diff --git a/FinalProject_NLP.ipynb b/FinalProject_NLP.ipynb new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e05f919 --- /dev/null +++ b/FinalProject_NLP.ipynb @@ -0,0 +1,809 @@ +{ + "cells": [ + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 42, + "id": "3f962c96", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stderr", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "[nltk_data] Downloading package stopwords to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package stopwords is already up-to-date!\n", + "[nltk_data] Downloading package wordnet to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package wordnet is already up-to-date!\n", + "[nltk_data] Downloading package punkt to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package punkt is already up-to-date!\n", + "[nltk_data] Downloading package stopwords to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package stopwords is already up-to-date!\n", + "[nltk_data] Downloading package omw-1.4 to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package omw-1.4 is already up-to-date!\n", + "[nltk_data] Downloading package averaged_perceptron_tagger to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package averaged_perceptron_tagger is already up-to-\n", + "[nltk_data] date!\n" + ] + }, + { + "data": { + "text/plain": [ + "True" + ] + }, + "execution_count": 42, + "metadata": {}, + "output_type": "execute_result" + } + ], + "source": [ + "import pandas as pd\n", + "import re\n", + "from pandas.api.types import is_string_dtype, is_categorical_dtype\n", + "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n", + "import seaborn as sns\n", + "from tensorflow.keras.preprocessing.text import Tokenizer\n", + "from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer\n", + "from nltk.corpus import stopwords\n", + "from nltk.stem import WordNetLemmatizer, PorterStemmer\n", + "\n", + "import nltk\n", + "\n", + "nltk.download('stopwords')\n", + "nltk.download('wordnet')\n", + "nltk.download('punkt')\n", + "nltk.download('stopwords')\n", + "nltk.download('omw-1.4') # WordNet data\n", + "nltk.download('averaged_perceptron_tagger')" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "3d1803a2", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + " label content\n", + "0 0 hillary rodham nixon candidate baggage samsoni...\n", + "1 0 watch dirty harry reid lie romney s taxes didn...\n", + "2 0 hillary rodham nixon candidate baggage samsoni...\n", + "3 0 flashback king obama commutes sentences 22 dru...\n", + "4 0 benghazi panel calls hillary testify oath whit...\n", + "Shape: (40399, 2)\n" + ] + } + ], + "source": [ + "import pandas as pd\n", + "import re\n", + "\n", + "# Step 1: Load data and inspect\n", + "df = pd.read_csv('dataset/train_data.csv')\n", + "\n", + "import pandas as pd\n", + "import re\n", + "from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import ENGLISH_STOP_WORDS\n", + "\n", + "def cleanup_process(df):\n", + " \"\"\"\n", + " Cleans up a train_data.csv style DataFrame:\n", + " - Drops 'date' and 'subject' if present\n", + " - Merges 'title' and 'text' into 'content'\n", + " - Lowercases the text\n", + " - Removes all non-alphanumeric characters except spaces\n", + " - Removes common English stopwords\n", + " - Collapses multiple spaces into one\n", + " - Removes empty rows\n", + " - Resets index\n", + "\n", + " Returns:\n", + " pd.DataFrame: cleaned_dataset with 'label' and 'content'\n", + " \"\"\"\n", + " # Work on a copy so the original is not modified\n", + " df = df.copy()\n", + "\n", + " # Drop irrelevant columns\n", + " for col in ['date', 'subject']:\n", + " if col in df.columns:\n", + " df = df.drop(columns=col)\n", + "\n", + " # Merge title and text into 'content' and lowercase\n", + " df['content'] = (df['title'].fillna('') + ' ' + df['text'].fillna('')).str.lower()\n", + "\n", + " # Remove punctuation but keep digits\n", + " df['content'] = df['content'].apply(lambda x: re.sub(r'[^a-z0-9\\s]', ' ', x))\n", + "\n", + " # Remove stopwords\n", + " stop_words = set(ENGLISH_STOP_WORDS)\n", + " df['content'] = df['content'].apply(\n", + " lambda x: ' '.join([word for word in x.split() if word not in stop_words])\n", + " )\n", + "\n", + " # Collapse multiple spaces and strip leading/trailing spaces\n", + " df['content'] = df['content'].replace(r'\\s+', ' ', regex=True).str.strip()\n", + "\n", + " # Remove empty rows\n", + " df = df[df['content'].astype(bool)]\n", + "\n", + " # Reset index\n", + " df = df.reset_index(drop=True)\n", + "\n", + " # Return only label + content if label exists\n", + " if 'label' in df.columns:\n", + " return df[['label', 'content']]\n", + " else:\n", + " return df[['content']]\n", + "\n", + "# --- Usage ---\n", + "df = pd.read_csv('dataset/train_data.csv')\n", + "cleaned_dataset = cleanup_process(df)\n", + "\n", + "print(cleaned_dataset.head(5))\n", + "print(\"Shape:\", cleaned_dataset.shape)\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "5a2d7af6", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stderr", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "[nltk_data] Downloading package wordnet to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package wordnet is already up-to-date!\n", + "[nltk_data] Downloading package omw-1.4 to\n", + "[nltk_data] C:\\Users\\katyd\\AppData\\Roaming\\nltk_data...\n", + "[nltk_data] Package omw-1.4 is already up-to-date!\n" + ] + }, + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + " tokens \\\n", + "0 [hillary, rodham, nixon, candidate, baggage, s... \n", + "1 [watch, dirty, harry, reid, lie, romney, s, ta... \n", + "2 [hillary, rodham, nixon, candidate, baggage, s... \n", + "\n", + " lemm_stem \n", + "0 [hillari, rodham, nixon, candid, baggag, samso... \n", + "1 [watch, dirti, harri, reid, lie, romney, s, ta... \n", + "2 [hillari, rodham, nixon, candid, baggag, samso... \n" + ] + } + ], + "source": [ + "#STEP 2 : Text preprocessing \n", + "#Tokenization\n", + "from nltk.stem import WordNetLemmatizer, PorterStemmer\n", + "import nltk\n", + "nltk.download('wordnet')\n", + "nltk.download('omw-1.4')\n", + "\n", + "lemmatizer = WordNetLemmatizer()\n", + "stemmer = PorterStemmer()\n", + "\n", + "# Create word token list\n", + "cleaned_dataset['tokens'] = cleaned_dataset['content'].apply(lambda x: x.split())\n", + "\n", + "# Lemmatization + stemming\n", + "def lemmatize_and_stem(tokens):\n", + " lemmatized = [lemmatizer.lemmatize(word) for word in tokens]\n", + " stemmed = [stemmer.stem(word) for word in lemmatized]\n", + " return stemmed\n", + "\n", + "cleaned_dataset['lemm_stem'] = cleaned_dataset['tokens'].apply(lemmatize_and_stem)\n", + "\n", + "print(cleaned_dataset[['tokens', 'lemm_stem']].head(3))\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "7c8e2aaa", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Top 50 frequent words removed from corpus:\n", + " ['american', 'call', 'campaign', 'clinton', 'countri', 'democrat', 'donald', 'elect', 'govern', 'group', 'hillari', 'hous', 'includ', 'just', 'law', 'like', 'make', 'nation', 'new', 'news', 'obama', 'offic', 'offici', 'parti', 'peopl', 'polit', 'presid', 'report', 'republican', 'reuter', 'right', 's', 'said', 'say', 'senat', 'state', 'support', 't', 'time', 'told', 'trump', 'u', 'unit', 'use', 'video', 'vote', 'want', 'white', 'work', 'year']\n" + ] + }, + { + "data": { + "image/png": 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+ "text/plain": [ + "
" + ] + }, + "metadata": {}, + "output_type": "display_data" + } + ], + "source": [ + "# STEP 3 : VECTORIZATION - BAG OF WORDS & TF-IDF\n", + "import pandas as pd\n", + "import numpy as np\n", + "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n", + "from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import CountVectorizer, TfidfVectorizer, ENGLISH_STOP_WORDS\n", + "\n", + "# --- Step A: Identify top 50 most frequent words in the corpus ---\n", + "word_freq = pd.Series(' '.join(corpus).split()).value_counts()\n", + "top50_words = set(word_freq.head(50).index)\n", + "\n", + "# Show removed words\n", + "print(\"Top 50 frequent words removed from corpus:\\n\", sorted(top50_words))\n", + "\n", + "# --- Step B: Add to sklearn's stopwords and convert to list ---\n", + "custom_stopwords = list(ENGLISH_STOP_WORDS.union(top50_words))\n", + "\n", + "# --- Step C: Initialize and fit vectorizers ---\n", + "# Bag of Words\n", + "vectorizer = CountVectorizer(stop_words=custom_stopwords, min_df=5, max_df=0.9)\n", + "X_bow = vectorizer.fit_transform(corpus)\n", + "\n", + "# TF-IDF\n", + "tfidf_vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer(stop_words=custom_stopwords, min_df=5, max_df=0.9)\n", + "X_tfidf = tfidf_vectorizer.fit_transform(corpus)\n", + "\n", + "# --- Step D: Extract top tokens for visualization ---\n", + "# BoW\n", + "bow_sum = np.array(X_bow.sum(axis=0)).flatten()\n", + "bow_vocab = vectorizer.get_feature_names_out()\n", + "bow_df = pd.DataFrame({'token': bow_vocab, 'count': bow_sum}).sort_values(by='count', ascending=False).head(20)\n", + "\n", + "# TF-IDF\n", + "tfidf_sum = np.array(X_tfidf.sum(axis=0)).flatten()\n", + "tfidf_vocab = tfidf_vectorizer.get_feature_names_out()\n", + "tfidf_df = pd.DataFrame({'token': tfidf_vocab, 'score': tfidf_sum}).sort_values(by='score', ascending=False).head(20)\n", + "\n", + "# --- Step E: Plotting ---\n", + "fig, axes = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(14, 6))\n", + "\n", + "# BoW plot\n", + "axes[0].barh(bow_df['token'][::-1], bow_df['count'][::-1])\n", + "axes[0].set_title('Top 20 Words (Bag of Words)\\n(after removing top 50 frequent words)')\n", + "axes[0].set_xlabel('Count')\n", + "\n", + "# TF-IDF plot\n", + "axes[1].barh(tfidf_df['token'][::-1], tfidf_df['score'][::-1])\n", + "axes[1].set_title('Top 20 Words (TF-IDF)\\n(after removing top 50 frequent words)')\n", + "axes[1].set_xlabel('TF-IDF Score')\n", + "\n", + "plt.tight_layout()\n", + "plt.show()\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "48e760bb", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Train size: 32319 | Test size: 8080\n", + "Class balance (train):\n", + "label\n", + "0 0.564\n", + "1 0.436\n", + "Name: proportion, dtype: float64\n", + "Class balance (test):\n", + "label\n", + "0 0.564\n", + "1 0.436\n", + "Name: proportion, dtype: float64\n" + ] + } + ], + "source": [ + "# STEP 4 : PRE PROCESSING & MODELING\n", + "#A_ We keep only label and content\n", + "df_cls = cleaned_dataset[['label', 'content']].dropna().reset_index(drop=True)\n", + "\n", + "# B_Define X (texts) and y (labels)\n", + "X = df_cls['content']\n", + "y = df_cls['label']\n", + "\n", + "# C_3) Train/Test split (80/20), stratified to keep class balance\n", + "from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split\n", + "\n", + "X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(\n", + " X, y,\n", + " test_size=0.20,\n", + " stratify=y, # keeps the same class proportion in train/test\n", + " random_state=42 # for reproducibility\n", + ")\n", + "\n", + "print(\"Train size:\", X_train.shape[0], \"| Test size:\", X_test.shape[0])\n", + "print(\"Class balance (train):\")\n", + "print(y_train.value_counts(normalize=True).round(3))\n", + "print(\"Class balance (test):\")\n", + "print(y_test.value_counts(normalize=True).round(3))\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "44c8f96e", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Train TF-IDF shape: (32319, 34794)\n", + "Test TF-IDF shape: (8080, 34794)\n" + ] + } + ], + "source": [ + "# STEP 5 Vectorization (TF-IDF)\n", + "# Train/Test Split \n", + "# convert columns into vectors using TF-IDF, which captures how important a word is in a document compared to the whole corpus.\n", + "from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer\n", + "\n", + "# Initialize TF-IDF vectorizer\n", + "tfidf = TfidfVectorizer(\n", + " lowercase=True,\n", + " strip_accents='unicode',\n", + " stop_words='english', \n", + " min_df=5, # ignore very rare words\n", + " max_df=0.9 # ignore very common words\n", + ")\n", + "\n", + "# Fit on the training data\n", + "X_train_tfidf = tfidf.fit_transform(X_train)\n", + "\n", + "# Transform the test data using the same vocabulary\n", + "X_test_tfidf = tfidf.transform(X_test)\n", + "\n", + "print(\"Train TF-IDF shape:\", X_train_tfidf.shape)\n", + "print(\"Test TF-IDF shape:\", X_test_tfidf.shape)\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "4b600a00", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Accuracy: 0.9862623762376238\n", + "\n", + "Classification Report:\n", + " precision recall f1-score support\n", + "\n", + " 0 0.99 0.99 0.99 4558\n", + " 1 0.98 0.98 0.98 3522\n", + "\n", + " accuracy 0.99 8080\n", + " macro avg 0.99 0.99 0.99 8080\n", + "weighted avg 0.99 0.99 0.99 8080\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "data": { + "image/png": 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", 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" + ] + }, + "metadata": {}, + "output_type": "display_data" + }, + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "\n", + "=== Global metrics ===\n", + "Accuracy: 0.9863\n", + "Balanced accuracy: 0.9860\n", + "Precision (macro): 0.9861\n", + "Recall (macro): 0.9860\n", + "F1 (macro): 0.9860\n", + "Precision (weighted): 0.9863\n", + "Recall (weighted): 0.9863\n", + "F1 (weighted): 0.9863\n", + "ROC AUC: 0.9988\n", + "PR AUC (avg precision): 0.9983\n", + "Log loss: 0.0861\n", + "MCC: 0.9721\n", + "Cohen’s kappa: 0.9721\n", + "\n", + "=== Classification report (per class) ===\n", + " precision recall f1-score support\n", + "\n", + " 0 0.9873 0.9884 0.9878 4558\n", + " 1 0.9849 0.9835 0.9842 3522\n", + "\n", + " accuracy 0.9863 8080\n", + " macro avg 0.9861 0.9860 0.9860 8080\n", + "weighted avg 0.9863 0.9863 0.9863 8080\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "data": { + "image/png": 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", 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", + "text/plain": [ + "
" + ] + }, + "metadata": {}, + "output_type": "display_data" + } + ], + "source": [ + "# STEP 6 Train/Test Split (Internal)\n", + "#Logistic Regression \n", + "from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression\n", + "from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score, classification_report, confusion_matrix\n", + "\n", + "# 1. Initialize the model\n", + "log_reg = LogisticRegression(max_iter=1000)\n", + "\n", + "# 2. Train the model\n", + "log_reg.fit(X_train_tfidf, y_train)\n", + "\n", + "# 3. Predict on the test set\n", + "y_pred = log_reg.predict(X_test_tfidf)\n", + "\n", + "# 4. Evaluate performance\n", + "print(\"Accuracy:\", accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred))\n", + "print(\"\\nClassification Report:\\n\", classification_report(y_test, y_pred))\n", + "\n", + "# 5. Confusion matrix\n", + "import seaborn as sns\n", + "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n", + "\n", + "cm = confusion_matrix(y_test, y_pred)\n", + "sns.heatmap(cm, annot=True, fmt='d', cmap='Blues', xticklabels=[0,1], yticklabels=[0,1])\n", + "plt.xlabel('Predicted')\n", + "plt.ylabel('Actual')\n", + "plt.title('Confusion Matrix')\n", + "plt.show()\n", + "\n", + "# 6 Metrics\n", + "from sklearn.metrics import (\n", + " accuracy_score, precision_score, recall_score, f1_score,\n", + " classification_report, confusion_matrix, ConfusionMatrixDisplay,\n", + " roc_auc_score, roc_curve, precision_recall_curve, average_precision_score,\n", + " balanced_accuracy_score, matthews_corrcoef, cohen_kappa_score, log_loss\n", + ")\n", + "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n", + "import numpy as np\n", + "\n", + "# ------- Prédictions -------\n", + "y_proba = log_reg.predict_proba(X_test_tfidf)[:, 1] # proba classe 1\n", + "y_pred = (y_proba >= 0.5).astype(int) # ou log_reg.predict(X_test_tfidf)\n", + "\n", + "# ------- Métriques globales -------\n", + "metrics = {\n", + " \"Accuracy\": accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred),\n", + " \"Balanced accuracy\": balanced_accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred),\n", + " \"Precision (macro)\": precision_score(y_test, y_pred, average=\"macro\", zero_division=0),\n", + " \"Recall (macro)\": recall_score(y_test, y_pred, average=\"macro\", zero_division=0),\n", + " \"F1 (macro)\": f1_score(y_test, y_pred, average=\"macro\", zero_division=0),\n", + " \"Precision (weighted)\": precision_score(y_test, y_pred, average=\"weighted\", zero_division=0),\n", + " \"Recall (weighted)\": recall_score(y_test, y_pred, average=\"weighted\", zero_division=0),\n", + " \"F1 (weighted)\": f1_score(y_test, y_pred, average=\"weighted\", zero_division=0),\n", + " \"ROC AUC\": roc_auc_score(y_test, y_proba),\n", + " \"PR AUC (avg precision)\": average_precision_score(y_test, y_proba),\n", + " \"Log loss\": log_loss(y_test, y_proba),\n", + " \"MCC\": matthews_corrcoef(y_test, y_pred),\n", + " \"Cohen’s kappa\": cohen_kappa_score(y_test, y_pred),\n", + "}\n", + "print(\"\\n=== Global metrics ===\")\n", + "for k,v in metrics.items():\n", + " print(f\"{k}: {v:.4f}\")\n", + "\n", + "# ------- Per-class classification report -------\n", + "print(\"\\n=== Classification report (per class) ===\")\n", + "print(classification_report(y_test, y_pred, digits=4))\n", + "\n", + "# ------- Courbe ROC -------\n", + "fpr, tpr, _ = roc_curve(y_test, y_proba)\n", + "plt.figure(figsize=(6,5))\n", + "plt.plot(fpr, tpr, label=f\"ROC AUC = {metrics['ROC AUC']:.3f}\")\n", + "plt.plot([0,1], [0,1], linestyle='--', label=\"Chance\")\n", + "plt.xlabel(\"False Positive Rate\")\n", + "plt.ylabel(\"True Positive Rate\")\n", + "plt.title(\"ROC curve\")\n", + "plt.legend()\n", + "plt.tight_layout()\n", + "plt.show()\n", + "\n", + "# ------- Courbe Precision-Recall -------\n", + "prec, rec, _ = precision_recall_curve(y_test, y_proba)\n", + "plt.figure(figsize=(6,5))\n", + "plt.plot(rec, prec, label=f\"AP = {metrics['PR AUC (avg precision)']:.3f}\")\n", + "plt.xlabel(\"Recall\")\n", + "plt.ylabel(\"Precision\")\n", + "plt.title(\"Precision-Recall curve\")\n", + "plt.legend()\n", + "plt.tight_layout()\n", + "plt.show()\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": 67, + "id": "e76a0036", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Best params: {'C': 4.0, 'class_weight': None, 'max_iter': 1000, 'solver': 'liblinear'}\n", + "Accuracy: 0.9920792079207921\n", + " precision recall f1-score support\n", + "\n", + " 0 0.99 0.99 0.99 4558\n", + " 1 0.99 0.99 0.99 3522\n", + "\n", + " accuracy 0.99 8080\n", + " macro avg 0.99 0.99 0.99 8080\n", + "weighted avg 0.99 0.99 0.99 8080\n", + "\n" + ] + } + ], + "source": [ + "# STEP 7 : Tuning\n", + "from sklearn.model_selection import GridSearchCV\n", + "from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression\n", + "\n", + "param_grid = {\n", + " \"C\": [0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0],\n", + " \"class_weight\": [None, \"balanced\"],\n", + " \"max_iter\": [1000],\n", + " \"solver\": [\"liblinear\"] # good for small grids with L2\n", + "}\n", + "\n", + "logreg = LogisticRegression()\n", + "grid = GridSearchCV(logreg, param_grid, cv=5, n_jobs=-1, scoring=\"f1\")\n", + "grid.fit(X_train_tfidf, y_train)\n", + "\n", + "print(\"Best params:\", grid.best_params_)\n", + "best_model = grid.best_estimator_\n", + "\n", + "# Evaluate on test\n", + "from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score, classification_report\n", + "y_pred = best_model.predict(X_test_tfidf)\n", + "print(\"Accuracy:\", accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred))\n", + "print(classification_report(y_test, y_pred))\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "bd2e7b73", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Saved vectorizer_tfidf.joblib and model_logreg.joblib\n", + "Wrote predictions to predictions_validation.csv\n" + ] + } + ], + "source": [ + "# ---- FINAL TRAIN + PREDICT PIPELINE ----\n", + "import re\n", + "import pandas as pd\n", + "from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer\n", + "from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression\n", + "import joblib\n", + "\n", + "# ========= SAME CLEANING AS TRAINING =========\n", + "def cleanup_process(df: pd.DataFrame) -> pd.DataFrame:\n", + " \"\"\"Clean like training: merge title+text -> content, lowercase, keep letters+digits+space,\n", + " collapse spaces, drop empties. Returns df[['label','content']] or [['content']].\"\"\"\n", + " df = df.copy()\n", + " for col in ['subject', 'date']:\n", + " if col in df.columns:\n", + " df = df.drop(columns=col)\n", + "\n", + " # If content not present, build it from title+text\n", + " if 'content' not in df.columns:\n", + " if 'title' not in df.columns or 'text' not in df.columns:\n", + " raise KeyError(\"Expected 'title' and 'text' to build 'content'.\")\n", + " df['content'] = (df['title'].fillna('') + ' ' + df['text'].fillna('')).str.lower()\n", + "\n", + " # remove punctuation (keep digits)\n", + " df['content'] = df['content'].str.replace(r'[^a-z0-9\\s]', ' ', regex=True)\n", + " # collapse spaces\n", + " df['content'] = df['content'].str.replace(r'\\s+', ' ', regex=True).str.strip()\n", + " # drop empty rows\n", + " df = df[df['content'].astype(bool)].reset_index(drop=True)\n", + "\n", + " cols = ['content']\n", + " if 'label' in df.columns:\n", + " cols = ['label', 'content']\n", + " return df[cols]\n", + "\n", + "# ========= Use ALL labeled data to fit TF-IDF + train LR =========\n", + "train_df = cleaned_dataset[['label', 'content']].dropna().reset_index(drop=True)\n", + "\n", + "# Vectorizer\n", + "tfidf = TfidfVectorizer(\n", + " lowercase=True,\n", + " strip_accents='unicode',\n", + " stop_words='english',\n", + " min_df=5,\n", + " max_df=0.9\n", + ")\n", + "\n", + "X_all = tfidf.fit_transform(train_df['content'])\n", + "y_all = train_df['label']\n", + "\n", + "# Best params via tuning\n", + "model = LogisticRegression(C=4.0, solver='liblinear', max_iter=1000)\n", + "model.fit(X_all, y_all)\n", + "\n", + "\n", + "# ========= Predict on test_data_no_labels.csv =========\n", + "val_raw = pd.read_csv(\"dataset/test_data_no_labels.csv\")\n", + "val_clean = cleanup_process(val_raw) # -> has 'content' (no label) or ['label','content'] if provided\n", + "X_val = tfidf.transform(val_clean['content'])\n", + "val_pred = model.predict(X_val).astype(int)\n", + "\n", + "# Build output in original format: replace label column with predictions\n", + "submission = val_raw.copy()\n", + "# If the file has a 'label' column (filled with 2), replace it; else, insert it as first column\n", + "if 'label' in submission.columns:\n", + " submission['label'] = val_pred\n", + "else:\n", + " submission.insert(0, 'label', val_pred)\n", + "\n", + "# Save exactly same columns & separator (CSV)\n", + "submission.to_csv(\"predictions_validation.csv\", index=False)\n", + "print(\"Wrote predictions to predictions_validation.csv\")\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "d6984880", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [ + { + "name": "stdout", + "output_type": "stream", + "text": [ + "Final Accuracy: 0.9948763644464246\n", + "\n", + "Classification Report:\n", + " precision recall f1-score support\n", + "\n", + " 0 0.98 0.98 0.98 684\n", + " 1 1.00 1.00 1.00 3805\n", + "\n", + " accuracy 0.99 4489\n", + " macro avg 0.99 0.99 0.99 4489\n", + "weighted avg 0.99 0.99 0.99 4489\n", + "\n" + ] + }, + { + "data": { + "image/png": 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", + "text/plain": [ + "
" + ] + }, + "metadata": {}, + "output_type": "display_data" + } + ], + "source": [ + "# TEST with Test labels\n", + "import pandas as pd\n", + "from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score, classification_report, confusion_matrix\n", + "\n", + "# 1. Load predictions\n", + "preds = pd.read_csv(\"predictions_validation.csv\")\n", + "\n", + "# 2. Load true labels\n", + "true_labels = pd.read_csv(\"test_labels.csv\")\n", + "\n", + "# 3. Check row correspondence\n", + "if len(preds) != len(true_labels):\n", + " raise ValueError(\"Mismatch in number of rows between predictions and true labels!\")\n", + "\n", + "# 4. Compare\n", + "y_true = true_labels['label']\n", + "y_pred = preds['label']\n", + "\n", + "# 5. Metrics\n", + "print(\"Final Accuracy:\", accuracy_score(y_true, y_pred))\n", + "print(\"\\nClassification Report:\\n\", classification_report(y_true, y_pred))\n", + "\n", + "# 6. Confusion matrix\n", + "import seaborn as sns\n", + "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt\n", + "\n", + "cm = confusion_matrix(y_true, y_pred)\n", + "sns.heatmap(cm, annot=True, fmt='d', cmap='Blues', xticklabels=[0,1], yticklabels=[0,1])\n", + "plt.xlabel('Predicted')\n", + "plt.ylabel('Actual')\n", + "plt.title('Final Confusion Matrix on Validation Set')\n", + "plt.show()\n" + ] + }, + { + "cell_type": "code", + "execution_count": null, + "id": "c5631c77", + "metadata": {}, + "outputs": [], + "source": [] + } + ], + "metadata": { + "kernelspec": { + "display_name": "mon_env", + "language": "python", + "name": "python3" + }, + "language_info": { + "codemirror_mode": { + "name": "ipython", + "version": 3 + }, + "file_extension": ".py", + "mimetype": "text/x-python", + "name": "python", + "nbconvert_exporter": "python", + "pygments_lexer": "ipython3", + "version": "3.11.13" + } + }, + "nbformat": 4, + "nbformat_minor": 5 +} diff --git a/NLP-Project-.pptx b/NLP-Project-.pptx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..150695c Binary files /dev/null and b/NLP-Project-.pptx differ diff --git a/predictions_validation.csv b/predictions_validation.csv new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef7df4b --- /dev/null +++ b/predictions_validation.csv @@ -0,0 +1,4492 @@ +label;title;text;subject;date;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syria toxic gas inquiry to end after Russia again blocks U.N. renewal;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An international investigation into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria will end on Friday after Russia blocked for the third time in a month attempts at the United Nations to renew the inquiry, which Moscow has slammed as flawed. In the past two years, the joint U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inquiry has found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack and has also several times used chlorine as a weapon. It blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas. Russia vetoed on Friday a Japanese-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution to extend the inquiry for one month. It was an eleventh-hour bid to buy more time for negotiations after Russia blocked U.S.-drafted resolutions on Thursday and Oct. 24 to renew the investigation, which the council created in 2015. Syrian ally Russia has cast 11 vetoes on possible Security Council action on Syria since the country s civil war began in 2011. The Japanese draft received 12 votes in favor on Friday, while China abstained and Bolivia joined Russia to vote no. After Friday s vote, the council moved to closed-door discussions at the request of Sweden s U.N. Ambassador Olof Skoog to ensure we are absolutely convinced we have exhausted every avenue, every effort to try and renew the investigation. After a brief discussion, Italian U.N. Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi, council president for November, told reporters: The council will continue to work in the coming hours and days, constructively, to find a common position. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council earlier on Friday that the inquiry could only be extended if fundamental flaws in its work were fixed. He said that for the past two year the investigators had rubber-stamped baseless accusations against Syria. The council voted on a rival Russian-drafted resolution on Thursday to renew the inquiry, but it failed after only garnering four votes in favor. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Russia, Britain or China to be adopted. Russia is wasting our time, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council on Friday. Russia s actions today and in recent weeks have been designed to delay, to distract and ultimately to defeat the effort to secure accountability for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, Haley said. While Russia agreed to the creation of the inquiry two years ago, it has consistently questioned its work and conclusions. The April 4 sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people prompted the United States to launch missiles on a Syrian air base. Haley warned on Thursday: We will do it again if we must. Despite the public deadlock and war of words between the United States and Russia at the United Nations, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Thursday that President Donald Trump believed he could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin on issues like Syria. Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greeks march to mark 1973 student revolt against junta, clashes break out;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police clashed with hooded youths in Athens on Friday after thousands marched to mark a bloody 1973 student uprising that helped topple the military junta which then ruled the country. More than 10,000 people marched peacefully to the embassy of the United States, which some Greeks accuse of having supported the seven-year military dictatorship. About 5,000 police were deployed in the streets of central Athens. At the tail-end of the demonstration, hooded youths hurled stones and petrol bombs at police in the Exarchia district in central Athens, often the setting for such clashes. Police used teargas to disperse them. Earlier on Friday, Greeks laid flowers at the Athens Polytechnic University to honor those killed during the revolt. The junta collapsed less than a year later. The annual protest often becomes a focal point for protests against government policies and austerity measures mandated by the country s international lenders in exchange for bailout funds. The crisis that broke out in 2010 has left hundreds of thousands of people unemployed. Protesters held banners reading: We will live freely and No pensioner will be fired! After seven years of belt-tightening Greeks hope that they will emerge from lenders supervision in August 2018, when the country s third international bailout expires. Many of them accuse a political elite of driving the country to bankruptcy. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says will work with North Korea to boost ties as envoy visits;BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - Traditional friendship between China and North Korea represents valuable wealth for their people, China said after its special envoy met a high-ranking North Korean official, but there was no mention of the crisis over North Korea s weapons. Song Tao, who heads the ruling Chinese Communist Party s international department, is visiting Pyongyang to discuss the outcome of the recently concluded Communist Party Congress in China, at which President Xi Jinping cemented his power. In a brief statement dated Friday but reported by Chinese media on Saturday, the international department said Song, who is there representing Xi, reported to North Korean official Choe Ryong Hae the outcome of the congress. Song and Choe also talked about relations between their parties and countries, the department said. They said that the traditional friendship between China and North Korea was founded and cultivated by both countries former old leaders, and is valuable wealth for the two peoples, it said. Both sides must work hard together to promote the further development of relations between the two parties and two countries to benefit their two peoples. The department made no mention of North Korea s nuclear or missile programs, which are strongly opposed by China. The North s official KCNA news agency said Song informed Choe about China s 19th National Congress in detail , and stressed China s stance to steadily develop the traditionally friendly relations between the two parties and countries. Song arrived on Friday but it is not clear how long he will be in North Korea. China has repeatedly pushed for a diplomatic solution to the crisis over North Korea s development of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them, but in recent months it has had only limited high-level exchanges with North Korea. The last time China s special envoy for North Korea visited the country was in February last year. Song s trip comes just a week after U.S. President Donald Trump visited Beijing as part of an Asia tour, where he pressed for greater action to rein in North Korea, especially from China, with which North Korea does 90 percent of its trade. The influential state-run Chinese tabloid the Global Times said in an editorial that it was unwise to expect too much from his trip, saying his key mission was to inform North Korea about the party congress in Beijing. Song is not a magician, the newspaper said. The key to easing the situation on the peninsula lies in the hands of Washington and Pyongyang. If both sides insist on their own logic and refuse to move in the same direction, even if Song opens a door for talks, the door could be closed any time. It is not clear whether Song will meet North Korea s youthful leader Kim Jong Un. Kim and President Xi exchanged messages of congratulations and thanks over the Chinese party congress, but neither leader has visited the other s country since assuming power. Song s department is in charge of the party s relations with foreign political parties, and has traditionally served as a conduit for Chinese diplomacy with North Korea. China s new special envoy for North Korea, Kong Xuanyou, who took up his position in August, is not believed to have visited the country since assuming the job. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina intensifies search for missing submarine with 44 crew;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An Argentine submarine with 44 crew on board was missing in the South Atlantic two days after its last communication, prompting the navy to step up its search efforts late on Friday in difficult, stormy conditions. The ARA San Juan was in the southern Argentine sea 432 km (268 miles) from the Patagonian coast when it sent its last signal on Wednesday, naval spokesman Enrique Balbi said. The emergency operation was formally upgraded to a search-and-rescue procedure on Friday evening after no visual or radar contact was made with the submarine, Balbi said. Detection has been difficult despite the quantity of boats and aircraft involved in the search, Balbi said, noting that heavy winds and high waves were complicating efforts. Obviously, the number of hours that have passed - two days in which there has been no communication - is of note. The navy believes the submarine, which left Ushuaia en route to the coastal city of Mar del Plata in Buenos Aires province, had communication difficulties that may have been caused by an electrical outage, Balbi said. Navy protocol would call for the submarine to come to the surface once communication was lost. We expect that it is on the surface, Balbi said. The German-built submarine, which uses diesel-electric propulsion, was inaugurated in 1983, making it the newest of the three submarines in the navy s fleet, according to the navy. President Mauricio Macri said the government was in contact with the crew s families. We share their concern and that of all Argentines, he wrote on Twitter. We are committed to using all national and international resources necessary to find the ARA San Juan submarine as soon as possible. Argentina accepted an offer from the United States for a NASA P-3 explorer aircraft, which had been stationed in the southern city of Ushuaia and was preparing to depart to Antarctica, to fly over the search area, Balbi said. A Hercules C-130 from the Argentine Air Force was also flying over the operational area. Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Britain and South Africa had also formally offered assistance. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MUST READ: I’m Still Trying To Figure Out How Hillary Lost The Election…;Once you ve read this list, you re going to want to share this with everyone you know! Was it the Russian Uranium Deal? Was it Wikileaks? Was it Podesta? Was it Comey? Was it having a sexual predator as a husband? Was it Huma Abedin s sexual predator husband Anthony Weiner? Was it because the Clinton Foundation ripped off Haiti? Was it subpoena violations? Was it the congressional testimony lies? Was it the corrupt Clinton Foundation? Was it the Benghazi butchering? Was it pay for play?Was it being recorded laughing because she got a child rapist off when she was an attorney? Was it the Travel Gate scandal? Was it the Whitewater scandal? Was it the Cattle Gate scandal? Was it the Trooper-Gate scandal? OR . Was it the $15 million for Chelsea s apartment bought with foundation money? Or her husband s interference with Loretta Lynch & the investigation? Or having debate questions stolen & given to her? Or her own secret server in her house? Or deleting 30,000 emails? Or having cell phones destroyed with hammers? Was it the Seth Rich murder?Was it the Vince Foster murder? Was it the Gennifer Flowers assault & settlement? Was it the $800,000 Paula Jones settlement? Was it calling half the United States deplorable? Was it the underhanded treatment of Bernie Sanders?Was it Bill s impeachment? Was it the lie about being under sniper fire in Bosnia?Was it the $10 million she took for the pardon of Marc Rich? Or the $6 BILLION she lost when in charge of the State Dept.? Or because she is a hateful, lying, power-hungry, overly ambitious, greedy, nasty person? Gee I just can t seem to put my finger on it -Author unknown;left-news;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri leaves Saudi Arabia for France on Friday;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who sparked a crisis by resigning as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4 during a visit to Saudi Arabia, is on his way to the airport, he said early on Saturday, before his flight from Riyadh to France. Hariri s abrupt resignation while he was in Saudi Arabia and his continued stay there caused fears over Lebanon s stability. His visit to France with his family to meet President Emmanuel Macron is seen as part of a possible way out of the crisis. I am on the way to the airport, he said in a Tweet. However, Okab Saqr, a member of parliament for Hariri s Future Movement, said that after Hariri s visit to France, he would have a small Arab tour before traveling to Beirut. Macron, speaking in Sweden, said Hariri intends to return to his country in the coming days, weeks . The crisis has thrust Lebanon into the bitter rivalry pitting Saudi Arabia and its allies against a bloc led by Iran, which includes the heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite Hezbollah group. In Lebanon, Hariri has long been an ally of Riyadh. His coalition government, formed in a political deal last year to end years of paralysis, includes Hezbollah. President Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, has called Hariri a Saudi hostage and refused to accept his resignation unless he returns to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Hariri say his movements are not restricted. On Wednesday, Macron invited Hariri to visit France along with his family, providing what French diplomats said might be a way to reduce tensions surrounding the crisis by demonstrating that Hariri could leave Saudi Arabia. Lebanese politicians from across the political spectrum have called for Hariri to return to the country, saying it is necessary to resolve the crisis. Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, who heads President Aoun s political party, said on Thursday Beirut could escalate the crisis if Hariri did not return home. We have adopted self-restraint so far to arrive at this result so that we don t head towards diplomatic escalation and the other measures available to us, he said during a European tour aimed at building pressure for a solution to the crisis. Saudi Arabia regards Hezbollah as a conduit for Iranian interference across the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. It says it has no problem with Hezbollah remaining a purely political party, but has demanded it surrender its arms, which the group says are needed to defend Lebanon. Although Riyadh has said it accepted Hariri s decision to join a coalition with Hezbollah last year, after Hariri announced his resignation Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon of declaring war on it because of Hezbollah s regional role. Lebanon, where Sunni, Shi ite, Christian and Druze groups fought a 1975-1990 civil war, maintains a governing system intended to balance sectarian groups. The prime minister is traditionally from the Sunni community, of which Hariri is the most influential leader. On Friday, Hariri said in a tweet that his presence in Saudi Arabia was for consultations on the future of the situation in Lebanon and its relations with the surrounding Arab region . His scheduled meeting with Macron in Paris on Saturday, and a lunch that his family will also attend, comes the day before Arab foreign ministers meet in Cairo to discuss Iran. Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, says it appears Saudi Arabia hopes the ministers will adopt a strongly worded statement against Iran. But she said not all the countries share Riyadh s view that one way to confront Iran is to apply pressure on Lebanon. There is quite a widespread understanding that there is only so much Lebanon can do and it doesn t serve anybody to turn Lebanon into your next arena for a fight between Iran and Saudi Arabia, said. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. urges passage of Japan proposal to extend probe of chemical weapons attacks in Syria;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Friday urged passage of a U.S.-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution to renew an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria for one month. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, speaking to reporters in a briefing, said the United States was very disappointed in Russia s veto of U.N. Security Council action on the issue on Thursday. Russia separately on Friday rejected the one-month extension proposal crafted by Japan. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: UNCOVERED VIDEO REVEALS Dan Rather Saying Americans Are Bored With Bill Clinton Rape Story…Want To “Move On” To The Next Thing;In one of his regular appearances on the Imus In The Morning radio show, Dan Rather was asked by Imus in 1999, if he had any idea why NBC News was sitting on the story about the rape charges against Bill Clinton by Juanita Broaddrick? Rather responded that the reason they were sitting on the story was pretty obvious. First, Rather clarified that they don t call to tell him why or why not they choose to hide a story from their news channel, but suggested: I think it s pretty obvious that they re nervous about, number one, whether this information is accurate, whether it s really true or not. And number two, even if it does turn out to be true, it happened a long time ago, and number three, they ve got to be figuring that maybe, just maybe the American public has heard all that they want to hear about it and they re saying, next , let s move on to the next thing. Imus went on to say that he read an article in either the leftist propaganda Newsweek or Time magazine that even the woman herself, Juanita Broaddrick said she hoped that this thing went away this week, and even she was sick of hearing about it, [Dan Rather interrupted Imus with laughter] and it s her story. Dan Rather then busted out in laughter and agreed, saying, Well let s hope she gets her way with that. More laughter Imus then revealed that Someone from NBC News told me that she wasn t clear about when exactly this thing happened, but then her son called me and he s an attorney someplace, in, I guess in Arkansas, and he wanted me to know, why he called me god knows, but he wanted me to know that that was not the case, that she knows exactly what it was, and there was some other reason they were sitting on it. Instead of responding to Imus comments, Rather deflected by making an embarrassing play to stroke Imus ego and distract him from the reason NBC hiding the Clinton rape story. Rather continued, But I just don t know if this is going anywhere, you know, I d have to bet for the moment that it isn t. The Washington Post gave it a pretty good ride on Saturday, and there wasn t much pick up from it. So unless there s some new and sensational information developed out of it, my guess is that it probably dribbles away. ;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YEA! GOP SENATOR GOES OFF On Liberal Dem Spouting Lies About Trump Tax Plan: ‘GIMME A BREAK!’ [Video];Dem Sherrod Brown and GOP Senator Orrin Hatch go at it! They were discussing the tax plan and Hatch let Brown know he doesn t appreciate the class warfare propaganda THE MIDDLE CLASS WINS WITH TRUMP TAX PLAN:The Senate s plan to rewrite the tax code would go much further than a competing House proposal toward making good on Republican promises to focus on the middle class, a new report shows.Moderate-income people would consistently see the largest percentage declines in their tax bills, according to an analysis released late Saturday by the official, nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.In 2019, people in the middle of the income spectrum, earning between $50,000 and $70,000, would see their taxes fall by 7.1 percent. Those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 would see a 10.4 percent decline, the report shows, while millionaires would get a 5.3 percent tax cut.Unlike with the House plan, that trend holds up throughout the period over which JCT analyzed the Senate proposal. In 2027, for example, millionaires would get a 2.8 percent tax cut from the Senate plan, compared with a 6.1 percent decline for people in the middle and a 10.3 percent reduction for those earning between $20,000 and $30,000.How Republicans tax plans would affect people in different income groups has been a hotly contested issue in Congress, with the GOP contending its plans are aimed at the middle class while Democrats call them a giveaway to the rich.The House proposal would have a muddled impact on people in different income groups, JCT found earlier this month. At first, modest-income people would be its biggest winners, but the outlook changes after the first few years. Some modest-income people would face tax increases under the House plan, JCT found, and by 2027, millionaires would be its biggest winners.The analysis of the Senate plan, which the Finance Committee plans to formally take up on Monday, shows people in every income cohort receiving a tax cut on average, though it did not examine whether some people within those groups would face tax increases.;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THIS TOPS IT ALL! HILLARY CLINTON Makes Shocking Statement Exposing Her Continued Delusion About 2016 Election Loss [Video];This tops it all! Hillary Clinton sat down with liberal rag Mother Jones and actually had the balls to come out and question the legitimacy of President Trump s victory last November! Remember that this woman was strongly opposed to anyone questioning the results of an election before she lost to Trump. Now she s literally challenging Trump s win! This woman needs some help! This is embarrassing Bill, come and get your wife!HOW DARE SHE SAY THIS!Two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 election in a new interview with Mother Jones. I think that there are lots of questions about its legitimacy, Clinton said. And we don t have a method for contesting that in our system. VOTER SUPPRESSION? NOW THAT S FUNNY!Clinton listed Russian interference and voter suppression as reasons why she is questioning the legitimacy of President Donald Trump s victory and calling for an independent commission to investigate the matter.WHAT HAPPENED That s why I ve long advocated for an independent commission to get to the bottom of what happened, she said.SHE WAS FOR IT BEFORE SHE WAS AGAINST ITDuring the 2016 presidential debates, Clinton often derided then-candidate Trump for his comments about the election being rigged and possibly not accepting the results. In the first debate, Clinton said that she supported democracy and would accept the results of the election. I support our democracy. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But I certainly will support the outcome of this election, Clinton said.Clinton even argued that Trump refusing to say he would accept the results of the election was a threat to American democracy.READ MORE: WFB;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WOW! IS MEGHAN MCCAIN FINISHED With The Hateful Hags of “The View” After Today’s Blow Up With Joy Behar? [VIDEO];It s pretty common knowledge for anyone s who s tortured themselves by watching The View, that it s really nothing more than a liberal, think-tank for dummies with too much time on their hands. Only one month ago, Meghan McCain left her job at Fox News as a co-host on The Five to plant herself at the end of the table, where anywhere between 4-6 angry women spend one-hour every weekday telling their viewers why they re angry, and why they hate President Trump and anyone who supports him. Thankfully for Meghan, she s the daughter of RINO Senator John McCain, one of the angriest men in politics, so she knows a thing or two about how to handle angry, and irrational people, who are driven by hate, and inspired by their desire to seek revenge. She also knows that her position at the end of the table (where the token conservatives are seated on The View), was likely offered to her because she was already on the anti-Trump train and didn t need any coaching.Every day, it becomes more and more obvious to the viewers that the pressure cooker relationship between unhinged co-hosts, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin, and their hated opponent Meghan McCain won t last. If I was a betting woman, I d bet McCain is packing up her dressing room and heading back to Fox for another attempt at more intellectual discourse and meaningful dialogue by the end of this year.Watch [Fireworks start at about the 3:30-minute mark]: There s a lot of Democrats asking for [Franken] to step down if you can believe it I don t just watch Fox, McCain said, looking at Behar. Fox is sex harassment central, Behar interrupted. You know what. That s so cheap. I m trying to talk about the fact that I watch other networks and people in your party are calling for the stepping down of Al Franken because of this investigation being a distraction, a frustrated McCain shot back.Whoopi attempted to interject, before losing her words and simply exclaiming, Well, shoot. I was responding to Joy. I just don t think that saying Fox is X, I know, I used to work there, McCain continued. We re talking about the present. This is what s exhausting about this conversation. I totally agree with you that it s absolutely disgusting at this point that we re still having conversations about Roy Moore. He should step down. but right now we re talking about another senator. We re also talking about hypocrisy, which is what provoked my outburst, Behar explained. Trump s hypocrisy, Fox s hypocrisy, Breitbart, Sean Hannity, all of them. What about the hypocrisy of Bill Clinton right now? McCain asked, prompting Joy to ask, Why bring up Bill Clinton at this point? It was at this point Whoopi stopped the conversation in its tracks, saying, We re doing and we ll be right back, before the show went to commercials. TooFabDo you think Meghan McCain will last another month on The View? We d love to hear your thoughts below. ;left-news;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ZING! Sarah Sanders Slices and Dices Hack Reporter With Awesome One-Liner [Video];You d think reporters would learn to ask questions on policy but they obviously still want to challenge Sarah Sanders with trash talk about President Trump. April Ryan should know! She s had many run-ins with Sanders that never end well for her. The one below is no exception:Sure, April Ryan just happened to be chatting with Hillary Clinton yesterday April Ryan: I was talking to Hillary Clinton today about the president s past and she said, Look I worry about everything from his past because it tells you how he behaves in the present and the future. What do you say to that as it relates to these allegations of the president?And then this from Sarah: I think Hillary Clinton probably should have dealt with some of her own issues before addressing this president.BOOM!ONE OF OUR PREVIOUS ZINGERS FROM SARAH SANDERS TO APRIL RYAN:Sarah Huckabee Sanders shut down White House reporter April Ryan during a press conference today. She said that the San Juan mayor made zero comments when President Donald Trump opened the table for discussion during his visit to Puerto Rico. The fake news claimed Trump didn t call on her to speak when in reality it was an open discussion that Mayor Cruz could have participated in.When Mayor Cruz joined Joy Reid on the The Rachel Maddow show Tuesday night. She called Trump s actions during his visit terrible and abominable, and criticized the round table discussion as a PR 17-minute meeting. Huckabee Sanders responded to Ryan s question by saying the visit was not controversial and was in fact widely praised, even by a Democrat Governor. She argued the Mayor of San Juan was politicizing the visit rather than focusing on the relief efforts. I think that it is sad that the Mayor of San Juan chose to make that a political statement instead of a time of focusing on the relief efforts. The president invited her to be part of that conversation. He specifically asked in the meeting where many were present, including a couple dozen other mayors who were very happy with the recovery effort, the governor, the congresswoman he opened the floor up for discussion and she actually made zero comments. The press secretary then suggested the round table discussion was her time to weigh in and ask for what she needed for San Juan. To me, that would have been the time and the place that she should have weighed in and asked for what she needed and laid out what she was asking for, for San Juan. She didn t, Huckabee Sanders said.Huckabee Sanders concluded with a word of advice for the mayor. Instead, she chose to wait until the president left, and then criticized him on TV. Which I think is the wrong thing for her to do for her constituents, and I hope the next time she is given the opportunity to help her constituents, she ll take it, she said.;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MUST READ: I’m Still Trying To Figure Out How Hillary Lost The Election…;Once you ve read this list, you re going to want to share this with everyone you know! Was it the Russian Uranium Deal? Was it Wikileaks? Was it Podesta? Was it Comey? Was it having a sexual predator as a husband? Was it Huma Abedin s sexual predator husband Anthony Weiner? Was it because the Clinton Foundation ripped off Haiti? Was it subpoena violations? Was it the congressional testimony lies? Was it the corrupt Clinton Foundation? Was it the Benghazi butchering? Was it pay for play?Was it being recorded laughing because she got a child rapist off when she was an attorney? Was it the Travel Gate scandal? Was it the Whitewater scandal? Was it the Cattle Gate scandal? Was it the Trooper-Gate scandal? OR . Was it the $15 million for Chelsea s apartment bought with foundation money? Or her husband s interference with Loretta Lynch & the investigation? Or having debate questions stolen & given to her? Or her own secret server in her house? Or deleting 30,000 emails? Or having cell phones destroyed with hammers? Was it the Seth Rich murder?Was it the Vince Foster murder? Was it the Gennifer Flowers assault & settlement? Was it the $800,000 Paula Jones settlement? Was it calling half the United States deplorable? Was it the underhanded treatment of Bernie Sanders?Was it Bill s impeachment? Was it the lie about being under sniper fire in Bosnia?Was it the $10 million she took for the pardon of Marc Rich? Or the $6 BILLION she lost when in charge of the State Dept.? Or because she is a hateful, lying, power-hungry, overly ambitious, greedy, nasty person? Gee I just can t seem to put my finger on it -Author unknown;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WOW! IS MEGHAN MCCAIN FINISHED With The Hateful Hags of “The View” After Today’s Blow Up With Joy Behar? [VIDEO];It s pretty common knowledge for anyone s who s tortured themselves by watching The View, that it s really nothing more than a liberal, think-tank for dummies with too much time on their hands. Only one month ago, Meghan McCain left her job at Fox News as a co-host on The Five to plant herself at the end of the table, where anywhere between 4-6 angry women spend one-hour every weekday telling their viewers why they re angry, and why they hate President Trump and anyone who supports him. Thankfully for Meghan, she s the daughter of RINO Senator John McCain, one of the angriest men in politics, so she knows a thing or two about how to handle angry, and irrational people, who are driven by hate, and inspired by their desire to seek revenge. She also knows that her position at the end of the table (where the token conservatives are seated on The View), was likely offered to her because she was already on the anti-Trump train and didn t need any coaching.Every day, it becomes more and more obvious to the viewers that the pressure cooker relationship between unhinged co-hosts, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin, and their hated opponent Meghan McCain won t last. If I was a betting woman, I d bet McCain is packing up her dressing room and heading back to Fox for another attempt at more intellectual discourse and meaningful dialogue by the end of this year.Watch [Fireworks start at about the 3:30-minute mark]: There s a lot of Democrats asking for [Franken] to step down if you can believe it I don t just watch Fox, McCain said, looking at Behar. Fox is sex harassment central, Behar interrupted. You know what. That s so cheap. I m trying to talk about the fact that I watch other networks and people in your party are calling for the stepping down of Al Franken because of this investigation being a distraction, a frustrated McCain shot back.Whoopi attempted to interject, before losing her words and simply exclaiming, Well, shoot. I was responding to Joy. I just don t think that saying Fox is X, I know, I used to work there, McCain continued. We re talking about the present. This is what s exhausting about this conversation. I totally agree with you that it s absolutely disgusting at this point that we re still having conversations about Roy Moore. He should step down. but right now we re talking about another senator. We re also talking about hypocrisy, which is what provoked my outburst, Behar explained. Trump s hypocrisy, Fox s hypocrisy, Breitbart, Sean Hannity, all of them. What about the hypocrisy of Bill Clinton right now? McCain asked, prompting Joy to ask, Why bring up Bill Clinton at this point? It was at this point Whoopi stopped the conversation in its tracks, saying, We re doing and we ll be right back, before the show went to commercials. TooFabDo you think Meghan McCain will last another month on The View? We d love to hear your thoughts below. ;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘ENABLING HILLARY’ Creates Insane Reason to Praise Serial Groper Al Franken…Bashes Trump and Moore; ENABLING HILLARY came to Senator Al Franken s defense on Friday during an interview for her new book, saying he should be praised for his accountability and willingness to apologize. The problem with this is that Franken really HAD TO apologize because he was caught red-handed. A picture of him groping a woman was evidence he made sexual groping a thing in his life.Clinton is clearly trying to play politics with this and uses it in a way that s really dirty. We know Franken is guilty Roy Moore and Donald Trump had no women prove they did anything wrong yet Clinton tries to throw President Trump and Judge Roy Moore under the bus: Speaking to WABC Radio s Rita Cosby, the former Secretary of State instead pointed the finger at President Trump and embattled GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore claiming they should be viewed as the real predators, and not Franken:WHAT IS THIS WOMAN SMOKING: Look at the contrast between Al Franken, accepting responsibility, apologizing, and Roy Moore and Donald Trump who have done neither. That is the kind of accountability I m talking about. I don t hear that from Roy Moore or Donald Trump. A former Playboy Playmate came forward this week and accused Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, of groping her while the two were on a USO tour in 2006. The senator offered his sincerest apologies on Thursday, saying he was just trying to be funny.Franken has inevitably drawn comparisons to Moore and Trump, both of whom have been accused of sexual misconduct.ALLEGATIONSWhile the president has been hit with sexual harassment allegations by numerous women in the past, Moore was only recently accused by his alleged victims in the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein scandal. BLASTING TRUMP AND MOORE The 70-year-old politician seemed to focus most of her energy on blasting Trump and Moore with these nasty and bitter comments to Cosby: Trump has disgraced the office, she said, prompting Rita to ask whether the president had done anything in the last few months that impressed her. No. The answer is absolutely no, Rita I didn t think he d be as bad as he turned out to be. WHAT A BITTER WOMAN!Read more: NYP;politics;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia blocks bid to briefly extend Syria chemical weapons inquiry;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia vetoed on Friday a Japanese-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution to extend by one month an international inquiry into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, just a day after Moscow blocked a U.S. push to renew the investigation. The mandate for the joint inquiry by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was unanimously created by the 15-member Security Council in 2015, ends on Friday. Syrian ally Russia has now cast 11 vetoes on possible Security Council action on Syria since the country s civil war began in 2011. The U.N./OPCW investigation found that the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent sarin in an April 4 attack and has also used chlorine as a weapon several times. It blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanese Sunni politician warns of Arab sanctions over Hezbollah;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon could face economic sanctions from Arab countries or worse if Hezbollah does not stop meddling in regional conflicts, a Lebanese Sunni politician said on Friday. Former Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi, who rose to prominence with vocal opposition to Shi ite Hezbollah, is closely aligned to the Saudi position in Lebanon and more hawkish than long-established Sunni leaders. We can expect economic repercussions. At the political level too, at the level of our Lebanese-Arab relations. And it s open to all the possibilities, unfortunately, he said. His comments to Reuters echo recent statements by Saad al-Hariri, who quit abruptly as Lebanese prime minister in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia two weeks ago. The shock resignation thrust Lebanon into a regional rivalry between Riyadh and its allies against an Iranian bloc, which includes the Hezbollah militant group and political party. Rifi said he has been in touch with Saudi officials recently over Lebanon s crisis and is familiar with Riyadh s thinking. A political rival of Hariri, Rifi defeated a Hariri-backed list in local elections in the mostly Sunni city of Tripoli last year, though he lacks the premier s country-wide standing. Today, Lebanese officials have a big responsibility. All the Lebanese officials have to be careful about good relations with the Arab world, Rifi told Reuters. There is no more leniency towards Hezbollah...using its illegitimate arsenal in Middle East conflicts. Lebanon s heavily armed Hezbollah, a part of the political fabric, wields great influence in the country. It also has sent thousands of fighters into Syria to battle alongside the Damascus government against mostly Sunni rebels and militants. Lebanese politicians and bankers have said they fear Saudi Arabia corralling Arab allies to economically blockade Lebanon as they did with Qatar. Lebanon cannot live without the Arab countries, Rifi said. We know how many Lebanese work in Saudi Arabia or in the Gulf and how much revenue they bring...to the Lebanese economy. Up to 400,000 Lebanese work in the Gulf, and remittances flowing into the country are a vital source of cash to keep its economy afloat and the heavily-indebted government functioning. Political sources have said that potential sanctions include a ban on flights, visas, exports and transfer of remittances. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have now drawn a line in the sand, Rifi said. That there is no place for (Hezbollah) in (Lebanon s) future government, if it keeps choosing to be a security and military arm for Iran. The Lebanese state will have to distance itself in a real and practical way from regional wars so that we don t bear the repercussions of Hezbollah s acts, he added. In his resignation speech, Hariri said he feared assassination, railing against Iran and Hezbollah. A Sunni Muslim leader and long-time Saudi ally, Hariri has yet to return to Beirut. In his public comments after quitting, Hariri warned of possible Arab sanctions and a danger to the livelihoods of Lebanese in the Gulf. Hezbollah must stop intervening in regional conflicts, particularly Yemen, he said. Lebanon s President Michel Aoun has called Hariri a Saudi hostage, refusing to accept his resignation unless he returns to Beirut, and stressing that the government still stands. Saudi Arabia and Hariri say he is a free man. Hariri became prime minister last year in a power-sharing deal that made Aoun, a Hezbollah political ally, president and his coalition government includes Hezbollah. Rifi criticized Aoun s stance, as well as other Lebanese accusations that Riyadh forced Hariri to quit, as surprising and unprecedented. He considered Hariri s resignation constitutional and said Lebanon would have to form a new, more balanced government in the near future. Rifi, a former police chief, resigned as justice minister in 2016 in protest at what he described as Hezbollah s dominant role. He had also heaped criticism on Hariri for nominating another Hezbollah ally to fill the vacant presidency. From the moment the prime minister uttered his desire to quit, the government became a resigned one, he said.;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox - Pot Nation: Canada's plans for legal marijuana;(Reuters) - Recreational marijuana is on track to be legalized in Canada by July 2018, making Canada the first Group of Seven country to allow the drug nationwide and the second in the world after Uruguay. While the federal legislation proposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau s Liberal government will regulate cannabis production, the details of who can sell it and who can buy it will be largely left up to the country s provinces. The following are details of some key factors of how legal marijuana is shaping up in Canada. So far, five of Canada s 10 provinces have come forward with frameworks for retail marijuana sale. In Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, cannabis sales will be run by provincial government-owned entities. The western provinces of Manitoba and Alberta have said they will license private retailers. The federal government set the minimum legal age for buying marijuana at 18, but the provinces can raise that if they wish. In Ontario, Canada s most populous province, the legal age will be 19. The federal government s proposed law also permits adults to grow up to four marijuana plants at home, although Quebec announced Thursday it will not allow residents of the province to grow their own marijuana. Federal and provincial governments are tightening the rules around impaired driving and bringing in a roadside saliva test to check for drug impairment. The federal government is setting up systems to track all cannabis from seed to sale, to license non-medical producers and to test marijuana for potency and quality control. The federal government has already issued more than 70 licenses for producing medical marijuana, which has been legal in Canada since 2001. MJIC Inc s equal-weighted Canadian Marijuana Index, which tracks stocks of major legal cannabis companies, is up 28 percent this year. The Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, the first exchange traded fund in North America to focus on the legal market, is up more than 20 percent since it launched in April. Canopy Growth Corp, Aurora Cannabis and Aphria, three of Canada s four biggest marijuana producers by market cap, have gained 89 percent, 137 percent and 71 percent respectively this year. MedReleaf Corp, the fourth, which listed in June, is up 107 percent since its debut. Marijuana stocks listed have surged since Oct. 30, when U.S. alcohol company Constellation Brands bought a nearly 10 percent stake in Canopy for about C$245 million ($192.05 million). A battle is brewing between the federal government and some provinces over how tax revenue is divided between the two levels of government. The federal government said last week it wants an excise tax on all cannabis products of C$1 (78 cents) per gram (0.04 ounce), or 10 percent of the retail price, whichever is higher. The government proposed splitting the tax 50-50 with the provinces, drawing criticism from Ontario which says it will face higher costs related to enforcement and establishing a system for sales. ($1 = 1.2757 Canadian dollars) ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Lebanon's Hariri on Twitter: ""I am on the way to the airport""";CAIRO (Reuters) - Lebanon Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said late on Friday he is on his way to the airport in Saudi Arabia. Hariri, who sparked a crisis by resigning as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4 during a visit to Saudi Arabia, tweeted, To say that I am held up in Saudi Arabia and not allowed to leave the country is a lie. I am on the way to the airport... Earlier a member of his party said Hariri will leave Riyadh for France on Friday, but will not return directly to Beirut after the visit. Hariri s abrupt resignation while he was in Saudi Arabia and his continued stay there caused fears over Lebanon s stability and thrust it into the bitter rivalry between Riyadh and Iran. ;worldnews;17/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina says signals detected, likely from missing submarine;MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Hopes that 44 crew members of a missing Argentine navy submarine may be found alive rose after the defense ministry said the vessel likely tried to communicate via satellite on Saturday as an international search mission was underway in the stormy South Atlantic. The ministry said seven failed satellite calls that it believes came from the ARA San Juan submarine were detected in a likely sign the crew was trying to reestablish contact. The signals, in the late morning and early afternoon, lasted between four and 36 seconds, the ministry said. Argentina is working on tracing the location with an unnamed U.S. company specialized in satellite communications, the ministry said. The satellite communications were believed to have failed because of foul weather, a source in the defense ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly told Reuters. It was not immediately clear what type of calls the vessel may have tried to make but submarines that are stricken underwater can float a location beacon known as an EPIRB to the surface that can then emit emergency signals via satellite. Whipping winds and more than 20-foot waves in the South Atlantic hindered the international search for the submarine. The last confirmed location of the German-built ARA San Juan was 432 km (268 miles) off Argentina s southern Atlantic coast early on Wednesday. The U.S. Navy said it was deploying a deep-sea rescue mission to Argentina from California to support the effort, with a remotely operated vehicle and two vessels capable of rescuing people from bottomed submarines set to arrive in coming days. As nations from Chile to South Africa offered help, Argentine sea vessels and planes scoured the southern sea. But a storm pitching powerful winds and waves more than 6 meters (20 feet) high has disrupted visibility and movement in the area, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said. The submarine s color and design, which aim to camouflage the vessel in the ocean s surface, also posed a challenge. The idea is to continue through the night and the early morning, depending on weather conditions, Balbi told reporters. The weather was expected to be somewhat improved on Sunday, he said. A search of 80 percent of the area initially targeted for the operation turned up no sign of the vessel, but the crew should have ample supplies of food and oxygen, Balbi added. The dramatic search has captivated the nation of 44 million, which recently mourned the loss of five citizens killed when a truck driver plowed through a bicycle path in New York City. In the resort and fishing city of Mar del Plata, where the submarine had been destined to arrive before vanishing, a Catholic Mass was held in honor of the crew members. Many relatives of the crew members awaited news at the city s naval base. We re hopeful this will end soon to remain only as a bad memory, Maria Morales, mother of crew member Luis Esteban Garcia, told journalists. Messages of support poured in from around the world. Pope Francis, an Argentine, was praying fervently for the crew to return home soon, his office said. The Argentine navy said an electrical outage on the diesel-electric-propelled vessel might have downed its communications. Protocol calls for submarines to surface if communication is lost. The episode could hold political implications for President Mauricio Macri. His center-right government has set an ambitious target for cutting government spending and told Reuters in March it had few funds available to replace an outdated military fleet beyond buying aircraft for training pilots. The ARA San Juan was inaugurated in 1983, making it the newest of the three submarines in the navy s fleet. Built in Germany by Nordseewerke, it underwent mid-life maintenance in 2008 in Argentina that required cutting its hull in half and sealing back it together again, according to state news agency Telam. Nordseewerke now belongs to German industrial group Thyssenkrupp AG (TKAG.DE), which could not be reached for comment outside of regular business hours. Carlos Zavalla, a navy commander, urged loved ones of crew members not to give up hope. So far, the only concrete thing is the lack of communication, Zavalla said on TV channel A24. That s all. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's ruling party set to sack Mugabe, sources say;HARARE (Reuters) - The leaders of Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF party will meet on Sunday to approve the dismissal of President Robert Mugabe, the only leader the southern African nation has known since independence 37 years ago, two party sources have said. An extraordinary meeting of the party s central committee is expected to convene around 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) to consider removing the 93-year-old, four days after a military seizure of power ostensibly aimed at criminals within his entourage. Separately, state television said Mugabe would meet military commanders on Sunday, quoting the Catholic priest who has been mediating in negotiations with the president. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Harare, singing, dancing and hugging soldiers in an outpouring of elation at Mugabe s overthrow. ZANU-PF s central committee is also expected to reinstate Emmerson Mnangagwa as party vice-president, resurrecting the political career of the former security chief, nicknamed The Crocodile, whose sacking this month triggered the military s intervention. Mugabe s wife, Grace, will be fired as head of the ZANU-PF Women s League, the sources told Reuters, completing the demise of a 52-year-old former government typist who just a week ago stood in pole position to succeed her husband after Mnangagwa s dismissal. The pair s stunning downfall is likely to send shockwaves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda s Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo s Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to step aside. In scenes reminiscent of the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, men, women and children ran alongside the armored cars and troops who stepped in this week to oust the man who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980. Under house arrest in his lavish Blue Roof compound, Mugabe has refused to stand down even as he has watched his support from party, security services and people evaporate in less than three days. His nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, told Reuters the elderly leader and his wife were ready to die for what is correct rather than step down in order to legitimize what he described as a coup. But on Harare s streets, few seemed to care about the legal niceties as they heralded a second liberation for the former British colony and spoke of their dreams for political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship. These are tears of joy, said Frank Mutsindikwa, 34, holding aloft the Zimbabwean flag. I ve been waiting all my life for this day. Free at last. We are free at last. The crowds in Harare have so far given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army s intervention, backing its assertion that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, which would help it avoid the diplomatic backlash and opprobrium that normally follow a coup. The United States, a long-time Mugabe critic, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighboring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once. For a graphic on Zimbabwe struggles, click ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanese FM may not attend Arab League meeting, to decide Sunday: senior Lebanese official;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s foreign minister may not attend an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Sunday and a final decision will be taken in the morning, a senior Lebanese official told Reuters on Saturday. The official said Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil wanted to avoid an anticipated confrontation at the meeting with Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies over the regional role of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah. The emergency Arab foreign ministers meeting is being convened at the request of Saudi Arabia with support from the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait to discuss means of confronting Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of Arab states, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government and a political ally of Lebanese President Michel Aoun. The Sunni Muslim monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran are at loggerheads across the region, and tensions between them have recently escalated in both Lebanon and Yemen. Lebanon was thrust to the forefront of the regional struggle when Saad al-Hariri resigned as prime minister on Nov. 4 in a surprise announcement from Riyadh. Aoun has accused Saudi Arabia of holding Hariri hostage. Senior Lebanese politicians close to Hariri have also said he had been held in Saudi Arabia against his will and coerced into resigning. Saudi Arabia and Hariri both deny this. After French intervention, Hariri flew to France overnight and met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday. Hariri, speaking in Paris, said he would clarify his position when he returns to Beirut in the coming days. He said he would take part in Lebanese independence day celebrations, which are scheduled for Wednesday. Hariri, long a political ally of Saudi Arabia, cited fear of assassination and accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world during his resignation speech. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians say they won't be blackmailed by U.S. move to close PLO office;RAMALLAH/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Palestinian officials expressed surprise on Saturday at a U.S. decision to close the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington unless the group enters peace negotiations with Israel, and said they would not surrender to blackmail. A U.S. State Department official said that under legislation passed by Congress, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could not renew a certification that expired this month for the PLO office, given certain statements made by the Palestinian leaders about the International Criminal Court. The law says the PLO, the main Palestinian umbrella political body, cannot operate a Washington office if it urges the ICC to prosecute Israelis for alleged crimes against Palestinians. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian Authority called on the ICC to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people. The State Department official added that restrictions on the PLO in the United States, including the operation of its Washington office, could be waived after 90 days if U.S. President Donald Trump determines the Palestinians have entered into direct, meaningful negotiations with Israel. We are hopeful that this closure will be short-lived, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. According to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, the Palestinian presidency expressed surprise at the U.S. move, which was first reported by the Associated Press. WAFA quoted Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki as saying that Palestinian leaders would not give in to blackmail or pressure regarding the operation of the PLO office or negotiations on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The agency quoted a spokesman for Abbas, Nabil Abu Rdainah, expressing surprise, given that meetings between Abbas and Trump had been characterized by full understanding of the steps needed to create a climate for resumption of the peace process. A Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters the State Department had informed the Palestinians of the decision on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear what effect the State Department s move might have on the Trump administration s efforts to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which are led by Jared Kushner, the U.S. president s son-in-law and senior adviser. Abbas spokesman called the U.S. move an unprecedented step in U.S.-Palestinian relations that would have serious consequences for the peace process and U.S.-Arab relations, according to WAFA. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Saturday: This is a matter of U.S. law. We respect the decision and look forward to continuing to work with the U.S. to advance peace and security in the region. The State Department official said the U.S. move did not amount to cutting off relations with the PLO or signal an intention to stop working with the Palestinian Authority. We remain focused on a comprehensive peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians that will resolve core issues between the parties, the official said. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gerry Adams: Face of IRA who helped cement Northern Ireland peace;DUBLIN (Reuters) - As the public face of the Irish Republican Army during its bombing campaigns, then peacemaker and mainstream politician, Gerry Adams has been a defining figure of Northern Ireland s 50-year journey from sectarian torment to relative stability. Adams announced his intention to step down as leader of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party on Saturday with his ultimate goal of a united Ireland still elusive. But the party he leaves is not only the dominant Irish nationalist force in the British-ruled province, but also strong enough across the border in the Irish Republic to have a chance of entering government there, too. During the 1970s and 80s, at the height of an IRA bombing campaign to end British rule over Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein operated as the IRA s political wing. As its leader from 1983 onwards, Adams thus became, for many in Britain and Northern Ireland, the face of the IRA. As a result, he was loathed by pro-British unionists and the British government, but lionized in equal measure by Irish nationalists. Yet when the prospect of political progress arose, he showed himself ready to compromise, working with late former IRA commander Martin McGuinness to swing the IRA and the province s Roman Catholic minority behind a 1998 deal with the pro-British Protestant majority. The Good Friday agreement gave the province s Catholics a share of power and largely ended a conflict in which some 3,600 people had been killed, many at the hands of Irish republican groups such as the IRA, and others by pro-British unionist paramilitaries and British security forces. Since then, Adams has helped to build Sinn Fein into the dominant Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, overseeing its agreement in 2007 to share power with its bitter rival, the Democratic Unionist Party and, in recent months, its efforts to restore power-sharing after it collapsed in January. Adams also announced on Saturday that he would not stand for re-election to the Dublin parliament, where he has sat since 2011, moving Sinn Fein from the fringes to become the Irish Republic s third party and its main left-wing force. Adams was born into a Belfast family steeped in revolutionary politics, several of his relatives having been involved in armed republicanism. At 20, he left his job as a barman to help defend fellow Catholics from what they saw as a hostile British state, and to fight for Northern Ireland to split from the United Kingdom and unite with the Irish Republic. Like his father, Adams was interned - held without trial - on suspicion of being a senior IRA commander. He has always denied membership of the IRA, although accusations from former IRA fighters that he was involved in its campaign of killings have dogged him throughout his career. Between 1988 and 1994, Adams was banned from speaking on British airwaves. While his oversized glasses and red-tinged beard were instantly recognizable, his voice was unknown as broadcasters had actors dub his words. Former British conservative prime minister John Major, one of the architects of peace in Northern Ireland, once said the thought of sitting down to talk with Adams had turned my stomach . But Adams was at the time walking a political tightrope - between IRA hawks who argued that only a continuation of violence would chase Britain from the island, and doves who said that negotiations were the route to a united Ireland. He emerged from the political cold in October 1997 when he shook hands with the new Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, at their first meeting. Sinn Fein had polled 17 percent in Northern Ireland s elections and returned Adams to the British parliament, although he refused to take his seat. Within a year, Adams and McGuinness had helped to broker a peace deal that largely ended the violence in the province. Since that deal, his role as statesman has grown, and he has made several visits to the White House. He was arrested in 2014 as part of an investigation into one of the province s most controversial murders, but no charges were brought. Latterly he has used social media to create a grandfatherly image in the Irish Republic, with posts about his dog and his taste in cartoons. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Official photo released to mark 70th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth;LONDON (Reuters) - Buckingham Palace issued a new photographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip on Saturday to mark their upcoming 70th wedding anniversary. The couple married at London s Westminster Abbey on Nov. 20, 1947, just two years after the end of World War Two, in a lavish ceremony attended by statesmen and royalty from around the world. The portrait, taken earlier this month, showed the queen wearing the same dress which she chose for a service of thanksgiving to mark their diamond wedding anniversary held at the Abbey where they were married. She is also wearing a Scarab brooch in yellow gold, carved ruby and diamond which Philip gave her in 1966. Elizabeth has been married for far longer than any other royal, and the newly-released picture showed the couple framed by Thomas Gainsborough s 1781 portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte, who were married for 57 years - the second longest royal marriage. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey launches investigation into U.S. prosecutors over Zarrab case: Anadolu;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have opened an investigation into the U.S. prosecutors who brought charges against a Turkish gold trader facing trial in New York, state media said on Saturday, after Ankara said the case was based on fabricated documents. The Istanbul prosecutor s office is investigating former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and acting U.S. Attorney John H. Kim, the state-run Anadolu news agency said, following allegations that their case was based on documents Turkey says were fabricated. When asked for comment, Bharara referred Reuters to the Southern District of New York s Attorney s Office. James Margolin, a spokesman for the Attorney s Office, declined to comment. Reuters was not immediately able to reach anyone at the Istanbul Prosecutor s office for comment. The reported move comes after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday said the U.S. case was based on documents fabricated by followers of the cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for last year s attempted coup. Cavusoglu also accused Bharara of being very close to Gulen s network. Following those allegations, Bharara responded on Friday on Twitter, saying: Turkey FM is a liar. Now let s see what happens in court . The case against the wealthy, Iran-born gold trader Reza Zarrab has complicated already strained relations between the United States and Turkey, both members of the NATO military alliance. Zarrab, together with alleged co-conspirators, has been charged with handling hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran s government and Iranian entities from 2010 to 2015, in a scheme to avoid sanctions. He has pleaded not guilty and is due to go on trial in New York on Nov. 27. Under a previous Turkish investigation that became public in 2013, Turkish prosecutors accused Zarrab and high-ranking Turkish officials of involvement in facilitating Iranian money transfers via gold smuggling, leaked documents at the time showed. President Tayyip Erdogan, then prime minister, cast that investigation as a coup attempt orchestrated by his political enemies. Several prosecutors were removed from the case, police investigators were reassigned, and the investigation was later dropped. Erdogan, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, has said U.S. prosecutors have ulterior motives by including references to him and his wife in court papers relating to the trial in New York. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Party set to sack Mugabe, Zimbabweans celebrate expected downfall;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ruling party will dismiss President Robert Mugabe on Sunday and reinstate Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice-president he fired, two party sources told Reuters on Saturday, as ecstatic crowds celebrated the expected downfall. Mugabe s 37-year rule has been effectively at an end since the army seized control on Wednesday, confining him to his residence, saying it wanted to target the criminals around him. State television said Mugabe would meet military commanders on Sunday, quoting Catholic priest Fidelis Mukonori, who has been mediating in negotiations with the president. But hundreds of thousands of people had no need for a formal signal that his time had ended as they flooded the streets of Harare, singing, dancing and hugging soldiers. In scenes reminiscent of the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, men, women and children ran alongside the armoured cars and the troops who stepped in this week to oust the only ruler Zimbabwe has known since independence in 1980. Others marched towards his lavish Blue Roof residence, but were kept away by soldiers. Under house arrest in his compound, the 93-year-old has watched support from his party, security services and people evaporate in less than three days. The sources said a ZANU-PF party central committee meeting scheduled for 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) would also dismiss 93-year-old Mugabe s preferred successor, his wife Grace, from her role as head of the ZANU-PF Women s League. Mugabe s nephew Patrick Zhuwao, speaking from an undisclosed location in South Africa, told Reuters the leader and his wife were ready to die for what is correct rather than step down in order to legitimise what he described as a coup. Zhuwao also said that only Mugabe, who had hardly slept since the military took over but was otherwise in good health, could call a meeting of the central committee. It was not clear from reading the party s constitution who is empowered to call such a meeting - but events appeared to have made the issue irrelevant. On Harare s streets, Zimbabweans spoke of a second liberation for the former British colony, alongside their dreams of political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship. These are tears of joy, said Frank Mutsindikwa, 34, holding aloft the Zimbabwean flag. I ve been waiting all my life for this day. Free at last. We are free at last. Mugabe s downfall is likely to send shockwaves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda s Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo s Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to step aside. The crowds in Harare have so far given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army s intervention, backing its claims that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, which would help it avoid the diplomatic backlash and opprobrium that normally follows a coup. The military had been prompted to act by Mugabe s decision to sack Mnangagwa, Grace Mugabe s main rival to succeed her husband. The next presidential election is due next year. Zimbabweans abroad were also hailing the end of Mugabe s rule, not least the hundreds living in Britain who gathered outside their embassy in central London. I m ecstatic to see people give Mugabe a reality check because he has been in his echo chamber for too long, lying to himself that people still want him, said Ruva Kudambo, 37, who came to study technology and ended up staying. Tasa, a 36-year-old who refused to give his family name, said he had brought his four young children, aged 5 to 9, to the protest because they are the future of Zimbabwe . NO DIS-GRACE For some Africans, Mugabe remains a nationalist hero, the continent s last independence leader and a symbol of its struggle to throw off the legacy of decades of colonial subjugation. But to many more at home and abroad, he was reviled as a dictator happy to resort to violence to retain power and to run a once-promising economy into the ground. Political sources and intelligence documents seen by Reuters said Mugabe s exit was likely to pave the way for an interim unity government led by Mnangagwa, a life-long Mugabe aide and former security chief known as The Crocodile . Stabilising the free-falling economy will be the number one priority, the documents said. The United States, a long-time critic of Mugabe, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighbouring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once. The Herald, the state newspaper that has served as Mugabe s loyal mouthpiece, said ZANU-PF had called on Friday for him to go. It said ZANU-PF branches in all 10 provinces had also called for the resignation of Grace, the first lady whose ambitions to succeed her husband outraged the military and much of the country. To many Zimbabweans, she is known as Gucci Grace on account of her reported dedication to shopping, or - in the wake of an alleged assault in September on a South African model - Dis-Grace . The scenes in Harare reflect the anger and frustration that has built up among Zimbabwe s 16 million people in nearly two decades of economic mismanagement that started with the seizure of white-owned farms in 2000, the catalyst of a wider collapse. The central bank tried to print its way out of trouble by unleashing a flood of cash but that only made matters worse, leading to hyperinflation that topped out at 500 billion percent in 2008. At least 3 million Zimbabweans emigrated in search of a better life, most of them to neighbouring South Africa. After stabilising briefly when Mugabe was forced to work with the opposition in a 2009-2013 unity government, the economy has collapsed again, this time due to a chronic shortage of dollars. In October, monthly inflation leapt to more than 50 percent, according to some economists, putting basic goods beyond the means of many in a country with 90 percent unemployment. Mugabe s only public appearance since the military took over was at a university graduation ceremony on Friday morning. Decked out in blue and yellow academic gowns, he appeared tired, at one point falling asleep in his chair. A senior member of ZANU-PF said it was only a matter of time before he agreed to go. If he becomes stubborn, we will arrange for him to be fired on Sunday, the source said. When that is done, it s impeachment on Tuesday. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gerry Adams to step down in end of an era for Irish nationalism;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Sinn Fein s Gerry Adams, a pivotal figure in the political life of Ireland for almost 50 years, said on Saturday he will step down as party leader and complete a generational shift in the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Reviled by many as the face of the IRA during its campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, Adams reinvented himself as a peacemaker in the troubled region and then as a populist opposition parliamentarian in the Irish Republic. Adams said he would be replaced as party president, a position he has held since 1983, at a party conference next year. He would also not stand for reelection to the Irish parliament. Republicanism has never been stronger... But leadership means knowing when it is time for change. That time is now, Adams said in an emotional speech to a packed party conference. I have complete confidence in the next generation of leaders, he said. Adams stayed on stage as the 2,500-strong crowd, some in tears, gave him a standing ovation and sang a traditional Irish song about the road home, followed by the national anthem. Adams will almost certainly hand over to a successor with no direct involvement in the decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, a prospect that would make Sinn Fein a more palatable coalition partner in the Irish Republic where it has never been in power. Deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, an English literature graduate from Trinity College Dublin who has been at the forefront of a new breed of Sinn Fein politicians transforming the party s image, is the clear favourite to take over. That would mean the left-wing party being led on both sides of the Irish border by women in their 40s after Michelle O Neill succeeded Martin McGuinness as leader in Northern Ireland shortly before the former IRA commander s death in March. Adams, who will turn 70 next October, has always denied membership of the IRA but accusations from former IRA fighters that he was involved in its campaign of killings have dogged him throughout his career. Adams was a key figure in the nationalist movement throughout the three decades of violence between Catholic militants seeking a united Ireland, mainly Protestant militants who wanted to maintain Northern Ireland s position as a part of Britain, and the British army. 3,600 died in the conflict, many at the hands of the IRA. As head of the political wing of the IRA during its bombing campaigns in 1980s Britain, Adams was a pariah and banned from speaking on British airwaves, forcing television stations to dub his voice with that of an actor. He and his party emerged from the political cold in October 1997 when he shook hands with Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair at their first meeting. A year later, he helped win sceptical elements in the IRA to the Good Friday peace deal, which largely ended the violence. Since the peace deal Adams and McGuinness turned Sinn Fein from a fringe party into the dominant Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland and the third largest party in south of the border. While its anti-austerity platform led to a six-fold increase in its number of seats in the Republic - 23 out of 158 - suspicion of Sinn Fein s role in the Northern Ireland troubles still runs deep and the far larger ruling Fine Gael and or main opposition Fianna Fail have ruled out governing alongside them. Analysts say a change of leader could help open the way to Sinn Fein entering government in Dublin for the first time. Under a new Sinn Fein leader I think anything is possible, said David Farrell, politics professor at University College Dublin. A new Sinn Fein leader will also take over responsibility for rescuing power-sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland and avoid a return to full direct rule from London for the first time in decade. Power-sharing collapsed after Sinn Fein withdrew in January saying the Democratic Unionist Party was not treating it as an equal partner and a series of talks have failed to break the impasse. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian activists detained by court for protesting Red Sea islands transfer;ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT (Reuters) - A court in Alexandria has ordered the detention of leading rights activist Mahienour el-Massry over charges of illegally protesting in June against the Egyptian government s decision to transfer two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia. El-Massry was detained in Egypt s second largest city along with activist Moatasim Medhat and both will be held pending their trial for illegal assembly on Dec. 30, the misdemeanour court said. The pair s lawyer, Taher Abo Nasser, said they denied the charges, adding that there was no evidence of a protest taking place. The decision came as a shock for us but Mahienour is remaining strong and accepting, Abo Nasser said. The plan to cede the islands to Saudi Arabia was announced last year and has become mired in political protest and legal action. Opponents of the plan say Egypt s sovereignty over the islands dates back to 1906, before Saudi Arabia was founded. Saudi and Egyptian officials say the islands belong to the kingdom and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh had asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe to meet military commanders for talks on Sunday: state TV;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s President Robert Mugabe will meet military commanders for talks on Sunday, state broadcaster ZTV said on Saturday, quoting Catholic priest Fidelis Mukonori who has been mediating the negotiations. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine summons Polish envoy as diplomatic row between neighbours deepens;WARSAW (Reuters) - Ukraine has summoned the Polish ambassador in Kiev after Poland denied entry to a Ukrainian official in an escalation of a diplomatic spat over the two neighbours troubled past. Poland s decision to refused entry on Saturday to the head of Ukraine s commemoration commission, Svyatoslav Sheremet, was in response to a ban imposed earlier this year by Kiev on the exhumation of Poles killed in Ukraine during World War Two, Polish state news agency PAP reported. The Ukrainian side has complained that Mr Sheremet was not allowed into Poland, Poland s ambassador to Kiev Jan Pieklo told PAP after the meeting with Ukrainian authorities. I have been also informed that this is a problem that concerns the restarting of exhumations because Sheremet is the person responsible for this, Pieklo said, adding that both sides had agreed that the exhumations should be restarted. In an apparent effort to mend ties, representatives of the Polish and Ukrainian presidents said on Friday that they reconfirmed their commitment to strengthening the strategic partnership . The parties agreed that the ban on the search and exhumation works in Ukraine should be lifted, the statement published on Friday said. The denial of entry to Sheremet came after the Polish foreign minister said earlier in November that Poland would bar Ukrainians with anti-Polish views . [L8N1N84EF] Poland last year passed a resolution that declared the World War Two-era killing of about 100,000 Polish men, women and children by units in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) genocide . Ukraine rejects that label, saying the killings were a result of bilateral hostilities. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German parties regroup for last-ditch coalition push;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s three would-be coalition partners went deep into overtime in talks on Saturday as they sought enough common ground in climate and migration policy to form a government and stave off the prospect of a repeat election. Incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel s only realistic hope of securing a fourth term after suffering losses in September s election is an awkward three-way conservative-liberal-Green alliance. But after four weeks of talks, the parties remained far apart as they adjourned for the night. The biggest sticking points are climate change, where the Greens want emissions cuts that the other parties see as economically ruinous, and immigration, where Merkel s arch-conservative allies in Bavaria insist on stricter rules. With the pro-business, tax-cutting Free Democrat (FDP) liberals freshly returned to parliament after four years in the wilderness, and the Greens out of office for 12 years, neither is keen to give ground. A self-imposed deadline of Thursday for wrapping up exploratory talks and starting formal coalition negotiations passed without agreement, forcing the conservatives to promise further concessions on emissions cuts to the Greens. FDP leader Christian Lindner said the talks now had to be wrapped up by 1700 GMT on Sunday. But President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a former foreign minister who now plays an apolitical role, said brinkmanship was to be expected. Before the formal talks start, there are always attempts by parties to drive prices up, he told the weekly Welt am Sonntag. What we ve seen in the past weeks isn t so different from previous coalition negotiations. Greens chairwoman Simone Peter said much that had earlier been agreed on emissions policy had been undone, without giving details. Bavaria s Christian Social Union (CSU) faces regional state elections next year, and fears the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could unseat it after 60 years if it fails to secure tough immigration rules - which are anathema to the left-leaning Greens. Among its demands are a cap of 200,000 per year on the number of refugees Germany will take, and an end to the practice of allowing successful asylum seekers to bring their immediate families to join them. All parties are anxious to avoid a repeat election, which they fear could boost the AfD, which surged into parliament for the first time in September s national election. But the heterogeneous three-way coalition, made necessary after the conservatives and the centre-left suffered punishing election losses, is untested at national level. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe protest crowd heads to Mugabe's Harare compound;HARARE (Reuters) - Hundreds of protesters seeking to remove Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe from office heeded a call from a leader of the powerful liberation war veterans on Saturday to march on the 93-year-old s residence in the capital. Let us now go and deliver the message that grandfather Mugabe and his typist-cum-wife should go home, war veterans secretary-general Victor Matemadanda told an anti-Mugabe rally in the Harare township of Highfield. As he spoke, people started leaving the rally to head towards Mugabe s lavish Blue Roof residence, live television pictures showed. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China wants Bangladesh, Myanmar to solve Rohingya crisis bilaterally;DHAKA (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday urged Bangladesh and Myanmar resolve the Rohingya crisis through bilateral negotiations instead of an international initiative. The international community should not complicate the situation, Wang said in a press briefing at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka. Actions in the United Nations Security Council must help Bangladesh-Myanmar bilateral cooperation to resolve the problem peacefully , the minister told reporters. Wang arrived in Bangladesh on Saturday for a two-day visit and from there he will go to Myanmar to attend the Asia-Europe Meeting. (ASEM) China supports resolving the crisis peacefully, bilaterally with mutual consultation between Bangladesh and Myanmar, he said. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late August driven out by a military clearance operation in Buddhist majority Myanmar s Rakhine State. It is a complex situation and needs a comprehensive solution. Economic development of Rakhine State is needed. China is ready to help, Wang said. Earlier in the day Wang also met with Bangladesh s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her official residence in Dhaka and assured her of China s support in solving the crisis. Myanmar will have to take back their nationals ensuring their safety, security and dignity for a durable solution to the crisis, Hasina s private secretary Ihsanul Karim quoted the prime minister as saying. We will not allow the land of Bangladesh to be used by any terrorist group to commit any act of insurgency in neighboring countries, Hasina added, according to Karim. Bangladesh s Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali told Wang that Bangladesh is trying to resolve the issue both bilaterally and internationally as it could not afford the huge burden of the refugees. A statement from Bangladesh foreign ministry said that when the issue of displaced Myanmar nationals was raised, Wang stated that China would help resolve the issue and will not be partial to any side. He acknowledged that Bangladesh is facing the brunt of continuing influx of Rohingya refugees, the Bangladeshi foreign ministry statement said. A delegation of U.S. Congressmen is visiting Bangladesh to study the Rohingya crisis on Saturday. Sweden s foreign minister Margot Wallstrom, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, Germany s foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kona will also visit Bangladesh this week. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's Maduro offers to help Trump fight drugs;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose top political allies have been accused by Washington of dealing in illegal narcotics, on Friday offered to help U.S. President Donald Trump in fighting the drug trade. Top Venezuelan officials including Vice President Tareck El Aissami and Interior Minister Nestor Reverol have been blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury on allegations they have helped move drugs from neighboring Colombia into North America. Maduro calls those charges a smear campaign, and insists that the United States must do more to reduce drug consumption. President Trump, if you really want to fight drug trafficking that has destroyed U.S. youth and filled the country with drugs from Colombia, you have an ally in me, Maduro said in a televised broadcast. Come find out about our experience, we can join forces. He did not provide further details. Maduro has repeatedly excoriated Trump for sanctions against Venezuela, which range from restrictions on U.S. banks buying newly issued debt to barring American citizens from having any dealings with specific individuals in his government. The Trump administration slammed Maduro s decision to create an all-powerful legislature called the Constituent Assembly in August. The opposition and the international community decried that move as the consolidation of a dictatorship. Maduro, who is himself under U.S. sanction, has in the past requested meetings with Trump. The White House responded to one such entreaty this year by saying it will meet with Venezuela s president when the country returns to democracy. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's ruling party to hold rally as anti-Mugabe tide rises;HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe s own ruling ZANU-PF party wants him to step down and plans to hold a rally in Zimbabwe s capital Harare on Saturday to make the point. Mugabe, at Zimbabwe s helm since independence from Britain in 1980, faces the starkest challenge ever to his rule after the army seized power on Wednesday, saying it was targeting criminals around the nonagenarian leader. ZANU-PF called on Friday for Mugabe to resign, the main state newspaper The Herald reported, a clear sign that the aging leader s authority has collapsed after the army takeover. The newspaper said that ZANU-PF branches in all 10 provinces had met and had also called for Mugabe s wife Grace, whose ambitions to succeed her husband triggered the political crisis, to resign from the party. A senior member of ZANU-PF earlier told Reuters the party wanted their long-time president gone. If he becomes stubborn, we will arrange for him to be fired on Sunday, the source said. When that is done, it s impeachment on Tuesday. The Herald reported that ZANU-PF would convene a special Central Committee meeting on Sunday to realign the revolutionary party with current political developments . Pointedly, the military said it fully supports a solidarity march - apparently separate from the ZANU-PF event - in Harare on Saturday, part of an apparent groundswell of anti-Mugabe sentiment unleashed by the dramatic events of the past few days. The army said it had been approached by several private volunteer organizations seeking to freely move and express their desires and they could do so if they were orderly and peaceful. Harare has been calm as the coup has unfolded but the armed forces also said in a statement that people have been warned against looting . The army appears to want Mugabe to go quietly and allow a transition to Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking last week as vice president sparked the army action. A goal of the generals is to prevent Mugabe handing power to his wife, Grace, 41 years his junior, who appeared on the cusp of power after Mnangagwa was pushed out. Mugabe, 93, who calls himself the grand old man of African politics, looks to be running out of options. The army is camped on his doorstep. Grace Mugabe is under house arrest and her key political allies are in military custody. All the main pillars of Mugabe s rule have turned on him or have offered no support. The police have shown no resistance, while Chris Mutsvangwa, the leader of Zimbabwe s influential war veterans, said on Friday that Mugabe would not be allowed to resist the military and remain in power. And ZANU-PF, which built a cult of personality around its leader, has now deserted him. Mugabe is revered by some as an elder statesman and independence leader but also reviled by many in Africa and abroad who accuse him of resorting to violence to retain power while running a once promising economy into the ground. The economy collapsed after the seizure of white-owned farms in 2000. Unemployment is now running at nearly 90 percent and chronic shortages of hard currency have triggered inflation, with the prices of imports rising as much as 50 percent a month. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France should not interfere in Iran's missile program: adviser to Iran's supreme leader;BEIRUT (Reuters) - France should not interfere in Iran s missile program, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran s supreme leader, said on Saturday according to state media. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that Tehran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify the strategy around its ballistic missile program. It does not benefit Mr. Macron and France to interfere on the missile issue and the strategic affairs of the Islamic Republic, which we have great sensitivities about, Velayati said. What does this issue have to do with Mr. Macron? Who is he at all to interfere? If he wants relations between Iran and France to grow then he should try not to interfere in these issues. U.S. President Donald Trump has said Iranian missile activity should be curbed. Iranian officials have repeatedly said the Islamic Republic s missile program is for defense purposes and is not up for negotiation. The program was not part of the 2015 nuclear deal with Western powers under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions. France said on Wednesday it wanted an uncompromising dialogue with Iran about its ballistic missile program and a possible negotiation over the issue separate from Tehran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hariri tells Lebanese president will be in Lebanon Wednesday: Aoun;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who resigned as Lebanon s prime minister this month while in Saudi Arabia, told President Michel Aoun in a phone call he would be in Lebanon on Wednesday for Independence Day celebrations, Aoun said on Twitter on Saturday. Hariri arrived in Paris on Saturday with his wife from Riyadh, where he has been since he announced his resignation on Nov. 4. He is due to meet French President Emmanuel Macron later on Saturday. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt-Gaza border opens under PA control for first time in a decade;GAZA (Reuters) - The Egypt-Gaza border opened under control of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority for the first time since 2007 on Saturday, raising residents hopes for easier passage in and out of the impoverished enclave. An Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal last month formally restored Palestinian President Abbas s administrative control of Gaza, including its border crossings with Israel and Egypt, after a 10-year schism with Islamist Hamas. Palestinians hope the pact will ease Gaza s economic woes and help them present a united front in their drive for statehood, although the details of implementation of the deal have yet to be worked out fully. Citing security concerns, Egypt and Israel maintain tight restrictions at their Gaza borders. Hamas, regarded by the West as a terrorist group, seized the enclave in 2007 after fighting forces loyal to Abbas. Hamas quit positions at three Gaza crossings and handed them over to Palestinian Authority employees on Nov. 1, in a step seen as vital to encouraging Israel and Egypt to ease their restrictions on the movement of goods and people. Witnesses said at least five buses loaded with passengers crossed over to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Saturday. Hamas-appointed policemen had checked travellers documents in a separate hall outside Rafah. Egypt has not yet signaled any change to its present policy under which it opens the border crossing three times a week. Palestinians are hoping the crossing will operate full-time, as it had been doing until 2007. About 30,000 Gazans have applied for entry to Egypt in the past few months, according to the Palestinian Interior Ministry. Egypt will host further talks with Hamas, Fatah and other factions next week on Nov. 21 to discuss major reconciliation issues, including security arrangements and a possible date for Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections. Responsibility for security remains an open issue in Gaza, where Hamas, which still polices the territory, has what analysts say are at least 25,000 well-equipped fighters. The group refuses to disarm, as demanded by Israel and the United States. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma says supports 'people of Zimbabwe';JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday the African region was committed to supporting the people of Zimbabwe after a military takeover and that he was cautiously optimistic that the situation there could be resolved amicably. Zuma made the comments in the South African city of Durban as thousands of Zimbabweans celebrated the expected downfall of President Robert Mugabe in the streets of Harare. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe 'ready to die for what is correct', nephew tells Reuters;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace are ready to die for what is correct and have no intention of stepping down in order to legitimize this week s military coup, his nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, said on Saturday. Speaking to Reuters from a secret location in South Africa, Zhuwao said Mugabe had hardly slept since the military seized power on Wednesday but his health was otherwise good . ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan rebuffs NATO apology over 'enemy poster';ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday batted back an apology from the NATO military alliance after his name appeared on an enemy poster at a drill, saying such disrespectful behavior could not be so easily forgiven. You have seen the disrespectful behavior at the NATO drill yesterday. There are some mistakes that are done not by fools but only by base people, Erdogan said in a speech broadcast live on television. This matter cannot be covered over with a simple apology, he said. Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey was pulling 40 soldiers out of a NATO exercise in Norway, after his name appeared in a list of enemies on a poster at the drill. NATO and Oslo have since apologized. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Selfies with soldiers as Zimbabweans hail ""second independence""";HARARE (Reuters) - Helen Kwambana has lived in fear of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his security forces her whole life. On Saturday she chanted on the streets of the capital for the 93-year-old to step down and took a selfie with a soldier. Kwambana and tens of thousands of others joined anti-Mugabe marches in Harare, singing and dancing as military helicopters flew overhead and grinning soldiers made token attempts to control the revelers who rushed to embrace them. Though Mugabe has not agreed to stand down, the crowds oozed with confidence that his time would soon be up, in scenes of jubilant defiance most had never witnessed. I have never known freedom, Kwambana, 23, told Reuters, draped in the Zimbabwean flag and waving to passing cars as drivers honked their horns in celebration. It s like a baby opening its eyes for the first time. Mugabe is under house arrest after the army seized power on Wednesday in what it said was an attempt to weed out the criminals in his government who helped remove vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa and his allies this month. Mugabe s wife, Grace, was seen as being behind the purge as she pursued her own presidential ambitions. Some of the demonstrators held placards emblazoned with Mnangagwa s face or covered with the words: No to Mugabe Dynasty . Mugabe is accused by many Zimbabweans of ruling like a dictator, destroying a once-promising economy and of numerous human rights abuses during his nearly four decades in power. Contempt for the Grand Old Man of Africa brought together young and old, black and white, in the aptly named Robert Mugabe Street before they marched on to State House - the first time anyone has demonstrated outside the presidential offices without Mugabe s permission. He is an evil man. Very, very wicked, said Tendai, a 40-year-old laborer who was leading chants of Freedom! . Mugabe may be under house arrest but we have been living under country arrest our whole lives. Many protesters spoke of their hopes for a better life in a country that has lurched from one crisis to the next and where most of the 16 million people live in poverty, as Mugabe and his family have amassed huge wealth. The crumbling buildings, boarded up shops and twisted figures of disabled beggars in Harare s streets bear witness to the poverty many hope will be tackled after Mugabe leaves. We were praying for this day to come. Life has been very painful but we have been liberated, said Kevin Mugwampi, who lost his job as a banker during a 2008 recession. Today marks our second independence. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hariri says will clarify position on Lebanese crisis on his return to Beirut;PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri said on Saturday he would travel to Beirut in the coming days and announce his position on the crisis in his country after holding talks with President Michel Aoun. With regard to the political situation in Lebanon, I will go to Beirut in the coming days, I will participate in the independence celebrations, and it is there that I will make known my position on these subjects after meeting President Aoun, Hariri said after meeting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sri Lanka arrests 19 after Buddhist-Muslim violence;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's ruling party to fire Mugabe on Sunday: sources;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF party will hold a special central committee meeting on Sunday morning to dismiss 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe as its leader, two ZANU-PF sources said on Saturday. The meeting, which is scheduled to start at 1030 am (3.30 a.m. ET) will also reinstate ousted vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa and remove Mugabe s wife, Grace, from the leadership of the ZANU-PF Women s League. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vatican says investigating alleged abuser who became priest;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Saturday it had opened an investigation into reports that a former teenage altar boy, who allegedly repeatedly forced a dormitory mate to have sex with him, went on to become a priest. The allegations concerning the St. Pius X Institute, known as a pre-seminary, were made in a recent book and in Italian television reports. The pre-seminary is a residence inside the Vatican for altar boys who serve at masses in St. Peter s Basilica mostly presided over by priests, bishops and cardinals. At times they also participate in papal liturgies. The boys go to Italian schools while they live in the Vatican, a sovereign city-state surrounded by Rome. The reports said that despite complaints to superiors against the teenager, he was accepted into what is known as a major seminary when he became an adult. He was later ordained a priest and is now serving in a parish in northern Italy, they said. The statement said an initial investigation in 2013 had resulted in no adequate confirmation . A new investigation had been opened following the latest reports in order to try to shed full light on what really happened , it added. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Crowds boo, jeer as Zimbabwe's Mugabe motorcade leaves Harare residence;HARARE (Reuters) - Crowds of Zimbabweans booed and jeered as President Robert Mugabe s motorcade left his Blue Roof residence in Harare on Saturday, a Reuters witness said. It was not clear whether Mugabe was in the motorcade, or where it was headed. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France ready to host international meeting on Lebanon if needed;PARIS (Reuters) - France is considering whether to host a meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group to discuss the political crisis in the country, a French presidential source said on Saturday. The source said there was no decision yet on whether it would take place or whether it would be a ministerial meeting. The group includes Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. (This story has been refiled to remove reference to Germany in third paragraph.) ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe not in motorcade that left his residence: source;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was not in a motorcade that was seen leaving his residence in Harare on Saturday, a security source told Reuters. Earlier, crowds booed and jeered as the motorcade left the Blue Roof residence. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodian court charges two journalists with espionage;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court on Saturday charged two journalists with espionage for filing news reports to a U.S.-funded radio station, which can carry a prison term of up to 15 years. Prime Minister Hun Sen, the strongman who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades, has taken a strident anti-American line in an increasingly tense run-up to a 2018 election and there has been a crackdown on critics, rights groups and independent media. The United States announced it was ending funding for the election, and promised more concrete steps , after the Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) on Thursday at the request of the government, on the grounds it was plotting to seize power. The party denied the accusation. The two journalists, Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, had in the past worked for the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) which broadcast in the Khmer language until it shut down in September. The two were charged with providing information that is destructive to national defense to a foreign state , when they were caught filing stories to RFA, said Ly Sophana, a spokesman at Phnom Penh Municipal Court. They will be sent to an investigating judge for further procedures, Ly Sophana told Reuters. RFA has said it had no ties to the two journalists since it shut its Phnom Penh office in September. In charging two former RFA journalists with espionage, Cambodian authorities have opened the door to more serious forms of intimidation worthy of despots and dictators, RFA spokesman Rohit Mahajan said in emailed comments. A lawyer for the two said the charges were too serious and they had merely been doing their jobs as journalists. This is not dangerous to the country, said the lawyer, Keo Vanny. The charges carried up to 15 years in prison if the men were convicted, he said. Hun Sen has been fighting a deepening war of words with the U.S. embassy and State Department over his government s crackdown on the opposition. CNRP leader Kem Sokha was arrested on Sept. 3 and charged with treason for an alleged plot to take power with U.S. help. He denied any such pot. The U.S. State Department called on Friday for Cambodia to release him and reverse the decision to ban his party. Western countries, which for decades supported Cambodia s emergence from war and isolation, have shown little appetite for sanctions in response to the government s crackdown, but the European Union has raised the possibility of Cambodia losing vital trade preferences. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia recalls ambassador to Germany over Gabriel comments;CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has summoned its ambassador in Germany home for consultations over comments by German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel about the political crisis in Lebanon. The Saudi foreign ministry said the government also handed Germany s representative in Riyadh a protest note over what it said were shameful comments Gabriel made after a meeting with his Lebanese counterpart. After a meeting in Berlin with Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, Gabriel told reporters that Europe could not tolerate the adventurism that has spread there . It was not clear from a Reuters television recording that the remark was targeted at Saudi Arabia. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri resigned while in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4. Such remarks provoke the surprise and disapproval of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which considers them as aimless and based on false information that would not help bring about stability in the region, the Saudi ministry said. The ministry later said on its Twitter account it had summoned the German ambassador in Riyadh and handed him a protest memorandum over the shameful and unjustified remarks made by the German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. Hariri s abrupt resignation has raised concern over Lebanon s stability. He met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, several hours after he left Saudi Arabia. Lebanon s President Michel Aoun said on Twitter Hariri had told him in a phone call from Paris he would be in Lebanon on Wednesday for Independence Day celebrations. The German foreign ministry welcomed Hariri s departure from Saudi Arabia for Paris and impending return to Lebanon. We are very concerned about regional stability and call on sides to reduce tensions, the statement read. We aim this message at all actors in the region. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Macron meeting, Hariri says will clarify position in Lebanon;PARIS (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who resigned as Lebanon s prime minister this month while in Saudi Arabia, said on Saturday he would clarify his position when he returns to Beirut next week. Hariri s resignation on Nov. 4 threw Lebanon into political crisis and put it center-stage in the Middle East s overarching rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and its allies and a bloc led by Shi ite Iran. With regard to the political situation in Lebanon, I will go to Beirut in the coming days, I will participate in the independence celebrations, and it is there that I will make known my position on these subjects after meeting President (Michel) Aoun, Hariri said after holding talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Hariri declined to take questions, but is set to return to Beirut by Wednesday when Lebanon celebrates its independence day. He thanked Macron, who has been mediating as part of French efforts to try to ease tensions across the region, for his help. Macron had leveraged France s close relations with both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to secure a deal that saw Hariri travel to Paris and open the door to a resolution of the crisis. Hariri, who arrived at his residence in Paris in the early hours of the morning, told Aoun in a phone call from Paris that he would be in Lebanon on Wednesday for the celebrations, the Lebanese president said on Twitter. Lebanon is being shaken so it s important Hariri comes to Paris for us to work with him on the best way out of the crisis, said a senior French diplomat. We re trying to create the conditions for a de-escalation in the region. We want to avoid a proliferation of crises that could get out of control. Hariri s abrupt resignation and continued stay in Saudi Arabia has caused fears for Lebanon s stability. Okab Saqr, a member of parliament for Hariri s Future Movement, said after Hariri s visit to France he would have a small Arab tour before traveling to Beirut. A French presidential source said Macron had reiterated that Paris wanted Hariri to return to Lebanon to ensure the country s political system continued to function and that it was imperative it remained disassociated from regional crises. The source said Macron would continue to be active on the dossier in the coming days and that France was considering whether to host a meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group to discuss the political crisis. The crisis has thrust Lebanon into the regional rivalry pitting Saudi Arabia and its allies against a bloc led by Iran, which includes the heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite Hezbollah group. Aoun has called Hariri a Saudi hostage and refused to accept his resignation unless he returns to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Hariri say his movements are not restricted. Lebanon maintains a delicate sectarian balance after Sunnis, Shi ites, Christians and Druze fought a civil war between 1975 and 1990, with factions often backed by regional rivals. Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, is a long-time ally of Saudi Arabia. Aoun, a Christian, is a political ally of Hezbollah. Hariri s government, a power-sharing coalition formed last year, includes Hezbollah. France, which controlled Lebanon between the world wars, has sought to play a key role in defusing tension with Macron personally getting involved and putting him at the heart of a regional power struggle that will test his diplomatic skills. That was evident since the outbreak of the Lebanese crisis over the last week with a surprise visit to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, followed by a flurry of calls, sending his foreign minister to Saudi Arabia and then the invitation to Hariri, which caught many diplomats unawares. While undoubtedly a diplomatic coup for Macron, some regional and French diplomats have cautioned that his strategy to try to appease all sides in the region may backfire. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Macron about the situation in Lebanon and Syria. The White House said the leaders agreed on the need to work with allies to counter Hezbollah s and Iran s destabilizing activities in the region. Paris has intensified its rhetoric over Iran s regional activities. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking alongside his Saudi counterpart, denounced Tehran s hegemonic temptations . Iran responded by accusing France of taking sides and Macron on Friday said Iran should clarify its ballistic missile program. That was met by a rebuke in Tehran. On Saturday, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran s supreme leader, said Macron should stay out of its affairs. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian medical group wants access to Manus Island asylum seekers;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia s main medical association called on Saturday for the government to allow independent doctors and other health experts to help more than 400 asylum seekers languishing inside a recently closed detention center in Papua New Guinea. The asylum seekers have shut themselves inside the Australian-run Manus Island Centre for the past 18 days, defying attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) to close it in a standoff the United Nations describes as a looming humanitarian crisis . Australia has shut access to the center, and staff, including doctors, have left, leaving the men without sufficient food, clean water, power or medical care. Members of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) voted unanimously on Saturday to call on the government to grant access to the center so doctors could assess the men s health, wellbeing and living conditions. The AMA has made many representations on this matter, both publicly and in private but, with a worsening and more dangerous situation emerging on Manus, the federal council strongly believes that urgent action and answers are needed, AMA President Michael Gannon said. It is our responsibility as a nation with a strong human rights record to ensure that we look after the health and wellbeing of these men, and provide them with safe and hygienic living conditions. Government spokesmen were not immediately available for comment. Australia s sovereign borders immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores, has been heavily criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups but has bipartisan political support in Australia. The 421 asylum seekers on Manus island say they fear violent reprisals from the community if they move to transit centers, pending possible resettlement to the United States. Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz said via text message on Saturday that PNG officials had started to dismantle the center s perimeter fences and food was running low. We are waiting drinking from the rainwater ... it s tense feeling, we don t have any idea what PNG will do to us. Their attitude toward us they are really aggressive, Aziz said. PNG s Supreme Court ruled last year that the center breached its laws and fundamental human rights, leading to the decision to close it. New Zealand has offered to accept 150 of the men, but Australia has declined the offer saying the priority was an existing refugee swap deal negotiated with former U.S. President Barack Obama last year. Under that deal, up to 1,250 asylum seekers could be sent to the United States and Australia will in turn accept refugees from Central America. ;worldnews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CROOKED DEMOCRAT Congresswoman Corrine Brown Found GUILTY of STEALING Scholarship Money From Children…Blames RACISM For Verdict;Celebrated Congressional Black Caucus member, and legend Corrine Brown would like Americans to believe that stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from underpriveleged children in her district, and using the money to vacation with her daughter, is not the reason she s been found guilty of 18 counts of fraud and corruption, it s because she is black. Washington Examiner She partied with Nancy Pelosi, traveled on Air Force one next to President Obama, and cast her superdelegate vote for Hillary Clinton. But on February 9, 2017, Corrine Brown was in federal court for stealing scholarship money from school children.The disgraced congresswoman attempted to defend against charges that she funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from a non-profit charity, One Door for Education, into her own pocket.After her former chief of staff testified against her, the question was no longer whether or not she s guilty. It s why Democrat brass would continually cozy up to a congresswoman who was so clearly corrupt?From the beginning, Brown s been shrouded in controversy. Shortly after she won election in 1992, the Federal Election Commission accused Brown of violating numerous campaign finance laws. Most notably, she accepted donations from foreign citizens and failed to report the use of a corporate plane. And that s just the tip of the ethical iceberg.A convenient rap sheet, put together last July by the Florida Times-Union, documents every allegation of wrongdoing brought against Brown during her 27-year career. Hollywood couldn t have better scripted some of the highlights.In 1998, Brown cashed a $10,000 check from Rev. Henry Lyons, the disgraced president of the National Baptist Convention who spent five years in federal prison for fraud. The congresswoman said tthat she used the unreported money to bus her supporters to an event.In 2000, Brown battled back a House Ethics investigation into her efforts to free imprisoned West African millionaire Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko from federal prison. She appealed to Attorney General Janet Reno for help, asking her to spring Sissoko from prison. Though unsuccessful, Brown received a new Lexus worth $50,000 for her trouble.And in 2008, Brown took heat from the mayor of Jacksonville after she had sandbags delivered by the city to protect her home from Tropical Storm Fay. The congresswoman eventually pledged to pay the city $886.But none of this dissuaded Democrats from palling around the Florida woman. It s mind boggling that Brown not only fundraised with the president but also enjoyed prominent perches on the Transportation and Veteran Affairs Committees.First Coast News On Thursday, November 16, 2017, the former Jacksonville area Congresswoman Corrine Brown took the stand, and plead for mercy from federal judge Timothy Corrigan. I am sorry you have to be here today to see me in this situation, Brown said in her statement to the court. I never imagined I would one day be in court asking people to speak on my behalf never. In hindsight, I wished I had been more diligent in overseeing my personal and professional life The idea that some people could believe these charges hurt me because it runs contrary to everything I ve ever believed and done in my life. I hope and pray these proceedings to don t make them [ordinary people] lose faith in the system. I humbly ask for mercy and compassion. Brown was convicted on 18 counts of fraud and corruption in May.The lead prosecutor in the sentencing hearing argued Thursday that the former congresswoman should be sentenced to about 7.5 to 9 years in federal prison. Her defense attorney is seeking probation and community service.Brown s defense attorney James Smith objected to various aspects of the sentencing recommendations, including how much money Brown should be culpable for.Prosecutor Duva asked the court, What accountability does the law require? during his presentation.Duva said Brown was accustomed to receiving money she should not have received. She also lied about donations to colleges, churches and other entities.He also argued that Brown has made ludicrous comments during the investigation, including a comment where she essentially said that had investigators not been looking into her case, the Pulse shooting in Orlando would never have happened. She also referred to the charges as bogus and racist, implying that she was targeted for her race in the case.Duva objected to that notion by saying, She was targeted because she committed fraud, not because she was black or white. Corrine Brown had several witnesses come forward Thursday in support of her through witness testimony during the sentencing hearing.Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee provided a glowing character witness of Corrine Brown during her sentencing hearing Thursday.Jackson Lee described via telephone testimony it as her privilege to characterize Corrine Brown as a loving person. She said Brown has had a pointed and direct effort [in] helping others, not herself. The veterans community loved Congresswoman Brown, Jackson Lee said, stating that Brown has helped those with PTSD and other issues following fighting overseas. She also stated Brown helped tremendously with relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. That shows a character of giving to others unselfishly, Jackson Lee said.Additional arguments by defense attorneyThe defense attorney belabored the point that they are against the notion that Brown abused a position of trust, which is established by the evidence presented in the trial.Smith explained the definition of obstruction of justice, which Brown is accused of doing while taking the stand by the prosecutor, stating that it is the intention or deliberate effort while on the stand to make material falsehoods. The judge wasn t so sure and asked the defense attorney to elaborate.Smith appeared to get emotional after posing two questions: What type of sentence does justice require in this case? and How do you sentence someone who is a legend? He attributes some of her actions to the progress our country has made in terms of relations for black people.Smith said he met with an Orlando attorney who was from Jacksonville and said the attorney described Brown as our Martin Luther King for black Jacksonville natives. None of those people had to push the boulder up the mountain like she did, said Smith, referring to others in Congress. She truly is a legend. There are a lot of moving parts in the case against Corrine Brown and her co-conspirators.Carla Wiley first became involved in the fraud scheme when she started dating Ronnie Simmons.She was president of a charity called One Door for Education, which was never actually registered as a 501(c)(3).The fake charity received more than $800,000 in four years, with about only $1,200 of it actually going to scholarships for students. That money is now gone.Simmons was dating Wiley when he told her he needed a nonprofit to financially back a reception for congresswoman Brown in 2012. Wiley offered One Door for Education as an option for that reception.The charity claimed to give scholarships to poor and underprivileged children seeking the become teachers.Lead prosecutor A. Tysen Duva argued during the trial that Ronnie Simmons worked under Brown and did her bidding by taking out $800 a day from the One Door for Education bank account and depositing it into Brown s personal bank account. He did this numerous times, according to Duva and evidence released earlier this month.The fake charity was essentially used as a slush fund for Corrine Brown s travels, expenses and shopping, according to the prosecutors.She used the money put in her bank account to go to Nassau, Bahamas with her daughter, fly to Beverly Hills and shop along Rodeo Drive, and attend a Beyonc concert, according to court documents and previous reports by First Coast News.The prosecutors also argued that Brown committed wire fraud, mail fraud and stole money from the government after she lied on tax documents.Brown had friends in high places, such as former CSX CEO Mike Ward. She would ask them for donation to Open Door for Education and many of them gladly donated, according to previous reports and prosecutor testimony.Ward, for instance, contributed $35,000 to One Door for Education after learning that the money would go toward providing students with iPads for learning.Prosecutors also argued that Brown lied about and inflated what she gave in tithes to various churches. The churches came forward in the trial and said the donations claimed to be given by Brown did not match their records, to which Brown said she sometimes gave anonymous donations.Other legitimate scholarship organizations came forward and said they had never received funds from Brown s charity.Meanwhile, Brown s tax returns claimed she contributed as much as $30,000 20 percent to a third of her income, to various charities.;politics;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pro-trade Republicans get nervous that NAFTA talks could fail;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Pro-trade Republicans in the U.S. Congress are growing worried that U.S. President Donald Trump may try to quit the NAFTA free trade deal entirely rather than negotiate a compromise that preserves its core benefits. As a fifth round of talks to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement kicked off in Mexico on Friday, several Republicans interviewed by Reuters expressed concerns that tough U.S. demands, including a five-year sunset clause and a U.S.-specific content rule, will sink the talks and lead to the deal’s collapse. Business groups have warned of dire economic consequences, including millions of jobs lost as Mexican and Canadian tariffs snap back to their early 1990s levels. “I think the administration is playing a pretty dangerous game with this sunset provision,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from eastern Pennsylvania. He said putting NAFTA under threat of extinction every five years would make it difficult for companies in his district, ranging from chocolate giant Hershey Co to small family owned manufacturing firms, to invest in supply chains and manage global operations. Hershey operates candy plants in Monterrey and Guadalajara, Mexico. Some 74 House of Representatives members signed a letter this week opposing U.S. proposals on automotive rules of origin, which would require 50 percent U.S. content in NAFTA-built vehicles and 85 percent regional content. They warned that this would “eliminate the competitive advantages” that NAFTA brings to U.S. automakers or lead to a collapse of the trade pact. Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican who has long been a supporter of free trade deals, said he disagreed with the Trump approach of “trying to beat someone” in the NAFTA talks. Texas is the largest U.S. exporting state with nearly half of its $231 billion in exports last year headed to Mexico and Canada, according to Commerce Department data. “We need to offer Mexico a fair deal. If we want them to take our cattle, we need to take their avocados,” Sessions said. Still, congressional apprehension about Trump’s stance is far from unanimous. The signers were largely Republicans, with no Democrats from auto-intensive states such as Michigan and Ohio signing. Some pro-labor Democrats have actually expressed support for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s tough approach. “Some of those demands are in tune,” said Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee. “We don’t want to blow it up, Republicans don’t want to blow it up. But we want substantial changes in the labor, the environmental, the currency, on how you come to an agreement when there’s a dispute, and on problems of origin.” Farm state Republicans are especially concerned that a collapse of NAFTA would lead to the loss of crucial export markets in Mexico and Canada for corn, beef and other products. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said Lighthizer in a recent meeting agreed that a withdrawal from NAFTA would be hard on U.S. agriculture, which has largely benefited from the trade pact. U.S. agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico quintupled to about $41 billion in 2016 from about $9 billion in 1993, the year before NAFTA went into effect, according to U.S. Commerce Department data. Grassley said, however, that Lighthizer’s approach was “taking everybody to the brink on these talks.” Other Republicans are taking a wait and see approach to the talks. Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma said he was willing to give Trump “the benefit of the doubt” on NAFTA talks, adding that farmers and ranchers in his rural district were strong Trump supporters in the 2016 election. “The president’s a practical fellow. When push comes to shove, he understands the base,” Lucas said. ;politicsNews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. nuclear general says would resist 'illegal' Trump strike order;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. nuclear commander said on Saturday that he would resist President Donald Trump if he ordered an “illegal” launch of nuclear weapons. Air Force General John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada that he had given a lot of thought to what he would say if he received such an order. “I think some people think we’re stupid,” Hyten said in response to a question about such a scenario. “We’re not stupid people. We think about these things a lot. When you have this responsibility, how do you not think about it?” Hyten, who is responsible for overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, explained the process that would follow such a command. As head of STRATCOM “I provide advice to the president, he will tell me what to do,” he said in his remarks, retransmitted in a video posted on the forum’s Facebook page. “And if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen? I’m going to say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’ And guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?’ And we’ll come up with options, of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that’s the way it works. It’s not that complicated.” Hyten said running through scenarios of how to react in the event of an illegal order was standard practice, and added: “If you execute an unlawful order, you will go to jail. You could go to jail for the rest of your life.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hyten’s remarks. They came after questions by U.S. senators, including Democrats and Trump’s fellow Republicans, about Trump’s authority to wage war, use nuclear weapons and enter into or end international agreements, amid concern that tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs could lead to hostilities. Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and threatened in his maiden United Nations address to “totally destroy” the country of 26 million people if it threatened the United States. Some senators want legislation to alter the nuclear authority of the U.S. president and a Senate committee on Tuesday held the first congressional hearing in more than four decades on the president’s authority to launch a nuclear strike. ;politicsNews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! SARAH PALIN Has EPIC Response When MSNBC Reporter Asks If She’s Ever Been Sexually Assaulted;MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt began her segment on sexual harassment in Washington by telling the show s viewers, Funnily enough, I caught up in the basement of the capitol today with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin today. Funnily enough? Isn t this the same network who spent an excessive amount time criticizing Sarah Palin s grammar?Hunt asked Palin, who endorsed the embattled Roy Moore in the Alabama GOP primary race, to share her thoughts on sexual harassment with their viewers. Palin told Hunt, It s not a partisan issue, so when we see this happening today, I think that it leads to a lot of questions about what standards are going to be applied to whom. WFB Hunt followed up by asking Palin whether she has ever experienced sexual harassment in the workplace as an ambitious woman in public life. I think a whole lot of people know that I m probably packing, and so I don t think there s a whole lot of people who would necessarily mess with me, said Palin, a vocal advocate of the Second Amendment. I don t mean to be lighthearted;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHOA! Is RINO Senator Mitch McConnell Behind Roy Moore “Hit Job”?…”I strongly, strongly suspect somebody out of the McConnell camp planted the story”;From the Washington Examiner Roy Moore is the embattled Republican senatorial nominee in Alabama, but two other figures in the party have even more to lose in his race: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.First, the obvious. If Moore is beaten by Democrat Doug Jones a leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee poll has the socially conservative retired judge trailing Jones by 12 points, but this is at odds with public polling McConnell will be knocked down to leading a 51-49 Republican Senate.That may not seem like much in a Senate that has no meaningful filibuster for executive and judicial appointments, but where 52 votes are no more useful for advancing legislation that can t be snuck through the reconciliation process. It is nevertheless significant given that the Senate has already had trouble passing major legislation like Obamacare repeal and tax reform with the majority it currently has.It also would bring the Democrats one vote closer to recapturing the Senate majority, despite a very daunting electoral map for the upper chamber in 2018. Winning such a reliably red state would aid Democratic candidate recruitment across the board and embolden the party s ten senators from states President Trump carried who are up for re-election next year.Superficially speaking, McConnell comes out a loser if Moore is defeated. But not in the bigger picture. The Dec. 12 special Senate election in Alabama could also be viewed as a front in the proxy war between McConnell and Bannon.After leaving the White House, Bannon threatened to recruit primary challengers for most of the incumbent Republican senators who are seeking re-election in 2018. At a joint press conference with Trump in the Rose Garden, McConnell didn t mince words about how he felt about this gambit. Look, you know, the goal here is to win elections in November, McConnell said last month. Back in 2010 and 2012, we nominated several candidates Christine O Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock. They re not in the Senate. And the reason for that was that they were not able to appeal to a broader electorate in the general election. My goal as the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate is to keep us in the majority, he added. The way you do that is not complicated. You have to have nominated people who can actually win, because winners make policy and losers go home. Bannon wants more Republican senators who will vote against McConnell. McConnell and his allies believe the Breitbart News chief s intervention in the primaries could lead to fewer Republican senators overall, so they have started punching back.In September s Alabama Republican primary, McConnell went all in on appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange and lost, despite the president s backing. Bannon made the argument that the candidate Trump endorsed wasn t the one who would be most supportive of the Trump agenda. For that, he insisted, you needed an anti-establishment candidate like Moore. Bannon, via Moore, won.Both men might have been better off with Rep. Mo Brooks, who was eliminated in the first round of voting. Brooks was big on the Trump agenda and did not have all the weird sexual baggage that could wind up dooming Moore. Bannon allies told the Washington Examiner that the former top Trump strategist might have preferred Brooks.Yet McConnell s political apparatus spent heavily against Moore to protect Strange, a sitting senator who struggled from the local perception he secured his seat through some kind of corrupt bargain with disgraced former Gov. Robert Bentley. And Bannon couldn t very well throw his weight behind a candidate who, despite being ideologically Trumpist, endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, over Trump in the 2016 primaries especially while still serving in the West Wing.Freed from the White House, Bannon backed Moore less because the Ten Commandments judge had any particular affinity for the issues that Trump ran on last year and more because Alabama s political conditions made him likely to beat Strange. Moore would owe McConnell and the establishment nothing, but Bannon would have chits to cash in and an improved reputation as a kingmaker inside the GOP.If Moore loses in a disastrous fashion (and remember it is courting disaster for this race to even be competitive;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! SARAH PALIN Has EPIC Response When MSNBC Reporter Asks If She’s Ever Been Sexually Assaulted;MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt began her segment on sexual harassment in Washington by telling the show s viewers, Funnily enough, I caught up in the basement of the capitol today with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin today. Funnily enough? Isn t this the same network who spent an excessive amount time criticizing Sarah Palin s grammar?Hunt asked Palin, who endorsed the embattled Roy Moore in the Alabama GOP primary race, to share her thoughts on sexual harassment with their viewers. Palin told Hunt, It s not a partisan issue, so when we see this happening today, I think that it leads to a lot of questions about what standards are going to be applied to whom. WFB Hunt followed up by asking Palin whether she has ever experienced sexual harassment in the workplace as an ambitious woman in public life. I think a whole lot of people know that I m probably packing, and so I don t think there s a whole lot of people who would necessarily mess with me, said Palin, a vocal advocate of the Second Amendment. I don t mean to be lighthearted;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! TRUMP TWEETS Hilarious Message To #CrookedHillary…Suggests She Gives It “Another Try” In 2020;President Trump on Saturday criticized Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated in the 2016 White House race, for her recent and repeated questioning of the election results. Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time, Trump tweeted. She just can t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2017The Republican president was likely responding to a Mother Jones interview published Friday in which Clinton questioned last year s election results, amid evidence that Russia tried to influence the race outcome. She called for an independent commission to investigate the matter.Clinton, in the interview, also alleged voter suppression in the 2016 race, saying, In a couple of places, most notably Wisconsin, I think it had a dramatic impact on the outcome. FOX NewsIn case America has forgotten why Donal Trump trounced Hillary in the polls, watch the short clip from their second presidential debate below:The very sick Hillary Clinton barely made it through to the November election without needing a stretcher, while running her very lackadaisical 2016 presidential campaign. It would be very interesting to see Hillary attempt a comeback 4 years later.Watch, as Hillary collapes while attempting to enter her van after leaving a 9-11 memorial service early, reportedly because she was suffering a mysterious medical situation that required her to leave during the ceremony. At first, her campaign said she was suffering from heat exaustion, after the American public refused to buy their excuse, the campaign then said she had pnuemonia. After several weeks of watching her being propped up and carried around by the arm like a candidate who has one foot on a banana peel and the other in her grave, following her 9-11 incident , we re definitely not buying it.This IS NOT heat related. #HillarysHealth pic.twitter.com/PFNfCEVFrV John Cardillo (@johncardillo) September 11, 2016And then, there is the long list of crimes committed by Hillary, that she has yet to be prosecuted for.The list of Hillary s crimes continues to grow, even after the election. Just before the 2016 presidential election, Breitbart put together a list of a few of the most well-documented crimes and national security nightmares that are in her resume. Here is the list:Clinton is promising expanded numbers of Syrian refugees brought to the United States, despite the fact that 99.1% of the 13,210 refugees admitted to the US in 2016 are Muslim and the FBI has said there is no way to adequately vet them for terrorist connections and sympathies.Our true national scandal is not that Clinton has so far escaped indictment, it is that so many of our civic and political institutions have been corrupted by a misguided loyalty to the Clinton crime syndicate.From the board rooms of Wall Street to the editorial boards of local newspapers and the town halls of the League of Women Voters, the defense of the progressive cause has come down to defending the indefensible pay-for-play cronyism, open borders and national security breaches on a global scale.A full chronicle of Hillary Clinton s crimes will someday fill a large shelf of books, if not a whole library.There could be no better news for President Donald Trump in 2020, than the announcement that Hillary was going to throw her hat in the ring for the third time. Bring it Hillary America can t wait! ;politics;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: Colin Kaepernick’s Worst Nightmare [Video];You might remember this bright moment from when Obama was president A couple of years ago, 500 high school choir students sang the Star-Spangled Banner in the 18-story atrium of a Hyatt hotel in Louisville as part of the Kentucky Music Educators Convention. Any anti-anthem liberals in the building probably ran out screaming into the night:Good thing Louisville doesn t have an NFL team. If there had been a visiting team in the building, some of the players would have had to put their helmets on to keep their skulls from exploding.REMEMBER WHEN OBAMA SUPPORTED KAEPERNICK S ANTI-ANTHEM PROTEST? OBAMA DEFENDS KAEPERNICK S Decision to Disrespect American Flag: He s generated more interest in something that needs to be talked about When Obama had the opportunity to speak out against 49er s quarterback Colin Kaepernick s disrespect for our flag, he chose instead to defend his actions, explaining that it was okay for him to sit out the national anthem, as long as he was bringing attention to the cop-hating/killing, divisive Black Lives Matter terror group President Obama said San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is exercising his constitutional right to sit out the national anthem, but the president acknowledged that the silent protest is a tough thing for military service members to accept.At a news conference in China on Monday, the president said he did not doubt Kaepernick s sincerity in his decision not to stand for the anthem ahead of games to protest the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement in U.S. cities. Obama noted a long history of sports figures protesting political or social issues. There are a lot of ways you can do it, Obama said after the G-20 summit here. As a general matter when it comes to the flag and the national anthem and the meaning that holds for our men and women in uniform and those who fought for us that is a tough thing for them to get past to then hear what his deeper concerns are. But I don t doubt his sincerity. I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about. If nothing else, he s generated more conversation about issues that have to be talked about. Obama said he has not closely followed the controversy surrounding Kaepernick s actions while he has been overseas, but he said he was aware of the public response, which has been sharply divided. The president has sought to balance his own response to the unrest and mistrust between African Americans and police officers over the past several years, including in Baton Rouge and Dallas this year. You ve heard me talk in the past about the need for us to have an active citizenry, Obama said. Sometimes that s messy and controversial and gets people angry and frustrated. But I d rather have young people that are engaged in the argument and trying to think through how they can be part of our democratic process than people just sitting on the sidelines not participating at all. My suspicion is that over time he s going to refine how he thinks about it. Maybe some of his critics will start seeing that he had a point about concerns about justice and equality. That s how we move forward. Washington Post ;politics;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama Senate election winner due to be certified in late December;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The outcome of Alabama’s Dec. 12 U.S. Senate election probably will not be certified until Dec. 26 at the earliest, a state official said on Friday, making it unlikely the race will affect major year-end legislation in Congress including Republican tax cuts. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate. A victory by Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore, who is facing sexual misconduct allegations, in the Alabama race would cut that margin to 51-49, making it harder for President Donald Trump’s party to win congressional passage of major legislation. Lawmakers are due to take up legislation on government funding and immigration in December and also will try to pass a sweeping Republican tax cut bill ahead the Dec. 25 Christmas holiday. If the Alabama result is not certified until after Christmas, Republicans would have more time to get their legislative goals accomplished regardless of the Alabama contest’s outcome. John Bennett, chief of staff for the Alabama secretary of state, said the state’s 67 counties face a Dec. 22 deadline for officially reporting election results, but some are likely to miss it. Bennett said that would push the process back until after Christmas, making Dec. 26 the earliest possible date for certification. Once certified election results are available, a new senator would be sworn in during an open session of the Senate, according to Senate officials. With the Senate scheduled to be out the last week of December, the next open session would not be until early January. ;politicsNews;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! TRUMP TWEETS Hilarious Message To #CrookedHillary…Suggests She Gives It “Another Try” In 2020;President Trump on Saturday criticized Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated in the 2016 White House race, for her recent and repeated questioning of the election results. Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time, Trump tweeted. She just can t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! Crooked Hillary Clinton is the worst (and biggest) loser of all time. She just can t stop, which is so good for the Republican Party. Hillary, get on with your life and give it another try in three years! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2017The Republican president was likely responding to a Mother Jones interview published Friday in which Clinton questioned last year s election results, amid evidence that Russia tried to influence the race outcome. She called for an independent commission to investigate the matter.Clinton, in the interview, also alleged voter suppression in the 2016 race, saying, In a couple of places, most notably Wisconsin, I think it had a dramatic impact on the outcome. FOX NewsIn case America has forgotten why Donal Trump trounced Hillary in the polls, watch the short clip from their second presidential debate below:The very sick Hillary Clinton barely made it through to the November election without needing a stretcher, while running her very lackadaisical 2016 presidential campaign. It would be very interesting to see Hillary attempt a comeback 4 years later.Watch, as Hillary collapes while attempting to enter her van after leaving a 9-11 memorial service early, reportedly because she was suffering a mysterious medical situation that required her to leave during the ceremony. At first, her campaign said she was suffering from heat exaustion, after the American public refused to buy their excuse, the campaign then said she had pnuemonia. After several weeks of watching her being propped up and carried around by the arm like a candidate who has one foot on a banana peel and the other in her grave, following her 9-11 incident , we re definitely not buying it.This IS NOT heat related. #HillarysHealth pic.twitter.com/PFNfCEVFrV John Cardillo (@johncardillo) September 11, 2016And then, there is the long list of crimes committed by Hillary, that she has yet to be prosecuted for.The list of Hillary s crimes continues to grow, even after the election. Just before the 2016 presidential election, Breitbart put together a list of a few of the most well-documented crimes and national security nightmares that are in her resume. Here is the list:Clinton is promising expanded numbers of Syrian refugees brought to the United States, despite the fact that 99.1% of the 13,210 refugees admitted to the US in 2016 are Muslim and the FBI has said there is no way to adequately vet them for terrorist connections and sympathies.Our true national scandal is not that Clinton has so far escaped indictment, it is that so many of our civic and political institutions have been corrupted by a misguided loyalty to the Clinton crime syndicate.From the board rooms of Wall Street to the editorial boards of local newspapers and the town halls of the League of Women Voters, the defense of the progressive cause has come down to defending the indefensible pay-for-play cronyism, open borders and national security breaches on a global scale.A full chronicle of Hillary Clinton s crimes will someday fill a large shelf of books, if not a whole library.There could be no better news for President Donald Trump in 2020, than the announcement that Hillary was going to throw her hat in the ring for the third time. Bring it Hillary America can t wait! ;left-news;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CROOKED DEMOCRAT Congresswoman Corrine Brown Found GUILTY of STEALING Scholarship Money From Children…Blames RACISM For Verdict;Celebrated Congressional Black Caucus member, and legend Corrine Brown would like Americans to believe that stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from underpriveleged children in her district, and using the money to vacation with her daughter, is not the reason she s been found guilty of 18 counts of fraud and corruption, it s because she is black. Washington Examiner She partied with Nancy Pelosi, traveled on Air Force one next to President Obama, and cast her superdelegate vote for Hillary Clinton. But on February 9, 2017, Corrine Brown was in federal court for stealing scholarship money from school children.The disgraced congresswoman attempted to defend against charges that she funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from a non-profit charity, One Door for Education, into her own pocket.After her former chief of staff testified against her, the question was no longer whether or not she s guilty. It s why Democrat brass would continually cozy up to a congresswoman who was so clearly corrupt?From the beginning, Brown s been shrouded in controversy. Shortly after she won election in 1992, the Federal Election Commission accused Brown of violating numerous campaign finance laws. Most notably, she accepted donations from foreign citizens and failed to report the use of a corporate plane. And that s just the tip of the ethical iceberg.A convenient rap sheet, put together last July by the Florida Times-Union, documents every allegation of wrongdoing brought against Brown during her 27-year career. Hollywood couldn t have better scripted some of the highlights.In 1998, Brown cashed a $10,000 check from Rev. Henry Lyons, the disgraced president of the National Baptist Convention who spent five years in federal prison for fraud. The congresswoman said tthat she used the unreported money to bus her supporters to an event.In 2000, Brown battled back a House Ethics investigation into her efforts to free imprisoned West African millionaire Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko from federal prison. She appealed to Attorney General Janet Reno for help, asking her to spring Sissoko from prison. Though unsuccessful, Brown received a new Lexus worth $50,000 for her trouble.And in 2008, Brown took heat from the mayor of Jacksonville after she had sandbags delivered by the city to protect her home from Tropical Storm Fay. The congresswoman eventually pledged to pay the city $886.But none of this dissuaded Democrats from palling around the Florida woman. It s mind boggling that Brown not only fundraised with the president but also enjoyed prominent perches on the Transportation and Veteran Affairs Committees.First Coast News On Thursday, November 16, 2017, the former Jacksonville area Congresswoman Corrine Brown took the stand, and plead for mercy from federal judge Timothy Corrigan. I am sorry you have to be here today to see me in this situation, Brown said in her statement to the court. I never imagined I would one day be in court asking people to speak on my behalf never. In hindsight, I wished I had been more diligent in overseeing my personal and professional life The idea that some people could believe these charges hurt me because it runs contrary to everything I ve ever believed and done in my life. I hope and pray these proceedings to don t make them [ordinary people] lose faith in the system. I humbly ask for mercy and compassion. Brown was convicted on 18 counts of fraud and corruption in May.The lead prosecutor in the sentencing hearing argued Thursday that the former congresswoman should be sentenced to about 7.5 to 9 years in federal prison. Her defense attorney is seeking probation and community service.Brown s defense attorney James Smith objected to various aspects of the sentencing recommendations, including how much money Brown should be culpable for.Prosecutor Duva asked the court, What accountability does the law require? during his presentation.Duva said Brown was accustomed to receiving money she should not have received. She also lied about donations to colleges, churches and other entities.He also argued that Brown has made ludicrous comments during the investigation, including a comment where she essentially said that had investigators not been looking into her case, the Pulse shooting in Orlando would never have happened. She also referred to the charges as bogus and racist, implying that she was targeted for her race in the case.Duva objected to that notion by saying, She was targeted because she committed fraud, not because she was black or white. Corrine Brown had several witnesses come forward Thursday in support of her through witness testimony during the sentencing hearing.Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee provided a glowing character witness of Corrine Brown during her sentencing hearing Thursday.Jackson Lee described via telephone testimony it as her privilege to characterize Corrine Brown as a loving person. She said Brown has had a pointed and direct effort [in] helping others, not herself. The veterans community loved Congresswoman Brown, Jackson Lee said, stating that Brown has helped those with PTSD and other issues following fighting overseas. She also stated Brown helped tremendously with relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. That shows a character of giving to others unselfishly, Jackson Lee said.Additional arguments by defense attorneyThe defense attorney belabored the point that they are against the notion that Brown abused a position of trust, which is established by the evidence presented in the trial.Smith explained the definition of obstruction of justice, which Brown is accused of doing while taking the stand by the prosecutor, stating that it is the intention or deliberate effort while on the stand to make material falsehoods. The judge wasn t so sure and asked the defense attorney to elaborate.Smith appeared to get emotional after posing two questions: What type of sentence does justice require in this case? and How do you sentence someone who is a legend? He attributes some of her actions to the progress our country has made in terms of relations for black people.Smith said he met with an Orlando attorney who was from Jacksonville and said the attorney described Brown as our Martin Luther King for black Jacksonville natives. None of those people had to push the boulder up the mountain like she did, said Smith, referring to others in Congress. She truly is a legend. There are a lot of moving parts in the case against Corrine Brown and her co-conspirators.Carla Wiley first became involved in the fraud scheme when she started dating Ronnie Simmons.She was president of a charity called One Door for Education, which was never actually registered as a 501(c)(3).The fake charity received more than $800,000 in four years, with about only $1,200 of it actually going to scholarships for students. That money is now gone.Simmons was dating Wiley when he told her he needed a nonprofit to financially back a reception for congresswoman Brown in 2012. Wiley offered One Door for Education as an option for that reception.The charity claimed to give scholarships to poor and underprivileged children seeking the become teachers.Lead prosecutor A. Tysen Duva argued during the trial that Ronnie Simmons worked under Brown and did her bidding by taking out $800 a day from the One Door for Education bank account and depositing it into Brown s personal bank account. He did this numerous times, according to Duva and evidence released earlier this month.The fake charity was essentially used as a slush fund for Corrine Brown s travels, expenses and shopping, according to the prosecutors.She used the money put in her bank account to go to Nassau, Bahamas with her daughter, fly to Beverly Hills and shop along Rodeo Drive, and attend a Beyonc concert, according to court documents and previous reports by First Coast News.The prosecutors also argued that Brown committed wire fraud, mail fraud and stole money from the government after she lied on tax documents.Brown had friends in high places, such as former CSX CEO Mike Ward. She would ask them for donation to Open Door for Education and many of them gladly donated, according to previous reports and prosecutor testimony.Ward, for instance, contributed $35,000 to One Door for Education after learning that the money would go toward providing students with iPads for learning.Prosecutors also argued that Brown lied about and inflated what she gave in tithes to various churches. The churches came forward in the trial and said the donations claimed to be given by Brown did not match their records, to which Brown said she sometimes gave anonymous donations.Other legitimate scholarship organizations came forward and said they had never received funds from Brown s charity.Meanwhile, Brown s tax returns claimed she contributed as much as $30,000 20 percent to a third of her income, to various charities.;left-news;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Exposing the Shakespearean tragedy of the “Russia Hacking” hoax;Sunday Wire host Patrick Henningsen delivers another blow to the Resistance exposing the Shakespearean tragedy of the Russia Hacking hoax and explains why Hillary Rodham Clinton might have very well been one of the worse presidential candidates in US history as well as why it s wrong for US federal government to brand RT America as a foreign agent. Enjoy the rant READ MORE RUSSIA-GATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russia-Gate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV;US_News;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Exposing the Shakespearean tragedy of the “Russia Hacking” hoax;Sunday Wire host Patrick Henningsen delivers another blow to the Resistance exposing the Shakespearean tragedy of the Russia Hacking hoax and explains why Hillary Rodham Clinton might have very well been one of the worse presidential candidates in US history as well as why it s wrong for US federal government to brand RT America as a foreign agent. Enjoy the rant READ MORE RUSSIA-GATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Russia-Gate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; GOP Senator Caught On Hot Mic Trashing His Own Party Over Roy Moore And Donald Trump (VIDEO); Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is liberated now that he has announced his retirement. In his resignation speech on the Senate floor, Flake issued a scathing takedown of Trump, and it seems his views have not changed. At a town hall on tax reform, Flake was caught on a hot mic while he was chatting with the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, fellow Republican John Giles. Flake said of extremist candidates and officials like Alabama Senate candidate and alleged pedophile Roy Moore, and the current president Donald Trump: If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast. Giles responded: And I am not throwing smoke at you, but you are the guy. Just for fun, think about how much fun it would be, just to be the foil, you know, and point out what an idiot this guy [Trump] is. Giles then encourages Flake to foil the idiot Trump in 2020, and the two continue yucking it up about how ridiculous the kinds of people who are emerging as the face of their party are. It took a staffer reminding Flake of the mic to stop the conversation, but we ve certainly heard enough to know where he stands on the current state of the GOP.So, in other words, Jeff Flake, who is one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, is fed up with the extremism in the GOP. He clearly thinks people like Roy Moore and Donald Trump have zero business being anywhere near the levers of power, and yet here we are. Trump is in the Oval Office, and Moore is a heartbeat away from being seated in the United States Senate.Watch the comments below:Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images;News;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Conservative ‘Christian’ Leader Kept A Sexual Assault Secret For A Republican Lawmaker;Conservatives should shun Tony Perkins for this.Earlier this week, Ohio GOP state Rep. Wes Goodman was busted for carrying on a same-sex affair in his taxpayer funded office, forcing him to tender his resignation.But there is an even worse transgression in Goodman s past, one that should drag the Family Research Council leader to hell with him.As it turns out, Goodman once fondled an 18-year-old without consent in his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C.The teen s stepfather was quick to alert Perkins of the incident via email, warning him that continuing to endorse Goodman would be a mistake. If we endorse these types of individuals, then it would seem our whole weekend together was nothing more than a charade, the teen s stepfather wrote. Trust me, Perkins replied. This will not be ignored nor swept aside. It will be dealt with swiftly, but with prudence. Perkins withdrew his support and suspended Goodman from the Council for National Policy. Going forward so soon, without some distance from your past behavior and a track record of recovery, carries great risk for you and for those who are supporting you, Perkins wrote to Goodman.But Perkins failed to report the crime to law enforcement. Instead, he kept quiet and allowed a sexual predator to gain public office. In fact, even the board members of the Council for National Policy knew about the crime because Perkins informed them, and none of them did a damn thing about it.And this all happened just two years ago in 2015. Surely, Perkins and the board members he told can still be prosecuted for failing to report Goodman to the authorities.Because they definitely should be.Featured Image: Wikimedia;News;18/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHOA! Is RINO Senator Mitch McConnell Behind Roy Moore “Hit Job”?…”I strongly, strongly suspect somebody out of the McConnell camp planted the story”;From the Washington Examiner Roy Moore is the embattled Republican senatorial nominee in Alabama, but two other figures in the party have even more to lose in his race: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.First, the obvious. If Moore is beaten by Democrat Doug Jones a leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee poll has the socially conservative retired judge trailing Jones by 12 points, but this is at odds with public polling McConnell will be knocked down to leading a 51-49 Republican Senate.That may not seem like much in a Senate that has no meaningful filibuster for executive and judicial appointments, but where 52 votes are no more useful for advancing legislation that can t be snuck through the reconciliation process. It is nevertheless significant given that the Senate has already had trouble passing major legislation like Obamacare repeal and tax reform with the majority it currently has.It also would bring the Democrats one vote closer to recapturing the Senate majority, despite a very daunting electoral map for the upper chamber in 2018. Winning such a reliably red state would aid Democratic candidate recruitment across the board and embolden the party s ten senators from states President Trump carried who are up for re-election next year.Superficially speaking, McConnell comes out a loser if Moore is defeated. But not in the bigger picture. The Dec. 12 special Senate election in Alabama could also be viewed as a front in the proxy war between McConnell and Bannon.After leaving the White House, Bannon threatened to recruit primary challengers for most of the incumbent Republican senators who are seeking re-election in 2018. At a joint press conference with Trump in the Rose Garden, McConnell didn t mince words about how he felt about this gambit. Look, you know, the goal here is to win elections in November, McConnell said last month. Back in 2010 and 2012, we nominated several candidates Christine O Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock. They re not in the Senate. And the reason for that was that they were not able to appeal to a broader electorate in the general election. My goal as the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate is to keep us in the majority, he added. The way you do that is not complicated. You have to have nominated people who can actually win, because winners make policy and losers go home. Bannon wants more Republican senators who will vote against McConnell. McConnell and his allies believe the Breitbart News chief s intervention in the primaries could lead to fewer Republican senators overall, so they have started punching back.In September s Alabama Republican primary, McConnell went all in on appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange and lost, despite the president s backing. Bannon made the argument that the candidate Trump endorsed wasn t the one who would be most supportive of the Trump agenda. For that, he insisted, you needed an anti-establishment candidate like Moore. Bannon, via Moore, won.Both men might have been better off with Rep. Mo Brooks, who was eliminated in the first round of voting. Brooks was big on the Trump agenda and did not have all the weird sexual baggage that could wind up dooming Moore. Bannon allies told the Washington Examiner that the former top Trump strategist might have preferred Brooks.Yet McConnell s political apparatus spent heavily against Moore to protect Strange, a sitting senator who struggled from the local perception he secured his seat through some kind of corrupt bargain with disgraced former Gov. Robert Bentley. And Bannon couldn t very well throw his weight behind a candidate who, despite being ideologically Trumpist, endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, over Trump in the 2016 primaries especially while still serving in the West Wing.Freed from the White House, Bannon backed Moore less because the Ten Commandments judge had any particular affinity for the issues that Trump ran on last year and more because Alabama s political conditions made him likely to beat Strange. Moore would owe McConnell and the establishment nothing, but Bannon would have chits to cash in and an improved reputation as a kingmaker inside the GOP.If Moore loses in a disastrous fashion (and remember it is courting disaster for this race to even be competitive;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fifteen dead in food aid stampede in Morocco: ministry;RABAT (Reuters) - Fifteen people were killed and five more injured when a stampede broke out in a southwestern Moroccan town on Sunday as food aid was being distributed in a market, the Interior Ministry said. A hospital source put the death toll at 18, adding that most victims were women who had been scrambling for food handed out by a rich man in the small coastal town of Sidi Boulaalam. A local journalist said the donor had organised similar handouts before, but this year some 1,000 people arrived, storming an iron barrier under which several women were crushed. King Mohammed ordered that the victims families be given any assistance they needed and the wounded treated at his cost, the ministry said in a statement, adding that a criminal investigation had been opened. Last month, the king dismissed the ministers of education, planning and housing and health after an economic agency found imbalances in implementing a development plan to fight poverty in the northern Rif region. The Rif saw numerous protests after a fishmonger was accidentally crushed to death in a garbage truck in October 2016 after a confrontation with police, and he became a symbol of the effects of corruption and official abuse. In July, the king pardoned dozens of people arrested in the protests and accused local officials of stoking public anger by being too slow to implement development projects. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel signals readiness for new election after coalition talks collapse;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would prefer a new election to ruling with a minority after talks on forming a three-way coalition failed overnight, but Germany s president told parties they owed it to voters to try to form a government. The major obstacle to a three-way deal was immigration, according to Merkel, who was forced into negotiations after bleeding support in the Sept. 24 election to the far right in a backlash at her 2015 decision to let in over 1 million migrants. The failure of exploratory coalition talks involving her conservative bloc, the liberal pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens raises the prospect of a new election and casts doubt about her future after 12 years in power. Merkel, 63, said she was sceptical about ruling in a minority government, telling ARD television: My point of view is that new elections would be the better path. Her plans did not include being chancellor in a minority government, she said after meeting President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier said Germany was facing the worst governing crisis in the 68-year history of its post-World War Two democracy and pressed all parties in parliament to serve our country and try to form a government. His remarks appeared aimed at the FDP and the Social Democrats (SPD), who on Monday ruled out renewing their grand coalition with the conservatives. Inside our country, but also outside, in particular in our European neighbourhood, there would be concern and a lack of understanding if politicians in the biggest and economically strongest country (in Europe) did not live up to their responsibilities, read a statement from Steinmeier, a former foreign minister who has been thrust centre-stage after taking on the usually largely ceremonial head of state role in March. Steinmeier s intervention suggests he regards a new election - desired by half of Germany s voters according to a poll - as a last resort. The SPD has so far stuck to a pledge after heavy losses in the September election not to go back into a Merkel-led broad coalition of centre-left and centre-right. Merkel urged the SPD to reconsider. I would hope that they consider very intensively if they should take on the responsibility of governing, she told broadcaster ZDF, adding she saw no reason to resign and her conservative bloc would enter any new election more unified than before. If new elections happened, then ... we have to accept that. I m afraid of nothing, she said. Business leaders also called for a swift return to talks. With German leadership seen as crucial for a European Union grappling with governance reform and Britain s impending exit, FDP leader Christian Lindner s announcement that he was pulling out spooked investors and sent the euro falling in the morning. Both the euro and European shares later recovered from early selling, while German bond yields steadied near 1-1/2 week lows, as confidence about the outlook for the euro zone economy helped investors brush off worries about the risk of Germany going to the polls again soon. FEAR OF FAR-RIGHT GAINS Earlier, Merkel got the strong backing of her CDU leadership. Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Germany weekly Die Zeit said she could rely on CDU support for now, but added: I will not bet on her serving out her entire four-year term. The main parties fear another election so soon would let the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party add to the 13 percent of votes it secured in September, when it entered parliament for the first time. Polls suggest a repeat election would return a similarly fragmented parliament. A poll published on Monday showed a new election would bring roughly the same result as the September election, with the Greens set to see the biggest gains. If Germans voted next Sunday, Merkel s conservatives would get 31 percent, the SPD 21 percent, the Greens and the AfD both 12 percent, the FDP 10 percent and the Left party 9 percent, the Forsa survey for RTL television showed. This compares with the election result of 32.9 percent for the conservatives, 20.5 percent for the SPD, 12.6 percent for AfD, 10.7 percent for FDP, 9.2 percent for the Left party and 8.9 percent for the Greens. The failure of coalition talks is unprecedented in Germany s post-war history, and was likened by newsmagazine Der Spiegel to the shock election of U.S. President Donald Trump or Britain s referendum vote to leave the EU - moments when countries cast aside reputations for stability built up over decades. Any outcome in Germany is, however, likely to be more consensus driven. The problem is stagnation and immobility, not instability as in Italy, said Joffe. The unravelling of the German talks came as a surprise since the main sticking points - immigration and climate policy - were not seen as FDP signature issues. Responding to criticism from the Greens, FDP vice chairman Wolfgang Kubicki said a tie-up would have been short-lived. Nothing would be worse than to get into a relationship about which we know that it will end in a dirty divorce, he said. Even if the SPD or the FDP revisit their decisions, the price for either party to change its mind could be the departure of Merkel, who since 2005 has been a symbol of German stability, leading Europe through the euro zone crisis. The inability to form a government caused disquiet elsewhere in Europe, not least because of the implications for the euro zone reforms championed by French President Emmanuel Macron. Germany s political impasse could also complicate and potentially delay the Brexit negotiations - Britain has just over a year to strike a divorce deal with the EU ahead of an exit planned for March 29, 2019. It s not in our interests that the process freezes up, Macron told reporters in Paris, adding he had spoken with Merkel shortly after the failure of talks. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: CLOSE FRIEND of Hillary Clinton Who Planned To “Step Away From Politics” Found DEAD In Apparent Suicide;Houston, Texas trial lawyer and Democrat mega-donor Steve Mostyn died on Thursday in what authorities are saying was a suicide, according to the Houston Chronicle. Mr. Mostyn was only 46, he left behind a wife and several children, and earlier this year had announced that he was going to be stepping away from politics to spend more time with his family.Details about how Mr. Mostyn allegedly committed suicide are slim. However, his family said that it happened after he suddenly became afflicted with some sort of mental illness then took his own life, although they weren t clear as to what type of mental illness he suffered from.But it is worth noting that Mr. Mostyn had never suffered from mental illness in the past, according to his family, further raising suspicions over the manner in which he died.Mr. Mostyn was a progressive powerhouse who was heavily involved in politics throughout his career. He made his fortunes off of suing insurance companies after hurricanes ravaged his state, and used his wealth to fund numerous Democrat and progressive causes, including the Super PAC Ready for Hillary, which he and his wife co-founded with Susie Tompkins Buell, a radical environmentalist and member of George Soros s Democracy Alliance.Mr. Mostyn s wife, Amber, was also a member of the Democracy Alliance and a close friend of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was the keynote speaker at a 2010 Annie s List event honoring Amber. The Mostyns were close to the Clintons in general, having held numerous high-dollar fundraisers for Hillary s failed 2016 presidential run at their Houston home.Houston Chronicle In 2012 alone, Mostyn donated $5.2 million to various pro-Democratic Super PACs ranging from Planned Parenthood to Texans for America s Future to Priorities USA Action, a pro-Barack Obama PAC, according to the Center for Public Integrity.In 2014, he and his wife donated approximately $3 million to Democratic candidates, including state Sen. Wendy Davis, who we running against Republican Greg Abbott. Davis lost. I am heartbroken, Davis tweeted Thursday. Texas has lost an extraordinary person. Steve was a committed and effective fighter for justice, a wonderful husband, father and friend. He leaves behind a lasting impact on everyone who s life he touched. Mostyn and his wife, Amber, were co-founders of the Ready for Hillary PAC, a political action committee supporting Clinton s unsuccessful campaign for president. At the same time, state campaign finance records show he also contributed to a police-affiliated PAC that supported Republican primary candidates.Mostyn also help fund the Texas Organizing Project and Battleground Texas, two Democratic comeback strategies for the party that has not won a statewide election in two decades. It s hard to really quantify the hole it leaves for progressives. He s probably the first true financial benefactor for progressives in Houston, and I say that because it s really different than supporting individual candidates the way trial lawyers have collectively in the past. He really supported the underlying causes, which is a different kind of take, and I m not sure that gets filled, certainly not immediately. Despite the Mostyns and the law firm s high-profile political activism they contributed more than $1.8 million to Texas politicians in 2016 Mostyn told the Texas Tribune in a September interview that he was growing tired of almost single-handedly funding Democratic candidates in a state that was solidly Republican.He said he intended to downscale his political giving to Democrats in Texas elections to encourage others to step forward. We ve asked other people to do it and they want to do it and I want other people to get credit for doing it, the Tribune quoted him as saying. I mean this is a giant, giant state, if we were trying to flip Vermont we d be done. However, their relationship came under stress in 2015, when ethics watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed a formal complaint against Hillary and her campaign for illegal coordination with the Ready for Hillary Super PAC, the Daily Caller reported. FACT has also asked the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to look into an April 21 meeting in which Clinton campaign aides attended a weekly meeting of Senate Democrats. FACT asserts that the meeting violates ruleThis wasn t the first time the Clinton and Mostyns found themselves being questioned over unethical practices. In 2010, Hillary Clinton s State Department pushed through a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing in Russia, and just two months later the company gave nearly a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.Just a short time later, Boeing s top lobbyist and former Bill Clinton aide Tim Keating partnered with Mr. Mostyn s Super PAC to do a joint fundraising venture for Hillary s planned presidential campaign. America s Freedom FightersFrom FOX News When Hillary Clinton was America s top diplomat, she also appeared at times like a top salesperson for America s biggest airplane maker, Boeing.Traveling abroad on official business as secretary of state, Clinton often visited Boeing facilities and made a pitch for the host country to buy Boeing jets. During one visit to Shanghai in May 2010, she boasted that more than half the commercial jetliners operating in China are made by Boeing. A sales plug in Russia in 2009, though, may have proved especially fruitful. While touring a Boeing plant, Secretary of State Clinton said, We re delighted that a new Russian airline, Rossiya, is actively considering acquisition of Boeing aircraft, and this is a shameless pitch. In 2010, Boeing landed the Russian deal, worth $3.7 billion. And two months later, the company donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation.This chain of events is raising new questions for Clinton, and Boeing, as the former secretary of state launches her 2016 presidential campaign. The Boeing deal only adds to a growing list of business deals involving Clinton Foundation donors now coming under scrutiny.Boeing shareholder David Almasi recently confronted CEO James McNerney about the ethics of it. That opens the door to charges of honest services fraud, that there was a quid pro quo between the Clinton Foundation, the State Department, and Boeing, Almasi said.In prepared answers to questions posed to Boeing by Fox News, a spokesman defended the company s actions. Our contribution to the Clinton Foundation to help the people of Haiti rebuild was a transparent act of compassion and an investment aimed at aiding the long-term interests and hopes of the Haitian people, the spokesman said. The company also pointed out that it gave the American Red Cross $1.3 million after the devastating 2010 earthquake.Clinton defenders say there is no smoking gun. There s zero evidence that Hillary Clinton went to bat for Boeing for any reason other than to benefit the U.S. economy and U.S. workers, said former Clinton/Gore adviser Richard Goldstein.But the financial connections don t end there. Boeing also paid former President Bill Clinton $250,000 for a speech in 2012. It was a speech that was approved by the State Department s Ethics Office which according to an Associated Press report often approved the ex-president s speaking engagements within days.Here is a list of mysterious deaths tied to the Clinton s:1 James McDougal Clinton s convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr s investigation.2 Mary Mahoney A former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The murder happened just after she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.3 Vince Foster Former white House counselor, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock s Rose Law firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.4 Ron Brown Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the top of Brown s skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors.5 C. Victor Raiser II and Montgomery Raiser, Major players in the Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane crash in July 1992.6 Paul Tulley Democratic National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock, September 1992 Described by Clinton as a Dear friend and trusted advisor. 7- Ed Willey Clinton fund raiser, found dead November 1993 deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fundraising events.8 Jerry Parks Head of Clinton s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock. Park s son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton. He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.9 James Bunch Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported that he had a Black Book of people which contained names of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas.10 James Wilson Was found dead in May 1993 from an apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to Whitewater.11- Kathy Ferguson, ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson, was found dead in May 1994, in her living room with a gunshot to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she were going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Kathy Ferguson was a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones.12 Bill Shelton Arkansas State Trooper and fiancee of Kathy Ferguson. Critical of the suicide ruling of his fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.13 Gandy Baugh Attorney for Clinton s friend Dan Lassater, died by jumping out a window of a tall building January, 1994. His client was a convicted drug distributor.14 Florence Martin Accountant & sub-contractor for the CIA, was related to the Barry Seal Mena Airport drug smuggling case. He died of three gunshot wounds.15 Suzanne Coleman Reportedly had an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head, ruled a suicide. Was pregnant at the time of her death.16 Paula Grober Clinton s speech interpreter for the deaf from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.17 Danny Casolaro Investigative reporter. Investigating Mena Airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He slit his wrists, apparently, in the middle of his investigation.18 Paul Wilcher Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 October Surprise was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993 in his Washington DC apartment. Had delivered a report to Janet Reno three weeks before his death19 Jon Parnell Walker Whitewater investigator for Resolution Trust Corp. Jumped to his death from his Arlington, Virginia apartment balcony August15, 1993. He was investigating the Morgan Guarantee scandal.20 Barbara Wise Commerce Department staffer. Worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised, nude body was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.21- Charles Meissner Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.22 Dr. Stanley Heard Chairman of the National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee, died with his attorney Steve Dickson in a small plane crash. Dr. Heard, in addition to serving on Clinton s advisory council personally treated Clinton s mother, stepfather and brother.23 Barry Seal Drug running pilot out of Mena, Arkansas, death was no accident.24 Johnny Lawhorn Jr. Mechanic, found a check made out to Bill Clinton in the trunk of a car left at his repair shop. He was found dead after his car had hit a utility pole.25 Stanley Huggins Investigated Madison Guarantee. His death was a purported suicide and his report was never released.26- Hershell Friday Attorney and Clinton fund raiser died March 1, 1994 when his plane exploded.27 Kevin Ives and Don Henry Known as The boys on the track case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas airport drug operation. A controversial case, the initial report of death said, due to falling asleep on railroad tracks. Later reports claim the two boys had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many linked to the case died before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.THE FOLLOWING PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:28 Keith Coney Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck, July 1988.29 Keith McMaskle Died stabbed 113 times, November 198830 Gregory Collins Died from a gunshot wound January 1989.31 Jeff Rhodes He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.33 James Milan Found decapitated. However, the Coroner ruled his death was due to natural causes. 34 Jordan Kettleson Was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.35 Richard Winters A suspect in the Ives / Henry deaths. He was killed in a set-up robbery July 1989.THE FOLLOWING CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE DEAD: 36 Major William S. Barkley Jr. 37 Captain Scott J. Reynolds 38 Sgt. Brian Hanley 39 Sgt. Tim Sabel 40 Major General William Robertson 41 Col. William Densberger 42 Col. Robert Kelly 43 Spec. Gary Rhodes 44 Steve Willis 45 Robert Williams 46 Conway LeBleu 47 Todd McKeehan48 -World-renowned space economist Molly Macauly was brutally murdered in Baltimore park.49-John Ashe- The former President of the UN General Assembly was awaiting trial on bribery charges when he turned up dead in June, apparently having crushed his own windpipe while lifting weights in his home 50-Victor Thorn-Prominent CLINTON Critic VICTOR THORN Found Dead Of Apparent Suicide On His Birthday51-Seth Rich-Still No Clues in Murder of DNC s Seth Rich, As Conspiracy Theories Thicken52- Joe Montano-Filipino American activist and aide to Sen. Kaine, dies at 4753-Shawn Lucas-Death of DNC Lawsuit Processor Shawn Lucas Adds to Seth Rich Conspiracy Theories54-Seth Rich-Family s private investigator: There is evidence Seth Rich had contact with WikiLeaks prior to death55-Klaus Eberwein Found Dead Before Testifying Against Clinton Foundation in HAITI COVERUP56-Man who sought Clinton s emails from Russian hackers committed suicideDoes anyone in the media wonder why everyone around the Clinton s seems to commit suicide, disappear or dies under mysterious circumstances? The Clintons are either the luckiest people in the world, or they are guilty of taking down an awful lot of people who could either rat them out or take them down. ;left-news;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina says satellite calls detected, likely from missing submarine;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s defense ministry said seven failed satellite calls that it believes came from a missing naval submarine were detected on Saturday in a likely sign the crew of 44 was trying to reestablish contact. The calls, believed to be from the ARA San Juan submarine, lasted between four and 36 seconds in the late morning and early afternoon, the ministry said in an emailed statement. The ministry said it was working on tracing the location with an unnamed U.S. company specialized in satellite communications. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LAVAR BALL: Here’s Why President Trump Was Under No Legal Obligation To Help Release Your Shoplifting Son From Chinese Prison;Before Lavar Ball, the ungrateful father of accused criminal, and UCLA basketball player, LiAngelo Ball, goes off on a public rant about how unappreciative he for President Trump s help, when he interceded on behalf of his son and 2 other UCLA basketball players, who were caught shoplifting at a Louis Vuitton store in China, he may want to consider, that without the help of President Trump, his son could be sitting in a Chinese prison for the next 10 years.Lavar Ball might also want to consider that President Trump was under no obligation to ask President Xi to get involved in the public relations nightmare that took place while our President was a guest in China, to help negotiate their release, and here s why Days after President Donald Trump touted his role in the release of three UCLA basketball students who were arrested in China, LaVar Ball, the father of one of those players, suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. LaVar Ball, father of UCLA player with sticky fingers Law Newz Our Tweeter-in-Chief lashed out on Twitter Sunday after Ball, a businessman, and ex-basketball player, downplayed POTUS role in helping release son LiAngelo Ball from Chinese custody.Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017 I should have left them in jail, Trump wrote. That s a hell of thing to tweet, and it grabbed a lot of attention. Outlets like Mediaite, The NY Times, Fox News, and ESPN were all over it. But as with many things in this administration, it s always helpful to review a president s role in situations like this.To recap, we have three Americans UCLA basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley arrested by Chinese authorities for alleged shoplifting. Trump took credit for their return to the states, saying he asked the country s president Xi Jinping for help. Now we have that same president saying he should ve done nothing.What does it mean if provable spite motivated a president s decision to refrain from helping an American held in custody on foreign soil? Law&Crime reached out to Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman for his take on the matter and asked if such behavior, or something like it, could be impeachable. Not impeachable, Feldman wrote in an email. He was under no duty to help and no duty to be nice about it after the fact. ;left-news;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HYSTERICAL! BERNIE SANDERS On Why ‘Very Popular’ Al Franken Shouldn’t Resign Is Classic [Video];Double standards everywhere! Socialist Bernie Sanders was asked whether Senator Al Franken should step down following an accusation of sexual misconduct. Bernie replied that, Al is a very popular senator . He totally dodges a yes or no answer what a hypocrite! Notice how he goes on with the Dem talking points on women and how they aren t treated well in the workplace While Democrats cry out for Roy Moore to step down, they obviously have a double standard when it comes to their own CNN s Jake Tapper asked about the Franken scandal on State Of The Union. PROOF OF GROPING WITH FRANKEN BUT ZERO PROOF WITH MOORE:A Los Angeles-based radio anchor wrote Franken aggressively kissed her without consent during a USO tour in 2006, and she also published a photo of Franken apparently groping her breasts while she slept. Franken apologized, and he said he would cooperate with an ethics investigation. I think that s a decision for Al Franken and the people of the state of Minnesota, Sanders said. My understanding is that Al is a very popular senator. People in Minnesota think that he is doing a good job, and his political future will rest with the people of Minnesota. SO IS BERNIE SANDERS SUGGESTING FRANKEN SHOULD STAY BECAUSE HE S POPULAR?So socialist Bernie Sanders believes all is equal unless it comes down to Republican vs. Democrat? Roy Moore is very popular in Alabama and nothing has been proven against him .NOTHING!There is proof with Franken BUT he s popular soooooo he gets a pass for being a groper?Double Standards, Double Standards Everywhere!READ MORE: WFB;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;UCLA PLAYER’S FATHER Disses Trump On China Release…Downplays His Son’s Crime: ‘I’ve seen a lot worse’;Send this kid back to China! The ungrateful attitude of the father of LiAngelo Ball is so classless. What s even worse the dad makes excuses and even dismisses the son s crime as no big deal: They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. LaVar Ball, father of UCLA player with sticky fingers And we wonder why we have little thugs who aren t remorseful for their crimes? The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven! Bad parenting LaVar Ball! WHO? Days after President Donald Trump touted his role in the release of three UCLA basketball students who were arrested in China, LaVar Ball, the father of one of those players, suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Trump s social media director, Dan Scavino, fired back at Ball on his personal Twitter account Saturday afternoon, saying Ball s son, LiAngelo, would be in China for a long, long, long time without the President s assistance. Wannabe @Lakers coach, BIG MOUTH @Lavarbigballer knows if it weren t for President @realDonaldTrump, his son would be in China for a long, long, long time! #FACT, Scavino wrote.LiAngelo Ball, along with two other players, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, were arrested last week on suspicion of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store while their team was in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. Trump had said he personally asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to intervene in the case.On Wednesday, Trump issued a call for gratitude from the players on twitter. He did get a thanks for their release after his tweet.STICKY FINGERS NO BIG DEAL?Athletic Director Dan Guerrero confirmed the trio shoplifted from three stores near their hotel Monday night. The three were identified the next morning after police searched their bags and found the stolen items.LaVar Ball told ESPN he was happy to have his son back, and also seemed to downplay his alleged crime. As long as my boy s back here, I m fine, he said. I m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. All three players have been suspended from the UCLA basketball team indefinitely.;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BOOM! TRUMP HITS BACK At UCLA Player’s Father For Dissing His Efforts To Get Son Released From China;Oh my gosh! This is awesome! President Trump tweeted back to the dad of the UCLA basketball player who was arrested while in China: Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!, Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017THE JAPANESE PM TWEETED BACK HIS SUPPORT:Great job Donald! I know firsthand that your negotiating skills are world-class! @realDonaldTrump Shinzo Abe (@realShinzoAbe) November 19, 2017HERE S OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON WHAT THE DAD SAID: Send this kid back to China! The ungrateful attitude of the father of LiAngelo Ball is so classless. What s even worse the dad makes excuses and even dismisses the son s crime as no big deal: They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. LaVar Ball, father of UCLA player with sticky fingers And we wonder why we have little thugs who aren t remorseful for their crimes? The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven! Bad parenting LaVar Ball! WHO? Days after President Donald Trump touted his role in the release of three UCLA basketball students who were arrested in China, LaVar Ball, the father of one of those players, suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Trump s social media director, Dan Scavino, fired back at Ball on his personal Twitter account Saturday afternoon, saying Ball s son, LiAngelo, would be in China for a long, long, long time without the President s assistance. Wannabe @Lakers coach, BIG MOUTH @Lavarbigballer knows if it weren t for President @realDonaldTrump, his son would be in China for a long, long, long time! #FACT, Scavino wrote.LiAngelo Ball, along with two other players, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, were arrested last week on suspicion of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store while their team was in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. Trump had said he personally asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to intervene in the case.On Wednesday, Trump issued a call for gratitude from the players on twitter. He did get a thanks for their release after his tweet.STICKY FINGERS NO BIG DEAL?Athletic Director Dan Guerrero confirmed the trio shoplifted from three stores near their hotel Monday night. The three were identified the next morning after police searched their bags and found the stolen items.LaVar Ball told ESPN he was happy to have his son back, and also seemed to downplay his alleged crime. As long as my boy s back here, I m fine, he said. I m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. All three players have been suspended from the UCLA basketball team indefinitely.;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! DESPERATE KATHY GRIFFIN Makes Home Video To Complain About Not Getting Work After Trump Beheading Stunt…Takes Page From Hillary’s Playbook…Blames Everyone Else For End Of Her Career;Wow! Poor Kathy Griffin The toxic comedian found herself facing a tsunami-sized backlash after she held a severed, and bloodied head of President Trump, during a comedy skit earlier in the year. And now, the former funny girl is telling anyone who will listen, that she s furious no one wants to hire her. Kathy Griffin starts her homemade 5-minute video by whining to viewers about all of the online hate by trolls that she s receiving. Griffin then goes on to trash the other not funny comedian Lena Dunham, who wrote about sexually assaulting her little sister, for defending a Hollywood actor who s been accused of sexually assaulting a female actress. Her comments that follow the Dunham remarks make no sense, although she seems to be attempting to make the point that the equally trashy liberal comedian, Lena Dunham, is still getting work, and how Griffin just doesn t think that it s fair. (After all, Dunham hates Trump as much as her right?)Griffin tells the camera that appears to be set up in her living room, I just want you guys to know that I am fully in the middle of a blacklist like I m in the middle of a Hollywood blacklist. It is real. I m not booked on any talk shows. Griffen continued to whine about her lack of jobs, I just want you guys to know, that when I get home, I do not have one single day of paid work in front of me, and the people who want me to go back and do clubs and do 10 minutes again I don t mean to be an asshole, but I m not gonna do that. I ve worked way too hard to go back and work for free, and do the club scene again because this is some bullshit. Because I ve been blacklisted.Griffin then goes on to tell her fellow Hollywood libs to stop sending her requests for donations to their fundraisers because she doesn t have any money. She goes on to explain that she s spent all of her money on lawyers because she believes in something. Griffin can t quite find a way to articulate what that something is, but she s apparently learned her lesson and has refrained from exposing her true obsession and desire, which was to destroy Donald Trump.Watch: ;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NFL ON LIFE SUPPORT? Pictures Of Empty Stadiums Paint Scary Picture For Future Of Cop-Protesting NFL;Since the Colin Kaepernick and his fellow players started their Black Lives Matter kneeling campaign, social media has been lit up with photos of empty stadiums, proving that fans are not interested in supporting players who disrespect our flag and our law enforcement officers. The photos seem to suggest that every week more and more seats remain empty in NFL stadiums across America. Here s a look at a number of NFL stadiums today:Check out this photo of the Cleveland Browns stadium:Cleveland #NFL #Browns RT @middlebunns: @EmptySeatsPics #JAXvsCLE Opening kickoff pic.twitter.com/WjDTdfamD0 Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) November 19, 2017The Lions games in neighboring Chicago are always very popular not so much today.Got a feeling there will be a lot of #Lions blue in the stands at Soldier Field the other color is the empty seats. #Bears are 3-6 pic.twitter.com/Et7LeQwG3n Cheryl Raye Stout (@Crayestout) November 19, 2017Empty seats in the smallest modern stadium in the NFL , Chicago s Soldier Field are a rare sight indeed, especially when the visiting team is right next door in Michigan.Bears v Lions. Opening kick off against a divisional opponent at the smallest modern stadium in the #NFLIt's empty (great shot of Trump Tower in the background though) #MAGA pic.twitter.com/4xRoKknjMv Buda (@labuda_robert) November 19, 2017The Minnesota Viking stadium looks like their hosting a local high school game instead of a professional football team.@Vikings sec345 row 6 seat 19. pic.twitter.com/DzThB1r26i Peter Klages (@pakman75) November 19, 2017@Vikings section 101 row 22, seats 6-8 we d like to meet some legends pls thank you pic.twitter.com/FAGvyr9rYq Emily (@OhDagEmily) November 19, 2017You could ve shot a cannot through the NY Giants stadium today.The Unknown #Giants Fans. pic.twitter.com/sAyITREEwm James Kratch (@JamesKratch) November 19, 2017Kickoff is just minutes away! WATCH #NYGiants Pregame Warmups presented by @Visa pic.twitter.com/dwsw5viPtI New York Giants (@Giants) November 19, 2017Wow. I have never seen this many empty seats here before. John Mara must be thrilled. #GiantsPride. pic.twitter.com/G7Nw7g9Hlq Kevin McCleerey (@KevinMcCleerey) November 19, 2017It almost looks like it s a practice day in Cleveland.I think you ll see this a lot. Squalls every 20 minutes or so. #JAXvsCLE #Jaguars pic.twitter.com/nLHxTxgHur Brent Martineau (@BrentASJax) November 19, 2017Texans fans must have started their Christmas shopping early and decided to skip the game today.View from my seat for today's #Texans game. More empty seats than normal for the start of a game. pic.twitter.com/3PpxhtPJue Ryan Kahrhoff (@xman30) November 19, 2017Lots of empty seats at NRG as they are about to toss the coin pic.twitter.com/PJvF07byVl Kent Somers (@kentsomers) November 19, 2017you can really tell the orange is indeed oranger with all these empty seats pic.twitter.com/hgcDG2bUwJ Jordan Zirm (@clevezirm) November 19, 2017The Miami stadium seats are mostly empty.NFL football with @bellavate! #TBvsMIA #HardRockStadium pic.twitter.com/iTzYbBnnFD Kevin #Destiny2 PC (@ORIGINPCCEO) November 19, 2017;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HOW SO? CNN HOST Makes Claim President Trump Is ‘Race Baiting’ UCLA Player’s Ungrateful Dad In Hysterical Tweet [Video];CNN anchor Brian Stelter went off on President Trump this afternoon for his tweet hitting back at the father of the UCLA player who was arrested in China for shoplifting. Fredricka Whitfield put on her best puzzled face and said to Stelter, the way this President prioritizes is very confusing to a lot of people. Stelter noted how this time last year Trump was touting how restrained he would be on Twitter: If this is restrained, I can t imagine what it would look like if he were to be unrestrained. I mean, think about this. He s just recently let the NFL kneeling controversy start to subside, start to fade away, and now here he is calling out these players and the families again. I think it s immature at best, Fred, but it s really race-baiting at worst. That s gonna be debated, that s gonna be argued about, but I want to put that on the table: it sure looks like race-baiting to a lot of people. HOW THE HECK IS THIS RACE-BAITING? This is the same doofus who said President Trump s tweets about Puerto Rico were dog whistles Why is it always racism with the left? Why?RACE BAITING? HOW IS THIS RACE BAITING?HERE S THE PRESIDENT S TWEET AND LAVAR BALL S COMMENT HOW IN THE HECK IS THIS ANYTHING BUT THE TRUTH? Oh my gosh! This is awesome! President Trump tweeted back to the dad of the UCLA basketball player who was arrested while in China: Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!, Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017THE JAPANESE PM TWEETED BACK HIS SUPPORT:Great job Donald! I know firsthand that your negotiating skills are world-class! @realDonaldTrump Shinzo Abe (@realShinzoAbe) November 19, 2017HERE S OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON WHAT THE DAD SAID: Send this kid back to China! The ungrateful attitude of the father of LiAngelo Ball is so classless. What s even worse the dad makes excuses and even dismisses the son s crime as no big deal: They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. LaVar Ball, father of UCLA player with sticky fingers And we wonder why we have little thugs who aren t remorseful for their crimes? The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven! Bad parenting LaVar Ball! WHO? Days after President Donald Trump touted his role in the release of three UCLA basketball students who were arrested in China, LaVar Ball, the father of one of those players, suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Trump s social media director, Dan Scavino, fired back at Ball on his personal Twitter account Saturday afternoon, saying Ball s son, LiAngelo, would be in China for a long, long, long time without the President s assistance. Wannabe @Lakers coach, BIG MOUTH @Lavarbigballer knows if it weren t for President @realDonaldTrump, his son would be in China for a long, long, long time! #FACT, Scavino wrote.LiAngelo Ball, along with two other players, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, were arrested last week on suspicion of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store while their team was in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. Trump had said he personally asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to intervene in the case.On Wednesday, Trump issued a call for gratitude from the players on twitter. He did get a thanks for their release after his tweet.STICKY FINGERS NO BIG DEAL?Athletic Director Dan Guerrero confirmed the trio shoplifted from three stores near their hotel Monday night. The three were identified the next morning after police searched their bags and found the stolen items.LaVar Ball told ESPN he was happy to have his son back, and also seemed to downplay his alleged crime. As long as my boy s back here, I m fine, he said. I m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. All three players have been suspended from the UCLA basketball team indefinitely.;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;POTUS MEETS WITH NCAA TEAMS…Then This Amazing Thing Happens [Video];This is fantastic! President Trump met with all of the NCAA championship teams at the White House last week. It was all fun and games until this amazing moment happened He didn t expect it but he was asked to pray with the Oklahoma Sooners team. Watch as President Trump doesn t hesitate to join in to pray. It s a very touching moment where you can see the player praying with the president and her team. The extended video below this one shows more of the moment the president prayed with the team you can hear some of what was said at the 14:45 point.More video from the event qnd the moment of interaction and then prayer with the softball team at 14:45: Watch how personable and really warm President Trump is with the crowd.This is so heartwarming!FYI:Oklahoma softball will go for its third-consecutive national title in 2018 with most of its roster back from last season. The team gave POTUS a special glove:The glove that @OU_Softball will present to the president. pic.twitter.com/9pwKIlYitV Kenny Mossman (@Kenny_Mossman) November 17, 2017President Trump met with the teams listed below:President Donald Trump will host a group of NCAA National Championship teams at this White House today. Here are the teams, per a WH official: pic.twitter.com/QcoNsR6vng Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) November 17, 2017;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: CLOSE FRIEND of Hillary Clinton Who Planned To “Step Away From Politics” Found DEAD In Apparent Suicide;Houston, Texas trial lawyer and Democrat mega-donor Steve Mostyn died on Thursday in what authorities are saying was a suicide, according to the Houston Chronicle. Mr. Mostyn was only 46, he left behind a wife and several children, and earlier this year had announced that he was going to be stepping away from politics to spend more time with his family.Details about how Mr. Mostyn allegedly committed suicide are slim. However, his family said that it happened after he suddenly became afflicted with some sort of mental illness then took his own life, although they weren t clear as to what type of mental illness he suffered from.But it is worth noting that Mr. Mostyn had never suffered from mental illness in the past, according to his family, further raising suspicions over the manner in which he died.Mr. Mostyn was a progressive powerhouse who was heavily involved in politics throughout his career. He made his fortunes off of suing insurance companies after hurricanes ravaged his state, and used his wealth to fund numerous Democrat and progressive causes, including the Super PAC Ready for Hillary, which he and his wife co-founded with Susie Tompkins Buell, a radical environmentalist and member of George Soros s Democracy Alliance.Mr. Mostyn s wife, Amber, was also a member of the Democracy Alliance and a close friend of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was the keynote speaker at a 2010 Annie s List event honoring Amber. The Mostyns were close to the Clintons in general, having held numerous high-dollar fundraisers for Hillary s failed 2016 presidential run at their Houston home.Houston Chronicle In 2012 alone, Mostyn donated $5.2 million to various pro-Democratic Super PACs ranging from Planned Parenthood to Texans for America s Future to Priorities USA Action, a pro-Barack Obama PAC, according to the Center for Public Integrity.In 2014, he and his wife donated approximately $3 million to Democratic candidates, including state Sen. Wendy Davis, who we running against Republican Greg Abbott. Davis lost. I am heartbroken, Davis tweeted Thursday. Texas has lost an extraordinary person. Steve was a committed and effective fighter for justice, a wonderful husband, father and friend. He leaves behind a lasting impact on everyone who s life he touched. Mostyn and his wife, Amber, were co-founders of the Ready for Hillary PAC, a political action committee supporting Clinton s unsuccessful campaign for president. At the same time, state campaign finance records show he also contributed to a police-affiliated PAC that supported Republican primary candidates.Mostyn also help fund the Texas Organizing Project and Battleground Texas, two Democratic comeback strategies for the party that has not won a statewide election in two decades. It s hard to really quantify the hole it leaves for progressives. He s probably the first true financial benefactor for progressives in Houston, and I say that because it s really different than supporting individual candidates the way trial lawyers have collectively in the past. He really supported the underlying causes, which is a different kind of take, and I m not sure that gets filled, certainly not immediately. Despite the Mostyns and the law firm s high-profile political activism they contributed more than $1.8 million to Texas politicians in 2016 Mostyn told the Texas Tribune in a September interview that he was growing tired of almost single-handedly funding Democratic candidates in a state that was solidly Republican.He said he intended to downscale his political giving to Democrats in Texas elections to encourage others to step forward. We ve asked other people to do it and they want to do it and I want other people to get credit for doing it, the Tribune quoted him as saying. I mean this is a giant, giant state, if we were trying to flip Vermont we d be done. However, their relationship came under stress in 2015, when ethics watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed a formal complaint against Hillary and her campaign for illegal coordination with the Ready for Hillary Super PAC, the Daily Caller reported. FACT has also asked the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to look into an April 21 meeting in which Clinton campaign aides attended a weekly meeting of Senate Democrats. FACT asserts that the meeting violates ruleThis wasn t the first time the Clinton and Mostyns found themselves being questioned over unethical practices. In 2010, Hillary Clinton s State Department pushed through a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing in Russia, and just two months later the company gave nearly a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.Just a short time later, Boeing s top lobbyist and former Bill Clinton aide Tim Keating partnered with Mr. Mostyn s Super PAC to do a joint fundraising venture for Hillary s planned presidential campaign. America s Freedom FightersFrom FOX News When Hillary Clinton was America s top diplomat, she also appeared at times like a top salesperson for America s biggest airplane maker, Boeing.Traveling abroad on official business as secretary of state, Clinton often visited Boeing facilities and made a pitch for the host country to buy Boeing jets. During one visit to Shanghai in May 2010, she boasted that more than half the commercial jetliners operating in China are made by Boeing. A sales plug in Russia in 2009, though, may have proved especially fruitful. While touring a Boeing plant, Secretary of State Clinton said, We re delighted that a new Russian airline, Rossiya, is actively considering acquisition of Boeing aircraft, and this is a shameless pitch. In 2010, Boeing landed the Russian deal, worth $3.7 billion. And two months later, the company donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation.This chain of events is raising new questions for Clinton, and Boeing, as the former secretary of state launches her 2016 presidential campaign. The Boeing deal only adds to a growing list of business deals involving Clinton Foundation donors now coming under scrutiny.Boeing shareholder David Almasi recently confronted CEO James McNerney about the ethics of it. That opens the door to charges of honest services fraud, that there was a quid pro quo between the Clinton Foundation, the State Department, and Boeing, Almasi said.In prepared answers to questions posed to Boeing by Fox News, a spokesman defended the company s actions. Our contribution to the Clinton Foundation to help the people of Haiti rebuild was a transparent act of compassion and an investment aimed at aiding the long-term interests and hopes of the Haitian people, the spokesman said. The company also pointed out that it gave the American Red Cross $1.3 million after the devastating 2010 earthquake.Clinton defenders say there is no smoking gun. There s zero evidence that Hillary Clinton went to bat for Boeing for any reason other than to benefit the U.S. economy and U.S. workers, said former Clinton/Gore adviser Richard Goldstein.But the financial connections don t end there. Boeing also paid former President Bill Clinton $250,000 for a speech in 2012. It was a speech that was approved by the State Department s Ethics Office which according to an Associated Press report often approved the ex-president s speaking engagements within days.Here is a list of mysterious deaths tied to the Clinton s:1 James McDougal Clinton s convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr s investigation.2 Mary Mahoney A former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The murder happened just after she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.3 Vince Foster Former white House counselor, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock s Rose Law firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.4 Ron Brown Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the top of Brown s skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors.5 C. Victor Raiser II and Montgomery Raiser, Major players in the Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane crash in July 1992.6 Paul Tulley Democratic National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock, September 1992 Described by Clinton as a Dear friend and trusted advisor. 7- Ed Willey Clinton fund raiser, found dead November 1993 deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fundraising events.8 Jerry Parks Head of Clinton s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock. Park s son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton. He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.9 James Bunch Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported that he had a Black Book of people which contained names of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas.10 James Wilson Was found dead in May 1993 from an apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to Whitewater.11- Kathy Ferguson, ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson, was found dead in May 1994, in her living room with a gunshot to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she were going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Kathy Ferguson was a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones.12 Bill Shelton Arkansas State Trooper and fiancee of Kathy Ferguson. Critical of the suicide ruling of his fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.13 Gandy Baugh Attorney for Clinton s friend Dan Lassater, died by jumping out a window of a tall building January, 1994. His client was a convicted drug distributor.14 Florence Martin Accountant & sub-contractor for the CIA, was related to the Barry Seal Mena Airport drug smuggling case. He died of three gunshot wounds.15 Suzanne Coleman Reportedly had an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head, ruled a suicide. Was pregnant at the time of her death.16 Paula Grober Clinton s speech interpreter for the deaf from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.17 Danny Casolaro Investigative reporter. Investigating Mena Airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He slit his wrists, apparently, in the middle of his investigation.18 Paul Wilcher Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 October Surprise was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993 in his Washington DC apartment. Had delivered a report to Janet Reno three weeks before his death19 Jon Parnell Walker Whitewater investigator for Resolution Trust Corp. Jumped to his death from his Arlington, Virginia apartment balcony August15, 1993. He was investigating the Morgan Guarantee scandal.20 Barbara Wise Commerce Department staffer. Worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised, nude body was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.21- Charles Meissner Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.22 Dr. Stanley Heard Chairman of the National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee, died with his attorney Steve Dickson in a small plane crash. Dr. Heard, in addition to serving on Clinton s advisory council personally treated Clinton s mother, stepfather and brother.23 Barry Seal Drug running pilot out of Mena, Arkansas, death was no accident.24 Johnny Lawhorn Jr. Mechanic, found a check made out to Bill Clinton in the trunk of a car left at his repair shop. He was found dead after his car had hit a utility pole.25 Stanley Huggins Investigated Madison Guarantee. His death was a purported suicide and his report was never released.26- Hershell Friday Attorney and Clinton fund raiser died March 1, 1994 when his plane exploded.27 Kevin Ives and Don Henry Known as The boys on the track case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas airport drug operation. A controversial case, the initial report of death said, due to falling asleep on railroad tracks. Later reports claim the two boys had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many linked to the case died before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.THE FOLLOWING PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:28 Keith Coney Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck, July 1988.29 Keith McMaskle Died stabbed 113 times, November 198830 Gregory Collins Died from a gunshot wound January 1989.31 Jeff Rhodes He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.33 James Milan Found decapitated. However, the Coroner ruled his death was due to natural causes. 34 Jordan Kettleson Was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.35 Richard Winters A suspect in the Ives / Henry deaths. He was killed in a set-up robbery July 1989.THE FOLLOWING CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE DEAD: 36 Major William S. Barkley Jr. 37 Captain Scott J. Reynolds 38 Sgt. Brian Hanley 39 Sgt. Tim Sabel 40 Major General William Robertson 41 Col. William Densberger 42 Col. Robert Kelly 43 Spec. Gary Rhodes 44 Steve Willis 45 Robert Williams 46 Conway LeBleu 47 Todd McKeehan48 -World-renowned space economist Molly Macauly was brutally murdered in Baltimore park.49-John Ashe- The former President of the UN General Assembly was awaiting trial on bribery charges when he turned up dead in June, apparently having crushed his own windpipe while lifting weights in his home 50-Victor Thorn-Prominent CLINTON Critic VICTOR THORN Found Dead Of Apparent Suicide On His Birthday51-Seth Rich-Still No Clues in Murder of DNC s Seth Rich, As Conspiracy Theories Thicken52- Joe Montano-Filipino American activist and aide to Sen. Kaine, dies at 4753-Shawn Lucas-Death of DNC Lawsuit Processor Shawn Lucas Adds to Seth Rich Conspiracy Theories54-Seth Rich-Family s private investigator: There is evidence Seth Rich had contact with WikiLeaks prior to death55-Klaus Eberwein Found Dead Before Testifying Against Clinton Foundation in HAITI COVERUP56-Man who sought Clinton s emails from Russian hackers committed suicideDoes anyone in the media wonder why everyone around the Clinton s seems to commit suicide, disappear or dies under mysterious circumstances? The Clintons are either the luckiest people in the world, or they are guilty of taking down an awful lot of people who could either rat them out or take them down. ;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LAVAR BALL: Here’s Why President Trump Was Under No Legal Obligation To Help Release Your Shoplifting Son From Chinese Prison;Before Lavar Ball, the ungrateful father of accused criminal, and UCLA basketball player, LiAngelo Ball, goes off on a public rant about how unappreciative he for President Trump s help, when he interceded on behalf of his son and 2 other UCLA basketball players, who were caught shoplifting at a Louis Vuitton store in China, he may want to consider, that without the help of President Trump, his son could be sitting in a Chinese prison for the next 10 years.Lavar Ball might also want to consider that President Trump was under no obligation to ask President Xi to get involved in the public relations nightmare that took place while our President was a guest in China, to help negotiate their release, and here s why Days after President Donald Trump touted his role in the release of three UCLA basketball students who were arrested in China, LaVar Ball, the father of one of those players, suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. LaVar Ball, father of UCLA player with sticky fingers Law Newz Our Tweeter-in-Chief lashed out on Twitter Sunday after Ball, a businessman, and ex-basketball player, downplayed POTUS role in helping release son LiAngelo Ball from Chinese custody.Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017 I should have left them in jail, Trump wrote. That s a hell of thing to tweet, and it grabbed a lot of attention. Outlets like Mediaite, The NY Times, Fox News, and ESPN were all over it. But as with many things in this administration, it s always helpful to review a president s role in situations like this.To recap, we have three Americans UCLA basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley arrested by Chinese authorities for alleged shoplifting. Trump took credit for their return to the states, saying he asked the country s president Xi Jinping for help. Now we have that same president saying he should ve done nothing.What does it mean if provable spite motivated a president s decision to refrain from helping an American held in custody on foreign soil? Law&Crime reached out to Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman for his take on the matter and asked if such behavior, or something like it, could be impeachable. Not impeachable, Feldman wrote in an email. He was under no duty to help and no duty to be nice about it after the fact. ;politics;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain to submit 'Brexit bill' proposal before December EU meeting;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will submit proposals on how to settle its divorce bill with the European Union before an EU summit next month and is expected to negotiate hard, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday. The EU told Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock the Brexit talks, repeating its early December deadline for her to flesh out Britain s opening offer on the financial settlement. We will make our proposals to the European Union in time for the Council, Hammond told the BBC, referring to the Dec. 14-15 meeting of EU heads of government. He was speaking three days before he sets out Britain s budget plan, where he will have to find room within tight fiscal constraints to help May convince voters that the Conservative government is tackling Britain s domestic problems at the same time as negotiating its exit from the EU. Last week, May met fellow EU leaders to try to break a deadlock over how much Britain will pay on leaving the bloc, an issue threatening to derail British hopes for a negotiated exit and an agreement on a new trading relationship by March 2019. May has signalled she would increase an initial offer that is estimated at some 20 billion euros ($24 billion) - about a third of what Brussels wants. But Hammond, who has been criticised by supporters of Brexit for being too conciliatory towards Brussels and lobbying for a softer exit, said Britain would take a tough stance about how much it owes. There are some things that we re very clear we do owe under the treaties, other things where we dispute the amounts or even whether something should be included, Hammond said in a separate interview with ITV television. Of course we ll negotiate hard to get the very best deal for the British taxpayer. Asked about the prospect of Brexit without a trade deal, Hammond said he was increasingly confident that an agreement could be reached because it was in the interests of both parties. Despite scepticism in Brussels over the tight timetable, May and her chief negotiator David Davis have been clear they want to have a full post-Brexit free trade deal sealed by the time Britain leaves. However, Hammond set out a softer stance on the timing of the trade deal. We hope that it will be agreed, certainly in principle, that the big elements of it will be agreed before March 2019 so that everybody knows where we are going, he told ITV. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish capital bans LGBT cinema, exhibitions;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The Turkish capital Ankara has banned the public showing of films and exhibitions related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, the governor s office said on Sunday, citing risks to public safety. The move is likely to deepen concern among rights activists and Turkey s Western allies about its record on civil liberties under President Tayyip Erdogan s Islamist-rooted AK Party. Starting from Nov. 18, 2017, concerning our community s public sensitivity, any events such as LGBT... cinema, theater, panels, interviews, exhibitions are banned until further notice in our province to provide peace and security, the governor s office said in a statement. It said that such exhibitions could cause different groups in society to publicly harbor hatred and hostility toward each other and therefore pose a risk to public safety. Authorities in Ankara had already banned a German gay film festival on Wednesday, the day before it was due to start, citing public safety and terrorism risks. In addition, gay pride parades have been banned in Istanbul for the last two years running. Unlike in many Muslim countries, homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey, but there is widespread hostility to it. Civil liberties in Turkey have become a particular concern for the West following the attempted military coup in July 2016. Since then, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial on suspicion of links to the coup. Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs. Human rights groups and Turkey s Western allies fear Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to quash his opponents. Ankara says the measures are necessary, given the extent of the security threat it faces. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bangladesh says it's in talks with Myanmar on Rohingya repatriation deal;DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh is in negotiations with Myanmar aimed at a deal to repatriate displaced Rohingya and Dhaka s foreign minister will address the matter at talks in Myanmar this week, the Bangladeshi foreign ministry said on Sunday. More than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since late August, driven out by a military clearance operation in Buddhist majority Myanmar s Rakhine State. The Rohingyas suffering has caused an international outcry. Bangladesh and Myanmar are in the process of negotiation for a bilateral agreement for repatriation of displaced people and expect to form a Joint Working Group to facilitate the repatriation, said a ministry statement, quoting remarks by Foreign Minister Abul Hasan Mahmood Ali at a meeting with his Japanese counterpart in Dhaka on Sunday. A senior aide to Ali said he would leave for Myanmar late on Sunday to attend an Asia-Europe (ASEM) meeting on Monday and Tuesday and would stay on another couple of days for bilateral talks on the Rohingya. The official said Ali hoped for an agreement on allowing Rohingya to return to Myanmar. Both countries have almost reached an understanding on this issue and there are a few points (still) to be agreed ... We hope to reach an agreement. There was no immediate comment from Myanmar. On Nov. 1, Myanmar insisted it was ready to set up a repatriation process but voiced fears Bangladesh was delaying an accord to first get international aid money. A senior Bangladesh home ministry official described the accusation as outrageous. Stung by international criticism and accusations of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, Myanmar s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has said Rohingyas who can prove they were resident in Myanmar would be accepted back. Last week a United Nations General Assembly committee called on Myanmar to end military operations that have led to the systematic violation and abuse of human rights of Rohingya. The move revived a U.N. resolution that was dropped last year due to Myanmar s progress on human rights. However, in the past three months there has been a Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh after the Myanmar military began an operation against Rohingya militants who attacked 30 security posts and an army base in Rakhine on Aug. 25. Myanmar s army released a report on Monday denying all allegations of rapes and killings by security forces, days after replacing the general in charge of the military operation. Top U.N. officials have denounced the violence as a classic example of ethnic cleansing. The Myanmar government has denied these allegations. Rohingyas have been denied citizenship in Myanmar, where many Buddhists see them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. A U.S. congressional delegation, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and the foreign ministers of Germany, Sweden and Japan visited Rohingya camps in Cox s Bazar at the weekend to raise awareness of their plight. We support Bangladesh s efforts toward a lasting solution, including the repatriation of displaced persons, Japan s Taro Kona told Ali at their meeting, where Tokyo pledged $18.6 million in aid to ease the Rohingya crisis. Mogherini told reporters: More than putting pressure, our approach has always been and will continue to be to offer a negotiating space, encourage the taking care of a situation that is not going to disappear. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NFL ON LIFE SUPPORT? Pictures Of Empty Stadiums Paint Scary Picture For Future Of Cop-Protesting NFL;Since the Colin Kaepernick and his fellow players started their Black Lives Matter kneeling campaign, social media has been lit up with photos of empty stadiums, proving that fans are not interested in supporting players who disrespect our flag and our law enforcement officers. The photos seem to suggest that every week more and more seats remain empty in NFL stadiums across America. Here s a look at a number of NFL stadiums today:Check out this photo of the Cleveland Browns stadium:Cleveland #NFL #Browns RT @middlebunns: @EmptySeatsPics #JAXvsCLE Opening kickoff pic.twitter.com/WjDTdfamD0 Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) November 19, 2017The Lions games in neighboring Chicago are always very popular not so much today.Got a feeling there will be a lot of #Lions blue in the stands at Soldier Field the other color is the empty seats. #Bears are 3-6 pic.twitter.com/Et7LeQwG3n Cheryl Raye Stout (@Crayestout) November 19, 2017Empty seats in the smallest modern stadium in the NFL , Chicago s Soldier Field are a rare sight indeed, especially when the visiting team is right next door in Michigan.Bears v Lions. Opening kick off against a divisional opponent at the smallest modern stadium in the #NFLIt's empty (great shot of Trump Tower in the background though) #MAGA pic.twitter.com/4xRoKknjMv Buda (@labuda_robert) November 19, 2017The Minnesota Viking stadium looks like their hosting a local high school game instead of a professional football team.@Vikings sec345 row 6 seat 19. pic.twitter.com/DzThB1r26i Peter Klages (@pakman75) November 19, 2017@Vikings section 101 row 22, seats 6-8 we d like to meet some legends pls thank you pic.twitter.com/FAGvyr9rYq Emily (@OhDagEmily) November 19, 2017You could ve shot a cannot through the NY Giants stadium today.The Unknown #Giants Fans. pic.twitter.com/sAyITREEwm James Kratch (@JamesKratch) November 19, 2017Kickoff is just minutes away! WATCH #NYGiants Pregame Warmups presented by @Visa pic.twitter.com/dwsw5viPtI New York Giants (@Giants) November 19, 2017Wow. I have never seen this many empty seats here before. John Mara must be thrilled. #GiantsPride. pic.twitter.com/G7Nw7g9Hlq Kevin McCleerey (@KevinMcCleerey) November 19, 2017It almost looks like it s a practice day in Cleveland.I think you ll see this a lot. Squalls every 20 minutes or so. #JAXvsCLE #Jaguars pic.twitter.com/nLHxTxgHur Brent Martineau (@BrentASJax) November 19, 2017Texans fans must have started their Christmas shopping early and decided to skip the game today.View from my seat for today's #Texans game. More empty seats than normal for the start of a game. pic.twitter.com/3PpxhtPJue Ryan Kahrhoff (@xman30) November 19, 2017Lots of empty seats at NRG as they are about to toss the coin pic.twitter.com/PJvF07byVl Kent Somers (@kentsomers) November 19, 2017you can really tell the orange is indeed oranger with all these empty seats pic.twitter.com/hgcDG2bUwJ Jordan Zirm (@clevezirm) November 19, 2017The Miami stadium seats are mostly empty.NFL football with @bellavate! #TBvsMIA #HardRockStadium pic.twitter.com/iTzYbBnnFD Kevin #Destiny2 PC (@ORIGINPCCEO) November 19, 2017;left-news;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenyan police fire teargas to break slum protests after four murdered;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan police fired teargas to disperse a crowd that was protesting on Sunday against the overnight murder of four people in a slum in the capital Nairobi. Parts of the city have been gripped by tension since Friday when at least five people were killed in violence involving the police and opposition supporters who were accompanying their leader Raila Odinga after a trip abroad. Japheth Koome, the police commander in the city, said investigations had started after four bodies were found in the Mathare Area Four slum on Sunday morning. We went there and found those bodies with injuries, he told a news conference, describing the murders as a criminal act rather than ethnic-driven violence. The violence took place a day before the Supreme Court rules on two cases seeking to nullify the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta in a repeat election held last month. Odinga, who successfully petitioned against Kenyatta s initial victory in the Aug. 8 vote and subsequently boycotted the repeat poll, visited the scene of the murders on Sunday and accused the government of being behind the killings. Those who are doing these acts are the ones who already lost and want to hold onto power by force but we will remove them using the power of the people, he told a crowd of his supporters. Police fired teargas and used water cannons to disperse protesters for the better part of the morning until calm was restored in the area in the afternoon. The broadcast industry regulator, Communications Authority of Kenya, said it had banned live broadcasts of political rallies, after all the main TV stations showed hours of live footage of the chaos that greeted Odinga s return. A source at the authority told Reuters on Sunday the ban was put in place to help manage the tension in the country. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Helping the poor is a 'Passport to Paradise,' Pope says;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis welcomed the poor, homeless and unemployed as guests of honor for a Mass and gourmet meal in the Vatican on Sunday, saying that helping the needy was one way of obtaining a passport to paradise . Francis celebrated a Mass marking the Roman Catholic Church s first yearly World Day of the Poor, which the pope established to draw the attention of the world s 1.2 billion Catholics to the neediest. Volunteers from charity organizations brought about 7,000 needy people to St Peter s Basilica for a special Mass celebrated by the pope, who has made defense of the poor, immigrants and downtrodden a major plank of his papacy. About 1,500 of them were having lunch with the pope in the Vatican s large audience hall and others were being taken to eat as guests in nearby pontifical colleges. Most of the needy people were from Rome and other parts of Italy but charity groups also brought groups from France, Spain, Germany and Poland. If in the eyes of the world they (the poor) have little value, they are the ones who open to us the way to heaven;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pinera wins first round of Chile election, faces runoff;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera will face center-left Senator Alejandro Guillier in a runoff for Chile s presidency next month, after a first round vote on Sunday that Pinera won, but with fewer votes than expected. Both candidates would keep in place the top copper exporter s longstanding free-market economic model, but former president Pinera has promised investor-friendly policies to turbocharge growth, while Guillier wants to press on with outgoing President Michelle Bachelet s overhaul of education, taxes and labor. With over 98 percent of votes counted, Pinera, a 67-year-old businessman, had clinched 36.6 percent, falling short of the 50 percent needed for an outright victory, Chile s electoral agency Servel said. Guillier, a 64-year-old bearded former TV news anchor elected to the Senate in 2013, had 22.7 percent, just over two points ahead of the third placed candidate, leftist Beatriz Sanchez, whose better than expected showing will likely ensure her Frente Amplio coalition will yield sway in Congress. Pinera s result was below pollster expectations, indicating that the Dec. 17 runoff will likely be a more closely-fought contest than previously forecast, especially if Guillier can rally supporters of Sanchez and four other left-leaning rivals behind him. We re going to have a very competitive second round, Pinera s campaign chief Andres Chadwick told journalists on Sunday evening. The most recent opinion survey by CEP last month had forecast Pinera securing 42 percent of likely votes in the first round, and easily defeating Guillier in the runoff. After a divisive race, Guillier called for profound unity to unite Chile s fractured left against Pinera. There are more of us, and therefore we must win in December!, Guillier told his cheering supporters. Sanchez did not endorse Guillier in a fiery speech before her followers, even as she pilloried his opponent. Sebastian Pinera is a step backward for the country and the country is going in a different direction! Sanchez said. But Pinera, who previously led Chile between 2010 and 2014, flashed the optimism he has shown on the campaign trail, where he has repeatedly plugged his campaign slogan better times. This result is very similar to the one in 2009. And you ll remember that in 2009 we won the election, Pinera said, before a buoyant crowd. Voter turnout was higher than expected, a factor which analysts forecast will count against Pinera if repeated in a runoff. Bachelet cannot run again this year because of term limits. Guillier was one of two candidates her center-left coalition Nueva Mayoria backed in the first round. Speaking from the presidential palace on Sunday evening, she urged Chileans to vote in December, saying her policy changes were at stake. Guillier faces a more polished opponent in Pinera, who oversaw robust economic growth in his first presidential term that overlapped with higher copper prices. Pinera has vowed to double Chile s economic growth rate, with proposals that include trimming corporate taxes, making state-run miner Codelco more self-sufficient, and tweaking the pension system to include incentives for later retirement. But he must ease fears that he would wipe out gains made in Bachelet s government for students, women and workers - from expanding free education to strengthening unions. Should Guillier triumph in the runoff, he has pledged to tackle stubbornly high inequality in one of Latin America s most business-friendly economies. He wants to diversify Chile s dependence on copper, increase access to free higher education and write workers rights into a new constitution. I voted for Guillier because I think we have to continue to provide free education. It s a social right, said unemployed voter Mario Giannetti, 53. Since its transition to democracy from dictatorship in 1990, Chile has stood out as one of the region s most developed countries. But public debt has grown as lower copper prices hit government revenues in recent years, and Bachelet s critics say she failed to court investments or prioritize economic growth that slowed to an annual average of 1.8 percent. In a first since the 1990s, credit ratings agencies Fitch and S&P downgraded Chile s debt rating this year. While investors see Pinera as a safe pair hands for the economy, his previous term was marred by massive student protests seeking an education overhaul. His responses were often seen as out of touch and grassroots groups still oppose him. Early on Sunday, a group of young protesters stormed Pinera s campaign headquarters before being arrested by police, TV images showed. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian army, allies take back Albu Kamal from Islamic State;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian army and its allies took complete control over Albu Kamal, Islamic State s last significant town in Syria, a military news service run by Hezbollah said on Sunday. The army had declared victory over Islamic State in Albu Kamal earlier this month but the jihadists then staged a counter-attack using sleeper cells hidden in the town. Driving Islamic State from Albu Kamal means only a few villages along the Euphrates and patches of nearby desert, as well as isolated pockets in other parts of the country, remain in Syria of the caliphate it declared in 2014. Most of the forces battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have said they expect it to go underground and turn to a guerrilla insurgency using sleeper cells and bombings. Western intelligence agencies have said it will still be able to inspire attacks on civilians around the world. The Syrian Army and its allies in the axis of resistance have expelled Daesh from its last stronghold on Syrian soil, the Hezbollah news service reported. The axis of resistance is used by those in it to describe the alliance of Iran, Syria and Shi ite militias including Hezbollah. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that most IS members withdrew from the town, with fighting continuing in the perimeter of Albu Kamal. Islamic State s area of rule in Syria has crumbled this year under two rival military campaigns. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, backed by a U.S.-led coalition has driven it from much of its territory in the north, including its former Syrian capital Raqqa. Syria s army and its allies have waged an offensive across central and eastern Syria backed by Russian air and missile power. The two offensives have mostly avoided conflict with each other through communication between the United States and Russia. However, Syrian and Iranian officials have said that Damascus seeks to regain control over areas held by the SDF. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Southern African leaders to discuss Zimbabwe on Tuesday;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will discuss Zimbabwe s political crisis on Tuesday at a summit in the Angolan capital Luanda, South Africa said on Sunday. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was fired as leader of the ruling ZANU-PF party on Sunday and replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the deputy he sacked this month, sources at a special ZANU-PF meeting to decide his fate told Reuters. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe war vets threaten to unleash crowds on Mugabe;HARARE (Reuters) - The leader of Zimbabwe s powerful liberation war veterans threatened on Sunday to unleash the mob against 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe if he continued to refuse to step down after a military seizure of power. Asked what would happen if Mugabe failed to yield to pressure to go, Chris Mutsvangwa told reporters: We will bring back the crowds and they will do their business . ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China military sets up website to report leaks, fake news;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s military on Sunday launched a website inviting the public to report leaks and fake news, as well as illegal online activities by military personnel, the latest step in a push to ensure Communist Party control over the internet. Beijing has been ramping up measures to secure the internet and maintain strict censorship, a process that accelerated ahead of the party s five-yearly National Congress that took place in October. The new website is an effort to implement the guiding spirit of the Congress and will help maintain a clear internet space surrounding the military, according to 81.cn, the military s official news portal. Citizens are encouraged to use the platform to report online content that attacks the military s absolute leadership and distorts the history of the military and the Communist Party, the website said. Cases of military personnel illegally opening online social accounts and publishing unauthorized information should also be reported, it said. President Xi Jinping has made China s cyber sovereignty a top priority in his sweeping campaign to bolster security. He has also reasserted the ruling Communist Party s role in limiting and guiding online discussion. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! DESPERATE KATHY GRIFFIN Makes Home Video To Complain About Not Getting Work After Trump Beheading Stunt…Takes Page From Hillary’s Playbook…Blames Everyone Else For End Of Her Career;Wow! Poor Kathy Griffin The toxic comedian found herself facing a tsunami-sized backlash after she held a severed, and bloodied head of President Trump, during a comedy skit earlier in the year. And now, the former funny girl is telling anyone who will listen, that she s furious no one wants to hire her. Kathy Griffin starts her homemade 5-minute video by whining to viewers about all of the online hate by trolls that she s receiving. Griffin then goes on to trash the other not funny comedian Lena Dunham, who wrote about sexually assaulting her little sister, for defending a Hollywood actor who s been accused of sexually assaulting a female actress. Her comments that follow the Dunham remarks make no sense, although she seems to be attempting to make the point that the equally trashy liberal comedian, Lena Dunham, is still getting work, and how Griffin just doesn t think that it s fair. (After all, Dunham hates Trump as much as her right?)Griffin tells the camera that appears to be set up in her living room, I just want you guys to know that I am fully in the middle of a blacklist like I m in the middle of a Hollywood blacklist. It is real. I m not booked on any talk shows. Griffen continued to whine about her lack of jobs, I just want you guys to know, that when I get home, I do not have one single day of paid work in front of me, and the people who want me to go back and do clubs and do 10 minutes again I don t mean to be an asshole, but I m not gonna do that. I ve worked way too hard to go back and work for free, and do the club scene again because this is some bullshit. Because I ve been blacklisted.Griffin then goes on to tell her fellow Hollywood libs to stop sending her requests for donations to their fundraisers because she doesn t have any money. She goes on to explain that she s spent all of her money on lawyers because she believes in something. Griffin can t quite find a way to articulate what that something is, but she s apparently learned her lesson and has refrained from exposing her true obsession and desire, which was to destroy Donald Trump.Watch: ;left-news;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More than 30 rescued in Afghan raid on Taliban prison;LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan and foreign special forces raided a Taliban prison in southern Helmand province on Sunday and rescued at least 30 people, according to army and provincial officials. Those rescued in the raid in Helmand s Nawzad district included four children under the age of 12 and two policemen, the officials said. Twenty of the people had been arrested by the Taliban in connection with helping the government or were family members of Afghan army and police. The reasons for the jailing of six of those rescued was still being investigated, said Abdul Qadir Bahadurzai, a deputy spokesman for the army s 215th Maiwand military corps. The Taliban said in a statement that the people rescued were criminals accused of robbery, kidnapping, personal disputes and other crimes and were awaiting trial. There wasn t anyone belonging to the enemy in that prison and there wasn t enough security for it, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said in the statement. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mugabe given until noon Monday to quit as Zimbabwe President;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF party has given Robert Mugabe until noon (5.00 a.m. ET) on Monday to step down as President or face impeachment, cyber security minister Patrick Chinamasa said on Sunday. He was speaking at a televised news conference after a special party meeting at which Mugabe was sacked as ZANU-PF leader. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mugabe holds more exit talks with generals: state media;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe met military chiefs on Sunday for a second round of negotiations to encourage him to stand down after 37 years in power, according to The Herald state newspaper. In photos posted on its website, Mugabe was shown in a dark suit and tie and standing behind a wooden desk at State House as he shook hands with a procession of generals and the chief of police. Beside him was a television tuned in to Al-Jazeera. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Obamacare mandate in U.S. Senate tax plan not bargaining chip: Mnuchin;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday the repeal of the Obamacare individual healthcare mandate was not a bargaining chip in negotiations over the Senate tax legislation. “This is all about getting this passed in the Senate. This isn’t a bargaining chip, the president thinks we should get rid of it and I think we should get rid of it,” Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday. “It’s an unfair tax on poor people.” ;politicsNews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Satellite signals not helpful to Argentine submarine search: navy official;MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) - Seven satellite calls that Argentine officials detected recently believed to have come from a navy submarine missing in the South Atlantic have not helped to determine the vessel s location, a navy official said on Sunday. We analyzed these signals, which as we know were intermittent and weak, said Gabriel Galeazzi, a naval commander. They could not help determine a point on the map to help the search. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pinera leads Chile election with 36 percent after partial count;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Conservative Sebastian Pinera took an early lead in Chile s presidential election on Sunday evening, garnering 36.13 percent of votes, with 6.44 percent of ballots counted, Chile s electoral agency Servel said. Center-left Alejandro Guillier had 22.62 percent and leftist Beatriz Sanchez had 20.78 percent. Chileans were voting for a successor to President Michelle Bachelet. Sebastian Pinera, a former president, has long been the favorite to come in first but is not forecast to win the 50 percent of votes needed to avoid a December runoff. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli minister reveals covert contacts with Saudi Arabia;JERUSALEM/RIYADH (Reuters) - An Israeli cabinet minister said on Sunday that Israel has had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia amid common concerns over Iran, a first disclosure by a senior official from either country of long-rumoured secret dealings. The Saudi government had no immediate response to Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz s remarks. A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also did not respond immediately to a request to comment. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel view Iran as a main threat to the Middle East and increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fuelled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together. Saudi Arabia maintains that any relations with Israel hinge on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state. U.S. President Donald Trump s peace envoys, seeking an Israeli-Palestinian agreement with regional support, have visited Saudi Arabia several times since he took office. In an interview on Army Radio, Steinitz, a member of Netanyahu s security cabinet, did not characterise the contacts or give details when asked why Israel was hiding its ties with Saudi Arabia. He replied: We have ties that are indeed partly covert with many Muslim and Arab countries, and usually (we are) the party that is not ashamed. It s the other side that is interested in keeping the ties quiet. With us, usually, there is no problem, but we respect the other side s wish, when ties are developing, whether it s with Saudi Arabia or with other Arab countries or other Muslim countries, and there is much more ... (but) we keep it secret. In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir, asked about reports of cooperation with Israel, cited a Saudi peace initiative, first adopted in 2002 by the Arab League, as key to forging any relationship. We have always said that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved on the basis of the Arab peace initiative that Israel would have enjoyed normal relations, economic, political, diplomatic relations with all of the Arab countries, and so until that happens, we don t have relations with Israel, he said. That plan makes those relations contingent on a full withdrawal by Israel from territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war, including East Jerusalem. Netanyahu has expressed tentative support for parts of the initiative, but there are many caveats on the Israeli side. Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said Steinitz s remarks won t surprise anyone who s been paying attention to the budding courtship between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is being especially pushed by the Israeli side . Last week, the Israeli military chief, Lieutenant General Gadi Eizenkot, told an Arabic language online newspaper that Israel was ready to share intelligence information with Saudi Arabia, saying their countries had a common interest in standing up to Iran. Saudi Arabia has ratcheted up pressure on Iran, accusing Tehran of trying to expand its influence in Arab countries, often through proxies including the Lebanese Shi ite Hezbollah group. Ibish said that given the mutual threat perceptions shared by Israel and Gulf Arab countries, it is unlikely that covert ties aren t developing. But he said Israeli officials have tended to exaggerate such interactions in a bid to drive down the price they may have to pay, especially on Palestinian issues, to expand strategic relations and ties with Arab countries . In public remarks in September, Netanyahu pointed to covert relationships with Arab states, saying, without mentioning any by name, that cooperation exists in various ways and different levels . Also in September, Israel Radio reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had secretly met officials in Israel that month, drawing an official denial from Riyadh. Last month, Saudi former intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal shared a stage with ex-Israeli Mossad spy agency director Efraim Halevy at a debate on Iran in a New York synagogue. In 2016, former Saudi general Anwar Eshki visited Israel, where he met Israeli legislators, to promote - as he has at various academic forums - the Saudi peace initiative. (This version of the story corrects Saudi foreign minister s first name in paragraph 9 to Adel, not Abdel) ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chile's Pinera seen winning 36 percent of vote, Guillier 23 percent: media projection;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Billionaire and ex-president Sebastian Pinera would come in first in Chile s presidential election on Sunday, but would fall short of the 50 percent of votes necessary to avoid a runoff, Radio Bio-Bio forecast. Pinera was seen as taking 35.7 percent of the vote, local broadcaster Radio Bio-Bio said after polls closed. His second place rival, center-left Alejandro Guillier, had 23.2 percent, and the third-place leftist Beatriz Sanchez had 20.2 percent. A run-off election would be held December 17. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iridium says last call from its device on missing Argentine submarine was Wednesday;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - U.S. satellite communications company Iridium Communications Inc (IRDM.O) said on Sunday the last call from its device aboard a missing Argentine submarine was made at 1136 GMT on Wednesday, the day the vessel vanished. Argentina s Defense Ministry has said seven failed satellite calls on Saturday may have been from the submarine. In a statement to Reuters, Iridium referred to those reports and said no calls from the vessel were made on its network on Saturday but that there may be equipment from another satellite communications company aboard the submarine. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek centrists elect alliance leader to boost popularity;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek centrists elected politician Fofi Gennimata on Sunday to lead a center-left party alliance, hoping to win back voters disillusioned after seven years of crisis and boost their popularity as the country emerges from bailouts. Past attempts by centrists to form parties and alliances have not fared well and the latest bid is seen as a last-ditch effort to restore unity and attract voters, many of whom defected to the ruling leftist Syriza party over the years of painful bailout reforms. The new alliance includes Greece s once-powerful Socialist PASOK party, which Gennimata already leads, the Democratic Socialist Movement, the Democratic Left and the To Potami party. Gennimata won about 58 percent of the vote. PASOK ruled Greece for decades but has seen its popularity sliding to single-digit figures since 2010, when it signed up to Greece s first bailout from the EU and the International Monetary Fund in return for draconian austerity. It has 19 seats in the 300-member parliament. The centre-left Potami, which was founded in 2014 and first entered parliament with 6.1 percent in a 2015 national election now ranks eighth in opinion polls with 1.5 percent. It has six MPs. Greece s leftist-led Syriza government was catapulted to power in January 2015 promising to end austerity. It was forced to sign up to a new rescue package, the country s third bailout a few months later. That bailout expires in August. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras term ends in 2019 and he says he will seek a new four-year mandate then. But his ratings have been sagging in opinion polls behind the main opposition, the conservative New Democracy party. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia and Arab allies push for unity against Iran, Hezbollah meddling;CAIRO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and other Arab foreign ministers criticized Iran and its Lebanese Shi ite ally Hezbollah at an emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday, calling for a united front to counter Iranian interference. Regional tensions have risen in recent weeks between Sunni monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran over Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s surprise resignation, and an escalation in Yemen s conflict. Hariri, a Saudi ally, resigned on Nov. 4 from Riyadh, accusing Iran and Hezbollah of spreading strife. But Lebanese President Michel Aoun and other politicians accused Saudi Arabia of holding Hariri hostage and said he had been coerced into resigning. Saudi Arabia and Hariri both deny that. Hezbollah, both a military force involved in Syria s war and a political movement, is part of a Lebanese government made up of rival factions, and an ally of Aoun. Saudi Arabia also accuses Hezbollah of a role in the launch of a missile towards Riyadh from Yemen this month. Iran denies accusations that it supplies Houthi forces there. The kingdom will not stand by and will not hesitate to defend its security, Saudi Arabia s Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir told the assembly. We must stand together. The emergency Arab foreign ministers meeting was convened at the request of Saudi Arabia with support from the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait to discuss means of confronting Iranian intervention. In a declaration after the meeting, the Arab League accused Hezbollah of supporting terrorism and extremist groups in Arab countries with advanced weapons and ballistic missiles. It said Arab nations would provide details to the U.N. Security Council of Tehran s violations for arming militias in Yemen. Lebanon s Arab League representative objected to the declaration accusing Hezbollah of terrorism and said it is part of Lebanon s government, the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar television channel reported. United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said on Twitter later that the declaration was a clear message about joint Arab action against Iran. Yemen s civil war pits the internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies, against the Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Iranian threats have gone beyond all limits and pushed the region into a dangerous abyss, Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. Unfortunately countries like the Saudi regime are pursuing divisions and creating differences, and because of this they don t see any results other than divisions, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Iranian state media on Sunday on the sidelines of a meeting in Antalya. Egypt s foreign minister received a call from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday when they also discussed regional tensions over Lebanon, the foreign ministry said in a statement. After French intervention, Hariri flew to France and met President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday. He will arrive in Cairo for a visit on Tuesday, his office said. Speaking in Paris, Hariri said he would clarify his position when he returns to Beirut in the coming days. He said he would take part in Lebanese independence day celebrations, scheduled for Wednesday. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel president rejects pardon appeal of soldier who killed prone Palestinian assailant;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel s president on Sunday turned down a pardon request by an ex-conscript who is serving an serving a 14-month jail term for killing an incapacitated Palestinian assailant. In September, Israel s military reduced by four months the 18-month jail term of Elor Azaria who was caught on videotape shooting dead a Palestinian who was lying wounded after taking part in a stabbing attack on other Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron in March 2015. A statement issued by President Reuven Rivlin s office said that he had reviewed the plea and after Azaria had already received reductions to his sentence, it would not be right to grant a pardon. The president believes ... that an additional reduction in punishment would undermine the strength of the military, its values, and of the state of Israel, part of the statement read. It added that the president understood that Azaria was due to face a parole board shortly and could be released in three months time. Azaria became a right-wing cause celebre in Israel, where most Jewish men and women are drafted at 18 for military service. One poll found that nearly half of Israeli Jews believe any Palestinian attacker should be killed on the spot. Azaria said he shot Abd Elfatah Ashareef because he feared the Palestinian could carry out another attack, but a court-martial found contradictions in the testimony and convicted him of manslaughter. The verdict was upheld on appeal. Right-wing ministers and lawmakers, including Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, criticized Rivlin s decision, saying he should have pardoned Azaria. President Rivlin had an opportunity to end an affair that has rocked Israeli society, Lieberman wrote. Beyond the price that the soldier and his family have paid ... I believe ... that (there is a need) to heal the rifts in society ... we must not forget that this was a case of (Azaria), an exemplary soldier (facing) a terrorist who came to kill. After being discharged from the military, Azaria went to prison in August and appealed to the armed forces chief, Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, to reconsider his sentence, citing the cost to his family of the acrimonious trial. In a response letter, the military informed Azaria that Eizenkot had decided to cut the jail term on grounds of compassion and mercy ... taking into account your past as a combat soldier in an operational theater . But the letter also faulted the former soldier over grave actions for which you did not take responsibility and for which you did not express regret, adding that the important messages in the court rulings should be heeded . The Palestinian government said Azaria s jail term had given Israeli soldiers a green light to kill with impunity. Under Israeli law, manslaughter can carry a maximum 20 years behind bars. Military prosecutors had asked the appeals court to impose a three- to five-year sentence on Azaria, but were turned down. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House OK with removing Obamacare mandate repeal from Senate tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump would not object to removing a provision in a Senate Republican tax plan that would repeal the Obamacare mandate if it “becomes an impediment,” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Sunday. Some Republican senators who have been critical of the plan warned that some middle-income taxpayers could see tax cuts wiped out by higher health insurance premiums if the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s mandate goes through. “If we can repeal part of Obamacare as part of a tax bill ... that can pass, that’s great,” Mulvaney said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “If it becomes an impediment to getting the best tax bill we can, then we are OK with taking it out.” ;politicsNews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe opposition leader 'baffled' by Mugabe decision to stay;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he was baffled by President Robert Mugabe s address to the nation on Sunday when the veteran leader defied widespread expectations that he would resign. I am baffled. It s not just me, it s the whole nation. He s playing a game. He has let the whole nation down, Tsvangirai told Reuters. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri to visit Egypt on Tuesday: Hariri's office;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanese prime minister in a televised broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, will visit Egypt on Tuesday to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Hariri s office said on Sunday. Hariri has since Saturday been in Paris, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron, and has said he will return to Lebanon by Wednesday for its Independence Day celebrations. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has said he will not accept Hariri s resignation until it is delivered in person and all sides in Beirut have called for his speedy return. A leader in Hariri s Future Movement had earlier told Reuters Hariri would visit Egypt on Monday. The resignation sparked a political crisis in Lebanon and put it on the front line of a regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hariri criticized Iran and its ally Hezbollah, which is in Lebanon s coalition government, in his resignation statement, and said he feared assassination. Apart from a brief trip to Abu Dhabi, he remained in Saudi Arabia until he flew to France. His stay in the kingdom led to accusations from Lebanese officials and politicians that Saudi Arabia had coerced him to resign, which he and Riyadh denied. On Friday, Hariri tweeted that his presence there was for consultations on the future of the situation in Lebanon and its relations with the surrounding Arab region . On Sunday, Arab League foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Cairo, requested by Saudi Arabia, to discuss ways to confront Iran and Hezbollah over their role in the region. In a statement afterwards, the ministers accused Hezbollah of supporting terrorism in Arab countries. Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil did not attend. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe defies expectations of immediate resignation;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s President Robert Mugabe defied expectations he would resign on Sunday, pledging to preside over a ZANU-PF congress next month even though the ruling party had removed him as its leader hours earlier. ZANU-PF had given the 93-year-old less than 24 hours to quit as head of state or face impeachment, an attempt to secure a peaceful end to his tenure after a de facto coup. Mugabe said in a address on state television that he acknowledged criticism against him from ZANU-PF, the military and the public, but did not comment on the possibility of standing down. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe war vets leader says Mugabe will be impeached;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The leader of Zimbabwe s war veterans said on Sunday plans to impeach President Robert Mugabe would go ahead as scheduled after the 93-year-old leader defied expectations that he would resign in a national address. Chris Mutsvangwa, who has been leading a campaign to oust Mugabe, told Reuters in a text message moments after Mugabe finished his speech that people would take to the streets of Harare on Wednesday. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Algeria picks up 286 boat migrants en route to Europe;ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria s coastguard has picked up 286 illegal migrants heading across the Mediterranean to Europe by boat, the Defence Ministry has said. The migrants were detained on several boats between Thursday and Saturday, according to a ministry statement carried on Sunday by the state news agency, APS. Algeria has so far seen relatively few attempts to cross to Europe by boat, compared to the hundreds of thousands of mostly African would-be migrants who have set off in search of prosperity or security from elsewhere along the north African coast, mostly from Libya. Most illegal crossings from Algeria take place in summer, when sailing conditions are more favorable. Neighboring Tunisia has recently seen a surge in such departures as young unemployed people seek work in Italy. Algeria s economy is also suffering as its vital energy revenues have been hit by a sharp fall in prices. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Tusk says alarmed that Poland's policy resembles 'Kremlin's plan';WARSAW (Reuters) - European Council President Donald Tusk said on Sunday he was alarmed by the similarity of policies pursued by Poland s right-wing government to what he described as Kremlin s plan . Poland s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been increasingly at loggerheads with the EU and Tusk since coming to office in late 2015, although the acrimony between Tusk and PiS dates back many years. The PiS is locked in disputes with the bloc over immigration, logging of an ancient forest and putting courts and media under more government control. Tusk, Poland s former prime minister and the arch-rival of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, won a second term in March as chairman of EU summit meetings - with Poland the only country to vote against his extension. Alarm! A vehement dispute with Ukraine, isolation in the European Union, departure from the rule of law and independent courts, attack on non-governmental sector and free media - PiS strategy or Kremlin s plan? Tusk tweeted. Too similar to rest easy. Tusk was referring to, among other things, the fact that Ukraine summoned the Polish ambassador in Kiev on Saturday after Poland denied entry to a Ukrainian official in an escalation of a diplomatic spat over the two neighbors troubled past. Tusk did not provide details of what he described as the Kremlin s plan . In May, Tusk urged Group of Seven leaders on to stick to their sanctions policy on Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Tusk also sided with member nations such as Poland and the Baltic states in their efforts to oppose a new pipeline connecting Russia and Germany. The Polish government denies all charges from Brussels that it is undermining the rule of law or isolating Poland in Europe, saying it needs to overhaul Poland s ineffective legal system and stand up for Poland s interests in the EU. A majority of EU lawmakers on Wednesday demanded punishment for the eurosceptic government in Poland, saying it was undermining the rule of law and promoting intolerance. In a response to Tusk s comment, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo tweeted: @donaldtusk as @eucopresident has done nothing for Poland. Today, using his position to attack the Polish government, he is attacking Poland. In March, Poland s defense minister accused Tusk of working with Russian President Vladimir Putin to harm Polish interests following the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski - Jaroslaw s twin brother - and 95 others. In April, Tusk testified for eight hours in a separate intelligence probe by Warsaw s right-wing government that he described as a smear campaign to discredit him. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander, another fighter, killed in Syria: Iranian media;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A commander in Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards and a lower-ranking Iranian fighter have been killed fighting Islamic State in Syria in recent days, Iranian media reported on Sunday. The Revolutionary Guards, Iran s most powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, have been fighting in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for several years. An Iranian official told the Tasnim news agency last year that more than 1,000 Iranians have been killed in Syria. Senior members of the Guards have been among those killed. Kheyrollah Samadi, a Guards commander in charge of a unit in Syria, died on Thursday in fighting in the Albu Kamal region, bordering Iraq, according to Fars News. Samadi was killed in clashes with Islamic State, according to the Ghatreh news site. Iranian media have previously reported on fighting in that area between Iran s Shi ite militia allies and Islamic State. The Syrian army and its allies took complete control over Albu Kamal, Islamic State s last significant town in Syria, a military news service run by Hezbollah said on Sunday. Samadi, who fought in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s and had retired from the Iranian military before signing on to go to Syria, was killed by a mortar explosion, Fars News, a news agency, said. Iranian news sites posted pictures on Sunday of Samadi with Qassem Soleimani, head of the Guards branch responsible for operations outside Iran. The lower-ranking Iranian fighter, Mehdi Movahednia, was killed on Saturday in clashes with Islamic State in the town of Mayadin in eastern Syria, Fars News reported. The Revolutionary Guards initially kept quiet about their role in the Syria conflict. But in recent years, as casualties have mounted, they have been more outspoken about their engagement, framing it as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State who see Shi ites, the majority of Iran s population, as apostates. On web sites linked to the Guards, members of the organization killed in Syria and Iraq are praised as protectors of Shi ite holy sites and labeled defenders of the shrine . U.S. President Donald Trump last month gave the U.S. Treasury Department authority to impose economic sanctions on members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in response to what Washington calls its efforts to destabilize and undermine its opponents in the Middle East. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe state broadcaster preparing for announcement: source;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ZBC state broadcaster is preparing for an announcement in the next few hours, sending a broadcast van to State House where President Robert Mugabe is under pressure to resign, a source at the broadcaster said on Sunday. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Texas Governor Just Broke With Trump;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli police resume interview of Netanyahu in corruption probe;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police officers on Sunday questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the sixth time in a corruption probe, a police spokeswoman said. Investigators arrived by car in late afternoon to Netanyahu s official residence in Jerusalem where past interrogations have taken place, and disappeared behind security gates. Police said Netanyahu was questioned for several hours at his residence in an ongoing fraud investigation under the oversight of the state attorney, the country s chief prosecutor, and with the authorisation of the attorney-general. No charges have been brought against Netanyahu, who has been in power since 2009 and has denied wrongdoing. He is a suspect in two cases, one involving the receipt of gifts from businessmen and the other related to alleged conversations he held with an Israeli newspaper publisher about limiting competition in the news sector in exchange for more positive coverage. Police said earlier this month that a top Netanyahu confidant had been questioned as part of a different investigation into a $2 billion submarine deal with Germany. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No deal on tax among German coalition parties: conservative politician;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s would-be coalition partners have not agreed to abolish a tax imposed after reunification to help poorer eastern states, a conservative politician told Reuters on Sunday, retracting his previous remarks that a deal on the issue had been reached. Hans Michelbach, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservative bloc, said earlier that an agreement had been reached with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) to abolish the solidarity tax by 2021. The FDP had made abolishing the tax, which was due to expire in 2019, an election promise. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Haitian army set to make controversial return after two decades;CAP-HAITIEN/PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti s president on Saturday heralded the re-establishment of the country s military after 22 years, a divisive issue in the impoverished Caribbean nation which has a history of bloody coups and political instability. Haiti has been without military forces since 1995, when former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide disbanded the army after returning to power following a coup, leaving the national police responsible for security. The army s comeback has been a divisive topic in a country still suffering from a catastrophic earthquake and a fierce hurricane in recent years, with critics and activists concerned that armed forces would meddle in politics and rob essential resources from education and health care. Haitian President Jovenel Moise on Thursday named former army colonel Jodel Lesage as acting commander-in-chief, moving troops closer to full operation. The appointment still needs to be approved by Haiti s senate. On Saturday, Moise welcomed the army s anticipated return with a parade featuring dozens of camouflaged soldiers toting rifles in the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien, calling on Haitians to recall the Battle of Vertieres won against French colonialists exactly 214 years ago. The army is our mother, he said. When your mother is sick and wears dirty clothes, you do not kill her. You take her to the hospital. So let us join forces to provide needed care to our mother. After Haiti s independence, the military mounted dozens of coups and its forces were accused of rampant human rights abuses. Moise acknowledged that history, but vowed that the new military would be different. The United Nations has called for increased support for the Haitian National Police (HNP) with about 15,000 members. A U.N.-backed mission to aid Haiti s justice system and law enforcement arrived in October, replacing a much larger peacekeeping mission that had focused on stability efforts since 2004. Having demonstrated its ability to maintain stability and guard against security threats, the HNP has emerged as one of the most trusted governmental institutions in Haiti, U.N. spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement last month. Haitian defense minister Herve Denis told Reuters the army will begin with 500 soldiers in engineering, medical and aviation corps, but is still working to fill its ranks. A recruiting process was well underway by last July, attracting many young men in a country that is the poorest in the Americas. Denis said the government plans to ultimately expand to 5,000 troops working to protect Haitian borders, fight terrorism, curb illegal trade and aid Haitians affected by natural disasters. Government opponents fear the Moise administration could use the military to crack down on foes despite the president s claims that troops will steer clear of politics. I don t believe the Moise regime really wants to reinstate the army, but instead set up a political militia to persecute political opponents, said Andre Michel, spokesman for an opposition coalition that has called for Moise s resignation. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Defiant Hun Sen tells U.S. to cut all aid to Cambodia;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen challenged the United States on Sunday to cut all aid after it announced it was ending funding for a general election next year in response to the dissolution of the main opposition party, media reported. Hun Sen, the strongman who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades, has taken a strident anti-American line in an increasingly tense run-up to a 2018 election that has included a crackdown on critics, rights groups and independent media. The United States announced on Friday it was ending funding for the election, and promised more concrete steps , after the Supreme Court dissolved the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) at the request of the government, on the grounds it was plotting to seize power. The party denied the accusation. The pro-government Fresh News website reported that Hun Sen said in a speech to garment workers that he welcomed the U.S. aid cut and urged it cut it all. Samdech Techo Hun Sen confirmed that cutting U.S. aid won t kill the government but will only kill a group of people who serve American policies, Fresh News reported, using Hun Sen s official title. It did not identify the people suspected of serving U.S. policies but added: Hun Sen ... welcomes and encourages the U.S. to cut all aid. The U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh did not respond to a request for comment. In April, the U.S. embassy announced a $1.8 million grant to assist local elections this year and next year s general election. The U.S. State Department said on its website that U.S. assistance to Cambodia for programs in health, education, governance, economic growth and clearing unexploded ordnance was worth more than $77.6 million in 2014. However, Chinese support for big ticket projects has allowed Hun Sen to brush off Western criticism of his crackdown on dissent. China vastly outspends the United States in a country once destroyed by Cold War superpower rivalry, and its money goes on highly visible infrastructure projects and with no demands for political reform. In September, authorities arrested the CNRP leader, Kem Sokha, and charged him with treason over what they said was a plot to take power with U.S. help. He denied any such plot. The U.S. State Department called on Friday for Cambodia to release him and reverse the decision to ban his party. The court also banned 118 party members from politics for five years. Police have begun to take down CNRP signs from their offices across the country. Mu Sochua, a senior CNRP member who moved abroad shortly before the party was banned, said Hun Sen was jeopardizing foreign investment. Foreign investors serious about investing in Cambodia won t be coming and are, or will be, looking at an exit if they can t compete with China s monopoly in Cambodia because Hun Sen needs to pay back favors to China, she said. Western countries, which for decades supported Cambodia s emergence from war and isolation, have shown little appetite for sanctions in response to the crackdown, but the European Union has raised the possibility of Cambodia losing trade preferences. Tariff-free access to Europe for Cambodian garments - and similar trade preferences in the United States - have helped Cambodia build a garment industry on low-cost labor. EU and U.S. buyers take some 60 percent of Cambodia s exports. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump open to dropping healthcare provision in Senate tax bill: aide;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump would not insist on including repeal of an Obama-era health insurance mandate in a bill intended to enact the biggest overhaul of the tax code since the 1980s, a senior White House aide said on Sunday. The version of tax legislation put forward by Senate Republican leaders would remove a requirement in former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law that taxes Americans who decline to buy health insurance. “If we can repeal part of Obamacare as part of a tax bill ... that can pass, that’s great,” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “If it becomes an impediment to getting the best tax bill we can, then we are OK with taking it out.” It was too soon to say whether eliminating the repeal of the so-called individual mandate would increase the bill’s chances of passing. The provision was not an impediment now, Mulvaney said. Republican senators who have been critical of the plan said that some middle-income taxpayers could see any benefits of the tax cuts wiped out by higher health insurance premiums if the repeal of the Obamacare mandate goes through. Among them was Senator Susan Collins, one of a handful of Republicans who voted in July to block a broader Republican attempt to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. “I don’t think that provision should be in the bill. I hope the Senate will follow the lead of the House and strike it,” Collins said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Republicans can only afford to lose two votes on the tax bill because of their slim 52-48 majority in the Senate. Getting rid of the mandate is one of Republican Trump’s main goals. He campaigned for president last year on a promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, but Congress has not agreed so far on how to do that. Another top Trump administration official, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, said the individual mandate “isn’t a bargaining chip.” “The president thinks we should get rid of it and I think we should get rid of it,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” Mnuchin said the objective “right now” was to keep repeal of the mandate in the bill. “We are going to work with the Senate as we go through this. We are going to get something to the president to sign this year,” he said. The House of Representatives last week passed its tax bill. Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, consider a tax bill critical to their party’s prospects in the 2018 U.S. congressional elections. Democrats call the Republican plan a giveaway to corporations and the rich. Trump had urged lawmakers to add repeal of the mandate to the tax bill, writing on Twitter last week that the provision was “unfair” and “highly unpopular.” The next day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did just that. The mandate plays a critical role in Obamacare by requiring young, healthy people, who might otherwise go without coverage, to purchase insurance and help offset the costs of covering sicker and older Americans. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that repealing the mandate would increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 13 million by 2027. Republican Senator Roy Blunt said he thought the Senate bill would pass with or without the individual mandate repeal. “It depends on where the votes are,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Appearing on several television shows, Collins said she also wanted the Senate to “skew more of the relief to middle-income taxpayers.” She advocated keeping the top tax rate of 39.6 percent for people who make $1 million or more a year, as the House does, as well as the deduction for state and local taxes. The corporate tax does not need to be cut so steeply to 20 percent, Collins said. A 22 percent rate would garner an additional $200 billion and allow the Senate to restore the deduction for state and local property taxes, she told ABC. Collins has emerged as a pivotal lawmaker in the tax debate, along with Republican Senators John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Ron Johnson, all of whom are also on the fence or oppose the bill. The Senate bill needs work, Collins told ABC’s “This Week.” “I want to see changes in that bill,” she said. “And I think there will be changes.” ;politicsNews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;President Mugabe stuns Zimbabwe by defying pressure to resign;HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe stunned Zimbabwe on Sunday by making no mention of resignation in a television address, defying his own ZANU-PF party, which had sacked him hours earlier, and hundreds of thousands of protesters who had already hailed his downfall. Two sources - one a senior member of the government, the other familiar with talks with leaders of the military - had told Reuters Mugabe would announce his resignation to the nation after ZANU-PF dismissed him as its leader in a move precipitated by an army takeover four days earlier. But in the speech from his State House office, sitting alongside a row of generals, Mugabe acknowledged criticisms from ZANU-PF, the military and the public but made no mention of his own position. Instead, he said the events of the week were not a challenge to my authority as head of state and government , and pledged to preside over the congress scheduled for next month. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was dumbstruck. I am baffled. It s not just me, it s the whole nation. He s playing a game, he told Reuters. He is trying to manipulate everyone. He has let the whole nation down. ZANU-PF had given the 93-year-old, who has led his country since independence in 1980, less than 24 hours to quit as head of state or face impeachment, an attempt to secure a peaceful end to his tenure after a de facto military coup. Chris Mutsvangwa, the leader of the liberation war veterans who have been spearheading an 18-month campaign to oust Mugabe, said plans to impeach him in parliament, which next sits on Tuesday, would now go ahead, and that there would be mass protests on Wednesday. He also implied that Mugabe, who spoke with a firm voice but occasionally lost his way in his script during the 20-minute address, was not aware of what had happened just hours earlier. Either somebody within ZANU-PF didn t tell him what had happened within his own party, so he went and addressed that meeting oblivious, or (he was) blind or deaf to what his party has told him, Mutsvangwa said. ZANU-PF s central committee had earlier named Emmerson Mnangagwa as its new leader. It was Mugabe s sacking of Mnangagwa as his vice-president - to pave the way for his wife Grace to succeed him - that triggered the army s intervention. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets of the capital Harare to celebrate Mugabe s expected downfall and hail a new era for their country. In jubilant scenes, men, women and children ran alongside armoured cars and the troops who stepped in to target what the army called criminals in Mugabe s inner circle. Many heralded a second liberation and spoke of their dreams for political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship. They, like the more than 3 million Zimbabweans who have emigrated to neighbouring South Africa in search of a better life, are likely to be bitterly disappointed by Mugabe s defiance. Speaking from a secret location in South Africa, his nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, had told Reuters that Mugabe and his wife were ready to die for what is correct rather than step down in order to legitimise what he described as a coup. Zhuwao, who was also sanctioned by ZANU-PF, did not answer his phone on Sunday. However, Mugabe s son Chatunga railed against those who had pushed out his father. You can t fire a Revolutionary leader! he wrote on this Facebook page. ZANU-PF is nothing without President Mugabe. The huge crowds in Harare have given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army s intervention, backing its assertion that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, rather than a plain coup, which would risk a diplomatic backlash. But some of Mugabe s opponents are uneasy about the prominent role played by the military, and fear Zimbabwe might be swapping one army-backed autocrat for another, rather than allowing the people to choose their next leader. The real danger of the current situation is that, having got their new preferred candidate into State House, the military will want to keep him or her there, no matter what the electorate wills, former education minister David Coltart said. The United States, a longtime Mugabe critic, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighbouring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once. Besides changing its leadership, ZANU-PF said it wanted to change the constitution to reduce the power of the president, a possible sign of a desire to move towards a more pluralistic and inclusive political system. However, Mnangagwa s history as state security chief during the so-called Gukurahundi crackdown, when an estimated 20,000 people were killed by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland in the early 1980s, suggested that quick, sweeping change was unlikely. The deep state that engineered this change of leadership will remain, thwarting any real democratic reform, said Miles Tendi, a Zimbabwean academic at Oxford University. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Satellite calls yield no clues on missing Argentine submarine;MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) - A storm on Sunday complicated efforts to find an Argentine navy submarine missing in the South Atlantic with 44 crew members, while satellite calls thought to come from the vessel did not help searchers identify the vessel s location. The defense ministry has said the ARA San Juan appeared to try to make contact through seven failed satellite calls on Saturday between late morning and early afternoon. The vessel was 432 km (268 miles) off Argentina s coast when its location was last known early on Wednesday. As waves of up to 8 meters (20 feet) and winds reaching 40 knots complicated the search by sea, authorities spent Sunday trying to trace the submarine s location through data from the satellite calls without significant progress, a navy official told reporters. We analyzed these signals, which as we know were intermittent and weak, said Gabriel Galeazzi, a naval commander. They could not help determine a point on the map to help the search. U.S. satellite communications company Iridium Communications Inc, which was brought in to help analyze the calls, said they did not originate with its device aboard the vessel and may have been from another satellite communications company s equipment. It said the last call it detected from its device was on Wednesday, the same day the government said the vessel vanished. More than a dozen boats and aircraft from Argentina, the United States, Britain, Chile and Brazil had joined the effort. Authorities have mainly been scanning the sea from above as the storm made the search difficult for boats, navy Admiral Gabriel Gonzalez told reporters. Unfortunately these conditions are expected to remain for the next 48 hours, Gonzalez said from the Mar del Plata naval base, about 420 km (240 miles) south of Buenos Aires where the submarine had been heading toward before vanishing. A search of 80 percent of the area initially targeted for the operation turned up no sign of the submarine on the ocean s surface, but the crew should have ample supplies of food and oxygen, Balbi said. The navy said an electrical outage on the diesel-electric-propelled vessel might have downed its communications. Protocol calls for submarines to surface if communication is lost. Three boats left Mar del Plata on Saturday with radar detection probes and were following the path that the submarine would have taken to arrive at the base in reverse, Balbi said. Those probes allow the boats to sweep the ocean floor during their journey and try to make a record of the floor in three dimensions, Balbi said. The U.S. Navy said its four aircraft were carrying a submarine rescue chamber designed during World War II that can reach a bottomed submarine at depths of 850 feet and rescue up to six people at a time. The chamber can seal over the submarine s hatch to allow sailors to move between the vessels. It said it also brought a remote-controlled vehicle that can be submerged and controlled from the surface The dramatic search has captivated the nation of 44 million, which recently mourned the loss of five citizens killed when a truck driver plowed through a bicycle path in New York City. Crew members relatives gathered at the Mar del Plata naval base, where the submarine had once been expected to arrive around noon on Sunday from Ushuaia. However, it would not be unusual for storms to cause delays, Balbi said. At the entrance of the base, locals hung signs with messages in support of the crew members and their families on a chain-link fence. Strength for Argentina. We trust in God. We are waiting for you, read a message inscribed on a celestial blue-and-white Argentine flag hanging on the fence. Let s go, men of steel. We are waiting for you at home, read a message written on a picture of the submarine. Argentine-born Pope Francis mentioned the missing vessel in his Sunday noon prayer. I also pray for the men of the crew of the Argentine military submarine which is missing, the pontiff said. The ARA San Juan was inaugurated in 1983, making it the newest of the three submarines in the navy s fleet. Built in Germany, it underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina. That maintenance included the replacement of its four diesel engines and its electric propeller engines, according to specialist publication Jane s Sentinel. ;worldnews;19/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Moyo says on Twitter he is out of the country;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo, one of a number of officials purged from the ruling ZANU-PF party along with President Robert Mugabe, said on Monday he and at least 50 other senior party officials were outside of the country. Moyo made the comments on his Twitter handle, but the tweet was subsequently deleted. Moyo is one of many ZANU-PF members targeted by the ruling party in the wake of a military coup. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korean women suffer discrimination, rape, malnutrition: U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korean women are deprived of education and job opportunities and are often subjected to violence at home and sexual assault in the workplace, a U.N. human rights panel said on Monday. After a regular review of Pyongyang s record, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women also voiced concern at rape or mistreatment of women in detention especially those repatriated after fleeing abroad. North Korean women are under-represented or disadvantaged in tertiary education, the judiciary, security and police forces and leadership and managerial positions in all non-traditional areas of work , the panel of independent experts said. The main issue is first of all the lack of information. We have no access to a large part of laws, elements and information on national machinery, Nicole Ameline, panel member, told Reuters. We have asked a lot of questions. North Korea told the panel on Nov. 8 that it was working to uphold women s rights and gender equality but that sanctions imposed by major powers over its nuclear and missile programs were taking a toll on vulnerable mothers and children. Domestic violence is prevalent and there is very limited awareness about the issue and a lack of legal services, psycho-social support and shelters available for victims, the panel said. It said economic sanctions had a disproportionate impact on women. North Korean women suffer high levels of malnutrition , with 28 percent of pregnant or lactating women affected, it said. We have called on the government to be very, very attentive to the situation of food and nutrition. Because we consider that it is a basic need and that the government has to invest and to assume its responsibilities in this field, Ameline said. Unfortunately I am not sure that the situation will improve very quickly. The report found that penalties for rape in North Korea were not commensurate with the severity of the crime, which also often goes unpunished. Legal changes in 2012 lowered the penalties for some forms of rape, including the rape of children, rape by a work supervisor and repeated rape. This has led to reducing the punishment for forcing a woman in a subordinate position to have sexual intercourse from four years to three years, the report said. It said women trafficked abroad and then returned to North Korea, are reported to be sent to labor training camps or prisons, accused of illegal border crossing , and may be exposed to further violations of their rights, including sexual violence by security officials and forced abortions. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe calls for cabinet meeting on Tuesday;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s President Robert Mugabe has called his cabinet for a meeting on Tuesday at his State House offices, the chief secretary to the president and cabinet said in a notice, the same day ruling party members plan to impeach him. This is the first time the ministers are set to meet for their routine weekly meeting with Mugabe since the military took power on Wednesday. Cabinet meetings are usually held at Munhumutapa Building in the center of town, but an armored vehicle and armed soldiers are camped outside the offices. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq Kurds seek international help to lift sanctions imposed by Baghdad;ERBIL (Reuters) - Iraq s Kurdistan Regional Government on Monday called on the international community to intervene and help lift sanctions imposed by the central government in Baghdad in retaliation for a September referendum on Kurdish independence. The restrictive policies adopted by Baghdad against Erbil are in violation of Iraq s obligations and responsibilities under international and humanitarian law, the KRG said in a statement. We call on the international community to intercede in urging Baghdad authorities to lift the embargo, without condition, on international flights. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Belarus KGB says Ukrainian journalist set up spy ring in Minsk;MINSK (Reuters) - Belarus s KGB state security service said on Monday it had uncovered a spy ring working for the Ukrainian defence ministry that had been set up by a detained Ukrainian radio correspondent. Minsk-based journalist Pavlo Sharoyko was arrested in October and charged with being an undercover intelligence officer, KGB spokesman Dmitry Pobyarzhin said in a briefing. In Belarus, Sharoyko built a network of agents made up of Belarussian citizens, who carried out his assignments for monetary compensation, Pobyarzhin said. An adviser to the embassy in Minsk, Ukrainian Ihor Skvortsov, has been declared persona non grata - banned from the country - as he is believed to be Sharoyko s handler, Pobyarzhin said. The Ukrainian defence ministry denied the allegations against Sharoyko who it said had worked as a spokesman for the ministry before switching to journalism in 2009. The information contained in the (KGB) statement is not true, it said. The Ukrainian foreign ministry declined immediate comment. Sharoyko and Skvortsov could not be reached for comment. The case could put further pressure on relations between Minsk and Kiev that were tested earlier this year when Belarus hosted large-scale joint military exercises with Russia. September s Zapad-2017 ( West-2017 ) war games unnerved Ukraine and NATO member states on Europe s eastern flank, which feared the exercises could be a rehearsal or cover for a real offensive. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German president says all parties have duty to try to form government;BERLIN (Reuters) - German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he expects all parties elected to parliament to be ready for talks to enable a government to be formed after talks on forging a new ruling coalition collapsed early on Monday. All political parties elected to the German parliament have an obligation to the common interest to serve our country, Steinmeier said in a statement he read out to media. I expect from all a readiness to talk to make agreeing a government possible in the near future, he added. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek island on strike in protest against becoming migrant 'prison';ATHENS (Reuters) - Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos went on strike on Monday to protest against European policies they say have turned it into a prison for migrants and refugees. Islanders shut businesses, shops, municipal offices, nurseries and pharmacies and dozens rallied on a central square, calling on the government to transfer asylum-seekers to the mainland. Lesbos is not a place of exile, a banner read. Just a few miles from Turkey s coast, Lesbos has borne the brunt of Europe s migrant crisis. In 2015, nearly a million people - most fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan - landed on its shores before heading north, mainly to Germany. It is now hosting some 8,500 asylum-seekers in facilities designed to hold fewer than 3,000. Lesbos is not an open prison, nor will we allow anyone to view it as such, Mayor Spyros Galinos was quoted as saying by the Athens News Agency. Thousands of asylum-seekers have become stranded on Lesbos and four other islands close to Turkey since the EU agreed a deal with Ankara in March 2016 to shut down the route through Greece. Some have been moved to camps on the mainland, but authorities say the terms of the agreement prevent asylum-seekers from traveling beyond the islands. Rights groups have described conditions in camps across Greece as deplorable and unfit for humans. On Lesbos, violence often breaks out over delays in asylum procedures and poor living standards. The message (today) was that we can t take it any more, Galinos said. Lesbos is in a state of emergency. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK Brexit campaign probed over possible breach of campaign finance rules;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Electoral Commission has opened an investigation to establish whether Vote Leave Limited, the organization behind the official campaign to leave the European Union, breached campaign finance rules during the 2016 referendum campaign. The commission said on Monday its decision to open an investigation followed a review of previous assessments conducted in February in March, which had resulted in no further action being taken. Since that time, new information has come to light which, when considered alongside the information obtained previously, has given the Commission reasonable grounds to suspect an offense may have been committed, it said in a statement. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korean foreign minister heads to Cuba;HAVANA (Reuters) - North Korea s foreign minister will arrive in Cuba on Monday, in search of support amid unprecedented pressure from the United States and the international community to cease its nuclear weapons and missile programs. The Cuban foreign ministry, in a brief note on its web page, said Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho would meet with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez, among other unspecified activities. North Korea is pursuing nuclear weapon and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions and has made no secret of its plans to develop a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. It has fired two missiles over Japan. Cuba and North Korea have maintained warm political relations since 1960, despite Havana s often-stated opposition to nuclear weapons. President Donald Trump has also increased pressure on Cuba since taking office, rolling back a fragile detente begun by predecessor Barack Obama and returning to the hostile rhetoric of the Cold War. The visit provides an opportunity for North Korea to demonstrate, just 90 miles from the United States, that it is not completely isolated, and for Cuba that it will not buckle under U.S. pressure. At the same time, diplomats said Cuba was one of the few countries that might be able to convince North Korea to move away from the current showdown with the United States that threatens war. We often ask the Cubans if they can talk to them, an Asian diplomat said. The two Communist-run countries are the last in the world to maintain Soviet-style command economies, though under President Raul Castro, the Caribbean nation has taken some small steps toward the more market-oriented communism of China and Vietnam. Cuba maintains an embassy in North Korea, but publicly trades almost exclusively with the South. Last year, trade with the latter was $67 million and with the North just $9 million, according to the Cuban government. However, in 2013, Panama discovered a load of Soviet vintage weapons hidden under 10,000 tonnes of Cuban sugar on a North Korean vessel, in violation of U.N. sanctions and appearing to confirm suspicions that the two countries worked together to circumvent them. Cuba claimed the weapons were going to North Korea for repairs and were to be sent back. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary says it is facing 'frontal assault' from U.S. financier Soros;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary is facing a frontal assault from U.S. financier George Soros who is attacking the country via his non-government organizations and European Union bureaucrats, a top ruling party politician said on Monday. Fidesz Vice Chairman Gergely Gulyas said Soros claims that the Hungarian government lied in its campaign against him were not substantial , adding the billionaire and the European Union pushed the same pro-migrant agenda. He rejected charges by Soros that the government s campaign stoked anti-Muslim sentiment and employed anti-Semitic tropes. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK says clear that Zimbabwe's Mugabe has lost the support of the people;LONDON (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has lost the support of the people, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday, while urging a peaceful and swift resolution to the uncertain political situation there. We don t yet know how developments in Zimbabwe are going to play out but what does appear clear is that Mugabe has lost the support of the people and of his party, the spokesman said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe opposition wants inclusive political process after military intervention;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s main opposition leader said on Monday President Robert Mugabe s refusal to resign had dampened people s spirits and called for an inclusive political process in the aftermath of a military intervention last week. Morgan Tsvangirai said there should be an all-stakeholders meeting to chart the country s future and that the next elections due next year should be supervised by the international community. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Health staff in southern Libya strike after doctor's kidnapping;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Medical staff in the southern Libyan city of Sabha said on Monday they were suspending work for 10 days in protest over poor security after a doctor was kidnapped. Health services in Libya have been severely disrupted by years of conflict with the remote south particularly affected. Salem al-Selhab, who worked in the surgical department of the Sabha Medical Centre, the biggest hospital in southern Libya, was kidnapped by an unknown group on Thursday evening. For a long time the medical staff of the Sabha Medical Centre have suffered attacks, abuse and been shot at, said Osama al-Wafi, a spokesman for the center, adding that Selhab s kidnapping was a serious setback. This doctor was very important, he said. Staff at the center and at private clinics in the city announced a 10-day strike on Sunday to demand Selhab s release and the provision of security for medical staff. Sabha is a major hub for the smuggling of migrants toward Libya s northern coast, some of whom seek treatment in local medical facilities. The Sabha Medical Centre receives 70 percent of its backing from international organizations in the absence of state support from rival governments in Tripoli and the east, said Wafi. We suffer greatly from a shortage of medicines, political division and lack of support, he said. The World Health Organization (WHO), one of the international bodies to provide Sabha Medical Centre with support, strongly condemned violence against staff in the area. WHO urges all to refrain from attacking health workers and facilities, as required by international humanitarian law, and calls upon parties responsible for the kidnapping of the doctor in Sabha to ensure his safety and immediate release, it said in a statement. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's president rejects terrorism suggestion;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese president appeared to defend Hezbollah as necessary to resist Israel on Monday, after an Arab League statement accused the group of terrorism and noted it is part of Lebanon s coalition government. Israeli targeting still continues and it is the right of the Lebanese to resist it and foil its plans by all available means, President Michel Aoun s office quoted him as saying in a Tweet. The heavily armed Shi ite Muslim Hezbollah, formed by Iran s Revolutionary Guards, fought Israel s occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s and says its weapons are still needed against Israel. Saudi Arabia, a regional rival of Iran, opposes Hezbollah s role as a military force in Syria and has accused it of helping the Houthi group in Yemen and militants in Bahrain. The Arab League met on Sunday to discuss what it called Iranian interference in Arab countries, and accused Tehran s ally Hezbollah of terrorism. Aoun said that Lebanon could not accept suggestions that its government was a partner in acts of terrorism, another Tweet quoted him as saying after meeting Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit in Beirut. Aboul Gheit said in Beirut that nobody was accusing Lebanon s government of terrorism or wanted to harm Lebanon. One of the ruling partners is accused of this...It is an indirect means of asking the Lebanese state to talk to this partner and convince them to restrain their acts on Arab land, he said. Everyone acknowledges the particularity of the Lebanese situation. Lebanon faces a political crisis after its prime minister Saad al-Hariri suddenly resigned on Nov. 4 in a statement broadcast from Saudi Arabia. His resignation statement accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in Arab countries. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;SPD leader says voters must reassess German political situation;BERLIN (Reuters) - German voters should be given the opportunity to reevaluate the political situation after talks to form a government collapsed, Social Democrats (SPD) leader Martin Schulz said on Monday, adding that his party was not afraid of new elections. Schulz said his party was still not available to join Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) in a continuation of their grand coalition government after her talks with other parties failed. In such a situation, the sovereign, that is the voters, must reassess what is going on, Schulz told reporters, adding that Merkel had yet to contact him and that he would meet President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Soros says Hungarian government lying in attacks against him;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - U.S. financier George Soros on Monday denounced a Hungarian government campaign against him as distortions and lies designed to create a false external enemy. Soros, 86, is a Hungarian-born Jew whose longtime support for liberal and open-border values in eastern Europe have put him at odds with right-wing nationalists, in particular the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban, who faces elections in April 2018, last month sent to voters seven statements attributed to Soros that, among other things, called for the European Union to settle a million migrants a year and pay each of them thousands of euros. The statements ... contain distortions and outright lies that deliberately mislead Hungarians about George Soros s views on migrants and refugees, said a statement issued by Soros s Open Society Foundations. With Hungary s health care and education systems in distress and corruption rife, the current government has sought to create an outside enemy to distract citizens. The government selected George Soros for this purpose, it said. The ruling Fidesz party s vice chairman said Soros was engaged in a frontal assault against Hungary. What Soros writes about immigration, in general, is a pro-immigration stance that is open about its disdain for the nation state, Gergely Gulyas told a news conference. Decisions made in Brussels echo that in the field of immigration policy. Days before a recent immigration decision in the European Parliament Soros was meeting with the rapporteur on the subject as well as five different EU commissioners. I am not a conspiracy theorist but this holds some clues. Soros said each of the seven statements was a distortion or lie, refuting them one by one. It said Soros proposed admitting an annual 300,000 refugees to the EU only while strengthening European border controls and making migrant relocations within the bloc voluntary, not mandatory as Budapest asserted. It said Soros proposed no payments to migrants, rather EU subsidies to member states to help them cope with migration. To three other proposals attributed to Soros - that he wanted milder criminal sentences for migrants, to push national cultures and languages into the background to facilitate easier integration of migrants and sanctions against countries that oppose migration, the Open Society statement said, Nowhere has Soros made any such statement(s). This is a lie. Orban once received a Soros grant to study at Britain s Oxford University but later turned against the billionaire philanthropist, vilifying him as an alleged mastermind of a global agenda to weaken nation states. The election campaign of Orban s Fidesz party has built on a series of billboards warning Hungarians, Don t let Soros have the last laugh and showing a laughing Soros in black and white. Some of the billboards have had stinking Jew scrawled on them. The billboards, along with calls from Orban to preserve Hungary s ethnic homogeneity and his endorsement of a World Two Hungarian leader who allied with Nazi Germany, drew accusations of anti-Semitism earlier this year. Alluding to the billboards and to Orban s rejection of immigration, especially from Muslim nations, the Open Society Foundations accused Budapest of stoking anti-Muslim sentiment and employing anti-Semitic tropes reminiscent of the 1930s . Fidesz pulled the billboard campaign just before a July visit to Budapest by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Orban vowed to fight anti-Semitism. The government has denied its campaign was anti-Semitic, and re-launched the billboards in the autumn in promoting a national consultation with voters. Gulyas said it was outrageous that Soros called the campaign anti-Semitic. Immigration which Soros supported was bringing hundreds of thousands of people into Europe whose cultural background was inimical to Jewsm he said. It is not us who should be facing anti-Semitism charges, he said, adding that Fidesz also had nothing against Muslim culture but was against mass immigration of people with a different cultural background to Hungary s Christian roots. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK queen and husband Philip celebrate 70 years of marriage, quietly;LONDON (Reuters) - Queen Elizabeth and husband Prince Philip mark their platinum wedding anniversary with a small family get-together on Monday, a far cry from the pomp and celebration which greeted their marriage 70 years ago. The couple married at London s Westminster Abbey on Nov. 20, 1947, just two years after the end of World War Two, in a glittering ceremony which attracted statesmen and royalty from around the world and huge crowds of cheering well-wishers. Seventy years on, no public events are planned, although the 91-year-old queen did acknowledge the occasion by appointing Philip a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order for his services to the sovereign. Elizabeth and her 96-year-old husband, who retired from active public life in August, will celebrate their milestone with a private party at Windsor Castle, the monarch s home to the west of London. That contrasts with their silver, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries when they attended thanksgiving services at the thousand-year-old Abbey, where the queen was crowned and where her grandson and his wife, William and Kate, were married in 2011. However, the Abbey itself will mark the occasion with a full peal of its bells involving 5,070 change of sequences, with the 70 reflecting the anniversary, which will last more than three hours. Congratulations to The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh as they celebrate their Platinum Wedding anniversary, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Twitter. They have devoted their lives to the service of the UK and the Commonwealth - my best wishes to them both on this special occasion. The wedding of Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, to the dashing naval officer Philip Mountbatten was seen as raising the nation s spirits amid an austere background of rationing and shortages that followed the war. Millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel, said former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Five years later, Elizabeth succeeded her father George VI on the throne and has ruled for the following 65 years, more than any other monarch in British history, with Philip by her side throughout. The support he gives to my grandmother is phenomenal, Prince Harry said in a documentary to mark her 60th year on the throne. Regardless of whether my grandfather seems to be doing his own thing, sort of wandering off like a fish down the river, the fact that he s there - I personally don t think that she could do it without him. While the couple s marriage has remained strong, three of their four children have seen their unions end in divorce, most notably heir Prince Charles s ill-fated union with his late first wife Princess Diana. He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, Elizabeth said in a speech to mark the couple s 50th wedding anniversary in 1997. Royal historian Hugo Vickers said the secret of their long marriage was their mutual support and devotion to duty. They don t waste a jot of time wondering whether we like them or not - they just get on with the job, he told Reuters. On the occasions when I have been lucky enough to see them together, they always look incredibly comfortable in each other s company. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya's Supreme Court upholds Kenyatta's presidential win;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta in last month s repeat presidential vote, paving the way for him to be sworn in next week. Chief Justice David Maraga said all six judges dismissed the two legal challenges to the vote. The opposition coalition NASA insisted the government was illegitimate. Kenyatta s main challenger, NASA s Raila Odinga, said via his adviser Salim Lone that the ruling did not come as a surprise and said it was a decision taken under duress . We in NASA had repeatedly declared before this Supreme Court ruling today that we consider this government to be illegitimate and do not recognise it. This position has not been changed by the court ruling, the statement said. It referred to security concerns raised by the opposition about the judges after one of their bodyguards was shot the day before the court was to rule on a request to delay the vote. The chief justice said at the time police had enhanced security after the shooting. The court could not immediately be reached on Monday to comment on NASA s allegation. Monday s ruling clears the way for Kenyatta s swearing-in on Nov. 28, but it is unlikely to end the worst political crisis in East Africa s most developed economy in a decade. Sporadic clashes erupted in pro-opposition areas after the ruling. Odinga had called for a National Resistance Movement after Kenyatta s victory last month. Kenyatta had said he would not engage in dialogue with the opposition until constitutional options had been exhausted. The prolonged election process has disrupted the economy and forced the government to cut its growth forecast. Rights groups say at least 66 people have died in bloodshed surrounding the votes in August and October. The petitioners had argued that the outcome should be voided because the election board did not seek fresh nominations after the Aug. 8 poll was invalidated, and because the vote was not held in each of the 291 constituencies. The Supreme Court ordered the Oct. 26 election after nullifying the results of the August election, citing irregularities in the tallying of votes - an unprecedented move on the continent. The opposition boycotted the poll, which Kenyatta won with 98 percent of the vote. Some opposition supporters mobilised to prevent polls from opening in the west of the country. The court has unanimously determined that the petitions are not merited, chief justice Maraga said. As a consequence, the presidential election of 26th of October is hereby upheld. The court did not detail its reasons. It said it would issue a full judgment within 21 days. The decision was met with applause in the courtroom from lawyers for the election commission and Kenyatta. The commission said the ruling affirmed its resolve and deliberate efforts to conduct free, fair and credible elections . There was no immediate reaction from Kenyatta. Kenya, a U.S. ally in the fight against Islamists and a trade gateway to East Africa, has a history of disputed elections. A row over the 2007 poll, which Odinga challenged after being declared loser, was followed by weeks of ethnic bloodshed that killed more than 1,200 people. Police said on Sunday at least four people were killed overnight in a Nairobi opposition stronghold. [L8N1NP07P] Odinga accused the government of being behind the killings, which followed at least five deaths on Friday as police tried to disperse opposition supporters. Deputy President William Ruto said action would be taken against those inciting violence. Odinga put the death toll in violence since he returned to Nairobi on Friday from an overseas trip far higher, at 31. The police tally over the same period was nine. In several areas of the capital, riots broke out on Sunday in response to the deaths, as residents set cars and buses on fire and police responded with teargas. Outside the Nairobi court, Kenyatta supporters waved Kenyan flags and danced, and celebrations broke out in the central city of Nyeri, a ruling party stronghold, and other cities. In the western, pro-opposition city of Migori, protesters said one person was killed in skirmishes with the police after the court ruling. Migori county police commander Joseph Nthenge denied the report. There were no deaths reported from Kisumu, the largest city in western Kenya and a hotbed of opposition support, although police and protesters also briefly clashed there too. In the Nairobi slum of Kibera, residents said three people were killed on Monday, including a 67-year-old woman and a young man, but there were conflicting reports of who was responsible for the violence. Police spokesman Charles Owino told Reuters that he had no reports of deaths in the capital on Monday. In downtown Nairobi, Elvis Kinyanjui, a vendor selling socks and watches, said he hoped next year business would be back to normal . Everyone is holding on to their shilling not knowing what tomorrow will be like, he said. Shares headed higher and the currency strengthened against the dollar after the ruling, traders said. [L8N1NQ1OW] The markets dropped sharply when the court nullified August s vote. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's opposition to decide on Mugabe impeachment Tuesday: chief whip;HARARE (Reuters) - Lawmakers from Zimbabwe s main opposition party MDC will hold a meeting on Tuesday to decide whether to join their ruling party rivals to impeach 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe, the minority chief whip said. Although Mugabe s ZANU-PF has the required two-thirds membership to remove Mugabe, participation by the opposition could give a boost to a process that was started by the military s intervention last week. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's 5-Star pummels center-right in Rome beachfront vote;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement pummeled a center-right coalition to govern Ostia, one of Rome s largest neighborhoods, in a run-off vote that confirms the 5-Star s strength months away from a national election. Five-Star s Giuliana Di Pillo took 60 percent of the vote, doubling her first-round result, against 40 percent for the center-right s Monica Picca in a closely watched contest that comes just months before a national election. The result shows the legal troubles that have plagued the administration of Rome s 5-Star mayor, Virginia Raggi, since her election in June of last year have not dampened the maverick party s popularity in the capital. There is a Raggi effect and it s positive, Luigi Di Maio, the 5-Star prime minister candidate, wrote on Twitter. In Rome we continue to win even against a coalition of five center-right forces. The 5-Star is Italy s most-popular party ahead of a national vote due between March and May, while the ruling Democratic Party (PD) is a distant second, a poll showed last week. But a center-right alliance joining Silvio Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!), the anti-immigration Northern League and the far-right Brothers of Italy would pull in the most votes, though it would fall short of a parliamentary majority. The PD failed to make it to Ostia s run-off and the turnout was just 34 percent. The previous center-left administration for the capital s seaside borough, which has more than 230,000 inhabitants, was dissolved two years ago after police said it had fallen under the influence of organized crime. This year s campaign was marred by alleged connections between the neo-fascist Casapound party, which won more than 9 percent in the first round and will have a seat on the local council, and organized crime. Ten days before the runoff, Robert Spada, a brother of an imprisoned mobster, attacked a journalist for RAI state TV who had gone to ask questions about Spada s open support for Casapound. Italian organized crime groups have long sought control of local governments, and some 450 municipal administrations of different political stripes have been dissolved for mafia infiltration over the past quarter century. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe broadcaster on stand-by for address by military: ZBC workers;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s state broadcaster ZBC was on Monday put on stand-by for an expected address by the military, a day after President Robert Mugabe failed to announce his resignation to an expectant nation, workers at the broadcaster said. The military seized power last week saying this was meant to arrest criminal elements around the president and on Sunday the ruling ZANU-PF party re-called Mugabe from his position as president and first secretary. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's ruling party to launch Mugabe impeachment motion on Tuesday;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF on Monday officially notified President Robert Mugabe of his removal as party president and will on Tuesday table a motion to impeach him after a deadline it set for his resignation passed, spokesman Simon Moyo said. ZANU-PF on Sunday removed Mugabe, who has led the party since 1977 and been in power for 37 years. The party also fired his wife Grace, capping a dramatic week after the military seized power on Wednesday. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Face time with May: UK listens to bankers' Brexit worries;LONDON (Reuters) - A few hours before Theresa May lost her second cabinet member in a week, the British prime minister found time amidst the crisis to meet one of the world s most powerful bankers. With May renowned for keeping finance chiefs at arm s length, some commercial rivals suspected special treatment in her willingness to sit down with Jamie Dimon, chief executive of U.S. investment bank JPMorgan. Others, however, sense a subtle but significant change in the political climate with May listening more to the worries of an industry struggling to fathom out Britain s departure from the European Union. Her talks with Dimon on Nov. 8 raised eyebrows - and some hackles - around the City of London financial center. It s a bit outrageous, said a senior executive at one of Britain s top banks. What other bank CEO is getting as much one-on-one face time with the prime minister? We certainly aren t. From Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to David Cameron last year, British prime ministers have traditionally held the door open for leaders of a finance industry that pays more than 70 billion pounds ($92 billion) in UK tax every year and employs more than a million Britons. Not so May, who has appeared reluctant to meet bank executives. Still, Dimon secured the face-to-face talks between the abrupt departures of her defense and international development ministers which rocked the minority government. Shortly before last year s Brexit referendum, Dimon warned that 4,000 out of JPMorgan s 16,000 British jobs might have to move abroad to ensure the bank could continue selling services across the remaining nations of the EU. Dimon has since softened his tone, but the British bank executive asked whether the original estimate had won JPMorgan the access. I don t know if it s because they ve threatened to move the most jobs - maybe we should say we re moving 4,000 too, he said. But something is afoot. Reuters has spoken to more than a dozen executives at large banks and government officials, with many saying May is showing greater willingness to press the City s cause in Brexit negotiations. In return, the bankers are scaling back their plans to move jobs to rival financial centers such as Frankfurt, Paris and Dublin, at least during any transitional period after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. Britain and the EU have yet to begin discussing financial services at the Brexit talks, worrying bankers who fear the government has left it too late to negotiate a transition period or secure a good deal. Our view is that the government frankly is in chaos, said another senior executive at a U.S. bank. We are really nervous. However, May outlined to Dimon her vision for a transition period after Brexit day - March 29, 2019 - and a future trade deal with the EU, easing concerns that Britain may crash out of the world s biggest trading bloc without any agreement. A JPMorgan spokeswoman expressed cautious optimism after the Downing Street talks. While some uncertainty remains, we feel that the government understands the concerns of international firms such as ours, and the economy more broadly, she said. We were grateful for better clarity on the government s objectives in the Brexit negotiations. A spokesman for the prime minister did not respond to requests for comment. However, sources with knowledge of the meeting noted that she can make promises on her intentions for the Brexit talks but not on their outcome. We got clarity on what they re looking for, not on how it will unfold, said the source. The bankers pressed their case for a period of adjustment to the post-Brexit financial services regime, rather than an abrupt change as soon as Britain leaves. We re all looking for transition and a good future deal, said the source. In return, the JPMorgan team indicated there would be no major staff upheaval, at least on Brexit day. They told her we will try to move as few people as possible on Day One. It will be a few hundred people and we will keep as many people as possible in the UK, said another source. For the banks, moving top London employees to the continent is expensive and unpopular with staff reluctant to uproot their families. But longer term, a significant number of jobs may still shift if a final deal is not to their liking. As in a number of countries, banks have been deeply unpopular in Britain since the global financial crisis. But their leaders felt particularly unloved after May came to power last year and cooled what critics regarded as an overly cozy relationship between the government and big business. May confined her contacts with bankers largely to round table gatherings such as at Davos in January, a meeting Dimon also attended. Some Wall Street bosses were left expressing frustration with a lack of detail on the Brexit process, and questioning May s commitment to protecting the finance industry The relationship remains measured. May was scheduled to make only a five minute courtesy appearance at the talks with Dimon, hosted by finance minister Philip Hammond. In the event she stayed a quarter of an hour. Still, those who connect government and business have noticed a change. Iain Anderson, executive chairman of public affairs company Cicero, said a thaw began after the May lost her parliamentary majority in a June election and the government started asking companies for more input on the Brexit talks. The mood has improved from last year when I don t think I have ever seen businesses as emotional and angry, said Anderson, whose firm represents many FTSE 100 companies. Government officials confirmed May s change of tack. She is far more skeptical about engaging with business than her predecessors, said one official, who declined to be named. This created bitterness because people are getting less face time, said the official, but added: The situation has improved since the election. Brexit minister David Davis, whose talks with chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier appear deadlocked, has led his own charm offensive in the past week or so. Davis said on Tuesday the financial industry would be exempt from any curbs on immigration from the remaining EU countries. That is likely to contrast with tough new rules planned for arrivals of lower-skilled workers. In another speech, he emphasized the importance of an industry which accounts for about 12 percent of Britain s economic output. When I sit round the negotiating table with Michel Barnier, or round the cabinet table with my colleagues, it s always with the importance of the City very much in my mind, Davis said. Only a year ago, he was accusing bankers of leading a blame Brexit festival and lying about the number of UK employees they would have to fire. Davis had surprised executives in his initial meetings by telling them they would not get any special favors in the negotiations, according to people who attended. The head of one of Britain s largest finance companies, who has met Davis several times in the last year, said the minister has accepted the damage to the wider economy if firms go overseas. Davis has got the message, the executive said. According to government officials, the atmosphere has improved since the banks scaled back their estimates of how many jobs will move to more realistic levels. There has been an effort on both sides to improve the relationship, he said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Clamor for justice: Yugoslav court leaves global legacy;BELGRADE (Reuters) - When a court on the Dutch North Sea coast issues its final verdict this week, it will signal the end of an experiment that has reverberated around the world, from the killing fields of Rwanda to the CIA s secret cells in Europe. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), set up by the United Nations in 1993, marked the biggest leap in the field of international criminal law since the Allies tried the Nazis in Nuremberg. Created in answer to the worst war crimes in Europe since World War Two, it set a precedent of accountability that has since put the Khmer Rouge and Liberia s Charles Taylor in the dock and paved the way for a court with global ambition. Almost 25 years later, its legacy is under threat. The International Criminal Court (ICC), opened in 2002, is undermined by renewed West-Russia rivalry, stone-walling and revolt in Africa, barrel bombs in Syria and a boycott by three of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Supporters of the Yugoslav tribunal say it will remain a beacon inspiring a growing demand for justice and creativeness in delivering it from ad hoc tribunals in Africa to the conviction in one country of a dictator from another and that of a Syrian in Sweden after a post on Facebook. The glass is either half full or half empty, said Alex Whiting, professor of practice at Harvard Law School. You can say we haven t come far enough and the new institutions, particularly the ICC, have not replicated the success of the ICTY, but you can just as easily say it s remarkable how far we ve come in just 25 years, he said. The ICTY is the North Star. The Yugoslav tribunal owes a debt to history, born as it was between the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks on the United States, when Russia was weak and the West was united in collective action. For decades before, conflicts from Vietnam to Algeria, Afghanistan to Sri Lanka escaped major judicial scrutiny. Backed by the arrest-power of Western peacekeepers and the readiness of the European Union to condition integration with Yugoslavia s successor states on their cooperation, the tribunal issued 161 indictments and secured 83 convictions. Wednesday s verdict in the trial of Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic will be its last, bar appeals. The Yugoslav court was the first to indict a sitting head of state in Serbia s Slobodan Milosevic, recognized sexual violence as a crime of war and advanced the definition of genocide. With the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda, it assembled the hybrid case law used by tribunals in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Lebanon and ultimately the ICC. Its 2.5 million pages of transcripts offer a forensic and often harrowing account of a state s dissolution that dispels the fog of wartime propaganda. More than 4,500 witnesses took the stand. I committed myself to speak on behalf of those who did not survive, said Nusreta Sivac, a former judge in Bosnia who testified to her rape by Bosnian Serb captors. The tribunal rulings will write history. Detractors say the court was slow, expensive and damaged by a number of high-profile acquittals. Milosevic died in 2006 while still on trial, while some cases were plagued by witness intimidation. The tribunal was supposed to help with reconciliation, but revisionism is rife and convicted war criminals often feted as heroes. Critics argue the indictment of Milosevic, at the height of NATO air strikes against him, only complicated the conflict and encouraged him to cling on, which he did for another 17 months. Similar arguments have been made against the ICC s pursuit of some African leaders. Established by treaty and boycotted by the United States, China and Russia, the ICC has little of the clout of the ICTY. With only one Arab member, it has found the bulk of its work in Africa. Alleging bias, Burundi quit the court last month. Kenya and South Africa have threatened to follow. The court s credibility has already been tested by the collapse in 2014 of a case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir s eight-year evasion of arrest. Most glaring is its impotence in the face of nearly half a million dead in Syria, its hands tied by Russian and Chinese vetoes in the Security Council, which can refer a case to the court in a non-member state such as Syria. The ICC denies any bias against Africa and is at various stages of investigation in Georgia, Iraq, Ukraine, Colombia and Palestine, though it can expect to make little progress in investigating conflicts involving Russia or the United States. In a watershed moment, prosecutors this month called for a formal investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, including the mistreatment of detainees by U.S. forces in the country and at CIA dark sites in Poland, Romania and Lithuania. Experts say the move is symbolic of the court s ambition, but also of its limitations, given the unlikelihood of any cooperation from the Trump administration. The Yugoslav tribunal demonstrated that, with strong political and diplomatic support from the international community, justice can be achieved , its chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told Reuters. But without that support, the obstacles can be almost insurmountable. Kevin Jon Heller, law professor at the University of Amsterdam, said of the ICC: I strongly doubt it is ever going to fulfill the aspirations of the people in the states that created it. Nevertheless, demands for accountability are multiplying, along with avenues to pursue them. Experts point to the 2016 conviction of Chad ex-dictator, Hissene Habre, in a Senegalese court, the first time universal jurisdiction was used to prosecute the former ruler of one country by a court in another for human rights crimes. The same principle saw a Syrian soldier convicted by a Swedish court last month, partly on the basis of social media posts, while authorities in Sweden and Germany are each investigating more than a dozen individuals for crimes in Syria and Iraq. With the Security Council paralyzed, the U.N. General Assembly has launched its own ad hoc mechanism to investigate war crimes in Syria. A hybrid tribunal is in the works in Central African Republic and another mooted for South Sudan. What has not ebbed in the last five to seven years, and in fact what has only increased, is the demand for justice, and an expectation that it will translate into action, said Param-Preet Singh, an associate director at Human Rights Watch. The ICTY and efforts since have changed the conversation , said Whiting. It is for that reason this project will never die, he said. It will go into dormancy, but it will never die. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German coalition talks collapse is 'bad news for Europe': Dutch minister;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The collapse of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s talks to form a three-way coalition government is bad news for Europe given the leading role of the European Union s biggest member state, the Dutch foreign minister said on Monday. Germany s political crisis was weighing on the euro and European shares after the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) unexpectedly pulled out on Sunday from weeks of talks with Merkel s conservatives and the ecologist Greens. It s bad news for Europe that the government in Germany will take a little longer, new Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra said on arrival for talks with EU peers in Brussels. Germany is a very influential country within the EU so if they don t have a government and therefore don t have a mandate it ll be very hard for them to take positions. Germany s outgoing EU Minister Michael Roth, a member of the Social Democrats who are not in talks on forming a new Merkel government, said: We all have an interest in getting a mandate so that we are able to take care fully of business in Europe. We have never had such a situation in Germany. So, given the collapse of these exploratory talks, we will need to assess the situation and decide accordingly. The spokesman for the EU s executive arm in Brussels stressed the need for stability in Germany, as did an official in French President Emmanuel Macron s office. We are confident that the German constitutional process will provide the basis for the stability and continuity that has been a trademark of German politics and we hope this time will not be different, said the European Commission s Margaritis Schinas. While some in Germany spoke of a possible new election, Zijlstra said that was a bad idea and noted that the Dutch government took seven months to form, which meant German parties could still return to talks after a pause. Foreign Minister Didier Reynders of Belgium, which was without a government for 18 months after an election, sought to strike a lighter tone on Germany. In Belgium we have a tradition to do that, sometimes it s very long, Reynders told reporters. Zijlstra did not think the situation in Germany affected the Brexit talks specifically for now, as the EU was waiting for a substantial offer from the British on the exit bill. Both Roth and Reynders agreed London must make a move on the money now. Arriving at the same talks, the Czech Republic s EU minister, Ales Chmelar, said: We are hopeful that we will have a strong government in Germany sooner rather than later. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe students chant anti-Mugabe songs, exams postponed;HARARE (Reuters) - The University of Zimbabwe postponed exams on Monday after students started chanting and singing songs against 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe, who is under mounting pressure to resign, a Reuters witness said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe speech was meant to sanitize army intervention: sources;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe agreed to resign on Sunday but his ruling ZANU-PF party did not want him to quit in front of the military, an act that would have made its intervention look like a coup, two senior political sources said on Monday. It would have looked extremely bad if he had resigned in front of those generals. It would have created a huge amount of mess, one senior source within ZANU-PF said. Another political source said the speech was meant to sanitize the military s action. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel cancels news conference with Dutch PM as coalition talks fail;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel has canceled a news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte that had been planned for Monday, her office said, after German coalition talks collapsed overnight. The chancellery gave no reason for the cancellation of the news conference, which had been scheduled for 1 p.m. (1200 GMT). Merkel said earlier on Monday her efforts to form a three-way coalition government had failed, thrusting Germany into a political crisis. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. consular office in Zurich evacuated: Blick newspaper;ZURICH (Reuters) - A United States consular office in the Swiss financial capital Zurich was evacuated on Monday when staff found a suspicious package in the entrance, the Blick newspaper reported, citing staff from the facility. Police confirmed they had deployed in the downtown area but gave no more details. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China upset as Indian president visits disputed border region;BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Monday criticized a visit by Indian President Ram Nath Kovind to the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims, saying China opposed any activities by Indian leaders in disputed areas. The latest row over Arunachal Pradesh suggests the Asian giants remain far apart, despite recent attempts to defuse tension over a region that China claims as southern Tibet. The Indian president went over the weekend, inaugurating a new state assembly building. For India, the state is where the sun first rises - being its easternmost region - each day, and from here light is spread across the country, he said in a speech to the state assembly. He also remarked on several steps taken by the federal government to advance the state s transport links. Speaking at a daily news briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that China had never recognized Arunachal Pradesh, but that China s position on the border issue was clear, which was to seek a solution both could accept via talks. Before the border issue is resolved, both sides should jointly work hard to protect the peace and tranquility of the border region. China resolutely opposes Indian leaders activities in disputed regions, Lu said. Sino-India ties are at an important stage in development, and China hopes India does not do anything to complicate the border issue but should instead create conditions for border talks and the healthy, stable development of relations, he added. China and India have tried to develop two-ways ties in recent years but there is still deep distrust over the border dispute. In April, China slammed India s decision to host Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in the same region, saying it could cause serious damage to relations. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. urges Japan to resettle more refugees after taking just three in first half;TOKYO (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency has urged Japan to resettle more asylum seekers, its chief said on Monday, pressuring the country to help solve a global crisis after giving refugee status to just three people in the first half of the year. Japan is one of the developed world s least welcoming countries for asylum seekers. It accepted 28 in 2016, despite applications from a record 10,091 people. It has since 2008 given home to limited numbers of refugees through a so-called third-country resettlement scheme, resettling a total of 152 people - mostly ethnic Karen people from Myanmar living in Thai and Malaysian camps. That program is very small, about 20-30 refugees a year, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told a news conference in Tokyo. I have asked the government to consider whether it could be expanded. Japan s reluctance to accept refugees mirrors a wider caution towards immigration in a nation where many pride themselves on cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Its record at home has drawn sharp criticism from international human rights groups, and has been at odds with its traditional status as a major international donor on refugees. But Japan s donations to the UNHCR have slipped: in the year to Oct. 2, it was the fourth-largest donor, giving $152 million, compared to the second-largest four years ago. Contributions from the government to the UNHCR have been declining a little bit every year since 2013, Grandi said. What I asked the government to consider is that the needs of refugees and displaced people are increasing. More than 2 million people fleeing wars or persecution have joined the ranks of the world s refugees this year. At the end of last year, the latest figure available, 17.2 million refugees fell under the UNHCR s mandate. Japan says that many people claim asylum in Japan to find work, encouraged by access to renewable work permits for people applying for refugee status. It officially rejects unskilled migrant workers, even as a fast-shrinking and ageing population blunts the potency of government efforts to rouse the economy from over two decades of sluggish growth and deflation. The Justice Ministry, which oversees refugee recognition, is weighing steps including restrictions on work permits for asylum seekers to curb what it deems abusive applications. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron says not in French interests for German coalition talks to stall;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he had spoken with German Chancellor Angela Merkel late on Sunday when her efforts to form a coalition government collapsed and that it was not in French interests for the process to stall. It s not in our interests that the process freezes up, Macron told reporters in Paris. Germany s pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) unexpectedly pulled out after more than four weeks of talks with Merkel s conservative bloc and the ecologist Greens, citing irreconcilable differences. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says willing to keep playing constructive role over Rakhine state issue;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Myanmar President Htin Kyaw on Sunday that China was willing to keep playing a constructive role over the Rakhine state issue, China s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe war vets to launch court case to legalize military action to oust Mugabe;HARARE (Reuters) - The leader of Zimbabwe s war veterans Chris Mutsvangwa said on Monday he would initiate court action to legalize the military action against President Robert Mugabe after the army seized power on Wednesday. The 93-year-old president defied expectations that he would resign in a national address on Sunday night during which he was flanked by military generals. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe has drafted resignation letter, CNN says;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has agreed to stand down and his resignation letter has been drafted, CNN said on Monday, citing a source familiar with his negotiations with the generals who seized power in Harare last week. Under the terms of the deal, Mugabe and his wife Grace would be granted full immunity, CNN said. Two senior government sources told Reuters late on Sunday that Mugabe had agreed to resign but did not know details of his departure. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Twenty Chinese Uighurs use blankets to escape Thai cell;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Twenty ethnic Uighur Muslims from China broke out of a detention center near the Thai-Malaysia border, Thai officials said on Monday, after digging holes in the wall and using blankets as ladders. The 20 were part of the last remaining group of more than 200 Uighurs who were detained in 2014. Members of the group identified themselves as Turkish citizens and asked to be sent to Turkey but more than 100 were forcibly returned to China in July 2015, a move that sparked international condemnation, including from rights groups who feared they could face torture in China. Hundreds of people have died in recent years in China s troubled far western region of Xinjiang due to violence between majority Han Chinese and Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language. Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Uighurs have escaped unrest in Xinjiang by traveling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. Twenty-five Uighurs dug through their cell wall using broken tiles and then used blankets to climb out of the cell to make their dramatic escape from the detention center in Thailand s southern Songkhla province, immigration officials said. Five were caught but the rest fled, officials said. Twenty are still at large, Police Captain Prasit Timmakarn, sub-inspector of the detention center, told Reuters, adding: Heavy rain helped to mask the loud escape noises. Prasit said authorities have set up checkpoints along the border. In August 2015, a bomb planted at Bangkok s Erawan shrine killed 20 people, most of them foreign tourists. Thai police arrested two Uighur men who are still on trial. Authorities said the attack was prompted by an earlier crackdown on human smuggling networks but many analysts and diplomats said it was likely an act of revenge for Thailand s deportation to China of the more than 100 Uighurs. The Chinese government has blamed much of the Xinjiang unrest on separatist Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say that anger over tightening Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Uighurs is more to blame. China routinely denies any repression in Xinjiang. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte keeps open pit mining ban in policy clash;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has not lifted a ban on open pit mining, his spokesman said on Monday, going against the stance of a government panel and the environment minister who are seeking to reverse the policy. Open pit mining is allowed under the laws of the Southeast Asian country, the world s top nickel ore exporter. But, the former environment minister Regina Lopez banned it during her 10 months in office, saying the environmental degradation ruined the economic potential of places where it was done. The Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC), an inter-agency panel that makes recommendations on mining policy, last month asked the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to lift the ban. Roy Cimatu, the new Environment and Natural Resources Secretary, supports removing the ban. Cimatu replaced Lopez when she stepped down in May after the Philippine Congress voted not to confirm her. I assure you that this is one of the instances when I personally asked the President if there s been a change in policy. And he says that s there s still no new policy on this, there s still a ban on new open pit mining, Harry Roque, Duterte s spokesman, told a media briefing. Roque said he was unsure whether the MICC recommendation has reached Duterte. The MICC is co-chaired by Cimatu and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez. Calls and messages to Cimatu seeking comment were not immediately returned. But Finance Undersecretary Bayani Agabin, who is an alternate for Dominguez on the MICC, said the policy on open pit mining is under Duterte s authority. The President has the final say on the matter, Agabin told Reuters in a text message. The ban would only affect new projects. Lifting the ban could open the door for some big-ticket ventures including the $5.9 billion Tampakan copper and gold mine. The Tampakan project in South Cotabato province on the island of Mindanao is the nation s biggest stalled mining venture. Operator Glencore Plc to quit the project in 2015 but development was first halted after South Cotabato banned open-pit mining in 2010. Lopez has said the project would cover an area the size of 700 soccer fields in what otherwise would be agricultural land. Duterte said in September he agreed with the open-pit mining ban given the environmental damage it causes, but would give mining firms time to find other ways to extract minerals. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three dead after suspected gas leak at PetroChina refinery: media;BEIJING (Reuters) - Three workers were killed and six others injured during a suspected gas leak at a PetroChina-operated refinery in Dalian on Saturday evening, state media said on Monday. The men working for Henan Yanling Jingshun Petrochemical Machinery Equipment Co Ltd were carrying out maintenance at the West Pacific Petrochemical Corp (WEPEC) plant, in northeast Liaoning province. They were thought to have been poisoned by hydrogen sulphide, a highly toxic gas found in natural gas and crude petroleum, the China News report said. A PetroChina spokesperson could not immediately comment on the accident. A WEPEC official said production at the 200,000-barrels per day plant had not been affected by the accident. The Dalian government is investigating the cause of the incident, the China News report said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's Chongqing renews attacks on former disgraced leaders;BEIJING (Reuters) - The government of the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing renewed its attacks on two of its disgraced former leaders on Monday, saying one had set up an independent kingdom while the other was a lazy deceiver. Chongqing, one of China s most important cities, is perhaps best known outside China for its association with its one-time party boss, Bo Xilai, once himself a contender for top leadership before being jailed for life in 2013 in a dramatic corruption scandal. In July, another of its party chiefs, Sun Zhengcai, was sacked after he was accused of corruption. Sun, who has yet to face a court, had also been seen as a contender for promotion to the highest echelons of power in China. Chongqing is now run by Chen Miner, a close ally of President Xi Jinping, who has made fighting deeply ingrained corruption a cornerstone of his administration. Chen has vowed to root out graft in the city. In a front page commentary, the official Chongqing Daily said there could be no excuses for ignoring party instructions, especially on party discipline issues. Bo Xilai raised his own flag, started something new in order to be different, and set up an independent kingdom, the paper wrote, in apparent reference to his Chongqing model policy of more equal growth and flashy infrastructure projects. Bo, a former commerce minister, turned the sprawling, haze-covered municipality into a showcase for his mix of populist policies and bold spending plans that won support from leftists yearning for a charismatic leader. His campaign against crime was also crucial in making him the country s most prominent provincial-level leader, and a popular one at that. But he was ousted after his wife murdered a British businessman and later jailed for a litany of crimes, including bribery, corruption and abuse of power. Sun, though, has yet to be formally charged. The party has accused him of leaking secrets as well as bribery and abuse of power. The Chongqing Daily did not reveal any other details of what Sun is suspected of, only leveling further broad accusations against him. Sun Zhengcai practiced lazy and indolent politics, bullied those below and hoodwinked those above, and was passively handled enforcement of decision from the party center, it added. The actions of Bo and Sun seriously harmed the party and had a malign influence on Chongqing, the paper said. Efforts need to redoubled to root out their residual poison , it wrote. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing orders safety checks after apartment block fire kills 19;BEIJING (Reuters) - A fire in a Beijing apartment block that killed 19 people and injured eight has prompted authorities to order city-wide safety checks, state news agency Xinhua reported. The fire broke out on Saturday evening at a three-storey apartment block in Beijing s southern Daxing district, and a probe in to its cause was underway, Xinhua reported, adding that anyone found to be responsible would be punished. Preliminary investigation showed there was a refrigeration facility in the basement of the apartment, where the fire was likely to have started, Xinhua said late on Sunday. Fire fighters said there was heavy smoke in the building but no large flames. Following the blaze, Beijing s Communist Party boss Cai Qi ordered safety checks throughout the capital, including its outlying villages. We must take actions and protect people s lives and safeguard the safety and stability of the capital, Cai said, according to Xinhua. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China proposed three-phase plan for Rohingya issue;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has proposed a three-phase plan for resolving the Rohingya crisis, starting with a ceasefire, that has won the support of Myanmar and Bangladesh, the Foreign Ministry said. More than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late August driven out by a military clearance operation in Buddhist majority Myanmar s Rakhine State. The Rohingyas suffering has caused an international outcry. Visiting the Myanmar capital Naypyitaw, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China believed that the issue could be addressed by a solution acceptable to neighbors Myanmar and Bangladesh through consultations. A ceasefire should be followed by bilateral dialogue to find a workable solution, the ministry website reported late on Sunday. The third and final phase should be to work toward a long-term solution. Wang said a ceasefire was basically in place already, and the key now was to prevent a flare-up. He hoped the two sides could soon sign and implement an agreement already reached on repatriation. The international community and the United Nations Security Council should give encouragement and support to both countries to create the necessary conditions and a good environment , it quoted Wang as saying at a joint press conference with Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar s de facto leader. Myanmar was supportive of the Chinese plan, as was Bangladesh, where Wang visited earlier in the weekend. In Dhaka Wang said the international community should not complicate the situation. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia parliament speaker taken into custody by anti-graft agency;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s parliament speaker, Setya Novanto, has been taken into custody by the anti-corruption agency after being arrested over his alleged role in causing state losses of $170 million linked to a national electronic identity card scheme. Novanto, clad in an orange vest worn by detainees of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), was transferred from a hospital on Sunday night into a KPK detention facility. He is one of the most senior politicians to be detained by the agency, popular among ordinary Indonesians for targeting members of the establishment suspected of abuse of power. Novanto was arrested on Friday night but his detention was postponed while he received treatment for injuries suffered in a car crash the day before. Delay of the arrest is no longer needed, as a medical statement showed Novanto did not need further hospital treatment, Laode Muhammad Syarif, the deputy head of the agency, said in a video on its official Periscope page. On Sunday night, Novanto told reporters he was still suffering from vertigo after the crash that he said had injured a leg, an arm and his head. I thought I would be given time for recovery, but I obey the law, Novanto was quoted by news website Kumparan.com as saying. Novanto will be held for 20 days for questioning, said KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah. He will be detained in a sparsely-furnished holding cell with some mattresses and a shared toilet. Graft agency officials tried to arrest Novanto, the chairman of Golkar, Indonesia s second-largest party and partner in the ruling coalition, at his house in Jakarta late on Wednesday. But they failed to find him, sparking speculation that he had gone into hiding. Later, Novanto was involved in a car accident and his lawyer, Fredrich Yunadi, said a journalist was driving the vehicle and interviewing his client at the time. The car crash was found to be an accident, media cited Jakarta s deputy director of traffic police as saying, dismissing speculation that the mishap was staged. Novanto has denied wrongdoing but has repeatedly missed summonses for questioning by the agency in recent months, saying he was ill and needed heart surgery. The agency is investigating state losses of about $170 million after allegations that sums ranging from $5,000 to $5.5 million, generated by marking up procurement costs for the ID cards, were divided up among politicians in parliament. Novanto was named a suspect on Nov. 10 again after he had used a controversial legal maneuver, a pre-trial motion, to get earlier charges dropped last month. President Joko Widodo told reporters on Monday that he had asked Novanto to follow the legal process . The KPK has been collaborating with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on the case, said agency spokesman Diansyah. The FBI has been investigating the activities of Johannes Marliem, a U.S.-based contractor for the ID card scheme, who later committed suicide in Los Angeles. The parliament speaker s legal battle with the graft agency has gripped Indonesia, with newspaper front pages splashing the story and social media circulating memes mocking him. Novanto gained a measure of international fame in September 2015 when Donald Trump, then a U.S. presidential candidate, hailed him as a great man at a news conference. Do they like me in Indonesia? Trump asked after introducing Novanto to reporters at Trump Tower. Yes, highly, Novanto replied. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China draws three-stage path for Myanmar, Bangladesh to resolve Rohingya crisis;NAYPYITAW (Reuters) - China called for a ceasefire in Myanmar s Rakhine State so that Rohingya Muslim refugees can return from Bangladesh, proposing a three-stage approach to the crisis as diplomats from 51 mostly Asian and European countries gathered in Myanmar on Monday. More than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late August, driven out by a military clearance operation in Buddhist majority Myanmar s Rakhine State. Amid a burgeoning humanitarian catastrophe, rights groups have accused the Myanmar military of atrocities, while foreign critics have blasted Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize winner who leads a civilian administration that is less than two years old, for failing to speak out more strongly. On Monday, Suu Kyi opened an Asia-Europe Meeting for foreign ministers that had been scheduled in Myanmar before the outbreak of the crisis. Speaking in the capital of Naypyitaw on Sunday, having arrived from Dhaka, China s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China believed Myanmar and Bangladesh could work out a mutually acceptable way to end the crisis. The first phase is to effect a ceasefire on the ground, to return to stability and order, so the people can enjoy peace and no longer be forced to flee, China s foreign ministry said in a statement, citing Wang. With the hard work of all sides, at present, the first phase s aim has already basically been achieved, and the key is to prevent a flare-up, especially that there is no rekindling the flames of war. During a meeting on Sunday, the ministry said, Wang told Myanmar President Htin Kyaw, As a friend of both Myanmar and Bangladesh, China is willing to keep playing a constructive role for the appropriate handling of the Rakhine State issue. Visiting Myanmar last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made many of the same points, but he also called for a credible investigation into reports of atrocities. Once a ceasefire is seen to be working, Wang said talks between Myanmar and Bangladesh should find a workable solution for the return of refugees, and the final phase should be to work toward a long-term solution based on poverty alleviation. Myanmar and Bangladesh officials began talks last month to settle a repatriation process for Rohingya refugees, which Bangladesh expects to take to the next level in coming days. Speaking on the sidelines of the ASEM meeting, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said, We believe that stopping the violence, the flow of refugees and guaranteeing full humanitarian access to Rakhine state, and safe, sustainable repatriation of refugees are going to be key. Mogherini, who also visited Bangladesh over the weekend, said, There s a real possibility of Myanmar and Bangladesh reaching a memorandum of understanding and agreement for the safe repatriation of refugees to Myanmar. The European bloc was ready to help with the process, she added. It was unclear, however, whether a safe return was possible, or advisable, for the thousands of Rohingya women and children still stranded on the beaches trying to flee hunger and instability in Rakhine. Myanmar intends to resettle most refugees who return in new model villages , rather than on the land they previously occupied, an approach the United Nations has criticized in the past as effectively creating permanent camps. Besides restoring peace for Rohingya to return, Myanmar also had to resolve the issue of their citizenship, having treated them as stateless for decades, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, told a news conference in Tokyo. The UNHCR was ready to assist both countries with repatriation, he said, adding that it could help Myanmar with the citizenship verification of the Rohingya. Until now it has not been invited to participate in either. Much as resources are needed in Bangladesh to respond to the crisis, the solutions to this crisis lie in Myanmar, Grandi said. The crisis erupted after the military launched a brutal counter-insurgency operation against the militants after attacks on an army base and 30 police posts in Rakhine on Aug. 25. Myanmar s military has said that all fighting against the Rohingya militants died out on Sept.5. The group behind those attacks, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), had declared a one-month ceasefire on Sept.10, which was rejected by the Myanmar government. But there have been no serious clashes since. The United States and other Western countries have become more engaged with Myanmar since it began a transition to civilian government after nearly 50 years of military rule. Myanmar s generals retain autonomy over defense, internal security and border issues in the current power-sharing arrangement. China, with close ties to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, has long been a key player in lawless borderlands where rebel ethnic groups have battled Myanmar s government for decades in a conflict driving thousands of refugees to seek shelter in China. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Noon deadline set by ZANU-PF for Mugabe's resignation passes;HARARE (Reuters) - A noon deadline by the ruling party for Robert Mugabe to stand down as President of Zimbabwe or face impeachment expired on Monday with no word on the fate of the 93-year-old, who was fired as head of his ZANU-PF party at the weekend, an ignominious end to his 37 years in power. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese envoy exchanges views on Korean peninsula issue in North Korea;BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese envoy exchanged views on the Korean peninsula issue with North Korean officials during a visit to North Korea, China s state news agency Xinhua said on Monday. It did not immediately give details, but Song Tao, head of the international department of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, has been in Pyongyang to discuss the outcome of the recently concluded Communist Party Congress in Beijing. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's SPD not available for government after talks fail;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats are still not available to join Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats in a continuation of their grand coalition government after talks with other parties failed, a party document showed on Monday. Given the results of the Sept. 24 election, we are not available for entry into a grand coalition, read a SPD paper due to be discussed by party leaders that was obtained by Reuters. We are not afraid of new elections. The comments came after Merkel s efforts to form a three-way coalition government failed, pitching Germany into its worse political crisis for decades, raising the prospect of fresh elections and casting doubt over her future. The SPD won just 20.5 percent in the September election, its worst post-war result after it lost stature as junior partner in the often awkward coalition dominated by Merkel. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;What happens now after collapse of German coalition talks?;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel s failure to forge a three-way coalition government has plunged Europe s largest economy into uncharted waters, raising pressure on the three-term conservative chancellor to maintain stability. The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) abruptly pulled out after more than four weeks of negotiations with Merkel s conservative bloc and the ecologist Greens, citing irreconcilable differences. The euro recovered from a two-month low on Monday as investors brushed off the broader political risks. But Germany now faces a prolonged period of political wrangling and uncertainty. The path to a new election would be difficult and involve more than one vote in parliament. Many fear a new election could further strengthen the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that surged into parliament in the Sept. 24 election after winning nearly 13 percent of the vote. AfD leaders have pushed for new elections for weeks as the coalition talks failed to reach agreement. Current opinion polls predict little change compared to the September vote. A Forsa poll released last week showed conservatives on 32 percent, the Social Democrats on 20 percent, the FDP 12 percent, the Greens 10 percent and the AfD 12 percent. It was not immediately clear what impact the latest development would have on the parties support. Leaders of the other parties expressed shock about the FDP s move since negotiators had been on the cusp of an agreement. The Greens accused the FDP of a pre-meditated move to oust Merkel. Here s what could happen next, and possible scenarios for the coming weeks: The political crisis hands significant power to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD) and a former foreign minister under Merkel who assumed the normally ceremonial post in February. Merkel was to meet with Steinmeier on Monday to discuss the most serious political crisis to confront Germany in the post-war era. Steinmeier had already urged negotiators on Saturday to uphold their civic responsibilities and avoid new elections. He is expected to repeat that message in a statement later Monday, according to the RND newspaper chain. Steinmeier could push the FDP and its leader Christian Lindner to return to the negotiating table. But political experts say it would be difficult to rebuild any sense of trust among the would-be coalition partners after Sunday s events. MERKEL LOOKS INTO CONTINUATION OF GRAND COALITION Merkel is likely to approach the SPD, which served for four years as junior partner in her grand coalition , but SPD leaders have vowed to return to opposition after the party s worst election result since 1933. Labour Minister Andrea Nahles reaffirmed that view in an interview with broadcaster ZDF on Monday, saying voters had clearly voted against a further tie-up of Germany s two largest parties. If they agreed to talks, the SPD - which saw its support slide in the September election after it lost stature as junior partner in the often awkward coalition dominated by Merkel - would probably insist on her departure, according to party insiders. The SPD is in a much stronger negotiating position now, said Tyson Barker at the Aspen Institute. But I just don t see the incentives there for the SPD. The grand coalition is just teetering on a majority. If coalition talks fail, the only way to trigger a new election under the German constitution would be for Steinmeier to suggest a parliamentary vote on Merkel as chancellor. If Merkel wins a majority in such a vote, he would name her as chancellor. If she doesn t raise a majority, parliament can vote again within 14 days. If she again misses the majority, parliament votes again and the candidate with the most votes wins. Then Steinmeier could name Merkel - or whoever wins the most votes - as chancellor, but is not required to do so. If he refrains, he would dissolve parliament and new elections must be held within 60 days. If she is elected as chancellor, Merkel could form a minority government with a variety of partners, including just the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of her Christian Democrats, or among conservatives with the FDP. She could also form a minority coalition with the Greens. Juergen Hardt, foreign policy spokesman for the conservative bloc, said such a tie-up was promising and could convince Steinmeier to agree to a minority government. A minority government would require Merkel to find changing majorities for her policies, but it would allow the smaller parties to maintain an independent profile, said Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. He said that could be helpful for the CSU, which has said it needs to pursue a more hardline position on immigration and security as it gears up for state elections in September 2018, given massive losses to the far-right AfD on Sept. 24. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel gets strong backing from her party after talks fail;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel got the strong backing of the leadership of her Christian Democrats (CDU) during a telephone conference on Monday after coalition talks to form a new government failed late on Sunday. Armin Laschet, deputy chairman of the CDU and premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, told journalists that leading members of Merkel s party had expressed their strong support for their leader despite the talks failing. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia, NZ officials discuss screening for Manus refugees - NZ PM;WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand and Australia have begun talks about screening procedures for asylum seekers holding out in a Papua New Guinea detention center, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday, amid reports of worsening health conditions there. Australia has been refusing New Zealand s offer to take up to 150 of the detainees from the Australian-run camp on Manus Island, but Ardern s comments have raised speculation that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is ready to accept. The center was closed almost three weeks ago after PNG s High Court ruled it was illegal, but more than 400 detainees have refused to leave, citing concerns for their security if they were moved to transit centers as planned. More than 150 men at the center were seriously ill without access to basic first aid or medicine, said advocacy group Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), which is calling for safe resettlement of the men. A team from the group, which is based in Australia, visited the center last Wednesday, a spokeswoman said. The deteriorating state of the men s bodies was obvious to me as I was shown around, said Jana Favero, the group s campaigns director. This is a medical emergency festering inside a humanitarian crisis. Medical conditions requiring urgent care ranged from chest pain and undiagnosed episodes of unconsciousness to infections and chronic diarrhea among others, the group added. Turnbull has been refusing New Zealand s offer as he worries asylum seekers could view it as a back door to Australia, undermining the country s tough immigration policies. Ardern said the conversations were about establishing the screening processes. To be clear, we have not started that process, she told Radio New Zealand. But I think that certainly we re a bit further along than we have been before - we haven t even had officials having those discussions in the past. The United Nations, which has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis , last week urged Australia to accept New Zealand s offer to take the men. Turnbull has insisted the priority was an existing refugee swap deal negotiated last year with former U.S. president Barack Obama. The men holed up in the camp depend on erratic food supplies smuggled in by supporters. They lack power and running water. Australia s sovereign borders immigration policy that refuses to let asylum seekers arriving by boat reach its shores has been heavily criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups, but has bipartisan domestic political support. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France wants 'strong and stable' Germany, President Macron says;PARIS (Reuters) - France wants a strong and stable Germany to move Europe forward and will continue to work with the current German government, an official at President Emmanuel Macron s office said on Monday. For Germany and for Europe, we want our main partner to be stable and strong, to move forward together, the official said. This merely reinforces the need for France to make proposals, to take the initiative, to work on an ambitious European project that we will implement with our German partner, the official added. Efforts to form a three-way coalition government have failed, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday, pitching Germany into its worst political crisis in decades. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May's spokesman says not aware of Brexit concerns over German political crisis;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May s spokesman said on Monday he was not aware of any Brexit-related concerns in the British government following the collapse of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s talks to form a three-way coalition government. I m not aware of any broader concerns, the spokesman said when asked whether May was worried the situation would affect Britain s ability to negotiate a Brexit deal. It s a matter for Germany and a matter for politicians in Germany. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's opposition gives up posts after ban;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Elected officials of Cambodia s banned opposition party have begun handing over their duties after a court ordered the party dissolved, the government said on Monday. The Supreme Court outlawed the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) last week at the request of authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen s government in a move that prompted the United States to cut election funding and threaten more punitive steps. The party was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason. The government says he sought to take power with American help. He rejects that allegation as politically motivated, to allow Hun Sen to extend his more than three decades in power in next year s general election. Among those told to give up their positions were councillors elected to communes in June, when the CNRP gained control of 40 percent of local councils, showing the electoral threat it posed to Hun Sen. The implementation has been going smoothly, the Interior Ministry s spokesman, Khieu Sopheak, told Reuters on Monday, adding that he did not know how long handover completion would take. The ruling Cambodian People s Party (CPP) will take over nearly all of the communes won by the opposition. The CNRP s 55 seats in the 123-member parliament will be shared among six minor parties, the National Election Committee (NEC) said. It had been unable to contact one of the parties entitled to a seat because its headquarters was shut, it added. Three NEC members submitted a letter of resignation from the electoral body in protest at their party s dissolution, saying the redistribution of seats to other parties was unconstitutional and against voters will . The court has also banned 118 CNRP party members from politics for five years. Mu Sochua, a senior CNRP member who moved abroad shortly before the ban, said party officials met over the weekend outside Cambodia to put together an action plan for the immediate future. We reject the decision of the court, she said, adding that Kem Sokha remained president and the party s former leader, Sam Rainsy, had rejoined it. Sam Rainsy had resigned in February, saying he feared the party would be banned if he did not, because of defamation convictions that he calls politically motivated and which pushed him to flee Cambodia in 2015. Across Cambodia, police took down CNRP signs outside party offices and on the streets. The interior ministry spokesman said the CNRP had helped by taking down its Phnom Penh headquarters sign itself. Rejecting the criticism from the United States over the dissolution of the opposition party and a crackdown on local rights groups and independent media, Hun Sen said on Sunday that Washington should cut off all aid for Cambodia. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi Kurd prime minister: court voided referendum without KRG input;ERBIL (Reuters) - Iraq s Supreme Federal Court, which voided results of a Kurdish independence referendum on Monday, reached its ruling without input from representatives of the Kurdish autonomous region, the region s Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said on Monday. The rights of Kurds are enshrined in the [Iraqi] constitution, and we seek the implementation of this constitution to resolve our issues with Baghdad, Barzani told reporters at a news conference, according to Kurdish Rudaw TV. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel to meet German president, who will then make statement;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday to update him on events after her efforts to form a three-way coalition government failed, her spokesman said. The acting chancellor will meet the president at noon today to inform him about how things stand, spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular government news conference. Steinmeier would make a statement to media at 2.30 p.m. (1330 GMT), his office said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greece to give millions in compensation to flood victims;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece said on Monday it would offer emergency compensation worth millions of euros to hundreds of households affected by flash flooding west of Athens that killed at least 20 people on Nov. 15. Hundreds of homes and businesses were extensively damaged in the coastal towns of Mandra and Nea Peramos when a torrent of mud and water smashed into the settlements, built along dry gullies on the foothills of a mountain range. Twenty people died and two remain missing from the early-morning deluge, the worst casualty toll from flooding since 1977 when more than 30 people died. The disaster has prompted recriminations and finger-pointing over a perceived inability of Greek authorities to act on prior warnings that areas with poor infrastructure and unlicensed construction were vulnerable to flooding. Critics also asked why flood prevention projects had been delayed. Authorities will offer flood victims up to 5,000 euros ($5,896.50) for households and 8,000 euros for businesses, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said. It was not immediately clear how much the state had budgeted for compensation. Tzanakopoulos told Reuters the amount would come from the national budget. That assistance would be over and above compensation residents were entitled to, comprised of 60 percent government aid and 40 percent interest-free loan, he said. The flash flooding hit many areas of the country, including housing settlements where town planning regulations are often flouted. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian Kurdish militia attacks Turkish outpost in Syria's Idlib, no casualties: Anadolu;ANKARA (Reuters) - The Syrian-Kurdish YPG militia has attacked a Turkish military observation post in Syria s Idlib with mortars, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Monday, adding that there were no casualties. The Turkish military retaliated after the attack, which hit the observation post in the Darat Izza region and some civilian settlements with five mortars, Anadolu said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin plan to rejuvenate Russian politics makes slow progress;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Poised to run for a fourth term, President Vladimir Putin has started clearing out the old Russian political elite and says he s bringing in young people with fire in their eyes. But a Reuters analysis shows that he has made limited progress so far. In the run up to March elections that are expected to hand him a mandate to stay in power until he is 70, Putin says he is promoting a new generation of officials to drive Russia s economic and political future. One fifth of the country s 85 regional governors have been replaced this year and almost half of the lower house of parliament changed in elections last year after Putin brought in a new chief of staff. The Reuters analysis of political appointments shows, however, that in the cabinet, the upper house of parliament, the Security Council and the presidential administration, the pace of change has slowed and the average age is almost three years higher than when he began his third term in 2012. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the findings. He said it would take too long to check the data. With no change expected at the very top, critics say the lack of fresh blood translates into a dearth of fresh ideas to stimulate politics and the economy. There are similarities with the era of (Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev in that we ve fallen into a malign stability from which there s no way out, Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst, told Reuters. Opposition protesters are fond of photoshopping Putin s face onto Brezhnev s torso on placards, implying that Putin and the system he has built is as stagnant as Brezhnev s Soviet Union, a charge the Kremlin rejects. For Putin there are no risks because the system works and obeys him, said Oreshkin. The risks are for the country and the economy. The model of stability is underpinned by a system of loyalty and corruption. Outside Moscow, which is rich, there is stagnation. Weighed down by Western sanctions for its 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea and backing for a pro-Russian uprising in east Ukraine, the Russian economy, though recovering, remains fragile and vulnerable to oil fluctuations and new sanctions. Russia's aging political elite: tmsnrt.rs/2zRTpRY Reuters compared the profiles of 784 current regional governors, members of the upper and lower houses of parliament, the government, the Security Council, and the presidential administration to 768 who were in power in May 2012. It found little sign of renewal in the cabinet, the upper house of parliament, the Security Council and the presidential administration. Of the 784 positions, 314 had changed hands in the last two years, fewer than in May 2012 when that figure was 368. Often when officials left their posts, they showed up in other jobs. There were fewer changes in the cabinet, the upper house of parliament, the Security Council and the presidential administration. The average age of all the officials rose from 52.6 in 2012 to 55.5 now. In the Security Council, which Putin chairs, the average age stands at 60.4. It has seen only two changes in its 12-strong permanent makeup in the last two years. In the presidential administration, which Putin uses to devise and implement his ideas, the average age is 57 compared to 53.2 in 2012, and in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the average age has risen to almost 53 from 51 five years ago. This month Putin told 10 governors, that as a rule they were being replaced with young people. You have probably noticed the fire in their eyes, he said. Putin has said his aim is to create a new governors corps of young promising modern people who will think about the future of the region and all of Russia. Critics say the Kremlin s emphasis on youth is window-dressing designed to create the illusion of political change in a system bereft of real competition. Up to two thirds of Russians want some kind of societal or political change that would raise living standards, some opinion polls show, and turnout in last year s parliamentary election fell to a post-Soviet low. In the Kremlin, the thinking goes that a fresh face in the governor s seat may reduce the population s unhappiness and increase turnout in the election, Natalya Zubarevich, an academic, wrote in a paper for the Carnegie Moscow Center. Putin has received a succession of newly-minted regional governors in his Kremlin office live on state TV and hosted two groups of glum-looking ex-governors. Rotation is a natural and self-evident process, he told one group of five ex-governors in February. Putin s aides are also touting a program for new leaders. Applicants must be under 50 years of age and parts of the 9-month training program for top regional officials emphasize fitness and courage. Videos leaked to the RBC online news portal have shown participants leaping from a cliff into a river seven meters below and undergoing weapons and parachute training. Some Kremlin watchers say the newcomers are all Putin loyalists whom he can easily influence if he exits office in 2024 and assumes a father-of-the-nation role. He s training up 30- and 40-year olds for whom he ll become a political father, Sergei Dorenko, the prominent head of a Moscow radio station, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily. He ll smooth their passage and give them the earth. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea fears further missile advances by North this year in threat to U.S.;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea may conduct additional missile tests this year to polish up its long-range missile technology and ramp up the threat against the United States, South Korea s spy agency said on Monday, adding that it was monitoring developments closely. North Korea is pursuing nuclear weapons and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions and has made no secret of its plans to develop a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. It has fired two missiles over Japan. The reclusive state appears to have carried out a recent missile engine test while brisk movements of vehicles were spotted near known missile facilities, Yi Wan-young, a member of South Korea s parliamentary intelligence committee which was briefed by Seoul s National Intelligence Service, said. No sign of an imminent nuclear test had been detected, Yi noted. The third tunnel at the Punggye-ri complex remained ready for another detonation at any time , while construction had recently resumed at a fourth tunnel, making it out of use for the time being. The agency is closely following the developments because there is a possibility that North Korea could fire an array of ballistic missiles this year under the name of a satellite launch and peaceful development of space, but in fact to ratchet up its threats against the United States, the lawmakers told reporters after a closed-door briefing by the spy agency. North Korea defends its weapons programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. Pyongyang is also carrying out a sweeping ideological scrutiny of the political unit of the military for the first time in 20 years, according to Kim Byung-kee, another lawmaker in the committee. The probe was led by the ruling Workers Party s Organisation and Guidance Department and orchestrated by Choe Ryong Hae, who once headed the General Political Bureau of the Korean People s Army himself until he was replaced by Hwang Pyong So in May 2014. As a result, Hwang and Kim Won Hong, who Seoul s unification ministry said was removed from office in mid-January as minister of the Stasi-like secret police called bowibu , had been punished, the lawmaker said. He did not elaborate. Choe, who was subjected to political reeducation himself in the past, appears to be gaining more influence since he was promoted in October to the party s powerful Central Military Commission. The National Intelligence Service indicated that Choe now heads the Organisation and Guidance Department, a secretive body that oversees appointments within North Korea s leadership. Under Choe s command, the Organisation and Guidance Department is undertaking an inspection of the military politburo for the first time in 20 years, taking issue with their impure attitude toward the party leadership, the lawmaker, Kim, said. Separately on Monday, South Korea approved a request by a South Korean to attend an event in the North marking the anniversary of the death of his mother who formerly led the Chondoist Chongu Party, a minor North Korean political party. The son, identified only by his surname Choi, will be the first South Korean to visit the North since liberal President Moon Jae-in took office in May. He is scheduled to arrive in Pyongyang via China on Wednesday and return on Saturday, according to Seoul s unification ministry. A senior Chinese official wrapped up a four-day visit to North Korea on Monday, apparently without meeting the country s leader, Kim Jong Un. Song Tao, head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party, met senior officials from the Workers Party of Korea and exchanged views on the Korean peninsula issue , China s official Xinhua news agency said. The ruling parties of China and the Democratic People s Republic of Korea on Monday pledged to strengthen inter-party exchanges and coordination, and push forward relations, it added, using North Korea s official name. Song had been in Pyongyang to discuss the outcome of the recently concluded Chinese Communist Party Congress in Beijing. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey detains 51 teachers over suspected links to coup: Dogan;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities on Monday issued arrest warrants for 107 teachers for suspected ties to the U.S.-based cleric Ankara blames for orchestrating last year s coup, the Dogan news agency said. Fifty-one of the teachers were detained in Ankara after the local prosecutor issued the warrants, Dogan said, adding that operations continued to round-up the remaining teachers. The teachers were previously suspended from their jobs as part of the ongoing crackdown that followed the attempted coup in July 2016, it said. Turkey blames Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, for last year s failed coup. Gulen has denied any involvement and denounced the coup. More than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial in the crackdown, while 150,000 people, including military personnel, teachers and public servants, have been sacked or suspended from their jobs. The government dismisses rights groups concerns about the crackdown, saying only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says infiltrated the judiciary, army, schools and other institutions. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss police lift U.S. consular office evacuation;ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss police declared the U.S. consular office building in Zurich as safe, saying a suspicious object discovered on Monday morning that had prompted a brief evacuation of two buildings was found to be harmless. A street blockade was lifted and people were allowed to re-enter the buildings, Zurich municipal police said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ZANU-PF members to meet to discuss impeaching Mugabe: party chief whip;HARARE (Reuters) - Lawmakers from President Robert Mugabe s ruling party will meet at the party headquarters on Monday to discuss impeaching the 93-year-old leader after a noon deadline passed without him resigning, ZANU-PF s chief whip Lovemore Matuke said. The ruling party removed Mugabe as ZANU-PF president and first secretary on Sunday, capping a dramatic week after the military seized power on Wednesday saying it wanted to remove criminal elements around the president. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel sees no reason to resign;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. envoy to Russia: visa consultations in consulates may resume soon - TASS;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Visa consultations in U.S. consulates in Russia could be resumed in the near future, TASS news agency cited U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman as saying on Monday. I believe that in the near future they (visa consultations) may be resumed, the agency quoted him as saying. We are trying to do everything possible, and I hope that in coming weeks we will be able to effectively issues visas. In August, the United States began to scale back its visa services in Russia, drawing an angry reaction from Moscow three weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered Washington to more than halve its embassy and consular staff. The U.S. consulates are located in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg in the Urals and Vladivostok in Russia s far east. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi court rules Kurdish independence vote unconstitutional;BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq s Supreme Federal Court ruled on Monday a Sept. 25 Kurdish independence referendum was unconstitutional and the results void, strengthening Baghdad s hand in a stand-off with the Kurdish region watched closely by neighboring Turkey and Iran. The Kurdistan Regional Government did not directly say whether it accepted the effective cancellation of the vote, but its new prime minister called for a third party to oversee talks between Iraq s central government and the Kurds. The KRG also called on the international community including the United Nations, European Union and non-governmental organizations to intervene and help lift what it called restrictive sanctions imposed by Baghdad in retaliation for the referendum. Kurds voted overwhelmingly to break away from Iraq in the referendum, defying the central government in Baghdad and alarming neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. The Federal Court issued the decision to consider the Kurdish region s referendum unconstitutional and this ruling is final, a court spokesman said. The power of this ruling should now cancel all the results of the referendum. The court is responsible for settling disputes between Iraq s central government and its regions, including Kurdistan. The verdict is not subject to appeal. A statement from Iraq s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said: We call upon everybody to ... avoid taking any step which violates the constitution and law. The court had ruled on Nov. 6 that no region or province can secede. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said last week it would respect that verdict, signaling a new phase in efforts to restart negotiations over the region s future. The Iraqi government responded to the Kurdish independence referendum by seizing the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings. Long-serving Kurdish president Masoud Barzani stepped down over the affair and the regional government led by his nephew Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani has tried to negotiate an end to the confrontation. In a news conference following Monday s ruling, Nechirvan Barzani said the court s ruling was reached unilaterally, without input from KRG representatives, and called for a third party to oversee negotiations between Baghdad and the Kurds. The rights of Kurds are enshrined in the (Iraqi) constitution and we seek the implementation of this constitution to resolve our issues with Baghdad, Barzani told reporters, according to Kurdish Rudaw TV. The constitution is one package and must be applied in its entirety, not selectively. However, Barzani did not directly say whether Kurdish officials accepted the effective cancellation of the referendum. The KRG had previously offered only to freeze the results. The KRG later said its chief concern was the lifting of an embargo on international flights to the region, which it said hampered foreign investment as well as humanitarian efforts for the more than 1.5 million internally displaced people currently in the region. We call on the international community to intercede in urging Baghdad authorities to lift the embargo, without condition, on international flights. The restrictive policies adopted by Baghdad against Erbil are in violation of Iraq s obligations and responsibilities under international and humanitarian law, the KRG said in a statement. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sounds detected not from missing Argentine submarine: navy spokesman;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Sounds detected by probes searching for a missing Argentine submarine in the South Atlantic on Monday did not come from the vessel, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters. The finding dashed hopes that the search and rescue operation was zeroing in on the ARA San Juan, which was carrying 44 crew and gave its last signal five days ago after earlier reporting an electric malfunction. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe minister Moyo's Twitter account hacked: family member;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A relative of Zimbabwean minister Jonathan Moyo, purged from the ruling ZANU-PF party along with President Robert Mugabe, said on Monday that a tweet on his Twitter handle earlier saying that he was outside of the country was the work of a hacker. While he remains safe, he is not the one who posted that, the family member told Reuters, adding that Moyo remained in Zimbabwe. The tweet was subsequently deleted. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: JOY BEHAR of “THE VIEW” Calls Bill Clinton Rape and Sexual Assault Victims “Tramps” That “Slept With” Hillary’s Husband…Whoopi Says Hillary’s The “Victim”;Last week, the mostly female audience of The View watched the panel of hypocritical, rabidly anti-Republican hosts attack Alabama s GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore for unproven sexual assault allegations. Only one year ago, however, The View s co-host Joy Behar, attacked the disgraced the mulitple sexual assault victims of former President Bill Clinton, calling them tramps who slept with him . Are the mostly female viewers really okay with the co-hosts of The View (who are completely devoid of any intellectual thought) dismissing the multiple allegations of sexual assault, including rape, by the impeached Democrat President Bill Clinton? Is it really okay with their viewers that Whoopi Goldberg would refer to the wife of the alleged rapist, Hillary Clinton (who threatened his victims to remain silent about her husbands sex crimes, or pay serious consequences) a victim ? When do the women who watch The View say, Enough with the hypocrisy! ? The female hosts of The View discussed the second debate the following day on their show. During the discussion, host Joy Behar called the women who allegedly slept with Bill Clinton tramps .Prior to the debate, Trump highlighted three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or harassment. The View host Sunny Hostin suggested that Hillary Clinton may have missed an opportunity to address the controversy during the second presidential debate. This is the thing though if a woman sleeps with your husband, you re not going to necessarily embrace them That s why when he brought up these allegations, I wonder if she missed the opportunity to address it in a way that the public would understand Hostin mused.Behar disagreed, joking that there wasn t much Hillary Clinton could say to the women.Behar suggested the Democratic nominee could say: I would like to apologize to those tramps that have slept with my husband. Maybe she could have said that. Fox News.@WhoopiGoldberg reacts to Donald Trump inviting Bill Clinton s accusers to last night's #debate. https://t.co/wxW54okAF5 The View (@TheView) October 10, 2016Only today, The View hags attempted to defend Democrat Senator Al Franken s sexual assault accusations, suggesting that he shouldn t step down, while simultaneously suggesting that GOP Senate candidate, Roy Moore, should drop out of the Senate race in Alabama.Watch:SHOULD SEN. FRANKEN RESIGN? After a second woman accuses Sen. Al Franken of inappropriate touching, co-hosts discuss what should come next. pic.twitter.com/NoerTvzzCd The View (@TheView) November 20, 2017 ;left-news;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! Marshawn Lynch’s Mommy Comes To Her Son’s Defense After Trump Calls Him Out For Disrespecting U.S. Flag During NFL Game In Mexico: “what NFL team do Trump own ?”;President Donald Trump says that the Oakland Raiders should suspend running back Marshawn Lynch for the rest of the season for disrespecting the flag after he did not stand for the anthem.Before Sunday s game against the New England Patriots in Mexico City, Lynch sat during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, as he has done all season. Lynch did stand when the Mexican national anthem was played.Marshawn Lynch sits during the US national anthem, stands for Mexican anyhem pic.twitter.com/8wdaKprEki Ben Volin (@BenVolin) November 19, 2017While Lynch hasn t publicly commented on the protest, he did wear a shirt that said Everybody vs. Trump before a Week 4 game against the Denver Broncos. Great disrespect! Next time NFL should suspend him for remainder of season. Attendance and ratings way down, Trump tweeted on Monday morning. SIMarshawn Lynch of the NFL s Oakland Raiders stands for the Mexican Anthem and sits down to boos for our National Anthem. Great disrespect! Next time NFL should suspend him for remainder of season. Attendance and ratings way down. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2017The mama of big tough guy, NFL player Marshawn Lynch, who recently left the bench during a game, to assault a referee with over a call he disagreed with, has taken to Twitter in hopes of embarrassing President Donald Trump.Here s Marshawn Lynch leaving the bench to assault a referee during a game. He was later suspended by the team for his inappropriate actions:nickr83: Tensions flare in Oakland. #TNF #KCvsOAK CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City https://t.co/DDAQV3HyiY pic.twitter.com/jvVsmiXBuu FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017Here it is again in slow motion:silverhunt: Beast mode!! CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City Chiefs at Oakland Raiders https://t.co/lMUBGz02dH pic.twitter.com/9Mahc5vHhd FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017Perhaps Delisa Lynch should consider refraining from making public comments on Twitter. By the looks of her tweet, the only one who should be embarrassed by Delisha Lynch s tweet is Delisa Lynch, whose grammar and punctuation is almost as embarrassing as her loser son s behavior. Lynch starts each sentence in her tweet with lower case letters and ends her tweet with a sentence followed by a space, a comma, and two exclamation points for emphasis. Lynch s tweet was apparently intended to embarrass President Trump, when she asked, what NFL team do Trump own ? oh yeah they wouldnt let him have one ,!! LMAOwhat NFL team do Trump own ? oh yeah they wouldnt let him have one ,!! LMAO https://t.co/1rPa5jfMjE Delisa Lynch (@MommaLynch24) November 20, 2017;left-news;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump’s Favorite News Channel Tries To Soothe His Battered Ego – Gets Taken To The Cleaners;Yesterday, after the father of one of the UCLA players arrested in China failed to show Trump proper gratitude for getting his kid released, Trump, predictably, went to Twitter to grouse about it. He seems to expect to be worshiped for his help on this matter, but LaVar Ball wouldn t do it, so Trump tweeted:Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017Fox News put that tweet into a meme portraying Trump as a strong, decisive leader and the UCLA basketball players as weaklings, because of course they did. Then they asked: Do you agree with President Trump? Yes. Fox News seriously asked people whether they agree that Trump should have left them in jail because the father of one is refusing to show proper gratitude:Do you agree with President @realDonaldTrump? pic.twitter.com/p3VdoXPxPG Fox News (@FoxNews) November 20, 2017And Twitter is just not having this at all:Nope. He needs adoration- sign of insecurity. That s why he mocks others. Worthless. pic.twitter.com/XpI18s83Wx Billy Depp (@ucla_007) November 20, 2017I ve never seen a Fox tweet critical of the president.All Fox is does is aid and abet insanity, hate and divisiveness that hurts America. pic.twitter.com/HrsATfLSMI American Patriot (@RealPatriot1976) November 20, 2017It s all relative. Shoplifting is a crime but its totally eclipsed by Trump University. Cody Swan (@Lampliighter) November 20, 2017Yeah, POTUS should only do his job if he gets his ass kissed properly. Are you high? Bill Raudenbush (@CandidateBill) November 20, 2017No. He s a child! Opinionated (@letmesharewithu) November 20, 2017nah i know what public service means o (@geofftype) November 20, 2017I think he should stop being petty af. I don t care to hear about this from the President of the United States. He s so insecure, it s beyond troubling. Keisha Venezio (@keishhhha) November 20, 2017No, I don t agree pic.twitter.com/7N9KI0oTxl Kelly H (@Kellyk1969) November 20, 2017Do you agree with President @realDonaldTrump? pic.twitter.com/p3VdoXPxPG Fox News (@FoxNews) November 20, 2017Nope. I personally would be extraordinarily appreciative if this happened to one of my kids, but i think it s shameful that the prez resents not being thanked enough and doesn t view helping Americans as just part of the job. Liberal Kansan (@pvliberal) November 20, 2017NO Disgusting & embarrassing! Melanie (@Melanie03630436) November 20, 2017Well, I m not convinced that he single-handedly got them out of jail so the question isn t really valid Isaac Simonelli (@DiceTravels) November 20, 2017No normal person does. And YOU know it. Ernie Page (@AngryHatter) November 20, 2017What?! This man is a child in a rumpled suit. In case you haven t noticed, hardly anybody likes him. : Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. pic.twitter.com/ntJzgkdWdz DEMOS..We the people (@Windemere22) November 20, 2017China should have thrown #Dotard @realDonaldTrump into the slammer, chucked the key into the bog & flushed it away. Holger \_( )_/ (@hnelke1973) November 20, 2017No. @realDonaldTrump has no idea what it means to do good for the sake of doing good. He is an empty shell of a man with no moral compass. Also not my favorite president. Doreen Graham (@DoreeGraham) November 20, 2017Absolutely not. The fact that our narcissistic baby in chief can t take any criticism without lashing out is disgraceful. We deserve better erin o (@erin0331) November 20, 2017Typical trump .. always about himself forgetting America is for all SARA_PDaily (@sarapdaily) November 20, 2017Typical trump .. always about himself forgetting America is for all SARA_PDaily (@sarapdaily) November 20, 2017Why would anyone agree with this shit? Remember when we mourned the death of the student who died in NK and now we re talking about this? Aditya Sharma (@adityaksharma) November 20, 2017No I do not agree with Donald. As a matter of fact, I wish he was left in the hospital at the time of his birth. RABell (@R_A_Bell) November 20, 2017President Man-Baby needs to grow up. And Fox News needs to stop feeding his bullshit.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images;News;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House wants Republican in Alabama Senate seat for tax bill vote: adviser;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House wants to see a Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama to help pass a tax overhaul bill, a senior adviser said on Monday, indicating a possible shift toward supporting candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of pursuing teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, is the Republicans’ only realistic chance to win the special Dec. 12 election. Republicans have a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate. The White House has said President Donald Trump thinks the allegations, including a charge Moore initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30s, are troubling and he should step down if they are true. But it has also said it is up to the people of Alabama to make the choice for the Senate and it has not called on Moore to exit the race, as have many other leading Republicans. In an interview with Fox News Channel on Monday, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway railed against Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate. Jones, a former federal prosecutor, has overtaken Moore in polls since allegations of sexual misconduct were first reported by the Washington Post two weeks ago. Asked if she was favoring a vote for Moore, Conway said: “We want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill.” The U.S. House of Representatives passed tax legislation last week. The Senate, where Republicans can afford to lose only two votes, will take up its own version next week. Last week, Conway told Fox: “There’s no Senate seat that’s worth more than a child.” Moore’s campaign has struggled since the Post detailed the accounts of four women who say Moore pursued them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. More women have since spoken out with allegations of their own. Reuters has been unable to independently confirm any of the allegations. Moore, 70, has denied the accusations and has said he is the victim of a witch hunt. In her first televised interview since the Post detailed her allegations, Leigh Corfman told NBC’s “Today” show on Monday that Moore “basically laid out some blankets on the floor of his living room and proceeded to seduce me, I guess you would say” on her second visit to his home when she was 14 and he was 32. Corfman said that since the story in the Washington Post there have been “a lot of people that have come out and have said that because of my courage they’re able to do the same.” She said she had considered confronting Moore twice before, but did not do it, once because her school-age children were afraid that “they would be castigated in their group.” Corfman said she has not been paid by anyone for speaking up about her allegations. “If anything, it has cost me. I had to take leave from my job,” she said. ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House promises welfare overhaul details early next year;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will provide details of its plans to overhaul welfare in the first few weeks of 2018, a White House spokeswoman said on Monday. “This is something that the president has a great deal of interest in and I think you can count on probably the first part of next year seeing more specifics and details come out on that,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a press briefing when asked about Trump’s comment earlier on Monday that “people are taking advantage of the system.” ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. senators seek details on 'dubious' oversight shift by Japanese bank;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A decision by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG) to shift its U.S. banks from state regulators to a federal bank regulator is garnering scrutiny from a pair of U.S. Democratic senators. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Monday, pressing for details on the regulator’s decision to allow the bank to come under its purview, after it had sparred with New York’s banking regulator. Earlier this month, MUFG’s Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd branches in New York, Illinois, Texas and California were granted federal charters, allowing the bank to be regulated by the Trump administration rather than state governments. The pair said they were “disturbed” by the decision, and questioned whether the shift to a federal banking license allowed the bank to escape any investigations by the New York Department of Financial Supervision, where the company had bank branches. They also questioned the role of Acting Comptroller Keith Noreika, who previously counted MUFG as a client, in the decision. Noreika recused himself from the bank’s application for a federal charter, but the two senators are demanding additional details on that decision, and who was responsible for approving the bank’s charter instead. An OCC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: Healthcare, infrastructure, welfare reforms up next after taxes;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to take up healthcare, infrastructure and welfare reform issues soon after Republicans’ tax overhaul is finalized, which the party has pledged to complete by the end of the year. “We’ll be submitting plans on healthcare, plans on infrastructure and plans on welfare reform, which is desperately needed in this country, soon after taxes,” he told reporters at the White House ahead of a meeting with his Cabinet secretaries. ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. patent review board becomes conservative target;NEW YORK(Reuters) - In August, a dozen inventors gathered around a fire pit outside the headquarters of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia, and set alight patents they said had been rendered worthless by an overreaching federal government. “It’s time for us to make patents great again,” Michael Caputo, an advisor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, told those gathered. US Inventor, the group behind the protest Caputo now represents as a spokesman, is calling for the abolition of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board, an administrative tribunal run by the patent office that reviews the validity of patents. The rallying cry marks an about-face for some conservatives, who broadly supported the board’s creation in 2011 as a way to rein in trial lawyers and “patent trolls,” who hold patents for the sole purpose of suing big companies for licensing fees. “Things have really flipped when it comes to the conservative perspective on patents,” said Charles Duan, a lawyer with left-leaning consumer group Public Knowledge. Much of the credit goes to activists who have convinced many conservatives that the real problem is not out-of-control litigation but how the tribunal designed to speed up resolving patent disputes favors big business over smaller rivals. The change of positions has been aided by deepening right-wing distrust of tech giants, such as Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, which have benefited the most from PTAB while embracing liberal causes like immigration or gay and transgender rights. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2A1LfXV) The U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule sometime next year on whether the tribunal is an unconstitutional intrusion of the executive branch onto matters reserved for the courts and influential conservative groups are already weighing in. The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Federalist Society, and the American Conservative Union have published articles or submitted briefs arguing that PTAB should be abolished. Most legal experts expect it to survive, though, noting the Supreme Court has largely accepted the powers of executive-branch courts in other areas, such as public employee benefits. The mounting criticism of PTAB could still convince the court’s conservative justices to vote for abolition, said Q. Todd Dickinson, a lawyer with the firm Polsinelli and a former director of the patent office. The advocacy effort by conservative groups could also convince the Trump administration to curb the patent board’s power, Dickinson said. AN ANTI-TROLL WEAPON More than 70 percent of the Republicans in Congress backed the legislation that created PTAB. At the time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the law would “help reduce unnecessary litigation against American businesses.” In February the same business lobbying group criticized PTAB for creating “cost and uncertainty for patent owners.” U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who holds patents relating to computer interfaces, was not in Congress at the time the board was created, but said conservatives’ initial intent to curb excessive litigation has gradually given way to fears that PTAB is helping the wrong businesses. The board’s creation was pushed by big tech companies, banks and retailers, who complained they were being inundated with “troll” lawsuits. Successfully defending a patent case in federal court often takes years and costs millions of dollars, escalating pressure to settle. PTAB offered a cheaper and faster alternative. The average cost of litigating a PTAB petition to a final decision is about $250,000, according to patent risk management company RPX Corp. There are no juries and limited live witness testimony in PTAB proceedings, and its administrative judges apply a lower standard of proof than would be required in federal court. About 80 percent of the patents that PTAB makes final decisions on are either partially or fully invalidated, according to a report issued in October by the patent office. But the agency also said 56 percent of patents challenged at PTAB are upheld, in part because the court frequently declines requests to review patents. A spokesman for the patent office declined to comment. Inventors say PTAB has made it much harder to get patents licensed by big technology, which now routinely respond to patent infringement claims by initiating PTAB proceedings. “Patents owners who don’t have the wherewithal to withstand serial challenges to the validity of their patents just can’t license them,” said David Pridham, chief executive of Dominion Harbor, a firm that owns and attempts to license former Eastman Kodak Co patents. Paul Morinville, a cowboy hat-wearing entrepreneur from Indiana and the founder of US Inventor, said it has become harder for him to get funding for his business based on software patents he holds. Morinville has been speaking to Republican lawmakers and their staffers for the past four years and many conservatives credit his group with raising alarm about the patent tribunal. “They are as close to your iconic garage inventor as you can get, so their stories really resonate,” said James Edwards, a conservative lobbyist focused on patent law. While conservative groups have been most vocal, the debate transcends party lines. Some Republicans, such as Representative Darrell Issa of California, keep supporting the PTAB, while some Democrats have joined Republicans in calls to curb its powers. Many trial lawyers whose case loads have fallen also oppose it. But many liberals have embraced PTAB as a means of eliminating brand-name pharmaceutical patents that keep drug prices high. Generic drug makers and large tech companies are also among the board’s supporters, arguing it has actually increased competition by weeding out low-quality patents. The conservative backlash in part reflects how the right views tech giants like Apple and Google, which thanks to the tribunal have prevailed in hundreds of disputes with patent owners seeking hefty compensation. “Google, Amazon, and Apple and other big tech companies - you look at their power and it is really astounding. And they are generally left-leaning companies,” said Matthew Dowd, a conservative patent lawyer in Washington D.C. who has represented US Inventor. “Those dynamics are definitely playing into the increasing willingness of conservatives to speak up about patents.” ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Contrary to Trump Tweet, Senator Flake still undecided on tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on Sunday that Senator Jeff Flake will oppose the Republican tax bill, but the senator’s office says he has not yet made up his mind. “Senator Flake is still reviewing the tax reform bill on its merits. How he votes on it will have nothing to do with the president,” a spokesman for the senator said in an email. That is contrary to an assertion made by Trump on Sunday in a post on Twitter. “He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is ‘toast.’,” Trump wrote of Flake on Twitter. Where individual Republican senators stand on the tax bill has become the focus of those trying to determine whether it will pass because Republicans control only 52 seats in the Senate. More than two Republican defections would likely kill the bill. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has already publicly stated he opposes the bill in its current form. The House voted last week to approve the tax bill with no support from Democrats and 13 Republicans defecting. Trump and Flake, both Republicans, have been critical of each other in recent months. Flake delivered a speech on the Senate floor in October during which he said Trump threatened the nation’s democracy. In the same speech, Flake announced he would not be seeking re-election to the Senate next year when his term expires. Trump has in turn been critical of Flake, saying he would not be able to win re-election. On Saturday at an event in Arizona, Flake was overheard on a nearby microphone talking with Mesa Mayor John Giles about Trump. “If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast,” Flake said, according to television station KNXV, whose microphone recorded him. Moore, who is the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Alabama, has faced sexual misconduct allegations, and Republican leaders in Congress have urged him to drop out of the Dec. 12 special election. In his Twitter post on Sunday, Trump also suggested that Flake intentionally made those remarks in order to be heard. “Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President,” Trump wrote on Twitter. ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Burkina Faso recalls ambassador to Libya over 'slave markets' report;OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Burkina Faso s foreign minister said on Monday it had recalled its ambassador to Libya over a report that black African migrants were being auctioned as slaves there. The decision by the West African nation followed the broadcast by CNN of footage of what it said was an auction of men offered to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400, a chilling echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade of centuries past. Libya s ambassador to Burkina Faso said his country was being unfairly blamed for a global problem that all nations affected must come together to solve. Foreign Minister Alpha Barry announced the decision by President Roch Marc Kabore in a news conference. The president of Burkina Faso has decided to recall the ambassador to Tripoli, General Abraham Traore, for a consultation, Barry said. He had also summoned the Libyan charge d affairs in (Burkina Faso s capital) Ouagadougou to express our indignation at these images that belong to other centuries, images of the slave trade . In a news conference on Wednesday, Libya s ambassador to Burkina Faso, Abdul Rahman Khameda, appealed for help from both the European Union and African Union to help Libya reach a lasting resolution of the migrant crisis. Libya alone can not solve this problem, he said. We call on the international community to intensify efforts to help Libya cope with this danger (illicit migration), which is tearing at its social fabric. African and European leaders are due to meet next week in Ivory Coast s main city, Abidjan, where migration and Europe s efforts to tackle it by co-opting Libya will be high on the agenda. Adopting an effective solution will prevent certain parties from exploiting such unfortunate events to tarnish Libya s name, Khameda said. An agreement between Europe and Africa to stem the flow of migrants coming through Libya to Europe had failed to tackle the severe abuses they face, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein wrote in an article published in September. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe resigns, ending four decades of rule;HARARE (Reuters) - Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe s president on Tuesday, a week after the army and his former political allies moved to end four decades of rule by a man once feted as an independence hero who became feared as a despot. His former vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking this month prompted the military takeover that forced Mugabe out, will be sworn in as president on Wednesday or Thursday, Patrick Chinamasa, legal secretary of the ruling ZANU-PF party, told Reuters. The 93-year-old Mugabe had clung on for a week after an army takeover, with ZANU-PF urging him to go. He finally resigned moments after parliament began an impeachment process seen as the only legal way to force him out. Wild celebrations broke out at a joint sitting of parliament when Speaker Jacob Mudenda read out Mugabe s brief resignation letter. Mugabe, confined to his Harare residence, did not appear. People danced in the streets of Harare and car horns blared at the news that the era of Mugabe who had led Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 was finally over. Some brandished posters of Mnangagwa and army chief General Constantino Chiwenga. Workers turned the Christmas lights on early in Africa Unity Square and people climbed aboard armored vehicles to pose for photographs with soldiers. Despite the public outpouring of joy, Mugabe s downfall was as much the result of in-fighting among the political elite as a popular uprising, although thousands of people rallied against him in the days after the army intervened last week. The army seized power after Mugabe sacked Mnangagwa, ZANU-PF s favorite to succeed him, in a bid to smooth a path to the presidency for his wife Grace, 52, known to her critics as Gucci Grace for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping. Since the crisis began, Mugabe has been mainly confined to his Blue Roof mansion in the capital where Grace is also believed to be. ZANU-PF chief whip Lovemore Matuke told Reuters that Mnangagwa would be sworn in within 48 hours and serve the remainder of Mugabe s term until the next election, which must be held by September 2018. I am very happy with what has happened, said Maria Sabawu, a supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), outside the hotel where the impeachment process was happening. I have suffered a lot at the hands of Mugabe s government, she said, showing her hand with a missing finger that she said was lost in violence during a presidential run-off election between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008. Mugabe had led Zimbabwe since a guerrilla struggle ended white-minority rule in the country formerly known as Rhodesia. He took the once-rich nation to economic ruin, presiding over the forced takeover of white-owned farms at the end of the century, which devastated agricultural foreign exchange earnings and led to hyperinflation. But brandishing his anti-colonial credentials and styling himself the Grand Old Man of African politics, Mugabe retained the admiration of many people across the continent. Amnesty International said that under Mugabe tens of thousands of people were tortured, forcibly disappeared or killed in a culture of impunity that allowed grotesque crimes to thrive . The people of Zimbabwe deserve better. The next generation of leaders must commit itself to upholding the constitution, living up to Zimbabwe s international human rights obligations and treating its people with dignity and justice, the rights group said in a statement. Mnangagwa, 75, who fled Zimbabwe after his sacking in fear for his safety, was a chief lieutenant to Mugabe for decades and himself stands accused of participating in repression. He was internal security chief in the mid-1980s when Mugabe deployed a North Korean-trained brigade against rebels during which 20,000 civilians were killed, according to rights groups. Reuters reported in September that Mnangagwa was plotting to succeed Mugabe, with army backing, at the helm of a broad coalition to seek Zimbabwe s re-engagement with the world after decades of isolation from global lenders and donors. Nicknamed Ngwena , or crocodile in the Shona language, an animal famed in Zimbabwean lore for its stealth and ruthlessness, Mnangagwa issued a statement from hiding on Tuesday calling on Zimbabweans to unite to rebuild the country. Opposition politician and former education minister David Coltart said that call gave hope of lifting a shattered economy from its knees, provided Mnangagwa made good on his promise to reach out to other factions. When we all wake up with hangovers tomorrow, we will be reminded of the dreadful state our nation is in - no money in the banks and businesses collapsing, Coltart told Reuters. As Emmerson Mnangagwa said, ZANU-PF is not capable of resolving this issue on its own. I took some comfort from his words. If he translates them into action, the future is positive. Zimbabwe s Platform for Concerned Citizens, a civil society group, called for a national dialogue and a transitional authority to decide the country s future. Theresa May, prime minister of former colonial power Britain, said Mugabe s resignation provides Zimbabwe with an opportunity to forge a new path free of the oppression that characterized his rule . She said Britain, as Zimbabwe s oldest friend , would do all it could to support the country. The U.S. embassy in Harare said Zimbabwe was living a historic moment . Whatever short-term arrangements the government may establish, the path forward must lead to free, fair and inclusive elections, it said in a statement. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bipartisan Harvard panel recommends hacking safeguards for elections;SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A bipartisan Harvard University project aimed at protecting elections from hacking and propaganda will release its first set of recommendations today on how U.S. elections can be defended from hacking attacks. The 27-page guidebook shown to Reuters ahead of publication calls for campaign leaders to emphasize security from the start and insist on practices such as two-factor authentication for access to email and documents and fully encrypted messaging via services including Signal and Wickr. The guidelines are intended to reduce risks in low-budget local races as well as the high-stakes Congressional midterm contests next year. Though most of the suggestions cost little or nothing to implement and will strike security professionals as common sense, notorious attacks including the leak of the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, have succeeded because basic security practices were not followed. The ongoing effort is being led by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, based at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and is drawing on top security executives from companies including Google, Facebook and the cyber security firm CrowdStrike. The guidebook will be available online (here). “We heard from campaigns that there is nothing like this that exists,” said Debora Plunkett, a 31-year veteran of the National Security Agency who joined the Belfer Center this year. “We had security experts who understood security and election experts who understood campaigns, and both sides were eager to learn how the other part worked.” Plunkett said the goal was a digestible outline that was both realistic and helpful, and that leadership buy-in was critical. The handbook is the first effort from the Belfer Center’s four-month-old Defending Digital Democracy program, whose leadership includes top campaign officials from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Belfer co-director Eric Rosenbach said another guidebook, scheduled for spring, will aim at state election officials, who oversee the actual vote-counting and might also have to deal with propaganda intended to mislead or dissuade voters or sow suspicions about election integrity. “Deterring information operations is inherently a government responsibility, and the technology firms will decide how to act on their platforms, but state organizations are the victims,” Rosenbach said. The Belfer Center is also sending students out to the states to understand various voting technologies and procedures. The idea is to recommend best practices for each type of set-up, which could include mandated software updates, paper back-ups and audits. Thus far, the project has offered no advice for the internet companies that are under fire for allowing Russian advertising and false claims to polarize Americans. That could come later, as could a broader program for quick sharing of threat information. ;politicsNews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. marine accused of drunk driving after Japanese man dies in crash;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese man was killed in a truck collision involving a 21-year-old U.S. marine who was well over the legal alcohol limit for driving, police said of a case that was likely to stoke resentment over the U.S. military presence on the southern island of Okinawa. In response to the Sunday s fatal accident, U.S. forces in Japan banned, until further notice, all personnel in the country from drinking of alcohol. The Defence and Foreign Ministries have lodged a stern representation to the U.S. forces in Japan and the U.S. embassy in Japan, asking for the enforcement of discipline, prevention of recurrence and sincere response to the bereaved, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference on Monday. U.S. Ambassador to Japan William Hagerty expressed his condolences and offered an apology, Suga said. The accident occurred at an intersection in the city of Naha early Sunday morning. The marine was driving a military truck, and the 61-year-old crash victim was in a light truck. The Japanese man was later pronounced dead, while the U.S. serviceman, who was arrested for the fatal accident and driving under the influence of alcohol, suffered scratches, a police official in Naha said. The official said a breath test showed the marine was as much as three times over the legal limit for alcohol. When our service members fail to live up to the high standards we set for them, it damages the bonds between bases and local communities and make it harder for us to accomplish our mission, a statement from the U.S. forces in Japan said. Last year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe protested to then-U.S. President Barack Obama about the killing of a young woman in Okinawa, for which a U.S. base worker had been charged. Obama, who was visiting Japan for a Group of Seven summit, expressed deepest regrets. The case is under trial. Residents in Okinawa, a reluctant host to the bulk of U.S. bases in Japan, believe that they shoulder an unfair burden in supporting the U.S. military presence in Japan. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DIRTY POOL! FBI AND DOJ Just Affirmed They Spied On Trump WITHOUT Proving Dossier’s Authenticity;How dirty is this? The powers-that-be at the intelligence agencies didn t follow the proper channels before opening up spying on the Trump campaign! They needed proof that the Trump dossier is authentic but never received that proof. They moved forward with the spying anyway! What dirty rats these Democrats are!FBI and Justice Department officials have told congressional investigators in recent days that they have not been able to verify or corroborate the substantive allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign outlined in the Trump dossier.The FBI received the first installment of the dossier in July 2016. It received later installments as they were written at the height of the presidential campaign, which means the bureau has had more than a year to investigate the allegations in the document.The dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.An August 24, 2017 subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee to the FBI and Justice Department asked for information on the bureau s efforts to validate the dossier. Specifically, the subpoena demanded any documents, if they exist, that memorialize DOJ and/or FBI efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate information provided by Mr. Steele and/or sub-sources and/or contained in the Trump Dossier. According to sources familiar with the matter, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has provided documents in response to that part of the committee s subpoena. But in face-to-face briefings with congressional staff, according to those sources, FBI and DOJ officials have said they cannot verify the dossier s charges of a conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.Read more: WE;Government News;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BOOM! TRUMP TWEETS TO NFL’s Marshawn Lynch About His US Anthem Protest in Mexico;It didn t take long for President Trump to tweet his displeasure to NFL player Marshawn Lynch for his protest against our national anthem last weekend. Lynch stood for the Mexican national anthem but sat out the US national anthem (see below)! What a jack wagon!President Trump tweeted: OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON MARSHAWN LYNCH: The NFL just keeps killing the goose that laid the golden egg First of all, they play in Mexico? Are they trying to cultivate fans there now? They might have more luck filling the stadiums.And we still have players kneeling during our national anthem They re killing any chance to redeem themselves, one game at a time.Idiotic Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch has pulled some stunts during this season but the one below takes the cake:Marshawn Lynch sits during the US national anthem, stands for Mexican anyhem pic.twitter.com/8wdaKprEki Ben Volin (@BenVolin) November 19, 2017Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat during most of U.S. anthem and stood for the Mexican anthem before their game against the Patriots at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.Mexican national anthem being sung on field at Estadio Azteca. And throughout the crowd. Marshawn Lynch rose for it. pic.twitter.com/Pz4GoEfyuw Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) November 19, 2017Lynch has not stood for the national anthem since returning from retirement this season.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE ANTICS OF MARSHAWN LYNCH: NATIONAL ANTHEM KNEELER Marshawn Lynch Ejected From Raiders Game For Leaving Sideline to Attack Ref [Video]NFL anthem kneeler Marshawn Lynch ran onto the field to jump into a fight that broke out after a play. He attacked a ref on the field and was promptly ejected. Slow motion video below shows him attacking the ref after running onto the field. No respect!nickr83: Tensions flare in Oakland. #TNF #KCvsOAK CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City https://t.co/DDAQV3HyiY pic.twitter.com/jvVsmiXBuu FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017Here he is running onto the filed from the sideline:silverhunt: Beast mode!! CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City Chiefs at Oakland Raiders https://t.co/lMUBGz02dH pic.twitter.com/9Mahc5vHhd FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017Lynch is tossed from the game after his embarrassing attack on a ref after running onto the field:nickr83: #BeastMode gets ejected. #TNF #KCvsOAK CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City Ch https://t.co/GqTeMzXp7K pic.twitter.com/6D8ioiK7y6 FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017OUR RECENT REPORT ON LYNCH: when we thought the NFL might return to focusing on playing football and that maybe, just maybe, the players would have time to reflect, and to understand the amazing gift they ve been given to be able to live in the greatest nation on earth along comes Marshawn Lynch Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch sat during the national anthem over the weekend, ahead of a Saturday preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals, the AP reports.The NFL player was photographed on top of an orange cooler with a banana in Glendale, Ariz.Last year, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat and kneeled during the national anthem and protested police brutality.Lynch previously backed Kaepernick, telling comedian Conan O Brien in September 2016, I d rather see him take a knee than stand up, put his hands up and get murdered. If you re really not racist then you won t see what he done, what he s doing, as a threat to America, but just addressing a problem that we have, Lynch said at the time.Raiders coach Jack Del Rio says he didn t know about Lynch s plans ahead of the game, according to NFL.com. On Marshawn, talked to Marshawn trying to make sure we re on the same page, the coach said. He said, This is something I ve done for 11 years. It s not a form of anything other than me being myself. I said, So you understand how I feel, I very strongly believe in standing for the national anthem. But I m going to respect you as a man, you do your thing. We ll do ours. It s a non-issue for me. Via: Fox News;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Detained Catalan government members say they accept Madrid's control;MADRID (Reuters) - Two former members of the Catalan government held in custody over their roles in Catalonia s banned independence drive have asked to be released from custody after accepting Madrid s control of the region, according to appeals published on Monday. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked the Catalan government and took control in October, hours after the Catalan parliament made a unilateral declaration of independence in a vote boycotted by the opposition and declared illegal by Spanish courts. Lawyers for Jordi Turull and Josep Rull have lodged requests with the High Court to be released, saying they had not shown any resistance to Rajoy instigating direct rule over Catalonia by activating Article 155 of the Spanish constitution. Six other ex-members of the Catalan government and the leaders of the two main pro-independence grassroots groups are also in jail awaiting trial at the High Court on charges of rebellion and sedition. Catalonia s independence movement has deeply divided Spain, dragging it into its worst political crisis since the return of democracy four decades ago and fuelling anti-Spanish sentiment in Catalonia and nationalist tendencies elsewhere. Rajoy has called a Dec. 21 election in Catalonia, which he hopes will lead to a unionist majority in the regional parliament. Separatist parties failed to agree to run on a united ticket, knocking their chances of retaining control. In their requests to the court, Turull and Rull s lawyers said there was no risk their clients would hide or alter or destroy evidence. My client has accepted the application of Article 155 of the constitution by the Spanish Government, they said. Earlier this month, Spain s Supreme Court released the Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell on bail of 150,000 euros after she agreed to renounce any political activity that went against the Spanish constitution. Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is in Belgium, and Spain has issued a European arrest warrant for him. He said a week ago he might consider a solution to the crisis that did not involve Catalonia s secession. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: JOY BEHAR of “THE VIEW” Calls Bill Clinton Rape and Sexual Assault Victims “Tramps” That “Slept With” Hillary’s Husband…Whoopi Says Hillary’s The “Victim”;Last week, the mostly female audience of The View watched the panel of hypocritical, rabidly anti-Republican hosts attack Alabama s GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore for unproven sexual assault allegations. Only one year ago, however, The View s co-host Joy Behar, attacked the disgraced the mulitple sexual assault victims of former President Bill Clinton, calling them tramps who slept with him . Are the mostly female viewers really okay with the co-hosts of The View (who are completely devoid of any intellectual thought) dismissing the multiple allegations of sexual assault, including rape, by the impeached Democrat President Bill Clinton? Is it really okay with their viewers that Whoopi Goldberg would refer to the wife of the alleged rapist, Hillary Clinton (who threatened his victims to remain silent about her husbands sex crimes, or pay serious consequences) a victim ? When do the women who watch The View say, Enough with the hypocrisy! ? The female hosts of The View discussed the second debate the following day on their show. During the discussion, host Joy Behar called the women who allegedly slept with Bill Clinton tramps .Prior to the debate, Trump highlighted three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or harassment. The View host Sunny Hostin suggested that Hillary Clinton may have missed an opportunity to address the controversy during the second presidential debate. This is the thing though if a woman sleeps with your husband, you re not going to necessarily embrace them That s why when he brought up these allegations, I wonder if she missed the opportunity to address it in a way that the public would understand Hostin mused.Behar disagreed, joking that there wasn t much Hillary Clinton could say to the women.Behar suggested the Democratic nominee could say: I would like to apologize to those tramps that have slept with my husband. Maybe she could have said that. Fox News.@WhoopiGoldberg reacts to Donald Trump inviting Bill Clinton s accusers to last night's #debate. https://t.co/wxW54okAF5 The View (@TheView) October 10, 2016Only today, The View hags attempted to defend Democrat Senator Al Franken s sexual assault accusations, suggesting that he shouldn t step down, while simultaneously suggesting that GOP Senate candidate, Roy Moore, should drop out of the Senate race in Alabama.Watch:SHOULD SEN. FRANKEN RESIGN? After a second woman accuses Sen. Al Franken of inappropriate touching, co-hosts discuss what should come next. pic.twitter.com/NoerTvzzCd The View (@TheView) November 20, 2017 ;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH The White House Christmas Tree Arrival Ceremony [Video];MAKING CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN! First Lady Melania Trump and Barron Trump received the official 2017 White House Christmas Tree today. It s a 19-and-a-half-foot Balsam fir from Wisconsin that was picked out in September The National Christmas Tree Association and White House officials decide on the tree in a contest held every year:CHAPMAN FAMILY WINS!Silent Night Evergreens, owned by the Chapman family, last provided the official White House Christmas tree in 1998 and 2003, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.The Chapman family got to present the tree at the White House and meet First Lady Melania Trump and Barron Trump.After the first lady and son Barron gave their symbolic approval, the tree will be set up and decorated in the Blue Room of the White House.THE FIRST LADY WROTE ON TWITTER: Thank you Silent Night Evergreens in Wisconsin for our beautiful tree! POTUS, Barron & I are excited for Christmas in our new home! Thank you Silent Night Evergreens in Wisconsin for our beautiful tree! @POTUS, Barron & I are excited for Christmas in our new home! pic.twitter.com/so6HVG1st8 Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) November 21, 2017;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ACCUSED RAPIST BILL CLINTON Has 4 NEW Accusers…Claim He Sexually Assaulted Them While Flying Around On ‘Air F**k One’;Who didn t see this coming? Four more women have come forward to charge Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them This could get interesting You know, with Hillary coming out last week with a lecture on standing up for women Will she stand by her man or not?Edward Klein is the former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine and the author of numerous bestsellers including his fourth book on the Clintons, Guilty as Sin, in 2016. His latest book is All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump was released on October 30, 2017. Bill Clinton is facing explosive new charges of sexual assault from four women, according to highly placed Democratic Party sources and an official who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.The current accusations against the 71-year-old former president whose past is littered with charges of sexual misconduct stem from the period after he left the White House in 2001, say the sources.Attorneys representing the women, who are coordinating their efforts, have notified Clinton they are preparing to file four separate lawsuits against him.As part of the ongoing negotiations, the attorneys for the women are asking for substantial payouts in return for their clients silence.A member of Clinton s legal team has confirmed the existence of the new allegations.Back in the late 1990s, Clinton paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee whose case led to Clinton s impeachment in the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal by the Senate in 1999. The negotiations in the new lawsuits are said to have reached a critical stage. If they fail, according to sources in Clinton s inner circle, the four women are said to be ready to air their accusations of sexual assault at a press conference, making Clinton the latest and most famous figure in a long list of men from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey who have recently been accused of sexual assault.The new allegations refer to incidents that took place more than 10 years ago, in the early 2000s, when Clinton was hired by Ron Burkle, the playboy billionaire investor, to work at his Yucaipa companies. Clinton helped Burkle generate business and flew around the world with a flock of beautiful young women on Burkle s private jet, which was nicknamed Air F**k One. The four women, who have not yet revealed their identities, were employed in low-level positions at the Burkle organization when they were in their late teens and claim they were sexually assaulted by the former president.Read more: Daily Mail;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! Marshawn Lynch’s Mommy Comes To Her Son’s Defense After Trump Calls Him Out For Disrespecting U.S. Flag During NFL Game In Mexico: “what NFL team do Trump own ?”;President Donald Trump says that the Oakland Raiders should suspend running back Marshawn Lynch for the rest of the season for disrespecting the flag after he did not stand for the anthem.Before Sunday s game against the New England Patriots in Mexico City, Lynch sat during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, as he has done all season. Lynch did stand when the Mexican national anthem was played.Marshawn Lynch sits during the US national anthem, stands for Mexican anyhem pic.twitter.com/8wdaKprEki Ben Volin (@BenVolin) November 19, 2017While Lynch hasn t publicly commented on the protest, he did wear a shirt that said Everybody vs. Trump before a Week 4 game against the Denver Broncos. Great disrespect! Next time NFL should suspend him for remainder of season. Attendance and ratings way down, Trump tweeted on Monday morning. SIMarshawn Lynch of the NFL s Oakland Raiders stands for the Mexican Anthem and sits down to boos for our National Anthem. Great disrespect! Next time NFL should suspend him for remainder of season. Attendance and ratings way down. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2017The mama of big tough guy, NFL player Marshawn Lynch, who recently left the bench during a game, to assault a referee with over a call he disagreed with, has taken to Twitter in hopes of embarrassing President Donald Trump.Here s Marshawn Lynch leaving the bench to assault a referee during a game. He was later suspended by the team for his inappropriate actions:nickr83: Tensions flare in Oakland. #TNF #KCvsOAK CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City https://t.co/DDAQV3HyiY pic.twitter.com/jvVsmiXBuu FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017Here it is again in slow motion:silverhunt: Beast mode!! CBS Thursday Night Football: Kansas City Chiefs at Oakland Raiders https://t.co/lMUBGz02dH pic.twitter.com/9Mahc5vHhd FanSportsClips (@FanSportsClips) October 20, 2017Perhaps Delisa Lynch should consider refraining from making public comments on Twitter. By the looks of her tweet, the only one who should be embarrassed by Delisha Lynch s tweet is Delisa Lynch, whose grammar and punctuation is almost as embarrassing as her loser son s behavior. Lynch starts each sentence in her tweet with lower case letters and ends her tweet with a sentence followed by a space, a comma, and two exclamation points for emphasis. Lynch s tweet was apparently intended to embarrass President Trump, when she asked, what NFL team do Trump own ? oh yeah they wouldnt let him have one ,!! LMAOwhat NFL team do Trump own ? oh yeah they wouldnt let him have one ,!! LMAO https://t.co/1rPa5jfMjE Delisa Lynch (@MommaLynch24) November 20, 2017;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Veteran Journalist of 45 Years Suspended by CBS, PBS, Bloomberg After Multiple Women Claim Harassment;Who knew? Probably everyone in the news biz knew but said nothing. Charlie Rose has been groping women for years. It has come to this if a woman accuses you, you re gone, gone, gone. Apparently, several women came forward and accused the smooth talking veteran journalist of sexual misconduct. Charlie Rose immediately issued a statement apologizing but saying all claims aren t accurate. Charlie Rose was a groper? Wow!CHARLIE ROSE IS TOAST In response to a Washington Post report detailing multiple accusations of inappropriate conduct, PBS and Bloomberg announced on Monday afternoon that both companies will stop distributing Charlie Rose s eponymous show, Charlie Rose. The nightly show is produced by Rose s company, Charlie Rose Inc.Separately, CBS announced that Rose is suspended from his role as CBS This Morning co-host. Charlie Rose is suspended immediately while we look into this matter, the network said. Rose is also a contributing correspondent for 60 Minutes.The Post spoke to eight women for the story about Rose, which focuses on his treatment of Charlie Rose employees between the late 1990s and 2011. None of the women worked for CBS or PBS, according to the report, and PBS, CBS and Bloomberg all told the newspaper that they have no records of sexual harassment complaints about Charlie Rose. PBS was shocked to learn today of these deeply disturbing allegations, the organization in a statement. We are immediately suspending distribution of Charlie Rose. PBS does not fund this nightly program or supervise its production, but we expect our producers to provide a workplace where people feel safe and are treated with dignity and respect. In a statement, Bloomberg said: We are deeply disturbed to learn of these allegations and are immediately suspending the show from airing on Bloomberg TV. WHO KNEW? ROSE IS A SERIAL GROPER? Most of the women said Rose alternated between fury and flattery in his interactions with them, the Post reported. Five described Rose putting his hand on their legs, sometimes their upper thigh, in what they perceived as a test to gauge their reactions. Two said that while they were working for Rose at his residences or were traveling with him on business, he emerged from the shower and walked naked in front of them. One said he groped her buttocks at a staff party. ROSE ISSUES STATEMENT Rose addressed the allegations in a statement to the Post and to reporters following publication. He said: In my 45 years in journalism, I have prided myself on being an advocate for the careers of the women with whom I have worked. Nevertheless, in the past few days, claims have been made about my behavior toward some former female colleagues. It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DIRTY POOL! FBI AND DOJ Just Affirmed They Spied On Trump WITHOUT Proving Dossier’s Authenticity;How dirty is this? The powers-that-be at the intelligence agencies didn t follow the proper channels before opening up spying on the Trump campaign! They needed proof that the Trump dossier is authentic but never received that proof. They moved forward with the spying anyway! What dirty rats these Democrats are!FBI and Justice Department officials have told congressional investigators in recent days that they have not been able to verify or corroborate the substantive allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign outlined in the Trump dossier.The FBI received the first installment of the dossier in July 2016. It received later installments as they were written at the height of the presidential campaign, which means the bureau has had more than a year to investigate the allegations in the document.The dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.An August 24, 2017 subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee to the FBI and Justice Department asked for information on the bureau s efforts to validate the dossier. Specifically, the subpoena demanded any documents, if they exist, that memorialize DOJ and/or FBI efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate information provided by Mr. Steele and/or sub-sources and/or contained in the Trump Dossier. According to sources familiar with the matter, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department has provided documents in response to that part of the committee s subpoena. But in face-to-face briefings with congressional staff, according to those sources, FBI and DOJ officials have said they cannot verify the dossier s charges of a conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.Read more: WE;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico's presidential front-runner vows stable economy;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel says she would prefer new elections over minority government;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that she would prefer new elections to leading a minority government after talks about forming a three-way coalition collapsed overnight. My point of view is that new elections would be the better path, Merkel told ARD television in an interview to be broadcast later in the evening. She added that her plans did not include being chancellor in a minority government. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump declares North Korea state sponsor of terrorism, triggers sanctions;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear weapons and missile programs. The Republican president, who has traded personal insults with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but has not ruled out talks, said the Treasury Department will announce additional sanctions against North Korea on Tuesday. The designation came a week after Trump returned from a 12-day, five-nation trip to Asia in which he made containing North Korea s nuclear ambitions a centerpiece of his discussions. In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, including assassinations on foreign soil, Trump told reporters at the White House. This designation will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime. Trump, who has often criticized his predecessors policies toward Pyongyang, said the designation should have been made a long time ago. North Korea is pursuing nuclear weapons and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions and has made no secret of its plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. It has fired two missiles over Japan and on Sept. 3 fired its sixth and largest nuclear test. South Korea s spy agency said on Monday the North may conduct additional missile tests this year to improve its long-range missile technology and ramp up the threat against the United States. Experts say the designation will be largely symbolic as North Korea is already heavily sanctioned by the United States, a reality that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson seemed to acknowledged while saying it would help dissuade third parties from supporting Pyongyang. The practical effects may be limited but hopefully we re closing off a few loopholes with this, he told reporters. The United States has designated only three other countries - Iran, Sudan and Syria - as state sponsors of terrorism. Some experts think North Korea does not meet the criteria for the designation, which requires evidence that a state has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. In his remarks, Trump remembered Otto Warmbier, the college student from Ohio who died in June shortly after his return from North Korea, where he was held for more than a year. His death caused outrage in the United States and further inflamed tensions with Pyongyang. A U.S. intelligence official who follows developments in North Korea expressed concern that Trump s move could backfire, especially given that the basis for the designation is arguable. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Kim could respond in a number of ways, including renewing missile or nuclear tests in a very volatile environment. The move also could undercut Trump s efforts to solicit greater Chinese cooperation in pressuring North Korea to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, the official said. In any case, it will do little to open the way for U.S. dialogue with North Korea, which China - Pyongyang s main ally - and others have been pushing for. I don t see how this helps, and it might just be an important miscalculation, said Robert Gallucci, the chief U.S. negotiator during the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis. In February, plans for talks in the United States between former U.S. officials and North Korea were scrapped when the State Department denied a visa for a top envoy from Pyongyang after the murder of Kim s half brother, Kim Jong Nam, in Malaysia. North Korea was put on the U.S. terrorism sponsor list for the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air flight that killed all 115 people aboard. But the administration of former President George W. Bush, a Republican, removed Pyongyang in 2008 in exchange for progress in denuclearization talks. Some members of Congress had been pushing for years for North Korea to be put back on the list, but others questioned whether the reclusive regime met the criteria of actively sponsoring international terrorism. U.S. Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, called the decision an important step in our efforts to apply maximum diplomatic and financial pressure on Kim Jong Un. Democratic Senator Edward Markey said the designation ratchets up the rhetoric but does nothing to hold North Korea accountable for its weapons program. The designation could prove counterproductive, said Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the conservative Center for the National Interest. Sadly, this action by the Trump administration just further cements a dangerous game of escalatory brinkmanship where neither side is giving the other any off-ramp, he said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. general sets two-year goal for driving back Afghan Taliban;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said on Monday he believes he could help Afghan forces drive back the Taliban enough to control at least 80 percent of the country within two years, compared with about two-thirds today. General John Nicholson, citing counter-insurgency doctrine, said gaining 80 percent control of the country would represent a turning point in the 16-year-old conflict, which has become the longest U.S war. This we believe is the critical mass necessary to drive the enemy to irrelevance, meaning they re living in these remote outlying areas, or they reconcile, or they die, Nicholson told a Pentagon news briefing via video conference from Afghanistan. His remarks carried echoes of a U.S.-led strategy that began in 2009 and was accompanied by a massive surge in U.S. forces, which peaked in 2011 at more than 100,000 troops. Many areas that were regained during U.S.-led operations eventually reverted to Taliban control when Western forces turned them over to the Afghans. The U.S. military presence is just a fraction of its peak levels today. President Donald Trump sent an additional 3,000 troops to Afghanistan in recent weeks, bringing the total number of U.S. troops to about 14,000. The Pentagon is also directing more and more intelligence assets and firepower to the country as gains against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria free up resources for Afghanistan. That has allowed for a major increase in U.S. air strikes, which Nicholson said reached their highest level this year since 2012. Still, Taliban control of the country remains roughly steady against last year, Nicholson acknowledged. As of August, 13 percent of the 407 districts in Afghanistan were under Taliban control or influence, compared with 11 percent in February, according to a report released last month by the U.S. government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Many analysts, as well as current and former U.S. officials, believe that Afghanistan s war cannot be won militarily, particularly when the Taliban benefit from safe-havens in Pakistan. Trump has articulated a harder policy toward Pakistan in recent months, but U.S. officials say they have not yet seen a meaningful shift by Islamabad against insurgents using Pakistan as a hub for attacks in Afghanistan. The Afghan army also suffers from deep structural problems, including high casualty rates, rampant illiteracy, corruption and a frequent lack of tribal ties to areas where they are sent to fight. Still, in Nicholson s view, getting Afghan forces to hold 80 percent of the country s population would leave the Taliban with less than 10 percent control. Maybe the rest is contested, he said. One way that Nicholson hopes to increase pressure on the Taliban is to curb their financing, and he showed videos to Pentagon reporters of U.S. strikes in recent days against Taliban opium factories. He cited estimates of between 400 and 500 opium factories in Afghanistan. Afghan opium production reached record highs this year, up 87 percent from last year, the United Nations said last week. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said output of opium made from poppies in Afghanistan, the world s main source of heroin, stands at around 9,000 metric tons this year. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi agency says country targeted in cyber spying campaign;LONDON/RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian security officials said on Monday that the country had been targeted as part of a wide-ranging cyber espionage campaign observed since February against five Middle East nations as well as several countries outside the region. The Saudi government s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) said in a statement the kingdom had been hit by a hacking campaign bearing the technical hallmarks of an attack group dubbed MuddyWater by U.S. cyber firm Palo Alto Networks. Palo Alto s Unit 42 threat research unit published a report last Friday showing how a string of connected attacks this year used decoy documents with official-looking government logos to lure unsuspecting users from targeted organizations to download infected documents and compromise their computer networks. Documents pretending to be from the U.S. National Security Agency, Iraqi intelligence, Russian security firm Kaspersky and the Kurdistan regional government were among those used to trick victims, Unit 42 said in a blog post (goo.gl/SvwrXv). The Unit 42 researchers said the attacks had targeted organizations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Israel, as well as entities outside the Middle East in Georgia, India, Pakistan and the United States. The Saudi security agency said in its own statement that the attacks sought to steal data from computers using email phishing techniques targeting the credentials of specific users. The NCSC said they also comprised so-called watering hole attacks, which seek to trick users to click on infected web links to seize control of their machines. The technical indicators supplied by Unit 42 are the same as those described by the NCSC as being involved in attacks against Saudi Arabia. The NCSC said the attacks appeared to be by an advanced persistent threat (APT) group - cyber jargon typically used to describe state-backed espionage. Saudi Arabia has been the target of frequent cyber attacks, including the Shamoon virus, which cripples computers by wiping their disks and has hit both government ministries and petrochemical firms. Saudi Aramco, the world s largest oil company, was hit by an early version of the Shamoon virus in 2012, in the country s worst cyber attack to date. The NCSC declined further comment on the source of the attack or on which organizations or agencies were targeted. Unit 42 said it was unable to identify the attack group or its aims and did not have enough data to conclude that the MuddyWater group was behind the Saudi attacks as outlined by NCSC. We cannot confirm that the NCSC posting and our MuddyWater research are in fact related, Christopher Budd, a Unit 42 manager told Reuters. There s just not enough information to make that connection with an appropriate level of certainty. Palo Alto Networks said the files it had uncovered were almost identical to information-stealing documents disguised as Microsoft Word files and found to be targeting the Saudi government by security firm MalwareBytes in a September report. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Like Zimbabwe, South Africa needs leadership change: ANC official;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress (ANC) should get President Jacob Zuma to stand down as head of state after a party conference next month because like Zimbabwe the country urgently needs a change of leader, a senior ANC official said. The ANC has been dogged by infighting for much of this year as a series of corruption scandals have tarnished its image ahead of the December conference at which it will elect Zuma s successor. The party is split between factions backing Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former minister and ex-wife of Zuma, and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa for the ANC s top job. ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told Reuters that whoever the party chooses next month, the incoming leadership should tell Zuma to go to allow the ANC to clean up its act. You can t keep him there, he said. Mthembu said the ANC could learn from what was happening in Zimbabwe, where the ruling ZANU-PF party is pushing for President Robert Mugabe to leave his post. In Zimbabwe they call that bloodless corrections ... We need to make the corrections immediately after the conference. How do you effect those corrections in government when the same person who might have contributed to a better degree still sits? Mthembu asked. Mthembu is in the camp that backs Ramaphosa for ANC president and said it was important for the ANC to regain the trust of South African people after news reports that the Gupta brothers, business friends close to Zuma, had influenced government appointments and secured contracts from state firms. Both Zuma and the Guptas deny any wrongdoing. Zuma s second term as president expires in 2019, but he could be forced out as head of state by the ANC s new leadership before his term ends, as was the case with former president Thabo Mbeki. In May the ANC said its executive committee backed Zuma after calls for him to resign, and in August Zuma survived a no-confidence motion in parliament. Zuma still has strong support in the party, including from the influential women s and youth leagues as well as in rural areas, where several tribal chiefs back the traditionalist leader. The ANC has seen its electoral majority shrink over recent years, and some analysts predict it could lose the 2019 election. Until recently that was unthinkable for a party that has led comfortably since sweeping to power under Nelson Mandela at the end of apartheid in 1994. Mthembu said if the ANC failed to emerge from its December conference with a new image it was doomed . It s us who got South Africa into this mess by electing Zuma to be president. We should have looked closely into the man. With hindsight we made a terrible error of judgment, he said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe in talks with ousted vice president: army chief;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s top general said on Monday he was encouraged by contact between President Robert Mugabe and former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking two weeks ago triggered a coup. In remarks made on the state broadcaster, General Constantino Chiwenga said Mnangagwa would be back in the country soon and hold talks with Mugabe, adding that the army was confident its intervention code named Operation Restore Legacy was progressing well. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions individuals, entities for Iran-linked counterfeiting;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday sanctioned a network of individuals and companies it said counterfeited Yemeni bank notes potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran Revolutionary Guard s Qods Force. The network circumvented European export restrictions in order to provide the counterfeiting supplies and equipment, according to a Treasury statement. President Donald Trump last month declared Iran s Revolutionary Guard a supporter of terrorism and authorized Treasury to impose tough sanctions limiting its access to goods and funding. Republican Trump has been critical of the 2015 agreement his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, reached with Iran and said the United States must take stronger steps to ensure the country does not acquire nuclear weapons. The counterfeiting scheme exposed the deep levels of deception that the Qods Force, a Revolutionary Guard unit carrying out missions outside the country, employs against companies in Europe, governments in the Gulf, and the rest of the world to support its destabilizing activities, said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. According to Treasury, Pardavesh Tasvir Rayan Co. is a printing operation controlled by businessman Reza Heidari and owned by Tejarat Almas Mobin Holding that procured equipment and materials to print counterfeit Yemeni rial bank notes. Qods Force used the currency to support its activities. Heidari used front companies and other methods to keep European suppliers in the dark about their ultimate customer. He coordinated with Mahmoud Seif, Tejarat s managing director, on the logistics of procuring materials and moving them into Iran, Treasury said. Treasury sanctioned both men and both companies, as well as ForEnt Technik GmbH, which Heidari owns, and Printing Trade Center GmbH for serving as front companies in the operation. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe in contact with ousted vice president;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s top general said on Monday talks were planned between President Robert Mugabe and former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking by the 93-year-old leader two weeks ago triggered a coup. General Constantino Chiwenga, head of the armed forces and leader of the takeover codenamed Operation Restore Legacy , told a media conference he was encouraged by contact between the two men and Mnangagwa would be back in the country soon. Thereafter, the nation will be advised on the outcome of talks between the two, he said, reading from a statement. Earlier, Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF resolved to bring a motion in parliament on Tuesday to impeach Mugabe, after a noon deadline expired for the besieged leader to resign and bring the curtain down on nearly four decades in power. Impeachment could see Mugabe kicked out in days and would be an ignominious end to the career of the Grand Old Man of African politics, once lauded as an anti-colonial hero. In the draft motion, the party accused Mugabe of being a source of instability , flouting the rule of law and presiding over an unprecedented economic tailspin in the last 15 years. It also said he had abused his constitutional mandate to favor his unpopular wife Grace, 52, whose tilt at power triggered the backlash from the army that brought tanks onto the streets of the capital last week. Mnangagwa s removal was meant to boost her chances of succeeding her husband. On paper, the impeachment process is long-winded, involving a joint sitting of the Senate and National Assembly, then a nine-member committee of senators, then another joint sitting to confirm his dismissal with a two-thirds majority. However, constitutional experts said ZANU-PF, in revolt against Mugabe, could push it through quickly. They can fast-track it. It can be done in a matter of a day, said John Makamure, executive director of the Southern African Parliamentary Support Trust. Mugabe s demise, now apparently inevitable, is likely to send shockwaves across Africa. A number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda s Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo s Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to step aside. Mugabe was once admired as the Thinking Man s Guerrilla , a world away from his image in his latter years as a dictator who proudly declared he held a degree in violence . As the economy crumbled and opposition to his rule grew in the late 1990s, Mugabe tightened his grip in the southern African country of 16 million, seizing white-owned farms, unleashing security forces to crush dissent and speaking of ruling until he was 100. ZANU-PF s action follows a weekend of high drama in Harare that culminated in reports Mugabe had agreed to stand down - only for him to dash the hopes of millions of his countrymen in a bizarre and rambling national address on Sunday night. Flanked by the generals who sent in troops last week to seize the state broadcaster, Mugabe spoke of the need for national unity and farming reform, but made no mention of his own fate. I am baffled. It s not just me, it s the whole nation, shocked opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai told Reuters. He s playing a game. Two senior government sources told Reuters Mugabe had agreed on Sunday to step aside and CNN said on Monday his resignation letter had been drawn up, with terms that included immunity for him and Grace. Two other political sources told Reuters on Monday Mugabe had indeed agreed to resign but ZANU-PF did not want him to quit in front of the military, an act that would have made its intervention last week look more like a coup. Another political source said Mugabe s opponents had hoped his televised speech would sanitize the military s action, which has paved the way for Mnangagwa, a former security chief known as The Crocodile, to take over. Moments after the address, war veterans leader Chris Mutsvangwa, called for a wave of protests if Mugabe refused to go. In London, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said Mugabe had clearly lost the support of his people. Since last week, Mugabe has been confined to his lavish Blue Roof residence in Harare, apart from two trips to State House to meet the generals and one to a university graduation ceremony at which he appeared to fall asleep. Grace and at least two senior members of her G40 political faction are believed to be holed up in the same compound. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Harare to celebrate Mugabe s expected downfall and hail a new era for their country, whose economy has imploded under the weight of economic mismangement. Inflation reached 500 billion percent in 2008. An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans have emigrated to neighboring South Africa in search of a better life. The huge crowds on the streets have given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army s intervention. Behind the euphoria, however, some Zimbabweans have misgivings. The real danger of the current situation is that, having got their new preferred candidate into State House, the military will want to keep him or her there, no matter what the electorate wills, former education minister David Coltart said. Others worry about Mnangagwa s past, particularly as state security chief in the early 1980s, when an estimated 20,000 people were killed in the so-called Gukurahundi crackdown by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland. He has denied any wrongdoing but critics say Zimbabwe risks swapping one army-backed autocrat for another. The deep state that engineered this change of leadership will remain, thwarting any real democratic reform, said Miles Tendi, a Zimbabwean academic at Oxford University. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., Afghan forces strike opium factories to curb Taliban funds;KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. and Afghan forces have launched joint attacks on Taliban opium factories to try to curb the insurgent group s economic lifeline, officials from both countries said on Monday. U.S. Army General John Nicholson showed videos at a press conference of targeted aerial strikes against what he described as Taliban drug factories. Last night we conducted strikes in northern Helmand to hit the Taliban where it hurts, in their narcotics financing, said Nicholson, flanked by Afghan Army Lieutenant General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali. The southern province of Helmand suffers heavy fighting and is the single-largest producer of opium. Opium production in Afghanistan reached record highs this year, up 87 percent on last year, the United Nations said last week. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said output of opium made from poppy seeds in Afghanistan, the world s main source of heroin, stands at around 9,000 metric tons this year. UNODC has warned in the past that Kabul s weakening grip on security was contributing to a collapse in eradication efforts. Nearly half of Afghan opium is processed, or refined into morphine or heroin, before it is trafficked out of the country, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. We re determined to tackle criminal economy and narcotics trafficking with full force, said Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Twitter. Nicholson said the attacks were part of U.S. President Donald Trump s new policy toward Afghanistan as he boosts troop numbers. The four-star general showed one video of an F-22 fighter jet dropping 250-pound bombs on two buildings, emphasizing that a nearby third building was left unscathed. U.S. troops have long been accused of causing unnecessary collateral damage and civilian deaths. The United States says it takes every precaution to avoid civilian casualties. The United Nations said at least 10 civilians may have been killed by a strike in Kunduz earlier this month, contradicting a U.S. investigation that found no civilian deaths. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;DUP says Northern Ireland will leave EU on same terms as rest of UK;BELFAST (Reuters) - The head of the Democratic Unionist Party said on Monday Northern Ireland would leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom, rebuffing a suggestion from the bloc that the region remain subject to some of its rules. Brussels has said it will not move to the second phase of Brexit talks with Britain until London provides additional detail of how it will guarantee that there be no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Chief EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday asked the British government to detail what specific EU rules it would retain in Northern Ireland to ensure regulatory equivalence between the region and the Irish Republic and thus avoid the need for a hard border. But the head of the DUP, whose votes the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May is dependent on to pass legislation, repeated her rejection of the suggestion on Monday, saying she would not create barriers to business with the rest of the United Kingdom to allow smooth trade with Ireland. Northern Ireland will exit the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom, Arlene Foster said in a statement ahead of a meeting with May on Tuesday morning. We will not countenance a border in the Irish Sea. I welcome the Prime Minister s commitment on this. The EU has said the UK needs to come forward with concrete proposals on the Irish border and on what past financial commitments it will honor by early December if EU leaders are to declare at their Dec. 14-15 summit that enough has been achieved to start talks on a transition period and a trade deal. Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc in March 2019. Foster said the EU s stance on Northern Ireland amounted to blackmail. Those in Dublin and Brussels, recklessly trying to use Northern Ireland for their own objectives, should cease, she said in the statement. The Prime Minister should warn Brussels that Northern Ireland must not be used as blackmail. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hezbollah denies sending weapons to Yemen;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of Lebanon s Hezbollah said on Monday his Iran-backed group had not sent any weapons to Yemen and denied that it was behind the firing of a ballistic missile at Riyadh from Yemeni territory held by Tehran-allied Houthi forces. In a televised address, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also urged followers to listen to recent comments by Israeli officials which he said pointed to ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, Hezbollah s arch foe. An Israeli cabinet minister said this week that Israel has had covert contacts with Riyadh amid common concerns over Iran, a first disclosure by a senior official from either country of long-rumoured secret dealings. Nasrallah also heaped criticism on Arab states that accused Hezbollah of terrorism at an emergency Arab League meeting on Sunday. He called the charge trivial and ridiculous , asking why Arab states were silent about what he described as the destructive war a Saudi-led coalition has waged in Yemen. I confirm to them, no ballistic missiles, no advanced weapons, and no guns ... we did not send weapons to Yemen, or Bahrain, or Kuwait, or Iraq, he said. Hezbollah had however sent arms to Palestinian territories, including anti-tank missiles, Nasrallah said. I take pride in that. And in Syria there are the weapons we are fighting with, he said. Regional tensions have risen in recent weeks between Sunni Muslim monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran, whose rivalry has wrought upheaval in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Arab League foreign ministers held an emergency meeting on Sunday at the request of Saudi Arabia to discuss ways to confront Iran and Hezbollah over their role in the region. Saudi Arabia has accused the heavily armed Shi ite Hezbollah of helping Houthi rebels in Yemen and playing a role in the ballistic missile attack this month. Riyadh has been bogged down in the war it launched against the Houthis in Yemen in 2015. I categorically deny it, Nasrallah said. No man from Lebanese Hezbollah had any part in the firing of this missile or any missiles fired previously. Lebanon was thrust back to the forefront of the power struggle between Riyadh and Tehran after its prime minister quit abruptly in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia this month. In his shock resignation speech, Saad al-Hariri accused Iran and Hezbollah of sowing strife in the region. Lebanese state officials and politicians close to Hariri say he was held in Riyadh against his will and forced to resign, which Riyadh and Hariri denied. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has refused to accept the resignation until Hariri comes home. A long-time Saudi ally and Sunni leader, Hariri flew to France at the weekend and is expected to return to Beirut in time for independence day celebrations on Wednesday. We are all waiting for the return of the prime minister, whom we still consider has not resigned, Nasrallah said. When he comes, we will see. We are open to any dialogue and any discussion that happens in the country. Hariri took office last year in a power-sharing deal that saw Aoun, a Hezbollah political ally, become president. His coalition government includes Hezbollah, a military and political movement that wields great influence in Lebanon. Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to support the Damascus government against mostly Sunni Syrian rebel factions, some of whom have received Saudi aid, and Islamic State militants. Nasrallah also thanked Major-General Qassem Soleimani for what he described as his huge role in fighting Islamic State in the eastern Syrian town of Albu Kamal. Soleimani, commander of foreign operations for Iran s Revolutionary Guards, led the battle from the frontlines from the very beginning, he said. The battle must continue with the same strength ... and we must continue working to end the remnants of Daesh, he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Hezbollah could withdraw its large number of commanders from Iraq once Islamic State was defeated there, he said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin, Qatari Emir discuss Syria by phone: Kremlin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir and Qatar s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani discussed the situation in Syria and problems in the Middle East by phone on Monday, the Kremlin said. The two men noted successes in the fight against terrorist groups in Syria and prospects for a political solution to the crisis there, the Kremlin said. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Head of Syrian opposition's HNC resigns: statement;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The head of the Syrian opposition s High Negotiations Committee (HNC) resigned on Monday, nearly two years after he was picked to chair the Saudi-backed umbrella group that brings together the armed and political opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. Riyad Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister under Assad, did not explain his reasons for stepping down in a statement posted on social media. The HNC has been the main representative of the Syrian opposition since its formation at a meeting in Saudi Arabia in December, 2015, and has taken part in U.N.-led diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict that erupted in 2011. The war has been going Assad s way since Russia sent its air force to support him militarily in 2015. The Damascus government has been steadily regaining control of territory, thanks also to the support of Iran-backed forces such as Lebanon s Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia is due to host an expanded conference for the Syrian opposition this month, aiming to unify its position ahead of more U.N.-backed peace talks, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported last week. Previous rounds of Geneva peace talks have failed to make headway towards a resolution of the war. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sound in Atlantic not from missing Argentine submarine: navy spokesman;MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A sound detected on Monday in the South Atlantic, near where an Argentine navy submarine with 44 crew went missing five days ago, is not believed to have come from the ill-fated vessel, a navy spokesman said. The sound detected by probes initially raised hopes that crew members aboard the ARA San Juan submarine, which disappeared after reporting an electrical malfunction, may have been intentionally making noise to attract rescuers. But an analysis by Argentine authorities, on the fourth day of a search-and-rescue mission, showed that it was highly unlikely it had come from the German-built submarine, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters in Buenos Aires. It does not correspond to a pattern that would be consistent with bangs against the walls in morse code, Balbi said. He described whatever had been detected as a continuous, constant sound. The disappointment followed another letdown earlier in the day, when the navy said satellite calls detected over the weekend did not in fact come from the vessel. (tmsnrt.rs/2zQ8HGZ) The vessel reported an electrical problem and was headed back to its base in the port of Mar del Plata when it disappeared on Wednesday, the navy said. Storms have complicated search efforts as relatives wait anxiously. More than a dozen boats and aircraft from Argentina, the United States, Britain, Chile and Brazil have joined the search effort. Authorities have mainly been scanning the sea from the sky, as storms have made it difficult for boats. The navy said on Monday night that two boats belonging to French oil company Total SA, which has offshore operations in Argentina, arrived at the Patagonian port of Comodoro Rivadavia to transport rescue equipment the U.S. Navy brought to the country, including a remote-operated vehicle, a mini-submarine, and a submarine rescue chamber. Gabriel Galeazzi, a naval commander, told reporters that the submarine had come up from the depths and reported the unspecified electrical malfunction before it disappeared nearly 300 miles off the coast. The submarine surfaced and reported a malfunction, which is why its ground command ordered it to return to its naval base at Mar del Plata, he said. The malfunction did not necessarily cause an emergency, Galeazzi added. The craft was navigating normally, underwater, at a speed of five knots toward Mar del Plata when it was last heard from, he said. A warship has a lot of backup systems, to allow it to move from one to another when there is a breakdown, Galeazzi said. One of the crew is Argentina s first female submarine officer, Eliana Maria Krawczyk, 35, who joined the navy in 2004 and rose to become the master-at-arms aboard the ARA San Juan. The families of crew members have gathered at the Mar del Plata naval base awaiting news. They were joined on Monday by President Mauricio Macri. We continue to deploy all available national and international resources, to find the submarine, Macri said on Twitter. Intermittent satellite communications were detected on Saturday and the government had said they were likely to have come from the submarine. But the ARA San Juan sent its last signal on Wednesday, according to Balbi. The calls that were detected did not correspond to the satellite phone of the submarine San Juan, he said on Monday, adding that the craft had oxygen for seven days. After that, he said, it would have to surface or get near the surface to replenish air supply. The ARA San Juan was inaugurated in 1983, making it the newest of the three submarines in the navy s fleet. Built in Germany, it underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina. That maintenance included the replacement of its four diesel engines and its electric propeller engines, according to specialist publication Jane s Sentinel. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;USA's Tillerson and Saudi crown prince discuss terrorism by phone;RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday to discuss regional security, Saudi state news agency SPA reported. The two discussed ways to combat terrorism and coordination of efforts to reinforce security and the stability of the region, according to the report. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Liberia electoral commission says fraud claims lack evidence;MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia s electoral commission said on Monday that claims of fraud brought by a presidential candidate in last month s election did not have sufficient evidence, delivering a preliminary conclusion of an investigation. According to the hearing officer, the Liberty Party did not have sufficient evidence to prove their case. It was denied, commission spokesman Prince Dunbar said by telephone. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Navy rolls out new measures after deadly Asia-Pacific crashes;PATTAYA, Thailand (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy has introduced new measures aimed at avoiding a repeat of two deadly crashes in the Asia Pacific region involving its warships and commercial vessels following a review of its practices, the Seventh Fleet commander said on Monday. Vice Admiral Phillip Sawyer s comments come after a U.S. guided-missile destroyer was slightly damaged at the weekend when a Japanese tug drifted into it during a towing exercise off central Japan, the latest incident in the Pacific this year involving ships from the fleet. The U.S. Navy announced a series of reforms this month aimed at restoring basic naval skills and alertness at sea after a review of deadly collisions in the Asia-Pacific region showed sailors were under-trained and over-worked. Two of the incidents - collisions with commercial vessels involving guided-missile destroyers, the Fitzgerald in June off Japan and then the John S. McCain in August as it approached Singapore - have left a total of 17 sailors dead. The crashes were caused by preventable errors by the sailors on board the ships, Navy investigations showed. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an international fleet review in the Thai seaside town of Pattaya, Sawyer said the Navy made circadian rhythm sleep guidelines a requirement and a new group, the Naval Surface Group Western Pacific, has been training officers at the fleet s headquarters in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, Japan. This is a team that is now in Yokosuka and they re charged with doing the man, train, equip aspect of our operations with surface ships, Sawyer told reporters. The second thing we have done is Automatic Identification System and that s a system onboard ships that puts out signal and it tells whoever is receiving that signal the course, speed and identification of the ship, he said. The third thing is that we are working on the circadian rhythm onboard the ships to make the sailors more alert. Sawyer took command of the U.S. force in August after the Navy removed the fleet s previous commander, Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, following a series of collisions. The U.S. Seventh Fleet operates in the largest of the U.S. Navy s numbered fleets. It oversees about 70-80 ships and submarines at any given time in the region. The fleet operates over an area of 124 million square km (48 million square miles) from bases in Japan, South Korea and Singapore. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Televisa exec shot dead outside Mexico City while riding bike;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Adolfo Lagos, the head of struggling Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa s telecoms unit izzi, was shot dead on Sunday on the outskirts of Mexico City, the state attorney general s office said in a statement. The attorney general s office for the State of Mexico, which surrounds the capital, said it was investigating the homicide near the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids. It said Lagos was on a bicycle when he was shot. He died in hospital from his wounds. Press reports said Lagos died after group of men tried to steal his bike. In his Twitter profile photo, Lagos is shown riding a bike. The attorney general s office could not immediately be reached for comment. Grupo Televisa profoundly laments the death of izzi Director Adolfo Lagos Espinosa that took place in the State of Mexico. Our condolences to his wife, daughters and family members, the company wrote on Twitter. izzi offers phone, internet and cable television services. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took to Twitter to offer his condolences, saying that the federal attorney general s office would help state prosecutors investigate. The death of Lagos, a well-known former banker, is a fresh pain for Televisa, which is struggling with declining ad sales and tough competition from the widespread move to online video. The company s longtime chief executive will step down next year, the company said last month, and Televisa has also faced U.S. allegations that it was among media companies that paid bribes to secure television rights for soccer matches. The testimony came during the first trial to emerge from the U.S. investigation of bribery surrounding FIFA, soccer s world governing body. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May meets senior ministers to discuss Brexit divorce bill offer;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May met with senior members of her ministerial team on Monday to discuss their response to European Union demands for more detail on how much Britain is willing to pay as part of its Brexit divorce package. The EU told May on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock the Brexit talks, repeating its early December deadline for her to flesh out Britain s opening offer on the financial settlement thought to be worth around 20 billion euros ( 17.72 billion). May met with ministers amid expectations that she will offer the EU more than she committed to during a speech in Florence in September which failed to provide a meaningful breakthrough in the stalled negotiations. Despite growing pressure from businesses to show she can drive talks onto the subject of future trading relations with the EU, May s office gave little away as to the conclusions of Monday s meeting. It remains our position that nothing s agreed until everything s agreed in negotiations with the EU, a source from May s office said. As the Prime Minister said this morning, the UK and the EU should step forward together. Media reports said the ministers had agreed to make an offer which would increase the value of May s existing commitment but gave no specific details. The BBC reported that no specific amounts had been discussed during the meeting. May has repeatedly signalled that she will increase an initial offer that is thought to be worth about a third of what Brussels wants. But, wary of the need to keep the peace in her Conservative Party, which has a powerful faction insisting Britain should be paying the minimum possible to the EU and using the cash offer to leverage better exit terms, May has avoided publicly discussing any figure. Instead, she has said Britain will meet its financial obligations to the bloc a commitment which remains wide open to interpretation. Finance minister Philip Hammond said on Sunday that the government would submit its proposal to the EU before a Dec. 14-15 summit. He warned Britain would be prepared to negotiate hard over the bill, acknowledging differences of opinion with the EU on the value of liabilities, and whether Britain was even liable at all for some elements of the total amount mooted by Brussels. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan PM welcomes U.S. designation of North Korea as sponsor of terrorism: Kyodo;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump s move to put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, saying it would ramp up pressure on Pyongyang, Kyodo News reported. The designation, announced Monday, allows the United States to impose more sanctions on Pyongyang, which is pursuing nuclear weapons and missile programmes in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions. I welcome and support (the designation) as it raises the pressure on North Korea, Abe told reporters, according to Kyodo. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson says North Korea designation aimed at third parties;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday that the move to designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism will help dissuade third parties from supporting Pyongyang. The practical effect of it is ... it may though disrupt, and dissuade some third parties from undertaking certain activities with North Korea, as it does impose prohibition on a number of other activities that may not be covered by existing sanctions, Tillerson told a White House briefing. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina's first female submarine officer on board missing vessel;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - One of the 44 crew members on board the Argentine submarine that is missing in the South Atlantic is Eliana Maria Krawczyk, who came from a landlocked province to become the country s first female submarine officer. In a Facebook video posted in January by the Defense Ministry, Krawczyk discussed her experience of being the first woman in a traditionally male space. She said that she aspired to become the commander of a navy submarine one day. If you think about being underwater, navigating, and being the only woman, it is strange, but at the same time it is exciting and very challenging, she said in the video. Any woman that wants to can do it. Krawczyk, 35, was born in the northeastern province of Misiones and joined the navy in 2004, after responding to an advertisement online. She rose to become the master-at-arms aboard the ARA San Juan, which went missing last week. She graduated from Argentina s submarine and diving school in 2012 as the first female officer and always loved her job working at sea, according to her sister Silvina Krawczyk. It is like she was born for this, Silvina told Reuters. She really likes to do what she does in the navy. Hopes of discovering the ARA San Juan received a setback on Monday when the navy confirmed that failed satellite calls traced to the area on Saturday did not come from the submarine. With rough seas and high winds hampering the search for the 34-year-old vessel, a navy spokesman said the German-built submarine had surfaced and reported an electrical problem before it disappeared 268 miles (432 km) off the coast. They are working very hard to find them, said Silvina Krawczyk who, like many relatives of the missing crew members, was camped out at a naval base in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, awaiting updates on the search and rescue mission. Besides just the faith one has to maintain in these situations, I truly trust that they are going to find them, Silvina said. The pioneering submariner had been aboard the ARA San Juan - the newest of the three operated by the Argentine navy - when it made the same trip from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, to Mar del Plata last year without incident, her sister said. The voyage normally takes around a week, but modest delays due to poor weather are not uncommon. The submarine left Ushuaia on Nov. 13. It is the first time that something like this has happened, said Silvina, who herself is a machinist in Argentina s Merchant Marines. At the entrance to the Mar del Plata base, locals hung signs with messages in support of the crew members and their families on a chain-link fence. Strength for Argentina. We trust in God. We are waiting for you, read one inscribed on a celestial blue-and-white Argentine flag hanging on the fence. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pinera aims for center in tight battle for Chile's top job;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera said he would court centrist s on Monday in a bid to regain ground in Chile s presidential election after a surprise surge by leftists in Sunday s first-round vote. Pinera faces a tight Dec. 17 runoff against center-left Alejandro Guillier and will also likely have to deal with opposition to his promised tax breaks in the next left-leaning Congress if he triumphs. A former president who ran Chile between 2010 and 2014, Pinera placed first with more than 36 percent of the vote, but his two main left-leaning rivals made a stronger-than-expected showing, garnering a combined 43 percent between them. And after Congressional elections that also took place on Sunday, left-of-center lawmakers will outnumber Pinera s Chile Vamos voting bloc in Congress, complicating his plans to cut the corporate tax rate and slash red tape in the top copper exporter. Markets that had priced in a new four-year term for Pinera sank on Monday. Chile s stock index took its biggest daily dive in six years and the peso currency suffered its sharpest depreciation since 2013. It s going to be a tight and hard-fought election, Pinera told foreign media on Monday in capital Santiago. To boost his chances of winning, Pinera said he would tap some of the more popular lawmakers-elect in his bloc to help guide his campaign. We re going to appeal to the center, to the kind of people who want moderation, said Pinera. We re going to listen with humility to what the majority of Chileans want. On Monday night, the center-left Christian Democratic party endorsed Guillier without conditions. Its presidential candidate, Carolina Goic, who was the most moderate of those running to Pinera s left, garnered about 2 percent of the vote in Sunday s contest. According to the vote tally, many Chileans want change. A new leftist grouping, Frente Amplio, which has criticized Chile s model of free-market provision of services and promised to tax mining companies and the super-rich , performed much better than expected. The bloc s presidential candidate, Beatriz Sanchez, secured 20 percent of votes in the field of eight, double the support predicted by pollster CEP. The block won its first senate seat and around 20 seats in the lower house of Congress. No single bloc will control Congress. A Pinera victory in December was no longer a sure thing, said election forecaster and political scientist Kenneth Bunker. It s all up in the air right now, Bunker said. We were just dumbfounded when the results started to come in. In another bad sign for Pinera, Chileans went to polls in bigger numbers than expected on Sunday. Analysts say a low voter turnout favors Pinera because his supporters tend to be better at showing up to vote. Chile, a country of 17 million people with a $250 billion economy, has been one of Latin America s most business-friendly and stable nations since its transition to democracy in 1990. Its economy slowed, however, to an average growth rate of 1.8 percent during outgoing President Michelle Bachelet s term, with lower copper prices dragging on government revenue. Guillier has promised to deepen Bachelet s policies, from expanded access to free university education to protections for striking unions, without departing from Chile s free-market economic model. He has a tricky task ahead to attract the support of Chile s wide-ranging left-of-center voters, in part because he is seen by many as a continuation of Bachelet s unpopular government. Having slammed Pinera as a step backward for Chile, Sanchez, a 46-year-old former radio journalist, could rally her supporters to vote for Guillier, but likely in exchange for policy concessions. If Mr Guillier wants us to vote for him, he s going to have to give in to Beatriz s proposals, Sanchez supporter and salesman Hector Mino said. He cited Sanchez plan to wipe out student debt and overhaul the public-private pension system to ensure bigger payouts as possible offerings. But a too-sharp left turn could push more centrist s to Pinera. As left-leaning blocs weighed possible alliances, far-right Jose Antonio Kast threw his weight behind Pinera. Kast won nearly 8 percent of votes and urged the Chileans who cast them to vote for Pinera in the runoff. We re not going to demand anything in return, said Kast, who defended deceased Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during the campaign. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt's Sisi to meet Lebanon's Hariri on Tuesday - Egypt presidency;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will meet Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4, on Tuesday evening, the presidency said on Monday. Sisi and Hariri s meeting will address the latest developments in the region and developments of the Lebanon situation, a statement from Egypt s presidency said. Hariri has since Saturday been in Paris, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron. He has said he will return to Lebanon by Wednesday for the country s Independence Day celebrations. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has said he will not accept Hariri s resignation until it is delivered in person and all sides in Beirut have called for his speedy return. The resignation sparked a political crisis in Lebanon and put it on the front line of a regional power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hariri criticised Iran and its ally Hezbollah, which is in Lebanon s coalition government, in his resignation. ;worldnews;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LIKE A BAD PENNY: OBAMAS CRASH Music Awards to Boast About Their Connection to Music Legend [Video];THE OBAMAS ARE LIKE THE CLINTONS They just keep turning up like a bad penny. Who knows why they keep popping up everywhere but some say Michelle might run for POTUS in 2020 They must not have gotten the message in the 2016 election .GO AWAY! Note to Barack: STOP criticizing President Trump. You make yourself look like a bigger loser than you already are! It s not about you anymore!This appearance reminds us of the odd Oscars show when Michelle wore a new weave with bangs and a glam gown to give out the best picture award:Barack and Michelle Obama for some strange reason appeared at the 2017 American Music Awards, serving as a warm-up act for the winner of the life-time achievement award, Diana Ross:The Obamas discussed how important Ross s music is to them. When we heard Diana Ross was getting the lifetime achievement award, our first reaction was, she doesn t have it yet? Obama said in a pre-taped appearance. Her artistry resonates with folks of every race, background, and walk of life, Michelle Obama said. And today her voice is still as pure, her beauty is undeniable, and her showmanship is on point as back when she was a Supreme. WHY WE AWARDED HER THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM ???Obama said he and his wife s affinity for Ross is why he awarded her the presidential medal of freedom. We still listen to Diana around the house, Obama said. that s why we gave her the presidential medal of freedom last year. But, this is a big deal too. Diana Ross, we love you, Michelle said, with her husband echoing: We love you much. ;politics;20/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump and Putin speak for an hour about Syria, Ukraine, North Korea;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone for about an hour on Tuesday and covered topics including Syria, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, a White House official said. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. border officials violated court orders on travel ban: watchdog;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Department of Homeland Security violated two court orders in the days after U.S. President Donald Trump issued a temporary travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, according to the department’s watchdog. DHS Inspector General John Roth summarized his findings in a letter dated Monday to three Democratic U.S. senators, saying he has been unable to release the full 87-page report, completed six weeks ago. He said the delay was due to a dispute with DHS higher-ups over redactions, which would “deprive Congress and the public of significant insights into the operation of the Department,” Roth said. After the Jan. 27 order by the president, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) “was very aggressive in preventing affected travelers from boarding aircraft bound for the United States, and took actions that, in our view, violated two separate court orders,” Roth said. Trump banned the entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days. His order was issued with little warning to major U.S. agencies, sparking confusion at airports in the United States and around the world over its scope and impact. Civil rights groups quickly challenged the travel ban, managing to block implementation of some of its key measures as protesters, lawyers and elected officials rushed to major U.S. airports where citizens of the seven countries had been detained. At U.S. ports of entry, CBP officials largely complied with court orders blocking the ban, though they were hampered by a lack of guidance from superiors, Roth wrote in his letter. CBP officials “had virtually no warning” that Trump was issuing his travel ban “or of the scope of the order, and was caught by surprise,” Roth said. Still, CBP officers at U.S. airports “attempted in good faith to obey court orders,” he said. In one case, at Dulles International Airport near Washington, CBP stopped a departing airplane that was taxiing so an affected traveler could be admitted to the United States. From Jan. 29 to Feb. 3, CBP instructed airlines to prevent Boston-bound passengers from the seven countries from flying to the United States in violation of an order by a federal court in Massachusetts. All of the airlines except Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) followed CBP instructions. When Lufthansa’s passengers arrived in Boston, they were allowed to enter, Roth said. CBP also continued to issue “no board” instructions to airlines even after a separate nationwide federal court order on Jan. 31 blocked the agency from doing so, Roth said. Top DHS officials are reviewing Roth’s report and may invoke a form of governmental privilege which he said “would prevent us from releasing to you significant portions of the report. I am very troubled by this development.” Agency officials “conducted themselves professionally, and in a legal manner, as they implemented an executive order issued by the president,” said Tyler Q. Houlton, a DHS spokesman. Parts of the report are subject to “privileges afforded by well-recognized law,” he said since the travel ban’s implementation is subject to lawsuits and court orders. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. charges two with bribing African officials for China energy firm;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has charged a former Senegalese foreign minister and a former top Hong Kong government official with links to a Chinese energy conglomerate with bribing high-level officials in Chad and Uganda in exchange for contracts for the mainland company. Chi Ping Patrick Ho, 68, of Hong Kong, and Cheikh Gadio, 61, were charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, international money laundering and conspiracy, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement on Monday. It said Gadio, a former foreign minister of Senegal, was arrested in New York on Friday. It added that Ho, a former Hong Kong home affairs secretary who heads a non-governmental organization based in Hong Kong and Virginia, was arrested on Saturday. “Wiring almost a million dollars through New York’s banking system in furtherance of their corrupt schemes, the defendants allegedly sought to generate business through bribes paid to the president of Chad and the Ugandan foreign minister,” Joon Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was quoted as saying in the statement. No one could be reached at the embassies of Chad and Uganda in Washington late on Monday. The missions did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment. In a statement, the U.S. Justice Department said the case against Ho involved two bribery schemes to pay high-level officials of Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for a Shanghai-headquartered, multibillion-dollar energy firm. This energy company funded a non-government organization (NGO) based in Hong Kong and Virginia that Ho heads, the statement said, without naming the Shanghai company or the NGO. Ho is the secretary general of the Hong Kong-based China Energy Fund Committee, a mainland-backed think-tank that describes itself as a charitable, non-government organization. China Energy Fund Committee is fully funded by CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based private conglomerate, according to the think tank’s website. The organization did not respond to an email requesting comment. CEFC China Energy said in a statement posted on its website late on Tuesday that: “As a non-governmental, non-profit organization, the fund is not involved in the commercial activities of CEFC China Energy.” CEFC does not have any investment in Uganda, the company said in the statement, and its investment in Chad had been acquired via a stake bought from Taiwan’s state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corp and it had not dealt directly with the Chad government. “The company will continue monitoring this matter and will take necessary measures based on developments,” it said. CEFC has been a key player in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative, which aims to bolster China’s global leadership ambitions by building infrastructure and trade links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing Tuesday that he was not aware of the specific details of the case. “I want to emphasize that the Chinese government consistently requires Chinese companies abroad to operate lawfully and abide by local laws and regulations.” Idriss Deby has been Chad’s president since 1990. Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa served as the president of the U.N. General Assembly in 2014 and 2015. Ho’s attorney, Ed Kim, of Krieger Kim & Lewin LLP, declined to comment to Reuters. Bob Baum of Federal Defenders, who represented Gadio for the bail argument, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ho was ordered detained after appearing in court on Monday, the Justice Department statement said. It said Gadio appeared before a judge on Saturday and is being held until he can meet the conditions of a $1 million bond, according to court records. The Justice Department said a $2 million bribe was paid to Chad’s president, who then provided the company with an opportunity to obtain oil rights in Chad without international competition. The department said in the statement that Gadio was the go-between and was paid $400,000 by Ho via wire transfers through New York. The Justice Department accused Ho of being involved with bribes and promises of future benefits to Uganda’s foreign minister in exchange for help in obtaining business advantages for the Chinese company. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House ethics panel investigating allegations against U.S. Rep. Conyers;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Tuesday it was investigating allegations of sexual harassment against U.S. Representative John Conyers, who said his office had resolved a harassment case with a payment but no admission of guilt. A BuzzFeed News report late on Monday cited allegations from former staffers that Conyers, 88, made sexual advances to female staff. The Democratic congressman from Michigan issued a statement on Tuesday prior to the Ethics Committee’s announcement that did not give details of the case but said he would fully cooperate in any investigation. The allegations against Conyers came to light as Congress reviews policies on how to handle sexual harassment complaints. They followed a string of such complaints against prominent figures in the U.S. media, Hollywood and politics. “In this case, I expressly and vehemently denied the allegations made against me and continue to do so,” said Conyers, who is one of America’s most prominent black lawmakers. “My office resolved the allegations – with an express denial of liability – in order to save all involved from the rigors of protracted litigation. That should not be lost in the narrative.” The statement said the resolution of the allegations was equal to a reasonable severance payment. The Ethics Committee said in a statement it was aware of the public allegations and had begun an investigation. The panel can recommend punishments such as a reprimand, censure or expulsion, but the final punishment is determined by a vote in the full House. No member of Congress has ever been expelled for sexual misconduct. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had called for the panel to open a probe of Conyers. “Any credible allegation of sexual harassment must be investigated by the Ethics Committee,” she said in a statement. First elected in 1964, Conyers is the longest serving member of the House and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. In a statement, the chairman of the caucus, Democratic Representative Cedric Richmond, called the allegations “very serious and disturbing” and urged Conyers to “cooperate fully with any and all investigations into this matter.” U.S. Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat who has led the push in the House to revise policies on sexual harassment complaints, called for an investigation. “The allegations of sexual harassment and misuse of congressional funds against Congressman Conyers are serious & require an immediate Ethics investigation,” she said in a statement. House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement earlier calling the latest news report “extremely troubling.” ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump pardons turkey in annual Thanksgiving tradition;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, who has raised eyebrows by mulling his power to pardon as investigators probe possible ties between his 2016 election campaign and Russia, used his authority in a less controversial way on Tuesday to “pardon” a Thanksgiving turkey. Joined by his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, Trump entered the Rose Garden for the annual presidential tradition and granted freedom to a large white bird named Drumstick. Americans traditionally feast on turkey, stuffing and other delights on the Thanksgiving holiday, which takes place this coming Thursday, but Drumstick and his pal Wishbone were granted a reprieve. “I’m pleased to report that, unlike millions of other turkeys at this time of the year, Drumstick has a very, very bright future ahead of him,” Trump said. The Republican president couldn’t resist referring to his predecessor, former Democratic President Barack Obama, who pardoned two turkeys named Tater and Tot last year. “As many of you know, I have been very active in overturning a number of executive actions by my predecessor,” Trump quipped. “However, I have been informed by the White House Counsel’s Office that Tater and Tot’s pardons cannot, under any circumstances, be revoked.” The turkeys will live at an enclosure at a nearby university, Virginia Tech. Allegations of potential ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Moscow have loomed over the White House and investigations are ongoing. Trump and Moscow have denied collusion. In a message on Twitter in July, Trump noted that as president he had “complete power to pardon.” ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New judge assigned to U.S. lawsuit against AT&T-Time Warner deal;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit aimed at stopping AT&T Inc from buying movie and TV show provider Time Warner Inc will be heard by District Court Judge Richard Leon, according to a court filing on Tuesday. Leon, who was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush, is no stranger to high-profile cases. In the 1990s, he worked on House of Representatives panels looking at the Iran-Contra affair and the Whitewater controversy. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;AT&T lawyer says U.S. effort to stop Time Warner deal 'foolish': CNBC;(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice’s move to block AT&T Inc’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc was “foolish” because the deal posed no threat to consumers, the wireless carrier’s trial lawyer Dan Petrocelli told CNBC on Tuesday. The Justice Department on Monday sued AT&T arguing that the U.S. No. 2 wireless carrier would use Time Warner’s content to force rival pay-TV companies to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for Time Warner’s networks.” AT&T has vowed to defend the deal. “We want to go to court as soon as possible,” Petrocelli told CNBC, saying the burden of proof was on the government. The case was initially assigned on Tuesday to Judge Christopher Cooper in federal court in Washington but later reassigned to Judge Richard Leon. The case will be closely watched because U.S. President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of Time Warner’s CNN, and opposed AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner on the campaign trail last year, saying it would concentrate too much power in AT&T’s hands. In antitrust circles, the court fight will be closely watched since the Justice Department has not successfully litigated to stop a vertical deal - where the merging companies are not direct competitors - since the 1970s, when it prevented Ford Motor Co from buying assets from spark-plug maker Autolite. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Any Trump NAFTA withdrawal faces stiff court challenge: legal experts;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - With NAFTA talks grinding toward stalemate, U.S. President Donald Trump may be tempted to carry out his threat to withdraw from the trade pact, but legal experts say such a decision could be defeated, or delayed significantly by court challenges. The constitutional and statutory authority for who can terminate the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement - Trump or the U.S. Congress - is deeply disputed, and it may take the U.S. Supreme Court or a truce between the White House and Capitol Hill to sort it out. Private sector executives said that major U.S. business groups are preparing legal challenges to any withdrawal by the United States, although the plaintiffs had not yet been determined. Litigation would lay bare the fault lines between Trump’s populist vision and the pro-trade, business friendly lawmakers of his Republican Party, many of whom are increasingly nervous that NAFTA will collapse and cause economic damage.. “I think this is headed for a huge legal morass if the president were to unilaterally send a notice of withdrawal,” said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown University law professor and former World Trade Organization (WTO) appellate judge. “There will be immediate challenges across the board.” NAFTA’s original text allows a country to withdraw from the agreement six months after it provides written notice to the other parties, but neither the agreement nor U.S. implementing legislation specifies how that should be decided. Once the six-month period ends, the president can declare the restoration of U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico to WTO levels, although some legal experts say Congress may ultimately have authority over this. The three countries were wrapping up a fifth round of talks to update NAFTA on Tuesday with major differences yet to be resolved. The NAFTA implementing law would be untouched by a Trump withdrawal, creating what some call a “zombie” trade pact without tariff-free access, but other provisions would remain. Some of those rules are opposed by the Trump administration, including the “Chapter 19” arbitration system that often thwarts U.S. anti-dumping cases against Canada and Mexico, as well as labor, environmental and regional content requirements that U.S. officials see as weak. Trump would need Congress’ approval to repeal that law. Winning that vote could be extremely difficult, as most congressional Republicans follow their business and farm constituents in being advocates of free trade in general and NAFTA in particular. “The president would want to get Congress on board so that the implementing legislation is coherent,” said Dean Pinkert, a trade lawyer and former U.S. International Trade Commission member. Almost any court challenge would argue that Trump needs congressional approval to quit NAFTA because Congress has explicit authority in the U.S. Constitution over tariffs and trade. But the president historically has held power over foreign policy matters such as international treaties. The Supreme Court is often reluctant to rule on questions of authority between the executive and legislative branches of government and prefers legislative solutions instead. In a 1979 case, the court sided with President Jimmy Carter after Senator Barry Goldwater challenged his authority to nullify a defense treaty with Taiwan. But that pact did not have a trade component and was clearly a foreign policy issue. If the Supreme Court did rule on a NAFTA withdrawal challenge, much would depend on how the case is argued, said Tim Meyer, an international law professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “If the case is successfully framed as to who has authority over foreign affairs, I think the president wins,” Meyer said. Georgetown University’s Hillman said her reading of the constitutional question and implementing legislation stacks up against Trump - that Congress only explicitly intended for the president to implement NAFTA, not the reverse. “NAFTA unequivocally falls under the commerce clause of the Constitution,” Hillman said. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House ethics panel investigating allegations against Rep. Conyers;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Tuesday it is investigating allegations of sexual harassment against Representative John Conyers. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said earlier on Tuesday his office had resolved a harassment case with a payment but no admission of guilt. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says AT&T plan to buy Time Warner 'not a good deal';"(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday stood by his criticism of pay TV and wireless company AT&T’s deal to buy movie and TV show maker Time Warner Inc, which the Justice Department has sued to stop. “I’m not going to get involved in litigation, but personally I’ve always felt that that was a deal that’s not a good deal for the country,” the president said on the lawn of the White House as he left for Florida. “I think your pricing’s going to go up, I don’t think it’s a good deal for the country.” The case will be more closely watched than other merger challenges because Trump has been a vocal critic of Time Warner’s CNN, and opposed AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner on the campaign trail last year, saying it would concentrate too much power in AT&T’s hands. Until Tuesday, he had not repeated that criticism. The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday sued AT&T, arguing that it would use Time Warner’s content to force rival pay-TV companies to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for Time Warner’s networks.” The Justice Department pushed back any suggestion that the decision to sue was done because of “political considerations.” “This is a law enforcement decision, not a political one. The DOJ has reached the end of a year-long investigation by a large, capable staff of expert lawyers and economists,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in an email comment. “The division concluded on the merits that the merger is illegal under the antitrust laws because it will hurt competition.” AT&T has vowed to defend the $85.4 billion deal in court. The Department of Justice’s move to block it was “foolish” because the deal posed no threat to consumers, the wireless carrier’s trial lawyer, Dan Petrocelli, told CNBC on Tuesday. ""We want to go to court as soon as possible,"" Petrocelli told CNBC, saying the burden of proof was on the government. cnb.cx/2AjiOVw AT&T will ask the court for an expedited trial next week, a source familiar with case said. The case has been assigned to Judge Richard Leon, a senior judge on the District of Columbia District Court, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002. Time Warner shares went higher when Leon’s assignment was announced as investors bet the judge would be more likely to allow the deal to proceed. Republican-appointed judges are generally, but not always, more business-friendly than those appointed by Democrats. Shares of Time Warner closed up 2.1 percent at $89.56 on Tuesday, signaling that investors believe the deal has a better chance of being approved. AT&T closed down less than 1 percent at $34.33. The merger challenge is unusual since the two companies do not compete directly. The Justice Department has not successfully litigated to stop a vertical deal - where the merging companies are not direct competitors, as is the case with AT&T and Time Warner - since the 1970s, when it prevented Ford Motor Co from buying assets from spark-plug maker Autolite. ";politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. diplomats accuse Tillerson of breaking child soldiers law;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of about a dozen U.S. State Department officials have taken the unusual step of formally accusing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of violating a federal law designed to stop foreign militaries from enlisting child soldiers, according to internal documents reviewed by Reuters. A confidential State Department “dissent” memo, which Reuters was first to report on, said Tillerson breached the Child Soldiers Prevention Act when he decided in June to exclude Iraq, Myanmar, and Afghanistan from a U.S. list of offenders in the use of child soldiers. This was despite the department publicly acknowledging that children were being conscripted in those countries. [tmsnrt.rs/2jJ7pav] Keeping the countries off the annual list makes it easier to provide them with U.S. military assistance. Iraq and Afghanistan are close allies in the fight against Islamist militants, while Myanmar is an emerging ally to offset China’s influence in Southeast Asia. Documents reviewed by Reuters also show Tillerson’s decision was at odds with a unanimous recommendation by the heads of the State Department’s regional bureaus overseeing embassies in the Middle East and Asia, the U.S. envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the department’s human rights office and its own in-house lawyers. [tmsnrt.rs/2Ah6tB4] “Beyond contravening U.S. law, this decision risks marring the credibility of a broad range of State Department reports and analyses and has weakened one of the U.S. government's primary diplomatic tools to deter governmental armed forces and government-supported armed groups from recruiting and using children in combat and support roles around the world,” said the July 28 memo. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, questioned at length by reporters on the issue at her daily briefing, strongly defended Tillerson’s decision as valid and in “technical compliance with the law in the way he read it.” “No one in the United States government likes the idea of the use of child soldiers,” she said. “It’s abhorrent. Asked at a photo opportunity with the visiting Peruvian foreign minister about his decision, Tillerson sidestepped any direct response to the dissenting officials’ complaint. Reuters reported in June that Tillerson had disregarded internal recommendations on Iraq, Myanmar and Afghanistan. The new documents reveal the scale of the opposition in the State Department, including the rare use of what is known as the “dissent channel,” which allows officials to object to policies without fear of reprisals. The views expressed by the U.S. officials illustrate ongoing tensions between career diplomats and the former chief of Exxon Mobil Corp appointed by President Donald Trump to pursue an “America First” approach to diplomacy.     The child soldiers law passed in 2008 states that the U.S. government must be satisfied that no children under the age of 18 “are recruited, conscripted or otherwise compelled to serve as child soldiers” for a country to be removed from the list. The statute extends specifically to government militaries and government-supported armed groups like militias. The list currently includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Mali, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In a written response to the dissent memo on Sept. 1, Tillerson adviser Brian Hook acknowledged that the three countries did use child soldiers. He said, however, it was necessary to distinguish between governments “making little or no effort to correct their child soldier violations ... and those which are making sincere - if as yet incomplete - efforts.” [tmsnrt.rs/2zWGRt0]Hook made clear that America’s top diplomat used what he sees as his discretion to interpret the law. Foreign militaries on the list are prohibited from receiving aid, training and weapons from Washington unless the White House issues a waiver based on U.S. “national interest.” In 2016, under the Obama administration, both Iraq and Myanmar, as well as others such as Nigeria and Somalia, received waivers. At times, the human rights community chided President Barack Obama for being too willing to issue waivers and exemptions, especially for governments that had security ties with Washington, instead of sanctioning more of those countries. “Human Rights Watch frequently criticized President Barack Obama for giving too many countries waivers, but the law has made a real difference,” Jo Becker, advocacy director for the group’s children’s rights division, wrote in June in a critique of Tillerson’s decision. The dissenting U.S. officials stressed that Tillerson’s decision to exclude Iraq, Afghanistan and Myanmar went a step further than the Obama administration’s waiver policy by contravening the law and effectively easing pressure on the countries to eradicate the use of child soldiers.     The officials acknowledged in the documents reviewed by Reuters that those three countries had made progress. But in their reading of the law, they said that was not enough to be kept off a list that has been used to shame governments into completely eradicating the use of child soldiers. Ben Cardin, ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Tillerson on Friday saying there were “serious concerns that the State Department may not be complying” with the law and that the secretary’s decision “sent a powerful message to these countries that they were receiving a pass on their unconscionable actions.” The memo was among a series of previously unreported documents sent this month to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the State Department’s independent inspector general’s office that relate to allegations that Tillerson violated the child soldiers law. Legal scholars say that because of the executive branch’s latitude in foreign policy there is little legal recourse to counter Tillerson’s decision. Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University in Washington, said U.S. courts would be unlikely to accept any challenge to Tillerson’s interpretation of the child soldiers law as allowing him to remove a country from the list on his own discretion. The signatories to the document were largely senior policy experts with years of involvement in the issues, said an official familiar with the matter. Reuters saw a copy of the document that did not include the names of those who signed it. Tillerson’s decision to remove Iraq and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, from the list and reject a recommendation by U.S. officials to add Afghanistan was announced in the release of the government’s annual human trafficking report on June 27.     Six days earlier, a previously unreported memo emailed to Tillerson from a range of senior diplomats said the three countries violated the law based on evidence gathered by U.S. officials in 2016 and recommended that he approve them for the new list.     It noted that in Iraq, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations “reported that some Sunni tribal forces ... recruited and used persons younger than the age of 18, including instances of children taking a direct part in hostilities.”     Ali Kareem, who heads Iraq’s High Committee for Human Rights, denied the country’s military or state-backed militias use child soldiers. “We can say today with full confidence that we have a clean slate on child recruitment issues,” he said.     The memo also said “two confirmed cases of child recruitment” by the Myanmar military “were documented during the reporting period.” Human rights advocates have estimated that dozens of children are still conscripted there.     Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay challenged accusers to provide details of where and how child soldiers are being used. He noted that in the latest State Department report on human trafficking, “they already recognized (Myanmar) for reducing of child soldiers” – though the report also made clear some children were still conscripted.     The memo said further there was “credible evidence” that a government-supported militia in Afghanistan “recruited and used a child,” meeting the minimum threshold of a single confirmed case that the State Department had previously used as the legal basis for putting a country on the list.     The Afghan defense and interior ministries both denied there were any child soldiers in Afghan national security forces, an assertion that contradicts the State Department’s reports and human rights activists. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Doubts linger after Florida's Scott pitches biggest budget;NEW YORK (Reuters) - After deep cuts in spending for Florida schools and other public programs following the Great Recession, outgoing Republican Governor Rick Scott this month proposed an $87.4 billion budget he says boosts spending on some depleted services to record levels. Despite Scott’s meaty 2018-2019 budget recommendation, which is about $2.4 billion above current spending, advocates for Florida public education, environment and affordable housing remained skeptical the new plan would go far enough. “It doesn’t move Florida (schools) out from the bottom when compared to other states,” said Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Education Association, the state’s teachers union. Florida’s public school per-pupil spending sank from a peak of $7,126 in the 2007-2008 budget to a post-recession low of $6,217 for the 2011-2012 year. In his latest proposal, Scott recommended increasing funding to $7,176 per student, a $50 rise above record-high per-student funding. Florida has more than 2.7 million students enrolled in its public K-12 schools. Pudlow said he welcomed the governor’s increases, but support for Florida education was still lagging far behind most of the United States. The nationwide per-student spending average was $11,392 in 2015, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data available. Adjusted for inflation, Pudlow pointed out, Scott’s budget puts Florida’s per-student spending at about $1,200 less than it was at its peak. Scott proposed increasing public elementary and secondary school spending to about $14.71 billion from some $14.45 billion in the current fiscal year. Andrea Messina, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, said she was hopeful Scott’s proposal signaled a an attitude shift in the state capital toward public education financing, but the bill was far from final. The Florida House of Representatives and Senate will hear the governor’s budget recommendations at the next legislative session starting on Jan. 9. They then make their own budget proposals and negotiate until a single plan is agreed on. That budget will go back to the governor, who has the authority to veto line items before signing off on the bill. Scott has also proposed $180 million in cuts to taxes and fees and asked for sharp increases in spending on departments, including corrections, which would see more than 500 added jobs under the plan. The budget for environmental protection would surge to more than $1.7 billion from $1.48 billion in the current year, making it among the budget’s biggest gainers. Florida Everglades restoration would be among the environmental projects to receive an infusion of funds. “That’s one place where we’re happy, although the devil is in the details,” said Frank Jackalone, director of Sierra Club Florida. Jackalone said he was concerned the state would continue to cut environmental rules enforcement and to take from earmarked funds intended for the environment to spend on other government programs. State Representative Carlos Smith, a Democrat who represents a central Florida district seeing an influx of residents fleeing from hurricane-battered areas, including Puerto Rico, said he opposed Scott’s budget proposal on affordable housing. Under the plan, overall spending on affordable housing would rise, Smith said, but it would also include a raid of nearly $92 million on trust funds earmarked for affordable homes. “We don’t know what to do, people are sleeping in cars,” Smith said of storm evacuees, namely Puerto Ricans fleeing the bankrupt and hurricane-battered U.S. commonwealth. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;FCC chief plans to ditch U.S. 'net neutrality' rules;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled plans on Tuesday to repeal landmark 2015 rules that prohibited internet service providers from impeding consumer access to web content in a move that promises to recast the digital landscape. FCC chief Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, said the commission will vote at a Dec. 14 meeting on his plan to rescind the so-called net neutrality rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama that treated internet service providers like public utilities. The rules barred broadband providers from blocking or slowing down access to content or charging consumers more for certain content. They were intended to ensure a free and open internet, give consumers equal access to web content and prevent broadband service providers from favoring their own content. The action marks a victory for big internet service providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc that opposed the rules and gives them sweeping powers to decide what web content consumers can get and at what price. It represents a setback for Google parent Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc, which had urged Pai not to rescind the rules. Netflix said Tuesday it opposed the measure to “roll back these core protections.” With three Republican and two Democratic commissioners, the move is all but certain to be approved. Trump, a Republican, expressed his opposition to net neutrality in 2014 before the regulations were even implemented, calling it a “power grab” by Obama. The White House did not immediately comment Tuesday. Pai said his proposal would prevent state and local governments from creating their own net neutrality rules because internet service is “inherently an interstate service.” The preemption is most likely to handcuff Democratic-governed states and localities that could have considered their own plans to protect consumers’ equal access to internet content. “The FCC will no longer be in the business of micromanaging business models and preemptively prohibiting services and applications and products that could be pro-competitive,” Pai said in an interview, adding that the Obama administration had sought to pick winners and losers and exercised “heavy-handed” regulation of the internet. “We should simply set rules of the road that let companies of all kinds in every sector compete and let consumers decide who wins and loses,” Pai added. Tom Wheeler, who headed the FCC under Obama and advocated for the net neutrality rules, called the planned repeal “a shameful sham and sellout. Even for this FCC and its leadership, this proposal raises hypocrisy to new heights.” AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have said that repealing the rules could lead to billions of dollars in additional broadband investment and eliminate the possibility that a future presidential administration could regulate internet pricing. Comcast said no matter what the FCC decided it would “not block, throttle, or discriminate against lawful content.” Verizon said it believed the FCC “will reinstate a framework that protects consumers’ access to the open internet, without forcing them to bear the heavy costs from unnecessary regulation.” The Internet Association, representing major technology firms including Alphabet and Facebook, said Pai’s proposal “represents the end of net neutrality as we know it and defies the will of millions of Americans.” “This proposal undoes nearly two decades of bipartisan agreement on baseline net neutrality principles that protect Americans’ ability to access the entire internet,” it said. Pai’s proposal would require internet service providers to disclose whether they allow blocking or slowing down of consumer web access or permit so-called internet fast lanes to facilitate a practice called paid prioritization of charging for certain content. Such disclosure will make it easier for another agency, the Federal Trade Commission, to act against internet service providers that fail to disclose such conduct to consumers, Pai said. The FTC could seek to bar practices that it deemed “anticompetitive” or violated antitrust rules. The FCC received more than 22 million comments. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman disclosed Tuesday he has been investigating for more than six months in a bid to learn who was behind the filing of false comments. A U.S. appeals court last year upheld the legality of the net neutrality regulations, which were challenged in a lawsuit led by telecommunications industry trade association US Telecom. The group praised Pai’s decision to remove “antiquated, restrictive regulations” to “pave the way for broadband network investment, expansion and upgrades.” The FCC’s repeal is certain to draw a legal challenge from advocates of net neutrality. Nancy Pelosi, the top U.S. House of Representatives Democrat, said the FCC move would hurt consumers and chill competition, saying the agency “has launched an all-out assault on the entrepreneurship, innovation and competition at the heart of the internet.” The planned repeal represents the latest example of a legacy achievement of Obama being erased since Trump took office in January. Trump has abandoned international trade deals, the landmark Paris climate accord and environmental protections, taken aim at the Iran nuclear accord and closer relations with Cuba, and sought repeal Obama’s signature healthcare law. Pai, who has moved quickly to undo numerous regulatory actions since becoming FCC chairman, is pushing a broad deregulatory agenda. Pai said he had not shared his plans on the rollback with the White House in advance or been directed to undo net neutrality by White House officials. The FCC under Obama regulated internet service providers like public utilities under a section of federal law that gave the agency sweeping oversight over the conduct of these companies. Language in the new proposal would give the FCC significantly less authority to oversee the web. The FCC granted initial approval to Pai’s plan in May, but had left open many key questions including whether to retain any legal requirements limiting internet providers conduct. His plan would eliminate the “internet conduct standard,” which gave the FCC far-reaching discretion to prohibit improper internet service provider practices. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; WATCH: Nicolle Wallace Takes Trump To The Woodshed For Backing Pedophile Moore;Donald Trump just got his ass handed to him by Nicolle Wallace for endorsing an accused child molester.Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore has been accused of sexual assault by several women, most of whom were teens at the time. One woman was 14-years-old.Age of consent laws apparently did not matter to Moore, who was the district attorney during the time period in which most of the assaults allegedly occurred. Moore own former colleagues have confirmed that Moore preyed upon teenage girls and he was even banned from a shopping mall because he kept creeping on teen girls.On Tuesday, Trump finally spoke out about Moore and the allegations. And what he said was sickening.Trump accused Moore s opponent Doug Jones of being soft on crime before saying he d rather have an accused child molester in the Senate instead of a Democrat. Then he defended Moore the same way he defended Vladimir Putin during his trip to Asia. Well, he denies it, Trump said. Look, he denies it. I mean, if you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours, he totally denies it. He says it didn t happen and you know, you have to listen to him also. Trump s words were so disgusting that MSNBC s Nicolle Wallace took him to the woodshed. I have this physical feeling of just being repulsed listening to be it a figure head, he is the head of the Republican Party and I have described myself as a nonpracticing member, but I don t know what other word to use other than repulsed, that the head of the Republican Party said essentially threw his weight behind someone accused of stalking and engaging in sexual activity with a 14-year-old. There s nothing normal about throwing your weight behind a child molester. So when he says, this president says he denies it, he denies it I almost heard in him, I denied it too. He s almost projecting on to Roy Moore his own circumstance. Here s the video via YouTube.Indeed, Trump was accused of sexual assault by over a dozen women during the campaign. He called all of them liars at the time. And it looks like that s coming back to bite Trump on the ass.Featured Image: Screenshot;News;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Pastor Goes Full Y’all Qaeda Defending Roy Moore: He Only Wanted Teen Girls For Their ‘Purity’;A pastor who appeared alongside Senate candidate Roy Moore at a campaign rally just days ago just gave a defense of the Alabama Senate candidate that makes Christian purity balls seem even creepier. Flip Benham has quite a history as an anti-gay pastor who was also convicted of stalking a doctor who performed abortion procedures in North Carolina. In reaction to that in 2011, Benham said outside the courtroom while holding a Bible, I can t speak. I can t get within 500 feet. They ve stolen from innocent babies a voice that has spoken for them. Well, that whole pro-life platform of his sure did change since then and his defense of Roy Moore, the twice-removed judge who has been accused of perving on teenage girls when he was 32-years-old, is not going to help the Alabama Republican.The right-wing pastor explained that Moore dated teen girls because of their purity and said that when he got back from Vietnam there weren t any women his age left to date.So, pedophilia, right?On Monday, Benham told a local Alabama radio show that there was nothing wrong with Moore dating teenage girls. I think that, number one, you need to understand, 40 years ago, what the Sitz im Leben was like in Alabama, Benham said, as reported by Right Wing Watch. Judge Roy Moore graduated from West Point and then went on into the service, served in Vietnam and then came back and was in law school. All of the ladies, or many of the ladies that he possibly could have married were not available then, they were already married, maybe, somewhere. So he looked in a different direction and always with the [permission of the] parents of younger ladies He did that because there is something about a purity of a young woman, there is something that is good, that s true, that s straight and he looked for that. Listen to the whole thing below:We re thinking that someone should check into Pastor Flip Benham s browsing history. Benham s words aren t going to help Moore. Pedophiles go after kids because of their purity. Image via screen capture. ;News;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump’s National Security Adviser Reportedly TRASHED Him – This Is Epic;Add Trump s national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, to the growing list of high-profile people who think he s a total buffoon. McMaster, a seasoned combat officer in the Army, is reportedly fed up with Trump s lack of intelligence, lack of focus, and inability to understand even the most basic premises of national security.According to several Buzzfeed sources, McMaster was attending a private dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz, and dragged Trump through the mud, calling him an idiot, a dope, and someone with the intelligence of a kindergartner. Another source who wasn t at the dinner told Buzzfeed that McMaster has made similar comments before.Recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a moron, prompting the man-baby to jump on Twitter and challenge Tillerson to an IQ test. Trump either knows exactly what he is and is riddled with self-loathing and embarrassment over it, or he honestly believes he has one of the great minds and memories of all time, just like he s claimed, and his fragile fee-fees can t handle anyone thinking otherwise.Then there s Senator Bob Corker, who s had no qualms at all about criticizing Trump, which led the two of them into a Twitter war because Trump can t stand looking like the pathetic, ineffective pseudo-man that he is. And we all know how Senator Jeff Flake feels.Officials who are on Trump s side, however, push back against all these things vehemently. From their stories, everything is hunky-dory in the White House, and Trump is highly competent, calm, collected, respected in short, presidential. Anyone inside or outside the White House talking badly about him is just, well, jealous ? Or un-American ? To them, these stories are nothing more than people deliberately working to undermine Trump, at least in the world Trump and his loyalists are desperate to create.These stories keep coming out, though, and when taken with his embarrassing public appearances and his ridiculous behavior on Twitter, they are ever harder to ignore. Buzzfeed has five sources for McMaster s words, with a sixth saying they d heard similar words from him before.This dinner between McMaster and Catz took place over the summer, and was allegedly peppered with insults toward Trump and other senior members of the White House staff, including Trump s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. McMaster reportedly (and, if true, correctly) said that Kushner doesn t belong in the White House and shouldn t be involved in national security matters.In short, Trump doesn t have the respect he thinks he has. Poor widdle Donnie.Featured image via Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images;News;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New York Attorney General investigating false 'net neutrality' comments to FCC;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York State Attorney Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday said he has been investigating for six months who posted significant numbers of fake comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission in its review of net neutrality rules. The FCC got more than 22 million comments during its review and several researchers found evidence that significant numbers of submissions were fake. Schneiderman said Tuesday the “FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence.” The FCC did not immediately comment. On Tuesday FCC Chairman Ajit Pai proposed reversing the Obama era net neutrality rules. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin, Trump to discuss North Korea on Tuesday: IFX cites Kremlin aide;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will discuss North Korea when they hold a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Interfax news agency cited Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov as saying. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier on Tuesday that the conversation would focus on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Russia which he made on Monday. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BLACK CAUCUS MEMBER From Impoverished Detroit District Who’s Leading Effort To Impeach President Trump…CAUGHT Paying Off Sex Assault Victims With Taxpayer Money;"This story is about more than a massive cover-up for an elected officials who sexually assaulted innocent women, it s also about the media s lack of desire to report about crimes that have obviously been covered up in DC for a very long time. Perhaps the media s reluctance to report about the sexual abuse taking place in Washington DC, is because most, if not all, of the elected officials whose crimes are now being uncovered, are Democrats? So far, two of the most rabid anti-Trump Democrats in Washington, Senator Al Franken (D-MI) and now Representative John Conyers (D-MI) have been outed is it a coincidence, or could it be that one of the reasons Democrats are so adamantly opposed to Trump s presidency is because he is shaking things up in Washington, and in doing so, he s breaking up the good ole boys network?Buzzfeed Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not succumb to [his] sexual advances. Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News from Mike Cernovich, include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sexual favors, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.And the documents also reveal the secret mechanism by which Congress has kept an unknown number of sexual harassment allegations secret: a grinding, closely held process that left the alleged victim feeling, she told BuzzFeed News, that she had no option other than to stay quiet and accept a settlement offered to her. I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go, she said in a phone interview. BuzzFeed News is withholding the woman s name at her request because she said she fears retribution.Last week the Washington Post reported that Congress s Office of Compliance paid out $17 million for 264 settlements with federal employees over 20 years for various violations, including sexual harassment. The Conyers documents, however, give a glimpse into the inner workings of the office, which has for decades concealed episodes of sexual abuse by powerful political figures.The woman who settled with Conyers launched the complaint with the Office of Compliance in 2014, alleging she was fired for refusing his sexual advances, and ended up facing a daunting process that ended with a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a settlement of more than $27,000. Her settlement, however, came from Conyers office budget rather than the designated fund for settlements.Congress has no human resources department. Instead, congressional employees have 180 days to report a sexual harassment incident to the Office of Compliance, which then leads to a lengthy process that involves counseling and mediation, and requires the signing of a confidentiality agreement before a complaint can go forward.After this an employee can choose to take the matter to federal district court, but another avenue is available: an administrative hearing, after which a negotiation and settlement may follow.In this case, one of Conyers former employees was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would rehire the woman as a temporary employee despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.The draft agreement viewed by BuzzFeed News was unsigned, but congressional employment records match the timing and amounts outlined in the document. The woman left the office and never went public with her story.The process was disgusting, said Matthew Peterson, who worked as a law clerk representing the complainant, and who listed as a signatory to some of the documents.Hillary Clinton and John Conyers have been longtime friends. What is it about Hillary that sexual predators find so endearing? It is a designed cover-up, said Peterson, who declined to discuss details of the case but agreed to characterize it in general terms. You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It s like being abused twice. Two staffers alleged in their signed affidavits that Conyers used congressional resources to fly in women they believed he was having affairs with. Another said she was tasked with driving women to and from Conyers apartment and hotel rooms.Rep. Conyers did not admit fault as part of the settlement. His office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Monday.Citizen journalist Mike Cernovich admonishes journalists who are tasked with reporting the news for a living for ignoring how massive this cover up really is:The Conyers settlement was 1 out of 264!How about you ""journalists"" stop hating on me and go find those other 263? Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 21, 2017The documents were first provided to BuzzFeed News by Mike Cernovich, the men s rights figure turned pro-Trump media activist who propagated a number of false conspiracy theories including the Pizzagate conspiracy. Cernovich said he gave the documents to BuzzFeed News for vetting and further reporting, and because he said if he published them himself, Democrats and congressional leaders would try to discredit the story by attacking the messenger. He provided them without conditions. BuzzFeed News independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents with four people directly involved with the case, including the accuser.Here s citizen journalist Mike Cernovich telling his massive Twitter audience that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan helped to cover up John Conyers disgusting sexual assaults:Congressman John Conyers is a sexual predator, and Paul Ryan covered it all up https://t.co/rHAzX4Hevo Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 21, 2017In her complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to touch it, in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands.She alleged Conyers made her work nights, evenings, and holidays to keep him company.In another incident, the former employee alleged the congressman insisted she stay in his room while they traveled together for a fundraising event. When she told him that she would not stay with him, she alleged he told her to just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go. Rep. Conyers strongly postulated that the performing of personal service or favors would be looked upon favorably and lead to salary increases or promotions, the former employee said in the documents.Three other staff members provided affidavits submitted to the Office Of Compliance that outlined a pattern of behavior from Conyers that included touching the woman in a sexual manner and growing angry when she brought her husband around.One affidavit from a former female employee states that she was tasked with flying in women for the congressman. One of my duties while working for Rep. Conyers was to keep a list of women that I assumed he was having affairs with and call them at his request and, if necessary, have them flown in using Congressional resources, said her affidavit. (A second staffer alleged in an interview that Conyers used taxpayer resources to fly women to him.)The employee said in her affidavit that Conyers also made sexual advances toward her: I was driving the Congressman in my personal car and was resting my hand on the stick shift. Rep. Conyers reached over and began to caress my hand in a sexual manner. The woman said she told Conyers she was married and not interested in pursuing a sexual relationship, according to the affidavit. She said she was told many times by constituents that it was well-known that Conyers had sexual relationships with his staff, and said she and other female staffers felt this undermined their credibility. I am personally aware of several women who have experienced the same or similar sexual advances made towards them by Rep[.] John Conyers, she said in her affidavit.A male employee wrote that he witnessed Rep. Conyers rub the legs and other body parts of the complainant in what appeared to be a sexual manner and saw the congressman rub and touch other women in an inappropriate manner. The employee said he confronted Conyers about this behavior. Rep. Conyers said he needed to be more careful because bad publicity would not be helpful as he runs for re-election. He ended the conversation with me by saying he would work on his behavior, the male staffer said in his affidavit.";politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House asks Supreme Court to allow full travel ban;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban to take full effect after an appeals court in California ruled last week that only parts of it could be enacted. A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 13 partially granted a Trump administration request to block at least temporarily a judge’s ruling that had put the new ban on hold. It ruled the government could bar entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries with no connections to the United States. Trump’s ban was announced on Sept. 24 and replaced two previous versions that had been impeded by federal courts. The administration’s appeal to the top U.S. court argued that the latest travel ban differed from the previous orders “both in process and in substance” and that the differences showed it “is based on national-security and foreign-affairs objectives, not religious animus.” It also argued that even if the 9th Circuit ruled to uphold the partial ban, the Supreme Court was likely to overturn that decision as it had “the last time courts barred the President from enforcing entry restrictions on certain foreign nationals in the interest of national security.” Last week’s appeals court ruling meant the ban would only apply to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad who did not have connections to the United States. Those connections are defined as family relationships and “formal, documented” relationships with U.S.-based entities such as universities and resettlement agencies. Those with family relationships that would allow entry include grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States. The state of Hawaii, which sued to block the restrictions, argued that federal immigration law did not give Trump the authority to impose them on six of those countries. The lawsuit did not challenge restrictions toward people from the two other countries listed in Trump’s ban, North Korea and Venezuela. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu ruled last month that Hawaii was likely to succeed with its argument. Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, just a week after he took office, and then issued a revised one after the first was blocked by the courts. The second one expired in September after a long court fight and was replaced with another revised version. Trump has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from attacks by Islamist militants. As a candidate, Trump promised “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Critics of the travel ban in its various iterations call it a “Muslim ban” that violates the U.S. Constitution by discriminating on the basis of religion. The 9th Circuit is due to hear oral arguments in the case on Dec. 6. In a parallel case from Maryland, a judge also ruled against the Trump administration and partially blocked the ban from going into effect. An appeal in the Maryland case is being heard on Dec. 8 by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The Maryland case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents several advocacy groups, including the International Refugee Assistance Project. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BLACK CAUCUS MEMBER From Impoverished Detroit District Who’s Leading Effort To Impeach President Trump…CAUGHT Paying Off Sex Assault Victims With Taxpayer Money;"This story is about more than a massive cover-up for an elected officials who sexually assaulted innocent women, it s also about the media s lack of desire to report about crimes that have obviously been covered up in DC for a very long time. Perhaps the media s reluctance to report about the sexual abuse taking place in Washington DC, is because most, if not all, of the elected officials whose crimes are now being uncovered, are Democrats? So far, two of the most rabid anti-Trump Democrats in Washington, Senator Al Franken (D-MI) and now Representative John Conyers (D-MI) have been outed is it a coincidence, or could it be that one of the reasons Democrats are so adamantly opposed to Trump s presidency is because he is shaking things up in Washington, and in doing so, he s breaking up the good ole boys network?Buzzfeed Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not succumb to [his] sexual advances. Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News from Mike Cernovich, include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sexual favors, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.And the documents also reveal the secret mechanism by which Congress has kept an unknown number of sexual harassment allegations secret: a grinding, closely held process that left the alleged victim feeling, she told BuzzFeed News, that she had no option other than to stay quiet and accept a settlement offered to her. I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go, she said in a phone interview. BuzzFeed News is withholding the woman s name at her request because she said she fears retribution.Last week the Washington Post reported that Congress s Office of Compliance paid out $17 million for 264 settlements with federal employees over 20 years for various violations, including sexual harassment. The Conyers documents, however, give a glimpse into the inner workings of the office, which has for decades concealed episodes of sexual abuse by powerful political figures.The woman who settled with Conyers launched the complaint with the Office of Compliance in 2014, alleging she was fired for refusing his sexual advances, and ended up facing a daunting process that ended with a confidentiality agreement in exchange for a settlement of more than $27,000. Her settlement, however, came from Conyers office budget rather than the designated fund for settlements.Congress has no human resources department. Instead, congressional employees have 180 days to report a sexual harassment incident to the Office of Compliance, which then leads to a lengthy process that involves counseling and mediation, and requires the signing of a confidentiality agreement before a complaint can go forward.After this an employee can choose to take the matter to federal district court, but another avenue is available: an administrative hearing, after which a negotiation and settlement may follow.In this case, one of Conyers former employees was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would rehire the woman as a temporary employee despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.The draft agreement viewed by BuzzFeed News was unsigned, but congressional employment records match the timing and amounts outlined in the document. The woman left the office and never went public with her story.The process was disgusting, said Matthew Peterson, who worked as a law clerk representing the complainant, and who listed as a signatory to some of the documents.Hillary Clinton and John Conyers have been longtime friends. What is it about Hillary that sexual predators find so endearing? It is a designed cover-up, said Peterson, who declined to discuss details of the case but agreed to characterize it in general terms. You feel like they were betrayed by their government just for coming forward. It s like being abused twice. Two staffers alleged in their signed affidavits that Conyers used congressional resources to fly in women they believed he was having affairs with. Another said she was tasked with driving women to and from Conyers apartment and hotel rooms.Rep. Conyers did not admit fault as part of the settlement. His office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Monday.Citizen journalist Mike Cernovich admonishes journalists who are tasked with reporting the news for a living for ignoring how massive this cover up really is:The Conyers settlement was 1 out of 264!How about you ""journalists"" stop hating on me and go find those other 263? Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 21, 2017The documents were first provided to BuzzFeed News by Mike Cernovich, the men s rights figure turned pro-Trump media activist who propagated a number of false conspiracy theories including the Pizzagate conspiracy. Cernovich said he gave the documents to BuzzFeed News for vetting and further reporting, and because he said if he published them himself, Democrats and congressional leaders would try to discredit the story by attacking the messenger. He provided them without conditions. BuzzFeed News independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents with four people directly involved with the case, including the accuser.Here s citizen journalist Mike Cernovich telling his massive Twitter audience that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan helped to cover up John Conyers disgusting sexual assaults:Congressman John Conyers is a sexual predator, and Paul Ryan covered it all up https://t.co/rHAzX4Hevo Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 21, 2017In her complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to touch it, in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands.She alleged Conyers made her work nights, evenings, and holidays to keep him company.In another incident, the former employee alleged the congressman insisted she stay in his room while they traveled together for a fundraising event. When she told him that she would not stay with him, she alleged he told her to just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go. Rep. Conyers strongly postulated that the performing of personal service or favors would be looked upon favorably and lead to salary increases or promotions, the former employee said in the documents.Three other staff members provided affidavits submitted to the Office Of Compliance that outlined a pattern of behavior from Conyers that included touching the woman in a sexual manner and growing angry when she brought her husband around.One affidavit from a former female employee states that she was tasked with flying in women for the congressman. One of my duties while working for Rep. Conyers was to keep a list of women that I assumed he was having affairs with and call them at his request and, if necessary, have them flown in using Congressional resources, said her affidavit. (A second staffer alleged in an interview that Conyers used taxpayer resources to fly women to him.)The employee said in her affidavit that Conyers also made sexual advances toward her: I was driving the Congressman in my personal car and was resting my hand on the stick shift. Rep. Conyers reached over and began to caress my hand in a sexual manner. The woman said she told Conyers she was married and not interested in pursuing a sexual relationship, according to the affidavit. She said she was told many times by constituents that it was well-known that Conyers had sexual relationships with his staff, and said she and other female staffers felt this undermined their credibility. I am personally aware of several women who have experienced the same or similar sexual advances made towards them by Rep[.] John Conyers, she said in her affidavit.A male employee wrote that he witnessed Rep. Conyers rub the legs and other body parts of the complainant in what appeared to be a sexual manner and saw the congressman rub and touch other women in an inappropriate manner. The employee said he confronted Conyers about this behavior. Rep. Conyers said he needed to be more careful because bad publicity would not be helpful as he runs for re-election. He ended the conversation with me by saying he would work on his behavior, the male staffer said in his affidavit.";left-news;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: CNN’s Chris Cuomo Stunned At STUPIDITY of LaVar Ball After Refusing To “Thank” President Trump For Helping His Son Get Out of Chinese Jail Sentence;CNN host Chris Cuomo definitely drew the short straw when he was asked to fill in for host Don Lemon, on Tonight with Don Lemon . Unfortunately for Cuomo, he was tasked with interviewing the outrageous, nonsensical Lavar Ball, father of UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball, who was arrested in China for shoplifting. Americans were outraged when Lavar refused to thank President Trump for asking Chinese President Xi to allow the young men to be set free, and took it a step further when he insisted Trump didn t deserve any credit for his son s release.Watch:CNN compiled a list of some of Lavar Ball s most incredible comments during the interview. Here is a sampling of Lavar s bizarre remarks during the interview (Our comments are in italics): It s not like he was in the US and said, OK, there s three kids in China, I need to go over there and get them? That wasn t the thought process, right? I don t have to say, to go around saying thank you to everybody. You come around and shake my hand, and meet me, or meet my son, or anybody and then say you know what, maybe I can help you out. Just because people say things, you know, that s supposed to be true, like hey, I stopped him from serving ten years. Maybe we were doing some talking with other people before he even got there. I don t have no doubts about what he did. I got doubts about what he didn t do. Huh? If I m coming to get you out of trouble, you best believe I m going to take you with me. It s just somebody ask me a question and I gave a lot of confusion to you. Uhh while we re talking about confusion, can someone please explain what the hell he just said? Why is it confusing? Are you concerned? Somebody can make a suggestion and somebody could do something. You have people that make suggestions you got people that do things. Why are we talking about this with all these political matters going on in the world? Says the guy who has no idea why President Trump was in China in the first place. I know exactly what I said. But you buffered it up like you said that you don t want to say thank you to nobody. Buffered it up? I know you re trying to add tone to it because that s what you do. Can you add tone to someone s tone when they, themselves are speaking on tv? I had some things done, I talked to some people that did some things, too. If you want something, and you want it, you shouldn t just go and steal it. You can to Africa and somewhere and do the same thing anywhere you go in someone else s country, yes, it s going to be a little deeper than what you thought it was. Ball asked Cuomo if Trump paid their bail, suggesting that if he did, then, he would be grateful to the President. This comment is nothing short of spectacularly incredible. I m asking you, I m asking you. Did he do it? Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son and let s just stay in our lane. Somebody asked me a question, man. I give him my opinion, but I am not taking a shot at the president. Yeah, okay Lavar. Whatever you say I m not the other guys, though. I m not the other guys. I m doing something else. I m not the other guys. Lavar Ball then goes on to ask CNN host Chris Cuomo to thank him. Can you say thank you, Mr. LaVar Ball? When Cuomo seems to be confused as to why Ball is asking him to thank Ball, Ball then asks another idiotic question: Give me a couple of reasons why you re thanking me. You don t say thank you like any kind of word. Next, Lavar reminds the CNN host that he has a title, and would appreciate it if Chris Cuomo would address him by his title: My title is LaVar Ball, the big baller, the CEO of the Big Baller Brand. But the Chinese people were like, you know what, he s OK. He has so much character in 18 years that he s allow to have a pass for that. Uhh actually, no they weren t. They were thinking about how many years his son would be sentenced, possibly to hard labor for the crimes he committed in their country.This may be the funniest line of all. Ball asks the anti-Trump CNN host if he s Trump s brother ? Are you Trump s brother? You want me to thank you? Did you thank the doctor for bringing you into this world? Well, you better go back and find him. Because you lucky. Apparently, this is Lavar logic Ball then changes gears and makes yet another strange comment: I like how you keep saying my whole name, man. Cuomo then responds to Ball, explaining that his friends call him Mo. My friends call me Mo. You can call me Mo. Finally, Ball makes his final and completely ignorant remark to end the completely off-the-wall segment with Cuomo: Chrome-Mo like Google. Like the Google Chrome. ??????????? ;left-news;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BALL FAMILY MEMBER Reveals SICK Reason LaVar Ball Allegedly Wouldn’t Let His Sons See Their Mother After “Surgery To Remove Portion of Her Skull”;Last week, President Trump stepped in and interceded on behalf of three young UCLA basketball players who foolishly were caught shoplifting in China. Shoplifting in China is not treated lightly and most likely would have resulted in a prison term for all three young men. President Trump was able to convince China s President Xi, however, to release the three young men from custody. When asked how the loudmouth father of LiAngelo Ball felt about President Trump helping to secure the release of his son, LiAngelo, LaVar Ball suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. President Trump took to Twitter to reply to LaVar Ball s ignorant comments:Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017So who is this crackpot LaVar Ball, and why would anyone in their right mind make such arrogant and ignorant remarks after the President of the United States just helped their son to escape a prison sentence in a foreign country? Andrew Stephens of the Armchair All Americans did a pretty good job of summing up what a horrible human being the self-serving, money, and fame-obsessed LaVar Ball really is. In his article, Stephens reveals a sick man, who is so controlling of his 3 sons and their basketball careers, that he wouldn t even let them visit their very sick mother in the hospital, over fears that it could create media attention that could damage his merchandise brand. On March 15, 2017, Andrew Stephens of Armchair All Americans published an article about Lavar Ball titled Lavar Ball: The epitome of what is wrong with modern sports. It touched on helicopter parenting and the monetization of potentially profitable children.Stephens claimed that in the article, without commenting on upbringing tactics, I attempted to delve into Lavar Ball s seemingly unnecessary promotion of his own sons for his personal benefit.About an hour after the article was run, I received a comment on it from a member of the Ball family, who wishes to remain anonymous. The comment (which has since been removed to protect the email address and identity of the commenter) read as follows:- Wow. You nailed it. Although you don t even know the half of it. Lavar took over the high school program, added the Coach, his puppet (which is why he quit last year after becoming the national coach of the year) and Lavar stepped on and crushed countless other kids careers and love for the game to get his kids on the court. If you are allowed to shoot at any time from any where and never come out of the game, any decent idiot could score 30 points.Also, Tina Ball, his wife had a stroke on Feb 21. She had life threatening skull surgery to relieve brain pressure guess where Lavar was during the operation that could have killed his wife? at the CHHS vs. LB Poly game with his sons, including Lonzo. He still has not allowed his kids to see their sick mother due to the media attention it would bring to him, and cause BBB sales to diminish. [Name of hospital] in [City of hospital], CA Tina is there now and he only visits for 1 hour a few days a week, while her Mother has yet to leave her side. Pathetic!!! I was a bit skeptical when I initially viewed the comment. I figured that it was someone attempting to drive a smear campaign against the Ball family, seeing how Lavar was such a polarizing figure. But, the information was oddly specific.After a bit of deliberation, I contacted the email address listed with the comment. They confirmed through multiple email and social media confirmations that they were, in fact, a close relative of Lavar and Tina Ball. I also spoke with the hospital listed in the email. The hospital confirmed that Tina Ball was checked in as of 12:30 PM EST on March 15.Tina, who was very active on Twitter, stopped communication on February 19, which fits in with the timeline provided below by a member of the Ball family.Watch this video as the loud-mouth, obnoxious LaVar Ball is interviewed on the Skip and Shannon Undisputed sports show.One of the first questions the female host asked of LaVar was about his desire to have a reality show made about him and his family (Keep in mind, this interview took place shortly after a very serious stroke). It s hard not to pick up on the sadness expressed on the face of his oldest son Lonzo Ball, while his overbearing father dominates the conversation and makes a complete ass of himself:When confirming the identity of the member of the Ball family that commented via email, we received another large piece of harrowing information: Notice, she is not at any games, she is not at work, and she is not at home. Someone needs to ask the question, where is Tina? She is severely disabled and paralyzed on right side. Cannot talk and is questionable about her comprehension. Left side of her brain impacted with massive stroke, while at home on Feb. 21 (school holiday President s day). Tina is a PE teacher in [City of school],CA [Name of school].Feb. 20: Tina Ball admitted at [Name of first hospital] ICUFeb. 21: Surgery to remove a portion of her skull to reduce swelling from the stroke (evening)Feb 21: Chino Hills vs LB Poly @ Cerritos College evening game (same time as surgery) Lavar & Lonzo at the game with the other Ball boys missed the surgery and post op. Did not come to hospital during or after surgery. The Ball boys are not allowed to see their mother, Lavar is afraid it will take away from their game(s). Lonzo had big game at ASU and U of A later that week. Also, media buzz would take away from all the interviews and media touring for Lavar + BBB brand would suffer. It literally is bigger than Tina s life, as evidenced by Lavar s approach. As a family member, I am embarrassed and feel so sorry for Tina, since Lavar is on a media tour, he visits her rarely, while her mother has stayed by her side continuously. The crux of the original story was rooted in that fact that Lavar Ball s priorities were self-motivated and not for the betterment of a family brand. After hearing the explicit details given to us, if these allegations are true it only confirms one thing for Lavar Ball: money and fame are king.LaVar recently attempted to sell his Ball s Big Baller Brand for a billion dollars. When major shoe companies laughed at his offer, he raised his price to 3 billion dollars. How Ball ever got his product line this far is really quite amazing. When LaVar Ball said he wanted $1 billion for a Big Baller Brand co-branding shoe deal for his three sons, the big shoe companies scoffed.After that rejection, Big Baller Brand released Lonzo Ball s first signature shoe, the ZO2, and decided to charge a minimum of $495 for a pair. LaVar told Colin Cowherd on Wednesday that companies like Nike, Adidas and Under Armour will regret not forking over $1 billion and that he s decided to raise the price for a deal. Now that Lonzo s headed to Los Angeles, what they should have done is give me a billion dollars and let me be on my way, LaVar said, referring to the Lakers drawing the No. 2 pick in next month s NBA draft.But now? Apparently, the draft lottery results tripled Big Baller Brand s value. Now you know if they want to talk to me now, it just went up to $3 billion. Triple B s billion, billion, billion, he told Sports Illustrated.LaVar had a chance to fix his embarrassing error of disrespecting the President for the gift he gave their family, but instead chose to double down on stupid, in one of the most painfully ignorant interviews you will ever witness, with CNN s Chris Cuomo:;left-news;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PATHETIC! It’s What Trump DIDN’T Say To Eminem That Has The Rapper ‘Extremely Angry’ [Video];"Seriously? How pathetic is this? In an effort to score some publicity, Eminem performed a free style rap saying disgusting things about President Trump. It s clear now that POTUS was not biting TRUMP GETS THE LAST LAUGH!Eminem says he is extremely angry President Trump never responded to his BET Awards freestyle: I feel like he s not paying attention to me. I was kinda waiting for him to say something, and for some reason, he didn t say anything. Pathetic Eminem says he is extremely angry President Trump never responded to his BET Awards freestyle: ""I feel like he's not paying attention to me. I was kinda waiting for him to say something, and for some reason, he didn't say anything."" pic.twitter.com/PaSMvUm5gK Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) November 21, 2017LOL! PRESIDENT TRUMP SAID NOTHING SO GUESS WHERE THE NEW SONG HIT WORST EVER RELEASE BY EMINEM SINCE 1998Trump curse strikes again. Eminem's new single is his first not to debut in the Billboard top 10 since 1998. pic.twitter.com/lotqxlqCvY Thirsty Grunt (@Thirsty_Grunt) November 21, 2017";left-news;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WOW! NASTY LIBERALS ATTACK 9-Year Old Girl After Video Showing Her Getting Excited To See Donald Trump Goes Viral…” I will punch that lil girl in ha face”;The Washington Post published an article with a video of 9-year old Ava Lovley of Newport, Maine, in the back seat of the family car, that captured her reaction when her mother, Kim, told her that they were going to a Donald Trump rally in January, 2016. We re Republicans, but we re not political people at all, Kim Lovley told us by phone when we spoke on Tuesday afternoon. Ava was a big Trump fan, though, and had been tracking his candidacy since he announced. She said she loved his hair and that he speaks his mind, Kim said. And since Ava herself is a bit outspoken, that appealed.Kim arranged for the family to see Trump at an event in Farmington, N.H., about three miles from Newport, just over the state line. When I put [the video] on Facebook, basically it was just for our friends and family to see how happy she was, Kim said. It wasn t for any political agenda. When a friend helped her upload the video to YouTube, though, it blew up. Kim and her husband Jason had been fielding phone calls from members of the media all day.Neither of them has decided whom to vote for, by the way. I d never been to a rally and a rally is not where her mother wanted to be yesterday, Kim Lovley told us by phone when we spoke on Tuesday afternoon. But after going to the rally, I was quite compelled by hearing what Mr. Trump had to say. I thought he gave a great rally. Ava enjoyed it, too, naturally. Ava had the Best time!!!, Jason Lovley reported on Facebook. She enjoyed every minute! Twitter resurrected the viral video yesterday and tolerant hate-filled liberals have done everything from threatening the little girl to suggesting that her parents should have thrown her out onto the road. Unfortunately, for Democrats, Independent voters have been turned off by their party and the hate they spew. Every time Independent voters see reactions like these to an innocent little girl being attacked for being excited to see her favorite presidential candidate, it helps to confirm who they don t want to be associated with.Liberals wasted no time attacking the little girl:This the ugliest shit I ve ever seen https://t.co/VMr6k0H2AP Nazanin Kavari (@Nazaninkavari) November 21, 2017Liberal Twitter users attacked her because of the color of her skin.this is singlehandedly the whitest, most unseasoned thing i've ever watched. pic.twitter.com/bPZE39wDDZ (@iwishyouweregay) November 19, 2017Bentley Coop threatened the little 9-year old girl, I will punch that lil girl in ha face. I will punch that lil girl in ha face. Oh my word face ass.. FUCK TRUMP https://t.co/I4xGLpi2nR Bentley Coop (@erykahnobadu_) November 21, 2017Two different Twitter users used GIF s to suggest that her parents should have thrown her out of the car or better yet, over a cliff:If I was in the car with them pic.twitter.com/k4BCJ2WB0L Marc (@MarcKardashian) November 21, 2017throw the whole kid away pic.twitter.com/7YO68EvpaD spicy (@LuDawl) November 21, 2017This tweet is a perfect example of how liberals have overused the word racist that is no longer has any real meaning to most people.can racists stop reproducing?? Like fuck y'all could benefit from free birth control https://t.co/360kYpLMRj Lindsay Phoenix (@mylittlemortys) November 21, 2017So many Twitter users seem to think that it s okay to mock her because of her skin color. Of course, liberals never think of themselves as intolerant, but the truth is, they are the most intolerant and racist group of people in America. pic.twitter.com/oYU3z1qAvy Valeria (@strangerdoIans) November 19, 2017And finally, this white Twitter user asks, Imagine being this white? Imagine being this white faggot crocodile wet tea (@sunflowereilish) November 19, 2017h/t Gateway Pundit;left-news;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! NYC COLLEGE Tells NYPD To Use Bathroom At Far End Of Campus With “Dirty and Broken Toilet” So They Don’t Offend Students;Brooklyn College is advising New York City police officers to use bathrooms on the far end of campus in order to avoid being seen by students who might be offended by their presence.The Excelsior, the college s student newspaper, reported last week that Director of Public Safety Donald Wenz would prefer if members of the New York Police Department (NYPD) used facilities in the West End Building (WEB) rather than walking across either quad to use the bathroom. Wenz s comments come in the wake of a film screening of the movie Watched, which documents an NYPD informant who surveilled Muslim students on campus for a period of four years as part of the city s counterterrorism efforts. After the screening, students were allowed to share their thoughts on having NYPD officers on campus. I disagree with them being on campus. Especially allowing them to use the building where student groups are held, one unidentified student remarked, according to The Excelsior, later noting that he would be sending a petition to College President Michelle Anderson, pressuring her to issue a statement that we do not want the NYPD on campus in any respect even if it s just to take breaks and use bathrooms. After discovering The Excelsior s report, The New York Post took a trip to the WEB, where officers are now encouraged to use the bathroom, and found an out of order sign on the stall door, with a dirty and broken toilet on the inside. The bathroom is horrendous. You can only wash your hands in one of the sinks because the other two are broken, one student told the Post, though others argued that NYPD should not be allowed on campus at all. I know students from every background and across every major. They don t feel comfortable around cops. They just don t. It makes safe spaces feel not so safe, one unidentified student remarked, with another telling the Post that it s weird seeing cops on campus.But members of the NYPD who monitor the neighborhood surrounding the school told the Post that the student sentiments are insane. Campus Reform ;left-news;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! NYC COLLEGE Tells NYPD To Use Bathroom At Far End Of Campus With “Dirty and Broken Toilet” So They Don’t Offend Students;Brooklyn College is advising New York City police officers to use bathrooms on the far end of campus in order to avoid being seen by students who might be offended by their presence.The Excelsior, the college s student newspaper, reported last week that Director of Public Safety Donald Wenz would prefer if members of the New York Police Department (NYPD) used facilities in the West End Building (WEB) rather than walking across either quad to use the bathroom. Wenz s comments come in the wake of a film screening of the movie Watched, which documents an NYPD informant who surveilled Muslim students on campus for a period of four years as part of the city s counterterrorism efforts. After the screening, students were allowed to share their thoughts on having NYPD officers on campus. I disagree with them being on campus. Especially allowing them to use the building where student groups are held, one unidentified student remarked, according to The Excelsior, later noting that he would be sending a petition to College President Michelle Anderson, pressuring her to issue a statement that we do not want the NYPD on campus in any respect even if it s just to take breaks and use bathrooms. After discovering The Excelsior s report, The New York Post took a trip to the WEB, where officers are now encouraged to use the bathroom, and found an out of order sign on the stall door, with a dirty and broken toilet on the inside. The bathroom is horrendous. You can only wash your hands in one of the sinks because the other two are broken, one student told the Post, though others argued that NYPD should not be allowed on campus at all. I know students from every background and across every major. They don t feel comfortable around cops. They just don t. It makes safe spaces feel not so safe, one unidentified student remarked, with another telling the Post that it s weird seeing cops on campus.But members of the NYPD who monitor the neighborhood surrounding the school told the Post that the student sentiments are insane. Campus Reform ;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WOW! NASTY LIBERALS ATTACK 9-Year Old Girl After Video Showing Her Getting Excited To See Donald Trump Goes Viral…” I will punch that lil girl in ha face”;The Washington Post published an article with a video of 9-year old Ava Lovley of Newport, Maine, in the back seat of the family car, that captured her reaction when her mother, Kim, told her that they were going to a Donald Trump rally in January, 2016. We re Republicans, but we re not political people at all, Kim Lovley told us by phone when we spoke on Tuesday afternoon. Ava was a big Trump fan, though, and had been tracking his candidacy since he announced. She said she loved his hair and that he speaks his mind, Kim said. And since Ava herself is a bit outspoken, that appealed.Kim arranged for the family to see Trump at an event in Farmington, N.H., about three miles from Newport, just over the state line. When I put [the video] on Facebook, basically it was just for our friends and family to see how happy she was, Kim said. It wasn t for any political agenda. When a friend helped her upload the video to YouTube, though, it blew up. Kim and her husband Jason had been fielding phone calls from members of the media all day.Neither of them has decided whom to vote for, by the way. I d never been to a rally and a rally is not where her mother wanted to be yesterday, Kim Lovley told us by phone when we spoke on Tuesday afternoon. But after going to the rally, I was quite compelled by hearing what Mr. Trump had to say. I thought he gave a great rally. Ava enjoyed it, too, naturally. Ava had the Best time!!!, Jason Lovley reported on Facebook. She enjoyed every minute! Twitter resurrected the viral video yesterday and tolerant hate-filled liberals have done everything from threatening the little girl to suggesting that her parents should have thrown her out onto the road. Unfortunately, for Democrats, Independent voters have been turned off by their party and the hate they spew. Every time Independent voters see reactions like these to an innocent little girl being attacked for being excited to see her favorite presidential candidate, it helps to confirm who they don t want to be associated with.Liberals wasted no time attacking the little girl:This the ugliest shit I ve ever seen https://t.co/VMr6k0H2AP Nazanin Kavari (@Nazaninkavari) November 21, 2017Liberal Twitter users attacked her because of the color of her skin.this is singlehandedly the whitest, most unseasoned thing i've ever watched. pic.twitter.com/bPZE39wDDZ (@iwishyouweregay) November 19, 2017Bentley Coop threatened the little 9-year old girl, I will punch that lil girl in ha face. I will punch that lil girl in ha face. Oh my word face ass.. FUCK TRUMP https://t.co/I4xGLpi2nR Bentley Coop (@erykahnobadu_) November 21, 2017Two different Twitter users used GIF s to suggest that her parents should have thrown her out of the car or better yet, over a cliff:If I was in the car with them pic.twitter.com/k4BCJ2WB0L Marc (@MarcKardashian) November 21, 2017throw the whole kid away pic.twitter.com/7YO68EvpaD spicy (@LuDawl) November 21, 2017This tweet is a perfect example of how liberals have overused the word racist that is no longer has any real meaning to most people.can racists stop reproducing?? Like fuck y'all could benefit from free birth control https://t.co/360kYpLMRj Lindsay Phoenix (@mylittlemortys) November 21, 2017So many Twitter users seem to think that it s okay to mock her because of her skin color. Of course, liberals never think of themselves as intolerant, but the truth is, they are the most intolerant and racist group of people in America. pic.twitter.com/oYU3z1qAvy Valeria (@strangerdoIans) November 19, 2017And finally, this white Twitter user asks, Imagine being this white? Imagine being this white faggot crocodile wet tea (@sunflowereilish) November 19, 2017h/t Gateway Pundit;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PATHETIC! It’s What Trump DIDN’T Say To Eminem That Has The Rapper ‘Extremely Angry’ [Video];"Seriously? How pathetic is this? In an effort to score some publicity, Eminem performed a free style rap saying disgusting things about President Trump. It s clear now that POTUS was not biting TRUMP GETS THE LAST LAUGH!Eminem says he is extremely angry President Trump never responded to his BET Awards freestyle: I feel like he s not paying attention to me. I was kinda waiting for him to say something, and for some reason, he didn t say anything. Pathetic Eminem says he is extremely angry President Trump never responded to his BET Awards freestyle: ""I feel like he's not paying attention to me. I was kinda waiting for him to say something, and for some reason, he didn't say anything."" pic.twitter.com/PaSMvUm5gK Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) November 21, 2017LOL! PRESIDENT TRUMP SAID NOTHING SO GUESS WHERE THE NEW SONG HIT WORST EVER RELEASE BY EMINEM SINCE 1998Trump curse strikes again. Eminem's new single is his first not to debut in the Billboard top 10 since 1998. pic.twitter.com/lotqxlqCvY Thirsty Grunt (@Thirsty_Grunt) November 21, 2017";politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHAT TRUMP JUST SAID Should Scare All Gropers in Congress Who Settled Sex Assault Cases Using Taxpayer Dollars;President Trump wants those who settled sexual harassment cases using our tax dollars to be exposed The House is responsible for the sexual assault slush fund that used our taxpayer money to pay off accusers. We should all call for this slush fund to be shut down This is NOT what our hard earned money should be paying for NEW: President Trump tells me he believe Congress should release the names of lawmakers who have settled sexual harassment claims Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) November 21, 2017The Transcript and video of Rep. Jackie Speier on Face the Nation, Nov. 19, 2017 is below. She spoke to John Dickerson and Chuck Todd before that about the $15 million in settlements for sexual harassment by congress members. Americans are furious that their tax dollars are being used in such a way WITHOUT the harasser being held accountable. These gropers should pay for this themselves!HERE S THE COMMENT FROM THE INTERVIEW BELOW THAT REALLY STANDS OUT: we have a system in place that allows for the harasser to go unchecked. Doesn t pay for the settlement himself and is never identified. So the Office of Compliance to which a victim must apply or complain is a place that has really been an enabler of sexual harassment for these many years because of the way it s constructed. REP JACKIE SPEIERRep. Jackie Speier, D-California, joined Face the Nation Sunday to discuss the fallout from the flood of sexual assault and harassment allegations across the U.S., and sexual harassment in Congress.JOHN DICKERSON: The debate over sexual harassment moved into the halls of Congress after California Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier went public with her own experience of unwanted sexual advances as a young Capitol Hill staffer. Speier s revelation actually inspired Leeann Tweeden to come forward with her allegations against Senator Franken.This week, Congresswoman Speier introduced legislation in the House aimed at fighting sexual harassment in Congress. And she joins us this morning from Palm Springs, California. Congresswoman, I want to start with something you wrote. You said that, It s clear the good old boys club mentality of Capitol Hill still persists after all these years. It is perhaps the worst I ve seen in 30 years of working on these issues. The old boys club was pretty bad. You re saying it s worse now?JACKIE SPEIER: Well, I think it s worse in part because we have a system in place that allows for the harasser to go unchecked. Doesn t pay for the settlement himself and is never identified. So the Office of Compliance to which a victim must apply or complain is a place that has really been an enabler of sexual harassment for these many years because of the way it s constructed.JOHN DICKERSON: As Congress and the larger culture tries to figure out what the standard is for treating accusers who come forward, something better than what has been where they ve been blocked, but also something that doesn t allow false accusations, how does that standard get determined, in your mind?JACKIE SPEIER: Well, first of all, we have to make sure that a complaint is taken seriously. And the person who is the victim is not somehow tortured or intimidated into not filing the complaint. That s what it is right now in Congress. There s a one month period where you re counseled. There s another month where you go through mandatory mediation and you have to sign a non disclosure agreement at the front end.And then you have a month of cooling off period. I mean, that is truly ridiculous. It s important for us to remember too, John, that over 90% of those who have been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted are telling the truth. So all these victims who have come forward with Roy Moore or with the president or with Al Franken, all of them have to be, we expect to believe them because, for the most part, they are telling the truth. There is no gain for them to come forward. There re lots of down sides, frankly.JOHN DICKERSON: What s your view about reevaluating the situation? You mentioned the president. The White House seems to suggest, and Senator Cotton also seemed to suggest that the voters knew about this. They voted for him. And so it s an issue that s in the past. How do you see it?JACKIE SPEIER: Well, I think there is some truth to that. If the president was running today, I bet he would not be elected because I think we have had a huge cultural shift that was 40 years in the making, but I think all of us are grateful now that there is a new day for women in the workplace, where they do not have to put up with sexual advances that are unwanted. That they do not have to live and work in a hostile work environment. And that s going to be good for all of us in the workplace.JOHN DICKERSON: As that cultural shift takes place, some people have argued, some Democrats and liberals have argued, that a reevaluation of Bill Clinton s presidency is required. What do you think about that in order to be clear about what the new standard is and use, you know, elements from the past that are well known?JACKIE SPEIER: Well, first of all, let s remember that he did face impeachment. It wasn t as if it was just tossed to the side. He faced impeachment. I think that the victims who came forward were not treated as they should have been. They should have been believed because, as I have pointed out, most people who come forward are telling the truth.JOHN DICKERSON: In the case of Al Franken, what s your feeling about that? There have been some columnists who ve written that basically again, liberals have said he must leave the Senate in order for Democrats to retain their credibility on this issue, or else they re open to the charge that Democrats apply it when it comes to Republicans, but are more generous when it comes to their own team.JACKIE SPEIER: I think it s appropriate for the ethics committee to do an investigation. Senator Franken has actually agreed to that as well. I also think that it has to be determined if there s a pattern of sexual harassment. Incidents have to be severe or they have to be ones that happen over a period of time. So I think we ll wait and see what the investigation determines.JOHN DICKERSON: Is that an instructive distinction then, pattern versus specific mistake in terms of what might penalize somebody but be the difference between penalizing and expulsion?JACKIE SPEIER: And that s what the Courts have held with sexual harassment cases. If there s a pattern, then sexual harassment is found to be in existence. If it s a one event and it s maybe a conversation versus, you know, sexual assault or an unwanted sexual advance, so it really depends on the circumstances in all of these cases.JOHN DICKERSON: Final question on a different topic, on taxes. Eleven of your Republican colleagues in California voted for the House tax cut bill in which deductibility of state and local taxes is no longer allowed. They were told- at least one of them was told, Well, that ll get fixed later. And Californians who have high taxes will be able to deduct them. What s your-do you believe that?JACKIE SPEIER: No, I don t believe it. And I think for all of those members who basically have handed their constituents a $10,000 tax increase, that s what we re talking about. When you take the state and local taxes and the property taxes and the mortgage deduction that is reduced to $500,000, it is a huge hit for every single California family.JOHN DICKERSON: All right, Congresswoman, thanks so much for being with us. And we ll back in one JACKIE SPEIER: Thank you, John.JOHN DICKERSON: minute with White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: POTUS Speaks Out On Alabama’s Roy Moore…The Left Goes Bonkers [Video];President Trump just spoke out on the alleged sexual misconduct of Alabama s Roy Moore. It took a split second for leftist media outlets like Fake News CNN to say that Trump all but endorsed Moore. Twitter was exploding with faux outrage from the left. As usual, President Trump said what we re all thinking POTUS said Roy Moore totally denies it BUT did not endorse Moore Trump on Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations: He totally denies it you have to listen to him also pic.twitter.com/HFCZjEhkFe NBC News (@NBCNews) November 21, 2017 He denies it. Look, he denies it, Trump said of Moore. If you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours. He totally denies it. He says it didn t happen. And look, you have to look at him also. Several women have come forward and accused Moore of pursuing romantic relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, and several others also have accused him of assault .Not one of them has proven anything against him.The President expressed opposition to liberal Democrat Doug Jones: We don t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, Jones. I ve looked at his record. It s terrible on crime. It s terrible on the border. It s terrible on military, Trump said. I can tell you for a fact we do not need somebody who s going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad for the military, bad for the Second Amendment. President Trump left the door open to campaigning with Moore: I ll be letting you know next week, he said, when asked whether he will campaign with Moore.Trump repeatedly emphasized that Jones has denied the allegations brought against him:Trump declined to say whether he believed Moore s denials, but when asked he again pointed to the denials. Well, he denies. I mean, he denies. I mean, Roy Moore denies it. And by the way, it is a total denial. And I do have to say 40 years is a long time. He s run eight races and this has never come up. Forty years is a long time, Trump said, pointing to the amount of time that has passed since the alleged behavior. ;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BALL FAMILY MEMBER Reveals SICK Reason LaVar Ball Allegedly Wouldn’t Let His Sons See Their Mother After “Surgery To Remove Portion of Her Skull”;Last week, President Trump stepped in and interceded on behalf of three young UCLA basketball players who foolishly were caught shoplifting in China. Shoplifting in China is not treated lightly and most likely would have resulted in a prison term for all three young men. President Trump was able to convince China s President Xi, however, to release the three young men from custody. When asked how the loudmouth father of LiAngelo Ball felt about President Trump helping to secure the release of his son, LiAngelo, LaVar Ball suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. President Trump took to Twitter to reply to LaVar Ball s ignorant comments:Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2017So who is this crackpot LaVar Ball, and why would anyone in their right mind make such arrogant and ignorant remarks after the President of the United States just helped their son to escape a prison sentence in a foreign country? Andrew Stephens of the Armchair All Americans did a pretty good job of summing up what a horrible human being the self-serving, money, and fame-obsessed LaVar Ball really is. In his article, Stephens reveals a sick man, who is so controlling of his 3 sons and their basketball careers, that he wouldn t even let them visit their very sick mother in the hospital, over fears that it could create media attention that could damage his merchandise brand. On March 15, 2017, Andrew Stephens of Armchair All Americans published an article about Lavar Ball titled Lavar Ball: The epitome of what is wrong with modern sports. It touched on helicopter parenting and the monetization of potentially profitable children.Stephens claimed that in the article, without commenting on upbringing tactics, I attempted to delve into Lavar Ball s seemingly unnecessary promotion of his own sons for his personal benefit.About an hour after the article was run, I received a comment on it from a member of the Ball family, who wishes to remain anonymous. The comment (which has since been removed to protect the email address and identity of the commenter) read as follows:- Wow. You nailed it. Although you don t even know the half of it. Lavar took over the high school program, added the Coach, his puppet (which is why he quit last year after becoming the national coach of the year) and Lavar stepped on and crushed countless other kids careers and love for the game to get his kids on the court. If you are allowed to shoot at any time from any where and never come out of the game, any decent idiot could score 30 points.Also, Tina Ball, his wife had a stroke on Feb 21. She had life threatening skull surgery to relieve brain pressure guess where Lavar was during the operation that could have killed his wife? at the CHHS vs. LB Poly game with his sons, including Lonzo. He still has not allowed his kids to see their sick mother due to the media attention it would bring to him, and cause BBB sales to diminish. [Name of hospital] in [City of hospital], CA Tina is there now and he only visits for 1 hour a few days a week, while her Mother has yet to leave her side. Pathetic!!! I was a bit skeptical when I initially viewed the comment. I figured that it was someone attempting to drive a smear campaign against the Ball family, seeing how Lavar was such a polarizing figure. But, the information was oddly specific.After a bit of deliberation, I contacted the email address listed with the comment. They confirmed through multiple email and social media confirmations that they were, in fact, a close relative of Lavar and Tina Ball. I also spoke with the hospital listed in the email. The hospital confirmed that Tina Ball was checked in as of 12:30 PM EST on March 15.Tina, who was very active on Twitter, stopped communication on February 19, which fits in with the timeline provided below by a member of the Ball family.Watch this video as the loud-mouth, obnoxious LaVar Ball is interviewed on the Skip and Shannon Undisputed sports show.One of the first questions the female host asked of LaVar was about his desire to have a reality show made about him and his family (Keep in mind, this interview took place shortly after a very serious stroke). It s hard not to pick up on the sadness expressed on the face of his oldest son Lonzo Ball, while his overbearing father dominates the conversation and makes a complete ass of himself:When confirming the identity of the member of the Ball family that commented via email, we received another large piece of harrowing information: Notice, she is not at any games, she is not at work, and she is not at home. Someone needs to ask the question, where is Tina? She is severely disabled and paralyzed on right side. Cannot talk and is questionable about her comprehension. Left side of her brain impacted with massive stroke, while at home on Feb. 21 (school holiday President s day). Tina is a PE teacher in [City of school],CA [Name of school].Feb. 20: Tina Ball admitted at [Name of first hospital] ICUFeb. 21: Surgery to remove a portion of her skull to reduce swelling from the stroke (evening)Feb 21: Chino Hills vs LB Poly @ Cerritos College evening game (same time as surgery) Lavar & Lonzo at the game with the other Ball boys missed the surgery and post op. Did not come to hospital during or after surgery. The Ball boys are not allowed to see their mother, Lavar is afraid it will take away from their game(s). Lonzo had big game at ASU and U of A later that week. Also, media buzz would take away from all the interviews and media touring for Lavar + BBB brand would suffer. It literally is bigger than Tina s life, as evidenced by Lavar s approach. As a family member, I am embarrassed and feel so sorry for Tina, since Lavar is on a media tour, he visits her rarely, while her mother has stayed by her side continuously. The crux of the original story was rooted in that fact that Lavar Ball s priorities were self-motivated and not for the betterment of a family brand. After hearing the explicit details given to us, if these allegations are true it only confirms one thing for Lavar Ball: money and fame are king.LaVar recently attempted to sell his Ball s Big Baller Brand for a billion dollars. When major shoe companies laughed at his offer, he raised his price to 3 billion dollars. How Ball ever got his product line this far is really quite amazing. When LaVar Ball said he wanted $1 billion for a Big Baller Brand co-branding shoe deal for his three sons, the big shoe companies scoffed.After that rejection, Big Baller Brand released Lonzo Ball s first signature shoe, the ZO2, and decided to charge a minimum of $495 for a pair. LaVar told Colin Cowherd on Wednesday that companies like Nike, Adidas and Under Armour will regret not forking over $1 billion and that he s decided to raise the price for a deal. Now that Lonzo s headed to Los Angeles, what they should have done is give me a billion dollars and let me be on my way, LaVar said, referring to the Lakers drawing the No. 2 pick in next month s NBA draft.But now? Apparently, the draft lottery results tripled Big Baller Brand s value. Now you know if they want to talk to me now, it just went up to $3 billion. Triple B s billion, billion, billion, he told Sports Illustrated.LaVar had a chance to fix his embarrassing error of disrespecting the President for the gift he gave their family, but instead chose to double down on stupid, in one of the most painfully ignorant interviews you will ever witness, with CNN s Chris Cuomo:;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER NFL PLAYER: UCLA Player’s Dad Said ‘Dumbest Thing’ [Video];Former NFL player Shannon Sharpe on Tuesday called LaVar Ball s complaints directed at President Donald Trump the dumbest thing he could have said. Sharpe is usually as anti-Trump as they come but is just smart enough to understand that it s idiotic to diss the president. Sharpe makes some dumb comments during the rant about LaVar Ball but it s pretty big that he is supportive of President Trump:Sharpe appeared to take Trump s side in the feud and said the president s involvement in China didn t hurt the situation. I can assure you President Trump mentioning [the detainment] to the Chinese President didn t hurt his situation. If he [LaVar Ball] felt this strongly, why didn t the hell he say that while they were over there? This is when he should have been vocal. Sharpe said.Sharpe also asked why, if Trump didn t help the situation, why did all three players personally thank him? Why did all three of those guys get up there and say thank President Trump, personally? Thank the American government, personally? Sharpe inquired. I didn t hear one of them mention LaVar Ball s name. I did hear three President Trumps and three American government. Now they get back on American soil, he [LaVar Ball] wants to pound his chest. I see why President Trump used the word ungrateful,' he added.Later in the segment, Sharpe said Trump wouldn t have had to say anything about LiAngelo Ball if he hadn t attempted to steal. President Trump would have said nothing about the boy. If your son would have had kept his sticky ass fingers in his pockets, and not take peoples stuff in China, we wouldn t even be having this conversation, Sharpe said, directing his comments to LaVar Ball.In the past, Sharpe has criticized Trump, especially over the president s comments about player protests in the NFL. Read more: WFB;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: CNN’s Chris Cuomo Stunned At STUPIDITY of LaVar Ball After Refusing To “Thank” President Trump For Helping His Son Get Out of Chinese Jail Sentence;CNN host Chris Cuomo definitely drew the short straw when he was asked to fill in for host Don Lemon, on Tonight with Don Lemon . Unfortunately for Cuomo, he was tasked with interviewing the outrageous, nonsensical Lavar Ball, father of UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball, who was arrested in China for shoplifting. Americans were outraged when Lavar refused to thank President Trump for asking Chinese President Xi to allow the young men to be set free, and took it a step further when he insisted Trump didn t deserve any credit for his son s release.Watch:CNN compiled a list of some of Lavar Ball s most incredible comments during the interview. Here is a sampling of Lavar s bizarre remarks during the interview (Our comments are in italics): It s not like he was in the US and said, OK, there s three kids in China, I need to go over there and get them? That wasn t the thought process, right? I don t have to say, to go around saying thank you to everybody. You come around and shake my hand, and meet me, or meet my son, or anybody and then say you know what, maybe I can help you out. Just because people say things, you know, that s supposed to be true, like hey, I stopped him from serving ten years. Maybe we were doing some talking with other people before he even got there. I don t have no doubts about what he did. I got doubts about what he didn t do. Huh? If I m coming to get you out of trouble, you best believe I m going to take you with me. It s just somebody ask me a question and I gave a lot of confusion to you. Uhh while we re talking about confusion, can someone please explain what the hell he just said? Why is it confusing? Are you concerned? Somebody can make a suggestion and somebody could do something. You have people that make suggestions you got people that do things. Why are we talking about this with all these political matters going on in the world? Says the guy who has no idea why President Trump was in China in the first place. I know exactly what I said. But you buffered it up like you said that you don t want to say thank you to nobody. Buffered it up? I know you re trying to add tone to it because that s what you do. Can you add tone to someone s tone when they, themselves are speaking on tv? I had some things done, I talked to some people that did some things, too. If you want something, and you want it, you shouldn t just go and steal it. You can to Africa and somewhere and do the same thing anywhere you go in someone else s country, yes, it s going to be a little deeper than what you thought it was. Ball asked Cuomo if Trump paid their bail, suggesting that if he did, then, he would be grateful to the President. This comment is nothing short of spectacularly incredible. I m asking you, I m asking you. Did he do it? Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son and let s just stay in our lane. Somebody asked me a question, man. I give him my opinion, but I am not taking a shot at the president. Yeah, okay Lavar. Whatever you say I m not the other guys, though. I m not the other guys. I m doing something else. I m not the other guys. Lavar Ball then goes on to ask CNN host Chris Cuomo to thank him. Can you say thank you, Mr. LaVar Ball? When Cuomo seems to be confused as to why Ball is asking him to thank Ball, Ball then asks another idiotic question: Give me a couple of reasons why you re thanking me. You don t say thank you like any kind of word. Next, Lavar reminds the CNN host that he has a title, and would appreciate it if Chris Cuomo would address him by his title: My title is LaVar Ball, the big baller, the CEO of the Big Baller Brand. But the Chinese people were like, you know what, he s OK. He has so much character in 18 years that he s allow to have a pass for that. Uhh actually, no they weren t. They were thinking about how many years his son would be sentenced, possibly to hard labor for the crimes he committed in their country.This may be the funniest line of all. Ball asks the anti-Trump CNN host if he s Trump s brother ? Are you Trump s brother? You want me to thank you? Did you thank the doctor for bringing you into this world? Well, you better go back and find him. Because you lucky. Apparently, this is Lavar logic Ball then changes gears and makes yet another strange comment: I like how you keep saying my whole name, man. Cuomo then responds to Ball, explaining that his friends call him Mo. My friends call me Mo. You can call me Mo. Finally, Ball makes his final and completely ignorant remark to end the completely off-the-wall segment with Cuomo: Chrome-Mo like Google. Like the Google Chrome. ??????????? ;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: NEW DOCUMENTS Found Link Hillary to Russia in Uranium One Deal [Video];This could get ugly and should! A treasure trove of new documents found linking Hillary to the Russia deal to sell uranium Nick Short said it best: This could get ugly This is not just about bribery and kickbacks but about a U.S. company that was transporting yellow-cake for the Russians with our approval. There's a treasure trove of documents tying Russia to Uranium One. https://t.co/L2gzCXWn5k pic.twitter.com/M8wzsMDpme Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) November 20, 2017Recent pushback in Congressional testimony by Department of Justice Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as well as unnamed Justice Department officials in several news articles, stating that the case involving a highly placed FBI confidential informant in the Russian nuclear industry was not connected to the sale of the Canadian firm Uranium One in 2010, does not coincide with the trove of documents, emails and memoranda obtained by this reporter that prove otherwise.Moreover, an American energy consultant, whose now an official with the Department of Energy office of Nuclear Energy, produced a memorandum regarding the acquisition of Uranium One and other legislative matters for one of the main Russian co-conspirators that was then under an FBI clandestine investigation.Within the over 5,000 documents and briefs given to the FBI and DOJ by the informant, there were detailed plans of Russia s state controlled nuclear arm Rosatom, and its subsidiaries, to penetrate America s vast energy market and its efforts to gain approval of the United States government for the eventual purchase of Uranium One. At the time Uranium One controlled roughly 20 percent of American uranium mining capacity.In fact, the evidence obtained by the Department of Justice and FBI, starting as early as 2008, paint a much different picture than that of recent reports regarding the confidential informant, William D. Campbell Jr., and his role. According to the documents, Campbell gained insight into Russia s strategic plans to gain global dominance in the uranium industry and to build a closer relationship with Obama administration officials.Read the full report at: SaraCarter.com;politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ROY MOORE WITCH HUNT UNRAVELLING: More Witnesses Step Forward To Refute Story Of Latest Roy Moore Accuser…OUCH!;"This is truly shocking! Roy Moore takes a commanding lead in the Alabama Senatorial race as the allegations against him by the left and the RINO Republicans collapse. Check this out:Yesterday, the spread between the two leading candidates was 15 Today, it s 62 -40. While the internal polling for the Moore campaign had the spread at 5 points, it s looking really great for a Moore win in Alabama!NEW WITNESSES REFUTE THE ACCUSER S STORY:The witnesses say they ve shared the information with news outlets but to no one s surprise, the outlets refused to run the story. The employees who came forward offered details about the restaurant that refute the claims by the accuser. The calls for the arrest of Allred for the crime of forgery are getting louder. See the interesting discrepancies with the yearbook below:Roy Moore s campaign sent the following in a press release:GADSDEN, Ala. On Monday evening, the Moore Campaign unveiled statements from key witnesses that completely bust the story of Beverly Nelson and Gloria Allred and further reveal an unconscionable bias on the part of state and national press to hide the truth from Alabama voters who will undoubtedly see through the fake news and elect Judge Moore for the man that they have always known him to be.Rhonda Ledbetter, a retired public school teacher who is currently the senior choir director at a Baptist church and teaches children at a local, church-sponsored day care center, was a waitress at Olde Hickory House for almost three years from 1977-1979. She was a college student at Jacksonville State University at the time and worked varying shifts at different times of day, multiple days a week during the time of her employment. She said in a statement: When I heard Beverly Nelson s story, there were several details that were different from what I remember. I was nervous at coming forward because of all the attention this story has gotten, but as a moral and ethical person I had to speak up about what I know to be true. I was a waitress at Olde Hickory for almost three years from 1977-1979, and I never saw Roy Moore come in to the restaurant. Not one time. And I would have noticed because most of our customers weren t wearing suits, especially not at night. Many customers worked at Goodyear next door and would stop in on their way to and from work, and I don t remember anyone from the courthouse coming in at all. That just wasn t our crowd. A few things stuck out to me. First, Nelson said she was 15 years old when she started working there but you had to be 16. I don t remember her from my time there, and I don t remember any 15 year olds working there at all. Second, Nelson said the restaurant closed at 10 p.m. but I know the earliest it closed was 11, though I believe it was midnight. I m certain of that because Goodyear employees came in to eat after their shift ended at 10:00 p.m., so there s no way we would have closed at that time. Third, the area wasn t dark and isolated as she described. Rather, the building was right off the busy four-lane highway and people and cars were always around. The restaurant had a wrap-around porch, like the ones at Cracker Barrel restaurants, and there were lights all around the sides of the building. So it wasn t dark and anyone in the parking lot was visible from the road. Fourth, the dumpsters were to the side of the building, not around back and there sure wasn t room to park in between the building and the dumpsters. People from the kitchen would take trash out of the side door and throw it right into the dumpsters. We were always told to park on the side of the building, because there just wasn t much room behind it. I don t remember there being an exit from the back of the parking lot, there would barely have been enough room to turn a car around. I came forward because from what I ve seen, the media is only interested in reporting one side of this story. In fact, Dixon Hayes from WRBC in Birmingham asked for former employees to contact him but never responded when I told him I never saw Roy Moore come into Olde Hickory House during the three years I worked for. Two other news outlets in the state asked to interview me and I agreed, but neither one has aired my interview and I have to wonder why they don t think the people of Alabama deserve to hear anything that counteracts the accusations against Judge Moore. It s not for me to say whether or not something happened, I can only tell the truth about factual details that I know for sure. I think all Alabamians deserve to have all of the facts so they can decide for themselves what the truth is. Despite what the national media and people in DC might say, Alabama voters are intelligent and have common sense. We don t need anyone to tell us how to vote or to explain to us what really happened. We will make that decision and I just wanted to do my part in sharing the truth on some of these important facts. I, like all Alabama voters, want any and all information that can shed light on the truth. Johnny Belyeu, Sr. is a former police officer with over two decades of experience with the Etowah County Sheriff s Department and the Gadsden Police Department. He said in a statement, I was an officer with the Etowah County Sheriff s Department in the 1970s which means I worked in the courthouse and knew who Roy Moore was since he was the Deputy District Attorney at the time. I was a regular customer at Olde Hickory House, and I never once saw Judge Moore come in there. If he had I would have immediately recognized him. I also never met Beverly Nelson during any of the many times I frequented the restaurant, and I can t say that she even worked there. Renee Schivera of Huntsville, Alabama stated, I was a waitress at the Olde Hickory House during the summer of 1977, before my senior year of high school. When I heard Beverly Nelson s story the first thing that stuck out to me was that I don t remember Roy Moore ever coming into the restaurant. I also don t remember her working there. The other thing that struck me as odd is that from my best recollection, the dumpsters were to the side of the building. I just know they were visible from the road, and not back behind the building. But the main thing is that if someone came in almost every night we knew who there were, and I never saw Roy Moore there. As a Christian woman, I wouldn t lie for anyone and I am only sharing what I know because it s the truth. The days of unbiased reporting are over, Moore Campaign strategist, Brett Doster said. The liberal media will dodge any source and refuse to air any interview that doesn t square with their effort to land a liberal Democrat in the senate seat. The Moore Campaign is committed to presenting factual truth to the people of Alabama and looks forward to victory on December 12. ""The Moore Campaign unveiled statements from key witnesses that completely bust the story of Beverly Nelson and Gloria Allred and further reveal an unconscionable bias on the part of state and national press to hide the truth from Alabama voters."" #ALSen pic.twitter.com/AxIpaAMc2E Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 21, 2017Roy Moore tweeted about the yearbook that lawyer for accuser won t turn over:Good morning, Alabama!Day 7 of New York attorney Gloria Allred's refusal to turn over her fake yearbook for third party examination.#ALSen Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 21, 2017CALLS TO ARREST ALLRED!Gloria Allred is in some hot water over her effort to stop candidate Moore with salacious allegations and very flimsy evidence. The Moore campaign offered to have a handwriting analysis on the yearbook the accuser said he signed but Allred hasn t offered the yearbook up yet. The two things that came up about the signing of the yearbook are that it s in two different colors of ink and Moore was not a DA the year of the signing. The Moore signature says, Roy Moore DA .Swamp creatures like Mitch McConnell should be called out along with the Washington Post and other political operatives. Mitch McConnell should be ashamed of his dirty politics against Moore This is backfiring on him BIG TIME!";politics;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. judge in California blocks Trump's order on sanctuary cities;(Reuters) - A federal court judge in California on Monday blocked an executive order from President Donald Trump to deny some federal grants to so-called sanctuary cities, undermining the administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The judge, who blocked the order provisionally in April, issued a permanent injunction in the suit brought by the city and county of San Francisco and Santa Clara County, which said the order was unconstitutional. “The Counties have demonstrated that the Executive Order has caused and will cause them constitutional injuries by violating the separation of powers doctrine and depriving them of their Tenth and Fifth Amendment rights,” U.S. District Judge William Orrick for the Northern District of California wrote in his order. Trump issued the order in January, shortly after he was inaugurated, slashing funding to jurisdictions that refuse to comply with a statute that requires local governments to share information with U.S. immigration authorities. As part of that policy, the Justice Department has sought to punish cities and other local jurisdictions that have joined a growing “sanctuary” movement aimed at shielding illegal immigrants from stepped-up deportation efforts. “The district court exceeded its authority today when it barred the president from instructing his cabinet members to enforce existing law,” Department of Justice spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement. “The Justice Department will vindicate the president’s lawful authority to direct the executive branch.” The department has already appealed the judge’s prior ruling from April. The Trump administration contends local authorities endanger public safety when they decline to hand over for deportation illegal immigrants arrested for crimes. Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have joined the growing “sanctuary” movement. Supporters of the sanctuary policy argue enlisting police cooperation in rounding up immigrants for removal undermines communities’ trust in local police, particularly among Latinos. The Justice Department is concerned about localities’ compliance with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests to detain people up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release time so that immigration officials can pick them up. Some cities say they will only honor such requests when accompanied by criminal warrants, and that compliance is voluntary and not required under the statute. Chicago also sued the federal government in August over the threats of funding cuts by the Justice Department. A federal judge sided with the city in September and issued a preliminary injunction barring the U.S. government from denying the public-safety grants. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar operation against Rohingya has 'hallmarks of ethnic cleansing', U.S. Congress members say;YANGON (Reuters) - Members of U.S. Congress said on Tuesday they were disturbed by the harsh response of Myanmar’s security forces to attacks by militants in August which they said bore “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing” against the Rohingya Muslim minority. “We are profoundly disturbed by the violent and disproportionate response against the Rohingya by the military and local groups,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told reporters in Yangon at the end of a visit to Bangladesh and Myanmar. Merkley, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led the five-strong congressional delegation, which over the last few days met with people affected by the military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims which has forced more than 600,000 people to flee to Bangladesh. In early November, U.S. lawmakers proposed targeted sanctions and travel restrictions on Myanmar military officials over the treatment of the Rohingya. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. to end protected status for Haitians in July 2019;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States in July 2019 will end a special status given to about 59,000 Haitian immigrants that protects them from deportation after a devastating 2010 earthquake, senior Trump administration officials said on Monday. The decision by acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke gives Haitians 18 months to return to their impoverished Caribbean country or legalize their status in the United States. Former President Barack Obama’s administration granted Haitian nationals in the United States so-called Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for 18 months after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in January 2010, killing more than 300,000 people. The Obama administration extended the status several times after the initial designation. Duke decided to terminate the special status after a U.S. review of the conditions in Haiti found the country had made considerable progress, a senior official with President Donald Trump’s administration told a briefing. “It was assessed overall that the extraordinary but temporary conditions that served as the basis of Haiti’s most recent designation has sufficiently improved such that they no longer prevent nationals of Haiti from returning safely,” the official said. In May, then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly extended the status for Haitians for six months through January 2018. At the time, Kelly told reporters that TPS “is not meant to be an open-ended law but a temporary law.” The decision to end TPS for Haitians is part of Trump’s broader efforts to tighten restrictions on immigration, and comes despite calls from even some fellow Republicans to continue the relief. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida published an opinion piece in the Miami Herald on Friday urging the administration to renew Haiti’s TPS designation for another 18 months, citing ongoing natural disasters, health epidemics and security issues since the 2010 quake. Duke in September ended protected status for citizens of Sudan as of 2018, but extended it for citizens of South Sudan through mid-2019. This month, Duke decided to end the status for Nicaraguan immigrants, but extended the program for Honduran immigrants until July 2018.. Thousands of Nicaraguans and Hondurans received the special status in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America. The Washington Post reported that Kelly pressured Duke to end the program for Hondurans, but Duke denied the reports. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Congress members decry 'ethnic cleansing' in Myanmar;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump defends Senate candidate Moore despite misconduct allegations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump defended embattled U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore on Tuesday, saying the Alabama Republican had denied allegations of sexual misconduct and emphasizing that he did not want Moore’s Democratic opponent to win. Trump previously said that Moore should step aside if the allegations were true. Speaking to reporters at the White House before leaving Washington for Florida, Trump left open the possibility of campaigning for Moore, saying he would make an announcement on that next week. The president also ripped into Moore’s opponent, Democrat Doug Jones, describing the former prosecutor as liberal and soft on crime. The comments represented a shift in strategy for the White House, which previously tried to keep its distance from the controversy sparked by a Washington Post report detailing accusations by four women that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. More women have since spoken out with allegations of their own. “He totally denies it. He says it didn’t happen. And, you know, you have to listen to him also,” Trump said. Trump’s position was a break from that of other national Republicans. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent lawmakers have pressed Moore to quit the race. It also contrasted with comments from his daughter Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser who told the Associated Press there was a “special place in hell for people who prey on children.” She said she had no reason to doubt the women’s accounts. Moore, 70, has denied any wrongdoing. The married Christian conservative has said he is the victim of a witch hunt and has declined to drop out of the race. Reuters has not been able to confirm any of the accusations independently. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump himself faced accusations from several women that he had in the past made unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate personal remarks about them. Trump denied the allegations, accusing Democrats and the media of a smear campaign. Trump supported Moore’s opponent, Senator Luther Strange, in the Republican primary race for the open U.S. Senate seat vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but he backed Moore after the former Alabama chief justice won the nomination. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate. They are eager to hold on to that advantage to pass Trump’s legislative agenda on taxes, healthcare and other priorities. Since the accusations against Moore were reported, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders has said repeatedly that Alabama voters should decide the election and called the allegations “troubling.” The White House also backed the Republican National Committee’s decision to withdraw support for Moore. But the administration’s position appeared to start evolving this week when White House counselor Kellyanne Conway criticized Jones during an interview with Fox News and said the White House wanted a Republican to win the seat in order to support Trump’s plan for a tax overhaul. Trump, who had declined until Tuesday to answer questions about the Alabama race, was prepared with a list of complaints about Jones when facing reporters on the south lawn of the White House. “I can tell you one thing for sure: We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, Jones,” Trump said. “I’ve looked at his record. It’s terrible on crime. It’s terrible on the border. It’s terrible on the military. I can tell you for a fact, we do not need somebody that’s going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad with the military, bad for the Second Amendment.” Before the allegations came to light, Moore was heavily favored to defeat Jones, a former federal prosecutor, in the special election on Dec. 12. Two opinion polls last week showed Moore now trailing Jones. “Doug believes the women, and that the people of Alabama will hold Roy Moore accountable,” Jones’ spokesman, Sebastian Kitchen, said in a statement. Among those prosecuted by Jones when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama were two former Ku Klux Klan members for their involvement in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham that killed four girls. ;politicsNews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK Brexit minister says EU agreement likely, but UK ready for no deal;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Brexit minister David Davis said on Tuesday that reaching a deal with the European Union was the most likely outcome of talks, but added that the British government was prepared for no agreement with the bloc. Reaching a deal with the European Union is not only far and away the most likely outcome, it s also the best outcome for our country, Davis said in a speech in London. I don t think it would be in the interest for either side for there to be no deal. But as a responsible government it is right that we make every plan for every eventuality. Both sides have spoken of their frustration at a lack of progress in negotiations so far, although Davis said talks had made real and tangible progress. Britain wants to move discussions on to the future trade relationship with the EU which Brussels will not consider until London settles what it sees as past debts. While Davis said he was unambiguously seeking a deal, he said Britain was ready for talks to fail. Over the past year every department across Whitehall has been working at pace covering the whole range of scenarios, he said. These plans have been well developed, have been designed to provide the flexibility to respond to a negotiated agreement, as well as preparing us for the chance that we leave without a deal. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China supports Cambodia's crackdown on political opposition;BEIJING (Reuters) - China supports Cambodia s efforts to protect political stability and believes it will smoothly hold elections next year, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Cambodian counterpart, after the country s main opposition party was dissolved. The Supreme Court banned the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) last week at the request of Prime Minister Hun Sen s government in a move that prompted the United States to cut election funding and threaten more punitive steps. The European Union has also threatened action. The CNRP was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason. The government says he sought to take power with American help. He rejects that allegation as politically motivated, to allow Hun Sen to extend his more than three decades in power in next year s general election. The United States has said that Cambodia s 2018 election will not be legitimate, free or fair . Meeting on Monday on the sides of a Asia-Europe foreign ministers meeting in Myanmar, Wang told his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhon that China supported the government s actions. China supports the Cambodian side s efforts to protect political stability and achieve economic development, and believes the Cambodian government can lead the people to deal with domestic and foreign challenges, and will smoothly hold elections next year, , China s Foreign Ministry said in a Tuesday statement. China has repeatedly expressed its support for Cambodia, making no criticism of the government led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, who is one of Beijing s most important allies in Southeast Asia after more than three decades in power. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German political limbo threatens European reform push;BERLIN (Reuters) - Half a year ago, the political stars seemed perfectly aligned for a deep reform of the European Union and its euro currency. Emmanuel Macron had won the French presidency on a promise to relaunch Europe. And Angela Merkel, on track to win a fourth term as German chancellor, looked ready to embrace his bold vision, telling an audience in Bavaria that it was time for Europe to take its fate into its own hands. Following the collapse of German coalition talks, however, the prospects for a meaningful leap forward in European cooperation, driven by newly minted governments in Berlin and Paris, look dimmer than ever. Political uncertainty has crossed the Rhine, said Jean Pisani-Ferry, an economist and academic who helped write Macron s election program. Europe has gotten used to having a strong German government with clear positions. That is something we may not have for some time. Germany now faces months of political limbo which will narrow an already tight window for agreeing reforms of euro zone governance and EU defense and asylum policies. Should Germany be forced to hold new elections, its partners may have to wait until next summer for a government to take form. By then, Europe will be entering crunch time in its Brexit negotiations with Britain, preparing for sensitive discussions on a long-term EU budget and gearing up for the election of a new European Parliament. Euro zone leaders were due to begin a six-month discussion on closer integration of their 19-nation currency bloc next month at a special summit in Brussels. Now that debate seems likely to be delayed and officials say the chances of reaching any conclusions by June 2018, as proposed by European Council President Donald Tusk, are slim. Things will go on hold until there is a formal acting German government, one euro zone official said. At this stage I don t see what steps the leaders could take in December or June for deepening euro zone integration when there is a German government without a mandate. Another casualty could be the completion of an EU pact on closer defense cooperation, known as PESCO. Berlin and Paris had hoped to sign it into law at a regular EU summit next month. Now diplomats involved in EU foreign policy say that may be overly ambitious. Germany has also been a driving force behind EU efforts to reform its asylum policies in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis. Those discussions, pitting countries like Italy and Greece against Poland and Hungary, were already bogged down. Without a new government in Berlin, there is next to no hope of a breakthrough. We have so many things we need to do urgently that slowing us down is not good for Europe as a whole, Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister who is deputy head of the European Commission, told CNN. He played down the risks, however, saying: It might slow us down a little bit but I don t think it would take Europe off course, whatever happens. Perhaps the only pressing issue which will not be significantly affected by the political uncertainty in Germany is Brexit, where there is a broad political consensus among German parties. That means that Merkel, who will remain in place in a caretaker capacity until a new coalition is formed, should have sufficient room to maneuver in talks that, in any case, are being led by the European Commission and its chief negotiator Michel Barnier. Still, hopes that the two political earthquakes of 2016 Britain s decision to leave the EU and the election of U.S. President Donald Trump might shock European capitals into bold reforms, once elections in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria were out of the way, are fading. Even before the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) walked out of coalition negotiations with Merkel s conservatives and the Greens in the early hours of Monday, doubts were rising about whether she would have the flexibility to meet Macron halfway as head of an awkward three-way Jamaica alliance. Now that those talks have collapsed, she would appear to have three options: convince the Social Democrats (SPD) to enter another right-left grand coalition ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Iran's Rouhani urges France to remain ""realistic, impartial"" in Middle East";BEIRUT/PARIS (Reuters) - France can play a productive role in the Middle East by taking a realistic and impartial approach , Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call on Tuesday, according to Iranian state media. Tensions between Iran and France increased last week after Macron said that Tehran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile program. His foreign minister also denounced Tehran s hegemonic temptations during a visit to Saudi Arabia. Iranian state media said Rouhani told Macron that the Islamic Republic was ready to develop its relations with France on all bilateral, regional and international issues based on mutual respect and shared goals. Rouhani referred to the adventurism of some inexperienced princes in the region - an allusion to Iran s arch geopolitical rival, Saudi Arabia - and said France could play a positive role in easing the situation. We are against adventurism and creating division in the region and believe that France, by keeping an independent vote and its position in the region, can, with a realistic and impartial approach, have a productive role, he said. In a rare statement on both calls, Macron s office said he had talked to Rouhani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu separately, telling them both that it was vital to keep Lebanon disassociated from regional crises. He also said France was attached to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal with world powers, but that regional and ballistic issues should be discussed separately and constructively. Macron also stressed the importance for the countries of the region to work collectively to reduce tensions, the statement said. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states criticised Iran and its Lebanese Shi ite Muslim ally Hezbollah at talks in Cairo on Sunday, calling for a united front to counter Iranian influence. Rouhani also highlighted the importance of maintaining stability in Lebanon and, in the phone call with Macron, noted what he characterized as the threat posed by Israel. Hezbollah are a part of the Lebanese people and are incredibly loved in this country. Their weapons are only defensive and are only for use in the face of a potential attack, Rouhani said. Now we have to try so the Lebanese groups can, with security, have a government that can help advance their country. Macron, whose country has called for Hezbollah to disarm, has tried to mediate in a regional crisis that erupted after Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri announced his resignation in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, accusing Tehran and Hezbollah - which was part of his coalition government - of sowing strife across the Middle East. Macron spoke on Monday with Netanyahu, who is due in Paris in December, according to diplomatic sources. According to the Iranian state media, Macron invited Rouhani to Paris for a climate summit on Dec. 12. Macron s office did not respond when asked to confirm the invite. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. says air strike kills over 100 militants in Somalia;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said it killed more than 100 Islamist militants in Somalia on Tuesday when it launched an air strike against al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked insurgent group that wants to topple the U.N.-backed government. The military s Africa Command said the strike was carried out on a camp 125 miles (201 km) northwest of the capital, Mogadishu and that the United States would continue to target militants. The strike was done in coordination with Somalia s federal government, the Pentagon said. U.S. air strikes killing such a large number of militants in Somalia are rare, but not unprecedented. In March 2016, a U.S. air strike killed more than 150 al Shabaab fighters in Somalia. Somalia s state news agency SONNA reported late on Tuesday that about 100 militants were killed when U.S. planes and Somali commandos attacked al Shabaab bases in the Bur Elay area of Bay region. Al Shabaab spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab denied the attack. It is just...propaganda, he told Reuters in Somalia. Al Shabaab is fighting to topple Somalia s Western-backed transitional federal government and impose its own rule on the Horn of Africa country. Earlier this month, the U.S. warned of a threat to its diplomatic staff in Mogadishu and directed all non-essential staff to leave the capital. Al Shabaab has lost control of most of Somalia s cities and towns since it was pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011. But it retains a strong presence in parts of the south and center and carries out gun and bomb attacks. Al-Shabaab has publicly committed to planning and conducting attacks against the U.S. and our partners in the region, the U.S. military statement said. Al Shabaab aims to topple Somalia s government, drive out African Union peacekeeping troops and impose its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Earlier this month, the U.S. military also carried out its first strikes against Islamic State militants in Somalia and said it killed several terrorists. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Exclusive: African leaders wanted Mugabe, an ""embarrassment"", to go - Zimbabwe intelligence";JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - African leaders were embarrassed by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and already encouraging him to step down before the army began moves last week to oust him, according to a secret Zimbabwean intelligence cable seen by Reuters. The cable, dated Oct 23 and written by someone within the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to an unknown recipient, also says Mugabe spoke to South African President Jacob Zuma about his rivalry with Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president whose sacking by Mugabe prompted the army action. The 93-year-old president stepped down on Tuesday, the speaker of parliament said, in the middle of impeachment proceedings from his own ZANU-PF party and after a week of pressure from the military and crowds which thronged the capital at the weekend. Two party officials said Mnangagwa would take his place. The cable, one of a series seen by Reuters this year which give a detailed, insider s view of Zimbabwean politics, described intelligence officials warning Mugabe he would face fierce resistance from the military if Mnangagwa was removed. First seen by Reuters before the army intervened, it said the 16-country Southern African Development Community (SADC) led by Zuma was pressuring Mugabe to resign and Zuma had suggested offering him a senior African Union role to ease him out. Zuma s spokesman, Bongani Ngqulunga, dismissed the account as completely untrue and scandalous . President Jacob Zuma did not communicate with President Mugabe about former Vice-President Mnangagwa at all about the issues you mention. Regional support allowed Mugabe to overcome an election setback in 2008 and could have held the key to his future as leader this time round. SADC leaders met on Tuesday to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mnangagwa will be sworn in as Zimbabwe president: ZANU-PF;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa will be sworn in as president on Wednesday or Thursday, ZANU-PF legal secretary Patrick Chinamasa told Reuters, after the resignation of Robert Mugabe. Separately, ZANU-PF chief whip Lovemore Matuke told Reuters that Mnangagwa would be sworn in within 48 hours and that he would serve the remainder of Mugabe s term until the next general elections, which must be held by September 2018. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suicide bomber kills 50 in Nigeria in mosque attack;YOLA, Nigeria (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people in northeastern Nigeria on Tuesday in an attack on a mosque which bore the hallmarks of a faction of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The bombing in Mubi in Adamawa state was one of the deadliest in Nigeria s northeast since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 pledging to end Boko Haram s eight-year insurgency and attacks by the group on civilian and military targets. It brought to at least 278 the number of people killed in 2017, according to calculations by Reuters. There was no claim of responsibility. Some of the dead were in pieces beyond recognition, said Bayi Muhammad, a worshipper who escaped the blast because he was late for early morning prayers. Abubakar Othman, a police spokesman in Adamawa state, said the death toll was at least 50, but added that the tally could rise. Eight people were critically injured and more than 30 others hurt but in stable condition, said Idris Garga, the northeast regional coordinator for Nigeria s national emergency agency. Boko Haram held territory in Adamawa state in 2014. Troops pushed them out in early 2015, and the town of Mubi had itself been relatively peaceful until Tuesday s bombing. In a statement on Tuesday, Nigeria s president said the attack was very cruel and gave assurances his government would do everything required to secure the state from Boko Haram. The militant group often mounts suicide attacks in public places such as mosques and markets. Last December, two schoolgirl suicide bombers killed 56 people and wounded dozens more at a market in Adamawa. The mosque blast bears the hallmarks of a faction led by Abubakar Shekau, which forces women and girls to carry out suicide bombings. The attacks often leave only the bomber dead. Boko Haram has waged an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria since 2009 in its attempt to create an Islamic state in the region. It has killed more than 20,000 and forced around 2 million people to flee their homes. The group split in 2016 and the faction under Shekau is based in the Sambisa forest on the border with Cameroon and Chad and mainly targets civilians with suicide bombers. The other faction is based in the Lake Chad region and led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi. It mainly attacks military forces after quietly building up its strength over the past year. Most attacks focus on Borno state, the birthplace of the insurgency. The group held land around the size of Belgium in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states until early 2015 but was forced out by Nigeria s army and troops from neighboring countries. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran's president declares end of Islamic State;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of Islamic State on Tuesday while a senior military commander thanked the thousands of martyrs killed in operations organised by Iran to defeat the militant group in Syria and Iraq. Today with God s guidance and the resistance of people in the region we can say that this evil has either been lifted from the head of the people or has been reduced, Rouhani said in an address broadcast live on state TV. Of course the remnants will continue but the foundation and roots have been destroyed. Major General Qassem Soleimani, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, also said Islamic State had been defeated, in a message sent on Tuesday to Iran s supreme leader which was published on the Guards news site, Sepah News. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei congratulated Soleimani on the defeat of Islamic State and said it was a blow against Israel, America and its allies, an allusion to Saudi Arabia. It was a blow against the past and current governments of America and the regimes linked to it in the region who created this group and gave them every kind of support so they could expand their malevolent power in west Asia, Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website. In June Islamic State carried out its first attack in Iran, killing 18 people in Tehran, testing the government s belief that by backing offensives against the group elsewhere in the region it could keep the militant group away from Iran. Iranian media have often carried video and pictures of Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside Iran, at frontline positions in battles against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Revolutionary Guards, a powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, has been fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the central government in Baghdad for several years. More than 1,000 members of the Guards, including senior commanders, have been killed in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian conflict has entered a new phase with the capture at the weekend by government forces and their allies of Albu Kamal, the last significant town in Syria held by Islamic State, where Soleimani was pictured by Iranian media last week. Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town there under Islamic State control, on Friday, signaling the collapse of the so-called caliphate it proclaimed in 2014 across vast swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory. Most of the forces battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have said they expect it to go underground and turn to a guerrilla insurgency using sleeper cells and bombings. In his address on Tuesday, Rouhani accused the United States and Israel of supporting Islamic State. He also criticized Arab powers in the region and asked why they had not spoken out about civilian deaths in Yemen s conflict. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states criticized Iran and its Lebanese Shi ite ally Hezbollah at an emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday, calling for a united front to counter Iranian interference. Soleimani acknowledged the multinational force Iran has helped organize in the fight against Islamic State and thanked the thousands of martyrs and wounded Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani defenders of the shrine . He pointed to the decisive role played by Hezbollah and the group s leader Seyed Hassan Nasrallah and highlighted the thousands of Iraqi Shi ite volunteers, known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, who have fought Islamic State in Iraq. On websites linked to the Guards, members of the organization killed in Syria and Iraq are praised as protectors of Shi ite holy sites and labeled defenders of the shrine . Rouhani is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan in Russia on Wednesday to discuss the Syria conflict. The Revolutionary Guards initially kept quiet about their military role in both Syria and Iraq but have become more outspoken about it as casualties have mounted. They frame their engagement as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State, who see Shi ites, the majority of Iran s population, as apostates. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the U.S. Treasury Department authority to impose economic sanctions on Guards members in response to what Washington calls its efforts to destabilize and undermine its opponents in the Middle East. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron tells Iran, Israel leaders of need to preserve Lebanon's stability;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron told the leaders of Iran and Israel in separate telephone calls that it was vital to keep Lebanon disassociated from regional crisis and urged all countries in the region to work collectively to reduce tensions. Macron s office also said in a statement that he had told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that France was attached to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, but that regional subjects and ballistic missile programmers should be discussed separately. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian businessman Kerimov detained by French police in Nice: prosecutor's office;PARIS (Reuters) - Senior Russian lawmaker and businessman Suleiman Kerimov was arrested by French police at Nice airport on Monday night in connection with a tax evasion case, an official at a French prosecutor s office said on Tuesday. He is being held for questioning in a case related to laundering of tax fraud proceeds, an official at the prosecutor s office said. Kerimov is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia s 21st wealthiest businessman, with a net worth of $6.3 billion. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China urges Thailand to find Muslim Uighurs quickly after dramatic cell break;BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday it has urged Thailand to quickly bring to justice 20 ethnic Uighur Muslims from China who broke out of a Thai detention center through a hole in the wall, using blankets to climb to the ground. Twenty-five Uighurs dug through their cell wall with broken tiles to make their dramatic escape from the center in Thailand s southern Songkhla province, near the border with Malaysia, early on Monday. As of Tuesday, 10 had been caught, leaving 15 whose whereabouts were still unknown, according to Thai police, who said checkpoints had been set up along the border. The escapees were part of the last remaining group of more than 200 Uighurs detained in Thailand in 2014. Members of the group identified themselves as Turkish citizens and asked to be sent to Turkey but more than 100 were forcibly returned to China in July 2015, a move that sparked international condemnation, including from rights groups who feared they could face torture in China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China would continue to strengthen cooperation with Thailand on the detainees escape and closely follow the situation. China has already urged the relevant Thai department to quickly bring the relevant people to justice, he said at a regular news briefing. Over the years, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Turkic-language speaking Uighurs have escaped unrest in China s western region of Xinjiang by traveling clandestinely via Southeast Asia to Turkey. The Chinese government has blamed violence in Xinjiang between majority Han Chinese and Uighurs on separatist Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say that anger over strict Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Uighurs is to blame. Exiled ethnic Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer called on Thailand and any country that may find the Uighurs to treat them according to international law and not hand them over to China. The Uyghurs took the risk of capture and perhaps harsh repercussions to try to save themselves from indefinite detention in Thailand and from deportation to China, Kadeer said in an email released by the World Uyghur Congress, which she heads. [Whether they] are indeed Turkish nationals as they claim or Chinese nationals as China claims, the fact that they are ethnic Uyghur is enough for them to face persecution and harsh punishment, she said. Kadeer is a former political prisoner in China accused of leaking state secrets in 1999. She was later allowed to leave on medical grounds and lives in the United States. Amnesty International has said that Chinese authorities in recent months have detained up to 30 of Kadeer s relatives. China routinely denies accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang, though it has admitted a problem with torture of detainees and has pledged to stop mistreatment of prisoners. On the borders of Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the region is one of China s most sensitive domestic issues, and the government has dramatically ramped up police operations there and set up what critics characterize as re-education camps and oppressive surveillance. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia moves to shelter banks funding arms makers from sanctions;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has proposed ending the publication of the names of banks which finance Russian state-controlled arms producers, in a possible sign that Moscow is preparing for new U.S. sanctions. The draft law would, if adopted, mean the Russian central bank no longer has to publish a list of banks dealing with the arms industry, which included eight lenders as of Oct. 1. Russia s government and the president would be able to include any banks they wanted to in such deals and would no longer publish the criteria for their involvement. Under current regulations only state-controlled or central bank-controlled lenders with capital of not less then 100 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) may get such contracts. Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting on Tuesday to discuss building up the country s military. The U.S. State Department last month named 39 Russian defense and intelligence-related entities following the signing in August of a new sanctions law by President Donald Trump to punish Moscow after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded it meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, allegations the Kremlin has repeatedly denied. The U.S. law calls on the president to impose sanctions on anyone he identifies as having engaged in a significant transaction with a person that is part of, or operates for or on behalf of, the defense or intelligence sectors of the Russian government.. The action does not itself impose new sanctions, and determinations will be made on a case by case basis, State Department officials said in October. Banks on the list include state-controlled majors Sberbank, VTB and Russian Agriculture Bank, along with private-owned Rossiya and Gazprombank, in which gas producer Gazprom holds a stake. Sberbank has proposed establishing a special bank to finance Russia s military industry as a means of side-stepping the sanctions, three sources familiar with the talks told Reuters. Sberbank declined to comment. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany, citing own history, urges work to bridge Gulf divisions;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel offered his Qatari counterpart a small piece of the Berlin Wall on Tuesday, saying Germany s post-war history was proof it was possible to overcome deep divisions such as those now plaguing the Gulf region. Gabriel said Germany had a keen interest in maintaining good relations with all the Gulf countries and working for peace in the region, even if those countries were sometimes in conflict. Especially in politically troubled times in which dialogue has sometimes slipped into the background, it is all the more important to build bridges, to emphasize the things that unite us and to help remove walls, Gabriel said at the opening of a new Qatar-funded Arabic cultural center in Berlin. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he hoped the new center, erected in a neo-classical villa in the southern part of Berlin, could showcase Arab culture and help battle stereotypes of Arabs in Europe. Sheikh Mohammed last week blamed what he called reckless leadership in the Gulf for a rift with Qatar and the current crisis in Lebanon, taking apparent aim at Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt this summer cut diplomatic, transport and trade ties with Qatar, accusing it of financing terrorism. Doha denies the charges. Gabriel did not refer to the Gulf dispute directly, but lauded Germany s World War Two enemies for building bridges and welcoming Germany back into the world community despite the devastation and horrors of the Nazi regime. After 70 years, we saw that it s possible, even after a world war, to be partners in a first step and friends in a second, he said. Tearing down walls is exhausting but worth it. Gabriel said a full segment of the Wall that once divided East and West Germany would be delivered to a museum in Doha, fulfilling a promise he had made to the sister of Qatar s ruler. Because as a politician, particularly in these days in Germany, we ought to fulfill our promises, he said. That is a hot topic in my country at the moment. Gabriel, a former leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), declined to comment further on Chancellor Angela Merkel s failure to forge a new coalition government with the pro-business Free Democrats and environmental Greens. Merkel is pressing the SPD to reconsider its refusal to join another grand coalition with the conservatives - a move that would stave off new elections that now loom. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump and Putin speak for an hour about Syria, Ukraine, North Korea;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone for about an hour on Tuesday and covered topics including Syria, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, a White House official said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe civil society calls for post-Mugabe 'national dialogue';HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s Platform for Concerned Citizens, a civil society group, called on Tuesday for a far-reaching national dialogue involving all political parties to help plot a new course for the country after the resignation of Robert Mugabe. A National Transitional Authority must be the final outcome of a national dialogue, the PCC said in a statement. We have informed both the government and the military of our view. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. appeals court revives claims in $1.7 billion Iran terrorism lawsuit;NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday revived part of a $1.68 billion lawsuit against Iran s central bank, Bank Markazi, by families of soldiers killed in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon. By a 3-0 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred in dismissing claims against Markazi;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Truck bomb in northern Iraq kills at least 23;KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - At least 23 people were killed and 60 wounded when a suicide bomber set off a truck bomb near a crowded marketplace in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu, police and medical sources said on Tuesday. An interior ministry spokesman said a violent explosion took place near a vegetable market in the town, south of Kirkuk, but did not immediately provide casualty figures. Military authorities said 17 were killed and 36 injured, according to a statement. Most of the casualties were civilians, the police and medical sources told Reuters. The death toll was expected to rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition. The bombing took place in a mainly Shi ite Turkmen area. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Suicide bombings are a trademark of Islamic State, and Iraqi security officials have said the group was likely to wage an insurgency after its self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed and its militants were dislodged from territories they held in the country. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May says Mugabe's resignation gives Zimbabwe a chance to be free;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday Robert Mugabe s resignation gave Zimbabwe the chance to forge a new path, free from oppression. The resignation of Robert Mugabe provides Zimbabwe with an opportunity to forge a new path free of the oppression that characterized his rule, May said. In recent days, we have seen the desire of the Zimbabwean people for free and fair elections and the opportunity to rebuild the country s economy under a legitimate government. May added in a statement that Britain, as Zimbabwe s oldest friend , would do all it could to support the country. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq to declare final victory over Islamic State after desert campaign;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective but he would only declare final victory after IS militants were routed in the desert. Iraqi forces on Friday captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control, signaling the collapse of the group s caliphate proclaimed after it overran much of Iraq s north and west in 2014. Securing desert and border areas is what remains in the campaign against Islamic State, military commanders say. From a military perspective, we have ended the presence of Daesh in Iraq, Abadi said while addressing a weekly news conference, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym. God willing we will announce very soon after the end of the purification operations victory over Daesh in Iraq. Abadi s comments came as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of Islamic State while a senior Iranian military commander thanked the thousands of martyrs killed in operations organized by Iran to defeat the militant group in Syria and Iraq. Political disagreements will pave the way for the Sunni militant group to carry out attacks, however, Abadi said. He was referring to the central Baghdad government s dispute with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government over the latter s declaration of independence following a Sept. 25 referendum. Any disagreement between political factions will encourage Daesh to carry out terrorist attacks, he said. I call on our Kurdish brothers to avoid fighting. Hours before Abadi spoke, at least 23 people were killed and 60 wounded when a suicide bomber set off a truck bomb near a crowded marketplace in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu, south of the oil city of Kirkuk. Abadi praised a federal court verdict that ruled the Kurdish referendum unconstitutional and called on Kurds not to resort to violence. Iraq s Supreme Federal Court ruled on Monday that the referendum was unconstitutional and the results void, bolstering Baghdad s hand in a stand-off with the Kurdish region watched closely by neighbouring Turkey and Iran. I hail the federal court s decision to void the Kurdish region s referendum, he said. Kurds voted overwhelmingly to break away from Iraq in the referendum, defying Baghdad and alarming neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. The Iraqi government responded to the referendum by seizing Kurdish-held Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mugabe: Zimbabwe's liberator and, for many, its oppressor;HARARE (Reuters) - When he came to power, Zimbabwe s Robert Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero in a nation that had endured nearly a century of white colonial rule. Nearly four decades after the country s independence from Britain in 1980, he was regarded by many as an autocrat, willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of power. The 93-year-old resigned as president on Tuesday, ending 37 years of rule. He had clung on for a week after an army takeover and expulsion from his ZANU-PF party, but quit after parliament began an impeachment process against him. Educated and urbane, Mugabe took power after seven years of a liberation bush war and is the only leader Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, has known since independence from Britain in 1980. The army seized power last week after Mugabe sacked ZANU-PF s favorite to succeed him, Vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, to smooth a path to the presidency for his wife Grace, 52, known to her critics as Gucci Grace for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping. It s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered his court to a gang of thieves around his wife, Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of Zimbabwe s influential liberation war veterans, told Reuters after the army takeover. Born on a Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa s University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism. Returning to Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics but was jailed for a decade four years later for opposing white rule. After his release, he rose to the top of the powerful Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, known as the thinking man s guerrilla on account of his seven degrees, three of them earned behind bars. Later, as he crushed his political enemies, he boasted of another qualification - a degree in violence . After the long bush war ended, Mugabe was elected as the nation s first black prime minister. Initially, he offered reconciliation to old adversaries as he presided over a booming economy. But it was not long before Mugabe began to suppress challengers such as liberation war rival Joshua Nkomo. Faced with a revolt in the mid-1980s in the western province of Matabeleland which he blamed on Nkomo, Mugabe sent in North Korean-trained army units, provoking an international outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians. Human rights groups say 20,000 people died, most from Nkomo s Ndebele tribe. The discovery of mass graves prompted accusations of genocide against Mugabe. After two terms as prime minister, Mugabe changed the constitution and was elected president in 1990, shortly before the death of his first wife, Sally, seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him. When, at the end of the century, he lost a constitutional referendum followed by a groundswell of black anger at the slow pace of land reform, his response was uncompromising. As gangs of black people calling themselves war veterans invaded white-owned farms, Mugabe said it was a correction of colonial injustices. Perhaps we made a mistake by not finishing the war in the trenches, he said in 2000. If the settlers had been defeated through the barrel of a gun, perhaps we would not be having the same problems. The farm seizures helped ruin one of Africa s most dynamic economies, with a collapse in agricultural foreign exchange earnings unleashing hyperinflation. The economy shrank by more than a third from 2000 to 2008, sending unemployment above 80 percent. Several million Zimbabweans fled, mostly to South Africa. An unapologetic Mugabe portrayed himself as a radical African nationalist competing against racist and imperialist forces in Washington and London. Britain once likened him to Adolf Hitler but Mugabe did not mind, saying the Nazi leader had wanted justice, sovereignty and independence for his people: If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler ten-fold. The country hit rock bottom in 2008, when 500 billion percent inflation drove people to support the challenge of Western-backed former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Facing defeat in a presidential run-off, Mugabe resorted to violence, forcing Tsvangirai to withdraw after scores of his supporters were killed by ZANU-PF thugs. An increasingly worried South Africa squeezed the pair into a fractious unity coalition but the compromise belied Mugabe s de facto grip on power through his continued control of the army, police and secret service. As old age crept in and rumors of cancer intensified, his animosity towards Tsvangirai eased, with the two men enjoying weekly meetings over tea and scones, a quirky nod to Mugabe s affection for British tradition if not authority. On the eve of the 2013 election, Mugabe dismissed cries of autocracy and likened dealing with Tsvangirai to sparring in the ring. Although we boxed each other, it s not as hostile as before, he said. It s all over now. We can shake hands. At the same time, Mugabe s agents were finalizing plans to engineer an election victory through manipulation of the voters roll, the Tsvangirai camp said. The subsequent landslide was typical of a man who could always out-fight and out-think opponents. To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician, former U.S. ambassador Christopher Dell wrote in a cable released by WikiLeaks. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabweans take to Johannesburg streets to celebrate Mugabe resignation;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabweans took to the streets of the Yeoville and Hillbrow districts of the South African city of Johannesburg on Tuesday to celebrate news of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe s resignation. Around 3 million Zimbabweans have emigrated from their home country to South Africa in search of work following Zimbabwe s economic collapse. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Members of Libyan parliament signal backing for U.N. transition proposals;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Libya s eastern-based parliament voted on Tuesday to approve some U.N. proposals aimed at unifying the divided North African nation, although major obstacles remain for a deal to stabilize the oil producer. The U.N. launched a new round of talks in September to end years of turmoil in Libya following a 2011 NATO-backed uprising and unite the rival governments and parliaments in Tripoli and the east. Choosing the members of the presidency and the government, and settling the question of military leadership are seen as the biggest hurdles to any deal. Only a minority of members of the House of Representatives in Benghazi took part in Tuesday s vote, so it is unclear to what extent it will advance the latest push for a political deal. Opposition in the House had been a key obstacle to previous U.N. peace efforts. A rival assembly in Tripoli is also meant to approve the proposals. The U.N. talks were suspended in October, but the organization has been working behind the scenes. Its envoy Ghassan Salame said last week that delegations from rival assemblies were close to a consensus . On Tuesday, a majority of about 75 members of the House present approved U.N. proposals regarding the broader structure of a future government, said Fathi al-Marimi, an adviser to House speaker Agila Saleh. An unspecified number were flown in by Saleh on a private plane, he said. The House session had originally been planned for Monday but was postponed when a U.N. flight carrying some deputies based in western Libya was prevented from landing. The U.N. proposals are aimed at relaunching a deal signed in December 2015, which produced a U.N.-backed government in Tripoli that has struggled to assert its authority and never been accepted by factions that control the east of the country. Salame said last week that he was planning to hold a national conference in February to agree how to finalize a transition, and that the U.N. was working to establish the right conditions for holding new elections. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arm found near Copenhagen could relate to submarine case: Danish police;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - An unidentified arm found by divers in the water near Copenhagen could belong to Swedish journalist Kim Wall who died after taking a submarine ride with the vessel s Danish inventor in August, Danish police said on Tuesday. The arm was found near the route that had been investigated in connection with the submarine case, the police said in a statement. The limb would be examined by coroners on Wednesday. We have not yet determined if this is a right or left arm or who the arm belongs to. But we are working from a perspective that it stems from the submarine case, police spokesman Jens Moller Jensen said. Wall, a freelance journalist who was researching a story on submarine owner Peter Madsen, went missing after he took her out to sea in the 17-metre (56-foot) submarine in August. On Aug. 23, police identified a headless female torso that washed ashore in Copenhagen as that of Wall. In October, police said they had recovered her head and legs. Madsen admitted to dismembering Wall on board his submarine and dumping her body parts in the sea, but he still denies murdering her and a charge of sexual assault without intercourse. The trial has been set to take place in Copenhagen next March. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon army chief warns of Israel threat amid political crisis;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s army chief told his soldiers on Tuesday to be extra vigilant to prevent unrest during political turmoil after the prime minister quit, and accused Israel of aggressive intentions at the southern frontier. Troops should be ready to thwart any attempt to exploit the current circumstances for stirring strife, the army s Twitter account quoted General Joseph Aoun as saying ahead of Independence Day celebrations on Wednesday. The exceptional political situation that Lebanon is going through requires you to exercise the highest levels of awareness. Aoun called on troops to assume full readiness at the southern border to face the threats of the Israeli enemy, its violations, and the aggressive intentions it is indicating towards Lebanon. A senior Israeli official dismissed the warnings of border aggression as nonsense . Lebanon was thrust back onto the forefront of regional rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran, after its prime minister quit this month in a broadcast from Riyadh. In his shock resignation, Saad al-Hariri railed against the Iran-backed Shi ite military and political movement Hezbollah, which both Saudi Arabia and Israel consider an enemy. The Lebanese president has refused to accept Hariri s resignation until he returns to Lebanon. The Saudis have demanded that Hezbollah stop meddling in regional conflicts and say it must disarm. Hezbollah has long said it must keep its arsenal to protect Lebanon from Israel, and its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused the Saudis this month of inciting Israel to attack Lebanon. He said he could not rule out a new clash with Israel, although he described it as unlikely. In a televised speech on Monday, Nasrallah suggested the Saudis and Israelis were working together. Tensions grew earlier this year between Israel and Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war in 2006 that killed around 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them troops. Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinmetz said this week that Israel has had covert contacts with Riyadh amid common concerns over Iran, a rare disclosure by a senior official from either country of long-rumored secret dealings. But Israel dismissed claims that it is planning military action against Hezbollah at the behest of Saudi Arabia. We are not interested in an escalation with Lebanon, Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a member of the security cabinet, told Reuters about the accusation of Israeli-Saudi collusion. However, Bennett added: If rockets are fired from Lebanon at Israeli cities, then we will see that as a declaration of war by the state of Lebanon and will act with all our might. In Israel, where the 2006 war was widely seen as inconclusive, there is little in the public mood or political discourse to suggest fighting with Hezbollah is imminent. But Israeli officials have voiced deep concern about Iran and Hezbollah s expanding influence in the region. The Saudis and Israel definitely have common interests today, including the threat from Iran, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in a radio interview last week. The countries coming together could serve both of them. But, Shaked said, we don t work for anyone. We first and foremost look out for our interests. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri leaves Cairo for Lebanon: Egypt airport sources;CAIRO (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who resigned as Lebanese prime minister on Nov. 4, left Cairo for Lebanon on Tuesday after a brief meeting with Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egyptian airport sources said on Tuesday. Hariri announced his resignation during a visit to Saudi Arabia but has yet to return home. He has said he will clarify his position once he returns to Lebanon. His surprise resignation has triggered a political crisis in Lebanon, which finds itself in the midst of a bitter regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri holds talks with Egypt President Sisi in Cairo;CAIRO (Reuters) - Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri, who resigned as prime minister on Nov. 4, met Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for talks in a brief Cairo stopover before a planned return to Lebanon, Egypt state media said on Tuesday. Hariri had been in Paris since Saturday when he met French President Emmanuel Macron. He has said he will return to Lebanon by Wednesday for the country s Independence Day celebrations, where he said he will clarify his position. His surprise resignation announced from Riyadh triggered a political crisis in Lebanon s power-sharing government and drew his country deeper into a regional power struggle between Sunni kingdom Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran. A Saudi ally, Hariri said he quit over interference in Lebanon by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, a Shi ite group, which is part the government. But President Michel Aoun and others say Hariri may have been coerced into resigning. Sisi, a former military commander who presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist militancy, has stressed his backing for Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab allies who have helped with aid since he ousted a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. But he has also said Egypt is not considering measures against Hezbollah despite Saudi demands for sanctions against the Lebanese group. He has received calls from Macron and from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over the crisis. Hariri arrived at Cairo International Airport, where he was received by Egypt s health minister, the Lebanese ambassador to Cairo and Egypt s ambassador to Beirut, his press office said. He went immediately to the presidential palace, it said. A message on Hariri s Twitter account said the meeting would be followed by a dinner in his honor. Saad Hariri arrived in Cairo on Tuesday evening from Paris to meet President Sisi, and he is scheduled to return to Lebanon on Wednesday, MENA state news agency said. Egypt s presidency said Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, also spoke with Sisi to discuss developments. Sisi and Aoun underscored the importance of preserving Lebanon s stability as well as upholding Lebanon s national interest. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin, Saudi king, stress need to coordinate over energy markets: Kremlin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia s King Salman stressed the importance of further coordinating their actions on the energy markets, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;30 people killed in attack on cattle herders in northeast Nigeria: police official;BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Unidentified attackers killed more than 30 cattle herders in the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa, a police spokesman said on Tuesday. The attack, in the Numan area of Adamawa, began on Sunday night and fighting continued into Monday morning, said Othman Abubakar, a police spokesman for the state, adding that an investigation was underway. He gave no further details. Earlier on Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed 50 worshippers during morning prayers in a mosque in the town of Mubi in northeastern Nigeria, police said, in one of the deadliest attacks in the region in years. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Once triumphant Bosnian Serb commander Mladic reduced to frail genocide defendant;SARAJEVO (Reuters) - In the 1990s he was the burly, brash general leading nationalist Bosnian Serbs towards a seemingly sweeping victory in Bosnia s war. Two decades later, he was reduced to an ailing old man trying in vain to delay judgment for genocide in a U.N. court. On Wednesday, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted Ratko Mladic, 74, in one of the highest profile war crimes cases since the post-World War Two Nuremberg trials of Germany s Nazi leadership. Radovan Karadzic, political leader of Bosnia s Serbs in the 1992-95 war, and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who armed and funded Bosnian Serb forces, were tried on the same charges. The ICTY convicted Karadzic in 2016 and jailed him for 40 years. Milosevic died in his cell in 2006 before his trial ended. Defiant until the close of his five-year trial, Mladic desperately tried to postpone the verdict. His lawyers persistently accused the ICTY of denying him proper medical care. They asked for him to be treated in Serbia or Russia, but were rebuffed. Prosecutors demanded a life sentence for the man who critics called the Butcher of Bosnia . His lawyers called for his acquittal and release, arguing he never approved mass killings of Muslim or Croat civilians in Bosnia s vicious, often neighbourhood war and was a victim of Western anti-Serb bias. Mladic said he wanted to be remembered as a defender of Serbs in a struggle for survival against Muslims dating back centuries, and made urgent by a Muslim-Croat vote for Bosnia s independence from Serbian-led Yugoslavia in 1992. I am General Ratko Mladic. The whole world knows who I am, he told a pre-trial hearing in 2011. I am here defending my country and people, not Ratko Mladic. Mladic was charged with genocide for the slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys rounded up in the town of Srebrenica, and his forces 43-month-long siege of Sarajevo in which thousands of civilians were killed by artillery, mortar, tank and sniper fire from the rugged hills ringing the capital. From the time of his ICTY indictment in mid-1995, before the war ended, it took 17 years to bring him to trial in The Hague - a testament to the loyalty he inspired among Serbs who helped conceal him and to the resilience of their nationalist cause. But as Serbia evolved after Bosnia s war from authoritarian rule to democracy seeking integration with the European Union, Mladic lost his sanctuary. When Serbian police acting on an ICTY arrest warrant finally traced Mladic to a cousin s farmhouse in May 2011, they found a penniless, shambling and ill old man. The son of a World War Two Yugoslav partisan killed in 1945, Mladic was a general in the old communist Yugoslav People s Army (JNA) when the multinational Balkan republic began to disintegrate in 1991 with the secession of Slovenia and Croatia. When Bosnia s Serbs rose up in response to a referendum for independence by Muslims and Croats, Mladic took over Belgrade s forces in Bosnia which swiftly overran 70 percent of the country with a combination of daring, ruthlessness and brutality. Serb paramilitaries entered the conflict with a campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and expulsion mainly against Bosnian Muslims. Dozens of towns were besieged with heavy weapons and villages were burned down as 22,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops stood by more or less helplessly, with orders not to take sides. Mladic had a cameraman film the blitz of the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, showing him bronzed and fit at 53, extolling his lads and haranguing hapless Dutch U.N. peacekeepers who took his soldier s word that the inhabitants would be safe. Instead, 8,000 of them were systematically executed in a massacre that took several days in July 1995. TV footage showed Mladic asserting that he had liberated Srebrenica and gifted it to Serbs as revenge against Turks who ruled the region when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Muslim men and boys were separated from women, stripped of identification then shot. The dead were bulldozed into mass graves. The remains were later dug up and hauled away in trucks to be better hidden from the world in more remote mass graves. Over 6,900 victims have since been identified by DNA tests. The massacre was the grim culmination of a 3-1/2-year conflict in which the beefy general had pounded Sarajevo daily with the entire Bosnian Serb arsenal, killing over 11,000 people, until local sports fields were overflowing with graves. His goal, ICTY prosecutors said, was ethnic cleansing - the forcible extermination or expulsion of Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs to clear Bosnian lands for a Greater Serbia . Prosecutors said it was a conspiracy in which Mladic and Karadzic were aided, armed and abetted by Milosevic. Only a combination of Western pressure and covert American arms and training for Croats and Muslims turned the tide in 1995 against Mladic s army, ultimately depriving it of equipment and fuel supplies from Serbia. NATO air strikes did the rest. He spent only half his time at large as a hunted fugitive. Even after Milosevic fell to a pro-democracy uprising in 2000, Mladic remained well protected in various Belgrade apartments until 2005. He received treatment at a top military hospital. Sporadic sightings put him at a Belgrade horse race or soccer match. When finally arrested in the shabby rural farmhouse, he put up no resistance. His right arm was lame, the apparent result of an untreated stroke. His trial had to be delayed over and over because of his shaky health. Yet in court, Mladic grinned as a judge read out the charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Srebrenica massacre survivors attending one hearing were shocked when he made a throat-slitting gesture towards a Muslim woman who had lost her husband, son and several brothers. In 2014, he refused to give evidence in support of old ally Karadzic, calling the tribunal a satanic court . When the time finally came on Wednesday to face judgment, Mladic delayed proceedings, first by taking a bathroom break and undergoing a blood pressure test at his request, then screaming This is all lies, you are all liars on returning to the court. He was hustled out of the chamber, and the tribunal announced he had been convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. Mladic will appeal against the verdict, his lawyer said. Even with his conviction on Wednesday, Mladic s trial is unlikely to further post-war reconciliation in Bosnia. The U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords of 1995 halted the bloodshed by dividing Bosnia into a semi-autonomous Serb Republic entity and a Bosniak-Croat Federation. This did not heal ethnic splits or prevent a resurgence of Serb separatism. Most Bosnian Serbs remain convinced that Mladic is innocent, and that the tribunal is utterly biased against them. Of the 83 defendants the ICTY has convicted, over 60 of them are Serbs. I am a very old man ... and I am not important, Mladic told the tribunal. It matters what kind of legacy I will leave behind, among my people. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-Bosnian Serb commander Mladic convicted of genocide, gets life in prison;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A U.N. tribunal on Wednesday convicted ex-Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic of genocide and crimes against humanity for massacres of Bosnian Muslims and ethnic cleansing campaigns to forge a Greater Serbia , and jailed him for life. Mladic was hustled out of the court minutes before the verdict for angrily shouting, This is all lies, you are all liars! The outburst occurred after Mladic returned to the courtroom from what his lawyers described as a visit to the bathroom, then a blood pressure test which held up proceedings. The U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladic guilty of 10 of 11 charges, including the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 civilians were killed by shelling, mortar and sniper fire. The killings in Srebrenica of men and boys after they were separated from women and taken away in buses or marched off to be shot amounted to Europe s worst atrocity since World War Two. The crimes committed rank among the most heinous known to humankind, and include genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said in reading out a summary of the judgment. Many of these men and boys were cursed, insulted, threatened, forced to sing Serb songs and beaten while awaiting their execution, he said. Mladic had pleaded not guilty to all charges. His legal team said he would appeal against the verdict. Called the Butcher of Bosnia by survivors of his actions, Mladic was the most notorious of 163 ICTY indictees together with Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb nationalist leader and political mastermind of ethnic cleansing, and their patron, then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The tribunal found Mladic significantly contributed to genocide committed in Srebrenica with the goal of destroying its Muslim population, personally directed the bombardment of Sarajevo and was part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at purging Bosnian Muslims and Catholic Croats from Bosnia. Prosecutors said the ultimate agenda of Mladic, Karadzic and Milosevic was what came to be known worldwide as ethnic cleansing, to carve out an Orthodox Greater Serbia in the ashes of multinational federal Yugoslavia. ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz called the verdict a milestone in holding Mladic accountable not just for massacres but the detention of tens of thousands of non-Serbs in camps where many were beaten and raped, and the forced displacement of over one million to remake Bosnia s demographic map. The Mladic case is the last major decision by the ICTY, which plans to close its doors soon after sentencing 83 Balkan war criminals since opening in 1993. In Geneva, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein called Mladic the epitome of evil and said his conviction after 16 years as an indicted fugitive and five years of trial was a momentous victory for justice . Today s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take, Zeid said in a statement. RESPECT THE VICTIMS, LOOK TO THE FUTURE -SERBIA President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, whose 1990s strongman leader Milosevic died in a tribunal prison in 2006 before the end of his genocide trial, said Serbia respects the victims . I would like to call on everyone (in the region) to start looking into the future and not to drown in tears of the past... We need to look to the future...so we finally have a stable country, Vucic told reporters when asked about the verdict. Serbia, once the most powerful Yugoslav republic, is now democratic and seeking ties to the European Union. Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic said he hoped that those who still call for new divisions and conflicts will carefully read the verdict rendered today ...in case that they are still no ready to face their past . He was alluding to enduring separatism in post-war federal Bosnia s autonomous Serb region. Srebrenica, near Bosnia s eastern border with Serbia, had been designated a safe area by the United Nations and was defended by lightly armed U.N. peacekeepers. But they quickly surrendered when Mladic s forces stormed it on July 11, 1995. A bronzed and beefy Mladic was filmed visiting a refugee camp in Srebrenica on July 12. He was giving away chocolate and sweets to the children while the cameras were rolling, telling us nothing will happen and that we have no reason to be afraid, recalled Munira Subasic of the Mothers of Srebrenica group. Serbian TV footage showed Mladic approaching a blond boy in a friendly way and asking him his name and how old he was, then turning to fearful Muslim women and children and assuring them: All who would like to stay can stay. Just take it easy. Subasic said: After the cameras left he gave an order to kill whoever could be killed, rape whoever could be raped and finally he ordered us all to be banished and chased out of Srebrenica, so he could make an ethnically clean town. Dutch peacekeepers looked on helplessly as Bosnian Serb officers separated men and boys from women, then sent them out of sight on buses or marched them away to be shot. The remains of Subasic s son and husband were both found in mass graves by International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) workers. The ICMP have identified some 6,900 remains of Srebrenica victims through DNA analysis. The siege of Sarajevo terrorised its people. It involved both heavy shelling that sometimes slaughtered residents queueing outside for scarce supplies, and random sniper fire that picked off people who dared to venture into the streets, or even as they stood indoors by exposed windows. In May 1992, as artillery barrages from surrounding hillsides were setting Sarajevo ablaze, Bosnian intelligence intercepted a Mladic phone call in which he was giving orders about targets: Fire on the parliament, presidency, the Old Town. Fire so that they cannot sleep, burn their brains! That phone call was entered as evidence in his trial. Mladic is still seen as a national hero by some compatriots for the swift capture of much of Bosnia after its Serbs rose up against an early 1992 referendum vote by Muslims and Croats for independence from Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia. His lawyers will argue in their appeal that Bosnian Serbs were victims of the referendum and fought in self-defence . Mladic s lawyers contended that Sarajevo was a legitimate military target as it was the main bastion of Muslim-led Bosnian government forces. They also asserted that Mladic left Srebrenica shortly before Serb fighters began executing Muslim detainees and was later shocked to find out they had occurred. But Wednesday s verdict was never much in doubt, given the mountain of evidence of Serb atrocities produced at previous trials. Four of Mladic s subordinates received life sentences. Karadzic, 72, was convicted of genocide in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years. He is appealing. Mladic was indicted along with Karadzic in 1995, shortly after the Srebrenica killings. But he evaded capture until 2011, three years after a heavily disguised Karadzic was arrested. Mladic s trial in The Hague took five years in part because of delays due to his poor health. He has suffered several strokes, but the ICTY rejected a flurry of last-minute attempts by his lawyers to put off the verdict on medical grounds. The ICTY indicted 161 people in all from Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Of the 83 convicted, more than 60 of them were ethnic Serbs. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's figurehead president now best hope of unlocking political crisis;BERLIN (Reuters) - Frank-Walter Steinmeier was hardly Chancellor Angela Merkel s first choice for the largely ceremonial job of German president, but the lifelong Social Democrat may be her best hope of holding onto power amid an unprecedented political crisis. Steinmeier, 61, a two-time foreign minister, met on Tuesday with political leaders from the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) after Merkel s bid to forge a three-way coalition with those parties collapsed. On Wednesday, he will meet with Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian sister party of Merkel s conservatives. On Thursday, he will meet Martin Schulz, head of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the second largest in the Bundestag lower house of parliament, to urge him to reconsider his party s rejection of another grand coalition with Merkel s conservatives for the good of the country. Some 30 of the SPD s 153 parliamentary members questioned the rejection of such a coalition this week, the Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday. It said Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also favored resuming the coalition that has ruled for the past four years. Merkel favors new elections over a minority government, but Steinmeier is pressing political leaders to avoid a new poll that experts say would further strengthen the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) after it moved into parliament with nearly 13 percent of the vote on Sept. 24. The German president, who is now as powerful as seldom seen in German constitutional history, holds the reins, the Rheinische Post newspaper wrote on Tuesday. This is the first time a German president has had to get actively involved in trying to forge a new coalition government. The architects of the German constitution devised a complicated process to prevent the frequent elections that weakened the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and facilitated the rise of Adolf Hitler. But new elections are likely around April if Steinmeier cannot bring Merkel s conservatives, the Greens and FDP back to the negotiating table, or persuade his former SPD colleagues to return to government. The SPD wants a spell in opposition to rebuild after its worst election result since the 1930s. Steinmeier, following the tradition of all previous German presidents, gave up his party membership upon taking office. But he could wield some influence with top SPD players after years in leadership roles. His first months as president were lackluster, with some commentators skeptical that the veteran political operator could emulate the success of his predecessor Joachim Gauck, a former East German pastor, in serving as Germany s moral compass. But last month Steinmeier delivered a powerful address on the anniversary of German reunification and then went to Russia to try to repair strained ties with President Vladimir Putin - the first German head of state to visit Moscow since 2010. A carpenter s son from the west German state of North-Rhine Westphalia, Steinmeier is a long-time confidante of former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Steinmeier failed to win election as chancellor in 2009, but later won plaudits from the German public for donating a kidney to his seriously ill wife. He has long experience of working with Merkel after serving as foreign minister in the first grand coalition between the SPD and conservatives in 2005-09 and then resuming that role in 2013-17, when the two parties allied again. He and Merkel worked closely together on the Minsk peace agreement aimed at ending fighting in eastern Ukraine - a complex deal that required hours of negotiations with Putin and Ukrainian leaders. I thought Minsk was his biggest accomplishment, but it may pale in comparison with the effort involved in building a functioning government in his own country, said Olaf Boehnke of the Rasmussen Global consultancy. Merkel and Steinmeier actually have a good working relationship. And now he s in the driver s seat, Boehnke said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German political grandees press parties to compromise for stability;BERLIN (Reuters) - Two veteran allies of Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to Germany s parties on Tuesday to strike a compromise and form a stable government that could drag Europe s biggest economy out of a political impasse. The collapse of talks between Merkel s conservative bloc, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens has thrown Germany into political uncertainty and raised the prospect of new elections. It has cast doubt over whether Merkel, Europe s most powerful leader after 12 years in office, will serve a fourth term after her conservatives bled support to the far-right in a Sept. 24 election, though still won the most seats. There are wider implications too for Europe since the collapse of talks means the euro zone s ambitious plans for deeper economic integration could now be put on hold, euro zone officials said in Brussels on Tuesday. Merkel s former finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, now in the impartial role of parliamentary president, said compromise was the order of the day while chancellery chief Peter Altmaier gave parties three weeks to sort out the mess. We must be in a situation in the next three weeks where there is clarity about whether there can be a stable government on the basis of this election result, Altmaier, also acting finance minister, told ZDF television. Merkel has said she prefers new elections to an unstable minority government. Until a government is agreed, she continues as acting chancellor and previous ministers remain in post, while the newly-elected parliament also proceeds with business. Pressure is growing on the Social Democrats (SPD) whose leader Martin Schulz has refused to contemplate re-entering a Merkel-led government after voters punished them for sharing power with her for the last four years. Many in the SPD fear that another four-year term with Merkel, who is herself still popular, would mean their political suicide. Altmaier appealed to the SPD to reconsider: Like Made in Germany , we are known for having a stable and reliable government ... we must give the SPD a chance to think. Andrea Nahles, head of the SPD s parliamentary group reiterated that it did not want to prop up Merkel again. We are not an emergency stop-gap for Merkel, she said. However, she also said the SPD would use talks with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is meeting party leaders to explore possibilities to form a government, to find solutions, hinting at other possible options. We should talk about how we form a process that leads our country into a new, stable government, Nahles said, adding this might be a minority government or new elections. Steinmeier met FDP and Greens leaders on Tuesday, but they made no comment after the meetings. One option could be an alliance between the conservatives and Greens, who built up a certain level of trust during the exploratory talks, which could be tolerated by the SPD. That could guarantee some government policies get through parliament. Michael Kellner, a top Greens negotiator, said it was up to Merkel s party to propose such a minority government, but did not rule it out as an option. In a sign that compromise is still possible, Merkel s Christian Democrats, FDP and Greens voted together on a motion in parliament on Tuesday to create the conditions for Ireland to pay back debts early to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). One former SPD leader Bjoern Engholm said the SPD should rethink their no to a grand coalition, but he said any such alliance would only be possible without Merkel. Many commentators think the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) stand to gain most from new elections although polls show no big differences from the September results. Due to a protracted procedure designed to avoid repeated elections, a new vote would take months to organize, raising worries that European reform efforts will be held up. Europe needs a Germany that is capable of acting, said Schaeuble. The reactions from abroad show that Europe and many other countries in the world are waiting for us. He said it was important for parties to compromise to avert a crisis, saying this did not mean parties had to ditch their principles. The task is huge, but it s not unsolvable. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions 13 Chinese and North Korean organizations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 13 Chinese and North Korean organizations Washington accused of helping evade nuclear restrictions against Pyongyang and supporting the country through trade of commodities like coal. The U.S. Treasury announced the action one day after President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, on its website. The new curbs show the Trump administration s focus on hurting trade between China and North Korea, which it sees as key to deterring Pyongyang from its ambition to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States. This designation will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons, and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime, said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The latest sanctions included blacklisting three Chinese companies, Dandong Kehua Economy & Trade Co., Dandong Xianghe Trading Co., and Dandong Hongda Trade Co., which the Treasury Department said had done more than $750 million in combined trade with North Korea over almost five years until Aug. 31. It said they were involved in trade of coal, iron ore, lead, zinc and silver ore, lead metal and ferrous products as well as notebook computers. The sanctions also blacklisted Sun Sidong and his company Dandong Dongyuan Industrial Co. In a June report, Washington think tank C4ADS said the firm was part of an interconnected network of Chinese companies that account for a vast share of trade with North Korea. U.S. authorities have repeatedly targeted companies and individuals from the Chinese city of Dandong, which borders North Korea, in a bid to cut off Pyongyang s major export revenue from selling natural resources, such as coal. In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China s opposition to unilateral sanctions by other countries, adding it could investigate for itself any contravention of its laws or international obligations. If other parties wish to have effective cooperation with China on this issue and really have a grasp of certain matters, they can totally share intelligence with China and cooperate with China to appropriately handle the issue, Lu told a daily briefing on Wednesday. The direct impact on listed companies may be limited as trade between China and its isolated northern neighbor has slowed substantially since the United Nations imposed a ban in September on North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. In February, China also prohibited coal purchases from North Korea. China does not strictly enforce financial rules in the Dandong area, said Anthony Ruggiero, a North Korea expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. As a result, Dandong draws companies interested in making a profit by selling to North Korea, he said. The new sanctions also hit several North Korean companies that send workers to countries such as Russia, Poland, Cambodia and China. United States authorities said they are seeking to cut off the money North Korea makes from the export of labor. Besides targeting sources of weapons technology, the curbs were the first time the United States sought to directly attack North Korea s daily consumer trade, said Peter Harrell, a sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security. We are sanctioning companies involved in ordinary trade, Harrell said. That s the logical next step. The sanctions aim to further isolate Pyongyang, said Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, adding that she did not think targeting more Chinese firms would affect Beijing s cooperation on the North Korean issue. I don t think it jeopardizes anything, she said. I think the world has come together on this issue. We have a good relationship with China. That s not going to change. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Panama illegal drug seizures set to hit record in 2017: officials;PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama is on track to hit a record level of illegal narcotics seizures this year after authorities over the weekend seized about 2 tonnes of cocaine near the Central American country s border with Colombia, officials said on Monday. The total drug confiscations in full-year 2017 are expected to surpass the previous annual record of 72 tonnes confiscated last year, Security Minister Alexis Bethancourt told reporters, adding that the uptick is due to better coordination among local law enforcement agencies as well as help from friendly countries. The weekend drug bust was made in the border province of Darien on a boat from Colombia, the national border agency SENAFRONT said at a press conference. Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela has previously complained that a peace deal between the Colombian government and the Marxist FARC rebel group has led to a spike in drug trafficking and violence in Panama. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico suffers deadliest month on record, 2017 set to be worst year;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - There were more murders in October in Mexico than in any month over at least 20 years, according to official data, in the latest grim milestone in 2017, a year on course to register the highest homicide tally since modern records began. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto s failure to tackle growing drug violence is seen as a major weakness ahead of next July s presidential election, where he faces an uphill battle to keep his centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in power. The data, published by Mexico s interior ministry on Monday, showed there were 2,371 murder investigations opened in October. With 20,878 murders nationwide in the first 10 months of 2017, this year is on track to overtake 2011 as the most violent since the government began publishing such data in 1997. There were an average of 69 murders a day so far this year, putting Mexico on track to overtake the 2011 homicide tally before the end of November. In 2011, there were an average of 63 murders per day, according to Reuters calculations. In a speech earlier this month, Pena Nieto acknowledged that crime and violence had been rising. It has to be said, we re still not satisfied, and we still have lots more to achieve, he said. Security needs to remain an utmost priority for the government. However, he also added that certain sectors of society are engaged in bullying Mexico s institutions, belittling the work of the police and military. Those comments were ridiculed online, where many criticized the rising violence and graft that have stained his administration. In further bad news for Pena Nieto s unpopular government, Silvestre de la Toba, the head of the Baja California Sur state human rights commission, was shot dead on Monday. His killing drew criticism from U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson, who tweeted that his death should be fully investigated. Baja California Sur, which includes the popular resort of Los Cabos, is one of the states that has seen the sharpest rise in murders. There were 409 in the first 10 months of 2017, up 178 percent from the same period last year. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Weather improves but clock ticks for Argentine submarine search;MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) - The search for a missing Argentine submarine and its 44-member crew was helped by calmer seas on Tuesday, but there were no new clues about its location and worries multiplied because the vessel may be running low on oxygen, a navy spokesman said. The ARA San Juan was en route from Ushuaia, the world s southernmost city, to its base in Mar del Plata and was about 300 miles (480 km) off the coast when it gave its last location on Wednesday, soon after reporting an electrical malfunction. If the German-built submarine had sunk or was otherwise unable to rise to the surface since it sent its last signal, it would be winding down its seven-day oxygen supply. Oxygen is a permanent worry. Every day that passes is more critical, naval commander Gabriel Galeazzi said at an evening news conference in Mar del Plata. More than a dozen boats and planes from Argentina, the United States, Britain, Chile and Brazil have joined the search. Authorities had been mainly scanning from the sky as storms halted the maritime hunt last weekend. The weather improved on Tuesday, helping search efforts by sea. Wind speed slowed and waves that rose as high as 8 meters (26 feet) at the weekend diminished. The search by patrol ships has become more effective thanks more than anything to less pounding by the waves, which have fallen to three or four meters, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters in Buenos Aires. We have to make the most of today and tomorrow because on Thursday the weather is expected to get more complicated, he said. Also on Tuesday, authorities investigated white flares spotted in the South Atlantic overnight. Searchers found an empty floating raft, and noticed the flares from a distance. But the raft s brand suggested it did not belong to the ARA San Juan, which was equipped with only red flares for emergencies and green flares for other situations, the navy said. Searchers have suffered other disappointments. Analysis of satellite signals and sounds detected by underwater probes, initially thought to be messages from the crew, has found they did not come from the vessel. The sounds could be biological. We have discarded the possibility that it was a clanging of morse code against the hull of the submarine, Balbi said. Relatives of crew members have been gathered at a naval base in Mar del Plata, where the search is being coordinated. The ARA San Juan was launched in 1983, the newest of three submarines in the navy s fleet, and underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina. Its four diesel engines and its electric propeller engines were replaced, according to specialist publication Jane s Sentinel. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Timeline: U.N. tribunal to give verdict in genocide trial of Ratko Mladic;SARAJEVO (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia delivers its verdict on Wednesday in the trial of Ratko Mladic, the ex-Bosnian Serb military commander charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia s 1992-95 war. Here is a timeline of events leading to his arrest as well as important aspects of his trial: July 25 - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicts Mladic and wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of wars. Nov. 21 - The United States brokers the Dayton Accords that formally end Europe s worst conflict since World War Two, with 100,000 dead and 2 million homeless. A NATO-led force deploys in the shattered country to secure implementation of the deal. Late 1990s - Mladic is believed to move to neighboring Serbia to avoid possible capture by international forces in Bosnia. Occasional reports surface of Mladic appearing in public in Belgrade. Karadzic also moves secretly to Serbia. 2000 - Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is toppled by a pro-democracy uprising and successor authorities hand the former strongman over to the ICTY in 2001 for trial. ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte renews demand for arrest of Mladic and Karadzic. 2006 - A Serbian military intelligence report discloses that Mladic was using army premises until mid-2002. The European Union suspends talks on relations with Serbia over its failure to arrest war crimes fugitives including Mladic and Karadzic. March 11, 2006 - Milosevic dies in his prison cell before his trial can be completed. 2008 - Serbian authorities arrest a disguised Karadzic and extradite him to the ICTY in The Hague. June 16 - Mladic s family launch court proceedings in Serbia to declare him dead, saying he had been in poor health and they had had no contact with him for over five years. Oct. 28 - Serbia raises reward for information leading to the arrest of Mladic to 10 million euros. May 26 - Mladic is arrested at the farmhouse of a relative in a small town in northern Serbia. May 29 - Serbian nationalists assault police at a Belgrade rally where about 10,000 people demand the fall of the government over Mladic s arrest. May 31 - Serbia extradites Mladic to the ICTY. June 3 - Mladic appears at an ICTY hearing, calling the charges against him obnoxious and monstrous words . He declines to enter a plea, saying he needs more time to study the charges. Judge Alphons Orie schedules a new hearing for July 4. July 4 - Judge Alphons Orie removes Mladic from the courtroom after he refuses to listen to the charges against him. Orie enters a not-guilty plea on Mladic s behalf on all 11 charges against him. May 16 - Mladic s trial begins. July 9 - The first witness, a survivor of a 1992 massacre, confronts Mladic and breaks down in tears as he tells the court about the last time he saw his father, one of 150 Muslim men killed by Bosnian Serb forces in the village of Grabovica. April 10 - Mladic gets removed from court for challenging harrowing testimony from a survivor of the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. Jan. 28 - Mladic appears as a witness against his will in the trial of Karadzic and sidesteps questions from his old ally. April 5 - The ICTY upholds a life sentence against Zdravko Tolimir, the former head of Bosnian Serb military intelligence who reported directly to Mladic, for genocide over his role in the Srebrenica massacre. March 24 - The ICTY convicts Karadzic of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War Two, and sentences him to 40 years. December - Prosecution and defence teams deliver closing arguments in Mladic s trial. Prosecutors demand life in prison for Mladic for the execution-style killings of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and their burial in mass graves, the long siege and bombardment of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in other areas. Defense lawyers argue that Mladic never ordered the Srebrenica killings and say the case against him was systematically biased. March - Mladic s lawyers seek his provisional release, arguing he is not getting adequate medical treatment at the U.N. detention center in The Hague. Prosecutors argue against this. May 11 - Judges reject Mladic s requests for provisional release. They will reject his appeals and similar requests for release on medical grounds regularly through November. Nov. 22 - Verdict and potential sentencing. ($1 = 0.8530 euros) ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Half of Germans want new elections after coalition talks fail;BERLIN (Reuters) - Half of Germans are in favor of calling a new election after Chancellor Angela Merkel failed to reach a deal to form a new coalition with two other parties, while a fifth back forming a minority government, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday. The poll, conducted by INSA for the Bild daily, showed 49.9 percent favoring another election. It also showed 48.5 percent think the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are right to rule out joining a new grand coalition with Merkel s conservatives, which only 18 percent would favor. The SPD lost ground in the September election after sharing power with Merkel for the last four years. The collapse of talks between Merkel s conservative bloc, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens has thrown Germany into political uncertainty and raised the prospect of new elections. The poll showed that 28 percent blame FDP leader Christian Lindner for the failure of the talks, followed by 27 percent, who blame Merkel, while only 13 percent blame Greens leader Cem Ozdemir. Four out of 10 people polled say Merkel should run again as chancellor if new elections are called, while 24 percent would prefer another candidate for her Christian Democrats (CDU), although there is little consensus on who that should be. The poll showed that most voters would prefer a coalition between the CDU and FDP after new elections, followed by a coalition between SPD, Greens and the left-wing Linke. However, the poll showed that a new election would bring little change to the results of the September vote, with the CDU down slightly on 30 percent, the SPD steady on 21 percent, the Greens on 10 percent and the FDP on 11 percent. That would still mean that the only possible coalitions with a majority would be between the CDU and the SPD or between the CDU, FDP and Greens. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hariri back in Lebanon for first time since quitting as PM;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri returned to Beirut on Tuesday for the first time since he resigned as Lebanon s prime minister in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia and plunged his country into political crisis. Hariri s sudden resignation on Nov. 4 thrust Lebanon to the forefront of regional tussle between the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran, whose powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah is part of the government. Hariri was greeted by members of the security forces as he disembarked from a jet at Beirut airport, live footage of his arrival showed. Hariri, a long-time ally of Saudi Arabia, cited fear of assassination and meddling by Iran and Hezbollah in the Arab world in his resignation speech. The move caught even his aides off guard, and politicians close to him say Riyadh forced him to quit and held him in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh and Hariri have denied this. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has refused to accept the resignation until Hariri returns to present it in person. Earlier, Hariri met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, saying after the meeting that he would announce his political position in Lebanon. In a Nov. 12 interview from Saudi Arabia with Future TV, a station affiliated with his political party, Hariri said he would return to Lebanon to confirm his resignation. But he also held out the possibility of withdrawing it if Hezbollah respected Lebanon s policy of staying out of regional conflicts such as Yemen. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen Houthis say Sanaa airport repaired, ready to receive flights: agency;ADEN (Reuters) - Yemen s Sanaa airport, damaged in an air strike by a Saudi-led coalition last week, has been repaired and is ready to receive international flights, the Houthi-led government which runs the capital city said on Tuesday. The Nov. 14 raid destroyed radio navigation equipment at the airport and in effect put the facility out of service. The attack happened after the coalition banned naval, air and land transportation to Yemen following a missile fired by the Houthis that was shot down over the Saudi capital Riyadh. The transport minister in the Houthi-run government, Zakariya al-Shami, said that technical civil aviation teams had completed implementation of technical alternatives necessary to restore services to the airport . It is ready to receive international flights, Shami said, according to Houthi-controlled news agency Saba. The airport had been mainly used by international relief agencies, including U.N. staff, using United Nations flights to Sanaa. The coalition has said that all Yemeni land crossings, air and sea ports would remain closed until assurances are made that no weapons can reach the Houthis. The coalition accuses Iran of smuggling weapons, including the missile fired towards Riyadh airport on Nov. 4, to the Houthis through Yemeni ports controlled by the group. Iran denies sending any weapons to the Houthis. The closure of Yemen s ports, including the main Hodeidah port where most of the country s food supplies enter, has raised alarm around the world. The European Union on Tuesday urged the Saudi-led coalition to reopen Yemen s ports and airports. While fully recognizing the serious security threat incoming from Yemen, it is our firm belief that hindering vital humanitarian access to the Yemeni population that is already on the brink of famine and subject to a spreading cholera outbreak will not effectively address these security concerns, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK government averts Brexit rebellion, giving ground on EU rights plan;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May s government averted a rebellion in parliament on Tuesday over plans to ditch the European Union s Charter of Fundamental Rights, promising to review its approach and make changes if needed. Parliament is debating legislation which will enact Britain s exit from the EU in March 2019 and copy EU law into British law - described by officials as one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK . The bill is testing May s ability to govern effectively after she lost her parliamentary majority in June, leaving her leading a fragile minority government and in charge of a Conservative Party divided on how best to manage the split from the EU. On Tuesday, the focus of an eight-day debate which has already forced May s ministers into some concessions, fell on the government s plan not to include the Charter of Fundamental Rights in its mass cut and paste of EU law. The government, which says there is no need to copy across the EU charter because all it does is codify rights that exist through other legal instruments, headed off a potential rebellion by promising a review and possible technical changes later in the lawmaking process. We do recognise the strength of views... and we are prepared to look again at this issue to make sure that we are taking an approach which can command the support of this house, said the government s Solicitor General Robert Buckland. That was enough to dissuade dissatisfied members of May s party from joining forces with opposition lawmakers to force an outright U-turn on scrapping the charter. The government still intends to scrap the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, but says citizens will not lose any of the existing rights the document sets out. During the debate, critics - including members of May s own party - argued that abandoning the charter was an unnecessary risk and in its current form diluted some citizens rights and created uncertainty over the protection of others. The rights charter came into force in 2009 through the EU s Lisbon Treaty and brings together the fundamental EU-protected right in a single document. It is one of only a handful of exceptions contained within the government s Brexit blueprint which sets out to preserve EU law after Britain leaves the bloc to give businesses certainty that they won t face overnight rules changes. The bill is currently at an early stage in the lawmaking process. The government has so far avoided any defeats, but has had to make last-minute concessions on several points. Tuesday s concession concerned a technical issue around how certain types of EU law should be treated after Brexit. The toughest test of May s authority, set to centre on the issue of fixing the date and time of Britain s EU exit in law, is yet to come. No date has been set yet for the remaining five days of debates that make up the current stage of the bill s passage. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri lands in Cyprus, meets its president- Hariri Twitter feed;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri arrived in Cyprus for a meeting with its president on Tuesday, Hariri said on his Twitter feed, ahead of his expected return to Beirut to take part in independence day celebrations on Wednesday. Hariri is expected to return to Lebanon in the coming hours, his first trip home since his sudden resignation as prime minister on Nov. 4 plunged the country into political crisis. It was a 45-minute meeting which was requested earlier today through diplomatic channels, Cypriot government spokesman Nikos Christodoulides told Reuters of the meeting between Hariri and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades. We, and he, desire to see stability in Lebanon. He is leaving as we speak, he added. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. diplomats accuse Tillerson of breaking child soldiers law;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of about a dozen U.S. State Department officials have taken the unusual step of formally accusing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of violating a federal law designed to stop foreign militaries from enlisting child soldiers, according to internal documents reviewed by Reuters. A confidential State Department dissent memo, which Reuters was first to report on, said Tillerson breached the Child Soldiers Prevention Act when he decided in June to exclude Iraq, Myanmar, and Afghanistan from a U.S. list of offenders in the use of child soldiers. This was despite the department publicly acknowledging that children were being conscripted in those countries. [tmsnrt.rs/2jJ7pav] Keeping the countries off the annual list makes it easier to provide them with U.S. military assistance. Iraq and Afghanistan are close allies in the fight against Islamist militants, while Myanmar is an emerging ally to offset China s influence in Southeast Asia. Documents reviewed by Reuters also show Tillerson s decision was at odds with a unanimous recommendation by the heads of the State Department s regional bureaus overseeing embassies in the Middle East and Asia, the U.S. envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the department s human rights office and its own in-house lawyers. [tmsnrt.rs/2Ah6tB4] Beyond contravening U.S. law, this decision risks marring the credibility of a broad range of State Department reports and analyses and has weakened one of the U.S. government's primary diplomatic tools to deter governmental armed forces and government-supported armed groups from recruiting and using children in combat and support roles around the world, said the July 28 memo. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, questioned at length by reporters on the issue at her daily briefing, strongly defended Tillerson s decision as valid and in technical compliance with the law in the way he read it. No one in the United States government likes the idea of the use of child soldiers, she said. It s abhorrent. Asked at a photo opportunity with the visiting Peruvian foreign minister about his decision, Tillerson sidestepped any direct response to the dissenting officials complaint. Reuters reported in June that Tillerson had disregarded internal recommendations on Iraq, Myanmar and Afghanistan. The new documents reveal the scale of the opposition in the State Department, including the rare use of what is known as the dissent channel, which allows officials to object to policies without fear of reprisals. The views expressed by the U.S. officials illustrate ongoing tensions between career diplomats and the former chief of Exxon Mobil Corp appointed by President Donald Trump to pursue an America First approach to diplomacy. The child soldiers law passed in 2008 states that the U.S. government must be satisfied that no children under the age of 18 are recruited, conscripted or otherwise compelled to serve as child soldiers for a country to be removed from the list. The statute extends specifically to government militaries and government-supported armed groups like militias. The list currently includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Mali, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In a written response to the dissent memo on Sept. 1, Tillerson adviser Brian Hook acknowledged that the three countries did use child soldiers. He said, however, it was necessary to distinguish between governments making little or no effort to correct their child soldier violations ... and those which are making sincere - if as yet incomplete - efforts. [tmsnrt.rs/2zWGRt0]Hook made clear that America s top diplomat used what he sees as his discretion to interpret the law. Foreign militaries on the list are prohibited from receiving aid, training and weapons from Washington unless the White House issues a waiver based on U.S. national interest. In 2016, under the Obama administration, both Iraq and Myanmar, as well as others such as Nigeria and Somalia, received waivers. At times, the human rights community chided President Barack Obama for being too willing to issue waivers and exemptions, especially for governments that had security ties with Washington, instead of sanctioning more of those countries. Human Rights Watch frequently criticized President Barack Obama for giving too many countries waivers, but the law has made a real difference, Jo Becker, advocacy director for the group s children s rights division, wrote in June in a critique of Tillerson s decision. The dissenting U.S. officials stressed that Tillerson s decision to exclude Iraq, Afghanistan and Myanmar went a step further than the Obama administration s waiver policy by contravening the law and effectively easing pressure on the countries to eradicate the use of child soldiers. The officials acknowledged in the documents reviewed by Reuters that those three countries had made progress. But in their reading of the law, they said that was not enough to be kept off a list that has been used to shame governments into completely eradicating the use of child soldiers. Ben Cardin, ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Tillerson on Friday saying there were serious concerns that the State Department may not be complying with the law and that the secretary s decision sent a powerful message to these countries that they were receiving a pass on their unconscionable actions. The memo was among a series of previously unreported documents sent this month to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the State Department s independent inspector general s office that relate to allegations that Tillerson violated the child soldiers law. Legal scholars say that because of the executive branch s latitude in foreign policy there is little legal recourse to counter Tillerson s decision. Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University in Washington, said U.S. courts would be unlikely to accept any challenge to Tillerson s interpretation of the child soldiers law as allowing him to remove a country from the list on his own discretion. The signatories to the document were largely senior policy experts with years of involvement in the issues, said an official familiar with the matter. Reuters saw a copy of the document that did not include the names of those who signed it. Tillerson s decision to remove Iraq and Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, from the list and reject a recommendation by U.S. officials to add Afghanistan was announced in the release of the government s annual human trafficking report on June 27. Six days earlier, a previously unreported memo emailed to Tillerson from a range of senior diplomats said the three countries violated the law based on evidence gathered by U.S. officials in 2016 and recommended that he approve them for the new list. It noted that in Iraq, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations reported that some Sunni tribal forces ... recruited and used persons younger than the age of 18, including instances of children taking a direct part in hostilities. Ali Kareem, who heads Iraq s High Committee for Human Rights, denied the country s military or state-backed militias use child soldiers. We can say today with full confidence that we have a clean slate on child recruitment issues, he said. The memo also said two confirmed cases of child recruitment by the Myanmar military were documented during the reporting period. Human rights advocates have estimated that dozens of children are still conscripted there. Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay challenged accusers to provide details of where and how child soldiers are being used. He noted that in the latest State Department report on human trafficking, they already recognized (Myanmar) for reducing of child soldiers though the report also made clear some children were still conscripted. The memo said further there was credible evidence that a government-supported militia in Afghanistan recruited and used a child, meeting the minimum threshold of a single confirmed case that the State Department had previously used as the legal basis for putting a country on the list. The Afghan defense and interior ministries both denied there were any child soldiers in Afghan national security forces, an assertion that contradicts the State Department s reports and human rights activists. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hariri returns to Lebanon for first time since resigning as PM;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri landed in Beirut on Tuesday, his media office said, returning home for the first time since he resigned as Lebanon s prime minister in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia and plunged his country into political crisis, Hariri s sudden resignation on Nov. 4 thrust Lebanon to the forefront of a regional power struggle between the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran, whose powerful ally Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine rebel leader accuses sacked ally of staging revolt;MOSCOW/KIEV (Reuters) - Armed men in masks blocked off the center of Ukraine s rebel-controlled city of Luhansk on Tuesday in what the rebel leader said was a revolt by supporters of a sacked regional police chief. In fighting that broke out in 2014, Russian-backed rebels threw off rule by a new pro-Western leadership in Kiev and set up two self-proclaimed separatist statelets in eastern Ukraine, one centered on Luhansk and another around the city of Donetsk. Those separatist regions are aided by Moscow but not recognized by any state, and they have been dogged by outbreaks of internal tensions that have on occasion turned violent. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitors the implementation of a much-violated ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, said on Tuesday it had observed military-style vehicles and armed men in central Luhansk. The tension in Luhansk did not appear to have any direct connection to the conflict between the rebels and Ukraine s government, but President Petro Poroshenko called a meeting of his security and defense council late on Tuesday. The Ukrainian armed forces are ready for all developments to ensure the safety of civilians, Poroshenko said in a statement. Residents of Luhansk, capital of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People s Republic (LNR), saw unidentified armed men blocking access to downtown streets on Tuesday morning, according to local media and a resident of the city. The OSCE s monitoring mission posted photos on Twitter that showed lines of heavy military trucks and armored personnel carriers in central Luhansk. The LNR s rebel leader, Igor Plotnitsky, blamed disgruntled supporters of Igor Kornet, his chief of police whom he said he had fired on Monday. The attempts by certain elements in the interior ministry in this way to challenge the decision .... (to remove Kornet) have gone beyond the bounds of what is acceptable, Plotnitsky said in a statement on his administration s web site. I can say with confidence that the attempts by certain persons to stay in power by destabilizing the situation ... are futile, and in the very near future will be neutralized. But Kornet said he was still in his job, and demanded that senior figures in the region s rebel leadership be prosecuted. I want to dispel rumors that I ve been removed, he said in a video message, clad in field camouflage. We have the situation completely under control. He said that he had uncovered evidence that several senior LNR officials, acting in collusion with Kiev, were involved in criminal activity to the detriment of the interests of the republic and the people of Luhansk . Last night I provided all the documents available to the ...Igor Plotnitsky, who decided to launch criminal cases and arrest those involved, Kornet said. In his statement the Luhansk rebel leader contradicted this, saying there were no grounds to arrest the officials identified by Kornet. The conflict in the country s east between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists has killed over 10,000 people. Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO that it supports the rebels with troops and weapons. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin hosts Assad in fresh drive for Syria peace deal;MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for three hours of talks to lay the groundwork for a new push by Moscow to end Syria s conflict now that Islamic State s territory is overrun. Russia is trying to broker an international consensus around a peace deal for Syria, over two years after Moscow began a military intervention that turned the tide of the conflict in Assad s favor. Putin said he would follow up his meeting late on Monday with Assad by talking soon to international leaders with influence over the conflict, among them U.S. President Donald Trump, the Saudi king, and the leaders of Iran and Turkey. In a more than hour long phone call on Tuesday, Trump and Putin stressed the importance of the U.N.-led peace process in resolving the Syrian civil war, the White House said. According to the Kremlin, Putin told Trump that the Syrian leader confirmed adherence to the political process, to run a constitutional reform and presidential and parliamentary elections. Previous attempts to end Syria s six years of war have foundered because of bitter disagreements, especially on whether Assad himself should stay in power. After the talks in Russia Assad s first publicly-declared travel outside Syria since a trip to Moscow in October, 2015 a Kremlin spokesman declined to say if Assad s own future had come up in the discussions, saying only that was up to the Syrian people. The White House statement made no mention of Assad s future. U.S. officials have said Assad has no future governing Syria. Putin meanwhile also spoke with Saudi King Salman, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The half-hour conversation with Netanyahu dealt with Iran s attempts to gain a foothold in Syria and Israel s opposition to such moves, according to a source in Netanyahu s office. The Israeli leader stressed his country s security concerns, the source said. In a sign that international attempts may be underway to bridge the differences between rival sides in the Syrian conflict, leading opposition figures, including former prime minister Riyad Hijab, resigned. Hijab headed the opposition High Negotiations Committee, formed with Saudi backing, and had insisted on Assad s removal from power at the start of a political transition. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Moscow, said the resignations would make the opposition more reasonable and realistic. On Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani whose countries back opposing sides in the Syria conflict will travel to Russia for a three-way meeting with Putin aimed at advancing the Syrian peace process. Assad s visit to Russia was brief and closely-guarded. He flew in on Monday evening, held talks, and flew out four hours after landing, according to the Kremlin. Officials did not release word of the meeting until Tuesday morning. Sitting either side of a small coffee table in a conference room at Putin s residence in Sochi, southern Russia, Putin told Assad it was time to pivot from a focus on military operations to a search for a peaceful solution. Syrian government forces and their allies at the weekend took control of Albu Kamal, the last major Syrian town held by Islamic State. We still have a long way to go before we achieve a complete victory over terrorists. But as far as our joint work in fighting terrorism on the territory of Syria is concerned, this military operation is indeed wrapping up, Putin told Assad, in comments broadcast by Russian television. Now the most important thing, of course, is to move on to the political questions, and I note with satisfaction your readiness to work with all those who want peace and a solution (to the conflict), Putin said. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, dressed in an olive-colored uniform, looked on as Putin and Assad spoke. Wearing a dark suit and sitting across from Putin, Assad told the Russian leader: At this stage, especially after we achieved victory over terrorists, it is in our interests to move forward with the political process. And we believe that the situation we now have on the ground and in the political sense permits us to expect progress in the political process. We count on the support of Russia to ensure the non-interference of outside players in the political process, he said through an interpreter. We don t want to look backwards. We welcome all those who truly want to see a political solution. We are ready to have a dialogue with them, said Assad. Putin and Assad last met in Moscow on Oct. 20, 2015, a few weeks after Moscow launched its military operation in Syria, which has beaten back anti-Assad rebels and propped up struggling government forces. Underscoring the importance of the Russian military to Assad, Putin presented the Syrian leader to top military commanders assembled at his Sochi residence. On behalf of the entire Syrian people, I express my gratitude for what you have done, Assad told them. We will not forget it. Assad s opponents, and Western governments, have accused Russia of killing significant numbers of Syrian civilians with its air strikes, allegations Moscow denies. Some people familiar with the Kremlin s thinking say that, to reach a peace deal, Russia would not insist on Assad staying in power as long as the institutions of the Syrian state remained intact. But while Russia is not wedded to Assad, Iran is committed to him. Iranian forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia have played a big role in the fighting on the ground, supporting Assad s forces. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah thanked and praised Shi ite militias including Afghans and Iraqis for their role in the Syria war in a speech on Monday night. He said the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani, had led the battle for Albu Kamal from the frontlines. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain to detail Brexit bill when EU agrees to move talks forward;LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will only detail how big a divorce settlement Britain is willing to pay the EU when the bloc gives a commitment to moving talks forward, according to a plan rubber-stamped by even her most pro-Brexit ministers. The Brexit bill has become one of several hurdles to talks to unravel more than 40 years of union, with London reticent to offer too much too soon on what officials consider to be one of its strongest bargaining chips. In Brussels, British media speculation that May has won the backing of Brexit hardliners to offer more cash prompted talk among EU diplomats that a deal to unblock talks on future trade relations could be in the making ahead of a crunch Brussels summit in three weeks. At a meeting on Monday, May s Brexit committee - made up of some of her top ministers - backed the long-held strategy that Britain would honor commitments made when it was a member of the European Union. But the government will only offer any specifics when the bloc s negotiators give a commitment that talks will move to a discussion of the future relationship. We are ready to move onto phase two, to see those talks about a deep and special partnership with the EU for the future, a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU, May said on Tuesday. I think that s in the interests of the UK and in the interests of the remaining EU-27. I think it s also important that the UK and the EU step forward together, she added, a turn of phrase a source said expressed her desire for coordination. In public, Brussels is standing firm on the need for Britain to first make clear not a concrete euros and cents offer but a commitment to pay a share of EU spending for some items after Brexit - one of three key conditions the EU has set for opening trade talks. Asked if the EU was ready to give a promise to start those talks as soon as London offers more money, European Commission deputy head Frans Timmermans told CNN: I hear them saying that. But as far as the EU27 is concerned, ... if we tackle the three issues ... if we deal with that satisfactorily, we can move to the next stage. And that s been crystal clear since Day One. Nonetheless, EU negotiators are willing to help May with at least the appearance of cutting a deal. They could help fudge the amount of cash being handed over. And the EU already has an outline of a transition and free trade accord, which May could point to as something she had secured in exchange. We are ready to present the exit bill in a way that would make it easier for the Brits to sell at home, one diplomat said. He added that EU officials had looked at whether Britain might forgo its roughly 50-percent rebate on EU budget payments during a two-year transition period after Brexit, so reducing the gross amount Britain would otherwise hand over in advance. With only 16 months until Britain leaves the bloc, May is under increasing pressure not only from EU officials to move on the money, but also by businesses to provide certainty by early next year so they can make investment decisions. But she has a tightrope to walk. Many in her governing Conservative Party want Britain to quit the talks, feeling the EU is holding the country hostage over money, which they want to spend at home rather than abroad. Her spokesman said no figures were discussed at Monday s meeting and other ministers gave no details of what was discussed. Local media reported that she could increase the sum to 40 billion pounds ($53 billion), more than double the initial estimated offer of 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion). The Commission has cited a figure of 60 billion euros but EU officials have long said that is up for negotiation. For many in May s own party, however, the suggestion of any increase in how much Britain will pay at a time when talks had failed to move forward for five months was unpalatable. I need to be able to look my voters in the eye and be able to say that I have backed a deal that is in the interests of Britain, Conservative lawmaker Andrew Bridgen told Reuters. If I can t do that, I will vote against a deal and we will go to WTO rules of trade, rules with which we already trade with most of the world successfully. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump, Putin discuss support for U.N. peace process in Syria: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump spoke on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the two leaders stressed the importance of the U.N.-led peace process in resolving the Syrian civil war, the White House said in a statement. In the more than hour-long phone call, Trump and Putin also agreed to explore ways to cooperate in the fight against militant groups such as Islamic State, the statement said. In addition, the two leaders discussed how to achieve peace in Ukraine and the need to keep pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear program, it said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombia protests Venezuelan military crossing border;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia sent a letter to the Venezuelan foreign ministry on Tuesday protesting the incursion of a military helicopter and troops from that nation over the border, the latest in a series of similar incidents that have drawn criticism from Colombia. The incident occurred on Nov. 15 and 16 near the town of Tibu in Norte de Santander province, Colombia s foreign ministry said in a statement. The events have already been protested by the foreign ministry and there has been a meeting arranged between the foreign ministers to analyze what happened and request that measures be taken to prevent a recurrence, it said. Forays by Venezuelan troops into Colombia have increased in recent years, heightening diplomatic tension between the government of Colombia s President Juan Manuel Santos and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Santos has accused Maduro of destroying democracy in Venezuela, while Maduro has said Colombia is part of an international conspiracy seeking to overthrow his government. Colombia and Venezuela share a border of 2,219 km (1,379 miles), over which contraband and illegal drugs frequently pass, according to security sources. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;All eyes on the 'Crocodile' as Zimbabwe's Mugabe resigns;HARARE (Reuters) - When Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe sacked his vice president in front of 12,000 baying party members in 2014, Emmerson Mnangagwa sat quietly in the crowd, a green baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. The man who stood to gain most from the dismissal betrayed nothing through his expression and gentle clapping - a survival tactic honed during five decades of service to the mercurial Mugabe. His cap, however, spoke volumes. Emblazoned across its front, next to a portrait of Mugabe, were four words: Indigenise, Empower, Develop, Employ - a slogan of the ruling ZANU-PF party. That day, he became Mugabe s official deputy. Mnangagwa, whose sacking from the post this month brought Zimbabwe s political crisis to a head, is now poised to take over after Mugabe, 93, resigned on Tuesday, ending almost four decades of rule. Mnangagwa will be sworn in on Wednesday or Thursday, ZANU-PF s legal secretary Patrick Chinamasa told Reuters. The party s chief whip said Mnangagwa would serve the remainder of Mugabe s term until the next election due by September 2018. But there are questions over how Mnangagwa will lead the country led by Mugabe since independence in 1980. In a statement issued from hiding on Tuesday, Mnangagwa said Zimbabweans from all walks of life had to work together to rebuild a shattered economy and deeply polarized society. My desire is to join all Zimbabweans in a new era, where corruption, incompetence, dereliction of duty and laziness, social and cultural decadence is not tolerated, he said. In that new Zimbabwe, it is important for everyone to join hands so that we rebuild this nation to its full glory. This is not a job for ZANU-PF alone but for all people of Zimbabwe. The 75-year-old was one of Mugabe s most trusted lieutenants, having been at his side in prison, during wartime and then in government. With his appointment in 2014 as Mugabe s official deputy, Mnangagwa had appeared well set as the eventual successor to Africa s oldest head of state. There are no arguments around his credentials to provide strong leadership and stability, but there are questions over whether he can also be a democrat, said Eldred Masunungure, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. Speaking at the congress in 2014, Mnangagwa reinforced the message emblazoned on his headgear, announcing revisions to ZANU-PF s constitution that backed total ownership and control of Zimbabwe s natural resources. It was a key insight to the party s direction as it contemplated life beyond Mugabe. We will remain forever masters of our own destiny, Mnangagwa said at the time, to cheers from the crowd. Along the way, Mnangagwa earned the nickname Ngwena , Shona for crocodile, an animal famed in Zimbabwean lore for its stealth and ruthlessness. He backed Mugabe s economic nationalism, especially a drive to force foreign firms to hand majority stakes to local blacks, suggesting he may not be the pro-market pragmatist many investors were hoping for. He has been in every administration since independence, holding posts as varied as minister of state security, defense and finance, as well as speaker of parliament. Most controversially, he was in charge of internal security in the mid-1980s when Mugabe deployed a crack North Korean-trained brigade against rebels loyal to his rival Joshua Nkomo. Rights groups say 20,000 civilians, mostly from the Ndebele tribe, were killed. Mugabe denies genocide or crimes against humanity but has admitted it was a moment of madness . Mnangagwa s role remains shrouded in mystery, typical of a political operator trained as a communist guerrilla in China in the 1960s and who always stayed in the shadows behind Mugabe. Secretive and insular, he prefers to operate under the radar, those in his inner circle say, and when pushed into a corner, resorts to jokes and trivia to avoid serious discussion. I wouldn t say he is deceptive but it s fair to say his default position is to crack jokes and deflect uncomfortable questions by asking endless questions, one member of parliament close to him said. He is very conscious that his public image is that of a hard man but he is a much more complex personality - pleasant and an amazing story-teller, the politician, also from Mnangagwa s Midlands Province, told Reuters. Mnangagwa s appointment as vice president came a day after his predecessor Joice Mujuru was fired for allegedly planning to topple Mugabe. Asked whether the purge would weaken the party, a smiling Mnangagwa said: The revolution has a way of strengthening itself. It goes through cycles, this is another cycle where it rids itself of elements that had now become inconsistent with the correct line. Mnangagwa learnt his politics in prison in the 1960s after being sentenced to death for sabotage by British authorities. He was captured while in one of the earliest guerrilla units fighting white colonial rule in what was then Rhodesia. He was 19 and only spared the noose by a law prohibiting the execution of convicts under 21. After a decade in prison, often sharing a cell with Mugabe, Mnangagwa became personal assistant to the leader of the liberation struggle, and went on to head the guerrilla movement s feared internal security bureau. In January, a photograph appeared in local media showing Mnangagwa enjoying drinks with a friend. In his hand was a large novelty mug emblazoned with the words: I M THE BOSS. To supporters of Mugabe, this bordered on treason. They suspected that Mnangagwa already saw himself in the leader s shoes. When Mugabe fired Mnangagwa as vice president this month for showing traits of disloyalty , he removed a possible successor who was also one of his last remaining liberation war comrades. But relations had already cooled between the two men after suggestions by Mnangagwa s allies in August that he had been poisoned by ice cream from a dairy owned by the Mugabes. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police present stolen John Lennon diaries;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police presented on Tuesday diaries, pairs of glasses and other items belonging to late Beatle John Lennon that were stolen from his widow Yoko Ono in 2006 and eventually ended up in Berlin. Police arrested a man in Berlin on Monday suspected of receiving the 86 stolen items, which include Lennon s last diary that ended on the day he was shot and killed in New York on Dec. 8, 1980. This day contains the entry that on that morning John Lennon and Yoko Ono had an appointment with Annie Leibovitz to take a photo which I think is world famous, Berlin prosecutor Michael von Hagen told a news conference. The Leibovitz portrait of a naked Lennon curled up around Ono on their bed ran on the January 1981 cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Hagen rejected suggestions that Ono might have lent or given away the objects: The diaries especially ... were also treated by Yoko Ono as something sacred. And the idea that she would have given away three original diaries, especially the one that ends on the very day Lennon died, can be completely ruled out. Carsten Pfohl, head of property crime for Berlin police, said investigators had found one of the pairs of glasses and a receipt in Lennon s name hidden in the trunk of the car of the accused on Monday. Police suspect that the items were stolen by Ono s former driver and then taken to Turkey and were only brought to Berlin in 2013 or 2014. Another suspect lives in Turkey, they said. The Berlin police was alerted after they were found by the administrator for a bankrupt auction house, which had previously valued the objects at 3.1 million euros ($3.64 million). ($1 = 0.8519 euros) ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin informs Trump of outcome of meeting with Syria's Assad;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President discussed the civil war in Syria on Tuesday, with Putin stressing the importance of finding a political solution to the conflict after meeting with Syria s president. Trump and Putin spoke by telephone for about an hour, covering topics including Syria, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, a White House official said earlier. Their conversation came after Putin hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for three hours of talks on Monday, in preparation for a push by Moscow to end Syria s conflict now that Islamic State has been driven out of its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria. According to Kremlin, Putin told Trump that the Syrian leader confirmed adherence to the political process, to run a constitutional reform and president and parliament elections . The message was sent of the necessity to keep the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Syria and to reach a political settlement based on principals to be worked out in a full-scale negotiation process in Syria, the Kremlin said. On Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani - whose countries back opposing sides in the Syria conflict - will travel to Russia for a meeting with Putin aimed at advancing the Syrian peace process. Putin stressed the importance to Trump of what he called coordinating of efforts between the special services of both countries . The two leaders also discussed North Korea, stressing the expediency of finding the ways of solution by the diplomatic means . ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada proposes health warnings, child-proof packs for legal pot sales;OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government proposed on Tuesday mandatory health warnings and child-proof packaging as well as a licensing regime for all cannabis products in legislation ahead of the July 2018 legalization of recreational marijuana. The proposals, which will be open for public consultation for 60 days, include restrictions on packaging to ensure the products are not enticing to children as well as legal standards for quality control and potency, Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor told reporters. The government is on track to legalize recreational marijuana by July 2018, making it the first Group of Seven country to do so. Petitpas Taylor said the government wants to set strict guidelines for the safety of cannabis products, but ensure micro-producers and big companies alike will have access to the market as long as they are licensed. We want to make sure the market will be open to everyone. Some people will be small businesses and they can certainly apply for a license in order to have a micro-industry, if you will, she told reporters, adding there is no limit to the number of licenses that will be available. The proposed regulations address the licensing, tracking, packaging and labeling of recreational and medical marijuana practices, and include a permitting regime for the cultivation, processing, sale, testing and import and export of cannabis. The federal government earlier this month proposed splitting with the provinces income from excise taxes on recreational marijuana, drawing criticism from Ontario, which is concerned it will face higher costs associated with the new law. The federal government said it wants an excise tax on all cannabis products, including medical marijuana, of C$1 per gram (0.04 ounce), or 10 percent of the retail price, whichever is higher. Some provinces have asked the government to delay legalization, saying they need more time to set up a sales system and train police officers who will be enforcing the new rules. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the issue part of his 2015 successful election campaign and the Liberal government says regulating marijuana will keep it out of the hands of underage users and reduce drug-related crime. Shares of licensed producers, such as Canopy Growth, have soared in anticipation of legalization but the stocks are expected to face a bumpy ride in 2018. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq to resume payments of Gulf War reparations to Kuwait: U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it had accepted a proposal from Iraq to pay 0.5 percent of its 2018 oil proceeds toward compensation for $4.6 billion owed to Kuwait for destruction of its oil facilities during the 1990-91 Gulf War occupation. Payments from the fund, which were suspended since October 2014 due to security and budgetary challenges faced by Iraq, will escalate annually until the end of 2021, the U.N. Compensation Commission (UNCC) said in a statement, adding that Kuwait had accepted the proposal. Based on oil price and export projections, this would result in payment in full of the outstanding claim award, it said, referring to the claim by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the largest approved by the Geneva-based UNCC. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian lawmaker Kerimov detained by French police in tax evasion case;NICE, France (Reuters) - Russian businessman and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov was arrested by French police at Nice airport on Monday evening in connection with a tax evasion case, an official at the French prosecutor s office said on Tuesday. Kerimov is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia s 21st wealthiest businessman, with a net worth of $6.3 billion. His family controls Russia s largest gold producer Polyus. He is being held for questioning in a case related to laundering of tax fraud proceeds, the official said. Representatives for Kerimov could not immediately be reached for comment. Polyus declined to comment. A source said the investigation centers on the purchase of several luxury residences on the French Riviera via shell companies, something that would have enabled Kerimov to reduce taxes owed to the French state. The source added Kerimov would be held in custody for at least another 24 hours. Russia s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by Interfax news agency that Kerimov held a diplomatic passport and had immunity. It said it had informed the French authorities. Kerimov does have a diplomatic passport, but that does not protect him from prosecution, the French official said. The French foreign ministry could not immediately confirm it had been in contact with Moscow. A French diplomatic source said immunity was given by governments to people on diplomatic lists or if they had been mandated with a specific mission in the country. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabweans pour onto Harare streets in jubilation after Mugabe resigns;HARARE (Reuters) - Thousands of Zimbabweans poured onto the streets of Harare after President Robert Mugabe resigned on Tuesday, and cars were hooting in the streets. Some people were holding posters of Zimbabwean army chief Constantino Chiwenga and former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking this month triggered the military takeover that forced Mugabe to resign. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May says believes Northern Irish accord possible;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sweden stops some new aid for Cambodia in protest over crackdown;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Sweden said on Tuesday it was stopping new aid for Cambodia, except in education and research, and would no longer support a reform programme after the main opposition party was outlawed by the Supreme Court at the government s request. The announcement marked the first concrete action by a European Union country in protest at a political crackdown in which veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen s main rival has also been arrested and civil rights groups and independent media attacked. The United States cut election funding and said it would take more punitive steps after last week s ban on the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). The European Union has also threatened action. Sweden s embassy in Phnom Penh said the country was reviewing its engagement with Cambodia. We will not initiate any new government-to-government development cooperation agreements, except in the areas of education and research, it said in a statement. As a consequence, it would be unable to support decentralisation reform in its current form. That reform aims to strengthen lower levels of government, such as local communes. The CNRP won control of more than 40 percent of the communes in elections in June, but has now had to give them up to the ruling Cambodian People s Party (CPP). The CNRP was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for alleged treason. The government says he sought to take power with American help. He rejects that allegation as politically motivated, to allow Hun Sen to extend his more than three decades in power in next year s general election. Responding to the Swedish statement, a senior official said Cambodia welcomed friendship with Sweden or other countries, but said they must understand the CNRP had been banned because the courts found it had committed treason. People should respect the Cambodian people s decision in accordance with the principle of democracy and the rule of law, said Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the Interior Ministry. Sweden, which has given Cambodia an estimated $100 million in aid over five years, ranked third among individual EU member states in Cambodia s database of donors last year, after France and Germany. Swedish fashion group H&M is also a key buyer from Cambodia s garment factories - the country s main export earner. But Western donors have less sway than they once did since China has emerged as Cambodia s biggest aid donor and investor. Meeting on Monday on the sidelines of a meeting of Asia-Europe foreign ministers in Myanmar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Cambodian counterpart Prak Sokhon that China supported the government s actions. China has repeatedly expressed its support for Cambodia, making no criticism of the government led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, who is one of Beijing s most important allies in Southeast Asia. (The story adds dropped word after in paragraph 1) ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar operation against Rohingya has 'hallmarks of ethnic cleansing', U.S. Congress members say;YANGON (Reuters) - Members of U.S. Congress said on Tuesday they were disturbed by the harsh response of Myanmar s security forces to attacks by militants in August which they said bore all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslim minority. We are profoundly disturbed by the violent and disproportionate response against the Rohingya by the military and local groups, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told reporters in Yangon at the end of a visit to Bangladesh and Myanmar. Merkley, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led the five-strong congressional delegation, which over the last few days met with people affected by the military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims which has forced more than 600,000 people to flee to Bangladesh. In early November, U.S. lawmakers proposed targeted sanctions and travel restrictions on Myanmar military officials over the treatment of the Rohingya. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil house speaker says whipping votes for pension reform difficult, but urgent;RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The speaker of Brazil s lower house said on Tuesday that it will not be easy to obtain the 308 votes needed to pass a much anticipated pension reform, but that doing so is fundamental and urgent for the country. In an interview with Brazil s CBN radio, Maia said it was important that the government completed a reform to Brazil s ministerial framework soon, so that it can advance in negotiations regarding pensions. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese court jails rights lawyer for two years for inciting subversion;BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Tuesday jailed a prominent rights lawyer for two years, saying he incited subversion of state power, the most recent such verdict in a sweeping crackdown on activism. Jiang Tianyong, 46, developed notions of overthrowing China s political system after being influenced by training workshops held by anti-China foreign forces overseas, the court in the central city of Changsha said. He used social media to attack or defame government departments and incited others to gather and demonstrate in public, the Changsha Intermediate People s Court said on its Twitter-like Weibo microblog. However, Jiang s wife, Jin Bianling, called the verdict unacceptable , adding that she believed he was being made an example of, in order to deter or repress other rights lawyers. I do not acknowledge or accept this verdict, she told Reuters in a telephone interview from the United States, where she lives. Jiang Tianyong is innocent. Jiang s family was unable to appoint their own lawyers, Jin said, and she had been unable to contact him in detention. In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office, which has denounced China s crackdown on defense lawyers since 2015, called for his release. We urge the Chinese authorities to release Jiang Tianyong as well as lawyer Wang Quanzhang and other lawyers and activists who have remained in detention since August 2015, U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters. The verdict came exactly a year after Jiang disappeared last November while visiting the family of another detained rights lawyer. He was held incommunicado for six months before being formally charged. There were serious concerns regarding the lawfulness of the legal proceedings , said Germany s ambassador to China, Michael Clauss, including the denial of access to lawyers of Jiang s choice. The circumstances and the lack of regard for the rights of the defendant certainly call into question the fairness of the verdict, Clauss said in a statement. Jiang, who was disbarred in 2009 after taking on sensitive cases such as defending practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, had been an outspoken critic of the government crackdown on dissent. Since mid-2015, hundreds of rights lawyers and activists have been sentenced or detained, drawing condemnation from foreign governments and international rights groups. Tuesday s ruling broadly followed the facts in Jiang s confession at his trial in August, when the court released video images of him reading parts of a written statement. China has videostreamed or liveblogged increasing numbers of court hearings in recent years, in a push for judicial transparency. But in sensitive cases, say rights activists, only selected portions are made available, when the defendant has agreed to go along with a pre-prepared outcome. Rights group Amnesty International called Jiang s conviction baseless and his trial a total sham . His so-called confession and apology, most likely extracted under duress, were nothing more than an act of political theater directed by the authorities, said William Nee, a China researcher at Amnesty. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rosneft's Sechin to miss hearing at ex-minister corruption trial: media;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of Russian state oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, will not be in Moscow on Wednesday where he is meant to appear in court to testify in a major corruption trial of a former minister, according to Russian news agencies. Russian prosecutors accuse Alexei Ulyukayev of extorting a $2 million bribe from powerful political rival Sechin in exchange for approving a lucrative business deal in what turned out to be a sting operation. Ulyukayev, who was fired by President Vladimir Putin from his post as economy minister shortly after being detained, denies the charges and says Sechin framed him. Asked by reporters whether he would be in Moscow on Wednesday when the hearing is due, Sechin replied that he would be still be on a visit to western Siberia where on Tuesday he attended the opening of a new Rosneft oil field. Tomorrow I am meeting with the governor (of the Khanty-Mansiiysk region), gathering the staff, will be summing up results of the prime minister s visit, Sechin was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. Sechin has already missed two hearings in Ulyukayev s trial. He has previously said he would attend as soon as his schedule allowed. Ulyukayev s arrest a year ago came moments after Sechin personally handed him the cash in a late-night meeting at the Rosneft headquarters in exchange for signing off on Rosneft s purchase of a stake in mid-sized oil producer Bashneft, according to investigators. The fate of Bashneft, one of the most lucrative state assets to be privatized in years, was the focus of a major turf war between rival Kremlin camps, sources close to the deal and in the government have said. Ulyukayev was among those who believed Bashneft should go to private investors. Both he and Sechin are deeply embedded in the tangle of allegiances and rivalries in Russian politics and business. Ulyukayev belonged to a faction of economic liberals who argued for less state control over the economy, while Sechin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, represents the opposite view. Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev dismissed speculation over possible reasons for Sechin s likely absence at Wednesday s hearing, also citing the demands of his schedule. This is a made up problem and it was made up with only one purpose - to avoid attention from the essence of the trial, Leontyev said. This is not the first case in the human or Russian history when the court wants to hear a testimony of a man with tight schedule. Ulyukayev faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain will honour commitments made to EU - May's spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will honour its commitments made while a member of the European Union, but specific figures on how much the country will pay for Brexit are subject to negotiations, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday. All I can point you to is the PM s position as set out many times in terms of the fact that the UK will honour commitments we ve made during the period of our membership. No EU member state will need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan, he told reporters. In terms of specific figures or scenarios, they are all subject to negotiation. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Only five ministers, attorney general turn up for Zimbabwe cabinet meeting: sources;HARARE (Reuters) - Only five Zimbabwe cabinet ministers and the attorney general turned up for a meeting called by President Robert Mugabe as 17 others opted to attend a meeting to plan the 93-year-old leader s impeachment, sources said on Tuesday. The cabinet meeting is the first called by Mugabe since a military takeover last Wednesday. Mugabe faced the start of an impeachment process later in the day as his party sought to end his nearly four decades in power. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Once inside Kim Jong Un's inner circle, top aide's star fades;SEOUL (Reuters) - When Kim Jong Un sat down in September to order the sixth and largest of North Korea s nuclear tests, Hwang Pyong So sat by his side, his khaki military uniform conspicuous among the suits at the table, photos released by state media at the time showed. Now Hwang, once one of Kim s most-trusted advisers, is facing unspecified punishment on the orders of another man who also sat at that exclusive table in September, Choe Ryong Hae, South Korean intelligence officials believe. Information on North Korea is often difficult to obtain, and with few hard details and no official confirmation from Pyongyang, analysts said it was too soon to draw any firm conclusions from the unspecified punishments. But the moves, which appear to involve two of Kim s top four advisers, are being closely watched for indications of fractures within his secretive inner circle, and come as North Korea faces increasing international pressure over its nuclear weapons program. Having his advisers compete with each other suits Kim just fine, said Christopher Green, an analyst with the Crisis Group. It is hardwired into autocracy to have underlings in competition, he said. Hwang, a shy, bespectacled general in his mid-60s, is a close confidant of Kim Jong Un and has had an unprecedented rise to the top rungs of North Korea s leadership in the space of a few years. In 2014, he became one of the most powerful people outside the ruling Kim family when he was named chief of the General Political Bureau of the army, a powerful position that mobilizes the military for the leader. His apparent punishment takes on additional meaning as it was orchestrated by Choe who has competed with Hwang in the past and stands to gain from any demotion, according to South Korea s spy agency. The two men were last seen in public together early last month as they watched a gymnastics gala, according to state media. Hwang has since faded from public view, whereas Choe was the ranking official who met with a senior envoy from China in Pyongyang last week. Kim has not shied away from removing or punishing even favored leaders who could become powerful enough to threaten his grip on power, said Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership at 38 North, a project of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Studies in Washington. Vice Marshal Hwang Pyong So could not have continued in the capacity that he was operating in, without it coming back to bite him, he said. Both Hwang and Choe came to South Korea during the Asian Games in 2014 - the highest such visit by North Korean officials to the rival South. Dressed in a drab, olive army uniform and his large officer s cap, Hwang, who had been promoted to the No.2 spot behind Kim just one week earlier, had tea and lunch with Choe and South Korean officials and waved to crowds at the games closing ceremony. The trip had been announced just one day in advance and took many South Korean observers by surprise. Some suggested there may have been a power struggle between the two men, neither wanting to yield the high-profile visit to the other. Choe, who was subjected to political reeducation himself in the past, now appears to be gaining more influence since he was promoted in October to the party s powerful Central Military Commission, according to South Korean officials. The National Intelligence Service indicated Choe now heads the Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD), the secretive body which oversees appointments within North Korea s leadership. The punishment represents the first time Hwang has faced any major blow to his standing, said Lee Sang-keun, a North Korea leadership expert at Ewha Woman s University s Institute of Unification Studies. Hwang had a reputation of playing a respectful and careful role around the notoriously unpredictable Kim. Photos released by state media often showed him covering his mouth as he politely laughed with the supreme leader. The punishment may not reflect any specific mistakes on Hwang s part but could be part of a wider effort by Kim to ensure that the ruling party retains its control over the military, Lee said. The moves are part of a sweeping ideological scrutiny of the political unit of the military for the first time in 20 years, according to Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker on South Korea s parliamentary intelligence committee. They could also be an effort to prevent a repeat of a major purge in 2013, 38 North s Madden said. Kim s uncle and second most powerful man in the secretive state, Jang Song Thaek, was executed during that purge after a special military tribunal found him guilty of treason. Preemptively putting Hwang in his place now meant Kim might prevent him from becoming so powerful he could only be dealt with in a similar way, Madden said. What (Kim s) doing can be described as clipping wings. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine expels Belarus diplomat over Minsk spy-ring spat;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday it had expelled a Belarussian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move linked to allegations from Belarus that the Ukrainian defense ministry had set up a spy ring in Minsk. Belarus s KGB state security service said on Monday it had arrested a Ukrainian journalist and declared a Ukrainian diplomat persona non grata due to their alleged involvement in espionage. The Ukrainian foreign ministry has also made the decision to declare a Belarussian diplomat persona non grata and he has already left the country, Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa said by telephone. Betsa said the diplomat was a first secretary in the embassy in Kiev but declined to name him or her. The Ukrainian defense ministry has denied the KGB s allegations. Minsk-based Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Sharoyko was arrested in October and has since been charged with being an undercover intelligence officer by the KGB. Reuters has not been able to reach him for comment. The case puts further pressure on relations between Minsk and Kiev that were tested earlier this year when Belarus hosted large-scale joint military exercises with Russia. September s Zapad-2017 ( West-2017 ) war games unnerved Ukraine and NATO member states on Europe s eastern flank, which feared the exercises could be a rehearsal or cover for a real offensive. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea, Japan welcome U.S. relisting North Korea as sponsor of terrorism;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and Japan on Tuesday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump s move to put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, saying it will ramp up pressure on the reclusive regime to get rid of its nuclear weapons. The designation, announced on Monday, allows the United States to impose more sanctions on North Korea, which is pursuing nuclear weapons and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions. (Graphic: Nuclear North Korea - tmsnrt.rs/2lE5yjF) I welcome and support (the designation) as it raises the pressure on North Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. South Korea said it expected the listing to contribute to peaceful denuclearisation, the foreign ministry said in a text message. North Korea has vowed never to give up its nuclear weapons program, which it defends as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such plans. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China had noted the reports on the U.S. decision. Currently, the situation on the Korean peninsula is complicated and sensitive, Lu told a daily news briefing. We still hope all relevant parties can do more to alleviate the situation and do more that is conducive to all relevant parties returning to the correct path of negotiation, dialogue and consultation to resolve the peninsula nuclear issue. The move will further weigh on the precarious situation on the peninsula, China s official Xinhua news agency said in an English-language editorial. The prospect of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula has been pushed farther away by one after another irresponsible action or blaring rhetoric, it said. This year s rapid escalation of tension was largely down to a game of chicken between Washington and Pyongyang, it added. Trump s re-listing of North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism comes a week after he returned from a 12-day trip to Asia in which containing North Korea s nuclear ambitions was a centerpiece of his discussions. In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, including assassinations on foreign soil, Trump told reporters at the White House. This designation will impose further sanctions and penalties on North Korea and related persons and supports our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the murderous regime. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also backed Trump s decision. Kim Jong Un runs a global criminal operation from North Korea peddling arms, peddling drugs, engaged in cyber-crime and of course threatening the stability of region with his nuclear weapons, Turnbull told reporters in Sydney, referring to the North Korean leader. Trump, who has often criticized his predecessors policies toward North Korea as being too soft, said the designation should have been made a long time ago . North Korea was put on the U.S. terrorism sponsor list for the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air flight that killed all 115 people aboard. But the administration of former President George W. Bush, a Republican, removed it in 2008 in exchange for progress in denuclearisation talks. Experts say the designation will be largely symbolic as North Korea is already heavily sanctioned by the United States. On Monday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in s special security adviser, Moon Chung-in, told reporters any such designation would be more symbolic than substance . The United States has designated only three other countries - Iran, Sudan and Syria - as state sponsors of terrorism. North Korea has said it plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. It has fired two missiles over Japan and on Sept. 3 conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. urges Sudan to improve plight of Darfur's displaced people;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations urged Sudan to end violence and human rights abuses against the 2.6 million people displaced by its long conflict in Darfur, a U.N. report documenting the abuses said on Tuesday. Conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when mainly non-Arab tribes took up arms against Sudan s Arab-led government. Progress on resolving the conflict was a key demand made by the United States before it lifted 20-year sanctions last month that had long-isolated the country. Sudan said last month that it would extend a unilateral ceasefire with rebels that has been in place since October 2016 until the end of December. The U.N. report found that despite a ceasefire between the Government and various armed opposition groups ... violence against internally displaced people continues to be widespread and impunity for human rights violations persists. I urge the Government to address fundamental issues that are preventing the return of displaced people, such as continued violence, including from armed militias, which raise continuing and justifiable fears for their safety and the lack of basic services that leave them dependent on aid, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad Al Hussein said in a statement. People displaced by the conflict face outright absence of law enforcement and judicial institutions and serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, the statement said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin to inform Saudi king about his meeting with Assad: Kremlin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a telephone conversation with the king of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to inform him about his meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Kremlin said. Today there will be Putin s telephone conversation with the king of Saudi Arabia, and one can certainly expect that Putin will inform his Saudi counterpart about yesterday s meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Putin hosted Assad in his Black Sea residence in Sochi on Monday to talk about the need to move from military operations to the search for a political solution to Syria s conflict, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's Schaeuble urges parties to compromise, take responsibility;BERLIN (Reuters) - German parties must be more willing to compromise and take responsibility to form a coalition government because Europe and the world need Berlin as a strong and reliable ally, Parliamentary President Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Tuesday. Speaking to lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house of parliament after efforts to form a three-way alliance failed, Schaeuble said: Europe needs a Germany that is capable of acting. The reactions from abroad show that Europe and many other countries in the world are waiting for us. Schaeuble, a veteran conservative and former finance minister, added: The challenges are huge and just as we ourselves need strong partners, our neighbors also want a reliable partner at their side. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Israeli official dismisses Lebanese army border warning;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli official dismissed as nonsense on Tuesday a warning by Lebanese army s of possible aggression by Israel. It s nonsense, the official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters in response to Lebanon s army commander General Joseph Aoun urging full readiness at the southern border to face threats of the Israeli enemy and its violations . Separately, the Israeli military said it had been holding a drill near Israel s border with Syria since Sunday. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa adds to calls for Mugabe to go;HARARE (Reuters) - Ousted Zimbabwean vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa added his voice on Tuesday to those demanding 93-year-old President Mugabe resign, saying he needed to heed the clarion call of his people and step down. Mnangagwa, who said he fled Zimbabwe because of a threat to his life after being purged from the ruling party, said he had been in contact with Mugabe and invited to return but would not do so until his personal security could be guaranteed. I told the President that I would not return home now until I am satisfied of my personal security, because of the manner and treatment given to me upon being fired, he said in a statement. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Unclear if anyone will attend Mugabe cabinet meeting: spokesman;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s information minister said on Tuesday he did not know whether ministers would attend a cabinet meeting called by President Robert Mugabe at his State House offices, the first since a military takeover last week. I do not know whether anyone will attend, SK Moyo told Reuters hours before parliament was due to sit to start proceedings to impeach the 93-year-old leader. Cabinet meetings normally start at 0730 GMT. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says hopes all parties can resolve North Korea issue peacefully;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it hoped all parties could contribute to resolving the issue on the Korean peninsula peacefully, after the United States put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. Ministry spokesman Lu Kang made the comment at a daily news briefing. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing detains 18 after apartment fire: Xinhua;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Police in Beijing have detained 18 people following a fire that killed 19 people and injured another eight on Saturday evening, the state news agency Xinhua reported late on Monday. The fire took place in three-storey apartment block in Beijing s southern Daxing district. A large refrigeration facility had been under construction in the building s basement, and preliminary investigations suggested the fire may have started there, Xinhua said late on Monday. Seven managers at the apartment block had been detained, along with seven electricity workers and four construction workers at the facility. None of the workers were properly qualified, it added, citing police. Beijing s Communist Party chief Cai Qi has already ordered a city-wide safety check, which will last four 40 days. The official China Daily said the inspections would cover warehouses, factories, wholesale markets, large residential areas and public places like supermarkets and tourist spots. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Resignation letter of Zimbabwe's Mugabe doesn't mention who he leaves in charge;HARARE (Reuters) - The resignation letter written by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe that was read out by the speaker of the country s parliament made no mention of who he was leaving in charge of the country. The speaker added that he was working on legal issues to make sure a new leader was in place by the end of Wednesday. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump, Putin to talk over phone on Tuesday after Assad's visit to Russia: Ifx;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a telephone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, the Interfax news agency cited the Kremlin as saying. Putin was paid a rare visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday. Greeting Assad at his Black Sea residence of Sochi, Putin said he would follow up the meeting with telephone calls to Trump and to Middle Eastern leaders including the Emir of Qatar. [nL8N1NR0K3] ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China pledges to be more open to providing information: China Daily;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Central and local governments will be more open to providing information to help the international community understand China, the official China Daily reported on Tuesday, citing a senior government official. We should be open-minded to talk about our disadvantages calmly and conflicts with other countries frankly, the paper quoted Jiang Jianguo, minister at the State Council Information Office, as saying. Jiang said China should be more confident in discussing its political thought and the way it governs, and should also not avoid talking about hot-button issues . China enforces strict controls over the media and the dissemination of information online. It has built a Great Firewall aimed at restricting overseas websites and is also cracking down on the use of virtual private networks used to circumvent censorship. In a report published last week, the U.S. non-government organization Freedom House ranked China last when it comes to internet freedom, citing censorship targeting ethnic minorities, media and regular citizens. China has also imposed restrictions on academic publications, forcing them to block access to articles judged to be in violation of local regulations. However, local authorities have also been urged to improve the accuracy, speed and transparency of economic and environmental data as part of efforts to improve their performance, and China says it is also encouraging the media to hold local officials to account. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thailand seeks to prosecute ousted PM Thaksin in absentia in two graft cases;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand is seeking to prosecute ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for graft under a law that allows politicians to be tried in absentia, an official said on Tuesday, months after Thaksin s sister was sentenced to jail in her absence. Thailand is divided broadly between those backing Thaksin and his sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government was removed in a 2014 coup, and the elite in the capital, Bangkok. A former commerce minister and member of Yingluck s Puea Thai Party that was ousted in the coup said the planned prosecution of Thaksin was politically motivated. The former telecommunications tycoon was ousted in a 2006 coup and has since lived in self-imposed exile to avoid a graft conviction in 2008 he says was politically motivated. Separate cases against Thaksin, including graft cases in 2008 and 2012, had to be suspended until he returned to Thailand for trial. But an amendment to the law in September makes it possible for politicians to be prosecuted in their absence. The 2008 and 2012 cases involved Thaksin s alleged conflict of interest in a telecoms concession and suspected abuse of power. Public prosecutors put in a request to the supreme court today to proceed with the two cases without presence of the accused, in accordance with the new law, Wanchart Santikunchorn, a spokesman for the office of the attorney-general, told reporters. Thaksin was not immediately available for comment. Thaksin re-shaped Thai politics after building a business empire, winning staunch support with populist policies that raised living standards, especially among the rural poor, and propelled him or his loyalists to victory in every election since 2001. Yingluck fled the country in August, ahead of a verdict in a negligence trial, but was eventually found guilty and handed down a five-year jail term in absentia in September. Former commerce minister Watana Muangsook said the junta was damaging the country with politically motivated court cases. The law which allows court proceedings in absentia of the accused is aimed at destroying the regime s political opposition, Watana said in a statement to Reuters. Wanchart denied the moves against the Shinawatra family were biased, saying they were in line with the newly amended law. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea says U.S. designation of North Korea as terrorist sponsor to contribute to decentralization;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s foreign ministry said on Tuesday the United States decision to put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism is expected to contribute to the peaceful decentralization of the North. The announcement will not change the joint stance of South Korea and the United States in trying to bring North Korea to dialogue, the ministry said in a text message to reporters. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish opposition journalist sentenced to three years over tweet: agency;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish court sentenced a journalist from opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet to three years in prison on Tuesday on a charge of spreading terrorist propaganda over a tweet which the paper briefly posted in May, state media said. The newspaper s online editor, Oguz Guven, was accused of discrediting Ankara s fight against supporters of the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government says orchestrated a coup attempt last year. The tweet had referred to a prosecutor being killed in a road accident with the expression that he had been mowed down by a truck . Cumhuriyet, long a pillar of the secularist establishment, says the tweet was replaced within one minute by one saying the prosecutor died awfully in a truck accident . The prosecutor who died had prepared an indictment against Gulen s network. The cleric denies any involvement in the coup attempt. State-run Anadolu agency said Guven was sentenced to three years and one month in jail. He had been remanded in custody in May but was released in June pending trial. More than a dozen Cumhuriyet correspondents and executives are being tried in a separate case in which prosecutors say the paper was taken over by supporters of Gulen and used to target Erdogan and veil the actions of militant groups. Prosecutors are seeking up to 43 years in jail for the paper s staff, accused of targeting Erdogan through asymmetric war methods. They have denied the charges. Since the failed coup in July 2016, Turkey has jailed more than 50,000 people and closed more than 130 media outlets, raising concerns among Western allies about deteriorating rights and freedoms. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian Kurdish YPG accuses Turkey of Afrin aggression;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Syrian Kurdish militia accused Turkish forces on Tuesday of aggression and escalation in the Afrin region, which it controls, on Syria s northwestern border with Turkey. Ankara has sent forces into areas of Syria adjacent to Afrin to oppose the influence of the YPG militia, which it sees as a branch of the PKK movement that has waged a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey. The YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State with the help of a U.S.-led coalition. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said last week that Turkey needed to cleanse Afrin of the YPG. On Monday, Ankara accused it of attacking an observation post in Idlib province. In an apparent response to that charge, the YPG said in a statement that Turkey was spreading several rumors about our forces attacking Turkish lands . It said Turkey had fired artillery and machine guns at several villages in Afrin on Monday. Turkey backed an incursion into a part of Syria immediately east of Afrin last year in support of anti-government Syrian rebel factions, which led to frequent clashes with the YPG. Last month, Ankara also sent some troops into Idlib, south and west of Afrin, as part of a deal it has agreed with Russia and Iran to set up so-called de-escalation zones to reduce fighting. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany detains six Syrian suspected of planning attack;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police on Tuesday detained six Syrians suspected of planning an attack using weapons or explosives on behalf of the Islamic State militant group, prosecutors said. Police detained the suspects aged between 20 and 28 during raids in the cities of Kassel, Hanover, Essen and Leipzig, the general prosecutor s office in Frankfurt said in a statement. Some 500 police officers took part in the raids during which eight apartments were searched. Four of the suspects arrived in Germany in December 2014 and two arrived the following year. All six had applied for asylum. The prosecutor s office did not say if their asylum applications had been approved. Prosecutors said the six Syrians are suspected of being members of the foreign terrorist organization that calls itself Islamic State (IS) . They added: The accused are also suspected of having planned an attack against a public target in Germany using either weapons or explosives. It is the second time this month that Syrians have been arrested on suspicion of planning militant violence. Earlier this month a 19-year-old Syrian man was detained on suspicion of planning a bomb attack. The arrest comes one month before the first anniversary of an attack in Berlin by a failed Tunisian asylum seeker who killed 12 people by plowing a truck into a Christmas market. Concrete blocks have been installed around Christmas markets at several central squares in the capital this year before the festive season opens in a couple of weeks. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte threatens to close mines that support rebels;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday threatened to shut down any mine that supports Maoist rebels waging a protracted guerrilla war to overthrow the government. The Philippines has been in on-again, off-again peace talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF), the political arm of the communist movement, since 1986 to end a rebellion that has killed more than 40,000 people and stunted growth in resource-rich rural areas. In a speech honoring soldiers who fought pro-Islamic State militants for five months in the southern city of Marawi, Duterte said that attacks from the Maoist rebels had been on the rise, forcing him to end negotiations, and that he would declare the guerrilla group a terrorist organization. If I go against the communists, then everybody has to reconfigure their relationship with the New People s Army, he said, referring to the communists armed wing. If you support them financially, I will close you down. Duterte said some mines were paying revolutionary taxes to the rebels in exchange for allowing their operations in remote areas to continue. He did not name any companies. Mines in the Philippines, many with foreign partners, are digging for gold, nickel, copper, chromite and coal. The Mines and Geosciences Bureau said the country had estimated $840 billion worth of untapped mineral wealth as of 2012. The rebels are also engaged in small-scale mining, like gold panning in the south. Mining companies shared the president s position, Ronald Recidoro, executive director at the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, said. We do not condone any member supporting the New People s Army through the payment of revolutionary taxes, Recidoro told Reuters. This is clearly against the law and they really should be prosecuted if they are found to be supporting these organizations. And if closure is warranted, that is within the prerogative of the president. The Chamber of Mines groups 20 of the country s 43 operating mines. Recidoro said some mining firm members had experienced some of their equipment being burned by the NPA because of their refusal to pay the taxes. I am fighting a rebellion... I have to build a strong army, Duterte said, adding the military would next year acquire 23 attack helicopters to boost counter-insurgency capability. Military spokesman Major-General Restituto Padilla said the Philippines already had approval for the purchase of attack helicopters but had not decided what type or where to source them. ($1 = 50.6 pesos) ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron scores diplomatic coup on Lebanon but balancing act under test;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron s initiative in bringing Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri to Paris puts France at the center of a power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran and will test a policy of neutrality that critics doubt can be sustained. While the move eased regional tensions that spiked after the prime minister s resignation on Nov. 4, it also exposed the difficulty of Macron s stated position of taking no sides in the Middle East. Macron has put his neck out on Lebanon, said a European diplomat who didn t want to be named talking about an ally s policies. It s a bit like his moment of truth. Hariri, a Saudi ally, arrived in France on Saturday days after announcing his resignation while in Riyadh, accusing Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of creating strife. Many Lebanese believe the Saudis made him quit. President Michel Aoun has not accepted the resignation and Hariri is expected to return to Beirut on Wednesday, when Lebanon celebrates the end of France s colonial mandate in 1943. Macron s maneuver, which came after a visit to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and a flurry of calls, appears to have taken the foreign ministry by surprise, an example of his penchant for bypassing state organs to show he s in charge, much like former leader Nicolas Sarkozy. So far it s a symbolic victory for French diplomacy that has enabled a reduction in tensions, said Stephane Malsagne, a lecturer at Sciences Po University in Paris, adding it was a risky gamble that could antagonize all sides. Macron set out his foreign policy objectives for the region in his first speech to the diplomatic corps in August, saying he wanted France to maintain a balanced position. We will achieve our goal of fighting terrorism only if we do not make the mistake that would impose a choice between Shi ites and Sunnis, and in a sense, force us to lock ourselves in one camp, he said at the time. Some French diplomats say Macron will find it difficult to appease everyone, however. Lebanon maintains a delicate sectarian balance after Sunnis, Shi ites, Christians and Druze fought a civil war between 1975 and 1990, with factions often backed by regional rivals. Hariri is Sunni Muslim and President Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, is Christian. Hariri s government, a power-sharing coalition formed last year, includes Shi ite Hezbollah. This mediation is an introduction for a new French political role in Lebanon ... (and) a French attempt to find a foothold starting from Lebanon into the region, said a senior Lebanese official, speaking on condition of anonymity. But in the shadow of big players (U.S., Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia) in the region, the French will face difficulties. Since Hariri announced his resignation, Saudi Arabia has accused Lebanon of declaring war on it, citing Hezbollah s role in fighting in other Arab countries. France has a long history of commercial, political and social links with Iran that even saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei exiled near Paris in 1979, but it was arguably the most demanding of the six powers negotiating the 2015 nuclear accord. Under Presidents Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, who aligned themselves with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, respectively, there was a hawkish shift toward Tehran. Since the deal, Paris has been quick to restore trade ties, with planemaker Airbus, oil major Total and automobile manufacturers Peugeot and Renault all signing deals. That rapprochement annoyed Riyadh, which has been moving closer to the United States under President Donald Trump. We had to reassure the Saudis ... and rebalance things. Prince Salman has gone into overdrive and that s dangerous for everyone so he needs some love from us, said one French diplomat, who asked not to be identified. Tehran is now chafing in turn over France s warming Saudi ties and what appears to be a good relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due in Paris on Dec. 10 for the second time since Macron took office in May. Recent rhetoric has reflected the tensions. At a news conference on Friday, Macron said Iran should clarify what is going on with its ballistic missile program which seems to be uncontrolled . That followed a news conference in Riyadh on Thursday at which Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced Tehran s hegemonic temptations . On Saturday Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran s supreme leader, told Macron to stay out of its affairs. Le Drian has pushed back a planned visit to Tehran and talk that Macron may visit next year has become more muted. Speaking to all sides is noble, but this policy in the region will come tumbling down if Le Drian and Macron do not go to Tehran. Our credibility depends on it, said a second French diplomat. Some hardline politicians in Iran have criticized President Hassan Rouhani for trying to strengthen ties with Paris, saying Europeans will not endanger their interests in the face of U.S. pressure. A senior Iranian official said Macron s policy of balance ultimately just offered mixed signals. He talks about curbing Iran s defensive missile work and criticizes Iran s regional policy and then he wants to build closer ties? the official said. France should clearly announce which side Paris is taking.... we like to expand our relations but Paris sends mixed signals and cannot be trusted. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After U.N. veto, Russia moves against chemical weapons watchdog;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - After blocking U.N. Security Council action against Syria, Russia has proposed changing the rules for inspectors at the world s chemical weapons body in The Hague, a move Western diplomats and experts said would undermine its work. It is the latest confrontation between Russia, a close ally and military backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the West over an international inquiry established to determine who is behind ongoing chemical attacks in Syria s civil war. It came as Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Assad late on Monday for talks aimed at ending a conflict that has now raged for nearly seven years. [L8N1NR3VO] At the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a draft Russian-Iranian decision circulated among the 41 members of the body s executive council, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, sought to overturn procedures on how OPCW inspectors work and how their findings are shared. The proposal was to be discussed by the OPCW s decision-making executive council, which was meeting on Tuesday, but had little chance of obtaining sufficient support to pass. Russia s ambassador to the OPCW, Alexander Shulgin, said in an interview that Moscow remained committed to the OPCW and efforts to prosecute perpetrators of attacks. But Russia is not convinced by some of the findings implicating the Syrian government, he said, defending the effort to change the mandate. He also questioned the decision not to send OPCW inspectors to Khan Sheikhoun, where nearly 100 people were killed with sarin on April 4, based on the pretext of the security conditions . The head of the OPCW said at the time the team was not deployed to Khan Sheikhoun due to genuine security risks they were ambushed and shot at during investigations in 2013 and 2014. The team confirmed sarin poisoning by testing the blood of victims across the border in Turkey. The Russian draft says the OPCW should withhold findings that are not based on the results of on-site investigations , but experts said this was an attempt to scupper the investigations. (Russia s) supreme goal is to compromise the ability of the (OPCW) fact-finding mission to do its job professionally and without political interference, said Gregory Koblentz, a non-proliferation expert at George Mason University, in the U.S. state of Virginia. This draft resolution has to be seen as part of a Russian strategy to undermine all international investigations into the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government, he said. Last Friday, Moscow blocked a proposal to extend the mandate of a joint investigation by the United Nations and the OPCW, saying it was seriously flawed. Under a 2013 U.S.-Russian deal, Assad agreed to hand over his toxic stockpile following a sarin attack in a Damascus suburb. Dozens of countries helped to remove and destroy the lethal chemicals, but attacks have continued. Investigators have already concluded that Syrian government forces were behind later attacks with nerve-agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs, while Islamic State militants had used sulfur mustard gas. Syria denied using chemical weapons. Sweden and Uruguay are pushing for the U.N. Security Council to revive an international inquiry, but without the support of Russia, which holds a veto, there can be no further U.N.-backed inquiries. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey charges three Bulgarians with migrant smuggling;SOFIA (Reuters) - Turkey has charged three Bulgarians with illegal migrant trafficking and assisting a criminal organization, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said on Tuesday. The three were detained on Friday and held in custody in the northwestern Turkish city of Edirne pending investigations, a ministry statement said Last week the Bulgarian authorities smashed a gang suspected of smuggling migrants into Western Europe. Eight people, including two Pakistanis, were charged with smuggling offences after they transported migrants, mainly Pakistanis, Afghans and Iraqis, from Turkey into Romania and then on to Hungary and Austria. Bulgaria has built a fence on its border with its Balkan neighbor Turkey and has bolstered its border controls to prevent inflows of illegal migrants. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Northern Ireland parties downbeat on talks as May calls for progress;LONDON (Reuters) - Northern Ireland s main political parties pointed on Tuesday to fresh obstacles to restoring a devolved power-sharing government in the British region after meeting Prime Minister Theresa May, who urged them to resume talks next week. The province has been without a regional government for almost a year, destabilizing the delicate balance between Irish nationalists and pro-British unionists that has already been shaken by Britain s vote to leave the European Union. The latest efforts at breaking the stalemate in Belfast collapsed this month, prompting Britain to begin setting a budget for the province, a major step toward imposing direct rule from London for the first time in a decade. The head of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Arlene Foster accused Irish nationalist rival Sinn Fein - the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army - of the glorification of terrorism in a party conference last weekend. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in turn accused May of acting in bad faith by including a potential statute of limitations covering crimes by British forces in a planned consultation on new laws to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland s 30 years of sectarian violence. May struck a more positive tone, saying the issues dividing the parties were relatively few and that she believed an agreement could be reached. In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that if an administration could not be formed, he would seek a meeting in the New Year of the British Irish Intergovernmental Conference, a joint decision making body recognizing the Irish government s special interest in Northern Ireland that last met a decade ago. Analysts have said a fresh round of talks is unlikely to be even contemplated until after both parties annual conferences, culminating with the DUP s meeting on Saturday. The DUP has said it was upset by prolonged cheering at Sinn Fein s annual conference at the weekend after MP Elisha McCallion spoke of former Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness pride in his role in the IRA. The IRA killed hundreds in its campaign against British rule before a ceasefire in 1994. Around 3,600 died on all sides in the conflict, fought over whether Northern Ireland should be part of the United Kingdom or Ireland, before it ended with a 1998 peace agreement. It was quite disgraceful to look at the glorification that happened at the weekend of the IRA and terrorism and of course that makes it more difficult for us, Foster, whose father narrowly escaped alive from an IRA shooting, told reporters. Foster, who warned ahead of the talks that further steps toward direct rule looked inevitable unless there is a change of direction, said her party remained committed to devolution. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech police ask parliament to allow prosecution of prospective PM Babis;PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech police have requested parliament lift the immunity of prospective prime minister Andrej Babis to allow prosecution in a case involving alleged fraud in tapping European Union subsidies, the lower house s press office said on Tuesday. Babis, whose ANO party was the runaway winner in a parliamentary election in October on pledges to run the state better and fight corruption among traditional parties, denies any wrongdoing and has called the charges politically motivated. Police suspect the billionaire businessman hid ownership of the Stork s Nest farm and convention center almost a decade ago to get a two million euro EU subsidy that was part of a program aimed at small businesses. Lawmakers already voted in September to allow his prosecution, but Babis won immunity again with his re-election. He said on Tuesday the new request to lift immunity was further evidence of a campaign against him. The speed at which they are coming after me again only shows what huge fear the corrupt system has;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somaliland picks ruling party's candidate as new president;BOSASSO (Reuters) - Musa Bihi Abdi of the ruling Kulmiye party was declared the winner of Somaliland s presidential election on Tuesday, by the election commission of the breakaway region. Situated at the northern tip of east Africa on the Gulf of Aden - one of the busiest trade routes in the world - Somaliland broke away from Somalia in 1991 and has been relatively peaceful since. The region of 4 million people has not been internationally recognized but it has recently drawn in sizeable investments from the Gulf. In the election, Abdi won just over 55 percent of the vote, while opposition leader Abdirahman Iro took nearly 41 percent, election commission chairman Iman Warsame said. Turnout was 80 percent. In a debate before last week s vote, Abdi pledged to boost women s participation in politics and introduce compulsory national service for high school and university graduates. There was no immediate comment from Iro, whose opposition party Waddani had accused Kulmiye of vote-rigging although it has not given evidence. A U.K. government-funded international observer mission said the poll preserved the integrity of the electoral process and concluded irregularities were limited and did not undermine the vote. The former British protectorate broke away from Somalia in 1991 following a bloody civil war. The poll had originally been scheduled for 2015 but was delayed by political spats and severe drought. Analysts say the region enjoys strong ties with neighboring Ethiopia and Djibouti as well as its growing investment from the Gulf. Earlier this year the government agreed to let the United Arab Emirates establish a military base in its port of Berbera. That came after Dubai s DP World last year signed a 30-year concession to develop the same port that will require an investment of $440 million. The company is pouring further funds into a project connecting the port to landlocked Ethiopia. This month DP World said it would also develop an economic zone in the region. [L5N1NC3CC] ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In movie-style heist, Kenya robbers tunnel into bank opposite police station;NAIROBI (Reuters) - In a heist reminiscent of a Hollywood movie, Kenyan robbers spent months tunneling into the bowels of a bank located opposite a police station and stole the equivalent of half a million dollars, police said on Tuesday. Police said they had arrested two men and one woman over the robbery but had not recovered the 50 million Kenyan shillings, reported missing by staff at the branch of Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) on Monday when they showed up to work. We have not recovered the stolen money, said Simba Willy, sub-county police commander in the town of Thika, northeast of Nairobi, where the heist took place. We suspect the robbers hired one of the shops near the bank (while digging their tunnel), Willy told Reuters. The robbers were able to remove the earth during their months-long excavations without arousing suspicion by concealing it in boxes, the Daily Nation newspaper quoted local traders as saying. The traders described the two young men who had rented the store as very hardworking and introverts . KCB, which is the region s biggest bank by assets, confirmed the break-in on Twitter. But the Kenyans have competition for the title of most ingenious robbery. Last month Brazilian police foiled a plot to rob a Sao Paulo bank after discovering a 500-metre underground tunnel kitted out with lighting and ventilation systems. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. charges two with bribing African officials for China energy firm;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has charged a former Senegalese foreign minister and a former top Hong Kong government official with links to a Chinese energy conglomerate with bribing high-level officials in Chad and Uganda in exchange for contracts for the mainland company. Chi Ping Patrick Ho, 68, of Hong Kong, and Cheikh Gadio, 61, were charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, international money laundering and conspiracy, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement on Monday. It said Gadio, a former foreign minister of Senegal, was arrested in New York on Friday. It added that Ho, a former Hong Kong home affairs secretary who heads a non-governmental organization based in Hong Kong and Virginia, was arrested on Saturday. Wiring almost a million dollars through New York s banking system in furtherance of their corrupt schemes, the defendants allegedly sought to generate business through bribes paid to the president of Chad and the Ugandan foreign minister, Joon Kim, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was quoted as saying in the statement. No one could be reached at the embassies of Chad and Uganda in Washington late on Monday. The missions did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment. In a statement, the U.S. Justice Department said the case against Ho involved two bribery schemes to pay high-level officials of Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for a Shanghai-headquartered, multibillion-dollar energy firm. This energy company funded a non-government organization (NGO) based in Hong Kong and Virginia that Ho heads, the statement said, without naming the Shanghai company or the NGO. Ho is the secretary general of the Hong Kong-based China Energy Fund Committee, a mainland-backed think-tank that describes itself as a charitable, non-government organization. China Energy Fund Committee is fully funded by CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based private conglomerate, according to the think tank s website. The organization did not respond to an email requesting comment. CEFC China Energy said in a statement posted on its website late on Tuesday that: As a non-governmental, non-profit organization, the fund is not involved in the commercial activities of CEFC China Energy. CEFC does not have any investment in Uganda, the company said in the statement, and its investment in Chad had been acquired via a stake bought from Taiwan s state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corp and it had not dealt directly with the Chad government. The company will continue monitoring this matter and will take necessary measures based on developments, it said. CEFC has been a key player in Chinese President Xi Jinping s Belt and Road initiative, which aims to bolster China s global leadership ambitions by building infrastructure and trade links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing Tuesday that he was not aware of the specific details of the case. I want to emphasize that the Chinese government consistently requires Chinese companies abroad to operate lawfully and abide by local laws and regulations. Idriss Deby has been Chad s president since 1990. Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa served as the president of the U.N. General Assembly in 2014 and 2015. Ho s attorney, Ed Kim, of Krieger Kim & Lewin LLP, declined to comment to Reuters. Bob Baum of Federal Defenders, who represented Gadio for the bail argument, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ho was ordered detained after appearing in court on Monday, the Justice Department statement said. It said Gadio appeared before a judge on Saturday and is being held until he can meet the conditions of a $1 million bond, according to court records. The Justice Department said a $2 million bribe was paid to Chad s president, who then provided the company with an opportunity to obtain oil rights in Chad without international competition. The department said in the statement that Gadio was the go-between and was paid $400,000 by Ho via wire transfers through New York. The Justice Department accused Ho of being involved with bribes and promises of future benefits to Uganda s foreign minister in exchange for help in obtaining business advantages for the Chinese company. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Denmark to ramp up cyber security efforts: defense minister;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark intends to invest to boost efforts to prevent cyber attacks in a strategy to be presented early next year, its defense minister said on Tuesday. We are going to spend more money in this area, Claus Hjort Frederiksen told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Copenhagen, though he declined to disclose a figure. Cyber security is very high on the agenda for the right-leaning government, but also for the broad selection of Danish political parties negotiating a new defense strategy for the coming six years, he said. The government would like to expand an early warning system with sensors that detects when Danish companies or authorities are under attack from, for example, malware. To some degree we do have a system today, but we would like to expand it to the strategic infrastructure and to private companies, he told Reuters. The government also wants to increase the preventive capacity at the Danish center for cyber security to increase its ability to better catch and inform about imminent cyber threats, he said. World s no.1 container shipper and one of Denmark s largest companies Maersk was hit by major cyber attack in June, one of the biggest-ever disruptions to hit global shipping. The government also works for a deeper cooperation between authorities and private companies in battling cyber attacks, Frederiksen said. He said he believed companies were sometimes reluctant to inform they had been hit by cyber attacks, because they were afraid to scare off customers or investors. Frederiksen said he saw the overall cyber threat as one of the greatest threats of our time . If you can undermine our democratic nations by hacking the energy systems or the communication systems or the financial systems it will undermine our own people s belief in our societies ability to protect them, he said. Russia hacked the Danish defense network and gained access to employees emails in 2015 and 2016, Frederiksen said in April. Danish troops will get training in how to deal with Russian misinformation before being sent to join a NATO military build-up in Estonia in January, Frederiksen said in July. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq relocates hundreds of foreign wives and children of suspected Islamic State militants to Baghdad;ERBIL/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi authorities have moved hundreds of foreign wives and children of suspected Islamic State militants from a detention center in northern Iraq to Baghdad, citing security concerns and the difficulties of keeping them in a remote location. Local officials, security and aid agency sources said more than 800 women and children mostly from Turkey, Europe and former Soviet states had been moved to a secure detention facility in Baghdad. Around 700 more are still being held at the facility in the northern town of Tal Keif, said Mohammed al-Bayati, the head of Mosul s provincial council security and defense committee. Most of the women and children have been in detention since Aug. 30, when more than 1,300 surrendered to Kurdish Peshmerga after government forces expelled the jihadist group from Tal Afar, one of its last remaining strongholds in Iraq. Their numbers have swelled as more foreign nationals have surrendered or been captured, said Sara al-Zawqari, the spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq. Security forces have continued operations to rout the militants from their last remaining pockets of control in Western Anbar. Iraqi authorities began moving the families several days ago, Bayati said, adding that the government intends to move all the foreign detainees to Baghdad within the next few days. The move to the capital coincides with a push by Iraqi officials to begin legal proceedings to determine the fate of these women and children and end their prolonged detention, local officials and aid agency sources said. The government should find a way of deciding their future and what to do with them, said Abdul Rahman al-Wagga, a local councillor in Mosul where many of the women and children lived under the Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate. These foreign women and children have the right to a fair trial, said Zawqari, whose ICRC was the only aid group granted consistent access to the families in Tal Keif and has provided them with humanitarian services. If they need to be repatriated, all parties involved should also ensure they have these rights and are treated with respect and dignity. In September, aid agencies said they were gravely concerned about the fate of the families, after the initial 1,300 were relocated without warning to Tal Keif from the transit site south of Mosul where they had initially been kept. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Still battling for independence, Lebanon to mark national day;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon marks its independence on Wednesday with its sovereignty as compromised as ever by the agendas of foreign states that have shaped its history since the French mandate ended in 1943. The crisis ignited by Saad al-Hariri s sudden resignation as prime minister is unprecedented even by the standards of a country where loyalties have been split between countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia regionally and the United States, France and Russia globally. Hariri is due back in Lebanon on Wednesday for the first time since his resignation in a televised broadcast from Riyadh. Many believe Saudi Arabia made him quit and held him in Riyadh because he was not serving its objectives. Riyadh denies this. He will take part in independence day celebrations in Beirut after an intervention by Lebanon s former colonial power France led to him leaving Saudi Arabia for Paris last week. Can Lebanese people act the way they want? Are they free to take a decision and follow it? No they cannot. Because there are foreign powers who decide the way things go, said Antoine Mouawad, a 65-year old charity employee. We do not feel independent, said George al-Basha, 58, an unemployed barber in Beirut s Achrafiyeh district. For some Lebanese, the latest chapter in their turbulent history carries echoes of its independence in 1943, when France arrested the president and prime minister. International pressure and popular protests eventually forced their release. The parallel with Hariri s situation was drawn by one of Lebanon s major TV stations at the start of the crisis. Foreign states have often regarded tiny Lebanon as a theater for their rivalry, exploiting the fissures between Muslim and Christian sects who have also courted foreign intervention to help them in their struggles with each other. For years it was the tussle between Israel, which occupied southern Lebanon from 1982-2000, and Syria, which maintained a big military presence across much of the country from 1976-2005, that played out on Lebanese soil. The Palestine Liberation Organisation also controlled much of the country prior to 1982. Reflecting today s biggest Middle East rivalry, it is competition between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran that lies behind many accusations of foreign meddling. Critics of the heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah view it as a tool of Iranian policy. Opponents of Hariri, who was thrust into politics by the 2005 assassination of his father, Rafik, have similarly labeled him as an instrument of Saudi policy. But the demand for his return has united Lebanese across the political spectrum. Politicians close to Hariri say Riyadh held him against his will and forced his resignation to bust a coalition government that suited Hezbollah. Posters of Hariri demanding his return to Lebanon, even in areas dominated by his biggest political opponents, reflect widely felt anger at the perceived foreign intervention. The most important thing in a country like Lebanon is to understand that independence is a battle that does not stop, Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a member of Hariri s Future Movement, said on Tuesday as he laid a wreath on Rafik Hariri s grave. Saad al-Hariri has also denied being held by Saudi Arabia, and in his resignation speech instead blamed Iran and Hezbollah for Lebanon s present difficulties. Wednesday s independence parade will be held near the central Martyrs Square, where reconstruction from Lebanon s 1975-90 civil war continues. In the nearby seaport are moored naval vessels belonging to the U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL which was established after Israeli s first invasion in 1978, and expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. What we have seen in the last 10 days or two weeks, this is really crude intervention, said Sami Atallah of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, a thinktank in Beirut. When you have a prime minister who resigns in a capital not his own, it tells you that someone else is giving the orders. Syria s military presence in Lebanon was brought to an end in 2005 by a wave of popular protests and international pressure following the Hariri assassination. A U.N.-backed court has charged five Hezbollah members over the killing. The group denies any role. Lebanon is tied either to Saudi Arabia or to Iran. It doesn t have the ability to take actions by itself and politicians are to blame for this, said Nohad Chelhot, a retired business owner. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says retreat of Syrian opposition figures good for peace;MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday that the resignation of radically minded Syrian opposition figures such as Riyad Hijab would help unite the disparate opponents of President Bashar al-Assad around a more realistic platform. Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister, stepped down on Monday as head of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) which was formed nearly two years ago with Saudi backing to bring together political and armed opponents of Assad. The retreat of radically minded opposition figures from playing the main role will make it possible to unite this motley opposition internal and external on a more reasonable, realistic and constructive platform, Russia s Rossiya 24 state television showed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying at a news briefing. We will support the efforts made by Saudi Arabia in this respect. After intervening decisively in Syria s war in 2015 to support Assad, Russia now hopes to build on the collapse of militant group Islamic State to revive a political process to end the more than six-year-old war. Hijab is one of up to 10 HNC members who have quit the opposition umbrella group, including Riyad Naasan Agha, who told Reuters its work had now been brought to an end . Agha said the HNC, which has insisted on Assad s removal from power at the start of a political transition, had been marginalized ahead of a conference of the Syrian opposition which Saudi Arabia is due to host this week. The expanded conference aims to forge a united position ahead of a new round of U.N.-backed peace talks toward ending the conflict that erupted in 2011. But Yahya al-Aridi, an HNC member who will be taking part in the Riyadh conference, said: The HNC is not finished ... it is a technical group with a particular function to carry out, which is negotiations. There are other Syrians who are still committed to the rights of Syrian people for freedom and liberty, Aridi said. Hijab did not spell out his reasons for stepping down in a statement on Monday night. The Syrian opposition has long been weakened by ideological and political divisions, exacerbated by ties to regional states with competing agendas such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia countries that have been at loggerheads since June. In a telephone interview with Reuters, Agha said HNC members including Hijab and himself had not been invited to the Nov. 22-24 conference, and in practical terms its work has been brought to an end . Agha said he did not know who had taken the decision to marginalize the HNC but would not blame the Saudi hosts. Russia is behind overturning the scales of the opposition to be in the interest of Assad and not against him, he said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey has not seen data on fugitive Raqqa fighters, officials say;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has not been given crucial data to help identify Islamic State militants who fled their former stronghold in Raqqa last month and may have slipped out of Syria to threaten Turkish or Western targets, Turkish officials said. Hundreds of Islamic State members and their families were allowed to leave Raqqa by Kurdish and Arab forces who captured the city in mid-October, spokesmen for the fighters and the U.S.-led alliance which supports them said. The coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq said last month that biometric information including fingerprints was taken from the militants before their convoy left Raqqa, so they would be known if they resurface in the future . But two senior Turkish security officials told Reuters they had not seen any such data which would identify fighters from Raqqa among the hundreds of Islamic State suspects rounded up in security sweeps in Turkish cities over the last two weeks. If the United States or the coalition received information about Islamic State members who were withdrawn from Raqqa and is not sharing it with Turkey, how will we fight against terrorism together? one official said. We didn t receive any biometric data in this office, another security official said. A third government official said he believed the biometric data had not been shared with Turkey. Ankara has bitterly criticized the deal to allow militants to leave Raqqa, saying it suspects some fighters have been smuggled across Syria s northern border into Turkey and could pose an international threat. These Islamic State members, released with their weapons, will cause deaths of innocent people in Europe, the United States, all over the world, especially in Turkey, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said last week. His comments reflect long-running tensions with Washington over its support for the Kurdish YPG militia which spearheaded the fight to seize Raqqa from Islamic State, as well as Turkey s complaints at what it says is limited security cooperation. Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which has waged an insurgency in the south of the country since the 1980s, and says weapons supplied by the United States will fall under PKK control. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last week that the Raqqa deal showed the YPG was more interested in gaining territory for a Kurdish state in Syria than defeating Islamic State. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they are not seeking secession. They are in close cooperation with Daesh (Islamic State) there, Cavusoglu said. These organizations appear to be fighting when it suits them. The coalition said around 250 fighters, accompanied by 3,000 people it described as human shields, left Raqqa on Oct. 15 under the deal reached by Arab tribal leaders and a local civil council. In a statement to Reuters, it said a coalition leader had attended talks where the deal was reached but was not an active participant, and it explicitly disagreed with letting armed ISIS (Islamic State) terrorists leave Raqqa . The coalition said screening of the departing fighters was carried out by Kurdish YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who took Raqqa, and the Raqqa Civil Council. It referred questions about the biometric data gleaned from the tests to those two bodies. As far as it was aware none of the terrorists who departed Raqqa with the convoy on Oct. 15, 2017 were able to legally or illegally gain entry to Turkey, the coalition said, without saying whether it had been able to track them. SDF spokesman Mostafa Bali said all the fighters who were allowed to leave Raqqa were in SDF detention. He did not say whether the biometric data had been shared. But another Turkish official said Ankara suspected - based on interrogations of captured suspects - that some militants from Raqqa had managed to smuggle themselves across the border, despite increased security at crossings. We believe some of the captured Islamic State militants may be from those that left Raqqa, he said. Since they came in with their families, we get this (information) from their families . There was no specific intelligence of a threat to Turkey or Europe at the moment, he added, but an attack could take place at any time. We have brought measures to counter this to their highest level, he said. Exchange of information with Europe and the United States was continuing, despite any political differences, he added. France, where militants killed 130 people in coordinated strikes across Paris in November 2015, said last week the threat of an attack was no greater than over the last two years and security services were either arresting or monitoring Islamist militants who returned from Syria and Iraq. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin, Trump to discuss North Korea on Tuesday: IFX cites Kremlin aide;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will discuss North Korea when they hold a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Interfax news agency cited Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov as saying. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier on Tuesday that the conversation would focus on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s visit to Russia which he made on Monday. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tunisia PM will go ahead with painful policy despite opposition;TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia will continue with a package of painful economic policies, Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said on Tuesday, despite resistance from labor unions and business associations to changes that will raise taxes and put thousands out of work. The North African country is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund to speed up policy changes and help its economy recover from militant attacks in 2015 that hurt its vital tourism industry. Tunisia plans to raise value-added and other taxes and lay off about 10,000 government workers as part of the 2018 budget to cut its budget deficit. The government has also proposed a 1 percent social security tax on employees and companies. A federation of company owners, UTICA, has rejected that proposal and is threatening to shut down companies. We will seek consensus with all, but we go ahead with reforms needed to revive the economy and will not retreat, Chahed told parliament at the start of the budget debate. Chahed also wants to freeze public-sector hiring, but the powerful union UGTT said it will not accept that, because branches such as education and health needed recruitments. Beware the anger of the Tunisian UGTT if the situation continues and if the rest of the parties refuse to share sacrifice, UGTT head Nourredine Taboubi said. Tunisia has been praised for its democratic progress after a 2011 uprising that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. But successive governments have failed to make the changes needed to trim deficits and create growth. Under the 2018 budget, the deficit will fall to 4.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2018, from about 6 percent expected in 2017. Tunisia hopes to raise GDP to about 3 percent next year against 2.3 percent this year. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lack of German government puts euro zone integration plans on hold;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The collapse of talks on a new German government means that the euro zone s ambitious plans for deeper economic integration could be put on hold, euro zone officials said on Tuesday. German government coalition talks collapsed on Sunday night as the liberal FDP party pulled out after weeks of exploratory talks, plunging the euro zone s most important economy into political uncertainty and raising the prospect of new elections. Euro zone leaders are to set a direction for deeper euro zone economic integration at a summit in the middle of December, at which Germany s input is crucial. As long as Germany does not have a clear position, it will by default not agree to anything. Therefore, delay is the most likely option, one senior euro zone official involved in the euro zone integration talks said. The summit is to launch six months of work that would lead decisions in June 2018 on whether or not the single currency area should have a budget, a finance minister and a euro zone assembly in the European Parliament. The deeper integration push, championed by French President Emmanuel Macron, also includes the transformation of the euro zone bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund and the creation of a sovereign insolvency mechanism. Things will go on hold until there is a formal acting German government, a second euro zone official said. At this stage I don t see what steps the leaders could take in December or June for deepening euro zone integration when there is a German government without a mandate, he said. Some officials said that a potential delay in the euro zone integration talks was not a big issue because they concerned the future architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), now encompassing 19 countries. There is nothing that makes new decisions on the EMU especially urgent, so I don t believe this to be a real problem, a third senior euro zone official said. The June deadline can always be moved, if need be, the official said. But others noted the initial timing of the talks was to make use of a window of opportunity in 2018, when no major euro zone countries, except Italy, or EU institutions had to face elections and were therefore free to focus on euro zone reforms. If the talks were delayed, decisions on key issues, often sensitive politically, could be pushed back toward 2019 a year of elections to the European Parliament, the formation of a new European Commission and choosing new heads of the European Central Bank and the chairman of EU leaders. An official involved in preparations for the December summit said it would go ahead as planned. National elections happening all the time, all over Europe, are no reason to stop our work, the official said. But others said they expected the mandate that leaders would give to the Commission for further work on euro zone integration would probably be weaker than it would have otherwise been if no German government is in place by then. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Congress members decry 'ethnic cleansing' in Myanmar;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's state mouthpiece captures fall of First Lady Grace;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s longstanding government and ruling party mouthpiece, The Herald newspaper, has abruptly changed its tune on President Robert Mugabe s wife Grace, confirmation of her political downfall. The Herald often takes its marching orders from the information ministry. And it has always reported from the point of view of the winning faction in the ruling ZANU-PF, making it a reliable barometer of someone s political standing. In August, the paper ran a typically fawning portrait of Grace under the headline A Loving Mother of the Nation. Loving mother, compassionate philanthropist, astute businesswoman, perceptive politician, remarkable patriot, these are all adjectives that can be used to describe the First Lady Dr Grace Mugabe, The Herald gushed. Less than three months later and in the wake of a coup that threatens Mugabe s presidency and has seen both he and Grace expelled from ZANU-PF, her Herald portrayal was starkly different. Grace Mugabe lacked grooming and true motherhood as shown by her foul language, the paper quoted the ZANU-PF s youth wing as saying. We take exception to the vulgar language which had become part of Mrs Mugabe s vocabulary, it quoted a Youth League cadre as saying. Zimbabweans, many of whom are devoutly religious and culturally conservative, often take offense at profanities. The piece featured an unflattering picture of an unsmiling Grace - a sharp departure from the loving mother portrayal that included photos of her smiling and holding infants. Until the events of the past week, the political fortunes of Grace dubbed Gucci Grace for her reputed fondness shopping sprees were on the rise, if The Herald s coverage was anything to go on. In September 2014, the University of Zimbabwe awarded her a PHD raising eyebrows as her academic prowess had previously been unknown. But in Zimbabwe, the path to power is paved with academic letters. Weeks later, one Herald headline blared: Dr Grace Mugabe honored in song. At the time, she was being shoe-horned into the top position in ZANU-PF s Women s League, and the song was entitled: Dr G Mugabe For Women s League Secretary. Just 12 days ago, paper was reporting that the Women s League was backing Grace in her bid to become vice president. This was days after Mugabe sacked his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa, clearing the path for Grace to assume the role and succeed her 93-year-old husband. It was this tilt at power that triggered the army backlash. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe parliament has received motion to remove Mugabe: Speaker;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s parliament has received a motion to impeach President Robert Mugabe after the army seized power last week, Speaker Jacob Mudenda said on Tuesday. Mudenda said parliament would adjourn to a hotel to start the impeachment proceedings against the 93-year-old president, who defied his party s Monday noon deadline to resign. Zimbabwean law says a joint sitting can take place anywhere. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French truckers jam border crossings over cut-price competition;PARIS (Reuters) - French truck drivers blocked traffic at border crossings with Spain, Italy and Belgium on Tuesday in protest over cut-price competition in the road-freight industry. French truckers are angry that an agreement reached by EU member states on Oct. 23 to limit the amount of time workers can be posted from one EU country to another does not cover the road transport sector. [L8N1MY3RF] As a result, French truckers face being priced out by drivers from other EU member states, especially east Europe, Spain and Portugal, who are willing to do fixed-term work for lower pay than French drivers might normally receive. Widening gaps in pay and conditions endanger French firms and workers, said Pascal Favre, a member of the Force Ouvriere labor union who was among truckers protesting in southwest France, near the border with Spain. (There are) those who work for lower pay because they spend more time behind the wheel on jobs the French do not do because of unfair competition. The posted workers issue effectively pits wealthier EU countries against poorer peers like Poland and Bulgaria, whose skilled workers are keen to move around the EU on fixed-term contracts, earning more than they would do at home but often undercutting workers in the host country. The number of workers posted to France from other EU countries rose 23.8 percent to 354,151 in 2016, after a similar jump the preceding year, according to a government count cited by the business newspaper Les Echos on Tuesday. Emmanuel Macron made the issue part of his presidential campaign, saying he would fight to protect workers from unfair competition. While he managed to forge agreement among the EU s 28 states for some adjustments to the rules, transportation workers were not included. About 200 French truckers took part in the protest at the northern border crossing into Rekkem in Belgium, waving cars through but halting trucks, a local police official said. Traffic on the main motorway from the French city of Lille to the Belgian city of Ghent was disrupted by another trucker protest in the region for a few hours early in the day. Traffic through the Frejus tunnel to Italy in the southeast was similarly disrupted, as were some crossings with Spain. It wasn t immediately clear how great the economic impact of the protests would be, although they were not expected to continue beyond Tuesday. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South African, Angolan leaders to visit Zimbabwe ob Wednesday;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma and his Angolan counterpart, Joao Lourenco, will travel on Wednesday to Zimbabwe, where 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe is under growing pressure to resign, South Africa s state broadcaster said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Famine survey warns of thousands dying daily in Yemen if ports stay closed;GENEVA (Reuters) - A U.S.-funded famine survey said on Tuesday that thousands of Yemenis could die daily if a Saudi-led military coalition does not lift its blockade on the country s key ports. The warning came a day after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said 2.5 million people in Yemen s crowded cities had no access to clean water, raising the risk that a cholera epidemic will spread. Using the internationally recognized IPC 5-point scale for classifying food security, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said that even before the current blockade, 15 million people were in crisis (IPC Phase 3) or worse. Therefore, a prolonged closure of key ports risks an unprecedented deterioration in food security to Famine (IPC Phase 5) across large areas of the country, it said. It said famine is likely in many areas within three or four months if ports remain closed, with some less accessible areas at even greater risk. In such a scenario, shortages of food and fuel would drive up prices, and a lack of medical supplies would exacerbate life-threatening diseases. Thousands of deaths would occur each day due to the lack of food and disease outbreaks, said FEWS NET, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Famine remained likely even if the southern port of Aden is open, its report said, adding that all Yemeni ports should be reopened to essential imports. The United Nations has said the Saudi-led coalition must allow aid in through Hodeidah port, controlled by the Houthis, the Saudis enemies in the war in Yemen. U.N. humanitarian agencies have issued dire warnings about the impact of the blockade, although U.N. officials have declined to directly criticize Saudi Arabia. Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former U.N. aid chief, was blunt in his criticism, however. US, UK & other allies of Saudi has only weeks to avoid being complicit in a famine of Biblical proportions. Lift the blockade now, he wrote in a tweet. Last year Saudi Arabia was accused by then U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of exerting unacceptable undue pressure to keep itself off a blacklist of countries that kill children in conflict, after sources told Reuters that Riyadh had threatened to cut some U.N. funding. Saudi Arabia denied this. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. rebukes Philippines president Duterte, Burundi officials for threats;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday condemned attacks and threats made against its investigators by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and by senior Burundian officials. Last week Mr Duterte threatened to slap (U.N. special rapporteur Agnes) Callamard if she investigates him for alleged extrajudicial killings, U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing. He made the same threat against her in June after she criticized his war on drugs campaign which has left thousands dead, he added, referring to remarks made after her visit in May in an unofficial capacity to attend an academic conference. The Philippine Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing arguments in a petition to declare Duterte s deadly war on drugs, denounced by rights groups across the world, as unconstitutional. More than 3,900 Filipinos have been killed in what the police called self-defense after armed drugs suspects resisted arrest in the 16 month-long campaign. Critics say executions are taking place with zero accountability, allegations the police reject. Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, is an independent expert reporting to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Her planned visit to the Philippines last December was called off because she refused to accept Duterte s conditions. Recently she has also been subjected to a tirade of online abuse, including physical threats, during what appears to be a prolonged and well-orchestrated trolling operation across the internet and on social media , Colville said. We condemn this treatment of Ms Callamard and the disrespect it shows to the Human Rights Council that appointed her in the strongest terms, he added. On Burundi, the U.N. rights office has written to the Bujumbura government to demand that officials stop threatening with prosecution members of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry that found Burundian officials at the highest level should be held accountable for crimes against humanity, Colville said. Burundi s ambassador in New York told the U.N. General Assembly that the inquiry s report was biased and politically motivated and threatened to bring to justice its authors for defamation and attempted detribalization, he said. Burundi is an elected member of the 47-member Human Rights Council, the main U.N. rights forum. All states should cooperate with mandates established by the Council. None of them are established without good cause, Colville said. ;worldnews;21/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Navy plane crashes in Philippine Sea, three missing;TOKYO (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy transport plane carrying 11 people crashed in the Philippine Sea south of Japan on Wednesday as it flew to the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and three people were missing, in the latest Navy accident in the region. Eight other people were rescued and transferred to the carrier where they were in good condition, the U.S. Seventh Fleet said. Search and rescue efforts for three personnel continue with U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) ships and aircraft on scene, the U.S. Seventh Fleet said in a news release. The incident will be investigated, it added. The plane was conducting a routine transport flight carrying passengers and cargo from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni to the carrier, which was operating in the Philippine Sea as part of an exercise with Japanese forces, it said. U.S. President Donald Trump was briefed on the crash at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida, where he is spending the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, said White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters. The @USNavy is conducting search and rescue following aircraft crash. We are monitoring the situation. Prayers for all involved, Trump wrote in a Twitter post. Japanese Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera told reporters the U.S. Navy informed him that the crash may have been a result of engine trouble. The propeller-powered transport plane, a C-2 Greyhound, carries personnel, mail and other cargo from mainland bases to carriers operating at sea. C-2 aircraft have been in operation for more than five decades and are due to be replaced by the long-range tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft. Two crashes in the Asia Pacific region involving U.S. Navy warships and commercial vessels this year have raised questions about Navy training and the pace of operations in the region, prompted a Congressional hearing and the removal of a number of officers. The guided missile destroyer Fitzgerald almost sank off the coast of Japan after colliding with a Philippine container ship on June 17. The bodies of seven U.S. sailors were found in a flooded berthing area after that collision. In a separate incident in August, 10 sailors were killed when the guided missile destroyer John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker. The Navy has dismissed a number of officers, including the commander of the Seventh Fleet, as a result of the collisions involving its warships in Asia. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Besieged Syrians eating trash, fainting from hunger: U.N. survey;GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrians in the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta are so short of food that they are eating trash, fainting from hunger and forcing their children to eat on alternate days, the U.N. World Food Programme said in a report on Wednesday. Since September, approximately 174,500 people in the town of Douma in the besieged zone have been forced to adopt emergency coping strategies , the WFP report said. This includes consuming expired food, animal fodder and refuse, spending days without eating, begging and engaging in high risk activities to get food. Moreover, many hunger-induced fainting episodes have been reported among school children and teachers. At least four people have died from hunger, including a child in Douma who took his own life due to hunger, said the report, which was based on a mobile phone survey and information from contacts on the ground. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta since 2012 and Douma has not had a food aid convoy since receiving wheat flour rations in August. Although the area is traditionally agricultural, arable land on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta is either on the frontline of the conflict or targeted by snipers, the report said. Last week fighting destroyed recently distributed rations in a storehouse, exacerbating shortages. Although Damascus is only 15 km (10 miles) away, 700-grams (25 ounces) of bread is 85 times more expensive in Eastern Ghouta, the report said. The situation is anticipated to deteriorate further in the coming weeks when food stock is expected to be totally depleted and household coping strategies will be highly eroded as a result. Government restrictions meant WFP could only provide a fraction of the food needed. Family food baskets were being shared among six families and were reportedly the only source of food for many female-headed and destitute households, it said. Some households are even resorting to rotation strategies whereby the children who ate yesterday would not eat today and vice-versa. The report quoted a female head of household in Douma as saying she was forced to rotate rations between her 13-year-old daughter and her two- and three-year-old orphaned grandchildren. My daughter cries every time I lock her door cause she knows today is not her turn and will sleep with an empty stomach, she said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab states blacklist Islamist groups, individuals in Qatar boycott;DUBAI (Reuters) - The four Arab countries boycotting Qatar added 11 more individuals and two other entities, including a major group of Islamist scholars, to their terrorist blacklists for the Gulf state, Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Thursday. The lists now include the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) which was formed in 2004 mostly by clerics belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and is chaired by the influential Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi. A statement issued by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain said they also blacklisted the International Islamic Council (IIC). The two entities listed are two terrorist organizations that promote terrorism by using Islamic rhetoric as a cover to facilitate terrorist activities, the statement said. The move deepened the rift between the four countries and Qatar, the world s top gas exporter and host to the biggest U.S. military base in the Middle East. The countries cut ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of financing militants in Syria and allying with Iran, their regional foe. The Saudi-led quartet also added 11 individuals to their lists, including the acting Brotherhood leader Mahmoud Ezzat Ibrahim. The Muslim Brotherhood movement led the Arab Spring protests in 2011 that toppled some autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa. The Gulf States rulers see the group, whose political ideology challenges the principle of dynastic rule, as a security threat. The IUMS membership includes the Saudi cleric Salman al-Awdah, who was arrested by Saudi authorities in September, the Tunisian Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Ennahda party, and Moroccan scholar Ahmed Raissouni. Mediation efforts of the Qatar crisis led by Kuwait and shuttle diplomacy by Western officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have failed to end what has become the worst rift between Gulf Arab states in years. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italian magistrates investigate whether ex-Treasury official sold secrets;ROME (Reuters) - Italian magistrates are investigating whether a Treasury official sold confidential government information to her previous employers, Ernst & Young, two judicial sources involved in the case said on Wednesday. Magistrates suspect that Susanna Masi was paid some 220,000 euros ( 195,290.33) between 2013-2015 in return for sensitive material, including on planned tax reforms which could have given the professional services firm an unfair advantage over its rivals, the sources said. Masi s lawyer, Giorgio Perroni, confirmed his client was being investigated but denied she had done anything wrong. Neither Ernst & Young s Italian office, nor lawyers representing the company, responded to requests for comment. The judicial sources told Reuters that magistrates had emails and wiretaps to back up their case. Perroni said he was still waiting to see the case files after which his client would request to meet the investigators. We are certain that we will be able to demonstrate the correct behaviour of my client and the total lack of foundation of the accusations, Perroni told Reuters. Masi joined the Treasury in 2012, becoming a tax adviser for the government in 2013. In 2015, she was appointed to the board of Equitalia a state-owned tax collection agency while retaining her position within the Treasury, her lawyer said. Corriere della Sera newspaper, which first reported the story on Wednesday, said besides leaking confidential information, Masi was also suspected of lobbying on behalf of Ernst & Young for modifications to the tax code. Corriere said Masi worked for Ernst & Young before joining the Treasury. Perroni confirmed she used to work for the company in Italy, but did not know the exact dates. The Treasury declined to comment on the case. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. calls Myanmar moves against Rohingya 'ethnic cleansing';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday called the Myanmar military operation against the Rohingya population ethnic cleansing and threatened targeted sanctions against those responsible for what it called horrendous atrocities. The situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement, using a term he avoided when visiting Myanmar, also known as Burma, last week. The United States will also pursue accountability through U.S. law, including possible targeted sanctions against those responsible for the alleged abuses, which have driven hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh, he said. The United States shifted its stance in part to raise pressure on Myanmar s military and civilian leaders, who have shared power for the past two years under an uneasy arrangement after decades of military rule, to address the crisis. Rights monitors accused Myanmar s military of atrocities, including killings, mass rape and arson, against the stateless Rohingya during so-called clearance operations after Rohingya militants Aug. 25 attacks on 30 police posts and an army base. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine state in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh, since the crackdown, which followed the insurgent attacks. These abuses by some among the Burmese military, security forces, and local vigilantes have caused tremendous suffering and forced hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to flee their homes, Tillerson said. While repeating U.S. condemnation of the insurgent attacks, he added: No provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued. Myanmar s 2-year-old government, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals with whom it shares power. It s not a situation that is completely under her authority, but certainly we are counting on her to show leadership and also to work through the civilian government with the military to address the crisis, a senior U.S. official told reporters in a conference call. The term ethnic cleansing is not defined in international or U.S. law and does not inherently carry specific consequences, a second senior U.S. official said on the call. Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said the State Department s use of the term and threat of sanctions will likely have limited to no impact on the ground. It is likely to create more distrust between the United States and Myanmar s military and government and push them closer to China, Russia, and its more authoritarian neighbors in Southeast Asia, he added. The U.S. move came the same day as a U.N. tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic of genocide and crimes against humanity for massacres of Bosnian Muslims and ethnic cleansing campaigns, and imprisoned him for life. The second U.S. official said Washington was analyzing whether genocide or crimes against humanity had occurred in Myanmar, which would violate international law, but has made no determination on either and that this would take time to assess. In the end it s a court that has to decide that, as we ve just seen with the verdict against Mladic, he said. A top U.N. official in September described the military actions as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing, but the United States until Wednesday had avoided the term. Washington has sought to balance its wish to nurture the civilian government in Myanmar, where it competes for influence with China, with its desire to hold the military accountable for the abuses. U.S. officials also worry that the mistreatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority may fuel radicalism. The first U.S. official said Washington would work with Bangladesh and Myanmar to encourage the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya. We have focused on the issue of voluntary returns, the official said. We don t want people to be forced to return to a situation in which they feel uncomfortable. Congressional pressure for a tougher U.S. response to the Rohingya crisis mounted before President Donald Trump s first visit to Asia this month to attend a summit of Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, in Manila. U.S. government sources told Reuters in October that officials were preparing a recommendation for Tillerson that would define the military-led campaign against the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, which could spur new sanctions. In early November, U.S. lawmakers proposed targeted sanctions and travel restrictions on Myanmar military officials. Rights group Amnesty International called for a comprehensive arms embargo against Myanmar as well as targeted financial sanctions against senior Myanmar military officials. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentine navy says unusual noise heard on day sub disappeared;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An unusual noise was detected last week on the day an Argentine submarine went missing, near its last reported position, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters on Wednesday. Pressed by reporters on the nature of the detected sound, Balbi declined to say whether it indicated an explosion or other emergency aboard the ARA San Juan, which was last heard from on Nov. 15. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. welcomes Hariri's return to Lebanon: State Department official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States welcomes Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s return to Lebanon, a U.S. State Department official said on Wednesday. The United States is also encouraged by Hariri s discussions with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and his statement reaffirming his commitment to the stability of Lebanon, the official said. After returning to Beirut for the first time since he quit abruptly on Nov. 4 in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia, Hariri shelved his decision to resign at the request of Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's PM Hariri shelves resignation, easing crisis;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri on Wednesday shelved his decision to resign as prime minister at the request of President Michel Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East. Hariri made his announcement after returning to Beirut for the first time since he quit abruptly on Nov. 4 in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia. Top Lebanese officials have said Riyadh forced him to quit and held him in the kingdom. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. At the presidential palace near Beirut, Hariri said he hoped his move would lead to a responsible dialogue...that deals with divisive issues and their repercussions on Lebanon s relations with Arab brothers. Hariri said all Lebanese sides must commit to keeping the country out of regional conflicts, a reference to the Iran-backed Hezbollah political and military movement. Hezbollah s regional military role has greatly alarmed Saudi Arabia, Hariri s long-time ally. I presented today my resignation to President Aoun and he urged me to wait before offering it and to hold onto it for more dialogue about its reasons and political background, and I showed responsiveness, he said in a televised statement. The resignation had shocked even Hariri s aides. He returned to Lebanon late on Tuesday night after French intervention. Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, had refused to accept the resignation because it happened in mysterious circumstances abroad. He had called Hariri a hostage in Riyadh. Hariri appeared to express relief that Aoun had not accepted the resignation right away. He thanked Aoun on Wednesday for respecting constitutional norms and his rejection of departing from them under any circumstances . The resignation pitched Lebanon to the forefront of the regional rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran, which backs Lebanon s Hezbollah, and raised concerns of a protracted crisis. In his resignation speech, Hariri had cited fear of assassination, and attacked Iran along with Hezbollah for sowing strife in the Arab world. Hundreds of Hariri supporters packed the streets near his house in central Beirut, waving the blue flag of his Future Movement political party. The Sunni leader told them he would stay with (them)... to be a line of defense for Lebanon, Lebanon s stability and Lebanon s Arabism . His presence in the country alone brings stability, said Manar Akoum, 26, as she stood with the celebrating crowd. Hariri s resignation was followed by a steep escalation in Saudi statements against the Lebanese government, which includes Shi ite Hezbollah. Riyadh said the government as a whole - not just Hezbollah - had declared war against it. Western governments including the United States struck a different tone, affirming their support for Hariri and the stability of Lebanon, which hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees - nearly one-in-four of the population. Ahead of his return to Beirut, Hariri had stressed the importance of the Lebanese state policy of staying out of regional conflicts, notably Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iran-backed Houthi fighters. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who had also called for Hariri s return, said on Monday his group was open to any dialogue and any discussion . Nasrallah also issued his clearest denial yet of any Hezbollah role in Yemen. A senior source in a political alliance that includes Hezbollah said Hariri s move on Wednesday would start a breakthrough in the crisis. This step is not detached from the framework of a complete solution whose features will appear in the coming days, the source told Reuters. Lebanese dollar bonds, which had fallen in response to Hariri s resignation, gained following Wednesday s announcement. A government minister from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a close ally of Saudi Arabia, said Lebanon must implement its policy of keeping out of Middle East conflicts in order to get out of its own crisis as well as regional troubles. The main problem facing that is the selective implementation of (this) principle and the functional Iranian role of Hezbollah outside the Lebanese framework, Anwar Gargash, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, wrote on Twitter. Cyprus, where Hariri had briefly stopped on his journey home, said it would attempt to help defuse the crisis. Our common objective is stability in Lebanon, stability in our area. Within this context... the President of the Republic will undertake some initiatives precisely to promote this objective;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian factions agree to hold general election by end-2018;GAZA/CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian factions, including rival groups Hamas and Fatah, have agreed to hold a general election by the end of 2018, a joint statement by several groups said on Wednesday following talks in Cairo. Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation deal in October in Cairo-backed talks after Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of Gaza, including the key Rafah border crossing, a decade after seizing the enclave in a civil war. The Palestinian groups in Cairo said they would defer the choice of a final date for the general election to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Western-backed mainstream Fatah party lost control of Gaza to Hamas, considered a terrorist group by many in the West and by Israel, in fighting in 2007. But last month Hamas agreed to cede powers in Gaza to Abbas Fatah-backed government in a deal mediated by Egypt. Salah Al-Bardaweel, a Hamas official involved in the talks, called Wednesday s agreement vague and expressed concern that it was unable to progress on key issues such as lifting sanctions imposed by Abbas and secure full opening of the crossing between Gaza and Egypt. The talks also failed to address security responsibilities in Gaza, which have so far remained in the hands of Hamas-backed security services. Abbas has said previously that upon assuming control of Gaza he would move to lift sanctions imposed on the impoverished enclave that have included power cuts and salary reductions of 30 percent to some 60,000 Gazans employed by his Palestinian Authority. We worked hard to reach practical results ... such as opening crossings and lifting the sanctions and advancing the issue of reconciliation but unfortunately it did not happen, said Bardaweel. Azzam Al-Ahmed, head of Fatah s delegation to the Cairo talks, said his group insisted Hamas completes full handover of Gaza control to the government by Dec 1. He added that another meeting with Hamas will be held later in December to evaluate further reconciliation steps. Palestinian officials said Egypt is expected to send a security delegation to Gaza in the coming days to oversee the implementation of the agreement. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. pressed Saudis to ease Yemen blockade: sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Saudi Arabia to ease its blockade of Yemen, two sources said, just days before the Saudi-led military coalition announced on Wednesday it would let aid flow through the Yemeni port of Hodeidah and allow U.N. flights to the capital. It was not clear if pressure from Washington was the direct cause of the Saudi change of heart but the request from Tillerson to Saudi Arabia s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was one of several U.S. attempts this month to have Riyadh soften its hawkish foreign policy. Tillerson asked for a loosening of the blockade on Yemen during a roughly 45-minute phone call at the beginning of this week, according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. R.C. Hammond, a top adviser to Tillerson, confirmed the exchange with Prince Mohammed. The secretary of state has brought the request to (the) Saudis attention several times over the past months, he added. The Trump administration, according to U.S. officials and a European diplomat, also pressed the Saudis to allow Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to return to Beirut after he flew to Riyadh on Nov.4 and abruptly announced his resignation. The efforts to take the edge off Saudi Arabia s foreign policy reflect growing U.S. concern about Riyadh s direction despite high-profile attempts by President Donald Trump to improve relations with the longtime U.S. ally. Publicly, Trump, his top aides and senior Saudi officials have hailed what they say is a major improvement in U.S.-Saudi ties compared with relations under former President Barack Obama, who upset the Saudis by sealing a nuclear deal with their arch-foe Iran. Privately, however, U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts express growing dismay over Riyadh s foreign policy, especially toward Yemen and Lebanon, as Saudi Arabia aims to contain Iranian influence. It is my understanding that the administration is frustrated. There has been of course varying degrees of frustration from different members of the administration, U.S. Senator Todd Young said of the situation in Yemen. Young, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke before the Saudi-led military coalition s decision was announced on Wednesday. The coalition, which is fighting Houthi rebels, said it would allow humanitarian aid access through Hodeidah and U. N. flights to the capital Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country to stop the flow of arms from Iran. Yemen, in civil war and under bombardment by a Saudi-led coalition, faces a deep humanitarian crisis and aid workers warn of famine if the blockade were not lifted. A senior Saudi official told Reuters that even before Tillerson and Prince Mohammed spoke recently, senior White House officials had communicated to the Saudi ambassador in Washington the importance of taking those two steps. They stressed the importance of addressing the humanitarian situation in Yemen and we said that we understood and that the closures were temporary while we work on a comprehensive aid and access plan, the official said. An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that White House and National Security Council officials worked on easing the blockade with senior Saudi officials, including Prince Mohammed and his younger brother Khalid, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Much of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, multiple U.S. officials say, is conducted in a tight circle and led by Trump s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who has established a direct channel with Prince Mohammed. Kushner did not oppose the pressure on the Saudis and United Arab Emirates to ease humanitarian suffering in Yemen, said one U.S. official. But the official added: In no way does this change the position that Jared and the Crown Prince evidently share that the main objective is reversing Iranian influence in Yemen and elsewhere. On Lebanon, the U.S. message to Saudi Arabia about Hariri was conveyed in statements by Tillerson and in private conversations between U.S. and Saudi officials. Those officials included the Saudi state minister for Gulf affairs, Thamer al-Sabhan, who was in Washington recently, a senior administration official said. We ve encouraged...the Saudis that it will be good for Lebanon s political stability for Hariri to return back to Beirut as soon as is practical, the official said last week. Hariri has since returned to Lebanon and shelved his decision to resign as prime minister, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East. Top Lebanese officials have said Saudi Arabia forced Hariri to quit and held him in the kingdom. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Facing graft probe, Pakistan Finance Minister relieved of duties;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan s Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has been relieved of his duties, local media said on Wednesday, following speculation about his future after he failed to appear in court to answer corruption charges. Documents seen by Reuters show Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi granted Dar sick leave on Wednesday, while local TV channels Geo and Samaa said he had been relieved of his portfolio. Dar would keep his status as a minister for the time being, Geo reported. Dar, who is receiving medical treatment in London for a heart condition, has an arrest warrant issued against him after he missed multiple court appearances on charges that he had amassed wealth beyond his known sources of income. The case had, along with Pakistan s worsening economic outlook, led to mounting calls for him to resign. The country is battling to stave off balance of payments pressures due to a dwindling foreign currency reserve and a widening current account deficit. A spokesman for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could Dar. He has missed more than three weeks of court hearings conducted by the anti-graft agency, the National Accountability Bureau. Dar s absence had come at an awkward time for Pakistan, which has been trying to woo international investors as it looks to raise in excess of $1 billion on debt markets through a Sukuk and a Eurobond in coming months. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led coalition to reopen Yemen's Hodeidah port, Sanaa airport for aid;DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi-led military coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow humanitarian aid access through Yemen s port of Hodeidah and United Nations flights to the capital Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country. The coalition closed air, land and sea access to the Arabian Peninsula country on Nov. 6 to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons. Soon after the closure, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock warned that the blockade could spark the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims unless the coalition gave access to humanitarian aid. The Saudi-led coalition said in a statement on Wednesday that from Nov. 23 the Red Sea port of Hodeidah would be reopened to receive food aid and humanitarian relief, and Sanaa airport would be open for UN flights with humanitarian relief. We re monitoring these developments, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York. If that were to happen that would be a very welcome and critically important development. We made clear the tremendous amount of needs on the ground, Haq said. Earlier this month the coalition said it would allow aid deliveries through the government-held port of Aden. However, around 80 percent of Yemen s food imports arrive through Hodeidah. The United Nations has said some seven million people in Yemen are on the brink of famine and nearly 900,000 have been infected with cholera, a waterborne disease that causes acute diarrhea and dehydration. Aid groups said there also needed to be commercial access to Yemen for food and fuel shipments. Humanitarian aid alone cannot meet the needs of Yemenis who are unjustly bearing the brunt of this war, Paolo Cernuschi, Yemen country director at the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement. Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former U.N. aid chief, posted on Twitter, We need all ports to open and access for commercial food and supplies to large civilian population. Humanitarian aid alone cannot avert hunger. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday that it had evacuated from Sanaa five staff members in need of urgent medical assistance. The Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the Houthis since they seized parts of Yemen in 2015, including the capital Sanaa, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee. The Houthis, drawn mainly from Yemen s Zaidi Shi ite minority and allied with long-serving former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control much of the country. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine rebel leader says situation in Luhansk is attempted coup;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The presence of armed men in the streets of the capital of Ukraine s breakaway Luhansk region is an attempted coup by a fired local police chief, Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the self-styled Luhansk People s Republic (LNR), said on Wednesday. Plotnitsky sacked Igor Kornet, the local interior minister, on Monday. How else can you call the situation when the person fired by court from his job is attempting to conduct some operations by force? This an attempt to seize power, Plotnitsky s website quoted him as saying during a meeting with reporters. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rights groups urge end to Poland's overhaul of judiciary;WARSAW (Reuters) - Plans to overhaul Poland s judiciary would end the country s status as a democratic state based on the rule of law and should be scrapped, more than two dozen rights groups and non-governmental organizations said in a petition on Wednesday. The petition, backed by Amnesty International and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights among others, came as parliament started debating amendments agreed by President Andrzej Duda and the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). The proposals give the parliament a virtually free hand in deciding the composition of the Supreme Court and how judges are selected and are in gross conflict with the constitution, the signatories said in their petition. The introduction of these amendments will mean that Poland will definitely cease to be a democratic state of law, it said. We request the immediate stoppage of parliamentary work on (the bills) and demand the start of extensive public consultations on this. The nationalist, eurosceptic PiS, which has a parliamentary majority, says reform of the judicial system is needed because the courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist-era mentality. Duda had raised hopes among critics of the plans that they could be halted when he vetoed the original PiS proposals in July, following nationwide protests and warnings from the European Union. The president, an ally of PiS, said then that the proposals gave too much power to one party and to the justice minister. But subsequent work on the amendments has been conducted in secrecy, spurring criticism from the United Nations and the European Commission that they could further damage Poland s judicial system. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of PiS and Poland s paramount politician, has met privately with Duda several times for talks. Details of those meetings have not been made public and it is not known what consensus has been reached. The president gave us some hope that the constitution would not be so continually abused, said Irena Kaminska, a judge and a member of the Themis association of judges. For a moment I had hoped there would be a breakthrough, but that has not happened. Stanislaw Piotrowicz, head of parliament s justice committee, told the PAP state news agency that lawmakers could complete work on the bills at the next session, planned for Dec. 6-8. If the bills pass they could potentially allow PiS to tighten its control of the political system, its critics said. Marcin Matczak of the Batory Foundation in Warsaw, one of the NGO signatories to the petition, said PiS would be able to change the electoral system to its own advantage because the judges would no longer challenge them. After the (court) laws are implemented the government will be able to rule eternally, he said. There will be no one to defend us. The EU is pressing a legal case against Poland over its judicial reform plans and has suggested the country could forfeit some development funds if it refuses to change course. PiS says it has a democratic mandate for its reforms. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan says Turkey, Iran, Russia agreed to carry out political solution in Syria;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Turkey, Iran and Russia have agreed to carry out a transparent process for a political solution in Syria, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday. Speaking at a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the southern Russian city of Sochi, Erdogan said the solution process relied on the stance of the Syrian government and the opposition, adding that excluding terrorist groups from the process was a priority. Erdogan also said that solving negativities in Syria s Afrin would be a crucial step in the process, and called on the international community to support the steps taken by the three countries. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia-hosted summit could be decisive for Syria peace: Erdogan;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - A three-way summit on Wednesday between the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey could produce decisive steps toward ending the bloodshed in Syria, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said at the start of their talks. The summit, hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a rare occasion bringing together the leaders of Russia and Iran who back Syria s President Bashar al-Assad around a table with Erdogan, who has supported Assad s opponents. In opening remarks at the summit in the southern Russian resort of Sochi, Putin, Erdogan and Iran s President Hassan Rouhani spoke of an opening for peace in Syria now that Islamic State has been pushed out of its last major stronghold there. The point we have reached is important, but not enough, Erdogan told the gathering, also attended by military commanders and foreign ministers from the three countries. It is critical for all parties to contribute to a permanent and acceptable political solution for the people of Syria, he said. This summit is aimed at results, I believe critical decisions will be taken. As a prelude to the summit, Putin earlier this week hosted Assad at his residence in Sochi. It was the only time the Syrian leader is known to have left Syria since his last visit to Russia, two years ago. Putin also made telephone calls in the past 24 hours to other leaders with influence in Syria, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia s King Salman, as part of Moscow s drive to build an international consensus over a peace deal to end the six-year conflict. We can say with certainty that we have reached a new stage, opening up the possibility to launch a real political process towards a peace deal, Putin told the gathering. Compromises and concessions will be needed on all sides ... including (from) the Syrian government, Putin said. He said the focus of peace efforts should be the convocation of a congress bringing together all of Syria s ethnic groups. Russia has offered to host such a congress in Sochi, but attempts to agree a date have so far foundered, in part because Turkey raised objections to the presence of some Kurdish groups. Iran s Rouhani used his remarks at the summit to rail against the presence of foreign forces in Syria, an apparent reference to the United States and Tehran s arch regional rival Saudi Arabia, which alongside Turkey have backed Assad s foes. There is no excuse for the presence of foreign troops in Syria without the approval of its legitimate government, Rouhani said. The Syrian nation will not allow any interference of foreigners in their state affairs and will confront any move that harms Syria s integrity, independence and unity, he said. Iran s military is also present in Syria, alongside Russian troops and Hezbollah, the pro-Iran Lebanese militia. They say that does not amount to foreign interference because they are in Syria at Assad s invitation. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Summit on euro zone future in December still on despite no German government: Tusk;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A summit of euro zone leaders will go ahead as planned in the middle of December, the chairman of European Union leaders said on Wednesday, dispelling speculation it might be postponed because of the collapse of German coalition talks. Just to be clear: The December Euro Summit is on. As part of the Leaders Agenda we need to discuss what, how and when to move forward on the EMU (European Monetary Union) and the Banking Union, Tusk said on Twitter. He said he discussed the agenda of the meeting over the phone on Wednesday with the chairman of euro zone finance ministers Jeroen Dijsselbloem. German government coalition talks collapsed on Sunday night as the liberal FDP party pulled out after weeks of exploratory talks, plunging the euro zone s most important economy into political uncertainty and raising the prospect of new elections. Euro zone leaders are to set a direction for deeper euro zone economic integration at a summit in the middle of December, at which Germany s input is crucial. The summit is to launch six months of work that would lead decisions in June 2018 on whether or not the single currency area should have a budget, a finance minister and a separate euro zone assembly within the European Parliament. The deeper integration push, championed by French President Emmanuel Macron, also includes the transformation of the euro zone bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund and the creation of a sovereign insolvency mechanism. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma appoints permanent police commissioner;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma appointed General Khehla Sitole as national police commissioner on Wednesday, filling the position on a permanent basis for the first time in nearly three years. South Africa has been without a permanent head of police since Zuma suspended Riah Phiyega in 2015 pending an investigation into her role in the killing of 34 platinum miners by officers during a violent strike over pay in 2012. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, while burglary and car theft are common. Tackling violent crime is a top political priority for much of the public. Zuma has been criticized by opposition parties and civil society for previously appointing civilians rather career police officers to the top posts in the service. Sitole had grown through the ranks of the police having joined the service as a constable until his promotion as a Lieutenant General in 2011, Zuma s office said in a statement. General Sitole brings a wealth of operational as well as management experience to the SA Police Service. Zuma appointed his third police minister in under three years in March, drawing further criticism that he has failed to build a stable team to tackle crime. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Ramaphosa leads in nominations for ANC leader: poll;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has taken a lead in party nominations for the next leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), securing the support of 65 percent of branches tallied so far, a poll showed. Hundreds of ANC branches across South Africa are nominating their choice for party president and other senior positions ahead of a December conference where about 5,000 delegates sent by the branches will cast their votes. The ANC s next leader will probably become president of the country at a national election in 2019 given the party s electoral dominance. Early indications are that party members are split between Ramaphosa, a former union leader and one of the country s richest people, and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former minister and ex-wife of President Jacob Zuma, for the party s top job. The poll by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) found that Dlamini-Zuma had secured 30 percent of nominations and that ANC Treasurer General Zweli Mkhize received most of the remaining 5 percent of nominations. The IRR said its data suggested 74 percent of ANC branches had made nominations and cautioned that it had not been able to corroborate its findings. The ANC does not make the nomination tallies public. A Ramaphosa win in December has tended to be viewed as the more positive outcome by investors, some of whom have been spooked by Dlamini-Zuma s campaign message of radical wealth redistribution. Nominations do not necessarily translate into votes at the ANC s elective conference because delegates could vote for a different candidate than the one nominated by their branch. Dlamini-Zuma s campaign says that many branches sympathetic to her are yet to submit their nominations, which could reduce Ramaphosa s lead or swing the outcome in December in her favor. Dlamini-Zuma is backed by the ANC s women s and youth leagues, which also vote in December. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German Social Democrats face pressure over coalition talks;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) faced pressure on Wednesday to consider offering coalition talks to Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives to settle the worst political crisis in modern German history. A leader of the smaller Free Democrats (FDP) also raised the possibility of reviving coalition talks with the conservatives and Greens that collapsed at the weekend raising fears across Europe of stalemate in the EU s economic and political powerhouse. But the party chief later appeared to ruled it out. The signs of possible flexibility came after President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a move unprecedented for a largely ceremonial position, intervened to promote talks that could avert a disruptive early repeat election. SPD leader Martin Schulz, whose party had governed in coalition under Merkel since 2013, wants to go into opposition after September polls that knocked its support to the lowest levels since formation of the modern German republic in 1949. But the mass-circulation Bild newspaper said 30 members of the SPD s 153-strong parliamentary group questioned that position this week at a meeting of the parliamentary party. SPD lawmaker Johannes Kahrs, spokesman for the Seeheimer Circle, a conservative wing in the party, urged Schulz to keep an open mind when he meets on Thursday with Steinmeier. Kahrs told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper that the collapse of the coalition talks had changed the situation. We cannot just tell the German president, Sorry, that s it. Bild said German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who handed leadership of the SPD to Schulz and became foreign minister earlier this year, also favors a resumed grand coalition. Germany, traditionally a bastion of stability in the EU, could face months of political stagnation, further complicating agreement on reforms of euro zone governance and EU defense and asylum policies. Merkel, who remains acting chancellor until a government is agreed, has said she would prefer to work with the SPD. If that failed, she would favor new elections over an unstable minority government. Merkel s 12-year hold on power was shaken at the September elections partly by the arrival of the anti-immigration AfD party in parliament. Guenther Oettinger, an EU commissioner and member of Merkel s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), urged the SPD to think again about its rejection of coalition talks. The long process of forming a government is weakening Germany s influence in Brussels, Oettinger told Der Spiegel newsmagazine in an interview to be published on Thursday. Axel Schaefer, deputy head of the SPD s parliamentary group, urged the three political blocs to try again to reach agreement. But he said his party would also talk with conservatives if asked to do so by Steinmeier, who is meeting with possible coalition partners this week. A top official of the pro-business FDP told broadcaster ntv her party would not rule out reviving the three-way coalition talks if Merkel s conservatives and the Greens offered a completely new package of proposals. If it really was possible to build a modern republic in the coming years, then we are the last ones who would refuse to talk, FDP Secretary General Nicola Beer said. But FDP chief Christian Lindner told Spiegel magazine: For the foreseeable future, it is impossible to imagine cooperation with the Greens at the federal level. Stephan Weil, the SPD premier of Lower Saxony who just completed a coalition agreement with conservatives in his state, has said a new election could leave few options other than a grand coalition anyway, the Sueddeutsche newspaper reported. Joe Kaeser, chief executive of Siemens, told Die Welt newspaper that he hoped new elections could be avoided since the results would likely be little changed from Sept. 24. A new poll released Wednesday showed that half of Germans favor a new election, while a fifth support a minority government. Only 18 percent want a renewal of the SPD-conservative coalition that ruled the past four years. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin wins backing from Iran, Turkey for new Syria peace push;SOCHI, Russia/RIYADH (Reuters) - Russia s Vladimir Putin won the backing of Turkey and Iran on Wednesday to host a Syrian peace congress, taking the central role in a major diplomatic push to finally end a civil war all but won by Moscow s ally, President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian opposition groups, meeting in Saudi Arabia to seek a unified position ahead of peace talks, decided to stick to their demand that Assad leave power, Al Arabiya television reported, following speculation they might soften their stance after their hardline leader quit. Two days after being visited by Assad in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Putin hosted his counterparts Tayyip Erdogan and Hassan Rouhani there. In a joint statement, the three leaders called on the Syrian government and moderate opposition to participate constructively in the planned congress, to be held in the same city on a date they did not specify. The congress will look at the key questions on Syria s national agenda, Putin told reporters at the summit, sitting alongside Rouhani and Erdogan. First of all that is the drawing-up of a framework for the future structure of the state, the adoption of a new constitution, and, on the basis of that, the holding of elections under United Nations supervision. There was no word from the leaders on who would be invited. The list of invitees has been a sticking point, with Turkey objecting to some Syrian Kurdish groups attending. Syria s civil war, in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and created the world s worst refugee crisis, driving more than 11 million people from their homes. All previous efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution have swiftly collapsed, with the opposition demanding Assad leave power, the government insisting he stay on, and neither side able to force the issue by achieving a military victory. But since Russia joined the war on behalf of Assad in 2015, the balance of power has turned decisively in his government s favor. A year ago, the army forced rebels out of their last urban stronghold, the eastern half of Aleppo. In recent weeks, the self-proclaimed caliphate of jihadist group Islamic State has collapsed. Government forces now effectively control all of Syria apart from a few shrinking rebel pockets and a swathe in the north held by mainly Kurdish forces backed by the United States. Opposition groups held their meeting on Wednesday at a luxury hotel in Riyadh, two days after the leader of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) that has represented them at previous peace talks quit abruptly. HNC chief Riyad Hijab had been known as an uncompromising defender of the position that Assad must have no role in any political transition for Syria, and his resignation had led to speculation the opposition could soften its stance. However, a draft of the meeting s final statement still included the demand Assad leave office at the start of any transition, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television reported. Having helped Assad s government reach the cusp of victory, Putin now appears to be playing the leading role in international efforts to end the war on Assad s terms. In addition to hosting Assad, Rouhani and Erdogan, the Russian leader has also phoned U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi King Salman in the past 24 hours. Iran has long supported Assad. Saudi Arabia, Iran s arch rival in the Middle East and long a backer of rebel groups in Syria and advocate of the position that Assad must leave, has been the main supporter of the HNC. But after King Salman made an historic visit to Moscow a few months ago, Riyadh appears to have come around to Russia s dominant role in Syria. Similarly Turkey, traditionally one of the Syrian leader s implacable foes, has increasingly shown willingness to work with Russia to resolve the crisis. This summit is aimed at results. I believe critical decisions will be reached, Turkey s Erdogan said in Sochi before his meeting with Putin and Rouhani. The Syrian government welcomed the final statement from the three-way Iran summit, Syrian state media said on Wednesday, quoting an official source in the Foreign Ministry. It described it as the culmination of Assad s summit with Putin. The other major power with troops in Syria, the United States, has so far kept its distance. Washington has been arming, training and sending special forces to assist a Kurdish group fighting against Islamic State, angering Turkey which is fighting its own Kurdish insurgency. Still, any final settlement that keeps Assad in power will probably require the participation of some kind of opposition delegation willing to negotiate over the demand that he go. U.N. peace talks mediator Staffan de Mistura, host of the formal peace process in Geneva, told the opposition groups at the Riyadh meeting they needed to have the hard discussions necessary to reach a common line . A strong, unified team is a creative partner in Geneva and we need that, one who can actually explore more than one way to arrive to the goals that we need to have, he said. De Mistura will meet Russia s defense and foreign ministers on Thursday to discuss preparations for a new round of Geneva talks, Russian news agency RIA reported. Russia said on Tuesday that the resignation of such radically minded Syrian opposition figures as HNC chief Hijab would help unite the disparate opposition factions around a more realistic platform. [L8N1NR296] ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin says Iran, Turkey back proposed Syrian peoples' congress;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - The leaders of Iran and Turkey on Wednesday supported the convocation of a Syrian peoples congress as one of the first steps to establish inclusive dialogue in the war-ravaged country, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. Speaking after meeting his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani and Turkey s Tayyip Erdogan, Putin said the three leaders had instructed their diplomats, security and defense bodies to work on the composition and date of the congress. Syria s leadership is committed to the peace process, constitutional reform and free elections, Putin said after the trilateral meeting held in the southern Russian city of Sochi. The three presidents agreed to step up efforts to finish off terrorist groups in Syria, he said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech parliament picks speaker, opens way for new prime minister;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The newly-elected Czech lower house of parliament on Wednesday picked a speaker from the biggest party ANO, a source in the voting committee said, opening the way for the government to resign and ANO chief Andrej Babis to become prime minister. Babis, whose ANO party won the October election by a large margin on pledges to uproot corruption and streamline functioning of the state, has been asked by President Milos Zeman to form a government but has so far failed to find majority support. Electing the speaker is one of the constitutional conditions for the parliament to conclude its first session. After that, the outgoing government led by Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka resigns, and a new prime minister and eventually a full cabinet can be appointed. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Georgian policeman, three terrorism suspects killed in police operation: state security;TBILISI (Reuters) - One Georgian special forces serviceman and three members of an armed group suspected of terrorism were killed on Wednesday in a police operation against the group on the outskirts of the capital Tbilisi, state security said. Four other police were wounded and one member of the criminal group was arrested during the 20-hour operation at a residential block where the group was thought to be hiding. The operation was launched late on Tuesday and went on through the night into Wednesday. Heavy shooting and explosions were heard throughout Wednesday. Residents of nearby buildings were evacuated. The members of the group are not Georgian citizens and it is assumed they are members of a terrorist organization, state security administration deputy chief Nino Giorgobiani told reporters. She said surveillance of the suspects had been going on for several weeks and that the state security service was working with international counter-terrorism bodies to identify the group s members and their links to criminal networks. Giorgobiani said efforts had been made to persuade the group s members to give themselves up but they had refused to do this. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uganda denies corruption allegations against its foreign minister;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda on Wednesday denied its foreign minister had engaged in corrupt activities with a Hong Kong man who has been charged with bribery and other violations by U.S. authorities. Chi Ping Patrick Ho, 68, who heads the China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC), a charity based in Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Virginia, was charged with violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Ho was accused of among other issues of being involved with bribes and promises of other benefits to Sam Kutesa, Uganda s foreign affairs minister, in exchange for promises of business contracts for an unnamed Chinese firm. Kutesa is also a former president of the U.N. General Assembly. The Ugandan foreign ministry said the interaction and engagement that Kutesa had with Ho was in fulfilment of his official functions as president of the U.N. General Assembly . It is therefore erroneous to insinuate or infer that Hon. Sam Kutesa, from references made to him and CEFC...is linked to the bribery allegations, a statement said. Ho s attorney has declined to comment to Reuters on the charges. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mladic verdict carries message for Syria and beyond: U.N.'s Zeid;GENEVA (Reuters) - The conviction of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic for genocide and crimes against humanity serves as a warning to others such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday. Earlier on Wednesday the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Mladic guilty of the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and for the siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 civilians were killed by shelling and snipers over 43 months. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein, who worked for the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, told Reuters he had waited a long time for the life sentence handed down against Mladic. Mladic is the epitome of evil and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of international justice, Zeid said in an interview in his Geneva office. Noting that Mladic is now 74 but was in his 50s at the time of his crimes, Zeid said the case showed justice would catch up with other leaders who trampled over human rights. The passage of time is no protection. Eventually I hope all those who have authored these appalling atrocities across the world will be held accountable before a court of law and there will be justice for the victims of those particular crimes. Pressed on whether that would include Assad, he said: Yes. It s very clear to us that what happened in Syria recently and not limited to Syria, in many parts of the world, were so grotesque that if a court of law on the basis of evidence were to prosecute senior leaders then you would expect that some of them would be held responsible. Assad and his government deny committing rights abuses and say they are engaged in a legitimate struggle against terrorist groups including Islamic State. Trials are led by evidence, Zeid said. And so whatever trials are mounted in the future, if the evidence leads to the very senior rungs of leadership, then you would indeed hope this takes place. In the end there is justice, he added. U.N. war crimes investigators documenting massacres and other atrocities in Syria have accused all sides of grave crimes including the government s use of chemical weapons against civilians more than two dozen times, as well as executions, torture and rapes. Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said last year that the scale of deaths in prisons indicated that the Assad government was responsible for extermination as a crime against humanity . Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and created the world s worst refugee crisis, driving more than 11 million people from their homes. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"France tells Libya to act over migrant ""crimes against humanity""";PARIS (Reuters) - France demanded on Wednesday an urgent U.N. Security Council session on human trafficking in Libya and raised the possibility of sanctions on the country after a video appearing to show African migrants sold as slaves there sparked global outrage. Convened by Italy, which struck a deal with Libya to slash the number of migrants reaching its shores, the Council on Tuesday unanimously backed a resolution urging tougher action to crack down on human trafficking and modern slavery worldwide. Speaking to lawmakers, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian suggested Paris wanted to take things further and called for an urgent session of the Council to specifically discuss the situation in Libya. Libyan authorities, who have been alerted several times, including by myself because I was there in September, have decided to open an investigation into the facts, Le Drian said. We want it to go fast and if the Libyan justice system can not carry this procedure through then we should open international sanctions, Le Drian said. Footage appearing to show African migrants sold as slaves in Libya has sparked an international outcry with protests erupting across Europe and Africa, while artists to soccer stars to U.N. officials have made pleas for the abuse to end. The video broadcast by CNN showed what it said was an auction of men offered to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400, a chilling echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade of centuries past. What has been revealed is indeed trafficking of human beings, it s a crime against humanity, Macron said during a news conference with African Union President Alpha Conde. Macron said he wanted the U.N. Security Council to discuss what concrete steps could be taken to tackle the issue. A French diplomat said the U.N. session would likely be in coming days, probably next week, and would see what concrete measures could be taken to improve the situation. Despite events in Libya, Conde put the blame firmly on the European Union, accusing it of encouraging the Libyans to keep migrants in the North African country despite there being no government. What happened in Libya is shocking, scandalous, but we must establish the responsibilities, said Conde. In Libya there is no government, so the European Union can not choose a developing country and ask that country to detain refugees (...) when it doesn t have the means to do so, he added. The refugees are in terrible conditions ... so our European friends were not right to ask Libya to keep the migrants. The European Union is responsible. Le Drian said he wanted the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. Refugee Agency to publish details about the trafficking of migrants in the country. Libya splintered along political, ideological and tribal lines during and after a 2011 NATO-backed uprising that unseated former leader Muammar Gaddafi. In 2014 a battle for the capital led to rival parliaments and governments being set up in Tripoli and the east. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"""The people have spoken,"" Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa tells cheering crowd";HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is due to be sworn in to replace Robert Mugabe as president on Friday, told a cheering crowd in Harare on Wednesday that the country was entering a new stage of democracy. The people have spoken. The voice of the people is the voice of God, Mnangagwa told thousands of supporters who had gathered outside the ruling ZANU-PF party s offices. Today we are witnessing the beginning of a new and unfolding democracy. Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe s president on Tuesday, a week after the army and his former political allies moved to end four decades of rule by a man once feted as an independence hero who became feared as a despot. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea, China to hold summit next month to mend ties;(Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit Beijing next month for a summit with China s Xi Jinping as the two countries seek to mend ties frayed by a year-long spat over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea, Seoul s foreign ministry said on Thursday. The agreement was made during a meeting between South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing, the ministry said. The two leaders met on the sidelines of an APEC summit in Danang, Vietnam, early this month, during which they agreed to another round of talks in the near future. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Missing Argentine submarine highlights years of military underfunding;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The search for an Argentine submarine missing in the South Atlantic for more than a week has highlighted the dwindling resources and lack of training faced by the armed forces since the end of a military dictatorship in the early 1980s. As South America s second-largest economy has lurched from one crisis to the next in recent decades, military funding has not been a priority for cash-strapped governments, and an incident like the disappearance of the ARA San Juan was a problem in the making, military and political analysts said. Human rights violations perpetrated by the dictatorship broke the bond between society and the armed forces, said Andrei Serbin Pont, research director at the CRIES think tank in Buenos Aires. He said a rethinking of the military s role in society was long overdue. The majority of Argentines don t really care about the armed forces, therefore politicians aren t particularly interested in maintaining any sort of military policy or defense policy, he said. Since the loss of the Falklands War to Britain in 1982 and the fall of the dictatorship the following year, military spending has fallen from 2.16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to a low of 0.87 percent in 2011, according to World Bank data. While it inched up to 0.96 percent of GDP last year, spending remains well behind neighboring Brazil and Chile, which spent 1.3 percent and 1.9 percent of GDP on their militaries, respectively, the data show. It is too early to determine the cause of the disappearance of the ARA San Juan, and an intense search and rescue effort continued on Wednesday. But Argentina s submarine fleet has been among the areas of the military most plagued by a lack of funds. In 2014, the fleet spent a total of just 19 hours submerged, versus the 190 days needed for the fulfillment of operational and training needs, according to a May 2016 report by specialist publication Jane s Sentinel. The fact that you had so little use of the submarines was an indication that clearly they were a problem waiting to happen, said Evan Ellis, a research professor focusing on Latin America at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. President Mauricio Macri pledged to improve the 26,000-strong armed forces capabilities during his campaign in 2015. His administration s 2016 State of the State report noted that 70 percent of the Defense Ministry s budget was spent on wages and pensions, rather than investment. The conditions in which they work are practically impossible. I m talking about all the armed forces, Elisa Carrio, a key member of Macri s Let s Change coalition, said in a recent television interview. But since taking office in December 2015, Macri has not markedly improved the financing situation. The 2018 budget calls for a 14 percent increase in funding for the Defense Ministry, below inflation expected at 15.7 percent. In March, then-Defense Minister Julio Martinez told Reuters Argentina lacked money to buy aircraft or replace an aging fleet. The German-built ARA San Juan was launched in 1983 and underwent a local upgrade beginning in 2008 which included the replacement of its four diesel engines and its electric propeller engines, according to Jane s Sentinel. Shortly before giving its last location on Nov. 15, the submarine reported an electrical outage. Concerns about the state of the vessel surfaced when video was published by newspaper Perfil of a tense meeting between Macri and relatives of some of the 44 crew members. Does someone have to die for things to change? Could you not have invested in this before? one sailor s wife was recorded telling Macri. Macri said the ship s level of maintenance, not its age, was what mattered, and that authorities were convinced the submarine was in good condition. Argentine news media have reported that the search has sparked friction between the navy and the defense ministry, with civilian authorities concerned that the military has not been forthcoming with information. Navy officials have denied this. A ministry source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told Reuters the ministry has opened an investigation into the incident and has not ruled out criminal charges once the search operation is complete. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to meet congressional leaders next week on legislative issues -White House;WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with congressional leaders next week to discuss “end-of-year legislative issues,” a White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday. Republicans are rushing to pass a major tax bill before the end of the year, and lawmakers need to pass legislation to fund the government and raise the nation’s debt ceiling. “The president will be meeting with congressional leaders next week to discuss end-of-year legislative issues,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said. ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin pledges to stand up for Russian billionaire arrested in France;MOSCOW/PARIS (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday it will spare no effort to defend the rights of Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian businessman and lawmaker who was arrested in the French Riviera resort of Nice in connection with a French tax evasion case. Shares in Polyus, Russia s biggest gold producer which is controlled by Kerimov s family, were down on the news of his detention. The 51-year-old billionaire would be presented to a judge with a view to formally placing him under judicial investigation, a French public prosecutor said in Nice on Wednesday. Under France s legal system, being formally placed under investigation often, but not always, leads to a person being sent to trial. We will do everything in our power to protect his lawful interests, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Intensive work is now being undertaken by the foreign ministry. A representative for Kerimov in the upper house of parliament, where he sits as a lawmaker, declined to comment on the case on Wednesday when contacted by Reuters. Polyus declined to comment. Russia s state-run Rossiya 24 TV station, citing an unnamed source, reported that Kerimov had denied any guilt. In the lower house of parliament, lawmaker Rizvan Kurbanov asked the Russian foreign ministry to make representations on Kerimov s behalf with the French authorities. We have still not received from the French authorities any explanation of the reasons for the detention of our colleague, Kurbanov told parliament. All this testifies to an unprecedented demarche by the French, he said, adding that he hoped the Russian foreign ministry would issue a formal protest. Shares in Polyus were down by more than 3 percent in early trade in Moscow but since then recovered some ground to trade at minus 2.3 percent by 1342 GMT. Originally from the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, Kerimov built his multi-billion natural resources business through a combination of debt, an appetite for risk, and political connections. He owned top flight soccer club Anzhi Makhachkala until he sold it in 2016. Kerimov s fortune peaked at $17.5 billion in 2008 before slumping to just $3 billion in 2009, according to Forbes magazine, due to so-called margin-calls on his assets triggered by the 2008 global financial crisis. In March this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving Kerimov the state award For Services to the Fatherland, second class for his contribution to Russian parliamentary life. French police arrested Kerimov at Nice airport on Monday evening. A French judicial source said the investigation centered on the purchase of several luxury residences on the French Riviera via shell companies, something that would have enabled Kerimov to reduce taxes owed to the French state. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: THREE LIBERAL REPORTERS Bribed To Push “Trump Dossier” Propaganda; It s no wonder that Fusion GPS wants to block documents from coming out. The newest unsealed documents are explosive enough with the revelation that there was a payoff to three reporters to push negative news on Trump. Who are the three journalists? Well, Fusion GPS wants that to remain a secret Unsealed court documents reveal that the firm behind the salacious 34-page Trump-Russia Dossier, Fusion GPS, was paid $523,000 by a Russian businessman convicted of tax fraud and money laundering, whose lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a key figure in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone.In short, D.C. opposition research firm Fusion GPS is the common denominator linked to two schemes used to damage the Trump campaign.PAYOFF TO THREE JOURNALISTS:Newly filed court documents confirm that Fusion GPS, the company mostly responsible for the controversial Trump dossier on presidential candidate Donald Trump, made payments to three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017.The revelation could be a breakthrough for House Republicans, who are exploring whether Fusion GPS used the dossier, which was later criticized for having inaccurate information on Trump, to feed anti-Trump stories to the press during and after the presidential campaign. The three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on Russia issues relevant to [the committee s] investigation, the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.REDACTED DOCUMENTS AND RESTRAINING ORDERS:But the recipients names, the amounts, and purposes of those payments were either redacted from the documents that Fusion GPS filed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia or were not disclosed.Fusion has asked the court to issue a restraining order against the House committee, which is demanding documents from the company that, among other things, explain the payments it made to reporters. Most of the documents sought are banking records.Let s hope that the details come to light and all are held accountable for their corruption.;left-news;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DIGITAL TYRANNY: Google Will Make ‘Those Kinds of Sites’ Harder to Find;21st Century Wire says This has been an ongoing project of the search giant, long in the making, and already underway. In fact, this website, 21stCenturyWire.com, has felt the impact of its content being disappeared in Google s search results resulting in a drop of over 50% in our organic search query traffic since April.It s those kinds of sites like RT, Sputnik, 21WIRE and many others that are targets in the grand plan, as outlined here by Robert Parry of Consortium News: YOU DON T NEED A HUGE AMOUNT OF IMAGINATION TO SEE HOW THIS COMBINATION OF MAINSTREAM GROUPTHINK AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COULD CREATE AN ORWELLIAN FUTURE IN WHICH ONLY ONE SIDE OF A STORY GETS TOLD AND THE OTHER SIDE SIMPLY DISAPPEARS FROM VIEW. RTGoogle will de-rank RT articles to make them harder to find Eric SchmidtEric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google s parent company Alphabet, says the company will engineer specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine s news delivery services. We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites it s basically RT and Sputnik, Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates Russian propaganda. We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don t want to ban the sites that s not how we operate. The discussion focused on the company s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.RT has criticized the proposed move whose timescale has not been publicized as arbitrary and a form of censorship.Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren t allowed if they come from RT, because Russia even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they ve found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT, Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement.During the discussion, Schmidt claimed that he was very strongly not in favor of censorship, but said that he has faith in ranking without acknowledging if the system might serve the same function. Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001, said that the company s algorithm was capable of detecting repetitive, exploitative, false, and weaponized info, but did not elaborate on how these qualities were determined.The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a longtime friend, added that the experience of the last year showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.Continue this story at RT READ MORE SCI-TECH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Sci-Tech FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police find similarities in body parts found Copenhagen waters;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - An arm found by divers near Copenhagen was weighed down with pieces of metal similar to those attached to the legs of Swedish journalist Kim Wall who died in August on board a submarine owned by a Danish inventor, local police said on Wednesday. The arm was found about 1 km (half a mile) from the spot where Wall s head and legs had been found in October. Wall, a freelance journalist who was researching a story on entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Peter Madsen, went missing after he took her out to sea in his homebuilt 17-metre (56-foot) submarine in August. On Aug. 23, police identified a torso that washed ashore in Copenhagen as Wall s. Coroners examined what turned out to be a left arm after it was found in Koge Bay just outside of Copenhagen - near the route that had been searched in connection with the submarine case. Divers and police will continue the search for the right arm along with further evidence on Thursday. Madsen admitted to dismembering Wall on board his submarine and dumping her body parts in the sea, but he still denies murdering her and a charge of sexual assault without intercourse. The trial has been set to take place in Copenhagen next March. (The story adds distance in miles in second paragraph) ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"""The people have spoken,"" says Zimbabwe's new leader";HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s new leader Emmerson Mnangagwa told a cheering crowd in Harare on Wednesday that the country was entering a new stage of democracy following Robert Mugabe s removal as president after nearly four decades in power. Mnangagwa returned to the country earlier in the day, having fled for his safety when the 93-year-old former leader sacked him as vice president two weeks ago to smooth a path to the succession for his much younger wife Grace. The people have spoken. The voice of the people is the voice of God, Mnangagwa told thousands of supporters gathered outside the ruling ZANU-PF party s offices in the capital. Today we are witnessing the beginning of a new and unfolding democracy. Zimbabwe was once one of Africa s most promising economies but suffered decades of decline as Mugabe pursued policies that included the violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms and money-printing that led to hyperinflation. Most of its 16 million people remain poor and face currency shortages and sky-high unemployment, something Mnangagwa promised to address. We want to grow our economy, we want peace in our country, we want jobs, jobs, jobs, he told the crowd, adding: The will of the people will always, always succeed. Mnangagwa s dismissal was the trigger for the army and former political allies to move against Mugabe, feted as an independence hero when Zimbabwe broke with former colonial power Britain in 1980 but later feared as a despot. He resigned as president on Tuesday as parliament began an impeachment process, after resisting pressure to do so for a week. People danced in the streets following his downfall, some brandishing posters of Mnangagwa and army chief General Constantino Chiwenga, who led the takeover. Parliamentary speaker Jacob Mudenda said on Wednesday that Mnangagwa would be sworn in as president on Friday after being nominated by ZANU-PF to fill the vacancy left by Mugabe. The demise of Mugabe leaves Zimbabwe in a different situation to a number of other African countries where veteran leaders have been toppled in popular uprisings or through elections. The army appears to have engineered a trouble-free path to power for Mnangagwa, who was for decades a faithful lieutenant of Mugabe and member of his elite. He was also in charge of internal security when rights groups say 20,000 civilians were killed in the 1980s. Mugabe has gone but I don t see Mnangagwa doing anything different from that old man. This is not the change I expected but let us give him time, said security guard Edgar Mapuranga, who sat by a bank cash machine that was out of money. Restoring the country s fortunes and international standing will be a challenge. Alleged human rights abuses and flawed elections prompted many Western countries to impose sanctions in the early 2000s that further hurt the economy, even with Chinese investment to soften the blow. Staging clean elections next year will be key to winning fresh funds. Although Mnangagwa is almost certain to win any vote, German Chancellor Angela Merkel s personal representative for Africa, Guenther Nooke, said it would be a victory for Zimbabwe s old elites with the help of China. He will manage to get elected using fear or many tricks, and then we ll have a succession from one tyrant to the next, Nooke told broadcaster SWR2. China s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it respected Mugabe s decision to resign. In London, Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain wanted Zimbabwe to rejoin the international community now that Mugabe has resigned. Mnangagwa met neighboring South Africa s President Jacob Zuma before his return on Wednesday. Mugabe is one of the last of a generation of African leaders who led their countries to independence and then ruled, among them Ghana s Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Felix Houphouet-Boigny in Ivory Coast and South Africa s Nelson Mandela. The African Union said he would be remembered as a fearless pan-Africanist liberation fighter and the father of the independent Zimbabwean nation and that his decision to step down would enhance his legacy. But he also stifled democracy en route to winning a series of elections. His government is accused by the opposition and human rights groups of persecuting and killing opponents. The forced takeover of white-owned farms from around 2000 aimed to bolster his popular support but crippled foreign exchange earnings from agriculture. Mnangagwa s human rights record also stirs hostility in many Zimbabweans. The dark past is not going to disappear. They will be following him around like a piece of chewing gum on his shoe, International Crisis Group s southern Africa senior consultant Piers Pigou said. For him to really be seen to be doing the right thing, he s going to have to introduce policies that fundamentally undermine the power structures of ZANU-PF, through a shift to genuine political pluralism and a decoupling of the party and state. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FED UP FAN Confronts College Basketball Player For Shooting Baskets During National Anthem Because Of His Islamic Faith…Gets Standing Ovation From Crowd;Has America reached a tipping point? Will more and more fed up Americans begin to object to athletes who choose to blatantly disrespect our flag during the national anthem? Should athletes be allowed to disrespect our flag during school-sponsored events? We d love to hear what you think in the comment section below.Todd Starnes of FOX News broke the story about 74-year old Jim Howard, of Garden City, Kansas is a red-blooded, American patriot and a faithful supporter of the athletic program at the local community college.For 32 years he s volunteered with the booster club keeping scorebooks, holding fundraisers, running the chain gang for football and even providing a place for players to have a Thanksgiving meal.He was in the stands on Nov. 1 for the season-opener of the Garden City Broncbusters basketball team. And when the announcer asked everyone to stand for the national anthem, he dutifully joined the crowd and stood at attention.That s when he noticed a lone player seated on a bench at courtside Rasool Samir, a 19-year-old Muslim red-shirt.It was unusual because there s a team rule that the entire basketball team was supposed to stay inside the locker room until after the national anthem had concluded.But as the crowd began singing about the bombs bursting in air and the rocket s red glare, the Muslim basketball player grabbed a ball, walked onto the court and began shooting baskets. It was an in your face slam, he said.Mr. Howard decided enough was enough. He was tired of people disrespecting the national anthem. So at the conclusion of the song, he walked onto the court and confronted Samir. I walked onto the floor and I told the guy he should respect the flag and if he s not going to respect the flag, he should get off the court and get out of the gym, Mr. Howard told the Todd Starnes Show. You should respect the flag. If you don t respect the flag, just stay seated. Don t make a big scene, he said. At least respect the people that paid for your scholarship to get you on this campus like myself and everyone else in that gym. The Garden City Telegram reported that a police officer broke up the confrontation telling Mr. Howard to return to his seat and escorting the player off the court.When that happened, a number of people in the stands gave Mr. Howard a standing ovation and some fans even came over to shake the man s hand.It seems, they too had had enough. Everyone around town was patting me on my back and saying thank you, he said.The following day Samir was dismissed from the team.However, there are two versions as to what happened. The local newspaper says it was Samir s decision to leave. But the American Civil Liberties Union claims the young man was kicked off the team.The Kansas chapter of the ACLU fired off a letter to the community college demanding answers and claiming that Samir s constitutional rights were violated. He refrained from participating in the national anthem because he is a Muslim and his faith prohibits acts of reverence to anything but God, the ACLU wrote in a letter to the school.Well, if that s the case, why didn t Samir stay inside the locker room with the rest of the team during the national anthem? ;left-news;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Mugabe, African leaders ponder own fate;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Hours after Zimbabwe s Robert Mugabe was forced out after 37 years in power, Uganda s president, another former guerrilla in office for more than three decades, was tweeting about pay rises for civil servants and bright prospects for his army tank crews. Supporters of long-serving African leaders dismiss parallels with Zimbabwe, where Mugabe s former deputy - sacked during a power struggle with Mugabe s wife - is about to take power with military and public backing. [nL8N1NS0IR] But Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni s tweets, which come amid rising anger at the 73-year-old s attempts to prolong his rule, suggest he is looking south and wondering about his own fate. Now that the economic situation in Uganda is improving, the government will be able to look into raising of salaries of soldiers, public servants, health workers and teachers and also deal with institutional housing, Museveni tweeted on Wednesday. It was unclear what improvement he meant. Uganda s faltering economy is growing too slowly to absorb a booming population of 37 million. The number of citizens spending less than a dollar a day has surged to 27 percent, the statistics office reported in September, up from 20 percent five years ago. Museveni s office was not immediately available for comment on the tweets, but John Baptist Nambeshe, a ruling party lawmaker who opposes the president s attempts to have an age limit on his post lifted, said there was no coincidence. The timing couldn t have been coincidental. It was to underscore his might, that probably the military is still solidly behind him, unlike in Zimbabwe, Nambeshe told Reuters. Museveni may not be alone. Several African leaders have faced popular opposition in recent years, from Togo, where thousands protested this autumn, to Gabon, where riots broke out last year after President Ali Bongo was re-elected in a disputed vote. Mugabe s fall has raised hopes among opposition politicians that other long-serving leaders will fall, but also stoked fears that those who replace them may be no better. President since 1986, Museveni is among Africa s longest-serving leaders. They include Equatorial Guinea s Teodoro Obiang, president for 38 years;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DRAMATIC VIDEO RELEASED: Brave Soldier Tries Escaping North Korea Under Gunfire [Video];The American-led UN Command just released very dramatic video showing a North Korean soldier trying to escape across the border into South Korea. The tricky thing is that four soldiers were firing on him the entire time The video starts with a lone soldier driving a dark olive-green jeep down a straight, tree-lined road, past drab, barren fields and, headlights shining, across the replacement for the Bridge of No Return, which was used for prisoner exchanges during the Korean War, the Associated Press reported.Fellow North Korean soldiers realize that one of their comrades is trying to defect to South Korea and start chasing the jeep through the Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMV, until the defector crashes and exits the vehicle under fire. He then sprints across the border before hitting the ground in critical condition but alive.The four soldiers unloaded an estimated 40 rounds from multiple types of firearms.The defector a 24-year-old soldier surnamed Oh, according to CNN was taken to a South Korean hospital in critical condition from the gunshot wounds and lost nearly half of his blood. Oh s surgeon, Lee Cook-jong, said that he found four major wounds on the soldier, who received four pints of blood.The soldier underwent multiple surgeries to repair damage, and in doing so, surgeons found dozens of parasites including a 10.6-inch roundworm, possibly indicating improper nutrition in North Korea s military. His condition has become much better since yesterday. We ve turned on the TV for him since yesterday, Lee told reporters.Read more: WFB;politics;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FED UP FAN Confronts College Basketball Player For Shooting Baskets During National Anthem Because Of His Islamic Faith…Gets Standing Ovation From Crowd;Has America reached a tipping point? Will more and more fed up Americans begin to object to athletes who choose to blatantly disrespect our flag during the national anthem? Should athletes be allowed to disrespect our flag during school-sponsored events? We d love to hear what you think in the comment section below.Todd Starnes of FOX News broke the story about 74-year old Jim Howard, of Garden City, Kansas is a red-blooded, American patriot and a faithful supporter of the athletic program at the local community college.For 32 years he s volunteered with the booster club keeping scorebooks, holding fundraisers, running the chain gang for football and even providing a place for players to have a Thanksgiving meal.He was in the stands on Nov. 1 for the season-opener of the Garden City Broncbusters basketball team. And when the announcer asked everyone to stand for the national anthem, he dutifully joined the crowd and stood at attention.That s when he noticed a lone player seated on a bench at courtside Rasool Samir, a 19-year-old Muslim red-shirt.It was unusual because there s a team rule that the entire basketball team was supposed to stay inside the locker room until after the national anthem had concluded.But as the crowd began singing about the bombs bursting in air and the rocket s red glare, the Muslim basketball player grabbed a ball, walked onto the court and began shooting baskets. It was an in your face slam, he said.Mr. Howard decided enough was enough. He was tired of people disrespecting the national anthem. So at the conclusion of the song, he walked onto the court and confronted Samir. I walked onto the floor and I told the guy he should respect the flag and if he s not going to respect the flag, he should get off the court and get out of the gym, Mr. Howard told the Todd Starnes Show. You should respect the flag. If you don t respect the flag, just stay seated. Don t make a big scene, he said. At least respect the people that paid for your scholarship to get you on this campus like myself and everyone else in that gym. The Garden City Telegram reported that a police officer broke up the confrontation telling Mr. Howard to return to his seat and escorting the player off the court.When that happened, a number of people in the stands gave Mr. Howard a standing ovation and some fans even came over to shake the man s hand.It seems, they too had had enough. Everyone around town was patting me on my back and saying thank you, he said.The following day Samir was dismissed from the team.However, there are two versions as to what happened. The local newspaper says it was Samir s decision to leave. But the American Civil Liberties Union claims the young man was kicked off the team.The Kansas chapter of the ACLU fired off a letter to the community college demanding answers and claiming that Samir s constitutional rights were violated. He refrained from participating in the national anthem because he is a Muslim and his faith prohibits acts of reverence to anything but God, the ACLU wrote in a letter to the school.Well, if that s the case, why didn t Samir stay inside the locker room with the rest of the team during the national anthem? ;politics;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: THREE LIBERAL REPORTERS Bribed To Push “Trump Dossier” Propaganda; It s no wonder that Fusion GPS wants to block documents from coming out. The newest unsealed documents are explosive enough with the revelation that there was a payoff to three reporters to push negative news on Trump. Who are the three journalists? Well, Fusion GPS wants that to remain a secret Unsealed court documents reveal that the firm behind the salacious 34-page Trump-Russia Dossier, Fusion GPS, was paid $523,000 by a Russian businessman convicted of tax fraud and money laundering, whose lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a key figure in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone.In short, D.C. opposition research firm Fusion GPS is the common denominator linked to two schemes used to damage the Trump campaign.PAYOFF TO THREE JOURNALISTS:Newly filed court documents confirm that Fusion GPS, the company mostly responsible for the controversial Trump dossier on presidential candidate Donald Trump, made payments to three journalists between June 2016 until February 2017.The revelation could be a breakthrough for House Republicans, who are exploring whether Fusion GPS used the dossier, which was later criticized for having inaccurate information on Trump, to feed anti-Trump stories to the press during and after the presidential campaign. The three journalists who were paid by Fusion GPS are known to have reported on Russia issues relevant to [the committee s] investigation, the House Intelligence Committee said in a court filing.REDACTED DOCUMENTS AND RESTRAINING ORDERS:But the recipients names, the amounts, and purposes of those payments were either redacted from the documents that Fusion GPS filed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia or were not disclosed.Fusion has asked the court to issue a restraining order against the House committee, which is demanding documents from the company that, among other things, explain the payments it made to reporters. Most of the documents sought are banking records.Let s hope that the details come to light and all are held accountable for their corruption.;politics;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUDICIARY MEMBER: Why was FBI’s Case on Clinton Labelled ‘Special’ Status? [Video];" I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";politics;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;JPMorgan's Dimon says Trump likely to be a one-term president;CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co, on Wednesday said he expects to see a new U.S. president in 2021 and advised the Democratic party to come up with a “pro-free enterprise” agenda for jobs and economic growth instead. Asked at a luncheon hosted by The Economic Club of Chicago how many years Republican President Donald Trump will be in office, Dimon said, “If I had to bet, I’d bet three and half. But the Democrats have to come up with a reasonable candidate ... or Trump will win again.” Dimon, who in the past has described himself as “barely” a Democrat, has been going to Washington more often since the 2016 elections to lobby lawmakers on issues including changes in corporate taxes, immigration policies and mortgage finance. In December, Dimon became chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs who take their views to government policymakers. Dimon, 61, touched on wide range of topics, from America’s political climate to racial discrimination to the effects of the U.K. leaving the European Union. He also commented on foreign affairs, saying, for example, “We should never be rude to a neighbor like Mexico” and cautioning that the political weakness of German Chancellor Angela Merkel “is bad for all of us.” Talks on forming a governing coalition including Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union collapsed earlier this week, casting doubt on her future after 12 years in power. Dimon spoke for several minutes about discrimination over gender and race which he said is not acknowledged enough in the United States. “If you’re white, paint yourself black and walk down the street one day, and you’ll probably have a little more empathy for how some of these folks get treated,” Dimon said. “We need to make a special effort because this is a special problem.” Dimon gave his own bank a mixed review on diversity. His direct reports include people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), and half are women as are 30 percent of the top 200 JPMorgan executives, he said. Now in his 12th year as JPMorgan’s CEO, Dimon also reflected a bit on his own role. “I basically love my job,” Dimon said. “I mean, it’s tiring;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Senate candidate Moore's spokesman resigns as allegations roil campaign;(Reuters) - The communications director for U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore has resigned amid the Alabama Republican’s efforts to combat allegations of sexual misconduct that have roiled his campaign. News of the departure of John Rogers came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump defended Moore from accusations by multiple women that Moore pursued them as teenagers when he was in his 30s, including one who has said he initiated a sexual encounter with her when she was 14. Moore has denied any wrongdoing and has accused the women of conspiring with Democrats, media outlets and establishment Republicans in an effort to tarnish his reputation. Reuters has not independently confirmed any of the accusations. “As we all know, campaigns make changes throughout the duration of the campaign,” campaign Chairman Bill Armistead said in a statement on Wednesday. “John made the decision to leave the campaign last Friday - any representations to the contrary are false - and we wish him well.” Fox News journalist Dan Gallo said on Twitter that Brett Doster, a Moore campaign adviser, told him: “Unfortunately John just did not have the experience to deal with the press the last couple of weeks, and we’ve had to make a change.” Doster did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moore, 70, a conservative Christian and former Alabama chief justice, won the nomination for the Dec. 12 special election in a hotly contested primary against incumbent Senator Luther Strange. Strange, who was appointed to fill the Senate vacancy left by Jeff Sessions, now U.S. attorney general, was backed by Republican leaders, including the president, while Moore’s campaign attracted support from insurgent right-wing figures like former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Trump told reporters on Tuesday, however, that he might yet campaign for Moore, who he said “totally denies” the misconduct allegations, and that Democratic nominee Doug Jones was a liberal who should not be elected. The president’s stance stood in contrast to the reactions from most Republicans in Washington, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who have called on Moore to step aside. Jones released a campaign advertisement on Wednesday featuring the nine women who have accused Moore of improper conduct. “They were girls when Roy Moore immorally pursued them,” the narrator says, as photos of the women as young girls flash on the screen. “Will we make their abuser a U.S. senator?” ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. calls Myanmar moves against Rohingya 'ethnic cleansing';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday called the Myanmar military operation against the Rohingya population “ethnic cleansing” and threatened targeted sanctions against those responsible for what it called “horrendous atrocities.” “The situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement, using a term he avoided when visiting Myanmar, also known as Burma, last week. “The United States will also pursue accountability through U.S. law, including possible targeted sanctions” against those responsible for the alleged abuses, which have driven hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh, he said. The United States shifted its stance in part to raise pressure on Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders, who have shared power for the past two years under an uneasy arrangement after decades of military rule, to address the crisis. Rights monitors accused Myanmar’s military of atrocities, including killings, mass rape and arson, against the stateless Rohingya during so-called clearance operations after Rohingya militants’ Aug. 25 attacks on 30 police posts and an army base. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine state in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh, since the crackdown, which followed the insurgent attacks. “These abuses by some among the Burmese military, security forces, and local vigilantes have caused tremendous suffering and forced hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to flee their homes,” Tillerson said. While repeating U.S. condemnation of the insurgent attacks, he added: “No provocation can justify the horrendous atrocities that have ensued.” Myanmar’s 2-year-old government, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals with whom it shares power. “It’s not a situation that is completely under her authority, but certainly we are counting on her to show leadership and also to work through the civilian government with the military to address the crisis,” a senior U.S. official told reporters in a conference call. The term “ethnic cleansing” is not defined in international or U.S. law and does not inherently carry specific consequences, a second senior U.S. official said on the call. Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said the State Department’s use of the term and threat of sanctions “will likely have limited to no impact on the ground.” “It is likely to create more distrust between the United States and Myanmar’s military and government and push them closer to China, Russia, and its more authoritarian neighbors in Southeast Asia,” he added. The U.S. move came the same day as a U.N. tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic of genocide and crimes against humanity for massacres of Bosnian Muslims and ethnic cleansing campaigns, and imprisoned him for life. The second U.S. official said Washington was analyzing whether genocide or crimes against humanity had occurred in Myanmar, which would violate international law, but has made no determination on either and that this would take time to assess. “In the end it’s a court that has to decide that, as we’ve just seen with the verdict against Mladic,” he said. A top U.N. official in September described the military actions as a textbook case of “ethnic cleansing,” but the United States until Wednesday had avoided the term. Washington has sought to balance its wish to nurture the civilian government in Myanmar, where it competes for influence with China, with its desire to hold the military accountable for the abuses. U.S. officials also worry that the mistreatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority may fuel radicalism. The first U.S. official said Washington would work with Bangladesh and Myanmar to encourage the voluntary repatriation of Rohingya. “We have focused on the issue of voluntary returns,” the official said. “We don’t want people to be forced to return to a situation in which they feel uncomfortable.” Congressional pressure for a tougher U.S. response to the Rohingya crisis mounted before President Donald Trump’s first visit to Asia this month to attend a summit of Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, in Manila. U.S. government sources told Reuters in October that officials were preparing a recommendation for Tillerson that would define the military-led campaign against the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing, which could spur new sanctions. In early November, U.S. lawmakers proposed targeted sanctions and travel restrictions on Myanmar military officials. Rights group Amnesty International called for a comprehensive arms embargo against Myanmar as well as targeted financial sanctions against senior Myanmar military officials. ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sign-up pace slows in third week of 2018 Obamacare enrollment;(Reuters) - The pace slowed in the third week of enrollment for 2018 Obamacare individual insurance as nearly 800,000 people signed up through the federal government website HealthCare.gov, down about 75,000 people from the previous week, a U.S. government agency reported on Wednesday. There was an increase, however, in the number of new consumers to the program created by former President Barack Obama, to 220,323 from 208,397 in the previous week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. Republican President Donald Trump and lawmakers are trying to undo Obama’s health law but do not have enough votes to repeal it and so must continue to run the insurance program, which offers income-based subsidies. Uncertainty over its future drove 2018 monthly premiums up more than 30 percent on average as insurers such as Anthem Inc, Centene Corp and Molina Healthcare sought to cover higher costs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 11 million will enroll in 2018, up from 2017’s 10 million, even as the period for sign-ups has been cut in half to six weeks and will end on Dec. 15. Total sign-ups for Obamacare individual insurance in the 39 states that use HealthCare.gov reached 2.28 million during the first three weeks of enrollment. The figures do not include enrollment in Washington, D.C. or the 11 states including New York and California that run their own enrollment and websites. Among the states using HealthCare.gov with the highest number of individuals signing up were Florida, 498,168;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUDICIARY MEMBER: Why was FBI’s Case on Clinton Labelled ‘Special’ Status? [Video];" I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";Government News;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DIGITAL TYRANNY: Google Will Make ‘Those Kinds of Sites’ Harder to Find;21st Century Wire says This has been an ongoing project of the search giant, long in the making, and already underway. In fact, this website, 21stCenturyWire.com, has felt the impact of its content being disappeared in Google s search results resulting in a drop of over 50% in our organic search query traffic since April.It s those kinds of sites like RT, Sputnik, 21WIRE and many others that are targets in the grand plan, as outlined here by Robert Parry of Consortium News: YOU DON T NEED A HUGE AMOUNT OF IMAGINATION TO SEE HOW THIS COMBINATION OF MAINSTREAM GROUPTHINK AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COULD CREATE AN ORWELLIAN FUTURE IN WHICH ONLY ONE SIDE OF A STORY GETS TOLD AND THE OTHER SIDE SIMPLY DISAPPEARS FROM VIEW. RTGoogle will de-rank RT articles to make them harder to find Eric SchmidtEric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google s parent company Alphabet, says the company will engineer specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine s news delivery services. We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites it s basically RT and Sputnik, Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates Russian propaganda. We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don t want to ban the sites that s not how we operate. The discussion focused on the company s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.RT has criticized the proposed move whose timescale has not been publicized as arbitrary and a form of censorship.Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren t allowed if they come from RT, because Russia even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they ve found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT, Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement.During the discussion, Schmidt claimed that he was very strongly not in favor of censorship, but said that he has faith in ranking without acknowledging if the system might serve the same function. Schmidt, who joined Google in 2001, said that the company s algorithm was capable of detecting repetitive, exploitative, false, and weaponized info, but did not elaborate on how these qualities were determined.The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a longtime friend, added that the experience of the last year showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.Continue this story at RT READ MORE SCI-TECH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Sci-Tech FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV;US_News;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Haitians in U.S. malign Trump decision to send them back home;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Haitian immigrants on Tuesday decried a U.S. decision to end a program that granted 59,000 Haitians temporary visas after the 2010 earthquake, saying they would be sent back to a country that has yet to recover from that disaster and others since. The United States offered Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, to Haitians after the January 2010 earthquake killed some 300,000 people and devastated a country that has long been the poorest in the Americas. The administration of former President Barack Obama extended the program several times, finding that conditions in Haiti were too dire to send the beneficiaries home. President Donald Trump’s administration, after previously granting a six-month extension, announced on Monday that it would end TPS for Haiti in July 2019. Any Haitian who cannot obtain another kind of U.S. visa will be subject to deportation back to the Caribbean nation, where some earthquake victims are still homeless and the country is wobbling from Hurricane Matthew, a cholera outbreak and political instability. “We’re just left in a void,” said Sebastian Joseph, 26, a Haitian immigrant living in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn where Haitians and other Caribbeans are concentrated. He said virtually all Haitians want to stay in the United States, where they have carved out a niche in construction and healthcare services such as caring for the elderly and sick. “America has been the home of the free for 200 years or more. Everybody wants to come to America,” Joseph said. “A lot of people will go back to nothing.” Trump’s supporters note that the visa program was always meant to be temporary and that Trump ran a 2016 presidential campaign promising restrictive immigration policies. At least one Haitian TPS recipient in Brooklyn accepted that eventually she must return. “If they say I have 18 months and that’s it, I say thank God, and then I will go,” said Margaret Etienne, who gave birth to a 3-year-old son here who is now a U.S. citizen. “It’s my country. I love my country,” she said after buying takeout from a Haitian restaurant with her son on a stretch of Church Avenue that is also called Bob Marley Boulevard, after the late Jamaican musician. In ending the TPS designation, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke said she had determined that the “extraordinary but temporary conditions caused by the 2010 earthquake no longer exist.” Some critics dispute that Haiti has recovered and question how Duke reached such a conclusion. Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, the state with the most Haitians, urged Trump to extend TPS, warning in a column he wrote for the Miami Herald that “Haitians sent home will face dire conditions, including lack of housing, inadequate health services and low prospects for employment.” Fifty-nine percent of Haiti’s population lives below the poverty line of $2.41 per day, according to the World Bank. “It’s not going to be good for me. I don’t know what I would do,” said Ives Joseph Laforgue, 63, an unemployed Haitian immigrant in Flatbush who said he had open-heart surgery in 2014 and lives off the charity of Brooklyn’s Haitian community. Still, he said he would have even less in Haiti. Haitian community leaders and pro-immigration politicians in New York on Tuesday pledged to pressure the Trump administration to extend TPS. Among them was U.S. Representative Nydia Velazquez, a Democrat who introduced legislation that would protect from deportation immigrants who have TPS and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), another program subject to presidential discretion that was extended by Obama but is due to expire in March 2018. Ricot Dupuy, station manager of Radio Soleil, a Haitian-themed broadcaster in New York, said he thinks the decision is racially motivated. “This pressure to send immigrants back home ... The idea is to whiten America,” Dupuy said from his Brooklyn studio. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not stupid. They know that TPS holders, it’s good for this country. The business community knows it’s good for them. And eventually they may have the last word.” ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Waiting for May, Brussels eyes December Brexit deal;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When Theresa May visits Brussels on Friday, EU negotiators will be listening intently for signs the British prime minister is preparing to risk a domestic backlash and raise her offer to secure a Brexit deal in December. European Union officials and diplomats from the other 27 member states involved in the process hope that within a week to 10 days of meeting European Council President Donald Tusk, during a summit with ex-Soviet neighbors, May will deliver movement on three key conditions so that her EU peers can launch a new phase of Brexit negotiations when they meet on Dec. 14-15. I don t know what room for maneuver May has, but what we can see is a willingness to act, one senior EU official told Reuters. Another spoke of efforts to arrange the choreography of a deal over the next three weeks, including a possible EU-UK joint report on interim accords to unlock talks on trade. I feel the tectonic plates moving now, a diplomat handling Brexit for an EU government said. Time is running out and a failure in the December Council would serve nobody s purpose. There has been only a day of top-level talks between the two lead negotiators since a mid-October summit that dismissed May s call for immediate talks on a future trade agreement. But talks are continuing apace behind the scenes, participants say, ahead of a deadline of early December to strike a deal which can then be fully formalized by the 27 government leaders at the summit. Hopes have been raised by reports in British media that May has secured backing from pro-Brexit hardliners in her cabinet to increase the amount of a financial settlement of what Britain owes to the Union when it leaves in March 2019. If there is a political willingness in Britain, we should be ready, a senior EU official said, while warning that nothing was being taken for granted. May s room for maneuver to cut a deal that would please business while irritating Britons who want a sharper break with Brussels is limited. And Germany and France, the Union s lead powers have taken a tough line so far. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel distracted at home by a search for a new coalition, May can expect little focus from her to help smooth a deal, several diplomats said, leaving it quite possible that December will not see an end to deadlock. That would create some kind of crisis in negotiations, the second EU official said, noting that time was already short to complete a treaty by late next year to ensure an orderly Brexit. But maybe that is necessary. EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who met Tusk on Wednesday to prepare Tusk s Friday meeting with May, had been expected to hold a formal round of talks with British Brexit Secretary David Davis in the week starting Dec. 4. But EU officials say planning is all still up in the air. There could be a high-level meeting as soon as next week, possibly on Friday, Dec. 1, one said. The sides already believe they are quite close on agreeing the scope of rights for expatriate citizens in Britain and on the continent, though the EU will be particularly looking to pin Britain down to accepting its demands that any agreement be subject to enforcement through the Union s legal system. The third key criterion for moving to Phase Two, an outline agreement on how to avoid the new EU-UK land border disrupting the peace in Northern Ireland, remains a potential stumbling block. Differences of opinion between London and Dublin have been marked this month, worrying EU officials. However, it is the financial settlement that has been the most concern for the past few months and that, they believe, could be resolved by a combination of May stating clearly that Britain will pay a share after leaving of two major EU budget lines, staff pensions and agreed but undisbursed spending. British press reports, seen in Brussels as planted leaks from May s team, suggesting she might offer to pay something like 40 billion pounds ($53 billion) have encouraged EU negotiators. While that is well short of the 60 billion euros ($71 billion) the European Commission has mentioned, that was always seen by EU officials as a maximum demand. And they are willing, they say, to help May massage the public messaging of the amount in order to limit the political flak she takes at home. On presentational issues, Barnier is ready to help, not to call things by their real name, an EU official said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan court orders release of Islamist blamed for Mumbai attacks;LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani court on Wednesday ordered the release from house arrest of an Islamist leader accused by the United States and India of masterminding attacks on Mumbai in 2008 in which 166 people were killed, a prosecutor said. Hafiz Saeed was put under house arrest in January after years of living freely in Pakistan, one of the sore points in its fraying relationship with the United States. His freedom had also infuriated its arch-foe India. Saeed, who is expected to be freed on Thursday, thanked the court judges in a video message released by his Islamist charity. Thanks to God, this is a victory of Pakistan s independence, he said. The government of Pakistan s Punjab province had asked for a 60-day extension to Saeed s detention but the request was turned down by the court, prosecutor Sattar Sahil told Reuters. His previous detention for 30 days is over, which means he would be released tomorrow, said Sahil. Saeed has repeatedly denied involvement in the Mumbai attacks in which 10 gunmen attacked targets in India s largest city, including two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a train station in a rampage that lasted several days. The violence brought nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India to the brink of war. The United States had offered a $10 million bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed, who heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Members say the Jamaat-ud-Dawa is an charity but the United States says it is a front for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group. The review board of the Lahore High Court asked the Punjab government to produce evidence against Hafiz Saeed for keeping him detained but the government failed, Saeed s lawyer A.K. Dogar told Reuters. The court today said that there is nothing against Saeed, therefore he should be released, he added. A spokesman for India s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. India accused Pakistan of sponsoring the attacks through the LeT, which Saeed founded in the 1990s. Pakistan has denied any state involvement in the attack. It placed the LeT on a list of banned organizations in 2002. The leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Hafiz Saeed s (may God protect him) internment is over, Nadeem Awan, a media manager for JuD, wrote on Facebook after the court order. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Detained Venezuelan-U.S. Citgo executives to be tried as 'traitors': Maduro;WASHINGTON/CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday that Venezuelan-American executives at refiner Citgo who were arrested in a corruption sweep this week would be tried as corrupt, thieving traitors despite a request by the United States to free them. Five of six executives of U.S.-based refiner Citgo [PDVSAC.UL] who were arrested in Caracas this week are U.S. citizens, according to a source familiar with the matter, possibly complicating Venezuela s corruption sweep of the oil industry. The six executives included acting Citgo President Jose Pereira, who has Venezuelan citizenship and U.S. permanent residency, the source said. Citgo did not respond to requests for comment. Late on Wednesday, Maduro tapped Asdrubal Chavez, a former oil minister and cousin of the late president Hugo Chavez, to replace Pereira. Military intelligence agents detained the Texas-based executives during an event at state oil company PDVSA s headquarters in Caracas on Tuesday, two sources told Reuters. U.S.-based Citgo Petroleum Corp (Citgo) is a Venezuelan-owned refiner and marketer of oil and petrochemical products. Maduro said the U.S. embassy had requested that its nationals be freed. He mocked the demand and vowed that the men, who are also Venezuelan, would pay for alleged wrongdoing in a financial deal. These are people born in Venezuela, they re Venezuelan and they re going to be judged for being corrupt, thieving traitors, Maduro said in a televised broadcast during which he also sang and danced salsa. They re properly behind bars, and they should go to the worst prison in Venezuela. Relations between Caracas and Washington have long been tense. They have further soured under President Donald Trump since his administration imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials including Maduro, and economic sanctions that have impeded the OPEC nation s access to international banks. Venezuela has defaulted on sovereign debt and bonds issued by PDVSA after failing to make timely payments, a New York-based derivatives group ruled on Thursday. Late on Wednesday, a U.S. State Department official said, We have seen media reports of the arrest of U.S. citizens in Venezuela. Venezuela is required under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to provide consular notification to the U.S. upon request of a detained U.S. citizen, and to provide consular access. When a U.S. citizen is arrested overseas, we immediately request permission to visit him or her. We have no additional information to offer at this time. Venezuelan state Prosecutor Tarek Saab has declared a crusade against organized crime in Venezuela s oil industry. Saab told a news conference on Tuesday that his office had uncovered a roughly $4 billion planned deal with foreign companies, offering the refiner as guarantee in a detrimental deal for Venezuela. According to Saab, the deal was with U.S. investment fund Apollo Global Management LLC and Dubai-based Frontier Management Group LTD, and also included a Swiss-based intermediary, Mangore Sarl. He added there was a presumed link between Mangore Sarl and the Citgo executives. Opposition leaders have attributed the arrests to in-fighting among government factions and the cash-strapped government s desire to gain control of money-making companies rather than a genuine desire to root out corruption. Venezuela has whipped out much of Citgo s top brass at a delicate time for the OPEC nation, which has been declared in selective default after some late payments. But as Venezuela is making efforts to pay, bondholders of some of the world s highest yielding debt have so far been tolerant of the delays. The five other arrested executives are: Tomeu Vadell, vice president of refining operations;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Waiting for May, Brussels eyes December Brexit deal;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When Theresa May visits Brussels on Friday, EU negotiators will be listening intently for signs the British prime minister is preparing to risk a domestic backlash and raise her offer to secure a Brexit deal in December. European Union officials and diplomats from the other 27 member states involved in the process hope that within a week to 10 days of meeting European Council President Donald Tusk, during a summit with ex-Soviet neighbors, May will deliver movement on three key conditions so that her EU peers can launch a new phase of Brexit negotiations when they meet on Dec. 14-15. I don t know what room for maneuver May has, but what we can see is a willingness to act, one senior EU official told Reuters. Another spoke of efforts to arrange the choreography of a deal over the next three weeks, including an EU-UK joint report pinning down interim accords to unlock talks on trade. I feel the tectonic plates moving now, a diplomat handling Brexit for an EU government said. Time is running out and a failure in the December Council would serve nobody s purpose. There has been only a day of top-level talks between the two lead negotiators since a mid-October summit that dismissed May s call for immediate talks on a future trade agreement. But talks are continuing apace behind the scenes, ahead of a deadline of early December to strike a deal which can then be formalized by the 27 government leaders at the summit. Everyone is talking to everyone already, at all levels, the European Commission s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters on Thursday when he confirmed that May would meet Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4. That is two days before envoys from the 27 meet on Dec. 6 to discuss a first draft of the Dec. 14-15 summit conclusions, including, crucially, whether the leaders should accept Britain has made sufficient progress to merit opening trade talks. Hopes in Brussels have been raised by reports in British media that May has secured backing from pro-Brexit hardliners in her cabinet to increase the amount of a financial settlement of what Britain owes to the Union when it leaves in March 2019. If there is a political willingness in Britain, we should be ready, a senior EU official said, while warning that nothing was being taken for granted. May s room for maneuver to cut a deal that would please business while irritating Britons who want a sharper break with Brussels is limited. And Germany and France, the Union s lead powers, have taken a tough line so far. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel distracted at home by a search for a new coalition, May can expect little focus from her to help smooth a deal, several diplomats said. Some in Britain have suggested May could take advantage of Merkel s weakness at home to drive a harder bargain. But EU diplomats argue that Merkel s troubles make it harder for her, and so for the 27, to water down their existing demands. So any brinkmanship around the summit could mean no deal in December. That would create some kind of crisis in negotiations, the second EU official said, noting that time was already short to complete a treaty by late next year to ensure an orderly Brexit. But maybe that is necessary. The sides already believe they are quite close on agreeing the scope of rights for expatriate citizens in Britain and on the continent, though the EU will be particularly looking to pin Britain down to accepting its demands that any agreement be subject to enforcement through the Union s legal system. The third key criterion for moving to Phase Two, an outline agreement on how to avoid the new EU-UK land border disrupting the peace in Northern Ireland, remains a potential stumbling block. Differences of opinion between London and Dublin have been marked this month, worrying EU officials. However, it is the financial settlement that has been the most concerning for the past few months. Officials believe that could be resolved by a combination of May stating clearly that Britain will pay a share after leaving of two major EU budget lines, staff pensions and agreed but undisbursed spending. British press reports, seen in Brussels as planted leaks from May, suggesting she might offer to pay something like 40 billion pounds ($53 billion) have encouraged EU negotiators. While that is well short of the 60 billion euros ($71 billion) the European Commission has mentioned, that was always seen by EU officials as a maximum demand. And they are willing, they say, to help May massage the public messaging of the amount in order to limit the political flak she takes at home. On presentational issues, Barnier is ready to help, not to call things by their real name, an EU official said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Papua New Guinea police order protesting asylum seekers out of Australian-run camp;SYDNEY (Reuters) - About fifty asylum seekers departed an Australian-run detention camp in Papua New Guinea on Thursday after police moved into the complex, confiscating food, water and personal belongings from the roughly 310 who remained. The Manus Island center was sealed off after a three-week standoff the United Nations has called a looming humanitarian crisis as detainees defied attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) to close it. Right now we have no water, one of the asylum-seekers in the camp said in a mobile telephone message. I came back to my room and they took my laptop and money and cigarettes. Video images shot and posted on social media site Facebook by Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz showed police using a megaphone to tell asylum seekers to leave because their stay at the camp, located on land used by the PNG navy, was illegal. Men boarded buses in footage he posted later on social network Twitter. The buses took the men to alternative accommodation, three sources said. In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it had received reports of force being used to remove the refugees and asylum seekers and called for calm. We urge both governments to engage in constructive dialogue, to de-escalate the tensions and work on urgent lasting solutions to their plight, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement noting it lacked full access to the shuttered facility. A police blockade of the camp was still in place, Tim Costello, chief advocate of aid group World Vision Australia, said by telephone from outside, adding that he had seen buses leave and that the accommodation he had visited was unfinished. PNG immigration and police officials did not return telephone calls from Reuters to seek comment. The camp in PNG, and another on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, have been the cornerstones of Australia s controversial immigration policy, which has been strongly criticized by the United Nations and rights groups. Australia opened the camps in a bid to stem a flow of asylum seekers making dangerous voyages by boat to its shores. Under its sovereign borders immigration policy, Australia refuses to land asylum seekers arriving by sea, and sends them to the offshore camps instead. At the camp, witnesses said officials in army fatigues led away Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani, a resident for four years who posts regular social media messages on conditions there. Boochani later posted that he had been released after being handcuffed for several hours and had left the camp. My understanding is that a number of people, a small number of people, have been arrested, including the individual, Australia s Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton told SKY News, referring to Boochani. Pictures sent via a messaging service showed upturned boxes of food and torn packets of rice and instant noodles and smashed furniture, including broken beds. Last year PNG s Supreme Court ruled that the center, first opened in 2001, breached its laws and fundamental human rights, leading to the decision to close it. But the asylum seekers say they fear for their safety if moved to a transit center on the island, and risk being resettled in PNG or another developing nation permanently. We don t want another prison. We want to leave this place, but they need to give a good solution for us, the first asylum-seeker said. We don t want another prison. We want a third country. Most of those in the camp are from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria. The transit centers had food, water, security and medical services, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said. They think this is some way they can pressure the Australian government to let them come to Australia, Turnbull told reporters in the capital, Canberra. Well, we will not be pressured. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Search for missing Argentine submarine reaches 'critical phase';MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The search for an Argentine navy submarine missing in the South Atlantic for one week reached a critical phase on Wednesday as the 44 crew on board could be running low on oxygen, a navy spokesman said. Dozens of planes and boats were searching for the ARA San Juan, a mission that has plunged relatives of the sailors into an anguished wait for news and transfixed the South American country of 44 million people. If the German-built submarine, in service for more than three decades, had sunk or was otherwise unable to rise to the surface since it gave its last location on Nov. 15, it would be using up the last of its seven-day oxygen supply. We are in the critical phase...particularly with respect to oxygen, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters. There has been no contact with anything that could be the San Juan submarine. Relatives of the crew members have gathered at a naval base in Mar del Plata, where the search is coordinated. Their concern grew as the hours ticked by. The craft was probably on the seabed because the mechanism to surface either failed or was not activated by a crew member, naval investigator Fernando Morales told Reuters in a telephone interview. If the captain stayed at the bottom because he thought it was more prudent to stay at the bottom, it s one thing. But at this point we have to think that if he s at the bottom, it s because he could not emerge, Morales said. In an evening news conference, Balbi said an unusual noise was detected on Nov. 15, near where the submarine last reported its position. He declined to say if the sound indicated an explosion or emergency on the vessel. Data on the noise were being analyzed, he added. Favorable weather allowed search boats to cover a greater area after being hampered by strong winds and waves for much of the past few days, Balbi said. Poor weather was expected to return on Thursday. Around 30 boats and planes and 4,000 people from Argentina, the United States, Britain, Chile and Brazil have joined the search for the submarine, which last transmitted its location about 480 km (300 miles) from the coast. Planes have covered some 500,000 square km (190,000 square miles) of the ocean surface, but much of the area has not yet been scoured by the boats. Argentines have been gripped by the search, with local newspapers placing photographs on their front pages of crew members relatives praying. The case has dominated discussion on social media in Argentina, with the hash tags Los 44 (The 44) and (navy spokesman) Enrique Balbi becoming trending topics on Twitter. Comparisons were made to the most recent major rescue operation in the region, when 33 miners in northern Chile were rescued in 2010 after 69 days trapped underground. The submarine was en route from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, to the coastal city of Mar del Plata, some 400 km (250 miles) south of Buenos Aires, when it reported an electrical malfunction shortly before disappearing last week. The submarine was launched in 1983 and underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina. The disappearance has highlighted the dwindling resources and lack of training faced by the armed forces since the end of a military dictatorship in the early 1980s. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian billionaire under investigation in France;NICE/MOSCOW (Reuters) - A French judge put Russian businessman and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov, whose interests the Kremlin has pledged to defend, under formal investigation on Wednesday after his arrest linked to a French tax evasion case, the prosecutor said. The investigation, a step that often but not always leads to a trial in the French legal system, was opened on suspicion of aggravated laundering of tax fraud proceeds, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. The judge decided that Kerimov could be released from detention but had to turn in his passport and could not leave the Alpes-Maritime county Nice is in. He was also ordered to post a bail of five million euros ($5.9 million) and to check in with police several times per week. The Kremlin said earlier that it would spare no effort to defend the rights of Kerimov, a 51-year-old billionaire who was arrested Monday night in the French Riviera resort city of Nice. Shares in Polyus, Russia s biggest gold producer which is controlled by Kerimov s family, fell on the news of his detention. We will do everything in our power to protect his lawful interests, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Intensive work is now being undertaken by the foreign ministry. The prosecution requested that Kerimov be kept in custody and a decision by a judge was expected soon. A second person was also put under formal investigation. A representative for Kerimov in the upper house of Russia s parliament, where he sits as a lawmaker, declined to comment on the case on Wednesday when contacted by Reuters. Polyus also declined to comment. Russia s state-run Rossiya 24 TV station, citing an unnamed source, reported that Kerimov had denied any guilt. It was not immediately clear if a lawyer had been hired to represent Kerimov in France. In the lower house of parliament, lawmaker Rizvan Kurbanov asked the Russian foreign ministry to make representations on Kerimov s behalf with the French authorities. We have still not received from the French authorities any explanation of the reasons for the detention of our colleague, Kurbanov told parliament. All this testifies to an unprecedented demarche by the French, he said, adding that he hoped the Russian foreign ministry would issue a formal protest. Shares in Polyus fell more than 3 percent in early trade in Moscow on Wednesday but then recovered some ground to close down 1.25 percent. Originally from the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, Kerimov built his lucrative natural resources business through a combination of debt, an appetite for risk, and political connections. He owned top flight soccer club Anzhi Makhachkala until he sold it in 2016. Kerimov s fortune peaked at $17.5 billion in 2008 before slumping to just $3 billion in 2009, according to Forbes magazine, due to so-called margin calls on his assets triggered by the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. In March this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving Kerimov the state award For Services to the Fatherland, second class for his contribution to Russian parliamentary life. French police arrested Kerimov at Nice airport on Monday evening. A French judicial source said the investigation centered on the purchase of several luxury residences on the French Riviera via shell companies, something that could have enabled Kerimov to reduce taxes owed to the French state. ($1 = 0.8465 euros) ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican leftist Lopez Obrador leads presidential race polls; (This version of the November 22nd story corrects deadline for parties to register candidates in eleventh par) MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican leftist presidential hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador showed leads over potential rivals in two newspaper polls published Wednesday, shortly after he unveiled key policies of his campaign platform ahead of next July s election. Lopez Obrador is almost certain to be the candidate for his National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), but other parties have yet to announce who will run for them, making accurate polling difficult. The survey in business newspaper El Financiero showed Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who has already vied twice for the presidency, ahead in any of ten potential candidate groupings with leads ranging from 5 to 15 percentage points. A separate poll in national daily El Universal showed AMLO, as the politician is known locally, at the top in six candidate combinations but with smaller margins, ranging from 5 to 10 points. The 64-year-old laid out his 2018 policy platform on Monday, vowing to boost infrastructure spending without upsetting economic stability. He also published a 415-page manifesto outlining goals such as cleaning up graft with tighter financial regulations. Lopez Obrador narrowly lost in 2006 and by a larger margin in 2012, in both cases refusing to accept results he dismissed as marred by fraud. He previously ran a popular, moderate government as mayor of Mexico City, but rivals depict him as a dangerous firebrand and liken his policies and style to the socialist project in crisis-hit Venezuela. Next year s election is expected to be contested by multiple candidates including independents for the first time, which will fragment the vote, a change that could favor either Lopez Obrador or the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from a second term. In both polls, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong emerges as the strongest potential candidate for the ruling party, which is considering at least four high-ranking officials. Mexican political parties have until March to formally register candidates, but most have set a mid-December deadline to benefit from a longer campaign period. A coalition headed by the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) is also contemplating several options for candidacy. El Universal conducted 1,000 face-to-face interviews between Nov. 10 and 17 nationwide, resulting in a 3.53 percent margin of error. El Financiero conducted 1,004 face-to-face interviews between Nov. 11 and 16 nationwide, and said the poll has a 3.1 percent margin of error. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; New York Times Reports There’s An Actual Russian Agent In Congress And He Has A Code Name;More than a year ago, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was caught *oops* on a hot mic saying that there were two people in Washington who were being paid by the Russians Donald Trump and California GOP. Rep Dana Rohrabacher. Sadly, those two people are still in office.A new report by the New York Times, though, confirms half of McCarthy s comments. Rohrabacher isn t just being paid by the Russians, he s a Russian agent, and he has a code name, and it s not even new information.According to the Times report, the FBI warned Rohrbacher in 2012 that the Russians viewed him as a source and had given him a code name. The next year, Congress elevated him to the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee that overseas Russian policy. Nope, nothing at all fishy there.Rohrabacher didn t seem to have much involvement in the Trump campaign (that would be too obvious, even for the Russians), but Special Investigator Robert Mueller is eyeing him nonetheless:As revelations of Russia s campaign to influence American politics consume Washington, Mr. Rohrabacher, 70, who had no known role in the Trump election campaign, has come under political and investigative scrutiny. The F.B.I. and the Senate Intelligence Committee are each seeking to interview him about an August meeting with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, Mr. Rohrabacher said. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is said to be interested in a meeting he had last year with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump s short-lived national security adviser.Rohrabacher s Russian connections go back further than just a few years, though. As a young Reaganite, he got the warm fuzzies with the fall of the Soviet Union and he developed a relationship with Vladimir Putin. In the 90s, Rohrabacher lost an arm wrestling match to the man who would become President for life, or whatever the hell Putin calls himself.Rohrabacher, naturally, denies that he is a Russian agent:Mr. Rohrabacher has laughed off suggestions that he is a Russian asset, and said in an interview that he did not remember being briefed that the Russians viewed him as a source. The F.B.I. and the senior members of the House Intelligence Committee sat Mr. Rohrabacher down in the Capitol in 2012 to warn him that Russian spies were trying to recruit him, according to two former intelligence officials. I remember them telling me, You have been targeted to be recruited as an agent, he said. How stupid is that? Only, his actions paint a very different picture. In 2016, he served as what might be called a delivery boy between Russia and either the Trump campaign or the RNC. He picked up a memo targeting Democratic donors. Rohrabacher has also met with Wikileaks Julian Assange and Russian (accused criminal) oligarchs.Rohrabacher insists nothing untoward is going on. His goal, he says, is to bring Russia in to help us battle terrorism. To be fair, Russia could help rein in terrorism, but they would have to stop funding terrorists, like Syrian President Bashir Assad.Republicans are finding it a bit easier to distance themselves from Rohrabacher than the other alleged Russian agent, Donald Trump. They are limiting his power on the Foreign Affairs committee.Politically, this could be disaster for Rohrabacher. He s facing a tough race in California, and you d better believe that his opponents are using his Russian connections against him.Hans Keirstead, a prominent stem-cell researcher competing with five other Democrats to challenge Mr. Rohrabacher, compared the Republican s Russia record to a prologue to a very bad book. We ve got a Russian-tainted congressman, Mr. Keirstead said in an interview, adding Why should the constituents of the 48th District vote for an individual whose interests are elsewhere? Of course, Rohrabacher, like anyone who s been trained in dictator 101, is fundraising off of it, calling it an attack. Featured image via Adam Berry/Getty Images.;News;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Fox News Bans Gene Simmons For Life For Harassing Staff Off Camera;Gene Simmons, the 68-year-old Kiss bassist and co-lead singer, contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice for a grand total of three episodes back in 2008, self-proclaimed womanizer, and all-around poster-boy for washed up, aging rock stars who will stop at nothing to keep their names in the rapidly-diminishing spotlight, has stooped to a new low in his battle against irrelevancy He has been given a lifetime ban from Fox News.When it comes to Fox News, the network has a tendency to be a little lenient on the issue of behavior of sexual nature, a reputation that screams Hold my beer! to a man like Gene Simmons. On what was far from his first appearance on the network, Simmons was a guest last Wednesday on Fox and Friends, as well as Fox Business Network s Mornings With Maria, to promote his new book, On Power. Gene Simmons, who claims to know Donald Trump very well and that the current President s critics should get over it, couldn t be faulted for his onscreen appearance, even helping with the weather report:MUST SEE: @genesimmons helps @JaniceDean with the weather! pic.twitter.com/EFfRQESNuq FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) November 15, 2017Simmons also sat on a panel with Mornings With Maria host Maria Bartiromo and gave his view on the Harvey Weinstein sexual-misconduct case. The lunatics have taken over the insane asylum when respected business entities such as yourself ask guys that like to stick their tongues out what I think of Harvey Weinstein, Simmons answered. Okay, I m a powerful and attractive man, and what I m about to say is deadly serious, he added. Men are jackasses. From the time we re young we have testosterone. I m not validating it or defending it. As is always the case, however, it was when the cameras weren t rolling that things began to get creepy and also quite hypocritical. According to a knowledgeable Fox News source, Simmons arrived on the studio s fourteenth floor to do an interview with FoxNews.com s entertainment section to promote his book, but also chose to walk into a staff meeting uninvited, opened his shirt and shouted, Hey chicks, sue me! He didn t stop there, though. The source claims he went on to tell pedophilia-related Michael Jackson jokes, hit two employees on the head with his book while making comparisons on their intelligence based on the sounds, and asked an African-American employee if he was Al Roker. It was pretty severe, the source said.Simmons behavior was reported to a supervisor, who in turn passed the news on to Fox News human-resources executive Kevin Lord, who promptly banned Simmons from the building. He was also permanently barred from appearing on any Fox News or Fox Business Networkprogramming.It seems that Gene Simmons may have had a change of heart over the past week, as he has released the following statement: I have appeared frequently over the years on various Fox News and Fox Business programs and have a tremendous amount of respect for the talented women and men who work there. While I believe that what is being reported is highly exaggerated and misleading, I am sincerely sorry that I unintentionally offended members of the Fox team during my visit. Although Simmons interview with FoxNews.com was recorded, it will not be released.Featured image via Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images;News;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. hopes to pressure Myanmar to permit Rohingya repatriation;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States hopes its determination that ethnic cleansing occurred against the Rohingya will raise pressure on Myanmar’s military and civilian leadership to respond to the crisis and allow displaced people to return home, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. “The determination does indicate we feel it was ... organized planned and systematic,” a senior U.S. official told reporters on a conference call. “It does not point the finger at any specific group, but there is a limited number of groups that can be involved in that planning and organization.” ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Trump strongholds, Democrats walk tightrope ahead of 2018 elections;KATY, Texas (Reuters) - As Democrats try to win control of the U.S. Congress in next year’s midterm elections, their hopes of picking up a Senate seat in Republican-dominated Texas rest with a telegenic ex-punk rocker who wants to impeach President Donald Trump and legalize marijuana. Beto O’Rourke’s long-shot bid to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz illustrates the tightrope Democrats must walk as they gear up for the November 2018 elections. Democrats will have to win in areas that backed Trump last year in order to gain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate but even in Texas the party’s left-wing base is pressing candidates to stop the president by any means necessary. O’Rourke, who currently represents El Paso in the House, is drawing big crowds across Texas as he calls for universal healthcare and new restrictions on gun ownership. At a recent rally outside Houston, hundreds of supporters stood in line for up to an hour to shake his hand. O’Rourke, 45, said Trump’s surprise victory last year was a big reason he decided to run for the Senate. He said Trump’s racially charged rhetoric and divisive governing style have led him to support impeachment. “I’m now convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump is unfit for that office,” O’Rourke told Reuters in an interview. “This is a moment unlike any other, certainly in my lifetime, I think in this country since the Civil War, where we have to really decide who we are, and there are two very clear paths that we can take,” he said. The end of the path laid out by Trump “is tyranny, it is not democracy,” O’Rourke said. O’Rourke’s unapologetic progressivism stands out among Democrats who are campaigning outside the party’s liberal strongholds in the Northeast and on West Coast. In deeply conservative Alabama, Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones has been running as a pragmatist ahead of a Dec. 12 special election, saying he wants to be a “voice for reason” in Washington. He has run ads attacking Republican opponent Roy Moore over a sex scandal, but has steered clear of harsh anti-Trump rhetoric. In Virginia, Ralph Northam denounced Trump as a “narcissistic maniac” as he sought the Democratic nomination for governor, but dialed back the rhetoric during the general election, telling voters ahead of his Nov. 7 victory that he would work with Trump when it was in his state’s interest. In Congress, a handful of rank-and-file House Democrats have filed articles of impeachment even though U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is still investigating whether Trump’s campaign worked with Russia in last year’s election. Russia has repeatedly denied meddling and Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt.” Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi said earlier this month that she would not make impeachment a priority if her party won the House next year but Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer has said it is premature to consider impeachment. Even some of O’Rourke’s supporters say impeachment talk is counterproductive as long as Republicans control Congress. “Otherwise, in my view, it’s just chest-beating,” said Nikki Redpath, a Houston-area homemaker and O’Rourke campaign volunteer. O’Rourke is seen as the favorite to win the Democratic nomination in March but analysts say his progressive views could prove a liability as he tries to reverse his party’s long losing streak in the Lone Star State. Trump finished nine percentage points ahead of Democrat Hillary Clinton in Texas last year and the state has not elected a Democratic governor or senator since 1994. Democrats have lost recent statewide elections by double-digit margins and have struggled to recruit top-tier candidates for major races. Still, O’Rourke’s anti-Trump message has resonated with oil-industry executive Katherine Stovring, who said she used to vote for candidates from both parties but now has been motivated to work for Democratic candidates as a way to stop Trump. “I’m looking for ways to engage. This is our democracy at risk,” she said. Texas Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak said he thought O’Rourke would be trounced by Cruz unless voters turn en masse against Trump nationally. “He’s a more interesting candidate than the traditional sacrificial lamb the Democrats put up,” Mackowiak said. “But he’s far too liberal to be elected statewide.” In an era where differences between Republicans and Democrats are stark, candidates like O’Rourke have little incentive to moderate their positions, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. At this point there is little downside for O’Rourke to make polarizing statements on impeachment and other issues.     “I think you can expect to hear a lot more of that as the campaign unfolds,” he said. ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: Father of UCLA player in shoplifting case is 'ungrateful fool';(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday reignited a feud with the father of one of the three UCLA basketball players who were detained in China on suspicion of shoplifting, calling him an “ungrateful fool” in a series of early-morning tweets. LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo Ball, has played down Trump’s involvement in the three athletes’ release from Chinese detention after they admitted to stealing items from three stores during a team trip to China earlier this month. “...LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!,” Trump tweeted. In another tweet, Trump took sole credit for getting LiAngelo Ball out of a long-term prison sentence - and not the White House, the State Department or LaVar Ball’s associates in China. “IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just think.. ,” Trump tweeted, referring to the American boxing promoter. Ball has declined to thank the president and downplayed his role in helping to get his son home from China. The three players have apologized and thanked Trump for helping secure their release by raising the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to the country earlier this month. All three players have been suspended indefinitely from the UCLA basketball team. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he “should have left them in jail!” The Republican president also weighed in on another pet peeve: National Football League players kneeling during the national anthem at games. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that league owners are considering reverting to an earlier practice of keeping players off the field during the national anthem. “The NFL is now thinking about a new idea - keeping teams in the Locker Room during the National Anthem next season. That’s almost as bad as kneeling!” Trump said in a third early-morning tweet. “When will the highly paid Commissioner finally get tough and smart? This issue is killing your league! ...” A NFL representative had no immediate comment. ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrats, advocacy groups launch blitz of ads attacking tax plan;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The tax overhaul pushed by President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans is prompting a slew of attack ads by Democrats and progressive groups that say the legislation would lavish benefits on corporations and the rich, while harming the middle class. One ad launched on Tuesday warns that the Republican tax plan would leave Maine residents “lost in the wilderness” as it pans through a dark, deserted forest. The television spot, paid for by the group Not One Penny, urges the state’s Republican senator, Susan Collins, who is undecided on the plan and whose vote could help decide its fate in the Senate, “not to lose her way.” Another Not One Penny ad in Nevada, where Republican Senator Dean Heller faces a tough re-election race next year, says that the Senate plan is “a tax break for billionaires and wealthy corporations, paid for by higher taxes on every day Nevadans.” Republicans are looking to pass tax legislation within the next few weeks. Groups spending millions on the ads are aiming to sway public opinion in the final stretch of debate over the legislation, which would cut the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, and reduce individual income tax rates. Liberals see criticism of the tax plan as a potent issue for the 2018 U.S. congressional elections, when all 435 House seats are up for re-election, along with 33 in the Senate. The House of Representatives passed its tax bill last week. The Senate plans to vote once lawmakers return to Washington after this week’s U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Republicans are under pressure to deliver a tax bill to score their first major legislative achievement since taking control of the White House and both chambers of Congress in January. Many Democratic ads focus on Republicans thought to be vulnerable in the 2018 elections. Others target Republicans such as Collins in the Senate, where Republicans have a slim 52-48 majority and can afford to lose just two Republican votes and still pass a tax bill, with Democrats united in opposition. Republicans say their tax plans would provide across-the-board cuts for both businesses and middle-class workers, along with tax code simplifications that would make it easier for individual taxpayers to file. Republican tax writers contend their plan would mean a “typical family of four would see their tax bill drop by nearly 60 percent.” But Democrats say Republicans have used as a model a family with a specific set of tax circumstances, and that other families at similar income levels could end up paying more. Both the House and Senate plans cut individual tax rates but eliminate popular deductions. In the Senate plan, the tax rate cut for individuals is temporary, while the corporate rate cut is permanent. The Senate plan would repeal a key provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires individuals to pay a penalty if they do not have health insurance. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the Senate bill would, beginning in 2021, lead to higher tax bills on average for households earning $10,000 to $30,000 annually. By 2027, most taxpayers earning $75,000 or less annually would be paying more taxes, the JCT said. Democratic advocacy group Priorities USA on Tuesday increased to $2 million a tax-related digital ad campaign targeting voters in 20 House districts where Republicans voted for the House bill. It also plans ads in states represented by Senate Republicans Collins (Maine), Heller (Nevada), John McCain (Arizona), Bob Corker (Tennessee) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is running digital ads in more than 40 Republican-held House districts. The group Save My Care is running digital ads in the districts of 14 House Republicans who voted for the bill, and in Alaska, Arizona and Maine. Republican and conservative groups are running ads of their own. The National Republican Congressional Committee started running spots in multiple districts last week promoting the tax bill. America First Policies, a nonprofit run by former Trump campaign advisers, is spending $135,000 this week for spots on conservative radio programs. ;politicsNews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; WATCH: Retired Alabama Cop: We Were Told To Keep Roy Moore Away From High School Cheerleaders;It seems that Republican candidate for Attorney General Jeff Sessions vacated Senate seat Roy Moore s proclivity for teenage girls was well known decades ago in Gadsden, Alabama even within the courthouse where he worked as an Assistant District Attorney, and even within the police department. Retired police officer Faye Gary spoke with MSNBC and said of the situation: The rumor mill was that he liked young girls, and we were advised that he was being suspended from the mall because he would hang around the young girls that worked in the stores and really got into a place of where they say he was harassing. We were also told to watch him at the ball games, and make sure that he didn t hang around the cheerleaders. Faye Gary went on to say that she originally thought that Moore liked, perhaps, women in their 20 s you know, LEGAL younger women. But, no. It was actually teenagers the old creep liked. Gary also said that Moore s liking for little girls was a known fact, while speaking with the New York Times, going on to say, It was treated like a joke. That s just the way it was. Of course, Roy Moore has long been a controversial character. He was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court twice, both times refusing to follow the law. The first time it was over his refusal to removed a 5,000+ pound monument of the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court building, and the second time for ordering officials around the state to refuse to comply with the United States Supreme Court s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality nation wide. He has also said that Representative Keith Ellison should not be allowed to serve in Congress because he is a Muslim. In other words, this is a man who has no regard for the rule of law, and is likely a child molester to boot.In short, the voters of Alabama need to reject this bigoted extremist, and, if they don t, they ll be sending a message to the rest of the nation: a child molester is much better to be seated in the Senate than a Democrat.Watch Faye Gary s comments on the matter below:Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images;News;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rosneft's Sechin a no-show as witness in bribery trial again, ordered to appear next week;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin again failed to show up as a witness at the bribery trial of a former Russian economy minister on Wednesday, prompting the judge to order him to appear next week. Sechin, boss of Russia s biggest oil company and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, had told the court he would be unavailable for the rest of the year. He is a key witness in the trial of Alexei Ulyukayev, who was arrested last year after a late night meeting in Sechin s office. Ulyukayev faces up to 15 years in prison, accused of accepting $2 million from Sechin in return for approving the sale of a state-controlled oil company to Rosneft. Police detained him inside Rosneft headquarters shortly after Sechin handed him the cash. Ulyukayev denies the accusations and says he was framed by Sechin. His lawyers say their client cannot testify in court prior to Sechin s testimony as a witness. All of us are here thanks to witness Sechin, Ulyukayev s lawyer Timofei Gridnev told the court after Sechin failed to appear on Wednesday. Gridnev said it was the third time Sechin had ignored a summons to appear. Judge Larisa Semyonova read out a letter from Sechin s lawyers saying he would be unable to attend for the rest of the year due to his tight schedule, but she nevertheless summoned him for next Monday. Rosneft made clear later on Wednesday that chances its boss would appear in court on Monday were rather slim. This hunt for Sechin discredits the court. Sechin is not the accused one, Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev told Reuters. All this shouting of Sechin s name in court and these dates are trash. Before his arrest, Ulyukayev was one of the leading figures in a faction of economic liberals who argued for less state control over the economy. Sechin is widely seen as the main champion of the opposite view, that the state should consolidate its grip, particularly over the energy sector that provides a large share of Russia s state revenue through its two biggest companies, Rosneft and Gazprom. Ulyukayev had opposed last year s sale of the medium-sized oil company Bashneft to Rosneft. But prosecutors say he signed off on the deal and then took the cash from Sechin. Sechin missed Wednesday s hearings because he is on a business trip to western Siberia, where on Tuesday he attended the opening of a new Rosneft oil field. On Wednesday, he met a regional governor and chaired a meeting with Rosneft s management in the Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiisk, Rosneft said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Srebrenica survivors: No punishment enough for Mladic despite conviction;SREBRENICA, Bosnia (Reuters) - Bosnian Muslims who lost loved ones in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre said on Wednesday that no punishment was enough for Ratko Mladic, the ex-Bosnian Serb wartime commander jailed for life for genocide. Mladic, dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia , was convicted by a U.N. tribunal on 10 counts of war crimes including the siege of Sarajevo in which over 10,000 civilians died from shelling and sniper attacks, and the expulsion of hundred of thousands of non-Serbs during the 1992-95 conflict. Can there ever be adequate punishment for someone who committed so many crimes? It would be too many even for 300 years, let alone three days, said Vasva Smajlovic, 74, referring to the Srebrenica slaughter in July 1995. Her husband, son-in-law and other relatives were among the 8,000 Muslim men and boys taken away and shot dead execution-style after Mladic assured U.N. peacekeepers and local residents that no harm would befall them after his forces seized the town. I try to count my dead all the time. I count to 50 and then I m not able to count anymore, Smajlovic said tearfully while watching a live telecast of the Mladic verdict. No words can describe how I feel. I am angry. All this comes too late. Her sister-in-law felt, however, justice was served with Mladic s conviction, even if it came 22 years after the war. Nothing can compensate for our pain but it is important that justice is done, said Bida Smajlovic, who last saw her husband when he tried to flee Srebrenica through woods in July 1995. His remains were later found in a mass grave. On July 11, 1995, Mladic s ultra-nationalist forces separated men and boys from women and took them away in buses or on foot to be shot within days. It was Europe s worst single atrocity since World War Two. Wednesday s verdict, the last major case before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after 24 years of work, stirred tension in a region still scarred by the 1990s Balkans conflagration. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who frequently threatens the secession of the Serb region from Bosnia, said the tribunal s judgment of Mladic only proved its bias against the Serbs. But Bakir Izetbegovic, the Muslim Bosniak member of Bosnia s tripartite presidency, said: No people, including Serbs, should call Mladic a hero, ..., glorify criminals and decorate war criminals. I hope this verdict will bring about such kind of sobering in Bosnia. The opinions underscored the stillborn reconciliation process in the federal state, now divided into an autonomous Serb Republic and Muslim-Croat federation. Placards with a portrait of the once beefy and brash Mladic bearing a slogan You Are Our Hero plastered the sides of buildings in Srebrenica, now a largely ethnic Serb town, and nearby Bratunac on Wednesday. The general will become a legend, and we shall continue to live as we have lived, said Milena Komlenovic, the Serb mayor of the eastern town of Kalinovik, where Mladic went to school. She added that the international court s decisions - over 60 of 83 defendants convicted have been Serbs - had aggravated rather than healed divisions in Bosnia. Politicians in neighboring Serbia, whose 1990s nationalist president, Slobodan Milosevic, armed and funded Mladic s forces, appealed for calm and urged all to look to the future when a now democratic Belgrade hopes to join the European Union. Our hearts are also with the victims, the victims on all sides. I do honestly feel...for all victims, but let s look towards the future, Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said. Zdravka Gvozdjar, whose nine-year-old son Eldin was killed in the Bosnian Serb bombardment of besieged Sarajevo, said the verdict was no surprise and partially satisfactory. He deserved a much worse punishment but I was so excited and satisfied that he was handed down a life sentence because it is the most he could get. There is no comfort for me or any other mother (but) we have learned to live with the pain. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope to meet head of Myanmar army, Rohingya refugees: Vatican;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis will meet the head of Myanmar s army and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, both late additions to a tour of the two countries next week. Human rights monitors and U.N. officials have accused Myanmar s military of atrocities, including mass rape, against the stateless Rohingya during operations that followed insurgent attacks on 30 police posts and an army base. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said on Wednesday that the pope would meet army head Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Nov. 30 in a church residence in Yangon. Myanmar Cardinal Charles Maung Bo had talks with the pope in Rome on Saturday and suggested that he add a meeting with the general to the schedule for a trip that is proving to be one of the most politically sensitive since Francis was elected in 2013. Both the pope and the general agreed. Some 600,000 Rohingya refugees, most of them Muslim and from Myanmar s northern Rakhine state, have fled to Bangladesh. Burke said a small group of Rohingya refugees would be present at an inter-religious meeting for peace in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka on Dec 1. Myanmar s government has denied most of the claims of atrocities against the Rohingya, and the army last week said its own investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by troops. The pope will separately meet the country s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in the capital Naypyitaw, on Nov. 28 in an encounter that was already on the schedule. Briefing reporters on the trip, Burke gave no details of how the Rohingya who will meet the pope would be chosen. A source in Dhaka said the refugees would be able to tell the pope about their experiences. Both events were not on the original schedule of the Nov. 26-Dec. 2 trip. Bo, the cardinal from Myanmar, has advised the pope not to use the word Rohingya while in Myanmar because it is incendiary in the country where they are not recognized as an ethnic group. Burke said the pope took the advice seriously but added: We will find out together during the trip ... it is not a forbidden word . ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;War crimes verdict on Mladic delayed as he undergoes blood test: Mladic son;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The verdict in the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was delayed on Wednesday while he underwent a blood pressure test, his son Darko told Reuters. U.N. judges had ordered a five-minute bathroom break for Mladic, 74, before issuing their verdict in his trial for 11 alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including genocide. That pause then stretched on for more than an hour. They took his blood pressure during the break. We don t know the readings, but they said they could continue with the verdict. We are very concerned about his blood pressure because he has already has four strokes, Darko Mladic said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia defends alternative accommodation for asylum seekers against U.N. criticism;SYDNEY/GENEVA (Reuters) - Australia s foreign minister said on Wednesday that asylum seekers occupying an abandoned Australian-run detention camp in Papua New Guinea (PNG) can relocate to alternative accommodation, challenging United Nations claims that the substitute site is unfinished and inadequate. Some 380 men have barricaded themselves into Manus Island center for more than 20 days without regular food or water supplies, defying attempts by Australia and PNG to close the facility. The asylum seekers say they fear for their safety if moved to the transit center, and risk being resettled in PNG or another developing nation permanently. There is accommodation that is perfectly acceptable, Australia s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, said in an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp radio on Wednesday. The stand-off on Manus Island can be ended if the men ... move from the regional processing center to the alternative accommodation that is being offered. Mostly from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria, the men are held under Australia s strict sovereign borders immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores. The stand-off has attracted the attention of the United Nations, which is a long-time critic of the conditions experienced by asylum seekers held in Australia s offshore camps. Nai Jit Lam, a regional representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva on Tuesday that asylum seekers are still not adequately provided for outside the center . It s still under construction ... we saw for ourselves that they are trying to complete the site as quickly as possible but the fact remains that major work is still in progress, Lam said in a satellite phone call from Manus Island. Australia says allowing asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores would only encourage people smugglers in Asia and see more people risk their lives trying to make the perilous sea voyage. It rejected an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 of the men to focus on sending up to 1,250 asylum seekers to the United States. Conditions at the abandoned facility are getting worse each day, according to Lam, with rubbish and human waste building up and medical supplies already exhausted. Papua New Guinea s Post-Courier newspaper reported on Tuesday that immigration officials would begin evicting the men on Wednesday, the fourth such deadline imposed on the refugees to leave since the camp s closure on Oct. 31. Papua New Guinea s Immigration department did not respond to a request for comment. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines set to keep open pit mining ban as Duterte rejects call to lift it;MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine environment minister said on Wednesday that a ban on new open pit mining in the country would remain in place, with President Rodrigo Duterte rejecting government panel recommendations to reverse it. The ban, implemented by former environment minister Regina Lopez from April covers new projects including the $5.9-billion copper-gold Tampakan project in southern Mindanao island, the biggest stalled mining venture in the Southeast Asian nation. The President sets the policy. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources will implement what the President deems as best for the country s interest, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Roy Cimatu told Reuters in a text message. Open pit mining is allowed under the laws of the Southeast Asian country, the world s top nickel ore exporter, where many mines use it to extract minerals. But Lopez said the process ruins the economic potential of places where it is carried out. Duterte said late on Tuesday that he had rejected a recommendation by the Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) to lift the ban because such mining is destroying the soil and environment and no corrective measure is immediately (being) implemented . He added that while mining brings good profit , he can let it go . The comments by the firebrand leader followed an announcement on Monday by his spokesman that Duterte had not reversed the ban. The MICC, an inter-agency panel that makes recommendations on mining policy, is chaired by Cimatu and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez. Cimatu said last month that he supported the removal of the open pit ban and that his agency would strengthen regulations to prevent any excesses by miners. The ban would further halt development of the Tampakan project in the southern South Cotabato province. The project was first stopped after South Cotabato banned open-pit mining in 2010, and operator Glencore Plc quit the project five years later. Lopez, who stepped down in May after failing to win congressional confirmation after 10 months in office, has said the project would cover an area the size of 700 soccer fields in what otherwise would be agricultural land. Also covered by the ban is the $1.2 billion Silangan copper and gold mine in Mindanao by Philippine miner Philex Mining Corp. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea soldier who defected regains consciousness, needs further care;SUWON, South Korea (Reuters) - A North Korean soldier who defected to South Korea in a dash across the border last week has recovered consciousness and is breathing on his own following two operations to extract bullets from his body, the hospital treating him said on Wednesday. The soldier, who requires further intensive care, is cooperating with treatment but is hesitant to speak and shows signs of depression, Ajou University Hospital said in a statement. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ninth Australian lawmaker quits as citizenship crisis widens;SYDNEY (Reuters) - A ninth Australian lawmaker quit parliament on Wednesday after discovering she was a dual national, the latest casualty in a widening constitutional crisis that has already cost the government its majority. The resignation of Skye Kakoschke-Moore, one of three senators in the center-right Nick Xenophon Team, over the surprise revelation that she was a British citizen by descent, does not affect the government s position in the upper house. Their advice was extremely surprising to me, Kakoschke-Moore told reporters in Adelaide, after having learnt from Britain s Home Office that her mother s birth in then-colonial Singapore in 1957 made her British by descent. Australia s 116-year-old constitution bans dual citizens from holding national office, in a bid to prevent split allegiances. The crisis, which is likely to ripple even wider in coming weeks as lawmakers are required to prove their status, has already cut a swath through Australia s parliament. The ruling center-right coalition lost its one-seat majority in the lower house after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was found ineligible for office and expelled by the High Court. Another resignation has since weakened it further. Adherence to the dual-citizenship rule, in a country where more than half the population of 24 million were either themselves, or have a parent, born overseas, has only recently come under the spotlight, with the High Court adopting a strict interpretation of the law. In response, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ordered all lawmakers to prove they comply with the laws by Dec. 5, and at least one lawmaker besides those who have quit has raised the possibility that she is ineligible. Senate votes from 2016 will be recounted to decide on a replacement for Kakoschke-Moore. By-elections set for Dec. 2 and Dec. 16, to replace Joyce and a lower-house government lawmaker who resigned on discovering he was British, are shaping as crucial for the government s survival. Joyce is expected to retain his seat, internal party polling published by the Australian newspaper showed, but former tennis champion John Alexander must contend with a high-profile rival in former New South Wales state Premier Kristina Keneally. The government would be reduced to minority rule if Alexander lost, forcing it to depend on a handful of independent lawmakers to retain power and pass laws. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican leftist presidential candidate vows financial crime crackdown;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican leftist presidential frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged in his manifesto to clamp down on financial crime, and tighten money laundering, banking and tax regulations if elected next July. Lopez Obrador, the 64-year-old former mayor of Mexico City and a two-time presidential candidate, on Monday unveiled his 2018 policy platform, vowing to boost infrastructure spending while preserving economic stability. In his 415-page manifesto, published late on Monday, the founder of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party said he would combat money laundering by tightening controls on the banking system, including tougher sanctions for public officials convicted of financial crimes, a new conflict-of-interest law and longer sentences for tax offenses. Banks and financial institutions aren t victims, but rather those principally responsible for, and benefiting from, the total lack of control in money laundering, the proposal said. Lopez Obrador s plan also aims to ensure transparency in sworn-wealth declarations and to block the right to confidential information for people under investigation for financial crimes. AMLO, as he is known locally, has sought to deflect accusations that he would pursue Venezuela-style socialist policies if elected, vowing instead to clean up the country s graft-stained politics. Mexico s government estimates that the drug trade, tax fraud and other crimes are worth at least 1.13 trillion pesos ($58.5 billion) a year in Mexico, with all of the funds susceptible to money laundering, according to a classified report seen by Reuters in October. The manifesto also gave details on Lopez Obrador s plan to scrap President Enrique Pena Nieto s new $13 billion Mexico City airport project, which is currently under construction. Lopez Obrador s plan recognizes the need to ease traffic and delays at Mexico City s existing airport, but proposes preserving it while expanding a nearby military site. AMLO would add two runways and a terminal at the Saint Lucia International Airport in the State of Mexico. The expansion would cost 50 billion pesos ($2.66 billion) and take less than three years, resulting in five runways shared between Saint Lucia and the current airport, he said. The document said this alternative would cost about one-third what will be spent on the new airport, which Lopez Obrador says would drain government coffers with maintenance costs. Pena Nieto s office said in a statement that cancelling the project would cause job losses and send a bad signal. The macroeconomic risk for Mexico would be enormous, as it would be sending the message that Mexico doesn t respect contracts nor private investment, the statement added. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Air China indefinitely suspends flights between Beijing and Pyongyang;TAIPEI/BEIJING (Reuters) - Air China Ltd has indefinitely suspended flights between Beijing and Pyongyang, citing poor demand as North Korea faces growing sanctions from the United States over its nuclear weapons and missile programs. An official in the company s Beijing-based press office, who only gave his surname as Ding, told Reuters on Wednesday that flights were suspended because business was not good . He declined to comment on when flights might resume. The suspension by China s national flag carrier comes shortly after a visit by a senior Chinese envoy to the city and also coincides with a U.S. decision to put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. Air China flights to Pyongyang, which have traditionally operated on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, began in 2008, but have frequently been canceled because of unspecified problems, state media has said. Last year, Air China halted flights seasonally for winter but resumed them in March. So far it is not selling tickets for any 2018 flights, according to Routes Online. One staff member in the company s Pyongyang office who declined to give his name told Reuters that Air China can resume the flights whenever there is enough demand and the office will operate normally even while there are no scheduled flights between Beijing and Pyongyang. Air China s Beijing-based press office declined to provide further comment. The company canceled some flights in April but later said that it would increase their number in May. The United States has urged China to do more to press North Korea to stop what the United States sees as belligerent defiance of U.N. resolutions. China s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that it hoped all parties could contribute to resolving the issue on the Korean peninsula peacefully. It also said that it was not aware of the Air China situation, adding that airlines made their decisions based on market needs. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Singapore sees running autonomous buses on public roads from 2022;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore is hoping to deploy autonomous buses on public roads in three different districts of the city-state from 2022 to provide better connectivity, the country s Ministry of Transport said in a statement on Wednesday. Countries around the world are encouraging the development of self-driving technologies. High-density Singapore, which has manpower shortages in many sectors, is at the forefront of such efforts and is hoping to prompt its residents to use more shared vehicles and public transport. There are at least 10 companies testing their autonomous technology on the island. Autonomous scheduled bus services will complement human-driven public buses, and will initially travel on less crowded roads, according to the statement. Autonomous on-demand shuttles will allow commuters to hail the services via their mobile phones. The government said it was seeking inputs from the industry and research institutions on the key requirements for the successful pilot launch of these autonomous vehicles. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian navy the odd man out in Asia's 'Quad' alliance;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Trump administration is pushing security ties between the United States, India, Japan and Australia, but the revival of the Asian Quad must overcome lingering mistrust in New Delhi towards its allies that hampers genuine military cooperation. Joint naval drills have been at the heart of a relationship that analysts widely see as a move to counterbalance China s rising power by binding the region s leading democracies more closely together. But while the navies of the United States, Japan and Australia can easily operate together - based on common U.S.-designed combat systems and data links - India is the outlier. Not only are most of its ships and warplanes Russian-made, its government and military remain deeply reluctant to share data and open up sensitive military communications systems. The United States has carried out more naval exercises with India than any other nation. But naval sources and experts say these are more about cultural familiarization than drills for joint combat. Because India will not sign an agreement on sharing data, naval exercises are conducted through voice and text commands with rudimentary SMS-style data exchange, Indian and Japanese military sources said. Think of it as directing your friend to your house in the 1980s. Your left may be his right, neither of you have situational awareness, said Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a senior fellow at New Delhi s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies who has tracked the military exercises. What the Americans want is 2017 - drop a pin on Google maps and hit share. You know where your friend is and he knows where your house is and how to get to it. The Indian defense ministry did not respond to a request for a comment. The so-called Quad to discuss and cooperate on security emerged briefly as an initiative a decade ago - much to the annoyance of China - and was revived recently, with an officials-level meeting this month on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Manila. The Trump administration has talked up cooperation with India as part of efforts for a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific . Describing the Indian and Pacific Oceans as a single strategic arena , U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described India and the United States as regional bookends . In concrete terms, it will lead to great co-ordination between the Indian, Japanese and American militaries including maritime domain awareness, anti-submarine warfare, amphibious warfare, and humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and search and rescue, he said. To be sure, India and the United States have steadily been bringing more powerful ships into their annual Malabar drills that have been expanded to include Japan in recent years. This year the USS Nimitz carrier group was deployed for the maneuvers off India s eastern coast, along with an aircraft carrier from India and a helicopter carrier from Japan. But a Japanese Maritime Self Defence Forces official said when Japan conducts drills with the Indian navy, communication is done mostly through voice transmission. There is no satellite link that would allow the two navies to access information and share monitor displays in on-board command centers. Communication is usually the most difficult aspect of any joint drill, he said. The exercises are meant to lay the ground for joint patrols that the U.S. eventually wants to conduct with India and its allies across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said better interoperability was a goal of the exercises and noted that India s enhanced role as a major U.S. defense partner would help boost the relationship. The designation of India as a major defense partner is significant and is intended to elevate defense trade and technology sharing with India to a level commensurate with that of our closest allies and partners, he said. As this relationship matures so will the level of interoperability. Last year, India signed a military logistics pact with the United States after a decade of wrangling, but two other agreements are stuck. The United States says the Communication and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) would allow it to supply India with encrypted communications equipment and systems. The Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement is the other pact that would set a framework through which the United States could share sensitive data to aid targeting and navigation with India. India is concerned that agreeing to the CISMOA would open up its military communications to the United States, and even allow it to listen in on operations where Indian and U.S. interests may not coincide - such as against arch-rival Pakistan, military officials in New Delhi say. Captain Gurpreet Khurana, executive director at the government-funded National Maritime Foundation, said India s underlying concern was having its autonomy constrained by binding its military into U.S. codes and operating procedures. Once, the Americans proposed a portable suitcase communications system called the CENTRIXS which could transmit full situational awareness data to Indian ships while the two navies practised together. India refused to allow it to be plugged in for the duration of the exercise, citing operational security, according to an Indian source briefed on the planning of the exercises. Even the joint air exercises that the two countries are conducting as a follow-on to Malabar are severely restricted, the source said. India sends its Russian-acquired Sukhoi jets to the drills, but their radars and jammers are turned off. David Shear, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia under President Barack Obama, said U.S. forces, particularly the Navy, were well aware of the interoperability constraints to interacting with India. They understand what the obstacles are and that this is going to be a long-term project, he said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri says to hold off resignation as PM;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s Saad al-Hariri said on Wednesday he would hold off presenting his resignation as prime minister in response to a request from President Michel Aoun to allow more dialogue. I presented today my resignation to President Aoun and he urged me to wait before offering it and to hold onto it for more dialogue about its reasons and political background, and I showed responsiveness, Hariri said in a televised statement. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Small eruption at Bali volcano triggers Singapore travel advisory;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s Mount Agung volcano in Bali has let out a puff of black smoke and ash in a small eruption, prompting Singapore to advise its citizens to be ready to evacuate the holiday island at short notice amid concern about a bigger eruption. Authorities have not changed the alert status on Agung, which remains at one level below the highest and there have been no reports of flight cancellations. Singaporeans should defer non-essential travel to the affected areas of the island at this juncture, Singapore s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a travel notice on Wednesday. You should also be ready to evacuate at short notice. Eruptions could result in ash clouds that could severely disrupt air travel , it said. Agung looms menacingly over eastern Bali at a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,842 feet). It last erupted in 1963, killing more than 1,000 people and razing several villages. Indonesia has nearly 130 volcanoes, more than any other country. Many of them show high levels of activity but it can be months before an eruption. A spokesman for Indonesia s National Disaster Mitigation agency, said via a text message that there had been a phreatic eruption late on Tuesday with black smoke reaching 700 meters (2,300 ft), followed by falling ash, gravel and sand. These types of eruptions called phreatic are the product of rock that already exists being shattered violently when water heated by the rising magma under Agung quickly turns to steam, according to a blog post on the Discovermagazine.com website. The disaster agency recommended against any activity within 6-7.5 km (3.7-4.6 miles) of the crater. It said that 29,245 people were staying in 278 evacuation camps. At one stage, after authorities put Agung s alert status at the highest level of four in September, more than 130,000 people left their homes. The alert level was lowered to three on Oct. 29. Australia left its travel advice unchanged and told citizens to monitor local media reports, follow the instructions of local authorities, and stay outside the existing exclusion zone . Bali, famous for its surf, beaches and temples, attracted nearly 5 million visitors last year, but business has slumped in areas around the volcano since September when Agung s volcanic tremors began to increase. Tourism, a cornerstone of Bali s economy, is Indonesia s fourth-biggest earner of foreign currency after natural resources like coal and palm oil. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China probes former chief of internet regulator for suspected graft;BEIJING (Reuters) - The former head of China s powerful internet regulator is under investigation for suspected corruption, the ruling Communist Party said, the latest senior official to be caught up in a sweeping campaign against graft. Lu Wei was suspected of serious discipline breaches, the party s corruption-busting Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a brief statement late on Tuesday, using a euphemism for graft. Reuters was unable to reach Lu or a representative to seek comment. At the height of his influence, Lu, a colorful and often brash official by Chinese standards, was seen as emblematic of China s increasingly pervasive internet controls. Organizers of China s first World Internet Conference in 2014, set up under Lu to promote Beijing s vision of internet governance, irked foreign tech firms by seeking their agreement on a last-minute declaration on internet sovereignty . Tech industry representatives ultimately declined to sign the pledge, and rights groups condemned the declaration as an attempt to undermine internet freedom. In 2015, he told reporters, Indeed, we do not welcome those that make money off China, occupy China s market, even as they slander China s people. These kinds of websites I definitely will not allow in my house. But courting China s powerful internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, was a key task for companies hoping to stay in his good graces or gain access to the huge internet market. When Lu visited Facebook Inc s U.S. campus in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the social networking site that has long been blocked in China, greeted Lu in Mandarin, according to a Chinese government website. But Lu s downfall, foreshadowed by his June 2016 replacement as head of the internet regulator and the loss of his other posts, is unlikely to signal a reversal of internet control policies, which have tightened further under successor Xu Lin. In a separate statement on its website on Wednesday, the CCDI emphasized the significance of Lu being the first tiger , or senior official, to be brought to heel for corruption since the key 19th Communist Party Congress held last month. It said that under Lu, the cyberspace administration did not carry out President Xi Jinping s instructions in a timely or resolute fashion. The improper use of power occurred on occasion, and the safeguarding of political security was not strong enough, it said, without elaborating on any of Lu s specific wrongdoings. Lu worked his way up though China s official Xinhua news agency before becoming head of propaganda in Beijing and then moving to internet work in 2013. He became a deputy propaganda minister after being replaced at the internet regulator. The government has blocked sites it deems could challenge Communist Party rule or threaten stability, including sites such as Facebook and Google s main search engine and Gmail service. Xi has waged war against deep-rooted corruption since taking office five years ago, punishing hundreds of thousands of officials. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;World Bank sees no slowing in Cambodia's strong growth;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia s economy is forecast to grow 6.9 percent next year, compared with a projected 6.8 percent pace in 2017, despite risks including uncertainties over next year s election, the World Bank said on Wednesday. Cambodia s political turbulence has had little impact on economic growth, which has hovered around 7 percent for the past six years. The World Bank said textile exports had moderated and the construction sector showed signs of slowing, but other manufacturing exports had increased and Cambodia was also drawing more tourists - particularly from China. The outlook remains positive, it said in a report. A possible slowdown of the regional economy, especially China, and potential election related uncertainties, however, pose downside risks to the outlook. China is now Cambodia s biggest aid donor and investor, but Western donors remain important and Cambodia has been increasingly at odds with them in the run-up to the 2018 election. They have condemned the arrest of Prime Minister Hun Sen s main rival, Kem Sokha, the dissolution of the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and a crackdown on civil rights groups and independent media. The government accuses Kem Sokha of plotting to take power with American help and his party of treason - charges the opposition says are politically motivated to ensure Hun Sen keeps his more than three-decade hold on power. Sweden said on Tuesday it was stopping some aid and the United States said it was ending election funding and would take further concrete steps. World Bank senior country economist Miguel Sanchez said uncertainty had affected Cambodia in previous election years, leading to postponed investment decisions and a decline in foreign currency deposits. It was temporary, he told a news conference. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia's Victoria state closer to legalizing assisted death;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s second-largest state on Wednesday took another step towards adopting a law allowing voluntary assisted dying for terminally ill patients. Any resident of Victoria state over 18, with a terminal illness and with less than six months to live can request a lethal dose of medication under the new legislation. Assisted dying will remain illegal in Australia s other five states. In a vote in Victoria s upper house, 22 of 40 senators supported the legislation. The legislation required amendments to pass the upper house, including halving the time frame for eligible patients to access the scheme, reduced from 12 months to live to six months to live. The amendments must be approved by the lower house before becoming law. The legislation is not expected to be opposed. There will be exemptions for sufferers of conditions such as motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis, who can request a lethal dose of medication even if they have been given up to a year to live. Many countries have legalized euthanasia, including Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and some states in the United States. But Australia s federal government has opposed legalizing euthanasia even though the remote Northern Territory, which does not hold Australian statehood, became the first jurisdiction in the world to do so in 1995. The federal government enacted its own legislation to override the Northern Territory law in 1997 under rules allowed by the constitution. State law, however, can not be overridden. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey expects S-400 defense system from Russia in 2019: minister;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey expects to receive its first Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles in 2019, Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday, the first time Ankara has given a firm timeline for a deal that has alarmed its NATO allies. Turkey has been in negotiations with Russia to buy the S-400 for more than a year, a decision seen by Washington and some of its other allies in NATO as a snub to the Western military alliance. Giving the most detail yet on the deal to parliament s budget committee, Canikli said it called for delivery of two S-400 systems, but that the second one was optional. The deal has raised concern among NATO countries in part because the weapons cannot be integrated into the alliance s defenses. Ankara has said it had no choice but to buy the Russian missiles, because NATO countries did not offer a cost-effective alternative. Once these systems are received, our country will have secured an important air defense capability. This solution aimed at meeting an urgent need will not hinder our commitment to developing our own systems, he said. Relations between Turkey and Russia deteriorated sharply over years during which they backed opposite sides in the war in neighboring Syria, but have improved markedly over the past year. The countries are now cooperating on Syrian peace efforts. Canikli said Turkey was also in talks with the Franco-Italian EUROSAM consortium on developing its own missile defense systems, after signing a memorandum to strengthen cooperation between the three countries in defense projects. With the memorandum in question, Turkish, French and Italian firms have started cooperation to identify, develop, produce and use a more advanced version of the SAMP-T (missile system) in a common consortium, he said. Turkey aimed to bring talks with EUROSAM to a definitive end soon, he said, adding that Ankara aimed to finalize the deal by the end of 2017 at the latest. Turkey has been working to develop its own defense systems and equipment, and has lined up several projects for the coming years, including combat helicopters, tanks, drones and more. Canikli said Turkey received bids last Friday for the production of 500 Altay battle tanks, of which 250 are optional. Shares of Turkish commercial and military vehicle producer Otokar rose almost 3 percent following the news about the 7 billion euro ($8.24 billion) domestic tank project. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey orders detention of 216 people in post-coup probe: Anadolu;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have issued detention warrants for 216 people, including former finance ministry personnel, suspected of having links to last year s failed coup attempt, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Wednesday. It said 17 former finance ministry personnel had been detained so far and another 65 were sought over alleged links to Gulen s network, Anadolu said. Separately, authorities carried out operations across 40 provinces targeting private imams believed to be recruiting members to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen from Turkey s armed forces. Ankara blames Gulen for orchestrating the July 15 coup attempt last year and has repeatedly demanded the United States extradite him, so far in vain. Gulen denies involvement. In the aftermath of the coup, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs in the military, public and private sector. The extent of the purges has unnerved rights groups and Turkey s Western allies, who fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the abortive putsch as a pretext to stifle dissent. The government, however, says the measures are necessary due to the gravity of the threats it is facing following the military coup attempt, in which 240 people were killed. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rohingya refugees 'drained' by trauma, says U.N. refugee chief;SEOUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled to Bangladesh from violence in Myanmar have been drained by the trauma they suffered during the crisis and a struggle to overcome desperate want, the United Nations refugee chief said on Wednesday. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since late August this year for neighboring Bangladesh, driven out by a military clearance operation in Rakhine State. The refugees suffering has caused an international outcry, spurring appeals by aid agencies for millions of dollars in funds to tackle the crisis. I found this was a population that had almost no response. Very passive, said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, describing his visit late in September to camps where the refugees were staying. You almost felt there was nothing left and that everything had been drained by this, he told Reuters in an interview in his first visit to the South Korean capital. He saw the lassitude as a symptom of trauma, he added. We haven t seen this kind of trauma for a very long, long time, the Italian diplomat said. Maybe I saw it in the 90s in central Africa. Grandi coordinated UN humanitarian activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo during its 1996-97 civil war. The success of aid efforts by the United Nations and non-government bodies depends on the Myanmar government to defuse the hostility facing humanitarian workers in Rakhine, Grandi said. It s not political work, it s not to favor one community over the other, he said. On the contrary, it s directed to all those who are in need. And when members of the Buddhist community are in need, they certainly qualify for that. I think it s important that they stress that, they do that more, said Grandi. Tension had been rising between the government and aid agencies even before the spasm of violence that began in late August. Officials had accused the World Food Programme of aiding insurgents after high-energy biscuits were discovered in July at a forest encampment the authorities said belonged to a militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Longstanding antipathy among ethnic Rakhine Buddhists - who say the UN and nongovernment bodies favor the Rohingya with aid deliveries spiked in August, with protesters demanding that aid agencies leave and the U.N. warning staff against rising hostility. Since the Aug. 25 militant attacks in Rakhine, the government has barred most aid agencies, except for the Red Cross organizations, from working in the state s north, and curtailed their activities elsewhere in the state. In several cases aid deliveries have been forcibly blocked by Rakhine Buddhists. The U.N. s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said the World Food Programme resumed some food distribution in northern Rakhine this month, but limited access meant agencies still do not know how many people were internally displaced over the last three months. Access remains restricted for most humanitarian actors in northern Rakhine, preventing them from reaching many people in need, the agency said. In central Rakhine, humanitarian organizations also continue to face access constraints. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arrested Indonesian parliament speaker pleads to keep his job;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s speaker of parliament, who was arrested last week over his alleged role in a $170 million graft case, has sent a letter from his cell to house leaders pleading to be allowed to keep his job while he fights the charges. Setya Novanto, who has denied wrongdoing, is being held for 20 days for questioning by Indonesia s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). He made the request in a letter handwritten in his holding cell that was released to the media late on Tuesday. The KPK is investigating state losses of about $170 million after allegations that sums ranging from $5,000 to $5.5 million, generated by marking up procurement costs for national electronic ID cards, were divided up among politicians in parliament. I ask other parliament leaders to give me an opportunity to prove that I wasn t involved, Novanto wrote. And in the meantime do not organize an ethics council plenary session on the possibility of making me non-active either as parliament speaker or as a member of parliament. Novanto, also chairman of Golkar, Indonesia s second-largest party and a partner in the ruling coalition, is one of the most senior politicians to be detained by the KPK, which is popular among Indonesians for targeting members of the establishment suspected of abuse of power. His battle with the graft agency has gripped Indonesia, where newspapers have splashed the story on front pages and memes mocking him have circulated on social media. He has clung to power through several previous corruption cases and repeatedly missed summonses for questioning by the agency in recent months, saying he needed heart surgery. Novanto was named a suspect on Nov. 10 again after using a controversial legal maneuver to get earlier charges dropped last month. In another letter, addressed to Golkar, Novanto said there has been no discussion of me temporarily or permanently stopping as chairman of Golkar . In that letter he nominated Idrus Marham to serve as acting chairman of the party. Novanto s lawyer, Fredrich Yunadi, told Reuters it was up to parliament and party officials to decide if he should keep his posts, but he was confident that his client would win his case. We have strong proof (and) in every court we always win, Yunadi said. Asked if he was concerned about the strength of evidence against Novanto, KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah said: From the beginning the KPK has had strong evidence, and the two people we have put on trial already (in this case) have been found guilty even up to an appeal stage. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sechin summoned to court in Ulyukayev's trial, but his schedule is tight: lawyer;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian oil major Rosneft has received court summons for its Chief Executive Igor Sechin to appear in court during the trial of ex-economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev, the judge read a letter from Sechin s lawyer on Wednesday. Sechin was called to court to testify but has missed the first two court sittings since then. In a letter to the court, his lawyer said Sechin s schedule would become tighter by the end of this year. Ulyukayev is on trial on charges of extorting a $2 million bribe from Sechin, in exchange for Ulyukayev s approval of a business deal. Ulyukayev denies the charges. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian senators approve 'foreign agents' media bill: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s upper house of parliament on Wednesday approved a bill which will allow the authorities to list foreign media operating in Russia as foreign agents , responding to U.S. restrictions on two Russian media outlets, RIA news agency reported. Last week the foreign agents law was swiftly approved by the lower chamber of the legislature. It now needs President Vladimir Putin s signature to become law. The move by the compliant parliament heavily dominated by Putin s loyalists comes after his threat this month that Russia would respond in kind to what he said were Washington s measures to restrict the freedom of speech of Russian media organizations operating on U.S. soil. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says it respects Mugabe's decision to resign;BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday that it respects Robert Mugabe s decision to resign as Zimbabwe s president, a week after the African country s army and Mugabe s former political allies moved to end his four decades of rule. The 93-year-old Mugabe had clung on for a week after an army takeover, and finally resigned on Tuesday, moments after parliament began an impeachment process, prompting dancing in the streets of the capital, Harare. China has close ties with Zimbabwe and traditionally also with Mugabe himself, who is reviled in the West as a despot whose disastrous handling of the economy and willingness to resort to violence to maintain power destroyed one of Africa s most promising states. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing that China was happy to see Zimbabwe peacefully and appropriately resolve the issue via talks, and that its policy toward the country would not change. China respects Mr Mugabe s decision to resign. He remains a good friend of the Chinese people, Lu said, adding that Mugabe had made historic contribution to Zimbabwe s independence and liberation . Zimbabwe s army seized power after Mugabe sacked his former vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was a favorite to succeed him. Mugabe s move was an apparent bid to smooth a path to the presidency for his wife Grace, 52, known to her critics as Gucci Grace for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping. Mnangagwa is expected to be sworn in within days and serve the remainder of Mugabe s term until the next election, which must be held by September 2018. Asked about a U.S. call for free elections in Zimbabwe, Lu said China believed it could handle its own affairs and China hoped other countries would not interfere. China and Zimbabwe have a close diplomatic and economic relationship, and China had stood with Mugabe s government in the face of Western economic sanctions, investing in auto, diamond, tobacco and power-station projects. In August, Zimbabwe said a Chinese company planned to invest up to $2 billion to revive operations at Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO), which ceased production in 2008 at the height of an economic meltdown. That year, China vetoed a proposed Western-backed U.N. resolution that would have imposed an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and financial and travel restrictions on Mugabe and 13 other officials, saying it would complicate , rather than ease, conflict. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Danish PM's party dealt blow at local election, Social Democrats gain;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen s Liberal Party suffered losses in Denmark s local elections, a possible bellwether for the next national election, which is to be held no later than mid-2019. The center-right Liberal Party received 23.1 percent of the votes in Tuesday s election, 3.5 percentage points less than in 2013. The Social Democrats gained 3 percentage points to 32.5 percent. The Social Democrats won the leadership of four of Denmark s five regions, and in at least 40 of the 98 municipalities, including the four largest cities. Coalition talks are still ongoing in some municipalities. The results are seen as a boost for Mette Frederiksen who took over the Social Democratic leadership after former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt failed to extend her rule at the 2015 national election. The Danes have said that it is more important to take good care of our welfare, rather than to get tax cuts, Social Democrat spokesman Nicolai Wammen said, alluding to the government s plans to cut taxes next year. Rasmussen was relatively satisfied with the result, he told broadcaster TV2. A spokesman for his party said the election results were mainly driven by local agendas rather than national level politics. The support for government ally Danish People s Party fell 1.3 percentage points to 8.8 percent, contrary to some predictions ahead of the elections. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says 'serious danger' in Syria's Afrin must be removed;ANKARA (Reuters) - There is a serious danger in the Syrian region of Afrin and this must be removed, Turkish Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday. Speaking at his ministry s budget talks in Ankara, Canikli also said the Turkish Armed Forces had completed the formation of its third observation post in Syria s Idlib province. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey received bids in tender for 500 battle tanks last week: minister;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey received bids last Friday for the production of 500 Altay battle tanks, of which 250 are optional, Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday. Speaking to parliament s budget commission, Canikli said the tender would be finalised in the coming days. The domestic Altay tank project is worth an estimated 7 billion euros ($8.24 billion). ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says it is following situation in Ukraine's Luhansk region;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin is following the situation in Ukraine s rebel-controlled Luhansk region, where there is a standoff between the head of the rebel administration and a sacked police chief, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. Peskov said he was not ready to disclose the Kremlin s views on what was happening in Luhansk, where armed men were on Tuesday blocking access to the centre of the regional capital. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait's Emir in hospital for medical checks after cold: agency;KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait s elderly ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah, was admitted to hospital on Wednesday for medical checks after suffering from a cold, the state news agency KUNA reported. It cited the Emiri Court Affairs Minister Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as saying that the 88-year-old Sheikh Sabah would undergo a normal medical checkup after going through a cold. The agency gave no further details. A veteran diplomat, Sheikh Sabah has been recently led mediation efforts to heal a bitter rift between some Arab countries, including regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, and Qatar over allegations that Doha supported terrorism, a charge Qatar denies. Born in Kuwait on June 16, 1929, Sheikh Sabah is known as the dean of Arab diplomacy for his work as foreign minister to restore relations with Arab states which backed Baghdad during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, when Kuwait was occupied by Iraqi forces. He was nominated ruler of the key U.S. regional ally and OPEC oil exporter in 2006, after Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah died and his successor, Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, was appointed only to be unanimously voted out of office by parliament due to illness. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says no proof Russia was source of radioactive pollution;MOSCOW (Reuters) - There has to date been no confirmation from any Russian government agencies that there was an incident on Russian soil that could have caused raised levels of pollution from a radioactive isotope, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. Russia s meteorological service said on Tuesday it had measured pollution of the ruthenium 106 isotope at nearly 1,000 times normal levels in the Ural mountains. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia will help Syrian opposition come out unified from Riyadh meet: Jubeir;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Wednesday his country will lend support to the Syrian opposition to come out unified from talks in the Saudi capital Riyadh ahead of peace talks in Geneva. We will provide help and support for them in all what they need, Jubeir told reporters in Riyadh after he attended the opening session of a Syrian opposition conference aimed at unify their ranks ahead of peace talks in Geneva. We hope they can come out of the conference unified, he added. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa to be sworn in as president on Friday: state broadcaster;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa will be sworn in as president on Friday following the resignation of Robert Mugabe after nearly four decades in power, state broadcaster ZBC reported on Wednesday. Mnangagwa, who fled for his safety after Mugabe sacked him two weeks ago, will land back in Zimbabwe at 6pm (1600 GMT) at Manyame Airbase in Harare, ZBC said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police detain suspect in global online drug ring;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police detained a 29-year-old man suspected of trading narcotic drugs internationally over the internet through anonymous websites and sending them by mail to customers in Germany, police said on Wednesday. In cooperation with Dutch authorities, police seized 400,000 euros ($470,840) and 75 kg (165 lb) of ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamine and heroin at the apartments of the suspect and at his mother in the Netherlands. The dealer and his partners, using the pseudonyms Mr. Drug Commander and Drugs Squad , were receiving orders mostly from German customers on black market websites such as Hansa Market and Dream Market , federal criminal police said. The man, who was not identified, was arrested on Nov. 9 while entering Germany to mail 34 shipments of drugs. A day earlier, in Ingolstadt in Bavaria, police had arrested a man who had ordered marijuana and amphetamines. Dutch authorities are still looking for other gang members. Police said online drug shops are boosting drug consumption and trafficking, requiring a shift in approach by German authorities. The supposedly anonymous ordering on the Internet motivates more young people to buy, consume or even sell drugs for profit, said federal criminal police in a statement. Police said the investigation began in August, leading to the initial arrest in October of six people in the Bavarian town of Coburg, which in turn helped identified 12 other buyers. German customs police in July said they expected far more cocaine to flood into Europe in the future, and had seized nearly five tonnes of the drug in northern sea ports so far this year, more than three times their total in 2016. [L5N1KF3CV] ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says opposes unilateral sanctions after new U.S. curbs target North Korea;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that China opposed unilateral sanctions after the United States imposed new curbs against 13 Chinese and North Korean organizations. Ministry spokesman Lu Kang made the comment at a daily news briefing. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU preaches tough love for impatient Ukraine;BRUSSELS/KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine s EU membership ambitions will collide with the West s reform demands at a summit on Friday with EU leaders ready to admonish Kiev for failing to implement anti-corruption laws that would bring it closer to the West, officials say. European Union leaders gathering in Brussels for the biennial Eastern Partnership summit with Ukraine and five other former Soviet republics are worried Kiev has lost interest in the reforms it began with zeal after its pro-European uprising in 2014. At stake for Kiev is new funding to rebuild the corruption-ridden economy, including a possible donors conference, more EU financial-sector aid and a Lithuanian-led push for 10-year development fund. We have to show some tough love because friendly advice isn t working said a senior EU official preparing the summit with Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus. Ukraine is the highest-profile test of the EU s 15-year-old policy to build an outer ring of market democracies from the Caucasus to the Sahara without offering EU membership. Backed by Washington, the strategy has so far worked by rewarding President Petro Poroshenko with attention, visa-free travel for Ukrainians and a free-trade deal with the EU. But Ukraine remains perceived as one of the world s most corrupt countries, according to Transparency International, ranked 131 out of 176 countries in 2016. Olena Halushka of the non-governmental Anti-Corruption Action Centre in Kiev said the political elite was now trying to fake the reforms agreed with Western donors, including energy, judicial and police overhauls. We are also witnessing attempts to roll back the achievements, she said of Poroshenko s reforms since 2014. EU leaders are expected to acknowledge the European aspirations of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova in a summit statement - EU code for closer ties but not membership. Kiev wants a promise of EU membership. Washington and Brussels say Ukraine would do well to follow the reformist-minded Baltic countries, now EU members, who as outsiders in the 1990s were told they had little chance of joining the bloc. Ukraine is at risk of taking our aid for granted, said a second EU official involved in policymaking with Kiev. Poroshenko, whose country is battling with a Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine, says the country has implemented more reforms in the past three years than in all of the last 24. But lately, the message from Poroshenko s government is to back off in the run-up to the 2019 presidential elections, which will be the focus now, EU officials and diplomats say. A year ago, things were looking promising, but now vested interests are fighting back, said a third EU official. We can t plough more money into Ukraine on that basis. There are achievements, including a revamped police force, a wealth declarations database for officials and modernization of the banking sector and state-owned energy firm Naftogaz. But some proposed laws, such as to legalize agricultural land sales and set up an independent anti-corruption court, have been pushed back, while some existing reforms are under threat. The wealth declarations register, launched in October 2016, is ineffective because authorities have not introduced software that would cross-reference data and identify malfeasance. Slow progress on the anti-corruption court and backtracking on gas pricing commitments have also stalled funding under Ukraine s $17.5 billion IMF program. Accusations that Ukrainian officials have tried to undermine anti-corruption investigators are a concern, EU officials said. With no threats other than withholding aid, the EU has few new incentives, having granted visa-free travel and market access to Ukraine. We definitely need to look for new carrots, which would be linked to reforms, said activist Halushka. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan special panel to weigh timing of emperor's abdication;TOKYO (Reuters) - The timing of Emperor Akihito s abdication, Japan s first in nearly two centuries, is to be discussed by a special panel that will meet from Dec. 1, the top government spokesman said on Wednesday. Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23 and has had heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, said in rare remarks last year that he feared age might make it hard to fulfill his duties. A law adopted in June that allows him to step down and be succeeded by Crown Prince Naruhito, 57, left details, such as timing, to be worked out. News the Imperial Household Council - whose 10 members include Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the chief justice of the Supreme Court along with two royals - would convene grabbed domestic headlines after Abe called on Akihito on Tuesday, apparently to inform the emperor of the meeting. Once considered divine, Japan s emperor is defined in the post-war constitution as a symbol of the state and of the unity of the people , and he has no political power. But Akihito, who has spent much of his time on the throne seeking to soothe the wounds of a war fought in his father Hirohito s name, and consoling people suffering from disasters or other woes, is widely respected by many average Japanese. At a special news conference to announce the meeting, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga did not comment on media reports that two options were being considered - March 31, 2019, or April 30 that year. After hearing (the panel s) opinion, based on that, we would like to decide the date promptly, he said. The government had proposed the emperor retire at the end of 2018 but Imperial Household Agency officials demurred, media have said, citing a cluster of rituals and other events around that time. Some in government, however, now worry an alternate proposal of March 31, 2019, would be complicated by nationwide local elections set for that spring, media said. Once Akihito steps down, a new imperial era will begin, replacing the current Heisei , or achieving peace period, which began on Jan. 8, 1989, the day he took the throne. Japan uses the Western-style Gregorian calendar but has also preserved the ancient custom in which the reign of a new emperor ushers in a new era. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N.'s de Mistura to discuss Syria in Moscow on Thursday: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura will visit Moscow on Thursday for talks on the situation in Syria, RIA news agency quoted him as saying on Wednesday. De Mistura will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss preparations for a new round of Geneva peace talks on Syria and a proposed congress on Syria in Russia s Black Sea resort of Sochi, RIA reported. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma met Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa in Pretoria;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma hosted Zimbabwe s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa in Pretoria on Wednesday, eNCA television footage showed. The ruling ZANU-PF party nominated Mnangagwa to fill the vacancy left by Robert Mugabe, who resigned as president on Tuesday, ending nearly four decades in power. Mnangagwa has said he fled Zimbabwe for his own safety, and he is expected to return to Harare on Wednesday. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mladic will appeal conviction, sentence;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic will appeal his conviction and life sentence, his legal team said on Wednesday after a U.N. war crimes tribunal found him guilty of genocide. It is certain we will file an appeal and the appeal will be successful, attorney Dragan Ivetic told journalists. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's FDP does not rule out renewed coalition talks: Beer;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) on Wednesday said they would not rule out renewed talks on a three-way coalition government if Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the Greens offered a completely new package of proposals. If it really was possible to build a modern republic in the coming years, then we are the last ones who would refuse to talk, FDP Secretary General Nicola Beer told ntv German television. But she added: I can t imagine that this will work. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain wants Zimbabwe to rejoin international community: PM May;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain wants Zimbabwe to rejoin the international community following the resignation of Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday. We want to see that country rejoining the international community, May told parliament. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Few tears in China as old friend Mugabe ousted in Zimbabwe;BEIJING (Reuters) - China is shedding few tears over the ousting of its old friend Robert Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe, fed up with the ruinous state of its economy and confident a new government will not antagonize China or change course on policies towards it. China pointedly failed to offer any open support for Mugabe after the army took power last week, instead calling vaguely for a peaceful resolution under a legal framework and for talks to bridge differences. On Wednesday, the foreign ministry said it respected Mugabe s decision to resign as president, and that he remained a good friend of China s who made historic contributions to Zimbabwe s independence and liberation . China s friendship with Mugabe dates back to Zimbabwe s independence struggle, which China supported. Mugabe has visited China numerous times, most recently in January when President Xi Jinping told him: China will never forget its old friends. But trade has sagged amid Zimbabwe s economic turmoil of recent years, and China does not rely on it for any crucial raw materials, unlike Zambia for its copper or Angola and oil. China s total trade with Zimbabwe in 2016 was worth $1.11 billion, down 15 percent on-year, a fraction of the $35.3 billion in trade China and South Africa did. Last year, China did more trade with Tunisia and Senegal than Zimbabwe. It has been clear to China what has caused the problems, and China showed no desire to prop up Mugabe in his hour of need. China will not interfere and is happy to let Zimbabwe s people make their own choices, said Shen Xiaolei, an Africa expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences government think-tank. The ruling party is fighting amongst itself, and his economic policies and national governance have had many problems, Shen said. Zimbabwe s regime was certainly going to get into trouble;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's Berlusconi takes fight against ban from office to European court;STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Lawyers for Silvio Berlusconi argued on Wednesday at the European Court of Human Rights against his ban from holding public office, hoping for a green light that will allow him to run for prime minister at Italy s election early next year. In a hearing before the Strasbourg court, the four-times prime minister appealed against his banishment from holding public office that followed a 2013 tax fraud conviction. It is supposed to remain in place until 2019. The billionaire media tycoon was widely written off after he quit as prime minister in 2011 amid a sex scandal involving his bunga bunga parties, while Italian bond yields surged to unsustainable levels at the height of the euro zone debt crisis. However, the 81-year-old Berlusconi has made a remarkable comeback after open heart surgery last year and his Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party is now the lynchpin of a center-right coalition which leads in opinion polls ahead of the election. The Berlusconi versus Italy case is being heard by 17 judges who make up the court s Grand Chamber, which is used for particularly important and complex matters. Berlusconi has hired a top London law firm to represent him. At the end of the hearing Edward Fitzgerald, a lawyer for Berlusconi, told reporters an injustice had taken place in the Italian courts. Basic procedural guarantees were lacking for doing something as massive and draconian as depriving an elected official of his electoral mandate, and the people who elected him of their right to be represented by the person they chose. The court will not issue a verdict on Wednesday, and even if it eventually decides in favor of Berlusconi the ruling may not come in time for him to run in the election, which must be held by May next year. In an interview on Wednesday with la Repubblica newspaper, Berlusconi said he would still be campaigning for his party whether he can stand for office or not. Irrespective of whether I can stand, I ll be a player and I ll bring the center-right to power, he said. Berlusconi was not present at the hearing. Berlusconi argues that because the tax fraud took place many years before the 2013 Italian law that bars him from running for office was passed, the legislation is being applied retroactively and is therefore illegitimate. Berlusconi received a four-year prison sentence in August 2013 for organizing a complex scheme to illegally lower the tax bill of his Mediaset media company. Three of the four years were immediately waived due to an amnesty to relieve prison overcrowding, and he was allowed to serve the remaining year in community service, helping out in an old people s home. After the conviction, Berlusconi was expelled from Rome s Senate, or upper house of parliament. With or without Berlusconi, the election is expected to produce a hung parliament. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement leads in opinion polls with around 28 percent of the vote, followed by the ruling center-left Democratic Party on about 25 percent. The center-right bloc is made up of Forza Italia and the anti-immigrant Northern League, each on around 14 percent, and the right-wing Brothers of Italy, with around 5 percent. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uganda police say raid newspaper, detain staff over article about president;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan police raided the office of a local newspaper, detaining staff and confiscating equipment on allegations it had published an inaccurate story, the paper s lawyer and police said on Wednesday. The day before the Tuesday evening raid, Red Pepper, Uganda s leading tabloid, published a story alleging that Rwanda believed President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda was plotting to oust President Paul Kagame. The article cited unnamed sources. The government said there were no tensions between Uganda and Rwanda. Police spokesman Emirian Kayima said eight managers and editors at the newspaper s Kampala head office were detained after police searched the paper s Kampala office and confiscated computers and mobile phones. Kayima said the eight staff were being held at a detention facility in eastern Uganda and would appear in court when investigations were complete. He said the story contained serious statements and insinuations...that have grave implications on national and regional security and stability. The paper s lawyer Maxma Mutabingwa said uniformed police told Red Pepper staff during the search that they wanted material and information on a story published on Monday . He said some managers homes were also searched but gave no details. Red Pepper was not published on Wednesday and staff had not been allowed to access the offices since the raid, Mutabingwa said. Human rights groups say harassment of independent media by security personnel has been escalating in the East African country where Museveni, 73, has ruled for 31 years. Local media including Red Pepper have reported this month on tensions between Uganda and neighboring Rwanda over a range of economic and security disputes. There s no tension between Uganda and Rwanda...we have no problem at all (with Rwanda), Uganda s foreign affairs ministry spokeswoman, Margaret Kafeero, told Reuters. She said Uganda had not received any official complaint from Rwanda regarding any allegations of a plot against Kagame and that the reports in Ugandan media were rumors . Relations between the two countries are often complicated by a shared history which has by turns been a source of mutual suspicion and amity. Kagame, the Rwandan leader, grew up as a refugee in Uganda and also occupied a top position in the Ugandan army after serving in the guerrilla movement that helped Museveni take power in 1986. The Rwandan leader launched his own rebellion from Uganda that ushered him into power and halted a genocide in Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Kerimov to be formally put under investigation in France: prosecutor;PARIS (Reuters) - Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov, arrested in France earlier this week by tax fraud investigators, will be presented to a judge with a view to formally placing him under judicial investigation, a public prosecutor said on Wednesday. Under France s legal system, being formally placed under investigation often but not always leads to a person being sent to trial. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;US renews grant for clearing bombs in Cambodia;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday opened a $2 million tender to help clear unexploded bombs in Cambodia weeks after the government s mine clearance agency said its U.S. funding had been stopped. Relations between Cambodia and the United States have spiraled downwards this year with the government accusing Americans of involvement in a plan by detained opposition leader Kem Sokha to bring down Prime Minister Hun Sen. Washington has rejected the accusations as baseless. Last week, it said it was cutting aid for next year s election and would take further steps after the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved by the Supreme Court at the government s request. The U.S. embassy said it was accepting applications for a $2 million one-year grant to survey and clear unexploded ordnance in eastern Cambodia, which suffered heavy U.S. bombing during the war in neighboring Vietnam. The United States has supported humanitarian demining in Cambodia for over 20 years and is committed to addressing our war-time legacy, Ambassador William Heidt said in a statement. We are looking for the best national and international experts. The size of the contract matches the amount which the government s Cambodian Mine Action Centre said earlier this month had been cut from funding it received from the United States through Norwegian People s Aid. We welcome the commitment in taking part in addressing the legacy of the war, said Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the Interior Ministry. China, now Cambodia s closest ally, was quick to step in with an offer of help for demining soon afterwards. China is Cambodia s biggest donor and investor and has played an ever more prominent role as Western countries have criticized a crackdown on the opposition, civil society groups and media ahead of next year s election. Although it has not taken action, the European Union pointed out last week that Cambodia s access to duty free access vital to its garment industry depended on respect for human rights. Hun Sen told garment workers on Wednesday that they would be the ones to suffer - not him - if the access was withdrawn. European Union countries accounted for about 40 percent of Cambodia s exports in 2016. Most of that was clothing. You must remember clearly that if there is any cut of buying orders, it s all the fault of a group of people of the opposition party, Hun Sen told garment workers in Phnom Penh. Hun Sen won t die but workers, you will die, he said. The prime minister accused exiled opposition leaders of trying to get sanctions imposed. They have so far said they would not call for measures to curb trade because of the impact it could have on the livelihoods of an estimated 700,000 garment workers. Cambodia s economy has proved largely immune to political turbulence. The World Bank said on Wednesday it expected the economy to grow 6.9 percent next year, compared with a projected 6.8 percent pace in 2017, despite risks including uncertainty over the election. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says hopes South Korea continues to appropriately handle THAAD issue;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his South Korean counterpart Kang Kyung-wha on Wednesday that Beijing hopes Seoul continues to appropriately handle their dispute over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea, state media said. The installation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system had angered China, which fears its powerful radar could look deep into China and threaten its own security. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says critical decisions on Syria will be made today;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Critical decisions will be taken for a solution to the Syrian crisis at a summit between Turkey, Russia and Iran on Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said. Speaking alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the southern Russian city of Sochi, Erdogan said it was vital for all parties to contribute to a political solution in the crisis that is acceptable for the Syrian people. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran's Rouhani says foreign interference in Syria must end, names no names;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that foreign interference in the conflict in Syria must end and foreign military presence in the country may only be acceptable if it is by the invitation of Syria s government. Rouhani, who stopped short of naming any specific nations, also told his Russian counterparts Vladimir Putin and Turkey s Tayyip Erdogan that now there was the need to uproot the last terrorist cells in Syria and the ground was prepared for political settlement. Rouhani was speaking at the three leaders meeting in the southern Russian city of Sochi. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italian left's efforts to stop migrants may backfire at election;ROME (Reuters) - A deal with Libya that has slashed the number of migrants reaching Italy could scupper the ruling center Democratic Party s (PD) already dwindling hopes of staying in power next year as it is opposed by the PD s potential coalition partners. The deal, struck in February, is popular with the Italian public and with right-wing and anti-establishment parties now ahead in opinion polls, but it has drawn criticism from the United Nations, rights groups and many on Italy s left. Under the accord, Italy and the European Union pledged to finance migrant camps in Libya, and Rome also agreed to train the Libyan coastguard, part of a crackdown on migrants attempting the hazardous sea crossing to Europe. But the deal has also led to tens of thousands of migrants being trapped in Libya, where humanitarian groups say they are locked up in appalling conditions, bought and sold, and subjected to crimes on a daily basis. One politician who wants changes to the agreement is Emma Bonino, a former foreign minister in a center government. I ve always criticized this agreement with Libya. It s a cork in a bottle that cannot hold, Bonino told Reuters. Italians have the perception that they are being invaded by Muslim foreigners. It s not true. Fear is fantastic for winning elections, but it s simply useless for controlling migration. Bonino is considering forming a pro-EU party with other left-leaning figures that could support the PD ahead of next year s national election, which must be held by May. In other criticism of the Libya deal, Giulio Marcon, the top lawmaker in the lower house for the Italian Left party, said: We cannot be complicit in migrant push backs. Left-wing voters hold humanitarian values dear, said Marcon, whose party has so far refused an alliance with the PD. ANTI-IMMIGRANT PARTIES GAINING The PD needs the support of other parties, on the left in particular. It trailed the populist 5-Star Movement in a recent poll with 24 percent to 29 percent, while a center coalition that includes the anti-immigrant Northern League, Silvio Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) and the far-right Brothers of Italy has combined support totaling about 36 percent. The deal with Libya, modeled on a similar one struck between the EU and Turkey, has been successful in reducing the flow of migrants into Italy, with arrivals down by about a third so far this year compared to the same period in 2016. In October alone arrivals were down about 80 percent from a year earlier. Ordinary Italians, alarmed by the arrival of some 600,000 migrants in the past four years, have welcomed the trend. An SWG poll this month showed two thirds of Italians do not want more immigrants, fearing they will take away jobs and increase crime. The Northern League, tapping into the anti-immigrant mood, has seen its popularity more than double to about 15 percent in three years. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, has accused fake refugees of invading Italy and bringing crime with them. Not to be outdone, the 5-Star Movement s candidate for prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, this summer accused charity ships rescuing migrants piled onto overcrowded and unseaworthy boats of being a taxi service . Under the February deal, Libya s coastguard has so far picked up about 20,000 migrants, including refugees. They are then forced into detention centers where they can be held indefinitely. Last week the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the EU s support for the Libyan coastguard as inhuman because intercepted migrants were imprisoned and subjected to unimaginable horrors . Former U.N. secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan said the Libya deal suggested Italy was complicit in a breach of the Geneva Convention, which says refugees cannot be returned to a place where they may be persecuted. Under the Convention, you cannot push them (refugees) back. But if you make an arrangement with somebody else to keep them from moving, in a way you are complicit, Annan said during a trip to Rome this month. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somalia says it requested U.S. air strike that killed 100 militants;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia s government said on Wednesday it had requested a U.S. air strike that killed scores of suspected militants to help pave the way for an upcoming ground offensive against Islamist group al Shabaab. The U.S. military s Africa Command (Africom) said on Tuesday it had killed more than 100 of the al Qaeda-linked insurgents in the strike on a camp 125 miles (200 km) northwest of the capital Mogadishu. Those militants were preparing explosives and attacks. Operations against al Shabaab have been stepped up, Somali Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman told Reuters. We have asked the U.S. to help us from the air to make our readied ground offensive more successful. Al Shabaab spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab denied the air strike had taken place. It is just... propaganda, he told Reuters. The United States has ramped up operations in Somalia this year after President Donald Trump loosened the rules of engagement in March. Africom reported eight U.S. air strikes from May to August, compared to 13 for the whole of 2016. Including Tuesday s strike, it has reported five this month alone. The Pentagon said the U.S. military would continue to target militants in strikes in coordination with the Somali government. Al Shabaab has lost control of most of Somalia s cities and towns since African Union peacekeepers supporting Somali troops pushed the insurgency out of the capital Mogadishu in 2011. But it retains a strong presence in parts of the south and center. Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a dual U.S.-Somali citizen, has taken a harder line than his predecessors against the insurgency since he was sworn in earlier this year. But his plans have been undermined by the poor state of the Somali military and political infighting. He has also had to try to mend fences with the powerful Habar Gidir clan, following a raid involving U.S. forces on the town of Bariire in August in which 10 people were killed including three children. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa arrives home, to be sworn in as president Friday;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa arrived back in the country on Wednesday, two days before he is due to be sworn in as president to replace Robert Mugabe, ruling party ZANU-PF official Larry Mavhima said. Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe s president on Tuesday, a week after the army and his former political allies moved to end four decades of rule by a man once feted as an independence hero who became feared as a despot. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli veteran, government clash over alleged abuse of Palestinian;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli ex-soldier who serves as a spokesman for a group that documents alleged abuses of Palestinians has set off a legal tussle with the Israeli authorities by saying he himself beat a detainee. After Dean Issacharoff, a former army lieutenant, spoke of the incident in a speech uploaded to YouTube in April, the Israeli Justice Ministry took the unusual move of launching an investigation, with him as a suspect. Issacharoff, the son of a senior diplomat, belongs to Breaking the Silence, a circle of army veterans that has long angered Israeli leaders by publicising abroad what it says are confessions of war crimes in occupied Palestinian territory. The group portrayed as another example of Israeli military excess Issacharoff s account of what he said was his own beating of a Palestinian stone-thrower in the West Bank town of Hebron while trying to handcuff him in 2014. But the Justice Ministry last week declared the case closed, saying questioning of the alleged Palestinian victim showed the event had never happened and that Issacharoff had made a mendacious claim . On Twitter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the decision as further proof Breaking the Silence lies and slanders our soldiers . Issacharoff retorted on social media that the ministry had questioned the wrong Palestinian - a man he had detained separately in Hebron around the same time. Breaking the Silence issued what it said was video of the right incident, showing Issacharoff frog-marching a handcuffed man. The Palestinian appears to have dark patches on his cheeks, which the group said were bruises from Issacharoff having kneed him. Issacharoff said he bloodied the Palestinian, though no blood is seen on the detainee in the footage. Achiya Schatz, another Breaking the Silence spokesman, accused the Justice Ministry of clearing Issacharoff in order to discredit the group. This was a politicised investigation, made-to-order for the elimination of opposition (voices), Schatz said. Prosecutor Nurit Littman denied any bias and said Issacharoff s testimony had been too sketchy to produce corroboration. We do not dabble in politics. We deal in evidence, she told Army Radio, leaving open the possibility of a new investigation taking into consideration the new video. Interviewed on Israeli television, the Palestinian, Faisal al-Natsheh, said he had been detained though he had not thrown stones, and had been beaten by troops. He could not confirm Issacharoff was among them. They didn t let me look at them, not even once, he said. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Draft opposition statement calls for Assad to leave at start of transition: Arabiya;RIYADH (Reuters) - The draft of a final statement by a Syrian opposition meeting in Riyadh calls for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad at the beginning of any transition, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said on Wednesday. An array of opposition groups and figures began meeting earlier in the day in a bid to unify the group s position ahead of U.N.-backed peace talks to end the country s six-year civil war. Some opposition members have hinted that the new communique could drop any mention of Assad, softening a long-standing demand that he not have a role in any transition. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cyprus says it plans to help defuse Lebanese crisis;ATHENS (Reuters) - Cyprus on Wednesday said it would try to help defuse a crisis in neighboring Lebanon after Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri made an unexpected stopover on the island on Tuesday night. Cyprus announced the move shortly after Hariri shelved a decision to resign at the request of Lebanon s President Michel Aoun, easing an impasse that had stirred tensions around the Middle East. Hariri met Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades at Larnaca airport for about 45 minutes late on Tuesday on his way back to Lebanon, his first visit home since he unexpectedly announced on Nov. 4 he would resign in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia. Our common objective is stability in Lebanon, stability in our area. Within this context... the President of the Republic will undertake some initiatives precisely to promote this objective;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon PM Hariri to supporters: 'I'm staying with you';BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri told his supporters on Wednesday he would stay with them, after suspending his resignation in a move that eased a major political crisis. I am staying with you and will continue with you...to be a line of defense for Lebanon, Lebanon s stability and Lebanon s Arabism, he said to hundreds of people gathered outside his house in central Beirut. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Le Pen says victim of 'banking fatwa' over account closures;PARIS/NANTERRE (Reuters) - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused two banks on Wednesday of launching a banking fatwa to silence her National Front party by closing bank accounts of hers and her party s. The banks said they had acted within regulatory requirements but declined to offer fuller explanations. Le Pen is smarting from defeat in this year s presidential and parliamentary elections, during which she accused French banks of being politically biased for not lending to her campaigns. This is an attempt to suffocate an opposition party, and no democrat should accept that, Le Pen told a news conference, calling on President Emmanuel Macron and other political parties to back her National Front (FN). Le Pen said the FN would file a complaint against Societe Generale and its subsidiary, Credit du Nord. She also plans a complaint against HSBC for closing a personal account of hers. The FN says Societe Generale closed its accounts earlier this month, and when the central bank ordered a subsidiary, Credit du Nord, to manage an account for the party, the bank refused to process cheque and credit card payments. Societe Generale rejected the accusations. Decisions to open or close a bank account depend purely on banking reasons ... without taking into account any political consideration, it said in a statement. It added that Credit du Nord offered an FN representative banking services required by law but gave no more details. HSBC said it complied with all necessary regulations and could not publicly discuss client relationships. In France, banks are allowed to close accounts with advance notice and do not have to say why. Holding an account is a right, however, and a customer can ask the Bank of France to designate a bank that would be forced to open one. But the designated bank can choose to limit the use of the account to basic banking services. The Bank of France would not comment. The FN has long said it struggled with financing. It came under scrutiny for a 9 million-euro loan it got in 2014 from a now-defunct Russian bank. It spent 12.5 million euros ($14.70 million) on the presidential election alone this year. Party supporters have since been asked to lend it money directly. At her news conference, Le Pen asked party supporters to react to the account closures. Hours later, the hashtag JeQuitteLaSG , or I Leave Societe Generale , was the top trending topic on Twitter in France. Government spokesman Christophe Castaner said the FN should be allowed to have a bank account and use it normally. But I do not know why the bank told its client, the National Front, Thank you and goodbye , so I cannot comment on the substance of the case, he told a weekly news conference. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Norway's police downgrade threat level;OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had lowered the national threat assessment, but still regarded an attack by militants as a possibility. The risk level was lowered to possible from likely , reversing an April decision to raise the threat assessment following an Oslo bomb scare and an attack in neighboring Sweden, where four people were killed. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Scope of Kerimov's immunity status up to judge to decide upon, says France;PARIS (Reuters) - The scope of the immunity status accorded to Russian businessman and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov, who has been arrested in France, is up to the French judge dealing with the matter to decide upon, said the French foreign ministry. Kerimov was arrested by French police at Nice airport on Monday evening in connection with a tax evasion case, and the Kremlin said it would do everything in its power to defend his lawful interests. It is up to the judge, who has been called upon in this case, to clarify whether the charges that have been brought against him are related to his official roles and would therefore be protected by diplomatic immunity, said French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne. Kerimov is ranked by Forbes magazine as one of Russia s richest businessman, with a net worth of $6.3 billion. His family controls Russia s largest gold producer Polyus. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Serbia PM says must leave the past behind after Mladic verdict;OSLO (Reuters) - Ex-Bosnian Serb general Rakto Mladic s conviction for war crimes did not come as a surprise, Serbia s prime minister said on Wednesday. We need to look to the future, so we finally have a stable country, Ana Brnabic told reporters during a visit to Oslo. We need to leave the past behind, she said. A U.N. tribunal convicted Mladic of genocide and crimes against humanity for orchestrating massacres and ethnic cleansing during Bosnia s war and sentenced him to life in prison. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Escape from North Korea: video shows defector under fire;SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean border guard briefly crossed the border with the South in the chase for a defector last week - a violation of the ceasefire accord between North and South, a video released on Wednesday by the U.N. Command (UNC) in Seoul showed. The North Koreans were only steps behind the young man when they shot him at least four times as he made his escape on Nov. 13. The video, filmed as the defector drove an army truck through the demilitarized zone and then abandoned the vehicle, gives a dramatic insight into his escape. The defector, identified by a surgeon as a 24-year-old with the family name Oh, was flown by a U.S. military helicopter to a hospital in Suwon, south of Seoul. Doctors said he had regained consciousness, having had two operations to extract the bullets, and his breathing was stable and unassisted. He is fine, lead surgeon Lee Cook-Jong said at a news conference in Suwon. He is not going to die. A UNC official said North Korea had been informed on Wednesday that it had violated the 1953 armistice agreement, which marked the cessation of hostilities in the Korean War. The UNC official told a news conference that a soldier from the North Korean People s Army (KPA) had crossed the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), the border between the two Koreas, for a few seconds as others fired shots at the defecting soldier. The key findings of the special investigation team are that the KPA violated the armistice agreement by one, firing weapons across the MDL, and two, by actually crossing the MDL temporarily, Chad Carroll, Director of Public Affairs for the UNC, told reporters. The incident comes at a time of heightened tensions between North Korea and the international community over its nuclear weapons program, but Pyongyang has not publicly responded to the defection. The video, released by the UNC, was produced from surveillance cameras on the southern side of the the Joint Security Area (JSA) inside the demilitarized zone. When tree cover is too dense to see the wounded defector crawling across the border, it switches to infra-red. The film begins with a lone dark green army jeep speeding along empty, tree-lined roads toward the border. At one checkpoint, a North Korean guard marches impassively toward the approaching vehicle. It races by. He runs in pursuit. After passing a memorial to North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, where tourists often gather, the jeep runs into a ditch just meters from the border, which is not clearly marked. For several minutes the driver tries to free the vehicle, but the wheels spin uselessly in fallen leaves. The driver abandons the vehicle and sprints away, pushing tree branches out of his way and sending leaves flying. He scrambles up a slope to cross just seconds before more guards appear, shooting as they run. One slides into a pile of dead leaves to open fire before running forward and appearing to briefly cross the dividing line between the two countries. He quickly turns on his heel. The video does not show the moment the defector is hit, but he is seen lying in a pile of brush next to a concrete wall in a later edited clip. The UNC s Carroll said the position was still exposed to North Korean checkpoints across the border. Allied troops operating the cameras had by then notified their commanders and a quick reaction force had assembled on the South Korean side, according to Carroll. The video does not show this force. Infrared imagery shows two South Korean soldiers crawling through undergrowth to drag the wounded North Korean to safety, while the deputy commander of the border security unit oversees the rescue from a few meters away. Doctors have conducted a series of surgeries to remove four bullets from the critically wounded soldier, who arrived at the hospital having lost a large amount of blood. From a medical point of view he was almost dead when he was first brought here, said the surgeon, Lee. Hospital officials said the man remains in intensive care. The soldier showed signs of depression and possible trauma, in addition to a serious case of parasites that has complicated his treatment, the hospital said in a statement. Lee said last week one of the flesh-colored parasites he removed from the soldier s digestive tract was 27 cm (10.6 in) long. Continuing stress made the soldier hesitant to talk, but he had been cooperative, doctors said. The patient first recovered consciousness on Sunday, and asked where he was in South Korea, Lee said. He was in agony when he came to, the surgeon added. Since then doctors have played South Korean pop music for him, and American action movies including The Transporter from 2002. On average more than 1,000 North Koreans defect to the South every year, but most travel via China and numbers have fallen since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011. It is unusual for a North Korean to cross the land border dividing the two Koreas. They have been in a technical state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The last time a North Korean soldier had defected across the JSA was in 2007. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thailand arrests woman wanted over deadly 2015 bombing at shrine;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Police in Thailand on Wednesday arrested a woman wanted in connection with a 2015 bombing in Bangkok that killed 20 people, 14 of them foreign tourists. The blast at a central Bangkok shrine popular with visitors from China and elsewhere in Asia raised fears of a spillover of violence from China s western Xinjiang region, where some members of the Uighur Muslim minority oppose Beijing s rule. No group claimed responsibility for the blast that killed five people from mainland China and two from Hong Kong and wounded more than 120 people. The Thai woman suspect, Wanna Suansan, 29 was arrested at Bangkok airport, said deputy national police chief Srivara Ransibrahmanakul. He declined to say where she had arrived from. Wanna faced various charges including premeditated murder and co-possession of explosives and weapons, police said. She is one of 17 people wanted in connection with the bombing. After questioning police will send her to prosecutors, Srivara told reporters at Bangkok s national police headquarters. Two ethnic Muslim Uighur men from China were accused of carrying out the bomb attack and are on trial in Thailand. They have denied all charges. Investigators said in 2015 Wanna rented a room in Bangkok to one of those men. She fled the country shortly after the attack. Police ruled out terrorism , saying the bombing was prompted by a crackdown on human smuggling networks. But many analysts and diplomats said it was likely an act of revenge for Thailand s deportation to China of the more than 100 Uighurs in July that year. A relative of Wanna s told reporters at the national police headquarters that Wanna wanted to come back to Thailand to prove her innocence. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mnangagwa to be sworn in on Friday as president: Zimbabwe's speaker;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa will be sworn in as president on Friday following the resignation of Robert Mugabe, the parliament speaker said on Wednesday. Speaker Jacob Mudenda said the ruling party ZANU-PF had informed him it has nominated Mnangagwa to fill the vacancy of the office of president, replacing the 93-year-old Mugabe who had clung on for a week after an army takeover. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;SocGen says no wrongdoing in handling of National Front accounts;PARIS (Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale on Wednesday rejected the far-right National Front s accusations that it had acted to suffocate the party by closing accounts. Societe Generale group s decisions on whether to open or close a bank account depend purely on banking reasons and in respect of all regulatory requirements, without taking into account any political consideration, it said in a statement. Regarding the opening of an account at Credit du Nord, a financial representative of Front National asked the Bank of France for the right to have a bank account as an individual. Credit du Nord responded to the Bank of France s requirements and offered the services required within the right s regulatory framework. Credit du Nord is part of the French retail banking network of SocGen. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N.'s Zeid says Mladic 'epitome of evil', no escape from justice;GENEVA (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic is the epitome of evil and his conviction on Wednesday for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes was a momentous victory for justice , U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said. Mladic is the epitome of evil, and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about, Zeid said in a statement. Today s verdict is a warning to the perpetrators of such crimes that they will not escape justice, no matter how powerful they may be nor how long it may take. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt detains 29 people on suspicion of espionage for Turkey;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s public prosecutor has ordered the detention of 29 people suspected of espionage on behalf of Turkey and joining a terrorist organization, state news agency MENA reported on Wednesday. According to the results of an investigation by the General Intelligence Services, the group has been recording phone calls and passing information to Turkish intelligence as part of a plan to bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power in Egypt, MENA said. The nationalities of the suspects were not specified. They are also accused of money laundering and trading currency without a license. Ties between Ankara and Cairo have been strained since the army ousted President Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood following mass protests against his rule in 2013. The Muslim Brotherhood has close ties with Turkey s ruling AK Party and many of its members have fled to Turkey since the group s activities were banned in Egypt. Following Mursi s ouster, Egypt branded the Brotherhood, the world s oldest Islamist movement, a terrorist organisation and most of its senior members have been arrested, driven into exile or underground. The Brotherhood says it is a peaceful organization and has condemned the crackdown. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. hopes to pressure Myanmar to permit Rohingya repatriation;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States hopes its determination that ethnic cleansing occurred against the Rohingya will raise pressure on Myanmar s military and civilian leadership to respond to the crisis and allow displaced people to return home, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The determination does indicate we feel it was ... organized planned and systematic, a senior U.S. official told reporters on a conference call. It does not point the finger at any specific group, but there is a limited number of groups that can be involved in that planning and organization. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea calls terror relisting 'serious provocation' by Trump: state media;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea denounced on Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling it a serious provocation and violent infringement , North Korean state media reported. Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tension over North Korea s nuclear weapons and missile programs. In North Korea s first reaction to the designation, a spokesman for the foreign ministry denied in an interview with the state media outlet KCNA, that his government engaged in any terrorism. He called the state sponsor of terrorism label just a tool for American style authoritarianism that can be attached or removed at any time in accordance with its interests . The U.S. designation only made North Korea more committed to retaining its nuclear arsenal, the official said. As long as the U.S. continues with its anti-DPRK hostile policy, our deterrence will be further strengthened, he said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. The U.S. will be held entirely accountable for all the consequences to be entailed by its impudent provocation to the DPRK. The designation came a week after Trump returned from a 12-day, five-nation trip to Asia in which he made containing North Korea s nuclear ambitions a centerpiece of his discussions. Announcing the designation, Trump told reporters at the White House: In addition to threatening the world by nuclear devastation, North Korea has repeatedly supported acts of international terrorism, including assassinations on foreign soil. ;worldnews;22/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish government on verge of collapse in spat over deputy PM;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish government was on the verge of collapse on Thursday after the party whose votes Prime Minister Leo Varadkar depends on to pass legislation appeared set to break the terms of a confidence and supply deal. The opposition Fianna Fail party said it would put a motion of no confidence in Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald on Tuesday, a move that would breach the deal it agreed to support Varadkar s Fine Gael government in key votes for three years. Fianna Fail indicated it might withdraw the motion if Fitzgerald resigned, but Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told state broadcaster RTE that Fitzgerald would not resign. The crisis comes weeks ahead of a European Union summit in which the Irish government has an effective veto on whether Britain s talks on leaving the bloc progress as it determines if EU concerns about the future of the Irish border have been met. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. asks Venezuela for access to detained Citgo executives;CARACAS (Reuters) - Washington has asked the government of leftist Nicolas Maduro for access to Venezuelan-American executives of U.S.-based refiner Citgo detained in Caracas this week, a State Department official said on Thursday. Five of six Citgo [PDVSAC.UL] executives arrested on graft allegations are U.S. citizens, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. All six men are being held in the headquarters of Venezuela s military counterintelligence department in Caracas, the country s state prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday. Socialist Maduro has said that the United States, his ideological foe, had requested the men be freed, but he vowed on Wednesday they would be tried as corrupt, thieving traitors for allegedly seeking to personally profit from a financial deal that was detrimental to the nation. The U.S. Embassy in Venezuela has asked that (Venezuelan) authorities grant consular access to all U.S. citizen detainees in Venezuela. We call on the (Venezuelan government) to do so immediately in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the State Department official said. Relations between Caracas and Washington have long been tense. They have further soured under President Donald Trump since his administration imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials including Maduro, and economic sanctions that have impeded the OPEC nation s access to international banks. U.S.-based Citgo Petroleum Corp (Citgo) is a Venezuelan-owned refiner and marketer of oil and petrochemical products and the arrests come amid a wider anti-corruption sweep in Venezuela s oil industry. Around 50 managers at state oil company PDVSA have been arrested since August. Sources in the energy sector say the arrests owe more to Maduro s move to sideline rivals and increase his control of money-making companies as the country struggles in a devastating recession. The political opposition says PDVSA is rife with corruption, and a congressional investigation concluded that at least $11 billion went missing between 2004 and 2014. The legacy of socialism: To have destroyed PDVSA and the oil industry and turned it into a den of corruption and nepotism, opposition lawmaker Jose Guerra said on Twitter. They need to blame someone and some gringos are ideal, Guerra later told Reuters. The arrests rid Citgo of much of its top brass and have instilled fear throughout Venezuela s oil industry, snarling up decision making, sources close to PDVSA have told Reuters. The arrests also come at a highly delicate time for Venezuela, which was declared in selective default this month after some late payments. But as Venezuela is making efforts to pay, bondholders of some of the world s highest yielding debt have so far been tolerant of the delays. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Guatemala prosecutors raid Millicom offices in graft probe;GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala s attorney general and a United Nations-backed commission against impunity in Guatemala searched the offices of Millicom International Cellular s local unit on Thursday as part of a corruption investigation. The raid comes four months after Ivan Velasquez, head of the commission, known as CICIG, said in July it would investigate Tigo, the Guatemalan affiliate of emerging markets mobile and media group Millicom, over alleged illegal campaign financing and corruption. Tigo declined to comment on the raid. Guatemalan police arrested 17 people in July on suspicion of involvement in a corruption racket allegedly directed by the country s former communications minister, Alejandro Sinibaldi, who has been on the run since June 2016. During the probe, investigators found evidence of payments from Telecomunicaciones de Guatemala S.A. (Telgua), a subsidiary of billionaire Carlos Slim s America Movil, in Sinibaldi s account. CICIG said that the payments were made to secure the company favorable treatment in a dispute with Tigo. America Movil said at the time it would audit the unit. In October 2015, Millicom said it had reported to U.S. and Swedish authorities potential improper payments on behalf of its joint-venture in Guatemala, sending its shares down. It was not immediately clear if this was related to the current investigation. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;PM Hariri urges Lebanese to put country first;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Thursday Lebanon s political crisis was a wake-up call for Lebanese with different loyalties to put their country ahead of regional issues. Hariri was referring to the crisis ignited by his shock announcement on Nov. 4 that he was resigning. He made it from Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy and regional powerhouse locked in a confrontation with Shi ite Islamist Iran. After returning to Lebanon this week, he shelved the decision on Wednesday at the request of President Michel Aoun. The period that passed was perhaps like a wake-up call for all of us to look for Lebanon s interests rather than looking at problems around us, Hariri said at the Annual Arab Banking Conference in Beirut on Thursday. The problems around us are important, but Lebanon is more important. Hariri reaffirmed the need for Lebanon to stick by its policy of staying out of regional conflict not just with words but with action as well . I want to stress that ... our main concern is stability, and this is what we ll be working on. Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, the head of President Aoun s political party, wrote to the Arab League chief on Thursday, stressing Lebanon s policy of staying out of regional crises, the state news agency reported. The regional role played by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah political and military movement has greatly alarmed Saudi Arabia, Hariri s long-time ally. Hezbollah s parliamentary group met on Thursday and said in a statement afterwards that Hariri s return to Lebanon and his positive statements signaled a possible return to normality. Hariri said on Wednesday his decision to postpone resigning would lead to a responsible dialogue ... that deals with divisive issues and their repercussions on Lebanon s relations with Arab brothers. Top Lebanese officials have said Riyadh forced him to quit and held him in the kingdom. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. Hariri returned to Lebanon after an intervention by France. A leader in Hariri s Future Movement said on Thursday that Hariri s decision to wait instead of officially resigning from his post was a wise step that would allow for more dialogue. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fair elections in Poland at risk from ruling party bill, opposition says;WARSAW (Reuters) - A bill sponsored by Poland s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party will undermine the fairness of elections, opposition deputies said in parliament on Thursday. The proposal would introduce live web feeds from polling stations, but also replace all current members of the State Electoral Commission, a body responsible for conducting and overseeing elections, as well as all election commissioners, giving political parties more say in naming new ones. The PiS has said its bill would make voting more transparent, but critics said the real aim is to boost the electoral prospects of the party, which has been accused by the European Commission of eroding democratic standards. This bill is a thuggish project. This is a mine placed under elections in Poland, the head of opposition PSL party, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said in parliament. The socially conservative PiS, in power since late 2015, is already at loggerheads with fellow members of the European Union over its push to bring the courts and state media under more direct government control, as well as over migration. According to the 72-page long amendment that did not undergo any public consultations, seven of the nine members of the State Electoral Commission would be chosen by parliament for 9-year terms, with PiS set to directly appoint three members and the remaining parties four. The remaining two members would be judges chosen by the head of the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Administrative court. PiS deputies have already appointed the head of the Tribunal following changes in the law that opposition parties said violated the constitution, a charge PiS denies. The changes proposed in the bill will destabilize the election system and are a serious threat to the effective carrying out of the local elections in 2018, the State Election Commission said in a statement last week. Head of the Commission Wojciech Hermelinski said on Thursday the amendment would also give an advantage to political parties at the expense of independent candidates. The bill would require the newly-chosen Commission to appoint nearly 400 election commissioners within 60 days of the bill coming into force, removing the requirement for the commissioners to be independent from political parties. Lawmakers are expected to initially vote on the bill early on Friday. If finally passed by the PiS-dominated parliament, the bill would still have to be signed into law by President Andrzej Duda, who could potentially veto it. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron tones down criticism of Poland, but concerned by its judicial reform plans;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that Poland s plans to overhaul the judiciary remained a cause for concern though there were a decreasing number of subjects where the two countries did not see eye-to-eye. Frosty even under the previous French administration, bilateral relations between the two powers reached a new low in August when Macron said the Polish people deserved better leaders and he shunned Poland during an eastern Europe tour. That prompted Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo at the time to call him arrogant and inexperienced . But at a joint news conference on Thursday in Paris the two leaders appeared to want to put their differences to one side, with Macron saying: We have disagreements, which we talked about, but also points on which we share views. Poland s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been increasingly at loggerheads with the EU since coming to office in late 2015, locked in disputes with the bloc over immigration and putting courts and media under more government control. More than two dozen rights groups signed a petition this week saying plans to overhaul Poland s judiciary would end the country s status as a democratic state based on the rule of law. When he met Szydlo on Thursday, Macron avoided overt criticism and said it was not up to him to lecture another EU country on its domestic reforms. But he added that France would follow the conclusions of the EU Commission s investigation on Poland s judicial reforms. The EU is pressing a legal case against Poland over its judicial reform plans and has suggested the country could forfeit some development funds if it refuses to change course. We will continue to exchange views on this topic for concerns, Macron said. If it turns out that what is done does not comply with European treaties, we will all draw the consequences. If agreements are found, and it turns out it does comply, or if Poland changes the ongoing reform to comply - of which I m neither the judge nor the participant - then in that case we will no longer have any problem, he added. Szydlo said Poland respected all the principles, values and rights of the European Union. All the ongoing reforms comply with these principles, she said. On another issue which has caused friction - the reform of the EU s directive on posted workers - Macron and Szydlo said there was room for compromise. The issue of the so-called posted workers pits wealthier countries against poorer peers keen to preserve current rules that allow their citizens to work elsewhere in the bloc for salaries higher than they would get at home but still lower than the local labor force. Macron won the backing of a majority of EU member states in October to limit posted work , but Poland opposed it. The most important thing is that we sit together at the table and talk, Szydlo said on Thursday. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Backlash among German MPs against parliamentary Twitter ban;BERLIN (Reuters) - German lawmakers have protested after Wolfgang Schaeuble, the new president of the Bundestag, announced a ban on sending tweets from inside the parliament chamber. In a letter published in German media on Thursday, the former finance minister told lawmakers that using devices to photograph, tweet or send messages from the plenary chamber is inappropriate to the proceedings of the Bundestag . German politicians are far behind other countries in addressing voters via Twitter s short messaging service, and none comes close to U.S. President Donald Trump - but the measure has not gone unprotested. This is not going to be the last word on the matter, tweeted conservative lawmaker Dorothee B r, who with more than 64,000 followers is among the biggest Twitter stars of German politics, proving her adeptness with a winking smiley and a string of hashtags. You can watch parliamentary sessions live, but we can t tweet from it, tweeted her liberal colleague Frank Sitta. Would a handwritten letter from inside be ok? It makes no sense! It was not clear if either of those tweets had been sent from the parliament chamber. The backlash comes after an election which heard promises to address Germany s relative slowness in adopting the latest digital technologies. Politicians fear the industrial and export titan s strength risks being undermined by more nimble digital upstarts from Silicon Valley. During his decade at the finance ministry, Schaeuble earned a reputation for ruthlessly policing indebted euro zone states budgets. Lawmakers chose him for his new job in the hope he would ably discipline a parliament that since September s national election is more fragmented than ever before. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe bourse loses $6 billion, index falls 40 percent after military takeover;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s stock market has shed $6 billion while its main index has slumped 40 percent since last Wednesday when the military seized power leading to the fall of Robert Mugabe, stock exchange data showed on Thursday. The main industrial index was at 315.12 points compared with 527.27 points on Wednesday last week when the military announced its takeover and put former president Mugabe under house arrest. On Thursday the index fell 4.4 percent. The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange had been on a rapid rise in the last two months, driven by investors seeking a safe haven for their investment amid fears of a return to hyperinflation in an economy suffering acute shortages of foreign exchange. But analysts said the market had entered a period of correction on investor optimism of a change in economic policy in a post-Mugabe era. Market capitalization was $9 billion, down from $15 billion last week, bourse data showed. On the currency front, black market rates for buying cash dollars softened further on Thursday. Buying $100 using electronic transfer cost $150, down from $180 last week. Some black market traders said they were not buying dollars at all, anticipating further softening of rates. Zimbabwe adopted the U.S. dollar in 2009, along with Britain s pound and the South African rand, to tame inflation that topped out at 500 billion percent. The market is adjusting back to reality, an analyst at a Harare-based asset management company said. The gains that we had seen were being fueled by an outlook of a return to hyperinflation, continued isolation of Zimbabwe by international lenders as well as well as a depressed economic outlook. An analyst at a local stockbrocking firm said Mnangagwa had hit the right notes with his speech on Wednesday. Mnangagwa said he wanted to grow the economy, create jobs and for Zimbabwe to re-engage the international community as the country has faced isolation since 1999 when it defaulted on its debt with the International Monetary Fund. Most of Zimbabwe s 13 million people remain poor and face currency shortages and sky-high unemployment, something Mnangagwa promised to address. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia likely to reduce troops in Syria before year-end: military chief;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - The size of Russia s military force in Syria is likely to be significantly reduced and a drawdown could start before the end of the year, the chief of the Russian military general staff said on Thursday. Russia s military support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, notably through air strikes, has been crucial in defeating Islamic State and Syrian opposition forces. There is very little left to do before the completion of military objectives. Of course, a decision will be made by the supreme commander-in-chief and the deployment will be reduced, Valery Gerasimov told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and military top brass in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Gerasimov said forces would likely be substantially reduced but leave Russia with two military bases, a ceasefire-monitoring center and a number of necessary structures to support the situation which has developed in Syria. Putin hosted Assad in Sochi on Monday and discussed moving from military operations to a search for a political solution to Syria s conflict. [nL8N1NR0K3] On Wednesday, Putin won the backing of Turkey and Iran to host a Syrian peace conference, taking the central role in a major diplomatic push to finally end Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year. [nL8N1NS5RQ] In March last year Putin said Russia had achieved its goals in Syria and ordered the withdrawal of the main part of its forces. However, a U.S.-led coalition operating in Syria said that after that statement Russia s combat power was largely intact. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three Georgian military personnel wounded in Afghanistan;KABUL (Reuters) - Three Georgian military personnel serving with the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan were lightly wounded when their vehicle was attacked near an airbase north of the capital Kabul, officials said. None of their injuries was considered life-threatening, Resolute Support spokesman Capt. Tom Gresback said in an emailed statement on Thursday. During a recent patrol south of Bagram Airfield yesterday afternoon, three Georgian service members suffered minor injuries when a motorcycle-borne IED (improvised explosive device) was detonated next to their patrol, he said. The attack came as NATO prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan to support a new U.S. strategy aimed at breaking the stalemate with the Taliban. Georgia, one of the largest contributing nations to the 13,500-strong Resolute Support mission, has around 870 troops in Afghanistan, behind only Germany, Italy and the United States. In August, a Georgian soldier was killed and six other coalition personnel were wounded in an attack on a convoy in Qarabagh district, the area in which Wednesday s attack occurred. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German Social Democrats under pressure to form grand coalition;BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of Germany s Social Democrats came under growing pressure on Thursday to drop his opposition to a new grand coalition with Angela Merkel s conservatives, with senior politicians arguing the party had a duty to promote stability. Merkel is facing the biggest political crisis of her career since efforts to forge a three-way coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens collapsed last weekend. That has raised worries across Europe of a prolonged leadership vacuum in the continent s economic powerhouse. The Social Democrats (SPD) have governed in coalition under Merkel since 2013. But leader Martin Schulz said the party must heed the will of voters by going into opposition after achieving its worst result of the postwar period in the Sept. 24 election. Pressure is growing on the party to revisit his decision, either by agreeing to prop up a conservative-led minority government by not voting against it, or by forming a renewed coalition. In either case, the position of Schulz as party leader could become untenable. If changing course and teaming up with the conservatives requires a change of leadership at the SPD, that would be unlikely before a party conference on Dec. 7-9. Schulz held a lengthy meeting with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a former SPD lawmaker and foreign minister, on Thursday afternoon before heading to party headquarters to consult senior party members. Steinmeier is trying to help facilitate a coalition government and avoid fresh elections. We will talk about if and how one can get a federal government in Germany, a senior SPD member said ahead of the meeting, adding that one option on the table was to support Merkel only indirectly by not blocking a minority government. But Stephan Weil, the SPD premier of the state of Lower Saxony, one of the party s most influential figures after he defied polls by winning re-election this year, implied a full coalition would preferable to a minority government. Minority governments are fragile constructs, he told the RND newspaper consortium. The SPD had to chart a path between a party rank-and-file reluctant to repeat the bruising experience of a grand coalition and its democratic obligations. Everyone understands that the stakes are high, involving the stability of an extremely important member of the European Union, he added. Volker Kauder, leader of the conservative parliamentary group and a key ally Merkel ally, echoed the sentiment, calling for the grand coalition to be reprised. Europe is waiting for a Germany capable of acting so that it can finally respond to the questions raised by French President (Emmanuel) Macron, he said, referring to Macron s call for fiscal reforms to strengthen the euro zone. Germany, the world s fourth largest economy, has long been a bastion of stability in the EU, and officials in Brussels and Paris fear months of political uncertainty could harm plans to reform euro zone governance and EU defense and asylum policies. Merkel, who remains acting chancellor until a new government is agreed, has said she would prefer to work with the SPD, but if that option fails, she would favor new elections over an unstable minority government. Another election would also provide no speedy resolution. Under Germany s constitution, the president could call another election only after Merkel had lost several votes in the Bundestag a process that could take several months. The mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday that 30 members of the SPD s 153-strong parliamentary group this week had questioned Schulz s preference for going into opposition during a meeting of the parliamentary party. Speaking to ZDF television on Thursday, SPD deputy leader Karl Lauterbach said his party might have to rethink its opposition to another grand coalition , but added he was still skeptical about joining one led by Merkel. The SPD supports Macron s proposal to give the euro zone the power to spend money to protect members of the single currency bloc against external shocks. If the SPD changes tack about a grand coalition , however, the leader of Merkel s sister party in the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said on Thursday it should not expect the conservatives to grant any significant concessions. We can t be blackmailed, said Horst Seehofer, who is himself fighting to hang on as CSU leader in the face of internal opposition. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libyan government says investigating migrant 'slave market' reports;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya s U.N.-backed government said on Thursday it was investigating reports of African migrants being sold as slaves and promised to bring the perpetrators to justice. Footage broadcast by CNN appearing to show African migrants being traded in Libya sparked an international outcry and protests in Europe and Africa. There have been direct instructions issued to form an investigative committee so as to uncover the truth and to capture the wrongdoers, and those responsible, and put them before the judiciary, Libyan Interior Minister Aref al-Khodja told journalists in Tripoli. We are now currently waiting for the results of the investigations which I believe are coming to a close. The CNN video showed what it said was an auction of men offered to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400, appearing to confirm earlier reports of the existence of markets for trading migrants in Libya. Many Libyans reacted with anger to the outcry, with some pointing to a European push to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean to Italy that activists say has resulted in a worsening of conditions for migrants inside Libya. We call on local and international bodies to cooperate with the Attorney General s Office and provide any information that helps to reveal the truth, the U.N.-backed government s presidency said in a statement. We, in Libya, are victims of illegal migration and we are not a source for it, it added, appealing to foreign powers to help stop flows from migrants countries of origin and across Libya s southern borders. The U.N. Libya mission said on Wednesday it was actively pursuing the matter with the Libyan authorities to set up transparent monitoring mechanism that safeguards migrants against horrific human rights abuses . Under pressure from Italy, the U.N.-backed government has co-opted local groups and tried to bolster Libya s coastguard to stem the record flows of migrants crossing the Mediterranean since 2014. Though sea arrivals to Italy are down almost a third this year, this week was marked by a surge in rescues after several days of bad weather, and one body was recovered, Italy s coast guard and humanitarian groups said. On Wednesday, 1,100 migrants were rescued from 11 boats, the coast guard said, and more than 200 were picked up on Thursday. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Journalists detained by Uganda charged with treason, police say;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Eight managers and editors of a daily newspaper arrested this week have been charged with treason, Ugandan police said on Thursday. Police raided the Red Pepper, Uganda s leading tabloid, late on Tuesday and detained the journalists, whom they accused of publishing a false story the previous day. The story, citing unnamed sources, alleged that Rwanda believed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was plotting to oust its leader, Paul Kagame. Besides treason, the journalists were charged with offensive communication and publication of information prejudicial to national security, police spokesman Emilian Kayima told Reuters. Kayima couldn t say when the journalists would appear in court. Rights groups and journalists have complained of escalating harassment and intimidation of independent media by security personnel in Uganda. We believe that this is economic sabotage aimed at occasioning the media house financial loss since all its production have been stopped, the Human Rights Network for Journalists - Uganda (HRNJ-U), a local media rights group, said in a statement issued on Thursday. Local media, including Red Pepper, have reported this month on tensions between Uganda and neighboring Rwanda over a range of economic and security disputes. Uganda s foreign affairs ministry has dismissed the reports as rumors and insisted relations between the two countries were untroubled. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia likely to reduce forces in Syria before year-end -general;SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - Russia s military forces in Syria are likely to be substantially reduced and a drawdown could begin before the end of the year, the head of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said on Thursday. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EY says cooperating with authorities in Italy probe;MILAN (Reuters) - Accounting firm EY said on Thursday it was cooperating with Milan magistrates in an investigation into whether one of its former employees in Italy had sold it confidential government information. On Nov. 21 we became aware of the investigation targeting EY in Italy. We are examining it carefully and seriously and we are fully cooperating with the judiciary, EY said in a statement, adding it was not in a position to comment further. Italian magistrates suspect that Susanna Masi, a Treasury official and former EY employee, was paid some 220,000 euros ($260,000) between 2013-2015 in return for sensitive material, judicial sources involved in the case said on Wednesday. The sources said the confidential material included information on planned tax reforms which could have given EY previously known as Ernst & Young an unfair advantage over its rivals. Masi s lawyer, Giorgio Perroni, has denied any wrongdoing by his client. [nL8N1NS5SS] ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea's wounded defector 'nice guy,' likes CSI: surgeon;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea s latest defector, a young soldier known only by his family name Oh, is a quiet, pleasant man who has nightmares about being returned to the North, his surgeon said on Thursday. He s a pretty nice guy, said lead surgeon John Cook-Jong Lee, who has been operating and caring for the 24-year-old. Oh has become a focus of worldwide attention after he was badly wounded by fellow North Korean soldiers as he scrambled across the border in the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South on Nov. 13. Video of Oh s escape released on Wednesday showed him stumbling over the border and being dragged unconscious through the undergrowth by South Korean troops. Surgeon Lee has been almost the only person to speak with Oh since he arrived at the hospital, he told Reuters in an interview at his office at Ajou University Hospital, just a few floors away from where the defector lies guarded by South Korean special forces and intelligence officers. The surgeon, who has hung a South Korean flag in the soldier s room, said he is avoiding subjects that may disturb his patient. Oh is eating his first clear liquid food such as broths, and can smile, talk, and use his hands, Lee said. But when his patient woke on Sunday he cried out in pain, and Lee said he is still anxious about the South Korean guards. Lee said Oh told him that he had joined the North Korean army when he was 17, right after secondary school graduation. The soldier s hair is styled like a jarhead, like a U.S. Marine, so I actually joked why don t you join the South Korean Marines? He smiled and said that he would never ever go back to the military system again. Medical teams have worked for days to remove the shards of at least four bullets from Oh s body, stitch up his shredded organs, and treat pre-existing conditions including tuberculosis, hepatitis B, and a case of massive intestinal worms, Lee said. He s a quite strong man, said Lee. Since Oh s defection, North Korea appeared to have replaced all its security guards on the border, an intelligence source in the South told Yonhap news agency on Thursday. Lee said that when the defector arrived in an American military helicopter at the hospital which is equipped with state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment and is used to treat VIP visitors such as visiting U.S. presidents - he came with zero personal information. On the flight in, American army flight medics had fought to keep Oh alive, jabbing a large needle into his chest to treat a collapsed lung. Oh was immediately wheeled into a diagnostic room where doctors confirmed he was suffering from massive internal bleeding. We knew then that we didn t have time to hesitate, Lee said, standing in that room Thursday night. Two major surgeries were required to remove the bullets and patch Oh back together, and the medical team pumped as much as 12 liters of new blood into his body. The normal body has less than half as much blood. He told me that he is so thankful for South Koreans for saving his life and giving him that much blood, Lee said. Lee has been playing South Korean pop music and American films and TV shows for his patient, but has not exposed him to any news coverage. Among the shows, Oh showed a liking for the French-American thriller Transporter 3, comedy Bruce Almighty starring Jim Carrey and Morgan Freeman;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian opposition to form delegation to take part in U.N. talks;CAIRO (Reuters) - Syrian opposition will form a 50-member delegation to participate in U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva, the main Syrian opposition meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh told a news conference late on Thursday. There will be further meetings tomorrow to decide the members of the delegation and determine its working mechanism, Basma Qadmani, a member of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, said. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Papua New Guinean police evict asylum-seekers from Australian-run camp, UNHCR decries force used;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Papua New Guinean police cleared the remaining asylum-seekers from a shuttered Australian-run detention complex on Friday, ending a three-week protest which started with some 600 people surviving on rain water and smuggled food and supplies. Australia closed the Manus Island detention centre on Oct. 31, after it was declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea court, but the asylum seekers refused to leave to transit centres saying they feared for their safety. Despite the unsanitary conditions and lack of adequate food and fresh water, about 300 remained when Papua New Guinea police started removing people on Thursday and Friday. The refugees are leaving the prison camp, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani told Reuters in a text message on Friday. We did our best to send out our voice but the government does not care. Australia s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said in a statement on Friday that all of the asylum seekers had now departed for alternative accommodation. Advocates should now desist from holding out false hope to these men that they will ever be brought to Australia, Dutton said. In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR denounced the use of force by Papua New Guinean police to remove the refugees and asylum seekers and called for Australia to ensure their protection. The beating of refugees and asylum-seekers by uniformed officers with metal poles, shown by footage released today, is both shocking and inexcusable, UNHCR said in a statement. Several refugees were severely injured in the raid and needed medical treatment, it added, warning of a grave risk of further deterioration of the situation on the island. The fate of the asylum seekers, some of whom have been detained for years and come mostly from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria, remains unclear. Australia steadfastly refuses to allow them entry under its strict sovereign borders policy and the asylum seekers have refused to resettle in Papua New Guinea. Australia and Papua New Guinea both say the asylum seekers are now the other s responsibility, although the Australian government said it had spent A$10 million ($7.6 million) on the transit facility and it wanted the men to move there. Under Australia s sovereign borders policy asylum seekers trying to reach its shores by boat are intercepted and detained in either Papua New Guinea or Nauru in the South Pacific. The United Nations and human rights groups have for years criticised Australia s policy, citing human rights abuses in the offshore detention centres and called for their closure. Papua New Guinea intensified efforts to clear the Manus facility on Thursday by bringing in buses to start moving the men and cutting off routes previously used to deliver smuggled supplies, said Christian pastor Jarrod McKenna, who was at the shuttered centre earlier this week helping the refugees. Pictures sent to Reuters by an asylum-seeker showed Papua New Guinean officials wearing army fatigues inside the camp on Friday, and a video distributed by advocacy group GetUp showed police armed with sticks pulling an asylum seeker to his feet. Buses are waiting for you, trucks are waiting for you...you will get on to them and you will move to your new location, you will not stay here, a man who identified himself as a police commander told the asylum seekers in a video posted to Facebook by Sudanese refugee Abdul Aziz. Papua New Guinea immigration and police officials did not return telephone calls from Reuters to seek comment. ($1 = 1.3118 Australian dollars) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mnangagwa vows to rebuild Zimbabwe and serve all citizens;HARARE (Reuters) - New President Emmerson Mnangagwa laid out a grand vision on Friday to revitalise Zimbabwe s ravaged economy and vowed to rule on behalf of all the country s citizens. Sworn in days after the overthrow of Robert Mugabe, the 75-year-old former security chief promised to guarantee the rights of foreign investors and to re-engage with the West, and said elections would go ahead next year as scheduled. In a 30-minute speech to tens of thousands of supporters in Harare s national stadium, Mnangagwa extended an olive branch to opponents, apparently aiming to bridge the ethnic and political divides exploited by his predecessor during his 37 years in charge. I intend, nay, am required, to serve our country as the president of all citizens, regardless of color, creed, religion, tribe or political affiliation, he said, in a speech that also hailed the voice of the people as the voice of god . Behind the rhetoric, some Zimbabweans wonder whether a man who loyally served Mugabe for decades can bring change to a ruling establishment accused of systematic human rights abuses and disastrous economic policies. He made clear that the land reforms that sparked the violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms from 2000 would not be reversed, but promised that those who lost property would receive compensation. To some political opponents, the speech was a welcome contrast with the habitual belligerence of Mugabe and appeared to be drawing on Mnangagwa s knowledge and understanding of China as a model for running an economy. His model has been the Chinese, said David Coltart, a former education minister and MP from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. He will drive to make Zimbabwe a more attractive investment location, and more efficient, but like China will not tolerate dissent. If you behave , you will be secure. Those skeptical about the new president s commitment to change question his role in the so-called Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland in 1983, when an estimated 20,000 people were killed in a crackdown on Mugabe s opponents by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade. Mnangagwa was in charge of internal security at the time, but has denied any part in the atrocities. Many Zimbabweans, especially the ethnic Ndebele who bore the brunt of the Gukurahundi slaughter, will see his appeal on Friday to let bygones be bygones as an attempt to gloss over his nation s darkest chapter. Some critics have alleged harsh treatment by soldiers of opponents of the military intervention last week - a de facto coup against Mugabe, 93, and his 52-year-old wife Grace. Axed finance minister Ignatius Chombo was in hospital with injuries sustained from beatings during a week in military custody, his lawyer told Reuters. He was blindfolded throughout his time in detention, Lovemore Madhuku said. It was a very brutal and draconian way of dealing with opponents, he added. Asked to comment, police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said she had no information about Chombo. Separately, High Court Judge President George Chiweshe ruled that the military intervention last week was legal, following an application brought by two citizens who petitioned the court to confirm the military had been right to do what they did. Since his return to Zimbabwe this month after fleeing a Mugabe-led purge, Mnangagwa has been preaching democracy, tolerance and respect for the rule of law. Along with Mugabe, Grace - Mnangagwa s sworn enemy - has been granted immunity from prosecution and had her safety guaranteed, part of a deal that led to Mugabe s resignation on Tuesday, sources close to the negotiations said. For decades Mnangagwa was a faithful aide to Mugabe, who was widely accused of repression of dissent and election-rigging and under whose rule one of Africa s once most prosperous economies was wrecked by hyperinflation and mass emigration. Mnangagwa earned the nickname Ngwena , Shona for crocodile, an animal famed and feared in Zimbabwean lore for stealth and ruthlessness. In his speech, Mnangagwa called for the removal of Western sanctions and said he wanted to hit the ground running . He appeared to have initial support from neighboring states. South African President Jacob Zuma said he hoped he would steer Zimbabwe successfully through the transition from Mugabe s rule. The Southern African Development Community, an intergovernmental organization, said it was ready to work closely with Mnangagwa s government. Zimbabweans listening to his speech said they were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, but were also realistic about the chances of injecting life into an economy with 90 percent unemployment and banks devoid of cash. In the last 15 years, an estimated 3 million have emigrated to neighboring South Africa in search of a better life. I wanted to see for myself that Mugabe has really gone. He is the only president I ve known, said 33-year-old Lenin Tongoona. We have a new president who may try something a little different to improve the economy. I m excited today but tomorrow is uncertain because we don t know how he will turn out. He talks about creating jobs. How does he plan to do that? ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trumpsters Launch Insane Conspiracy Theory About The Boot On John McCain’s Foot;"Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was treated at Walter Reed Medical Center over the weekend for a minor tear in his right Achilles tendon, according to his website which further explains that he has returned to work in the Senate and will be wearing a walking boot until his injured tendon is fully healed. I can t tell you how much I hate wearing this boot! McCain tweeted.I can't tell you how much I hate wearing this boot! https://t.co/W6zClDRpFb pic.twitter.com/x3mDC4n11H John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 6, 2017McCain then posted a photo on Twitter from his daughter Meghan s wedding in which his walking boot was on his left foot, but previously he was seen wearing it on his right foot.Mother, father & puppy of the bride in beautiful Cornville #Arizona yesterday! pic.twitter.com/sd3rsye1OV John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 22, 2017Instead of concentrating on the real concern which is that McCain appears to be shapeshifting into Mike Pence, Trump supporters were sure they had the goods on the Arizona Republican because of his boot. So, far right-wing sites such as Gateway Pundit, a blog which was gifted with White House credentials (!), wrote up the breaking news about the boot-switch.Comments poured in the thread under the post, many speculating that McCain is under house arrest and wearing an ankle monitor. Trump supporters weighed in on Twitter, too.John McCain's walking boot mysteriously appears to swap feet in latest photo-It s official #bootgate is real https://t.co/nC3q3mYK5w Eazy Duz MAGA (@socalmike_SD) November 23, 2017*hypocrite.WHAT A HIPOCRITE!!! Deborah F. Kellum (@DKellum19761) November 23, 2017This guy is totally losing his sh*t over the boot.This demonstrates yet again the scared corrupt Dems / with photo evidence @SenJohnMcCain mistakenly thinks the #USA Trusts him & Crooked Hillary This #BootGate will not fly when you tell a lie.. you sir cannot be trusted #Resign pic.twitter.com/kMAu6kuA0q MBNI (@MBNI_) November 23, 2017@SenJohnMcCain do you have something to share with us? #bootgate pic.twitter.com/AOPAejLALY Nimble Navigator (@basedcentipede1) November 22, 2017It's amazing how many ""Democrats"" are out in force to throw shade on the McCain ""BootGate."" Why is it so important to them and why are they so adamant that this a ""fake flipped"" image when it's clearly not?Weird #DasBoot #McCainBoot #BootGate pic.twitter.com/YnhqWgsB14 Balance (@Balance_In_Life) November 23, 2017Did @SenJohnMcCain use a REAL DOLL & Leave the Country or is that a Corpse?I Wouldn't put anYthing past him!!!Hair looks like felt on Right & Hands Look Unnatural**See Linked Tweet Above pic.twitter.com/4d29kY8SJP Kate Mazzochetti (@1st5d) November 22, 2017 @senJohnMcCain caught faking an injury! #McCain IS NOT In Pain!Why is #JohnMcCain lying to the American public? BUSTED!! Share this EVERYWHERE! #BootGate #FollowtheWhiteRabbit. #QAnon pic.twitter.com/OLlYcFha0Z Truth Report (@realtruthreport) November 23, 2017Can you say #Ankle Monitoring Bracelet ! @11S_L_2016_Cat @1VirtualPixie #Bootgate pic.twitter.com/OQEjK8ncE7 Penny (@PVotedtrump) November 23, 2017Because of the insane conspiracy theory, McCain was forced to explain in a tweet. Thank you for your support & best wishes, McCain tweeted. My left leg was doing extra work to compensate for the boot, so I m giving it a break. I still hate wearing this boot, but it won t slow us down from frying 7 turkeys today! Thank you for your support & best wishes. My left leg was doing extra work to compensate for the boot, so I'm giving it a break. I still hate wearing this boot, but it won't slow us down from frying 7 turkeys today! John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 23, 2017As a surprise to no one ever, Trump supporters still do not believe McCain. The Arizona Senator has been receiving treatment for brain cancer after announcing in July that he had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of the disease. The tendon tear is considered a normal side effect of his cancer therapy.Image via Twitter. ";News;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mugabe granted immunity, assured of safety in Zimbabwe: sources;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former president Robert Mugabe was granted immunity from prosecution and assured that his safety will be protected in his home country under a deal that led to his resignation, sources close to the negotiations said on Thursday. Mugabe, who had led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980, stepped down on Tuesday after the army seized power and the ruling party turned against him. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the former vice president sacked by Mugabe earlier this month, is set to be sworn in as president on Friday. A government source said Mugabe, who is 93 and was the world s oldest serving head of state, told negotiators he wanted to die in Zimbabwe and had no plans to live in exile. It was very emotional for him and he was forceful about it, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the details of the negotiated settlement. For him it was very important that he be guaranteed security to stay in the country...although that will not stop him from traveling abroad when he wants to or has to. Mugabe resigned as parliament began a process to impeach him, sparking wild celebrations in the streets. His sudden fall after 37 years in power was triggered by a battle to succeed him that pitted Mnangagwa against Mugabe s much younger wife Grace. The outgoing president is obviously aware of the public hostility to his wife, the anger in some circles about the manner in which she conducted herself and approached ZANU-PF party politics, a second source said. In that regard, it became necessary to also assure him that his whole family, including the wife, would be safe and secure. Mugabe had clung on to power for a week after the military intervened. He angered many Zimbabweans when he did not resign in a televised address on Sunday as many had anticipated. The government source said the tipping point for Mugabe was the realization that he would be impeached and ousted in an undignified way. When the process started, he then realized he had lost the party, the source said. Mugabe will receive a retirement package that includes a pension, housing, holiday and transport allowance, health insurance, limited air travel and security. The elderly ex-president was rugged and drained by events of the past week and may travel to Singapore for medical checks in the coming weeks, the source said. He had been due to leave for the Southeast Asian country in mid-November before the military put him under house arrest. Mugabe has maintained that he leads a frugal life and that he does not possess any wealth or properties outside Zimbabwe. But last month a legal quarrel between Grace and a Belgian-based businessman over a $1.3 million diamond ring lifted a veil on the wealthy lifestyle of Mugabe and his wife, nicknamed Gucci Grace for her reputed dedication to shopping. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe runs a dairy business and the family has several farms while local and foreign media have reported that Grace has bought properties and luxury cars in South Africa. Addressing a cheering crowd in Harare on Wednesday night, Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe was entering a new stage of democracy. He had returned to the country earlier in the day, having fled for his safety when Mugabe sacked him as vice president two weeks ago to smooth a path to the succession for Grace. The people have spoken. The voice of the people is the voice of God, Mnangagwa told thousands of supporters gathered outside the ruling ZANU-PF party s offices in the capital. On Thursday, Mnangagwa urged the country s citizens not to undertake any form of vengeful retribution . Some of his supporters have been calling for unspecified action against the G40 group that backed Mugabe and his wife. The army appears to have engineered a trouble-free path to power for Mnangagwa, who was for decades a faithful lieutenant of Mugabe and member of his elite. His own human rights record also stirs hostility in many Zimbabweans. Mnangagwa was Mugabe s state security minister in the 1980s when a Korean-trained army brigade cracked down on the minority Ndebele, who supported the PF-ZAPU party of Mugabe s then-main rival Joshua Nkomo. Rights groups say up to 20,000 people died during the operation, which Mugabe later said was a moment of madness. Mnangagwa denied responsibility in an interview with Britain s New Statesman last December. Restoring Zimbabwe s fortunes and international standing will be a challenge. Human rights abuses and flawed elections prompted many Western countries to impose sanctions in the early 2000s that further damaged the economy, even with Chinese investment to soften the blow. Staging clean elections next year will be key to winning fresh funds. In its first official comments since Mugabe resigned, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it was cautiously optimistic a Mnangagwa presidency would not mimic and replicate the evil, corrupt, decadent and incompetent Mugabe regime . Zimbabwe s bourse, which had been on a rapid rise, lost $6 billion during the military intervention as its main index fell by 40 percent. Analysts say it will fall even further before recovering. Zimbabwe was once one of Africa s most promising economies but suffered decades of decline as Mugabe pursued policies that included the violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms and money-printing that led to hyperinflation. Most of its 13 million people remain poor and face currency shortages and sky-high unemployment, something Mnangagwa promised to address. An International Monetary Fund official said Zimbabwe s economic situation remained very difficult as sustainable growth is threatened by high government spending, an untenable foreign exchange regime and inadequate reforms. Immediate action is critical, Gene Leon, IMF mission chief for Zimbabwe said. Britain s Minister for Africa, meanwhile, said the former colonial power wants Zimbabwe s new rulers to place the country on a more democratic and prosperous path. Zimbabweans suffered for too long as a result of Mugabe s ruinous rule, Minister Rory Stewart said on arriving in Harare. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ARMY VETERAN’S Incredible Thanksgiving Smack Down Of Spoiled Brat NFL Anthem Kneelers Goes Viral;On this Thanksgiving, I would like to address an open letter to the multimillionaire National Football League players who continue to take a knee when The Star-Spangled Banner is played.Dear kneeling brothers,As a proud Army veteran, mom and black American, I thank God that I live in the greatest nation on Earth. For me, Thanksgiving doesn t just come once a year. I m thankful 365 days a year.You make far, far more money than almost all Americans regardless of race. Kids look up to you as heroes. You appear on TV and in the media.Yet, you keep on protesting refusing to rise and respect our national anthem and respect the men and women like me who serve or have served in our military.I was willing to die for my country when I put on the Army uniform. And you re not even willing to stand up for a short song? This is too much of a sacrifice for you?One of the many lessons I ve learned along the way is that there is no place on the planet like America. She is not perfect, because we are not perfect. Yet, she is a consummate beacon of light, set upon a hill, for nations who look to her for hope, dignity and direction.You big guys should appreciate that and pause for a few moments to express your patriotism and love for our great nation when our national anthem is played and our flag flies before thousands of people who have paid good money to see you run around a field chasing a little ball.Let me tell you about me. I m not as big and strong as you, but I stepped forward to join the Army to fight for your right to play games in peace.Weeks before I graduated from the Army s basic training program, I had an epiphany: I could be deployed to war. Would I go? Would I put my life on the line for someone else?It didn t take me long to come to a resounding Yes! If called, I would go.But I gave myself an assignment. If I was going to potentially give life or limb to defend this great country, I would need to know what, exactly, I was defending. I am still learning.One of the lessons I ve learned about America is more of a personal lesson. I am not a victim. My two beautiful black babies are not victims. Black Americans are not victims.We are victors not so much because of anything we have done, but because of those who came before us. Slaves in chains, treated like farm animals, to be owned by others. And after Emancipation, those who endured the humiliation of drinking out of the dirty water fountain or taking their child into the colored restroom.Those who were spat upon or cursed out solely because they were deemed the wrong color. Those who had to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar to be eligible to vote, notwithstanding their college education.Those who were hosed down, billy-clubbed across the head or attacked by trained dogs just because they walked across a bridge.Those who were aroused from their sleep to see hate-filled men covered in white sheets, a cross burning in their front yard and their neighbor calling out for their son.Those who, oftentimes, paid the ultimate sacrifice not for their own benefit, but for the joy that was set before them.We, today, are the joy that was set before them. And, how do you repay them for their sacrifice to be treated as equal under the law? You have chosen to take a knee.If you followed the rhetoric we hear today, America is not far removed from those Jim Crow days of legalized discrimination against black people.If you closed your eyes and just listened to the blistering speeches coming from Antifa, the Black Lives Matter folks and many politicians, you would think we re not even 40 years removed from slavery itself.The narrative behind Hands Up, Don t Shoot perpetuates the storyline that around every street corner there s a police officer waiting to shoot a black man. It is these narratives that have given life to you NFL players kneeling during our national anthem.If there was truth behind these narratives, then I would readily support you black millionaire athletes using your national platform to shine a bright light on the systemic racism against the black community.But we re not living in 1850 or 1950. Racism is certainly not dead, but it s not the powerful monster backed by all the resources of government either. And you guys are not exactly downtrodden, going hungry, being shoved to the back of the bus, or used for target practice by Ku Klux Klansmen dressed up like cops.Allow me to make a few suggestions to you as an alternative to continuing to disrespect our country and flag. If you want to make a real difference that extends beyond getting your picture on a magazine cover, please consider doing the following.First, invest in black urban schools, to help them pay for the educational programs and enhanced learning opportunities that wealthy suburban schools have to help their students succeed.Second, commit to providing mentoring and college scholarships for 20, 10 or even just one child in the inner city, from elementary school through high school and into college. You will change their futures.Third, take $1 million or $2 million not all of your vast wealth and invest it into creating jobs, businesses and entrepreneurial internships to help black people achieve the American Dream. Find ways to personally take your millions directly into a distressed community and invest.Fourth, take a family out of the inner city by giving them a mortgage-free home. Consider the ripple effect of good this stand would have on the lives of an entire family for generations to come.Fifth, educate yourselves and then others on what the Democratic Party has done to the black community. I have yet to find an inner city run by conservatives. Yet I see one Democratic politician after another representing some of the most distressed communities. These politicians themselves usually do not live in those distressed communities and often live in expensive homes while their kids attend private schools.Teach yourselves and others to hold elected officials accountable. Be determined to no longer fall prey to their sleight-of-hand manipulations that only serve to distract you from their lack of effort to make real changes in the black community.Doing just one of these things would make an indelible imprint on any community, especially the black community.So instead of taking a knee, take a stand to stomp out poverty by investing in businesses, by creating an environment that promotes family stability, and by fanning the flames of hope, dignity and direction into the lives of some of our most depressed citizens.By the grace of God, I was never called into war during my Army service. I know many others who were. Some did not return whole. So, while I can t play pro football, I have two legs, two arms and a brain that tells me to appreciate and love the United States of America.For all this I am thankful, and I think you should be too.Happy Thanksgiving,Kathy Barnette;politics;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OUCH! PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Call to Troops Zings Obama’s Terrible Strategy Defeating ISIS [Video];President Trump called the branches of the Armed Forces this morning to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. He delivered his powerful comments at Mar-a-Lago where he offered his thanks and appreciation but got in a dig at Obama s terrible policy defeating ISIS. His comments regarding the current policy in the Trump administration rang true too: It s an honor to speak with you all, to give God thanks for the blessings of freedom, and for the heroes who really have this tremendous courage that you do, to defend us and to defend freedom, Trump said. So we want to thank you all very much. Very, very special people. They say we ve made more progress against ISIS than they did in years of the previous administration, Trump said. And that s because I m letting you do your job. You re performing more than 1,000 missions over the skies of Iraq and Syria in the last four months. We re very, very proud of you. Believe me, everybody in this country is watching, and they re seeing positive results for a change, instead of the neutral and negative reports. s So as we give thanks to you this holiday, I know I speak on behalf of all Americans when I say that we totally support you, Trump said. In fact, we love you. We really do. Well said Mr. President! You can tell this president really appreciates our troops!;politics;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nuclear test-ban body heard noise near Argentine sub's last position;VIENNA (Reuters) - An international nuclear test-ban body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts detected an unusual signal underwater last week near where an Argentine submarine went missing, it said on Thursday. The Vienna-based Comprehensive nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) runs monitoring stations equipped with devices including hydrophones - underwater microphones that scan the oceans for sound waves. Two of its monitoring stations detected the unusual signal, the CTBTO said in a statement, adding that it was passing the information on to the Argentine authorities coordinating the search for the ARA San Juan, which had 44 crew on board when it went missing last week. An Argentine navy spokesman said earlier on Thursday that an abnormal sound detected near the submarine s last known position in the South Atlantic was consistent with an explosion , but the CTBTO was more guarded on the possible cause. It could be consistent with an explosion but there is no certainty about this, CTBTO hydroacoustic engineer Mario Zampolli told Reuters. He agreed with the navy spokesman s description of the signal as unusual and short, adding that the cause was non-natural. We can also calculate the time when the event happened in that location and that time is about three and a half hours after the last contact that the sub apparently had, according to what s out in the news, he said. The stations that detected it are far apart, in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, he added. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Thanksgiving message, Trump hails military gains and 'big, beautiful, fat tax cuts';PALM BEACH, FLORIDA (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump gave a bullish Thanksgiving address to troops overseas on Thursday, hailing progress in Afghanistan and against ISIS, and telling them they were fighting for “something real,” including a stock market at record highs and his promised “big, beautiful fat tax cuts.” Speaking in a live video teleconference from Palm Beach, Florida, with military personnel serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, Trump told them they were “very, very special people.” He called troops in Afghanistan “brave, incredible fighters” who had “turned it around” in the past three to four months. “We opened it up;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Flynn's lawyers cut talks with Trump team, signaling Mueller cooperation: NY Times;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawyers for Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, have told Trump’s legal team they can no longer discuss a probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, indicating Flynn may be cooperating with the investigation, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Flynn, a retired Army general, is a central figure in a federal investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump aides colluded with Russia to boost his 2016 presidential campaign. The probe has hung over the White House since January, when U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the election to try to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit her. Russia has denied interfering in the U.S. election and Trump has said there was no collusion. Flynn’s lawyer and a spokesman for Mueller declined to comment on Thursday. Jay Sekulow, an attorney for Trump, said: “No one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about General Flynn cooperating against the president.” The Times reported that Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Trump’s legal team about the Mueller investigation. Citing four unnamed people involved in the case, the newspaper reported the cooperation agreement had ended. Due to rules that aim to prevent conflicts of interest when lawyers represent clients, the move by Flynn’s lawyers to stop communicating with Trump’s lawyers indicated Flynn was now cooperating with Mueller, the Times said, although adding that in itself was not proof. But the development has led Trump’s lawyers to believe that Flynn has begun discussions with Mueller about cooperating, according to the Times. Flynn served 24 days as Trump’s national security adviser but was fired after it was discovered he had misrepresented his contacts with a Russian diplomat to Vice President Mike Pence. Mueller’s inquiry is looking into Flynn’s paid work as a lobbyist for a Turkish businessman in 2016, in addition to contacts between Russian officials and Flynn and other Trump associates during and after the Nov. 8 presidential election, Reuters reported in June. A lawyer for Flynn’s son, Michael Flynn Jr., who worked with his father and is also being investigated by Mueller, according to a person familiar with the matter, declined to comment. ;politicsNews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jeff Sessions orders review of gun background check system;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday ordered a review of a government database used for background checks on gun buyers, after a man who killed 26 people in a Texas church was left off the system despite having a criminal record. Sessions said the Nov. 5 shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, by Devin Kelley, a former Air Force serviceman who had a 2012 conviction for domestic assault, showed that not all the necessary information was being added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. In a statement, Sessions said he was directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “to do a comprehensive review of the NICS and report back to me the steps we can take to ensure that those who are prohibited from purchasing firearms are prevented from doing so.” Kelley was found guilty by an Air Force court-martial in 2012 of assaulting his first wife and a stepson. Federal law prohibits anyone from selling a gun to someone who has been convicted of a crime involving domestic violence against a spouse or child. The Air Force has said it failed to provide information as required about Kelley’s criminal history to the FBI’s criminal database. Sessions said he was directing the FBI and ATF to determine if the Defense Department and other government agencies were properly reporting information to the database. Kelley, who killed himself during a getaway attempt after the shooting, bought guns from a store in Texas in 2016 and 2017, although it is not clear whether those were the weapons used in the massacre. The U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said earlier this month it would investigate the Air Force’s failure to notify the FBI of Kelley’s criminal record. U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber, said he planned to introduce legislation to ensure that federal agencies put required criminal records into the database. ;politicsNews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;FARC dissidents face full force of Colombia military: president;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Former Marxist FARC rebels who have chosen to join drug trafficking gangs instead of demobilizing will face the full power of Colombia s military, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday, amid worries gangs will stymie security gains. More than 11,000 fighters and collaborators from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) handed over their weapons this year as part of a peace accord with the government to end more than five decades of war. The group has kept its initials in its reincarnation as a political party. But the country s ombudsman says some 800 former guerrillas did not demobilize, a figure in keeping with estimates of security sources and think tanks who put the number of dissident ex-FARC members as ranging between 700 and 1,000. FARC leaders have renounced the dissidents and emphasized that the group will move forward as a peaceful political party. We re going to throw everything at these dissidents, Santos told journalists. There will be no hesitation. Santos said the number of dissidents is below the 15 percent of fighters that he said usually refuse to demobilize when rebel groups lay down their arms after peace deals. Human rights groups and analysts have expressed worries that a lack of state presence in territory formerly occupied by the FARC is allowing the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group and criminal gangs to battle for control of lucrative coca crops and illegal mining sites. Amnesty International said in a report on Thursday that despite a reduction in civilian deaths, the conflict rages on in several parts of the country because of the presence of the gangs and the ELN. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., South Korea to hold joint air force drill in early December;SEOUL (Reuters) - The air forces of South Korea and the United States are scheduled to hold a regular joint drill next month, deploying six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters in the exercise, a South Korean defense ministry official said on Friday. The drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run from Dec. 4 to 8, the official told Reuters. The F-22 stealth fighters will be joined by F-35 aircraft, a U.S. Air Force official said. The Vigilant Ace drill is held regularly by the United States and South Korea to simulate wartime defenses. About 12,000 U.S. personnel will participate with South Korean troops while 230 aircraft will be flown at eight U.S. and South Korean military installations, the U.S. Seventh Air Force said in a news statement. U.S. Marine Corps and Navy troops will also participate, it added. This realistic combat exercise is designed to enhance interoperability between U.S. and Republic of Korea forces and increase the combat effectiveness of both nations, it said. The exercise comes as North Korea continues to press forward with developing its nuclear and missile program, in defiance of global condemnation and sanctions, though it has not held tests for two months. Pyongyang strongly protests against joint drills of this nature, which it views as aggression against the isolated state. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope faces diplomatic dilemma in Myanmar visit;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis visits Myanmar next week, a delicate trip for the world s most senior Christian to a majority Buddhist country accused by Washington of the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingya people. He will also visit Bangladesh to where more than 600,000 people have fled from what Amnesty International called crimes against humanity including murder, rape torture and forcible displacement, allegations the Myanmar military denies. The trip is so delicate that some of the pope s advisors have warned him against even saying the word Rohingya, lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the country s military and government against minority Christians. The most tense moments of the Nov. 26-Dec. 2 trip are likely to be private meetings with army head Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and, separately, civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar does not recognize Rohingya as citizens nor as a group with its own identity, posing a dilemma for Francis as he visits a country of 51 million people where only around 700,000 are Roman Catholics. He risks either compromising his moral authority or putting in danger the Christians of that country, said Father Thomas Reese, a prominent American author and analyst at Religion News Service. I have great admiration for the pope and his abilities, but someone should have talked him out of making this trip, he wrote. Vatican sources say some in the Holy See believe the trip was decided too hastily after full diplomatic ties were established in May during a visit by Suu Kyi, whose global esteem as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been tarnished by expressing doubts about the rights abuse allegations and failing to condemn the military. Pope Francis needs to be firm on all fronts. While the violence cannot stop without the cooperation of security forces, Suu Kyi should not be given a free pass either, said Lynn Kuok, a fellow of the Brookings Institution s Center for East Asia Policy Studies. In a late addition to his itinerary, Francis will meet Rohingya refugees on the second leg of his trip in the Bangladesi capital Dhaka. His meeting with General Min Aung Hlaing was also a late addition following negotiations with the military by Myanmar s senior churchman, Cardinal Charles Bo. In a video message sent to Myanmar last week, Francis said he wanted the trip to lead to reconciliation, forgiveness and peace , to further the Gospel values of dignity for every man and woman and encourage harmony and cooperation. The pope has already used the word Rohingya in two appeals from the Vatican this year. Asked if he would say it in Myanmar, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis was taking the advice he had been given seriously, but added: We will find out together during the trip ... it is not a forbidden word . Senior Vatican sources said the pope will be mindful of not doing anything that could imperil Myanmar s transition to democracy. The Pope is one of the most respected moral voices in the world today, and for that reason his visit will be significant, said Richard Horsey, a Yangon-based analyst and former senior United Nations official in Myanmar. But he will be conscious of the fact that popular opinion in Myanmar is firmly behind the government and against the Rohingya, and that the intervention of a Christian leader on this religiously-charged issue could inflame sentiments rather than encourage positive movement, Horsey said. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday called the operation against the Rohingya ethnic cleansing and threatened targeted sanctions for horrendous atrocities. Amnesty International said the Rohingya and Muslims generally in Rakhine State had been subjected to systemic social and political exclusion for decades and accused the military of crimes against humanity in the last two years including murder, rape torture and forcible displacement. Myanmar s government has denied most of the claims, and the army has said its own probe found no evidence of wrongdoing by troops who say their actions were in response to militant attacks on 30 police posts and an army base. The Vatican has little by way of carrots and sticks that can help, said Kuok, the Brookings fellow. That said, the pope s visit can help to raise awareness about the Rohingya community, which may then lead to indirect pressure on governments to do more about the situation there. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Gay GOP Operative Endorses Doug Jones Over ‘Bigoted, Deviant’ Roy Moore In Senate Race (VIDEO);The Republican Party has a Roy Moore problem. Even before it came out that the judge turned Alabama Senate candidate is accused of being a child molester, he was a problem. He had been removed twice from the Alabama Supreme Court for flagrantly defying the law. Moore has said Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress. He waved a gun around on stage at a campaign rally and rode a horse to the polls in Alabama to vote for himself in the primary he would eventually win against establishment-backed interim Senator Luther Strange. Well, it seems that with all of this and then some, sane Republicans have had enough of Roy Moore. One such person is former Jeb Bush campaign strategist Tim Miller. He has a solution to his party s Roy Moore problem: Vote for the Democrat, Doug Jones, to keep Roy Moore the hell away from the United States Senate.Miller happens to be gay, so of course Moore s disgusting homophobia is a problem for him. Then there is, of course, the child molesting. In a column for the left-wing site Crooked Media entitled The Republican Case for Doug Jones, Miller says of his decision, which he calls, obvious : But here we are in the dark abyss of 2017, and in this political moment, child exploitation attempted child rape, even has become a partisan issue. President Donald Trump is even cool with it, as long as the sex predator is on his team. A comrade in genital grabbing if you will. So after Trump essentially re-endorsed Alabama s Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, this particular child predator, on Tuesday, I took what I thought was an obvious step. I donated to the other guy s campaign. But in this instance there was one wrinkle for me. The other guy, Doug Jones, is a Democrat. And I a Republican political operative have never donated to one of those before. Thus, in sharing the fact that I had made the donation on social media, I also noted that this was a first for me, even though it felt extremely obvious. Here is the tweet where Tim Miller announces his crossover:I just donated to a Democrat for the first time in my life if any of yall want to do so as well. Enough is enough. https://t.co/YlDXTXSnyJ Tim Miller (@Timodc) November 21, 2017Tim Miller is right. Roy Moore is absolutely deplorable, and should be nowhere near the United States Senate. This isn t politics, it s morals. Now, it is time for more sane, reasonable Republicans to get out there and do the unthinkable reject a child molester and endorse and donate to the man who prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan while Roy Moore was busy creeping on little girls. It s not that hard.Watch the video of Tim Miller s appearance on The Last Word with Lawrence O Donnell below:Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images;News;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syria opposition meeting in Riyadh sees no role for Assad in transition;RIYADH/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria s main opposition stuck by its demand on Thursday that President Bashar al-Assad play no role in an interim period under any U.N.-sponsored peace deal, despite speculation it could soften its stance because of Assad s battlefield strength. A gathering in Saudi Arabia of more than 140 participants from a broad spectrum of Syria s mainstream opposition also blasted Iran s military presence in Syria and called on Shi ite militias backed by Tehran to leave the country. The participants stressed that this (the transition) cannot happen without the departure of Bashar al Assad and his clique at the start of the interim period, opposition groups said in a communique at the end of the meeting. Iran-backed militias sowed terrorism and sectarian strife between Sunni and Shi ite Muslims, the communique said. The opposition groups met to seek a unified position ahead of U.N.-backed peace talks after two years of Russian military intervention that has helped Assad s government recapture all of Syria s main cities. The Syrian opposition has sent a message that it is ready to enter serious direct talks over a political transition in Syria and has a unified position and a vision for the future of Syria, Ahmad Ramadan, opposition spokesman, told Reuters. The participants elected 50 members to a High Negotiations Committee and will finalize on Friday the delegation for the next round of U.N.-sponsored talks. We agreed with the group of components present here in Riyadh and the Cairo and Moscow platforms on the formation of one delegation to participate in direct negotiations in Geneva in a few days, spokeswoman Basma Qadmani said. U.N. peace talks mediator Staffan de Mistura, preparing for a new round of Geneva talks, will visit Moscow on Friday, where he is expected to discuss the situation in Syria. There had been speculation that the opposition, at the meeting, could soften its demands that Kremlin ally Assad leave power before any transition. Riyad Hijab, an opposition hardliner who led the High Negotiations Committee that represented the opposition at previous rounds of negotiations, abruptly quit this week. For many years, Western and Arab countries backed the opposition demand that Assad leave office. However, since Russia joined the war on behalf of Assad s government it has become increasingly clear that Assad s opponents have no path to victory on the battlefield. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a congress of the Syrian government and opposition to draw up a framework for the future structure of the Syrian state, adopt a new constitution and hold elections under UN supervision. But he has also said that any political settlement in Syria would be finalised within the Geneva peace talks process overseen by the United Nations. The opposition has long been suspicious of the parallel diplomatic track pushed by Russia, which before the proposed Sochi congress included talks in Kazakhstan, and has insisted that political dialogue should only take place in Geneva. The opposition communique said the participants supported a U.N. based process that would allow Syria to undergo a radical political transition from an authoritarian system to a democracy where free elections would be upheld. Negotiations should be direct and without preconditions based on past U.N. Security Council resolutions, it said. The opposition backed the restructuring of the army and security organs and preservation of state institutions, but called for the trial of those responsible for war crimes. The meeting, which included independents and Free Syrian Army military factions, also blamed the Syrian government for the lack of progress in Geneva-based talks held in the past. The political process has not achieved its goal because of the regime s violations, the communique said, citing the bombing of civilian areas, the siege of rebel held areas and the detention of tens of thousands of dissidents. Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and created the world s worst refugee crisis, driving more than 11 million people from their homes. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish government on verge of collapse ahead of EU Brexit summit;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish government was on the verge of collapse on Thursday after the party whose votes Prime Minister Leo Varadkar depends on to pass legislation said it would seek to remove the deputy prime minister in a breach of their cooperation agreement. The crisis comes three weeks ahead of a European Union summit in which the Irish government has an effective veto on whether Britain s talks on leaving the bloc progress as it determines if EU concerns about the future of the Irish border have been met. In a row that escalated rapidly, the opposition Fianna Fail party said it would put a motion of no confidence in Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald before parliament on Tuesday over her handling of a legal case involving a police whistleblower. That would break the three-year confidence and supply agreement that allowed Varadkar s Fine Gael party to form a minority government 18 months ago. Fianna Fail initially indicated it might withdraw its threat if Fitzgerald resigned but Fine Gael members of parliament passed a unanimous motion of support in Fitzgerald at an emergency meeting on Thursday evening. Asked after Fine Gael s statement whether the country was headed for an election, a senior Fianna Fail source replied: Straight towards one. The source declined to be named as the party s frontbench was due to hold an emergency meeting early on Friday to decide its next move. This is ... dangerous politically at a time when the country does not need an election, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney of Fine Gael told national Irish broadcaster RTE, in an apparent reference to the Brexit talks he had earlier described as a historic moment for the island of Ireland. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after its departure, is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly solved before it decides next month on whether to move the talks onto a second phase about trade, as Britain wants. Coveney told parliament on Thursday that the government was not yet ready to allow the talks to move on to the trade issues at the Dec. 14-15 summit and needed more clarity from London. A breakdown of the government s cooperation deal, which has worked relatively smoothly up until now between two parties that differ little on policy but have been bitter foes for decades, would likely lead to an election in December or January. The Fianna Fail move comes after Fitzgerald admitted she was made aware of an attempt to discredit a police whistleblower in a 2015 email, but failed to act. Fine Gael say she adhered to due process. Since Varadkar s appointment as Fine Gael leader in May, his party has narrowly led Fianna Fail in opinion polls that suggest both parties would increase their support but still struggle to form anything but another minority government. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Possible explosion detected near Argentine sub's last-known location;MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) - The Argentine navy raised the possibility on Thursday that a navy submarine missing in the South Atlantic suffered an explosion, heightening concerns over the fate of the 44 crew members on the eighth day of an international search effort. A sound detected underwater by an international agency on the morning of Nov. 15, around the time the ARA San Juan sent its last signal and in the same area, was consistent with an explosion, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters. The sub had only a seven-day supply of oxygen, a fact that drained hope from some of the relatives of the crew who have gathered at the vessel s base in the city of Mar del Plata. What s the point of hope if it s already over? Itati Leguizamon, wife of one of the missing crew members, told reporters. The navy did not have enough information to say what the cause of the explosion could have been or whether the vessel might have been attacked, Balbi said. Search-and-rescue crews were undeterred by a series of false leads that raised hope over recent days that the sub might be located. Asked during an evening news conference about the fate of the 44 sailors, Balbi said the situation was critical . We are not going to enter into conjecture out of respect for the families, he added. The information about the possible explosion was received on Thursday from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, or CTBTO, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts. The Vienna-based agency, which has monitoring stations equipped with devices including underwater microphones that scan the oceans for sound waves, said in a statement that two of its stations had detected an unusual signal near where the submarine went missing. The agency was more guarded about whether that was caused by an explosion. A huge sea and air hunt is being conducted for the San Juan, a German-built, diesel-electric powered submarine that was launched in 1983, as crew members relatives waited anxiously for news more than a week after the vessel disappeared. The relatives had been largely optimistic until Thursday. They shed tears and insulted authorities after being briefed on the news of the possible explosion. They were told about it before the public announcement. Balbi said the news of the abnormal sound was consistent with a separate report received on Wednesday of an acoustic anomaly in the same area and around the same time. The San Juan was some 430 km (270 miles) off the Patagonian coast when it sent its last signal. This is very important because it allows us to correlate and confirm the acoustic anomaly from the U.S. report yesterday, Balbi said. Here, we re talking about a singular, short, violent, non-nuclear event, consistent with an explosion. In Vienna, CTBTO hydroacoustic engineer Mario Zampolli said the signal his agency had detected could be consistent with an explosion but there is no certainty about this. Speaking to Reuters, he agreed with Balbi s description of the signal as unusual and short, adding that the cause was non-natural. The submarine was en route from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, to Mar del Plata, 400 km (250 miles) south of Buenos Aires, when it reported an electrical malfunction shortly before disappearing. Some relatives have questioned authorities for letting the crew navigate on an ageing submarine - criticism that has highlighted the armed forces dwindling resources since the end of a military dictatorship in the 1980s. Authorities have said the level of maintenance, not the age, was what mattered, and that the vessel was in good condition. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's prime minister skeptical about bill to expand anti-graft rules;LIMA (Reuters) - The government of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will likely object to a bill passed by Congress that aims to expand new anti-graft restrictions to Grana y Montero and other local partners of Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL], the prime minister said Thursday. Odebrecht has admitted to paying millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Peru over a decade-long period, and lawmakers want the financial constraints written to keep Odebrecht from evading payment of fines for bribery to apply to the companies it partnered with. But Prime Minister Mercedes Araoz said a new bill that sailed through the opposition-ruled Congress two weeks ago threatens to paralyze construction projects and likely violates due process. I m not a lawyer but I do think that you always have to respect the presumption of innocence, Araoz told foreign media in the capital Lima. There are parts of it that we would have to take issue with. Araoz said Congress has not yet sent the bill to the executive branch for passage and that the justice and economy ministries would study it thoroughly before taking any action. The legislation would restrict international asset transfers and the right to seize ill gotten gains of Grana and other Odebrecht partners. However, none of Odebrecht s local partners have been convicted of any crimes and deny taking part in Odebrecht s bribes. Grana, Peru s biggest construction group and Odebrecht s most important local partner, saw its shares drop nearly 23 percent to 2.4 soles ( 0.5573) after passage of the legislation. Grana did not immediately respond to requests for comment but has criticized the bill as unconstitutional and promised to take legal action if it becomes law. Lawmakers who back the legislation have said Odebrecht s partners likely had a hand in Odebrecht s kickback schemes and that prosecutors were working too slowly in finding other guilty parties. Grana is under investigation in the attorney general s office but has not been charged with any crime and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. Araoz added that the government is planning to ask Congress for special legislative powers to make tax collection more efficient. However, she said the changes would be minor and ruled out any changes to tax rates. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Brexit withdrawal bill to be debated from December 4;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s parliament will debate the Brexit withdrawal bill on Dec. 4, and on a further four days in the month, the leader of the House of Commons said on Thursday. The EU Withdrawal Bill, which faces much opposition in parliament, aims to sever political, financial and legal ties with the bloc and copy and paste many European rules and regulations into British law after the country leaves the European Union. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope, at service for Africa, decries murder of women and children;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Thursday denounced the murder of innocent women and children as the horrid face of war as he presided at a special prayer service for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Francis had planned to go later this year to South Sudan, which has been hit by civil war, famine and a refugee crisis, but had to scrap the project for security reasons. During the service, which was punctuated by African singing in English, French, Italian and Swahili, Francis asked God to break down the walls of hostility that today divide brothers and sisters, especially in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. May he protect children who suffer from conflicts in which they have no part, but which rob them of their childhood and at times of life itself, he said in his brief homily. How hypocritical it is to deny the mass murder of women and children! Here war shows its most horrid face, he said. St. Peter s Basilica was decked out with photographs of African children. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after protracted bloodshed, then fell into civil war in late 2013, with troops loyal to President Salva Kiir fighting those backing Riek Machar, a former vice president Kiir had sacked. Both sides have targeted civilians, human rights groups say. Right now, we are moving into the lean season, and by July of 2018, many thousands of people across South Sudan not just isolated pockets of the country will be dying from hunger, said Jerry Farrell, country representative in South Sudan for Catholic Relief Services. What is most tragic is there absolutely shouldn t be hunger in South Sudan, he said in an email, adding that people of different tribes inter-marry and work together but that the conflict is instigated and fanned by politicians. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, dozens of people have died in protests against President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate last December. Unrest sparked by the uncertainty surrounding the polls has raised fears Congo could witness a repeat of the kind of violence that killed millions around the turn of the last century, mostly from hunger and disease. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Merkel ally calls Russia's new Syrian peace push ""height of cynicism""";BERLIN (Reuters) - A top member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on Thursday dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin s push to host a new Syrian peace process with the backing of Iran and Turkey, calling it the height of cynicism. The leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey on Wednesday called on the Syrian government and moderate opposition to participate constructively in the planned congress, to be held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Juergen Hardt, foreign policy speaker for Merkel s conservatives in parliament, said Russia had repeatedly blocked efforts by the U.N. Security Council to find a constructive solution to end the Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year. It is the height of cynicism that, of all countries, Russia and Iran, which fuelled the civil war in Syria in their own interests, causing the deaths of thousands of people, now want to develop a political vision for Syria s future, Hardt said. Hardt said Germany s conservatives hoped that the announcement of a ceasefire was serious, and would lead to a permanent halt in fighting in Syria and an end to mass death, flight and expulsion. Russia, Iran and the dictatorial regime in Syria could have achieved this long ago if they had wanted to, Hardt said, noting that a solution could not be achieved under conditions set by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hardt said a lasting peace could only be achieved if all parties were involved, and that, in turn, was only possible under a peace process led by the United Nations. The German foreign ministry had no immediate comment on Putin s new initiative. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Assad adviser says rebels must lay down arms: Syrian state media;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia s planned peace talks among Syrian groups will only succeed if the opposition ends its fight against the government, a senior adviser to President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday. The success of the congress depends on the various opposition groups realizing that the time has come to stop the violence, lay down their weapons and engage in a national dialogue, said Bouthaina Shaaban in comments to a Russian news agency carried by Syrian state media. Russian President Vladimir Putin met Assad as well as the leaders of Iran and Turkey in the Black Sea resort of Sochi this week in a diplomatic push to prepare for a congress between Syria s government and opposition. For years, Western and Arab countries backed the opposition demand that Assad quit power, but since Russia s 2015 entry into the war, his government has won back major cities and now looks militarily unassailable. Large parts of northwest and southwest Syria remain in rebel hands as well as a pocket near Damascus, and Kurdish-led groups hold much of the northeast. Opposition groups who met in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday will stick to their demand that Assad leave power as part of any political transition, the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya channel reported. But after the Syrian army and its allies recaptured Albu Kamal, Islamic State s last Syrian town, Putin said the military campaign in Syria was winding down. Russia has not said when the Syrian congress, also planned to take place in Sochi, will take place or who will be invited. The congress will involve drawing up a framework for the future structure of the Syrian state, adopting a new constitution and holding elections under United Nations supervision, Putin said. After their meeting on Wednesday, Putin, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on the Syrian government and moderate opposition to participate constructively . Shaaban said the government is ready for dialogue with those who believe in a political solution, adding that the opposition s desire - or even ability - to engage in a real political operation has not yet been made clear. Syria s six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands, pushed millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two and embroiled regional and world powers. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trading inside the Rohingya camps;PALONG KHALI, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Mohammad Ayas, a 12-year-old Rohingya refugee in the sprawling Palong Khali camp, is busy hawking piazu, a fried mixture of onions, lentils and spices. The 150 portions of piazu, made by his mother from the aid package the family received after fleeing violence in Myanmar, sell for 1 taka each, or a little more than 1 U.S. cent. I started my trading here with the relief I got, Mohammad told Reuters. I did not buy anything. I got this relief package five days ago and my mum made this piazu this morning. Myanmar s Rohingya Muslims have endured killings, arson and rape by Myanmar troops and ethnic Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes since Aug. 25, in response to Rohingya insurgent attacks on security posts, the United Nations says. It says problems like children trafficking existed in Bangladesh s camps, even before they were overwhelmed by the more than 600,000 new arrivals. Now, driven by a need for food and other essentials, trade is starting to thrive in the Palong Khali camp, located about 4 km (2.5 miles) from the Naf River that marks the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar. For the photo essay on trading inside the camps click on: reut.rs/2A5Sg7v Some refugees are returning to their previous occupations to eke out a living. Abul Fayaj, a 50-year-old vegetable seller from Buthidaung township in Rakhine, now sells green chilies to residents of the camp. He said a Bangladeshi lent him money for the chilies, which he sells for 200 taka ($2.39) per kg, higher than the local market price of 130 taka per kg. I don t have the money to take lots of food, that s why I have to take a loan, he said. I have to pay more to the lender who gave me the money to buy the vegetables, so there is only a small profit, said Fayaj, adding he takes home 100 taka a day. Obaidul Mannan, 40, with five daughters and two sons, traded clocks in Myanmar until the military came to his village, arresting people and burning homes. He now sells betel nut that he bought with 9 grams (0.3 ounces) of gold that belonged to his wife. His complaints are common to shopkeepers everywhere. The problem I m facing here is that I m selling next door to traders who are also selling the same items, he said. Some Bangladeshi shopkeepers have hired Rohingya to run shops within the camp. Kalim Ullah, 42, fled from the Buthidaung area with his wife, six sons and a daughter. He used to transport goods in Myanmar, but was told that Rohingya could not own a business in Bangladesh. Ullah joined up with a local business owner and now sells snacks and red chilies in the camp for a daily wage of 100 taka. Two Bangladesh government officials confirmed that the refugees are not legally allowed to own businesses in the country since they are not citizens. We are giving all kind of humanitarian assistance. They are not our citizens, said a senior home ministry official. The Myanmar government will have to take them back. Bangladeshis are aware of the opportunities that the Rohingya exodus provides for trade and a number of them have moved closer to the camps. Abdur Razzak, 26, sells knives, pots and water buckets in the Palong Khali camp where he set up shop three months ago. After paying rent on his shop, wages for two assistants and transporting goods from the town of Ukhia, about 9 km (5.4 miles) north of the camp, Razzak earns about 500 taka profit on sales of 2,000 taka. I m not making a lot of money. I just profit a little, he said. ($1 = 83.7000 taka) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar, Bangladesh ink Rohingya return deal amid concern over army's role;NAYPYITAW (Reuters) - Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an accord on Thursday over terms for the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh, both governments said, amid concern that Myanmar s powerful army could prove obstructive. Rights groups have accused the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar of carrying out mass rape and other atrocities during a counter-insurgency operation launched in late August in retaliation for attacks by Rohingya militants in Rakhine State. On Wednesday, the United States said the military operation that drove 620,000 Rohingya to seek sanctuary in neighboring, largely Muslim Bangladesh, amounted to ethnic cleansing , echoing an accusation first leveled by top U.N. officials in the early days of the humanitarian crisis. Myanmar is seeking to ease international pressure by striking an initial agreement on returns, while Dhaka wants to ensure overstretched refugee camps that have mushroomed in the Cox s Bazar region don t become permanent. The return of the refugees should start in two months, the pact says. A joint working group will be set up in three weeks and a specific bilateral arrangement for repatriation will be concluded in a speedy manner, the Bangladesh foreign affairs ministry said in a statement. We are ready to take them back as soon as possible after Bangladesh sends the forms back to us, Myint Kyaing, a permanent secretary at Myanmar s ministry of labor, immigration and population, told Reuters, referring to forms the Rohingya must complete with personal details before repatriation. The signing took place after a meeting between Myanmar s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Bangladesh foreign minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali in Naypyitaw. In its statement, Myanmar said the deal was based on the 1992-1993 repatriation pact between the two countries that followed a previous spasm of violence in Myanmar. Although Western countries and the world Muslim body, the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, portrayed the matter as an international issue, Myanmar said it was resolved via two-way talks based on friendly and good neighborly relations . Issues that emerge between neighboring countries must be resolved amicably through bilateral negotiations, Suu Kyi s office said. On the basis of the 1992-1993 agreement, Myanmar would accept those who could present identity documents issued to the Rohingya by governments in the past, Myint Kyaing said. Acceptable identity documents include the currently distributed national verification cards, the now-withdrawn white cards , and receipts the Rohingya received for the return of white cards , he said. The refugees have to provide names of family members, previous addresses in Myanmar, birthdates and a statement of voluntary return in the forms they fill out, he added. Diplomats have said key deal elements will be the criteria of return and the participation of the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. Other important points include safeguards for the Rohingya against further violence, a path to resolving their legal status and whether they would be allowed to return to their own homes and farms. Myint Kyaing declined to elaborate on those points. Speaking at a military event in Dhaka, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she was calling on Myanmar to start taking back soon their nationals from Bangladesh . However, there was little enthusiasm for the deal among Rohingya refugees in the camps in Bangladesh s Cox s Bazar area near the Myanmar border. We will go back to our country if our demands are met, said one of them, Salimullah, who arrived in Bangladesh 15 days ago. Our demands are that we are given citizenship. They also have to give us back our land, he told Reuters Television. Suu Kyi, whose stature as a Nobel peace prize winner was tarnished by the crisis, has said repatriation of the largely stateless Muslim minority would be based on residency and that it will be safe and voluntary . But her civilian administration, which is less than two years old, has to share power with the military that ruled Myanmar for decades, and the generals have appeared less enthusiastic about the prospect of Rohingya returning. Russia s ambassador to Myanmar criticized the U.S. stance, saying that using the term ethnic cleansing was unhelpful and could aggravate the situation. On a visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Myanmar s commander in chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, was told by a senior Chinese general that China wanted stronger ties with Myanmar s military. Humanitarian workers told Reuters they were particularly concerned about a statement by Min Aung Hlaing last week. The situation must be acceptable for both local Rakhine ethnic people and Bengalis, and emphasis must be placed on wish of local Rakhine ethnic people who are real Myanmar citizens, Min Aung Hlaing said. His use of the term Bengali for the Rohingya implies they are from Bangladesh, and Buddhists in Rakhine are largely opposed to their presence. Min Aung Hlaing, over whom Suu Kyi has no control, also said the returnees would be scrutinized and re-accepted under the 1982 Citizenship Law and the 1992 Myanmar-Bangladesh bilateral agreement . The 1982 law, passed during the junta s long rule, ties Myanmar citizenship to membership of recognized ethnic groups, an official list that excludes the Rohingya. Senior U.N. officials based in Myanmar told Reuters they feared that security personnel in key positions may not cooperate over the return of Rohingya. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Juncker says will see in 'next few days' if Brexit talks can enter second phase;BERN (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday that it would be seen in the next few days whether Brexit talks with Britain had made enough progress to enter a second phase of negotiations. We are in intense negotiation with the UK to end the first phase of the talks about topics such as citizen rights, the Ireland problem , the bill that will have to be paid, Juncker told a news conference during an official visit to Switzerland. The worst is behind us, but there has not been sufficient progress for me to say that we can enter the second phase of the talks about our relationship in the future. We ll see that within the next few days, he said. Asked about a report the UK could pay 45 billion pounds for its Brexit divorce, he said: I m not crazy enough to give an immediate answer to the question. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N.'s de Mistura to visit Moscow on Friday: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura will visit Moscow on Friday, RIA news agency reported on Thursday, citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov. Previously, RIA news agency reported that de Mistura was due in Moscow on Thursday to discuss the situation in Syria. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China air force again flies round Taiwan, over South China Sea;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s air force has again flown bombers and other warplanes through two strategic channels near Taiwan and also over the disputed South China Sea during training drills, state media said on Thursday. Numerous H-6K bombers and other jets recently flew through the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines and the Miyako Strait in Japan s south, and also over the South China Sea on a combat patrol , the official Xinhua news agency said, citing Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke. Shen did not say when the drills began but said all planes had finished their patrols on Thursday, which were intended to improve maritime real combat capabilities and forge the forces battle methods . China has been increasingly asserting itself in territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. It is also worried about Taiwan, run by a government China fears is intent on independence. Beijing has never ruled out the use of force to bring proudly democratic Taiwan under its control, and has warned that any moves towards formal independence could prompt an armed response. China is in the midst of an ambitious military modernization program that includes building aircraft carriers and developing stealth fighters to give it the ability to project power far from its shores. Taiwan is well armed, mostly with U.S. weaponry, but has been pressing Washington to sell it more high-tech equipment to better deter China. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China grants economic aid to Djibouti, site of overseas military base;BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Thursday offered loans to Djibouti, the site of its first overseas military base, as the Horn of Africa state s leader told President Xi Jinping he considered himself a great friend of the Asian giant. With a population of less than one million, Djibouti has long punched above its weight, thanks to a strategic location on the Gulf of Aden, one of the world s busiest shipping routes linking Europe to Asia and the Middle East. China formally opened the base, which it calls a logistics facility, on Aug. 1, the 90th birthday of the People s Liberation Army. Djibouti also hosts large U.S. and French bases. Djibouti was politically stable, Xi told its president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, at a meeting in Beijing s Great Hall of the People. China sets great store by its relations with Djibouti, he added. Guelleh, who has been in power since 1999, said he considered himself a great friend of China s and could not count the number of times he had visited. Djibouti is known for being a country of peace, exchanges and meetings, Guelleh said. I would like to recall the geostrategic position of Djibouti and its importance in this part of the world as an island of stability for Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The two, who did not mention the military base in comments to reporters, later oversaw the signing of a framework pact for preferential loans. Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong declined to reveal the amount of loans offered, saying he could not remember. In this area both countries have always had good cooperation, Chen told reporters. Xi and Guelleh did discuss the military base, Chen added. What I want to stress is that China building a logistics base in Djibouti benefits China to even better fulfill its naval protection, peace-keeping, disaster relief and other international work, he said. The base will be used to resupply navy ships participating in peacekeeping, humanitarian and anti-piracy missions off the coasts of Yemen and Somalia, in particular. China also has deep economic interests in Djibouti. Last week, China s POLY-GCL Petroleum Group Holdings Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding to invest $4 billion in a natural gas project in Djibouti. In January, the government launched construction of a project billed as Africa s largest free trade zone, as part of China s massive Belt and Road infrastructure initiative stretching to Asia, Europe and beyond. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech president plans to appoint Babis's cabinet by mid-December;PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech President Milos Zeman plans to appoint Andrej Babis as prime minister in early December and the full cabinet around the middle of the month, Zeman s spokesman said on Thursday. Babis s ANO party came first by a wide margin in a parliamentary election last month but fell short of a majority and has not found any coalition partners nor votes to support a minority cabinet that Babis is now trying to form. Czech public television reported on Thursday that Zeman wanted to appoint Babis on Dec. 6 and his full cabinet on Dec. 15. The president s spokesman said those were provisional dates. Zeman spoke on Thursday with journalists traveling with him during a state visit in Russia. The eight other parties in parliament have so far been unwilling to join a coalition with ANO, mainly due to an investigation into allegations that Babis hid ownership of an farm and convention center almost a decade ago to get European Union subsidies. Babis denies any wrongdoing and says the case is politically motivated. The new government will take power from the date of the appointment. If it loses a mandatory confidence vote, it will stay in office until another administration is formed, which can take months. Babis appointment will be possible only after the current government of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka resigns, which is expected to happen next week at the earliest. So far, only the Communists have said they may help ANO s minority government in the confidence vote, but their votes alone would not be enough. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran Guards ready to help rebuild Syria, Hezbollah will not disarm: TV;ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran s Revolutionary Guards are ready to help rebuild Syria and bring about a lasting ceasefire there, chief commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said, adding that disarming Lebanon s Hezbollah is out of the question, state TV reported on Thursday. Regional tensions have risen in recent weeks between Sunni Muslim monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran, whose rivalry has wrought upheaval in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has accused the heavily armed Iran-backed Hezbollah of helping Houthi forces in Yemen and playing a role in a ballistic missile attack on the kingdom earlier this month. Iran and Hezbollah both denied the claims. Iranian state television quoted Jafari as saying: Hezbollah must be armed to fight against the enemy of the Lebanese nation which is Israel. Naturally they should have the best weapons to protect Lebanon s security. This issue is non-negotiable. Iran denies giving financial and military support to the Houthis in the struggle for Yemen, blaming the deepening crisis on Riyadh. Iran only provides advisory and spiritual assistances to Yemen ... and this help will continue, he said. Jafari also praised the success of Iranian allies across the region, hailing a resistance front from Tehran to Beirut and calling on Riyadh to avoid confronting this grouping. We directly deal with global arrogance and Israel not with their emissaries... That is why we do not want to have direct confrontation with Saudi Arabia, he said. The term global arrogance refers to the United States. Leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed on Wednesday to help support a full-scale political process in Syria and announced an agreement to sponsor a conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to try to end Syria s civil war. The guards are ready to play an active role in establishing a lasting ceasefire in Syria ... and reconstruction of the country, Jafari said. Iran has signed large economic contracts with Syria, reaping what appear to be lucrative rewards for helping Tehran s main regional ally President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against rebel groups and Islamic State militants. In meetings with the (Iran) government, it was agreed that the Guards were in a better position to help Syria s reconstruction ... the preliminary talks already have been held with the Syrian government over the issue, Jafari said Jafari repeated Iran s stance on its disputed ballistic missile work, saying the Islamic Republic s missile program is for defensive purposes and not up for negotiation. The program was not part of the 2015 nuclear deal with Western powers under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions. Iran will not negotiate its defensive program ... there will be no talks about it, he said. (French president Emmanuel) Macron s remarks over our missile work is because he is young and inexperienced. Macron said earlier this month that Tehran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify the strategy around its ballistic missile program. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Warehouse fire sends huge clouds of smoke across London skyline;LONDON (Reuters) - A fire at an industrial estate sent clouds of smoke billowing across London on Thursday morning. London s fire brigade said 81 firefighters and 12 fire engines were battling the blaze at an industrial estate in Ponders End, northeast London. The smoke clouds could be seen against a clear blue sky from as far away as the Canary Wharf financial district in the east of the capital. There were no immediate reports of injuries. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to detain 99 suspects in widening post-coup probe: Anadolu;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities issued detention warrants for 99 suspects including doctors and lawyers and have so far detained 78 of them, the state-run Anadolu agency said on Thursday, as part of a widening crackdown since last year s failed coup attempt. The suspects were believed to be users of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app which the government says was used by the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating last July s abortive putsch. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies involvement. Anadolu said security forces were seeking the remaining suspects in southern Turkish province of Antalya. Turkey has identified 215,092 users of ByLock and has launched investigations on 23,171 of them, the interior minister said earlier this week. More than 50,000 people, including soldiers, teachers and journalists, have been jailed pending trial in a sweeping crackdown following last year s coup attempt. In the judiciary alone, 5,920 people have been sacked from their jobs due to suspected links to the 2016 coup attempt, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said on Thursday. Rights groups and some of Turkey s Western allies have voiced concern about the crackdown, fearing the government is using the coup as a pretext to quash dissent. The government says only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says deeply infiltrated institutions such as the army, schools and courts. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar, Bangladesh sign Rohingya return deal: Myanmar official;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday, a senior Myanmar official told Reuters, for the return home of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled to the neighboring country to escape a Myanmar army crackdown. We are ready to take them back as soon as possible after Bangladesh sends the forms back to us, said Myint Kyaing, a permanent secretary at Myanmar s ministry of labor, immigration and population, referring to registration forms the Rohingya must complete with personal details before repatriation. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. calling Rohingya operation 'ethnic cleansing' unhelpful: Russian envoy;YANGON (Reuters) - The U.S. labeling of a Myanmar army crackdown on Rohingya Muslims as ethnic cleansing is unhelpful and could aggravate the situation, Russia s ambassador to the southeast Asian nation said on Thursday, criticizing excessive external intervention . Rights groups have accused the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar of carrying out mass rape and other atrocities during a ferocious military sweep launched in late August in retaliation for attacks by Rohingya Muslim militants in Rakhine State. That drove 620,000 Rohingya refugees, many traumatized with gunshot wounds and burns, to flee to Bangladesh, joining hundreds of thousands who have sheltered there for years after previous spasms of violence in the former Burma. The military operation amounted to ethnic cleansing , the United States said on Wednesday, echoing an accusation first made by top U.N. officials in the early days of the humanitarian crisis. I don t think that it will help to solve this problem, Russian ambassador Nikolay Listopadov told Reuters in an interview in Yangon, when asked about the U.S. move. On the contrary, it can aggravate the situation, throw more fuel, he said in English, citing concern over how the Buddhist community in Rakhine would react to such a designation. This month, Russia and China agreed to a UN Security Council statement urging Myanmar to ensure no further excessive use of military force and expressing grave concern over reports of human rights violations , but they have opposed tougher steps and further pressure on Myanmar. We are against excessive external intervention, because it won t lead to any constructive results, Listopadov said. Just pressure and blaming and accusing - it simply won t work. On a visit to Myanmar last week, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged the government of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi to lead a credible and impartial inquiry, saying those who committed abuses should be held responsible. But prospects for such an inquiry remain dim and Suu Kyi s government refused to cooperate with a mission launched by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March after a less intense bout of violence in Rakhine. The so-called independent investigation demanded by Tillerson was absolutely out of the question for Myanmar, Listopadov said. It s absolutely not acceptable for the Myanmar side - it will never accept it...it won t work - it s counterproductive, said Listopadov. Independent investigation means international (investigation) - no, it s not acceptable. Moscow s approach was for the Rakhine issue to be solved by political means, political dialogue, he added, without elaborating. He welcomed talks being held in Myanmar s capital of Naypyitaw between Myanmar and Bangladesh on the repatriation of Rohingya refugees, stressing it was important to start this process. We wish them success, said Listopadov, this complicated Rakhine issue can be solved mostly only by negotiations and agreements between the two sides, because they re the most involved, he said, referring to Bangladesh and Myanmar. China wants closer ties with Myanmar s military to help protect regional peace and security, a senior Chinese general told the visiting head of the southeast Asian country s army this week. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia urges strong, sustained U.S. engagement in Asia, warns on China;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia called on Thursday on the United States to build a strong presence in Asia and bolster ties with like-minded partners while warning against China s rising influence. A more insular United States would be detrimental to the liberal nature of the world s rules-based order , the government said in a 115-page foreign policy white paper. Australia believes that international challenges can only be tackled effectively when the world s wealthiest, most innovative and most powerful country is engaged in solving them, the government said. The white paper is a guide for Australian diplomacy and provides a roadmap for advancing its interests. The election of President Donald Trump represented a step towards a more isolationist world, which could be negative for Australia s export-dependent economy, commentators have said. Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional trade agreement in January, shortly after he took office. Strong and sustained U.S. engagement in the international system remains fundamental to international stability and prosperity, the government said in the paper. Without such engagement, the effectiveness and liberal character of the international order would erode. Australia is one of the staunchest U.S. allies and troops from the two countries have fought alongside each other in all major conflicts for generations. But the economic growth and power that the United States has enjoyed since the end of the World War Two is now being challenged by China, Australia said. Australia and China have close economic ties but China is suspicious of Australia s close military relationship with the United States. Australia warned in the paper of risks it faces, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region due to a shift in the balance of power. It highlighted the South China Sea as a major fault line in the regional order , and said it was particularly concerned by the unprecedented pace and scale of China s land reclamation and construction activities in the disputed waters. China s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular briefing that the paper was on whole a positive assessment of China s development, which he said adhered to the global rules-based order, and of relations between China and Australia. But Lu said the paper did make irresponsible remarks on the South China Sea for which China expressed its concerns. While the government recognized the economic benefits from China s rise, it was also trying to wish China away , said Jane Golley, deputy director at the Australian Center on China in the World, Australian National University. To actually drop the word Asia from Asia-Pacific undoes three decades of diplomatic effort, Golley said, referring to the use of the phrase Indo-Pacific which came up 120 times in the paper. Asia-Pacific was not used once. The United States and some of its allies have recently been talking up their vision of the Indo-Pacific , instead of the Asia-Pacific , in a play on words aimed at undermining the influence of China. There is a small reference to China s geo-economic strategy in the paper but the emphasis is on the tensions that could create, rather than the economic benefits, Golley said. We ll have to see how China reacts to this but they re not going to like this policy. Relations between Australia and China sank to a low point this year after Australia rejected high-profile Chinese investments, citing national interest . Australia has also shown little enthusiasm for China s ambitious Belt and Road initiative, which aims to connect China to Europe and beyond with infrastructure projects. The initiative was mentioned just once in the paper. We are not embracing the future, Golley said. We are holding on to the past and reaching on to the life jacket rather than thinking of building a whole new ship. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No joke: China government warns northern cities to get serious in war on smog;BEIJING (Reuters) - Some northern Chinese cities failed to improve air quality by much last month, hitting the smog-prone region s overall results in a drive against pollution, the government said as it warned provincial officials to comply with stringent steps to clear the skies. Some cities did not improve air quality by much or even experienced some volatility, and in a way, they have dragged down the regional air quality level, Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) spokesperson, Liu Youbin, said at a regular briefing on Thursday. He did not identify the underperforming cities, but the comment comes amid concerns about the country s ability to reduce pollution in winter as it battles to avoid a repeat of the near-record levels of choking smog that enveloped key northern areas at the start of the year. There is no jesting in war. For those local officials who do not enforce the measures of the campaign effectively and could not improve air quality in time, we will hold them accountable, Liu added. Data earlier this month showed only four of 28 northern Chinese cities met their air quality targets in October and air quality in 338 Chinese cities worsened in October, with levels of hazardous breathable particles, known as PM 2.5, up 5.6 percent on the year to an average of 38 micrograms per cubic meter. Beijing is under huge pressure to meet politically crucial air quality targets and clear the skies of toxic smog that blankets the north of the country as homes turn up the heat which is powered by coal. Liu said overall air quality in the northern cities was improving compared with September. Average PM 2.5 levels in the region dropped 15.8 percent in October from the month before, he said. It shows that our measures are working. As long as we are persistent, and diligently enforce existing measures, regional air quality will definitely improve, he said. Under the six-month campaign, 28 northern Chinese cities were ordered to thin traffic and cut industrial output. Thousands of pollution sources including steel mills, coal-fired boilers, cement and ceramic plants, mines and building sites will be shut. These measures, part of Beijing s years-long time war on smog, have already roiled commodities market, fuelling worries that the tough inspections are hurting the already slowing economy. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait's emir leaves hospital after successful medical tests: agency;DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait s Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah was discharged from hospital on Thursday after successful medical tests, state news agency (KUNA) reported, one day after he was admitted following a cold. The agency cited Emiri Court Affairs Minister Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as saying that the 88-year-old ruler of the Gulf Arab state, which is allied with the West, left hospital after successfully completing regular medical tests . ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines president likely to return police to drugs war soon: spokesman;MANILA (Reuters) - There is a strong likelihood Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will lift a suspension on police from his war on drugs, his spokesman said on Thursday, a move likely to alarm activists who accuse police of committing murder under the guise of drug busts. Amid international concern over the staggering death toll and several killings of youngsters, President Rodrigo Duterte last month suspended police anti-narcotics operations for a second time and put the country s undermanned drugs enforcement agency, PDEA, in charge. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque reiterated Duterte s concern expressed last week that the drugs problem could intensify and gains might be lost with the Philippine National Police (PNP) sidelined. A decision will soon be made, Roque told a regular briefing. That s the president s call. If he thinks it (the war on drugs) must be returned (to the PNP) then it must be, the PDEA has been given enough time. He added: Effectively he has manifested already a decision to return it to the PNP. Close to 4,000 mostly urban poor Filipinos have been killed in what police say are anti-drug operations. Human rights groups and political opponents say executions of drug users and small-time peddlers have been widespread, but police insist those killed were all dealers who put up violent resistance. Police have rebuffed criticism and cite 117,000 arrests as proof that their policy is to preserve life. They also deny links to at least 2,000 mysterious street killings of drug users. Roque said Duterte knew the police had flaws and would not tolerate abuses, but he still believed in them. He suspended police in January and reinstated them five weeks later, arguing that drugs were pouring back to the streets. It is unclear why he removed them again on Oct. 11. His directive was to bring order to the campaign, but in angry, at times incoherent speeches, he suggested he was trying to appease the international community. Duterte last week oversaw his biggest international summit yet but there was no known challenge from other leaders to his war on drugs, including from U.S. President Donald Trump. The volatile Duterte did, however, lash out afterwards about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling it an insult that he should express his concern to him. Phelim Kine, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Asia, said people should brace for more bloodshed and called again for a United Nations-led international investigation. Until that happens, the number of victims denied justice and accountability will likely only continue to grow, he wrote in a web posting. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. suspends official travel to Myanmar's troubled Rakhine;YANGON (Reuters) - The United States temporarily suspended travel for American officials to parts of Myanmar s Rakhine state, the U.S. embassy said on Thursday, citing concerns over potential protests after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing in the state. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Unbending on border, Ireland says there work to do to get Brexit deal next month;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland, armed with an EU veto and insistent on an open Irish border after Britain leaves the bloc, is hopeful agreement can be reached by mid-December but believes sufficient progress has yet to be made. Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday his country needed more clarity from London. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after its departure, is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly solved before it decides next month on whether to move the talks onto a second phase about trade, as Britain wants. I am hopeful this can be reached in December, but it is by no means pre-determined... We need a lot more clarity, Coveney told a parliamentary committee while repeating that with three weeks to go, Dublin has still not received proposals from London to allow talks to move on. Before it can sign off on the first phase of talks, the Irish government wants Britain to spell out in writing how it intends to make good on its commitment that the 500-km (310 mile) border will remain as seamless post-Brexit as it is today. Dublin has said this can be best achieved if London commits, on behalf of Northern Ireland, that there would be no regulatory divergence north and south of the border. Coveney said that includes all areas from agriculture to state aid rules. Speaking to reporters in Paris, Ireland s European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee said Dublin would continue to resist the idea expressed by some British ministers that talks need to move onto the trade phase before the border issue can be resolved. They are asking us to take a leap in the dark and we are not going to take a leap in the dark. We need something more concrete, McEntee said. The border question is particularly sensitive given the decades of violence over whether Northern Ireland should be part of the UK or Ireland. Some 3,600 people were killed before the 1998 peace agreement. We have been very clear in terms of what we re asking for, that hasn t changed for months. What has changed, perhaps, is the expectation that Ireland, maybe when we came under a bit of pressure, that we might back off or accept that this would be deferred into phase two, Coveney said. Some people seem to be surprised that that s not happening, maybe they weren t listening when we told them the first time, or the second time or the tenth time but I think people are listening now. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba, North Korea reject 'unilateral and arbitrary' U.S. demands;HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba s foreign minister and his North Korean counterpart rejected the United States unilateral and arbitrary demands on Wednesday while expressing concern about escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, the ministry said. North Korea is searching for support amid unprecedented pressure from the United States and the international community to cease its nuclear weapons and missile programs, which it carries out in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The country, which has made no secret of its plans to develop a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, has maintained warm political relations with Cuba since 1960, despite the island s opposition to nuclear weapons. Some diplomats said Cuba was also one of the few countries that might be able to convince North Korea to move away from the current showdown with the United States that threatens war. The ministers, meeting in Havana, called for respect for peoples sovereignty and the peaceful settlement of disputes, according to a statement released by the Cuban foreign ministry. They strongly rejected the unilateral and arbitrary lists and designations established by the U.S. government which serve as a basis for the implementation of coercive measures which are contrary to international law, the statement said. U.S. President Donald Trump has also increased pressure on Cuba since taking office, rolling back a fragile detente begun by predecessor Barack Obama and returning to the hostile rhetoric of the Cold War. A U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the United States had made clear it wanted a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue. The DPRK s belligerent and provocative behavior demonstrates it has no interest in working toward a peaceful solution, the official said. DPRK stands for North Korea s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. Cuba said in the statement the Cuban and North Korean foreign ministers had expressed concern about the escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula. The ministers discussed the respective efforts carried out in the construction of socialism according to the realities inherent to their respective countries. Cuba and North Korea are the last in the world to maintain Soviet-style command economies, though under President Raul Castro, the Caribbean nation has taken some small steps toward the more market-oriented communism of China and Vietnam. Cuba maintains an embassy in North Korea, but publicly trades almost exclusively with the South. Last year, trade with the latter was $67 million and with the North just $9 million, according to the Cuban government. North Korea defends its weapons programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intentions. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: India pares back planned funding for crucial public health scheme;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has approved a three-year budget for its flagship public health program almost 20 percent lower than what the health ministry said was needed, according to sources and previously unreported government documents reviewed by Reuters. The federal finance ministry in August renewed the National Health Mission with $20 billion of funding between 2017-20, against the health ministry s estimated requirement of $25 billion, the documents showed. Officials familiar with the plan said the finance ministry reduced planned funding because of other spending priorities and because of state governments poor track record of spending the health budgets they ve been allotted in the past. The finance and health ministries did not respond to several requests for comment. The National Health Mission is one of the world s largest health programs and forms the backbone of public services in India. It provides everything from free drugs to immunization services to millions of rural poor. Prime Minister Narendra Modi s government has hiked federal funding for the overall health budget this year as part of a plan to improve care and meet a 2025 goal of raising health expenditure to 2.5 percent of GDP from the current 1.15 percent. The National Health Mission typically accounts for about half of the federal health budget and officials said the lower spending approval would make achieving the government s 2025 target more difficult. NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES After focusing on maternal and child health for years, the program had planned to broaden its priorities to tackle the rising threat of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Faced with the lower funding, the health ministry has reduced its three-year allocation to tackle NCDs such as cancer and diabetes to $1.4 billion, close to half of the estimated need of $2.4 billion, the documents showed. The Lancet, a British medical journal, last week said NCDs caused a disease burden in India like never before . More than 60 percent of deaths in the country during 2016 were due to non-communicable diseases, up from about 38 percent in 1990, according to the publication. While funding for such diseases up to 2020 will be higher than in recent years, the lower-than-planned approved funding will slow government efforts to tackle these diseases, two government officials said. The cutbacks in NCDs (spending) are dangerous ... this can potentially stall the NCD screening and management plan, said Oommen C. Kurian, a health researcher at the New Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation. India this year introduced free NCD screening for patients in 100 districts, with plans to eventually cover the country. Beyond non-communicable diseases, spending on strengthening the health system - such as improving district hospitals and patient transport services - will be an estimated $4.3 billion between 2017-20, a third lower than the ministry s request. Planned funding for immunization will be $2.9 billion versus $3.2 billion requested. The spending breakdown for different schemes will be finalised once the health ministry is allocated funding in India s annual budget. Modi s government has taken steps to improve public healthcare including a 27 percent budget hike this year to $7 billion, accompanied by cuts to prices of critical medical devices and drugs. Shamika Ravi, a health expert at Brookings India, said Modi s government was also pursuing fundamental structural reforms to improve healthcare, such as the ranking of district hospitals and empowering state medical officers. There is a lot of background work happening, said Ravi, who is also on Modi s economic advisory council. However, critics say more needs to be done to address the underfunded and overburdened public health system. Some 900,000 children in India died before turning five in 2016, the highest in the world, The Lancet estimates. In March, health officials faced criticism from other government departments for the National Health Mission s inefficiencies and were asked to rework the renewal proposal for 2017-20 after they drew up spending estimates of $33 billion. The health ministry revised the cost to nearly $25 billion, but the finance ministry reduced estimates by another $5 billion while approving the plan, the documents showed. The estimates were pared back because Modi s government has other priorities and because the finance ministry wants to control spending as it seeks to balance fiscal deficit targets while boosting growth, several government officials aware of the process said. It s about political priorities - you have programs on roads, on infrastructure, on ports, said one of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The government is also concerned states do not have the governance capacity to spend large health budgets efficiently, officials said. A shortage of workers, bureaucratic bungling and slow procurement processes have plagued the states health systems. More than $1.4 billion in health budgets was unspent by states by 2015-16, India s federal auditor said earlier this year. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's internet regulator denounces its former chief now under investigation;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s internet regulator had said it will purge the evil influence of its former top official who the ruling Communist Party has put under investigation for suspected corruption. The official, Lu Wei, was suspected of serious discipline breaches, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced on Tuesday. Lu, a colorful and often brash official by Chinese standards, was at the height of his power seen as emblematic of China s increasingly pervasive internet controls. The Communist Party referred to him as the first tiger taken down after a congress in October, when President Xi Jinping pledged that his anti-graft campaign would continue to target both tigers and flies , a reference to elite officials and ordinary bureaucrats. Lu s former agency, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), held a meeting on Wednesday in which it called its former chief a typical two-faced person who had seriously polluted its political environment. Lu Wei cannot represent CAC s image. He precisely undermined CAC s image, the agency said in statement published late on Wednesday. The CAC would draw profound lessons from Lu s breaches and thoroughly purge Lu s evil influence , it said. The CCDI said in a separate commentary on its website on Thursday that the investigation of Lu was a potent sign that the party would not let up on its fight against wayward officials. One must not think that no one will ask today about yesterday s crimes, the CCDI said. It was nonsense to think the party would let bygones be bygones , it said. Xi has waged war against deep-rooted corruption since taking office five years ago, punishing hundreds of thousands of officials. Lu worked his way up though China s official Xinhua news agency before becoming head of propaganda in Beijing and then moving to internet work in 2013. He later became a deputy propaganda minister. But his downfall, foreshadowed by his June 2016 replacement as head of the internet regulator and the loss of his other posts, is unlikely to signal a reversal of internet control policies, which have been tightened under his successor, Xu Lin. The government has blocked sites it thinks could challenge party rule or threaten stability, including sites such as Facebook and Google s main search engine and Gmail service. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China tells Myanmar military it wants closer ties;BEIJING (Reuters) - China wants closer ties with Myanmar s military to help protect regional peace and security, a senior Chinese general told the visiting head of the southeast Asian country s army. China and Myanmar have had close diplomatic and economic ties for years, including increasingly in the strategically important oil and gas sectors, and China has offered its support to its southern neighbor, also known as Burma, throughout a crisis over its treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar s Rakhine State, most to neighboring Bangladesh, since a Myanmar military crackdown in response to attacks on the security forces by Rohingya insurgents in August. The United States on Wednesday for the first time called the Myanmar military operation against the Rohingya ethnic cleansing and threatened targeted sanctions against those responsible for horrendous atrocities . Meeting in Beijing, Li Zuocheng, who sits on China s Central Military Commission, which runs its armed forces, told Senior General Min Aung Hlaing that China s development and prosperity were an important opportunity for Myanmar s development, China s Defense Ministry said in a statement. In the face of a complex and changeable regional security situation, China is willing to maintain strategic communication between the two countries militaries, Li was cited as saying in the statement issued late on Wednesday. China wanted greater contacts between the two armed forces and deeper training and technical exchanges and to promote border defense cooperation to ensure peace and stability along their common border, Li added. China has been angered by fighting between Myanmar s military and autonomy-seeking ethnic minority rebels close to the Chinese border in recent years, which has at times forced thousands of villagers to flee into China. The Chinese ministry made no direct mention of the Rohingya issue in the statement. China built close ties with Myanmar s generals during years of military rule, when Western countries imposed sanctions on Myanmar for its suppression of the democracy movement. More recently, their ties have included oil and gas as Myanmar pumps natural gas from the Bay of Bengal to China. A new oil pipeline, opened this year, also feeds Middle East crude through Myanmar to a new refinery in Yunnan, southwest China. This has opened a new oil supply route to China, avoiding the Strait of Malacca and Singapore. The United States and other Western countries have stepped up engagement with Myanmar since the military began handing power to civilians in 2011, and especially since former democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a 2015 election. But an international outcry over Myanmar s violations of the rights of the Rohingya has raised questions in Western countries about that engagement. Rights group Amnesty International has called for a comprehensive arms embargo against Myanmar as well as targeted financial sanctions against senior Myanmar military officials. China s Defense Ministry cited Min Aung Hlaing as thanking China for its support in helping Myanmar ensure domestic stability. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China must enhance protection of intellectual property rights: Premier Li;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - It is strategically important for China s economy that the country enhances protection of intellectual property rights, the state news agency Xinhua quoted Premier Li Keqiang as saying, as the cabinet promised to improve regulations. Inadequate protection of intellectual property had contributed to the decline in private investment, he added. Companies and foreign business lobbies have often accused China of doing too little to rein in risks related to intellectual property rights, despite having anti-piracy laws. To protect these rights better, the State Council, or cabinet, said the government would look into punitive fines for infringements. The cabinet plans to increase costs for those caught infringing on intellectual property rights, and will make rights protection more affordable, Xinhua said. Private businesses will enjoy equal rights similar to public sector companies, it quoted a statement following a cabinet meeting chaired by Li as saying. Enhancing the protection of intellectual property rights is a matter of overall strategic significance, and it is vital for the development of the socialist market economy, Li said. Deficiency in (property rights protection) is a main cause for the slide in private investment... The wider opening up of the country calls for enhancing IPR protection. The cabinet vowed to clear, revise or abolish regulations or documents that were contradictory to the 2007 Property Rights Law and 2016 guidelines on improving property rights protection. Wayward and arbitrary law enforcement would be strictly prevented, it added.IPR law enforcement will be channeled towards cases related to the internet, exports and imports, as well as rural and urban areas, where counterfeiting is rampant. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea considers scrapping exercise with U.S. for Olympics: Yonhap;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is considering scrapping a regular military exercise with U.S. forces next year to minimize the risk of an aggressive North Korean reaction during the Winter Olympics in the South, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday. North Korea denounces regular military exercises between South Korean and U.S. forces as preparations to invade it, and it has at times conducted missile tests or taken other aggressive action in response. The Winter Olympics will be held in South Korea from Feb. 9 to Feb. 25, with the Paralympics on March 8-18. The South s Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified South Korean presidential office official, said the option of scrapping the exercise had been considered for a very long time . The Blue House presidential office said in a statement no decision has been made on the exercise. Officials at the defense ministry declined to comment. The South Korean and U.S. militaries usually hold a military exercise in March and April called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which involves about 17,000 U.S. troops and more than 300,000 South Koreans. South Korea is hopeful that North Korean participation in the games could help improve their fraught relations. The South has said any North Korean athletes who are eligible for the competition would be welcome. A North Korean figure skating pair has qualified to compete but their participation has not been confirmed. Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for the past year with North Korea developing its nuclear weapons and missiles in defiance of international condemnation and U.N. sanctions. While North Korea has not conducted any tests over the past two months, it has repeatedly vowed to never give up the weapons it deems it needs to protect itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese police detain seven in multi-billion underground currency scheme;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Police in southern China have detained seven people in connection with an underground banking scheme involving more than 20 billion yuan ($3 billion), the state news agency Xinhua reported. From a suspicious bank account in Shaoguan, a city in Guangdong province, the investigation snowballed to involve a suspected 10,000 people and 148 accounts across more than 20 provinces, Xinhua reported. The suspects allegedly profited from changes in the exchange rates for yuan and Hong Kong dollars, it said without giving details. The yuan, or renminbi, is not fully convertible and the government limits the amount of foreign currency to which individuals and businesses in China have access, which has given rise to networks of underground money changers and banks. ($1 = 6.6086 Chinese yuan renminbi) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British urged to map out post-Brexit future for lawyers;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain needs to set out plans to make sure its lawyers can keep working across Europe after Brexit, a lobby group said on Thursday. TheCityUK said Britain s withdrawal from the European Union should also not threaten the international dominance of English law and the prospects of an industry that generated 31.5 billion pounds ($42 billion) in revenue last year. The group, which lobbies for financial and legal services firms, said it was urging the government to do everything it can to make sure Brexit does not act as a barrier to future growth opportunities but as a stimulant. This includes the need to secure mutual market access to enable UK-based practitioners to continue to represent clients in EU jurisdictions. The government needed to give details on how it planned to convert EU rules governing the industry into domestic law, and the process for signing up to international conventions. Legal services make up 1.5 percent of the UK economy and employ more than 311,000 people, TheCityUK said in a report on the industry. More than 200 foreign law firms have set up shop in London and English law is used in 40 percent of global corporate arbitrations, it added. The choice of English law for global commercial contracts is in part driven by the UK s reputation as the leading center for international dispute resolution, the report said. But others are waiting in the wings. The German Federal State of Hesse promoted a conference earlier this year that looked at how Brexit provided an opportunity for Frankfurt to become a new litigation hub in Europe. ($1 = 0.7560 pounds) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran sets December 10 court date for jailed Iranian-British aid worker;LONDON (Reuters) - Iran has told jailed Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe that she will appear in court next month accused of spreading propaganda, her husband, Richard, said on Thursday. She s been told she will appear in court on Dec. 10, he told Reuters. He said that he understood she would appear in court charged with spreading propaganda. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was sentenced to five years after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. Zaghari-Ratcliffe s fate become a major political issue in Britain after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson made remarks on Nov. 1 that appeared to cast doubt on statements from her employer about what she had been doing in Iran. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News, said she had been on holiday. Johnson told a parliamentary committee he understood she had been teaching people journalism before her arrest in April 2016. He later apologized for his remarks. The Thomson Reuters Foundation said she had not been training journalists in Iran. Iranian state television has said Johnson s comments showed Zaghari-Ratcliffe s guilt and that she was involved in spying. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli official under fire for comments on American Jews' military service;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A top Israeli diplomat was rebuked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for suggesting that American Jews have a poor commitment to service in the U.S. military. Asked in an English-language television interview about criticism of Israeli policies by some U.S. Jews, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely questioned whether people that never send their children to fight for their country could understand the complexity of the Middle east. Most of the Jews don t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan or to Iraq, she said on i24 TV news on Wednesday. They don t feel how it feels to be attacked by rockets, and I think part of it is to actually experience what Israel is dealing with on a daily basis, said Hotovely, a member of Netanyahu s right-wing Likud party. While Israel has often quarreled with American Jews over their right to advise it from afar, Hotovely s remarks went further by appearing to insinuate they are not fully committed to their native country, a notion U.S. Jewish organizations have long fought against in their battle against anti-Semitism. In a statement, Netanyahu, who also serves as Israel s foreign minister, denounced Hotovely s comments as hurtful . There is no place for such a harangue and her remarks do not reflect the State of Israel s position, the statement said. According to a 2009 survey published by the congressionally-mandated Military Leadership Diversity Commission, an estimated 1.09 percent of the members of the U.S. armed forces are Jewish. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2013 that Jews make up about 2 percent of the U.S. adult population. The website of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington lists more than 50 Jewish service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe opposition wants Mugabe's pillars of repression dismantled;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s main opposition said on Thursday it wanted incoming president Emmerson Mnangagwa to dismantle all pillars of repression that helped sustain Robert Mugabe s 37 years in power. In its first official comments since Mugabe resigned on Tuesday, the MDC said it was cautiously optimistic that a Mnangagwa presidency would not mimic and replicate the evil, corrupt, decadent and incompetent Mugabe regime. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel looks secure for now despite coalition chaos;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives are rallying around her despite the failure of talks to form a three-way ruling coalition, buying her time in office and putting the onus on her Social Democrat rivals to break Germany s political impasse. Resolute conservative support for Merkel is significant, as some members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) have said privately their price for a re-run of its grand coalition with the conservatives would be Merkel s head. The collapse late on Sunday of the coalition talks, which followed an inconclusive Sept. 24 election, has plunged Germany into the worst political crisis since the end of World War Two. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is trying to broker a deal, is keenly aware the source of Germany s international clout is its economic power and that businesses want a stable coalition soon to end the uncertainty and avoid another poll. SPD leader Martin Schulz, whose party is the second biggest in Germany and was the junior coalition partner to Merkel s conservative bloc in the last parliament, has insisted the SPD should rebuild in opposition after heavy losses in September. But with Merkel secure for now at the helm of her Christian Democrats (CDU), the pressure shifts to the SPD to help form a coalition after the failure of the chancellor s three-way talks with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens. Surveys suggest going to the polls again would deliver a similar outcome to September s result. Furthermore, 58 percent of voters want Merkel to remain chancellor, an Infratest Dimap poll for broadcaster ARD showed this week. While the SPD prevaricates, Merkel looks reasonable for trying to resolve the impasse. One thing is clear: Angela Merkel s position in the CDU is very strong. She is our Number One, David McAllister, a CDU executive committee member, told Reuters. Her party believes she did all she could to forge a three-way coalition. Merkel s efforts also improved ties with the CDU s Bavarian allies in the conservative bloc, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which had been strained over immigration. Another senior CDU official said there was no question of sacrificing Merkel as the party had no credible alternative. A third senior CDU official, Volker Kauder, leader of the conservative parliamentary group in the lower house of parliament, said he hoped the Social Democrats would change their minds about rejecting another grand coalition.[nL8N1NT1PP] Steinmeier is due to meet Schulz on Thursday at 1400 GMT as part of his efforts to help facilitate a coalition government and avoid more elections. Asked about the possibility of the SPD supporting a Merkel-led minority government or entering a new grand coalition, an SPD spokesman pointed to Schulz s meeting with Steinmeier and said, then we will see what comes afterwards . A former SPD leader, Steinmeier is meeting leaders from all parties in parliament this week and wants them to make agreement on a new government possible in the near future . Only after a new government has formed is Merkel s position likely to come under pressure - and even then, not immediately. Her mentor, Helmut Kohl, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany s rebirth after World War Two, are the only post-war chancellors to have ruled Germany longer than her. Merkel, 63, only decided to run again last November after thinking long and hard. She said then she was seeking to stay on if health allows . In 1998, she was quoted as saying: I don t want to be a half-dead wreck when I leave politics. She appears in robust health, but given she has already held power for 12 years, questions will inevitably arise about who will succeed her before she is half way through any new four-year term. Potential successors are not circling just yet. She will have probably a year or so after a government is formed before the question of her succession becomes an overwhelming issue in German domestic politics, said Jan Techau at the American Academy in Berlin. The moment that starts, her power will be greatly diminished. But first, Merkel must form a new government. If Steinmeier fails to convince the SPD to enter a new grand coalition, other options include a three-way coalition after all, a Merkel-led minority government, or new elections. Since snap elections won t change relative strengths, my prediction is ... another grand coalition between the only two parties that have learned to compromise, said Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of weekly Die Zeit. Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday that some SPD deputies were now questioning their party s rejection of a renewed grand coalition. [nL8N1NS1PN] Changing course and teaming up with Merkel again may require a change of leadership at the SPD and there could yet be a shake out at a party conference in early December. The pressure needs to build up within the Social Democratic party, said Techau. He said Merkel should focus on being a responsible caretaker chancellor until a new government forms. She just needs to play her own game well and then she can survive. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says Google down-ranking Sputnik, RT would be censorship;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s foreign ministry said on Thursday that moves by Alphabet Inc s (GOOGL.O) Google to place articles from Russian news outlets Sputnik and Russia Today lower in search results would amount to censorship. Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking on stage at an international forum last Saturday, responded to a question about Sputnik articles appearing on Google by saying the company was working to give less prominence to those kinds of websites as opposed to delisting them. Speaking at a news briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday Google was acting under strong political pressure from the U.S. authorities. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Event 'consistent with an explosion' detected near missing Argentine sub-navy;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An abnormal sound detected in the South Atlantic ocean around the time that an Argentine navy submarine sent its last signal last week was consistent with an explosion, a navy spokesman said on Thursday. Spokesman Enrique Balbi described the blast in the morning of Nov. 15 as abnormal, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear. A huge sea and air hunt is being conducted for the ARA San Juan, which went missing with 44 crew on board. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt housing minister to head government while premier receives treatment abroad: Ahram;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt has appointed Housing Minister Mustafa Madbuly to serve as interim prime minister while Prime Minister Sherif Ismail receives medical treatment abroad, state newspaper Al-Ahram reported on Thursday. The cabinet said on Wednesday that Ismail would travel to Germany on Thursday for surgery and is expected to remain there for three weeks, though it did not specify the condition he would be treated for. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Who burned the cakes? Belgian waffle fire chokes Brussels;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The sweet smell of waffles is familiar in Belgium but on Thursday people were left choking as a fire at a waffle factory sent a dense black cloud across Brussels, disrupting some rail traffic in the capital. Police said the blaze at the Milcamps factory, which produces the national sweet treat in various regional variants, broke out at lunchtime. It was not immediately clear what started it or whether anyone was hurt. A lot of smoke has been emitted and we are advising people to keep doors and windows shut and to stay inside. Drivers should close air vents in their cars, local police said. A sharp smell of burned waffle caused coughing in the city center, 6 km (4 miles), from the blaze. Belgian waffles, traditionally sold from mobile vendors and street kiosks, have become popular around the world. They are batter cooked between hotplates patterned according to various regional traditions and dusted with icing sugar. Their history dates back to the wafers baked for Mass in the medieval monasteries of the Low Countries. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s defense ministry said on Thursday long-range bombers had carried out air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria s Deir al-Zor province, the RIA news agency reported. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. strikes on Taliban opium labs won't work, say Afghan farmers;LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan/KABUL (Reuters) - As U.S. and Afghan forces pound Taliban drug factories this week, farmers in the country s largest opium producing-province and narcotics experts say the strategy just repeats previous failed efforts to stamp out the trade. U.S. Army General John Nicholson, who heads NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, announced on Monday a new strategy of attacking opium factories, saying he wanted to hit the Taliban where it hurts, in their narcotics financing . Critics say the policy risks further civilian casualties and turning large swathes of the population dependent on poppy cultivation against the Afghan government. The Taliban will not be affected by this as much as ordinary people, said Mohammad Nabi, a poppy farmer in Nad Ali district in the southern province of Helmand, the heartland of opium production. Farmers are not growing poppies for fun. If factories are closed and businesses are gone, then how will they provide food for their families? Opium production in Afghanistan reached record highs this year, up 87 percent, according to the United Nations. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said last week that output of opium from poppy seeds in Afghanistan, the world s main source of heroin, stood at around 9,000 metric tons in 2017, worth an estimated $1.4 billion on leaving the farms. In Helmand, cultivation area increased 79 percent. Publicizing the new strategy, which he said was open-ended, Nicholson showed one video of an F-22 fighter jet dropping 250-pound bombs on two buildings, emphasizing that a nearby third building was left unscathed. U.S. troops have long been accused of causing unnecessary collateral damage and civilian deaths. The United States says it takes every precaution to avoid civilian casualties. The four-star general emphasized that farmers were not the targets. They are largely compelled to grow the poppy and this is kind of a tragic part of the story, said Nicholson. WHACK-A-MOLE Experts, however, question whether the new strategy will have an impact on Taliban financing. All these things have been tried before and not produced effective results. If they had, we wouldn t be where we are now, said Orzala Nemat, director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, which has been researching the country s drug trade for a decade and a half. Another analyst said it was simply a futile game of whack-a-mole. Those familiar with the drug industry in Afghanistan said it would only take three or four days to replace a lab, which generally has a low sunk-cost. They also say it was not just the Taliban involved in Afghanistan s drug trade. Drugs are elemental to the political economy of Afghanistan, to those who rule and to those who oppose that rule, said one analyst, asking not to be named. Prior to being ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, the Taliban virtually eliminated the trade, saying it was forbidden by Islam. The United States and its Western allies, the Afghan government and United Nations have made repeated efforts since to eradicate poppy cultivation, including encouraging farmers to cultivate alternatives such as saffron, spraying poppy fields with herbicide, and destroying labs. However, they have not made any serious headway in stemming the rise in drug production. The issue underlines problems faced by the Afghan government and its allies, as they seek to cut off a major source of financing for the Taliban and stem the flow of drugs to Europe. The Taliban said that U.S. forces were mistaken in their targeting and were hitting civilians. There are no drug producing factories in these areas. Invading Americans are carrying out these attacks based on false information and to make propaganda, which most of its victims are civilians, said Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi on Wednesday. Although World Bank projections show Afghanistan s economy picking up modestly, the improvement is more than offset by population growth, leaving many in rural areas saying they have no alternative to growing poppies. The government must provide jobs so people can feed their families and survive, said poppy farmer Haji Daoud in Sangin, Helmand. It should provide security and infrastructure. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi militia indicates will hand heavy guns to army after Islamic State quashed;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A prominent Iraqi militia indicated on Thursday it would give any heavy weapons it had to the military once Islamic State was defeated and rejected a proposed U.S. congressional bill designating it a terrorist group. Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters, is one of the most important militias in Iraq. Though made up of Iraqis, it is loyal to Iran and is helping Tehran create a supply route through Iraq to Damascus. The Nujaba fights under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a mostly Iranian-backed coalition of Shi ite militias that played a role in combating Islamic State. Disarming the PMF is seen as Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi s most difficult test as Iraqi forces edge closer to declaring victory over the Sunni militants. The heavy weapons belong to the Iraqi government, not us. We are not rebels or agents of chaos and we do not want to be a state within a state, Hashim al-Mouasawi, the group s spokesman, said at a news conference on Thursday. He was responding to a Reuters question on whether his group would obey orders by Abadi, who as prime minister commands the military, to return heavy weaponry, reduce the number of fighters, or withdraw from Syria. He would not be drawn on the reduction of fighters or Syria. The PMF is under the command of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and naturally when the war is over and victory is declared, the final decision will be his, Mouasawi said. His comments broadly echoed those of Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool. The tanks, armored vehicles, and machine guns belong to the army and it is natural that after the battles are over they return to the army, Rasool told Reuters in an interview. Nujaba strongly objected to moves by Washington towards designating it a terrorist group. Nujaba blames the United States, without providing evidence, for the creation of IS. Republican U.S. Representative Ted Poe introduced a bill this month to the House of Representatives that would place Nujaba and another militia loyal to Iran on a list of terrorist groups and give President Donald Trump 90 days to impose sanctions on it once it passed. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, sparking condemnation in Baghdad from Iraqi lawmakers and Abadi himself, who said he would not allow anyone who fought Islamic State to be treated as criminals. Accusing us of terrorism is not new or surprising. It is not a coincidence, and does not shock us, because we have never been part of the American bloc or project, said Mouasawi. Iraq is backed by adversaries the United States and Iran in its fight against Islamic State. The United States is concerned that Iran, a Shi ite Muslim regional power, will take advantage of gains against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to expand the influence it amassed after the U.S. invasion in 2003, something Sunni Arab rivals such as Saudi Arabia also oppose. Tens of thousands of Iraqis heeded a call to arms in 2014 after Islamic State seized a third of the country s territory, forming the PMF, which receive funding and training from Tehran and have been declared part of the Iraqi security apparatus. They are paid by the Iraqi government and officially report to the prime minister, but some Arab Sunni and Kurdish politicians describe these militias as a de facto branch of the Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). Mouasawi openly said on Thursday his group receives support in the form of advice from the Guards and the commander of its foreign operations, Major-General Qassem Soleimani, and Lebanese Shi ite political and military group Hezbollah. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aid agencies say Yemen blockade remains, Egeland calls it 'collective punishment';GENEVA (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition s blockade of Yemen, which has cut off food imports to a population where 7 million people are on the brink of famine, is illegal collective punishment of civilians, a prominent aid official said on Thursday. Major agencies said aid was still blocked a day after the Saudi-led military coalition said it would let humanitarian supplies in. The U.S.-backed coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the port of Hodeidah, as well as U.N. flights to the capital Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country. We have not yet had any movement as of now, said Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance. Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, said of the blockade: In my view this is illegal collective punishment. Egeland, whose group helps 1 million Yemenis, welcomed the coalition announcement as a step in the right direction , but added: We only have it in writing now and haven t seen it happen. The coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6 to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying weapons. Sending a missile in the direction of Riyadh is really very bad. But those who are suffering from the blockade had nothing to do with this missile, Egeland told Reuters while in Geneva. Even if both the flights and humanitarian shipments will go through now, it is not solving the underlying crisis that a country that needs 90 percent of its goods imported is not getting in commercial food or fuel. Houthi authorities who control the capital Sanaa were also imposing restrictions on access for aid workers, he said. The United Nations says some 7 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine and 945,000 have been infected since April with cholera. More than 2,200 people have died. U.N. officials have submitted requests to the coalition for deliveries via Hodeidah and Sanaa, and the hope and expectation was that the vital aid pipelines would re-open on Friday, the U.N. s Laerke said. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was vital to get commercial traffic resumed. Yemenis will need more than aid in order to survive the crisis and ward off famine, spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq launches operation to clear desert near Syria of Islamic State;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces launched an operation on Thursday to clear the desert bordering Syria of Islamic State in a final push to rid Iraq of the militant group, the military said. Troops from the Iraqi army and mainly Shi ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were taking part in the campaign against militants hiding in a large strip of border land, Iraqi military officials said. The objective behind the operation is to prevent remaining Daesh groups from melting into the desert region and using it as a base for future attacks, said army colonel Salah Kareem, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym. Islamic State fighters who ruled over millions of people in both Iraq and Syria since proclaiming their caliphate in 2014, have been largely defeated in both countries this year, pushed out of all population centers to empty desert near the border. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective, but he would declare final victory only after the militants were routed in the desert. [nL8N1NR57C] In the latest operation, Iraqi forces had purified 77 villages and exerted control over a bridge and an airport, operations commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said in a statement. Over 5,800 squared kilometers had been purified, he added. On Friday Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control. Iraqi army commanders say the military campaign will continue until all the frontier with Syria is secured to prevent Islamic State from launching cross border attacks. We will completely secure the desert from all terrorist groups of Daesh and declare Iraq clean of those germs, said army Brigadier General Shakir Kadhim. Army officials said troops advancing through sprawling desert towards the Syria border are facing landmines and roadside bombs placed by retreating militants. We need to clean scattered villages from terrorists to make sure they no longer operate in the desert area with Syria, said army Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Fairs. Iraqi military helicopters provided cover for the advancing troops and destroyed at least three vehicles used by militants as they were trying to flee a village in the western desert, said the army officer. Islamic State s self-declared caliphate has swiftly collapsed since July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling battle that had lasted nine months. Driven also from its other main bastion in Syria s Raqqa, Islamic State has since been gradually squeezed into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert straddling the Syria-Iraq frontier, pursued by a range of enemies that include most regional states and global powers. The group s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert which runs along the border of both countries. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Forty human traffickers arrested, 500 people rescued in West Africa;PARIS (Reuters) - Forty people were arrested and 500 people rescued after a swoop on human trafficking across West Africa, international police organization Interpol said on Thursday. The Interpol-led action comes amid a global outcry sparked by footage of Africans being solved as slaves in Libya, often the final transit for migrants wanting to reach Europe. In a statement, Interpol said that some 500 people, including 236 minors, had been rescued in simultaneous operations across Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Forty suspected traffickers were arrested. The results of this operation underline the challenge faced by law enforcement and all stakeholders in addressing human trafficking in the Sahel region, said the operation s coordinator Innocentia Apovo. The 40 arrested face prosecution for offences including human trafficking, forced labor and child exploitation. They are accused of forcing victims to engage in activities ranging from begging to prostitution, with little to no regard for working conditions or human life, the statement said. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's indigenous Warao decamp to uncertain future in Brazil;PACARAIMA, Brazil (Reuters) - An indigenous tribe that journeyed hundreds of kilometers to flee the economic crisis in Venezuela has been trapped in limbo near the border in Brazil, after it was moved off the streets of the Amazon city of Manaus. Driven by hunger and illness from their traditional homeland on the Orinoco River delta in northeastern Venezuela, more than 1,200 members of the Warao tribe migrated to northern Brazil to live and beg on the streets. Brazilian authorities, nongovernmental organizations and churches have helped provide temporary shelter on the border, but the Warao s future remains uncertain. The tribe insists it will not return to Venezuela, where a deep recession has led to shortages of basic goods under President Nicolas Maduro s socialist government. The children were dying in Venezuela from illness. There was no medicine, no food, no help, said Rita Nieves, a cacique, or chief, of the matrilineal Warao. Members of the tribe are still making the arduous journey. Nieves was wearing her best clothes to cross back into Venezuela to bury a 3-month-old Warao baby that had just died in its mother s arms on the 1,000-km (620-mile) bus ride to Brazil. We are staying here because things have not changed in Venezuela, she said, sitting in a warehouse turned into a living space for 220 Warao in the small border town of Pacaraima. Children played among dozens of hammocks hanging from metal structures erected by U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. Outside, women cooked broth on wood fires and men sat listening to their shaman talk about the virtues of the moriche palm used to weave baskets and hammocks, as he puffed on a straw cigar. The Warao have lived for centuries on the Orinoco delta, but some began to leave when fish supplies were depleted by the diversion of the waters to deepen shipping lanes for Venezuelan iron ore and bauxite exports. Many went to Venezuelan cities to sell craftwork and beg on the streets. However, when the economy tipped into crisis, they began moving to Brazil last year, often just walking across the border without documents. They were already begging in Venezuela, but those who gave them money are themselves asking for help today, said Sister Clara, a missionary from Brazil-based humanitarian organization Fraternidade that runs two shelters for the Warao. Who in today s crisis in Venezuela is going to buy Warao arts and crafts? she said. Around 500 Warao arrived on the streets of Manaus last year, where they begged from drivers and sold craftwork at traffic lights. Many slept under a highway overpass until city authorities stopped the begging and moved them into shelters they did not like. Some then traveled down the Amazon to Santarem and Belem, while others returned to frontier towns, from which they can go back and forth to their delta homeland when they raise enough money. They started staying here, sleeping in the streets, and caused a humanitarian emergency, said Pacaraima social services secretary Isabel Davila. The town provided an abandoned warehouse with toilets, showers and a kitchen, built with funding from the Mormon church. Like a similar shelter in the nearby city of Boa Vista that houses 500 Warao, these are temporary landing places, where the Warao can live while they get documents to legalize their status so they can find work, Davila said. But Chief Rita has no plans to move. Pacaraima s mayor promised land to grow crops and materials to make Warao craft work, she said, and she wants the Warao children to learn Portuguese. Half of the land in Roraima state is reserved for indigenous peoples, but an attempt to ask local communities to cede territory to the Warao met with a firm rebuttal. We think they might be here for a decade, said Danusa Sabala, a spokeswoman for Brazil s Indian affairs office FUNAI, which sees no short-term solution for the Warao. Ramon Gomez, a Warao chief in the Boa Vista shelter, said their ancestral homeland in the delta was finished and the situation in Venezuela was deteriorating rapidly. When ... this President Maduro took over, everything ended, food, medicine, G mez said. We will be here until Venezuela changes. It will get worse before it gets better. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa says against any form of 'vengeful retribution';HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s incoming president Emmerson Mnangagwa has called on citizens to remain peaceful and desist from any form of vengeful retribution , days after Robert Mugabe resigned from power. Mnangagwa s supporters were angered by his dismissal early this month, a move that triggered the military to intervene. Some of the supporters have been calling for unspecified action against the G40 group that backed Mugabe and his wife. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French conservatives' leader-in-waiting out to woo far-right voters;PROVINS, France (Reuters) - France s main conservative party needs to go on the political offensive against President Emmanuel Macron by rediscovering a right-wing identity and increasing its appeal to National Front voters, its leader-in-waiting said. Laurent Wauquiez, known for his euroscepticism and hardline opinions on immigration and security, has crossed swords with many top officials in his The Republicans (LR) party. But his views and brash style have made the 42-year-old popular with the party s grass-roots and he is the clear leader in opinion polls to become LR s next head next month. We won t bring people together by being tepid, Wauquiez told Reuters in an interview after a party rally in Provins, south of Paris. Saying France s conservatives had for too long fallen into the trap of being too moderate, he added: Emmanuel Macron isn t doing the job. Whoever takes over as the head of LR, currently under an interim leadership, will face the task of uniting a divided party that is struggling to make its voice heard in parliament where, while being the biggest opposition group, it has its fewest number of seats in decades. LR was heavily favored to win this spring s presidential election until the party imploded over financial scandals that embroiled its candidate, Francois Fillon. It failed to make the election s second round, contested by centrist Macron and the far-right National Front s Marine Le Pen, and was further weakened when the new president chose several of its top officials for his cabinet, including Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Addressing Wednesday s rally, Wauquiez delighted an audience of some 300 LR supporters with calls to stop giving free basic health care to illegal migrants and criticism of French politicians naivety over radical Islam. Asked about the fact that these are Le Pen favorite themes, Wauquiez, who was first elected lawmaker at 29, said: So if Marine Le Pen says it s night-time I should say it s day-time? Because the National Front (FN) talks about immigration I shouldn t? After the wave of attacks that have traumatized our country, the right shouldn t talk about Islamic fundamentalism? That was the trap the French right had fallen in to for too long as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel s big mistake, he said. Merkel s open-door policy on refugees was widely credited with causing her conservatives to bleed votes to the far-right AfD party in a national election in September. France s conservatives, meanwhile, are split over how to oppose Macron, whose economic policies coincide with what many of them stand for. Wauquiez s critics within LR say his policies may be too close to those of the FN and warn they could leave the party if he crosses that line once elected party chief. Wauquiez, a graduate of France s elite schools and a former minister under ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, says he is the voice of the silent majority and his critics have misunderstood him. My plan is simple, he said. I want to reach out to those who have voted for the National Front but I would never strike any alliance with National Front officials. Wauquiez s challenge will also be to convince LR voters who chose Macron for president and who pollsters say are now still backing him over his economic policies to return to the fold for the next election. Yes, the right has been knocked down. Yes, there are tensions as we are rebuilding ourselves, and that s normal after such a stinging defeat. Wauquiez said. Calling the president s labor reforms a sham . Wauquiez added: There is another path than Emmanuel Macron s, that of a determined and unfazed right. (This version of the story was refiled to add dropped word voters to headline) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State beheads 15 of its own fighters: Afghan official;JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Islamic State beheaded 15 of its own fighters due to infighting in Afghanistan s eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said, while a separate suicide attack on Thursday tore into a crowd in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, killing at least eight. The two incidents underline the insecurity and lawlessness across Afghanistan, where thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded this year amid unrelenting violence involving militant groups including Islamic State and the Taliban. In a bloody day for the province, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing at least eight people at a meeting of supporters of a police commander who was sacked for illegal land grabbing. There was no claim of responsibility and no immediate indication of who was behind the attack on the crowd in Jalalabad, which had gathered to demand the reinstatement of the commander, who survived the attack. A spokesman for the Jalalabad hospital confirmed eight people had been killed and 15 wounded. Nangarhar, on the porous border with Pakistan, has become a stronghold for Islamic State, generally known as Daesh in Afghanistan, which has grown to become one of the country s most dangerous militant groups since it appeared around the start of 2015. Attaullah Khogyani, the provincial governor s spokesman, said the 15 Islamic State fighters were executed after a bout of infighting in the group, which has become notorious for its brutality. The killings occurred in the Surkh Ab bazaar of Achin district. Further details were not available and there was no confirmation from Islamic State, whose local branch is known as Islamic State in Khorasan, an old name for the area that includes modern Afghanistan. The Taliban and Islamic State have frequently fought each other in Nangarhar and both have been targeted by sustained U.S. air strikes. But the exact nature of the relationship between the two groups is little understood. There have been isolated incidents in Afghanistan in which the fighters of both appear to have cooperated. Afghan intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters this year showed security officials believe Islamic State is present in nine provinces, from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's Hun Sen will fall like Mugabe, says opponent Rainsy;PARIS (Reuters) - Cambodia s Prime Minister Hun Sen will be driven from power like President Mugabe in Zimbabwe, veteran opposition chief Sam Rainsy told Reuters on Thursday, adding that Western states should impose targeted sanctions after his party was dissolved. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was banned at the government s request last week, deepening Hun Sen s fight with Western donors who accuse him of demolishing democracy in the country he has ruled for over 32 years. Rainsy resigned in February from the party, saying he feared it would be banned if he did not. Defamation convictions that he calls politically motivated drove him to flee Cambodia for France in 2015. Cambodia is at a tipping point. The people are fed up with Hun Sen and what is happening in Zimbabwe is inspiring, Rainsy told Reuters in an interview. Mugabe has fallen and it will soon be the turn of Hun Sen, who has become unacceptably anachronistic. Mugabe, who had led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980, stepped down on Tuesday after the army seized power and the ruling party turned against him. Hun Sen s government called for the CNRP ban after arresting its leader Kem Sokha on Sept. 3. It charged him with treason for an alleged plot to take over the Southeast Asian country with the help of the United States. His opponents say the charges were intended to eliminate Kem Sokha from next year s election so the strongman, who is currently the world s longest serving prime minister, can extend his rule. Rainsy, who announced his return to politics on Nov. 15, described the party ban as just on paper . He said the opposition needed to demonstrate that it continued to garner strong support after winning some 3 million votes in the 2013 elections, and push Cambodia s main western donors to shy away from the Phnom Penh government. What is important is to show Hun Sen that what he did was unacceptable. The world is not going to do business as usual with this government ... and needs to tell him it would never recognize a government that came out of these elections, he said. According to a recording leaked online on Thursday, Hun Sen has warned his party it could still lose the vote even after the CNRP was banned, and he demanded that it improve its image. Western countries have condemned the government s crackdown on the opposition, civil rights groups and independent media and have called for the release of Kem Sokha to allow credible elections. Washington has said it is cutting planned aid for holding elections and will take further steps. France, which ruled the country for almost a century before its 1953 independence, on Thursday said the government needed to abide by a democratic process. Hun Sen, a former commander in the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot which is blamed for the deaths of around two million people in the 1970s, has brushed off Western criticism, and warned that trade sanctions will hurt the people first. Rainsy said the U.S. and European Union should initially withdraw all assistance for the elections and impose targeted sanctions ranging from visa bans to asset freezes. He stopped short of calling for economic sanctions, saying that this could be used further down the line. We need personal sanctions that target individuals so that it won t hurt the people, but (hurt) the leaders who have hidden their ill-amassed fortunes abroad. They react when their personal interests are hurt, he said. When asked about Hun Sen increasingly turning to China, Cambodia s biggest donor, Rainsy said he believed the relationship would eventually unravel. China looks beyond Hun Sen. No government is stupid enough to continue to bet on him. What is happening in Cambodia now is reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge era. Pol Pot was isolated from the world and relied on China, but ... when it didn t need him it threw him out. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's 5-Star tells France's Macron movement is no threat to EU;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement told French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday that it does not represent a threat to the European Union, and sought to shrug off the label populist . Leader Luigi Di Maio, whose party tops polls ahead of a national election due early next year, wrote an open letter to Macron after the French leader reportedly expressed concern about anti-system forces in Italy. I am sure that when we get to know each other better, you will realize that our movement is not only not a threat, but is cultivating the best solutions for many of Europe s problems, Di Maio said in the letter published on the 5-Star movement s blog. Italian media reported this week that Macron had told former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi he was worried about the rise of 5-Star and the Northern League, which is close to France s National Front. Allied to Britain s United Kingdom Independence Party in the European Parliament, 5-Star is trying to distance itself from anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic parties in the rest of the bloc. Di Maio, a sober 31 year-old who has taken over leadership of the movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, said 5-Star shared with Macron the desire to rebuild Europe. They lazily call us populist without knowing what this means, when in reality we are ... close to the people, who want pay-back and a role in changing our country, he said. Di Maio made no mention of a referendum on Italy s use of the euro which 5-Star originally pledged when it burst onto the political scene in 2013, but has since backed away from. Regarding EU budget rules, Di Maio said that 5-Star s point of view was very close to that of France, which he said had let its budget deficit rise to accommodate spending on welfare and other investments. In January, 5-Star s European parliamentarians tried and failed to split from UKIP, which successfully campaigned for Britain to leave the EU. 5-Star eventually gave up a leading role in the group. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada data shows 10 percent of Haitian border crossers get refugee status;TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada has granted refugee status to about 10 percent of the 298 Haitian border crossers whose applications have been processed this year, according to government data released on Wednesday. That could bode ill for the 6,000 Haitians still in the refugee queue who illegally crossed the Canada-U.S. border by foot fearing that U.S. President Donald Trump would revoke their Temporary Protected Status. And it may discourage more from illegally crossing into Canada after the U.S. government on Monday said it would end protected status for nearly 60,000 Haitians living in the United States in July 2019. Of the 298 Haitian applications processed so far this year, 68 were abandoned by the asylum seekers, which means they did not turn up for their hearings, the data released from the Immigration and Refugee Board showed. Another 62 withdrew their applications, according to the data from the quasi-judicial body whose tribunals determine refugee claims. Montreal-based refugee lawyer Eric Taillefer said he thinks the Haitians who already made the border crossing did not understand Canadian laws on granting asylum. They don t understand the evidence threshold, they don t understand, maybe, the definition of a refugee, he said. The Canadian government has dispatched parliamentarians to talk to U.S. diaspora communities and dispel myths around Canada s immigration and refugee systems. Haiti-born politician Emmanuel Dubourg was in New York City this week. The high rates of abandoned claims could be because asylum seekers had trouble navigating the system and were not aware they needed to show up at a hearing, Taillefer said. Haitians are among some 17,000 asylum seekers who have walked across the border into Canada so far this year. Border crossers from other countries fared better, with 46 percent of Nigerian claims accepted, and 94 percent of Turkish people and 88 percent of Syrians approved. The stream of people crossing the border has eased since August, when there were hundreds each day, but Canadian authorities are planning for more people in the winter months. The federal government is paying a Quebec company C$1.2 million to set up heated trailers to accommodate up to 200 people at a temporary encampment where asylum seekers have been staying while they await processing by the Canada Border Services Agency. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's Hun Sen warns his party it could still lose election;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned his party it could still lose next year s election even after the banning of the opposition and demanded that it improve its image, according to a recording leaked online on Thursday. Hun Sen s Cambodian People s Party (CPP) played down the importance of the message, in which Hun Sen tells senior officials they must stop corruption, extortion and other illegal practices and start making people happy. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was banned at the government s request last week, deepening Hun Sen s fight with Western donors who accuse him of demolishing democracy in the country he has ruled for over 32 years. It doesn t mean that now the opposition is dissolved we can be careless, Hun Sen says in the 12-minute recording of a message to party officials, warning that his opponents could start a new party and should not be underestimated. If we get bad results and lose it would be twice as bad after we already dissolved the opposition party... People can also dissolve us through an election. He said the international community could try to revive their puppets and channel funding to Cambodia despite a five-year political ban on 118 CNRP politicians. The CNRP was banned after its leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested for allegedly plotting treason with American help. He has rejected the accusations as a ploy to let Hun Sen win next year s election. In his message, Hun Sen called on party officials to stop corruption, extortion, illegal logging and other irregularities that had pushed Cambodians to vote for the opposition. Votes were cast because of anger due to our mistakes in the past and that cannot happen again, Hun Sen said in the recording. CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said the message had not been secret. He did not say when the recording had been made. There is nothing to hide, he said. He was doing his work as the party leader and the prime minister. The 55 parliamentary seats that the CNRP won in the last election in 2013 were allocated to smaller parties on Thursday by the National Election Committee. The biggest winner was the royalist Funcinpec party of Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who was once Hun Sen s main rival but is now aligned with the prime minister. Funcinpec will get 41 seats in parliament - a third of all the seats - despite winning less than 4 percent of the vote in 2013. The ruling party did not get any more seats, but already had a majority with 68 seats. The will of the people has been violated, said Mu Sochua, a deputy to Kem Sokha who fled abroad in fear of arrest. The National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia has lost its legitimacy. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi aims to issue tourist visas next year, official says;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia aims to start issuing tourist visas to foreigners next year, a senior Saudi official told CNN, as the government seeks to open up the conservative kingdom and find new sources of revenue to diversify its economy. At present, foreigners traveling to Saudi Arabia are largely restricted to resident workers and their dependents, business travelers, and Muslim pilgrims who are given special visas to travel to holy sites. The targets are people who want to come and literally experience this country, and really the grandness of this country, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, head of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Natural Heritage, said in an interview broadcast late on Wednesday. Asked about plans for the visas, he replied: Hopefully in 2018, adding that the government would use online technology to make applying for visas easy. Saudi Arabia s 32-year-old heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is seeking to develop new industries to wean his country off its dependency on oil exports. He has also taken some steps to loosen its ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police and announcing plans to allowing women to drive next year. Plans to admit significant numbers of tourists from abroad have been discussed for years, only to be blocked by conservative opinion and bureaucracy;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fighting between rebel and army kills 27 in South Sudan;Juba (Reuters) - Twenty-seven people were killed when rebels attacked government forces in South Sudan, a local government official said on Thursday. Three government soldiers and 24 fighters loyal to rebel leader Riek Machar were killed in the fighting in Southern Liech state on Wednesday, Peter Makouth Malual, the region s information minister, told Reuters. Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel did not have a death toll for the fighting. He told Reuters he was trying to reach commanders on the ground. As expected, the onset of the dry season has led to fresh fighting between the army and rebels. Diplomats and analysts told Reuters earlier this month it was unlikely peace talks would resume to end a war that has already killed tens of thousands and created Africa s largest refugee crisis [L3N1NG5D4]. Crude oil output has been slashed by two-thirds to around 130,000 barrels per day by the violence. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after protracted bloodshed, then fell into civil war in late 2013, with troops loyal to President Salva Kiir fighting those backing Machar, a former vice president Kiir had sacked. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia sends research ship to help search for missing Argentine sub;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s defense ministry has sent an oceanographic research ship to the South Atlantic to help with the search for an Argentine submarine which went missing more than a week ago, TASS news agency reported on Thursday. The vessel, called Yantar (Amber), is equipped with two self-propelled deep submergence vehicles allowing it to examine underwater areas up to 6,000 meters (3.75 miles) deep, TASS quoted the Russian military as saying. Dozens of planes and boats are searching for the San Juan submarine. The search entered a critical phase on Wednesday as the 44 crew on board could be running low on oxygen, an Argentine navy spokesman said. If the German-built submarine, in service for more than three decades, had sunk or was otherwise unable to rise to the surface since it gave its last location on Nov. 15, it would be using up the last of its seven-day oxygen supply. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May to meet EU's Juncker, Barnier December 4, EU confirms;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, the EU executive confirmed on Thursday. EU officials hope that May will make new offers to unblock negotiations on a treaty on Britain s 2019 withdrawal from the Union. They say any British move needs to come by around Dec. 4 if leaders meeting at a Dec. 14-15 are to be able to endorse a move to a new phase of talks, to include future trade relations. On Friday, May will meet European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels as part of what EU officials describe as a bid to agree the choreography of a deal in December. Confirming the Juncker-May meeting, the Commission s chief spokesman told reporters they would discuss Brexit but declined to comment further on the state of negotiations. Everyone is talking to everyone, already, at all levels, he said. No comment was immediately available from May s office. Envoys from the 27 other member states agreed on Wednesday to delay by a week until Wednesday, Dec. 6, a meeting to prepare the drafts of the summit conclusions, diplomats said. Those conclusions will determine whether leaders agree that Britain has made sufficient progress toward agreeing divorce terms for the summit to approve new talks on a post-Brexit relationship. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. urges Australia to protect refugees at Papua New Guinea camp;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency called for calm on Thursday after receiving reports of force being used to remove refugees and asylum-seekers from a center closed three weeks ago on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. About fifty asylum seekers departed an Australian-run detention camp in Papua New Guinea on Thursday after police moved into the complex, confiscating food, water and personal belongings from the roughly 310 who remained. [nL8N1NS6KK] We urge both governments to engage in constructive dialogue, to de-escalate the tensions and work on urgent lasting solutions to their plight, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. It could not confirm that force had been used as it had not been granted full access to the shuttered facility. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. ally seen clinching re-election in Honduras vote, eight years after coup;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Eight years after a coup sparked by a previous president s flirtation with a second term, voters in the poor Central American country of Honduras look poised on Sunday to re-elect their U.S.-friendly leader whose assault on gangs has slowed killings. Juan Orlando Hernandez of the center-right National Party took office in 2014 vowing a militarized crackdown on endemic gang violence in one of the world s most violent countries. That effort has brought down the murder rate. The economy has also grown during his tenure. His victory would be cheered in Washington, according to two U.S. State Department officials, who noted the United States had few steadfast allies among Central America s current crop of leaders with whom it can reliably work to fight poverty, migration and gang violence. Honduras has long had close ties with the United States, which viewed the country as an ideological and military partner during the leftist guerrilla insurgencies that roiled the region throughout the Cold War era. The U.S.-educated Hernandez has a close working relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump s chief of staff, John Kelly. In 2009, the United States wrestled with how to respond to the removal of President Manuel Zelaya after he proposed a referendum on re-election. Nonetheless, U.S. officials now say they are not yet concerned that Hernandez is consolidating power, but want to see the passage of stalled legislation to impose a cap on presidential terms. Open-ended re-election is not good for democracy, said one U.S. diplomat. We would very much like to see some sort of law that would regulate election. Hernandez was among lawmakers who supported the ouster of Zelaya. But following a 2015 Supreme Court decision that overturned a constitutional ban on re-election, Hernandez, 49, looks likely to win a second four-year term. Opinion polls have shown him with a double-digit lead over television host Salvador Nasralla, who heads a left-right alliance of Honduran opposition groups called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. The opposition argues Hernandez s presidential bid is illegal, and has refused to discuss term-limit legislation while coalescing to try to prevent him from clinching victory. Hernandez has won favor with the United States, working closely on U.S.-bound migration with Kelly when that official was head of U.S. Southern Command and the Department of Homeland Security. He has also led a purge of the police force and made it easier to extradite drug bosses. The United States has few ideological allies in the region. Two leftist former guerilla leaders govern El Salvador and Nicaragua, while Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales has sought to banish a U.S.-backed anti-corruption body probing his family. There does seem to be more of a kinship in terms of how he sees governance, one of the U.S. officials in Central America said of Hernandez. The president says he would keep soldiers on the streets to help the widely mistrusted police. He has also promised to lure foreign investment in textiles, call centers and auto manufacturing, creating 600,000 jobs and lifting growth to above 6 percent with infrastructure projects. Hondurans applaud how Hernandez has lowered the murder rate to a projected 46 per 100,000 by the end of 2017 from 79 per 100,000 in 2013, while raising growth and lowering the deficit. But he has not been immune to scandal. The son of his political mentor, former President Porfirio Lobo, was recently sentenced to 24 years in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. During the trial, there were allegations that drug money was funneled to Hernandez s campaign, a charge his office denied. In 2015, Hernandez admitted his 2013 campaign took money from companies linked to one of the worst corruption scandals in the country s history, but said he and his National Party were unaware of where the money came from. Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said that despite the president s flaws, the United States had decided it could still do business with Hernandez, its most important ally in Central America. Of all the people in that country, they realize they re best off sticking with him, he said. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's CSU denies report Seehofer to quit as Bavaria premier;MUNICH (Reuters) - A spokesman for Bavaria s Christian Social Union (CSU) denied a German media report on Thursday that Horst Seehofer is to stand down as state premier and hand over to rival Markus Soeder, but stay on as head of the Christian Social Union (CSU). Broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk, citing no sources, had reported the move. A shakeup has been widely expected as senior CSU members meet on Thursday. But a spokesman for the CSU said the media report was absolutely wrong . Any changes, which would come as Germany struggles to find a way out of a political crisis caused by the collapse of coalition talks on Sunday night, could end a longstanding power struggle within the CSU, sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU). ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek pensioners protest against government that 'took everything';ATHENS (Reuters) - Several hundred elderly Greeks marched through Athens on Thursday, protesting against a government they say took everything with a new round of cuts to pensions and crumbling health care benefits. Greece s three bailouts since 2010 have repeatedly taken aim at the pension system. Cuts have pushed nearly half its elderly below the poverty line with incomes of less 600 euros ($710.70) a month. With nearly a quarter of the workforce unemployed, a quarter of children living in poverty and benefits slashed, parents have grown dependent on grandparents for handouts. But after the cuts to pensions, some Greeks have seen their monthly cheque fall between 40 and 50 percent in seven years. After rent, utility bills and health care, they barely make ends meet. I have never seen the country in this state, not even during war, said 80-year-old Nikos Georgiadis, a former hotel employee whose pension has been reduced by 40 percent. Pensioners are impoverished, and not only can they not afford to buy medicines, some are looking for food in the trash, he said, leaning on a tree to catch his breath. New changes to pension regulations mean more cuts are expected in 2019. Pensioners also have to pay more out of pocket for health care. Fotini Karavidou, a 75-year-old retired accountant who joined the march in a wheelchair, said she had to cut back on everything to afford medicine. It s simple - many pensioners cannot afford to eat and to buy medicine, said Yiannis Karadimas, 67, who heads a local pensioners association. Karadimas said it was a joke that the government had legalised marijuana for medical purposes while cutting back on health care spending. They re killing us and they re mocking us at the same time, he said. The popularity of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has waned since he first won elections in 2015. In an effort to rebuild public support, the government gave Greece s 1.3 million pensioners a one-off Christmas bonus last year, worth 300 to 500 euros each. But the handouts have failed to whip up any obvious increase in support. Pensioners have taken to the streets time and again in recent months. About 2,000 people joined Thursday s march. Unfortunately, I voted for them, and they turned out to be the biggest liars of all, Georgiadis, the pensioner, said. It (the government) promised us everything, and it took everything. ($1 = 0.8442 euros) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss pledge more funds for EU budget, progress on treaty;BERN (Reuters) - Switzerland and the European Union, its main trading partner, made headway on Thursday on clinching a new treaty meant to cement ties, and Bern pledged fresh contributions to EU coffers. The head of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Swiss President Doris Leuthard gave an upbeat assessment of ties, which are on the mend after the Swiss parliament last year skirted voters calls for curbing immigration from the bloc. Things are going in the right direction, Juncker told a news conference after meetings in the Swiss capital. Shaky prospects for progress in the talks had prompted last-minute consultations on Monday to check whether the visit would even take place, a diplomat involved said. But Leuthard said Switzerland was on track to contribute another 1.3 billion Swiss francs ($1.33 billion) in cohesion payments to the EU budget over 10 years as a sign of solidarity. Legislation would go to parliament next year. The two sides did not achieve a breakthrough on a framework treaty Brussels wants to replace more than 100 bilateral accords now governing relations. This would ensure Switzerland adopts relevant EU laws in return for enhanced access to the bloc s single market, crucial for Swiss exports. Such a pact is anathema to the anti-EU Swiss People s Party (SVP), the biggest in parliament. Many conservative politicians as well worry that any deal giving EU judges a role in settling disputes plays into the SVP s hands before 2019 elections. They hope Britain s divorce talks with Brussels may open new avenues for Swiss-EU ties. While Britain seems set to leave the single market and to impose controls on immigration, Switzerland is keen to ensure EU citizens can continue to live and work here the price for its enhanced access to the EU market. Juncker said he was taking pains to ensure the Brexit issue and Swiss talks remained separate. Leuthard said the foreign judges issue remained a tricky one but added: We found some flexibility here and will go into this in more depth in the months ahead. She did not elaborate. Bilateral ties suffered when Swiss voters in 2014 demanded quotas on EU immigration, but thawed after parliament last year adopted instead a system giving people registered as unemployed in Switzerland first crack at open jobs. Agreements on mutual recognition of industrial standards and combining carbon trading systems followed, and Brussels is expected soon to recognize Swiss financial rules as sufficient. A new treaty could pave the way for heightened Swiss access to EU power markets, cutting costs and ensuring supplies in emergencies. It could also help open the EU market for financial services for Swiss-based banks and insurers. The EU has made clear the treaty is a precondition for such deals, which in theory could make a pact more attractive to Swiss voters in an inevitable referendum. Without accompanying perks, the treaty is a sitting duck , one EU diplomat said. While a treaty is also a stated aim of the Swiss government, mainstream conservatives are wary of the foreign judges angle. They worry this hands the SVP a stick with which to beat them. A survey this month by gfs.bern for Credit Suisse showed 60 percent of Swiss back the current web of bilateral accords, down sharply from 81 percent in 2016. Support for ending the accords rose 9 points to 28 percent. The survey reflected how contradictory Swiss wishes can be. Nearly 80 percent favor quotas to control immigration, while 85 percent want free access to foreign markets. The SVP has mounted a referendum campaign to scrap the bilateral accords and seize control of immigration to a country whose population is already a quarter foreign. ($1 = 0.9799 Swiss francs) ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hezbollah parliament group calls Hariri return positive;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The parliament group for Lebanon s Hezbollah said in a statement on Thursday that Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s return from abroad and his positive statements signal a possible return to normality in Lebanon, al-Mayadin TV channel reported. Hariri resigned abruptly while in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, sparking a political crisis in Lebanon, but returned to Beirut late on Tuesday and shelved his resignation. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chad rejects U.S. bribery allegations against president;N DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad has rejected allegations made in the United States that its President Idriss Deby was paid a $2 million bribe in exchange for providing a Chinese energy company with oil rights without international competition. The United States announced charges on Monday against former Hong Kong Home Secretary Chi Ping Patrick Ho and former Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Gadio for allegedly funnelling bribes to high-level officials in Chad and Uganda. The government is indignant and questions this fierce attack against our head of state, Chad s government said in a statement late on Wednesday, adding that Deby had always sought transparency in the country s natural resources sectors. The U.S. Justice Department said Gadio had received $400,000 from Ho via wire transfers through New York to act as a go-between for bribes to Deby on behalf of an unnamed energy firm headquartered in Shanghai. Neither Ho nor Gadio, who were both arrested last week, have commented publicly on the allegations against them. Landlocked Chad pumps about 130,000 barrels of oil per day. It ranks third-from-bottom on the U.N. Human Development Index and 159th out of 176 countries on Transparency International s Corruption Perceptions Index. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain says Zimbabwe's new rulers must show resolve for democracy;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain wants Zimbabwe s new rulers to show clear resolve to place the country on a more democratic and prosperous path after the fall of Robert Mugabe. Zimbabweans suffered for too long as a result of Mugabe s ruinous rule, Britain s minister for Africa, Rory Stewart, said on arriving in Harare. The events of the last few days have given people here real hope that Zimbabwe can be set on a different, more democratic and more prosperous path. What comes next must be driven by Zimbabweans - it must be in line with the Zimbabwean constitution and will be impossible without clear resolve from the incoming government, he said. ;worldnews;23/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Algeria's ruling parties retain majority in local elections;ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria s ruling parties retained their majority in local elections, taking more than 50 percent of the vote, the interior minister said on Friday. Turnout in Thursday s vote reached 46.83 percent, slightly up on 42.92 percent in 2012, the minister Noureddine Bedoui told reporters. Participation is closely watched by officials as they attempt to reverse a trend of increasing political apathy. More than half of Algeria s population are under 30 and many feel disconnected from the ageing elite which runs the country. The elections come amid continuing questions over the health of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999 and has made only rare appearances since suffering a stroke in 2013. In Thursday s election the two ruling parties, the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the National Rally for Democracy (RND), got 30.56 percent and 23.21 percent respectively, Bedoui said. The RND, which is led by Prime Minster Ahmed Ouyahia and which made gains also in parliamentary elections in May, boosted its number of seats to 463, from less than 250 in 2012. The FLN s share of seats was slightly lower than five years ago. A total of 1,541 seats were being contested. Islamists including the Movement for Society and Peace (MSP) and a coalition of three smaller parties lost ground, taking only 57 seats between them. Bouteflika is credited by many for bringing OPEC member Algeria out of a 1990s conflict with Islamist militants and for overseeing a period of high oil prices and vast public spending. But the government has recently been attempting to reduce spending to cope with a sharp fall in oil revenues since 2014. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Britain has 10-day ""absolute deadline"" to deliver on key Brexit issues: Tusk";BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain has only 10 days left to deliver on all three areas of its divorce terms with the European Union if London wants to start talks on a transition period after Brexit and a future relationship, the chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk said. We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland, Tusk tweeted on Friday after a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels. Sufficient progress in Brexit talks at December council is possible but still a huge challenge, he said on Twitter. An EU official said that May agreed in the one-hour discussions that Dec. 4 was the absolute deadline to allow the EU s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to recommend moving onto the next stage on trade and future ties. Tusk presented the timeline ahead of the December European Council, with Dec. 4 as the absolute deadline for the UK to make additional efforts, allowing Barnier to be in a position to recommend sufficient progress, the official said. May agreed to this timeframe, the official said. The official said Tusk had warned that if there was no progress within next 10 days, that would make moving forward impossible. The official said that the way Ireland s border with Northern Ireland functioned after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 was still an issue. The UK will need to give credible assurances as to how to avoid a hard border before Dec. 4, as it is still unclear how this can be done, the official said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt military carries out air strikes in area of Sinai mosque attack: security sources;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s military has begun conducting air strikes around the area of North Sinai where a deadly mosque attack that killed more than 230 occurred on Friday, security sources and eyewitnesses said. The strikes have been concentrated in several mountainous areas surrounding Al Rawdah mosque where militants are believed to be hiding out, the security sources said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland set for December election if crisis not averted by Tuesday -PM;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday he would not seek the resignation of his deputy prime minister, as sought by the party propping up his government, and would be forced to call an election if that demand was not withdrawn by Tuesday. I think if we don t resolve matters by Tuesday, then there will be a motion of no confidence in the Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) and, if the opposition come together to remove the Tanaiste, then we will be into an election at that point, Varadkar told the national broadcaster RTE. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Holiday cheer boosts Amazon, Macy's and other retail stocks;SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Macy s Inc (M.N), Kohl s Corp (KSS.N) and other U.S. retailers rose on Friday on early signs that consumers are on track to spend more this holiday shopping season than in previous years. Although there were few signs of the frenzy that had been a hallmark of the start to the crucial U.S. shopping season in years past, known as Black Friday, industry watchers were upbeat. The turnout this morning has been relatively slow but it is still the best we have seen in three years, said Burt Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resources Group, citing improving consumer confidence, a strong job market and healthy housing prices. We expect it to pick up as the day progresses. Adobe Analytics forecast online Black Friday sales of $5 billion, which would be a record high. Online retailers will rake in an additional $6.6 billion on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe. Amazon, the world s largest online retailer, rallied 2.6 percent to a record high, bringing its gain in 2017 to nearly 60 percent. It offered its own Black Friday deals and revealed a preview of its Cyber Monday discounts. Brick-and-mortar stores and their investors are hoping that a strong labor market and rising home prices will increase the turnout between Thursday s U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas, a period that can account for as much as 40 percent of total annual sales and make or break a retailer. [nL1N1NU0GH] Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), Macy s and others have beefed up their online sales platforms and boosted discounts for online orders in a bid to stem market share losses to Amazon. It s the big box retailers last stand against the digital revolution, said Jake Dollarhide, Chief Executive of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It s their last chance to say, This is still our season . Shares of Macy s, which has suffered from falling sales for several quarters, jumped 2.1 percent, while Gap Inc (GPS.N) added 1.6 percent and Kohl s rose 1 percent. Instead of curtailing spending, consumers are coming out of their bunker, said Chad Morganlander, a portfolio manager at Washington Crossing Advisors in Florham Park, New Jersey. Nonetheless, the trend of retail preferences of the consumer is not going away. Retailers appeared to be discounting their products less than in previous years, said Thomson Reuters retail analyst Jharonne Martis after visiting a mall in New York. They are going into the holiday season more confident, knowing that consumers want their merchandise, Martis said. Not all retailers shared in Friday s holiday cheer: Target Corp (TGT.N) fell 2.8 percent, with analysts noting that it closed its stores for several hours overnight even while many rivals stayed open. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc (BBBY.O) slipped 1.9 percent. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Four U.N. peacekeepers killed in two separate attacks in Mali;BAMAKO (Reuters) - Four United Nations peacekeepers and a Malian soldier were killed and 21 people were wounded in two separate attacks by unknown assailants in Mali on Friday, the U.N. mission there said. Regional armies, U.N. forces and French and U.S. soldiers are struggling to halt the growing influence of Islamist militants, some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State, in West Africa s Sahel region. Mali s U.N. mission, MINUSMA, has suffered the highest number of fatalities among current U.N. peacekeeping operations. I condemn in the strongest terms this attack that has once again befallen the MINUSMA force as well as the (Malian army), U.N. mission head Mahamat Saleh Annadif said in a statement. In the first incident on Friday, three peacekeepers and a Malian soldier were killed when they came under attack during a joint operation in the Menaka region near the border with Niger, an area that has seen a spike in violence over the last year. Sixteen other peacekeepers and one civilian were also wounded. Later in the day at around noon (1200 GMT), a MINUSMA convoy in the central Mopti region was the target of what the mission described as a complex attack by militants using explosive devices and rocket launchers. One U.N. soldier was killed and three others were seriously wounded, MINUSMA said in a statement. The mission did not specify the nationalities of the soldiers killed or wounded in either of the attacks. A 2013 French-led military intervention drove back militants who had seized control of Mali s desert north a year earlier, but they have regrouped and launch regular attacks against Malian soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers and civilians. Islamist groups are now increasingly exploiting the porous borders between Mali and neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso to expand their range of operations, alarming Western powers. France and the United States both have troops deployed in the West Africa. A new regional force composed of soldiers from Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - the so-called G5 Sahel nations - launched its first operations late last month. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland trying to force Northern Ireland to stay in customs union after Brexit: DUP;LONDON (Reuters) - Ireland is trying to force the United Kingdom, or at least Northern Ireland, to remain in the customs union after Brexit as it suits their national interest, the deputy leader of the province s Democratic Unionist Party said on Friday. Their real aim is to try to get to a situation where either they try to force the United Kingdom as a whole to stay within the customs union, which is in their interests clearly, Nigel Dodds told Sky News. Or, if they fail that, to at least force Northern Ireland to stay within the customs union and the single market, follow the rules of it, something then we d have no say over, but we d have to abide by the rules which would then bring about a united Ireland much easier. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Juncker says Dec. 4 meeting with May will show if Brexit progress made;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said on Friday that a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May on December 4 will allow the EU to see whether sufficient progress was made on Brexit talks. I will meet the British prime minister on 4 December. Then we will see if there has been sufficient progress, he told reporters in Brussels ahead of an EU summit that May is attending. Juncker said there had been progress in Brexit talks. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Mediterranean ""by far world's deadliest border"" for migrants: IOM";GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 33,000 migrants have died at sea trying to reach European shores since 2000, making the Mediterranean by far the world s deadliest border , the United Nations migration agency said on Friday. After record arrivals from 2014 to 2016, the European Union s deal with Turkey to stop arrivals to Greece and blocks on migrants inside Libya and off its coast have greatly reduced the flow, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Professor Philippe Fargues of the European University Institute in Florence, author of the report, said the figures probably underestimated the actual scale of the human tragedy. The report states that at least 33,761 migrants were reported to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean between the year 2000 to 2017. This number is as of June 30, IOM s Jorge Galindo told a Geneva news briefing. It concludes that Europe s Mediterranean border is by far the world s deadliest, he said. So far this year some 161,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea, about 75 percent of them landing in Italy with the rest in Greece, Cyprus and Spain, according to IOM figures. Nearly 3,000 others are dead or missing, it said. Shutting the shorter and less dangerous routes can open longer and more dangerous routes, thus increasing the likelihood of dying at sea, Fargues said. The report said: Cooperation with Turkey to stem irregular flows is now being replicated with Libya, the main country of departure of migrants smuggled along the central route;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;London police say have stood down after Oxford Street incident;LONDON (Reuters) - London s police force said on Friday that they had stood down after an incident in the heart of London s shopping district that they initially responded to as if it could have been terrorist-related. Our response on #OxfordStreet has now been stood down, the Metropolitan Police said on its official Twitter account. Given the nature of the info received we responded as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers, police added. The police said they had found no evidence of previously reported gunshots, and that there were no casualties. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;London police say responding to reports shots fired on Oxford Street;LONDON (Reuters) - London s police force said they had received reports that shots had been fired on Oxford Street and in the nearby underground station, which they were responding to as if it might be terrorist-related. Police were called at 16:38 hrs ... to a number of reports of shots fired on Oxford Street and underground at Oxford Circus tube station, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. Police have responded as if the incident is terrorist related. Armed and unarmed officers are on scene the police added. No casualties had been found so far, police said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tiger shot dead in Paris after escaping from circus;PARIS (Reuters) - A tiger was shot dead in western Paris on Friday after escaping from a circus, police said. The tiger was shot by circus staff, police said. A tram line had been closed while the animal was at large. No further details were immediately available. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine rebel region's security minister says he is new leader;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The security minister of Ukraine s pro-Russian rebel region of Luhansk said on Friday he was taking over power from regional chief Igor Plotnitsky, who days earlier had said he was facing an attempted armed coup to force him out. In a video posted on a rebel news portal in Luhansk, the security minister, Leonid Pasechnik, said he was taking over after Plotnitsky resigned for health reasons. But there was no immediate word from Plotnitsky itself. Luhansk region, along with the neighboring Donetsk region, rebelled against rule from Kiev in 2014 and declared themselves independent. But since then the regions, which are backed by Moscow, have been troubled by infighting that has at times turned violent. Today Igor Venediktovich Plotnitsky resigned for health reasons. Multiple war wounds, the effects of blast injuries, took their toll, Pasechnik said in the video. In accordance with his decision, I am taking on the duties of head of the republic until forthcoming elections. Earlier this week, armed men in camouflage uniforms blocked access to central streets in the city of Luhansk, capital of the self-proclaimed People s Republic of Luhansk. Plotnitsky said it was a coup attempt by supporters of Igor Kornet, the rebel region s interior minister whom he had sacked. But Plotnitsky said he had the situation under control and that the plotters would be dealt with. Moscow denies having any influence over the rebel regions but multiple separatist leaders have told Reuters Kremlin officials effectively select the rebel leaders. A Kremlin spokesman this week declined to comment on events in Luhansk. The two self-proclaimed republics are not recognized by Russia or any other nation. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police arrest Kosovo opposition leader for no-show at court;PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo police arrested three lawmakers on Friday, including the popular main opposition leader whom they handcuffed in the street, after the three failed to appear in court on charges of releasing tear gas in parliament in 2015 and 2016. Opposition lawmakers obstructed parliament for almost two years by letting off tear gas in the chamber in a protest against a border deal with Montenegro and an EU-brokered agreement with Serbia. Albin Kurti, leader of Kosovo s biggest opposition party Vetevendosje, was seized and handcuffed by police close to parliament building when he was on his way to attend a regular session. Police used paper spray to disperse several other lawmakers from Kurti s party who tried to hold onto him and prevent police from taking him away, Kosovo media showed. He was eventually moved into a police van. Kurti won more votes than any other political candidate and his party came first in June snap elections, but he did not enter the ruling coalition. All three MPs were given one month detention, Dukagjin Gorani of Vetevendosje told Reuters later in the day. Dozens of other MPs have been indicted so far for releasing tear gas in the 120-seat parliament. This is the continuation of a massive and wide-ranging persecution that has started against Vetevendosje, the party president, Visar Ymeri, said. Last week a court in Pristina sentenced four people, including one member of parliament, to prison terms ranging from two to eight years for taking part in a grenade attack against the parliament building last year. They were all loyalists of Vetevendosje. Opposition parties oppose the border deal with Montenegro saying the country of 1.8 million is losing land by handing over some 8,000 hectares (19,700 acres). The opposition is also against a deal signed in 2013 between Pristina and Belgrade as part of an EU-sponsored dialogue that would give more rights to the local Serb minority. They say the deal will practically divide the poor Balkan country on ethnic lines. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after NATO bombing drove Serb forces from the territory. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. backs Saudi 'first step' in addressing Yemen crisis;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday welcomed a first step by Saudi Arabia to allow humanitarian aid to reach Yemen and called for negotiations on the country s conflict. The coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country. About 7 million people face famine in Yemen and their survival is dependent on international assistance. Full and immediate implementation of the announced measures is a first step in ensuring that food, medicine, and fuel reach the Yemeni people and that the aid organizations on the frontlines of mitigating this humanitarian crisis are able to do their essential work, the White House said in a statement. We look forward to additional steps that will facilitate the unfettered flow of humanitarian and commercial goods from all ports of entry to the points of need, it added. A U.N. spokesman said the Saudi-led coalition had given the United Nations permission to resume flights of aid workers to the Houthi-controlled capital on Saturday, but not to dock ships loaded with wheat and medical supplies. Reuters reported on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Saudi Arabia to ease the blockade. The U.S.-backed coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6, in a move it said was to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying weapons. The White House said it was committed to supporting Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aggression and blatant violations of international law . The Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the Houthis since they seized parts of Yemen in 2015, including the capital Sanaa, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee. The Houthis, drawn mainly from Yemen s Zaidi Shi ite minority and allied with long-serving former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control much of the country. The United Nations has been mediating in the conflict without much success. The United States continues to believe that this devastating conflict, and the suffering it causes, must be brought to an end through political negotiations, the White House said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit talks progressing, but issues remain - May;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday that Brexit talks were making progress but that there were outstanding issues on the divorce settlement and the border with EU member Ireland. After meeting European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels, May described their discussion as positive and painted a picture where the two sides were edging towards agreement to move Brexit talks onto a discussion of future trade. But shortly afterwards, Tusk again repeated that Britain had 10 days to deliver on all the major areas of the initial divorce talks, something he said on Twitter was possible but still a huge challenge . May told reporters after their meetings: There are still issues across the various matters that we are negotiating on to be resolved. On one of the major sticking points how much Britain should pay when it leaves the European Union May said the two sides were making progress, but declined to offer any figures which could unlock the talks. I said that we would honour our commitments, and that s what we ve been talking about, she said. Referring to Britain s border with Ireland, where the government is set to collapse, May said her government was talking to Irish officials about solutions for that. We have the same desire, we want to ensure that movement of people and trade across that border can carry on as now. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;London police urge people on Oxford Street to go inside buildings;LONDON (Reuters) - London s police force urged people on Oxford Street, a major shopping district in the center of the city, to go inside while they dealt with an ongoing incident on Friday. If you are on Oxford Street go into a building. Officers are on scene and dealing (with it), the Metropolitan Police said on their official Twitter feed. London s transport authority said Oxford Circus underground station was closed while police dealt with what it called customer incident . ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Navy plane scours South Atlantic in search for Argentine sub;OVER THE SOUTH ATLANTIC (Reuters) - From the window of a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon airplane taking part in an international search for a missing Argentine submarine, the glistening vastness of the South Atlantic stretches in every direction. Yet onboard the modified Boeing 737, the nine-man crew spends much of the flight bent in silence over tracking devices. They listen to signals sent by buoys deployed on the ocean surface and watch video from the plane s heat-seeking camera on five sets of double screens at the center of the plane. More than 30 aircraft and ships from Argentina, Britain, Brazil, the United States, Chile and other countries are participating in the effort to find the ARA San Juan submarine, which disappeared on Nov. 15 with 44 crew members on board. In all, more than 4,000 personnel from 13 countries are assisting the search, scouring some 500,000 square km (193,051 square miles) of ocean - an area the size of Spain. It s great to be able to utilize everything we have - all the training we have, the equipment we have - in order to come down here to Argentina to help find this submarine, said mission commander Lieutenant Zachary Collver, a 32-year-old pilot from Washington state. However, hopes dimmed of finding the submarine s crew alive on Thursday when Argentina s navy raised the possibility the submarine suffered an explosion, after an international agency with listening posts to check for secret atomic blasts detected an unusual signal near where the vessel went missing. Midway through its seven-hour flight, the U.S. plane changed course, picked up speed and descended toward the ocean surface. Collver alerted the crew that a satellite image had picked up something near the area where the submarine last reported its position, according to a Reuters witness aboard the flight on Wednesday. The plane turned south toward the Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn, after taking off from an Argentine base in Bahia Blanca, some 650 km (400 miles) south of Buenos Aires. Data analysis would later show the object was just a big rock. The episode was one of several false leads in the international search operation, which has involved more than a dozen boats but has not yet produced any solid clues about the fate of the missing vessel. But the P-8A Poseidon crew insisted they would not diminish their search efforts. It s rewarding to know we can help out the best that we can, Collver said. It was the first time the Florida-based crew participated in an actual aerial search mission, rather than just a drill. Argentina has thanked the countries that have participated in the search. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ten days to crack Brexit deal, EU tells May;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union handed Prime Minister Theresa May a 10-day absolute deadline to improve her Brexit divorce offer or face failure in persuading EU leaders to open trade talks with Britain at a December summit. Without a deal next month, time will be very tight to agree arrangements before Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, adding to pressure on businesses to avoid potential losses and move investments. We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted after meeting May in Brussels for one hour following an EU summit. A deal on the Northern Ireland border became suddenly trickier on Friday as the Dublin government looked set to fall. Tusk said it was still possible the other 27 EU leaders would conclude at a summit on Dec. 14-15 that Britain had made sufficient progress toward meeting three key conditions for them to approve the opening of trade talks in the new year. But, added the former Polish premier who chairs the bloc s summit meetings, that was still a huge challenge . EU officials expect the crunch to come when May returns on Monday, Dec. 4, to meet the EU chief executive, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and his chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. Tusk presented the timeline ... with December 4 as the absolute deadline for the UK to make additional efforts, allowing Barnier to be in a position to recommend sufficient progress, an EU official said. May agreed to this time frame. The UK will need to give credible assurances as to how to avoid a hard border before December 4, as it is still unclear how this can be done, the official added. A further complication lay in Ireland, where Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who has warned of a veto without big British moves on the border issue, may call a snap election next week over a separate issue. May told reporters after meeting Tusk that the two sides were still making progress toward closing gaps on a financial settlement, rights for expatriates after Brexit and how to avoid a hard border that may disrupt the peace in Northern Ireland. But she added: There are still issues across the various matters that we are negotiating on to be resolved. She repeated a line she first used in September that Britain would honour our commitments . But there was no sign of details that EU counterparts are demanding over payments before they accede to London s call for talks on a post-Brexit trade pact. On the Irish border, May said: We and the Irish government continue to talk about solutions for that. We have the same desire. We want to ensure that movement of people and trade across that border can carry on as now. For months, the EU s demand for Britain to pay something like 60 billion euros ($72 billion) has seemed the toughest nut to crack. But EU negotiators have been encouraged by apparent leaks in the British media indicating that May has won backing from Brexit hardliners in her cabinet to offer a large sum. Now, Ireland could be a sticking point. The Irish issue is very worrying. The chances of sufficient progress in December were only 50-50. Now maybe less, an official handling Brexit talks from one of the other 27 EU states told Reuters on the sidelines of Friday s summit. Barnier threw the Union s weight behind Ireland on Friday, telling Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney there was strong solidarity for Ireland and Irish issues are EU issues . Coveney, who accused the government s opponents of being irresponsible in calling a no-confidence motion for Tuesday over an unrelated issue, said Ireland would not agree to opening EU trade talks with Britain if it was unhappy over the border. May s Northern Irish, pro-Brexit allies, on whom she depends for a slim parliamentary majority, accused Dublin of trying to force Northern Ireland, or the whole of the United Kingdom, to stay in a customs union with the EU, depriving it of the freedom to set its own commercial regulations. EU officials say the best way to avoid a hard border is to keep regulations the same - whether just for Northern Ireland or across the UK. Britain has rejected the former because it would divide Northern Ireland from the British mainland. Brexit campaigners say Britain should not have to follow EU rules. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aid workers to return to Yemen at weekend but no aid yet: U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen has given the United Nations permission to resume flights of aid workers to the Houthi-controlled capital on Saturday, but not to dock ships loaded with wheat and medical supplies, a U.N. spokesman said. The coalition fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country. About 7 million people face famine in Yemen and their survival is dependent on international assistance. The coalition has given clearance for U.N. flights in and out of Sanaa from Amman on Saturday, involving the regular rotation of aid workers, said Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). We re of course encouraged by the clearance of this flight which may be followed soon by clearances of flights from Djibouti to Sanaa, Laerke told a news briefing on Friday. But no green light have been received for U.N. requests to bring humanitarian supply ships to Hodeidah and Salif ports, he said. We are particularly talking about one ship which is offshore Hodeidah with wheat from WFP (the U.N. World Food Programme) and another boat which is waiting in Djibouti with cholera supplies and that is also destined for Hodeidah, he said. We stress the critical importance of resuming also commercial imports, in particular fuel supplies for our humanitarian response - transportation and so on - and for water pumping, Laerke said. The largest fuel importing companies in Yemen have indicated they will no longer be able to supply the consumer market at the end of this week, OCHA said in a report dated Nov. 23. UNICEF is also waiting to send vaccines, aid sources said. The charity Save the Children said an estimated 20,000 Yemeni children under the age of five were joining the ranks of the severely malnourished every month, an average of 27 children every hour . The commercial blockade is aggravating the food crisis, leading to a significant increase in child deaths from acute malnutrition and preventable diseases , it said in a statement. The U.S.-backed coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6, in a move it said was to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying weapons. Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to Reuters in Geneva on Thursday, said of the blockade: In my view this is illegal collective punishment. After more than two weeks of blockade of these ports, there are various kinds of supplies essential for fighting famine, for fighting cholera and other types of humanitarian threats that millions of people are facing in Yemen today, Laerke said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Crown Prince calls Iran leader 'new Hitler': NYT;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s powerful Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran the new Hitler of the Middle East in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday, sharply escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals. The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran back rival sides in wars and political crises throughout the region. Mohammed bin Salman, who is also Saudi defense minister in the U.S.-allied kingdom, suggested the Islamic Republic s alleged expansion under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei needed to be confronted. But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn t work. We don t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East, the paper quoted him as saying. Iran reacted harshly by saying that Salman was discredited internationally by his immature behavior, state television reported. No one in the world and in the international arena gives credit to him because of his immature and weak-minded behavior and remarks, Iran s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying. Now that he has decided to follow the path of famous regional dictators ... he should think about their fate as well. Tensions soared this month when Lebanon s Saudi-allied Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in a television broadcast from Riyadh, citing the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and risks to his life. Hezbollah called the move an act of war engineered by Saudi authorities, an accusation they denied. Hariri has since suspended his resignation. Saudi Arabia has launched thousands of air strikes in a 2-1/2-year-old war in neighboring Yemen to defeat the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement that seized broad swaths of the country. Salman told the Times that the war was going in its favor and that its allies controlled 85 percent of Yemen s territory. The Houthis, however, still retain the main population centers despite the war effort by a Saudi-led military coalition which receives intelligence and refueling for its warplanes by the United States. Some 10,000 people have died in the conflict. The group launched a ballistic missile toward Riyadh s main airport on Nov. 4, which Saudi Arabis decried as an act of war by Tehran. Bin Salman said in May that the kingdom would make sure any future struggle between the two countries is waged in Iran . For his part, Khamenei has referred to the House of Saud as an accursed tree , and Iranian officials have accused the kingdom of spreading terrorism, an accusation it denies. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South African appeals court more than doubles Pistorius sentence;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s Supreme Court more than doubled Oscar Pistorius murder sentence on Friday, accepting prosecutors argument that the original jail term of six years for shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shockingly lenient . The gold medal-winning athlete, a double amputee known as the Blade Runner for his carbon-fibre prosthetics, was not in court to hear the new sentence of 13 years and five months handed down. Steenkamp s family were also absent but welcomed the revised term the minimum 15 years prescribed for murder, minus the time Pistorius has already served and said it showed justice could prevail in South Africa. This is an emotional thing for them. They just feel that their trust in the justice system has been confirmed this morning, Tania Koen, a family spokeswoman, told Reuters. Rights groups in a country beset by high levels of violent crime against women say Pistorius, 31, received preferential treatment compared to non-whites and those without his wealth or celebrity status. Barry Steenkamp, the father of the slain model, told SABC television the family could now get on with their lives. I always, from the beginning, said justice had not been served, now it has, he said. In the same interview, her mother June Steenkamp said: We felt that we didn t have justice for Reeva by that too-lenient sentence but now we have justice for her. Pistorius elder brother Carl wrote on Twitter: Shattered. Heartbroken. Gutted. The athlete s lawyers could not be reached for comment. The athlete was jailed in July last year after being found guilty on appeal of murdering model and law graduate Steenkamp on Valentine s Day 2013 by firing four shots through a locked bathroom door. The case attracted worldwide interest. He had originally been found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to five years in jail. That conviction was increased to murder by the Supreme Court in December 2015 and his sentence extended to six years by trial judge Thokozile Masipa in July last year. Masipa said in court that while the Steenkamps had suffered a great loss, fallen hero Pistorius life and career were also in ruins, and that a long prison term would not serve justice . Pistorius appearance during the trial without his prostheses had drawn gasps from the courtroom. In a scathing criticism, the appeals court said Masipa s ruling had erred in deviating from the prescribed minimum sentence of 15 years imprisonment for murder. The sentence of six years imprisonment is shockingly lenient, to a point where it has the effect of trivializing this serious offence, said Judge Willie Seriti, who read out the unanimous court decision. I am of the view that there are no substantial and compelling circumstances which can justify the departure from the prescribed minimum sentence. Seriti also censured Pistorius, saying his apology to the deceased s family during the hearing did not demonstrate any genuine remorse on his part and that he does not appreciate the gravity of his actions . State prosecutors led by advocate Andrea Johnson had told the appeals hearing this month that there were no mitigating circumstances to justify Pistorius six-year sentence. Defense lawyer Barry Roux argued that Pistorius did not deliberately kill Steenkamp and the appeal should be thrown out. Roux had said during the July 2016 trial that Pistorius disability and mental distress following the killing should be considered as reasons to reduce his sentence. Pistorius reached the semi-finals of the 400 meters at the London Olympics in 2012 and took two golds in the Paralympics. Even in prison, he has been in the news. In August, he was allowed out to attend his maternal grandmother s funeral and spent a night in hospital for what local media reports said was a suspected heart attack. In August 2016, the athlete denied trying to kill himself after he was treated in hospital for wrist injuries. On Pistorius birthday on Wednesday, his father Henke told local YOU magazine that although he was behind bars, it was still a special day for his family, full of love and tears . Legal analysts said Pistorius could still appeal to the Constitutional Court, South Africa s topmost legal authority but saw his chances of success as slim. I don t think it s over. He has one more option, said lawyer Ulrich Roux, who is not linked to the Pistorius defense. All the same there are few grounds of success in this venture, to be honest. Lawyer Zola Majavu said the Constitutional Court was unlikely to agree to hear the case. In my view, that will be a very tall order. It is pretty much the end of the road for Pistorius. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran says Saudi Crown Prince's behavior 'immature, weak-minded': state TV;ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran said on Thursday that Saudi Arabia s crown prince was discredited internationally by his immature behavior, state television reported, after Mohammed bin Salman called Iran s Supreme Leader the new Hitler of the Middle East . No one in the world and in the international arena gives credit to him because of his immature and weak-minded behavior and remarks, Iran s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying. Now that he has decided to follow the path of famous regional dictators ... he should think about their fate as well. Escalating the war of words between the Middle East rivals, Salman described Iran s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the region s new Hitler in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: ABUSIVE, TRUMP-HATING Student May Be Facing Jail Time, After STEALING Trump Hat Off Student’s Head and DEMANDING College Officials Prevent Him From Wearing It On Campus;On September 27, 2017, an unhinged, liberal, Trump-hating student, who has now been identified as Edith Macias, was captured on what has now become a viral video. In the video, Macias can be seen ranting and screaming, during an unbelievable exchange that took place in a campus office building at the University of California, Riverside, only moments after she stole a hat off the head of Matthew Vitale, a UC Riverside student who was walking on the campus, and minding his own business. The exchange between this Hispanic woman, (who we re pretty sure is not a legal citizen, based on her comment to the victim, when she screamed, F*ck your laws! after he cited his right to free-speech) and the victim is stunning. Over and over again, this ill-informed and unbelievably angry student makes up her own facts with absolutely no basis whatsoever. Saying things like the signature Trump hat that reads Make America Great Again represents the genocide of a bunch of people and America was never great and of but of course, You stole this land! Just another ungrateful immigrant who is likely one of Obama s Dreamers. ***WARNING*** The video below will make your blood boil.According to Campus Reform, here s how the unbelievable exchange went down:A Trump-supporting student at the University of California, Riverside had his MAGA hat stolen by a peer who demanded that administrators refuse to allow him to continue to wear it.A video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform shows an enraged female student taking the hat to the school s Student Life Department as Matthew Vitale fruitlessly attempts to explain to the young woman that the hat is his property. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t, she continues as several staffers look on. Are you people not going to do anything? She is stealing my property, Vitale pleads, though the altercation went on for several more minutes. We will need to return his property to him, but we can talk about one university employee begins to explain before being abruptly cut off by the student thief. How about we talk about not letting him wear this sh*t on campus? the thief retorts, while Vitale later tells a growing presence of administrators that the fact that you people haven t gotten this back for me is sad and wrong. The altercation continued for several minutes until the hat was relinquished to an administrator who then returned it to Vitale, though not before his fellow student got in the last word. F*** your f***ing freedom of speech, boy. F***it. F*** it because your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there.According to the College Fix: The UC Riverside student who stole Vitale s Make America Great Again hat off his head and refused to give it back now faces steep legal consequences.A criminal complaint provided to The College Fix by the Riverside County District Attorney s Office states that Edith Macias has been charged with one misdemeanor count of grand theft for the September 27 incident.The next court date on the matter is slated for March, and the maximum penalty Macias faces if convicted as currently charged is one year in county jail, a spokesman for the DA s office told The Fix.The charge was filed after UC Riverside student Matthew Vitale, the student who had his Make America Great Again hat stolen from off his head, decided to press criminal theft charges against Macias.According to the declaration in support of an arrest warrant, Macias told the officer who responded to the incident that the reason she swiped the hat was because it represented genocide of a bunch of people. She stated she wanted to burn the hat because of what it represented, it states.In a statement to The College Fix on Monday, Vitale said he is gratified by the developments. I m very pleased that the DA decided to charge her, especially because I am skeptical that UCR student conduct did anything. I will be following up with the student conduct office to determine if anything was done, Vitale said. In the meantime, I can t thank UCPD enough for actually taking this matter seriously. The detective and officers involved with this case were the epitome of professionalism, he added. If, as I suspect, UCR decided not to discipline her in some way this decision by the DA s office shows two things: First, that UCR does not protect and shows no respect for speech that does not conform to their ideology. Second, that, in this case, UCR chose not to discipline a person who committed a crime on campus against another student. After Vitale had requested charges be brought against Macias, he explained his motives to The College Fix: I do want to send a message. I am not vindictive, I am not vengeful, but people, especially in my generation, need to realize you can t do things like this because you don t like what someone is saying or wearing. Knock, knock.Who s there?Karma ;politics;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish MPs back judicial overhaul seen by EU as threat to rule of law;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s ruling party lawmakers gave preliminary approval on Friday to two bills allowing parliament and the president to replace top judges, plans the opposition and the European Commission denounced as a threat to the rule of law. Once finally approved and signed into law by the president, the bills would likely deepen the right-wing government s standoff with the EU, potentially reducing the flow of EU development funds to Poland. Law and Justice (PiS) party deputies sent the bills authored by PiS-ally President Andrzej Duda to parliamentary committees after Duda vetoed in July PiS-sponsored bills that would have given the justice minister large powers over judges. Duda cast his veto after prolonged mass protests across Poland in July. Several thousand people in more than 100 cities protested the bills again on Friday night, although the demonstrations fell short of the mass summer rallies. I do not suppose that something will change in the way the authorities act, because these authorities are not listening to the people, said 29-year-old Jakub, a company worker who did not want to give his last name. But we are here to show that we will not agree to everything, we will not agree to laws, which lead to us leaving the European Union. In November, Duda and PiS reached an agreement on the shape of the judicial reform, according to which parliament will need a three-fifths majority to appoint new members of the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), a key panel that appoints judges in Poland. Details of the judicial reform bills are expected to be revealed on Tuesday and PiS has said all work on them could be finished in December. The PiS currently has an absolute parliamentary majority, but not a three-fifths one. The euroskeptic PiS says reform of the judicial system is needed because the courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist-era mentality. But critics of the government said the bills are part of a PiS plan to increase its powers over the judiciary and reflect its drive towards authoritarianism, both charges PiS denies. Will this demolition speed up court cases? No, lawmaker Krzysztof Paszyk of the opposition PSL told parliament on Friday, adding the bills would introduces pathology into the justice system. The European Commission s deputy head, Frans Timmermans, said earlier in November that Duda s bills - which row back from direct government interference in the judiciary envisaged in the original PiS bills - were still not acceptable. The socially conservative PiS, in power since late 2015, is already at loggerheads with fellow members of the European Union over migration policy, its push to bring state media under more direct government control, as well as over an earlier overhaul of the Constitutional Tribunal. Also on Friday, PiS deputies initially approved a bill amending the electoral system, which the opposition said would threaten the fairness of elections. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to discuss tax plan with Senate Republicans next week: senator;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Senate Republicans next week to discuss their party’s efforts to pass tax reform legislation, the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee said on Friday. U.S. Senator John Barrasso said in a statement that Trump will meet with Republican senators at their weekly luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. ;politicsNews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Flynn could prove to be key asset in Mueller's U.S. campaign probe, sources say;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawyers for former national security adviser Michael Flynn have halted communications with U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal team, a potentially critical step in the probe into contacts between Trump’s election campaign and Russia, sources familiar with the investigation said on Friday. Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, called John Dowd, Trump’s private lawyer, on Wednesday to say the matter had reached a point where the two could no longer could discuss it, two people familiar with the call told Reuters on Friday. The New York Times first reported that the two sets of lawyers had stopped communicating. Flynn, a retired Army general, is a central figure in a federal investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump aides colluded with alleged Russian efforts to boost his 2016 presidential campaign. It was not clear whether Kelner made the call because he had negotiated a plea agreement with Mueller for Flynn to cooperate in the probe, or because Flynn had decided to engage with Mueller, said two other sources. “No one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about General Flynn cooperating against the president,” Jay Sekulow, another attorney for Trump, said on Thursday. Dowd on Friday declined to comment on the matter, as did Peter Carr, Mueller’s spokesman. Kelner also declined to comment. White House officials also have declined to comment. The cooperation of Flynn, who was a top campaign adviser before becoming Trump’s national security adviser in the White House, would be a major asset in Mueller’s investigation. In March, as he unsuccessfully sought immunity for his client to testify to House and Senate investigations into the issue, Kelner said, “Mr. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he certainly wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.” Two sources familiar with Mueller’s investigation said Flynn may be able to provide insight into three major areas of inquiry. These are: any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 campaign;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump names interim consumer agency head, likely sparking showdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has designated White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed, the White House said on Friday. The action came hours after Richard Cordray submitted his formal resignation and named a deputy director as his replacement, setting the stage for a political and legal battle over the regulator’s leadership. “The president looks forward to seeing Director Mulvaney take a common sense approach to leading the CFPB’s dedicated staff, an approach that will empower consumers to make their own financial decisions and facilitate investment in our communities,” the White House said in its statement. Democratic lawmakers are eager to preserve the regulator for as long as possible while Republicans want to put in place new leadership to chart a drastically different course. The six-year-old bureau has policed consumer financial markets, drafting aggressive rules curbing products like payday loans, while issuing multimillion dollar fines against large financial institutions like Wells Fargo. But Republicans have consistently complained the agency is too powerful and lacks oversight from Congress on its operations, and they are eager to take control. Mulvaney, who has criticized the bureau in the past, said, “I look forward to working with the expert personnel within the agency to identify how the bureau can transition to be more effective in its mission, while becoming more accountable to the taxpayer.” The succession plan has never been tested, with Cordray as its first and only full-time director. Cordray had previously announced plans to resign by the end of November. In a statement to staff, he said that Leandra English, the CFPB’s chief of staff, had been named deputy director and would take over as acting director of the agency upon his exit. However, the White House had already said it planned to name its own interim leadership at the regulator. Trump has pushed to ease regulations on businesses, including the financial sector, a stance seemingly at odds with Cordray’s more aggressive regulatory approach. Earlier this month, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said that the administration “will announce an acting director and the president’s choice to replace Mr Cordray at the appropriate time.” There are competing theories in Washington as to who can name Cordray’s replacement. Democrats point to language in the Dodd-Frank law that created the CFPB, stipulating the deputy director replaces the director when he or she leaves. But others say a separate law governing federal vacancies gives Trump power to name someone elsewhere in the administration to that role temporarily, while the White House identifies a full-time nominee who would be confirmed by the Senate. ;politicsNews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MELANIA Visits Coast Guard With POTUS…One Part Of Her Outfit Causes Liberal Freak Out [VIDEO];President Trump and the First Lady took the time to visit the Coast Guard ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Melania proved once again that her fashion choices continue to provoke a response According to the petty liberals, she was scoring a fashion mishap during the visit. We think she s appropriate and sporty looking. There was one thing that she wore that made liberals have a fashion freak out No, it wasn t her pink gingham shirt. That s a fashion repeat that was worn as she got off Marine One a few months ago.It wasn t her Converse low-top tennis shoes IT WAS HER HAT! CHECK OUT THE VISIT:REMEMBER WHEN MELANIA CAUSED A STIR WHEN SHE WORE STILETTOS FOR HER TRIP TO TEXAS? President Trump and First Lady Melania traveled down to Texas today to assist with and show support for flood victims. You d think the press would point out that this is a great gesture by the First Couple but that s not the case. The press could only focus on the fact that the First Lady wore heels on her departure to Texas. They mocked her saying she wasn t quite ready to help flood victims: Melania s shoes are impressive but perhaps not what I would wear to a city submerged in floodwaters, wrote Elizabeth Bruenig, an assistant editor at the Washington Post.Those stilettos should help her stay above the flood line https://t.co/dQ89fK18N5 Ryan Teague Beckwith (@ryanbeckwith) August 29, 2017Melania is wearing stilettos to a hurricane zone: https://t.co/29WIwlipab erica orden (@eorden) August 29, 2017She had on all black with a pair of black stilettos Who cares? At least she made the trip! We can t say the same for Michelle Obama during the Louisiana floods!We checked into what Michelle Obama wore to visit the Louisiana floods Oops! She didn t go! Remember that she was on vacation with Barack and the girls but then came home and didn t make the trip with Barack.We checked to see if Michelle went to New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy Oops! She didn t go to that either!MELANIA GETS THE LAST LAUGH:Guess what Melania had on when she arrived in TEXAS? TENNIS SHOES! Is she ready enough now?First lady Melania Trump wore a baseball hat that said FLOTUS as she exited Air Force One upon landing in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday.First Lady Melania and President Trump arrive in Texas to be briefed on Harvey s devastating aftermath pic.twitter.com/Dz0IbQBRk3 Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 29, 2017The first lady had her hair pulled back in a ponytail under the black hat with white lettering.She also wore white sneakers, black pants, and a white button-up shirt.LOOKING GREAT!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOTeIa0FkG8Read more: WE ;politics;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHAT A FOURSOME! Trump Plays With Golf Greats [Video];President Trump announced he d be playing golf quickly with Jupiter Island resident Tiger Woods and PGA star Dustin Johnson .A lucky Instagram user got some great photos and video:WHAT A TREAT THE PRESIDENT AND GOLF GREATS!An Instagram user spotted the president at Trump National Golf Course on Friday morning with Tiger Woods and Dustin Johnson: Just your average morning! Excited my kids were able to see our President and the others were just a bonus, user hwalks wrote in her Instagram post. She posted pictures and a video of Trump, Woods, and Johnson on the golf course making their rounds. Just your average morning!! Excited my kids were able to see our President and the others were a bonus! #Tigerwoods #dustinjohnson #bradfaxon #donaldtrump #presidenttrumpA post shared by Always_7 (@hwalks) on Nov 24, 2017 at 6:53am PSTDR ERIC KAPLAN POSTED:The President with Dustin Johnson, Tiger Woods , Brad Faron, at Trump Jupiter, a great Potus & host pic.twitter.com/MJ3Hr4DNj5 Dr. Eric Kaplan (@drekaplan) November 24, 2017GOLF.COM PICKED UP THE VIDEO AND PICTURES: President Trump greets his playing partners Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Brad Faxon at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter. What do you think they were talking about on the range?A post shared by Golf Magazine (@golf_com) on Nov 24, 2017 at 8:48am PSTYou will not read this in media, but Trump is such a good host to media, food galore gave the media VIP private room pic.twitter.com/8WrJZn2XgM Dr. Eric Kaplan (@drekaplan) November 24, 2017AFTER GOLF BACK TO BUSINESSPresident Trump left the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter around 1:45 p.m., and spoke with the president of Egypt over the horrific terror attack at a mosque on Friday morning.Trump tweeted that he will discuss the tragic terrorist attack , and added that we have to get tougher and smarter and need the wall, need the ban. Trump and Woods played golf last December at Trump International while Trump was president-elect. Since becoming president, Trump s golf partners have included Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins, future NFL Hall of Famer Peyton Manning and professional golfers Ernie Els and Rory McIlroy. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee have also joined Trump on the links. ;politics;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: ABUSIVE, TRUMP-HATING Student May Be Facing Jail Time, After STEALING Trump Hat Off Student’s Head and DEMANDING College Officials Prevent Him From Wearing It On Campus;On September 27, 2017, an unhinged, liberal, Trump-hating student, who has now been identified as Edith Macias, was captured on what has now become a viral video. In the video, Macias can be seen ranting and screaming, during an unbelievable exchange that took place in a campus office building at the University of California, Riverside, only moments after she stole a hat off the head of Matthew Vitale, a UC Riverside student who was walking on the campus, and minding his own business. The exchange between this Hispanic woman, (who we re pretty sure is not a legal citizen, based on her comment to the victim, when she screamed, F*ck your laws! after he cited his right to free-speech) and the victim is stunning. Over and over again, this ill-informed and unbelievably angry student makes up her own facts with absolutely no basis whatsoever. Saying things like the signature Trump hat that reads Make America Great Again represents the genocide of a bunch of people and America was never great and of but of course, You stole this land! Just another ungrateful immigrant who is likely one of Obama s Dreamers. ***WARNING*** The video below will make your blood boil.According to Campus Reform, here s how the unbelievable exchange went down:A Trump-supporting student at the University of California, Riverside had his MAGA hat stolen by a peer who demanded that administrators refuse to allow him to continue to wear it.A video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform shows an enraged female student taking the hat to the school s Student Life Department as Matthew Vitale fruitlessly attempts to explain to the young woman that the hat is his property. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t, she continues as several staffers look on. Are you people not going to do anything? She is stealing my property, Vitale pleads, though the altercation went on for several more minutes. We will need to return his property to him, but we can talk about one university employee begins to explain before being abruptly cut off by the student thief. How about we talk about not letting him wear this sh*t on campus? the thief retorts, while Vitale later tells a growing presence of administrators that the fact that you people haven t gotten this back for me is sad and wrong. The altercation continued for several minutes until the hat was relinquished to an administrator who then returned it to Vitale, though not before his fellow student got in the last word. F*** your f***ing freedom of speech, boy. F***it. F*** it because your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there.According to the College Fix: The UC Riverside student who stole Vitale s Make America Great Again hat off his head and refused to give it back now faces steep legal consequences.A criminal complaint provided to The College Fix by the Riverside County District Attorney s Office states that Edith Macias has been charged with one misdemeanor count of grand theft for the September 27 incident.The next court date on the matter is slated for March, and the maximum penalty Macias faces if convicted as currently charged is one year in county jail, a spokesman for the DA s office told The Fix.The charge was filed after UC Riverside student Matthew Vitale, the student who had his Make America Great Again hat stolen from off his head, decided to press criminal theft charges against Macias.According to the declaration in support of an arrest warrant, Macias told the officer who responded to the incident that the reason she swiped the hat was because it represented genocide of a bunch of people. She stated she wanted to burn the hat because of what it represented, it states.In a statement to The College Fix on Monday, Vitale said he is gratified by the developments. I m very pleased that the DA decided to charge her, especially because I am skeptical that UCR student conduct did anything. I will be following up with the student conduct office to determine if anything was done, Vitale said. In the meantime, I can t thank UCPD enough for actually taking this matter seriously. The detective and officers involved with this case were the epitome of professionalism, he added. If, as I suspect, UCR decided not to discipline her in some way this decision by the DA s office shows two things: First, that UCR does not protect and shows no respect for speech that does not conform to their ideology. Second, that, in this case, UCR chose not to discipline a person who committed a crime on campus against another student. After Vitale had requested charges be brought against Macias, he explained his motives to The College Fix: I do want to send a message. I am not vindictive, I am not vengeful, but people, especially in my generation, need to realize you can t do things like this because you don t like what someone is saying or wearing. Knock, knock.Who s there?Karma ;left-news;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SEASONS BEATINGS! 19-Yr Old SHOT…Mall Brawls Spills Outside…Topless Feminist Destroys Candy Store…Worst of #BlackFriday VIDEOS;Black Friday madness has officially gripped the nation.The elbows-out shopping bonanza began on Thursday night as stores across the country opened their doors early to crowds of frantic bargain hunters.Within hours, there were mass brawls at malls as they fought over discounted televisions and clothes and the chaos is ongoing. In Hoover, Alabama, the scrum in one mall became so violent that paramedics had to be called to treat the injured.SEASON'S BEATING'S! Fist fights break out in Hoover Alabama at the Riverchase Galleria Mall on Thursday night forcing closure of mall. Police made multiple arrests. #BlackFriday2017 pic.twitter.com/DIH54vUgmU Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 24, 2017Walmart staff were filmed holding frothing female shoppers on the ground as they waited for security to arrive to carry them out. The violence was even more severe in Missouri where a 19-year-old man was shot outside a mall as shoppers rushed to snap up cut-price goods inside. He is in a critical condition.On Friday, millions more flocked to shopping centers across the country as yet more deals became available.At the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there were snaking lines before the sun had even come up. The crowds were organized by barriers before being let inside at 5am.At a Walmart somewhere else in the country however, five people were seen grappling over the same toy car. The grown men had to be separated by store staff and one was even talked down by his female companion. Their efforts were in vain store staff refused to allow any of them to take the car home. Four grown men squabble over a toy car.This sums up the utter mindlessness of #BlackFridayhttps://t.co/mWv1QUeqaC pic.twitter.com/rIGkmkjJRn Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 24, 2017This year s frenzy will see Americans spend an astonishing $20billion in stores and online, according to consumer experts. Experts predict 164 million Americans will spend nearly $1,000 each over the holiday weekend.Here s a look at just some of the disgusting behavior and fights that took place last year on Black Friday:The mayhem began at 5pm on Thanksgiving Day as thousands of bargain hunters rushed inside stores across the US in search of amazing sales, door buster deals and limited-time offers. Daily Mail No one should claim that it would not be the blackest Friday ever been. #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/Pq56WkRHsQ Onlinemagazin (@OnlineMagazin) November 24, 2017A topless feminist protester appearing in a Ukrainian sweet shop and frenzied bargain-hunters battling for deals in the likes of Brazil and Greece.Nothing says feminism like walking naked into a store and destroying merchandise of an innocent shopkeeper: Photographs from the Ukrainian capital show a woman from radical feminist group FEMEN throwing confectionery while screaming in protest.Before being taken away, the woman who also had the words Black Friday painted on her torso managed to cause a considerable mess in the store. Daily Mail ;left-news;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Ivanka Defends Malia Obama From Attacks, Her Dad’s Fans Won’t Stop: ‘She Looks Like A Baboon’;Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton defended Malia Obama after conservative websites published breaking news showing the former President s daughter acting like a 19-year-old college student, which she is. Obama was seen in one photo kissing her Harvard University boyfriend, and a video circulated showing her blowing smoke rings and for some reason, that made Trump supporters heads explode. Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school aged peers, Ivanka Trump tweeted. She is a young adult and private citizen, and should be OFF limits. Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school aged peers. She is a young adult and private citizen, and should be OFF limits. Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) November 24, 2017Trump fans weren t having it. This woman suggested that Malia Obama bragged about it and somehow broke a law by blowing smoke rings.Maybe those girls should not be drinking underage and brag about it and going to adult clubs. If regular citizens would be arrested. Not protected and allowed to break laws Michelle Naylor (@Michell18500924) November 24, 2017Sorry but have to disagree with you there! Key word adult! Young or old she s still an adult Celina Maccadanza (@CelinaSivret) November 24, 2017 She looks like a baboon when she blows smoke rings. (((Randall Weems))) many are asking no i am not ga (@DSARubsHands) November 24, 2017She is a bad apple in a rotting barrel WW (@WW300mag) November 24, 2017Chelsea Clinton weighed in, too. Malia Obama s private life, as a young woman, a college student, a private citizen, should not be your clickbait, she wrote. Be better. Malia Obama s private life, as a young woman, a college student, a private citizen, should not be your clickbait. Be better. Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) November 24, 2017That, too, fell on deaf ears.Yes the high road, how much has she trashed trump??? Selective bullying, malia deserves all the bashing she s getting, let s hear Michelle talk anti smoking again schockerone (@myJuicePlusBiz) November 24, 2017Barron Trump does not have that and he is a child. Hypocrisy Dee (@Dee33305261) November 24, 2017It s somehow racist to not pick on Obama s daughter.Funny when prior presidents kids were picked on in media, but not obama s kids, horrible double standard, and racist. Darren Gaskin (@kentuckyrunner) November 24, 2017We don t need to be lectured by a Clinton, be better MarieTweets (@mkues65) November 24, 2017Ivanka finally said something most of us can agree on but her father s supporters aren t going to let up.Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.;News;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gunmen in Egypt mosque attack carried Islamic State flag, prosecutor says;CAIRO (Reuters) - Gunmen who attacked a mosque on Friday in Egypt s North Sinai brandished an Islamic State flag as they opened fire through doorways and windows, killing more than 300 worshippers, including two dozen children, officials said on Saturday. No group has claimed responsibility, but Egyptian forces are battling a stubborn Islamic State affiliate in the region, one of the surviving branches of the militant group after it suffered defeats by U.S.-backed forces in Iraq and Syria. The assault on a mosque has stunned Egyptians, prompting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi s government to tighten security at places of worship and key buildings, and call three days of mourning for the bloodiest attack in Egypt s modern history. State news agency MENA said the death toll had risen to 305, including 27 children, and 128 people were injured. Egypt s public prosecutor s office, citing interviews with wounded survivors as part of its investigation, linked Islamic State militants, also known as Daesh, to the attack on the Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of El-Arish city. The worshippers were taken by surprise by these elements, the prosecutor said in a statement. They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles. The gunmen, some wearing masks and military-style uniforms, had arrived in jeeps, surrounded the mosque and opened fire inside, sending panicked worshippers scrambling over each other to escape the carnage. Witnesses had said gunmen set off a bomb at the end of Friday prayers and then opened fire as people tried to flee, shooting at ambulances and setting fire to cars to block roads. Images on state media showed bloodied victims and bodies covered in blankets inside the mosque. When the shooting began everyone was running, and everyone was bumping into one another, Magdy Rezk, a wounded survivor, said from his hospital bed. But I was able to make out masked men wearing military clothing. Striking a mosque would be a shift in tactics for the Sinai militants, who have previously attacked troops and police and more recently tried to spread their insurgency to the mainland by hitting Christian churches and pilgrims. Local sources said some of the worshippers were Sufis, whom groups such as Islamic State consider targets because they revere saints and shrines, which for Islamists is tantamount to idolatry. Islamic State has targeted Sufi and Shi ite Muslims in other countries like Iraq. The jihadists in Egypt s Sinai have also attacked local tribes and their militias for working with the army and police. Sisi, a former armed forces commander who supporters see as a bulwark against Islamist militants, promised the utmost force against those responsible for Friday s attack. Security has been a key reason for his supporters to back him, and he is expected to run for re-election next year. Egypt s military carried out air strikes and raids overnight to target hideouts and vehicles involved in the attack, the army said, without giving details on the number of militants. What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, Sisi said on Friday. The Sinai attack came as Sisi s government looks to draw more foreign investment and finish an IMF reform program to help revive an economy that struggled through instability after the 2011 uprising ousted long-standing leader Hosni Mubarak. North Sinai, a mostly desert area stretching from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has long been a security headache for Egypt and is a strategic region for Cairo because of its sensitive borders. Local militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, once allied to al Qaeda, split from it and declared allegiance to Islamic State in 2014. But attacks in the Sinai worsened after 2013 when Sisi led the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood after mass protests against his rule. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam prosecutes bank officials in corruption crackdown; (This Nov. 24 story has been refiled to correct paragraph eight to say former CEO was not among the five people prosecuted.) HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam has prosecuted five former officials of the unlisted Dong A Bank for violating rules that lead to serious consequences , police said on Friday, part of a widening investigation involving the Ho Chi Minh City-based lender. Energy and banking firms are at the heart of a sweeping crackdown on corruption in the communist state, a campaign that made global headlines this year when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping a Vietnamese businessman in Berlin. The troubled, partly private Dong A Bank is among several lenders under scrutiny of the authorities who say they want to tackle corruption, including abuse of power and violation of lending rules. The Investigation Police Department of the Ministry of Public Security is urgently investigating the case, police said in a statement. Abuse of trust to appropriate assets, deliberate violation of state regulations on economic management that led to serious consequences and the violation of lending provisions ... occurred at Dong A Commercial Joint Stock Bank (DAB), police said. The five former officials were banned from leaving their homes, police said. Dong A Bank said it would respond to a Reuters request for comment later in the day. The bank s former chief executive officer Tran Phuong Binh was arrested in 2016 along with four other executives. The central bank, the State Bank of Vietnam, had placed Dong A Bank under special supervision in 2015 for violations in financial management and credit grants by some executives. The ministry of public security said in a statement on Friday that 17 people have been arrested in the Dong A Bank fraud case. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hope fades after 9 days of searching for Argentine submarine;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Families of the 44 crew members of a missing Argentine submarine gave up hope and went home on Friday after days of waiting at the sub s Mar del Plata naval base, saddened and angered by evidence that the vessel may have exploded. The submarine went missing nine days ago with only a one-week supply of oxygen onboard. President Mauricio Macri said the search would continue and that he expected the submarine to be located in the days ahead. He called for a serious and deep investigation into the incident once the search operation was complete. This means understanding how a submarine that had received midlife maintenance and was in perfect condition to navigate apparently suffered this explosion, he said at a news conference. On Friday evening, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said improving weather would allow for boats with underwater detection capabilities to conduct a search. They will scan an area around where a sound thought to be an explosion was detected on the morning of Nov. 15, the day the vessel sent its last signal. The weather, thank God, is favorable in that search area for scanning and mapping the seabed, Balbi said at a news conference. Macri and Balbi both declined to comment directly on the widely held fear that the crew had died. The submarine, called the San Juan, was launched in 1983 and underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina. Concerns about the crew s fate have set off a fierce political debate in a society sharply divided between supporters of Macri and his free-market policies and opposition Peronists. Crew families have expressed outrage at the level of funding and maintenance of the armed forces, whose budget has gradually declined since the fall of a military dictatorship in the 1980s. That trend continued during the first half of former populist President Cristina Fernandez s administration, before a slight rebound. Military funding has remained mostly flat since Macri took office in December 2015. When Macri arrived in the presidency the destruction of the defense system was so complete that the first task was to restore morale, Senate leader and Macri ally Federico Pinedo said in a radio interview on Friday. A group of opposition lawmakers aligned with Fernandez demanded that Defense Minister Oscar Aguad testify in Congress, and called for the creation of a congressional committee to investigate the incident. Araceli Ferreyra, a lawmaker with the leftist Evita Movement, wrote on Facebook that she was concerned about suppression of information by the navy early on in the search. Local news media have reported tensions between the navy and Macri s administration over lack of timely communication, which both sides have publicly denied. Marta Yanez, a federal judge from the Patagonian city of Caleta Olivia, also began an investigation into the incident at the request of the navy. The information about the possible explosion came on Thursday from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts. Those posts had detected the violent, non-nuclear sound. Around 30 boats and planes and 4,000 people from 13 countries including Argentina, the United States, Britain, Chile and Brazil have joined the search for the submarine, which last transmitted its location about 480 km (300 miles) from Argentina s South Atlantic coast. A Russian plane was due to arrive in Argentina on Friday night carrying search equipment capable of reaching 6,000 meters (20,000 ft) below the sea surface, Balbi said. Relatives of the crew had arrived at Mar de Plata on Monday, filled with an optimism that had all but disappeared by Friday. At this point, the truth is I have no hope that they will come back, Maria Villareal, mother of one crew member, told local television on Friday morning. Others said they would remain at Mar del Plata. I m at the base and I m going to stay until they find the submarine, Silvina Krawczyk, sister of the sub s only female officer, Eliana Maria Krawczyk, told Reuters through the WhatsApp messaging application. Some family members accused the navy of putting their loved ones at unnecessary risk by sending them out in a more than 30-year-old vessel that they suspected was not properly maintained, an accusation the navy has denied. They killed my brother! a man leaving the base in a car shouted out to reporters. The older man driving the car was crying. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina's Macri expects missing sub to be found in coming days;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Mauricio Macri said on Friday that the country s navy and foreign forces would continue the search for a submarine that went missing nine days earlier and said he expected the vessel to be found over the days ahead. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian opposition picks chief negotiator ahead of new Geneva talks;RIYADH/AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria s main opposition group selected a new chief negotiator on Friday ahead of a new round of U.N.-backed peace negotiations with the Damascus government set to kick off next week. Nasr Hariri said the opposition was going to Geneva on Nov. 28 to hold direct talks and was ready to discuss everything on the negotiating table . The announcement came at a summit in Riyadh where, a day before, the opposition stuck by its demand that President Bashar al-Assad play no role in an interim period, despite speculation that it could soften its stance because of Assad s battlefield strength. The opposition groups met to seek a unified position ahead of Geneva after two years of Russian military intervention that has helped Assad s government reverse major territorial losses incurred since the beginning of the war. Hariri replaces hardliner Riyad Hijab, who led the Higher Negotiations Committee at previous negotiations but abruptly quit this week, hinting that the HNC under him had faced pressures to make concessions that favored Assad. U.N. peace talks mediator Staffan de Mistura, preparing for the next round of Geneva talks, met on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said Moscow was working with Riyadh to unify the Syrian opposition. For many years, Western and Arab countries backed the opposition demand that Assad leave office. But since Russia joined the war on behalf of Assad s government it has become increasingly clear that Assad s opponents have no path to victory on the battlefield. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a congress of the Syrian government and opposition to draw up a framework for the future structure of the Syrian state, adopt a new constitution and hold elections under U.N. supervision. But he has also said that any political settlement in Syria would be finalised within the Geneva peace talks process overseen by the United Nations. The opposition has long been suspicious of the parallel diplomatic track pushed by Russia, which before the proposed Sochi congress included talks in Kazakhstan, and has insisted that political dialogue should only take place in Geneva. Hariri said Sochi did not serve the political process and called on the international community, including Russia, to concentrate all our efforts to serve the political process according to international resolutions in Geneva under UN auspices . Alaa Arafat, who represents the Moscow Platform political grouping, though, said he would attend Sochi and urged others to go too, reflecting lingering tensions within the diverse opposition. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir, who opened the summit on Wednesday pledging his country s support for unifying the opposition, praised the creation of one negotiating team that represents everyone . Asked if there was any change in position towards Assad s future, he told reporters that Riyadh continued to support a settlement based on the U.N.-backed process at Geneva. We support the positions of the Syrian opposition. We have from the beginning and we will continue to do so, he said. Syria s six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Next round of Syria peace talks in Geneva to begin November 28: opposition chief;RIYADH (Reuters) - The next round of U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the Syrian civil war will begin on Nov. 28, the newly appointed head of the main opposition negotiating team said early on Saturday morning. Nasr Hariri told a news conference in Riyadh that the opposition was going to Geneva to hold direct talks and was ready to discuss everything on the negotiating table . ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian opposition chief says Sochi does not serve political process;RIYADH (Reuters) - The chief negotiator of Syria s main opposition said early on Saturday that Russia s proposal to hold a congress of the Syrian government and opposition in Sochi did not serve the political process. Nasr Hariri called on the international community, including Russia, to focus all our work on serving the political process according to the U.N.-sponsored Geneva track in order to save time and achieve the desired goal . ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. adjusts military support to partners in Syria: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said that he had informed Turkey s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a call that Washington is adjusting military support to partners on the ground in Syria, the White House said Friday. Turkey s presidency had previously reported that the United States would not supply weapons to the Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria. [nA4N1L2020] ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Panic on London's Oxford Street after reports of shooting;"LONDON (Reuters) - Panic erupted among Christmas shopping crowds on London s Oxford Street on Friday evening as armed officers raced to respond to reports of shots being fired in the area, but police said later they had found no evidence of gunfire or casualties. Oxford Street, with its festive window displays and hundreds of overhead lights, was crammed with shoppers taking advantage of the Black Friday sales when the incident happened shortly after dusk. London s Metropolitan Police said in a statement they had found no evidence of gunfire, casualties or any suspects and that the incident, which lasted for just over an hour, had been stood down. Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers, the police said in a statement. British Transport Police posted CCTV images of two men on Twitter, saying they believed that an altercation had erupted between the two men at the Oxford Circus underground station and said they would like to speak to the men, ""who they believe may have information about the incident and the circumstances around the incident."" bit.ly/2jkkVNT A Reuters witness said panicked shoppers had fled Oxford Street and the Oxford Circus underground station. The witness saw an elderly lady and a man carrying a child knocked over in the rush. There were people running in all directions. I didn t know which way to run, the witness said. The transport police said they had received a report of one woman suffering a minor injury in the panic. The capital s transport operator, Transport for London, said the Oxford Circus and Bond Street stations, which were briefly shut due to the incident, had later reopened. ";worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru prosecutors say ex-president Toledo bribed by Brazil's Camargo;LIMA (Reuters) - The Peruvian attorney general s office accused former president Alejandro Toledo on Friday of taking bribes from Brazilian construction firm Camargo Correa SA [PMORRC.UL] in exchange for a lucrative highway contract during his 2001-2006 term. An unnamed state s witness had helped uncover evidence that showed some $3.98 million in payments Camargo made to Toledo through offshore bank accounts controlled by one of Toledo s associates, the attorney general s office said in an emailed statement. Camargo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In Lima, Toledo s attorney, Heriberto Benitez, said Toledo was innocent of the accusations. I spoke with him yesterday, he said: I didn t take money from anyone, Benitez said to Reuters in a phone interview. Toledo is already wanted in Peru in connection with allegations that he took $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht[ODBES.UL], another privately owned Brazilian builder, for help winning a contract for building a different section of the same highway. Peruvian authorities are seeking Toledo s extradition from the United States. His current whereabouts is unclear, but authorities said in February that he was in California, near his alma mater Stanford University. Following a judge s order in February that he should be held in pre-trial detention, Toledo said he would not return to Peru. He has repeatedly described the probe as political persecution . Last year Odebrecht admitted to paying millions of dollars in bribes in Peru to secure lucrative government contracts over a decade-long period, spurring a far-reaching investigation to determine which officials received them. Odebrecht and Camargo were at the center of Brazil s biggest-ever graft inquiry, known as Operation Car Wash. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba marks anniversary of Fidel death as post-Castro era nears;HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba marks the first anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Saturday with a week of vigils nationwide, as the island embarks on a political cycle that will end 60 years of the Castro brothers rule. Fidel, a towering figure of the 20th century who built a Communist-run state on the doorstep of the United States and defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died aged 90 on Nov. 25 last year. The Cold War icon had already been largely out of public view for around a decade, having formally ceded the presidency to his younger brother, Raul Castro, in 2008 due to ill health. Cubans say his death changed little on the island. The pace of reforms instigated by Raul to update the Soviet-style command economy has continued as hesitantly as before. Cuba s relationship with the United States, meanwhile, has actually worsened due to U.S. President Donald Trump s more hostile stance. More significant politically, analysts say, will be the electoral cycle that starts Sunday with a municipal vote and will end with the selection of a new president in late February. Raul, 86, has said he would step down at the end of his two consecutive terms. The transition is expected to be gradual as Raul will remain head of the Communist Party. It comes, however, as the country faces a tricky time with a decline in aid from ally Venezuela, weaker exports and a resulting cash crunch. Not even we know what our future will be, said Ariadna Valdivia, 45, a high school teacher. Raul is ending his term in 2018, Fidel is already history, and I don t really see any way of improving things. Salaries are the same, food is always getting more expensive and now we have Trump tightening the embargo. By the time of his death, Castro had been out of the public limelight since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006, occasionally writing columns and receiving foreign dignitaries at his home. His death last year plunged Cuba into nine days of national mourning. A funeral cortege carried his ashes on a three-day journey from Havana to his final resting place in the east of the island, where he had launched the Cuban revolution. I am Fidel became a nationwide chant, as many Cubans pledged to stay faithful to the revolution he led that in 1959 overthrew a U.S.-backed dictator. He was the best we ve had as a leader, said Rene Perez, a Havana taxi driver, echoing the feelings of many Cubans who miss Fidel s leadership, especially at times of crisis. Raul did not appear in public after Hurricane Irma thrashed the island in September. In keeping with his wishes to avoid a personality cult, no statues have been made of Fidel or public places named after him in Cuba. Even his tomb is a sober affair, a large granite boulder in Santiago de Cuba s Santa Ifigenia Cemetery with a plaque simply reading Fidel. Galas and vigils in honor of Fidel will be held around the country this week, according to state-run media. Cultural institutions like the national ballet are dedicating their shows to his memory, and state television is running archived footage on a loop. The municipal vote on Sunday, the only part of the electoral process with direct participation by ordinary Cubans, is being cast in state media as a show of support for his ideas. Posters of Fidel hung at assemblies where neighborhoods nominated candidates over the last two months. It will be followed by provincial and national assembly elections in which candidates are selected from slates by commissions. The new National Assembly will then in late February select a successor to Castro, widely expected to be First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Eduardo Torres, the director of Cuba s National Library, said there were several politicians well placed to become president but there would never be another Fidel and the country faced a generational transition. Raul had the weight of the historic generation, said Torres. When he leaves, it is another generation and another history we will start to build. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentine protester Maldonado died of drowning, hypothermia: judge;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An activist whose disappearance in southern Argentina in August captured the country s attention in the months before mid-term elections died of drowning and hypothermia, the judge investigating the case said on Friday. Santiago Maldonado had been missing from Aug. 1. He had attended an indigenous land rights protest in Patagonia that day. His body was found on October 17 in a nearby river. Federal Judge Guillermo Gustavo Lleral told reporters outside a morgue that an autopsy showed the cause of Maldonado s death was drowning and hypothermia, and that his body was in the Chubut river for at least 55 days. Some government opposition and rights groups have said that state security forces took Maldonado, a 28-year-old craftsman, after police reportedly clashed with Mapuche Indians who claim territory throughout southern Argentina and Chile. The groups allegations that President Mauricio Macri s government covered up Maldonado s whereabouts overshadowed a mid-term congressional election on Oct. 22. Macri s government has said there was no evidence that showed security forces had detained Maldonado. On Friday, Maldonado s brother said he would keep insisting on an investigation. This was the cause of death, but we still do not know what happened, Sergio Maldonado said after a meeting with Lleral. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD considers propping up Merkel, but only if members agree;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats agreed on Friday, under intense pressure, to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel on renewing their outgoing coalition government, but pledged that party members would have the final say on any deal. The about-turn by the center-left SPD, which had said it would go into opposition after suffering its worst result in 70 years in September s election, could help avert a disruptive repeat vote in Europe s economic and political powerhouse. SPD leader Martin Schulz told a news conference the party leadership had reached the decision out of a sense of responsibility to Germany and Europe after Merkel s attempt to form a government with the pro-business Free Democrats and environmental Greens smaller parties collapsed on Sunday. There is nothing automatic about the direction we are moving in, Schulz said. If a discussion results in us deciding to participate, in any form whatsoever, in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members. Schulz told 300 members of the party s youth wing - who rejected another grand coalition at a conference in Saarbruecken - that nothing had been decided. But he suggested that governing could offer better chances to achieve his primary goal of improving the lives of people in Germany and around the world. From which position is that best possible? What is more important? The radiance of our decisions, or the improvement of the everyday lives of people? Schulz told the group. He said he noted the group s position and thanked them for their support in the September election. But he said he expected their loyalty and constructive cooperation with whatever path was ultimately decided by the party s leadership. Backing for a new government could mean forming a coalition, agreeing not to obstruct a Merkel-led minority government, or other options yet to be explored, SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told broadcaster ZDF. Rainer Haseloff, the premier of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and a member of Merkel s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), told Reuters: I think opinion is moving in the direction of there being a grand coalition. He said conservatives would look at the SPD s proposals, but the bloc would not agree to any move to replace Merkel. Juergin Trittin, a senior Greens member, told Germany s RND newspaper group it was a question of when, not if the SPD would agree to discuss another coalition with conservatives. Stegner, who is skeptical about another grand coalition, told broadcaster ZDF the SPD would extract a price for any deal. The SPD won t go cheaply, he said, without elaborating. Merkel spoke with reporters after an event in Brussels, but declined to answer any questions. A poll conducted on Monday, before the latest SPD comments, showed half of Germans supported the SPD s initial rejection of a new grand coalition, while 44 percent would support renewing the coalition government that has ruled for the past four years. Six out of 10 Germans would support a new election, the poll by infratest dimap for broadcaster ARD showed. Over her 12 years in power, Merkel has embraced a succession of coalition partners who then went on to suffer painful electoral defeats. A cartoon published by Cicero magazine on Friday depicted the SPD as a mouse being enticed out of its hole by a waiting feline Merkel. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will host a meeting with Schulz, Merkel and Horst Seehofer, leader of the CDU s arch-conservative Bavarian sister party, next Thursday. Steinmeier, a former SPD foreign minister, has urged his former party to reverse its pledge to go into opposition, having made clear that he saw fresh elections as a last resort. The crisis has arisen because Merkel s conservatives also lost votes in September as the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany surged into parliament. With the SPD licking its wounds, an unlikely-looking three-way coalition with smaller parties had appeared the only option for the weakened chancellor. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish court frees British citizen on bail in terrorism trial: media;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish court has freed on bail a British citizen facing charges of joining a terrorist organization, Turkey s Ihlas news agency said on Friday. Joseph Robinson, a former British soldier, is accused of fighting with the Syrian Kurdish YPG milita. He was arrested in July while on holiday in the southwestern Turkish town of Didim, Ihlas said. Robinson denies the charge and said during his defense at an initial hearing that he went to Syria to help provide medical assistance to victims of the civil war there, Ihlas said. Turkey considers the YPG to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey s southeast and is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union as well as Turkey. Robinson faces a jail sentence of up to 10 years if found guilty, local media said. His Bulgarian fiance, who is accused of terrorist propaganda in the same case, was released before the start of the trial but imposed with a travel ban. The next hearing in the case is set for March 12. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Castro meets North Korea minister amid hope Cuba can defuse tensions;HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Raul Castro met with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Friday amid hopes the Communist-run island might be able to convince its Asian ally to avert a showdown with the United States. North Korea is facing unprecedented pressure from the United States and the international community to cease its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Cuba has maintained close diplomatic ties with North Korea since 1960 but is opposed to nuclear weapons. In the brotherly encounter, both sides commented on the historic friendship between the two nations and talked about international topics of mutual interest, Cuban state television said on its midday broadcast. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday he had discussed with Castro last year the possibility of working together to defuse global tensions with North Korea. Can we pass along messages through surprising conduits? Trudeau asked in a Q&A session after a speech. It was a topic of conversation when I met President Raul Castro last year. These are the kinds of things where Canada can, I think, play a role that the United States has chosen not to play, this past year. Canada had an interest in seeking solutions, not just because of regional security but also because the flight path of possible North Korean missiles would pass over its territory, Trudeau said. North Korea is working on developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, aiming to achieve what Ri has called a real balance of power with the United States . Ri met his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez this week and the ministers denounced U.S. unilateral and arbitrary lists and designations that led to coercive measures contrary to international law , according to Cuba s foreign ministry. The ministers called for respect for peoples sovereignty and the peaceful settlement of disputes , according to a ministry statement. President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Cuba since taking office, rolling back a detente begun by his predecessor Barack Obama and returning to the hostile rhetoric of the Cold War. North Korea and Cuba are the last countries in the world to maintain Soviet-style command economies, though under Raul Castro, the Caribbean nation has taken small steps toward the more market-oriented communism of China and Vietnam. Raul took over the presidency in 2008 from his older brother and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who died on Nov. 25 last year. Cuba is marking the anniversary on Saturday with vigils and concerts. [L8N1NS6SF] Cuba maintains an embassy in North Korea but trades mostly with South Korea. Last year, trade with the latter was $67 million and just $9 million with the North, the government said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish government set to fall weeks before Brexit summit;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s minority government looked set to collapse within days on Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britain s plans to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that if the motion was not withdrawn by Tuesday, he would be forced to hold an election before Christmas, a prospect EU officials say would complicate a key EU summit on Dec. 14-15 on Brexit. What that would mean is me throwing a good woman under the bus to save myself and my own government, and that would be the wrong thing to do, Varadkar told national broadcaster RTE, dismissing demands for his deputy Frances Fitzgerald to quit. Varadkar is due to play a major role in the Brexit talks, telling EU leaders whether Ireland believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britain s province of Northern Ireland. The border is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move the talks on to a second phase about trade, as Britain wants. While Varadkar could go into the summit in a caretaker role, he said that any election would have to happen before Christmas so that he or his successor could attend the next meeting of EU leaders in February with a fresh mandate. The head of opposition party Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin, earlier said an election can be avoided if the government takes action by asking Fitzgerald to resign. Varadkar said he would not seek, nor did he expect to be offered, a resignation. Fianna Fail supports the minority Fine Gael government in a confidence and supply arrangement. Voting no confidence in a minister would break that agreement. Varadkar and Martin met on Friday and were due to speak again over the weekend ahead of the motion of no-confidence in Fitzgerald, to be debated on Tuesday. The trigger is her handling of a legal case involving a police whistleblower. At a time when issues and decisions will need to be made that will reverberate in our country for decades to come, the prospect of either an election taking place or a government not being in place afterwards is actually unconscionable, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe told RTE. However a source familiar with Fine Gael s planning said it had begun to make preparations on Friday for a snap poll. As well as the border, the other issues Brussels wants resolved before Brexit talks move on to trade arrangements are Britain s financial settlement on leaving the bloc and the rights of EU citizens living in Britain. EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier assured Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney on Friday that the EU would defend Dublin s position in talks with Britain over the coming weeks. Coveney told parliament on Thursday the government was not yet ready to allow the talks to move on to trade issues, and needed more clarity from London. Fianna Fail s Martin said parliament would be united behind Varadkar at the December summit. University College Dublin politics professor David Farrell said Varadkar may be tempted to take an even harder line against the United Kingdom in the talks in a bid to shore up support among Irish voters, who are overwhelmingly against Brexit. I suppose the only card he can try and play to distract from the crazy shenanigans around the causes of this election is leadership in Europe, he said. An election would likely be dominated by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, two centre-right parties that differ little on policy but have been bitter foes for decades, something that has always left the minority government one serious row away from collapse. But it would also present an opportunity for left-wing opposition party Sinn Fein to see if its veteran leader Gerry Adams decision last week to step down will boost its support. The party said deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald would lead them into the election, if one is called. While Sinn Fein, the third largest party in the Republic, has said it wants to enter government, the two largest parties have ruled out doing a deal with the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Since Varadkar s appointment as Fine Gael leader six months ago, his party has narrowly led Fianna Fail in opinion polls, which suggest both parties would increase their support but struggle to form anything but another minority government. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine's promise of EU membership remains elusive;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU leaders offered Ukraine closer ties on Friday at a summit meant to cement Kiev s ties with the West, but they declined to promise that the country could one day join the bloc. As fighting escalated in Ukraine s industrial east, EU leaders held a summit with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and five other former Soviet republics, part of a tug-of-war with Russia for influence through trade and cooperation. In a summit statement also signed by Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus, EU leaders agreed to the European aspirations and European choice of the partners - code for deeper integration without offering membership. Ukraine, which ousted a Russian-backed president in February 2014 in a pro-European uprising, wants the promise of future membership of the EU, the world s biggest trading bloc, as it seeks to overcome entrenched corruption and economic neglect. A promise of EU membership is important, it s symbolic, said Ukraine s Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk on the margins of the biennial summit. No other country was willing to pay such a high price as we did, he told Reuters. Kiev, fighting a Russian-backed insurgency in the east, sees a promise of membership as a morale-boosting next step after agreeing a free-trade accord with the bloc and winning visa-free travel to the EU for its citizens. Some EU leaders are sympathetic to Kiev and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he promised Poroshenko a formal study into how Ukraine might join the EU s customs union. The summit s chairman Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, said: I would have preferred that the wording of the (summit) agreement were more ambitious without giving details. But other leaders warned Ukraine not to push too hard, in part because governments are seeking to curb immigration and face down far-right political parties at home, and also because Ukraine s fragile economy is not yet ready to meet EU norms. Stubbornness is good, but the most important thing is not guarantees on entering (the EU), but to be stubborn about reforms, said Lithuania s President Dalia Grybauskaite. Any membership is only as valuable as it is beneficial for Ukraine, she said, referring to the country s need to reform to meet EU business, health and other trade standards. Luxembourg s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel echoed that position, saying it was not the right moment to be discussing any future Ukrainian membership of the European Union. Backed by Washington, the European Union is seeking to build an outer ring of market democracies from the Caucasus to the Sahara without offering EU membership, a policy that has had limited success so far. Ukraine is also unhappy about being grouped in with Belarus, a Russian ally whose authoritarian leader, President Alexander Lukashenko, did not attend the summit on Friday despite being invited for the first time. On leaving the summit, Poroshenko said he expected a breakthrough soon on a stalled 600 million euro ($712 million) loan to the financial sector from the EU that is held up by Ukraine s failure to meet conditions. Danylyuk told Reuters he also saw the next IMF aid tranche coming early next year. Wary that reforms will slow as Ukraine moves closer to elections in 2019, the EU and IMF governments are using their financial support to push anti-corruption reforms. European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU integration, said it was ridiculous that 1.5 million Ukrainians signed up to a wealth declarations register last year but only 100 people had been assessed to date. Danylyuk countered that he was facing a campaign against his economic reform efforts from powerful business groups that benefited from corruption and legal loopholes. This is a fight, he said. For vested interests, it s like we are taking their money. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Strike called in Bangladesh over power price rise on day pope arrives;DHAKA (Reuters) - Several small opposition parties in Bangladesh have called for a half-day strike on Thursday against a power tariff increase, which could cause traffic chaos in the congested capital as Pope Francis arrives for a three-day visit. The strike will begin on Thursday morning and end in the early afternoon, after the pope is expected to land in Dhaka following a visit to neighboring Myanmar. Strikes in Bangladesh often involve street protests. The Communist Party of Bangladesh, which is leading the protest against the increase in electricity prices by an average of 5.3 percent from next month, said it had no intention of disrupting the pope s visit but the action was necessary given the burden on the people. But police said there would be no problem. We will be able to control the situation during the strike and there is nothing to worry about, said police spokeswoman Sahely Ferdous. Dhaka is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with an average traffic speed of just 7 kph (4.3 mph), slightly faster than an average walking speed, according to the World Bank. Congestion in Dhaka eats up 3.2 million working hours per day, it says. (bit.ly/2zkYr6l) Pope Francis visit will include a mass and meetings with a group of Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh following violence in Myanmar since late August. [nL8N1NS2HN] ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine agrees to sign EU summit declaration: officials;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union and six former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, agreed a joint summit declaration on Friday that aims to help bring the countries closer to the West, overcoming Kiev s objections, two EU officials said. It s been agreed, one official said as leaders from EU member states and from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan met for talks in Brussels. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'There is justice,' Steenkamps say after Pistorius sentence doubled;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The family of murdered model Reeva Steenkamp welcomed the increased sentence of 13 years and five months handed down on Paralympian Oscar Pistorius on Friday and said it showed that justice could prevail in South Africa. This is an emotional thing for them. They just feel that their trust in the justice system has been confirmed this morning, Tania Koen, a spokeswoman for the Steenkamp family, told Reuters. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Debate stifled in Cambodia as crackdown spreads fear;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - We speak our mind , says the website of a group of young Cambodians who have met at weekends for the past six years to discuss politics over mugs of coffee. But discussions by the Politikoffee group were postponed indefinitely by the organizers after the main opposition party was dissolved last week at the request of authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen s government. For participants, the suspension of their meetings because of the difficult environment was just one more sign of debate being shut down in what has been one of Southeast Asia s most open societies. People are sensitive in talking about politics or talking about what the government is doing right now, said Noan Sereiboth, 28, a researcher for health projects who was a regular attendee at the Politikoffee gatherings. Sometimes people s parents tell them not to talk about politics to stay safe, he said. The arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha for alleged treason in September and the ban on his party have eliminated the main obstacles to Hun Sen extending more than three decades in power in a general election next year. But the crackdown by the government has been felt much deeper: to once vocal civil society groups nurtured by Western donors, to independent media and to anyone posting subversive comment on social media. Local NGOs have been paralyzed and scattered, said Naly Pilorge of the Licadho human rights group, which has a long record of reporting on detentions and land seizures. People say space is shrinking. It s not shrinking, it s closed, she told Reuters at her office in Phnom Penh. Three other groups declined to comment or did not respond to requests for official comment. It was not lost on the groups that their names featured as associates of the opposition during testimony at the Supreme Court on banning the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which was accused of plotting a revolution with American help. The opposition says there was never a plot, dismissing accusations as a ploy to eliminate Hun Sen s rival. The government said nobody had reason to fear in a country that has been transformed since the devastation wrought by the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s. Everyone has full freedom of expression in every way, said Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the Interior Ministry. We have long graduated from fear. Civil rights groups and other non-governmental organizations flourished in Cambodia with the help of Western countries that hoped to build a liberal democracy after the first multiparty elections in 1993. That brought a more open environment than in neighboring countries such as communist Vietnam and Laos or military-ruled Thailand, with its harsh sentences for criticizing the monarchy. But Western donors lack the weight they one had in Cambodia and Hun Sen has brushed of their criticism of the crackdown. China is now the biggest aid giver. Since the ban on the CNRP, it has voiced support for Cambodia in the name of protecting political stability and economic development. Politikoffee, which gets speakers from all sides for its debates, said that postponing its recent events because of the difficult environment did not mean it was giving up. We hope we can weather the dramatically changing political order, team leader Aun Chhengpor told Reuters. The forum will be back in place soon. Although the debates among a few dozen participants cost little to organize, Politikoffee uses space provided by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German pro-democracy group which said it had no say over the group s discussions. The political troubles are not evident in the daily bustle of Phnom Penh, capital of a country of 16 million people which has recorded economic growth of around seven percent for the past six years. But few wish to speak about politics. We must just keep quiet and let it pass, said Chrock Soth, 46, who just about makes a living selling bananas from his bicycle on the outskirts of the city. In an informal survey of more than 30 people in and around Phnom Penh, traditionally a stronghold of the opposition, roughly half declined to comment on the situation or said they did not care about politics. The rest were unhappy, but said they could do nothing. Youths care about politics, Noan Sereiboth said. But in the current situation they can t do anything except watch. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to detain 79 former teachers in post-coup probe: Anadolu;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities issued detention warrants on Friday for 79 former teachers, the state-run Anadolu news agency said, as part of a widening crackdown since last year s failed coup attempt. The teachers were formerly employed at schools allegedly linked to the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating last July s abortive putsch, Anadolu said. The schools were shut down after the coup attempt. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies involvement. Anadolu said security forces were carrying out operations to capture the suspects in Ankara, where thousands of teachers from across the country arrived to visit the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, to celebrate the national teachers day. Since the abortive coup, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over alleged links to Gulen, while some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the military, public and private sectors. Rights groups and some of Turkey s Western allies have voiced concern about the crackdown, fearing the government is using the coup as a pretext to quash dissent. The government says only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says deeply infiltrated institutions such as the army, schools and courts. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suicide attack kills a top Pakistani police officer: official;PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed a top Pakistani police officer and one of his guards on Friday in the city of Peshawar, police said. Additional Inspector General Ashraf Noor was leaving his home for work when the bomber rammed into his vehicle, city police chief Tahir Khan said. Noor s vehicle was engulfed in flame, killing him on the spot, Khan said. One of his five guards died in hospital, the police chief said. No group claimed responsibility. Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi condemned the attack. Our resolve to eradicate the menace of terrorism can not be shaken, he said. Peshawar is the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan. Both Pakistani and foreign militants have for years operated in lawless stretches of the border region, launching attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mnangagwa told Mugabe he will be safe in Zimbabwe: state media;HARARE (Reuters) - Incoming Zimbabwe leader Emmerson Mnangagwa assured former president Robert Mugabe he and his family would be safe in the country when the two men spoke for the first time since Mnangagwa returned home this week, state media said on Friday. The State-owned The Herald newspaper said Mugabe and Mnangagwa, who is set to be sworn in as president later on Friday, had agreed that the former leader may not attend the swearing-in ceremony because he was tired. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ousted Zimbabwe finance minister hospitalized: lawyer;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former Zimbabwean finance minister Ignatius Chombo was admitted to hospital on Friday with injuries sustained from beatings he received in military custody after the army s intervention against Robert Mugabe a week ago, his lawyer said. Lovemore Madhuku said Chombo had injuries to his hands, legs and back and was blindfolded throughout his week in custody. He was being accused of corruption and abuse of power relating to his time as local government minister more than a decade ago, Madhuku added. It was a very brutal and draconian way of dealing with opponents, he told Reuters. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico ruling party leans to outside candidate to save presidency;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The threat of losing power to a fierce leftwing rival next year is tempting Mexico s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to enlist outside help for the first time in its nine-decade history. Corruption scandals, sluggish growth, failure to curb gang violence and persistent allegations of electoral fraud have seriously eroded the centrist party s already rocky reputation ahead of the July 2018 presidential election. That has opened the door to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist former mayor of Mexico City and twice runner-up for the presidency who has set the early pace with a relentless campaign against government corruption. The PRI s presidential hopefuls can begin registering on Dec. 3 and many officials believe Jose Antonio Meade, currently finance minister, will be chosen in a bid to detoxify its brand. A fixture in the Cabinet across two rival administrations, Meade has no formal party affiliation and has distinguished himself as a discreet and diplomatic public servant with a grasp of finance and economics matched by few in Mexico. More importantly, he has avoided the damaging scandals that have engulfed the PRI under President Enrique Pena Nieto, who cannot seek a second six-year term. Heriberto Galindo, a senior PRI politician, said Meade s probity and economic savvy make him an ideal choice at a time of nagging uncertainty for Mexico due to U.S. President Donald Trump s threats to ditch the NAFTA trade deal. The Mexican public s main social concerns are corruption and impunity, and Jose Antonio Meade has a reputation for being honorable and honest, and he is honorable and honest, Galindo said. That s why I think he should be the candidate. The PRI said on Thursday that the party s candidate would be elected by a national convention on Feb. 18. By then, the candidate may be obvious. CROSS-PARTY APPEAL Nearly a dozen PRI lawmakers, serving or former government officials consulted by Reuters said they believed Meade would most likely be chosen, pointing to his cross-party appeal. None forecast it would be the most prominent PRI contender, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, who has failed to tame gang violence and was pilloried for the 2015 jail break of kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Meade has been coy about whether he wants the presidency, and some PRI grandees caution the party might spring a surprise. Education Minister Aurelio Nuno, 39, Pena Nieto s former chief of staff and one of his closest allies, as well as health minister Jose Narro, are viewed as the most likely alternatives. Speculation over Meade intensified when the PRI changed its statutes in August to make it easier for outsiders to run, but Pena Nieto has sought to dispel talk of the finance minister. Polls show he would have work to do. Meade is not widely recognized by the public, and one survey this week by polling firm Buendia & Laredo put him 14 percentage points behind Lopez Obrador in a match-up with a third leading contender. However, PRI officials supportive of Meade believe he could persuade enough Mexicans opposed to Lopez Obrador to cast a so-called voto util (useful vote) and win. Much of that calculus, they argue, rests on Meade s ties to the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which ruled Mexico from 2000 to 2012 and has fought bitterly with Lopez Obrador. Entering government bureaucracy in the 1990s, Meade was by 2011 minister for energy, and later that year, finance. Many PAN lawmakers speak warmly of him and say that if the 2018 race became a choice between Lopez Obrador and Meade, they could back the latter. Yet the fact the PRI is considering somebody from outside its ranks shows the extent of the party s troubles, said Ernesto Cordero, a PAN senator who preceded Meade as finance minister. An October study by pollster Mitofsky showed that while the PRI slightly lagged the PAN and Lopez Obrador s MORENA party in terms of active support - backed by about 18 percent of voters - it was easily the most unpopular, rejected by over half. In strategic terms, the PRI needs a candidate that can say his hands are clean, Cordero said. Pena Nieto made Meade foreign minister in 2012 before he eventually returned to the finance ministry last year, making him, at 48, the most experienced Cabinet member in government. Expectations that the PRI could soon pass the torch to Meade were heightened on Wednesday when Pena Nieto s top aide, foreign minister Luis Videgaray, described the Yale-educated economist in glowing terms at an event. Under the leadership of Jose Antonio Meade, Mexico today has a direction, stability and has clarity in its decision-making on economic policy, Videgaray said. However, on Thursday Pena Nieto attempted to knock down the impression Videgaray s words had created. Don t be fooled, he told reporters. The PRI doesn t choose its candidate on the basis of praise or applause. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Looming national security laws raise fresh fears for Hong Kong's freedoms;HONG KONG (Reuters) - Amid calls from Hong Kong s pro-Beijing elite for sweeping new national security laws, government advisers and lawyers say the legislation is likely to be tougher than proposals shelved 14 years ago, raising fears about the city s cherished freedoms. Those demanding urgency for the long-delayed Article 23 are using a fledgling independence movement in the former British colony as justification even though the independence debate would have been allowed when Article 23 was first proposed in 2003. Lawyers, diplomats and activists fear the new pressure could lead to legal overkill in an open city already struggling with increased interference from Beijing s Communist Party rulers. We can see an intolerance from the central authorities over any kind of independence discussion, said Simon Young, a professor at the University of Hong Kong law school. In this atmosphere, there is a concern that we could end up with something that criminalizes even the advocacy of independence, something that goes much further and is tougher than the previous proposals. Kevin Yam, of Hong Kong s Progressive Lawyers Group, said it was vital to win the argument against independence by persuasion and debate, rather than a sweeping new law that curbs freedoms. If the government goes too far, it will undoubtedly have a chilling impact on Hong Kong, he said. This is of great concern. The government, in response to Reuters questions, did not provide information on when or how it would kick-start legislation, but said it will seek to create a favorable social environment for the community to handle this constitutional obligation ... in a positive manner. Hong Kong, a free-wheeling global financial hub, has been ruled under a one country, two systems formula since Britain handed it back to China in 1997, guaranteeing freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and freedom of expression. Those freedoms are outlined in the Basic Law, a mini-constitution that also demands the city pass its own law covering treason, secession and subversion against Beijing. But many see Beijing increasingly involved in Hong Kong s affairs, such as the shadowy detention in 2015 of five Hong Kong booksellers who sold gossipy material critical of Beijing, and a legal interpretation from the Chinese parliament that eventually led to the disqualification of six democratically elected lawmakers. The calls to enact Article 23 follow that pattern, they say. Previous government proposals outlawed incitement to violence but sought to protect political debate. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest against Article 23 in 2003, forcing the government to shelve it. Months-long pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014 further heightened political sensitivities surrounding the legislation, and the government has not set a firm timetable to re-introduce it. But now pressure is mounting on Hong Kong to push through the laws after mainland officials expressed concerns in both public and private meetings. Senior Chinese parliamentarian Li Fei used a visit to Hong Kong last week to warn that Article 23 was a duty that can t be shirked while the chief of China s Liaison Office in the city also called for action. Many risks and potential hazards that would affect or even threaten national sovereignty, security and developmental interests have not been effectively eliminated or prevented, Liaison Office chief and Communist Party Central Committee member Wang Zhimin told pro-establishment lawmakers, according to his office s website. Chinese President Xi Jinping took what some saw as a harder line on Hong Kong s future during his visit in July to mark the 20th anniversary of the handover from the British. Challenges and threats to China s sovereignty and power, or the use of Hong Kong as a base for infiltration and sabotage, were acts that crossed the red line and were absolutely impermissible , Xi said. Two members of Hong Kong s executive council - effectively the cabinet of leader Carrie Lam - have told Reuters that the 2003 bill would almost certainly have to be updated to reflect the fresh concerns. The city s independence movement, which has largely gone underground after most of its young leaders were charged for their roles in various protests, did not exist in 2003. Executive Council member Regina Ip - who pushed the previous bill as Hong Kong s then-security chief - said she could not say if the old proposals were sufficient in 2017. We must review any proposed legislation against the evolving security situation... that is only natural, she said. Her colleague and moderate democrat Ronny Tong said he believed, realistically, any new laws could draw the line at organized efforts to promote independence. If the last version were to be passed, in fact it would not stop ... what is done by the students, because they are not advocating violence, he said. Hong Kong people are getting more and more intolerant of Beijing, and they (Chinese rulers) don t like that at all. Even short of independence, they feel that something needs to be done ... to try to make people more respectful to Beijing. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vast majority of suspects in graft probe agreeing to settle, crown prince says;DUBAI (Reuters) - The vast majority of about 200 businessmen and officials implicated in a sweeping crackdown on corruption are agreeing to settlements under which they hand over assets to the government, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the New York Times. We show them all the files that we have and as soon as they see those about 95 percent agree to a settlement, which means signing over cash or shares in their companies to the Saudi Treasury, the newspaper quoted Prince Mohammed as saying. About 1 percent are able to prove they are clean and their case is dropped right there. About 4 percent say they are not corrupt and with their lawyers want to go to court. Prince Mohammed repeated a previous official estimate that the government could eventually recover around $100 billion of illicit money through settlements. The government said two weeks ago that it had questioned 208 people in the crackdown and released seven without charge. Dozens of princes, senior officials and top businessmen are believed to be held in Riyadh s opulent Ritz Carlton hotel as their cases are processed. Over 2,000 Saudi bank accounts have been frozen during the probe, causing concern that the crackdown could damage the economy. But the government has insisted that the companies of detained businessmen will continue operating normally. We have experts making sure no businesses are bankrupted in the process, Prince Mohammed told the Times. He dismissed suggestions that the crackdown aimed to strengthen his political power as ludicrous, noting that prominent people held at the Ritz had already publicly pledged allegiance to him and his reforms. A majority of the royal family is behind him, Prince Mohammed said. Under Saudi law, the public prosecutor is independent. We cannot interfere with his job the king can dismiss him, but he is driving the process. You have to send a signal, and the signal going forward now is, You will not escape. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Time Magazine Humiliates Trump After He Lies About Award;Donald Trump isn t polling well in the readers choice poll, getting his ass kicked in Time s Person Of The Year by Taylor Swift, the #MeToo movement, and the mayor of San Juan, the latter of which he has repeatedly targeted on Twitter. But that s different from Time Magazine s person of the year which is chosen by the editors. Trump did win last year, but it s one year after the election and he s the least popular president in the history of polling. So, President Liar Pants lied on Twitter about why he s not receiving the award. Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named Man (Person) of the Year, like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot, he wrote. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway! Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named Man (Person) of the Year, like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017No one is buying that excuse especially Time magazine. The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year, the magazine wrote on its official Twitter account. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6. The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6. TIME (@TIME) November 25, 2017Time s chief content officer, Alan Murray, also fired back at Trump from his own personal Twitter account. Amazing, Mr. Murray wrote. Not a speck of truth here Trump tweets he took a pass at being named TIME s person of the year. Amazing. Not a speck of truth here Trump tweets he 'took a pass' at being named TIME's person of the year https://t.co/D6SJgyTpcY Alan Murray (@alansmurray) November 25, 2017In the following tweet, Murray called Trump s claim total bullshit.Total BS https://t.co/jrUPRbLCGQ Alan Murray (@alansmurray) November 25, 2017In 2016, Trump called winning the 2016 award from the magazine a tremendous honor. The former reality show star turned president was busted in June for hanging a photoshopped Time cover featuring himself on the walls of at least four of his seventeen golf courses. The fake headlines touted his success. Trump has been grifting the U.S. since then with wild-eyed claims that only his cult-like supporters would believe.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.;News;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Regional African body says ready to work closely with Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The Southern African Development Community (SADC), an intergovernmental organization, said on Friday that it was ready to work closely with Zimbabwe s incoming leader Emmerson Mnangagwa and his government. Mnangagwa is due to be sworn in as Zimbabwean president on Friday following the resignation of Robert Mugabe, who had ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. SADC is a 16-country intergovernmental organization which is currently chaired by South Africa. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Five Ukrainian servicemen killed in eastern Ukraine: military;KIEV (Reuters) - Five Ukrainian servicemen were killed when pro-Russian rebels attacked government positions mostly in the Luhansk region on Thursday, the Ukrainian military said. An almost three-year-old peace agreement has failed to stop fighting in eastern Ukraine with each side accusing the other of violating the terms of a ceasefire on a near-daily basis. The Ukrainian military said in a statement they suffered losses during an eight-hour clash near the small village of Krymske, 30 km (20 miles) west of Luhansk. The situation in the Luhansk region had escalated after a conflict between separatist factions controlling the city. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least three dead as Indian passenger train derails in northern India;MUMBAI (Reuters) - A passenger train slipped off the rails in northern India early on Friday, killing at least three people and injuring about 10, the railways ministry said. The train was on its way from Goa in western India to Patna in the east when 13 coaches derailed, the ministry said. It did not provide any reason for the accident, which occurred in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Television news agency ANI however quoted the Uttar Pradesh Additional Director General of police as saying that the cause of accident is most probably a fractured railway track as per local assessment. A medical train and a relief train had reached the accident spot, the railways said. India has seen a spate of rail accidents over the last 12 months. Earlier in August, there were three separate incidents on the world s fourth-biggest rail network injuring over 165 people and killing several others. The biggest accident so far this year was on Aug. 19 in Uttar Pradesh, which resulted in the death of 23 people and led to the suspension of three senior railways officials. A crash in Uttar Pradesh last November killed 150 people. India s ailing rail network is in the midst of a $130 billion, five-year modernization process. In addition, the government launched a $15 billion safety overhaul in February after the surge in accidents blamed on defective tracks. But in June, Reuters reported that the overhaul was facing delays as the state steel company could not meet demand for new rails. [nL3N1JO1TU] ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa promises financial stability, elections next year;HARARE (Reuters) - In his inaugural address, Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised on Friday that elections would be held next year as scheduled and outlined a broad vision for restoring economic and financial stability. Mnangagwa, who took over from Robert Mugabe after a military intervention, also told a packed national stadium in Harare that Zimbabwe was ready to re-engage with the outside world but said its land reform process could not be reversed. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Navy halts search for three sailors lost in Philippine Sea air crash;TOKYO (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy said it has called off a search for three sailors missing since a transport plane crashed in the Philippines Sea south of Japan on Wednesday enroute to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. During the course of two days, eight U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Defence Force ships, three helicopter squadrons and maritime patrol aircraft covered nearly 1,000 square nautical miles, the U.S. Seventh Fleet said in a press release. Eight other people on a C-2 Greyhound were rescued shortly after the aircraft crashed and transferred to the Reagan. The latest Navy accident in the Asia Pacific comes after two deadly incidents in the region involving U.S. warships that have raised questions about training and the pace of Navy operations in the region, prompting a Congressional hearing and the removal of a number of some senior officers. The propeller powered C-2 on Wednesday was conducting a routine flight carrying passengers and cargo from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan to the carrier. The mainstay transport aircraft for the U.S. carrier fleet has been in operation for more than five decades and is due to be replaced by a long-range version of the tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft. The U.S. Navy said it is investigating the cause of the crash. Japanese Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera told reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. Navy informed him that the crash may have been a result of engine trouble. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican ruling party to pick presidential candidate on February 18;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) said on Thursday registration for PRI contenders in the July 2018 presidential election will begin on Dec. 3, and that a national convention would pick the candidate on Feb. 18. In a statement, the PRI said the national convention would be made up of around 19,100 delegates to be chosen during the second week of December. President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking a second six-year term. Ruling Mexico continuously from 1929, the PRI had become a byword for corruption by the time it was voted out in 2000. Pena Nieto returned the party to power in 2012, but a slew of corruption scandals, ongoing gang violence and anemic growth have sapped the PRI s credibility in the past five years. The party faces an uphill struggle to hang on to power, and veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, twice a runner-up for the presidency, has led most early polling for 2018. The run-up to the election takes place in the midst of fraught discussions between Mexico, the United States and Canada over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which underpins much of the region s commerce. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to walk away from the accord if he cannot rework it in favor of the United States. The three nations have pledged to keep talking through March. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe army hands ex-finance minister to police: relative;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former Zimbabwe finance minister Ignatius Chombo, who was among those detained by the military in an operation against criminals around ousted president Robert Mugabe last week, has been handed over to the police, a relative said on Friday. The relative, who wished to remain anonymous because of safety fears, said Chombo had been severely beaten while in military custody. Police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said she had no information about Chombo. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish lawmakers initially approve bill changing electoral system;WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish lawmakers from the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party initially approved on Friday a bill changing the electoral system that the opposition denounced as threatening the fairness of elections. The bill, which would replace all current members of a body responsible for conducting and overseeing elections, will now be sent to a parliamentary committee for further works. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland's Fianna Fail party says will be election if deputy PM does not resign;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s second-largest party Fianna Fail, which helps prop up the government, indicated on Friday it would force an election if the country s deputy prime minister does not resign over a policing scandal. Asked in an interview with national broadcaster RTE whether the only thing that could prevent a snap general election was the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald, senior Fianna Fail member Dara Calleary said: I think so. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nepal to elect new parliament after years of instability;KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepalis vote on Sunday to choose a new parliament and seven state assemblies hoping to end years of fickle coalitions and complete a tumultuous transition, more than a decade after the end of a civil war. The two-phase election is also expected to determine the path the country takes in balancing ties with China and India, both of whom are pushing hard to expand influence in the buffer state. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba s centrist Nepali Congress party faces a tight battle against a left alliance between the main group of Maoist former rebels and the opposition Communist UML party. About 15.4 million eligible voters are tasked to pick a 275-member parliament - 165 through first-past-the-post and 110 through proportional representation - the first under a new constitution agreed after years of wrangling. Simultaneously, voters will choose representatives to seven provincial assemblies for the first time after Nepal turned into a federal republic and abolished monarchy in 2008. These elections will firmly put the country on the path of stability and prosperity, Deuba, the country s tenth prime minister in as many years, told Reuters. Counting of votes will begin after the second round of polling on Dec 7 and complete results may not be known until the middle of December because of cumbersome counting procedures. Political analysts say that the left alliance is likely to open up the country further to Chinese investments if they were to come to power in the election. Already, the UML has said it would hand back the country s biggest hydro-electric project to China after the Deuba-government, seen as more pro-India, canceled the deal citing lapses in the contract. Our government will revoke the decision after the election, UML general secretary Ishwar Pokharel said, adding there was nothing wrong in the $2.5 billion deal with China Gezhouba Group Corporation to build a 1,200 megawatt plant. Soon after the cancellation of the deal, the chairman of Indian state-run power company NHPC Ltd said it could bid for the project, underlining Delhi s attempts to claw back ground in a country which it has long considered its backyard. The performance of the two largest communist parties in the elections could determine the course of Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in Nepal, said Guna Raj Luintel, editor of the Nagarik daily. In March, Nepal received letters of intent worth $8.4 billion from Chinese investors compared with $300 million received from Indian delegates at an investment summit, officials said. Deuba s Nepali Congress has struck a loose-knit alliance with ethnic Madhesi minority groups who live in the southern plains and have long complained of being sidelined by the Kathmandu-based main political parties. Madhesis account for one third of Nepal s 28 million people and Deuba has promised to amend the constitution to address their grievances if the alliance won the election. Aid and tourism dependent Nepal, recovering from a devastating earthquake that killed 9,000 people in 2015, is among the world s poorest. The economy, which saw zero growth last year due to instability and the earthquake, is expected to expand by 6.9 percent this year because of improved power supply and agricultural production, officials said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Jumblatt criticizes Saudi over Hariri;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Friday criticized the way Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri had been treated by some Saudi circles , the first time he has appeared to direct blame at Riyadh over Hariri s resignation this month. Jumblatt also condemned Iranian dictates , an apparent response to a statement by the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards this week that disarming of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah was out of the question. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia put Hariri under effective house arrest in Riyadh and forced him to declare his resignation on Nov. 4. Saudi Arabia has denied holding Hariri against his will or forcing him to resign. Hariri shelved his resignation on Wednesday after returning to Beirut this week following an intervention by France. His resignation had thrust Lebanon to the forefront of the regional tussle between the Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Islamist Iran. As Lebanese disapproved the unaccustomed way that Sheikh Saad was dealt with by some Saudi circles, we reject this Iranian diktat from Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Jumblatt wrote. He appeared to be referring to Jafari s comment that disarming the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah was out of the question. The Lebanese have enough experience and knowledge to deal with their affairs through dialogue. We do not want dictates from across the borders that go against their interests, Jumblatt said. Announcing his decision to suspend his resignation, Hariri stressed Lebanon must stick by its stated policy of staying out of regional conflicts, a reference to Hezbollah whose regional military role is a source of deep concern in Saudi Arabia. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish PM's party says government deal dead if opposition submits confidence motion;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The deal propping up the Irish government will be dead if opposition party Fianna Fail submits a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister before a 1100 deadline, Employment minister Regina Doherty said on Friday. It had been unclear whether the ruling party considered submitting the motion sufficient to violate the terms of the three-year deal, which Prime Minister Leo Varadkar s minority government depends on to rule, or whether it would consider the deal broken only when a vote on the motion was taken. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte ditches peace process with Maoist rebels;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday he has terminated intermittent peace talks with Maoist-led rebels and would consider them terrorists because hostilities had continued during negotiations. Ending the nearly half-century long conflict with the communists, in which more than 40,000 people have been killed, was among Duterte s priorities when he took office in June last year. Duterte said he would consider the political arm of the Maoists a terrorist group and was demanding that dozens of rebel leaders he freed last year in order to restart talks turn themselves in. I am ordering those I have released temporarily to surrender or face again punitive action, Duterte in a speech to soldiers. Let it not be said that I did not try to reach out to them, he said. Duterte on Thursday signed a proclamation ending the peace talks, which started in August last year and were brokered by Norway. Talks have been intermittent since 1986. We find it unfortunate that their members have failed to show their sincerity and commitment in pursuing genuine and meaningful peaceful negotiations, Duterte s spokesman, Harry Roque, said in a statement late on Thursday. In May, government negotiators canceled a round of formal talks with the Maoist-led rebels in the Netherlands as the guerrillas stepped up attacks in the countryside. The rebels had no choice but to intensify guerrilla warfare in rural areas, Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF), said in a statement. The NDF, the political arm of the Maoist guerrillas, said it regretted the unilateral cancellation of talks on such vital social and economic reforms. Government troops were advised to stay alert on the movements of the estimated 3,800 leftist guerrillas, said military spokesman Major-General Restituto Padilla. Government forces are also battling Islamist fighters in the south of the largely Christian country, some of whom recently occupied a town for several months in the biggest battle in the Philippines since World War Two. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German president to hold joint talks with Merkel, Schulz next week;BERLIN (Reuters) - German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will host a joint meeting next week between Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), a spokeswoman said. Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their CSU Bavarian sister party have ruled with the SPD in a grand coalition since 2013 and their caretaker government remains in place after an election in September. After meeting this week with the leaders of the CDU, CSU and SPD the federal president has agreed to meet a joint meeting at Schloss Bellevue, Steinmeier s spokeswoman said in a statement. The meeting takes place next week. The exact date will be communicated at a later time. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Conditions not yet in place for safe Rohingya returns: UNHCR;GENEVA (Reuters) - Conditions in Myanmar s northern Rakhine state are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns of more than 600,000 Rohingya refugees who fled violence to Bangladesh since late August, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. UNHCR said it had still not seen a repatriation agreement signed by the two countries on Thursday, but stressed that any returns by the traumatized group must be safe and voluntary. Spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing: It is important that international standards apply, and we are ready to help. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland does not need election amid crucial Brexit talks: Coveney;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ireland does not need an election now that talks on the terms of Britain s exit from the European Union are entering a crucial phase on how to avoid a physical border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Friday. The Irish government was on the verge of collapse on Thursday after the party whose votes Prime Minister Leo Varadkar depends on to pass legislation said it would seek to remove the deputy prime minister in a breach of their cooperation agreement. Ireland does not need an election right now. There is no reason why Frances Fitzgerald should be forced to resign. The issues that are under discussion are under investigation by a tribunal we all agreed to set up, Coveney said. The main opposition party... are risking an election at a time when there are some really, really serious issues for the government to manage in the national interests, he said referring to Brexit negotiations. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish foreign minister says opposition vote would bring down government;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s government will collapse if the opposition Fianna Fail party proceeds with its plan to vote for the resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said. If they move ahead with the motion of no confidence, then the confidence and supply (agreement) is over, Coveney, a member of the ruling Fine Gael party, told state broadcaster RTE on Friday, referring to a three-year agreement Fianna Fail signed to support the government. If there is no confidence and supply agreement in place ... then I don t see how we can have a government that can function, he said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Border without doctors? South Koreans urge more funding for trauma care after defector drama;SEOUL (Reuters) - A defector s treatment for critical injuries suffered during a dramatic dash from North Korea has highlighted a shortage of South Korean trauma doctors and again underscored Seoul s lack of preparedness in the event of hostilities with Pyongyang. The defector, identified only by his family name of Oh, was shot at least four times by his former comrades during his daring escape into South Korea last week. American military helicopters flew the wounded soldier not to one of the many hospitals in Seoul, closer to the border, but to the Ajou University trauma center an hour south of the capital. The center, and its lead surgeon John Cook-Jong Lee, have been thrust into the spotlight amid a push for more trauma facilities and specialist doctors in a country still technically at war and where preventable trauma death rates are already amongst the highest in the OECD. An official at South Korea s Ministry of Health said more than 30 percent of people who suffered fatal trauma injuries last year could have survived if they had access to proper, timely treatment. That s far higher than the 10 to 15 percent in places such as the United States and Japan. Although 133 surgeons are currently entitled to perform trauma surgery, I highly doubt that all of them can actually perform, said Park Chan-yong, general affairs manager of the Korean Society of Traumatology. Many of them just gained the rights, but never had practiced this kind of surgery. By Friday, attention sparked by the defector s case had prompted nearly 200,000 South Koreans to join a petition asking the presidential Blue House to boost funding for Lee s trauma center, one of just nine in the country. During increased tensions this year with heavily armed North Korea, Seoul has faced criticism over a lack of preparation for major emergencies, with many bomb shelters, for example, laying forgotten and unstocked with food or water. The government has launched programs to raise awareness, but public emergency drills often fail to attract much response. Despite the apparent need for specialists, Lee said he has faced ignorance, including from some doctors who complained he was showing off with new techniques, since returning from training in the United States in 2003. I had to explain whenever I met new doctors here, what a trauma surgeon was. Every day, he said. Often, trauma medicine is not seen as attractive or lucrative as other fields, said Park. Residents and medical students avoid coming to traumatology, because there is no hope and no dream. The South Korean government says it recognizes the problem, and in 2014 set a goal of lowering its rate of preventable trauma fatalities to levels closer to those of other OECD countries by 2020. But with a shortage of funding, only half of a planned 17 regional trauma centers have been built so far, a health ministry official said. Germany, for example, has less than twice the population of South Korea, but 10 times as many operational trauma centers. South Korea s strict gun control laws also mean there are far fewer gunshot wounds like those suffered by the defector. Between January 2012 and August 2017, 31 people were killed and 51 wounded by guns, according to the police. In comparison, in the United States, where Lee trained, more than 33,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year, according to annual averages of government data. However, the kinds of industrial accidents and car crashes commonly seen in South Korea can cause equally bad injuries, Lee said. In South Korea, roughly speaking, more than 90 percent of trauma victims are brought to the hospital in less than an hour, Lee said. However, frequently, they are put in emergency rooms for a while, sometime for hours, to get proper care. Lee has made a name for himself and the Ajou trauma center, in part by cultivating a close relationship with the American and South Korean militaries, making it an obvious choice for the defector s treatment. Lee said his fascination with the American medical evacuation crews and the techniques he learned in the United States have led him to push for a series of new additions at the trauma center, including a recently completed roof-top helipad with flashing neon messages in English for American pilots. U.S. military air crews, however, have yet to obtain Pentagon permission to use the new helipad, Lee said. The arrival of the North Korean defector has brought Lee a new round of criticism for appearing to seek attention, including from one lawmaker, a charge he says is unfounded. But it has also highlighted the need for more funding for his center and more trauma facilities in South Korea. To those who get only 10, 20 minutes of sleep while working to save emergency room patients, to those who only get to go home once a week or not even that we should not be criticizing them but rather, discuss how to resolve problems within the system, the petition submitted to the Blue House said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says progress made towards cooperation on disputed islands;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday progress had been made on confidence-building measures related to a territorial dispute between Moscow and Tokyo. The measures focused on easing access for Japanese visitors to the disputed islands in the Pacific, known in Russia as the Kurile Islands and in Japan as the Northern Territories, and boosting economic cooperation in the islands. Lavrov was speaking after talks in Moscow with his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Covering Mugabe for Reuters - 'You're the one who says I'm dying?';HARARE (Reuters) - Retired correspondent Cris Chinaka worked for Reuters in Harare from 1990 to 2015. Before that he reported on Zimbabwe for the ZIANA news agency and MOTO, a weekly newspaper. Here he reflects on a third of a century of covering Uncle Bob . There are two images of Robert Gabriel Mugabe that jump out of my memory to illustrate the contrasting sides of the man who led Zimbabwe for 37 years. The first is of a combative and ebullient 57-year-old, dressed in an olive green military-type suit in the dying days of what was then white-run Rhodesia. Waving a clenched fist in the air, he was scolding his opponents and rallying his supporters as they marched confidently towards the birth of a new nation: Zimbabwe. The second is of a shrunken 93-year-old slumped in a cushioned seat, snoozing. His wife Grace, more than 40 years his junior, whispers in his ear while placing a colorful cowboy hat on his head as thousands of fawning ZANU-PF party faithful applauded. In the nearly four decades that separated those two episodes, Zimbabwe had, in the eyes of its critics, declined into the same state as its leader: hollowed out, impotent and for some an object of ridicule. That first image is from my first meeting with Mugabe, in February 1980, at a ZANU-PF rally in the southeastern province of Masvingo, ahead of the vote that would mark independence from Britain. As Mugabe was ushered off the stage by his security guards, I introduced myself, shook his hand and asked for an interview. He was warm and attentive at this approach from a junior reporter and said my newspaper, the MOTO weekly, was one of his favorite publications. Aside from its nationalist editorial line, the paper may also have appealed to the Jesuit-educated Mugabe as it was published by the Catholic Church to which he belonged. Shortly after our conversation, Mugabe survived what would be one of many assassination attempts when a land mine exploded, narrowly missed his vehicle in the motorcade heading back to the capital, Harare. I had a longer one-on-one meeting three years later in March 1983 in India, where I was on a Commonwealth scholarship studying for a postgraduate degree in journalism. Mugabe prided himself on his elephantine and encyclopedic memory, but he must have been briefed on the backgrounds of the students at the Zimbabwean mission function in Delhi. When I introduced myself, he remarked, Oh, you are our Roman Catholic man, right? Five years later, when I was covering an official visit to Brussels for Zimbabwe s national news agency, Mugabe s chief of protocol told him: Your Excellency, that young Roman Catholic man is now a father. On the return journey, Mugabe came through from the presidential section of the plane into economy class, as he frequently did on such trips, to chat with members of the delegation. This time he sat next to me. He asked about my wife and our new baby daughter. We also discussed my job and current affairs. As he got up to leave after a 30-minute conversation, Mugabe said: You sound like an intelligent young man. Why did you go into journalism? Was he just joking, or was this a rare insight into what Mugabe - a man who would later be accused of gagging free speech and individual rights - really thought about the news business? YOU RE THE ONE WHO SAYS I M DYING? Mugabe knew the name of my daughter, Tariro, and for many years he would ask after her. I sometimes thought he remembered because she was born around the same time as his own daughter, Bona. On other foreign trips around Africa and Europe, I had opportunities for discussions with Mugabe, invariably about the subject of his mission, but I always got a sense that he was only giving away glimpses of his real thoughts and feelings. Even as his years advanced and his ability to recall distant facts and figures deserted him, he retained a sense of humor - especially at suggestions that he was on his way out. In 2010, having secured an interview for Reuters, I was ushered into his office and greeted him as he sat behind his desk. In return, he remarked with a smile: Aargh, so you are the man who has been reporting that I am dying? The interview lasted 90 minutes, and covered everything from his health, the desperate state of the economy and the Western sanctions that his ZANU-PF government blamed for the ills that had befallen the nation. My story focused on his denial that he was suffering from cancer and featured, for the first time, a line that he would repeat many times over the following years. Jesus died once, and resurrected only once - and poor Mugabe several times, he said, clapping his hands in glee. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma congratulates Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa on swearing-in;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma congratulated Emmerson Mnangagwa as he was sworn in as Zimbabwean president on Friday and said he hoped Mnangagwa would steer his country successfully through the transition from Robert Mugabe s rule. Zuma s comments were the first he has made in public since Mnangagwa emerged as the new leader of Zimbabwe following a military intervention against Mugabe. He made them at talks with Angolan President Joao Lourenco in South Africa s capital Pretoria. Lourenco was paying a state visit to South Africa that had been previously scheduled. The two leaders did not attend Mnangagwa s inauguration in Harare. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Afghan air strike kills about 20 Taliban at religious school - officials;KABUL (Reuters) - A rocket attack on an Afghan religious school killed about 20 Taliban insurgents exchanging fire with security forces, officials said on Friday, adding that no children were among the victims. The insurgents had taken shelter at the school compound in the central eastern province of Wardak, 35 km (20 miles) southwest of the capital, Kabul, when the air strike hit late on Wednesday, the officials said. International forces that conduct most of the air strikes across the country were not immediately available for comment. Abdul Rahman Mangal, a spokesman for the governor of Wardak, said there were no civilian casualties, adding that all the pupils had gone home before the air strike. Foreign troops have stepped up air strikes in Afghanistan in recent months as Afghan forces struggle against a resilient Taliban insurgency. The Taliban are seeking to reimpose strict Islamic law after their 2001 ouster by U.S.-led troops. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Newly freed Pakistani Islamist calls ex-PM Nawaz Sharif a 'traitor';LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A newly freed Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai called on Friday ousted former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a traitor for seeking peace with neighbor and arch-foe India. Hafiz Saeed, who has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head over the Mumbai attack, spoke at Friday prayers after being freed earlier in the day from 11 months of house arrest by a court that said there was no evidence to hold him. Saeed was placed under house arrest in January while Sharif was still prime minister, a move that drew praise from India, long furious at Saeed s freedom in Pakistan. A Supreme Court ruling disqualified Sharif from office in July over a corruption investigation, though his party still runs the government. Saeed, however, said Sharif deserved to be removed for his peace overtures with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Nawaz Sharif asks why he was ousted? I tell him he was ousted because he committed treason against Pakistan by developing friendship with Modi, killers of thousands of Muslims, Saeed said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In western Moscow, Putin allies lose an election but cling to power;MOSCOW (Reuters) - More than 10 weeks after losing a local council election in western Moscow, Vladimir Putin s party is clinging to power there - by fair means or foul. The standoff over control of Filyovsky Park Council came to a head when opposition councilor Vadim Korovin tried to sit in the chairman s seat at a meeting on Tuesday. A councilor from the Russian president s United Russia cut his microphone cable and then body-checked him as he tried to reach the seat. This is a violent occupation and seizure of power! Korovin protested to the United Russia representative, Dmitry Prokhorov, who pushed him from his way as a policeman stepped in to prevent a fight. All four United Russia members on the council then walked out. Soon afterwards the electricity in the building, and all the lights, went off. Using flashlights of mobile phones to see, the six opposition members of the 10-seat council continued the meeting. They elected Korovin as deputy chairman and, in effect, caretaker leader, but the United Russia members later refused to recognize the vote. The battle to control the council, witnessed by a Reuters correspondent who attended Tuesday s meeting, shows how difficult some of Putin s allies find it to surrender power when confronted with the unfamiliar experience of an election defeat. Moscow is not typical of Russia, as support for Putin and his allies across the country is high. Opinion polls suggest he will easily win next year s presidential election if, as is widely expected, he runs. But Putin, 65, is barred under the constitution from ruling for more than two consecutive terms so the question of who will succeed him, and how his allies will act when he leaves the political stage, will loom large in coming years. United Russia representatives have refused to cede power in 10 districts of Moscow where they suffered defeats in local elections on Sept. 10, according to the organizers of the opposition campaign in the Russian capital. Dmitry Gudkov, a former lawmaker who runs what is known as the United Democrats project, said the Moscow administration, which controls the building where Tuesday s meeting was held, was in a position to play spoiling tactics. If they want to disrupt our work they will do it, he said. Alexander Semennikov, a United Russia deputy in the Moscow city parliament who heads a commission that deals with relations with local councils, said any decisions made by the six Kremlin opponents on the council would have close to zero legitimacy. He described Tuesday s events as part of a stormy stage in the evolution of municipal institutions in Moscow, and urged the two sides to reach an agreement to resolve the situation. A spokesman at the Moscow mayor s office referred questions to the city administration s Western region, which includes Filyovsky Park. A spokesman for the Western region declined to comment. United Russia defeated the opposition in a majority of the 125 Moscow districts where voting took place on Sept. 10 but Kremlin opponents increased their share of the vote. Since the election, opposition councillors in some districts have been stymied by contradictory provisions in the legislation that governs how the councils are organized. The law states that a council s chair stays in the post until replaced after an election and must be elected by a two-thirds majority. It does not explain what happens if control of the council changes hands but, as in Filyovsky Park district, no party has a two-thirds majority. In Filyovsky Park, a district with 90,000 inhabitants, Tigran Mkrtchyan, a United Russia member who was appointed interim chairman in August, was among officials who lost their seat on Sept. 10. But because no side has the two-thirds majority required to elect a new chair, Mkrtchyan, who runs a shopping mall, has continued carrying out his duties. Official documents issued by the council since the election bear his signature, and the Moscow prosecutor s office supported Mkrtchyan s stance in October. A document seen by Reuters said former heads of municipal districts can keep running a council until a replacement is elected, even if they have lost their own place on the council. It cited a 2003 law in support of its argument. Tuesday s meeting, the council s second since the election, had been intended by the opposition council member to break the impasse. But after leaving the meeting, Mkrtchyan told Reuters he would keep the position of temporary head of the council until a new leader is elected. He and his associates still appeared to be in charge on Friday. When Reuters placed a call to the council, a member of Mkrtchyan s team picked up the phone. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Baby banned from Japanese municipal assembly;TOKYO (Reuters) - A baby brought into a Japanese municipal assembly chamber by his lawmaker mother was promptly ejected because his presence was against the rules, an official said on Friday, highlighting the hurdles faced by working women in Japan. Yuka Ogata, a member of the Kumamoto city assembly, brought her seven-month-old son into the chamber on Wednesday but she was asked to take him out because of a rule limiting attendance to assembly members, city official Naoya Oshima said. Ogata tried to stay but the speaker of the assembly eventually persuaded her to take the infant out. She handed him over to a babysitter and returned. I wanted to highlight the difficulties facing women who are trying to juggle their careers and raise children, the 42-year-old Ogata was quoted by the Asahi Shimbun daily as saying. Ogata was not immediately available for comment. Economists say given Japan s rapidly aging population, bringing women into the workforce is essential. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made increasing the number of women workers a key part of his economic plan, pledging, among various measures, to increase daycare for children. He told the United Nations in 2013 that he would create a society where women can shine , but little progress has been made. Japan ranked 114 out of 144 in the World Economic Forum s 2017 Global Gender Gap report, falling 13 places since Abe took power. Abe appointed only two women to ministerial posts in a cabinet reshuffle in August, down from three and five respectively in his previous two cabinets. Only 14 percent of Japan s lawmakers are women. Japanese labor law has no official system in place for maternity or parental leave for politicians. In 2000, a national lawmaker in Abe s Liberal Democratic Party took three days off from parliament to give birth, prompting the legislature to allow maternity leave for members. A total of 12 lawmakers have taken advantage of the time off, being granted up to three months of maternity leave at the most, the Mainichi Shimbun daily reported this year. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan's Osaka to snap sister city link with San Francisco over 'comfort women' statue;TOKYO (Reuters) - The mayor of Japan s western city of Osaka plans to cut ties with U.S. sister city San Francisco after the latter accepted the donation of a comfort women statue from a private group there. The issue of comfort women , as those forced to work in Japan s wartime military brothels were euphemistically known, has long embittered the ties of neighbors, such as China and South Korea, with Japan. This is highly regrettable, Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters, describing Wednesday s endorsement by San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee of a city council decision. The relationship of trust has completely been destroyed. Yoshimura aims to complete the procedures necessary to snap ties by the end of the year, he said in a statement on Thursday. No officials at the San Francisco mayor s office were immediately available for comment. Erecting comfort women statues in the United States and other countries is in conflict with our country s stance and extremely regrettable, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference on Friday. We plan to continue making every effort so that things like this won t happen again. In January, Japan temporarily recalled its ambassador to South Korea over a comfort women statue put up near its consulate in the southern city of Busan. In 2015, Japan and South Korea agreed the issue of comfort women would be irreversibly resolved if both sides fulfilled their obligations, including a Japanese apology and a fund to help victims. But South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said many South Koreans did not accept the deal reached by his conservative predecessor and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. On Friday, Suga said Japan had protested to Seoul after the South Korean parliament passed a bill designating Aug. 14 as a day of commemoration for comfort women , adding that the move risked affecting ties, Kyodo news agency reported. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia and Japan agree to speed up work on economic cooperation on disputed islands;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Friday he agreed with his Russian counterpart to speed up work on economic cooperation on disputed islands in the Pacific, and on easing travel restrictions to the islands. His Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov said earlier after talks in Moscow with Kono that progress had been made on confidence-building measures related to the islands, known is Russia as the Kurile islands and in Japan as the Northern Territories. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 54 killed after militants target mosque in Egypt's north Sinai: state media;CAIRO (Reuters) - At least 54 people were killed when suspected militants set off a bomb and opened fire at a mosque in Egypt s restive northern Sinai on Friday, state media and eyewitnesses said. Eyewitnesses reported ambulances ferrying casualties from the scene to nearby hospitals after the attack on Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, west of Arish city. Another 75 people were wounded, MENA reported. President Abdel Fattah al Sisi convened an emergency security meeting soon after the attack, state television reported. Egypt s security forces are battling an Islamic State insurgency in north Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers since fighting there intensified over the last three years. Militants have mostly targeted security forces in their attacks, but have also tried to expand beyond the peninsula by hitting Egyptian Christian churches and pilgrims. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Danish High Court finds 17-year old girl guilty of planning bomb attacks against schools -local media;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A 17-year-old Danish girl who offered to fight for Islamic State was found guilty on Friday of planning bomb attacks at two schools, one of them Jewish, state broadcaster DR reported. The High Court ruling upholds a ruling in the Holbaek district court in May that found the girl - who was not named - guilty of attempted terrorism. The girl was arrested at her home in January last year, when she was aged 15, and charged with planning the attacks after acquiring chemicals for making bombs. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. calls on Pakistan to arrest recently freed Islamist leader;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A U.S. official on Friday said Washington is deeply concerned at the release from house arrest of a Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai. Hafiz Saeed, who had been under house arrest since January, was ordered freed by a Pakistani court this week and preached on Friday at a mosque in the eastern city of Lahore. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saeed s organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including American citizens. The Pakistani government should make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes, Nauert said in a statement. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Le Drian says China is 'well placed to push' North Korea to talks;BEIJING (Reuters) - China has leverage to persuade North Korea to go back to talks over its nuclear ambitions, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday, after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. North Korea s rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles has fueled a surge in regional tensions as United Nations-led sanctions appear to have failed to bite deeply enough to change its behavior. Western diplomats have said that China is largely responsible for patchy enforcement. But Beijing bristles at the notion that it should be doing more to rein in North Korea, which does about 90 percent of its trade with China, saying it is fully enforcing U.N. sanctions and that everyone has a responsibility to lower tension and get talks back on track. We want to force the negotiations ... and it s true that China is well placed to push, Le Drian told reporters during a joint briefing with Wang after arriving in Beijing for a four-day visit. A military solution was an extreme option, he said. China advocates for a dual suspension plan to address the issue in which Pyongyang would halt its nuclear and missile programs and Washington would stop military exercises with its allies in the region, though U.S. President Donald Trump has ruled it out. Wang said the proposition is realistic and feasible . France thought it was a real proposition but that the conditions to realize it have not been met. But if we don t have the conditions we have to create the conditions, Wang said. Le Drian countered that he didn t see it as the right approach. I don t believe much in the double-suspension strategy, because first of all [North Korea] isn t prepared to negotiate the very principle of this nuclear program, Le Drian said. Le Drian has said previously that bellicose statements by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have created fears of a dangerous miscalculation, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3. Washington this week imposed sanctions on 13 Chinese and North Korean organizations Washington accused of helping evade nuclear restrictions against Pyongyang and supporting the country through trade of commodities like coal. The U.S. Treasury also put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism. But North Korea last week ruled out negotiations with Washington as long as joint U.S-South Korea military exercises continue, and said that Pyongyang s atomic weapons program would remain as a deterrent against a U.S. nuclear threat. The air forces of South Korea and the United States are scheduled to hold a regular joint drill in December, which will include hundreds of aircraft and about 12,000 U.S. personnel. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll in attack on mosque in Egypt's north Sinai rises to 184: state television;CAIRO (Reuters) - The death toll in a militant attack on mosque in Egypt s north Sinai region has risen to 184 killed, Egyptian state television and MENA state news agency said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kosovo war crimes court ready for first indictments: chief judge;PRISTINA (Reuters) - A special court with international prosecutors and judges set up to tackle alleged war crimes by ethnic Albanians against Serbs during Kosovo s 1998-99 war is ready to proceed with its first indictments, its president said in an interview. The court, which could indict or call as witnesses current officials in Pristina s government, will function under Kosovo law but operate in the Netherlands to minimize the risk of witness intimidation and judicial corruption in Kosovo. The Kosovo Specialist Chamber was set up in The Hague following U.S. and European Union pressure on the Kosovo government to confront allegations of atrocities against ethnic Serbs by Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas. The KLA rose up against then-Serbian strongman President Slobodan Milosevic, eventually winning crucial NATO air support that halted the killing and expulsion of Kosovo Albanian civilians in a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. Kosovo, with a 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority, declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has been recognized by over 110 states, but not by Serbia or Russia. The now-disbanded KLA, which counts among its former ranks much of Kosovo s current political elite, has been dogged for years by allegations that it sold organs removed from murdered Serb prisoners on the black market. We are really fully operational, Ekaterina Trendafilova, the Bulgarian court president, said, though she did not know when the first indictments would be filed. Asked if anyone in Kosovo would have immunity, she said: There is no immunity for anyone regardless of their position, and amnesty also cannot apply. (We will be addressing) individual criminal responsibility not related to any organization, to any group or ethnicity. Local media and analysts speculated that some of Kosovo s top officials who held commanding positions within the KLA could face indictments or be called as witnesses. A 2011 report for the Council of Europe linked leading Kosovo figures notably President Hashim Thaci to gruesome crimes against Serbs, including trade in organs harvested from prisoners of war. Thaci has denied any wrongdoing. Another Hague-based court, the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), will close down soon after delivering its last major verdict on Wednesday, convicting former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic of genocide. The ICTY, which addressed crimes mainly in the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia and Croatia, indicted 161 people in all - including Milosevic, who died in prison during his trial - and convicted 83, more than 60 of them ethnic Serbs. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope criticizes politicians for stoking racism over immigration;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Friday excoriated politicians who foment fear of migrants, saying they were sowing violence and racism, and urged them to practise the virtue of prudence to help them integrate. The pope, who has made defense of migrants and refugees a major plank of his papacy, made his comments in a message prepared for the Roman Catholic Church s World Day of Peace, which is celebrated on Jan. 1 each year. The message, whose title for 2018 is Migrants and Refugees: Men and Women in Search of Peace , is traditionally sent to heads of state and government and international institutions. The message is being released as migration has become a top political issue in countries including the United States, Italy, Australia and Germany. Many destination countries have seen the spread of rhetoric decrying the risks posed to national security or the high cost of welcoming new arrivals, and doing so demeans the human dignity due to all as sons and daughters of God, he wrote. Those who, for what may be political reasons, foment fear of migrants instead of building peace are sowing violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia, which are matters of great worry for all those concerned about the safety of every human being, he said. In elections in Germany in September, the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party made significant gains, with electors punishing Chancellor Angela Merkel for her open-door policy and pushing migration policy to the top of the agenda in talks to form a coalition government. Italy s anti-immigrant Northern League, whose leader Matteo Salvini often gives fiery speeches against migrants, is expected to make gains in national elections next year. Francis urged governments to make legal immigration easier but said that leaders should also recognize that many people move mainly out of desperation, when their own countries offer neither safety nor opportunity, and every legal pathway appears impractical, blocked or too slow . In the United States, President Donald Trump has promised to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out, something the pope has criticized in the past. The pope said richer countries should show a spirit of compassion toward those forced to flee war, hunger, discrimination, persecution, poverty and environmental degradation. He acknowledged that immigrants can sometimes compound numerous existing problems and that leaders have a clear responsibility toward their own communities ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former ally of Nigeria's Buhari prepared to contest presidency in 2019;ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria s Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and key ally of President Muhammadu Buhari, quit the ruling party on Friday saying it had failed the people , and a spokesman said he might run in a presidential election due in February 2019. Abubakar is the first political heavyweight to signal a likely bid for the presidency, which could pit him against 74-year-old Buhari, who took power in 2015 but has been absent for much of this year due to illness. Questions over Buhari s fitness or willingness to run in 2019 are rife in Nigeria, both within and outside his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party, which Abubakar had earlier quit in an unprecedented public rupture. Divisions within the party have been exacerbated by Buhari s recent long absences abroad for treatment for an unexplained ailment and discontent with his administration. The main opposition is also struggling to maintain unity, according to party members. In a statement announcing he was leaving the party, Abubakar said the APC has failed and continues to fail our people and accused it of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within the party and the government . A spokesman later told Reuters that Abubakar, who was Nigeria s vice president from 1999 to 2007 and has made numerous unsuccessful bids to become the country s leader, is prepared to run for the presidency in 2019 . An APC spokesman declined to comment on Abubakar s departure. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll in Egypt mosque attack climbs to 200: state television;CAIRO (Reuters) - The death toll in a militant attack on a mosque in Egypt s north Sinai region has risen to 200, Egyptian state television and MENA state news agency said on Friday. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says it will make efforts on Syria reconstruction;BEIJING (Reuters) - China hopes Syria can show flexibility in promoting peace talks, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday in a meeting with an adviser to Syria s president, adding that China would help with its reconstruction. Syria s six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two and embroiled regional and world powers. For years, Western and Arab countries backed an opposition demand that President Bashar al-Assad quit power, but since Russia s 2015 entry into the war, his government has won back major cities and now looks militarily unassailable. Leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed on Wednesday to help support a full-scale political process in Syria and announced an agreement to sponsor a conference in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to try to end the war. Syria is looking chiefly to Russia, China and Iran for help with reconstruction. Western states say recovery and reconstruction support for Syria depends on a credible political process leading to a genuine political transition that can be supported by a majority of the Syrian people . Wang told Bouthaina Shaaban, a senior aide to Assad visiting China, that engagement over the future of Syria s political arrangements had intensified, and that he believed it would contribute to a formal peace process talks in Geneva. China hopes the Syrian side can seize the opportunity, display flexibility, and promote dialogue and negotiation to achieve substantive results, Wang said, according to a statement from China s foreign ministry. The international community should emphasize and actively support Syria s reconstruction. China will put forth its own effort for this, Wang said, without elaborating on what those efforts would be. Shaaban welcomed China playing a greater role in Syria s political resolution process, the ministry said. While relying on the Middle East for oil supplies, China tends to leave the region s diplomacy to the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia. But China has been trying to get more involved, including sending envoys to help push for a diplomatic solution to the violence there and hosting Syrian government and opposition figures. China hopes a peaceful Middle East will also help end the involvement of ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim people from the far western Chinese region of Xinjiang, with militant groups in Syria and Iraq. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's Xi discusses Rohingya crisis with Myanmar army chief;YANGON (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Myanmar s top military general in Beijing on Friday and discussed China s support amid international criticism over its treatment of the Rohingya minority, according a statement from the general. China has offered diplomatic backing to its southern neighbor throughout the crisis, despite growing pressure from Western countries for the Myanmar military to be accountable for alleged atrocities. More than 600,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim group have fled from Buddhist-majority Myanmar s Rakhine State to Bangladesh in three months since insurgent attacks on security posts sparked a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. China helped to block a resolution on the crisis at the U.N. Security Council, while the United States this week called the response by the military and local vigilantes ethnic cleansing , echoing earlier statements by senior United Nations officials. According to a statement on the Facebook page of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, he and the Chinese leader on Friday discussed the promotion of cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries, the situation of China standing on Myanmar s side at the forefront of the international community regarding the Rakhine issue, and other issues. Min Aung Hlaing arrived in China on Tuesday and has largely met Chinese military officers during his visit. The statement also said they discussed ongoing talks between Myanmar s government and myriad ethnic insurgent groups, some of whom are based along Myanmar s shared border with China. According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi said China was closely watching the peace process and was willing to play a constructive role... for security and stability in their border areas. The Xinhua account did not mention Rakhine, but cited Xi saying that China always respects Myanmar s sovereignty and territorial integrity . ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Outgoing Czech government to submit resignation on Nov 29;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The outgoing Czech government will submit its resignation when it next meets on Nov. 29, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said on Twitter on Friday, making way for a new administration following an October parliamentary election. Czech President Milos Zeman plans to appoint Andrej Babis as prime minister in early December. Babis s ANO party won last month s election by a large margin but fell short of a majority. It has yet to find any coalition partners and is still seeking votes to support a minority cabinet. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German president to meet party leaders on Thursday;BERLIN (Reuters) - German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the head of Bavaria s conservatives, and the leader of the center Social Democrats (SPD) on Thursday, his office said on Friday. Steinmeier played a central role in encouraging the SPD to reverse its pledge to go into opposition. Thursday s meeting will include Merkel, SPD leader Martin Schulz and Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party to Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU). Schulz on Friday announced his center party would help form a new government led by Merkel to avert a disruptive repeat election in Europe s economic and political powerhouse, but said party members would have the final say on any deal. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China kindergarten sex abuse and 'needlemarks' claims prompt police probe;BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese police are investigating claims of sexual molestation and needlemarks on children at a Beijing kindergarten run by RYB Education Inc, the latest case in a booming childcare industry to spark outrage among parents, sending the company s New York-listed shares tumbling on Friday. The official Xinhua news agency said late on Thursday that police were checking allegations that some teachers and staff at the kindergarten had abused children, who were reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills . Shares in RYB (RYB.N) plunged 38 percent on the New York Stock Exchange early on Friday, almost wiping out most of the 44 percent rise in the Chinese company s stock since its IPO in September. Parents said their children, some as young as three, relayed troubling accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported medical check-ups on students, who were also unclothed, other media said. Some parents, who gathered outside the school to demand answers on Thursday, said their children gave matching accounts of being fed unidentified tablets and of punishments where students were made to stand naked in class, media said. The welfare of children in professional care has become a hot-button issue in China, where a string of high-profile cases of abuse has underlined lax regulations and supervision in the childcare and early learning industry. We deeply apologise for the serious anxiety this matter has brought to parents and society, RYB said in a statement on its official microblog on Friday, adding that it was helping authorities. We are currently working with the police to provide relevant surveillance materials and equipment;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says Trump told Erdogan weapons won't be supplied to Kurdish YPG;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump told President Tayyip Erdogan he had issued instructions that weapons should not be provided to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria, and that the Turkish government hoped to see that order carried out. Our discomfort regarding the provision of weapons to the YPG was conveyed to Mr Trump once again... Trump very clearly said he had given instructions to not provide weapons to the YPG, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara. We welcome the promise of not providing weapons to the YPG, and want to see it implemented practically. Cavusoglu also said that Russia, Iran and Turkey would decide jointly who would attend Syrian peace talks. Turkey has said it would not accept the presence of YPG representatives. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan, U.S. Trump discuss Syria, bilateral ties and Sochi summit: Turkish sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed recent developments in Syria, bilateral ties and a summit in Russia s Sochi during a phone call on Friday, sources in Erdogan s office said. At a summit in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Wednesday, Russia s Vladimir Putin won the backing of Turkey and Iran to host a Syrian peace congress, taking the central role in a major diplomatic push to finally end a civil war all but won by Moscow s ally, President Bashar al-Assad. A written statement from Erdogan s office will be released later on Friday, sources said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombian ex-presidents to back joint right-wing 2018 ticket;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Two former Colombian presidents will back a joint right-wing ticket in elections next year, they said on Friday, focusing their platform on objections to the peace deal signed with the Marxist FARC rebels. Ex-presidents Alvaro Uribe, who is now a senator with his Democratic Center party and Andres Pastrana, who leads the Conservatives, will jointly choose candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency, they said in a statement. The two men have vehemently opposed the peace deal between the government of President Juan Manuel Santos, who will leave office in August 2018, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels, who have demobilized and are now a political party. We will choose one candidate for the presidency and vice-presidency, from candidates chosen by the Democratic Center and the Conservative base led by Andres Pastrana, choosing the candidate with the best chance of winning the presidency, the statement said. The method for choosing between candidates has yet to be decided, it added. Besides changes to the peace deal, which the two men say is not harsh enough on former rebels and does not require them to pay enough for crimes including murder, kidnapping and displacement, the coalition will focus on improvements to health care and the economy. Uribe, who governed from 2002 and 2010 and managed a U.S.-backed offensive against the FARC, has yet to choose a candidate for his party. Pastrana, who himself attempted a peace process with the FARC during his 1998-2002 term, backs Conservative candidate Marta Lucia Ramirez, who also ran in 2014. Corruption scandals, which have lately touched every major political party, are also expected to be a major theme in the 2018 race. The country s constitutional court has ruled the peace deal cannot be modified for the next 12 years. Other presidential candidates for next year include former vice-president German Vargas Lleras, former government peace negotiator Humberto de la Calle, ex-governor Sergio Fajardo and former M-19 rebel and mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel reassures EU over lack of Berlin coalition deal;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had reassured her European Union counterparts during a summit on Friday that Germany continued to have a government committed to the EU despite delays in forming a new coalition. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, she said it was important to her that the EU continued to develop. Merkel s first attempt to form a new coalition after September s election failed last weekend, disappointing EU partners who were hoping for a fully functioning German government by December to help make deals. As the acting government, we are fulfilling all our European obligations, Merkel said. We are conducting the consultations we need with our parliament in order to be capable of taking the necessary decisions. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s Defence Ministry said on Friday six TU-22M3 long-range bombers had carried out air strikes on Islamic State targets on the western bank of the Euphrates river in Syria, the RIA news agency reported. Militants strongholds and groups were among the targets hit by the bombers, the ministry said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll in Egypt north Sinai mosque attack rises to 235: state television;CAIRO (Reuters) - The death toll in a militant attack on a mosque in Egypt s north Sinai region has risen to 235, Egyptian state television reported, quoting the public prosecutor. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rights groups say outside monitors needed for Rohingya return to Myanmar;YANGON (Reuters) - Human rights groups called on Friday for international agencies to be allowed to monitor the planned repatriation of hundreds of thousands Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh to the homes they have fled from in Myanmar over the past three months. The two governments signed a pact on Thursday settling terms for a repatriation process. They aim to start the return of Rohingya in two months in order to reduce pressure in the refugee camps that have mushroomed in the Cox s Bazar region of Bangladesh. But rights groups have expressed doubts about Myanmar, also known as Burma, following through on the agreement, and some have called for independent observers. The idea that Burma will now welcome them back to their smoldering villages with open arms is laughable, said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. Instead of signing on to a public relations stunt, the international community should make it clear that there can be no returns without international monitors to ensure security, an end to the idea of putting returnees in camps, the return of land and the rebuilding of destroyed homes and villages. More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar launched a brutal counter insurgency across northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. The United Nations and United States have described the military s actions as ethnic cleansing, and rights groups have accused the security forces of atrocities, including mass rape, arson and killings. China has backed Myanmar over the crisis and blocked a stronger international response, however. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday discussed the issue in Beijing with Myanmar s army chief, Min Aung Hlaing. While Myanmar s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has said repatriation of the largely stateless Muslim minority would be based on residency and would be safe and voluntary , there were concerns that the country s autonomous military could prove obstructive. The memorandum of understanding signed by Myanmar and Bangladesh on Thursday said a joint working group would be set up within three weeks to prepare for the return of the refugees. But it gave scant details about the criteria of return and of what role, if any, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, could play. The agency believed conditions in northern Rakhine are not in place to enable safe and sustainable returns of Rohingya and some refugees were still fleeing Myanmar, spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters. It is important that international standards apply, and we are ready to help, he said, adding that the UNHCR had still not seen the repatriation agreement signed by the two countries. It s important that people don t end up being sent back to confinement and ghettos. Human rights monitors said other important points not addressed in the statements released separately by the two governments included the protection of Rohingya against further violence, a path to resolving their legal status and whether they would be allowed to return to their old homes. Suu Kyi s spokesman was not immediately available for comment on Friday, and had declined to comment on these concerns when contacted by Reuters late on Thursday. Charmain Mohamed, Amnesty International s director for refugee and migrant rights, said the United Nations and the international community have been completely sidelined and the talk of return was premature while the flow of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh continued. China welcomed the agreement, saying it feels gratified at the current positive progress that has been achieved , Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters, adding that situation in Rakhine has obviously been alleviated . Humanitarian workers say, however, that hundreds of Rohingya are arriving in Bangladesh daily, driven out of Myanmar predominantly by chaos, starvation and fear. While the violence has mostly ceased, Rohingya say they have largely lost access to sources of livelihood such as their farms, fisheries and markets. We will go back if they don t harass us and if we can live life like the Buddhists and other ethnic groups. Our educated children should get government jobs like the others, said Sayer Hussein, 55, who arrived in Bangladesh two months ago. Thousands of Rohingya, most of them old people, women and children, are stranded on beaches near the border, waiting for a boat to take them to Bangladesh. Some independent estimates suggest there could still be a few hundred thousand Rohingya in Rakhine State. Thirty-six groups, including the International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International, called for a U.N. Human Rights Council special session on the situation in Myanmar. Myanmar should immediately cease all human rights violations, including crimes against humanity , the groups said in an open letter to the U.N. council. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai PM reshuffles cabinet for the fifth time since coup;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has reshuffled his cabinet, a statement published in the Royal Gazette said on Friday, the fifth change in his administration since he took power in 2014. Prayuth, a former army chief, seized power in a bloodless May 2014 coup following months of street protests that led to the ousting of Prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her civilian government. Prayuth switched or appointed 18 ministers, deputy ministers and deputy prime ministers, according to a list published in the Royal Gazette, which was endorsed by Thailand s King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The highest-level changes include the country s ministers of commerce, agriculture, energy, labor, and tourism. It was not immediately clear what impact the reshuffle would have. The reshuffle was to improve some ministerial positions for the benefit of the country s administration, the statement said. The reshuffle follows the resignation of a labor minister. The cabinet has 36 members, and the latest changes cut members from the army to nine, including Prayuth, from 12. Laws passed by the government generally come into force after publication in the Royal Gazette, a public journal. Prayuth last reshuffled his cabinet in December 2016 following one in August 2015 which was carried out to focus on Thailand s troubled economy. The junta has promised a general election in November 2018 to return Thailand to democracy. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's Maduro keeps eye on prize: 2018 presidential vote;CARACAS (Reuters) - Just months ago, with crowds of protesters baying on the streets for the resignation of the dictator and murderer, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked like a goner. Global opinion hardened against his socialist government, with Washington the first to impose sanctions. Coup rumors spread amid one of the worst economic implosions in modern Latin American history, and there were two botched mini-uprisings. Yet the unpopular successor to Hugo Chavez has not only survived, he is ending the year on a political high and is even a front-runner for the 2018 presidential election. The upturn in Maduro s fortunes began with a surprise victory in last month s gubernatorial elections, thanks to abstentionism by disillusioned opposition supporters and election conditions stacked in favor of his Socialist Party. He then seized the initiative by announcing Venezuela s intention to restructure its more than $120 billion foreign debt. The high-stakes moves allows him to blame a U.S.-led capitalist conspiracy for hyperinflation and shortages while potentially freeing hard currency to import food and medicines ahead of next year s vote. Government sources say a buoyant Maduro is now considering driving home his advantage by bringing forward the normally year-end election to February or March. The president, so toxic last month that few gubernatorial candidates wanted to be seen with him, might now be his party s best bet to retain power against an opposition in disarray. Speculation about alternative candidates - from powerful Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello to up-and-coming governor Hector Rodriguez - has quietened in recent days. For sure Maduro will be the candidate. How can anyone challenge him? said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based consultant who tracks Socialist Party politics. Look at him on TV: He s bright and happy. He even dances better than before! Chavismo has the momentum, he added, referring to the movement founded by Chavez. Maduro is taking credit in government circles for pushing through a Constituent Assembly super-body that cemented the socialists power - albeit in an election boycotted by the opposition and marred by fraud accusations even from the company running the voting machines - and for breaking the opposition coalition. With the main parties within the opposition Democratic Unity coalition boycotting next month s mayoral elections, another win looks likely at the local level. The 55-year-old leader is already touting his potential 2018 campaign theme: No to the Yankee sanctions. Some believe that was one motivation behind the proposed debt restructuring: to force creditors into pressuring Washington to ease sanctions because they hinder any refinancing of Venezuela s obligations. It is also part of Maduro s strategy with the opposition in talks due to start on Dec. 1 in the Dominican Republic. We must demand the Venezuela opposition reach a pact for 2018 to have presidential elections with economic guarantees, an end to U.S. government sanctions and an end to the financial persecution of Venezuela, Maduro said recently. The government will also press for the opposition-controlled National Assembly to support debt refinancing, a potential way around sanctions that otherwise prevent U.S. banks from participating. There has been no sign U.S. President Donald Trump would be willing to ease sanctions. On the contrary, a U.S. official told Reuters recently that Washington was weighing new sanctions in response to Maduro s crackdown on the opposition. Though the opposition is trying to rally Venezuelans to oust the socialists once and for all in the 2018 vote, there is no hiding their woeful state. Leaders struggled to explain the October gubernatorial poll defeat, first blaming fraud then admitting they shot themselves in the foot via abstentionism. The coalition openly split over the Dec. 10 municipal elections, with major parties opting for a boycott but others deciding to run candidates. That confused strategy - a far cry from their unity in 2015 parliamentary elections - has undercut western pressure on Maduro. Given that the opposition s most popular candidates are detained or banned from running, Maduro is goading veteran Democratic Action party leader Henry Ramos - a divisive figure, unpopular with many younger voters and hard-line opposition groups - to contest the 2018 poll. With an unpopular president potentially facing an unconvincing opposition candidate, next year s election would seem to be fertile territory for a middle-ground aspirant. This is the best time for anyone proposing a different way, said dissident former Chavista Nicmer Evans. Putting his money where his mouth is, Evans is tramping the streets of Caracas to campaign for a mayorship at the Dec. 10 vote with a new party called New Vision For My Country. Many Venezuelans say the best president would be Lorenzo Mendoza, the billionaire head of the Polar brewing and food company, whose ratings dwarf mainstream politicians. He, however, has shown little inclination. Assuming Mendoza remains on the sidelines and no Socialist Party faction displaces a Maduro candidacy, he seems to have a real chance of retaining the presidency despite popularity levels that have been halved during his rule to around 20-25 percent. A bigger threat than the opposition would appear to be social protests at the economic crisis, or a Zimbabwe-style move from within the military. Cliver Alcala, a former Chavista general who is now an outspoken critic of Maduro, said rank-and-file soldiers were fed up with personal penury and the politicization of their institution. Even so, he saw little appetite for an uprising and said the military top brass appeared to have a vested interest in supporting Maduro due to the influence he allows them. There is more possibility of a popular social outburst due to lack of food and medicine, and the constant abuses of authority, Alcala said. That, however, is a cycle Venezuelans have lived through over and over in recent years: violent protests and national shutdowns coming at huge cost to life, property and productivity. Through it all, Maduro has hung on - and for now is smiling again. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. special envoy on Syria says had 'useful' meeting with Russia's Lavrov: Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - United Nations special envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Friday was useful , Russia s Interfax news agency reported. He declined additional comments before the end of a Syria s opposition meeting in Riyadh. He also said he planned to discuss Syria with Russia s defense minister later on Friday. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron seeks renewal of Africa ties, but old problems persist;PARIS (Reuters) - Barely six months into office, President Emmanuel Macron is already preparing for his third visit to sub-Saharan Africa. Yet while the energetic young leader is eager to reshape France s relationship with the continent, old problems die hard. His Nov. 28-30 trip to Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast is aimed at boosting cooperation on education, the digital economy and the environment. The visit will be capped by an EU-Africa summit in Abidjan, when migration will top the agenda. Africa is not just the continent of migration and crises. It s a continent of the future, the 39-year-old president told French ambassadors in August. But even then, French forces were being sucked deeper into a years-long battle to quell Islamist militancy in Mali. Last month, a raid by French special forces in the Malian desert illustrated how deep that quagmire is becoming. French troops stormed an Islamist training camp, killing 15 suspected militants. French officials said the operation was based on intelligence the camp housed Malians who had joined the Islamists. Mali said government soldiers held hostage by the Ansar al-Dine group were among the dead. As recriminations flew, a defense official spoke of a real trust problem . Laurent Bigot, a former under-secretary in the French foreign ministry, was blunt: Mali is a disaster, he said. We re repeating mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan. That assessment underlines just how much work Macron faces if he is to strengthen security and migration policy without getting bogged down in costly military ventures. More than 7,000 French troops are already deployed across Africa. Macron will make his first stop in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, where he will set out his vision for Franco-African relations in his favored style - a speech. Language and tone are critical. French presidents usually make early visits to Africa, but some have misjudged. Nicolas Sarkozy declared the tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history . The comment has haunted him. A presidency official said Macron would emphasize education and investing in youth across the continent, themes he has touched on in his first six months in power. In Ghana, a former British colony where France has ramped up investment, including in oil, telecoms and technology, Macron is to promote the digital economy and a broadening of French education initiatives. In Ivory Coast, environment will be the main topic, before EU and African leaders meet to discuss security and migration, with both Macron and Germany s Angela Merkel keen to limit the flow of migrants to Europe by introducing tighter checks and controls on African soil, not in Europe. Macron s proposals to bolster African growth and create jobs echo Germany s call for a Marshall Plan for Africa . He also promises to raise France s aid budget from 0.38 percent of national income to 0.55 percent by 2022. After French colonialism ended in the 1950s and 60s, France wielded a tight grip over its former dominions, using military might to install leaders in return for French companies securing lucrative contracts a policy dubbed Francafrique . But French diplomats say the days of France throwing its weight around for commercial favors are over. Macron, born months after Djibouti became the last French colony to gain independence, has shown little inclination to revive the old networks that linked French businessmen and intelligence agents with African politicians. We have a president who has never known the colonies and never had those close links to the region s leaders. He has more freedom to say what he thinks, said one diplomat. Macron has created an African Presidential Council to help shape his thoughts. Its 11 members are mostly young, dual-national entrepreneurs with backgrounds in art, media, finance and ecology. It reports directly to the president, irking some in diplomatic circles. France s shift away from Francafrique has eroded the privileges once enjoyed by companies such as Total, Orange and Areva, just as globalization has opened the field to China and India. French business group Medef is lobbying Macron for a greater role for the private sector in his vision for Africa, although some acknowledge French companies face huge competition and can still suffer an image problem. Africa is a fast growing continent, business opportunities are not a problem, said Patrice Fonlladosa, president of Veolia Africa & Middle East and head of Medef s Africa committee. The problem is being chosen as the partner of choice. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD to put any gov't role up for vote: Schulz;BERLIN (Reuters) - Members of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) will get to vote on any decision by the leadership of the center-left party to join a future coalition government, leader Martin Schulz said on Friday. There is nothing automatic about the direction we are moving in, Schulz said. If a discussion results in us deciding to participate in any form whatsoever in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members. Schulz made the remarks said during a brief news conference, shortly after the German president announced he would host a meeting next week with Schulz and Chancellor Angela Merkel to find a way out of a political impasse. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish opposition leader says PM's party preparing for election;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The party of Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar appears to be preparing for an imminent general election, the head of the opposition Fianna Fail party said on Friday. The government looked set to collapse after Fianna Fail submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister in violation of a three-year support agreement. I took it from last night that Fine Gael wants a general election and is preparing for one, Fianna Fail s Micheal Martin told state broadcaster RTE. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Men found at northern Japan marina say they are from North Korea: police;TOKYO (Reuters) - Police in northern Japan have found eight men near a boat at a seaside marina who said they were from North Korea, and appear to be fishermen whose vessel ran into trouble, rather than defectors, a police official said on Friday. The incident comes at a time of rising tension over North Korea s nuclear arms and missile programs after President Donald Trump redesignated the isolated nation a state sponsor of terrorism, allowing the United States to levy further sanctions. Japanese police took the men into custody after a resident of Yurihonjo, a city in the prefecture of Akita, told police of the presence of individuals of unknown nationality, the official, Yoshinobu Ito, told Reuters. The men, who said they were North Koreans, appear to be fishermen whose wooden boat, found nearby, had trouble and went adrift, Ito said. Police and authorities were now dealing with the matter, he added. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, asked if the possibility the men were spies had been ruled out, told a news conference authorities were handling the matter carefully. Japan is studying plans to cope with a possible influx of tens of thousands of North Korean evacuees should a military or other crisis break out on the peninsula, as well as how to weed out spies and terrorists among them, a domestic newspaper said. Last week, the Japan Coast Guard rescued three North Korean men on a capsized boat in the Sea of Japan, off central Japan. The men said they were fishermen and were later sent home aboard a North Korean vessel. Twelve more crew went missing. Last week a North Korean soldier dramatically defected to the South after being shot and wounded by his country s military as he made his getaway across the border in the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone between the two countries. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria ex-vice president prepared to run for presidency in 2019;ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria s former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is prepared to run for the presidency in 2019, his spokesman told Reuters on Friday. The former ally of President Muhammadu Buhari quit the ruling party earlier on Friday, saying it had failed. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Barnier reassures Ireland EU stands with Dublin on Brexit;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier assured Ireland s foreign minister on Friday that the EU would defend Dublin s position in talks with Britain over the coming weeks. Barnier said on Twitter that he had updated Simon Coveney on the state of play in negotiations, in which Britain is hoping to clinch a deal with Brussels next month on a range of issues including management of the Northern Irish border in order to launch a second phase of discussions focusing on a trade accord. Strong solidarity with Ireland, Barnier wrote. Irish issues are EU issues. Coveney tweeted back: Thank u @MichelBarnier reaffirming EU solidarity with Ireland on #Brexit. Facing a possible government collapse and new elections just at a crucial point in the Brexit process, the Irish government has sharpened the tone of its demands from London for detail on how the border will be kept open and unhindered. It has warned it will veto moves to trade talks if it is not satisfied. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK says has constructive relationship with Ireland, will focus on Brexit progress;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has a constructive relationship with Ireland and will focus on making progress on Brexit negotiations, Prime Minister Theresa May s spokesman said on Friday. An Irish election appeared likely after opposition party Fianna Fail submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, which the ruling party considers a breach of a three-year agreement to support prime minister Leo Varadkar s government. We feel that we have a constructive relationship with Ireland, and we will continue to talk with them regularly, as we do with the other EU27, and we will continue to focus on making progress in the negotiation, May s spokesman said, when asked about the political uncertainty in Dublin. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish election likely after opposition submits no-confidence motion;DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish general election appeared likely after opposition party Fianna Fail submitted a motion of no confidence on Friday in the deputy prime minister, which the ruling party considers a breach of a three-year agreement to support prime minister Leo Varadkar s government. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin told state broadcaster RTE that his party had submitted the motion. A senior member of Varadkar s Fine Gael party earlier said that the submission of a no confidence motion by Fianna Fail would kill the deal to support the government. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia working with Saudi Arabia to unify Syrian opposition: Lavrov;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is working together with Saudi Arabia to unify the Syrian opposition, Russia s RIA news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying on Friday. Lavrov was speaking at a meeting with United Nations special envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who is visiting Moscow. De Mistura said a new Syrian constitution will be one of the main items on the agenda for UN-sponsored talks in Geneva next week between opposing sides in the Syria conflict, RIA reported. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Wiping out' extremist ideology is my mission: head of Saudi-based Muslim body;PARIS (Reuters) - The head of a Saudi-based organization that for decades was charged with spreading the strict Wahhabi school of Islam around the world has said those times were over and his focus now was aimed at annihilating extremist ideology. Former justice minister Mohammed al-Issa, appointed secretary-general of the Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL) just over a year ago, told Reuters during a European tour that his organization would no longer sit by and let Islam be taken hostage by extremists. The push for a more moderate Islam underscores efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to modernize the kingdom, which finances groups overseen by the organization, and cleave to a more open and tolerant interpretation of Islam. The ambitious young prince has already taken some steps to loosen Saudi Arabia s ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police, permitting public concerts and announcing plans to allow women to drive next year. The past and what was said, is in the past. What happened in the past and the way in which we worked then, is not the subject of debate, Issa said in an interview late on Thursday. We must wipe out this extremist thinking through the work we do. We need to annihilate religious severity and extremism which is the entry point to terrorism. That is the mission of the Muslim World League. Saudi Arabia has used the MWL to export its strict Wahhabi version of Islam since it was set up in 1962 as a bulwark against radical secular ideologies. The missionary society controls mosques and Islamic centers around the world, which critics say promote hatred and intolerance of other sects and religions - a charge the group has denied. Issa said the MWL would be much more hands on now and aim to tackle any sign of extremism in areas where it operates, but also if it became aware of any other schools, centers or mosques where an extremist ideology was being propagated. While he declined to give specific details, a week earlier he was in Geneva where he vowed to reform the city s largest mosque after French and Swiss authorities raised concerns that it had become a hub of extremism. The mosque is supported by the MWL. Every time we spot such a message, we won t keep our arms crossed, we will do everything to annihilate this ideology, the 52-year-old said through a translator. What we are doing and want to do is purify Islam of this extremism and these wrong interpretations and give the right interpretations of Islam, he said. Only the truth can defeat that and we represent the truth. The emergence of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq with its thousands of foreign fighters has highlighted how Europe in particular has become a breeding ground for angry and fragile people to turn to radical Islam. In France alone, a string of attacks that saw hundreds of people killed since 2015 were in large part carried out by French Muslims. Issa said part of his work was to address the difficulties Muslims may have in adapting their religion to non-Muslim nations. We try to bring answers to face down these messages that change the reality of Islam. We want to offer the real interpretation of the sacred texts that have been taken hostage and interpreted in a wrong way, he said. As part of those efforts, Issa said he was also working with other faiths. After the Lebanese Maronite patriarch made a historic visit to Riyadh last week, Issa visited religious officials at Paris landmark Notre Dame Cathedral, but also Paris Grand Synagogue. We have a common objective to end hatred, he said. The Muslim World League really believes that we can accomplish that, and religions are very influential in doing that. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine agrees to sign EU summit declaration: officials;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union and six former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, agreed a joint summit declaration on Friday that aims to help bring the countries closer to the West, overcoming Kiev s objections, two EU officials said. It s been agreed, one official said as leaders from EU member states and from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan met for talks in Brussels. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Freed Pakistani militant rails against India, ex-PM Sharif;LAHORE/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A newly freed Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai called ousted former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a traitor on Friday for seeking peace with neighbor and arch-foe India. The release of Hafiz Saeed from house arrest raised fresh questions as to whether Saeed might enter politics to run a new, unregistered political party founded by his supporters. India and the United States expressed concern at his release, calling for Saeed to be prosecuted over the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including Americans. Saeed, who has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, spoke at Friday prayers in a mosque in the city of Lahore after being freed from house arrest by a court that said there was no evidence to hold him. Saeed was placed under house arrest in January while Sharif was still prime minister, a move that drew praise from India, long furious at Saeed s continued freedom in Pakistan. In July, a Supreme Court ruling disqualified Sharif from office over a corruption investigation, though his party still runs the government with a close ally as prime minister. Saeed, however, said Sharif deserved to be removed for his peace overtures with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Nawaz Sharif asks why he was ousted? I tell him he was ousted, because he committed treason against Pakistan by developing friendship with Modi, killers of thousands of Muslims, Saeed said. India s Ministry of External Affairs condemned Saeed s release, saying it showed Pakistan was not serious about prosecuting terrorists. A U.S. official said Washington was deeply concerned about the release. The Pakistani government should make sure that he is arrested and charged for his crimes, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. Saeed has repeatedly denied involvement in the 2008 Mumbai violence in which 10 gunmen attacked targets in India s largest city, including two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a railway station. The assault brought nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India to the brink of war. I m happy that no allegation against me was proved, Saeed told supporters after his release, according to a video released by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Islamist charity, which he heads. The United States says the JuD is a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group, which Saeed founded and which has been blamed for a string of high-profile attacks in India. Pakistan officially banned the Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002. Saeed blamed India for his incarceration in Pakistan, saying Pakistan s rulers detained me on the aspiration of Modi because of their friendship with him . Saeed has long campaigned in support of Muslim separatists in the Indian-ruled portion of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, which Pakistan also claims. India accuses Pakistan of supporting the LeT and other separatists battling in the Indian part of Kashmir. Pakistan denies that. While Saeed was under house arrest, his JuD charity launched a political party, the Milli Muslim League (MML), which has won thousands of votes in by-elections. Senior government and retired military figures say the party has the backing of Pakistan s powerful military. The military denies any direct involvement in civilian politics. MML officials have privately said that the party is controlled by Saeed, but it is not clear if Saeed will seek to contest elections or launch a political career. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish finance minister says prospect of election 'unconscionable';DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s finance minister said the prospect of an election and period without government during Brexit talks is unconscionable, telling the party propping the government up that it needed to be aware of the consequences of causing an election. At a time when issues and decisions will need to be made that will reverberate in our country for decades to come, the prospect of either an election taking place or a government not being in place afterwards is actually unconscionable, Paschal Donohoe told national broadcaster RTE. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea replaces soldiers, South Korea awards medals after defector's border dash;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has reportedly replaced guards and fortified a section of its border with South Korea where a North Korean soldier defected last week, while South Korean and U.S. soldiers have been decorated for their role in the defector s rescue. The North Korean defector was shot and wounded by his fellow soldiers as he dashed into the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area (JSA) last week. The South Korean and U.S. soldiers who led a rescue attempt to drag the gravely injured soldier to safety have been awarded medals, according to U.S. Forces Korea. A group of senior diplomats based in Seoul visited the JSA on Wednesday morning where they saw five North Korean workers digging a deep trench in the area where the soldier had dashed across the line after getting his jeep stuck in a small ditch, a member of the diplomatic delegation told Reuters on Friday. In a photograph of the visit posted to the Twitter account of acting U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Marc Knapper, North Korean workers could be seen using shovels to dig a deep trench on the North Korean side of the line as soldiers stood guard. The workers were being watched very closely by the KPA guards, not just the two in the photo, but others out of shot behind the building, said the diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation. According to an intelligence official cited by South Korea s Yonhap news agency, the North has replaced the 35-40 soldiers it had guarding the JSA at the time of the incident. We re closely monitoring the North Korean military s movement in the JSA, a South Korean defense ministry official told reporters, without confirming the reduction in border guards. There are limits as to what we can say about things we know. Reuters was unable to independently verify the reports, although photos taken by Knapper and other diplomats of soldiers guarding the area where workers were digging the trench showed them dressed in slightly different uniforms to the ones usually worn by North Korea s JSA guards. Two new trees had also been planted in the small space between the ditch and the line with the South, the diplomat told Reuters, in an apparent effort to make it more difficult for would-be defectors to drive across the ground. Meanwhile, in South Korea, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said it had awarded its own JSA soldiers - three South Korean and three U.S. soldiers - the Army Commendation medal in recognition for their efforts in rescuing the defector. The medals were personally handed out by USFK Commander Vincent Brooks in a ceremony on Thursday, according to USFK s Facebook page. The soldiers had been responsible for dragging the wounded North Korean soldier to safety in a daring rescue seen in security camera footage released by the United Nations Command earlier this week. Pyongyang has not commented on the defection of its soldier, who is now in stable condition despite sustaining multiple injuries sustained from gunshot wounds to his arm and torso. The young soldier, known only by his family name Oh, is a quiet, pleasant man who has nightmares about being returned to the North, his surgeon told Reuters on Thursday. (For a graphic, click reut.rs/2jfoZPI) ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia takes Tokyo to task over defense alliance with Washington;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is concerned that Japan is allowing Washington to use its territory as a base for a U.S. military build-up in north Asia under the pretext of countering North Korea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. His remarks came at a joint press conference with his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, after talks between the two men in Moscow, and prompted Kono to defend Japan s stance toward North Korea and its ties with the United States. Japan had wanted to focus on resolving a seven-decade old territorial dispute between the countries but Lavrov s comments on North Korea cast a shadow over the meeting. We are expressing deep concern, with facts to back it up, that Japan along with South Korea is becoming a territory for the deployment of elements of the U.S. global missile defense system which is being rolled out in that region under the pretext of the North Korea threat, Lavrov said. We have no problems directly with Japan, we do not see risks there. We see risks because of the proliferation of a global U.S. missile defense system on the territory of countries that neighbor Russia, including Japan. He said that in the past few weeks the United States had conducted military exercises in the region and adopted additional sanctions despite the absence of provocation from Pyongyang. We are alarmed that in the last two months when North Korea conducted no tests or rocket launches, it seemed that Washington was not happy about that, and tried to do things that would irritate and provoke Pyongyang, Lavrov said. Referring to U.S. officials, he said: It s as if they are hoping that they (the North Koreans) will lash out again, and then it would be possible to engage in military options. As you know, the U.S. leadership has said many times that all options are on the table, including military options, and we note that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a meeting with President Trump in early November, said that he supports the American position 100 percent, Lavrov said. Japanese Foreign Minister Kono, after listening to Lavrov s remarks, responded that Japan and its allies were not seeking regime change in North Korea. He said Tokyo had to act to defend itself after Pyongyang test-fired missiles which flew over Japan s territory. This is unprecedented, the most important and most pressing threat not just to Japan and Russia but to the international community as a whole. It s absolutely unacceptable, Kono said, speaking through an interpreter. We believe it s necessary to use all possible means and to increase the pressure on North Korea as much as possible to stop its nuclear program and the rocket launches, he said. Japan welcomes the position of the United States, which is that to protect Japan and South Korea, all means of deterrence will be used. Earlier this year, Japan s Abe expressed hope of a breakthrough in Tokyo s dispute with Moscow over a group of islands in the Pacific, but that prospect has now dimmed. The islands are known in Japan as the northern territories and in Russia as the Kurile islands. At the end of World War Two, Soviet forces took control over the islands from Japan. The island dispute has meant that Moscow and Tokyo have still not signed a formal peace agreement to end war-time hostilities. Lavrov and Kono said at their talks that they had made progress on measures to boost Russian-Japanese economic cooperation on the islands, and to ease access for Japanese people wanting to visit. They offered no details about any progress on resolving the core of the dispute, about who has sovereignty over the islands. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt declares three days of mourning after attack on north Sinai mosque: state television;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s government has declared three days of mourning after attack on north Sinai mosque killed at least 85 people on Friday, state television said. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia: Asia should not be militarized under pretext of countering North Korea;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is opposed to the militarization of Asia under the pretext of countering North Korea and is concerned by U.S. plans to deploy part of its global missile defense system in the region, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday Lavrov was speaking after talks with his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono in Moscow. ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. rights team to visit Mexico after journalist murders;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday a group of experts on freedom of expression will visit Mexico at the end of November to assess the safety of journalists in the country, one of the most dangerous in the world for reporters. David Kaye, U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, and Edison Lanza, who holds the same position at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, will visit from Nov. 27 to Dec. 4 after an invitation by the government. This visit is about the crisis the press is going through in Mexico, the exponential increase in violence, said Leopoldo Maldonado, the protection and defense program officer in Mexico at Article 19, a freedom of expression advocacy group. The visit comes as Mexico s journalists live through one of the worst waves of violence in recent history, with at least 11 reporters murdered in 2017, the same number killed in 2016. Over the past 17 years, 111 journalists have been killed in Mexico, more than one third of them under the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto. Reporters are also having to contend with other forms of intimidation. In June, activists, human-rights lawyers and journalists filed a criminal complaint after experts found that their smartphones had been infected with advanced spying software sold only to the government. The Mexican government said at the time that there was no proof it was responsible for the spying and that it condemned any attempt to violate the privacy of any person. The rights experts will travel to Mexico City and the states of Guerrero, Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa to meet legislative, executive and judicial authorities plus journalists and representatives of civil society, the U.N. said. Reporters Without Borders ranks Mexico at 147 out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index, below Venezuela, South Sudan and Bangladesh, and one place above Russia.{rsf.org/en/ranking#} ;worldnews;24/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump names White House budget director Mulvaney acting head of consumer agency;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has designated White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to be acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed, the White House said on Friday. The six-year-old bureau, which has been controversial since its creation, had been led by Richard Cordray, who formally resigned on Friday. ;politicsNews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; CNN BLISTERS Trump After He Attacks Them For Bad Representation: ‘That’s Your Job’ (TWEETS);One of Donald Trump s favorite punching bags is CNN. He even once tweeted a GIF image of himself punching a person with a CNN logo superimposed over the head indicating that he d like to enact violence against CNN s reporters. Then there was the time he tweeted the Trump Train roaring over CNN. Now, he s back at it this time suggesting that fake CNN should be the ones representing America to the world, and that they are doing a bad job. Here is that tweet:.@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2017Of course, it is beneath the dignity of most people to respond to a moronic buffoon like Trump under normal circumstances. However, he is currently squatting in the White House, and has his tiny orange hands on the levers of power not to mention the nuclear codes so they have to stoop to a Trumpian level when personally attacked. However, being, well, you know, FIT to be doing the job they are doing, the good folks at CNN Communications fired back at Trump, and their response is nothing short of perfect:It's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours. Our job is to report the news. #FactsFirst CNN Communications (@CNNPR) November 25, 2017BOOM! Couldn t have asked for a sicker burn than this. And they are right of course especially the part about #FactsFirst. Trump has a problem with the truth, as we all well know. That s what makes what the CNN Communications people replied so fabulous. It is the ultimate truth something the likes of the pathological orange liar that is Donald Trump knows nothing about.Featured image via Andrew Burton/Getty Images;News;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! #FakeNews CNN’s April Ryan EMBARRASSES Herself On Thanksgiving Day Over Her Obsession With Legitimacy Of Sarah Sanders’ Pecan Pie;CNN political analyst just spent her Thanksgiving Day so consumed with hate for President Trump s White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that she removed any doubt her Twitter followers may have had about the possibility of having an objective bone in her body.CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan suggested, without any evidence, Friday that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders actually didn t actually cook the pecan pie Sanders said she did.Here is Sanders tweet that got under April Ryan s skin:I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan is frequently praised by liberals for being a nuisance in the White House press briefing room, but she failed to present any evidence Friday, except for the claims of random Twitter users, that Sanders faked the pie. Ryan did not respond to this reporter when asked for proof.A reverse image search did not find any other pictures of the pecan pie that Sanders posted.The White House press secretary responded to Ryan s criticism and said that she will make the journalist a pie of her own.-Daily CallerDon t worry @AprilDRyan because I m nice I ll bake one for you next week #RealPie #FakeNews https://t.co/5W3mGbKs4J Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 24, 2017While hundreds of liberal Twitter users jumped on Ryan s thread, as a way to drum up hate for the brilliant and witty conservative Press Secretary, Sanders definitely got her fair share of support. Conservative actor James Woods didn t make any secret about how he is thankful on Thanksgiving Day for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. One final reason to be thankful today: @SarahHuckabee She is the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. The #CNN and other liberal minions melt before her intelligence, her wit, and her sheer fortitude like snowflakes in the desert. James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 24, 2017Twitter user, Vanessa Vega nailed it with her tweet in response to Sanders reply to Ryan s ridiculous claim:It burns them up. That a graceful intelligent woman like you holds the WH positions, rocks at it, is an amazing mother and baked a pie during a traditional American Holiday. keep doing you @PressSec !! We are grateful for you & the haters are entertaining to watch Vanessa Vega (@EscbrRoX2017) November 25, 2017 ;left-news;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“I SERVED WITH ROY MOORE IN VIETNAM”…Letter From Veteran Sets Record Straight On “Honorable, Decent, Respectable, Patriotic Commander and Soldier”;If it wasn t for people like Vietnam veteran William E. Staehle, who made the decision to publicly defend the character of Roy Moore in an op-ed, the only picture the American people might have of the former judge, is the one painted by the leftist media and the rabid Democrat Party, that struggles to identify a single legitimate reason for Alabama voters to support their candidate Doug Jones.I served with Roy Moore in Vietnam in 1971-72, where I knew him to be an altogether honorable, decent, respectable, and patriotic commander and soldier. I have had no contact with him since.He and I were captains and company commanders in the 504th Military Police Battalion, stationed at the base camp called Camp Land, just west of Danang.I knew him well in my first four months in-country before I was re-assigned within the battalion to another location. During that time, I grew to admire him.I am Bill Staehle, residing in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I am an attorney, practicing law continuously for 42-years. I began my career as an assistant United States attorney, and for the past 32 years, I have been the managing trial lawyer for the staff counsel office of a major insurance company.Allow me to relate to you one experience involving Roy that impressed me.While in Vietnam, there came a time when another officer invited Roy and me to go with him into town after duty hours for a couple of beers. That officer had just returned from an assignment in Quang Tri Province north of Danang, and we were interested to learn of his experiences.I had not met him before, and I don t believe Roy had either. On other occasions with other officers, we would go to the officers club at the air force base, but on this occasion, he told us he knew of another place in town.When we arrived at the place and went inside, it was clear to Roy and me that he had taken us to a brothel. That officer appeared to know people there, as he was greeted by one or two young women in provocative attire.The place was plush. There were other American servicemen there. Alcohol was being served. There were plenty of very attractive young women clearly eager for an intimate time.In less time than it took any of the women to approach us, Roy turned to me and said words to this effect, We shouldn t be here. I am leaving. We told the officer who had brought us that we wanted to leave. He told us to take his jeep and that he could get a ride back later, which he did. Roy and I drove back to camp together.That evening, if I didn t know it before, I knew then that with Roy Moore I was in the company of a man of great self-control, discipline, honor, and integrity. While there were other actions by Roy that reinforced my belief in him, that was the most telling.I reject what are obvious, politically motivated allegations against Roy of inappropriate dating behavior. What I saw, felt and knew about him in Vietnam stands in stark contrast to those allegations.I sincerely doubt that Roy s character had changed fundamentally and dramatically in a few short years later. He deserves, in my view, to be heard on the issues that are important to the people of Alabama and our country.Roy was a soldier for whom I was willing to put my life on the line in Vietnam if the occasion ever arose. Fortunately, it did not.I was prepared to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him then, and I am proud to stand by Roy now. William E. Staehle, Asbury Park, New JerseyVia: Yellow Hammer;left-news;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TEACHER Uses “Shooting at Trump” As An Option On Multiple Choice Quiz For High School Students;A Wyoming high school is under fire after parents exposed an online student quiz that offered shooting at Trump as one of the multiple choice answers.An unidentified English teacher at Jackson Hole High School gave students a multiple choice quiz on Thursday about George Orwell s novel Animal Farm that included a question that many are pointing to as an example of the district s liberal bias, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reports. Napoleon has a gun fired for a new occasion. What is the new occasion? the quiz read.Possible answers included He was shooting at Trump, His birthday, For completion of the windmill, or To scare off the attackers of Animal Farm. Jim McCollum told the news site he did a double-take when his son showed him a screenshot he took of the test. I had to read it two times, McCollum said. I was like, Are you kidding me? McCollum, a Jackson Hole High School graduate and Trump supporter, shared the quiz on Facebook, where it was shared widely and generated a lot of angry comments. It was so inappropriate to show a name of a sitting president in that question, he said. To me, that is so wrong in light of the situation in our country and the divisiveness and all. He told the news site the incident is one of other examples of liberal bias in other classes at the school that make conservative students like son out to be the outcast. He told me, Dad, they crapped on everything I believe in, McCollum said of his son. Rylee is very patriotic, very supportive of our military and of our country and is considering enlisting in the U.S. Marines.School officials eventually issued a statement about the quiz on Monday. (District) administration learned late yesterday that a quiz was administered to a class of high school students that contained an inappropriate answer to a multiple choice question. The administration is investigating this incident and verifying the information we have received, the statement read. (The District) takes seriously threats of any kind, regardless of the intent. We apologize to the students, families and community for this incident and will be addressing the issue with personnel. EAG News ;left-news;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ANOTHER CLINTON CASUALTY? Sister Of Woman Who Allegedly Had Photos Proving Affair With Bill Clinton, Questions His Involvement In Her Mysterious House Fire Death;As more and more women line up to tell their stories about sex with Bill Clinton both consensual and forced there is one who is unable to relive the details of her alleged affair.Penthouse Pet Judi Gibbs died in a mysterious house fire in 1986 amid rumors that she had pictures that proved she and the then-Governor of Arkansas had been regular sex partners.And even now, 30 years after she died alongside her much-older other lover, doubts remain about how and why Gibbs and her long-time beau Bill Puterbaugh met their grizzly deaths.But now DailyMail.com has pieced together the life and death of Judi Gibbs, telling for the first time how the auburn-haired woman from a pin-prick of an Arkansas town managed to bed the man who went on to be one of the most powerful men in the world.And the question remains unanswered: Was Judi Gibbs killed because Bill Clinton and his advisers feared the affair was about to become public? I have always been convinced that Bill Clinton was responsible for the fire, but I have no proof, Gibbs older sister Martha, who still lives in Sims, Arkansas, told DailyMail.com. And what would happen if I had proof you can t touch those people. At the time of her death, Gibbs was 32 and living with 57-year-old developer Puterbaugh in a large isolated home a quarter-mile drive opposite a tiny airport outside Fordyce, Arkansas.Their bodies were both found in the huge master bedroom. They died of smoke inhalation.Puterbaugh s son, Randy, who followed him into the real estate business, tells a similar story to Martha Gibbs, even though the two have not spoken since the days following the double death. There are so many pieces of the puzzle. Puterbaugh said. I believe it is a possibility that Bill Clinton was involved in their deaths. I know I wish I had hired my own private investigator but I didn t, so I guess I will never know. Judi Gibbs and Bill Puterbaugh died on January 3, 1986. According to a report in the local Fordyce News-Advocate, Gibbs called the fire department at 2.26 am wailing in her Marilyn Monroe-type voice: Bill Puterbaugh s house is on fire, hurry, you all, hurry. Puterbaugh s body was found by a window. Gibbs was still clutching the phone right next to the king-sized bed.Local fire chief Roy Wayne Moseley has no explanation as to why the lovers did not manage to get out of the house. The only reason I can think why they didn t is they were overrun with smoke so quick and so fast, he said. It was a real tragedy. As far as residential fires go, that was the worst we ve had, added Moseley, now 80 and still chief of the Fordyce Volunteer Fire Department a post he has held since 1960.Many people around the Clintons have died in unusual circumstances over the years, leading conspiracy theorists to claim they could be connected.As DailyMail.com reported earlier this year, five deaths in a six-week span between June 22 and August 2 this year had connections to the former first family. I m not saying the Clintons kill people. I m saying a lot of people around the Clintons turn up dead, Larry Nichols, who worked with the former First Family before turning against them, told DailyMail.com.And the names of Judi Gibbs and her lover Bill Puterbaugh could be added to that list.Gibbs was the sixth of seven children born to a hardscrabble family in Sims, a two-hour drive west of Little Rock.In her teens, she was lured into prostitution by her brother-in-law Dale Bliss, who is now 85 and 32 years into a life prison sentence for child rape. Daily Mail ;left-news;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DNC MEGA-DONOR Ditches Dems in Scathing Message: ‘Bunch of dumb-ass political hacks’;Wow! This is huge! The Democrats and their leaders are obviously ticking off the big guys with big bucks Was it something they said? DNC Chairman Tom Perez could be the culprit or was it Donna Brazile exposing the corruption in the DSNC? We re happy Morgan saw the light and ditched the DNC but he s still on board with some Democratic candidates He needs to come on over to the RIGHT side!TALLAHASSEE John Morgan tossed a bomb Friday into the 2018 political landscape, saying in a post-Thanksgiving message he is leaving the Democratic Party, and that Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson should not run for re-election, but rather seek the governor s mansion so he can leave a legacy. I can t muster enthusiasm for any of today s politicians, the prominent trial lawyer and Democratic fundraiser wrote on Twitter. They are all the same. Both parties. I plan to register as an independent and when I vote, vote for the lesser of two evils. Morgan said, while he would support some Democratic candidates he likes, he would not raise a dime for national groups like the Democratic National Committee. F no, he said when asked if he would help national organizations. That s like pissing money down a rat hole. Read Donna [Brazile s] book Morgan was referring to a book by the former interim DNC chair, previewed this month in POLITICO Magazine, where she says the party essentially rigged the DNC to support Hillary Clinton before the Democratic primary was over. Bunch of dumb ass political hacks, Morgan added.;politics;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ANOTHER CLINTON CASUALTY? Sister Of Woman Who Allegedly Had Photos Proving Affair With Bill Clinton, Questions His Involvement In Her Mysterious House Fire Death;As more and more women line up to tell their stories about sex with Bill Clinton both consensual and forced there is one who is unable to relive the details of her alleged affair.Penthouse Pet Judi Gibbs died in a mysterious house fire in 1986 amid rumors that she had pictures that proved she and the then-Governor of Arkansas had been regular sex partners.And even now, 30 years after she died alongside her much-older other lover, doubts remain about how and why Gibbs and her long-time beau Bill Puterbaugh met their grizzly deaths.But now DailyMail.com has pieced together the life and death of Judi Gibbs, telling for the first time how the auburn-haired woman from a pin-prick of an Arkansas town managed to bed the man who went on to be one of the most powerful men in the world.And the question remains unanswered: Was Judi Gibbs killed because Bill Clinton and his advisers feared the affair was about to become public? I have always been convinced that Bill Clinton was responsible for the fire, but I have no proof, Gibbs older sister Martha, who still lives in Sims, Arkansas, told DailyMail.com. And what would happen if I had proof you can t touch those people. At the time of her death, Gibbs was 32 and living with 57-year-old developer Puterbaugh in a large isolated home a quarter-mile drive opposite a tiny airport outside Fordyce, Arkansas.Their bodies were both found in the huge master bedroom. They died of smoke inhalation.Puterbaugh s son, Randy, who followed him into the real estate business, tells a similar story to Martha Gibbs, even though the two have not spoken since the days following the double death. There are so many pieces of the puzzle. Puterbaugh said. I believe it is a possibility that Bill Clinton was involved in their deaths. I know I wish I had hired my own private investigator but I didn t, so I guess I will never know. Judi Gibbs and Bill Puterbaugh died on January 3, 1986. According to a report in the local Fordyce News-Advocate, Gibbs called the fire department at 2.26 am wailing in her Marilyn Monroe-type voice: Bill Puterbaugh s house is on fire, hurry, you all, hurry. Puterbaugh s body was found by a window. Gibbs was still clutching the phone right next to the king-sized bed.Local fire chief Roy Wayne Moseley has no explanation as to why the lovers did not manage to get out of the house. The only reason I can think why they didn t is they were overrun with smoke so quick and so fast, he said. It was a real tragedy. As far as residential fires go, that was the worst we ve had, added Moseley, now 80 and still chief of the Fordyce Volunteer Fire Department a post he has held since 1960.Many people around the Clintons have died in unusual circumstances over the years, leading conspiracy theorists to claim they could be connected.As DailyMail.com reported earlier this year, five deaths in a six-week span between June 22 and August 2 this year had connections to the former first family. I m not saying the Clintons kill people. I m saying a lot of people around the Clintons turn up dead, Larry Nichols, who worked with the former First Family before turning against them, told DailyMail.com.And the names of Judi Gibbs and her lover Bill Puterbaugh could be added to that list.Gibbs was the sixth of seven children born to a hardscrabble family in Sims, a two-hour drive west of Little Rock.In her teens, she was lured into prostitution by her brother-in-law Dale Bliss, who is now 85 and 32 years into a life prison sentence for child rape. Daily Mail ;politics;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TEACHER Uses “Shooting at Trump” As An Option On Multiple Choice Quiz For High School Students;A Wyoming high school is under fire after parents exposed an online student quiz that offered shooting at Trump as one of the multiple choice answers.An unidentified English teacher at Jackson Hole High School gave students a multiple choice quiz on Thursday about George Orwell s novel Animal Farm that included a question that many are pointing to as an example of the district s liberal bias, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reports. Napoleon has a gun fired for a new occasion. What is the new occasion? the quiz read.Possible answers included He was shooting at Trump, His birthday, For completion of the windmill, or To scare off the attackers of Animal Farm. Jim McCollum told the news site he did a double-take when his son showed him a screenshot he took of the test. I had to read it two times, McCollum said. I was like, Are you kidding me? McCollum, a Jackson Hole High School graduate and Trump supporter, shared the quiz on Facebook, where it was shared widely and generated a lot of angry comments. It was so inappropriate to show a name of a sitting president in that question, he said. To me, that is so wrong in light of the situation in our country and the divisiveness and all. He told the news site the incident is one of other examples of liberal bias in other classes at the school that make conservative students like son out to be the outcast. He told me, Dad, they crapped on everything I believe in, McCollum said of his son. Rylee is very patriotic, very supportive of our military and of our country and is considering enlisting in the U.S. Marines.School officials eventually issued a statement about the quiz on Monday. (District) administration learned late yesterday that a quiz was administered to a class of high school students that contained an inappropriate answer to a multiple choice question. The administration is investigating this incident and verifying the information we have received, the statement read. (The District) takes seriously threats of any kind, regardless of the intent. We apologize to the students, families and community for this incident and will be addressing the issue with personnel. EAG News ;politics;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GOP EVIDENCE: Comey FBI Busted Giving Clinton ‘Special Status’…Those Responsible STILL At FBI! [Video];"Friday on Fox News Channel s Fox & Friends, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said evidence had been uncovered showing that the FBI gave the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s improper use of an unauthorized email server while secretary of state a special status. According to the Florida Republican, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the process afforded to Clinton was different than it would have been for any other American. We now have evidence that the FBI s investigation of Hillary Clinton did not follow normal and standard procedures, he said. The current deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe sent emails just weeks before the presidential election saying that the Hillary Clinton investigation would be special that it would be handled by a small team at headquarters, that it would be given special status. GOETZ CALLED FOR AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION: I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";politics;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“I SERVED WITH ROY MOORE IN VIETNAM”…Letter From Veteran Sets Record Straight On “Honorable, Decent, Respectable, Patriotic Commander and Soldier”;If it wasn t for people like Vietnam veteran William E. Staehle, who made the decision to publicly defend the character of Roy Moore in an op-ed, the only picture the American people might have of the former judge, is the one painted by the leftist media and the rabid Democrat Party, that struggles to identify a single legitimate reason for Alabama voters to support their candidate Doug Jones.I served with Roy Moore in Vietnam in 1971-72, where I knew him to be an altogether honorable, decent, respectable, and patriotic commander and soldier. I have had no contact with him since.He and I were captains and company commanders in the 504th Military Police Battalion, stationed at the base camp called Camp Land, just west of Danang.I knew him well in my first four months in-country before I was re-assigned within the battalion to another location. During that time, I grew to admire him.I am Bill Staehle, residing in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I am an attorney, practicing law continuously for 42-years. I began my career as an assistant United States attorney, and for the past 32 years, I have been the managing trial lawyer for the staff counsel office of a major insurance company.Allow me to relate to you one experience involving Roy that impressed me.While in Vietnam, there came a time when another officer invited Roy and me to go with him into town after duty hours for a couple of beers. That officer had just returned from an assignment in Quang Tri Province north of Danang, and we were interested to learn of his experiences.I had not met him before, and I don t believe Roy had either. On other occasions with other officers, we would go to the officers club at the air force base, but on this occasion, he told us he knew of another place in town.When we arrived at the place and went inside, it was clear to Roy and me that he had taken us to a brothel. That officer appeared to know people there, as he was greeted by one or two young women in provocative attire.The place was plush. There were other American servicemen there. Alcohol was being served. There were plenty of very attractive young women clearly eager for an intimate time.In less time than it took any of the women to approach us, Roy turned to me and said words to this effect, We shouldn t be here. I am leaving. We told the officer who had brought us that we wanted to leave. He told us to take his jeep and that he could get a ride back later, which he did. Roy and I drove back to camp together.That evening, if I didn t know it before, I knew then that with Roy Moore I was in the company of a man of great self-control, discipline, honor, and integrity. While there were other actions by Roy that reinforced my belief in him, that was the most telling.I reject what are obvious, politically motivated allegations against Roy of inappropriate dating behavior. What I saw, felt and knew about him in Vietnam stands in stark contrast to those allegations.I sincerely doubt that Roy s character had changed fundamentally and dramatically in a few short years later. He deserves, in my view, to be heard on the issues that are important to the people of Alabama and our country.Roy was a soldier for whom I was willing to put my life on the line in Vietnam if the occasion ever arose. Fortunately, it did not.I was prepared to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him then, and I am proud to stand by Roy now. William E. Staehle, Asbury Park, New JerseyVia: Yellow Hammer;politics;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! #FakeNews CNN’s April Ryan EMBARRASSES Herself On Thanksgiving Day Over Her Obsession With Legitimacy Of Sarah Sanders’ Pecan Pie;CNN political analyst just spent her Thanksgiving Day so consumed with hate for President Trump s White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that she removed any doubt her Twitter followers may have had about the possibility of having an objective bone in her body.CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan suggested, without any evidence, Friday that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders actually didn t actually cook the pecan pie Sanders said she did.Here is Sanders tweet that got under April Ryan s skin:I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan is frequently praised by liberals for being a nuisance in the White House press briefing room, but she failed to present any evidence Friday, except for the claims of random Twitter users, that Sanders faked the pie. Ryan did not respond to this reporter when asked for proof.A reverse image search did not find any other pictures of the pecan pie that Sanders posted.The White House press secretary responded to Ryan s criticism and said that she will make the journalist a pie of her own.-Daily CallerDon t worry @AprilDRyan because I m nice I ll bake one for you next week #RealPie #FakeNews https://t.co/5W3mGbKs4J Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 24, 2017While hundreds of liberal Twitter users jumped on Ryan s thread, as a way to drum up hate for the brilliant and witty conservative Press Secretary, Sanders definitely got her fair share of support. Conservative actor James Woods didn t make any secret about how he is thankful on Thanksgiving Day for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. One final reason to be thankful today: @SarahHuckabee She is the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. The #CNN and other liberal minions melt before her intelligence, her wit, and her sheer fortitude like snowflakes in the desert. James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 24, 2017Twitter user, Vanessa Vega nailed it with her tweet in response to Sanders reply to Ryan s ridiculous claim:It burns them up. That a graceful intelligent woman like you holds the WH positions, rocks at it, is an amazing mother and baked a pie during a traditional American Holiday. keep doing you @PressSec !! We are grateful for you & the haters are entertaining to watch Vanessa Vega (@EscbrRoX2017) November 25, 2017 ;politics;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Succession battle at U.S. financial agency seen headed to courts;WEST PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A battle between the White House and Democrats over warring appointments to head up the top U.S. regulator for consumer finance is likely headed for the courts, opening any interim actions by the agency to legal challenges, lawyers said on Saturday. Richard Cordray, a Democrat, stepped down on Friday as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which was created after the financial crisis to protect consumers from abusive lending practices, and he named staffer Leandra English as acting director. A few hours later, President Donald Trump named someone else to lead the agency: Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director and one of the CFPB’s fiercest critics. The CFPB, the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and a liberal firebrand, has long been in the crosshairs of Republicans, who say it has had too much unchecked power. On Saturday, Trump tweeted that the CFPB - which has imposed steep penalties on banks, auto dealers, student lenders and credit card companies for predatory lending practices - had “devastated” financial institutions. Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump may nominate a permanent CFPB chief, but they disagree over who may lead the agency in the interim, a dispute which could drag on for months until the Senate confirms a permanent Trump appointment. The dispute is over which federal law prevails in naming an interim director. According to Democrats, the relevant law is the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that created the CFPB, which stipulates that the agency’s deputy director is to take over in the short term. Cordray, in announcing his resignation on Friday, said he had named English as deputy director and that she would become the acting director. But administration officials say the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act gives the president the power to temporarily fill agency positions, except for those with multi-member boards - an exemption they said did not apply to the CFPB. On Saturday evening, the Justice Department said in a memo that the White House was right to name a new CFPB director. The Dodd-Frank language about changing CFPB directors is “unusual” but the White House may name an interim chief, according to the memo. Such advice from the Justice Department is open to legal challenge. Alan Kaplinsky, head of the Consumer Financial Services Group for law firm Ballard Spahr LLP, said the issue will likely have to be decided in the courts. In the meantime, he said, “This enormous cloud of uncertainty” will hang over the CFPB. Kaplinsky said he believes that Dodd-Frank provides for the deputy director to take charge during the short-term, but Congress did not explicitly list the resignation of the director as a situation where the deputy would step up. “I think Trump wins, but unfortunately it is going to take a while,” Kaplinsky said. Quyen Truong, a partner at law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who was the assistant director and deputy general counsel for the CFPB until early 2016, said the industry should expect CFPB staff to continue their work, but that the “agency’s actions during this period almost certainly will be subject to legal challenge.” Despite the legal uncertainty, Mulvaney is expected to “show up Monday and he will go into the office and start working,” a senior administration official said on Saturday. White House officials said English was also expected to turn up on Monday and serve as Mulvaney’s deputy. English could not be reached for comment. Cordray is the only person to have led the young agency, making this the first time that succession of the director has been tested. Administration officials said the appointment of Mulvaney was “routine” and that the White House had sought guidance from the Justice Department before Friday’s announcement. “This needs to be decided in the courts,” Warren said in a tweet on Saturday. Industry critics said the succession battle underlined that the agency lacks proper Congressional oversight. “The CFPB’s current governing structure is a dictatorship, period,” Richard Hunt, head of the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group for retail banking, said in a statement. Democrats and consumer advocates said it was unfair and inappropriate to put Mulvaney - who once described the CFPB as a “joke” - in charge. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee, said Mulvaney would have too much power, as the CFPB director also sits on the boards of two other financial regulatory agencies. “The White House would have an alarming degree of direct control over financial regulation, supervision, and enforcement,” Waters said in a statement. ;politicsNews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GOP EVIDENCE: Comey FBI Busted Giving Clinton ‘Special Status’…Those Responsible STILL At FBI! [Video];"Friday on Fox News Channel s Fox & Friends, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said evidence had been uncovered showing that the FBI gave the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s improper use of an unauthorized email server while secretary of state a special status. According to the Florida Republican, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the process afforded to Clinton was different than it would have been for any other American. We now have evidence that the FBI s investigation of Hillary Clinton did not follow normal and standard procedures, he said. The current deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe sent emails just weeks before the presidential election saying that the Hillary Clinton investigation would be special that it would be handled by a small team at headquarters, that it would be given special status. GOETZ CALLED FOR AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION: I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";Government News;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump: Everything You Heard Me Say On The Access Hollywood Tape Never Happened;Former reality show star Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to be held responsible for the words that come out of his own mouth, even when it s on tape. For example, the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which he suggests that because he s powerful, he can just grab women by their p-ssies. Trump defended sexual harasser and Fox News host (yeah, I know that s redundant) Bill O Reilly in the recent past and even more recently, he has defended alleged pedophile and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. So, defending perverts is just another day for Donald Trump.Here s a quick reminder of what Trump said on the p*ssy grabbing tape: You know I m automatically attracted to beautiful [women] I just start kissing them. It s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don t even wait. And when you re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything. The New York Times reports that even after Trump made an almost-apology after the tape was revealed, he still told a Senator and an adviser that the Access Hollywood tape may not be authentic.But something deeper has been consuming Mr. Trump. He sees the calls for Mr. Moore to step aside as a version of the response to the now-famous Access Hollywood tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women s genitalia, and the flood of groping accusations against him that followed soon after. He suggested to a senator earlier this year that it was not authentic, and repeated that claim to an adviser more recently.So, to reiterate, Trump told an adviser recently that the video and tape of him talking about perving on women is fake news. And he also told that to a Senator after it was released.We see a pattern here. Maybe Trump s cult-like following will believe this crap but the rest of us remember that tape all too well. That tape was an indicating factor that Donald J. Trump is unfit for office, morally and intellectually.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;News;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Principles Over Power: Why Republicans Need To Do What’s Right To Remain Relevant;Over the last few weeks, I ve watched as the last shreds of the Republican Party s family values rotted away.As Alabama voters prepare to go to the polls in December they have two choices before them.They can vote for the Democrat and prove that they refuse to tolerate an accused child molester and sexual predator being in their party and in the Senate, or they can put political power over the morality they have long preached about.In other words, they can either put power over principles or put principles over power.They can t do both.And while they are damned if they do and damned if they don t, choosing the latter of those two options would be a far better and more honorable choice.Some things go above politics, and sexual assault is, and rightfully should, be one of them.Voting for Moore for the sake of political power throws every sexual assault victim under the bus. It will especially be a slap in the face of women across the country, a major voting block that has already been overwhelmingly voting Democrat for many years.If Republicans want to have any chance of surviving as a legitimate political party for many more decades to come, it is critical that they start by drawing a line in the sand when it comes to Moore and the people who defend him such as Donald Trump.This starting point alone can restore a little of the respect the GOP has lost. Perhaps then, they ll even be courageous enough to rejects the racists and the sexists and the Nazis, which will do more to grow the ranks of the party than the Southern Strategy ever did.And then the Republican Party can get past being a haven for extremists and anti-government zealots and get on the road to becoming a sane party with real ideas instead of simply opposing and obstructing at every turn, which has not been good for the country at all.America has lost its respect of the international community and our reputation has been seriously sullied. Letting Moore step inside the Senate would send a message to the world that America supports child molestation and the sexual assault and harassment of women.Such a message from the Republican Party smacks of hypocrisy. After all, we are talking about the same party that constantly bring up the sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton.But just like how they constantly bring up Abraham Lincoln in an attempt to claim that the Republican Party must still be great, their rhetoric about Bill Clinton is old and tired and not really that relevant today. The GOP is far removed from the days of Lincoln. And Bill Clinton was president two decades ago and if he were running today he would not win. The sexual assault allegations alone would prevent him from even getting on the ballot.However, by supporting Donald Trump, who was accused by a dozen women of sexual assault during the 2016 campaign, Republicans committed a serious hypocrisy that undermines their Bill Clinton talking point.If Moore wins next month, Republicans will only be doubling down on that hypocrisy and they ll be past the point of no return. And the consequences will be severe.America is more diverse than ever before. Women have emerged as a force to be reckoned with after decades of old white guys running the show. Minorities are also set to become the majority of the population, and once that scale tips, the GOP will no longer be able to be the party of white people. It just won t work.It s just a matter of time, and time is running out for the Republican Party.And that s why they must rise above politics and stand for something bigger than themselves.Sexual assault and child molestation should not be rewarded with power and prestige. And that should go beyond the political arena as well, whether the behavior is coming from a corporate CEO or the part-owner of a website or a church leader or any other position of power.Republicans need to start practicing the morality they preach and they can do that by putting politics aside and do the right thing.That s what Republicans did in 1860 when they voted for a dark horse candidate as their flagbearer. Lincoln then put politics aside to assemble one of the greatest Cabinets in our history, bringing together liberal and conservative Republicans and even a Democrat or two.And even though Lincoln remained neutral at first and the politics of day made it really difficult, he made the decision to put politics aside and pushed for the passage of the 13th Amendment. Such a move at the time could have cost Lincoln a second term, but he did it anyway.Lincoln put principle over power in the face of an even more contentious and hateful political environment than we are experiencing today. It s time for Republicans to do the same now.Seven years ago, my first article for this site explained how Republicans have put power over principles for decades to the detriment of our progress towards a better future for everyone.Today, I want inform my loyal readers that this will be my final article for Addicting Info.It has been an honor and a privilege to write here for so many years. I must first thank my readers for making this job possible. Knowing that I was informing so many people across the country and around the world motivated me to make writing about politics my career. And now it is time to move on in order to further pursue that goal.It is hard to leave the best job one has ever had. Through the years, I have made friends and lost friends. I have been here through the struggles and the triumphs. And I have done that while drastically improving as a writer and a person along the way.With that being said, it is especially hard to leave the people I work with, and there are many, both past and present, who deserve a shout-out. I would like to personally thank Wendy Gittleson, Sarah Wood, Eve-Angeline MItchell, John Prager, Justin Acuff, Elisabeth Parker, Shannon Barber, Andrew Simpson, Conover Kennard, Jameson Parker, Ryan Denson, Patricia Colli, Randa Morris, Joe Fletcher, Dylan Hock, April Louise Childers, Justin Rosario, Shannon Argueta, Allison McHam Vincent, Christopher Blair, Oliver Willis, Kerry-anne Mendoza, Nathaniel Downes, Nurmi Husa, and David E. Phillips for enriching my life and helping me develop into the writer and person I am today. You have all been amazing friends and colleagues and I would not be where I am without you.Last, but not least, I want to thank Matthew Desmond for believing in me enough to give me my start and keep me around all these years. You have been the best boss I could ever have hoped for and your friendship and support has been invaluable to me. You ve been an inspiration and I will always be grateful and fiercely loyal to you. You changed my life in ways you may never know.This is not goodbye forever. Perhaps one day, I ll return as long as the door remains open for me to do so. But for now, this is Stephen D. Foster Jr. signing off.Featured Image: Mark Wilson/Getty Images;News;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Sean Hannity Gets Wrecked For Yelling At Time Magazine For Calling Out Trump’s Lie;Fox News host Sean Hannity is having a Twitter meltdown after Time called out Donald Trump for claiming that the magazine called him regarding the Person of the Year award and that he declined the offer.Time magazine corrected Trump in a tweet, writing, The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6. The magazine calling out Trump was too much to bear for Trump cult member Sean Hannity who called it bullshit just hours after Time denied the former reality show star s bizarre claim. I call total Bullshit on Time. Answer the question;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Support for Irish PM's party falls as snap election nears;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Support for Ireland s governing Fine Gael party fell in a poll on Saturday as a political crisis that has left the country three days away from the calling of a snap election showed no sign of being resolved. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar s minority government was on the brink on Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britain s plans to leave the European Union where Ireland will play a key role. Varadkar has said that if the motion put down by Fianna Fail, the main opposition party, is not withdrawn by Tuesday, he would be forced to hold an election before Christmas. Support for his party dropped two points to 27 percent in the Sunday Business Post/Red C poll, only marginally ahead of the 25.5 percent it achieved at last year s election and its worst performance in recent opinion polls. Fellow center-right party Fianna Fail rose to 26 percent from 25 percent a month ago and leftwing opposition Sinn Fein were up two points to 16 percent, both also marginally higher than the last election. The survey was taken between November 20 and 24, the day the crisis escalated rapidly and suggested the parties would struggle to form anything but another minority administration. Again (the poll) suggests no one wins at a Christmas election if these numbers hold, Richard Colwell, the chief executive of Red C, wrote on Twitter. Varadkar has said that there is still time to avoid the snap poll but neither side were stepping down on Saturday ahead of the motion of no-confidence, to be debated on Tuesday. Although the leaders will do their best, it is unlikely that the positions are going to shift between now and Tuesday, and if that is the case the only way we can prevent an election is for the Tanaiste to resign, senior Fianna Fail MP Jim O Callaghan told national broadcaster RTE. The Tanaiste is the name given to the position of deputy head of government in Ireland, currently held by Frances Fitzgerald. Health Minister Simon Harris said the price of any talks over the next three days will not be the head of the deputy prime minister and that the agreement with Fianna Fail that allows the minority government to function was extremely badly damaged. Varadkar is due to play a major role in the Dec. 14-15 EU summit on Brexit, telling fellow leaders whether Dublin believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britain s province of Northern Ireland. The government has said enough progress has not been made to date. The border is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move the talks on to a second phase about trade and EU officials have said a snap election in Ireland would complicate that task. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian long-range bombers hit Islamic State targets in the northeast of Syria on Saturday, Russian news agencies cited the Russian Defense Ministry as saying. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin signs 'foreign agents' media law;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Saturday new measures allowing authorities to list foreign media outlets as foreign agents in response to what Moscow says is unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. The new law has been rushed through both Russian houses of parliament in the last two weeks. It will now allow Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of foreign agents and to disclose their funding sources. A copy of the law was published on the Russian government s online legislation database on Saturday, saying it entered into force from the day of its publication. Russia s move against U.S. media is part of the fallout from allegations that Russia interfered in last year s U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. U.S. intelligence officials have accused the Kremlin of using Russian media organizations it finances to influence U.S. voters, and Washington has since required Russian state broadcaster RT to register a U.S.-based affiliate company as a foreign agent . The Kremlin has repeatedly denied meddling in the election and said the restrictions on Russian broadcasters in the United States are an attack on free speech. The Russian Justice Ministry last week published a list of nine U.S.-backed news outlets that it said could be affected by the changes. It said it had written to the U.S. government-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by RFE/RL. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Zimbabwe finmin Chombo detained until bail hearing Monday;HARARE (Reuters) - Ousted Zimbabwe finance minister Ignatius Chombo, charged with three counts of corruption in offences that allegedly took place more than a decade ago, will be detained until Monday, when the court will rule on his bail application. Chombo was among those detained by the military when it seized power before Robert Mugabe resigned as president on Tuesday. Several members of a group allied to Mugabe and his wife Grace were detained and expelled from the ruling party, including Chombo. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran's Rouhani says Sochi summit 'right step, at right time' for Syria;LONDON (Reuters) - The trilateral meeting between Iran, Russia and Turkey in the Russian resort of Sochi this week was a right step, at the right time for stability in Syria, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad. Russia s Vladimir Putin won the backing of Turkey and Iran on Wednesday to host a Syrian peace congress, taking the central role in a major diplomatic push to finally end a civil war all but won by Assad. Sochi summit was a right step at the right time, Rouhani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA on Saturday in a phone call with Tehran s main regional ally. He said a national congress to hold face-to-face talks between government and opposition could be a step towards stability and security of Syria. Iran has signed large economic contracts with Syria, reaping what appear to be lucrative rewards for helping Assad in his fight against rebel groups and Islamic State militants. Tehran is ready to have an active role in reconstruction of Syria, Rouhani added. The chief commander of Iran s Revolutionary Guards, who has sent weapons and thousands of soldiers to Syria to prop up Assad s regime, also said on Thursday that their forces were ready to help rebuild Syria and bring about a lasting ceasefire there. Syria s six-year civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. In a joint statement in Sochi, the three leaders called on the Syrian government and moderate opposition to participate constructively in the planned congress, to be held in the same city on a date they did not specify. Saudi Arabia, Iran s arch rival in the Middle East, also sponsored a meeting on Wednesday at a luxury hotel in Riyadh for the Syrian opposition groups. Regional tensions have risen in recent weeks between Sunni Muslim monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran. Saudi Crown Prince called the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the new Hitler of the Middle East in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday. Israel also views Iran as the main threat in the region, and a cabinet minister said this month Israel has had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia. It is very odd that a regional country considers Iranian nation as its enemy and the Zionist regime as its friend, Rouhani told Assad in the call. The next round of U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the Syrian civil war will begin on Nov. 28. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistani government calls in army to help disperse Islamist protesters;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan s government on Saturday called on the military to help police break up a sit-in by religious hardliners who have blocked the main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks, state television reported. Army called in to control law and situation in capital, official Pakistan TV reported, citing an Interior Ministry notification. Pakistani police fought running battles on Saturday with stone-throwing activists of the ultra-religious Tehreek-e-Labaik party but failed to dislodge the activist who are blocking roads into Islamabad. By nightfall new demonstrators had joined the camp as protests spread to other main cities with activists brandishing sticks and attacking cars in some areas. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan orders TV channels to go off air during crackdown on Islamist protest;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities ordered private television channels to go off air on Saturday during a police and paramilitary crackdown on Islamist protesters in the capital. The suspension was ordered by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority for violating media regulations showing live coverage of a security operation, a statement from the regulator said. State-run Pakistan Television continued to broadcast, but aired a talk show discussing politics. Pakistani police used tear gas and watercannon and fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamist activists, as they moved to clear a protest by the religious hard-liners who have blocked main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan government calls in army after police, Islamists clash;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan s government on Saturday called on the army to help clear a sit-in by Islamist hard-liners blockading the capital after police clashed with activists and religious protests spread to other cities. More than 100 people were wounded in Saturday s clashes, including at least 65 members of the security forces, according to reports from hospitals. Protesters said four of their activists had been killed, but police said there had been no deaths. Television footage showed a police vehicle on fire, heavy curtains of smoke and fires burning in the streets as officers in heavy riot gear advanced. Protesters, some wearing gas masks, fought back in scattered battles across empty highways and surrounding neighbourhoods. By nightfall, protests spread to several other big cities with activists brandishing sticks and attacking cars in some areas. New demonstrators had joined the camp in Faizabad, just outside Islamabad, in a stand-off with police, Private TV stations were ordered off the air, with only state-run television broadcasting. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were also blocked in many areas. About 1,000 activists from Tehreek-e-Labaik, a new hard-line Islamist political party, have blockaded the main road into the capital for two weeks, accusing the law minister of blasphemy against Islam and demanding his dismissal and arrest. We are in our thousands. We will not leave. We will fight until end, Tehreek-e-Labaik party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters by telephone from the scene. Tehreek-e-Labaik is one of two new ultra-religious political movements that have risen up in recent months and seem set to play a major role in elections that must be held by summer next year, though they are unlikely to win a majority. Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal told Reuters in a message on Saturday night that the government had requisitioned the military assistance for law and order duty according to the constitution . The ruling party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif - who was disqualified by the Supreme Court in July and is facing a corruption trial - has a fraught history with the military, which in 1999 launched a coup to oust Sharif from an earlier term. Earlier in the day, Iqbal said the protests were part of a conspiracy to weaken the government, which is now run by Sharif s allies under a new prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. There are attempts to create a chaos in (the) country, Iqbal said on state-run Pakistan TV. I have to say with regret that a political party that is giving its message to people based on a very sacred belief is being used in the conspiracy that is aimed at spreading anarchy in the country, Iqbal added, without saying who he considered responsible. Pakistan s army chief on Saturday called on the civilian government to end the protest while avoiding violence from both sides . Opposition leader Imran Khan called for early elections, saying the incompetent and dithering administration had allowed a breakdown of governance. The clashes began on Saturday when police launched an operation involving some 4,000 officers to disperse around 1,000 activists and break up their camp, police official Saood Tirmizi told Reuters. The protesters have paralysed daily life in the capital, and have defied court orders to disband. Tehreek-e-Labaik blames the law minister, Zahid Hamid, for wording in an electoral law that changed a religious oath proclaiming Mohammad the last prophet of Islam to the words I believe , a change the party says amounts to blasphemy. The government put the issue down to a clerical error and swiftly changed the language back. Tehreek-e-Laibak was born out of a protest movement lionizing Mumtaz Qadri, a bodyguard of the governor of Punjab province who gunned down his boss in 2011 over his call to reform strict blasphemy laws. The party won a surprisingly strong 7.6 percent of the vote in a by-election in Peshawar last month. The government had tried to negotiate an end to the sit-in, fearing violence during a crackdown similar to 2007, when clashes between authorities and supporters of a radical Islamabad mosque led to the deaths of more than 100 people. Despite the police crackdown, the protesters were largely still in place by nightfall and Tehreek-e-Labaik leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a prominent cleric, remained at the site, party activist Mohammad Shafiq Ameeni said. Four protesters had died in the police crackdown, he added. By late afternoon, Tehreek-e-Labaik supporters were coming out on the streets in other Pakistani cities in support. Police fired tear gas in Karachi, Pakistan s largest city, to try to disperse about 500 demonstrators near the airport. Outside the northwestern city of Peshawar, about 300 protesters blocked the motorway to Islamabad and started attacking vehicles with stones and sticks. In the eastern city of Lahore, party supporters blocked three roads into the city. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. warns of repercussions for Pakistan over freed militant;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Saturday there would be repercussions for U.S.-Pakistan relations unless Islamabad took action to detain and charge a newly freed Islamist accused of masterminding a 2008 assault in Mumbai, India. A Pakistani court ordered the release on Wednesday of Hafiz Saeed, who was put under house arrest in January after years of living freely in Pakistan, one of the sore points in its fraying relationship with the United States. His freedom had also infuriated its arch-foe India. The White House on Saturday urged Pakistan to arrest Saeed, calling for him to be prosecuted over the Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including Americans. If Pakistan does not take action to lawfully detain Saeed and charge him for his crimes, its inaction will have repercussions for bilateral relations and for Pakistan s global reputation, the White House said in a statement. This is the first time the United States has acknowledged that the recent decision could have an impact on relations between the two countries, who are allies but view each other with suspicion. Saeed has repeatedly denied involvement in the Mumbai attacks in which 10 gunmen attacked targets in India s largest city, including two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a train station in a rampage that lasted several days. The violence brought nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and India to the brink of war. The United States had offered a $10 million bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed, who heads the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Members say the JuD is a charity but the United States says it is a front for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group. The White House said Pakistan s failure to charge Saeed sent a a deeply troubling message about Pakistan s commitment to (combating) international terrorism. It added that it also was counter to Pakistan s claim that it did not provide sanctuary to militants. President Donald Trump has accused Pakistan of harboring agents of chaos and providing safe havens to militant groups waging an insurgency against a U.S.-backed government in Kabul. Pakistan argues that it has done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down terrorists. U.S. official expressed hope that relations between the two countries could improve after a kidnapped U.S.-Canadian couple and their three children were freed in Pakistan in October, after the couple was abducted in neighboring Afghanistan. Michael Kugelman, of the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank in Washington, said he did not expect an imminent change in relations between the two countries, but Saeed s release would be a critical point for Washington as it considers it options. This could move the U.S. closer to adapting a largely symbolic but nonetheless major punitive step - the revocation of Pakistan s non-NATO ally status, which would be a big reputational blow for Pakistan, Kugelman said. Pakistan won major non-NATO ally status in 2004 from the George Bush administration, in what was at the time seen in part as recognition of its importance in the U.S. battle against al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. Non-NATO ally status is a designation given by the U.S. government to close allies who have a strategic working relationship with U.S. Armed Forces but are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ousted Zimbabwe finance minister Chombo faces corruption charges;HARARE (Reuters) - Former Zimbabwe finance minister Ignatius Chombo, among those detained by the military before Robert Mugabe resigned as president, was charged on Saturday with corruption, including trying to defraud the central bank in 2004. The court appearance was the first time Chombo had been seen in public since being detained after the military seized power in Operation Restore Legacy , which it said was meant to remove the criminals around Mugabe. Chombo, a Mugabe ally who had been promoted to finance minister in October, told the court that he was kept blindfolded for nine days after being arrested at his home on Nov. 15. His lawyer has said he was beaten in detention, although Chombo made no mention of that and had no injuries visible as he stood before magistrates in Harare. Several members of a group allied to Mugabe and his wife Grace were detained and expelled from the ruling party, including Chombo, the ousted head of the influential ZANU-PF youth league Kudzanai Chipanga and a deposed leader in the party s youth wing, Innocent Hamandishe. Some supporters of the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, have been calling for unspecified action against the so-called G40 group that backed Mugabe and his wife. Chombo, Chipanga and Hamandishe were allied to the G40. Before his inauguration, Mnangagwa on Thursday urged citizens not to undertake any form of vengeful retribution . The state prosecutor said Chombo was charged three counts of corruption, including attempting to defraud the Zimbabwean central bank in 2004, when he was local government minister. He was not asked to enter a plea by the state. Chombo showed no emotion while the charges were read. The court ordered Chombo detained until Monday when his bail application will be heard. Describing his arrest, when his wife had also been present, Chombo told the court: While we stood in the room, there rushed in between five and six people wearing masks and all of them had guns. The guns were pointing at us. He said he suffered lacerations on his left side when he fell as the soldiers led him out of his house to a car. Chombo s lawyer, Lovemore Madhuku, said on Friday Chombo was admitted to hospital with injuries sustained from beatings he received in military custody. Chombo had no visible injuries and appeared calm, chatting with the police guarding him when the court took a break. Chombo was handed over to the police by the military. The police said they had no information on Chombo s injuries when asked to comment. A former university lecturer and Mugabe s ally, Chombo was promoted in an October cabinet reshuffle from the interior ministry to the finance portfolio, against the backdrop of a severe shortage of the U.S. dollar used by Zimbabwe. In his main act as new finance minister, Chombo told parliament on Nov. 9 that Zimbabwe s budget deficit would soar to $1.82 billion or 11.2 percent of gross domestic product this year from an initial target of $400 million. In the same court, Chipanga faced charges of making statements aimed at undermining public confidence in the defence forces and was also detained until Monday when his bail application will be heard. Hamandishe faced six counts of kidnapping and one of publishing falsehoods and was detained in custody until Dec. 8. Mugabe s fall after 37 years in power was triggered by a battle to succeed him that pitted Mnangagwa against Mugabe s much younger wife Grace, who is 52. Mnangagwa, 75, the former vice president sacked by Mugabe this month, was sworn in as president on Friday. The 93-year-old Mugabe, who had led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980, stepped down on Tuesday after the army seized power and the ruling party turned against him. On Friday, Zimbabwe s Judge President George Chiweshe nullified Mugabe s decision to fire Mnangagwa as his deputy - a move that triggered the military intervention. In his inauguration speech, Mnangagwa laid out a grand vision to revitalise Zimbabwe s ravaged economy and vowed to rule on behalf of all the country s citizens. The main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said Mnangagwa s speech sounded like he was reading from the MDC policy documents , it said in a statement. As a party, we are flattered to note that President Mnangagwa seems to have radically departed from the usual ZANU-PF drivel such as hate-filled language, empty sloganeering and the rabid promotion of racism and retribution against perceived political foes, both domestically and internationally, it said. The MDC demanded concrete action to investigate human rights abuses, steps to tackle corruption, plans for free and fair elections next year and assurances that the military would return to their barracks and stay out of politics. In the early hours of Saturday, armoured vehicles and soldiers that had been stationed outside government buildings, parliament and the courts returned to Inkomo Barracks outside Harare, one of the soldiers manning the vehicles said. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Family of Lebanon PM Hariri visit French president in Paris;BEIRUT (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday received members of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s family in Paris, days after intervening to facilitate Hariri s departure from Saudi Arabia, Hariri s press office said. Hariri resigned as prime minister in a video broadcast from Riyadh on Nov. 4. After intervention by France he returned to Lebanon this week and postponed his resignation at the request of Lebanese President Michel Aoun while a dialogue takes place. Top Lebanese officials have said Riyadh was holding Hariri against his will and forced him to resign. Saudi Arabia has denied this. Hariri s office said his wife Lara, daughter Louloua and one of his two sons, Abdelaziz, arrived in France on Thursday for a holiday and will stay in Paris for a few days. Hariri is a dual Saudi-Lebanese citizen and the two children attend schools in Saudi. Hariri thanked Macron and his wife on Twitter for inviting them to the Elysee Palace. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri takes critical line on Hezbollah;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Saturday that he would not accept Iran-backed Hezbollah s positions that affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries , a statement from his press office said. The statement did not specify which countries he meant. Hariri announced his resignation from his post on Nov. 4 in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy and regional powerhouse locked in a confrontation with Shi ite Iran. Hezbollah is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Gulf monarchies have accused the Shi ite group of also supporting the Houthi group in Yemen and of backing militants in Bahrain. Hezbollah denies any activity in Yemen or Bahrain. Hariri s resignation pitched Lebanon to the forefront of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which backs Hezbollah. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. After returning to Lebanon this week, he shelved the decision on Wednesday at the request of President Michel Aoun, easing a crisis that had deepened tensions in the Middle East. Following his announcement, made on Lebanon s independence day, hundreds of Hariri supporters packed the streets near his house in central Beirut, waving the blue flag of his Future Movement political party. On Saturday, he said that his decision to wait instead of officially resigning is to give a chance to discuss and look into demands that will make Lebanon neutral and allow it to enforce its disassociation policy. Disassociation is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts. The regional role played by the Hezbollah political and military movement has greatly alarmed Saudi Arabia, Hariri s long-time ally. On Saturday, Hezbollah s International Relations Officer Ammar Moussawi said that the Shi ite group is ready to reach understandings with our partners in the country , and that the group is open to real dialogue and cooperation with all, Lebanon s state news agency NNA reported. Moussawi added that Hariri s resignation, which he said was done under coercion from Riyadh, was a spark that aimed to ignite Lebanon. Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the kingdom s modernization plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Five migrants wounded as shots fired in Calais brawl;LILLE, France (Reuters) - Five migrants were wounded on Saturday when shots were fired during a brawl in the northern French port of Calais, the local prefect s office said. Gunshots were exchanged between groups of Afghans in the late afternoon, it said. A police source said the incident occurred during what was probably a dispute between migrant smugglers. The shots were fired near the local Secours Catholique charity on the outskirts of Calais. Three migrants were being treated in a Calais hospital and a fourth, who was more seriously wounded, had been transferred to a hospital in Lille. A fifth was treated at the scene. Calais is a magnet for migrants aiming to reach Britain, a short distance across the Channel. Last year, authorities cleared the makeshift Jungle camp in Calais, but people hoping to get into Britain by crossing the Channel in trains or ferries are steadily returning. Authorities estimate at 500 and associations at 700 the number of migrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Afghanistan still in Calais. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thirty-one bodies recovered after migrant boat sinks off Libya;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - At least 31 migrants died after their boat sank off Libya s western coast on Saturday and some 200 others were picked up by the coastguard to be brought back to port in Tripoli, officials said. The migrants were on two boats off the coast near Garabulli, east of Tripoli, one of which had already sunk when the coastguard arrived at the scene, said Abu Ajala Amer Abdelbari, a coast guard commander. The boat had sunk and they were spread out in the sea, they were trying to swim towards the coast, he said. There were about 60 people who we were able to save because they were clinging to the (remains of the) boat. Another 140 migrants were picked up from the second boat, he said. The dead, including a number of children, were brought back to Tripoli naval base where they were unloaded in white plastic body bags. Libya is the main departure point for mostly African migrants trying to cross to Europe. Smugglers usually pack them into flimsy inflatable boats that often break down or sink. Most migrants are picked up by international vessels and taken to Italy, where more than 115,000 have landed so far this year, although an increasing number are intercepted by Libya s European-backed coastguard and returned to the North African country. Since July, there has been a sharp drop in crossings, though this week has seen a renewed surge in departures. Nearly 3,000 migrants are known to have died or be missing after trying to cross to Europe by sea this year, the majority of them between Libya and Italy. The International Organization for Migration said on Friday that since 2000 the Mediterranean had been by far the world s deadliest border for migrants. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected Boko Haram militants take over northeast Nigeria town: residents;BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Suspected members of Islamist militant group Boko Haram took over a town in the restive state of Borno in northeast Nigeria on Saturday, residents said. The attack comes days after a suicide bomber killed at least 50 people at a mosque in neighbouring Adamawa state in one of the deadliest attacks since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 pledging to end the eight-year insurgency. Residents said attackers entered Magumeri, around 50 km (30 miles) from Borno state capital Maiduguri, around 7:00 p.m. (1800 GMT). They said the insurgents shot sporadically and threw explosive devices, prompting locals to flee to a forest. We hurriedly took our families to the bushes before they could get us. Almost every resident is hiding here, said Wakil Bulama, one of two residents who spoke to Reuters by telephone. A military source who did not want to be identified said Magumeri had been attacked but could not confirm whether it had been seized. Boko Haram has waged an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria since 2009 in its attempt to create an Islamic state in the region. The group has killed more than 20,000 and forced around 2 million people to flee their homes. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel points to grand coalition with Social Democrats;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday welcomed the prospect of talks on a grand coalition with her Social Democrat (SPD) rivals and defended the record of the previous such government, saying it had worked well. Merkel s fourth term was cast into doubt when the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) walked out of three-way coalition talks with her conservative bloc and the Greens last Sunday, causing a political impasse in Europe s biggest economy. But on Friday, the SPD reversed a previous decision and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the possibilities of a new grand coalition which has ruled Germany for the last four years, or of a minority government. Addressing party members on Saturday, Merkel argued voters had given her conservatives a mandate to rule in the Sept. 24 election which handed her party the most parliamentary seats but limited coalition options. Her conservatives bled support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Europe needs a strong Germany, it is desirable to get a government in place quickly, Merkel told a regional party meeting in northern Germany, adding, however, that her acting government could carry on day to day business. Asking voters to go to the polls again would, I think be totally wrong, she said. On Monday, Merkel had said she would prefer new elections to a minority government in which her party would be only held in power by others. Without even mentioning the option of a minority government, Merkel said she wanted to look ahead after the setbacks of the last week. Sounding self-assured and drawing applause during her speech, she turned her attention fully to the SPD. Welcoming the prospect of talks with her former partner, she defended the record of the last coalition. We worked well together, she said, adding under the grand coalition, Germany enjoyed the strongest labor market for decades, a balanced budget and pensioners and families had benefited, she argued. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is to host Merkel, SPD leader Martin Schulz and the leader of her conservative CSU sister party for a meeting on Thursday. Steinmeier had exerted considerable pressure on Schulz to change course for the sake of stability in Germany. However, no one is saying things will be easy and the two former partners are already jostling over policy. Merkel said her aims are to maintain Germany s solid finances, cut some taxes and expand the digital infrastructure. In a nod to her CSU conservative allies, she also said she aims to limit the number of migrants entering Germany to 200,000 per year. This, however, may be hard for the SPD to swallow. A cap, which may not be called that, breaches the constitution and the Geneva Convention. With the SPD there will be no limit put on family members who want to join asylum seekers, SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told the Funke media group. Schulz, who had until Friday rejected any deal with Merkel, said there was nothing automatic about the outcome and promised party members a vote on talks. The SPD is split as many members fear that renewing a grand coalition would be political suicide. It scored its worst result since 1933 in the September election. Several other leading SPD members have called for other commitments, such as investment in education and homes. Some senior SPD members have made clear that they will not let Merkel hold them hostage. Mrs Merkel is not in a position to be setting conditions, Malu Dreyer, premier of the state of Rhineland Palatinate, told the Trierscher Volksfreund. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Medical supplies, U.N. aid workers reach Yemen after blockade eased;GENEVA/SANAA (Reuters) - Humanitarian aid workers and medical supplies began arriving in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Saturday, U.N. officials said, after the easing of a nearly three-week military blockade that sparked an international outcry. Aid groups have welcomed the decision to let aid in but said flights are not enough to avert humanitarian crisis. About 7 million people face famine in Yemen and their survival depends on international assistance. First plane landed in Sanaa this morning with humanitarian aid workers, the World Food Programme s regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa told Reuters in an email, while officials at Sanaa airport said two other U.N. flights had arrived on Saturday. The U.N. children s fund UNICEF said one flight carried over 15 tonnes of vaccines that will cover some 600,000 children against diphtheria, tetanus and other diseases. The needs are huge and there is much more to do for #YemenChildren, the world body said on Twitter. Airport director Khaled al-Shayef said that apart from the vaccinations shipment, a flight carrying eight employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross had also landed. Sanaa airport was closed from Nov. 6 until today, more than 18 days and this closure caused an obstruction to the presence of aid workers, he told Reuters in Sanaa. There are more than 500 employees trapped either inside or outside being denied travel as well as 40 flights that were denied arrival at Sanaa airport. Colonel Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition that closed the ports, said three more aid flights had been approved for Sunday. The coalition, which is fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen with backing from the United States, said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa. The coalition closed air, land and sea access in a move it said was to stop the flow of Iranian arms to the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh. Iran denied again on Saturday supplying weapons to the Houthis. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said that Tehran would welcome the lifting of blockade and any initiative that alleviates the pain of Yemeni people. Maliki said on Friday that 82 permits had been issued for international aid missions since Nov. 4, both for Sanaa airport and Hodeidah, the country s main port where some 80 percent of food supplies enter. That includes issuing clearance for a ship today (Rena), carrying 5,500 metric tonnes of food supplies, to the port of Hodeidah, he said. He told Reuters on Saturday that the commercial vessel had been checked and cleared by coalition navy forces and was approaching Hodeidah, but port officials said no ships had arrived yet and they were not expecting any to dock soon. Maliki said new procedures aimed at blocking weapons transfers stipulate that aid and commercial shipments cannot be mixed on the same vessel, that requests require 72 hours notice instead of 48, and that only humanitarian workers can travel on aid flights. The blockade has drawn wide international concern, including from the United States and the U.N. secretary-general. Sources in Washington said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had asked Saudi Arabia to ease its blockade of Yemen before the kingdom decided to do so. The heads of three U.N. agencies had earlier urged the coalition to lift the blockade, warning that untold thousands would die if it stayed in place. The coalition has asked the United Nations to send a team to discuss ways of bolstering its verification and inspection mechanism programme which was agreed in 2015 to allow commercial ships to enter Hodeidah. The coalition joined the Yemen war in 2015 after the Houthis forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to flee their temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden into exile in Saudi Arabia. The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced over 2 million, triggered a cholera epidemic, and driven Yemen to the verge of famine. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron unveils plan to curb violence against women;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday unveiled measures aimed at educating the public and schoolchildren about sexism and violence against women and improving police support for victims. During his campaign Macron, who won the presidential election in May, promised to rethink sexual politics and gender equality, which he made a national cause for his five-year mandate. The Harvey Weinstein scandal in the United States has accelerated a rethink of attitudes toward sexual harassment in France, a country that cherishes its self-image as the land of seduction and romance. Let s seal a pact of equality between men and women, Macron said in a speech marking the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women. About violence and sexual abuse, he said: It is essential that shame changes camp. During his speech, Macron observed a minute s silence for the 123 women killed by their partner or ex-partner in 2016. Measures announced include educating secondary school children about pornography and simplifying the system for rape and assault victims to go to the police. Proposals that could be included in a 2018 draft law include criminalizing street harassment and extending the statute of limitation for the rape of minors to 30 years from 20 years. Macron also said he was personally in favor of setting the age of sexual consent at 15. Currently France has no minimum age for sexual consent. Planned changes to the police system include allowing victims of rape and sexual assault to make their initial complaints online, before going to a police station to bring criminal charges. Other measures include on demand bus stops, where women can stop a bus anywhere at night so they can get home safely. French feminist group Osez le F minisme said the measures were going in the right direction but must be accompanied by adequate funding. Without funding, any communication, training, awareness or help plan for the victims will be useless, the statement said. France has often debated sexual harassment over the past decade following scandals involving French politicians. Six years ago a sex scandal forced former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn to resign as head of the International Monetary Fund, provoking a round of soul-searching in France about sexual abuse that goes undetected in the upper echelons of power. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syria's Kurds to hold second phase of elections in north;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Elections organized by the Kurdish-led authorities of northern Syria will be held on Dec. 1, part of a process leading to the creation of a local parliament by early 2018, a spokesman said on Saturday. Ibrahim Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish party, said the elections would be for local town and city councils, with more than 30 parties and entities participating. Northern Syrians held the first phase of elections in September, where voters picked leaders for some 3,700 communes spread across three regions of the north where Kurdish groups have established autonomous rule since 2011, when Syria s civil war erupted. Elections will culminate in January with the election of an assembly that will act as a parliament for a federal system of government in northern Syria. The election points to the ambitions of Kurdish groups and their allies that control close to a quarter of Syria, whose stated aim is to secure autonomy as part of a decentralized Syria. The groups insist they do not want to follow the example of the Kurds of northern Iraq, whose vote on an independence referendum in September prompted Western opposition and fierce resistance from Baghdad, Ankara and Tehran. Syria s main Kurdish groups hope for a new phase of negotiations that will shore up their autonomy in northern Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government, however, is asserting its claim to areas captured by the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) from the Islamic State in more forceful terms. Earlier this month, a top adviser to Assad said what happened in Iraqi Kurdistan should be a lesson to the SDF, adding that she does not think any government can discuss with any group when it comes to the topic of the country s unity . ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French minister believes banks had 'good reasons' to close National Front accounts;PARIS (Reuters) - French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Saturday he believed the banks that closed the accounts of far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen and her party had good reasons to do so. But Le Maire also told France Inter radio that he had asked the central Bank of France to look into whether the law had been complied with and that its governor would release his conclusions on Monday. Le Pen earlier this week accused two banks Societe Generale and HSBC of launching a banking fatwa to silence her National Front party by closing bank accounts belonging to her and her party. The banks said they had acted within regulatory requirements but declined to offer fuller explanations. If Societe Generale closes the accounts of the National Front, and also I point out that another bank closed the personal account of Marine Le Pen, it s because it had good reasons to do so. I trust French banking institutions, Le Maire said. My duty as economy and finance Minister is to verify the law has been complied with. So I asked the Bank of France.... I am convinced that the law has been complied with and that these banks had good reasons to take these decisions. Le Pen was defeated in this year s presidential election and her party fared poorly in parliamentary elections. She has accused French banks of being politically biased for not lending to her campaigns. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fire in hotel on Georgia's Black Sea coast kills 11;TBILISI (Reuters) - A fire in a hotel in Georgia s Black Sea resort city of Batumi killed 11 people, an official said on Saturday. Unfortunately, 11 people were killed and 19 were injured in a fire, Giorgi Gakharia, Georgia s interior minister, told reporters. The fire started late on Friday on one floor of the Leogrand hotel and spread quickly. Batumi is about 360 km from Tbilisi, Georgia s capital. The hotel has been scheduled to be a venue for the Miss Georgia beauty contest on Sunday. According to officials, no participants of the contest, who were staying at the hotel, were injured in the blaze. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Momentum grows for another grand coalition in Germany;BERLIN (Reuters) - Members of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) will likely approve a renewed coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives if party leaders present a convincing proposal, a member of the party s executive leadership said on Saturday. Niels Annen of the SPD, in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, called for quick action to form a new German government given a range of crises around the world, and said a grand coalition was an option that could not be excluded. SPD leader Martin Schulz on Friday agreed to hold talks with Merkel about reviving their outgoing coalition government, but said no decisions had been made and party members would have the final say on any deal. But he suggested that governing could help the SPD achieve its political aims and told the party s youth wing - which rejected another grand coalition at a party conference - that he expected their loyalty and constructive cooperation. Annen said the SPD needed to hear from the failed chancellor about how she envisioned the future government before agreeing to another four-year tie-up with conservatives. The center-left SPD had vowed to go into opposition after suffering its worst result in 70 years in September s election, but came under intense pressure, including by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to rethink its position and help avert a disruptive repeat poll in Europe s largest economy. Schulz said party leaders agreed to talks out of a sense of responsibility to Germany and Europe after Merkel s attempt to form a government with two smaller parties collapsed on Sunday. Germany urgently needs a predictable and reliable government. A grand coalition could be an option and we should not exclude it, Annen told the newspaper, adding that the SPD was focused on what is good for the country. He welcomed plans to take any coalition agreement to members for a vote, and said the party should continue its restructuring efforts after the September election setback. I m certain, if the SPD leadership makes a convincing proposal, it will be able to convince the membership, he said. Annen cited citizens insurance and better protection for renters as issues to hash out with conservatives. SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told the Funke newspaper group that Schulz would retain his leadership role, saying he continued to enjoy strong support within the party. There is absolutely no doubt that Martin Schulz will be re-elected as party chairman with a good result, he said. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan to spend around $17 billion to subsidize education: media;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s government will set aside around 2 trillion yen ($17.93 billion) to subsidize education costs and improve elderly care as part of an economic package due early next month, the Asahi newspaper said on Saturday. The government will earmark 800 billion yen for a new program that will offer free day care for children 3 to 5 years old and free childcare for low-income households with children up to 2 years old from April 2019, the newspaper said. The government will spend another 800 billion yen to offer free university education and more grants to low-income households that will begin in fiscal 2020, the newspaper said, without citing its sources. The package will also set aside around 100 billion yen to raise wages for workers at elderly homes and day care centers, the newspaper said. The package is expected to be formally approved on Dec. 8, the newspaper said. To fund the spending, the government will use 1.7 trillion yen in revenue from an increase in the nationwide sales tax scheduled for October 2019 and an increase in employer contributions, the newspaper said. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made increased spending on education and assistance for low-income families a top priority after a big win in lower-house elections last month. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan coast guard finds body of dead male suspected from North Korea;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s Coast Guard found the body of a male and parts of a wooden boat suspected to be from North Korea on the coast of one of Japan s outlying islands on Saturday, an official said. The Coast Guard made the discovery around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday (2130 GMT on Friday) on Sado island, which is off the coast of Japan s northwestern prefecture of Niigata, a coast guard official said, declining to give his name. The guard also found a pack of cigarettes written in Korean and other personal belongings with Korean written on them near the body, the official said. The cause of death is still unknown, the official said. The discovery on Saturday marks the second time this month that parts of a wooden boat suspected to be from North Korea have washed up on the shores of Sado island, the official said. Finding the body will add to the increasing unease in Japan and South Korea over North Korea s nuclear arms program after U.S. President Donald Trump redesignated North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, allowing the U.S. government to levy additional sanctions. On Friday, police found eight North Korean men near a boat at a seaside marina in northern Japan. The men appeared to be fishermen whose boat had trouble, rather than defectors, the police said. Last week, the Coast Guard rescued three North Korean men on a capsized boat in the Sea of Japan who said they were fishermen and were later sent home aboard a North Korean vessel. A North Korean soldier dramatically defected to South Korea last week after being shot and wounded by his country s military as he dashed across the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone between the two countries. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing police detains teacher related to alleged abuse at RYB kindergarten;BEIJING (Reuters) - The police of Beijing s Chaoyang district have detained a teacher on suspicion of abuse at a RYB kindergarten, the police said in an statement posted on its official Weibo account. The Chaoyang police have also arrested another person for disrupting social disorder by spreading false information about the alleged kindergarten abuse and causing odious social influence, it said in a separate Weibo posting. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bali's erupting volcano raises air travel warnings;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian and regional authorities heightened flight warnings around Bali s Mount Agung on Sunday as the volcano s eruptions sent a plume of volcanic ash and steam more than 6,000 metres into the skies above the popular holiday island. Ash covered roads, cars and buildings near the volcano in the northeast of the island, while scores of flights were cancelled and overnight a red glow of what appeared to be magma could be seen in photographs by Antara, the state news agency. The activity of Mount Agung has entered the magmatic eruption phase. It is still spewing ash at the moment but we need to monitor and be cautious over the possibility of a strong, explosive eruption, said Gede Suantika, an official at the volcanology and geological disaster mitigation agency. Bali, famous for its surf, beaches and temples, attracted nearly 5 million visitors last year but business has slumped in areas around the volcano since September when Agung s volcanic tremors began to increase. Agung rises majestically over eastern Bali at a height of just over 3,000 metres. When it last erupted in 1963 it killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages. Australia s Bureau of Meteorology s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VACC) in Darwin issued maps showing an ash cloud heading southeast over the neighbouring island of Lombok, away from Bali s capital, Denpasar, where the main international airport is located. Indonesia also upgraded its Volcano Observatory Notice for Aviation (VONA) to red, its highest warning, and said the ash-cloud top could reach 19,654 feet (6,142 metres) or higher. However, officials said the airport would remain open for now as the ash could be avoided. The volcanic ash has only been detected in a certain area, the airport and other officials said in a joint statement. All domestic flights and the airport itself were operating as normal and tests for ash had been negative, it said. Yunus Suprayogi, general manager of Bali airport operator Angkasa Pura I, said food and entertainment would be provided as well as extra bus services if conditions changed and passenger numbers increased. The airport would also make it easier for passengers to seek refunds and make other arrangements, he said, while noting that airlines had their own rules. After resuming flights on Sunday morning, Virgin Australia again cancelled flights on Sunday afternoon following a change in the aviation colour code from orange to red. Due to the significant volcanic ash and current weather conditions, we have made the decision to cancel the rest of today s flights to and from Bali as a precautionary measure, Virgin said in a statement on its website. AirAsia also cancelled its remaining flights to Bali and Lombok. Qantas and Jetstar flights were continuing as of Sunday afternoon but Jetstar warned on its website that flights could be subject to change at short notice for safety reasons. Indonesia s flag carrier Garuda said it was cancelling all flights to and from Lombok. Lombok airport was closed late on Sunday afternoon and authorities would assess the situation in the morning, a transport ministry spokesman said. Indonesia s disaster agency has said Bali is still safe for tourists except for a 7.5-kilometre (4.7-mile) zone around Mount Agung. Despite the string of eruptions, there has not been an increase in volcanic activity, it said in a statement, noting that the emergency status for Agung remains at level 3, one below the highest. China s Consulate in Denpasar warned citizens on Sunday to be prepared for the possibility of being stranded in Bali. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina faces 'hope and hopelessness' in submarine search;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - No sign of the Argentine submarine lost in the South Atlantic since Nov. 15 has been found despite a massive international search effort, while families of the 44 crew members face the increasing likelihood that their loved ones will never return. Saturday marked the 10th day since the ARA San Juan submarine reported its last position off Argentina s southern coast. Reports of a sound detected underwater near the last known position of the vessel suggest it might have imploded after reporting an electrical problem. But citing respect for the families, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi declined to say anything to confirm the now-common belief that the crew had perished. We are at a stage of hope and hopelessness at the same time, Balbi told reporters. We will not speculate beyond the facts as we know them. He said seven ships were braving 3-meter (3.28-yard) waves to map the ocean floor where the San Juan was most likely to be found. The U.S. Navy said it had deployed unmanned underwater vehicles, or mini-subs equipped with sonar, to join the search. A Russian plane arrived in Argentina on Friday carrying search equipment capable of reaching 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) below the sea surface, Balbi said. The search effort also includes ships and planes from Brazil, Chile, Great Britain and other countries. Families of the crew were meanwhile stuck in an emotional purgatory. The problem with being the loved one of someone who is missing is that the mourning process cannot start, because they are still out there somewhere, local psychologist Guillermo Bruchstein said in a Saturday television interview. They are gone but are not dead. The families have said they suspect the more than 30-year-old vessel was not properly maintained, a charge the government denies, and that the navy has been slow in sharing information with them. Relatives expressed anger at the level of funding of the armed forces, whose budget has declined since the fall of a military dictatorship in the 1980s. The loss of the San Juan is a consequence of the fact that the abandonment and degradation of our defense forces has been an official policy, Argentine Senator Pino Solanas of the independent Project South party told local radio on Saturday. Concerns about the crew s fate have set off a fierce political debate in a society sharply divided between supporters of President Mauricio Macri and opposition Peronists, who have been quick to find fault with the government s response. Until we find the submarine and have all the information, Macri said on Friday, we are not going to speculate on who is at fault. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Militant gunmen in Egypt mosque attack carried 'Islamic State' flag: prosecutor;CAIRO (Reuters) - Militant gunmen who killed more than 300 people in an attack on a mosque in Egypt s North Sinai on Friday were carrying an Islamic State flag and were between 25 to 30 in number, the public prosecutor s office said in a statement on Saturday. The gunmen, some wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded the mosque blocking windows and a doorway and opened fire inside with automatic rifles, the statement citing their investigation and interviews with wounded survivors. They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles, the statement said using an Arabic term for Islamic State. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese police detain teacher in kindergarten abuse inquiry;BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing police investigating alleged child abuse at a kindergarten run by RYB Education Inc said on Saturday they had detained a teacher, in the latest scandal to hit China s booming childcare industry. Police in the Chaoyang district said it will further investigate claims of abuse after China s official Xinhua news agency reported this week they were checking allegations that children at the nursery were reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills . Chaoyang district police said in an online posting on Saturday they had detained a 22-year-old teacher, surnamed Liu from the Hebei province adjacent to Beijing. Police have also arrested another person, also surnamed Liu, for allegedly disrupting social order by spreading false information about the alleged kindergarten abuse, it said in a separate posting. RYB s New York-listed shares plunged 38.4 percent on Friday as the scandal sparked outrage among parents and the public. The second woman, 31, and a Beijing native, was arrested on Thursday, police said. Parents said their children, some as young as three, gave accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported medical check-ups on unclothed students, other media said. RYB provides early education services in China and at the end of June was operating 80 kindergartens and had franchised an additional 175, covering 130 cities and towns in China. Meanwhile, Beijing city authorities have urged RYB to remove the head of the kindergarten, Xinhua reported. The Chaoyang district has launched an investigation into all childcare facilities in its area, the report said. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bangladesh says agreed with Myanmar for UNHCR to assist Rohingya's return;DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to take help from the U.N. refugee agency to safely repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had fled violence in Myanmar, Bangladesh said on Saturday. More than 600,000 Rohingya sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar launched a brutal counter-insurgency operation in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Faced with a burgeoning humanitarian crisis, the two governments signed a pact on Thursday agreeing that the return of the Rohingya to Myanmar should start within two months. Uncertainty over whether the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would have a role had prompted rights groups to insist that outside monitors were needed to safeguard the Rohingya s return. Addressing a news conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali gave assurances that the UNHCR would play some part. Both countries agreed to take help from the UNHCR in the Rohingya repatriation process, Ali said. Myanmar will take its assistance as per their requirement. The diplomatic breakthrough came just ahead of a visit by Pope Francis to Myanmar and Bangladesh from Nov. 26 to Dec. 2 that is aimed at promoting reconciliation, forgiveness and peace . While the violence in Rakhine has mostly ceased, Rohingya have continued to stream out of Myanmar, saying they have largely lost access to sources of livelihood such as their farms, fisheries and markets. Thousands of Rohingya, most of them old people, women and children, remain stranded on beaches near the border, waiting for a boat to take them to Bangladesh. Ali said a joint working group, to be formed within three weeks, will fix the final terms to start the repatriation process. After leaving the refugee camps in Bangladesh, Rohingya who opt to be voluntarily repatriated will be moved to camps in Myanmar, the minister said. Most houses were burnt down. Where they will live after going back? So, it is not possible to physically return to their homes, Ali said. Myanmar officials have said returnees will be moved to camps only temporarily while so-called model villages are constructed near their former homes. Win Myat Aye, the minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement who heads a Myanmar government panel on rehabilitation in Rakhine, said India and China had offered to provide modular houses for returnees. The U.N. and the United States have described the Myanmar military s actions as ethnic cleansing , and rights groups have accused the security forces of committing atrocities, including mass rape, arson and killings. The United States also warned it could impose sanctions on individuals responsible for alleged abuses. Led by Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar is in the early stages of a transition to democracy after decades of military rule. But civilian government is less than two years old, and still shares power with the generals, who retain autonomy over matters of defense, security and borders. The commander of Myanmar s armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has denied that soldiers committed any atrocities. On Friday he met China s President Xi Jinping in Beijing having been told earlier in the week by a top Chinese general that China wanted stronger ties with Myanmar s military. Under the deal struck with Bangladesh, Myanmar agreed to take measures to see that the returnees will not be settled in temporary places for a long time. Myanmar plans to issue them an identity card on their return, although most Rohingya have so far rejected a scheme to give them national verification cards . While the agreement says Bangladesh would seek the U.N. refugee agency s assistance on the process, Myanmar - which has largely blocked aid agencies from working in northern Rakhine since August - only agreed that the services of the UNHCR could be drawn upon as needed and at the appropriate time . Win Myat Aye told Reuters on Saturday that Myanmar would discuss technical assistance with the UNHCR, but had not reached a formal agreement with the agency. There were already hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the latest exodus, and the Bangladesh minister said they could also be considered for the repatriation, under the terms of the agreement. The agreement, however, says they will be considered separately on the conclusion of the present agreement. Some independent estimates suggest there are still a few hundred thousand Rohingya remaining in Rakhine. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Jumblatt calls for Saudi-Iranian discussions;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Top Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt on Saturday called on Saudi Arabia to enter dialogue with Iran and said that the Kingdom s modernization plans could not work while Riyadh was engaged in a war in Yemen. Lebanon was thrust back onto the frontline of a regional power tussle this month between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The two regional powers back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the last of which has become a central arena of the proxy battle. A settlement at minimum with the Islamic Republic (of Iran) gives us in Lebanon more strength and determination to cooperate to enforce the policy of disassociation, Jumblatt wrote in a Tweet on Saturday. Disassociation is widely understood in Lebanon to mean its policy of staying out of regional conflicts, which Hariri has been stressing since his resignation, a reference to Hezbollah whose regional military role is a source of deep concern in Saudi Arabia Saudi policy of confronting Iran more aggressively around the region has been spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also attempting to push through difficult and extensive internal reforms. Saudi Arabia has played an important role in Lebanon in the past, helping to broker the end of its civil war in 1990 and contributing to reconstruction afterwards. But the extent of its role in the Nov. 4 resignation announcement by Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been widely debated in Lebanon and led some Lebanese to fear that Riyadh sought to destabilize their country. Addressing Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Jumblatt said: The challenges are tremendous and the modernization of the Kingdom is an Islamic and Arabic necessity but this mission cannot be successful while the Yemen war continues. The Druze are a minority religious sect present in Syria, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. The Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement since 2015, after the Houthis seized parts of Yemen including the capital Sanaa, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee. On Wednesday, the coalition said it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country. Enough of the destruction and siege in Yemen and enough of the human and material drain on the Kingdom s people and resources, Jumblatt said. Let the Yemeni people choose who it wants and you, Your Excellency the Prince, be the judge, the reformer, and the big brother as your ancestors were. Jumblatt also said it is very difficult to stop the war unless issues are overcome and discussions are held with Iranians. On Friday, Jumblatt criticized the way Hariri had been treated by some Saudi circles , the first time he has appeared to direct blame at Riyadh over Hariri s resignation this month. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia put Hariri under effective house arrest in Riyadh and forced him to declare his resignation on Nov. 4. Saudi Arabia has denied holding Hariri against his will or forcing him to resign. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sacked Catalan leader challenges EU to respect election outcome;OOSTKAMP, Belgium (Reuters) - Catalonia s former leader challenged Spain and the European Union to respect the result of Catalan regional elections in December, saying Madrid would have to end direct rule if separatists win. Speaking from Belgium where he fled earlier this month, Carles Puigdemont said the vote was the most important in Catalonia s history. Will you accept the results of December 21 if the pro-independence camp wins?, he asked after supporters chanted Puigdemont, our president during a speech to unveil his list of candidates for the vote. Do you commit to ending (direct rule) if that is the result? said Puigdemont, the public face of the move for independence who is wanted in Spain for rebellion and sedition. After dissolving Catalonia s parliament and sacking theregional government in response to the region declaring itself independent on Oct. 27, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoysaid a new election would be held in Catalonia and called onPuigdemont to take part. Pro-Catalonia independence parties are expected to win next month although they may fall short of a majority of seats in parliament needed to revive the secession campaign, polls show. On December 21 we must tell Madrid, the EU and the tripartite support for direct rule that democracy in Catalonia must not be undermined. Never again in Catalonia! Puigdemont said from the town of Oostkamp near Bruges, part of Belgium s Flemish region that has its own separatist aspirations. EU leaders are extremely wary of Catalonia s search for independence because it has stirred separatist feelings far beyond Spanish borders. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker this month in Madrid called on Europe to reject what he called separatist poison. A Belgian court has granted Puigdemont conditional release but he is barred from leaving Belgium without a judge s consent. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll in Egypt mosque attack rises to 305 killed: state news agency;CAIRO (Reuters) - The death toll in a devastating militant attack on a mosque on Friday in Egypt s North Sinai has risen to 305 killed, including 27 children, and 128 more people were wounded, MENA state news agency said on Saturday. ;worldnews;25/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nationalists facing wipe out in Australian state election;SYDNEY (Reuters) - The resurgence of Australian nationalist politics has been halted at a state election in coal-rich Queensland, with Pauline Hanson s One Nation party at risk of being almost completely wiped from the state assembly. Australia s center-left Labor party is leading in the tight race after three-quarters of votes were counted following Saturday s poll, while Hanson s party has yet to confirm victory in a single seat. The official result may not be known for several days although political analysts believe Labor will win the 47 seats it needs to govern in Queensland 93-seat assembly, a result that would allow it to form a government without support from independents or minor parties. I am confident of a Labor majority, Queensland s Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters on Sunday. Hanson, a senator in the federal parliament, had anticipated a surge in support in her electoral heartland, to give momentum to the resurgence her anti-immigration, populist party enjoyed in the national election last year. But despite attracting support from around 14 percent of voters, One Nation has not recorded decisive victories in individual seats. It is tipped to win just one seat in state parliament, according to analysis by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Griffith University political analyst Paul Williams said despite a lack of seats, Hanson s party had likely polled higher than 20 per cent in some regional seats. All the anger, the disenchantment, the bitterness, the resentment to the major parties and elites, it s still as strong as it was 12 months ago, he told Reuters by telephone on Sunday. The election has been held in one of Australia s powerhouse mining states with debate over a A$16.5 billion ($12.6 billion) coal mine, rail and port project proposed by Indian energy giant Adani Enterprises dominating much of the campaign. While both major parties support the Queensland resources project, Labor has vowed to veto a near billion-dollar concessional loan Adani has asked Australia to provide for the proposed rail line, should it win government. The conservative opposition Liberal National Party, which the ABC forecasts will win 41 seats, supports the government loan. Hanson had been hoping her party would hold the balance-of-power in Queensland, and with it the ability to decide who the next premier would be. As the results rolled in late on Saturday, she told reporters in Buderim, an urban center near Queensland s coast, that while disappointed with some of the emerging numbers, the fight would go on. I think this is a clear indication that One Nation is not going anywhere, we are going to be around for a while yet, Hanson said. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRAT ACCUSED Of Sexual Harassment Just Threatened ‘Many Members’ Who Also Have Allegations Against Them;John Conyers might just drain the swamp for us. The 88-year old Democrat from Michigan who is accused of sexually harassing female staffers is now threatening to bring the swamp down by exposing all of the other members of the House and Senate accused of sexual harassment. Yes, the swamp is turning on itself. This could get really good In case you haven t heard $17 MILLION taxpayer dollars went to pay off people who accused politicians in the House and Senate of sexual harassment. That s YOUR money! Conyers paid $27K to one accuser He s got several more that have come out to say he also harassed them This guy is so bold with his harassment that he showed up to a meeting in his underwear. Yikes!CONYERS THREATENS TO EXPOSE OTHERS:Peter Hasson describes for the Daily Caller the remarkable vague threat emanating for the attorney representing John Conyers:The attorney for Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers, who is accused of continuously sexually harassing his female staffers, defended Conyers by indicating that there are allegations against many members of the House and Senate.Conyers attorney, Arnold E. Reed, released a statement defending the Michigan Democrat and pushing back against the disturbing allegations. The bizarre statement was written in all-CAPS and referred to both Reed and Conyers in the third person.https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/933504768269606912ALL CAPS? Really? The lawyer should resign for using all caps!CHART OF PAYOUTS TO SETTLE HARASSMENT CHARGES:Congressional Office of Compliance releases year-by-year breakdown of harassment settlements and awards: pic.twitter.com/vxbezi22wb Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) November 16, 2017;politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's Hun Sen calls for closure of rights group founded by rival;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Sunday called for the closure of one of the country s main human rights groups because it was founded by detained opposition leader Kem Sokha. A crackdown on critics of Hun Sen, the world s longest serving prime minister, has already led to the dissolution of the main opposition party and curbs on some independent media, prompting criticism from Western donors. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) must be shut down because it was created by foreigners not Cambodians. The ministry of the interior should look into this, Hun Sen told a group of garment workers. Hun Sen described the opposition as children of the United States and said he told this to U.S. President Donald Trump when they met in the Philippines earlier this month. The CCHR was founded by Kem Sokha in 2002 before he returned to a political career in 2007. Kem Sokha was arrested in September and charged with treason for an alleged plot to take power with American help. His Cambodia National Rescue Party was dissolved on Nov. 16 by the Supreme Court, acting at the government s request. Kem Sokha has rejected the charges against him, which the opposition calls a ploy to ensure Hun Sen extended over three decades in power in next year s election. Western countries have condemned the crackdown. The United States has stopped funding for the election and the European Union has raised a potential threat to Cambodia s duty free access if it does not respect human rights. Hun Sen has brushed off the criticism. Cambodia s biggest donor is now China, which has voiced support for measures to ensure stability. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's 5-Star, stung by fake news claims, calls for OSCE election monitors;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement wants international observers to monitor next year s national election campaign to help ward off fake news , party leader Luigi Di Maio said on Sunday. His comments came after the ruling Democratic Party (PD) accused 5-Star supporters of using interlinked internet accounts to spread misinformation and smear the center-left government. Di Maio, who was elected 5-Star leader in September, said his party was often misrepresented by the traditional media and said the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) should oversee the forthcoming election. The problem of fake news exists and we think it is necessary to have the OSCE monitor news and political debate during the election campaign, Di Maio said on Facebook. Such a request is unlikely to gain traction with 5-Star s opponents, who allege that the maverick group is to blame for some of the most egregious smear campaigns. Last week unofficial Facebook accounts that back 5-Star published a photograph purportedly showing a close ally of PD leader Matteo Renzi attending the funeral of Mafia boss Salvatore Riina. In fact it was a photo taken in 2016 at the funeral of a murdered migrant. Di Maio says he wants to call up OSCE monitors. Why doesn t he call up U.N. peacekeepers and the Red Cross, and while he is at it, why not telephone (his associates) who are continuing to post this filth, Renzi told a conference on Sunday. The sharing of false or misleading headlines and mass postings by automated social media bots has become a global issue, with accusations that Russia tried to influence votes in the United States and France. Moscow has denied this. Some PD leaders called this weekend for legislation ahead of the elections, which are due by May, to crack down on the spread of false news. Renzi ruled that out on Sunday, but said his party would release twice-monthly reports on web abuses. We do not want to shut down any website, but we want accountability, Renzi said. The 5-Star party complains that it is unfairly treated by mainstream media, saying state broadcaster RAI is under the sway of the government, while the largest private media group is controlled by the family of former center-right prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Italy s leading newspapers, which are owned by large industrial concerns, have also been highly critical of 5-Star, which has promised a campaign against corruption and is seen as unfriendly to big business. Latest polls show 5-Star has built a stable lead over other parties, with support of around 28 percent against 24 percent for the PD and 15 percent for Forza Italia. A new electoral law which encourages coalition building ahead of the vote, means Berlusconi s center-right bloc should emerge as the single largest political force, albeit without a clear parliamentary majority. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nepal votes in landmark poll;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Timeline: Nepal's rocky road from monarchy to democracy;KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Millions of Nepalis vote on Sunday to choose a new parliament and seven state assemblies more than a decade after the end of a civil war. The two-phase election is the first in Nepal since it turned into a federal republic and abolished monarchy in 2008. Here is a chronology of events in the Himalayan country since then: 2008, May 28 Special Constituent Assembly elected in April votes to abolish the 239-year-old monarchy and turns Nepal into a republic. 2008, July 23 The assembly elects Ram Baran Yadav as Nepal s first president. 2008, Aug. 15 Former rebel commander Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, is elected as prime minister. He had led a decade-long Maoist civil war that ended two years earlier. 2009, May 4 Prachanda steps down following a row with the president over the sacking of the army chief, leading to political instability in the country. 2010, May 28 The Constituent Assembly extends its term after failing to deliver a new charter within the stipulated period of two years. 2012, May 28 The assembly is dissolved without adopting any constitution amid wrangling among political parties. 2013, Nov 19 A second Constituent Assembly is elected to continue the unfinished task of drafting the charter. 2015, Apr. 25 Worst earthquake on record jolts Nepal, killing 9,000 people and bringing political parties together to adopt the charter and focus on reconstruction. 2015, Sept. 20 The Constituent Assembly approves the new charter, turning Nepal into a secular federal democratic republic. Ethnic Madhesis living in the southern plains reject the new charter, calling it discriminatory. 2015-2016 More than 50 people killed during protests by the Madhesis demanding a unified homeland in their region. Activists block trade points with India leading to crippling fuel and medicine shortages. 2017, May-Sept. First elections to local bodies in 20 years held. Lawmakers reject a government proposal to amend the constitution to meet some of the demands of the Madhesi minority. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Stephen Hawking lauds Chinese pop star for space migration question;BEIJING (Reuters) - British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, on his Chinese microblog Weibo account, praised the lead singer of China s most popular boy band for asking about life beyond Earth. Wang Junkai, leader singer of the wildly popular TFBOYS, posted a video of himself on his Weibo account on Friday asking the author of A Brief History of Time how humanity should prepare for interstellar migration in years to come. Hawking recently warned that the human race must evacuate Earth in 600 years before soaring energy consumption turns the planet into a ball of fire . Earlier this month, Hawking made a video appearance at a science summit organized by Tencent Holdings and pleaded for investors to support his idea of traveling to the closest star outside our solar system in the hope of finding an inhabitable planet. The 75-year old physicist said in a video posting on his Weibo account that Wang asked an excellent question , which gave him insight into Chinese millennnials and their curiosities regarding the future. Wang and his two other band mates each have more than 30 million followers on their Twitter-like Weibo microblog accounts. Owned by Weibo Corp, Weibo is China s biggest social media platform with more than 200 million active users. Hawking, who opened his Weibo account last year, has 4.3 million followers, while British Prime Minister Theresa May has more than 900,000, having inherited her account from David Cameron. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Special Report: 'Treacherous shenanigans' - The inside story of Mugabe's downfall;HARARE (Reuters) - Inside State House in Harare, Robert Mugabe was in the tightest spot of his 37-year rule. Tanks were on the streets and troops had occupied the state broadcaster, from where the army had announced it had taken control of Zimbabwe. Mugabe, 93 years old but still alert, remained defiant. The only leader the country had known since independence was refusing to quit. At a tense meeting with his military top brass on Nov. 16, the world s oldest head of state put his foot down: Bring me the constitution and tell me what it says, he ordered military chief Constantino Chiwenga, according to two sources present. An aide brought a copy of the constitution, which lays out that the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Chiwenga, dressed in camouflage fatigues, hesitated before replying that Zimbabwe was facing a national crisis that demanded military intervention. Mugabe retorted that the army was the problem, according to the sources present. Then the beleaguered president indicated that perhaps they could find a solution together. The meeting marked the start of an extraordinary five-day standoff between Mugabe and Zimbabwe s supreme law on one side, and the military, his party and Zimbabwe s people on the other. The generals wanted Mugabe to go, but they also wanted a peaceful coup, one that would not irreparably tarnish the administration aiming to take over, according to multiple military and political sources. The president finally accepted defeat only after he was sacked by his own ZANU-PF party and faced the ignominy of impeachment. He signed a short letter of resignation to parliament speaker Jacob Mudenda that was read out to lawmakers on Nov. 21. Mugabe, who had run Zimbabwe since 1980 and overseen its descent into economic ruin while his wife shopped for luxury goods, was gone. The country erupted into ecstasy. Parliamentarians danced and people poured onto the streets in their tens of thousands to celebrate a political downfall that sent shockwaves across Africa and the world. To many, the end of Mugabe had been unthinkable only one week before. Reuters has pieced together the events leading up to Mugabe s removal, showing that the army s action was the culmination of months of planning that stretched from Harare to Johannesburg to Beijing. Drawing on a trove of intelligence documents from within Mugabe s feared Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), Reuters reported in September that the army was backing Emmerson Mnangagwa, then vice president, to succeed Mugabe when the time came. The report detailed how Mnangagwa, a lifelong friend and former security chief of Mugabe, might cooperate with Mugabe s political foes in order to revive the economy. It caused furore in Zimbabwe s media and political circles. Bitter rivalry intensified between Mnangagwa and Grace, Mugabe s 52-year-old wife, who also hoped to take over as president and had the backing of a ZANU-PF faction known as G40. In early October, Mnangagwa said he had been airlifted to hospital in South Africa after a poisoning attempt in August. He pointed no fingers - but he didn t need to. Grace s swift response was to deny it and accuse her rival of seeking sympathy;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japanese cosmetics maker Pola says sorry for racist poster;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese cosmetics firm has apologized for a sign banning entry for Chinese people posted in one of its outlets, highlighting lingering hostility to foreign visitors from some in Japan as it strives to extend a shopping-driven tourism boom. Pola, a unit of Pola Orbis Holdings Inc, said on Saturday that images of an inappropriate poster were shared on Chinese social media sites on Friday, without specifying the contents or location of the offending item. Photos of a sign handwritten in Japanese saying Entry by Chinese people prohibited in a shop window were trending on Chinese and Taiwanese social media on Sunday. Pola, which has around 4,600 stores across Japan, apologized for causing unpleasant feelings and inconvenience to many people and said it had removed the sign. As soon as we confirm the facts, we will suspend operations at the store and implement strict punishment, it said in a statement posted at the top of its homepage in both Japanese and Chinese. Pola s mea culpa comes as Japan looks to boost a Chinese-powered inbound tourism boom ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics - a policy championed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s government. Japan is weighing looser visa rules for tourists from China, sources told Reuters earlier this year, as it looks to widen a tourism boom and lend support to consumer spending. Some 23.8 million visited Japan in the year to October, setting it on course for an annual record. Visitors from China - the No.1 source - climbed 13 percent from a year earlier to 6.2 million during the period, government data shows. Many Chinese tourists have taken advantage of a weaker yen and easier entry rules to visit Japan for shopping sprees dubbed explosive buying . Cosmetics are among the most popular items for Chinese shoppers. The Pola incident is not the first time this year a Japanese firm has offended China. Tokyo-based hotel and real estate developer APA Group came under fire this year over books placed in its hotels that contained essays denying the 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in the Chinese city of Nanjing. Following street protests and calls for a boycott of the chain by China s tourism administration, APA in June temporarily removed the books from hotels hosting athletes for a sports event - but said it would not do the same during the 2020 Olympics. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba holds municipal elections on road to Castro era’s end;HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba took another step on Sunday toward the end of the Castro era, with millions of residents placing paper ballots in cardboard boxes for ward delegates to municipal assemblies. The vote comes the day after the first anniversary of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro s death and precedes another election early next year for provincial and national assembly deputies. The new national assembly, where 50 percent of the deputies must be ward delegates elected on Sunday, is expected on Feb. 24 to select a new president to replace Raul Castro, Fidel s 86-year-old younger brother, who has said he will step down after serving two five-year terms. The Castro brothers have headed the government since the 1959 revolution. Raul Castro will remain head of the Communist Party until 2021, the only legal party in Cuba. Nearly 27,000 candidates are running for 12,515 ward positions in Sunday s election, the only part of the electoral process that is contested publicly and with direct participation by ordinary Cubans. The results will be announced on Monday. The candidates for the provincial and national assemblies are nominated by commissions composed of representatives of Communist Party-controlled organizations, such as the trade union federation, then presented as a slate for a public vote. Those slates have had the same number of names as seats in previous elections. Fifty percent of those names must be ward delegates. The electoral cycle comes at a tricky time for the Caribbean nation as the revolutionary generation passes, an economic reform program appears stalled, aid from key ally Venezuela shrinks, and the Trump administration threatens. Yet candidates debated none of these issues before Sunday s vote. First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who is expected to succeed Castro, lauded the electoral process and refused to speculate about his future. Today is a day to talk about what we are doing and Fidel, he told reporters after casting his ballot. Asked about relations with the United States, he said Cuba remained interested in improving them, but reiterated its position that negotiations would have to be based on mutual respect and equality and without dictates. The future depends on them, not us, he said. Campaigning is prohibited in Cuba, and candidates for the ward posts were nominated at neighborhood meetings based on their personal merits, not policy positions. They need not belong to the Communist Party, and many candidates are independents, but only a few government opponents have ever competed. I am happy to vote, but I must say, like most young people I do not think it makes any difference, said a young woman, who requested anonymity because she holds an important government job. She added that there was an ongoing discussion on how to reform the electoral process and make government more responsive. This year a coalition of opposition groups ran more than 160 pre-candidates, but most were blocked by state security from nomination meetings, and none are running on Sunday. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran warns it would increase missile range if threatened by Europe;LONDON (Reuters) - The deputy head of Iran s Revolutionary Guards warned Europe that if it threatens Tehran, the Guards will increase the range of missiles to above 2,000 kilometers, the Fars news agency reported on Saturday. France has called for an uncompromising dialogue with Iran about its ballistic missile program and a possible negotiation over the issue separate from Tehran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Iran has repeatedly said its missile program is defensive and not negotiable. If we have kept the range of our missiles to 2,000 kilometers, it s not due to lack of technology. ... We are following a strategic doctrine, Brigadier General Hossein Salami said, according to Fars. So far we have felt that Europe is not a threat, so we did not increase the range of our missiles. But if Europe wants to turn into a threat, we will increase the range of our missiles, he added. The head of Iran s Revolutionary Guards military force, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said last month that Iran s 2,000-kilometre missile range could cover most of American interest and forces within the region, so Iran did not need to extend it. Jafari said the ballistic missile range was based on the limits set by the country s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the head of armed forces. Iran has one of the Middle East s largest missile programs and some of its precision-guided missiles have the range to strike Israel. The United States accused Iran this month of supplying Yemen s Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two U.N. Security Council resolutions. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with missiles and weapons. Yemen is in total blockade. How could we have given them any missile? Salami said, according to the Fars report on Saturday. If Iran can send a missile to Yemen, it shows the incapability of (the Saudi coalition). But we have not given them missiles. Salami said the Houthis managed to increase the range and precision of their missiles in a scientific breakthrough. Jafari, the head of the Revolutionary Guards, said on Thursday that Iran only provides advisory and spiritual assistances to the Houthis. Iran long denied sending fighters to Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad in the fight against the rebels, and said the Revolutionary Guards presence on the ground was advisory In what seemed to be a correction of Jafari s comments, Salami said on Saturday that Iran s support for the Houthis was political and spiritual. The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States says Iran s missile program is a breach of international law because the missiles could carry nuclear warheads in the future. Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is for civilian uses only. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. consumer watchdog agency official sues to block Trump's pick;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official filed suit late on Sunday trying to prevent President Donald Trump from naming an acting head of the watchdog agency, but its top lawyer concluded Trump had the power to do so. The moves were the latest dramatic developments in the fight over leadership succession of an agency created in 2011 under Democratic former President Barack Obama to protect consumers from predatory lending practices. Republicans in the White House and Congress have tried to weaken the agency. The leadership of the agency was plunged into confusion on Friday after its outgoing Obama-era director Richard Cordray formally resigned and elevated his former chief of staff, Leandra English, to replace him on an interim basis until the Senate confirms a permanent successor named by Trump. Hours later, the Republican president named Mulvaney — his budget chief and a harsh critic of the agency — as its acting director. CFPB General Counsel Mary McLeod wrote a memo, first reported by Reuters, concurring with the opinion of the U.S. Justice Department that Trump had the power to appoint Mulvaney to the post. “I advise all Bureau personnel to act consistently with the understanding that Director Mulvaney is the Acting Director of the CFPB,” McLeod’s memo stated. Late on Sunday, English sued in U.S. District Court in Washington, seeking a temporary restraining order blocking Trump from appointing Mulvaney. In the filing, English said Mulvaney had no experience in a consumer protection or financial regulatory role, had sought to get rid of the agency and once described it as a “sad, sick joke.” McLeod’s intervention bolstered Trump’s position and isolated English, 34, who has held multiple jobs at the CFPB since its creation. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the Trump administration is aware of English’s lawsuit, but said “the law is clear” and that Mulvaney is the acting director. Sanders pointed to McLeod’s conclusion, adding that “there should be no question” that Mulvaney can take the job. “It is unfortunate that Mr. Cordray decided to put his political ambition above the interests of consumers with this stunt. Director Mulvaney will bring a more serious and professional approach to running the CFPB,” Sanders said. Both sides in the battle say they have the law on their side. Democrats have said the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that created the agency stipulated that its deputy director would take over on an interim basis when a director departs until the Senate confirms a permanent director. Cordray named English as deputy director and said she would become the acting director. “It’s a very important fact ... their own general counsel came out with a different conclusion,” said Alan Kaplinsky, head of the Consumer Financial Services Group for law firm Ballard Spahr LLP said. “Now that the thing is in court, I think it is really going to be in the hands of the judge.” Trump administration officials said the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act gives a president the power to temporarily fill agency positions, except for those with multi-member boards, an exemption they said did not apply to the CFPB. “The president’s attempt to install a White House official at the head of independent agency — while allowing that official to simultaneously serve in the White House — is unprecedented,” said English’s lawyer, Deepak Gupta of the law firm Gupta Wessler, adding that “the law is clear” and that English is the acting director. Created after the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB has issued rules and imposed steep penalties on banks, auto dealers, student lenders and credit card companies. [L8N1NW0MW] Future enforcement activities could be stymied while the question of who runs the CFPB is decided. Republican lawmakers argue that the agency wields too much unchecked power, adding that it burdens banks and credit card companies with unnecessary red tape. Writing on Twitter, Trump on Saturday called the agency a “total disaster” that had “devastated” financial institutions. ;politicsNews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rep. Conyers steps down from committee while lawmakers probe harassment allegations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative John Conyers is stepping down as senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, while lawmakers investigate allegations of sexual harassment against him, Conyers said in an emailed statement on Sunday. Conyers said that while he denied the allegations, his presence during a congressional ethics review of the matter was a distraction. “I cannot in good conscience allow these charges to undermine my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, and my friends on both sides of the aisle in the Judiciary Committee,” Conyers said. Conyers, 88, from Michigan, is the longest-serving House lawmaker and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. The House Ethics Committee said last week it was investigating allegations of sexual harassment against Conyers, who said his office had resolved a harassment case with a payment but no admission of guilt. The allegations against Conyers came to light as Congress reviews policies on how to handle sexual harassment complaints. They followed a string of such complaints against prominent figures in the U.S. media, Hollywood and politics. “In this case, I expressly and vehemently denied the allegations made against me and continue to do so,” said Conyers. Twelve women who said they previously worked for Conyers told reporters in a statement on Sunday that he “was a gentleman and never behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner in our presence.” The group said it supported letting the ethics probe run its course. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called for “zero tolerance” on sexual harassment in a statement released after Conyers’ email. “We are at a watershed moment on this issue, and no matter how great an individual’s legacy, it is not a license for harassment.” ;politicsNews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Justice Department says White House may name new consumer watchdog;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House may name an acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Justice Department said in a memo on Saturday that endorsed an action by the Trump administration. “The President may designate an Acting Director of the CFPB,” the eight-page memo said. On Friday, the White House said Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s budget director, would lead the CFPB on an interim basis. ;politicsNews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PELOSI CLAIMS Congressman Who Shows Up for Meetings in His Underwear is an ‘ICON’ [Video];"Michigan Congressman John Conyers has been in the spotlight recently for being a repeat sexual harasser to women he works with. He even showed up for a meeting in his underwear! Yikes!Nancy Pelosi defended Conyers on Meet the Press this morning when she called him an icon She went on to say that he deserves due process . That s pretty ironic when you think of how the left wants to lock up any Republican right away if they re accused of wrongdoing. Conyers gets a pass because he s an icon ? This is just more insanity from Pelosi who needs to retire with Conyers..@NancyPelosi: Accused Congressman Conyers is an ""icon"" in our country. #MTP pic.twitter.com/4QlKKJTIJP Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) November 26, 2017 SHOWED UP TO A MEETING IN HIS UNDERWEAR The Detroit Free Press reported:A lawyer who formerly worked for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, and later ran an ethics watchdog group in the nation s capital confirmed for the Free Press on Thursday that Conyers verbally abused her, criticized her appearance and once showed up to a meeting in his underwear.Melanie Sloan, a well-known Washington lawyer who for three years in the 1990s worked as Democratic counsel on the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers remains the ranking Democrat, told the Detroit Free Press that Conyers constantly berated her, screaming at her and firing her and then rehiring her several times.She said he criticized her for not wearing stockings on at least one occasion. On another, she said he ordered her backstage from a committee field hearing on crime she had organized in New York City to babysit one of his children. Sloan made clear that she did not feel she had ever been sexually harassed, but that she felt mistreated by this guy. ";politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRATS OUTRAGED…But You’ll Love What Rex Tillerson is Doing to the Bloated State Department;The story below from the liberal New York Times is hysterical! Rex Tillerson is sweeping the State Department clean! The angle of the NYT article is one of horror and shock that Tillerson could let these lifers in the bloated bureaucracy of the State Department go in such large numbers. How dare he! LOL!5 MINUTES AND YOU RE OUTTA HERE:Of all the State Department employees who might have been vulnerable in the staff reductions that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has initiated as he reshapes the department, the one person who seemed least likely to be a target was the chief of security, Bill A. Miller.Mr. Miller got just five minutes with the secretary of state, the former officials said. Afterward, Mr. Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, was pushed out, joining a parade of dismissals and early retirements that has decimated the State Department s senior ranks. Mr. Miller declined to comment.DEMOCRATS GO NUTS OVER HOLLOWING-OUT OF DEPARTMENT:Democratic members of the House Foreign Relations Committee wrote a letter to Tillerson citing what they said was the exodus of more than 100 senior Foreign Service officers from the State Department since January . They expressed concern about what appears to be the intentional hollowing-out of our senior diplomatic ranks. Career diplomats are outta here! Tillerson has also slashed the State Department budget by 31 percent! This is great!Tillerson has also frozen hiring and offered payouts to many career employees He s hoping to reduce the State Department workforce by 2,000! Yes, 2,000!MAGA! ;Government News;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Thanksgiving Day Fake News Turkey Shoot: Boiler Room – Special Holiday Event;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Fvnk$oul, Randy J, Patrick Henningsen, Infidel Pharaoh and Andy Nowicki for this special Thanksgiving holiday episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, get your ears on and enjoy some holiday festivities with the Boiler Room on ACR.*WARNING* This special episode may contain, satire, comedy and ridiculous un-news events inspired by both the mainstream media and the so-called alternative media. Any similarities to actual persons or events is probably a big poke in the eye to a really lame media outlet or maybe just a coincidence. Enjoy the show!Direct Download: Boiler Room Thanksgiving Day Fake News Turkey Shoot Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;US_News;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;TV star urges protests as his lead shrinks in Honduras vote;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The result of Honduras presidential election remained in limbo on Tuesday, with a gregarious TV host s surprise lead narrowing sharply, prompting him to call on supporters to take to the streets of the capital to defend the vote. President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who won U.S. praise for helping tackle the flow of migrants and deporting drug cartel leaders, was favored to win before Sunday s vote in the poor Central American nation with one of the world s highest murder rates. But a delayed, partial count on Monday morning pointed toward an unexpected victory for TV entertainer Salvador Nasralla, 64. Inexplicably, election authorities then stopped giving results for more than 24 hours. When, under mounting criticism from international election monitors over a lack of transparency, the electoral tribunal began updating its website again, the tendency rapidly began to change. In a television interview on Tuesday evening, an angry Nasralla said the election was being stolen from him and asked his supporters to flock to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to protest. We ve already won the election, he said. I m not going to tolerate this, and as there are no reliable institutions in Honduras to defend us, tomorrow the Honduran people need to defend the vote on the streets. The Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (EOM/OAS) in Honduras urged people to remain calm and wait for official results, which it said should be delivered as quickly and transparently as possible. The credibility of the electoral authorities and the legitimacy of the future president depend on this, it said in a statement. On Tuesday evening, Nasralla s original five-point lead had thinned to under 2 percentage points, with nearly 71 percent of ballots counted, according to the election tribunal. Nasralla said in a later television interview that the election tribunal was only counting ballots from regions where Hernandez had won, skewing the results and giving the false sense that the president was heading for victory. He asked the tribunal to include ballots from regions where he was stronger. A self-described centrist, Nasralla headed a center-left coalition called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, and claimed victory on Monday - as did Hernandez. Election official Marcos Ramiro Lobo told Reuters on Monday afternoon that Nasralla was leading by a margin of five points, with about 70 percent of ballots counted. Lobo said Nasralla appeared certain to win, signaling that experts at the electoral body regarded his lead as irreversible. On Tuesday, Hernandez reiterated that he had won, and refused to concede, telling supporters they should wait for final results. After Hernandez spoke, thousands of his blue-clad supporters gathered outside the presidential residence to celebrate his supposed victory. We won the election with Juan Orlando Hernandez, and we won t let them remove him from power, said 35-year-old housewife Maria Aguirre, who hailed from a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa. The election tribunal s delay was due to difficult negotiations between Hernandez s National Party and Nasralla s alliance, according to two European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity. Behind closed doors, the parties were discussing immunity from prosecution for current officials and how to carve up positions in government, the diplomats said. In an interview on Tuesday, Nasralla denied he was in talks with the National Party. He vowed to review whether to keep a base stationed with U.S. troops if he wins the election, but also promised to deepen security co-operation. Hernandez s National Party appears set to retain control of Congress in the election, giving it the second-most important perch in the country. The European Union s chief observer for the election, Marisa Matias, urged election officials to maintain an open channel of communication as they finalized the results. The electoral body had been so certain Hernandez would win that it showed unprecedented transparency during the contest, one of the diplomats said. That left the body with little room to maneuver when Nasralla came from nowhere to take a strong lead. With a booming voice and finely coiffed hair, Nasralla is one of the country s best known faces as the host of game shows that feature scantily clad women by his side. He is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in 2009 after he proposed a referendum on his re-election. The possible return to a position of influence for one-time leftist Zelaya risks fuelling concern in Washington. The United States has longstanding military ties to Honduras and few ideological allies among the current crop of Central American presidents. Hernandez, 49, was credited with lowering the murder rate and boosting the economy, but he was also hurt by accusations of ties to illicit, drug-related financing that he denies. His bid for a second term, which was made possible by a 2015 Supreme Court decision on term limits, divided opinion in the coffee-exporting nation of 9 million people. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Just Back From A Golfing Vacay, Trump Says He’s Done More Than Any President Ever;Donald Trump just got back from binge-golfing over a span of five days and he s on track to triple the time former President Barack Obama spent on the golf course in his first year in office even though he repeatedly disparaged his predecessor for golfing. There are at least 27 tweets which Trump unleashed about Obama golfing, and on the campaign trail, he continued that. If I were in the White House I don t think I d ever see any of the places that I [own], Trump said during the campaign just last year, citing one of his golf courses in Florida. I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off, make great deals. Right? Who s going to leave? Who s going to leave? Mark Knoller of CBS News keeps detailed statistics of presidencies.By my count, Pres Trump has spent all or part of 87 days at one of his golf clubs plus one in Japan. More often than not, WH won't say when he plays golf. Compares at same point in presidencies:Obama 24 rounds of golfGeorge W Bush 7 rounds. Mark Knoller (@markknoller) November 26, 2017Trump golfed for 5 days straight.Last day of his Florida holiday, Pres Trump back at one of his eponymous golf clubs. 5th day in a row. No photo op for the press pool, dropped off across-the-street at public library. Mark Knoller (@markknoller) November 26, 2017Sunday night, the Vacationer-in-Chief expressed his concern over the Russia scandal being brought up by wait for it bringing it up, then went on to tell how much he s done in 10 months, more than any president ever. Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia, Russia, he tweeted. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017To be clear, Trump is saying that he s accomplished more than George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt even though he s the least popular president in the history of polling and has not passed any major legislation. You know who isn t taking vacations right now? Robert Mueller, that s who.Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images.;News;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Two Weeks Before Election, Trump Still Defends Accused Child Molester Because TAXES, Y’all;Sunday morning, after what must have seemed like another interminable weekend of scrutiny, terror, and being made to look like a fool, Donald Trump returned to doing what he does best: Being an absolute garbage person. He was still recovering from the humiliation of his hilariously bad attempt at pretending TIME Magazine offered him their Person of the Year honorific, followed by the embarrassment of trying to troll CNN, only to see their response tweet get twice the likes and retweets of his original.So Trump had to up his game. And how could he possibly piss off more people than by pivoting back to Roy Moore, the accused pedophile running for the US Senate in Alabama?Even some of Trump s most ardent supporters have begged the Doddering Dotard to back off his support for the toxic candidate. It s hard, as you might imagine, to truly get behind a guy who s accused of molesting young girls, especially with so much evidence against him. But Trump tried nonetheless:The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017I endorsed Luther Strange in the Alabama Primary. He shot way up in the polls but it wasn t enough. Can t let Schumer/Pelosi win this race. Liberal Jones would be BAD! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017It s an interesting tack to take just talking about how terrible Doug Jones is, rather than addressing the fact that Roy Moore is accused of touching children inappropriately. What s more interesting is how wrong he is on every count. Weak on crime? Jones successfully prosecuted the KKK members who blew up a Birmingham church, killing four young black girls in 1963. The Second Amendment? The most Jones supports as far as gun control is expanded background checks. Bad for the military? Jones supports increased military spending, a position that puts him at odds with the two lawmakers that Trump tries to tie Jones to in his tweets. Jones is largely considered a moderate among Democrats.The bottom line is, Trump is terrified of losing a crucial vote on his signature tax cuts for the wealthy. He is so calculating that if he didn t have something so important pending, he would throw Roy Moore under the bus in a heartbeat despite the similarities between accusations against Moore and accusations against himself.This is the worst of politics, people. And when the Republican Party is bloodied on the floor of America, they can thank their garbage president who refused to back away from a child molester just because he wants to accomplish something before he s booted out of office.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;News;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Ashamed' Franken says he won't quit Senate over groping accusations;(Reuters) - U.S. Senator Al Franken, trying to salvage his political career amid accusations of groping or inappropriately touching women, said on Sunday he does not plan to resign but called himself “embarrassed and ashamed.” Franken, a Democrat and former comedian who has represented Minnesota in the Senate since 2009, said in a round of media interviews - his first since the allegations surfaced on Nov. 16 - that he looked forward to returning to his job on Monday. “I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I’ve let a lot of people down and I’m hoping I can make it up to them and gradually regain their trust,” Franken told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Franken resisted comparisons between his behavior and that of Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama who has been accused of improper conduct involving teenage girls decades ago. “I’m going to take responsibility. I’m going to be held accountable through the ethics committee,” said Franken, whose behavior is being investigated by the Senate ethics panel. “And I’m going to hopefully be a voice in this that is helpful... Again, I respect women. What kills me about this is it gives people a reason to believe I don’t respect women.” Franken told Minneapolis television station WCCO in another interview that his predicament was “a bitter irony” because he has championed women’s’ issues and has employed them in both his campaign and Senate offices. “I’ve put them (women) in the highest jobs in my office,” he said. In a separate interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Franken, one of the leading liberal voices in the Senate, said has no plans to quit. When asked if he had considered resigning, Franken said: “No, no. The ethics committee is looking into this and I will cooperate fully with it.” Pressed about stepping aside and allowing a woman to take his seat, Franken told Minnesota Public Radio, “I’m committed to working as hard as I can here in the Senate for the people of Minnesota.” Franken’s office had previously issued statements in which he either apologized or said he could not remember behaving in the manner the women have described. He has not denied any of the allegations. Franken was first accused of sexual misconduct by radio broadcaster Leann Tweeden. She said Franken had forcibly kissed her during a 2006 USO war zone tour, and a photo showed him with his hands over her chest while she was sleeping. Four days later, a woman named Lindsay Menz told CNN that Franken had touched her buttocks while the two were being photographed in 2010 at the Minnesota State Fair. Franken has apologized to Tweeden, and has said he does not remember the incident with Menz. Last week, two other women told the Huffington Post Franken had touched their buttocks in separate incidents. The article did not provide the names of those two accusers. “I don’t remember these photographs, I don’t,” Franken told the Star Tribune. “This is not something I would intentionally do.” “I have been reflecting on this,” Franken told Minnesota Public Radio of the allegations. “I want to be a better man.” Franken is among a long list of celebrities and politicians who have been accused of sexual misconduct. The recent wave of accusations, some of them dating back decades, began in October. ;politicsNews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led coalition allows first aid ship into Yemen's Hodeidah port: local officials;DUBAI (Reuters) - A ship carrying 5,500 tonnes of flour docked in Yemen s Hodeidah port in the Red Sea on Sunday, the first after more than two weeks of a blockade by a Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi movement, local officials said. Saudi Arabia and its allies closed air, land and sea access to the Arabian Peninsula country on Nov. 6, to stop what it calls a flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards its capital Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons. The delivery is the first aid to arrive through Hodeidah port, controlled by the Houthis, after the coalition allowed a flight carrying humanitarian aid workers to the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Saturday. The ship is 106 meters long and carries 5,500 tonnes of flour, one of the Yemeni officials said. Aid agencies said the blockade had worsened the humanitarian crisis in Yemen where the war has left an estimated 7 million people facing famine and killed more than 10,000 people. The coalition gave clearance for U.N. flights in and out of Sanaa from Amman on Saturday, involving the regular rotation of aid workers. After re-opening Sanaa airport, UNICEF has also sent vaccines there. The charity Save the Children said an estimated 20,000 Yemeni children under the age of five were joining the ranks of the severely malnourished every month, an average of 27 children every hour . ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NURSE FROM One Of Nation’s Largest Hospitals Tweets: “Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son”…Their Sons “should be sacrificed to the wolves b___””;It s hard to imagine, and very sad, that a hospital could hire someone who is so filled with hate and obsessed with race, to care for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.A controversial tweet allegedly posted Friday by a nurse at one of the largest hospital systems in the nation has sparked an internal investigation.The tweet came from an account named Night Nurse, linked to Indiana University Health employee Taiyesha Baker, FOX59 reported. Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son. Someone with the HIGHEST propensity to be a terrorist, rapist, racist, killer, and domestic violence all star. Historically every son you had should be sacrificed to the wolves b___, the tweet read.An IU Health spokesman confirmed to FOX59 that Baker is a registered nurse, but declined to reveal the hospital where she is currently employed. IU Health is aware of several troubling posts on social media which appear to be from a recently hired IU Health employee, the hospital said in a statement. Our HR department continues to investigate the situation and the authenticity of the posts. During the investigation, that employee (who does not work at Riley Hospital for Children) will have no access to patient care. Baker claimed to work in pediatrics in previously deleted tweets.According to public records obtained by FOX59, Baker was most recently issued a nursing license on Oct. 30.The Twitter account behind the controversial messages, @tai_fieri, was originally deleted after the post sparked a firestorm, but now appears to have been created by a different user who is posting new tweets, the IndyStar reported. FOX News;politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's RYB Education fires head of Beijing kindergarten embroiled in abuse scandal;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese educational services provider RYB Education Inc said it had removed the head of one of its kindergarten, as allegations of child abuse at the Beijing nursery rocked the country s booming childcare industry. In a statement issued late Saturday, New York-listed RYB also said it had fired a 22-year-old female teacher at the RYB Education New World kindergarten. It said the teacher, surnamed Liu, had been detained by district police on suspicion of abuse. Beijing police were investigating claims of child abuse at the kindergarten in Beijing s Chaoyang district, after state-run Xinhua news agency reported they were checking allegations that children were reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills . Several teachers at the kindergarten had already been suspended since Thursday. RYB s New York-listed shares plunged 38.4 percent on Friday as the scandal sparked outrage among parents and the public. Another woman surnamed Liu was also arrested for allegedly disrupting social order by spreading false information about the alleged kindergarten abuse, Chaoyang police said. The second woman, a 31-year-old from Beijing, was arrested on Thursday. Parents said their children, some as young as three, gave accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported medical check-ups on unclothed pupils, other media said. The Chaoyang district has launched an investigation into all childcare facilities in its area. It had also dispatched officials to the kindergarten and asked the school to communicate with the parents and make sure that the children there are safe. Founded in 1998, RYB provides early education services in China. At the end of June, the Beijing-based company was operating 80 kindergartens and had franchised an additional 175 covering 130 cities and towns in China. It was not the first case of alleged abuse at an RYB school. In 2015, a court in Jilin province found two teachers guilty of physically abusing children at one of its kindergartens in the city of Siping. In that case, staff at the school on multiple occasions used needles and intimidation tactics to abuse many of the children under their care , according to a court ruling document. China s education ministry said on Thursday that it had begun a special investigation into the operation of kindergartens, and told education departments nationwide to take heed of these types of incidents . Separate cases of children in China being slapped, beaten with a stick and having their mouths sealed shut with duct tape have also gone viral and fueled anger online. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SOUTH KOREA Uses Hilarious Technique To TAUNT North Korea After Soldier Escapes Kim Jong Un’s Hell [VIDEO];There is no word yet, about how Rocket Man plans to respond to the egg on his face South Korea is making sure North Korea doesn t forget about the regime s soldier who defected to the South in a daring escape earlier this month by blasting updates about the defector s health through its military s loudspeakers at the Demilitarized Zone, a report said on Sunday.South Korean troops broadcasted an update on Sunday about the North Korean soldier s nutritive conditions, taking a hit at the Hermit Kingdom s alleged health issues, Yonhap News Agency reported. The broadcasts are reportedly so loud that people within 12.4 miles from the DMZ are able to hear it. The nutritive conditions of the North Korean soldier who recently defected through the Panmunjom were unveiled, an official told Yonhap News Agency.Consistent updates have been broadcast through South Korean military s loudspeakers since the soldier, identified by his surname, Oh, was shot at least five times while dashing across the Joint Security Area a strip of land at the DMZ where North and South Korean forces stand face-to-face on Nov. 13. The broadcast operation is part of an ongoing psychological warfare between the North and the South. The gigantic loudspeakers were switched back on in January 2016 after North Korea s fourth nuclear test.The loudspeakers are also reportedly used to blast propaganda to persuade North Korean soldiers to doubt Kim Jong Un s regime and even convince them to defect to the South, the BBC reported. Those speakers have been used sporadically since the end of the Korean War.Watch the North Korean s daring escape here:The 24-year-old North Korean defector is currently recovering from the gunshot wounds he endured when his fellow comrades fired dozens of rounds at him to stop him from defecting to the South. Video of Oh s dash to freedom released on Wednesday showed him speeding down a tree-lined road as stunned North Korean soldiers began running after him. He fell into a pile of leaves against a small wall before being dragged to safety by South Korean troops. FOX News ;politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRAT ACCUSED Of Sexual Harassment Just Threatened ‘Many Members’ Who Also Have Allegations Against Them;John Conyers might just drain the swamp for us. The 88-year old Democrat from Michigan who is accused of sexually harassing female staffers is now threatening to bring the swamp down by exposing all of the other members of the House and Senate accused of sexual harassment. Yes, the swamp is turning on itself. This could get really good In case you haven t heard $17 MILLION taxpayer dollars went to pay off people who accused politicians in the House and Senate of sexual harassment. That s YOUR money! Conyers paid $27K to one accuser He s got several more that have come out to say he also harassed them This guy is so bold with his harassment that he showed up to a meeting in his underwear. Yikes!CONYERS THREATENS TO EXPOSE OTHERS:Peter Hasson describes for the Daily Caller the remarkable vague threat emanating for the attorney representing John Conyers:The attorney for Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers, who is accused of continuously sexually harassing his female staffers, defended Conyers by indicating that there are allegations against many members of the House and Senate.Conyers attorney, Arnold E. Reed, released a statement defending the Michigan Democrat and pushing back against the disturbing allegations. The bizarre statement was written in all-CAPS and referred to both Reed and Conyers in the third person.https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/933504768269606912ALL CAPS? Really? The lawyer should resign for using all caps!CHART OF PAYOUTS TO SETTLE HARASSMENT CHARGES:Congressional Office of Compliance releases year-by-year breakdown of harassment settlements and awards: pic.twitter.com/vxbezi22wb Reid Wilson (@PoliticsReid) November 16, 2017;left-news;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea to review whether or not to abolish anti-abortion law;SEOUL (Reuters) - The South Korean president s office said on Sunday that it will begin a review on the country s 64-year-old law to ban abortion. The announcement came after more than 230,000 South Koreans filed a petition calling for the abolishment of the law. South Korea criminalized abortion in 1953 when its leaders wanted to boost the population and build an army powerful enough to fend off its rival North Korea. But in 1973, with population growth strong, the country drew up exceptions to the abortion law, such as where the mother s health is at risk, the baby is to be born with severe birth defects or the pregnancy was caused by a sexual crime. Many public health experts in South Korea pushed for changes in the abortion law but faced opposition from a strong pro-life lobby in a country with one of Asia s largest percentages of Christians and a government trying to boost one of the world s lowest fertility rates. The president s office said the government will conduct research next year on the country s abortion cases for the first time since 2010. Based on the outcome from the research, we expect to move relevant discussions one step forward, Cho Kuk, the senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, said in a statement. Cho said South Korea s Constitutional Court, which in 2012 upheld the anti-abortion law, will again review the legislation. According to the most recent figures, an estimated 16,900 abortions were performed in 2010, and only 6 percent of them were done legally, he said. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Liberia's Liberty Party to appeal election fraud case to Supreme Court;MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia s opposition Liberty Party will take its claims of election fraud to the Supreme Court this week after the electoral commission ruled on Friday that the first-round Oct. 10 vote was fair, it said on Sunday. The appeal will likely set the West African country s presidential election back well into December, and could result in the first round poll being re-run, which could delay the first democratic transfer of power in over 70 years by months. Ex football star George Weah was meant to face Vice-President Joseph Boakai in a run-off vote in early November to determine who will replace Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. But third placed candidate Charles Brumskine of the Liberty Party said the Oct. 10 first round was marred by widespread fraud, and the Supreme Court ordered the National Elections Commission (NEC) to investigate. The NEC ruled last week that voting irregularities did not alter the outcome of the first round which Weah won with 38 percent versus Boakai with 29 percent. Brumskine won nearly 10 percent. International observers said the vote was largely free and fair. We will take our case to the Supreme Court any time this week, Brumskine told Reuters. We were not surprised by the ruling. NEC were the defendants and judge at the same time. The delay has raised tensions in Liberia where many say they are dissatisfied by Johnson Sirleaf s 12-year rule which cemented peace and brought much needed aid to the country after a civil war but which did little to alleviate dire poverty. The Liberty Party complained of widespread irregularities in the vote, including polling stations not allowing his supporters to cast their ballot. Under the constitution, it has until Friday to file its appeal, after which the Supreme Court has a further seven days to make a final ruling. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Huge blast in China's Ningbo city kills at least two, cause unknown;BEIJING (Reuters) - A powerful explosion in a Chinese city south of Shanghai brought down buildings in a neighborhood marked for demolition, killing at least two people, state television reported on Sunday. The explosion struck at around 8:50 a.m. (0050 GMT) in Jiangbei district in the port city of Ningbo in Zhejiang province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported. Police said the cause of the blast was still uncertain. A huge tremor was felt in the vicinity when it hit, CGTN, a network operated by CCTV, wrote on Twitter. The force of the explosion destroyed the roofs of two buildings at the site of the blast, which CCTV said were already structurally unsound. It also shattered windows and punched holes in the walls of some residential and commercial properties as far as a kilometer away. Images from CCTV also showed a few flattened cars and a low-rise building with a collapsed wall. The state broadcaster said two people were killed, while 16 were slightly wounded and two were in serious condition. CCTV said the blast was not a gas explosion, as the gas pipelines beneath the ground were no longer active, citing the operator of the pipelines. According to local Zhejiang Daily, the buildings that collapsed had already been cleared of people. Police told Reuters the area had been marked for demolition. The official People s Daily posted aerial photographs of firefighters working at the site of the blast - an open area of debris and broken concrete. The newspaper said there were no residents at the site of the explosion, though there might have been rubbish collectors at work when the blast occurred. Another photograph posted by People s Daily showed grey smoke rising over the skyline of the city of Ningbo, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Shanghai. Earlier in the day, the official agency Xinhua news agency said the blast had happened at a factory. Rescue work and an investigation into the cause were under way, local police said on Weibo. Blasts and other accidents are common in China due to patchy enforcement of safety rules, although the government has pledged to improve checks to try to stamp out such incidents. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigerian army repels Boko Haram attack on town: spokesman;MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria s military has repelled an attempt by suspected Boko Haram militants to seize the northeastern town of Magumeri, a spokesman said on Sunday, a day after the attack. The assault was the latest in a series of attacks in northeast Nigeria, where the conflict with the Islamist insurgency has dragged into a ninth year with little sign of an end. Three soldiers were killed and six others wounded while fighting the militants in Magumeri, which lies 50 km (30 miles) from Borno state capital Maiduguri, which has been the center of the conflict, the military spokesman said. A member of a vigilante group formed to fight Boko Haram put the death toll at six soldiers and three vigilantes, while a resident of Magumeri told Reuters by telephone that at least three civilians were also killed. A suicide bomber killed at least 58 people on Tuesday at a mosque in neighboring Adamawa state, one of the deadliest attacks since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015 pledging to end the Boko Haram insurgency. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Separatists and unionists tied for support ahead of Catalan elections: poll;BARCELONA (Reuters) - Pro-independence parties may fail to retain an absolute majority of seats in the Catalan parliament in regional elections next month, a poll published on Sunday showed, with pro-unity parties poised to increase their vote share. Failure to win a majority in the regional parliament would be a blow for Catalan separatists who have billed the Dec. 21 election as a de-facto plebiscite on Madrid s decision to impose direct rule on the wealthy region last month. Following Spain s worst political crisis in decades, the sacking of the secessionist Catalan government in October has a eased tensions for the moment, although victory for the pro-independence camp in December would plunge the northeast region back into uncertainty. Catalan separatist parties are predicted to win 46 percent of the vote, down slightly from 47.7 percent in a previous election in 2015. Unionist parties combined would account for another 46 percent of votes, up from less than 40 percent last time, according to the poll by Metroscopia. The poll shows pro-independence parties winning 67 seats, one short of the absolute majority they would need to retain control of the regional parliament. Unionists forces would also fall short a majority in this scenario, although the poll suggests a high number of voters, around 23 percent, remain undecided. The staunchly unionist center-right party Citizens looks set to cement its position as the largest opposition force with 25.3 percent of votes, gaining from the Catalan wing of Prime Minister Rajoy s conservative Popular Party which drops to 5.8 percent and loses five of its 11 seats. Turnout for the election, which former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said on Saturday would be the most important in the region s history, is predicted to reach a record 80 percent. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Merkel's conservatives, SPD set out policy lines for German coalition;(Reuters) - Momentum in Germany is building for a new grand coalition between Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservative bloc and the Social Democrats (SPD) to end the political instability created by the collapse of her coalition talks with other parties. The conservatives and SPD have ruled together for the last four years and most ministers are keeping their posts in an interim government until a new coalition or minority government is formed. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosts a first meeting of Merkel, the head of Bavaria s CSU conservatives, Horst Seehofer, and SPD leader Martin Schulz on Thursday. Here are some of the overlaps and differences in policy areas likely to be discussed in any coalition talks. Merkel has stressed she wants to maintain Germany s solid finances. Germany has run a budget surplus since 2014 under the stewardship of her hardline conservative finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble. She has also said she wants some tax cuts, mainly for low and medium earners. The SPD is far more focused on boosting spending and has in the last few days said it wants to increase investment in education and homes as well as on infrastructure. The SPD wants to increase inheritance tax, some in the party want to insist on raising the minimum wage and it fought the election on a pledge of keeping pensions stable. The conservatives and SPD both want to increase spending to expand broadband. An area of possible conflict. Since the election, Merkel has bowed to pressure from her Bavarian allies to put a cap on the number of people Germany will accept on humanitarian grounds. Merkel repeated on Saturday that she wanted to limit the number to about 200,000 a year. The SPD opposes this, arguing it breaches the constitution s guarantee of asylum to people who are persecuted for political reasons. Some leading party members have said they will not agree to a cap. The SPD is more positive than Merkel s cautious stance towards French President Emmanuel Macron s proposals for a euro zone budget and a euro zone finance minister. The SPD also backs the idea of turning the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund along the lines of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There is little difference on approach to Brexit talks. Broad agreement on most areas of foreign policy, including with the United States and Turkey. The SPD puts greater emphasis on mending ties with Russia which have been hurt by the conflict in Ukraine, but this is more a matter of nuance than a deep policy rift. Also agreement on armed forces missions abroad although the SPD is more skeptical on NATO demands to move towards increasing defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2014. The SPD fought its election on the platform of social justice and wants to improve the lot of the less affluent. A long-standing commitment which several senior SPD members have repeated recently is the idea of making health insurance fairer for everyone by introducing a citizen s insurance . The SPD also wants to ensure men and women have equal pay and working conditions. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian long-range bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Six Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria s Deir al-Zor province on Sunday, Russian news agencies cited Russia s Defense Ministry as saying. The bombers that flew from an airfield in Russia hit terrorist strongholds in the valley of the Euphrates river, the agencies reported. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government push for Damascus rebel enclave kills at least 23;BEIRUT (Reuters) - An intensifying push by the Syrian government and allied forces to take the last major rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus killed at least 23 people on Sunday and injured many, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The group said at least 127 people, including 30 children, have been killed by air strikes and shelling since the Syrian army backed by Russian jets began an offensive nearly two weeks ago to take the besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area. Eastern Ghouta is one of several de-escalation zones across western Syria, where Russia has brokered deals to ease the fighting between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad s government. A Reuters witness said there had been drones in the sky since Sunday morning and warplanes had heavily bombarded the towns of Mesraba and Harasta. Heavy shelling also hit Eastern Ghouta and dozens had been injured. Assad s forces have besieged Eastern Ghouta since 2012 and the area is suffering a humanitarian crisis. Ghouta residents are so short of food that they are eating trash, fainting from hunger and forcing their children to eat on alternate days, the U.N. World Food Programme said in a report this week. The opposition Eastern Ghouta Damascus Countryside local council said this week the escalating bombardment was forcing people to seek shelter in unsuitable and unsanitary places which it feared could lead to disease outbreaks. A number of shells from the rebel enclave have hit government-held Damascus in the past two weeks. Syria s six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. U.N.-backed peace negotiations are due to begin in Geneva on Nov. 28. Several previous rounds of Geneva talks have failed to agree a political transition for Syria or a way to stop the violence. Yahya Aridi, spokesman for the Syrian opposition Geneva delegation, said on Sunday it was now time for the Syrian government and the opposition to get to the table and start talking about transition, from dictatorship to freedom in Geneva. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;88-Yr Old DEMOCRAT Congressman and Accused SEXUAL PREDATOR Reluctantly Steps Down From House Judiciary Committee…REFUSES To Resign;John Conyers, the 88-year old Democrat Congressman and Black Caucus member who used taxpayer dollars from one of the most impoverished districts in Michigan, to pay off accusers of sexual assault, is refusing to give up the power he s become accustomed to, as the longest sitting House member in America s history. The corrupt Congressman has, however, agreed to step down from his role on the House Judiciary Committee, pending an investigation into the multiple allegations of sexual harassment that have been levied against him.In a statement released through Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi s office on Sunday, Conyers said he would like to keep his leadership position but realized that he may undermine the committee s work if he stays at the helm. I have come to believe that my presence as Ranking Member on the Committee would not serve these efforts while the Ethics Committee investigation is pending, Conyers (D-Detroit) said in the statement. I cannot in good conscience allow these charges to undermine my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, and my friends on both sides of the aisle in the Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives. Conyers, 88, is the longest-serving House member. BuzzFeed reported last week the contents of the secret $27,000 settlement Conyers paid with taxpayer funds to a former staffer who said she was fired for rejecting Conyers sexual advances.Conyers has admitted to the payment but denied any wrongdoing. I deny these allegations, many of which were raised by documents reportedly paid for by a partisan alt-right blogger, Conyers said, referring to the settlement papers obtained by Mike Cernovich and passed along to the news site. I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics. With Conyers stepping aside, the next most senior Democrat New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler will become acting Ranking Member of the powerful committee. Even under these unfortunate circumstances, the important work of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee must move forward, Nadler said in a Sunday statement. I will do everything in my power to continue to press on the important issues facing our committee, including criminal justice reform, workplace equality, and holding the Trump Administration accountable. Nadler added: Ranking Member Conyers has a 50 year legacy of advancing the cause of justice, and my job moving forward is to continue that critical work. New York Rep. Kathleen Rice was the first House Democrat last week to call for Conyers resignation from Congress, and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) said Conyers should at least give up his perch as the House Judiciary Committee s ranking member, pending the outcome of the ethics probe.Earlier Sunday, Pelosi defended Conyers on NBC s Meet the Press by not calling for his resignation and insisting the icon deserves due process. NYP ;politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No Irish border deal before EU trade agreement: British minister;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will not resolve the question of the Irish border after Brexit until it has also agreed the outline of a trade deal with the European Union, the country s International Trade Minister Liam Fox said on Sunday. The EU has said sufficient progress needs to be made on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, along with two other key issues, before EU leaders meeting at a summit on Dec. 14-15 can approve the opening of trade talks next year. However, Fox said it would be very difficult to address the issue of the border while Britain s relationship with the EU after Brexit remains unclear. We don t want there to be a hard border but the United Kingdom is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market, he told Sky News. We can t get a final answer to the Irish question until we get an idea of the end state, and until we get into discussions with the European Union on the end state that will be very difficult. Dublin wants a written guarantee that there will be no hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Earlier on Sunday Ireland s EU commissioner said Dublin would continue to play tough over its threat to veto talks about trade after Brexit unless Britain provided guarantees over the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Phil Hogan, the EU s agricultural commissioner, said that Britain, or Northern Ireland at least, should remain in the single market and the customs union to avoid a hard border dividing the island. If the UK or Northern Ireland remained in the EU customs union, or better still the single market, there would be no border issue, he told the Observer newspaper. Irish and EU officials say the best way to avoid a hard border - which could include passport and customs controls - is to keep regulations the same north and south, but the Northern Irish party that is propping up May s government will oppose any deal that sees the province operate under different regulations to the rest of the United kingdom. We will not support any arrangements that create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom or any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations, the Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster said on Saturday. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, said on Sunday that the Irish border was one of the really difficult bits of the negotiations. She said Britain s unique future position as the only country that had left the European Union meant its did not need an off-the-shelf solution, although she did not specify how the issue should be resolved. She said any delay in moving onto trade talks would have serious repercussions for businesses. I think that it is really important that we get the transitional deal nailed down;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Thanksgiving Day Fake News Turkey Shoot: Boiler Room – Special Holiday Event;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Fvnk$oul, Randy J, Patrick Henningsen, Infidel Pharaoh and Andy Nowicki for this special Thanksgiving holiday episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, get your ears on and enjoy some holiday festivities with the Boiler Room on ACR.*WARNING* This special episode may contain, satire, comedy and ridiculous un-news events inspired by both the mainstream media and the so-called alternative media. Any similarities to actual persons or events is probably a big poke in the eye to a really lame media outlet or maybe just a coincidence. Enjoy the show!Direct Download: Boiler Room Thanksgiving Day Fake News Turkey Shoot Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;Middle-east;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish PM 'doing everything he can' to avoid election: spokesman;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is doing everything he can to avoid a snap general election, his spokesman said, but the crisis that has brought his minority government to the brink showed no obvious sign of resolution on Sunday. Varadkar has two days to end the standoff with the party propping up his government before it submits a motion of no confidence in his deputy prime minister, a move that Varadkar says will force him to call a snap election before Christmas. The crisis has erupted less than three weeks before a summit on Britain s plans to leave the European Union, where Ireland will play a major role in deciding whether the negotiations can move onto the next phase. Talks between Varadkar and Micheal Martin, the leader of the main opposition party, Fianna Fail, will continue on Sunday ahead of Martin bringing the motion of no confidence in Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald before parliament on Tuesday. The Taoiseach (prime minister) is doing everything he can to avoid an election, and hopes it will be possible to reach agreement with Micheal Martin, Varadkar s spokesman said in a statement on Sunday. The spokesman added that there was no question of Fitzgerald being asked to resign over her handling of a legal case involving a police whistleblower. Fianna Fail say this is the only way to avoid an election. The Sunday Times newspaper reported that the leaders agreed the outline of a deal that would allow an ongoing judge-led tribunal to investigate the issue but that sources in Varadkar s Fine Gael party said an election was unavoidable if Fianna Fail continued to call for Fitzgerald to step down. Varadkar is due to play a major role in the Dec. 14-15 EU summit on Brexit, telling fellow leaders whether Dublin believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britain s province of Northern Ireland. The government has said enough progress has not been made to date and Ireland s EU Commissioner Phil Hogan said on Sunday that Dublin would continue to play tough over its threat to veto talks. The border is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move the talks on to a second phase about trade and EU officials have said a snap election in Ireland would complicate that task. Bosses at a number of Ireland s top companies were quoted by the Sunday Business Post as telling the parties to step back from the brink. This thing of bringing the country to a standstill at a critical time is just unacceptable, Dalata Hotel Group (DHG.I) chief executive Pat McCann told the newspaper. Politicians say they also know there is no appetite among voters for an election just 18 months after the last one and an opinion poll on Saturday suggested there would be little change with another minority administration the most likely outcome. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe 'glowed' with relief after he quit: priest;CHISHAWASHA, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Robert Mugabe s face glowed with relief when he agreed to step down as Zimbabwe s president last week under pressure from the military and his party after 37 years in power, the priest who mediated his resignation said on Sunday. Father Fidelis Mukonori, a Jesuit priest who is a close Mugabe friend, laughed off a report by the privately owned Standard newspaper that Mugabe cried and lamented the betrayal by close lieutenants when he agreed to resign. When he finished his signature his face just glowed, no weeping unless there were angels weeping somewhere, Mukonori told Reuters after mass at the Chishawasha Catholic mission just outside the capital Harare. For me it was a sign that he was accepting that ah this is done , he is relieved, not that he is aggrieved but relieved. He said Mugabe realized it was the end of the road two days before he resigned, when he saw 60,000 Zimbabweans protesting and demanding he quit at the Harare grounds where he was inaugurated as prime minister in 1980. His signed resignation letter was read out on Tuesday, as parliament heard a motion to impeach him. Sources have told Reuters Mugabe was defiant when he met army top brass on Nov. 16 - which was the start of an extraordinary five-day standoff between Mugabe and Zimbabwe s supreme law on one side, and the military who had seized power, his party and Zimbabwe s people on the other. The 93-year-old president finally accepted defeat only after he was sacked by his ZANU-PF party and faced the ignominy of impeachment. Mugabe s fall after 37 years in power was spurred by a battle to succeed him that pitted his former deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had stood by him for 52 years, and Mugabe s wife Grace, who is 52. Mnangagwa was sworn in as president on Friday and all eyes now are on whether he will name a broad-based government or select figures from Mugabe s era. Mukonori said Mugabe had wanted a gradual and smooth transition of power to Mnangagwa, whom he had fired as vice president two weeks ago, but this was thwarted after Mnangagwa failed to immediately return from exile in South Africa. The Standard newspaper, which has been critical of Mugabe and his government over the years, urged Mnangagwa to walk the talk on graft . At his swearing in ceremony, Mnangagwa said he valued democracy, tolerance and the rule of law and would tackle corruption. He has also urged citizens not to undertake vengeful retribution . The new government is already moving to bring some of Mugabe and his wife s close associates to court. Former finance minister Ignatius Chombo faced magistrates on Saturday on corruption charges. He did not enter a plea. Chombo was among several members of a group allied to Grace who were detained and expelled from the ZANU-PF after the military seized power in Operation Restore Legacy which it said was meant to remove the criminals around Mugabe. Chombo, who told the court he was forcibly removed from his home on Nov. 15 by armed men in military uniform, was detained until Monday when his bail application will be heard. He was led away in leg irons together with ousted head of the ZANU-PF s influential youth league Kudzanai Chipanga. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Searchers for Argentine submarine defy gale force winds on 11th day;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Searchers for an Argentine submarine missing since Nov. 15 battled gale-force South Atlantic winds on Sunday while a navy spokesman held out hope that the 44 crew members may still be alive in an extreme survival situation. The ARA San Juan had only a seven-day supply of air when it reported its last position, according to officials. Relatives of crew members focused on the possibility that the submarine may have been able to rise high enough in the ocean to refill its oxygen tanks at some point after its disappearance. Argentina s official weather service ordered an alert for intense winds of between 50 and 90 kilometers per hour (31 and 56 mph), with gusts, in Chubut province, the location from which search vessels were sailing. The bad weather conditions really are adverse, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference. Asked by a reporter about the chances that the crew may still be alive, Balbi left that as a possibility. We ve been searching for 11 days but that does not remove the chance that they could still be in an extreme survival situation, Balbi said. The U.S. Navy s Undersea Rescue Command sent a ship from Chubut s port Comodoro Rivadavia on Sunday, outfitted with a remotely operated mini-sub to be used as a rescue vehicle if the San Juan is found. The ship was expected to reach the search zone some 430 kilometers (267 miles) off Argentina s southern coast by Monday afternoon. A sudden, violent sound detected underwater near the last known position of the 65-meter-long (213 feet) diesel-electric submarine suggested it might have imploded on the morning of Nov. 15th, after reporting an electrical problem and being ordered back to base. Oscar Vallejos, a naval veteran and father of San Juan crew member Celso Vallejos, told local television that he refused to believe his son would not return alive. Hope always high, said the burly Vallejos, his posture ramrod straight and eyes hidden behind sunglasses. A black baseball-style cap identified him as a navy war veteran. Other crew family members were less sure. We are in a state of total uncertainty, Maria Victoria Morales, mother of Luis Garcia, an electrical technician aboard the missing Cold War-era submarine, told Reuters by telephone. A Russian plane arrived in Argentina on Friday carrying search equipment capable of reaching 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) below the sea surface, according to the Argentine navy. The international search effort includes about 30 ships and planes manned by 4,000 personnel from 13 countries including Brazil, Chile and Great Britain. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Speaker's arrest puts Indonesia parliament in graft spotlight, again;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Implicated in five corruption scandals since the 1990s but never convicted, the speaker of Indonesia s parliament Setya Novanto is a political survivor. Last week Novanto was detained by anti-corruption investigators over the biggest graft scandal to hit Indonesia s legislature. The 62-year-old political powerbroker was defiant, denying any wrongdoing and urging parliament and the political party he leads not to unseat him. His lawyer, Fredrich Yunadi, expressed confidence that Novanto would be cleared. In every court we always win, Yunadi told Reuters. But the latest allegations against Novanto have reinforced the perception among Indonesians that their parliament, long regarded as riddled with entrenched corruption, is a failing institution. Politicians and analysts say that is unlikely to change, whatever the outcome of the case. Before Setya Novanto, there were many, many MPs who were put in jail and it didn t have an effect, said Eva Sundari, a member of parliament from the PDI-P party, which sits in the ruling coalition alongside Novanto s Golkar. A Corruption Eradication Commission, known by its Indonesian initials KPK, was established in 2002 after the demise of authoritarian president Suharto. Fiercely independent and able to wiretap suspects without a warrant, it has been a thorn in the side of the country s establishment. But Bob Lowry, an Indonesia analyst at the Australian Institute of International Affairs, said that - the KPK aside - there has never been a systemic approach to tackling corruption that he says runs through all layers of government and politics. You are not dealing with individuals, you are dealing with an entire structure and culture. he said. Novanto is accused of orchestrating a scheme to plunder $173 million, or almost 40 percent of the entire budget for the project, from a government contract to introduce a national electronic identity card. Novanto denies any wrongdoing, writing a letter to other parliament leaders after he was detained asking them to give me an opportunity to prove that I wasn t involved . According to an indictment filed against Novanto s alleged bagman, businessman Andi Agustinus, they stood to be personally enriched to the tune of $42 million. Agustinus has not yet commented on the allegations or entered any plea. He is due to appear in court this week to answer the charges. The rest of the money was funneled to as many as 60 lawmakers, as well as officials, party chiefs, parliamentary staffers and tenderers, according to the KPK, which alleges some of the cash was brazenly divided up in parliamentary meeting rooms. In August a witness in the probe, a U.S.-based consultant to a company that won a contract to supply biometric technology for the identity cards - ironically aimed, in part, at curbing graft - shot himself after a stand-off with police in Los Angeles. Before his death, Johannes Marliem told KPK officers about meeting Novanto at his Jakarta home in 2011, according to a declaration to a court in Minnesota by a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent, at which the parliament speaker negotiated a discount under which he and Agustinus would get a 40 percent share of a contract worth more than $50 million. Marliem is also alleged to have said he had brought Novanto a $135,000 Richard Mille watch and showed the agent a photo of Novanto wearing it. A consummate political operator, Novanto is a key link between parliament and the government of President Joko Widodo, who is expected to seek re-election in 2019, said Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. He gained a measure of international prominence in September 2015 when Donald Trump, then a U.S. presidential candidate, hailed him as an amazing man at a news conference in Trump Tower in New York. Two months later he resigned from the speaker s post after a recording of a meeting emerged in which he was alleged to have attempted to extort $4 billion of shares from the U.S. mining giant Freeport McMoRan. The case got blanket media coverage and hearings were televised live. Within a year, however, Novanto was speaker again after the Constitutional Court ruled the recording inadmissible. Novanto s detention last week came after months of declining to answer summonses for questioning by the KPK. The allegations have once more gripped Indonesia, with newspaper front pages splashing the story and memes mocking Novanto trending on social media. Indonesia was ranked last year at 90 out of 176 countries on Transparency International s corruption perception index. The watchdog has singled out parliament as Indonesia s most corrupt institution, and in July called on President Widodo to protect the KPK against attempts by the legislature to weaken the commission s powers. Critics inside and outside the parliament say the root problem is money politics, which is underpinned by an open-ticket electoral system and campaign financing laws. These laws allow only tiny amounts of public funding, and do not require public disclosure of individual donors, which some lawmakers say perpetuates a system of funding from illicit sources and financial patronage for favors. The open-ticket voting system encourages candidates to spread largesse to voters and community leaders and then recoup the expenditure if they reach parliament, says the PDI-P s Sundari. Lawmaker Aryo Djojohadikusumo told Reuters that, with members of parliament holding the power to micromanage and approve the budgets of individual projects, the temptation to engage in pork-barrel politics is extremely high . However, he believes that parliament s reputation as corrupt has been magnified by the KPK s zeal in going after politicians, who make more headlines than low-level bureaucrats. Critics say many members of parliament are so focused on raising money for future campaigns and personal enrichment that the legislature is not doing its job. According to watchdog Concerned Citizens for the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi), lawmakers in Southeast Asia s biggest economy have ratified just five of 50 priority bills this year. If you want to see Indonesia free of corruption, Fahri Hamzah, one of parliament s vice speakers, told Reuters, you have to start tackling the political financing. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel's CDU agrees to pursue grand coalition in Germany;BERLIN (Reuters) - Leaders of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservative party agreed on Sunday to pursue a grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) to break the political deadlock in Europe s biggest economy. Merkel, whose fourth term was plunged into doubt a week ago when three-way coalition talks with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens collapsed, was handed a political lifeline by the SPD on Friday. Under intense pressure to preserve stability and avoid new elections, the SPD reversed its position and agreed to talk to Merkel, raising the prospect of a new grand coalition, which has ruled for the past four years, or a minority government. We have the firm intention of having an effective government, Daniel Guenther, conservative premier of the state of Schleswig Holstein, told reporters after a four-hour meeting of leading members of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU). We firmly believe that this is not a minority government but that it is an alliance with a parliamentary majority. That is a grand coalition, he said. The meeting came after the conservative state premier of Bavaria threw his weight behind a new right-left tie-up. An alliance of the conservatives and SPD is the best option for Germany - better anyway than a coalition with the Free Democrats and Greens, new elections or a minority government, Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian CSU, told Bild am Sonntag. An Emnid poll also showed on Sunday that 52 percent of Germans backed a grand coalition. Several European leaders have emphasised the importance of getting a stable German government in place quickly so the bloc can discuss its future, including proposals by French President Emmanuel Macron on euro zone reforms and Brexit. Merkel, who made clear on Saturday she would pursue a grand coalition, says that an acting government under her leadership can do business until a new coalition is formed. The youth wing of Merkel s conservatives raised pressure on the parties to get a deal done by Christmas, saying if there was no deal, the conservatives should opt for a minority government. In an indication, however, that the process will take time, the CDU agreed on Sunday evening to delay a conference in mid-December that had been due to vote on the three-way coalition. The SPD premier of the state of Lower Saxony said he feared there was no way a decision would be reached this year. It is a long path for the SPD, said Stephan Weil on ARD television. Merkel is against going down the route of a minority government because of its inherent instability, but pundits have said one possibility is for the conservatives and Greens to form a minority government with informal SPD support. The Greens have said they are open to a minority government. Even before any talks get under way, the two blocs have started to spar over policy priorities. Merkel, whose conservatives won most parliamentary seats in a Sept. 24 vote but bled support to the far right, has said she wants to maintain sound finances in Germany, cut some taxes and invest in digital infrastructure. She has to keep Bavaria s CSU on board by sticking to a tougher migrant policy that may also help win back conservatives who switched to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The SPD needs a platform for its policies after its poorest election showing since 1933. Leading SPD figures have outlined conditions including investment in education and homes, changes in health insurance and no cap on asylum seekers. Most experts believe the SPD has the stronger hand and several prominent economists said they expected the SPD to wield significant influence in a new grand coalition. If there is a grand coalition or even if there is toleration (of a minority government) I would expect more emphasis on the SPD s programme, Clemens Fuest, president of the Ifo institute, told business newspaper Handelsblatt. That would mean higher state spending and smaller tax cuts than would have been agreed with other potential partners. The SPD is divided, with some members arguing that a grand coalition has had its day. The SPD premier of the state of Rhineland Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, said she preferred the idea of the SPD tolerating a minority government over a grand coalition, making clear that the party would not agree to a deal at any price. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt court frees 17 accused of inciting debauchery: sources;CAIRO (Reuters) - A Cairo court on Sunday released 17 people arrested last month during a crackdown by the authorities on homosexuality, judicial sources said. They had been charged with practicing homosexuality and inciting debauchery and were sentenced to three years in prison should they fail to pay a fine of 5,000 Egyptian pounds ($285). The defendants have been given leave to appeal against the sentence in a higher court. Although homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt it is a conservative society and discrimination is rife. Gay men are frequently arrested and typically charged with debauchery, immorality or blasphemy. In October Egyptian security forces arrested 57 people in a wave of arrests triggered by the raising of a rainbow flag at a music concert. The overwhelming majority of those arrested were not involved in the flag incident, however, and were arrested over their perceived sexual orientation in the following days. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands of Romanians rally against ruling party's judicial overhaul;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Romanians rallied in the capital Bucharest and dozens of other cities on Sunday, protesting against a widely criticized plan by the ruling Social Democrats to overhaul the judiciary. The PSD-led coalition, which holds a robust majority in parliament, is drafting an overhaul that the European Commission, foreign diplomats and thousands of magistrates have criticized as placing the justice system under political control, potentially weakening an anti-corruption drive. A special parliamentary commission started debating the bill last week, with the ruling party aiming to have it approved by the end of the year. The commission is headed by Florin Iordache, who resigned as justice minister in February after a decree on corruption that he drafted triggered the biggest street protests since the 1989 anti-communist Romanian revolution. That decree, which was eventually rescinded, would have effectively shielded dozens of public officials from prosecution for corruption. Thieves, Thieves, shouted thousands of protesters in front of the government s headquarters on Sunday. We want justice, not corruption. PSD is the red plague. An estimated 30,000 people marched to parliament in Bucharest, while roughly 20,000 held rallies in about 70 cities. How do you trust wolves to make laws at the sheepfold, former technocrat prime minister Dacian Ciolos said on his Facebook page before going to the protests in Bucharest. The most contested judicial changes include those to an inspection unit that oversees magistrates conduct, the way in which chief prosecutors are appointed and the president s right to veto candidates. Romanian prosecutors have investigated hundreds of public officials, including former prime ministers, in an anti-corruption drive over the past decade. Transparency International ranks Romania among the European Union s most corrupt states, though Brussels has praised magistrates for their efforts. Prosecutors froze personal assets belonging to the leader of the PSD, Liviu Dragnea, this month as part of an investigation into suspected theft of cash from state projects, some of them Brussels-funded. Dragnea has denied any wrongdoing. In a report published on Nov. 15, the European Commission said that justice reform has stagnated in Romania this year and challenges to judicial independence remain a persistent source of concern. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Militants kill Egyptian U.N. peacekeeper in Central African Republic;DAKAR (Reuters) - Suspected Christian militias killed an Egyptian U.N. peacekeeper and wounded three others in an attack in southern Central African Republic on Sunday, the United Nations said in a statement. The attack, which the United Nations said was carried out by anti-balaka militants, occurred in Gambo, about 100 km (60 miles) from the town of Bangassou where more than 100 civilians and three Moroccan peacekeepers were killed in separate incidents in May and July. Conflict has killed thousands in Central African Republic since Muslim Seleka rebels ousted President Francois Bozize in 2013, provoking a backlash from the Christian anti-balaka militia. Violence spiked when former colonial power France ended its peacekeeping mission last year. Since then, the United Nations 13,000-strong Central African Republic mission, known as MINUSCA, has struggled to restore order to a country where government control barely extends beyond the capital Bangui. In total, 13 MINUSCA peacekeepers have been killed in the country this year alone. Five militants were also killed during Sunday s clash, the United Nations said. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt attack to spur on Saudi-backed Muslim military alliance: crown prince;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Sunday an attack on an Egyptian mosque that killed more than 300 worshippers would galvanize an Islamic military coalition that aimed to counter terrorism and extremism . Top defense officials from 40 Muslim-majority nation s met in Riyadh on Sunday. They are part of an alliance gathered together two years ago by Prince Mohammed, who is also Saudi defense minister. The crown prince has said he would encourage a more moderate and tolerant version of Islam in the ultra-conservative kingdom. Prince Mohamed told delegates that Friday s attack in Egypt was a very painful occurrence and must make us contemplate in an international and powerful way the role of this terrorism and extremism . Gunmen carrying the flag of Islamic State attacked the mosque in North Sinai. The group of Muslim nations, called the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, has yet to take any decisive action. Officials say the group would allow members to request or offer assistance to each other to fight militants. This could include military help, financial aid, equipment or security expertise. The group, which will have a permanent base in Riyadh, would also help combat terrorist financing and ideology. The biggest threat from terrorism and extremism is not only killing innocent people and spreading hate, but tarnishing the reputation of our religion and distorting our belief, Prince Mohammed told officials from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Iraq and Syria, at the forefront of the battle against Islamic State, are not members, nor is mainly Shi ite Muslim Iran, the regional rival to mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia. Qatar, originally part of the alliance, was not invited to Sunday s meeting after Riyadh led a group of states seeking to isolate Doha, saying it supported terrorism. Doha denies this. Abdulelah al-Saleh, a Saudi lieutenant general and the coalition s secretary general, said Qatar was excluded to help build a consensus for launching operations. He also said the group was not aimed at creating a Sunni bloc to counter Iran. The enemy is terrorism. It s not sects or religions or races, its terrorism, Saleh told reporters. Saleh said military initiatives had been proposed to the group s ministerial council, but he did not elaborate. Despite agreement on principles, members voiced different priorities at the meeting. Yemen s delegation said the focus should be Iran, al Qaeda and Islamic State, while Turkey called for support from our friends against Kurdish separatists. Critics say the coalition could become a means for Saudi Arabia to implement an even more assertive foreign policy by winning the backing of poorer African and Asian nations with offers of financial and military aid. Alongside leading a diplomatic charge against Qatar, Saudi Arabia is also leading a war against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in its neighbor Yemen, Saleh said Riyadh would pay the 400 million riyal ($107 million) bill for the coalition s new center, but said other nations could offer financial support for specific initiatives. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Proposals of main parties in Honduras presidential election;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Hondurans vote on Sunday in a presidential election that many expect to result in a second term for the current U.S.-friendly leader, eight years after he supported a coup against a former president who also floated the idea of re-election. Polls suggest Juan Orlando Hernandez, of the center-right National Party, will clinch a divisive second term and see off television host Salvador Nasralla, who helms a broad left-right coalition called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. Below are the candidates main proposals: Juan Orlando Hernandez - A former head of Congress who studied at the State University of New York and Honduras military academy, the 49-year-old Hernandez enjoys good rapport with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and is seen as a reliable U.S. ally in Central America. - Hernandez has managed to lower the murder rate and raise growth, while expanding his influence into the furthest reaches of the Honduran government. - Critics say that Hernandez, who was born in a humble, rural family of 17 siblings, has stifled dissent and is seeking to consolidate power. U.S. government officials say they want him to quickly revitalize stalled legislation to place a cap on presidential limits and assuage fears he will not cede power. - With his slogan that Change has begun, and should continue, Hernandez says he will keep up his militarized fight against the gangs that have turned the Central American nation into one of the world s most violent. - Hernandez says a so-called Honduras 20/20 plan will help lure investment in textiles, call centers and car manufacturing and lift growth. Hernandez wants to push ahead with special economic zones, a project that has so far yielded few concrete results. He says his policies will create 600,000 new jobs in the next four years. Salvador Nasralla - A colorful 64-year-old sports and talent TV show host descended from Lebanese immigrants, Nasralla promises to put an end to years of violence, poverty and graft. - Nasralla s Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship coalition includes the Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), which is controlled by ousted former President Manuel Zelaya, who many believe is the true force behind the coalition. - A non-traditional political figure who has benefited from his entertainment background to build support among those disenchanted by business-as-usual Honduran politics, Nasralla trailed Hernandez by 15 points in the last permitted poll before the election, which took place in September. - Nasralla says he will ask the United Nations to install an anti-graft body, similar to one operating in Guatemala, to probe and bring charges in corruption cases. Nasralla would maintain the Military Police, created by Hernandez, but wants to found a community police force to work in violent slums. He would also continue the purge of the national police, while hiring up to 25,000 new officers. - Plans for the economy are vague, but the coalition has proposed lowering sales tax and slashing a Hernandez-imposed corporate levy that has enraged the private sector. The Alliance has proposed a referendum on how the current Constitution should be rewritten, either by Congress or by a new national assembly. It also wants a referendum on stripping the powers of the Supreme Court, which it accuses of being pliant to Hernandez. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Candidates and what's at stake in Honduras presidential election;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Hondurans voted on Sunday in a presidential election that many expect to result in a second term for the current U.S.-friendly leader, eight years after he supported a coup against a former president who also floated the idea of reelection. Based on recent polls, Juan Orlando Hernandez, of the center-right National Party, looks set to profit from a 2015 Supreme Court decision that overturned a constitutional ban on reelection. He is running against television host Salvador Nasralla, who helms a broad left-right coalition called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. Below are the candidates main proposals: Juan Orlando Hernandez - A former head of Congress who studied at the State University of New York and Honduras military academy, Hernandez, 49, enjoys a good rapport with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and is seen as a reliable U.S. ally in Central America. - Hernandez has managed to lower the murder rate and raise growth while expanding his influence into the furthest reaches of the Honduran government. - Critics say Hernandez, who was born in a humble, rural family of 17 siblings, has stifled dissent and is seeking to consolidate power. U.S. government officials say they want him to revitalize stalled legislation to place a cap on presidential term limits and assuage fears he will not cede power. - With his slogan Change has begun and should continue, Hernandez says he will keep up his militarized fight against the gangs that have turned the Central American nation into one of the world s most violent. - Hernandez says his Honduras 20/20 plan will help lure investment in textiles, call centers and car manufacturing and lift growth. He wants to push ahead with special economic zones, a project that has so far yielded few concrete results. He says his policies will create 600,000 new jobs in the next four years. Salvador Nasralla - A colorful 64-year-old sports and talent TV show host descended from Lebanese immigrants, Nasralla promises to put an end to years of violence, poverty and graft. - Nasralla s Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship coalition includes the Liberty and Refoundation Party, or LIBRE. It is controlled by ousted former President Manuel Zelaya, who many believe is the true force behind the coalition. - A non-traditional political figure who has benefited from his entertainment background to build support among those disenchanted by business-as-usual Honduran politics, Nasralla trailed Hernandez by 15 points in a September poll, the last permitted before the election. - Nasralla says he will ask the United Nations to install an anti-graft body, similar to one operating in Guatemala, to probe and bring charges in corruption cases. He would maintain the Military Police created by Hernandez but wants to start a community police force to work in violent slums. He would also continue firing corrupt national police officers, while hiring up to 25,000 new officers. - Plans for the economy are vague, but the coalition has proposed lowering the sales tax and slashing a Hernandez-imposed corporate levy that has enraged the private sector. - The Alliance has proposed a referendum on how the current Constitution should be rewritten, either by Congress or by a new national assembly. It also wants a referendum on stripping the powers of the Supreme Court, which it accuses of being pliant to Hernandez. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NURSE FROM One Of Nation’s Largest Hospitals Tweets: “Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son”…Their Sons “should be sacrificed to the wolves b___””;It s hard to imagine, and very sad, that a hospital could hire someone who is so filled with hate and obsessed with race, to care for some of the most vulnerable members of our society.A controversial tweet allegedly posted Friday by a nurse at one of the largest hospital systems in the nation has sparked an internal investigation.The tweet came from an account named Night Nurse, linked to Indiana University Health employee Taiyesha Baker, FOX59 reported. Every white woman raises a detriment to society when they raise a son. Someone with the HIGHEST propensity to be a terrorist, rapist, racist, killer, and domestic violence all star. Historically every son you had should be sacrificed to the wolves b___, the tweet read.An IU Health spokesman confirmed to FOX59 that Baker is a registered nurse, but declined to reveal the hospital where she is currently employed. IU Health is aware of several troubling posts on social media which appear to be from a recently hired IU Health employee, the hospital said in a statement. Our HR department continues to investigate the situation and the authenticity of the posts. During the investigation, that employee (who does not work at Riley Hospital for Children) will have no access to patient care. Baker claimed to work in pediatrics in previously deleted tweets.According to public records obtained by FOX59, Baker was most recently issued a nursing license on Oct. 30.The Twitter account behind the controversial messages, @tai_fieri, was originally deleted after the post sparked a firestorm, but now appears to have been created by a different user who is posting new tweets, the IndyStar reported. FOX News;left-news;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;88-Yr Old DEMOCRAT Congressman and Accused SEXUAL PREDATOR Reluctantly Steps Down From House Judiciary Committee…REFUSES To Resign;John Conyers, the 88-year old Democrat Congressman and Black Caucus member who used taxpayer dollars from one of the most impoverished districts in Michigan, to pay off accusers of sexual assault, is refusing to give up the power he s become accustomed to, as the longest sitting House member in America s history. The corrupt Congressman has, however, agreed to step down from his role on the House Judiciary Committee, pending an investigation into the multiple allegations of sexual harassment that have been levied against him.In a statement released through Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi s office on Sunday, Conyers said he would like to keep his leadership position but realized that he may undermine the committee s work if he stays at the helm. I have come to believe that my presence as Ranking Member on the Committee would not serve these efforts while the Ethics Committee investigation is pending, Conyers (D-Detroit) said in the statement. I cannot in good conscience allow these charges to undermine my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, and my friends on both sides of the aisle in the Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives. Conyers, 88, is the longest-serving House member. BuzzFeed reported last week the contents of the secret $27,000 settlement Conyers paid with taxpayer funds to a former staffer who said she was fired for rejecting Conyers sexual advances.Conyers has admitted to the payment but denied any wrongdoing. I deny these allegations, many of which were raised by documents reportedly paid for by a partisan alt-right blogger, Conyers said, referring to the settlement papers obtained by Mike Cernovich and passed along to the news site. I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics. With Conyers stepping aside, the next most senior Democrat New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler will become acting Ranking Member of the powerful committee. Even under these unfortunate circumstances, the important work of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee must move forward, Nadler said in a Sunday statement. I will do everything in my power to continue to press on the important issues facing our committee, including criminal justice reform, workplace equality, and holding the Trump Administration accountable. Nadler added: Ranking Member Conyers has a 50 year legacy of advancing the cause of justice, and my job moving forward is to continue that critical work. New York Rep. Kathleen Rice was the first House Democrat last week to call for Conyers resignation from Congress, and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) said Conyers should at least give up his perch as the House Judiciary Committee s ranking member, pending the outcome of the ethics probe.Earlier Sunday, Pelosi defended Conyers on NBC s Meet the Press by not calling for his resignation and insisting the icon deserves due process. NYP ;left-news;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State raises stakes with Egypt mosque attack;ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - The mosque was packed with hundreds of worshippers for Friday prayers in Egypt s North Sinai when gunmen in military-style uniforms and masks appeared in a doorway and at windows. The ease with which they mounted an attack - killing more than 300 people in the worst bloodshed of its kind in Egypt s modern history - highlighted the threat militant groups pose in the most populous Arab country. After four years of battling Islamic State in the Sinai, where the group has killed hundreds of soldiers and police, authorities still face an enemy with growing ambitions in Egypt, despite its defeats in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Carrying the black flag of Islamic State, the assailants arrived in off-road vehicles before opening fire on the cream-colored Al Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed, leaving its carpets stained with blood, officials and witnesses said. People scrambled to escape as gunmen opened fire at worshippers, including dozens of children. By the time the shooting stopped, many of the village s men were lifeless. No group has claimed responsibility. Egyptians were stunned because the attack was directed at a mosque - a rarity in the country s history of Islamist insurgencies. The possibility that ultra-hardline Islamists are shifting tactics and picking new targets is worrying for Egypt, where governments have struggled to contain groups far less brazen than Islamic State. Egyptian leaders have adopted a zero-tolerance policy, with air strikes, raids on militant hideouts and long prison sentences. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has once again threatened to crush the militants. The armed forces and the police will avenge our martyrs and restore security and stability with the utmost force in the coming period, he said after Friday s carnage. Sisi has called for a comprehensive campaign to counter what he describes as the existential threat of radical jihadism, deploying moderate clerics to promote moderate Islam, for instance. He is expected to run for a second term early next year. Even with a convincing win, he will face pressure to deliver on promises of stability, especially if attacks like that on Al Rawdah persist. For Islamic State, the village was a target because of its ties to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that hardline Islamist groups consider heretical. Some villagers recalled how these threats were made about a year ago in an Islamic State internet publication. In a December 2016 issue of al-Nabaa, one of the group s religious leaders left little doubt that Sufis would be targeted. It mentioned Al Rawdah directly. Our primary focus lies in the war against polytheism and apostasy, and of those, Sufism, sorcery and divination, he said. More threats were made in early 2017. In March, Islamic State s branch in the Sinai posted a video of its religious police forcing a group of Sufis to renounce their beliefs under threat of death. It showed what it said were militants beheading two elderly Sufi men in the desert after they were found guilty of witchcraft and sorcery. Egypt has about 15 million Sufis, and their shrines and saints appear in villages across the country. Ultra-conservative Salafists abhor Sufi practices and some have in the past threatened to smash their symbols with hammers and iron bars. Five police and army sources said there was no recent specific threat against Sufis in Al Rawdah. Friday s attack began in the early afternoon. The mosque s imam said he had just stepped onto the podium for his sermon when gunfire erupted and worshippers struggled to escape. I found people piled on top of each other and they kept firing at anyone, imam Mohamed Abdel Fattah told Reuters from his hospital bed in Sharqiya city. They fired at anyone who breathed. Ramadan Salama, 26, said all he remembers before ending up in hospital was gunmen entering the mosque during the sermon and spraying worshippers with gunfire. As Egyptian security forces try to reassure an anxious public, they face yet another dangerous enemy. A new group with military training is already posing a more complex threat. In October it mounted a sophisticated attack, not far from Cairo. The little-known Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility for the attack on police in the Western desert, far from northern Sinai. Security sources said dozens of police officers and conscripts were killed. The government said 16 police and conscripts died. Security sources said the heavy weapons and tactics employed indicated ties to Islamic State or more likely an al Qaeda brigade led by Hesham al-Ashmawy, a former Egyptian special forces officer turned jihadist. For now, security and intelligence officials will continue to hunt Ashmawy, described as the country s most wanted man. Egypt s prosecutor s office, citing its investigation and interviews with wounded survivors, says gunmen carried an Islamic State flag as they stormed the Al Rawdah mosque. Authorities say 305 people, including 27 children, died as gunmen even attacked ambulances arriving on the scene. Another 128 were wounded. They entered the mosque from outside, almost 10 to 20 people with weapons, and they destroyed everything, said resident Magdy Rezk from hospital. It was a huge toll for a tiny village. Tribal leader Ibrahim el-Menaie, told Reuters via social media that it has a population of only 800. The whole village is black with mourning, said resident Haj Ahmed Swailam. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SOUTH KOREA Uses Hilarious Technique To TAUNT North Korea After Soldier Escapes Kim Jong Un’s Hell [VIDEO];There is no word yet, about how Rocket Man plans to respond to the egg on his face South Korea is making sure North Korea doesn t forget about the regime s soldier who defected to the South in a daring escape earlier this month by blasting updates about the defector s health through its military s loudspeakers at the Demilitarized Zone, a report said on Sunday.South Korean troops broadcasted an update on Sunday about the North Korean soldier s nutritive conditions, taking a hit at the Hermit Kingdom s alleged health issues, Yonhap News Agency reported. The broadcasts are reportedly so loud that people within 12.4 miles from the DMZ are able to hear it. The nutritive conditions of the North Korean soldier who recently defected through the Panmunjom were unveiled, an official told Yonhap News Agency.Consistent updates have been broadcast through South Korean military s loudspeakers since the soldier, identified by his surname, Oh, was shot at least five times while dashing across the Joint Security Area a strip of land at the DMZ where North and South Korean forces stand face-to-face on Nov. 13. The broadcast operation is part of an ongoing psychological warfare between the North and the South. The gigantic loudspeakers were switched back on in January 2016 after North Korea s fourth nuclear test.The loudspeakers are also reportedly used to blast propaganda to persuade North Korean soldiers to doubt Kim Jong Un s regime and even convince them to defect to the South, the BBC reported. Those speakers have been used sporadically since the end of the Korean War.Watch the North Korean s daring escape here:The 24-year-old North Korean defector is currently recovering from the gunshot wounds he endured when his fellow comrades fired dozens of rounds at him to stop him from defecting to the South. Video of Oh s dash to freedom released on Wednesday showed him speeding down a tree-lined road as stunned North Korean soldiers began running after him. He fell into a pile of leaves against a small wall before being dragged to safety by South Korean troops. FOX News ;left-news;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! DEMOCRAT CHEERLEADER Cokie Roberts Delivers Devastating News To ABC Comrades: “It is Going to Be Very Hard to Defeat” Roy Moore After Trump’s Endorsement [VIDEO];"Earlier today, President Trump tweeted about the Alabama Senate race where Republican candidate for Senate Judge Roy Moore has been the target of the left ever since he won in the GOP primary race in September, against the less conservative candidate, Luther Strange.The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017Unfortunately for the Democrats, their attempt at destroying the character of Roy Moore, by attempting to paint him as a sexual predator of teenage girls, continues to fall apart. Roy Moore s team is coming out and demanding that the high school yearbook used as evidence by one of Moore s accusers is more looked at by forgery experts after it was discovered that the signature doesn t match that of Roy Moore s and that two different colors of ink were used for the signature. The stepson of the woman who used what many are saying was a forged Roy Moore signature in her yearbook, has also come out to say his stepmother is lying about her encounter several decades ago with Roy Moore. Even the high-profile, leftist, media-whore lawyer, Gloria Allred, who represented the accuser with the yearbook, appears to have gone into hiding. Meanwhile, polls are showing that Roy Moore is ahead by anywhere from 5-15 points and that the left s shameful attempt at stealing the election from the popular conservative candidate in Alabama, is quickly falling apart.Now that President Trump has endorsed Roy Moore, the left appears to be giving up the ship Sunday on ABC s This Week, network analyst Cokie Roberts said now that President Donald Trump had supported Alabama GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore, it will be very hard to defeat Moore in the December 12 special election.Roberts said, He doesn t have to go to Alabama. He s done plenty for Roy Moore. Moore can put it in his ads, which he s doing. He s clearly got the endorsement of President Trump. Without the endorsement of President Trump, he won the primary. I think with the endorsement of President Trump, it will be hard to defeat him in the general election. Breitbart News.@CokieRoberts tells @ThisWeekABC Roy Moore clearly has the endorsement of Pres. Trump: Without the endorsement, he won the primary. I think with the endorsement, ""it is going to be very hard to defeat him."" pic.twitter.com/Hyw6wSligG ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 26, 2017";left-news;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! DEMOCRAT CHEERLEADER Cokie Roberts Delivers Devastating News To ABC Comrades: “It is Going to Be Very Hard to Defeat” Roy Moore After Trump’s Endorsement [VIDEO];"Earlier today, President Trump tweeted about the Alabama Senate race where Republican candidate for Senate Judge Roy Moore has been the target of the left ever since he won in the GOP primary race in September, against the less conservative candidate, Luther Strange.The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017Unfortunately for the Democrats, their attempt at destroying the character of Roy Moore, by attempting to paint him as a sexual predator of teenage girls, continues to fall apart. Roy Moore s team is coming out and demanding that the high school yearbook used as evidence by one of Moore s accusers is more looked at by forgery experts after it was discovered that the signature doesn t match that of Roy Moore s and that two different colors of ink were used for the signature. The stepson of the woman who used what many are saying was a forged Roy Moore signature in her yearbook, has also come out to say his stepmother is lying about her encounter several decades ago with Roy Moore. Even the high-profile, leftist, media-whore lawyer, Gloria Allred, who represented the accuser with the yearbook, appears to have gone into hiding. Meanwhile, polls are showing that Roy Moore is ahead by anywhere from 5-15 points and that the left s shameful attempt at stealing the election from the popular conservative candidate in Alabama, is quickly falling apart.Now that President Trump has endorsed Roy Moore, the left appears to be giving up the ship Sunday on ABC s This Week, network analyst Cokie Roberts said now that President Donald Trump had supported Alabama GOP U.S. Senate hopeful Roy Moore, it will be very hard to defeat Moore in the December 12 special election.Roberts said, He doesn t have to go to Alabama. He s done plenty for Roy Moore. Moore can put it in his ads, which he s doing. He s clearly got the endorsement of President Trump. Without the endorsement of President Trump, he won the primary. I think with the endorsement of President Trump, it will be hard to defeat him in the general election. Breitbart News.@CokieRoberts tells @ThisWeekABC Roy Moore clearly has the endorsement of Pres. Trump: Without the endorsement, he won the primary. I think with the endorsement, ""it is going to be very hard to defeat him."" pic.twitter.com/Hyw6wSligG ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 26, 2017";politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BRITISH MUSICIAN Says If He Was Given The Chance, He’d Kill Donald Trump…Blames Press For Making Him President;If this so-called celebrity said that he would have killed former President Obama if he was given the chance, he would likely be sitting in a jail cell somewhere facing serious charges, but apparently when a celebrity says they d like to kill President Trump, foreign authorities, as well the leftist media, simply shrug their shoulders Just another day in the life of an unhinged, Trump-hating celebrity Yawn.British musician Morrissey says if given the chance, he d kill President Donald Trump to ensure the safety of humanity. The 58-year-old former Smiths frontman said in an interview with der Spiegel this week that if he were presented with a button that could instantly kill Trump, he wouldn t hesitate to press it. I would [push it], for the safety of humanity, Morrissey told the outlet. It has nothing to do with my personal opinion of his face or his family, but in the interest of humanity I would push. The singer also explained that it was the media, who so derided Trump during the 2016 campaign season, that ultimately created Trump, ensured consistent coverage of his campaign, and led to his victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.The American media helped Trump, yes, they first created it, he explained, according to a translation of the interview by the Washington Times. Whether they criticize him or laugh at him, he does not care, he just wants to see his picture and his name. The American media have shot themselves in the leg. Watch Morrissey push for a Hillary presidency on Larry King Now prior to the election. Is there anything more heartwarming than watching a British musician tell an American host who Americans should vote for? Thank goodness no one listens to this unhinged overrated celebrity.Morrissey added that he never expected Trump to be elected president and has no faith in the political establishment anymore. Breitbart News;politics;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BRITISH MUSICIAN Says If He Was Given The Chance, He’d Kill Donald Trump…Blames Press For Making Him President;If this so-called celebrity said that he would have killed former President Obama if he was given the chance, he would likely be sitting in a jail cell somewhere facing serious charges, but apparently when a celebrity says they d like to kill President Trump, foreign authorities, as well the leftist media, simply shrug their shoulders Just another day in the life of an unhinged, Trump-hating celebrity Yawn.British musician Morrissey says if given the chance, he d kill President Donald Trump to ensure the safety of humanity. The 58-year-old former Smiths frontman said in an interview with der Spiegel this week that if he were presented with a button that could instantly kill Trump, he wouldn t hesitate to press it. I would [push it], for the safety of humanity, Morrissey told the outlet. It has nothing to do with my personal opinion of his face or his family, but in the interest of humanity I would push. The singer also explained that it was the media, who so derided Trump during the 2016 campaign season, that ultimately created Trump, ensured consistent coverage of his campaign, and led to his victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.The American media helped Trump, yes, they first created it, he explained, according to a translation of the interview by the Washington Times. Whether they criticize him or laugh at him, he does not care, he just wants to see his picture and his name. The American media have shot themselves in the leg. Watch Morrissey push for a Hillary presidency on Larry King Now prior to the election. Is there anything more heartwarming than watching a British musician tell an American host who Americans should vote for? Thank goodness no one listens to this unhinged overrated celebrity.Morrissey added that he never expected Trump to be elected president and has no faith in the political establishment anymore. Breitbart News;left-news;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian police ask interfaith couples: Is it love or terror?;NEW DELHI/KOCHI, India (Reuters) - India s Supreme Court started hearing a case on Monday that prosecutors say shows how Islamic State sympathizers are using Love Jihad marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam to win recruits and spread their message. Over the past 28 months, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has picked up dozens of interfaith couples in the southern state of Kerala to question them about their marriages. The women - all Hindus who married Muslims were asked extremely personal questions during the interrogations, two police officers from the agency said: Did you sleep with your husband before getting married? Did he suggest you visit Islamic shrines before marriage? Did he blackmail you before you converted to Islam? They were looking for cases of Love Jihad , a term publicized by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other hardline Hindu groups soon after they helped propel Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in 2014. It refers to what these groups say is an Islamist campaign to convert Hindu women through seduction and marriage. Police investigations at the time found no evidence of any organised strategy, and the claim was widely ridiculed. But since then, the NIA began focusing on Kerala - a state along the Arabian Sea with strong economic links to the Middle East. It investigated 89 cases of Love Jihad and found nine to be alliances planned by people linked to the Islamic State, two NIA sources said, requesting anonymity because the investigation is going on. The NIA will present evidence in the nine cases to the Supreme Court. The agency declined to disclose its evidence. But in two of the cases it was examining money sent from an Islamic school in Iraq to the women s bank accounts, and in another case a woman and her husband had shared IS videos among people in their Kerala village, the sources said. Opposition parties say the investigation shows the government is allowing the RSS and others to use the state apparatus to further an agenda of establishing Hindu dominance in India, where 13 percent of the population is Muslim. M.B Rajesh, a federal lawmaker and member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which rules Kerala, said the NIA and the RSS were trying to prove that marriages between Hindus and Muslims are forced unions . The NIA s probe is creating religious fault lines to help Modi s party win (Kerala s) state elections, but we will defeat them. J. Nandakumar, an RSS leader who oversees the group s activities in the state, said the NIA investigation vindicated the Hindu right s campaign against religious conversions. Their first step is to convert Hindu boys and girls, hypnotise them and prepare them for jihad, he said. The RSS, which founded the first iteration of Modi s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party six decades ago, believes India is fundamentally a Hindu nation. Since Modi s election in May 2014, the RSS has expanded its membership and influence across India and either it or its affiliates now run key ministries, such as the home ministry, which supervises the NIA, and the finance ministry. Muslims who account for 172 million of India s 1.32 billion citizens - have been under increasing pressure from the Hindu right. Muslims have been lynched for killing cows - considered sacred in Hinduism - and some of their slaughter houses forced to shut down. Neither Modi s office nor the NIA would comment because the issue is before the Supreme Court. One of the Muslim men, whose marriage to a Hindu woman was annulled by Kerala s High Court, has appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The NIA has accused the man, Shefin Jahan, in court of trying to recruit people for the Islamic State, a charge he denies. The 24-year-old woman, who converted to Islam before marrying him and changed her name from Akhila to Hadiya, was placed in her father s custody by the high court after he said he feared for her well-being. There is no criminal case against her. India s chief justice summoned Hadiya to New Delhi to testify on Monday on whether she had been forced to convert. In an interim order the Supreme Court removed Hadiya from her father s custody and said she could live in a hostel to complete her college education. The trial will begin in January. This is for the first time in the history of India the top court will be asking a woman the validity of her marriage and her religious conversion, said Kapil Sibal, a lawyer and a leader of the opposition Congress party. Sibal is representing Jahan. Jahan, 26, told Reuters he met Hadiya through a matrimonial website for Muslims while he was working in a pharmaceutical factory in Oman. He said he wanted to live with his wife, with whom he stayed for only 48 hours before her father complained to the police. Our simple love story has turned into an ugly religious and legal battle, Jahan said. The NIA investigation started in 2015 after the government identified Kerala, which sends tens of thousands of workers to the Middle East, as a potential hotbed of Islamic State recruitment. Nearly half of Kerala s 33 million people practice Islam and Christianity. Police and the NIA said at least 100 people from Kerala have joined the IS in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The NIA s nine Love Jihad cases were based on complaints lodged by the parents of the Hindu girls and all were found to have links with IS, the NIA police sources said. The agency dropped the investigations into the other 80 cases because no links to militants were found, the sources said. Across India, more than 270 men and 20 women have been arrested for working directly or indirectly with the IS, according to data at the federal Home Ministry. But Kerala was the only state where the NIA found a direct link between cases of Love Jihad and the IS, the NIA sources said. The agency says it has uncovered attempts by IS sympathizers to possibly send the women in Love Jihad marriages off to marry or stay with fighters from the militant group, the NIA sources said. Two couples, who were questioned by the NIA last year, told Reuters police searched their homes. I was shocked when they said maybe my husband was a jihadi, and he could be planning to send me to Syria, said one woman who married a Muslim information technology professional in 2015. Police questioned her for six hours, she said, and before leaving, took pictures of her wedding album. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gold trader's trial strains U.S.-Turkey relations;ISTANBUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A trial which has strained Turkish-U.S. ties before it even started opens this week in New York despite the possible absence of a defendant who Turkey says is cooperating with prosecutors in what it calls a clear plot against Ankara. Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, charged with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, has dropped out of sight in the last two months, prompting Turkey s prime minister to suggest he has reached a plea deal with U.S. authorities. James Margolin, a spokesman for U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan, declined to comment on whether Zarrab was cooperating with the authorities. A lawyer for Zarrab, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment for this article. Zarrab and eight other people, including Turkey s former economy minister and three executives of Turkish state-owned Halkbank, have been charged with engaging in transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran s government and Iranian entities from 2010 to 2015 in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Only Zarrab and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, one of the Halkbank executives, have been arrested by U.S. authorities. Ex-minister Zafer Caglayan, who has not been arrested by the United States and remains in Turkey, is also accused of receiving tens of millions of dollars in bribes from the proceeds of the scheme. The Turkish government has said he acted within Turkish and international law. Caglayan, Zarrab and Atilla have denied all the charges against them. Victor Rocco, a lawyer for Atilla, declined to comment on the case. Caglayan could not be reached for comment. Halkbank says all its transactions fully comply with Turkish and international regulations. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s government has said the case has been fabricated for political motives. The tensions it has exacerbated between Ankara and Washington - NATO allies - have hit investor sentiment toward Turkey, and traders say it has also contributed to the lira s fall to record lows. U.S. prosecutors claim that the defendants helped Zarrab use his network of companies to supply currency and gold to the Iranian government and Iranian entities, violating U.S. sanctions. The prosecutors have alleged that the defendants used front companies and fake invoices to trick U.S. banks into processing transactions disguised to appear as though they involved food, which is exempt from the sanctions. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the charges were baseless, and that Turkey had not violated its own or international laws regarding exports and trade. The Zarrab case is a clear plot against Turkey, a political case and lacking any legal basis, government spokesman Bekir Bozdag said last week. Zarrab has been absent from recent court hearings. Last month Atilla s lawyers said Zarrab, who was arrested in Miami in March 2016, had essentially not participated in the case and that Atilla might be the only defendant appearing at trial. The defendants in the case are under pressure and being forced to make statements against our country, Yildirim said, without explanation. The case is acutely sensitive in Turkey because the prosecutors say a Turkish government minister, Caglayan, was involved in the alleged conspiracy to evade the U.S. sanctions. In a filing four weeks ago, prosecutors also included the transcript of an April 16, 2013 recorded phone call in which a speaker they identified as Zarrab discussed with another co-defendant his efforts to buy a bank to establish a conduit for Iranian transactions. Prosecutors said Zarrab and Erdogan, then Turkey s prime minister, had spoken four days earlier at a wedding. I explained it that day at the wedding, Zarrab told the co-defendant, according to prosecutors. I will go back and will say, Mr. Prime Minister, if you approve, give me a license . Erdogan has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but has repeatedly expressed frustration with the case. You arrest the general manager of my bank when there are no crimes, try to use my citizen (Zarrab) as an informant, try him without having anything against him, Erdogan said in a speech to provincial governors on Oct. 12, in an apparent reference to the U.S. prosecutors. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said he sees in this case the hand of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan accuses Gulen of masterminding last year s failed military coup in Turkey and also of driving an earlier legal case involving Zarrab. In that earlier case, Turkish prosecutors accused Zarrab and high-ranking Turkish officials of involvement in facilitating Iranian money transfers via gold smuggling. After details of the Turkish prosecution were leaked in 2013, several prosecutors were removed from the case and police investigators were reassigned. Erdogan branded the case an attempt by Gulen s supporters to undermine his government and the investigation was later dropped. Cavusoglu said the two legal cases were exactly the same , and showed the extent to which Gulen had infiltrated American state institutions, including its judiciary. Needless to say, those claims are ridiculous, acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said last week. The case has been handled by career prosecutors concerned only with U.S. law, not Turkish politics, Kim said, adding: They re not Gulenists. Gulen denies involvement in the failed 2016 coup or any other attempts to undermine Erdogan and his government. The Zarrab case is one of several festering disputes between Ankara and Washington, which disagree over U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in Syria and suspended visa services after the arrest of a locally employed U.S. consulate worker in Istanbul last month. In a speech on Wednesday, Yildirim highlighted the economic fallout from the court hearings, saying they had come to the point of harming Turkey and our global economic ties . Turkey s bank regulator denied a report in Haberturk newspaper last month that six unnamed Turkish banks could face fines worth billions of dollars over Iran sanctions violations. Investors are nervous. Turkish bank shares have fallen more than 13 percent in November, nearly twice the decline of the broader Istanbul market. Jury selection is due to start on Monday, meaning the trial may begin as early as Tuesday. ;worldnews;26/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistani Islamists call off protests over blasphemy claim as govt. backs down;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A hardline Pakistani Islamist group called off nationwide protests on Monday after the government met its demand that a government minister accused of blasphemy resign, following weekend clashes with police that paralyzed major cities. The cleric-politician leading the nearly three-week blockade of the capital, Islamabad, thanked the army chief for helping resolve the stand-off, raising questions about the military s role. The new ultra-religious political party Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan was protesting against a small change in wording to an electoral law changing a religious oath to a simple declaration, which it said amounted to blasphemy. The government climbdown will be seen as an embarrassment for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party ahead of elections likely in mid-2018, and underlines the power of religious groups in the nuclear-armed nation of 207 million. Seven people were killed and nearly 200 wounded after a police bid to disperse protesters in Islamabad failed on Saturday, spurring demonstrators wielding sticks and iron rods to block key roads and motorways in other cities. Our main demand has been accepted, Ejaz Ashrafi, spokesman for Tahreek-e-Labaik, told Reuters, adding that part of the agreement was to free dozens of party workers arrested during the weekend crackdown. Our workers release is in process. Once that is done, we will leave. At nightfall on Monday, the protesters were still in place. Law minister Zahid Hamid handed in his resignation to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to take the country out of a crisis-like situation , state-run news channel PTV said on Monday. Government spokesmen did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment. The government called in the military to tackle the protests after a police operation failed, but there was no sign of troops around protest camps on Sunday. The military said the army chief in one telephone call had advised Abbasi to resolve the protests peacefully. Tehreek-e-Labaik leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi on Monday described the army s role in ending the standoff. The honorable chief of army staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, sent his special envoys to us. We said we do not want to talk to the government;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate Republican signals possible committee 'no' vote on tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Bob Corker said on Monday that he could oppose his party’s tax bill over deficit concerns in an expected Senate Budget Committee vote this week, but added that Republicans were working to resolve his concerns. “I’m not threatening anything. I’m just saying it’s very important for me to know that we’ve got this resolved,” Corker told reporters. Asked if he could vote ‘no’ on the tax bill at a committee hearing slated for Tuesday, he replied: “Very possible. Yeah. Sure.” Corker is among a group of deficit hawks who want the tax legislation to contain a backstop measure that would raise revenues in the event that expected economic growth does not materialize to compensate for nearly $1.5 trillion in deficit spending over the next decade. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Sen. Johnson may vote against tax bill in committee;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Ron Johnson said on Monday he would vote against a Republican tax bill in the Budget Committee on Tuesday unless his concerns about the legislation are resolved, according to his office. “If we develop a fix prior to committee, I’ll probably support it but if we don’t, I’ll vote against it,” Johnson’s office said he told reporters in his home state of Wisconsin. Johnson has said the bill unfairly benefits corporations more than other types of businesses. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;California lawmaker resigns after media report of sexual harassment;SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California lawmaker Raul Bocanegra resigned from the state assembly on Monday, a week after local media reported that six women had accused him of sexual harassment, while denying any criminal wrongdoing. On Nov. 20 the Los Angeles Times published a report in which the women accused Bocanegra of groping or harassing them. Previously, the newspaper reported that Bocanegra had been disciplined by the state for inappropriate behavior in 2009. Reuters has not independently confirmed the allegations. Bocanegra’s staff did not immediately reply to Reuters requests for comment. Bocanegra, a Democrat, wrote on Facebook on Nov. 20, “News stories were reported a few weeks ago about a regrettable encounter when I was a legislative staffer in 2009. It was a moment that I truly regret, that I am very sorry for, and for which I have accepted responsibility for my actions.” Bocanegra said in the post that he planned to resign from the legislature at the end of the session in September 2018. In a statement posted on Monday on that Facebook page, Bocanegra wrote that he was resigning from the State Assembly effective immediately. “While I am not guilty of any such crimes, I am admittedly not perfect,” he wrote. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon confirmed in an emailed statement that Bocanegra had resigned. Legislatures in several states are grappling with claims of sexual harassment and abuse. Bocanegra’s resignation came a day before the California statehouse is scheduled to begin hearings on sexual harassment. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Franken, on groping allegations, vows 'this will not happen again';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken returned to Congress on Monday to begin what he called a process of rebuilding trust shattered by allegations he had groped or inappropriately touched women, vowing “this will not happen again.” “I know that I am going to have to be much more conscious when in these circumstances, much more careful, much more sensitive and that this will not happen again going forward,” he told reporters outside his office on Capitol Hill. Franken has been accused of sexual misconduct by Leann Tweeden, a radio broadcaster who in 2006 appeared with Franken in an entertainment tour for U.S. troops serving in war zones. Prior to winning his Senate seat, Franken was a well-known comedian, television writer and author. Another woman, Lindsay Menz, accused Franken of touching her buttocks when they were being photographed at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. A contrite Franken appeared on Monday before a throng of reporters gathered outside his office as the senator vowed to get back to work following a week-long Senate Thanksgiving break. “I know there are no magic words that I can say to regain your trust and I know that’s going to take time. I’m ready to start that process and it starts with going back to work today,” Franken said, apparently addressing his Minnesota constituents back home. Franken, first elected in 2008, is not due to run for a third Senate term until 2020. Following sexual misconduct allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, additional complaints have been made regarding other big names in entertainment and in politics, notably Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, and Representative John Conyers of Michigan. All three men have denied the allegations, which Reuters has not been able to verify, and Conyers has stepped down as senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. In November, 2008, Franken barely won election in a race so close that it took vote recounts and court rulings before he finally was declared the winner the following July. Because of the closeness of his race and his background in entertainment and not government service, Franken came to the Senate refusing most media interviews. He kept a low profile while he tried to demonstrate to constituents that he was serious about his new political career. Eight years later, Franken is again having to prove himself with Minnesotans. Noting that his supporters had “counted on me to be a champion for women,” Franken again apologized for his behavior. In response to a reporter’s question, he said he would be “open” to making public the findings of a Senate ethics probe once that process is complete. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; While Honoring Native American Code Talkers, Trump Called Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ (VIDEO);"Former reality show star Donald Trump just can t stop using a slur to describe Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but this time he took things to the edge then crossed the line. On Monday, Trump referred to Warren as Pocahontas at an event honoring Native American code talkers who fought in World War II. Trump was literally surrounded by Native Americans when he hurled the slur. The chief. He s the general and the chief, Trump said during the White House event, in reference to White House chief of staff John Kelly. I said, how good were these code talkers? He said, sir, you have no idea. You have no idea how great they were, what they have done for this country and the strength and the bravery and the love for the country. So that was the ultimate statement from General Kelly, the importance, Trump continued. And I just want to thank you because you re very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago, they call her Pocahontas. But you know what I like you because you are special. Watch:MOMENTS AGO: Pres. Trump at White House event honoring Navajo code talkers, makes joke about ""Pocahontas"" Sen. Elizabeth Warren. pic.twitter.com/PgdhbxBrfT World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) November 27, 2017We re not sure how he worked Sen. Warren s name into the conversation but he did. We re also not sure why he threw in the Pocahontas slur, but the did that, too. Trump wasn t talking to his supporters at one of his rallies where he can get away with that sh-t. He said it to Native Americans while embarrassing our country again. When Trump said they call Sen. Warren Pocahontas, he means he calls her Pocahontas.Trump picked up this attack on Warren from an earlier one after she claimed that, according to family stories, she had Native American heritage. He started using that slur when Warren campaigned for Hillary Clinton and he hasn t stopped since.Image via screen capture. ";News;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Pro-Trump Group Is Now Using Pictures Of An Obama Rally To Make Trump Look Popular;In their pathetic attempt to pass the deeply unpopular and unfair tax bill that Republicans in Congress have been working on, the GOP has pulled out all the stops and so have outside spending groups.Every campaign season, America is inundated with ad after ad claiming that one candidate or the other will be either the nation s savior or its downfall. But when ads start popping up for legislation, you know the party that s pushing it is desperate for support.America First Policies, a pro-Trump organization that calls itself a non-profit just because they legally can, has come up with a new ad intended to convince Americans to call their members of Congress and demand that they vote yes on the upcoming tax nightmare. We know it s a nightmare because the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office just scored the bill on Sunday night, and said that the legislation, which has had ZERO hearings, raises taxes on the poor, cuts taxes on the rich, and cripples Obamacare by repealing the individual mandate that makes the system function.The ad is a clever bit of doublespeak itself, as is everything that Republicans say when it comes to taxes. They have promoted the utterly debunked theory of trickle-down economics for more than three decades, and for all of their posturing, not a single dime of tax cuts for corporations and the super-wealthy has ever trickled down in the form of economic stimulus or higher pay for workers as they perennially promise that it will.But it s an image that AFP uses in the ad that s catching people s attention.Watch the ad and see if you catch something that looks familiar:Check out our NEW TV ADThis is our once in a generation opportunity to CUT TAXES for the Middle Class. DEMAND IT let the politicians know you re watching https://t.co/ifVCJLvo5Y pic.twitter.com/cQ95bsWYxv AmericaFirstPolicies (@AmericaFirstPol) November 27, 2017That scene in front of the Capitol? You know, where the ad tries to make it seem like Americans are turning out in droves to demand this action?It s from Barack Obama s inauguration.That s right it s January all over again.Inauguration crowds redux: Stock image in this pro-Trump group's ad appear to be from Obama's inauguration. https://t.co/116VHXGgHO https://t.co/HL6DKxxfqN pic.twitter.com/0zPk3AmfxA Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) November 27, 2017These guys couldn t be more pathetic.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images;News;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Breitbart Editor To CNN Host: A Song By Ringo Starr Proves Roy Moore Isn’t A Pedo (VIDEO);"A Breitbart News editor tried to use a song Ringo Starr covered in order to make claims appear to be false that controversial Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore engaged in sexual misconduct with teenage girls when he was in his thirties. On Monday, Breitbart editor Joel Pollak told host Chris Cuomo on CNN s New Day that Starr released You re Sixteen (You re Beautiful, You re Mine), a cover of a song that was actually written by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman and performed by Johnny Burnette. The song was also featured in American Graffiti. He was 30-something at the time singing about a 16-year-old, Pollak said. You want to take away Ringo Starr s achievement? You can t be serious, Cuomo shot back. I m dead serious. You think that Ringo Starr s song is supposed to be a nod toward allowing 30-year-olds to prey on teenagers? You don t believe that, Joel. You re a parent. You don t believe that. Watch:Breitbart senior editor defends Judge Roy Moore citing Ringo Starr's hit cover of the song ""You're Sixteen You're Beautiful (And You're Mine)"" https://t.co/tmwxLROJCk New Day (@NewDay) November 27, 2017Pollack previously claimed that Moore creeping up on high school girls was perfectly legitimate because the age of consent is 16-years-old in Alabama. He said it wasn t accurate to claim that the teenage girls were teenagers because one of them was 16 and the other was 18, both of which would be considered wait for it teenage years.Moore, by the way, has been accused of pursuing relationships with girls as young as 14-years-old when he was in his 30s. Moore was also banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for perving on teenage girls. A police officer was assigned to the job of making sure Moore stayed away from high school ballgames to be sure he didn t bother the cheerleaders.Someone should check Pollak s browsing history. Just a thought. In fact, check Donald Trump s, too, since he s come out strong in support of Roy Moore.Image via screen capture. ";News;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DENZEL WASHINGTON Tells Black Americans To “Stop blaming the prison system…It starts at home. It starts with how you raise your children”;This isn t going to go over well with Obama s Black Lives Matter folks Veteran actor Denzel Washington says his latest role as a dogged defense attorney in Roman J. Israel, Esq. reinforced his belief that black men can t blame the system because we make it easy work when it comes to filling America s prisons. It starts at the home. It starts at home. It starts with how you raise your children. If a young man doesn t have a father figure, he ll go find a father figure, the Academy Award-winner told reporters at the Dan Gilroy-directed film s New York premiere, the New York Daily News reports. So you know I can t blame the system. It s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them, Washington said.The 62-year-old Hollywood heavyweight told reporters that the subject of how fatherless young men fall into a life of crime and incarceration is a personal one. I grew up with guys who did decades (in prison), and it had as much to do with their fathers not being in their lives as it did to do with any system, said Washington, whose character finds himself working in the overburdened Los Angeles criminal court system. Now I was doing just as much as they were, but they went further. I just didn t get caught, but they kept going down that road and then they were in the hands of the system, the actor added. But it s about the formative years. You re not born a criminal. Breitbart News This isn t the first time Washington pushed back on the victim narrative for black Americans. The self-proclaimed radical feminist Jenn M. Jackson wrote a hit piece on Denzel Washington in December 2016. In her article, Jackson expresses concern that Denzel is a little less woke than all of us had hoped. She even suggests that instead of being honest about his thoughts on racism, Washington would have been better off keeping his mouth shut. LOL! From Jackson s hit piece on Washington: In a recent interview with BET, Washington was asked if he thought colorism (the discrimination against people with darker skin tones) was holding back darker-skinned Black actresses in Hollywood. As BGLH reports, Washington was initially confused about what colorism was, asking the interviewer, Smriti Mundhra, what does that mean? Moments later he said, One of the best roles for a woman of any color in the last, in a good good while or at least any movie that I ve been in, a dark-skinned woman has in this film. So as long as you re being lead by outside forces or just being reactionary then you won t move forward. You have to continue to get better. However, he goes on to add, You can say, Oh I didn t get the part because they gave it to the light-skinned girl, or you can work, and one day, it might take twenty years, and you can be Viola. He continues, The easiest thing to do is to blame someone else, the system. Yeah, well, there s a possibility, maybe, that you re not good enough, but it s easy to say it s someone else s fault. But there s a possibility that you re not ready and you can still blame it on someone else instead of getting ready. ;politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ELIZABETH WARREN FREAKS After TRUMP REFERS To Her As “Pocahontas” During WH Ceremony With Native American Code Talkers…Forgets Bill Maher Just Called Her “Pocahontas” During Appearance On His Show [VIDEO];"While honoring Native American Code Talkers today at the White House, President Trump took a jab at Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is best known for the lie she told to Harvard University on a job application, where she told them she was of Native American heritage, in order to receive special consideration, by allowing her to skip over more qualified candidates simply because of her fake Native American heritage. While running for her Senate seat in Massachusetts, her lie was uncovered, and shortly after that, the name Pocahontas was born, and it has stuck with her ever since.On Monday, the president decided to air the attack one more time alongside aging Native American veterans who helped fight fascism, in a White House ceremony attended by White House chief of staff John Kelly and other officials. Trump told the honorees, You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas. Watch:Here's the video: Trump calls Elizabeth Warren 'Pocahontas' while honoring Native American code talkers: ""You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas."" pic.twitter.com/hjZ5MInDDf Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 27, 2017During his remarks, Trump recalled a time when Kelly asked him: How good were these code talkers? He said sir, you have no idea. You have no idea what they ve done for this country. And the strength and the bravery and the love that they have for the country. That was the ultimate statement from General Kelly on the importance. The president spoke as code-talkers stood by him at a podium, while another was seated in a wheelchair.Peter MacDonald, a WWII veteran and former chairman of the Navajo tribe, gave introductory remarks by going through the history of the code talkers in the Pacific theater, including at the battles at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Daily Mail Warren immediately began shooting arrows at Trump during an appearance on one of the Democrat propaganda networks, MSNBC.After huffing and puffing to MSNBC about Donald Trump, and how he took a jab at her dishonesty by calling his Pocahontas remark a racial slur , (an insult to Pochahontas, maybe, but a racial slur? Sorry Liz, we just don t see it) the dishonest Democrat Senator and wannabe President, Elizabeth Warren staged a dry run at Donald Trump for the Oval Office. Look, Donald Trump has done this over and over again in the past, thinking he s going to shut me up with it. It hasn t worked in the past, it s not gonna work now. Warren exclaimed in her nails-on-a-blackboard voice. Shut her up with it?Watch:WATCH: Elizabeth Warren responds to Trump's ""Pocahontas"" remark on @MSNBC:""It is deeply unfortunate that the President of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur."" pic.twitter.com/au1QntxDzR NBC News (@NBCNews) November 27, 2017Last year, a video Native Americans made a Youtube video, slamming Warren and her lie about her Native American heritage. Watch:Warren obviously forgot that only months ago, liberal comedian Bill Maher referred to Warren as Pocahontas during an appearance on his show to push her book. Does anyone remember Warren appearing on MSNBC to call Maher s comments a racial slur? ";politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! DOCUMENTS SHOW Roy Moore Represented Accuser’s Mother In “NASTY” Custody Case, Where She Won Custody Of 12-Yr Old Grandson…Accuser Also Plead “Guilty” To FELONY FRAUD Charges Against Family Member;Court documents related to Tina Johnson, an Alabama woman who claims that Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore groped her in his office decades ago, may raise questions about Johnson s motives in making the accusation.The documents, reviewed by Breitbart News, show that Moore represented Johnson s mother in a nasty custody case for Johnson s then 12-year-old son, Daniel Sitz. In the case, Johnson was repeatedly painted by Moore s client as an unfit, absent, and unstable mother and was accused of taking her son from his elementary school against his will. Johnson s mother was ultimately awarded custody in the case.One affidavit signed by Johnson s mother while she was represented by Moore accused Johnson of having a violent nature and noted that she has been treated by a psychiatrist when she was approximately 15 years of age. Johnson was a teenage mother.Separate criminal documents show that, as late as 2010, Johnson was arrested and pled guilty to felony fraud charges related to checks belonging to a family member. She also entered a court drug program.Speaking to AL.com, Johnson first went public with the claim that Moore groped her when she was on legal business with her mother in 1991. The website noted that Johnson reached out to AL.com to discuss her alleged experience with Moore.The website related that Johnson was at the office to sign over custody of her 12-year-old son to her mother, with whom he d been living. Johnson claimed that, after the two met with Moore, her mother walked out of the office door first and that, as Johnson was walking out, Moore grabbed her buttocks from behind. He didn t pinch it;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! PRESIDENT TRUMP Wants Network Who Pushes Most #FakeNews Coverage “Of Your Favorite President (me)” To Receive A HILARIOUS Award;Earlier today, President Trump tweeted: We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Not only is his latest tweet hilarious, but it speaks to the millions of Trump supporters who are sick and tired of watching #FakeNews networks like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS spew their vile, leftist propaganda. These over-paid activists, who are posing as hosts of news shows, are so consumed with hate, that they don t even try to hide their embarrassingly biased coverage of our President.We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2017Is President Trump correct when he says the media has treated him unfairly? Well, an interesting study from the far-left leaning Harvard University, provided stunning evidence that proves President Trump is 100% correct: Chicago Tribune Harvard University s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has come out with a study of media coverage of the Trump White House in its first 100 days.It is astonishing because it comes from Harvard, not exactly the bedrock of American conservatism.The study found that in Trump s first 100 days in office, the tone of the news coverage of the president has been a whopping 80 percent negative to 20 percent positive.So what does fair and balanced really mean, anyway? It confirms what most people understand, said Tom Bevan, publisher and co-founder of RealClearPolitics, one of the go-to websites for media and political junkies.Bevan spoke as a guest on The Chicago Way podcast that I co-host with WGN-AM radio producer Jeff Carlin. The response will be that Trump is deserving of this kind of coverage because he s conducted himself inappropriately, and these are self-inflicted wounds, and the press is doing nothing but covering him and his actions. But that s a little bit disingenuous, Bevan said.So how was President Obama covered in his first 100 days? With a 60-40 positive to negative ratio, according to the Harvard study. That s a significant shift, a significant difference, says Bevan. I think this is reflective of the fact that the media does root from the press box and they do cheer for certain personalities and they do cheer against others. I have my own memory of the media s tone after Obama took office. It wasn t merely positive, it was adoring, gushy, in the way a small child looks up to a beloved parent, or a dog to the master who gives it biscuits.It was as if the media were hugging a magical unicorn. Obama wasn t only given the benefit of the doubt. He was handed the Nobel Peace Prize though he hadn t done anything to earn it. And critics were trashed as nothing but racists.Obama controversies, from his administration s gun running scandal in the Fast and Furious debacle to using the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon against conservative groups, were covered, somewhat. But generally, the tone was muted, respectful, nothing like it was for Trump or the Clintons.Later, in Hillary Clinton s failed 2016 campaign, leaks of Democratic National Committee email whether hacked by the Russians or not demonstrated collusion between journalists and Democrats. But that cozy relationship has never properly been addressed, and that avoidance undermines the credibility of journalism as the media challenges Trump. Because of the way the press covered Obama, they lost so much credibility, Bevan said. And because they did not take these things seriously, the IRS Scandal, Fast and Furious, you could go down the list of where they turned the other cheek. And now where they re giving Trump the third degree on everything, that makes the contrast all that much greater. So you have a certain segment of the public, the people who voted for Trump, who literally do not trust what the media says. And the divide between rigidly defined political tribes, one courted by the media, the other dismissed by it, grows even wider. It s not good for journalism, and it s not good for the country, said Bevan. ;politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘MORNING JOE’ HOSTS Hail John Conyers as ‘Icon’…Who ‘Shows Up In His Pajamas’ [Video];" Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough agreed on Monday with Nancy Pelosi s defense of scandal-ridden Rep. John Conyers. Look I think it s really important that the words due process have come up in this conversation, not that it s possible in every situation, but in this situation Every situation that we ve covered in the past two months is different, Brzezinski said referring to numerous accusations of sexual misconduct that have been levied against celebrities and politicians. They all have different dynamics to them, they all have different levels of nasty to them or bad to them. And they all need to be treated differently. This one breaks my heart, it really does, Brzezinski said.In a report released last week, Conyers, 88-years-old and the longest currently serving congressman, was accused of settling a previous harassment claim, and further accused by other former staffers of misconduct. He subsequently stepped down as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. The congressman denies the allegations. Michigan Congressman John Conyers has been in the spotlight recently for being a repeat sexual harasser to women he works with. He even showed up for a meeting in his underwear! Yikes!Nancy Pelosi defended Conyers on Meet the Press when she called him an icon She went on to say that he deserves due process . That s pretty ironic when you think of how the left wants to lock up any Republican right away if they re accused of wrongdoing. Conyers gets a pass because he s an icon ? This is just more insanity from Pelosi who needs to retire with Conyers..@NancyPelosi: Accused Congressman Conyers is an ""icon"" in our country. #MTP pic.twitter.com/4QlKKJTIJP Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) November 26, 2017 SHOWED UP TO A MEETING IN HIS UNDERWEAR The Detroit Free Press reported:A lawyer who formerly worked for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, and later ran an ethics watchdog group in the nation s capital confirmed for the Free Press on Thursday that Conyers verbally abused her, criticized her appearance and once showed up to a meeting in his underwear.Melanie Sloan, a well-known Washington lawyer who for three years in the 1990s worked as Democratic counsel on the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers remains the ranking Democrat, told the Detroit Free Press that Conyers constantly berated her, screaming at her and firing her and then rehiring her several times.She said he criticized her for not wearing stockings on at least one occasion. On another, she said he ordered her backstage from a committee field hearing on crime she had organized in New York City to babysit one of his children. Sloan made clear that she did not feel she had ever been sexually harassed, but that she felt mistreated by this guy. ";politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MAGNIFICENT! 2017 White House Christmas Decorations Cause a Liberal Meltdown [Video];The 2017 Christmas decorations were unveiled in a stunning video montage showing the incredibly tasteful display complete with a nativity scene. The White House has never looked more like Christmas.TWITTER was immediately abuzz over the White House decorations The overwhelming majority of negative comments refer to how the decorations are over the top or tacky . The hate for all things Trump was visible in scorching comments from snowflakes:Yes, there were comments about the nativity scene too. The Hill commented on the nativity scene being included in Trump s first White House Christmas. Why wouldn t it be?Rumors swirled during Obama s presidency about whether the nativity scene would be displayed. We found that the Obamas discussed a non-secular Christmas but didn t follow through with it Can you imagine?THE OBAMAS DISCUSSED A NON-SECULAR CHRISTMAS?The Obamas talked about have a non-secular Christmas without a nativity scene at Christmas to be more inclusive but they didn t follow through with it: The New York Times reported:President Obama didn t ban a nativity scene display at the White House. A report that appeared in the New York Times fashion section that made reference to the Obamas planning a non-secular Christmas is behind those rumors.The original report was about Desir e Rogers, a glamorous corporate executive from Chicago, joining the Obama White House as social security. In that role, Rogers would orchestrate White House special events and celebrations. Rogers mentioned the Obamas were discussing a non-secular Christmas display at the White House during an introductory luncheon:The lunch conversation inevitably turned to whether the White House would display its cr che, customarily placed in a prominent spot in the East Room. Ms. Rogers, this participant said, replied that the Obamas did not intend to put the manger scene on display a remark that drew an audible gasp from the tight-knit social secretary sisterhood. (A White House official confirmed that there had been internal discussions about making Christmas more inclusive and whether to display the cr che.);politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NORWAY’S TOUGH Immigration Minister BLASTS Sweden, WARNS Refugees: “If You Are An Economic Migrant” or an “Illegal Immigrant” You’ll Be Sent Home;Norway has a new immigration sheriff in town, and so far, it appears that she s singing the same tune as President Trump on immigration. And oh yeah, Sylvi Listhaug doesn t give a damn about her critics either. How far are bleeding-heart nations, like Sweden, France, the UK, and Germany willing to take this mass-immigration experiment, before they realize it s too late to turn back? Before her appointment to the cabinet on December 16, Listhaug, then agriculture minister, criticized what she called a tyranny of kindness that is blowing over Norwegian society like a nightmare. It is very serious that politicians are using punitive measures that would make it more difficult for a number of asylum seekers who are entitled to protection, asylum association spokesman Andreas Furuseth told the Norwegian news agency NTB.Listhaug said she wanted 40 or so major and minor asylum law changes submitted to parliament in February before the European spring season, when asylum seeker arrivals were expected to rise again.She told Norwegian NRK public television that her legislative package amounted to a sharp retrenchment on wide social entitlements previously granted to refugees.Some 35,000 asylum seekers arrived in Norway in 2015.It was a record for the oil and gas-rich Nordic nation of 5.2 million people, which in recent weeks saw fewer arrivals, in part because of border controls reintroduced in neighboring Sweden and the arrival of wintry weather.NRK said the proposed rule tightening would allow family reunifications only after the applicant had acquired four years of work or education in Norway.And, the government would issue voucher cards instead of cash for day-to-day items to prevent applicants from sending money to family back home.Migrants who arrived on transit visas via Russia would not be granted asylum.Older applicants in the 55 to 67 age group would be required to learn the Norwegian language and aspects of Norwegian society.Applicants who fail to present identity documents will be refused asylum. A grant of temporary residence would not automatically lead to permanent residence. DWWhen Angela Merkel invited refugees to Germany in 2015, tearing up the rules obliging migrants to seek asylum in the first country they arrive in, the consequences were pretty immediate. Over 160,000 went to Sweden, leading to well-publicised disruption. Next door, things were different. Norway took in just 30,000;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House denies Trump made slur with 'Pocahontas' remark;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Monday that President Donald Trump wasn’t making a racial slur when he referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahantas” while speaking with Navajo military veterans who served as code-talkers in World War Two. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump had an “extreme amount of value and respect” for the World War Two veterans and “I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.” ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mulvaney has legal standing take charge of U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House budget director Mick Mulvaney has legal standing to take charge of U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a role he began on Monday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. “Director Mulvaney has taken charge of that agency and has the full cooperation of the staff and things went very well during his first day,” Sanders told reporters. “I think the legal outline shows very clearly who is in charge of that agency.” ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Former Obama Photographer Takes Trolling Trump To A Whole New Level (TWEETS);By now you would most likely be familiar with the story of President Trump taking a pass at being named Time Magazine s Person of the Year, a rather prestigious honor that Trump has a bizarre fixation with and one that is highly unlikely to be bestowed upon him again any time in the near future following his nomination last year.For those of you not in the know, Donald Trump tried to claim on Friday that he turned down the chance to be selected as Time s Person of the Year, as he would be required to give an interview and do a photo shoot. Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named Man (Person) of the Year, like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway! Trump tweeted.Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named Man (Person) of the Year, like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017The only flaw with the President s claim was that not a single word of it was remotely true and he was called on it too, first by Time magazine, who were quick to point out that that s not how the selection or announcement process even works, something Trump should already be aware of, and then by Time s chief content officer, Alan Murray, who tweeted that none of what the President had tweeted was at all factual.The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6. TIME (@TIME) November 25, 2017Amazing. Not a speck of truth here Trump tweets he 'took a pass' at being named TIME's person of the year https://t.co/D6SJgyTpcY Alan Murray (@alansmurray) November 25, 2017Total BS https://t.co/jrUPRbLCGQ Alan Murray (@alansmurray) November 25, 2017However, it didn t end there for Trump. Peter Souza, Barack Obama s former official White House photographer and an ardent Trump troll, took to Instagram to taunt President Trump. Souza shared a compilation of images consisting of 15 Time covers featuring the Obamas, originally posted by an account by the name of @michelleandbarack. To rub a little more salt into Trump s open and possibly septic wound, Souza also added the caption Someone has a lot of catching up to do to his post, as well as hashtags such as #TwoTerms, #ThankYouObama, #ComeBackBarack, and #MyPresidentWasBlack. Someone has a lot of catching up to do. #Repost @michelleandbarack #MichelleAndBarack #Forever44 #BarackObama #MichelleObama #MaliaObama #SashaObama #Bo #Sunny #POTUS #FLOTUS #WhiteHouse #ObamaFoundation #ThankYouObama #TwoTerms #Hope #ComeBackBarack #MyPresidentWasBlack #NeverForget #Hawaii #Chicago #WashingtonDC #MakeAmericaGreatAgainA post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Nov 25, 2017 at 12:51pm PSTSouza often trolls the President by using contrasting photos he took in the past that show Obama s time in office in a far more positive light. When someone as thin-skinned as Donald Trump has such a dislike for his predecessor, that s going to sting a little.Featured image via Chris Hondros/Getty Images;News;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia police arrest man accused of plotting NYE attack in Melbourne;SYDNEY/MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Police have arrested a 20-year-old man suspected of planning to use an automatic rifle for a mass shooting on New Year s Eve in downtown Melbourne, Australia s second largest city. Victoria state police said on Tuesday that the man was acting alone and had not been able to acquire a firearm before his arrest late on Monday. Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said the man, an Australian citizen with Somalian parents, had been monitored by authorities since the beginning of the year. He s accessed documents produced by al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula which is a guide book in respect to how to commit a terrorist act and also how to use firearms, guns and handguns and rifles, Patton said at a press conference in Melbourne. We are alleging that ... he is a sympathiser of ISIS. The man had planned to shoot as many people as possible at Melbourne s Federation Square, which swells with crowds on New Year s Eve as the focus of the city s celebrations, Patton said. He was charged with preparing to commit a terrorist attack and gathering documents likely to facilitate a terrorist act, according to the Australian Federal Police Australia, a staunch U.S. ally that sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East or their supporters. A gunman in a deadly 2014 Sydney cafe siege boasted about links with Islamic State militants, although no direct ties with the group were established. The shooting murder of a police accountant by a 15-year old boy in 2016 was claimed by Islamic State. Around a dozen significant plots have been foiled since the alert was issued, according to officials, including a plot to attack prominent sites in Melbourne last Christmas Eve and a plan to blow up an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi using a bomb disguised as a meat mincer. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland set for election if Deputy PM does not quit, opposition says;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s Deputy Prime Minister has to resign or else she will force a snap election next month, a senior member of the opposition party propping up the country s minority government said on Monday. I think the Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) should recognize that unless she does stand aside, she is going to force this country into an election nobody wants, that nobody needs and is not in the country s interests, Fianna Fail s Jim O Callaghan told national broadcaster RTE. I don t see any other method out of this. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico finance minister resigns to seek presidency for ruling party;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s finance minister resigned on Monday to seek the 2018 presidential nomination of the ruling party, anticipating a major break with tradition as it seeks outside help to clean up its tarnished image and stay in office for another six years. Jose Antonio Meade had been widely expected to run for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose credibility has been seriously undermined by corruption scandals, gang violence and accusations of electoral fraud. Meade is not a PRI member, and his reputation for honesty has persuaded many party grandees that he is the best bet to take on the front-runner in the July 2018 presidential race, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. PRI hopefuls can register from Dec. 3, and early indications suggested Meade would not face any major challengers. The PRI will formally elect its candidate on Feb. 18. He was warmly received by party members on a whistle-stop tour of organizations affiliated to the PRI in Mexico City on Monday. All the other early PRI favorites for the presidency expressed their support for him on Twitter. Soft-spoken and measured in tone, Meade, 48 first entered the Cabinet under the previous center-right administration of the National Action Party, or PAN. His ability to draw votes from other parties is viewed as one of his principal assets. He ll be an attractive candidate for those who don t necessarily support the PRI, tweeted Daniel Karam, who headed the Mexican Social Security Institute during Meade s initial Cabinet stint under the PAN. Eager to mend its reputation, the PRI changed its statutes in August to make it easier for outsiders to run for the job the party has held for most of the past century. At an event at his official residence, President Enrique Pena Nieto said Harvard-educated former World Bank official Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya would leave his job as chief executive of state oil company Pemex to replace Meade in the Finance Ministry. In a brief address at the ministry afterward, Meade said he would run for the presidency after 20 years of serving my country continuously with integrity and honesty. Lopez Obrador, twice runner-up for the presidency, has railed relentlessly for years against government graft. He quickly lashed out on Twitter against the PRI as corrupt and predictable after Meade made his announcement. Meade remains unknown to much of the Mexican public, and in opinion polls he lags far behind the veteran Lopez Obrador, who has sought to characterize all of the main opposition parties as corrupt extensions of the PRI. Serving as energy, then finance minister in 2011, Meade became foreign minister when Pena Nieto took office in December 2012. He later switched to the Social Development Ministry before returning to the Finance Ministry last year. Seen by allies as a discreet and diplomatic official, Meade s grasp of finance and economics is matched by few in Mexico, and his academic career includes degrees in law and economics as well as an economics doctorate from Yale. Crucially, argue his supporters, he has avoided the damaging scandals that have engulfed the PRI under Pena Nieto, who cannot constitutionally seek a second six-year term. I thank (Meade) for his dedication and commitment and I wish him success in the project he has decided to undertake, Pena Nieto said at the event at his Los Pinos residence. TV images showed Meade driving toward Los Pinos behind the wheel of a modest compact car, a frequent prop among Mexican politicians seeking to project the common touch. Gonzalez Anaya, who is related by marriage to influential former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, will be replaced at Pemex by Carlos Trevino, a senior executive at the company. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ELIZABETH WARREN FREAKS After TRUMP REFERS To Her As “Pocahontas” During WH Ceremony With Native American Code Talkers…Forgets Bill Maher Just Called Her “Pocahontas” During Appearance On His Show [VIDEO];"While honoring Native American Code Talkers today at the White House, President Trump took a jab at Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is best known for the lie she told to Harvard University on a job application, where she told them she was of Native American heritage, in order to receive special consideration, by allowing her to skip over more qualified candidates simply because of her fake Native American heritage. While running for her Senate seat in Massachusetts, her lie was uncovered, and shortly after that, the name Pocahontas was born, and it has stuck with her ever since.On Monday, the president decided to air the attack one more time alongside aging Native American veterans who helped fight fascism, in a White House ceremony attended by White House chief of staff John Kelly and other officials. Trump told the honorees, You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas. Watch:Here's the video: Trump calls Elizabeth Warren 'Pocahontas' while honoring Native American code talkers: ""You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas."" pic.twitter.com/hjZ5MInDDf Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 27, 2017During his remarks, Trump recalled a time when Kelly asked him: How good were these code talkers? He said sir, you have no idea. You have no idea what they ve done for this country. And the strength and the bravery and the love that they have for the country. That was the ultimate statement from General Kelly on the importance. The president spoke as code-talkers stood by him at a podium, while another was seated in a wheelchair.Peter MacDonald, a WWII veteran and former chairman of the Navajo tribe, gave introductory remarks by going through the history of the code talkers in the Pacific theater, including at the battles at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Daily Mail Warren immediately began shooting arrows at Trump during an appearance on one of the Democrat propaganda networks, MSNBC.After huffing and puffing to MSNBC about Donald Trump, and how he took a jab at her dishonesty by calling his Pocahontas remark a racial slur , (an insult to Pochahontas, maybe, but a racial slur? Sorry Liz, we just don t see it) the dishonest Democrat Senator and wannabe President, Elizabeth Warren staged a dry run at Donald Trump for the Oval Office. Look, Donald Trump has done this over and over again in the past, thinking he s going to shut me up with it. It hasn t worked in the past, it s not gonna work now. Warren exclaimed in her nails-on-a-blackboard voice. Shut her up with it?Watch:WATCH: Elizabeth Warren responds to Trump's ""Pocahontas"" remark on @MSNBC:""It is deeply unfortunate that the President of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur."" pic.twitter.com/au1QntxDzR NBC News (@NBCNews) November 27, 2017Last year, a video Native Americans made a Youtube video, slamming Warren and her lie about her Native American heritage. Watch:Warren obviously forgot that only months ago, liberal comedian Bill Maher referred to Warren as Pocahontas during an appearance on his show to push her book. Does anyone remember Warren appearing on MSNBC to call Maher s comments a racial slur? ";left-news;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! DOCUMENTS SHOW Roy Moore Represented Accuser’s Mother In “NASTY” Custody Case, Where She Won Custody Of 12-Yr Old Grandson…Accuser Also Plead “Guilty” To FELONY FRAUD Charges Against Family Member;Court documents related to Tina Johnson, an Alabama woman who claims that Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore groped her in his office decades ago, may raise questions about Johnson s motives in making the accusation.The documents, reviewed by Breitbart News, show that Moore represented Johnson s mother in a nasty custody case for Johnson s then 12-year-old son, Daniel Sitz. In the case, Johnson was repeatedly painted by Moore s client as an unfit, absent, and unstable mother and was accused of taking her son from his elementary school against his will. Johnson s mother was ultimately awarded custody in the case.One affidavit signed by Johnson s mother while she was represented by Moore accused Johnson of having a violent nature and noted that she has been treated by a psychiatrist when she was approximately 15 years of age. Johnson was a teenage mother.Separate criminal documents show that, as late as 2010, Johnson was arrested and pled guilty to felony fraud charges related to checks belonging to a family member. She also entered a court drug program.Speaking to AL.com, Johnson first went public with the claim that Moore groped her when she was on legal business with her mother in 1991. The website noted that Johnson reached out to AL.com to discuss her alleged experience with Moore.The website related that Johnson was at the office to sign over custody of her 12-year-old son to her mother, with whom he d been living. Johnson claimed that, after the two met with Moore, her mother walked out of the office door first and that, as Johnson was walking out, Moore grabbed her buttocks from behind. He didn t pinch it;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DENZEL WASHINGTON Tells Black Americans To “Stop blaming the prison system…It starts at home. It starts with how you raise your children”;This isn t going to go over well with Obama s Black Lives Matter folks Veteran actor Denzel Washington says his latest role as a dogged defense attorney in Roman J. Israel, Esq. reinforced his belief that black men can t blame the system because we make it easy work when it comes to filling America s prisons. It starts at the home. It starts at home. It starts with how you raise your children. If a young man doesn t have a father figure, he ll go find a father figure, the Academy Award-winner told reporters at the Dan Gilroy-directed film s New York premiere, the New York Daily News reports. So you know I can t blame the system. It s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them, Washington said.The 62-year-old Hollywood heavyweight told reporters that the subject of how fatherless young men fall into a life of crime and incarceration is a personal one. I grew up with guys who did decades (in prison), and it had as much to do with their fathers not being in their lives as it did to do with any system, said Washington, whose character finds himself working in the overburdened Los Angeles criminal court system. Now I was doing just as much as they were, but they went further. I just didn t get caught, but they kept going down that road and then they were in the hands of the system, the actor added. But it s about the formative years. You re not born a criminal. Breitbart News This isn t the first time Washington pushed back on the victim narrative for black Americans. The self-proclaimed radical feminist Jenn M. Jackson wrote a hit piece on Denzel Washington in December 2016. In her article, Jackson expresses concern that Denzel is a little less woke than all of us had hoped. She even suggests that instead of being honest about his thoughts on racism, Washington would have been better off keeping his mouth shut. LOL! From Jackson s hit piece on Washington: In a recent interview with BET, Washington was asked if he thought colorism (the discrimination against people with darker skin tones) was holding back darker-skinned Black actresses in Hollywood. As BGLH reports, Washington was initially confused about what colorism was, asking the interviewer, Smriti Mundhra, what does that mean? Moments later he said, One of the best roles for a woman of any color in the last, in a good good while or at least any movie that I ve been in, a dark-skinned woman has in this film. So as long as you re being lead by outside forces or just being reactionary then you won t move forward. You have to continue to get better. However, he goes on to add, You can say, Oh I didn t get the part because they gave it to the light-skinned girl, or you can work, and one day, it might take twenty years, and you can be Viola. He continues, The easiest thing to do is to blame someone else, the system. Yeah, well, there s a possibility, maybe, that you re not good enough, but it s easy to say it s someone else s fault. But there s a possibility that you re not ready and you can still blame it on someone else instead of getting ready. ;left-news;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! PRESIDENT TRUMP Wants Network Who Pushes Most #FakeNews Coverage “Of Your Favorite President (me)” To Receive A HILARIOUS Award;Earlier today, President Trump tweeted: We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Not only is his latest tweet hilarious, but it speaks to the millions of Trump supporters who are sick and tired of watching #FakeNews networks like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS spew their vile, leftist propaganda. These over-paid activists, who are posing as hosts of news shows, are so consumed with hate, that they don t even try to hide their embarrassingly biased coverage of our President.We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2017Is President Trump correct when he says the media has treated him unfairly? Well, an interesting study from the far-left leaning Harvard University, provided stunning evidence that proves President Trump is 100% correct: Chicago Tribune Harvard University s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has come out with a study of media coverage of the Trump White House in its first 100 days.It is astonishing because it comes from Harvard, not exactly the bedrock of American conservatism.The study found that in Trump s first 100 days in office, the tone of the news coverage of the president has been a whopping 80 percent negative to 20 percent positive.So what does fair and balanced really mean, anyway? It confirms what most people understand, said Tom Bevan, publisher and co-founder of RealClearPolitics, one of the go-to websites for media and political junkies.Bevan spoke as a guest on The Chicago Way podcast that I co-host with WGN-AM radio producer Jeff Carlin. The response will be that Trump is deserving of this kind of coverage because he s conducted himself inappropriately, and these are self-inflicted wounds, and the press is doing nothing but covering him and his actions. But that s a little bit disingenuous, Bevan said.So how was President Obama covered in his first 100 days? With a 60-40 positive to negative ratio, according to the Harvard study. That s a significant shift, a significant difference, says Bevan. I think this is reflective of the fact that the media does root from the press box and they do cheer for certain personalities and they do cheer against others. I have my own memory of the media s tone after Obama took office. It wasn t merely positive, it was adoring, gushy, in the way a small child looks up to a beloved parent, or a dog to the master who gives it biscuits.It was as if the media were hugging a magical unicorn. Obama wasn t only given the benefit of the doubt. He was handed the Nobel Peace Prize though he hadn t done anything to earn it. And critics were trashed as nothing but racists.Obama controversies, from his administration s gun running scandal in the Fast and Furious debacle to using the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon against conservative groups, were covered, somewhat. But generally, the tone was muted, respectful, nothing like it was for Trump or the Clintons.Later, in Hillary Clinton s failed 2016 campaign, leaks of Democratic National Committee email whether hacked by the Russians or not demonstrated collusion between journalists and Democrats. But that cozy relationship has never properly been addressed, and that avoidance undermines the credibility of journalism as the media challenges Trump. Because of the way the press covered Obama, they lost so much credibility, Bevan said. And because they did not take these things seriously, the IRS Scandal, Fast and Furious, you could go down the list of where they turned the other cheek. And now where they re giving Trump the third degree on everything, that makes the contrast all that much greater. So you have a certain segment of the public, the people who voted for Trump, who literally do not trust what the media says. And the divide between rigidly defined political tribes, one courted by the media, the other dismissed by it, grows even wider. It s not good for journalism, and it s not good for the country, said Bevan. ;left-news;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NORWAY’S TOUGH Immigration Minister BLASTS Sweden, WARNS Refugees: “If You Are An Economic Migrant” or an “Illegal Immigrant” You’ll Be Sent Home;Norway has a new immigration sheriff in town, and so far, it appears that she s singing the same tune as President Trump on immigration. And oh yeah, Sylvi Listhaug doesn t give a damn about her critics either. How far are bleeding-heart nations, like Sweden, France, the UK, and Germany willing to take this mass-immigration experiment, before they realize it s too late to turn back? Before her appointment to the cabinet on December 16, Listhaug, then agriculture minister, criticized what she called a tyranny of kindness that is blowing over Norwegian society like a nightmare. It is very serious that politicians are using punitive measures that would make it more difficult for a number of asylum seekers who are entitled to protection, asylum association spokesman Andreas Furuseth told the Norwegian news agency NTB.Listhaug said she wanted 40 or so major and minor asylum law changes submitted to parliament in February before the European spring season, when asylum seeker arrivals were expected to rise again.She told Norwegian NRK public television that her legislative package amounted to a sharp retrenchment on wide social entitlements previously granted to refugees.Some 35,000 asylum seekers arrived in Norway in 2015.It was a record for the oil and gas-rich Nordic nation of 5.2 million people, which in recent weeks saw fewer arrivals, in part because of border controls reintroduced in neighboring Sweden and the arrival of wintry weather.NRK said the proposed rule tightening would allow family reunifications only after the applicant had acquired four years of work or education in Norway.And, the government would issue voucher cards instead of cash for day-to-day items to prevent applicants from sending money to family back home.Migrants who arrived on transit visas via Russia would not be granted asylum.Older applicants in the 55 to 67 age group would be required to learn the Norwegian language and aspects of Norwegian society.Applicants who fail to present identity documents will be refused asylum. A grant of temporary residence would not automatically lead to permanent residence. DWWhen Angela Merkel invited refugees to Germany in 2015, tearing up the rules obliging migrants to seek asylum in the first country they arrive in, the consequences were pretty immediate. Over 160,000 went to Sweden, leading to well-publicised disruption. Next door, things were different. Norway took in just 30,000;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ALL OF AL FRANKEN’S APOLOGIES To Women He Groped Have One Disturbing Thing In Common;Al Franken returned to DC this week after a series of bombshell allegations of sexual harassment by several women. He claims to be tremendously sorry for his serial groping incidents but can t seem to recall them Yes, you ll love this Clintonesque tactic where you just claim you have no idea how this happened Daily Caller reported:The Minnesota Democrat has faced more and more outcry, even from within his own party, as the allegations continue to stack. In total, four women have now accused Franken of inappropriately touching or groping them without consent. Many in progressive circles are now calling for Franken s resignation. To date, Franken s office has said he will not resign and instead has issued controversial apologies to the women. The apologies issued by Franken range in length and content, however there is one very disturbing trend that each of them has in common.WHEN YOU READ THE FOUR APOLOGIES BELOW, WHAT IS THE COMMON THREAD? Franken is unaware that he is sexually assaulting women. Franken regularly states in his apologies that he is unaware that his groping was offensive and often does not remember if it even happened.2. I take thousands of photos at the state fair surrounded by hundreds of people, and I certainly don t remember taking this picture. I feel badly that Ms. Menz came away from our interaction feeling disrespected. 3. It s difficult to respond to anonymous accusers, and I don t remember those campaign events. 4. I take a lot of pictures in Minnesota, thousands of pictures, tens of thousands of people, those are instances that I do not remember. It has from the stories it has been clear that there are some women and one is too many who feel that I have done something disrespectful at that assert them and for that I am tremendously sorry. ;politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING: Democrat Congressman, Vocal ILLEGAL ALIEN Advocate and Trump Impeachment Leader, Luis Gutiérrez To Announce He Won’t Run For Re-election…What’s Behind His Sudden Decision?;Rep. Luis Guti rrez (Ill.), one of the most vocal immigration reform advocates in the House, reportedly won t run for reelection.Three Democratic sources told Politico that Guti rrez plans to announce Tuesday that he s pulling his nominating petitions for the seat.He was one of several Democrats to endorse articles of impeachment filed against President Trump earlier this month.Guti rrez s spokesman, Douglas Rivlin, told Politico that he couldn t comment. I don t know anything. I don t know anything, he said Monday. The HillRepresentative Luis Gutierrez, the strongest voice in Congress for illegal aliens, has been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump ever since he won the GOP primary. With absolutely no grounds, other than the fact that Trump won t be bullied into caving to the Democrat agenda, Gutierrez has been calling for the impeachment of Trump for quite some time. Gutierrez recently went off on an embarrassing rant about impeaching President Trump that was caught on video:Luis Gutierrez was recently arrested outside of the Trump Towers in New York while protesting over Trump s position on the protections President s executive order gave to DACA recipients.;politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: WASHINGTON POST Gets DESTROYED When Reporter Admits Truth About How They Cover President Trump In New Undercover Videos;"James O Keefe of Project Veritas has used his incredible talents to go undercover and expose crooked organizations like ACORN and Planned Parenthood. During the 2016 election, O Keefe was able to expose the corrupt underbelly of the Democrat Party who used paid plants to incite violence at Trump rallies. O Keefe was also able to tie Barack Obama directly to their chief organizer. Of course, every major #FakeNews outlet completely ignored these horrific coordinated acts of violence against innocent Americans.Over the past several months, O Keefe has been releasing undercover videos he s used to expose the bias and unprofessional tactics used by news publications like the New York Times and now, the Washington Post.Today, the Washington Post attempted to embarrass O Keefe for allegedly setting a trap for them with a woman posing as a Roy Moore sexual assault accuser.After seeing the woman entering Project Veritas, The Post made the unusual decision to report her previous off-the-record comments. https://t.co/W05qDKlhl8 pic.twitter.com/Q0uJ9iaBoo Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 27, 2017Here s a video the Washington Post released on Twitter, of reporters from WaPo ambushing O Keefe at his Project Veritas office.The @washingtonpost attempts to ambush @Project_Veritas anticipating an imminent video release pic.twitter.com/6UV2tOeiAS James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 27, 2017Many Twitter users wondered if the Washington Post was trying to cover up a bombshell that O Keefe was about to drop on the publication owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos?O Keefe tweeted a response to the Washington Post s videotaped ambush, warning everyone to fasten their seatbelts. Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly. Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seatbelts. Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly. Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seatbelts. James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 27, 2017Josh Caplan suggests that WaPo reporters who hounded O Keefe were panicked. Was the ambush on O Keefe by WaPo reporters over his alleged use of a plant disguised as a Roy Moore accuser , simply a way to discredit O Keefe in advance of his expose on them?Panicked Reporters Stalk Project Veritas HQ As Rumors Swirl @JamesOKeefeIII Is Set To Expose Washington Posthttps://t.co/BV66enlqbq Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) November 27, 2017BREAKING: Undercover video inside @washingtonpost shows National Security Correspondent @danlamothe and Director of Product @josephjames discussing WaPo's hidden agenda #AmericanPravda #ProjectVeritas Full: https://t.co/2002erd3ub pic.twitter.com/o4qi8DQyAz James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 27, 2017This video allegedly shows Amazon founder Jeff Bezos direct influence in the Washington Post s newsroom:.@josephjames, who works closely with the Jeff Bezos at the Post, sheds light on Bezos's influence in the newsroom. pic.twitter.com/KJcUSCqO5F James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 28, 2017Washington Post s Dan LaMonthe calls out the New York Times and CNN for their bias in this video:Looks like @DanLamothe is a fan of our #AmericanPravda series. Here he is attacking #CNN and #NYT for their extreme bias against @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/PHv7HPFhkQ @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/p79fzIOc1T Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) November 28, 2017Here s another Dan LaMonthe video where he explains how the Washington Post works together to take down Trump following his tweets:WATCH: @washingtonpost reporter: ""I can't tell you how many times we get an email at work: 'Oh did you see what (Trump) just tweeted? What are we gonna do about it?"" Full video: https://t.co/2002erd3ub pic.twitter.com/OOOjE3kOx5 James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 28, 2017Finally, Grant J. Kidney claims that Project Veritas just vindicated President Trump and his attack on the Amazon Washington Post. Project Veritas just vindicated President Trump in his calling of the Washington Post, the Amazon Washington Post . pic.twitter.com/FNNhNFNaRg GRANT J. KIDNEY (@GrantJKidney) November 28, 2017";politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate to vote on tax plan this week, No. 2 Republican says;"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate plans to vote on its tax overhaul package this week, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber said on Monday. “The current plan this week is to vote on the Senate tax bill that was voted out of the Finance Committee last Thursday night,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters. The bill is a major priority for both Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump. ";politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico's Meade to seek nomination of ruling PRI party;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s outgoing finance minister Jose Antonio Meade said on Monday he will seek the presidential nomination of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in next year s election. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING: Democrat Congressman, Vocal ILLEGAL ALIEN Advocate and Trump Impeachment Leader, Luis Gutiérrez To Announce He Won’t Run For Re-election…What’s Behind His Sudden Decision?;Rep. Luis Guti rrez (Ill.), one of the most vocal immigration reform advocates in the House, reportedly won t run for reelection.Three Democratic sources told Politico that Guti rrez plans to announce Tuesday that he s pulling his nominating petitions for the seat.He was one of several Democrats to endorse articles of impeachment filed against President Trump earlier this month.Guti rrez s spokesman, Douglas Rivlin, told Politico that he couldn t comment. I don t know anything. I don t know anything, he said Monday. The HillRepresentative Luis Gutierrez, the strongest voice in Congress for illegal aliens, has been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump ever since he won the GOP primary. With absolutely no grounds, other than the fact that Trump won t be bullied into caving to the Democrat agenda, Gutierrez has been calling for the impeachment of Trump for quite some time. Gutierrez recently went off on an embarrassing rant about impeaching President Trump that was caught on video:Luis Gutierrez was recently arrested outside of the Trump Towers in New York while protesting over Trump s position on the protections President s executive order gave to DACA recipients.;left-news;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH SANDERS Hits Back At Senator Warren For ‘Lying About Her Heritage’ [Video];Notice in the exchange below that the reporters have a cohesive message saying President Trump calling Senator Warren Pocahontas is a racial slur . They think we ll buy into their effort to make this is a slur if they say it often enough They re trying to hijack the narrative by repeating an untruth as fact Nice Alynsky tactic by the press Watch how Sarah Sanders turns it all around and asks why no one is asking why Warren lied about being Native American Another great job by Sarah!Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday it is ridiculous for Senator Warren to consider Pocahontas to be a racial slur Sanders was responding to a question about whether it was offensive for President Donald Trump to use the nickname during a White House event honoring World War II code talkers. A reporter said the comment was offensive to many, but Sanders turned the issue back to Warren s unsubstantiated claim to Native American heritage. I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career. BOOM!Another reporter brought up Warren saying on MSNBC, just before the press conference began, that Trump s nickname constitutes a racial slur. I think that is a ridiculous response, Sanders answered. I think the president certainly finds an extreme amount of value and respect for these individuals, which is why he invited them to come to the White House and spent time with them in recognizing and honoring them today, Sanders replied. He invited them here at the White House today to meet with them and to also remind everybody about what a historic role that they played many years ago. ;politics;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Meredith Corp. and Koch Money Buys Time Inc., ‘Left’ Goes Bonkers;21st Century Wire says News broke Sunday night that Meredith Corp., publisher of Better Homes & Gardens and other popular magazine brands, agreed to purchase all of Time Inc. s assets in a cash deal valued at $2.8 billion.Grabbing all the headlines is the $650 million investment from Koch Equity Development (KED). This is the private equity firm of Charles and David Koch, aka the Koch Brothers. According to the company s official press release, KED will not have a seat on Meredith s board and will have no influence on Meredith s editorial or managerial operations. Zero Hedge reports the deal gives the conservative billionaires a stake in one of America s best-known publishers. And that is what is giving the Left mainstream media nightmares and creating widespread panic and hysteria on social media:Great. The Koch brothers are about to be co-owners of TIME, Inc. How long til TIME, People and Sports Illustrated are pushing stories about how much better life would be if we canceled Social Security and Medicare? Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 27, 2017It remains to be seen how the editorial of these publications will be affected by Koch money. When the news broke in 2013 that Amazon.com founder and Bilderberg member Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, we started asking some questions at the time. We re starting to see how it will play out.What we do know thus far about the Meredith/Time news all the crazed paranoia around this deal exposes, yet again, how the mainstream, corporate power media likes to think their version of mass media is so influential. At the same time, discounting the ability of everyday citizens to think for themselves, and not be spoon fed whatever gets pushed out through the echo chambers of many of these failing and lost print magazine empires.Let s not forget it was Time Magazine that started selling ad space on their covers shortly after they were spun off from Time Warner back in 2014.We thought this story by Bloomberg Rothschild s Koch Connection Pays Off in Pursuit of Time Inc. was an interesting angle.Watch this space READ MORE MEDIA CRITIQUE AT: 21st Century Wire Media Cog FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Meredith Corp. and Koch Money Buys Time Inc., ‘Left’ Goes Bonkers;21st Century Wire says News broke Sunday night that Meredith Corp., publisher of Better Homes & Gardens and other popular magazine brands, agreed to purchase all of Time Inc. s assets in a cash deal valued at $2.8 billion.Grabbing all the headlines is the $650 million investment from Koch Equity Development (KED). This is the private equity firm of Charles and David Koch, aka the Koch Brothers. According to the company s official press release, KED will not have a seat on Meredith s board and will have no influence on Meredith s editorial or managerial operations. Zero Hedge reports the deal gives the conservative billionaires a stake in one of America s best-known publishers. And that is what is giving the Left mainstream media nightmares and creating widespread panic and hysteria on social media:Great. The Koch brothers are about to be co-owners of TIME, Inc. How long til TIME, People and Sports Illustrated are pushing stories about how much better life would be if we canceled Social Security and Medicare? Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 27, 2017It remains to be seen how the editorial of these publications will be affected by Koch money. When the news broke in 2013 that Amazon.com founder and Bilderberg member Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, we started asking some questions at the time. We re starting to see how it will play out.What we do know thus far about the Meredith/Time news all the crazed paranoia around this deal exposes, yet again, how the mainstream, corporate power media likes to think their version of mass media is so influential. At the same time, discounting the ability of everyday citizens to think for themselves, and not be spoon fed whatever gets pushed out through the echo chambers of many of these failing and lost print magazine empires.Let s not forget it was Time Magazine that started selling ad space on their covers shortly after they were spun off from Time Warner back in 2014.We thought this story by Bloomberg Rothschild s Koch Connection Pays Off in Pursuit of Time Inc. was an interesting angle.Watch this space READ MORE MEDIA CRITIQUE AT: 21st Century Wire Media Cog FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama Senate candidate Moore calls allegations 'dirty politics';HENAGAR, Ala. (Reuters) - Embattled Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore said on Monday the allegations of sexual misconduct against him were evidence of the moral failings of leaders in Washington and meant to distract attention from the real issues. Hitting the campaign trail for the first time in more than two weeks, when the charges first disrupted the race, Moore said the allegations were false and malicious and politicians in both parties were desperate to see him fail. “This is simply dirty politics. It’s a sign of the immorality of our times,” Moore told about 125 supporters who jammed a rural community center in northeast Alabama, speaking just over two weeks before a Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he was appointed U.S. attorney general earlier this year. Republican lawmakers in Washington, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, have rushed to distance themselves from Moore and called for him to step down from the race after he was accused by several women of sexual assault and misconduct when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. Reuters has not been able to independently verify those allegations. Moore said the allegations were designed to distract from “the true issues” facing people and that Senate leaders understood he was difficult to manage and did not want to deal with him. “Politicians will stop at nothing to win an election,” said Moore, who has accused the media of joining in the effort to malign him. Outside the rally, a man wearing a Moore sticker pushed away a cameraman as he attempted to film Moore’s arrival, local media reported. A reporter for the Birmingham News, in a tweet, identified the man as Tony Goolsby, the DeKalb County chairman for the Moore campaign. President Donald Trump defended Moore last week, but a White House official said Trump would not campaign for Moore before the Dec. 12 special election. Trump has repeatedly slammed Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney, calling him a liberal and saying that Jones would not vote for a tax overhaul plan now being debated in Congress. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate and are eager to maintain their advantage to pass Trump’s legislative agenda on taxes, healthcare and other priorities. But Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama told reporters on Monday he had not voted for Moore, writing in a candidate instead. He did not say whom he wrote in. Moore had largely stayed off the campaign trail and avoided questions since the allegations first surfaced in the Washington Post. The Jones campaign has taken notice and begun criticizing his absence. Before the rally, a Moore representative warned the crowd against any “outbursts” and said Moore would not be taking questions. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's tax bill faces potential Senate Republican opposition;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate Republican tax bill strongly backed by President Donald Trump faced potential opposition on Monday from two Republican lawmakers who could prevent the sweeping legislation from reaching the Senate floor. Senators Ron Johnson and Bob Corker, both members of the Senate Budget Committee, said they could vote against the tax package at a Tuesday hearing that Republican leaders hoped would send the legislation to a full Senate vote as early as Thursday. Each senator is seeking different changes to the legislation. Their opposition could create the first major hurdle for the Republican tax overhaul in the Senate, where political infighting killed the party’s effort to overturn the Obamacare healthcare law earlier this year. Corker, a prominent deficit hawk, said he wants his fellow Republicans to add a backstop measure to prevent tax cuts from ballooning the deficit. Johnson said he wants a bigger tax break for “pass-through” businesses, which include small mom-and-pop enterprises as well as some large, non-corporate businesses. “If we develop a fix prior to committee, I’ll probably support it, but if we don’t, I’ll vote against it,” Johnson’s office quoted him telling reporters in his home state of Wisconsin. Republicans have only a one-vote majority on the 23-member budget committee. The potential “no” votes surfaced after Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated the Republican bill would expand the $20 trillion national debt by $1.4 trillion over a decade. Republicans have said that economic growth spurred by tax cuts would generate enough new tax revenue to eliminate any new deficit. But Corker said JCT is not expected to release a full macroeconomic analysis of the tax bill ahead of a Senate vote, making a safeguard provision necessary. “I’m not threatening anything. I’m just saying it’s very important for me to know that we’ve got this resolved,” Corker told reporters. Asked if he could vote no on the tax bill at the committee hearing, he replied: “Very possible. Yeah. Sure.” Corker and other Republican deficit hawks, including Senator James Lankford, have been holding talks with Senate tax writers and the administration about adding a provision that would raise tax rates if revenues fall short of expectations. “We can’t afford to ignore the debt and deficit issues,” Lankford told reporters. “To me, the big issue is how are we dealing with debt and deficit, do we have realistic numbers and is there a backstop in the process just in case we don’t.” Republicans see the tax bill as their last chance to score a significant legislative achievement in 2017 and save face with voters in next year’s congressional midterm elections. Since Trump took office in January, he and his fellow Republicans have passed no major legislation, despite controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House. The Senate bill would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay. It would impose a one-time, cut-rate tax on corporations’ foreign profits, while exempting future foreign profits from U.S. taxation. Financial markets have rallied since Trump’s stunning 2016 election victory, partly on hopes of tax cuts for businesses. The Senate bill would deliver these, although its impact on individual Americans and families would be more mixed. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), another nonpartisan research unit of Congress, said the number of Americans with health insurance would fall by 13 million by 2027 under the Republican tax bill, which would repeal an Obamacare federal fine meant to encourage people to buy health insurance. Such a change would shrink the supply of healthy, young people insured and drive up healthcare insurance premiums. The CBO said this would make people with incomes below $30,000 net losers under the bill. Most of those earning more would be net winners, especially those with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000, it said. Democrats, who call the bill a give-away to the rich and corporations, are expected to oppose it in the Senate. The House of Representatives approved a tax bill by a 227-205 vote on Nov. 16. No Democrats voted for it. Thirteen Republicans opposed it. If the Senate Budget Committee approves the tax bill on Tuesday, it will allow Republicans to use a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to pass the measure on a simple majority in the 100-seat Senate, which they control by a slim 52-48 margin. Without reconciliation, the legislation would need 60 votes, allowing Democrats to prevent its passage. Senate Republican leaders did not appear on Monday to have enough votes to pass the legislation, with about a half-dozen Republicans viewed as potential “no” votes. But in a positive sign for Trump’s agenda, Republican Senator Rand Paul said on Monday he would support the bill. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has also signaled support. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump refers to a 'Pocahontas' in Congress at meeting with veterans;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said there was a “Pocahontas” in the U.S. Congress during a meeting on Monday with Native American World War Two veterans in an apparent derogatory reference to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. After listening to one veteran speak at length about his experience as a “Navajo code talker” during the war, Trump heaped praise on the veterans and said he would not give prepared remarks himself. “You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump said. “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.” Trump repeatedly referred to Warren as “Pocahontas,” the name of a famous 17th-century Native American, during his presidential campaign in a mocking reference to Warren’s having said in the past that she had Native American ancestry. Warren, one of the Senate’s most prominent liberal Democrats, is a noted legal scholar who taught at Harvard Law School and served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama before she was elected to the Senate in 2012. “It is deeply unfortunate that the president of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur,” Warren said on MSNBC. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders disputed the characterization of Trump’s remark as a racial slur. “I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career,” Sanders told reporters. Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, questioned the “use of the name Pocahontas as a slur ... Once again, we call upon the president to refrain from using her name in a way that denigrates her legacy.” Trump’s comment immediately trended on social media. The word “Pocahontas” appeared 12 times on Twitter every second, according to social media analytics company Zoomph. Trump’s knock at Warren came as his administration is embroiled in controversy over the Consumer Financial Protection Board, which Warren helped develop before entering politics. The agency, set up to protect Americans from abusive lending practices after the financial crisis, has been under attack by Trump since he took office in January. On Friday, Trump named his budget director as the interim head of the agency, after its outgoing chief named someone else to the job, setting up a court battle. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish deputy PM resigns, averting election threat;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s scandal-hit deputy prime minister resigned on Tuesday, averting a government collapse and potential snap election that had threatened to complicate Brexit talks next month between Britain and the European Union. Opposition parties had demanded Frances Fitzgerald step down after the release of fresh documents about her disputed handling of a police whistleblower who alleged corruption in the force. Fianna Fail, the main opposition party, which props up Fine Gael Prime Minister Leo Varadkar s minority government, said her resignation meant a December election would be avoided. It had warned it might force a snap poll if Fitzgerald refused to quit. Today I made the decision to tender my resignation to the Taoiseach (prime minister), stepping down with immediate effect, Fitzgerald said in a statement. I have decided on this occasion to put the national interest ahead of my own personal reputation. I believe it is necessary to take this decision to avoid an unwelcome and potentially destabilizing general election at this historically critical time. Ireland s political crisis exploded in the run-up to a key Brexit summit next month at which Varadkar is set to play a major role. He must tell fellow EU leaders whether he believes sufficient progress has been made on the future of the border between Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland. The border the only land frontier between Britain and the EU is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly resolved before it decides whether to move talks on Britain s divorce from the EU onto a second phase about trade, as Britain wants. While Varadkar has likely avoided the prospect of having to travel to Brussels in a caretaker capacity, his handling of the crisis has badly damaged him, his governing Fine Gael party and relations with its Fianna Fail opponents. While Fitzgerald s ministerial colleagues continued to back her in public ahead of the cabinet meeting at which she stood down, Tuesday s newspaper front pages were full of quotes from unnamed Fine Gael lawmakers and ministers saying she had to go. Some Fine Gael members who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said they were furious with Varadkar and Fitzgerald s handling of the crisis, having been forced to spend four days strongly defending the deputy prime minister since it broke. Members of the opposition Labour and Sinn Fein parties and political analysts said as Fitzgerald resigned that an election was still likely to follow in the next three or four months. Whatever happens today, the timeline of this administration is very much foreshortened by the events of the last two weeks, Labour leader Brendan Howlin told national broadcaster RTE. I think right now he (Varadkar) has probably lost the dressing room, you can see that in today s newspapers, and he s done some damage to himself and the stability of the government too, added Howlin, a former cabinet colleague of Varadkar. The crisis was the first major test of the 38-year-old prime minister who succeeded Enda Kenny in June. With a reputation as a straight-talker, he has been likened to French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by colleagues excited at the prospect of a generational shift. While an opinion poll on Saturday gave Fine Gael a one-point lead over Fianna Fail, bookmaker Paddy Power said on Tuesday that it made Fianna Fail slight favorites to win the most seats at the next election. The two center-right parties are fierce rivals but disagree little on policy. A three-year confidence and supply agreement between them is due to run until this time next year. I think there is damage (but) nobody is enhanced by this debacle. I don t think either party comes out of it particularly well, said Theresa Reidy, a politics lecturer at University College Cork, referring to Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. But Fine Gael are in government so they are more damaged by it. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tourists, authorities feel the heat as Bali volcano keeps airport closed;KARANGASEM, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia kept the airport on Bali closed on Tuesday as ash from an erupting volcano swept the holiday island, leaving thousands of tourists stranded as authorities tried to persuade villagers living nearby to leave their homes. A total of 443 flights, both domestic and international, were affected by the closure of the airport, about 60 km (37 miles) from Mount Agung which is spewing smoke and ash high into the sky. Aircraft flight channels are covered with volcanic ash, the transport ministry said in a statement, citing aviation navigation authorities. The airport - the second-biggest in Indonesia - will be closed at least until 7 a.m. on Wednesday (2300 GMT on Tuesday), the ministry said. Frustration at the airport was starting to boil over, with an estimated 2,000 people attempting to get refunds and reschedule tickets. There are thousands of people stranded here at the airport, said Nitin Sheth, a tourist from India. They have to go to some other airport and they are trying to do that, but the government or authorities here are not helping. Others were more relaxed. No, there s not a lot of information ... very little. (But) it s all right. We re on holidays so it doesn t matter. We don t know what s going to happen but we can get back to the bar and have another drink, said Matthew Radix from Perth. The airport operator said 201 international flights and 242 domestic ones had been hit. Ten alternative airports had been prepared for airlines to divert inbound flights, including in neighboring provinces, the operator said, adding it was helping people make alternative bookings and helping stranded travelers. The airport on Lombok island, to the east of Bali, had reopened, authorities said, as wind blew ash westward, towards the southern coast of Java island. Agung towers over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,800 feet). Its last eruption in 1963 killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages. On Tuesday, however, life went on largely as normal in surrounding villages, with residents offering prayers as the volcano sent huge billows of ash and smoke into the sky. Some villagers who fled in September, when the alert was last raised to the highest level, have gone home despite government warnings. On Monday, authorities said 100,000 residents living near the volcano had been ordered to get out of an 8-10 km (5-6 mile) exclusion zone, warning a larger eruption was imminent . While the population in the area has been estimated at anywhere between 63,000 and 140,000, just over 29,000 people were registered at emergency centers, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the Disaster Mitigation Agency. Not all people in the danger zone are prepared to take refuge, he said. There are still a lot of residents staying in their homes. Indonesia s Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center has warned that an eruption of a size similar to that seen in 1963 could send rocks bigger than a fist flying a distance of up to 8 km (5 miles), and volcanic gas a distance of 10 km (6 miles) within three minutes. Monitoring has shown the northeastern part of Agung s peak had swollen in recent weeks indicating there is fairly strong pressure toward the surface , the center said. For interactive package on Agung eruptions, click: tmsnrt.rs/2hYdHiq For graphic on the Pacific Ring of Fire, click: tmsnrt.rs/2BjtH6l ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: WASHINGTON POST Gets DESTROYED When Reporter Admits Truth About How They Cover President Trump In New Undercover Videos;"James O Keefe of Project Veritas has used his incredible talents to go undercover and expose crooked organizations like ACORN and Planned Parenthood. During the 2016 election, O Keefe was able to expose the corrupt underbelly of the Democrat Party who used paid plants to incite violence at Trump rallies. O Keefe was also able to tie Barack Obama directly to their chief organizer. Of course, every major #FakeNews outlet completely ignored these horrific coordinated acts of violence against innocent Americans.Over the past several months, O Keefe has been releasing undercover videos he s used to expose the bias and unprofessional tactics used by news publications like the New York Times and now, the Washington Post.Today, the Washington Post attempted to embarrass O Keefe for allegedly setting a trap for them with a woman posing as a Roy Moore sexual assault accuser.After seeing the woman entering Project Veritas, The Post made the unusual decision to report her previous off-the-record comments. https://t.co/W05qDKlhl8 pic.twitter.com/Q0uJ9iaBoo Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 27, 2017Here s a video the Washington Post released on Twitter, of reporters from WaPo ambushing O Keefe at his Project Veritas office.The @washingtonpost attempts to ambush @Project_Veritas anticipating an imminent video release pic.twitter.com/6UV2tOeiAS James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 27, 2017Many Twitter users wondered if the Washington Post was trying to cover up a bombshell that O Keefe was about to drop on the publication owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos?O Keefe tweeted a response to the Washington Post s videotaped ambush, warning everyone to fasten their seatbelts. Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly. Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seatbelts. Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly. Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seatbelts. James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 27, 2017Josh Caplan suggests that WaPo reporters who hounded O Keefe were panicked. Was the ambush on O Keefe by WaPo reporters over his alleged use of a plant disguised as a Roy Moore accuser , simply a way to discredit O Keefe in advance of his expose on them?Panicked Reporters Stalk Project Veritas HQ As Rumors Swirl @JamesOKeefeIII Is Set To Expose Washington Posthttps://t.co/BV66enlqbq Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) November 27, 2017BREAKING: Undercover video inside @washingtonpost shows National Security Correspondent @danlamothe and Director of Product @josephjames discussing WaPo's hidden agenda #AmericanPravda #ProjectVeritas Full: https://t.co/2002erd3ub pic.twitter.com/o4qi8DQyAz James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 27, 2017This video allegedly shows Amazon founder Jeff Bezos direct influence in the Washington Post s newsroom:.@josephjames, who works closely with the Jeff Bezos at the Post, sheds light on Bezos's influence in the newsroom. pic.twitter.com/KJcUSCqO5F James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 28, 2017Washington Post s Dan LaMonthe calls out the New York Times and CNN for their bias in this video:Looks like @DanLamothe is a fan of our #AmericanPravda series. Here he is attacking #CNN and #NYT for their extreme bias against @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/PHv7HPFhkQ @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/p79fzIOc1T Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) November 28, 2017Here s another Dan LaMonthe video where he explains how the Washington Post works together to take down Trump following his tweets:WATCH: @washingtonpost reporter: ""I can't tell you how many times we get an email at work: 'Oh did you see what (Trump) just tweeted? What are we gonna do about it?"" Full video: https://t.co/2002erd3ub pic.twitter.com/OOOjE3kOx5 James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 28, 2017Finally, Grant J. Kidney claims that Project Veritas just vindicated President Trump and his attack on the Amazon Washington Post. Project Veritas just vindicated President Trump in his calling of the Washington Post, the Amazon Washington Post . pic.twitter.com/FNNhNFNaRg GRANT J. KIDNEY (@GrantJKidney) November 28, 2017";left-news;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Allegations against Sen. Franken should go through normal process: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Allegations of sexual misconduct against U.S. Senator Al Franken should be dealt with through the normal process, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday. “The president is not going to weigh in on every single matter like this. We think this should go through a due process,” Sanders said to reporters on Monday. “That’s something that Senator Franken should be the first to address.” ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump-installed consumer agency head sets hiring freeze, halts new rules;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The fight for control of the U.S. consumer watchdog agency intensified on Monday as Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), imposed a hiring freeze and halted any new regulations. In a partisan showdown over the CFPB, which was created to crack down on predatory financial practices, Mulvaney is being sued by Leandra English, an Obama-era appointee to the agency who argues that she is the consumer bureau’s rightful leader. The conflict began on Friday when Richard Cordray, a Democrat appointed CFPB director by then-President Barack Obama, formally resigned and named English, his chief of staff, as acting director. Hours later, Trump named Mulvaney, the current director of the White House budget office, as temporary head of the CFPB. The Republican president has a right to name a permanent CFPB director, officials agree. There are dueling claims, however, about who gets to lead the agency in the meantime. Both sides presented their arguments during an emergency U.S. District Court hearing in Washington on Monday. Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge who is presiding over the case, said the issues raised were “extremely important and complicated.” The judge as well as the two sides said they hoped to see the case decided within the next few days. The next step is for the Trump administration to submit its response to English’s suit. The fight to control the 1,600-employee agency lays bare deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats over how to regulate Wall Street and protect consumers, following the 2007-2009 financial crisis that cost taxpayers $700 billion in bailouts. Republicans loathe the CFPB, saying it wields too much power and burdens banks and other lenders with unnecessary red tape. Mulvaney, who sought to dismantle the CFPB when he was a Republican congressman, acknowledged at a news briefing on Monday afternoon that the Trump administration had a “dramatically different” interpretation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that created the CFPB. He said there would be a 30-day freeze on hiring at the agency and no payments from the CFPB’s civil penalties fund for that amount of time as well, except as required legally. All new regulations would also be frozen, he said. “The president has made it very clear he wants me here. ... I want to be here. I don’t want anything coming out of here that I don’t know about,” Mulvaney said. Earlier on Monday, English welcomed staff back from the Thanksgiving holiday in a morning email and signed off as “acting director.” Around the same time, Mulvaney arrived at Cordray’s former office, bringing doughnuts for the staff. “Please disregard any instructions you receive from Ms. English in her presumed capacity as Acting Director,” he wrote in an all-staff email seen by Reuters that he also signed “acting director.” Mulvaney advised staff members to inform the agency’s general counsel if they heard additional communications from English. As Mulvaney was getting settled in, a source told Reuters, CFPB general counsel Mary McLeod sent a memo agreeing with the U.S. Justice Department that Trump had the power to appoint Mulvaney as temporary leader of the watchdog. English went to the CFPB in the morning, according to her lawyer. She then met on Capitol Hill with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who conceived the CFPB. English told reporters that “Mulvaney has no authority” at the agency. Schumer said on the Senate floor that the Dodd-Frank law, which he helped to write, set up a “clear” succession process for the CFPB that made English the acting director. Schumer said Mulvaney was chosen by the Trump administration simply to “rock the agency from the inside.” Trump campaigned for president saying Wall Street “gets away with murder,” but he also promised to defang or abolish the CFPB. Since taking office, Trump has tried to undo a number of his Democratic predecessor’s initiatives, mostly notably the 2010 Affordable Care Act that the Republican-controlled Congress has been unable to repeal and replace. Cordray developed a reputation for drafting aggressive rules curbing products such as payday loans, while issuing multimillion-dollar fines against large financial institutions such as Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N). Stock prices of major U.S. banks are trading near all-time highs. The KBW Bank Index .BKX has more than doubled since July 2011, when the CFPB opened for business. The drama over the CFPB came as the Senate was preparing to consider a bill that would significantly ease rules on some banks for the first time since the financial crisis. Moderate Democrats and Republicans have come out in support of the package, aimed primarily at smaller and mid-sized banks, but analysts warned the CFPB fight could imperil that compromise. The Senate Banking Committee is supposed to take up the bill next week. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bahrain's top Shi'ite cleric's health deteriorates: activists;DUBAI (Reuters) - The health of Bahrain s top Shi ite Muslim cleric has deteriorated, activists said on Monday, after months under virtual house arrest following a government decision to revoke his citizenship. Bahraini officials did not respond to a request for a comment on the reports about Ayatollah Isa Qassim s state of health. News about his condition has stoked tension in Bahrain as the Sunni Muslim-led monarchy pursues a crackdown on dissent by majority Shi ites that has included closing down two main political groupings and banning activists from travel or putting them on trial. Activists said Qassim, who is believed to be in his 70s, was suffering constant pain and excreting blood. Doctors who visited him on Sunday at his home in the village of Duraz, outside the capital Manama, have diagnosed him to be suffering from a groin hernia requiring emergency operation , according to the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD). Such an operation carries a high mortality risk at Sheikh Isa Qassim s age. He also suffers high blood pressure, diabetes and a form of heart disease, BIRD added in a statement. Sheikh Maytham al-Salman, a prominent Bahraini interfaith activist, said the Manama government was responsible for Qassim s health as it controlled access to medical treatment. The international community must ensure Bahrain is pressured to ensure the safety of Sheikh Isa Qassim is protected, he added in comments published by BIRD. The Interior Ministry announced in June 2016 that Qassim s citizenship had been revoked, accusing him of trying to divide Bahraini society, encourage youths to violate the constitution and promote a sectarian environment in the Gulf Arab state. The decision sparked angry protests in Bahrain and drew sharp condemnation from regional Shi ite power Iran and statements of concern from the United States and Britain. In May, five people were killed when security forces raided Qassim s homevillage to disperse followers who had camped out outside his house, and arrested 286 people, according to the interior ministry. Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet that helps secure the Gulf s oil-shipping lanes is based, crushed Arab Spring protests in 2011 led by Shi ites demanding a bigger share in running the country. But unrest has lingered on with occasional outbursts that are put down by force by the authorities. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;From blind date to Botswana's stars, Prince Harry charts love for U.S. actress Meghan Markle;LONDON (Reuters) - Just four weeks after a blind date with U.S. actress Meghan Markle that left him beautifully surprised , Britain s Prince Harry took his wife-to-be on a trip to Botswana to camp under the stars in his tent. Harry, 33, Queen Elizabeth s grandson and fifth-in-line to the British throne, and Markle, 36, best known for her role in the U.S. TV legal drama Suits , got engaged this month at their cottage in London over a roast chicken dinner. In their first broadcast interview since announcing the news earlier on Monday, Harry and Markle held hands as they discussed the moment of their proposal and their courtship. It was just an amazing surprise. It was so sweet and natural, and very romantic. He got on one knee, Markle said. I could barely let you finish proposing. I said, can I say yes now? Harry said that he had not watched the show which made Markle s name, and Markle too was relatively unfamiliar with Britain s royal family before meeting Harry. I had never watched Suits , I had never heard of Meghan before and I was beautifully surprised when I walked into that room and saw her. I was like, OK well I m going to have to really up my game here , Harry said. It was I think about three maybe four weeks later that I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana and we camped out with each other under the stars. Harry and Markle, who is a divorcee, met in July 2016 after they were introduced through a friend who set them up on a blind date. But it was not until September that they made their first public appearance together at the Invictus Games in Toronto, a sports event for wounded veterans. They are due to marry in the spring of next year. The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was confirmation to me that all the stars were aligned, everything was just perfect, Harry said. This beautiful woman just tripped and fell into my life, I fell into her life. The prince, the younger son of heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his first wife Diana, publicly confirmed their relationship months later in a rebuke to the media over its alleged intrusion into Markle s private life. As she got to know Harry, Markle learnt about the huge amount of public scrutiny that the royals face, and she said she was not prepared for the level of attention their relationship would have. I did not have any understanding of just what it would be like, she said, saying there was a misconception that because she was an actress she would be used to being in the media spotlight. In his office s warning to the media, Harry referred to the sexism and racism directed at Markle, whose father is white and her mother African-American. Harry said he had to warn his future wife about the media attention they would face. Any the end of day I m really just proud of who I am and where I come from and we have never put any focus on that, she said. We were just hit so hard at the beginning with a lot of mistruths. Markle said she had met Queen Elizabeth, who she said was an incredible woman. Harry quipped that the queen s corgis had taken to her straight away despite barking at him for years. Markle showed off her three-stone engagement ring set in yellow gold, which features a diamond from Botswana and two other gems from the collection of his mother, Diana, who died in a car crash in 1997. It s beautiful, and he designed it. It s incredible ... obviously not being able to meet his mum, it s so important to me to know that she s a part of this with us, Markle said, turning to Harry as she spoke about the ring. It s incredibly special to be able to have this, which sort of links where you come from, and Botswana, which is important to us, it s perfect. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish PM says EU confused since Brexit, needs to revisit Turkey's future place;LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union is entirely confused since Britain voted to leave the bloc and it needs to revisit its vision for enlargement and Turkey s place in that, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday. Launched in 2005 after decades of seeking the formal start of an EU membership bid, Ankara s membership negotiations have long been sensitive for France and Germany because of Turkey s status as a large, mainly Muslim country. The large purge that President Tayyip Erdogan has carried out following a failed coup attempt in July 2016 has worsened relations between Brussels and Ankara. During a visit to London, Yildirim said the European Union needed to look again at its plans to expand the bloc. After the Brexit decision the EU is entirely confused. They need to revisit their vision for the future, how far they are going to enlarge and what place Turkey will have in that. We are here. We are not going anywhere, he said. Yildirim also reaffirmed that Turkey did not believe that the crisis in neighbouring Syria could be resolved whilst President Bashar al-Assad remained in power. The current regime is responsible for the way things have evolved in Syria ... I don t think it s a realistic prospect to build lasting peace in Syria with Assad (in place), he said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-Russian minister says he thought bag with $2 million cash was gift of alcohol;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev, accused of extorting a bribe, told a court on Monday he thought a bag holding $2 million in cash which he took from Rosneft (ROSN.MM) chief executive Igor Sechin held a gift of expensive alcohol. Ulyukayev faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of accepting the $2 million cash from Sechin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin. Prosecutors said the bribe was given last year on Nov. 14 in exchange for Ulyukayev approving the sale of a state-controlled oil company Bashneft (BANE.MM) to Rosneft. Police detained Ulyukayev inside Rosneft headquarters shortly after Sechin handed him the cash inside a lockable brown bag and a little basket with sausage as a gift, prosecutors said. . The next day Putin fired Ulyukayev. Ulyukayev, speaking to the court, said he had believed the package contained a gift but that a trap had been set for him. All this was an action directed against me, planned in advance, a provocation organized in advance, he said. Ulyukayev s lawyers are trying to explain to the court why he accepted the bag from Sechin given that - according to transcripts of their conversations - neither man had discussed what was inside. Ulyukayev said when he had been economy minister, Sechin had visited his ministry two or three times and usually had come to the office with a bulky bag, containing presents. During that period, Sechin personally presented Ulyukayev with a watch and a model of an oil-derrick, and he sent a food hamper on occasions such as birthdays, Ulyukayev said. Ulyukayev had also received alcoholic drinks from Sechin as gifts, a prosecutor said. That was a norm of etiquette, from Sechin s point of view, Ulyukayev told the court. The ex-minister said the bag which Sechin gave him last year at Rosneft headquarters in a law enforcement sting operation weighed about 15 kg (33 lbs) and he thought there had been expensive wine or spirits inside. Ulyukayev said that a month before, Sechin promised to present him with a wine he had never tried before in his life to mark the successful closing of the Bashneft privatization deal. For that reason it came as a surprise that the bag contained money, Ulyukayev said. Sechin has been issued with four summonses to testify in the trial, but has failed to show up, despite being a key witness. His lawyer said in a letter to the court that Sechin had been away on business trips. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swedish govt. says to grant reprieve to some asylum seeker minors;STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden will let some migrants who arrived as unaccompanied minors and turned 18 during the process of applying for asylum stay even if their applications are rejected, a rare relaxation of rules imposed at the height of the 2015 migration crisis. More than 160,000 people sought asylum in Sweden in 2015, more than 30,000 of them unaccompanied minors, swamping the migration authority and leading to a huge backlog of cases. Monday s agreement between the Social Democrats and Greens to relax some rules irons out a rift in the minority government. These young people have become a part of Sweden. They should not be hurt by the extremely long processing times, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin of the Green Party told a news conference. Sweden tightened asylum rules late in 2015, saying it could no longer provide housing for all those who had arrived. Asylum seeker numbers fell to less than 30,000 last year, of which only about 2,000 were unaccompanied minors, although the fall is also due to the closing of the main route from Turkey to the EU through Greece. The November 2015 tightening of Sweden s traditionally generous asylum policies was a blow to the Green Party which has also had to accept the sale of state-energy company Vattenfall s lignite mines in Germany, which it wanted decommissioned. The new rules will apply to asylum seekers who were registered as minors before the new tighter laws were announced, provided the processing time had been longer than 15 months. They would be given temporary residency permits to finish high school, which could become permanent if they found employment, the government said. The Social Democrats and Greens will still need backing from parties outside government to get the agreement signed into law. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgarian, Macedonian Orthodox Churches edge closer despite thorny history;SOFIA (Reuters) - The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has taken a step towards possible eventual recognition of Macedonia s Orthodox Church, a rapprochement that echoes a warming of relations between the governments of the two Balkan neighbors. However, the move is unlikely to be welcomed by other Orthodox Churches such as those of Serbia and Greece, in a region where religious identity is often closely tied up with nationalist passions and politics. The Macedonian Orthodox Church was formed when the country was part of communist Yugoslavia but has never been recognized by other Orthodox churches due to a long-standing dispute over its independence from the Serbian Orthodox Church, with which it was previously formally united. This month, however, the Macedonian Church sent an official request to Bulgaria s 1,100-year-old Orthodox Church asking it to become its symbolic mother church. Bulgaria has close linguistic, cultural and historic ties with Macedonia. In a statement on Monday the Bulgarian Orthodox Church said that aware of its sacred duty... (it was) taking all necessary steps to establish the canonical status of the Macedonian Church . We must accept the outstretched hand of Macedonia, Bulgaria s Orthodox Patriarch Neofit said. This is the least (we can do) because they are our brothers. The move comes three months after the prime ministers of Bulgaria and Macedonia signed a friendship treaty in a move designed to end years of diplomatic wrangling and boost Macedonia s European integration. The Bulgarian Church s Holy Synod, its top executive body, will consult with other Eastern Orthodox churches, including those of Russia and Greece and Serbia, before announcing its final decision, it said. The Eastern Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian denomination worldwide with more than 250 million members, but unlike the Roman Catholic Church it has no supreme leader comparable to the Pope but instead is composed mainly of de facto national churches, each led by a patriarch. There was no immediate response on Monday from the Orthodox Church in Serbia, Greece or elsewhere to the Bulgarian move, but they are unlikely to be positive. Greece is locked in a long-running dispute with Macedonia over the country s name, which is also the name of a northern Greek province, and Athens has blocked the Skopje government s attempts to join the European Union and NATO. Russia s Orthodox Church, by far the biggest worldwide, is unlikely to do anything that might compromise Moscow s strong ties with Serbia. Moscow is also opposed to Macedonia s plans to join NATO and the EU. But Bulgaria s Orthodox Church could unilaterally recognize Macedonia s Church, a move sure to cheer Bulgarian nationalists. The Bulgarian Church must recognize the Macedonian (Church), Bulgarian Defence Minister Krasimir Karakachanov, co-leader of the United Patriots party, a junior partner in the centre-right coalition government in Sofia, said on Monday. The two brotherly churches speak without a translator and use the same church books, he added, alluding to the close linguistic links. Bulgarian nationalists regard the Macedonian language as a dialect of Bulgarian. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sudan general, nine soldiers killed in Darfur clashes: SUNA;KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A Sudanese general and nine soldiers were killed in clashes in the war-damaged region of Darfur on Sunday after their vehicles were ambushed by militants, state news SUNA reported on Monday. Conflict in Darfur erupted in 2003 when mainly non-Arab tribes took up arms against Sudan s Arab-led government and has led to intermittent clashes ever since, though the government announced a unilateral ceasefire last year. Fresh clashes erupted on Sunday following a military effort by government forces in the southern Darfur region to collect weapons from militants, SUNA reported. Defence Minister Ali Mohamed Salem said that prominent Darfur militia leader Musa Hilal had been arrested and the situation in Darfur was now stable following the clashes, according to SUNA. The news service did not elaborate. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Prince Harry says thrilled at engagement to U.S. actress Markle;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Prince Harry, who announced earlier on Monday he was engaged to his American girlfriend Meghan Markle, said they were both thrilled as they posed for their first picture together after the announcement. Thrilled. Over the moon, Harry said when asked how he felt. When asked by reporters when he knew she was the one, he said: The very first time we met. Asked if his proposal was romantic, Harry replied: Of course it was, before leaving with an arm around his fiancee who showed off her diamond engagement ring to photographers. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Reaction to Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Prince Harry is engaged to his U.S. actress girlfriend Meghan Markle with the marriage due to take place in the spring of 2018, his father Prince Charles announced in a statement on Monday. Here are some reactions to the engagement: Prince Harry, on how he feels Thrilled. Over the moon When did I know she was the one ? The very first time we met. Meghan Markle, on how she feels So happy Queen Elizabeth II The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh are delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness. Prince Charles on a trip to Poundbury, in southwest England We re thrilled. We re both thrilled. We hope they ll be very happy indeed. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate We are very excited for Harry and Meghan. It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together. British Prime Minister Theresa May I would like to offer my very warmest congratulations to HRH Prince Harry and Meghan Markle upon their engagement. This is a time of huge celebration for two people in love and, on behalf of myself, the Government and the country, I wish them great happiness for the future. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby I am absolutely delighted to hear the news that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are now engaged. I have met Prince Harry on a number of occasions and have always been struck by his commitment and passion for his charities, and his immense love for his family. I am so happy that Prince Harry and Ms Markle have chosen to make their vows before God. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron Congratulations to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Wonderful news and I wish them a long and happy life together. Pressure group Republic What is happy news for the royal couple is going to turn into another royal PR exercise, helped along by a widespread failure of good journalism. The royals have lots of hard questions to answer, about misuse of public funds, inappropriate lobbying and abuse of privilege. They re on the public payroll to do a public service, they need to be treated as we treat politicians. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish minister says expects election to be avoided;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s minister for social protection said she expects the government and main opposition party to avoid a snap election that a dispute between the two has left them 24 hours away from triggering. I think we all know an election is coming but it just isn t right for the country to have that election right now and I do expect us to come back from the brink, Regina Doherty told the Newstalk radio station on Monday. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait court sentences MPs to jail terms for storming into parliament;KUWAIT (Reuters) - A Kuwaiti court handed several lawmakers jail terms on Monday for forcing their way into the parliament building in 2011 - a move that could cause political turbulence in the Gulf Arab region s most liberal state. Protesters burst into parliament in 2011 after lawmakers had been denied the right to question then prime minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah about corruption allegations. Kuwait s al-Qabas newspaper said the court sentenced current MPs Jamaan al-Harbash and Waleed al-Tabtabai to five years and MP Mohammed al-Mutair to one year. An outspoken former parliament deputy, Musallam al-Barrak, who earlier this year finished serving a two-year prison sentence for insulting the country s ruler, was sentenced to seven years. The MPs have a considerable political following, especially among Kuwait s traditional tribes which have influence in areas outside the main cities. Kuwait avoided mass Arab Spring-style unrest though citizens held large street protests in 2012 after the Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah changed the electoral law. While Kuwait allows more freedom of speech than some other Gulf Arab states, the emir has the last say in state affairs. There have been a series of political trials and authorities have revoked citizenship of some Kuwaitis in the past several years that have drawn rebuke abroad and anger at home. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope meets Myanmar's military chief in shadow of Rohingya crisis;YANGON (Reuters) - Pope Francis held talks on Monday with Myanmar s military chief at the start of a delicate visit to a majority-Buddhist country that the United States has accused of ethnic cleansing against its Muslim Rohingya people. The leader of the Roman Catholic church will also visit Bangladesh, where more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to escape what Amnesty International has called crimes against humanity . Myanmar s army has denied accusations of murder, rape, torture and forced displacement that have been made against it. The pope s first meeting in Yangon was with military commander Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in St. Mary s Cathedral in the heart of the Southeast Asian nation s largest city. They discussed the great responsibility of authorities of the country in this time of transition, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said after the 15 minutes of talks, which were followed by an exchange of gifts. Francis presented the general with a commemorative medal of his visit, and Min Aung Hlaing gave the pope a harp in the shape of a boat and an ornate rice bowl, Burke said. The army chief told the pope that there s no religious discrimination in Myanmar and there s the freedom of religion, according to a statement on the Facebook page of Min Aung Hlaing. Every soldier s goal is to build a stable and peaceful country, the army chief was paraphrased as saying in the statement. Members of ethnic minority groups in traditional dress welcomed Francis at Yangon airport, and children presented him with flowers as he stepped off his plane. He waved through an open window at dozens of children waving Vatican and Myanmar flags and wearing T-shirts with the motto of the trip love and peace as he set off in a car. Only about 700,000 of Myanmar s 51 million people are Roman Catholic. Thousands of them traveled by train and bus to Yangon, and they joined crowds at several roadside points along the way from the airport to catch a glimpse of the pope. More than 150,000 people have registered for a mass that Francis will say in Yangon on Wednesday, according to Catholic Myanmar Church spokesman Mariano Soe Naing. We come here to see the Holy Father. It happens once in hundreds of years, said Win Min Set, a community leader who brought a group of 1,800 Catholics from the south and west of the country. He is very knowledgeable when it comes to political affairs. He will handle the issue smartly, he said, referring to the sensitivity of the pope s discussions about the Rohingya. Large numbers of riot police were mobilized in Yangon but there were no signs of any protests. The trip is so delicate that some papal advisers have warned Francis against even saying the word Rohingya , lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the country s military and government against minority Christians. The Rohingya exodus from Rakhine state to Bangladesh s southern tip began at the end of August, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week called the military operation ethnic cleansing and threatened targeted sanctions for horrendous atrocities . Myanmar s government has denied most of the accusations made against it, and the army says its own investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by troops. Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens nor as members of a distinct ethnic group with their own identity, and it even rejects the term Rohingya and its use. Many people in Myanmar instead refer to members of the Muslim minority in Rakhine state as illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Francis is expected to meet a group of Rohingya refugees in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on the second leg of his trip. The most tense moments of his Myanmar visit were expected to be the private meeting with the army chief and, separately, with civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday. Vatican sources say some in the Holy See believe the trip was decided too hastily after full diplomatic ties were established in May during a visit by Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi s reputation as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been tarnished because she has expressed doubts about the reports of rights abuses against the Rohingya and failed to condemn the military. The pope has already used the word Rohingya in two appeals from the Vatican this year. Asked if he would say it in Myanmar, Burke said Francis was taking the advice he had been given seriously, but added: We will find out together during the trip ... it is not a forbidden word . A hardline group of Buddhist monks, previously known as Ma Ba Tha, said it welcomed the pope s visit but warned, without elaborating, of a response if he spoke openly about the Rohingya. I hope he doesn t touch on sensitive issues that Myanmar people couldn t accept, said Tawparka, a spokesman for the group, who goes by a single name. There s no problem if he talks about Islam, but it s unacceptable if he speaks about Rohingya and extreme terrorists. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian congress in Russia postponed to February: RIA cites source;MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian-backed Congress of Syrian peoples in the Russian city of Sochi has been postponed until February, Russia s RIA news agency reported on Monday, citing a diplomatic source. The event, called the Syrian Congress on National Dialogue, was initially to be held in November but some opposition groups rejected the idea of the meeting, initially proposed by President Vladimir Putin. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Elizabeth Warren to meet Leandra English on Monday: aide;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is due to meet Leandra English, an official with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB), on Monday afternoon to discuss the leadership of the agency, an aide to the lawmaker said. English was named on Friday by former CFPB head Richard Cordray to lead the agency until President Donald Trump nominates a permanent chief. Hours later, the White House named budget chief Mick Mulvaney as acting director. On Sunday, English sued to prevent Trump from installing Mulvaney. Warren helped push for the creation of the CFPB and has said she support English’s position in the court case. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia denies its planes killed civilians in Syria's Deir al-Zor: Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s Defence Ministry denied on Monday that Russian war planes had carried out deadly air strikes on a village in Syria s Deir al-Zor province that had killed dozens of civilians, the Interfax news agency reported. Moscow was responding after the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 53 civilians, including children, had been killed in Russian air strikes in the eastern Syrian village of Al-Shafah. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No government options off table: German SPD leader;BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of the Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) said nothing had been ruled out ahead of talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a new government, but added that there was no certainty of success. No options are off the table, SPD leader Martin Schulz told a news conference at his party s Berlin headquarters on Monday, adding that it was impossible to say where preliminary talks, due to begin on Thursday, would lead. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rival sides square off over succession at U.S. consumer finance agency;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A battle over who should run the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the coming months was set for court as Obama-era holdovers sought to maintain their control over a powerful watchdog which President Donald Trump is seeking to curb. CFPB staff returning to work on Monday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday break were left scratching their heads over who was in charge after outgoing director Richard Cordray formally resigned on Friday and elevated his former chief of staff, Leandra English, to replace him temporarily. Hours later, President Donald Trump sought to over-rule that move by naming his budget chief Mick Mulvaney — a harsh critic of the agency — as acting director. Trump wants Mulvaney to run the CFPB until he can get a permanent successor confirmed by the Senate, a process which could take months. In yet another twist late on Sunday, English sued the Trump administration seeking to block Mulvaney’s appointment. The move means a federal court will now decide which law applies when filling a temporary leadership vacancy at the relatively new agency. The unprecedented battle reflects competing visions of how to regulate the U.S. financial system. Created in the wake of the financial crisis to protect consumers from predatory lending, the CFPB is hated by Republicans who think it wields too much power and burdens banks and other lenders with unnecessary red tape. President Barack Obama appointed Cordray, a Democrat, as the CFPB’s first director and he developed a reputation for drafting aggressive rules curbing products such as payday loans while issuing multimillion dollar fines against large financial institutions like Wells Fargo (WFC.N). In a tweet over the weekend, Trump called the agency a “total disaster” that had “devastated” financial institutions. He has pledged to roll back many of the Obama-era financial regulations. Liberal groups and consumer advocates planned a rally in front of the CFPB headquarters on Monday morning to demonstrate support for the agency. As acting director, Mulvaney would have the power to make far-reaching decisions on enforcement and supervision of financial firms. Trump administration officials say the president has the power to appoint an acting director under the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act and, in an powerful boost for them, the CFPB’s own general counsel, Mary McLeod, issued a three-page memo agreeing. “I advise all Bureau personnel to act consistently with the understanding that Director Mulvaney is the Acting Director of the CFPB,” McLeod’s memo, dated November 25, stated. Such advice will stick in the throats of many CFPB staffers. Mulvaney once described the agency as a “sad, sick joke” and tried to get rid of it when he was a lawmaker in the House of Representatives. English alluded to Mulvaney’s views on the CFPB in her lawsuit. She has argued that the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that created the CFPB stipulated that its deputy director would take over on an interim basis when a director departs. Cordray named English as deputy director and said she would become the acting director. The CFPB was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator and liberal firebrand. Over the weekend, lawmakers from both parties lined up to give opposing views of its role. Dick Durbin, the U.S. Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, told CNN on Sunday that “Wall Street hates it like the devil hates holy water.” While the legal battle rages, the CFPB’s enforcement work will be put in limbo. “Anything that the agency does or fails to do could be subject to challenge until this cloud is removed,” said Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe. The CFPB was preparing to sue Santander (SAN.MC) as early as this week alleging that the Spanish bank overcharged borrowers on auto loans, two sources familiar with the plans told Reuters last week. It was not clear if that lawsuit will now go ahead. The agency’s rule-making ability has already been halted by the Republican-controlled Congress, which last month killed a CFPB rule that had allowed borrowers to join together to sue lenders. Even if English prevails, Trump’s permanent nominee is expected to neutralize much of the CFPB’s work. Some of the names mentioned by lobbyists as potential permanent successors to Cordray include Republican Representatives Jeb Hensarling and French Hill, both CFPB critics. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Don't count on Germany's SPD to rescue Macron's euro agenda;BERLIN (Reuters) - During Germany s election campaign, the Social Democrats (SPD) rallied behind French President Emmanuel Macron s ideas for reform of the euro zone, including the creation of a budget, finance minister and separate parliament for the currency bloc. But as momentum builds for another grand coalition between the SPD and Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, doubts are rising about whether the center-left party will make European reform a top priority in looming negotiations. Several senior SPD officials, some speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while the party continued to support Macron s ideas, domestic reforms of health insurance, pensions and the labor market were likely to play a more prominent role in eventual talks. Europe is not a theme where we can simply push things through. We need to strive for a consensus, said Johannes Kahrs, a budget expert for the SPD in parliament and leader of the conservative Seeheimer Kreis wing of the party. It would be nice if the conservatives went along with the idea of a budget for the euro zone, but they need to want it. It would make no sense to try to bully them into this. The comments may come as a disappointment to Macron, who called SPD leader Martin Schulz after the collapse of three-way talks between Merkel s conservatives, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens a week ago, and urged him to do his part to ensure political stability in Germany. The EU faces a narrow window to forge agreement on Macron s European reform proposals because, as 2019 approaches, it is expected to be consumed by the Brexit negotiations, wrangling over a new long-term budget for the bloc and EU elections. For that reason, the French president would prefer to avoid a lengthy period of political uncertainty in Germany, including new elections that could delay the formation of a government in Berlin until mid-2018. Macron also may be hoping the SPD led by former European Parliament president Schulz and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel can convince Merkel s conservatives to embrace some of his more controversial ideas for the euro zone. Macron, a centrist, honed many of his European reform ideas with Gabriel when both were economy ministers. On page 98 of their election program, the SPD calls for many of the same measures that Macron supports: a euro zone budget, finance minister and parliament, as well as harmonized corporate tax rates and the transformation of Europe s ESM bailout mechanism into a more robust European Monetary Fund. Two months after the election, senior SPD officials say there is still broad support in the party for these ideas. But none suggest that the party is likely to insist on them in talks with Merkel that could begin next month. Several pointed to the departure of Merkel s hardline finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who has shifted to the role of Bundestag president, as a significant step already. Before the election, a lot of people said we needed to get rid of Schaeuble. Now they ve done that for us, said one senior party member. Will we push for more on Europe? Yes. Will there be other priorities that are perhaps more important? Yes. Another SPD official said achieving a level playing field on corporate tax rates in Europe and introducing a financial transactions tax were just as important as Macron s plans to overhaul euro zone governance. While Merkel has shown a readiness to work with Macron, other members of her conservative bloc are skeptical about his euro zone ideas, fearful Europe could develop into a transfer union in which Germany pays for reform-wary southern countries. Over the past four years, the SPD struggled to put its mark on European policy, with Schaeuble, backed by Merkel, setting a strict rules-based course that emphasized structural reforms in euro member states over closer integration. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish, Sudanese intelligence agencies catch and return alleged coup suspect: Anadolu;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish and Sudanese intelligence agencies have captured and returned to Turkey a man believed to be a financier for the U.S.-based cleric accused of orchestrating a failed coup in Turkey, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Monday. Citing security sources, Anadolu said Turkey s MIT and Sudan s NISS intelligence agencies carried out a joint operation targeting Memduh Cikmaz in Sudan and returned him to Turkey early on Monday. Cikmaz, labelled by Turkish media a money safe for the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, is believed to have transferred millions of dollars to Gulen s network from Sudan since he fled there in January 2016, Anadolu said. Sudanese officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Gulen is accused by Ankara of orchestrating the failed July 2016 coup against President Tayyip Erdogan. He has denied any involvement. Since the abortive coup, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over alleged links to Gulen, while some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the military, public and private sectors. Rights groups and some of Turkey s Western allies have voiced concern about the crackdown, fearing the government is using the coup as a pretext to quash dissent. The government says only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says deeply infiltrated institutions such as the army, schools and courts. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel presses cautious SPD over joining new German coalition;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel piled pressure on Monday on the Social Democrats (SPD) to rejoin a grand coalition with her conservatives, arguing that the European Union and the wider world urgently needed a stable German government in place. More than two months after its Sept. 24 national election, Europe s economic and political powerhouse is still without a government and officials say coalition talks may now properly begin only in the new year. There are European elections in 2019... so there is a big expectation that we take positions, she told reporters, referring to proposals by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and by French President Emmanuel Macron on the future governance of the EU s currency and economic union. Merkel also cited conflicts in the Middle East, tensions with Russia and relations with the United States as factors that required a Germany capable of acting . David McAllister, an executive committee member of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), echoed her views in comments to Reuters, adding that Germany needed to iron out its stance on key EU issues ahead of European Parliament elections in 2019. Diligence definitely comes before speed (in forming a coalition) but the government should be formed in time for Germany to be capable of acting if decisions need to be made (in Europe) in 2018, McAllister said. The conservatives should signal willingness to compromise and avoid drawing red lines as they prepare for talks with the SPD, he said. Preliminary talks are due to begin on Thursday. While the conservatives and SPD have different opinions on Europe, they managed to work together in a 2013-2017 governing coalition and all major parties in Germany agree on fundamental issues relating to the EU, McAllister added. Merkel s initial efforts to forge a three-way coalition with the liberals and the Greens collapsed on Nov. 19, forcing her to approach the SPD, which had wanted to go into opposition after suffering its worst election result in German postwar history. SPD leader Martin Schulz, who has previously been strongly opposed to another grand coalition , said on Monday he ruled nothing out ahead of the preliminary talks. Stung by their previous experience of serving as junior partner in Merkel-led governments - in 2005-09 and again in 2013-17 - the SPD rank-and-file membership shares Schulz s reticence about joining a new coalition. Many SPD members favor a looser arrangement whereby the SPD agrees to tolerate a Merkel-led minority government, supporting or at least agreeing not to vote against certain measures. A poll for RTL and NTV television showed 48 percent of SPD members were in favor of toleration, an inherently less stable form of government, and only 36 percent in favor of a renewed grand coalition. Merkel herself has said she would prefer a fresh election to presiding over a minority government. Schulz has promised to allow SPD members a vote on any deal his party reaches with Merkel. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek government under fire over would-be Saudi arms deal;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece s junior coalition party leader on Monday faced questioning in parliament and calls for his suspension over a failed deal to sell Greek army missiles to Saudia Arabia. Panos Kammenos, defense minister in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras government, secured a 66-million-euro deal with Saudi Arabia for the sale of surplus missiles to the Gulf state. The deal fell through in August and questions have arisen since over its transparency. Greece s supreme court prosecutor has ordered an investigation after press reports that the government used a middleman to broker the deal - something illegal in government-to-government deals since it is seen as likely to lead to corrupt practices. Kammenos has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His right-wing Independent Greeks party has just nine lawmakers in parliament, but Tsipras s government depends on it for a thin majority of 153 seats in the 300-member assembly. A fully legal government-to-government agreement to sell ammunition is being presented as corruption, Kammenos told lawmakers. It is a government-to-government deal and there are no intermediaries. The money that would have left Saudi Arabia would have gone to the state coffers - no intermediary, no middlemen, he said. But Conservative opposition lawmakers have called for the minister s resignation and for a probe into the sale. Others have also questioned the possible sale of arms to Saudia Arabia, which is involved in the Yemen conflict. In any normal country, the prime minister would have suspended the defense minister until the case was cleared up, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the main opposition New Democracy leader, told a heated parliamentary debate. Is Mr. Kammenos perhaps blackmailing you with toppling the government? he asked Tsipras. The deal was approved in March by Greece s top decision-making body on foreign affairs and defense matters, KYSEA, which is headed by Tsipras. The reasons it fell through are unclear. Greek anti-corruption laws ban the use of intermediaries in government-to-government agreements. The government denies wrongdoing and says the so-called intermediary was an authorised representative of Saudi Arabian interests. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Nov 27) - Networks;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! [0905 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Zimbabwe finance minister Chombo to be held in custody until trial;HARARE (Reuters) - Ousted Zimbabwe finance minister Ignatius Chombo, charged with three counts of corruption for offences that allegedly took place two decades ago, was denied bail on Monday and will be detained in custody until his case is heard on Dec. 8. Zimbabwe s new president Emmerson Mnangagwa named Patrick Chinamasa as acting finance minister to replace him. Chombo, who faces charges including trying to defraud the central bank, was detained after the military seized power in Operation Restore Legacy , which it said was meant to remove criminals around former president Robert Mugabe. His lawyer, Lovemore Madhuku, told reporters that he would appeal the magistrate s ruling in the High Court on Tuesday. Their decision was always made up that bail would not be granted here ... We are hopeful that the High Court will show independence, Madhuku said. Earlier, he told a packed courtroom that Chombo, who sat impassively throughout the hearing, would deny the charges at his trial and had documentary evidence showing the allegations had no basis. The magistrate who detained Chombo said the former minister could abscond, influence state witnesses or be the target of a mob attack over the allegations that he abused his position when he was minister of local government over a decade ago. Chombo, who was appointed finance minister in October, was among members of the G40 political faction allied to Mugabe and his wife, Grace, who were also expelled from the ruling ZANU-PF party. Two ousted ZANU-PF Youth League leaders, Kudzanai Chipanga and Innocent Hamandishe, who were both allied to G-40, were also ordered to be detained until Dec. 8. Some Mnangagwa supporters have called for unspecified action against G40 but the president has urged citizens not to undertake any form of vengeful retribution . Chombo told the court on Saturday how he was abducted from his home on Nov. 15 by armed men in soldiers uniform and kept blindfolded for nine days. He was promoted to the finance portfolio from the interior ministry by Mugabe in an October reshuffle, replacing Chinamasa, who the chief secretary to the president and cabinet said will return to the role until a new cabinet has been appointed. Zimbabwe is struggling with a severe shortage of the U.S. dollars it uses instead of its own currency. In his main act as finance minister, Chombo told parliament on Nov. 9 that Zimbabwe s budget deficit would soar to $1.82 billion or 11.2 percent of gross domestic product this year from an initial target of $400 million. Mnangagwa, who served Mugabe loyally for decades, was sworn in as president last Friday after the 93-year-old former leader quit under pressure from the military. He is expected to form a new cabinet this week. Zimbabweans are watching to see Mnangagwa he breaks with the past and names a broad-based government or selects other figures from the Mugabe era s old guard. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's Christmas markets open under tight security a year after attack;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Christmas markets opened on Monday at the start of the holiday season, with security staff on hand and concrete barriers to protect shoppers, nearly a year after an Islamist militant killed 12 people by driving a truck into crowds. Some 2,600 markets, known for their sparkling Christmas trees and wooden stalls serving candied nuts, sausages, mulled wine and handicrafts, opened across Germany under tighter than usual security. The markets are beloved by Germans and a major tourist attraction for visitors this time of year. In the city of Bochum in Western Germany, organizers decorate concrete bollards, wrapping them up as Christmas presents with bows to make them appear festive. In Berlin, Petra Henne, who had been at the market in December last year just half an hour before Tunisian militant Anis Amri drove a hijacked truck into the crowd, came out for the opening this year to enjoy the festivities. The extra security was a bit oppressive , she said. And it is awful, this violence that you can t do anything about. But Berliners are on good form and they carry on anyway. What else can one do? An interior ministry spokesman said the risk of an attack in Europe and Germany is continuously high . Organizers and business owners had complained that the government was reluctant to share the cost of extra security measures. What could be done was done, said Berlin s Mayor, Michael Mueller on Monday, noting that those measures still could not guarantee absolute security. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) far-right party asked members of the public to share pictures showing extra security measures at their local markets and post them on social media in protest against Chancellor Angela Merkel s decision in 2015 to open Germany s borders to more than a million asylum seekers. The AfD blames Merkel s immigration policy for what it says is a rise in crime and Islamist attacks. Klaus Schultheis, an expert in German Christmas markets who collects annual national data on the subject, said he knew of only two markets that were canceled over security concerns. Christmas markets are a piece of the German culture that shouldn t disappear no matter what, he said. It goes on. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Portugal approves 2018 budget, seeks to trim deficit further;LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal s parliament on Monday approved in the final reading the minority Socialist government s 2018 budget bill that aims to trim the deficit to a new low in the country s democratic history thanks to continuing, if slower, economic growth. The budget was approved by the Socialists and their far-left allies in parliament - the Communists and Left Bloc - who together hold 122 seats in the 230-seat house. The remaining lawmakers voted against the document that set the deficit at 1.1 percent of gross domestic product. The allies have already reversed many of the austerity policies of the previous center-right administration introduced under an international bailout program in 2011-14, and next year s plan carries more measures like tax cuts for low to medium incomes and higher pensions. The Socialist administration has debunked the myth that to have balanced accounts it is necessary to sacrifice the economy, jobs and well-being of Portuguese, Pedro Nuno Santos, secretary of state for parliament affairs, told lawmakers. The budget envisages that Portugal s strongest economic performance in at least a decade will extend into next year, with investment, tourism and exports remaining robust. But growth will slow to 2.2 percent from 2017 s 2.6 percent. Despite the approval, some analysts say that during the budget discussions pressure has been building on Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who came to power exactly two years ago, from the left and the unions for more state spending. That could make it more difficult to maintain the budget cuts down the road. As the 2019 electoral period approaches, there will be more serious pressure on the government, and the trend is no longer that of accelerating growth, said political scientist Antonio Costa Pinto of the University of Lisbon. They ve had good growth and deficit numbers in the first two years but those will be difficult to replicate, he said, adding though that potential tensions between the government and its allies were unlikely to result in any political crisis. The projected deficit is higher than the initial 1 percent plan due to hundreds of millions of euros added to expenditure on aid and reconstruction after devastating fires in June and October this year, which killed over 100 people and were an embarrassment to the government. Still, the gap is poised to narrow from this year s projected 1.4 percent - the lowest since Portugal returned to democracy in 1974 - as the economy is expected to grow for the fifth consecutive year. Nevertheless, Brussels has warned Portugal, along with several other countries, that their budgeted structural deficit cuts in 2018 fell short of EU requirements while some government spending also caused concerns. The European Commission has also put Portugal s overall 2018 budget gap at 1.4 percent, the same as this year. Costa argues that his government will allay Brussels concerns with each month that passes , citing his record of beating deficit-busting targets in 2016 and 2017. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran candidate says Nasralla won, urges president to concede;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Luis Zelaya, the third-placed candidate in Sunday s Honduran presidential election, said on Monday that Salvador Nasralla was the country s new leader, and urged the U.S.-friendly incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez to accept defeat. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Aoun holds talks on Hariri government;BEIRUT (Reuters) - President Michel Aoun held talks on Monday with other Lebanese political leaders over the future of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s government, but gave no sign whether they discussed Hariri s demand the country steer clear of regional turmoil. Aoun s office said the talks were positive and constructive but did not detail steps to address the demands Hariri made after postponing his shock resignation, notably that Lebanese stick by the state policy of staying out of regional conflicts - a reference to Iran-backed Shi ite group Hezbollah. The consultations would continue once Aoun returns on Friday from an official visit to Italy, the statement said. A senior Lebanese official said the consultations at the presidential palace in Baabda aimed to help Hariri s government get back on its feet , after weeks of political instability triggered by Hariri s Nov. 4 resignation, announced in Riyadh. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia forced Hariri to resign and held him against his will, triggering an intervention by France which led to his return to Beirut last week. Riyadh says Hariri, Lebanon s top Sunni Muslim politician and a long-time Saudi ally, resigned freely and denies holding him. In his resignation speech, Hariri strongly criticized Iran and its heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite Muslim ally Hezbollah for meddling in the Arab world. Since returning to Beirut, Hariri has said all Lebanese must stick by the state policy of disassociation , or keeping out of regional conflicts - a reference to Hezbollah. Leading Druze politician Walid Jumblatt, an influential figure in Lebanon, said after meeting Aoun that it was important to talk about disassociation , and how to achieve it. He said it would be wise not to bring up the question of Hezbollah s weapons in discussions, referring to previous rounds of futile talks on this point. The senior Lebanese official said the consultations might end with Lebanon reaffirming the ministerial statement that implicitly includes disassociation . The official spoke on condition of anonymity as Aoun s consultations were not over. Hariri said on Saturday he would not accept Hezbollah stances that affect our Arab brothers or target the security and stability of their countries . ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hariri says Hezbollah must remain neutral to ensure Lebanon moves forward;PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Monday that the political and militant group Hezbollah must stop interfering in regional conflicts and accept a neutral policy to bring an end to Lebanon s political crisis. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which forms part of the Lebanese government, is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and in Iraq against Islamic State militants. Gulf monarchies have accused the Shi ite group of also supporting the Houthi group in Yemen and of backing militants in Bahrain. Hezbollah denies any activity in Yemen or Bahrain. Hariri s main patron is Saudi Arabia, Iran s main regional rival, which has also intervened in regional conflicts. I don t want a political party in my government that interferes in Arab countries against other Arab countries, Hariri said in an interview recorded on Monday with French broadcaster CNews. I am waiting for the neutrality which we agreed on in the government, he said. One can t say one thing and do something else. Hariri shocked Lebanon on Nov 4 by resigning from his post in a statement from Saudi Arabia. His resignation, however, has not yet been accepted. President Michel Aoun held talks on Monday with other Lebanese political leaders over the future of Hariri s government but gave no sign whether they discussed Hariri s demand that the country steer clear of regional turmoil. Lebanon cannot resolve a question like Hezbollah which is in Syria, Iraq, everywhere because of Iran. It is a regional political solution that needs to be done, Hariri said. The interference of Iran affects us all. If we want a policy that is good for the region we shouldn t be interfering. He said he was ready to stay on as prime minister if Hezbollah accepted to stick by the state policy of staying out of regional conflicts. However, he said he would resign if Hezbollah did not keep to that, although consultations so far had been positive. I think in the interest of Lebanon, Hezbollah is carrying out a positive dialogue. They know we have to remain neutral in the region. He said that if this week s consultations ended positively he would possibly modify the make-up of the government and added that he was open to elections before next year. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe president Mnangagwa appoints Chinamasa acting finance minister;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday named Patrick Chinamasa acting finance minister until a new cabinet has been appointed, the chief secretary to the president and cabinet said in a statement. Chinamasa was a former finance minister under Robert Mugabe s government but was moved to a newly created ministry of cyber security during a reshuffle last month. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia seeks two-day ceasefire in Damascus suburb;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military says conducted air strike against ISIS in Somalia;BOSASO, Somalia (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Monday it had carried out an air strike against Islamic State militants in northeast Somalia, killing one person. Islamic State has been gathering recruits in the region, although experts say the scale of its force is unclear and it remains a small player compared to the al Shabaab group. In coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, U.S. forces conducted an airstrike against ISIS, in northeastern Somalia on Nov. 27, killing one terrorist, the U.S. Africa Command said in a statement. Colonel Ali Abdi, a military officer in an area near the town of Qandala in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, said the strike took place in hills near the town. We heard a huge crash of air strike in the hilly areas of Dasaan remote area behind Qandala town this afternoon Abdi told Reuters from Dasaan. After the strike the IS militants ran away from there. We went to the scene and saw pieces of a dead body. Last month, a group loyal to Islamic State seized a small port town in Somalia s semi-autonomous Puntland region, the first town it has taken since emerging a year ago. The group, which refers to itself simply as Islamic State, is a rival to the larger al Shabaab force, which is linked to Islamic State s rival al Qaeda and once controlled much of Somalia. Early this month, the U.S. military carried out its first air strike against Islamic State militants, killing several. Last week, Somalia s government said it had requested a U.S. air strike that killed scores of suspected militants to help pave the way for an upcoming ground offensive against al Shabaab. Earlier this year, the White House granted the U.S. military broader authority to carry out strikes in Somalia against al Shabaab. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New Venezuela oil boss to give military more PDVSA posts;CARACAS (Reuters) - A general appointed at the weekend to run Venezuela s energy sector will name more military officers to senior management posts at state oil company PDVSA as part of a shakeup the government says is aimed at fighting corruption, two company sources told Reuters on Monday. In a surprise move, unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday tapped Major General Manuel Quevedo to lead PDVSA [PDVSA.UL] and the Oil Ministry, giving the already powerful military control of the OPEC nation s dominant industry. Besides the corruption scandals, Quevedo will have to tackle an attempted debt restructuring, within the context of a deep recession and debilitating U.S. sanctions. Sources in the sector said Quevedo s appointment could quicken a white-collar exodus from PDVSA and worsen operational problems at a time when production has already tumbled to near 30-year lows of under 2 million barrels per day. About 50 officials at state oil company PDVSA have been arrested since August in what the state prosecutor says is a crusade against corruption. Sources within PDVSA and the oil industry said Maduro s administration was using corruption allegations to sideline rivals and deepen its control of the industry, which accounts for over 90 percent of export revenue. The order given is to militarize PDVSA in key areas, said a PDVSA employee, asking to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media. A second source said he was told military officials would take over key production divisions in Venezuela s east and west. Venezuela s president, a former bus driver and union leader whose popularity has plummeted during the economic crisis, has gradually handed the military more power in his cabinet and in key sectors such as mining. Unlike his popular predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro does not hail from the military. The opposition says he has been forced to buy the loyalty of the army, historically a power broker in Venezuela, giving them top posts and juicy business contracts while turning a blind eye to corruption. PDVSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an internal company message seen by Reuters called on workers to come to Caracas on Tuesday for Quevedo s swearing in. Let s all go to Caracas to consolidate the deepening of socialism and the total, absolute transformation of PDVSA, the message read. Quevedo, a former housing minister with no known energy experience, is not a heavyweight in Venezuela s political scene, although two sources close to the military told Reuters he was a Maduro ally. Opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado predicted the appointment would worsen PDVSA s operations. They re getting rid of the old executives, who although socialist and working under catastrophic management, at least knew about oil, he said. Now we re going to have totally inexperienced hands. Although military appointees had been on the rise within the oil industry too, Quevedo s appointment is the first time in a decade and a half that a military official has taken the helm of the oil industry. PDVSA so far had been led by chemist Nelson Martinez and the Oil Ministry by engineer Eulogio Del Pino, both of whom rose in the ranks under previous PDVSA president and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez. Later demoted to become Venezuela s representative at the United Nations in New York, Ramirez recently criticized Maduro for not reforming Venezuela s flailing economy, in what insiders say is a power struggle between the two rivals. The opposition has also accused Quevedo of violating human rights during the National Guard s handling of anti-Maduro protests, in which stone-throwing hooded youths regularly clashed with tear gas-firing soldiers. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio included Quevedo on a 2014 list of Venezuelan officials whom he said should be named in U.S. sanctions, although Quevedo does not appear in the list released by the U.S. Treasury Department. Venezuela s government denies abuses, saying protesters were in fact part of a U.S.-promoted armed insurrection designed to sabotage socialism in Latin America. Quevedo s appointment has worried foreign oil companies in Venezuela, including U.S. major Chevron and Russian state oil giant Rosneft, according to industry sources. Venezuela is also trying to pull off a complex restructuring of foreign debt, including $60 billion in bonds, about half of which have been issued by PDVSA. Bondholders were invited to Caracas for a meeting with the government two weeks ago, but market sources say there has been no concrete progress or proposals since. PDVSA said on Friday it was making last-minute payments on two bonds close to default, including one backed by shares in U.S.-based Citgo, a Venezuelan-owned refiner and marketer of oil and petrochemical products, due on Monday, and called for trust as it seeks to maintain debt service amid the crisis. Quevedo s position on the debt issue is not publicly known. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Water entered missing Argentine sub's snorkel, causing short circuit;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Water entered the snorkel of the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan, causing its battery to short-circuit before it went missing on Nov. 15, a navy spokesman said on Monday as hope dwindled among some families of the 44-member crew. The San Juan had only a seven-day oxygen supply when it lost contact, and a sudden noise was detected that the navy says could have been the implosion of the vessel. Ships with rescue equipment from countries including the United States and Russia were nonetheless rushing to join the search. Before its disappearance, the submarine had been ordered back to its Mar del Plata base after it reported water had entered the vessel through its snorkel, causing a battery short circuit, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference. They had to isolate the battery and continue to sail underwater toward Mar del Plata, using another battery, Balbi said. After contact with the San Juan was lost, the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international body that runs a global network of listening posts designed to check for secret atomic blasts, detected a noise the navy said could have been the submarine s implosion. The search for the 65-meter (213-foot) diesel-electric submarine is concentrated in an area some 430 km (267 miles) off Argentina s southern coast. The effort includes ships and planes manned by 4,000 personnel from 13 countries, including Brazil, Chile and Great Britain. Among the crew s family members, fissures started appearing on Monday between those who refuse to give up hope and those who say it is time to accept that their loved ones will not come back alive. Some relatives have said they are focusing on the lack of physical evidence of an implosion and the possibility that the submarine might have risen close enough to the ocean surface to replenish its oxygen supply after it went missing. But Itati Leguizamon said she believed her husband, crew member German Suarez, had died. There is no way they are alive, she told reporters, her voice shaking and eyes welling with tears. It is not that I want this. I love him. I adore him. He left his mother and sister behind, but there is no sense in being stubborn. The other families are attacking me for what I am saying, she said, but why have they not found it yet? Why don t they tell us the truth? ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's 'thrilled' Prince Harry announces he will wed U.S. actress Meghan Markle;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Prince Harry and U.S. actress Meghan Markle announced on Monday they were getting married next year, saying their relationship had blossomed incredibly quickly after meeting on a blind date. Harry, 33, Queen Elizabeth s grandson and fifth-in-line to the British throne, and Markle, 36, best known for her role in the U.S. TV legal drama Suits , said they had got engaged in London this month and will wed in the spring next year. The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was confirmation to me that all the stars were aligned, everything was just perfect. This beautiful woman just tripped and fell into my life, I fell into her life, Harry said in a broadcast interview. [L8N1NX5AE] The queen, who had to give her assent for the union, and her husband Prince Philip were delighted, Buckingham Palace said, while Harry also received the blessing of Markle s parents. We re thrilled. I hope they will be very happy indeed, his father, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles said. Harry and Markle, who is a divorcee, met in July 2016 after they were introduced through a mutual friend, with both knowing little about the other. I had never watched Suits, I had never heard of Meghan before and I was beautifully surprised when I walked into that room and saw her. I was like I m going to really up my game here, Harry said. After just two dates, the couple decided to go on holiday together to Botswana but it was only months later that the prince, the younger son of Charles and his first wife Princess Diana, publicly confirmed their relationship in a rebuke to the media over its alleged intrusion into Markle s private life. I did not have any understanding of just what it would be like, she said. Both of us were totally surprised by the reaction, added Harry, who said they had had a frank conversation about what she was letting herself in for. It was not until September this year that they made their first public appearance together at the Invictus Games in Toronto, a sports event for wounded veterans. Earlier the couple posed for photographs in the grounds of Kensington Palace in central London where the couple will live in a cottage. Asked when he knew Markle was the one , he replied: The very first time we met. Markle showed off a dazzling three-stone ring, designed by Harry himself with at its center a diamond from Botswana surrounded by two diamonds taken from the personal collection of his late mother Diana. Harry said she would have been thick as thieves with Markle. It s so important to me to know that she s a part of this with us, Markle said. The wedding is likely to attract huge attention across the world, as did the marriage of Harry s elder brother William to Kate Middleton in 2011. We are very excited for Harry and Meghan, William and Kate said in a statement. It has been wonderful getting to know Meghan and to see how happy she and Harry are together. In his office s warning to the media, Harry referred to the sexism and racism directed at Markle, whose father is white and her mother African-American. We are incredibly happy for Meghan and Harry. Our daughter has always been a kind and loving person, Markle s parents Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland said in a statement. To see her union with Harry, who shares the same qualities, is a source of great joy for us as parents. We wish them a lifetime of happiness and are very excited for their future together. Educated at the exclusive Eton College, Harry s teenage years were overshadowed by negative headlines, fostering an intense dislike which he and his brother harbored because of the way papers hounded their mother. She died in a Paris car crash in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi. Harry was portrayed as a royal wild child and playboy prince, and in 2002 he admitted smoking cannabis and getting drunk when underage in a pub near the royal family s country estate amid suggestions he had fallen in with a bad crowd. He later scuffled with paparazzi outside a London nightclub and drew outrage by dressing as a Nazi officer at a party. But he turned around his image after joining the army, where he spent 10 years and included two tours of duty in Afghanistan. He said it was a role where he felt he could be himself without media scrutiny or any other trappings of his gilded upbringing. Even when he was photographed partying naked and playing billiards in a private room in Las Vegas in 2012, the response was less critical and more understanding. He left the army in 2015 to focus on royal duties and charity work, particularly the welfare of military veterans, and continuing his mother s work helping those with AIDS, and mental health issues. His easy-going manner with the public has made him one of the most popular members of the Windsors. That has put him at the forefront of a rebranding of the monarchy as modern and relevant, a far cry from the perception of a hopelessly out-of-touch institution following the 1997 death of Diana. To coincide with the 20th anniversary of her death this year, Harry opened up about his own trauma at losing his mother at a young age, and was even quoted as saying he wanted out of the royal family altogether. Like William s wife Kate, Meghan will not become a princess in her own right after marrying Harry. However, Harry, like his brother, is likely to be made a duke when he marries, meaning Meghan would become a duchess. Markle was born in Los Angeles in 1981. Her father was a TV lighting director for soaps and sitcoms and her mother a clinical therapist. She made her first TV appearance in a 2002 episode of medical drama General Hospital has appeared in a number of TV shows and films, such as Horrible Bosses , but achieved greatest fame for her starring part as Rachel Zane in the ongoing Suits series. In 2011, she married film producer Trevor Engelson but they divorced two years later. She had her own lifestyle blog thetig.com, which she recently shut down, and like her future husband has become a prominent humanitarian campaigner. She also criticized U.S. President Donald Trump in a TV interview before last year s U.S. election, calling him misogynistic. Britain s royals are traditionally supposed to avoid making any political interventions and Harry said he had confidence that his wife-to-be would be able to handle the pressures her role would bring. I know the fact that she ll be unbelievably good at the job part as well is obviously a huge relief to me because she ll be able to deal with everything else that comes with it, he said. We re a fantastic team. We know we are. (This story has been refiled to remove extraneous words in lead) ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. consumer finance agency lawyer sides with Trump over succession - sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top lawyer for the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has concluded that President Donald Trump has the authority to name its acting director, three sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday, rejecting an effort by her former boss at the agency to name his immediate successor. The office of CFPB General Counsel Mary McLeod has prepared a memo concurring with the opinion of the U.S. Justice Department that Trump has the power to appoint his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, as temporary leader of the federal watchdog agency, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. One source said the memo would be sent to CFPB staff on Monday. CFPB officials did not respond to requests by email and phone requesting comment. McLeod’s opinion places her against Richard Cordray, who resigned as CFPB director on Friday and elevated his former chief of staff, Leandra English, to replace him on an interim basis until the Senate confirms a permanent successor named by Trump. Hours later, the Republican president named Mulvaney as acting head, plunging the bureau into uncertainty. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: What is the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?;(Reuters) - The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been thrown into disarray by a battle between the White House and Obama-era officials over who gets to run the federal watchdog on an interim basis after its director resigned. Outgoing director Richard Cordray elevated an agency official to replace him on an interim basis. But Republican President Donald Trump then named his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, as acting director until the president names a permanent successor who is confirmed by the Senate, which could take months. Here are some facts about the CFPB. The CFPB’s creation The CFPB was created in 2011 under Democratic former President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to look out for the interests of ordinary borrowers. Prior to the enactment of the Dodd Frank Act, which created the CFPB, consumer financial protection was spread across seven federal agencies. None of them prioritized the consumer, which critics said allowed predatory and deceptive mortgage practices to flourish, fueling the crisis. The agency’s duties The CFPB is the only federal agency focused exclusively on enforcing consumer financial laws. It is meant to ensure that all consumers have access to markets for consumer financial products and services and that such markets are fair, transparent and competitive. It was given the power to issue regulations and monitor a range of lenders from banks to non-bank firms that were previously unsupervised at the federal level including mortgage companies and payday lenders. It also has the power to discipline firms for misconduct. Since opening its doors, it has levied fines and dealt with more than a million consumer complaints relating to mortgages, credit cards, student loans, debt collection and other financial products. The CFPB said it has provided $11.7 billion in relief for more than 27 million harmed customers. That figure includes debts that were canceled or reduced as well as compensation paid out by firms. Controversy over the agency The brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, now a leading liberal voice in the U.S. Senate, the agency draws strong support from Democrats and strong opposition from Republicans, who say it wields too much unchecked power. Republicans objected to a clause in the Dodd Frank law that the CFPB director could be fired only “for cause” and they foiled Obama’s first choice for CFPB director, Warren, who at the time was a Harvard professor. Obama then appointed Richard Cordray as director while Congress was in recess. Republicans have introduced legislation to put a commission in charge of the CFPB to weaken the power of its single director and have Congress decide its funding. Currently, the U.S. Federal Reserve funds the agency. A federal appeals court ruled in 2016 that the structure of the CFPB was unconstitutional because it gave too much power to its director. Other agency heads who answer to the president can be fired at will. The CFPB has appealed that ruling, which came after it was sued by mortgage servicer PHH Corp.(PHH.N) Wall Street accuses the agency of imposing overly burdensome regulations and large fines. The agency during the Trump administration The Republican-led Congress and White House have put a halt to rule-making by the CFPB. The Trump administration is focused on rolling back Obama-era financial rules. Trump this month signed a congressional resolution that lets banks, credit card companies and other financial firms block customers from filing class action lawsuits. The move killed a CFPB rule released in July. CFPB restrictions on payday lenders, also known as “small-dollar” lending, are seen as the potential next target for Republicans. The CFPB’s power now is concentrated on enforcement, but that power may also be blunted. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Detained Ugandan journalists charged with libel, other offences;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda on Monday charged eight managers and editors of a daily newspaper with several offences including libel and computer misuse and a court ordered them detained until Dec. 5. The journalists have been in detention for nearly a week after police raided the premises of Red Pepper accusing them of publishing a false story. Police had said on Nov. 23 that they had preferred several charges including treason against the journalists. Their lawyer, Maxma Mutabingwa, said that when they appeared in court for the first time on Monday, treason was not among the offences read out to them. Instead they were charged with several counts of libel, offensive communication and publication of information prejudicial to security. I think police backed off the treason charge because it was ridiculous, it was not sustainable at all, he told Reuters. The journalists applied for bail but the state prosecutor said he needed time to respond and court adjourned the proceedings to Dec. 5. The raid on the paper followed publication of a story that, citing unnamed sources, said that Rwanda believed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was plotting to oust its leader, Paul Kagame. The paper has a wide readership and often regales its audience with a surfeit of salacious content about private lives of political and business officials and celebrities. In recent years it has moved to include more political coverage and has some times irked authorities with audacious headlines on security, diplomacy and power maneuvers in the government of President Yoweri Museveni. Police has kept the media outlet s premises cordoned off. It has not published the daily since the raid. Computers, phones and other equipment confiscated during the search have also not been returned, Mutabingwa said. Rights groups and journalists have complained of escalating harassment and intimidation of independent media by security personnel in the East African country especially as Museveni faces growing opposition pressure to end his rule. Local media, including Red Pepper, have reported this month on tensions between Uganda and neighboring Rwanda over a range of economic and security disputes but Uganda s foreign affairs ministry has dismissed the reports as rumors. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Teenage IS supporter guilty of plotting attack on Bieber concert in UK;LONDON (Reuters) - A British teenager was found guilty on Monday of planning to drive a car into a crowd in the Welsh capital Cardiff, with a Justin Bieber concert and a shopping center among the list of possible targets for his Islamic State-inspired attack. The 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wrote a martyrdom letter in which he said he was a soldier of the Islamic State . Police found the letter in a rucksack in his bedroom which also contained a large knife and a hammer. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said he was planning an attack of a similar type to one near Britain s parliament in March, where a man in a van drove into pedestrians on London s Westminster Bridge before stabbing a policeman. This teenager s behavior over many months leaves no doubt that he intended to kill and maim as many people as possible in an attack reminiscent of the incident on Westminster Bridge, said Sue Hemming, head of the special crime and counter terrorism division at the CPS. He was also posting extremist content online that could have encouraged others to commit terrorist acts and downloading instructions on how to carry out lone wolf attacks. The Westminster attack was one of five major attacks this year that British authorities are treating as terrorism incidents. Five people including the policeman and the attacker, Khalid Masood, died in the Westminster incident. The CPS said the Welsh schoolboy had posted Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account, and his Instagram password was Truck Attack . He researched possible targets including Cardiff Castle, a theater, a library and a shopping center, as well as the Bieber gig, which took place in June. The teenager admitted that he owned the knife and hammer and had written the letter, but denied intending to harm anyone. He will be sentenced in January. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil Speaker Maia says working to pass pension reform this year;SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil s lower house Speaker Rodrigo Maia said on Monday he will try to pass a fiscally crucial pension reform bill this year in the chamber, but he told reporters he would only put the measure to the vote if it has enough support. The bill needs a three-fifths super majority of 308 votes to pass and poll by Arko Advice consultancy found the government is 46 votes short and time is running out. A government plan to hold a vote next week will likely get put off until Dec 13, with days to spare before the Congressional recess begins on Dec 22. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron's European dream more difficult without 'strong' Germany;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron s bold vision for European renewal will be harder to translate into real policy change if France does not have a strong partner in Germany, France s new government spokesman said on Monday. Benjamin Griveaux s comments were the most explicit yet by the French government that the faltering coalition talks in Germany posed a risk to Macron s ideas for reform of the euro zone, as well as defense, immigration and energy policy. We are naturally paying close attention to everything that might help stabilize the political situation (in Germany) because without a strong partner it will obviously be more difficult to carry out the president s ambitious European project, Griveaux told a weekly news briefing. Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have spoken frequently in past months about their desire for France and Germany, the European Union s two largest economies and often its engines of change, to take the lead on closer cooperation. But Merkel s fourth term was plunged into doubt a week ago when three-way coalition talks with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens collapsed. Now momentum is building for another grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD). Even so, those negotiations may not be quick. The EU faces a narrow window to forge agreement on Macron s sweeping proposals because, as European elections in 2019 approach, the bloc is likely to be distracted by Brexit negotiations and wrangling over a new long-term budget. Moreover, doubts are rising over whether the SPD would make European reform a priority in looming coalition negotiations. On euro zone reform, Macron has called for the creation of a budget, finance minister and separate parliament for the currency bloc. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Eight bodies found in boat washed up on Japan beach: coast guard;TOKYO (Reuters) - Eight bodies, which had been reduced partly to skeletons, were found on Monday in a small wooden ship that washed up on a beach in the sea of Japan, the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) said. The ship came ashore on a beach 70 km (44 miles) north of a marina where police last week found eight men who said they were from North Korea. Police said they appeared to be fishermen whose boat, found nearby, had run into trouble. The JCG said they were working to establish the nationalities of the eight bodies on the ship. The bodies of two males, similarly partly skeletonized, were also found at the weekend on the western shore of the Sea of Japan island of Sado. Although the nationalities of these two have not yet been established, what appeared to be North Korean cigarettes and life jackets with Korean lettering on them were nearby, the JCG s Sado station said. Both local police and the JCG said the two may have been from North Korea. The incidents come at a time of rising tension over North Korea s nuclear arms and missile programs after President Donald Trump redesignated the isolated nation a state sponsor of terrorism, allowing the United States to levy further sanctions. Experts say North Korea s food shortages could be behind what is potentially a series of accidents involving North Korean ships. North Korea pushes so hard for its people to gather more fish so that they can make up their food shortages, said Seo Yu-suk, research manager of North Korean Studies Institution in Seoul. Small and old North Korean ships that sail beyond its coastal waters are vulnerable to bad weather, he said. Yoshihiko Yamada, professor at Japan s Tokai University, said fishermen operating in the Sea of Japan have just entered a season of hostile weather conditions. During the summer, the Sea of Japan is quite calm. But it starts to get choppy when November comes. It gets dangerous when northwesterly winds start to blow, he said. A total of 43 wooden ships that were believed to have come from the Korean peninsula washed up on Japanese shores or were seen to be drifting off Japan s coast from January to Nov. 22 this year, compared with 66 ships for the whole of last year, the JCG said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea warns North not to repeat armistice violation;PANMUNJOM, South Korea (Reuters) - North Korea violated an armistice agreement with South Korea this month when North Korean soldiers shot and wounded a North Korean soldier as he defected across their border and it must not do so again, South Korea s defense minister said on Monday. The defector, a North Korean soldier identified only by his surname, Oh, was critically wounded but has been recovering in hospital in South Korea. The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between North Korea and the international community over its nuclear weapons program, but the North has not publicly responded to the defection at the sensitive border. South Korean Minister of Defence Song Young-moo issued his warning to the North while on a visit to the border where he commended South Korean soldiers at a Joint Security Area (JSA), in the so-called Truce Village of Panmunjom, in the demilitarized zone, for rescuing the defector. A North Korean border guard briefly crossed the border with the South in the chase for the defector on Nov. 13 - a video released by the U.N. Command (UNC) in Seoul showed - a violation of the ceasefire accord between North and South at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Shooting towards the South at a defecting person, that s a violation of the armistice agreement, Song said. Crossing the military demarcation line, a violation. Carrying automatic rifles (in the JSA), another violation, he added as he stood near where South Korean soldiers had found Oh, collapsed and bleeding from his wounds. North Korea should be informed this sort of thing should never occur again. Since the defection, North Korea has reportedly replaced guards stationed there. Soldiers have fortified a section of the area seen aimed at blocking any more defections by digging a trench and planting trees. As Song was speaking 10 meters away from the trees North Korean soldiers planted, four North Korean soldiers were spotted listening closely. South Korean military officials pointed out two bullet holes in a metal wall on a South Korean building, from North Korean shots fired at Oh as he ran. Oh has undergone several operations in hospital to remove bullets. His lead surgeon, Lee Cook-jong, told Reuters his patient has suffers from nightmares about being returned to the North. In South Korea, six soldiers, three South Korean and three American, were given awards by the U.S. Forces Korea last week in recognition for their efforts in rescuing the defector. After inspecting the site on Monday, Song met troops stationed there for lunch and praised them for acting promptly and appropriately . South Korea has been broadcasting news of the soldier s defection towards North Korea via loudspeakers, according to the South s Yonhap news agency. South Korean military officials have declined to confirm that. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU Parliament chief asks Poland to ensure MEPs' safety after far-right protest;WARSAW (Reuters) - The president of the European Parliament said on Monday he would ask Poland s prime minister to ensure the security of Polish members of the assembly after a far-right protest staged a symbolic hanging of the politicians. On Saturday a few dozen people in the southern Polish city of Katowice hanged the portraits of politicians who backed a European Parliament resolution calling on the Polish government to condemn the xenophobic and fascist march held on Poland s Independence Day on Nov. 11. I will write to PM Beata Szydlo to ensure the security of elected members of the European Parliament to express their opinions independently, without threat, and oppose those who spread hatred by exhibiting outrageous pictures of hanged politicians, Antonio Tajani said on Twitter. Poland s socially conservative, euroskeptic government came under fire from the EU and human rights group for allowing far-right marchers - who were among some 60,000 people at the Nov. 11 rally - to brandish banners with racist slogans such as pure blood, clear mind or Europe will be white or uninhabited . Leading members of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) joined other politicians in denouncing the use of hate speech at the rally, but critics said their response was too slow. The PiS government has been increasingly at loggerheads with Brussels since sweeping to power two years ago over what the EU sees as its flouting of democratic rules. One has to condemn what happened in Katowice, Szydlo said. However, she added that if she received Tajani s letter she would also ask him to keep an eye on those MPs who insult and slander Poland in the European Parliament . Organisers of the Saturday protest told the local katowice24.info news portal that they were expressing their opposition to the slanderous voices against Poles expressing their pride during the Independence Day March . The pictures showed six members of the European parliament (MEPs) who belong to the opposition Civic Platform (PO) party. The economically liberal, pro-EU PO party governed Poland for eight years until its defeat by PiS in the 2015 national election. Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said prosecutors would look into the Katowice protest. He said he doesn t like what happened, but he also blamed the opposition, saying that in their protests they also displayed aggression . An action triggers a reaction, Ziobro told the public Trojka radio station. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope begins Myanmar trip in shadow of Rohingya crisis;YANGON (Reuters) - Pope Francis landed in Yangon on Monday, the start of a delicate visit for the world s most prominent Christian to majority-Buddhist Myanmar, which the United States has accused of ethnic cleansing its Muslim Rohingya people. The pope will also visit Bangladesh, to where more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled from what Amnesty International has dubbed crimes against humanity by Myanmar security forces, including murder, rape, torture and forcible displacement. The Myanmar army denies the accusations. Only about 700,000 of Myanmar s 51 million people are Roman Catholic. Thousands of them have traveled by train and bus to Yangon, the country s main city, to catch a glimpse of the pope. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says U.S. wants use gold trader case to impose sanctions on Ankara;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Monday that the United States wanted to use the trial in New York of a Turkish gold trader to impose sanctions on Ankara. In an interview with broadcaster Kanal24, Bozdag also said that the United States had pressured the trader, Reza Zarrab, to sign off on accusations against Turkey. They may have told Zarrab, Either you will remain in prison until you die, or you will sign under what we tell you, and they threatened him with retributions to sign off on accusations, Bozdag said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Quake of magnitude 6.2 strikes off Papua New Guinea: USGS;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck off the Pacific Ocean nation of Papua New Guinea on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of any damage or injuries from the quake, which struck 125 km (78 miles) east of the town of Rabaul, at a depth of 70 km (44 miles). ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Queensland result leaves Australian PM closer to edge;SYDNEY (Reuters) - The loss of a state election in Queensland has stepped up pressure on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who risks losing control of parliament at a by-election next month. Three Australian prime ministers have been ousted by their own parties since 2010, and a splintering of the conservative base in Queensland has raised questions over how long Turnbull s premiership can survive. Opinion polls already show his popularity at a record low. Queensland s Liberal National Party (LNP), which replicates the federal coalition made up of Turnbull s Liberal Party and its partner the National Party, was hurt by voters, particularly in regional and rural areas, defecting to Pauline Hanson s right-wing, populist One Nation party. Vote counting is still underway, but the conservative divide has left the Labor Party on track to form the government in the coal-rich northeastern state. Smarting from this latest setback, Turnbull reminded voters on Monday that if they backed One Nation at the next federal election it could play into the hands of the center opposition. Everyone is entitled to cast their vote as they see fit but the voting for One Nation in the Queensland election has only assisted the Labor Party, Turnbull told reporters in the city of Wollongong, south of Sydney. The next federal election is due either in late 2018 or early 2019. But first up is the Bennelong by-election on Dec. 16. Should the Liberals lose the seat in Sydney s north, Turnbull would have to negotiate with independents and small parties to retain control of the House of Representatives, where the government is formed. It could heighten chances of deadlock between the two houses of parliament, which might force Turnbull to call an early election, just as he did last year. Regarded as a moderate, Turnbull has trouble holding on to voters leaking to the right following the resurgence of Hanson s anti-immigration party, according to Queensland University of Technology political science expert Clive Bean. In recent times Queensland has often been one of the states that has made the difference when it comes to whether the coalition wins government or not, said Bean. The seats that tend to bleed votes to One Nation do tend to be seats where the LNP is traditionally stronger. Forecast to win just one seat in Queensland, One Nation polled almost 14 percent of the vote, spoiling the LNP s chances of taking the state off Labor. At the federal level, the ruling coalition s fragility has been exacerbated by rules forcing lawmakers holding dual nationality, which is prohibited, to recontest seats. Bennelong is one such seat, and should defeat there lead to the coalition losing control over the House of Representatives it would immediately undermine the prime minister s efforts to stave off an inquiry into Australia s scandal-hit major banks. While Turnbull has distanced himself from the Queensland election result, maverick coalition member George Christensen tweeted an apology to voters who switched allegiance to One Nation, blaming the federal government for not standing up for conservative values. A lot of that rests with the Turnbull govt, it s (sic) leadership & policy direction, the tweet said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico finance minister to resign as presidency race looms: sources;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican finance minister Jose Antonio Meade will step down on Monday, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday, as the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) gears up to pick its candidate for the 2018 presidential election. One of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Meade would announce his intention to seek the presidency for the PRI when resigning. The office of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto late on Sunday said it would hold an event at 10.00 a.m. local time on Monday, without specifying what it entailed. Several Mexican media said Meade would announce his resignation at 10.00 a.m. A spokesman for Meade s office said he was unaware of any plans for the minister to resign on Monday. Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking a second term, and his party faces a major challenge from twice presidential runner-up former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has led early polls for the July 2018 election. Meade would be replaced as finance minister by Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya, currently head of state oil firm Pemex, one of the two people familiar with the situation said. Meade has for months been one of the favorites to be the PRI candidate, both due to his reputation for competence as a minister across two rival administrations, and because he has avoided the taint of corruption that has battered the party. The 48-year-old has also been a top pick to succeed the departing Agustin Carstens at the helm of the Mexican central bank. The second person said if Meade was not stepping down to run for the PRI, he would be going into that job. Meade is not a member of the centrist PRI, which changed its statutes in August to make it easier for outsiders to run for the presidency. Officials say his reputation for honesty and cross-party appeal will be vital if he hopes to defeat Lopez Obrador. On Thursday, the PRI announced it would begin registering presidential hopefuls on Dec. 3, and that a national convention would formally elect the candidate on Feb. 18. Education Minister Aurelio Nuno, 39, Pena Nieto s former chief of staff and one of his closest allies, as well as health minister Jose Narro, are the most likely alternatives to Meade if he does not seek the candidacy, senior officials say. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bali airport may stay closed longer than 24 hours amid Agung eruption: governor;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Bali Governor Made Mangku Pastika said the closure of I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport could last longer than 24 hours amid an eruption of Mount Agung. We don t know how long it will be closed for, Pastika told reporters, referring to the Bali airport. Sure, it s been closed for 24 hours until tomorrow, but that doesn t rule out the possibility the (closure) could be extended, he said. At least 5,000 foreign and 15,000-20,000 domestic tourists pass through the airport each day, according to Pastika. Ngurah Rai is Bali s main international gateway and a hub for tourists traveling to Indonesian islands further east. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Xi wants China to spruce up toilets to boost tourism, quality of life;BEIJING (Reuters) - China must keep up efforts to revolutionize its toilets until the task is completed, state media quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping as saying on Monday, amid efforts to boost the domestic tourist industry and improve the quality of life. Xi launched the toilet revolution in 2015 as part of a drive to improve standards of domestic tourism in China, which he said suffers from deep-seated problems of a lack of civility. The toilet issue is no small thing, it s an important aspect of building civilized cities and countryside, Xi said, according to the official Xinhua news agency. As an emerging industry, Chinese tourism needs an upgrade in both hardware and software to continue strong growth, Xinhua reported Xi as saying. China s National Tourism Administration recently announced plans to build and upgrade 64,000 toilets between 2018 and 2020. But the toilet revolution is about more than just giving sightseers a better holiday experience;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia says 40,000 evacuated from Bali volcano, more need to move;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s disaster mitigation agency said 40,000 people had been evacuated from near Bali s erupting Mount Agung volcano, but tens of thousands still needed to move with an imminent large eruption warning issued on Monday. We really ask people in the danger zone to evacuate immediately because there s a potential for a bigger eruption, said Sutopo, a spokesman for Indonesia s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB). He told a briefing that 40,000 people had evacuated out of around 90,000-100,000 residents estimated in the 8-10 km (5-6 miles) exclusion zone around Agung. Not all residents have evacuated yet. There are those (who haven t evacuated) because their farm animals haven t been evacuated yet. There are those who feel they are safe, he said, adding that security personnel were trying to persuade people to leave but they could be evacuated by force. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar's Suu Kyi to visit China amid Western criticism over Rohingya exodus;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, will soon visit Beijing, state media said on Monday, as the southeast Asian nation appears to draw closer to its northern neighbor, China, amid global criticism over an exodus of Rohingya refugees. Myanmar has bristled at pressure from Western nations over its armed forces brutal response to August attacks on security posts by Rohingya Muslim militants in the western state of Rakhine. The United States and the United Nations have accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing and called for the military to be held accountable over allegations of killings, rape and arson that sent more than 620,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. China, however, has backed what Myanmar officials call a legitimate counter-insurgency operation in Rakhine, and stepped in to prevent a resolution on the crisis at the U.N. Security Council. News of Suu Kyi s visit comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Chinese military leaders welcomed Myanmar s powerful army chief Min Aung Hlaing last week and pledged closer cooperation. The state-run daily Global New Light of Myanmar said Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi would soon depart to attend a Communist Party of China-hosted forum of world political leaders in Beijing. Suu Kyi s spokesman Zaw Htay could not be reached for more details, but the meeting begins on Thursday and runs until Dec. 3, according to China s official news agency Xinhua. Myanmar is in the international spotlight this week as Pope Francis makes the first visit by a head of the Roman Catholic church to the Buddhist-majority country. He has previously spoken out about the treatment of minority Muslims to whom Myanmar denies citizenship, but some Christians fear doing so in the country could provoke a backlash. Many in Myanmar refuse to recognize the name Rohingya, preferring to call them Bengalis to suggest they belong in neighboring Bangladesh. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bali airport's closure due to volcano has affected 445 flights: operator;JAKARTA (Reuters) - The closure of I Gusti Ngurah Rai airport on the Indonesian island of Bali due to a volcanic eruption has affected 445 flights, including 196 international routes, its operator said on Monday. PT Angkasa Pura, the operator, has prepared five alternative airports for airlines to divert their inbound flights, including ones in neighboring provinces, it said in a statement. Bali airport s official website showed flights operated by Singapore Airlines, Sriwijaya, Garuda Indonesia, Tiger Air, Malaysian Airlines and Jetstar had been canceled. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran leader Hernandez declares himself victor in presidential vote;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a U.S. ally from the center-right National Party, on Sunday cited exit polls to declare himself winner of the poor Central American nation s election, despite the opposition saying it too had won. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Castro ally and intellectual Armando Hart dead at 87;HAVANA (Reuters) - Armando Hart, who headed the Cuban revolution s literacy campaign and served for decades as education and then culture minister under Fidel Castro, died on Sunday from respiratory failure at age 87, Cuban state media reported. Hart, a Marxist intellectual and lawyer, who fought in the urban underground and was imprisoned during the last year of the revolution against U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, was married to Haydee Santamaria until 1980, a heroine of the revolution and one of its most important female figures. They had two children, both of whom died in an automobile accident in 2008. Hart was also a member of the Communist Party Political Bureau and the Council of State for many years, the two most powerful executive bodies in Cuba. In 1997, Hart became director of the national center to preserve the memory and works of Jose Marti, the country s most venerated figure, a position he held up to his death. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras president with strong lead in TV station's election exit poll;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - An exit poll by a Honduran TV channel gave a strong lead to President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a staunch U.S. ally of the center-right National Party, after polling stations closed in the poor Central American nation s election on Sunday. The Channel 5 exit poll gave Hernandez 43.93 percent of the vote, with Salvador Nasralla, who helms a broad left-right coalition called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, trailing on 34.70 percent. The Honduras election tribunal is due to give its first official count later in the evening. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing kindergartens get permanent inspectors after abuse scandal: Xinhua;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Beijing will hire permanent inspectors to provide oversight at every one of its kindergartens following child abuse allegations at a facility run by the New York-listed RYB Education, state news agency Xinhua said late on Sunday. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission said educational inspectors stationed at kindergartens throughout the city will submit reports on safety, sanitation and management to a central database, according to the Xinhua report. It said safety checks are currently underway and kindergartens will be ordered to make immediate improvements should problems be found. RYB Education said late on Saturday it had fired the head of one of its kindergartens as well as a 22-year-old female teacher following allegations that children were abused. Xinhua reported earlier that police were checking allegations that children were reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills . The scandal has sparked outrage throughout China and RYB s New York-listed shares plunged 38.4 percent on Friday. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate's Schumer to meet with official named by Cordray to lead CFPB;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer plans to meet on Monday afternoon with Leandra English, the Democrats’ pick to lead the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Schumer and Senator Elizabeth Warren will meet jointly with English, who on Friday was named temporary head of the agency by outgoing Director Richard Cordray, according to Warren’s office. President Donald Trump is challenging English’s bid to serve as acting director, naming his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, to serve in an interim role. English has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order barring Mulvaney from leading the regulator. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Republican U.S. senators to watch in the debate on the tax bill;(Reuters) - Republican Senator Rand Paul said on Monday he will vote for a tax bill headed to the U.S. Senate floor for debate this week, settling questions about his support for the measure, although several other senators’ positions on it were still uncertain. President Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress want to pass tax legislation by the end of 2017. The House of Representatives has approved its own bill. Republicans control the Senate by a 52-48 margin, leaving little room for defections. Here is a list of Republicans whose votes could be pivotal to the bill’s fate. Paul, a fiscal hawk with a libertarian streak who sometimes strays from the party line, said on Monday he planned to vote for the tax bill, which was headed soon to the Senate floor. In a Fox News online opinion piece, Paul said the bill was not perfect and he would “prefer a larger cut,” but that he planned to back it because it achieved some of his goals and he could push for more changes next year. “I plan to vote for this bill as it stands right now,” wrote Paul, of Kentucky. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin surprised colleagues earlier this month by becoming the first Republican to announce opposition to the tax plan. That earned him a telephone call from Trump. Johnson, formerly chief executive of a polyester and plastics manufacturer, said the legislation unfairly helps corporations over small businesses. But he has said he hopes changes could be made to win his support. Susan Collins, a moderate Maine Republican, has said she has qualms about Senate leaders’ plan to include repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate in the tax bill. The mandate requires people to buy health insurance or face a penalty. Collins said her staff’s research showed that for some middle-class Americans, higher insurance costs stemming from repeal of the individual mandate would outweigh the benefits of the tax cuts they would receive. She was among three Republicans who voted in July to block a Republican attempt to dismantle Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. Senator Bob Corker, a Trump critic who has decided not to run for re-election, has not taken a position on the tax bill. As a deficit hawk, Corker’s main concern is red ink - the tax bill is expected to add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Corker and Trump have openly feuded in recent weeks, with Corker calling the White House an “adult day care center” after Trump attacked Corker repeatedly on Twitter.     Senator John McCain of Arizona, a maverick and former presidential nominee, says he will wait for the final version of the tax-cut bill before announcing his position. The war hero infuriated Trump when he joined Collins and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in voting against the Senate bill last summer to repeal Obamacare. McCain, who is still working after a diagnosis of brain cancer, has said he has almost no working relationship with Trump and has criticized the administration. Murkowski of Alaska chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling. That provides an enticement for her to support the tax bill. Her committee has passed legislation to open the refuge to oil drilling, and the measure is expected to be attached to the tax bill. But Murkowski voted against three attempts to dismantle Obamacare in the summer, so the combination of the tax bill with a repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate may give her pause. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a vocal Trump critic who is not seeking re-election in 2018, has issued a statement saying he appreciated the effort to fix the tax code but was worried about the impact on the national debt. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, is a conservative Republican, like Flake. Lankford has been in talks with Flake and others about opposing the tax plan on the grounds that it would balloon the national deficit, Time magazine has reported. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. court to hold hearing Monday on who will lead CFPB: order;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal court in the District of Columbia is due to hear arguments on Monday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT) on the question of who should lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the court said. Lawyers for the Trump administration and Leandra English, a CFPB official, are due to appear at a hearing to consider whether Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s pick to temporarily lead the agency, should be removed. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Opposition takes surprise lead over U.S. ally in Honduras election;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - A left-right coalition led by a flamboyant TV host took a surprise lead in the Honduran presidential election, initial results showed on Monday, upsetting forecasts that the crime-fighting, U.S. allied incumbent would comfortably win. Salvador Nasralla, who helms the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, had 45.17 percent of the vote, while the National Party s Hernandez had 40.21 percent with 57 percent of ballot boxes counted, according to the country s election tribunal. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pentagon says reviewing 'adjustments' to arms for Syrian Kurds;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it was reviewing adjustments in arms for U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria but stopped short of declaring a halt to weapons transfers, suggesting such decisions would be based on battlefield requirements. Turkey said on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump told President Tayyip Erdogan he had issued instructions that weapons should not be provided to Syrian Kurdish fighters, which Ankara views as threat. It called on Monday for Washington to follow through on its pledge. We are reviewing pending adjustments to the military support provided to our Kurdish partners in as much as the military requirements of our defeat-ISIS and stabilization efforts will allow to prevent ISIS from returning, said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon, using an acronym for Islamic State, which U.S. and U.S.-backed forces are battling in Syria. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam court jails blogger for seven years for 'propaganda' over spill;(Reuters) - A court in Vietnam jailed a blogger on Monday for seven years for conducting propaganda against the state , the latest action against a critic of the one-party state. Nguyen Van Hoa, 22, rose to prominence after a toxic waste spill from a steel mill built by Taiwan s Formosa Plastics Corp s Vietnam unit that polluted more than 200 km (125 miles) of coast, sparking rare protests in the Communist Party-ruled country. Despite sweeping economic reforms and growing openness to social change, including gay, lesbian and transgender rights, Vietnam retains tight media censorship and its government does not tolerate criticism. In recent months, authorities have stepped up measures to silence critics whose voices on various issues have been amplified by social media in a country that is among Facebook s top 10 by users. The people s court in Ha Tinh province said on its website Hoa had been found guilty of propaganda against the state. It said Hoa produced videos to call for protests after the spill. Neither Hoa nor or a legal or family representative were available for comment. Hoa was arrested and prosecuted in April for publishing anti-government content. The Formosa incident, one of Vietnam s worst environmental disasters, is a sensitive topic for the government as it balances political stability, environmental protection and foreign investment, one of the drivers of economic growth. The government has said it will prosecute identified Formosa protesters for causing public disorder . Another critic of the steel mill spill, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, known as Me Nam (Mother Mushroom), was given a 10-year jail term for publishing propaganda against the state. A prominent rights lawyer who has represented Quynh, said on Monday the Bar Federation in Phu Yen province had revoked his licence to practice. The government does not want me to work as a lawyer anymore because I have been defending poor people, people who were unjustly charged ... cases that are sensitive in Vietnam, the lawyer, Vo An Don, told Reuters. Don said he would not be able to defend Quynh at her appeal hearing. Reuters was unable to immediately reach the Bar Federation or government authorities for comment on the case. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Berlusconi suggests Italian general could be next prime minister;ROME (Reuters) - Silvio Berlusconi has suggested a Carabinieri (military police) general could be Italy s next prime minister if his center bloc wins national elections slated for early 2018. Berlusconi, a four-times prime minister, is barred from holding public office because of a 2013 conviction for tax fraud. He is trying to overturn the ban, but is seeking alternative candidates if his legal battle fails. I have many names, but there is someone who is very capable ... who has had success and is esteemed by everyone, General (Leonardo) Gallitelli, Berlusconi told a Sunday night chat show on state broadcaster RAI. Gallitelli headed the Carabinieri, a military police force that operates under the control of both the defense and interior ministries, from 2009 to 2015. He is currently head of Italy s anti-doping office. Berlusconi said he had not yet discussed the idea with Gallitelli. He has previously suggested that European Central Bank Governor Mario Draghi or the CEO of carmaker Fiat Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, could be his prime ministerial candidate. The billionaire media tycoon was widely written off after he quit as prime minister in 2011 amid a sex scandal. But he has made a remarkable political comeback and his Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party is now the lynchpin of a center coalition that leads in opinion polls ahead of next year s election. Berlusconi, 81, said if his bloc took power he would like to see 12 people from outside the world of politics appointed to the cabinet, with only 8 ministries entrusted to politicians. His allies, the far-right Northern League and Brothers of Italy, are likely to baulk at the suggestion. The three parties have agreed that whichever group gets more votes next year should nominate the prime minister. Forza Italia is just ahead of the Northern League in the polls, but surveys indicate no one party or bloc will win enough votes to govern alone, meaning a hung parliament looks likely. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia orders immediate evacuation as highest alert issued for Bali volcano;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia closed the airport on the tourist island of Bali on Monday and ordered 100,000 residents living near a grumbling volcano spewing columns of ash to evacuate immediately, warning that the first major eruption in 54 years could be imminent . The airport was closed for 24 hours from Monday morning, disrupting 445 flights and some 59,000 passengers, after Mount Agung, which killed hundreds of people in 1963, sent volcanic ash high into the sky, and officials said cancellations could be extended. Plumes of smoke are occasionally accompanied by explosive eruptions and the sound of weak blasts that can be heard up to 12 km (7 miles) from the peak, the Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said in a statement after raising the alert from three to its highest level of four. The potential for a larger eruption is imminent, it said, referring to a visible glow of magma at Mount Agung s peak overnight, and warning residents to evacuate a danger zone at a radius of 8-10 km (5-6 miles). Sutopo, a BNPB spokesman, said there had been no casualties so far and 40,000 people had left the area, but tens of thousands still needed to move. Video footage shared by the agency showed volcanic mud flows (lahar) on the mountainside. Lahar carrying mud and large boulders can destroy houses, bridges and roads in its path. Bali, famous for its surf, beaches and temples, attracted nearly 5 million visitors last year, and its airport serves as a transport hub for the chain of islands in Indonesia s eastern archipelago. But tourism has slumped in parts of Bali since September when Agung s volcanic tremors began to increase and the alert level was raised to maximum before being lowered in October when seismic activity calmed. I m really worried. Maybe I ll go somewhere south that I think will be safe to avoid being trapped by the ashfall, said Maria Becker, a German tourist staying in Amed, around 15 km (9 miles) from the volcano. Agung rises majestically over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 metres (9,800 feet). Northeastern Bali is relatively undeveloped compared to the more heavily populated southern tourist hub of Kuta-Seminyak-Nusa Dua. Indonesia s Vulcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Centre (PVMBG), which is using drones, satellite imagery and other equipment, said predictions were difficult in the absence of instrumental recordings from the last eruption 54 years ago. In 1963, an eruption of Agung killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages by hurling out pyroclastic material, hot ash, lava and lahar. Recordings now show the northeast area of Agung s peak has swollen in recent weeks indicating there is fairly strong pressure toward the surface , PVMBG said. It warned that if a similar eruption occurred, it could send rocks bigger than fist-size up to 8 km (5 miles) from the summit and volcanic gas to a distance of 10 km (6 miles) within three minutes. Some analysis, however, suggests the threat should not be as great this time because energy at Mount Agung s magma chamber is not as big and the ash column only around a quarter as high so far as the 20 km (12 miles) reached in 1963, Sutopo said. CHECK-INS CLOSED Bali airport, about 60 km (37 miles) from the volcano, will be closed for 24 hours, its operator said. Ten alternative airports have been prepared for airlines to divert inbound flights, including in neighboring provinces. Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd said it was cancelling flights on Tuesday, while Jetstar was offering to exchange Bali bound tickets for other destinations. Television footage showed hundreds of holidaymakers camped inside the airport terminal, some sleeping on their bags, others using mobile telephones. We have been here (in Bali) for three days we are about to leave today, but just found out our flights have been canceled. We have got no information because the gates, the check-ins, have been closed indefinitely, said Carlo Oben from Los Angeles. Cover-More, Australia s biggest travel insurer, said on its website customers would only be covered if they had bought policies before the volcano alert was first issued on Sept. 18. Indonesia s hotel and restaurant association said stranded tourists at member hotels would get one night s free stay. The main airport on Lombok, next to Bali, was closed after being open for much of the day, a spokesman said. Airlines avoid flying when volcanic ash is present because it can damage engines and can clog fuel and cooling systems and hamper visibility. (For interactive package on Agung eruptions, click tmsnrt.rs/2AayRVh)(For graphic on Pacific ring of fire, click tmsnrt.rs/2AzR9jv) ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;17-year-old Danish girl jailed for planning bomb attacks on schools;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A 17-year-old Danish girl who offered to fight for Islamic State was sentenced on Monday to eight years in prison by the Danish high court for planning bomb attacks on two schools, one of them Jewish. The high court on Friday found the girl - who was 15 years old at the time - guilty of the offences, upholding an earlier district court ruling. The district court had initially sentenced her to six years in jail. The prosecutor had called for her to sentenced to preventive detention indefinitely. The girl was arrested at her home in January last year and charged with planning the attacks after acquiring chemicals for making bombs. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany may need constitutional change to allow it to strike back at hackers;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany may need to change its constitution to allow it to strike back at hackers who target private computer networks and it hopes to complete any legal reforms next year, a top Interior Ministry official said on Monday. The plan could include disarming servers used in attacks and reflects growing concern about the frequency and intensity of such attacks. Industry is also raising pressure on government to respond to the barrage, which ultimately could hurt Europe s leading economy. State Secretary Klaus Vitt told Reuters the government believed significant legal changes would be needed to allow such hack back actions. A constitutional change may be needed since this is such a critical issue, Vitt said on the sidelines of a cyber conference organized by the Handelsblatt newspaper. The goal is to get it done by the end of next year at the latest. Vitt said much would depend on the outcome of coalition talks in Germany of which cyber capabilities formed a part. Experts say it may be easier to enact the legal changes under a right-center-left coalition, which has ruled for the past four years, than under a three-way coalition with smaller parties that Chancellor Angela Merkel initially tried to forge. Top German intelligence officials told parliament last month they needed greater legal authority to strike back in the event of cyber attacks from foreign powers. Vitt told the conference that changing threats and new modes of attack required different responses from government agencies including more offensive capabilities. We must assume that purely preventative measures will not be sufficient to counter future attacks, Vitt said. He said no one would question the need for police to enter a house and disarm a sniper shooting at innocent people. But what about servers that are used to launch cyber attacks that paralyze the IT (information technology) of hospitals or utilities, affecting hundreds of thousands of people? Andreas Jambor, chief information security officer for RWE Generation SE, a unit of German energy giant RWE (RWEG.DE), welcomed the moves. There s a war underway on the internet .... We want things to be sorted out, Jambor said. Other countries are doing it and we should do it here as well. Andreas Ebert, head of security for German carmaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) said any offensive action should be taken by the government. Arne Schoenbohm, president of Germany s BSI federal cyber protection agency, declined to give details about the legal concepts being developed. He said the need to target servers would likely make up just 0.01 percent of all cases. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain, Ireland at odds on border as Brexit deadline nears;DUBLIN/LONDON (Reuters) - Ireland and Britain remained at odds on Monday on how to progress talks on the Irish border with a week to go before London could face failure in persuading European Union leaders to open trade talks at a December Brexit summit. The EU handed Prime Minister Theresa May a 10-day absolute deadline on Friday to improve her divorce terms and meet three key conditions, including on the border between EU-member Ireland and Britain s province of Northern Ireland. Before it can sign off on the first phase of talks, the Irish government wants Britain to spell out in writing how it intends to make good on its commitment that the 500-km (300-mile) border will remain as seamless post-Brexit as it is today. Dublin and EU officials say the best way to avoid a hard border is to keep regulations the same north and south and that this needs to be agreed in phase one, but a spokesman for May reiterated on Monday that a solution can only be concluded in the second phase of talks. We remain firmly committed to avoiding any physical infrastructure but the secretary of state (Brexit minister David Davis) was also clear that we will only be able to conclude them finally in the context of the future relationship, he told reporters. May s spokesman repeated that the whole of the United Kingdom will leave the EU s single market and customs union but Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said it seemed impossible to Dublin that some form of hard border could be avoided if there are diverging regulatory regimes north and south. It s simply not credible to say on the one hand that we are going to have a frictionless border and at the same time that all of Britain, including Northern Ireland, is going to leave the customs union, the single market without giving any reassurance on the avoidance of regulatory divergence, he told national broadcaster RTE. With the possibility of Ireland vetoing progress on the talks dominating some newspaper front pages in Britain, Coveney added that Dublin would not need to use its veto if it remained dissatisfied since it has the backing of all other EU states. We don t need to use a veto because we have complete solidarity on this issue. It is clear to us that if there is not progress on the Irish border, we will not be moving onto phase two in December and that was reinforced to me as late as last Friday by very senior EU leaders, he said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Paul says he plans to vote for Senate tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Rand Paul, a fiscal hawk who has sometimes opposed his party’s spending plans, said on Monday he planned to vote for the U.S. Senate tax bill and urged his colleagues to do the same. Paul, writing in a Fox News online opinion piece, said that while the bill was not perfect and he would “prefer a larger cut,” he planned to support the measure because it achieved some of his goals, and he could push for more changes next year. “This tax bill is a true test for my colleagues,” wrote Paul, who represents Kentucky. “I’m not getting everything I want — far from it. But I’ve been immersed in this process. I’ve fought for and received major changes for the better — and I plan to vote for this bill as it stands right now.” President Donald Trump, also a Republican, had set a goal of signing a sweeping tax overhaul into law before the end of 2017. About a half-dozen lawmakers have voiced concerns about provisions including a nearly $1.5 trillion addition to the federal deficit, the treatment of small businesses and the potential impact on health insurances costs for people with medical conditions. Senate Republicans hope to pass their bill as early as Thursday. With only a 52-48 majority in the 100-seat Senate, and Democrats unlikely to vote for the measure, they can lose support from no more than two members of their own ranks. With the clock ticking, Trump was set to meet top Senate Republican tax writers at the White House as the administration considered policy tweaks to make the bill more palatable to potential Republican holdouts. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Europe, global environment mean Germany needs stable government, Merkel says;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany needs a stable government as soon as possible in order to respond to proposals for reforming the European Union and to deal with an uncertain global environment, Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference on Monday. Speaking after a meeting of her Christian Democrat (CDU) party s leadership, she said she would hold meetings with the Social Democrats (SPD), leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), who have agreed under pressure to enter coalition talks with Merkel s camp after first refusing to do so. There are European elections in 2019 ... so there is a big expectations that we take positions, she said, referring to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker s and French President Emmanuel Macron s proposals on the future governance of the currency and economic union. She also mentioned conflict in the Middle East, tensions with Russia and relations with the U.S. as factors that meant Germany needed to be capable of acting . ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. rights forum to hold special session on Myanmar Rohingya - U.N. sources;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. Human Rights Council is expected to hold a special session on killings, rapes and other crimes committed against Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar that have driven more than 600,000 into Bangladesh since August, U.N. sources said on Monday. There will be a special session on December 5, a senior United Nations source told Reuters. Council spokesman Rolando Gomez could not confirm the date but said: There are moves to convene a special session to address the human rights situation in the country. At least 16 of the 47 member states must request holding a special session of the Council, which are rare. Bangladesh and Muslim-majority countries were expected to back the call. In March, the Council already set up a fact-finding team. The investigators reported after their first mission to Bangladesh last month that Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar had testified that a consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson is taking place . The latest Rohingya exodus from Rakhine state to Bangladesh s southern tip began at the end of August, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has described the army s crackdown in Rakhine state as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The military has denied the accusations of murder, rape, torture and forced displacement. Amnesty International and other activist groups, in an open letter sent last week to member states, said that a special session was imperative to launch decisive action and ensure international scrutiny and monitoring of the situation . Pope Francis arrived in Myanmar on Monday on a diplomatically delicate visit for the leader of the Roman Catholic church to the majority-Buddhist country. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish police briefly detain academic in Kurdish militant probe: agency;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish academic Fikret Baskaya was briefly detained on Monday as part of an operation targeting members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, state-run Anadolu news agency said. Twelve other suspects were detained along with Baskaya, it said. Further information about the other suspects status was not immediately available. Baris Yarkadas, a lawmaker from the main opposition CHP, wrote on Twitter that Baskaya, 77, had been detained at his home in the capital Ankara at 6.30 am (0330 GMT) and that police had seized some of his personal possessions. Baskaya, who is an author and university lecturer, was later released after giving a statement to police, another CHP lawmaker, Murat Emir, said in a tweet. He added that Baskaya was detained over an article he wrote on Nov. 7, called Real Terror is State Terror, in which Baskaya said Turkey s Kurds suffered oppression at the hands of authorities. The investigation is ongoing despite Baskaya s release, Emir said. Anadolu said arrest warrants had been issued for a total of 17 people on allegations of aiding the PKK and spreading the group s propaganda on social media. Operations to detain the other suspects were ongoing. The PKK launched a separatist insurgency in southeast Turkey in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Prince Harry's engagement shows British monarchy has moved on from scandals of past;LONDON (Reuters) - King Edward VIII sacrificed his throne and Queen Elizabeth s sister Margaret gave up her one true love, but for Prince Harry marrying a divorcee is no longer a bar to being a royal or following his heart. On Monday, Harry, fifth-in-line to the British throne, announced he was to wed his girlfriend, divorced U.S. actress Meghan Markle, with the blessing of his grandmother, the queen. British social attitudes have been transformed in recent decades but the monarchy has been bound by a more traditional set of Christian values. So the queen s approval is a stark demonstration of how much the monarchy has also changed and modernized in the last 80 years when the idea of a royal marrying someone who was divorced was inconceivable. It s extraordinary how far we ve come since the 1930s, said royal biographer Claudia Joseph. In less than a century times have changed beyond all recognition. Famously, Harry s great-great-uncle Edward VIII set off a constitutional crisis in 1936 by insisting on marrying twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson to the horror of the British establishment, the government and the Church of England, which the monarch nominally heads. It was dubbed the greatest love story of the 20th century and Edward abdicated after just 11 months on the throne and ended up living in France, meaning Elizabeth s father George VI unexpectedly became king. You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love, Edward said in his abdication speech. Such attitudes were still prevalent two decades later. In 1955, Elizabeth s younger glamorous sister Margaret was forced to call off her proposed marriage to a dashing air force officer, Group Captain Peter Townsend. Although a royal equerry, Townsend was still deemed an unsuitable husband for the queen s sister because he was divorced and he was sent off to Brussels by Buckingham Palace. I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend, Margaret said in a sad announcement to the nation. Mindful that Christian marriage is indissoluble and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others. While divorce was considered unfathomable in those days, it has since become a common feature for the Windsors. Of Elizabeth s four children, three of their marriages have ended in divorce, most spectacularly that of Harry s father, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his first wife Princess Diana. They divorced in 1996, 15 years after their fairytale wedding and a year before she was killed in a car crash in Paris and Charles went on to wed another divorcee Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. Camilla was someone who he had first considered marrying in the early 1970s but who royal courtiers had considered unacceptable while she was not keen on taking on the role herself at the time. However Charles and Camilla could not marry in church, and the queen, who holds strong religious beliefs and has taken her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England very seriously, declined to attend the civil ceremony. The Church of England had only ruled three years earlier that a divorced person could in exceptional circumstances marry again in church while their former spouse was still alive. Joseph said Charles s second marriage had paved the way for Harry. I think the dilemma came when Prince Charles married the Duchess of Cornwall, she told Reuters. That was a hard thing for the queen to deal with. Somehow they had to marry without compromising her role as head of the church. Harry and Meghan s union, like all those of the first six royals in direct line of succession, must be approved by the queen under the 2013 Succession to the Crown Act, which replaced an even more prescriptive law dating back to the 18th century. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh are delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness, Buckingham Palace said in a statement. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ousted Hong Kong lawmakers ordered to pay hefty expense bills;HONG KONG (Reuters) - Four Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers who were ousted from the legislature this year condemned on Monday as political persecution a demand that they pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses. A special legislative commission demanded that the lawmakers each pay up to HK$3.1 million ($397,400) in operating expenses and staff wages, the legislative council s president, Andrew Leung, said. Critics say the demand for money is an attempt to bankrupt the four and pile pressure on the city s pro-democracy camp that has tried to challenge what it sees as increasing interference by Beijing despite a promise of autonomy in the financial hub. Leung said the legislature had a duty to recover the funds, backdated to when the lawmakers first took office in October last year, as public money was involved. The former lawmakers - Nathan Law, veteran activist Leung Kwok-hung otherwise known as long hair , lecturer Lau Siu-lai, and surveyor Edward Yiu - would be given four weeks to respond, after which the legislature would decide what to do. This is raw political persecution, said Law, 24, who was jailed in August on an unlawful assembly charge linked to Hong Kong s pro-democracy Occupy protests in 2014, but who is out on bail pending an appeal. It s preposterous, Law added at a news conference held with the other three. Another of the expelled lawmakers, Yiu, said the four had worked hard as lawmakers over nine months, and they should be compensated for that, and not punished unjustly. Hong Kong s High Court expelled the four from the 70-member legislature in July after judging their oaths of office void for various reasons including speaking too slowly, adding extra words, or using a tone of voice suggesting disrespect towards China. The disqualifications came after China s parliament last November judged that lawmakers must swear allegiance to Hong Kong as part of China, and that candidates would be disqualified if they changed the wording of their oath or if they failed to take it in a sincere and solemn manner. The ruling was considered Beijing s most direct intervention in Hong Kong s legal system since the 1997 handover of the city from Britain to China. The disqualifications eroded the influence of the opposition pro-democracy camp that had held a slender one-third veto bloc in the legislative council. Nearly 100 democracy activists are facing court cases in connection with their campaigning and several including student protest leader Joshua Wong have recently been jailed. A former British colony, Hong Kong reverted to China 20 years ago under a one country, two systems formula that guarantees a range of freedoms not enjoyed in China, including a direct vote for half of the legislative assembly. ($1 = 7.8005 Hong Kong dollars) ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mali's regional elections delayed by security concerns;BAMAKO (Reuters) - Mali s government said it has delayed regional elections from December to April amid security concerns caused by the spreading reach of Islamist militants. Mali has struggled to deal with insurgents and sectarian infighting this year despite international military interventions and a 2015 peace deal, and much of the country s north remains beyond government control. Four United Nations peacekeepers and a Malian soldier were killed and 21 people wounded in two separate attacks in the center of the arid West African country on Friday. The government said in a statement that it wants to delay the regional elections, which were originally scheduled for Dec. 17, in order to organize inclusive elections in a peaceful atmosphere . It was not clear if the delay would affect the timing of presidential elections scheduled for July. Opposition politicians expressed concern that the security situation is unlikely to improve by April. The government would not even set the date of the (regional) elections because it does not control the security situation, said Abouacar Sidick Fomba, chairman of the ADEPM party. There is no evidence that the situation will improve by that date. Militants seized Mali s desert north in 2012 before being forced back by French military intervention in 2013. But over the last two years they have reemerged as a major threat to security in Mali and across its vast, porous desert borders in Niger, Burkina Faso and beyond. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government delegation postpones departure to Geneva talks: report;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government delegation has postponed its departure to U.N.-backed peace talks that are due to resume on Tuesday in Geneva, the pro-Syrian government newspaper al-Watan reported. The office of U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said it would not comment on the travel plans of the Syrian government. The al-Watan report cited diplomatic sources in Geneva saying the Syrian government was annoyed by a statement that emerged last week from a Syrian opposition meeting in Riyadh. Syrian opposition groups stuck by a long-standing demand that President Bashar al-Assad be gone from power before a political transition. Damascus viewed the statement as a return to square one , al-Watan reported. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government welcomes committee to discuss constitution;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government welcomes the formation of a committee that will discuss the current constitution and is expected to be formed at a congress to be convened by Russia in Sochi, Syrian state media said. The congress marks a Russian effort to advance a political solution towards ending Syria s six-year-long war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee in the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. U.N.-backed talks towards ending the conflict are due to resume in Geneva this week with the participation of the Syrian opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, who is militarily dominant in the conflict thanks to Russia and Iran. A pro-Damascus newspaper, al-Watan, reported on Monday that the government delegation had postponed its travel to Geneva, saying Damascus was annoyed by the opposition s insistence on its demand that Assad leave power at the start of a transition. In a statement from the Syrian foreign ministry, the Syrian government said it would attend the national dialogue congress at the Sochi talks, whose date has yet to be confirmed. Syria welcomed U.N. participation in legislative elections to be held after the discussion of the constitution, state media cited a foreign ministry statement as saying. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week won the backing of Turkey and Iran - another ally of Assad - last week to host the congress. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chechen leader, amid reshuffles, says ready to die for Putin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia s Chechnya, said he was ready to die for Vladimir Putin and stand down, if ordered, ahead of a federal presidential election next year which has triggered personnel reshuffles that have put some politicians on edge. Kadyrov, 41, spoke during an interview broadcast on state TV late on Sunday that showcased what the unpredictable former warlord regards as his main achievements and, to a stirring soundtrack, showed him boxing, riding a horse, and giving his views on everything from polygamy to gay marriage. His comments looked like a tactic, one he has used before, to secure the Kremlin s public approval, something he didn t have to wait long for. Kadyrov has repeatedly said that he is, speaking figuratively, quite a consistent and committed member of Putin s circle of adherents and intends to continue working where and how the president of the country orders him, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on Monday. He didn t say anything different and that s what we re going on. Ramzan continues to remain the current head of the republic. Who rules the majority Muslim region is important for the Kremlin as Chechnya fought two wars against Moscow after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but now, in return for generous subsidies and a wide degree of autonomy, pledges absolute loyalty. Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya for the past decade during which rights groups have accused him of abuses, is seen by Moscow as the guarantor of that pact and was groomed by the Kremlin for his role after his father s 2004 murder. His comments about possibly quitting came when asked by his state TV interviewer what he made of the prospect of having to leave office at some point. Kadyrov said it was his dream to one day step down from what he described as a very difficult job. He said that, if asked, he could propose several candidates to take over. Once there was a need for people like me to fight, to put things in order. Now we have order and prosperity ... and the time has come for changes, said Kadyrov. Kadyrov, who calls himself Putin s foot soldier, has made similar statements before which have come to nothing. Nor is his position under threat. He was re-elected last year for a five-year term after Putin gave his personal blessing for him to carry in on the job, while warning him that Russian law must be strictly enforced in Chechnya. Kadyrov s statement, like those before it, looked instead like a symbolic show of loyalty to curry favor with Putin who the Chechen leader said in the same interview he saw rarely and only when summoned. Putin, 65, is widely expected to run for a fourth term and has started clearing out the old Russian political elite to bring in younger people, a process that has seen some regional leaders pressured to stand down. That has caused unease in some political circles and Kadyrov has found himself in the headlines in the West this year after rights groups accused him of presiding over a campaign of torture and murder of gay men. Kadyrov, in the same interview, said the allegations had been made up by rights group to attract funding grants and that he and his forces could not have persecuted gay men in Chechnya because there weren t any. He described Putin as his idol. I am ready to die for him, to fulfill any order, he said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian police cut chains from immigration protesters at PM's residence;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police on Monday used metal cutters to remove five protesters who had chained themselves to the gate of the prime minister s official residence over the treatment of asylum seekers detained in Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea police last week expelled about 400 protesting asylum-seekers from a shuttered Australian-run detention camp on Manus Island. The United Nations decried the crackdown as shocking . The Manus Island detention camp, and another in the South Pacific island nation of Nauru, have been cornerstones of Australia s policy under which it refuses to allow asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores. The policy, aimed at deterring people from making a perilous sea voyage to Australia, has been heavily criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups but has bipartisan political support in Australia. But some people, including some Christian groups, object to it. It s our hope that as church leaders we can actually respond ... in non-violent ways, in peaceful ways that actually highlight the issue and do justice to the beauty and the courage of the men on Manus Island, said one of the protesters, Jarod Mckenna, who said he was a Christian pastor. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull does not live in the official residence and he was not there during the three-hour protest which ended when police ordered the five to keep still while the chains were cut from around their necks. They were then taken away in a police vehicle. There were no reports of injuries, police said. Australia says allowing asylum seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores would only encourage people smugglers in Asia and see more people risk their lives trying to reach Australia. Australia closed the Manus Island detention center on Oct. 31, after it was declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea court. The asylum-seekers, who have said they fear for their safety as well as being resettled in Papua New Guinea or another developing country, were taken to transit centers. Australia has rejected an offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 of the men, and is instead aiming to sending up to 1,250 of them to the United States under a swap deal. So many people feel hopeless, Kurdish journalist and Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani told Reuters by text message from one of the transit centers. Papua New Guinea immigration and police officials did not return Reuters telephone calls or emails. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Barely a quarter of Catalans want to pursue split from Spain: poll;MADRID (Reuters) - Barely a quarter of Catalans want to continue with a plan to claim independence from Spain in the wake of Dec. 21 regional elections, according to a poll published in El Pais newspaper on Monday. An illegal Catalan independence referendum on Oct. 1 plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in decades. It eased after the sacking of the secessionist Catalan authorities by the Madrid government elicited little resistance. But uncertainty could return if the pro-independence camp wins in the Dec. 21 vote. Just 24 percent of those polled by Metroscopia said they would like to continue with the independence process after the elections, whereas 71 percent said they would prefer politicians to find an agreement based on Catalonia staying part of Spain. Pro-independence parties may fail to retain an absolute majority of seats in the Catalan parliament in next month s election, the first part of the poll published on Sunday showed. However, the survey s margin of error at 2.4 percent and the fact support was evenly split between the two sides makes reading conclusions from polls difficult. The telephone poll surveyed 1,800 Catalans between Nov. 20 and Nov. 22. Failure to capture a majority in the regional parliament would be a heavy blow for Catalan separatists who have billed the election as a plebiscite on Madrid s decision to impose direct rule on the region last month. The Oct. referendum produced a large majority in favor of independence, but turnout was only 43 percent because many who opposed the breakaway did not vote. Catalan separatist parties are forecast to win 46 percent of the vote, down slightly from 47.7 percent in a previous election in 2015. Unionist parties combined would account for another 46 percent of votes, up from less than 40 percent last time, according to the Metroscopia poll. Turnout for the election, which former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said on Saturday would be the most important in the region s history, is predicted to reach a record 80 percent. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says head of Chechnya to remain despite talk of quitting;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday that Ramzan Kadyrov, the outspoken leader of Russia s republic of Chechnya, would remain in his post despite comments he made about the possibility of standing down. Kadyrov, 41, said in a state interview broadcast late on Sunday that it was his dream to one day leave office and that, if asked, he could suggest several candidates capable of taking over his role. Ramzan continues to remain the current head of the republic, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on a conference call when asked about Kadyrov s statement. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe cabinet pick to show if Mnangagwa is breaking with the past;HARARE (Reuters) - New Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is expected to form a new cabinet this week, with all eyes on whether he breaks with the past and names a broad-based government or selects old guard figures from Robert Mugabe s era. Of particular interest is his choice of finance minister to replace Ignatius Chombo, who was among members of a group allied to Mugabe and his wife, Grace, who were detained and expelled from the ruling party. Chombo is facing corruption charges and is due to appear in court for a bail hearing on Monday. In a tentative sign that he might do things differently, ZANU-PF cut the budget for a special congress to be held next month and also slashed the duration by half from six days, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Monday. Mnangagwa was sworn in as president last Friday after 93-year-old Mugabe quit under pressure from the military. He vowed to rebuild Zimbabwe s ravaged economy and serve all citizens. But behind the rhetoric, some Zimbabweans wonder whether a man who loyally served Mugabe for decades can bring change to a ruling establishment accused of systematic human rights abuses and disastrous economic policies. The composition of the new government will show a clear path whether we continue with the status quo or the clear break with the past that we need to build a sustainable state. It s a simple choice, said former finance minister and opposition leader Tendai Biti. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has called for an inclusive transitional authority to mark a break with Mugabe s 37-year rule and enact reforms to allow for credible and free elections due next year. Zimbabwe needs all hands on deck...We cannot continue reproducing these cycles of instability, Biti, who earned international respect as finance minister in a 2009-2013 unity government, told Reuters. Some economic and political analysts say Mnangagwa s choices may be limited after Cyber Security Minister and close ally Patrick Chinamasa said last week he saw no need for a coalition, as ZANU-PF had a parliamentary majority. And with Mnangagwa saying on Friday elections would go ahead next year as scheduled, the opposition would have little to gain from participating in a coalition just eight months before the vote, Professor Anthony Hawkins, a business studies professor, said. If I were an opposition politician I would say: what s in it for me? Unless I m convinced I m going to lose the election, I won t participate, Hawkins told Reuters. He (Mnangagwa) might introduce technocrats from commerce and that will send out a signal of sorts... As far as the international community is concerned legitimacy is important. It s a very delicate situation and he has very little room for maneuver. The Standard newspaper, which has been critical of Mugabe and his government over the years, said Mnangagwa would be judged on how he delivers on the bold commitments he made at his inauguration. It said he must walk the talk on graft that has exacerbated the country s economic decline. Mugabe s fall after 37 years in power was spurred by a battle to succeed him that pitted Mnangagwa, his former deputy who had stood by him for 52 years, and Mugabe s wife, Grace, 52, who has been at the couple s Blue House mansion in Harare and hasn t been seen in public since. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel pushes on with law seen protecting PM under criminal probe;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli parliament voted on Monday in favor of a draft law barring police from publicizing its conclusions in criminal probes legislation seen as shielding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under investigation for corruption. The draft must still pass two more parliamentary votes. But if written into law, police would not be allowed to say whether they have found sufficient grounds to charge Netanyahu, keeping the Israeli public in the dark until the attorney-general determines whether the prime minister is to be prosecuted. The draft law also proposes a one-year jail term for officials who leak findings to the press. Its two sponsors, confidants of Netanyahu, said the law is meant to protect suspects rights and reputation, while the opposition derided it as a blatant attempt to protect Netanyahu and withhold knowledge from the public about his investigations. The public doesn t need to know everything. The public will find out at the end, Netanyahu s coalition head, David Bitan told the Knesset television channel. Netanyahu has said he has no interest in promoting personal legislation but he has not ordered Bitan and his co-sponsor of the bill, David Amsalem, to withdraw the legislation. Netanyahu is a suspect in two cases, one into alleged meddling in the media industry and the other into gifts he received from rich businessmen. He denies any wrongdoing. But, if charged, he would come under heavy pressure to resign or could call an election to test whether he still had a mandate. This is a Netanyahu law, said Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition party Yesh Atid, which latest polls show as neck in neck with Netanyahu s Likud. It is tailored for very few people. The only people to benefit from it are politicians, mafia heads and politicians who behave like mafia heads. All four prime ministers of the past two decades have been suspects in police investigations, but only Ehud Olmert was charged and convicted. He spent 16 months in jail for accepting bribes from real estate developers. In high-profile cases such as these, police usually say if they have gathered sufficient evidence against the suspects, before handing over to the Justice Ministry, where the Attorney-General and prosecutors decide whether to file charges. The attorney-general has expressed alarm about the proposed legislation. [L8N1NK5EK] The two investigations in which Netanyahu is a suspect are known as Case 1000 and Case 2000. Case 1000 revolves around gifts he received from businessmen, including cigars and champagne. Netanyahu s lawyers say they were simply presents from long-time friends, with no quid pro quo. Case 2000 focuses on suspicions Netanyahu negotiated with the publisher of Israel s best-selling newspaper for better coverage in return for curbs on the competition. The prime minister s lawyers say Netanyahu never seriously considered any such deal. Netanyahu has described himself as a victim of a political witch hunt and said of the cases against him: There will be nothing because there is nothing. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. consumer finance agency official sues to stop Trump appointment;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The deputy director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late on Sunday filed a lawsuit seeking to halt President Donald Trump from naming an official to run the watchdog agency on an interim basis. Leandra English, who was named acting director by outgoing agency chief Richard Cordray on Friday, is seeking a temporary restraining order barring Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, from taking control of the agency as Trump had sought. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, argues that Trump overstepped his legal authority in attempting to place Mulvaney in the post, maintaining Cordray had legal grounds to name his successor until a full-time director is named by Trump and confirmed by the Senate. ;politicsNews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: From taxes to budget, what's on U.S. Congress to-do list;(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is hurtling toward some major deadlines on tax legislation, the budget and other policies. Some of the deadlines are hard and some are soft as the end of 2017 approaches. Here is the Capitol Hill outlook for what promises to be a turbulent few weeks. MONDAY, NOV. 27: President Donald Trump discusses a tax overhaul over lunch with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, the Republican-controlled chamber’s top tax writer, and four other Republican members of Hatch’s panel: John Cornyn, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey and Tim Scott. Senate reconvenes after a week-long holiday break. TUESDAY, NOV 28: Trump joins Senate Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon to urge quick passage of tax legislation. Trump also meets with Republican and Democratic leaders of both the Senate and House of Representatives to talk about funding legislation and other priorities. The Senate Budget Committee holds a hearing on whether Republican tax legislation meets Senate rules for fast-track reconciliation bills. If it does, the bill could be introduced on the Senate floor later on Tuesday, beginning debate. THURSDAY, NOV. 30, or FRIDAY, DEC. 1: Possible, although far from certain, final Senate vote on tax bill. FRIDAY, DEC. 8: Expiration date for funding needed to keep the U.S. government open. Congress has three choices: approve a massive bill for more than $1 trillion to keep the government operating through Sept. 30, 2018;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suicide attack targets area southeast of Baghdad;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two attackers shot several civilians on Monday in the Nahrawan area southeast of Baghdad before one blew himself up and the other was killed by security forces, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said, without providing official casualty figures. Local media reported at least 17 people were killed and 28 wounded. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, described by an interior ministry spokesman as a terrorist attack by two terrorist suicide attackers who fired indiscriminately on citizens in the Nahrawan area . The Sunni Muslim militant group s Amaq news agency said it had killed 35 members of one of the Iran-backed Shi ite militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces. Iraqi security officials say Islamic State is likely to wage an insurgency after its self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed and its militants were dislodged from territories they held across a swathe of Iraq and Syria. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. asks Brazil for peacekeepers for Central African Republic;BRASILIA (Reuters) - The United Nations has asked Brazil to send troops to join its peace mission in the Central African Republic, said Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the U.N. s head of peacekeeping operations, in an interview on Monday. The U.N. Security Council approved this month the deployment of an additional 900 peacekeepers to protect civilians in the impoverished landlocked nation, where violence broke out between Muslims and Christians in 2013. Lacroix said violence had increased in the east, largely due to a security vacuum left by the departure of Ugandan troops, who had been part of a separate U.S.-supported African Union task force tracking Lord s Resistance Army rebels. The request for troops from Brazil, which has just ended a 13-year mission in Haiti, must be agreed to by President Michel Temer and approved by the Brazilian Congress. Brazil has a huge degree of know-how and professionalism and we definitely need those kinds of troops in our peacekeeping operations, Lacroix told Reuters in Brazil s capital, ahead of a meeting with the top brass of the country s armed forces. The troops did a fantastic, really exceptional job in Haiti, where they improved the security situation by establishing a relationship of trust with the Haitian population and exhibited good conduct and discipline, he said. Brazil is emerging from its worst recession on record and a huge government budget deficit could weigh on a decision to send more troops abroad, though its contribution to peacekeeping has enhanced the South American nation s international influence. U.N. peacekeeping forces are facing the pinch of the United States pushing to reduce costs. Washington pays more than 28 percent of the $7.3 billion annual U.N. peacekeeping budget. In June, the U.N. agreed to $600 million in cuts to more than a dozen missions for the year ending June 30, 2018. Lacroix said the peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast had been closed, troop deployment in Sudan s Darfur was being reduced, and next year the peacekeeping operation in Liberia would be closed down. There is an expectation that we be prudent and use our resources in the most cost-effective way we can, said Lacroix, a French diplomat who has been in the role since April. The political objectives and efficiency of almost all of the U.N s 15 peacekeeping operations worldwide were under review, Lacroix said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. in position to stop military support for some groups fighting Islamic State;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States plans to reduce military support for groups fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria but that does not mean Washington will stop all aid to those groups, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday. Sanders said with Islamic State s territory shrinking we re in a position to stop providing military equipment to certain groups but that doesn t mean stopping all support of those individual groups. On Friday, Turkey said President Donald Trump told President Tayyip Erdogan he had issued instructions that weapons should not be provided to the Syrian Kurdish fighters, which Ankara views as threat. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims responsibility for attack southeast of Baghdad: Amaq;CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that took place on Monday targeting the Nahrawan area southeast of Baghdad, the group s Amaq news agency said. The Sunni militant group said it had killed 35 members of Shi ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Forces but the Interior Ministry had earlier said the attack targeted civilians and did not provide official casualty figures. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian opposition aims for Assad's removal in Geneva talks;GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian opposition delegation at peace talks in Geneva is aiming for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and plans to engage his negotiators in serious and direct talks, the head of the opposition delegation Nasr Hariri said on Monday. Hariri called for major powers, especially Russia, to pressure the Assad government into real negotiations on a political transition followed by a new constitution and free elections, in line with a U.N. roadmap to end the six-year war. We stress that political transition which achieves the ousting of Assad at the beginning is our goal, Hariri told a news conference after arriving in Geneva for a round of U.N.-led talks that is scheduled to start on Tuesday. Our goal in the negotiation will be the departure of Bashar al-Assad from the beginning of the transition, he said. A breakthrough in U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva this week seems hardly more likely than in seven failed earlier rounds as Assad pushes for total military victory and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power. All previous diplomatic initiatives have swiftly collapsed over the opposition demand that Assad must go and his refusal to do so. The Syrian government delegation, led by its U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari, failed to arrive in Geneva on Monday when it had been due. It was not clear whether the delegation would arrive on Tuesday, when U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura is due to meet the opposition. We don t have high hopes, the regime is using delaying tactics to obstruct progress toward a political solution, at a time when the opposition comes with one unified delegation, Hariri said. Russia .. .is the only entity capable of bringing the regime to the table of negotiations. For many years, Western and Arab countries backed the opposition demand that Assad leave office. However, since Russia joined the war on behalf of Assad s government two years ago it has become increasingly clear that Assad s opponents have no path to victory on the battlefield. The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and caused the world s worst refugee crisis, driving 11 million from their homes. The Syrian government continued its bombing and sieges of areas including 400,000 people in eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held Damascus suburb, Hariri said on Monday. We are here for the hundreds of thousands who under siege who are in grave need of humanitarian aid and for hundreds of thousands of detainees who are at the verge of death, suffering but living death every day, he said. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pentagon says reviewing 'adjustments' to arms for Syrian Kurds;WASHINGTON/ANKARA (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it was reviewing adjustments in arms for the Syrian Kurdish forces that have angered Turkey, but it stopped short of halting weapons transfers, suggesting such decisions would be based on battlefield requirements. Turkey said on Friday U.S. President Donald Trump told President Tayyip Erdogan he had issued instructions that weapons should not be provided to the Syrian Kurdish fighters, which Ankara views as threat. We are reviewing pending adjustments to the military support provided to our Kurdish partners in as much as the military requirements of our defeat-ISIS and stabilization efforts will allow to prevent ISIS from returning, said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon, referring to Islamic State, which U.S. and U.S.-backed forces are battling in Syria. Earlier on Monday Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said Friday s call between Trump and Erdogan was a turning point in strained ties between the two countries, but Washington must honor a pledge to stop providing weapons to the Syrian Kurds. The We will not give weapons remark from a U.S. president for the first time is important, but it will lose value if it is not implemented. It would be deceiving the world, Bozdag said. The Syrian Kurdish YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State with the help of a U.S.-led coalition. A spokesperson for the coalition said on Sunday that it was looking at adjustments to the support it provides to the SDF, ranging from the number of advisers to training and artillery. Weapons provided to Syrian YPG have been limited and mission specific, the spokesperson added. Ankara has been infuriated by Washington s support for the YPG militia, seen by Turkey as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Little prospect of Syria peace progress seen in Geneva talks;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A breakthrough in U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva this week seems hardly more likely than in seven failed earlier rounds as President Bashar al-Assad pushes for total military victory and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power. U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday the Syrian government had not yet confirmed that it would attend the talks. A Syrian newspaper reported that the government delegation would delay its planned Tuesday arrival in Geneva because of the opposition s insistence Assad step down. The opposition s stance is seen by Damascus and its allies as divorced from reality after the government s steady march of victories since Russia entered the war in 2015. The rebels have been forced from all Syria s big cities and their hopes of toppling Assad by military means look finished. The opposition has also accused the government of refusing to seriously engage. The Assad regime must not be allowed to play for time while people are being besieged and bombed, Yahya al-Aridi, newly appointed head of the opposition s negotiating committee, said on Sunday. Aridi was chosen last week after the opposition rejigged its negotiations committee - jettisoning as its leader a more hardline opponent of Assad in what some speculated might be a move towards softening its position. But the statement it put out after meeting on Friday reiterated its demand that Assad go before the start of a political transition under any peace deal. Last week a senior Assad adviser said talks could succeed only if rebels laid down their arms. Over the weekend, air strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta district near Damascus intensified, killing 41 people on Sunday and Monday, according to a war monitor. You cannot expect very much, said Nikolaos Van Dam, a former Dutch diplomat in Damascus and author of two books about Syria. The regime doesn t want to really negotiate. They want to reconquer every inch of Syrian territory and then negotiate. But then the opposition would have no bargaining chips, he said. The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and caused the world s worst refugee crisis, driving 11 million from their homes. All previous diplomatic initiatives have swiftly collapsed over the opposition demand that Assad leave power and his refusal to go. Troops from Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States, as well as Shi ite militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, have all now joined arrived on the battlefield. Russia has pushed its own parallel track of diplomacy since early this year, bringing together Assad s other main ally Iran, and Turkey, which has been one of the biggest rebel supporters. Russia has elections next year and President Vladimir Putin wants to show progress towards a political deal after two years of fighting far from Russian soil. Moscow has already said it will bring many troops home from Syria by the end of the year. Putin may also seek to tout diplomatic progress as he angles for the West to take some of the burden of Syria s post-war reconstruction, now likely to fall on Russia, Iran and China. Western foreign ministers said in September their support hinges on a credible political process leading to a genuine political transition , a process they have said requires the involvement of the opposition. Russia wants the end of the war but it wants its ally intact. So what would be the compromise that is acceptable to the opposition or to the other countries? It s not clear to me, said Van Dam. Moscow now plans a Syrian Congress , bringing together the government and some opposition groups to write a new constitution leading to elections. The main opposition rejects the idea, saying all talks must come under the United Nations. But the government has said it backs the congress, as has Turkey, which has some sway over rebel groups in the northwest. There is an acceleration in the political solution on the basis of a unified Syria headed by Bashar al-Assad, with amendments to the constitution and in the election law, a senior, pro-Assad official in the region said. The Syrian government declared on Sunday it would support the formation of a committee that will discuss the constitution and is expected to be set up at the congress. It also said it would support U.N. participation in legislative elections to be held after that discussion. Ultimately Russia s objective is to dress up a limited military victory for the Assad regime and the Iranians in Syria as a diplomatic one, said Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank. Because the regime and the Iranians don t have the manpower to completely occupy all Syria, or to rebuild Syria, or the money to rebuild Syria, they need international buy-in, he said. I don t think it will be easy for them because the United States and others know what they are trying to do. This week s Geneva talks will focus on the issues of elections and a constitution, Ramzi Ramzi, the deputy United Nations special envoy for Syria said in Damascus on Saturday. De Mistura said on Monday negotiations should take place at Geneva and without any preconditions, and all other initiatives should support the U.N. mediation process. After recapturing the last major rebel urban stronghold in East Aleppo a year ago, and advancing across central and eastern Syria against Islamic State this year, the government now controls far more territory than any other force in the country. But rebels still hold a swathe of northwest Syria next to Turkey, and an enclave in the southwest near Israel and Jordan. They have other pockets near Damascus and Homs. Kurdish groups and allied Arab militia backed by the United States also hold the northeast and are holding elections there this week for local councils in an effort to cement autonomy. They have not been invited to the Geneva talks and are regarded by Syria s neighbor Turkey as enemies. Assad has sworn to recover all of his state, and visiting Iranian officials have indicated that new military campaigns may soon start against both the rebels and the Kurds. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish Deputy PM resists calls to resign, says tribunal will judge conduct;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland s Deputy Prime Minister resisted calls to resign in a crisis that has left the country on the brink of a general election, saying on Monday it is up to an ongoing judge-led tribunal to judge her conduct. The Tribunal will objectively judge the appropriateness of my conduct. I look forward to giving my evidence to the Tribunal early in January, Fitzgerald wrote in a statement on Twitter following further calls for her to step down on Monday over her handling of a case involving a police whistleblower. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nasralla practically assured of Honduras election win-official;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - With 70 percent of ballots counted in the Honduran presidential election, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla maintains a five point lead over President Juan Orlando Hernandez, and is set to win, an election official said on Monday. The technical experts here say that it s irreversible, said Marcos Ramiro Lobo, one of four election tribunal magistrates. (Nasralla) is practically the winner. Speaking to Reuters, Lobo said Nasralla had kept up a five point advantage over the incumbent Hernandez, who had been widely expected to win before the election took place. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Diplomats search for way to save trade system after U.S. vetoes judges;GENEVA (Reuters) - Diplomats are searching for ways to prevent the global trade dispute resolution system from freezing up, after the Trump administration blocked appointments to the body that acts as the supreme court for global trade. U.S. President Donald Trump has vetoed the appointment of judges to fill vacancies on the seven-member Apellate Body of the World Trade Organization, which provides final decisions in arguments between countries over trade. Members are already having a conversation about what to do with this situation, WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo told reporters. They are floating ideas, they are discussing. We have to see how that evolves. The WTO normally has seven judges and needs three to sign off on every appeal ruling. But two have left and another goes in December, leaving only four - just one above the minimum - to deal with a growing backlog of trade disputes. Azevedo said he did not think the situation was a threat to the WTO s survival but it was already having an impact, and the longer it went on the more acutely it would be felt. In a confidential note sent to all WTO members on Monday, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the Appellate Body said departing judges would continue working after they left on appeals filed before their terms ended. The United States has objected to that practice in the past. Appointments to the Appellate Body are meant to be unanimously agreed by all 164 members, like all decisions at the WTO. The fine print says the WTO can switch to majority voting if necessary, but diplomats are reluctant to do that for fear of unraveling a system that relies on consensus as a bulwark to protectionism. Azevedo said the Trump administration had made clear it had misgivings about the way the world trade system has functioned, although it had not linked any specific demands for reform with the decision to halt appointments to the appeals panel. The Trump administration has not publicly explained why it is blocking the appointment of judges to the trade panel. The U.S. mission to the WTO in Geneva declined to comment. Several trade experts said the move seemed to fit Trump s ideology of favoring bilateral trade deals over the multi-lateral system embodied by the WTO. Pieter Jan Kuijper, professor of law at the University of Amsterdam, said Trump s trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, preferred the pre-WTO practice of negotiating the outcome of trade disputes rather than being bound by WTO rulings. Although Trump regularly says Washington has been hurt by trade disputes, WTO experts mainly say the United States has actually been a big winner at the WTO. But negotiating the outcome of trade disputes rather than leaving them to judges might tip the balance further in Washington s favor. Kuijper compared Trump s stance to that of Zimbabwe s former president Robert Mugabe killing off the court of the Southern African Development Community by blocking new judges when the court became too troublesome. That example doesn t make one optimistic, he said. We are in a true emergency where we should take into account that the end of the Appellate Body may come, either by design or by accident. At a panel discussion on Monday for trade officials and diplomats, Kuijper and other trade experts discussed possible ways to avert a crisis if more vacancies come open. One solution would be to switch to majority voting for appointing judges. Another would be for the judges to change their own working procedures, refusing to take any more appeals until there are more judges. Nicolas Lockhart, a trade lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP, suggested the WTO could use its arbitration process more to resolve disputes and rely less on appeals. All three approaches have drawbacks, including the risk of further alienating the United States. A process that could lead to a situation where the United States leaves the WTO in a huff is actually a situation where everyone loses, and the last thing we should be aiming for, said Alice Tipping, a former New Zealand trade diplomat now at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Small Canadian designer in spotlight as Meghan Markle dons its coat;TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian designer Line the Label shot to prominence on Monday after U.S. actress Meghan Markle wore a coat from the brand in her first public appearance after her engagement to Britain s Prince Harry. Markle appeared in the sunken garden at Kensington Palace on Monday in the late November chill, donning the C$799 ($627.11) white wrap coat with oversized collars and cinched at the waist with a knotted belt. The surge in interest in the coat caused the style to quickly sell out and crashed the Toronto-based knitwear label s website in some parts of the world, including in London. The company is taking reorders on the coat, an external spokeswoman said by email. Line has since named the coat Meghan, company President and co-founder John Muscat said in a statement, adding it was one of her favorite pieces from the fashion label. We are incredibly honored that Meghan chose to wear a Line coat to mark this very special occasion, Muscat said. We are elated for Meghan and wish her a lifetime of happiness with Prince Harry. Markle, who has a starring role in the Toronto-filmed U.S. TV show Suits, has lived in the Canadian city for several years. Markle also wore a Line coat to the closing ceremony of the Invictus Games in Toronto in September, days after the pair made their first public appearance together. Celebrities including Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Garner and Kate Hudson have also been photographed wearing the brand. Line was founded in 2000 by Muscat and designer Jennifer Wells. It was acquired a few years later by Canadian fashion house and importer PYA, which is based in a north Toronto suburb. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel heads to EU-Africa summit with eye on migrant issue at home;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel will focus on expanding business ties and trying to regulate migration with Africa during an EU-Africa summit in Abidjan this week, as she comes under pressure at home to make progress faster on both fronts. Merkel is taking a break from her more than month-long drive to form a new government to attend the summit, keen to demonstrate Germany s continued ability to act on the foreign policy front, and to underscore her commitment to Africa. She will join with French President Emmanuel Macron at the summit to focus on education, investment in youth and economic development to prevent refugees and economic migrants from attempting the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean. Libya is now the main departure point for mostly African migrants trying to cross to Europe. Smugglers usually pack them into flimsy inflatable boats that often break down or sink. The chancellor told a conservative event on Saturday that she would press for expanded trade ties and investment, while urging African leaders in bilateral talks to accept the return of their citizens who had no right to stay in Europe. The trip is important for the German leader amid widespread criticism of her 2015 decision to allow in over a million migrants, then mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan. She is under pressure at home to avert another migration crisis after losing support to the far right in the Sept. 24 election. Germany is likely to adopt an immigration law of some kind in the aftermath of election losses for mainstream parties. Experts say the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could see further gains in any new election next year if Merkel fails to convince the Social Democrats to renew the grand coalition that ruled for the last four years. A year after Merkel made Africa a cornerstone of Germany s presidency of the G20 industrialized nations, illegal migration from Africa remains a concern, with rights groups blasting the EU s failure to address conditions in migrant camps in Libya and elsewhere. Merkel has also faced criticism from German companies, who say they risk losing out in the face of burgeoning interest in the region from rivals in France, China, the United States, Britain, India and Turkey. Germany s trade balance with African countries expanded 11.2 percent to 13.8 percent in the first half of 2017 after declining slightly in 2016. German industry remains underrepresented in these markets of the future, said Christoph Kannengiesser, director of the German-African Business Association. Compared to other international firms, German companies are noticeably behind, due to insufficient support from the government. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistani police exhume couple's bodies suspecting honor killing;KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani police on Monday exhumed the bodies of a young couple believed to have murdered by their families in a so-called honor killing, an investigator said. Zeeshan Siddiqui said Abdul Hadi, 25, already married with three children, and his 21-year-old cousin Hussaini Bibi ran away together a month ago and had yet to marry. The couple had settled in a rented house in the southern city of Karachi. Their landlord informed the police after the couple went missing. The house had bloodstains and signs of murder. Questioning of their relatives led police to a graveyard where the bodies were exhumed, said the officer, who suspected the two families colluded in the killing. Honour killings are mostly carried out by relatives over the perceived damage to their honor when a girl decides to marry someone of her choosing or refuses to marry someone her family would pick. The couple were from the Kohistan tribal district of northwest Pakistan. In 2012, four women and a girl were ordered to be killed by a tribal council in Kohistan after a cell phone video of them dancing and singing apparently in a wedding became public. ;worldnews;27/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey-backed rebels in Syria put IS jihadists through rehab;MAREA, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Shaven-headed former jihadists filled a classroom in northern Syria as a Muslim cleric taught them a more moderate form of Islam than the version they had imposed in Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate. Their class was in a new rehabilitation center for Islamic State members set up in the town of Marea, north of Aleppo, in an area controlled by Syrian rebel groups backed by Turkey. The center, set up in October, is meant to address a problem emerging across swathes of Syria and Iraq - how to handle thousands of people living there who joined Islamic State as it enforced its brutal rule. Islamic State used public killings and torture to enforce its draconian religious code, sexually enslaved captive women and slaughtered prisoners of war and members of enemy tribes. Its self-styled caliphate is now on the verge of defeat, having lost large tracts of its territory and most of its major towns and cities in both Syria and Iraq. Although some IS members came from abroad out of conviction, many others were local people who joined the group to protect themselves or earn money, according to an official at the center. There are 25 ex-members now at the center where they take classes in religious doctrine and law. Psychological counseling is mandatory;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YIKES! STUNNING VIDEOS Show ANYONE Can Hack MacOS High Sierra By Only Typing ONE WORD!;According to WIRED THERE ARE HACKABLE security flaws in software. And then there are those that don t even require hacking at all just a knock on the door and asking to be let in. Apple s macOS High Sierra has the second kind.On Tuesday, security researchers disclosed a bug that allows anyone a blindingly easy method of breaking that operating system s security protections. Anyone who hits a prompt in High Sierra asking for a username and password before logging into a machine with multiple users, they can simply type root as a username, leave the password field blank, click unlock twice, and immediately gain full access.In other words, the bug allows any rogue user that gets the slightest foothold on a target computer to gain the deepest level of access to a computer, known as root privileges. Malware designed to exploit the trick could also fully install itself deep within the computer, no password required. We always see malware trying to escalate privileges and get root access, says Patrick Wardle, a security researcher with Synack. This is best, easiest way ever to get root, and Apple has handed it to them on a silver platter. As word of the security vulnerability rippled across Twitter and other social media, a few security researchers found they couldn t replicate the issue, but others captured and posted video demonstrations of the attack, like Wardle s GIF below, and another that shows security researcher Amit Serper logging into a logged-out account. WIRED also independently confirmed the bug.Watch these two incredible videos posted to Twitter letting Apple know they have a HUGE security issue at MacOS High Sierra: pic.twitter.com/4TBh5NetIS patrick wardle (@patrickwardle) November 28, 2017Just tested the apple root login bug. You can log in as root even after the machi was rebooted pic.twitter.com/fTHZ7nkcUp Amit Serper (@0xAmit) November 28, 2017The fact that the attack could be used on a logged-out account raises the possibility that someone with physical access could exploit it just as easily as malware, points out Thomas Reed, an Apple-focused security researcher with MalwareBytes. They could, for instance, use the attack to gain root access to a logged-out machine, set a root password, and then regain access to a machine at any time. Oooh, boy, this is a doozy, says Reed. So, if someone did this to a Mac sitting on a desk in an office, they could come back later and do whatever they wanted. Facebook user Brian Matiash tells Mac users about how they protect their Mac from being hacked. We cannot confirm or deny if his advice is legit, we are simply sharing it with you. Matiash gives Facebook users the following advice: Wonders never cease, Apple. How can such a painfully obvious bug like this make it by your QA teams? At least make the default root password be password or something. FFS, guys. Get you damned act together. EDIT: It would be socially responsible of me to state that there is a fairly easy workaround. Start by opening up Terminal.app and type the following command: sudo passwd -u root Next, enter your primary user password. Then, enter a new password for root and retype it to confirm. There. You re protected.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: JUDICIAL WATCH Claims Comey’s FBI Hid and “Blacked Out” Records Of Secret Loretta Lynch Meeting With Bill Clinton On Tarmac;Remember when President Barack Obama s Attorney General Loretta Lynch just happened to get a surprise visit in Phoenix, while on the tarmac at the airport, from the husband of the Democrat candidate for President, former President Bill Clinton? Have Americans already forgotten, that the secret meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton took place only hours before the DOJ was about to release their report on Benghazi? Remember when Loretta Lynch told the media that their secret meeting was primarily social and was mostly about grandchildren and golf? Primarily? Watch:As previously reported by Gateway Pundit, Judicial Watch forced the FBI to admit it has 30 new documents related to the infamous Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting in mid-October.This is after the FBI originally told Judicial Watch they couldn t locate any records related to the tarmac meeting.Fitton blasted the FBI! The FBI is out of control. It is stunning that the FBI found these Clinton-Lynch tarmac records only after we caught the agency hiding them in another lawsuit. Judicial Watch will continue to press for answers about the FBI s document games in court. In the meantime, the FBI should stop the stonewall and release these new records immediately. Previous tarmac meeting documents released were redacted by the DOJ not Obama s DOJ, Trump s DOJ under Jeff Sessions! The talking points are completely blacked out you heard that right. They re blacked out. Again, they weren t blacked out by Attorney General Lynch, they weren t blacked out by James Comey, they weren t blacked out by Barack Obama. They were blacked out by the Justice Department run by Attorney General Sessions, an appointee of President Trump. Isn t that outrageous? Today, Judicial Watch president, Tom Fitton blasted James Comey, and the FBI for lying about the documents they were hiding about the Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting on Twitter:FBI Hid Clinton/Lynch Tarmac Meeting Records. But the cover-up begins to end thanks to @JudicialWatch the day after tomorrow. @RealDonaldTrump needs to clean house at FBI/DOJ. https://t.co/tytBp28sYL Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 28, 2017;left-news;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GRAMMYS Nominate All-Black Artists…SNUB Country Music, White Musicians Over “White Supremacy” Concerns…#BoycottGrammys;On Tuesday, the Grammys announced their nominations for the 2018 awards shows, and there are some notable additions and snubs that make it look like the Recording Academy is getting into the business of identity politics.For the first time in 14 years, no country music acts were nominated for the top awards: record of the year, song of the year, and album of the year. Instead, the Grammys took a sharp turn towards honoring hip-hop, R&B, and funk for the top awards.According to Buzzfeed: The night s biggest category, Album of the Year, not only has majority black nominees, but also has no white male nominees for the first time in 19 years.This is also the first year the Record of the Year category is only people of color (with the exception of Justin Bieber, who is featured on Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee s Despacito ).The Best New Artist category is also majority black this year with SZA, Khalid, and Lil Uzi Vert all gaining nominations. SZA is also this year s most Grammy-nominated woman.Rapper Jay-Z and pop singer Bruno Mars got nods in all three top categories, while rapper/singer Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover), rapper Kendrick Lamar, and the coupling of Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee got nods in two of the top three categories. Meanwhile, rapper Logic got nominated for his anti-suicide song 1-800-273-8255 for song of the year.Objectively speaking, Jay-Z, Mars, Gambino, Lamar, Fonsi, and Yankee put out some great product this past year, and with any awards show, there are going to be some snubs. However, it appeared that Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, and Miranda Lambert were all looked over from the top categories because of concerns about white supremacy. Instead, Lorde, the 20-year-old New Zealand singer, and Julia Michaels, the 24-year-old singer from Iowa, were the only pop acts to be nominated for the top categories. Washington ExaminerSince rap seems to have surpassed country in popularity (well, at least according to the Grammys), in an effort to address White supremacy , perhaps it s worth taking a look at the black rapper, Snoop Dogg, who shamelessly promotes killing our President and violence against his supporters. Paul Joseph Watson made a brilliant video that exposes how gangster rap increases racism in America. racist 45-year-old rapper Snoop Dogg (**Language warning**): ;left-news;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JOY BEHAR Still Claims Clinton Won…BUT Wore Bizarre Mourning Item When Hillary Lost [Video];The View s Joy Behar just let everyone know that she s a sore loser who just can t let go that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election. Even though she refuses to acknowledge Trump as president and says Hillary won, she told The View audience that she wore a black veil when Clinton lost indicating that she was in mourning. So which is it?She represents all of those on the left so well. She s STILL bitter and in denial over the loss. What a waste of time and energy to be part of the resistance to President Trump.She gets into it with co-host Meghan McCain over it: She did win and I m not going to give that up. The segment started with a Hot Topics discussion of Sen. John McCain s (R., Ariz.) interview with Esquire magazine where he trashed Clinton s post-election book. He sat down for an interview with Esquire, and he would like Hillary Clinton to hush. Because he says he felt it was a mistake for her to write a book so soon after she lost and that he learned after his loss the hardest thing to do is just shut up. Now, is he right?, co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked her fellow hosts. With all due respect to your father and whom I like very much, I think he s wrong, Behar said toward McCain. I think a woman s place is in the resistance. The woman won the election. Behar s comment was met with audience applause and cheers. What I think I could get on board with if she wrote it and got it out but maybe waited to release it so it becomes more historical. Because I think the optics of looking at someone that s lost whether you agree with them, and I voted for her, or not it looks bad when you didn t win and you re talking, co-host Sara Haines said. She did win, Behar interjected. She did win and I m not going to give that up. She didn t win, McCain retorted. She won the popular vote, co-host Sonny Hostin said.Behar continued to argue with McCain that Clinton won the election. But we don t elect presidents in America with the popular vote, McCain said. I get that. But the numbers are still there, Behar replied. Does that make you feel good at night when you re so angry about Trump, does that make you feel better? McCain quipped. No, it doesn t, Behar said.Behar then admitted she work a black veil when Trump beat Hillary.McCain recounted the night her father lost to President Barack Obama in 2008, expressing the extent to which she understands the difficulties of losing an election. Because you were up close and personal when your father didn t win the election, Hostin said. And I ve been there on election nights for other candidates who have wanted it and it s deeply sad. On election night we prayed and my father told me to buck up, we re the most blessed people in the world. And then, we didn t complain about it. We as a family recognized President Obama as the phenomenon that he was, McCain said. Whether or not you like it, President Trump is a populist phenomenon in a completely different way. And I think if I were you, and I m part of the resistance, I would look forward to new leadership. ;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Backlash as Beijing fire safety blitz forces exodus of city's underclass;BEIJING (Reuters) - In Xinjiancun, a ramshackle village of migrant workers on the far southern fringe of Beijing, demolition machinery tears into buildings as residents drag out the last of their belongings under the gaze of police and security staff. A citywide fire safety blitz prompted by a deadly blaze this month is forcing thousands of migrant workers out of their homes and businesses, igniting unusually direct criticism of city government measures seen by some people as unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass. Beijing s municipal government launched the 40-day special operation targeting fire code and building safety violations after a Nov. 18 apartment fire in Xinjiancun killed 19, almost all of them migrants. The Beijing government said it had acted on more than 25,000 violations in the operation s first week, which it described as purely for the lives and safety of the people . Tens of thousands of people are believed to be affected, activists said. While restaurants and shops not up to code in more affluent areas have not been immune, the safety blitz has mostly targeted outlying parts of Beijing where enforcement of construction codes has tended to be lax, and where migrant workers congregate due to cheaper rent. To say that this special operation is to drive out the low-end population is irresponsible and baseless, the Beijing government said in a statement carried by state media on Sunday. Some of the migrant population choose these places to work and live in, but they don t understand the danger they re in. One resident said her family of six, including her nine-month old grandson, had been suddenly rendered homeless, spending the previous night huddled in the back of their minivan in sub-freezing temperatures. We are also Chinese people. Why are we being treated this way? said the woman, from central China s Hubei province. What are we to do, where can we go to raise grievances? No one dares to, she said, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. Local authorities attributed the Nov. 18 blaze to faulty electrical wiring in an illegally modified two-storey property housing shops and a cold storage facility in the basement, with the top floor subdivided into small, crowded living quarters. More than a dozen residents of Xinjiancun said at least 50 uniformed security guards and chengguan - an urban management force which assists police - had smashed their stores signage and issued threats to ensure compliance. The Beijing city government and the Daxing district government, which covers the southern part of the city, did not respond to requests for comment. Xia Xiaocong, a 44-year-old supermarket owner, said he was told to move everything out and leave within 48 hours, after security guards cut his electricity and trashed the front of his shop. I told them I have all the legal documents, and they said you have to close and get lost, he told Reuters inside the damaged store, its shelves emptied. Residents and supermarket staff confirmed details of Xia s account. In Dingfuzhuang, a logistics hub in Beijing s east, residents on Saturday said authorities had cut off electricity and running water to force them out. In 2008, it was Beijing Welcomes You , said Liang Yinghui, from northern Hebei province, referring to the slogan of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now, in 2017, Beijing loathes you, and wants to throw you out. An open letter to the Chinese government from more than 100 prominent academics, lawyers and intellectuals said the measures against Beijing s migrant population were illegal, unconstitutional and seriously trampled on human rights . Such open criticism of government is increasingly rare as officials have clamped down on various aspects of civil society under President Xi Jinping. Some non-profit groups that sought to offer assistance said they have been obstructed by police, with their online advertisements blocked by censors. Tongzhou Jiayuan, a private community service centre in Beijing s Tongzhou district, said it was shut by police soon after posting a notice on social media welcoming struggling migrant workers to come and stay. On Monday, Beijing party secretary Cai Qi said authorities should have given more time for residents to relocate and called for the operation to be carried out in a more orderly fashion, according to the official Beijing Daily. Some 8.23 million Beijing residents came from outside the capital, almost 40 percent of its population of nearly 22 million, according to a 2016 report by the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. While the city says the clean-up is for safety, it is also consistent with policies to control growth. In September, the central government approved Beijing s plan to cap its population at 23 million in 2020. Ma Zhitao, 32, who arrived in Beijing at the start of the year to work as a laborer in the hope of providing a better life for his 10-year-old son back home in rural Shaanxi province, said he was now forced to return home. I thought it would be different, said Ma, whose power and water had been cut off at his home in Dingfuzhuang. It s the capital after all. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHOA! MSNBC Let Sheila Jackson Lee Do Entire Interview With…A Nosebleed? [Video];Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee did an entire interview on MSNBC Monday morning with what appeared to be a nosebleed dripping down her lip Why didn t anyone at MSNBC tell her to wipe her nose when she was off camera? Notice at the beginning of the interview, a staffer is off camera trying to tell her about the problem but she shoos the person away MSNBC Anchor Chris Jansing did the entire interview with Lee like this!Sheila Jackson Lee Does Entire MSNBC Interview With A Nosebleed #TRUMP #CyberMonday #MondayMotivaton #FakeNewsTrophy #CFPB #TheStorm #FollowTheWhiteRabbit #TickTock @LowInfoTweeter pic.twitter.com/MACn5ZdLoK John Dee -Deplorable (@GaltsGultch) November 27, 2017Daily Caller reported: Get away, she said when MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing cut to her camera, while motioning for someone to get out of the camera shot.The unidentifiable liquid underneath her nose was immediately visible and stayed there throughout the interview, which lasted just under ten minutes. It s not totally clear what the liquid is, but based on the placement underneath the nose and the dark color, we can only guess that it is a nosebleed.The MSNBC producers apparently didn t think to do Jackson Lee a favor and tell her to wipe her nose while they weren t showing her on screen. The good news is that the supposed nose bleed matched the color of Jackson Lee s red blazer.;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: ‘Chuck and Nancy’ Pull Out Of Budget Meetings with Trump After He Exposes Their True Agenda In One Awesome Tweet;Senate Minority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Pelosi are having a temper tantrum after President Trump exposed them for who they really are in a scorching tweet:PRESIDENT TRUMP S TWEET: Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal!Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017BURN! CHUCK AND NANCY CAN T HANDLE THE TRUTH!They released a joint statement on Tuesday saying they were not playing They were taking their ball and going home like a couple of toddlers. Were they EVER in the budget game to make any reasonable compromise? We think they asked for unreasonable things that Trump just couldn t pull the trigger on. Amnesty for Dreamers could be one of those things. We don t have details but we re thinking it s why Trump tweeted about one borders.A portion of the statement reads: Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won t result in an agreement, we ve asked Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan to meet this afternoon, THE TWEET IS THE TRUTH It s about time someone called these two out for putting Americans last! ;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GRAMMYS Nominate All-Black Artists…SNUB Country Music, White Musicians Over “White Supremacy” Concerns…#BoycottGrammys;On Tuesday, the Grammys announced their nominations for the 2018 awards shows, and there are some notable additions and snubs that make it look like the Recording Academy is getting into the business of identity politics.For the first time in 14 years, no country music acts were nominated for the top awards: record of the year, song of the year, and album of the year. Instead, the Grammys took a sharp turn towards honoring hip-hop, R&B, and funk for the top awards.According to Buzzfeed: The night s biggest category, Album of the Year, not only has majority black nominees, but also has no white male nominees for the first time in 19 years.This is also the first year the Record of the Year category is only people of color (with the exception of Justin Bieber, who is featured on Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee s Despacito ).The Best New Artist category is also majority black this year with SZA, Khalid, and Lil Uzi Vert all gaining nominations. SZA is also this year s most Grammy-nominated woman.Rapper Jay-Z and pop singer Bruno Mars got nods in all three top categories, while rapper/singer Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover), rapper Kendrick Lamar, and the coupling of Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee got nods in two of the top three categories. Meanwhile, rapper Logic got nominated for his anti-suicide song 1-800-273-8255 for song of the year.Objectively speaking, Jay-Z, Mars, Gambino, Lamar, Fonsi, and Yankee put out some great product this past year, and with any awards show, there are going to be some snubs. However, it appeared that Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, and Miranda Lambert were all looked over from the top categories because of concerns about white supremacy. Instead, Lorde, the 20-year-old New Zealand singer, and Julia Michaels, the 24-year-old singer from Iowa, were the only pop acts to be nominated for the top categories. Washington ExaminerSince rap seems to have surpassed country in popularity (well, at least according to the Grammys), in an effort to address White supremacy , perhaps it s worth taking a look at the black rapper, Snoop Dogg, who shamelessly promotes killing our President and violence against his supporters. Paul Joseph Watson made a brilliant video that exposes how gangster rap increases racism in America. racist 45-year-old rapper Snoop Dogg (**Language warning**): ;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Saudi prince freed in $1 billion settlement agreement: official;RIYADH (Reuters) - Senior Saudi Arabian prince Miteb bin Abdullah, once seen as a leading contender to the throne, has been freed after agreeing to pay over $1 billion to settle corruption allegations against him, a Saudi official said on Wednesday. Miteb, 65, son of the late King Abdullah and former head of the elite National Guard, was among dozens of royal family members, high officials and senior businessmen rounded up this month in a crackdown on graft that has strengthened the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The official, who is involved in the crackdown and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Miteb was released on Tuesday after reaching an acceptable settlement agreement . The official said he believed the agreed sum to be the equivalent of over $1 billion. It is understood that the settlement included admitting corruption involving known cases, the official said, without giving details. According to the official, Prince Miteb was accused of embezzlement, hiring ghost employees and awarding contracts to his own firms, including a deal for walkie talkies and bulletproof military gear. Prince Miteb is the first senior figure known to be released among those detained. Around 200 people in total have been questioned in the crackdown, authorities said earlier this month. The allegations, which include kickbacks, inflating government contracts, extortion and bribery, could not be independently verified. Saudi authorities, who estimate they could eventually recover around $100 billion of illicit funds, have been working on reaching agreements with suspects detained at Riyadh s luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel, asking them to hand over assets and cash in return for their freedom. Apart from Miteb, the Saudi official said that at least three other suspects had finalised settlement agreements and that the public prosecutor had decided to release several individuals. The prosecutor has decided to put at least five people on trial, the official said without disclosing their identities. The fate of billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of investment firm Kingdom Holding 4280.SE and one of Saudi Arabia s most prominent international businessmen, was not known. Kingdom issued a statement earlier this month saying it was continuing to operate normally but has not responded to queries about his status since he was detained early this month. Two Saudi sources told Reuters that Prince Alwaleed has so far refused to reach a settlement and had asked for access to his lawyer in order to fight allegations against him. Relatives, his lawyer and officials in his office could not be contacted to comment. Saudi Arabia s stock market .TASI, where many investors have been alarmed by the corruption probe, rose after news of the settlements by Prince Miteb and others. The main index was trading 0.4 percent higher around midday on Wednesday. The settlements may mean authorities can soon wind down parts of the probe, reducing the risk of damage to the economy through the freezing of hundreds of bank accounts, and easing the danger that firms linked to detainees could be affected. Officials from Prince Miteb s office could not be reached for comment about his release, and it was unclear if he was able to move freely or whether he would be put under house arrest. An acquaintance of the family said earlier on his Twitter account that Prince Miteb was receiving brothers and sons at his palace in Riyadh. The arrests of royals and top businessmen have been welcomed by many Saudis who are frustrated by corruption, but the crackdown is also seen by many people as a pre-emptive step by Prince Mohammed to remove any possible challenge to his control over the world s top oil exporting country. The round-up follows a meticulously planned palace coup in June through which Prince Mohammed ousted his elder cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as heir to the throne. Prince Miteb, as overlord of the 100,000-strong National Guard, represented the last great competing power center left after the toppling of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. In September, religious and intellectual critics of the government were jailed. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BRETT BAIER’S Dinner At Mar-a-Lago Over Thanksgiving Weekend Has The Left In Full Meltdown;"Fox News anchor Bret Baier was a surprise visitor at Mar-a-Lago on Thanksgiving weekend. Speculation swirled that Baier s attendance was a sign of media bias or collusion between President Trump and Fox News. Why else would Baier have dinner at the president s exclusive club?It was actually a coincidence Baier and his wife were spending the weekend with Jack Nicklaus who is a member of Mar-a-Lago. Fox News clarified the chance meeting with a tweet:Fox News statement on this photo: ""Bret Baier and his wife attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago as a guest of Jack Nicklaus, whose home they were staying at for the weekend. He was asked to take a photo with Nicklaus and the President and obliged."" pic.twitter.com/4poD1otcwu Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) November 26, 2017The left went nuts with slams against Baier, Fox News and golf legend Jack Nicklaus Jack Nicklaus was attacked by numerous liberals on twitter for hanging out with the Fox News host and the POTUS. These people are relentless and brutal in their judgement of others. We thought the left considered themselves to be a tolerant group We re guessing their tolerance is extended to everyone BUT conservatives. ";politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Repeat Deceit: How US Tries to Link Iran to Al Qaeda;When it comes to interpreting current events, no one does official conspiracy theories like the Unite States.For years, Washington has tried to promulgate a propaganda campaign which tries to somehow link al Qaeda to Iran, or ISIS to Iran. For the mentally-challenged members of the right-wing media in the US, this isn t a massive feat, as a large segment of that audience cannot even locate Iran on a global map. There is also the issue of US warhawks like Lindsey Graham and John McCain being proven pathological liars who will say anything regardless of whether it s based in actual fact. All of this contributes to a number of shallow, creative narratives which continuously circulate between FOX News, The Atlantic Magazine, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and the US Senate.And just like the US and UK mainstream media s coverage of Syria, the deep throat source in this dossier is al Qaeda.This latest chapter in the US fantasy world of Iranian intrigue attempts to further the Israeli-favoured mythology, blaming Iran for all of the region s woes. Make no mistake: the American neoconservative wing and their Israeli benefactors are determined to invent new conditions for war with Iran IMAGE: Bush s al Qaeda No.2 Guy Abu Musab al ZarqawiGareth Porter The American Conservative For many years, major U.S. institutions ranging from the Pentagon to the 9/11 Commission have been pushing the line that Iran secretly cooperated with Al Qaeda both before and after the 9/11 terror attacks. But the evidence for those claims remained either secret or sketchy, and always highly questionable.In early November, however, the mainstream media claimed to have its smoking gun a CIA document written by an unidentified Al Qaeda official and released in conjunction with 47,000 never-before-seen documents seized from Osama bin Laden s house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.The Associated Press reported that the Al Qaeda document appears to bolster U.S. claims that Iran supported the extremist network leading up to the September 11 terror attacks. The Wall Street Journal said the document provides new insights into Al Qaeda s relationship with Iran, suggesting a pragmatic alliance that emerged out of shared hatred of the United States and Saudi Arabia. NBC News wrote that the document reveals that, at various points in the relationship Iran offered Al Qaeda help in the form of money, arms and training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon in exchange for striking American interests in the Gulf, implying that Al Qaeda had declined the offer.Former Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price, writing for The Atlantic, went even further, asserting that the document includes an account of a deal with Iranian authorities to host and train Saudi-Al Qaeda members as long as they have agreed to plot against their common enemy, American interests in the Gulf region. But none of those media reports were based on any careful reading of the document s contents. The 19-page Arabic-language document, which was translated in full for The American Conservative, doesn t support the media narrative of new evidence of Iran-Al Qaeda cooperation, either before or after 9/11, at all.It provides no evidence whatsoever of tangible Iranian assistance to Al Qaeda. On the contrary, it confirms previous evidence that Iranian authorities quickly rounded up those Al Qaeda operatives living in the country when they were able to track them down, and held them in isolation to prevent any further contact with Al Qaeda units outside Iran.Taken by SurpriseWhat it shows is that the Al Qaeda operatives were led to believe Iran was friendly to their cause and were quite taken by surprise when their people were arrested in two waves in late 2002. It suggests that Iran had played them, gaining the fighters trust while maximizing intelligence regarding Al Qaeda s presence in Iran.Nevertheless, this account, which appears to have been written by a mid-level Al Qaeda cadre in 2007, appears to bolster an internal Al Qaeda narrative that the terror group rejected Iranian blandishments and were wary of what they saw as untrustworthiness on the part of the Iranians. The author asserts the Iranians offered Saudi Al Qaeda members who had entered the country money and arms, anything they need, and training with Hezbollah in exchange for hitting American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. But there is no word about whether any Iranian arms or money were ever actually given to Al Qaeda fighters. And the author acknowledges that the Saudis in question were among those who had been deported during sweeping arrests, casting doubt over whether there was ever any deal in the offing.The author suggests Al Qaeda rejected Iranian assistance on principle. We don t need them, he insisted. Thanks to God, we can do without them, and nothing can come from them but evil. That theme is obviously important to maintaining organizational identity and morale. But later in the document, the author expresses deep bitterness about what they obviously felt was Iranian double-dealing in 2002 to 2003. They are ready to play-act, he writes of the Iranians. Their religion is lies and keeping quiet. And usually they show what is contrary to what is in their mind . It is hereditary with them, deep in their character. The author recalls that Al Qaeda operatives were ordered to move to Iran in March 2002, three months after they had left Afghanistan for Waziristan or elsewhere in Pakistan (the document, by the way, says nothing of any activity in Iran before 9/11). He acknowledges that most of his cadres entered Iran illegally, although some of them obtained visas from the Iranian consulate in Karachi.Among the latter was Abu Hafs al Mauritani, an Islamic scholar who was ordered by the leadership shura in Pakistan to seek Iranian permission for Al Qaeda fighters and families to pass through Iran or to stay there for an extended period. He was accompanied by middle- and lower-ranking cadres, including some who worked for Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The account clearly suggests that Zarqawi himself had remained in hiding after entering Iran illegally.Strict ConditionsAbu Hafs al Mauratani did reach an understanding with Iran, according to the Al Qaeda account, but it had nothing to do with providing arms or money. It was a deal that allowed them to remain for some period or to pass through the country, but only on the condition that they observe very strict security conditions: no meetings, no use of cell phones, no movements that would attract attention. The account attributes those restrictions to Iranian fears of U.S. retribution which was undoubtedly part of the motivation. But it is clear Iran viewed Al Qaeda as an extremist Salafist security threat to itself as well.Most of the Al Qaeda visitors, according to the Al Qaeda document, settled in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchistan Province where the majority of the population are Sunnis and speak Baluchi. They generally violated the security restrictions imposed by the Iranians. They established links with the Baluchis who he notes were also Salafists and began holding meetings. Some of them even made direct contact by phone with Salafist militants in Chechnya, where a conflict was rapidly spiraling out of control. Saif al-Adel, one of the leading Al Qaeda figures in Iran at the time, later revealed that the Al Qaeda fighting contingent under Abu Musab al Zarqawi s command immediately began reorganizing to return to Afghanistan.Waves of ArrestsThe first Iranian campaign to round up Al Qaeda personnel, which the author of the documents says was focused on Zahedan, came in May or June 2002 no more than three months after they have had entered Iran. Those arrested were either jailed or deported to their home countries. The Saudi Foreign Minister praised Iran in August for having transferred 16 Al Qaeda suspects to the Saudi government in June.In February 2003, Iranian security launched a new wave of arrests. This time they captured three major groups of Al Qaeda operatives in Tehran and Mashad, including Zarqawi and other top leaders in the country, according to the document. Saif al Adel later revealed in a post on a pro-Al Qaeda website in 2005 (reported in the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat), that the Iranians had succeeded in capturing 80 percent of the group associated with Zarqawi, and that it had caused the failure of 75 percent of our plan. The anonymous author writes that the initial Iran policy was to deport those arrested and that Zarqawi was allowed to go to Iraq (where he plotted attacks on Shia and coalition forces until his death in 2006). But then, he says, the policy suddenly changed and the Iranians stopped deportations, instead opting to keep the Al Qaeda senior leadership in custody presumably as bargaining chips. Yes, Iran deported 225 Al Qaeda suspects to other countries, including Saudi Arabia, in 2003. But the Al Qaeda leaders were held in Iran, not as bargaining chips, but under tight security to prevent them from communicating with the Al Qaeda networks elsewhere in the region, which Bush administration officials eventually acknowledged.After the arrests and imprisonment of senior al Qaeda figures, the Al Qaeda leadership became increasingly angry at Iran. In November 2008, unknown gunmen abducted an Iran consular official in Peshawar, Pakistan, and in July 2013, al Qaeda operatives in Yemen kidnapped an Iranian diplomat. In March 2015, Iran reportedly released five of the senior al Qaeda in prison, including Said al-Adel, in return for the release of the diplomat in Yemen.In a document taken from the Abbottabad compound and published by West Point s Counter-Terrorism Center in 2012, a senior Al Qaeda official wrote, We believe that our efforts, which included escalating a political and media campaign, the threats we made, the kidnapping of their friend the commercial counselor in the Iranian Consulate in Peshawar, and other reasons that scared them based on what they saw (we are capable of), to be among the reasons that led them to expedite (the release of these prisoners). There was a time when Iran did view Al Qaeda as an ally. It was during and immediately after the war of the mujahedin against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. That, of course, was the period when the CIA was backing bin Laden s efforts as well. But after the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 1996 and especially after Taliban troops killed 11 Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998 the Iranian view of Al Qaeda changed fundamentally. Since then, Iran has clearly regarded it as an extreme sectarian terrorist organization and its sworn enemy. What has not changed is the determination of the U.S. national security state and the supporters of Israel to maintain the myth of an enduring Iranian support for Al Qaeda.Gareth Porter is an independent journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. This article originally appeared at The American Conservative.READ MORE IRAN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Iran NewsSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Facebook’s New ‘Proactive’ AI to Scan Posts for Suicidal Thoughts;21st Century Wire says Facebook is rolling out its latest artificial intelligence bot with the hope that the software will save lives, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social media juggernaut will use a special algorithm to flag posts that fit a certain pattern, then route them to a human being that can escalate early intervention.The idea of proactive detection can be a slippery slope. What else are these Facebook bots flagging, and who else is mining that information?Read more at TechCrunch READ MORE AI NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire AI FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump, Japan's Abe agree to boost deterrence against North Korea: Japan government;TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to boost their response to North Korea s missile program and urged China to do more, a government spokesman said on Wednesday. In a phone call the leaders agreed to strengthen our deterrence capability against the North Korean threat, Yasutoshi Nishimura, deputy chief cabinet secretary, told reporters after Pyongyang fired what Japan said appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile into waters in Japan s exclusive economic zone. Trump and Abe also agreed that China needs to play an increased role in countering North Korea, Nishimura said. They did not discuss military options toward North Korea, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a separate news conference. Japan will work closely with the United States and South Korea in response to the missile launch, Suga said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian media law poses threat to free press: U.S. State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that a new law allowing Russia s Justice Ministry to list foreign media outlets as foreign agents posed a threat to free press and it urged Moscow not to use the measure to tighten control over the media. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement on Tuesday, Freedom of expression, including speech and media which a government may find inconvenient, is a universal human rights obligation Russia has pledged to uphold. She said Russia s foreign agents law had been used to justify a constant stream of raids, harassment, and legal proceedings that effectively obstruct non-governmental organizations from doing their work. The law, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, allows Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of foreign agents and to disclose their funding sources. The legislation was rushed through Russia s parliament in two weeks after the United States required Russian state broadcaster RT to register its U.S.-based affiliate company as a foreign agent. Nauert rejected any comparison between the U.S. and Russian laws, saying the American law did not limit publication of information or restrict the organization s ability to operate. The move is part of the fallout from allegations that Russia interfered in last year s U.S. presidential campaign to try to help Donald Trump win. U.S. intelligence officials have accused the Kremlin of using Russian media to influence U.S. voters. Moscow has denied meddling in the U.S. election. Expanding the Foreign Agents Law to include media outlets opens the door to onerous requirements that could further stifle freedom of speech and editorial independence in Russia, Nauert said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Saudi prince freed in settlement agreement of $1 billion: Saudi official;DUBAI (Reuters) - Senior Saudi Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, once seen as a leading contender to the throne, was freed after reaching an acceptable settlement agreement with authorities paying more than $1 billion, a Saudi official said on Wednesday. The official said Miteb, in his deal with the government, had admitted corruption. Three other people involved in corruption cases have also finalised settlement agreements with authorities, the official told Reuters. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Meeting on North Korea crisis to be in Canada after Christmas: source;OTTAWA (Reuters) - A planned meeting of foreign ministers to discuss the North Korean crisis is not scheduled to take place before the Christmas break in late December, a Canadian official said on Tuesday. Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Canada would co-host the meeting with the United States on Canadian soil. At least a dozen foreign ministers will be involved, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of the situation. U.S Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, condemning a North Korean missile test earlier in the day, said the meeting would include South Korea, Japan and other affected nations, to discuss how the global community can counter North Korea s threat to international peace. Freeland had been discussing North Korea with counterparts in recent months, including those from the United States, South Korea, Japan, Australia and China, said the Canadian official. Canada was a good choice to host a meeting because it was less directly involved in the crisis than the United States, Japan, South Korea or China, said the official. There are fewer implications to us convening a constructive conversation, added the official, saying no decisions on a venue or who would be invited had been made. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hawaii to resume Cold War-era nuclear siren tests amid North Korea threat;HONOLULU (Reuters) - Hawaii this week will resume monthly statewide testing of Cold War-era nuclear attack warning sirens for the first time in at least a quarter century, in preparation for a possible missile strike from North Korea, state officials said on Tuesday. A recording of the wailing air-raid siren - familiar to older generations who grew up hearing it on a regular basis - was played at a news conference by Governor David Ige, civil defense and emergency management officers in the state capital, Honolulu. Ige said he believed Hawaii was the first in the nation to reintroduce statewide nuclear siren drills. The announcement, though planned weeks earlier, came hours after North Korea s latest test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) before landing in the Sea of Japan. The Pentagon said the rocket posed no danger to the United States, its territories or allies. But state emergency management authorities said they decided in recent months to reactivate the state s nuclear attack sirens for the first time since the 1980s after experts deemed some of North Korea s missiles were capable of reaching Hawaii. The wailing air raid sirens - distinguished from steady-tone sirens already in use to warn of hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters - were set to return on Friday. Both sirens will be sounded in separate 50-second intervals from more than 400 locations across the central Pacific islands starting at 11:45 a.m. in a test that will be repeated on the first business day of each month thereafter. The exercise is being launched in conjunction with public service announcements urging residents of the islands to get inside, stay inside and stay tuned when they hear the warning. A single 150-kiloton weapon detonated over Pearl Harbor on the main island of Oahu would be expected to kill 18,000 people outright and leave 50,000 to 120,000 others injured across a blast zone several miles wide, state Emergency Management Agency officials have said, citing projections based on assessments of North Korea s nuclear weapons technology. While casualties of that scale would be unprecedented on U.S. soil, an agency fact sheet stressed that 90 percent of Hawaii s 1.4 million-plus residents would survive the direct effects of such an explosion. Oahu, home to a heavy concentration of the U.S. military command structure, as well as Honolulu and about two-thirds of the state s population, is seen as an especially likely target for potential North Korean nuclear aggression against the United States. In the event of an actual nuclear missile launch at Hawaii from North Korea, the attack sirens would give island residents and tourists just 12 or 13 minutes of warning before impact, according to the state s fact sheet. In that case, residents are advised to immediately take cover in a building or other substantial structure. Although no designated nuclear shelters exist, staying indoors offers the best chance of limiting exposure to radioactive fallout. Calling the North Korea threat a new normal, Ige said, A possibility of attack today is very remote, but we do believe that it s important that we be proactive, that we plan and are prepared for every possibility moving forward. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New Venezuela oil chief vows anti-corruption crusade;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s new oil czar vowed on Tuesday to root out corruption in state oil company PDVSA in a combative two-minute speech during his inauguration, without offering clues as to how he plans to handle the company s crippling debt burden. President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday tapped Major General Manuel Quevedo to lead both PDVSA [PDVSA.UL] and the Oil Ministry, giving the already powerful military control of the OPEC nation s dominant industry. In comments during a two-hour broadcast by Maduro, Quevedo said he would go after saboteurs and defeat a corrupt bureaucracy, while offering only a brief nod to boosting oil production and improving refinery operations. We re going to clean up public finances so that those thieves in PDVSA will finally leave, said Quevedo. The government s actions have captured many people who had infiltrated the industry. Those who are left should be worried. Investors are closely watching Quevedo for clues as to whether he will seek to halt payment on PDVSA s bonds, or maintain Maduro s strategy of continuing to service debt despite the country s crippling economic crisis. Quevedo made no mention of foreign debt on Tuesday. Maduro said this month he would restructure and refinance all future debt payments and that the country would never default on its debt. Quevedo s predecessors, Oil Minister Eulogio del Pino and PDVSA President Nelson Martinez, were both seen as a industry veterans with significant technical expertise who favored continuing to make debt payments. Sources in the sector said Quevedo s appointment could quicken a white-collar exodus from PDVSA and worsen operational problems at a time when production has already tumbled to near 30-year lows of under 2 million barrels a day. Maduro said on Tuesday he was naming Ysmel Serrano, the head of the trade and supply division, as vice president of PDVSA, which oversees the world s largest crude reserves. He said he would seek to name the country s former energy minister, Ali Rodriguez, as honorary president of PDVSA. More military officers are set to be named to senior management posts as part of a shake-up the government says is aimed at fighting corruption, two company sources told Reuters on Monday. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Grenade thrown at French troops in Burkina Faso wounds three before Macron's arrival: report;PARIS (Reuters) - A grenade thrown at French soldiers wounded three civilians in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou shortly before the arrival of French President Emmanuel Macron, Radio France International reported on Tuesday. The grenade was thrown late on Monday, just hours before Macron was due to speak before a university audience at Ouagadougou, the radio station, citing security sources, said. Two hooded individuals threw the grenade from a motorbike before fleeing the scene, the radio said. There was no immediate comment of the incident at Macron s office. Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are due to address an EU-Africa summit in Abidjan this week, focusing on education, investment in youth and economic development to prevent refugees and economic migrants from attempting the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bolivian court clears way for Morales to run for fourth term;LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia s highest court struck down limits on re-election in the country s constitution and election laws on Tuesday, paving the way for socialist President Evo Morales to run for a fourth term in 2019. In September, Morales Movement to Socialism (MAS) party asked the South American country s highest court to rescind legal limits barring elected authorities from seeking re-election indefinitely, arguing that these violate human rights. All people that were limited by the law and the constitution are hereby able to run for office, because it is up to the Bolivian people to decide, Macario Lahor Cortez, head of the Plurinational Constitutional Court, wrote in the ruling. In the decision, the court cited the American Convention on Human Rights, a multilateral treaty signed by many countries in the Americas. The secretary general of the Organization of American States, which is responsible for enforcing the treaty, said the clause cited in the decision does not mean the right to perpetual power. Besides, presidential re-election was rejected by popular will in a referendum in 2016, Luis Almagro wrote on Twitter late on Tuesday. The ruling is final and cannot be appealed. Morales, who took power in 2006, had previously accepted the results of a 2016 referendum, when 51 percent of Bolivian voters rejected his proposal to reform the constitution to end existing term limits. He later reversed course and said that while he would happily give up office, his supporters were pushing for him to stay. The landlocked Andean country has enjoyed relative prosperity and calm under Morales, the country s first indigenous president. But his efforts to extend term limits have set off protests across the country, with opponents arguing Morales was trying to tighten his grip on power in the vein of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist ally. Opposition leader Samuel Doria Medina said on Twitter that the court decision was a blow to the constitution . ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran presidential candidate to review U.S. troops presence;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran presidential candidate leading after a partial count of votes said he would review whether to keep a base stationed with U.S. troops if he wins the election, but also promised to deepen security co-operation. Honduras has been slow to release the results of Sunday s election. Although U.S.-friendly President Juan Orlando Hernandez had been tipped to win, partial results show an upset, with gregarious television star Salvador Nasralla leading. One of the poorest nations in the Americas with one of the world s highest murder rates, Honduras has been blighted with years of gang violence. Nasralla has tapped into widespread disillusionment about the country s future, particularly among young voters. But his win is not yet certain. As results started flowing on Tuesday evening, Nasralla s original five-point lead had narrowed to just over 1.5 percentage points, with about 72 percent of ballot boxes counted. In a television interview on Tuesday evening, an angry Nasralla said the election was being stolen from him and urged his supporters to flock to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to protest. In an earlier interview with Reuters on Tuesday, the 64-year-old Nasralla said, if he did triumph, he would talk to the United States about 500 U.S. troops stationed at the Soto Cano air base, also known as Palmerola, two hours drive from Tegucigalpa. I need to see what benefit there is for Honduras from having a base like Palmerola, Nasralla said. The U.S. presence was established in the 1980s to help the United States in its fight against left-wing insurgencies in Central America. In 2008, former President Manuel Zelaya said he would turn the base into a civilian airport to serve the coffee-exporting country of 9 million people. A year later, Zelaya was ousted in a coup that his ally, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said was orchestrated from the base. U.S. officials denied any involvement in the coup. Nasralla, a self-described centrist, said he would deepen security ties with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, and that Honduras would remain the United States best ally in Central America. When the United States passes me its list of people it wants to extradite ... I m not even going to look at it. I m simply going to sign it and give the order, he said. I m willing to extradite ex-presidents, lawmakers, ministers. Honduras is riddled with corruption that breeds on rampant impunity, drug trafficking and gang violence. U.S. officials were aware of his economic and social policy positions, he added. I m certain that I won t have any problems with the United States, he said. The United States has longstanding military ties to Honduras and few ideological allies among the current crop of Central American presidents. In Mexico, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador leads opinion polls for next year s presidential election. Nasralla said that Zelaya would be an influential person in his government and that the former president s wife, Xiomara Castro, would serve as his vice-president. Zelaya, widely viewed as a traditional Latin American leftist due to his previous friendship with Chavez, commands considerable concern in Washington. Many observers believe him to be the true power behind Nasralla s coalition. Nasralla said the concerns were unfounded, and that he would not pursue a close relationship with Venezuela. But he also hinted that Zelaya could return to the presidency in the future. He said he did not want to change new rules allowing presidential re-election, apparently contradicting his previous opposition. His alliance was formed specifically to block Hernandez s bid for a second term. Nasralla said that he would not run for a second term, but that Zelaya could choose to run in 2022 and benefit from the lack of term limits. Ironically, Zelaya was ousted in 2009 after he proposed a referendum on those re-election rules. Earlier on Tuesday, Hernandez told supporters he still expected to win the election, but urged people to wait for the official results to come through. Given the nearly two-day lag in releasing results, a Hernandez victory would be certain to enrage the opposition, and could spark tensions. They re doing everything they can to take away our triumph, Nasralla wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon, as the lead started narrowing. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German broadcasters won't promote ex-Pink Floyd frontman's concerts over anti-Semitism accusations; (This November 28 story has been corrected to clarify in headline, lead and third paragraph that the broadcasters will not promote the concerts, not that they had dropped plans to air the concerts) BERLIN (Reuters) - German public broadcasters have dropped plans to promote concerts next year by British ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, citing what they call accusations of anti-Semitism against him . Waters, part of one of the world s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful rock bands from 1965-85 before going solo, is a member of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) that targets Israel over its occupation of territories where Palestinians seek statehood. Five state television and radio affiliates of the national ARD network have said they will not promote concerts by the 74-year-old Waters in Berlin and Cologne scheduled next summer in reaction to anti-Semitism accusations against him , Berlin and Brandenburg public radio (RBB) said. RBB, part of the ARD network, said it wanted to send a message to other artists who, heeding the BDS, refuse to perform in Israel. Waters joined the movement in 2011. Taking a clear position here is an important signal for RBB to the Jewish communities in Berlin and Brandenburg, RBB director Patricia Schlesinger said in a statement. The quick and decisive reaction by the broadcasters ...is an important signal that rampant anti-Semitism against Israel `has no place in Germany, said Josef Schuster, president of The Central Council of Jews in Germany. Marek Lieberberg, Waters tour director, said that German Jews were right to be concerned about clearly visible and growing anti-Semitism in Germany - alluding to the far right s surge in recent German elections - but that the broadcasters decision was absolutely ridiculous . Lieberberg, the son of Holocaust survivors, told the Mannheimer Morgen daily that while he rejected the BDS, he separates personal opinions from work. I cannot and do not want to deny (Waters) his right to freedom of opinion, he said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s right-wing government has long campaigned against the BDS, describing it as anti-Semitic and an attempt to erase Israel s legitimacy. The movement, launched in 2005 as a non-violent campaign to press Israel to heed international law and end its occupation of territory held since a 1967 war, has gathered momentum in recent years even if its economic impact remains negligible. Germany has long sought to distance itself from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and become one of Israel s closest allies. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea may announce completion of nuclear program within a year: South Korea minister;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea may announce the completion of its nuclear program within a year, South Korea s unification minister said on Tuesday, as the isolated country is moving more faster than expected in developing its weapons arsenal. Experts think North Korea will take two to three more years but they are developing their nuclear capabilities faster than expected and we cannot rule out the possibility Pyongyang may declare the completion of their nuclear program in a year, said Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon at a media event in Seoul. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China partly lifts ban on group tours to South Korea, online curbs stay;SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - China will allow travel agencies in Beijing and Shandong to partly resume sales of group tours to South Korea, in a sign of thawing relations between the nations that have been locked in a year-long diplomatic standoff. However, executives from tour agencies in the regions said they had been told not to include in their travel packages units of South Korean retail-to-chemicals giant Lotte Group - which provided land for the installation of a U.S.-backed anti-missile system that Beijing vehemently opposed. China had banned all group tours to the neighboring country since March in the wake of South Korea s decision to install the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. Beijing worries the THAAD s powerful radar can penetrate Chinese territory. In South Korea, a halving of inbound Chinese tourists in the first nine months of the year cost the economy $6.5 billion in lost revenue based on the average spending of Chinese visitors in 2016, official data shows. But a late October agreement between the countries to move past the dispute had boosted hopes group tours may be allowed in the near future. [L3N1NE1MN] China National Tourism Administration will allow resumption of only over-the-counter sales of package tours from Beijing and Shandong to South Korea, Park Yong-hwan, deputy director at Korea Tourism Organization, and executives at Chinese travel agencies said on Tuesday. Online sales of package tours, and chartering flights or cruise trips are still banned, Park said. According to the executives at travel agencies, restrictions on including Lotte Group units, such as Lotte Duty Free, in tour packages also remain. The executives declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. Lotte, South Korea s No.5 conglomerate, has faced a major setback in the wake of deteriorating bilateral relations, with most of its hypermarkets in China being shut down after fire inspections. The South Korean travel ban is expected to be be in place for other Chinese regions for now and be gradually lifted going forward, Park said. Shares in South Korean tourism and retail companies rallied after the news of the partial lifting of the ban, first reported by Yonhap earlier in the day. Asiana Airlines gained 3.1 percent and duty free store operator Hotel Shilla rose 2.8 percent. Casino operator Paradise rose 2.2 percent, while cosmetics maker LG Household & Health Care added 3.7 percent. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya police fire teargas to control crowd gathering for inauguration;NAIROBI, (Reuters) - Kenyan police fired teargas on Tuesday to try to control a crowd of thousands of people trying to force their way into a stadium to attend the inauguration of President Uhuru Kenyatta. In a separate part of the capital city, where opposition leader Raila Odinga had planned to hold a rival meeting, police sealed off the area and lobbed teargas at opposition supporters trying to gather there. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: TRUMP HITS BACK At ‘Nancy and Chuck’ with Stunning Visual…Pelosi Has A Twitter Meltdown [Video];We reported earlier today that Chuck and Nancy decided to be no-shows to a budget meeting after POTUS tweeted a scorchingly honest assessment of the two Democrat leaders (see below)WELL, IN TRUE TRUMP STYLE, THE PRESIDENT SET UP A GREAT VISUAL FOR A PRESSER:MOMENTS AGO: @POTUS, @SenateMajLdr, @SpeakerRyan, & Secretary Mattis delivered remarks on tax reform votes and North Korea's ICBM launch. pic.twitter.com/dA9jmoIiJk Fox News (@FoxNews) November 28, 2017NANCY GOES BONKERS WITH DELUSIONAL CLAIMS ABOUT POTUS:.@realDonaldTrump now knows that his verbal abuse will no longer be tolerated. His empty chair photo opp showed he s more interested in stunts than in addressing the needs of the American people. Poor Ryan and McConnell relegated to props. Sad! Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017@realDonaldTrump now knows that his verbal abuse will no longer be tolerated. His empty chair photo opp showed he s more interested in stunts than in addressing the needs of the American people. Poor Ryan and McConnell relegated to props. Sad!, Pelosi tweeted.ONCE AGAIN, TRUMP OUTWITS THE WASHINGTON SWAMP DWELLERS MAGA! HERE S WHAT HAPPENED EARLIER TODAY:Senate Minority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Pelosi are having a temper tantrum after President Trump exposed them for who they really are in a scorching tweet:PRESIDENT TRUMP S TWEET: Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal!Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017BURN! CHUCK AND NANCY CAN T HANDLE THE TRUTH!They released a joint statement on Tuesday saying they were not playing They were taking their ball and going home like a couple of toddlers. Were they EVER in the budget game to make any reasonable compromise? We think they asked for unreasonable things that Trump just couldn t pull the trigger on. Amnesty for Dreamers could be one of those things. We don t have details but we re thinking it s why Trump tweeted about one borders.A portion of the statement reads: Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won t result in an agreement, we ve asked Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan to meet this afternoon, THE TWEET IS THE TRUTH It s about time someone called these two out for putting Americans last!;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai police arrest 16 protesting against coal-fired power plant;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai authorities have arrested 16 people who were protesting against the construction of a coal-fired power plant, drawing criticism of the military government from rights activists and environmentalists. The planned power plant in the southern province of Songkhla will consist of two 1,000-megawatt units, and is part of a power development plan to 2036, but activists object to its expected environmental and health impact on communities in the area. The 16 protesters were arrested on Monday as they traveled from Thepa district, the site of the plant, to the provincial capital to present a petition to Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who was due in the city on Tuesday for a meeting. This incident shows the true face of Thailand s military dictators, who have committed a long list of abuses and repressions since the May 2014 coup, Sunai Phasuk, Thailand researcher for U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. Six protesters were injured in a scuffle with police, said anti-coal activist Supat Hasuwannakit. The use of force was uncalled for, Supat told Reuters. A few police officers were injured, police said, adding that the 16 had been charged with blocking traffic, assaulting authorities, and resisting arrest. Police have requested that a court detains them. Tara Buakamsri, country director for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said in a statement the action against the protesters reflected a complete failure by the government to promote a peaceful and inclusive society. The Thepa power plant has no legitimacy to be built, the group said. The first unit of the power plant is due to begin operating in 2021. Its environmental health impact assessment was completed in August and is pending approval by the National Environment Board. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: JUDICIAL WATCH Claims Comey’s FBI Hid and “Blacked Out” Records Of Secret Loretta Lynch Meeting With Bill Clinton On Tarmac;Remember when President Barack Obama s Attorney General Loretta Lynch just happened to get a surprise visit in Phoenix, while on the tarmac at the airport, from the husband of the Democrat candidate for President, former President Bill Clinton? Have Americans already forgotten, that the secret meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton took place only hours before the DOJ was about to release their report on Benghazi? Remember when Loretta Lynch told the media that their secret meeting was primarily social and was mostly about grandchildren and golf? Primarily? Watch:As previously reported by Gateway Pundit, Judicial Watch forced the FBI to admit it has 30 new documents related to the infamous Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting in mid-October.This is after the FBI originally told Judicial Watch they couldn t locate any records related to the tarmac meeting.Fitton blasted the FBI! The FBI is out of control. It is stunning that the FBI found these Clinton-Lynch tarmac records only after we caught the agency hiding them in another lawsuit. Judicial Watch will continue to press for answers about the FBI s document games in court. In the meantime, the FBI should stop the stonewall and release these new records immediately. Previous tarmac meeting documents released were redacted by the DOJ not Obama s DOJ, Trump s DOJ under Jeff Sessions! The talking points are completely blacked out you heard that right. They re blacked out. Again, they weren t blacked out by Attorney General Lynch, they weren t blacked out by James Comey, they weren t blacked out by Barack Obama. They were blacked out by the Justice Department run by Attorney General Sessions, an appointee of President Trump. Isn t that outrageous? Today, Judicial Watch president, Tom Fitton blasted James Comey, and the FBI for lying about the documents they were hiding about the Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting on Twitter:FBI Hid Clinton/Lynch Tarmac Meeting Records. But the cover-up begins to end thanks to @JudicialWatch the day after tomorrow. @RealDonaldTrump needs to clean house at FBI/DOJ. https://t.co/tytBp28sYL Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 28, 2017;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Watchdog to depart DHS after tensions over U.S. travel ban report;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s top internal watchdog told Reuters on Tuesday he will retire, after he complained about a delay in the release of a report critical of the department’s handling of President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth, nominated by former Democratic President Barack Obama in late 2013, said in an interview on Tuesday that his last day will be Thursday. He announced his plans to his staff early last week. Roth said his decision to step down was unrelated to concerns he raised in a seven-page, Nov. 20 letter to members of Congress that revealed for the first time the findings from his office’s inquiry into how U.S. Customs and Border Protection implemented Trump’s initial travel ban in January. In the letter, Roth said he was “troubled” that senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaders had taken more than six weeks to decide which parts of the report should be made public, and had given it to the Justice Department to decide whether to redact some sections on internal deliberations. The 87-page report has yet to be released. In a statement, a DHS spokesman said its employees “conducted themselves professionally, and in a legal manner” in implementing the travel ban. Roth said that after he leaves, the inspector general office’s deputy, John V. Kelly, will take over temporarily until the president nominates a permanent replacement. “It was a good run,” Roth said, noting that he has worked in the government since the Reagan era. “It is now time to do other things. This has been coming for awhile.” Trump’s travel ban of January 2017, restricting U.S. entry by people from certain Muslim majority countries, has been the target of multiple legal challenges. Its initial implementation led to chaos at airports across the United States. The January ban was blocked by federal courts. Trump later issued two revised versions in March and September. The U.S. Supreme Court is now weighing whether to let the latest version go into full effect after it was partially blocked by lower courts. In his letter to Congress, Roth said his office did not substantiate any claims of misconduct by customs agents, but that there was little warning before the ban took effect and the department violated court orders in two different instances. Roth told Reuters he had not heard any updates since he wrote to Congress. “I still remain very concerned,” he said, adding other inspectors general have told him they too were “surprised” by DHS’ handling of the matter. Presidentially appointed inspectors general serve at the pleasure of the president, although they typically do not step down with a change in administration. Roth has worked in government since 1987, including as a prosecutor in the Justice Department and more recently as head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YIKES! STUNNING VIDEOS Show ANYONE Can Hack MacOS High Sierra By Only Typing ONE WORD!;According to WIRED THERE ARE HACKABLE security flaws in software. And then there are those that don t even require hacking at all just a knock on the door and asking to be let in. Apple s macOS High Sierra has the second kind.On Tuesday, security researchers disclosed a bug that allows anyone a blindingly easy method of breaking that operating system s security protections. Anyone who hits a prompt in High Sierra asking for a username and password before logging into a machine with multiple users, they can simply type root as a username, leave the password field blank, click unlock twice, and immediately gain full access.In other words, the bug allows any rogue user that gets the slightest foothold on a target computer to gain the deepest level of access to a computer, known as root privileges. Malware designed to exploit the trick could also fully install itself deep within the computer, no password required. We always see malware trying to escalate privileges and get root access, says Patrick Wardle, a security researcher with Synack. This is best, easiest way ever to get root, and Apple has handed it to them on a silver platter. As word of the security vulnerability rippled across Twitter and other social media, a few security researchers found they couldn t replicate the issue, but others captured and posted video demonstrations of the attack, like Wardle s GIF below, and another that shows security researcher Amit Serper logging into a logged-out account. WIRED also independently confirmed the bug.Watch these two incredible videos posted to Twitter letting Apple know they have a HUGE security issue at MacOS High Sierra: pic.twitter.com/4TBh5NetIS patrick wardle (@patrickwardle) November 28, 2017Just tested the apple root login bug. You can log in as root even after the machi was rebooted pic.twitter.com/fTHZ7nkcUp Amit Serper (@0xAmit) November 28, 2017The fact that the attack could be used on a logged-out account raises the possibility that someone with physical access could exploit it just as easily as malware, points out Thomas Reed, an Apple-focused security researcher with MalwareBytes. They could, for instance, use the attack to gain root access to a logged-out machine, set a root password, and then regain access to a machine at any time. Oooh, boy, this is a doozy, says Reed. So, if someone did this to a Mac sitting on a desk in an office, they could come back later and do whatever they wanted. Facebook user Brian Matiash tells Mac users about how they protect their Mac from being hacked. We cannot confirm or deny if his advice is legit, we are simply sharing it with you. Matiash gives Facebook users the following advice: Wonders never cease, Apple. How can such a painfully obvious bug like this make it by your QA teams? At least make the default root password be password or something. FFS, guys. Get you damned act together. EDIT: It would be socially responsible of me to state that there is a fairly easy workaround. Start by opening up Terminal.app and type the following command: sudo passwd -u root Next, enter your primary user password. Then, enter a new password for root and retype it to confirm. There. You re protected.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to make remarks at White House at 3 p.m. EST;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is slated to give remarks to reporters at the White House at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) on Tuesday, the White House said. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. budget chief Mulvaney says CFPB staff should 'disregard' deputy director: memo;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. budget chief Mick Mulvaney on Tuesday told staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to “disregard” instructions from Leandra English, the deputy director, according to a memo. “Consistent with my email from yesterday, please disregard any email sent by, or instructions you receive from, Ms. English when she is purporting to act as the Acting Director,” Mulvaney wrote in an email to staff Tuesday morning. Mulvaney and English, the agency’s deputy director, are in a legal fight over who should control the agency following the Friday resignation of Director Richard Cordray. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian envoy to U.S. to inspect San Francisco consulate: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow’s ambassador to the United States will inspect the Russian consulate in San Francisco, from which staff has been expelled, on a visit to California later this month, the Russian embassy to the United States said on Tuesday, according to the news agency RIA. Russian staff left the consulate in September after Washington ordered Moscow to vacate some of its diplomatic properties, part of a series of tit-for-tat actions as relations soured between the two countries. U.S. officials have since occupied administrative parts of the compound, and Russia has threatened retaliation over what it has said are illegal and disrespectful acts. “From Nov. 29 to Dec. 3, Ambassador (Anatoly) Antonov will visit the state of California,” RIA quoted the embassy as saying. The embassy said the trip will also include meetings with experts and business people, RIA reported. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House to Democratic leaders: 'stop the political grandstanding';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will proceed as planned to meet with Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday and criticized Democratic leaders for bowing out, the White House said. “The president’s invitation to the Democrat leaders still stands and he encourages them to put aside their pettiness, stop the political grandstanding, show up and get to work,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top Democrats in Congress say won't meet with Trump as planned;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top two Democrats in the U.S. Congress said they would not meet with President Donald Trump on Tuesday as planned after he said he does not think he can reach a deal with them on legislation to fund the government. “Given that the president doesn’t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Senate liberals propose new steps for Puerto Rico recovery;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Puerto Rico would get substantial debt relief and other new aid to help it recover from destruction inflicted by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September, under legislation unveiled on Tuesday by leading liberals in the U.S. Senate. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, called for a new “emergency credit facility” of up to $57.2 billion for Puerto Rico and $5 billion for the Virgin Islands, according to a summary of the bill. The bill would also extend the deadline for individuals to apply for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The legislation cannot advance without the support of Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the Senate. Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have approved some $51 billion in aid to the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and U.S. states hit by hurricanes and wildfires, with a new round expected to be approved in December. The effort has been criticized as lackluster by many Democrats in Congress, with large swaths of Puerto Rico still without power and clean water. Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello is seeking more than $94 billion in disaster recovery aid, including $31.1 billion for housing and $17.8 billion to rebuild and bolster the power grid. The legislation would put Congress on record in support of relieving Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt. The island has a further $50 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Kenneth Mapp, governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, said the island had requested $7.5 billion to cover uninsured hurricane-related damages to the public sector. The hurricanes devastated the island’s healthcare sector, destroying two already struggling hospitals. Mapp also asked for a waiver to use $226 million in unspent Medicaid funding provided under Obamacare. The island was unable to spend the money because the local government could not provide its share of matching funds. The Sanders-Warren plan would also restore the U.S. minimum wage for certain young workers in Puerto Rico, open some federal food and nutrition programs to the two territories and improve benefits under the Medicare and Medicaid health programs. The legislation as well would provide more federal aid for rebuilding Puerto Rico’s electric grid, with an emphasis on beefing up solar, wind and other “clean” energy capabilities. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson 'offended' by claims of State Department's hollowing out;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday he was offended by claims that the State Department is being hollowed out, saying his agency is functioning well, contrary to scathing criticism from former diplomats. In the latest salvo, two retired senior U.S. diplomats said the agency is being undermined by proposed budget cuts of about 30 percent and is being deliberately taken apart. “President Trump’s draconian budget cuts for the State Department and his dismissive attitude toward our diplomats and diplomacy itself threaten to dismantle a great Foreign Service,” Nicholas Burns and Ryan Crocker wrote in the New York Times on Monday. “This is not about belt tightening. It is a deliberate effort to deconstruct the State Department and the Foreign Service,” Burns, a former No. 3 official at the agency, and Crocker, a six-time U.S. ambassador, added. The forcing out of many senior diplomats, the failure to nominate or to win Senate confirmation for officials to fill many major agency roles, and a perception that Tillerson is inaccessible have eroded morale, according to current officials. Tillerson said, however, the department is running well and that the department budget had grown dramatically. The planned cuts would restore it to historical norms, he said. He also praised officials serving as acting assistant secretaries of state, typically among the agency’s key jobs, saying they have helped to devise approaches on issues from North Korea and Syria to Iran and Ukraine. “There is no hollowing out,” Tillerson said after a speech at a think tank. “I am offended on their behalf when people say, somehow, we don’t have a State Department that functions ... I can tell you, it’s functioning very well from my perspective.” Tillerson said the process of winning Senate confirmation of appointments has been “excruciatingly slow.” However, the Trump administration has failed to nominate people to serve in many key agency slots, leaving the Senate unable to consider them. According to a database compiled by the Washington Post newspaper and the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, there are no nominees for the assistant secretaries of state for African, East Asian, South and Central Asian, Near Eastern or Western Hemisphere affairs. This means that the top diplomats for major regions do not enjoy status that comes from being chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: 'I don't see a deal' with Democrats on keeping government open;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he will meet on Tuesday with the Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, to discuss keeping the government open but cited differences with them. “Meeting with “Chuck and Nancy” today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don’t see a deal!” Trump said in a Twitter post. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congressman Gutierrez will not seek re-election: Politico;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, a prominent critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, will not seek re-election next year, Politico reported on Monday. Citing three Democratic sources with knowledge of the decision, Politico reported that Gutierrez was expected to announce his decision not to run on Tuesday. Gutierrez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Politico reported that former Chicago mayoral candidate Jesus “Chuy” Garcia was expected to enter the race for Guiterrez’s seat in the heavily Hispanic 4th District, which includes parts of Chicago and some suburbs west of the city. Gutierrez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, has criticized Trump’s efforts to restrict immigration and to deport millions of illegal immigrants in the United States. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Democrats Give Trump A Big F**ck You After He Attacks Them In Insane Twitter Rant;Donald Trump s Twitter feed is always a goldmine of crazy. Unfortunately, since the orange overlord is now squatting in the Oval Office, those nutty tweets tend to have the ability to derail important policy initiatives, and can therefore have disastrous effects for the nation and sometimes the world. Case in point the fact that he insisted upon attacking Democratic leaders that he had a meeting with regarding the debt ceiling, the Children s Health Insurance Program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and other important domestic policy initiatives. Apparently, Trump saw fit to take to Twitter to accuse his old pals Chuck and Nancy of not being strong enough on crime and immigration, and therefore doesn t see a way to make deals with them:Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017Given this out-of-the-blue attack, Democratic Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a joint statement promptly pulling out of the meeting, which reads: Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Leader Pelosi then took to Twitter herself to take Trump on:Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won t result in an agreement, we ve asked @SenateMajLdr & @SpeakerRyan to meet this afternoon. Read my full statement w/ @SenSchumer here: https://t.co/v17WhoEJFU Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017It s likely best that the Democrats don t go meet with Trump anyway. He is clearly becoming more and more unhinged by the day. There was absolutely no reason for him to attack these leaders who had set up a time to meet with him in good faith. Then again, we re led by a crazy man, and there s not much sense in anything at all anymore.Look for that government shutdown, folks. It s coming.Watch a video on the situation, below:Featured image via Zach Gibson Pool/Getty Images.;News;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Official in charge of State Department reorganization steps down;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official overseeing a reorganization of the State Department that has been criticized by current and former U.S. diplomats has stepped down after less than four months on the job, U.S. officials said on Monday. Maliz Beams, a former financial industry executive who was named State Department counselor on Aug. 17, is “stepping away” to return to Boston, said a department spokesman on condition of anonymity. Christine Ciccone, the department’s deputy chief of staff, will take over the agency’s “redesign,” he added. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been criticized by current and former U.S. diplomats as well as by some members of Congress for his management of the agency, where may top posts have not been filled nearly 10 months into Tillerson’s tenure. The department has also seen an exodus of senior diplomats. Tillerson defended the department when he was recently asked about morale problems and concerns that the agency was being weakened. “The redesign is going to address all of that. And this department is performing extraordinarily well, and I take exception to anyone who characterizes otherwise. It’s just not true,” he said on Nov. 20. State Department officials observing the reorganization say it has been plagued with uncertainty both about what Tillerson wants to achieve and how to go about it. “If the one thing she (Beams) was asked to do was the redesign and she is quitting ... how does this not reflect poorly on the overall management of this enterprise, that is the redesign?” said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Another State Department official said Beams had left of her own volition and was not fired. Beams did not immediately respond to voicemails left at her office and Massachusetts phone numbers or to an email sent to her State Department address. The State Department spokesman declined comment on criticism of the reorganization. A congressional aide said the effort is so amorphous that Congress is unable to pass legislation to give the agency the legal authority to make changes. “To do that we would need to have some road map - something - and none of that has been provided,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Wakes Up To Scream At Black People After Hurling A Racial Slur Yesterday;"Donald Trump thinks if he rage-tweets about NFL players who choose to kneel instead of stand during the national anthem as a form of silent protest against racial injustice and police brutality, it will all go away but by doing that, he inadvertently highlights that there is a problem. The former reality show star dropped a racial slur yesterday in front of Native American heroes, then today, he jumped on Twitter to yell at black people. We see a pattern here. At least 24 players kneeling this weekend at NFL stadiums that are now having a very hard time filling up, Trump screamed at the world. The American public is fed up with the disrespect the NFL is paying to our Country, our Flag and our National Anthem. Weak and out of control! At least 24 players kneeling this weekend at NFL stadiums that are now having a very hard time filling up. The American public is fed up with the disrespect the NFL is paying to our Country, our Flag and our National Anthem. Weak and out of control! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017This didn t go down well on the Internet.Hey Mr. Clumsy, Now that you have added the Native Americans to the long list of Americans you insulted, can you make life easier on us and just tell us when and where you ll be using the N word? The suspense is killing us. #disgrace (@ronenbergen) November 28, 2017Collin Kapernick was named Time person of the year. Way to go Collin #Time #TakeAKnee Winning MN (@WinningMN) November 28, 2017Let it go. Your just mad because they aren t doing what YOU want them to do. Rick Laferriere (@RickLaf2) November 28, 2017The American public is fed up with the disrespect the President is paying to blacks, browns, mexicans, gays and all women since he entered office. Hafiz Shariff (@HafizDoc) November 28, 2017Mr. Trump, you are fake news. https://t.co/7LA9ExaK3b Leanne (@MsTeacher80) November 28, 2017""Weak and out of control!"" Pot calling the kettle black. pic.twitter.com/6ovSNvbStm Dan (QWERTYGEO) (@The_QWERTYGEO) November 28, 2017Disrespect is being an a-hole while trying to honor code talkers while standing in front of Andrew Jackson. kimberly (@kdd75) November 28, 2017According to numbers compiled by the Associated Press from its reporters at stadiums around the country on Sunday, it was 23 not 24 players who participated in the protests.As for Trump s claim about a lack of attendance, attendance through Week 12 was listed at nearly 12 million fans for the league s 32 teams by Pro Football Reference, with Week 12 drawing just over 1 million, according to The Washington Post.The average attendance at NFL games was actually up slightly, from 68,914 per game in 2016 to 69,264 per game, so President Liar Pants lied again. If he wants to talk about attendance, we can discuss his unenthusiastic inauguration crowd size. As for his ratings, he ranks as the least popular president in the history of polling.Donald Trump is actively trying to divide our country even more than it already is. Trump s obsession with NFL athletes protesting against racial injustice is obvious, and yet, he didn t seem to be concerned about the tiki-torch carrying Nazis who marched in his name in Charlottesville this year.Trump s outrageous attacks during the past two days mean that some big news is about to drop. Wait for it.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.";News;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Supporters Object To Prince Harry’s Recent Engagement For Terrible Reasons (TWEETS);Great Britain s Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that Prince Harry, the youngest son of Diana, Princess of Wales, had gotten engaged. A royal engagement is always big news in the United Kingdom, but this one also hit home in the United States too, because Harry s now-fiance is American actress Meghan Markle, best known for her roles as Rachel Zane in the legal drama series Suits, as well as special agent Amy Jessup in the sci-fi thriller Fringe.The British royal family no longer holds anywhere near as much clout as it once did, now essentially relegated to mere tabloid fodder, but while many were expressing their happiness online for one of the Windsor s most beloved members, quite a few Trump supporters expressed their dissatisfaction at the prince s choice. You see, Markle is biracial, her father being Caucasian and her mother African-American, and in the minds of many deplorables, this is a bad thing.It s completely irrelevant that Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of the reigning Queen Elizabeth II, is half-Greek, because that is pretty much white. However, when news broke of Prince Harry s engagement to Markle, white supremacists from across the United States and around the globe took to Twitter, because in their twisted minds, disturbing the racial purity of the British royal family is not a good thing, despite the fact the fact it has been going on for centuries. Here is but a mere sample:It's all smiles on TV but in private the #QUEEN is figuring out how to stop #PrinceHarry from destroying the #royalbloodline with mixed race #royalwedding #godsavethequeen $fb $twtr $goog #MAGA $PENNY KING (@groman100) November 27, 2017Totally unsuitable as a Royal bride. Prince Harry is marrying a left wing dindu. By Royal Princess standards she s practically a prostitute. https://t.co/uKRkemAVnO Romper Stomper (@Votadini1) November 27, 2017#PrinceHarry is the biggest CUCK in britain he is gonna marry an avarage-looking chick that rode the kok-carousel throughout her 20s WHAT A LOSER Prince Harry Royal Wedding Royal Family Kensington Palace Western Highlander (@TheGreatWork3) November 27, 2017PRINCE HARRY IS MARRYING A HALF BREED, DOWN WITH THE CROWN. troy williams (@troywilliams67) November 27, 2017The bastard cuck is marrying an older half African woman #MeganMarkle #PrinceHarry #14Words We must secure https://t.co/nziXAm0SgC pic.twitter.com/pPIRhaiGw8 Doema Fadir (@Doemafadir) November 27, 2017Prince Harry to marry this average ass chick. Man they're lucky I'm not the prince I'd have 500 concubines from all over the world. I'd bring back the British empire with this big D. From South Africa to the USA baby England owns this shit. Harry is a cuck. Andrew Tate (@kingcobratate) November 27, 2017Prince Harry the race traitor loves the dindus https://t.co/9rFpCySq93 N E W G U A R D (@whowantstobeano) November 22, 2016But when it comes to the American racists letting their opinions be known, is it the princess-to-be s color that is the issue, or is it the fact that their idol has been snubbed from any Royal celebration that is causing the real pain? That s right, Prince Harry has made it quite clear that President Donald Trump is not welcome at his wedding, despite the bride being a United States citizen. Barack and Michelle Obama, on the other hand, will more than likely be welcomed with open arms.Both Harry and especially his mother, Princess Diana, are well-known for their humanitarian work and according to a close source, the prince is not a fan of Trump. Harry thinks the president is a serious threat to human rights, the source continued, but there might be a lot more to it than just that.When Princess Diana split from her husband, Prince Charles, in 1992, a palace aide claims that Trump was relentless in his pursuit of Diana, a claim backed up by British TV journalist and friend of the princess, Selina Scott. Scott said that Trump bombarded Diana at Kensington Palace with massive bouquets of flowers, adding that he gave Diana the creeps, a fact Trump representatives obviously deny. Then there were these tweets from Donald Trump when Princess Kate Middleton, wife of Harry s brother, Prince William, was illegally photographed by paparazzi sunbathing topless in her backyard in 2012:Kate Middleton is great but she shouldn't be sunbathing in the nude only herself to blame. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2012Who wouldn't take Kate's picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing. Come on Kate! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2012Meghan Markle has also been a critic of the President, calling him misogynistic and once even threatened to leave the US if he became president, so she would most likely be fine with Trump s non-attendance at her wedding, but his supporters won t take too kindly to him being shunned.Featured image via Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation;News;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. warns North Korean leadership will be 'utterly destroyed' in case of war;SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States warned North Korea s leadership it would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out after Pyongyang test fired its most advanced missile, putting the U.S. mainland within range, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The Trump administration has repeatedly said all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea s ballistic and nuclear weapons programmes, including military ones, but that it still prefers a diplomatic option. Speaking at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley said the United States had never sought war with North Korea. If war does come, it will be because of continued acts of aggression like we witnessed yesterday, she said. ...and if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed. Haley said the United States has asked China to cut off oil supply to North Korea, a drastic step that Beijing - the North s neighbour and sole major trading partner - has so far refrained from doing. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping talked on the phone earlier on Wednesday. Just spoke to President Xi Jinping of China concerning the provocative actions of North Korea. Additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea today. This situation will be handled! Trump wrote on Twitter. Previous U.S. administrations have failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and a sophisticated missile programme. Trump, who has previously said the United States would totally destroy North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from the nuclear threat, has also struggled to contain Pyongyang since he came to office in January. Urging China to use its leverage and promising more sanctions against North Korea are two strategies that have borne little fruit so far. In a speech in Missouri about taxes, Trump, who has traded insults with the North in the past, referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with a derisive nickname. Little Rocket Man. He is a sick puppy, Trump said. For a graphic on North Korea's missile program, click tmsnrt.rs/2twm7W3 North Korea, which conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September, has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim s leadership. Pyongyang has said its weapons programmes are a necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention. North Korean state media said on Wednesday the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was launched from a newly developed vehicle in a breakthrough and that the warhead could withstand the pressure of re-entering the atmosphere. Kim personally guided the missile test and said the new launcher was impeccable . Pyongyang claimed it had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force . Russia s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called on North Korea to stop its weapons tests and for the United States and South Korea not to hold military drills in December as it would inflame an already explosive situation . The official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial that the latest launch may have been prompted by the Trump administration s decision to label North Korea a sponsor of state terrorism. Beijing wants the two belligerents to calm down and is vexed that a golden opportunity to encourage Pyongyang into talks was casually wasted by the Trump administration, the paper said. The clock is ticking down to one of two choices: learning to live with the DPRK having nuclear weapons or triggering a tripwire to the worst-case scenario, it added. North Korea said the new missile soared to an altitude of about 4,475 km (2,780 miles) - more than 10 times the height of the International Space Station - and flew 950 km (590 miles) during its 53-minute flight. It flew higher and longer than any North Korean missile before, landing in the sea near Japan. Photos released by North Korean state media appeared to show a missile being positioned on the launch site by a mobile vehicle, designed to allow the missile to be fired from a wider number of areas to prevent it being intercepted before launch. Kim is shown laughing and smiling with officials both next to the missile as it is readied, and in a control booth. The launch itself shows the missile lifting off amid smoke and fire, with Kim watching from a field in the distance. U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded from satellite and other data that the test missile was fired from a fixed position, not a mobile launcher, three U.S. officials said. One official said the test appears to demonstrate a more powerful North Korean solid-fuel propulsion system, especially in its second stage rocket. The photos also revealed a larger diameter missile, which could allow it to carry a larger warhead and use a more powerful engine, said David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S.-based nonprofit science advocacy group. Three U.S. intelligence analysts said they were trying to assess whether North Korea s comments meant Kim might now be open to a longer halt in testing in order to reopen negotiations that might help prevent, or at least defer, the imposition of additional sanctions. The officials also noted, however, that North Korea has not proved it has an accurate guidance system for an ICBM or a re-entry vehicle capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and surviving a return from space through Earth s atmosphere, meaning further tests would be needed. An international meeting in Canada in January is designed to produce better ideas to ease tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear and ballistic missile tests, Canadian officials said on Wednesday, although North Korea itself will not be invited. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States has a long list of additional potential sanctions, some of which involve potential financial institutions, and the Treasury Department will be announcing those when they re ready to roll those out . In just three months, South Korea hosts the Winter Olympics at a resort just 80 km (50 miles) from the heavily fortified border with North Korea. (For a graphic on North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, click tmsnrt.rs/2f3Y8rQ ) (Interactive graphic: Nuclear North Korea, click tmsnrt.rs/2lE5yjF ) ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Sean Hannity Is Throwing A Stage-4 Temper Tantrum Over The Photo He Posed For (IMAGE);We re not sure why Fox News host Sean Hannity posed for this picture (see below) since he s obviously not happy with it but now, Donald Trump s cult member is upset with the New York Times for selecting the photo for the cover of its magazine. Along with the photo, the cover reads, How Far Will Sean Hannity Go? So @nytimes takes 100 s and 100 s of pics. Obviously they picked the best one? the Fox News host tweeted to his more than 3.1 million followers.So @nytimes takes 100 s and 100 s of pics. Obviously they picked the best one? https://t.co/6c0yV1lupe Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 28, 2017Here s the photo that s freaking Hannity out.Internet users thought Hannity s reaction to the photo was pretty funny.Snowflake much Sean? Paul Dickinson (@prdickinson) November 28, 2017We re wondering the same thing.Why would this dummy pose for a photo like that if he didn't want them to use it? CaptainPajamas (@captainpajamas) November 28, 2017Makes you look young. And deranged. So half-accurate. Doug Brooks (@Hoosier84) November 28, 2017Hahahajahahaaa Cathy R (@CathyMaiRu) November 28, 2017I liked this one.. pic.twitter.com/wL9en474YQ Hanna (@hanna_shane) November 28, 2017Could be worse. They could have taken a pic when you first got out of bed. pic.twitter.com/6hKUGGIYRm greg fuller (@GregFuller4Real) November 28, 2017I think they did. Loud Asshat Drain The Trumps (@DrainTheTrumps) November 28, 2017When Donald Trump was the president-elect, he wanted the media to stop publishing unflattering photos of him so naturally, Internet users circulated them quickly. Trump hates photos displaying his many chins. Trump was speaking off-the-record at the time to whine about the unflattering shots. He also complained about photos of himself that NBC used that he found unflattering.At one point, Trump turned to NBC News President Deborah Turness and told her the network won t run a nice picture of him, instead choosing this picture of me, as he made a face with a double chin.I hear Donald Trump really hates this photo. So make sure not to retweet it. Ever. pic.twitter.com/6dUnchk8tC Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) November 25, 2016#TrumpleChin is bad. Very weak. I have a tremendous chin. Other chins shouldn't be allowed on Twitter. Sad. pic.twitter.com/mb18VywW3L Persistent Woman (@PixMichelle) November 25, 2016Apparently Donald Trump is very upset @NBC used an unflattering photo of him.Anyway, here's him and a pelican.Please don't RT. pic.twitter.com/6IAaSYKpzc Steve Marmel (@Marmel) November 27, 2016We can understand Hannity s obsession with Donald Trump now. They re basically the same person with the same ego. The piece published by the Times was actually a softball interview but Hannity is upset over the photograph.Hannity described himself to the Times as an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist I want to give my audiences the best shows possible and we describe him as a Donald Trump sycophant who has a raging hard-on for Hillary Clinton. While Hannity frequently calls liberals snowflakes, he continues to be the snowflakiest Fox News host on TV and on Twitter.Image via screen capture.;News;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate panel votes to advance tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Budget Committee voted along party lines on Tuesday to send a Republican tax bill to the full Senate for a vote. The 12-to-11 vote “moves us one step closer to a simpler, fairer, and more transparent tax system,” Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi said in a statement. The full Senate is expected to begin debating the tax bill and vote on it sometime this week. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has already passed its version of a package of tax cuts. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: From taxes to budget, U.S. Congress's calendar tightens;(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is careening toward major deadlines on a Republican tax bill, the budget and other policies. Here is the outlook for what promises to be a sprint to the end of 2017. TUESDAY, NOV 28: The Senate Budget Committee voted on Tuesday to send Republican tax-cut legislation to the Senate floor for a vote, possibly as soon as Thursday, with 51 votes needed for passage. THURSDAY, NOV. 30, or FRIDAY, DEC. 1: Possible final Senate vote on tax bill, although delay was possible. Ahead of a floor vote, several Republican senators were making demands for possible changes to the legislation. If the Senate approves the bill, a conference would begin to reconcile differences between the Senate and House of Representatives tax measures. A compromise bill would need to be approved before going to President Donald Trump for enactment. FRIDAY, DEC. 8: Expiration date for funding needed to keep the U.S. government open. Congress has three choices: approve a massive bill for more than $1 trillion to keep the government operating through Sept. 30, 2018;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top two Republicans in Congress challenge Democrats to attend Trump meeting;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top two Republicans in the U.S. Congress said if leading Democrats want to reach an agreement with Republicans on a must-pass government funding bill, they need to attend a planned meet with President Donald Trump later on Tuesday. “We have important work to do, and Democratic leaders have continually found new excuses not to meet with the administration to discuss these issues,” House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement. The statement came after Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said they would not attend a planned meeting with Trump at the White House after the president said he did not think he could reach a deal with them. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Collins says talks on tax bill 'productive';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins, who has demanded changes to a Republican tax bill, said she had “good discussions” with the White House and colleagues on the legislation and that “productive negotiations” continue. “Many of these discussions have focused on my proposals to help middle-income families, including allowing a deduction for property taxes and helping to lower insurance premiums on the individual market to offset any increases that might result from repealing the individual mandate,” Collins said in a statement. Republican Senator Bob Corker, who has expressed concerns about the bill’s effect on the deficit, said details about a provision of the legislation known as a “trigger,” which would raise taxes if expected economic growth does not materialize, will be unveiled on Thursday. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. State Department criticizes Cuban municipal vote as 'flawed';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that municipal elections in Cuba over the weekend were flawed because authorities used intimidation, arcane technicalities and false charges to keep independent candidates off of the ballot. The elections that took place further demonstrate how the Cuban regime maintains an authoritarian state while attempting to sell the myth of a democracy around the world, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a briefing. Despite courageous efforts by an unprecedented number of independent candidates this year, none were allowed on the ballot. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to visit Utah next week, expected to announce monument decision;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is set to visit Utah on Monday and is expected to announce his decision on whether to reduce the size of two national monuments where drilling and mining are banned, an administration official said on Tuesday. Trump is expected shrink the Bears Ears National Monument, set aside by former Democratic President Barack Obama, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, preserved by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. The trip was first reported by the Salt Lake Tribune. Trump has pushed to roll back regulations that prevent development. To that end, he had ordered a review of the size of 27 monuments: land with cultural, historical or scientific importance preserved from development by past presidents under the Antiquities Act. Last month, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump would travel to Utah in early December, and U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said Trump would reduce the size of the monuments. Environmental groups and Native American tribal organizations plan to protest Trump’s planned visit on Saturday at Utah’s state capitol at what they call “The Rally Against Trump’s Monumental Mistake.” The announcement is expected to touch off a legal battle with environmental groups and Native American tribes. The Navajo Nation and the four other tribes that created and co-manage the Bears Ears monument plan to file a lawsuit the next day. “We will be fighting back immediately. All five tribes will be standing together united to defend Bears Ears,” said Natalie Landreth, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and other conservation groups also plan litigation against the Trump administration to challenge changes to both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, said Steve Bloch, director of SUWA. Bloch said conservation groups are concerned that Trump’s announcement will include an order to offer areas in the monuments for public lease sales for coal mining or oil and gas drilling. Industry groups like the oil lobbying organization the American Petroleum Institute have said in the past that both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante were unfairly designated as monuments and needed to be reviewed. Some Utah county officials welcome a reduction in the size of the monuments, which they say has restricted road access to protected areas. In Kane County, where 60 percent of land is located within Grand Staircase, commissioner Dirk Clayson plans to attend Trump’s event if he is invited. “We are grateful that somebody is listening to our local voice,” he said. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Republican senators to watch in tax bill fight;(Reuters) - U.S. Republicans made progress on Tuesday in addressing the demands of some key senators in the party about their tax legislation, improving the outlook for the bill’s passage. President Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress want to pass a tax bill by the end of 2017. Republicans control the Senate by a 52-48 margin, leaving little room for defections in the face of Democratic opposition. Here is a list of Republicans whose votes are pivotal to the bill’s fate. Senator Bob Corker said on Tuesday he had the outlines of a deal satisfying his concerns that the tax cuts could add too much to the national debt. As a deficit hawk, Corker’s main concern about the plan has been red ink - the tax bill is expected to add $1.4 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Republicans say that gap would be narrowed by additional economic growth. Under the deal that Corker said he had reached with Senate leaders, the bill would be modified to automatically raise tax revenues if growth targets were not reached. The Tennessee lawmaker, a Trump critic who is not running for re-election, voted to advance the tax plan on Tuesday in the Budget Committee. He also spoke to Trump at a Republican lunch. The two feuded recently, with Corker calling the White House an “adult day care center” after Trump attacked Corker repeatedly on Twitter. The moderate senator from Maine has said she has qualms about Senate leaders’ plan to include repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate in the tax bill. The mandate requires people to buy health insurance or face a penalty. But Trump appears to be making a clear bid for Collins’ vote. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday that Trump backed a Collins proposal to set aside money to help health insurers cover the most expensive patients. Graham said that provision would probably go into an upcoming government funding bill, along with another measure Collins favors to continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people for two years. Collins told reporters she would offer an amendment to the tax bill to include a deduction of up to $10,000 in property taxes. Collins was among three Republicans who voted in July to block a Republican attempt to dismantle Obamacare, Democratic former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. The senator from Alaska wanted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling. Provisions to do that were attached to the tax bill as it passed the Budget Committee. Murkowski told reporters on Tuesday she was “feeling better” about the tax bill. She voted against three attempts to dismantle Obamacare earlier this year. But a week ago, she wrote an opinion piece saying she supported repealing the Obamacare individual mandate. Murkowski also wrote that she supported legislation to continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people. Senator Ron Johnson also voted to advance the tax bill in the Budget Committee on Tuesday, although he has been demanding more favorable treatment for “pass-through” businesses as a condition of support. The Wisconsin lawmaker surprised colleagues earlier this month by becoming the first Republican to announce opposition to the tax plan. That earned him a call from Trump. Johnson, formerly chief executive of a polyester and plastics manufacturer, says the legislation unfairly helps corporations over small enterprises organized as non-corporate “pass-throughs.” Those include partnerships and sole proprietorships and account for most U.S. business. The senator from Montana said in a statement on Monday he opposed the current version of the tax bill because it helped corporations more than other kinds of businesses. “I want to see changes to the tax cut bill that ensure Main Street businesses are not put at a competitive disadvantage against large corporations,” he said. “Before I can support this bill, this improvement needs to be made.” The Arizona maverick and former presidential nominee said on Monday he was still undecided and concerned about “a lot of things” in the tax plan, according to the Wall Street Journal. The war hero infuriated Trump when he joined Collins and Murkowski in voting against the Senate bill last summer to repeal Obamacare. McCain, who is still working after a diagnosis of brain cancer, has said he has almost no working relationship with Trump. The senator from Arizona, a vocal Trump critic who is not seeking re-election in 2018, has issued a statement saying he was worried about the tax bill’s impact on the national debt. Trump has tweeted that he expects Flake to be a “no” on the tax bill “because his political career anyway is ‘toast.’” Like Corker, Oklahoma conservative Lankford questions whether tax revenues from economic growth will compensate for the expected increase in the national debt under the tax plan. He has been working with Corker to “trigger” more revenues if needed. “We’re still trying to lock in exactly how we would do it,” he told reporters on Tuesday. The Kansas lawmaker is also wary of the impact on the national debt, pointing to his own state’s recent experience of fiscal problems following tax cuts. A spokesman for Moran said the senator was “determined to pass tax reform” and was working with colleagues to do so. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress government funding fight seen spilling into 2018;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress is likely to miss a Dec. 8 deadline for passing legislation funding a wide range of federal government programs through Sept. 30, 2018, kicking the contentious debate into next year, a senior U.S. House of Representatives aide said on Tuesday. With Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress still haggling over the overall level of spending for the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1, stop-gap appropriations will be needed to avert a partial government shutdown on Dec. 8 when existing funds expire, according to the aide who asked not to be identified. The temporary funding legislation could extend at least until late January. Failure to pass a longer-term appropriations bill before Congress breaks for Christmas sometime next month would be a setback in President Donald Trump’s drive to pump up military spending in the current fiscal year, which already is nearly two months old. Democrats are insisting that any Pentagon spending increase be coupled with more money for an array of non-defense programs, which also have been cut or frozen under Republican austerity measures. Without an agreement on the overall amount of spending, congressional appropriators are stymied in their ability to write a spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2018. Earlier on Tuesday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, cast some doubt on Congress’ ability to pass legislation funding the government through next September, telling reporters “there probably will be a continuing resolution,” meaning a stop-gap spending bill in December. Congress’ top four Republican and Democratic leaders were scheduled to meet Trump at the White House earlier on Tuesday to discuss government funding, tax legislation and other end-of-year measures. But the Senate and House of Representatives Democratic leaders, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, stayed away after Trump attacked them in a tweet as being weak on illegal immigration and driven to raise taxes. “I don’t see a deal!” Trump declared. Schumer and Pelosi instead said they would continue their direct talks with Republican counterparts in Congress. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate Republicans shove tax bill ahead as Democrats fume;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans rammed forward President Donald Trump’s tax-cut bill on Tuesday in an abrupt, partisan committee vote that set up a full vote by the Senate as soon as Thursday, although some details of the measure remained unsettled. As disabled protesters shouted: “Kill the bill, don’t kill us,” in a Capitol Hill hearing room, the Senate Budget Committee, with no discussion, quickly approved the legislation on a 12-11 party-line vote that left Democrats fuming. Republican committee members quickly left the room after the vote as Democrats complained about a lack of discussion on a bill that would overhaul the U.S. tax code and add an estimated $1.4 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years. After the vote, Trump told reporters: “I think we’re going to get it passed,” adding that it would have some adjustments. Republicans are hurrying to move their complex tax legislation forward, hoping to avoid the protracted infighting that doomed their effort to repeal Obamacare four months ago. Since Trump took office in January, he and fellow Republicans in command of both chambers of Congress have approved no major legislation, a fact they want to change before facing voters in the 2018 congressional elections. If the Senate approves its tax measure later this week, it would need to be reconciled with a version already approved by the House of Representatives before anything could be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law. Republican leaders conceded that they had yet to round up the votes needed for passage in the Senate, where they hold a narrow 52-48 majority. “It’s a challenging exercise,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said at a news conference. Democrats have called the Republican tax plan a giveaway to corporations and the rich. The Senate bill would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay. It would impose a onetime, cut-rate tax on corporations’ foreign profits, while exempting future foreign profits from U.S. taxation. Tax rates for many individuals and families would also be cut temporarily before rising back to their previous levels in 2025. Key tax breaks would also be curbed or eliminated, making the bill a mixed bag for some middle-class families. Some taxes paid by wealthy Americans would be repealed. Wall Street moved higher on the news that the bill would move to a full Senate vote, with the benchmark S&P 500 .SPX index closing up a little over 1 percent. As written, the bill would widen the U.S. budget deficit by an estimated $1.4 trillion over 10 years. Republicans maintain that gap would be narrowed by additional economic growth. Senator Bob Corker, one of few remaining Republican fiscal hawks in Congress, said he worked out a deal satisfying his concerns that the tax cuts add too much to the national debt. He said the bill would be modified to automatically raise tax revenues if growth targets were not reached. “We got a commitment that puts us in a pretty good place,” he said. Although details were not immediately available, Corker said he expected more information to come out on Thursday as part of the bill. The concession immediately drew a detractor as Republican Senator John Kennedy told reporters he “would rather drink weed killer than vote for the thing,” adding: “I don’t like voting for automatic tax increases.” The Corker concession was one of several lingering uncertainties in the bill that Senate aides said would be nailed down as the measure neared a floor vote. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who remains undecided on how she will vote on the bill, said “productive discussions” continued and that she would offer an amendment preserving the $10,000 deduction for property tax payments. The deduction is in the House bill, but not the Senate version. Republican Senator Ron Johnson voted for the bill in the Budget Committee, even though he had said it did not cut taxes deeply enough for some non-corporate businesses. The final version could address his concerns. Aides said tax writers were working to change the tax rate for non-corporate businesses, preserve an individual deduction for property tax payments, and incorporate Corker’s tax revenue idea. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley told MSNBC that the Corker concession was “an absolute gimmick” that could be undermined later. “It’s just a justification to let those who have argued that they don’t believe in increasing the deficit actually vote for a bill which does exactly that,” Merkley said. As the tax fight played out, a new battle opened on another front as Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi skipped a White House meeting with Trump to discuss spending, immigration and other issues after Trump criticized them on Twitter. Lawmakers must renew government funding before it expires on Dec. 8 or risk a shutdown. Democrats hope to use their leverage on the budget issue to renew protections for young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrats skip Trump meeting, raising risk of government shutdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in Congress skipped a meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday that was to have focused on the budget, raising the risk of a government shutdown next month with both sides far apart on the terms of an agreement. After Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi informed Trump they would not attend the meeting at the White House, the president and Republican congressional leaders went ahead with the talks without them. Trump left empty seats on either side of him, with name cards for Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives. He also criticized them as the cameras rolled during a picture-taking session. “We have a lot of differences,” Trump said. “So they’ve decided not to show up. They’ve been all talk and they’ve been no action and now it’s even worse. Now it’s not even talk.” Schumer and Pelosi said they pulled out of the meeting because of a tweet Trump sent earlier in the day attacking them as weak on illegal immigration and bent on raising taxes. “I don’t see a deal!” the Republican president wrote on Twitter. Pelosi tweeted after Trump’s White House session that “his empty chair photo opp showed he’s more interested in stunts than in addressing the needs of the American people. Poor Ryan and McConnell relegated to props. Sad!” she added, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump said he would “absolutely blame the Democrats” if a government shutdown takes place. A Dec. 8 deadline is looming for passing a spending measure needed to fund a wide range of federal government programs.Although Republicans control both chambers of the U.S. Congress, their leaders will likely need to rely on at least some Democratic votes to pass the measure. Democrats have said they will demand help for the “Dreamers” - young people brought to the United States illegally as children - as part of their price for providing votes on the budget measure. But Trump said in a tweet late on Tuesday: “I ran on stopping illegal immigration and won big. They can’t now threaten a shutdown to get their demands.” Congress has three choices: approve a massive bill for more than $1 trillion to keep the government operating through Sept. 30, 2018;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. court backs Trump in battle over interim consumer watchdog head;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday sided with President Donald Trump in a legal battle over who should be in charge of the U.S. consumer finance watchdog, allowing White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to serve as acting head. Judge Timothy Kelly ruled against Leandra English, deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) who claimed to be its rightful interim director. He denied her request for a temporary restraining order to block Mulvaney’s appointment. She had argued in a lawsuit suit filed on Sunday that the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that created the CFPB stipulates that the agency’s deputy director is to take over in the short term. In its defense filed on Monday night, the Trump administration said the 1998 Federal Vacancies Act gives the White House the ultimate power to say who is in charge and granting the restraining order would be an extraordinary intrusion into the executive branch. Kelly sided with the White House’s interpretation of the law following a hearing on Tuesday afternoon. “Undeniably, the CFPB was intended to be independent, but it is part of the executive branch,” Kelly, a Trump appointee, said. The decision was a blow for Democrats and consumer advocacy groups who had rallied to English’s cause, fearing the agency will be weakened by Mulvaney, one of its fiercest critics. CFPB Director Richard Cordray, a Democrat appointed by the Obama administration, resigned on Friday and named English to lead the agency until a new director was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, a process that could take months. Hours later, Trump said Mulvaney would lead the agency on an interim basis, sparking an unprecedented showdown. The CFPB was created to crack down on predatory financial practices after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, but it is reviled by Republicans who say it is too powerful. Speaking to reporters outside the court in Washington, English’s lawyer, Deepak Gupta, said he would ultimately seek to take the case to a higher court. “I think whatever happens here there is going to be an appeal,” he said. The White House applauded the ruling. “It’s time for the Democrats to stop enabling this brazen political stunt by a rogue employee and allow Acting Director Mulvaney to continue the bureau’s smooth transition into an agency that truly serves to help consumers,” Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said. In a message on social network Twitter later on Tuesday, Trump hailed the decision as a “big win for the consumer!” Trump has long sought to weaken or abolish the 1,600-employee agency, saying too many regulations are suffocating lending. Mulvaney sought to dismantle the CFPB when he served as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats say the agency needs to oversee consumer financial products such as mortgages and have power over large non-bank financial companies to protect borrowers. To fight the ruling, English’s next step would be to seek a preliminary injunction against the administration. If that is dismissed, English can appeal the ruling in Circuit Court, legal experts said. “The ball is now back in English’s court,” said Alan Kaplinsky, head of the consumer financial services group for law firm Ballard Spahr. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China sentences Taiwanese activist to five years for subversion;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - China on Tuesday sentenced Taiwanese rights activist Li Ming-che to five years in prison for subverting state power, prompting Taiwan s ruling political party to label the verdict totally unacceptable . Li, a community college lecturer and an activist at a human rights non-governmental organisation in Taiwan, went missing while on a trip to China in March. Chinese authorities later charged him with subverting state power. In the first hearing of Li s case in September, he confessed to subversion, according to videos of the hearing, though his wife refused to recognise the court s authority. Tuesday s verdict was handed down by the Yueyang City Intermediate People s Court in central Hunan province, according to a video of proceedings released by the court s social media account. A mainland Chinese rights activist, Peng Yuhua, tried alongside Li, was sentenced to seven years for the same crime. Taiwan s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that it was strongly dissatisfied and regretful of the result, calling for Beijing to allow Li to return to Taiwan. Beijing must ensure the health and well-being of Li, respect the law and continue to allow his family to visit him, the DPP said in a statement. Li s wife, Li Ching-yu, who had travelled to the mainland from Taiwan to attend her husband s hearing, was in attendance when the verdict was read, according to the videos. Li Ching-yu said in a statement sent to Reuters by her supporters that her husband had long realised that his rights work came with a cost and that there were tigers in the mountains . He came to understand early on that he must accept the torment of being made to accept guilt and of being imprisoned, she said. Peng had been the main actor in the subversion and Li had been an active participant, the court authorities said in the video. Both Li and Peng said that they accepted the ruling and would not appeal, according to the court s video. Ties between Beijing and Taipei have been strained since Taiwan s President Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, took office last year. Tsai s refusal to state that Taiwan and China are part of one country has angered Beijing, as have her comments about human rights on the mainland. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Repeat Deceit: How US Tries to Link Iran to Al Qaeda;When it comes to interpreting current events, no one does official conspiracy theories like the Unite States.For years, Washington has tried to promulgate a propaganda campaign which tries to somehow link al Qaeda to Iran, or ISIS to Iran. For the mentally-challenged members of the right-wing media in the US, this isn t a massive feat, as a large segment of that audience cannot even locate Iran on a global map. There is also the issue of US warhawks like Lindsey Graham and John McCain being proven pathological liars who will say anything regardless of whether it s based in actual fact. All of this contributes to a number of shallow, creative narratives which continuously circulate between FOX News, The Atlantic Magazine, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and the US Senate.And just like the US and UK mainstream media s coverage of Syria, the deep throat source in this dossier is al Qaeda.This latest chapter in the US fantasy world of Iranian intrigue attempts to further the Israeli-favoured mythology, blaming Iran for all of the region s woes. Make no mistake: the American neoconservative wing and their Israeli benefactors are determined to invent new conditions for war with Iran IMAGE: Bush s al Qaeda No.2 Guy Abu Musab al ZarqawiGareth Porter The American Conservative For many years, major U.S. institutions ranging from the Pentagon to the 9/11 Commission have been pushing the line that Iran secretly cooperated with Al Qaeda both before and after the 9/11 terror attacks. But the evidence for those claims remained either secret or sketchy, and always highly questionable.In early November, however, the mainstream media claimed to have its smoking gun a CIA document written by an unidentified Al Qaeda official and released in conjunction with 47,000 never-before-seen documents seized from Osama bin Laden s house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.The Associated Press reported that the Al Qaeda document appears to bolster U.S. claims that Iran supported the extremist network leading up to the September 11 terror attacks. The Wall Street Journal said the document provides new insights into Al Qaeda s relationship with Iran, suggesting a pragmatic alliance that emerged out of shared hatred of the United States and Saudi Arabia. NBC News wrote that the document reveals that, at various points in the relationship Iran offered Al Qaeda help in the form of money, arms and training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon in exchange for striking American interests in the Gulf, implying that Al Qaeda had declined the offer.Former Obama National Security Council spokesman Ned Price, writing for The Atlantic, went even further, asserting that the document includes an account of a deal with Iranian authorities to host and train Saudi-Al Qaeda members as long as they have agreed to plot against their common enemy, American interests in the Gulf region. But none of those media reports were based on any careful reading of the document s contents. The 19-page Arabic-language document, which was translated in full for The American Conservative, doesn t support the media narrative of new evidence of Iran-Al Qaeda cooperation, either before or after 9/11, at all.It provides no evidence whatsoever of tangible Iranian assistance to Al Qaeda. On the contrary, it confirms previous evidence that Iranian authorities quickly rounded up those Al Qaeda operatives living in the country when they were able to track them down, and held them in isolation to prevent any further contact with Al Qaeda units outside Iran.Taken by SurpriseWhat it shows is that the Al Qaeda operatives were led to believe Iran was friendly to their cause and were quite taken by surprise when their people were arrested in two waves in late 2002. It suggests that Iran had played them, gaining the fighters trust while maximizing intelligence regarding Al Qaeda s presence in Iran.Nevertheless, this account, which appears to have been written by a mid-level Al Qaeda cadre in 2007, appears to bolster an internal Al Qaeda narrative that the terror group rejected Iranian blandishments and were wary of what they saw as untrustworthiness on the part of the Iranians. The author asserts the Iranians offered Saudi Al Qaeda members who had entered the country money and arms, anything they need, and training with Hezbollah in exchange for hitting American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. But there is no word about whether any Iranian arms or money were ever actually given to Al Qaeda fighters. And the author acknowledges that the Saudis in question were among those who had been deported during sweeping arrests, casting doubt over whether there was ever any deal in the offing.The author suggests Al Qaeda rejected Iranian assistance on principle. We don t need them, he insisted. Thanks to God, we can do without them, and nothing can come from them but evil. That theme is obviously important to maintaining organizational identity and morale. But later in the document, the author expresses deep bitterness about what they obviously felt was Iranian double-dealing in 2002 to 2003. They are ready to play-act, he writes of the Iranians. Their religion is lies and keeping quiet. And usually they show what is contrary to what is in their mind . It is hereditary with them, deep in their character. The author recalls that Al Qaeda operatives were ordered to move to Iran in March 2002, three months after they had left Afghanistan for Waziristan or elsewhere in Pakistan (the document, by the way, says nothing of any activity in Iran before 9/11). He acknowledges that most of his cadres entered Iran illegally, although some of them obtained visas from the Iranian consulate in Karachi.Among the latter was Abu Hafs al Mauritani, an Islamic scholar who was ordered by the leadership shura in Pakistan to seek Iranian permission for Al Qaeda fighters and families to pass through Iran or to stay there for an extended period. He was accompanied by middle- and lower-ranking cadres, including some who worked for Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The account clearly suggests that Zarqawi himself had remained in hiding after entering Iran illegally.Strict ConditionsAbu Hafs al Mauratani did reach an understanding with Iran, according to the Al Qaeda account, but it had nothing to do with providing arms or money. It was a deal that allowed them to remain for some period or to pass through the country, but only on the condition that they observe very strict security conditions: no meetings, no use of cell phones, no movements that would attract attention. The account attributes those restrictions to Iranian fears of U.S. retribution which was undoubtedly part of the motivation. But it is clear Iran viewed Al Qaeda as an extremist Salafist security threat to itself as well.Most of the Al Qaeda visitors, according to the Al Qaeda document, settled in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchistan Province where the majority of the population are Sunnis and speak Baluchi. They generally violated the security restrictions imposed by the Iranians. They established links with the Baluchis who he notes were also Salafists and began holding meetings. Some of them even made direct contact by phone with Salafist militants in Chechnya, where a conflict was rapidly spiraling out of control. Saif al-Adel, one of the leading Al Qaeda figures in Iran at the time, later revealed that the Al Qaeda fighting contingent under Abu Musab al Zarqawi s command immediately began reorganizing to return to Afghanistan.Waves of ArrestsThe first Iranian campaign to round up Al Qaeda personnel, which the author of the documents says was focused on Zahedan, came in May or June 2002 no more than three months after they have had entered Iran. Those arrested were either jailed or deported to their home countries. The Saudi Foreign Minister praised Iran in August for having transferred 16 Al Qaeda suspects to the Saudi government in June.In February 2003, Iranian security launched a new wave of arrests. This time they captured three major groups of Al Qaeda operatives in Tehran and Mashad, including Zarqawi and other top leaders in the country, according to the document. Saif al Adel later revealed in a post on a pro-Al Qaeda website in 2005 (reported in the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat), that the Iranians had succeeded in capturing 80 percent of the group associated with Zarqawi, and that it had caused the failure of 75 percent of our plan. The anonymous author writes that the initial Iran policy was to deport those arrested and that Zarqawi was allowed to go to Iraq (where he plotted attacks on Shia and coalition forces until his death in 2006). But then, he says, the policy suddenly changed and the Iranians stopped deportations, instead opting to keep the Al Qaeda senior leadership in custody presumably as bargaining chips. Yes, Iran deported 225 Al Qaeda suspects to other countries, including Saudi Arabia, in 2003. But the Al Qaeda leaders were held in Iran, not as bargaining chips, but under tight security to prevent them from communicating with the Al Qaeda networks elsewhere in the region, which Bush administration officials eventually acknowledged.After the arrests and imprisonment of senior al Qaeda figures, the Al Qaeda leadership became increasingly angry at Iran. In November 2008, unknown gunmen abducted an Iran consular official in Peshawar, Pakistan, and in July 2013, al Qaeda operatives in Yemen kidnapped an Iranian diplomat. In March 2015, Iran reportedly released five of the senior al Qaeda in prison, including Said al-Adel, in return for the release of the diplomat in Yemen.In a document taken from the Abbottabad compound and published by West Point s Counter-Terrorism Center in 2012, a senior Al Qaeda official wrote, We believe that our efforts, which included escalating a political and media campaign, the threats we made, the kidnapping of their friend the commercial counselor in the Iranian Consulate in Peshawar, and other reasons that scared them based on what they saw (we are capable of), to be among the reasons that led them to expedite (the release of these prisoners). There was a time when Iran did view Al Qaeda as an ally. It was during and immediately after the war of the mujahedin against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. That, of course, was the period when the CIA was backing bin Laden s efforts as well. But after the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 1996 and especially after Taliban troops killed 11 Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998 the Iranian view of Al Qaeda changed fundamentally. Since then, Iran has clearly regarded it as an extreme sectarian terrorist organization and its sworn enemy. What has not changed is the determination of the U.S. national security state and the supporters of Israel to maintain the myth of an enduring Iranian support for Al Qaeda.Gareth Porter is an independent journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. This article originally appeared at The American Conservative.READ MORE IRAN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Iran NewsSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Facebook’s New ‘Proactive’ AI to Scan Posts for Suicidal Thoughts;21st Century Wire says Facebook is rolling out its latest artificial intelligence bot with the hope that the software will save lives, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social media juggernaut will use a special algorithm to flag posts that fit a certain pattern, then route them to a human being that can escalate early intervention.The idea of proactive detection can be a slippery slope. What else are these Facebook bots flagging, and who else is mining that information?Read more at TechCrunch READ MORE AI NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire AI FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Nov. 28) - NFL, First Lady;"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - At least 24 players kneeling this weekend at NFL stadiums that are now having a very hard time filling up. The American public is fed up with the disrespect the NFL is paying to our Country, our Flag and our National Anthem. Weak and out of control! [0745 EST] - Melania, our great and very hard working First Lady, who truly loves what she is doing, always thought that “if you run, you will win.” She would tell everyone that, “no doubt, he will win.” I also felt I would win (or I would not have run) - and Country is doing great! [0800 EST] - Meeting with “Chuck and Nancy” today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don’t see a deal! [0917 EST] - ""Statement from President Donald J. Trump on #GivingTuesday"" [bit.ly/2iddEmr] [1127 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ";politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Consumer agency official English says will be in office Tuesday;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leandra English, who is in a legal battle with the Trump administration over who is acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will spent Tuesday working in the office, she said in a statement. “I plan on spending the day at CFPB headquarters taking calls and meetings with external stakeholders and bureau staff,” she said in a statement. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected Istanbul airport bomber thought killed in Georgia: three sources; (This November 28 story corrects to add attribution to information in paragraphs 13 and 14) By Margarita Antidze TBILISI (Reuters) - A former Islamic State warlord suspected of masterminding a deadly attack on Istanbul airport in 2016 is believed to have been killed during a special operation in ex-Soviet Georgia last week, three sources familiar with the case told Reuters. Akhmed Chatayev, an ethnic Chechen, is highly likely to have lost his life during a police operation against a group of armed men on the outskirts of the Georgian capital Tbilisi last week, the three sources said. One Georgian special forces serviceman and three members of the armed group, which was suspected of terrorism, were killed in the operation. Four police officers were wounded and one member of the group was arrested during the 20-hour operation at the apartment block where the group was hiding. We suspect that one of the gunmen killed in the special operation in Tbilisi could be Akhmed Chatayev, Nino Giorgobiani, deputy chief of the state security service, told Reuters on Tuesday. She said that the final conclusions would be reached after experts had completed their work and the relevant United States agencies (had) joined the investigation. Two other sources, who did not want to be named, told Reuters it looked very likely Chatayev had been killed. There is every indication that one of them (members of the group) was Chatayev, said one of the sources. According to my information, Chatayev was there ... He blew himself up, said the other source. Chatayev was named by Turkish media and a U.S. congressman as the mastermind of the suicide bombing of Istanbul airport in 2016 which killed 45 people. His involvement in the airport bombing has not been confirmed by Turkish officials. A veteran of Chechnya s conflict with Moscow during which he lost an arm, he lived in Georgia s Pankisi Gorge, a remote area populated largely by people from the Kist community, ethnic Chechens whose ancestors came to mainly Christian Georgia in the 1800s. When, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechnya rose up in an armed rebellion against Moscow s rule, the Kist community were drawn to the fight. Thousands of refugees arrived from Chechnya, and some insurgents used the gorge to regroup and prepare new attacks. Chatayev was wounded and arrested in Georgia in August 2012 following a clash between the Georgian police and a group of militants, who were allegedly trying to cross the Georgian-Russian border and move to Dagestan. He was released from jail on bail and Georgian prosecutors dropped the case against him in January 2013, citing a lack of evidence, according to Civil.ge, an online news service. Soon after his release, Chatayev left Georgia, saying he intended to go to Austria to convalesce and by 2015, he had moved to Islamic State-controlled areas in Syria and Iraq, the news service reported. Chatayev was listed as a terrorist in 2015 by the U.S. Treasury which accused him of planning attacks against unspecified U.S. and Turkish facilities and added him to the U.N. Security Council s Al-Qaeda sanctions list, according to Civil.ge. He was also wanted by the Russian authorities. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Sen. Warren predicts appeal in legal battle over consumer agency;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Tuesday she has “no doubt” the legal fight over who is the proper leader of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will continue to a U.S. appeals court after a district court judge renders a verdict. “It’s too important to everyone to let it rest at the district court. The parties are entitled to take an appeal to the Court of Appeals, and I have no doubt they will,” Warren, who helped establish the CFPB, said in a brief interview with Reuters. Leandra English, the agency’s deputy director, is suing the Trump administration over who is the proper acting director. She is seeking a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from filling that job, and the case is pending before a U.S. district court in Washington. ;politicsNews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH SANDERS Has Hysterical Response To The News That CNN Staffers Are Boycotting The White House Christmas Party;CNN s Brian Stelter tweeted out the news that CNN staffers won t be attending the White House Christmas party Yes, another liberal temper tantrum all because President Trump called them out for being fake news. The funny thing is that right after Stelter s tweet, Sarah Sanders tweeted out the best response EVER! She s so funny!W.H. is hosting a Christmas party for media this Friday at 2pm. Lots of curiosity about who will & will not attend. CNN staffers will not, per @JasonSchwartz https://t.co/HL8UmXsqrz Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 29, 2017A CNN spokesperson said it would be inappropriate to celebrate with him as his invited guests .This temper tantrum comes after POTUS tweeted about CNN being fake news :.@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2017POLITICO reported:Adding fuel to its growing feud with President Donald Trump, CNN told POLITICO it will be boycotting the White House Christmas party for the media this year. CNN will not be attending this year s White House Christmas party, a CNN spokesperson said. In light of the President s continued attacks on freedom of the press and CNN, we do not feel it is appropriate to celebrate with him as his invited guests. We will send a White House reporting team to the event and report on it if news warrants. The annual event, scheduled for Friday at 2 p.m., is typically seen as a time when reporters and their bosses can mingle freely with administration members, but Trump s posture toward the press has been uniquely aggressive.THEN SARAH SANDERS POSTED THE FUNNIEST TWEET IN RESPONSE TO THE CNN TEMPER TANTRUM:Christmas comes early! Finally, good news from @CNN. https://t.co/3GeJysIol3 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 29, 2017Go Sarah! The crybaby CNN staffers will lose in the end. They ll miss out on a great party at the White House!;politics;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's May heads to Middle East;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will travel to the Middle East this week to lend her support to economic reforms in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, her spokesman said. Her trip comes as Britain is looking for new relationships around the world, to replace those it will lose after it quits the European Union in a little more than a year. She will meet Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, where she will also discuss the crisis in Yemen and the dispute in Qatar. In Jordan, she will meet King Abdullah and Prime Minister Hanu Mulki. The London Stock Exchange is competing now to host part of Saudi Aramco s [IPO-ARMO.SE] initial public offering. Britain said this month it would provide $2 billion in credit guarantees to the energy company so it can buy British goods more easily. On Tuesday, British foreign minister Boris Johnson hosted officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United States to discuss humanitarian aid in Yemen, where aid agencies have complained about a port blockade. Aid agencies say it has worsened the crisis in Yemen where war has left an estimated 7 million people facing famine and killed more than 10,000 people. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. envoy says told to expect Syrian government delegation on Wednesday;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has received assurances that the Syrian government delegation will attend peace talks in Geneva this week, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Earlier the pro-Damascus Syrian newspaper al-Watan reported that the Syrian government delegation to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva this week has not yet left Damascus and may announce on Tuesday whether it will participate. The Government delegation has not yet arrived, the Special Envoy received a message that they are planning to arrive tomorrow, which is the 29th of November, U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told a news briefing in Geneva, declining to give details. At least we know that they are coming. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron condemns missile test conducted by North Korea;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron condemned on Tuesday what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile test conducted by North Korea and called for greater pressure on Pyongyang. I condemn the new ballistic irresponsible trial of North Korea. It reinforces our determination to increase the pressure on Pyongyang and our solidarity to our partners, Macron said on Twitter. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Difficult migration debate looms as African and EU leaders meet;ABIDJAN (Reuters) - European leaders under pressure from a far-right revival at home hope to avoid a difficult debate about immigration when they meet their African counterparts in Ivory Coast from Wednesday. Reports this month of abuses against African migrants in Libya have sparked anger across the continent however, threatening to drive migration to the top of the summit agenda and shine a spotlight on an issue fraught with political risk. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who head the Franco-German axis at the heart of the European Union, will have its next major political test in mind when they sit down with African Union heads of state. Italy, on the frontline of the campaign to slow illegal migration to Europe, holds elections early next year and the populist 5-Star Movement is leading opinion polls. The anti-immigrant, eurosceptic Northern League is also gaining support. We all have our own interests in not turning this into a migration conference, one EU official said ahead of the meeting to be held in Ivory Coast s commercial capital Abidjan. The summit is meant to focus on development, long the cornerstone of EU policy in Africa and tangentially related to migration. The theme of investing in youth, though, is a nod to the rampant unemployment and poverty that drives many young Africans to leave home in search of a better life. But it now looks increasingly unlikely the EU leaders can avoid hard questions from their African counterparts. Soon after CNN aired grainy images from Libya this month appearing to show migrants being sold as slaves, African governments began recalling diplomats from Tripoli. Protests erupted in France, Senegal and Benin. Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara called for Libyan slave traders to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. Libyan authorities have promised to investigate the slavery allegations. But the European Union too has been the target of anger and frustration. They re the ones who blocked the way and left us in the hands of these Libyans, said Cherifou Sahindou, sitting at a make-shift tea stand by a muddy, rubbish-strewn track near a mosque in Abidjan s Yopougon neighborhood. Sahindou and some of the other men around the tea stand said they made it to Libya, but no further. All had heard about the slave markets and all knew someone who had stayed in the water - the local euphemism for death on the migrant trail. Like many African leaders, Ouattara has called for Europe to broaden the legal avenues for migration from the continent using mechanisms such as student and temporary work visas. Europe and Europeans ... should not be afraid, because Africa and the African youth can bring a lot to Europe, he said in an interview with the France 24 news channel this week. But in the current political climate any proposal for more Africans to enter Europe is a non-starter for many EU leaders. Merkel herself is the most high-profile victim of an anti-immigration backlash. At the peak of the migrant influx into Europe in 2015 she declared an open door policy for refugees and asylum seekers, allowing in more than a million migrants. The anti-immigrant far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party campaigned hard against the policy and won some 13 percent of the vote in a September election - complicating Merkel s efforts to form a coalition government and weakening her position as the leading EU advocate within Europe. In an indication of how heated things have become, the mayor of a small town in Germany, who won an award from Merkel for his liberal migrant policies, was stabbed in the neck on Monday in an attack believed to be politically motivated. Other European leaders firmly behind the 28-member bloc are also wary of falling foul to such an explosive issue. If you say, I ve got a right to total access without conditions ... I can t explain that to my middle class, who ve worked, who pay their taxes, Macron said during a rowdy exchange with students in Burkina Faso on Tuesday. What do I tell them? It is those kinds of political calculations that are hindering much-needed policy solutions, said William Swing, head of the International Organization for Migration. The heart of the problem is the very toxic atmosphere that s been fairly widespread for some years now ... That s not just in Europe, he told Reuters. The drivers (of migration) are there and they re not going away. So clearly our policies need to change. European delegates at the summit, however, are expected to pledge aid, repeating often voiced calls for a Marshall Plan for Africa that would create jobs and lift incomes to give would-be migrants a reason to stay at home. The African security sectors charged with clamping down on migrant flows will also get their share of European money. EU support for the Libyan authorities, including Italian assistance for its coastguard, has helped halve the number of migrants arriving in Europe via the Mediterranean this year. Though lauded in Italy, the program, which has led to massive detention centers being created in Libya to hold intercepted migrants, was denounced by the United Nation s human rights chief Zeid Ra ad Al Hussein. Abdoulaye Dosso, another man at the tea stand in Yopougon, said he crossed the Sahara desert, played dead to survive as rebels shot other migrants, and then spent weeks in one such camp awaiting repatriation to Ivory Coast. There have been too many deaths, he said. There must be a change. (This story has been refiled to fix typo in French president s name in paragraph 3) ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Son of Sicilian mafia boss gets a year in a 'workhouse';ROME (Reuters) - An Italian judge ruled on Tuesday that a convicted mobster and son of late boss Salvatore Toto Riina be detained for a year in a secure labor unit, a judicial source said, less than two weeks after his father died, leaving the Sicilian mafia s future uncertain. Convicted of mafia membership in 2004 and sentenced to nearly nine years in prison before being released on parole, Giuseppe Salvatore Riina, 40, has been under police surveillance in the northern town of Padua. Criminals who are deemed dangerous to society or likely to re-offend can be sent to a secure unit, known as a workhouse in Italy, with the aim of rehabilitating them into society through manual labor. In Riina s case, investigators in Rome found that he had contact with drug dealers, prompting a prosecutor in Padua to ask for him to be held under tighter security, the source said. Riina declined to comment through his lawyer. A decision has not yet been taken on which of Italy s five workhouses Riina will be sent to, the source said. The judge handed down a one-year term, rather than the three years the Padua prosecutor had requested. On state television last year, Riina said he had been happy during his childhood, when his fugitive father lived under an assumed name. Toto Riina died on Nov. 17 in a hospital in Parma, the Italian city where he had been serving 26 life sentences for murders committed between 1969 and 1992. Nicknamed the boss of bosses , Toto Riina changed the structure of the Sicilian mafia, concentrating power in his own hands. His savagery prompted hundreds of mobsters to testify against him, allowing magistrates to uncover the secrets of Cosa Nostra and prosecute its leaders. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pentagon confirms 'probable' North Korean missile launch;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Tuesday that it had detected a probable missile launch from North Korea. We detected a probable missile launch from North Korea. We are in the process of assessing the situation and will provide additional details when available, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters. He said the probable launch was detected at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT). ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea fires unidentified ballistic missile: U.S. officials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has fired an unidentified ballistic missile, U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday on condition of anonymity, without immediately offering further details. The launch would be North Korea s first since it fired a missile over Japan in mid-September. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. experts think North Korea could launch missile 'within days': government sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. government experts think North Korea could conduct a new missile test within days, in what would be its first launch since it fired a missile over Japan in mid-September, two authoritative U.S. government sources said on Tuesday. One of the sources, who did not want to be identified, said the United States had evidence that Japanese reports about the monitoring of signals suggesting North Korea was preparing a new missile test were accurate. Both sources said U.S. government experts believed a new test could occur within days. A Japanese government source said earlier on Tuesday that Japan had detected radio signals suggesting North Korea may be preparing another ballistic missile launch, although such signals were not unusual and satellite images did not show fresh activity. South Korea s Yonhap news agency, citing a South Korean government source, also reported that intelligence officials of the United States, South Korea and Japan had recently detected signs of a possible missile launch and have been on higher alert. The U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters declined to say what type of missile they think North Korea might test, but noted that Pyongyang had been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States and had already tested inter-continental ballistic missiles. Other U.S. intelligence officials have noted that North Korea has previously sent deliberately misleading signs of preparations for missile and nuclear tests. These have been in part to mask real preparations, and in part to test U.S. and allied intelligence on its activities. After firing missiles at a rate of about two or three a month since April, North Korea paused its missile launches in late September, after it fired a missile that passed over Japan s northern Hokkaido island on Sept. 15. Last week, North Korea denounced U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling it a serious provocation and violent infringement. The designation allows the United States to impose more sanctions, though some experts said it risked inflaming tensions. Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and warned in his maiden speech to the United Nations in September that the United States would have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea if forced to defend itself or its allies. Washington has said repeatedly that all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea, including military ones, but that it prefers a peaceful solution by Pyongyang agreeing to give up its nuclear and missile programs. To this end, Trump has pursued a policy of encouraging countries around the world, including North Korea s main ally and neighbor, China, to step up sanctions on Pyongyang to persuade it to give up its weapons programs. North Korea has given no indication it is willing to re-enter dialogue on those terms. South Korean Unification Minister Chow Myoung-gyon told reporters on Tuesday there had been noteworthy movements from the North since its last missile launch, including engine tests, but there was no hard evidence of another nuclear or missile test. North Korea hasn t been engaging in new nuclear or missile tests but recently we ve seen them persistently testing engines and carrying out fuel tests, he said. But we need some more time to see whether these are directly related to missile and nuclear tests. Cho said North Korea may announce the completion of its nuclear program within a year, as it is moving more quickly than expected in developing its arsenal. North Korea defends its weapons programs as a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian official: not worried about EU's moves on defense pact;BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior Russia s foreign ministry official on Tuesday said he was not worried by the European Union s move to integrate European defenses, saying the initiative was just words and did not appear to be aimed at Moscow. Kirill Logvinov, head of the NATO section at the Russian foreign ministry, called at the annual Berlin Security Conference for renewed efforts to rebuild trust between European countries and Russia through dialogue and military cooperation. He said the trans-Atlantic NATO alliance had revived Cold War tensions through an enlargement that threatened Russia s national security. Moscow was open to resuming dialogue and rebuilding trust, he said, and remained committed to implementing the Minsk agreements aimed at ending violence in eastern Ukraine - as long as Kiev also made good its promises under the deal. Just to sit down at a table would be an important step back toward building trust, Logvinov told reporters. Asked whether Russia was concerned about an agreement by 23 EU members to cooperate on funding joint military projects and commands, he said Moscow welcomed any steps that would help unify Europe. We are not trying to splinter any group. The better the groups work with each other in the Europe, the better it is for us. The faster they speak with a single voice, the better it is for our relationship with the EU, he said. Logvinov said the EU s Permanent Structured Cooperation or PESCO, had been in the works for decades. Of course, we are watching this development, but at this point, it s just words. France, Germany and 21 other EU governments signed an agreement this month to fund, develop and deploy armed forces after Britain s decision to quit the bloc, a project that was first proposed in the 1950s and long resisted by Britain. Under the deal, to be signed by EU leaders in December, participating governments will for the first time legally bind themselves into joint projects as well as pledging to increase defense spending and contribute to rapid deployments. Its backers say that if successful, the formal club of 23 members will give the European Union a more coherent role in tackling international crises and end the kind of shortcomings seen in Libya in 2011, when European allies relied on the United States for air power and munitions. Rachel Ellehuus, principal director for European and NATO policy at the U.S. Defense Department, told the conference that the United States welcomed the deal, lauding Europe s transparent approach to the new initiative. Unlike past attempts, the U.S.-led NATO alliance backs the project, aiming to benefit from stronger militaries. Many governments say Russia s seizure of Ukraine s Crimea in 2014 was a turning-point for European defense integration, after years of defense spending cuts that left Europe without vital capabilities. But German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said PESCO was more about making Europe work more efficiently together to deal with humanitarian crises and was not related to fraying relations with Russia. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Report on deadly raid meant to make Philippine police 'look bad', says chief;MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines national police chief said on Tuesday that Reuters had timed a report on a deadly anti-drug raid to make his officers look bad as President Rodrigo Duterte mulls returning them to drug-war operations. Police killed three men in a poor Manila neighborhood on Oct. 11 in what they said was self-defense during a legitimate anti-drug operation. But security camera footage and eyewitness testimony published by Reuters on Monday contradicted the police report and suggested they may have executed the three men. They come out with damaging reports about the PNP when we are about to return, said police chief Ronald Dela Rosa, referring to the Philippines National Police. That means our enemies really don t want us to return to the war on drugs, he said, speaking to reporters at the Supreme Court in Manila. In October, Duterte banned the police from leading anti-drug operations, handing the task to the state-run Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. Duterte has hinted that he will soon allow police to resume operations, although his spokesman Harry Roque said on Tuesday the matter remains pending . Police say they have shot dead more than 3,900 drug suspects in self-defense during Duterte s 17-month anti-drug campaign that has triggered growing public distrust and criticism. Police said that one of the men they killed during the Oct. 11 raid was dealing drugs before they arrived, but the footage showed him chatting with friends. Police said they shot the three men in self-defense after they opened fire on undercover operatives. Residents told Reuters the men were unarmed. Joel Coronel, the chief of Manila Police District, which carried out the raid, said it was a high-risk operation against three suspected drug traffickers reported to be armed and dangerous . So far our reports indicate that we have observed all the rules in police operating procedures, he said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government team to arrive in Geneva for peace talks on Wednesday;BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - A Syrian government delegation will arrive in Geneva on Wednesday, a day later than expected, to attend peace talks being held there this week, Syrian state news agency SANA said. The delegation had delayed its planned departure for the talks, which begin on Tuesday, because of the opposition s insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. \ The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said the government and opposition would have a chance to negotiate directly for the first time, but it was not clear if they would choose to do so. We are going to offer it. We will see if this takes place. But we will be offering that, he said after meeting the opposition delegation. De Mistura has received assurances that the Syrian government delegation will attend the talks, U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told a Geneva news briefing. At least we know that they are coming, she said, declining to give details on who transmitted the message from Damascus. De Mistura said the government had accepted a Russian suggestion of a ceasefire in the besieged rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Bombardment on the area killed three people on Tuesday, a war monitor said earlier. A delegation from the newly-unified Syrian opposition, which arrived in the Swiss city on Monday, is due to hold a first meeting with de Mistura later on Tuesday, she said. In an emailed statement, the opposition negotiating committee said it was ready to meet the government side. It (the government) no longer has the pretext that the opposition is fragmented. We are one. We are ready to negotiate directly with the other side, said Yahya Aridi, the head of the negotiation committee. Earlier, the pro-Damascus Syrian newspaper al-Watan reported that the Syrian government delegation to an eighth round of peace talks in Geneva this week has not yet left Damascus. It had reported on Monday that the delay was because of the opposition s insistence that Assad step down, which he has refused to do. Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad s removal as a result of negotiations. The government delegation will be headed by Syria s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari, SANA said. A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ivanka Trump, feted in India, calls for closing gender gap in business;HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s daughter Ivanka Trump kicked off a global business summit in southern India on Tuesday calling for better opportunities for women entrepreneurs battling heavy odds around the world. Ivanka, also an informal adviser to her father, received a warm welcome in India s high-tech hub of Hyderabad with all the trappings of a state guest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined her in the opening of the U.S.-backed Global Entrepreneurship Summit which New Delhi is hoping will further boost political and economic ties with the United States under the Trump administration. Ivanka, wearing a bright green floral dress, said fuelling the growth of women-led businesses and closing the gender entrepreneurship gap could help expand global GDP by 2 percent. Women still face steep obstacles to starting, owning and growing their businesses. We must ensure women entrepreneurs have access to capital, access to networks and mentors, Ivanka said to loud cheers from a packed audience in a heavily-guarded conference center. In developing countries, 70 percent of women-owned smaller businesses were being denied access to capital, she said, leading to a near $300 billion annual credit deficit for them. GES is an event conceived by former U.S. President Barack Obama. It has previously been held in countries such as the United States and Turkey, but this year s edition is the first under the Trump administration. The theme of the conference this year is Women First, Prosperity for All . More than half the participants at the summit are women, and all-female delegations are representing countries such as Afghanistan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Ivanka, who ran an eponymous clothing and jewelry business before becoming an adviser in the White House, has made women s issues one of her main policy areas. She cited a Harvard Business Review report that found that in the United States investors ask men questions about their potential for gains, whereas they ask women questions about their potential for loss. Billboards with pictures of Ivanka dotted many parts of Hyderabad which is also home to major U.S. firms such as Microsoft (MSFT.O). In recent days, authorities took beggars off city streets in a clean-up drive before the meeting, media said. More than 10,000 police officials were deployed in the city and sniffer dogs as well as spotters , or men trained to detect any suspicious activity or people, were on stand by, a police officer said. On the sidelines, Ivanka held talks with Modi, as well as Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj. Later she toured the conference center with Modi and met a few entrepreneurs, before watching traditional Indian dance performances in the inaugural session. This event not only connects the Silicon Valley with Hyderabad but also show-cases the close ties between the United States of America and India. It underlines our shared commitment toward encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation, Modi said. India has become a major market for the United States, with two-way trade of about $115 billion last year. They aim to raise that to $500 billion by 2022. Military and strategic ties are also improving as China s influence rises in Asia and beyond. The Trump administration sees India as a strategic partner and wants to engage with India more. When you look at sending of Ivanka Trump, it is sending a very strong signal, said Mukesh Aghi, president of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope urges respect for human rights in Myanmar, avoids 'Rohingya' row;NAYPYITAW (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Tuesday urged the leaders of majority-Buddhist Myanmar, mired in a crisis over the fate of Muslim Rohingya people, to commit themselves to justice, human rights and respect for each ethnic group and its identity . The pope avoided a diplomatic backlash by not using the highly charged term Rohingya in his addresses to officials, including leader Aung San Suu Kyi. However, his words were applicable to members of the beleaguered minority, who Myanmar does not recognize as citizens or as members of a distinct ethnic group. More than 620,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh - where the pope heads on Thursday - since the end of August, escaping from a military crackdown that Washington has said included horrendous atrocities aimed at ethnic cleansing . Francis made his comments in Naypyitaw, the country s capital, where he was received by Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate and champion of democracy who has faced international criticism for expressing doubts about the reports of rights abuses against the Rohingya and failing to condemn the military. The future of Myanmar must be peace, a peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of each member of society, respect for each ethnic group and its identity, respect for the rule of law, and respect for a democratic order that enables each individual and every group none excluded to offer its legitimate contribution to the common good, he said. Myanmar rejects the term Rohingya and its use, with most people instead referring to the Muslim minority in Rakhine state as illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. The pope had used the word Rohingya in two appeals from the Vatican this year. But before the diplomatically risky trip, the pope s own advisers recommended that he not use it in Myanmar, lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the country s military and government against minority Christians. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International, which has accused the army of crimes against humanity , had urged him to utter it. A hardline group of Buddhist monks warned on Monday - without elaborating - that there would be a response if he spoke openly about the Rohingya. Richard Horsey, a former U.N. official and analyst based in Yangon, said the pope s speech was very cautiously worded and crafted to avoid antagonizing local audiences . He has clearly taken the advice of his cardinals to avoid weighing in too heavily on the Rohingya crisis, but he certainly alludes to it with a message in his speech on some of the specific points that he makes, Horsey said. Vatican sources say some in the Holy See believe the trip was decided too hastily after full diplomatic ties were established in May during a visit by Suu Kyi. The pope met privately with Suu Kyi at the presidential palace in this sparsely populated town that became the capital in 2006, and then they both made public addresses at a conference center. Suu Kyi said in her speech that there had been an erosion of trust and understanding between communities of Rakhine state, but did not refer to the Rohingya. Francis, speaking in Italian, said that as it emerged from nearly 50 years of military rule, Myanmar needed to heal the wounds of the past. He called for a just, reconciled and inclusive social order , adding that the arduous process of peacebuilding and national reconciliation can only advance through a commitment to justice and respect for human rights . Myanmar s army, whose leaders the pope met on Monday, has been battling various autonomy-seeking ethnic minority guerrillas for decades. The military has denied the accusations of murder, rape, torture and forced displacement of the Rohingya that have been made against it. The Rohingya exodus from Rakhine state began after Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. Referring to the country s communal tensions, Francis said religious differences need not be a source of division and distrust, but rather a force for unity, forgiveness, tolerance and wise nation-building . He made the same point at an earlier meeting with leaders of the Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Jewish and Christian faiths in Yangon, where he called for unity in diversity . Aye Lwin, a prominent Muslim leader who was at the interfaith meeting, told Reuters he had asked the pope to appeal to Myanmar s political leaders to rescue the religion that we cherish, which could be hijacked by a hidden agenda . Only about 700,000 of Myanmar s 51 million people are Roman Catholic. Thousands of them have traveled from far and wide to see him and more than 150,000 people have registered for a mass that Francis will say in Yangon on Wednesday. Francis is expected to meet a group of Rohingya refugees in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on the second leg of his trip. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Damascus shelling kills three before truce agreed;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Shelling killed three people in the last major rebel stronghold near Damascus on Tuesday, a war monitor said, shortly before the UN Syria envoy said the government had agreed a ceasefire there. Russia had on Monday proposed a ceasefire in the besieged Eastern Ghouta area on Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but he added we have to see if it happens . The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the war monitor, said there were three deaths and 15 injuries from Tuesday s shelling, but that it was less intense than in previous days. A witness in the area said that while the shelling was lighter earlier in the day, it had intensified later. A Syrian official said the situation on Tuesday was calm. The UN s humanitarian agency OCHA said in a Tweet that relief teams had entered Eastern Ghouta with food and health supplies for 7,200 people, entering through Nashabiyeh on the opposite side of the pocket from where the fighting was. Over the weekend, government air strikes and shelling on Ghouta intensified, killing at least 43 people on Sunday and Monday, the Observatory said. Syrian state media said 13 shells hit government-held areas of Damascus on Monday. Eastern Ghouta is one of several de-escalation zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad s government. But fighting has continued there. U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva are set to begin on Tuesday. The government delegation will arrive on Wednesday to attend the talks, state news agency SANA reported. The opposition delegation, the Syrian Negotiation Commission, called for direct negotiations with the government instead of the previous model of each side speaking only to UN mediators. M decins Sans Fronti res, the international medical humanitarian organization, said on Monday hundreds of people had been wounded in intense bombing and shelling of the Eastern Ghouta in the last two weeks. It said five MSF-supported field hospitals in East Ghouta had treated 576 wounded patients and recorded 69 deaths, with a quarter of the wounded women or children under the age of 15. In a statement, MSF said its figures did not account for the total numbers killed in the area as there are other medical facilities it does not support regularly. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea fires ballistic missile;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. to offer direct talks to Syrian negotiators for first time;GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian government and opposition negotiators meeting in Geneva this week will have the chance to hold direct talks for the first time, but it is not clear if they will take it, the U.N. envoy mediating the talks told reporters on Tuesday. We are going to offer it. We will see if this takes place. But we will be offering that, Staffan de Mistura said after meeting the opposition delegation at their hotel. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey suggests plan to extend military mission in Syria to Afrin, Aleppo;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey said on Tuesday it could expand its military mission in Syria to two other provinces, potentially bringing its forces into confrontation with U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters that Ankara considers its enemies. Turkish troops have operated an observation mission in rebel-held territory in Syria s northwestern Idlib province, under a deal with Damascus allies Russia and Iran to help reduce fighting between insurgents and government forces. It s been considered that the observation mission of the Turkish armed forces in the Idlib de-escalation zone is continuing successfully, and such a mission being performed near Western Aleppo and Afrin would provide a real environment of peace and safety, Turkey s National Security Council said in a statement. Ankara, which has long backed rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, has toned down its demands that Assad leave power. It now says its main concerns in Syria are combating both Islamist militants and Kurdish fighters it considers allies of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has fought a decades-long insurgency in southeastern Turkey. Earlier this month, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey needed to clear the Afrin region of northwest Syria of Kurdish YPG militia fighters as the military operation in Idlib province is largely complete. The Kurdish YPG is the main element in a U.S.-backed force that Washington has assisted with training, weapons, air support and help from ground advisers in the battle against Islamic State. Washington s support for the YPG is a bone of contention between the United States and Turkey, which are allies in NATO. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron's promise of new France-Africa ties raises heckles;OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - France s President Emmanuel Macron told African youths on Tuesday that he belonged to a new generation of French leaders who would build partnerships with the continent rather than tell it what to do. But a youth protest against him, stones pelting one of his delegation s vehicles and a botched grenade attack on French troops hours before his arrival in Burkina Faso s capital Ouagadougou showed the hostility that still lingers after decades of an often tense France-Africa relationship. Macron was also subjected to rowdy student questions at the university after his speech in Ouagadougou, and was sometimes left fruitlessly hushing as he struggled to get his answers heard above the crowd. In his speech, peppered with references to African nationalists such as Nelson Mandela and Burkina s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara, Macron promised a break with a past in which France often seemed to call the shots to former colonies. I am from a generation that doesn t come to tell Africans what to do, Macron said, prompting applause. I am from a generation for whom Nelson Mandela s victory is one of the best political memories. The 39-year-old is on a three-day visit to Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast aimed at boosting cooperation in education, the digital economy and migration. I will be alongside those who believe that Africa is neither a lost continent or one that needs to be saved, he said. The grenade attack missed the French soldiers but wounded three civilians hours before Macron arrived. No group claimed responsibility. Stones were thrown at a delegation convoy, however Macron was far away from it at a meeting with his Burkina counterpart, Roch Marc Kabore in the presidential palace. Dozens of local youths clashed with security forces in the center of the capital throwing stones. Police responded with teargas. Protesters burnt T-shirts with images of Macron and carried slogans including Down with new-colonialism and French military out of Burkina . It was not the first time a French president has promised to break with past French politics on the continent. Macron s predecessor Francois Hollande declared while visiting Senegal in 2012 that the time of La Francafrique is over , referring to a shadowy network of diplomats, soldiers and businessmen who manipulated African leaders for decades after independence. But it comes at a tense time, when French troops are being sucked deeper into a years-long battle to quell Islamist militancy in the Sahel region. France has 4,000 troops deployed there, and there are mixed feelings about their presence - highlighted in a bitter row between France and Mali over the deaths of 11 Malian troops being held captive by Islamist militants in a French air strike. The French are pinning their hopes on the so-called G5 Sahel force being set up by regional country s with French and American backing. It launched a campaign on Oct. 28 amid growing unrest in the desert reaches of the region, where jihadists allied to al Qaeda or inspired by Islamic State roam undetected. Macron earlier told journalists G5 had been too slow to get established. He said he would call for greater co-operation between Europe and Africa to tackle human trafficking and he touted a European initiative to rescue African migrants from being enslaved in Libya. The exchange with heckling students was typical Macron, who during his presidential campaign often managed to turn initially hostile crowds in his favor by answering questions head on. You speak to me like I m a colonial power, but I don t want to look after electricity in Burkina Faso. That s the work of your president, he retorted to one hostile questioner. (Refiles to remove extraneous repeated references to capital) ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya president sworn in, rival Odinga promises own inauguration;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in for a second term on Tuesday, shortly before riot police teargassed the convoy of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who promised supporters he would be sworn in himself on Dec. 12. Such a move would only deepen divisions opened by the extended election season in Kenya, a Western ally in a volatile region. Months of acrimonious campaigns and sporadic clashes have already blunted growth in East Africa s richest economy. At a lavish inauguration attended by the heads of many African nations, Kenyatta did his best to paint a picture of a country moving beyond that divide. The elections are now firmly behind us ... I will devote my time and energy to build bridges, he told a rapturous crowd of around 60,000 supporters as he was sworn in for a second, five-year term in a sports stadium in the capital Nairobi. But, he warned, Kenyans needed to free ourselves from the baggage of past grievances, and ... keep to the rule of law . Such words may ring hollow to citizens accustomed to the government ignoring reports on corruption from the country s auditor-general and documentation of hundreds of extrajudicial police killings every year from human rights groups. Last year, Kenyatta angered many Kenyans by saying he wanted to tackle corruption but his hands are tied . His government has also promised to improve police accountability, but an independent watchdog has managed to convict only two officers of murder despite thousands of brutality complaints. On Tuesday, at least one Odinga supporter was killed and three others were injured, a Reuters witness said. Other witnesses said the man had been shot by the police. A statement from Odinga said five people were shot, including his daughter s driver. Television stations KTN and NTV reported that a 7-year-old boy was hit by a stray bullet while playing on the balcony of a house near the site of a planned opposition prayer meeting. When I came home, I did not know it was my child who had been killed. Police were passing by shooting, Peter Mutuku, the boy s father, was quoted saying on NTV. Police could not immediately be reached for comment. Less than an hour after Kenyatta spoke, Kenyan national television carried pictures of riot police swinging clubs at civilians with their hands up. I didn t hear him say a single word on corruption and how he s going to fight it. I didn t hear anything on justice, said prominent anti-corruption campaigner Boniface Mwangi. When he says that there s the rule of law, his actions and the actions of his government show there s no rule of law. Kenyatta won a repeat presidential election on Oct. 26 that was boycotted by Odinga, who said it would not be free and fair. The Supreme Court nullified the first presidential election, in August, over irregularities. Supporters of Kenyatta - who won the October poll with 98 percent of the vote after Odinga s boycott - want the opposition to engage in talks and move on. I m sure Uhuru will be able to bring people together and unite them so we can all work for the country, said Eunice Jerobon, a trader who traveled overnight from the Rift Valley town of Kapsabet for the inauguration. But Odinga s supporters see such talk of unity as tantamount to surrender. Many of them are drawn from poorer parts of the country, and feel angered because they say they are locked out of power and the patronage it brings. Political arguments often have ethnic undercurrents, with Odinga s supporters pointing out that three of the country s four presidents have come from one ethnic group, the Kikuyu, although the country has 44 recognized groups. Odinga accuses the ruling party of stealing the election, overseeing rampant corruption, directing abuse by the security forces and neglecting vast swathes of the country, including Odinga s heartland in the west. This election of October 26 is fake. We do not recognize it, Odinga told supporters from the rooftop of a car. On Dec. 12, we will have an assembly that will swear me in. Shortly after that, riot police teargassed his convoy and charged his supporters. The opposition had planned to hold a prayer meeting in the capital on Tuesday, saying it wanted to commemorate the lives of Odinga supporters killed during confrontations with the security forces over the election period. More than 70 people have been killed in political violence this election season, mostly by the police. Riot police sealed off the scene of the rally in the morning, and fired teargas at residents, trying to prevent a crowd from gathering, as a helicopter hovered overhead. Roads were blocked by burning tyres, rocks and uprooted billboards. In his speech, Kenyatta promised to raise living standards by increasing jobs, home ownership, electricity connections and health insurance coverage. He also said all Africans would now get visas on arrival in Kenya, and members of the East African community could own property, work and live in Kenya, adding to underscore Kenya s commitment to pan Africanism, this shall not be done on the basis of reciprocity . ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek police raids find explosives, nine held over links to banned Turkish group;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police found bomb-making equipment and detonators in raids in Athens on Tuesday and were questioning nine people over suspected links to a banned militant group in Turkey ahead of an expected visit by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan next week. Eight men and a woman thought to hold Turkish citizenship were being detained after morning raids at three different addresses in central Athens. They were expected to appear before an investigating magistrate on Wednesday. Earlier, police officials told Reuters the individuals were being quizzed for alleged links to the leftist militant DHKP/C, an outlawed group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. At three homes, police found materials available commercially which could potentially be used in making explosives, they said in a statement. They also retrieved digital material, travel documents and a pistol. One of the detainees had been wanted by Greek police in connection with an arms and explosives haul off the Greek island of Chios, close to the Turkish coast, in 2013. Witnesses saw police experts in hazmat suits and holding suitcases entering one address in Athens. Tests on an unknown substance found in jars were expected to be concluded within the day. Turkey s Erdogan is widely expected to visit Greece in December, although his visit has not been officially announced. It would be the first visit by a Turkish president in more than 50 years. Another official told the semi-official Athens News Agency that the case was unconnected to domestic terror groups or militant Islamists, and described those questioned as being of Turkish origin. DHKP/C, known also as the Revolutionary People s Liberation Party/Front, is considered a terrorist group by the European Union, Turkey and the United States. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As West frowns on Putin, young Russians learn the military way;STAVROPOL, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin may be criticized by the West for the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but at home his public approval ratings have been boosted. The operation to seize the peninsula, hailed by Russian nationalists as The Crimean Spring , led to an upsurge in what is called military and patriotic education of Russian youths. In the southern region of Stavropol, interest has been revived in the Cossacks, a warrior class in tsarist times, and in the history of tsarist and modern wars which Moscow fought in the North Caucasus region. The Cossacks, who were portrayed as peaceful ploughmen in quiet times, were swift to repel attacks from nearby regions, such as Chechnya and Dagestan, or join Moscow s military campaigns elsewhere. Tomorrow begins today, reads the motto of a cadet school in Stavropol that was named after Alexei Yermolov, a 19th century Russian general who conquered the Caucasus for the Russian empire. A Reuters photo essay (reut.rs/2jp4dgu) captures images from the General Yermolov Cadet School training in Stavropol and in the countryside. Most cadets come from families of active Russian soldiers or officers from other security forces. About 40 percent of school leavers join the military or law enforcement agencies. Many instructors spent years in hot spots or conflict zones. A group of teenagers from the Patriot club in Crimea visited the school s field camp, named Russian Knights , over the summer. Up to 600 boys and girls train there each summer. This camp trains more than 1,500 teenagers a year. Physical exercises go hand-in-hand with weapons training, marksmanship tests, car driving and even parachuting. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea's Moon condemns missile launch, says provocation had been anticipated;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday he strongly condemns North Korea s latest ballistic missile launch, noting it had been anticipated and that the government had been preparing for it in advance. Moon added that there is no choice but for the international community to continue applying pressure and sanctions against North Korea. The president made the comments at a national security meeting held shortly after North Korea launched what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed close to Japan. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech election winner Babis says his cabinet to take power before December EU summit;PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech ANO party leader Andrej Babis said on Tuesday he expected his minority cabinet to take power on Dec. 13 which would enable him to attend a European Union summit as prime minister. After meeting President Milos Zeman, Babis said he had not yet secured backing for his cabinet in the lower house of parliament, where ANO has 78 out of 200 seats and other parties have so far rejected joining or backing Babis s administration. Lacking any direct left-right ideology, Babis won the October election on pledges to cut corruption among mainstream parties, fight immigration and make government more efficient and pro-business. I convinced Mr President for an earlier date for appointing the cabinet, on Dec.13, because on Dec. 14 and 15 the European Council will take place which will obviously be very important, Babis told reporters. The progress of negotiations with Great Britain over its departure from the EU will be the main topic of the summit. Babis said Zeman would appoint him on Dec. 6 as prime minister, and his full cabinet on Dec. 13, from which date the new team will take power regardless whether it has parliamentary majority. The main sticking point for Babis, a businessman ranked by Forbes as the second richest Czech worth $4 billion, is that police want parliament to lift his immunity so he can be charged with illegal tapping of an EU subsidy a decade ago. He denies any wrongdoing but the case has made him toxic for most of the other eight parliamentary factions. A parliamentary vote on his immunity is expected in the coming weeks. Lack of mainstream partners has raised the prospect Babis may negotiate support with the anti-NATO, pro-Russian Communist party and the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (SPD), which wants to quit the EU, NATO and fight what it calls EU-forced islamisation. Babis has repeatedly said he is ready to clash with EU partners over migration but also praised the EU s role as guarantor of peaceful Europe and said he was a pro-European politician. If the government loses a confidence vote prescribed within a month of its appointment, it must resign but it will stay in office until another solution is found, which can take months. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France pushes U.N. to impose sanctions over Libya migrant crisis;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - France said on Tuesday it wanted the United Nations Security Council to consider imposing targeted sanctions on human traffickers operating in Libya after a video appearing to show African migrants sold as slaves sparked global outrage. Several members of the 15-member Security Council expressed their horror at the video during a meeting on Tuesday, requested by France, to discuss human trafficking in Libya. The footage broadcast earlier this month by CNN showed what it said was an auction of men to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400 each. French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre said the council should use sanctions to help stamp out trafficking in Libya. France will propose to assist the sanctions committee ... in identifying responsible individuals and entities for trafficking through Libyan territory, Delattre told the council. We count upon support of the members of the council to make headway to that end. Under a sanctions regime set up in 2011, the Security Council is able to impose a global asset freeze and travel ban on individuals and entities involved in or complicit in ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, the commission of serious human rights abuses against persons in Libya. France can propose names for targeted U.N. sanctions but needs to win consensus support within the Security Council s 15-member Libya sanctions committee. Some council members expressed support for the possibility of imposing targeted sanctions, while others backed the council first issuing a statement. Diplomats said France, Britain and Sweden were drafting a statement. We all have a responsibility to act. This is not the moment to pass the buck, said Sweden s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Carl Skau. Libya descended into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 led to the overthrow and killing of leader Muammar Gaddafi, with two competing governments backed by militias scrambling for control of the oil-producing country. Islamic State militants have also gained a foothold in the North African state. People smugglers operating with impunity in Libya have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe, mainly Italy, by sea since 2014. Thousands have died during the voyages. The Security Council last week adopted an Italian-drafted resolution urging tougher action to crack down on human trafficking and modern slavery worldwide. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Roadside bomb kills eight in Afghanistan: local official;KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A roadside bomb planted by the Taliban killed at least eight civilians including three women and a child in Afghanistan s Kandahar province on Tuesday, a local official said. The victims of the blast in Kandahar s Maroof district were going from Maroof district center to their village when a newly planted Taliban bomb hit their car, said Zia Durani, a spokesman for Kandahar police. The southern province of Kandahar has long been a Taliban stronghold. Durani provided no evidence to support the assertion of Taliban responsibility. The group has not claimed the attack. Roadside bombs have been responsible for about 18 percent of civilian casualties this year, according to the United Nations. Nearly 500 people were killed by improvised explosive devices between January and September. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel scolds ally to shield coalition talks from weedkiller row;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel scolded a minister on Tuesday in a bid to shield talks on forming a coalition government from a dispute between cabinet colleagues over an EU license for a weedkiller. Conservative Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt angered the center-left SPD on Monday by breaking protocol to back a European Union proposal to extend the use of glyphosate in the bloc for another five years, a measure opposed by the SPD. The matter is sensitive because only last week the SPD reversed its decision to go into opposition after suffering its worst result in 70 years in a September election. They are expected to launch talks next year with Merkel s conservatives on forming a coalition government. The SPD are junior partners in Merkel s caretaker government, which includes her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) of which agriculture minister Schmidt is a member. As for the vote of the agriculture ministry yesterday on glyphosate, this did not comply with the instructions worked out by the federal government, Merkel said. I expect that such an incident will not be repeated. It is usual practice that Germany abstains in EU votes if ministers from different parties disagree on a policy. Schmidt s decision has strained relations between the two camps before they even launch exploratory talks on renewing their alliance. (The chancellor) must do something to heal the loss of trust. You can t govern like that. It simply doesn t work, SPD Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks told Deutschlandfunk radio before Merkel made her comments. Merkel said even though her stance on glyphosate use was closer to Schmidt s than to Hendricks he should not have voted in favor against the wish of his colleague and in breach of government instructions. Hendricks did not say whether the SPD wants Merkel to fire Schmidt, but the ecologist Greens said she should do just that. Merkel turned to the SPD after failing to form a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens, which created an impasse unseen in the post-World War Two era. Schmidt defended his decision to vote in favor of the five-year extension in Brussels on Monday, saying the European Commission would have probably decided on a longer extension if the vote had been indecisive. I took the decision on my own, Schmidt told German public television. It falls under my responsibility. Hendricks said she had called Schmidt two hours before the tight vote in Brussels, which Germany tipped in favor of an extension by defeating its key ally France. She expressed her opposition to the continued use of the weedkiller, which some of the EU s 28 member states fear causes cancer. Christian Schmidt took the chestnut out of the fire for the Commission in breach of our consultations, Hendricks said. French President Emmanuel Macron had wanted a shorter extension and a rapid phasing out of glyphosate, which is a mainstay of farming across the continent. After the vote, he said he would take all necessary measures to ban the product, originally developed by Monsanto, as soon as an alternative is available and at the latest within three years. Germany s Bayer plans to take over Monsanto for $63.5 billion. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa opens amnesty window for return of stolen funds;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, on Tuesday announced a three-month amnesty window for the return of public funds illegally stashed abroad by individuals and companies. Upon the expiry of the amnesty at end of February next year, the government will arrest and prosecute those who have failed to comply, Mnangagwa said in a statement. Mnangagwa was sworn-in as president on Friday and promised to tackle corruption, which had become endemic under former president Robert Mugabe s 37-year rule. Those affected are thus encouraged to take advantage of the three-month moratorium to return the illegally externalized funds and assets in order to avoid the pain and ignominy of being visited by the long arm of the law, Mnangagwa said. Zimbabwe s new president is under pressure to deliver, especially on the economy, which is in the grip of severe foreign currency shortages that have seen banks failing to give cash to customers. Mnangagwa told heads of government ministries on Tuesday that he was putting together a leaner government, which would see the merging of some departments to enhance efficiency. Critics say Zimbabwe has a bloated civil service, which chews more than 90 percent of the national budget. Mnangagwa, however, said only workers of retirement age would be laid off. He promised to rebuild the economy and improve the livelihoods of Zimbabweans. My government will have no tolerance for bureaucratic slothfulness, which is quick to brandish procedures as an excuse for stalling service delivery to citizens, investors and other stakeholders, Mnangagwa said in a statement read to the government officials. After recovering under a unity government between the ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition between 2009 and 2012, the southern African nation s economy has unraveled with the unemployment rate above 90 percent. Mnangagwa is expected to announce a cabinet this week, with all eyes on whether he breaks with the past and names a broad-based government or selects old guard figures from Mugabe s era. An official at parliament said Mnangagwa had asked for curriculum vitaes of ZANU-PF legislators on Tuesday as he moves to put the new cabinet in place. Meanwhile, deputy parliament speaker Mabel Chinomona told the house that she had been informed by ZANU-PF that the party had recalled five legislators from parliament, indicating the five had been dismissed as ZANU-PF lawmakers. The members, all linked to the G40 group that supported Mugabe s wife Grace, include former ministers Savior Kasukuwere, Jonathan Moyo and Ignatius Chombo, who is facing corruption charges in court. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Is the best of 'lucky general' Macron's good fortune behind him?;PARIS (Reuters) - During his rapid rise to the presidency, France s Emmanuel Macron was sometimes referred to as a lucky general a leader with the right skills for the job but also a generous dose of the good fortune needed to win the day. The 39-year-old certainly took advantage of a string of lucky breaks, especially a corruption scandal that derailed the campaign of front-running, center-right rival Francois Fillon. But six months into his occupation of the Elysee Palace, there are niggling signs Macron s luck could be starting to turn. In particular, the uncertain political picture in Germany has complicated his ambition to reform Europe s single currency zone, something he has put at the heart of his presidency and that stands or falls on Franco-German cooperation. And while changes he introduced early on to France s employment rules provoked less unrest than expected, the impact on the economy has so far been muted. His plans to amend the pensions and benefits system may not be so readily accepted. From a fiscal point of view, one of his main objectives is to bring the national deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product for the first time in a decade. Yet current indications are that he will struggle with that goal, leaving France at odds with the EU s executive Commission. And within his own party En Marche, formed as a grassroots movement a little over a year ago there is unease among some members about a top-down structure that goes against the ethos that propelled him to a five-year term in May. Some breaks continue to fall in Macron s favor. France last week won the right to host the European Banking Agency in a lucky dip against Dublin, and domestically he faces little serious opposition from either the left or right. But his biggest ambitions rely on a deep and sustained relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose position after 12 years as Germany s leader has been weakened over two months of so-far fruitless talks to form a governing coalition. We are naturally paying close attention to everything that might help stabilize the political situation (in Germany), Benjamin Griveaux, a close Macron ally who was recently named the government s new spokesman, said on Monday. Without a strong partner it will obviously be more difficult to carry out the president s ambitious European project. At one level, the fact that Merkel is now talking to Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) about a grand coalition , after overtures to the Liberals and Greens failed, is positive for Macron since the SPD is more avowedly pro-EU. But there s no guarantee the SPD will sign up to Macron s agenda, even if its leader, Martin Schulz, is a former European Parliament president who is committed to the project. Schulz has only gone as far as to say Macron s ideas need to be discussed in coalition talks with Merkel, while other SPD officials say domestic reforms to health insurance and pensions are a more pressing consideration. Europe is not a theme where we can simply push things through, said Johannes Kahrs, a budget expert for the SPD in parliament and leader of the party s conservative wing. Macron s ideas for overhauling the euro zone, including the creation of a region-wide budget, finance minister and separate parliament, may be just too ambitious for Germany to swallow. It would be nice if the conservatives went along with the idea of a budget for the euro zone, but they need to want it, said Kahrs. It would make no sense to try to bully them. Even as he focuses on his grand ambitions, Macron and his finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, must battle to get the state s historically overstretched finances in order, while hoping that France s currently steady growth rate doesn t falter. The budget deficit has been falling and should dip just below 3 percent next year, but from the European Commission s point of view that is insufficient. It wants more done on the structural deficit, which strips out the business cycle. If Macron and Le Maire are to achieve more, it will likely mean cutting deeper into regional budgets, where planned reductions have already provoked anger among mayors. Unemployment figures show job creation is at a record high but the jobless rate still ticked higher in the third quarter, rising to 9.7 percent. While it is forecast to decline again, the French rate remains way above Germany s of 5.6 percent. Jean Pisani-Ferry, a leading economist and former adviser to Macron, believes perhaps the biggest risk Macron faces is ensuring his European strategy pays off, because his domestic agenda will in large part be influenced by it in turn. Yet that depends a lot on Germany, and the wider EU. He s making a huge political investment (in Europe), said Pisani-Ferry, a professor of economics and public management at Sciences Po university. And if you re making a huge political investment, you want at some point some pay-off. If there is no pay-off whatsoever, then obviously there will be domestic political consequences. It will be a setback for him. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe is gone, but political kow-towing still abounds;HARARE (Reuters) - Robert Mugabe s 37-year rule may be over, but a culture of political fawning by the Zimbabwean state media and fear of those in authority still flourishes. The Herald newspaper and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation - state and ruling ZANU-PF party mouthpieces - routinely heaped lavish praise on the 93-year-old Mugabe and his wife Grace in sycophantic articles and commentaries. With the sudden change of guard, Zimbabwe s official media is having a hard time shaking off old habits and is now tailoring its eulogies to fit Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe s successor. State radio intersperses programs with martial music from the war of independence in honor of Mnangagwa s war veteran allies and the army. One morning talk show host spoke glowingly on Tuesday of seeing the presidential motorcade at 0645 GMT. This, he said, signaled the new leader was keeping his word to hit the ground running. The president is showing the way so get to work on time, he said. Mnangagwa, 75, a close Mugabe ally for several decades, took power after the military takeover on Nov. 15 following a succession battle that split the ruling ZANU-PF party. Comrade Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, (is) a true son of the soil who sacrificed his entire life to serving Zibmabwe as evidenced by the role he played in the liberation struggle as well as after independence up to this day. We are blessed to have you as our leader, an advertisement by the ministry for women affairs, gender and community development gushed in the Herald. Not all within the ruling party are comfortable with the trend though. Justice Wadyajena, a Mnangagwa admirer and outspoken ZANU-PF parliamentarian, reminded his Twitter followers of the dangers of personality cults. Those falling all over each other pledging loyalty to President ED are just brutes playing meek, Wadyajena wrote, referring to Mnangagwa by the initials of his first and middle names. If you really are principled, there s no reason to bootlick, your conduct should speak for itself. We ve seen the danger of personalizing governance and gatekeeping a NATIONAL FIGURE!! Mnangagwa, who served Mugabe loyally for 52 years, is expected to form a new cabinet this week. Zimbabweans are watching to see if he breaks with the past and names a broad-based government or selects figures from the Mugabe era s old guard. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia's advisory council studying proposals to protect whistleblowers;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s Shura Council, a top advisory council to the government, is studying proposals for protection of people who report financial crime, local media reported, following the government s anti-corruption crackdown. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has launched an inquiry into graft that has resulted in the detention of a dozens of princes, senior officials and businessmen. The Shura Council does not have legislative powers, but it can propose laws to the king and the cabinet. It said in a tweet on Monday that it had agreed on the appropriateness of the draft proposal for whistleblower protection for financial and administrative corruption. The Arabic-language newspaper al-Riyadh reported on Tuesday that the council had agreed to study two proposals on the matter that also included protection of eyewitnesses who report violations such as financial crime. A top official said earlier this month that Saudi authorities have questioned 208 people in an anti-corruption investigation and estimate at least $100 billion has been stolen through graft. The Government of Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is working within a clear legal and institutional framework to maintain transparency and integrity in the market, Attorney General Sheikh Saud Al Mojeb said in a statement on Nov. 9. The investigation has spread to the neighboring United Arab Emirates, as the UAE central bank asked commercial banks and finance companies there to provide details of the accounts of 19 Saudis detained in the crackdown. The UAE central bank governor said last week the request by the central bank for local banks and finance companies to provide details of the accounts of 19 Saudi Arabian citizens was just an information-gathering exercise. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jailed former Catalan vice-president accepts Madrid rule: lawyer;MADRID (Reuters) - Imprisoned former vice-president of Catalonia Oriol Junqueras and three other jailed members of his ERC party will abide by a ruling giving Madrid control over the region, their defense lawyer said on Tuesday. Junqueras and seven other former members of the Catalonia regional cabinet were jailed on Nov. 2 pending trial, accused of sedition, rebellion and misappropriation of funds after the local government declared independence from Spain. Catalonia s secession drive has tipped Spain into its worst political crisis in decades and prompted Madrid to sack the Catalan government, led by Carles Puigdemont, and call a regional election for Dec. 21. The acceptance of Madrid s rule over the region could prompt the Supreme Court to overrule the decision to hold the defendants in custody while they await trial, and release them in time to campaign for the election. All four jailed ERC members - Junqueras, former foreign affairs chief Raul Romeva, justice affairs head Carles Mundo and work chief Dolors Bassa - have been named as candidates in the election. The defendants did not agree with the application of Article 155, which stripped the regional government of its power after the secessionist ruling, but accepted it, their lawyer said in a statement to the Supreme Court. My charges accepted, and accept, the application of 155 ... but have done so from a position of deep political and judicial discrepancy, the lawyer said. The lawyer added that the statement does not mean that they renounce their political convictions. Former leader of Catalonia Puigdemont, who has been in self-imposed exile in Belgium since declaring independence, said on Saturday the election would be most important in the region s history. Turnout for the election is expected to reach a record 80 percent as the deeply divisive issue of the region s secession prompts participation from both sides. Less than a quarter of Catalans want to continue with a plan to claim independence from Spain, according to a poll published in El Pais newspaper on Monday. However, the same poll showed the vote evenly split between pro- and anti-independence parties in the upcoming regional election. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syria accepts Russian plan for ceasefire in besieged zone: U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian government has accepted a Russian suggestion of a ceasefire in the besieged rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters on Tuesday. I was just informed by the Russians today at the P5 meeting that the Russians have proposed and the government has accepted a ceasefire on Eastern Ghouta because we were and are very concerned about it, de Mistura said. Now we need to see whether this takes place but it s not coincidental that this has actually been proposed and agreed upon just at the beginning of this session (of peace talks in Geneva). ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China police say some claims of abuse at Beijing kindergarten unfounded;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese police said late on Tuesday some claims of child abuse at a Beijing kindergarten run by New York-listed RYB Education were unfounded, the latest twist in a case that has sparked outrage throughout China. RYB s shares plunged 38.4 percent last Friday after police launched an investigation into allegations of child abuse at the school, though they have recovered some losses this week. By 1700 GMT, the shares were up around 16.6 percent. Police in Beijing s Chaoyang district said in a statement posted on their official microblog late on Tuesday that they had criminally detained a teacher surnamed Liu suspected of using knitting needles to discipline children. However, they added that claims made by some parents that children had been fed unidentified tablets at the school and accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported medical check-ups on unclothed students were fabricated. China s state-run Xinhua news agency had reported last week that police were checking allegations that children were reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills . The Chaoyang police added they had recovered 113 hours of footage from the school s surveillance system, but had not yet found on it instances of people harming children. They added that the hard drive storage for the footage had been damaged . The fall-out from the scandal has been widespread. China s education ministry has launched a special investigation into kindergartens nationwide, while Beijing authorities have said they will send permanent inspectors to city nurseries. RYB, which says it has over 1,300 play-and-learn centers and nearly 500 kindergartens in around 300 cities in China, has suspended one teacher and fired the headmaster of the Beijing kindergarten. The Chaoyang police said it would continue with its investigation to get to the bottom of the child abuse claims and hand out severe punishments according to the law. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump considers when and how to move U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem: Pence;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is actively considering when and how to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday. Pence made the comment in remarks at Israel s Mission to the United Nations at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of the United Nations vote calling for the establishment of a Jewish state. Trump has vowed to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem but in June he signed a waiver to keep it in Tel Aviv. He is facing a new deadline in early December on whether to extend the waiver again, a practice that his predecessors used to avoid inflaming tensions in the Middle East. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Colleague names Putin's daughter, then withdraws comments;"MOSCOW (Reuters) - A colleague of Katerina Tikhonova from the world of acrobatic rock n roll confirmed that she is the younger daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then later withdrew his comments, saying he had misheard the question. It is the second time in two years that Reuters has disclosed Tikhonova s relationship to the president, citing a named source, and then been publicly challenged post publication. World Rock n Roll Confederation (WRRC) Vice President for Legal Affairs Manfred Mohab told Reuters in an interview on Sunday during a dance event that he knew Tikhonova through their work together on the confederation s presidium. When asked whether he knew Tikhonova was Putin s daughter, he said: Yes. I know her, yes of course. Asked a second time, he nodded and said: Yes. The Kremlin and Tikhonova did not respond to requests for comment. After the Reuters article was published on Tuesday, Mohab telephoned Reuters and said: I can t confirm that I know the daughter of Mr. Putin. I have nothing to do with them. Asked why he had earlier said Tikhonova was Putin s daughter, Mohab said: Believe me, it was so loud in the hall that a lot of the things I can t understand and other things I felt that I didn t understand right. So it s not sure that I gave you the right answers. Mohab said he had problems with his hearing. I m sure we had some misunderstandings. In 2015, Andrey Akimov, deputy chairman of the board of directors at Russian lender Gazprombank, told Reuters that Tikhonova was Putin's daughter but later denied the statement. Reuters also confirmed her identity through two other sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. [reut.rs/2ztup0f] After the report, Gazprombank said Akimov was ""surprised and bewildered"" by the quotes attributed to him by Reuters and that he had made no such remarks. [reut.rs/2zHzVAJ] Akimov and a representative for Gazprombank did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Putin, a former KGB intelligence officer, is famously guarded about his private life and has fought to keep his two daughters, Maria and Katerina, away from the public eye. While Katerina s identity has been widely assumed, it has never been confirmed by Tikhonova herself, her representatives or the Kremlin, which says it does not comment on the private lives of Putin s close relatives. Mohab, in his comments to Reuters on Sunday, became the first official to publicly identify her relationship to the Russian president since Akimov in 2015. Tikhonova, who uses a surname inherited from her grandmother, runs publicly-funded projects at Moscow State University and serves as the WRRC s vice president for expansion and marketing. Aged 31, she is a major player in acrobatic rock n roll, a niche dance discipline she has competed in and helps manage through senior positions at the WRRC and the Russian national federation. She is also married to Kirill Shamalov, the son of one of Putin's closest friends, who has since made a fortune of at least $1 billion through dealings in Russia's largest petrochemical company. [reut.rs/2BfT74A] Mohab spoke to Reuters on the sidelines of the World Cup Rock n Roll European Championship in Moscow. Asked if Tikhonova s personal connection to the president had been a boon for acrobatic rock n roll, he said: Yes, of course. The sport is developing thanks to Russia, he said. We have an expansion project which is working on all continents and in a lot of countries. And this is all going out from Russia. With just over 200 adult pairs in the WRRC world rankings, acrobatic rock n roll remains a relatively obscure discipline in competitive dancing that is most popular in eastern Europe. Around 9,000 people actively participate in acrobatic rock n roll in Russia and organizers aim to add another 3,000 people by 2020, according to the national federation. Reuters reported in December last year that Moscow was building a publicly-funded $30 million complex for the sport on the outskirts of the city, an investment which dwarfs that spent in other countries and on some bigger sports in Russia. ";worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt security forces kill 11 suspected militants in raid;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces have killed 11 suspected militants in a shootout near the Sinai, the interior ministry said on Tuesday, just days after more than 300 people were killed in an attack on a mosque in North Sinai. The shootout occurred during a raid on a suspected militant hideout in the Sinai-bordering province of Ismailia, the ministry said in a statement. It said the area was being used by militants to train and store weapons and logistical equipment for attacks in North Sinai. Militants detonated a bomb and then gunned down fleeing worshippers in last Friday s mosque attack, the deadliest in Egypt s modern history. No group has claimed responsibility for the assault, but Egypt s public prosecutor linked Islamic State militants to the attack, citing interviews with wounded survivors who said militants brandished an Islamic State flag. Six suspected militants were arrested as part of the operations, which also included a raid on an additional suspected militant hideout in the 10th of Ramadan, an area just outside of Cairo. Since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State affiliate in the mainly desert region of North Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers. The interior ministry statement on Tuesday did not directly link the suspected militants targeted in the operations to last week s mosque attack. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Balinese offer prayers as rumbling volcano threatens tourism lifeblood;JAKARTA/CANDI DASA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Bali s rumbling Mount Agung is starting to impact the economy of the holiday island and, if the eruptions and volcanic ash clouds persist, could spark a bigger wave of cancellations by visitors to Indonesia s main tourism destination as peak season beckons. The relatively small island has an outsized importance for Indonesian tourism. In January-September, Bali received 4.5 million foreign tourist arrivals, nearly half of the 10.5 million arrivals in Indonesia. Foreign tourist arrivals to the majority-Hindu island rose 26 percent in the nine-month period on an annual basis, though dropped on a monthly basis in September, when Indonesian authorities first raised the warning alert on Agung. Bali is about tourism, nothing else. If it (the eruption) is prolonged for around 1-3 months, it will impact our tourism significantly, said I Ketut Ardana, chairman of the Association of the Indonesian Tours and Travel Agencies (ASITA). We can feel a small impact now, the price of staple goods is increasing, he said. Indonesia closed Bali s airport on Tuesday for a second day, stranding thousands of visitors due to the ash cloud. On Monday alone, it disrupted 445 flights that would have carried 59,000 passengers. Chinese tourists have overtaken Australians to become the top visitors to Bali, representing around a quarter of arrivals in January-September. Australian and Japanese tourists are the second- and third-largest groups. Foreign tourists spent about $1,100 on average during Indonesia holidays in 2016, according to tourism ministry data. President Joko Widodo has been trying to promote creation of 10 new Balis in other parts of the scenic Indonesian archipelago. But for many so far, holidaying in Indonesia means going to Bali. As Agung spewed tall columns of ash, life continued largely as normal on Tuesday for villagers near the volcano who set up traditional markets and offered Hindu prayers. Matthew Smyth from Ireland, a restaurant owner in Amed, around 15 km (9 miles) from the volcano, said many businesses using rented land would be threatened if the eruption dragged on. Half of the businesses here are built on credit... if the situation continues many people will lose their land, said Smyth, who is also setting up a yoga retreat and freediving center. The problems facing Bali tourism come as Indonesian policymakers have been trying to fire up an economy stuck at around 5 percent growth, held back by largely flat consumption. Bali has been growing more quickly. The tourism sector was the biggest contributor to its 6.24 percent regional GDP growth last year. But Agung has already put a dent in Bali s growth this year. If it (the eruption) is prolonged to a month, especially in Bali, it could have an impact on tourism revenue. I think this is a short-term shock, but it needs to be watched, said Myrdal Gunarto, an economist at Maybank Indonesia in Jakarta. Wayan Wirjana, 31, the manager of a restaurant in Candi Dasa, a popular beach town in Bali, said he was only getting five visitors a day, down from 15-20 in the summer, and expects the usually busy Christmas and New Year period to be slow. If things continue in the long term, like through the Christmas period, we ll have to lay off staff even if temporarily. We all have families so there is a very real impact on us, he said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. general backs Germany to host new NATO operations command;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is best suited to host a new NATO military logistics command, the top U.S. Army general in Europe said on Tuesday. NATO allies this month backed plans for two new military headquarters - an Atlantic command and a logistics command - to help protect Europe in the event of a future conflict. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges told the Berlin Security Conference that Germany - already host to many U.S. troops - was well-placed to take on the logistics role given its geographical location in the heart of Europe, and its existing capabilities. I can t imagine any other country being better suited than Germany to take on that responsibility, from a geographical standpoint, a capability standpoint, Hodges said. Diplomats have said that Germany is eager to host the logistics command but no decisions have been made. Hodges, who is due to retire next month, has repeatedly pushed for increased focus on improving the ability to move troops and equipment across Europe in the event of a future conflict. NATO began beefing up its defenses after the 2014 annexation by Russia of Ukraine s Crimea peninsula, deploying troops to the Baltic states and Poland, strengthening its presence in the Black Sea and starting to modernizing its forces. The Kremlin, which denies harboring any aggressive intentions toward Europe, has condemned the moves as an attempt to encircle Russia. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. seeks report from Myanmar on rapes, deaths of Rohingya women;GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations women s rights panel called on Myanmar on Tuesday to report within six months on rapes and sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls by its security forces in northern Rakhine state and measures taken to punish soldiers. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) also asked authorities to provide details on women and girls killed in the violence since the army crackdown began in late August. The campaign, which followed attacks on police posts by Rohingya insurgents, has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh and left their villages burned to the ground. The rare request for an exceptional report from a country was only the panel s fourth since 1982. We request an exceptional report from a state when a situation of grave, massive and systematic violations occur and these issues are relevant to mandate of the Committee, panel member Nahla Haidar told Reuters. The exceptional report is also like a red flag, she said. The move aimed to help Myanmar authorities get out of the tunnel of this recent conflict which has really set back Myanmar which was going on the right foot to democratisation , she said. The U.N. watchdog panel, composed of 23 independent experts, set a six-month deadline for the government to submit the report to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The Committee requested information concerning cases of sexual violence, including rape, against Rohingya women and girls by State security forces;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Redacted Brexit reports spark new tug-of-war with UK parliament;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May s attempts to keep her Brexit plans secret provoked a new row on Tuesday when lawmakers criticized her for failing to hand over complete studies on the economic impact of Britain leaving the European Union. The government had promised to share more than 50 studies on how Brexit would affect different economic sectors, but on Monday it gave lawmakers a hard copy of a report running to around 850 pages with parts redacted because of what ministers called commercial and confidential information. Lawmakers hit back, saying the government was riding roughshod over a democratically elected parliament - the latest tug of war over who should have influence over talks that will shape Britain s future standing in the world by unraveling more than 40 years of union with the bloc. This is not a game. This is the most important set of decisions that this country has taken for decades, Keir Starmer, Brexit policy chief for the opposition Labour Party, told parliament. In my experience the biggest mistakes are made when decisions are not scrutinized. With much redacted, Scotland s Brexit minister Michael Russell said the report did not contain any actual impact analysis which could offer an insight into what May s government had concluded over the likely impact of leaving the EU s single market and customs union. It is essential that people across the UK fully understand the consequences of decisions being taken about their future, he said in a letter sent to Damian Green, May s deputy, that was made public by the Scottish government. Arguments that the economy would suffer if Britain left the EU were rejected by many voters at last year s referendum when the country backed Brexit. But with the economy struggling with lower growth since the vote, some of those who argue that Britain should reverse its decision or at least strive for a softer Brexit that maintains close ties say knowledge of the impact could change minds. The government has been reluctant to share its impact assessments, with May saying she has to play her cards close to her chest to win the best available deal with the EU. Earlier this month, parliament used an archaic rule to force the government to hand over 58 impact studies, which earlier Brexit minister David Davis had referred to as 57 studies (that) cover 85 percent of the economy - everything except sectors that are not affected by international trade . Late on Monday, Davis wrote to a parliamentary committee on Brexit that the papers had been redacted because he had not been given guarantees that lawmakers would keep the details secret, possibly undermining Britain s negotiating hand. A junior minister for Brexit, Robin Walker, told parliament the government had been as open as possible and had met the terms of parliament s demand despite lawmakers misunderstanding over what the analysis was. It is not a series of 58 impact assessments, he said. But the move to limit the information, Labour and the Scottish National Party say, could place the government in contempt of parliament, which could lead to the suspension or expulsion of Davis from the House of Commons. Asked whether a charge of contempt could move forward, the parliamentary Speaker, John Bercow, said any attempt should take place after a meeting between Davis and the head of parliament s Brexit committee. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 17 killed in gold mine dispute on Mali-Guinea border;CONAKRY (Reuters) - A two-day skirmish between Guinean and Malian villagers over control of a gold mine that straddles the countries joint border killed at least 17 people, a government official in Guinea said on Tuesday. Villagers in both countries lay claim to the zone s rich underground deposits, which have lured thousands of people to work in unregulated small-scale mines along the border. Artisanal gold mining, conducted with rudimentary tools, is a key source of income in both Mali and Guinea, but poses numerous safety risks, including frequent mine collapses. There are five dead on the Guinean side and 12 dead on the Malian side, said Cheick Mohamed Diallo, prefect of the town of Mandiana in eastern Guinea. A witness on the Guinean side of the border said the villagers fought each other with firearms and bladed weapons. The fighting has ceased, local resident Cheikh Keita said, but the situation remained tense on Tuesday. A similar incident occurred in February 2015, when Guinean miners killed three Malian nationals in a fight over a gold discovery. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya pressing group to restore water supply to capital;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan authorities are attempting to negotiate with a group that has cut water supplies to the Libyan capital for the second time in two months to press for the release of a jailed ally, an official said on Tuesday. The group shut down pipes pumping water to Tripoli and other coastal towns at the al-Hasawna well system south of the capital, said Tawfiq Shwehaidi, a manager at the Great Man Made River in the eastern city of Benghazi. Today is the fifth day in a row that the water has stopped and we are trying to negotiate with them, he said. The group, loyal to late former leader Muammar Gaddafi, is demanding the release of Mabrouk Ehnaish, a militia leader detained last month by Tripoli s Special Deterrence Force (SDF), which is aligned with Libya s U.N.-backed government. Ehnaish s backers have made various threats to sabotage infrastructure including oil and gas supplies, and in October blocked water supplies to the capital for about two weeks. The Great Man Made River is a pipeline system built under Gaddafi that pumps water to coastal areas from underneath the country s southern desert. The water cuts come as Libyans struggle to cope with a steep decline in living standards during the conflict that developed after Gaddafi s 2011 overthrow, and an economic crisis that has led to rapid inflation and severe cash shortages. In recent days there have also been long queues for fuel and cooking gas in Tripoli. Though distributors have denied any shortages, some residents nervous about disruption to supplies have queued for more than an hour to fill vehicles or jerry cans. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK says seeking to build on 'momentum' for Brexit talks breakthrough;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is seeking to build on the recent momentum in the Brexit divorce talks with the European Union before a summit next month, a spokeswoman for Britain s Department for Exiting the European Union said on Tuesday. We are exploring how we can continue to build on recent momentum in the talks so that together we can move the negotiations on to the next phase and discuss our future partnership, the spokeswoman said. She was responding to reports in British newspapers that Britain and the EU had reached agreement on a Brexit divorce bill which is likely to total around 50 billion euros, potentially heralding a breakthrough in the negotiations. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar's Suu Kyi says trust has been eroded between Rakhine state communities;NAYPYITAW (Reuters) - Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday there had been an erosion of trust and understanding between communities of Rakhine state, but did not refer to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled since a military crackdown there. Of the many challenges that our government has been facing, the situation in the Rakhine has most strongly captured the attention of the world, Suu Kyi said in a speech at a ceremony to welcome Pope Francis in the capital, Naypyitaw, on the second day of his visit to the country. As we address longstanding issues, social, economic and political, that have eroded trust and understanding, harmony and cooperation, between different communities in Rakhine, the support of our people and of good friends who only wish to see us succeed in our endeavors, has been invaluable, she said. More than 620,000 Rohingya have left northern Rakhine state over the past three months to escape what Amnesty International has dubbed crimes against humanity , gathering in refugee camps at the southern tip of neighboring Bangladesh. The United States has accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, but China has stood by the country and Suu Kyi is due to travel to Beijing later this week. Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate and champion of democracy who for years faced down the junta that long ruled her country, has faced condemnation from around the globe for expressing doubts about reports of rights abuses against the Rohingya and failing to condemn the military. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government to arrive in Geneva tomorrow for peace talks: SANA;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Syrian government delegation will arrive in Geneva on Wednesday to attend peace talks this week, state news agency SANA said, quoting Syria s foreign affairs ministry. The delegation will be headed by Syria s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari, SANA said on Tuesday. The delegation had delayed its planned departure to the talks set to begin on Tuesday because of the opposition s insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian Kurdish militia open fire on Turkish border post: CNN Turk;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Syrian Kurdish PYD forces sprayed a Turkish border post with gunfire late on Tuesday, wounding one soldier, and Turkey responded with artillery fire, private broadcaster CNN Turk said The gunfire came from Afrin province in northwest Syria, it added. No further information was immediately available. Turkey views the PYD and its armed YPG affiliate as offshoots of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and the European Union. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta sworn in for second, five-year term;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in for second, five-year term on Tuesday, ending months of political turmoil in the east African nation. Kenyatta won a repeat presidential election on Oct. 26 after opposition leader Raila Odinga boycotted the vote, citing concerns over fairness. Police prevented opposition leaders from holding a rival gathering on Tuesday. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish independent ministers say political situation 'very grave';DUBLIN (Reuters) - The two independent cabinet ministers that support Prime Minister Leo Varadkar s minority government said the uncertainty over the future of his deputy prime minister was very grave . The situation is very grave. We will make our views known to the taoiseach (prime minister) at cabinet this morning, the Independent Alliance group s Finian McGrath told reporters. He would not comment on whether the deputy prime minister should resign. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: no firm date yet for proposed congress of Syria's peoples;MOSCOW (Reuters) - No firm date has been set yet for a Congress of Syria s peoples proposed by Russia, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, stressing that such a forum should be as inclusive as possible. There is no clarity yet (on the date), no one is setting a task for himself to adjust this event to the New Year holidays or after them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. The main thing is to properly prepare and agree the lists (of the participants) - this is precisely the hardest part of it. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Burundi opposition platform boycotts new round of peace talks in Tanzania;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi s main opposition grouping said it is boycotting peace talks that resumed on Tuesday in Tanzania, leaving little chance that the negotiations will end simmering political violence that has claimed hundreds of lives. Burundi has been gripped by unrest since April 2015, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would stand for a third term, which the opposition said violated the constitution as well as a 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war. He won a vote largely boycotted by the opposition, but protests sparked a government crackdown that has killed more than 700 people, displaced over 400,000 to neighboring countries and left the economy moribund. The International Criminal Court is investigating whether pro-government forces committed war crimes including murder, torture and rape. Burundi, which has withdrawn from the court, is refusing to recognize the investigation. Exiled opposition grouping CNARED said former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa, who is facilitating the Nov. 28-Dec. 8 round of talks in Arusha, had not invited them. We have always asked the facilitator to invite CNARED as an opposition bloc, but he has refused and rather decided to select some of our members who will take part to the dialogue without our consent, said CNARED spokesman Pancrace Cimpaye. At the end of October, Burundi s cabinet adopted draft legislation seeking to change the current constitution to allow Nkurunziza to run for a fourth term in the 2020 election. The proposed amendments, likely to go to a referendum by next year, seek to abolish the two-term limit and lengthen the presidential terms to seven years. CNARED says amending the constitution will worsen the crisis. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese general kills himself amid corruption probe;BEIJING (Reuters) - A prominent Chinese general under investigation for corruption has committed suicide, state media said on Tuesday, the latest development in a sweeping anti-graft campaign that has shaken the armed forces. Zhang Yang, a former member of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), was being investigated over links to disgraced generals Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, the official Xinhua news agency said. The investigation into Zhang, 66, had verified that he gravely violated discipline , was suspected of giving and taking bribes and the origin of a huge amount of assets was unclear, Xinhua said, citing the commission. On the afternoon of Nov. 23, Zhang Yang hanged himself at home, the agency said. A suicide by an officer who held such a senior post is rare, though experts have said the frequency of officials from various levels of government taking their own lives may have increased as a result of the intensity of the corruption crackdown since President Xi Jinping took power five years ago. A commentary carried on both the Defense Ministry and military s official websites said the CMC decided on Aug. 28 to investigate Zhang, who had lost his moral bottom line and used suicide as a means to escape punishment from the party and country , an extremely abominable act . This former general of high position and great power used this shameful way to end his own life, the commentary said. He would exhort loyalty but be corrupt behind others backs, a typical two-faced person , it said. Sources had told Reuters that Zhang, who had served as director of the military s Political Work Department, had been subject to an investigation, but the government had not announced it. Zhang s downfall was foreshadowed in September when he failed to make a list of 303 military delegates to the ruling Communist Party s key five-yearly congress, along with fellow CMC member Fang Fenghui. Both men were replaced at the congress, held last month, as part of a sweeping military leadership reshuffle in which Xi install trusted allies in key positions. China s military, the world s largest and undergoing an ambitious modernization campaign, has been an important focus of Xi s deep-seated fight against corruption. Serving and retired officers have said graft in the armed forces is so pervasive it could undermine China s ability to wage war. Dozens of officers have been investigated and jailed, including Xu and Guo, both former vice chairmen of the commission, which Xi heads. Xu once ran the Political Work Department, which is in charge of imbuing political thought and makes military personnel decisions, and along with Guo was accused of taking bribes in exchange for promotions. Guo was jailed for life last year. Xu died of cancer in 2015 before he could face trial. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO says North Korea missile launch undermines international security;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - North Korea s latest missile launch undermines regional and international security and Pyongyang needs to re-engage in credible dialogue with the international community, NATO said in a statement on Tuesday. North Korea fired a missile that landed close to Japan in the early hours of Wednesday, the first test by Pyongyang since a missile fired over its neighbor in mid-September. The Pentagon said its initial assessment was that it was an intercontinental ballistic missile. I strongly condemn North Korea s new ballistic missile test. This is a further breach of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions, undermining regional and international security, Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of the trans-Atlantic NATO alliance said in a statement. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. general sees no change in Pakistan behavior despite Trump tough line;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that he had not seen a change in Pakistan s support for militants so far, despite President Donald Trump taking a tougher line against Islamabad. U.S. officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistan s reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks on neighboring Afghanistan. In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. He accused Pakistan of harboring agents of chaos and providing safe havens to militant groups waging an insurgency against a U.S.-backed government in Kabul. U.S. official expressed hope that relations between the two countries could improve after a kidnapped U.S.-Canadian couple and their three children were freed in Pakistan in October. The couple was abducted in neighboring Afghanistan. We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis... we have not seen those changes implemented yet, General John Nicholson told reporters. We are hoping to see those changes, we are hoping to work together with the Pakistanis going forward to eliminate terrorists who are crossing the border, Nicholson said. He said that he believed that senior Taliban leaders were based in Pakistan, while the lower-level leadership was in Afghanistan. Nicholson added that he agreed with other senior U.S. officials that Pakistan s main spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, had ties to the Haqqani network militant group. The United States in 2012 designated the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist organization. Pakistan says it has done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down terrorists. The four-star general said he had seen evidence of relations between Iran and the Taliban in western Afghanistan and was closely tracking it. The United States has sent more than 3,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan as a part of Trump s South Asia strategy. Nicholson said over 1,000 troops would be advising Afghan troops at the battalion level, putting them closer to the fighting and at greater risk. Nicholson gave an optimistic view of the situation, saying he believed we are on our way to a win. U.S. officials have made similar statements during the course of the 16-year-old war, but the situation according to many U.S. officials remains in a stalemate. According to a recent report by a U.S. government watchdog, the Taliban had increased the amount of territory it has influence over or controls in Afghanistan in the past six months. The figures are a sign of the deteriorating security situation in the war-torn country, even as the United States has committed more troops. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey, United States 'on same wavelength', to speak again this week: Erdogan;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday his talks with U.S. President Donald Trump last week were the first occasion in a long time the two NATO allies were on the same wavelength and they would speak against this week. Diplomatic ties between Ankara and Washington have been strained by several disagreements, particularly over the United States support for the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia, which Ankara regards as a terrorist group. The telephone call which we had with Trump on Friday was the first in a long time in which we got on the same wavelength, Erdogan said in a speech to deputies from his ruling AK Party in parliament. He said discussions would continue in the coming days on the issues of the YPG, defense industry cooperation and the fight against the network of a U.S.-based cleric whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating last year s failed coup in Turkey. According to Turkey s foreign minister, Trump on Friday told Erdogan he had issued instructions that weapons should not be provided to the Syrian Kurdish YPG. However, the Pentagon said on Monday it was reviewing adjustments in arms for Syrian Kurdish forces, but it stopped short of halting weapons transfers, suggesting such decisions would be based on battlefield requirements. Speaking to reporters in parliament after his speech, Erdogan said the Pentagon statement would be discussed at Turkey s National Security Council (MGK) meeting later on Tuesday. He also said that Trump indicated that another call may happen this week. If he doesn t call, I ll call, Erdogan said. The YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State with the help of a U.S.-led coalition. Turkey regards the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says will speak to U.S. Trump again this week;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday he would hold another phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump this week, after the two leaders spoke last week. Speaking to reporters in parliament, Erdogan also said Turkey s National Security Council (MGK), which will convene later Tuesday, will discuss a statement by the Pentagon on the provision of weapons to Syrian Kurdish militants. [nL1N1NX170] ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. requests U.N. Security Council meet on North Korea missile launch: diplomats;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and Japan have requested that the United Nations Security Council meet on Wednesday to discuss North Korea s latest missile launch, diplomats said on Tuesday. North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missiles and nuclear programs. Typically, China and Russia view only a test of a long-range missile or a nuclear weapons as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Salvador court finds ex-president Funes illegally enriched himself;SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - An El Salvador court on Tuesday ruled in a civil case that former President Mauricio Funes and one of his sons had illegally enriched themselves and ordered them to pay nearly $420,000 in restitution to the government, a prosecutor said. The country s second civil court ruled that Funes could not justify $206,665 of his assets, while his son Diego Funes could not prove the origin of $212,484, government prosecutor Cecilia Galindo told reporters following a closed-door ruling. The court also recommended that prosecutors file criminal charges against Funes, she said. El Salvador s attorney general had sought to recover $1.23 million from Funes and his family. The court acquitted Funes ex-wife and the current social inclusion minister, Vanda Pignato, of similar charges, Galindo said. She did not specify why the court had levied a smaller fine than was sought by prosecutors. Funes, a former journalist, was elected in 2009 and brought the party formed by a former leftist guerrilla group, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), to power for the first time following a 1980-1992 civil war. His term ended in 2014 and he sought asylum in Nicaragua last year after claiming he was being politically persecuted. Funes said in his Twitter account that he rejected the unjust and arbitrary sentence of the court. You can not condemn defendants for stealing money from the state and say their assets are illegal just because there is pressure from the Right to do so. We will appeal this sentence, Funes said in a post. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. top diplomat urges new steps to press North Korea to abandon weapons programs;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday strongly condemned North Korea s launch of an apparent intercontinental ballistic missile and urged the international community to take new steps to press Pyongyang to halt development of nuclear arms. In addition to implementing all existing U.N. sanctions, the international community must take additional measures to enhance maritime security, including the right to interdict maritime traffic traveling to North Korea, Tillerson said in a statement. Tillerson said the United States and Canada would convene a meeting of U.N. countries, including South Korea, Japan and other affected nations, to discuss how the global community can counter North Korea s threat to international peace. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says North Korea missile launch 'a situation that we will handle';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States will take care of the North Korea issue after its latest missile launch, and that the basic U.S. approach to dealing with Pyongyang will not change. Trump has tightened sanctions on North Korea and pressured China to do more to help rein in Pyongyang s ballistic missile and nuclear ambitions. North Korea fired what the U.S. Pentagon said appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that landed close to Japan on Wednesday. Trump said the missile launch did not change what he called the very serious U.S. approach, a week after he put North Korea back on a U.S. list of countries that Washington says support terrorism. I will only tell you that we will take care of it... It is a situation that we will handle, Trump told reporters during a meeting with Republican congressional leaders at the White House. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, who was also at the meeting, said the ICBM launch was a higher trajectory than any test conducted thus far by North Korea and called it part of a research and development effort. It went higher frankly than any previous shots they have taken, Mattis said. He said South Korea retaliated by firing some pinpoint missiles into the water to show North Korea that the U.S. ally would not be rattled by Pyongyang s launch. North Korea has said its weapons program is a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO sees growing Russia, China challenge;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. threatens South Sudan action, Russia warns against U.N. measures;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States threatened on Tuesday to take further action against the South Sudan government if it does not end violence and allow United Nations peacekeepers to do their job, but U.N. sanctions are unlikely as Russia has warned against such a move. A month after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley visited South Sudan and met with President Salva Kiir in the capital Juba, she told the U.N. Security Council: Words are no longer sufficient. The United States is prepared to pursue additional measures against the government or any party, for that matter if they do not act to end the violence and ease the suffering in South Sudan, said Haley, who was the most senior member of President Donald Trump s administration to visit South Sudan. The Trump administration imposed sanctions in September on two senior South Sudanese officials and the former army chief for their role in the civil war and attacks against civilians. However, any U.S. push for the U.N. Security Council to take further action against South Sudan is likely to be resisted by veto power Russia. The council sanctioned several senior South Sudanese officials on both sides of the conflict in 2015, but a U.S. bid to impose an arms embargo in December 2016 failed. It is counterproductive to impose targeted sanctions, counterproductive to impose an arms embargo, such measures will not help to break this deadlock and will only further exacerbate the crisis, Russia s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Petr Iliichev. South Sudan spiraled into civil war in late 2013, two years after gaining independence from Sudan, and a third of the 12 million population has fled their homes. The conflict was sparked by a feud between Kiir, a Dinka, and his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, who is being held in South Africa. A fragile peace deal in South Sudan broke down last year and East African bloc IGAD has been trying to revive it. We view as unjust the ongoing attempts to place all blame for the persistent unabated violence on Juba alone, it has done its role, now the opposition must reciprocate, Iliichev said. U.N. sanctions monitors reported earlier this month that despite the catastrophic conditions across South Sudan, armed forces, groups and militias - particularly those affiliated with Kiir and Vice President Taban Deng Gai - continued to actively impede both humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan army's role in focus as Islamists end blasphemy blockade;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - When hardline Pakistani Islamists signed an agreement with the government on Monday to end a crippling blockade of the nation s capital, the text of their deal concluded by thanking the army chief who it said had saved the nation from a big catastrophe . The effusive praise for General Qamar Javed Bajwa s role as mediator has triggered some concern among moderate politicians and criticism from a judge in Islamabad, where 36 hours earlier the civilian government had called in the army to restore order after police clashed with the entrenched Islamists. Seven people had been killed and nearly 200 wounded in an unsuccessful police-led operation to clear the Islamist protesters, who accused a government minister of blasphemy. Instead of sending in troops, General Bajwa requested a meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqi Abbasi on Sunday. The next day, the government capitulated and met most of the Islamists demands, including the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid, who stood down. A High Court judge issued an order on Monday demanding the government explain why the military had helped negotiate the deal. Judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui said the army appeared to be overstepping its constitutional role, which requires it to act in aid of civilian government when called upon to do so . Critics worry the military may be meddling in politics - always a concern in a country where the army has repeatedly seized power - rather than simply following the orders of the civilian administration. The job of the military is to be subservient to the government s orders, said political analyst Zahid Hussain. The military s role as facilitator has raised many questions. A ruling party spokesman said the army and government had acted in consultation and said the army did not balk at government orders. No evidence has emerged to contradict that account. The military itself did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Zahid said he was resigning to take the country out of a crisis-like situation , according to state-run news channel PTV. Tehreek-e-Labaik, a recently formed ultra-religious party that has made punishing blasphemy its main campaign rallying cry, had blocked main roads into Islamabad for nearly three weeks, demanding Law Minister Hamid s removal. It blamed the minister for a tweak in the wording in an electoral law that changed a religious oath proclaiming Mohammad the last prophet of Islam to the words I believe , a change the party says amounts to blasphemy. The government put the issue down to a clerical error and swiftly changed the language back. Insulting Islam s prophet is punishable by death under Pakistani law, and blasphemy accusations stir such emotions that they are almost impossible to defend against. Last week, the Islamabad High Court had ordered the government to remove the protesters, but not to use firearms. A clearing operation on Saturday quickly descended into chaos, with protesters armed with iron rods and stones battling police to a standstill and scores on each side hospitalized, after which the government called in the army. In an order made at a follow-up hearing on Monday, Judge Siddiqui said it appeared that the role assumed the top leadership of the army is besides the constitution and beyond its mandate . The judge said it was alarming that Major General Faiz Hameed had signed the agreement as a mediator. Hameed is a senior member of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, in charge of counter-terrorism, two senior military officials confirmed. Ruling party official Jan Achakzai confirmed that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and army chief General Bajwa had met on Sunday, but said the process was consultative and it did not constitute the military questioning orders. The army ... suggested the government resolve it through negotiations, Achakzai said, adding that the government, after deliberations, directed the interior ministry to meet the protesters demands to avert further violence. It was affecting the whole country, he said, adding the government had yielded in the larger interest of peace and maintaining law and order . Tehreek-e-Labaik leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi gave his account of the army s role in ending the stand-off at a news conference on Monday. So the general took personal interest and sent his team, saying we will become the guarantors, and have your demands fulfilled , Rizvi said. So we said, All right. That is what we want . The military s press department did not respond to questions about Rizvi s account. Tensions between the military and the ruling party led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have occasionally broken out into the open. Sharif had last year rejected a plan put forward by the army to mainstream some hardline Islamist groups into politics, government sources have previously told Reuters, including a forerunner of Tehreek-e-Labaik. The Islamist party has denied it has any links to the army and the military declined at the time to comment on the report. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korean missile launch unacceptable violation of its obligations: EU;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - North Korea s latest missile launch is a further unacceptable violation of its international obligations, a spokeswoman for the European Union foreign affairs chief said on Tuesday. North Korea fired a missile that landed close to Japan in the early hours of Wednesday, the first test by Pyongyang since a missile fired over its neighbor in mid-September. The Pentagon said its initial assessment was that it was an intercontinental ballistic missile. This launch represents a further grave provocation, and a serious threat to international security, a spokeswoman for Federica Mogherini said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron touts European initiative to evacuate Africans trapped in Libya;OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he would ask European leaders to help evacuate Africans in danger in Africa after reports appearing to show African migrants being traded there sparked an international outcry. I will propose that Africa and Europe come to the rescue of the people trapped in Libya, by bringing massive support to the evacuation of people in danger, Macron said in a speech in Burkina Faso without giving further details. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK bows to EU, will assume liabilities worth up to 100 billion euros: FT;(Reuters) - The UK has agreed to fully honor its financial commitments to the European Union, assuming liabilities worth up to 100 billion euros ($118.44 billion), as part of its agreement with the European Union on the Brexit divorce bill, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. The UK's net payments on the liabilities, discharged over many decades, could fall to less than half that amount, FT said, citing several diplomats familiar with the talks. on.ft.com/2zwsRm3 Britain and the EU have reached agreement on a Brexit divorce bill of between 45 billion and 55 billion euros, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported earlier on Tuesday. The newspaper also said that an agreement in principle has now been reached over the EU s demand for a 60 billion-euro financial settlement. The European Commission declined to comment on the FT report. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK government official says 'does not recognize' reported Brexit bill settlement;LONDON (Reuters) - A British government official cast doubt on a newspaper report on Tuesday that Britain and the EU had reached a financial settlement of between 45 billion and 55 billion euros. I do not recognize this account of the negotiations, said the government official, who declined to be named. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil struggles to help state dependent on Venezuela for power;SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The Brazilian government is looking at all options, including large batteries, to help northern Roraima state with power supplies after a series of blackouts in recent months largely related to its dependency on cash-strapped neighbor Venezuela. Roraima is the only Brazilian state not connected to the national power grid. Its capital, Boa Vista, and most other cities in the state are supplied by power produced in Venezuela and transmitted through a line that was opened in 2001. Documents produced by a Brazilian government committee monitoring the power sector show the state suffered 17 large-scale power outages since August. The documents, seen by Reuters, said only one instance was not related to Venezuela. The situation underscores how Venezuela s economic collapse is affecting its neighbors. Roraima is already dealing with a flood of Venezuelan migrants looking for food and work. The economic situation in Venezuela is precarious, and it affects power line maintenance, F bio Lopes Alves, electricity secretary at Brazil s Energy Ministry, told Reuters. It is extremely worrying, we are studying how to assist them, he said. The Energy and the Information ministries in Venezuela did not respond to requests for comment. A source at state-controlled Venezuelan power firm Corpoelec acknowledged that lack of maintenance is hurting Venezuela s power transmission system. The dams are full of water, the rainy season has filled the dams, but the lack of maintenance means that we still have power outages, the source said, asking not to be named because he was not authorized to speak about the issue. Brazil s government is evaluating quickly awarding licenses for companies to build local power generation projects of various types, including both renewable and non-renewable energy. It is also studying the possibility of buying large-scale batteries. Asked why Roraima is still not connected to the national power grid, Alves said a project for a new line awarded in 2011 to a consortium formed by Centrais El tricas Brasileiras SA and Alupar Investimento SA was never built because of difficulties obtaining environmental permits. Roraima is home to some of the largest indigenous lands in Brazil, such as the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve with 1.74 million hectares (4.2 million acres), an area similar to that of Kuwait. The proposed line would cut through one of them. The government plans to award a new license early next year for the construction of a power line to connect Roraima to the grid, Alves said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pro-refugee German mayor stabbed in suspected political attack;BERLIN (Reuters) - The mayor of a small town in western Germany known for pursuing liberal migrant policies was stabbed in the neck at a kebab shop on Monday evening and seriously hurt in an attack that officials suspected was politically motivated. The conservative mayor of Altena, Andreas Hollstein, appeared at a news conference on Tuesday to describe the attack which left him with a 15 cm long cut on his neck, covered in a white plaster. I feared for my life, said the 57-year-old mayor who has received a German integration prize from Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said the attack took place in an atmosphere of growing social tension and hate. The attacker asked him if he was the mayor, before saying: You let me die of thirst and let 200 refugees into Altena, Hollstein recalled. Then the man plunged a 30 cm long kitchen knife into him. Police told reporters that the suspect, identified only as Werner S., had been arrested. They believed his motives were xenophobic and political, although they took it to be a spontaneous attack, adding he had alcohol in his system. The attack comes as Germany struggles to deal with an increasingly fractured society. Many voters are still angry about the influx of more than 1.6 million people seeking asylum in the two years to the end of 2016. In a September election, some 13 percent of Germans voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which campaigned hard against Merkel s open-door migrant policy. It brings us no further forward if we transmit political views with hate, Hollstein said. He said his wife had warned him about possible attacks due to his policies but he was determined to continue his work. I will push for refugees and for other people in a weaker social situation, he vowed, thanking the owner of the shop and his son for probably saving his life. Under his leadership, the town of Altena, with 17,000 residents and 450 refugees, has taken in more migrants than it was allocated. Politicians including Merkel expressed their shock. I am horrified by the knife attack on the mayor Andreas Hollstein - and very relieved that he can already be back with his family. Thanks also to those who helped him, Merkel said via her spokesman on Twitter. The attack is reminiscent of the stabbing two years ago of a candidate for mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, in an anti-refugee attack. She was seriously hurt but went on to win the election and become mayor. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU more willing to consider new members in Balkans: EU commissioner;VIENNA (Reuters) - The European Union is increasingly willing to consider Western Balkan states joining the bloc, which could help ensure peace in the region while enriching the EU itself, the bloc s integration commissioner said. There is more willingness among (EU) member states to address an enlargement (than a year ago), Johannes Hahn told Austrian daily Wiener Zeitung in an interview published on Tuesday. Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are official candidates for EU membership while Bosnia and Kosovo are seeking the same status. The EU sees the region as important for issues from controlling immigration to countering security threats ranging from alleged interference of Russia to radical Islam. Member states have realized that peace could be achieved in the Balkans and that the perspective of joining the EU is vital for it, Hahn said. The Western Balkans and its 20 million people who are keen on developing their prosperity were a very attractive market for the bloc, Hahn said, adding that a new member state is not a burden but an enrichment . The commissioner said he did not support the idea of a multi speed Europe as this would lead to member states drifting apart. Instead, every effort should be made to enable weaker states to catch up to strengthen the European Union, he said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish court orders detention of two over U.S. court case: CNN Turk;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish court has issued detention warrants for two people including a former opposition lawmaker for allegedly providing fake evidence and documents to a court case in the United States, private broadcaster CNN Turk said on Tuesday. CNN Turk identified the two wanted individuals as former Republican People s Party (CHP) lawmaker Aykan Erdemir and banking auditor Osman Zeki Canitez, both of whom it said were named in a witness list presented for the U.S. trial of former Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla. The media relations office at the Istanbul prosecutor s office said they did not have any information regarding the detention warrants. U.S. authorities charged Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and eight other people, including Turkey s former economy minister and three executives of Turkish state-owned Halkbank, with engaging in transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran s government and Iranian entities from 2010 to 2015 in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who pleaded not guilty, will be the only person on trial in the U.S. case. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman told potential jurots on Monday that Zarrab, who has been the focus of the case, will not go on trial this week. Atilla and Zarrab are the only two defendants who were arrested by U.S. authorities. Turkish authorities have said that some evidence presented by prosecutors was fabricated for political motives, and state media said two weeks ago authorities had launched an investigation into the prosecutors who initiated the U.S. case. Halkbank and Turkish officials have said all the bank s transactions have been fully compliant with national and international regulations, but investors are worried. At 1100 GMT, shares in Turkey s state-owned lender Halkbank were trading 4.47 percent lower at 8.97 lira. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rouhani says Saudis call Iran an enemy to conceal defeat in region;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia presents Iran as an enemy because it wants to cover up its defeats in the region. Saudi Arabia was unsuccessful in Qatar, was unsuccessful in Iraq, in Syria and recently in Lebanon. In all of these areas, they were unsuccessful, Rouhani said in the interview live on state television. So they want to cover up their defeats. The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran back rival sides in the wars and political crises throughout the region. Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the new Hitler of the Middle East in an interview with the New York Times published last week, escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals. Tensions soared this month when Lebanon s Saudi-allied Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in a television broadcast from Riyadh, citing the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and risks to his life. Hezbollah called the move an act of war engineered by Saudi authorities, an accusation they denied. Hariri returned to Lebanon last week and suspended his resignation but has continued his criticism of Hezbollah. Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia form a line of resistance in the region that has worked toward stability and achieved big accomplishments , Rouhani said in the interview, which was reviewing his first 100 days in office in his second term. Separately, Rouhani defended his government s response to an earthquake in western Iran two weeks ago, a major challenges for his administration. The magnitude 7.3 quake, Iran s worst in more than a decade, killed at least 530 people and injured thousands. The government s response has become a lightning rod for Rouhani s hard-line rivals, who have said the government did not respond adequately or quickly to the disaster. Supreme Leader Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, has also criticized the government response. Hard-line media outlets have highlighted the role played by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the most powerful military body in Iran and an economic powerhouse worth billions of dollars, in helping victims of the earthquake. Government ministries have provided health care for victims and temporary housing has been sent to the earthquake zone, but problems still exist, Rouhani said in the interview. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France will no longer dictate to Africans, Macron says;OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday sought to make a clean break from his predecessors saying that he came from a generation that would not tell Africans what to do and would focus his efforts on bridging ties between Africa and Europe. I am from a generation that doesn t come to tell Africans what to do, Macron said during a speech to university students in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou. I am from a generation for whom Nelson Mandela s victory is one of the best political memories. Macron is on a three-day visit to West Africa that includes an EU-Africa summit in Ivory Coast s capital Abidjan. I will not stand by those who say the African continent is one of crises and misery. I will be alongside those who believe that Africa is neither a lost continent or one that needs to be saved. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan detects radio signals pointing to possible North Korea missile test: source;TOKYO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japan has detected radio signals suggesting North Korea may be preparing another ballistic missile launch, although such signals are not unusual and satellite images did not show fresh activity, a Japanese government source said on Tuesday. After firing missiles at a pace of about two or three a month since April, North Korean missile launches paused in September, after it fired a rocket that passed over Japan s northern Hokkaido island. This is not enough to determine (if a launch is likely soon), the source told Reuters. Japan s Kyodo news agency reported late on Monday that the Japanese government was on alert after catching such radio signals, suggesting a launch could come in a few days. The report also said the signals might be related to winter military training by the North Korean military. North Korea is pursuing its nuclear weapons and missile programmes in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions and has made no secret of its plans to develop a missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. It has fired two missiles over Japan. South Korea s Yonhap news agency, citing a South Korean government source, also reported that intelligence officials of the United States, South Korea and Japan had recently detected signs of a possible missile launch and have been on higher alert. South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told reporters on Tuesday there have been noteworthy movements from the North since its last missile launch in mid-September, but there was no hard evidence of another nuclear or missile test. North Korea hasn t been engaging in new nuclear or missile tests but recently we ve seen them persistently testing engines and carrying out fuel tests, said Cho at a media event in Seoul. But we need some more time to see whether these are directly related to missile and nuclear tests. Asked about the media reports, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters the United States continued to watch North Korea very closely. This is a diplomatically led effort at this point, supported by military options, he said. The Republic of Korea and U.S. alliance remains strong and capable of countering any North Korean provocations or attacks. Two U.S. government sources familiar with official assessments of North Korean capabilities and activities said that while they were not immediately familiar with recent intelligence suggesting that North Korea was preparing to launch a new missile test, the U.S. government would not be surprised if such a test were to take place in the very near future. Other U.S. intelligence officials noted North Korea has previously sent deliberately misleading signs of preparations for missile and nuclear tests, in part to mask real preparations, and in part to test U.S. and allied intelligence on its activities. South Korea s Cho said North Korea may announce the completion of its nuclear programme within a year, as it is moving more faster than expected in developing its arsenal. North Korea defends its weapons programmes as a necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombia's congress approves peace tribunals for ex FARC rebels;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia s lower house of congress late on Monday backed a bill to regulate transitional justice under the nation s peace deal with Marxist FARC rebels, including special tribunals that will try guerrilla leaders for war crimes. The bill, which was approved with some modifications, is considered the cornerstone of the peace agreement signed last year between the government and the FARC, known until recently as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The special courts will mete out alternative sentences like landmine removal for ex-guerrilla leaders who are convicted of war crimes committed during the five-decade war. Under the peace deal, those convicted will not serve time in traditional jails. The lower house made changes to the text agreed this month by the Senate, so it must now go for conciliation between the two chambers. Once there is agreement on alterations the bill will go to President Juan Manuel Santos to be signed into law. With this step, we move towards peace: transitional justice guarantees the rights of the victims and establishes the basis for the reconciliation of Colombians, Santos said on Twitter. Congress had until the end of the month to approve the law using a court-approved fast-track mechanism to reduce the number of required debates in an effort to implement the peace accord as quickly as possible. The FARC, now a political party known as the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force, has argued against any changes to the original agreement, including extradition for crimes committed after demobilization. The law, which would also apply to members of the military who have been accused of atrocities, is part of the agreement that allowed more than 11,000 members of the FARC - combatants and others - to lay down their arms and enter politics. With the modifications, the FARC will be able to participate in politics, but face the risk of losing benefits if they committed sexual abuse against minors. They can be also be extradited for crimes committed after the culmination of the peace process. We have achieved an agreement with teeth, said Rodrigo Lara, president of the lower house. Any FARC member who commits a another crime will immediately leave the special regime and go to the ordinary jurisdiction. Sexual crimes will not be protected. The leader of the FARC, Rodrigo Londono, a presidential candidate for next year s election, has said any changes put at risk the implementation of the peace agreement. Under the agreement the FARC will have 10 guaranteed seats in Congress until 2026. The group has announced a slate of candidates for elections next year. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya president lifts travel restrictions, saying all Africans can get visa on arrival;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Tuesday that any African can get a visa on arrival in Kenya, and will be free to settle in the country if they marry a Kenyan, removing restrictions on some nations. If you wish and find a willing partner, you can marry and settle in Kenya, he said during his inauguration address, saying the move was designed to cement African ties. This commitment we make again with no requirement for reciprocity. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bangladesh to turn island into temporary home for 100,000 Rohingya refugees;DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh approved a $280 million project on Tuesday to develop an isolated and flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal to temporarily house 100,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in neighbouring Myanmar. The decision came just days after Bangladesh sealed a deal aiming to start returning Rohingya to Myanmar within two months to reduce pressure in refugee camps. A Bangladeshi government committee headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina approved the plan to develop Bhashan Char island, also known as Thenger Char, despite criticism from humanitarian workers who have said the island is all but uninhabitable. Planning Minister Mustafa Kamal said it would take time to repatriate the refugees, and in the meantime Bangladesh needed a place to house them. The project to house 100,000 refugees on the island would be complete by 2019, he said. Many Rohingya people are living in dire conditions, he said, describing the influx of refugees as a threat to both security and the environment . More than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought sanctuary in Bangladesh after the military in mostly Buddhist Myanmar launched a harsh counter-insurgency operation in their villages across the northern parts of Rakhine State, following attacks by Rohingya militants on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali appealed in September for international support to transport Rohingya to the island. There were already about 300,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh before the most recent exodus. Bangladesh, one of the world s poorest and most crowded nations, plans to develop the island, which emerged from the silt off Bangladesh s delta coast only 11 years ago and is two hours by boat from the nearest settlement. It regularly floods during the June-September monsoons. When seas are calm, pirates roam the nearby waters to kidnap fishermen for ransom. A plan to develop the island and use it to house refugees was first proposed in 2015 and revived last year. Despite criticism of the conditions on the island, Bangladesh says it has the right to decide where to shelter the growing numbers of refugees. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek police find detonators, bomb making material: statement;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police found bomb making equipment and detonators during an early-morning raid at three addresses in Athens on Tuesday, it said in a statement. Nine persons were being questioned, police said. Earlier police officials told Reuters the individuals were being quizzed for alleged links to DHKP/C, an outlawed group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. Police sources earlier said unspecified material in jars was found, and was being tested. The police statement said commercial goods, which could potentially be used in making explosive materials were found. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope says Myanmar should commit to respect for human rights;NAYPYITAW (Reuters) - Pope Francis said on Tuesday that Myanmar is suffering from civil conflict and hostilities that have lasted all too long and created deep divisions , but in a speech in the country s capital he did not refer to the minority Rohingya Muslims. The arduous process of peacebuilding and national reconciliation can only advance through a commitment to justice and respect for human rights, he said, speaking after Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi had made an address. Religious differences need not be a source of division and distrust, but rather a force for unity, forgiveness, tolerance and wise nationbuilding, the pope added. The pope s visit to Myanmar comes after an exodus of more than 620,000 Rohingya from Rakhine state to the southern tip of Bangladesh following a military crackdown that the United States last week branded ethnic cleansing . His trip is so delicate that some papal advisers warned him against even saying the word Rohingya , lest he set off a diplomatic incident that could turn the country s military and government against minority Christians. Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens nor as members of a distinct ethnic group with their own identity, and it rejects the term Rohingya and its use. Pope Francis did not use the word in his speech. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Millions of insecure gadgets exposed in European cities: report;LONDON (Reuters) - A year after a wave of denial-of-service attacks knocked out major websites around the world, millions of unsecured printers, network gear and webcams remain undefended against attack across major European cities, a report published on Tuesday said. Computer security company Trend Micro (4704.T) said that Berlin has more than 2.8 million insecure devices, followed closely by London with more than 2.5 million exposed gadgets. Among the top 10 capitals, Rome was lowest with nearly 300,000 visible unsecured devices, the researchers said. The study was based on calculating the number of exposed devices in major European cities using Shodan, a search engine that helps to identify internet-linked equipment. Trend Micro said that electronics users must take responsibility for managing their own internet-connected devices because of the failure by many gadget manufacturers to build in up-front security by default in their products. The warning comes one year after a wave of attacks using so-called botnets of infected devices caused outages on popular websites and knocked 900,000 Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) users off the internet. (reut.rs/2BjdRII) Computer experts say the failure to patch millions of insecure devices after last year s Mirai denial-of-service attacks means it is only a question of time before further broad-based outages occur. Research company Gartner recently forecast that there would be 8.4 billion connected products or devices in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and expects the number to triple by 2020. (goo.gl/thR54Q) ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesian 'Trump' says has no plans to run for president;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Indonesian business tycoon Hary Tanoesoedibjo said on Tuesday he was not planning to stand in the country s 2019 presidential election, and that he would support current President Joko Widodo if he chose to run again. Tanoesoedibjo, a business partner of Donald Trump whose political ambitions have led to similarities with the U.S. President being drawn, said in January he would decide before the end of next year whether to run in the ballot. He previously stood as a candidate for vice president in the 2014 election and subsequently founded his own political party, which will contest Indonesia s general elections in 2019. Looking at the constellation today, I think President Jokowi will run again and I am in the position to support him, he told Reuters at the Asia TV Forum and Market in Singapore. Asked if he would stand, he replied: No, I don t think so. Widodo is expected to stand for a second term against Prabowo Subianto, who also rang against him in 2014. Religious and political tension in Indonesia, which has the world s largest Muslim population, escalated to its highest level during a divisive election for Jakarta governor earlier this year. Tanoesoedibjo said the political climate in Indonesia remained stable but that the country needed a president that stands in the middle of everyone . He (Widodo) is the strongest candidate. He is very moderate and he is very nationalist, added Tanoesoedibjo. As a business partner of Trump, Tanoesoedibjo believes his relationship with the U.S. President could help ties between the nations and he is not worried about the impact U.S. trade protectionism may have on the Southeast Asia s biggest economy. At least Mr Trump knows Indonesia better because of the relationship we have between our group and the Trump organization, he said. But what he is doing about reviewing the trade relationship with other countries I think is right....but Indonesia is too small...for the U.S. in terms of the amount of trade between the two countries and I don t think that would have any impact at all. Tanoesoedibjo is Trump s business partner in two resort developments in Indonesia - on the island of Bali and in West Java. Turning to his other business interests Tanoesoedibjo said he had plans to list a division of his company - MNC Studios International - on the Jakarta stock exchange next year. We have seen many interests (by investors) because it s the largest production company in the country, he said. ;worldnews;28/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron to give Saudi Arabia extremist list;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he would draw up a list of extremist organizations to convey to Saudi Arabia after its crown prince pledged to cut their funding. Saudi Arabia finances groups overseen by the Mecca-based Muslim World League, which for decades was charged with spreading the strict Wahhabi school of Islam around the world. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seeking to modernize the kingdom and cleave to a more open and tolerant interpretation of Islam. He never did it publicly, but when I went to Riyadh (this month), he made a commitment, such that we could give him a list and he would cut the financing, Macron said during an interview with France 24 television. I believe him, but I will follow up. Trust is built on results, Macron added. The crown prince has already taken some steps to loosen Saudi Arabia s ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police, permitting public concerts and announcing plans to allow women to drive next year. The head of the Muslim World League told Reuters last week that his focus now was aimed at annihilating extremist ideology. We must wipe out this extremist thinking through the work we do. We need to annihilate religious severity and extremism which is the entry point to terrorism, Mohammed al-Issa said in an interview. Macron, speaking from Abidjan, said he had also sought commitments to cut financing of extremist groups from Qatar, Iran and Turkey. The French leader will make a quick trip to Doha on Dec. 7, where he will discuss regional ties and could sign military and transport deals, including the sale of 12 more Rafale fighter jets. Qatar has improved its ties with Iran since Saudi Arabia and other Arab states boycotted it over alleged ties to Islamist groups and its relations with Tehran. Macron said he still intended to travel to Iran next year, but wanted to ensure there was a discussion and strategic accord over its ballistic missile program and its destabilization activities in several regional countries. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iceland's Left-Green opposition leader to become new prime minister;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Iceland s opposition leader Katrin Jakobsdottir will become the country s new prime minister, after her Left-Green Movement on Wednesday agreed to form a coalition government, state broadcaster RUV reported. Her party, which emerged as the second biggest party in snap parliamentary elections on Oct. 28, entered coalition talks with the Independence Party, the main partner in the current government coalition, and the Progressive Party two weeks ago. Current Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson of the right-wing Independence Party called the snap election in September, after less than a year in government, as a scandal involving his father prompted a government ally to drop out of his ruling coalition. The Nordic island of 340,000 people, one of the countries hit hardest by the 2008 financial crisis, has staged a remarkable economic rebound spurred by a tourism boom. The formation of a broad coalition government could bring an end to political instability triggered by a string of scandals. The previous snap election took place late in 2016, after the Panama Papers revelations showed several government figures involved in an offshore tax haven scandal. Still, some Left-Green members and voters have criticized the party s plan to enter a coalition with Benediktsson and his Independence Party. Two of Left-Green s mandates did not support the new coalition, giving the three parties a total of 33 of parliament s 63 seats. Jakobsd ttir, 41, campaigned on a platform of restoring trust in government and leveraging an economic boom to increase public spending. She failed to form a left-leaning government earlier this month, but said on election night she was open to forming a broad-based government. While both the Left-Greens and the Independence Party parties agree that investment is needed in areas like welfare, infrastructure and tourism, they disagree over how it should be financed. The Left-Greens want to finance spending by raising taxes on the wealthy, real estate and the powerful fishing industry, while the Independence Party has said it wants to fund infrastructure spending by taking money out of the banking sector. Benediktsson will become finance minister in the new government. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea meeting seeks 'better ideas' to solve crisis: Canada;OTTAWA (Reuters) - An international meeting in Canada on North Korea in January is designed to produce better ideas to ease tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear and ballistic missile tests, Canadian officials said on Wednesday. A Canadian source who declined to be identified said that up to 16 foreign ministers were scheduled to meet in Vancouver, although North Korea itself will not be invited. Canada announced the meeting on Tuesday and said it would be co-hosted by the United States. By discussing the various options out on the table, by listening to ... local wisdom of the regions and especially (to those) who live a bit closer to Korea than we do, you can come up with some better ideas, Andrew Leslie, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, told reporters. Early on Wednesday, North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, putting the continental United States within range and increasing pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump to deal with the nuclear-armed nation. Freeland later told reporters that Japan, South Korea and China would be among those invited to the meeting. It s an important step in terms of showing the unity of the international community in applying pressure on North Korea, she said, sidestepping a question about whether Trump might do something to upset the talks. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who came to power in 2015 promising the world that Canada is back , last week said he had discussed with Cuban President Raul Castro in 2016 the possibility of working together to address the crisis. These are the kinds of things where Canada can, I think, play a role that the United States has chosen not to play, this past year, Trudeau said, referring to Trump s isolationist global stance. Defense experts say North Korean missiles aimed at the United States could land off course in Canada. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters Canada was looking at the threat extremely seriously but declined to say what military counter measures he might be take. We believe the diplomatic solution is the way to go - we feel there is hope for it, Sajjan said. In the meantime, Canada s relations with North Korea appear to be warming up slightly. In September, a Canadian diplomat said the North Koreans perceive us as not an enemy and therefore potentially a friend . Canada established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2001 but suspended them in 2010. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Former Egyptian premier Shafiq says intends to run in 2018 election;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, an ex-air force pilot and former presidential candidate, said on Wednesday he intended to run in the presidential election early next year and would return to Cairo in the coming days . But Shafiq later told pan-Arab TV channel Al Jazeera that the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Egypt s where he is currently living, had barred him from traveling. I was surprised that I was prevented from leaving the UAE for reasons I do not understand, Shafiq said, adding that he thanked the UAE for its hospitality but wished to depart. Anwar Gargash, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, denied on his official Twitter account that any obstacles had been placed to his travel, saying the UAE hosted him despite strong reservations about some of his positions . In a video declaration sent earlier to Reuters as well as a telephoned statement, Shafiq said he would run in the election planned for around April, when President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is widely expected to seek a second term. I m honored to announce my will to run in the upcoming presidential elections in Egypt as a choice to be president of the country for the next four years, he said in the statement from the UAE in which he highlighted his time in the air force. Shafiq would be among a small number of candidates to announce their intentions for 2018. He lost against Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in the first presidential election after Egypt s 2011 uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Sisi, who as a military commander led the army s ousting of Mursi in 2013 before his own landslide election a year later, has yet to announce whether he will run again. He says he will follow the will of the people. His supporters regard Sisi as the key to stability following the prolonged, violent upheaval that followed the 2011 revolt. His government is fighting a stubborn Islamist militancy in the North Sinai and has also enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year that critics say have dented his popularity. After his defeat, Shafiq fled overseas. He formed a political party and led it from abroad but it failed to make significant gains in a 2015 parliamentary election. Shafiq has faced various corruption charges but was either acquitted or had cases against him dropped in most instances. A year ago, his lawyer said he was removed from airport watchlists, clearing his way to return home. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate takes step toward passage of tax bill, vote likely this week;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Wednesday took a step toward passage of tax legislation that is a top White House priority, setting up a likely decisive vote later this week even though it was unclear if the bill had enough Republican support to become law.Republicans spent the day scrambling to reformulate the bill, which aims to cut taxes on corporations, other businesses and many individuals and families, to satisfy lawmakers worried about how much it would balloon the U.S. budget deficit. Stocks rallied on optimism it could pass, but obstacles remained, including attempts to address the estimated $1.4 trillion that the bill would add to the United States’ $20 trillion national debt over 10 years. Lawmakers voted 52-48 to begin formal debate, a step that could lead on Thursday and Friday to a full vote on the bill. Republicans are eager to pass the legislation, wanting something to show for their control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Republicans have a 52-48 majority in the 100-member Senate, giving them enough votes to approve the bill if they can hold together. Without Democratic support, Republicans can afford to lose no more than two of their own votes. President Donald Trump in a speech in Missouri on Wednesday, implored members of his own party to get behind the effort, which would be his first significant legislative achievement since taking office in January. “A vote to cut taxes is a vote to put America first again,” Trump said, adding the bill could “cost me a fortune” and that his wealthy friends were not happy. “My accountants are going crazy right now. It’s all right. Hey look, I am president, I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.” Democrats say the tax cuts are a giveaway to corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working Americans. Some Democrats have said Trump and his children would gain from the bill, which would repeal the estate tax on inherited wealth. Among Americans aware of the Republican tax plan, 49 percent said they were opposed, up from 41 percent in October, according to a Nov. 23-27 Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday. The latest online poll of 1,257 adults found 29 percent supporting the plan and 22 percent saying they “don’t know.” The sweeping tax package was developed over several months behind closed doors by a small group of senior congressional and Trump administration figures, with little input from many Republican lawmakers and no involvement from Democrats. A major sticking point in the Senate is how the bill deals with the federal deficit and the national debt. Senator Bob Corker, one of the few remaining fiscal hawks in the Republican Party, wants to add a tax snap-back provision to the bill that would raise taxes automatically if economic growth targets are not hit in the future to offset a higher deficit. That trigger proposal has become a target of growing criticism among conservative Republicans and lobbyists, including interest groups aligned with the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who say the prospect of tax hikes could undermine future economic growth. “I’d prefer not having it there. We’re probably going to have one. But I’d prefer not having it,” Republican Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told reporters. Republican Senator David Perdue, a businessman from Georgia, said lawmakers could find common ground on a measure that delays any tax hike for at least five years and spreads the prospective burden among those who benefit from Republican tax cuts. Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, suggested such an approach may be gaining ground. “It looks like the idea is part way through the first 10 years, there’d be an opportunity to see if the economic growth numbers are performing as expected. And if not, there would be a trigger mechanism over a 10-year period,” Portman said. Democrats and independents were trying to persuade nonpartisan Senate officials to disqualify parts of the bill, including one to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as impermissible under Senate rules, an aide said. While some Republicans signaled determination to get the bill passed, they still did not have the votes. “It’s time for us to saddle up and ride. And I’m ready to go,” Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters. Corker declined to say whether he would vote for the tax bill even if Senate Republican leaders agree to the kind of trigger mechanism he wants. “I don’t do conjecture,” he told reporters, saying he could have other concerns about the final legislation. “There are also qualitative issues like the bill not getting any worse, that it doesn’t get more expensive.” ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump nominates Marvin Goodfriend for Fed governor post;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated Carnegie Mellon University Professor Marvin Goodfriend to become a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, adding a well-known monetary economist to a central bank losing two of its top economic thinkers. The nomination, if confirmed by the Senate, will help ensure the 7-member board of governors keeps at least four of those seats filled following the announced departure of Fed Chair Janet Yellen once her predecessor, current Fed Gov. Jerome Powell, is approved by the Senate. Along with Powell, Goodfriend would join recently appointed Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles, and Fed Gov. Lael Brainard, atop the world’s most influential central bank. A former economic adviser in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and research director of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank from 1993 to 2005, Goodfriend is arguably the most conservative of Trump’s Fed appointments yet. He has been critical of some recent Fed practices including the purchase of mortgage backed securities. He has also argued that the central bank should invite more oversight from elected officials, including getting a congressional sign off on its 2 percent inflation target and more discussion of how its policy decisions line up with a “reference rule.” Those ideas are likely to find favor among conservatives on Capitol Hill who feel the Fed has accumulated too much influence. But his writings have also defied easy description. He has argued the benefits of negative interest rates, for example, as a way to give central banks more flexibility to combat crises, rather than having to resort to unconventional means like bond buying after rates are cut to zero. Perhaps most significantly, he will bring recognized academic credentials to a Fed board that is losing Yellen, a recognized expert on labor markets, and in October lost Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, one of the intellectual forces behind modern central banking. Powell, a lawyer, was lauded by Trump for his private sector experience, but also will be the first non-economist to run the Fed since the 1970s. Goodfriend will bring to the board background in many of the same debates and intellectual fights, over inflation targeting and other issues, that Fischer and Yellen have participated in over the years. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (November 29) - Matt Lauer, North Korea, Tax Cuts;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - @foxandfriends, we are in record territory in all things having to do with our economy! [0632 EST] - Great, and we should boycott Fake News CNN. Dealing with them is a total waste of time! [0649 EST] - Looks like another great day for the Stock Market. Consumer Confidence is at Record High. I guess somebody likes me (my policies)! [0703 EST] - Wow, Matt Lauer was just fired from NBC for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.” But when will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past! [0716 EST] - So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate! [0914 EST] - Just spoke to President XI JINPING of China concerning the provocative actions of North Korea. Additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea today. This situation will be handled! [0940 EST] - Economy growing! Excluding hurricane effects, CEA estimates that real GDP growth would have been 3.9% in Q3. Stock market at a new high, unemployment at a low. We are winning and TAX CUTS will shift our economy into high gear! [0949 EST] - Departing @JBA_NAFW for St. Charles, Missouri to help push our plan for HISTORIC TAX CUTS across the finish line. A successful vote in the Senate this week will bring us one giant step closer to delivering an incredible victory for the American people! (link: instagram.com/p/BcFs_kXgTG5/) [1334 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BLACK CAUCUS MEMBER James Clyburn Suggests RACISM Is Motive For Rep. John Conyers Sexual Assault Accusers…”These Are All WHITE Women” [VIDEO];U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn could find himself in hot water.A writer for The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic tweeted that Clyburn invoked the name of Susan Smith, South Carolina s infamous child murderer, in his defense of Conyers. James Clyburn compared Conyers accusers to the child murderer Susan Smith, who initially claimed a black man had abducted her kids. Clyburn said, these are all white women who ve made these charges against Conyers, Robert Draper tweeted.When asked if that comment was true, Draper said he verified it through two sources, adding Clyburn has used the Susan Smith parallel more than once, to members & staffers. Clyburn responded on Twitter, saying This is inaccurate in many regards. The Congressional Black Caucus tweeted about the alleged Susan Smith comment, saying Clyburn used the Smith example to illustrate the dangers of convicting people before getting all the facts. Umm yeah, sure he did.Meanwhile, Clyburn just kept digging a deeper hole. Following his baseless and disgusting and racist claims to Congress, Clyburn was met in the basement of Congress, where he was asked about fellow Black Caucus member and accused serial sexual assaulter, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). His response was stunning.When asked about sexual harassment allegations against colleague Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Clyburn seemed to suggest elected officials should be held to a different standard than other public figures.In a video posted on Twitter, the 77-year-old Clyburn is walking to an elevator with Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.), when asked Other men in other industries have faced similar accusations and gotten out of the way, resign, stepped down, far faster than he has, right Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer? Clyburn s response, Who elected them? CBC Chair Richmond asks for ex. of ppl leaving jobs faster than Conyers when face sexual harassment claims;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NBC MANAGEMENT “Protected The Sh*t Out of Him”: Details of Married Matt Lauer’s Disgusting Acts Of Sexual Harassment Are REVEALED After Democrat Fan Boy Is Fired;NBC was called out by conservative news outlets, like Breitbart for refusing to disclose Matt Lauer s ties to the Clinton Foundation prior to his 30 minutes during NBC s Commander-in-Chief forum where he basically ignored every Hillary scandal during his interview with her. The longtime Today Show co-host had ties to the Clinton Foundation. Lauer was once listed as a notable member of The Clinton Global Initiative, the fundraising conduit of the scandal-ridden Clinton Foundation.Today, another close friend of the Clinton s saw his career as the highest paid morning host come to an abrupt end over sexual misconduct and assault allegations, as NBC announced that Matt Lauer had been fired from the Today Show. Variety spoke with 10 past and present workers at the company who accused Lauer of a vast array of sexual misconduct, including the woman who claims that she was sexually assaulted by the show s long-time anchor beginning in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics.That woman also shared her account with the human resources and legal departments of NBC News on Monday.NBC launched an investigation into her claims on Tuesday morning which ultimately led to Lauer s firing that same evening. That swift response was still not enough for some women however, who said their complaints to executives at the company fell on deaf ears.Those interviewed said it was at the OIympic Games where Lauer made moves on a number of female staff members. Lauer would invite women employed by NBC late at night to his hotel room while covering the Olympics in various cities over the years, claims Variety reporter Ramin Setoodeh. He later told colleagues how his wife had accompanied him to the London Olympics because she didn t trust him to travel alone. None of the 10 individuals who spoke with Variety are identified in the piece, including the woman who got the sex toy along with an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her. That woman said she was mortified, while a fellow co-worker s state was described as visibly shaken after Lauer allegedly flashed her in his office.When she did not do anything, Lauer reportedly reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act. His office was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up, writes Setoodeh. This afforded him the assurance of privacy. It allowed him to welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him. That information came courtesy of two of the women who spoke with the writer of the piece. He couldn t sleep around town with celebrities or on the road with random people because he s Matt Lauer and he s married. So he d have to do it within his stable, where he exerted power, and he knew people wouldn t ever complain. While not named, one woman, in particular, seemed to catch Lauer s eye according to thse interviewed for the piece. Several employees recall how he paid intense attention to a young woman on his staff that he found attractive, focusing intently on her career ambitions, reads the story. And he asked the same producer to his hotel room to deliver him a pillow. Lauer s fixation on women s bodies and physical appearance is also a big part of the story, with multiple people saying that he would often play the game F***, Marry or Kill with staffers.One of the show s anchors would often gossip about Lauer s sexual escapades according to staffers while a former reporter said: Management sucks there. They protected the s*** out of Matt Lauer. Daily Mail ;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Washington Post Exposed: Russia Story: ‘F*cking Crap Shoot…Maybe it Doesn’t Exist’ [Video];The Washington Post has been pushing the Russia story for months but do they really believe their own bullsh*t?They were just caught on undercover video saying they really haven t found anything on President Trump Adam Entous of The Washington Post spoke the truth about how the reporters are pushing the Russia story even though it s a nothingburger: But we really haven t addressed Our reporting has not taken us to a place where I would be able to say with any confidence that the result of it is going to be the president being guilty of being in cahoots with the Russians. There s no evidence of that that I ve seen so far. We ve seen a lot of flirtation, if you will, between them but nothing that, in my opinion, would rank as actual collusion. Now that doesn t mean that it doesn t exist, it just means we haven t found it yet. Or maybe it doesn t exist. Frankly, it s a shame that these people keep up this charade. A crap shoot ? Why in the world are they pushing this non-story except to defame Trump with lies or are they getting paid under the table to smear POTUS? Maybe both?OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE NEW YORK TIMES EXPOSED BY PROJECT VERITAS:Project Veritas latest installment in the American Pravda series takes aim at The New York Times, the supposed paper of record. In the first part of this series, Nicholas Dudich, Audience Strategy Editor for the Times extensive video library speaks candidly about how his left political bias influences his editorial judgement and reveals an unusual connection to former FBI Director James Comey, and a strange association with domestic terror group Antifa.Since this video came out, the New York Times released a statement saying they ve launched an investigation:This should have been done when hiring this former antifa thug who also worked for Clinton.RT reported:In the video, Dudich calls himself the gatekeeper for all the New York Times videos posted online, saying that his imprint is on every video we do. Any video that goes on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram I have a hand in that, Dudich said.When talking journalistic ethics, Dudich is captured sarcastically making air quotes while he said that he will be objective working for the Times before quickly admitting: no I m not. That s why I m there. According to the New York Times ethical handbook, employees must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times. As a journalist, I m not able to give any money to any political organization. I m not able to volunteer for any political organization. I m not able to work for any nonprofit or charity. Like, there s a lot of guidelines and ethics, Dudich said.However, before joining the Times, Dudich worked social media on the 2012 presidential campaign of former President Barack Obama and the 2016 presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.When asked how he was able to be politically active and still work as a journalist, Dudich said that he had to leave his job at ABC to take a job where he wasn t deemed a journalist anymore in order to work for the Clinton campaign.Dudich said he made the sacrifice in order to work against Trump, who he said was a threat. I saw the threat and I was like, I want to do something, Dudich said. Trump was a threat and still is a threat, right? Trump is a threat, the interviewer interjects. He s a threat. Oh, he s a threat to everything, Dudich added.Read more President/co-founder of The Dream Corps and CNN contributor Van Jones Rich Polk CNN s Van Jones calls Russia nothing burger video edited, right-wing propaganda At one point, Dudich explains his idea to make Trump resign or leave office by going after his businesses and his dumb f**k of a son, Donald Jr., and Eric. Target that. Get people to boycott going to his hotels, Dudich said. If you can ruin the Trump brand and you put pressure on his business and you start investigating his business and you start shutting it down, or they re hacking or other things. He cares about his business more than he cares about being President. He would resign. Or he d lash out and do something incredibly illegal, which he would have to. ;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP DEMANDS INVESTIGATION Into “Accidental” Death Of 28-Yr Old Joe Scarborough Staffer;With all of the stories of, TV hosts involved in sexual misconduct, it s a mystery why nobody brings ups the accidental death of Joe Scarborough s female staffer. Last November, President Trump called for an investigation into the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old staffer for then-Congressman Joe Scarborough. Many Morning Joe viewers probably have forgotten, or never knew, that the body of a female aide once was found in Scarborough s Congressional office. Investigators quickly saw that a blow to the head, delivered accidentally or intentionally, was involved in Lori Klausutis death. There are also some serious questions as to the mental competency of the doctor who performed the autopsy, as well as an important question about why there was no time of death recorded on his autopsy.According to the Daily Kos: Joe Scarborough, a U.S. Congressman from Florida s 1st District from 1995 suddenly resigned only 5 months into his 4th term in September 2001. His reason? The classic In order to spend more time with his children Curiously, just 2 months before he resigned, his 28-year-old staffer was found dead in his office.While Mainstream Media was hounding Democrat U.S. Congressman Gary Condit about his missing ex-intern, Chandra Levy, viewers heard next to nothing about Joe s intern, a healthy 28-year-old woman was found dead in his Congressional District Office in Fort Walton Beach, FL.Only two days after Scarborough s staffer was found dead in his office, the 9-11 terror attack happened, and this huge story was mostly ignored by media outlets. In a tweet calling for Scarborough and MSNBC president Phil Griffin to be terminated in the wake of Matt Lauer s firing, the president mentioned an unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago. So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate! the president wrote to his 43.6 million followers.So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017Trump was referencing Lori Klausutis, 28-year-old office staffer who worked for Scarborough when he was a representative from Florida. Klausutis was found dead in the congressman s district office in July 2001. The HillThe autopsy of Lori Klausutis makes no reference to a time of death. That raises new questions about an investigation that started when the 28-year-old woman s body was found in the office of then U.S. Representative Joe Scarborough in summer 2001.Accidental death was the official finding in the Klausutis case, with a cardiac arrhythmia causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk. But the recent discovery of human remains at a storage unit in Pensacola, Florida, casts doubt on that ruling. That s because the storage unit was rented by Dr. Michael Berkland, the man who conducted the Klausutis autopsy 11 years earlier.Berkland now faces a felony charge of improper storage of hazardous waste, and the grisly nature of the discovery calls his competence and perhaps his sanity into question.Daily Mail Florida was not the only place Berkland ran into trouble over his work. In 1996, he was fired as a contract medical examiner in Jackson County, Missouri, in a dispute over his autopsy reports.Berkland had incorrectly stated on the reports that he had taken sections of several brains to be preserved as specimens for medical conferences and teaching purposes, AP reported.He claimed they were proofreading errors and the Missouri attorney general s office found they did not jeopardize any criminal cases.Berkland complained the actions against him were unfair because he was unable to present evidence in his defense. His doctor s license was ultimately revoked there. Independent blogger, Legal Schnauzer suggested in 2012 that Berkland s findings be dismissed and that his autopsy of the deceased staffer should not be trusted: Was the Lori Klausutis autopsy conducted in a professional manner? Was foul play prematurely ruled out? Should the investigation be reopened, perhaps with renewed scrutiny for Scarborough and others who might have had access to his office at the time?So it s hard to figure why the autopsy makes no reference to the time of death. (See full autopsy report here.)Why is that a key omission? Consider this from an online document titled Determining Time of Death (TOD) :Why is it important to know the time of death? TOD can set the time of murder Eliminate or suggest suspects Confirm or disprove alibisWhy did Berkland not include this critical detail? It s not as if his report does not provide plenty of other details. He tells us that Klausutis was wearing a white thong on the day of her death. (Page 7.) He tells us that she had a shaved genital region. (Page 8.) But no time of death?The core of the autopsy report can be found in the comment section, pages 3-7. This probably is the central finding:There is no doubt that the head injury is as a result of a fall, rather than a blow being delivered to the heading by a moving object. Lori has a classic contrecoup injury, or bruise to the brain, meaning that her brain was bruised on the opposite side from where the external force was applied. The left side of Lori s brain was bruised while the external abraded contusion (scratch and bruise) was in the right temple region. The contrecoup contusion results when a freely moving, mobile head strikes an unyielding, firm, fixed object in a fall, as in the floor, or in this case, the desk. This finding is in marked distinction from the coup contusion, or that injury which results from a moving object (example a ball bat) that strikes a stationary head. In the coup injury, there is bruising of the brain on the same side as the external injury. There was no coup contusion in Lori Klausutis.What would cause a seemingly healthy young woman, an avid runner, to collapse and lose consciousness, unable to break her fall? Berkland rules out some of the common causes of such an event a pulmonary embolus, a brain hemorrhage, a ruptured aneurysm, drug issues. He concludes:These facts leave only a cardiac arrhythmia as the reason to go unconscious and subsequently fall and strike the desk in an unprotected fashion. If Lori s heart was normal, it would be problematic to postulate a plausible reason for a cardiac arrhythmia in such a young person. However, her heart was not normal. The heart contained an abnormality (floppy mitral valve) that is known to result in cardiac ectopy and dangerous cardiac arrhythmias.All of this sounds reasonable. But given recent events, can Michael Berkland s work be trusted? Why on earth was he keeping body parts in a storage unit? And did any of those parts once belong to Lori Klausutis?According to the Daily Kos, Dr. Berkland and his supervisor at the time, Dr. Gary Cumberland were known to be high-giving donors to Scarborough s Congressional campaigns. Did their relationship with Scarborough influence any and all the results issued by the M.E. s Office?;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LEFTIST REPORTERS Tie Hillary To Firing Of #MattLauer;"Once again, the left eats its own Liberal reporters used the unexpected firing of NBC News anchor Matt Lauer for unspecified sexual misconduct as an opportunity to mention how hard he was on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. It was a liberal pile-on with brutal attacks on twitter from journalists who actually called Lauer a right winger and Trump apologist .Now that s funny!Annie Karni, White House reporter for Politico, tweeted about how Hillary Clinton condemned Matt Lauer s performance during the 2016 Commander-in-Chief forum.Hillary Clinton on Matt Lauer's performance during the Commander-in-Chief forum in 2016: ""Trump should have reported his performance as an in-kind contribution . I can't say I didn't fantasize about shaking some sense into Lauer while I was out there."" Annie Karni (@anniekarni) November 29, 2017BuzzFeed World correspondent Borzou Daragahi used the firing to remind followers to not forget about Lauer covering Clinton s email controversy.Let's not forget Matt Lauer's shining moment of journalistic glory last year when he bulldozed over Clinton about her emails while letting Trump get away with lies https://t.co/RVl0ZkC3jr Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) November 29, 2017The left attacks its own AGAIN! Many on twitter are blaming Hillary for the ouster of Lauer. This means that he s being fired NOT because of sexual misconduct but for not following the party line and supporting Hillary? They might have a point. Lauer s escapades with women are legend so why fire him now? Is it the trend in sexual harassment cases or because he s out of favor with the liberal elites since the election last year? With these people you have to march in lockstep or you re out! How confusing!Numerous people have commented on our report about Lauer s firing to say they blame Hillary Who knew?OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON LAUER S FIRING: NBC was in cover your ass mode with their longtime anchor Matt Lauer s latest misstep coming to light via numerous news outlets. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack pulled the trigger to fire Lauer late last night after it was revealed that Lauer was going to be outed for sexual misconduct.Page Six reports:Longtime NBC anchor Matt Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted a female NBC staffer during the Rio Olympics. The staffer, who has not been named and wishes to remain anonymous, complained to NBC News bosses yesterday, prompting them to move fast and fire him. An NBC staffer come forward with a claim that Matt sexually assaulted her at the Olympics. There have been rumors about Matt having affairs with subordinates at NBC for years, but those were believed to be consensual. This incident in Rio was not. 2006 CRUEL AND INHUMANE His wife, Annette, famously filed for divorce in 2006, accusing him of cruel and inhumane behavior, but withdrew the filing a month later after they reached a private agreement. They ostensibly live separate lives, she living full time in the Hamptons with their children, while Matt resides in the city during the week.Lauer has been rumored to be a serial adulterer but this case was not consensual. A whole different ball of wax for the notorious cad.Rumors of an affair with Natalie Morales and other co-workers have been out there in the past. Lauer s current co-workers spoke out this morning claiming shock at what just happened:Matt Lauer has been terminated from NBC News. On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we ve decided to terminate his employment. pic.twitter.com/1A3UAZpvPb TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2017The victim wishes to remain anonymous we re wondering how long it will take for her name to be leaked out.";politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRESIDENT TRUMP Retweets 3 Videos Of Muslims Committing Disgusting Hate Crimes…The Left EXPLODES;The left woke up in a fury after they discovered President Trump retweeted 3 videos showing disgusting hate crimes committed against Europeans by Muslims. Was the President trying to prove his case about how the mass Muslim migration into Europe is destroying their cultures and making the citizens unsafe? President Trump didn t include any commentary with his retweets, he simply retweeted the videos. Should President Trump have retweeted these videos? We d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.On Wednesday morning, President Trump retweeted videos posted by a British nationalist, which showed Muslims committing crimes.Trump retweeted content posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group that stands against theIslamisation of the United Kingdom.The first video purportedly shows a Muslim migrant beating up a Dutch boy on crutches.VIDEO: Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches! pic.twitter.com/11LgbfFJDq Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 28, 2017Twitter responded to the video with the boy on crutches by saying that the Muslim migrant who beat up the boy on crutches was arrested the next day and was actually a Dutch citizen. We have checked both Dutch (link and link) websites who claim that the boy was neither a Muslim or a migrant. We couldn t verify if either one of the sites we checked are legitimate sources of news.The fact that the president retweeted this bigot is disgusting. Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) November 29, 2017According to Dutch media, the culprit wasn't a Muslim. Also not a migrant. But a 16-year old Dutch boy from town of Edam-Volendam.He was arrested on May 13th 2017, one day after the incident happened. Edna Sullivan (@SumTomGoingOn) November 29, 2017 The second video shows a Muslim man speaking to the camera and then bashing a statue of Virgin Mary on the ground, shattering herVIDEO: Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary! pic.twitter.com/qhkrfQrtjV Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 29, 2017thats such a good point pic.twitter.com/vfF8eKPPy6 blablaa (@CeeTheHit) November 29, 2017The third video President Trump retweeted shows an Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death! VIDEO: Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death! pic.twitter.com/XxtlxNNSiP Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 29, 2017Not everyone disagreed with President Trump s retweets. Many applauded him for bringing these videos to the attention of the world:Europe is lost. THIS is the new setting of Europe. It's so sad. You can thank Angela Merkel. Joey Mannarino (@Realjmannarino) November 29, 2017It's already too late for the UK and much of Europe, but hopefully it can be at least managed. So much danger. Joey Mannarino (@Realjmannarino) November 29, 2017Last year, Fransen was found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment after accosting a Muslim woman.The charge stemmed from a January 2016 incident in which Fransen, wearing a political uniform and during a so-called Christian patrol, accosted a Muslim woman named Sumayyah Sharpe in Luton, England. Daily Mail ;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Why Anchor #MattLauer Was Just Fired After Decades With NBC [Video];NBC was in cover your ass mode with their longtime anchor Matt Lauer s latest misstep coming to light via numerous news outlets. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack pulled the trigger to fire Lauer late last night after it was revealed that Lauer was going to be outed for sexual misconduct.Page Six reports:Longtime NBC anchor Matt Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted a female NBC staffer during the Rio Olympics. The staffer, who has not been named and wishes to remain anonymous, complained to NBC News bosses yesterday, prompting them to move fast and fire him. An NBC staffer come forward with a claim that Matt sexually assaulted her at the Olympics. There have been rumors about Matt having affairs with subordinates at NBC for years, but those were believed to be consensual. This incident in Rio was not. 2006 CRUEL AND INHUMANE His wife, Annette, famously filed for divorce in 2006, accusing him of cruel and inhumane behavior, but withdrew the filing a month later after they reached a private agreement. They ostensibly live separate lives, she living full time in the Hamptons with their children, while Matt resides in the city during the week.Lauer has been rumored to be a serial adulterer but this case was not consensual. A whole different ball of wax for the notorious cad.Rumors of an affair with Natalie Morales and other co-workers have been out there in the past. Lauer s current co-workers spoke out this morning claiming shock at what just happened:Matt Lauer has been terminated from NBC News. On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we ve decided to terminate his employment. pic.twitter.com/1A3UAZpvPb TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2017The victim wishes to remain anonymous we re wondering how long it will take for her name to be leaked out.;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian rivals delay full Gaza handover by 10 days;GAZA (Reuters) - Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to delay final transfer of power of the Gaza Strip from Hamas to the Western-backed Palestinian government by 10 days to Dec. 10 to allow time to complete arrangements , officials said. The factions signed a reconciliation deal brokered by Egypt last month after Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of Gaza, including the key Rafah border crossing, a decade after seizing the enclave in a civil war. The deal bridges a bitter gulf between the Western-backed mainstream Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, an Islamist movement designated as a terrorist group by Western countries and Israel. The agreement states that Hamas, which has disbanded its administration, would complete the handover by December 1 but disputes over the transfer process have emerged in recent days and Cairo has sent a senior security delegation to the territory to try to resolve the deadlock. In a brief joint statement, Fatah and Hamas said they had asked Egypt to delay the timetable from Dec 1 so that they could complete the arrangements to successfully conclude reconciliation steps to which the Palestinian people aspire . Completion will also strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas s standing at any potential resumption of the stalled peacemaking process with Israel, analysts say. It was initially unclear whether the deadline extension would prevent the 40,000-50,000 Hamas-hired employees being paid their November salaries on time. Hamas has demanded that Abbas lift sanctions he has imposed on Gaza such as slashing salaries of Palestinian Authority-hired public servants and limiting electricity imported from Israel for Gaza. The Palestinian Authority has demanded that it must have full control of Gaza in order to be able to discharge its administrative powers there and failure to pay the salaries could endanger further reconciliation steps. Earlier on Wednesday, tension between the two factions rose when Hamas refused to allow Palestinian Authority employees to return to their jobs at three ministries as instructed by the government. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump criticized in Britain and U.S. for sharing anti-Muslim videos;WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday shared anti-Muslim videos posted on Twitter by a far-right British party leader, drawing condemnation from Britain, U.S. Muslim groups and some members of Congress. The White House defended the retweets by the Republican president, who during the 2016 U.S. election campaign called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” saying that he was raising security issues. As president, Trump has issued executive orders banning entry to some citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, although courts have partially blocked the measures from taking effect. “Look, I’m not talking about the nature of the video,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “The threat is real and that’s what the president is talking about is the need for national security, the need for military spending, and those are very real things. There’s nothing fake about that.” Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of anti-immigration Britain First, posted the videos which she said showed a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue. Fransen was convicted earlier this month of abusing a Muslim woman and was ordered to pay a fine and legal costs. Some British lawmakers demanded an apology from Trump for sharing the videos with his nearly 44 million Twitter followers and U.S. Muslim groups said he had been incendiary and reckless. “It is wrong for the president to have done this,” the spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said. “Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people,” the spokesman said. Trump fired back at May over her criticism. “Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” Trump tweeted, using an incorrect Twitter handle for May. He later issued a tweet with her correct handle, “@Theresa_May”. Reuters was unable to immediately verify the videos and Fransen herself said they had come from various online sources which had been posted on her social media pages. “I’m delighted,” Fransen, who has 53,000 Twitter followers, told Reuters. She said Trump’s retweets showed the president shared her aim of raising awareness of “issues such as Islam”. The White House repeatedly refused to be drawn into the content of the videos or whether Trump was aware of the source of the tweets. “It’s about ensuring that individuals who come into the United States don’t pose a public safety or terrorism threat,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters aboard Air Force One. Fransen thanked Trump and said, “The important message here is Donald Trump has been made aware of the persecution and prosecution of a political leader in Britain for giving what has been said by police to be an anti-Islamic speech.” ANTI-IMMIGRATION One of the videos that Trump retweeted first circulated on social and Egyptian state media in 2013, showing what appeared to be supporters of now-ousted Islamist President Mohammed Mursi throwing two youths from a concrete tower onto a roof. In reference to another video that was titled “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”, the Netherlands embassy in the United States tweeted back at Trump saying: “@realDonaldTrump Facts do matter. The perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands. He received and completed his sentence under Dutch law.” Trump’s promotion of the videos contrasts with the way he often criticizes mainstream U.S. media, lambasting some outlets for “fake news” when they air segments he regards as being against him. “What we saw today is one of many videos that is circulating on anti-Muslim hate websites,” said Ilhan Cagri with the U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. “It is years-old and simply aims to breed fear for Muslims and Islam and breed violence. It has nothing to do with the practice of Islam itself,” Cagri said. The Anti-Defamation League said the retweets would only encourage “extremists and anti-Muslim bigots in the United States and abroad who exploit the propaganda value.” “Such content is the engine that fuels extremist movements and will embolden bigots in the U.S. who already believe the president is a fellow traveler,” the ADL said in a statement. Democrats in Congress and at least one Republican lawmaker were also critical of Trump. “The violence depicted in these videos is horrific, but it is abhorrent that President Trump would choose to deliberately fan the flames of hatred and religious bigotry,” Democratic U.S. Senator Jack Reed said in a statement. Republican Senator John McCain, a frequent critic of Trump, said he was “surprised” that Trump had chosen to retweet those videos. “What do I think about it? Obviously, surprised. Surprised,” he told Reuters as he left a meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah at the U.S. Senate. Britain First is a peripheral political party which wants to end all immigration and bring in a comprehensive ban on Islam, with anyone found to be promoting the religion’s ideology to be deported or imprisoned. The group, which rarely garners any media attention but attracts a few hundred protesters to its regular street demonstrations, states on its website it is a “loyalist movement.” Critics say it is simply racist. Last week, Fransen was charged by the police in Northern Ireland with using threatening, abusive or insulting words in a speech at a rally in Belfast in August. Along with the group’s leader, she was also charged in September with causing religiously aggravated harassment over the distribution of leaflets and posting online videos during a court trial involving a number of Muslim men accused and later convicted of rape. Politicians in Britain condemned Trump, with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, describing his tweets as “abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society.” In contrast, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who has run for political office in Louisiana, praised Trump. “He’s condemned for showing us what the fake news media won’t,” Duke wrote on Twitter. “Thank God for Trump! That’s why we love him!” ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;LNA-linked groups appear responsible for east Libya killings: HRW;TUNIS (Reuters) - The bodies of 36 men found near the eastern Libyan town of al-Abyar in October appear to have been summarily executed by armed groups loyal to Khalifa Haftar s Libyan National Army (LNA), Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. Local police found the bodies on a main road about 50 km east of Benghazi in an area controlled by the LNA. Shortly afterwards, the LNA said it was launching an investigation. Libya is divided between rival governments and armed factions. The LNA controls most of the east, where Haftar has expanded his power over the past three years, waging a long campaign against Islamists and other opponents for control of Benghazi. Haftar s buy-in is seen as crucial for any effective political deal to unify the oil-rich North African country, and he has been increasingly courted by Western powers. The bodies found near al-Abyar were the latest in a number of such cases in eastern Libya. Relatives of six of the victims told HRW they had been seized from their homes on different dates by armed groups loyal to the LNA in Benghazi or other locations, the U.S.-based group said in statement. All the relatives said that the victims bore gunshot wounds and had their hands tied behind their backs, and that families had been prevented from putting up tents outside their houses in Benghazi to receive guests during a traditional three-day mourning period, HRW added. It cited a forensic investigator who reviewed pictures of 23 of the bodies as saying the injuries were consistent with executions at point-blank range. The Libyan National Army s pledges to conduct inquiries into repeated unlawful killings in areas under their control in eastern Libya have so far led nowhere, said Eric Goldstein, HRW s deputy Middle East and North Africa director. The LNA will be condoning apparent war crimes if their pledge to investigate the gruesome discovery in al-Abyar proves to be another empty promise. An LNA spokesman gave no immediate comment. The LNA has said it is investigating the commander of an elite forces unit who is sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly executing dozens of prisoners, though his exact whereabouts remain unclear. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRAT SENATOR Reprimanded For Comparing Female Trump Nominee to a Horse: ‘It’s dehumanizing’ [Video];A Democratic Senator tried to compare Trump nominee Kathleen Hartnett White to a horse during testimony before members of the Environment and Public Works Committee .Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse tried to relate a story of Caligula s horse to the nominee but it went over like a lead balloon. We could start off by saying as a rule of thumb that a woman should never be compared to a horse Not a good idea. This arrogant and insensitive Senator thought he would get away with demeaning Ms. White .Watch what happens when Senator Barrasso gets his two cents worth in The committee voted to confirm White s nomination to lead the White House s Council on Environmental Quality, Wednesday.Washington Free Beacon reports:During a business meeting prior to the party-line vote, Whitehouse likened White to the ancient Roman emperor Caligula s horse: There is a popular legend of the Emperor Caligula appointing his horse to the Roman Senate, Whitehouse said. Had he done that, it would have raised important questions, but the real questions would not have been about the horse. The horse was just a horse. The real questions would have been about the power of the Emperor Caligula and the spine of the Roman Senate. Discussing the merits of the horse would be pointless. Approving this nominee for CEQ would be so preposterous that it would be like appointing Caligula s horse, in that the real question becomes about the power of our fossil fuel emperors and the spine of the Senate, he said. This is a moment in which the Senate takes its own measure. I guess we re about to see the answer. Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) quickly condemned Whitehouse s remarks: Let me just say that comparing Ms. White to a horse, as one of our Democrat colleagues just did, to me is a new low, Barrasso said. It s disturbing, it s demeaning, and it s dehumanizing. ;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. tells North Korea envoy that Pyongyang must stop 'destabilizing steps';UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman met with North Korea s Ambassador Ja Song Nam on Wednesday to tell him Pyongyang must desist from taking any further destabilizing steps after the country launched another ballistic missile. During the meeting, I stressed that there is nothing more dangerous to peace and security in the world than what is happening now on the Korean Peninsula, Feltman told the U.N. Security Council during a meeting on North Korea s most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile test yet. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. asks China to cut off oil supply to North Korea;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has asked China to cut off oil supply to North Korea, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Wednesday, warning that if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed. We have never sought war with North Korea, and still today we do not seek it. If war does come, it will be because of continued acts of aggression like we witnessed yesterday, Haley told the U.N. Security Council, referring to Pyongyang s ballistic missile launch on Tuesday. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump calls for boycott of television network CNN: tweet;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump urged a boycott of CNN on Wednesday, ramping up his fight against the television network as his administration fights AT&T Inc’s deal to buy CNN’s owner Time Warner Inc. Trump has criticized the proposed deal, which the Justice Department has sued to stop. Legal experts have said the president’s attacks on CNN could hobble his administration’s case. The president, who regularly assails mainstream media, has long criticized CNN, calling the network “fake news” and saying he no longer watches it, while lauding rival Fox News. His call for a boycott appeared to be a step up in his attacks. “Great, and we should boycott Fake News CNN. Dealing with them is a total waste of time!,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post. Trump was responding to a post by his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, who in her own post on Tuesday night praised reports that CNN would not attend an annual holiday party held at the White House for news media. It was not immediately clear if Trump in his post was calling for a wider boycott against CNN or one by White House staff. Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for CNN also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s tweet on Wednesday. A CNN spokesperson told Politico that it would not attend the party “in light of the President’s continued attacks on freedom of the press and CNN” but would send a reporting crew to cover the event, Politico reported on Tuesday. The network and its journalists have repeatedly defended CNN’s work against previous presidential attacks. The Department of Justice’s challenge is unusual move given that pay TV and wireless company AT&T does not directly compete with TV show maker Time Warner. The department has said the lawsuit is a law enforcement decision, not a political one. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump criticized in Britain and U.S. for sharing anti-Muslim videos;WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday shared anti-Muslim videos posted on Twitter by a far-right British party leader, drawing condemnation from Britain, U.S. Muslim groups and some members of Congress. The White House defended the retweets by the Republican president, who during the 2016 U.S. election campaign called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, saying that he was raising security issues. As president, Trump has issued executive orders banning entry to some citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, although courts have partially blocked the measures from taking effect. Look, I m not talking about the nature of the video, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. The threat is real and that s what the president is talking about is the need for national security, the need for military spending, and those are very real things. There s nothing fake about that. Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of anti-immigration Britain First, posted the videos which she said showed a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue. Fransen was convicted earlier this month of abusing a Muslim woman and was ordered to pay a fine and legal costs. Some British lawmakers demanded an apology from Trump for sharing the videos with his nearly 44 million Twitter followers and U.S. Muslim groups said he had been incendiary and reckless. It is wrong for the president to have done this, the spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said. Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people, the spokesman said. Trump fired back at May over her criticism. Theresa @theresamay, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine, Trump tweeted, using an incorrect Twitter handle for May. He later issued a tweet with her correct handle, @Theresa_May . Reuters was unable to immediately verify the videos and Fransen herself said they had come from various online sources which had been posted on her social media pages. I m delighted, Fransen, who has 53,000 Twitter followers, told Reuters. She said Trump s retweets showed the president shared her aim of raising awareness of issues such as Islam . The White House repeatedly refused to be drawn into the content of the videos or whether Trump was aware of the source of the tweets. It s about ensuring that individuals who come into the United States don t pose a public safety or terrorism threat, White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters aboard Air Force One. Fransen thanked Trump and said, The important message here is Donald Trump has been made aware of the persecution and prosecution of a political leader in Britain for giving what has been said by police to be an anti-Islamic speech. ANTI-IMMIGRATION One of the videos that Trump retweeted first circulated on social and Egyptian state media in 2013, showing what appeared to be supporters of now-ousted Islamist President Mohammed Mursi throwing two youths from a concrete tower onto a roof. In reference to another video that was titled Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches! , the Netherlands embassy in the United States tweeted back at Trump saying: @realDonaldTrump Facts do matter. The perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands. He received and completed his sentence under Dutch law. Trump s promotion of the videos contrasts with the way he often criticizes mainstream U.S. media, lambasting some outlets for fake news when they air segments he regards as being against him. What we saw today is one of many videos that is circulating on anti-Muslim hate websites, said Ilhan Cagri with the U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council. It is years-old and simply aims to breed fear for Muslims and Islam and breed violence. It has nothing to do with the practice of Islam itself, Cagri said. The Anti-Defamation League said the retweets would only encourage extremists and anti-Muslim bigots in the United States and abroad who exploit the propaganda value. Such content is the engine that fuels extremist movements and will embolden bigots in the U.S. who already believe the president is a fellow traveler, the ADL said in a statement. Democrats in Congress and at least one Republican lawmaker were also critical of Trump. The violence depicted in these videos is horrific, but it is abhorrent that President Trump would choose to deliberately fan the flames of hatred and religious bigotry, Democratic U.S. Senator Jack Reed said in a statement. Republican Senator John McCain, a frequent critic of Trump, said he was surprised that Trump had chosen to retweet those videos. What do I think about it? Obviously, surprised. Surprised, he told Reuters as he left a meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah at the U.S. Senate. Britain First is a peripheral political party which wants to end all immigration and bring in a comprehensive ban on Islam, with anyone found to be promoting the religion s ideology to be deported or imprisoned. The group, which rarely garners any media attention but attracts a few hundred protesters to its regular street demonstrations, states on its website it is a loyalist movement. Critics say it is simply racist. Last week, Fransen was charged by the police in Northern Ireland with using threatening, abusive or insulting words in a speech at a rally in Belfast in August. Along with the group s leader, she was also charged in September with causing religiously aggravated harassment over the distribution of leaflets and posting online videos during a court trial involving a number of Muslim men accused and later convicted of rape. Politicians in Britain condemned Trump, with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, describing his tweets as abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society. In contrast, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who has run for political office in Louisiana, praised Trump. He s condemned for showing us what the fake news media won t, Duke wrote on Twitter. Thank God for Trump! That s why we love him! ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Spent The Night Retweeting A White Supremacist Convicted Criminal;While most of us were sleeping, Donald Trump spent his night retweeting a white supremacist who was convicted in the UK for harassing a Muslim woman in front of her two young children. Jayda Fransen was arrested in October during a neo-Nazi rally for violating terms of her bail. Fransen, Deputy Director of Britain First is thrilled to have been retweeted three times by the so-called president of the United States. Trump even retweeted a video of a boy on crutches being murdered, just in case you haven t had enough gore in your life.The former reality show star s retweets even stunned Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars editor-at-large who suggested the move was not great optics. Yeah, someone might want to tell whoever is running Trump's Twitter account this morning that retweeting Britain First is not great optics. Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 29, 2017Even Infowars thinks Trump went too far. Let that sink in for a moment.Here s a screen capture of the snuff film Trump retweeted.Fransen was super excited that Trump shared her anti-Muslim videos to his 44 million followers and went all caps in her tweet. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN S TWITTER VIDEOS! Fransen tweeted. DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA! THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP, HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN'S TWITTER VIDEOS! DONALD TRUMP HIMSELF HAS RETWEETED THESE VIDEOS AND HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA! OCS @JaydaBF @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/BiQfQkTra9 Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 29, 2017Trump cult member Piers Morgan was shocked by the retweets, too. Good morning, Mr President @realDonaldTrump what the hell are you doing retweeting a bunch of unverified videos by Britain First, a bunch of disgustingly racist far-right extremists? he tweeted. Please STOP this madness & undo your retweets. Good morning, Mr President @realDonaldTrump what the hell are you doing retweeting a bunch of unverified videos by Britain First, a bunch of disgustingly racist far-right extremists? Please STOP this madness & undo your retweets. Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) November 29, 2017The video of the man being pushed off of a rooftop was filmed in Egypt during the 2013 overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi and the man complicit of the crime was hanged after being found guilty, according to BuzzFeed News.When British Labour Party politician Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right terrorist, he shouted, This is for Britain , keep Britain independent , and Britain first as he attacked her.Cox s husband responded to Trump s retweets, writing, Trump has legitimised the far right in his own country, now he s trying to do it in ours. Spreading hatred has consequences & the President should be ashamed of himself. Trump has legitimised the far right in his own country, now he s trying to do it in ours. Spreading hatred has consequences & the President should be ashamed of himself. Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) November 29, 2017Trump just promoted a woman who was convicted of a hateful act in Britain, much to the distress of a widowed man whose wife s murder shocked the world. Either Trump doesn t know how to Google or he s a hateful bigot or both. You choose.Photo by Zach Gibson Pool/Getty Images.;News;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump’s Biggest KKK Fan Is Back, And He Just LOVED Those Anti-Muslim Tweets This Morning;Just in case you needed any more proof that Donald Trump s racist tweets were a thinly-coded message to his alt-right, anti-Muslim, and white supremacist followers, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK has jumped on board today in praise of President Hates-a-Lot.It wasn t enough that the KKK endorsed Trump during his campaign to stop his multitudes of followers from voting for him, so it s hard to say whether Duke s full-throated endorsement of today s disgusting display of racism will be any different. But for the average American, seeing the former Klan leader get behind Trump so vigorously should make them more than a little sick.To even go to Duke s page on Twitter is to subject yourself to a blinding cover photo, all white, with a blue-eyed Aryan baby in the upper corner, and the words It s Okay To Be White across the middle. The phrase is part of a hate campaign that Doctor Duke has been pushing across America, a play on the notion that there is some kind of war on white people happening.But the tweet itself is disturbing:Trump retweets video of crippled white kid in Europe being beaten by migrants, and white people being thrown off a roof and then beaten to death, He's condemned for showing us what the fake news media WON'T. Thank God for Trump! That's why we love him! David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) November 29, 2017By invoking God in his message, Duke is trying the age-old tactic of pretending that white supremacy has its roots in Christianity, an angle that KKK members have tried to use for generations.Sadly, it works on some followers of both Duke s and of Donald Trump s. It seems there s quite a bit of crossover between the two racist groups. That s no surprise: The KKK were absolutely instrumental in getting Trump elected.The bottom line is, both men know exactly what they re doing when they send messages like that to their followers. Trump s racist retweets were already disgraceful enough. But continuing to leave them on his Twitter feed even after seeing praise from a Loyal White Knight like David Duke is just rubbing salt in the wound.Featured image via William Thomas Cain/Getty Images;News;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Americans Once Elected A President After He Was Accused Of Raping A 13-Year-Old Girl;After an awful campaign filled with hateful rhetoric, American voters elected a man to lead the most powerful country on earth even after he was accused of raping a 13-year-old. The year was 2016 and the accused was an alleged billionaire, former reality show star and an admitted sexual predator. Still, even after the revelations, conservatives saw nothing wrong with Donald Trump s behavior. The plaintiff described the horrifying incident in which Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein allegedly raped a child. A lawsuit was filed which claims that threats were made in order for the victim to keep her mouth shut about what had just happened.Both Defendants let Plaintiff know that each was a very wealthy, powerful man and indicated that they had the power, ability, and means to carry out their threats. Indeed, Defendant Trump stated that Plaintiff shouldn t ever say anything if she didn t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that Plaintiff had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.There was a witness who backed up Jane Doe s claims. According to the lawsuit, Trump and Epstein sexually and physically abused the then 13-year-old plaintiff and forced her to engage in various perverted and depraved sex acts including being forced to manually stimulate Defendant Trump with the use of her hand upon Defendant Trump s erect penis until he reached sexual orgasm, and being forced to engage in an unnatural lesbian sex act with her fellow minor and sex slave, Maria Doe, age 12, for the sexual enjoyment of Defendant Trump after luring her to a series of underage sex parties by promising her money and a modeling career, according to Snopes.Trump has admitted knowing Epstein for 15 years. Epstein was named in multiple similar lawsuits, served 13 months in jail, and is registered as a sex offender for life.The lawsuit which was filed in California on April 26, 2016, was dismissed over technical filing errors and it was refiled in June of the same year, then dropped again in November after the plaintiff received death threats.Last year, Trump was also accused by 16 women of sexually harassing or assaulting them. Conservatives went on to elect him knowing full well that he is a sexual predator because he said so in the Access Hollywood tape.History will not be kind as it remembers November of 2016.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.;News;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Passenger train derails in Spain, 21 hurt;MADRID (Reuters) - A passenger train derailed in the Spanish province of Seville on Wednesday, leaving 21 people injured, one seriously, according to the Andalusia emergency services. The medium-distance train was traveling between Malaga and Seville and slid off the tracks in the municipality of Arahal due to adverse conditions caused by heavy rain, a spokeswoman for the national transporter Renfe said. Andalusia emergency services said earlier on Wednesday that they had attended more than 100 incidents caused by severe weather conditions in the Seville region, mostly on the roads. Four people were killed and 47 injured after a train derailed in Galicia in northwestern Spain last year while some 80 people were killed in Spain s worst rail disaster in decades when a high-speed train went off the tracks and slammed into a wall, also in Galicia. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Sends Crazy-Time Tweet To The Wrong Account After Losing His Sh*t Over World Leader’s Remarks;Donald Trump retweeted fake news videos in the early hours of the morning and for that, he was widely condemned. The White House responded to say that it doesn t matter if the former reality show star posted fake videos about Muslims because the threat is real! Scary, huh? A backlash ensued after Trump retweeted three times from a woman who was convicted of a hate crime in the U.K.The current occupant of the White House is upset because British Prime Minister Theresa May responded to Trump s widely condemned retweets this morning, saying, It is wrong for the president to have done this. In a statement, Downing street further said, Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. Members of British Parliament also condemned Trump s retweets.So naturally, Trump lashed out on Twitter at our ally s leader. The problem is that he tweeted to the wrong Theresa May, a person who only has 6 followers, causing that Twitter user to receive nearly 9,000 notifications.We took a screen capture because we knew (and he did) the Dotard would delete it. Here s Trump s full tweet to the totally wrong person. Finally, Trump tweeted the correct Theresa May, writing the same message: Don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! .@Theresa_May, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017Wrong! We are not doing fine when the so-called leader of the free world tweets to the wrong world leader, even though he is addicted to Twitter and still cannot tweet correctly. And now that he has corrected his tweet, he sounds just as idiotic as he did this morning when he started tweeting out fake videos in order to promote his ban on Muslim countries.What a fuckin moron.Photo by David Becker/Getty Images;News;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Election crisis engulfs Honduras with rivals neck-and-neck;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras faced a growing election crisis on Wednesday, with its U.S.-friendly president edging ahead in troubled vote count that his centrist rival, a television game show host allied with leftists, has rejected, saying he is being robbed. Three days after polling stations closed in Honduras presidential election, there was growing international concern with no clear winner and both men claiming victory, despite nearly a fifth of ballots remaining uncounted. Stricken with poverty, drug gangs and one of the world s highest murder rates, Honduras is one of the United States closest military and ideological allies in Central America. On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department urged a quick conclusion to the vote count, which has been widely criticized. Resolution to the festering crisis had appeared possible on Wednesday when both candidates vowed to respect the final result once disputed votes had been scrutinized, issuing identical signed statements brokered by the Organization of American States (OAS). But the accord did not last long. Centrist opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla - who had watched with disbelief as his original 5-point lead evaporated, allowing center-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez to edge ahead by 3,000 votes - told reporters that he rejected the document he had signed just a few hours before. Nasralla cited an hours-long technical glitch at the election tribunal, and fears that Hernandez was planning to unilaterally declare himself victorious, as his reasons for dismissing the results of the electoral body. They take us for idiots and want to steal our victory, said Nasralla, who heads a coalition of leftist and centrist parties. The document I signed today with the OAS has no validity, he added, calling it a trap and pledging to take to the streets to defend his votes. The OAS said in a tweet that it regretted Nasralla had withdrawn from the pact, and that it would continue working for justice in the elections. Later on Wednesday, police fired tear gas to disperse Nasralla supporters gathered outside the election tribunal where the vote was being counted. The fumes entered the building, prompting its staff to be evacuated, television images showed. With around 82.89 percent of ballots counted, the center-right Hernandez had 42.2 percent of the vote, while Nasralla was on 42.1 percent, the tribunal said. Hernandez s National Party appears set to retain control of Congress. As he caught his rival, Hernandez s blue-clad supporters celebrated, chanting the president s name at a party base in capital Tegucigalpa, TV images showed, while thousands of Nasralla supporters took to the streets. I m here so that justice and the will of the people is carried out, because we elected Salvador Nasralla, and Juan Orlando Hernandez wants to steal his victory, said 22-year-old David Ramirez, a red political flag draped over his shoulder. The election body published more than half of the results of Sunday s election early on Monday, but faced international criticism for an ensuing 36-hour delay in releasing further data. The count halted again late on Wednesday afternoon. Tribunal chief David Matamoros apologized to the nation for a fresh computer glitch that derailed operations. We ve had a problem that we regret and that we didn t expect to have, and that we re resolving as quickly as possible, he said. Sometimes in an election, you can have a system failure, but never in a moment as critical as this. International observers said the delays were damaging the credibility of authorities and threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the next president. On Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert urged Honduran authorities to review the election results without delay. We urge all candidates to respect the results, she said. Behind closed doors, the parties of Hernandez, the pre-vote favorite, and Nasralla were discussing immunity from prosecution for current officials and carving up positions in government, two diplomats told Reuters on Tuesday. With a booming voice and finely coiffed hair, Nasralla is one of Honduras best known faces, hosting a sports programme and a television game show that features scantily clad women. In one interview, he boasted of his penis size and his sexual performance. He is backed by leftist former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup in 2009 after he proposed a referendum on his re-election. The possible return of Zelaya risks fueling concern in Washington. Hernandez has won U.S. praise for helping tackle a flow of migrants to the north and extraditing drug cartel leaders to the United States. He was credited with lowering the murder rate and boosting the economy, but was also hurt by accusations of ties to illicit, drug-related financing that he denies. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri signals may withdraw resignation next week - statement;ROME (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri indicated on Wednesday that he might withdraw his resignation next week, saying matters were positive and he would rescind his decision if they remained so, a statement from his press office said. Hariri announced his resignation in a televised statement while he was in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, prompting a political crisis in Lebanon and thrusting it back into a regional tussle between Riyadh and its main regional foe, Iran. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia coerced Hariri, a long-time ally of Saudi Arabia, into resigning and held him there against his will until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon last week. Saudi Arabia denies this. Hariri agreed to shelve the decision after meeting Aoun last week, saying this was to allow for dialogue. Hariri wants all Lebanese to commit to staying out of regional conflicts, a reference to the powerful armed Shi ite group Hezbollah, which Saudi Arabia accuses of sowing strife in the Arab world with support from Iran. Matters are positive, as you hear, and if this positivity continues we will announce, God willing, to Lebanese next week with President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri the withdrawal of the resignation, Hariri said on Wednesday. He was speaking during a celebration to mark the Prophet Mohammad s birthday. Earlier on Wednesday, Aoun was quoted as saying that Hariri would certainly remain prime minister and Lebanon s political crisis will be resolved in a few days. We have just finished talks with all the political forces, within and outside government. There is a broad agreement, the newspaper La Stampa quoted him as saying during a visit to Italy. Aoun did not accept Hariri s televised resignation, accusing Saudi Arabia of holding Hariri in Riyadh and forcing him to step down. Hariri eventually returned to Beirut on Nov. 22 and postponed his resignation. He said on Monday that he would stay on as prime minister if Iran s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, accepted a policy of staying out of regional conflicts. Asked about that demand, Aoun a Hezbollah ally said: Hezbollah has fought against Islamic State terrorists in Lebanon and abroad. But when the war against terrorism is finished, their fighters will come back to the country, La Stampa reported. The group has fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad s forces in Syria against rebels seeking to oust him, including factions that were backed by Saudi Arabia. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia reopens Bali airport as wind clears volcanic ash;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - The airport on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali reopened on Wednesday as wind blew away ash spewed out by a volcano, giving airlines a window to get tourists out while authorities stepped up efforts to get thousands of villagers to move to safety. Operations at the airport - the second-busiest in Indonesia - have been disrupted since the weekend when Mount Agung, in east Bali, began belching out huge clouds of smoke and ash, and authorities warned of an imminent threat of a major eruption. Bali s international airport started operating normally, air traffic control provider AirNav said in a statement, adding that operations resumed at 2:28 p.m. (0628 GMT). The reopening of the airport, which is about 60 km (37 miles) away from Mount Agung, followed a downgrade in an aviation warning to one level below the most serious, with the arrival of more favorable winds. We really hope that we actually get a flight, maybe today or tomorrow, to get back home, said tourist Nathan James, from the Australian city of Brisbane, waiting at the airport. A large plume of white and grey ash and smoke hovered over Agung on Wednesday, after night-time rain partially obscured a fiery glow at its peak. President Joko Widodo begged villagers living in a danger zone around the volcano to move to emergency centers. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the disaster mitigation agency said about 43,000 people had heeded advice to take shelter, but an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 people were living in the zone. The decision to resume flights followed an emergency meeting at the airport, when authorities weighing up weather conditions, tests and data from AirNav and other groups. Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 later showed there were flights departing and arriving at the airport although its general manager said if the wind changed direction the airport could be closed again at short notice. Agung looms over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,800 feet). Its last major eruption in 1963 killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages. Ash coated cars, roofs and roads to the southeast of the crater on Wednesday and children wore masks as they walked to school. Singapore Airlines Ltd (SIAL.SI) said it would resume flights while Australia s Qantas Airways Ltd (QAN.AX) said it and budget arm Jetstar would run 16 flights to Australia on Thursday to ferry home 3,800 stranded customers. Singapore Airlines and SilkAir were seeking approval to operate additional flights on Thursday, while budget offshoot Scoot said it would cease offering land and ferry transport to the city of Surabaya, on Java island, as it resumed flights to Bali. Virgin Australia plans to operate up to four recovery flights to Denpasar on Thursday. As the volcanic activity remains unpredictable, these flights may be canceled at short notice, it said on its website. The head of the weather agency at Bali airport, Bambang Hargiyono, said winds had begun to blow from the north to south, carrying ash toward the neighboring island of Lombok. He said the wind was expected to shift toward the southeast for the next three days , which should allow flights to operate. As many as 430 domestic and international flights had been disrupted on Wednesday. Authorities are urging villagers living up to 10 km (6 miles) from the volcano to move to emergency centers, but some are reluctant to leave homes and livestock. Those in the 8- to 10-km radius must truly take refuge for safety, Widodo told reporters. There must not be any victims. Interactive graphic: 'Mount Agung awakens' click tmsnrt.rs/2AayRVh Graphic: 'Ring of fire' click tmsnrt.rs/2AzR9jv ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia calls on U.S., South Korea not to hold military drills in December;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called on North Korea on Wednesday to stop its missile and nuclear tests and for the United States and South Korea not to hold military drills in December as it would inflame an already explosive situation. We strongly call on all concerned parties to stop this spiral of tension, he told the U.N. Security Council. It is essential to take a step back and weigh the consequences of each move. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras vote count shows president Hernandez edging ahead;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez on Wednesday edged ahead of his TV star rival in a contentious vote count that has dragged on for three days. With 81.77 percent of the ballot boxes counted, the election tribunal said both Hernandez and opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla had won 42.17 percent of the vote, though the incumbent had an advantage of 40 votes. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democratic Representative Gutierrez hints at 2020 U.S. presidential run;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez, who has announced he will not seek re-election to Congress in 2018, said on Wednesday he wanted to concentrate his energies “on the national level” and indicated he might be interested in a presidential run in 2020. Fox News reported earlier on Wednesday that Gutierrez was weighing such a bid. When asked by Reuters if he planned to run, Gutierrez, who has represented Chicago in the U.S. House of Representatives for the past quarter century, said he wanted to spend the first six months of 2018 touring the country “talking with as many people as possible.” “Does it mean going to Iowa? I certainly hope so,” Gutierrez said in an interview. Iowa traditionally holds the first Democratic and Republican party nominating contests for president. Candidates weighing presidential candidacies typically pay visits to the state well before they formally enter the race. “But it also means going to California and visiting farm workers there and visiting with farm workers in Florida ... and in Oregon and in Washington (state) and visiting with immigrant communities,” Gutierrez said. “I’m not retiring. I want to change my focus. I want to take my energy on a national level,” he said. “I can tell you that very, very clearly.” Republican President Donald Trump already has expressed his intention to seek re-election in 2020. While incumbent presidents often are favored to win, Democrats see Trump as particularly vulnerable given his low approval ratings in opinion polls. That has spurred speculation that many candidates could weigh challenging him. Former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, for example, has sent signals that he may run. Gutierrez, a 63-year-old lawmaker of Puerto Rican descent, has made immigration reform a signature issue. In August, he was arrested outside the White House while taking part in a protest against Trump’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that protects young people brought to the United States illegally as children. Gutierrez has sharply criticized the Trump administration’s response to the devastation in Puerto Rico from Hurricanes Maria and Irma. Gutierrez said he would explore possible campaign fundraising efforts. Although he would run as a Democrat, he would not seek the blessing of the Democratic Party establishment. “I’m not talking to DNC (Democratic National Committee) officials. I’m not going to talk to anybody within the Democratic Party structures because what I want to do is create a party structure independent of the Democratic Party,” he said. Regardless of whether he seeks the White House, Gutierrez said he wanted to play a big role in 2020 helping to encourage voting and political activism among Hispanics, a growing demographic group that leans strongly Democratic. When word leaked out that he was retiring from Congress, there was speculation Gutierrez might be planning a run for governor of Puerto Rico. On Wednesday, Gutierrez rejected the idea. “If it was president of the Republic of Puerto Rico, it would certainly be different,” said Gutierrez, who favors independence for the U.S. territory. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate Democrat presses Trump campaign advisers for Russia contacts;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee has asked four foreign policy advisers to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign for documents about their contacts with Russians and discussions about Russia. Senator Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday sent letters to former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, Sam Clovis, J.D. Gordon, and Walid Phares asking them for a range of materials about their contacts with Russians, as well as with each other and other Trump campaign advisers. Feinstein also asked some of the advisers to turn over any documents they have related to efforts to obtain or share “hacked” emails or other electronic data belonging to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Clinton herself, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee. She asked Gordon about efforts during the 2016 Republican presidential convention in Cleveland to soften proposed party platform language related to Russia and Ukraine. Convention delegate Diana Denman told Reuters in August 2016 she had proposed platform language urging the United States to provide “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine’s armed forces, but that Gordon told her he was going to speak to Trump about her proposal, which was not added to the platform. In an email to Reuters on Wednesday, Gordon said, “I’m always glad to clear up popular misconceptions, myths and blatant falsehoods surrounding all things Trump-Russia, like I’ve already done with other congressional committees. I look forward to a valuable exchange of information with the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well.” In her letter to Phares, Feinstein said she was interested in a meeting that he, Gordon, and Page allegedly held during the Cleveland convention with Sergei Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the United States. An aide to Phares said he maintains that Kislyak “was just one of many foreign diplomats present in the audience at a panel discussion” and that such an event “cannot fairly be described as a meeting with Russian officials.” Feinstein asked Page to turn over documents on trips he took to Russia in July and December 2016. In an email on Wednesday, Page said: “I hope if they can be somewhat reasonable in terms of supporting my efforts to deliver all of this domestic political intelligence to them down in the DC swamp, I’ll be happy to help with this latest tranche of irrelevant Witch Hunt information.” A lawyer for Clovis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.   Feinstein is cooperating with Republican Judiciary Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley on some but not all aspects of the committee’s investigation of Trump-Russia allegations. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-convict coal magnate says to run for Senate;CHARLESTON, W. Va. (Reuters) - Don Blankenship, the former CEO of coal company Massey Energy who was recently released from jail after a sentence for violating mine safety laws, said on Wednesday he plans to run for U.S. Senate representing West Virginia. “It’s true,” he told Reuters in an email, without elaborating. Local broadcaster WCHS-TV first reported the news earlier on Wednesday, saying Blankenship filed his registration papers this week to run as a Republican, making him an official candidate for the seat during 2018 elections. A Federal Election Commission spokeswoman said she had not yet seen the filing. Blankenship was sentenced to a year in prison in April 2016 for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards, following an explosion in 2010 at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 people. He is the most prominent American coal executive to be jailed for mine deaths. He was released in May 2017. He has maintained that his conviction was unfair and the accident at Upper Big Branch was distorted by the media. If Blankenship wins the Republican nomination, he would be up against incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin, who was governor at the time of the Upper Big Branch explosion and vehemently criticized Blankenship over the incident. Rival Republican Senate candidate Patrick Morrisey said he welcomed Blankenship’s entry into the race. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congressman Conyers not planning to resign: lawyer tells Detroit News;(Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Representative John Conyers has no immediate plans to resign after several women accused him of sexual misconduct, his lawyer told the Detroit News on Wednesday. “He’s not going to be forced out of office, and no one has told him he has to leave,” said attorney Arnold Reed, according to the newspaper. “He has not indicated he’s going to resign at this point,” Reed said of the 88-year-old congressman from Michigan. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nearly half of Americans oppose Republican tax bill: Reuters/Ipsos poll;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Opposition has grown among Americans to a Republican tax plan before the U.S. Congress, with 49 percent of people who were aware of the measure saying they opposed it, up from 41 percent in October, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday. Congressional Republicans are trying to rush their tax legislation to a vote on the Senate floor before the end of the week. President Donald Trump strongly backs the bill and wants to sign it into law before the end of the year. In addition to the 49 percent who said they opposed the Republican tax bill, 29 percent said they supported it and 22 percent said they “don’t know,” according to the Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll of 1,257 adults conducted from Thursday to Monday. When asked “who stands to benefit most” from the plan, more than half of all American adults surveyed selected either the wealthy or large U.S. corporations. Fourteen percent chose “all Americans,” 6 percent picked the middle class and 2 percent chose lower-income Americans. The tax bill being crafted in the Senate would slash the corporate tax rate, eliminate some taxes paid only by rich Americans and offer a mixed bag or temporary tax cuts for other individuals and families. As congressional discussion on the bill has unfolded, public opposition to it has risen, on average, following Trump’s unveiling of a nine-page “framework” on Sept. 27 that started the debate in earnest, Reuters/Ipsos polling showed. On Oct. 24, for example, among adults who said they had heard of the “tax reform plan recently proposed by congressional Republicans,” 41 percent said they opposed it, while 31 percent said they “don’t know” and just 28 percent said they supported it. Trump and his fellow Republicans are determined to make a tax code overhaul their first major legislative win since taking control of the White House and Congress in January. The House of Representatives on Nov. 16 approved its own tax bill. The Senate is expected to decide on Wednesday whether to begin debating its proposal, as the measure moves toward a decisive floor vote later this week. The two chambers would need to reconcile differences between their plans before legislation could be sent to the White House for Trump’s signature. In the Nov. 23-27 poll, 59 percent of Republicans supported the tax bill, 26 percent said they did not know and 15 percent opposed it. Among Democrats, 82 percent opposed it, 11 percent said they did not know and 8 percent supported it. The online poll has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawmaker says House intel panel near consensus on NSA spy program;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Members of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee are close to an agreement on how to overhaul a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program and hope to complete legislation soon, the top Democrat on the panel said on Wednesday. Representative Adam Schiff said he had proposed a compromise that would let intelligence agencies query a database of information on Americans in national security cases without a warrant, but would require a warrant to use the information in other cases, such as those involving serious violent crime. “This would prevent law enforcement from simply using the database as a vehicle to go fishing, but at the same time it would preserve the operational capabilities of the program,” Schiff told reporters. At issue is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. U.S. intelligence officials consider Section 702 among the most vital of tools at their disposal to thwart national security threats. But the program, classified details of which were exposed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, incidentally gathers communications of Americans, such as when they compete with foreigners. Currently, those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant. Congress must renew Section 702 in some form by Dec. 31 or the program will expire. Schiff said he believed the compromise would be acceptable to many lawmakers, as well as the intelligence community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is similar to legislation backed by the House Judiciary Committee. However, there are still deep divides in both the Senate and the House over what to do about Section 702, as lawmakers balance demands for more privacy protections with spy agencies’ desire to preserve what they see as a valuable tool. There are different renewal proposals in the House and Senate. One Senate bill would not require any warrants, which Schiff said he did not think could pass the House. It was not clear whether lawmakers will vote on a standalone 702 bill or whether it would be part of a broader must-pass bill, such as a spending measure Congress must pass next month to keep the government open. Another possibility would be a short-term extension to keep the current surveillance system in place and give Congress more time to come up with a solution that could become law. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. arms sales jump 25 percent in FY 2017;(Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements foreign arms sales, on Wednesday announced sales of $41.93 billion for fiscal 2017, a 25 percent rise from a year earlier. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense, said sales included $32.02 billion funded by partner nations through the Foreign Military Sales system and $6.04 billion funded by the State Department's Foreign Military Financing. (bit.ly/2AfrSd7) ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Black caucus members urge U.S. Representative Conyers to resign: sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of Democratic U.S. Representative John Conyers’ colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are pressing the 88-year-old lawmaker to resign amid sexual harassment allegations against him, two senior House Democratic aides said on Tuesday. The aides, who asked not to be identified, did not say how many lawmakers were involved in the effort but confirmed a report by CNN that it was under way. One aide said Democratic Representative Cedric Richmond, the CBC chairman, was active in the move to get Conyers to step down and end a House of Representatives career that began with his first election in 1964. Richmond issued a statement after meeting with Conyers on Tuesday that said: “Any decision to resign from office before the ethics investigation is complete is John’s decision to make.” Richmond said he had a “very candid conversation” with Conyers “about the seriousness of the allegations against him, which he vehemently denies.” “The Congressional Black Caucus calls on Congress to treat all members who have been accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other crimes with parity, and we call on Congress and the public to afford members with due process as these very serious allegations are investigated,” Richmond said. The Michigan congressman is the longest-serving House member and the dean of the CBC. Aides to Conyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On Sunday, Conyers said he was stepping down as the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee pending a congressional ethics investigation. He has denied allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances to some women who worked for him, but said his office had resolved a harassment case with a payment and no admission of guilt. Conyers’ troubles come as sexual harassment accusations in recent weeks have ensnared former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein and other politicians, including Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama and Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota. The CBC was founded in 1971 and has 49 members in the House and Senate. It is an influential voice within the Democratic Party. Following Conyers’ announcement on Sunday that he was stepping down as the ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called for “zero tolerance” on sexual harassment. If Conyers were to resign, a special election would be held to fill his seat. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to host Libyan Prime Minister Sarraj at White House on Friday;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will host Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj at the White House on Friday for talks on counterterrorism cooperation and ways to expand bilateral engagement, the White House in a statement on Wednesday. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. to meet with House panel Dec. 6: CNN;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., will meet with the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee next week, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing multiple sources with knowledge of the agreement. Representatives for Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the panel’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by Trump’s campaign, and Representative Adam Schiff, the panel’s top Democrat, said they could not comment on whether Trump’s eldest son was going to appear before the committee. Schiff told reporters that he could not comment on when or if Donald Trump Jr. might appear, but described him as a key witness. The younger Trump played a central role in his father’s campaign. “Obviously, when Donald Trump Jr. comes before the committee there are innumerable areas that we’re going to be interested in. It’s hard to find a more central figure in this,” Schiff told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. Schiff also said he thought it would “very likely” be necessary to bring the president’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, to testify again before the intelligence panel. The panel questioned Kushner behind closed doors in July. A lawyer for Donald Trump Jr., Alan Futerfas, did not respond to a request for comment. CNN said the meeting with lawmakers would be held next Wednesday. The House intelligence panel is one of the three main congressional committees, as well as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller, investigating the issue. In September, the younger Trump spoke privately with Senate Judiciary Committee staff. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Senator Richard Burr, has said his panel planned to interview Donald Trump Jr. in December. Trump’s son, who has denied any wrongdoing, met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in June 2016. Earlier this month, he released exchanges he had with the Twitter account of WikiLeaks, which released emails stolen from Democrats, during the campaign. The House Intelligence Committee will hear on Thursday from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose contacts with Russians during the campaign have also come under scrutiny, as well as from Erik Prince, who founded the private military contractor Blackwater and was a supporter of Trump’s presidential campaign. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House does not expect U.S. government shutdown;ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday that it does not expect the government to shut down next month, but has contingency plans in place if the U.S. Congress fails to reach a deal on funding the government by a Dec. 8 deadline. “We are not anticipating a shutdown. We think that we’ll be able to work together. But the developments of the last 24 hours are discouraging,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters traveling with Trump. Republicans control both chambers of the U.S. Congress, but their leaders will likely need to rely on at least some Democratic votes to pass the funding measure. “There are always contingencies in place. We hope it doesn’t get to that,” Shah said. Democratic leaders in Congress skipped a meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday that was expected to have been focused on the budget, raising the risk of a government shutdown next month with both sides far apart on the terms of an agreement. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, pulled out of the White House meeting because of a tweet that Trump sent earlier in the day attacking them as weak on illegal immigration and bent on raising taxes. Democrats have said they will demand help for young people brought to the United States illegally as children as part of their price for providing votes on the budget measure. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Conyers should resign if accusations are 'founded': No. 2 House Democrat;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said on Wednesday that Democratic representative John Conyers should resign if the sexual harassment allegations against him are found to be true. “Notwithstanding the credibility of the witnesses, we have a process to determine: were these allegations founded? And if they’re founded, yes, he should resign,” Hoyer said in an interview with MSNBC. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate to vote Wednesday on opening debate on tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate will vote later Wednesday on whether to begin debate on a Republican tax bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the chamber. “Today the Senate will take the next important step toward fixing the tax code and helping middle-class families keep more of their hard earned money,” McConnell, a Republican, said as he opened the Senate. Members would vote to begin debate on the bill, he added. Democrats oppose the legislation, but only a simple majority is needed to start debate under special rules governing the tax legislation, which aims to cut taxes to businesses and individuals. Republicans have a 52-48 majority in the Senate. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate to vote on motion to proceed on tax bill: lawmaker;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a motion to proceed on a Republican tax bill on Wednesday, a Republican lawmaker said, an action that could allow the chamber to vote on whether to adopt the tax-cut legislation as early as Thursday. “Today we have a pretty good vote, motion to proceed on our tax reform,” Senator Dean Heller, a member of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, told a news conference. The Senate was due to convene at noon ET (1700 GMT). “I’m going to bet that the motion to proceed passes and we’ll be well on our way to give tax reform to the American people as we move forward,” Heller added. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump was wrong to retweet UK far-right group: British PM May's spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump was wrong to have posted anti-Islam videos on Twitter that had originally been published by a leader of Britain First, a fringe, far-right party, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday. “It is wrong for the President to have done this,” the spokesman said. “Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency tolerance and respect.” ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House Speaker Ryan says up to Conyers whether to resign;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday commended Representative John Conyers for stepping down as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee in the face of sexual misconduct allegations, and said it was up to Conyers to decide if he should resign from the House. “I know what I would do if this happened to me. I will leave it up to him to decide what he wants to do. I think he made the right decision in stepping down from his leadership position,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No. 2 Republican in U.S. House sees conference on tax bill soon;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Wednesday the Senate would likely vote on its tax bill this week and that lawmakers from both chambers would get together “as quickly as possible” to resolve differences between their two bills. “I know the Senate is continuing to work hard to pass tax reform,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters. “We want to make sure we move to go to conference as quickly as possible.” ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Who are Britain First, whose leader's posts Trump re-tweeted?;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has re-tweeted anti-Islam videos originally posted by Jayda Fransen, a leader of a far-right British party convicted earlier in November of abusing a Muslim woman. Fransen is deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Britain First group. Here are some details about her organization: Britain First was founded in 2011 by leader Paul Golding with a membership of three individuals. It describes itself as a “patriotic political party and street movement”, although critics denounce it as a far-right, racist organization. “Britain First is committed to preserving our ancestral ethnic and cultural heritage, traditions, customs and values,” it says on its website. It wants to deport all illegal immigrants, halt all further immigration, and introduce “a comprehensive ban on the religion of Islam” with headscarves being outlawed in public. “Anyone found to be promoting the ideology of Islam will be subject to deportation or imprisonment,” its policy platform states. It holds protests across the country, usually attended by a couple of hundred supporters at most, many of whom hold white crosses because the group argues Christianity in Britain is being threatened by immigration and the growth of militant Islam. Golding was a former senior figure in the far-right British National Party and was elected a local councillor in 2009. In his biography on the group’s website it says he was “sent to prison in 2016 for confronting a Muslim hate preacher who was secretly recorded saying it’s okay for Muslims to keep sex slaves”. Golding stood for election as London mayor in May 2016, winning 31,372 votes, 1.2 percent of all cast. Fransen, who was elected deputy leader in 2014, was convicted of religiously aggravated harassment in November 2017, and both she and Golding are facing further similar charges. The group gained prominence in June 2016 when Labour lawmaker Jo Cox was shot dead on the street by a Nazi-obsessed loner who witnesses said had been shouting “Britain first” during the attack. Fransen told Reuters the killer had nothing to do with her group. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WIFE OF JOHN CONYERS CONFRONTS MEDIA At Her House: ‘Do you go and stalk white people’s houses?’ [Video];If you live in Michigan, you know about the controversial wife of Congressman John Conyers. She s had her share of scandals and has even served 3 years in Federal prison for bribery. But this IS Detroit so anything goes Watch the video below and you ll see her in action pulling the race card Monica Conyers wasn t in a talkative mood Wednesday morning as the media camped outside her house looking for her embattled husband, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit. John Conyers has come under fire because of sexual harassment allegations made against him and how they were handled by his office.The Detroit Free Press reports:As she was leaving the family s house Wednesday morning, Monica Conyers said: I ll make a comment when you all disclose to me who has made the allegations. Monica Conyers became irritated with the media attention then pulled the race card: Do you all go and stalk other people s houses? Monica Conyers asked the media camped outside her house. Do you go and stalk white people s houses or just come to the black neighborhoods and stalk our houses? Monica Conyers, wife of John Conyers, accuses the media of stalking black people. Typical, a Dem goes right to race baiting. It s pretty pathetic at this point. pic.twitter.com/v6xToqEbqW Based Monitored (@BasedMonitored) November 29, 2017Earlier, her son, John Conyers III, said it was disconcerting to see how his father was being treated in the wake of the allegations regarding the longest-serving member of the House.John Conyers III spoke to reporters early Wednesday outside his family s Detroit home, saying it s very unfortunate to see him fight so long for so many people and to automatically have the allegations assumed to be true. Conyers said her husband wasn t home and that she didn t know his whereabouts HERE S A GREAT EXAMPLE OF WHAT A NASTY WOMAN MONICA CONYERS IS: Watching this video will help anyone who is curious about why the city of Detroit continues to be bailed out of trouble like an irresponsible child with a trust fund. This video of Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers (D), wife of US Representative John Conyers helps to explain the type of character Detroit voters have been placing their trust in for decades. This is an older video, but definitely worth sharing.Shortly after this debate with an 8th grader, City Councilwoman Monica Conyers was found guilty of bribery and sent to prison for 3 years.Former Detroit City councilwoman, Monica Conyers was sentenced to more than three years in prison for bribery after a federal judge refused to set aside her guilty plea during a stormy court hearing dominated by a dispute over evidence of other payoffs.As guards cleared the packed courtroom, Monica Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal. The wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wanted to withdraw her guilty plea, suggesting she was the victim of badgering last year when she admitted taking cash to support a Houston company s sludge contract with the city.But U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn, reviewing a transcript of the June hearing, said Conyers had denied any coercion and voluntarily pleaded guilty to conspiracy.Conyers, 45, is the biggest catch so far in the FBI s wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Detroit city government. Nine people have pleaded guilty, including two former directors of the downtown convention center, and prosecutors have promised more charges are coming. Bribery is a betrayal of trust, Cohn told Conyers after announcing a 37-month prison term for her egregious crime. She quit the council after pleading guilty in June.Conyers plea deal was limited to taking bribes to support a contract with Synagro worth $47 million a year. But the recent trial of her former aide, Sam Riddle, exposed a series of alleged schemes involving others making payoffs to do business at city hall.Prosecutors said Riddle and Conyers collected $69,500 by shaking people down and urged Cohn to consider the alleged crimes when sentencing her. Defense lawyer Steve Fishman firmly objected and demanded a separate hearing.Conyers declared, I m not going to jail for something I didn t do. Before the hearing, Conyers moved around the courtroom like a playful host, blowing kisses to supporters while wearing dark sunglasses. Her husband, who has an office in the federal courthouse, was not in the courtroom. Spokesman Jonathan Godfrey said he didn t know his whereabouts. Via: Huff PostDespite her going to prison, losing her political job and often embarrassing the family with her behavior in City Hall, U.S. Rep. John Conyers does not want a divorce from his feisty wife, Monica Conyers, his lawyer told the Free Press on Monday.The former Detroit city councilwoman filed for divorce last month, claiming the marriage has fallen apart beyond repair. But her 86-year-old husband wants to work things out. Detroit Free Press;politics;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., Britain, France accused of snubbing anti-nuclear Nobel Prize;OSLO (Reuters) - The anti-nuclear group which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize accused the United States, Britain and France on Wednesday of snubbing its disarmament work by planning to send only second-rank diplomats to the award ceremony next month. It s some kind of protest against the Nobel Peace Prize, Beatrice Fihn, director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), told Reuters of a plan by the three nations to send only deputy chiefs of mission. They like their nuclear weapons very much and don t like it when we try to ban them, she said, accusing the three of wrongly opposing ICAN s work when North Korea and the United States are exchanging threats to use nuclear weapons . The annual December 10 Nobel prize ceremony in Oslo, attended by King Harald and Queen Sonja, is the highlight of the diplomatic calendar in Norway. The prize comprises a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque for $1.1 million. Olav Njoelstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, confirmed the three nations would send only deputies. He said the awards committee always preferred to see chiefs of mission. That being said, we are neither surprised nor offended by the fact that sometime foreign governments prefer to stay away from the ceremony in protest or, as in this case, because they prefer to be represented by their deputy chiefs of mission, he told Reuters. The Nobel Peace Prize is, after all, a political prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee takes notice of the joint decision of the British, French and U.S. embassies, he said. The British embassy confirmed it was sending a deputy ambassador and said in a statement the UK is committed to the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons. We share this goal with our partners across the international community including U.S. and France. The U.S. and French embassies were not immediately available for comment. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Kenneth Braithwaite to the post of ambassador in Oslo, currently held by an acting ambassador. ICAN, a coalition of grassroots non-government organizations in more than 100 nations, campaigned successfully for a U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted by 122 nations in July this year. But the agreement is not signed by - and would not apply to - any of the states that already have nuclear arms, which include the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, as well as India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel neither confirms nor denies the widespread assumption that it controls the Middle East s only nuclear arsenal. It was not clear whether other nuclear powers would send Oslo ambassadors to the Nobel ceremony. The absence of ambassadors from the United States, Britain and France is disappointing but at the same time we are focused on getting a majority of states in the world to join this treaty, Fihn said. She said the three nuclear states were exerting pressure on other nations not to engage in this treaty . ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans in House seek protection for municipal bonds in tax bill;(Reuters) - A group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday urged keeping federal tax breaks on private activity bonds sold by the developers of hospitals, nursing homes, airports and toll roads to reduce costs. A tax bill in Congress to eliminate that exemption, plus tax breaks on advance refunding bonds used to lower interest costs, stunned the $3.8 trillion municipal debt market. U.S. Representative Randy Hultgren, an Illinois Republican and co-chair of the Congressional Municipal Finance Caucus, said a letter he and 20 other Congressmen signed to object to the proposals was aimed at highlighting the value of tax-free debt issuance. “It’s really important for projects. We’ve seen multiple returns in jobs created,” he said, adding that supporters will continue to push to retain these tax exemptions as the bills work their way through Congress. The proposals are incompatible with President Donald Trump’s push for greater infrastructure investment, the letter stated. “This change in policy contradicts the growing need of the federal government to rely more, not less, on states and municipalities, as well as the private sector, to help to finance needed infrastructure in a market driven, cost effective manner,” the letter said. It added that advance refunding of municipal debt issues over the last five years will translate into saving taxpayers in every state billions of dollars in interest costs. Legislation that passed the House earlier this month, as well as a bill pending in the Senate would disallow states, cities, schools and other issuers from refinancing on a tax-exempt basis bonds that are more than 90 days from the date the debt can be bought back by an issuer. This is done by issuers in order to save money by taking advantage of lower market interest rates. Current refundings of debt within a 90-day call date window would remain tax-exempt. The House bill would also yank the tax exemption for new private activity bonds (PABs) used by nonprofit organizations and governments to finance projects including hospitals, nursing homes, colleges, affordable housing, economic development, ports, toll roads and airports at lower costs. Tim Fisher, legislative and federal affairs coordinator for the Council of Development Finance Agencies, said the letter may help if and when a Congressional conference committee meets to hash out differences between the House and Senate bills. “(The letter) is a good sign that shows certain House Republicans are willing to go on the record,” he said. The elimination of PABs would raise nearly $39 billion for the federal government between 2018 and 2027, while removing tax-exemption for advance refunding bonds would generate $17.3 billion over that time period, according to an estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Franco-German fighter jet project likely to be opened to other countries;BERLIN (Reuters) - A Franco-German program to develop a European fighter jet will likely be widened to include other countries to lower costs, officials with the German defense ministry and Europe s Airbus said on Wednesday. France and Germany unveiled the plans in July, burying past rivalries as part of a raft of measures to tighten defense and security cooperation. Companies in Britain, Italy and Sweden have expressed interest in participating in the multi-billion-euro program, that is widely expected to be led by Airbus and France s Dassault Aviation. Bertram Gorlo, Airbus Defence and Space s head of key account management for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, told a panel at the Berlin Security Conference that details were still being worked out, but he expected the program to be expanded to include more partners than just Germany and France. I think ... we will have to ask for the support of other nations, he said. France and Germany aim to come up with a roadmap by mid-2018 for jointly leading development of the new aircraft to replace their existing fleets of warplanes. Brigadier General Gerald Funke, head of the strategic defense planning and concepts division at the German defense ministry, said development of the next-generation aircraft system would likely begin the 2020s with the goal of seeing it enter into service in 2045. In the meantime, he said Germany was looking at buying an existing aircraft to replace its aging fleet of 85 Tornado jets beginning in 2025. Funke said it would be tough to avoid the national rivalries over jobs and other considerations that plagued earlier international programs like the A400M military transport plane. In Europe, we re in a world where we still have national interests, industrial interests. And the more partners you have the more complicated it is, he said. On the other hand, I m also fully convinced that we will not be able to afford a national solution alone. The key is the will of the partners to cooperate and to find compromise. Gorlo told the panel that Airbus successfully coordinated with many partners on each of its commercial airliners. The question is less about the number of partners, it s more about the governance model under which we contract, Gorlo said. He said the German defense ministry had already expressed interest in setting up a lead nation or lead industry concept for the new fighter program, which could help ensure a more efficient and streamlined development process. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to do whatever necessary if banking sector affected by U.S. trial: Simsek;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Wednesday Turkey will do whatever is necessary if its banking sector is affected by the U.S. trial of a Turkish bank executive in a case regarding a conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran. Speaking at a conference in Istanbul, Simsek said Turkey s banking sector has a great capacity to deal with shocks. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Banks view turning branches to subsidiaries as Brexit 'red line';LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign banks in Britain view any attempt to make them convert their branches to subsidiaries after Brexit as a red line which would likely cause them to rethink their presence in the country, an industry report said on Wednesday. Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Sam Woods said earlier this year that branches of European Union banks in London might have to apply to become subsidiaries after Britain leaves, a costly exercise that involves building up capital and reserves locally. Several European banks base the bulk of their investment banking activities, such as sales and trading, in London, operating via a branch structure that relies on capital held by their parent and are mainly supervised by their home regulator. A requirement to subsidiarize was a clear red line for most branches, with both EU and non- EU branches confirming that a subsidiarization approach would cause them to reassess their presence in the UK, possibly leading to the closure of the UK branch, the report by the Association of Foreign Banks (AFB) and law firm Norton Rose Fulbright found after surveying senior executives from global banks. Woods has said that he will have to decide by Christmas if branches of EU financial firms in London must convert to subsidiaries and be directly supervised by the (Prudential Regulation Authority) PRA. British regulators have been comfortable with this situation with Britain as part of the EU, but once Britain leaves they will want these banks to have enough capital to support their business and ensure that British taxpayers are not left footing the bill in a crisis. The focus so far has been on banks based in Britain applying for licenses to operate on the continent once Britain leaves the EU. Deutsche Bank has 9,000 staff based in Britain, while BNP Paribas has around 6,500 staff in the country, where it bases the bulk of its investment banking business and Societe Generale has some 4,000 staff in Britain. A significant majority of EU branch respondents said that enforced subsidiarization would cause them to reconsider their presence in the UK, with the two most likely outcomes being reallocation of regulated activity into the EU, or closure of London branches and withdrawal from the UK altogether, the report added. A report from Boston Consulting has estimated the switch to a full subsidiary structure could cost European banks around 40 billion euros ($47 billion) in extra capital Some respondents said that one solution would be to allow branches to continue operating where the parent entity is in a similarly regulated market and only insist on subsidiary status if there was UK deposit taking activity. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ICRC buying fuel to pump clean water in Yemen as 'last resort';GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday it was making a stop-gap purchase of fuel so as to provide clean water to one million people in the Yemeni cities of Hodeidah and Taiz for one month. The fuel shortage in Yemen has become critical under the Saudi-led coalition s blockade, partially lifted this week, leaving water systems in nine cities without fuel to run pumps, ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said. As a last resort and in light of the large and urgent needs...we are purchasing fuel to supply the urban water corporations in Hodeidah and Taiz with fuel, enough to operate their water pumps for one month, Jaquemet told Reuters. The ICRC is buying 750,000 liters of fuel for the two cities, she said, calling it an exceptional stop-gap measure . The lack of fuel has a cascading impact on several vital sectors - water and sanitation as well as health and food, as prices have risen sharply, she said. Fuel is needed to transport goods and run hospital generators and maintain cold chains for vaccines and medicines. Saudi Arabia and its allies closed air, land and sea access to the Arabian Peninsula country on Nov. 6, to stop what it calls a flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards its capital Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons. A first aid ship, carrying 5,500 tonnes of flour docked in the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah on the Red Sea on Sunday. Humanitarian aid has started coming in and it s a very welcome first step but we need commercial imports, Jaquemet said. ICRC trucks have brought medical material into Yemen this week, mainly badly needed dialysis material, she said. A shipment of kits for treating trauma patients is expected to berth in Aden shortly, she added. These war-wounded kits will enable surgeries for over 400 people and are to be distributed to 10 hospitals and 15 field hospitals across north and south Yemen. The ICRC is stepping up assistance to combat an outbreak of diphtheria in Ibb governorate, including protective equipment for hospital staff to avoid spread of the highly-infectious respiratory disease, she said. Some suspected cases and 20 deaths have been recorded in 13 governorates, more than 80 percent in Ibb, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. Yemen is also reeling from a cholera epidemic, with 960,065 suspected cases and 2,219 deaths reported since April, according to the latest WHO figures. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says ICBM test used new launch vehicle, showed successful warhead re-entry;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) it test-fired on Wednesday was launched from a newly developed vehicle and that the its warhead could withstand the pressure of re-entering the earth s atmosphere. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally guided the missile test and said the new launcher was impeccable , state media said. He described the new vehicle as a breakthrough . Observers and analysts have cast doubt on North Korea s ability to master the technology needed to design a warhead capable of withstanding the enormous pressure of re-entry into the earth s atmosphere and suggested the isolated country may still be years away from developing a credible delivery vehicle for a nuclear weapon. But Wednesday s launch re-confirmed the safety of a warhead in the atmospheric re-entry environment, state media said, without elaborating. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No Brexit deal would be 'a very bad deal' warns EU's Barnier;BERLIN (Reuters) - European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Wednesday that the bloc had to be, and was, united in dealing with Britain on its withdrawal from the bloc and warned that failure to reach agreement would be very bad. No deal would be a very bad deal, Barnier said, switching from French to English in a speech to Germany s BDA employers association. It was his third speech to a German audience on Brexit in the day so far. Barnier also said he hoped to have made progress on the principles of Britain s divorce from the EU by next week and that London knew it could not have one foot in the single market and one foot out of it. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish PM says progress being made in Brexit border talks;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Progress is being made in talks between Britain and the EU on how to avoid setting up a physical infrastructure on Northern Ireland s border after the United Kingdom leaves the EU in 2019, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday. I think it is fair to say that progress is being made but not that is sufficient at this stage, Varadkar told parliament. We are not at a decision point at the moment. Things are changing on a daily basis and are rapidly evolving, he said. The EU has named the border as one of three issues on which sufficient progress must be made in order to allow progress to talks on a future trade agreement with Britain, crucial for British businesses. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwean pastor found not guilty of subversion;HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean court found a pastor not guilty on Wednesday of attempting to subvert the government in a case seen as a barometer of judicial independence under new President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Evan Mawarire was a strident critic of former President Robert Mugabe who resigned last week after 37 years in power week under pressure from the army and ruling ZANU-PF party. Mawarire s #ThisFlag movement last year organized the biggest protests in a decade against Mugabe over a deteriorating economy, cash shortages and accusations of government corruption. He was arrested in September and faced up to 20 years in jail if convicted. Mugabe s critics say he used the courts as a tool of repression. They want to see if Mnangagwa s government breaks with the past, particularly given that he served in Mugabe s administration since independence from Britain in 1980. Amnesty International said in a statement they hoped that the ruling represents a new beginning for the country. Mawarire said he would keep up the pressure. If they (the new government) do to us what Robert Mugabe s government did to us, we will do the same thing to them that we have done to Robert Mugabe, Mawarire told reporters in court room soon after High Court Judge Priscilla Chigumba s judgment. This could be evidence of a freer Zimbabwe but this case had no legs to stand on. I think a lot more needs to be seen to determine whether this is a free judiciary going forward, he said. Chigumba said state prosecutors failed to show evidence that Mawarire s actions were a criminal offense. She also found him not guilty of inciting people to commit public violence. He urged passive resistance, he urged prayers for peace. How can prayers for peace be considered an unconstitutional means of removing a constitutional government? said Chigumba. There was a sigh of relief from the handful of people in court when the ruling was made. Mnangagwa must address a crisis facing Zimbabwe s economy that includes balance of payments problems and rampant inflation and steer the country towards an election next year. Britain could take steps to stabilize Zimbabwe s currency system and extend a bridging loan to help it clear World Bank and African Development Bank arrears, but such support depends on democratic progress , Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said. Those are indeed the things that we would try to do to help Zimbabwe forward, but we ve got to see how the democratic process unfolds, he said on Wednesday on the sidelines of an African Union-EU summit in Abidjan. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British negotiators still working on Brexit deal: Treasury minister;LONDON (Reuters) - British negotiators are still working out a deal with the European Union, Treasury minister Liz Truss said on Wednesday, calling reports that the government has agreed a sum of money to pay the Brexit bill media speculation . Truss told parliament that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed in the talks for Britain to leave the EU, saying it would be wrong of her to cut across the ongoing negotiations in Brussels by commenting on the reports. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German court rules 'bookkeeper of Auschwitz' fit to go to jail;BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court ruled on Wednesday that a 96-year-old German known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz was fit to go to prison, rejecting his plea for the sentence to be suspended. Oskar Groening, who is physically frail, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2015 for his role in the murder of 300,000 people at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. However, he had not started serving his sentence due to a legal argument about his health. Prosecutors said in August that a medical examination showed Groening was fit to start serving his prison sentence, though Groening s lawyer disputed that. On Wednesday a court in the northern German town of Celle said: The higher regional court thinks, based on expert opinion, that the convicted man is able to serve his term despite his advanced age. It said enforcing Groening s sentence would not breach his fundamental rights and added that special needs related to his age could be catered for in prison. In a 2015 court battle seen as one of the last major Holocaust trials, prosecutors said although Groening did not kill anyone himself while working at Auschwitz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, he helped support the regime responsible for mass murder by sorting bank notes seized from trainloads of arriving Jews. Groening, who admitted he was morally guilty, said he was an enthusiastic Nazi when he was sent to work at Auschwitz in 1942, at the age of 21. Some 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust carried out under Adolf Hitler. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Danish divers find arm assumed to be that of dismembered journalist: police;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Divers searching waters near Copenhagen found a second arm on Wednesday that police said probably belonged to Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who died in August on board a Danish inventor s submarine. The divers found Wall s left arm on Nov. 21 in the same area of Koge Bay near the Danish capital. Police said the second arm, like the first one, had been weighed down by pieces of metal to prevent it floating to the surface. The arm has not been investigated yet but it was found in the same area where we found the first arm and it was weighed down in the same way, police spokesman Jens Moller Jensen said in a statement. Coroners will examine the arm on Thursday. Danish inventor Peter Madsen has admitted to dismembering Wall on board his submarine and dumping her body parts in the sea, but he denies murdering her and also denies a charge of sexual assault without intercourse. Wall, a freelance journalist who was researching a story on Madsen, went missing after he took her out to sea in his homebuilt 17-metre (56-foot) submarine in August. Wall s cause of death has yet to be determined. On Aug. 23, police identified a headless female torso that washed ashore in Copenhagen as Wall s. In October, police said they had recovered her head and legs. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Courtroom where war crimes defendant drank 'poison' now crime scene: judge;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Dutch police have declared the courtroom where a Bosnian Croat war crimes defendant said he drank poison on Wednesday during his appeals verdict a crime scene, the presiding judge said. Slobodan Praljak, 72, was receiving medical treatment while judge Carmel Agius continued to read the judgment in the final case the United Nations Yugoslav tribunal will hear before it closes next month. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech government resigns, making way for election winner Babis;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech center-left government of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka stepped down on Wednesday, making way for billionaire Andrej Babis, who won an election last month, to take power in time for an EU summit in December. The government approved its resignation, the resignation will be delivered to the president today, Sobotka told reporters after a regular government session. Sobotka s coalition government was the first in 15 years to complete a full four-year term and presided over robust economic growth that helped cut unemployment to the lowest level in the EU and push up wages at the fastest pace in a decade. However, voters tired of politics as usual opted for anti-establishment candidates, punishing traditional parties at the polls. Babis s ANO party, with pledges to fight political corruption and run the state with a business touch, was the biggest benefactor of this shift despite being part of the outgoing cabinet with Sobotka s Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats. ANO has failed to convince any of the other eight parliamentary parties to join a coalition. Babis has instead sought a minority cabinet, expected to be appointed by President Milos Zeman on Dec. 13 and take power immediately. This would enable Babis to attend the summit of EU leaders on Dec. 14-15, where the main topic will be progress in negotiations with Britain over its departure from the EU. Parties have shunned Babis, a businessman worth $4 billion and ranked by Forbes as the second richest Czech, because of police charges he illegally received a 2 million euro EU subsidy a decade ago for a farm and convention center by hiding ownership. He denies any wrongdoing. As a lawmaker, he has immunity from prosecution, which the outgoing parliament voted to suspend but which comes into effect again with the new parliament. Some lawmakers who voted to allow him to face prosecution in the past have hinted they will uphold his immunity, suspending proceedings for this parliamentary term. Only the small Communist party has said so far that it could consider tolerating Babis s minority government, but its 15 votes are not enough to secure victory in a confidence vote in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies, where ANO holds 78 seats. Initial votes in the new parliament have shown ANO voting along with the Communists as well as the far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party, but the latter has so far said it would not give backing or tolerance to Babis in a confidence vote. Once appointed prime minister, Babis would remain in the position even if he loses a confidence vote, pending talks on an alternative solution. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greece charges nine over links to banned Turkish group;ATHENS (Reuters) - Nine Turkish citizens were charged in Greece with terrorism-related offences on Wednesday, accused of hoarding explosives and of links to an outlawed militant organization responsible for suicide bombings in Turkey. The arrest of eight men and a woman in early-morning raids at three locations in central Athens on Tuesday came days before an expected state visit by Tayyip Erdogan, the first by a Turkish president to Greece in 65 years. Greece says the two events are unrelated. Police officials said they were being questioned for alleged links to the leftist DHKP/C, a far-left group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. Their lawyer said the individuals, who have not been named, were struggling against a fascist regime and had denied any wrongdoing. They were charged with setting up and being members of a criminal organization, terrorist-related acts of supply and possession of explosive materials, illegal possession of firearms, smoke bombs and fire crackers, court sources said. The individuals, escorted handcuffed into a central Athens court wearing bullet proof vests, have not entered a formal plea. They are refugees, lawyer Alexandra Zorbala said. Some have sought, others have received asylum ... they are fighters who are struggling against a fascist regime, against torture and thousands of arrests. . One of the charges they face is resisting arrest. At least one of the defendants entered the courthouse with a black eye. One of the detainees had been wanted by Greek police in connection with an arms and explosives haul off the Greek island of Chios, close to the Turkish coast, in 2013. Turkey s Erdogan is widely expected to visit Greece in December, although his visit has not been officially announced. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;GCC summit to go ahead despite Qatar row, diplomats say;KUWAIT (Reuters) - An annual summit of Gulf Arab heads of state will convene in Kuwait on Dec. 5 and 6, Gulf officials said on Wednesday, despite an ongoing dispute between some members of group. A rift between the Gulf Cooperation Council members Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on one side, and Qatar on the other has put this year s annual meeting in doubt. A senior Kuwaiti official confirmed on Wednesday that the meeting would take place on Dec. 5 and 6, but said the level of representation was not clear yet. Two Gulf diplomats also said Kuwait, which had led unsuccessful mediation efforts between the two sides, would try again to use the meeting to resolve the rift. The crisis, which began in June, revolve around allegations by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt that Qatar supports terrorism, a charge Doha denies. Qatar says the four countries are trying to force Doha to fall in line with their own foreign policy views. The U.S.-allied council was founded in 1980 as a bulwark against bigger neighbors Iran and Iraq. Bahrain said last month it will not attend the summit if Qatar does not change its policies and Qatar should have its membership in the six-nation group suspended. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine troops kill 14 Maoist rebels in clash: army;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine soldiers have killed 14 Maoist guerrillas in an offensive south of the capital, Manila, an army officer said on Wednesday, days after President Rodrigo Duterte ended peace talks with the rebels. More than 40,000 people had been killed in nearly 50 years of fighting between the leftist guerrillas and government forces, a conflict that has stunted economic growth in resource-rich rural areas. Duterte, who took power last year, had raised hopes for peace with the communists as well as with Muslim insurgents in the south of the predominantly Roman Catholic country, but peace has proved elusive. This is a big blow to their organization, Major Mikko Magisa, executive officer of the army s 202nd Brigade, told reporters, referring to the late Tuesday clash in Batangas province. Five soldiers had been wounded in the 20-minute clash involving army and air force commandoes, he said. The bodies of 13 rebels were found, including a suspected secretary and a platoon leader of the guerrilla unit, he said. One of two wounded rebels who were captured died in hospital. Duterte signed a proclamation ending peace talks with the communists last week after complaining that rebel violence had continued during the negotiations. Talks, which have been held intermittently since 1986, were revived in August last year, and were brokered by Norway. Government troops have been ordered to be on alert for movements by the estimated 3,800 leftist guerrillas, military officials have said. Government troops have in recent months been engaged in the biggest battle in the Philippines since World War Two, with Islamist militants who occupied a southern town for several months. (Amends to show peace has been elusive, paragraph three) ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump urges China's Xi to convince North Korea to end provocations: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to exert Beijing s pressure on North Korea after Pyongyang said it successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the White House said. Trump emphasized the need for China to use all available levers to convince North Korea to end its provocations and return to the path of denuclearization, the White House said in its statement after the two leaders spoke earlier on Wednesday. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump, after talk with China's Xi, says North Korea faces more sanctions;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said additional major sanctions would be imposed on North Korea after Pyongyang said it had tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile and that its nuclear weapons could reach the U.S. mainland. Just spoke to President Xi Jinping of China concerning the provocative actions of North Korea. Additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea today. This situation will be handled! Trump wrote in a post on Twitter. He gave no other details about the sanctions. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's Xi tells Trump maintaining peace in Korean peninsula is China's unswerving goal;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump that it is Beijing s unswerving goal to maintain peace and stability in Northeast Asia and denuclearize the Korean peninsula, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. Xi made the comments in a phone conversation with Trump, who urged the Chinese leader to exert pressure on North Korea after Pyongyang said it successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May meets Iraqi PM Abadi in Baghdad;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May met with her Iraqi counterpart Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad on Wednesday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, her first visit to Iraq since coming to power last year. Britain is a main partner in the U.S.-led coalition helping Iraq defeat Islamic State, the hardline Sunni group that overran about a third of Iraq in 2014. The British government said in September that there were around 600 British soldiers on the ground in Iraq. They are primarily involved in training Iraqi security forces in battle-winning infantry, engineering and combat medical techniques, as well as providing courses on other skills including countering improvised explosive devices. Britain provided over 1,400 military personnel as part of its three-year involvement in the U.S.-led coalition. Iraqi-British relations are witnessing a marked improvement. We thank the British government for its support of Iraq in all fields, chiefly cooperation against terrorism, air support, and intelligence, Abadi said in a news conference. Britain had also helped Iraq on the issue of those who were internally displaced as a result of the Islamic State takeover and the subsequent campaign by Iraqi forces to dislodge the militants, he said. We will continue to support Iraq as a partner in order to enforce security, building, and stability, as well as in training Iraqi forces and efforts to return the displaced, Abadi s office quoted May as saying. The two leaders discussed British investments in Iraq. May pledged in a news conference to provide 20 million pounds ($26.8 million) in support of human rights and 30 million towards stabilization efforts and reforms. Britain agreed in March to arrange 10 billion pounds in loans to finance infrastructure projects in Iraq over a 10 year period, a program that would only benefit British companies. May affirmed her support for Iraq s unity and called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to respect a united Iraq in all fields, Abadi s office said in a statement. She said in a news conference, through a translator, that she wanted to see a united and inclusive Iraq . Iraq s Kurds voted overwhelmingly to break away from Iraq in a Sept. 25 referendum, defying the central government in Baghdad and alarming neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. The Iraqi government responded by seizing the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings. Long-serving Kurdish president Masoud Barzani stepped down over the affair and the regional government led by his nephew Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani has tried to negotiate an end to the confrontation. A KRG spokesman told Reuters there were no plans for May to visit the region s capital Erbil. ($1 = 0.7463 pounds) ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: What progress? EU's price for Brexit breakthrough;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has given Prime Minister Theresa May until Monday to raise Britain s offer of divorce terms if she wants EU leaders to open talks next month on a future free trade pact. Britain has moved close to the EU demands on money, EU diplomats said on Wednesday, but there are concerns that differences remain on other key conditions. These are the key points EU officials and diplomats say she must be ready to concede when she visits Brussels on Dec. 4. The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving in March 2019. May has promised that the other 27 states will not lose out financially before the end of 2020 an indication Britain will maintain its current roughly 10 billion-euro annual payment to the EU during a two-year post-Brexit transition. The EU wants May to commit to paying a fair share of two big budget lines after 2020 funds for projects approved during Britain s membership but not yet disbursed, and staff pensions. EU diplomats said negotiators had in recent days received assurances that this was the case and British newspapers put the offer at very roughly 50 billion euros. Phil Hogan, Ireland s EU commissioner, said Britain s new proposals go very close towards meeting the requirements of the EU. However, May s spokesman dismissed as speculation the British media reports. Both sides insist there can be no agreement on a hard figure yet and much will depend on future economic developments. But observers will be quick to make ballpark calculations. And EU leaders are set on binding May to a written commitment to pay specific elements of the bill to avoid haggling later on. The second of three conditions, on all of which sufficient progress must be recorded, that may now be the least problematic. However, the EU is still seeking further commitments from May that the rights of EU citizens in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed under EU judicial supervision, not just British still a potential stumbling block to Britain s agreement. EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier repeated on Wednesday that European Court of Justice supervision was essential. Member states, some of which have taken a tougher line than the Brussels negotiators, insist Britain also make concessions on family reunion rules and social benefits. The EU wants more detail on a British pledge to avoid a hard border at the new land frontier on the island of Ireland that might disrupt peace in Northern Ireland. London says the detail depends on the future trade agreement, which the EU will not discuss until after agreeing on sufficient progress. But Dublin has stepped up its complaints that assurances of good intentions from Britain do not go far enough. EU officials say the broad possible outlines of a trade pact are already obvious and mean that a hard border can only be avoided if commercial regulation remains identical on either side. One solution would be for Northern Ireland to stay in a customs union with the EU. But Britain, and May s crucial Northern Irish parliamentary allies, insist there should be no new barriers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. The EU says that means the whole of the United Kingdom would then have to maintain regulatory conformity, something Brexit campaigners do not want. Brussels and Dublin say Northern Ireland already has some different rules from Great Britain. On Friday, Dec. 1, EU national envoys expect an update from Barnier and the negotiators. On Dec. 6, two days after May meets Barnier and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU-27 envoys meet to start drafting the conclusions for a summit on Dec. 14-15. They may need a whole week to secure all states agreement that there is sufficient progress or not. At the summit, if they agree to move ahead, the 27 leaders could immediately discuss the roughly two-year transition period May has asked for which the EU says will mean Britain taking all EU rules but having no say in making them. They would also ask officials to complete work on formal negotiating guidelines for a future trade deal. There would need to be some weeks of further internal preparation in the EU before trade talks start. Even with sufficient progress, detailed negotiation on the divorce deal or Withdrawal Treaty will continue. Barnier hopes to have a text by October or November next year to give time for ratification by the European Parliament by Brexit Day. Barnier has said a trade deal could be launched by January 2021 if talks start after Christmas. But many EU diplomats say Britain may need further transition terms before one is ready. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel to appoint new envoy to Jordan in bid to heal ties - source;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel plans to appoint a new ambassador to Jordan in a bid to calm Amman s anger over the current envoy s handling of a shooting by an embassy guard in July that has strained relations, an Israeli diplomatic source said on Wednesday. But Israel has shown no sign of meeting Jordan s demand that it launch criminal proceedings against the guard, who killed two Jordanians in what he called self-defence. He was repatriated along with Ambassador Einat Schlein a day after the incident. Jordanian authorities say they suspect the shooting was unprovoked but could not investigate the guard due to his diplomatic immunity. A televised welcome he and Schlein received from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outraged Amman. Since Schlein s departure on July 24 the embassy has been shuttered, casting a pall over Israel s ties with Jordan, a U.S.-backed regional security partner and one of only two Arab countries that recognise Israel. The 1994 peace deal with Israel is unpopular among many Jordanians, who often identify with the Palestinians. An Israeli diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Schlein would not return. The Jordanians don t want her back, and this has been a big obstacle in patching things up, the source said. We re looking for a replacement. Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for Israel s Foreign Ministry, said: We are working on a solution that will bring the relations back on track. Israel says the guard opened fire after being attacked and lightly wounded by a workman, killing him and a Jordanian bystander. Israeli officials have said they were looking into the possibility of compensating the family of the second man. They say it is highly unlikely Israel would prosecute the guard, as demanded by Jordan. His prospects of continued work in Israeli diplomatic security abroad were in doubt, however, after a Jordanian newspaper published his name and photograph. Israel s consulates in Turkey have been handling Jordanian applications for Israeli visas since the incident. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Judges uphold Bosnian Croat convictions in last verdict of Yugoslav war tribunal;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Appeals judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal upheld on Wednesday the convictions of six Bosnian Croats found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1990s, in the court s last verdict before it closes next month. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established by the United Nations in 1993, is due to close when its mandate expires at the end of the year. The six former high-level politicians and defense officials were convicted in 2013 of participating in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Bosnian Muslims. They include Jadranko Prlic, a former defense minister, whose 25 year jail sentence was upheld on Wednesday. He had been found guilty of being part of a criminal enterprise by the wartime Croatian government of late President Franjo Tudjman, to create an ethnically pure state. Zagreb, which maintained it had clean hands in the bloody 1992-95 war in Bosnia, had wanted that finding overturned. However the appeals chamber concluded that it was not shown that the earlier judges had misinterpreted relevant evidence of Tudjman and Zagreb s confirmed Croatia s role in the Bosnian conflict. Several convictions for specific crimes for Prlic and the five others were reversed in the appeal, but president Judge Carmel Agius said all six remain convicted of numerous and very serious crimes. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Back to school: China kindergarten weathers child abuse storm for now;SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - When RYB Education Inc became enmeshed in allegations of child abuse at one of its Beijing kindergartens, it touched off an angry online furor in China, a police inquiry and a precipitous fall in the company s New York-listed shares. Barely a week later, the firm appears to have weathered much of the storm, for now. Chinese police said late on Tuesday some claims of abuse were unfounded, although one teacher was in custody for using knitting needles to discipline children. The company s shares closed up 23.33 percent in New York on Tuesday, after falling over 40 percent last week when allegations first emerged of abuse that included sexual molestation and forced medication. However, shares fell over 10 percent in pre-market trade on Wednesday after the company said there were parent complaints about other RYB-branded kindergartens and that it was cooperating with police. It gave no other details. RYB s actions over the week represented a case of effective crisis management, experts said, rare in the Chinese corporate world where companies tend to hunker down in the face of adverse news and allow events to play out. RYB appeared to have taken some good corrective actions , said James Robinson, managing director of communications consultancy APCO Worldwide s Shanghai office, adding a well-oiled response and open channels of communication with government stakeholders were key. It s essential for companies to respond swiftly, even if it s just to acknowledge they are aware of an issue and are investigating further. Led by chief executive and founder Shi Yanlai, a vocal proponent for China s early child education sector, RYB appeared to have hit all the right buttons last week. When I heard the news, I was personally shocked and very angry, Shi said in an investors call on Friday. This issue has struck an alarm bell for us, she said, adding the firm would look to speed up the installation of blanket surveillance tools at its schools and day care centres. RYB announced a $50 million share buyback and said it had dismissed a teacher suspected of involvement in the case as well as the head teacher of the Beijing school. Shi helped set up RYB in 1998 when her own son was born. It now has over 1,300 play and learn centres and nearly 500 kindergartens in around 300 cities in China. Most are operated on a franchise model. As the case became a lighting rod for wider anger in China about a lack of trained teachers, low wages and poor regulatory oversight in the massive and fast-growing private pre-school sector, Shi underscored that she was a mother herself and repeated frequently in local media interviews that the children were the top priority. On Wednesday, the kindergarten in Beijing was operating as normal, with parents milling around waiting for children to finish class. A handful of police officers were the only sign of last week s troubles. At the company s headquarters in southern Beijing, an RYB official said the police had only released their preliminary findings and that the firm could not provide comment until the investigation had finished. Shi also refused to comment for this story. Teachers, investors and experts said RYB had so far had got off fairly lightly, with a lot of the anger being aimed at regulators and wider issues in the market. Beijing is sending inspectors to the city s kindergartens, while China s education ministry is doing a broad investigation into the sector. I m not really surprised, wrote Zhang Xiaolong, an education sector executive who has half a million followers online, referring to Tuesday s recovery in RYB s shares. After such a serious issue, the government hasn t taken away RYB s license to operate schools, and so it seems like it s being treated like an isolated incident. Teachers in China said the furor over the case - hundreds of millions posted online about it last week - reflected bubbling tensions over the fast development of the private pre-school sector and a lack of resources for teachers. Thresholds for kindergarten teachers getting into the profession are too low;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Qatar builds dairy industry in desert as it defies Arab boycott;UMM AL HAWAYA, Qatar (Reuters) - Deep in the Qatari desert, a herd of cows stands in a vast shed, cooled by fans and jets of mist - each animal a key player in a plan to defy a trade boycott and make the kingdom self-sufficient in milk by next year. The black and white Holstein cattle are among the first members of a 14,000-strong herd that farming company Baladna is expecting to build up in coming months, its chief executive John Dore told Reuters in an interview. We will make Qatar self-sufficient by June - that is the target, Dore said. He conceded that raising and milking cows in temperatures nearing 50 degrees Celsius (120 Fahrenheit) in summer posed special challenges. But technology and the deep pockets of Baladna s Qatari owners were compensating for the harsh environment, said Dore, an Irishman who previously worked for Saudi Arabian dairy giant Almarai. Hundreds of cows were already hooked up to the automatic milking machines at Baladna s farm in Umm al Hawaya, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Doha, and producing milk good enough to export, he said. More than 6,000 more cows from the United States are due to arrive by February. Qatar s drive to build a dairy industry in the desert illustrates how the tiny but wealthy country, the world s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, is using money and technology to cope with its isolation. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut trade and transport ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of backing terrorism, a charge which Doha denies. The boycott disrupted Qatar s shipping routes through the Gulf. It also shut Qatar s land border with Saudi Arabia, across which many perishable goods were imported, including almost 400 tonnes of fresh milk and yoghurt a day. The boycott has forced Qatar to fly in dairy products from Turkey and Iran. But Dore said the country was determined to create its own dairy sector, largely relying on Baladna, a private company which is receiving logistical and other support from the government. The firm, which raises sheep, was considering moving into milk production before the boycott, but knew it would find it hard to compete on price with imports from Almarai, he said. The boycott removed that competition and in the initial weeks of the diplomatic crisis, the company flew in the first 3,400 cows on state-owned airline Qatar Airways. We were milking cows here on the 11th of July, which is barely a month after the blockade, and that by any method or means is some achievement, Dore said. Baladna is planning two more sea shipments from the United States - each holding 3,300 animals - by February. Another consignment of 3,000 cows has been planned, but not yet ordered. By June, it says it is expecting to raise production of fresh milk and yoghurt to 500 tonnes a day, enough to meet domestic demand with 100 tonnes left over for export. Baladna has not disclosed financial details of its project, and it is not yet clear whether Qatar can produce large volumes of milk economically, let alone export some at competitive prices. But for now at least, the country s drive to reduce its dependence on imports with domestic production appears to be stimulating the economy. The manufacturing sector grew 3.2 percent from a year earlier in September, official data released last week showed. Food manufacturing jumped 23.5 percent. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. imposing more sanctions against N.Korea soon: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States plans to impose additional sanctions against North Korea very soon, a White House spokeswoman said on Wednesday after Pyongyang said it had it successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile and could now reach the U.S. mainland with its nuclear weapons. We re going to add additional sanctions very shortly that will continue to put that maximum pressure on North Korea, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told Fox News in an interview. Sanders also said the administration would also try to push Russia to take a bigger and bolder stance to put more pressure on North Korea. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says 80 militants killed in air strike in north Iraq;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s military said on Wednesday that more than 80 militants were killed in an air strike on Monday in northern Iraq, where Turkish jets have frequently targeted PKK fighters. It said in a statement that a weapons depot and two vehicles were also destroyed in the air strike. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency in southeast Turkey since the 1980s, also has bases across the border in Iraq. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Croatian PM Plenkovic regrets Praljak's death in The Hague;ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday he regretted the death of Slobodan Praljak, the wartime commander of Bosnian Croat forces who died after he drank poison in The Hague. His act, which we regrettably saw today, mostly speaks about a deep moral injustice towards six Croats from Bosnia and the Croatian people ... We voice dissatisfaction and regret about the verdict, Plenkovic said. Praljak drank poison seconds after a United Nations judges turned down his appeal against a 20-year sentence for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bolivian president welcomes, opposition slams re-election ruling;LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia s socialist President Evo Morales on Wednesday hailed a decision by the country s highest court to allow him to run for another re-election as a great surprise for the people, for the revolutionaries, for the anti-imperialists. The opposition said it would march against the ruling announced on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court, which paved the way for Morales to run for a fourth term in 2019. The court decision was final and cannot be appealed. The ruling guarantees a democratic continuity, but also guarantees stability, dignity and work for the Bolivian people, Morales said during a news conference. Opposition leaders called for several marches to be held on Wednesday, protesting what they say is the end of democracy in the land-locked, natural gas-producing country. It means a coup d etat, it means trampling the constitution and the most worrying is that Bolivia is approaching the road that Venezuela is on, Samuel Doria Medina, leader of the National Unity party, told Reuters. Bolivia is allied with Venezuela, where leftist President Nicolas Maduro is struggling with a severe economic crisis. Morales, in power since 2006, had previously accepted the results of a 2016 referendum, when 51 percent of voters rejected his proposal to end existing term limits. He later reversed course, saying that while he was willing to leave office, his supporters were pushing for him to stay. In September, Morales Movement to Socialism (MAS) party asked the court to rescind legal limits barring elected authorities from seeking re-election indefinitely. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sinai carnage presses Egypt to seek new alliance with tribes;NORTH SINAI, Egypt (Reuters) - An attack that killed more than 300 people in North Sinai has prompted Egyptian officials to renew efforts to enlist local tribes whose support will be critical in attempts to defeat Islamic State, security and military sources said. Brandishing an Islamic State flag, masked men in military-style uniforms fired on worshippers at a village mosque on Friday in the worst such bloodshed in modern Egyptian history. It was a dramatic setback for the military, which has been fighting militant groups in the Sinai peninsula for years with air strikes, ground assaults and mass arrests, while hundreds of police and soldiers have been killed. Lacking sufficient counter-insurgency skills, the army began recruiting tribesmen three years ago, hoping their mastery of the Sinai s inhospitable terrain would provide intelligence on the militants and their arms smuggling routes. That campaign has produced limited results and the latest bloodshed will pressure the army to secure better cooperation from tribal leaders despite some gains against Islamic State this year. No group has claimed responsibility for Friday s assault, whose brutality shocked Egyptians. On Wednesday, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the military to secure the Sinai within the next three months. You can use all brute force necessary, he said. Tribes in the Sinai vowed to unite and join forces with the army after fellow Bedouins were killed in Friday s carnage. But such declarations by Sinai tribes which accuse the Cairo government of treating them like second-class citizens have in the past produced limited results. In addition, tribesmen remain divided over feuds and other local issues. The Egyptian military has more than enough weapons. The biggest issue when it comes to doing anything in the Sinai is to make sure they have good intelligence, said HA Hellyer, an Egypt expert and senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. If it is going to be a counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency set of strategies, that will necessitate involvement from the tribes at a very significant level. Three security and military sources said that over the past two days talks had been held between security officials and tribal leaders in north and central Sinai. Those security officials said greater coordination and cooperation were needed to defeat the militants. The tribes were divided into five groups and security officials sat separately with each group. We asked them to help us to control the militants in the areas that they live, farm and move in, because each tribe knows its own people best, said one of the sources. There are many things that make them cooperate with us and they vary from each tribe to the next. That s why we sat separately with each tribe. One tribe needs services, and there is economic cooperation on projects with another tribe. A spokesman for the military said it had made no statement on tribal affairs in Sinai and he could not comment Alliances with tribes have succeeded in other countries facing serious extremist threats under the right conditions. In 2006, Sunni tribesmen joined forces with U.S. troops in Iraq and rebelled against al Qaeda in what became known as the Sahwa , or Awakening. By January 2009, Washington had invested more than $400 million in the Awakening program, according to U.S. data. Fighters were paid as much as $300-400 a month. That investment paid off, helping Iraqi security forces to defeat al Qaeda then. Under a Sisi initiative in 2015 to reinforce cooperation, several hundred Bedouins were to be recruited. Occasionally, they joined patrols and manned checkpoints under supervision. But some tribal leaders were reluctant to team up with the army without more weapons to confront battle-hardened militant fighters. Authorities are wary of supplying arms to tribes with a history of animosity to Cairo, security officials say. When the security officials spoke to the tribal leaders, they told them that there is no third option in front of them. Either with us or against us, another source said. Most of the tribes immediately announced their cooperation with security forces, and others asked for some time to think. But I think that the security forces don t have the time to give them to think. Mustafa al-Aqili, of the Supreme Council of Arab Tribes, said heavy losses in the mosque attack could encourage both sides to work more closely together. But he stressed waging war against radicals was the responsibility of the military. Sinai s people grew stronger after that attack and they are standing more with the army, he said. They are keen to join the fighting. But that is the job of the army. A security source in El-Arish, the main city in North Sinai, said ties have improved. The Bedouins are cooperating with us and have increased their cooperation, he said. Bringing Sinai s tribes together and on the military s side will not be easy. The cash-strapped government would have to create jobs and invest in schools and infrastructure. To appease angry residents for now, authorities announced $10 million in funds shortly after the attack. We have no relationship with politics or anything else, and don t cooperate with the army or armed groups, said Mansur Eid, who lost his son in Friday s attack. We just live in poverty here. Egypt may face a bigger challenge if Islamic State militants defeated in Iraq, Syria and Libya join comrades in the Sinai. Help from tribes would be even more important. Friday s attack was similar to Islamic State s approach in Iraq, where it has bombed places of worship in a bid to deepen sectarian strife. Sisi has said that fighters returning from Iraq and Syria may seek refuge in Libya and target Egypt from there. In his most recent speech released in September, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urged followers in North Sinai to keep fighting after the group was defeated in Mosul. Tribal leaders say there are around 800 militants, mostly Egyptians, with some Palestinians and other foreigners, in the North Sinai. But even small numbers of fighters have inflicted heavy casualties with suicide bombings in Egypt and elsewhere. Islamic State is also seeking to enlist tribesmen in the Sinai, and Ahmed Zagloul, a researcher on Islamist movements, said it had managed to recruit from the largest tribes. By capitalizing on frustrations with the government and civilian deaths, Islamic State has won some support despite its brutal methods. Many in the Sinai were not won over by the government s methods of fighting terrorism, which had left some villages completely destroyed, said Sheikh Ibrahim al-Menei, a leader of the Sawarka tribe. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. urges authorities to review Honduras election results quickly;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States urged election authorities to review the results of Sunday s vote in Honduras without undue delay, a State Department spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The United States urges calm and patience as the results are tabulated, said Spokesperson Heather Nauert. It s critical that Honduran election authorities be able to work in a free and transparent manner without interference. We urge all candidates to respect the results. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Who are Britain First, whose leader's posts Trump re-tweeted?;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has re-tweeted anti-Islam videos originally posted by Jayda Fransen, a leader of a far-right British party convicted earlier in November of abusing a Muslim woman. Fransen is deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Britain First group. Here are some details about her organization: Britain First was founded in 2011 by leader Paul Golding with a membership of three individuals. It describes itself as a patriotic political party and street movement , although critics denounce it as a far-right, racist organization. Britain First is committed to preserving our ancestral ethnic and cultural heritage, traditions, customs and values, it says on its website. It wants to deport all illegal immigrants, halt all further immigration, and introduce a comprehensive ban on the religion of Islam with headscarves being outlawed in public. Anyone found to be promoting the ideology of Islam will be subject to deportation or imprisonment, its policy platform states. It holds protests across the country, usually attended by a couple of hundred supporters at most, many of whom hold white crosses because the group argues Christianity in Britain is being threatened by immigration and the growth of militant Islam. Golding was a former senior figure in the far-right British National Party and was elected a local councillor in 2009. In his biography on the group s website it says he was sent to prison in 2016 for confronting a Muslim hate preacher who was secretly recorded saying it s okay for Muslims to keep sex slaves . Golding stood for election as London mayor in May 2016, winning 31,372 votes, 1.2 percent of all cast. Fransen, who was elected deputy leader in 2014, was convicted of religiously aggravated harassment in November 2017, and both she and Golding are facing further similar charges. The group gained prominence in June 2016 when Labour lawmaker Jo Cox was shot dead on the street by a Nazi-obsessed loner who witnesses said had been shouting Britain first during the attack. Fransen told Reuters the killer had nothing to do with her group. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU considers new plan to ease disputes over migrants;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU governments will study a new proposal aimed at overcoming the deep splits over sharing responsibility for asylum-seekers that has soured relations in the bloc since the migrant crisis of 2015, diplomats said on Wednesday. Estonia, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, put what it called the mother of all compromises to EU envoys, hoping to reconcile countries like Italy, which bear the brunt of arrivals from across the Mediterranean, and eastern states fiercely opposed to being obliged to take in immigrants. Previous proposals have failed to make headway;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Barnier says 'still working' on Brexit terms with Britain;BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Wednesday he was still working to reach agreement with Britain about its exit from the bloc. We are still working. (That is) the only comment I can make, Barnier said after a speech at the Berlin Security Conference, when asked about reports that Britain had offered to pay much of what the EU was demanding to settle a Brexit divorce bill . I am working for an agreement, Barnier told Reuters. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRESIDENT TRUMP Retweets 3 Videos Of Muslims Committing Disgusting Hate Crimes…The Left EXPLODES;The left woke up in a fury after they discovered President Trump retweeted 3 videos showing disgusting hate crimes committed against Europeans by Muslims. Was the President trying to prove his case about how the mass Muslim migration into Europe is destroying their cultures and making the citizens unsafe? President Trump didn t include any commentary with his retweets, he simply retweeted the videos. Should President Trump have retweeted these videos? We d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.On Wednesday morning, President Trump retweeted videos posted by a British nationalist, which showed Muslims committing crimes.Trump retweeted content posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group that stands against theIslamisation of the United Kingdom.The first video purportedly shows a Muslim migrant beating up a Dutch boy on crutches.VIDEO: Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches! pic.twitter.com/11LgbfFJDq Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 28, 2017Twitter responded to the video with the boy on crutches by saying that the Muslim migrant who beat up the boy on crutches was arrested the next day and was actually a Dutch citizen. We have checked both Dutch (link and link) websites who claim that the boy was neither a Muslim or a migrant. We couldn t verify if either one of the sites we checked are legitimate sources of news.The fact that the president retweeted this bigot is disgusting. Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) November 29, 2017According to Dutch media, the culprit wasn't a Muslim. Also not a migrant. But a 16-year old Dutch boy from town of Edam-Volendam.He was arrested on May 13th 2017, one day after the incident happened. Edna Sullivan (@SumTomGoingOn) November 29, 2017 The second video shows a Muslim man speaking to the camera and then bashing a statue of Virgin Mary on the ground, shattering herVIDEO: Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary! pic.twitter.com/qhkrfQrtjV Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 29, 2017thats such a good point pic.twitter.com/vfF8eKPPy6 blablaa (@CeeTheHit) November 29, 2017The third video President Trump retweeted shows an Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death! VIDEO: Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death! pic.twitter.com/XxtlxNNSiP Jayda Fransen (@JaydaBF) November 29, 2017Not everyone disagreed with President Trump s retweets. Many applauded him for bringing these videos to the attention of the world:Europe is lost. THIS is the new setting of Europe. It's so sad. You can thank Angela Merkel. Joey Mannarino (@Realjmannarino) November 29, 2017It's already too late for the UK and much of Europe, but hopefully it can be at least managed. So much danger. Joey Mannarino (@Realjmannarino) November 29, 2017Last year, Fransen was found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment after accosting a Muslim woman.The charge stemmed from a January 2016 incident in which Fransen, wearing a political uniform and during a so-called Christian patrol, accosted a Muslim woman named Sumayyah Sharpe in Luton, England. Daily Mail ;left-news;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea military says North Korea missile presumed to be Hwasong-14: Yonhap;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s Joint Chiefs of Staff said they presume North Korea fired a Hwasong-14 long-range ballistic missile on Wednesday, the South s Yonhap News Agency reported. A military spokesman told Reuters he could not confirm the report. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea's Moon says North Korea missile capability seems improved;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday North Korea s missile technology seems to have improved, following the launch of what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed close to Japan. Moon made the remark to U.S. President Donald Trump in a phone call, his office said, during which both heads of state said they would talk further on measures to respond to North Korea s latest provocation. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea to make announcement at 0330 GMT: Yonhap;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea will make an announcement at 0330 GMT, South Korea s Yonhap news agency said on Wednesday, citing the North s broadcast media, following the launch of what appeared to an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed close to Japan. The reports did not say what the announcement would be about, Yonhap added. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico ruling party hopeful attacks rival's 'hunger for power';MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A newly unveiled presidential contender for Mexico s ruling party attacked his main leftist rival on Tuesday, accusing him of being obsessed by power, afraid of debate and unable to tackle corruption when he held public office. Jose Antonio Meade, who resigned as finance minister on Monday to run for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), sought to discredit former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the early front-runner in the July 2018 election. I m not afraid of Andres Manuel, I m sure I m going to beat him ... because there s a fundamental difference, Meade told Mexican radio. What he s about is hunger for power, and with me it s about wanting to serve and construct. Graft scandals have battered the PRI s credibility under President Enrique Pena Nieto, and senior officials regard Meade as a strong candidate because he has avoided the taint of corruption in office - and does not belong to the party. The PRI does not begin registering candidates until Dec. 3 and will not elect its contender until Feb. 18. However, all the indications are that Meade will run to replace Pena Nieto, who is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election. Lopez Obrador, runner-up in the past two elections, has spent years railing against graft, which promises to be a key campaign issue. Right after Meade signaled his intention to run, Lopez Obrador branded the PRI as corrupt and predictable. Meade offered little detail of how he planned to root out corruption beyond pledging to strengthen institutions, echoing the rhetoric of Pena Nieto, whose approval ratings plumbed multi-year lows, partly due to failure to tackle the issue. Instead Meade, 48, accused Lopez Obrador of seeking to avoid debate, and argued that his rival failed to root out corruption when he had the chance, as mayor of the capital. Whoever thinks that the answers to Mexico s problems are about one person ... (or) are about being messianic ... is simplifying the complexity of building institutions that give us a nation of laws, he said in another radio interview. Meade, who has held most of the top cabinet jobs across two rival administrations, was at pains to stress his honesty, and said he had no skeletons in his closet. That s why I feel very proud to look my children in the eyes, with them knowing that their dad has worked for Mexico with integrity and honor, he said. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing warns Taipei against hyping up China's jailing of Taiwanese activist;BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Wednesday said that any attempt to hype up its decision to jail a Taiwanese rights activist for subversion would be futile, after Taiwan s ruling political party labeled the result unacceptable . A Chinese court on Tuesday jailed Li Ming-che, Taiwanese community college lecturer and human rights non-governmental worker, for five years for subverting Chinese state power. Li was tried alongside a mainland activist, Peng Yuhua, who received a seven year sentence for the same charge. Both were found guilty of attempting to promote political reform in China through discussions of democracy in social media chatrooms. Taiwan s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said the result was totally unacceptable and called for Beijing to return Li to Taiwan. It is not a crime for Li to share his opinions about democratic freedoms with friends, they said. China s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang told reporters at a regular news briefing: Any attempts to hype up the case for political ends or to instigate opposition between compatriots across the straits will all be futile. Although Taiwan and Beijing should have mutual respect for each other s social systems and development paths, Taiwan cannot impose its political ideas on the mainland or use the cover of democratic freedoms to break Chinese law, Ma said. Ties between Beijing and the self-ruled island of Taiwan have been frosty since Taiwan s Tsai Ing-wen led the independence-leaning DPP to election victory last year. Beijing claims the island as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. Chiu E-Ling, secretary general of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday that Li s supporters would call on Tsai and her government go beyond mere words to secure Li s release. They also expressed concern over the verdict s implication for the rights of Taiwanese citizens, saying that Li had expressed his opinions online while on Taiwan soil. The Global Times, a state-backed tabloid popular with China s nationalists, said in an editorial on Wednesday that the DPP s statement was tantamount to encouraging Taiwanese to come to China and break the law. We hope that Taiwanese people will not accept the DPP s witchcraft and will not become an assault team or sacrificial victims for them, the paper said. One s own safety should be more important than the slogans they utter, it added. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says successfully launches new ICBM that can reach all of U.S;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15 that can reach all of the United States, the isolated country s state media said on Wednesday. The missile is the North s most powerful ever, and it flew 950 km (590 miles) for 53 minutes while reaching an altitude of 4,475 km (2,781 miles), according to a statement read by a television presenter. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Singapore charges activist for organizing assemblies without permit;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore authorities charged human rights activist Jolovan Wham on Wednesday for organizing public assemblies without a police permit, prompting rights groups to call on the government to guarantee the right to peaceful assembly. The 37-year-old Wham, the former executive director of a group advocating the rights of foreign workers in Singapore, could be fined up to $10,000 or imprisoned for up to 6 months, or both, if found guilty of repeat offences. Wham was involved in a protest in June by several blindfolded activists who held up books on a subway train in a call for justice for 22 people detained in 1987 under a tough internal security law. Wham is recalcitrant and has repeatedly shown blatant disregard for the law, especially with regard to organizing or participating in illegal public assemblies , Singapore Police Force said in a statement. He was also charged for vandalism and refusing to sign statements made during investigations, the police said. He faces a total of seven charges stemming from public assemblies he organized dating back to November 2016, the police said. Under strict public assembly laws, protests are allowed only at a designated downtown square called the Speakers Corner. Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called on Singapore to drop the case against peaceful protestor Wham and to amend what it called a draconian law on public order to guarantee Singaporeans the right to peaceful assembly. Prosecuting Jolovan Wham for holding peaceful gatherings demonstrates the absurdity of Singapore s laws on public assemblies and the government s willingness to penalize those who speak out, its deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said. The Singapore government should start listening to criticism, stop treating peaceful assemblies as crimes, and cease prosecuting their organizers, he said. A pre-trial conference for the case will take place on Dec. 13. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims responsibility for Aden car bomb: Amaq;CAIRO (Reuters) - Militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack outside the offices of the Yemeni finance ministry in the southern port city of Aden, the group s news agency Amaq said on Wednesday. Hospital officials said at least two people were killed in the explosion. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims responsibility for Aden car bomb: Amaq;CAIRO (Reuters) - Militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack outside the offices of the Yemeni finance ministry in the southern port city of Aden, the group s news agency Amaq said on Wednesday. Hospital officials said at least two people were killed in the explosion. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey seeks arrest of 360 people in probe targeting Gulen network in army: media;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 360 people in an operation targeting supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen within the army, state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Wednesday. It said 333 of those facing arrest in the Istanbul-based operation were soldiers, 216 of them serving personnel. Ankara accuses Gulen and his network of orchestrating an attempted coup last year. Gulen denies the charge. Istanbul police officers were continuing operations to capture the suspects, it said. The private Dogan news agency said seven of those facing arrest were pilots. More than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over links to Gulen, while 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the public and private sectors since the July 15 failed putsch, in which 250 people were killed. Sixteen months on, operations targeting supporters of the U.S.-based preacher are continuing on a daily basis. Last week, nearly 700 people were detained in related investigations. While Turkey s Western allies and rights groups have voiced concern that Ankara is using the investigations to crack down on dissent, Turkey says only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says infiltrated institutions such as the military, judiciary and schools. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia to reopen Bali airport after closure due to volcano;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Bali airport will reopen on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said, two days after a volcanic eruption spread ash across the island and forced the airport to close. The airport will reopen at 3 p.m. (0700 GMT) ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two human heads found outside broadcaster's office in Mexico;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Two human heads were discovered in a cooler outside an office of broadcaster Televisa in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, authorities said on Tuesday. It was not clear who the heads belonged to, but the cooler contained a threatening message signed off with CJNG , the Spanish initials of a drug gang, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a security official in the western city said. A second official at the office of the Jalisco state prosecutor said the cooler was left outside an office of the Televisa station. However, media in the state suggested the gruesome find was directed at an official, not at the broadcaster. Elsewhere in the city, authorities found a second cooler containing a message threatening a judge, and a bag with suspected human remains with another threat, the second official added. Both officials declined to be identified. In recent years, the CJNG has become one of the most powerful Mexican drug gangs, and authorities blame it for violence that has convulsed much of central and western Mexico. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China expresses 'grave concern' over North Korean missile test;BEIJING (Reuters) - China expressed grave concern on Wednesday after North Korea fired what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that landed close to Japan. China hopes all parties act cautiously to preserve peace and stability, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela systematically abused foes in 2017 protests: rights groups;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela systematically abused anti-government protesters this year, two rights groups said on Wednesday, including through beatings, firing tear gas canisters in closed areas and forcing detainees to eat food tainted with excrement. Unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro faced four months of near-daily protests asking for early elections, humanitarian aid to combat food and medicine shortages, respect for the opposition-led congress, and freedom for jailed activists. Demonstrators say heavy-handed National Guard soldiers clamped down on their right to protest, while Maduro says his administration faced a U.S.-backed armed insurgency. More than 120 people died in the unrest, with victims including demonstrators, government supporters, security officials, and bystanders. In a joint report, New York-based Human Rights Watch and Venezuela-based Penal Forum documented 88 cases between April and September, from excessive use of force during marches to protest against arbitrary detentions. Around 5,400 people were detained, with at least 757 prosecuted in military courts, the report said. The widespread vicious abuses against government opponents in Venezuela, including egregious cases of torture, and the absolute impunity for the attackers suggests government responsibility at the highest levels, said Chilean lawyer Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. Venezuela s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. In one case cited, intelligence agents allegedly hanged a 34-year-old government critic from the ceiling and gave him electric shocks as they interrogated him. The man, whose name was not revealed, was ultimately released and left Venezuela. In another case, a 32-year-old detained during a protest in Carabobo state was allegedly beaten for hours by National Guard soldiers who also threatened to rape his daughter. He said officials also fired tear gas into his cell. Others interviewed recounted being handcuffed to a metal bench, hit with sticks, and witnessing a man being raped with a broomstick. At least 15 detainees in Carabobo said officials forced them to eat human excrement mixed in with uncooked pasta. The government failed to acknowledge such violations, the report said, adding that instead officials often downplayed the abuses or issued implausible, blanket denials. Maduro s government says Human Rights Watch is in league with a Washington-funded conspiracy to sabotage socialism in Latin America. Rights activists are in league with the opposition and compliant foreign media, officials say, and downplay opposition violence, including setting a man on fire during a demonstration and targeting police with explosives. The two rights groups said there were cases of protesters hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at security forces, but that abuses by authorities went far beyond attempts to quell unrest. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congressman Conyers faces mounting pressure to resign;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. congressman John Conyers faced increasing pressure to resign on Wednesday, with the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives saying he should step aside if sexual harassment accusations against him were true. With Congress in session, Conyers returned to his home district in Detroit on Tuesday. He has been accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward women who worked for him. The latest accusation was reported by the Detroit News, which cited a former staffer as saying Conyers sexually harassed her three times between 1997 and 1999. Conyers, 88, has denied the accusations and said he would cooperate with a House Ethics Committee investigation. Asked if Conyers was planning to resign, his attorney Arnold Reed told Reuters, “No.” The Detroit News earlier quoted Reed as saying, “He’s not going to be forced out of office, and no one has told him he has to leave.” “Notwithstanding the credibility of the witnesses, we have a process to determine were these allegations founded? And if they’re founded, yes, he should resign,” Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said in an interview with MSNBC. Conyers’ office did not reply to a Reuters request for comment. The Michigan lawmaker has stepped down as the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee pending the outcome of the ethics investigation. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said it was up to Conyers to decide if he should resign from the chamber. “I know what I would do if this happened to me. I will leave it up to him to decide what he wants to do. I think he made the right decision in stepping down from his leadership position,” Ryan said. The House on Wednesday passed a resolution requiring members and their staff to take annual training on sexual harassment. A bipartisan group of House members also introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of public funds to settle sexual harassment claims against members, and require all previously made payments to be made public. Conyers and his wife Monica left their house in Detroit in separate vehicles on Wednesday. He did not talk to reporters who had gathered outside. Some of Conyers’ colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus have been privately pressing him to resign, according to Democratic aides. Representative Joe Crowley, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, said he believed that in Michigan, Conyers was “taking counsel from his family as well as his constituents.” “And I believe at the end of the day the right thing will be done. I think accountability will be had,” Crowley told a news briefing. Democratic Representative Linda Sanchez said lawmakers were trying to pursue a fair process for both sides. “It appears that there’s more than one complainant, which does heighten my sense of ‘there may be something there,’” Sanchez said, adding that she could not call for Conyers’ resignation unless she has heard all the evidence. Sexual harassment accusations have been made against a number of public figures in recent weeks, including former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein, Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama and Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota. ;politicsNews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen car bomb attack kills at least two people in Aden: residents;ADEN (Reuters) - Assailants detonated a car bomb outside the Yemeni Finance Ministry offices in the southern city of Aden on Wednesday, killing at least two people, hospital officials and residents said. They said the force of the blast shook the Khor Maksar area of Aden, the temporary capital of the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and causing severe damage to the six-storey building. The force of the blast also shattered windows of adjacent houses, they said. Ambulances were seen racing to the scene, as sounds of gunfire were heard in the area, they said. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion. An official at the city s main government-run Jumhouriya hospital said that two people have arrived dead to the hospital, while three others were in critical condition. He said that medics have said they believe that more casualties were at the scene of the blast, but no one could reach them due to an exchange of gunfire that was taking place in the area. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fractured French Right struggles to unite against Macron;PARIS (Reuters) - A year ago, France s conservatives appeared headed for the presidency. Now the French right is more fractured than at almost any point in the modern-day Fifth Republic, leaving one clear winner: President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist. Over the weekend, a group of Macron-friendly lawmakers cemented their split from the center-right The Republicans party, forming a new party, Agir (Act). In a further blow to The Republicans, three other party heavyweights defected to Macron s Republic on the Move party. This comes at a time the far-right National Front party is riven by internal divisions and fighting a new rival movement set up by one of its own. In two weeks, The Republicans will elect a new party chief. The task of whoever wins will be to heal divisions and rebuild a party blown apart by Macron s election triumph. The Right is in the process of breaking apart ... if this goes on we will be in opposition for 20 years, Mael de Calan, a rising star in The Republicans and candidate for party leader, told television channel France 2. De Calan hit out at those deserting the party. He also said the frontrunner in the party leadership race, 42-year-old Laurent Wauquiez, was advocating policies that would push The Republicans too far to the right an outcome which could prompt others to leave. Macron, 39, dynamited France s traditional political landscape in the summer, winning the presidency without ever having held office before and securing a commanding majority in parliament with a party just over a year old. Macron poached cabinet ministers from both the Socialist Party and The Republicans, leaving both scrambling for an answer to the former investment banker s stunning rise to power. The Socialists of former President Francois Hollande were particularly hurt. Macron destroyed the Left with the presidential election and now the target is the Right, said Frederic Dabi of pollster Ifop. Both far-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen are viewed as stronger opponents to Macron, an Odoxa poll showed at the weekend. Equally worrying to Wauquiez should he become leader of The Republicans is that another survey on Tuesday showed one in two voters were indifferent to him. Wauquiez, who calls those quitting the party traitors , told Reuters last week that he wanted to unite the party and that France needed his hardline proposals on immigration, security and Europe. We won t bring people together by being tepid, he said. His platform has, however, left moderate party stalwarts such as Valerie Pecresse, leader of the wider Paris region, and former prime minister Alain Juppe, being coy about their future. The Republicans problem is that they are not showing the French an image of unity or a (future) leader that embodies a solid enough opposition, said Odoxa s president Gael Sliman, adding that Wauquiez s hard-right line was not popular enough. Marine Le Pen, gloating, said on Tuesday that The Republicans faced a catastrophic situation. They imploded in two camps, she told BFM TV. But she too presides over a deeply divided party. One of its eight lawmakers on Monday defected to a splinter party established by her former deputy in September. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'For the Party and the motherland!': North Korea's Kim heralds missile test after setbacks;SEOUL (Reuters) - When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed an order for his scientists to test their latest missile, he was no doubt hoping for technical advances but perhaps also to reclaim the narrative after recent setbacks. Fire it bravely for the Party and the motherland! Kim wrote on his order, according to a photograph shown on North Korean state television on Wednesday, shortly the test of a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Hwasong-15. The test, North Korea s first since mid-September, allowed Kim to declare with pride that his country had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force , one of the strongest statements yet on the status of his nuclear arsenal. It came a week after U.S. President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a U.S. list of countries it says support terrorism, allowing it to impose more sanctions. The test also follows a dramatic defection to South Korea by a North Korean soldier on Nov. 13, who braved a hail of bullets by fellow soldiers as he crossed the heavily fortified border dividing the two Koreas. Neither the North Korean government nor its state media have made any mention of the defection, which dominated headlines in South Korea and in international media for days. Analysts say the test makes technical sense for scientists trying to refine their rockets as they strive to achieve Kim s goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach all of the U.S. mainland. But the launch likely also had other benefits. Kim may have wanted to regain control of the narrative and reinforce solidarity, after the defection and increasing diplomatic isolation, a South Korean official said. They couldn t sit pat after having been designated a sponsor state of terrorism, said Kim Dong-yub, a military expert at South Korea s Kyungnam University. The North Korean leader is also no doubt keen to fulfil a vow made in a 2017 New Year s message to soon achieve an operable ICBM, Kim said. Kim Jong Un said at the beginning of this year they were near completing their nuclear capability. Won t he have to say in next year s New Year s address that they ve completed it? ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;How North Korea's latest ICBM test stacks up;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Wednesday it had successfully tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), called Hwasong-15, that could reach all of the U.S. mainland. [L1N1NY1RR] In a broadcast on state TV, North Korea said the newly developed Hwasong-15 has much greater advantages in its tactical and technological specifications and technical characteristics than its Hwasong-14 ICBM, tested twice in July. Analysts and officials are awaiting the release of photos and video from the launch to identify what differences there may be between the Hwasong-15 and previous North Korean missiles. The missile, the first test in 75 days, was fired on a steep trajectory and flew for 53 minutes, North Korea said. It reached an altitude of 4,475 km (2,780 miles) and flew 950 km (590 miles), according to the North. If (today s) numbers are correct, then if flown on a standard trajectory rather than this lofted trajectory, this missile would have a range of more than 13,000 km (8,100 miles), the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists said in a statement. That would suggest that all of the continental United States including Washington D.C. and New York could be theoretically within range of a North Korean missile. On July 4, North Korea launched its first ICBM, Hwasong-14, which reached an altitude of 2,802 km (1,741 miles) and a range of 933 km (580 miles) during a flight of 39 minutes, North Korea s state media reported. A second test of the Hwasong-14 on July 28 exhibited improved performance, with the missile flying for about 47 minutes to an altitude of 3,724 km (2,313 miles) and a range of 998 km (620 miles), according to state media. The second flight showed the missile has a range of more than 10,000 km (6,213 miles), potentially putting the U.S. West Coast within range, analysts have said. After Wednesday s test, Kim declared that with the Hwasong-15 North Korea had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force. International observers, however, said it remains unclear how heavy a payload the missile was carrying, and if it could carry a large nuclear warhead far enough to strike the United States. It also remains unclear whether the North Koreans have perfected a re-entry vehicle capable of protecting a nuclear warhead during its descent. North Korea launched the missile from Pyongsong, South Pyongan Province, about 30 km (18 miles) north of its capital, Pyongyang, the first time a missile was fired from this location. Unlike many other tests that historically occur in the early mornings, Wednesday s launch occurred in the middle of the night in Korea, at around 2:28 a.m. North Korea s local time (6:17 p.m. GMT). The location and timing are likely a reflection of Pyongyang s continuing efforts to test weapons from anywhere and at any time, providing more realistic tests and making it more difficult for other countries to predict and possibly intercept a launch. The test is unusual in that it was conducted in the dead of night, perhaps reflecting North Korean concerns about avoiding a U.S. ballistic missile defence intercept, the U.S.-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies said. The previous two ICBM tests in July were launched from Panghyon airfield in North Pyongan Province, and in Mupyong-ni, Chagang Province, respectively. Other, shorter range missiles have been launched from a variety of locations as well, including at least two intermediate-range ballistic missiles that flew over Japanese airspace in August and September. The last of those missiles was launched at Sunan, just north of Pyongyang, from a transporter erector launcher, a road-mobile vehicle that can make it more difficult to track and target missiles before they are launched. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany summons North Korea's ambassador over missile test;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany strongly condemns North Korea s latest ballistic missile test, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Wednesday, adding that he would summon North Korea s ambassador. North Korea has again breached international law. North Korea s ruthless behavior poses a huge threat to international security, Gabriel said in a statement. North Korea said on Wednesday it successfully tested a powerful new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel says must stick to growth-friendly investment and budget consolidation;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, currently trying to form a new coalition government after September s election, said on Wednesday Germany needed to keep non-wage costs below 40 percent and stressed the importance of budget consolidation. Speaking in a video message played at an employers conference in Berlin, Merkel said it remains important to keep non-wage costs under the 40 percent mark . Merkel, who is expected to start coalition talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) after attempts to form an awkward three-way alliance with the liberals and Greens failed, said that during the upcoming talks with the SPD she would emphasize that Germany needed to stick to its course of growth-friendly investment and budget consolidation. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea says Japan's Abe considering attending Pyeongchang Olympics;SEOUL (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is considering attending the winter Olympics in South Korea in February despite escalating tension after North Korea s latest missile test on Wednesday, the South s presidential office said. Abe raised the possibility of attending the games during a telephone call with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in which they said they would no longer tolerate North Korea s increasing security threats and they would tighten sanctions and pressure against it, Moon s press secretary, Yoon Young-chan, told a news briefing. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish border should see no queues post-Brexit: British minister;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain wants to reach an agreement with the European Union that would secure a frictionless border between EU member Ireland and Northern Ireland to avoid any need for queues on either side, junior Brexit minister Robin Walker said on Wednesday. Settling the border with Northern Ireland has become one of the main sticking points in Britain s talks on leaving the European Union. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Same-sex marriage bill clears Australia's Senate;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s upper house Senate on Wednesday passed a measure to legalize same-sex marriage, perhaps as soon as next week, after lawmakers dismissed a conservative push to allow religious objectors to refuse service to same-sex couples. Australians overwhelmingly endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage in a postal survey run by the national statistics agency and the bill easily passed the Senate by 43 votes to 12. Conservative lawmakers had pressed for broad protections for religious objectors, among them florists, bakers and musicians, to refuse service to same-sex couples. But amendments for lay celebrants to refuse to solemnize same-sex marriages and permitting caterers opposed to the unions to refuse service at wedding receptions were either defeated or abandoned during two days of debate in the senate, where same-sex marriage supporters are in the majority. The Australian people voted to lessen discrimination, not to extend it and we, the senate, have respected that vote by rejecting amendments which sought to extend discrimination, or derail marriage equality, Labor Senator Penny Wong, who voted down all the amendments, told Parliament. The bill moves to the lower house next week, where conservative lawmakers hope for a renewed push to add measures exempting objectors to same-sex marriage from existing laws against discrimination. I do not think we have made these changes in a way which advances rights fully, said center-right National Party Senator Matt Canavan. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition government and the main opposition Labor Party have said they wanted to pass the law through parliament by Dec. 7. If the legislation passes as expected, Australia will become the 26th nation to legalize same-sex marriage, a watershed for a country where some states held homosexual activity illegal until 1997. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: stay calm, but new North Korea missile test a provocative act;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The latest test of a new North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a provocative act, Russia said on Wednesday, calling on all sides involved to stay calm to avoid a clash. North Korea said it successfully tested a powerful new ICBM on Wednesday that put the entire U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. The latest test was the highest and longest any North Korean missile had flown, landing in the sea near Japan. Certainly, this new missile launch is a provocative act, which provokes further growth in tension and which moves us further away from the point where a settlement of the crisis can begin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a conference call with reporters. North Korea s first missile test since mid-September came a week after U.S. President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a U.S. list of countries it says support terrorism, allowing it to impose more sanctions. Washington has said repeatedly that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea while stressing its desire for a peaceful solution. Diplomatic options remain viable and open, for now, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. While condemning the latest test, the Kremlin s Peskov said: We hope that all the sides involved are able to preserve calm, which is so necessary to avoid the situation on the Korean peninsula sliding towards a worst-case scenario. Russia and China have proposed a roadmap for defusing the crisis in the region. On Wednesday, Russia s foreign ministry repeated its offer to use the plan, calling on North Korea to stop its missile and nuclear tests, while urging the United States and South Korea to abstain from their unprecedentedly large-scale, unscheduled military air exercises announced to be held in early December . Asked if the Kremlin believed that the proposed roadmap was being considered by the North Korean leadership, Peskov said: Let s put it this way: there are no grounds for substantial optimism. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain close to deal on Brexit bill with EU - sources;BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has offered to pay much of what the European Union was demanding to settle a Brexit divorce bill , bringing the two sides close to agreement on a key obstacle to opening talks on a future free trade pact, EU sources said on Tuesday. The offer, which British newspapers valued at around 50 billion euros (44.3 billion pounds), reflected the bulk of outstanding EU demands that include London paying a share of post-Brexit EU spending on commitments made before Britain leaves in March 2019 as well as funding of EU staff pensions for decades to come. A British government official said they do not recognise this account of the talks going on ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Theresa May to Brussels this coming Monday. EU officials close to the negotiations stressed that work was still continuing ahead of May s talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. But EU diplomats briefed on progress said the British offer was promising and that, on the financial settlement, the two sides were, as one said, close to a deal . Nonetheless, others cautioned that Britain had yet to make a fully committed offer and that essential agreement from the other 27 member states could not yet be taken for granted. The EU set the condition of significant progress on three key elements of a withdrawal treaty before it would accede to London s request for negotiations on a free trade pact that could keep business flowing after Brexit in 16 months. It set a deadline of Monday for that progress to be made if EU leaders were to give a green light at a summit on Dec. 14-15. On the issue of the rights of EU citizens in Britain, EU negotiators are still pressing Britain to accept that European judges should have a final say on enforcing those rights. If the financial settlement, which many British businesses have argued May should make in order to avoid a disruptive cliff edge departure from the single market, is forthcoming, the thorniest outstanding issue is that of the Irish border. Ireland remains the most difficult issue, a senior EU diplomat said after Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar avoided a disruptive snap election when his deputy resigned on Tuesday at the insistence of the party propping up his minority government. Britain has yet to satisfy EU - including Irish - demands that it clarify how it would avoid a hard border with customs posts on land between Northern Ireland and the EU. Many fear that would disturb the fragile peace in the British province. On the Brexit bill, Juncker has estimated Britain would owe roughly 60 billion euros. EU officials say Brussels is willing to work with May to massage those figures in order to help her win backing from hardline Brexit supporters who have in the past insisted that Britain owes Brussels nothing. Britain s Financial Times said London agreed to assume liabilities worth up to 100 billion euros, but said net payments over many decades could fall to less than half that amount. The European Commission declined to comment. Britain s Brexit ministry said intensive talks were continuing and the two sides were trying to find a way to build on recent momentum in the talks to take them to the next stage. Sterling rallied around 1 percent against the U.S. dollar as investors took the reports as a sign that the risk of Britain leaving the EU without a deal, which is widely seen as damaging to the economy, had diminished. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BLACK CAUCUS MEMBER James Clyburn Suggests RACISM Is Motive For Rep. John Conyers Sexual Assault Accusers…”These Are All WHITE Women” [VIDEO];U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn could find himself in hot water.A writer for The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic tweeted that Clyburn invoked the name of Susan Smith, South Carolina s infamous child murderer, in his defense of Conyers. James Clyburn compared Conyers accusers to the child murderer Susan Smith, who initially claimed a black man had abducted her kids. Clyburn said, these are all white women who ve made these charges against Conyers, Robert Draper tweeted.When asked if that comment was true, Draper said he verified it through two sources, adding Clyburn has used the Susan Smith parallel more than once, to members & staffers. Clyburn responded on Twitter, saying This is inaccurate in many regards. The Congressional Black Caucus tweeted about the alleged Susan Smith comment, saying Clyburn used the Smith example to illustrate the dangers of convicting people before getting all the facts. Umm yeah, sure he did.Meanwhile, Clyburn just kept digging a deeper hole. Following his baseless and disgusting and racist claims to Congress, Clyburn was met in the basement of Congress, where he was asked about fellow Black Caucus member and accused serial sexual assaulter, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). His response was stunning.When asked about sexual harassment allegations against colleague Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Clyburn seemed to suggest elected officials should be held to a different standard than other public figures.In a video posted on Twitter, the 77-year-old Clyburn is walking to an elevator with Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.), when asked Other men in other industries have faced similar accusations and gotten out of the way, resign, stepped down, far faster than he has, right Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer? Clyburn s response, Who elected them? CBC Chair Richmond asks for ex. of ppl leaving jobs faster than Conyers when face sexual harassment claims;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NBC MANAGEMENT “Protected The Sh*t Out of Him”: Details of Married Matt Lauer’s Disgusting Acts Of Sexual Harassment Are REVEALED After Democrat Fan Boy Is Fired;NBC was called out by conservative news outlets, like Breitbart for refusing to disclose Matt Lauer s ties to the Clinton Foundation prior to his 30 minutes during NBC s Commander-in-Chief forum where he basically ignored every Hillary scandal during his interview with her. The longtime Today Show co-host had ties to the Clinton Foundation. Lauer was once listed as a notable member of The Clinton Global Initiative, the fundraising conduit of the scandal-ridden Clinton Foundation.Today, another close friend of the Clinton s saw his career as the highest paid morning host come to an abrupt end over sexual misconduct and assault allegations, as NBC announced that Matt Lauer had been fired from the Today Show. Variety spoke with 10 past and present workers at the company who accused Lauer of a vast array of sexual misconduct, including the woman who claims that she was sexually assaulted by the show s long-time anchor beginning in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics.That woman also shared her account with the human resources and legal departments of NBC News on Monday.NBC launched an investigation into her claims on Tuesday morning which ultimately led to Lauer s firing that same evening. That swift response was still not enough for some women however, who said their complaints to executives at the company fell on deaf ears.Those interviewed said it was at the OIympic Games where Lauer made moves on a number of female staff members. Lauer would invite women employed by NBC late at night to his hotel room while covering the Olympics in various cities over the years, claims Variety reporter Ramin Setoodeh. He later told colleagues how his wife had accompanied him to the London Olympics because she didn t trust him to travel alone. None of the 10 individuals who spoke with Variety are identified in the piece, including the woman who got the sex toy along with an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her. That woman said she was mortified, while a fellow co-worker s state was described as visibly shaken after Lauer allegedly flashed her in his office.When she did not do anything, Lauer reportedly reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act. His office was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up, writes Setoodeh. This afforded him the assurance of privacy. It allowed him to welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him. That information came courtesy of two of the women who spoke with the writer of the piece. He couldn t sleep around town with celebrities or on the road with random people because he s Matt Lauer and he s married. So he d have to do it within his stable, where he exerted power, and he knew people wouldn t ever complain. While not named, one woman, in particular, seemed to catch Lauer s eye according to thse interviewed for the piece. Several employees recall how he paid intense attention to a young woman on his staff that he found attractive, focusing intently on her career ambitions, reads the story. And he asked the same producer to his hotel room to deliver him a pillow. Lauer s fixation on women s bodies and physical appearance is also a big part of the story, with multiple people saying that he would often play the game F***, Marry or Kill with staffers.One of the show s anchors would often gossip about Lauer s sexual escapades according to staffers while a former reporter said: Management sucks there. They protected the s*** out of Matt Lauer. Daily Mail ;left-news;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP DEMANDS INVESTIGATION Into “Accidental” Death Of 28-Yr Old Joe Scarborough Staffer;With all of the stories of, TV hosts involved in sexual misconduct, it s a mystery why nobody brings ups the accidental death of Joe Scarborough s female staffer. Last November, President Trump called for an investigation into the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old staffer for then-Congressman Joe Scarborough. Many Morning Joe viewers probably have forgotten, or never knew, that the body of a female aide once was found in Scarborough s Congressional office. Investigators quickly saw that a blow to the head, delivered accidentally or intentionally, was involved in Lori Klausutis death. There are also some serious questions as to the mental competency of the doctor who performed the autopsy, as well as an important question about why there was no time of death recorded on his autopsy.According to the Daily Kos: Joe Scarborough, a U.S. Congressman from Florida s 1st District from 1995 suddenly resigned only 5 months into his 4th term in September 2001. His reason? The classic In order to spend more time with his children Curiously, just 2 months before he resigned, his 28-year-old staffer was found dead in his office.While Mainstream Media was hounding Democrat U.S. Congressman Gary Condit about his missing ex-intern, Chandra Levy, viewers heard next to nothing about Joe s intern, a healthy 28-year-old woman was found dead in his Congressional District Office in Fort Walton Beach, FL.Only two days after Scarborough s staffer was found dead in his office, the 9-11 terror attack happened, and this huge story was mostly ignored by media outlets. In a tweet calling for Scarborough and MSNBC president Phil Griffin to be terminated in the wake of Matt Lauer s firing, the president mentioned an unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago. So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate! the president wrote to his 43.6 million followers.So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the unsolved mystery that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2017Trump was referencing Lori Klausutis, 28-year-old office staffer who worked for Scarborough when he was a representative from Florida. Klausutis was found dead in the congressman s district office in July 2001. The HillThe autopsy of Lori Klausutis makes no reference to a time of death. That raises new questions about an investigation that started when the 28-year-old woman s body was found in the office of then U.S. Representative Joe Scarborough in summer 2001.Accidental death was the official finding in the Klausutis case, with a cardiac arrhythmia causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk. But the recent discovery of human remains at a storage unit in Pensacola, Florida, casts doubt on that ruling. That s because the storage unit was rented by Dr. Michael Berkland, the man who conducted the Klausutis autopsy 11 years earlier.Berkland now faces a felony charge of improper storage of hazardous waste, and the grisly nature of the discovery calls his competence and perhaps his sanity into question.Daily Mail Florida was not the only place Berkland ran into trouble over his work. In 1996, he was fired as a contract medical examiner in Jackson County, Missouri, in a dispute over his autopsy reports.Berkland had incorrectly stated on the reports that he had taken sections of several brains to be preserved as specimens for medical conferences and teaching purposes, AP reported.He claimed they were proofreading errors and the Missouri attorney general s office found they did not jeopardize any criminal cases.Berkland complained the actions against him were unfair because he was unable to present evidence in his defense. His doctor s license was ultimately revoked there. Independent blogger, Legal Schnauzer suggested in 2012 that Berkland s findings be dismissed and that his autopsy of the deceased staffer should not be trusted: Was the Lori Klausutis autopsy conducted in a professional manner? Was foul play prematurely ruled out? Should the investigation be reopened, perhaps with renewed scrutiny for Scarborough and others who might have had access to his office at the time?So it s hard to figure why the autopsy makes no reference to the time of death. (See full autopsy report here.)Why is that a key omission? Consider this from an online document titled Determining Time of Death (TOD) :Why is it important to know the time of death? TOD can set the time of murder Eliminate or suggest suspects Confirm or disprove alibisWhy did Berkland not include this critical detail? It s not as if his report does not provide plenty of other details. He tells us that Klausutis was wearing a white thong on the day of her death. (Page 7.) He tells us that she had a shaved genital region. (Page 8.) But no time of death?The core of the autopsy report can be found in the comment section, pages 3-7. This probably is the central finding:There is no doubt that the head injury is as a result of a fall, rather than a blow being delivered to the heading by a moving object. Lori has a classic contrecoup injury, or bruise to the brain, meaning that her brain was bruised on the opposite side from where the external force was applied. The left side of Lori s brain was bruised while the external abraded contusion (scratch and bruise) was in the right temple region. The contrecoup contusion results when a freely moving, mobile head strikes an unyielding, firm, fixed object in a fall, as in the floor, or in this case, the desk. This finding is in marked distinction from the coup contusion, or that injury which results from a moving object (example a ball bat) that strikes a stationary head. In the coup injury, there is bruising of the brain on the same side as the external injury. There was no coup contusion in Lori Klausutis.What would cause a seemingly healthy young woman, an avid runner, to collapse and lose consciousness, unable to break her fall? Berkland rules out some of the common causes of such an event a pulmonary embolus, a brain hemorrhage, a ruptured aneurysm, drug issues. He concludes:These facts leave only a cardiac arrhythmia as the reason to go unconscious and subsequently fall and strike the desk in an unprotected fashion. If Lori s heart was normal, it would be problematic to postulate a plausible reason for a cardiac arrhythmia in such a young person. However, her heart was not normal. The heart contained an abnormality (floppy mitral valve) that is known to result in cardiac ectopy and dangerous cardiac arrhythmias.All of this sounds reasonable. But given recent events, can Michael Berkland s work be trusted? Why on earth was he keeping body parts in a storage unit? And did any of those parts once belong to Lori Klausutis?According to the Daily Kos, Dr. Berkland and his supervisor at the time, Dr. Gary Cumberland were known to be high-giving donors to Scarborough s Congressional campaigns. Did their relationship with Scarborough influence any and all the results issued by the M.E. s Office?;left-news;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY MUSLIM IMMIGRANT Welfare Fraud Has Exploded… Latest Shop Owner Stole $1 Million!;The cases of fraud, money laundering and theft of American tax dollars by Muslim immigrants is outrageous! The list just keeps on growing Why? Because the punishment is just a slap on the hand and these people are NEVER deported!The case below is just the latest in a string of Muslim immigrants who take advantage of our system:A man accused of running a welfare scam out of a Portland halal grocery is pleading guilty. The market sells meat permissible under Muslim law. According to federal court documents, Ali Ratib Daham is pleading guilty to federal food stamp and other welfare fraud. He is also admitting to money laundering and theft from the state s MaineCare program. Daham is agreeing to a jail sentence of at least 33 months and will pay more than $1 million in restitution to the government. In exchange, prosecutors are agreeing to drop dozens of other charges in the case.The plea deal will be considered in federal district court Tuesday. The guilty plea could cause him to be deported.They never deport these people, and tell me how is he going to repay $1 million when I ll bet the money was moved abroad a long time ago. Yes, these crooks send the money back home! America is a global magnet for all of the goodies we give immigrants. Did you know the feds give money to these people to start a small business? They then screw the system and make off with millions Taxpayers should be outraged! Via: FOX23 MaineA PREVIOUS REPORT ON THEFT BY IMMIGRANT STORE OWNERS: RING OF MUSLIM STORE OWNERS STOLE $16 MILLION!A ring of Muslim store owners played the system and made over $16 million off of the American taxpayers BUT Muhammad Sarmad was sentenced to just 18 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. Does anyone else see how this is a joke of a sentence for a HUGE crime? How is this a deterrent when the guy gets out in 18 months? Baltimore, Maryland U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Muhammad Sarmad, age 41, of Nottingham, Maryland, to 18 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for conspiracy to commit food stamp fraud and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to illegally redeem food stamp benefits in exchange for cash. At the sentencing on March 27, 2017, Judge Bennett also ordered that Sarmad pay restitution of $3,550,662.Sarmad, co-defendant Mohammad Irfan, and other family members owned and/or operated New Sherwood Market, 6324 Sherwood Road in Northwood, Maryland;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodian PM leaves for China to seek more aid;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, facing Western donor pressure over a crackdown on critics ahead of 2018 elections, will seek more aid and investment from China during a visit this week, his aide said on Wednesday. China is already Cambodia s biggest donor and its support has bolstered Hun Sen in the face of criticism of what his opponents say amounts to the destruction of democracy. The aide, Sry Thamrong, said Hun Sen would attend a special summit from Thursday to Sunday held by the ruling Communist Party on a theme espoused by Chinese President Xi Jinping on turning the world for the better and without interference. The aim of Hun Sen s meetings to discuss aid and investment with Xi and Chinese investors is to create more jobs in Cambodia, he said. Especially, we need more bridges on the Mekong River, we also need many more roads, trains, sky train, Sry Thamrong told reporters at the international airport in Phnom Penh, the capital, before the departure. These are the things we need in the future. China has supported Cambodia s crackdown, making no criticism of the government, which is one of Beijing s most important allies in Southeast Asia after more than three decades in power. The supreme court this month banned the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) at the government s request. That followed the arrest of its leader Kem Sokha for plotting to take power with American help. The United States has stopped election funding ahead of next year s general election and threatened further concrete steps. The European Union has raised a potential threat to Cambodia s duty free access. Washington is working on a review of its ties with Cambodia after the dissolution of the CNRP, William Heidt, the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia said. That is something we are taking very seriously, having a very serious review of our policies towards Cambodia, he told broadcaster Voice of America in an interview on Wednesday. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump was wrong to retweet UK far-right group: British PM May's spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump was wrong to have posted anti-Islam videos on Twitter that had originally been published by a leader of Britain First, a fringe, far-right party, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday. It is wrong for the President to have done this, the spokesman said. Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency tolerance and respect. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tribal militia kill 43 in South Sudan's Jonglei state, abduct women, children;JUBA (Reuters) - A tribal militia killed at least 43 people in South Sudan s Jonglei state, local officials said on Wednesday, extending a spate of tit-for-tat revenge killings. Raiders from the Murle ethnic group killed 20 men, 22 women and one child, and injured 19 people in the village of Duk Payel on Tuesday, Jonglei Information Minister Jocab Akech Deng said. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a separate statement that among those killed were six staff members of local aid organizations. The killings are the latest chapter in a chain of revenge attacks, cattle raiding, and child abduction between the Murle and the Dinka Bor tribe. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said that about 60 women and children had been abducted. Oil-rich South Sudan dissolved into civil war in 2013 and is riven by rivalry between rebels, the military and tribal militias. More than a third of the country s 12 million population have fled their homes. Kudumoch Nyakurono, the information minister of neighboring Boma state where the Murle are based, said his government was trying to find the culprits. There are some villages which were attacked by some youth from Murle in Pibor, said Nyakurono. The government of Boma state has condemned this attack and we have sent commissioners and representatives from here to go and find out which village has organized this attack so that we can bring them to justice. UNMISS said it was sending a peacekeeping patrol and human rights monitors to the area of the attack. UNMISS deplores any incidents in which innocent civilians are killed. The mission will continue to support reconciliation efforts on the ground between communities to ease tensions and end the cycle of revenge, said UNMISS spokesman Daniel Dickinson. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gunmen kill intelligence officer at Islamabad Shi'ite mosque;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on worshippers at the entrance of a Shi ite Muslim mosque in Pakistan s capital Islamabad on Wednesday, killing an intelligence officer at the scene, police said. Three or four attackers on two bikes shot at members of the minority Shi ite community who were leaving evening prayers in a residential neighborhood, police official Ghulam Qasim said. A member of Pakistan s domestic Intelligence Bureau among the worshippers got hit several times and died later in hospital, Qasim said. We re not sure yet whether it is a sectarian incident, Qasim added. The man who died got five or six bullets. That seems to make him a target. No group immediately claimed responsibility. Attacks are rare in the capital, but Al-Qaeda and Islamic State-affiliated Sunni Muslim sectarian groups are active in the country. Four other people were being treated for bullet wounds, police said. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria flies migrants home from Libya after slavery scare;LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria s president said on Wednesday the government had started bringing stranded citizens home from Libya after a global outcry over reports that migrants there were being sold into slavery. Muhammadu Buhari s comments came days after CNN aired footage that appeared to show men being auctioned as farm hands in Libya after being smuggled across the Sahara. Libya s U.N.-backed government has said it is investigating. The situation in Libya, of people being sold into slavery, is appalling and unacceptable. We will do everything to protect our citizens wherever they might be, Buhari wrote on his Twitter account. Nigeria had started bringing back home all Nigerians stranded in Libya and elsewhere, he added. The U.N. s International Organization for Migration said 239 Nigerians flew home from Tripoli on Tuesday. It has said Nigerian migrants risk exploitation, detention and abuse as they head north to Libya, hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German court orders release of soldier accused of attack plan;BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court on Wednesday ordered the release of an army officer suspected of planning to carry out an attack on politicians and incriminate asylum seekers, saying there was not enough evidence to keep him in detention. The officer, named only as Franco A., was arrested in April in a case that shocked Germans and stirred a debate about the depth of right-wing radicalism in the country s military. Prosecutors suspected that Franco A., along with two accomplices, wanted to implicate refugees in their planned attack by posing under a false identity as an asylum seeker. Former president Joachim Gauck and Justice Minister Heiko Maas were on a list of possible targets prepared by the suspects, who wanted to make their attack look like the work of Islamist militants, prosecutors had said. However, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that there was not enough evidence that Franco A. was preparing an attack to keep him in detention, even if there were some grounds for suspicion. Investigators must now make clear whether they have enough evidence to bring the officer to trial. A suspected accomplice was freed in July pending trial, while the other suspect was released for lack of evidence. The case had put pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel s government, with her close ally, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, facing criticism for failing to deal with right-wing extremism in the army and also because she implied that most soldiers were right-wing radicals. Franco A., who served with an army battalion stationed in France, had used a fake identity to register as a Syrian refugee and moved into a shelter for migrants in Bavaria even though he speaks no Arabic. The soldier had previously been detained in late January by Austrian authorities on suspicion of having hidden an illegal gun in a bathroom at Vienna s main airport. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD, conservatives argue over repatriation of Syrian refugees;BERLIN (Reuters) - Members of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) and Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives argued on Wednesday about repatriating Syrian refugees accused of crimes, a potential foretaste of coalition negotiations on immigration. Migration will be a key issue in coalition talks after an influx of more than a million migrants since mid-2015 hurt both the two major German parties in the September election and helped the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). The SPD criticized a proposal by conservative politicians to deport Syrian refugees who commit crimes, accusing the conservative party of moving to the right, RND newspaper group reported on Wednesday. Earlier this month, the AfD called for the repatriation of all the half a million Syrian refugees living in Germany, saying the war there was nearly over. The conservative interior minister of Saxony state, Markus Ulbig, proposed deporting Syrian refugees who commit offences after evaluating the security situation in their home country, RND reported earlier. Ulbig s proposal, was supported by other regional interior ministers who will meet next week to discuss whether the situation in Syria merits a new status in order to consider sending Syrians back, starting from the end of June 2018. We have always said: we want to respond to the developments in Syria, said the spokesman of the head of Christian Democrats in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Now we have to ensure in the medium term that people return to their homeland. The SPD said a halt to deportations for Syrian asylum seekers should be extended at least until the end of 2018. Now thinking about sending people to this country as quickly as possible - as the conservatives proposed- is cynical and inhuman, said Eva Hoegl, a senior SPD politician. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, which is led by SPD politician Sigmar Gabriel, noted that the conflict was still ongoing, suggesting that it was premature to talk about a new security assessment for the country. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 11 million driven from their homes in Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year. The situation on the ground has changed in the last two years since Russia joined the war on the side of the government, helping it recapture most rebel-held territory. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Opposition wants Russian pressure for Syria deal within six months;GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria s opposition wants Russia and other states to put pressure on President Bashar al-Assad to engage in peace talks in Geneva to produce a political solution within six months, the chief of its delegation said at the start of negotiations on Wednesday. We want more pressure on the regime to engage in the negotiation and continue in the negotiation to reach a political solution in six months, as (U.N. Security Council Resolution) 2254 says, Nasr Hariri told Reuters. Just speaking about a political transition without any advancement, we will lose our trust in the process and our people will lose their trust in us and in the process itself. Hariri said Syria and its ally Iran wanted the fighting to continue until they could declare a military victory, and they were not abiding by agreements to de-escalate the fighting in areas such as Eastern Ghouta, a besieged rebel-held enclave. If the situation continues as it is now I think there is great danger in these agreements. Russia had arranged a pause in the fighting for Eastern Ghouta for two or three days, which showed Moscow had the power to ensure de-escalation agreements were respected, he said. A war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday that heavy shelling hit Eastern Ghouta in spite of the start of the Russian-backed truce there. Syria s civil war is now in its seventh year and previous rounds of negotiations made virtually no progress, with no direct contact between the opposing delegations, who took turns to meet U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura. The Syrian government delegation has always rejected the opposition s demand that Assad leave power, calling them terrorists who lacked the legitimacy to negotiate. The government s position on the battlefield has strengthened dramatically since Russia joined the war on Assad s behalf two years ago, raising speculation that the opposition could soften its negotiating stance. However, opposition delegates meeting last week issued a statement repeating their demand that Assad be excluded from any transitional government, a position which Damascus and its allies say is divorced from reality on the ground. De Mistura originally planned a round of 4-5 days but was now planning to continue until Dec. 15, Hariri said, adding that his team had come hoping for direct talks with the government delegation for the first time. Hariri said his opening words to government negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari would be: I hope despite all of the crimes which have been done in Syria, I hope that the regime can come ready to put the people of Syria first. De Mistura has asked both sides to come without preconditions. Hariri said the opposition had no preconditions, but planned to talk about Assad s future as part of the negotiations. The talks are meant to cover four major issues: elections, governance, the constitution and fighting terrorism. All four would be discussed, Hariri said, but it would not be possible to go straight into the core elements straightaway. If we will speak about constitution or election under the current circumstances inside Syria with this kind of regime, I think it will be impossible, he said. Among issues the opposition wanted to discuss at the outset were humanitarian aid and people detained by forces loyal to Assad. Hariri said detainees number more than 200,000. Syrian government negotiator Ja afari also met de Mistura on Wednesday but declined to speak to reporters afterwards. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's Maduro strips rival of U.N. post amid corruption purge: sources;CARACAS/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela has ordered the removal of Rafael Ramirez, once a powerful oil minister and head of state oil company PDVSA, from his post as representative to the United Nations in New York, four sources with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. Though the decision will not affect the OPEC nation s struggling oil industry, it may help President Nicolas Maduro shore up his position in crisis-stricken Venezuela as the country heads toward presidential elections in 2018. Ramirez, an increasingly vocal critic of Maduro in recent months, was seen by some as angling to be a presidential candidate as Maduro s unpopular government and an economic crisis have fueled divisions with the ruling Socialist Party. He was fired last night, said a source with knowledge of the information, who asked not to be identified. Maduro sent Ramirez to the U.N. in 2014 in a major demotion from his decade-long roles as oil minister and head of PDVSA. Venezuela s Information Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United Nations has not received formal notification of Ramirez s removal, a U.N. spokesman said. Vice President Tareck El Aissami said on Wednesday that he hoped that Maduro will be re-elected in 2018, the clearest indication yet that the former bus driver will seek another term despite the economic crisis. A separate source said that Ramirez had been summoned to present himself in Venezuela in coming days. That source said Ramirez had not been formally removed and that he was working at the United Nations on Wednesday. However, he was not present when his turn to speak at a meeting on the rights of the Palestinian people came up, according to diplomatic sources at the meeting. Two sources said Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza traveled to New York this week. Another source said Ramirez tried to fight back and negotiate but was unable to. Ramirez has published several online opinion pieces this year criticizing the management of PDVSA for allowing oil production to plummet and admonishing the government for not taking measures to improve Venezuela s tanking economy. In one piece this month entitled the The Storm, he described his efforts in 2014 to help stabilize the economy, which Maduro s allies perceived as an attack on the president, according to one source. The article played up his close relationship with late President Hugo Chavez, who tasked Ramirez with leading oil sector nationalizations that began in 2007. Chavez s deity-like status in the Socialist Party makes any relationship with him a commodity that officials often use when vying for influence or jockeying for position. Maduro, who calls himself the son of Chavez, this week named a military officer to head PDVSA and promised to break up mafias that have stolen from the nation s coffers. Some of his comments in a speech on Tuesday appeared aimed at Ramirez tenure. We ve witnessed the rise of mafias that controlled important areas of our oil industry, Maduro said in the speech during the swearing in of Major General Manuel Quevedo. They didn t just steal from the country ... they believed themselves to be the owners of the oil industry. Venezuelan authorities last week arrested the acting president of its U.S.-based refiner Citgo and five of the subsidiary s top executives as part of the corruption probe. Since August the authorities have ordered the arrest of around 50 oil industry managers as part of the anti-corruption sweep. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran denies airspace access to Bulgarian PM's plane en route to Riyadh: minister;SOFIA (Reuters) - Iran denied access to its airspace to a Bulgarian government jet taking a delegation led by Prime Minister Boyko Borissov to Tehran s regional arch-enemy Saudi Arabia, Sofia s foreign minister said on Wednesday. Ekaterina Zaharieva told reporters the plane had all necessary permits to fly over Iran en route to Riyadh late on Tuesday but once it entered Iranian airspace it was asked by Iranian authorities to leave. Zaharieva, part of the delegation on board, said the aircraft had to return to Turkey after what she called an inexplicable last-moment refusal by Iran. She said the plane had to get permission to fly through Iraqi airspace, to the west of Iran, before it could reach its final destination. She said Tehran had told Sofia the air access refusal was due to a slight deviation of the plane from its planned route, but Bulgarian authorities disagreed and had summoned the Iranian charge d affaires to Bulgaria for an explanation. The government aircraft had secured all the necessary diplomatic permissions to fly over Iranian airspace, Zaharieva said. The Iranian charge d affaires, Hassan Dotagi, said he deeply regretted the case and described it as a technical misconception , according to a Bulgarian Foreign Ministry statement following the meeting. Borissov is the first Bulgarian prime minister to visit Saudi Arabia. Bulgaria will take the European Union s rotating presidency from January for six months. The plane was also carrying former Bulgarian king Simeon Saxe-Coburg and four other cabinet ministers. The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Muslim Iran support rival sides in wars and political crises throughout the Middle East. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Dozens of mortar bombs landed on the last major rebel stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, despite a 48 hour truce proposed by Russia to coincide with the start of peace talks in Geneva. After a relatively calm morning, shelling picked up later in the day, accompanied by ground attempts to storm the besieged enclave, a witness in the Eastern Ghouta area told Reuters. The Syrian army stepped up bombardment two weeks ago in an effort to recapture Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held pocket of densely populated agricultural land on the outskirts of the capital under siege since 2012. Scores of people have been killed in air strikes during the offensive, and residents say they are on the verge of starvation after the siege was tightened. Russia had proposed a ceasefire on Monday in the besieged area for Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but we have to see if it happens . The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed when dozens of mortars crashed into Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday. Eastern Ghouta is one of several de-escalation zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad s government. But fighting has continued there. On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, the observatory said. It had reported intense bombardment that killed 41 people over two days from Sunday to Monday. A two-day truce is not nearly enough for civilians facing grave violations of international law - including bombardment and besiegement - but it is a window of opportunity to save the lives of the most desperately in need of treatment, said Thomas Garofalo, International Rescue Committee s Middle East Public Affairs Director, in a statement on Wednesday. The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad s removal as a result of negotiations. The government delegation will be headed by Syria s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari, state-run news agency SANA said. A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel: End smuggling and slavery, allow legal migration for Africans;ABIDJAN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday stressed the importance of ending smuggling and slavery while creating a legal route for Africans to come to Europe as she faces pressure at home to tackle a migrant influx. Speaking at an EU-Africa summit in Abidjan, Merkel is seeking to show Germany can take foreign policy action despite still being under a caretaker government two months after an election. The influx of more than a million migrants since mid-2015, many of them fleeing the Middle East and Africa, was largely to blame for the rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Sept. 24 election. By taking votes from Merkel s conservative bloc and others, they surged into parliament for the first time, leaving Merkel facing complicated coalition arithmetic. She is grappling to form a new government with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) after discussions on forming a three-way tie-up with the pro-business Free Democrats and the Greens failed, in part because of the thorny issue of migration. There is a common interest in ending illegal immigration, Merkel said. This plays a role all over the African continent now because there are reports that young African men are being sold like slaves in Libya. Libya is now the main departure point for mostly African migrants trying to cross to Europe. Smugglers usually pack them into flimsy inflatable boats that often break down or sink. Merkel, who in 2015 decided to open Germany s borders to migrants, said legal options should be created for Africans to be able to get training or study in an EU country. Speaking on the sidelines of the summit, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, from the SPD, suggested that Europe could offer several hundred thousand places each year as long as those people returned voluntarily after three or four years. But Guenter Nooke, Merkel s Africa envoy from her Christian Democrats (CDU), was more sceptical: No interior minister will let hundreds of thousands in if he is not sure that most of them will return, he told Reuters. The difference between Gabriel and Nooke suggests that migration will be a contested subject in coalition talks between the CDU and the SPD, but perhaps less so than in the three-way talks that failed as the two parties policies are closer. More important than creating legal migration options was to create more opportunities for young people at home, Nooke said, noting that Africa s population could double from a current 1.2 billion by 2050. It s all about creating seeds for growth, with industrial parks and special economic zones. It is a question of jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, he said. The summit was due to focus on education, investment in youth and economic development to discourage refugees and economic migrants from attempting the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three dead bodies pulled from sea near Spain after migrant boat sinks;MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish rescue services pulled three drowned men from the Strait of Gibraltar after rescuing one man from a half-sunken, rickety boat and another from the open sea, an emergency services spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The men are believed to be from a boat that was carrying migrants attempting to cross into Europe, the spokeswoman said. One of the rescued men said there were six people aboard originally, she said. The search continues for the sixth person. Conditions in the Strait of Gibraltar - a narrow strip of water that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea - are currently dangerous with bad weather and big waves, she said. Tens of thousands of migrants attempt the treacherous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from Africa every year in unseaworthy boats, leading to thousands of deaths by drowning. Migrant drownings have topped 3,000 on Mediterranean Sea routes for the fourth straight year, the International Organization for Migration said on Tuesday. Migrants seeking a better life in Europe have sought new routes through Spain in an effort to get around European Union actions to curb migration in the central and eastern Mediterranean. Almost 10,300 people arrived in Spain by sea in the first seven months of 2017, the IOM said in September, four times as many as in 2016. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After threats, EU lawmakers seek 'protection' on Malta visit;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers have asked for protection when they visit Malta this week to probe accusations of high-level corruption on the island, citing death threats made against some members of the EU parliament. The legislature passed a motion this month voicing concerns about democracy and the rule of law in the EU s smallest state, following the killing of a journalist who had accused some political leaders of graft and money laundering. A group of seven MEPs will visit Malta on Thursday and Friday. In a letter seen by Reuters, Manfred Weber, the German leader of the center-right bloc, wrote to European Parliament President Antonio Tajani on Wednesday asking him to remind the Maltese authorities of their duty to protect the delegation and allow them to carry out their duty free from fear . The stark terms of the letter underscored the depth of feeling in Brussels about recent developments in Malta. It also reflected Tajani s call on Monday for the Polish government to ensure the safety of MEPs after a far-right protest there over an EU parliament motion about democracy in Poland. Centre-left Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat says Malta does not tolerate crime and promised justice for the murdered journalist, who had leveled personal accusations against him as well as against members of the center-right opposition party. Sven Giegold, a German member of the EU parliament s Greens party and a leading campaigner on financial crime who will be part of the delegation, told Reuters he was not very worried but added: I hope the security will be guaranteed. Weber, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, wrote that there were serious concerns about the independence of the Maltese police and referred to MEPs being threatened with their lives for speaking out in defense of the rule of law in Malta . One of his group s members, Maltese center-right MEP Roberta Metsola, has faced public death threats on social media after speaking on the issue, parliamentary officials said. Mr Weber can rest assured that, as in previous occasions, Malta will offer maximum hospitality to the MEP delegation , a spokesman for the Maltese government told Reuters. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan, Germany's Steinmeier discuss improving relations: Turkish sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier discussed the need to improve ties between their countries and take mutual steps to that end during a phone call on Wednesday, Turkish presidential sources said. Aside from bilateral relations, the sources said, Erdogan also briefed Steinmeier about a summit on Syria s conflict held by Turkey, Russia and Iran in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Nov. 22. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela has not told U.N. it is changing representative: official;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Venezuela s government has not officially notified the United Nations of any changes to its representation at the organization, a U.N. spokesman said on Wednesday. Four sources told Reuters on Wednesday that Rafael Ramirez, a former oil czar turned U.N. diplomat, had been sacked from his post amid a broad oil industry anti-corruption campaign. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vatican defends pope's avoidance of term 'Rohingya' in Myanmar;YANGON (Reuters) - The Vatican on Wednesday defended Pope Francis s decision not to use the word Rohingya in public during his visit to Myanmar, saying his moral authority was unblemished and that his mere presence drew attention to the refugee crisis. But at a news conference, the Holy See s spokesman also acknowledged that Vatican diplomacy was not infallible and that others were entitled to their views. The pope leaves on Thursday for Bangladesh, where about 625,000 Muslim Rohingya from predominantly Buddhist Myanmar have fled following a military crackdown in Rakhine state. He is due to meet Rohingya refugees there. Since he arrived in Myanmar, Francis has studiously avoided the highly charged term, following advice of local Church officials. They feared it could set off a diplomatic incident and turn Myanmar s military and government against minority Christians. Even though his calls for justice, human rights and respect were widely seen as applicable to the Rohingya, who are not recognized as citizens or as members of a distinct ethnicity, rights groups such as Amnesty International said they were disappointed. I think it was pretty clear from the local concerns that the pope was going to take the advice very seriously in public, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said at the news conference, which was also with several Myanmar bishops. That doesn t take away from anything the pope has said in the past, or from anything he says in private, Burke said. The fact of the matter that the pope is here and draws attention to the country itself is an incredibly positive thing. Scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, and refugees arriving in Bangladesh told of killings and rapes. Washington said last week that the military s campaign included horrendous atrocities aimed at ethnic cleansing . Myanmar s military has denied accusations of murder, rape and forced displacement. The government blames the crisis on the Rohingya militants, whom it has condemned as terrorists. Everyone s entitled to their own opinion here. Nobody ever said Vatican diplomacy s infallible, Burke said when asked if the Vatican had any second thoughts about the decision for the pope not to use the word. He said the aim of Vatican diplomacy was building bridges and seek discussions as brothers, which often take place behind closed doors . This suggested the pope, who has defended Rohingya by name before in Rome, may have used the term in private during meeting in Myanmar. The pope, Burke said, was not afraid of minefields, but he could not just parachute in to areas to solve crises. I find it really hard to think that the moral authority of the pope has somehow diminished. People are not expected to solve impossible problems, Burke said. The moral of the pope stands. You ll see him go ahead and you can criticize what is said and what is not said, but the pope is not going to lose moral authority on this question, he said. Asked about the accusations of ethnic cleansing, Bishop John Hsane Hgyi said I did not see it with my own eyes. I don t know if its true or not . When she came to power in 2016, Nobel peace laureate and longtime champion of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi said her top priority was ending ethnic conflicts that have kept Myanmar in a state of near-perpetual civil war since independence in 1948. That goal remains elusive and, although Suu Kyi remains popular at home, she has faced a barrage of international criticism for expressing doubts about reports of rights abuses against Rohingya and failing to condemn the military. Although Suu Kyi formed Myanmar s first civilian government in half a century, her defenders say she is hamstrung by a constitution written by the military that left the army in control of security and much of the apparatus of the state. The military s power was clear on Monday when its leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, demanded to meet the pope before Sun Kyi, upending the planned schedule, which had her meeting the pontiff first. I m sure the pope would have preferred meeting the general after he had done the official visits, Burke said. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Barnier paints gloom and doom for post-Brexit Britain;BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union s chief Brexit negotiator told German industry on Wednesday that it was his responsibility to help European companies weather the exit of Britain from the EU, and he warned Britain that its economy had much to lose. In a series of speeches, Michel Barnier also said work remained to be done on how much Britain would pay the EU to cover its share of the EU budget after it leaves. British newspapers have reported his team has broadly agreed on a payment of around 50 billion euros ( 44 billion). The EU has given Britain until Monday to make an acceptable offer for a financial settlement, agree on the rights of EU citizens in Britain and ensure no hard border is set up with Ireland. Only then will it start talks on a future trade pact. German business is worried about the impact of Brexit - Britain is Germany s third-largest export destination and its fifth-biggest overall trading partner. The future of the EU is more important than Brexit, Barnier told the BDA employers association and the BDI industry group and DIHK chambers of commerce. Barnier said he wasn t sure if the whole truth had been explained to British business on the impact of Brexit. My responsibility before you and everywhere in Europe is to tell the truth to European businesses, he said in the speech to the BDA employers association. A trading relationship with a non-EU member inevitably involved friction, he said. Whatever the outcome of the current negotiations, there will be no business as usual, he said. Some politicians in Britain have argued that German companies depend on them for business, so Berlin under Chancellor Angela Merkel may help London get a deal. But only about 6 percent of Germany s trade in goods is with the United Kingdom, compared with 56 percent with the other EU countries, Barnier said - making it clear Britain had the most to lose. Barnier also pointed to value-added tax returns and the imports of animals and animal projects that are subject to checks at the EU s borders as potential problems. And he warned there was no guarantee that judgements by UK courts on trade disputes would automatically be recognised across the EU after Brexit. The BDI industry association and DIHK chambers of commerce stressed that the onus was on the British government to shift in its negotiations. The British government must move so that the EU can give the green light in two weeks for phase two of the talks, said the BDI and DIHK groups. There can be no cherry picking for London. It is clear: our priority is to strengthen the EU and develop it further, they said, stressing that the freedoms of the internal market would not be diluted for Britain during any transition phase. Barnier also warned that companies should prepare for a possible no deal , which implies returning to trade tariffs under World Trade Organisation rules, and border controls. That scenario would lead to higher transport and storage costs, hitting companies operating on a just-in-time basis, he said. The no-deal scenario is not our scenario, but since it cannot be ruled out, we have to prepare for it, he said. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit campaigners accuse May of selling UK short over divorce bill;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May faced a backlash on Wednesday from prominent supporters of Brexit after reports that she is ready to pay much of what the European Union is demanding to settle the country s divorce bill to leave the bloc. The Daily Telegraph newspaper said the net bill would total 45 billion to 55 billion pounds ($53 billion to $65 billion). A government official cast doubt on those numbers and the European Commission declined to comment, but there is a growing expectation that the sides will clinch a deal on cash. Veteran Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage said Britain should walk away from the talks rather than offer such huge sums. This is a complete sell-out that is not in our national interest, said Farage, a former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who played a big role in the 2016 referendum in which 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the EU. The British prime minister needs to say: Look, either start to behave reasonably, either start to behave in a grown-up way, or ... we are walking away , Farage, who remains a member of the European Parliament, told Reuters. Many businesses and investors fear such an approach, leading to a disorderly Brexit , would spook financial markets, sow legal chaos and badly harm the British and EU economies by disrupting trade ties and cross-border supply chains. Farage and pro-Brexit entrepreneurs such as billionaire Peter Hargreaves say Britain can prosper outside the EU and what they see as its onerous rules and regulations. Britain, which is due to leave in March 2019, hopes to persuade EU leaders next month that the sides have made enough progress on three key issues - the rights of EU citizens living in the UK, the exit bill and the land border with Ireland - to be able to move on to talks on a post-Brexit trade relationship. Hardline Brexit supporters in May s ruling Conservative Party have been fairly muted in recent weeks on the money issue, with British media saying the cabinet had swung behind her plans to pay more in the exit bill. On Wednesday Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, one of the leaders of the 2016 Leave campaign, said it was time to get the ship off the rocks . But Hargreaves, the second biggest donor to last year s Leave campaign, denounced the government s handling of Brexit talks, saying they showed no understanding of the sums involved. We ought to say to the EU: Thank you very much, we are never going to get a deal, goodbye and we are gone, lock stock and barrel, and carry on trading as before, Hargreaves said. Farage dismissed calls by some opponents of Brexit such as former prime minister Tony Blair that British voters might change their mind about leaving the EU. The revolution of 2016 is still rolling, he said. The European Union project is in deep trouble and it s only a matter of time until it ends. The EU s supporters say it has helped to cement peace, prosperity and stability across a continent historically ravaged by wars. Farage s opponents see him and his party - now riven by divisions and with no lawmakers in the British parliament - as dangerous populists who misled voters about the true costs of Brexit. ($1 = 0.8433 euros) (Adds information in signoff field) ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain summons North Korean ambassador over missile test;LONDON (Reuters) - The British Foreign Office said it had summoned the North Korean ambassador to condemn Wednesday s ballistic missile test. North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a breakthrough that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. I summoned the North Korean Ambassador to the Foreign Office to make clear to him our condemnation of this latest ballistic missile test, Minister for Asia and Pacific Mark Field said in a statement. North Korea claims it wants to bring security and prosperity to its people. But its actions are creating only insecurity and deepening its isolation, said Field. Britain is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The latest test was the highest and longest any North Korean missile had flown, and it landed in the sea near Japan. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela VP makes clearest indication yet that Maduro will run in 2018;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s vice president said on Wednesday that he hopes Nicolas Maduro will be re-elected as president in 2018, the clearest indication yet that the unpopular leftist will run for another term despite a debilitating economic crisis. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Tusk: Africa, EU must cooperate to end 'horrifying' migrant abuses;ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Europe and Africa have joint responsibility for making migration more humane and orderly so they can end horrifying abuses being committed against African migrants by people smugglers, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday. He was speaking at a two-day Africa-European Union summit that was meant to focus on development and investment in youth, but had inevitably been overshadowed by the migrant crisis. Reports this month of white Libyan slave traders selling black African migrants at markets in Libya - a grim echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade in centuries past - have drawn worldwide horror. The outcry threatened to put migration to the top of the summit agenda and shine a light on a thorny issue for European leaders faced with a surge in far-right, anti-immigration parties at home. It is clear that migration is a joint responsibility. It is in all our interests to have orderly migration that is more controlled, more humane and sustainable, Tusk said in his opening remarks. The recent reports about the treatment of Africans - especially young people - by smugglers and traffickers are horrifying, he said, adding that 5,000 migrants had drowned in the Mediterranean last year. Soon after CNN aired grainy images from Libya this month appearing to show migrants being sold as slaves, African governments began recalling diplomats from Tripoli. Protests erupted in France, Senegal and Benin. Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara called for Libyan slave traders to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. Let s work together to bring more humane solutions to this migration crisis that taints relations between the North and the South, said Guinea s president, Alpha Conde, the chairman of the African Union. Libya has promised to investigate the reports, but many African citizens also blame European policies for abuses along the migrant trail. The worst we can do is to start the blame game. What we need now are common solutions and stronger cooperation to save lives, protect people, Tusk said. Our common duty is to step up the fight against these unscrupulous criminals. But European leaders - including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who head the Franco-German axis at the heart of the EU - are hamstrung by electorates that are increasingly anti-immigration. Despite pressure at home, Merkel on Wednesday highlighted the need to create legal avenues for migration. However, Gunter Nooke, her special envoy for Africa, later told Reuters that alone would not solve the problem. There we talk about thousands, tens of thousands. But with (illegal) migration we talk about millions. He added that no country is going to allow hundreds of thousands of students in from developing nations unless they can be sure most will go back within four years, which he said rarely happened. In a joint statement, the United Nations, African Union and European Union announced the creation of a joint task force to save and protect lives of migrants and refugees along the routes and in particular inside Libya, and to speed up returning migrants to countries of origin. European and African leaders met late on Wednesday to discuss the reports of slavery in Libya and the migrant crisis. We must not only denounce it, we must act, by collectively attacking these smuggling networks, Macron, who has called the abuses in Libya a crime against humanity, said at the meeting. We are going to ... to carry out targeted sanctions. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Joining NATO would help Finland's security but unlikely for now: finance minister;HELSINKI (Reuters) - Joining NATO would improve Finland s security but is unlikely to happen any time soon because of a lack of wider support, Finance Minister Petteri Orpo said on Wednesday. His National Coalition Party, part of a three-party ruling coalition, had a clear position that NATO membership would strengthen Finland s security, and Finland should be part of all western institutions, Orpo told Reuters. Finland is one of six members of the European Union that have not also joined the Western military alliance. It has forged closer ties with NATO in recent years over heightened security concerns in the Baltic Sea region, but has stayed out of the alliance in line with a tradition of avoiding confrontation with Russia, with which it shares an 833-mile (1,340 km) border and a difficult history. This government will not seek membership, and we are committed to that... When the next government will be formed, this issue will likely be considered again, taking into account the situation in the country and the security environment. A poll released by the Defence Ministry on Tuesday showed only 22 percent of Finns support NATO membership while 62 percent opposed it. Because a large majority of parliamentary parties, as well as of the citizens, do not support seeking a membership, the issue is not that topical. Orpo s NCP (National Coalition Party) leads opinion polls with support of around 21 percent. The next general elections will be held in 2019. President Sauli Niinisto said last month that any move to join NATO would need public approval via a referendum. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri signals may withdraw resignation next week: statement;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Wednesday that matters were positive and if that continued, he would withdraw his resignation next week, a statement from his press office said. Hariri had announced his resignation from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, then put it on hold last week at the request of President Michel Aoun, after Hariri had returned to Lebanon. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bosnian Croat war crimes convict dies after taking 'poison' in U.N. court;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A former Bosnian Croat military commander swallowed what he said was poison in a U.N. war crimes courtroom on Wednesday and died shortly after losing an appeal against his 20-year prison term. Slobodan Praljak s apparent courtroom suicide, which was broadcast on a video feed, came in the final minutes of the last judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which closes next month after 24 years. The white-bearded Praljak, 72, was taken to hospital after drinking from a flask or glass as an ICTY judge read out appeals rulings against him and five other convicted Bosnian Croat war criminals, tribunal spokesman Nenad Golcevski said. I just drank poison, the ex-general told the stunned court. I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction. After gulping down the drink, he sat back down and slumped in his chair, said a lawyer who was in the courtroom at the time. Praljak drank a liquid in court and quickly fell ill, Golcevski said. He was treated by tribunal medical staff, but passed away today at the HMC hospital in The Hague , he said. Presiding Judge Carmel Agius hastily suspended the hearings and the courtroom was declared a crime scene by Dutch authorities. As a forensic investigation got under way, the chamber was sealed off and the public told to leave. Don t take away the glass! Agius said, instructing the guards to lower blinds and block a glass-partition separating the court from the public. In the chaotic moments that followed, guards and paramedics raced in and out of the courtroom, and ambulances sped away. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, whose country was the patron of separatist Croat forces in Bosnia s 1992-95 war, said he regretted Praljak s death and offered condolences to his family. His act tells the most about deep ethical injustice toward the six Bosnian Croats and the Croatian people. The ICTY upheld on appeal Praljak s conviction on charges of crimes against humanity over persecution, murders and expulsions of Bosnian Muslims from territory captured by nationalist Bosnian Croats and the brutal imprisonment of 1,000 Muslims. A reading of the judgment, which was also ruling on appeals against convictions and sentences against five other Bosnian Croat convicts, resumed more than two hours after Praljak drank the apparent poison. The incident upstaged the appeals rulings, which were important for Croatia - it suspended a session of parliament so lawmakers could follow the hearing. In the southern Bosnian town of Mostar, where Bosnian Croats and Muslims fought each other in the war and now co-exist in an uneasy peace, cafes closed to avoid incidents. Praljak was acquitted of some charges of wanton destruction related to the Bosnian Croat militia s shelling of Mostar s iconic, Ottoman-era Old Bridge because the judges ruled that it had been a legitimate military target. About a thousand Bosnian Croats gathered in a Mostar square late on Wednesday to light candles in support of Praljak. A mass in his honor was held in a packed Catholic cathedral, where churchgoers draped themselves in Croatian flags. I came here to support our generals and pay respect to General Praljak who could not bear injustice and made his final verdict. He is our pride and hero, said Darko Drmac, a Bosnian Croat war veteran. Fikret Kurtic, a Mostar Muslim who was detained in a Croat-run detention center during the war, said the verdict could not change the past but may serve as an example for others in this divided country that crimes cannot go unpunished. Kasim Brkovic, an unemployed Bosnian Muslim war veteran and former prisoner, said: The same people are in power today and we still live in a camp, it s just they don t beat us anymore. The ICTY also upheld the convictions of Jadranko Prlic, former political leader of the breakaway Bosnian Croat statelet during the war, along with military and police figures Bruno Stojic, Milivoj Petrovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic. Judges ruled there had been a criminal conspiracy, with the involvement of Croatia s government under then-President Franjo Tudjman - who died in 1999 - aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population of parts of Bosnia to cement Croat domination there. The defendants on Wednesday received sentences ranging from 10 to 25 years. The decision cannot be appealed. The chairman of post-war Bosnia s shaky, Muslim-Serb-Croat presidency, Dragan Covic, a Croat, said: (Praljak) showed before the whole world what kind of sacrifice he is ready to make to prove that he is not a war criminal. Previously, two defendants awaiting their ICTY trial, both Serbs, committed suicide by hanging themselves in their U.N. cells, according to court documents. Slavko Dogmanovic died in 1998 and Milan Babic was found dead in his locked cell in 2006. The ICTY indicted 161 suspects in all from Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo in connection with atrocities in the ethnic wars there during the 1990s. Of the 83 convicted, more than 60 of them were ethnic Serbs. The court s lead suspect, former Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, died of a heart attack in March 2006 months before a ruling in his genocide trial. Last week, former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for mass killings and expulsions of Muslims and the siege of Sarajevo, and sentenced to life in prison. Mladic s lawyers tried to delay the verdict mid-reading by saying he was too ill to continue, and Mladic was then removed from the courtroom after shouting that judges were liars . ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Clashes kill four in Yemen capital as anti-Saudi alliance frays;DUBAI (Reuters) - Four supporters of Yemen s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed in clashes with their supposed allies from the Houthi movement in the center of the capital Sanaa on Wednesday, his party said. The fighting around the city s main mosque complex underlined deepening rifts between the armed groups who have together confronted a Saudi-led alliance in three years of war. Houthi fighters and army units loyal to Saleh made common cause to fan out through Yemen in 2015 and have weathered thousands of air strikes launched by neighboring Saudi Arabia and its allies. But they have fought between themselves briefly once before in August and have vied for influence in the capital and Yemen s main population centers over which they rule. In an official statement, Saleh s General People s Congress Party accused Houthi forces of trying to occupy part of the mosque site on Wednesday for a coming political rally. Hundreds of Houthi fighters, the statement said, broke into the Saleh Mosque and fired RPGs and grenades inside the mosque and put its regular guards under siege. They said four of Saleh s supporters died and six guards were wounded in the complex built by Saleh and bearing his name which straddles a major highway and is close to the presidential palace. The Houthis, the statement said, were responsible for every drop of blood. Officials from the Houthi group were not immediately available to comment on the reports of gunbattles, which were also reported in Arab media. The two allies were once bitter foes, as Saleh launched several wars on the armed Shi ite Muslim religious movement before 2011 Arab Spring protests forced him to step down. They formed a partnership to fight the Saudi-backed and internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his forces. A political body the allies established continues to rule over most of Yemen s population centers but quarrels over appointments and policy have mounted as a Saudi-led blockade has spread economic pain and helped unleash hunger and disease. Taha Mutawakil, a Houthi spiritual leader, in a Friday sermon blasted Saleh s rule as black days for Yemen and called for the Houthis to declare an economic state of emergency and seize the assets of Saleh-aligned businessmen. The movement s leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, appeared to direct an unprecedented salvo at pro-Saleh officials in a speech on Saturday: He who does not understand the concept of alliance and partnership, is an obstacle and knows only how to be a rival. For their part, Saleh s General People s Congress party referred to pro-Houthi fighters as cartoonish mercenary things in an earlier statement. Saudi Arabia accuses the Houthis, as Saleh frequently did before their alliance, of being proxies of Shi ite Iran - a charge the group and Tehran deny. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish President calls accusations of family bank transfers abroad lies;ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan dismissed as lies accusations by Turkey s main opposition party that his family has moved millions of dollars into foreign bank accounts to avoid taxes. The Republican People s Party (CHP) filed a parliamentary motion requesting an investigation into its allegations, which CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu says he can back with documents detailing some $14 million in money transfers by members of Erdogan s family to the Isle of Man. Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2003, denied the accusations against his family and said he would take the CHP leader to court. These people haven t sent a dime abroad, Erdogan said in a speech, adding that Kilicdaroglu was telling lies . Erdogan s lawyer says the documents are fake and has called on Kilicdaroglu to hand them over to prosecutors. CHP Spokesman Bulent Tezcan was quoted by Hurriyet newspaper as saying the prosecutor had no role to play in the matter. We know you are trying to drown this out and silence everyone, but we will not be silenced, he said. It is not ethical. Our chairman did not say whether this was a crime or not. He has made no evaluation in criminal terms. To form any investigative commission, a majority vote would be needed in a parliament which is dominated by the AK Party that Erdogan founded. Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics in almost 15 years as Prime Minister and then President and remains by far the country s most popular leader;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian presidential hopeful says barred from travel from UAE;DUBAI (Reuters) - Former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, who told Reuters on Wednesday he intended to run in the presidential election early next year, told pan-Arab TV channel Al Jazeera that the United Arab Emirates had barred him from traveling. Shafiq, an ex-air force commander and presidential candidate, said earlier he had planned to return to Cairo in the coming days from his current location in the UAE, a close ally of Egypt. UAE officials could not be immediately reached for comment. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. welcomes move by Libya to help find refugee solutions;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency on Wednesday welcomed a decision by Libya to open a transit center for unaccompanied children and other vulnerable refugees from among hundreds of thousands of migrants, and called on EU countries and others to accept them. Reports this month of white Libyan slave traders selling black African migrants at markets in Libya - a grim echo of the trans-Saharan slave trade in centuries past - have drawn worldwide horror and condemnation. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have been crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean to reach Europe through Libya in each of the past several years. Thousands die during crossing the desert and at sea. Many are now being held in camps in Libya in conditions rights groups describe as inhumane. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has flown 13,000 migrants from Libya back to their countries of origin this year under a voluntary repatriation program. But thousands of others who face war or persecution at home cannot be sent back safely. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been seeking to open a refugee transit center in Tripoli to resettle or evacuate as many as 5,000 of the most vulnerable out of Libya each year. UNHCR...welcomes the decision by the Libyan authorities to set up a transit and departure facility in Tripoli for people in need of international protection, the Geneva-based agency said in a statement on Wednesday. With support from the Italian government, the initiative will facilitate the transfer of thousands of vulnerable refugees to third countries, it said. But we now need EU member states and others to step up with offers of resettlement places and other solutions, including family reunification slots, said Roberto Mignone, UNHCR Representative to Libya. The goal is to speed up the process of securing places in third countries, particularly for unaccompanied and separated children and women at risk, it said. William Lacy Swing, head of the IOM, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that it was working with partners to try to empty the detention centers in Libya of around 15,000 migrants. Nigeria s president said on Wednesday the government had started bringing stranded citizens home from Libya after the global outcry over reports that migrants there were being sold into slavery. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO should defend Sweden, Finland if attacked: NATO official;BERLIN (Reuters) - NATO should defend Sweden and Finland in the event of an armed aggression, although neither country is an alliance member, a senior NATO official said on Wednesday at an event that underscored growing concerns about Russia s military buildup. Commodore Hans Helseth, special adviser to the NATO Joint Warfare Center in Norway, said the two nations growing ties to the western alliance increased their risk and NATO had a moral obligation to come to their assistance if they were attacked. Their non-membership actually lowers the threshold of an armed aggression against the two countries. In my opinion, NATO simply has for moral reasons and other reasons to come to the two countries assistance, Helseth said at the Berlin Security Conference. He said NATO remained open to welcoming both nations as members if they chose to join. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland agreed this month to step up defense cooperation and exchange more air surveillance information, part of a broader effort to build up their defenses to counter Russian activities. Officials from both Finland and Sweden spoke at the conference about their concerns about Russia s military buildup in the Arctic and northern Europe in general, citing its 2014 annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine as a wakeup call. The two countries take part in NATO military drills, but they are not covered by Article V of NATO s foundational treaty which says an attack on one member is an attack on all. Both countries know any move to join the alliance would create a backlash in Moscow, which opposes any expansion of NATO. A senior Russian foreign ministry official on Tuesday called for efforts to rebuild ties with European countries, including more communication among military experts. But Helseth said there could be no return to business as usual with Russia given its annexation of Crimea and its role in supporting violence in eastern Ukraine, as well as its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and use of unfriendly attacks in the cyber domain . Top military leaders from NATO and member countries spoke at the two-day event about their efforts to build up a bigger deterrent to any military aggression by Russia. U.S. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who heads U.S. Army forces in Europe, said Russia had missed a big opportunity to mend ties with the West by not being more transparent about military exercises this year. U.S. and NATO officials say Russian forces far exceeded the 13,000 threshold beyond which a country is obligated to invite military observers. Russia says western officials are exaggerating the scope of the exercises. Hodges said western nations had achieved an unprecedented level of information-sharing during the exercise, and said he hoped that would continue even as NATO expands its own capabilities to rapidly move forces to the eastern flank. He cited concerns about recent activities by Russia, including its purchase of 2,000 vehicles to transport tanks by road and moves to take advantage of melting ice in the Arctic. Russia is not sitting around waiting to see what happens. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Talks on EU top court role after Brexit stalled: EU parliament Brexit coordinator;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Parliament s main Brexit coordinator expressed great concern on Wednesday that talks on the role of the EU s top court to ensure EU citizens rights in Britain after Brexit have stalled. In a letter to the EU s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, Guy Verhofstadt also said that Britain had to ensure common rules between Northern Ireland and Ireland so that there was no need for a physical border between the two. In order to guarantee the coherence and integrity of the EU legal order, the Court of Justice of the European Union must remain the sole and competent authority for interpreting and enforcing European Union law and not least the citizens rights provisions of the withdrawal agreement, he said. It is with great concern that we note that negotiations in this respect have stalled and even some progress reversed, he said. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt's Sisi calls on military chief to secure Sinai in three months;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday ordered his military command to use all force necessary to secure the Sinai peninsula within the next three months following a militant attack on a mosque that killed more than 300 people. No group has claimed responsibility for Friday s attack in which authorities say gunmen carrying an Islamic State flag opened fire after setting off an explosive. It was the worst militant attack in Egypt s modern history. Egyptian forces have battled an Islamic State affiliate for several years in North Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers. It is your responsibility to secure and stabilize Sinai within the next three months, Sisi said addressing his new chief of staff in a speech that gave no details on any operations. You can use all brute force necessary. Islamic State s Wilayat Sinai branch has claimed some of the most deadly attacks in Egypt. The group was made up in 2014 of former fighters of a local jihadist group and has staged raids on the security forces for more than three years. Sinai has become one of Islamic State s last holdouts after military defeats in Iraq and Syria. Clearing militants from North Sinai, a desert area stretching from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, has been a difficult task for Egypt s army, which is more used to conventional warfare than counter-insurgency. The military has carried out air strikes and bulldozed homes to clear an area near the Gaza border to destroy tunnels. Some tribal leaders say the campaign alienates local communities and has in the past fueled sympathy for militants. The Arab League plans to hold an emergency meeting on Dec. 5 to discuss the attack, MENA state news agency said on Wednesday. Tribal leaders in the Sinai, some of whom cooperate with the military to provide intelligence, say militants are as few as 800. Most are local Egyptians but there are also some Palestinians, they say. Egypt hopes a recent agreement it helped broker between Palestine rivals factions Hamas and Fatah to allow a unity government to control the Gaza border will help stem arms smuggling by tightening control on the crossing and tunnels into Egyptian territory. Friday s attack was a shift for Sinai militants who have mostly focused on targeting police and soldiers on the peninsula. But since December 2016 they have begun hitting Coptic Christian churches and pilgrims on the mainland. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia accuses U.S.-led coalition of trying to partition Syria;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s ambassador to the United Nations accused the U.S.-led coalition in Syria on Wednesday of trying to partition the country by setting up local governing bodies in areas seized from Islamic State, Russian news agencies reported. Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia was cited as complaining that the coalition was discussing measures to restore the economy with the new bodies, but not with the Syrian government. What the coalition is doing amounts to concrete steps to partition the country, Nebenzia was quoted as saying. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron urges China, Russia to support North Korea sanctions;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he was counting on U.N. Security Council members China and Russia to step up sanctions on North Korea after its latest missile test. I once again condemn with the greatest force the missile launch yesterday and now we must increase sanctions, Macron told France 24 television. I am counting a lot in particular on China and Russia in order to take the most difficult and effective sanctions, he added, speaking during an interview from Abidjan in Ivory Coast. ;worldnews;29/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump angers UK with truculent tweet to May after sharing far-right videos;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump sparked outrage in Britain on Thursday with a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. As British politicians lined up to condemn Trump for sharing videos originally posted by a leader of a British far-right fringe group, Trump, in an unprecedented attack on one of America’s closest allies, replied with an unrepentant message. “Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” he tweeted. His truculent response caused anger in Britain, where there have been several major Islamist militant attacks this year, with one minister describing Trump’s tweets as “alarming and despairing”. London’s Muslim mayor called for the withdrawal of an offer to him to make a state visit to Britain. May, on a visit to Jordan, repeated her view, expressed earlier by her spokesman, that the U.S. leader was wrong for sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First. But she did not directly respond to Trump’s rebuke. “I’m very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do,” May told reporters in Jordan. She said the group was a “hateful organization” that sought to spread division and mistrust. “The fact that we work together does not mean that we’re afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong, and be very clear with them,” May said. She added that Britain had a long-term, enduring relationship with the United States. The British ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, said he had raised concerns with White House officials. “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right, which seek to divide communities & erode decency, tolerance & respect,” he wrote on Twitter. Fransen, who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman and whose group wants to ban Islam, is facing further criminal charges of racially aggravated harassment. TRUMP AND MAY ONCE HAND-IN-HAND Islamist militants have carried out several major attacks in Britain this year that have killed a total of 36 people, including a bombing in Manchester and two attacks on bridges in London in which victims were rammed with vehicles and stabbed. Trump initially addressed his rebuke to a Twitter handle that was not May’s, though he later retweeted to the British leader’s correct account. Always a pillar of Britain’s foreign policy, the so-called “special relationship” with Washington has taken on added importance as Britain prepares to leave the European Union in 2019 and seeks new major trade deals. Since Trump became president, May has gone out of her way to cultivate a good relationship with him. She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in January, and they were filmed emerging from the White House holding hands. She later said Trump took her hand in a gentlemanly gesture as they walked down a ramp. But she angered his many critics in Britain then by extending an invitation to make a state visit to Britain with all the pomp and pageantry it brings including a formal banquet with Queen Elizabeth. London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said May should withdraw the offer of a state visit. “After this latest incident, it is increasingly clear that any official visit at all from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed,” Khan, who has clashed on Twitter with Trump, said. British lawmakers held an urgent session to discuss Trump’s tweets, with parliamentarians from across the political divide united in condemnation. “By sharing it (the videos), he is either a racist, incompetent or unthinking, or all three,” opposition Labour lawmaker Stephen Doughty said. Britain’s Middle East minister Alistair Burt tweeted: “The White House tweets are both alarming and despairing tonight. This is so not where the world needs to go.” Despite repeated calls from opposition lawmakers to cancel the state visit, Home Secretary (interior minister) Amber Rudd said the invitation still stood although a timing had not been agreed. Outside parliament, there was more harsh criticism from the likes of Brendan Cox, the husband of lawmaker Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 by a far-right extremist and Justin Welby, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church. The U.S. ambassador to London Woody Johnson wrote on Twitter he had relayed concerns to Washington. “The U.S. & UK have a long history of speaking frankly with each other, as all close friends do,” he said. The videos shared by Trump purported to show a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue. Reuters was unable to verify the videos. The Dutch embassy in Washington issued a Twitter comment on one of them, which Fransen had described as showing a “Muslim migrant” beating up a boy. “@realDonald Trump Facts do matter. The perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands,” the embassy said. “He received and completed his sentence under Dutch law.” Britain First, a little-known party on the periphery of UK politics, welcomed Trump’s retweeting of the videos to his 44 million followers, regarding it as an endorsement of their message. “I’m delighted,” said Fransen, whose own Twitter following increase by 50 percent in the wake of the furor to 78,000. She told Reuters Trump’s retweets showed the president shared her aim of raising awareness of “issues such as Islam”. The White House defended the retweets by the Republican president, who during the 2016 U.S. election campaign called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, saying that he was raising security issues. It repeatedly refused to be drawn into the content of the videos or whether Trump was aware of the source of the tweets. “It’s about ensuring that individuals who come into the United States don’t pose a public safety or terrorism threat,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters aboard Air Force One. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arctic drilling hits speed bumps in U.S. tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A quest by Republicans to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve was slowed after a nonpartisan Senate official ruled late on Wednesday that the exploration was subject to environmental assessments by the Interior Department. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska and the head of the Senate energy panel, has been pushing a measure in the U.S. tax bill that would open a portion of the refuge on the coastal plain to two lease sales in 10 years for drilling. But the nonpartisan senate official took issue with the energy committee measure as it did not fully consider requirements under a national environmental law. The official ruled that oil exploration in the refuge is not exempt to an environmental law requiring the Interior Department to commission an assessment, a Democratic aide said. Such environmental assessments can take months or years to complete. “This is good news for us because it could slow down or prevent drilling,” the Democratic aide said. Republicans offered new language to the bill after the move and said that the drilling would still advance if the tax bill passes. “There was a little hiccup, but they fixed it in the amendment they just filed tonight, so full steam ahead,” a Republican Senate aide said. Murkowski said she was not concerned about procedural questions and that the issues would be fully resolved. The Arctic reserve, protected by the federal government since 1960, is home to wildlife populations including caribou, polar bears and millions of birds that migrate to six of the seven continents. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the area Republicans want to drill in has up to 12 billion barrels of recoverable crude. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House Democratic leader Pelosi says Conyers should resign;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that Representative John Conyers should resign after sexual harassment allegations were brought against him, saying “zero tolerance means consequences for everyone.” Pelosi said the situation with Conyers, the longest-serving member in the U.S. House of Representatives, was “very sad” but the allegations against him were “serious, disappointing and very credible” and “the brave women who came forward are owed justice.” “Congressman Conyers should resign,” Pelosi said. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Digisexual Robot Pimps, Swamp Chess, Hollywood & DC Cannibalism: Boiler Room EP #137;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Andy Nowicki of the Nameless Podcast, Fvnk$oul and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE hosts, DJs & contributors) and the rest of the boiler gang for the hundred and thirty seventh episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.On this episode of Boiler Room the ACR Brain-Trust is having a fireside-chat regarding the latest grinding of gears in the political, social (engineering) and media machines.Direct Download Episode #137 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;US_News;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;U.S. State Dept. Spox: ‘Everybody wants Assad out five years ago’;21st Century Wire says At Tuesday s U.S. State Department briefing, spokesperson Heather Nauert, once again, displayed her servitude to Washington s geopolitical agenda in Syria.Watch as Nauert, in an overly assuming and flippant style, proclaims how everybody in this room and in this building wants Assad out five years ago in her exchange with NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. The sheer audacity begins at the 39 minute mark. This is all just more scripted servitude from U.S. State Department talking heads on the topic of Syria as Washington s war plan there continues to crumble. READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"U.N. rights boss condemns ""spreading hatred through tweets""";GENEVA (Reuters) - In a thinly veiled reference to U.S. President Donald Trump, the top U.N. human rights official on Thursday condemned “populists” who spread “hatred through tweets”. Britain criticised Trump on Wednesday after he retweeted anti-Islam videos originally posted by a leader of a far-right British fringe party who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman. “There are the populists — political hooligans who through their incitement — which is the equivalent of hurling racist insults, throwing bottles onto the field, attacking the referee and, as we saw yesterday, spreading hatred through tweets — seek to scramble our order, our laws,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a speech in Geneva. A U.N. official, who declined to be identified, said that Zeid’s remarks were “clearly a reference to Trump tweets but also others using social media in this way”. (Refiles to add dropped full name of official) ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Collins says not committed to tax bill, concerned about SALT;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins said on Thursday she was not committed to voting for the Senate tax bill, citing concerns over healthcare and the loss of a deduction for state and local taxes. Collins told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast it would be “very difficult for me to support the bill if I do not prevail on those two issues” but she was encouraged by her discussions with leadership. Collins said she has proposed an amendment to the tax bill that would retain the deduction for property taxes up to $10,000, as the House bill does. The Senate bill repeals the Affordable Care Act fine on people who do not purchase health insurance, which will lead to higher insurance premiums. Collins has asked lawmakers to include in a separate bill provisions that would help insurers cover expensive patients, and that would continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low income people for two years. The Republican from Maine also said one of her amendments to the tax bill is a refundable tax credit for adult dependent care that would be paid for by closing a loophole on carried interest. Collins said she believed the corporate tax rate does not need to be cut as low as 20 percent, as President Donald Trump has favored. She said 21 or 22 percent would be “fine with me.” She said she expected a Senate floor vote during the tax bill debate on making individual tax cuts permanent, or to make corporate tax cuts expire at same time as individual cuts. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. intel committee subpoenas comedian in Russia election meddling probe;(Reuters) - A New York comedian has been compelled to appear before a House Intelligence Committee investigating suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election where he will likely face questions about acting as a go-between for Wikileaks and an ally of President Donald Trump. Randy Credico, a political activist who hosted a radio show on New York radio, is scheduled to appear in front of the committee on Dec. 15, according to a photo of the subpoena posted on his Twitter account. On several occasions over the last few years, Credico interviewed and met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a man believed by some U.S. officials and lawmakers to be an untrustworthy pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Assange’s group released Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign that U.S. intelligence agencies say were hacked by Russia to try to tilt the election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He is regarded with distaste by many in Washington, although Trump, then the Republican candidate, supported the group’s email releases last year. Credico has also interviewed Republican political consultant Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, who he worked with in the past to reform New York’s drug laws, according to the New York Times. Stone flatly denied allegations of collusion between the president’s associates and Russia during the 2016 U.S. election in a meeting with House of Representatives Intelligence Committee in September. During his appearance in front of the committee, Stone refused to identify an “opinion journalist” who had acted as a go-between between Stone and Assange. According to Stone’s own account to Reuters, he “reluctantly” identified the journalist as Credico in written communication to the committee. The committee has been interested in predictions that Stone made about damage the email release would have on Clinton’s campaign, the Times reported. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's U.S. ambassador discussed Trump retweets with senior White House staff: source;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s ambassador to the United States discussed a row over retweets sent by President Donald Trump with senior White House officials on Wednesday, a British government source said on Thursday. The source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, did not give further details of the discussion. Trump has sparked outrage in Britain’s political establishment with a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after she criticised him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Nov 30) - NYTimes;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - The Failing @nytimes, the pipe organ for the Democrat Party, has become a virtual lobbyist for them with regard to our massive Tax Cut Bill. They are wrong so often that now I know we have a winner! [0701 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May is focused on tackling extremism, spokesman says in response to Trump;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May is fully focused on tackling extremism, her spokesman said on Thursday, responding to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump telling her to focus on “destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism”. Asked if May was focused on tackling extremism: her spokesman said: “Yes.” “The overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country are law-abiding people who abhor extremism in all its forms. The prime minister has been clear ... that where Islamist extremism does exist it should be tackled head on. We are working hard to do that both at home and internationally and ... with our U.S. partners.” ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British minister hopes condemnation of Trump tweet has impact;LONDON (Reuters) - British interior minister Amber Rudd said on Thursday she hoped Britain’s condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump for retweeting material from a British far-right group would have an impact. “I think we all listen more carefully, perhaps, to criticism from our friends than from people who we don’t have a relationship with. So, I hope that the prime minister’s comments will have some impact on the president,” Rudd told parliament. British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that Trump was wrong to have retweeted posts from the Britain First group. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kushner met with special counsel Mueller in Russia probe: CNN;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team earlier this month as part of its Russia probe, CNN reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the meeting. Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn was the prime topic of the conversation between Kushner and Mueller’s team, CNN said, citing one of the sources. Flynn, who resigned in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with a Russian diplomat, is under investigation by Mueller’s team, which is looking into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in last year’s presidential election. The nature of the questioning was principally to make sure Kushner did not have information that exonerated Flynn, CNN said, citing one source. Kushner spoke with Mueller’s team for less than 90 minutes, CNN said. “Mr. Kushner has voluntarily cooperated with all relevant inquiries and will continue to do so,” Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s lawyer, told Reuters. Lawyers for Flynn have halted communications with Trump’s legal team, a potentially critical step in Mueller’s probe, sources familiar with the investigation said on Friday. Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, called John Dowd, Trump’s private lawyer, last week to say the matter had reached a point where the two could no longer could discuss it, two people familiar with the call told Reuters. It was not clear whether Kelner made the call because he had negotiated a plea agreement with Mueller for Flynn to cooperate in the probe, or because Flynn had decided to engage with Mueller, said two other sources. The probe has dogged the White House since January, when U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the election to try to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit her. Russia has denied interfering in the U.S. election and Trump has said there was no collusion. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate tax bill stalls on deficit-focused 'trigger';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday delayed voting on a Republican tax overhaul as the bill was tripped up by problems with an amendment sought by fiscal hawks to address a large expansion of the federal budget deficit projected to result from the measure. The Senate debated the legislation late into Thursday and adjourned, putting off any votes until Friday morning. It was unclear if a decisive vote on the bill would occur then. The delay underscored nagging concerns among Republican fiscal conservatives about the deficit impact of the bill. That set up the possibility that its deep tax cuts might have to be moderated, that future tax increases might be built in, and that some conservatives might seek to attach spending cuts, all approaches that could throw up new political problems. White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told reporters in the Capitol: “I don’t think tax cuts are going to be scaled back. I think it would still be historic tax relief for corporations and for middle-income families.” The tax bill is seen by Republicans as crucial to their prospects in the November 2018 elections, when they will fight to keep control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump and Republicans now in control of Congress have yet to pass major legislation, a fact they hope to change with their proposed tax- code overhaul, which would be the biggest since the 1980s. Democrats, expected to unanimously oppose the tax bill, have dismissed it as a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. Republican Senator Bob Corker and others had tried to add a provision to the bill to trigger automatic future tax increases if the tax cuts in the bill did not boost the economy and generate revenues sufficient to offset the deficit expansion. But the Senate parliamentarian barred Corker’s “trigger” proposal on procedural grounds. The trigger amendment was needed to win Corker’s vote and those of others worried about the deficit - worries that intensified when congressional analysts said the bill would not boost the economy enough to offset the estimated deficit expansion, as the Trump administration had said it would. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told reporters in the Capitol that it had not been easy to accommodate Corker, Senator Jeff Flake and other fiscal hawks. “It’s been pretty hard to make them happy so far. We’re going to keep working on it ... and we’re going to do it,” Hatch said. Senate Republicans were considering making a proposed corporate income tax rate cut temporary, instead of permanent, so the rate would rise back to an unknown level after six or seven years, said one Republican senator and an aide. By that time, Trump might no longer be in office and a future Congress might change the law. When asked if the tax bill was in trouble, Republican Senator Mike Rounds told reporters: “No, I don’t think so. It’s just a matter of once again trying to make the bill work.” Optimism had reigned earlier in the day, when the bill won the backing of Republican Senator John McCain. Stocks surged on hopes that a key tax overhaul vote was imminent. The S&P 500 hit a record closing high and the Dow Jones industrial average topped the 24,000 mark for the first time. But the Joint Committee on Taxation, or JCT, a nonpartisan fiscal analysis unit of Congress, said the bill as passed earlier by the Senate Finance Committee, would generate only $407 billion in new tax revenue from increased economic growth. JCT had earlier estimated the tax bill would balloon the $20 trillion national debt by $1.4 trillion over 10 years. The new estimate, counting “dynamic” economic effects, put the deficit expansion at $1 trillion, far short of assertions by some Republicans that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the new JCT estimate showed “no amount of dynamic scoring fairy dust will fix the catastrophic deficits of the GOP tax scam.” McCain, a key player in July’s collapse of a Republican effort to gut Obamacare, backed the tax bill. While “far from perfect,” the party’s 2008 presidential nominee said it would boost the economy and help all Americans. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who also played a role in the failure of the Obamacare rollback, told reporters she was still not committed to the bill. Several Republicans were withholding support while pushing for including a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes and bigger tax breaks for “pass-through” companies, including small businesses. As drafted, the Senate bill would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay and reduce the tax burden on businesses and individuals, while ending many tax breaks, but would still expand the deficit, Trump wants to enact tax cuts before January. The House approved its own tax bill on Nov. 16. It would have to be merged with the Senate bill, if it is approved, before any final measure could go to Trump for his signature. Republicans have 52 votes in the 100-member Senate, giving them enough to win if they hold together. With Democrats opposed, Republicans could lose no more than two of their own votes, with Vice President Mike Pence able to break a 50-50 tie. Trump has attacked Corker and Flake on Twitter. Both senators are not seeking re-election. In early October, the president called Corker, “Liddle’ Bob Corker” in a tweet. Corker tweeted that the Trump White House was an “adult daycare center.” Days later, he called Trump a liar who had damaged U.S. standing in the world. Trump tweeted back saying Corker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher.” Trump earlier this month tweeted that Flake’s political career was ‘toast’” In a dramatic Senate speech, Flake said U.S. politics had become inured to “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior from the White House. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump fires back at Britain's May: 'Don't focus on me';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump fired back at British Prime Minister Theresa May over her criticism of his retweeting of anti-Muslim videos, saying she should focus on terrorism in Britain. “Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” Trump tweeted. The Twitter handle Trump included in his tweet was not that of the British leader. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May says Donald Trump was wrong to retweet far-right videos;AMMAN (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump was wrong to retweet a video from a far-right British group which she said was “hateful” and spreads division. Trump sparked outrage in Britain with a sharp rebuke of May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting anti-Islam videos from the deputy leader of Britain First. “The fact that we work together does not mean that we’re afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong, and be very clear with them,” May told reporters in Amman. “And I’m very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do,” May said. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says Tillerson still in charge at State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that Rex Tillerson remains the U.S. secretary of state despite reports of his upcoming departure, and that there are no changes at this time. “As the President just said, ‘Rex is here.’ There are no personnel announcements at this time. Secretary Tillerson continues to lead the State Department and the entire cabinet is focused on completing this incredibly successful first year of President Trump’s administration,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders in a statement. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Conyers defiant as Democratic leaders call on him to resign;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The three top Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Democratic congressman John Conyers on Thursday to resign in light of the sexual harassment allegations he faces, but Conyers’ attorney said he was not thinking of stepping down. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the allegations were “serious, disappointing and very credible” as she shifted away from comments four days ago in which she said Conyers, the longest-serving House member, was an “icon” who deserved due process. “Zero tolerance means consequences for everyone,” she told reporters on Thursday. “The brave women who came forward are owed justice ... Congressman Conyers should resign.” Pelosi’s call was echoed by her second-in-command, Representative Steny Hoyer, and the No. 3 Democrat in the House, Representative James Clyburn. Like Conyers, Clyburn is known for his activism during the civil rights movement. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the top House Republican, also said Conyers, who is 88 and has served since 1965, should step aside. An attorney for the congressman said Conyers would not be hounded from office. “It is not up to Nancy Pelosi,” attorney Arnold Reed told reporters in Detroit, Michigan. “Nancy Pelosi did not elect the congressman, and she sure as hell won’t be the one that tells the congressman to leave.” “That decision will be completely up to the congressman. He’s not thought of that,” Reed said. Instead, Conyers was focusing on his health after being hospitalized late on Wednesday after suffering dizziness, light-headedness and shortness of breath, Reed said. Conyers, who is facing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, is one of numerous prominent men in U.S. politics, media and entertainment who have been accused in recent months of sexual harassment and misconduct. Others include former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein, Democratic Senator Al Franken and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Conyers has acknowledged settling with one former staffer over her claims of harassment, but he has denied wrongdoing. He has relinquished his post as the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and has said he will cooperate with the ethics probe. The resignation calls came after one of Conyers’ accusers, Marion Brown, detailed her allegations in a television interview on Thursday morning. Brown told NBC’s “Today” show that the congressman had “violated my body” and frequently propositioned her for sex. “No one should have to go through something like that, let alone here in Congress, so yes I think he should resign. He should resign immediately,” said Ryan. Reuters has not verified the allegations. Republican and Democratic House members introduced a bill on Wednesday that would bar public funds from being used to settle sexual harassment claims against members and require previously made payments to be made public. U.S. media have reported that Conyers used public funds to settle a claim with one of the women who had worked in his office. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Digisexual Robot Pimps, Swamp Chess, Hollywood & DC Cannibalism: Boiler Room EP #137;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Andy Nowicki of the Nameless Podcast, Fvnk$oul and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE hosts, DJs & contributors) and the rest of the boiler gang for the hundred and thirty seventh episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.On this episode of Boiler Room the ACR Brain-Trust is having a fireside-chat regarding the latest grinding of gears in the political, social (engineering) and media machines.Direct Download Episode #137 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;Middle-east;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. attorney general Sessions evasive on Russia probe: congressmen;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions refused to answer questions on Thursday during a closed congressional hearing about whether President Donald Trump ever instructed him to hinder the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Democratic lawmakers who attended. Sessions testified behind closed doors for several hours before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. Representative Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, told reporters he was troubled by Sessions’ refusal to answer what he believes are essential questions. “I asked the attorney general whether he was ever instructed by the president to take any action that he believed would hinder the Russia investigation and he declined to answer the question,” Schiff told reporters after the hearing. “There is no privileged basis to decline to answer a question like that. If the president did not instruct him to take an action that would hinder the investigation, he should say so. If the president did instruct him to hinder the investigation in any way, in my view that would be a potential criminal act,” Schiff said. Representative Mike Quigley, another Democratic committee member, said on MSNBC that Sessions “is one of the most forgetful persons who works out of Washington, D.C., or he’s being less than candid with the American public.” Sessions declined to comment to reporters as he left the secure hearing room. The panel is among several congressional committees, along with the Justice Department’s special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating allegations that Russia sought to influence the U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump’s campaign. Moscow has denied any meddling and Trump has said there was no collusion. Another source familiar with his testimony said that Sessions said he could not remember the answers to many important questions, and the answers he did provide concerning meetings with Russians tracked statements he had previously made in other congressional hearings. A spokeswoman for Sessions said he has consistently declined to discuss his communications with Trump in the past, and that he has also previously said he was never instructed to do anything illegal or improper. When he was a Republican U.S. senator, Sessions was an early supporter and close adviser to Trump during his run for the White House. Democrats have accused Sessions of repeatedly changing his sworn testimony throughout several prior congressional hearings about meetings and contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Schiff said committee members asked Sessions questions during the closed hearing about his prior testimony and about “interactions the campaign had with Russia.” The intelligence committee also met for more than three hours on Thursday with Erik Prince, who founded the private military contractor Blackwater and was a supporter of Trump’s presidential campaign. One focus of Thursday’s interview was expected to be a meeting Prince had in the Seychelles Islands in January, which some news reports later described as an effort to connect the incoming Trump administration with Moscow. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s Secretary of Education, and he has said the Seychelles meeting had nothing to do with Trump. Schiff told reporters there were some “unresolved issues” after Prince’s testimony. Prince complained that the hearing had wasted time and taxpayer dollars on a “meaningless fishing expedition.” A spokesman for Prince later issued a statement saying Prince had volunteered to answer questions. “As we have said throughout, Mr. Prince has never acted on behalf of President Trump, the transition team or his administration regarding Russia.” The Republican-led committee is planning to publicly release the transcript of Prince’s closed hearing, described as “public in a closed setting” within about three days. There is no plan to release a transcript from Sessions’ testimony. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump weighs recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital: officials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is considering recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that could upend decades of American policy and ratchet up Middle East tensions, but is expected to again delay his campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy there, U.S. officials said on Thursday. After months of intense White House deliberations, Trump is likely to make an announcement next week that seeks to strike a balance between domestic political demands and geopolitical pressures over an issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – the status of Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. Trump is weighing a plan under which he would declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the officials said, deviating from White House predecessors who have insisted that it is a matter that must be decided in peace negotiations. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel’s claim on the entire city. Such a move by Trump, which could be carried out through a presidential statement or speech, would anger the Palestinians as well as the broader Arab World and likely undermine the Trump administration’s fledgling effort to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It could, however, help satisfy the pro-Israel, right-wing base that helped him win the presidency and also please the Israeli government, a close U.S. ally. Trump is likely to continue his predecessors’ policy of signing a six-month waiver overriding a 1995 law requiring that the U.S. Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the officials said. But among the options under consideration is for Trump to order his aides to develop a longer-term plan for the embassy’s relocation to make clear his intent to do so eventually, according to one of the officials. However, the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the plan has yet to be finalized and Trump could still alter parts of it. “No decision has been made on that matter yet,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday. Trump pledged on the presidential campaign trail last year that he would move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But Trump in June waived the requirement, saying he wanted to “maximize the chances” for a peace push led by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Those efforts have made little if any progress. The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinian leaders, Arab governments and Western allies have long urged Trump not to proceed with the embassy relocation, which would go against decades of U.S. policy by granting de facto U.S. recognition of Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital. However, if Trump decides to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, even without ordering an embassy move, it would be certain to spark an international uproar. A key question would be whether such a declaration would be enshrined as a formal presidential action or simply be a symbolic statement by Trump. Some of Trump’s top aides have privately pushed for him to keep his campaign promise to satisfy a range of supporters, including evangelical Christians, while others have warned of the potential damage to U.S. relations with Muslim countries. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate Ethics Committee opens probe of Senator Franken;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee said on Thursday it has opened a preliminary inquiry into alleged misconduct by Senator Al Franken, who has been accused of sexual misconduct and inappropriately touching women. Franken, a Democrat, said this week he was embarrassed and ashamed by his behavior but would not resign. He said he would cooperate with an Ethics Committee investigation. “While the committee does not generally comment on pending matters or matters that may come before it, in this instance, the committee is publicly confirming that it has opened a preliminary inquiry into Senator Franken’s alleged misconduct,” the committee said in a statement. Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Franken said the senator was committed to cooperating fully with the ethics investigation. Franken is one of several prominent American men in politics, media and entertainment to be accused in recent months of sexual harassment and misconduct. He was accused of sexual misconduct by Leeann Tweeden, a radio broadcaster who in 2006 appeared with Franken in an entertainment tour for U.S. troops serving in war zones. Another woman, Lindsay Menz, accused Franken of touching her buttocks when they were being photographed at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Prior to winning his Senate seat in 2008, Franken was a well-known comedian, television writer and author. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pompeo might bring assets to 'hellish' secretary of state role;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If he becomes U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo would have three assets Rex Tillerson did not: experience in government, the confidence of President Donald Trump, and a defter touch with Congress and the bureaucracy. But he still would suffer from problems that have afflicted Tillerson, chief among them a boss who has shown little regard for diplomacy and no qualms about undermining his secretary of state with tweets, current and former U.S. officials said. News media reports, first published by the New York Times, that Trump has a plan to replace his embattled secretary of state with Pompeo, a former U.S. congressman who now heads the Central Intelligence Agency, drew mixed reviews from serving U.S. officials. Some argued that things at the State Department can hardly get worse than they have been under Tillerson, whose 10-month reign has been marked by an exodus of top diplomats, deep dismay at planned 30 percent budget cuts, and conflicts with Trump. “Anybody could play the hand he’s been dealt better than Tillerson,” said one U.S. official on condition of anonymity, saying things can only get better. But others argued that any new secretary of state would face the same obstacles as Tillerson, who was undercut this year when Trump told his chief diplomat to stop “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with North Korea. “This is a hellish environment for a secretary of state,” said one State Department official on condition of anonymity. It was not clear whether Trump plans to throw Tillerson, who in October reportedly called the president a “moron,” overboard. Tillerson has not directly addressed whether he made the comment, though his spokeswoman denied it. Asked on Thursday if he wanted Tillerson to stay, Trump sidestepped the question saying: “He’s here. Rex is here.” “There are no personnel announcements at this time,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders later said in a statement that left Tillerson twisting in the wind. Trump was alienated by the reported “moron” comment and Tillerson positions that differ from Trump’s on North Korea and the Gulf standoff between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, said another senior official. Tillerson has embittered many in the State Department by embracing the planned budget cut, failing to get top officials into key diplomatic jobs, relying on a handful of aides and keeping his distance from career diplomats. If Trump went with Pompeo, he would tap a former Army armor officer and Harvard Law School graduate who was in his fourth term representing a Kansas district in Congress when he was chosen to lead the CIA, where officials say he has enjoyed a less hostile relationship with career spies than Tillerson has had with career diplomats. While some intelligence officers say Pompeo tends to tell the president what he wants to hear rather than giving him their assessments, others say they have been impressed by his intellect, his willingness to listen and his advocacy of more robust covert operations. Current and former officials said Pompeo was likely to get along better with Congress and with the White House, not least because of his conservative bent. However, they said Pompeo would need to resist the planned budget cuts and find a way to grapple with Trump’s tweets. “If the president undercuts what he is trying to achieve diplomatically, convinces people that whatever you agree to with the secretary of state will be overturned by the president ... then he is basically neutered,” said Richard Boucher, a former top U.S. diplomat who now teaches at Brown University. “So the question is not whether Pompeo can do the job but whether the president is going to let Pompeo do the job.” ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican tax bill stumbles on deficit 'trigger,' new options weighed;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican tax bill in the U.S. Senate stalled on a procedural problem late on Thursday, forcing lawmakers to weigh new options to an amendment sought by a leading fiscal hawk to address a projected large expansion of the federal deficit under the measure, senators said. Senator Bob Corker had wanted to add a provision to the bill that would trigger automatic tax increases in years ahead if the tax cuts in the bill failed to boost the economy and generate revenues sufficient to offset the deficit expansion. But the Senate parliamentarian barred Corker’s “trigger” proposal. “We just got the realization from the parliamentarian that that’s probably not going to work,” said Republican Senator David Perdue. In response, Republicans were considering building future tax increases into their bill. “It’s not a threshold anymore. It’s just a tax increase. ... The only thing that’s come off the table is the trigger concept,” Perdue said. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military to indefinitely delay ban on cluster bombs;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon will indefinitely delay a ban on the use of older types of cluster bombs due to take effect on Jan. 1, 2019, officials said, arguing that safety improvements in munitions technology failed to advance enough to replace older stockpiles. Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter bomblets across a wide area, but sometimes fail to explode and are difficult to locate and remove. That can lead to civilian deaths and injuries long after conflicts end. The U.S. military had hoped to transition to cluster munitions that explode at least 99 percent of time, greatly reducing the risks. But with just over one year to go before the ban’s slated implementation, a Pentagon spokesman told Reuters that safety technology had not progressed enough to replace existing stockpiles with safer weaponry. Reuters has seen a copy of the memo changing U.S. policy and confirmed the changes with Pentagon officials. “Although the Department seeks to field a new generation of more highly reliable munitions, we cannot risk mission failure or accept the potential of increased military and civilian casualties by forfeiting the best available capabilities,” the Pentagon memo says. The memo, which was expected to be signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Thursday, called cluster munitions “legitimate weapons with clear military utility.” Disclosure of the new policy met sharp criticism from Congress and human rights groups. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who has helped lead efforts to restrict use of cluster bombs, said the Pentagon was, in effect, “perpetuating use of an indiscriminate weapon that has been shown to have high failure rates.” Senator Dianne Feinstein called the move “unbelievable.” Human Rights Watch disputed the idea that the U.S. military needed the weapons, saying that with the exception of a single strike in Yemen in 2009 it had not used the weapons since 2003 in Iraq. “We condemn this decision to reverse the long-held US commitment not to use cluster munitions that fail more than 1 percent of the time, resulting in deadly unexploded submunitions,” said Mary Wareham, arms division director at Human Rights Watch. Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson acknowledged it has been years since the U.S. military has used any significant amount of cluster munitions and the new Pentagon policy puts emphasis on eventually shifting to safer cluster munitions. Still, it was unclear at what point in the future the Pentagon might be required to stop using its existing stockpiles, since there would also need to be not just higher-tech weaponry, but sufficient quantities of new cluster munitions for U.S. stocks. The new policy does not allow the Pentagon to buy any additional cluster bombs that do not satisfy new standards that were outlined in the memo. The new rules broaden the definition of which types of munitions meet safety requirements beyond the 99 percent detonation rate. Under the new policy, the Pentagon says bombs that have advanced self destruct or deactivation technology would also be acceptable for future acquisition. Such weaponry must meet a series of criteria, including having a way to render submunitions inoperable within 15 minutes of being armed. The Pentagon policy also prohibited purchasing weaponry that is banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The convention strictly prohibits the use of cluster munitions. But it exempts certain types of munitions that the Pentagon says it would nonetheless classify as cluster munitions. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Republicans to watch in U.S. Senate tax bill fight;WASHINGTON - Some key U.S. senators still had concerns about the Republican tax bill in the Senate, as a procedural motion to formally open debate on the measure was approved on Wednesday. Here is a list of Republicans pivotal to the bill’s fate. The moderate senator from Maine has qualms about Republicans’ plan to include in the tax bill a repeal of a federal fee imposed on people who do not comply with Obamacare’s “individual mandate.” The fee is meant to encourage young, healthy people to get health insurance so that premiums are affordable for old, sick people. Collins and others fear repealing the fine would drive up insurance premium costs, canceling out tax-cut gains that many of their constituents might get from the tax bill. Collins said Republican leaders had promised her to take up two healthcare provisions before the end of the year to help mitigate the impact of repealing the fee. Those provisions would help insurers cover expensive patients and continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people for two years. Collins has also prepared an amendment to the tax bill to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, a provision that is part of the House of Representatives’ tax bill. Both the Senate and House bills end deductibility of state and local tax income and sales tax. Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill ends property tax deductibility too. Collins sidestepped a question on whether she would vote for the tax bill. She said: “We’re doing this one step at a time.” The senator from Alaska will vote for the tax bill, she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening. Murkowski said a number of the bill’s features were “very attractive,” noting that it would lower tax rates, double the child tax credit and double the standard deduction. She said it also included a provision she had written, to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling. Murkowski said it was important to enact reforms separately to help stabilize the individual market in health insurance. The Montana Republican has concerns about the bill’s treatment of “Main Street” businesses. He said on Wednesday he had secured an agreement to increase a 17.4 percent deduction for owners of pass-through businesses to 20 percent. The senator from Wisconsin also has demanded more favorable treatment for “pass-through” businesses, which include sole proprietorships and partnerships, as a condition of his support. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, said on Tuesday he had the outlines of a deal adding a tax snap-back provision to the bill that would raise taxes automatically if economic growth targets are not hit in the future to offset a higher deficit. Corker said that arrangement would satisfy his concerns that the tax cuts could add too much to the national debt. As of Wednesday evening, the details had not been announced. The snap-back proposal also became a target of growing criticism among conservative Republicans and lobbyists. The tax bill was expected to add $1.4 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years. The Arizona conservative said on Wednesday he was more comfortable with the tax bill because of indications there would be provisions in it to protect against ballooning the deficit. Flake told National Public Radio he was concerned about “gimmicks,” but liked other parts of the bill, especially the corporate tax cut. The Arizona maverick and former presidential nominee sidestepped questions on Monday about how he would vote on the tax bill, telling reporters in the hallway to “stay tuned.” Like Corker and Flake, Oklahoma’s Lankford questions whether tax revenues from economic growth will compensate for the expected increase in the national debt under the tax plan. He has been working with them to “trigger” more revenues if needed. The Kansas lawmaker is also wary of the impact on the national debt, pointing to his own state’s recent experience of fiscal problems following tax cuts. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Economic growth to partially offset deficit impact of U.S. tax plan: JCT;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican tax bill would generate a net $407 billion in new revenue from economic growth, reducing the amount that the legislation would add to the federal deficit, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said on Thursday. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Senate panel to vote Tuesday on Powell nomination to lead Fed;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Banking Committee will vote on Tuesday on the nomination of Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell to lead the U.S. central bank, the panel said in a statement. The committee said on Thursday the vote would be held at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT). If confirmed by the Senate, as expected, Powell would assume the Fed chair post after Janet Yellen’s term expires on Feb. 3. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mattis on Tillerson departure: 'There's nothing to it';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis dismissed reports on Thursday that President Donald Trump was considering a plan to oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Asked what he made of Tillerson’s reported pending departure, Mattis said: “I make nothing of it. There’s nothing to it.” He was responding to a shouted question at the beginning of a meeting with the Libyan prime minister at the Pentagon. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-Twitter worker claims responsibility for Trump's account shutdown;SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A German man has come forward as the former Twitter Inc employee who shut down the account of U.S. President Donald Trump for 11 minutes this month on his last day of work at the social network. The technology news website TechCrunch published an interview on Wednesday with Bahtiyar Duysak, whom it called a 20-something with Turkish roots who was born and raised in Germany. He was a temporary contract worker in San Francisco for Twitter, the website said. Duysak, who had not previously been identified as the person behind the takedown, told TechCrunch that he considered Trump’s temporary silencing a “mistake” and never thought the account would get deactivated. It was not a planned act, he said. Rather, he said, the chance to shutter the account fell into his lap near the end of his scheduled final shift, and he decided to take it. “There are millions of people who would take actions against him if they had the possibility. In my case, it was just random,” Duysak said in a video of the interview posted online. He wore a gray sweater emblazoned with the American flag. Twitter on Wednesday would not confirm whether Duysak was the ex-employee in question or answer other questions. Reuters could not immediately reach Duysak. BuzzFeed News, citing two anonymous sources, reported separately that Duysak was the ex-employee responsible. Duysak is a former volunteer security guard at a Muslim community center in California, BuzzFeed reported. Trump has been critical of Muslims, calling during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The takedown of Trump’s account on Nov. 2 sparked concerns among Twitter users over how much power employees have over sensitive accounts and whether abuse of their power could lead to international incidents. Twitter said in a statement on Wednesday: “We have taken a number of steps to keep an incident like this from happening again.” Duysak did not shed much light on the incident. Near the end of his last day at the San Francisco-based company, an alert came to him that someone had reported Trump’s account for an unspecified violation, he said. Duysak put the wheels in motion to deactivate it, TechCrunch said, although the account did not go offline until hours later. Neither Duysak nor TechCrunch explained the delay. “I didn’t hack anyone. I didn’t do anything which I wasn’t authorized to do,” he said. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House bill aims to identify lawmakers in sex harassment cases;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday introduced legislation requiring the disclosure of sexual harassment case settlements involving members of Congress and their staffers. The move came amid a snowballing number of revelations about harassment of co-workers and others by members of Congress, as well as high-profile entertainment and media figures’ being accused of workplace improprieties. If the legislation were to become law and such settlements came to light they potentially would have a ripple effect on politicians and elections. Republicans control the House, but it was not clear whether Speaker Paul Ryan would throw his weight behind the legislation. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A House committee hearing on overhauling existing procedures dealing with harassment cases is set for Dec. 7. Ryan called reports that Democratic Representative John Conyers was involved in a settlement over allegations of sexual impropriety “extremely troubling.” An aide to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi noted that she has indicated she would support legislation such as the bill offered on Wednesday, although it would have to respect the wishes of victims who want to remain anonymous. Under current practice, the names of lawmakers and aides who settle sexual harassment cases at taxpayer expense have not been divulged. The bipartisan “Congressional Accountability and Hush Fund Act” was introduced with at least 21 co-sponsors. It would require disclosure within 30 days of all settlement payments, the reason for the payment and nature of the allegation, as well as the lawmakers and staffers implicated. The public disclosure of lawmakers would be retroactive under the bill and any payments as a result of settlements would be the responsibility of members of Congress and staff involved, instead of taxpayers. Over the years, more than $15 million in taxpayer dollars have been paid out in an array of settlement claims, including those involving sexual harassment, noted Representative Ron DeSantis, a Republican and one of the bill’s authors. Separate legislation has been introduced on tightening procedures for Congress handling sexual harassment cases. On Wednesday the full House approved a resolution requiring lawmakers and their aides to take courses aimed at preventing harassment. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate tax bill stalls on deficit-focused 'trigger';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday delayed voting on a Republican tax overhaul as the bill was tripped up by problems with an amendment sought by fiscal hawks to address a large expansion of the federal budget deficit projected to result from the measure. The Senate debated the legislation late into Thursday and adjourned, putting off any votes until Friday morning. It was unclear if a decisive vote on the bill would occur then. The delay underscored nagging concerns among Republican fiscal conservatives about the deficit impact of the bill. That set up the possibility that its deep tax cuts might have to be moderated, that future tax increases might be built in, and that some conservatives might seek to attach spending cuts, all approaches that could throw up new political problems. White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told reporters in the Capitol: “I don’t think tax cuts are going to be scaled back. I think it would still be historic tax relief for corporations and for middle-income families.” The tax bill is seen by Republicans as crucial to their prospects in the November 2018 elections, when they will fight to keep control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump and Republicans now in control of Congress have yet to pass major legislation, a fact they hope to change with their proposed tax- code overhaul, which would be the biggest since the 1980s. Democrats, expected to unanimously oppose the tax bill, have dismissed it as a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. Republican Senator Bob Corker and others had tried to add a provision to the bill to trigger automatic future tax increases if the tax cuts in the bill did not boost the economy and generate revenues sufficient to offset the deficit expansion. But the Senate parliamentarian barred Corker’s “trigger” proposal on procedural grounds. The trigger amendment was needed to win Corker’s vote and those of others worried about the deficit - worries that intensified when congressional analysts said the bill would not boost the economy enough to offset the estimated deficit expansion, as the Trump administration had said it would. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told reporters in the Capitol that it had not been easy to accommodate Corker, Senator Jeff Flake and other fiscal hawks. “It’s been pretty hard to make them happy so far. We’re going to keep working on it ... and we’re going to do it,” Hatch said. Senate Republicans were considering making a proposed corporate income tax rate cut temporary, instead of permanent, so the rate would rise back to an unknown level after six or seven years, said one Republican senator and an aide. By that time, Trump might no longer be in office and a future Congress might change the law. When asked if the tax bill was in trouble, Republican Senator Mike Rounds told reporters: “No, I don’t think so. It’s just a matter of once again trying to make the bill work.” Optimism had reigned earlier in the day, when the bill won the backing of Republican Senator John McCain. Stocks surged on hopes that a key tax overhaul vote was imminent. The S&P 500 hit a record closing high and the Dow Jones industrial average topped the 24,000 mark for the first time. But the Joint Committee on Taxation, or JCT, a nonpartisan fiscal analysis unit of Congress, said the bill as passed earlier by the Senate Finance Committee, would generate only $407 billion in new tax revenue from increased economic growth. JCT had earlier estimated the tax bill would balloon the $20 trillion national debt by $1.4 trillion over 10 years. The new estimate, counting “dynamic” economic effects, put the deficit expansion at $1 trillion, far short of assertions by some Republicans that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said the new JCT estimate showed “no amount of dynamic scoring fairy dust will fix the catastrophic deficits of the GOP tax scam.” McCain, a key player in July’s collapse of a Republican effort to gut Obamacare, backed the tax bill. While “far from perfect,” the party’s 2008 presidential nominee said it would boost the economy and help all Americans. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who also played a role in the failure of the Obamacare rollback, told reporters she was still not committed to the bill. Several Republicans were withholding support while pushing for including a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes and bigger tax breaks for “pass-through” companies, including small businesses. As drafted, the Senate bill would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay and reduce the tax burden on businesses and individuals, while ending many tax breaks, but would still expand the deficit, Trump wants to enact tax cuts before January. The House approved its own tax bill on Nov. 16. It would have to be merged with the Senate bill, if it is approved, before any final measure could go to Trump for his signature. Republicans have 52 votes in the 100-member Senate, giving them enough to win if they hold together. With Democrats opposed, Republicans could lose no more than two of their own votes, with Vice President Mike Pence able to break a 50-50 tie. Trump has attacked Corker and Flake on Twitter. Both senators are not seeking re-election. In early October, the president called Corker, “Liddle’ Bob Corker” in a tweet. Corker tweeted that the Trump White House was an “adult daycare center.” Days later, he called Trump a liar who had damaged U.S. standing in the world. Trump tweeted back saying Corker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher.” Trump earlier this month tweeted that Flake’s political career was ‘toast’” In a dramatic Senate speech, Flake said U.S. politics had become inured to “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior from the White House. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Five facts about Tom Cotton, Trump's likely pick for CIA;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, a hawkish Iraq war veteran who has said he did not consider waterboarding to be torture, is likely to be chosen by President Donald Trump as the next leader of the Central Intelligence Agency amid a Cabinet shake-up, senior administration officials said. Here are five facts about the Arkansas Republican: - Cotton, 40, is a staunch Trump ally who has vigorously opposed the Iran nuclear deal. He served one term in the House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 2014 as part of a Republican wave. Cotton sits on the Intelligence Committee but has no experience managing a large organization. - Cotton has given a qualified endorsement of the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to boost Trump’s prospects. “I have no doubts about the intelligence community’s assessment,” he said in an Oct. 5 interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. - Cotton wants to boost the defense budget, saying the U.S. military is in crisis, and has pointed to both Russia and China as growing threats. He accused Moscow of trying to divide NATO and said China was “seeking control over the Pacific Rim.” - A decorated Army veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cotton appeared to align himself with Trump’s support of waterboarding, saying he did not consider it torture. “Waterboarding isn’t torture. We do waterboarding on our own soldiers in the military,” the former paratrooper told CNN in November 2016. Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someone’s face to simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by Democratic President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. - Cotton is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. A father of two, he has a reputation as a devoted family man who once apologized for being late for an intelligence hearing because he was tending to a baby in his office. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;How parents of adopted children foiled a U.S. Republican tax proposal; (Refiles Nov. 30 story to cut extraneous word ‘against’ in 2nd paragraph;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says Tillerson to remain as secretary of state;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rex Tillerson will remain as U.S. secretary of state, the White House spokeswoman said on Thursday, amid reports Tillerson will be removed in favor of Mike Pompeo, who is currently CIA director. “When the president loses confidence in someone, they will no longer serve here,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said when asked about reports of a staff shake up. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-Trump campaign aide Manafort in $11.65 million bail deal: lawyer;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort has agreed to an $11.65 million bail agreement with the special counsel investigating Trump campaign ties to Russia, the longtime Republican political consultant’s lawyer said on Thursday. Manafort, who was indicted along with a business associate Richard Gates in October, would be released from house arrest and electronic monitoring under the deal, lawyer Kevin Downing said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington. Manafort, who has been confined to his Virginia home, has agreed to forfeit four real estate properties worth about $11.65 million if there is a bail violation, the court document said. Manafort previously had an unsecured $10 million “appearance bond” to guarantee he shows up to court. Agreement on bail had been reached with the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Downing said in the filing. A spokesman for Mueller could not immediately be reached for comment. Manafort, who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign for several months, and Gates pleaded not guilty in October to a 12-count indictment by a federal grand jury. They face charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. The charges are part of Mueller’s investigation into the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia undertook a campaign of hacking and misinformation to tilt the election in Trump’s favor and potential collusion by Trump associates, allegations that Moscow and the president deny. Mueller and his attorneys have previously argued that the court should only agree to a bail agreement if Manafort fully explains his finances to the court and that they considered him a flight risk. The four properties posted as bail are a Bridgehampton, New York home valued at $4 million, a New York City property valued at $3.7 million, a Florida property estimated at $1.25 million, and a home in Virginia worth $2.7 million, the filing said. Manafort’s wife, Kathleen, and his daughter Andrea have agreed to act as sureties on the appearance bond, it said. To address the issue of flight risk, Manafort has agreed to not travel overseas, has handed over his passports, and will restrict his travel to Florida, Virginia, New York and Washington D.C. Downing called the $11.65 million a “substantial portion” of Manafort’s assets. “Simply put, Mr. Manafort’s family would face severe economic consequences if he were not to appear as required.” ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's call for military buildup hits bump in Congress;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s push for a major military buildup suffered a setback on Thursday when the House of Representatives put plans on hold to fully fund the federal government through next Sept. 30 and instead resorted to temporary measures freezing spending at current levels. With a Dec. 8 deadline rapidly approaching for either extending federal funding in some way or triggering a partial government shutdown, the House next week will advance a temporary patch, according to a senior aide, and try to provide money through Dec. 22. That will give Congress more time to craft a second patch, the aide said, to operate the government through January. While the moves, if successful, would keep the Pentagon running at last year’s levels, they are far from Republican hopes of handing Trump about $634 billion in fiscal 2018 funding for the military’s regular operations, $85 billion above last year. For months, Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have been working behind the scenes to broker a deal on overall spending levels for the current fiscal year, which already is two months old. Democrats are demanding increases in non-defense spending if military budgets are pumped up as Trump has demanded. It is unclear whether Republicans in Congress and Trump will allow unrelated controversial measures to be attached to either of the temporary spending bills. Democrats, whose votes normally are needed in the Republican-controlled Congress to pass spending bills, have been hoping to use their political leverage to win passage of an immigration measure by attaching it to an end-of-year appropriations bill. That bill would provide legal protections to “Dreamers,” the hundreds of thousands of undocumented people who came to the United States as children and have established roots. House Speaker Paul Ryan, asked about the possibility of attaching the immigration provision to a spending bill, said he wanted to resolve the issue. But he noted that Congress is under a March deadline to pass the Dreamers measure, saying “We’ve got other deadlines in front of that,” referring to the spending bills. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sexual misconduct allegations may roil 2018 U.S. congressional elections;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A spate of sexual misconduct accusations against U.S. politicians and other powerful men will force candidates for the November 2018 congressional elections to weigh more carefully than ever whether their past behavior could doom their chances. Following allegations against Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, Democratic U.S. Representative John Conyers and Democratic U.S. Senator Al Franken, campaign operatives from both parties warned that past behavior that might once have been excused may now be disqualifying. “This is a game-changer,” said Democratic strategist Dane Strother. “Every man who wants to run for office needs to give some serious thought to his past.” Politicians have been among a growing number of prominent men, including in the entertainment and media fields, accused of sexual harassment. There will be increased pressure on candidates to undertake “self-vetting,” where, as one Republican strategist said, they are willing to subject themselves to a “trial on what the other side will put them through.” But he cautioned: “A lot of this is still dependent on what the candidate is willing to talk about and how forthcoming they are.” In next year’s elections, Democrats will seek to wrest one or both houses of Congress from Republican control. Thirty-three U.S. Senate seats and all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will be contested. Sex scandals have long been a part of U.S. politics, but in the current environment, operatives are encouraging candidates and office-holders alike to level with advisers about past conduct, even behavior that might in the past have fallen into a gray area. “You may have to press the candidate particularly aggressively to be sure that he confronts what he may have passed off as a failed advance and not have imagined would come back to haunt him,” a veteran Democratic lawyer who advises campaigns told Reuters. Sonia Van Meter, a Democratic opposition researcher, said candidates would have to think carefully about “their demeanor, their offhanded remarks, the way they carried themselves. Everything will be under more scrutiny.” If candidates are not careful about self-vetting, operatives said, researchers working for opposing candidates would do it for them. Verifiable facts - court documents, voting records, speeches and more - usually form the backbone of opposition research conducted by rival campaigns. Such research may expand into behavior that has not been documented, Strother said, adding that might include conversations with former female staffers to find out if there are any issues. Tracy Sefl, a strategist in Chicago who has directed opposition research for the Democratic National Committee, said workplace relationships between a male candidate and women could now be targeted by opposing campaigns. “In the context of employment: Was a man supervising women? Were those women younger, older, or his peers?” Sefl said. “How long did those women tend to work there? What do they have to say about their experience there and about him, specifically?” But Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who worked for presidential candidates Tim Pawlenty and Marco Rubio, doubted opposition research would see a dramatic shift, largely because most campaigns cannot afford it and must instead rely on public records, internet searches and news reports. “Opposition research in early stages of congressional campaigns is not going back and interviewing every single person who has worked with a candidate,” Conant said. There are also limits on the effectiveness of opposition research in identifying potential misconduct. Rumors surrounding Moore’s alleged interest in teenage girls had circulated in Alabama politics for years, but it took reporters from the Washington Post, not researchers from campaigns, to persuade his accusers to go on the record. Moore, who is running against Democrat Doug Jones in a Dec. 12 special election, has denied the allegations, which Reuters has been unable to independently verify. Republican lawmakers in Washington, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, have distanced themselves from Moore and urged him to quit the race. Self-vetting is all the more important, operatives said, because the national parties have little capacity to weed out problematic candidates. In 2016, the insurgent White House bids of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders highlighted the limited ability of parties to hand-pick candidates for major public offices. Trump won the presidency despite himself being accused by several women of having in the past made unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate personal remarks about them. Trump denied the allegations, saying they were part of a smear campaign. In the race for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, Moore prevailed in the Republican primary over Luther Strange, the incumbent backed by the party establishment. While the parties still vet some candidates for Congress and big-ticket donors, they largely rely on local party officials to screen and refer them. Van Meter said the string of scandals had altered the landscape because victims now felt empowered to go public, which may topple some candidates and keep others from running at all. “What has changed is the culture, the number of women coming forward,” she said. “We’re going to see more of these cases.” ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Treasury would run out of cash by early April if debt ceiling not lifted: CBO;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury would exhaust all of its borrowing options and run dry of cash to pay its bills by late March or early April if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling before then, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday. “If the debt limit remains unchanged, the ability to borrow using extraordinary measures will be exhausted and the Treasury will most likely run out of cash by late March or early April 2018,” it said. “If that occurred, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully, and it would delay making payments for its activities, default on its debt obligations, or both,” the CBO added. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump considers plan to replace Tillerson with CIA chief: U.S. officials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is considering a plan to oust Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose relationship has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other differences, senior administration officials said on Thursday. Tillerson would be replaced within weeks by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist and foreign policy hard-liner, under a White House plan to carry out the most significant staff shake-up so far of the Trump administration. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress, would be tapped to replace Pompeo at the Central Intelligence Agency, the officials told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was not immediately clear whether Trump had given final approval to the reshuffle, but one of the officials said the president asked for the plan to be put together. Tillerson’s long-rumored departure would end a troubled tenure for the former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive, who has been increasingly at odds with Trump over issues such as North Korea and under fire for planned cuts at the State Department. Tillerson was reported in October to have privately called Trump a “moron,” something the secretary of state sought to dismiss. That followed a tweet by Trump that Tillerson should not waste his time by seeking negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear and missile program, widely seen as a sign of the secretary of state being marginalized. Trump has soured on Tillerson mostly because of the “moron” report, his less confrontational approach on North Korea and differences over the Qatar crisis, one senior U.S. official said. His slow approach to filling diplomatic openings at the State Department is also a factor, another official said. Trump asked John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to develop the transition strategy, and it has been discussed with other officials, one administration source said. Under the plan, which has been in the works for weeks and was first reported by the New York Times, the reshuffle would happen around the end of the year or shortly afterward, the official said. Asked whether he wanted Tillerson to remain in his job, Trump sidestepped the question, telling reporters at the White House: “He’s here. Rex is here.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Kelly told Tillerson’s chief of staff on Thursday the reports on Tillerson being replaced were not true. Nauert added that Tillerson “serves at the pleasure of the president.” Asked about Tillerson, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the secretary of state remained in his post. “When the president loses confidence in someone, they will no longer serve here,” she said. Pompeo, a former congressman, has moved to the forefront as he has gained Trump’s trust on national security matters. Tillerson, 65, has spent much of his tenure trying to smooth the rough edges of Trump’s unilateralist “America First” foreign policy, with limited success. On several occasions, the president publicly undercut his diplomatic initiatives. A source familiar with Tillerson’s thinking said the secretary of state’s original plan when he took the job was to leave in February. If carried out, the staff changes would be the latest in a string of firings or resignations in the Trump administration including the departures of the chief of staff, national security adviser and FBI director. Pompeo, 53, has taken tough foreign policy stands, especially on Iran, and talked about how his agency is becoming more aggressive and how he has been focusing on deploying more CIA officers overseas.    He has offered effusive praise for Trump despite the president’s criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies, some of which concluded that Russia conducted an influence campaign to boost Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Tillerson has at times put distance between himself and Trump’s positions. At a private dinner of foreign policy veterans last month, a senior White House official criticized Tillerson for failing to support the president’s agenda, according to a person familiar with the matter. Tillerson joined Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in pressing Trump not to pull the United States out of an agreement with Iran and world powers over Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Tillerson has taken a more hawkish view than Trump on Russia and tried to mediate a dispute after four Arab nations launched a boycott of Qatar. In September in Beijing, Tillerson said Washington was probing North Korea to see whether it was interested in dialogue, and had multiple direct channels of communication with Pyongyang. The next day, Trump appeared to dismiss those efforts in a tweet, telling Tillerson he was “wasting his time.” Tensions have also run high between Tillerson and veteran diplomats who oppose his proposed staff and budget cuts. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tax trigger idea for Senate tax bill swiftly draws critics;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposal to amend a tax bill in the U.S. Senate with a trigger to automatically reverse tax cuts if new revenues fall short of forecasts could further pressure businesses and the economy if the economy slows, critics said on Wednesday. The trigger, championed by Republican Senator Bob Corker, is meant to allay concerns about the estimated $1.4 trillion that the tax bill would add over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt. Under the proposal, tax cuts in the bill would be scaled back to recapture lost federal revenues if the strong economic growth and fresh revenues promised by the bill’s supporters fail to materialize in coming years. The trouble is that the trigger would most likely kick in during an economic downturn, said critics and even some Republicans, who warned that would further weaken businesses and consumers just when a boost is needed. “That is exactly the wrong time to raise taxes,” said William Gale, a senior economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Among Republicans who criticized the proposal, Representative Tom Cole said: “I don’t like it very much. ... You may end up having a tax increase in a down economy.” Unlike programs such as unemployment insurance that add to household incomes in bad times and support consumer spending to offset a weak economy, the trigger would squelch business and household spending, reinforcing a downturn. “These triggers are not innocuous. They are dangerous,” Gale said. Details of how the trigger would work were sketchy. It was not certain it would even make it into the legislation that senators are to begin debating on Thursday. But knowledgeable sources said the bill likely will include a trigger that would reverse a deep corporate income tax cut. President Donald Trump, his advisers and many of Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress say the tax bill, which includes slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, would boost the economy and raise new tax revenue sufficient to offset deficit increases. Many Republicans believe tax cuts can pay for themselves because they would fuel greater economic growth. Democrats dismiss this notion and some Republicans have expressed doubts. Corker, a conservative on fiscal policy, lobbied for the trigger to try to ensure that the tax cuts do not blow out the national debt. Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who has not committed to voting for the tax bill, said on Wednesday he was more comfortable with the legislation because of indications that trigger provisions would protect against raising the deficit. Because Republicans hold only a 52-48 majority in the Senate, they can afford to lose few votes among their own on the tax legislation. Most economists and business leaders advise against raising taxes in a recession when the economy typically needs to be stimulated. David McIntosh, president of the conservative lobbying group Club for Growth, said in a statement, “Any senator who understands basic business principles and truly cares about the deficit should understand that this trigger is an automatic tax increase and will actually harm economic growth.” ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Texas congressman will not seek re-election in wake of nude photo;AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas will not seek re-election, his office said in a statement on Thursday, in a decision he made after a nude picture of him appeared on the internet earlier this month. Barton’s announcement reverses his Nov. 2 announcement of plans to run for an 18th term in the U.S. House. He was first elected to Congress in 1984 and had been considered a favorite to win re-election in his heavily Republican district until the photo surfaced on Nov. 22. Barton, 68, has told media the nude photograph came when he was separated from his second wife, prior to a divorce, and was part of a consensual sexual relationship. Barton’s genitals were obscured in the version of the photo that was posted on the internet. Barton, who belongs to the party’s right-wing Freedom Caucus, issued the statement saying he would not seek re-election on Thursday shortly after an exclusive interview with the Dallas Morning News in which he went into more detail about his decision. “There are enough people who lost faith in me that it’s time to step aside and let there be a new voice for the 6th district in Washington, so I am not going to run for re-election,” he told the newspaper. The source of the photo and how it appeared on the internet are still unknown. Some Republicans in the state have called for Barton to step down and many criticized him for his behavior. “Ellis County Republicans are deeply grieved and embarrassed by the conduct of Congressman Joe Barton,” Randy Bellomy, the head of the party in the county that borders Dallas and is Barton’s constituency, said in a statement on Wednesday. Barton, vice chairman of the House Energy Committee, has shown strong support for the energy industry and drawn the ire of environmentalists for his dismissive views on climate change. “We’re thankful that Representative Barton chose to not seek re-election after reports of his deeply inappropriate actions and disturbing display of judgment,” Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Crystal Perkins said in a statement. Barton has not been accused of sexual harassment. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Republicans to watch in Senate tax bill fight;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some key U.S. senators still had concerns about the Republican tax bill in the Senate, as a procedural motion to formally open debate on the measure was approved on Wednesday. Here is a list of Republicans pivotal to the bill’s fate. The moderate senator from Maine has qualms about Republicans’ plan to include in the tax bill a repeal of a federal fee imposed on people who do not comply with Obamacare’s “individual mandate.” The fee is meant to encourage young, healthy people to get health insurance so that premiums are affordable for old, sick people. Collins and others fear repealing the fine would drive up insurance premium costs, canceling out tax-cut gains that many of their constituents might get from the tax bill. Collins said Republican leaders had promised her to take up two healthcare provisions before the end of the year to help mitigate the impact of repealing the fee. Those provisions would help insurers cover expensive patients and continue Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people for two years. Collins has also prepared an amendment to the tax bill to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, a provision that is part of the House of Representatives’ tax bill. Both the Senate and House bills end deductibility of state and local tax income and sales tax. Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill ends property tax deductibility too. Collins sidestepped a question on whether she would vote for the tax bill. She said: “We’re doing this one step at a time.” The senator from Alaska will vote for the tax bill, she wrote on Twitter on Wednesday evening. Murkowski said a number of the bill’s features were “very attractive,” noting that it would lower tax rates, double the child tax credit and double the standard deduction. She said it also included a provision she had written, to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling. Murkowski said it was important to enact reforms separately to help stabilize the individual market in health insurance. The Montana Republican has concerns about the bill’s treatment of “Main Street” businesses. He said on Wednesday he had secured an agreement to increase a 17.4 percent deduction for owners of pass-through businesses to 20 percent. The senator from Wisconsin also has demanded more favorable treatment for “pass-through” businesses, which include sole proprietorships and partnerships, as a condition of his support. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, said on Tuesday he had the outlines of a deal adding a tax snap-back provision to the bill that would raise taxes automatically if economic growth targets are not hit in the future to offset a higher deficit. Corker said that arrangement would satisfy his concerns that the tax cuts could add too much to the national debt. As of Wednesday evening, the details had not been announced. The snap-back proposal also became a target of growing criticism among conservative Republicans and lobbyists. The tax bill was expected to add $1.4 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years. The Arizona conservative said on Wednesday he was more comfortable with the tax bill because of indications there would be provisions in it to protect against ballooning the deficit. Flake told National Public Radio he was concerned about “gimmicks,” but liked other parts of the bill, especially the corporate tax cut. The Arizona maverick and former presidential nominee sidestepped questions on Monday about how he would vote on the tax bill, telling reporters in the hallway to “stay tuned.” Like Corker and Flake, Oklahoma’s Lankford questions whether tax revenues from economic growth will compensate for the expected increase in the national debt under the tax plan. He has been working with them to “trigger” more revenues if needed. The Kansas lawmaker is also wary of the impact on the national debt, pointing to his own state’s recent experience of fiscal problems following tax cuts. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congressman Conyers has not thought about resigning: lawyer;(Reuters) - Democratic Representative John Conyers, facing sexual misconduct allegations, has not thought about resigning, his lawyer said on Thursday after the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives called on the congressman to step down. “It is not up to Nancy Pelosi,” attorney Arnold Reed told reporters in Detroit, Michigan, referring to the House Democratic leader. “Nancy Pelosi did not elect the congressman, and she sure as hell won’t be the one that tells the congressman to leave. That decision will be completely up to the congressman. He’s not thought of that,” Reed said. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump turnover - Tillerson would be latest to leave administration;(Reuters) - The revolving door at the Trump White House was ready to spin again as senior administration officials said on Thursday there is a plan to replace U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo within weeks. The following is a partial list of officials who have been fired or have left the administration in the 10 months since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, as well as people who were nominated by Trump for a position but did not take the job: * Stephen Bannon - Trump’s chief strategist, who had been a driving force behind the president’s anti-globalization and pro-nationalist agenda that helped propel him to election victory, was fired by Trump in mid-August. He had repeatedly clashed with more moderate factions in the White House. * Philip Bilden - a private equity executive and former military intelligence officer picked by Trump for secretary of the Navy, withdrew from consideration in February because of government conflict-of-interest rules. * James Comey - the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, who was leading a probe into possible collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia to influence the election outcome, was fired by Trump in May. Richard Cordray - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s first director resigned on Nov. 24. Trump designated White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney as acting director, but Cordray named a deputy director as his replacement, triggering a political and legal battle. Four days later, a federal court ruled in Trump’s favor. * James Donovan - a Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) banker who was nominated by Trump as deputy Treasury secretary, withdrew his name in May. * Michael Dubke - founder of Crossroads Media, resigned as White House communications director in May. * Michael Flynn - resigned in February as Trump’s national security adviser after disclosures that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office and had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. * Mark Green - Trump’s nominee for Army secretary withdrew his name from consideration in May. * Gerrit Lansing - White House chief digital officer, stepped down in February after failing to pass an FBI background check, according to Politico. * Jason Miller - communications director for Trump’s transition team, who was named by the president-elect in December as White House communications director, said days later that he would not take the job. * Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned under pressure from Trump on Sept. 29 in an uproar over Price’s use of costly private charter planes for government business. * Reince Priebus - the former chairman of the Republican National Committee was replaced by John Kelly as Trump’s chief of staff in July. A confidant of the president said Trump had lost confidence in Priebus after major legislative items failed to be approved by Congress. * Todd Ricketts - a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team and Trump’s choice for deputy secretary of commerce, withdrew from consideration in April. * Anthony Scaramucci - the White House communications director was fired by Trump in July after just 10 days on the job after profanity-laced comments to The New Yorker magazine were published. * Walter Shaub - the head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, who clashed with Trump and his administration, stepped down in July before his five-year term was to end. * Michael Short - senior White House assistant press secretary, resigned in July. * Sean Spicer - resigned as White House press secretary in July, ending a turbulent tenure after Trump named Scaramucci as White House communications director. * Robin Townley - an aide to national security adviser Flynn, was rejected in February after he was denied security clearance to serve on the U.S. National Security Council, according to Politico. * Vincent Viola - an Army veteran and a former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange, nominated by Trump to be secretary of the Army, withdrew his name from consideration in February. * Katie Walsh - deputy White House chief of staff, was transferred to the outside pro-Trump group America First Policies in March, according to Politico. * Caroline Wiles - Trump’s director of scheduling, resigned in February after failing a background check, according to Politico. * Sally Yates - acting U.S. attorney general, was fired by Trump in January after she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to enforce Trump’s immigration ban. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson unaware of plan to oust him, Senator Corker says;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was unaware of any plans to oust him when he spoke to Senator Bob Corker on Thursday, Corker said. “He’s conducting business, as is the norm, and is unaware of anything changing,” Corker, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;U.S. State Dept. Spox: ‘Everybody wants Assad out five years ago’;21st Century Wire says At Tuesday s U.S. State Department briefing, spokesperson Heather Nauert, once again, displayed her servitude to Washington s geopolitical agenda in Syria.Watch as Nauert, in an overly assuming and flippant style, proclaims how everybody in this room and in this building wants Assad out five years ago in her exchange with NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell. The sheer audacity begins at the 39 minute mark. This is all just more scripted servitude from U.S. State Department talking heads on the topic of Syria as Washington s war plan there continues to crumble. READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SYRIA FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to give State of the Union address on Jan. 30: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation by Congress to deliver a State of the Union address on Jan. 30, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Thursday. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan extended the invitation to Trump earlier on Thursday to make the address to Congress. The speech, typically given every year of a president’s term except the first, reports on the current condition of the United States and allows the leader to outline legislative and other priorities. (This story corrects date of address in 1st paragraph to Jan. 30, not Jan. 20) ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Five facts about Mike Pompeo, expected to replace Tillerson;(Reuters) - The following are five facts about Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo, who a senior administration official said on Thursday would replace Rex Tillerson as U.S. secretary of state within weeks under a plan developed by the White House. * Pompeo, 53, regularly briefs President Donald Trump on intelligence matters, and is considered one of the most hawkish voices on North Korea in Trump’s inner circle. * Pompeo has downplayed the extent of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, saying Moscow has sought to influence American elections for decades. * Like Trump, Pompeo is an outspoken critic of Iran and has called for scrapping the 2015 deal curbing Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. In October, he said Iran was “mounting a ruthless drive to be the hegemonic power in the region.” * Pompeo has supported the U.S. government’s sweeping collection of Americans’ communications data. In an opinion piece published last year, he called for restarting the bulk collection of domestic telephone metadata and combining it with financial and lifestyle information into one searchable database. * Before taking the reins at the CIA in January, Pompeo was a conservative Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kansas. He is a retired Army officer and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and Harvard Law School. ;politicsNews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia already preparing military withdrawal from Syria: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev said on Thursday Moscow was already preparing to withdraw its military contingent from Syria, Russian news agencies reported. Preparations are underway, RIA news agency quoted Patrushev as saying. The chief of the Russian military general staff said last week Russia s military force in Syria would likely be significantly reduced and a drawdown could start before the end of the year. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER “BAYWATCH” STAR Tries To Flirt Her Way Past Secret Service;Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson tried to use her charms to get past the Secret Service to meet with Vice President Mike Pence. She wanted to speak with Pence about a pardon for Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Anderson has been connected to Assange romantically and reportedly visits him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. She s also become more politically active in recent years because of her awareness of Assange s plight.Page Six reports:Spies tell Page Six that Anderson was in Manhattan filming a PSA at the JW Marriott Essex House when she learned that Pence was at the same address. The blond bombshell has said that she loves WikiLeaks founder Assange and visits him every two weeks in his cramped room at London s Ecuadorian embassy, where he s staying in order to evade extradition.According to onlookers, Anderson marched straight up to the Secret Service and asked to see Pence. A witness said: The Secret Service agent practically swooned and fainted when she walked up to him and started pressing her finger on his badge. Pam said, I d like to meet the vice president. But, the source added, The agent did get it together enough to politely refuse, saying the vice president was busy. Pamela Anderson s attempt to woo the Secret Service was unsuccessful.When we reached activist Anderson for comment, she confirmed to Page Six: I wanted to thank [Pence] for supporting protection of sources for journalists. He is heralded for co-sponsoring proposals for a federal shield law, which I deeply admire. This action would have allowed journalists to keep confidential sources secret even if the government requested them. She added, I really wanted to mention this it is a topic close to my heart. Julian Assange deserves a pardon, and I thought I might be able to help. Julian is a hero to most of the world s youth and free-minded thinking people. America needs to be on the right side of history. ;left-news;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU agrees registration rules for drones, downloads of flight recordings;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Drone owners in Europe will have to register their devices if dangerous and aircraft makers ensure that black box recordings can be downloaded in real-time if a plane is in distress under a sweeping reform of Europe s aviation safety agency. European Union lawmakers and member states reached a tentative deal early on Thursday on a long-awaited reform of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which includes Europe s first ever rules on drones. Under the agreement, drones which can cause significant harm to people either by crashing into them or presenting risks to privacy, security or the environment, will have to be registered. Dangerous drones will be defined as having a kinetic energy of over 80 joules based on their mass and maximum speed. The European Parliament had pushed for a registration threshold of 250 grammes but EU governments resisted. The rules will apply to all drones, including ones sold in shops for private use. The drone industry is soaring and has potential uses in agriculture, delivery, mapping, building maintenance. To ensure these activities develop in full security, a European regulatory framework will prevail, said Karima Delli, chair of the European Parliament s Transport Committee. Risks posed by the increasing use of drones were highlighted in October when a drone hit an aircraft landing at a Canadian airport and there have been several near-misses between drones and passenger planes in Europe. EU member states and the Parliament had been bogged down in negotiations for a year, with disagreements ranging from drone registration limits to how much EASA should be bound by international CO2 standards to whether overflights should be guaranteed when air traffic controllers are on strike. Thursday s agreement, which was reached around 0545 CET (0445 GMT) after 10 hours of negotiations, will need to be confirmed by both the Parliament and national governments. Currently, drone rules vary from country to country in Europe. Under the deal, recordings of cockpit conversations in planes will need to be downloaded to the ground in real-time when an aircraft is in distress. The Parliament had pushed for the provision to avoid a repeat of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which vanished three years ago in the southern Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard. The exact criteria under which aircraft will have to be equipped with black boxes whose recordings can be downloaded in real-time will be decided by the European Commission and member states at a later stage, a Parliament source said. The deal also ensures that EASA will not be able to go beyond international standards agreed at the United Nations aviation agency on pollutants and CO2 emissions, something with environmental campaigners and the Parliament had pushed for. In the face of this missed opportunity, the European Parliament is ready and waiting for an ambitious plan for CO2 emissions reductions from transport, Delli said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU and Britain agree settlement post Brexit: senior EU official;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has agreed a financial settlement with Britain, a senior EU official told Reuters on Thursday, under which London has committed to paying a set share of EU budgets after Britain has left the bloc. Following reports of British offers in recent days, EU negotiators have insisted publicly that work is continuing on the financial deal, as both sides also push to reach accords on two other key divorce conditions before a crunch meeting on Monday. The official offer has not been submitted, but unofficially it has been agreed to such an extent that if no one decides to stage a last minute complete turnaround everything will be OK, the official said. A spokesperson for Britain s Department for Exiting the European Union was not immediately available for comment. Overall, the EU side was optimistic that agreement could be reached on the conditions to allow EU leaders to agree during a Dec. 14-15 summit to open talks on post-Brexit relations. The British government dismissed as speculation on Wednesday reports in British newspapers that it had more than doubled its offer to the EU to very roughly 50 billion euros. The EU official said there was no precise figure discussed because the amounts to be paid in future will depend on many imponderable variables, ranging from whether loan guarantees had to be exercised to the vagaries of the sterling-euro exchange rate and relative growth in the British and EU economies. Britain has committed to meeting an agreed share of the vast bulk of the future budget items which the EU asked for, the official said, adding: It is a deal on what percentage share Britain will cover and on what items. The official said the British share would be significantly less than 16 percent - Britain s share last year of the total output of the 28-nation Union. In any case, Britain s economic weight may decline as the pound has sunk since last year s vote to leave the EU, while even in sterling terms, the British economy has been growing more slowly than others. The share of the economy used for the EU budget is also calculated somewhat differently and Britain has been entitled as a member to a special rebate. Among key budget lines that Britain has committed to was covering a share of disbursements from the EU budget in years beyond the current seven-year EU budget ending in 2020. We have agreed a certain formula how to calculate that share. So we take each line in the budget and apply the share to it, the official said. British Prime Minister Theresa May had said Britain would pay its full share of the budget to the end of 2020 - the point at which the EU expects roughly to end a transition period , during which Britain will effectively keep all its obligations and most rights in the EU after Brexit in March 2019, while losing its vote on laws. But the EU, which originally estimated the likely Brexit bill at roughly 60 billion euros, had demanded Britain also pay its share of items, committed to during that seven-year 2014-2020 budget but not actually disbursed until years later. All in all, they are ready to pay a suitable, fair price for moving on to the second phase. This is what they want, the official said of May s push to convince fellow EU leaders to open talks next month on a transition and future trade pact. They want as soon as possible to solve the transition period issues, because they are afraid companies will start moving, he added, saying that broadly speaking London was going to be paying all the EU wanted . ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Ziraat Bank denies Zarrab allegations regarding the bank: official;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish lender Ziraat Bank denied allegations made on Thursday by a Turkish-Iranian gold trader in a New York court who said Ziraat sought to take part in an Iranian money laundering scheme, a senior bank official told Reuters. The bank conformed to international regulations, the official added. Reza Zarrab, who has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, is expected to testify in Manhattan federal court against Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla, in a case that has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope urges decisive measures for Myanmar refugees, avoids 'Rohingya';DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis called on Thursday for decisive measures to resolve the political reasons that caused mostly Muslim refugees in Myanmar to flee to Bangladesh and urged countries to help the Dhaka government deal with the crisis. However, just as on the first leg of his trip, in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya to describe the refugees, which is contested by the Yangon government and military. In a speech before Bangladeshi President Abdul Hamid and diplomats hours after arriving under heavy security in Dhaka, the chaotic and dusty capital of 14 million people, Francis instead spoke of refugees from Rakhine State . In his speech, Francis, who used the term Rohingya twice this year in appeals from the Vatican, praised impoverished Bangladesh s spirit of generosity and solidarity in helping a massive influx of refugees from Rakhine State . The exodus of some 625,000 Muslim Rohingya people from Rakhine state to the southern tip of Bangladesh was sparked by a military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, and refugees arriving in Bangladesh told of killings and rapes. The United States has said the campaign by mainly Buddhist Myanmar s military included horrendous atrocities aimed at ethnic cleansing . The military denies the accusations. None of us can fail to be aware of the gravity of the situation, the immense toll of human suffering involved, and the precarious living conditions of so many of our brothers and sisters, a majority of whom are women and children, crowded in the refugee camps, Francis said at the presidential palace. It is imperative that the international community take decisive measures to address this grave crisis, not only by working to resolve the political issues that have led to the mass displacement of people, but also by offering immediate material assistance to Bangladesh in its effort to respond effectively to urgent human needs. Even though his calls for justice, human rights and respect in Myanmar were widely seen as applicable to the Rohingya, who are not recognized as Myanmar citizens or as members of a distinct ethnicity, rights groups such as Amnesty International said they were disappointed he did not defend them by name. In studiously avoiding the highly charged term, the pope has so far followed the advice of church officials in Myanmar, who feared it could set off a diplomatic incident and turn Myanmar s military and government against minority Christians. Francis is due to meet a group of Rohingya refugees in Dhaka on Friday. In his address to the pope, the president of Bangladesh, which is predominantly Muslim, used the term Rohingya several times and accused the Myanmar army of committing ruthless atrocities . He called for a safe, sustainable and dignified return of the refugees to their homes. Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an accord last week on terms for the return of Rohingya, though rights groups are skeptical Myanmar will follow through on the deal and have called for independent observers for any repatriation. There are concerns about protection for Rohingya from further violence if and when they go home, and about a path to resolving their legal status - most are stateless - and whether they would be allowed to return to their old homes. The pope s visit to the South Asian country unfolded under heavy security. While Francis stuck to his custom of using a simple car, he was escorted by many armored military and police vehicles. The country was shocked on July 1, 2016, when gunmen stormed a caf in Dhaka s upscale Gulshan neighborhood, killing 22 people, most of them foreigners, in an overnight siege. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU, U.N., African leaders draw up emergency plan for migrants in Libya;ABIDJAN (Reuters) - The European Union, United Nations and African Union have agreed to an emergency plan to dismantle people-smuggling networks and repatriate stranded migrants, in an effort to ease a human rights disaster in Libya, officials said. Images broadcast by CNN earlier this month appeared to show migrants being auctioned off as slaves by Libyan traffickers, sparking outrage in Europe and anger in Africa. It forced the issue of abuse of African migrants heading for Europe to the top of the agenda of a summit meant to focus on Africa s youth. European Council President Donald Tusk called the slavery reports horrifying during the opening ceremony of the African Union-European Union summit on Wednesday. French President Emmanuel Macron said the plan included the establishment of an operational task-force composed of European and African police and intelligence services. The goal will be in very short order to be able to arrest identified traffickers, dismantle these networks and their financing which goes through banks and payments that in the region contribute ... to sustaining terrorism, he said late on Wednesday. France would use its military presence in the region to help break up trafficking networks, but the plan would not involve sending French troops into Libya, Macron said at a press conference in Ghana on Thursday. On Libyan soil, it is now up to the Libyan government to decide in connection with the African Union, he said. It is important to preserve the sovereignty of Libya. The plan, the details of which emerged on Thursday, came from a meeting of UN officials, EU leaders and government representatives from Chad, Niger, Morocco, Congo and Libya that was called by France on Wednesday. The European Union, African Union and United Nations agreed to freeze assets and impose financial sanctions against known smugglers. Libya s government, which has promised to investigate reports of slave auctions, said it would grant U.N. agencies access to migrant camps in areas under its control, German officials said. EU countries, meanwhile, will finance the repatriation of migrants from Libya, a process that is already being organized by the International Organization for Migration, they said. Allowing Africans to come to Europe on a temporary basis for three of four years of training or schooling was also discussed, according to European government officials. Circular migration could be key to easing illegal migration, experts have said. Regional governments have also agreed to educate Africans about the dangers of migration, and there will be stronger coordination between security services across North, West and Central Africa to eradicate smuggling. Vulnerable migrants who might eventually qualify for asylum will be brought to Chad or Niger before being relocated to a third country either in Europe or another region. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Year of protests and crisis in volatile Venezuela;CARACAS (Reuters) - Even by the volatile and violent standards of recent times in Venezuela, 2017 was an exceptional year, a perfect storm of political and economic crisis. Going into a fourth year of crippling recession, Venezuela s 30 million people found themselves skipping meals, suffering shortages of basic foods and medicines, jostling in lines for ever-scarcer subsidized goods, unable to keep up with dizzying inflation rates, and emigrating in ever larger numbers. In unprecedented scenes for the once-prosperous OPEC nation, some citizens survived only by scavenging through garbage. Not surprisingly in that context, President Nicolas Maduro s ruling Socialists the inheritors of Hugo Chavez s 21st century revolution - - lost popularity on the street, and the opposition coalition sensed a chance to unseat them. The tipping point came in March when the pro-Maduro Supreme Court essentially took over functions of the opposition-led National Assembly. Though the controversial ruling was later modified, it was a trigger and rallying cry for the opposition, which began a campaign of street protests that ran from April to July. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Venezuela, decrying economic hardship, demanding a presidential election, urging a foreign humanitarian aid corridor, and seeking freedom for scores of jailed activists. Slogans that read Maduro, murderer! and Maduro, dictator! began appearing on roads and walls around the country. Though the majority of protesters were peaceful, youths wearing masks and brandishing homemade Viking-style shields started turning up at the front of rallies to taunt security forces. When police and National Guard soldiers blocked marches, youths threw Molotov cocktails and stones. The security forces quickly escalated tactics, routinely turning water-cannons on the protesters and firing teargas into crowds. Guns appeared on the streets, and on several occasions security officials were caught on camera firing directly at demonstrators. Police were targeted with homemade explosives. Opposition supporters burned one man alive. The deaths, injuries and arrests mounted. Over the chaotic months, at least 125 people died, thousands were injured and thousands were jailed. Global opinion hardened against Maduro. Amid the extraordinary daily events, gangs burst into the National Assembly and beat up opposition lawmakers. The nation s best-known jailed opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, was released from prison and placed on home arrest to the joy of his supporters, then taken back to jail, then allowed home again, all in a matter of days. Venezuelans grew accustomed to navigating around barricades and burning streets as they tried to get to school and work. Some days, the country virtually shut down. By the end of July, many opposition supporters feared for their lives and protest numbers dwindled. Maduro said he was defeating a U.S.-backed coup attempt and authorities held an election, which the opposition boycotted, for an all-powerful Constituent Assembly charged with imposing order on the country. Having failed to block the Constituent Assembly, the protests fizzled out, leaving opposition supporters nursing their wounds and planning their next moves. They decided to tackle Maduro at the ballot-box in regional elections in October, but that backfired badly when they lost most of the governorships despite polls showing they would win. The opposition alleged fraud, but their complaints did not get traction and Maduro cemented his authority. In November, Venezuela said it planned to renegotiate its entire foreign debt, adding another dimension to the deepening national crisis. (See reut.rs/2AdRQ0Q for related photo essay) ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's Gulf policies impulsive and dangerous: Iranian minister;ROME (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s policies in the Gulf are dangerous and misguided, Iran s foreign minister said on Thursday, adding that pressure from Washington had only succeeded in strengthening Tehran s resolve. Speaking at a conference in Rome, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized Trump for seeking to renegotiate a 2015 deal aimed at curbing Iran s nuclear program. He also questioned the U.S. response to a crisis between Qatar and its neighbors. We have problems with the policies that are coming from Washington and I believe those policies are extremely dangerous, impulsive, not grounded in reality, Zarif said. Generally a revision, or a reorientation, or a cognitive adjustment to our region is highly necessary in Washington. He said Trump did not understand the nature of the nuclear accord and was trying to dissuade foreign investors from doing business in Iran. In spite of the arm twisting, more and more European companies have been coming in, he said. Zarif led Iran s negotiating team for the nuclear deal and faced criticism from hardliners at home over the terms of the accord. He said this dissent had faded over the past year. The United States pressure has in fact created more solidarity inside Iran. I am being attacked much less in Iran today than I was before Trump was elected. So I thank him for that, Zarif said. Trump said in October he would not certify that Tehran was complying with the 2015 deal and warned he might ultimately terminate it, accusing Iran of not living up to the spirit of the accord. Other signatories of the agreement Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union have said they believe Iran is living up to its commitments. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll from Somalia truck bomb in October now at 512: probe committee;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - More than 500 people were killed in twin bomb blasts in Mogadishu in October, a Somali committee looking into the attack said on Thursday, raising the death toll from at least 358. In the incidents on Oct. 14, a truck bomb exploded outside a busy hotel at the K5 intersection lined with government offices, restaurants and kiosks. A second blast struck Medina district two hours later. The impact of the truck bomb was worsened by it exploding next to a fuel tanker that increased its intensity and left many bodies being burnt or mutilated beyond recognition. By Oct. 20, the government said the toll had reached 358. It set up a committee, known as the Zobe Rescue Committee, to establish a more accurate death toll by talking to relatives of those who may have been at the site of the blasts. So far we have confirmed 512 people died in last month s explosion ... (Some) 316 others were also injured in that blast, Abdullahi Mohamed Shirwac, the committee s chairman, told Reuters on Thursday. There was no immediate comment from the government on the latest toll. The bomb attacks were the deadliest since Islamist militant group al Shabaab began an insurgency in 2007. Al Shabaab has not claimed responsibility, but the method and type of attack - a large truck bomb - is increasingly used by the al Qaeda-linked organization. Al Shabaab stages regular attacks in the capital and other parts of the country. Although the group says it targets the government and security forces, it has detonated large bombs in crowded public areas before. It has sometimes not claimed responsibility for bombings that provoked a big public backlash, such as the 2009 suicide bombing of a graduation ceremony for medical students. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel's embassy in Jordan can't reopen before legal action against guard - source;AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan will not allow Israel to reopen its embassy in Amman until it has launched legal proceedings against an Israeli security guard who shot dead two Jordanian citizens in July, a Jordanian diplomatic source said on Thursday. Israel must also be able to assure its Arab neighbor that justice has been served in the case, the senior source said, asking not to be named. The embassy was closed shortly after Israel hastily repatriated the guard under diplomatic immunity to prevent Jordanian authorities from interrogating him and taking any legal action against him. The Israeli ambassador and embassy staff were pulled out. Israeli sources said on Wednesday they were planning to replace Ambassador Einat Schlein at the Amman embassy in an effort to improve ties. However they did not address the long-standing Jordanian demand to take legal action against the security guard. They can look for a new ambassador but that ambassador will not be welcome in Jordan until a due legal process takes its course and justice is served, the diplomatic source said. Our position remains solid in Jordan.. The embassy will not reopen until these conditions are met... which is the position we took from the very beginning, he added. Jordan maintains that even if the guard had diplomatic immunity that did not mean he could not be punished. The guard enjoyed immunity and not impunity under Vienna conventions, the source said, referring to the Vienna Convention that specifies privileges given to diplomats. Jordan acted in compliance with its obligation under international law and Israel has to do the same, the source said. Jordanian officials have treated the shooting as a criminal case and say the two unarmed Jordanians, one a bystander and the other a teenage workman, were killed in cold blood by the armed guard. Israel said the armed guard opened fire after being attacked and lightly wounded by the workman, who was delivering furniture at his home within the embassy compound, and acted in self- defense, in what Israeli officials called a terrorist attack . A televised welcome and hero s embrace by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the guard enraged King Abdullah. In a rare outburst, the monarch accused Netanyahu of using the incident as a political show saying it was provocative on all fronts . The king called on Israel to put the guard on trial. From the very beginning they had addressed this issue in a disgraceful way to politically exploit it, the source said. The handling of the shooting has tested ties between Israel and Jordan, one of only two Arab states that has a peace treaty with Israel. They have a long history of close security ties. Many Jordanians, in a country where the peace treaty is unpopular and pro-Palestinian sentiment widespread, were outraged the guard was allowed to leave and staged protests calling on the authorities to scrap the 1994 peace treaty. Israel has said it is highly unlikely it would prosecute the security guard but has hinted at financial compensation to the family of one of the dead Jordanians. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump, South Korea's Moon discuss next steps on North Korea: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to South Korean President Moon Jae-In on Thursday for the second time since North Korea launched its latest missile to discuss their response, the White House said. The presidents reiterated their strong commitment to enhancing the alliance s deterrence and defense capabilities, it said in a statement. Both leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to compelling North Korea to return to the path of denuclearization at any cost. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Video gives new prominence to charges of Libyan slave trade;ROME (Reuters) - A video appearing to show men auctioned as slaves in Tripoli has put a long history of abuses against refugees and migrants there on the international agenda, the United Nations refugee chief said on Thursday. Grainy footage broadcast by CNN earlier this month appeared to show an auction of men offered as labourers to Libyan buyers for $400, prompting outrage and anger in Europe and Africa. But migrants who reach Europe by sea have been telling stories of being kidnapped, imprisoned and forced to work for no pay for years. Unfortunately, the horrifying abuses which that video made evident, made obvious to the whole world, are not new, Filippo Grandi told Reuters in Rome. The merit of that video is that it has now put the issue on the international agenda. Some African countries recalled their ambassadors after the video was broadcast, and the U.N. Security Council held a special session to discuss the issue after French President Emmanuel Macron railed against crimes against humanity in Libya. Partly in response to the video, European and African leaders meeting in Abidjan on Thursday agreed to a plan to cooperate to fight smuggling and seek to ease a human rights disaster in Libya. We ve heard finally authorities - Libyan authorities, the international community - talk about practical measures and how to respond to those abuses, to try to stop them, and to try to find solutions for the people affected by them, Grandi said. More than half a million migrants largely from war zones in the Middle East and Africa have reached Europe by sea after setting off from the Libyan coast over the past four years, bringing with them numerous tales of abuse. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said in April it had been told of slave market conditions in Libya and Niger. A Nigerian man, John Osifo, told Reuters in May after he was rescued at sea by a humanitarian ship that he had been forced into hard labor, treated like an animal, and beaten with a metal pipe. For Libyans, our black skin is like diamonds, Nicky Yong from Cameroon said. He watched two men barter for him when he was sold to work as a builder , he said. After months of negotiations, Libya s U.N.-backed government in Tripoli agreed this week to open a transit center for vulnerable refugees, which will be used to house people before they can be resettled or evacuated to another country. The U.N. told Reuters in September it hoped to open the center, where refugees can be protected from smugglers and criminals, early next year. Grandi said that more such facilities will be needed, and that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) needs to have better access to the detention centers currently being run by the Tripoli government. We will need to create probably more (transit) facilities, Grandi said. We will also need to have more access... to the detention centers to do the work that we want to do, Grandi said. William Lacy Swing, head of the IOM, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that it was working with partners to try to empty the detention centers in Libya. Some 30 centers, condemned as inhumane by rights groups, are estimated to hold 15,000-20,000 migrants. Hundreds of thousands of other migrants are estimated to be in Libya, and many of them are being held by smugglers under lock-and-key in a country consumed by factional violence since strong man Muammar Gaddafi was ousted six years ago. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Expect more war, hunger, Islamist violence in 2018 -Geneva think-tank;"GENEVA (Reuters) - Humanitarian crises around the world will worsen next year with no let-up in African civil wars, near-famines in conflict-ridden regions and the threat of Islamist violence, a Geneva-based think-tank predicted in a report published on Thursday. The report by ACAPS, a non-profit venture that supports humanitarian aid workers with daily monitoring and analysis of 150 countries, examined the anticipated needs of 18 countries in 2018 and found little to cheer. If 2017 did not look good, predictions for 2018 are no better: violence and insecurity are likely to deteriorate in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Ethiopia, Mali, Somalia, and Syria next year, ACAPS director Lars Peter Nissen wrote in the report. Next year Ethiopia will join northeastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen as places at risk of famine, said the report, entitled ""Humanitarian Overview: An analysis of key crises into 2018"". here In a separate report, the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said an estimated 76 million people across 45 countries were likely to need food aid in 2018, driven by conflict, an 18-month-old drought in the Horn of Africa and forecasts for below average rains in Africa s spring next year. Rather than bringing stability, the prospect of elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan and Venezuela is expected to exacerbate tensions and fuel violence, the ACAPS report said. Islamic extremism will also continue to cause death and conflict, the report said. Despite the defeat of Islamic State in its main strongholds in Iraq, the group is expected to continue improvised attacks throughout the country to destabilise the government, as well as gaining strength and resources in southern Libya. Islamic State is also likely to increase its toehold in the Puntland region of Somalia, impacting the civilian population and clashing with its bigger regional rival Al Shabaab, which will increase the lethality of its own attacks. ACAPS said Islamist armed groups are also expected to take advantage of the withdrawal of government troops from central Mali, gaining local recruits and further influence, while in Afghanistan the Taliban will consolidate rural strongholds and increased opium production will boost funding for armed groups. The fragmentation of armed groups in Central African Republic is expected to worsen the violence there, sending more refugees into Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo, where President Joseph Kabila is unlikely to leave power until 2019, fuelling frustration and violent protest, the report said. Militia groups previously focused on local grievances will likely become increasingly frustrated by the national, political, and socioeconomic situation and are likely to increase violence, particularly against government forces and institutions, the report said. ";worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico ruling party hopeful 14 points adrift in presidential poll;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The newly unveiled presidential contender of Mexico s ruling party, Jose Antonio Meade, lags his main rival, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, by some 14 percentage points, an opinion poll showed on Thursday. The voter survey, by daily newspaper Reforma, showed Meade, who resigned as finance minister on Nov. 27 to seek the nomination of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), polling 17 percent support against Lopez Obrador s 31 percent. Mexico elects a new president in July 2018, and though the PRI will not formally choose its candidate until Feb. 18, the party is already swinging behind Meade, even though he is not a member. The credibility of the PRI, which has dominated Mexican politics for most of the past century, has been seriously undermined by graft, gang violence and accusations of electoral fraud. Meade has, however, avoided corruption scandals in office, and part of his appeal rests on his status as an outsider. Meade also held ministerial posts in the 2006-2012 administration of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), and the PRI hopes his pedigree will enable him to pick up votes from rival parties. The poll, conducted Nov. 23-27, surveyed 1,200 Mexicans and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, Reforma said. The dates suggest it was carried out largely before Meade announced his intention to succeed President Enrique Pena Nieto, who is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election. The poll put Meade two points behind a third possible contender, Ricardo Anaya, head of the PAN, assuming the latter runs in a cross-party alliance with the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), as the two parties have proposed. The PAN has been beset by infighting since it lost power and has yet to agree on a candidate with the PRD. Some inside the PAN have already indicated they could support Meade. In a scenario in which Anaya ran for the PAN alone, he and Meade each drew 16 percent of the vote, with Lopez Obrador out in front at 32 percent, the poll showed. Meade said on Tuesday he was good with numbers and expressed certainty he would win the presidency, but some of the figures in the Reforma poll underlined the challenge he faces. Seven out of ten voters said they did not know Meade, and negative opinions of him were five percentage points higher than positive ones. Only 13 percent of voters did not know Lopez Obrador and the balance of opinion was neutral. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland demands 'significantly more clarity' from UK over Brexit border;DUBLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ireland needs Britain to provide significantly more clarity on its plans for the Irish border, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday, denting hopes that London was on the verge of a deal to move on to the second phase of Brexit talks. But British Prime Minister Theresa May s room to offer additional concessions to Dublin appeared extremely limited as the Northern Ireland party propping up her government hinted it might withdraw its support if she gives too much. Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can move to negotiations on Britain s future trade relationship with the EU and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. A mis-step by May could bring down the British government or spook British businesses fearful of a cliff-edge Brexit without a transition deal. We are looking for significantly more clarity than we currently have from the British negotiating team, Coveney told parliament in Dublin, adding that constructive ambiguity from Britain would not suffice. Hopefully we will make progress that will allow us to move on to Phase 2 in the middle of December, he said. If it is not possible to do that, so be it. Britain in the coming days needs to demonstrate sufficient progress on three key EU conditions a financial settlement, rights of expatriate citizens and the Irish border for leaders to give a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. With significant progress on the financial settlement and citizen rights, a deal on the Irish border would pave the way for Brussels to offer British Prime Minister Theresa May a transition deal as early as January. Britain s Times newspaper, without citing a source, said London was close to a deal after a proposal to devolve more powers to the government of its province of Northern Ireland so that it could ensure regulations there did not diverge from the EU rules in place south of the border across the island. The border between EU-member Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after Brexit, and Dublin fears a hard border could disrupt 20 years of delicate peace in Northern Ireland. Ireland has called on Britain to provide details of how it will ensure there is no regulatory divergence after Brexit in March 2019 that would require physical border infrastructure. But any attempt at a solution will have to convince Northern Ireland s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 members of parliament are propping up May s government. The party ratcheted up the pressure on Thursday by suggesting it might withdraw its support for May s government. If there is any hint that in order to placate Dublin and the EU they re prepared to have Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, then they can t rely on our vote, DUP member of parliament Sammy Wilson said in an interview with the BBC. European Council President Donald Tusk, who last week set an absolute deadline of Monday for May to demonstrate sufficient progress on the three issues, is due to fly to Dublin on Friday for talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in a bid to break the deadlock. May will then hold talks in Brussels on Monday with EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, and will hope to secure a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. Barnier said on Wednesday the summit would be able to discuss a transition period and that the EU would define a framework next year of the new partnership with Britain that would follow the transition. May has insisted she wants any new offers to be met with simultaneous assurances from the EU that it will maintain the open trading relationship which businesses are demanding to know soon if they are to maintain investment levels in Britain. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In court first, Swede jailed for rape of children online;STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A man was jailed for 10 years for rape by a Swedish court on Thursday for forcing 27 children from the United States, Canada and Britain to perform sex acts on themselves or with other children that he viewed over the internet. The case, heard in Uppsala, marked the first time in Sweden that a person has been convicted of rape without having met the victim - setting a precedent for such crimes over the internet to be treated as seriously as if they were committed in person. The district court makes a very important assessment here. It states clearly what is required for an act performed by a girl on her own body to be regarded as rape when the perpetrator is not in the same room, prosecutor Annika Wennerstrom told TT news agency. This may lead to a different level of priority and status from the police in criminal investigations with these types of crimes. The 41-year-old Swede found the girls via social media and threatened to rape them and kill their families unless they committed the sex acts on themselves, on other children or with animals. The children, most under the age of 15, either streamed the acts to the man over the internet or recorded them and sent them later. The man was also sentenced for a large number of acts of online sexual abuse of children and child pornography. As a result of this case, Wennerstrom said the means of investigation and the penalties could change. We will be given the opportunity to use other types of methods with this legal classification, penalties will be longer and the chances for compensation for victims will increase, she said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In warning to Ankara, EU cuts funds for Turkey's membership bid;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is set to cut up to 175 million euros for Turkey in 2018 that are linked to Ankara s stalled bid to join the bloc and could block some 3.5 billion euros in development loans earmarked for the country, lawmakers and diplomats said. In a symbolic stand against deteriorating human rights in Turkey, the 2018 cuts are likely to be the start of a longer-term reduction of pre-accession aid that is meant to help EU candidate countries prepare for membership. As long as Turkey is not respecting freedom of speech, human rights, and is drifting further away from European democratic standards, we cannot finance such a regime with EU funds, said Siegfried Muresan, the European Parliament s chief budget negotiator. Two EU diplomats said EU governments had agreed with the European Parliament this week to withdraw 105 million euros that would have gone to help finance political reforms in Turkey, as well as holding back another 70 million euros. Ankara can still access the 70 million euros if it improves its rights record, Muresan said. Signaling the slow collapse of Turkey s decades-long attempt to join the European Union, the cuts are deeper than an initial proposal to reduce funds by 80 million euros next year. They follow a call for action by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her re-election campaign, who has described Turkish behavior on human rights as unacceptable . Aside from money that the EU gives Turkey as part of its 2016 migration deal, Ankara was set to receive 4.4 billion euros from the EU between 2014 and 2020. Some EU governments now want frozen funds to go to non-governmental groups in Turkey, not to Ankara. Next week, EU governments and lawmakers are set to decide whether Ankara should also lose access to some 3.5 billion euros of European Investment Bank loans that have been earmarked for Turkey until 2020 and that have yet to be assigned. They are now likely to be made available to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, diplomats said. Merkel has said the rule of law in Turkey is moving in the wrong direction , a reference to the large-scale purge that President Tayyip Erdogan has carried out following a failed coup attempt in July 2016. While the EU condemned the coup attempt, the scope of Erdogan s response, his detention of U.S. and European citizens including dual nationals, and his jibes at Germany for what he has called Nazi-like behavior have soured EU-Turkey ties. Erdogan says the purges across society are necessary to maintain stability in a NATO country bordering Iraq and Syria. Launched in 2015 after decades in which Ankara sought to formally start an EU membership bid, Turkey s EU membership negotiations were always sensitive for France and Germany because of its status as a large, mainly Muslim country. They are not officially frozen, despite calls from Austria to formally scrap Turkey s EU membership program. That is in part because the EU relies on Ankara to take in Syrian refugees in return for billions of euros of aid. But a majority of EU countries, led by Germany and the Netherlands, say it no longer makes sense to fund political reforms in Turkey when formal EU membership talks have not taken place since last year. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spanish court orders prison for ex-Salvadoran officer over priests' massacre;MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish court has ordered the imprisonment of a former El Salvadoran army colonel for participating in the murder of five Spanish Jesuits in 1989 during the Central American country s civil war, a court ruling showed on Thursday. The ruling comes after the United States deported Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano Morales to Spain, where he is facing charges related to the massacre of six Roman Catholic priests. He arrived in Madrid on Wednesday and was taken into custody. Montano, who is being prosecuted for murder and crimes against humanity, will formally be notified of his charges next Monday, according to the ruling from the Spanish High Court. Montano, 74, had been in U.S. custody since 2011 when he was arrested outside Boston on immigration fraud charges after the Spanish government indicted 20 former Salvadoran army officers for the killings of the Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. The group was targeted because one of the priests, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, was a prominent critic of the U.S.-backed right-wing government. The massacre was one of the most notorious acts of a decade-long civil war during which 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 went missing. Spanish judge Manuel Garcia Castellon said in his ruling on Thursday that Montano actively participated in the decision and design of the murder of the Spaniards and Jesuits of an El Salvadoran University, Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez and Juan Ramon Moreno. Montano, who has proclaimed his innocence, is also accused of overseeing a radio station that urged the priests murder and participating in meetings a day before the deaths when a colleague gave the order to kill the men. The massacre occurred early on Nov. 16, 1989, when a group of soldiers from the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of the Central American University where Ellacuria was rector. At the time, a battle was raging across the capital San Salvador as part of a nationwide offensive launched by the left-wing Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Ellacuria had advocated a negotiated settlement to the war and the international revulsion at the murders helped to push through such a solution. The war ended in 1992. After a criminal investigation, two army officers were convicted for the Jesuit murders and jailed, but later released after an amnesty law passed in 1993. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;What's wrong with a joke? Macron defends air-conditioning gag in Africa;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron has a reputation for disarming hostile audiences with repartee and humor, but his latest verbal jousting on a trip to Africa has drawn criticism at home. In an interview broadcast late on Wednesday, Macron dismissed as ridiculous suggestions he had offended Burkina Faso s President Roch Marc Kabore when he quipped with students that Kabore had left the room to fix the air-conditioning. The exchange came during a boisterous 90-minute question-and-answer session at Ouagadougou University earlier this week that followed Macron s promise of a new era in relations between France and Africa. When one of the students in the audience grilled Macron over what he would do about Burkina Faso s constant power cuts, the 39-year-old replied: You speak to me like I m a colonial power, but I don t want to look after electricity in Burkina Faso. That s the job of your president. Earlier heckles turned into laughter and applause. When Kabore later left the hall, Macron joked: You see, he s gone. He s left to fix the air-conditioning. Shortly after, a smiling Kabore returned to his seat. Macron s remark touched off a social media frenzy, splitting those who defended it as lighthearted banter and others who complained of paternalistic overtones. Far-right rivals accused him of bordering on racism . That s ridiculous, Macron said in an interview with France 24. We have a relationship of equals, that means we can joke with one another. Macron has courted trouble with his language before. He was widely criticized this summer after saying that Africa faced civilisational problems. In France he has provoked anger by describing opponents as slackers and urging workers to stop kicking up a bloody mess . Firing back at his critics, Macron said it was those who deemed it inappropriate to joke with an African leader who were guilty of patronizing the continent. I would have had a laugh about it with any European leader with whom I have this kind of relationship. I don t with (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel, but I do for example with (European Commission president) Jean-Claude Juncker, he said. (Fixes typo in para 9, adds TV in media identifier) ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump angers UK with truculent tweet to May after sharing far-right videos;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump sparked outrage in Britain on Thursday with a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. As British politicians lined up to condemn Trump for sharing videos originally posted by a leader of a British far-right fringe group, Trump, in an unprecedented attack on one of America s closest allies, replied with an unrepentant message. Theresa @theresamay, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine, he tweeted. His truculent response caused anger in Britain, where there have been several major Islamist militant attacks this year, with one minister describing Trump s tweets as alarming and despairing . London s Muslim mayor called for the withdrawal of an offer to him to make a state visit to Britain. May, on a visit to Jordan, repeated her view, expressed earlier by her spokesman, that the U.S. leader was wrong for sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First. But she did not directly respond to Trump s rebuke. I m very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do, May told reporters in Jordan. She said the group was a hateful organization that sought to spread division and mistrust. The fact that we work together does not mean that we re afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong, and be very clear with them, May said. She added that Britain had a long-term, enduring relationship with the United States. The British ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, said he had raised concerns with White House officials. British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right, which seek to divide communities & erode decency, tolerance & respect, he wrote on Twitter. Fransen, who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman and whose group wants to ban Islam, is facing further criminal charges of racially aggravated harassment. TRUMP AND MAY ONCE HAND-IN-HAND Islamist militants have carried out several major attacks in Britain this year that have killed a total of 36 people, including a bombing in Manchester and two attacks on bridges in London in which victims were rammed with vehicles and stabbed. Trump initially addressed his rebuke to a Twitter handle that was not May s, though he later retweeted to the British leader s correct account. Always a pillar of Britain s foreign policy, the so-called special relationship with Washington has taken on added importance as Britain prepares to leave the European Union in 2019 and seeks new major trade deals. Since Trump became president, May has gone out of her way to cultivate a good relationship with him. She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in January, and they were filmed emerging from the White House holding hands. She later said Trump took her hand in a gentlemanly gesture as they walked down a ramp. But she angered his many critics in Britain then by extending an invitation to make a state visit to Britain with all the pomp and pageantry it brings including a formal banquet with Queen Elizabeth. London s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said May should withdraw the offer of a state visit. After this latest incident, it is increasingly clear that any official visit at all from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed, Khan, who has clashed on Twitter with Trump, said. British lawmakers held an urgent session to discuss Trump s tweets, with parliamentarians from across the political divide united in condemnation. By sharing it (the videos), he is either a racist, incompetent or unthinking, or all three, opposition Labour lawmaker Stephen Doughty said. Britain s Middle East minister Alistair Burt tweeted: The White House tweets are both alarming and despairing tonight. This is so not where the world needs to go. Despite repeated calls from opposition lawmakers to cancel the state visit, Home Secretary (interior minister) Amber Rudd said the invitation still stood although a timing had not been agreed. Outside parliament, there was more harsh criticism from the likes of Brendan Cox, the husband of lawmaker Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 by a far-right extremist and Justin Welby, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church. The U.S. ambassador to London Woody Johnson wrote on Twitter he had relayed concerns to Washington. The U.S. & UK have a long history of speaking frankly with each other, as all close friends do, he said. The videos shared by Trump purported to show a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue. Reuters was unable to verify the videos. The Dutch embassy in Washington issued a Twitter comment on one of them, which Fransen had described as showing a Muslim migrant beating up a boy. @realDonald Trump Facts do matter. The perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands, the embassy said. He received and completed his sentence under Dutch law. Britain First, a little-known party on the periphery of UK politics, welcomed Trump s retweeting of the videos to his 44 million followers, regarding it as an endorsement of their message. I m delighted, said Fransen, whose own Twitter following increase by 50 percent in the wake of the furor to 78,000. She told Reuters Trump s retweets showed the president shared her aim of raising awareness of issues such as Islam . The White House defended the retweets by the Republican president, who during the 2016 U.S. election campaign called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States , saying that he was raising security issues. It repeatedly refused to be drawn into the content of the videos or whether Trump was aware of the source of the tweets. It s about ensuring that individuals who come into the United States don t pose a public safety or terrorism threat, White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters aboard Air Force One. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"U.N. rights boss condemns ""spreading hatred through tweets""";GENEVA (Reuters) - In a thinly veiled reference to U.S. President Donald Trump, the top U.N. human rights official on Thursday condemned populists who spread hatred through tweets . Britain criticised Trump on Wednesday after he retweeted anti-Islam videos originally posted by a leader of a far-right British fringe party who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman. There are the populists political hooligans who through their incitement which is the equivalent of hurling racist insults, throwing bottles onto the field, attacking the referee and, as we saw yesterday, spreading hatred through tweets seek to scramble our order, our laws, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad Al Hussein said in a speech in Geneva. A U.N. official, who declined to be identified, said that Zeid s remarks were clearly a reference to Trump tweets but also others using social media in this way . (Refiles to add dropped full name of official) ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel strikes militant targets in Gaza after mortar barrage;JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli tanks and aircraft struck militant positions in the Gaza Strip on Thursday soon after Palestinian militants fired mortar shells at an Israeli military post close to the territory, the Israeli army said. A Reuters witness in Gaza said he saw smoke rising from at least two targets struck by Israel, one belonging to Hamas and another to Islamic Jihad militants. Witnesses in the southern Gaza Strip said two Islamic Jihad posts was hit there. No casualties were reported initially on either side. Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus said the militants mortar barrage was aimed the Israeli army post and at construction crews working close by on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. Israel has been constructing a sensor-equipped underground wall along the 60-km (36-mile) Gaza border, aiming to complete the $1.1 billion project by mid-2019. Conricus said Israel was not looking to escalate the situation but any further Israeli action would depend on what Gaza militants did. At least three rounds of airstrikes had taken place by dusk, the Reuters witness said. We remain ready with the tools necessary and the capabilities at hand should Hamas or the Islamic Jihad act aggressively again... We are not looking to escalate the situation or to initiate hostilities, Conricus said. The train service between the Israeli town of Sderot close the Gaza border and Ashkelon to the north was briefly suspended but resumed later in the evening. The mortars were fired exactly a month after Israel blew up an attack tunnel that led from Gaza into Israeli in which 14 militants were killed. Following the tunnel demolition, Islamic Jihad vowed to retaliate but Thursday s action was their first significant reaction. During the last Gaza war, in 2014, Hamas fighters used dozens of tunnels to blindside Israel s superior forces and threaten civilian communities near the frontier, a counterpoint to the Iron Dome anti-missile system that largely protected the country s heartland from militant rocket barrages. Israel and the United States have called for Hamas to be disarmed as part of the pact between it and the Palestinian Authority, so Israeli peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which collapsed in 2014, could proceed. Hamas has rejected the demand. On Wednesday, Abbas s Fatah and Hamas agreed to delay the final transfer of power of Gaza from Hamas to the Western-backed Palestinian government by 10 days to Dec. 10 to allow time to complete arrangements, officials said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More than 400 U.S. troops leaving Syria: coalition;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 400 U.S. Marines and their artillery are leaving Syria after helping to capture the city of Raqqa from Islamic State, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the militant group said on Thursday. Last month, U.S.-backed militias declared victory in Raqqa, Islamic State s former headquarters in Syria, after months of fighting with the help of the U.S.-led coalition. With the city liberated and ISIS on the run, the unit has been ordered home. Its replacements have been called off, the coalition said in a statement, using an acronym for Islamic State. We re drawing down combat forces where it makes sense, but still continuing our efforts to help Syrian and Iraqi partners maintain security, Brigadier General Jonathan Braga, the director of operations for the coalition, said in the statement. Our remaining forces will continue to work by, with, and through partner forces to defeat remaining ISIS, prevent a re-emergence of ISIS, and set conditions for international governments and NGOs to help local citizens recover from the horrors of ISIS short-lived rule, he said. Officially, the Pentagon says there are 503 troops in Syria. However, as of last week, U.S. officials said there were closer to 2,000 U.S. troops in the country. The latest announcement would reduce that number. As that campaign against Islamic State winds down, it is unclear how many, if any, U.S. troops will remain in Syria. Most of them are special operations forces, working to train and advise local partner forces, including providing artillery support against Islamic State militants. Separately, Russia said it was already preparing to withdraw its military contingent from Syria, Russian news agencies reported. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greece moves asylum-seekers from Lesbos to mainland;PIRAEUS (Reuters) - Greek authorities on Thursday moved a few hundred asylum-seekers from the island of Lesbos to the mainland in an effort to ease overcrowding in its camps. Thousands of asylum-seekers have become stranded on Lesbos and four other islands close to Turkey since the European Union agreed a deal with Ankara in March 2016 to shut down the route through Greece. I came to heaven from hell, said 30-year old Mohammad Firuz, who lived for two months in a state-run camp in Lesbos. Firuz was among 300 people, many of them women and children, aboard a ferry that reached the port of Piraeus early on Thursday morning. The asylum seekers would be taken to camps and apartments in the mainland, authorities said. Lesbos is now hosting some 8,500 asylum-seekers, nearly three times the capacity of state-run facilities. Violence often breaks out, mainly over delays in asylum procedures and poor living standards. Lesbos residents went on strike earlier this month to protest against European policies they say have turned it into a prison for migrants and refugees. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish prosecutors investigating claims of Erdogan family money transfers;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors said on Thursday they were investigating allegations that President Tayyip Erdogan s family moved millions of dollars abroad to avoid taxes, saying there were doubts about the authenticity of documents behind the claims. The chairman of the main opposition Republican People s Party (CHP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accused members of Erdogan s family earlier this week of transferring $14 million to a company in the Isle of Man, holding up documents he said proved the transactions had taken place. [nL8N1NZ43I] Erdogan dismissed the allegations as lies and said on Thursday Kilicdaroglu would pay the price . Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics for almost 15 years and remains by far the country s most popular leader. Opponents accuse him of increasingly authoritarian conduct, especially since a failed military coup last year;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. seeks urgent medical evacuation of 500 from Syria's eastern Ghouta;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations called on world powers on Thursday to help arrange the medical evacuation of 500 people, including 167 children, from eastern Ghouta, saying the besieged Damascus suburb has now become a humanitarian emergency . Nine people died in recent weeks waiting for permission from the Syrian government for the sick and wounded to be evacuated from the rebel-held area to hospitals less than an hour drive from the capital, said Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian adviser on Syria. Russia and Iran, as well as the United States and France, pledged to help during the weekly humanitarian meeting, he said. It would be incredible if they cannot deliver a simple evacuation of mainly women and children, a 40-minute drive to Damascus city, Egeland told a news conference in Geneva. We are convinced that we can do the evacuation if we get a green light from the government. We can then negotiate calm with both sides. Dozens of mortar bombs landed on Ghouta, the last major rebel stronghold near Damascus, on Wednesday, a war monitor and a witness said, despite a 48-hour truce proposed by Russia to coincide with the start of peace talks in Geneva. Eastern Ghouta, next door to Damascus, is the eye of the hurricane, it is the epicentre of this conflict. At the moment there are 400,000 people there, Egeland said. In the past two months, U.N. convoys have delivered supplies to only 68,000 of the 400,000 trapped civilians, he said. Our not being able to reach eastern Ghouta for many months in most of areas has now led to an undoubtedly catastrophic situation, Egeland said. Acute malnutrition rates among children there is nearly 12 percent, above the 10 percent emergency threshold, and a five- or six-fold increase since January, he added. In general I would say that no, there is no calm in this de-escalation zone, there is only escalation in this de-escalation zone, Egeland said. That has ended in eastern Ghouta except for (a pause of) two days only, there has been massive loss of civilian life, hundreds and hundreds have been wounded. We need sustained calm to be able to feed 400,000 people who now beyond doubt are in a humanitarian emergency , he said. Civilians in Damascus have also been killed or wounded by mortars coming from eastern Ghouta, he added. In Hassakeh, in northeastern Syria, U.N. aid workers found a desperate situation, Egeland said. They told about children walking around barefoot, recently displaced children, barefoot in the snow and the cold. He hoped that the U.N. Security Council would agree on a resolution allowing cross-border aid to continue to enter Syria, supplying 2.7 million people in rebel-held areas. It is my clear understanding from all members of the Security Council that none wants a break of the pipeline. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's Merkel tells Erdogan will speed up EU aid to Turkey: Turkish sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday that she would work to speed up the transfer of financial assistance promised by the European Union to Turkey as part of a migrant deal, Turkish presidential sources said. The two leaders also agreed in a phone call to accelerate an improvement in bilateral ties once a new German government has been formed, the sources said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France invites U.S. to Dec. 13 summit on boosting fight against W.African militants;ACCRA (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron fears Islamist militants have scored military and symbolic victories in West Africa while a regional military force has struggled to get off the ground, a French presidential source said on Thursday. To help get the new G5 Sahel force operating effectively, he said, France has invited the United States to a summit with the five participating countries as well as the African Union and European Union in Paris next month. Thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, French troops and U.S. military trainers and drone operators have failed so far to stem a growing wave of jihadist violence, leading world powers to pin their hopes on the new G5 Sahel force. The G5 Sahel initiative - grouping Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger - faces an immense security challenge in a largely desert and weakly governed region and already faces questions over its financing and provision of equipment. Emmanuel Macron believes that it s not going quickly enough and that the terrorists have registered military and symbolic victories, especially in Niger, and (that) it s urgent to reverse this trend, the French official said in Ghana where Macron was winding up a three-day Africa trip. The (objective) will be to accelerate the calendar for the support of the force, and the operational calendar. The jihadist threat hit home again last month with an attack in Niger in which eight U.S. and Nigerien troops were killed, prompting American officials to forecast that U.S. involvement in the Sahel region would deepen. As well as the leaders of the G5 nations - all former French colonies - and the EU and African Union, the French presidential official said the United States had also been invited to the Dec. 13 summit. The G5 force is to eventually comprise 5,000 men from seven battalions and police the region in collaboration with 4,000 French troops deployed there since Paris intervened in 2013 to beat back an insurgency in northern Mali. It will also have to coordinate with MINUSMA, Mali s U.N. peacekeeping mission. MINUSMA has been frequently attacked in the north where Islamists have regained ground since 2013. A donor conference will be held in Brussels on Dec. 14 to raise funds for the Sahel force. Paris has also asked Saudi Arabia to help finance the force and representatives of the kingdom could also be in Paris on Dec. 13, the official said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia bid for Eurogroup chair;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Finance ministers from Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal and Slovakia bid on Thursday to replace Jeroen Dijsselbloem as the head of the euro zone finance ministers, the Eurogroup, before a vote next week among the 19 countries sharing the euro. The president of the Eurogroup chairs monthly meetings of finance ministers and heads the euro zone bailout fund which has saved Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus from bankruptcy during the sovereign debt crisis. Finance ministers Dana Reizniece-Ozola of Latvia, Pierre Gramegna of Luxembourg, Mario Centeno of Portugal and Peter Kazimir of Slovakia all submitted formal applications for the job on Thursday, officials told Reuters. The decision is expected to be taken on Monday. The current Eurogroup chairman, Dutchman Dijsselbloem will step down on Jan 13 after two terms since 2012. He is no longer a finance minister after Dutch national elections earlier this year. He confirmed on Thursday that he had received four applications. Asked if there was a frontrunner, Dijsselbloem said: I love them all . The chairman will be chosen by a simple majority of votes, so the winner has to secure the backing of 10 euro zone finance ministers. European socialists, of which Dijsselbloem is one, have been calling for the job to remain with a socialist because the European center-right already has many of the top EU jobs, such as European Commission president. Centeno is a socialist and has the backing of Italy, whose own finance minister Pier-Carlo Padoan also wanted the job, but dropped out because it is not certain he will stay in government after Italian elections due by May 2018. The Harvard-educated economist has led Portugal during a strong recovery from the country s 2011-14 debt crisis and bailout. The country is growing at its fastest pace in at least a decade and the budget deficit is set to fall to its lowest in many decades. In May, former German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble dubbed Centeno the Ronaldo of EU finance ministers a reference to the Portuguese soccer star as Portugal was about to exit the EU s disciplinary procedure for running excessive deficits. Some in the Eurogroup say, however, say a minister from a country that had to be bailed out because of past policy mistakes would have smaller chance of getting the job. Many also say that Centeno has not contributed much to Eurogroup discussions in the past. Slovakia s Kazimir, also a socialist, has run a tight fiscal ship at home and has been hawkish on bailouts for Greece. Some officials say that among socialist candidates he would have the backing of Germany and the Netherlands. Critics of his candidacy, however, say that he has not taken the opportunity of Slovakia s European Union presidency to drive his economic agenda harder and show leadership. Gramegna is a liberal and has more of a centrist stand, although some colleagues have criticized his view on EU cooperation on taxes. Tiny Luxembourg also already holds the prestigious position of European Commission president. Reizniece-Ozola, 36, is the only female candidate and her party associates itself with the European center-right, rather than socialists, which could win her the support of center-right finance ministers. She is a chess grandmaster. Her critics however, also mention that as in the case of Centeno, she has not been very vocal in Eurogroup meetings so far and that she had campaigned against Latvia s adoption of the euro in 2014. In an interview with Latvian Television in March 2015 she said she still hasn t changed her mind about Latvia joining the euro. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela confirms ex-oil bosses Del Pino, Martinez detained;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s state prosecutor confirmed on Thursday that former oil bosses Eulogio Del Pino and Nelson Martinez were detained in the early hours of Thursday as part of a sweeping graft probe that is ridding the OPEC member of many of its top executives. Del Pino was arrested for alleged participation in a $500 corruption scandal at the Petrozamora joint venture, while Martinez was held for allegedly allowing a refinancing deal for U.S.-based refiner Citgo to go ahead without government approval, prosecutor Tarek Saab said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France stops large shipment of radioactive Belarus mushrooms;PARIS (Reuters) - France has stopped a large shipment of Belarus mushrooms contaminated with low-level radioactivity probably from Chernobyl and not linked to a radioactive cloud that appeared in southern Russia last month, officials said on Thursday. Earlier, the head of French nuclear regulator ASN Pierre-Franck Chevet told the French senate that traces of cesium had been found on imported mushrooms from Russia and did not mention Belarus. A spokesman for French nuclear safety institute IRSN said that a few days ago customs officials found that a 3.5 tonne shipment of Belarus mushrooms coming through Frankfurt, Germany was contaminated with cesium 137, a radioactive nuclide that is a waste product of nuclear reactors. While the contaminated mushrooms did not represent a health threat to consumers, the shipment will be destroyed in a specialized incinerator in coming days, the IRSN said. There is no link with the ruthenium 106 pollution, the official said. Earlier this month the IRSN said that a cloud containing radioactive ruthenium 106 originating from southern Russia had blown over large parts of Europe in October but added that there was no danger to people. Russia later confirmed it had measured ruthenium pollution at nearly 1,000 times normal levels in the Ural mountains, but did not acknowledge any accident. As the mushrooms came from Belarus, it is very likely the contamination originated in Chernobyl, the official said. ASN did not reply to a number of Reuters calls later on Thursday. Chernobyl, Ukraine is just south of the Belarus border and was the site of a major nuclear disaster in 1986. Cesium 137, which has a 30-year half-life, is still widely found in the areas around Chernobyl. The official said it was highly unusual for such a large shipment of mushrooms to be stopped and that none of the produce had made it onto French retail markets. Mushrooms, more than any other vegetable, concentrate radioactivity because their thread-like root systems spread over a large area for several meters on the surface around the plant. The IRSN said eating tens of kilos of the Belarus mushrooms would expose a consumer to a radioactivity level similar to natural ambient radioactivity during a whole year. He added there had been no risk for the customs officials, even if they had touched the mushrooms with their bare hands. Earlier, the head of the French nuclear regulator ASN told the French senate that traces of cesium had been found on imported mushrooms and said there was no connection with the ruthenium pollution. French consumer protection agency DGCCRF said in a statement that the Belarus mushrooms had cesium 137 levels above legal limits but contained no ruthenium 106. The agency said that following the discovery of the ruthenium, it had started testing samples of food products imported from the regions affected by the radioactive cloud. So far, it has not found food items with ruthenium 106 levels above legal thresholds. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In pre-recorded video, detained Venezuela oil minister says is 'victim';CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s former Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino, in video shot before his detention and published on his Twitter account on Thursday, said he had been a victim of an unjustified attack. Del Pino, an engineer who also used to lead state oil company PDVSA [PDVSA.UL], said he would exercise his right to self-defense but did not elaborate on who ordered his arrest in the early hours of Thursday. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina abandons rescue mission for crew of missing submarine;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina has given up on rescuing 44 crew members on a submarine that disappeared 15 days ago, though it will continue the search for the vessel with international assistance, a navy spokesman said on Thursday. The ARA San Juan had a seven-day supply of air when it reported its last position on Nov. 15. The crew had been ordered to return to a naval base in Mar del Plata after reporting water had entered the vessel through its snorkel. More than double the number of days have passed where it would have been possible to rescue the crew, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference. We will continue the search... there will not be people saved. Some family members criticized the government for giving up, and for its means of communicating. Luis Tagliapietra, whose son was on the submarine, said some 12 families had found out the rescue mission was abandoned from the televised news conference. He also told television channel TN the government had been too slow to say the water entering the sub caused it to short circuit, which the navy confirmed on Monday. The navy had said earlier, on Nov. 23, that international organizations detected a noise that could have been the submarine s implosion the same day contact was lost. I want to know what happened and I do not believe in any of the official hypotheses, Tagliapietra said, his voice cracking up. I have no words for it. Some families had held out hope for a miracle and were organizing prayer groups together. Balbi said 28 ships, nine planes and 4,000 people from 18 countries were involved in the search covering 557,000 nautical miles - more including radar monitoring. Despite the magnitude of our search it has not been possible to find the submarine, he said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish gold trader implicates Erdogan in Iran money laundering;(Reuters) - A Turkish-Iranian gold trader on Thursday told jurors in a New York federal court that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan authorized a transaction in a scheme to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Reza Zarrab is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in the criminal trial of a Turkish bank executive accused of helping to launder money for Iran. At the time of the alleged conspiracy, Erdogan was Turkey s prime minister. Zarrab said he had learned from Zafer Caglayan, who was Turkey s economy minister, that Erdogan and then-treasury minister Ali Babacan had authorized two Turkish banks, Ziraat Bank and VakifBank, to move funds for Iran. Both Ziraat and VakifBank denied taking part in the scheme. Erdogan s spokesman, and an adviser to Babacan could not immediately be contacted by Reuters. Erdogan said earlier on Thursday that Turkey did not violate U.S. sanctions, CNN Turk reported. A spokesman for Erdogan s government has called the case a plot against Turkey. The testimony came on the third day of the trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkey s state-owned Halkbank, who has pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court. U.S. prosecutors have charged nine people in the case with conspiring to help Iran evade sanctions, although only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, have been arrested by U.S. authorities. Over two days of testimony, Zarrab has told jurors that he helped Iran use funds deposited at Halkbank to buy gold, which was smuggled to Dubai and sold for cash. On Thursday, he said that he had to stop the gold trades and start moving money through fake food purchases instead in 2013, after U.S. sanctions changed. Zarrab has said that Atilla helped design the gold transactions, along with Halkbank s former general manager, Suleyman Aslan. On Thursday, Zarrab discussed a 2013 phone call with Atilla about his plan to switch from gold trades to fake food sales. He said Atilla did not understand at the time that no actual food would be sent to Iran, and was reluctant to sign off on the plan. Zarrab said Aslan ordered Atilla to allow the transaction. Zarrab has testified that in the course of his scheme, he bribed Aslan and former Turkish economy minister Zafer Caglayan. Both Caglayan and Aslan were charged in the case. Reuters was not able to reach Caglayan or Aslan for comment. Turkey s government has previously said that Caglayan acted lawfully, and Halkbank has said it acted lawfully as well. Caglayan previously said that similar allegations in a 2013 corruption investigation in Turkey that was later dismissed were unfounded claims . ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump weighs recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital: officials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is considering recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a move that could upend decades of American policy and ratchet up Middle East tensions, but is expected to again delay his campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy there, U.S. officials said on Thursday. After months of intense White House deliberations, Trump is likely to make an announcement next week that seeks to strike a balance between domestic political demands and geopolitical pressures over an issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the status of Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. Trump is weighing a plan under which he would declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the officials said, deviating from White House predecessors who have insisted that it is a matter that must be decided in peace negotiations. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel s claim on the entire city. Such a move by Trump, which could be carried out through a presidential statement or speech, would anger the Palestinians as well as the broader Arab World and likely undermine the Trump administration s fledgling effort to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. It could, however, help satisfy the pro-Israel, right-wing base that helped him win the presidency and also please the Israeli government, a close U.S. ally. Trump is likely to continue his predecessors policy of signing a six-month waiver overriding a 1995 law requiring that the U.S. Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the officials said. But among the options under consideration is for Trump to order his aides to develop a longer-term plan for the embassy s relocation to make clear his intent to do so eventually, according to one of the officials. However, the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the plan has yet to be finalized and Trump could still alter parts of it. No decision has been made on that matter yet, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday. Trump pledged on the presidential campaign trail last year that he would move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But Trump in June waived the requirement, saying he wanted to maximize the chances for a peace push led by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Those efforts have made little if any progress. The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinian leaders, Arab governments and Western allies have long urged Trump not to proceed with the embassy relocation, which would go against decades of U.S. policy by granting de facto U.S. recognition of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital. However, if Trump decides to declare Jerusalem as Israel s capital, even without ordering an embassy move, it would be certain to spark an international uproar. A key question would be whether such a declaration would be enshrined as a formal presidential action or simply be a symbolic statement by Trump. Some of Trump s top aides have privately pushed for him to keep his campaign promise to satisfy a range of supporters, including evangelical Christians, while others have warned of the potential damage to U.S. relations with Muslim countries. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran protesters, police clash in growing election crisis;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran police fired tear gas at rock-hurling protesters on Thursday after a contentious presidential election that looks set to drag on for two more days without a clear winner, deepening the political crisis in the Central American nation. Both center-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez and his rival Salvador Nasralla, a television game show host allied with leftists, claimed victory after Sunday s election. The vote tally at first favored Nasralla, but then swung in favor of the incumbent after hold-ups in the count, fueling talk of irregularities. International concern has grown about the crisis in the poor coffee-producing nation of more than 9 million, which experienced a military-backed coup in 2009 and suffers from drug gangs and one of the world s highest murder rates. The delays have already led to violence, and observers fear they could risk undermining the eventual winner s legitimacy. One of the four magistrates on the Honduran electoral tribunal flagged serious doubts about the process on Thursday. Marcos Ramiro Lobo called for an independent external auditor to review the results, but was non-committal on whether there was evidence of electoral fraud. We can t be sure of one thing or the other, Lobo told Reuters, expressing concern about the vote count breaking down. What I do know is that serious doubts are being raised. David Matamoros, who chairs the electoral tribunal, on Thursday evening heeded calls from international election observers and Honduras top business group, and said the tribunal would hand-count some 1,031 outstanding ballots, or roughly 6 percent of the total, that had irregularities. That fresh count would be completed in up to two days, and would allow the tribunal to declare a definitive winner with 100 percent of ballots counted, Matamoros said. The tribunal s latest tally showed that with 94.31 percent of ballots counted, Hernandez had secured 42.92 percent of the vote, with Nasralla at 41.42 percent. The Organization of American States (OAS) appeared to have salvaged the credibility of the election on Wednesday by eliciting signed statements from both candidates who vowed to respect the final result once disputed votes had been checked. But a few hours later, Nasralla rejected the accord, saying his opponents were trying to rob him. He urged supporters to take to the streets to defend his triumph. They take us for idiots and want to steal our victory, said Nasralla, who heads a center-left coalition. Nasralla is one of Honduras best-known faces and is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was ousted in the 2009 coup after he proposed a referendum on his re-election. On Thursday, Nasralla s coalition issued a statement signed by Zelaya, in which the former president asked for more transparency in the vote count, and said the coalition could not currently accept any decision issued by the tribunal. Luis Larach, the president of COHEP, a powerful business lobby, told Reuters that given the slim difference between the candidates, the hand-count of irregular ballots would be crucial in deciding the winner. For me, it s still up in the air, he said. Nasralla s followers took to the streets, protesting throughout Honduras on Thursday. At least nine people were injured in protests in the capital, Tegucigalpa, as well as two police officers and a soldier, emergency services said. Six of the nine had been shot. There were also reports of a police station and highway toll booths set alight in other parts of Honduras. We re going to keep protesting and won t let them steal this victory, said university student Josue Valladares, 20, as he battled with security forces, who were guarding a vote-count center in Tegucigalpa. The sporadic way in which results have been published, and the reversal of Nasralla s lead, have led the opposition to say Hernandez may have influenced the election tribunal, an allegation Hernandez denies. Opinion polls before the election indicated that Hernandez was favored to win. On Thursday, the OAS urged the tribunal to process all of the ballots before declaring a winner, as did a European Union election monitor. On Monday, the tribunal published more than half the results, showing Nasralla with a five point lead, but then published nothing more for 36 hours. When the count started again, Hernandez began to catch Nasralla. The count has started and stopped ever since. The tribunal blamed a five-hour delay on Wednesday on computer glitches. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnamese court upholds prominent blogger's 10-year jail term;HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese court on Thursday upheld a 10-year jail sentence for a prominent blogger convicted of publishing propaganda against the state, her lawyer said, the latest move in a crackdown on critics of the one-party state. Despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness towards social change, including gay, lesbian and transgender rights, Vietnam s ruling Communist Party retains tight media censorship and does not tolerate criticism. In recent months, it has targeted critics whose voices have been amplified by social media in a country that ranks among Facebook s top ten, in terms of users. Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 37, known as Me Nam (Mother Mushroom), who gained prominence for blogging about environment issues and deaths in police custody, was found guilty in June for distributing what police called anti-state reports. A court in the central city of Nha Trang upheld Quynh s sentence, one of her lawyers said. This sentence is not objective and is unfair, the lawyer, Ha Huy Son, told Reuters by telephone. Quynh said she is innocent and she carried out her right as a citizen. Vietnam s state news agency confirmed the outcome of the appeal. The hearing was public and in accordance with Vietnamese law , foreign ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang added. Quynh s mother said she was among those outside the court protesting against the verdict when plainclothes policemen approached and beat them. The police beat me repeatedly, Nguyen Tuyet Lan, the mother, told Reuters, adding that police detained three activists. Reuters was not able to reach police for comment. In March 2009, Quynh spent nine days in police detention for receiving funds from Viet Tan, a California-based activist group which Vietnam calls a terrorist group, to print T-shirts with slogans against a major bauxite project, police said. She has also spoken out against a subsidiary of Taiwan s Formosa Plastics Corp that caused one of Vietnam s biggest environmental disasters in April. The European Union, whose representatives were denied access to the appeal hearing, urged that Quynh be immediately and unconditionally released , its Vietnam delegation said on Friday, ahead of an annual human rights session in Hanoi. A U.S. diplomat in Vietnam said she was deeply troubled that Quynh s conviction was upheld. The United States calls on Vietnam to release Ms Quynh and all prisoners of conscience immediately, and to allow all individuals in Vietnam to express their views freely and assemble peacefully, Caryn McClelland, the U.S. charg d affaires, said in a statement. New York-based Human Rights Watch called the hearing a farce. The proceedings were a farce, with the judge simply going through the motions before issuing the harsh verdict predetermined by the ruling communist party, upholding her long prison sentence, said Phil Robertson, the group s deputy director for Asia. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bolivia's Morales says he'll seek fourth term, spurs protests;LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Thursday that opposition from the United States convinced him to run for a fourth term in 2019, spurring a second day of protests after the constitutional court eliminated term limits. Morales government earlier brushed off criticism from Washington, which said it was deeply concerned over Tuesday s court decision. Morales himself then took it a step further, saying the U.S. reaction actually convinced him to run. I was not so determined;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: U.S. sanctions aimed at turning business elite against Putin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Thursday it was confident the United States was using sanctions in an attempt to turn Russia s business elite against President Vladimir Putin. We are sure that s what it is, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. Reuters reported earlier on Thursday that the threat of new U.S. sanctions has spread anxiety among Russia s wealthiest people that their association with Putin could land them on a U.S. government blacklist. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea images suggest missile capable of hitting all America: U.S. experts;WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) - Images released by North Korea on Thursday appeared to show it has succeeded in developing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon anywhere in the United States and it could be only two or three tests away from being declared combat ready, U.S.-based experts said on Thursday. North Korea released dozens of photos and a video after Wednesday s launch of the new Hwasong-15 missile, and leader Kim Jong Un declared the country had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force . U.S.-based experts, some of whom have been skeptical about past North Korean claims to have put all of the United States in range, said data from the latest test and the photos appeared to confirm North Korea has a missile of sufficient power to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in America. Experts and U.S. officials say questions remain about whether it has a re-entry vehicle capable of protecting a nuclear warhead as it speeds toward its target and about the accuracy of its guidance systems. In an analysis for the Washington-based 38 North think tank, missile expert Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said the North Korean photos showed a missile considerably larger than its predecessor. Initial calculations indicate the new missile could deliver a moderately sized nuclear weapon to any city on the U.S. mainland, Elleman said. Elleman said the missile was large and powerful enough to carry simple decoys or other countermeasures to challenge U.S. missile defenses. A handful of additional flight tests are needed to validate the Hwasong-15 s performance and reliability, and likely establish the efficacy of a protection system needed to ensure the warhead survives the rigors of atmospheric re-entry, Elleman wrote. Only two or three more tests might be needed if North Korea could accept low confidence in the missile s reliability. Another missile expert, whose employer does not allow him to speak publicly to the media, agreed with Elleman s assessment. If North Korea does not make high demands on the reliability or accuracy of the missile ... two or three more tests would suffice. So long as North Korea can hit U.S. cities with thermonuclear warheads, they probably don t need the ability hit every city they target or target specific aim points within those cities to convince the U.S. leadership that war with North Korea would be too expensive to contemplate. In a call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the missile was North Korea s most advanced so far. But it was unclear if Pyongyang had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead, and it still needed to prove other things, including re-entry technology. U.S. based experts said North Korea had almost certainly developed a warhead light enough to be carried by the Hwasong- 15, which Elleman said should be capable of delivering a 1,000 kg payload. Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies said on Twitter the Hwasong-15 was so big that the warhead wouldn t need to be miniaturized. On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis acknowledged the missile went higher than any previous test and was part of a North Korean effort to continue building ballistic missiles that can threaten everywhere in the world, basically. North Korea said the missile soared to an altitude of about 4,475 km (2,780 miles), more than 10 times the height of the International Space Station, and flew 950 km (590 miles) during its 53-minute flight before landing in the sea near Japan. The missile s large size was immediately apparent in the photos, which analysts said allowed for a more powerful propulsion system. This is a very big missile, said Michael Duitsman, a research associate at the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies. And I don t mean big for North Korea. Only a few countries can produce missiles of this size, and North Korea just joined the club. U.S. experts and officials said the missile still appeared to be powered by liquid fuel, something that made it vulnerable as it could take to up to two hours to fuel on-site before launching. Earlier, one U.S. official told Reuters the missile could have been powered by solid fuel, but experts said North Korea could still be a few years away from being able to field a more versatile solid-fueled ICBM. The photos appeared to show the missile with at least two large nozzles on its first stage, instead of the one large and several smaller nozzles on the Hwasong-14. The first stage seems to use essentially the same case (as the Hwasong-14) but has two engines, said David Wright, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S.-based nonprofit science advocacy group. The second stage looks like it can carry more than twice as much propellant. The combination of those two things means it really is a new, more capable missile. While the photos show a mobile erector vehicle being used to position the missile upright, it is not seen in photos of the launch itself. U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the test missile was fired from a fixed position, not a mobile launcher, three U.S. officials said. The massive vehicle was 100 percent a domestic product of North Korea, state media quoted Kim Jong Un as saying. Western analysts said it is more likely the truck was one of about half a dozen vehicles obtained years ago from China, which North Korea has modified since then. (For a graphic on Rocket science click tmsnrt.rs/2j2S5T3) (For a graphic on North Korea's missile and nuclear tests click tmsnrt.rs/2vXbj0S) ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Joe Scarborough: It’s Not Our Imagination – Trump Really Is Losing His Mind (VIDEO);People have long speculated about Donald Trump s mental state. While it was once seen as unseemly to suggest that a public figure may be crazy, Trump s alarming behavior warrants an exception especially since he has the nuclear codes. Well, it s not our imagination and that s not just because we can see with every wild statement and unhinged Twitter rant that something is wrong with Trump. It s because, according to former Republican Congressman and current host of MSNBC s Morning Joe reported on Thursday that several of Trump s allies confided to him that Trump has dementia.Then, Scarborough went all in, and called for the use of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump, and in doing so, decided to list many of Trump s infamous incidences of con artistry in the process: If this is not what the 25th Amendment was drafted for, I would like the Cabinet members serving America not the president you serve America, and you know it. You know you don t serve Donald J. Trump. Scam developer, scam Trump University proprietor, reality TV show host. You don t represent him. You represent 320 million people whose lives are literally in your hands, and we are facing a showdown with a nuclear power. You have somebody inside the White House that the New York Daily News says is mentally unfit. That people close to him say is mentally unfit, that people close to him during the campaign told me had early stages of dementia. This is astounding. Joe Scarborough is no liberal. I disagree with a lot of what he says, but he s definitely putting his country before his party, and doing the right thing. It s time for Republicans to stop being cowards and remove Trump.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images;News;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; This Hilarious Campaign Ad Shows Voters How They Can Avoid Scandalous Elected Officials;In Michigan, the upcoming election in 2018 presents voters with an interesting option: They could, for the first time, have an all-female ticket for every major office being contested. Senator Debbie Stabenow is up for re-election, and odds are good that the nominees for Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State will all be women.At least one of those candidates thinks that s a very good thing. Democratic candidate for AG Dana Nessel has produced a campaign ad that capitalizes on the benefits of being female when it comes to running for public office. Namely, the fact that she doesn t have a d*ck to wave at every passerby.With the wave of allegations over the last few weeks, beginning with the outing of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein as a total pervert and a sexual predator, it seems like everywhere you look there s someone else being ousted from their position or job for having at least acted like a pig and in some cases the allegations are even worse.Of course, not everyone is suffering from the paradigm shift that has stoked bravery in women across America and around the world. The highest office in the country is, of course, occupied by a man who s been accused by at least 19 women of everything from sexual harassment to actual inappropriate physical touching. And the open US Senate seat in Alabama is currently being contested by, on the Democratic side, the guy who successfully prosecuted the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young black girls, and on the Republican side, a guy who s accused of pursuing, dating, and touching teenage girls as young as 14 when he was an Assistant District Attorney in his 30 s.Dana Nessel wants to help you avoid all of that unseemly contact with potentially predatory men by simply not being one: [W]hen you re choosing Michigan s next attorney general, ask yourself this: Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn t have a penis? I d say so. Watch the amazing ad here:Featured image via Bill Pugliano/Getty Images;News;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran vote count gives Hernandez 1 point lead over rival;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez extended the lead over his rival to just over one percentage point in a seesawing, delayed vote count for a presidential election that has sparked a political crisis, latest results showed on Thursday. The website of the electoral tribunal said that with 90.4 percent of ballots counted after Sunday s election, Hernandez had secured 42.68 percent of the vote in the Central American nation, with his centrist opponent Salvador Nasralla on 41.6 percent. The process has been disrupted by technical glitches, and Nasralla initially held a five point lead over pre-election favorite Hernandez until the count ground to a halt on Monday with more than half of the ballots counted. When the count restarted some 36 hours later, the results started to swing in favor of Hernandez, and Nasralla cried foul, rejecting the figures and saying that he was being robbed. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina blocks some activists from attending WTO meeting;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina revoked the credentials of some activists who had been accredited by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to attend its ministerial meeting taking place in Buenos Aires next month, the foreign ministry and civil society groups said on Thursday. The 63 activists who had their accreditations rescinded were largely affiliated with the Our World Is Not for Sale network, said organizer Deborah James. The group opposes corporate globalization and has staged protests at previous WTO meetings. A spokeswoman for Argentina s foreign ministry told Reuters some individuals were not allowed to attend because they were determined to be more disruptive than constructive. WTO meetings often attract protests by anti-globalization groups, but they have remained largely peaceful since riots broke out at the 1999 meeting in Seattle. We ve never had this happen before. It s totally unprecedented, James, who is also director of international programs at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, said by telephone from Washington, D.C. The group posted a public letter including an email the WTO sent to certain participants on Wednesday discouraging them from traveling to Argentina for the Dec. 10-13 meeting to avoid being turned away at the airport. The Geneva-based WTO did not immediately respond to request for comment after normal business hours. The Financial Times on Thursday quoted WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell saying the WTO had asked the Argentine government to reverse the decision. Argentina s President Mauricio Macri has promoted free-trade policies since taking office in December 2015, and Argentina will host global events as chair of the G20 group of major economies next year. During protests that coincided with a World Economic Forum event in Buenos Aires earlier this year, security forces used water cannons and tear gas to control picketers who had blocked a highway. James said it was unusual for a government that had agreed to host an international gathering to deny entry to people who were accredited by the host organization. The activists represented 20 different groups, including Friends of the Earth International and Global Justice Now. Nearly 500 civil society groups registered. James said she could not tell why some members were rejected and others not, and said she planned to attend. They re not blacklisting me, and I m the organizer. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libyan PM Sarraj hopes for easing of arms embargo;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj said on Thursday that he was hopeful that a U.N.-imposed arms embargo would be partially lifted against some branches of the country s military. The Libyan government is allowed to import weapons and related materiel with the approval of a U.N. Security Council committee overseeing the embargo imposed in 2011. ...We hope that this embargo will be partially ended at least against some of the military branches such as the presidential guard and the coast guard, Sarraj, the head of the Government of National Accord (GNA), said before meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon. He was speaking through a translator. President Donald Trump will host Sarraj at the White House on Friday for talks on counterterrorism cooperation and ways to expand bilateral engagement. The North African country has been in turmoil since Muammar Gaddafi s downfall gave space to Islamist militants and smuggling networks that have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe. Political and military fractures have left the country mired in conflict. Rival parliaments and governments have vied for power. Libya s eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar is aligned with a government and parliament in eastern Libya. He has rejected a U.N.-backed Government of National Accord based in the capital, Tripoli, as he has gradually strengthened his position on the ground. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Yemen rebel missiles fired at Saudi Arabia appear Iranian - U.N.;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Remnants of four ballistic missiles fired into Saudi Arabia by Yemen s Houthi rebels this year appear to have been designed and manufactured by Riyadh s regional rival Iran, a confidential report by United Nations sanctions monitors said, bolstering a push by the United States to punish the Tehran government. The independent panel of U.N. monitors, in a Nov. 24 report to the Security Council seen by Reuters on Thursday, said it as yet has no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier of the missiles, which were likely shipped to the Houthis in violation of a targeted U.N. arms embargo imposed in April 2015. Earlier this month, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused Iran of supplying Houthi rebels with a missile that was fired into Saudi Arabia in July and called for the United Nations to hold Tehran accountable for violating two U.N. Security Council resolutions. The report said that monitors had visited two Saudi Arabian military bases to see remnants gathered by authorities from missile attacks on Saudi Arabia on May 19, July 22, July 26 and Nov. 4. They also visited four impact points from the Nov. 4 attack where other remnants of the missiles were identified. Design characteristics and dimensions of the components inspected by the panel are consistent with those reported for the Iranian designed and manufactured Qiam-1 missile, the monitors wrote. The Qiam-1 has a range of almost 500 miles and can carry a 1,400-pound warhead, according to GlobalSecurity.org public policy organization. Saudi-led forces, which back the Yemeni government, have fought the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen s more than two-year-long civil war. Saudi Arabia s crown prince has described Iran s supply of rockets to the Houthis as direct military aggression that could be an act of war. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons, saying the U.S. and Saudi allegations are baseless and unfounded. Iran s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the U.N. monitors report. Another ballistic missile was shot down on Thursday near the southwestern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait, the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya channel reported. The U.N. monitors said they gathered evidence that the missiles were transferred to Yemen in pieces and assembled there by missile engineers with the Houthis and allied forces loyal to Yemen s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The panel has not yet seen any evidence of external missile specialists working in Yemen in support of the Houthi-Saleh engineers, the monitors wrote. They visited Saudi Arabia after the monitors called on the coalition to provide evidence backing Riyadh s claim that Iran was supplying missiles to the Houthis, warning that a failure to do so would violate a U.N. resolution. They said the missiles most likely were smuggled into Yemen along the land routes from Oman or Ghaydah and Nishtun in al Mahrah governorate (in Yemen) after ship-to-shore transshipment to small dhows, a route that has already seen limited seizures of anti-tank guided weapons. The monitors also said that while concealment in cargo of vessels offloading in the Red Sea ports is unlikely, it cannot be excluded as an option. The Saudi-led coalition used the Nov. 4 missile attack to justify a blockade of Yemen for several weeks, saying it was needed to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The United Nations had said the blockade could spark the largest famine the world has seen in decades. Some 7 million people in Yemen are on the brink of famine, and nearly 900,000 have been infected with cholera. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's Social Democrats refuse to jump into bed with Merkel quickly;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrat (SPD) Foreign Minister said on Thursday that his party would not be quick to agree to another grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, as party leaders met with the president in a bid to end political deadlock. Merkel is casting around for a coalition partner after her center-right bloc shed support to the far right in a Sept. 24 election. Her attempts to form a three-way tie-up with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens failed. The SPD, which saw its participation in a Merkel-led coalition government from 2013-17 rewarded with its worst election result in German post-war history, had been strongly opposed to another grand coalition . But under pressure from Germany s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, SPD leader Martin Schulz has signaled willingness to discuss a way out of the political impasse. SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told broadcaster ZDF no one should expect his party - still ruling with the conservatives in a caretaker government - to immediately agree to join another grand coalition now that talks to form a three-way Jamaica alliance have failed. We re now in a process orchestrated by the president, in which we first need to look at what the possibilities are but no one can expect it to go quickly, he said, adding that it was up to the conservatives to show what they wanted. The conservatives, Greens and FDP took months to get nothing off ground so I d ask people not to put pressure on us, Gabriel said, adding that the conservatives needed to make clear what they wanted. Senior conservative and chancellery chief Peter Altmaier told ZDF the conservatives and SPD had presided over four years of economic prosperity and the SPD needed to decide if it would give that up or reconsider its decision to go into opposition. We re making the case for that because we think one of our trademarks, alongside Made in Germany , is Stability Made in Germany , Altmaier said. He added that many people expected Germany to manage to form a government, adding: Everyone has to live up to that. Steinmeier, a former SPD lawmaker and foreign minister, hosted a meeting on Thursday that lasted just over two hours between Merkel, her Bavarian conservative ally Horst Seehofer and Schulz, as part of his efforts to facilitate the formation of a stable government. The parties are all due to hold high-level meetings on Friday to discuss how to proceed. Sources in the SPD said all options would be discussed - ranging from a re-run of the grand coalition with the conservatives to new elections. Merkel is set to hold a telephone conference with senior party members on Friday to discuss the meeting with Steinmeier but the conservatives do not expect the SPD to agree to official coalition talks until after its party congress next week. Almost two-thirds of Germans, surveyed between Nov.22 and Nov.27, want the SPD to start talks with the conservatives on forming another coalition of the center-right and center-left, an Allensbach poll showed. The atmosphere has been soured by the decision of the conservative agriculture minister to back a European Union proposal to extend the use of a weedkiller for another five years - a measure opposed by the SPD. In reaction, SPD members have called for compensation and set various policy conditions. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a conservative, told reporters a stable government was urgently needed to move ahead on security priorities such as hiring more police. He told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that the conservatives were trying to form a stable government with the SPD, if the SPD would agree. He added: Only if this attempt fails do we need to think about other steps - not now. FDP leader Christian Lindner, who walked out of attempts to form the Jamaica alliance, told newspaper Rheinische Post a grand coalition would be more stable and more advantageous than a Jamaica tie-up.The business wing of Merkel s Christian Democrats called on Merkel to seriously consider a minority government, warning that another grand coalition would only be possible for the price of even more unaffordable promises in social policy. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chile's leftists stop short of endorsing presidential candidate Guillier;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A coalition of Chilean leftist parties on Thursday challenged presidential contender Alejandro Guillier to clarify his social and economic policies, withholding the outright endorsement sought by the center-left candidate. Beatriz Sanchez, the flagbearer for the hard-left Frente Amplio coalition, also criticized conservative ex-president Sebastian Pinera, the frontrunner, and called him a step back for the country, in a statement issued after a party meeting. Pinera and Guillier will face off in a Dec. 17 runoff vote after placing first and second respectively in the first round of the election on Nov. 19. Sanchez, who campaigned on a promise to tax mining companies and the super-rich in order to boost social spending, finished just two percentage points behind Guillier. Her stronger-than-anticipated performance spooked markets and ensured the bloc will have influence, both in Congress and over campaigning for the second round. We are not the owners of anyone s vote, so we call on our supporters to make their voices heard in this second round, and to vote according to their own convictions and analysis, Sanchez said on national television. She challenged Guillier to clarify his positions on her bloc s priorities, including overhauling the country s highly privatized pension system, forgiving the student loans of university graduates and re-writing Chile s dictatorship-era constitution. This isn t about negotiating with us. It s about negotiating with those who overwhelmingly support these changes in our society, she said. Guillier did not immediately respond to the demands of the Frente Amplio. But winning over Sanchez s 1.3 million voters is seen by Guillier s camp as essential in triumphing over Pinera. Guillier said at a campaign event on Monday that he would need everyone s support to advance. He has offered to forgive the debt of 40 percent of the country s poorest university students and said he remained open to rewriting Chile s constitution, both policies intended to appeal to leftist voters. But Guillier must walk a fine line, as a too-sharp turn to the left could push more moderate voters - historically a large and potent voting bloc in Chile - to Pinera. Both candidates would keep in place the top copper exporter s longstanding free-market economic model, but Pinera has promised investor-friendly policies to turbocharge growth, while Guillier wants to press on with outgoing President Michelle Bachelet s overhaul of education, taxes and labor laws. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli, Palestinian killed in two violent incidents;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli and a Palestinian were killed on Thursday in two separate incidents in Israel and the occupied West Bank, officials said. An Israeli man was stabbed to death in the southern Israeli city of Arad in what police said was most probably a terrorist attack . The investigation is continuing and police units are searching for the suspect who fled the scene, said a police spokesman. Earlier in the day, an Israeli settler shot and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, in what the Israeli army said was a response to an attack by Palestinians throwing rocks, an account that Palestinians denied. The Israeli military said the shooter had opened fire in self-defense as part of a group of settlers hiking near the village of Qusrah who had come under attack. Local villagers identified the Palestinian who was killed as Mahmoud Odeh, a 48-year-old farmer. They denied that any clash had taken place before the shooting. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the incident as a cowardly act and evidence to the world of the ugly crimes conducted by settlers against unarmed Palestinians , his office said in a statement. The Israeli military said troops arrived at the scene after the shooting. Israeli police said they were investigating the incident. A wave of Palestinian street attacks that began two years ago has largely dissipated and it is uncommon for two deadly events to occur in the same day. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Niger approves use of armed American drones: U.S. official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government of Niger has approved the use of armed American drones, a U.S. official said on Thursday, expanding the U.S. ability to target militants in the region. Reuters had already reported that Niger had sought to arm U.S drones against jihadist groups operating on its border with Mali, but it had not been previously reported that an agreement had been reached. An ambush in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers in October has thrown a spotlight on the U.S. counterterrorism mission in the West African country. The U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the permission for drones had been granted earlier this week but the capability had not yet been used. What began as a small U.S. training operation has expanded to an 800-strong force that accompanies the Nigeriens on intelligence gathering and other missions. It includes a $100 million drone base in the central Nigerien city of Agadez which at present only deploys surveillance drones. U.S. forces do not have a direct combat mission in Niger, but their assistance to its military does include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in their efforts to target violent Islamist organizations. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's anti-Saudi alliance members clash for second day, three killed;ADEN (Reuters) - Three fighters from forces loyal to the former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed in a second day of clashes with their own allies from the Houthi movement in the capital Sanaa, Saleh s party said on Thursday. The two groups are fighting a Saudi-led coalition that has intervened in a 2-1/2 year Yemeni civil war with a view to restoring the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. A statement from Saleh s General People s Congress Party said three guards were killed when Houthi forces attacked the house of Tarek Saleh, Ali Abdullah Saleh s nephew, adding that they also besieged the residence of Ibrahim Sharaf, a party member and foreign minister of the Sanaa-based government. The Houthis violated the truce agreement and attacked the residence of colonel Tarek and killed three guards and wounded three others, the statement said. The clashes underscore the complex situation in Yemen, as Hadi s alliance has also seen similar internal fighting between his contingents and pro-independence southern forces backed by the United Arab Emirates, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition Local sources told Reuters some residents fled areas where the fighting, which involved heavy artillery and rocket launchers, raged for several hours for a second day. Four supporters of Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed when a gunfight erupted on Wednesday in the center of Sanaa, after the Houthis broke into the city s main mosque complex and fired RPGs and grenades. Houthi fighters and battalions loyal to Saleh made common cause to fan out through Yemen in 2015 and have weathered thousands of air strikes launched by neighboring Saudi Arabia and its allies. Hadi s government is nominally based in the port city of Aden. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mattis says has confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Thursday that he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea and the United States would be unrelenting in working through the United Nations. I am not willing to say that diplomacy has not worked. We will continue to work diplomatically, we will continue to work through the United Nations, the United Nations Security Council and we will be unrelenting in that, Mattis said before the start of a meeting with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Seraj at the Pentagon. At the same time, our diplomats will speak from a position of strength because we do have military options, he added. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No north-south Ireland border despite leaving customs union, British minister pledges;BERLIN (Reuters) - There will never again be a border dividing Northern Ireland and the republic, a British minister said days before a summit at which the Irish border issue threatens to derail Britain s Brexit plans. But in the interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper, international trade minister Greg Hands reaffirmed that Britain would quit the European Union s customs union, a move most experts believe would lead to the reimposition of a border. Currently, both parts of the island are members of the same customs union, meaning checks of goods crossing the border are unnecessary. If Britain left the customs union and no new checks were imposed, many experts warn it would create a back-door route to circumvent EU tariffs. As part of its negotiations to quit the European Union, Britain must satisfy the bloc s remaining 27 members that it has settled issues including its financial obligations, citizens rights and maintaining a low-friction border between the two parts of the divided island. Failure to do so could bring a veto from any of the bloc s member states, including the Republic of Ireland, preventing Britain from moving on to a discussion of its future relationship with its much larger neighbor. All sides, the Irish government, my government and the European Commission are committed to the peace deal that ended the Northern Ireland conflict, Hands said. There will never be a border between north and south. Extracts of the interview were published on Thursday. He said he was confident that no veto would be cast at the mid-December summit. The 1998 Good Friday peace agreement between Britain and the Republic of Ireland was the crucial step that brought to an end decades of violence in Northern Ireland, partly by offering extensive provisions to allow residents of the British province to maintain allegiance to both EU member states. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. urges Venezuela to release U.S. citizen held for 17 months;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department urged Venezuela on Thursday to immediately release Josh Holt, a U.S. citizen who has been detained without charges for nearly a year and a half and is in deteriorating health. We remain extremely concerned for his health and his well-being, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a news briefing. The decline in his health has been further exacerbated by the Venezuelan authorities delays in providing necessary medical treatment. Sometimes they have blocked his care altogether. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Son of Russian lawmaker sentenced in U.S. for role in cyber crime ring;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The son of a Russian lawmaker was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Thursday for his role in a cyber crime ring that stole and sold people s credit card numbers, the U.S. Justice Department said. Roman Valeryevich Seleznev, who pleaded guilty in two criminal cases out of Georgia and Nevada stemming from a hacking probe in September, was sentenced for participating in a racketeering enterprise and conspiring to commit bank fraud. The Justice Department also said he was ordered to pay more than $52 million in restitution. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela arrests ex-oil bosses for graft in widening purge;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan authorities on Thursday arrested two once-powerful officials who had run the oil ministry and state energy company PDVSA as part of a deepening industry purge also seen as a power play by leftist President Nicolas Maduro. In the highest-profile arrests to date, engineer Eulogio Del Pino and chemist Nelson Martinez were detained early on Thursday on accusations of graft and seeking to sabotage the nation s ailing energy industry, prosecutor Tarek Saab said in a televised speech. He accused Del Pino of participating in a $500 million corruption and sabotage scheme at the Petrozamora joint venture with Russia s Gazprombank (GZPRI.MM) and said Martinez had allowed a poor refinancing deal for Venezuela s Citgo Petroleum Corp, a U.S.-based refiner that he used to lead, to go ahead without government approval. We re talking about the dismantling of a cartel of organized crime that had taken over PDVSA, Saab said as state television flashed a video of armed military intelligence agents knocking on doors and images of the two men being handcuffed and arrested. Maduro has promised a vast anti-corruption purge to cleanse the oil industry of mafias. Some 65 executives have been detained so far, panicking PDVSA workers, depriving Venezuela s oil industry of much of its top brass, and stalling decision-making in the company overseeing the world s biggest crude reserves, insiders say. The opposition dismisses the probe as a power struggle within Maduro s inner circle, noting that the industry has been under tight control of the ruling Socialist Party since early in the late President Hugo Chavez s 14-year rule. They say authorities ridiculed and dismissed a report last year by the opposition-run Congress, which concluded that some $11 billion went missing at PDVSA over a decade when Del Pino and Martinez were both influential officials. Insiders instead say the probe is politically motivated, likening it to a recent crackdown on graft in Saudi Arabia that has strengthened the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. PDVSA and Venezuela s Information and Oil ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters was unable to contact Del Pino or Martinez. In a video recorded before his arrest that he published on his Twitter account on Thursday afternoon, Del Pino defended himself and said he was the victim of an unjustified attack, but did not elaborate on who was to blame for his arrest. We know there are irregularities, and I am the first who, through internal control mechanisms ... (made us) denounce and push ahead with investigations, said a tired-looking Del Pino, speaking under a large tree. The arrests of Del Pino and Martinez have brought more attention to Rafael Ramirez, who was Venezuela s all-powerful oil czar for a decade and under whom both men ascended. Maduro fired Ramirez, who was thought to have presidential ambitions, from his job as representative to the United Nations on Tuesday and summoned him back to Caracas from New York, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Those people say a protracted rivalry between the two men has deepened in recent weeks, especially after Ramirez wrote online opinion articles criticizing PDVSA s production slump and Maduro s handling of the economy. Saab did not mention Ramirez by name, although both Maduro and top officials have recently repeatedly referred to his governance as oil boss as a time when mafias were formed and executives came to think of themselves as the owners of Venezuela s reserves. Ramirez s next moves were not immediately clear. He did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Authorities appear to be seeking information on Ramirez from Del Pino and Martinez as splits widen in the Socialist Party, which is no longer controlled by the charismatic Chavez, according to one source with knowledge of the detentions. Del Pino, wearing a Venezuelan national soccer team shirt, was picked up at his Caracas home, according to the source and a photo flashed on state television. Oil industry sources say Maduro is using the graft probe to sideline political rivals and consolidate his grip on a sector that, despite falling investment and output, brings in more than 90 percent of the cash-strapped country s export income. The unpopular leftist appears to be seeking to shore up his position ahead of a presidential vote in 2018, when he is poised to seek re-election despite an economic crisis that has sparked food shortages and the world s highest inflation. After surviving major political protests and pushing through a controversial pro-government legislative superbody, Maduro is feeling empowered, according to government insiders and opposition politicians. To ensure he maintains support, military and political sources say that Maduro, who unlike Chavez does not hail from the army, has handed it more power. Del Pino and Martinez had been removed from their posts on Sunday and replaced by a major general, giving the already powerful military further clout. The demotion followed the arrest in Caracas last week of six Citgo executives, five of whom are also U.S. citizens, as part of the graft probe, leaving the refiner deprived of much of its top brass. The men s sidelining also deprives the Venezuelan oil sector of two of its most experienced executives, who were also adamant that the country must keep paying its onerous debt and avoid a debilitating default at all costs. Del Pino did not respond to a Whatsapp message, although his profile picture had changed to one of his children from a photo of him at a PDVSA event with red-shirted workers. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. brings Syria talks under one roof, not yet into one room;GENEVA (Reuters) - Representatives of Syria s warring sides sat just meters apart in separate rooms at U.N. peace talks on Thursday, but mediator Staffan de Mistura stopped short of bringing them together in what diplomats had hoped might be a minor breakthrough. Previous rounds of talks have gone almost nowhere, with de Mistura shuttling between hotels and meeting multiple delegations separately. A newly unified opposition had raised the possibility of face-to-face talks to speed up the talks. Although the two delegations were in the U.N. building concurrently, de Mistura kept them apart, dashing between their respective meeting rooms on either side of a corridor. We are having what we would call close proximity parallel meetings, he told the opposition team, after making similar comments to the government delegation, promising to leave them in the hands of his deputy while he went to meet their enemies. After several hours of talks, chief government negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari and his opposition counterpart Nasr Hariri left separately, without commenting to the media. Hariri told Reuters on Wednesday that he was ready for direct talks and was prepared to negotiate with no preconditions to end the six-year war. He said his first words to Ja afari would be: Despite all of the crimes which have been done in Syria, I hope that the regime can come ready to put the people of Syria first. If the two sides do meet, it will not be their first time in the same room. In February, de Mistura infuriated Ja afari by inviting both sides to a ceremony to inaugurate the talks. On that occasion, as de Mistura warmly embraced the opposition delegates, whom the government of President Bashar al-Assad regards as terrorists, Ja afari and his team walked out of the room without turning back. One Western diplomat predicted fireworks if the two sides sat down to talk at last, almost seven years into Syria s war, but he said the sponsor countries backing the talks - including Russia and the United States - would then force them back to the table, and the pressure would gradually be released. A European diplomat expected the opposition to be pragmatic and flexible but there was little chance of a big breakthrough. I think we need baby steps, and we ve made such little progress in the years gone by, largely because of the regime s reluctance to engage in this, so to make some small steps now and develop some momentum would be very helpful indeed. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Syria s civil war and more than 11 million have been driven from their homes. Previous rounds of talks have faltered over the opposition s demand that Assad leave power and his refusal to go. Over the past two years, since Russia joined the war on the government side, Assad and his allies have recaptured all major towns and cities from the rebels. There has been some speculation ahead of this week s round of talks that the opposition could soften its demands in light of the government s success on the battlefield. However, at a meeting before the talks began, opposition delegates stuck by their demand that Assad be excluded from any transitional government under a future peace deal. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. extends Syria round to Dec. 15, presidency not yet on table;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday that it was extending a round of Syria talks in Geneva until Dec. 15 aimed at shaping a political solution to end the war, but that the presidency had not yet been discussed. U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said that the talks would focus in particular on a new constitution and U.N.-supervised parliamentary and presidential elections, as well as on 12 core principles that he declined to enumerate. We have not discussed the issue of the presidency. We have been discussing the 12 principles. You will see they are of a broad nature but they have an impact on everything in the future constitution, he told a news conference. These are essential because they do refer to what could be a shared vision of the kind of Syria that the Syrians want to live in, he said. Syria s opposition has always said that President Bashar al-Assad must step down, but his negotiators have refused to discuss the issue, and his recent successes on the battlefield have strengthened his hand. I want to believe that that issue should come up from the Syrians through U.N.-supervised elections, de Mistura said. With more than two weeks ahead, the round was effectively just beginning, he said, noting that the government negotiators had arrived late and might take a few days out to consult and refresh in Damascus before returning to Geneva around Tuesday. On Thursday he began shuttling between the two sides, installed in separate rooms off the same corridor, but he said having contact in person was less important than meeting on the substance, and the atmosphere was professional and serious on both sides. He said the talks had solid diplomatic backing, with recent support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Assad, as well as a telephone call from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the start of the round. The defeat of Islamic State in its main strongholds in Syria had also produced a moment of truth . All this takes place against quite a backdrop. It s just not a normal round of talks, de Mistura said. Have you seen how people are talking to each other, how those who were involved in the conflict for the first time are taking positions that are in the direction of a political dialogue? And for the first time in eight rounds of Syria talks presided over by de Mistura, the opposition is represented by a unified negotiating team, raising the possibility of direct talks between the two sides. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia intercepts Yemeni missile, second in a month;DUBAI (Reuters) - A ballistic missile fired by Yemen s armed Houthi group at Saudi Arabia was shot down on Thursday near the south-western city of Khamis Mushait, the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya channel reported. It was the second ballistic missile fired from Yemen this month, after an earlier rocket was brought down near King Khaled Airport on the northern outskirts of the capital Riyadh. A Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen has closed air, land and sea access in a move it says is meant to stop a flow of Iranian arms to the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen. The blockade has cut food imports to seven million people on the brink of famine. Air defense intercepted a ballistic missile, fired by the Houthis toward Khamis Mushait, Arabiya said on its Twitter account, without giving details. The Houthis and allied militias loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who have fired dozens of missiles into Saudi territory during a 2-1/2 year war, said on their official news agency they had launched a mid-range ballistic missile that hit its military target with high precision . SABA, quoting a military source, added the successful test was a new start of locally made missile launches . Saudi Arabia and its allies, who receive logistical and intelligence help from the United States, accuse the Houthis of being a proxy of Iran. The coalition has launched thousands of air strikes against the Houthis who still control much of Yemen s main population centers including the capital Sanaa and the strategic port and city of Hodeidah. The conflict has led to one of the world s worst humanitarian crises and killed at least 10,000 people. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's Berlusconi sent to trial accused of bribing witness: source;SIENA, Italy (Reuters) - Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was ordered on Thursday to stand trial accused of bribing a witness in a 2013 under-aged prostitution case, a legal source said. Berlusconi, leader of the center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party, is charged with paying a piano player at his wild Bunga Bunga parties to give false witness at that trial, at the end of which he was eventually acquitted. The new trial will begin in the Tuscan city of Siena in February, the source said, not long before a national election which must be held by May at the latest. The 81-year-old four-times prime minister denies all wrongdoing in the case, and has always maintained that the parties at his plush residence near Milan were nothing more than elegant dinner parties. The new case will lead to unwelcome publicity for Berlusconi but may not have much impact on his prospects at the election. He has already undergone numerous trials on various charges and with a range of outcomes, and most of his supporters either care little about his legal problems or believe his assertion that he is the victim of politically motivated prosecutors. Forza Italia is the lynchpin of a center-right alliance which is set to win most seats at the election, according to opinion polls, although they suggest no party or coalition will secure an absolute majority, leading to a hung parliament. Berlusconi is accused of paying pianist Danilo Mariani to lie in the 2013 trial when he was accused of having sex with 17-year-old Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, better known in Italy by her stage name, Ruby the Heartstealer. Mariani, who was also sent to trial for alleged perjury, is one of numerous people whom prosecutors believe Berlusconi paid to give false testimony at that trial. The alleged payments to various witnesses are being handled in different courts around the country according to the location of the banks that received the money. Berlusconi was originally found guilty of paying to have sex with a minor and sentenced to seven years in jail, but the verdict was overturned in 2014 by an appeals court, which ruled that there was no proof he had known Mahroug s age. Berlusconi s political career has been dogged by non-stop legal battles. After a conviction for tax fraud in 2013, he was barred from office, but this month he asked the European Court of Human Rights to overturn the ban. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Airlines limit Bali flights to guard against volcanic ash;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - A window appeared to be closing on Friday for travelers stranded on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali as airlines cut back on flights, fearing a return of plumes of volcanic ash. An erupting volcano closed the airport for most of this week, stranding thousands of visitors from Australia, China and other countries, before the winds changed and flights resumed. Australian budget airline Jetstar said it would cancel nine flights on Friday after meteorological officials warned the ash could hit operations at Bali airport, about 60 km (37 miles) southwest of the Mount Agung volcano. Malaysia s AirAsia Bhd said it would only operate out of Bali during the day, as the ash could impair visibility at night and wind conditions in the area were unpredictable. They don t have an answer if they have space for us for the next flight, said Martim Cazado, a traveler who was trying to get home to Portugal via Singapore but had been unable to get a flight. He was worried he might be stuck waiting in front of the Bali airport s departure hall for a few days, he added. A column of white smoke and ash hung above Mount Agung, where tremors continued, meteorological officials said, although with decreasing frequency, while lava sparks flash at night. Ash was visible to the southeast of Mount Agung, the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said on its website. Volcanological sources indicate a larger eruption is still possible, it said. The wind was blowing the ash toward the east and the airport was clear for normal operations, Indonesia s transport ministry said in a statement. Jetstar and its parent, Qantas Airways Ltd, had planned up to 18 flights on Friday to ferry 4,300 passengers home to Australia, including one by a Qantas 747 jet. But Jetstar will cancel nine flights after a sudden change in today s forecast for this evening in Bali, it said in a website update. Other airlines with regular Bali flights, including Singapore Airlines Ltd and Garuda Indonesia, have not posted website updates on Friday evening s flight plans. Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash as it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure. A tropical cyclone south of Java island altered wind direction in the area, including for Bali, where it could bring heavy rains and strong winds until Saturday, the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics agency said. About 10,700 foreign and 6,400 domestic tourists left Bali on Thursday, airport data showed. Thousands of residents remain in a 10-km (6-mile) danger zone around the volcano, reluctant to leave for religious reasons or unwilling to abandon homes and livestock. A rescue team escorted 10 people off its southwestern slope on Friday, some of whom said they had endured days of falling ash and feared potentially deadly volcanic mud flows. An estimated 90,000 to 100,000 people live in the danger area near the volcano in eastern Bali. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea's missile is advanced, but still some things to prove: South Korea president;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday a missile launched this week by North Korea was the most advanced of Pyongyang s arsenal, but said that the isolated state still needed to prove some technical details. Moon made the remarks during a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, saying it was unclear whether the North actually had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and that it still needed to prove other things, such as its re-entry technology. Earlier, the United States warned North Korea s leadership it would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out, after Pyongyang test-fired its most advanced missile, putting the U.S. mainland within range, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bangladesh could move some Rohingya to flood-prone island next year: official;DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh could start relocating Rohingya Muslim refugees to a flood-prone island off its coast in the middle of next year, a government official said on Thursday, as it pushes ahead with the plan despite criticism from aid agencies and rights groups. Densely populated Bangladesh has seen an influx of more than 620,000 Rohingya to its southern-most district of Cox s Bazar, fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar, since August. This week, it approved a $280 million plan to develop the low-lying Bhashan Char island to temporarily house some of them until they can go home. The Bay of Bengal island, also known as Thenger Char, only emerged from the silt off Bangladesh s delta coast about 11 years ago. Two hours by boat from the nearest settlement, the island has no roads or buildings and it regularly floods during the rough seas of the June-September rainy season. When the sea is calm, pirates roam the waters in the vicinity to kidnap fishermen for ransom. We can t keep such a large number of people in this small area of Cox s Bazar where their presence is having a devastating effect on the situation on the ground environmentally, population wise and economically, H.T. Imam, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina s political adviser, told Reuters on Thursday. So, as quickly as we can shift at least some of the burden over to Bhashan Char, that will minimize the problem. Rohingya have fled repression in Buddhist-majority Myanmar several times since the 1970s, and almost one most million of them live in crowded camps in Cox s Bazar. Mainly Muslim Bangladesh has said it aims to move about 100,000 refugees to the island. Some aid officials speculate that by raising the island plan, Bangladesh could be trying to put pressure on the international community to find a better solution to the crisis. But Imam, who holds the rank of cabinet minister, has denied any such tactic. He said the navy had started work on developing the island, money for which will come from the government. Bangladesh, however, would need financial and other help from aid agencies to move the refugees to the island, he said. There are some organizations which have assured help but I won t specify who they are, Imam said. It s a huge project and includes the development of livestock. They will be given cattle, they will be given land, they will be given houses. They will raise their livestock, there will be other vocations that will be created. Humanitarian agencies, however, have criticized the plan since it was first floated in 2015. Having opened its doors to more than 600,000 Rohingya over the past three months, the Bangladesh government now risks undermining the protection of the Rohingya and squandering the international goodwill it has earned, said Biraj Patnaik, Amnesty International s South Asia Director, referring to the plan to move people to the island. In its desperation to see the Rohingya leave the camps and ultimately return to Myanmar, it is putting their safety and well-being at risk. Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an accord last week on terms for the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, though rights groups have expressed doubts about Myanmar following through on the agreement and have called for independent observers for any repatriation. There are concerns about protection for Rohingya from further violence if and when they go home, and about a path to resolving their legal status - most are stateless - and whether they would be allowed to return to their old homes. Imam said Bangladesh was working on those issues but did not give details. In diplomacy, there are a lot of things that happen but then you don t pronounce them publicly, he said. A lot of back-door diplomatic work is being done. People are involved at the highest level. For a graphic on Bangladesh's Rohingya relocation plan, click tmsnrt.rs/2kULcWn ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai politician eyes kingmaker role as election plotting starts;BANGKOK (Reuters) - An election could be a year away in army-ruled Thailand, but Anutin Charnvirakul is already eyeing a role as a potential kingmaker with ties across the traditional political divide and to the politicized generals. A businessman and amateur pilot whose party came third in the last election, Anutin, 51, has seen his political profile rise as parties start to map out a strategy for an election the junta has promised for the end of next year. Pundits have tipped Anutin as a possible prime minister in a coalition government made more likely by a new voting system expected to weaken the color-coded parties behind more than a decade of turmoil leading to a 2014 coup. I think it is better to be a kingmaker in this situation rather than an opportunistic prime minister, Anutin told Reuters in a recent interview. The main support for Anutin s Bhumjaithai party is among farming communities in the lower northeast and he reckoned it could increase its share of seats to 50 out of 500 at the next election, from 34 in the last vote in 2011. I have never been closer to the doorstep of Government House, he said, referring to the official prime ministerial offices. Anutin said he had a good personal relationship with both major parties - a rarity in polarized Thailand, where the army took power in a 2014 coup in the name of ending bloody protests. Anutin was once a senior official in the party led by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose red populist movement has strong support in the north and among the poor. It has won every election since 2001 and it was a government led by Thaksin s sister, Yingluck, that was ousted in the most recent coup. But Anutin also has links to Thaksin s rivals, led by the yellow Democrat Party which draws support from the south and particularly from Bangkok s elite. Anutin s father - Bhumjaithai s founder - served in the last Democrat government. There are major ideological differences between political groups and I no longer want to take sides, Anutin said. The bottom line is, the country should not return to turmoil plagued by street demonstrations between different camps. Anutin was identified in 2009 as a close associate of Thailand s then crown prince, who is now King Maha Vajiralongkorn, according to a U.S. embassy cable published by Wikileaks. Thailand s king plays a powerful role behind the scenes. Anutin did not comment on any relationship. The Democrat Party s deputy leader, Ong-art Klampaiboon, said it was too early to comment on what might happen at the election. Former deputy prime minister Phongthep Thepkanjana of the Shinawatra-linked Pheu Thai Party shared a similar view. Suspicions are rife that junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha, or another military-backed candidate, will seek to become prime minister after elections. A new constitution guarantees the army a lasting say. Anutin is the former chairman of Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction Pcl, Thailand s third biggest building firm, which was founded by his father. His fortune has helped finance his political ambitions as well as his hobbies of flying light aircraft and collecting antique tea sets and Buddha statues. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yet another North Korean boat found in distress in Japanese waters;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s coast guard on Thursday boarded a North Korean fishing boat near a Japanese island where the crew said they had taken shelter from rough seas, the latest in a series of North Korean vessels in distress drifting into Japanese waters. The wooden boat was towed nearer the northern island of Hokkaido for inspection, a coast guard spokesman said. Authorities had yet to decide what to do with the vessel and the ten fishermen on board. At this point, it is still too early to say what we will do, he said. Experts say food shortages may be driving fishermen to risk taking their small boats to more dangerous waters closer to Japan. The encounters have attracted greater attention amid tension in the region over North Korea s weapons programs and its latest missile test on Wednesday. There has been no suggestion that the fishermen may be defectors from the impoverished, tightly controlled country which has fired two missiles over Japan in recent tests and regularly threatens to destroy the United States. On Monday, eight bodies believed to be of North Koreans, which had been partly reduced to skeletons, were found in a small wooden ship washed up on a beach on Japan s northwest coast. Two other bodies were found at the weekend on the western shore of the Sea of Japan island of Sado, with life jackets displaying Korean lettering. Last week, police in northern Japan found eight North Korean men who said they landed after claiming their vessel had lost power and run into trouble. On Thursday, the coast guard issued an advisory to shipping about a half-sunken wooden boat floating in waters close to Sado. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia revokes diplomatic passports of banned opposition members;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia has canceled the diplomatic passports of some opposition members weeks after a Supreme Court ruling dissolved their political party, senior government officials said on Thursday. The court outlawed the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) this month at the request of authoritarian Prime Minister Hun Sen s government in a move that prompted the United States to cut election funding and threaten more punitive steps. Huy Vannak, undersecretary of state at the Interior Ministry, said 56 diplomatic passports of former members of the CNRP had been revoked. Legally, they are just ordinary citizens, they are no longer special officials who receive diplomatic passports, Huy Vannak told Reuters. They can no longer use them and it means that they can use normal passports. The move comes after a warning this week from Hun Sen that former members of the CNRP who have fled to Thailand may be sent back to Cambodia. Government spokesman Phay Siphan told Reuters on Thursday he was unaware whether there was any attempt to bring back to Cambodia those in hiding in Thailand. Rights groups and some Western governments have voiced concern over what they say is the deterioration of Cambodia s political landscape ahead of a 2018 election that had looked set to be the biggest challenge to Hun Sen s 32-year rule. CNRP leader Kem Sokha was arrested in September and charged with treason over an alleged plot to take power with American help. Washington has rejected the accusations as baseless. The Nov. 16 Supreme Court ruling ordered a five-year political ban for 118 members of the CNRP, including Kem Sokha. The 55 parliamentary seats the CNRP won in the last election in 2013 were allocated to smaller parties after the ruling. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope lands in Bangladesh, to meet Rohingya group on Friday;DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis landed in Bangladesh on Thursday after a diplomatically sensitive trip to neighboring Myanmar, where he made no direct reference to the plight of Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh in their hundreds of thousands. Bangladesh is hoping the Thursday-Saturday visit, during which the pope will meet a group of Rohingya in Dhaka, will help pressure the international community to find a lasting solution to the problem of the periodic influx of Rohingya from Buddhist-majority Myanmar. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland demands 'significantly more clarity' from UK over Brexit border;DUBLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ireland needs Britain to provide significantly more clarity on its plans for the Irish border, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday, denting hopes that London was on the verge of a deal to move on to the second phase of Brexit talks. But British Prime Minister Theresa May s room to offer additional concessions to Dublin appeared extremely limited as the Northern Ireland party propping up her government hinted it might withdraw its support if she gives too much. Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can move to negotiations on Britain s future trade relationship with the EU and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. A mis-step by May could bring down the British government or spook British businesses fearful of a cliff-edge Brexit without a transition deal. We are looking for significantly more clarity than we currently have from the British negotiating team, Coveney told parliament in Dublin, adding that constructive ambiguity from Britain would not suffice. Hopefully we will make progress that will allow us to move on to Phase 2 in the middle of December, he said. If it is not possible to do that, so be it. Britain in the coming days needs to demonstrate sufficient progress on three key EU conditions a financial settlement, rights of expatriate citizens and the Irish border for leaders to give a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. With significant progress on the financial settlement and citizen rights, a deal on the Irish border would pave the way for Brussels to offer British Prime Minister Theresa May a transition deal as early as January. Britain s Times newspaper, without citing a source, said London was close to a deal after a proposal to devolve more powers to the government of its province of Northern Ireland so that it could ensure regulations there did not diverge from the EU rules in place south of the border across the island. The border between EU-member Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after Brexit, and Dublin fears a hard border could disrupt 20 years of delicate peace in Northern Ireland. Ireland has called on Britain to provide details of how it will ensure there is no regulatory divergence after Brexit in March 2019 that would require physical border infrastructure. But any attempt at a solution will have to convince Northern Ireland s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 members of parliament are propping up May s government. The party ratcheted up the pressure on Thursday by suggesting it might withdraw its support for May s government. If there is any hint that in order to placate Dublin and the EU they re prepared to have Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, then they can t rely on our vote, DUP member of parliament Sammy Wilson said in an interview with the BBC. European Council President Donald Tusk, who last week set an absolute deadline of Monday for May to demonstrate sufficient progress on the three issues, is due to fly to Dublin on Friday for talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in a bid to break the deadlock. May will then hold talks in Brussels on Monday with EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, and will hope to secure a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. Barnier said on Wednesday the summit would be able to discuss a transition period and that the EU would define a framework next year of the new partnership with Britain that would follow the transition. May has insisted she wants any new offers to be met with simultaneous assurances from the EU that it will maintain the open trading relationship which businesses are demanding to know soon if they are to maintain investment levels in Britain. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Muslim holds ancient key to Jesus tomb site in Jerusalem;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - As dark falls, Adeeb Joudeh, a Muslim, makes his way through the stone alleyways of Jerusalem s walled Old City cradling the ancient key to one of Christianity s holiest sites. Centuries ago, the imposing iron key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried, was entrusted to his family, one of Jerusalem s most prominent clans, says Joudeh. He dates the arrangement back to the time of Saladin, the Muslim conqueror who seized the holy city from the Crusaders in 1187. Honestly, it s a great honor for a Muslim to hold the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is the most important church in Christendom, Joudeh, 53, said. Another of the city s oldest Muslim families, the Nusseibehs, were entrusted with the duty of opening and closing the church doors, a task they perform to this day. It requires firm fingers: The key is 30 cm (12 inches) long and weighs 250 grams (0.5 pounds). Historians differ on the roots of the arrangement. Some researchers say Saladin most likely bestowed the guardianship upon the two families in order to assert Muslim dominance over Christianity in the city. It also had financial implications, with a tax from visitors collected at the door. Documentation, however, only goes back to the 16th century, Joudeh said, displaying dozens of Fermans , or royal decrees by rulers of the Ottoman empire, bestowing the key custodianship upon his family. Jerusalem s Old City today houses sites that are sacred to all three major monotheisms. It and other east Jerusalem areas were captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel has since declared the entire city its undivided capital. This status is not recognized internationally and is rejected by the Palestinians who want East Jerusalem as capital of a state they hope to found. Joudeh says his key is about 800 years old. Another copy he holds broke after centuries of use. I started learning this when I was eight years old. It s handed down from father to son, said Joudeh. I have been doing this for 30 years and I feel that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is my second home. The Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Roman Catholic denominations share custody of the church, where tensions often run high over control of its various sectors. Christianity scholar Yisca Harani said having Muslim families in charge of the key and the doors helps somewhat in keeping the peace between the denominations. The church is definitely a model of co-existence, Harani said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian military working on deal to use Egyptian air bases: document;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s government published a draft agreement between Russia and Egypt on Thursday allowing both countries to use each other s air space and air bases for their military planes. The draft deal was set out in a decree, signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Nov. 28, which ordered the Russian Defence Ministry to hold negotiations with Egyptian officials and to sign the document once both sides reached an agreement. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Cairo for talks with Egypt s political and military leadership on Wednesday and the decree said the draft had been preliminary worked through with the Egyptian side and approved by Medvedev. Russia launched a military operation to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015 and there are signs it is keen to further expand its military presence in the region. U.S. officials said in March that Russia had deployed special forces in Egypt near the border with Libya, an allegation Moscow denied. Russia has cultivated close ties with powerful Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, who held talks with Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, via video link from a Russian aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean this year and visited Moscow. Russian and Egyptian war planes would be able to use each other s air space and airfields by giving five days advance notice, according to the draft agreement, which is expected to be valid for five years and could be extended. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French defense minister hopeful for fighter jets, armored vehicle sale to Qatar;PARIS (Reuters) - France is hoping to strike deals to sell 12 Rafale fighter jets and armored vehicles to Qatar when President Emmanuel Macron visits the country in December, the French defense minister said on Thursday. Qatar has been strengthening its military since its ties with other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, have deteriorated. France, which has carefully avoided taking sides in that dispute, is hoping to capitalize on a recent arms export surge which included the sale of 24 Rafale jets to Doha in 2015. The Rafale is made by Dassault Aviation. We ve been negotiating for months, defense minister Florence Parly told BFM TV. We ve also been negotiating for months about the sale of a large number of armored vehicles and we hope it will be concluded when the president goes to Qatar at the beginning of December, she added. French media have said France s Nexter was in talks to sell about 300 VBCI armored vehicles to Qatar. However, a French government source told Reuters nothing had been agreed yet. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic and trade links with Qatar in June, suspending air and shipping routes with the world s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian PM says doping allegations part of new anti-Russian campaign;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday allegations that Russian athletes used doping during the 2014 Sochi Olympics were political manipulations in a new anti-Russian campaign. That (Sochi Olympics) was a brilliant victory and no foreign forces can make us believe the opposite ... This angle has become a cornerstone of the political campaign against Russia, Medvedev said in an interview with Russian television channels broadcast live. The International Olympic Committee is re-testing all Russian athletes samples from the event after Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Moscow s discredited anti-doping laboratory, blew the whistle on what he said was a state-sponsored doping programme. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's ruling party says to back Putin if he seeks new term;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s ruling United Russia party will support President Vladimir Putin if he decides to run for a new term in office, its leader, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, said on Thursday. Putin, 65, has so far kept silent on whether he plans to seek a fourth term in a presidential election due in March 2018. Our party, and I personally, will support him in this in every possible way, Medvedev said in an interview with Russian television channels broadcast live. Because we believe that he is a successful president who is leading our country. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 800 civilians killed by coalition strikes in Iraq, Syria: report;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 800 civilians have been killed in strikes in Iraq and Syria by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State since the campaign began in 2014, according to a report released by the coalition on Thursday. The estimate in the monthly report, which said coalition strikes had unintentionally killed at least 801 civilians between August 2014 and October 2017, was far lower than figures provided by monitoring groups. The monitoring group Airwars says a total of at least 5,961 civilians have been killed by coalition air strikes. We continue to hold ourselves accountable for actions that may have caused unintentional injury or death to civilians, the coalition said in its report. Since the start of the campaign against Islamic State militants, the coalition has carried out more than 28,000 strikes and has received 1,790 reports of potential civilian casualties, the report said. It was still assessing 695 reports of civilian casualties from strikes it carried out in Iraq and in Syria. The coalition, battling to defeat Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British minister hopes condemnation of Trump tweet has impact;LONDON (Reuters) - British interior minister Amber Rudd said on Thursday she hoped Britain s condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump for retweeting material from a British far-right group would have an impact. I think we all listen more carefully, perhaps, to criticism from our friends than from people who we don t have a relationship with. So, I hope that the prime minister s comments will have some impact on the president, Rudd told parliament. British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that Trump was wrong to have retweeted posts from the Britain First group. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian PM says U.S.-Russia ties at low ebb but Trump 'friendly';MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that U.S.-Russia ties were the worst he could recall, but that U.S. President Donald Trump struck him as a friendly person keen to establish positive working contacts with Russia. Trump took office in January, saying he wanted warmer ties with Russia which had fallen to a post-Cold War low. But since then, ties have frayed further after U.S. intelligence officials said Russia had meddled in the presidential election, something Moscow denies. Medvedev, who met Trump in Manila this month, suggested he and President Vladimir Putin both found Trump constructive and friendly in person, but accused other U.S. politicians of playing what he called the Russian card to achieve their own aims and influence Trump s attitude towards Russia. The impression he (Trump) makes is that of a friendly political figure ready to establish full-scale contacts and who reacts reasonably towards everything, Medvedev said in an interview with Russia s main TV channels. Medvedev said he had chatted to Trump briefly over dinner at a regional summit in Manila. He (Trump) recalled our cooperation during World War Two, saying that it was important both for Russia and America, said Medvedev. It was a pretty normal exchange I am sure and President (Vladimir) Putin has spoken about just that - that everything is fine when it comes to our relations when we meet in person. But Medvedev said that was of secondary importance because overall U.S.-Russia relations were appalling. They are very bad, I would say appalling. They are the worst I can remember. Medvedev said the political climate towards Russia in the United States reminded him of the 1950s when U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy helped launch a campaign against anyone he regarded as pro-communist in the United States. But still, even then there was no talk of settling accounts with your own president, said Medvedev. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Denizbank says did not collaborate with gold trader Zarrab;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s Denizbank said on Thursday it did not have any dealings with the shipping group owned by gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is testifying in a U.S. federal court after pleading guilty to conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran. Zarrab on Wednesday told the court that he helped Iran use funds deposited in Turkey s state-owned Halkbank to buy gold, which was smuggled to Dubai and sold for cash. Halkbank has said all of its transactions complied with national and international regulations. According to local media reports, Zarrab also testified that he used Denizbank for some transactions. Denizbank disputed the reported allegations. Our transactions only revolved around buying and selling gold domestically, and there were no foreign transactions, it said in a statement. Our bank... has had no dealings with the Royal Shipping group owned by Reza Zarrab. The case has fueled tensions between the United States and Turkey, which are NATO allies. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s government has said the case was fabricated for political reasons. Turkey s banking regulator last month denied a local media report that six Turkish lenders could face substantial fines from the United States over alleged violations of Iran sanctions. (Corrects third paragraph to show that sourcing for Zarrab s testimony on Denizbank is local media reports) ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Halkbank denies allegations of illegal transactions;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish state lender Halkbank on Thursday denied allegations that it was involved in illegal transactions designed to help Iran avoid U.S. sanctions, following testimony in New York against its former deputy general manager. Our bank has not been a part to any transaction which is uncertain and illegal relating to any country and has not executed any transfer transaction which is uncertain and unlawful, it said in a statement. There is no systematic and conscious violation of transactions... as it is alleged and it has not been intermediated in the export of prohibited parties and goods. Its comments came after Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab on Wednesday told a U.S. federal court that he helped Iran use funds deposited in Halkbank to buy gold that was smuggled to Dubai and sold for cash. Zarrab, who has pleaded guilty, is testifying against Halkbank executive Mehemt Hakan Atilla, who has pleaded not guilty. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says Chinese envoy to North Korea appeared to have 'no impact': Twitter;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China s envoy to North Korea appears to have had little impact in addressing tensions with North Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday after Pyongyang test fired its most advanced missile earlier this week. The Chinese envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man, Trump said in a post on Twitter, referring to North Korea s leader Kim Jong Un. A Chinese envoy reportedly visited North Korea earlier this month. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;The Adoration Of Kim Jong Un;PYONGYANG - North Koreans stage a demonstration of devotion to their leader Kim Jong Un at least once a year, in a large ceremonial square in Pyongyang. Mansae! the people call as they parade past the 33-year old, who stands on a balcony above them: Live long! This December, Kim will mark six years in power. In that time he has purged or executed around 340 people, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank of South Korea s National Intelligence Service (NIS). The people on parade carry flowers including North Korea s national blooms, Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which were specially created in honor of Kim s grandfather and father, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. North Korea is the only socialist country to have passed power down the family line. Images of former presidents are pinned on the left side of every jacket and dress. They are worn there to be close to the wearers hearts. In private conversations, some North Koreans quietly lament the shortcomings of their system: It s too bureaucratic, takes too long to get things done, is disorganized, they say. But few dare to openly criticize the Supreme Leader. North Korea s GDP per capita, estimated at $1,700 in the CIA Factbook, places it 215th in the world it is poorer than Haiti, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. Defectors say many North Koreans lead double lives, earning money in unofficial market places to supplement state incomes. The leadership turns a blind eye to this. Traditionally, Pyongyang has been the home of North Korea s elites. But the inhabitants of the capital must also prepare for the parades. Around this time, everyone everywhere must increase production in a process known as a battle. People, organized into work units, are assigned duties on top of their usual jobs. The 70-day battle ahead of a Party congress in 2016 meant long after-work hours sprucing up the capital. State media released a report: Some work units had delivered 110 percent of their quotas. The fatigue shows in some flower-wavers faces. On June 1, 2016, the country announced that a new campaign of celebration was to be held. This time, it said, the battle would last 200 days. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;The thinking behind Kim Jong Un's 'madness';SEOUL (Reuters) - On an icy December day in 2011, North Korea s new leader Kim Jong Un was accompanied by seven advisers as they escorted the hearse that carried his father, Kim Jong Il, through the streets of Pyongyang. None of the men remain with the young Kim. This October, he demoted the last of his father s aides, both men in their nineties. They were among around 340 people he has purged or executed, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank of South Korea s National Intelligence Service (NIS). Kim, obviously a madman in the eyes of U.S. President Donald Trump, has completed a six-year transition to what the South calls a reign of terror. His unpredictability and belligerence have instilled fear worldwide: After he tested a breakthrough missile earlier this week, he pronounced North Korea a nuclear power capable of striking the United States. But a closer look at his leadership reveals a method behind the madness. At 33, Kim Jong Un is one of the world s youngest heads of state. He inherited a nation with a proud history, onto which a socialist state had essentially been grafted by Cold War superpowers to create a buffer between Communist China and the capitalist South. Under Kim s father, the economy was mismanaged, and the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union eliminated an important source of support. Up to three million people starved. To consolidate a weak position, the young leader has been cultivating three main forces: military and nuclear power, a tacit private sector market economy, and the fear and adoration of a god. To this end, he has executed two powerful men and promoted one young woman Kim Yo Jong, his younger sister, who Korea-watchers say is also Kim s chief propagandist. She is Kim s only other blood relative to be involved in politics: His elder brother, Kim Jong Chol, was rejected by their father as heir. Over the five years to December 2016, Kim spent $300 million on 29 nuclear and missile tests, $180 million on building some 460 family statues, and as much as $1 billion on a party congress in 2016 including $26.8 million on fireworks alone, according to the Institute, which employs high-level defectors. Yes, he has replaced many top commanders and officials so easily and ruthlessly killed some of them, which could make you wonder if he s sane, said Lee Sang-keun, a North Korean leadership expert at the Institute of Unification Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. But this is a historical way of governing that can put you in power for a long time. (Graphic - Kim family tree: tmsnrt.rs/2AJM8F1) (Graphic - Purge and launch: tmsnrt.rs/2ApSfhC) In ancient days, Pyongyang was the capital of a mighty empire, Koguryo, the root of the modern word Korea. Going back through history, the Great Leader concept is a blend of several ideas handed down through time: an almighty god, the Confucian worship of a parent, and a king with the Mandate of Heaven, according to Lee Seung-yeol, a senior researcher at the National Assembly Research Service in Seoul. Lee, a leading North Korea leadership researcher, said the state s theory of succession means Kim the younger s rise should have been completed while his father was alive: Kim s father was anointed 20 years before he took over, giving him time to build allies and a leadership system. Kim Jong Un had just three years as leader-in-waiting. Born in 1984, he was third in line for power and a fractious, competitive child, according to Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese chef who worked for the family and one of the few people to recount meetings with the young Kim. In his memoirs published in 2010, Fujimoto, who now runs a sushi restaurant in Pyongyang, said Kim once snapped at his aunt Ko Yong Suk for calling him Little General. Kim wanted to be called Comrade General. When Kim Jong Il knew his young son would soon succeed him, researchers have said, the father took several measures to protect the boy. Lee said these included shifting the country s power base to create rivalry between the elites so Kim the younger could play one group off against another. Kim Jong Il had declared the military the country s supreme power a policy known as songun, which means military first. At a party conference in 2010, he changed the setup so the military had to compete with the party administration for the leader s favour. Military strategy was the first thing Kim changed. His father had used the promise of nuclear disarmament as a bargaining chip for aid, and in February 2012, young Kim started in his father s footsteps, promising to freeze North Korea s nuclear program in return for food aid from the United States. But weeks later he changed tack, saying North Korea would fire a long-range rocket. The negotiations were carried on as the legacy of Kim Jong Il, said Wi Sung-lac, a former South Korean envoy to talks in 2011 that contributed to the February deal. Since then his strategic thinking has shaped up. In Kim s view, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya were fatally weakened by not having nuclear weapons, North Korean media say. History proves that powerful nuclear deterrence serves as the strongest treasured sword for frustrating outsiders aggression, the official KCNA news agency said in an editorial in January 2016. North Korea is racing to achieve a nuclear deterrent because the state feels threatened, worrying particularly that Kim may face a fate like Gaddafi. The Libyan leader agreed in 2003 to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Denmark passes law that could ban Russian pipeline from going through its waters;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark passed a law on Thursday that could allow it to ban Russia s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from going through its waters on grounds of security or foreign policy. The measure amends Denmark s regulatory framework to allow the authorities to cite security or foreign policy as reasons to block a pipeline. Previously these were not valid grounds for objection. Denmark has been caught in a geopolitical conflict as Russia s Gazprom and its European partners have sought to build Nord Stream 2, a giant pipeline to pump natural gas to Germany through the Baltic Sea, bypassing existing land routes over Ukraine, Poland and Belarus. The proposed route goes through Danish waters, but the pipeline consortium is investigating an alternative route north of the Danish island Bornholm which would run in international waters and therefore not be impacted by a potential Danish ban. Nord Stream 2 has already applied for permission in Denmark and its application is being assessed at the Danish Energy Agency. The change to the law will take effect from Jan. 1 but apply to applications that have already been submitted. In June, Danish energy and climate minister Lars Christian Lilleholt said he expected the agency to have completed its assessment during early 2018. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO mulls 'offensive defense' with cyber warfare rules;TARTU, Estonia (Reuters) - A group of NATO allies are considering a more muscular response to state-sponsored computer hackers that could involve using cyber attacks to bring down enemy networks, officials said. The United States, Britain, Germany, Norway, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands are drawing up cyber warfare principles to guide their militaries on what justifies deploying cyber attack weapons more broadly, aiming for agreement by early 2019. The doctrine could shift NATO s approach from being defensive to confronting hackers that officials say Russia, China and North Korea use to try to undermine Western governments and steal technology. There s a change in the (NATO) mindset to accept that computers, just like aircraft and ships, have an offensive capability, said U.S. Navy Commander Michael Widmann at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, a research center affiliated to NATO that is coordinating doctrine writing. Washington already has cyber weapons, such as computer code to take down websites or shut down IT systems, and in 2011 declared that it would respond to hostile cyber acts. The United States, and possibly Israel, are widely believed to have been behind Stuxnet , a computer virus that destroyed nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2010. Neither has confirmed it. Some NATO allies believe shutting down an enemy power plant through a cyber attack could be more effective than air strikes. I need to do a certain mission and I have an air asset, I also have a cyber asset. What fits best for the me to get the effect I want? Widmann said. The 29-nation NATO alliance recognized cyber as a domain of warfare, along with land, air and sea, in 2014, but has not outlined in detail what that entails. In Europe, the issue of deploying malware is sensitive because democratic governments do not want to be seen to be using the same tactics as an authoritarian regime. Commanders and experts have focused on defending their networks and blocking attempts at malicious manipulation of data. Senior Baltic and British security officials say they have intelligence showing persistent Russian cyber hacks to try to bring down European energy and telecommunications networks, coupled with Internet disinformation campaigns. They believe Russia is trying to break Western unity over economic sanctions imposed over Moscow s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. They (Russia) are seeking to attack the cohesion of NATO, said a senior British security official, who said the balance between war and peace was becoming blurred in the virtual world. It looks quite strategic. Moscow has repeatedly denied any such cyber attacks. The United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France have cyber commands special headquarters to combat cyber espionage and hacks of critical infrastructure. Estonia, which was hit by one of the world s first large-scale cyber attacks a decade ago, aims to open a cyber command next year and make it fully operational by 2020, with offensive cyber weapons. You cannot only defend in cyberspace, said Erki Kodar, Estonia s undersecretary for legal and administrative affairs who oversees cyber policy at the defense ministry. Across the globe this year computer hackers have disrupted multinational firms, ports and public services on an unprecedented scale, raising awareness of the issue. NATO held its biggest ever cyber exercise this week at a military base in southern Estonia, testing 25 NATO allies against a fictional state-sponsored hacker group seeking to infiltrate NATO air defense and communication networks. The fictional scenarios are based on real threats, said Estonian army Lieutenant-Colonel Anders Kuusk, who ran the exercise. NATO s commanders will not develop cyber weapons but allied defense ministers agreed last month that NATO commanders can request nations to allow them use of their weapons if requested. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia accuses U.S. of trying to provoke North Korean leader 'to fly off handle';MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia accused the United States on Thursday of trying to provoke North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into flying off the handle over his missile program to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country. In some of his most robust comments on the subject to date, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also flatly rejected a U.S. call to cut ties with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile program and said U.S. policy towards North Korea was deeply flawed. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have flared after North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday in a breakthrough that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Russia has condemned the test, like others before it, as a provocation, but Lavrov said the way the United States was handling the situation was dangerously provocative. The latest U.S. actions look designed to deliberately provoke Pyongyang into taking new extreme action, Lavrov told reporters in Belarus, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry transcript. Lavrov said he was referring to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises planned for December, which he said U.S. officials had intimated to Russia would not take place until spring to open a window for tensions to be defused. We were encouraged by that approach. And then suddenly ... they announced large-scale exercises in December. We have the impression that it was all done specially to get Kim Jong Un to fly off the handle and take another reckless step. The air forces of the United States and South Korea are scheduled to hold a regular joint drill early next month with six U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth fighters taking part. The Americans need to explain to us all if they want to find a pretext to destroy North Korea. Let them say it directly ... then we can take a decision about how to react, said Lavrov. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Wednesday called for other countries to sever all ties with Pyongyang, including cutting trade links and expelling North Korean workers. Moscow sells oil products to North Korea and thousands of North Korean workers toil in Russia, sending remittances back to the authorities in Pyongyang. Lavrov said Haley s call for the world to isolate North Korea was wrong. We regard this negatively, Lavrov said. We have already said many times that sanctions pressure has exhausted itself. He also complained that the United States was totally ignoring a U.N. demand for talks with North Korea. I think it s a big mistake, said Lavrov. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May is focused on tackling extremism, spokesman says in response to Trump;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May is fully focused on tackling extremism, her spokesman said on Thursday, responding to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump telling her to focus on destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism . Asked if May was focused on tackling extremism: her spokesman said: Yes. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in this country are law-abiding people who abhor extremism in all its forms. The prime minister has been clear ... that where Islamist extremism does exist it should be tackled head on. We are working hard to do that both at home and internationally and ... with our U.S. partners. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. tribunal seeks answers after stunned by courtroom suicide;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A U.N. tribunal that was stunned by the courtroom suicide of a Bosnian Croat war criminal said on Thursday it was working with Dutch investigators to piece together how he smuggled a fatal dose of poison into the high-security building. Slobodan Praljak, 72, died on Wednesday at a hospital in The Hague within hours of drinking a vial of liquid during the reading of his appeals judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. [L8N1NZ2YM] Preliminary testing confirmed that the cause of death was drinking a liquid that can kill, spokesman Vincent Veenman of the public prosecutors office in The Hague said. We cannot yet say what that substance was. Further testing is needed, he said. A 5-member ICTY appeals bench upheld Praljak s conviction on charges of crimes against humanity over persecution, murders and expulsions of Bosnian Muslims from territory captured by nationalist Bosnian Croats and the brutal imprisonment of wartime detainees. It also upheld his 20-year prison sentence. The criminal investigation was immediately launched by Dutch authorities, who sealed off the ICTY courtroom to take evidence after Praljak told the court: I have just taken poison , denounced the verdict and slumped back in his chair. Dutch prosecutors said the inquiry was focused on assisted suicide and violation of the Medicines Act. It will also try to determine how the poison was smuggled into the court. The court on Thursday declined to provide further comment, citing the ongoing independent investigation. Stricter procedures at the U.N. detention unit were adopted following the 2006 death of suspect Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian and Yugoslav president. Milosevic, who died of a heart attack before his verdict on genocide and war crimes charges, had banned medication in his cell which may have worsened an existing heart condition. Emotional reactions in Bosnia to Praljak s death highlighted lasting division in the Balkans, where the court had aimed to bring reconciliation, but convicted war criminals are often revered as heroes. About 1,000 nationalist supporters gathered to hold a Mass for Praljak, a former film and theater producer, in the Bosnian town of Mostar, known for the destruction of its iconic Old Bridge. Muslim victims of wartime violence welcomed his 20-year sentence and expressed hope it would deter future crimes. Croatian newspapers on Thursday focused on a lack of security measures at the tribunal and the government s rejection of the court s finding that Croatia, now a member of the European Union, was also responsible for war crimes. A verdict with consequences for Croatia , read a headline in the Novi List daily. The appeals chamber found (former president Franjo) Tudjman and Croatia responsible, it said. A horrific end for The Hague Tribunal , read the front-page headline in the Jutarnji List daily, which like all papers ran a prominent photo of Praljak swallowing poison. The dramatic events unfolded in the last minutes of the court s final ruling before it closes next month after 24 years. [L8N1NL7ZT] Previously, two defendants awaiting their ICTY trial, both Serbs, committed suicide by hanging themselves in their U.N. cells, according to court documents. The ICTY indicted 161 suspects in all from Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo in connection with atrocities in the ethnic wars during the 1990s. Of the 83 convicted, more than 60 were ethnic Serbs. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey did not violate U.S. sanctions against Iran, 'did the right thing', Erdogan says;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey did not violate U.S. sanctions against Iran and did the right thing regardless of the outcome of the ongoing case in the United States, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by private broadcaster CNN Turk as saying on Thursday. On Wednesday, Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab described in a U.S. court how he ran a sprawling international money laundering scheme aimed at helping Iran get around U.S. sanctions and spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, in a case that has further strained ties between Ankara and Washington. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Record fall in net migration to UK in year after Brexit vote;LONDON (Reuters) - Net migration to Britain fell by the largest amount on record in the 12 months after the Brexit vote, with more than three-quarters of the drop due to more EU citizens leaving and fewer arriving, official data showed on Thursday. Net migration tumbled by 106,000 to 230,000 people in the 12 months to June, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Some 82,000 of the decline was due to EU citizens, cutting net migration from the bloc to its lowest level since June 2013. The total fall in net migration was the largest since people moving to Britain started to outnumber those leaving in the 1980s. The ONS said Brexit was likely to be one of the factors driving the fall. Prime Minister Theresa May has said she wants to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands, a promise first made by the government in 2010 and designed to reassure Britons worried about the impact immigration had on public services. Net migration into Britain has exceeded 100,000 in every year since 1998, as workers from abroad were attracted by a relatively strong currency, a vibrant economy and easy hiring rules. Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics at King s College London, linked the latest fall to Britain s economic slowdown since the Brexit vote and the weakening of the pound - which means foreign workers earn less in Britain when converted to their own national currencies. It cannot be good news that the UK is a less attractive place to live and work, and that we will be poorer as a result, said Portes, who has previously argued that Brexit is likely to hurt Britain s economy. He predicted that net migration to Britain was likely to fall further to 150,000 over the next few years. Business groups reacted to the latest figures with disappointment. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said the fall in net migration was an alarm bell for Britain s economy, with many employers struggling to find skilled workers. But Steven Woolfe, an independent British lawmaker in the European Parliament who campaigned for Brexit, said long-term migration remained high. This number again highlights the greater need for Britain to have a brand new immigration system, starting on Brexit day one, he said on Twitter. Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019. Larger numbers of foreign workers have helped Britain s economy to expand. The Bank of England has said almost all of its growth in the last decade stems from an increase in workers. Britain s retail, hospitality, manufacturing and agriculture sectors are particularly reliant on staff from abroad. The BoE has said a fall in migrant workers coming to Britain is likely to contribute to a new, slower speed limit for the economy, meaning it would be more prone to inflation. Opinion polls have shown immigration topping the list of concerns among people who voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum, in which 52 percent backed leaving the EU. The ONS said the scale of the drop in net migration in the most recent data partly reflected a strong run-up in migration last year, which pushed it to a record high in June 2016. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Deadline looms for South Africa's Zuma over revived graft charges;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Lawyers for Jacob Zuma have until midnight to file papers outlining why nearly 800 corruption charges shelved before he became South African president eight years ago but recently reinstated by the courts should not be brought against him. The revival of the charges could increase pressure on Zuma to step down before his term ends in 2019 and diminish his influence over who succeeds him when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) chooses a new leader in December. The 75-year-old president has faced and denied numerous other corruption allegations since taking office in 2009. The 783 charges, which relate to a 30 billion rand ($2.2 billion) government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s, were filed but then dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) shortly before he ran for the presidency. South Africa s High Court reinstated the charges last year and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in October, rejecting an appeal by Zuma and describing the NPA s decision to set aside the charges as irrational . The NPA said then that Zuma had until Nov. 30 to make submissions before it decided whether to pursue the charges. Spokesmen for the NPA and Zuma were not available for comment on Thursday. Last month s Supreme Court ruling lifted the rand currency against the dollar as investors bet that Zuma s removal may be inching closer. The president is unpopular with many investors after sacking respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan in March, a move that hit South African financial assets and helped tip the country s credit ratings into junk territory. Infighting within the ruling ANC ahead of next month s conference to elect a successor to Zuma as party chief has also sapped confidence among the investors upon whom South Africa relies to finance its hefty budget and current account deficits. One of South Africa s leading universities, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, said on Thursday that it had appointed Gordhan as a visiting professor. He will join other ANC heavyweights who have ended up at the Wits after being sidelined by Zuma, among them another respected and ousted finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, and former Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni. Widely seen as a competent and honest technocrat, Gordhan has become an unlikely poster boy for public anger at the president, whose administration has been marred by missteps and allegations of corruption. Zuma denies any wrongdoing. ($1 = 13.6794 rand) ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;West Africa population planners battle to woo Muslim hearts;DAKAR/LIBORE, Niger (Reuters) - Mabingue Ngom, the head of the U.N. Population Fund in West Africa, knows that if he wants to cut birth rates he can t ignore religion. Population experts like Ngom are worried that if West Africa s population continues to grow at its current pace - the region has the highest birth rate in the world - it will drive fiercer competition for scarce water and farmland, and fuel malnutrition, conflict and ever more economic refugees. GRAPHIC-Family planning in West Africa: tmsnrt.rs/2zWftuY West African governments, U.N. agencies and charities also want to cut maternal mortality rates, which are higher in West Africa than anywhere else in the world, according to U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) figures. But imams who follow the puritanical Wahhabist form of Islam and some traditional religious leaders across the region regularly preach against the use of contraception, saying Western nations are pushing birth control because they fear being outnumbered by Africans. Some imams cite a passage in the Koran imploring Muslims to go forth and multiply , and family planning is seen by many in the region as a Western plot to curb the spread of Islam. The West s policy is about reducing our numbers, said Hassane Seck, an imam in Dakar influenced by the Wahhabist tradition. Because of their perverse promotion of contraception, women in Europe are no longer fertile, but ours are. There are going to be many more of us, and they re afraid. . To counter that message, population experts are trying to co-opt moderate clerics. Which is why, at a meeting in September with half a dozen senior Senegalese clerics, Ngom avoided the issue of overpopulation and focused on values espoused in the Koran: the need for better maternal health and the need to ensure parents have resources to feed and educate their children. You can come with your Powerpoint and make nice speeches and achieve nothing. People will be even more hostile, he told Reuters. If you want to change things, you have to engage them. After listening to Ngom speak, Bou Mouhamed Kounta, deputy head of Senegal s Islamic Supreme Council, warned that family planning in Senegal was taboo. But, he added: We are ready to work with you, because I can see that UNFPA respects religion. For planners worried about growth rates, the starkest case remains Niger, a poor country stretching into the Sahara desert. According to U.N. projections, its population will triple by 2050 to 72 million, yet because of frequent droughts it already struggles to feed its people. The fertility rate in Niger has been the highest in the world for the past decade and has been above 7 children per mother for a quarter of a century, according to U.N. figures. More than one in five women are married by the time they are 19 and for every 100,000 births in Niger, 553 mothers die. In neighboring Chad, the maternal mortality level is 856 per 100,000 births. It is only 12 in the developed world. Attempts by Niger to lower its birth rate have been fiercely resisted by traditional leaders - known as marabouts - and some imams. Measuring the extent of Wahhabist influence in West Africa is hard, but they control many of the region s most strategic mosques, such as the main university houses of worship in Senegal and Niger. On Niger s religious TV stations, preachers promise hellfire for anyone practicing family planning. At a large mosque in the southern city of Maradi, an imam denounces contraception as a plot by the whites to reduce us , two reproductive health workers based there, who declined to be named, said. When UNFPA and Niger s President Mahamadou Issoufou tried to introduce sex education in schools in 2015, angry mobs burned the text books outside U.N. offices. Three years earlier a bill banning girls being taken out of school for marriage provoked such a backlash it had to be axed. Back then, Ngom wondered whether decades of telling Africans they were having too many babies was counterproductive. He decided the family planning message needed to be nuanced and has held dozens of meetings with moderate imams, always wearing a bubu, the traditional Muslim robe of his native Senegal. In a world of suspicion, of mistrust, how you put things is more important than the issues themselves, he told Reuters in Dakar. You need to know your audience. Atamo Hassane, head of Niger s family planning unit, agrees. To limit or reduce population, those are two words you just can t use, Hassane told Reuters in Niger s capital Niamey. If you do, every marabout ... is going to be against you. He said using family planning to space out births won t be enough to tackle population growth but hopes that once people start to use contraception they will see the benefits, use it more, and birth rates will then start to fall. Other moderate clerics include Sheikh Ali Ben Salah, Niger s former minister of religious affairs. Islam is clear: you can t just have children without considering how you re going to feed, clothe and educate them, Salah told Reuters at a conference on child marriage in Dakar. So family planning is part of Islam. The problem only comes if you want to stop at a certain number. UNFPA had a breakthrough in July when Chad s highest Islamic authority hosted a symposium with the U.N. agency and 1,200 regional religious leaders - unprecedented for the subject of family planning. I told them family planning will reduce maternal mortality by a third. Who doesn t want to do that? Ngom said. Cheikh Abdeldahim Abdoulaye, secretary general of Chad s Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, told Reuters he had backed the U.N. program because the Koran permitted the spacing out births, primarily for the sake of better maternal health. Aminatou Bakah, a Nigerien aid worker for charity Marie Stopes International, which provides contraception and family planning advice in 37 countries, said they had long struggled to shake off the idea they were a tool of Western interference. They called us Marie Stop , because we want to stop people having children, she said. We had to explain that, no, we want to help you plan, not just get pregnant by pure chance. At a pop-up clinic run by the charity in Libore, 20 km (13 miles) outside Niamey, mothers with young children wait for advice on contraceptive methods. In the village of jagged acacia trees, clay houses and a mosque, all nine of the mothers interviewed by Reuters said they didn t want to have fewer children and were using contraception only as a temporary reprieve from child birth. I would have 15 children if that s what God wants, said Rahinatou Kadri, 24, a mother of four. Her husband, who is an imam, has two other wives, the oldest of whom has 16 children, she said. Keen not to be outdone, when her husband said he wanted another child, Kadri dutifully came back to have her contraceptive implant removed. Our religion doesn t permit us to stop having children, said Mariane Hamadoun, 34, a mother of five. Thanks partly to such views, the birth rate in some African countries has defied predictions that it would fall as the continent gets more prosperous, as has happened in Europe, Asia and the Americas. But attitudes may be changing. Lamodi Soulye, 39, a devout Muslim and worker in a Chinese restaurant in Niamey, was one of 28 siblings from one father and three different mothers. He remembers occasionally going hungry, and dropping out of school with only basic primary education. My father lacked the resources to keep us, he said. I decided not to do the same thing to my children. He plans to stop at three. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Playing with fire: tens of thousands refuse to leave Bali volcano homes;KARANGASEM, Indonesia (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of villagers on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali are refusing to evacuate a 10-km (six-mile) danger zone around an erupting volcano, putting their fate in the hands of the gods or simply staying put to protect homes and livestock. The glowing, 3,000-metre Mount Agung, considered sacred by many on the Hindu-majority island, started spewing huge columns of ash at the weekend and there have been constant tremors and volcanic mud flows since. Search and rescue teams making daily forays into the zone say some are refusing to leave their cattle unattended, while others have spiritual reasons. The government has been clear about evacuation orders, but some people are slow to act or want to stay, said Gede Ardana, head of Bali s search and rescue agency. We cannot force them - but we will be held responsible, so we need to convince them. For cattle farmer Ketut Suwarte, there was no question of staying put. There was thick ash falling around us and we could smell sulfur. We were scared and we decided to leave immediately, said Suwarte, 47, now staying in an evacuation camp just outside the danger zone. Suwarte s father recalls the last time Mount Agung exploded, in 1963, killing about 1,000 people as pyroclastic flows - made up of hot gas and volcanic matter - raced down the mountain. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, of the disaster mitigation agency, said about 43,000 people had heeded advice to take shelter, but with an estimated population of 90,000 to 100,000 in the danger area, many had not. Ika Wardani, 33, sleeps with her family at an evacuation center at night but during the day returns to her cattle farm about 10 km north of the volcano. During the day at least we can see the volcano. But we re uncomfortable sleeping here at night because an earthquake or loud explosion would cause panic, she said. We would have to drive our motorbikes at night and the roads are narrow so it s safer to spend the nights at the evacuation center. She says there are people only five km from the crater who have refused to evacuate. They are stubborn, she said. Some of them survived 1963 so they believe it s all right now. The government has set up radio stations and chat groups on social media to warn people of the risks. Many people have made the decision to stay inside the exclusion zone, and that is clearly very dangerous, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the disaster management agency. Others, including tourists, are taking unnecessary risks by trying to take selfies as close as possible, officials say. Last month, a Frenchman shared a video of himself at the crater s edge on social media. In September, when authorities first raised the warning alert to the highest level, an exclusion zone of up to 12 km was imposed, prompting nearly 150,000 to leave, but when no major eruption occurred, many returned and the warning status was lowered. When authorities again raised the warning level this week, many were reluctant to move again. If (Mount Agung) follows the most frequent trend, it is likely to continue increasing in explosivity but at what rate and how large, nobody knows, said Dr Carmen Solana, a volcanologist at the University of Portsmouth. President Joko Widodo on Wednesday urged people to leave the exclusion zone before it s too late. There must not be any victims, he said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian finance minister says will not serve in new government;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling said on Thursday he would not serve in the next coalition government being put together by the leader of his conservative party, Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. Schelling, 63, had for months said he hoped to retain the finance portfolio and had at one point even suggested other countries wanted him to become the next head of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers. But Kurz, who is just 31, and his party won last month s parliamentary election on a platform of change, despite already being in government, and Schelling s chances of remaining in his post were seen as slim. After it became clear this week that Schelling was not in the running for the European post, the former furniture executive said he would step down from the position he has held for more than three years, though he would stay on until the next government is formed. I am leaving politics altogether, Schelling said in a statement. The reasons for my decision are many, but I would like to maintain my business-like style and therefore not comment further on my decision. It is unclear who will succeed Schelling, a relatively orthodox conservative who often joked that he was one of his country s longer-serving finance ministers of recent years. Kurz is in coalition talks with the far-right Freedom Party that he aims to wrap up before Christmas after his party won last month s parliamentary election. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military says no civilians killed in August Somalia raid;NAIROBI (Reuters) - The U.S. military did not kill any civilians when it accompanied Somali forces on a deadly raid in August, U.S. Africa command said late on Wednesday, the first public statement on the findings from an investigation into the raid. The two-paragraph statement referred to a joint raid by U.S. and Somali troops on the village of Bariire. Eyewitnesses told Reuters that 10 civilians were killed and the military had been drawn into a local clan conflict. The survivors and relatives of the dead said they wanted blood money and an apology. The U.S. military denied that any civilians were killed, although it did not offer any details on the investigation. The statement described the dead as enemy combatants and the military later said in a Twitter message that they were members of al Shabaab, the al-Qaeda linked insurgency. Africa Command did not provide any proof for their claim. After a thorough assessment of the Somali National Army-led operation near Bariire, Somalia, on Aug. 25, 2017 and the associated allegations of civilian casualties, U.S. Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAF) has concluded that the only casualties were those of armed enemy combatants, the two paragraph statement read. Before conducting operations with partner forces, SOCAF conducts detailed planning and coordination to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties and to ensure compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict. U.S. Africa Command and the Department of Defense take allegations of civilian casualties very seriously. Despite promising a public investigation, the embattled Somali government has made no public statement on the raid, and some Somali security officials said privately that it would not, for fear of alienating the powerful clan whose members were killed. Some Somali security officials have suggested privately that the survivors and relatives had misrepresented the incident to try to get cash and political advantages for their clan. The United States has stepped up operations in Somalia this year after President Donald Trump loosened restrictions on the military in March. A Navy SEAL was killed there in May, the first U.S. combat casualty there since a Blackhawk helicopter was shot down in 1993. The United States has also ramped up its use of air strikes, conducting twice as many strikes this year as last year. Somalia has been riven by civil war since 1991. It now has a weak, internationally-backed government, supported by African peacekeepers. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected U.S. drone targets Haqqani militants in Pakistan, killing four;DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone strike on Thursday targeted a hideout of the Haqqani militant network along Pakistan s mountainous border with Afghanistan, killing four people, officials said. If confirmed, it would be the fourth such U.S. strike inside Pakistan since President Donald Trump took office in January. Two Pakistani intelligence officials and a local government officer said an unmanned aerial vehicle dropped two missiles on a compound housing militants under the command of a senior network commander, Abdur Rasheed Haqqani. Villagers initially reported a blast in the Upper Kurram area to authorities, said one of the officials, adding, We got it from our informant later that it was a U.S. drone strike that targeted Haqqanis. It was not clear if the commander was among those killed, added the officials, who sought anonymity as the issue is a sensitive one. Trump s new strategy for the Afghanistan war calls for a tougher stance with Pakistan against militants such as the Haqqani network who have bases inside Pakistan. Since the Afghan policy review, the U.S. has been pushing Islamabad for decisive action against the Haqqani network militants, who are notorious for using Pakistani soil to launch attacks against American-led NATO troops in Afghanistan. Islamabad denies the allegations, and, instead, blames Kabul for not taking out militants who use Afghan territory as a base for attacks on targets in Pakistan. Pakistan has been facing a deadly Islamist militancy for more than a decade. Gunmen attacked a minority Shi ite Muslim mosque in Islamabad, the capital, on Wednesday, killing two people. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, a Sunni sectarian group linked with militant group Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the mosque attack. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May says Donald Trump was wrong to retweet far-right videos;AMMAN (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump was wrong to retweet a video from a far-right British group which she said was hateful and spreads division. Trump sparked outrage in Britain with a sharp rebuke of May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting anti-Islam videos from the deputy leader of Britain First. The fact that we work together does not mean that we re afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong, and be very clear with them, May told reporters in Amman. And I m very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do, May said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. says ban-the-bomb Nobel winner won't make world more peaceful;OSLO (Reuters) - The Nobel Peace Prize winner s campaign to ban nuclear weapons will not make the world more peaceful, the U.S. Embassy in Norway said, confirming its top diplomat will not attend next month s award ceremony. On Wednesday, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) accused the United States, Britain and France of snubbing its disarmament work by planning to send only second-rank diplomats in a coordinated move. ICAN, a little-known organization that was a surprise choice for the prize, has been campaigning for the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted by 122 nations in July this year. But the treaty is not signed by - and would not apply to - any of the states that already have nuclear arms: the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, as well as India, Pakistan and North Korea. North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday in a breakthrough that puts the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. The U.S. Embassy in Oslo said it planned to send its acting deputy chief of mission instead of its acting ambassador to the Dec. 10 ceremony, attended by King Harald and Queen Sonja and the highlight of the diplomatic calendar in Norway. This year s Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN for its efforts in support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, comes at a time of increased danger of nuclear proliferation, the embassy said in the statement to Reuters on Thursday. This treaty will not make the world more peaceful, will not result in the elimination of a single nuclear weapon, and will not enhance any state s security, it said. This treaty ignores the current security challenges that make nuclear deterrence necessary, and risks undermining existing efforts to address global proliferation. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Kenneth Braithwaite to the post of ambassador in Oslo, currently held by an acting ambassador. While Britain and France will do the same as the United States in sending lower-ranking diplomats to the ceremony, the other two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are taking different approaches. The Russian embassy said it would send its ambassador to the ceremony. The ambassador is planning to attend, said Russian embassy spokeswoman Olga Kiriak. The Chinese embassy said the ambassador was unavailable and that it had no plans to send someone else instead of him. We cannot be sure about the ambassador s schedule at this time. He is on holiday, said a press officer at the Chinese embassy, who did not give her name. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aktif Bank says has not violated U.S., international sanctions;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish lender Aktif Bank said on Thursday it had not violated any U.S. or international sanctions, after it was mentioned in the U.S. case regarding Iran sanctions violations. Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is a witness, testified on Wednesday that he had initially handled Iranian transactions through Aktif Bank. He said Aktif Bank at first hesitated to open an account for him and it shut down the account after receiving a warning from the United States. No transaction violating U.S. or international sanctions has occurred on behalf of our bank, the lender said in a statement. We have and continue to cooperate with international and national institutions and the result of this case will not have negative impacts on us. Zarrab said he used Halkbank to continue his transactions with Iran after Aktif Bank stopped working with him. A Halkbank executive, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, is a defendant in the case. Atilla has pleaded not guilty. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin calls U.S. Congress move against RT TV station 'very unfriendly';MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin on Thursday called a U.S. decision to withdraw the Congressional press credentials of Russia s RT broadcaster because of its status as a foreign agent in the United States an unfriendly step. Kremlin-backed RT on Wednesday night published a letter from the Executive Committee of the Congressional Radio And Television Correspondents Gallery saying the channel s Congressional press credentials had been withdrawn due to its registration as a foreign agent in the United States. That means RT s reporters will not be able to have as much access to Congress as other foreign media. It is a very unfriendly step. We are deeply disappointed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Thursday. The United States decided to designate RT as a foreign agent in retaliation for what Washington described as Russia s attempts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, something Moscow has repeatedly denied. In response, Russia introduced its own law allowing it to designate U.S. and other foreign media as foreign agents. Peskov said that the Russian parliament might give an emotional response to the new Congressional restrictions on RT. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Finnish court bans neo-Nazi group;HELSINKI (Reuters) - A Finnish court banned neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance Movement (PVL) on Thursday, saying there was an urgent social need to shut down the group which it said spread hate speech and incited violence. Police had asked that the far-right group, which the Finnish intelligence service says aims to create a national socialist state, be closed down. The association offends ethnic groups and spreads hate speech, the district court in Pirkanmaa, in the country s southwest, said in its verdict. In addition to offending and hateful expressions ... the association urges its supporters to use violence and harassment against alleged enemies. There is an urgent social need to shut down an association like PVL, the court said. A member of the group was sentenced to two years in jail last year following death of a 28-year-old man he had assaulted during a demonstration in Helsinki. Anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise in Finland, a country of 5.5 million where about 32,000 migrants and refugees arrived during Europe s migrant crisis in 2015. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China pushing billions into Iranian economy as Western firms stall;ROME/ANKARA (Reuters) - China is financing billions of dollars worth of Chinese-led projects in Iran, making deep inroads into the economy while European competitors struggle to find banks willing to fund their ambitions, Iranian government and industry officials said. Freed from crippling nuclear sanctions two years ago, Iran is drawing unprecedented Chinese funding for everything from railways to hospitals, they said. State-owned investment arm CITIC Group recently established a $10 billion credit line and China Development Bank is considering $15 billion more. They (Western firms) had better come quickly to Iran otherwise China will take over, said Ferial Mostofi, head of the Iran Chamber of Commerce s investment commission, speaking on the sidelines of an Iran-Italy investment meeting in Rome. The Chinese funding, by far the largest statement of investment intent of any country in Iran, is in stark contrast with the drought facing Western investors since U.S. President Donald Trump disavowed the 2015 pact agreed by major powers, raising the threat sanctions could be reimposed. Iranian officials say the deals are part of Beijing s $124 billion Belt and Road initiative, which aims to build new infrastructure - from highways and railways to ports and power plants - between China and Europe to pave the way for an expansion of trade. A source in China familiar with the CITIC credit line, which was agreed in September, called it an agreement of strategic intent . The source declined to give details on projects to be financed, but Iranian media reports have said they would include water management, energy, environment and transport projects. An Iranian central bank source said loans under the credit line would be primarily extended in euros and yuan. The China Development Bank signed a memorandum of understanding for $15 billion, Iranian state news agency IRNA said on Sept. 15. The bank itself declined to comment, in line with many foreign investors and banks, including from China, who were reluctant to discuss their activities in Iran for this story. The web sites of banks and companies often carry little or no information on their Iran operations. With a population of 80 million and a large, sophisticated middle class, Iran has the potential to be a regional economic powerhouse. But with the risk of sanctions hanging in the air, more and more foreign investors want Tehran to issue sovereign guarantees to protect them in case the projects are halted. Economic ties between Iran and Italy, its biggest European trade partner, have been affected. Italy s state-owned rail company, Ferrovie dello Stato, is a consultant in the building of a 415-km (260-mile) high-speed north-south rail line between Tehran to Isfahan via Qom by state-owned China Railway Engineering Corp. The Italian firm is separately contracted to build a line from Qom west to Arak, but it needs 1.2 billion euros in financing. Though backed by the state s export insurance agency, it says it needs a sovereign guarantee. We are finalizing the negotiations and we are optimistic about moving forward, said Riccardo Monti, chairman of Italferr, the state firm s engineering unit, adding that the financing should be finalised by March next year. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi s promise in Tehran last year to oil the wheels of trade with a 4 billion euro credit line from Italy s state investment vehicle is effectively dead, a source in Italy familiar with the matter said. Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) risked losing the confidence of its many U.S. bond-holders who could sell down their holdings if the credit line went ahead, the source said. A few European banks have deepened trade ties with Iran this year Austria s Oberbank (OBER.VI) inked a financing deal with Iran in September. South Korea has also proved a willing investor, with Seoul s Eximbank signing an 8 billion euros credit line for projects in Iran in August, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. But China is the standout. Valerio de Molli, head of Italian think tank European House Ambrosetti, reckons China now accounts for more than double the EU s share of Iran s total trade. The time to act is now, otherwise opportunities nurtured so far will be lost, de Molli said. Iranian officials attending this week s meeting in Rome sought to goad European firms and their bankers into action by talking up the Chinese financing and investments. The train is going forward, said Fereidun Haghbin, director general of economic affairs at Iran s foreign ministry. The world is a lot greater than the United States. Some Iranian officials remain concerned that investment could become lop-sided and are looking at creative ways to maintain investment links with the West, however. The Iran chamber is encouraging Western firms to consider transferring technology as a way of earning equity in Iranian projects rather than focusing on capital. It was also seeking approval to set up a 2.5-billion-euro offshore fund, perhaps in Luxembourg, as an indirect way for foreigners to invest in Iran, especially small and medium-sized Iranian enterprises, Mostofi said. The fund would issue the financial guarantees that foreigners want in return for a fee, effectively stepping in where banks now fear to tread. Most of the fund s capital would come from Iran, Mostofi said. For now, however, big Western firms remain stuck. Italian power engineering firm Ansaldo Energia, controlled by state investor CDP and part-owned by Shanghai Electric Group (601727.SS), has been in Iran for 70 years. Its chairman, Giuseppe Zampini, told Reuters at the Rome conference there were many opportunities for new contracts but his hands were tied for now, partly because Ansaldo bonds were also in the hands of U.S. investors. My heart says that we are losing something, Zampini said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson: China could do more to curb oil exports to N.Korea;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday welcomed Chinese efforts toward North Korea amid tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear weapons program, but said Beijing could do more with its oil exports to pressure North Korea. The Chinese are doing a lot. We do think they could do more with the oil. We re really asking them to please restrain more of the oil, not cut it off completely, Tillerson said in remarks at the State Department. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Pope urges ""decisive measures"" for Myanmar refugees but avoids ""Rohingya""";DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Thursday called for decisive measures to resolve the political crisis causing mostly Muslim refugees from neighboring Myanmar to flee to Bangladesh. But, just as in the first leg of his trip in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya, which is contested by the Yangon government and military. In a speech before Bangladesh s president hours after arriving, Francis instead spoke of refugees from Rakhine State . He also called on countries to give immediate material assistance to help Bangladesh deal with the crisis. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;For some Russian oligarchs, sanctions risk makes Putin awkward to know;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The threat of new U.S. sanctions has spread anxiety among Russia s wealthiest people that their association with President Vladimir Putin could land them on a U.S. government blacklist, members of the business elite say. The list, to be drawn up by early next year, is part of a sanctions bill passed overwhelmingly by Congress soon after Donald Trump became president and reluctantly signed by him on Aug. 2 despite his avowed wish to improve ties with Moscow. Although those included on the list would not automatically be sanctioned, six people who are part of the business elite or close to the Kremlin said it was a major concern because the criteria for inclusion and the consequences were unclear. People are on edge, said a senior figure in a major Russian company. If they classify you as close to Putin, just try proving it s not the case, the figure said. The Americans tactics are clear: they need to cause pain in all ways possible for those who support Putin. While most of the business elite remains loyal to Putin, the prospect of personal sanctions which can prevent travel abroad or access to foreign bank accounts and freeze foreign assets has prompted some to steer clear, the sources said. A billionaire businessman who has sat on panels of business leaders with Putin and in the front row of the audience when Putin addressed conferences has adjusted his diary to avoid such occasions, a source who works closely with him said. He s simply been trying lately to show up less next to Putin, said the source, who spoke on condition neither he nor his boss be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic. Because it s not clear on what basis there could be sanctions. You get the impression anyone could get hit. A source in the entourage of a second Russian billionaire said several oligarchs had chosen the tactic of keeping a low profile to avoid inclusion in the list. One billionaire businessman in the top 100 of wealthiest Russians spoke to Reuters in person. He said he could not get any clarity from his Russian political contacts about the threat. Asked what steps he could take to protect himself if he was included on a U.S. sanctions blacklist, he said: There s no way. You have to leave. He did not say where he would go. Unusually for one of Russia s billionaire class a group that presents itself as loyal to the Kremlin - he expressed frustration with senior officials, including Putin. The leadership (of the country) does not believe that the sanctions are going to follow the hard scenario, said the businessman, speaking on condition of anonymity. They live in a parallel reality. No one wants to listen to business. Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of any frustration among the business elite from the new sanctions. We know nothing of such views. If they exist and appear, we are always open to discussion, he said. Asked whether he believed that sanctions were aimed at setting up elites against Putin, Peskov said: We are confident this is exactly the case. The Aug. 2 sanctions legislation expanded and toughened sanctions already in force since over Russia s 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea region. The law is very bad, it s very broad, very incoherent, its application could have all sorts of consequences, Andrei Kostin, chief executive of VTB Russia s second biggest bank, said this week, referring to the legislation as a whole. The list, to be drawn up by the Treasury Department, is set to name the most significant Russian oligarchs as determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their net worth . It is meant to be sent to Congress by the end of January, weeks before Russia is due to vote in a presidential election. Though he has not declared his intentions yet, most Kremlin-watchers expect Putin to run and polls show he would easily win. Sanctions lawyers say the list itself has no legal force and inclusion does not mean sanctions will follow. Other provisions of the Aug 2 law present a more immediate threat by raising the level of risk for firms that do business with entities already under sanctions. Nevertheless, Western banks have started making additional checks on people they deem to be associated with Putin, said an executive with a European bank that operates in Russia. The checks, said the executive, were prompted by the Aug. 2 sanctions law and included establishing whether the individuals, whom he did not name, had accounts with the banks concerned. The source did not say whether they were taking any action. Some people in Putin s innermost circle have already been on a U.S. sanctions blacklist since 2014. Gennady Timchenko, an oil mogul and one of Putin s closest friends, called his inclusion in 2014 an honor for me . Timchenko s wife, Elena, had her bank card rejected the same year when she tried to pay for treatment in a German clinic because her husband was under sanctions. The planned list of oligarchs is likely to include people outside that circle, who are not unquestioning Putin loyalists yet could still be punished for their association with him. Everyone s fearful for themselves, they re afraid of personal sanctions, said a source close to a fourth top 100 Russian billionaire. Because, what if the whole of the Russian establishment ends up under sanctions? No one knows, so everyone is afraid. A senior source who is close to the government and the Kremlin said the U.S. authorities were trying to turn Putin s allies against him, especially with the presidential election approaching. If all these threats become reality, in respect of other people as well, that will create powerful tension and discontent in the business elite, said the source. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May says we must stand firm in support of Iran nuclear deal;AMMAN (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday underlined Britain s support for the nuclear deal concluded with Iran which came into force in October 2015. We must stand firm in our support for the ....deal, she told reporters in Jordan at the end of a brief visit to the Middle East. U.S. President Trump has called the Iran deal the worst of its kind ever struck by a U.S. administration. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's U.S. ambassador discussed Trump retweets with senior White House staff: source;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s ambassador to the United States discussed a row over retweets sent by President Donald Trump with senior White House officials on Wednesday, a British government source said on Thursday. The source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, did not give further details of the discussion. Trump has sparked outrage in Britain s political establishment with a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after she criticised him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hezbollah emerges a winner from Mideast turmoil, alarming foes;BEIRUT (Reuters) - When Iran declared victory over Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, it hailed the strong and pivotal role played by Lebanon s Hezbollah movement. The praise, contained in a top general s letter to Iran s Supreme Leader in November, confirmed Hezbollan s pre-eminence among Shi ite Muslim regional groups backed by Tehran that are helping the Islamic Republic exert influence in the Middle East. Hezbollah has emerged as a big winner in the turmoil that has swept the Arab world since the uprisings of 2011 that toppled governments in several countries. It has fought in Syria and Iraq, trained other groups in those countries and inspired other forces such as Iran-allied Houthis waging a war in Yemen. But its growing strength has contributed to a sharp rise in regional tension, alarming Israel, the United States - which designates it as a terrorist organization - and Sunni Muslim monarchy Saudi Arabia, Iran s regional rival, which accuses Hezbollah of having a military role on its doorstep in Yemen. Israel fears Iran and Hezbollah will keep permanent garrisons in Syria and has called for action against Iranian aggression . With Hezbollah stronger than ever, war with Israel is seen by many in the region as inevitable, sooner or later. Hezbollah has gained from the experience of working with armies and managing numerous weapons systems simultaneously - air power, armored vehicles, intelligence, and drones: all specialties of conventional armies, said a commander in a regional alliance fighting in Syria. Hezbollah is now a dynamic army, bringing together guerrilla and conventional warfare. Hezbollah s elevated status among Iran s regional allies was clear at the funeral this month of Hassan Soleimani, father of Major General Qassem Soleimani who wrote the letter praising Hezbollah s role fighting IS in Syria and Iraq. Hezbollah s delegation, led by Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, a top figure in its clerical leadership, took responsibility for organizing talks on the sidelines of the funeral between the various Iranian allies present, an official who attended said. All the resistance factions were at the condolences. Hezbollah coordinated and directed meetings and discussions, the official said. Hezbollah was set up by the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to fight Israeli forces that invaded Lebanon in 1982 and to export Iran s Shi ite Islamist revolution. It has come a long way from the Bekaa Valley camps where its fighters first trained. Its fighters spearheaded the November attack on Albu Kamal, a town near Syria s border with Iraq, which ended IS resistance in its last urban stronghold in the country. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said the battle for Albu Kamal was led by Qassem Soleimani, commander of the branch of the IRGC responsible for operations outside. An Iran-backed Iraqi Shi ite militia, the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), crossed into Syria to help during the battle. Hezbollah helped to set up the Iraqi PMF at the peak of Islamic State s expansion in 2014. The attack was of huge symbolic and strategic significance for Iran and its regional allies, recreating a land route linking Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut - often termed the Shi ite crescent by Iran s regional enemies. The United States says Iran is applying what you might call a Hezbollah model to the Middle East - in which they want governments to be weak, they want governments to be dependent on Iran for support, White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said in late October. So, what is most important, not just for the United States but for all nations, is to confront the scourge of Hezbollah and to confront the scourge of the Iranians and the IRGC who sustain Hezbollah s operations, he told Alhurra, a U.S.-funded Arabic-language news network. Syria is where Hezbollah has made its biggest impact outside Lebanon though its role was kept secret when its fighters first deployed there Syria in mid-2012. The initial aim was to defend the shrine of Sayeda Zeinab, a Shi ite pilgrimage site near Damascus. But as President Bashar al-Assad lost ground, Hezbollah sent more fighters to aid Syrian security forces ill suited to the conflict they faced. Hezbollah s role was crucial in defeating many of the rebels who fought Assad with backing from his regional foes, helping him win back the cities of Aleppo and Homs, and other territory. Its publicly declared role in support of Assad has been accompanied by an effort to establish new Syrian militias that have fought alongside it, said the commander in the regional alliance fighting in Syria. Hezbollah has lost more than 1,500 fighters in Syria, including top commanders. But it has gained military experience, supplementing its know-how in guerrilla tactics with knowledge of conventional warfare thanks to coordination with the Syrian and Russian armies and the IRGC, the commander said. With Iranian support, Hezbollah has raised and trained new Syrian militias including the National Defence Forces, which number in the tens of thousands, and a Shi ite militia known as the Rida force, recruited from Shi ite villages, the commander said. Hezbollah has also taken the lead in the information war with a military news service that often reports on battles before Syrian state media. The United States and Saudi Arabia are worried Hezbollah and Iran are seeking to replicate their strategy in Yemen, by supporting the Houthis against a Riyadh-led military coalition. Hezbollah denies fighting in Yemen, sending weapons to the Houthis, or firing rockets at Saudi Arabia from Yemeni territory. But it does not hide its political support for the Houthi cause. Saudi concern over Yemen is at the heart of a political crisis that rocked Lebanon in November. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s sudden resignation was widely seen as a Saudi-orchestrated move to create trouble for Hezbollah at home. Shared concerns over Hezbollah may have been a motivating factor behind recently declared contacts between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Hezbollah is meanwhile expanding its conventional arsenal in Lebanon, where it is part of the government, including buying advanced rocket and missile technology, in a broadening of the threat to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula , Nick Rasmussen, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said in October. Despite newly imposed U.S. sanctions, Hezbollah sounds confident. With IS now defeated in Iraq, Nasrallah has indicated Hezbollah could withdraw its men from that front, saying they would return to join any other theater where they are needed . He says his group will continue to operate wherever it sees fit, repeatedly declaring: We will be where we need to be. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;REPORT: The White House is a ‘Real Dump’…Hundreds of Problems Left by Previous Administration;Gross! As it turns out, the White House is a wreck with infestations of mice, roaches and ants. It s being reported that hundreds of work orders have been made to fix numerous problems. If anyone can fix the White House up to be the best it can be, it s President Trump. He s a builder and a perfectionist so it s no surprise that he reportedly said the White House is a dump . He s use to 5-star places so we re betting he ll have the White House in 5-star shape AND under budget in no time .MAGA!Apparently, the White House really is a dump with work orders showing reports of mice and cockroach infestations in the West Wing, broken toilet seats in the Oval Office and numerous other problems.The documents, obtained by NBC4 Washington, were made public this week just months after President Trump reportedly criticized the shape that it was left in by the previous administration. That White House is a real dump, he said, according to Golf magazine.While the president later denied the comment, it turns out, there really are loads of issues plaguing the historic structure.White House officials made hundreds of requests for repairs, equipment and pest control in 2017 with the US General Services Administration many of which were similar to those made in 2016 during Barack Obama s final year in office, NBC4 reports.The work orders were similar in number and included reports of mice, cockroaches and even ants!Some orders listed simple projects such as broken doors and chairs, while others detailed requests for TV systems and new decor. It s an enormous job. GSA is assigned to manage that job, explained former GSA Inspector General Brian Miller.Some of the work that needs to be done inside the White House listed a mid-April deadline, though it s unclear if this was actually met. It s also not known if any of the aforementioned issues were ever fixed or dealt with. They are old buildings, Miller said of the grounds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Any of us who have old houses know old houses need a lot of work. Via: NYP ;politics;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER “BAYWATCH” STAR Tries To Flirt Her Way Past Secret Service;Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson tried to use her charms to get past the Secret Service to meet with Vice President Mike Pence. She wanted to speak with Pence about a pardon for Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Anderson has been connected to Assange romantically and reportedly visits him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. She s also become more politically active in recent years because of her awareness of Assange s plight.Page Six reports:Spies tell Page Six that Anderson was in Manhattan filming a PSA at the JW Marriott Essex House when she learned that Pence was at the same address. The blond bombshell has said that she loves WikiLeaks founder Assange and visits him every two weeks in his cramped room at London s Ecuadorian embassy, where he s staying in order to evade extradition.According to onlookers, Anderson marched straight up to the Secret Service and asked to see Pence. A witness said: The Secret Service agent practically swooned and fainted when she walked up to him and started pressing her finger on his badge. Pam said, I d like to meet the vice president. But, the source added, The agent did get it together enough to politely refuse, saying the vice president was busy. Pamela Anderson s attempt to woo the Secret Service was unsuccessful.When we reached activist Anderson for comment, she confirmed to Page Six: I wanted to thank [Pence] for supporting protection of sources for journalists. He is heralded for co-sponsoring proposals for a federal shield law, which I deeply admire. This action would have allowed journalists to keep confidential sources secret even if the government requested them. She added, I really wanted to mention this it is a topic close to my heart. Julian Assange deserves a pardon, and I thought I might be able to help. Julian is a hero to most of the world s youth and free-minded thinking people. America needs to be on the right side of history. ;politics;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SHEILA JACKSON LEE Gets Into It With MSNBC Host Over Conyers: ‘Let me be clear!’ [Video]; A conversation with MSNBC host Craig Melvin got heated today when Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) refused to say Thursday whether her Democratic colleague Rep. John Conyers (Mich.) should resign. She was all over the map and was confused about what she thinks about Conyers saying, Congress should instead focus on how to change the system. Straddling the fence has never been more fun to watch with these leftists who don t know what the hell to do. My brain hurt after watching this interview What did she just say except to repeatedly say she s not taking a back seat over and over again We hear ya Sheila but what does that have to do with Conyers resigning? MSNBC host Craig Melvin repeatedly asked the congresswoman about sexual harassment allegations against Conyers, but Jackson Lee steadfastly refused to say her colleague should step down: I believe the decision to go or come will be the decision of that member, she said. As I understand it, Mr. Conyers is with his family. I m praying for them. I m praying for the women, and I m praying for them to make their decision. But all those decisions are usually at the behest of the member and I expect that to be the case here. Melvin asked if she thought the Democratic Party was sacrificing its credibility on standing up for women by not pushing out Conyers. Jackson Lee denied that was the case.NICE PIVOT BY LEE TO BLAST TRUMP BUT WE RE NOT BUYING IT: Craig, absolutely not, because the story is not near concluded, she said before shifting to say what is appalling are the allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and President Donald Trump.Melvin pressed Jackson Lee further on her position about the women who have come forward against Conyers, bringing up an African-American accuser who was on the Today show Thursday morning. The Texas Democrat said Melvin was mishearing her because she is not taking a backseat on matters of sexual harassment. She said Democrats would not be wimps on this issue.THE TRUTH WAS RIGHT THERE:WHEN CRAIG SAID THE CONYERS VICTIM LOOKS JUST LIKE US IT WAS ON!Jackson-Lee repeated AGAIN that she s not taking a backseat on matters of sexual harassment Yada, yada, yada ;politics;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: JOHN CONYERS’ Attorney Suggests Nancy Pelosi Is A Racist For Saying Conyers Should Resign;"Apparently, the arrogant 88-year-old Congressman John Conyers, who is being accused of sexual misconduct by several women, is not going to leave the halls of Congress on his own. Yesterday, Black Caucus member, Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC) claimed that the women accusing Conyers of sexual misconduct were all white women or racists. Today, Conyers black accuser is speaking out.More than a week after it was first reported that Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Detroit, settled a sexual harassment claim in 2015, the woman he settled with is speaking out.WATCH: ""Can you tell me what you say John Conyers did when you were his employee?"" @savannahguthrie asks Rep. Conyers accuser Marion Brown pic.twitter.com/2jsszMStWj TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 30, 2017Brown s 2014 complaint, and a settlement she reached with Conyers in 2015, were first reported by BuzzFeed News last week. The report did not identify Brown, who signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of the settlement that prohibited her from speaking about it.The report included Brown s accusation that Conyers had fired her after she rejected his sexual advances. Since then, at least two other female former staffers have accused Conyers of sexual harassment. Conyers denies the allegations.Lisa Bloom, the high-profile attorney representing Brown, issued a statement Sunday calling on Conyers and the congressional Office of Compliance to release her client from the non-disclosure agreement.Brown said Thursday that she decided to break the agreement and speak out to be a voice for other women. I felt it was worth the risk to stand up for all the women in the workforce that are voiceless ordinary women like myself with extraordinary challenges, working in the workforce, that are dominated by men, she said. Huffington PostWATCH: ""Did you ever tell any of your superiors?"" @savannahguthrie asks Rep. Conyers accuser Marion Brown pic.twitter.com/EAsOYkU0Ry TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 30, 2017Before Conyer s accuser Marion Brown came out and courageously appeared on the Today Show, Nancy Pelosi stood firm in her belief that Conyers was innocent. She even went as far as to call him an icon during her interview with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd:.@NancyPelosi: Accused Congressman Conyers is an ""icon"" in our country. #MTP pic.twitter.com/4QlKKJTIJP Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) November 26, 2017Now that Conyer s accuser has revealed herself to the public and is being represented by the high-profile, leftist lawyer, Lisa Bloom, Nancy has suddenly had a change of heart and is now calling for the resignation of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).BREAKING: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calls for resignation of Rep. John Conyers https://t.co/wXXKqJGQKV pic.twitter.com/D8cRNKAiNE WXYZ Detroit (@wxyzdetroit) November 30, 2017Speaker of the House Paul Ryan joined the chorus today and called for the resignation of Congressman Conyers..@SpeakerRyan on Congressman Conyers: ""Yes, I think he should resign. I think he should resign immediately."" pic.twitter.com/z7NIHwOc2X CSPAN (@cspan) November 30, 2017Meanwhile, Conyers attorney, Arnold Reed, is laughing at the idea that the 88-year-old congressman who has been accused by several women of sexual misconduct would resign. Today, during his press conference in Detroit, Reed called out the idea that Nancy Pelosi would call for his client to resign while ignoring (white) Senator Al Franken (D-MN). During his press conferencet today Reed told reporters that Nancy Pelosi won t tell Conyers what to do. Reed then pulled the race card from the bottom of the deck, asking: What is the discernible difference between Al Franken and John Conyers? Rep. Conyers' attorney on calls for resignation: ""It is not up to Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi did not elect [Conyers] and she sure as hell wont be the one to tell the congressman to leave"" pic.twitter.com/fxaRpDRQmh NBC News (@NBCNews) November 30, 2017NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt tweeted about Conyers belligerent lawyer:JOHN CONYERS' LAWYER says Nancy Pelosi won't tell him what to do: ""What is the discernible difference between Al Franken and John Conyers?"" he says Kasie Hunt (@kasie) November 30, 2017Yesterday, Conyers arrogant and defiant lawyer tweeted that his client is not going to be forced out of office :Attorney: Conyers not going to be forced out of office https://t.co/Np2bGmUGdI via @detroitnews Arnold E. Reed (@ArnoldReedEsq) November 30, 2017";politics;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HILLARY OWNS THIS! How Clinton Brought Black African Slavery to Libya [Video];Even more reason to believe it s a good thing Hillary Clinton isn t formulating U.S. foreign policy:Footage from Libya recently released showed young men from sub-Saharan Africa being auctioned off as farm workers in slave markets Yes, slave markets! Horrible! Eight hundred, says the auctioneer. 900 1,000 1,100 Sold. For 1,200 Libyan dinars the equivalent of $800. Not a used car, a piece of land, or an item of furniture. Not merchandise at all, but two human beings.One of the unidentified men being sold in the grainy cell phone video obtained by CNN is Nigerian. He appears to be in his twenties and is wearing a pale shirt and sweatpants.He has been offered up for sale as one of a group of big strong boys for farm work, according to the auctioneer, who remains off camera. Only his hand resting proprietorially on the man s shoulder is visible in the brief clip. After seeing footage of this slave auction, CNN worked to verify its authenticity and traveled to Libya to investigate further.Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness a dozen people go under the hammer in the space of six or seven minutes. Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he ll dig, the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. What am I bid, what am I bid? Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, 500, 550, 600, 650 Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new masters. And how did we get to this point? As the BBC reported back in May, Libya has been beset by chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011. And who was behind that overthrow? None other than then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.You broke it, Hillary. You own it.Bush 43 had a deal with Gadhafi, according to which the dictator abandoned his weapons of mass destruction in return for not getting deposed. Obama and Hillary reneged on the deal, resulting in the creation of an ISIS/al Qaeda terrorist wonderland in a country that had been neutralized;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: MI DEMOCRAT Candidate For AG Makes Ad Promising Not To Show Her P*nis If She’s Elected; Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Democrat Dana Nessel asks in the new ad. Is it the candidate who doesn t have a penis? I d so say. She then makes several promises to her voters: I will not sexually harass my staff. And I won t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won t walk around in a half-open bathrobe. The ad follows allegations of sexual misconduct against U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., among others.Conyers, who allegedly used taxpayer money to settle with an accuser, won t seek re-election next year, Detroit s WDIV-TV reported.Nessel, a former assistant prosecutor vying against Republican state House Speaker Tom Leonard and Democratic state Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, told WJBK-TV that she does not think the ad crosses a line. I think the ad was rather tame when it comes to the news stories that have come out whether they are journalists, whether they re in Hollywood, or whether they re political representatives, she said. We ve heard some pretty lewd stories coming out. Fox News;politics;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentine court sentences 29 to life for dictatorship crimes;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina sentenced 29 people, some with nicknames like Blond Angel of Death and The Tiger, to life sentences on Wednesday in a trial involving some 800 cases of kidnapping, torture and murder during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. Many defendants, including former Navy Captain Alfredo Astiz and Captain Jorge Acosta, were already serving life sentences for Dirty War crimes committed at the ESMA Naval Mechanics School that was converted into a clandestine prison and torture center. For the first time in the so-called ESMA mega-case, however, Wednesday s sentence included convictions for death flights, when people were drugged and their bodies dumped in the River Plate. Giving sedatives to our loved ones before or during the flight before throwing them in the river or the sea is unbelievable;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump fires back at Britain's May: 'Don't focus on me';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump fired back at British Prime Minister Theresa May over her criticism of his retweeting of anti-Muslim videos, saying she should focus on terrorism in Britain. Theresa @theresamay, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine, Trump tweeted. The Twitter handle Trump included in his tweet was not that of the British leader. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran opposition candidate rejects official election count;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Salvador Nasralla, the Honduran opposition candidate whose early lead against President Juan Orlando Hernandez in a presidential election has evaporated, on Wednesday said he rejected the vote count of the electoral tribunal. Earlier, both candidates vowed to respect the final result once every disputed vote had been scrutinized, issuing signed statements brokered by the Organization of American States. But Nasralla told a news conference a few hours later that the document had no validity and rejected the count. Nasralla initially held a five point lead against Hernandez until the electoral count suddenly stopped on Monday. When it restarted on Tuesday, the count began favoring Hernandez who edged ahead earlier on Wednesday before it stopped again. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU says needs concrete evidence from Turkey to deem Gulen network as terrorist;ANKARA (Reuters) - The European Union does not share Turkey s view that the network of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen is a terrorist organization and would need to see substantive evidence to change its stance, the EU s counter-terrorism coordinator said. The comments by Gilles de Kerchove are likely to infuriate Ankara, which accuses Gulen of masterminding a failed military coup last year, in which more than 250 people were killed. Gulen has denied the charge and condemned the coup. Turkey has long accused its NATO allies, including the United States and Germany, of failing to condemn the abortive putsch strongly enough, saying they appeared more concerned by Ankara s ensuing crackdown on suspected supporters of the coup. As for FETO, we don t see it as a terrorist organization, and I don t believe the EU is likely to change its position soon, Kerchove said, using the Turkish government s acronym for Gulen s network. You need not only circumstantial evidence - like just downloading an app - but concrete substantive data which shows that they were involved..., he told Reuters in an interview cleared for publication on Thursday. Turkish authorities have detained some 50,000 people, including teachers, police officers, journalists and U.S. consular staff for alleged links to Gulen s network. Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs. Some have been detained for having downloaded ByLock, a messaging app the government says was used by the coup plotters. Others have been detained for having had telephone calls with ByLock users. Human rights groups and some EU officials accuse Erdogan of using the crackdown to muzzle dissent in Turkey, a charge Ankara denies. It says the scale of the clampdown is justified because the Gulen network threatens national security. Gulen was once an ally of Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party and his movement ran schools, banks and media outlets in Turkey until the two men had a public falling-out in 2013. Germany s BND spy agency has said it is not convinced that Gulen was behind the failed coup, in which rogue soldiers used tanks and helicopters to attack Turkey s parliament and other key targets. Turkey has also sought, so far unsuccessfully, Gulen s extradition from the United States, where the cleric has lived in self-imposed exile since 1999. U.S. officials say their courts require sufficient evidence to order his extradition. As of July, Turkey had supplied 84 boxes of documents to the United States for evidence, Ankara s envoy to Washington has said, although he has acknowledged that more concrete evidence of Gulen s direct involvement has remained elusive. Germany, which has sharply criticized the mass arrests in Turkey, has refused to extradite people Ankara says were involved in the plot or linked to Gulen s network. The decision on extradition is in the hands of all member states, and most of the time the judiciary, the independent judiciary, and they need hard evidence, Kerchove said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China vows more checks on teachers after kindergarten abuse scandal;BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Thursday pledged stiffer oversight of preschool teachers, including closer checks on their qualifications, following an outcry over allegations of child abuse at a private kindergarten in Beijing. The case has become a lighting rod for anger at a lack of trained teachers, low wages and poor oversight in China s massive and fast-growing private pre-school sector. Claims that teachers at a school in the capital run by New York-listed RYB Education had abused children sparked an outpouring of anger online last week. On Tuesday, police in Beijing dismissed as unfounded some of the claims, such as one that children were given tablets or another that doctors had undressed them for medical checkups. The education ministry will do more to check the qualifications of new entrants to teaching and will adopt tougher oversight measures, deputy minister Tian Xuejun said, in reply to a question from Reuters about the scandal. Most teachers are cautious and conscientious workers who provide a happy environment for children, he said, adding, But there have also been a few individual incidents like this that we do not wish to see. Tian attributed such events to Chinese parents unmet demand for pre-school education of high quality. We believe one side of incidents like this at kindergartens reflects a contradiction between the masses rigid desire for pre-schools and the inadequate and unbalanced development of education, he said. Tian s view echoed President Xi Jinping s declaration, at a top meeting of the ruling Communist Party in October, that the core issue facing Chinese society is unequal and imbalanced development that fails to meet people s desire for a nice life. RYB appears to have weathered the storm, seeing its shares recover some of their initial losses after the scandal broke, thanks in part to active and effective crisis management by the company s founder, experts said. Teachers and academics have said that stamping out abuse remains a challenge in China, especially at franchised, private-sector schools where competition for entry is fierce and norms for teachers are less stringent. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov: little difference between policies of Trump and Obama - RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The actions of U.S. President Donald Trump s team are similar to the policies of his predecessor Barack Obama, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview, state-run RIA news agency reported on Thursday. Unfortunately, many actions of Donald Trump s team are inertial and, in fact, are little different from the line of Barack Obama, RIA quoted Lavrov as saying in the interview with Italian newspaper Libero. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan emperor to cede all public duties after abdication: prince;TOKYO (Reuters) - Emperor Akihito will hand over all public duties to his heir after retiring in what will be Japan s first abdication in nearly two centuries, the monarch s younger son said, responding to worries a former emperor might weaken his successor s status. Japan s constitution defines the emperor as a symbol of the state and the people, without political power. His duties include Shinto religious ceremonies and constitutionally-defined tasks, such as the opening of parliament. The octogenarian Akihito s 29-year reign has also been marked by travels to domestic disaster sites to cheer survivors, and overseas to soothe the wounds of a war fought in the name of his father, Emperor Hirohito, who was considered divine until Japan s defeat in World War Two. Some experts, recalling past examples when ex-emperors kept their influence, had feared the former monarch s existence would undercut the symbolic status of his heir, Crown Prince Naruhito. The emperor all along has intended to pass all his public duties including state acts to the next emperor, Naruhito s younger brother, Prince Akishino, said in remarks published to mark his 52nd birthday on Thursday. Even if there are concerns about dual authority , if that expression is appropriate, I can clearly say that it is impossible, he added. A law enacted in June allows Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23, to step down, but details have yet to be worked out. A special panel will discuss possible dates on Friday, with the cabinet to make a final decision. The abdication is expected to take place in 2019. Akihito, who has had heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, said in rare remarks last year that he feared age might make it hard to fulfill his duties. Akishino, who is next in line to the throne after the 57-year-old Naruhito, said he wanted his father to rest after retiring. I hope the emperor will spend relaxing time as much as possible after the abdication, he said. Akishino said he was willing to take on the crown prince s duties as much as possible after Naruhito ascends the throne but would need to consult his older brother. This is unprecedented, so there are many things I can not imagine, he said. Akishino s 11-year-old son, Prince Hisahito, is the emperor s only grandson and will be second in line to the throne after the abdication. Naruhito s daughter, Princess Aiko, who turns 16 on Friday, cannot inherit the males-only throne. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. intel committee subpoenas comedian in Russia election meddling probe;(Reuters) - A New York comedian has been compelled to appear before a House Intelligence Committee investigating suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election where he will likely face questions about acting as a go-between for Wikileaks and an ally of President Donald Trump. Randy Credico, a political activist who hosted a radio show on New York radio, is scheduled to appear in front of the committee on Dec. 15, according to a photo of the subpoena posted on his Twitter account. On several occasions over the last few years, Credico interviewed and met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a man believed by some U.S. officials and lawmakers to be an untrustworthy pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Assange s group released Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign that U.S. intelligence agencies say were hacked by Russia to try to tilt the election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. He is regarded with distaste by many in Washington, although Trump, then the Republican candidate, supported the group s email releases last year. Credico has also interviewed Republican political consultant Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, who he worked with in the past to reform New York s drug laws, according to the New York Times. Stone flatly denied allegations of collusion between the president s associates and Russia during the 2016 U.S. election in a meeting with House of Representatives Intelligence Committee in September. During his appearance in front of the committee, Stone refused to identify an opinion journalist who had acted as a go-between between Stone and Assange. According to Stone s own account to Reuters, he reluctantly identified the journalist as Credico in written communication to the committee. The committee has been interested in predictions that Stone made about damage the email release would have on Clinton s campaign, the Times reported. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope heads for Bangladesh after diplomatic balancing act in Myanmar;YANGON (Reuters) - Pope Francis flew to Bangladesh on Thursday after a visit to Myanmar where he made no direct reference to the plight of Muslim Rohingya people to avoid a diplomatic incident with a Buddhist-majority country some have accused of ethnic cleansing. There will be no such balancing act for the pope in Bangladesh s capital, Dhaka, where he is expected to meet a group of Rohingya refugees from among the roughly 625,000 who have fled neighboring Myanmar since the end of August. The Vatican on Wednesday defended the pope s decision not to use the word Rohingya in public during his four-day Myanmar trip, saying his moral authority was unblemished and that his mere presence drew attention to the refugee crisis. But a Vatican news conference in Yangon to wrap up the visit only served to highlight the diplomatic minefield that the issue had presented for Francis. Spokesman Greg Burke said the pope s decision not to refer to the Rohingya did not take away from anything he has said in the past - he had mentioned them and their suffering before his Myanmar visit - but added that Vatican diplomacy was not infallible and others were entitled to their views. Muddying the waters for the Vatican delegation, a Myanmar regional bishop cast doubt at the same news conference about allegations of ethnic cleansing, suggesting other communities might be responsible for stoking them. When we speak of the truth, we should go to an authoritative source or a reliable source to get the news ... Those who criticize should go to the scene to study the reality and history, Bishop John Hsane Hgyi said. The Global New Light of Myanmar, a state-run daily, seized on the bishop s comments, putting a banner headline on its front page that read Reports of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine is not reliable: Myanmar church . The exodus of Rohingya people from Rakhine state to the southern tip of Bangladesh was sparked by a military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, and refugees arriving in Bangladesh told of killings and rapes. The United Nations has accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing and last week Washington said the military s campaign included horrendous atrocities aimed at ethnic cleansing . Myanmar s military has denied accusations of murder, rape and forced displacement. The government blames the crisis on the Rohingya militants, whom it has condemned as terrorists. Many people in Myanmar regard the largely stateless Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, they are excluded from the 135 national races recognized by law, and even using the name is considered inflammatory. Although Francis studiously avoided the term, following the advice of local Church officials who feared it could turn Myanmar s military and government against minority Christians, his calls for justice, human rights and respect were widely seen as applicable to the Rohingya. Francis held talks during his trip with Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate and longtime champion of democracy who in 2016 formed Myanmar s first civilian government in half a century. Suu Kyi has faced a barrage of criticism from Western nations in recent weeks for expressing doubts about reports of abuses against Rohingya and for failing to condemn the military. China has backed what Myanmar officials call a legitimate counter-insurgency operation in Rakhine, and stepped in to prevent a resolution on the crisis at the U.N. Security Council, support observers believe will draw Suu Kyi closer to Beijing. Myanmar s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Suu Kyi left on Thursday morning for China to join a forum of world leaders hosted by the Communist Party of China. Suu Kyi s defenders say she is hamstrung by a constitution written by the military that left the army in control of security and much of the apparatus of the state. The military s power was clear on Monday when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, demanded to meet Pope Francis before Sun Kyi, upending a schedule that had her meeting the pontiff first. I m sure the pope would have preferred meeting the general after he had done the official visits, spokesman Burke said. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU calls for 'equal rights' for all in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar must guarantee equal rights for everyone in troubled Rakhine state as talks on repatriation of more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh gather steam, the new EU ambassador to the country said on Thursday. Kristian Schmidt, who took over the European Union mission in Yangon some two months ago, also called on the administration of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to break down barriers between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine. He said the return of refugees should be voluntary and the involvement of the United Nations agencies in the repatriation process would be extremely useful . The initial deal struck by Bangladesh and Myanmar mentions the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, but does not specify its role. Schmidt said Myanmar must address the root causes of the Rakhine crisis, such as decades-long discrimination against the Rohingya population that included restrictions on movement and lack of access to proper education. The primary priority, which is for the local authorities and the union government to establish rule of law, non-discriminatory civilian administration ... and equal rights for everyone, Schmidt told Reuters in an interview in Yangon. There are root causes that must be addressed in Rakhine state so when the refugees return they do not return to the situation ex ante - this is not sustainable, he said. The exodus of Rohingya was triggered by an army crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on security forces on Aug. 25 - attacks Schmidt referred to as terrorism and the EU has condemned. Schmidt said confining the Rohingya to villages reduced education opportunities and could have radicalized some. You should not be surprised later that some of the elements of that population radicalizes. Becomes increasingly desperate, he said. Amid the army crackdown, scores of Rohingya villages were burnt and refugees have told reporters of killings and rapes. The United Nations and the United States have both accused Myanmar of ethnic cleansing , a charge the country denies. In response to the army operation, Brussels suspended invitations to Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing and senior army officers. We are ready to review that decision at any time in light of positive or not-so-positive news. We still of course understand the importance the military of Myanmar plays in Myanmar s economic and democratic transition so dialogue is open, said Schmidt. He added, however, that there was the need for accountability and reiterated the EU s support for a U.N.-mandated fact-finding mission that Suu Kyi s administration has opposed and blocked from operating in the country. There has to be a credible, independent investigation of the events that led 620,000 people to flee to quite horrible conditions on the other side of the border, he said. We need to know. The Danish diplomat spoke on the sidelines of a conference promoting the EU s Erasmus+ program of exchanges between university students. He wants Myanmar students to take part in it to help overhaul institutions as the country emerges from decades of isolation under military dictatorship. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany withdraws diplomat from North Korea;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Germany is withdrawing a third diplomat from its embassy in North Korea over increasing concerns about Pyongyang s missile program, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday, a day after Pyongyang test fired a new missile. North Korea said on Wednesday it had successfully tested a powerful new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Berlin strongly condemned the test as a violation of international law. Speaking in Washington after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Gabriel said he had offered support for taking a tough line towards Pyongyang. He wants our support for their efforts to pursue a hardline position vis a vis North Korea, and he has it. But it s our job to decide what we will do in diplomatic channels. Two diplomats had already been withdrawn from the German embassy in Pyongyang, and a third was being pulled out now, Gabriel said. Germany was also demanding North Korea reduce its diplomatic presence in Germany. Gabriel said Washington had not demanded that Germany, one of seven European countries with embassies in North Korea, shut its mission or withdraw its ambassador. It was not Germany s desire to shut down its embassy, he said, but added: that doesn t mean we are ruling it out. Gabriel said Germany would discuss North Korea options with fellow European countries to determine whether it s necessary to further increase the diplomatic pressure. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States had called on countries to scale back or cut ties with North Korea as part of an effort to pressure Pyongyang to give up its weapons programs. If they would be willing to close their missions in North Korea altogether, that is also something we would be supportive of, she said, while adding that Tillerson had not specifically asked in his meeting with Gabriel for Germany to recall its ambassador. Gabriel also told reporters that he had no information about reports that the White House planned to replace Tillerson, noting that he had already scheduled another meeting with Tillerson for next week. U.S. officials said on Thursday the White House had developed a plan for CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson within weeks. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says U.S. idea to cut all ties with N.Korea simplistic;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Thursday that the main question now is finding a solution to the North Korea crisis rather then cutting all ties with Pyongyang. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Wednesday called for other countries to sever all ties with Pyongyang, including cutting trade links and expelling North Korean workers. Cutting all relations would be too simple, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SHOCKING VERDICT: Kate Steinle Murdered By Illegal Alien Who Walks Free [Video];A shocking verdict and race baiting was on the menu tonight in the liberal bastion of San Francisco tonight The prosecutor in the Kate Steinle case won and then came out to make a statement where he attacked President Trump and waisted no time politicizing the verdict as it relates to gun control. He claimed that the president was fomenting hate Huh? This is where we are in America right now: An illegal alien with 7 prior felony convictions murders a legal American citizen and goes free Americans last? Illegals first?LISTEN TO THIS JACKWAGON LAWYER POLITICIZING THIS CASE:Matt Gonzalez: The physical evidence has always supported the finding that this was an accidental occurrence, and I think the jury came to that conclusion. #TheStory pic.twitter.com/QDy4qNx4zZ Fox News (@FoxNews) December 1, 2017HARD TO HEAR BUT MATT GONZALEZ POLITICIZES THE CASE: There are a number of people who have commented on this case in the past few years: the Attorney General of the United States, the President and the Vice President of the United States, let me just remind them that they are themselves under investigation by a special prosecutor in Washington D.C., and they may themselves soon avail themselves of the presumption of innocence and beyond a reasonable doubt standard, Gonzalez says. I would ask them to reflect on that before they comment or disparage the result in this case. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez speaking to critics of the jury verdict, specifically @realDonaldTrump, who faces Mueller's investigation pic.twitter.com/gDoC2ccHOK ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) December 1, 2017HOW IS WHAT CANDIDATE TRUMP SAID IN 2015 ABOUT THE STEINLE CASE FOMENTING HATE ?: This senseless and totally preventable act of violence committed by an illegal immigrant is yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately, Trump said in July 2015. This is an absolutely disgraceful situation and I am the only one that can fix it. Nobody else has the guts to even talk about it. That won t happen if I become President. HEARTBREAKING TESTIMONY FROM KATE STEINLE S DAD:Kate Steinle s father testifies and says his daughters last words were help me, Dad . Long Live #KateSteinle pic.twitter.com/r7uyK2amuY Based Monitored (@BasedMonitored) December 1, 2017ABC News reports:In a surprising verdict, the jury of six men and six women deliberated and came back with a not guilty verdict for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. The defendant was facing second degree murder charges for killing 32-year-old Pleasanton resident Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015 at Pier 14 in San Francisco.While Garcia Zarate can technically walk out of the courtroom, it s expected that he will be taken into custody by Immigration officials and eventually deported back to his native Mexico.The case gained notoriety because Garcia Zarate is an undocumented immigrant who had been deported several times and had a number of felony convictions. Steinle s death became part of the immigration debate in this country. During his campaign, President Trump criticized San Francisco for its sanctuary city status.;left-news;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: MI DEMOCRAT Candidate For AG Makes Ad Promising Not To Show Her P*nis If She’s Elected; Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Democrat Dana Nessel asks in the new ad. Is it the candidate who doesn t have a penis? I d so say. She then makes several promises to her voters: I will not sexually harass my staff. And I won t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won t walk around in a half-open bathrobe. The ad follows allegations of sexual misconduct against U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., among others.Conyers, who allegedly used taxpayer money to settle with an accuser, won t seek re-election next year, Detroit s WDIV-TV reported.Nessel, a former assistant prosecutor vying against Republican state House Speaker Tom Leonard and Democratic state Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, told WJBK-TV that she does not think the ad crosses a line. I think the ad was rather tame when it comes to the news stories that have come out whether they are journalists, whether they re in Hollywood, or whether they re political representatives, she said. We ve heard some pretty lewd stories coming out. Fox News;left-news;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Sources Confirm Robert Mueller’s Office Interviewed Jared Kushner Several Weeks Ago;Jared Kushner, senior White House adviser and son-in-law of President Donald Trump, was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller s office at the beginning of November, according to a source familiar with the process. As part of an interview that lasted approximately 90 minutes, Kushner was quizzed mainly on his interactions, meetings, and any general contact he had with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as his son, in regards to Flynn s private business dealings with his firm, Flynn Intel Group. Mr. Kushner has voluntarily cooperated with all relevant inquiries and will continue to do so, Kushner s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement given to NBC News.The news of Kushner s interview first came to light when grand jury testimony related to Flynn s private business dealings was postponed by prosecutors working for Mueller, the reason for which is still unclear. This postponement came just a week after Flynn s attorneys alerted President Trump s legal team that information related to the case could no longer be shared between the two parties, nor are they allowed to publicly comment on the matter. It is not uncommon for defense teams to share information, but the practice is considered unethical once a conflict of interest arises, not that Donald Trump has ever been particularly concerned with matters as trivial as ethics. The fact that Flynn s attorneys are no longer sharing information with Trump s legal team is in no way proof that Flynn is cooperating with the special counsel, but it is a decent sign that he is working with them, but Trump s team has been expecting this for quite some time. It is probably a plea deal, Jay Sekulow, a member of President Trump s legal team, told CBS News earlier in the month. That is the assumption. And if it is a plea that doesn t necessarily mean it has anything to do with the president. The Manafort indictment didn t have anything to do with the campaign or Trump. Michael Flynn served as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was fired from the position in 2014 by former President Barack Obama, however, he still retained a security clearance, even during Trump s presidential campaign and transition into the White House until Flynn s role was terminated 23 days into Trump s presidency. Any possible cooperation Flynn has with the prosecution could give Mueller s counsel insight into the Trump campaign s operations and potential dealings with Russia, as well as the first few weeks of his presidency.The FBI is already looking into both Flynn s Trump lobbying and Flynn Intel Group s research work for an unfinished film for which the firm was paid $530,000 by a Turkish businessman. Employees of Sphere Consulting, who did public relations work on the film, have been turning over documents requested by Mueller s investigators and sitting for voluntary interviews for several months.Featured image via Olivier Douliery Pool/Getty Images;News;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: China's North Korea diplomacy appears to have 'no impact on Little Rocket Man';WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed a Chinese diplomatic effort to rein in North Korea s weapons program as a failure on Thursday, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Beijing was doing a lot, but could do more to limit oil supplies to Pyongyang. In a tweet, Trump delivered another insulting barb against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who he called Little Rocket Man and a sick puppy after North Korea test-fired its most advanced missile to date on Wednesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington s approach was dangerously provocative. Trump s tweets further inflamed tensions reignited this week after North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a breakthrough that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons whose warheads could withstand re-entry to the Earth s atmosphere. The Chinese envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man, Trump said on Twitter, a day after speaking with Chinese President Chinese President Xi Jinping and reiterating his call for Beijing to use its leverage against North Korea. Tillerson on Thursday welcomed Chinese efforts on North Korea, but said Beijing could do more to limit its oil exports to the country. The Chinese are doing a lot. We do think they could do more with the oil. We re really asking them to please restrain more of the oil, not cut it off completely, Tillerson said at the State Department. China is North Korea s neighbor and its sole major trading partner. While Trump has been bellicose at times in rhetoric toward North Korea, Tillerson has persistently held out hopes for a return to dialogue if North Korea shows it is willing to give up its nuclear weapons program. However, Tillerson may not remain in his job long, with disagreements with Trump over North Korea being one factor. On Thursday, senior Trump administration officials said the White House was considering a plan to replace Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea and that the United States would be unrelenting in working through the United Nations. In spite of Trump s rhetoric and warnings that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea, his administration has stressed it favors a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Trump has pledged more sanctions in response to the latest test and, at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting late Wednesday, the United States warned North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. This administration is focused on one big thing when it comes to North Korea, and that s denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a regular White House briefing. Anything beyond that is not the priority at this point, she said, responding to a question on whether regime change was on the administration s agenda after Trump s recent tweets and a speech by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Lavrov pointed to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises planned for December and accused the United States of trying to provoke Kim into flying off the handle over his missile program to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country. He also flatly rejected a U.S. call for Russia to cut ties with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile program, calling U.S. policy toward North Korea deeply flawed. In a call with Trump on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the missile launched this week was North Korea s most advanced so far, but it was unclear whether Pyongyang had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and it still needed to prove other things, such as its re-entry technology. A White House statement said Trump and Moon reiterated their strong commitment to enhancing the deterrence and defense capabilities of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and added: Both leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to compelling North Korea to return to the path of denuclearization at any cost. North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim s leadership and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September. It has said its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention. Previous U.S. administrations have failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and a sophisticated missile program. Trump, who has previously said the United States would totally destroy North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from the nuclear threat, has also struggled to contain Pyongyang since taking office in January. ;worldnews;30/11/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's military muscles into first post-Mugabe cabinet;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa appointed senior military officials to top posts in his first cabinet on Friday in what was widely seen as a reward for the army s role in the removal of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe. Sworn in as president a week ago after 93-year-old Mugabe quit in the wake of a de facto military coup, Mnangagwa made Major-General Sibusiso Moyo foreign minister and handed Air Marshal Perrance Shiri the sensitive land portfolio. The new president, who later on Friday spoke publicly about the need to draw on local expertise and skills to put the economy back on robust footing, also brought back Patrick Chinamasa as finance minister despite his chequered record in that post previously. Most Zimbabweans remember Moyo as the khaki-clad general who went on state television in the early hours of Nov. 15 to announce the military takeover that ended Mugabe s 37-year rule. Shiri is feared - and loathed - by many Zimbabweans as the former commander of the North Korean-trained 5 Brigade that played a central role in the so-called Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland in 1983 in which an estimated 20,000 people were killed. The land portfolio is a sensitive but economically crucial one since land reforms in the early 2000s led to violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and the collapse of the nation s economy. For most observers, this (the new cabinet line-up) looks like a reward for the military - or more specifically like the military asserting its authority, London-based political analyst Alex Magaisa wrote on Twitter. Mnangagwa, a former state security chief known as The Crocodile , dropped allies of Mugabe s wife, Grace, but brought back many Mugabe loyalists from the ruling ZANU-PF party, disappointing those who had been expecting a break with the past. Zimbabweans were expecting a sea change from the Mugabe era. After all, had there not been a revolution, or so they thought? Magaisa said. New information minister Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of the powerful liberation war veterans, was not immediately available for comment. Mnangagwa s opponents from Grace Mugabe s ousted G40 faction derided the line-up as old wine in a khaki bottle. Even #Nigeria didn t have so many commanders in Cabinet in its coup days! former information minister and G40 leader Jonathan Moyo, who remains in hiding, said on Twitter. Chinamasa, a lawyer by training, had been finance minister since 2013 until he was shifted to the new ministry of cyber security in a reshuffle this year. His predecessor and Mugabe ally Ignatius Chombo, is in jail facing corruption charges dating back more than two decades. A high court on Friday postponed Chombo s hearing to next Tuesday. During Chinamasa s time in charge, though, the economy stagnated, with a lack of exports causing acute dollars shortages that crippled the financial system and led to long queues outside banks. The issuance of billions of dollars of domestic debt to pay for a bloated civil service - a key component of the ZANU-PF patronage machine under Mugabe - also triggered a collapse in the value of Zimbabwe s de facto currency and ignited inflation. I had expected a more broad-based cabinet, said economist Anthony Hawkins, adding that Mnangagwa s faith in Chinamasa suggested loyalty trumped ability. Chinamasa s appointment was to be expected, notwithstanding his appalling record. With elections due next year, Mnangagwa needs to deliver a quick economic bounce and has made clear he wants to curb wasteful expenditure. His cabinet has 22 ministers compared to Mugabe s 33. One of his most pressing tasks will be to patch up relations with donors and the outside world and work out a deal to clear Zimbabwe s $1.8 billion of arrears to the World Bank and African Development Bank. Without that, the new administration will be unable to unlock any new external financing. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told Reuters this week London was thinking about extending a bridging loan to Harare to allow this to happen, although said it depended on how the democratic process unfolds . Speaking publicly for the first time as president at a graduation ceremony at a university in Chinhoyi, 110 km (68 miles) south of Harare, Mnangagwa, however, appeared to be looking to local expertise to put the economy on a stronger footing. As we engage the world it is of great importance to have our own home-grown solutions to develop our economy and benchmark ourselves on the best in the global village, he said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Flynn prepared to testify Trump directed him to contact Russians: ABC;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, is prepared to testify that Trump directed him to make contact with Russians when he was a presidential candidate, ABC News reported on Friday. Reuters has not verified the ABC News report, which cited a Flynn confidant. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea won't disarm, says Russian delegation to Pyongyang: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers who visited Pyongyang said North Korea was not prepared to disarm, and while it did not want nuclear war it is morally ready for it, Russia s RIA news agency reported. They said they won t disarm, there cannot even be any talk of that, the agency quoted Svetlana Maximova as saying. She was part of a delegation of Russian lawmakers just back from a visit to North Korea. Another member of the delegation, Kazbek Taisayev, was quoted as saying by RIA of the North Koreans: They do not want war, they want to live normally, but if there is a threat from the United States, then they are morally ready for that war. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House staff exits likely as Trump's first year draws to a close: sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s expected exit from the Trump administration is one of many staff changes likely as President Donald Trump nears the end of his first year in office, with sources saying top economic adviser Gary Cohn and son-in-law Jared Kushner could be among those who depart. Cohn, whose relationship with Trump became tense earlier this year, has considered leaving once the Republican effort to overhaul the U.S. tax system is completed in Congress, according to the sources with ties to the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity. Kushner, who has seen his influence in the White House shrink, may receive a “face-saving” exit as he deals with legal challenges related to a special counsel’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign’s potential ties to Russia, one of the sources said. “This is pure speculation,” said White House spokesman Raj Shah in an emailed statement about potential staff moves. More junior-level advisers could also use the completion of Trump’s first year and tax legislation as a pivot point to move on, leading to another period of uncertainty that has at times overshadowed Trump’s tenure, which began on Jan. 20. Things change quickly at the Trump White House. Advisers and Cabinet members who fall out of favor with the president can re-enter his good graces, making it hard to predict staff moves. But shifts in personnel are watched around the world for indications of how Trump will tackle issues ranging from North Korea to regulatory policy. “It may be February, it may be March, it may be April, but I think once you get to that time period, people are going to feel as though they’ve kind of put their time in,” said one person with close ties to the White House. “You’re definitely going to see some people leave after tax cuts get done,” said a separate Trump adviser, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the administration. Trump is considering a plan to oust Tillerson, whose relationship has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other differences, senior administration officials said. A State Department spokeswoman said Tillerson’s chief of staff had been told by the White House that the reports of Tillerson being replaced were not true. Cohn’s future in the White House has come into question since his public criticism of Trump’s response to the violence at a white supremacist rally in Virginia in August. Their once-tense relationship has since improved, however, and one source close to the White House said he could stay longer to help spearhead legislation to improve U.S. infrastructure. “I’d go a little bit against conventional wisdom here and say he’s got one more project to get under his belt before he leaves,” the source said, referring to infrastructure. The White House noted Cohn’s interview with CNBC earlier this month in which said he did not plan to leave after tax reform was finished. “It’s my plan to stay and work as long as I can help the president drive his economic agenda,” Cohn said. Two of the sources with ties to the White House said they assumed the White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, wanted at least to outlast his predecessor Reince Priebus’ six-month tenure in the position. The White House spokesman’s statement said discussion of changes was speculation. One of the sources said Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, could go if a scenario, such as giving him an outside adviser role, were found that appealed to the president. “Once someone comes up with a solution that sounds right, then I think he’s going to latch on,” the source said. Kushner told the Washington Post this month that he and his wife, a fellow White House adviser, were “here to stay.” Though a lot of speculation about departures has focused on high-profile names, the possibility of mid-level staffers leaving could have a big impact on the rhythms of the White House. “The difference in this administration is that you don’t have replacements already on staff” or people clamoring to get on board, said one of the sources with ties to the White House. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson dismisses talk of his departure as 'laughable';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday dismissed reports that the White House is weighing a plan under which he would be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo as “laughable.” Media reports on Thursday, first published by the New York Times, cited U.S. officials as saying that Trump has a plan to replace his embattled secretary of state with Pompeo, a former U.S. congressman who now heads the Central Intelligence Agency. Asked if some at the White House wanted him to resign, Tillerson told reporters: “It’s laughable ... laughable.” His comments came as he posed for pictures with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Seraj of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. Tillerson’s relationship with Trump has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other policy differences, as well as by reports in October that he had called the president a “moron.” Tillerson has not directly addressed whether he made the comment, though his spokeswoman denied it. Asked on Thursday whether he wanted Tillerson to remain in his job, Trump sidestepped the question, telling reporters at the White House: “He’s here. Rex is here.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had told Tillerson’s chief of staff the reports on Tillerson being replaced were not true. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump plans to meet oil industry reps on U.S. biofuel policy: sources;(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has agreed to meet with representatives of the oil refining industry and their legislative backers to discuss the nation’s biofuels program, according to two sources briefed on the matter. The White House meeting could set the stage for negotiations over possible legislation to overhaul the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard - a 2005 law that requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels like ethanol into the nation’s gasoline each year, the sources said, asking not to be named. While the regulation would be a boon to the Midwest corn belt, refining companies oppose it because it cuts into their petroleum-based fuel market share, and because they say the blending requirement costs them hundreds of millions of dollars. Lawmakers representing both industries have in recent months threatened to block administration nominations over the White House’s handling of the issue, including most recently Texas Senator Ted Cruz - who said he will hold up the nomination of Bill Northey to a federal agriculture post until he gets a meeting with Trump on biofuels. “The president was briefed, and has agreed on a meeting. Now it is just a matter of finding an hour window,” one of the sources told Reuters. He said he was told by the White House the meeting is likely to be set for the week of Dec. 11. A White House official declined to comment. Cruz and eight other senators from states with oil refineries - including Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania - had requested the meeting with Trump in a letter in October to discuss the regulation. In the letter, the senators asked that the meeting include Midwest lawmakers, biofuels representatives and relevant administration officials, so all sides could “discuss a pathway forward toward a mutually agreeable solution.” It is unlikely Trump would be able to move to reform the biofuels program without buy-in from the corn coalition. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a vocal biofuels backer, has said that such a meeting would be a “waste of time.” His office declined to comment on whether Grassley would attend. “No meeting has been scheduled,” his spokesman Michael Zona said. A spokesman for Senator Cruz did not comment. The Renewable Fuel Standard was introduced more than a decade ago by then-President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions. A number of independent refiners, like Valero Energy Corp, CVR Energy and PBF Energy have vocally opposed the regulation’s requirement that refiners blend the biofuels, or purchase credits from rivals that do - a rule they say costs them hundreds of millions of dollars each year. CVR’s majority owner, billionaire Carl Icahn, served for months as a top adviser to Trump on regulation. During that time he pushed to shift the responsibility for blending away from refiners to supply terminals or distributors. But Trump’s administration has so far not budged. The Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the program, slightly increased biofuels volumes targets for 2018 and has rejected proposals to shift the blending burden, or to allow ethanol exports to count towards volumes targets. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Gets An Epic F**ck You From Britain Over His White Supremacist Retweets;Donald Trump has a white supremacy problem, and now it is causing Great Britain, America s closest ally, to rebuke him in an historically public way. After Trump retweeted the leader of Britain First, a fascist white nationalist group, Prime Minister Theresa May decided she had had enough. She publicly criticized Trump, and made it clear that she in no way approved of his identifying with Britain First. May said of Trump s tweets: The fact that we work together does not mean that we re afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong, and be very clear with them. And I m very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do. May went on to call Britain First a hateful organization that has caused division in her nation. Now, it seems that a so-called working visit that had been planned soon for Trump in Britain will now be cancelled.Trump, of course, instead of trying to patch things up in the special relationship that has always existed between the United States and Great Britain, decided to attack the Prime Minister of our closest and most important ally again, of course, via Twitter:.@Theresa_May, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017Donald Trump is an absolute disgrace. He is shredding America s international relationships, and painting us as a country full of bigoted, knuckle-dragging morons in front of the entire world. No matter who cancelled the visit to the UK for Trump, they were right to do so. The UK s citizens are right to be outraged that this buffoon was set to come to their great nation. Now, if only we Americans could get rid of him in the same way. We can hope.Featured image via Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images;News;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; White House Panics Knowing Flynn Is Going To Take Them Down;While Donald Trump has been taking vacations, special counsel Robert Mueller has been working hard on the Russia investigation. Instead of golfing this weekend, we suggest that the former reality show star huddle with his lawyers. Trump s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador and he s fully cooperating with Mueller. As part of the plea deal, Flynn admitted that he was directed by a senior member of the Trump transition team to make contact with Russian officials in December. In addition, Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump as a candidate, ordered him to make contacts with the Russians.This marks the first instance of solid proof that there was collusion between team Trump and a hostile foreign government.On Friday, just after the news broke, the White House insisted that Flynn s guilty plea will not implicate Trump or anyone else in the White House.The White House said in a statement that Flynn was fired for making false statements to Trump officials, and that he worked for the administration for a short time and that he was a former Obama administration official. The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year, said White House lawyer Ty Cobb. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The White House then referred to Flynn as the former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days as well as a former Obama administration official. However, the White House left out a few important details. President Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and he also warned Trump about Flynn during a discussion two days after the election and emphasized that he had concerns about him joining the national security team for the new president.On top of that, just after Flynn was forced to resign, Trump called him a wonderful man who was treated unfairly by the media.Photo by David Becker/Getty Images.;News;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Flynn says cooperating with Russia probe, in best interest of U.S.;(Reuters) - Former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn said in a statement on Friday that his decision to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and to cooperate with an investigation into possible ties between Russia and President Donald Trump’s administration was “made in the best interests of my family and of our country”. In the statement, which was issued by the law firm representing him, Flynn also said it was “painful to endure” the “false accusations of ‘treason’ and other outrageous acts” over the past several months but that he recognized “that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong.” ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump urged Senate Republicans to drop panel's Russia probe: NYT;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans over the summer to end the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including the panel’s chairman, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing several lawmakers and aides. Senator Richard Burr, the committee's chairman, said in an interview this week Trump told him that he was eager to see the investigation come to an end, the Times reported. (nyti.ms/2AlKdmT) “It was something along the lines of, ‘I hope you can conclude this as quickly as possible,’” Burr told the Times. He said he replied to Trump that “when we have exhausted everybody we need to talk to, we will finish,” the newspaper reported. The panel is among several congressional committees, along with the Justice Department’s special counsel Robert Mueller, investigating allegations that Russia sought to influence the U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump’s campaign. Moscow has denied any meddling and Trump has said there was no collusion. White House spokesman Raj Shah said on Thursday that the president had not acted improperly, the Times reported. Trump “at no point has attempted to apply undue influence on committee members” and believes “there is no evidence of collusion and these investigations must come to a fair and appropriate completion,” the newspaper quoted Shah as saying. White House officials did not immediately respond to a request by Reuters for comment. Trump’s requests were a highly unusual intervention from a president into a legislative inquiry involving his family and close aides, the Times said. Trump also told Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, and Republican Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the intelligence committee, to end the investigation swiftly, the Times reported, citing lawmakers and aides. Spokesmen for McConnell, Burr and Blunt did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Times quoted Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, a former chairwoman of the intelligence committee, as saying in an interview this week that Trump’s requests were “inappropriate” and represented a breach of the separation of powers. “It is pressure that should never be brought to bear by an official when the legislative branch is in the process of an investigation,” Feinstein was quoted as saying. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump taps Fifth Third lawyer McWilliams to lead FDIC;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate Jelena McWilliams, Fifth Third Bancorp’s top attorney, to serve as the next head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the White House said on Thursday. McWilliams has worked as the bank’s chief legal officer since January, and if confirmed by the Senate, would take the helm of a key financial regulator that is still being run by an appointee of former President Barack Obama. The White House said in a statement Trump will nominate her to serve as an FDIC board member for the remainder of a six-year term expiring July 15, 2019, and as chairperson for five years. Martin Gruenberg, the current FDIC chairman who plans to serve in that role until his term expires this month, has resisted efforts from the Trump administration to significantly roll back rules on the financial sector. Trump has made trimming rules on Wall Street a top priority, arguing it is needed to boost economic growth. Gruenberg, who has not said whether he will continue to serve as a board member until the end of his six-year term in December 2018, may continue to serve as chair until a successor is appointed. The FDIC plays a key role in regulating banks nationwide, and also has a prominent voice in interagency matters like the “Volcker Rule,” which bars proprietary trading by banks. The Trump administration had to scramble to find an FDIC chief after its prior nominee, James Clinger, withdrew his name from consideration in July, citing family issues. McWilliams also has a history in Congress, having served as a Senate staffer going back to 2010. She most recently served in the Senate as senior counsel to Republican Senator Richard Shelby, who at the time was the chairman of the Banking Committee. McWilliams also spent three years as an attorney for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Watch This Awesome Mashup of Michael Flynn Leading The ‘Lock Her Up’ Chant As He Goes Off To Court (VIDEO);Donald Trump s disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has just plead guilty to lying to the FBI a felony. He has also agreed to testify against Trump in exchange for leniency from Special Counsel Robert Mueller s team. The irony here is beyond delicious especially since Flynn infamously led the LOCK HER UP! chants at the 2016 Republican National Convention, saying that Hillary Clinton was some kind of criminal, and that if Trump was elected they d be able to put her in jail, where many Trump supporters believe she belongs. Well, now the tables are turned, and it is Flynn who will be heading to jail, and the people who realize who the REAL criminals are have been having a field day. Perhaps one of the best pieces of Twitter schaudenfraude is this video of Flynn heading into court to plead guilty with the Lock her up! chant being played:I mashed up Michael Flynn s perp walk with audio of him leading a lock her up chant. pic.twitter.com/L1o5CjJXrQ Adam Smith (@asmith83) December 1, 2017This is BEYOND awesome. These fools thought they d get a chance to put Hillary Clinton in jail as if we live in some kind of banana republic. Instead, they are all turning on each other in order to save their own asses in the best circular firing squad any of us ever could have imagined. Michael Flynn is going to sing like a canary so that he can keep himself and his equally criminal son out of federal prison and railroad the entire Trump crime family into the slammer just where they belong.The GOP made a deal with the devil when their ignorant, bigoted voters chose this unfit orange overlord to be their presidential nominee. Now, they are very likely to rue the day they ever heard the name Donald Trump.Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;News;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China customs handles 2,773 cases of smuggling from January-October: paper;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese customs authorities handled 2,773 cases of smuggling in the first 10 months of this year, part of a nationwide crackdown, the China Daily reported on Friday citing a senior official. The 2017 Sword Guarding the Country s Gate campaign netted 233 smuggling cases involving weapons and ammunition, 474 cases related to illegal drugs and 86 related to endangered species, according to Huang Songping, a spokesman with China s General Administration of Customs. He said 56 of the cases involved rice smuggling, with traders trying to avoid paying duties on imports worth a total of 1.6 billion yuan ($242.09 million). Previous cases this year involved the import of Thai white sugar, with nine arrested for trying to evade customs inspections by disguising their ship as a domestic vessel and entering the port of Yancheng, which is not open to overseas traffic. China also cracked down on an oil smuggling ring in which a criminal gang bought 400 million yuan worth of overseas oil products and sold it to gas stations in Zhejiang province, the customs authority said in a notice last month. China s environment ministry said this week that as many as 259 people had been arrested this year for smuggling more than 300,000 tonnes of foreign waste into the country for recycling and reprocessing. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia calls U.S. threat to destroy North Korea a 'bloodthirsty tirade';ROME (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that a U.S. threat to destroy North Korea in the event of a war was a bloodthirsty tirade and military action against Pyongyang would be a big mistake. Speaking on a visit to Italy, Lavrov strongly condemned comments made by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who earlier this week warned North Korea s leadership it would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out after Pyongyang test fired its most advanced missile. If someone really wants to use force to, as the U.S. representative to the United Nations put it, destroy North Korea ...then I think that is playing with fire and a big mistake, Lavrov told reporters. He called Haley s speech on North Korea, which she made at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, a really bloodthirsty tirade . We will do everything to ensure that (the use of force) doesn t happen so that the problem is decided only using peaceful and political-diplomatic means, said Lavrov. Later, addressing a Rome conference, Lavrov said Russia and the United States both wanted North Korea to disarm, but said Washington would send a bad message if it walked away from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump said in October he would not certify that Tehran was complying with the 2015 deal and warned he might ultimately terminate it, accusing Iran of not living up to the spirit of the accord. If the United States drops out of this deal, it won t be very credible in the eyes of those who are now requested to drop their (own) nuclear program like North Korea, Lavrov said. He added that most serious analysts ... and many officials in Washington understood this. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; BREAKING: Michael Flynn CRACKS – Will Testify To Mueller Against Trump Himself;Michael Flynn, Trump s embattled former national security adviser, has reportedly caved in and will testify to Robert Mueller and his team about Trump s collusion with Russia. According to an ABC News special report, Flynn has pleaded guilty to charges that include making false statements to the FBI. Most importantly, he admitted in his plea that officials on Trump s transition team directed his contacts with Russian officials.Furthermore, according to CNN s David Wright on Twitter, there s more to it than that. He s reporting that Brian Ross, who reported for ABC News, said that Flynn also says he s prepared to testify that Trump himself ordered him, directed him, to make contact with the Russians, which contradicts all that Donald Trump has said at this point. .@BrianRoss reports Michael Flynn is prepared to testify that President Trump as a candidate Donald Trump ordered him, directed him, to make contacts with the Russians, which contradicts all that Donald Trump has said at this point. David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) December 1, 2017.@BrianRoss: As well, we re told that Flynn made the decision to cooperate only in the last 24 hours. That he is distraught about this decision, but feels he is doing the right thing for his country David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) December 1, 2017.@BrianRoss: and that he is facing huge legal bills of more than a million dollars, and he said that finally he had to go and do this for that reason. He expects to put his house on the market. He is facing serious financial problems. David Wright (@DavidWright_CNN) December 1, 2017For his part, Flynn issued a statement saying the following: Actions I acknowledged in court today are wrong, and through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions. The White House has said that this is merely more of what got Flynn fired in the first place, and that this will have zero effect on Trump. Har de har har don t make us laugh too hard. It hurts. Merry Christmas to Donald Trump and his entire treasonous family and administration! We hope you like orange jumpsuits!Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;News;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says Flynn's Russia plea implicates Flynn alone;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The guilty plea entered by former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn to a charge of lying to the FBI implicates Flynn alone, the White House said in a statement on Friday. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn,” said Ty Cobb, a White House attorney. “The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year,” Cobb said, adding that the plea “clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion” of the Office of the Special Counsel’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential collusion by Trump’s campaign. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Trump adviser Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prosecutors said, adding that he had spoken with a top member of Trump’s transition team regarding his communications with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Federal prosecutors also said Flynn had been directed by “a very senior member” of Trump’s transition team regarding a December 2016 United Nations vote. Flynn also filed materially false statements and omissions in his March 7, 2017, foreign agent filing over his company’s work with the Turkish government, according to prosecutors. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK MPs cast doubt on plan to avoid Ireland border after Brexit;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s intention to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit is inconsistent with its plan to withdraw from the European Union s single market and customs union, a committee of lawmakers said on Friday. The Irish border, which will be the only land link between the EU and Britain after Brexit, is proving to be one of the most problematic issues in a slow diplomatic process which is testing the patience of politicians, businesses and investors. The EU is looking to Britain to provide a solution on how to manage the flow of goods between Ireland and the British province without erecting politically inflammatory border controls. Britain has said it wants to withdraw from the EU s customs union, within which goods can move freely, but will not contemplate border posts or other infrastructure that could disrupt 20 years of delicate peace in Northern Ireland. We cannot at present see how leaving the customs union and the single market can be reconciled with there being no border or infrastructure, said opposition lawmaker Hilary Benn, chair of the Brexit committee which is scrutinising the negotiations. The British government has said it is seeking a flexible and imaginative approach to the border that goes beyond existing EU precedents, and has mooted technological solutions or a new form of customs union. But ministers have been criticised by their counterparts in Ireland for a lack of detail. Progress on the border issue is crucial to Britain s hopes of moving negotiations on to the subject of trade and future relations - something businesses are impatient to find out about as they contemplate the need to relocate. Deputy Irish Prime Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday that significantly more clarity was needed before a Dec. 14-15 summit which could agree the start of phase two talks on trade. The committee, which based its report on evidence from Brexit minister David Davis, also said the government needed to publish more detail on both its short-term plans for a post-departure transition period, and its long-term vision of a future trading relationship with Europe. If phase two of the talks do start next month, then ministers need to move beyond words like bespoke and special and actually explain what it is they are seeking, Benn said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax debate employing more than half of Washington's lobbyists: report;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half of the registered lobbyists in Washington have worked on tax issues in 2017, a report showed on Friday, as lawmakers in the U.S. capital scramble to conclude a year-long effort to pass a tax reform bill before Christmas. About 6,200 lobbyists, or 57 percent of those who reported activity in 2017, have been listed on disclosure forms as working on issues involving “tax” this year, the advocacy group Public Citizen said in the report. Twenty companies and trade groups each hired 50 lobbyists to work on tax issues, the report said, with U.S. Chamber of Commerce hiring 100 and the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives at big U.S. companies, employing 51 lobbyists. The Republican bill would be the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the 1980s and its ultimate shape and success are crucial to U.S. corporate profits over the next 10 years. As drafted, the Senate bill would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay and reduce taxes for some businesses and individuals, while ending many tax breaks. Democrats have been united in their opposition to the bill, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. U.S. companies have a vested interest in nearly every aspect of the Republican tax plan, saying they would use a tax reform windfall to buy back shares, retire debt or invest back into their business.[nL1N1NQ15C} Five large U.S. companies have hired at least 15 lobbying firms for tax issues in 2017, the report said. Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) hired 23 firms, Anheuser-Busch brought on 19 companies, Verizon Communications (VZ.N) hired 17, Microsoft (MSFT.O) hired 16 and Altria Group (MO.N) has engaged 15 lobbying firms. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Corker says cannot support Senate tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Bob Corker said on Friday he cannot support a sweeping tax bill that Senate Republican leaders have said has enough votes to pass. “At the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generations,” Corker said in a statement issued by his office. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lower taxes, big gains: The stocks poised to win from tax cuts;NEW YORK (Reuters) - A proposal driven by President Donald Trump to overhaul the country’s tax system is moving through U.S. Congress, lifting the overall stock market and raising hopes that corporate earnings will get a boost. The S&P 500 .SPX rallied this week as the drive to push sweeping tax legislation through the U.S. Senate gained momentum, although gains were tempered by a report that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that before taking office Trump had directed him to make contact with Russians. Senate Republicans said on Friday they had gathered the votes needed to pass a sweeping tax overhaul. While negotiations are ongoing, the legislation could cut the corporate tax rate to as low as 20 percent from 35 percent. UBS strategists project that overall S&P 500 earnings would rise by 6.5 percent should the corporate tax rate fall to 25 percent and increase by 9.5 percent should the rate go to 20 percent. But certain stocks could benefit more than others from the Republican-led plans. “It will be favorable to companies with primarily domestic business that are paying close to the full tax rate,” said John Carey, portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer Asset Management in Boston. Investors appear to have already rotated into some of these tax-sensitive areas. Some market watchers caution about generalizing winners, noting big differences in effective rates between companies in the same sectors. But strategists point to industries with a concentration of companies poised to benefit, particularly from a lower corporate tax rate. (For a graphic on industries that stand to win from corporate tax cuts, click reut.rs/2zVJls9) (For a graphic on sector benefits from a corporate tax cut, click reut.rs/2AMn9AU) (High tax stocks underperform in 2017: reut.rs/2AMdrP5) Of the major S&P sectors, financials pay the highest effective tax rate at 27.5 percent, according to a Wells Fargo analysis of historical tax rates. Brian Klock, managing director in equity research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods who covers large regional banks, expects tax cuts to add 16 percent to median bank earnings in 2018 and 18 percent in 2019. “We’re assuming whatever the benefit is will drop right to the bottom line,” Klock said. “They won’t give up on loan pricing or put any big investments in. With the increased capital they’ll return it to shareholders.” Among large regional banks, Zions Bancorp (ZION.O), M&T Bank Corp (MTB.N) and Comerica Inc (CMA.N) stand to benefit the most, Klock said. Transportation ranks among the top industries expected to receive a big earnings boost from a lower corporate tax rate, according to UBS. U.S. railroads such as Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N) and CSX Corp (CSX.O) are almost entirely exposed to the U.S. statutory rates, said Morningstar analyst Keith Schoonmaker. Railroads would benefit from provisions allowing them to expense their capital expenditures in one year as opposed to over time, lowering their taxable income, Schoonmaker said. “We’ll see what comes out as far as the ability to depreciate immediately, but that certainly would be beneficial because they are all big capital spenders,” Schoonmaker said, noting that railroads spend 18 percent to 20 percent of revenue on capital expenditures. Airlines stand to gain from lower tax rates, analysts said, with UBS pointing to Alaska Air Group Inc (ALK.N) and Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) as possible winners. Domestically geared healthcare companies that focus on services would likely benefit more from tax rate reductions than pharmaceutical and medical device companies that sell their products overseas. “Healthcare services is one of the most taxed industries and would be a big beneficiary of reductions in corporate tax rates,” Lance Wilkes, an analyst at Bernstein, said in a recent note. The S&P 500 healthcare providers and services index .SPLRCHCPS, which includes health insurers such as Anthem Inc (ANTM.N), drug wholesalers like AmerisourceBergen Corp (ABC.N), and hospital operators such as HCA Healthcare inc (HCA.N), has gained 5.4 percent this week. According to Leerink analyst Ana Gupte, a corporate tax rate cut to 20 percent could boost health insurer earnings by about 20 percent to 40 percent, but some of those gains would be expected to be passed through to employer and individual customers. Other potential big winners include home health services company Almost Family Inc (AFAM.O), lab-testing company Quest Diagnostics Inc (DGX.N) and pharmacy benefit manger Express Scripts Holding (ESRX.O), according to Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut. Department stores head the list of retailers that will benefit because they have among the heaviest U.S. exposure, said Bridget Weishaar, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. Weishaar points to Macy’s Inc (M.N), Nordstrom Inc (JWN.N) and Kohls Corp (KSS.N) as potential winners among department stores, as well as Victoria’s Secret owner L Brands (LB.N) and apparel retailer Ross Stores (ROST.O). “Retail companies will benefit from paying a lower tax rate,” Weishaar said. “Consumers hopefully will have additional cash, which will help consumer discretionary spending.” Telecom companies, including AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), also stand to gain. “They’re domestically focused companies with a very high percentage of their employee base in the U.S. and significant amounts of investments in U.S. infrastructure,” said Amir Rozwadowski, telecom equity analyst at Barclays. “Therefore they’re predisposed to benefit from tax reform.” AT&T has climbed 4.9 percent this week, while Verizon has surged 9 percent. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Timeline: U.S. prosecutors lay out Flynn's dealings with Russian ambassador;(Reuters) - The legal document charging Michael Flynn with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation lays out a chronology of events connected with the offense that the former U.S. national security adviser pleaded guilty to on Friday. Here is a timeline based on the document, known as a statement of the offense, and events at the time. The document was drafted by prosecutors working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of ties between President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia. The period covered includes the presidential transition that followed Trump’s election victory on Nov. 8, 2016, and the first few months of his presidency: * Dec. 21, 2016: Egypt submits a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building. * Dec. 22: A “very senior member” of the Trump transition team directs Flynn to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each country stands on the resolution and to influence them to delay the vote or defeat the resolution. * On the same day, Flynn contacts Russia’s ambassador to the United States about the pending vote. Flynn informs the ambassador about the incoming administration’s opposition to the resolution and asks that Russia vote against or delay it. (The statement of offense does not name the ambassador;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Collins to vote for Senate tax bill: statement;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Susan Collins will vote for a Senate tax bill, her office said on Friday. Collins, who had been considered a possible “no” vote on the sweeping tax overhaul, said she would support the legislation “after securing significant changes,” her office said in a statement. Once the Senate passes the law, it must work with the House of Representatives, which already has approved its own tax bill, to craft a single measure that can pass both chambers and be sent to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson not leaving post;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not leaving, President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday, after U.S. officials on Thursday said the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him. “The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon - FAKE NEWS! He’s not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!” Trump said on Twitter. The tweet linked to a picture of Tillerson being sworn in as secretary of state with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence looking on. Senior administration officials on Thursday said that Trump was considering a plan to oust Tillerson, whose relationship with the president has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other policy differences, as well as by reports in October that he called the president a “moron.” Tillerson has not directly addressed whether he made the comment, though his spokeswoman denied it. The New York Times on Thursday first reported the White House plan to replace him. Asked to comment on some White House officials wanting him to resign, how the matter was being handled and what his plans were, Tillerson replied: “It’s laughable. It’s laughable.” His comments came as he posed for pictures with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. Tillerson visits Europe next week to attend NATO meetings in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Vienna on Thursday and talks with French officials in Paris on Friday. He is tentatively scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Vienna on Thursday on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting, a senior State Department official told reporters. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House intel panel advances NSA spying bill despite privacy objections;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House panel on Friday approved legislation that would renew the National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program, despite objections from the technology sector and civil liberties groups over inadequate privacy protection. The House Intelligence Committee passed 13-8 the measure to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for a further four years until 2021. The act is due to expire on Dec. 31 in the absence of congressional action. The bill’s passage signaled that Congress remained far from consensus on how to renew Section 702, as several rival bills with various new privacy provisions circulated in the House and Senate, with no clear path forward for any measure. Intelligence agencies say Section 702 is vital to national security and protecting American allies, and the Trump administration wants minimal changes to it. But privacy advocates criticized the intelligence panel’s bill for not requiring a warrant to access collected data belonging to Americans. Reform Government Surveillance, a group representing major tech companies including Facebook (FB.O), Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) and Apple (AAPL.O) that presses governments around the world to bolster digital privacy protections, issued a lengthy statement Thursday denouncing the measure, which it said may expand government surveillance. All Republicans on the intelligence panel supported the measure, while all Democrats opposed it due to a mix of concerns, including language that would revise how government officials can “unmask” the identity of Americans’ names’ typically redacted in intelligence intercepts. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have accused without evidence the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, of improperly unmasking names for political reasons, a charge Democrats have rejected. Section 702 allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. But the program, classified details of which were exposed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas. Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The House Judiciary Committee last month passed by 27-8 another measure that partially restricts the FBI’s ability to review American data collected under Section 702 by requiring the agency to obtain a warrant when seeking evidence of crime, but not in other cases such as for data related to counterterrorism. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Massachusetts senator's husband subject of sex abuse probe;BOSTON (Reuters) - The Massachusetts state senate on Friday prepared to open an independent probe into accusations that Majority Leader Stanley Rosenberg’s husband used his political connections to sexually harass men, following a Boston Globe report on the claims. Rosenberg, a Democrat, told reporters on Friday that he supported the investigation and that his husband, Bryon Hefner, was going to enter an inpatient treatment center for alcohol dependency. That came the day after the newspaper quoted four unnamed men who said Hefner, 30, had groped them or had other unwanted sexual contact. Hefner in a statement issued by an attorney expressed surprise at the report but did not specifically deny the allegations, the newspaper reported. “If Bryon claimed to have influence over my decisions or over the Senate, he should not have said that. It is simply not true,” Rosenberg, 68, told reporters outside his statehouse office. “I am looking forward to fully cooperating with the investigation.” Rosenberg did not directly address whether he believed the allegations of sex abuse and declined to answer questions. The newspaper quoted the four men who accused Hefner, 30, anonymously as they feared their work as political advocates would be imperiled by speaking against the spouse of a powerful lawmaker. The allegations, which the newspaper said related to incidents in 2015 and 2016, could not be confirmed by Reuters. “I was shocked to learn of these anonymous and hurtful allegations,” the newspaper quoted Hefner’s attorney-issued statement as saying. “To my knowledge, no one has complained to me or any political or governmental authority about these allegations which are now surfacing years afterward.” It did not name the attorney. A spokesman for Rosenberg said he did not know who was representing Hefner and Reuters could not immediately reach Hefner for comment. “These charges are very serious and very disturbing, and I am shocked and saddened,” said Senate Majority Leader Harriette Chandler, in a statement. “To ensure a completely impartial process ... we will be going to the unprecedented step of bringing in an independent special investigator.” Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, and Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat, agreed with the call for an immediate probe. “Frankly, I am appalled by the allegations,” Baker told reporters late Thursday. The allegations are the latest in a wave of sexual assault and sexual harassment claims levied against powerful men in U.S. politics, entertainment and journalism. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kushner told Flynn to contact Russians last year: NBC News;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, directed Michael Flynn, then a Trump adviser, to contact Russian officials around Dec. 22 about a UN resolution regarding Israel, NBC News reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter. Flynn, who later briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser, pleaded guilty earlier on Friday to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia’s ambassador, and prosecutors said he consulted with a senior official in Trump’s presidential transition team before speaking to the envoy. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House ethics panel launches wide-ranging probe into sexual harassment claims;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives ethics committee has begun a sweeping probe into possible sexual harassment and discrimination by the chamber’s 434 lawmakers and their staff, requesting on Friday a wide range of documents from the congressional office that handles employment disputes. In a letter to the office, Susan Brooks, the committee’s Republican chair, and Theodore Deutch, its senior Democrat, requested the congressional compliance office promptly share all its records “related to any claims of sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation or any other employment practice.” Capitol Hill has been rocked this fall by news of possible sexual misconduct by lawmakers, and outrage that public money may have been paid to settle harassment suits against lawmakers. Most notably Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, is under pressure to resign in light of sexual harassment allegations, which Reuters has not verified. U.S. media have reported Conyers used public funds to settle a claim with a woman, and the ethics committee is currently investigating if he “used official resources for impermissible personal purposes.” Conyers has acknowledged settling with a former staffer over her claims of harassment, but he has denied wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Texas Republican Representative Joe Barton recently decided not to seek re-election after a nude photo of him appeared on the internet. The committee had no comment beyond the letter. Pressure is mounting for it to ramp up its enforcement of congressional rules. It last took a disciplinary action on Aug. 1, determining Representative Ben Ray Lujan broke a rule on campaign communications but not imposing any sanctions. Along with resolving disputes and enforcing employment laws for more than 30,000 people working for Congress, the compliance office provides public money to confidentially settle claims against lawmakers. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking to change that practice with legislation that would require prompt public disclosure of settlement awards. In a letter sent to House Administration Committee Chair Gregg Harper on Friday, the compliance office said that since 2013 it has paid settlements on two claims including sex discrimination allegations and one alleging sexual harassment. It paid $84,000 for one sexual harassment claim and $7,000 in one case alleging both sex and religious discrimination. Politico reported the harassment award was made on behalf of Texas Republican Blake Farenthold. “While I 100 percent support more transparency with respect to claims against members of Congress, I can neither confirm nor deny that settlement involved my office as the Congressional Accountability Act prohibits me from answering that question,” said Farenthold in a statement. In 2014 Farenthold’s former communications director Lauren Greene sued him, alleging a hostile work environment, gender discrimination, and retaliation, court documents show. Farenthold and Greene reached a mediated agreement in 2015 to avoid costly litigation, but the settlement’s details were confidential, according to a statement released at the time, where Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Daines says he will support tax bill -statement;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana, one of several senators seen as pivotal to the fate of a Republican tax overhaul plan, said on Friday he would support the tax bill. “After weeks of fighting for Main Street businesses including Montana’s farmers and ranchers, I’ve decided to support the Senate tax cut bill which provides significant tax relief for Main Street businesses” Daines said in a statement. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate Republicans have 50 votes to pass tax bill: Cornyn;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The No. 2 U.S. Senate Republican John Cornyn said on Friday he was confident Republicans have the 50 votes necessary to pass a tax overhaul bill in the chamber. “We are confident of the 50 and would like to build on that,” Cornyn said. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans have the votes to pass tax bill in Senate: McConnell;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Friday Republicans had enough votes to pass a tax overhaul bill in the Senate. “We have the votes,” McConnell said. Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who had been holding out support for the legislation, said he now supported the bill. Republican Senator Susan Collins, another holdout, said a deal had been reached to include her unspecified property tax deduction amendment in the Republican tax bill. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. consumer financial watchdog official defies Trump from within agency;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two days after a federal court endorsed President Donald Trump’s deregulatory pick for a consumer watchdog, a rival official was encouraging agency staff to keep up the pressure on the lending industry, several current and former officials said on Friday. Leandra English, the deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is suing Trump for the right to lead the agency. She wants the bureau to follow through on “several enforcement actions in the pipeline” targeting companies that violate fair lending rules, these people said. Trump has said the agency “devastated” lenders, and his administration is eager to lessen the power of the agency, which was conceived to halt abusive loans. A judge on Tuesday rejected English’s argument to lead the agency, but an appeal is expected. Meanwhile, she is urging colleagues to continue policing the lending industry, said several current and former agency officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. In an email to CFPB managers Thursday evening, English reminded them of the pending enforcement actions and said other routine reports on consumer protections are due in December. English wrote colleagues that she wants “to be sure that these are still on track,” according to the email seen by Reuters. She signed the email, “Leandra English, Acting Director.” English has been active at the agency this week, said her lawyer. “She is doing the work of the bureau and looking out for its mission,” said attorney Deepak Gupta. Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget director, has been endorsed by a federal court to lead the CFPB and he has instructed agency staff to “disregard” instructions from English. And he is increasing his influence at the agency. A spokesman for Representative Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, confirmed Friday that Brian Johnson, one of his top aides, had left the committee to assist Mulvaney at the CFPB. Hensarling, a Texas Republican, is one of the CFPB’s harshest critics in Congress. The CFPB’s last director, Richard Cordray, tapped English as his successor when he stepped down last week, a move that sparked the legal wrangling. Cordray left behind 14 lawsuits that are ready to be filed against financial services companies, Mulvaney told the Washington Times on Thursday. Mulvaney told the newspaper he is “combing through” those draft lawsuits now. A spokesman for Mulvaney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. One of the drafted lawsuits is against Santander bank and accuses the Spanish lender of overcharging borrowers on auto loans in the United States, Reuters has reported. Consumer advocates and banking industry leaders have battled over the CFPB for years but both sides agree the president has the right to nominate Cordray’s full-time successor, who must be confirmed by the Senate. Both sides also agree that English is the agency’s deputy director for the time being. The legal fight should last for weeks. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. remains committed to Libyan political agreement: State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States remains committed to the Libyan Political Agreement, the State Department said in a statement following U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s meeting with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj on Friday. “Attempts to bypass the UN-facilitated political process or impose a military solution to the conflict would only destabilize Libya and create opportunities for ISIS (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups to threaten the United States and our allies,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Five facts about ex-Trump security aide Michael Flynn;(Reuters) - Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s first U.S. national security adviser, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russia’s U.S. ambassador. Here are five facts about Flynn: Flynn was national security adviser for just 24 days, from Jan. 20, when Trump took office, to Feb. 13. Flynn was fired following disclosures that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Sergey Kislyak, Moscow’s U.S. ambassador, and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. On Feb. 14, Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey in an Oval Office meeting to end the agency’s investigation into ties between Flynn and Russia, according to news media reports. Trump, who fired Comey on May 9, later denied making such a request. Trump had named the former Army lieutenant general to the national security post despite red flags about Flynn’s Russian contacts and advocacy for warmer U.S. relations with Moscow, which has been under U.S. economic sanctions for years. Outgoing President Barack Obama had warned Trump not to hire Flynn, who had been fired by the Democratic president in 2014. Flynn was an early and vociferous Trump supporter during the New York businessman’s 2016 White House run. He made vitriolic appearances on the campaign trail, notably leading the Republican National Convention in chants of “Lock her up,” referring to Trump’s Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In addition to Flynn’s contacts with Russia, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible ties between the Trump election campaign and Moscow has expanded its probe to include Flynn’s paid work as a lobbyist for a Turkish businessman in 2016, people with knowledge of the inquiry have told Reuters. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Seoul says North Korea puts Washington in range, but needs to prove critical technology;SEOUL/MOSCOW (Reuters) - North Korea s latest missile test puts Washington within range, but Pyongyang still needs to prove it has mastered critical missile technology, such as re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation, South Korea said on Friday. South Korea s Ministry of Defence said the Hwasong-15 missile tested on Wednesday was a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range. The test prompted a warning from the United States that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out, a statement that drew sharp criticism from Russia. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov termed the threat from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley a bloodthirsty tirade and said military action against Pyongyang would be a big mistake, Russian news agencies reported. We will do everything to ensure that (the use of force) doesn t happen so that the problem is decided only using peaceful and political-diplomatic means, Lavrov said. Separately, Russian lawmakers just back from a visit to Pyongyang said North Korea was not prepared to disarm, and while it did not want nuclear war it was morally ready for it, Russia s RIA news agency reported. Pyongyang has said its Wednesday missile test was a breakthrough and leader Kim Jong Un said the country had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force. After North Korea released video footage and photographs of Hwasong-15, U.S. based experts said it appeared North Korea was indeed capable of delivering a nuclear weapon anywhere in the United States and could only be two or three tests away from being combat ready. Yeo Suk-joo, South Korea s deputy minister of defense policy, told the South Korean parliament that North Korea still needed to prove some technologies, like re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation. Even so, South Korea s Unification Ministry said North Korea was likely to pause its missile tests for a number of reasons, including the northern hemisphere winter season. For now if there are no sudden changes in situation or external factors, we feel there is a high chance North Korea will refrain from engaging in provocations for a while, said Lee Yoo-jin, the ministry s deputy spokeswoman. North Korea is known to test fewer missiles in the fourth quarter of the year as troops are called to help with harvests, while the cold temperatures are a strain on the country s fuel supplies. This week s missile launch was the first in 75 days. South Korea Defence Minister Song Young-moo told parliament he expected North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to use his New Year s Address to declare that North Korea had completed its weapons program. South Korean and U.S. officials say the Hwasong 15 is the most advanced missile North Korea has ever tested. Yeo told lawmakers the first stage engine of the missile featured a clustering of two engines from a smaller Hwasong-14 ICBM test-launched in July. He said the Hwasong-15 is two meters (six feet) longer than the Hwasong-14. He said the second-stage engine requires further analysis. Yeo said U.S. strategic assets would continue to be rotated on and near the Korean peninsula until the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea next February in a bid to deter further North Korean provocations. U.S. President Donald Trump has responded to the latest North Korean test with a fresh round of insults directed against Kim Jong Un, who he called Little Rocket Man and a sick puppy. Trump has vowed to respond with tougher sanctions, but his administration has warned that all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea, including military ones. North Korea has stuck to its effort to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States in spite of years of international sanctions and condemnation. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No hike in Argentine defense spending despite sub tragedy: senator;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Argentina will not increase defense spending, despite the loss of a submarine with 44 crew aboard that has sparked criticism of the state of its armed forces, a close ally of President Mauricio Macri said on Friday. Argentina has given up hope of rescuing the crew of the ARA San Juan, which disappeared over two weeks ago in the South Atlantic. The tragedy underscored what some critics have described as the parlous state of the country s military, which has faced dwindling resources for years. There were no plans to provide extra funding for the armed forces, said Esteban Bullrich, a former education minister under Macri who is now a senator representing Argentina s powerful Buenos Aires province. We have to work within the constraints of our (budget) policy in general, we re not going to go out of our plan because of this incident, Bullrich told Reuters in an interview in New York. There will be no change in Argentina s 2018 budget allocation for defense, he said. Defense spending in the budget is lower than in the previous year in real terms. It is the lowest in the region compared to gross domestic product, and the government has limited room for maneuver. Since Macri took power in 2015, the country has returned to international debt markets but investment has been slower than the government had hoped. Bullrich was in New York to attend a United Nations event and meet with investors, as part of the government s charm offensive to convince them that Argentina is open for business after over a decade of protectionist rule. October s congressional elections - which saw sweeping victories for Macri allies like Bullrich - were a sign to investors that Argentines want change, he said. The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Macri s government. His market-oriented changes have not all been popular. But government supporters say they are starting to benefit Latin America s third largest economy. Although Macri s coalition does not have a congressional majority, Bullrich said he believed that opposition politicians were ready to work with the government. We can pass (reforms) even with a minority, because senators realize this, we had huge support from Argentinians in general, he said. Bullrich expressed confidence that key Macri legislation on pensions, tax, and capital markets - as well as the 2018 budget - could be voted on before the end of 2017. Yes it is (tight). But the thing is a lot of these reforms have been discussed in advance, and we re very open to changes, he said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. states gird for fight as Trump targets consumer finance watchdog;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pennsylvania’s Attorney General is leading the charge among his Democratic peers preparing to shore up protections for borrowers and savers while President Donald Trump follows through on a pledge to defang a powerful consumer finance watchdog. Since he was sworn in January, Democrat Josh Shapiro has built up his own consumer finance unit in preparation for when Republican Trump’s officials take over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The unit is staffed with more than a dozen people and led by a former senior CFPB attorney. Shapiro and this team have already filed cases against Navient (NAVI.O), a student loan servicer, which is accused of deceiving borrowers in order to drive up profits, and are leading a 48-state investigation into hacking at Equifax (EFX.N), a consumer credit bureau. “We’re demonstrating a capacity to handle these big, complex consumer financial protection cases,” Shapiro told Reuters, adding that attorneys general from both parties have asked about how they can “mimic our efforts”. Navient has said it operates within federal laws and rules on student loans, and has contested similar charges brought by the CFPB in court. An Equifax spokesperson said the company cannot comment on pending litigation, “but we remain focused on helping our customers, as well as their employees and consumers, to navigate this situation.” Shapiro expects his case load will grow, particularly now that Trump has installed his budget director and fierce CFPB critic, Mick Mulvaney, as temporary chief of the agency. The press office at the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently handling public relations for CFPB, said it was too early to comment on Democratic attorneys’ plans. “However, of course we will carry out what we are statutorily obliged to enforce,” spokesman John Czwartacki said. Created in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis to crack down on predatory financial practices, the CFBP has long been criticized by Republicans, including Trump, who say it is far too powerful and burdens lenders with red tape. Shapiro is part of a group of Democratic attorneys general from powerful and large states such as California and New York who disagree with Trump’s call for financial deregulation. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, those top law enforcement officials have sued the administration at least 25 times over its crackdown on immigration and dismantling of regulations across a range of areas from energy to education. When it comes to financial consumer protection state attorneys general wield an additional potentially powerful weapon. A little-known provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which created the CFPB, gives them the authority to enforce the agency’s rules and its broad ban on “unfair, deceptive and abusive” practices beyond state lines. States have rarely used those provisions while Richard Cordray, appointed by President Barack Obama and known for aggressively pursuing financial firms, was in charge of the watchdog. But with his departure last week, Mulvaney freezing new rulemakings and hiring and a permanent successor expected to loosen the watchdog’s regulation and enforcement, top attorneys in states such as Pennsylvania and California say they are preparing to get more active. “If we have to do this with just states that makes it more difficult but that doesn’t make it impossible,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat. One difficulty for states wanting to pursue federal enforcement cases and go after financial firms across state lines, is that, by law, they must notify the CFPB, said Ori Lev, consumer financial services partner at law firm Mayer Brown. If they proceed without the CFPB’ blessing or if the agency changes its mind about a case, then the agency could challenge them in federal court, and they would most likely have to defer to the CFPB, said C. Boyden Gray, a founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, who works with the conservative Federalist Society on tracking regulation. Still, attorneys general have jurisdiction to sue institutions operating in their states under state consumer protection laws and they could join forces to pursue cases nationally. Attorneys general contacted by Reuters and the Democratic Attorneys General Association, representing 22 officials, or nearly half the top state attorneys in the country, said they were prepared to take on more cases. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said his office’s consumer finance division now had 27 attorneys, compared with 11 four years ago. “Consequently, we are well positioned to use all the tools available to us to protect Washingtonians if a new leader of the CFPB does not share director Cordray’s vigor for protecting consumers,” the Democrat said. Before the consumer watchdog was created, states often took the lead in cases involving consumer lenders. As Ohio’s attorney general, Cordray, for example, led the investigation of financial firms which precipitated the financial crisis, winning more than $2 billion in settlements for the state and its pension funds. Consumer advocacy groups have generally applauded the work of both the CFPB and the states on consumer protections, but some Republican attorneys general have sided with Trump on the need to rein in the federal watchdog. In a Nov. 27 letter to Trump, Republican attorneys from West Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma said Mulvaney would help curb “the CFPB’s practice of overreaching regulation that harms the interests of consumers and small financial institutions.” Anticipating more state activity, Maria Earley, partner at the law firm Reed Smith, has been advising clients facing CFPB charges against stalling in hopes the watchdog will become more lenient under Trump. “You may want to litigate to run out the clock, but you’re going to have six, seven, eight states who will start looking into you,” Earley said, adding she has settled three CFPB cases for clients since Trump took office. Reuters could not independently verify this number. Michelle Rogers, a partner with Buckley Sandler, said Wall Street may end up with increased regulatory complexity rather than relief as the state attorneys step in. “They are more nimble than a big federal agency. They have their own staff, and their own agenda, and they can send out a subpoena on a whim on a broader set of issues,” she said. (This story corrects 18th paragraph to attribute idea to C. Boyden Gray, instead of Ori Lev) ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria puts fortress towns at heart of new Boko Haram strategy;BAMA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria s government has a plan for the northeast, torn apart by eight years of conflict with Boko Haram: displaced people will be housed in fortified garrison towns, ringed by farms, with the rest of the countryside effectively left to fend for itself. The vision for the state of Borno, ground zero for the war with the Islamist insurgency, is a stark admission of the reality in the northeast. For two years, the military and government have said Boko Haram is all but defeated, and the remnants are being mopped up. But the military is largely unable to control territory beyond the cities and towns it has wrested back from Boko Haram. That means many of the nearly 2 million displaced people across the northeast cannot return to their homes in rural areas. Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state, said it was not possible for people to live in small villages. There s beauty in numbers, there s security in numbers. So our target is to congregate all the people in five major urban settlements and provide them with means of livelihood, education, health care and of course security, he told Reuters. It s a long term solution, certainly. The plan for the eastern part of the state, centered on the town of Bama, is intended as a pilot scheme to be rolled out in other parts of Borno if it is successful. Vigilantes, currently members of a group known as the Civilian Joint Task Force, will become agricultural rangers, the governor said. Aided by Nigerian security forces, they will aim to secure and patrol a five-km (three-mile) radius around each garrison town where people can farm. Peter Lundberg, the United Nations Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, who heads the organization s response in the northeast, said the reconstruction of Bama town, the second biggest in the state, was logical . People are very eager to go back if the conditions are right and if the conditions are safe, if the conditions are dignified, and of course it has to be voluntary, he told Reuters. Sentiment amongst the displaced is mixed. Abubakar Goni, who lived outside Bama before fleeing to the Borno state capital Maiduguri, said he wants to return home, but if the town is safer he will agree to go there. I will support it as long as I will have a place to farm. I am also happy to hear the government will give us protection on the farm because I learnt Boko Haram men are still around. Others, like Tijja Modu Alhaji, are wary of potential disputes between residents of the towns where people will be sent and the returnees. I don t want to stay in Bama because I will still be a stranger there, just as I am in Maiduguri now, he said. I want to go home, not to somebody else s land. The governor s plan is still in its early stages. It involves bringing back thousands of people who fled the town of Bama and the surrounding area and sought refuge in camps in Maiduguri and elsewhere. They will eventually be housed in towns such as Bama, which was largely abandoned by its inhabitants when Boko Haram took it three years ago, but has since been recaptured by the military. Many of Bama s buildings are still shells, windows smashed, doors ripped out and roofs gone. Telephone and electricity wires remain torn down, more than two years after the military evicted Boko Haram. It is not clear how the returnees will be housed. There are already 15,000 people in a crowded camp for displaced local residents set up by the military after it retook the town. The United Nations had planned to move them gradually to new shelters accommodating 30,000 people that have been erected in the town, but the military said it could not oversee two camps there at the same time, UN and military officials told Reuters. The government has announced plans to build 3,000 homes in the Bama area. But there are concerns about how people sent to the town will manage, since many did not originally live there. It s one thing to move people to Bama, said Lundberg. Unless the engine of the economy can restart, the risk is that people are moving back to places where they will become very dependent (on aid). Aid workers said the demarcation between garrison towns and a lawless countryside means people have a choice: live in virtual quarantine, or return to their homes in the countryside, where Boko Haram roam, and be treated by security forces as potential insurgency sympathizers. You re imprisoned, but you re safe, said one senior relief worker, speaking on condition of anonymity. If you prefer your own life you can do it on the outside. Boko Haram s recent attacks, including a suicide bombing that killed at least 50 in a mosque in Adamawa state last week, are the last kicks of a dying horse, Nigeria s Information Minister Lai Mohammed said last Sunday. But military and diplomatic officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said overstretched troops are unable to push Boko Haram out of non-urban areas. Much of Borno is not under the authorities control and attacks are rife. On Saturday, suicide bombers killed at least 13 people in the town of Biu and injured 53 others. Borno is not getting better at all. It may have even gotten worse, a diplomat said of the security situation outside urban areas. There is no recovery and stabilization. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ABC NEWS Gets DESTROYED On Twitter For Waiting Several Hours To Admit They Got Major Detail In Flynn Story Wrong…#FakeNewsABC;After ABC News broke the General Flynn-Trump story, the stock market began its freefall, Americans were stunned by the news, and the media, who s been searching for blood in the water since Trump s inauguration, was in a feeding frenzy over the prospect of President Trump being caught directing General Flynn to meet with the Russians when he was actively campaigning. As it turns out, ABC News got it wrong. But no worries, several hours later, they clarified how the story should have read ABC News major report on Michael Flynn and President Trump s direction on reaching out to the Russians has been corrected. Hours later. And Twitter is ripping the network over it.Per multiple reports earlier, Brian Ross report that Flynn is expected to testify Trump directed him to meet with Russians as a candidate was followed minutes later by a drop in the stock market.But as Ross clarified on World News Tonight (video here), it was as President-elect, not as a candidate, and that is kind of a major difference. MediaiteABC News also tweeted out a clarification and deleted its earlier tweet:CLARIFICATION of ABC News Special Report: Flynn prepared to testify that President-elect Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians *during the transition* initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria, confidant now says. https://t.co/ewrkVZBTbc pic.twitter.com/GQAKwT1Eda ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017Twitter users responded to the clarification by ABC News, who should NEVER have gotten this story wrong in the first place. Jim VandeHei, CEO and co-founder of Axio slammed ABC for moving the markets and setting off a frenzy with their massive mistake:Astonishing. The story moved markets, set off a media frenzy, suggested worst possible outcome. This is called a massive correction, or retraction, not clarification. https://t.co/uVUamf4jYY Jim VandeHei (@JimVandeHei) December 2, 2017Associate editor of the Daily Caller reminded ABC News that their clarification was actually a huge correction. That's a huge correction https://t.co/EIMaE0EkGu Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) December 1, 2017David Rubin reminded ABC News why no one trusts them anymore: Reason nobody trusts the mainstream media 14,761 .Reason nobody trusts the mainstream media 14,761 https://t.co/1RQ7FRbava Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) December 2, 2017Twitter user Echo Lew called out ABC News for blaming their source and not Brian Ross, their reckless reporter who actually made the mistake:Blame it on a source and not your reckless reporter @BrianRoss 'on air' tremendous mistake. Echo Lew (@PhinsnNoles) December 2, 2017ABC News has apparently earned a new name to go along with their acronym.ABC Always Broadcasting Crap BNL NEWS (@BreakingNLive) December 2, 2017And then, finally, Twitter user Jake Blum called ABC News out for reporting fake news :This is so incredibly irresponsible and reckless. Sowing damage to the legitimacy of our government. Hard for you all to push back on the fake news label when this is so damn common. Jake Blum (@RealJakeBlum) December 2, 2017 ;politics;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JOHN CONYERS’ LAWYER Threatens ‘If This Nonsense Continues, This Is Just a Harbinger of What’s to Come’ [Video];Rep. John Conyers lawyer, Arnold Reed, threatened with what s to come during a press conference today: This, ladies and gentlemen, I promise you, if this nonsense continues, this is just a harbinger of what s to come, Reed said while defending the congressman during the press conference in Detroit.IS REED TRYING TO BLAME THE ACCUSER OR IS CONYERS READY TO NAME NAMES?Marion Brown, a former staffer to Conyers, revealed herself this week to be one of the accusers. In a Thursday interview with the Today Show, she alleged Conyers violated her body and would frequently proposition her for sex. You boo d up with him at the Barrister s Ball? LAWYER FOR JOHN CONYERSREED PUSHES BACK:Reed pushed back against the allegations and showed several signed statements of former Conyers staffers that stated they didn t witness any harassment or sexual misconduct from the congressman.Reed made us head for the Urban Dictionary when he said the victim was boo d up with Conyers: This means kissing in public or in a relationship Mr. Campbell indicates that he never saw anything and verified that the congressman hired the accuser s daughter. But there became a problem all hell broke loose when the congressman fired the daughter. And then, all of a sudden, we get this sexual harassment, sexual allegation problem. Here s the predator that she s talking about at the Barrister s Ball, 2011 Barrister s Ball, Reed said as he held up a photograph that appeared to be of Conyers and Brown next to each other, posing for a picture. She [Brown] said that he took every opportunity during hours to harass her. He was an animal. But you boo d up with him at the Barrister s Ball? You want to get angry and mad when the congressman defends himself? Reed continued.READ MORE: WFB ;politics;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY IS AL SHARPTON’S “Half-Brother” Registering Thousands Of Felons To Vote In Alabama’s Controversial Senate Race? [VIDEO];Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow claims he s Reverend Al Sharpton s brother, and he s registering thousands of felons to vote in the hotly contested, upcoming Senate election. When the local News 5 station looked into the pastor s claim, that he was Al Sharpton s brother, they made an interesting discovery. Glasgow told News 5 that he was indeed Al Sharpton s brother and that he dropped the Sharpton because we didn t want somebody that s a racist, a bigot, to try to kill me knowing I was Sharpton s brother while he was in prison. News 5 performed a background check on Glasgow and came up with nothing. They also called Reverend Sharpton s office in New York and spoke with Sharpton s media correspondent, who said he d never heard of Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow. It wasn t until they contacted Sharpton-Glasgow s mother, Tina Glasgow, that they finally discovered the connection.As it turns out, Glasgow actually has ties to Al Sharpton Watch the video below for the bizarre details:Much like his brother, the pastor is also a Democrat activist, and he is pulling out all the stops to help the party defeat Judge Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama. While the Democrat Party is begging for donors to help support Moore s opponent, Doug Jones, Al Sharpton s half-brother is busy signing up felons to vote in a controversial election, where every vote will count.Thousands of felons across Alabama have registered to vote in recent weeks, according to Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, who is heading up a statewide effort to get felons to the voting booth.Glasgow s goal is to get as many felons as possible signed up to vote before the end of the day Monday, the deadline to be able to cast a ballot in Alabama s Dec. 12 U.S. Senate special election. In the last month, I think we registered at least five- to ten-thousand people all over the state, Glasgow, president of Dothan s The Ordinary People Society (TOPS) advocacy group, said Monday. I ve got people all over the state registering people with my TOPS branches in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Montgomery, Enterprise, Dothan, Abbeville, Geneva, Gordon, Bessemer, we have a lot. For generations, most Alabamians convicted of a felony were barred from ever voting in the state again, but the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, a new law passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in May, cleared the way for thousands of felons to restore their voting rights.The law lists several dozen felony convictions that are considered crimes of moral turpitude, which means that anyone convicted of one of them loses the right to vote;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LAWMAKER REVEALED: Settled $84K Sexual Harassment Case Using YOUR Tax Dollars;Another politician using your money to pay off a sexual harassment settlement Can you believe it? Blake Feingold is on the right in the onesie jammies. What was he thinking?Here s a photo of him with clothes on:Rep. Blake Farenthold used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by his former spokesman the only known sitting member of Congress to have used a little-known congressional account to pay an accuser.Lauren Greene, the Texas Republican s former communications director, sued her boss in December 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.When she complained about comments Farenthold and a male staffer made to her, Greene said the congressman improperly fired her. She filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, but the case was later dropped after both parties reached a private settlement.Read more: Politico;politics;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WILL OBAMA REGIME Be Held Accountable For Dirty Tactics They Used To Take Down MICHAEL FLYNN?;"While we re on the subject of lying to the FBI, when will Hillary Clinton be prosecuted for multiple crimes she committed while acting as our Secretary of State? Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn admitted Friday to making false statements to the FBI, entering the first guilty plea in Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe and agreeing to cooperate with investigators.A source close to Flynn said financial and emotional pressure helped lead to the decision to plead guilty, rather than endure a drawn-out court battle.As part of the deal, Flynn already is supplying information about the actions of top Trump transition officials.Though the individuals are not named, court documents show Flynn claiming a very senior member of the Trump transition team directed him to contact foreign governments including Russia over a United Nations vote discussions tied to one of Flynn s false statements.The documents also say Flynn called an unnamed senior transition official in December to ask what to communicate to the Russian ambassador about sanctions. That official and Flynn discussed how they didn t want Russia to escalate the situation, something Flynn immediately told the ambassador in a phone call.According to the plea deal, Flynn has agreed to cooperate fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly with the probe, with sentencing delayed until those efforts have been completed. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, becomes the first Trump ex-White House official charged in the special counsel probe.His tenure at the White House was brief he was fired for similar conduct, pertaining to his undisclosed discussions with the Russians and Flynn had been under investigation even before the special counsel probe over lobbying work for Turkey and other issues. The fact that he faced just one count prompted immediate speculation Friday that Flynn was cooperating and offering information to Mueller s team.As for the past discussions between Flynn and transition officials, it s unclear which senior officials the plea deal referred to. But a former senior intelligence officer with knowledge of Trump transition activities told Fox News that then-President-Elect Trump directed Flynn during that period to contact the Russians while also directing him and his team to contact 12 other countries. The transition team felt that the Obama White House had completely abandoned any coherent foreign policy and had to fill the vacuum, the former official told Fox News.In a statement, White House lawyer Ty Cobb said nothing about the plea implicates anyone other than Flynn. NBC News tweeted Cobb s statement:Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI. The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion. BREAKING: President Trump's personal attorney releases statement after Flynn plea:""Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn."" pic.twitter.com/TEygBKCx0W NBC News (@NBCNews) December 1, 2017Conservative citizen journalist Jack Prosobiec asked a very good question about the tactics that were used to gain access to Trump administration officials by the Obama regime:Michael Flynn charges come after he was illegally wiretapped and unmasked by the Obama Administration and Susan RiceWhen are those charges coming? Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) December 1, 2017Watch Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and ACLJ President Jay Sekulow lay out the case against Barack Obama officials and the felonies they committed when they leaked and improperly disseminate classified information and unmask members of the Trump transition team. Jay Sekulow explains to Sean Hannity, that, The concern is the intelligence apparatus in the United States has rules, that they have to follow, like every other agency, and it appears that in the waning days, or maybe the last year of the former administration, they viewed those laws as advisory opinions and not law. When the unmasking allegations first surfaced, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) had plenty to say about the unmasking of Michael Flynn.On March 19, 2017, George Stephanopolis asked Senator Rand Paul about his thoughts on the unmasking of Michael Flynn. Senator Paul suggested that the person responsible for unmasking General Flynn should be in jail. Paul went on to say that you cannot allow this unmasking to take place, or we will have presidents being blackmailed or national security advisers being blackmailed. Here s an excerpt from their conversation published by Politico:STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, sir, you re also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. WE see the president standing by that claim about President Obama. It s caused a rift now with British intelligence over the weekend. How big a problem is this for the president s credibility? How does he fix it?PAUL: I think that we know one thing for sure, that the Obama administration did spy on Flynn. Now, whether it was direct or indirect, somebody was reading and taking a transcript of his phone calls and then they released it.It is very, very important that whoever released that go to jail, because you cannot have members of the intelligence community listening to the most private and highly classified information and then releasing that to The New York Times.There can only be a certain handful of people who did that. I would bring them all in. They would have to take lie detector tests. And I would say, including the political people, because some political people knew about this as well.But we need to get to the bottom of who is releasing these highly classified conversations. And if the president was surveilled, he probably wasn t the target. I don t know that he was or wasn t. But if he was, they probably targeted someone in a foreign government, but then they listened to the conversation with Americans.STEPHANOPOULOS";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mattis eyes moving away from arming Syrian Kurdish fighters;ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that as offensive operations against Islamic State in Syria entered their final stages, he expected the focus to move towards holding territory instead of arming Syrian Kurdish fighters. Speaking with reporters on a military plane en route to Cairo, Mattis did not say if there had already been a halt to weapons transfers. U.S. President Donald Trump informed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in a call last week that Washington was adjusting military support to partners on the ground in Syria. The Syrian Kurdish YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State with the help of a U.S.-led coalition. Turkey s presidency had previously reported that the United States would not supply weapons to Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria. Until now, the Pentagon has only gone as far as saying it was reviewing adjustments in arms for the Syrian Kurdish forces, which Ankara views as a threat. The YPG is armed and as the coalition stops offensive (operations) then obviously you don t need that, you need security, you need police forces, that is local forces, that is people who make certain that ISIS doesn t come back, Mattis said. When asked if that would specifically mean the U.S. would stop arming the YPG, Mattis said: Yeah, we are going to go exactly along the lines of what the President announced. Ankara has been infuriated by Washington s support for the YPG militia, seen by Turkey as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union. The United States expects to recover heavy weapons and larger vehicles from the YPG, but lighter weapons are unlikely to be completely recovered, U.S. officials have said. Earlier this week, the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said more than 400 U.S. Marines and their artillery would be leaving Syria after helping to capture the city of Raqqa from Islamic State. Mattis said that was part of the United States changing the composition of its forces to support diplomats to bring an end to the war. The troops are changing their stance...that includes with our allies who are now changing their stance as they come to the limits of where they are going, Mattis said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ATTORNEY FOR STEINLE KILLER Calls Verdict ‘Vindication of Rights of Immigrants’ [Video];As if Americans aren t outraged enough about the verdict in the Kate Steinle murder, the lawyer for the illegal who murdered her came out and lectured Americans on the right of immigrants This scumbag murderer is NOT an immigrant! He s an illegal alien who was deported 5 times! If San Francisco had followed federal law and detained this guy, Kate Steinle would be alive today! Attorney Ugarte speaks at the 1:00 mark after Ingraham s intro:Attorney Francisco Ugarte: I believe today is a vindication of the rights of immigrants. That today we have to reflect all of us on how we talked about this case in the beginning. And how this swarm of reflection and reaction on the basis of what I believe to be the racial dynamics of this case. Nothing about Garcia Zarate s ethnicity, nothing about his immigration status, nothing about the fact that he was born in Mexico had any relevance on what happened on July 1, 2015.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE STEINLE VERDICT: A shocking verdict and race baiting was on the menu tonight in the liberal bastion of San Francisco tonight The prosecutor in the Kate Steinle case won and then came out to make a statement where he attacked President Trump and waisted no time politicizing the verdict as it relates to gun control. He claimed that the president was fomenting hate Huh? This is where we are in America right now: An illegal alien with 7 prior felony convictions murders a legal American citizen and goes free Americans last? Illegals first?LISTEN TO THIS JACKWAGON LAWYER POLITICIZING THIS CASE:Matt Gonzalez: The physical evidence has always supported the finding that this was an accidental occurrence, and I think the jury came to that conclusion. #TheStory pic.twitter.com/QDy4qNx4zZ Fox News (@FoxNews) December 1, 2017HARD TO HEAR BUT MATT GONZALEZ POLITICIZES THE CASE: There are a number of people who have commented on this case in the past few years: the Attorney General of the United States, the President and the Vice President of the United States, let me just remind them that they are themselves under investigation by a special prosecutor in Washington D.C., and they may themselves soon avail themselves of the presumption of innocence and beyond a reasonable doubt standard, Gonzalez says. I would ask them to reflect on that before they comment or disparage the result in this case. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez speaking to critics of the jury verdict, specifically @realDonaldTrump, who faces Mueller's investigation pic.twitter.com/gDoC2ccHOK ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) December 1, 2017HOW IS WHAT CANDIDATE TRUMP SAID IN 2015 ABOUT THE STEINLE CASE FOMENTING HATE ?: This senseless and totally preventable act of violence committed by an illegal immigrant is yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately, Trump said in July 2015. This is an absolutely disgraceful situation and I am the only one that can fix it. Nobody else has the guts to even talk about it. That won t happen if I become President. HEARTBREAKING TESTIMONY FROM KATE STEINLE S DAD:Kate Steinle s father testifies and says his daughters last words were help me, Dad . Long Live #KateSteinle pic.twitter.com/r7uyK2amuY Based Monitored (@BasedMonitored) December 1, 2017ABC News reports:In a surprising verdict, the jury of six men and six women deliberated and came back with a not guilty verdict for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. The defendant was facing second degree murder charges for killing 32-year-old Pleasanton resident Kate Steinle on July 1, 2015 at Pier 14 in San Francisco.While Garcia Zarate can technically walk out of the courtroom, it s expected that he will be taken into custody by Immigration officials and eventually deported back to his native Mexico.The case gained notoriety because Garcia Zarate is an undocumented immigrant who had been deported several times and had a number of felony convictions. Steinle s death became part of the immigration debate in this country. During his campaign, President Trump criticized San Francisco for its sanctuary city status.;politics;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Flynn to Plead Guilty to Lying to the FBI;The broader story in this entire Russia witch hunt is if the one count on Flynn announced today is a plea deal. Flynn is being charged with only one count so this raises red flags There has been talk that Flynn would do what he could to protect his son who is also involved in this witch hunt The crime is not the substance but the cover-up of conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador. This is exactly what President Trump fired Flynn for Fox News is reporting:Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been charged in the special counsel s Russia investigation with making false statements to the FBI and is expected to plead guilty at a hearing Friday morning.Special Counsel Robert Mueller s office released a one-count charging document ahead of the hearing.ABC News is reporting that this is a plea deal and that Flynn will assist in the witch hunt:Flynn s plea signals the former top adviser to Trump is now cooperating with the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A brief statement released by Mueller s team Friday morning does not say what information Flynn has provided the government as part of this deal, but sources familiar with the agreement told ABC News Friday he has made a decision to assist investigators.THE DOCUMENT ACCUSING FLYNN:The document accusing Flynn of making false statements pertains to his interactions with Russian officials in late December specifically discussions about sanctions and other matters.According to the document, those statements were that: On or about Dec 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia s Ambassador to the United States ( Russian Ambassador ) to refrain from escalating situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ABC NEWS Gets DESTROYED On Twitter For Waiting Several Hours To Admit They Got Major Detail In Flynn Story Wrong…#FakeNewsABC;After ABC News broke the General Flynn-Trump story, the stock market began its freefall, Americans were stunned by the news, and the media, who s been searching for blood in the water since Trump s inauguration, was in a feeding frenzy over the prospect of President Trump being caught directing General Flynn to meet with the Russians when he was actively campaigning. As it turns out, ABC News got it wrong. But no worries, several hours later, they clarified how the story should have read ABC News major report on Michael Flynn and President Trump s direction on reaching out to the Russians has been corrected. Hours later. And Twitter is ripping the network over it.Per multiple reports earlier, Brian Ross report that Flynn is expected to testify Trump directed him to meet with Russians as a candidate was followed minutes later by a drop in the stock market.But as Ross clarified on World News Tonight (video here), it was as President-elect, not as a candidate, and that is kind of a major difference. MediaiteABC News also tweeted out a clarification and deleted its earlier tweet:CLARIFICATION of ABC News Special Report: Flynn prepared to testify that President-elect Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians *during the transition* initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria, confidant now says. https://t.co/ewrkVZBTbc pic.twitter.com/GQAKwT1Eda ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017Twitter users responded to the clarification by ABC News, who should NEVER have gotten this story wrong in the first place. Jim VandeHei, CEO and co-founder of Axio slammed ABC for moving the markets and setting off a frenzy with their massive mistake:Astonishing. The story moved markets, set off a media frenzy, suggested worst possible outcome. This is called a massive correction, or retraction, not clarification. https://t.co/uVUamf4jYY Jim VandeHei (@JimVandeHei) December 2, 2017Associate editor of the Daily Caller reminded ABC News that their clarification was actually a huge correction. That's a huge correction https://t.co/EIMaE0EkGu Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) December 1, 2017David Rubin reminded ABC News why no one trusts them anymore: Reason nobody trusts the mainstream media 14,761 .Reason nobody trusts the mainstream media 14,761 https://t.co/1RQ7FRbava Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) December 2, 2017Twitter user Echo Lew called out ABC News for blaming their source and not Brian Ross, their reckless reporter who actually made the mistake:Blame it on a source and not your reckless reporter @BrianRoss 'on air' tremendous mistake. Echo Lew (@PhinsnNoles) December 2, 2017ABC News has apparently earned a new name to go along with their acronym.ABC Always Broadcasting Crap BNL NEWS (@BreakingNLive) December 2, 2017And then, finally, Twitter user Jake Blum called ABC News out for reporting fake news :This is so incredibly irresponsible and reckless. Sowing damage to the legitimacy of our government. Hard for you all to push back on the fake news label when this is so damn common. Jake Blum (@RealJakeBlum) December 2, 2017 ;left-news;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY IS AL SHARPTON’S “Half-Brother” Registering Thousands Of Felons To Vote In Alabama’s Controversial Senate Race? [VIDEO];Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow claims he s Reverend Al Sharpton s brother, and he s registering thousands of felons to vote in the hotly contested, upcoming Senate election. When the local News 5 station looked into the pastor s claim, that he was Al Sharpton s brother, they made an interesting discovery. Glasgow told News 5 that he was indeed Al Sharpton s brother and that he dropped the Sharpton because we didn t want somebody that s a racist, a bigot, to try to kill me knowing I was Sharpton s brother while he was in prison. News 5 performed a background check on Glasgow and came up with nothing. They also called Reverend Sharpton s office in New York and spoke with Sharpton s media correspondent, who said he d never heard of Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow. It wasn t until they contacted Sharpton-Glasgow s mother, Tina Glasgow, that they finally discovered the connection.As it turns out, Glasgow actually has ties to Al Sharpton Watch the video below for the bizarre details:Much like his brother, the pastor is also a Democrat activist, and he is pulling out all the stops to help the party defeat Judge Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama. While the Democrat Party is begging for donors to help support Moore s opponent, Doug Jones, Al Sharpton s half-brother is busy signing up felons to vote in a controversial election, where every vote will count.Thousands of felons across Alabama have registered to vote in recent weeks, according to Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, who is heading up a statewide effort to get felons to the voting booth.Glasgow s goal is to get as many felons as possible signed up to vote before the end of the day Monday, the deadline to be able to cast a ballot in Alabama s Dec. 12 U.S. Senate special election. In the last month, I think we registered at least five- to ten-thousand people all over the state, Glasgow, president of Dothan s The Ordinary People Society (TOPS) advocacy group, said Monday. I ve got people all over the state registering people with my TOPS branches in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Montgomery, Enterprise, Dothan, Abbeville, Geneva, Gordon, Bessemer, we have a lot. For generations, most Alabamians convicted of a felony were barred from ever voting in the state again, but the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, a new law passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in May, cleared the way for thousands of felons to restore their voting rights.The law lists several dozen felony convictions that are considered crimes of moral turpitude, which means that anyone convicted of one of them loses the right to vote;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MATT LAUER Called Out By Sandra Bullock For Creepy Sex Talk During Interview: ‘I’ve seen you naked’ [Video];Former NBC anchor Matt Lauer claims he s planning on doing some soul searching now that he s got time on his hands after being fired for sexual misconduct . He might want to take a look at the old footage of him awkwardly interviewing Sandra Bullock about a nude scene Yikes! Is it his tone of voice or just overall creepiness during the interview? You be the judge Lauer begins the 2009 interview about Bullock s film The Proposal by telling her how long it s been since he last interviewed her on the Today Show.He then adds with a smile: The major thing that s changed since I ve seen you last? I have now seen you naked. Bullock cringes and replies: And I m so sorry about that. Were you able to sleep afterwards? Lauer then says creepily: It s now my screensaver, before continuing to push the issue by saying: You were naked for most of this movie. Bullock laughs awkwardly and insists: No, I m not. I m not naked for most of this movie, [perhaps] emotionally naked. Lauer continues to question Bullock about how she, playing a publishing house executive, covers her body with a wash cloth during the scene in which she bumps into her assistant played by Ryan Reynolds after a shower.Later in the interview he brings up her nudity again, asking: Did I mention you have a nude scene in this movie? Pretty much from the time you opened your mouth, Bullock snaps.Lauer then tries to end the interview by saying: Sandra Bullock, come back more often but she replies no, not after this interview, no. Read more: Daily Mail ;left-news;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WILL OBAMA REGIME Be Held Accountable For Dirty Tactics They Used To Take Down MICHAEL FLYNN?;"While we re on the subject of lying to the FBI, when will Hillary Clinton be prosecuted for multiple crimes she committed while acting as our Secretary of State? Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn admitted Friday to making false statements to the FBI, entering the first guilty plea in Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe and agreeing to cooperate with investigators.A source close to Flynn said financial and emotional pressure helped lead to the decision to plead guilty, rather than endure a drawn-out court battle.As part of the deal, Flynn already is supplying information about the actions of top Trump transition officials.Though the individuals are not named, court documents show Flynn claiming a very senior member of the Trump transition team directed him to contact foreign governments including Russia over a United Nations vote discussions tied to one of Flynn s false statements.The documents also say Flynn called an unnamed senior transition official in December to ask what to communicate to the Russian ambassador about sanctions. That official and Flynn discussed how they didn t want Russia to escalate the situation, something Flynn immediately told the ambassador in a phone call.According to the plea deal, Flynn has agreed to cooperate fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly with the probe, with sentencing delayed until those efforts have been completed. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, becomes the first Trump ex-White House official charged in the special counsel probe.His tenure at the White House was brief he was fired for similar conduct, pertaining to his undisclosed discussions with the Russians and Flynn had been under investigation even before the special counsel probe over lobbying work for Turkey and other issues. The fact that he faced just one count prompted immediate speculation Friday that Flynn was cooperating and offering information to Mueller s team.As for the past discussions between Flynn and transition officials, it s unclear which senior officials the plea deal referred to. But a former senior intelligence officer with knowledge of Trump transition activities told Fox News that then-President-Elect Trump directed Flynn during that period to contact the Russians while also directing him and his team to contact 12 other countries. The transition team felt that the Obama White House had completely abandoned any coherent foreign policy and had to fill the vacuum, the former official told Fox News.In a statement, White House lawyer Ty Cobb said nothing about the plea implicates anyone other than Flynn. NBC News tweeted Cobb s statement:Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI. The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion. BREAKING: President Trump's personal attorney releases statement after Flynn plea:""Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn."" pic.twitter.com/TEygBKCx0W NBC News (@NBCNews) December 1, 2017Conservative citizen journalist Jack Prosobiec asked a very good question about the tactics that were used to gain access to Trump administration officials by the Obama regime:Michael Flynn charges come after he was illegally wiretapped and unmasked by the Obama Administration and Susan RiceWhen are those charges coming? Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) December 1, 2017Watch Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and ACLJ President Jay Sekulow lay out the case against Barack Obama officials and the felonies they committed when they leaked and improperly disseminate classified information and unmask members of the Trump transition team. Jay Sekulow explains to Sean Hannity, that, The concern is the intelligence apparatus in the United States has rules, that they have to follow, like every other agency, and it appears that in the waning days, or maybe the last year of the former administration, they viewed those laws as advisory opinions and not law. When the unmasking allegations first surfaced, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) had plenty to say about the unmasking of Michael Flynn.On March 19, 2017, George Stephanopolis asked Senator Rand Paul about his thoughts on the unmasking of Michael Flynn. Senator Paul suggested that the person responsible for unmasking General Flynn should be in jail. Paul went on to say that you cannot allow this unmasking to take place, or we will have presidents being blackmailed or national security advisers being blackmailed. Here s an excerpt from their conversation published by Politico:STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, sir, you re also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. WE see the president standing by that claim about President Obama. It s caused a rift now with British intelligence over the weekend. How big a problem is this for the president s credibility? How does he fix it?PAUL: I think that we know one thing for sure, that the Obama administration did spy on Flynn. Now, whether it was direct or indirect, somebody was reading and taking a transcript of his phone calls and then they released it.It is very, very important that whoever released that go to jail, because you cannot have members of the intelligence community listening to the most private and highly classified information and then releasing that to The New York Times.There can only be a certain handful of people who did that. I would bring them all in. They would have to take lie detector tests. And I would say, including the political people, because some political people knew about this as well.But we need to get to the bottom of who is releasing these highly classified conversations. And if the president was surveilled, he probably wasn t the target. I don t know that he was or wasn t. But if he was, they probably targeted someone in a foreign government, but then they listened to the conversation with Americans.STEPHANOPOULOS";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FOX NEWS Host EXPOSES Jimmy Kimmel HYPOCRISY After His Paid “Goon” Disrupts AL Church Service Where Roy Moore Spoke;If anyone thought the man who s been attacked by the left for most of his adult life, was going to roll over and play dead, as the Democrats and their allies in the entertainment industry come at him with a coordinated character assassination attempt, they were sadly mistaken.Breitbart The U.S. Senate campaign of Judge Roy Moore is firing back at Jimmy Kimmel and his paid trickster Rich Barbieri also known as Jake Byrd for disrupting a worship service at which Moore spoke here on Wednesday night. Jimmy Kimmel and the Hollywood elite cross the line when they invade our Churches under a disguise and attempt to make a mockery of our worship services, Drew Messer, a senior adviser to Moore, told Breitbart News on Thursday morning after the incident at the church on Wednesday night.On Wednesday evening, after the pastor of Magnolia Springs Baptist Church here in Theodore, Alabama, just outside Mobile warned attendees of a worship service at which Moore was speaking multiple times that it was against the law in Alabama to disrupt worship services, Barbieri proceeded to interrupt the worship service during Moore s speech.The pastor had earlier in the evening also warned event-goers against disrupting the worship service, so this constituted his second warning. But that did not stop Barbieri whose character on Kimmel s show is Jake Byrd from disrupting the event and being escorted out by police. Breitbart Watch:Turns out tonight's Roy Moore superfan is a comedian named Tony Barbieri, part of Jimmy Kimmel's gang. pic.twitter.com/ykeGKVDdkS Ben H. Raines (@BenHRaines) November 30, 2017Upon discovering that the man who disrupted the worship service was a paid comedian on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Roy Moore tweeted to the despicable leftist comedian/ activist to come down to Alabama and mock their Christian values face to face ..@jimmykimmel If you want to mock our Christian values, come down here to Alabama and do it man to man. #ALSen https://t.co/E7oQB9D83P Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 30, 2017So Little @jimmykimmel sent one of his goons to Alabama to disrupt a church service where Roy Moore was speaking. I doubt Kimmel would ever disrupt a service at a mosque toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) November 30, 2017Roy Moore also responded to the leftist comedian, whose ratings are in the toilet, over his despicable comedian s stunt:Despite D.C. and Hollywood Elites' bigotry towards southerners, Jimmy, we'll save you a seat on the front pew. https://t.co/z7n6uaeyCj Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 30, 2017 Was the Kimmel comedian s stunt about embarrassing Roy Moore, or was it more about jumping on the left s Hate Trump s All (or as the left falsely calls it: Love Trumps Hate ) campaign? Based on the most recent ratings of late-night shows, the only thing keeping the higher rated late-night shows on the air is their unabated criticism of President Trump, that s used as fuel to keep their hate-filled, leftist audience fed. Observer While Donald Trump has been a huge boon for late-night TV ratings, one host who isn t enjoying an upswing is Jimmy Fallon. The good-natured nice guy persona Fallon has crafted on NBC s The Tonight Show is great for producing viral videos, but not so great for navigating a politically tumultuous era. As Stephen Colbert s The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel s Jimmy Kimmel Live have continued to hone in on the Trump administration, and seen viewership rise as a result, Fallon has largely stayed out of the fray and is suffering because of it.According to the New York Times, Fallon has lost 21 percent of his audience year over year since the fall season began on September 25. Since February, Colbert leads late night in total viewers by a wide margin and Kimmel has been gaining ground over the last several months as well. NBC s top brass have combated these trends by noting that Fallon still leads the field in viewers in the advertiser-friendly 18 to 49 demographic, but the New York Times points out that even that gap is closing.Breitbart Fellow senior Moore adviser Brett Doster bashed Kimmel for enabling Hollywood s culture of preying on women as seen by the recent downfalls of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. Last night, Jimmy Kimmel sent one of his goons to disrupt an Alabama worship service as a comedy prop, Doster said in an email to Breitbart News. For years, Kimmel hosted a show that exploited women and encouraged sexual impropriety. He and the rest of the entertainment industry look down their noses at our evangelical values while using their own pulpit to encourage the very behavior purveyed by monsters like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. It remains to be seen whether Kimmel will have the guts to face Moore s team head-on in Alabama, and own up to the actions of his staff. A Kimmel publicist has not responded to Breitbart News when asked via email whether Kimmel or Barbieri would be willing to defend themselves in an interview.;left-news;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FOX NEWS Host EXPOSES Jimmy Kimmel HYPOCRISY After His Paid “Goon” Disrupts AL Church Service Where Roy Moore Spoke;If anyone thought the man who s been attacked by the left for most of his adult life, was going to roll over and play dead, as the Democrats and their allies in the entertainment industry come at him with a coordinated character assassination attempt, they were sadly mistaken.Breitbart The U.S. Senate campaign of Judge Roy Moore is firing back at Jimmy Kimmel and his paid trickster Rich Barbieri also known as Jake Byrd for disrupting a worship service at which Moore spoke here on Wednesday night. Jimmy Kimmel and the Hollywood elite cross the line when they invade our Churches under a disguise and attempt to make a mockery of our worship services, Drew Messer, a senior adviser to Moore, told Breitbart News on Thursday morning after the incident at the church on Wednesday night.On Wednesday evening, after the pastor of Magnolia Springs Baptist Church here in Theodore, Alabama, just outside Mobile warned attendees of a worship service at which Moore was speaking multiple times that it was against the law in Alabama to disrupt worship services, Barbieri proceeded to interrupt the worship service during Moore s speech.The pastor had earlier in the evening also warned event-goers against disrupting the worship service, so this constituted his second warning. But that did not stop Barbieri whose character on Kimmel s show is Jake Byrd from disrupting the event and being escorted out by police. Breitbart Watch:Turns out tonight's Roy Moore superfan is a comedian named Tony Barbieri, part of Jimmy Kimmel's gang. pic.twitter.com/ykeGKVDdkS Ben H. Raines (@BenHRaines) November 30, 2017Upon discovering that the man who disrupted the worship service was a paid comedian on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Roy Moore tweeted to the despicable leftist comedian/ activist to come down to Alabama and mock their Christian values face to face ..@jimmykimmel If you want to mock our Christian values, come down here to Alabama and do it man to man. #ALSen https://t.co/E7oQB9D83P Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 30, 2017So Little @jimmykimmel sent one of his goons to Alabama to disrupt a church service where Roy Moore was speaking. I doubt Kimmel would ever disrupt a service at a mosque toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) November 30, 2017Roy Moore also responded to the leftist comedian, whose ratings are in the toilet, over his despicable comedian s stunt:Despite D.C. and Hollywood Elites' bigotry towards southerners, Jimmy, we'll save you a seat on the front pew. https://t.co/z7n6uaeyCj Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 30, 2017 Was the Kimmel comedian s stunt about embarrassing Roy Moore, or was it more about jumping on the left s Hate Trump s All (or as the left falsely calls it: Love Trumps Hate ) campaign? Based on the most recent ratings of late-night shows, the only thing keeping the higher rated late-night shows on the air is their unabated criticism of President Trump, that s used as fuel to keep their hate-filled, leftist audience fed. Observer While Donald Trump has been a huge boon for late-night TV ratings, one host who isn t enjoying an upswing is Jimmy Fallon. The good-natured nice guy persona Fallon has crafted on NBC s The Tonight Show is great for producing viral videos, but not so great for navigating a politically tumultuous era. As Stephen Colbert s The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel s Jimmy Kimmel Live have continued to hone in on the Trump administration, and seen viewership rise as a result, Fallon has largely stayed out of the fray and is suffering because of it.According to the New York Times, Fallon has lost 21 percent of his audience year over year since the fall season began on September 25. Since February, Colbert leads late night in total viewers by a wide margin and Kimmel has been gaining ground over the last several months as well. NBC s top brass have combated these trends by noting that Fallon still leads the field in viewers in the advertiser-friendly 18 to 49 demographic, but the New York Times points out that even that gap is closing.Breitbart Fellow senior Moore adviser Brett Doster bashed Kimmel for enabling Hollywood s culture of preying on women as seen by the recent downfalls of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. Last night, Jimmy Kimmel sent one of his goons to disrupt an Alabama worship service as a comedy prop, Doster said in an email to Breitbart News. For years, Kimmel hosted a show that exploited women and encouraged sexual impropriety. He and the rest of the entertainment industry look down their noses at our evangelical values while using their own pulpit to encourage the very behavior purveyed by monsters like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. It remains to be seen whether Kimmel will have the guts to face Moore s team head-on in Alabama, and own up to the actions of his staff. A Kimmel publicist has not responded to Breitbart News when asked via email whether Kimmel or Barbieri would be willing to defend themselves in an interview.;politics;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. council to meet on North Korea rights abuses, nuclear program in December;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Security Council ministers will meet on Dec. 15 to discuss North Korea s nuclear and missiles programs and the body will also meet separately this month to discuss human rights abuses in the North Asian country, an annual meeting that its ally China has tried to prevent for the past three years. Japan s U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho, president of the 15-member council for December, said several ministers were confirmed to attend the Dec. 15 meeting. He also said the meeting on human rights in North Korea could be held on Dec. 11. China has unsuccessfully tried to stop three previous human rights meetings by calling a procedural vote. A minimum of nine votes are needed to win such a vote and China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France cannot wield their vetoes. This year s meeting has the backing of nine members - the United States, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, Senegal, Sweden, Ukraine and Uruguay. Last year, the United States angered North Korea by blacklisting its leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses. A landmark 2014 U.N. report on North Korean human rights concluded that North Korean security chiefs - and possibly Kim himself - should face justice for overseeing a state-controlled system of Nazi-style atrocities. Michael Kirby, chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry that drew up the report, said at the time that the crimes the team had cataloged were reminiscent of those committed by the Nazis during World War Two. Some of them are strikingly similar, he told Reuters. North Korea has repeatedly rejected accusations of human rights abuses and blames sanctions for a dire humanitarian situation. Pyongyang has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missiles and nuclear programs. Despite persistent sanctions and pressure by the U.S. and other hostile forces, my government concentrates all its efforts on improving people s livelihood and providing them with a better future, the North Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations said in a statement on Nov. 14. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Mideast nuclear plan backers bragged of support of top Trump aide Flynn;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backers of a U.S.-Russian plan to build nuclear reactors across the Middle East bragged after the U.S. election they had backing from Donald Trump s national security adviser Michael Flynn for a project that required lifting sanctions on Russia, documents reviewed by Reuters show. The documents, which have not previously been made public, reveal new aspects of the plan, including the proposed involvement of a Russian company currently under U.S. sanctions to manufacture nuclear equipment. That company, major engineering and construction firm OMZ OAO, declined to comment. The documents do not show whether Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, took concrete steps to push the proposal with Trump and his aides. But they do show that Washington-based nuclear power consultancy ACU Strategic Partners believed that both Flynn, who had worked as an adviser to the firm as late as mid-2016, and Trump were firmly in its corner. Donald Trump s election as president is a game changer because Trump s highest foreign policy priority is to stabilize U.S. relations with Russia which are now at a historical low-point, ACU s managing director, Alex Copson, wrote in a Nov. 16, 2016 email to potential business partners, eight days after the election. White House officials did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. ACU declined comment and also declined to make Copson available for an interview. Previously they told a congressional committee that they had not had any dealings with Flynn since May 2016, before Trump became the Republican Party s presidential candidate. Flynn s lawyer, Robert Kelner, did not respond to a request for comment. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about a discussion with the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in late December 2016 regarding sanctions. The documents also show that ACU proposed ending Ukraine s opposition to lifting sanctions on Russia by giving a Ukrainian company a $45 billion contract to provide turbine generators for reactors to be built in Saudi Arabia and other Mideast nations. The contract to state-owned Turboatom, and loans to Ukraine from Gulf Arab states, would require Ukraine to support lifting US and EU sanctions on Russia, Copson wrote in the Nov. 16 email. A Turboatom spokeswoman said she did not have an immediate comment on the matter. The email was titled TRUMP/PUTIN ME Marshall plan CONCEPT. ME stands for Middle East. The title, evoking the post-World War Two plan to rebuild Western European economies, reflected the hopes of the plan s backers that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could cooperate on a project that would boost Middle East economies. The email can be seen here: tmsnrt.rs/2ALdoCY The ACU documents reviewed by Reuters include emails, business presentations and financial estimates and date from late autumn 2016. As part of their investigation into the Trump election campaign s ties to Russia, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Democrats on the House of Representatives Oversight Committee are probing whether Flynn promoted the Middle East nuclear power project as national security adviser in Trump s White House. Flynn resigned after just 24 days as national security adviser after it became known he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence by telling him he had not discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Kislyak in late December. In response to questions about the emails and documents, ACU referred Reuters to letters written in June and September by ACU scientist Thomas Cochran to the House Oversight Committee. In those letters, Cochran had laid out the project s strategy, describing a ready-to-go consortium that included French, Russian, Israeli and Ukrainian interests, without naming specific companies. Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee s top Democrat, said the panel s Republican chairman, Trey Gowdy, has for months rejected Democrats requests to ask the White House for documents pertaining to the ACU proposal. Gowdy has blocked all efforts to allow committee members to vote on issuing subpoenas, Cummings told Reuters. Gowdy did not respond to requests for comment. The ACU s nuclear reactor plan aimed to provide Washington s Middle East allies with nuclear power in a way that didn t risk nuclear weapons proliferation and also helped counter Iranian influence, improve dismal U.S.-Russian relations, and revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, according to the documents seen by Reuters. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported this week that Flynn pushed a version of the nuclear project within the White House by instructing his staff to rework a memo written by a former business associate into policy for Trump to sign. Two U.S. officials familiar with the issue told Reuters the policy document Flynn prepared for Trump s approval proposed working with Russia on a nuclear reactor project but did not specifically mention ACU. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they did not know if Trump had read the memo or acted upon it. On Nov. 18, 2016, 10 days after Trump won the presidential election, ACU s Copson received an email from nuclear non-proliferation expert Reuben Sorensen saying that he had updated Flynn on the nuclear project s status. Sorensen s role in the project was not clear from the emails. Flynn is getting closer to (being named) National Security Advisor. Expect an announcement soon. This is a big win for the ACU project, Sorensen wrote. Spoke with him via backchannels earlier this week. He has always believed in the vision of the ACU effort ... We need to let him get settled into the new position, but update him shortly thereafter, Sorensen added. The email can be seen here: tmsnrt.rs/2zTqxcZ Reuters could not independently confirm a briefing took place. Sorensen did not reply to an email seeking comment. On Nov. 30, 2016, Copson briefed U.S. Representative Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on the nuclear project, an email shows. Copson was joined by Jim Hamel, a senior official from Curtiss-Wright Corp., which has a nuclear division based in Royce s California district and was eager for a role in the multi-billion dollar project. In a follow-up email on Dec. 5 to a Royce aide, Hamel wrote, We hope that the Chairman will follow-up on Alex s suggestion to reach out to General Flynn to discuss the project. Royce s spokesman, Cory Fritz, confirmed the briefing to Reuters. No action was ever taken by the chairman or the committee, he said in an email. Hamel and Curtiss-Wright declined to comment. Flynn was an adviser to ACU from April 2015 to June 2016, according to amended financial disclosure forms he filed in August 2017 to the Office of Government Ethics. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say that when Flynn applied last year to renew his government security clearance, he failed to disclose a June 2015 trip he made to Egypt and Israel to promote the reactor project. Flynn has not commented on the trips. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;One dead, scores arrested in unrest over delayed Honduran vote count;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - At least one protester died, over 20 people were injured and more than 100 others were arrested for looting in Honduras after a delayed and disputed presidential vote count sparked unrest amid opposition accusations of electoral fraud. Honduras was due to publish the final result of last Sunday s presidential election at 9 p.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Friday, the electoral tribunal said, but opposition complaints about the count appeared set to impede that. Election results initially favored opposition candidate and TV star Salvador Nasralla by five points with more than half the votes counted. They then swung in favor of U.S.-backed center-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez after the count came to a halt on Monday and resumed over a day later, sparking protests. The tribunal has said it will hand-count some 1,031 outstanding ballot boxes with irregularities - or nearly 6 percent of the total - after the count halted with Hernandez ahead by less than 50,000 votes, or about 1.5 percentage points. However, Nasralla s center-left alliance has called for votes to be recounted in three of Honduras 18 departments, or regions, and refused to recognize the tribunal s special count until its demands for a wider review were met. If Juan Orlando wins, we re ready to accept that, but we know that wasn t the case, we know that Salvador won and that s why they re refusing the transparency demands, said Marlon Ochoa, campaign manager of Nasralla s alliance. International concern has grown about the electoral crisis in the poor Central American country, which struggles with violent drug gangs and one of the world s highest murder rates. Police sources said at least one man had been shot and killed at a protest in the city of La Ceiba, while about 12 members of the military and police force had been injured in demonstrations that snarled traffic outside Honduras main port on Friday and around the country. At least 10 protesters were injured in the capital of Tegucigalpa, according to the city s Hospital Escuela. Military officials called for peaceful protests after police reports of looting in the capital and other cities. In the country s second-biggest city of San Pedro Sula, thick plumes of black smoke clouded the air as protesters burned tires and police tried to disperse the crowds with tear gas. More than 100 people were also arrested on suspicion of looting in San Pedro Sula on Friday, a police spokesman said, and local media carried footage of shops being plundered. People flocked to supermarkets on Friday, stocking up on food and provisions as major roads and supply routes were blocked across the country by angry protesters. Lines appeared outside gas stations and cash machines. Banks clogged up with people wanting to withdraw or deposit money. I m filling the tank with gas in case anything happens, the situation looks bad and there are protests all over the city, said Carlos Valle, a 61-year-old pensioner, as he joined a long line of vehicles waiting at a fuel pump in Tegucigalpa. Both Hernandez and Nasralla, a television game show host allied with leftists, claimed victory after the election, and the challenger has said he will not accept the tribunal s result because of doubts over the counting process. Leading a center-left alliance, the 64-year-old Nasralla is one of Honduras best-known faces and backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. Zelaya weighed into the debate on Thursday in a letter in which he accused the tribunal of electoral crimes on behalf of Hernandez, who himself was standing for re-election enabled by a contentious 2015 Supreme Court ruling. One of the four magistrates on the electoral tribunal on Thursday flagged serious doubts about the counting process. The Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday convinced both candidates to vow to respect the final result once disputed votes had been checked. But a few hours later Nasralla rejected the OAS accord, saying his opponents were trying to rob him. He urged supporters to take to the streets in protest. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU says Irish to have final say as Brexit border deadline looms;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The key to British hopes of moving on to talks on trade ties with the European Union after it quits the bloc lies in Dublin, the European Council president said on Friday as Ireland called for credible solutions from London for the Irish border. Avoiding a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can advance to trade ties and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. But European Council President Donald Tusk that while the EU negotiating team represents the interests of the 27 other members, Ireland will have the final say on the border issue. Let me say very clearly: if the UK offer is unacceptable for Ireland, it will also be unacceptable for the EU, Tusk said in Dublin at a joint press conference with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. The key to the UK s future lies - in some ways - in Dublin, at least as long as Brexit negotiations continue. Tusk confirmed he had given British Prime Minister Theresa May a deadline of Monday to make a final offer on Irish border conditions before EU heads of government decide whether there is sufficient progress on a UK-EU divorce settlement to merit opening talks on the future relationship. If London meets the three key EU conditions on its financial bill for leaving, the rights of expatriate citizens and the border, then leaders could give a green light to trade talks at the summit on Dec. 14-15. With significant headway on the financial settlement and citizen rights now apparently in the bag, a deal on the Irish border appears to be the final hurdle. The political and economic stakes are high. The economy of Ireland, north and south, has become deeply integrated since the EU single market s creation in 1993, and only road signs now mark the frontier. Free-flowing commerce, together with the 1998 peace deal between Northern Ireland s Protestants and Catholics, has transformed previously neglected areas on both sides of the boundary. Varadkar said that while progress on the border issue had been made, the next few days would be crucial and that Ireland would not be afraid to use its veto if necessary. The UK must offer credible, concrete and workable solutions that guarantee that there will be no hard border...whatever the future relationship between the EU and the UK is, he said. I m an optimist by nature...However I m also prepared to stand firm with our partners if need be...if the UK offer falls short. Before it can sign off on the first phase, Dublin wants May to spell out in writing how she intends to make good on a commitment to avoid turning the clock back to a border of customs and security checks. It says the best way to do so is to keep regulations the same on both sides of a border that will be the UK s only land boundary with the EU after Brexit. May s government has said Britain will leave the EU s single market and customs union but wants the Irish border to remain open, a stance that EU officials say is contradictory. Earlier on Friday Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said a deal on the border was doable but that the sides were not there yet. Coveney said negotiators were working to find sensible wording , drafts of which were being exchanged. Dublin, he said, will insist there will be no fudge . May s room to offer additional concessions to Dublin appeared extremely limited when the pro-Brexit Northern Ireland party propping up her government on Thursday hinted it might withdraw its support if she gives up too much. But Coveney said the Irish government and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) agreed on far more than it disagreed on. May is also under pressure from British business leaders who want confirmation of a transition deal so they have time to adapt to the new relationship. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland says Brexit border breakthrough 'doable' by December summit;DUBLIN (Reuters) - A breakthrough on the future of the Irish border once Britain leaves the European Union is doable before a key EU summit in two weeks time but the negotiating teams are not there yet , Ireland s foreign minister said on Friday. Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can move to negotiations on Britain s future trade relationship with the EU and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. European Council President Donald Tusk last week set an absolute deadline of Monday - when British Prime Minister Theresa May meets EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier - for London to deliver sufficient progress in its divorce offer. Let s hope we can make more progress in the next few days. I don t think everything needs to be done by next Monday but certainly we need to be in a position by the time EU leaders meet (on Dec. 14), I hope, to have wording that everybody can live with, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told reporters. I think it s doable but I think there s a need for some movement and more flexibility than we ve seen to date. We re not where we need to be today but I do think it is possible to get to where we need to be over the next few days, he said. If London meets the three key EU conditions on its financial settlement for leaving, the rights of expatriate citizens and the border, then leaders could give a green light to trade talks at the summit on Dec. 14-15. Before it can sign off on the first phase, Dublin wants May to spell out in writing how she intends to make good on a commitment to avoid a hard border and says the best way to do so is to keep regulations the same on both sides of a border that will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after Brexit. Coveney said negotiators were working to find sensible wording , drafts of which were being exchanged. Dublin, he said, will insist there will be no fudge . He said his government and the pro-Brexit Northern Ireland party propping up May s government agreed on far more than it disagreed on after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) hinted it might withdraw its support for May if she gives too much away. However he warned the DUP that one party does not have a monopoly on the region whose voters sought to stay in the EU and that there were broad and different views among the British province s unionists and Irish nationalist communities. We can t allow one party to dictate what s acceptable and what s not, he said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon will only survive if Hezbollah disarms: Saudi minister;ROME (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s foreign minister said on Friday that Lebanon had been hijacked by Hezbollah and could only flourish if the Iranian-backed group disarmed. The Shi ite Muslim militia was set up by the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in the 1980s and has grown steadily in influence, sharing power in the Beirut government and giving crucial support to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria s civil war. Its growing strength has alarmed Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim monarchy that is Shi ite Iran s arch-rival for regional influence. Lebanon will only survive or prosper if you disarm Hezbollah, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a conference in Italy. As long as you have an armed militia, you will not have peace in Lebanon. Jubeir said the situation in Lebanon was tragic and accused Iran of fomenting unrest across the Middle East. Since 1979, the Iranians have literally got away with murder in our region, and this has to stop, he said. A month ago, Saad al-Hariri resigned as Lebanese prime minister while he was in Saudi Arabia, triggering a political crisis in Beirut and thrusting Lebanon onto the front line of the regional rivalry. Saudi Arabia denied coercing its long-time ally to quit, and Hariri has now returned to Beirut and indicated that he might withdraw his resignation. Elsewhere in the region, Saudi Arabia fears that Hezbollah and Iran are trying to take control of its neighbor Yemen, by supporting Houthi forces against a Riyadh-led military coalition. Hezbollah denies fighting in Yemen, sending weapons to the Houthis, or firing rockets at Saudi Arabia from Yemeni territory. Jubeir rejected this and said his country would not back down in the conflict. The Houthis cannot be allowed to take over a country, he said. Jubeir said his country only had bad relations with two nations Iran and North Korea. He said Riyadh did not have relations with Israel, which shares Saudi worries over Iran, because it was waiting for a Palestinian peace deal. He said everyone knew what a solution would look like to the decades-old conflict. It is not rocket science, he said, adding that he was waiting for the United States to put forward a new proposal. One of the most intractable problems facing negotiators is the spread of Jewish settlements across occupied territory that the Palestinians want for a future state. Jubeir said he expected an eventual deal would set the borders of a Palestinian state on the lines prevailing before the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, he said adjustments could be made for settlers: Seventy percent of the settlers who are on the (1967) Green Line remain in Israel, and the other 30 percent - you offer them compensation and work out housing, and they can move to Israel. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After quitting talks, Syrian government envoy blames Saudis;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government envoy to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva said on Friday that Saudi Arabia had mined the way to the meeting and did not want a political solution to the conflict. The Syrian government delegation earlier quit the talks in Geneva, blaming the opposition s rejection of any role for President Bashar al-Assad in any interim government. Saudi policy is the foundation that got this matter to where it is. They do not want any success for the political, peaceful solution, Bashar al-Ja afari, who also serves as Syria s U.N. envoy, said in an interview with al-Mayadeen television. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt attack victims pray, mourn in Sinai mosque amid high security;AL RAWDAH, Egypt (Reuters) - People wounded in an attack on a mosque in Egypt s North Sinai region that killed more than 230 returned to the site to pray on Friday and a top Muslim leader urged the army to destroy the cancer of insurgency. One worshipper said a whole village had been exterminated in last Friday s attack on the Al Rawdah mosque, near the town of Bir al-Abed - the deadliest such incident in Egypt s modern history. Some of the more than 100 wounded made their way past tight security to the mosque. They prayed and recounted their ordeal at the hands of suspected Islamist militants when a bomb exploded and dozens of gunmen opened fire. The attack targeted worshippers indiscriminately, said wounded school teacher Magdy Rezk. It included everyone inside, those outside and those coming in from the street. Even those trying to escape from the mosque were not spared, he said. Another man who gave only his first name, Ismail, said he lost his father, brother and several uncles and cousins. I was sitting outside the mosque and just started running, he said. They (militants) were approaching from all sides ... it was unbelievable. A whole village was exterminated, said another villager. The army had beefed up security and set up checkpoints leading to the village and the mosque on Friday. At Al Rawdah, a soldier stood inside its minaret keeping watch. No group has claimed the attack, but the Islamic State s Sinai branch, which has for years battled Egyptian security forces and more recently attacked churches, is a prime suspect. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has vowed to step up efforts against Islamist insurgents in Sinai and ordered his military chief to use all force necessary to secure North Sinai in the next three months. The Grand Imam of Cairo s Al-Azhar mosque, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, urged the armed forces to fight and destroy the Islamist insurgency in a televised speech delivered at the mosque. The judgment of God (has) to be implemented upon them by fighting them, he said, describing the militants as cancerous . Egypt, with its security (forces)... is capable of getting through this difficult stage and destroying this terrorism that is foreign to our land, he said. Egypt s deadliest militant attack comes just months before a presidential election in which Sisi is expected to seek reelection. Sisi s support base see him as a vote for stability following prolonged, violent upheaval in the years after the 2011 Egyptian revolt against Hosni Mubarak. In addition to trying to fight the Islamist insurgency in North Sinai, his government has also enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year that critics say have dented his popularity. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;War crimes convict Praljak took cyanide, Dutch prosecutors say;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A preliminary autopsy indicates that Bosnian Croat war crimes convict Slobodan Praljak died of cyanide poisoning, Dutch prosecutors said on Friday. Praljak said he had taken poison in the courtroom immediately after his conviction and 20-year sentence were upheld on Wednesday, and died shortly afterward. In a statement, prosecutors said a toxicological test found Praljak had a concentration of potassium cyanide in his blood. This has resulted in a failure of the heart, which is indicated as the suspected cause of death . ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police secure nail-filled package found near Christmas market;POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) - German police on Friday secured a device full of wires and nails found near an outdoor Christmas market in the city of Potsdam, but could not establish whether it had contained explosives. Germany is on high alert for militant attacks, nearly a year after a Tunisian Islamist rammed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 11 people as well as the driver. Police evacuated a large area of Potsdam s old town center on Friday, including parts of the market, and closed stores while they investigated the package, which had been delivered to a pharmacy. Karl-Heinz Schroeter, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, said the area would remain shut while police searched with sniffer dogs for any other similar packages. He told reporters that several hundred grams of nails had been found in a metal cylinder inside the package, but added: We just don t know at this point if this was a device that could have actually exploded, or a fake, or a test. A robot using water jets was used to ensure the device was safe, officials said. Potsdam police said X-rays had shown wires, nails and batteries inside the package, but that no detonator had been found. Christmas markets opened across Germany on Monday at the start of the holiday season, fortified with concrete barriers and security staff to protect shoppers. Germany has around 2,600 such markets, filled with sparkling Christmas trees and wooden stalls serving candied nuts, sausages, mulled wine and handicrafts. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said this week that Germany had increased information-sharing between federal and state officials and taken other steps to increase security after a series of missteps in the Berlin case. A ministry spokesman said this week that the risk of an attack in Germany and Europe remained high. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish hunger striker found guilty of militant links, freed;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish professor who has been on hunger strike since losing her job in a purge following last year s failed coup was convicted on Friday of belonging to a banned far-left group but the court ordered her release pending an appeal. Nuriye Gulmen, 35, was sentenced to six years and three months in jail for being a member of the militant leftist DHKP-C group, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, defense lawyers told Reuters. She was found not guilty of lesser charges including organizing illegal rallies. The literature professor had been hospitalized before the trial began due to her worsening health after seven months of surviving on water, herbal tea and sugar and salt solutions. Primary school teacher Semih Ozakca, 28, who has also been on hunger strike since losing his job in the crackdown, was acquitted on similar charges. The Ankara court had ordered his release on Oct. 21 for the remainder of the trial, on condition that he wear an ankle monitor. Both deny any links to DHKP-C. A third defendant, Acun Karadag, was acquitted on a lesser charge of participating in illegal rallies. The teachers have said their hunger strike aimed to highlight the plight of some 150,000 state employees including academics, civil servants, judges and soldiers suspended or sacked since the abortive coup in July 2016. The pair were detained in May and jailed pending the start of the trial in September. On Sept. 12, days before the teachers were due in court, Turkey issued detention warrants for the lawyers who were set to defend them. Turkish authorities blame the coup attempt on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his supporters. Gulen condemned the coup and denies involvement. Human rights groups and the European Union have said President Tayyip Erdogan is using the crackdown to stifle dissent in Turkey, an assertion that he denies. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bosnian Croat war criminal Praljak killed himself with cyanide: prosecutors;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Bosnian Croat war crimes convict Slobodan Praljak used cyanide to kill himself in court after losing his appeal, according to preliminary autopsy findings, Dutch prosecutors said on Friday. Praljak, 72, announced that he had taken poison immediately after his conviction and 20-year sentence were upheld by appeals judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on Wednesday, and died shortly afterward. In a statement, prosecutors said a toxicological test had found that Praljak had a concentration of potassium cyanide in his blood . This resulted in a failure of the heart, which is indicated as the suspected cause of death, they added. Earlier on Friday, the tribunal said it had launched its own independent review into the death. Praljak committed suicide in the final minutes of the last verdict at the court before it closes later this month. I just drank poison, the ex-general told the stunned court in a hearing that was being broadcast online. I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction. Prosecutors said they were focusing their investigation on how Praljak had managed to obtain a banned substance in the high-security U.N. building. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump likely to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital next week: official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is likely to announce next week that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a senior administration official said on Friday, a move that would upend decades of American policy and possibly inflame tensions in the Middle East. Trump could make the controversial declaration in a speech on Wednesday though he is also expected to again delay his campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The senior official and two other government sources said final decisions had not yet been made. The Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel s claim on all of the city, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. Word of Trump s planned announcement, which would deviate from previous U.S. presidents who have insisted the Jerusalem s status must be decided in negotiations, drew criticism from the Palestinian Authority and was sure to anger the broader Arab world. It could also unravel the U.S. administration s fledgling diplomatic effort, led by Trump s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and enlist the support of U.S. Arab allies. Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital would destroy the peace process and destabilize the region. Such a move, however, could help satisfy the pro-Israel, right-wing base that helped Trump win the presidency and also please the Israeli government, a close U.S. ally. The senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said details were still being finalized and could still change. Another U.S. official said Trump appeared to be heading toward recognizing Israel s claim to Jerusalem but that it was not a done deal. We ve nothing to announce, said a spokesperson with the White House National Security Council. Trump s impending decisions on Jerusalem, one of the most sensitive core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, follow intense internal deliberations in which the president has personally weighed in, one White House aide said. Trump is likely to continue his predecessors practice of signing a six-month waiver overriding a 1995 law requiring that the U.S. embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, two officials told Reuters on Thursday. But seeking to temper his supporters concerns, another option under consideration is for Trump to order his aides to develop a longer-term plan for the embassy s relocation to make clear his intent to do so eventually, the officials said. It was unclear, however, whether any public recognition by Trump of Israel s claim on Jerusalem would be formally enshrined in a presidential action or be more of a symbolic statement. Trump pledged on the presidential campaign trail last year that he would move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But in June, Trump waived the requirement, saying he wanted to maximize the chances for a new U.S.-led push for what he has called the ultimate deal of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Those efforts have made little, if any, progress so far and many experts are skeptical of the prospects for success. The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, a move not recognized internationally. Arab governments and Western allies have long urged Trump not to proceed with the embassy relocation, which would reverse long-standing U.S. policy by granting de facto U.S. recognition of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital. Visiting Washington this week, Jordan s King Abdullah warned lawmakers that moving the U.S. embassy could be exploited by terrorists to stoke anger, frustration and desperation, according to the Jordanian state news agency Petra. Some of Trump s top aides have privately pushed for him to keep his campaign promise to satisfy a range of supporters, including evangelical Christians, while others have cautioned about the potential damage to U.S. relations with Muslim countries. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela government and foes resume talks, breakthrough unlikely;SANTO DOMINGO/CARACAS (Reuters) - Members of Venezuela s leftist government and opposition coalition began a new round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Friday aimed at resolving the OPEC nation s long-running and often bloody political standoff. Various mediation efforts have failed in recent years: foes accuse President Nicolas Maduro of exploiting dialogue to buy time, while he says the opposition prefers violence. Few Venezuelans expect a breakthrough this time, with opponents demoralized at seeing Maduro consolidate power and position himself for possible re-election in 2018. The Democratic Unity coalition - which failed to dislodge Maduro in months of street protests this year that led to about 125 deaths - is pressing primarily for a guarantee of free and fair voting next year. It also wants a foreign humanitarian aid corridor to alleviate one of the worst economic crises in modern history, as well as freedom for several hundred jailed activists, and respect for the opposition-led congress. We ve come to seek solutions to Venezuela s problems: food, medicines, free elections, and the need to restore democracy, lead opposition negotiator Julio Borges said. It s a difficult path. The opposition s bargaining power has been weakened by a surprising defeat in October gubernatorial elections. Furthermore, the multi-party group is divided, with more militant sectors opposing the talks. The dialogue they are planning to start is a parody ... an instrument for the regime to gain time and keep itself in power, said Antonio Ledezma, an opposition leader who escaped house arrest this month to seek asylum abroad. Maduro has instructed negotiators to focus on opposition to U.S. sanctions against his government. He was strengthened by the October vote and anticipates another win in mayoral elections set for December, which the opposition is mainly boycotting. President Donald Trump has slapped individual sanctions on a raft of officials for alleged rights abuses, corruption and drugs crimes, as well as economic measures intended to stop the Venezuelan government issuing new debt. Maduro wants any potential deal with the opposition to include joint pressure on Washington to back off. He has blamed the U.S. measures for Venezuela s economic problems, which in fact began several years ago amid failed statist policies and a plunge in global oil prices. We came to demand the immediate end of the economic aggressions against Venezuela, said chief government negotiator and Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez. There is no indication, however, that Trump would be prepared to ease pressure on Maduro, whom he has called a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator. On the contrary, U.S. officials say Washington could strengthen sanctions unless Maduro enacts democratic changes. The government also wants recognition for Venezuela s Constituent Assembly, an entirely pro-Maduro superbody elected in July despite an opposition boycott and widespread international condemnation. With an eye to its push to refinance more than $120 billion in foreign debt, Maduro would like the opposition-led congress to agree to approve any negotiations with bondholders, a potential loophole to get round the U.S. sanctions. Foreign ministers from Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua and host Dominican Republic were acting as guarantors at the talks over two days at the Foreign Ministry building in Santo Domingo. Major near-term breakthroughs remain unlikely given the complexity of issues on the table and the distance between each side s preferences, said Eurasia group consultancy. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kosovo PM removed from international arrest warrant: minister;PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj was removed from an international arrest warrant issued by Serbia, lifting an obstacle to him travelling outside the country, the justice minister said on Friday. Early this year Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovar guerilla leader who in September took over as prime minister, was arrested in France on an arrest warrant issued by Serbia. He was released after a French court rejected Belgrade s extradition request. Despite many attempts by Pristina, Belgrade refused to remove his name from the Interpol red notice. Today I was informed that Interpol has removed 18 people from Kosovo that are wanted by Serbia and this list includes also the prime minister, Abelard Tahiri, Kosovo s Justice Minister told Reuters. After today s decision all these individuals are free to travel outside the country without any problem. Haradinaj and others are wanted by Serbia for allegedly committing war crimes. Serbia has charged Haradinaj with murdering Serbs in the late 1990s war. The 1998-99 conflict ended after NATO bombed the now-defunct Yugoslavia, then comprising Serbia and Montenegro, for 78 days to force a withdrawal of its troops from Kosovo and end a counter-insurgency campaign against ethnic Albanians. Haradinaj, who has twice been tried and acquitted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague, denies any wrongdoing. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 but Serbia refused to recognize its former breakaway province. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Coalition with Merkel not automatic, all options open: Germany's SPD;BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) said on Friday he ruled out no option for forming a new government but stressed that a re-run of the outgoing grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives was not a done deal. Germany, Europe s political and economic powerhouse, has been struggling to build a new government since a Sept. 24 national election. Merkel s conservative bloc and the SPD lost support in that vote, while an anti-immigrant party surged into parliament, seriously complicating the coalition arithmetic. Merkel, her own political future on the line after 12 years at the helm, is making overtures to the center-left SPD - her partner in government over the past four years - after her bid to form a three-way coalition with two smaller parties failed. The SPD, which had wanted to go into opposition to rebuild after suffering its worst post-World War Two election result, fears its distinctive identity and policy ideas will again be smothered in any tie-up with Merkel s bigger center-right bloc. Regarding the formation of a new government, there was broad support for not ruling any option out, SPD leader Martin Schulz said after party board discussions in Berlin. Schulz, who held talks late on Thursday with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Merkel and her Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer, denied he had agreed to another grand coalition. I can clearly deny the media report about me having given the green light for grand coalition negotiations. This is simply wrong, Schulz said, adding that the report appeared to be based on sources within Merkel s conservative CDU/CSU bloc. He added that whoever circulated such reports was damaging trust. Ties between the SPD and conservatives - still sharing power in a caretaker capacity - have already been strained this week after a conservative minister backed extending the use of a weedkiller at the European Union level against the SPD s wishes and without its prior knowledge. We have a lot of options for building a government. We should talk about each of these options. That s exactly what I will propose to the party leadership on Monday, Schulz said. The SPD will hold a party congress in Berlin on Dec. 7-9, where it is expected to debate its options. Other options apart from a grand coalition include a minority conservative government - which the SPD could support on a case-by-case basis, or fresh elections. Merkel has said in the past she does not want to lead a minority government. Merkel s camp said the ball was in the SPD s court. It s now up to the SPD to provide clarity, said CDU manager Klaus Schueler. The fact that we underlined today that we are prepared to enter such talks with the SPD shows that we re aiming to bring these talks to a successful conclusion. Another senior member of Merkel s Christian Democrat Union (CDU), Mike Mohring, said he was hopeful for an eventual grand coalition and expected a new government to be formed by March. The way for a grand coalition has been paved, Mohring told Reuters after taking part in a teleconference where Merkel had briefed the federal board of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Thursday night s talks with Schulz and the president. Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament, has said he wants changes in Germany s approach to the European Union and in economic and social policy. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Schulz said the SPD backed French President Emmanuel Macron s call for closer eurozone integration, including a new finance minister for the currency bloc - ideas that face resistance from conservatives. Giving Emmanuel Macron a positive answer will be a key element in every negotiation with the SPD, Schulz was quoted as saying in the interview made available on Friday, adding that he also backed a joint EU tax policy. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pleas to flee, a desperate video: Inside Venezuela's oil industry purge;CARACAS (Reuters) - Days before masked agents arrested him, family and friends pleaded with Eulogio Del Pino to flee, warning that he could be next among executives detained or pursued, one after another, in a mounting purge of Venezuela s faltering oil industry. But the former oil minister, detained by police before dawn on Nov 30, was reluctant to believe he could soon be among those targeted in what President Nicolas Maduro has characterized as a cleanup of the all-important sector. I told him: Go! , said one of three people who described the leadup to the former minister s detention. But he told me I haven t done anything wrong. I trust that they re not going to do anything bad to me. That trust, the product of three years in which Del Pino held the top two jobs in Venezuela s oil ministry, now appears alarmingly misplaced. Maduro is charging Del Pino and many other former industry executives with corruption and blaming them for economic woes now crippling the Andean nation. I m not going to shield anyone, Maduro said in a speech on Nov 28, as he swore in a general who replaced Del Pino as oil minister. If you re corrupt, you have to pay with jail and return what you ve stolen. The crackdown has led to uncertainty, panic and paranoia across the sector, with as many as 65 former executives arrested over the past four months. Prosecutors, critics say, have provided scant evidence for the charges. Corruption has long plagued the OPEC member s oil industry and much of the broader Maduro government, a leftist administration struggling with an imploding economy, soaring crime and debilitated public services. But critics of Maduro s beleaguered administration, and many within the oil industry itself, see the purge as nothing more than an effort to eliminate rivals within the sector and consolidate control ahead of presidential elections next year. Maduro wants control of PDVSA and control of its cash flow, said opposition legislator and economist Angel Alvarado, using the initials for state-controlled oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Venezuela s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. PDVSA and the oil ministry did not respond to requests for comment either. It is not clear whether any of the charges against Del Pino are substantiated. Prosecutors, without presenting any evidence, accused him of belonging to a cartel that operated a roughly $500 million corruption scheme in the western state of Zulia. But the Stanford-educated engineer, who led the ministry until Nov. 26 and PDVSA for three years before that, was previously known as a government loyalist, committed to Maduro s vision for 21st century socialism. Only after he was ousted from the ministry, the three people familiar with his arrest said, did Del Pino finally begin to believe that his time was probably up. His final days as a free man illustrate how swiftly fortunes can shift for even senior officials in Maduro s government. Just after his firing, Del Pino told Reuters in a WhatsApp message: I need a rest. On Nov. 29, three days after his ouster, an exhausted Del Pino went to Avila, a verdant mountain that towers over Caracas, the capital, where he liked to hike, one of the people said. Del Pino found a quiet spot under a tree and recorded a video on his cell phone. He said he believed he was about to become a victim of an unjustified attack. Before sunlight the following morning, hooded and armed military intelligence agents burst into his home and arrested him. Footage of the detention showed Del Pino wearing the burgundy-colored soccer shirt of Venezuela s national team. Later that day, the video Del Pino recorded appeared on his Twitter account. I hope the revolution will give me the right to a legitimate defense, he said, referring to the government in the militant terms embraced by Maduro. Del Pino did not respond to requests for comment on WhatsApp, where he had recently changed his profile picture from one of him in a PDVSA hat to one of his children. After Del Pino s detention, stunned workers at PDVSA s Caracas headquarters, where he was generally well-liked, watched the state TV footage on screens in company elevators. Fear has gripped employees at both institutions, according to a half-dozen current and former PDVSA insiders as well as foreign oil executives. Managers are scared to sign routine documents in case it could be used against them. Maduro promoted Del Pino, who was born in the Canary Islands and holds a Spanish passport, from PDVSA s exploration and production division to the company s top job in 2014. At the time, foreign oil executives and analysts largely welcomed the arrival of the genial and low-profile technocrat. He replaced Rafael Ramirez, a once-powerful loyalist of the late Hugo Chavez, Maduro s predecessor. Ramirez, who dominated Venezuela s oil industry for a decade, sought to make PDVSA redder than red. He urged workers to wear red shirts in support of Chavez s socialist movement and to attend pro-government rallies. Del Pino, by contrast, eased up on revolutionary garb and attendance at militant gatherings. He also sought closer relationships with foreign partners frustrated by currency controls and a lack of professionalism at PDVSA. Still, many PDVSA insiders and oil executives were ultimately disappointed with Del Pino s management. Instead of improvements, he presided over a major production fall that brought Venezuela s oil output to near 30 year-lows. Del Pino ultimately found his hands tied at a company where intervention by the government is common. Last January, Maduro replaced many of his top executives with political and military appointees. Whether Del Pino and other arrested executives are ultimately found guilty or not, many in Venezuela see opportunism behind the ongoing purge, not a concerted effort to stamp out graft. The industry, after all, has been under tight control of the ruling Socialist Party since shortly after Chavez came to power in 1998. Although the government ridiculed a report last year by the opposition-run Congress, finding that some $11 billion went missing at PDVSA over a decade, it now recognizes that many voters support the anti-corruption stances espoused by rivals. The opposition has been pushing for a fight against corruption, and now Maduro wants to appropriate that, said Alvarado, the opposition lawmaker. After surviving major protests this year and pushing through a controversial pro-government legislative superbody, Maduro is feeling empowered, government officials said. He seeks to fortify his position for re-election next year. He is also expected to continue finding ways to target perceived threats to his political power. Some in Venezuela see Del Pino s arrest as a way of getting at an old rival: Ramirez, the former PDVSA boss. Ramirez, until recently Venezuela s envoy to the United Nations, is believed by many in the government to have presidential ambitions. Although Ramirez has not been mentioned by prosecutors, senior government officials increasingly refer to his time at PDVSA as a period when mafias were formed and executives like Del Pino grew ascendant. This week, after Ramirez criticized the president in recent opinion articles online, Maduro fired him and summoned him back to Caracas, according to people familiar with the clash. Late Friday, police arrested Diego Salazar, a relative of Ramirez, in what prosecutors said was another corruption investigation. Ramirez did not respond to a request for information on Friday. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela arrests relative of powerful ex-oil boss Ramirez in graft probe;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela has arrested Diego Salazar, a relative of former oil czar Rafael Ramirez, as part of an investigation into a money laundering scandal in Andorra, the South American country s state prosecutor said on Friday night. President Nicolas Maduro is overseeing what his administration calls a crusade against corruption in the member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Some 65 oil executives have been detained in a deepening purge that could also see the leftist leader consolidate his grip over the energy sector and sideline rivals. The Salazar case appears to relate to what the United States in 2015 said were some $2 billion in laundered funds from Venezuelan state oil company Petr leos de Venezuela, S.A. [PDVSA.UL], known as PDVSA, at the private bank Banca Privada D Andorra (BPA). Saab did not specify Salazar s role or details on the money laundering, except that it involved around 1.35 billion euros in 2011 and 2012, but he said the case was bound to grow. I want to highlight that this citizen will likely not be the only one detained and the only one investigated, Saab said in a phone call to state television announcing the arrest. The arrest is bound to cast the spotlight on Ramirez, who was the powerful head of PDVSA and the oil ministry for a decade before Maduro demoted him as a envoy to the United Nations in 2014. A protracted rivalry between Maduro and Ramirez has increased in the recent weeks, sources close to the situation said this week, especially after Ramirez wrote online opinion articles criticizing PDVSA s production slump and the government s handling of Venezuela s crisis-hit economy. Maduro sacked Ramirez, who was thought to have presidential ambitions, from his job this week and summoned him back to Caracas from New York, the people with knowledge of the situation said. Ramirez and PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Salazar could not immediately be reached for comment. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran presidential result due at 9 pm: electoral tribunal;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras will publish the final result for last Sunday s presidential election at 9 p.m. (0300 GMT) on Friday, said the head of the country s electoral tribunal, David Matamoros. Honduras has been stuck in political limbo since the election due to problems with the vote count. The vote count initially favored opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, then swung in favor of President Juan Orlando Hernandez after it came to a halt on Monday and restarted more than a day later. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kushner, former Trump adviser McFarland spoke with Flynn about Russia contacts: CNN;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former adviser K.T. McFarland were the Trump transition officials who spoke to former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn about his contacts with Russian officials, CNN reported Friday. McFarland went on to serve in the Trump White House and has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to Singapore. CNN also reported she met with investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking at contacts between Russians and the Trump administration. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany mulls new move to improve snooping on cars and apartments;BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government is considering legal changes that would oblige operators of car and house alarm systems to help law enforcement in their efforts to spy on potential terrorists or criminals, a spokesman for the interior ministry said on Friday. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a conservative, plans to discuss the issue with security officials across the country next week in a bid to remove what he sees as hurdles to better surveillance, the spokesman said. But those plans have already sparked criticism from Social Democrats (SPD), who are partners in the current German caretaker government and are under pressure to renew the grand coalition that ruled Germany for the past four years. Surveillance is a sensitive issue in Germany given its legacy of spying by East Germany s Stasi secret police and the Nazi era Gestapo. Boris Pistorius, an SPD member and interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony, said de Maiziere s plans were premature and panicked , and called for a more measured approach. 2017 is not Orwell s 1984, he told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung in an interview to be published on Saturday. We need sound judgment and not exaggeration. In the past, law enforcement officials have run into difficulty installing secret listening devices in cars and apartments because individuals were tipped off by security systems in electronic gadgets connected to the internet, or received text messages when their cars were opened. Officials were now exploring legal changes that would require alarm system operators to provide law enforcement with specific tools that would enable them to secretly open and circumvent alarm systems in cases involving suspected terrorist activity or organized crime, the spokesman said. He said authorities were not seeking access to suspects computers, smart phones or other electronic devices. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate intel panel's top Democrat: Lawmakers will want talk to Kushner again;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate intelligence panel’s top Democrat on Friday said lawmakers will want to again interview U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law turned White House adviser Jared Kushner in the wake of former adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea as part of the U.S. special counsel’s investigation. “There are a number, like Mr. Kushner and others, that we’re going to want to invite back,” Senator Mark Warner told reporters. He declined to say whether that would include U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. He added that he remained confident in the panel’s Republican chairman, Richard Burr. Burr, in a New York Times report on Thursday, said Trump had told him that he was eager to see the committee’s probe end. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State seizes new Afghan foothold after luring Taliban defectors;JAWZJAN, Afghanistan/KABUL (Reuters) - When a Taliban commander defected to Islamic State in northern Afghanistan a few months ago, his men and the foreign fighters he invited in started to enslave local women and set up a bomb-making school for 300 children, officials and residents said. The mini-caliphate established six months ago in two districts of Jawzjan province marks a new inroad in Afghanistan by Islamic State (IS), which is claiming more attacks even as its fighters suffer heavy losses in Iraq and Syria. Qari Hekmat, a prominent Taliban leader in Jawzjan, switched allegiance around six months ago, according to local people who have since fled, raising the movement s black flag over the local mosque and forcing residents to swear fealty to IS s leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. They started killing a lot of people and warned others to cooperate, said Baz Mohammad, who fled Darz Aab district after his 19-year-old son was recruited into IS at the local mosque. IS in Jawzjan has now attracted the attention of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which will launch an offensive in the north in the next few days, U.S. Army General John Nicholson said on Tuesday. U.S. air strikes and special forces have been pounding the main Afghan foothold of IS fighters in the eastern province of Nangarhar, but that has not prevented the movement from stepping up attacks. IS has claimed at least 15 bombings and other attacks in Afghanistan this year, including two in Kabul last month, killing at least 188 people. The number of attacks is up from just a couple nationwide last year. It is unclear whether the all the attacks claimed by IS were carried out by the group, or linked to its central leadership in the Middle East. Afghan intelligence officials say some of the attacks may in fact have been carried out by the Taliban or its allied Haqqani network and opportunistically claimed by IS. Yet the sheer number of attacks plus the targeting of Shi ite mosques, an IS hallmark, indicates the movement is gaining some strength, though their links to the leadership in the Middle East remain murky. Some analysts see IS as an umbrella term covering groups of fighters in Nangarhar s mountains, armed gangs in northern Afghanistan and suicide bombers in Kabul. Little is known about what ties them together. IS in Afghanistan never was such a solid, coherent organization, even from the beginning, said Borhan Osman, an International Crisis Group analyst. In Jawzjan, Islamic State gained its pocket of territory in much the same way it did in Nangarhar - through defection of an established militant commander. Hekmat s Taliban fighters had long held sway in Darz Aab and Qushtepa districts, with the Afghan government having little control, residents who fled to Shiberghan, some 120 km away (75 miles), told Reuters. But when Hekmat had a falling-out with the central Taliban leadership and switched allegiance, his men were joined by about 400 IS-affiliated fighters from China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and elsewhere, according to Darz Aab s district chief, Baz Mohammad Dawar. Foreign militants have long operated in the border areas of Afghanistan, and in Jawzjan they had typically moved from place to place, occasionally cooperating with the Taliban. But once they came to stay, life changed for the worse, according to three families and local officials who spoke to Reuters, even by the war-weary standards of Afghanistan. IS took our women as slaves, or forcefully made them marry a fighter. The Taliban never did that, said Sayed Habibullah, a Darz Aab resident. The Taliban had mercy and we spoke the same language, but IS fighters are foreigners, much more brutal and barbaric. The fighters also forced some 300 children into IS training. In the school, IS allocated two classes for the children to learn about guns and bombs, said Ghawsuddin, a former headmaster in Darz Aab who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. Islamic State emerged in Afghanistan more than two years ago, when members of the Pakistani Taliban swore allegiance to the relatively new global Islamist movement that at the time had seized vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. By June 2015, newly IS-aligned fighters had crossed into Afghanistan and seized around half a dozen districts in Nangarhar, scorching Taliban poppy fields and forcing them to flee. (reut.rs/2j2l6Oy) Soon after, U.S. forces began air strikes and dispatched special forces to assist Afghan troops in fighting Islamic State - also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh. Nicholson, the commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, said on Tuesday that some 1,400 operations had been conducted against IS since March, removing over 1,600 from the battlefield and cutting off their outside finance and support. Daesh has been unable to establish a caliphate in Afghanistan, Nicholson said, adding We see no evidence of fighters making their way from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, because they know if they come here they will face death. . Even if IS is not bringing in new fighters - though that remains a fear - it is another obstacle to Afghan security after 16 years of war against the Taliban. Whether it is Islamic State or Taliban, they are our enemy, said Jawzjan police chief Faqir Mohammad Jawzjani. And they have to be eliminated. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;President Xi says China will not export its political system;BEIJING (Reuters) - China will not export its political system, President Xi Jinping told a forum for foreign political groups on Friday, as the ruling Communist Party seeks to boost its global image and take a more assertive international role. China s state media has this year touted the annual inter-party meeting as a high-level dialogue with Xi speaking at it for the first time. Xi told the forum s opening session China was struggling for the cause of human progress and it would bring benefits to every country in the world, according to state television. We will not import other countries models, and will not export the China model, Xi said. We will provide more opportunities for the world through our development, he said. The official Xinhua news agency has said that representatives from hundreds of political parties in more than 120 countries have registered for the four-day meeting, though it has not provided a full list. Myanmar s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Tony Parker, treasurer of the U.S. Republican National Committee, were among attendees who spoke at the forum s opening. At a Chinese Communist Party (CPP) congress in October, where Xi cemented his power, he laid out a confident vision for a proud and prosperous China in a new era under his leadership. At the time, he also called on the Communist Party, as the world s biggest political party with 89 million members, to have a big image . China has expanded the reach of its foreign policy and military under Xi, whose diplomatic thought has been credited domestically with transcending 300 years of Western international relations theory and serving as a marker of China s growing soft power. But concern abroad about China using its influence to sway foreign business, academic, and political institutions have grown in tandem. Some foreign business has been alarmed by the increased push for influence by Communist Party units in their operations and joint ventures, and international publishers have sparked academic freedom controversies by pulling content that offends Beijing. Jude Blanchette, an expert on China s Communist Party at The Conference Board s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, said Xi and the party had been re-articulating the idea of a China solution for governments around the world. In isolation, the meeting will be forgotten by next week, but it s a small piece in a much larger strategy to rebrand the CCP from a reactive organization on the wrong side of history into a political force at the center of the global conversation, Blanchette said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Former top Brazil prosecutor says successor, police chief slowing graft probes;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Three senior Brazilian law enforcement officials, including the former prosecutor general, said new leaders of the federal police and prosecutors offices are curbing an anti-corruption drive that challenged centuries of impunity in Latin America s biggest country. Rodrigo Janot, who until mid-September was Brazil s prosecutor general and remains an influential senior prosecutor, told Reuters this week he believes that President Michel Temer, whom he charged on three different counts of corruption, appointed a new head of federal police specifically to divert graft investigations. Separately, two other senior law enforcement officials said that Raquel Dodge, Janot s replacement as prosecutor general, told some senior prosecutors in the capital Brasilia to shift away from corruption probes and stop talking publicly about anti-graft efforts. In a statement, the president s office said the police chief was appointed after consultations with the police force. It criticized any suggestions the new director would hinder investigations. Only someone ill-informed or ill-intentioned could suppose that interference in investigations is possible, Temer s office said. A spokeswoman for Dodge said the new prosecutor general was vigorously combating corruption on numerous fronts. Fernando Segovia, the new police director, in an email to Reuters said his office will strengthen the fight against corruption. Brazil s crackdown on graft in recent years led to dozens of convictions of senior politicians, government officials and corporate executives, inspiring many Brazilians to believe that a longstanding culture of impunity was changing. It also helped spawn similar crackdowns elsewhere in Latin America. But in Brazil, where Congress recently shielded Temer from charges, some investigators and prosecutors say that elected officials are finding ways to outmaneuver them, especially as they seek, before elections next year, to retain seats that give them constitutional safeguards against prosecution. The sprawling nature of many of Brazil s inquiries, conducted by investigators in dozens of far-flung offices, would make any concerted effort to derail them difficult, corruption experts said. But Janot s dissent, and growing criticism expressed by other senior officials, reveal a growing rift at the top levels of Brazilian law enforcement at a time when some investigators believe Temer and Congressional allies are out to quash landmark investigations. Now is the time to speak up, Janot told Reuters, so that all this effort will not have been in vain. The effort, including Operation Car Wash and several other major investigations, involves probes into kickbacks by private construction firms to government officials and politicians in exchange for public works and other contracts. It uncovered billions of dollars worth of illicit payments and led to sharing of evidence with 40 other countries, many of which launched their own probes and convicted officials based on Brazilian investigators findings. During a rare, two-hour interview in Brasilia, Janot was especially critical of Segovia s appointment to head the federal police, which spearheaded Car Wash and other investigations. The 61-year-old prosecutor, who stepped down as prosecutor general because the second of his two terms in the office expired in September, said he believes that Segovia was named to complete a mission to divert the focus of the investigations. Janot cited public commentary made by the new police chief, including Segovia s criticism of prosecutors investigations at a press conference shortly after he took office. By the statements he has made, it appears he was selected for the mission to discredit the investigation, Janot added. Segovia, 48, who has spent over two decades on the force, in the email said he seeks to strengthen investigations of crimes against public coffers and involving corruption. I have made clear in all my public statements that we will broaden and strengthen Operation Car Wash, he added. The new police chief was appointed with strong support from Temer s ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB. His appointment surprised some within the federal police because Segovia has never held what is considered one of the force s major posts, according to other investigators and law enforcement experts. During a press conference on Nov. 20, ten days into the new job, Segovia criticized prosecutors for their case against Temer, calling it a rushed investigation. He belittled the evidence, including a video shot by federal police of a Temer aide accepting a bag with 500,000 reais ($150,000) in cash. A single bag does not provide the criminal evidence needed, Segovia said, prompting widespread scorn in Brazilian press and social media. It cannot be denied that the statements made by the new director of the federal police were extremely unfortunate, read an editorial in the Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil s largest newspaper, afterward. When Dodge took office on Sept 19, she was widely criticized by police, prosecutors and many others in Brazil for failing in a speech to acknowledge the historic Car Wash probe. The two senior law enforcement officials, who requested to remain anonymous, said that the new prosecutor general has told other prosecutors to shift their focus from graft. Dodge also told some prosecutors to stop using the word corruption so much in public, they said. The prosecutor general s spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether Dodge told prosecutors to avoid the word corruption or whether she told prosecutors to de-emphasize graft cases. Janot declined to comment on Dodge s dealings with other prosecutors, saying he has a professional and respectful relationship with his successor. Although it is early in the tenure of both Dodge and Segovia, some prosecutors and police investigators say they are already seeing a significant slowdown in procedures necessary to pursue some cases. Janot, for instance, said Dodge s office has filed far less paperwork with Brazil s Supreme Court than would have been expected given the caseload when she took over. The paperwork is a key step in many big investigations because only the top court can authorize probes involving elected federal officials. A spokeswoman for the top court did not respond to a request for comment on the volume of the paperwork. Before his term expired, the prosecutor general s office this year sent an average of 302 requests related to the Car Wash corruption investigations to the Supreme Court each month, Janot said. Dodge s office said it had filed a total of 450 requests since she took office in mid-September, representing an average of 180 per month, or a roughly 40 percent drop. Some experts say it is too soon to know whether a shift away from corruption investigations is underway or even possible to orchestrate, particularly because of the number of investigators pursuing cases across Brazil. More time is needed, they say, to evaluate Dodge s administration. Even if Dodge and Segovia were strategically appointed to stop or create delays in investigations, I doubt they would succeed because the process has become decentralized, said Carlos Pereira, a professor of public administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and a leading expert on corruption. Still, those involved in ongoing cases are troubled by any prospect of a slowdown, particularly with national elections looming next October, which would prolong constitutional protections for many office-holders facing charges. The risks increase exponentially as the elections approach, said Carlos Lima, the top regional prosecutor in Curitiba, the southern city where the Car Wash investigations began. During his conversation with Reuters, Janot criticized Segovia s support from Temer and his allies, some of whom are also facing investigations and charges. A person with close ties to these people some under investigation, some charged I cannot say if they should be allowed to run an institution of the size and importance of the federal police, Janot said. In the email, Segovia said I have no type of political or party ties with the PMDB or any other political party. Temer, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, staved off prosecution largely because allies in the lower house of Congress, which must authorize charges against a sitting president, voted against it. The vote outraged many Brazilians because some of those who voted against the charges in Congress are also being investigated. Temer will still face charges once he leaves federal elected office. The pushback is such that a Congressional committee is now investigating how federal prosecutors carried out their probe against Temer. We re going to investigate those who have always investigated us, said Carlos Marun, a PMDB Congressman and Temer ally, who danced on the lower house floor after it voted against sending the president for trial. Marun himself is facing a corruption trial in his home state of Mato Grosso do Sul. He has denied any wrongdoing. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British Labour leader Corbyn tells Morgan Stanley: 'We're a threat';LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned Morgan Stanley that bankers are right to regard him as a threat because he wants to transform what he cast as a rigged economy that profits speculators at the expense of ordinary people. Morgan Stanley cautioned investors on Nov. 26 that political uncertainty in Britain was a bigger threat than Brexit given the risk of Corbyn winning power and then dismantling what was once seen as one of the world s most stable free-market economies. Bankers like Morgan Stanley should not run our country but they think they do, Corbyn, a 68-year-old socialist, said in a video posted on Twitter that showed the towers of the City of London and Canary Wharf financial districts. So when they say we re a threat, they re right: We re a threat to a damaging and failed system that is rigged for the few, he said. Morgan Stanley declined to comment. London, which vies with New York for the title of the world s financial capital, dominates the $5.1-trillion-a-day global foreign exchange market and is home to more banks than any other financial center. But many bankers, CEOs and investors were spooked by the shock 2016 vote for Brexit and have been dismayed by the political turmoil which followed, including Prime Minister Theresa May s botched gamble on a snap election in June. May lost her party its majority in parliament in that election while Corbyn s unexpectedly strong result in the vote has convinced many of Labour s opponents that Corbyn is a potential prime minister if May s government falls. Kept in power with the support of a small Northern Irish political party, May has just over a year to negotiate Britain s divorce from the EU that will shape Britain s prosperity and global influence for generations to come. Now many investors fear Corbyn, who was once dismissed by his own party as an out-of-touch peace campaigner with no hope of ever winning power, could win the top job if the political turmoil continues in London. One senior executive at a top U.S. investment bank said that at a meeting in New York recently concerns over Corbyn trumped concerns about Brexit. Their top concern was not what s happening in Germany and Spain, or North Korea and Trump: their main concern was what s happening in the UK and what Corbyn might mean for the country, the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity said. It s like Cuba without the sun, the executive said. Morgan Stanley said Britain now faced a double whammy of uncertainty from Brexit and the domestic political instability. From a UK investor perspective, we believe that the domestic political situation is at least as significant as Brexit, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note to clients. Morgan Stanley said there was a high likelihood of another national election in late 2018 just months before Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29 2019. The bank s analysts said a Labour victory could mark the biggest shift in British politics since the late 1970s when Margaret Thatcher won victory, started to privatize chunks of the economy and opened up London to U.S. and Japanese banks. It is certainly plausible that the Labour Party could ultimately moderate some of its more radical policy ideas;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's conservative-far right cabinet likely sworn in Dec. 20: source;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s new conservative-far right ruling coalition is likely to be sworn in on Dec. 20, an informed source said on Friday, marking a victory for nationalists so far shut out of government elsewhere in western Europe. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, whose mainstream conservative People s Party (OVP) won a parliamentary election on Oct. 15 but not a majority, has been in coalition talks with Heinz-Christian Strache s Freedom Party (FPO). Both sides have described the discussions as friendly and constructive but so far failed to disclose the kind of sweeping tax, immigration and administrative reforms they had called for in their campaigns. Kurz, 31, who has taken a tough stance on immigration and Muslim parallel societies , tilting towards the FPO line as the far right surged in popularity, is tipped to become chancellor and the youngest head of government in the European Union. There has been no confirmation on who might get which portfolio in the new cabinet, but the anti-immigration FPO has said it would aim for about half of the ministries. The OVP gained 31.5 percent and the FPO 26 percent of votes in the Alpine republic s October election. (Dec. 20) is certainly a possible date (for the swearing-in), OVP Chairwoman Elisabeth Koestinger said on Oe1 radio, adding they would put quality before speed even if that meant a deal only after Christmas. FPO deputy leader Norbert Hofer told Oe1 that no deal had been sealed yet, repeating previous statements that both parties aimed to finish before Christmas. The Austrian national news agency APA also cited Dec. 20 as the most likely date for the swearing-in of the new government by President Alexander Van der Bellen, but listed Jan. 8 as an alternative date. The FPO, which came within a whisker of winning the 2015 presidential election, is allied with France s National Front and Germany s AfD, which in a September election became the third strongest party in Germany s parliament. The populist far right last entered an Austrian federal government in 2000 and currently rules in coalition with centrists in two of the country s provinces. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cameroon secessionists kill six soldiers, police: president;YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Militants seeking independence for Cameroon s English-speaking regions killed four soldiers and two policemen in attacks this week, President Paul Biya said late on Thursday, vowing to eliminate the secessionists as a threat to peace. Dozens of civilians have been killed since October, after the government cracked down on members of a movement protesting their perceived marginalization by Cameroon s Francophone-dominated government. The repression has driven many into the arms of a once-fringe separatist movement, which has launched a series of deadly raids before presidential elections in 2018. I think things are now perfectly clear to everyone. Cameroon is the victim of repeated attacks, Biya said as he arrived home from a summit of European Union and African leaders in Ivory Coast. Faced with these attacks of aggression, I assure the Cameroonian people that all measures are being taken to end these criminals ability to do harm, he said. Two secessionist leaders confirmed the movement carried out the first raid, late on Tuesday in the town of Mamfe, near the border with Nigeria in Cameroon s Southwest Region, in which four soldiers were killed. One of the main objectives is to clear the checkpoints that they have put on our roads. They are the symbols of occupation, Ben Kuah, the chairman of the defense wing of the Ambazonian Governing Council (AGC), told a Reuters reporter in Dakar. The separatists claimed to have looted weapons during the raid. Ambazonia is the name the separatists have given to the homeland they hope to create. We will dismantle all of these military outposts that have been used to prosecute the occupation of our homeland, said Cho Ayaba, another leading member of the AGC. Two police officers were killed in a similar attack the following night in the nearby town of Out. Separatist leaders were not immediately available to comment on that raid. Cameroon s language divide is a legacy of World War One, when the League of Nations split the former German colony of Kamerun between allied French and British victors. The two entities were reunited following independence. (This version of the story has been refiled to fix typo in paragraph five) ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rohingya who says she was raped in Myanmar hopes pope can help find justice;DHAKA (Reuters) - A 27-year-old Rohingya Muslim woman refugee from Myanmar will meet Pope Francis on Friday in the hope he can help her find justice for the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of Myanmar soldiers, including rape. Pope Francis, visiting both Myanmar and Bangladesh this week, has called for decisive measures to resolve the political reasons that caused Rohingya to flee from Myanmar and urged help for Bangladesh to deal with and influx of some 625,000 refugees since late August. The pope will hear first hand, from the woman and other Rohingya, the sort of accounts that have led to accusations from the United Nations that majority-Buddhist Myanmar has waged a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Muslim minority, including killings and rape. They captured me and some other women, tortured us, the woman told Reuters in the office of an aid group in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka. I still bleed, there is pain in the abdomen, my back hurts, I get headaches. Medicines have not helped much, the woman said as her young daughter clutched at her black burqa. Myanmar s army has denied all accusations of rape and killings by the security forces. It said an internal investigation found no evidence of rape or killings by the security forces. The woman identified herself but Reuters is not publishing her name, or that of her husband, who was with her in Dhaka as she gave her account. The couple said they fled from their village in Myanmar s Rakhine State in late August, soon after the army launched a crackdown following attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants. The woman said that on the fourth day of her 17-day-trek to the safety of a refugee camp in Bangladesh, she was raped by Myanmar soldiers after she got separated briefly from her husband. I will share my pain with him, the woman said of the pope, referring to him the head of the Christians . Her husband sighed as she narrated how she was raped along with nearly a dozen other women by a stream. I will tell him about the stinking bodies we saw on our way to Bangladesh. I want him to recognize us as Rohingya. I want my torturers to be punished, she said. New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch this month accused Myanmar security forces of committing widespread rape as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The United States has said the campaign by Myanmar s military included horrendous atrocities aimed at ethnic cleansing . The pope celebrated a huge outdoor Mass on Friday to ordain new priests from Bangladesh on his first full day in the country after arriving from Myanmar. In calls for peace in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya to describe members of the Muslim minority. The term is contested by the Yangon government and military. Most Rohingya are stateless and they are regarded in Myanmar as illegal immigrants form Bangladesh. The Rohingya refugees who will meet the pope on Friday said they could not risk going back to their homeland without assurances for their safety. We should be recognized as bona-fide citizens of Myanmar, we should be assured life-long security, we should be allowed to pursue higher education, only then we can go back, said the woman s husband. I want justice for my wife. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exiled Egypt presidential hopeful plans return in coming weeks: family;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi s strongest potential challenger in the country s 2018 election plans to return from exile in the coming weeks, his daughter said on Friday. Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander and government minister, said this week he intended to run for president in a surprise announcement from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he is based. Shafik s daughter May Shafik told Reuters on Friday he was preparing to depart, first for Europe and the United States. Then he will head back to Egypt to start his presidential campaign, she said. Shafik had been prevented from leaving the UAE in previous days but had now received assurances that he could travel freely, she said, without specifying who gave the assurances. The UAE denied placing any movement restrictions on Shafik, after a video of him aired by Qatari-owned TV channel Al Jazeera said he had been barred from travel. May Shafik said there had been no intention to release that video, and that it had been leaked to Al Jazeera. The video was filmed as a precaution, she said. The UAE is an ally of Sisi s government, which has been officially silent on Shafik s candidacy announcement. Several Egyptian TV pundits, however, came out against Shafik in a sign of opposition he is likely to face from state-linked media. Shafik is the most serious potential challenger yet to Sisi, who is widely expected to seek a second term, although he has not yet announced he will run. Sisi as a military commander led the ousting of former president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, before his own landslide election a year later. Sisi s supporters see him as key to stability following prolonged, violent upheaval that followed the 2011 Egyptian revolt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak. Sisi s government is fighting an Islamist militant insurgency in the Sinai region and has also enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year that critics say have dented his popularity. Shafik, a minister under Mubarak, narrowly lost to Mursi in Egypt s 2012 election before fleeing overseas. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Norway, Germany to develop missile based on NSM technology;OSLO (Reuters) - Norway and Germany have agreed to develop a common missile for their navies based on Kongsberg Gruppen s Naval Strike Missile (NSM), the Norwegian defense ministry said on Friday. It did not say how long the development was expected to take. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. aid chief appeals for full lifting of Yemen blockade;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Friday to the Saudi-led military coalition to fully lift its blockade of Yemen, saying up to eight million people were right on the brink of famine . Earlier this week the coalition partially eased its blockade to let aid into the ports of Hodeidah and Salif and U.N. flights into Sanaa. But aid shipments cover only a fraction of Yemen s needs, since almost all food, fuel and medicine are imported. The coalition, which is backed by the United States and other countries, began the blockade on Nov. 6 after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired from Yemen toward its capital Riyadh. A second missile was shot down on Thursday. That blockade has been partially wound down but not fully wound down. It needs to be fully wound down if we are to avoid an atrocious humanitarian tragedy involving the loss of millions of lives, the like of which the world has not seen for many decades, U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said. Yemen has a population of 25 million people. Twenty million of them need assistance and something like seven or eight million of them are, right now, right on the brink of famine, he said as he launched the U.N. s 2018 humanitarian appeal. Lowcock sidestepped reporters questions on whether the Saudi-led blockade amounted to a violation of international law, though he said the United Nations had consistently urged all parties in the conflict to respect their obligations. I m not a lawyer but clearly international humanitarian law includes a requirement to facilitate unhindered access for aid agencies, and that s what I ve been trying to secure both in what I ve said publicly and also in my private dialogue, he said. U.N. officials are often shy of criticizing parties to a conflict for fear of losing access or funding. Saudi Arabia has been a major donor to aid appeals for Yemen. Others have been less reticent. Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief, has called the blockade illegal collective punishment , while Alfredo Zamudio, director of the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue in Norway, told Reuters he thought the International Criminal Court should investigate whether it was a war crime. Speaking at Friday s event in Geneva, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, head of Save the Children International, said: What we ve seen in Yemen has been actually a very clear breach of the rules and also it s been very clear that denial of aid coming in has also become a weapon of war. The coalition joined the Yemen war in 2015 after the Iran-allied Houthi group and its allies forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh sees the Houthis as a proxy for Iran, its arch-foe in the region. The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced over 2 million and triggered a cholera epidemic as well as pushed the country to the verge of famine. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says understands why Russian parliament wants to ban U.S. media;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday it fully understood why the Russian lower house of parliament planned to discuss banning representatives of U.S. media organizations in retaliation for what it says is U.S. mistreatment of Russian media. Russian lawmakers are to discuss a proposal to bar U.S. media from accessing the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the RIA news agency quoted the chair of one of the chamber s committees as saying earlier on Friday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters that the Kremlin understood why lawmakers wanted to hit back against the United States for its mistreatment of Russian media. Peskov said Russian media had been subjected to outrageous attacks in the United States which violated freedom of speech. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK must produce 'credible' border plan to unlock Brexit talks: Irish PM;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Friday that the British government must produce credible, concrete solutions in the coming days to ensure there will be no hard border in Ireland if it wants to move on to the next phase of Brexit talks. The UK must offer credible, concrete and workable solutions that guarantee that there will be no hard border, whatever the outcome of the negotiations and whatever the future relationship between the EU and the UK is, Varadkar said after talks with European Council President Donald Tusk. The next couple of days will be crucial, he said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Skin in the game: Philippine students protest Duterte in naked run;MANILA (Reuters) - A Philippine college fraternity used its annual naked run on Friday to protest against President Rodrigo Duterte s brutal war on drugs and the imposition of martial law in the south in the army s fight against Islamist militants. The masked and hooded young men sprinted in the nude through their college, holding signs reading Lift Martial Law and Stop the Killings , as bystanders laughed and pointed and others took photos. The level of violence in society is growing and the fraternity cannot simply ignore that, that thousands of people are dying , Alpha Phi Omega spokesperson Thomas Roca said, when asked why the fraternity picked the protest theme this year. Since taking office last June, Duterte has launched a ferocious war of drugs that has left thousands of Filipinos dead, and in May, he imposed martial law in Mindanao, an island of 22 million people, when Islamic State-linked militants took over large parts of the city of Marawi. This is not the first time the fraternity has taken a political stance with its yearly bare-bottomed event. The society used its naked run during the rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s to protest against the censorship of activists at the University of the Philippines. For a finale on Friday, the men gathered by a pond, arms slung over each other s shoulders, and lustily sang their fraternity song, alumni members in the audience joining in as well. It s my first time seeing this , college student Haji Viado said, with a smile. But for me what they did was effective to get people s attention on these issues. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Georgia says suspect in Istanbul airport bombing killed last week;TBILISI (Reuters) - A former Islamic State fighter suspected of masterminding a deadly attack on Istanbul airport in 2016 was killed during a special operation in ex-Soviet Georgia last week, a spokeswoman for Georgia s state security service said on Friday. Akhmed Chatayev was named by Turkish media and a U.S. congressman as the mastermind of the suicide bombing of Istanbul airport in 2016 which killed 45 people. His involvement has not been corroborated by Turkish officials. It s confirmed that one of those killed during the operation is Akhmed Chatayev, Nino Giorgobiani, a spokeswoman for Georgia s state security service, told a news briefing. Giorgobiani said that Chatayev blew himself up. One Georgian special forces serviceman and two other members of the armed group, which was suspected of terrorism, were killed in the same operation. Four police officers were wounded and one member of the group was also arrested. The 20-hour operation took place at an apartment block on the outskirts of the Georgian capital Tbilisi last week. Giorgobiani declined to name the two other armed men killed or disclose the identity of the member of the group who was arrested, the group s motives, or how they got to Georgia. The investigation is ongoing ... We continue to work with our international partners to identify the other two (armed men), Giorgobiani said. She said that experts from the United States had been participating in the investigation. A United Nations sanctions list describes Chatayev as a senior figure in Islamic State responsible for training Russian-speaking militants. A veteran of Chechnya s conflict with Moscow during which he lost an arm, he lived in Georgia s Pankisi Gorge, a remote area populated largely by people from the Kist community, ethnic Chechens whose ancestors came to mainly Christian Georgia in the 1800s. When, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechnya rose up in an armed rebellion against Moscow s rule, the Kist community were drawn to the fight. Thousands of refugees arrived from Chechnya, and some insurgents used the gorge to regroup and prepare new attacks. Chatayev was wounded and arrested in Georgia in August 2012 following a clash between the Georgian police and a group of militants, who were allegedly trying to cross the Georgian-Russian border and move to Dagestan. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss dismiss ETA activist's asylum bid, but she is free to stay;ZURICH (Reuters) - A Swiss federal court has dismissed the asylum appeal of a woman convicted in Spain of supporting the Basque separatist group ETA, but said she was now free to remain in Switzerland after Madrid dropped her sentence. The case of Nekane Txapartegi, who said she was tortured while in custody in Spain before fleeing in 2007, has drawn considerable attention in Switzerland, with members of a Free Nekane movement staging rallies in Zurich and other cities. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture and Amnesty International had also urged Swiss authorities not to extradite Txapartegi to Spain. On Friday the Swiss court said the asylum issue was no longer relevant because Spain s High Court had ruled that her sentence - initially 11 years in jail, later reduced to 3-1/2 years - had reached its statute of limitations. As with every European citizen, Ms. Txapartegi may stay in Switzerland within the rules of free movement, a spokesman for the State Secretariat for Migration said. Switzerland is not in the European Union but EU citizens can settle there provided they are in gainful employment or can prove they have sufficient funds to support themselves. Swiss authorities arrested Txapartegi in Zurich in April 2016 after they discovered she had been living under an assumed name in Switzerland since 2009. They agreed in March this year to extradite her but freed her in September after the Spanish decision to drop her jail sentence. Txapartegi had told Swiss authorities she was tortured into confessing support for ETA while in Spanish custody. The Swiss Federal Office of Justice said at the time she could not credibly show that she was actually tortured . On Friday the Swiss court said that, given the conditions prevailing in Spain at the time of her arrest, she may well have been subjected to physical and psychological abuse, but said it no longer needed to evaluate her claims. ETA, which killed more than 850 people in a decades-long campaign to carve out a separate state, effectively ended its armed resistance this year when it surrendered its weapons. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary PM Orban, U.S. financier Soros clash as elections loom;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday he would use all means necessary, including secret services, to combat what he called efforts to undermine him by U.S. financier George Soros. Soros said in a video that Hungary under Orban was more oppressive than it was during the Cold War Soviet occupation. He cannot reach me, but he exploits and oppresses the people who are in opposition in Hungary. The spat marks a new high in the conflict between Orban and Soros, allies in dismantling Communism during the 1980s who have grown apart. Soros has described Orban as a dangerous autocrat while Orban accuses the financier of interference in Hungarian politics through its support of opposition groups. We want a different future, and...it was my duty to enlist all possible tools of the state, including intelligence, the secret services, legal and public debate, Orban said in an interview. Therefore we ordered an intelligence report on the composition, workings and Hungarian and European influence of this Soros machinery. Orban told public radio that Hungarian secret services had completed a report this week about a network of non-government organizations and other groups funded by Soros in Hungary and in Europe. He did not disclose its findings. At the heart of their conflict is immigration, which Orban rejects as an existential threat to the continent, while Soros has promoted a more lenient policy mix, including controlled immigration and aid to migrants in Europe and at home. The ruling Fidesz party faces elections in April next year, and Orban - a strong favorite for a third consecutive term - said he expected Soros to work on behalf of his pro-immigration opponents. They will support publications, do propaganda, strengthen civil groups, and pay hundreds, thousands of people. By election time they will establish civil centers which will work like campaigning parties, meaning the Soros network has entered the Hungarian election campaign. Daniel Makonnen, a spokesman for Soros Open Society Foundations (OSF) in Budapest, told Reuters that OSF planned two new funding centers in the east and south of the country. The centers, in the cities of Debrecen and Pecs, will make grants of a total of $1 million each this year and next for local education, health care and anti-poverty programs, he said. Immigration or electoral politics will not be on their agenda, nor will they open more branches, Makonnen added. We have differences we cannot bridge because he considers us enemies, Soros said of Orban in a video message which surfaced online after Orban s interview on Friday. I have no personal grudge but a difference in principle. I oppose his system. A government spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Soros s latest remarks. Soros said Orban wanted to expel his organizations. I think the current system is more oppressive than it was during the Russian occupation. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Quake hits southeast Iran, destroys homes;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan to make historic visit to Greece next week;ATHENS (Reuters) - Tayyip Erdogan will travel to Greece on Dec. 7-8, Greek sources said on Friday, in the first visit by a Turkish president in decades that have seen ties at times severely strained over issues from Aegean Sea rights to ethnically-split Cyprus. Erdogan is expected to meet his Greek counterpart and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and discuss bilateral relations, security issues and the refugee crisis, following a 2016 EU-Ankara deal aimed at reducing migrant flows to Europe. He is also expected to visit Thrace in northern Greece, where there is a Muslim minority. Erdogan last visited fellow NAT member Greece in 2010 in his capacity as prime minister. His visit next week will be the first by a Turkish president to Greece in 65 years. Greece and Turkey, NATO allies, came to the brink of war in 1996 over the ownership of uninhabited Aegean islets. Relations have improved since then but they are still at odds over issues from territorial disputes to Cyprus, which remains divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities living on either side of a U.N.-monitored ceasefire line. Eight Turkish soldiers commandeered a helicopter and flew it to northern Greece as a failed coup unfolded against Erdogan between July 15 and 16, 2016. Turkey has repeatedly demanded Greece hand them over but Greece s highest court has rejected their extradition. Greek police on Tuesday arrested nine Turkish citizens who were later charged with terrorism-related offences. They are accused of hoarding explosives and of links to an outlawed militant organization responsible for suicide bombings in Turkey. They have denied any wrongdoing. [nL8N1NZ39F] ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe court postpones former finmin Chombo bail hearing-state radio;HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean court has postponed former finance minister Ignatius Chombo s bail hearing to next Tuesday, state radio reported on Friday. The High Court had been due to sit for the hearing on Friday. Chombo, detained by the military before Robert Mugabe resigned as president, is accused of corruption, including trying to defraud the central bank in 2004. His lawyer says Chombo will deny the allegations at his trial. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-U.S. NSA employee pleads guilty to taking classified documents;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. National Security Agency employee pleaded guilty on Friday to illegally taking classified information outside the spy agency that an intelligence official said was later stolen from his home computer by Russian hackers. Nghia Hoang Pho, who worked in the NSA’s elite hacking unit, retained U.S. government documents containing top-secret national defense information between 2010 and March 2015, the Justice Department said. Pho, a 67-year-old U.S. citizen born in Vietnam, faces up to 10 years in prison. He is not being held by authorities as he awaits his sentencing, which is scheduled for April 6, 2018, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pho was the same NSA employee who had been identified in media reports for using Kaspersky Lab antivirus software on his home computer. Some U.S. officials have said software from the Moscow-based company allowed Russian intelligence agencies to pilfer sensitive secrets from the United States through Pho’s computer. The Department of Homeland Security in September ordered federal agencies to start removing Kaspersky software from their computers. U.S. officials have said the firm either has ties to Russian intelligence or is forced to share information held on its servers with Russian officials. Kaspersky has repeatedly denied the allegations but acknowledged its software in 2014 took NSA code for a hacking tool from a customer’s computer before its chief executive, Eugene Kaspersky, ordered the code destroyed. The court documents do not appear to make mention of Russian intelligence agencies or Kaspersky Lab. The connection was first reported by the New York Times. The intelligence official declined to comment on whether Pho knew the software he was using at home was vulnerable. Pho is at least the third NSA employee or contractor to be charged within the past two years on counts of improperly taking classified information from the agency, breaches that have prompted criticism of the secretive NSA. A federal grand jury indicted former NSA contractor Harold Martin in February on charges alleging he spent up to 20 years stealing up to 50 terabytes of highly sensitive government material from the U.S. intelligence community, which were hoarded at his home. In June another NSA contractor, Reality Winner, 25, was charged with leaking classified material about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to a news outlet. She pleaded not guilty. And in 2013, former contractor Edward Snowden pilfered secrets about NSA’s surveillance programs and shared them with journalists. He now lives in Moscow. Pho, of Ellicott City, Maryland, took both physical and digital documents that contained “highly classified information of the United States,” including information labeled as “top secret,” according to court records unsealed Friday. He was aware the documents contained sensitive information and kept them at his residence in Maryland, the records said. Asked for comment, Pho’s attorney, Robert Bonsib, said, “Any conversations regarding this case will be made in the courtroom during the sentencing.” He declined to comment further. Officials at the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The NSA, whose main mission is gathering and analyzing foreign communications for potential security threats, is based at Fort Meade, Maryland. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Charity shop customers leave empty-handed, refugees benefit;LONDON (Reuters) - Customers at a new charity shop in London walk away empty-handed and any money they spend goes to assist refugees in Europe and the Middle East. The Choose Love shop, run by the charity Help Refugees, displays products ranging from warm clothing to cooking equipment in London s central Soho district, the use of which was donated to the charity free of charge. It s easy to forget how lucky we are to have a bed, a blanket and a roof over our heads. For thousands of refugees this winter, these basic human needs are completely out of reach, Josie Naughton, CEO of Help Refugees said in a statement. The products on display are all items that the charity distributes to refugees in its field operations. Items range in price from 4.99 ($6.70) to 499. The charity said it would spend its customers money raised for specific items on identical or similar products to send to refugees. A spokesman added they may need to balance what they fund if consumers bought too many or too few of certain items. ($1 = 0.7414 pounds) ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turks flock to social media for gold trader sanctions case;ANKARA (Reuters) - Allegations of wrongdoing by Turkey s political and financial leaders have transfixed the country this week, but with some newspapers focusing instead on courtroom conspiracies and clothes, many Turks have been left hungry for news. Casual chic on the 2nd day , read HaberTurk newspaper s front page story after main witness Reza Zarrab told a New York court that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan authorized a transaction in a scheme to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. On the second day of the trial, Reza Zarrab was not wearing a prison uniform and was casual chic in his white shirt and dark blazer, HaberTurk said. Like other publications, HaberTurk stepped nimbly around the substantive issues. Erdogan has presided over a crackdown in areas from judiciary to media since a failed coup last year with a number of journalists jailed. He has also frequently taken court action against those he deems have insulted him. Zarrab is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in the criminal trial of a Turkish bank executive accused of helping to launder money for Iran. The executive has pleaded not guilty. Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for almost 15 years, has not yet responded to courtroom claims;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian Kurds hold local elections, press on with autonomy plans;QAMISHLI, Syria (Reuters) - Kurdish-led authorities held local elections on Friday in areas they control in northern Syria, pushing ahead with autonomy plans opposed by both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and by Turkey. Kurdish forces and their political allies now hold the largest part of Syria outside the grip of Assad s government. They have captured vast territory from Islamic State with the support of U.S. arms, jets and ground advisers, although Washington opposes their autonomy drive. Kurdish leaders say their goal is to establish self-rule within Syria, not secession. But their influence has infuriated Ankara, which considers the Kurdish YPG militia to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has run a decades-long insurgency in Turkey. Assad has vowed to recover every inch of the country, as his territorial grip expanded rapidly over the past two years with help from Russia and Iran. Damascus has more forcefully asserted its claim to territory held by Kurdish-led forces in recent months. The head of Syria s delegation to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva, Bashar al-Ja afari, rejected the election, repudiating any unilateral act that happens without coordination with Damascus. Since Syria s conflict began more than six years ago, the dominant Kurdish parties have been left out of international diplomacy in line with Turkish wishes. They were excluded again from U.N.-led peace talks which reconvened in Geneva this week. Hadiya Yousef, a senior Kurdish politician, said the Kurdish-led administration would not be bound by decisions taken in its absence. We are not present in these meetings, and therefore we are developing the solution on the ground, Yousef told Reuters. Peace talks would not arrive at solutions so long as they do not involve those running 30 percent of the country, she added. Voters are picking from close to 6,000 candidates for town and city councils on Friday, the second part of a three-stage process that will culminate in electing a parliament early next year. They chose representatives for smaller-scale district councils in September. Everyone should take part (in the election) because this is the fate of the entire region, said Sheikhmous Qamishlo, a 65-year-old Syrian Kurd at a polling station in Qamishli. This is a new experience, we wish it success, he said, and described casting his vote as a national duty . The election was being monitored by a small group of politicians from other countries in the Middle East, Yousef said, including a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party which runs the autonomous Kurdish region in neighboring Iraq. Yousef said the Iraqi Kurdish official s presence was a kind of recognition of the Syrian Kurdish political project. The Iraqi Kurdish authorities, whose own plans for independence were met with a swift backlash from states in the region in the past two months, have previously been hostile to the Syrian Kurdish parties. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Russia envoy cancels trip saying Russian officials won't meet him;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has been forced to cancel a planned trip to Russia s Far East next week because senior regional officials could not find time to meet him, the U.S. Embassy to Russia said in a statement on Friday. The United States has a consulate in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East and the embassy said his planned visit was part of a series of trips to places where the U.S. hoped to resume consular operations which were suspended earlier this year amid a diplomatic dispute. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian parliament to discuss ban on access for U.S. media: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers are to discuss a proposal to bar representatives of U.S. media organizations from accessing the lower house of parliament, RIA news agency quoted the chair of one of the chamber s committees as saying. Olga Savastyanova, who chairs the chamber s rules and regulations committee, said her committee would consider a resolution containing the proposal next Monday. It would be put forward for approval of the chamber, known as the State Duma, on Tuesday or Wednesday, according to RIA. It s a ban on journalists who represent American media, all American media, visiting the State Duma, RIA quoted Savastyanova as saying. She represents the ruling United Russia party, which holds a majority of the seats in the chamber. U.S. authorities have designated Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT as a foreign agent, after intelligence officials alleged it tried to meddle in the U.S. presidential election last year. RT denies that. The Kremlin has pledged to retaliate in kind. At the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the Russian authorities to designate some foreign media as foreign agents. The move to deny U.S. journalists access to the State Duma was a response to a similar move in Washington, RIA quoted Savastyanova as saying. RT on Wednesday night published a letter from the Executive Committee of the Congressional Radio And Television Correspondents Gallery saying the channel s Congressional press credentials had been withdrawn due to its registration as a foreign agent in the United States. That means RT s reporters will not be able to have as much access to Congress as other foreign media. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey seeks arrest of ex-CIA officer over suspected coup links: Hurriyet;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a former officer of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over suspected links to last year s failed coup, the Hurriyet daily said on Friday, in a further blow to troubled U.S.-Turkey ties. The Istanbul prosecutor s office is seeking the detention of Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council and CIA officer in Turkey, on suspicion that he helped to plan the July 2016 coup attempt, Hurriyet said. It said prosecutors had also issued an arrest warrant for Henri Barkey, a prominent Turkey scholar based in the United States, on suspicion of involvement in planning the coup. The Istanbul prosecutor s office declined to comment on the matter. Neither Fuller nor Barkey could immediately be reached for comment. The arrest warrants, if confirmed, will put further strain on relations between NATO allies Turkey and the United States, already at loggerheads over a wide range of issues. Hurriyet said Turkish authorities believed Fuller had left Turkey after the abortive coup, in which rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and helicopters in an attempt to oust President Tayyip Erdogan and his government. It said the warrant marked the first time that Turkish authorities have been able to confirm Fuller s whereabouts before and after the putsch. Erdogan accuses U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his supporters of organizing the coup, in which more than 250 people were killed. Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan, has condemned the coup and denies any involvement. Turkey has asked the United States to extradite Gulen for trial but U.S. officials say it has failed to provide sufficient evidence to justify such a move, infuriating Erdogan. Turkish authorities have shut down businesses, media outlets and schools belonging to Gulen and have sacked or suspended some 150,000 people including soldiers, journalists, academics and judges over their possible links to his network. Nearly 50,000 people suspected of involvement in the coup have been jailed. Human rights groups and some Western politicians have accused Erdogan of using the crackdown to muzzle dissent in Turkey, but the government says the purges are necessary due to the gravity of the security threats it faces. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nine killed as burqa-clad Taliban attack Pakistani college;PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani Taliban gunmen disguised in all-enveloping burqas stormed the campus of an agricultural college in Pakistan on Friday, killing at least nine people and wounding 35, police and hospital officials said. Police and army troops summoned to the scene killed all of the attackers at the Agriculture Training Institute in the northwestern city of Peshawar about two hours into the attack, the military s press wing said. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying in a message from spokesman Mohammad Khorasani that they had targeted a safe house of the military s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The gunmen arrived at the campus in an auto-rickshaw, disguised in the burqas worn by many women in the region, Peshawar police chief Tahir Khan said. They shot and wounded a guard before entering the campus, he said. A wounded student, Ahteshan ul-Haq, told Reuters the university hostel usually houses nearly 400 students, but most had gone home for a long holiday weekend and only about 120 students remained. We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. I got up and within seconds everybody was running and shouting the Taliban have attacked , he said. The Pakistani Taliban later released a video showing the attack, recorded with what appeared to be a body-mounted camera. In it, one of the gunmen raced into a building shouting Allahu Akbar! and firing his weapon as he went room to room searching for students. The militants also issued photos of the attackers, who they said were from nearby Swat Valley, singing with the movement s fugitive leader, Mullah Fazlullah, before their mission. Shehzad Akbar, medical director of Hayatabad Medical Complex, said six people died of their wounds and 18 were being treated. Another three people died at Khyber Teaching Hospital and 17 wounded were there, director Nekdad Afridi said. In December 2014, Pakistani Taliban gunmen killed 134 children at Peshawar s Army Public School, one of the single deadliest attacks in the country s history. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban insurgents who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three migrants die in boat accident off Morocco: official;RABAT (Reuters) - At least 3 migrants, two of them women, died when their boat sank off Morocco late on Thursday, a Moroccan official said on Friday. Four migrants from sub-Saharan countries were rescued and were being treated in a Moroccan hospital, a hospital source who asked for anonymity said. A navy search operation for other possible survivors was underway, the official said. Another 28 people who were on their boat are still missing, Joel Millman, a spokesman for the U.N. International Organization for Migration said. Millman said 174 people have already died on the route between North Africa and Spain this year, up from 121 in the same period of 2017, while the number of people arriving in Spain has reached 19,668 by Nov. 29. Morocco is, like other North African countries, a departure point for African migrants heading in makeshift boats for Europe. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian billionaire denounces Saudi corruption crackdown;ROME (Reuters) - Egyptian billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris condemned on Friday a crackdown on graft in Saudi Arabia, saying the purge had undermined the rule of law in the Kingdom and would deter investment. In unusually outspoken comments, Sawiris, a well-known business figure in North Africa and the Middle East, also accused Qatar of destabilizing the region, and said there were only a handful of Arab nations that were safe to invest in. Saudi security forces rounded up dozens of members of the country s political and business elite last month on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in what was billed as a war on rampant corruption. Sawiris, whose family s Orascom businesses have interests ranging from construction to telecommunications, said influential figures should stand up to the Crown Prince, whom he referred to as this young man . We need to tell him no . There is the rule of law and order. You have a transparent process. Where is the court? What is the evidence? Who is the judge? he told a conference in Rome, questioning the Crown Prince s motives. Are you not part of this? Where did you get your money? Didn t you do this? What is the system? he said. Prince Mohammed has said Saudi Arabia needs to modernize and has warned that without reform, the economy will sink into a crisis that could fan unrest. Critics say his purge is aimed at shoring up his own power base, which the Saudi government denies. Sawiris said everyone with a conscience should speak out, but added that many were too frightened to do so. Everyone is scared because they have interests there, they have the oil, they have the money. But you need to have a conscience. When I say this, I know I am done-for in Saudi Arabia. No more business (there). Ok, I don t care. A monthly Reuters poll published on Thursday showed Middle East fund managers had become more positive towards Saudi Arabian equities after an initial market sell-off following the launch of the anti-graft drive. But Sawiris, who is not known to have major investments in Saudi Arabia, predicted business leaders would steer clear of the country in future. I think after what happened in Saudi Arabia, no one will invest there, he said. Sawiris also took aim at Iran, accusing the country of interfering in the affairs of its neighbors. He likewise denounced Qatar, saying it was funding terror groups. Why don t they take care of the prosperity of their own people instead of financing crazy clergymen who push young men to go and kill? he said. A group of Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt cut ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of fomenting instability. Qatar, a tiny Gulf state, has denied supporting militants. Asked where was safe to invest in the Arab world, Sawiris mentioned Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Sudan, but jokingly dismissed Lebanon. The problem with Lebanon is they are all sharks and they leave nothing to anyone. Only a crazy person would invest in Lebanon, he said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian bombers hit targets in Syria's Deir al-Zor province;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Six Russian long-range bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria s Deir al-Zor province, RIA news agency cited the Russian Defence Ministry as saying on Friday. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. firms push Washington to restart nuclear pact talks with Riyadh: sources;RIYADH/DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S. firms attracted by Saudi Arabia s plans to build nuclear reactors are pushing Washington to restart talks with Riyadh on an agreement to help the kingdom develop atomic energy, three industry sources said. Saudi Arabia has welcomed the lobbying, they said, though it is likely to worry regional rival Iran at a time when tensions are already high in the Middle East. One of the sources also said Riyadh had told Washington it does not want to forfeit the possibility of one day enriching uranium - a process that can have military uses - though this is a standard condition of U.S. civil nuclear cooperation pacts. They want to secure enrichment if down the line they want to do it, the source, who is in contact with Saudi and U.S. officials, said before U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry holds talks in Riyadh early next week. Another of the industry sources said Saudi Arabia and the United States had already held initial talks about a nuclear cooperation pact. U.S. officials and Saudi officials responsible for nuclear energy issues declined to comment for this article. The sources did not identify the U.S. firms involved in the lobbying. Under Article 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, a peaceful cooperation agreement is required for the transfer of nuclear materials, technology and equipment. In previous talks, Saudi Arabia has refused to sign up to any agreement with the United States that would deprive the kingdom of the possibility of one day enriching uranium. Saudi Arabia, the world s top oil producer, says it wants nuclear power solely for peaceful uses - to produce electricity at home so that it can export more crude. It has not yet acquired nuclear power or enrichment technology. Riyadh sent a request for information to nuclear reactor suppliers in October in a first step towards opening a multi-billion-dollar tender for two nuclear power reactors, and plans to award the first construction contract in 2018. Reuters has reported that Westinghouse is in talks with other U.S.-based companies to form a consortium for the bid. A downturn in the U.S. nuclear industry makes business abroad increasingly valuable for American firms. Reactors need uranium enriched to around 5 percent purity but the same technology in this process can also be used to enrich the heavy metal to a higher, weapons-grade level. This has been at the heart of Western and regional concerns over the nuclear work of Iran, which enriches uranium domestically. Riyadh s main reason to leave the door open to enrichment in the future may be political - to ensure the Sunni Muslim kingdom has the same possibility of enriching uranium as Shi ite Muslim Iran, industry sources and analysts say. Saudi Arabia s position poses a potential problem for the United States, which has strengthened ties with the kingdom under President Donald Trump. Washington usually requires a country to sign a nuclear cooperation pact - known as a 123 agreement - that forfeits steps in fuel production with potential bomb-making uses. Doing less than this would undermine U.S. credibility and risk the increased spread of nuclear weapons capabilities to Saudi Arabia and the region, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). It is not clear whether Riyadh will raise the issue during Perry s visit, which one of the industry sources said could include discussion of nuclear export controls. Under a nuclear deal Iran signed in 2015 with world powers - but which Trump has said he might pull the United States out of - Tehran can enrich uranium to around the level needed for commercial power-generation. It would be a huge change of policy for Washington to allow Saudi Arabia the right to enrich uranium, said Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Americas office at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. Applying the golden standard of not allowing enrichment or preprocessing (of spent fuel) has held up a 123 agreement with Jordan for many years, and has been a key issue in U.S. nuclear cooperation with South Korea, said Fitzpatrick, a nuclear policy expert. The United States is likely to aim for restrictions, non-proliferation analysts say. These could be based on those included in the 123 agreement Washington signed in 2009 with the United Arab Emirates, which is set to start up its first South Korean-built reactor in 2018 and has ruled out enrichment and reprocessing. Perhaps Saudi Arabia is testing the Trump administration and seeing if the administration would be amenable to fewer restrictions in a 123 agreement, ISIS s Albright said. Saudi Arabia s nuclear plans have gained momentum as part of a reform plan led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to reduce the economy s dependence on oil. Riyadh wants eventually to install up to 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of atomic capacity by 2032 - or up to 17 reactors. This is a promising prospect for the struggling global nuclear industry and the United States is expected to face competition from South Korea, Russia, France and China for the initial tender. Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, has said the kingdom wants to tap its own uranium resources for self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel and that this is economically viable. As a nuclear conference in October, Saudi officials declined to comment when asked to expand on the topic. In 2015, before the Iran deal was signed, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior Saudi royal and former intelligence chief, said Riyadh would want the option to enrich uranium if Tehran had it. In October, Maher al-Odan, the chief atomic energy officer of KACARE, said Saudi Arabia had around 60,000 tonnes of uranium based on initial studies and that the kingdom wanted to start extracting it to boost the economy. Asked what would happen to the uranium after that, he replied: This is a government decision. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian rebels down army helicopter in southwest: Observatory;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian insurgents brought down an army helicopter in southwest Syria on Friday, near the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, a war monitoring group said. The Syrian military could not immediately be reached for comment. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the aircraft went down in government territory southwest of Damascus after a missile hit it. Rebels are fighting Syrian government forces in the vicinity. Two Syrian army officers from the helicopter s crew died, the Britain-based monitor said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected al Qaeda fighters among four Syrians arrested in Netherlands: prosecutors;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Two men suspected of having fought for an al Qaeda-linked group in Syria were among four Syrian migrants arrested in the Netherlands, Dutch authorities said on Friday. The national prosecutor s office said in a statement that the two men were from 2012-2015 members of the Nusra Front, which the Dutch government designates as a terrorist group, and had traveled to the Netherlands as refugees in 2015. A third Syrian man was arrested in possession of four kilograms of marijuana while the fourth had traveled to the Netherlands using fake documents in 2017. All four remain in custody, the statement said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Long road ahead to a new life for wounded North Korean defector;SEOUL (Reuters) - The North Korean soldier critically wounded when making a dash to the south last month may have cheated death, but even as his health improves, he is months if not years away from finding a normal life in South Korea, officials and other defectors say. The transition to life in the democratic and prosperous South can be difficult for any defector from the isolated and impoverished North, let alone for a soldier from an elite border unit with potentially actionable military intelligence and a high profile that may complicate efforts to blend in. The 24-year-old soldier, identified only by his surname Oh, has been released from intensive care after being shot five times during his daring defection, but is still battling a hepatitis B infection which could delay his transfer to a military hospital for some time, doctors said. As active duty soldier defectors have up-to-date information, the intelligence agencies would question the soldiers and see if anything needs to be addressed in our military s operation and combat plans, a current South Korean government official involved in resettling North Korean refugees told Reuters. Oh will likely be under the protection of South Korea s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), and then be offered work such as code cracking in the military or related agencies, a former senior South Korean government official said. The decision would be made after a comprehensive assessment on what he means to national security, the level of information he has, and whether he would be capable of mingling with other defectors at the resettlement center, the former official said. Defections by active-duty soldiers are extremely rare, once a year or less. Intelligence agencies are keen to question Oh, who was stationed in the Joint Security Area near the heavily fortified border, according to South Korean lawmakers briefed by the NIS. Doctors have asked that officials wait until Oh is fully recovered both physically and emotionally before they begin questioning. Given his high-profile escape and status as a member from an elite border unit, Oh will likely be given more personalized assistance, away from other North Korean defectors at the Hanawon resettlement center, the former South Korean official said. Most defectors undergo security questioning by the National Intelligence Service for a few days up to several months in extreme cases, before being moved to the Hanawon resettlement center. There they receive mandatory three-month education on life in the capitalist South, from taking public transportation to opening a bank account to creating an email address. It s where you would get to see the outside world for the first time, as they take you out to meet people on the streets and learn how to access the social service network. These days, you can also do a homestay with an ordinary South Korean family, said Ji Seong-ho, a 35-year-old defector who heads Now, Action and Unity for Human Rights (NAUH), a group that rescues and resettles North Korean refugees. Such training can be more useful for some people than others, said Kim Jin-soo, a 29-year-old former member of the North Korean secret police who defected to the South in 2011. Looking back, it would ve been really useful if they taught more realistic things even though it might discourage people, like how to prepare for a job fair and find a suitable workplace and why it s important to lose the North Korean accent, he said. Fresh off Hanawon, you re like a one-year-old baby. But those are the things that would pose a real obstacle when you actually go out there on your own, said Kim, who now works at a advertising firm in Seoul. After leaving Hanawon, central and local governments provide defectors 7 million won ($6,450) in cash over a year - barely a fifth of South Korea s annual average income - as well as support in housing, education and job training. Police officers are assigned to each of the defectors to ensure their security. Oh may have potential value to the South Korean government or organizations that try to highlight conditions in North Korea, but it will be up to him whether he wants to live a life in the limelight, said Sokeel Park, country director for Liberty in North Korea, which helps North Korean refugees. If he has any mind to get involved in that kind of stuff then there will be all kinds of media or non-governmental organizations who would fall over themselves to give him that platform, said Park. But if he makes a good recovery and he chooses to blend it, then he s just another young guy with a vague back story. GRAPHIC: Defector braves hail of bullets reut.rs/2zAUDRN ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ethnic clash in Nigeria leaves four police officers dead: official;YOLA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Muslim cattle herders are suspected of killing four police officers in the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa, a police official said on Friday. The four officers were killed on Thursday night defending a village in the Numan region from the herdsmen, who attacked the settlement as a reprisal for an earlier deadly clash, said Othman Abubakar, a police spokesman for the state. In the earlier clash, unidentified attackers killed more than 30 cattle herders in Numan. Numan has recently become a flashpoint for clashes between the herders and Christian farmers, which occur frequently across broad swathes of Nigeria, as each group contests the other s rights to land for pasture and agriculture. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine president: reforms to get harder as elections approach;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said at a meeting with businesses on Friday that it will become harder to muster votes in parliament for reformist legislation as elections approach. Ukraine is due to go to the polls by 2019 at the latest. Delays in implementing reforms to modernize the economy and tackle corruption have delayed billions of dollars of aid from the International Monetary Fund and other foreign backers. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. remains committed to Libyan political agreement: State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States remains committed to the Libyan Political Agreement, the State Department said in a statement following U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson s meeting with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj on Friday. Attempts to bypass the UN-facilitated political process or impose a military solution to the conflict would only destabilize Libya and create opportunities for ISIS (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups to threaten the United States and our allies, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate approves major tax cuts in victory for Trump;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate narrowly approved a tax overhaul on Saturday, moving Republicans and President Donald Trump a big step closer to their goal of slashing taxes for businesses and the rich while offering everyday Americans a mixed bag of changes. In what would be the largest change to U.S. tax laws since the 1980s, Republicans want to add $1.4 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt to finance changes that they say would further boost an already growing economy. Trump, speaking to reporters as he left the White House for New York hours after the pre-dawn vote, praised the Senate for passing “tremendous tax reform” and said “people are going to be very, very happy”. Once the Senate and House of Representatives reconcile their respective versions of the legislation, he said, the resulting bill could cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent “to 20 (percent). It could be 22 (percent) when it comes out. It could also be 20 (percent).” U.S. stock markets have rallied for months on hopes that Washington would provide significant tax cuts for corporations. Celebrating their Senate victory, Republican leaders predicted the tax cuts would encourage U.S. companies to invest more and boost economic growth. “We have an opportunity now to make America more competitive, to keep jobs from being shipped offshore and to provide substantial relief to the middle class,” said Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. The Senate approved their bill in a 51-49 vote, with Democrats complaining that last-minute amendments to win over skeptical Republicans were poorly drafted and vulnerable to being gamed later. “The Republicans have managed to take a bad bill and make it worse,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “Under the cover of darkness and with the aid of haste, a flurry of last-minute changes will stuff even more money into the pockets of the wealthy and the biggest corporations.” No Democrats voted for the bill, but they were unable to block it because Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority. Talks will begin, likely next week, between the Senate and the House, which already has approved its own version of the legislation, to reconcile their respective bills. Trump, who predicted that the negotiations would produce “something beautiful,” wants that to happen before the end of the year. This would allow him and his Republicans to score their first major legislative achievement of 2017 after having controlled the White House, the Senate and the House since he took office in January. Republicans failed in their efforts to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law over the summer and Trump’s presidency has been hit by White House in-fighting and a federal investigation into possible collusion last year between his election campaign team and Russian officials. The tax overhaul is seen by Trump and Republicans as crucial to their prospects at mid-term elections in November 2018, when they will have to defend their majorities in Congress. In a legislative battle that moved so fast a final draft of the bill was unavailable to the public until just hours before the vote, Democrats slammed the proposed tax cuts as a give-away to businesses and the rich financed with billions of dollars in taxpayer debt. The framework for both the Senate and House bills was developed in secret over a few months by a half-dozen Republican congressional leaders and Trump advisers, with little input from the party’s rank-and-file and none from Democrats. Six Republican senators, who wanted and got last-minute amendments and whose votes had been in doubt, said on Friday they would back the bill and did so. Senator Bob Corker, one of few remaining Republican fiscal hawks who pledged early on to oppose any bill that expanded the federal deficit, was the lone Republican dissenter. “I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that ... could deepen the debt burden on future generations,” said Corker, who is not running for re-election. Numerous last-minute changes were made to the bill on Friday and in the early morning hours of Saturday. One was to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, mirroring the House bill. The Senate previously had proposed entirely ending state and local tax deductibility. “The tax reform measure that passed the Senate is negative overall for state and local government finances. Lower federal tax rates for businesses and individuals could result in a modest boost to hiring and consumption, positively affecting state and local revenues,” Nick Samuels, Vice President at Moody’s Investors Service, said in a statement. “However, the change to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction would reduce disposable income for many taxpayers, likely outweighing the positive effect of lower federal rates on consumption in many communities and states.” In another change, the alternative minimum tax (AMT), both for individuals and corporations, would not be repealed in full. Instead, the individual AMT would be adjusted and the corporate AMT would be maintained as is, lobbyists said. Another change would put a five-year limit on letting businesses immediately write off the full value of new capital investments. That would phase out over four years starting in year six, rather than be permanent as initially proposed. Under the bill, the corporate tax rate would be permanently slashed to 20 percent from 35 percent, while future foreign profits of U.S.-based firms would be largely exempt, both changes pursued by corporate lobbyists for years. On the individual side, the top tax rate paid by the highest-income earners would be cut slightly. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, analyzed an earlier but broadly similar version of the bill passed by the Senate tax committee on Nov. 16 and found it would reduce taxes for all income groups in 2019 and 2025, with the largest average tax cuts going to the highest-income Americans. Two Republican senators announced their support for the bill on Friday after winning more tax relief for non-corporate pass-through businesses. These include partnerships and other companies not organized as public corporations, ranging from mom-and-pop concerns to large financial and real estate groups. The bill now features a 23 percent tax deduction for such business owners, up from the original 17.4 percent. The Senate bill would gut a section of Obamacare by repealing a fee paid by some Americans who do not buy health insurance, a step critics said would undermine the Obamacare system and raise insurance premiums for the sick and the old. Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she obtained commitments from Republican leaders that steps would be taken later in separate legislation to minimize the impact of the repeal of the “individual mandate” fee. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Countdown to Brexit breakthrough?;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The next two weeks will determine whether Britain avoids further costly delays in giving business assurances of a smooth exit from the European Union and free trade in the future. Following is a timeline of critical meetings and explanation of the key decisions that need to be taken. British Prime Minister Theresa May wants the EU to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations, concerning relations after Britain s withdrawal on March 30, 2019. The EU will only do that if there is sufficient progress in agreeing divorce terms, notably on three key issues: a financial settlement, guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain and a soft border with Ireland. A deal on money is effectively done, EU officials say, and they are close on citizens rights, leaving Ireland the biggest headache outstanding. [nL8N1O06MU] [nL8N1O12A0] As part of the intricate choreography for a political deal, the EU set May an absolute deadline of Monday, Dec. 4, to provide new offers in time for the other EU leaders to approve a move to Phase 2 at a summit of the EU-27 on Friday, Dec. 15. May is pushing for a simultaneous, reciprocal guarantee from the EU of a soft transition and future trade deal, which she may use to show Britons what her compromises have secured. The EU wants to have firm British offers which the 27 can discuss before leaders commit. The result is some complex dance steps: Mon, Dec. 4 - May lunches in Brussels with EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. The latter says he plans a joint report on progress with the UK. Wed, Dec. 6 - Juncker chairs weekly European Commission meeting in the morning. After hearing Barnier, the Commission could say there is sufficient progress to move to Phase 2. Wed, Dec. 6 - At 3 p.m. (1400 GMT), EU-27 envoys meet to prepare decisions to be taken at EU-27 summit on Dec. 15 most significantly on opening talks on what happens after Brexit. Thur, Dec. 14 - May attends routine EU summit in Brussels, starting in the afternoon. Defense, foreign affairs on agenda. Fri, Dec. 15 - After May has left, EU-27 leaders hold summit. They could take one comprehensive decision on Phase 2 or break it down into separate ones on the transition and future ties. January - Outline of EU transition offer may be ready, under which Britain retains all its rights except voting in the bloc, and meets all its obligations until the end of 2020. [nL8N1MZ59A] February - After agreeing among the 27 their negotiating terms, EU may be ready to open talks with London on a free trade pact that Brussels likens to one it has with Canada. [nL8N1NL26Q] The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving. EU officials say there is now agreement after Britain offered to pay an agreed share of most of the items Brussels wanted especially for committed spending that will go on after 2020. Both sides say there is no precise figure as much depends on future developments. British newspaper reports that it would cost up to 55 billion euros sparked only muted criticism from May s hardline pro-Brexit allies who once rejected big payments. Barnier is still seeking a commitment that the rights of 3 million EU citizens who stay on in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, not just by British judges. May has said the ECJ should play no more role in Britain. But the issue could be vital to ensure ratification of the withdrawal treaty by the European Parliament. A compromise might focus on making clear that the ECJ has a role only for the existing EU residents, whose numbers will shrink over time. Member states, some of which have taken a tougher line than the Brussels negotiators, are also insisting Britain make concessions on family reunion rules and social benefits. The EU wants more detail on a British pledge to avoid a hard border at the new land frontier on the island of Ireland that might disrupt peace in Northern Ireland. London says the detail depends on the future trade agreement. EU officials say a hard border can be avoided only if rules remain identical on either side. Northern Ireland could stay in a customs union with the EU. But Britain, and May s crucial Northern Irish parliamentary allies, insist there should be no new barriers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. The EU says that means the whole of the United Kingdom would then have to follow EU rules, something Brexit campaigners do not want. A British newspaper reported London was considering offering Northern Ireland more autonomy to set different rules. But at present, party feuding means the province has no government. Dublin says it may not be possible to reach a deal on sufficient progress by Monday but in the days after that. Ireland, with the blessing of the EU-27, says it will veto any move to Phase 2 if Britain s border offer is unsatisfactory. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Flynn to Plead Guilty to Lying to the FBI;The broader story in this entire Russia witch hunt is if the one count on Flynn announced today is a plea deal. Flynn is being charged with only one count so this raises red flags There has been talk that Flynn would do what he could to protect his son who is also involved in this witch hunt The crime is not the substance but the cover-up of conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador. This is exactly what President Trump fired Flynn for Fox News is reporting:Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been charged in the special counsel s Russia investigation with making false statements to the FBI and is expected to plead guilty at a hearing Friday morning.Special Counsel Robert Mueller s office released a one-count charging document ahead of the hearing.ABC News is reporting that this is a plea deal and that Flynn will assist in the witch hunt:Flynn s plea signals the former top adviser to Trump is now cooperating with the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A brief statement released by Mueller s team Friday morning does not say what information Flynn has provided the government as part of this deal, but sources familiar with the agreement told ABC News Friday he has made a decision to assist investigators.THE DOCUMENT ACCUSING FLYNN:The document accusing Flynn of making false statements pertains to his interactions with Russian officials in late December specifically discussions about sanctions and other matters.According to the document, those statements were that: On or about Dec 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia s Ambassador to the United States ( Russian Ambassador ) to refrain from escalating situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Key Republicans in U.S. Senate tax bill fight;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Six more U.S. senators signed on to support a sweeping Republican tax bill on Friday, leaving only one known Republican opponent - Bob Corker - and virtually assuring the measure would pass despite Democratic opposition. A vote was expected later Friday. Here are the Republican senators who have been pivotal to the bill’s fate. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, said on Friday he could not vote for the Senate legislation because of fiscal concerns. In a statement, he said he believed the tax overhaul “could deepen the debt burden on future generations.” Corker had stalled momentum on the tax bill on Thursday by demanding Republicans look for more ways to keep the bill from causing the U.S. deficit to balloon. He said Friday he felt it would have been fairly easy to alter the measure in a way that would have been more fiscally sound, but “unfortunately, it is clear that the (Republican) caucus is in a different place.” However, Corker said he had told President Donald Trump in a phone call Friday that he would take a close look at the final version of the bill, expected to be produced by a House-Senate conference, before deciding how to vote on it. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated on Thursday that the Republican bill would expand the national debt by $1 trillion over 10 years, far short of assertions by Republicans that the tax cuts would pay for themselves. The moderate senator from Maine announced Friday she will support the tax bill after securing several improvements in the text and getting assurances that other legislation would be advanced to help lower health insurance premiums. Collins dislikes a clause in the bill repealing a fee imposed on people who do not comply with Obamacare’s “individual mandate” to obtain health insurance. She said she worried that repealing this fee would drive up insurance premium costs, canceling out gains from tax cuts that many constituents might get from the bill. She said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had pledged to help mitigate the effect of the repeal by supporting passage of two other healthcare bills before the end of the year. One would help insurers cover expensive patients;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kim Jong Nam had nerve agent antidote in bag, Malaysian court told;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Kim Jong Nam, the murdered half-brother of North Korea s leader, had a dozen vials of antidote for lethal nerve agent VX in his sling bag on the day he was poisoned, a Malaysian court was told this week. Two women, Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong, a Vietnamese, are charged with conspiring with four North Korean fugitives in the murder, making use of banned chemical weapon VX at the Kuala Lumpur international airport on Feb. 13. The vials contained atropine, an antidote for poisons such as VX and insecticides, toxicologist Dr K. Sharmilah told the court on Wednesday, state news agency Bernama said. However, she did not know if the vials were marked in Korean, she said when cross-examined by Siti Aisyah s lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng. Kim Jong Nam, who was living in exile in Macau, had criticized his family s dynastic rule of North Korea and his brother had issued a standing order for his execution, some South Korean lawmakers have said. Malaysia was forced to return Kim Jong Nam s body and allow the suspects hiding in the embassy to return home, in exchange for the release of nine Malaysians barred from leaving Pyongyang. On Thursday, a police witness told the court Huong had the opportunity to dispose of a T-shirt and short skirt she had worn during the alleged attack. The T-shirt, bearing the word LOL , and the skirt could have easily been found in a pile of clothes in the hotel room where Huong stayed, the witness, Nasrol Sain Hamzah, an assistant superintendent, told Huong s lawyer, Hisyam Teh Poh Teik. Earlier, Nasrol told the court that he needed Huong to point out the clothes which had been concealed when the police raided. Defence lawyers say Siti Aisyah and Huong, arrested in Kuala Lumpur within days of the killing, were duped into thinking they were playing a prank for a reality TV show and did not know they were poisoning Kim Jong Nam. North Korea has denied accusations by South Korean and U.S. officials that Kim Jong Un s regime was behind the killing. The court hearings, which have run more than a month, are to resume on Jan. 22. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Republican side-deals build support for Senate tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans were considering a raft of last-minute changes to their sweeping tax bill on Friday, as they edged toward a final vote that could move Congress to year-end enactment of tax cuts for businesses and individuals. Deals include a higher tax deduction for owners of pass-through businesses and a phase-out of full expensing for business capital investments. To pay for these changes, Republicans say they will no longer repeal the alternative minimum taxes for corporations and individuals and will raise tax rates on the repatriation of corporate profits held overseas. Senate Republicans have yet to unveil a final bill for adoption. But here is an unofficial list of anticipated changes, according to lawmakers and lobbyists. * PASS-THROUGHS: Senators Ron Johnson and Steve Daines announced their support for the tax bill after securing agreement on a bigger tax break for the owners of pass-through enterprises, including small businesses, S-corporations, partnerships and sole-proprietorships. An original 17.4 percent deduction would rise to 23 percent. * FULL EXPENSING: Senator Jeff Flake, who was a holdout over deficit concerns, agreed to vote “yes” after Republican leaders agreed to change a provision allowing the full expensing of business capital investments to sunset after five years. Flake worried that Congress would be unable to eliminate the benefit cold turkey, allowing it to bleed red ink for years to come. But the Arizona Republican says the change would instead phase out full expensing over three years beginning in year six. * RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Senator Susan Collins said she persuaded Republican leaders to retain catch-up contributions to retirement accounts for church, charity, school and public employees. * MEDICAL EXPENSES: Collins also said she was able to include language to reduce the threshold for deducting unreimbursed medical expenses for two years to 7.5 percent of household income from 10 percent. * STATE AND LOCAL PROPERTY TAXES: Collins has proposed an amendment that would retain a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes. * INDIVIDUAL ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Rescinding a proposed repeal of the AMT and instead increase exemption levels and phase-out thresholds is also on the table. * CORPORATE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: So is rescinding a proposed repeal of the corporate AMT. * REPATRIATION: Another change could be to increase tax rates on U.S. corporate profits held overseas to 14 percent for liquid assets and 7 percent for illiquid holdings, up from 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Mideast nuclear plan backers bragged of support of top Trump aide Flynn;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backers of a U.S.-Russian plan to build nuclear reactors across the Middle East bragged after the U.S. election they had backing from Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn for a project that required lifting sanctions on Russia, documents reviewed by Reuters show. The documents, which have not previously been made public, reveal new aspects of the plan, including the proposed involvement of a Russian company currently under U.S. sanctions to manufacture nuclear equipment. That company, major engineering and construction firm OMZ OAO, declined to comment. The documents do not show whether Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, took concrete steps to push the proposal with Trump and his aides. But they do show that Washington-based nuclear power consultancy ACU Strategic Partners believed that both Flynn, who had worked as an adviser to the firm as late as mid-2016, and Trump were firmly in its corner. “Donald Trump’s election as president is a game changer because Trump’s highest foreign policy priority is to stabilize U.S. relations with Russia which are now at a historical low-point,” ACU’s managing director, Alex Copson, wrote in a Nov. 16, 2016 email to potential business partners, eight days after the election. White House officials did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. ACU declined comment and also declined to make Copson available for an interview. Previously they told a congressional committee that they had not had any dealings with Flynn since May 2016, before Trump became the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, did not respond to a request for comment. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about a discussion with the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in late December 2016 regarding sanctions. The documents also show that ACU proposed ending Ukraine’s opposition to lifting sanctions on Russia by giving a Ukrainian company a $45 billion contract to provide turbine generators for reactors to be built in Saudi Arabia and other Mideast nations.     The contract to state-owned Turboatom, and loans to Ukraine from Gulf Arab states, would “require Ukraine to support lifting US and EU sanctions on Russia,” Copson wrote in the Nov. 16 email. A Turboatom spokeswoman said she did not have an immediate comment on the matter.     The email was titled “TRUMP/PUTIN ME Marshall plan CONCEPT.” ME stands for Middle East. The title, evoking the post-World War Two plan to rebuild Western European economies, reflected the hopes of the plan’s backers that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could cooperate on a project that would boost Middle East economies.     The email can be seen here: tmsnrt.rs/2ALdoCY The ACU documents reviewed by Reuters include emails, business presentations and financial estimates and date from late autumn 2016. As part of their investigation into the Trump election campaign’s ties to Russia, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Democrats on the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee are probing whether Flynn promoted the Middle East nuclear power project as national security adviser in Trump’s White House. Flynn resigned after just 24 days as national security adviser after it became known he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence by telling him he had not discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Kislyak in late December. In response to questions about the emails and documents, ACU referred Reuters to letters written in June and September by ACU scientist Thomas Cochran to the House Oversight Committee. In those letters, Cochran had laid out the project’s strategy, describing a “ready-to-go” consortium that included French, Russian, Israeli and Ukrainian interests, without naming specific companies. Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat, said the panel’s Republican chairman, Trey Gowdy, has for months rejected Democrats’ requests to ask the White House for documents pertaining to the ACU proposal. Gowdy “has blocked all efforts to allow committee members to vote on issuing subpoenas,” Cummings told Reuters. Gowdy did not respond to requests for comment. The ACU’s nuclear reactor plan aimed to provide Washington’s Middle East allies with nuclear power in a way that didn’t risk nuclear weapons proliferation and also helped counter Iranian influence, improve dismal U.S.-Russian relations, and revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, according to the documents seen by Reuters.    The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported this week that Flynn pushed a version of the nuclear project within the White House by instructing his staff to rework a memo written by a former business associate into policy for Trump to sign.     Two U.S. officials familiar with the issue told Reuters the policy document Flynn prepared for Trump’s approval proposed working with Russia on a nuclear reactor project but did not specifically mention ACU. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they did not know if Trump had read the memo or acted upon it.     On Nov. 18, 2016, 10 days after Trump won the presidential election, ACU’s Copson received an email from nuclear non-proliferation expert Reuben Sorensen saying that he had updated Flynn on the nuclear project’s status. Sorensen’s role in the project was not clear from the emails.     “Flynn is getting closer to (being named) National Security Advisor. Expect an announcement soon. This is a big win for the ACU project,” Sorensen wrote. “Spoke with him via backchannels earlier this week. He has always believed in the vision of the ACU effort ... We need to let him get settled into the new position, but update him shortly thereafter,” Sorensen added. The email can be seen here: tmsnrt.rs/2zTqxcZ Reuters could not independently confirm a briefing took place. Sorensen did not reply to an email seeking comment.     On Nov. 30, 2016, Copson briefed U.S. Representative Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on the nuclear project, an email shows.     Copson was joined by Jim Hamel, a senior official from Curtiss-Wright Corp., which has a nuclear division based in Royce’s California district and was eager for a role in the multi-billion dollar project.     In a follow-up email on Dec. 5 to a Royce aide, Hamel wrote, “We hope that the Chairman will follow-up on Alex’s suggestion to reach out to General Flynn” to discuss the project.     Royce’s spokesman, Cory Fritz, confirmed the briefing to Reuters. “No action was ever taken by the chairman or the committee,” he said in an email.     Hamel and Curtiss-Wright declined to comment.     Flynn was an adviser to ACU from April 2015 to June 2016, according to amended financial disclosure forms he filed in August 2017 to the Office of Government Ethics.     Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say that when Flynn applied last year to renew his government security clearance, he failed to disclose a June 2015 trip he made to Egypt and Israel to promote the reactor project. Flynn has not commented on the trips. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Scientists identify remains of 88 Argentine soldiers on Falklands;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Forensic scientists have identified the remains of 88 Argentine soldiers buried in anonymous graves on the Falkland Islands after the country s 1982 conflict with Britain, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday. The results were presented to Argentine and British delegations, and Argentine authorities would inform the families of the soldiers directly and confidentially, the ICRC said in a statement. Scientists analyzed 122 sets of human remains in 121 anonymous graves in the Darwin Cemetery in the South Atlantic, an ICRC spokeswoman said. One of the graves, which were all marked Argentine soldier only known to God, had two bodies. The ICRC has been interviewing families of dead Argentine soldiers since 2012 and 107 have consented to DNA testing. During Britain s two-month war to reclaim the Falklands, which Argentines call the Malvinas, 255 British troops and about 650 Argentine soldiers died. The majority of the Argentines that perished were on a Navy ship that sank. For us, the process will end when all those who fell are identified, said Ernesto Alonso, a veteran of the war. While the South American country still claims the islands, President Mauricio Macri has adopted a softer tone than his predecessor Cristina Fernandez. The two countries signed an agreement last December to try to identify the soldiers and to divide the $1.5 million of related costs. The ICRC forensic scientists, and two experts each from Argentina and Britain, began their efforts in June. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Pope holds emotional meeting with refugees, says ""Rohingya"" for first time";DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis had an emotional meeting with Muslim refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh on Friday and used the word Rohingya to describe them for the first time on his Asian trip, calling for them to be respected. He also urged the world not to ignore refugees, persecuted minorities, the poor and vulnerable. The encounter took place at an inter-religious peace meeting on his first full day in Bangladesh, to where 625,000 Rohingya from Myanmar s Rakhine state have fled from an army crackdown. Refugees have said scores of Rohingya villages have been burnt to the ground, people killed and women raped. Myanmar s military has denied accusations of ethnic cleansing by the United States and United Nations. The pope had earlier in the week visited Myanmar, where he met its leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. But there he avoided using the word Rohingya, a term the authorities reject. Many people in Myanmar regard the largely stateless Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. At the Bangladesh meeting, however, he said: The presence of God today is also called Rohingya. Addressing about 5,000 people at the gathering on the grounds of the Roman Catholic archbishop s residence, Francis said: How much our world needs this heart to beat strongly, to counter the virus of political corruption, destructive religious ideologies, and the temptation to turn a blind eye to the needs of the poor, refugees, persecuted minorities, and those who are most vulnerable. Aid workers brought 16 Rohingya refugees from camps in Cox s Bazar, about 430 km (260 miles) southeast of Dhaka on the border with Myanmar, to join other Muslims, as well as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and charity workers. The pope looked somber as each member of the group, which included 12 men and four women, including two young girls, told him their stories through interpreters. Francis looked pained as he listened. In the name of all those who persecute you, who have persecuted you, those who have hurt you, above all for the indifference of the world, I ask for forgiveness, forgiveness. Francis said in improvised comments. Before that, in his calls for peace in Myanmar and Bangladesh, he had not publicly used the word Rohingya to describe the refugees disappointing human rights groups and other prominent figures in the West who have condemned the repression. He had decided to follow the advice of Myanmar Church officials, who said his use of the word could prompt a backlash against Christians and hurt Myanmar s fragile path to democracy. One of the women refugees told Reuters before the meeting: Myanmar military captured me and some other women, tortured us. I still bleed, there is pain in the abdomen, my back hurts, I get headaches. Medicines have not helped much. I will share my pain with him, the woman as her young daughter clutched at her burqa garment. The pope spoke under a huge tent-like canopy held up by bamboo poles and covered with red, white and scarlet fabric to guard against the afternoon sun. He had first visited the cathedral and then was taken to the tent in a flower-bedecked peddle rickshaw that a man pushed up the central aisle. In his address, Francis said: Religious concern for the welfare of our neighbor, streaming from an open heart, flows outward like a vast river, to quench the dry and parched wastelands of hatred, corruption, poverty and violence that so damage human lives, tear families apart, and disfigure the gift of creation, he said. The pope has called for decisive measures to resolve the political reasons that caused the refugee crisis and urged countries to help the Bangladesh government deal with it. Earlier this year from the Vatican, the pope twice defended the Rohingya by name, once saying that they had been tortured, killed simply because they wanted to live their culture and their Muslim faith . The Myanmar military launched the crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts in August and says it is a legitimate counter-insurgency operation. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Dec 1) - Kate Steinle, Tax cuts, Rex Tillerson;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - The Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court. His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THE WALL! [0603 EST] - The jury was not told the killer of Kate was a 7 time felon. The Schumer/Pelosi Democrats are so weak on Crime that they will pay a big price in the 2018 and 2020 Elections. [0613 EST] - Republicans Senators are working hard to pass the biggest Tax Cuts in the history of our Country. The Bill is getting better and better. This is a once in a generation chance. Obstructionist Dems trying to block because they think it is too good and will not be given the credit! [0621 EST] - The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon - FAKE NEWS! He’s not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!(link: instagram.com/p/BcLCXDYgQed/) [1508 EST] - Economists on the TAX CUTS and JOBS ACT: “The enactment of a comprehensive overhaul - complete with a lower corporate tax rate - will IGNITE our ECONOMY with levels of GROWTH not SEEN IN GENERATIONS...” [1649 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government negotiator quits Geneva talks, says may not return;GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria s government delegation quit U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva on Friday and said it would not return next week unless the opposition withdrew a statement demanding President Bashar al-Assad play no role in any interim post-war government. For us (this) round is over, as a government delegation. He as mediator can announce his own opinion, government chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari said after a morning of talks, referring to U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura. As long as the other side sticks to the language of Riyadh 2 ... there will be no progress, Ja afari said. He was referring to a position adopted by Syrian opposition delegates at a meeting in Riyadh last week, in which they stuck to their demand that Assad be excluded from any transitional government. Ja afari went further in a televised interview with al-Mayadeen TV: We cannot engage in serious discussion in Geneva while the Riyadh statement is not withdrawn. De Mistura put a brave face on the impasse, saying in a statement that he had asked the delegations to engage in talks next week and give their reactions to 12 political principles. Previously there had been some speculation the opposition could soften its stance ahead of this week s Geneva negotiations, in response to government advances on the battlefield. The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven 11 million from their homes. So far all previous rounds of peace talks have failed to make progress, faltering over the opposition s demand Assad leave power and his refusal to go. Pressed whether the government delegation would return to Geneva next week, Ja afari replied: Damascus will decide. Ja afari said the statement insisting Assad leave power that was adopted by the opposition in Riyadh ahead of this week s peace talks was a mine on the road to Geneva, and the opposition had purposefully undermined the negotiations. The language with which the statement was drafted was seen by us, the Syrian government, as well as by too many capitals, as a step back rather than progress forward, because it imposed a kind of precondition, he said. The language is provocative, irresponsible, he said. The opposition, which held brief talks later with U.N. officials, rejected the charge that it was seeking to undermine the talks, and said it sought a political solution . We have come to this round with no preconditions, opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi told reporters. Now, not coming back is a precondition in itself. It s an expression or a reflection of a responsibility toward people who have been suffering for seven years now, Aridi said. Nasr Hariri, the opposition delegation chief, said earlier on Friday that his side had come to Geneva for serious, direct negotiations with Assad s government. So far, government and opposition delegations have not negotiated face-to-face in any Syrian peace talks but have been kept in separate rooms. We call on the international community to put pressure on the regime to engage with this process, Hariri said in a statement. De Mistura said on Thursday the talks would run until Dec. 15, but the government delegation might return to Damascus to refresh and consult before a resumption probably on Tuesday. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Japanese emperor Akihito worked to console the people, reconcile with Asia;TOKYO (Reuters) - A special panel to debate the timing of Emperor Akihito s abdication, Japan s first in nearly two centuries, meets on Friday, setting the stage for a formal decision by the government. Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23 and has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer, said last year he feared age might make it hard to fulfill his duties. Following are some highlights from Akihito s career as the first emperor not to be considered divine from the time he ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1989. MIDDLE-CLASS MONARCHY Akihito s 1959 marriage to Michiko Shoda, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, was the first by an emperor to a commoner and was hailed as a symbol of a new Japan. The two courted at a tennis club and he won her promise to marry him over the phone. They worked to craft an image of a middle-class monarchy in an attempt to draw the imperial family closer to the people. All three of their children went to university and married commoners, and the public was informed when Akihito was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002 - in contrast to the secrecy around Emperor Hirohito s ultimately fatal illness. Akihito and Michiko have worked to smooth relations across Asia, which suffered from Japan s aggression before and during World War Two, with numerous visits abroad. In 1992, he became the first Japanese monarch in living memory to visit China, where bitter memories of the war run deep, and deeply deplored an unfortunate period in which my country inflicted great suffering on the people of China . At a news conference marking his birthday in 2001, he said he felt a certain kinship with Korea because one of his ancestors had come from there, an unprecedented statement from a Japanese royal that made front page headlines in Seoul. In 2005, the couple went to the island of Saipan, the scene of bloody fighting during World War Two, to pay respects at memorials honoring Japanese, American and Korean war dead. Akihito has often urged Japan to remember the suffering of the war, comments that have attracted increased attention in recent years, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears to be pushing for a less apologetic tone towards Japan s past. On Aug. 15, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the war s end, Akihito departed from his annual script to express deep remorse . The day before, Abe had expressed utmost grief but said future generations should not have to keep apologizing. One of the duties the royal couple has taken most seriously has been comforting victims of disasters. Akihito has knelt to talk to evacuees and Michiko has hugged women who lost their homes. In 2011, Akihito took the unprecedented step of addressing the nation in a televised speech after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. He again turned to television in 2016 to tell the people he feared he was getting too old to carry out his duties, implying he wished to abdicate. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey casts Zarrab case as attempt to undermine its politics, economy;ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey cast the testimony of a wealthy gold trader in a U.S. court as an attempt to undermine Ankara and its economy on Friday, highlighting how President Tayyip Erdogan may use the politically charged case to rally nationalist support. The trader, Reza Zarrab, told a New York court on Wednesday that Erdogan had authorized a transaction in a scheme to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. A dual national of Iran and Turkey, Zarrab is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in the trial of a Turkish bank executive accused of helping Iran launder money. The executive has pleaded not guilty. This court case has stopped being judicial and become completely political, with the sole aim to corner Turkey and its economy, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. The case has aggravated tension between Ankara and Washington, NATO allies already at odds over Syria policy and the United States failure to extradite the Muslim cleric Turkey accuses of engineering a failed military coup last year. Although the economic fall-out from the case could be substantial - especially if U.S. authorities fine Turkish banks - analysts said that Erdogan is unlikely to be damaged politically at home and could potentially emerge stronger by attracting more nationalist support. This will bolster his claim that he is fighting an independence battle against foreign enemies, said Halil Karaveli, editor of the Turkey Analyst, a policy journal. If there is going to be any political impact, I suspect it will actually help in the electoral sense. Media coverage of the case has been limited in Turkey and one pro-government outlet branded the trial as a conspiracy by enemies of the country. Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for almost 15 years, has not yet responded to the courtroom claims;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fearing for post-Brexit prosperity and peace, farmers demand invisible Irish border;FLORENCECOURT, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Northern Irish sheep farmers like John Sheridan collectively transport more than 1,000 lambs a day over the Irish border for slaughter and shipment to shoppers across the European Union. At the moment, the process is seamless. But Sheridan sees a threat to his life s work, his family s future and even the settlement that ended years of violence in British-ruled Northern Ireland should checkpoints reappear after Brexit on the invisible frontier with the Irish Republic. It s crazy, crazy stuff. It absolutely cannot happen here. There cannot be a border - and that s before even talking about the peace, said Sheridan, a 56-year-old Protestant brought up in the pro-British unionist tradition. Almost 18 months after Britain voted to leave the EU, the future of the only UK land frontier with the bloc after Brexit - and its role in sustaining about 20 years of fragile peace in Northern Ireland - is a major hurdle in the divorce talks. Armed with a power of veto, the Irish government says the negotiations cannot progress unless Britain agrees to keep customs regulations the same north and south. This, Dublin says, is the only way of avoiding a damaging return to border controls. Only road signs mark the frontier between the two member states of the EU s single market, within which goods and people move freely. Trucks like those carrying Sheridan s lambs rumble past the remains of disused checkpoints, built by the British army during three decades of political and sectarian violence that was settled by the 1998 peace deal. For Sheridan, any change after Brexit in March 2019 to this smooth, tariff-free movement of livestock and common standards in both jurisdictions could spell ruin for the business he is in the process of passing on to his three children. If there s a hard border, we ll be pulling out. It will become a wasteland here, said Sheridan, whose farm near the County Fermanagh village of Florencecourt lies only 3 km (2 miles) from the border. Sheridan, who belongs to a campaign group called Border Communities against Brexit , has a warning for any politicians who upset the status quo. Do you think I m going to let them ruin my business that took blood, sweat and tears to build, and ruin my family s future in our country that we want to live in? Do you think anybody s going to put up with that? The economy of Ireland, north and south, has become deeply integrated since the single market s creation in 1993. This, along with peace, has transformed previously neglected border areas such as rural County Fermanagh which depends largely on tourism and agriculture. According to the Ulster Farmers Union, 40 percent of all Northern Irish lambs are processed in the republic. A quarter of milk output also moves south, the Dairy UK trade body says, and around 60 percent of Northern Ireland s processing capacity is owned by dairy co-operatives from the republic. If common standards cease in areas such as labeling and product traceability, business north and south will grind to a halt , Mike Johnston, Dairy UK s Northern Ireland Director, told a UK parliamentary committee earlier this year. The dismantling of military border posts was a vital aspect of the peace deal between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British. Over 3,600 died in the conflict. Already the province s government is suspended due to a row between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the nationalist Sinn Fein, which vehemently opposes a hard border. The parties have shared power under the 1998 settlement, and any rupture over the issue risks seriously upsetting the peace process. Britain says it will not contemplate the return of a hard border but a committee of UK lawmakers has found that this is inconsistent with its plans to leave the EU s single market and customs union. Room for any special arrangements for Northern Ireland is further limited as the minority Conservative government relies on the pro-Brexit DUP to prop it up in Westminster. The DUP has said it will not support any deal that makes the province operate under different rules from the rest of the UK or creates trade barriers between it and its biggest market. North-South trade has doubled since 1995, but the British economy is 14 times larger than the Irish Republic s. The Northern Ireland food and drink sector, for instance, relies on Britain for 73 percent of its sales. Despite Sheridan s misgivings, many of his fellow Protestants stand squarely behind the DUP. At the party s annual conference last month, supporters waving Union Jack flags belted out a rousing rendition of God Save The Queen . Brexit means Brexit, so we are going out, William Gibson, a north Belfast businessman, said at the conference. We are an integral part of the UK and it is most important that we are treated the same way as the rest of the UK. The DUP was the only Northern Irish party to campaign for Brexit in last year s referendum, when 56 percent of voters in the province went against the national trend by opting to remain in the EU. Many of the 10 DUP lawmakers who hold the balance of power in London suspect Dublin s motives. They fear its proposals will boost the case for uniting the two sides of the border, as ultimately sought by their nationalist rivals. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney assured unionists on Friday that his government was only trying to maintain the status quo, and nothing else . The DUP, which also wants to maintain a soft border but has not spelled out how, has hinted it may withdraw its support for the government if Prime Minister Theresa May gives too much away. A delicate solution is therefore needed if EU leaders are to agree at a summit on Dec. 14-15 - one described by Dublin as having historic significance for the island - that sufficient progress has been made to move the Brexit talks onto a trade deal, as London wants. This can be achieved, a report prepared by Belfast s Queen s University for the European Parliament found this week, but it added: This process is entirely dependent not on technical solutions but on political will. Sheridan will be watching closely from his farm in the Fermanagh constituency of DUP leader Arlene Foster. Dublin, he says, must hold a firm line. There can be no turning back the clock. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Killing of Mexican prosecutor of crimes against women sparks outcry;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The European Union on Thursday condemned the killing of a female Mexican prosecutor who specialized in violence against women, as the country grapples with its worst murder rate in two decades, including a spate of attacks on rights workers and reporters. Yendi Guadalupe Torres Castellanos, a prosecutor in the state of Veracruz whose remit included violence against women as well as sexual and family-related crimes, was killed Monday in her car in the city of Panuco, according to the state government. This murder demonstrates once more the troubling level of violence that devastates Mexico, including violence against human rights defenders, the EU s Mexican delegation said in a joint statement with Swiss and Norwegian ambassadors. Earlier this month, unknown gunmen shot dead Silvestre de la Toba, the head of the Baja California Sur state human rights commission. And, after a spate of killings of reporters, a United Nations team of experts on freedom of expression is currently visiting Mexico to assess the safety of journalists. Torres death was also denounced by the Veracruz government, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. October was the most violent since the Mexican government began tracking such crimes two decades ago. The 2,735 homicides of women last year was the second-highest figure of any year since 1990, and more than double the number recorded a decade ago, according to data published by Mexico s national statistics agency. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to seize assets of gold trader testifying in U.S. court: Anadolu;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey is to seize the assets of a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who is a key witness in the trial of a Turkish bank executive in the United States over violations of Iran sanctions, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Friday. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Friday he hoped gold trader Reza Zarrab would turn back from his mistake in cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, reiterating Ankara s view that the criminal trial in New York was aimed at putting pressure on Turkey and its economy. The Istanbul prosecutor s office decided to seize the assets of Zarrab and those of his acquaintances as part of an investigation against him, Anadolu said. The prosecutor s office was not immediately available for comment. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Vakifbank denies involvement in processes mentioned in U.S. lawsuit;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s Vakifbank said on Friday it had never had any interest or involvement whatsoever in any of the processes mentioned in the U.S. trial of a Turkish bank executive accused of helping to launder money for Iran. VakifBank has always acted in compliance with laws and related legislations and shown utmost care and diligence to act in accordance with the laws and the related legislations, the bank said in a statement to the Istanbul stock exchange. Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab testified in the United States on Thursday that two Turkish authoriZed Vakifbank and another lender to move funds for Iran. Shares of VakifBank were down 1.6 percent in early trade in Istanbul. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan court sentences U.S. base worker to life for rape, murder: NHK;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese court sentenced a former U.S. military base worker to life in prison on Friday for the rape and murder of a woman on the southern island of Okinawa, public broadcaster NHK reported. The Naha District Court found Kenneth Franklin Shinzato, 33, guilty of killing 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro in April last year, NHK said. A court spokesman told Reuters he was unable to immediately confirm the decision. The case sparked anger on the island, where locals have long protested the presence of U.S. military bases that they say imposes a heavy burden on Okinawa. Okinawa hosts around 50,000 U.S. nationals, including 30,000 military personnel and civilians employed at the bases. In a bid to assuage locals, the United States last year agreed to limit legal protection and benefits to some U.S. civilian contractors working for the military in Japan under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that dates back to 1960. SOFA exempts personnel from requiring visas while in Japan, and has been criticized because it has been used by the U.S. military to ship people home before Japanese police can capture them. Other incidents involving U.S. personnel have stirred resentment among Okinawans. On Nov. 19, a local man was killed in road accident after his van collided with a car driven by a U.S. Marine suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol. The U.S. military responded by imposing a drinking ban for personnel in Japan on or off base. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. aid chief appeals for full lifting of Yemen blockade;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Friday to the Saudi-led military coalition to fully lift its blockade of Yemen, saying up to eight million people were right on the brink of famine . Earlier this week the coalition partially eased its blockade to let aid into the ports of Hodeidah and Salif and U.N. flights into Sanaa. But aid shipments cover only a fraction of Yemen s needs, since almost all food, fuel and medicine are imported. The coalition, which is backed by the United States and other countries, began the blockade on Nov. 6 after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired from Yemen toward its capital Riyadh. A second missile was shot down on Thursday. That blockade has been partially wound down but not fully wound down. It needs to be fully wound down if we are to avoid an atrocious humanitarian tragedy involving the loss of millions of lives, the like of which the world has not seen for many decades, U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said. Yemen has a population of 25 million people. Twenty million of them need assistance and something like seven or eight million of them are, right now, right on the brink of famine, he said as he launched the U.N. s 2018 humanitarian appeal. Lowcock sidestepped reporters questions on whether the Saudi-led blockade amounted to a violation of international law, though he said the United Nations had consistently urged all parties in the conflict to respect their obligations. I m not a lawyer but clearly international humanitarian law includes a requirement to facilitate unhindered access for aid agencies, and that s what I ve been trying to secure both in what I ve said publicly and also in my private dialogue, he said. U.N. officials are often shy of criticizing parties to a conflict for fear of losing access or funding. Saudi Arabia has been a major donor to aid appeals for Yemen. Others have been less reticent. Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief, has called the blockade illegal collective punishment , while Alfredo Zamudio, director of the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue in Norway, told Reuters he thought the International Criminal Court should investigate whether it was a war crime. Speaking at Friday s event in Geneva, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, head of Save the Children International, said: What we ve seen in Yemen has been actually a very clear breach of the rules and also it s been very clear that denial of aid coming in has also become a weapon of war. The coalition joined the Yemen war in 2015 after the Iran-allied Houthi group and its allies forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh sees the Houthis as a proxy for Iran, its arch-foe in the region. The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced over 2 million and triggered a cholera epidemic as well as pushed the country to the verge of famine. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland says wants 'agreed wording' on Brexit border before December 14 summit;LONDON (Reuters) - Ireland wants re-assurance from Britain there will be no regulatory divergence between it and Northern Ireland after Brexit, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told BBC radio on Friday. He said Ireland wanted to achieve before a Dec. 14 EU summit an agreed wording whereby we can agree the parameters within which we can find a solution that prevents the re-emergence of a border on the island of Ireland . Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can move to negotiations on Britain s future trade relationship with the EU and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. Coveney said Ireland cannot be asked to leap into the dark by the UK. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Catalan cabinet members appear before Supreme Court;MADRID (Reuters) - A judge will give his ruling on Monday on whether eight pro-independence Catalan politicians charged with sedition should be released from custody so they can contest a regional election set for Dec. 21, judicial sources said on Friday. The eight, former members of Catalonia s dismissed regional government, appeared before the Supreme Court on Friday to request their release while they await trial in the wake of a disputed independence referendum. Catalan leaders, who previously held a slim parliamentary majority, made a unilateral declaration of independence in defiance of Spanish law on Oct. 27, leading to their arrest and forcing Madrid to take direct control of the region and call the election. The face-off between Barcelona and Madrid has tipped Spain into its worst political crisis in four decades, prompted more than 2,800 companies to move their legal headquarters out of the region, and forced the government to cut growth forecasts. It has also deeply divided people in the wealthy northeastern region and caused resentment in the rest of Spain. Sacked regional vice-president Oriol Junqueras, one of his ERC party s main candidates for the election, has asked to leave jail in order to campaign in the December vote, which pro-independence parties see as a de facto vote on secession. The presiding judge will make his decision on the cabinet members custody public on Monday, judicial sources said. Any release would likely to be on bail and under strict conditions as the defendants await trial. Junqueras and seven other former cabinet members were jailed on Nov. 2 pending trial on charges of sedition, rebellion and misappropriation of funds after organizing the illegal secession vote and declaring independence from Spain. Earlier in November, the Supreme Court released Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell on bail of 150,000 euros ($178,410) after she agreed to renounce any political activity that went against the Spanish constitution. All eight former cabinet members have said they would abide by a ruling giving Madrid control over the region, according to their lawyers, although some of them said they did not agree with this unprecedented move stripping power from the rebel administration. Campaigning for the Dec. 21 election officially starts on Tuesday. The former president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, in self-imposed exile in Belgium and subject to an arrest warrant from Spain for rebellion and misuse of public funds, has called the elections the most important in the region s history. Barely a quarter of Catalans want to continue with the project of creating an independent state, a survey by pollsters Metroscopia showed. However, the same poll of 1,800 Catalans taken between Nov. 20 and Nov. 22, showed that separatist parties are forecast to win 46 percent of the vote, down slightly from 47.7 percent in a previous election in 2015. Unionist parties combined would account for another 46 percent of votes, up from less than 40 percent last time. The leaders of Catalan civic groups Asamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) and Omnium Cultural, Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart who were imprisoned last month, also testified before the Supreme Court over their role in the independence drive. ($1 = 0.8408 euros) ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope ordains priests in Bangladesh ahead of meeting with Rohingya;DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis celebrated a huge outdoor Mass on Friday to ordain new priests from Bangladesh on his first full day in the country where he is due to meet Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar later in the day. More than 100,000 people attended the Mass in Dhaka s Suhrawardy Udyan Park, site of a memorial and museum of Bangladesh s independence from Pakistan in 1971, where Francis arrived in an open popemobile. Catholics make up less than one percent of the population of 169 million people in majority-Muslim Bangladesh. I know that many of you came from afar, for a trip for more than two days, the pope told the crowd in his homily. Thank you for your generosity. This indicates the love you have for the Church. At an inter-religious gathering later on Friday, the pope was due to meet 18 Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar where authorities have been accused of ethnic cleansing by the United States and United Nations. The government denies wrongdoing. In calls for peace in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya to describe the refugees, which is contested by the Yangon government and military. The refugees were brought to the Bangladeshi capital from Cox s Bazar, to where 625,000 Rohingya from Myanmar s Rakhine state have fled. The exodus followed a Myanmar military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, and refugees arriving in Bangladesh told of killings and rapes. On Thursday night, the pope called for decisive measures to resolve the political reasons that caused the refugee crisis and urged countries to help the Dhaka government deal with it. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Representative Conyers' future plans to be discussed in 'next day or so': attorney;DETROIT (Reuters) - The question of whether U.S. Representative John Conyers may resign in the face of sexual harassment allegations will be addressed in the “next day or so,” an attorney for the congressman said on Friday. “We will make another announcement in the coming days as to whether the congressman will continue or whether he will step aside, but that decision is not being made today,” attorney Arnold Reed told reporters outside Conyers’ home as he discussed the allegations. Conyers, who is facing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, is one of numerous prominent men in U.S. politics, media and entertainment who have been accused in recent months of sexual harassment and misconduct. Others include former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein, Democratic Senator Al Franken and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Conyers has acknowledged settling with one former staffer over her claims of harassment, but he has denied wrongdoing. He has relinquished his post as the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and has said he will cooperate with the ethics probe. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the leading Democrat in the House of Representatives, and her top deputies on Thursday had called on Conyers to step aside. House Speaker Paul Ryan, the top-ranking Republican in Congress, also said Conyers should resign. Reed said he had spoken with Conyers about his future before the congressman went into the hospital on Wednesday after experiencing dizziness, shortness of breath and lightheadedness, but that Conyers had not reached a definitive decision. “No decision has been made at this juncture,” Reed said. “As you know, his health is not the best,” he said. “We will meet in the next couple days, if he gets stronger, which I anticipate he will, so that we can discuss these issues.” ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Catalan cabinet members to appear before Supreme Court;MADRID (Reuters) - Eight former Catalan cabinet members currently in custody awaiting trial will appear before the Supreme Court on Friday, after requesting their release ahead of a regional election Dec. 21 in the wake of a disputed independence referendum. Sacked regional vice-president Oriol Junqueras, one of his ERC party s main candidates for the election, has asked to be allowed to leave jail in order to campaign in the vote which was called by Madrid. Junqueras and seven other former members of the Catalonia regional cabinet were jailed on Nov. 2 pending trial on charges of sedition, rebellion and misappropriation of funds after the Catalan government declared independence from Spain. The Oct. 1 referendum, declared unconstitutional by Spain, and the subsequent proclamation of independence by the wealthy northeastern region pushed Spain into its worst political crisis in decades and led Madrid to impose direct rule on Barcelona. The eight jailed cabinet members, whose original hearing was at the Spanish High Court, had their case moved to the Supreme Court after the presiding judge argued the different Catalan cases should be tried in the same court. Earlier November, the Supreme Court released Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell on bail of 150,000 euros after she agreed to renounce any political activity that went against the Spanish constitution. All the eight former cabinet members have said they would abide by a ruling giving Madrid control over the region, according to their lawyers, although some of them said they did not agree with this unprecedented move stripping power from the rebel administration. Campaigning for the Dec. 21 election, seen by pro-independence parties as a de facto plebiscite on secession from Spain, starts on Monday at midnight. The former leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, in self-imposed exile in Belgium and subject to an arrest warrant from Spain for rebellion and misuse of public funds, has called the elections the most important in the region s history. Barely a quarter of Catalans want to continue with the project of creating an independent state, a recent survey by pollsters Metroscopia showed. However, polls show the vote split evenly between parties seeking independence from Spain and those wanting to remain part of a united country. The leaders of Catalan civic groups Asamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) and Omnium Cultural Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart - who were imprisoned last month - also testify before the Supreme Court over their role in the independence drive. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox - The four men charged in U.S. probe of Trump-Russia ties; (The Dec. 1 story was refiled to correct Gates’ first name to Richard in paragraph 3) (Reuters) - Michael Flynn’s plea of guilty on Friday to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation made him the fourth person known to be charged in a U.S. Justice Department investigation of ties between President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia. The other three known to be charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe are: ** Former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and Richard Gates. A grand jury in October indicted Manafort, a longtime Republican political consultant, and Gates, a business associate. The two men pleaded not guilty on Oct. 30 to the 12-count indictment, whose charges include conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. Manafort has agreed to an $11.65 million bail deal that would result in his release from house arrest and electronic monitoring. ** Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos, a Chicago-based international energy lawyer, pleaded guilty on Oct. 30 to lying to FBI agents about contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials. It was the first criminal charge alleging links between the Trump campaign and Russia. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders played down Papadopoulos’ campaign role, saying it was “extremely limited” and “any actions that he took would have been on his own.” ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Flynn pleads guilty to lying on Russia, cooperates with U.S. probe;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia, and he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into the actions of President Donald Trump’s inner circle before he took office. The dramatic turn of events also raised new questions about whether Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had a role in those Russia contacts. Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides. Under a plea bargain deal, Flynn admitted in a Washington court that he lied when asked by FBI investigators about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, just weeks before Trump took office. Prosecutors said the two men discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia and that Flynn also asked Kislyak to help delay a U.N. vote seen as damaging to Israel. On both occasions, he appeared to be undermining the policies of outgoing President Barack Obama. They also said a “very senior member” of Trump’s transition team had told Flynn to contact Russia and other foreign governments to try to influence them ahead of the U.N. vote. Sources told Reuters that the “very senior” official was Kushner, a key member of Trump’s transition team and now the president’s senior adviser. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. He has previously said Kushner has voluntarily cooperated with all relevant inquiries and would continue to do so. Flynn’s decision to cooperate with Mueller’s team marked a major escalation in a probe that has dogged the president since he took office in January. There was nothing in the court hearing that pointed to any evidence against Trump, and the White House said Flynn’s guilty plea implicated him alone. “Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn,” said Ty Cobb, a White House attorney. Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general, only served as Trump’s national security adviser for 24 days. He was forced to resign after he was found to have misled Vice President Mike Pence about his discussions with Kislyak. But Flynn had been an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s election campaign and the president continued to praise him even after he left the administration, saying Flynn had been treated “very, very unfairly” by the news media. A small group of protesters yelled “Lock him up!” as Flynn left the courthouse on Friday, echoing the “Lock her up!” chant that Flynn himself led against Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in vitriolic appearances on the campaign trail. Mueller’s team is also looking at whether members of Trump’s campaign may have sought to ease sanctions on Russia in return for financial gain or because Russian officials held some leverage over them, people familiar with the probe say. Prosecutors said Flynn and Kislyak last December discussed economic sanctions that Obama’s administration had just imposed on Moscow for allegedly interfering in the election. Flynn asked Kislyak to refrain from escalating a diplomatic dispute with Washington over the sanctions, and later falsely told FBI officials that he did not make that request, court documents showed. Prosecutors said Flynn had earlier consulted with a senior member of Trump’s presidential transition team about what to communicate to the Russian ambassador. “Flynn called the Russian ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner,” the prosecutors said in court documents, adding that Flynn then called the Trump official again to recount the conversation with Kislyak. They did not name the senior official in the Trump team but U.S. media reports identified former adviser K.T. McFarland as the person. Reuters was unable to verify the reports. On Dec. 28, 2016, the day before prosecutors say the call between the Trump aides took place, Trump had publicly played down the need to sanction Russia for allegedly hacking U.S. Democratic operatives. “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort. Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University Law School, said Flynn’s plea deal shows Mueller is scrutinizing the truthfulness of testimony given to his investigators. Kushner is potentially liable for making false statements if his testimony is contradicted by Flynn, Goodman said. Earlier on Friday, ABC News cited a Flynn confidant as saying Flynn was ready to testify that Trump directed him to make contact with Russians before he became president, initially as a way to work together to fight the Islamic State group in Syria. Reuters could not immediately verify the ABC News report. U.S. stocks, the dollar and Treasury yields fell sharply after the ABC report, although they partially rebounded on optimism that a Republican bill to cut taxes will be approved in the U.S. Senate. If Trump directed Flynn to contact Russian officials, that might not necessarily amount to a crime. It would be a crime if it were proven that Trump directed Flynn to lie to the FBI. Moscow has denied what U.S. intelligence agencies say was meddling in the election campaign to try to sway the vote in Trump’s favor. Trump has called Mueller’s probe a witch hunt. In May, the president fired FBI Director James Comey, who later accused Trump of trying to hinder his investigation into the Russia allegations. Comey also said he believed Trump had asked him to drop the FBI’s probe into Flynn. Comey on Friday tweeted a cryptic message about justice. “But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, ‘Amos 5:24’,” he wrote, quoting the Biblical book of Amos. Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s presidential campaign for several months last year, was charged in October with conspiring to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. Manafort, who did not join Trump’s administration, and a business associate who was charged with him both pleaded not guilty. ;politicsNews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan's Emperor Akihito to abdicate on April 30, 2019;TOKYO (Reuters) - Emperor Akihito, who has spent much of his nearly three decades on Japan s throne seeking to soothe the wounds of World War Two, will step down on April 30, 2019 - the first abdication by a Japanese monarch in about two centuries. A 10-member Imperial Household Council of lawmakers, royals and supreme court justices, chaired by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, agreed on the timing on Friday. Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23 and has had heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer, said in rare remarks last year that he feared age might make it hard for him to fulfil his duties. He will be succeeded by his heir, 57-year-old Crown Prince Naruhito. This is the first abdication by an emperor in 200 years and the first under the (post-war) constitution, Abe told reporters after announcing the recommendation. I feel deep emotion that today, the opinion of the Imperial Household Council was smoothly decided and a big step was taken toward the imperial succession. The cabinet still has to sign off on the decision on the date, which it will likely do next week. Once considered divine, Japan s emperor is defined in the post-war constitution as a symbol of the state and of the unity of the people , but has no political power. Akihito, along with Empress Michiko, has spent much time trying to address the legacy of World War Two, which was fought in the name of his father Hirohito, and consoling victims of disasters or other woes. He is widely respected by average Japanese. Both the emperor and empress thought tirelessly about the people, said Taeko Ito, a 72-year-old caregiver. Now he is elderly and I wish from my heart that he can have a rest. Akihito and Michiko, the first commoner to wed a Japanese monarch, have worked to reconcile ties across Asia, soured by Japan s aggression before and during World War Two, with numerous visits abroad. In 1992, he became the first Japanese monarch in living memory to visit China, where bitter memories of the war run deep. During that visit the emperor said he deeply deplored an unfortunate period in which my country inflicted great suffering on the people of China . Akihito has consistently urged the Japanese never to forget the horrors of war, remarks that have garnered increased attention since Abe took office in 2012 and sought to adopt a less apologetic tone over Japan s past military aggression. He redefined the job. He wanted to modernise the monarchy and take care of the unfinished business ... and bring the imperial household closer to the people, said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. He s been remarkably successful on all fronts. He is deeply admired and respected. His moral authority is unquestioned. Once Akihito steps down a new imperial era will begin, replacing the current Heisei or achieving peace period which began on Jan. 8, 1989, the day he took the throne. Japan uses the Western-style Gregorian calendar but has also preserved the ancient custom in which the reign of a new emperor ushers in a new era. The last time a Japanese emperor abdicated was in 1817. Post-war law had not allowed for abdication, so a one-off law was adopted in June to let Akihito step down, but it left details such as the timing to be worked out. An early proposal that he retire at the end of 2018, his 30th year on the throne, was rejected over worries it would conflict with rituals and other duties around then. Another date considered was March 31, 2019, the end of the business year. But subsequent ceremonies would have coincided with a busy time for many people and nation-wide local elections in early April, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said. Some Japanese lamented that the process was taking too long. It s the same for me - life is not so long, said a 79-year-old retiree, Asataro Nishizawa. They should have granted his wish sooner, while he is still vigorous. The abdication law did not address the problem of the future of an ageing, shrinking imperial family and the related issue of whether women should be allowed to ascend the throne. Eleven-year-old Prince Hisahito, the son of Akihito s younger son Prince Akishino, is the emperor s only grandson and will be second in line to the throne after his father following the abdication. Naruhito s daughter, Princess Aiko, who turned 16 on Friday, cannot inherit the males-only throne. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Prince Harry and fiancee Markle delight crowd on first official walkabout;NOTTINGHAM, England (Reuters) - Britain s Prince Harry and his American fiancee Meghan Markle delighted cheering crowds who braved the cold on Friday to watch the couple on their first official engagement together. Queen Elizabeth s grandson Harry, 33, fifth-in-line to the throne, and U.S. actress Markle, 36, previously best known for her leading role in U.S. legal drama Suits , announced their engagement on Monday, igniting a transatlantic media frenzy. In the central English city of Nottingham, the pair, both wearing long navy overcoats, greeted hundreds of smiling well-wishers, some waving British and U.S. flags. We love Harry, and Meghan - she looks beautiful doesn t she? Betty Parker, 78, told Reuters as she waited to meet the couple. We re so happy for them both, Mary Cooper, 60, said. We always come and see him whenever he comes here and it s lovely that he keeps coming to Nottingham and has sort of adopted this city. The couple were visiting a charity fair to mark World Aids Day, an event particularly symbolic for Harry whose late mother Princess Diana is credited with playing an important role in breaking down the stigma that was attached to the disease. The event, held by the Terrence Higgins Trust, remembers lives lost to HIV and marks the progress made in fighting it. Harry has become a prominent campaigner on the issue, following in the footsteps of Diana who opened Britain s first HIV/AIDS unit in London in 1987 and confronted stigma by kissing an AIDS patient during a hospital visit. They are so wonderful together, and you can clearly see that there is an immense amount of love and adoration for each other from the personal point of view of course but also for the work that each other are involved in, said HIV campaigner Chris O Hanlon, who met the couple at the event. Afterwards, the couple went to Nottingham Academy to meet headteachers from local schools and hear about the Full Effect programme, an initiative supported by the charity of Harry, his elder brother Prince William and William s wife Kate, which seeks to deter children from becoming involved in violence. Markle, who has been a campaigner for several causes including work as a U.N women s advocate, is to give up her previous charity roles as she begins life in Britain s royal family, Harry s spokesman said on Tuesday. She was also keen to travel around Britain to get to know the country that will become her home as she intends to become a British citizen, the spokesman added. The couple, who became engaged earlier this month at the cottage they share in the grounds of Kensington Palace in central London, are to be married next May in St George s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the family home of British kings and queens for almost 1,000 years. This is good. I m excited to have some Americans in the royal family, U.S. student Mark Arnold, who is studying at Nottingham University, told Reuters. It s really nice, I m excited. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Skyscraper fire kills 10 in northern Chinese city of Tianjin;BEIJING (Reuters) - A skyscraper fire in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin killed 10 and injured five early on Friday, state media reported. The fire broke out around 4 a.m. on the 38th floor of a serviced apartment building near the city centre, the official Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua said the fire had been extinguished and that early indications were that the blaze was caused by interior decorating materials used in a renovation catching fire. State broadcaster CCTV said renovation workers working on site were among the casualties. Fire safety has come under scrutiny in China after a deadly blaze last month killed 19 in the far southern fringe of Beijing, which has led to citywide evictions seen by some people as unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass. Tianjin party secretary Li Hongzhong said authorities would carry out citywide fire safety inspections in response to Friday s blaze, the official Tianjin Daily reported. ;worldnews;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: GENERAL FLYNN CALLS With Russian Ambassador Approved By Obama Administration;General Michael Flynn released the statement below: After over 33 years of military service to our country, including nearly five years in combat away from my family, and then my decision to continue to serve the United States, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions. ;Government News;01/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: VIDEO SHOWS Obama State Department Telling Reporters They Have No Problem With General Flynn Contacting Foreign Officials;The stock market lost over 350 points after ABC News erroneously reported that General Flynn was in communication with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during Trump s campaign. It turns out that after the stock market plunge and the feeding frenzy by the leftist media, ABC News got it wrong. Flynn was actually in contact with the Russian Ambassador during the Trump transition period, which is an entirely different story. In fact, according to a video that was uncovered by citizen journalist Jack Posobiec, Obama s State Department told reporters during the Trump transition period, that the State Department didn t have any problem with the transition team meeting with any foreign officials (See video below). According to CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, the Obama regime actually gave the go-ahead for Flynn to have conversations with the Russian Ambassador: On Friday, the White House said that it was the Obama administration that authorized former national security adviser Michael Flynn s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during President Trump s transition, according to CNN. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak in the month before Trump took office, the first current or former Trump White House official brought down by special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into Russian election meddling. Court records indicate that his communications with Kislyak were directed by a Trump transition official, with multiple news outlets reporting that official was Trump s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. They are saying here at the White House that Flynn s conversations with Sergey Kisylak were quote, authorized by the Obama administration, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta said.General Michael Flynn released the statement below: After over 33 years of military service to our country, including nearly five years in combat away from my family, and then my decision to continue to serve the United States, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions. The HillWatch Obama s State Department clarifying to a reporter that they have no problem with General Flynn and the Trump transition team talking to foreign officials:Obama State Dept: We have no problem with General Flynn and the incoming administration contacting foreign officials pic.twitter.com/FwZDaHU8lO Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) December 2, 2017;left-news;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;20 TIME DEPORTED MEXICAN Laughs While Being Sentenced For Sodomy, Kidnapping and Sexual Assault In SANCTUARY STATE of Oregon…Tells Victims’ Relatives: “See All You Guys In Hell!” [VIDEO];Next time you see a Democrat lawmaker, thank them for supporting sanctuary cities and states, and making every American less safe A Mexican man who was deported from the US 20 times has been convicted of 10 counts including sexual assault in Oregon. On Friday, Sergio Jose Martinez, 31, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in a Portland courtroom after pleading guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault, sodomy and several other counts, KOIN reported.Martinez smiled throughout the trial, and as he left, he gave one grim parting shot to his two victims relatives: See all you guys in Hell. The first attack occurred early on the morning of July 24, when Martinez entered the Northeast Portland home of a 65-year-old woman through a window she had left open to cool the house.Wielding a metal rod, Martinez told the woman to get down on the ground, where he bound and blindfolded her, threatened to murder her, and then sexually assaulted her, KGW reported.He stole the woman s purse and car;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: VIDEO SHOWS Obama State Department Telling Reporters They Have No Problem With General Flynn Contacting Foreign Officials;The stock market lost over 350 points after ABC News erroneously reported that General Flynn was in communication with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during Trump s campaign. It turns out that after the stock market plunge and the feeding frenzy by the leftist media, ABC News got it wrong. Flynn was actually in contact with the Russian Ambassador during the Trump transition period, which is an entirely different story. In fact, according to a video that was uncovered by citizen journalist Jack Posobiec, Obama s State Department told reporters during the Trump transition period, that the State Department didn t have any problem with the transition team meeting with any foreign officials (See video below). According to CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, the Obama regime actually gave the go-ahead for Flynn to have conversations with the Russian Ambassador: On Friday, the White House said that it was the Obama administration that authorized former national security adviser Michael Flynn s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during President Trump s transition, according to CNN. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak in the month before Trump took office, the first current or former Trump White House official brought down by special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into Russian election meddling. Court records indicate that his communications with Kislyak were directed by a Trump transition official, with multiple news outlets reporting that official was Trump s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. They are saying here at the White House that Flynn s conversations with Sergey Kisylak were quote, authorized by the Obama administration, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta said.General Michael Flynn released the statement below: After over 33 years of military service to our country, including nearly five years in combat away from my family, and then my decision to continue to serve the United States, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions. The HillWatch Obama s State Department clarifying to a reporter that they have no problem with General Flynn and the Trump transition team talking to foreign officials:Obama State Dept: We have no problem with General Flynn and the incoming administration contacting foreign officials pic.twitter.com/FwZDaHU8lO Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) December 2, 2017;politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;A COUGHING CLINTON Takes A Nasty Swipe At Matt Lauer…Bitterly Blames Men for Her Loss;What a bitter woman! She blames a different thing every week for her 2016 loss to President Trump. Everything she says below is a lie. She just makes it up as she goes along: She went on to describe how men who shaped the narrative of the campaign harmed her but are now under fire for sexual harassment. Hillary Clinton thinks that former NBC host Matt Lauer s demise is karma for how he questioned her about her private email server during the 2016 presidential campaign.Clinton was in Philadelphia on Thursday promoting her campaign memoir, What Happened, when she was asked about Lauer being fired this week over allegations of sexual misconduct, the Philly Voice reported. Lauer faced a storm of criticism last year when several journalists and commentators deemed his questioning of Clinton at a candidate forum unfair and even sexist. Every day I believe more in karma, Clinton said of Lauer.She went on to describe how men who shaped the narrative of the campaign harmed her but are now under fire for sexual harassment, echoing how her supporters have tied Lauer s alleged misconduct to his treatment of Clinton. She also repeated her past arguments about the election, primarily blaming a host of outside factors for her defeat. EXTENDED COUGHING FIT IS THIS KARMA TOO?At one point early in the evening, Clinton launched into an extended coughing fit, the kind of thing that tended to lead to theories during the campaign that the candidate was concealing some sort of illness. Weiner attempted to fill the time by making a self-deprecating joke about her own last name, but knowing that Clinton s history with a man of that particular surname is what led to the notorious Comey Letter, she may have not found it so funny.STILL TRYING TO SELL HER BOOK ON THE ROAD, CLINTON IS ONLY SUCCESSFUL IN MAKING HERSELF OUT TO BE THE BIGGEST WHINER AROUND The only video out there that we could find is of Hillary s response to a heckler:Philly and @HillaryClinton were having none of this asshole tonight #pizzagate #HillaryClinton #philly #whathappened pic.twitter.com/iuezuhhzKs Amy (@amyreyrn) December 1, 2017The heckler yelled out a question about Pizzagate She wasted no time in attacking the right wing . LOL!THE PHILLY NEWS COMMENTS ON THE CLINTON VISIT ARE 99.9% AGAINST CLINTON HERE S A SAMPLING:VIA: WFB;politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Mueller Fired ‘Top FBI Agent’ Who “Helped Lead” Hillary Investigation Over Discovered Text Messages;" This is an interesting development in the Mueller investigation because we don t trust the FBI. Is this new news from the New York Times an effort to make Mueller and McCabe appear unbiased? We re not buying it because this guy was the lead investigator in the Hillary email case Really??? Talk about compromised! Please see our previous report below on the FBI giving special status to Hillary s email investigation. Robert Mueller kicked a top FBI agent off the special counsel investigation this summer over potential anti-Trump texts he sent, per a new report today.According to The New York Times, Peter Strzok not only helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton s emails, but he played a major role in the Trump-Russia investigation.But he is no longer on the investigation:Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller s investigation to the F.B.I. s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear anti-Trump.ABC News reported back in August that Strzok had left the investigation, but said at the time it s unclear why Strzok stepped away from Mueller s team of nearly two dozen lawyers, investigators and administrative staffers. And The Washington Post s report today on Strzok contains some rather, well, personal details:During the Clinton investigation, Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.The extramarital affair was problematic, these people said, but of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season, in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton Officials are now reviewing the communications to see if they show evidence of political bias in their work on the cases, a review which could result in a public report, according to people familiar with the matter. Via: mediaiteFBI INVESTIGATORS GAVE SPECIAL STATUS TO HILLARY:Friday on Fox News Channel s Fox & Friends, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said evidence had been uncovered showing that the FBI gave the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s improper use of an unauthorized email server while secretary of state a special status. According to the Florida Republican, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the process afforded to Clinton was different than it would have been for any other American. We now have evidence that the FBI s investigation of Hillary Clinton did not follow normal and standard procedures, he said. The current deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe sent emails just weeks before the presidential election saying that the Hillary Clinton investigation would be special that it would be handled by a small team at headquarters, that it would be given special status. GOETZ CALLED FOR AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION: I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM's social mobility board quits over failing the poor;LONDON (Reuters) - All four members of the British government s Social Mobility Commission have quit accusing Prime Minister Theresa May of being too fixated on Brexit to improve the prospects of those from poor backgrounds. May has said she would create an economy which works for all Britons, but the commission s chairman Alan Milburn, a former minister in Tony Blair s Labour government, said she was failing to deliver on her promises. I have reached the conclusion sadly that the current government bears little, if any, hope of progress being made toward the fairer Britain the prime minister has talked about, Milburn told the BBC on Sunday. The government for understandable reasons is focused on Brexit and seems to lack the bandwith to be able to translate the rhetoric of healing social division and promoting social justice into reality. May talked about tackling the burning injustices in society on her first day as prime minister last year. She talked about tackling racism, gender inequality, the underperformance of government schools and the difficulties young people face buying a home. A government spokesman said it was making good progress on social mobility. We accept there is more to do and that is why we are focusing our efforts in disadvantaged areas where we can make the biggest difference, the spokesman said. May, who presides over a warring cabinet and has faced an open rebellion by some of her own lawmakers, is being buffeted by crises. Two ministers have quit May s cabinet in the last month, placing a strain on the government ahead of the Dec. 14-15 summit on Britain s exit from the European Union, when Britain wants EU leaders to give a green light to talks about future trade relations. An opinion poll published for the Mail On Sunday newspaper put Labour on 45 percent with the ruling Conservatives on 37 percent, the biggest lead for opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn s party in a survey by pollster Survation since late 2013. An 8 point lead would put the Labour party into overall majority territory if such vote share totals were reflected at the ballot box, Survation said. Corbyn has promised sweeping renationalisation, tax rises for the rich and increased welfare spending, including an end to healthcare cuts and scrapping university tuition fees. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WALMART Is Selling “Made In Mexico” Apparel Featuring Domestic Terror Group [VIDEO];The domestic terror group, Antifa, has been around for a while, but since Donald Trump s inauguration in January, they ve become more visible and increasingly more violent. Well, good news for Americans who support violent, masked, molotov cocktail throwing, ax and hammer-wielding punks, who run through major cities in packs, busting out windows, setting fire to vehicles, and pretty much destroying anything or anyone in their path, as a way to show their resistance to a Donald Trump presidency, Walmart now offers a line of Antifa apparel for you. If you re struggling to find the perfect gift for your violent, snot-nosed, anti-Trump student, or unemployed basement dweller in your family this holiday season, you can find it online at Walmart. Walmart is selling Antifa clothing that will [allow you to] express yourself inside the opposition to the ideology, organizations, governments, and people from the far right (fascism). The mega-retailer is offering at least 13 different sweatshirts made in Mexico of 100% COTTON for all-day comfort promoting the group whose activities were formally classified by the Obama Administration as domestic terrorist violence as early as April 2016, according to Politico, despite the group s efforts to downplay this determination. Antifa, or Anti-Fascist Action, is an informal grouping of communist, anarchist, and other far-left street gangs. Drawing inspiration from the German Communist Party s street fighters of the 1930s, the modern movement grew out of the European far-left punk scene in the 1980s. These unapologetically violent bands of leftists were largely unknown in the United States until recent years, when America s post-Occupy Wall Street far-left began adopting the name.This (anti-Trump) video provides a window into the violent Antifa group and how they destroy other people s property while running from cops and calling for them to be killed. Listen to Antifa chanting: AK47 put the cops in piggy heaven on the streets of Washington DC during Donald Trump s inauguration at about the 1:20-minute mark. Watch what happens to the young Trump supporter who tries to speak reasonably with the Antifa terrorists about how using violence is not the answer, as he puts out a fire started by the terror group at the 9:20-minute mark:Antifa is well known for dozens of violent crimes against people they consider fascists on both sides of the Atlantic. Just remember to keep creating a better world, the clothing advertisements encourage.This glorification of Antifa was mirrored Friday by the New York Times, which published a fashion style guide for the group: practical advice on how to dress for a riot. In their guide, the Times explains why a uniform look is needed, from Breitbart News s Charlie Nash: These defensive methods work only if there are enough black-clad others nearby. A single person in all black and multiple face masks is an eye grabber. Finally, the Times claimed that dressing in black militant gear and concealing your face forms an emotional connection with other rioters. Tactical considerations aside, it s this emotional connection with other members of the bloc that many practitioners highlight the most in interviews, they proclaimed. It s why soldiers and police have uniforms. Walmart has come under previous criticism for selling Black Lives Matter shirts and other items. Following a request from the national Fraternal Order of Police, the retail giant eventually removed one of the items last December, shirts that said Bulletproof, but refused to remove the rest.As with the Black Lives Matter paraphernalia, the Antifa products are being sold by a third party manufacturer, in this case, Tee Bangers, on Walmart s website. Breitbart ;politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FLASHBACK To 2014 WaPo Headline: “Obama Should Fire John Brennan” For Lying…Only One Year After James Clapper Was Caught Lying Under Oath;Yesterday, the leftist media spent the day wringing their hands in anticipation of finally pinning a Russian collusion story on President Trump, after General Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, during the Trump transition period. It now appears that Flynn s testimony is a big nothingburger. In fact, if the media was being honest with the American people, they would be telling them that Flynn s admission doesn t hold a candle to the lies former President Barack Obama s regime was caught telling. Barack Obama s regime lied about matters that actually were much more serious in nature. Many of their lies were about covering up for the deaths of innocent Americans. From Obama s crooked former AG, Eric Holder, who lied about the illegal gun running program Fast n Furious that was responsible for the death of US Border Agent BrianTerry, to the lies his former national security advisor, Susan Rice told, when she went on a media-blitz to knowingly lie, when she told Americans the death of 4 Americans in Benghazi, was caused by a video. It s got to be pretty bad, when a staunch Obama media ally, the Washington Post, tells him he should fire his CIA Director, John Brennan for lying. From the Washington Post:In March, at the Council on Foreign Relations, CIA Director John Brennan was asked by NBC s Andrea Mitchell whether the CIA had illegally accessed Senate Intelligence Committee staff computers to thwart an investigation by the committee into the agency s past interrogation techniques. The accusation had been made earlier that day by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said the CIA had violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution. Brennan answered:As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn t do that. I mean, that s that s just beyond the you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do. { }And, you know, when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.Watch Brennan lie to Andrea Mitchell here:Now we know that the truth was far different. The Post s Greg Miller reports:CIA Director John O. Brennan has apologized to leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee after an agency investigation determined that its employees improperly searched computers used by committee staff to review classified files on interrogations of prisoners. { }A statement released by the CIA on Tuesday acknowledged that agency employees had searched areas of that computer network that were supposed to be accessible only to committee investigators. Agency employees were attempting to discover how congressional aides had obtained a secret CIA internal report on the interrogation program. Some employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between the CIA and lawmakers in 2009, when the committee investigation was launched, according to the agency statement, which cited a review by the CIA s inspector general. The CIA statement was first reported by McClatchy.That committee s investigation is said to be sharply critical of the CIA, finding that it exaggerated the effectiveness of harsh interrogation measures and repeatedly misled members of Congress and the executive branch. The findings are expected to be released publicly within weeks.After briefing committee leaders, Brennan apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the [inspector general] report, the agency statement said. Brennan also ordered the creation of an internal personnel board, led by former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), to review the agency employees conduct and determine potential disciplinary measures. An apology and an internal review board might suffice if this were Brennan or intelligence leaders first offense, but the track record is far from spotless. In 2011, Brennan claimed that dozens of U.S. drone strikes on overseas targets had not killed a single civilian. This remarkable success rate was not only disputed at the time by news reports even supporters of the drone program called it absurd but as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the New York Times both reported later, President Obama received reports from the very beginning of his presidency about drone strikes killing numerous civilians. As Obama s top counterterrorism adviser at the time, Brennan would have received these reports as well, so either Brennan knew that his claim was a lie, or he is secretly deaf. Similarly, Brennan denied snooping on Senate computers six weeks after Feinstein first made the accusation to the CIA in private, which means either that he was lying, or he had ignored a serious charge against his agency for six weeks, then spouted off about it without any real knowledge hardly the behavior expected of an agency director.And last year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress when he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the Senate Intelligence Committee that the National Security Agency did not collect any kind of data on millions of Americans, a claim later disproved by documents leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Despite Clapper receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle, the damage to Clapper s and the White House s credibility on intelligence and civil liberties issues and, well, the fact that lying to Congress is a crime (though one that s difficult to prosecute), Obama has not disciplined Clapper in any way.;politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After return home, former Egypt premier says still mulling election bid;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik, who returned home from the United Arab Emirates after announcing his bid for Egypt s presidency, appeared in Cairo on Sunday to say he was still considering his run in next year s election. Shafik s comments on a private Cairo television station came a day after his family said he had been taken from their home in the Emirates and deported back to Egypt, where they said they had lost contact with him until late on Sunday. Shafik, a former air force chief and government minister, has been seen by critics of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the strongest potential challenger to the president, who is expected to run for a second term next year. Details about what happened to Shafik between his leaving the UAE on Saturday and his declaration on Sunday were unclear. He made a surprise announcement from the UAE last week that he planned to run in the 2018 election. Today, I am here in the country, so I think I am free to deliberate further on the issue, to explore and go down and talk to people in the street, he said on Sunday. There s a chance now to investigate more and see exactly what is needed ... to feel out if this is the logical choice. The interview on Dream TV was Shafik s first public appearance since leaving the UAE on Saturday. His family said earlier they feared he had been kidnapped . Sources said he had been picked up by Egyptian authorities at Cairo airport. Shafik dismissed reports he had been kidnapped. His lawyer, Dina Adly, wrote on her Facebook page that she had been able to see him at a Cairo hotel and said he was not subject to any investigations. She did not confirm whether he was able to leave the hotel or country. I had a meeting with Shafik an hour ago at one of the hotels in New Cairo and confirmed his health, Adly wrote on Facebook, referring to a suburban area of Cairo. He confirmed that his health was good and that he was not subjected to any investigations, she wrote. Shafik s family said earlier he had been taken from their home on Saturday by UAE authorities and flown by private plane back to Cairo. We know nothing about him since he left home yesterday, Shafik s daughter May told Reuters on Sunday before his reappearance. If he was deported he should have been able to go home by now, not just disappear. We consider him kidnapped. UAE authorities confirmed he left the Emirates but gave no details. A source at the Egyptian interior ministry said: We do not know anything about Shafik. We did not arrest him and we did not receive any requests from the prosecution to arrest him or bring him back. Shafik s abrupt departure from UAE came weeks after Lebanese officials accused Saudi Arabia of meddling by forcing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to resign by holding him against his will. Saudi Arabia denied those charges but the case prompted a crisis and pushed Lebanon back into the center of a regional struggle between Riyadh with its Sunni Gulf allies and Iran. Sisi is an ally of UAE and Saudi Arabia and his supporters say he is key to Egypt s stability. Critics say he has eroded freedoms gained after a 2011 uprising that ousted former leader Hosni Mubarak and jailed hundreds of dissidents. Sisi has won backing from Gulf states and has presented himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants since, as army commander, he led the overthrow in 2013 of former president Mohamed Mursi of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood. After four decades in the military, Shafik touted his military experience as one of his strengths in the 2012 vote. But he fled to the UAE to escape corruption charges in June 2012. He dismissed the charges as politically motivated and was taken off airport watchlists last year. In UAE, his family said he had round-the-clock security at home and informed authorities about his whereabouts. Soon after his announcement on Wednesday, he claimed he had been blocked from traveling, but his family later said he had been given assurances he could travel. Sisi has yet to announce his own intentions for the election. His supporters dismiss criticism over rights abuses and say any measures are needed for security in the face of an Islamist insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers. His government is struggling to crush the insurgency in the North Sinai region and has enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year which critics say have eroded his popularity. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOU DOBBS and Steve Forbes Rip Obama for Criticizing Trump Overseas: ‘He doesn’t get that he doesn’t matter anymore’ [Video];Former President Barack Obama embarked on an Asia trip this week, and Fox Business Lou Dobbs went off on Obama tonight for comments aimed at President Trump. Our favorite comment goes to Steve Forbes who said, He doesn t get that he doesn t matter anymore. Ouch! Please see the video below of Nigel Evans who says what we d like to say to Obama.THE OBAMAS ARE TAKING OVER FOR THE CLINTONS THEY NEVER GO AWAY!Obama is obviously thinking he still matters He rudely took swipes at President Trump:While in India, Obama offered this advice: Think before you speak, think before you tweet. He also invoked his own social media follower numbers compared to other people who use it more often. Dobbs slammed Obama for his criticisms of his predecessor, and guest Steve Forbes said Obama doesn t realize he doesn t matter anymore. Dobbs then said this: I think U.S. Marshals should follow him, and any time he wants to go follow the President like he is, and behave I mean, this is just bad manners. It s boorish, it s absurd, he doesn t realize how foolish he looks. I mean, he should be brought back by the Marshals. Isn t there some law that says presidents shouldn t be attacking sitting presidents? OBAMA SHOULD TAKE ADVICE FROM BRITISH MP NIGEL EVANS: When we stand up in this country and attack Donald Trump in an unseemly way we re actually attacking the American people. Conservative MP Nigel Evans tells those opposing Trump s state visit to get over it because he s the President of the United States .When you attack President Trump, you attack America ;politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope says his defense of Rohingya got through in Myanmar;ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Saturday defended his strategy of avoiding the term Rohingya in Myanmar, saying he believed he got his message across to both the civilian and military leadership without shutting down dialogue. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome from Bangladesh, the pontiff also indicated that he had been firm with Myanmar s military leaders in private meetings about the need for them to respect the rights of Rohingya refugees. He also disclosed that he cried when he met a group of Rohingya refugees on Friday in Bangladesh, where he defended their rights by name in an emotional meeting. For me, the most important thing is that message gets through, to try to say things one step at a time and listen to the responses, he said. I knew that if in the official speeches I would have used that word, they would have closed the door in our faces. But (in public) I described situations, rights, said that no one should be excluded, (the right to) citizenship, in order to allow myself to go further in the private meetings, he said. Francis did not use the word Rohingya in public while on the first leg of the trip in Myanmar. Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognize the mostly Muslim Rohingya as an ethnic group with its own identity but as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Local Roman Catholic Church authorities had advised him not to say it because it could spark a backlash against Christians and other minority groups. The pope met Myanmar s military leaders privately on Monday, shortly after his arrival in the nation s biggest city, Yangon. The meeting had been scheduled for Thursday morning but the military pointedly asked at the last minute that it be pushed forward. The result was they saw the pope before the civilian leaders instead of the other way around, as had been planned. NON-NEGOTIABLE TRUTHS It was a good conversation and the truth was non-negotiable, he said of his meeting with the military leaders. The latest exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh of about 625,000 people followed a Myanmar military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Refugees have said scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, people were killed and women were raped. The military have denied accusations of ethnic cleansing by the United States and United Nations. Asked if he used the word Rohingya during the private meeting with the military chiefs, the pope said: I used words in order to arrive at the message and when I saw that the message had arrived, I dared to say everything that I wanted say . He then gave a reporter a mischievous grin and ended his answer with the Latin phrase Intelligenti Pauca, which means Few words are enough for those who understand, strongly hinting that he had used the word the military detests while in their presence. Human rights groups have criticized the country s de facto civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was under house arrest for a total of 15 years before the 2015 elections, for not taking a stand against the generals. But Francis, who met with her privately on Tuesday, appeared to give her the benefit of the doubt because of her delicate relationship with the generals who were once her jailers. Myanmar is a nation that is growing politically, in transition, Francis said in response to a question about Suu Kyi and budding democracy in Myanmar. So things have to be viewed through this lens. Myanmar has to be able to look forward to the building of the country . On Friday in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, Francis held an emotional encounter with Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and then used the word Rohingya for the first time on the trip, although he had defended them by name twice from the Vatican earlier this year. He told the crowd where the Rohingya were that God s presence was within them and they should be respected. I was crying and tried to hide it, Francis said on the plane, recounting how moved he felt when the refugees recounted their ordeals to him. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FLASHBACK To 2014 WaPo Headline: “Obama Should Fire John Brennan” For Lying…Only One Year After James Clapper Was Caught Lying Under Oath;Yesterday, the leftist media spent the day wringing their hands in anticipation of finally pinning a Russian collusion story on President Trump, after General Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, during the Trump transition period. It now appears that Flynn s testimony is a big nothingburger. In fact, if the media was being honest with the American people, they would be telling them that Flynn s admission doesn t hold a candle to the lies former President Barack Obama s regime was caught telling. Barack Obama s regime lied about matters that actually were much more serious in nature. Many of their lies were about covering up for the deaths of innocent Americans. From Obama s crooked former AG, Eric Holder, who lied about the illegal gun running program Fast n Furious that was responsible for the death of US Border Agent BrianTerry, to the lies his former national security advisor, Susan Rice told, when she went on a media-blitz to knowingly lie, when she told Americans the death of 4 Americans in Benghazi, was caused by a video. It s got to be pretty bad, when a staunch Obama media ally, the Washington Post, tells him he should fire his CIA Director, John Brennan for lying. From the Washington Post:In March, at the Council on Foreign Relations, CIA Director John Brennan was asked by NBC s Andrea Mitchell whether the CIA had illegally accessed Senate Intelligence Committee staff computers to thwart an investigation by the committee into the agency s past interrogation techniques. The accusation had been made earlier that day by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said the CIA had violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution. Brennan answered:As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn t do that. I mean, that s that s just beyond the you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do. { }And, you know, when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.Watch Brennan lie to Andrea Mitchell here:Now we know that the truth was far different. The Post s Greg Miller reports:CIA Director John O. Brennan has apologized to leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee after an agency investigation determined that its employees improperly searched computers used by committee staff to review classified files on interrogations of prisoners. { }A statement released by the CIA on Tuesday acknowledged that agency employees had searched areas of that computer network that were supposed to be accessible only to committee investigators. Agency employees were attempting to discover how congressional aides had obtained a secret CIA internal report on the interrogation program. Some employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between the CIA and lawmakers in 2009, when the committee investigation was launched, according to the agency statement, which cited a review by the CIA s inspector general. The CIA statement was first reported by McClatchy.That committee s investigation is said to be sharply critical of the CIA, finding that it exaggerated the effectiveness of harsh interrogation measures and repeatedly misled members of Congress and the executive branch. The findings are expected to be released publicly within weeks.After briefing committee leaders, Brennan apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the [inspector general] report, the agency statement said. Brennan also ordered the creation of an internal personnel board, led by former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), to review the agency employees conduct and determine potential disciplinary measures. An apology and an internal review board might suffice if this were Brennan or intelligence leaders first offense, but the track record is far from spotless. In 2011, Brennan claimed that dozens of U.S. drone strikes on overseas targets had not killed a single civilian. This remarkable success rate was not only disputed at the time by news reports even supporters of the drone program called it absurd but as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the New York Times both reported later, President Obama received reports from the very beginning of his presidency about drone strikes killing numerous civilians. As Obama s top counterterrorism adviser at the time, Brennan would have received these reports as well, so either Brennan knew that his claim was a lie, or he is secretly deaf. Similarly, Brennan denied snooping on Senate computers six weeks after Feinstein first made the accusation to the CIA in private, which means either that he was lying, or he had ignored a serious charge against his agency for six weeks, then spouted off about it without any real knowledge hardly the behavior expected of an agency director.And last year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress when he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the Senate Intelligence Committee that the National Security Agency did not collect any kind of data on millions of Americans, a claim later disproved by documents leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Despite Clapper receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle, the damage to Clapper s and the White House s credibility on intelligence and civil liberties issues and, well, the fact that lying to Congress is a crime (though one that s difficult to prosecute), Obama has not disciplined Clapper in any way.;left-news;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;US Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid and Genocidal History; Table set for thanksgiving in Siem Reap. (Photo: Andre Vltchek)Andre Vltchek NEOA table was set up for two, an advertisement table, a table with a photo of a giant turkey, two elegant plates, and a U.S. flag sticking out into the air. Thanksgiving at Angkor Royal Cafe , a flier read. And: 23rd November Join us for a traditional Thanksgiving Feast .This was at one of the international hotels in Siem Reap, a Cambodian city near the world architectural treasures of Angkor Wat and the ancient Khmer capital, Angkor Thom.The same day I read an email sent to me from the United States, by my Native American friends, with a link to an essay published by MPN News, called Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid History . It began with a summary: While millions of Americans prepare this week to get into the holiday spirit, beginning with Thanksgiving, how many are prepared to view the day through an accurate lens? While to many Americans the holiday serves as a reminder to give thanks, it is seen as a day of mourning by countless of others. The truth is: European migrants brutally murdered Native Americans, stole their land, and continue to do so today . The day became an official day of festivities in 1637, to celebrate the massacre of over 700 people from the Pequot Tribe.In a hotel, I approached a cheerful French food and beverage manager and asked him whether he was aware of what he was suggesting should be celebrated in one of his restaurants? Oh I know I know, he replied, laughing. It is a little bit controversial, isn t it? Bit controversial? I wondered. It appears more like you are inviting people to celebrate genocide, a holocaust, with free flowing wine and a giant turkey. I am trying to see things positively, he continued grinning at me. Then he summarized: So I guess you won t be joining us tonight? What a pity What a pity, I thought, what a pity. I won t get to eat that famous American pie tonight and turkey and who knows what else, just because I am not eager at all to celebrate the massacres and land grabs perpetrated by the Empire.The manager couldn t help asking: Where are you from? I knew he would ask. No European would say what I was saying. I m Russian, I replied. Oh I see, he gave me that I should have guessed smile . Russian-American, I added.I m convinced that the French manager has been sincerely oblivious about what I was stating. He is supposed to be oblivious. There are, after all, our genocides , and the genocides of the others . Our genocides , those that we triggered or committed, should never be discussed. Or more precisely, it is extremely impolite to discuss them. Most of the people don t even know about them, including many of the victims. On the other hand, the genocides committed by the others, particularly by adversaries of the West, are widely discussed, publicized, analyzed, inflated and very often even fabricated (All this described in detail in my 840-page book Exposing Lies Of The Empire ).Cambodia is the textbook case of the latter. Here, several decades ago, the U.S. and its allies first supported the hopelessly corrupt and brutal government in Phnom Penh, while triggering a monstrous carpet-bombing campaign of the Cambodian countryside, mainly near the border with Vietnam. This was supposed to prevent the country from going Communist , or at least Ho Chi Minh style Communist . Hundreds of thousands of villagers were murdered by the bombing. Millions were forced to hit the road, leaving their dwellings, as the countryside was converted into a giant minefield, covered by unexploded ordnance.Further hundreds of thousands died from starvation and diseases. Furious, mad from suffering, the people of Cambodia rose against the collaborators with the West in Phnom Penh. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took the capital virtually unopposed. Recently, deep in the jungle, I spoke to the former Pol Pot s personal guards. I asked them point-blank whether they knew anything about Communism. Nothing at all, I was told. The U.S. was murdering our families, for no reason. Corrupt elites were selling the country to the West. We were all outraged, and ready for revenge. We would follow anybody calling for revenge. However, the West is passing the events, to this day, as a Communist genocide .Rwanda is yet another case of a twisted narrative. I made an entire full-length documentary film Rwanda Gambit on the subject. There, the West turned the history upside down, reducing the entire tragedy into a primitive and easy-to-digest narrative of bad Hutus killing good Tutsis. Yet even the former U.S. ambassador Robert Flatten told me that his country groomed, armed and supported the deadly RPF, mainly Tutsi army, which had been, before 1994, raiding the Rwandan countryside from neighboring Uganda, burning villages and killing civilians.While a former Australian lawyer and U.N. investigator, Michael Hourigan, supplied me with information about the downing of the plane, which, in April 1994, killed both the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, while on the final approach to Kigali airport. The orders to shoot down the plane were given by the RPF leader Paul Kagame, who was in turn sponsored by the West. This event triggered the terrible bloodletting on 1994. The next year, in 1995, the Rwandan army entered the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and participated in the killing of at least 9 million people, mainly civilians, on behalf of Western governments and multi-national companies, making it the worst crime against humanity in recent history.In fact, almost all the major genocides committed by the West or its allies in modern history, are silent ones , including those in Iraq, Syria, Iran, West Papua, East Timor, DRC, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Angola, and dozens of other unfortunate places all over the world.The gruesome genocides committed by the West all over the world, during the last 2,000 but especially during the last 500 years, are never defined as such;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;US Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid and Genocidal History; Table set for thanksgiving in Siem Reap. (Photo: Andre Vltchek)Andre Vltchek NEOA table was set up for two, an advertisement table, a table with a photo of a giant turkey, two elegant plates, and a U.S. flag sticking out into the air. Thanksgiving at Angkor Royal Cafe , a flier read. And: 23rd November Join us for a traditional Thanksgiving Feast .This was at one of the international hotels in Siem Reap, a Cambodian city near the world architectural treasures of Angkor Wat and the ancient Khmer capital, Angkor Thom.The same day I read an email sent to me from the United States, by my Native American friends, with a link to an essay published by MPN News, called Thanksgiving Guide: How to Celebrate a Sordid History . It began with a summary: While millions of Americans prepare this week to get into the holiday spirit, beginning with Thanksgiving, how many are prepared to view the day through an accurate lens? While to many Americans the holiday serves as a reminder to give thanks, it is seen as a day of mourning by countless of others. The truth is: European migrants brutally murdered Native Americans, stole their land, and continue to do so today . The day became an official day of festivities in 1637, to celebrate the massacre of over 700 people from the Pequot Tribe.In a hotel, I approached a cheerful French food and beverage manager and asked him whether he was aware of what he was suggesting should be celebrated in one of his restaurants? Oh I know I know, he replied, laughing. It is a little bit controversial, isn t it? Bit controversial? I wondered. It appears more like you are inviting people to celebrate genocide, a holocaust, with free flowing wine and a giant turkey. I am trying to see things positively, he continued grinning at me. Then he summarized: So I guess you won t be joining us tonight? What a pity What a pity, I thought, what a pity. I won t get to eat that famous American pie tonight and turkey and who knows what else, just because I am not eager at all to celebrate the massacres and land grabs perpetrated by the Empire.The manager couldn t help asking: Where are you from? I knew he would ask. No European would say what I was saying. I m Russian, I replied. Oh I see, he gave me that I should have guessed smile . Russian-American, I added.I m convinced that the French manager has been sincerely oblivious about what I was stating. He is supposed to be oblivious. There are, after all, our genocides , and the genocides of the others . Our genocides , those that we triggered or committed, should never be discussed. Or more precisely, it is extremely impolite to discuss them. Most of the people don t even know about them, including many of the victims. On the other hand, the genocides committed by the others, particularly by adversaries of the West, are widely discussed, publicized, analyzed, inflated and very often even fabricated (All this described in detail in my 840-page book Exposing Lies Of The Empire ).Cambodia is the textbook case of the latter. Here, several decades ago, the U.S. and its allies first supported the hopelessly corrupt and brutal government in Phnom Penh, while triggering a monstrous carpet-bombing campaign of the Cambodian countryside, mainly near the border with Vietnam. This was supposed to prevent the country from going Communist , or at least Ho Chi Minh style Communist . Hundreds of thousands of villagers were murdered by the bombing. Millions were forced to hit the road, leaving their dwellings, as the countryside was converted into a giant minefield, covered by unexploded ordnance.Further hundreds of thousands died from starvation and diseases. Furious, mad from suffering, the people of Cambodia rose against the collaborators with the West in Phnom Penh. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge took the capital virtually unopposed. Recently, deep in the jungle, I spoke to the former Pol Pot s personal guards. I asked them point-blank whether they knew anything about Communism. Nothing at all, I was told. The U.S. was murdering our families, for no reason. Corrupt elites were selling the country to the West. We were all outraged, and ready for revenge. We would follow anybody calling for revenge. However, the West is passing the events, to this day, as a Communist genocide .Rwanda is yet another case of a twisted narrative. I made an entire full-length documentary film Rwanda Gambit on the subject. There, the West turned the history upside down, reducing the entire tragedy into a primitive and easy-to-digest narrative of bad Hutus killing good Tutsis. Yet even the former U.S. ambassador Robert Flatten told me that his country groomed, armed and supported the deadly RPF, mainly Tutsi army, which had been, before 1994, raiding the Rwandan countryside from neighboring Uganda, burning villages and killing civilians.While a former Australian lawyer and U.N. investigator, Michael Hourigan, supplied me with information about the downing of the plane, which, in April 1994, killed both the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, while on the final approach to Kigali airport. The orders to shoot down the plane were given by the RPF leader Paul Kagame, who was in turn sponsored by the West. This event triggered the terrible bloodletting on 1994. The next year, in 1995, the Rwandan army entered the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and participated in the killing of at least 9 million people, mainly civilians, on behalf of Western governments and multi-national companies, making it the worst crime against humanity in recent history.In fact, almost all the major genocides committed by the West or its allies in modern history, are silent ones , including those in Iraq, Syria, Iran, West Papua, East Timor, DRC, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Angola, and dozens of other unfortunate places all over the world.The gruesome genocides committed by the West all over the world, during the last 2,000 but especially during the last 500 years, are never defined as such;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WALMART Is Selling “Made In Mexico” Apparel Featuring Domestic Terror Group [VIDEO];The domestic terror group, Antifa, has been around for a while, but since Donald Trump s inauguration in January, they ve become more visible and increasingly more violent. Well, good news for Americans who support violent, masked, molotov cocktail throwing, ax and hammer-wielding punks, who run through major cities in packs, busting out windows, setting fire to vehicles, and pretty much destroying anything or anyone in their path, as a way to show their resistance to a Donald Trump presidency, Walmart now offers a line of Antifa apparel for you. If you re struggling to find the perfect gift for your violent, snot-nosed, anti-Trump student, or unemployed basement dweller in your family this holiday season, you can find it online at Walmart. Walmart is selling Antifa clothing that will [allow you to] express yourself inside the opposition to the ideology, organizations, governments, and people from the far right (fascism). The mega-retailer is offering at least 13 different sweatshirts made in Mexico of 100% COTTON for all-day comfort promoting the group whose activities were formally classified by the Obama Administration as domestic terrorist violence as early as April 2016, according to Politico, despite the group s efforts to downplay this determination. Antifa, or Anti-Fascist Action, is an informal grouping of communist, anarchist, and other far-left street gangs. Drawing inspiration from the German Communist Party s street fighters of the 1930s, the modern movement grew out of the European far-left punk scene in the 1980s. These unapologetically violent bands of leftists were largely unknown in the United States until recent years, when America s post-Occupy Wall Street far-left began adopting the name.This (anti-Trump) video provides a window into the violent Antifa group and how they destroy other people s property while running from cops and calling for them to be killed. Listen to Antifa chanting: AK47 put the cops in piggy heaven on the streets of Washington DC during Donald Trump s inauguration at about the 1:20-minute mark. Watch what happens to the young Trump supporter who tries to speak reasonably with the Antifa terrorists about how using violence is not the answer, as he puts out a fire started by the terror group at the 9:20-minute mark:Antifa is well known for dozens of violent crimes against people they consider fascists on both sides of the Atlantic. Just remember to keep creating a better world, the clothing advertisements encourage.This glorification of Antifa was mirrored Friday by the New York Times, which published a fashion style guide for the group: practical advice on how to dress for a riot. In their guide, the Times explains why a uniform look is needed, from Breitbart News s Charlie Nash: These defensive methods work only if there are enough black-clad others nearby. A single person in all black and multiple face masks is an eye grabber. Finally, the Times claimed that dressing in black militant gear and concealing your face forms an emotional connection with other rioters. Tactical considerations aside, it s this emotional connection with other members of the bloc that many practitioners highlight the most in interviews, they proclaimed. It s why soldiers and police have uniforms. Walmart has come under previous criticism for selling Black Lives Matter shirts and other items. Following a request from the national Fraternal Order of Police, the retail giant eventually removed one of the items last December, shirts that said Bulletproof, but refused to remove the rest.As with the Black Lives Matter paraphernalia, the Antifa products are being sold by a third party manufacturer, in this case, Tee Bangers, on Walmart s website. Breitbart ;left-news;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran army enforces curfew after vote count stalls;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran security forces fanned out on Saturday to enforce a curfew as sporadic demonstrations continued over a contested presidential election that triggered violent protests that have killed at least three people. Hundreds have been arrested after the tally from last Sunday s presidential race stalled without a clear winner. Opposition leaders accused the government of trying to steal the election TV star Salvador Nasralla on Saturday accused his rival, President Juan Orlando Hernandez, of carrying out a coup by manipulating the vote count and declaring the curfew to stifle protests. International concern has grown about the electoral crisis in the poor Central American country, which struggles with violent drug gangs and one of the world s highest murder rates. Lines formed at supermarkets and early Saturday as people stocked up on supplies, but upscale malls and many shops were shuttered while others closed early as groups of workers waited to catch buses and get back to their homes before the 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew took effect. I m afraid I m going to get arrested by the army and be stuck in jail overnight or hit a blockade in the streets, said Daniel Solorzono, 27, as he heaved eggs, bananas and sausage into his pick-up truck at a market and rushed off to his home. Nasralla s early 5 percentage point lead on Monday was later reversed, after a pause of more than a day in the count, in favor of Hernandez, leading to accusations of vote fraud and calls for protests. Disputed votes could swing the outcome. Under the official count, Hernandez had 42.9 percent of the vote while Nasralla has 41.4 percent, with 95 percent of votes tallied. Electoral authorities have proposed recounting around 6 percent of the vote, but Nasralla s party has demanded a wider recount, forcing a stand-off with the ruling party and election authorities. Heide Fulton, the top official at the U.S. embassy which does not currently have an ambassador, called for Hondurans to refrain from violence. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal must have the time and space to count all votes transparently and free from interference, she said on Saturday in a post on Twitter. One man was killed in the port city of La Ceiba on Friday and a 19-year old woman was shot in the head early Saturday in Tegucigalpa as soldiers busted up protesters blockades of rubble and burning tires that had snarled traffic in the capital and major ports, a spokesman for the national police said. On Friday, police had reported another protestor was killed in La Ceiba. There were also reports from opposition leaders and a police source that between four and five demonstrators had been shot dead in the north of the country. While security forces cleared blockades in the capital, there were still highways obstructed around La Ceiba and other areas outside major cities, a police spokesman said. More than 200 people have been arrested and more than 20 injuries have been reported in the skirmishes between protesters and security forces. Thirty-four people who were detained during the week would be charged with terrorism, said Col. Jorge Paz, a spokesman for the military. The government declared the curfew on Friday, expanding powers for the army and police to detain people and break up blockades of roads, bridges and public buildings. The electoral tribunal was unable to resume the vote tally on Saturday as Nasralla s center-left alliance refused to participate unless the recount was expanded to three regions with alleged vote tampering. The tribunal said it would try to carry out the recount of disputed votes on Sunday and that it hoped the opposition would participate. Its top official said they would evaluate if the recount could be widened. What everyone already knows is that a coup occurred in Honduras last night precisely in the processing of the ballots. So, the whole world will not recognize these elections, Nasralla told local television. The 64-year-old Nasralla is one of Honduras best-known faces and he is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. Hernandez, 49, implemented a military led crackdown on gang violence that was backed by the United States and is credited with curbing the country s murder rate. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;20 TIME DEPORTED MEXICAN Laughs While Being Sentenced For Sodomy, Kidnapping and Sexual Assault In SANCTUARY STATE of Oregon…Tells Victims’ Relatives: “See All You Guys In Hell!” [VIDEO];Next time you see a Democrat lawmaker, thank them for supporting sanctuary cities and states, and making every American less safe A Mexican man who was deported from the US 20 times has been convicted of 10 counts including sexual assault in Oregon. On Friday, Sergio Jose Martinez, 31, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in a Portland courtroom after pleading guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault, sodomy and several other counts, KOIN reported.Martinez smiled throughout the trial, and as he left, he gave one grim parting shot to his two victims relatives: See all you guys in Hell. The first attack occurred early on the morning of July 24, when Martinez entered the Northeast Portland home of a 65-year-old woman through a window she had left open to cool the house.Wielding a metal rod, Martinez told the woman to get down on the ground, where he bound and blindfolded her, threatened to murder her, and then sexually assaulted her, KGW reported.He stole the woman s purse and car;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Trump Gives Slap Down to Press Over Flynn Guilty Plea as He’s Leaving the White House [Video];"Even though the big news was that President Trump got a BIG win with the passage in the Senate last night of his tax bill, the press was stuck on the topic of Mike Flynn s guilty plea. POTUS was asked as he was leaving the White House this morning if he s worried about Flynn s guilty plea He had a firm answer then tried to remind the press that last night was a big win for him JUST IN: President Trump makes first comments after Michael Flynn's guilty plea.Reporter: ""Are you concerned about what Mike Flynn might tell the special counsel?""Trump: ""No, I'm not."" pic.twitter.com/UlDrdPMU2S NBC News (@NBCNews) December 2, 2017 No, I m not and what has been shown is no collusion, no collusion. There s been absolutely no collusion so we re very happy. And frankly, last night was one of the big nights We ll see what happens. PDJTWE RE ASSUMING PRESIDENT TRUMP WAS TALKING ABOUT THE BIG NIGHT BEING THE PASSAGE OF HIS TAX BILL:We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America. Special thanks to @SenateMajLdr Mitch McConnell and Chairman @SenOrrinHatch for shepherding our bill through the Senate. Look forward to signing a final bill before Christmas! pic.twitter.com/gmWTny3SfS Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017While the press does their best to try and bring down President Trump, he continues to fight for all Americans. The Democrats have to be beside themselves after this huge win for Trump and Republicans. Maxine Waters was on with Joy Reid this morning saying this was all doom and gloom We say MAGA! TRUMP 2020!";politics;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against Netanyahu, corruption;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - About 20,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday against government corruption and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is under criminal investigation over allegations of abuse of office. The demonstration was by far the largest of weekly anti-corruption protests sparked by corruption allegations against Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing. The four-term leader is suspected of involvement in two cases. The first involves receiving gifts from wealthy businessmen and the second involves negotiating a deal with a newspaper owner for better coverage in return for curbs on a rival daily. Saturday s protest was prompted by a draft law expected to be ratified by parliament next week, which would bar police from publishing its findings in two investigations of Netanyahu. A Reuters cameraman and Israeli media put the number of demonstrators at about 20,000. Police would not provide an official estimate. Critics say the draft law is a blatant attempt to protect Netanyahu and keep the public in the dark about his investigation. Supporters of the legislation say it is meant to protect suspects rights. Netanyahu has said he has no interest in promoting personal legislation but he has not ordered its two sponsors, close confidants in his Likud party, to withdraw the bill. Netanyahu has described himself as a victim of a political witch hunt and said of the cases against him: There will be nothing because there is nothing. If charged, he would come under heavy pressure to resign or could call an election to test whether he still had a mandate. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's far-right AfD chooses nationalist as co-leader;HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Members of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party elected a right-wing nationalist to be their co-leader on Saturday, signaling a possible toughening of tone before regional votes next year. A party congress chose Alexander Gauland - who once defended an AfD member who had said history should be rewritten to focus on German victims of World War Two - to return to the post he had held until 2015. As members deliberated, thousands of anti-AfD protesters marched outside carrying placards reading Hanover against Nazis and Stand up to racism . Earlier, riot police fired water cannon at dozens of protesters who blocked a road leading to the congress, underlining the divisive impact the party has had since it entered the Bundestag lower house for the first time in a Sept. 24 election. The party s incumbent leader Jorg Meuthen - seen as a relative moderate in the movement - won enough votes to keep his post. But in a vote that dragged into the evening, he was joined as co-leader by Gauland, who ran for the post at the last minute after another candidate seen as a moderate, Georg Pazderski, failed to win enough votes. Before the leadership vote, Meuthen praised the party often beset by internal strife for showing unity after two senior members quit in September in protest against what they saw as an unstoppable populist streak. There are people in this country who don t only say We can do this but who actually manage to do something, Meuthen told delegates, putting a new twist on Chancellor Angela Merkel s Wir schaffen das (We can do it) message to those who doubted Germany can deal with a record influx of migrants in 2015. As thousands of protesters marched peacefully outside, AfD delegates watched a short film that painted a gloomy picture of Europe s largest economy being overrun by beggars, stone-throwers and Muslims. Founded in 2013 as a vehicle to oppose euro zone bailouts, the AfD was polling at around 3 percent nationally two years ago on the eve of the refugee crisis. The arrival of more than 1.6 million people seeking asylum in the two years to the end of 2016 has helped it morph into an anti-immigrant party that now has seats in 14 of Germany s 16 regional parliament. Polls suggest it will win seats in next year s regional elections in the southern state of Bavaria and the western region of Hesse, which would give it a foothold in all of Germany s state parliaments. Gauland replaces Frauke Petry, who quit to become an independent member of parliament. Her sudden departure two days after the AfD became the first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag since the 1950s exposed rifts over whether the party should ditch rhetoric including statements saying Islam was not compatible with the German constitution. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led coalition says confident Saleh's GPC to return to Arab fold;DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said on Saturday it was confident that leaders of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh s General People s Congress Party (GPC) would return to the Arab fold. The comments, carried by the Saudi-owned Al-Hadath news channel, came after Saleh said he was ready to turn a new page with the coalition if it stopped what he described as its aggression on Yemen and lifted restrictions on transportation. The coalition accuses Saleh of having betrayed his Arab neighbors by joining the Houthi-led forces they say are aligned with non-Arab Iran. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa drops education minister after public outcry;(Reuters) - Zimbabwe s new president Emmerson Mnangagwa dropped his education minister, a day after reappointing him to a cabinet which gave top posts to senior military officials in what was widely seen as a reward for the army s role in the removal of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe. Mnangagwa made other changes to the cabinet that his chief secretary Misheck Sibanda called adjustments to ensure compliance with the Constitution and considerations of gender, demography and special needs . Under the Zimbabwean constitution, ministers and their deputies have to be members of parliament, except five who can be chosen for their professional skills and competence. Mnangagwa had named as ministers seven people, including Major-General Sibusiso Moyo as foreign minister and Marshall Perrance Shiri to the sensitive land portfolio, who are not lawmakers. He replaced primary and higher education minister Lazaraus Dokora with his deputy Paul Mavima. Dokora s reappointment had caused an outcry from Zimbabweans on social media and radio shows who slammed him for poor performance and undermining the country s education system. He also named ZANU-PF lawmaker Petronella Kagonye to the labor and social welfare portfolio, replacing university professor Clever Nyathi who was appointed special advisor in the president s office on national peace and reconciliation. Chris Mutsvanga, leader of the powerful war veterans association and who was named media, information and broadcast minister, has also been appointed special advisor to the president. Sworn in as president last Friday after 93-year-old Mugabe quit in the wake of a de facto military coup, Mnangagwa s cabinet drew criticisms from analysts and Zimbabweans who had expected a more broad-based lineup that marked a break from the Mugabe era. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope ends sensitive trip to Asia after seeking Rohingya forgiveness;DHAKA (Reuters) - Pope Francis ended a diplomatically tricky trip to Asia on Saturday, seeking the forgiveness of Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh after his controversial decision to not directly refer to their plight when he visited their homeland, Myanmar. On the last day of his three-day visit to Bangladesh, which came after meetings in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, the pope went to a home in Dhaka founded by Mother Teresa for orphans, unwed mothers and destitute elderly. Later in a speech to an audience of around 7,000 young Catholics, Muslims and followers of other religions, the pope spoke about welcoming and accepting those who act and think differently than ourselves . When a people, a religion or a society turns into a little world , they lose the best that they have and plunge into a self-righteous mentality of I am good and you are bad , Francis said at the Notre Dame College, founded by Catholic priests. He also asked his young listeners to not spend the whole day playing with your phone and ignoring the world around you! Francis said he was very pleased by an inter-religious meeting on Friday night, where he had an emotional meeting with refugees from Myanmar and then used the word Rohingya for the first time on his current trip, saying they had God within them and should be respected. He also sought their forgiveness in the name of all who persecuted them. Previously, in Myanmar, he followed the advice of Myanmar Church officials who said his use of the word could prompt a backlash against Christians and hurt that country s fragile path to democracy. That had disappointed rights groups such as Amnesty International, which has said Myanmar s security forces were carrying out a systematic, organized and ruthless campaign of violence against the Rohingya population. Myanmar s military has denied the allegations. The country does not recognize the stateless Rohingya as an ethnic group with its own identity and considers them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Mother Teresa, who started the Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of the poor, opened the Dhaka home in the early 1970s to look after Bengali women who became pregnant as a result of rape by Pakistani soldiers during the war of independence. The pope made an impromptu address to nuns and priests at the home during which he praised Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country where Catholics make up less than one percent of its around 169 million people, for having what he called some of the best inter-religious relations in the world. His words of appreciation have been welcomed by Bangladesh, which was already home to around 400,000 Rohingya Muslims before nearly 625,000 more came since August after the Myanmar army launched an offensive in response to attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants. Bangladesh last week signed an agreement to return the refugees over time, while at the same time expanding refugee camps and constructing tens of thousands of shelters for them in Bangladesh until they are able to return , a statement issued on behalf of the government said. Dear friends in Myanmar and Bangladesh, thank you for your welcome! Francis said on Twitter as his flight took off. Upon you I invoke divine blessings of harmony and peace. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodian PM pulls back on threat to shut rights group founded by rival;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has pulled back from a threat to close a human rights group founded by the detained opposition leader Kem Sokha, a pro-government website said on Saturday. The move follows a visit by Hun Sen to Cambodia s main ally China and comes as the veteran leader is under fire from Western donors for a crackdown on the opposition. The rights group, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, was founded in 2002 by Kem Sokha, who was arrested in September and charged with treason for an alleged plot to take power with American help. The government decided to keep (CCHR) so it continues to serve human rights activities in Cambodia, and as a result of the Ministry of Interior s finding, there are no illegal acts, Hun Sen was quoted as saying by Freshnews. Kem Sokha has rejected the charges against him, which the opposition calls a ploy to ensure Hun Sen extends his more than three decades in power at next year s election. Kem Sokha s party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was dissolved on Nov. 16 by the Supreme Court, acting at the government s request. In response to the crackdown, the United States has stopped funding for the election and the European Union has raised a potential threat to Cambodia s duty free access if it does not respect human rights. The statement was released as Hun Sen held a two-day ceremony at the famed Angkor Wat temple to pray for peace and stability in Cambodia. He sat beside his wife Bun Rany and pressed his hands together while Buddhist monks chanted prayers. Mu Sochua, a deputy to Kem Sokha who fled the crackdown in Cambodia, said the nation s deep divisions could not be healed in one ceremony. Peace for Cambodia can not be achieved through just a ceremony. Peace is about full respect of human rights, freedoms, liberties and rule of law, Mu Sochua told Reuters. Chak Sopheap, executive director of the rights group CCHR, said she and other staffs were incredibly relieved by the news. With this investigation out of the way, we can get back to focusing on our core mission, the work of promoting respect for human rights in Cambodia, Chak Sopheap said in a Facebook post. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's Saleh ready to turn new page if Saudi-led attacks end;DUBAI (Reuters) - Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Saturday called on the Saudi-led coalition to pave the way for an end to nearly three years of war by ceasing attacks and lifting a siege. Saleh, whose call came as his supporters fought allied Houthi forces in the capital Sana a, said on television that he was ready to turn a new page if the coalition agreed to his demands. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More Bali flights canceled on forecast of volcanic ash;"DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Airlines canceled more flights departing the Indonesian holiday island of Bali on Saturday, citing forecasts of deteriorating flying conditions due to a risk of volcanic ash from the erupting Mount Agung volcano. A Bali airport spokesman said the airport was still operating normally, but airlines such as Jetstar and Virgin Australia had opted to cancel some flights Bali flying conditions expected to be clear throughout the day, but forecast for tonight has deteriorated so several flights have been canceled, Australian budget airline Jetstar said on its Twitter account. The erupting volcano had closed the airport for much of this week, stranding thousands of visitors from Australia, China and other countries, before the winds changed and flights resumed Twenty flights were canceled on Friday evening due to concerns over ash. Some airlines including Malaysia s AirAsia Bhd have said they would only operate out of Bali during the day, as the ash could impair visibility at night and wind conditions in the area were unpredictable. Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash as it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure. There are also concerns over changing weather conditions with a tropical cyclone south of Java island impacting weather and wind in the area, including for Bali, the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics agency said With some airlines continuing to fly normally on Saturday, there was frustration among passengers. Australian couple Justine and Greg Hill were on holiday with their two teenage children and had been due to fly out today but their flight later this evening was canceled. It s more an inconvenience than anything. Don t understand why if other airlines are flying, some others aren t. Obviously there must be safety protocols but there s no detailed explanation, said Greg Hill, 46, who was waiting at the airport. Several foreign consulates have set up booths in the international departures area to assist stranded passengers. Subrata Sarkar, India s vice consul in Bali, told Reuters at the airport s international departure area that they had helped around 500 passengers so far this week. We have advised citizens the volcano may erupt. We never say please don t come . But we have issued travel advisories. If it s urgent business, then ok, but if it s only tourism, then plans should be reconsidered, said Sarkar. For an interactive graphic on Mount Agung volcano, click - tmsnrt.rs/2hYdHiq For a graphic on the Pacific ""Ring of Fire,"" click - tmsnrt.rs/2BjtH6l ";worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cyclone batters southwestern India coast killing 14, many missing;MUMBAI (Reuters) - Cyclone Ockhi barrelled into the Lakshwadeep islands in southwestern India on Saturday after drenching the neighboring states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, claiming so far around 14 lives with many fishermen still feared trapped at sea. Authorities including the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), India s Coast Guard and Navy have rescued about 223 fishermen and evacuated thousands of people from cyclone hit areas, officials said, as they continued their operations on Saturday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, assuring him of support operations including necessary funds, according to local media. Ockhi is expected to travel north towards Mumbai and Gujarat in the next 48 hours, according to Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) Director S. Sudevan in Trivandrum, though it is likely to lose intensity. The intensity of the wind may come down and the cyclone could change into depression, Sudevan said adding fishermen have been warned not go to the sea for the next few days as waves are likely to be 3-5 meters (12-15 feet) high. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli missiles hit military post near Damascus: Syrian state TV;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli missiles struck a military position near Damascus and Syria s air defence system responded on Saturday, destroying two of them, Syrian state television said. The Israeli enemy launched...several surface-to-surface missiles towards a military position, it said, adding there had been material losses at the site. An Israeli military spokeswoman had declined to comment on earlier reports of such an attack overnight. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said missiles, probably fired by the Israeli military, struck an arms depot of the Syrian army or its allied forces after midnight. The Britain-based group, which monitors the war through a network of contacts in Syria, said the attack hit near al-Kiswa town south of the capital Damascus, causing loud explosions. The Israeli air force has said it struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and Lebanon s Hezbollah nearly 100 times during more than six years of the Syrian war. Israel has grown deeply alarmed by Iran s expanding clout during the conflict, and has warned it would act against any threat from its regional foe Tehran. Iran has provided critical support to President Bashar al-Assad s military in fighting Syrian rebels and Islamic State militants. Iran-backed Shi ite militias, including Hezbollah, have helped Damascus regain control of swathes of the country. On a visit to Damascus in October, Iran s military chief warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace or territory. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli missiles hit military position near Damascus: Syrian state TV;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli missiles struck a military position near Damascus overnight and Syria s air defense system thwarted them, Syrian state television said on Saturday. The blatant assault led to material losses at the site in the countryside around the capital, it said. An Israeli military spokeswoman had declined to comment on earlier reports of such an attack overnight. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canadian judge suspends Quebec niqab ban;TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian judge on Friday suspended part of a Quebec law banning people from wearing full-face veils when giving or receiving public services, handing a provisional victory to civil liberties groups who argued that the law is unconstitutional and discriminates against Muslim women. Judge Babak Barin suspended the portion of the act banning face coverings until the government enacts guidelines for how the law will be applied and how exemptions might be granted. The government of the mainly French-speaking province of Quebec now has a chance to clarify in detail how the law would be put into practice. The law, passed in October, affects everyone from teachers and students to hospital employees, police officers, bus drivers and transit users. While the law does not single out any religion by name, debate has focused on the niqab, a full-face veil worn by a small minority of Muslim women. The judge recognized the immediate harm the law was causing to the people it affects outweighed any theoretical public purpose of the law, lawyer Catherine McKenzie, who is representing the people challenging the law, told Reuters. Quebec s Liberal government is defending the law in court, saying it does not discriminate against Muslim women and is necessary for reasons of security, identification and communication. The act s name refers to religious neutrality and accommodations on religious grounds. I m not unsatisfied with the judgment because there s no mention that the law contravenes the charters (of rights), Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard told reporters Friday, as quoted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. The National Council for Canadian Muslims welcomed the ruling as a successful first step, its executive director Ihsaan Gardee said. Opponents of the law say it targets a visible minority that has been subject to threats and violence. Quebec had about 243,000 Muslims as of 2011, according to Statistics Canada, out of a population of 8 million. In January a gunman walked into a Quebec City mosque and shot six people to death. A French-Canadian university student has been charged as the sole suspect. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and the German state of Bavaria have imposed restrictions on the wearing of full-face veils in public places. Denmark plans to institute its own ban. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Leaked Email Proves Trump Officials Aware Russia Had ‘Thrown The USA Election’ To Trump;Donald Trump s current deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, a former Fox News personality, K. T. McFarland admitted in an email to a colleague during the 2016 presidential transition to Russia throwing the election to Trump. The leaked email was written just weeks before Trump s inauguration and it states that sanctions would make it difficult to ease relations with Russia, which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him. The New York Times reports:But emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.A White House lawyer tried to explain McFarland s email to the The Times by saying that she was referring to the Democrats portrayal of the election. That doesn t make any sense, by the way.McFarland wrote the email to Thomas P. Bossert, who currently serves as Trump s homeland security adviser, then he forwarded it to future National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (now indicted), future Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, future senior strategist Stephen Bannon, and future press secretary Sean Spicer, the Daily Beast reports.With all the pearl-clutching we witnessed from conservatives about Hillary Clinton s emails, you d think they wouldn t be sending messages about Russia throwing the election to Trump.This past March, John Oliver, the host of the HBO comedy show Last Week Tonight started a segment called Stupid Watergate, which he described as a scandal with all the potential ramifications of Watergate, but where everyone involved is stupid and bad at everything. Nailed it!Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.;News;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Just Admitted He Knew Flynn Lied To The FBI Before He Asked Comey To Drop The Investigation;Donald Trump really should have taken his staffers advise and not tweeted about former national security adviser Michael Flynn because the former reality show star just implicated himself. I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI, Trump tweeted. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide! I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017 Oh my god, he just admitted to obstruction of justice, former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller tweeted. If Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to let it go, then there is your case. Oh my god, he just admitted to obstruction of justice. If Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to let it go, then there is your case. https://t.co/c6Wtd0TfzW Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) December 2, 2017However, last February, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump asked Flynn to resign from his position because of eroding trust. There is not a legal issue but rather a trust issue, he said at the time.After Flynn left, Trump defended him, calling the disgraced former national security adviser a wonderful man. I think he s been treated very, very unfairly by the media as I call it, the fake media, in many cases, Trump said in February. I think it s really a sad thing he was treated so badly. When Flynn resigned, he apologized for giving an inaccurate assessment of his conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to Mike Pence, who, at the time, was the vice-president elect.Pence then said that Flynn had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak.The day after Flynn resigned, Trump, according to then-FBI Director James Comey, asked him to let go of an investigation into Flynn.Trump admitted that he knew Flynn lied to the FBI, then he asked Comey to drop the investigation. Shorter version: Trump just tripped over his own little d*ck and presented exhibit A for trial because he obstructed justice.Photo by Steve Pope/Getty Images.;News;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mueller removed FBI agent from Russia probe for anti-Trump texts: reports;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel examining alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election removed a top FBI investigator from his team for exchanging text messages with a colleague that expressed anti-Trump views, two U.S. newspapers reported on Saturday. The New York Times and the Washington Post identified the investigator as FBI agent Peter Strzok, the deputy head of FBI counter-intelligence. He was reassigned last summer to the FBI’s human resources department after the Justice Department’s inspector general began looking into the text messages, the papers said, quoting several unidentified people familiar with the matter. A source familiar with the matter confirmed the reports Strzok was transferred to the human resources department over the politically charged text messages. Strzok played a key role in the FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the papers said. During that probe and the 2016 presidential election, Strzok and an FBI colleague exchanged texts that disparaged then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and favored Clinton, his Democratic rival, the Washington Post said. The newspapers did not disclose details of the text messages. Reuters was unable to reach Strzok for comment. The New York Times said that a lawyer for Strzok declined to comment, while the Washington Post said it repeatedly sought comment from Strzok, but received no response. Mueller’s office confirmed Strzok’s removal, but did not elaborate on the cause. “Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel’s Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation,” spokesman Peter Carr said. In apparent reference to the case, the Justice Department inspector general’s office said in a statement on Saturday that it was “reviewing allegations involving communications between certain individuals.” The matter came up during a review that the Justice Department launched into the FBI’s decision to announce an inquiry into Clinton’s emails shortly before the November presidential election. The statement provided no further details and it did not mention any individuals by name. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for further comment. The FBI was not immediately available for comment. According to the newspapers, federal law enforcement officials became concerned that Trump and his supporters could use the exposure of the text messages to attack the credibility of Mueller’s investigation. Mueller, a former FBI director, is looking into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, which ran an influence operation aimed at swinging the vote to Trump over Clinton, according to three U.S. intelligence agencies. Trump has criticized the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, initially citing it as his reason for firing former FBI director James Comey on May 9. Some lawmakers have called for Mueller to resign. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ABC News suspends top journalist over inaccurate Flynn reporting;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - ABC News said on Saturday it had suspended Brian Ross, its chief investigative correspondent, over an error in his reporting about former national security adviser Michael Flynn which sent U.S. stocks, the dollar and Treasury yields lower on Friday. “We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday ... As a result of our continued reporting over the next several hours ultimately we determined the information was wrong and we corrected the mistake on air and online,” ABC News said in a statement. “Effective immediately, Brian Ross will be suspended for four weeks without pay,” added ABC News, owned by the Walt Disney Co. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia, and he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into the actions of President Donald Trump’s inner circle before he took office. Soon after, ABC News reported that Flynn, citing a confidant, was prepared to testify that Trump directed him to make contact with Russians when he was a presidential candidate. Wall Street’s main indexes all fell by more than 1 percent after the report. ABC News later issued a correction that the source clarified that Trump had assigned Flynn and a “small circle of senior advisers” to find ways to improve relations with Russia and other hotspots during the presidential campaign. “It was shortly after the election, that President-elect Trump directed Flynn to contact Russian officials on topics that included working jointly against ISIS,” ABC News said. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Senate tax bill accomplishes major Obamacare repeal goal;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sweeping tax overhaul that passed the U.S. Senate on Saturday contains the Republicans’ biggest blow yet to former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, repealing the requirement that all Americans obtain health insurance. The individual mandate is meant to ensure a viable health insurance market by forcing younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage to help offset the cost of sicker patients. It helps uphold the most popular provision of the law, which requires insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates. Removing it while keeping the rest of Obama’s Affordable Care Act intact is expected to cause insurance premiums to rise and lead to millions of people losing coverage, policy experts say. “It’s going to take a bunch of healthy people out of the insurance market,” said Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Obamacare “is going to collapse even more now,” he said. Republican lawmakers failed several times this year to scrap the mandate as part of a broader repeal of Obamacare, blocked by opposition from a few of the party’s senators, including Susan Collins of Maine. Collins, still opposed to removing the mandate, said she voted for the tax bill on Saturday after being assured by Republican leaders that they will support legislation to prop up U.S. health insurance markets. The tax bill is not yet final. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate must now reconcile the differences in their respective versions of the legislation. “Repealing the individual mandate simply restores to people the freedom to choose,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has opposed previous Obamacare repeal efforts, wrote in an opinion piece in Alaska’s Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “Instead of taxing people for not being able to afford coverage, we should be working to reduce costs and provide options.” One of the Obamacare stabilization bills, co-authored by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, would restore billions of dollars in subsidies that health insurers use to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low income Americans. A second, co-authored by Collins and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, would create an additional $4.5 billion fund to compensate insurers for covering health care for the sickest patients. Still, health policy experts said both of those measures would be needed without a mandate repeal and would not make up for expected premium increases and the rise in the numbers of uninsured Americans. “Neither of these bills would do anything to offset the increase in uninsured resulting from a mandate repeal,” said Larry Levitt, health economist at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The marketplaces would limp along without a mandate but it’s probably not a stable place.” Without the mandate, health insurance premiums would rise 10 percent in most years over the next decade on the individual market and 13 million people would lose coverage by 2027, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report last month.  Levitt said that insurers would need around $10 billion per year to offset the lost revenue from the individual mandate rather than raise premiums. Republicans, who control the White House, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, failed for months to make good on a top campaign pledge of President Donald Trump. Trump has said Congress will return to repeal-and-replace efforts next year and over the past several months has taken regulatory and executive actions to steadily undermine the Obamacare law.   Insurers and leading medical groups have already urged Congress to preserve the individual mandate and warned of “serious consequences” such as rising premiums and a rise in the number of uninsured if it were repealed. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Representative Levin says he will not run for reelection;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Sander Levin of Michigan said on Saturday he would not run for reelection next year, stepping down after more than three decades in Congress. The 86-year-old Democrat is a member of the House of Representatives’ powerful Ways and Means committee, which deals with tax and economic policies as well as spending on programs such as Social Security and unemployment. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi praised Levin in a statement acknowledging his decision to step down. “Since his days as a student activist, Congressman Levin has been a fearless and dedicated voice for justice and progress,” Pelosi said. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says Flynn's actions during presidential transition were 'lawful';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday the actions of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn after the 2016 election were “lawful”. Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign. “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” Trump said in a tweet. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;How McConnell kept Republicans in line to win Senate tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Republicans tried to repeal and replace Obamacare over the summer, they acted like “a bunch of free range chickens”, said Republican Senator John Kennedy. “Everybody was upset, tired, mad, people drawing lines in the dirt.” Not this time. Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of his party’s Senate leadership brought party members into line this week and finally won passage of a sweeping tax overhaul early on Saturday. Late arm-twisting and deal-sweeteners for wavering lawmakers allowed them to push through legislation that aims to slash corporate taxes and cut personal taxes. Democrats complained it was a bad deal for middle-class and poor Americans and would irresponsibly raise the national debt by $1.4 trillion over the next decade. But they were outnumbered and Republicans’ discipline, in short supply for much of this year, saw the bill through. The debate revealed how the Republican Party is undergoing a transformation under President Donald Trump. Republicans who fight above all for a balanced budget no longer wield the power they once had. “I feel somewhat like a dinosaur,” deficit hawk Bob Corker admitted on Friday afternoon. Hours later, he was the only Republican to vote against the bill. Fear also played a role. The risk of a backlash from wealthy donors and conservative supporters if the party failed to deliver on another campaign promise ahead of mid-term elections next year helped party leaders get the legislation approved in a 51-49 vote. “I think after failing twice on healthcare, folks went back home and talked to the real people of America,” said Kennedy. “And they were told, ‘Look, we sent you up there to fix our problems. Fix them or we’ll find somebody who will.’” McConnell needed 50 of the 52 Republicans in the Senate to back the tax bill, knowing Vice President Mike Pence was on hand to provide the tie-breaking vote if needed. McConnell could only count on 43 votes on Wednesday night. Nine other Republican members were wobbly and he had no support from Senate Democrats. McConnell and his allies went to work, offering a wide range of late concessions to holdouts to get a political victory after months of frustration. The bill still needs to be reconciled with a different version approved by the House of Representatives, but the Senate bill is expected to remain largely intact. Led by Corker and Jeff Flake, a small group of fiscal conservatives were at first upset that the Senate bill was going to increase fiscal deficits and the national debt. Early efforts to get their support went slowly. “It’s been pretty hard to make them happy so far. We’re going to keep working on it, as we always have, and we’ll get to the finish line,” Senator Orrin Hatch said on Thursday night. Flake came around when he was able to win two concessions. First, he got a commitment from Senate leadership and the Trump administration to put a time limit on allowing companies to write off the full value of new capital investments. Second, Pence assured Flake the administration would work with him on fair and permanent protections for illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children. Two other fiscal conservatives, James Lankford and Jerry Moran, also came on board. Although Corker refused to yield, the others’ votes were enough to ensure victory. Senator Ron Johnson demanded and won amendments to further ease the tax burden on “pass-through” businesses. “I was just kind of biding my time ... And then Senator Portman came over and said ‘What can we do’?”, Johnson said of a Thursday night vote. Even moderate Senator Susan Collins, who helped scuttle Obamacare repeal efforts earlier this year, agreed to vote in favor of the tax bill. Representing voters with a high state tax burden in Maine, Collins was against her party’s plan to end the deduction of state and local property taxes. Under an amendment she pushed, taxpayers would be allowed to deduct up to $10,000 a year. Collins also said she was assured by Republican leaders that they would take steps soon to mitigate damage caused by the repeal of a fee linked to the Obamacare “individual mandate”, which requires some Americans to buy health insurance. McConnell also got lucky in that Trump didn’t make his job any harder. Unlike his conduct in the Obamacare debate, Trump largely stayed on message, proclaiming the tax bill would help the middle class and businesses. Although incorrect, he also claimed it would be the biggest tax cut ever. Trump met with Republican senators on Capitol Hill for lunch this week, a gathering described as thoughtful and positive. “Nobody called anybody names or talked about anybody’s native American heritage, or anything,” said Kennedy, referring to Trump’s habit of picking fights with perceived enemies. Democrats were furious, saying Republicans were throwing money at the rich and that the bill was handled too fast. “If the economy grows or shrinks. If it creates jobs or loses them. Who knows? Certainly no one here. No one could know, because it hasn’t even been read, let alone thoughtfully considered,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Shumer. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Disputed CFPB acting director plans to seek preliminary injunction: filing;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The disputed acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a court filing on Friday that she plans to seek a preliminary injunction against rival acting director Mick Mulvaney and the Trump administration by Dec. 5. President Donald Trump named Mulvaney, the White House budget director, as acting director of the CFPB on Nov. 24 following the departure of the director, who had named the agency’s deputy director, Leandra English, to temporarily succeed him. A federal judge this week refused to block Trump’s appointment of Mulvaney to lead the consumer watchdog agency, but English is continuing to pursue the issue and indicated in a court filing she would file a motion of preliminary injunction against Mulvaney and the Trump administration by Dec. 5. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Flynn, Kushner targeted several states in failed U.N. lobbying: diplomats;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn admitted on Friday that he asked Russia to delay a U.N. vote seen as damaging to Israel, but diplomats said it was not the only country he and presidential adviser Jared Kushner lobbied.  In the hours before the vote by the 15-member United Nations Security Council on Dec. 23, Flynn also phoned the U.N. missions of Uruguay and Malaysia, and Kushner spoke with Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the United States, according to diplomats familiar with the conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The lobbying took place before Republican President Donald Trump, who was known for his pro-Israel campaign rhetoric, took office on Jan. 20. It failed, with the Security Council adopting a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building on land Palestinians want for an independent state. The vote was 14 in favor and one abstention by the United States. The efforts made on Israel’s behalf capped several days of unusual diplomacy. In a surprise Dec. 21 move, Egypt had called for a vote the next day on the draft resolution, prompting both Trump and Israel to urge Washington to veto the text. A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israeli officials contacted Trump’s transition team at a “high level” to ask for help after failing to persuade Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration to veto the draft U.N. resolution. According to court documents made public on Friday, a member of Trump’s presidential transition team, later identified by sources as Trump’s son-in-law Kushner, told Flynn on Dec. 22 to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to convince them to delay the vote or veto the resolution. Flynn spoke with then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak that day, and again the following day, according to the court documents. Also on Dec. 22, Trump discussed the resolution with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Egypt withdrew the text from a council vote the same day. The 1799 Logan Act bars unauthorized private U.S. citizens, which Trump, Flynn, and Kushner all were at the time, from negotiating with foreign governments. However, only two Americans have ever been indicted for allegedly violating it – in 1802 and 1852 – and neither was convicted. Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday about Israel or other issues. A SECOND GO-ROUND After Egypt withdrew the resolution, its co-sponsors, New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela, and Senegal, put it forward again for a Dec. 23 vote. In Washington, Kushner was in contact with Britain’s Darroch, and Flynn spoke with Kislyak - lobbying to delay the vote or veto the resolution. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the council’s five permanent members - China, Britain, France, Russia, and the United States - to be adopted. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who died in February, signaled to colleagues behind closed doors on Dec. 23 that he was unhappy with the haste with which the draft resolution was being put to a vote, but he did not ask for the vote to be delayed, diplomats said. Flynn also tried to speak to Malaysian U.N. Ambassador Ramlan Bin Ibrahim, but Ibrahim did not take the call. He also called the Uruguayan U.N. mission, eventually getting through to Deputy Ambassador Luis Bermudez – who was the charge d’affaires - minutes before the vote. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia's former deputy PM wins by-election in coalition boost;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce cleared the way for his return to parliament on Saturday, winning a by-election just over a month after he was kicked out over a dual citizenship crisis that cost the government its majority. Joyce was not only returned in his New England seat in New South Wales but was forecast to have lifted his primary vote by at least 10 points, giving Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull a welcome boost after a tough few weeks. This has been a stunning victory, Turnbull told supporters as he joined Joyce at a pub in the town of Tamworth. Exit polls were predicting the largest swing to the government in the history of by-elections in Australia , Turnbull said, adding it was a vindication of his coalition. We re getting the band back together. Joyce was one of the Citizenship Seven whose eligibility to sit in parliament was thrown into doubt when it was found they were dual citizens, a status that is barred for politicians under Australia s constitution to prevent split allegiances. The High Court ruled on Oct. 27 that Joyce, along with four of the seven other lawmakers, was ineligible to remain in parliament, forcing a by-election. Joyce was found to be a dual citizen of New Zealand, a status he has since rescinded. The deputy leader position, traditionally held by a member of the junior coalition partner, the National Party, had remained vacant since the High Court ruling. The result comes at a difficult time for Turnbull, who earlier this week reversed his long-held opposition to a full-blown inquiry into the country s scandal-hit financial sector amid mounting political pressure. Turnbull has also seen a splinter within his center right Liberal-National coalition over same-sex marriage, with the conservative faction, led by some of the Nationals, angered by his promise to push through legislation after an historic public vote in favor of the unions. The last day of campaigning for the by-election was marred by a call from New South Wales Nationals state leader and deputy premier John Barilaro for Turnbull to step down as a Christmas gift to the nation. The comments were quickly rebuffed by Liberal Party lawmakers and Joyce, who said they were very unhelpful and insulting. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police arrest woman in Tanzania over video of same-sex kiss;DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Police in Tanzania have arrested a woman after a video clip showing her kissing and embracing another woman at a party was widely shared online, a senior official said. Homosexuality is a criminal offense in the East African nation, where a conviction for having carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature can carry a life sentence. The woman, who police said resides in the northwestern Tanzanian town of Geita, was arrested after a video circulated on social media showing a woman kissing and hugging another woman and presenting her with a ring. I can confirm that a Tanzanian woman is under police custody over that video clip. We will issue more details later after we conclude our investigation, Geita police chief Mponjoli Mwabulambo told Reuters by telephone on Saturday. Tanzanian president John Magufuli s government has stepped up a crackdown against homosexuality since coming into power in 2015 and threatened in June to arrest and expel activists, as well as deregister all non-governmental organizations that campaign for gay rights. In October, authorities in the main city Dar es Salaam raided a meeting at a hotel, saying the gathering was promoting same-sex relationships, and arrested at least 12 men. The arrest of the woman in Geita was thought to be the first arrest of a lesbian suspect in the recent crackdown and police sources said authorities were also searching for the woman who was given the ring in the video clip. Reuters could not confirm where or when the video the filmed. The clip drew condemnation on social media platforms in the socially conservative nation, with some Tanzanians condemning the celebration as immoral. Both of them should be arrested. Why did the woman accept an engagement ring from another woman? Cosmas Alele, a resident of the northwestern town of Kagera said on Twitter, writing in Kiswahili. Since homosexuality is a criminal offense in Tanzania, rights groups are reluctant to speak publicly in defense of gay rights. The country s health ministry banned non governmental organizations last year from distributing free lubricants to gays as part HIV/AIDS control measures. Some health experts warn that shutting down HIV/AIDS outreach programs targeting gay people could put the wider population at higher risk of infections. Around 1.4 million Tanzanians among a population of more than 50 million are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to government estimates. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump notes Flynn lied to FBI, says his actions during transition were lawful;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that actions by former national security adviser Michael Flynn during the presidential transition were lawful, and that he had had to fire him because Flynn had lied to the FBI and the vice president. The president’s comment suggested he may have known Flynn lied to the FBI before he urged the FBI director not to investigate his former adviser, legal experts said. But they noted that it was unclear from the tweeted comment exactly what the president knew when. Flynn is the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian attempts to influence last year’s U.S. presidential election and possible collusion by Trump aides. “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies,” Trump said on Twitter while he was in New York for a fundraising trip. “It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” Flynn, who on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia, is a former Defense Intelligence Agency director who was Trump’s national security adviser only for 24 days. He was forced to resign after he was found to have misled Vice President Mike Pence about his discussions with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak. “What has been shown is no collusion, no collusion,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for the New York trip. “There’s been absolutely no collusion, so we’re very happy.” Establishing when Trump was told Flynn lied to the FBI agents could be key to determining if the president acted improperly. According to a person familiar with the matter, during a conversation between White House counsel Don McGahn and then-acting attorney general Sally Yates in January, Yates told McGahn that Flynn had told FBI agents the same thing he had told Pence. This was the same conversation reported earlier this year in which Yates told McGahn that Flynn had misled the vice president about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and that he might be compromised, the person said. However, Yates did not give McGahn the impression that the FBI was actively pursuing Flynn for lying, the source said. McGahn did not believe the FBI was investigating Flynn for lying because the bureau had not revoked his security clearance, the person said. McGahn shared the information from Yates with the president, the person said. A lawyer for McGahn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Yates did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Legal experts said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI and then pressured then-FBI director James Comey not to investigate him, that would be problematic. If that were the case Trump’s tweet “absolutely bolsters an obstruction of justice charge,” said Jimmy Gurule, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Notre Dame University. “It is evidence of the crucial question of whether Trump acted with a corrupt intent.” In May, the president fired Comey, who later accused Trump of trying to hinder his investigation into the Russia allegations. Comey also said he believed Trump had asked him to drop the FBI’s probe into Flynn. Andrew Wright, a professor at Savannah Law School, said the tweet is open to interpretation and that Trump’s lawyer would downplay its significance. White House attorney Ty Cobb referred questions about the president’s tweet to Trump’s personal attorney, John Dowd, who described it as a “paraphrase” of a statement Cobb had made on Friday reacting to Flynn’s guilty plea. According to a person familiar with the matter, Dowd composed the tweet. The tweet is “bizarre and helpful to Mueller and hurtful to the president,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago now at the law firm Thompson Coburn. “It’s one more piece of evidence that helps show the president’s intent when he fired Comey.” As part of his plea on Friday, Flynn agreed to cooperate with the investigation. The retired U.S. Army lieutenant general admitted in a Washington court that he lied to FBI investigators about his discussions last December with Kislyak. In what appeared to be moves undermining the policies of outgoing President Barack Obama, the pair discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia, and Flynn asked Kislyak to help delay a United Nations vote seen as damaging to Israel, according to prosecutors. Flynn was also told by a “very senior member” of Trump’s transition team to contact Russia and other foreign governments to try to influence them ahead of the U.N. vote, the prosecutors said. Sources told Reuters the “very senior” transition official was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor. Kushner’s lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Separately, speaking at a defense conference in California on Saturday, Trump’s current national security advisor H.R. McMaster said he saw no evidence that the indictment of Flynn, his immediate predecessor, was hurting U.S. national security. “There’s tremendous confidence, I think there’s more confidence in the United States frankly. I think there’s a sense that we’re re-engaging in areas where we had largely disengaged,” he said. ;politicsNews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says U.S. courts cannot put Turkey on trial;ANKARA (Reuters) - Courts in the United States cannot put Turkey on trial, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, in reference to the case of a Turkish bank executive who has been charged with evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. Already strained ties between NATO allies Ankara and Washington have deteriorated in recent weeks as Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, detailed in court a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Over three days of testimony, Zarrab has implicated top Turkish politicians, including Erdogan. Zarrab said on Thursday that Erdogan personally authorized two Turkish banks to join the scheme when he was prime minister. Ankara has cast the testimony as an attempt to undermine Turkey and its economy, and has previously said it was a clear plot by the network of U.S.-based Fethullah Gulen, who it alleges engineered last year s coup attempt. Reuters was not immediately able to reach representatives for the ministers implicated by Zarrab in the trial. Turkey has repeatedly requested Gulen s extradition, but U.S. officials have said the courts require sufficient evidence before they can extradite the elderly cleric, who has denied any involvement in the coup. Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for almost 15 years, told members of his ruling AK Party in the northeastern province of Kars on Saturday that U.S. courts can never try my country . Although he has not yet responded to the courtroom claims, he has dismissed the case as a politically motivated attempt to bring down the Turkish government and on Friday the state-run Anadolu news agency said Turkish prosecutors are set to seize the assets of Zarrab and his acquaintances. Turkey has stepped up its pressure on the U.S. and on Saturday Anadolu quoted Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying that Gulen s followers had infiltrated the U.S. judiciary, Congress, and other state institutions. The United States says its judiciary is independent of any political or other interference. Some 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs over alleged links to Gulen since the attempted coup, while close to 50,000 people from the military, public and private sector have been jailed. And in a further blow to Turkish-U.S. ties, Turkish authorities on Friday issued an arrest warrant for former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Graham Fuller over suspected links to the abortive putsch. Rights groups and Turkey s Western allies have voiced concerns that Erdogan is using the crackdown to muzzle dissent, but the government says the purges are necessary due to the gravity of the threat it faces. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers kill at least 13 in Nigeria: officials;BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers have killed at least 13 other people in an attack on a market in the northeast Nigerian town of Biu in Borno state, officials said on Saturday. The blasts struck while aid workers were distributing food to people affected by the eight-year conflict with Boko Haram, said Aliyu Idrisa, a community leader. In addition to the 13 victims, 53 people were injured and two bombers were killed, said Victor Isuku, police spokesman for Borno state. Saturday s attack bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which uses suicide bombers, often women and girls, to attack crowded public spaces. Last week, a suicide bombing at a mosque in the northeastern town of Mubi killed at least 50 people, one of the deadliest attacks in recent years. The government has said its long-term plan for the northeast is to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns and effectively cede the countryside to Boko Haram. That plan and a string of deadly attacks have raised questions about assertions by the Nigerian government and military that Boko Haram s Islamist insurgency has been all but wiped out. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romanian protesters halt building of Xmas fair at protest site;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian protesters clashed with riot police on Saturday when they stopped construction workers from building a Christmas fair at the site of anti-corruption demonstrations in Bucharest. Victory Square saw big street protests at the beginning of the year following attempts by the ruling Social Democrats to decriminalize some corruption offences and has been a gathering place for largely peaceful protests since. Further demonstrations have been announced on social media as parliament gears up to approve a judicial overhaul that has been criticized by thousands of magistrates, centrist President Klaus Iohannis, the European Commission and the U.S. State Department. Earlier this week Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea, a senior Social Democrat member, said she would stage a Christmas fair for most of December in the square - a decision which Social Democrat Prime Minister Mihai Tudose said was not the most inspired. On Saturday, protesters began dismantling the scaffolding and fences for the fair, waving flags and chanting We won t give Victory Square up, and Firea, don t forget, this square is not yours. Three protesters were taken to a police station, riot police spokesman Georgian Enache told state news agency Agerpres. He added one of them was accused of hitting another citizen. We are asking Bucharest city hall to abandon immediately ... the move to fence in Victory square, protest activists said in a statement on Facebook page Corruption Kills. We urge citizens to protest firmly but non-violently. We must stop this treacherous and rudimentary attempt by mayor Gabriela Firea to discourage protests at a time when they will be crucial for the future of this country. This means the beginning of anarchy, Firea said in a statement later. She said she would find another place to locate the fair. If the capital s city hall was prevented from organizing an event in a public space which belongs to everyone today, similar events could happen tomorrow at the presidential office, parliament and other public institutions. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron calls on Iraq to dismantle all militias;PARIS/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday called on Iraq to dismantle all militias, including the government-sanctioned, Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a rare public call to do so by a major Western leader. Macron s call, which followed a meeting with Iraqi Kurdish leaders in Paris, underscores the tough balancing act Baghdad has to perform between its allies in the war on Islamic State, Iran and Western powers, which do not see eye to eye. It is essential that there is a gradual demilitarisation, in particular of the Popular Mobilisation that established itself in the last few years in Iraq, and that all militias be gradually dismantled, he told a Paris news conference held with Iraqi Kurdish leaders. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) authorities accuse the majority Arab Shi ite PMF of widespread abuses against Kurds in Iraq s ethnically mixed regions. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi s government denies that the PMF are engaged in a systematic pattern of abuses and has pledged to punish anyone proven guilty of violations. Disarming the PMF is seen as Abadi s most difficult test as his forces edge closer to declaring victory over Islamic State. In Baghdad, Abadi s office released a statement later saying he had spoken to Macron by phone and that the French president had affirmed his country s commitment to a unified Iraq. It made no mention of Macron s call to dismantle the militias. Iraqi Vice President Nuri al-Maliki, a former prime minister who was pressured to leave office by both the U.S. and Iran for failing to stop Islamic State, was more forceful. Macron, he said, was carrying out unacceptable interference in Iraq s internal affairs. These positions from France are absolutely rejected and harm Iraq s sovereignty and its institutions, Maliki said in a statement. Macron s meeting with KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and his deputy Qubad Talabani was the first high-profile international meeting for the Kurdish leadership after a Sept. 25 independence referendum. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and British Prime Minister Theresa May have both made trips to Iraq after the referendum but only met officials in Baghdad and made no visits to the KRG capital Erbil. Western powers had encouraged the Kurds not to hold the referendum and instead engage in dialogue with Baghdad. Macron again called for dialogue between the central government in Baghdad and the semi-autonomous KRG within the framework of the Iraqi constitution, saying he was convinced a constructive dialogue could lead to lifting Baghdad s restrictions on the Kurdish region. Kurds voted to break away from Iraq in the referendum, defying the government in Baghdad and alarming neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. The Iraqi government responded by seizing the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. Long-serving Kurdish president Masoud Barzani stepped down over the affair and the regional government led by his nephew Nechirvan has tried to negotiate an end to the confrontation. The Kurdish prime minister said on Saturday he saw France playing a role to end the dispute with Baghdad and that his government respected a verdict by the Iraqi Supreme Federal Court ruling the referendum unconstitutional and its results void. With regards to the referendum, we are in a new era, and this issue is over and we have made our position in the Kurdistan Regional Government clear, Erbil-based broadcaster Rudaw quoted Barzani as saying. Macron called for the long-delayed implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution to settle the status of territories disputed between Baghdad and the Kurds. Article 140 provided for a referendum to be held by the end of 2007 in the oil region of Kirkuk and other territories claimed by both the KRG and the Iraqi government to determine whether their populations wanted to be part of the Kurdish region or not. No such referendum took place, among the reasons cited by the KRG to unilaterally hold its referendum on independence. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil environmentalist Marina Silva to run for president in 2018;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Former Brazilian senator and environmental minister Marina Silva said on Saturday that she would seek her party s nomination to run for president next year. Silva announced her plans at a meeting of her Sustainability Network Party, or REDE, which would officially nominate her at its national convention in April. The 59-year-old environmentalist, born into a rubber-tapping community in the Amazon rainforest, was minister under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. She has run in the previous two presidential elections but never made it to a second-round vote. Silva said she would seek her party s nomination because Brazilians want a country free of corruption and that she had the ethical bearings to deliver on that. Supporters have praised her as Brazil s most principled politician, which could play a large role in the next election. Since early 2014, Brazilian prosecutors and police have carried out an unprecedented anti-corruption drive that has revealed political graft touching every major party, but not Silva s. Silva has remained committed to fiscal responsibility, inflation targeting and a floating exchange rate, the so-called tripod of economic policies that gave Brazil stability after a period of rampant inflation and erratic growth in the 1990s. In the latest election survey conducted by the respected Datafolha polling institute and published Saturday on the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper s website, Silva ranked third, with 10 percent of respondents saying they would vote for her. But that poll included Lula as a possible candidate. Lula was convicted in a corruption trial in July. If a higher court upholds that conviction before the October election, he could not run. Without Lula, the Datafolha poll had Silva trailing right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker who won 21 percent approval, compared with her 16 percent. Datafolha interviewed 2,765 voters across Brazil on Nov. 29-30. The poll had a two-percentage-point margin of error. In the 2010 election, Silva, then with the Green Party, took a surprising 20 percent of the first-round vote, but it was not enough to push her into a runoff with eventual winner Dilma Rousseff. In 2014, she ran for vice president on the Brazilian Socialist Party ticket headed by Eduardo Campos, who died when his campaign plane crashed just two months before the election. Silva took his spot and won 21 percent in the first round, again missing out on a runoff. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope decries 'irrational' attitude towards nuclear weapons;ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Saturday urged world leaders to turn back from the brink of possible human annihilation, suggesting that some of them had an irrational attitude towards nuclear weapons. The pope made his comments to reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome from a trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, which was dominated by the crisis of Rohingya refugees affecting both countries. In a speech last month, the pope suggested that he was ready to officially harden the decades-old Church teaching that possessing nuclear weapons as a deterrence was morally acceptable as long as the ultimate goal was their elimination. In that speech on Nov. 10, Francis said even the mere possession of nuclear weapons should now be condemned because there appeared to be little or no intention by world leaders to reduce their numbers. Aboard the plane, he was asked what had prompted him to consider changing the official Church position and specifically, what he felt about the war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. What has changed is the irrationality (of the attitude toward nuclear weapons), Francis said. Today we are at the limit, he said. It can be debated but it is my opinion, my conviction, that we have reached the limit of the (moral) licitness of having and using nuclear weapons, he said. Why? Because today, with such a sophisticated nuclear arsenal, we risk the destruction of humanity or at least a great part of humanity, he said. The pope has in the past suggested that a third nation should try to negotiate a deal between the United States and North Korea and had urged both sides to cool down the rhetoric and stop trading insults. We are at the limit, and because we are at the limit, I ask myself this question ... Today, is it licit to keep nuclear arsenals as they are, or today, in order to save creation, to save humanity, is it not necessary to turn back? South Korea said on Friday that North Korea s latest missile test puts Washington within range, but Pyongyang still needs to prove it has mastered critical missile technology, such as re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation. The test prompted a warning from the United States that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out, a statement that drew sharp criticism from Russia. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital would fuel violence: Arab League;CAIRO (Reuters) - Any move by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital would fuel extremism and violence, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Saturday. He spoke a day after a senior U.S. administration official said U.S. President Donald Trump was likely to make the announcement next week. The Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel s claim on all of the city, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. Word of Trump s planned announcement, which would deviate from previous U.S. presidents who have insisted the Jerusalem s status must be decided in negotiations, has already drawn criticism from the Palestinian Authority. Today we say very clearly that taking such action is not justified ... It will not serve peace or stability, but will fuel extremism and resort to violence, Aboul Gheit said in a statement published on the Arab league s website. It only benefits one side;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UAE says Egyptian ex-premier Shafik left for Egypt, family still in UAE;DUBAI (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik has left the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for Egypt but his family has remained behind, UAE news agency WAM reported on Saturday. General Ahmed Shafik s family is still in the country in the gracious care of the state of the United Arab Emirates, the agency said, quoting an official UAE source. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's Saleh says ready for 'new page' with Saudi-led coalition;ADEN (Reuters) - Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he was ready for a new page in relations with the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen if it stopped attacks on his country. The call came as his supporters battled Houthi fighters for a fourth day in the capital Sanaa while both sides traded blame for a widening rift between allies that could affect the course of the civil war. Together they have fought the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen in 2015 aiming to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthis forced him into exile. The clashes between Saleh s supporters and the Houthis underscore the complex situation in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, where a proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed Hadi has caused one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent times. I call upon the brothers in neighboring states and the alliance to stop their aggression, lift the siege, open the airports and allow food aid and the saving of the wounded and we will turn a new page by virtue of our neighborliness, Saleh said in a televised speech. We will deal with them in a positive way and what happened to Yemen is enough, he added. Saleh, who was forced to step down by a 2011 mass uprising against his 33 years in office, said Yemen s parliament, which is dominated by his GPC party, was the only legitimate power in the country and was ready for talks with the coalition. The Saudi-led coalition welcomed Saleh s change of stance. In a statement carried by the Saudi-owned Al-Hadath channel, the coalition said it was confident of the will of the leaders and sons of Saleh s General People s Congress (GPC) party to return to Arab fold. The coalition accuses non-Arab Iran of trying to expand its influence into Arab countries, including Yemen, which shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, by aligning themselves with the Houthis and Saleh. The Houthis accused Saleh of betrayal, and vowed to keep up the fight against the Saudi-led coalition. It is not strange or surprising that Saleh turns back on a partnership he never believed in, the group s political bureau said in a statement. The priority has been and still is to confront the forces of aggression. Residents of Sanaa described heavy fighting on the streets of Hadda, a southern residential district of the Yemeni capital where many of Saleh s relatives live, early on Saturday, with sounds of explosions and gunfire heard while the streets were deserted. The fighting eased in the afternoon as Saleh supporters gained the upper hand, but intermittent gunfire was being heard. There was no immediate word on casualties. Both sides have reported that at least 16 people were killed in the fighting, which began on Wednesday when armed Houthi fighters entered the main mosque complex, firing RPGs and grenades. Saleh s GPC party accused the Houthis of failing to honor a truce and said in a statement on its website that the Houthis bear responsibility for dragging the country into a civil war. It also called on supporters, including tribal fighters, to defend themselves, their country, their revolution and their republic... The GPC appealed to the army and security forces to remain neutral in the conflict. But the head of the Houthis Ansarullah group warned that the biggest winner from what he described as Saleh s sedition was the Saudi-led coalition. I appeal to the leader Saleh to show more wisdom and maturity... and not to heed incitement calls, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi said in a speech on the group s Al-Masirah TV, adding that his group was ready to sit down for arbitration and abide by any ruling. Yemen s civil war has killed more than 10,000 people since 2015, displaced more than two million people, caused a cholera outbreak infecting nearly one million people and put the country on the brink of famine. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's business community sours on Kuczynski: survey;PARACAS, Peru (Reuters) - Support from business leaders for Peru s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has plummeted, a survey showed, as he spars with an opposition-controlled Congress and struggles to revive economic growth. The survey by Ipsos Peru, taken at a business forum in Paracas to the south of Lima last week and released late on Friday, showed participants approval for Kuczynski fell to 37 percent from 89 percent a year earlier at a similar event. Kuczynski took office in July 2016 promising to modernize Peru and strengthen its economy with solid backing from Lima s business elite after a tight runoff election against right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori. But the 79-year-old former investment banker s first year in power was hampered by Congress, which is dominated by Fujimori s Popular Force Party and voted to oust his Cabinet in September. Meanwhile economic growth in what was once one of Latin America s fastest growing economies slowed after heavy flooding and a corruption scandal involving Brazilian builder Odebrecht stalled investment in public works projects. The economy and politics cannot continue on separate lines, their progress is interdependent and deficiencies in politics and institutions can block the path of our development, the president of the business forum, Drago Kisic, told reporters. Peru s Central Bank President Julio Velarde also warned during the event that the clashes between the government and Congress could hinder growth in the future, saying the finance ministry had lost influence over the legislature. It is absolutely necessary in the long term that there be a better consensus among political forces in terms of agreeing on the essential elements to underpin growth, he said. Finance Minister Claudia Cooper said on Friday Peru s economy could grow more than 4 percent in 2018, up from 2.8 percent expected in 2017, if private investment in the metals exporting nation recovered. The Ipsos survey showed that among hundreds attending Peru s best known business forum, disapproval with Kuczynski had risen to 63 percent from 11 percent a year earlier. Closing the conference on Friday, Kuczynski defended his government and called on attendees and Congress to unite in a fight against populism. I want to ask you to speak out more clearly about the challenges that we are facing politically, this is a determined government, not a confrontational one, he said. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Middle East leaders paint 'dark picture' at Rome conference;ROME (Reuters) - When Italy organized a conference focused on the Middle East, the Gulf and North Africa, it promised to look beyond the turmoil roiling the region and instead promote a positive agenda . But many of the 45 heads of state, ministers and business leaders who attended the event over the past three days saw little future cheer. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, captured the gloom, bemoaning a lack of wisdom in the region, with no hope on hand for ordinary people hoping for an end to years of conflict, upheaval and sectarianism. Maybe I have presented a dark picture, but it is not as dark as I have explained, it is darker, said Thani, whose country is suffering an economic blockade by its Arab neighbors, which accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism. Qatar denies the accusations and the crisis has pushed the tiny, gas-rich state closer to Shi ite Muslim Iran, the regional rival to Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia. The foreign ministers of both Iran and Saudi Arabia addressed the conference, taking turns to trade barbs. Since 1979, the Iranians have literally got away with murder in our region, and this has to stop, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Friday, accusing Tehran of interfering in the affairs of numerous Arab states, including Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. A day earlier, on the same stage, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Saudi Arabia of blocking ceasefire efforts in Syria, suffocating Qatar, destabilizing Lebanon and supporting Islamic State. He also dismissed suggestions that Tehran was meddling in the affairs of its troubled neighbors or that it should stop supporting militia groups, like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Casting around for reasons to be positive, most speakers pointed to the defeat of Islamic State, which used to rule over millions of people in Iraq and Syria, but now controls just small pockets of land after months of fierce military assaults. However, officials warned the group would not die easily. It has been defeated as a military force on the ground, but it is likely to go back to cities to create destruction and terror, said Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, predicting the militant group could still be around in 10 years. Iraq s foreign minister bemoaned the destruction it had left in its wake, and called on the world to unite to help rebuild his country in the same way they had come together to fight IS. The world owes this to us, said Ibrahim al-Jaafari. A lot of destruction demands a lot of reconstruction. Mosul is not at all what it was like before. It used to be beautiful. It had a university. Now it is just ruins. Egypt s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry warned that IS fighters fleeing Syria and Iraq had come to his country, where an attack on a mosque in Sinai last month had killed more than 300 people. They were also heading to lawless Libya, he said. Amidst all the talk of war and chaos, there was little mention of diplomatic efforts to restore peace to the region. At a time when you have so many sources of tension, so many fuses, so many humanitarian catastrophes, you also have so little diplomacy, said Robert Malley, vice president for policy at the non-governmental International Crisis Group. Underscoring this point, no one from the White House administration took part in the conference a signal some diplomats put down to a general disengagement from the Middle East by President Donald Trump. Last year, the then secretary of state, John Kerry, participated. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian ex-PM Shafik arrives in Cairo, say airport sources;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik, whose family say was deported from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), arrived in Cairo on Saturday, airport sources said. In a surprise announcement from the UAE where he has been based, Shafik, a former air force commander, said on Wednesday he would run for president in an election set for around April 2018. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian former deputy prime minister returns to parliament;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia s former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce will return to parliament after he won an essential by-election for his seat, just over a month after he was kicked out over a dual citizenship crisis that cost the conservative coalition government its majority. Joyce, who was widely expected to win, said he was utterly humbled by his sizeable victory in the rural New South Wales seat of New England, in which he looks likely to increase his primary vote by an additional 10 points. ABC election analyst Antony Green reported that Joyce is on track to achieve a primary vote of about 64 percent, a significant increase on his 52.3 percent primary at the last federal election in 2016. The win gives the government and its embattled prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, some much-needed breathing space, as it restores its slim one-seat majority. The government is already claiming the victory as a vote of confidence of its performance, despite a series of polls showing its growing unpopularity. This has been a stunning victory, Turnbull told supporters as he joined Joyce at a pub in the town of Tamworth to celebrate the win. Exit polls were predicting the largest swing to the government in the history of by-elections in Australia , Turnbull said, adding it was a sign of confidence in his government. Joyce added that he was completely and utterly humbled , after winning from a record field of 17 candidates. I say to the people of New England, that I never take anything for granted, and for every person who voted for us and voted for us for the first time, he said, the ABC reported. Joyce was one of the Citizenship Seven whose eligibility to sit in parliament was thrown into doubt when it was found they were dual citizens, a status that is barred for federal politicians under Australia s constitution to prevent split allegiances. The High Court ruled on Oct. 27 that Joyce, along with four of the seven other lawmakers, was ineligible to remain in parliament, forcing a by-election. Joyce was found to be a dual citizen of New Zealand, a status he has since rescinded. A by-election occurs outside of the usual three-year election cycle, usually when a representative decides to leave parliament early or dies. The deputy leader position, traditionally held by a member of the junior coalition partner, the National Party, has remained vacant since the High Court ruling. The result comes at a difficult time for Turnbull, who earlier this week was forced into an embarrassing reversal of his long-standing position against a Royal Commission into the country s scandal-hit banking and financial sector amid mounting political pressure. The last day of campaigning for the by-election was marred by a call from New South Wales Nationals state leader and deputy premier John Barilaro for Turnbull to step down as a Christmas gift to the nation. The comments were quickly rebuffed by Liberal Party lawmakers and Joyce, who said they were very unhelpful and insulting. It was the latest of a long line of internal turmoil to hit the coalition throughout the year, which has contributed to its poor performance in polls throughout the year. ;worldnews;02/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Embattled Australian PM says he will lead government to next election;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia s embattled conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has shaken off speculation about the security of his leadership, declaring on Sunday he will lead his coalition government into the next election in 2019. Turnbull, who has faced a horror run in recent weeks, losing his one-seat majority and being called to stepdown before Christmas, said that he runs the government and that his party s policies would soon be converted into public support. I have every confidence that I will lead the coalition to the next election in 2019 and we will win it, Turnbull told Sky News television. I am very confident we will be able to see a disciplined approach to teamwork within the coalition. Three Australian prime ministers have been ousted by their own parties since 2010. Turnbull s confidence has been bolstered by the stunning by-election victory of his former deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, who easily cruised to victory on Saturday night with a huge 65 percent primary vote. Barnaby was kicked out of parliament just over one month ago because he held dual citizenship with New Zealand, a status he has since rescinded. Under Australia s constitution dual citizens are banned from the national parliament. Barnaby s win restores Turnbull s slim one-seat majority in parliament and Turnbull, who is struggling with record low opinion polls, has claimed the victory as a vote of confidence in his performance. Turnbull has been under sustained attack for much of the year over issues including same sex marriage and the scandal-plagued banking sector, and has failed to end widespread disquiet within his coalition about his future as leader. On Friday, the conservative deputy premier of New South Wales state John Barilaro called for Turnbull to step down as a Christmas gift to the nation. The comment came just days after Turnbull was forced into an embarrassing policy reversal and called a Royal Commission into the country s banking and financial sector amid mounting political pressure. Turnbull has failed to stem a flow of disgruntled voters away from his conservative coalition to far-right parties and the fragility of his government has been exacerbated by a dual citizenship crisis which is forcing a number of lawmakers, like Barnaby, to recontest seats. One of those by-elections for the blue-ribbon conservative electorate of Bennelong in Sydney on Dec. 16 could see Turnbull again lose his majority in parliament if the opposition Labor achieves a surprise win. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Enter the 'petro': Venezuela to launch oil-backed cryptocurrency;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked to the world of digital currency to circumvent U.S.-led financial sanctions, announcing on Sunday the launch of the petro backed by oil reserves to shore up a collapsed economy. The leftist leader offered few specifics about the currency launch or how the struggling OPEC member would pull off such a feat, but he declared to cheers that the 21st century has arrived! Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency, backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. The petro, he said, would help Venezuela advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, to make financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade. Opposition leaders derided the announcement, which they said needed congressional approval, and some cast doubt on whether the digital currency would ever see the light of day in the midst of turmoil. The real currency, the bolivar, is in freefall, and the country is sorely lacking in basic needs like food and medicine. Still, the announcement highlights how sanctions enacted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump s administration are hurting Venezuela s ability to move money through international banks. Washington has levied sanctions against Venezuelan officials, PDVSA executives and the country s debt issuance. Sources say compliance departments are scrutinizing transactions linked to Venezuela, which has slowed some bond payments and complicated certain oil exports. Maduro s pivot away from the U.S. dollar comes after the recent spectacular rise of bitcoin, which has been fueled by signs that the digital currency is slowly gaining traction in the mainstream investment world. The announcement bewildered some followers of cryptocurrencies, which typically are not backed by any government or central banks. Ironically, Venezuela s currency controls in recent years have spurred a bitcoin fad among tech-savvy Venezuelans looking to bypass controls to obtain dollars or make internet purchases. Maduro s government has a poor track record in monetary policy. Currency controls and excessive money printing have led to a 57 percent depreciation of the bolivar against the dollar in the last month alone on the widely used black market. That has dragged down the monthly minimum wage to a mere $4.30. For the millions of Venezuelans plunged into poverty and struggling to eat three meals a day, Maduro s announcement is unlikely to bring any immediate relief. Economists and opposition leaders say Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, has recklessly refused to overhaul Venezuela s controls and stem the economic meltdown. He could now be seeking to pay bondholders and foreign creditors in the currency amid a plan to restructure the country s major debt burden, opposition leaders said, but the plan is likely to flop. It s Maduro being a clown. This has no credibility, opposition lawmaker and economist Angel Alvarado told Reuters. I see no future in this, added fellow opposition legislator Jose Guerra. Maduro says he is trying to combat a Washington-backed conspiracy to sabotage his government and end socialism in Latin America. On Sunday he said Venezuela was facing a financial world war. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump still weighing whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital: Kushner;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has not yet made a decision on whether to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said on Sunday, a move that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. He s still looking at a lot of different facts, and then when he makes his decision, he ll be the one to want to tell you, not me, Kushner said at an annual conference on U.S. policy in the Middle East organized by the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. A senior administration official said last week that Trump could make the announcement on Wednesday. Kushner is leading Trump s efforts to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, efforts that so far have shown little progress. Past U.S. presidents have insisted that the status of Jerusalem home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions must be decided in negotiations. The Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel s claim on all of the city. Any move by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital would fuel extremism and violence, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Saturday. A senior Jordanian source said on Sunday that Amman, the current president of the Arab summit, has begun consultations on convening an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation before Trump s expected declaration this week. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May heads for Brussels as last-minute Brexit talks go on;BRUSSELS/DUBLIN (Reuters) - British negotiators were locked in last-minute talks with their European Union and Irish counterparts on Monday, trying to put together a Brexit deal that Prime Minister Theresa May might agree over lunch in Brussels. London has broadly agreed to many of the EU s divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion euros. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland remain fraught, diplomats said. Brussels officials and diplomats sounded increasingly confident of a deal over the weekend, but they caution that much will depend on the outcome of May s talks over lunch. I have a good feeling but I am not prejudging the outcome, one senior Brussels diplomat said. May hopes that her talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, due to start at 1:15 p.m. (1215 GMT), can persuade her 27 fellow EU leaders that sufficient progress has been made on divorce terms for them to agree next week to open talks on their future trade relationship. They will hold a summit on Friday, Dec. 15 [nL8N1O30C4], chaired by European Council President Donald Tusk, with whom May has scheduled a meeting at 4 p.m., after her lunch with Juncker. Dublin, backed by the rest of the EU, is seeking strong assurances that London will commit to keeping business regulations in Northern Ireland the same as in the EU, to avoid a hard border that could disrupt peace on the island. Hopefully, we ll find a way forward today, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told state broadcaster RTE ahead of a cabinet meeting to discuss the issue before May s talks. Coveney said the talks are in a sensitive place , with the British and Irish governments discussing possible texts of an agreement. Britain is seeking to keep its options open, having rejected a commitment to leave Northern Ireland in a customs union with the EU or to keep the whole United Kingdom in one. May depends in parliament on a pro-British party in Northern Ireland that rejects any deal which would divide the province from the British mainland. But Ireland and the EU say maintaining a customs union is the best way to avoid regulatory divergence . Juncker and Barnier will meet the European Parliament s Brexit team at 11 a.m. to brief them on progress. The legislature, which must approve any withdrawal treaty if a disruptive Brexit is to be avoided in March 2019, has demanded that EU courts have the final say in guaranteeing rights for 3 million EU citizens in Britain. Britain insists that it will no longer accept the supervision of the European Court of Justice. Nadine Dorries, a member of Britain s ruling Conservative Party who supports Brexit, said May should tell EU officials time is running out to move talks on to the next phase. The EU has had enough time now to decide whether or not they are going to discuss trade with us, they need to get on with it and if they don t get on with it, the closer we get to walking away with no deal , she said. May portrays Monday s meeting as part of preparations for an EU summit on Dec. 15 - though the EU says no negotiations will be conducted at the summit itself, so Monday is the last chance for her to make offers. A British spokesman said: With plenty of discussions still to go, Monday will be an important staging post on the road to the crucial December Council. Since Britain s referendum on leaving the EU in 2016, high-profile opponents of Brexit have suggested Britain could change its mind and avoid what they say will be a disaster for its economy. Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the EU, according to an opinion poll published on Sunday. With the clock ticking down to the March 2019 exit date, May is under pressure to start talks on its future trade ties by the end of the year to remove the cloud of uncertainty for companies that do business in the EU. More than 30 pro-Brexit supporters, including members of parliament and former Conservative ministers, have signed a letter calling on May to walk away from talks unless key conditions are met. They include an end to free movement of people from the EU into Britain and for the European Court of Justice to have no further role in British legal matters after March 2019. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish border row thwarts May bid to clinch Brexit trade deal;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May failed to clinch a deal on Monday to open talks on post-Brexit free trade with the European Union after a tentative deal with Dublin to keep EU rules in Northern Ireland angered her allies in Belfast. The British leader had sat down to lunch with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker hoping that a last-minute offer to the Irish government of regulatory alignment on both sides of a new UK-EU land border would remove a last obstacle to the EU open talks next week on future trade. Yet as May and Juncker spoke in Brussels and the pound rose on prospects of free trade and perhaps a very soft Brexit , Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) issued an uncompromising reiteration of its refusal to accept any divergence from rules on the British mainland. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar cancelled a news conference and the pound fell back, losing a cent against the dollar, as May and Juncker emerged to say there was still not sufficient progress on divorce terms to move ahead. May agreed with Juncker that a deal could be reached in a few days before the EU summit on Dec. 14-15, but that promise did little to stem recriminations at home, where Brexit campaigners want Britain to become what one called a free agent and set its own rules. Varadkar shared the view of some officials in Brussels that it was an opportunity missed. I m surprised and disappointed that the U.K. government appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today, he told a news conference in Dublin. I accept that the British prime minister has asked for more time and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith but my position and that of the Irish government is unequivocal. The Irish border has emerged as a defining issue for Brexit, one of the thorniest of three main issues, which include how much Britain should pay to leave and protections for expatriate citizens rights, to be settled before moving talks forward. With time running down after Britain triggered the two-year divorce process in March, May is keen to push the talks to a discussion of future trade to try to offer nervous businesses some certainty over their investment decisions. All sides say they want to avoid a return to a hard border between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland, which might upset the peace established after decades of violence. But they have found it difficult to find the right wording on guaranteeing the unguarded border as set out in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that will suit all sides. Dependent on the support of lawmakers in the DUP for a majority in parliament, May must keep them on board and has repeated that she wants to maintain the economic integrity of the United Kingdom in any Brexit deal. By suggesting May would settle for continued regulatory alignment if there was no alternative way, some in the DUP and in her own party fear Northern Ireland could get a kind of special status that could draw it away from the mainland. A DUP source said the party s leader, Arlene Foster, had spoken to May while she was in Brussels. The phone call took place shortly after Foster told supporters she would not allow a Brexit deal that created regulatory divergence . The leaders of Scotland and Wales, and the mayor of London, also announced that they would want to follow suit if special terms were agreed for Northern Ireland. We haven t decided to dismantle the United Kingdom and give in to the demands of the Irish government, said pro-Brexit lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg after a Conservative Party meeting in London. May s aides were sanguine, saying expectations had been too high for what some had billed as a crunch meeting in Brussels, and they played down any involvement of the DUP in sinking the deal. One EU official even said the last-minute hitch may have been stage-managed to give the British prime minister some scope for saying she had fought hard for her position with the EU. Juncker hailed May as a tough negotiator . May added: We will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively. But European Council President Donald Tusk, who met May and who will chair next week s summit in Brussels, said that he had been ready to send draft negotiating guidelines for a free trade pact to EU leaders on Tuesday. It is now getting very tight but agreement at December (summit) is still possible, Tusk tweeted. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rebel Honduran police ignore curfew order, election protesters rejoice;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Hondurans spilled into the streets of the capital on Monday night, banging pots and pans and joining rebel police in defiance of a curfew imposed after a presidential election that was heavily criticized by the Organization of American States. Some police officers abandoned their posts and joined carnival-like demonstrations that erupted across the city hours after night fell and the curfew was supposed to have begun. A statement issued in the name of the National Police said the officers were upset with the government over a political crisis that was not their responsibility. Our people are sovereign, said a member of the elite Cobra riot police, reading the statement. We cannot confront and repress their rights. Authorities finished counting votes on Monday after a week of increasingly widespread criticism about the Nov. 26 election, with Organization of American States (OAS) lending credence to opposition claims the government manipulated the results to ensure a win. The tight margin, along with the irregularities, errors and systematic problems that have surrounded this election, does not allow the mission to be certain about the results, said former Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga, heading the OAS election observation mission in the Central American country. Electoral authorities said President Juan Orlando Hernandez won 42.98 percent of the vote, compared with opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla s 41.39 percent, based on 99.96 percent of ballot boxes tallied. However, authorities refrained from declaring a winner, with Nasralla s center-left opposition Alliance demanding a wide recount of nearly a third of votes, a request backed by the OAS and European Union election observers. Lending more support to that view, a leader of rebellious Cobra riot police told reporters the country wanted a vote-by-vote recount to clarify the results, and called on the armed forces to come out in support of the police protest. The Alliance, which claims that results sheets from ballot boxes were altered, is expected to formally contest the results. President Hernandez, who has been praised by the United States for his crackdown on street gangs, also refrained from calling himself the winner on Monday, despite claiming victory several times since the election. I make a call for peace, for brotherhood, for sanity, for national unity, he told reporters. In a striking sign of support for Hernandez, 49, the U.S. State Department cleared the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. aid two days after the election, certifying that the government has been fighting corruption and upholding human rights, a document seen by Reuters showed. The government was struggling to contain the fallout from the chaos on Monday evening. Even former TV star Nasralla joined a crowd of boisterous supporters, jumping up and down in a tan suit while flashing peace signs and joining a chant of the dictatorship will fall, a video posted on Twitter showed. The additional powers granted to the army and police including the nighttime curfew from Friday were intended to stem the protests and have led to more than a thousand arrests. Up to 12 people have been killed in the protests or during the curfew. Tens of thousands peacefully took to the streets on Sunday in a show of force for the opposition. The police revolt began when more than 200 members of the Cobras refused to carry on battling protesters, saying it was tantamount to taking sides. Nasralla has repeatedly called on the security forces to ignore orders. We are rebelling, said one of the policemen, who covered his face in a ski mask and declined to give his name. We call on all the police nationally to act with their conscience. They soon had the support of other units, with reports that their protests had spread to other cities. The police also said they were angry about the death of two colleagues shot while they were enforcing the curfew on Sunday night, an attack a spokesman said was unrelated to the election protests. Two civilian protesters were killed in the capital overnight, their relatives said, although authorities did not confirm the deaths. The OAS called for peaceful protests, said politicians must not incite violence and that security forces must respect human rights. Last week, at least three people were killed as soldiers broke up protesters blockades. One police source and local reports said five more had been shot dead in the north of the country on Friday. The deaths have not been confirmed by authorities. Early last week, Nasralla, a 64-year-old former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory, gaining a five-point lead with more than half of the ballots tallied. The counting process suddenly halted for more than a day and began leaning in favor of Hernandez after resuming. Opposition leaders on Monday showed a sample of their own records of polling that did not match with the tribunal s. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused the United States of backing vote fraud in Honduras, while the U.S. embassy on Monday called for a transparent, impartial, and opportune election result. Honduras struggles with violent drug gangs, one of world s highest murder rates and endemic poverty, driving a tide of its people to migrate to the United States. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;European parliament not moving from Strasbourg, France says;PARIS (Reuters) - France won t let the official base of the European Union s parliament be moved from Strasbourg to Brussels, the country s European affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau said on Sunday. Strasbourg must remain the seat of European democracy. It s also the symbol of Franco-German reconciliation, she said on France 3 television. It is often said that Europe comes down to the Brussels bubble. Europe needs to be closer to its regions, she added. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) convene in Strasbourg for one week every month and in Brussels for the remainder. The monthly upheaval costs the bloc 114 million euros ($124 million) a year, EU auditors say. Critics have long called for the arrangement to be scrapped, but it has stayed in place largely because France would have vetoed any attempt to make the required amendment to the EU treaty. Some lawmakers had hoped the election victory of pro-EU President Emmanuel Macron could help plans to close the base in the French city. On Brexit negotiations, Loiseau said there were positive noises ahead of a summit in Brussels set to decide whether enough progress has been made on the first phase of negotiations to move on to talks about a post-Brexit trade relationship. But she said France remained vigilant on the issue of the land border with Ireland. It s a red line which was drawn by the 27 member states and by the United Kingdom, accepted by them, she said. Loiseau also said France was waiting for conclusions from the Eurostat statistics agency on whether the reimbursements it is due to make to companies after a dividend tax was canceled by courts should be all included in its 2017 accounts. That would scupper the French government s plans to bring its budget deficit below the EU-mandated 3 percent in 2017. In all logic, there is no reason to attribute the whole 10 billion euros to 2017. That s what we explained, we are waiting for Eurostat answers, she said. Loiseau, a career diplomat, also said she was disappointed by Germany s decision to vote in favor of clearing the use of weedkiller glyphosate for the next five years earlier this week. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Countdown to Brexit breakthrough?;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May meets European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for lunch in Brussels on Monday for what could be a breakthrough in Brexit talks. Here is a timeline of the following 10 days that will determine whether Britain avoids further costly delays in giving business assurances of a smooth exit from the European Union and of free trade with its biggest market in the future: May wants the EU to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations concerning relations after Britain s withdrawal on March 30, 2019. The EU will only do that if there is sufficient progress in agreeing divorce terms, notably on three key issues: a financial settlement, guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain and a soft border with Ireland. A deal on money is effectively done, EU officials said last week. There were indications of agreement on citizens rights and of an understanding of how at least to move forward on the Irish issue to avoid holding up the rest of the package. As part of the choreography for a political deal, the EU set May an absolute deadline of Monday, Dec. 4, to provide new offers in time for the other EU leaders to approve a move to Phase 2 at a summit of the EU-27 on Friday, Dec. 15. May is pushing for a simultaneous, reciprocal guarantee from the EU of a soft transition and future trade deal, which she may use to show Britons what her compromises have secured. The EU wants to have firm British offers which the 27 can discuss before leaders commit. The result is some complex dance steps: Monday, Dec. 4 11 a.m. (1000 GMT) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier meet Guy Verhofstadt and his Brexit team from the European Parliament. The legislature, which must ratify any withdrawal treaty, insists EU judges must have the final say on enforcing citizens rights. 1:15 p.m. (1215 GMT) - May joins Juncker and Barnier for lunch at the EU executive s Berlaymont headquarters. The plan is to sign a joint declaration on progress so far in the talks. Wednesday, Dec. 6 10 a.m. - Juncker chairs weekly European Commission meeting at which Barnier will update them on progress. The Commission could then say there is sufficient progress to move to Phase 2. 3 p.m. - EU-27 envoys meet to prepare formal decision on sufficient progress to be taken at EU-27 summit on Dec. 15 and to work on draft negotiating guidelines for future trade deal. Monday, Dec. 11 EU-27 sherpas meet to prepare the summit. Tuesday, Dec. 12 EU affairs ministers of EU-27 meet to prepare summit. Thursday, Dec. 14 4 p.m. - May attends routine EU summit in Brussels. Defence, social affairs, foreign affairs and migration are on the agenda. Friday, Dec. 15 After May has left, EU-27 leaders hold Brexit summit. They could take one comprehensive decision on Phase 2 or break it down into separate ones on the transition and future ties. January - Outline of EU transition offer may be ready, under which Britain retains all rights except voting in the bloc, and meets all its obligations until the end of 2020. February - After agreeing their negotiating terms, EU-27 may be ready to open talks with London on a free trade pact that Brussels likens to one it has with Canada. The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving. EU officials say there is now agreement after Britain offered to pay an agreed share of most of the items Brussels wanted, especially for committed spending that will go on after 2020. Both sides say there is no precise figure as much depends on future developments. British newspaper reports that it would cost up to 55 billion euros sparked only muted criticism from May s hardline pro-Brexit allies who once rejected big payments. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that London would be paying the EU 60 billion euros on Brexit. Barnier is still seeking a commitment that the rights of 3 million EU citizens who stay on in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, not just by British judges. May has said the ECJ should play no more role in Britain. But the issue could be vital to ensure ratification of the withdrawal treaty by the European Parliament. A compromise might focus on making clear that the ECJ has a role only for the existing EU residents, whose numbers will shrink over time. Member states, some of which have taken a tougher line than the Brussels negotiators, are also insisting Britain make concessions on family reunion rules and social benefits. The EU wants more detail on a British pledge to avoid a hard border at the new land frontier on the island of Ireland that might disrupt peace in Northern Ireland. London says the detail depends on the future trade agreement. EU officials say a hard border can be avoided only if rules remain identical on either side. Northern Ireland could stay in a customs union with the EU. But Britain, and May s crucial Northern Irish parliamentary allies, insist there should be no new barriers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. The EU says that means the whole of the United Kingdom would then have to follow EU rules, something Brexit campaigners do not want. Dublin says it may not be possible to reach a deal on sufficient progress by Monday but in the days after that. Ireland, with the blessing of the EU-27, says it will veto any move to Phase 2 if Britain s border offer is unsatisfactory. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese police detain 11 over deadly Tianjin skyscraper fire;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained 11 people in connection with a deadly skyscraper fire in the northern port city of Tianjin, the municipal government said on Sunday, after an investigation found numerous fire code violations. The blaze which killed 10 and injured five early on Friday morning was caused by renovation materials catching fire on the 38th floor of a serviced apartment building, the Tianjin government said in a post on its official Weibo account. It said the companies responsible for the renovations had left a fire prevention water tank empty, rendering firefighting equipment useless and allowing the fire to spread quickly. Fire safety has come under scrutiny and attracted increased media attention in China after a deadly blaze last month killed 19 in the far southern fringe of Beijing, which has led to citywide evictions seen by some people as unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass. Sparks from drilling work caused a blaze at a warehouse storing rubber products in a logistics park in China s eastern Shandong province on Friday, though no casualties were reported. On Sunday, another fire broke out at a small insulation factory in Xian, in northwestern Shaanxi province. No casualties were reported. All but one of the dead in the Tianjin fire were renovation workers who were sleeping on site, against regulations. All were men and all were migrant workers from other Chinese provinces. Tianjin party secretary Li Hongzhong said authorities would carry out citywide fire safety inspections in response to Friday s blaze, the official Tianjin Daily reported. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Corsican nationalists surge in first round of French election;PARIS (Reuters) - Corsican nationalists won almost half of the vote in the first round of the French Mediterranean island s territorial election on Sunday, a landslide likely to fuel local calls for greater autonomy from Paris. The ticket led by autonomist leader Gilles Simeoni won 45.36 percent of the votes for the newly created, more powerful local assembly, according to final interior ministry results. A second round will be held next Sunday. President Emmanuel Macron s ticket only came in fourth with 11.26 percent of the vote. In the April and May presidential elections, Macron had already significantly underperformed his national score in Corsica. Macron s Republic On the Move party said in a statement the vote showed Corsicans loss of confidence in the central government and that it aimed to rebuilt trust everywhere in France. Separately, the party also hailed the election of the first mayor associated with Macron s movement on Sunday, in the southern village of Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe near Toulouse. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UAE denies Yemen's Houthis have fired missile toward UAE;DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates on Sunday denied a report that Yemen s Houthi group had fired a missile toward a nuclear plant in the UAE, state news agency WAM reported on its Twitter account. It quoted the UAE s emergency and crisis management department as saying the UAE possessed a missile defense system that could deal with any such threats and adding the al-Barakah nuclear plant was secure against all eventualities. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's Houthi group says fires missile toward Abu Dhabi nuclear reactor;DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemen s Houthi group has fired a cruise missile toward a nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, the group s television service reported on its website on Sunday, without providing any evidence. There were no reports of any missiles reaching the UAE. The Iran-aligned Houthis control much of northern Yemen and had said Abu Dhabi, a member of the Saudi-led coalition fighting against them since 2015, was a target for their missiles. The missile force announces the launching of a winged cruise missile ... toward the al-Barakah nuclear reactor in Abu Dhabi, the website said. It gave no further details. The Barakah project, which is being built by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) (015760.KS), is expected to be completed and become operational in 2018, the UAE energy minister has said. It is the second time this year the Houthis have said they have fired missiles toward the UAE. A few months ago they said they had successfully test fired a missile toward Abu Dhabi. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Commander of Taliban 'special forces' killed in Afghanistan: officials;KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of the Taliban s special forces branch, known as the Red Unit, was killed last week in Helmand province by Afghan forces, according to Afghanistan s main intelligence agency. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said Mullah Shah Wali, also known as Mullah Naser, was killed in an air operation in Helmand. The province is a Taliban stronghold in the heartland of Afghanistan s lucrative drug trade. Wali became the commander of the Taliban s Red Unit as well as deputy shadow governor of Helmand province three years ago and was directly involved in Taliban offensives, the statement said. The Red Unit is thought to be equipped with advanced weapons, including night vision scopes, 82mm rockets, heavy machine guns and U.S.-made assault rifles, according to the Afghan military. Wali was killed alongside a suicide bomber and two other Taliban commanders in Helmand s Musa Qala district, according to the NDS. The United States has worked hard to build up Afghan air support and attack capabilities since they were found inadequate after most foreign forces withdrew three years ago. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mali's president contradicts French account of military strike;PARIS (Reuters) - Malian soldiers killed by a French military strike in northern Mali in October were hostages of Islamist militants, not deserters turned jihadists as French authorities say, Mali s president said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday. Malian and French officials have given contradicting accounts of the Oct. 23 strike on a camp of the Ansar Dine militant group, which the French army said took 15 Islamists out of action . France s defense minister has said her services had factual information showing the fighters were all jihadists, including ex-Malian soldiers enrolled by Islamists, contradicting comments from the Malian defense ministry. But in a interview with Jeune Afrique magazine, Malian President Ibrahim Boubakar Keita insisted that was not the case: They were the terrorists hostages and there should be no ambiguity about that between our French friends and us, he said. It s regrettable, it can unfortunately happen in this type of operations. We should admit it and not look for reasons that don t exist. The Malian government is struggling to contain Tuareg and Islamist violence in northern Mali, some of which is spreading south. Attempts to place officials in northern towns have sometimes failed, raising questions about the government s ability to maintain stability ahead of elections. Islamist militants seized northern Mali in 2012 and French forces intervened a year later. Around 4,000 French troops remain in West Africa s Sahel region as part of Operation Barkhane. France has also been at the forefront of organizing a regional force as part of efforts to find a long-term strategy to exit the region. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;CIA chief Pompeo says he warned Iran's Soleimani over Iraq aggression;SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (Reuters) - U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he sent a letter to Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and Iranian leaders expressing concern regarding Iran s increasingly threatening behavior in Iraq. Speaking during a panel at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in Southern California, Pompeo said he sent the letter after the senior Iranian military commander had indicated that forces under his control might attack U.S. forces in Iraq. He did not specify the date. What we were communicating to him in that letter was that we will hold he and Iran accountable for any attacks on American interests in Iraq by forces that are under their control, Pompeo told the panel. We wanted to make sure he and the leadership in Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear. Soleimani, who is the commander of foreign operations for Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards, refused to open the letter, according to Pompeo, who took over the CIA in January. Iranian media earlier quoted Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying an unnamed CIA contact had tried to give a letter to Soleimani when he was in the Syrian town of Albu Kamal in November during the fighting against Islamic State. I will not take your letter nor read it and I have nothing to say to these people, Golpayegani quoted Soleimani as saying, according to the semi-official news agency Fars. Reuters reported in October that Soleimani had repeatedly warned Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq to withdraw from the oil city of Kirkuk or face an onslaught by Iraqi forces and allied Iranian-backed fighters, and had traveled to Iraq s Kurdistan region to meet Kurdish leaders. The presence of Soleimani on the frontlines highlights Tehran s heavy sway over policy in Iraq, and comes as Shi ite Iran seeks to win a proxy war in the Middle East with its regional rival and U.S. ally, Sunni Saudi Arabia. A U.S.-led coalition has been fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and is often in proximity to Iran-allied militia fighting Isis there. You need to only look to the past few weeks and the efforts of the Iranians to exert influence now in Northern Iraq in addition to other places in Iraq to see that Iranian efforts to be the hegemonic power throughout the Middle East continues to increase, Pompeo said. The CIA chief said Saudi Arabia had grown more willing to share intelligence with other Middle Eastern nations regarding Iran and Islamist extremism. The Israeli government said last month that Israel had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia amid common concerns over Iran, a first disclosure by a senior official from either country of long-rumored secret dealings. We ve seen them work with the Israelis to push back against terrorism throughout the Middle East, to the extent we can continue to develop those relationships and work alongside them - the Gulf states and broader Middle East will likely be more secure, said Pompeo. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pentagon evaluating U.S. West Coast missile defense sites: officials;SIMI VALLEY, Calif (Reuters) - The U.S. agency tasked with protecting the country from missile attacks is scouting the West Coast for places to deploy new anti-missile defenses, two Congressmen said on Saturday, as North Korea s missile tests raise concerns about how the United States would defend itself from an attack. West Coast defenses would likely include Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missiles, similar to those deployed in South Korea to protect against a potential North Korean attack. The accelerated pace of North Korea s ballistic missile testing program in 2017 and the likelihood the North Korean military could hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear payload in the next few years has raised the pressure on the United States government to build-up missile defenses. On Wednesday, North Korea tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range, South Korea said on Friday. Republican party Congressman Mike Rogers, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee which oversees missile defense, said the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was aiming to install extra defenses at West Coast sites. The funding for the system does not appear in the 2018 defense budget plan indicating potential deployment is further off. It s just a matter of the location, and the MDA making a recommendation as to which site meets their criteria for location, but also the environmental impact, the Alabama Congressman told Reuters during an interview on the sidelines of the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in southern California. After this story was published Congressman Rogers told Reuters in a statement he was unaware of any effort by the Department of Defense to locate additional intermediate missile defense assets on the West Coast. He added that his earlier comments to Reuters should not be interpreted as confirmation of such an effort. Reuters global head of communications, Abbe Serphos, said We stand by our story. When asked about the plan, MDA Deputy Director Rear Admiral Jon Hill said in a statement: The Missile Defense Agency has received no tasking to site the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System on the West Coast. The MDA is a unit of the U.S. Defense Department. Congressman Rogers did not reveal the exact locations the agency is considering but said several sites are competing for the missile defense installations. Rogers and Congressman Adam Smith, a Democrat representing the 9th District of Washington, said the government was considering installing the THAAD anti-missile system made by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp, at west coast sites. The Congressmen said the number of sites that may ultimately be deployed had yet to be determined. THAAD is a ground-based regional missile defense system designed to shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and takes only a matter of weeks to install. In addition to the two THAAD systems deployed in South Korea and Guam in the Pacific, the U.S. has seven other THAAD systems. While some of the existing missiles are based in Fort Bliss, Texas, the system is highly mobile and current locations are not disclosed. A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment on specific THAAD deployments, but added that the company is ready to support the Missile Defense Agency and the United States government in their ballistic missile defense efforts. He added that testing and deployment of assets is a government decision. In July, the United States tested THAAD missile defenses and shot down a simulated, incoming intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). The successful test adds to the credibility of the U.S. military s missile defense program, which has come under intense scrutiny in recent years due in part to test delays and failures. Currently, the continental United States is primarily shielded by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system (GMD) in Alaska and California as well as the Aegis system deployed aboard U.S. Navy ships. The THAAD system has a far higher testing success rate than the GMD. The MDA told Congress in June that it planned to deliver 52 more THAAD interceptors to the U.S. Army between October 2017 and September 2018, bringing total deliveries to 210 since May 2011. North Korea s latest missile test puts the U.S. capital within range, but Pyongyang still needs to prove it has mastered critical missile technology, such as re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation, South Korea said on Friday. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Egyptian premier says still considering presidential bid;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian premier Ahmed Shafik said on Sunday he was still considering his presidential bid and exploring the idea further now that he is in Egypt, according to a televised interview on Sunday in which he denied authorities had kidnapped him. Today I am here in the country, so I think I am free to deliberate further on the issue, to explore and go down and talk to people in the street ... so there s a chance now to investigate more and see exactly what is needed ... to feel out if this is the logical choice, Shafik said. The interview on private Dream TV channel was Shafik s first public appearance since leaving the United Arab Emirates on Saturday for Cairo. His family said he was kidnapped and sources said he had been picked up by Egyptian officials at Cairo airport. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. quits talks on global migration pact over sovereignty clash;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has quit negotiations on a voluntary pact to deal with migration because the global approach to the issue was simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty, said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. In a statement released late on Saturday, the U.S. mission to the U.N. noted that President Donald Trump made the decision. No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue, said Haley, whose parents are immigrants from India. But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country, she said. Trump campaigned last year on a promise to deport large numbers of immigrants and build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico to help tackle illegal immigration and crime in the United States. Since he took office in January, he has also moved to ban U.S. entry by people from select Muslim countries. With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September last year in which they also agreed to spend two years negotiating the pact on safe, orderly and regular migration. Former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration backed the resolution, known as the New York Declaration, which also asked U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to propose a global compact on refugees for adoption in 2018. The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty, Haley said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said on Sunday, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks. The positive story of migration is clear: it needs to be better told. Equally, the challenges it throws up need to be tackled with more determination and greater international coordination, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. Three days of preparatory talks begin in Mexico on Monday ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February over the non-binding pact. Haley s predecessor Samantha Power mocked the U.S. move. How to further insult your Mexican neighbor, turn your back on humanity s most desperate, and make America irrelevant on a hugely destabilizing global crisis in one easy step, she posted on Twitter. While former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said on Twitter: On migration, national solutions logically do not exist ... Going it alone is a lose-lose proposition. (The story was refiled to correct the name of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to Filippo Grandi from Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein in paragraph 7) ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. chief urges end to air, ground assaults in Yemen;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged warring parties in Yemen to stop all ground and air assaults and called for a resumption of all commercial imports into the country because millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death. A Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Yemen s capital, Sanaa, local media said, lending support to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh after he signaled he was abandoning his support of the Iran-aligned Houthis - a shift that could pave the way to end three years of war. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe truck accident kills 21, injures others;HARARE (Reuters) - At least 21 people died in Zimbabwe s northwest province after a truck carrying 69 people overturned on Saturday evening, police said on Sunday. A police spokesman said several other people were injured in the accident which occurred when the driver of the truck lost control on a bend. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland says unclear if EU, UK can agree wording on border by Monday;DUBLIN (Reuters) - It is not yet clear if Britain and the European Union can agree on written assurances to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border by a Monday deadline, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Sunday. But he said he was hopeful a meeting between British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Council President Donald Tusk on Monday would lead to a deal in time for a Dec. 14-15 EU summit. That would allow Britain to move on to talks on its future trading relations with the bloc. Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before talks begin on the future trade relationship and a two-year Brexit transition. Tusk said he had asked May to put a final offer on the table by Monday, but Coveney suggested agreement on the wording of written reassurances may come later. The hope is that those [Monday] meetings will result in a momentum that can be carried into the leaders summit the week after ... and can allow this Brexit negotiation process to open up to phase two of discussions, Coveney told RTE radio. Asked if he expected an agreed text of written British assurances on the issue Monday morning, Coveney said: Let s not run before we can walk here. Obviously, we would like that to be the case. The Irish cabinet is to meet at 0900 GMT on Monday and give Prime Minister Leo Varadkar a mandate to make a decision on the border issue. That may or may not be on the back of an agreed wording. That remains to be seen over the next number of hours, Coveney said. Ireland is not asking the British government to do the impossible and provide a detailed plan border will work, but rather for clear principles for the second phase of talks to eliminate the possibility of a hard border. What we have to make sure here is that we don t have an unintended consequence of the re-emergence of a [hard] border, he said. We can t allow that and we won t allow that. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says businessmen moving assets abroad are 'traitors';ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday businessmen who attempted to move assets abroad were traitors , and called on his cabinet to block any such moves. I am seeing signals, news that some businessmen are trying to move their assets abroad, and I call on firstly my cabinet from here to never allow this exit for any of them because these people are traitors, Erdogan said. Speaking to members of his ruling AK Party in the eastern province of Mus, Erdogan did not say to whom he was referring, nor did he single out a single business, person or country of destination. His comments come after the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Friday that Turkish prosecutors were set to seize the assets of Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in the trial of a Turkish bank executive charged with evading U.S. sanctions on Iran, and his acquaintances. The trial has caused already strained ties between NATO allies Ankara and Washington to deteriorate further as Zarrab detailed in court a scheme to evade the U.S. sanctions, saying that Erdogan personally authorized two Turkish banks to join the scheme when prime minister. Ankara has cast the testimony as an attempt to undermine Turkey and its economy, and has previously said it was a clear plot by the network of U.S.-based Fethullah Gulen, who it alleges engineered last year s coup attempt. We cannot take kindly to those who earn in this country and then try to take those earnings abroad, Erdogan said. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian Kurdish YPG says seized eastern region from Islamic State;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said on Sunday it had fully captured Deir al-Zor s eastern countryside from Islamic State with the help of both the U.S.-led coalition and Russia. The YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of mostly Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State with Washington s backing. The SDF offensive in Deir al-Zor province, which borders Iraq, has focused on territory east of the Euphrates river. On the western bank, the Syrian military has waged its own attack against Islamic State with support from Iran-backed militias and Russia. The separate assaults advanced from opposite sides of the river, which bisects oil-rich Deir al-Zor, mostly staying out of each other s way. The U.S.-led coalition and the Russian military have held deconfliction meetings - to prevent clashes between planes and troops - though the two offensives have sometimes come into conflict. The SDF s most powerful component, the YPG, announced that it had defeated Islamic State militants on its side in cooperation with the Arab tribes. The U.S.-led coalition and Russian forces in Syria provided air and logistical support, advice and coordination on the ground, its statement said. We hope for an increase in this support and for ensuring the necessary air cover. A YPG spokesman declared the victory in a village in Deir al-Zor in the presence of a Russian envoy from Moscow s Hmeimim military base in Syria, it said. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said this week that as the battle against Islamic State entered its final stages, he expected the focus to move toward holding territory instead of arming Syrian Kurdish fighters. Washington s support for the YPG has infuriated Turkey, which sees the growing influence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat. Ankara considers the YPG an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) movement, which has fought a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil. Since the start of Syria s conflict in 2011, the YPG and its allies have carved out autonomous regions in the north. They now control around a quarter of Syria, the largest part outside government control, after seizing vast land from Islamic State. Their autonomy plans face opposition from their battlefield ally Washington, from Turkey and from the Syrian government. The YPG said on Sunday it was forming civil councils for Deir al-Zor that include Kurds, Arabs and other components based on the principle of democracy and self-rule. It would mirror governing arrangements in other towns and cities that the Kurdish fighters and their allies captured. With Islamic State close to collapse in Syria, Syrian Kurdish leaders hope for a phase of negotiations to shore up their autonomy in the north. But in recent months, the Damascus government and its Iranian allies have more forcefully asserted ambitions to take territory under the control of Kurdish-led forces. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says will not succumb to U.S. 'blackmail' over court case;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey would not succumb to blackmail by the United States in the trial of a Turkish bank executive being charged with evading U.S. sanctions on Iran. Already strained ties between NATO allies Ankara and Washington have deteriorated as Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, detailed in court a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Erdogan said Turkey s dealings were in line with the decisions of the United Nations, adding that they were not against Ankara s alliance with Washington. What have we done, for example? We bought natural gas from a country we have an agreement with so our citizens wouldn t be cold in the winter. Like other countries, only the UN s decisions bind us, and Turkey followed them to the dot, he told members of his ruling AK Party in the eastern province of Mus. Over three days of testimony, Zarrab has implicated top Turkish politicians, including Erdogan. Zarrab said on Thursday that when Erdogan was prime minister he had authorized a transaction to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Ankara has cast the testimony as an attempt to undermine Turkey and its economy, and has previously said it was a clear plot by the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who it alleges engineered last year s coup attempt. This case is nothing more than the 17-25 December plot being carried across the ocean. Excuse us, but we will not succumb to this blackmail, Erdogan said, referring to 2013 leaks about alleged government corruption which were blamed on his opponents. Although he has not yet responded to the courtroom claims, Erdogan has dismissed the case as a politically motivated attempt to bring down the Turkish government, led by Gulen. Turkey has repeatedly requested Gulen s extradition, but U.S. officials have said the courts require sufficient evidence before they can extradite the elderly cleric, who has denied any involvement in the coup. Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As Brexit deal takes shape, Juncker to meet MEPs;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission added to mounting confidence in Brussels that it is set for a Brexit deal with London when it scheduled talks with EU lawmakers ahead of a crunch meeting on Monday with Theresa May. However, EU officials and diplomats cautioned on Sunday that it was still unclear that a deal would be struck with the British prime minister when she meets the EU executive. Two hours before they sit down for lunch with May in Brussels, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier will brief Guy Verhofstadt and his European Parliament Brexit team, an official said. Verhofstadt and his colleagues wrote to the EU negotiators last week to sound an alarm at what they said were stalled talks on EU demands that the rights of EU citizens in Britain be guaranteed directly by the European Court of Justice after Britain leaves the European Union. They also voiced concern about Northern Ireland. Parliament must ratify any treaty on Britain s withdrawal from the European Union before Brexit in March 2019 in order to create the smooth transition period May wants, and so it will be vital to both sides to keep the legislators on board. Senior EU officials and diplomats said work was continuing on Sunday. One person close to the discussions said the situation was delicate . It s still quite fluid, said a second person involved. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister and strong critic of Brexit, declined to comment. The German leader of the center-right group in the EU parliament warned that lawmakers were not yet satisfied. On Brexit negotiations, money is one of the problems, but it is not the biggest one, Manfred Weber said in a statement. We are much more concerned about the fact that so far negotiations are stalled on the protection of EU citizens rights after Brexit and on the Irish case, he said. The EU wants outline accords on three critical divorce terms before it will open negotiations on the transition and a future free trade pact that would follow. May s lunch on Monday is a deadline for the EU to have her final offers before EU leaders consider whether to agree at a Dec. 15 summit to launch Phase 2. Britain and the EU aim to sign a joint declaration setting out progress toward final deals which the Commission, as the EU executive, would say was sufficient for opening trade talks. EU officials say terms have been agreed for a financial settlement long resisted by hardline supporters of Brexit. The Irish prime minister said on Saturday that would essentially cover all the 60 billion euros the EU had demanded. On the second key issue of a deal to avoid a hard border on land between Britain and the EU across the island of Ireland, diplomats say the joint document will set out rules for reaching a border deal aimed at avoiding disruption to peace in the north but leaving open many of the details. The third issue, of citizens rights, has long seemed the least problematic, but the European Parliament s concerns were a reminder of how far the insistence on the ECJ having the final say in whether London was respecting the withdrawal treaty conflicts with British demands to be free of EU courts. It was not immediately clear what compromise, if any, has been found. EU governments had also been pressing London to give better terms to EU expatriates on bringing in future family members and on moving social welfare benefits across borders. One suggestion in Brussels has been to limit clearly any ECJ involvement as a last resort and clearly only available to those EU citizens who choose to go on living in Britain before Brexit, not to any who arrive later. There are 3 million of them today. Looking to show skeptical pro-Brexit allies that she has secured something in five months of negotiation that seem set to end with London broadly accepting the EU s original terms, May has insisted that Brussels make a simultaneous and reciprocal commitment to transition and trade talks if she accepts a deal. That seems set to be the case with the joint declaration. Everyone knows we have to honor politically what the Brits have accepted on money, a senior EU diplomat said. So on Monday they will sign this document. If all goes to the plan, 27 EU leaders would give the official green light on Dec. 15, a day after May has joined them for a routine summit on other EU business.. The deliberately vague concept of sufficient progress gives the political leaders the option to leave plenty of room for future negotiation. The key thing for many in Brussels is that it should mark the establishment of trust that both sides are willing to work for a separation that is not too disruptive. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zuma says South Africa and Morocco will resume diplomatic ties: media;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa and Morocco will resume diplomatic ties more than a decade after Morocco withdrew its ambassador from Pretoria, South African President Jacob Zuma said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday. Morocco recalled its ambassador from South Africa in 2004 after former South African president Thabo Mbeki recognized a breakaway region in the Western Sahara which Morocco claims as part of its territory. Morocco is an African nation and we need to have relations with them, Zuma told City Press in the interview. We never had problems with them anyway;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cholera could resurge in Yemen due to lack of aid, fuel: WHO;GENEVA (Reuters) - Another wave of cholera could strike Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition blockade has cut off fuel for hospitals, water pumps and vital aid supplies for starving children, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday. Dr. Nevio Zagaria, WHO country representative in Yemen, told Reuters that 16 percent of Yemeni children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, including 5.2 percent with a severe form that is life-threatening, and the problem is increasing. Yemen, where 8 million people face famine, is mired in a proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthi armed movement and the U.S.-backed military coalition that the United Nations says has led to the world s worst humanitarian crisis. Some 960,000 suspected cases of cholera and 2,219 deaths have been reported since the epidemic began in April, WHO figures show. Children account for nearly a third of infections of the waterborne disease, spread by food or water contaminated with human feces, that causes acute diarrhoea and dehydration and can kill within hours if untreated. Although the number of new cases has dropped for 11 straight weeks, 35 districts in Yemen are still reporting cholera with high attack rates in communities, Zagaria said. A deteriorating economic situation and lack of safe drinking water, due to water sewage systems in many cities lacking fuel for the pumps, have compounded the humanitarian crisis, he said. This is a perfect mix to have a new explosion of a cholera epidemic at the beginning of the rainy season in March of next year, Zagaria said in a telephone interview from Sanaa, amid four days of clashes in the capital city. WHO is working with local authorities in both the internationally recognized government and Houthi-controlled Sana a to identify areas at highest risk of a spike in the cholera epidemic and to boost defences, he said. A campaign of oral cholera vaccination - initially planned last July during an acute phase and then abandoned by authorities - is now under reconsideration but as a preventive action next year, he said. Meanwhile, a ship carrying 35 tonnes of WHO surgical and medical supplies is being diverted to Aden after waiting weeks to offload at Hodeidah port, Zagaria said. We are waiting and hoping that the situation of the blockade will be resolved. We have an opening to the humanitarian blockade but the opening to the commercial blockade is only partial, he added. The United Nations appealed on Friday to the coalition to fully lift its blockade of Yemen, which was partially eased last week to let aid into Hodeidah and Salif, and U.N. flights into Sanaa. The U.S.-backed military coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6 in a move it said was to stop the flow of Iranian arms to the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen. Aid shipments cover only a fraction of Yemen s needs, since almost all food, fuel and medicine are commercially imported. Yemen s health system has virtually collapsed, with most health workers unpaid for seven months. WHO supports 130 hospitals across the country, providing fuel, water, oxygen, drugs, medical supplies and essential equipment, Zagaria said. The (fuel) contractors that we are working with are finding difficulty in keeping the stock, he said, noting that some hospitals require 60,000 liters of fuel per month. WHO runs 15 stabilization centers for severely acute malnourished children with medical complications and is expanding with 10 more, Zagaria said. We see that there is a constant flow of newly admitted patients to these centers. The deterioration of the situation in terms of malnutrition in children is increasing... It is very difficult to quantify with precise numbers, said Zagaria, who went to the intensive care unit of the pediatric ward in Sadaa last week. I am a pediatrician, I worked many years in Africa. You don t need to take the weight and the height. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fishing boat capsizes in South Korea, eight killed;SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean fishing boat capsized off the country s western coast on Sunday after it collided with a refueling vessel, killing eight people, South Korea s coast guard said. The boat was carrying two sailors and 20 passengers when the collision occurred in waters near Incheon west of Seoul, a coast guard official told a media briefing. Two people remain missing and a search and rescue operation involving five helicopters and 19 vessels is underway. President Moon Jae-in ordered all measures be taken to find those missing, his office told reporters. Those rescued from the water have been sent to nearby hospitals, the coast guard said. The reason for the collision has yet to be confirmed, according to the coast guard. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela political talks end without deal, new meeting planned Dec. 15;CARACAS (Reuters) - Members of Venezuela s government and opposition coalition failed to reach a deal in a new round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Saturday aimed at resolving the OPEC nation s protracted political crisis, but planned to meet in two weeks to try again. Various mediation efforts have failed in recent years. Foes accuse President Nicolas Maduro of exploiting dialogue to buy time, while he says the opposition prefers violence. Few Venezuelans expect further talks to yield a breakthrough, with Maduro s foes demoralized at seeing him consolidate power ahead of a likely re-election campaign in 2018. The disparate Democratic Unity coalition, which failed to dislodge Maduro in months of street protests earlier this year and then succumbed to infighting, is pressing primarily for a guarantee of free and fair voting next year. It also wants a foreign humanitarian aid corridor to alleviate one of the worst economic crises in modern history, as well as freedom for several hundred jailed activists and respect for the opposition-led congress. This process is difficult, heavy, hard and full of debate and confrontation, said Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led congress, adding he hoped the two sides could come closer on Dec. 15. The government and the opposition did not compromise on any key points, according to one participant in the talks who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to media. The opposition s bargaining power has been weakened by a surprising defeat in October gubernatorial elections. Furthermore, the multi-party group is divided, with more militant sectors opposing the talks they say simply buy the government more time. However, debilitating U.S. sanctions against Maduro s government have given his administration more impetus for the talks. Maduro wants any potential deal with the opposition to include joint pressure on Washington to back off. We said the true aid should come from putting an end to the attacks on Venezuela s economy, said information minister and government negotiator Jorge Rodriguez, who struck a more positive tone than Borges and said his side was deeply satisfied with the two-day talks. There is no indication that U.S. President Donald Trump would be prepared to ease pressure on Maduro, whom he has called a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator. U.S. officials say Washington could strengthen sanctions unless Maduro enacts democratic changes. Foreign ministers from Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua and host Dominican Republic acted as guarantors at the talks held at the Foreign Ministry building in Santo Domingo. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Qatari emir to attend Gulf summit despite row: foreign minister;DOHA (Reuters) - Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is expected to attend the annual summit of Gulf Arab heads of state in Kuwait on Dec. 5 and 6, Qatar s foreign minister said on Sunday, despite a deep dispute within the group. The ministerial meeting will be attended tomorrow, and (for) the summit, god willing, the Emir, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said in a speech. The rift between the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council members Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on one side, and Qatar on the other had put this year s annual meeting in doubt. There was no immediate comment from other Gulf nations on the Qatari announcement. The dispute, which erupted in June, revolves around allegations by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt that Qatar supports terrorism, a charge Doha denies. The four countries have severed diplomatic, trade and travel links with Doha, in a move Qatar says is inflicting collective punishment on its people but its opponents call a legitimate response to its policies. Qatar says the four countries are trying to force Doha to fall in line with their own foreign policy. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former key ally of Nigeria's Buhari joins opposition party;ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria s Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and key ally of President Muhammadu Buhari, said on Sunday he had joined the country s opposition party after quitting the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) last month. Abubakar is the first political heavyweight to signal a potential bid for the presidency, which could pit him against the 74-year-old Buhari. Buhari took power in 2015, but illness has kept him absent for much of this year. Abubakar is prepared to run for president in 2019, a spokesman said last month when he left the APC. He did not indicate on Sunday whether he would try to become the opposition People s Democratic Party s (PDP s) presidential candidate. Abubakar rejoined the PDP after four years because it has resolved its issues, he said, according to a statement on Sunday. He had left the PDP because he believed it was no longer aligned to the principles of equity, democracy and social justice, he said. In Sunday s statement, Abubakar criticized the APC for letting down the Nigerian people by failing to create a strong economy and jobs, especially for the young, with one quarter of 18-25 year olds unemployed. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. allies fret as 'guillotine' hangs over Tillerson;BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - On the eve of his trip to Europe, Rex Tillerson gave a speech last week that European allies had waited months to hear: an ironclad promise of U.S. support to its oldest allies. The relief in European capitals lasted barely a day as reports surfaced of a White House plan to oust the U.S. secretary of state, plunging America s friends back into confusion over President Donald Trump s foreign policy. The uncertainty is particularly acute given Washington s leading role in crises in North Korea and Syria. Just as Tillerson comes to Brussels to give a public statement of support that the EU and NATO have wanted all along, it seems he has no mandate, that the guillotine is hanging over his head, said an EU official involved in diplomacy with White House officials. It leaves Europe just as doubtful as before about Trump. U.S. officials said on Thursday the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson but Trump said on Friday he was not leaving and the secretary of state said on Saturday the reports were untrue. European leaders yearn for stability in U.S. foreign policy. They are troubled by Trump s America first rhetoric and inconsistent statements on NATO and the European Union. In addition, Trump s decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accord and his decision not to certify Iran s compliance with a nuclear deal undermine European priorities. The chaos in the administration doesn t help in the current geopolitical climate, said a senior French diplomat. Early last week, Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, delivered a long address in support of Europe in Washington more akin to traditional U.S. policy. The United States remains committed to our enduring relationship with Europe. Our security commitments to European allies are ironclad, he told a think tank. He said he would convey that message to the European Union and NATO. He is set to visit Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday and Paris on Friday. The question is whether European officials believe him, given tensions during his April visit to Europe, when Reuters reported Tillerson initially planned to skip a NATO meeting in Brussels and then only attended under pressure from allies. If there were expectations that Tillerson might evolve into a counterweight to Trump, someone who could pass on messages from partners and exert moderating influence over American foreign policy those expectations have been disappointed, said Niels Annen, foreign policy spokesman for Germany s Social Democrats in parliament. On his watch, the State Department has become a non-actor. Despite Tillerson s pledge to reform the U.S. foreign service, European governments take a dim view of how he has sought to cut costs at the State Department, with top diplomatic posts unfilled almost a year into the administration. The French have gone around Tillerson to develop contacts with U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, while the EU s top diplomat Federica Mogherini has gone directly to Vice President Mike Pence. Berlin has focused on Capitol Hill, as well as Kelly, McMaster and Mattis. Yet it is unclear if that access translates into a direct impact on Trump s foreign policy, diplomats said. There is hope that if Pompeo is appointed he could rejuvenate the State Department after Tillerson, who is seen as ineffective, diplomats said. Pompeo is an unknown quantity in Europe but is viewed as closer to Trump. We may be looking at a larger dose of Trump at the State Department, if Pompeo did get the job, said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the German Marshall Fund s Berlin office. One European diplomat said Tillerson was in a difficult position from the outset because the Trump administration was hostile to Iran and brought in a team of generals who took a hard line, so it never left Tillerson much room. In addition, Trump s son-in-law Jared Kushner has taken a leading role in formulating policy on Middle East peace. But Europeans see Trump as a blizzard of conflicting signals. At a NATO summit in Brussels in May, the president publicly admonished European leaders for their low defense spending and threatened to reduce support, only to announce a jump in U.S. military spending in Europe months later. Things may only become more unpredictable, diplomats say. European diplomats see Tillerson and Mattis as instrumental in talking Trump out of making any rash decisions over North Korea and its nuclear program, given administration comments about utterly destroying the country. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Half of Britons support a second vote on Brexit, poll finds;LONDON (Reuters) - Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the European Union and a majority think the government may be paying too much money to the EU to open the way to trade talks, according to a new opinion poll. The poll, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, found 50 percent of people supported another vote on the final terms of Britain s exit deal, 34 percent rejected another referendum and 16 percent said they did not know. The newspaper said it was the first major opinion poll since last week s media reports that Britain is preparing to pay about 50 billion euros ($59 billion) to help to move on to talks on a future trade pact with the EU. Mike Smithson, an election analyst who runs the www.politicalbetting.com website and a former Liberal Democrat politician, said on Twitter it was the first time any pollster has recorded backing for a second Brexit referendum. Since the referendum in 2016, high profile opponents of Britain s exit - from French President Emmanuel Macron, to former British prime minister Tony Blair and billionaire investor George Soros - have suggested Britain could change its mind and avoid what they say will be disastrous for the British economy. Blair said on Sunday he was trying to reverse Brexit because claims by the leave campaign, such as the National Health Service getting an extra 350 million pounds a week once Britain leaves the EU, have been proved false. Blair told the BBC that the government aims in the Brexit negotiations will fail because it wants to leave the single market, but retain all of the benefits, and voters can change their minds. It s reversible. It s not done until it s done, he said. When the facts change, I think people are entitled to change their mind. Brexit supporters argue any attempt to halt the exit process would be anti-democratic. According to the Survation poll only 11 percent of voters said Britain should pay 50 billion pounds to quit the EU, while 31 percent said the government should not pay anything at all. The poll also found 35 percent of those surveyed said they would be worse off financially after Brexit, while 14 percent said they would be better off. The online poll, carried out by research firm Survation, interviewed 1,003 adults in Britain between 30 November and 1 December. Survation said it carries out polls for media organizations including the BBC, Sky News, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. The polling agency correctly predicted a narrowing in the vote between the ruling Conservative party and the opposition Labour Party in this summer s general election that resulted in May leading a minority government. ($1 = 0.8411 euros) ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Netanyahu orders redraft of law seen as protecting him;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that a draft bill that sets limits on police investigators should be revised so it does not apply to criminal probes in which he is a suspect. The proposed legislation, which has sparked protests in Israel, would prohibit the police from publicizing whether they have found sufficient grounds to charge a suspect. Critics say the bill is an attempt to protect Netanyahu and keep the public in the dark regarding ongoing investigations in which he is a suspect, but its supporters said it is intended to protect suspects legal rights and reputations. Some 20,000 Israelis demonstrated against the bill in Tel Aviv on Saturday and, as public pressure mounted, support among coalition members for the bill began to wane on Sunday, a day before parliament was expected to ratify it. For the debate on the bill to be topical and not be used for political propaganda, I have asked ... that (it) be worded so that it does not cover the ongoing investigations in my matters, Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page. With ratification of the legislation delayed, he said he had told the bill s proponent, David Amsalem, a lawmaker from his own right-wing Likud party, that it had become a political battering ram against the government. But in justifying the legislation, Netanyahu said: The bill is intended to prevent publication of police recommendations which would leave a cloud over innocent people, something that happens every day. Netanyahu is a suspect in two cases. In one, he is alleged to have meddled in the media industry and the other concerns gifts he received from wealthy businessmen. He denies any wrongdoing. But, if charged, he would come under heavy pressure to resign or he could call an election to test whether he still has a mandate to govern. Netanyahu has in the past said he had no interest in promoting personal legislation but he also did not order the bill s sponsors, Amsalem, and David Bitan, another Likud confidant, to withdraw it. Netanyahu has described himself as a victim of a political witch hunt and said he will be cleared. There will be nothing because there is nothing, he has said repeatedly. (This story removes extraneous text from first paragraph) ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jordan begins diplomatic offensive ahead of Trump move on Jerusalem;AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan has begun consultations on convening an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation before an expected move this week by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a senior Jordanian source said. A senior U.S. administration official said on Friday that Trump was likely to make the controversial declaration in a speech on Wednesday. Recognizing Jerusalem would upend decades of American policy and possibly inflame tensions in the Middle East. Jordan, the current president of the Arab summit, would invite members of the two bodies to convene if the recognition is extended, to discuss ways of dealing with the consequences of such a decision that raised alarm and concern , the senior Jordanian diplomatic source told Reuters. It could ultimately hamper all efforts to get the peace process moving and would certainly be provocative to Arab and Muslim countries and Muslim communities across the West, said the source, asking not to be named. No issue can move Arabs and Muslims in the same potent way as Jerusalem does. King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes of status of the disputed city. Officials are worried the move could trigger violence in the Palestinian territories and a spillover into Jordan, a country where many people are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948. A tremendous wave of anger will spread across the Arab and Muslim world, said another regional diplomatic source in touch with U.S. officials on the issue. Tensions in Jerusalem s Al Aqsa compound, the third holiest site in Islam, earlier this year provoked days of unrest. Word of Trump s planned announcement, which would deviate from the line taken by previous U.S. presidents who insisted Jerusalem s status must be decided in negotiations, drew criticism from the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel s claim on all of the city, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and says the city s fate should only be decided only at the end of a final settlement. King Abdullah warned of the repercussions of Trump s expected move in talks this week in Washington with top administration officials. Trump suggested earlier this year he was open to new ways to achieve Middle East peace that did not necessarily entail the creation of a Palestinian state, a hallmark of U.S. policy for decades. If it happens (recognition of Jerusalem) it will jeopardize all efforts towards stability and peace in the region and thwart a resolution of the conflict, the regional diplomatic source said. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Families of lost Argentina submarine crew decry government response;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Dozens of relatives of the 44 crew members of an Argentine submarine that went missing on November 15 marched from a naval base on Sunday, demanding to know what happened and criticizing the government s response to the tragedy. Holding posters with photos of the crew and chanting Search and Rescue! the family members walked away from a naval base in Mar del Plata, following a press conference during which the navy said the submarine had still not been located. The disaster has spurred soul searching over the state of the military in Argentina, which now has one of Latin America s smallest defense budgets in relation to economic size after a series of financial crises. Our disagreement is with the government, not with the navy, said Marcela Moyano, wife of crew member Hern n Rodr guez, during the protest. Whoever is responsible needs to be held responsible. Spokesman Enrique Balbi said on Thursday the navy had abandoned hope of rescuing the crew alive, noting the ARA San Juan had air supplies for a week while 15 days had passed since it last reported its position. Some family members complained they were not advised before the general public of the end of the rescue mission and have also demanded more contact with President Mauricio Macri in Mar del Plata, where the San Juan was scheduled to end its journey. While local media have speculated Macri will soon declare a period of national mourning for the submarine crew, he has been silent in recent days. He (Macri) needs to be here because this is the priority, there are 44 families behind this situation and someone has to be in charge, said Marcela Fern ndez, wife of Alberto S nchez. Macri s defense minister met with families in Mar del Plata on Friday. Balbi said on Saturday an object that was being reviewed by a Russian unmanned remotely operated vehicle in the South Atlantic had turned out not to be the submarine. The government has pledged to continue the search with foreign assistance. The navy said on Nov. 27 that water that entered the submarine s snorkel caused its battery to short-circuit before it went missing. The navy had previously said international organizations detected a noise that could have been the submarine s implosion the same day contact was lost. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. seeking to evacuate aid workers from Yemen: sources tell Reuters;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations is trying to evacuate at least 140 aid workers from the Yemeni capital amid fighting that has cut off the airport road, but is awaiting approval from the Saudi-led coalition, U.N. and other aid officials said on Sunday. Coalition aircraft bombed Houthi positions in Sanaa overnight, residents and local media said, aiming to shore up supporters of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh as they battle the Houthi group, which is aligned with Iran. It was the fourth day of clashes in which dozens have been killed, the Red Cross said. There is a plane on stand-by in Djibouti for 140 international staff, a U.N. official in Sanaa told Reuters. About half were from non-governmental organizations, he said. Fighting is moving toward the airport and the situation is very tense. We can t even evacuate staff, he said. United Nations staff have been confined to their living quarters in Sanaa since clashes erupted on Thursday, he said. Shells were falling near the UN compound in Sanaa on Siteen Street on Sunday, with one source on the scene saying stray bullets had hit the compound. The compound is empty as staff had been told to stay at home and not report to work. Another aid worker with an independent agency in Yemen, who declined to be identified, said the U.N. was planning to evacuate as many as 180 U.N. and other aid workers, but U.N. officials considered the airport road was not safe enough. Russell Geekie, a U.N. humanitarian spokesman in New York, said the U.N. planned to reduce the number of non-essential staff in Sanaa, but they could not yet safely move, and exact numbers were unclear due to the fluidity of the situation. We re very concerned by the clashes in Sanaa city, which have reportedly resulted in civilian deaths and have negative implications for the humanitarian response, Geekie said in an emailed response to Reuters. At present, fighting is restricting movement within the city, including on the airport road. The airport remains closed with Sanaa residents holed up in their homes. Clearance to land at Sanaa airport has yet to be received from the coalition, who control the skies over the Houthi-controlled capital, aid workers said. Saleh said on Saturday he was ready to turn a new page in ties with the coalition fighting in Yemen if it stopped attacks on Yemeni citizens, in a move that could pave the way to end nearly three years of war. The apparent shift in position came as Saleh s supporters battled Houthi fighters in Hadda, a district in southern Sanaa where members of Saleh s family, including his nephew Tareq, live. In Geneva, spokeswoman Elodie Schindler of the International Committee of the Red Cross said: In light of the current chaotic situation, the ICRC is looking to downsize staff presence in Yemen to a core team . ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police say Potsdam explosive package not 'terrorism';BERLIN (Reuters) - German authorities investigating the delivery of a package containing powerful firecrackers, wires and nails to a pharmacy near a Christmas market in the city of Potsdam said on Sunday it was criminal activity rather than terrorism. Karl-Heinz Schroeter, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg where Potsdam is located, told a news conference criminals were behind the package which they had used to try to extort millions of euros from logistics firm DHL, which had delivered the package. Police said it was highly likely that the package could have exploded. Staff at the pharmacy in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, called the police on Friday after they discovered the suspicious package. The Christmas market was evacuated and the package was made safe by a police robot. DHL warned the public not to open packages if they did not recognize the sender s address or if the sender s address was suspicious. As we find ourselves approaching Christmas, which is not only a time of peace, but also a time when many presents are sent, such an act of extortion is reprehensible, Schroeter told the news conference. He said all efforts were being made to catch those who sent the package. Authorities said the people who sent the package most likely lived in Berlin or in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the German capital. They did not say how much money they had demanded, but said they had told DHL they would send more packages that could kill or injure if DHL, owned by Deutsche Post, refused to pay up. Brandenburg police chief Hans-Juergen Moerke said that a QR barcode that can be read using a smart phone was found on a piece of paper inside the package. The extortion letter addressed to DHL was found in the barcode. (The story was refiled to remove the reference to the police search after the news conference) ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lawyer for Egypt's ex-premier meets him at Cairo hotel: Facebook statement;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik s lawyer said on Sunday she had met with him at a hotel in Cairo, her first contact with him since his arrival in Cairo on Saturday. Shafik s family and lawyer said earlier they had lost contact with him after what they called his deportation from the United Arab Emirates to Cairo, days after announcing his intention to run for president of Egypt next year. I had a meeting with Shafik an hour ago at one of the hotels in New Cairo and confirmed his health, Shafik s lawyer, Dina Adly, wrote on Facebook. He confirmed that his health was good and that he was not subjected to any investigations, she wrote. Adly did not say whether Shafik was free to leave the hotel, which she did not identify by name. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenyan opposition says a strategist arrested, no reason given;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s opposition National Super Alliance said on Sunday that one of its key strategists had been arrested in Kwale, in the country s coastal region, and that his whereabouts were unknown. The Alliance said economist David Ndii had been taken away from the Diani area late on Sunday. The family was told that he had been taken to the Diani beach police station, but when they went there they were told he was not there nor did they know where he was. No reason was given for his arrest, Salim Lone, an adviser for Raila Odinga, the coalition s leader, said in a statement. NASA lawyers from Nairobi and the coast are trying to locate where he is being held, he said, referring to the coalition by its acronyms. Charles Owino, a police spokesman, said he was unaware of Ndii s arrest, as were police in Kwale. Police have confirmed they have David Ndii at Diani Police Station. But they want to go back to his Leopard Beach Hotel in Kwale and pick the computer and laptop for the information they need, Dennis Onyango, Odinga s spokesman, said on Twitter. President Uhuru Kenyatta defeated Odinga in August, but Odinga challenged the election and a court voided the results, citing procedural irregularities, and ordered a fresh vote. The court s decision was the first of its kind in Africa. Odinga boycotted the October repeat poll, saying the country s election commission had failed to carry out sufficient reforms. Kenyatta won with 98 percent of the vote. Last week, Odinga said he planned to have a people s assembly swear him in on Dec. 12 - the country s independence day - raising the prospect for confrontation with security forces. Lone said that Ndii had been appointed chairman of a steering committee for the steering committee organizing for Odinga s planned swearing in. Why has @DavidNdii been arrested and where is he being held? Is he being permitted to speak to his lawyer? Is the rule of law and due process being respected? Isaac Okero, the president of Law Society of Kenya, said on Twitter. Kenya is a regional hub for trade, diplomacy and security. The prolonged election season disrupted its economy as investors waited to see the outcome. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led air strikes support Yemen's Saleh as he shifts against Houthis;ADEN (Reuters) - A Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Yemen s capital, Sanaa, local media said, lending support to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh after he signaled he was abandoning his support of the Iran-aligned Houthis - a shift that could pave the way to end three years of war. In a speech on Saturday, Saleh appeared to indicate the end of his loyalists alliance with Houthi fighters. He said he was ready to turn a new page in ties with the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, if it stopped attacks on Yemeni citizens and lifted a siege. Residents on Sunday, however, said a coalition air strike overnight killed 12 Yemeni civilians in one family in the northern province of Saada, the home territory of the Houthis. The attack could not be verified. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said on Sunday coalition aircraft pounded Houthi outposts in southern Sanaa overnight, but gave no details on casualties. Separately, the Houthis, who together with Saleh s loyalists, control most of northern Yemen, said they had fired a cruise missile toward a nuclear power plant under construction in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a report quickly denied by the UAE. Saleh s announcement on Saturday was welcomed by the Saudi-led coalition, which has been backed by the United States and other Western powers. The coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates, is trying to help Yemen s internationally recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi back to power, but it has struggled to advance against Houthi-Saleh forces. A split between Saleh s armed allies and the Houthis could tip the balance of power. Army units loyal to Saleh have been clashing with Houthi fighters in the past five days, adding a new layer to an already complex situation in Yemen. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash appeared to back Saleh s side in remarks on his official Twitter page. The events in Sanaa are murky, but its national uprising needs support ... to protect the Arabian Peninsula from Iranian expansion, he said. Residents in Sanaa reported on Sunday that the Houthis appeared to be clawing back some territory lost to Saleh over the previous four days, and Houthi tanks were deployed amid heavy gun battles in the city s central Political District. The area is a stronghold of Saleh s loyalists under the command of his nephew Tareq, an influential army general. The fighting has cut off the airport road, prompting the United Nations to try to evacuate at least 140 aid workers from Sanaa, according to U.N. and other aid officials. The U.N. was awaiting approval from the Saudi-led coalition, they said. Residents earlier said Houthi fighters seized the television studios of Yemen Today, a news channel owned by Saleh, after clashes that damaged the building. Residents said 20 employees were trapped inside. The Red Cross said dozens of people have been killed in clashes over the past five days and called for civilian lives to be spared. In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi called for calm and restraint. All internal disputes should be resolved through dialogue to block the grounds for any abuse by the enemies of the Yemeni nation, he said, according to a statement on the ministry s website. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, and the proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed Hadi has created widespread hunger and disease, in one of the worst humanitarian crises of recent times. More than 10,000 people have died since 2015, more than two million have been displaced and nearly a million have been infected by a cholera outbreak. Famine threatens much of the country. Yemen descended into violence in late 2014 when the Houthis, a group that follows the Zaidi branch of Shi ite Islam, marched on Sanaa and seized control of the government. Backed by government troops loyal to Saleh, the Houthis fanned out across the country, forcing Hadi to flee to Riyadh. His ouster led the alliance headed by the Saudis to join the fighting. The Houthis said the missile fired on Sunday was directed toward the al-Barakah nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi, but provided no evidence of any attack. There were no reports of any missiles reaching Abu Dhabi. The country s crisis management authority said the al-Barakah was well protected and urged the public not to listen to rumors. The National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority denies claims by the coup trumpets in Yemen that they fired a missile toward the airspace of the United Arab Emirates, the department said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM. It said the nuclear power project was fortified and sturdy against all possibilities. And enjoys all measures of nuclear safety and security that such grand projects require . The Houthis had said Abu Dhabi, a member of the Saudi-led coalition fighting against them since 2015, was a target for their missiles. The Barakah project, which is being built by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) (015760.KS), is expected to be completed and become operational in 2018, the UAE energy minister has said. It is the second time this year the Houthis have said they have fired missiles toward the UAE. A few months ago, they said they had successfully test-fired a missile toward Abu Dhabi, but there were no reports of any rockets being intercepted by or falling in the UAE. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Crime, casualties undermine U.S. gains on Afghan battlefield;KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Since U.S. forces began stepping up air strikes against the Taliban, Kunduz shopkeeper Najibullah no longer fears another insurgent takeover of the northern Afghan city. But he does fear robbery or kidnap by militia gangs. With Afghan forces improving and on the offensive, U.S. commanders have more freedom to attack the Taliban and insurgents no longer threaten any major urban centers. Although Taliban-controlled areas begin within a 10-minute drive of the city, Kunduz - a strategic hub that fell twice in the past two years - is largely calm. But there is a long way to go to build confidence in daily security. In the past people were afraid that the Taliban would come but no-one talks about that now, said Najibullah, who like many Afghans, uses only one name. Now we have internal problems, he said, leaning over the counter of his shop in the city center and talking softly to avoid being overheard. There are gunmen that do anything they want. There are people in this city, if they know you have money they ll come to your shop and rob you in broad daylight. Outside the city, where the Taliban still hold sway, the risk of being caught between helicopter gunships and the insurgents or swept up in a clearing operation means life is also more difficult for villagers on the front line. Last month, locals say 16 people were killed by U.S. helicopters in a night raid near the villages of Qatl-e Am and Gharow Qushlaq in Chahardara district, an area largely controlled by the Taliban. A U.S. investigation concluded there was no evidence any civilians were killed. Since the Americans announced their new strategy and signed the new agreement, the situation has been getting worse, said Atiqullah, a villager who said he was about three kilometers away when the raid took place. The shift in perceptions on the ground suggests ordinary Afghans are seeing the fresh strategy is hitting the insurgents. But their new fears underline how much more is needed to build trust in the Western-backed government. I m a businessman but I can t go anywhere without a gun, said Jamal Nasir Aymaq, who owns a number of bakeries in the city. Our businessmen and rich people have already escaped Kunduz and children are not safe. Kidnapping and robbery are rife and there is little confidence of justice from a government many see as deeply implicated in abuses by rogue militia commanders who operate with impunity. We all know peace cannot be achieved by force alone, it needs development and the economy, said Kunduz police chief Abdul Hameed Hameedi. Security is much better than last year but we haven t got what people are expecting yet. Kunduz Governor Asadullah Omarkhil dismissed talk of any official collusion in kidnapping as baseless , but while many people fear the Taliban, many also feel they are more honest and efficient than city officials. If there were a real government in the center of Kunduz, people wouldn t be going to the Taliban for legal decisions, said Mawlawi Khosh Mohammad Nasratyar, a member of the Kunduz provincial council. Now, even people from the center of Kunduz go to the Taliban to settle legal cases. The wariness among many Afghans contrasts with optimism among Western officials, who say the new approach is starting to turn a stalemate with the Taliban around. The air strikes have made all the difference, said one Western diplomat in Kabul. When you go to (the NATO-led Resolute Support mission) headquarters, there s a bit of a buzz about the place that wasn t there before and a feeling they re back on the front foot. So far in 2017, U.S. forces have dropped three times the quantity of bombs as last year and special forces units have been in regular action with their Afghan counterparts. Hundreds of Taliban fighters and many senior leaders have been killed, including Mullah Abdul Salam, mastermind of the assault that saw the Taliban flag raised over Kunduz in 2015, the first time the insurgents had taken a major town. Similar successes have been seen in other towns including Tarin Kot in the central province of Uruzgan, which the Taliban briefly overran last year, or Lashkar Gah in Helmand, which they have also come close to taking. Two years ago, there was a fear of Taliban attack on the city every minute and we couldn t come into the office, said Kunduz provincial council secretary Fawzia Jawad Yaftali. But now everything is different, the shops are open and I m sitting in my office without any fear, she said. The campaign has not been without cost however and hanging over it is the fact that the air strikes have inevitably brought more civilian casualties in their wake, even if their numbers are still well below those killed by roadside bombs. In a briefing this week, the commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson said they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties and have a rigorous process to investigate allegations. But people from Chahardara react with deep anger to official denials that the raid on Nov. 3-4 killed at least 16 civilians. The helicopter started bombing at three in the morning. Afterwards, at about 6 o clock a lot of people gathered to help and then the helicopter came back. That was the big bomb, said Mohebullah, a village elder. Sixteen people were killed and six wounded, he said, showing a handwritten list of names. They have advanced equipment, they should be sure of who they are attacking. They should target criminals not innocent and helpless people. The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said reports of at least 10 deaths were credible . A U.S. investigation found no evidence of any civilian casualties but Capt. Thomas Gresback, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said they would engage in dialogue with anyone who came forward with information. Most of the propaganda about civilian casualties comes from the enemy, said Governor Omarkhil, who said only one person was killed in the incident. In Chahardara, the Taliban made people go to the battle zone and take out dead bodies. The U.S. military says the Taliban deliberately shelters in houses and schools but the issue, over which former Afghan President Hamid Karzai repeatedly clashed with Washington, causes deep resentment, sapping support for the government. The people who were killed were all civilians, they had nothing to do with the government or the Taliban, said Mohebullah. Everyone lost a family member, everyone is shocked and in grief. The governor is lying. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pentagon should move U.S. dependents out of South Korea due to North Korean threat: senator;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday urged the Pentagon to start moving U.S. military dependents, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea is getting close. It s crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea given the provocation of North Korea, Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS s Face the Nation. So I want them (the Pentagon) to stop sending dependents and I think it s now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea, Graham said. The United States has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. On Wednesday, North Korea tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range, South Korea said on Friday. Graham said this development showed conflict is approaching. We re getting close to military conflict because North Korea is marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that can not only get to America, but deliver the weapon. We re running out of time, Graham told CBS. The Pentagon referred questions to the Pacific command, which was not immediately available for comment. White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster told Fox News Sunday that President Donald Trump is prepared to take action against North Korea but is working to convince China, Russia and other nations to use more economic pressure to help curb its nuclear ambitions. The president s going to take care of it by, if we have to, doing more ourselves. But what we want to do is convince others, it is in their interest to do more, McMaster said. The Trump administration has repeatedly said all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea s ballistic and nuclear weapons programs, including military ones, but that it still prefers a diplomatic option. ;worldnews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP SUGGESTS People Should Sue ABC NEWS After Massive Stock Market Crash Triggered By #FakeNews Report On Michael Flynn;President Trump is not giving ABC News a pass for their fake news story about Michael Flynn and his meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when Trump was a candidate running for office. The President is suggesting that ABC News needs to be held accountable for the drop in the Stock Market that was triggered by their fake news story. Trump tweeted: People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused many millions of dollars!People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused many millions of dollars! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017Here is a screen grab of the Brian Ross bombshell story that appeared on the ABC News Twitter account, stating that Michael Flyyn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians. that has now been deleted. There s a big difference between candidate Trump and President-elect Trump.After ABC News broke the General Flynn-Trump story, the stock market began its freefall.Americans were stunned by the news, and the media, who s been searching for blood in the water since Trump s inauguration, was in a feeding frenzy over the prospect of President Trump being caught directing General Flynn to meet with the Russians when he was actively campaigning. As it turns out, ABC News got it wrong. But no worries, several hours later, they clarified how the story should have read, and then later, after ABC News was getting destroyed on social media for their reckless reporting of fake news, they changed their clarification to a correction . Here are side-by-side screen grabs of the tweets by ABC News: ABC News announced today, that they were suspending Brian Ross for 4 weeks over his horrendous error that caused Americans to lose millions in the stock market. 4 weeks?.@ABC News statement on Michael Flynn report: https://t.co/sd9TeFiiLQ pic.twitter.com/UtHFHeuwcM ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017President Trump responded to the news of Brian Ross suspension with a brutal tweet to ABC: Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017;left-news;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRATS Get DEVASTATING News After Spending $10.1 MILLION To Defeat Roy Moore In AL Senate Race;Roll Call Democrat Doug Jones drastically outraised GOP nominee Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate race, new campaign finance documents show.Jones raised nearly six times Moore s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent. Jones raked in nearly $10.2 million compared to Jones $1.8 million. Jones also spent roughly 5 times as much as Moore during that period, nearly $8.7 million compared to Moore s $1.7 million.The Democrat Party, who up until just recently, was essentially broke, just got some very bad news today from reliable media ally, CBS News.As the majority of Alabama Republicans believe that the allegations against Judge Roy Moore are untrue, he now takes a commanding lead over radical leftist Democrat Doug Jones per a new CBS News poll.The CBS News/YouGov poll, conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, surveyed 1,037 Alabamians registered to vote in Alabama. It further segmented the poll results into some results among registered voters and others among likely voters. Among registered voters, the margin of error is 3.8 percent. Among likely voters, the margin of error is 4.8 percent. The results of the election, with Moore leading Jones, were broken down to likely voters.Another part broken down to likely voters was polling specifically about the allegations about Moore. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a significant number of Alabamians do not believe the allegations against Moore one bit. Breitbart Despite all of the money Democrats have poured into the race, Alabama voters are not buying the media reports that decades ago, several women were victims of Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore, who they are now accusing of being a sexual predator. After many of the women s claims were called into question, including the claim made by Beverly Young-Nelson, whose stepson said she s lying about having a sexual encounter with the judge, and whose yearbook that was allegedly signed by Roy Moore has been called into question as a forgery. And then there s another accuser, Tina Johnson who lost her 12-year old son to her mother in a nasty custody battle, in a case where Roy Moore represented her mother. It s entirely plausible that Roy Moore s sexual assault accuser, Tina Johnson, had an ax to grind with Moore, the person who was able to successfully prove to the court that Johnson was unfit to care for him.To add insult to injury, only yesterday, President Trump appeared with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to announce record-breaking fundraising of over $120 million, which McDaniel attributed to President Trump.Watch: ;left-news;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WEEK #13 of NFL HELL CONTINUES: “Lots of Empty Seats For The Biggest Game of The NFL Week”;"Here are just a few examples of the empty or mostly empty NFL stands across America today:The stands appear to be mostly empty for the Atlanta Falcons V. Minnesota Vikings game, in what NFL fans were calling the biggest game of the week on Twitter.Lots of empty seats for the biggest game of the NFL week pic.twitter.com/kQDZySMFtU Brian Handke (@brianhandke) December 3, 2017Here s another shot of the empty seats at the Atlanta vs. Minnesota game in Atlanta:Caption: ""What s up with ALL the empty seats? 30% empty? Could it be tix are too expensive? Fans don t want to pay the PSL?"" (https://t.co/ceK9VSHPuT) pic.twitter.com/ZftCoDwwr8 Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) December 3, 2017It appears as though Jacksonville fans found something better to do than watch the Indiana vs. Jacksonville matchup.Pic via an Indiana talking head #INDvsJAX RT @cliffWISH8: available for the Jags playoff push. I repeat. pic.twitter.com/XfcVfkh5EJ Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) December 3, 2017Here s a close up of the empty seats in Jacksonville:What are those? pic.twitter.com/SYqmwKZyBl Jags Ghost (@Battle4Duval) December 3, 2017Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, a lot of empty seats can be found again this week in Chicago s Soldier Field, that is usually a sold out venue:There are some empty seats here at Soldier Field. It looks like the Lions game two weeks ago: pic.twitter.com/rEfsrT0hD9 Adam Jahns (@adamjahns) December 3, 2017Here s a close up of the empty seats in the upper deck at the Bears game:A lot of empty seats in the upper deck today. #Bears pic.twitter.com/eqdnpdDbl7 Zack Pearson (@Zack_Pearson) December 3, 2017The north end zone doesn t look any better:Good amount of empty seats in north end zone. pic.twitter.com/YQJwnpvwGv Jeff Dickerson (@DickersonESPN) December 3, 2017I know that I am a goat, but do I smell that bad? 49ers at Bears. Media deck. @EmptySeatsPics pic.twitter.com/7JiTEczWXh prof. goat (@ProfGoat) December 3, 2017The Buffalo Bills played the NE Patriots, 2017 Superbowl championship team, and former NFL fans didn t seem to care enough to show up and watch the game :A lot of empty seats came out to see the Bills play the Patriots today @EmptySeatsPics pic.twitter.com/NgGSwdEkqP Darin Weeks (@DarinJWeeks) December 3, 2017 ";left-news;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump tweets about Russia probe spark warnings from lawmakers;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into “peril” by commenting on the probe. “I would just say this with the president: There’s an ongoing criminal investigation,” Graham said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril,” he added. On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser - a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given. That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI.” Legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then pressured Comey not to investigate him, that could bolster a charge of obstruction of justice. Trump’s attorney, John Dowd, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that he had drafted the Saturday tweet and made “a mistake” when he composed it. “The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea,” Dowd said. “Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand.” Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact that Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged. Dowd also clouded the issue by saying that then-Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn in January that Flynn told FBI agents the same thing he told Pence, and that McGahn reported his conversation with Yates to Trump. He said Yates did not characterize Flynn’s conduct as a legal violation. Part of Yates’ testimony in May before a Senate committee appears to conflict with Dowd’s account. She said at the time that she declined to answer McGahn when he asked how Flynn had done in his FBI interview. Dowd said he stood by his version of events. Dowd said it was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president. “I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “I’m sorry I misled people.” Yates did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a lawyer for McGahn did not respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The series of tweets came after a dramatic turn of events on Friday in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, just weeks before Trump entered the White House. Flynn also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russia before the president took office. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she believed the indictments in the investigation so far and Trump’s “continual tweets” pointed toward an obstruction of justice case. “I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That’s obstruction of justice,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime,” Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the ABC program “This Week.” The Russia matter has dogged Trump’s first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax bill. Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides. Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion. Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn. “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Trump said on Twitter on Sunday. On CBS, Graham criticized Comey, saying he believed the former FBI director made some “very, very wrong” decisions during his tenure. But Graham also said Trump should be careful about his tweets. “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I’d watch this,” Graham said. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;McConnell optimistic of tax bill deal between Senate and House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday that he is optimistic the Senate and House of Representatives will reach a conference agreement on tax legislation that can be signed into law by President Donald Trump. “We’ll be able to get to an agreement in the conference. I’m very optimistic about it,” the Kentucky Republican told ABC’s “This Week” program. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox - Republicans cut side deals to push through U.S. Senate tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans made last-minute changes to their tax bill to secure enough votes to pass the sweeping legislation on Saturday and move on to negotiations this week on a final measure with Republicans in the House of Representatives. The deals enabled leadership to get four wavering Republican senators on board with the legislation by addressing issues such as deductions for state and local property taxes and the tax treatment of so-called pass-through enterprises. Republicans also agreed to changes to help pay for the deals, including higher tax rates on the repatriation of U.S. corporate profits held overseas. Following are some of the changes: STATE AND LOCAL PROPERTY TAXES: Senator Susan Collins got Senate Republican leaders to include a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes in the legislation, which eliminates a similar deduction for state and local income and sales taxes. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, or JCT, estimates that the change will mean the loss of an additional $148 billion in federal revenue over the next decade, compared with a legislative proposal approved earlier by the Senate Budget Committee. PASS-THROUGHS: Under pressure from Senators Ron Johnson and Steve Daines, Senate Republican leaders increased to 23 percent from 17.4 percent a deduction for the owners of pass-through enterprises including small businesses, S-corporations, partnerships and sole proprietorships. JCT estimated revenue loss versus earlier legislative proposal: $114 billion. FULL EXPENSING: Senator Jeff Flake, who had been a holdout over deficit concerns, agreed to vote “yes” after Republican leaders did away with an abrupt end to the full business expensing of capital investments after five years. Instead, the bill phases out full expensing in 20 percent increments over four years, beginning in year six. Flake said Congress would not have been able to suddenly eliminate full expensing and that benefit would have been left to bleed red ink for years to come. JCT revenue loss estimate versus earlier legislative proposal: $34 billion. MEDICAL EXPENSES: Collins also added language to reduce the threshold for deducting unreimbursed medical expenses for two years to 7.5 percent of household income from 10 percent. JCT estimated revenue loss versus earlier legislative proposal: $4.6 billion. RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Collins persuaded Republican leaders to retain catch-up contributions to retirement accounts for church, charity, school and public employees. No immediate JCT revenue impact estimate. INDIVIDUAL ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Republicans rescinded an earlier provision to repeal the individual AMT but increased exemption amounts and phase-out thresholds to make the tax less onerous. JCT estimated revenue gain versus earlier legislative proposal: $133 billion over a decade. REPATRIATION: Senate Republicans increased tax rates on the repatriation of U.S. corporate profits held overseas to 14.5 percent for liquid assets and 7.5 percent for illiquid holdings, up from 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively. JCT estimated revenue gain versus earlier legislative proposal: $113 billion. CORPORATE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Republicans decided to retain this tax, after initially proposing its repeal. JCT estimated revenue gain versus earlier legislative proposal: $40.3 billion. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Beautiful Video Honoring The Life Of Rosa Parks Reminds Everyone Of DISGUSTING Way President Obama Made Anniversary of Parks’ Brave Act About Him ;Yesterday, President Trump took to Twitter to honor the 62-year anniversary of civil rights icon, Rosa Parks. President Trump tweeted, 62 years ago this week, a brave seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama uttered one word that changed history His message was accompanied by a beautiful video narrated by the President that featured the courageous act of defiance against a bigoted bus driver who attempted to make her sit at the back of the bus, simply because she was black. President Trump s video is a beautiful tribute to a woman who, much like Donald Trump, was a fighter. She wasn t looking for someone else to fight for her, she wasn t organizing a mob to fight back against injustice, she stood alone, she fought back, and because of her, America won. (Sound familiar?)62 years ago this week, a brave seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama uttered one word that changed history pic.twitter.com/eOvCBcMIKX Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017Five years ago, President Obama also honored the legacy of Rosa Parks. Obama, however, took a much different approach. Instead of focusing on Rosa Parks, and her contribution to the civil rights movement, Barack Obama posted a narcissistic photo of himself sitting on the bus, that s parked at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, MI. Apparently, Barack Obama felt that he deserved the spotlight on the 57th and again on the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks brave act of defiance.Here s how the former President Barack Obama honored Rosa Parks on her 57th anniversary:Today is the 57th Anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Pic: President Obama on Rosa Parks bus pic.twitter.com/cFaKOYDt White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) December 1, 2012Here s how President Barack Obama honored Rosa Parks again, on her 58th anniversary:Michelle was so impressed by her husband s arrogance, that she too, tweeted a picture of her husband to honor the life of Rosa Parks:For the record, there are plenty of photos of Rosa Parks that were available for the President and First Lady to use in their tweets.But somehow, the Obama s always seemed to take a moment that should belong to someone else, and make it about them.It s not the first time Barack Obama honored himself instead of the person he claimed to be honoring. We ve posted several images of Barack Obama honoring himself instead of the activist, hero or legend he was supposed to honoring.Here are just a few examples:Although he never mentions him by name or even bothers to circle him in this photo, where Barack Obama is clearly the center of attention, this tweet was supposed to be honoring the late golf icon, Arnold Palmer:Here's to The King who was as extraordinary on the links as he was generous to others. Thanks for the memories, Arnold. pic.twitter.com/UlyfpIBOL2 President Obama (@POTUS44) September 26, 2016In this tweet, Barack Obama says, He shook up the world, and the world s a better place for it. Fortunately, he added Rest in Peace , otherwise, his social media followers would have no reason to believe that this tweet was supposed to be a tribute to the deceased boxing legend, Muhammad Ali, as once again, Obama appears to be the focus of the image with a photo of Ali in the background.He shook up the world, and the world's better for it. Rest in peace, Champ. pic.twitter.com/z1yM3sSLH3 President Obama (@POTUS44) June 4, 2016The former President honored Nelson Mandela by posting a picture of himself in the jail cell where Mandela was imprisoned:Compassion, understanding, and reconciliation on #MandelaDay, we are reminded of the promise for a better world. pic.twitter.com/vOpRlM4gwf White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) July 18, 2016And finally, on Pearl Harbor Day in Barack Obama honored the dead, by posting a picture of himself on Facebook walking down the stairs next to the Pearl Harbor Memorial.;left-news;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Embattled Alabama Republican Senate candidate ahead in CBS poll;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Embattled Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore led his Democratic opponent by six percentage points in a CBS News poll released on Sunday, with most Alabama Republicans saying the allegations of sexual misconduct against him are false. Moore was leading Democrat Doug Jones 49 to 43 percent among voters likely to cast ballots in the Dec. 12 special election, CBS said. The contest was even among registered voters, it said. Republican lawmakers in Washington, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, have distanced themselves from Moore and called for him to step down from the race after he was accused by several women of sexual assault and misconduct when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the allegations. But McConnell said on Sunday that if Moore is elected, the Senate will swear him in and then the Senate ethics committee would decide whether to investigate the allegations. “We’ll swear in whoever’s elected and see where we are at that point,” McConnell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We can’t stop him from being seated,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who was also interviewed on CBS. “If there was an (ethics) investigation and all six members of the committee said they believe he was a child molester, that would be a problem.” According to the CBS poll, 71 percent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Moore are false, and believe that Democrats and the media are behind the accusations. Another poll a day earlier had Jones barely ahead. The Washington Post-Schar School poll said Jones’ support among likely voters stood at 50 percent, versus Moore’s 47 percent. President Donald Trump originally backed Moore’s opponent in the Republican primary, Senator Luther Strange. But Trump has since defended Moore, noting Moore has denied allegations of sexual misconduct. The president says he does not want Moore’s Democratic opponent to win. Trump is slated to travel to a rally in Pensacola, Florida on Friday — a city just across the state line from Alabama — just days ahead of the Alabama election. The timing and location gives Trump an opportunity to express support for Moore. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate and are eager to maintain their advantage to advance Trump’s legislative agenda on taxes, healthcare and other priorities. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. allies fret as 'guillotine' hangs over Tillerson;BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - On the eve of his trip to Europe, Rex Tillerson gave a speech last week that European allies had waited months to hear: an “ironclad” promise of U.S. support to its oldest allies. The relief in European capitals lasted barely a day as reports surfaced of a White House plan to oust the U.S. secretary of state, plunging America’s friends back into confusion over President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The uncertainty is particularly acute given Washington’s leading role in crises in North Korea and Syria. “Just as Tillerson comes to Brussels to give a public statement of support that the EU and NATO have wanted all along, it seems he has no mandate, that the guillotine is hanging over his head,” said an EU official involved in diplomacy with White House officials. “It leaves Europe just as doubtful as before about Trump.” U.S. officials said on Thursday the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson but Trump said on Friday he was not leaving and the secretary of state said on Saturday the reports were untrue. European leaders yearn for stability in U.S. foreign policy. They are troubled by Trump’s “America first” rhetoric and inconsistent statements on NATO and the European Union. In addition, Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accord and his decision not to certify Iran’s compliance with a nuclear deal undermine European priorities. “The chaos in the administration doesn’t help in the current geopolitical climate,” said a senior French diplomat. Early last week, Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, delivered a long address in support of Europe in Washington more akin to traditional U.S. policy. “The United States remains committed to our enduring relationship with Europe. Our security commitments to European allies are ironclad,” he told a think tank. He said he would convey that message to the European Union and NATO. He is set to visit Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday and Paris on Friday. The question is whether European officials believe him, given tensions during his April visit to Europe, when Reuters reported Tillerson initially planned to skip a NATO meeting in Brussels and then only attended under pressure from allies. “If there were expectations that Tillerson might evolve into a counterweight to Trump, someone who could pass on messages from partners and exert moderating influence over American foreign policy – those expectations have been disappointed,” said Niels Annen, foreign policy spokesman for Germany’s Social Democrats in parliament. “On his watch, the State Department has become a non-actor.” Despite Tillerson’s pledge to reform the U.S. foreign service, European governments take a dim view of how he has sought to cut costs at the State Department, with top diplomatic posts unfilled almost a year into the administration. The French have gone around Tillerson to develop contacts with U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, while the EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini has gone directly to Vice President Mike Pence. Berlin has focused on Capitol Hill, as well as Kelly, McMaster and Mattis. Yet it is unclear if that access translates into a direct impact on Trump’s foreign policy, diplomats said. There is hope that if Pompeo is appointed he could rejuvenate the State Department after Tillerson, who is seen as ineffective, diplomats said. Pompeo is an unknown quantity in Europe but is viewed as closer to Trump. “We may be looking at a larger dose of Trump at the State Department,” if Pompeo did get the job, said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin office. One European diplomat said Tillerson was in a difficult position from the outset because the Trump administration was hostile to Iran and brought in a team of generals who took a hard line, “so it never left Tillerson much room.” In addition, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has taken a leading role in formulating policy on Middle East peace. But Europeans see Trump as a blizzard of conflicting signals. At a NATO summit in Brussels in May, the president publicly admonished European leaders for their low defense spending and threatened to reduce support, only to announce a jump in U.S. military spending in Europe months later. Things may only become more unpredictable, diplomats say. European diplomats see Tillerson and Mattis as instrumental in talking Trump out of making any rash decisions over North Korea and its nuclear program, given administration comments about “utterly destroying” the country. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;McConnell says U.S. government shutdown over DACA 'ridiculous';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday it would be “ridiculous” for a fight with Democrats over immigration issues to result in a standoff over a year-end spending bill and prompt a shutdown of the federal government. “There’s not going to be a government shutdown,” McConnell told ABC’s “This Week” program. “It’s just not going to happen.” As tensions rise between the two parties over the spending bill, McConnell called the Democrats’ position “untenable,” saying Congress has until March to address the status of so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. With funding for the federal government due to run out on Friday, Republican leaders need to put together the votes for a spending bill. But Democrats have said they will insist on protections for Dreamers as the price of their support for a spending bill, setting the stage for a potential showdown. “That’s a ridiculous position,” McConnell told ABC. Although Republicans control both chambers of the U.S. Congress, at least some Democratic votes will be needed to pass the spending bill. In September, Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which shields young illegal immigrants from deportation. He gave Congress six months to find a solution. “I don’t think that Democrats would be very smart to say they want to shut down the government over a non-emergency that we can address anytime between now and March,” McConnell said. “That’s a very untenable position.” Trump and Republican leaders want measures strengthening border enforcement to accompany any relief for the Dreamers, a stance Democrats reject. McConnell said he was also optimistic that House and Senate Republicans could agree on unified tax legislation to send to President Donald Trump after the Senate approved its own bill on Saturday. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump lawyer Dowd says he drafted tweet on Flynn firing: Axios;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer took responsibility on Sunday for a tweet about the firing of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a central figure in the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In an interview with Axios, John Dowd said the tweet was “my mistake” and that he drafted the tweet that raised more questions about whether there had been attempts to obstruct the Russia investigation. “I’m out of the tweeting business,” Dowd told Axios. “I did not mean to break news.” ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House open to small changes on corporate tax rate: budget chief Mulvaney;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is willing to consider a small increase on the corporate tax rate if it is needed to finalize the bill in the U.S. Congress, White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney said on Sunday. Mulvaney made his comments after President Donald Trump suggested on Saturday that the corporate tax rate could end up at 22 percent once the Senate and House of Representatives reconcile or “conference” their respective versions of the legislation, even though both bills currently stand at 20 percent. “My understanding is that the Senate (bill) has a 20 percent rate now. The House has a 20 percent rate now. We’re happy with both of those numbers,” Mulvaney said in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “If something small happens in conference that gets us across the finish line, we’ll look at it on a case-by-case basis. But I don’t think you’ll see any significant change in our position on the corporate taxes,” Mulvaney said. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson says no truth to reports that he is being replaced;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Saturday denied that he was leaving his post to be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Asked if there was any truth to the multiple reports about him this week, Tillerson told Reuters: “None.” “People need to get better sources,” he said in a brief interview at the State Department ahead of a dinner to celebrate the recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors awards. Tillerson said he hoped to be at the same reception a year from now. “I’m going to be here as long as I can be effective and get something done,” he said. “We’re getting a lot done.” Senior administration officials on Thursday said President Donald Trump was mulling a plan to oust the top U.S. diplomat, whose relationship with the president has been strained by Tillerson’s softer line on North Korea and other policy differences. Trump denied the reports on Friday, saying in a tweet that he worked well with Tillerson and that the diplomat was not going anywhere. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FLASHBACK To Time When ABC News’ #LyinBrianRoss Tried To Tie Aurora, CO Mass Shooter To Tea Party [VIDEO];As the name of the suspect, identified as 24-year-old James Holmes, first emerged Friday morning, Ross reported on ABC News that he d found a web page for a Jim Holmes on a Colorado Tea Party site.Here a transcript of the discussion on live television between George Stephanopoulos and ABC News lyin Brian Ross: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to go to Brian Ross here, because, Brian, you ve been looking- investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You ve found something that might be significant.BRIAN ROSS: There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well. Talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don t know if this the same Jim Holmes. But it s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, we ll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.Watch:After Lyin Brian Ross unsubstantiated and completely bogus report about the identity of a man who just shot and killed several people, that could have put the life of tea party member Jim Holmes in danger, Ross simply apologized.Fox News That man is not the same Jim Holmes. The Colorado Tea Party Patriots, whose website Ross was looking at, put out a statement criticizing Ross for even floating the possibility noting the Jim Holmes with the Tea Party group is 52 years old and not the same person. The attempts of some media organizations to characterize the shooter as a Tea Party member without having made any effort to contact our organization are shameless and reprehensible, the group said in a statement.Ross clarified on air Friday, as ABC News issued a formal apology. An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted, the statement said.On air later in the morning, Ross also said: An earlier report that I had was incorrect that he was connected with the Tea Party. In fact, that s a different Jim Holmes. He was not connected to the Tea Party and what we do know about him is he is a 24-year-old white male who went to Colorado for a Ph.D.Here s Lyin Brian Ross apology after he got caught reporting fake news about the Michael Flynn s meeting with the Russian Ambassador while President Trump was a candidate .;left-news;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn;(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday he never asked former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn is the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence last year’s U.S. presidential election. Trump fired Comey from his post in May. “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Trump tweeted. ;politicsNews;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; FBI Agents Destroy Donald Trump After He Attacks The Agency And James Comey;Donald Trump went on quite a tweetstorm this morning, lashing out former Director of the FBI James Comey and the agency. Trump is losing his sh*t after his former national security adviser flipped in the investigation into any possible collusion between his campaign and Russia. On his former FBI Director, Trump called him a liar, writing, I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! Then he claimed his FBI is the worst in History! and said it was in tatters. After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters worst in History! he wrote. But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness. After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017That tweet prompted a statement from the President of the FBI Agents Association in a series of tweets. Every day, FBI Special Agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats, FBIAA President Thomas O Connor wrote. Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution. This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world, he continued. FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WEEK #13 of NFL HELL CONTINUES: “Lots of Empty Seats For The Biggest Game of The NFL Week”;"Here are just a few examples of the empty or mostly empty NFL stands across America today:The stands appear to be mostly empty for the Atlanta Falcons V. Minnesota Vikings game, in what NFL fans were calling the biggest game of the week on Twitter.Lots of empty seats for the biggest game of the NFL week pic.twitter.com/kQDZySMFtU Brian Handke (@brianhandke) December 3, 2017Here s another shot of the empty seats at the Atlanta vs. Minnesota game in Atlanta:Caption: ""What s up with ALL the empty seats? 30% empty? Could it be tix are too expensive? Fans don t want to pay the PSL?"" (https://t.co/ceK9VSHPuT) pic.twitter.com/ZftCoDwwr8 Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) December 3, 2017It appears as though Jacksonville fans found something better to do than watch the Indiana vs. Jacksonville matchup.Pic via an Indiana talking head #INDvsJAX RT @cliffWISH8: available for the Jags playoff push. I repeat. pic.twitter.com/XfcVfkh5EJ Empty Seats Galore (@EmptySeatsPics) December 3, 2017Here s a close up of the empty seats in Jacksonville:What are those? pic.twitter.com/SYqmwKZyBl Jags Ghost (@Battle4Duval) December 3, 2017Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, a lot of empty seats can be found again this week in Chicago s Soldier Field, that is usually a sold out venue:There are some empty seats here at Soldier Field. It looks like the Lions game two weeks ago: pic.twitter.com/rEfsrT0hD9 Adam Jahns (@adamjahns) December 3, 2017Here s a close up of the empty seats in the upper deck at the Bears game:A lot of empty seats in the upper deck today. #Bears pic.twitter.com/eqdnpdDbl7 Zack Pearson (@Zack_Pearson) December 3, 2017The north end zone doesn t look any better:Good amount of empty seats in north end zone. pic.twitter.com/YQJwnpvwGv Jeff Dickerson (@DickersonESPN) December 3, 2017I know that I am a goat, but do I smell that bad? 49ers at Bears. Media deck. @EmptySeatsPics pic.twitter.com/7JiTEczWXh prof. goat (@ProfGoat) December 3, 2017The Buffalo Bills played the NE Patriots, 2017 Superbowl championship team, and former NFL fans didn t seem to care enough to show up and watch the game :A lot of empty seats came out to see the Bills play the Patriots today @EmptySeatsPics pic.twitter.com/NgGSwdEkqP Darin Weeks (@DarinJWeeks) December 3, 2017 ";politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘MR FAST AND FURIOUS’ ERIC HOLDER Destroyed on Twitter After Hitting Back At Trump for Slamming FBI; Mr Fast and Furious fired back at President Trump who claimed the FBI s reputation is in tatters thanks to former FBI Director James Comey. He certainly wasn t expecting to be slammed back by people on twitter. Holder and Obama have obviously decided to go full out to attack President Trump. They just don t realize who they re dealing with The American people and President Trump aren t sitting back and letting these thugs attack them Holder said the FBI has more integrity than the White House, which is facing increased scrutiny as special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into Russia s meddling in the 2016 election heats up.Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI s reputation is not in tatters . It s composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You ll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 3, 2017 Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI s reputation is not in tatters. It s composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You ll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now, Eric Holder tweeted Sunday.1. Desperately trying to message what remains of your crooked network eh, Eric? Comey out, McCabe & Strzok chained to their desks and under surveillance. Dear me. Anyone else who got involved with you must be VERY nervous right now. Imperator_Rex (@Imperator_Rex3) December 3, 2017Hillary was supposed to win, that is why they believed they could act with impunity, their arrogant sloppiness brought them down. They had it all planned and then SHE LOST! Game over, now we get to see some real justice done. Jennifer Hoffman (@Jenniferhoffman) December 3, 2017 pic.twitter.com/GIPxxShDw4 Andy Weiss (@AndyWeiss11) December 3, 2017This coming from the guy that sat back and watched as our uranium was being sold to the very ones that you as democrats decry as our foe. Russia, russia, russia. Oh and there s that whole running guns thing too. Culper Ring (@ring_culper) December 3, 2017HOLDER RECENTLY CALLED PRESIDENT TRUMP A DEROGATORY NAME IN ANOTHER RANT:The information below is disturbing and should be a wake up call for Americans that the left isn t taking losing lying down. This is war A war for the heart of America!The quote below from Steve Bannon also goes for the left and the radical elitists like Holder He continuously mocks President Trump in the interview below by calling him orange man . Holder is seething with contempt and hate. It s shameful behavior from a man who was once a very powerful member of a presidential administration in America. He exposes himself for the hateful racist we knew he was. This is scary and should be a big reminder that the war isn t over with these people. Keep up the fight!Former Attorney General Eric Holder says he is glad to be unshackled from his old job because employment with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee lets him lash out at Republicans like orange man President Trump.Politico recently went on the road with the NDRC s chairman in Virginia for get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor.An interview at Rising Mount Zion Baptist Church in Richmond covered everything from NDRC s efforts to raise over $30 million for gubernatorial races to Mr. Trump s alleged role in empowering neo-Nazis and white nationalists. I probably would not have [attacked Republicans like] that while I was attorney general, he continued. I didn t have an orange man who I was serving under, but, I mean, I would not have said that about a former president, for instance, while I was attorney general. But now, I m just a citizen and I ve got the full range of my voice back. The former attorney general also told Rising Mount Zion congregants that Mr. Northam s battle with Republican Ed Gillespie was important because debts have to be repaid. Read more: WT;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MSNBC’S JOY REID Gets a Huge Dose of KARMA from an Unlikely Source…Apologizes on Social Media;"Now this is sweet KARMA! If you ve ever watched Joy Reid interview Maxine Waters on MSNBC then you know the bitterness and hatefulness runs deep with both of them. Well, as it turns out, Reid has a nasty past of bashing people by accusing them of being gay while married. Reid relentlessly was homophobic and downright nasty to former Florida governor Charlie Crist:MSNBC host Joy Reid apologized amid social media outrage over homophobic blog posts she wrote between 2007 and 2009.In the articles unearthed by left-leaning Paste magazine, Reid mocked former Florida governor Charlie Crist as Miss Charlie 17 times when she was an editor at black-centric website the Grio.1/x From 2007 to 2009 @joyannreid authored a dozen homophobic posts not only attempting to out Charlie Crist as gay, she attacked & mocked him for being so.She repeatedly referred to him as ""Miss Charlie"" and tagged posts about him under ""gay politicians."" (thread) pic.twitter.com/tRYvJ3lTc8 James M (@Jamie_Maz) November 30, 2017Reid thought it was hilarious to ridicule a man by suggesting he s a homosexual and then trying to out him publicly, as seen in tweets posted by Twitter user @Jamie_Maz.6/x Joy writes a post on Crist under the tag ""not gay politicians"" and shares her awful opinions on gay men who get married. pic.twitter.com/ZX2sOGDvL6 James M (@Jamie_Maz) November 30, 2017 Miss Charlie, Miss Charlie. Stop pretending, brother. It s okay that you don t go for the ladies, Reid crowed in a 2007 post about Crist.8/x Joy constantly refers to Crist mockingly as ""Miss Charlie"" and insinuates that his marriage is a fraud to cover up his being gay. pic.twitter.com/HMcGE1LlPr James M (@Jamie_Maz) November 30, 2017Crist was a Republican when Joy mocked his sexuality. In 2012, he switched over to the Democratic Party, so they re on the same side now, as it were.After being widely slammed on Twitter, Reid finally apologized in a statement to the press 10 years after the hypocritical anti-gay attacks. I deeply apologize to Congressman Crist, who was the target of my thoughtlessness, Reid wrote. This note is my apology to all who are disappointed by the content of blogs I wrote a decade ago, for which my choice of words and tone have legitimately been criticized. She added: Re-reading those old blog posts, I am disappointed in myself. I apologize to those who also are disappointed in me. Life can be humbling. It often is. Crist has never come out as gay, and he has been married twice to women. And if he were gay, that would actually make him a liberal hero according to leftist orthodoxy.Reid also suggested Crist married women to promote his career. Meanwhile, Reid never condemned Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren for falsely claiming she was Native American to get advance her career.HATEFUL DEMOCRATS AREN T HARD TO FIND THESE DAYS This woman just happens to be on a major news network spewing her vile hatred every day. Just think a younger version of Maxine Waters.";politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CONFUSED PROTESTERS Swarm Outside Trump NYC Fundraiser: ‘Tax the Rich, Not Working People’;The protesters in NYC must be confused They yelled tax the rich, not working people . Aren t the rich working people too? Many of the rich worked like crazy to be where they are today. Also, the rich pay plenty in taxes already. Don t you love how these people don t want anyone to be successful but want them to give away their hard-earned money?Dozens of protesters yelling shame gathered across the street from Cipriani on East 42nd Street early Saturday where President Trump was to attend a breakfast fundraiser. Members of SEIU aka Obama s Purple Army were out in force doing what they ve been trained to do PROTESTPresidential motorcade departs Cipriani earlier today. We will have the story later on @NY1. pic.twitter.com/uw6kWHdmH0 Shannan Ferry (@ShannanFerry) December 2, 2017 New York hates Trump, several protesters shouted. I believe it s time to stop lining the pockets of the rich and stealing from the poor, said John Eng, a 54-year-old real estate agent from Manhattan who was holding a sign declaring, The poor will have to eat the rich. The protesters were particularly enraged by the Senate s early-morning passage of a $1.2 trillion tax reform bill supported by Trump. A few shouted Kill the bill, don t kill us. That tax plan is an abomination, said Melissa Carpenter, a 51-year-old lawyer from Bayside who wore a Guy Fawkes mask for the occasion. He has some balls to come here. Read more NYP;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRATS Get DEVASTATING News After Spending $10.1 MILLION To Defeat Roy Moore In AL Senate Race;Roll Call Democrat Doug Jones drastically outraised GOP nominee Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate race, new campaign finance documents show.Jones raised nearly six times Moore s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent. Jones raked in nearly $10.2 million compared to Jones $1.8 million. Jones also spent roughly 5 times as much as Moore during that period, nearly $8.7 million compared to Moore s $1.7 million.The Democrat Party, who up until just recently, was essentially broke, just got some very bad news today from reliable media ally, CBS News.As the majority of Alabama Republicans believe that the allegations against Judge Roy Moore are untrue, he now takes a commanding lead over radical leftist Democrat Doug Jones per a new CBS News poll.The CBS News/YouGov poll, conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, surveyed 1,037 Alabamians registered to vote in Alabama. It further segmented the poll results into some results among registered voters and others among likely voters. Among registered voters, the margin of error is 3.8 percent. Among likely voters, the margin of error is 4.8 percent. The results of the election, with Moore leading Jones, were broken down to likely voters.Another part broken down to likely voters was polling specifically about the allegations about Moore. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a significant number of Alabamians do not believe the allegations against Moore one bit. Breitbart Despite all of the money Democrats have poured into the race, Alabama voters are not buying the media reports that decades ago, several women were victims of Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore, who they are now accusing of being a sexual predator. After many of the women s claims were called into question, including the claim made by Beverly Young-Nelson, whose stepson said she s lying about having a sexual encounter with the judge, and whose yearbook that was allegedly signed by Roy Moore has been called into question as a forgery. And then there s another accuser, Tina Johnson who lost her 12-year old son to her mother in a nasty custody battle, in a case where Roy Moore represented her mother. It s entirely plausible that Roy Moore s sexual assault accuser, Tina Johnson, had an ax to grind with Moore, the person who was able to successfully prove to the court that Johnson was unfit to care for him.To add insult to injury, only yesterday, President Trump appeared with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel to announce record-breaking fundraising of over $120 million, which McDaniel attributed to President Trump.Watch: ;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Classless Obama Continues to Shamelessly Shadow Trump: ‘We have a temporary lack of American leadership’;Lack of leadership? How about pot calling the kettle brown? Obama was at the helm of the MOST leaderless presidency EVER! He couldn t make a move unless it was to line his pockets or promote his communist ideology. What a joke that he s shadowing President Trump by going overseas. Lou Hobbs and Steve Forbes had choice words for Obama last week on his effort to be relevant (see below)NOTE TO OBAMA: WE DITCHED THE GLOBAL WARMING SCAM! WHAT S THERE TO LEAD?While speaking to a group of business leaders in Paris, former President Barack Obama said there is a temporary absence of American leadership when it comes to tackling climate change. I grant you that at the moment we have a temporary absence of American leadership on the issue, the former president noted, which was met with laughter from the room full of French former ministers and CEOs at the invite-only event, according to Reuters.However, he noted, you re seeing American companies and states and cities continuing to work to meet targets and stay on track.According to ABC News, the swipe at the current administration was part of a speech Obama delivered at the event, Fear Less, Innovate More. HERE S WHAT WE D LIKE OBAMA TO KNOW:LOU DOBBS AND STEVE FORBES HAVE A MESSAGE FOR OBAMA:Former President Barack Obama embarked on an Asia trip this week, and Fox Business Lou Dobbs went off on Obama tonight for comments aimed at President Trump. Our favorite comment goes to Steve Forbes who said, He doesn t get that he doesn t matter anymore. Ouch! Please see the video below of Nigel Evans who says what we d like to say to Obama.THE OBAMAS ARE TAKING OVER FOR THE CLINTONS THEY NEVER GO AWAY!Obama is obviously thinking he still matters He rudely took swipes at President Trump:While in India, Obama offered this advice: Think before you speak, think before you tweet. He also invoked his own social media follower numbers compared to other people who use it more often. Dobbs slammed Obama for his criticisms of his predecessor, and guest Steve Forbes said Obama doesn t realize he doesn t matter anymore. Dobbs then said this: I think U.S. Marshals should follow him, and any time he wants to go follow the President like he is, and behave I mean, this is just bad manners. It s boorish, it s absurd, he doesn t realize how foolish he looks. I mean, he should be brought back by the Marshals. Isn t there some law that says presidents shouldn t be attacking sitting presidents? OBAMA SHOULD TAKE ADVICE FROM BRITISH MP NIGEL EVANS: When we stand up in this country and attack Donald Trump in an unseemly way we re actually attacking the American people. Conservative MP Nigel Evans tells those opposing Trump s state visit to get over it because he s the President of the United States .When you attack President Trump, you attack America ;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NFL CUTS FUNDS for Breast Cancer, Military Charity to Pay for Players’ $89 Million ‘Social Justice’ Activism;The NFL is toast They just caved to demands made by players to dump millions into a social justice boondoggle aimed at the black community. The problem is that the entire Black Lives Matter scam is a lie AND PLAYERS KNOW IT. There is now discord between players who feel differently about the kneeling protest. A lack of leadership by Goodell to put an end to the protests, has harmed the NFL irreparably . The NFL is just another social justice program BOYCOTT!WHAT EXACTLY IS SOCIAL JUSTICE ?The NFL met with a group of players and reached an agreement in principle late Wednesday night to partner on a plan to address social justice issues considered important to African-American communities, sources told ESPN.The unprecedented agreement calls for the league to contribute $89 million over seven years to projects dealing with criminal justice reform, law enforcement/community relations and education.During a conference call Wednesday night, Malcolm Jenkins and Anquan Boldin, who lead roughly 40 players who have negotiated with the league office about demonstrations during the national anthem, guided the group through the highlights of the package, which represents the NFL s largest contribution to a social issue, surpassing that of Salute to Service or Breast Cancer Awareness/Crucial Catch.The partnership came a day after some players broke away from the Players Coalition because of their dissatisfaction with how Jenkins and Boldin have handled negotiations. Commissioner Roger Goodell, believing that an agreement was at hand, was furious when ESPN reported that players were breaking off, according to one source. But during an afternoon call, Jenkins asked that the commissioner and the owners continue to stand with the players and allow them to do important work in the community.NO END IN SIGHT FOR PROTESTS:The agreement does not include language calling for players to end protests during the national anthem in exchange for funds;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; ‘Ghost Of Witness Flipped’: Hilarious SNL Skit Takes Trump Into His Own Private Holiday Hell (VIDEO);By now, everyone knows that disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has flipped on Donald Trump. Of course, the good folks at Saturday Night Live, who have been mocking Trump relentlessly, couldn t resist using this to needle the notoriously thin -skinned, sorry excuse for a president. It also helps that we are in the midst of the holiday season, which enabled SNL to use a seasonal classic, A Christmas Carol, to poke fun at Trump.Alec Baldwin took up the mantle to play Trump again, who is visited by a fictional Michael Flynn (Mikey Day) in chains, and seems positively terrified of the Ghost of Michael Flynn, who appears to tell Trump, it s time to come clean for the good of the country. After that, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future line up to torture Trump in the Oval Office.The Ghost of Christmas Past is fired NBC host Billy Bush (Alex Moffat), of Trump s infamous grab em by the pussy tape. Then it was time for a shirtless Vladimir Putin (Beck Bennet) to arrive, to remind Trump of the fact that he wouldn t be president without help from the Russian government, and that he s about to have all of their efforts be for naught. The Ghost of Christmas Future is the best of all, with a positively wickedly delicious version of Hillary Clinton, played by Kate McKinnon, who gleefully says to Trump: You Donald, have given me the greatest Christmas gift of all! You have no idea how long I ve wanted to say this, lock him up! Lock him up indeed. This entire criminal administration belongs in jail. It will go from Flynn, to Pence, to Trump Jr., and then to Trump himself and then Hillary will really have the last laugh.;News;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FLASHBACK To Time When ABC News’ #LyinBrianRoss Tried To Tie Aurora, CO Mass Shooter To Tea Party [VIDEO];As the name of the suspect, identified as 24-year-old James Holmes, first emerged Friday morning, Ross reported on ABC News that he d found a web page for a Jim Holmes on a Colorado Tea Party site.Here a transcript of the discussion on live television between George Stephanopoulos and ABC News lyin Brian Ross: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to go to Brian Ross here, because, Brian, you ve been looking- investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You ve found something that might be significant.BRIAN ROSS: There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well. Talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don t know if this the same Jim Holmes. But it s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, we ll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.Watch:After Lyin Brian Ross unsubstantiated and completely bogus report about the identity of a man who just shot and killed several people, that could have put the life of tea party member Jim Holmes in danger, Ross simply apologized.Fox News That man is not the same Jim Holmes. The Colorado Tea Party Patriots, whose website Ross was looking at, put out a statement criticizing Ross for even floating the possibility noting the Jim Holmes with the Tea Party group is 52 years old and not the same person. The attempts of some media organizations to characterize the shooter as a Tea Party member without having made any effort to contact our organization are shameless and reprehensible, the group said in a statement.Ross clarified on air Friday, as ABC News issued a formal apology. An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted, the statement said.On air later in the morning, Ross also said: An earlier report that I had was incorrect that he was connected with the Tea Party. In fact, that s a different Jim Holmes. He was not connected to the Tea Party and what we do know about him is he is a 24-year-old white male who went to Colorado for a Ph.D.Here s Lyin Brian Ross apology after he got caught reporting fake news about the Michael Flynn s meeting with the Russian Ambassador while President Trump was a candidate .;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP SUGGESTS People Should Sue ABC NEWS After Massive Stock Market Crash Triggered By #FakeNews Report On Michael Flynn;President Trump is not giving ABC News a pass for their fake news story about Michael Flynn and his meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when Trump was a candidate running for office. The President is suggesting that ABC News needs to be held accountable for the drop in the Stock Market that was triggered by their fake news story. Trump tweeted: People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused many millions of dollars!People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused many millions of dollars! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017Here is a screen grab of the Brian Ross bombshell story that appeared on the ABC News Twitter account, stating that Michael Flyyn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians. that has now been deleted. There s a big difference between candidate Trump and President-elect Trump.After ABC News broke the General Flynn-Trump story, the stock market began its freefall.Americans were stunned by the news, and the media, who s been searching for blood in the water since Trump s inauguration, was in a feeding frenzy over the prospect of President Trump being caught directing General Flynn to meet with the Russians when he was actively campaigning. As it turns out, ABC News got it wrong. But no worries, several hours later, they clarified how the story should have read, and then later, after ABC News was getting destroyed on social media for their reckless reporting of fake news, they changed their clarification to a correction . Here are side-by-side screen grabs of the tweets by ABC News: ABC News announced today, that they were suspending Brian Ross for 4 weeks over his horrendous error that caused Americans to lose millions in the stock market. 4 weeks?.@ABC News statement on Michael Flynn report: https://t.co/sd9TeFiiLQ pic.twitter.com/UtHFHeuwcM ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017President Trump responded to the news of Brian Ross suspension with a brutal tweet to ABC: Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Beautiful Video Honoring The Life Of Rosa Parks Reminds Everyone Of DISGUSTING Way President Obama Made Anniversary of Parks’ Brave Act About Him ;Yesterday, President Trump took to Twitter to honor the 62-year anniversary of civil rights icon, Rosa Parks. President Trump tweeted, 62 years ago this week, a brave seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama uttered one word that changed history His message was accompanied by a beautiful video narrated by the President that featured the courageous act of defiance against a bigoted bus driver who attempted to make her sit at the back of the bus, simply because she was black. President Trump s video is a beautiful tribute to a woman who, much like Donald Trump, was a fighter. She wasn t looking for someone else to fight for her, she wasn t organizing a mob to fight back against injustice, she stood alone, she fought back, and because of her, America won. (Sound familiar?)62 years ago this week, a brave seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama uttered one word that changed history pic.twitter.com/eOvCBcMIKX Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017Five years ago, President Obama also honored the legacy of Rosa Parks. Obama, however, took a much different approach. Instead of focusing on Rosa Parks, and her contribution to the civil rights movement, Barack Obama posted a narcissistic photo of himself sitting on the bus, that s parked at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, MI. Apparently, Barack Obama felt that he deserved the spotlight on the 57th and again on the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks brave act of defiance.Here s how the former President Barack Obama honored Rosa Parks on her 57th anniversary:Today is the 57th Anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Pic: President Obama on Rosa Parks bus pic.twitter.com/cFaKOYDt White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) December 1, 2012Here s how President Barack Obama honored Rosa Parks again, on her 58th anniversary:Michelle was so impressed by her husband s arrogance, that she too, tweeted a picture of her husband to honor the life of Rosa Parks:For the record, there are plenty of photos of Rosa Parks that were available for the President and First Lady to use in their tweets.But somehow, the Obama s always seemed to take a moment that should belong to someone else, and make it about them.It s not the first time Barack Obama honored himself instead of the person he claimed to be honoring. We ve posted several images of Barack Obama honoring himself instead of the activist, hero or legend he was supposed to honoring.Here are just a few examples:Although he never mentions him by name or even bothers to circle him in this photo, where Barack Obama is clearly the center of attention, this tweet was supposed to be honoring the late golf icon, Arnold Palmer:Here's to The King who was as extraordinary on the links as he was generous to others. Thanks for the memories, Arnold. pic.twitter.com/UlyfpIBOL2 President Obama (@POTUS44) September 26, 2016In this tweet, Barack Obama says, He shook up the world, and the world s a better place for it. Fortunately, he added Rest in Peace , otherwise, his social media followers would have no reason to believe that this tweet was supposed to be a tribute to the deceased boxing legend, Muhammad Ali, as once again, Obama appears to be the focus of the image with a photo of Ali in the background.He shook up the world, and the world's better for it. Rest in peace, Champ. pic.twitter.com/z1yM3sSLH3 President Obama (@POTUS44) June 4, 2016The former President honored Nelson Mandela by posting a picture of himself in the jail cell where Mandela was imprisoned:Compassion, understanding, and reconciliation on #MandelaDay, we are reminded of the promise for a better world. pic.twitter.com/vOpRlM4gwf White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) July 18, 2016And finally, on Pearl Harbor Day in Barack Obama honored the dead, by posting a picture of himself on Facebook walking down the stairs next to the Pearl Harbor Memorial.;politics;03/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Countdown to Brexit breakthrough?;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May failed to secure a breakthrough in Brexit talks on Monday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Here is a timeline of the coming 10 days that will determine whether Britain avoids further costly delays in giving business assurances of a smooth exit from the European Union and of free trade with its biggest market in the future: May wants the EU to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations concerning relations after Britain s withdrawal on March 30, 2019. The EU will only do that if there is sufficient progress in agreeing divorce terms, notably on three key issues: a financial settlement, guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain and a soft border with Ireland. A deal on money is effectively done, EU officials said last week. There are indications of agreement on citizens rights. But opposition from key allies in Northern Ireland to treating the province differently from the mainland in a bid to maintain on open EU land border with Ireland scuppered a deal on Monday. As part of the choreography for a political deal, the EU set May an absolute deadline of Monday to provide new offers in time for the other EU leaders to approve a move to Phase 2 at a summit of the EU-27 on Friday, Dec. 15. Now, however, that has been pushed back by a few days, EU officials have conceded. May is pushing for a simultaneous, reciprocal guarantee from the EU of a soft transition and future trade deal, which she may use to show Britons what her compromises have secured. The EU wants to have firm British offers which the 27 can discuss before leaders commit. The result is some complex dance steps: Tuesday, Dec. 5 EU summit chair Donald Tusk, having canceled a visit to Jerusalem, had expected to call around EU leaders to discuss common guidelines for launching trade negotiations with Britain. This and a series of other steps are now on hold. Monday, Dec. 11 EU-27 sherpas meet to prepare the summit. Tuesday, Dec. 12 EU affairs ministers of EU-27 meet to prepare summit. Thursday, Dec. 14 4 p.m. - May attends routine EU summit in Brussels. Defence, social affairs, foreign affairs and migration are on the agenda. Friday, Dec. 15 After May has left, EU-27 leaders hold Brexit summit. They could take one comprehensive decision on Phase 2 or break it down into separate ones on the transition and future ties. If May delays a divorce agreement until the summit, perhaps to show voters at home her resolve, this may delay opening trade talks. January - Outline of EU transition offer may be ready, under which Britain retains all rights except voting in the bloc, and meets all its obligations until the end of 2020. February - After agreeing their negotiating terms, EU-27 may be ready to open talks with London on a free trade pact that Brussels likens to one it has with Canada. The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving. EU officials say there is now agreement after Britain offered to pay an agreed share of most of the items Brussels wanted, especially for committed spending that will go on after 2020. Both sides say there is no precise figure as much depends on future developments. British newspaper reports that it would cost up to 55 billion euros sparked only muted criticism from May s hardline pro-Brexit allies who once rejected big payments. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that London would be paying the EU 60 billion euros on Brexit. Barnier is still seeking a commitment that the rights of 3 million EU citizens who stay on in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, not just by British judges. May has said the ECJ should play no more role in Britain. But the issue could be vital to ensure ratification of the withdrawal treaty by the European Parliament. EU diplomats say a compromise may let British courts refer cases on citizens rights to the Luxembourg-based ECJ on a voluntary basis. Irish premier Leo Varadkar said London agreed on Monday that Northern Ireland would remain in regulatory alignment with the EU, and hence the Irish Republic, to ensure there was no hard border with police and customs checks that could disrupt peace. However, a hostile reaction from May s pro-Brexit and pro-London allies the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on whom she depends for her slim parliamentary majority, caused May to hold off agreeing the package deal with Juncker. The DUP and many in May s own party fear that means separating the province from the British mainland - or forcing EU rules onto the whole of the UK. Leaders of mainland regions Scotland, Wales and London leapt on the deal to demand similar freedom to perhaps remain in the EU customs union or single market, giving May a new headache. Varadkar said he is willing to see changes in the text but not that would change its actual meaning. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Militants kill U.N. peacekeeper in Central African Republic;DAKAR (Reuters) - Christian militiamen killed a Mauritanian U.N. peacekeeper in an attack on a camp for displaced people in a Central African Republic diamond-mining town on Monday, the United Nations mission there said. Fighters armed with AK-47s and makeshift weapons also wounded one Zambian and two Mauritanian peacekeepers during the 90-minute gunfight at the police checkpoint in the town of Bria, the U.N. added. The country has been riven by sectarian conflict since 2013 when Muslim Seleka rebels ousted President Francois Bozize. That triggered a backlash by Christian anti-balaka fighters. As many as 100 people died in Bria in June during a day of clashes between rival factions. The area is coveted by militia for its surrounding diamond mines. It also hosts tens of thousands of people displaced by the conflict. Even with 13,000 troops, the U.N. mission has struggled to restore order to a country the size of France and has lost 14 peacekeepers in attacks this year alone. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Scotland, Wales and London want special Brexit deal if Northern Ireland gets one;EDINBURGH/LONDON (Reuters) - Scotland, Wales and London should all benefit from any special deal given to Northern Ireland to smooth access to European Union markets after Brexit, the three regions most senior politicians said on Monday. Most Scots and Londoners voted to stay in the EU in June 2016 s referendum, unlike their compatriots in the rest of the United Kingdom. Politicians in Scotland, Wales and the British capital have campaigned for Britain as a whole to stay in the EU s single market to smooth trade relations. Prime Minister Theresa May has ruled that out so far, saying Britain needed the freedom to make its own rules and trade deals. But the three regions rallied to the cause again after Irish government sources said on Monday that the British government had agreed to maintain EU regulatory alignment for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. May said there had been no overall agreement on Monday. Keeping regulations in Northern Ireland similar to those in the rest of the EU make it less likely that the bloc would insist on border checks after Brexit. But making an exception of Northern Ireland could make it difficult for May to argue that others cannot have the same. So far, she has argued that Brexit should follow a one-size-fits-all pattern for the whole of the United Kingdom. If one part of the United Kingdom can retain regulatory alignment with the European Union and effectively stay in the single market ... there is surely no good practical reason why others can t, Nicola Sturgeon, the head of Scotland s devolved pro-independence government, said on Twitter. Sturgeon welcomed the outline of a deal that meant no return to a hard border in Ireland, but argued that such an agreement meant something similar for Scotland was even more vital. For Scotland to find itself outside the single market, while Northern Ireland effectively stays in would place us at a double disadvantage when it comes to jobs and investment. A large majority of voters in Scotland, one of the UK s four nations with around 5 million people, voted to stay in the EU, as did Northern Ireland. Wales and England, the most populous nation, voted to leave, straining the structure of the UK and complicating negotiations to unwind four decades of political and trading links with the EU. Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it s possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market and customs union after Brexit, Sadiq Khan, London s mayor, said on Twitter. Britain s capital, with a population of 8.8 million, voted by a margin of 59.9 percent to remain within the EU. Turnout was high by local standards at nearly 70 percent and Khan, from Britain s main opposition Labour Party, campaigned to stay in the EU. Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones called for Wales to be allowed to continue to participate in the single market if other parts of the UK could. May s government has up to now ruled out any special deal for Scotland, although the Scottish government published a year ago a plan for the northernmost part of the UK to remain in the single market even if Britain as a whole leaves. Its plan was, however, rejected as unworkable by the UK government. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Risks grow for Rohingya in Bangladesh's teeming, squalid camps;(Reuters) - Bangladesh plans to allocate more land for camps housing Rohingya refugees as concerns grow over a possible outbreak of disease in crowded, makeshift settlements clustered at the country s southern tip. About 625,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to sanctuary in Bangladesh from violence, looting and destruction in neighboring Myanmar after government forces launched a counter insurgency following attacks by Rohingya militants on Aug. 25. The swift exodus has taken the Rohingya refugee population to 837,000, making Bangladesh one of the world s largest, most crowded settlement of asylum-seekers. More than 60 percent of the water supply in the camps is contaminated with bacteria as temporary latrines overflow into hastily-built, shallow wells, a World Health Organization survey showed. Faecal sludge in the settlements goes largely untreated. There is a high risk of a public health event, not just cholera and acute watery diarrhea, said Naim Talukder of the group Action Against Hunger, who is coordinating the efforts of 31 groups and agencies to manage water, sanitation and hygiene. A Reuters graphic uses satellite imagery to document the mushrooming spread of the refugee areas. Data show the challenge of meeting international standards for water, sanitation and hygiene in the camps and spillover sites. Click on the link for the Reuters Graphic - tmsnrt.rs/2AoMIaV Most refugees live in flimsy bamboo and canvas shelters in an area crowded well beyond emergency standards, said Graham Eastmond, an official of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). You are talking a third of the international standard, he said. We need to decongest urgently and obviously, to do that, we need more land. The IOM is among the bodies that have urged Bangladesh to free up more land and allow a wider spread of settlements. The government already allocated 3,000 acres of land for the Rohingya, Shah Kamal, a disaster management official, told Reuters. That figure is equivalent to 1,214 hectares. Considering the current situation, the government is planning to allocate 500 acres more land for them, he added. Last week, Bangladesh approved a $280-million project to develop an isolated and flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal to temporarily house 100,000 Rohingya, despite criticism from rights groups. The overcrowding spells health and safety risks, Eastmond added, from rapidly spreading water-borne and communicable diseases to landslides and flooding, besides swelling the threat to vulnerable children and women. Single women or children head about a fifth of households, preliminary findings of a population survey by the U.N. refugee agency and Bangladesh show. By Nov. 11, there were 36,096 cases of acute watery diarrhea since Aug. 25, as infection rates climbed, the U.N. children s agency said last month. Bangladesh, in partnership with U.N. agencies and charities, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in responding to the crisis. New roads built by the army will open this month, boosting access for camp-dwellers, said Eastmond. Yet just 23 percent of funding needs for water, sanitation and hygiene services are being met, Talukder said. Bangladesh and Myanmar vowed to begin the voluntary return of the Rohingya to Myanmar in the next two months. But the Rohingya will have to present identity documents in order to be accepted, said Myint Kyaing, a Myanmar labor and immigration ministry official. Relief officials fear that few Rohingya, a stateless and long-persecuted minority in Myanmar, carried such documents in their desperate scramble to leave. Hundreds of Rohingya villages have been razed, their land given to others and their crops harvested. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fighting and air strikes in Yemen's Sanaa trap civilians and halt aid: U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - Fighting and air strikes have intensified in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, where roads are blocked and tanks are deployed on many streets, trapping civilians and halting delivery of vital aid including fuel to supply clean water, the United Nations said on Monday. Some of the fiercest clashes are around the diplomatic area near the U.N. compound, while aid flights in and out of Sanaa airport have been suspended, the world body said in a statement following its appeal for a humanitarian pause on Tuesday. The escalating situation threatens to push the barely functioning basic services ... to a standstill. These services have already been seriously compromised with the latest shock of the impact of the blockade, it said, adding that fighting had also spread to other governorates, such as Hajjah. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish PM 'surprised' that agreed Brexit border deal could not be concluded;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is surprised and disappointed that the British government was unable to conclude a deal Dublin believed had been agreed on the future of the Northern Ireland border after Brexit, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Monday. We had an agreement this morning. We re disappointed and surprised to hear that agreement cannot be concluded today but we re happy to give the UK government more time, if it needs it, so we can conclude it in the coming days, Varadkar told a news briefing in Dublin. He said Ireland s position was unequivocal and that Ireland would accept changes to the agreed text only if the meaning remained the same. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian security forces kill five suspected militants in raid;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces killed five suspected militants in a raid on Monday on a desert location being used by the group for training in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, north of Cairo, the interior ministry said. Security forces arrested six other people and seized ammunition and weapons in the operation, a ministry statement said. The statement did not link the militants to any specific group. Since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State affiliate in the mainly desert region of North Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers. Last month Egypt saw its deadliest attack in its modern history when militants killed more than 300 at a North Sinai mosque. No group has claimed responsibility though officials said the gunmen brandished an Islamic State flag. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hadi calls on Yemenis to rise up against Houthis after Saleh's death - live speech;DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi called on Yemenis on Monday to rise up against the Iran-aligned Houthis after the death of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Speaking in a speech carried live on the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, Hadi also called for a new chapter in the fight against the Houthis, who were allied with Saleh before he turned on them and offered to back the Saudi-led coalition. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bolivians spoil ballots in judicial vote to protest Morales;LA PAZ (Reuters) - More than half the ballots cast in Bolivia s judicial elections on Sunday were spoiled, or nullified, by voters, a sign that the opposition said showed dwindling support for President Evo Morales. Tensions are high in Bolivia after the Constitutional Court last week gave Morales the green light to run for a fourth straight term in 2019. Morales opponents encouraged voters to spoil their ballots in protest of the ruling. Morales, a former coca farmer in power since 2006, had previously accepted the results of a referendum in 2016, when 51 percent of voters rejected his proposal to end term limits. The citizens have defeated Evo Morales, a leader who is trying to impose re-election on Bolivia, along with corruption and the manipulation of the justice system, businessman and former presidential candidate Samuel Doria Medina Tweeted. The 26 judges elected on Sunday will be seated in January. Morales said in a news conference on Monday that the high number of spoiled ballots should not be seen as a protest against him, but as an attempt by the opposition to block his plan for a judiciary with elected rather than appointed judges. The unpatriotic right wing wanted the election of an organic judiciary to fail, but the people have elected their authorities;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uber joins forces with global public transport association;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ride-hailing app Uber [UBER.UL] said on Monday it was joining a global public transport association to improve mobility in the cities it operates in, although North America s largest public transit union said there was no place for the U.S. company. Uber s move to join the International Association of Public Transportation (UITP) is part of a drive by Uber to improve its relationships with local authorities after a series of regulatory and legal setbacks. UITP represents public transport providers around the world, including Transport for London (TfL) - which in September stripped Uber of its operating license. Scandal-hit Uber has just had to reassure authorities it is changing the way it does business after the disclosure of a massive data breach cover-up that has prompted investigations from regulators around the world. Andrew Salzberg, Uber s head of transportation policy and research, said aligning the company with public transport authorities was a good way to make Uber a better partner for cities. Uber, currently valued at $69 billion, has been testing a more collaborative approach to regulators under its new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a shift away from a more aggressive culture under former CEO Travis Kalanick. One of the big emphases that Dara has made ... is that we want to be better partners for the cities we operate in, Salzberg said. Uber said it would work on a series of training sessions with UITP aimed at connecting people better with public transport. Salzberg said the company also wanted to help reduce congestion on roads by encouraging people to move to shared modes of transport. Alain Flausch, secretary general of UITP, said Uber s decision to join the association was a sign that the company wanted a better relationship with regulators. Flausch said he had told members of UITP that he would check the company stuck to its promises. It s a work in progress and having Uber join is a good sign. Of course they keep their business model but ... they need to be a bit more flexible and open to talking, he told Reuters. However, Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), which represents public transit employees in the United States and Canada, said Uber should start being a better partner to the cities it operates in by paying a living wage to their drivers who call those cities home. Public transportation should serve the public good, and until Uber demonstrates that they meet that standard they have no business being a part of the International Association of Public Transport, Hanley said. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudis pledge $100 million to African anti-jihadist force: Mali;DAKAR (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has pledged $100 million to a new regional military force battling jihadist groups in West Africa s Sahel region, force member Mali said on Monday. The contribution would be a major boost to the cash-strapped force and bring pledged commitments to more than half the roughly $500 million the G5 Sahel says it needs for its first year of operations. The G5 Sahel - composed of the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - launched its first military campaign in October amid growing unrest in the Sahel, whose porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State. Those groups have stepped up attacks on civilian and military targets, including tourist attractions in regional capitals, raising fears the zone will become a new breeding ground for militants. Mali s foreign ministry said Saudi Arabian authorities made the pledge during a visit to the kingdom late last month by Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop. Saudi Arabia s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Sunni Muslim kingdom is competing with its main rival, Shi ite power Iran, for influence across West Africa and other parts of the Muslim world. Donors from both countries have given money to mosques and other causes there. France, the G5 s most vocal foreign backer, has pressed Saudi Arabia to take concrete actions to fight Islamist militants. French President Emmanuel Macron asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to contribute to the G5 when he saw him in Riyadh last month. The European Union, France, the United States and each of the G5 countries have also promised to fund the force. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. defense chief urges Pakistan to redouble efforts against militants;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met Pakistan s civilian and military leaders on Monday and urged them to redouble their efforts to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in neighboring Afghanistan. Mattis, on a one-day visit to Pakistan, said the South Asian nation had made progress in the fight against militancy inside its borders but needed to make more. More than 100 days since U.S. President Donald Trump announced a South Asia strategy that calls for a firmer line toward Islamabad, U.S. officials and analysts say there has been only limited success and it is not clear how progress will be made. U.S. officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistan s reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan. The Secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country, the Pentagon said in a statement. Mattis, who visited Pakistan for the first time as defense secretary, said before the trip that the goal for his meetings with Pakistani officials would be to find common ground . In his discussion with Mattis, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the two allies shared objectives. We re committed (to) the war against terror, he said. Nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan. Mattis also met with high-ranking officials from Pakistan s powerful military, including army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lieutenant-General Naveed Mukhtar, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency that U.S. officials say has links with Haqqani and Taliban militants. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mattis conversations had been straightforward and specific. The official said one of the topics of conversation was getting Pakistan to help bring the Taliban to the negotiating table In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. But beyond that, the Trump administration has done little to articulate its strategy, experts say. U.S. officials say they have not seen a change in Pakistan s support for militants, despite visits by senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis ... we have not seen those changes implemented yet, General John Nicholson, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said last week. Pakistani officials have pushed back on the U.S. accusations and say they have done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down militants. U.S. official expressed hope relations could improve after a U.S.-Canadian couple kidnapped in Afghanistan were freed in Pakistan in October with their three children. While the Trump administration has used tougher words with Pakistan, it is has yet to change Islamabad s calculus. Some experts say the United States loses clout in Pakistan when it is seen as bullying. While Mattis traveled to the region earlier this year, he did not stop in Pakistan, but visited its arch rival, India, a relationship that has grown under the Trump administration. There is not an effective stick anymore because Pakistan doesn t really care about U.S aid, it has been dwindling anyway and it is getting the money it needs elsewhere ... treat it with respect and actually reward it when it does do something good, said Madiha Afzal, with the Brookings Institution. Mattis brief visit to Islamabad comes a week after a hardline Pakistani Islamist group called off nationwide protests after the government met its demand that a minister accused of blasphemy resign. Separately, a Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai was freed from house arrest. The White House said the release could have repercussions for U.S.-Pakistan relations. I think for Pakistan, the timing is very bad. There is talk about progress being made against extremists and here you have a situation where religious hardliners have basically been handed everything they wanted on a silver platter, said Michael Kugelman, with the Woodrow Wilson think tank in Washington. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Finland should stay militarily non-aligned: prime minister;HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland should remain militarily neutral because it helps ensure security in the Baltic Sea region, Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in an interview ahead of celebrations of the country s 100 years of independence. The EU member state was part of the Russian Empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian revolution but it nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two. The center-right government retains the option of seeking NATO membership but remaining non-aligned and increasing defense cooperation with Sweden and the EU was Finland s way, Sipila said. At the moment, to have Finland and Sweden forming this militarily non-aligned zone, I think that increases the security and stability in the Baltic Sea region ... I see no reason to change this, Sipila told Reuters by phone. Finland has stepped up military cooperation with Sweden and forged closer ties with NATO because it is concerned about Russia s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and heightened East-West tensions in the Baltic Sea. However, the government has opted to stay out of NATO in line with its tradition of avoiding confrontation with Russia. A report commissioned by the government said last year that if Finland joined NATO it would lead to a crisis with Russia, which is also a major trade partner for Finland. Moscow has hinted that it could move troops closer to the Finnish-Russian border if Finland joins NATO. It is clear that Finland is part of the West and the western community. That is our place, Sipila said. We want to be ... at the core of the European Union, influencing EU s future. But the main difference between us and the majority of EU states is our military non-alignment. Polls show that only 22 percent of Finns support NATO membership, while 62 percent are opposed. Sipila, who leads Finland s Centre party, said any move to join would need public approval via a referendum. Finance Minister Petteri Orpo from Finland s poll-leading National Coalition party told Reuters last week he believed that joining NATO would improve Finland s security. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit deal agreed on all Irish issues - Irish government sources;DUBLIN (Reuters) - British and European Union Brexit negotiators have reached agreement on a deal for all Irish issues, including the maintenance of regulatory alignment on the island to avoid a hard border, two Irish government sources told Reuters. Agreement has been reached on an overall deal for the Irish issues, one of the sources said. The key phrase is a clear commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment in relation to the rules of the customs union and internal market which are required to support the Good Friday Agreement, the all-island economy and the border. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany must stop relying on U.S. for foreign policy: foreign minister;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should be more assertive in setting foreign policy according to its own interests rather than to those of the United States, the German foreign minister said on Tuesday. Traditionally close ties between Berlin and Washington have soured since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. Trump is at odds with Germany over Iran and North Korea, has denounced Germany s trade surplus with the United States, accused Berlin and others of owing vast sums to NATO and worried partners by deciding to ditch the Paris climate accord. The traditional view of the United States as having a protecting role was beginning to crumble , Sigmar Gabriel told an audience of politicians and government representatives at the Koerber Foundation. The U.S. s retreat (from its international role) is not due to the policies of only one president. It will not change fundamentally after the next elections, he said. Germany should continue to invest in its partnership with the United States as a trading partner but must be more assertive in representing its own interests when the two countries are at odds. Gabriel gave the example of sanctions against Russia that the U.S. Congress agreed on in the summer and which could ultimately affect Germany s energy supply as they affect Russian pipelines. Gabriel also warned against ending the nuclear deal with Iran, saying this would increase the risk of war and affect national security, and against any move by the United Stales to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Germany cannot afford to wait for decisions from Washington, or to merely react to them. We must lay out our own position and make clear to our allies where the limits of our solidarity are reached, Gabriel said in the speech, excerpts of which had been published by Sueddeutsche Zeitung ahead of time. Germans see U.S. President Donald Trump as a bigger challenge for German foreign policy than authoritarian leaders in North Korea, Russia or Turkey, a survey published by the Koerber Foundation showed. Post-war Germany has pursued a cautious foreign policy embedded in the principles and institutions of the European Union, due to the legacy of World War Two but has gradually taken on a more active global role in the last decade or so. Gabriel s Social Democrats (SPD) have said they will launch talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a government next week if members of his center-left party gave him the green light at a congress this weekend. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea, U.S. kick off large-scale air exercise amid North Korean warnings;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the United States launched large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, officials said, a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced missile as part of a weapons programme that has raised global tensions. The annual U.S.-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. The exercises have been condemned as a provocation by the isolated North. F-35 fighters will also join the drill, which will also include the largest number of 5th generation fighters to take part, according to a South Korea-based U.S. Air Force spokesman. Around 12,000 U.S. service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight U.S. and South Korean military installations. South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The U.S. Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports. The joint exercise is designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military had said before the drills began. The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation. Pyongyang blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for raising tensions and warned at the weekend the Vigilant Ace exercise was pushing tensions on the Korean peninsula towards a flare-up , according to North Korean state media. North Korea s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called Trump insane on Sunday and said the drill would push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war . The North s KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, also said on Saturday the Trump administration was begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula . North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. political affairs chief to visit North Korea this week;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations political affairs chief will visit North Korea this week, making the highest-level visit by a U.N. official in more than six years as tensions grip the region over Pyongyang s nuclear and weapons programs. Jeffrey Feltman, a former senior official of the U.S. State Department, will visit from Tuesday to Friday and meet with officials to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern, the United Nations said. He will meet with North Korea Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk, said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, adding that the visit was in response to a long-standing invitation from the authorities in Pyongyang for a policy dialogue with the U.N. He will also meet with the United Nations Country Team and members of the diplomatic corps, as well as visit U.N. project sites, Dujarric told reporters, adding that Feltman was also visiting China. Feltman will be the first senior U.N. official to travel to North Korea since his predecessor Lynn Pascoe visited in February 2010 and former U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos visited in October 2011, the United Nations said. The visit comes at a time of high tension over North Korea s program to develop nuclear tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States, including the test of Pyongyang s largest intercontinental ballistic missile last week. An official of the U.S. State Department said it was aware of the planned trip, when asked in Washington backed the initiative. The United States will continue to work with other countries, including the members of the U.N. Security Council, to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on (North Korea) to convince the regime to abandon its illegal nuclear weapons and missile development programs, the official added. It is imperative that the countries of the world present North Korea with a unified, unambiguous response to its unlawful provocations. The official said the U.S. focus remained on finding a peaceful diplomatic solution to the crisis, but the reality is that the regime has shown no interest in credible negotiations. While stressing that it favors a diplomatic solution, President Donald Trump s administration has said it will never accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and has warned that all options, including military ones, are on the table. On Monday, the United States and South Korea went ahead with large-scale joint aerial drills, a move North Korea had said would push the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war. Russia and China wanted the drills called off. North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its missile and nuclear programs. At a U.N. Security Council meeting last week to discuss the missile test, U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that while Washington does not seek war with Pyongyang, if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed. Dujarric said North Korea issued the invitation for Feltman to visit on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York in September, but the visit was confirmed only late last week. When asked if Feltman was paving the way for a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Dujarric said: We hope to have more afterwards. There are about 50 international staff working for six U.N. agencies in North Korea - the U.N. Development Programme, the U.N. children s agency UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.N. Population Fund. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Construction executives detained in Peru in graft probe;LIMA (Reuters) - Four former and current executives of Peruvian construction companies were detained pending trial on Monday, accused of colluding with Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] to bribe a former president. Judge Richard Concepcion ordered the men, who deny wrongdoing, to be held in pre-trial jail to ensure they do not flee or obstruct the law, as prosecutors prepare criminal charges. The decision marked the first time executives from major Peruvian companies have been jailed in the Car Wash scandal, Brazil s largest-ever corruption probe that has widened to include other Latin American countries. Odebrecht has admitted to bribing local officials in 12 countries to secure public works contracts over the course of a decade and promised authorities that it would provide details. Prosecutor Hamilton Castro accused Jose Alejandro Grana and Hernando Alejandro Grana, who once headed Peru s biggest construction group Grana y Montero, and Fernando Gonzalo and Jose Fernando Castillo, who work for two private contractors, of providing $15 million of a $20 million bribe that Odebrecht paid. The money was paid to ex-president Alejandro Toledo to secure highway contracts that the companies partnered together on a decade ago and had been disguised on company books as the cost of additional risks covered by Odebrecht, Castro said at a court hearing. The judge also ordered Gonzalo Ferraro, a former Grana y Montero manager who was in local hospital, to be placed under house arrest. All five men deny any wrongdoing and are appealing the judge s ruling, said Ferraro s attorney Roger Yon. Grana y Montero, and the two private companies, JJC Contratistas Generales and Ingenieros Civiles y Contratistas Generales, declined to comment. The three companies have previously denied knowing about or taking part in Odebrecht s bribes. Grana y Montero s U.S.-listed shares closed 6.9 percent lower on Monday. The corruption probe has shaken up the local construction sector as the government prepares to award nearly $8 billion in contracts for rebuilding infrastructure and housing destroyed by flooding. President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who served in Toledo s cabinet when the highway contracts were awarded, has said he knew nothing about the alleged bribe for Toledo. Toledo, ordered to pre-trial detention in February, has denied taking bribes from Odebrecht. Peru is seeking his extradition from the United States. A second former President, Ollanta Humala, has been in pre-trial detention since July and denies allegations he took illicit funds from Odebrecht. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump delays announcement on whether U.S. embassy to be moved to Jerusalem;ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will not announce a decision on Monday on whether he will again delay moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a White House spokesman said, despite Monday s deadline for doing so. An announcement on the decision will be made in coming days, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters aboard Air Force One as Trump was returning from a trip to Utah. Trump had been due to decide whether to sign a waiver that would hold off relocating the embassy from Tel Aviv for another six months, as every U.S. president has done since Congress passed a law on the issue in 1995. Senior U.S. officials have said that Trump is expected to issue a temporary order, the second since he took office, to delay moving the embassy despite his campaign pledge to go ahead with the controversial action. But the officials have said Trump is likely to give a speech on Wednesday unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a step that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. They have said, however, that no final decisions have been made. The president has been clear on this issue from the get-go;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Support for Brazil's pension reform more organized: lawmaker;BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The government of Brazil s President Michel Temer is far from assembling the coalition needed to pass a landmark pension reform, but potential supporters of the measure are now more organized, a key legislator said on Monday. We re still enormously far (from having the needed votes), but we have a party leader committed, a party president committed, one party that s set to commit, Brazil s lower house speaker, Rodrigo Maia, told journalists after an event in Rio de Janeiro. Pension reform is the cornerstone policy in President Temer s efforts to bring Brazil s deficit under control. But the measure is widely unpopular with Brazilians, who are accustomed to a relatively expansive welfare net. In order to curry support from Congress, Temer and his allies watered down their original proposal in November, requiring fewer years of contributions by private sector workers to receive a pension. According to several government sources, Temer s allies have grown more optimistic in the last week about the reform s chances. However, speed is essential for the bill s passage. A congressional recess begins on Dec. 22, and lawmaking thereafter will be hampered by politics, as lawmakers ramp up their campaigns for 2018 elections. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;OAS says Honduran vote results in doubt due to 'irregularities';TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Observers cannot be certain of the results of Honduras Nov. 26 presidential vote due to irregularities, errors and systematic problems, the top representative of the Organization of America States (OAS) in Honduras said on Monday. Former Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga and head of the OAS mission to Honduras told reporters that electoral authorities should carry out a wider recount after a ballot count pointed to a win for incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Kiss of death' to two-state solution if Jerusalem declared Israel capital: PLO envoy;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A formal U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would be the kiss of death to the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Palestine Liberation Organization s chief representative in Washington said on Monday. Should such a step be taken, it would have catastrophic consequences, Husam Zomlot told Reuters in an interview. That would be actually the kiss of death to the two-state solution because Jerusalem is at the very heart of the two-state solution, Zomlot said. A senior administration official told Reuters last week that U.S. President Donald Trump would likely make the announcement on Wednesday, although his adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said the president had not yet made a final decision. Such a declaration would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. Past U.S. presidents have insisted that the status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions - must be decided in negotiations between the two sides. Should the two-state solution receive that final lethal blow, then the main reaction from us will be strategic and political because we are not going to be engaged in an empty process, Zomlot said. Israeli officials have made clear they would welcome U.S. endorsement of their claim of sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government to Zomlot s comments. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital - a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Kushner is leading Trump s efforts to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, efforts that so far have shown little progress. Zomlot warned the role of the United States as a mediator in the conflict would be effectively torpedoed if Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. It will be a self-inflicted disqualification of the U.S. from the role of the mediator ... (which) will be irreversible because by then the U.S. would be part of the problem, not part of the solution, he said. Trump suggested earlier this year he was open to new ways to achieve Middle East peace that did not necessarily entail the creation of a Palestinian state, a hallmark of U.S. policy for decades. Trump is again expected to delay moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, U.S. officials said on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Saudi Arabia s ambassador to Washington, Prince Khalid bin Salman, said on Monday that any U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem before a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would harm the peace process and increase regional tensions. Jordan, the Arab League and Turkey have also warned against the dangers of such a move. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli missiles target Syrian military facility near Damascus: Syrian state media;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian state media on Monday said Israel had fired missiles at a Syrian military facility in the Damascus countryside, adding that Syrian air defense systems had intercepted three of the missiles. Our air defenses are confronting an Israeli missile attack on one of our sites in the Damascus suburbs and three of the targets were downed, state news agency SANA said, adding the attacks happened at 11:30 p.m. Monday. A witness told Reuters late on Monday three strong explosions were heard from the direction of Jamraya, west of Damascus. Another witness said thick smoke could be seen rising over the area. Jamraya contains a military research facility which was hit by what was believed to have been an Israeli attack in 2013. Israel in the past has targeted positions of Lebanon s powerful Hezbollah group inside Syria where the Iran-backed group is heavily involved in fighting alongside the Syrian army. On Saturday Syrian state media said Israeli missiles struck a military position south of Damascus, and in September Israel attacked a Syrian military site believed to be linked to chemical weapons production. An Israeli military spokeswoman said they do not comment on foreign reports. War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, from its sources, said planes believed to be Israeli had fired missiles into the Jamraya area. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spain's Supreme Court refuses bail for former Catalonia cabinet members;MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s Supreme Court refused bail on Monday for two Catalan pro-independence leaders accused of sedition ahead of regional elections that Madrid hopes will defuse the nation s worst political crisis in four decades. The ruling will leave the leaders of Catalonia s biggest secessionist groups behind bars during campaigning for the Dec. 21 election, and could generate sympathy for the independence movement just as opinion polls show some voters abandoning it. The battle between Madrid and secessionists in the wealthy northeast region has hurt the national economy and prompted thousands of companies to shift their legal headquarters outside Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of the Spanish economy. The former head of the regional government, Carles Puigdemont, and four of his disbanded cabinet, went in to self-imposed exile in Belgium shortly after a call for secession Oct. 27. They are currently under conditional release after an international arrest warrant was served against them. The judge in Brussels on Monday said he would rule on Puigdemont s extradition Dec. 14. Eight members of the disbanded cabinet, including vice-president Oriol Junqueras, were detained in custody Nov. 2 facing potential charges of sedition, rebellion and misappropriation of funds. In a court statement, the judge ruled that, while he considered there was no risk the defendants would leave the country, he did believe there was a risk of criminal reiteration. The Catalan politicians have since called to be released to campaign for the election, with Junqueras heading his ERC party s list. Campaigning officially begins on Tuesday. Six other former members of the Catalonia cabinet also detained in custody were set bail of 100,000 euros ($118,570). While many polls have shown that the election is likely to be a dead heat between the pro-independence and pro-unionist camps, the latest official poll saw the secessionists just losing their majority in the regional parliament. Pro-independence party Junts per Catalunya was seen as winning 25-26 seats, ERC another 32 seats and extreme-left party CUP 9 seats, according to the poll carried out by Sociological Research Centre (CIS) published on Monday. That would give the secessionist camp just 67 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament, stripping them of the previous slim majority. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has flatly refused to negotiate any talks on an independence referendum, saying that the constitution does not allow for any separation of any of the country s 17 autonomous regions. The regional election was called to return legal certainty to Catalonia, Rajoy has said. In an editorial in Politico, published on Sunday, Junqueras said Madrid could not be trusted to oversee the election, and called for the European Union to step in. It is hard to believe that Spain s conservative People s Party government will actually respect the result of these elections. Therefore, it is vital that the European Union oversee the results to ensure they are truly respected, and to erase any doubts about the outcome, he wrote. EU leaders are extremely wary of Catalonia s search for independence because it has stirred separatist feelings far beyond Spanish borders and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had called nationalism a poison . Civic pro-independence group ANC, whose leader Jordi Sanchez was one of the defendants to be refused bail on Monday, has called for protests against the ruling at 8 pm (1900 GMT) in front of Catalan government buildings. ($1 = 0.8434 euros) ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD to start talks with Merkel next week if members agree;BERLIN/MUNICH (Reuters) - The leader of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) said on Monday he would launch talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a government next week if members of his center-left party gave him the green light at a congress this weekend. The remarks by Martin Schulz raised hopes that the two parties that suffered losses to the far right in an election in September could renew an alliance that has ruled Germany since 2013 and end the political deadlock in Europe s largest economy. Merkel turned to the SPD after failing to form a three-way alliance with the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, plunging Germany into a political impasse and raising doubt about her future after 12 years in power. We ll explore whether and how the formation of a government is possible in Germany, Schulz told journalists. The SPD party board leadership had earlier set down its key demands for coalition talks with the conservatives. On the divisive issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkel s first effort, the SPD said it opposed a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some asylum seekers. Family reunions and family cohabitation lead to good integration, the SPD document said. That s why we are against extending the suspension of family reunions. In a sign of the tensions likely to bubble up between the parties, Horst Seehofer, leader of the arch-conservative Bavarian sister party to Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), warned the SPD not to try to prevent attempts to extend the ban on family reunifications. That would lead to such a huge migrant influx again that Germany s ability to integrate them all would be completely overstretched, Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), told Bild newspaper. Merkel could also face complications from her own camp. Her arch-conservative CSU allies in Bavaria on Monday named right-winger Markus Soeder to be their candidate for the state premiership in a regional election next autumn, potentially weakening her hand as she negotiates with the SPD. Merkel s CDU and the CSU bled support to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) in September s federal election because of anger at the chancellor s decision in 2015 to open Germany s door to more than a million asylum seekers. The CSU now fears losing more votes at regional level. The future of Seehofer had been in question since the election. After the losses, Merkel reluctantly accepted a CSU demand to put a limit on the number of asylum seekers Germany will accept each year. Asked why he was clearing the stage for Soeder to lead the CSU in next year s vote in Bavaria, Seehofer said: The past doesn t win you any elections. Soeder, who has accused Merkel of pulling the conservatives to the left and took a hard line on Greece during the euro zone crisis, is likely to be a bigger thorn in Merkel s side than Seehofer, who is expected to remain party leader. For its part, the SPD, which has governed in coalition under Merkel since 2013, suffered its worst election result in postwar history in September, and had been reluctant to join another grand coalition . It dropped its pledge to go into opposition only after Merkel failed to form a government, bowing to pressure from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to ease the deadlock. The SPD will hold a party congress in Berlin this weekend, where it is expected to debate its position on coalition talks. Kevin Kuehnert, the head of the SPD s youth wing - which opposes another grand coalition - told Die Welt newspaper that the outgoing CDU-CSU-SPD government had been characterized by cheap and often quite bad compromises, such as on urgently needed investment in education and infrastructure . The SPD did not stake out a position on the conservatives upper limit on refugees in its policy document. But it did say Germany should work with French President Emmanuel Macron on strengthening the European project through policies geared to fight high youth unemployment. It did not mention key proposals by Macron that the euro zone should have its own budget and finance minister, but it did refer to his plan for closer defense cooperation. On the economy, the SPD s proposals for more rights for workers and employee-friendly regulation of the large temporary work sector could draw fire from the CSU. The long political impasse is starting to worry investors. An investor sentiment survey tracking Germany fell in December. The research group Sentix said investors wanted to know how expensive a tie-up with the SPD would be. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi says U.S. announcement on Jerusalem to hurt peace process, heighten tensions;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Monday any U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem before a final settlement is reached in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would hurt the peace process and heighten regional tensions. Any U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem prior to a final settlement would have a detrimental impact on the peace process and would heighten tensions in the region, Saudi Ambassador Prince Khalid bin Salman said in a statement. The kingdom s policy - has been - and remains in support of the Palestinian people, and this has been communicated to the U.S. administration. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss to return $321 million in stolen funds to Nigeria;ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland will return to Nigeria around $321 million in assets seized from the family of former military ruler Sani Abacha via a deal signed with the World Bank on Monday, the Swiss government said. Transparency International, a corruption watchdog, has accused Abacha of stealing up to $5 billion of public money during the five years he ran the oil-rich country, from 1993 until his death in 1998. In 2014, Nigeria and the Abacha family reached an agreement for the West African country to get back the funds, which had been frozen, in return for dropping a complaint against the former military ruler s son, Abba Abacha. The son was charged by a Swiss court with money-laundering, fraud and forgery in April 2005, after being extradited from Germany, and later spent 561 days in custody. In 2006, Luxembourg ordered that funds held by the younger Abacha be frozen. Now Switzerland, Nigeria and the World Bank have agreed the funds will be repatriated via a project supported and overseen by the World Bank, the Swiss government said. The project will strengthen social security for the poorest sections of the Nigerian population. The agreement also regulates the disbursement of restituted funds in tranches and sets out concrete measures to be taken in the event of misuse or corruption, it added. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. calls on Yemen's warring factions to re-energize talks;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is calling on all sides in Yemen to re-energize political talks to end the country s civil war, a Trump administration official said on Monday, after former President Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in a roadside attack. Analysts said Saleh s death would be a huge morale boost for the Iran-aligned Houthis, since Saleh had switched sides by abandoning the Houthis in favor of a Saudi-led coalition. The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that Houthi claims on Sunday they launched a missile at Abu Dhabi demonstrated how destabilizing this war is for the region and how the Iranian regime is exploiting the war for its own political ambitions. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri to meet major powers in Paris;PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri will meet ministers from major powers in Paris on Friday to discuss ways of stabilizing his country a month after his shock resignation plunged it into political turmoil, three diplomats said. The Arab and European diplomats said Hariri would take part in the meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group, a body that includes the five members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. Hariri resigned as prime minister in early November while he was in Saudi Arabia, prompting a political crisis in Lebanon and thrusting it back into a regional tussle between Riyadh and its main regional foe, Iran. Hariri has now returned to Beirut and indicated that he might withdraw his resignation, which was never accepted by the president. Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time ally of the kingdom, into resigning and held him there against his will until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia denies this. A European diplomat said the aim of the meeting would be to put pressure on the Saudis and Iranians . He added that the meeting would be an opportunity to reinforce that the Lebanese must stick by the state policy of disassociation , or keeping out of regional conflicts. Before Hariri sets off, Lebanon s cabinet is this week set to meet for the first time since the political crisis erupted. The date of the cabinet meeting has not yet been confirmed but it is expected to address Hariri s resignation. A Lebanese MP who met Hariri on Monday said discussions among politicians were moving positively and would result in a unanimous stance by the cabinet soon. The comments from MP Wael Abu Faour were published by Hariri s office on Monday. The Lebanon support group, launched in 2013, also includes the European Union, the Arab League and the United Nations. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's cabinet to meet Tuesday for first time since political crisis: media office;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s cabinet will meet on Tuesday for the first time since the country entered a political crisis a month ago when Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri offered his resignation in a broadcast from Saudi Arabia. The cabinet s media office said the session would begin at noon at the presidential palace. The meeting is expected to address Hariri s resignation which thrust Lebanon back into a regional tussle between Riyadh and its main regional foe, Iran. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Ramaphosa gets most nominations ahead of ANC leadership vote;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has received the most nominations for leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) ahead of a party vote this month, voting data from the country s nine provinces show. Ramaphosa is one of two frontrunners in a closely watched contest to take over from President Jacob Zuma as ANC leader at a party conference starting on Dec. 16. Whoever becomes ANC leader will most likely be the next president of South Africa, owing to the ruling party s electoral dominance. Ramaphosa received 1,862 nominations by ANC branches, whereas his main rival for ANC leader, former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, received 1,309 endorsements. Reuters compiled the number of nominations for each candidate based on voting data released by provincial ANC structures. ANC officials in the provinces of Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal were the last to release their nominations totals on Monday. Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader and millionaire businessman, is seen as more market-friendly than Dlamini-Zuma, who was previously married to Zuma. Signs that Ramaphosa has been doing well in the nominations by ANC branches have boosted the rand currency in recent weeks. However, Dlamini-Zuma could still win the race for ANC leader as analysts say the outcome in December could be swayed by inducements and pressure on conference delegates. Delegates are not bound to vote for the candidate that was nominated by their ANC branch. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nine charged over links to banned Turkish group detained pending trial;ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek court on Monday ordered the detention of nine Turkish citizens pending trial for terrorism-related offences, including links to a banned militant group behind a series of suicide bombings in Turkey. Greek police arrested the eight men and one woman in dawn raids in central Athens last week. Officials say there is no link between the arrests and a planned state visit by President Tayyip Erdogan to Greece, the first by a Turkish head of state in 65 years, on Dec. 7-8. Greek police are investigating the suspects alleged links to the leftist DHKP/C, a far-left group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. The nine suspects have been charged with setting up and belonging to a criminal organization, terrorist-related acts of supplying explosive materials, and with illegal possession of firearms, smoke bombs and fire crackers, court officials said. They said the suspects had denied the charges in a statement that also read: Solidarity with people who are fighting for their rights and freedom is not terrorism. Their lawyers said the defendants had not been fully briefed on the case against them and that the charges were vague. Police have released the names and photographs of the suspects, who are aged between 20 and 64. One of the detainees had been wanted by Greek police in connection with an arms and explosives haul off the Greek island of Chios, close to the Turkish coast, in 2013. Under Greek law, individuals can be held pending trial for up to 18 months. Some of the defendants will apply for asylum in the meantime, their lawyers said. Based on Greek legal practice, an investigating magistrate will now take over the investigation and a judicial council will finally decide if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. Greece and Turkey, though NATO allies, have often been at loggerheads over issues including Aegean territorial rights and the ethnically divided island of Cyprus. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Egypt premier says he's 'fine' and still mulling election bid;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik, who returned home from the United Arab Emirates in mysterious circumstances after announcing his bid for Egypt s presidency, told Reuters on Monday he was fine but was prevented from saying much more. A Reuters reporter approached Shafik at a Marriott Hotel in a Cairo suburb, where he was accompanied by men in civilian clothes who refused to let him talk and quickly sent the reporter away. I m fine, thanks to God, he replied when asked how he was, before three men shouted at the reporter to stop talking to him. It is okay, leave it at that, Shafik told the reporter. Reuters was unable to establish the identity of the three men. The former air force chief and government minister told a private Cairo television station on Sunday that he was still considering contesting next year s election, although Shafik was less categorical than his previous declaration of intent. Today, I am here in the country, so I think I m free to deliberate further on the issue, he told TV channel Dream. There s a chance now to investigate and see exactly what is needed ... to feel out if this is the logical choice. Some of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi s critics consider 76-year-old Shafik to be the strongest potential challenger to the incumbent, who is widely expected to run for a second term next year. On Saturday, Shafik s family said he had been taken from their home in the Emirates and deported back to Egypt, where they said they had lost contact with him until late on Sunday. In Sunday s interview, he dismissed reports that he had been kidnapped. I hadn t had a chance to prepare the house myself, so all I thought was I d go to one of the hotels. I was surprised - suddenly I m in the car and it s taking me to one of the nicest hotels in my area, he said. Here I am talking to you and I am not kidnapped. What are the requirements for being kidnapped? Shafik s lawyer met him on Sunday at the hotel, saying only that he was in good health, but not whether he was able to leave the hotel or not. A source at the hotel said Shafik s reservation had been made by Egypt s armed forces, when asked for his room number to contact him. After announcing his intention to run for president, the former aviation minister under ousted president Hosni Mubarak and later prime minister during Egypt s 2011 revolt, began receiving indications of support from some on Cairo s streets. Pro-state media quickly painted him as a corrupt old regime hand with ties to the banned Muslim Brotherhood. An interior ministry official said there were no criminal charges pending against Shafik and there had been no order to deport him from the UAE or detain him in Cairo upon his arrival. But a general intelligence official and a national security official at the hotel said Shafik was not entirely free , without giving details or further explanation. A Reuters witness and airport sources said Shafik had been accompanied in a convoy by Egyptian authorities after his arrival in Cairo. Sisi is an ally of UAE and Saudi Arabia and his supporters say he is key to Egypt s stability. Critics say he has eroded freedoms gained after a 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak and jailed hundreds of dissidents. Sisi has won backing from Gulf states and has presented himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants since, as army commander, he led the overthrow in 2013 of former president Mohamed Mursi of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood. After four decades in the military, Shafik touted his military experience as one of his strengths in a 2012 election, which he narrowly lost to Mursi. Shafik fled to UAE to escape corruption charges in June 2012. He dismissed the charges as politically motivated and was taken off airport watchlists last year. Sisi has yet to announce his own intentions for the election. His supporters dismiss criticism over rights abuses and say any measures are needed for security in the face of an Islamist insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers. His government is struggling to crush the insurgency in the North Sinai region and has enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year which critics say have eroded his popularity. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somalia's peacekeeping mission could be hurt by cut in force size: mission chief;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The African Union s plan to trim its Somalia peacekeeping force (AMISOM) will hurt the mission unless extra equipment is found to offset the troop decrease, the mission s leader told Reuters on Monday. The force of 22,000 deployed a decade ago is set to lose 1,000 soldiers this year as part of a long-term plan to pull out of the country and hand security to the Somali army. AMISOM is confronting the Islamist militant group al Shabaab, whose ranks have been swelled by Islamic State fighters fleeing military setbacks in Libya and Syria. Militants killed more than 500 people in an attack in the capital Mogadishu last month. It was the deadliest such attack in the country s recent history. AMISOM deployed to help secure the government of a country that since 1991 has struggled to establish central control. The peacekeepers helped push al Shabaab out of Mogadishu but the group still frequently attacks civilian and military targets. Unless we have a proportionate forces multiplier in terms of equipment ... intelligence, electronic intelligence, that (withdrawal) will have a very considerable effect on our mission, AMISOM head Fransisco Madeira told Reuters. We believe the U.N. will find ways and means of covering or making up the gap that might result. The diplomat from Mozambique was speaking on the sidelines of a security conference in Mogadishu. He said it was hard to estimate the number of al Shabaab fighters. Somalia s minister of internal security Mohamed Abukar Islow told Reuters the government wants the lifting of an arms embargo so that our forces get enough weapons and military equipment. The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Somalia shortly after the nation plunged into civil war in the early 1990s. It partially lifted the ban in 2013 to help equip government forces. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. document certifies Honduras as supporting rights amid vote crisis;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has certified that the Honduran government has been fighting corruption and supporting human rights, clearing the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. aid, a document seen by Reuters showed. The document, dated Nov. 28, which was seen by Reuters on Monday, showed that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified Honduras for the assistance, two days after a controversial presidential election that has been claimed by an ally of Washington. Honduras has faced violent protests over the disputed results of the election, which has still not produced a clear winner over a week after the vote ended. The decision to issue the certification prompted concern from some congressional Democrats that Republican President Donald Trump s administration could be seen to be taking sides. What kind of message does that send? one congressional aide asked. State Department officials did not have an immediate response when questioned about the timing of the certification. Honduras is required to fulfill about a dozen requirements in order to receive its share of $644 million appropriated by the U.S. Congress under a program to assist Central American governments. Among those requirements are combating corruption - including investigating and prosecuting current and former government officials alleged to be corrupt - and protecting the rights of political opposition parties. Honduras struggles with violent drug gangs, one of the world s highest murder rates and endemic poverty. In recent years, many Hondurans - including children - have attempted to migrate to the United States. In hopes of stemming this migration, former President Barack Obama s administration in 2015 came up with a plan that included sending hundreds of millions of dollars in additional aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Congress agreed to provide the money, if the governments were found to be taking steps to fight crime and corruption. A preliminary ballot count in Honduras on Monday pointed to a narrow victory for President Juan Orlando Hernandez over opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla, although the electoral tribunal has not declared a winner. Early last week, Nasralla, a former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory over Hernandez. The counting process suddenly halted for more than a day and began leaning in favor of Hernandez after resuming. Opposition leaders said they wanted a recount and have accused the government of stealing the election. Hernandez, 49, implemented a military-led crackdown on gang violence after taking office in 2014. He has been supported by Trump s chief of staff, John Kelly. Nasralla, 64, is one of Honduras best-known faces and is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron tells Trump concerned over Jerusalem plans;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron told U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday that he was worried about the possibility that the United States could unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Macron s office said in a statement. The French President expressed his concern over the possibility that the United States would unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the statement said, after Macron and Trump spoke over the phone. Mr Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed that the question of Jerusalem s status had to be dealt with in the framework of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, with the aim in particular to establish two countries, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security side by side with Jerusalem as capital. Trump has not yet made a decision on whether to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said on Sunday, a move that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRAT DERSHOWITZ Slaps Down Feinstein’s Effort to Say Trump Guilty of Obstruction: ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about’ [Video]; I think this is hope over reality longtime Democrat and Harvard Law professor Allen Dershowitz ripped into Senator Diane Feinstein for making accusation of obstruction of justice against President Trump. He went through all of the reason why there is nothing to the claim by Feinstein that POTUS committed a crime. Dershowitz compared Trump to the crimes of past presidents and concluded that Trump is in the clear. He detailed crimes that Nixon and Clinton clearly committed but said that it s within the Constitutional powers that Trump did what he did by firing former FBI Director James Comey: You cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power. @AlanDersh pic.twitter.com/dPZBrIcsLh FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) December 4, 2017 She simply doesn t know what she s talking about Dershowitz on Senator Diane Feinstein s claim that President Trump obstructed justice.This woman is another one who needs to go! She s gotten rich off of being in Washington and will probably only retire if she s pulled out of her office kicking and screaming. It s been a lucrative business for Diane and we re sure she doesn t want to see it end. Is she pushing the envelope politically because she knows her delusional liberal base will approve? Reelection over truth and integrity wins out with these people every time ;left-news;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;DUP leader spoke to PM May on Brexit border;BELFAST (Reuters) - The head of the Northern Irish party which props up the British government spoke to Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday shortly after telling supporters she would not allow a Brexit deal that creates regulatory divergence between the region and Britain. Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster spoke to May by phone shortly after her statement in Belfast, a party source told Reuters. The source declined to reveal the content of the call, but said the DUP was in continuing contact with May. May agreed on Monday to keep Northern Ireland in regulatory alignment with the European Union after Brexit, Irish government sources said, creating the possibility of divergence between regulations in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;The Battle against Islamic State;(Reuters) - It was an awkward coalition riven by political and sectarian differences, facing an elusive, fanatical enemy dug into an urban maze of narrow streets and alleyways. So, could Iraq s government really deliver on its vow to vanquish Islamic State? In the end, the army, Shi ite Muslim paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters mustered rare unity to end Islamic State s reign of terror in Iraq s second city Mosul, seat of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents caliphate . Baghdad s victory in July 2017 after nine months of fighting was the coup de grace for the caliphate and came three years after a jihadist juggernaut seized one third of Iraq. But even with supportive U.S. air strikes, Baghdad s triumph came at a devastating cost for the once-vibrant, multicultural city in northern Iraq and the surrounding region. When Islamic State militants first arrived in Mosul in June 2014 after sweeping aside crumbling Iraqi army units, many Mosul residents initially welcomed them. The militants were Sunni Muslims, like many in Mosul who had accused the forces of then-Shi ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of widespread sectarian abuses. Islamic State consequently presented itself as Mosul s savior. But as jihadists brandishing AK-47 assault rifles began imposing an Islamist doctrine even more brutal and mediaeval than al Qaeda, its popularity soon faded. Maliki s successor, Haider al-Abadi, had long been seen as an ineffective leader who could not make tough decisions. However, a U.S.-backed campaign against IS in Mosul offered Abadi a chance to emerge as a steely statesman capable of taking on a group that had terrorized a sprawling city with beheadings in public squares while staging deadly attacks in the West. Just smoking one cigarette, an act IS saw as anti-Islamic, earned you dozens of lashes. Children were used as informers. Women in minority communities were turned into sex slaves. But taking back Mosul was never going to be easy. Long before the first shot was fired, Abadi and his advisers and military commanders had to tread cautiously, taking into account sectarian and ethnic sensitivities that could splinter the united front he urgently needed to establish. Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence agencies had recruited informers inside Mosul, from ex-soldiers and army officers to taxi drivers, who would face instant execution if caught. Even if an alliance of convenience was struck, glossing over sectarian splits, Mosul itself posed formidable physical obstacles. Key districts consisted of ancient little streets and alleyways inaccessible to tanks and armored vehicles, and they were so densely populated that U.S.-led coalition air strikes risked heavy civilian casualties. So, street by street, house by house, fighting was unavoidable. Such challenges first popped up in Mosul s hinterland as Kurdish forces slowly advanced against fierce IS resistance. In one village, a single IS sniper hunkered down in a house held up hundreds of Kurdish fighters, the U.S. special forces advising them and 40 of their vehicles. Eventually, his rifle went silent after three air strikes on the house. As pro-government forces inched forward, the United Nations warned of a possible humanitarian disaster and expressed fear that jihadists could seize civilians for use as human shields, and gun down anyone trying to escape. IS fighters both Iraqis and foreigners - were experts at carrying out suicide bombings and assembling homemade bombs. Many houses were booby-trapped. Iraqi military commanders had to factor these lurking perils into their gameplan. In interviews, IS insurgents shed light on what Iraqi forces were up against. They were quite open about their ideology and what they were willing to do to transform the Middle East. One man said he had used rape as a weapon of war against more than 200 women from Iraqi minorities, and had killed 500 people. After months of grueling fighting, Iraqi forces finally attained the outskirts of Mosul, but any celebrations were premature. Bombs littered dusty roads. Car bombs were exploding. A Mosul resident explained that his child no longer flinched as explosions shook his street because many people, including the young, had grown numb to the daily bloodshed. Each side resorted to desperate measures to gain an edge. In north Mosul, people walked by fly-infested, bloated corpses of militants who had been left on roadsides for two weeks. Iraqi soldiers explained that the stinking bodies had been left there to send a clear message to residents - don t join IS or you will suffer the same fate. Caught in the middle were civilians who had suffered under the IS reign of terror for three years and were now wondering if they would survive a relentless battle to liberate them. Parents waited patiently after weeks of fighting for a largely unknowable right moment to make a dash for Iraqi government lines, clutching their children, risking a run-in with jihadists from places as far away as Chechnya. As much of east and west Mosul was pulverized by coalition air strikes or IS truck and car bombs, the city was reduced to row after row of collapsed or gutted housing. In the end, IS suffered its most decisive defeat and watched their self-proclaimed caliphate evaporate in Iraq, then in Syria as Kurdish-led forces retook Raqqa, IS s urban stronghold there. But those victories will be followed by tough questions about the future of both Iraq and Syria. Preserving the shaky understanding forged between the different communities in the run-up to the Mosul campaign will be essential to saving Iraq as a state in the future. It did not take long for the Mosul coalition to fray. In October, Iraqi forces dislodged Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from the oil city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas and Baghdad imposed curbed air travel to and from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in retaliation for a Kurdish independence referendum held in northern Iraq in September. The battle for Raqqa, which became IS s operational base in Syria, had a different feel to it as U.S.-backed Kurds and Arabs in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) tightened their siege. The fighting seemed slower and more measured, step by step along abandoned streets where journalists were given access. In the weeks before Raqqa s fall in October, young female SDF fighters faced off against hardened militants and suffered losses. But that did not curb their enthusiasm and some said they would eventually like to join Kurdish PKK militants in Turkey and help advance their 33-year-old insurgency there. The victors in Iraq and Syria now face new challenges as they rebuild cities shattered by the showdown with IS. After IS s defeat in Raqqa, Raqqa residents formed a council to run the city but they had no budget when it was first set up, just residents streaming into their tin, run-down headquarters demanding everything from instant jobs to getting their damaged farmland back. Syrian Kurdish fighters were inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan, head of the PKK militants who has been imprisoned in Turkey for almost 20 years. Turkey views the political rise of Syria s Kurds as a threat to its national security and is fiercely opposed to the idea of Kurdish autonomy on its doorstep. The Kurdish groups who led the fight against Islamic State in its former capital Raqqa must now navigate a complex peace to avoid ethnic tension with the city s Arab majority and to secure critical U.S. aid. So, life for Raqqa s victors will remain fraught with risk. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea, U.S. kick off large-scale air exercise amid North Korean warnings;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the United States launched large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, officials said, a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced missile as part of a weapons programme that has raised global tensions. The annual U.S.-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. The exercises have been condemned as a provocation by the isolated North. F-35 fighters will also join the drill, which will also include the largest number of 5th generation fighters to take part, according to a South Korea-based U.S. Air Force spokesman. Around 12,000 U.S. service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight U.S. and South Korean military installations. South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The U.S. Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports. The joint exercise is designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military had said before the drills began. The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation. Pyongyang blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for raising tensions and warned at the weekend the Vigilant Ace exercise was pushing tensions on the Korean peninsula towards a flare-up , according to North Korean state media. North Korea s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called Trump insane on Sunday and said the drill would push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war . The North s KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, also said on Saturday the Trump administration was begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula . North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia president nominates air chief to replace controversial military head;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo has nominated the chief of staff of the air force to be the new head of the armed forces (TNI), to replace a controversial general who is due to retire in April. Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto has close ties to the president and was previously in charge of an air base in the city of Solo, on the island of Java, when Widodo was its mayor. Since then, Tjahjanto has been promoted a number of times including to inspector general of the defense ministry and the president s military secretary. Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto is considered capable and qualified to become TNI commander, presidential spokesman Johan Budi told reporters on Monday after confirming the nomination. The proposal had been sent to the parliament, which needs to approve it, he said. Abdul Kharis Almasyhari, chairman of a parliamentary commission with oversight of defense and security, said the commission would do a fit and proper assessment of the nomination, which hopefully could be completed by a Dec. 14 recess. The outgoing armed forces chef, General Gatot Nurmantyo, who will step down at the end of his term in April, has often courted controversy over what analysts see as his political ambitions. He has been accused of whipping up nationalist sentiment by promoting the notion that Indonesia is besieged by proxy wars waged by foreign states looking to undermine it. In October, Widodo said the armed forces should stay out of politics and ensure their loyalty was only to the state and the government - a statement many believed referred to Nurmantyo s actions. There has been speculation that Nurmantyo would seek to run for vice president or even president in 2019. Nurmantyo has not confirmed any political ambitions. He told a briefing in October the military was neutral in practical politics . ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian, Russian jets bomb residential areas in eastern Ghouta: witnesses, monitor;AMMAN (Reuters) - Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday. Civil defense workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta. Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defense workers said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period. The Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by army troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave to submission. The government has in recent months tightened the siege in what residents and aid workers have said is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies. The United Nations says about 400,00 civilians besieged in the region face complete catastrophe because aid deliveries by the Syrian government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave. Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining large swathe of rebel-held area around Damascus that has not reached an evacuation deal to surrender weapons in return for allowing fighters to go to other rebel-held areas farther north. They are targeting civilians ... a jet hit us there, no rebels or checkpoints, Sadeq Ibrahim, a trader, said by phone in Hamoriya. May God take his revenge on the regime and Russia, said Abdullah Khalil, another resident, who said he lost members of his family in the air strike on Arbin and was searching for survivors among the rubble. The intensified bombardment of Eastern Ghouta follows a rebel attack last month on an army complex in the heart of the region that the army had used to bomb nearby rebel-held areas. Residents said, however, that the failure of the army to dislodge rebels from the complex had prompted what they believe were retaliatory indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the Eastern Ghouta. Government advances since last year have forced people to flee deeper into its increasingly overcrowded towns. The loss of farmland is increasing pressure on scarce food supplies. The Eastern Ghouta is part of several de-escalation zones that Russia has brokered with rebels across Syria that has freed the army to redeploy in areas where it can regain ground. Rebels accuse the Syrian government and Russia of violating the zones and say they were meant as a charade to divert attention from the heavy daily bombing of civilian areas. The Syrian government and Russia deny their jets bomb civilians and insist they only strike militant hideouts. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;CSU nominates right-winger as candidate for Bavaria state premier;MUNICH (Reuters) - Lawmakers of Germany s Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, have nominated state finance minister Markus Soeder as candidate for state premier in a regional election. CSU parliamentary group leader Thomas Kreuzer told reporters in Munich that CSU lawmakers had unilaterally agreed to nominate Soeder, a fierce critic of Merkel s refugee policy, as candidate to run for state premier in next year s regional election. Soeder said he welcomed the decision from Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer to keep the post of CSU party leader since this would help to find a way out of the political impasse in Berlin. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish foreign minister says Brexit border breakthrough possible on Monday;DUBLIN (Reuters) - No agreement has yet been reached between Britain and Ireland on the future of the Northern Irish border, but the breakthrough required to allow wider Brexit talks to proceed could come later on Monday, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said. British Prime Minister Theresa May hopes to break the Brexit talks deadlock on Monday with a new offer on divorce settlements at a crunch meeting with EU officials, but she has not yet achieved sufficient progress on the Irish border - one of three issues that must be resolved. Coveney said the talks were in a sensitive place with the two governments discussing possible texts of an agreement, which is a prerequisite for Britain to start discussions on a new trade pact and a two-year transitional deal. We re not quite yet where we need to be. But it is possible to do that today, Coveney told Irish state broadcaster RTE. Hopefully we ll find a way forward today, he said. Ireland has called on Britain to provide details of how it will ensure there is no regulatory divergence after Brexit in March 2019 that would require physical border controls. But any solution will need the support of Northern Ireland s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 members of parliament are propping up May s government. Coveney said that draft texts were produced following progress in talks last Thursday and that discussions had continued over the weekend. There are political conversations happening in both governments in relation to that text, he said. Both governments understand what each other is asking for. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish government says significant progress on Brexit talks;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland has made significant progress in talks with Britain on the future of the Northern Irish border, but the sides are not there yet , a spokesman for Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Monday. The spokesman said Ireland was seeking a commitment to avoid a hard border in the withdrawal treaty, or ensuring that the rules and regulations of the single market and customs union cannot diverge . It is also looking for assurances on the protection of the Northern Ireland peace process, cross-border funding and the British-Irish common travel area as well as a commitment to a transition period, he said. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moscow to respond to pressure on Russian media abroad: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said on Monday it would respond in kind to any violations of the rights of Russian companies and media abroad, saying it had the tools to do this, the RIA news agency reported. Russia threatened to take action against Alphabet Inc s (GOOGL.O) Google if articles from Russian news websites Sputnik and Russia Today were placed lower in search results, after a statement by Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt appeared to admit this. We have been in correspondence with Google regarding this, and Google replied to us that they had in no way implied this ranking of information, RIA cited Roskomnadzor head Alexander Zharov as saying. It is completely clear that there is the need to react in kind to any violations of the rights of our companies as well as of our mass media, he said. And the Russian Federations has the tools to do this. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Tusk cancels Mideast trip due to Brexit crunch;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Council President Donald Tusk canceled a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories planned for this week due to a critical moment in Brexit negotiations, an EU official said on Monday. Tusk, who scheduled a meeting in Brussels at short notice on Monday with British Prime Minister Theresa May, will chair an EU summit next week that London hopes will give the go-ahead to opening talks on post-Brexit trade relations. On Wednesday, Tusk had been due to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;With new plan, Swiss pin anti-extremism hopes on prevention;ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland released a national plan on Monday to prevent violent extremism, including training teachers and coaches to recognize warning signs and re-integrating people who have already been radicalized. The Swiss so far have avoided the kind of attacks that have hit neighboring Germany and France, but the Swiss Intelligence Service said last month it was tracking 550 people deemed a potential risk to Switzerland as part of its jihad monitoring program, up from 497 people at the end of 2016. Last month, Swiss and French police combined in a cross-border anti-terrorism swoop in which 10 people were arrested. Several high-profile criminal prosecutions have been carried out against people accused of supporting banned groups, including al Qaeda or Islamic State. Over the past 14 months, Switzerland developed the new action plan, which includes 26 measures to better counter such threats. The government is setting aside 5 million Swiss francs ($5.08 million) to support the program over five years, although officials said the main responsibility for implementing programs lies at the local rather than federal level. If you want to stop terrorism, you cannot wait until it is at your door and the police have to take action, you have to tackle it much earlier, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told a news conference. If we want to accomplish something, we have to prevent people from being radicalized in such a way that they resort to violence and turn themselves into terrorists. Neutral Switzerland has not participated in wars in the Middle East, but some fear domestic policies could put the country in the crosshairs of extremists. Voters in 2009 banned the construction of new minarets, and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino has banned facial coverings. A national referendum to ban burqas is also in the works. The action plan comes on top of a separate effort by Bern to tighten anti-terrorism laws, a push that could toughen sentences for people who support violent extremism and boost cooperation with other countries intelligence services. ($1 = 0.9837 Swiss francs) ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's Houthis blow up ex-president Saleh's house;SANAA (Reuters) - Fighters from Yemen s armed Houthi movement blew up house the house of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the center of the capital Sanaa on Monday, residents reported, as his whereabouts remain unknown. His loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban combat with the Iran-aligned Houthis, his former allies in nearly three years of war with a Saudi-led military coalition. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Davis says vital that Brexit talks progress onto trade;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Brexit minister David Davis said on Monday it was vital that European Union negotiators agree to move the talks on to discuss trade, saying it was of huge value to all members of the trading bloc. It s an important day... Everybody understands that the decision to move on to trade talks is vital, it s vital to everybody, it s of huge value to the 27 members and to ourselves, he told Sky News. British negotiators were locked in last-minute talks with their European Union and Irish counterparts on Monday, trying to put together a Brexit deal that Prime Minister Theresa May might agree over lunch in Brussels. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. firms invited to bid for Saudi nuclear plants;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has invited U.S. firms to take part in developing its civilian nuclear power program, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Monday, adding the kingdom was not interested in diverting nuclear technology to military use. Reuters has reported that Westinghouse is in talks with other U.S.-based companies to form a consortium for a multi-billion-dollar project to build two reactors and that those firms are pushing Washington to restart talks with Riyadh on a civil nuclear cooperation pact. Falih said Saudi Arabia was committed to restricting nuclear technology to civilian use. Not only are we not interested in any way to diverting nuclear technology to military use, we are very active in non-proliferation by others, he said at a joint news conference with U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. KACARE, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, is the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans. It said last month on its website that it was in talks with Toshiba-owned Westinghouse and France s EDF. We hope that the two paths will converge - the commercial, technical discussions between KACARE and the American companies, while we work with our counterparts on the American side to address the regulatory and policy issues, Falih said. Perry, who is on his first official visit to Saudi Arabia and will go on to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar this week, said it was a bit premature to comment on the negotiations. We are in the early stages of it but I think we both are working from the position of getting to yes, he said. Washington usually requires a country to sign a peaceful nuclear cooperation pact - known as a 123 agreement - that blocks steps in fuel production with potential bomb-making uses. In previous talks, Saudi Arabia has refused to sign up to any agreement that would deprive it of the possibility of one day enriching uranium. The world s top oil exporter says it wants nuclear power to diversify its energy mix allowing it to export more crude rather than burning it to generate electricity. It has not yet acquired nuclear power or enrichment technology. Reactors need uranium enriched to around 5 percent purity but the same technology in this process can also be used to enrich the heavy metal to a higher, weapons-grade level. This has been at the heart of Western and regional concerns over the nuclear work of Iran, Saudi Arabia s arch-rival which enriches uranium domestically. Riyadh has said it wants to tap its own uranium resources for self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel . The kingdom sent a request for information to nuclear reactor suppliers in October, and plans to award the first construction contract in 2018. Its nuclear plans have gained momentum as part of a reform plan led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to reduce the economy s dependence on oil. Riyadh wants eventually to install up to 17.6 gigawatts of atomic capacity by 2032 - or up to 17 reactors. This is a promising prospect for the struggling global nuclear industry and the United States is expected to face competition from South Korea, Russia, France and China for the initial tender. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malta police arrest 10 suspects in murder of blogger, PM says;VALLETTA (Reuters) - Maltese police have arrested 10 suspects in the murder of anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia, the country s prime minister said on Monday, almost two months after she was killed when her car was blown up. All of the suspects are Maltese nationals and most have a criminal record, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said, without providing any further details. The police have 48 hours to question the suspects, arraign them or release them. Muscat initially announced eight arrests at a press conference, then later said on Twitter that two more had been apprehended. Authorities have all areas of interest under control since early this morning and searches are underway, he said. A section of Lighters Wharf in Marsa was sealed off early on Monday as helicopters circled above. Military and police used sniffer dogs to search. Caruana Galizia, 53, was murdered on Oct. 16 as she was driving away from her house in northern Malta. She wrote a popular blog in which she relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged graft targeting politicians from across party lines. Galizia was following leads from the Panama Papers, which were leaked in 2015 and show how the world s rich use offshore firms to hide their wealth. She had also accused senior figures in the government and opposition of corruption and money laundering. All have denied the accusations and Galizia was hit with 36 libel suits in the nine months preceding her death. Her murder shocked Malta and raised concern within the European Union about the rule of law on the Mediterranean island. Concluding a fact-finding mission on Friday, a group of EU lawmakers said there was a perception of impunity in Malta. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France close to Qatar military, transport contracts: presidential source;PARIS (Reuters) - France is close to finalizing major military and transport contracts during a visit by Emmanuel Macron to Qatar on Thursday, a French presidential source said. Qatar has an option to buy 12 more Dassault-made Rafale fighter jets after buying 24 planes in 2015 for about 6 billion euros ($7.11 billion) and officials have said that the deal could be concluded this week. The two sides are also in talks for sale of 300 VBCI armored vehicles from French firm Nexter and a contract worth some 3 billion euros to manage the Doha metro for 20 years. Discussions are ongoing, a French presidential source told reporters on Monday ahead of the visit. You spoke about several dossiers for which the point of maturity is close, but I prefer to remain a little bit prudent and wait until Thursday. Paris has close commercial and political ties with Qatar and has pushed further business interests in the country as well as encourage investment into France, where the gas-rich Gulf state already has assets of about $10 billion. It has also sought to play a role as a go-between in a row, which began in early June when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut political and trade ties with Qatar. Since then Qatar has sought to strengthen its military, including signing military equipment deals with the United States, Russia and Britain. ($1 = 0.8441 euros) ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalonia's pro-independence parties seen losing majority in election: poll;NMADRID (Reuters) - Catalonia s pro-independence parties were seen losing their parliamentary majority in the regional election on Dec. 21, an official poll showed on Monday. Pro-indepence party Junts per Catalunya was seen winning 25-26 seats, ERC another 32 seats and extreme-left party CUP 9 seats, according to the poll carried out by Sociological Research Centre (CIS). That would give the pro-independence camp just 67 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament, stripping them of the previous slim majority. The government s People s Party (PP) would win just 7 seats while the Socialists would take 21 and the market friendly Ciudadanos 31-32 seats, the poll showed. CatComu-Podem, the Catalan arm of the anti-austerity Podemos party, could win 9 seats, according to the survey. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain and EU agree to avoid hard border in Ireland-Daily Telegraph;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union have agreed a deal that ensures there will be no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit, the chief political correspondent of the Daily Telegraph said on Twitter on Monday. British negotiators have been locked in last-minute talks with their EU and Irish counterparts, trying to put together a Brexit deal that Prime Minister Theresa May might agree over lunch in Brussels. Britain and the European Union are understood to have agreed a deal to ensure there is no hard border between Northern and Southern Ireland after Brexit, the Telegraph s Christopher Hope said on Twitter. The Financial Times also reported that a compromise on the border had been reached. The two sides will agree to maintaining regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit, the FT said. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jordan sentences Syrian militant to death over border attack;AMMAN (Reuters) - A state security court in Jordan on Monday sentenced one Syrian militant to death and handed life sentences to three others for their role in a suicide bombing attack on a Jordanian military border post that killed seven guards last year. Military judge Colonel Mohammad al-Afif said the men, in their early twenties, were involved in helping the Islamic State militant group stage the suicide bombing that shook the kingdom in June last year. Afif said the four had provided photos and intelligence about the Jordanian military post to an Islamic State leader in the former de facto capital of the militants, Raqqa in Syria. The Islamic state leader then sent the suicide bomber. The military outpost was located a few hundred meters away from Rukban camp in a no-man s land where thousands of Syrian refugees were stranded and near where the frontiers of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet. The court found the four, who were residents of the camp, guilty of abetting terrorist acts that led to the death of human beings and other charges of committing terrorist acts using automatic weapons . A fifth defendant was acquitted. They had all pleaded not guilty when the trial began last March. Officials said at the time the suicide bomber drove an explosive laden car at full speed from behind a berm and evaded troops to reach the Jordanian post and detonate his car. The blast, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility a few days later, also left 15 soldiers wounded, officials said. The area was later declared a closed military zone and the incident disrupted aid to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Jordan, which has kept tight control of its frontier with Syria since the outbreak of war in its neighbor, is a partner in a U.S.-led coalition fighting militants in Syria and Iraq, and has been the target of attacks before. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing violence and Russian air strikes in the eastern Homs desert had sought shelter at Rukban, a remote desert camp. King Abdullah had said there were militants among them and Jordan refused to allow them to enter on security grounds. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fiercest clashes yet in Sanaa, Yemen casualties growing: ICRC;GENEVA (Reuters) - Fighting in Yemen s capital has intensified, with the known toll from three hospitals reaching at least 125 killed and 238 wounded in the past six days, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday. Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck at Houthi militia positions in Yemen s capital Sanaa for a second day on Monday in support of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former Houthi ally who has now renounced his alliance with the Iranian-backed group. Residents are trapped in their homes, many lacking provisions, with the sick, wounded and pregnant women often unable to reach hospitals, ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said. The ICRC supplies three large hospitals in the Yemeni capital - Al Thawra, Al Jumhouri and Al Kuwait - which urgently need kits for treating war-wounded, she said. According to the hospitals we are in touch with, the clashes have claimed the lives of 125 people and wounded 238, she said. But due to the fighting, the agency cannot reach its medical warehouse in Sanaa which was hit overnight, but as far as it knows the kits and other goods have not been damaged, she added, declining to give more details about whether it was struck in an air strike or by another type of attack. She said they were looking at donating body bags to the hospitals, plus other supplies. We hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators and they are in urgent need of fuel because their stocks are being depleted at a time of the recent increase in the number of casualties, Jaquemet said. Hospitals need electricity to perform surgeries and maintain the cold chain for drugs and vaccines, she said. The ICRC relocated 13 international staff to Djibouti from Sanaa on Monday, leaving about 199 staff in the city, including 21 expatriates, she said. The agency deploys about 425 staff in Yemen, including in Hodeida, Saada, Taiz and Aden, she said. U.N. and other aid officials said on Sunday that the United Nations was trying to evacuate at least 140 aid workers from the Yemeni capital amid fighting that had cut off the airport road, but awaited approval from the Saudi-led coalition. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Belgian judge to decide on warrant for ex-Catalan leader on Dec. 14: lawyer;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian judge will decide on the exercising of a European arrest warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont on Dec. 14, his lawyers said on Monday. Puigdemont and four of his ministers left Spain after his regional government was sacked by Madrid for unilaterally declaring Catalonia independent following a referendum on secession that court authorities in Madrid had ruled was illegal. They face an arrest warrant from Spain with charges of rebellion and sedition. Paul Bekaert, one of Puigdemont s lawyers, said a decision on the execution of the arrest warrant would be made on Dec. 14. A Brussels court last month spared Puigdemont custody but ruled he could not leave Belgium without a judge s consent. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD to start talks with Merkel next week if members agree;BERLIN/MUNICH (Reuters) - The leader of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) said on Monday he would launch talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a government next week if members of his center-left party gave him the green light at a congress this weekend. The remarks by Martin Schulz raised hopes that the two parties that suffered losses to the far right in an election in September could renew an alliance that has ruled Germany since 2013 and end the political deadlock in Europe s largest economy. Merkel turned to the SPD after failing to form a three-way alliance with the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, plunging Germany into a political impasse and raising doubt about her future after 12 years in power. We ll explore whether and how the formation of a government is possible in Germany, Schulz told journalists. The SPD party board leadership had earlier set down its key demands for coalition talks with the conservatives. On the divisive issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkel s first effort, the SPD said it opposed a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some asylum seekers. Family reunions and family cohabitation lead to good integration, the SPD document said. That s why we are against extending the suspension of family reunions. In a sign of the tensions likely to bubble up between the parties, Horst Seehofer, leader of the arch-conservative Bavarian sister party to Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), warned the SPD not to try to prevent attempts to extend the ban on family reunifications. That would lead to such a huge migrant influx again that Germany s ability to integrate them all would be completely overstretched, Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), told Bild newspaper. Merkel could also face complications from her own camp. Her arch-conservative CSU allies in Bavaria on Monday named right-winger Markus Soeder to be their candidate for the state premiership in a regional election next autumn, potentially weakening her hand as she negotiates with the SPD. Merkel s CDU and the CSU bled support to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) in September s federal election because of anger at the chancellor s decision in 2015 to open Germany s door to more than a million asylum seekers. The CSU now fears losing more votes at regional level. The future of Seehofer had been in question since the election. After the losses, Merkel reluctantly accepted a CSU demand to put a limit on the number of asylum seekers Germany will accept each year. Asked why he was clearing the stage for Soeder to lead the CSU in next year s vote in Bavaria, Seehofer said: The past doesn t win you any elections. Soeder, who has accused Merkel of pulling the conservatives to the left and took a hard line on Greece during the euro zone crisis, is likely to be a bigger thorn in Merkel s side than Seehofer, who is expected to remain party leader. For its part, the SPD, which has governed in coalition under Merkel since 2013, suffered its worst election result in postwar history in September, and had been reluctant to join another grand coalition . It dropped its pledge to go into opposition only after Merkel failed to form a government, bowing to pressure from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to ease the deadlock. The SPD will hold a party congress in Berlin this weekend, where it is expected to debate its position on coalition talks. Kevin Kuehnert, the head of the SPD s youth wing - which opposes another grand coalition - told Die Welt newspaper that the outgoing CDU-CSU-SPD government had been characterized by cheap and often quite bad compromises, such as on urgently needed investment in education and infrastructure . The SPD did not stake out a position on the conservatives upper limit on refugees in its policy document. But it did say Germany should work with French President Emmanuel Macron on strengthening the European project through policies geared to fight high youth unemployment. It did not mention key proposals by Macron that the euro zone should have its own budget and finance minister, but it did refer to his plan for closer defense cooperation. On the economy, the SPD s proposals for more rights for workers and employee-friendly regulation of the large temporary work sector could draw fire from the CSU. The long political impasse is starting to worry investors. An investor sentiment survey tracking Germany fell in December. The research group Sentix said investors wanted to know how expensive a tie-up with the SPD would be. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe swears in first post-Mugabe cabinet;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s new president Emmerson Mnangagwa swore in his cabinet on Monday, with allies defending him against criticism for giving top posts to the generals who helped his rise to power. Sworn in as president on Nov. 24 after 93-year-old Robert Mugabe quit following a de facto military coup, Mnangagwa has also come under fire for bringing back several faces from the Mugabe era, including Patrick Chinamasa as finance minister. Air Marshall Perrance Shiri, who was handed the sensitive land portfolio, defended his appointment in remarks to reporters after a simple ceremony to take oaths of office. Who says military people should never be politicians? I m a Zimbabwean so I have every right to participate in government, he said. Shiri is feared and loathed by many Zimbabweans as the former commander of the North Korean-trained 5 Brigade that played a central role in ethnic massacres in Matabeleland in 1983 in which an estimated 20,000 people were killed. Land is a central political issue in the southern African country, where reforms in the early 2000s led to the violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and hastened an economic collapse. Another military figure is foreign minister Sibusiso Moyo, whom most Zimbabweans remember as the khaki-clad general who went on state television in the early hours of Nov. 15 to announce the military takeover. He declined to discuss the cabinet with Reuters, saying he had yet to get into his new office. Assembling a cabinet has not been without mishaps. Mnangawa dropped his initial pick as education minister on Saturday, 24 hours after appointing him, after a public outcry and reshuffled two others to meet a Constitutional requirement that all but five ministers be Members of Parliament. This has left the information portfolio vacant after he named Chris Mutsvangwa, the influential leader of the war veterans association, as special advisor to the president. Mutsvangwa has defended the cabinet, which at 22 is smaller than Mugabe s 33-strong team, saying the two military appointments were not unique to Zimbabwe. He also said Mnangagwa had engaged the opposition MDC party about taking part in an inclusive government, but its leader Morgan Tsvangirai had blocked it a claim disputed by the MDC. As far as we are concerned there was no contact whatsoever between President Mnangagwa, ZANU-PF and our party regarding the possibility of inclusion or involvement of our members in the government, MDC Vice President Nelson Chamisa told Reuters. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"U.N. seeks humanitarian pause in Sanaa where streets ""battlegrounds""";GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations called on Monday for a humanitarian pause in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Tuesday to allow civilians to leave their homes, aid workers to reach them, and the wounded to get medical care. Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in a statement that the streets of Sanaa had become battlegrounds and that aid workers remain in lockdown . Thus, I call on all parties to the conflict to urgently enable a humanitarian pause on Tuesday 5 December, between 10:00 a.m. and 16:00 p.m. to allow civilians to leave their homes and seek assistance and protection and to facilitate the movement of aid workers to ensure the continuity of life-saving programs, he said. McGoldrick warned the warring parties that any deliberate attacks against civilians, and against civilian and medical infrastructure, are clear violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes . ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU getting closer to starting trade talks with Britain in December: Tusk;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The chairman of European Union leaders said on Monday he was encouraged by the progress of talks on avoiding a physical border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Britain leaves the EU, which brought closer the prospect of starting trade talks with Britain. London wants to start talks on the future trade deal with the EU as soon as possible to provide clarity for companies based in Britain on the terms of business after exiting the EU in March 2019. But the EU said it could only start such talks once sufficient progress is made in negotiations on the terms of the divorce - a financial settlement, citizens rights and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Tell me why I like Mondays! Encouraged after my phone call with Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar) on progress on Brexit issue of Ireland. Getting closer to sufficient progress at December EU summit, Donald Tusk said on Twitter. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian lawmaker proposes to same-sex partner on floor of parliament;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An Australian conservative politician on Monday proposed to his long-term partner on the floor of parliament, ahead of the expected passage of a measure for same sex couples to marry. Australians overwhelmingly voted for same-sex marriage in a postal vote in September and a marriage equality bill that passed the senate last week is being debated in the lower house, where it is expected to pass this week. Liberal member of parliament Tim Wilson proposed to his partner Ryan Bolger in the capital of Canberra, the two having already exchanged rings but having pledged to wait for the country to pass the legislation before they wed. This debate has been the soundtrack to our relationship, an emotional Wilson said to his partner, seated in parliament s public viewing area above. In our first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands, that they are the answer to the question we cannot ask. So there s only one thing left to do - Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me? asked Wilson, who was formerly Australia s human rights commissioner. Bolger nodded yes, to applause. Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition government and the main opposition Labor Party have said they aim to pass the law by Dec. 7, but any proposed amendments could stretch out that timeline. Passage of the bill will make Australia the 26th nation to legalize same-sex marriage, a watershed for a country in which some states considered homosexual activity illegal until 1997. This is an issue of fundamental fairness, Turnbull said to parliament later on Monday. A society that promotes freedom and equality under the law should accord gay men and women the right to marriage. About 80 percent of eligible voters participated in the voluntary survey, a turnout larger than for Britain s Brexit vote and Ireland s same-sex marriage referendum. The message today, to every gay person in this nation, is clear, Turnbull added. We love you, we respect you, your relationship is recognized by the Commonwealth as legitimate and honorable as anybody else s. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police check more suspicious parcels after Potsdam explosive package;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police on Monday investigated further suspicious mail packages found around the country as they tried to catch an extortionist who sent a defective parcel bomb to a pharmacy in the city of Potsdam last week. That package, which contained powerful firecrackers, wires and nails and did not explode, was found to be a criminal extortion attempt against logistics firm DHL rather than terrorism, German authorities said on Sunday. DHL, owned by Deutsche Post, warned its clients on Monday that other suspect packages could arrive through its service among millions of parcels sent in the holiday season. The company said it would not change its postal secrecy principle to control the content of packages. More suspicious packages were reported to authorities around Germany - one, which German media suspected contained a grenade, was sent to the state chancellery in the eastern region of Thuringia but police found only rolled-up catalogues inside it. Police in the eastern state of Brandenburg, where Potsdam is located, said they checked 10 suspicious packages on Monday but gave the all-clear for all of those parcels. The police said a special team investigating the Potsdam pharmacy package was doubled to over 50 officials and they were searching for the extortionist. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France should know that Iran's missiles are not negotiable: spokesman;BEIRUT (Reuters) - France should know that Iran s missile program is not an issue that can be negotiated, Iran s foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, said in an interview with state media on Monday. French official, other officials, who want to speak about Iran s affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past, Qassemi said Monday, according to state media. The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defense and missile issues. Tension between Iran and France increased last month when French President Emmanuel Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile program. His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran s hegemonic temptations . France could play a productive role in the Middle East by taking a realistic and impartial approach , Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Macron in a telephone call two weeks ago, according to Iranian state media. Iranian state media said Rouhani told Macron that the Islamic Republic was ready to develop its relations with France on all bilateral, regional and international issues based on mutual respect and shared goals. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bounce for Australian PM as voters tire of leadership roundabout;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Embattled Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull received an unexpected boost from an opinion poll on Monday that showed voters want their leaders to govern for their full terms rather than the revolving door that has marked Australian politics. Three sitting Australian prime ministers have been ousted by their own parties since 2010, dumped by their colleagues almost as soon as their popularity began to wane. Turnbull has flirted with becoming the latest victim of this syndrome, his popularity flagging ever since he became leader in a party-room coup in September 2015. However, Monday s Fairfax/Ipsos showed that voters had wearied of the national leadership switches, with 71 percent of 1,400 people surveyed saying they disapproved of changing leaders between elections. It came as some relief for Turnbull, whose centre-right coalition government is clinging precariously to power since a citizenship crisis forced his deputy, along with eight other lawmakers, out of parliament because they were dual citizens. The citizenship crisis left Turnbull presiding over a minority government. If there s anyone silly enough to think that they could overthrow Turnbull, I would think this gives them pause for thought, said Rod Tiffen, emeritus professor in government and international relations at Sydney University. But the state of the polls generally is not good news for him, he told Reuters. The government clawed back one key seat on Saturday when Barnaby Joyce, Turnbull s deputy who was forced by the citizenship crisis to recontest his seat, resoundingly won a by-election to regain his place in parliament. However, another crucial by-election looms on Dec. 19 and the crisis continues to distract from Turnbull s attempts at turning the domestic agenda to voter-friendly issues such as tax reform and housing affordability. The Liberal-National coalition lost a 24th straight fortnightly Newspoll, also published on Monday, since Turnbull ousted his predecessor Tony Abbott. Turnbull seized the leadership after Abbott lost 30 consecutive Newspolls and now finds himself under enormous pressure. A poor showing at a state election in Queensland last month, as well as his handling of a vote to legalize same-sex marriage, prompted disgruntled coalition lawmakers to demand that Turnbull quit last week. He has so far stared down the threat and declared he will lead the coalition to the next election, which is due in 2019. Turnbull has also ordered all politicians to disclose the birthplace of their parents and grandparents on Dec. 5 in a bid to end the citizenship crisis. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain and EU fail to agree Brexit deal on Monday: BBC;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union have failed to fully agree a deal on Brexit, the BBC Europe editor said on Monday. No deal today I ve just been told #brexit, Katya Adler said. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya frees Odinga adviser arrested on suspicion of inciting violence;NAIROBI (Reuters) - A prominent strategist for Kenya s opposition who has strongly criticized President Uhuru Kenyatta and called for some parts of the country to secede was released on Monday after being briefly detained on suspicion of inciting violence. Kenya s public prosecutor said on Twitter that David Ndii had been released on police bond and that appropriate actions would be taken after investigations are completed. Police had earlier said Ndii, an economist and anti-corruption campaigner who was arrested on Sunday in the coastal town of Diani, was under interrogation regarding ... the offence of incitement to violence . Opposition leader Raila Odinga condemned the arrest, saying on Monday: He has committed no crime. (This is) designed to intimidate and fragment the people of Kenya. Pro-democracy groups said Ndii s arrest raised concerns about freedom of expression. Ndii has been at the forefront of articulating the problems with the way the country is run, said Gladwell Otieno, executive director of Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) in Nairobi. Ndii is an outspoken critic of Kenyatta, who was sworn in for a second presidential term last week after a prolonged elections season that has disrupted the economy and spurred protests that killed more than 60 people. A senior policy adviser to the opposition National Super Alliance (NASA), he has called since a disputed August election that was voided by the Supreme Court for western and coastal areas that are opposition strongholds to declare independence. Odinga, who boycotted a repeat poll in October saying the election commission had failed to carry out sufficient reforms, has said his preference is for Kenya to remain united. Kenyatta won the re-run election with 98 percent of the vote but the country, a Western ally in a volatile region, remains deeply divided after months of bitter campaigning and sporadic violent clashes. Salim Lone, an Odinga adviser, said Ndii was helping to organize the swearing in of Odinga by a people s assembly on Dec. 12, Kenya s independence day, a plan that has raised the prospect of further confrontations with security forces. Ndii s wife Judith Mwende Gatabaki told journalists on Monday that he was arrested by men who identified themselves as members of the flying squad a police unit that is part of the criminal investigation directorate. She said they searched the couple s hotel room before taking him away and that she had been unable to reach her husband since. We came here to attend a wedding. There was nothing political about it and my husband is not a criminal, Gatabaki said. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bosnia must make reforms or EU window could close - Hahn;SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnia must start making concrete reforms if it wants to join the European Union, or the window to becoming a member could close, the bloc s enlargement chief said on Monday. The European Union accepted Bosnia s application 15 months ago - but Johannes Hahn said the Balkan nation had not made any of the reforms or changes agreed with the bloc and international creditors. So far nothing has been delivered. We now expect very concrete results, Hahn said after meeting political leaders. Bosnia s prime minister, Denis Zvizdic, said he hoped the leaders would reach a compromise on outstanding issues by later this month or early January. The ethnically divided country has so far not managed to respond to the initial EU questionnaire on its readiness to join the bloc. Political bickering has held up a law raising excise tax on fuel, required to unlock external financing for infrastructure projects. There has also been no sign of development and energy and agriculture sector strategies demanded by the bloc. There are a lot of issues in the pipeline but I would like to have them through the pipeline, said Hahn. It is absolutely high time now to deliver on what has been agreed, otherwise, the window can be closed again and this is not something we all would like to see, he told a news conference. Hahn urged government and opposition leaders to stop appealing to ethnic nationalism, and said the EU would be looking for evidence of European values, including a respect for court rulings. Without that understanding one cannot make any progress, he said. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FBI AGENT Who ‘Found Nothing’ on Huma and Anthony Weiner’s Laptops in Record Time Right Before Election is Same Agent FIRED by Mueller for Anti-Trump Texts;"Holy moly! We ve been covering the FBI agent who was fired for his anti-Trump tweets but now this BOMBSHELL:The agent is the one who quickly looked over thousands of emails from the Weiner computer and said there was nothing there! You can bet this is now a big problem for the FBI. President Trump is correct when he says the FBI is in tatters Reddit reported:OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE FIRED ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT: This is an interesting development in the Mueller investigation because we don t trust the FBI. Is this new news from the New York Times an effort to make Mueller and McCabe appear unbiased? We re not buying it because this guy was the lead investigator in the Hillary email case Really??? Talk about compromised! Please see our previous report below on the FBI giving special status to Hillary s email investigation.Robert Mueller kicked a top FBI agent off the special counsel investigation this summer over potential anti-Trump texts he sent, per a new report today.According to The New York Times, Peter Strzok not only helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton s emails, but he played a major role in the Trump-Russia investigation.But he is no longer on the investigation:Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller s investigation to the F.B.I. s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear anti-Trump.ABC News reported back in August that Strzok had left the investigation, but said at the time it s unclear why Strzok stepped away from Mueller s team of nearly two dozen lawyers, investigators and administrative staffers. And The Washington Post s report today on Strzok contains some rather, well, personal details:During the Clinton investigation, Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.The extramarital affair was problematic, these people said, but of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season, in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton Officials are now reviewing the communications to see if they show evidence of political bias in their work on the cases, a review which could result in a public report, according to people familiar with the matter. Via: mediaiteFBI INVESTIGATORS GAVE SPECIAL STATUS TO HILLARY:Friday on Fox News Channel s Fox & Friends, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said evidence had been uncovered showing that the FBI gave the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s improper use of an unauthorized email server while secretary of state a special status. According to the Florida Republican, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the process afforded to Clinton was different than it would have been for any other American. We now have evidence that the FBI s investigation of Hillary Clinton did not follow normal and standard procedures, he said. The current deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe sent emails just weeks before the presidential election saying that the Hillary Clinton investigation would be special that it would be handled by a small team at headquarters, that it would be given special status. GOETZ CALLED FOR AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION: I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";Government News;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congo used exiled rebels to suppress anti-Kabila protests: report;DAKAR (Reuters) - Congolese security officials recruited more than 200 exiled rebel fighters to help suppress protests against President Joseph Kabila a year ago, ordering them to use lethal force, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Monday. Security forces killed dozens during demonstrations in December 2016 when a delay to presidential elections and Kabila s refusal to step down sparked widespread unrest. Kabila was required by the constitution to step down after an election to replace him in 2016 but the vote has been delayed until December 2018. Opposition leaders and activist groups have vowed fresh protests this month to try to force him from power. The HRW report was based on interviews with 13 fighters from the M23 rebel group who it says were recruited in neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, M23 leaders and nine Congolese security and intelligence officials, most of whom were cited anonymously. Congo s government spokesman declined to comment. Delphin Kahimbi, the head of Congo s military intelligence named in the report as one of the operation s coordinators, denied he recruited M23 fighters, calling the report s findings ridiculous and absurd . M23 president Bertrand Bisimwa said in a statement on Monday that Congo had recruited deserters and others previously kicked out of the group but that M23 leadership was in no way involved. The M23 rose up against the government in eastern Congo in 2012 in one of a series of insurrections driven by disputes over ethnicity, land and resource rights that have cost millions of lives over the past two decades. The M23 was defeated by Congolese and U.N. troops in late 2013. The government subsequently promised amnesty for most of the hundreds of rebels who fled to neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, but the process has stalled. Congo s security services turned to M23 last year because Kabila did not trust his own security forces, the report said. Fighters were deployed to Kinshasa, Congo s second city Lubumbashi and the eastern city of Goma, integrated into police, army and presidential guard units. They were ordered to use lethal force against protesters, the report said. For their service, M23 members received hundreds of dollars each. Recruiters also warned they would lose all protection if Kabila left power. Richard Karemire, Uganda s military spokesman, denied M23 fighters were recruited in Uganda. Rwandan officials could not be immediately reached for comment. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;With Algeria's future uncertain, Macron unlikely to dwell on past during visit;PARIS/ALGIERS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron is likely to use a visit to Algeria on Wednesday to look to the future and turn the page on the colonial past, but stop short of apologizing for his country s actions as some demand. The trauma of the 1954-1962 independence war, in which hundreds of thousands of Algerians were killed and tortured was used on both sides, has left deep scars. Former French leader Francois Hollande sought a more conciliatory tone describing his country s colonization of Algeria as brutal and unfair and Macron is unlikely to go further. With President Abdelaziz Bouteflika rarely seen in public since a 2013 stroke, Macron will focus on the generational shift and importance of enhanced economic and security within that context. On a visit to Algeria in February as a candidate, Macron, 39, already shocked many at home when he said France s 132-year colonial rule was a crime against humanity. The president had strong words. It was appreciated by Algerians, but today the idea is to turn the page and build a new relationship with Algeria, a French presidential source said, adding that youth was his key message. During a three-day tour in Africa last week Macron again addressed the colonial past. While recognizing the crimes of the European colonizers, he also pointed to the positives of the era and made clear that his generation should not be blamed. Facing high unemployment, low oil prices, austerity and political uncertainty, Algeria s youth is likely to warm to Macron s call to look to the future more than the war veterans. It s very difficult to have a relationship between one partner (Macron) that is young, vibrant and wants renewal and the other partner (Bouteflika) who represents such a severe contrast, said Pierre Vermeren, a North Africa specialist at the Paris Sorbonne university. Economic ties between the two countries have marginally progressed since 2012 and France is now behind China as the main partner. Annual trade stands at about 8 billion euros compared with 6.36 billion five years ago. More than 400,000 Algerians are given visas for France annually, almost twice as many as in 2012. If Macron makes it easier to get a visa, that will be great for me. As for the history stuff I really don t care, said Slimane Khalifa, 25 who is an engineer at a state firm. POST-BOUTEFLIKA TEST Political jostling around Bouteflika has intensified as his health has waned, fuelling questions about the transition if he steps down before his term ends in 2019. With more than 4 million people of Algerian origin in France, all with ties to the North African state, any upheaval across the Mediterranean would have a serious impact on Paris. Macron s biggest foreign policy test could be Algeria because the state of Bouteflika s health is a worry and potentially what happens after could have huge ramifications on us, said a French diplomat. Macron s friendship visit, downgraded from an official visit, is also an opportunity to appease some anger in Algiers after he traveled first to arch-rival Morocco earlier this year, a taboo for previous French leaders. Many hope Macron will go one step further when it comes to the past. France should not only apologize, but also pay for its crimes during occupation, Lakhdar Brahimi, retired diplomat and close friend of the 80-year-old Bouteflika said last week. Brahimi, like Bouteflika, belongs to the war veterans who fought against French occupation and among that generation Macron is seen as his last chance for history to remember Bouteflika as the man who obtained an official apology. However, it remains a sensitive issue across France and Macron s comments in February led to a drop in poll ratings and uproar across various strands of society forcing him to clarify his stance. With the generational change yet to take place, Macron for now needs Algeria to help resolve the crisis in neighboring Libya and to prevent Islamist militants from stoking problems in the Sahel region, where some 4,000 French troops, roam close to the Algerian border. All the Algerians want is for France and the Barkhane force to get out of Mali and away from its border, said a senior French diplomat. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian walkout from talks 'an embarrassment to Russia': opposition;GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian government s decision to quit peace talks last week was an embarrassment to its main supporter Russia, which wants both sides to reach a deal quickly, opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi said on Monday. The delegation left the U.N.-backed talks in Geneva on Friday, blaming the opposition s demands that President Bashar al-Assad should play no role in any interim post-war government. I don t think that those who support the regime are happy with such a position being taken by the regime. This is an embarrassment to Russia, Aridi said at the hotel where the opposition delegation is staying in Geneva. We understand the Russian position now. They are... in a hurry to find a solution. There was no immediate comment from Russian officials at the talks on the withdrawal of the government delegation. Russia helped to turn the Syrian war in Assad s favor and has become the key force in the push for a diplomatic solution. Last month Russian President Vladimir Putin said a political settlement should be finalised within the U.N. Geneva process. The opposition, long wary of Russia s role, now accepts it. Western diplomats say Putin s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev was present at the Riyadh meeting last month where the opposition drew up its statement rejecting any future role for Assad. Asked if the opposition was willing to compromise on Assad s role in any post-war government, Aridi said his delegation s demands were based on the wishes of the Syrian people. I believe that our mere presence in Geneva is in itself a compromise. We are sitting with a regime that has been carrying out all these atrocities for the past seven years. What other compromise could we make? A source close to government delegation told Reuters on Monday that Damascus was still studying the feasibility of participation in the talks and when a decision was reached it would be sent through ordinary diplomatic channels. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Corsica's nationalists press for autonomy talks after local vote;AJACCIO, France (Reuters) - Corsican nationalists on Monday demanded the French government enter into negotiations over greater autonomy for the Mediterranean island after they won almost half the votes in a local election. The nationalists - split between those who seek greater autonomy and those who see full independence from France as the end-game - emerged as Corsica s main political force for the first time in French regional elections in December 2015. In a vote on Sunday for a newly created local assembly, the Pe a Corsica (For Corsica), an alliance of the two main nationalist parties, won 45.36 percent of the ballot, putting it in a commanding position for the second round vote on Dec. 10. In the wake of Catalonia s recent independence referendum, Corsican nationalists have downplayed any ambitions for secession, saying the island lacked the demographic and economic clout of the Spanish region. Corsica has a population of just 320,000 people and a tiny 8.6 billion euro ($10.2 bln) economy. The nationalists less ambitious demands, and dissatisfaction with the central government in France, probably helped the nationalists attract more votes on Sunday. Pe a Corsica, which unites the moderately autonomist Femu a Corsica and the committed separatist Corsica Libera, has drawn up a 10-year road-map during which it hopes to obtain a new status giving the island greater autonomy and pave the way for stronger economic development. Paris must at last open dialogue with Corsica, said Gilles Simeoni, the outgoing president of Corsica s Executive Council and a member of Femu a Corsica. Corsican people have their own identity and this must be recognized. The French government said it would not comment on the Corsican vote until after the second round. France is a highly centralized state and its demands for more autonomy have often been met with irritation and a refusal to negotiate by past governments. But support for the nationalist political movement has gained support since the most active clandestine group, the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC), laid down its weapons in 2014 after a near four-decade long rebellion. Corsica s nationalists oppose France s political and cultural dominance over the island, the birthplace of Napoleon annexed by Paris in 1768, and their demands for independence fueled years of bloodshed. At some point, the wishes of Corsican people will have to be taken into account, Jean-Guy Talamoni, the president of the Corsican Assembly and leader of the pro-independence Corsica Libera movement, told France Inter radio on Monday. However, he acknowledged those backing all-out independence were still in a minority. If a majority of Corsican people want independence in 10 years, in 15 years time, no one will be able to get in their way, he said. French President Emmanuel Macron s ticket came in fourth in Sunday s vote with 11.26 percent. His Republic On the Move party said the vote showed Corsicans loss of confidence in Paris and that it aimed to rebuild trust everywhere in France. ($1 = 0.8430 euros) ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia to start registering some foreign media as 'foreign agents' this week: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s justice ministry will start registering some foreign media as foreign agents this week, the RIA news agency cited a source in the Russian upper house of parliament as saying on Monday. Nine U.S. media outlets, including the Voice of America and Radio Liberty, are likely to enter the list of foreign agents to be approved by Russia s parliament, the source at the legislature s Federation Council chamber told RIA. The Kremlin has said it fully understands why Russia s parliament plans to discuss banning representatives of U.S. media organizations in retaliation for what it calls U.S. mistreatment of Russian media. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish PM statement on Brexit talks delayed;DUBLIN (Reuters) - A statement by Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on the progress of Brexit talks between Britain and the European Union has been delayed, a spokesman said. He did not say what time the statement would take place. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary dismisses Estonian compromise offer on asylum-seekers;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary remains firmly opposed to illegal immigration and the European Union should focus efforts on protecting its external borders, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said about an Estonian compromise proposal on asylum-seekers. Hungary s view on migration is clear and rock steady: We think illegal immigration is dangerous. Because of illegal immigration, Europe has never had to face the kind of terror threat it faces now, Szijjarto told a news conference with ministers and officials from eastern and southern Europe, in response to a question. Under the Estonian plan, the executive European Commission would determine fair shares of asylum-seekers that countries would be expected to take in at their own borders - largely based on their population and wealth. But it would trigger an early warning if arrivals looked about to test such levels. Szijjarto said any encouragement for further migrant arrivals was against Europe s interests, adding that the only solution acceptable to Budapest was that illegal immigration should be stopped, preferably as far outside the EU s borders as possible. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Yemeni strongman Saleh played his last hand and lost;DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemen s steely former president of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, made his last political gamble and lost on Monday, meeting his death at the hands of the Houthi movement, his erstwhile allies in the country s multi-sided civil war. Officials in his General People s Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the 75-year-old Saleh had been killed outside the capital Sanaa in what Houthi sources said was an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and gun attack. A master of weaving alliances and advancing his personal and family interests in Yemen s heavily armed and deeply fractious tribal society, Saleh unified his country by force, but he also helped guide it toward collapse in its latest war. The Middle East s arch-survivor once compared running Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes , ruling with expertly balanced doses of largesse and force. He outlived other Arab leaders who were left dead or deposed by uprisings and civil wars since 2011. Cornered by pro-democracy Arab Spring protests, Saleh wore a cryptic smile when signing his resignation in a televised ceremony in 2012. Saleh waged six wars against the Houthis from 2002 to 2009 before he made an impromptu alliance with the group that seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 and eventually turned on him. The two sides feuded for years for supremacy over territory they ran together. The Houthis probably never forgave his forces for killing their founder and father of the current leader. Fearing the Houthis are a proxy for their arch-foe Iran, the mostly Gulf Arab alliance sought to help the internationally recognized Yemeni government win the conflict. Saleh s army loyalists and Houthi fighters together weathered thousands of air strikes by a Saudi-led military coalition in almost three years of war. As the conflict wrought a humanitarian crisis, mutual sniping about responsibility for economic woes in northern Yemeni lands that they together rule peaked on Wednesday when the capital erupted in gunbattles between their partisans. ARCH-SURVIVOR Saleh had seemed unshakeable in one of the world s poorest and unstable countries. He managed to play his enemies off against each other as tribal warfare, separatist movements and Islamist militants destabilized Yemen. He survived a bomb attack in his palace mosque in 2011 which killed senior aides and disfigured him. As other leaders were toppled by the Arab Spring uprisings, he found a way to retire peacefully to his villa in the capital and plot a comeback. Despite being forced to step down in 2012 under a Gulf-brokered transition plan following protests against his rule, Saleh won immunity in the deal and remained a powerful political player. The ever-nimble Saleh was a pivotal figure in the war, which has killed at least 10,000 people, displaced 2 million from their homes, led to widespread hunger and a cholera epidemic. Saleh became the ruler of North Yemen in 1978 at a time when the south was a separate, communist state, and led the unified country after the two states merged in 1990. Opponents often complained that Yemen under Saleh failed to meet the basic needs of the country s people, where two of every three live on less than $2 per day. Saleh managed to keep Western and Arab powers on his side, styling himself as a key ally of the United States in its war on terrorism. He received tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid for units commanded by his relatives. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against U.S. cities, Yemen came onto Washington s radar as a source of foot soldiers for Osama bin Laden s al Qaeda network. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia though his family came from Yemen s Hadramaut region. Saleh cooperated with U.S. authorities as the CIA stepped up a campaign of drone strikes against key al Qaeda figures, which also led to scores of civilian deaths. Born in 1942 near Sanaa, he received only limited education before joining the military as a non-commissioned officer. His first break came when President Ahmed al-Ghashmi, who came from the same Hashed tribe as Saleh, appointed him military governor of Taiz, North Yemen s second city. When Ghashmi was killed by a bomb in 1978, Saleh replaced him. In 1990, the collapse of the Soviet Union helped propel North Yemen under Saleh and the socialist South Yemen state into a unification. Saleh angered Gulf Arab allies by staying close to Saddam Hussein during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, leading to the expulsion of up to 1 million Yemenis from Saudi Arabia. But he then won plaudits from Western powers for carrying out economic reforms drawn up by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and made efforts to attract foreign investors. He swept to victory when southerners tried to secede from united Yemen in 1994 and drew closer to Saudi Arabia, which he allowed to spread its radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam. Saleh s son, Ahmed Ali, lives under house arrest in the United Arab Emirates, where he once served as ambassador before it joined ally Saudi Arabia to make war on the Houthi-Saleh alliance. Ahmed Ali, a powerful former military commander whom his father appeared to be grooming to succeed him, may the family s last chance to win back influence. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MINNESOTA MAYOR Has Classic Liberal Meltdown Over ‘White Privilege’ Denier [Video];The latest liberal meltdown comes from Minnesota This reminds of the mayor who was stopped by the police and had a fake meltdown too (see below). Do these liberals all have a meltdown handbook ?SDA reports:If you re a Social Justice Warrior, here s a standard set of tactics to get your way:Proclaim anything you wish, no matter how ludicrous.If anyone dares disagree with you, call them a racist, bigot, homophobe, or Islamophobe.If they dare object, scream at them that they are out of order and to stop interrupting you.Start shaking and crying, proclaiming how passionate you are about what you re saying.Do whatever you need to do to make yourself out to be the victim.Now that you understand this playbook, watch New Brighton, Minnesota mayor Val Johnson follow this script:Vote this crazy liberal lunatic out THAT S WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS LIBERAL LUNATIC: Thank goodness a police camera captured a Democratic county lawmaker bizarrely screaming, begging, invoking for special privileges, saying she s broke, claiming to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and panting like she s about to keel over while she received a routine speeding ticket for driving 13 miles per hour over the posted speed limit. The legislator in the disturbing dash-cam video is Jennifer Schwartz Berky, a member of the Ulster County Legislature in Ulster County, New York.Becky obviously doesn t think the rules apply to her The incident occurred back in May. The video is coming out now just in time for local elections in response to a Freedom of Information Law request (and in spite of appeals by Berky s lawyer to suppress it).You owe it to yourself to watch this woman s epic freakout. There s groaning and whimpering. There are excuses galore.Mere words cannot do any sort of justice to the groaning, the whimpering, the excuse-making, the lamentation and the gnashing of teeth over a speeding ticket for going 43 miles per hour in a zone where the posted speed limit is 30 miles per hour.The New York Post has published an even shorter version sort of a CliffsNotes summary of Berky s amazing encounter with local police.Berky who claims in the video that she suffers from PTSD has an undergraduate degree in art history and a graduate degree in urban planning from Columbia University, according to a lengthy biography at the website of Ulster County s local government.She was born and raised in New York City but has lived for several years abroad during her career and studies, and is fluent in Spanish, French and Italian. She lists three party affiliations in her bio. In addition to the Democratic Party, there is the Green Party and the Working Families Party, an ultra-progressive leftist group.She has been very been active in supporting her fellow Democrats and Working Families Party candidates in federal, state and local elections. Wow! Koo Koo!Read more: Daily Caller;left-news;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Northern Ireland must leave EU on same terms as rest of UK, DUP leader Foster says;BELFAST (Reuters) - The leader of the Northern Irish party which props up Prime Minister Theresa May s minority government said the province must leave the European Union on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said there could be no regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland must leave the European Union on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom, Foster said. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland politically or economically from the rest of the UK. And the economic and constitutional integrity of the UK must not be compromised in any way. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Scotland's Sturgeon sees no reason not to get special Brexit deal like N.Ireland;EDINBURGH (Reuters) - An agreement to keep Northern Ireland in regulatory alignment with the European Union after Brexit could be replicated in other parts of the UK, Nicola Sturgeon, the head of Scotland s devolved pro-independence government, said on Monday. Earlier, Irish government sources said the British government had agreed to maintain such alignment for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state. If one part of the United Kingdom can retain regulatory alignment with the European Union and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can t , Sturgeon said on Twitter. In the 2016 referendum in which the UK as a whole voted to leave the EU, a large majority of Scots voted to remain in the bloc. The British government has so far ruled out any special Brexit deal for Scotland that would reflect that. The devolved Scottish government has been campaigning for the UK to stay within the European single market and customs union, and had originally argued that Scotland could stay in the single market even if the rest of the UK left the trading area. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says recognizing Jerusalem as capital would cause catastrophe;ANKARA (Reuters) - A formal U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would cause catastrophe and lead to new conflict in the Middle East, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Monday. Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting, Bozdag, who is also the government spokesman, said Jerusalem s status had been determined by international agreements and that preserving it was important for the peace of the region. The status of Jerusalem and Temple Mount have been determined by international agreements. It is important to preserve Jerusalem s status for the sake of protecting peace in the region, Bozdag said. If another step is taken and this step is lifted, this will be a major catastrophe. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump s adviser and son-in-law said Trump had not yet made a decision on whether to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a move that would break with decades of U.S. policy. Past U.S. presidents have insisted that the status of Jerusalem home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions must be decided in negotiations. On Saturday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan held a phone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which they discussed the status of Jerusalem, sources in Erdogan s office said. The sources said Erdogan told Abbas that preserving the status of Jerusalem was important for all Muslim countries, adding that international laws and United Nations decisions should be followed on the issue. Any move by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital would fuel extremism and violence, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Saturday. A senior Jordanian source said on Sunday that Amman has begun consultations on convening an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation before Trump s expected declaration this week. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian prosecutors seek 10 years in jail for ex-economy minister: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian prosecutors on Monday sought a sentence of 10 years in jail for ex-economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev, on trial on charges of extorting a $2 million bribe from Rosneft chief Igor Sechin, Russian news agencies reported. Ulyukayev denies the charges. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saleh was killed in RPG, gun attack on his car, Houthis say;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Houthi radio station says ex-president Saleh killed, party denies;DUBAI (Reuters) - The radio station of Yemen s Houthi-controlled Interior Ministry said on Monday that the group s rival, ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh had been killed, but there has been no independent confirmation of his death. The report added that the official Houthi TV station would soon broadcast footage of his dead body, while social media users in Yemen circulated unverified images of a corpse which resembled the ex-president. Saleh s party denied to Reuters that their leader had been killed and said he was continuing to lead forces in their clashes against the Houthis in the capital Sanaa. His whereabouts are unknown and he has made no public appearances since the reports of his death surfaced. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France, Germany want Iran to reverse ballistic missile program;PARIS (Reuters) - France and Germany agree that Iran must reverse its ballistic missile program and end its hegemonic temptations across the Middle east, the French foreign minister said on Monday. We also have the same view on the necessity for Iran to go back on its ballistic missile program and its hegemonic temptations, Jean-Yves Le Drian said at a news conference alongside his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: FBI Supervisor Fired For Anti-Trump Texts Oversaw Michael Flynn Interviews;A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller s Special Counsel s Office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the bureau s interviews of embattled former National Security advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one-count of lying to the FBI last week.FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, which took place on Jan. 24, at the White House, said several sources. The other FBI special agent, who interviewed Flynn, is described by sources as a field supervisor in the Russian Squad, at the FBI s Washington Field Office, according to a former intelligence official, with knowledge of the interview.Strzok was removed from his role in the Special Counsel s Office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton s email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia s election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee s Chairman Devin Nunes chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the Special Counsel three months ago, according to a statement given by the Chairman.The former U.S. intelligence official told this reporter, with the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the Special Counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 of Flynn s interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question. The most logical thing to happen would be to call the other FBI Special Agent present during Flynn s interview before the Grand Jury to recount his version, the former intelligence official added.The former official also said that Strzok s allegiance to (Deputy Director Andrew) McCabe was unwavering and very well known. Flynn, a retired three-star general, issued a statement on Dec. 1, saying, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. According to another source, with direct knowledge of the Jan. 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called, the source said.McCabe told Flynn some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate, the source said. It wasn t until after they were already in (Flynn s) office that he realized he was being formerly interviewed. He didn t have an attorney with him, they added.Flynn s attorney Robert Kelner did not respond for comment. A former FBI agent said the investigation into Strzok and the reported text messages between him and Page, shows a bias that cannot be ignored particularly if he had anything to do with Flynn s interview and his role in it. The former U.S. intelligence official questioned, how logical is it that Flynn is being charged for lying to an agent whose character and neutrality was called into question by the Special Counsel. According to an anonymous source in The Washington Post, Strzok s and Page had exchanged a number of texts that expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton. For entire story: Sara Carter, Hannity.com ;left-news;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: MEGHAN MCCAIN RIPS Into Joy Behar For Her Embarrassing Reaction To Brian Ross’ FAKE NEWS Report On “The View”; The View co-host, and rabid, liberal, activist, Joy Behar, made a colossal ass of herself on Friday when she was handed a breaking news story in the middle of her show. Joy Behar paused the show to read the breaking news statement aloud to her viewers: ABC News Brian Ross is reporting Michael Flynn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team, and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians! Yes! Joy proceeded to throw her hands in the air and toss the card containing what ended up being a fake news story, into the air, as a sign of her jubilation over the news that they finally got Donald Trump. Joy was not only telling her audience something that wasn t true, she was showing what it looks like when a partisan hack puts their own selfish desires above a potentially serious issue that, if it were found to be true, could potentially be a serious national security issue.Watch:joy behar getting handed the flynn news is the definition of, well, joy pic.twitter.com/Ush7sH5K3r David Mack (@davidmackau) December 1, 2017Meghan McCain, who was clearly disturbed by her co-host Joy Behar s unprofessional behavior on Friday, gave Behar, and the rest of the liberal The View panel a piece of her mind on the show today.Watch:The funniest and most delusional part of the video happens when fellow unhinged, liberal, activists and co-hosts of The View attempt to convince their viewers how Hillary could never get away with half of the things Donald Trump has done. EW- When it happened in real time, I think everyone who was watching the show could see my discomfort at the room erupting like the Dodgers had just won the World Series, she said when the topic of the correction was first brought up. She then compared Behar s initial reaction to that of Rush Limbaugh saying that he hoped Barack Obama would fail as president. McCain explained, If we re celebrating a breach of national security it s going to tear our country apart. McCain then lambasted her co-hosts for spreading fake news with her on the panel. I went to a Christmas party over the weekend;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Earthquake strikes off Kermadec Islands, no tsunami warning;SYDNEY (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 struck off the Kermadec Islands at a depth of 10 km on Monday, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. There was no tsunami warning. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says resurfacing tensions on Korean peninsula regrettable;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday that after two months of relative calm on the Korean peninsula, the resurfacing of tensions was regrettable. Wang, speaking to reporters at a joint briefing with his Mongolian counterpart, said that China has an open attitude on solutions to the North Korean nuclear issue, but that parties should be consultative. In late November, North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, putting the continental United States within range and increasing pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump to deal with the nuclear-armed nation. North Korea s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called Trump insane on Sunday and said air drills between the United States and the South would push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war . ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;JUST IN: SUPREME COURT Rules On Trump Travel Ban;Another winner for America and for President Trump! The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the travel ban! Guess who voted against it Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place. Is anyone surprised by the two lefty judges? Not us!Fox News reports:Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of President Trump s travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.The justices said the policy can take full effect despite multiple legal challenges against it that haven t yet made their way through the court system.The ban applies to people from Syria, Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.Lower courts had said people from those countries with a bona fide relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.The nine-member high court said in two one-page orders late Monday afternoon that lower court rulings that partly blocked the ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco take up the case.Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.Both courts are scheduled to hear arguments in those cases this week.Both courts are also dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions with appropriate dispatch. Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.Trump s travel ban has been challenged in separate lawsuits by Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both have argued the ban discriminates against Muslims and should not go into effect under immigration laws.;Government News;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran electoral website shows president 1.59 percent points ahead;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez held a lead over his main opposition rival after a partial recount of a disputed Nov. 26 presidential vote that has sparked a political crisis, the website of the electoral tribunal showed Monday. Hernandez had 42.98 percent of the vote, while TV star Salvador Nasralla had 41.39 percent, with 99.96 percent of votes tallied, according to the tribunal s website. The head of the tribunal, David Matamoros, has yet to declare an outright winner, telling reporters that parties could still file legal challenges and that the tribunal could still consider a wider recount. He said there would be more announcements later on Monday. Early last week, Nasralla, a former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory over Hernandez, gaining a five point lead with over half of the vote tallied. After the count suddenly halted for more than a day, the sporadic vote count started leaning in favor of the incumbent. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;John Anderson, liberal Republican who challenged Reagan, dies at 95;"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John Anderson, a former Republican congressman who challenged the party’s conservative drift by taking on its chief symbol, Ronald Reagan, and ran for president as an independent in 1980, died on Sunday. He was 95. Anderson had been ill for some time, family friend Dan Johnson told Reuters in a telephone interview. Anderson’s wife, Keke, and his daughter Diane were at his side when he died in Washington, Diane Anderson said by phone. Anderson finished a distant third with almost 7 percent of the vote in the 1980 presidential election but gave almost 6 million voters an alternative to the conservative Reagan - who won the election - and the unpopular Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. But Anderson did not win a single precinct and political analysts said he ultimately may have contributed to Reagan’s electoral landslide by taking votes from Carter. Anderson’s first venture into politics came in 1956 when he was elected as a state attorney in Illinois. In 1960, he won the first of 10 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives running as a conservative. He later moved to the left, breaking with conservatives in 1968 by voting for a bill to outlaw racial discrimination in housing. Anderson served as chairman of the House Republican Conference for the next 10 years even as he became more critical of Republican President Richard Nixon, especially on his handling of the Vietnam War. He was one of the first Republican House members to call for Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal. “He’s the smartest guy in Congress, but he insists on voting his conscience instead of party,” Republican U.S. Representative Gerald Ford, who later become president, said of Anderson in 1973. In 1980, with Carter low in the opinion polls and his administration mired in the Iran hostage crisis, many Republicans, including Anderson, jumped into the party’s presidential primaries for a chance to oppose the Democrat in the November election. Reagan, who had come close to winning the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, quickly moved to the front of the race, with his main opponent being former U.N. Ambassador George H.W. Bush. Anderson dropped out of the Republican primaries in the spring of 1980 and announced he was running as an independent. When he entered the race, he was enthusiastically greeted as an alternative to the major parties, getting around 25 percent support in at least one poll. But his poll numbers began sliding, even though he was seen as having bested Reagan in surveys after a televised debate with the Republican presidential nominee. Carter boycotted that debate and refused to face Reagan if Anderson was included. Carter finally agreed to a debate with Reagan shortly before the election, when the sponsoring League of Women Voters agreed not to invite Anderson. Four years later, Anderson’s break with conservative Republicans was complete and he supported Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale, who lost to Reagan in a landslide. Born in Rockford, Illinois, on Feb. 15, 1922, Anderson was educated at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Harvard Law School. He served in the Second World War and joined the foreign service, stationed in Germany, his family said in a statement. After his presidential defeat, Anderson became a visiting professor at various universities, wrote extensively and served on many boards including FairVote, a voting rights organization formerly known as the Center for Voting and Democracy. In the 2000 presidential election, Anderson was seen as a possible presidential candidate for the Reform Party founded by Texas billionaire Ross Perot, but he ended up endorsing Ralph Nader. Diane Anderson said her father believed the two-party system was broken and was appalled by what happened with the Republican Party. “Everything he wanted to prevent unfortunately came to pass,” she said. ";politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Supreme Court lets Trump's latest travel ban go into full effect;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by allowing his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect even as legal challenges continue in lower courts. The nine-member court, with two liberal justices dissenting, granted his administration’s request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a contentious policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January. The high court’s action means that the ban will now go fully into effect for people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. The Republican president has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism by Islamic militants. In a statement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the Supreme Court’s action “a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people.” Sessions said the Trump administration was heartened that a clear majority of the justices “allowed the president’s lawful proclamation protecting our country’s national security to go into full effect.” The ban was challenged in separate lawsuits by the state of Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both sets of challengers said the latest ban, like the earlier ones, discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution and is not permissible under immigration laws. Trump had promised as a candidate to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Last week he shared on Twitter anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right British party leader. “President Trump’s anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret - he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter,” ACLU lawyer Omar Jadwat said. “It’s unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones,” Jadwat added. Lower courts had previously limited the scope of the ban to people without either certain family connections to the United States or formal relationships with U.S.-based entities such as universities and resettlement agencies. Trump’s ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect. The high court said in two similar one-page orders that lower court rulings that partly blocked the latest ban should be put on hold while federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia weigh the cases. Both courts are due to hear arguments in those cases this week. The Supreme Court said the ban will remain in effect regardless of what the appeals courts rule, at least until the justices ultimately decide whether to take up the issue on the merits, which they are highly likely to do. The court’s order said the appeals courts should decide the cases “with appropriate dispatch.” “We agree a speedy resolution is needed for the sake of our universities, our businesses and most of all, for people marginalized by this unlawful order,” Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the administration’s request. Monday’s action sent a strong signal that the court is likely to uphold the ban on the merits when the case likely returns to the justices in the coming months. There are some exceptions to the ban. Certain people from each targeted country can still apply for a visa for tourism, business or education purposes, and any applicant can ask for an individual waiver. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the merits of Hawaii’s challenge on Wednesday in Seattle. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will arguments on the merits of case spearheaded by the ACLU on Friday in Richmond. Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, then issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. The second one expired in September after a long court fight and was replaced with the present version. The Trump administration said the president put the latest restrictions in place after a worldwide review of the ability of each country in the world to issue reliable passports and share data with the United States. The administration argues that a president has broad authority to decide who can come into the United States, but detractors say the expanded ban violates a law forbidding the government from discriminating based on nationality when issuing immigrant visas. The administration has said the ban is not discriminatory and pointed out that many Muslim-majority countries are unaffected by it. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; This Sarah Huckabee Sanders Tweet About Attacking The FBI Hasn’t Aged Well;Donald J. Trump spent a portion of his Sunday, presumably after church, lashing out at the world, including the FBI and its former Director James Comey. In an unprecedented fashion, Trump blasted his own Intelligence agency as the worst in history and claimed that it was in tatters. After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters worst in History! President Exclamation Mark tweeted. But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness. After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017We do not know why he capitalized history and tatters, though.Trump also attacked former FBI Director James Comey to call him a liar. I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn, he tweeted. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017Trump sent out multiple tweets blasting his own agency, which resulted in FBI agencies firing back at his claims.It was just last year that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the White House press secretary, tweeted a response to Taegan Goddard, who wrote at the time, Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election. When you re attacking FBI agents because you re under criminal investigation, you re losing, Sanders tweeted in 2016 just before the election.When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing https://t.co/SIoAxatCjp Sarah Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) November 3, 2016Twitter users pounced. that did age so well!! Time to eat some crow, Sarah! Kalani (@kalani159) December 4, 2017 pic.twitter.com/Vu50IDUB3m Carmine Davis (@Carmine761) December 4, 2017I don't think I've ever liked a @SarahHuckabee tweet before. Backdoor Russian Overture (@BackdoorRussian) December 4, 2017I spit my coffee reading that and checked if it was the real account and then the date. Their twitter remarks always come back to bite them! Carmine Davis (@Carmine761) December 4, 2017They have lied themselves in to a complete circle. pic.twitter.com/Ab8AMi0UxB GammyGroot (@capcara) December 4, 2017Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office that firing nut job Comey eased pressure on him, according to the New York Times. I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job I faced great pressure because of Russia, he said in May. That s taken off. I m not under investigation. The current occupant of the White House didn t just launch a war on U.S. Intelligence agencies, he launched a war on intelligence. In 2016, Sanders defended the FBI over Hillary Clinton. In 2017, she ll back up her boss s attack on the FBI because special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on his administration. Because, it s not Hillary Clinton who will be locked up, after all.Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.;News;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrats to join Trump, Republicans in talks to avert government shutdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in Congress on Monday accepted an invitation to meet U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans for talks to avert a government shutdown this week, even as the Democrats pressed demands on funding priorities and protecting young immigrants. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who canceled a meeting with Trump last week after he posted a disparaging note about them on Twitter, said on Monday they hoped the president would remain open-minded about reaching a deal with Democrats. “We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home,” Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement. “There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.” The meeting was scheduled for Thursday, a day before funding for the federal government is due to run out. House Republicans over the weekend introduced a stopgap measure that would fund the government at current levels until Dec. 22 to give lawmakers time to reach a deal on a longer-term bill. Congress is expected to vote on the measure this week. Conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus asked House Republican leaders to extend the duration of the stopgap measure through Dec. 30 in exchange for their votes for the House to go to conference with the Senate on tax legislation, which moved Congress closer to a final bill for a major tax overhaul. “There is a better chance of going to the 30th than the 22nd, but no commitment,” Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters. The House Republican leadership agreed to consider the Dec. 30 date and talk to the Senate leadership about it, a House Republican leadership aide said. Trump is scheduled to have lunch with Republican members of the Senate at the White House on Tuesday. Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate. But they will need some Democratic support to get the spending bill past Senate procedural hurdles that require 60 votes, since there are only 52 Republicans in the 100-member chamber. Schumer said on Monday that everyone should be working to avoid a shutdown, and he did not believe Republican congressional leaders wanted one. “The only one at the moment who’s flirted with a shutdown is President Trump, who tweeted earlier this year that ‘we could use a good shutdown to fix the mess,’” Schumer said. The Republican bill will provide some short-term help for states that are running out of money to finance a health insurance program for lower-income children, Republican aides said. Schumer and Pelosi on Monday listed that program among their priorities, which also included the opioid crisis, pension plans, rural infrastructure and protection for young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, known as “Dreamers.” Those young immigrants must be taken care of now, Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin declared on the Senate floor. He said Democrats had offered in return to toughen border security, a Republican priority. “How can we in good conscience pass a spending bill giving authority and resources to this administration to go out and arrest and deport these young people - and not address the underlying issue of their legality and future in the United States?” Durbin asked. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Manafort tried to pen positive op-ed on Ukraine work: special counsel;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Monday accused President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, of working with a Russian colleague to draft an opinion piece about his political work for Ukraine. In court filings, a prosecutor working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team said Manafort was working on the article as recently as Nov. 30. Had it been published, prosecutors say it would have violated a Nov. 8 court order not to discuss the case publicly. The Russian colleague who was working with Manafort allegedly to shape public opinion about his work for a Ukrainian political party has ties to Russian intelligence agencies, according to the filing. Manafort ultimately never published the opinion piece, after prosecutors reached out to his attorneys to alert them, they said in the filing. Due to Manafort’s actions, prosecutors said the judge should reject his request to modify his bail conditions. Manafort has proposed an $11.65 million bail package in exchange for lifting him from house arrest and electronic monitoring. As part of that deal, he would forfeit four of his real estate properties if he violated his bail conditions. “Even if the ghost-written op-ed were entirely accurate, fair and balanced, it would be a violation of this court’s November 8 order if it had been published,” wrote prosecutor Andrew Weissmann. A spokesman for Manafort did not have any immediate comment. Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were both indicted in October in a 12-count indictment by a federal grand jury. They face charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. Initially, Manafort’s lawyers had said in their court filing that the special counsel’s office was willing to accept the proposed terms of his release. But prosecutors wrote that they can no longer trust Manafort, and cannot accept his proposed terms. “Because Manafort has now taken actions that reflect an intention to violate or circumvent the court’s existing orders, at a time one would expect particularly scrupulous adherence, the government submits that the proposed bail package is insufficient,” the filing said. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump son, former partner due before House panel this week: source;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s eldest son and a former business associate of the president are due to testify to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, as it continues its investigation of possible Russian involvement in the 2016 election, sources familiar with the schedule said. Donald Trump Jr. will appear before the committee on Wednesday and Felix Sater, a Russian-American who was a former Trump business associate who claimed deep ties to Moscow, as soon as Thursday, the sources said. Neither session will be public. Donald Trump Jr.’s attorney declined a request for comment on his Wednesday appearance, which was first reported by CNN. An attorney for Sater, Robert Wolf, did not respond to a request for comment. Another source said his session with the panel had been set for Thursday but might be rescheduled. Committee aides declined to comment. It is the Intelligence Committee’s policy not to comment on the schedule for closed meetings. The panel is one of the three main congressional committees, as well as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller, investigating Russia and the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the possibility of collusion between Trump associates and Moscow. Separately, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Monday she had made requests to three more people for information related to the Russia investigation. Feinstein, who has made public similar requests, said she wrote to Rick Dearborn, a deputy White House chief of staff;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In slap at Romney, Trump says he wants Hatch to run for re-election;SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday he wants U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah to run for re-election next year, putting Trump on a collision course with Republican rival Mitt Romney, who wants to run for Hatch’s seat. Hatch, 83, has made noises about retiring from the Senate seat he has held since 1977. Republican officials say Romney, a Utah resident who was the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, has been preparing to run for Hatch’s seat next year. But Trump, who has clashed with Romney in the past, said he wants Hatch to run for re-election. “You are a true fighter, Orrin, I have to say,” Trump said at an event in Salt Lake City, Utah’s capital. “We hope you will continue to serve your state and your country in the Senate for a very long time to come.” Asked if he was going seek re-election, Hatch told reporters: “We’ll have to see.” He called Trump’s endorsement “certainly is a nice thing,” but did not say whether it would influence his decision. Romney, 70, a former governor of Massachusetts who spends a great deal of time in Utah, has been expecting to run for Hatch’s seat in a state that Republicans typically win. Romney made clear that he took a dim view of Trump’s endorsement on Monday of Republican Roy Moore for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama that will be decided in a special election next week. Moore has been accused by at least seven women of sexual improprieties they said occurred decades ago. Several were teenagers at the time. Moore has denied the accusations and said he is the victim of a witch hunt. “Roy Moore in the US Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation,” Romney wrote on Twitter. “Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity.” Trump considered picking Romney as his secretary of state a year ago but opted instead for Rex Tillerson. In August, Romney demanded Trump apologize for saying that both sides were to blame for violence at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump did not apologize. Trump demurred on Monday when asked whether he was trying to send Romney a message by encouraging Hatch to run again. “He’s a good man. Mitt’s a good man,” Trump said. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Billy Bush: It was Trump's voice on ""Access Hollywood"" tape";WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former NBC television host Billy Bush accused U.S. President Donald Trump of “indulging in some revisionist history” for reportedly telling allies it was not his voice making lewd remarks as the men waited to film a segment for “Access Hollywood” in 2005. “He said it. ‘Grab ‘em by the pussy,’” Bush wrote in an editorial published in the New York Times on Sunday. The New York Times reported last month that Trump has been privately telling aides and allies, including at least one U.S. senator, that the voice on the recording was not his. That would be a reversal from his immediate acknowledgement of responsibility after the tape surfaced weeks ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump said: “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.” Reuters has not been able to verify the Times report that he has been privately telling allies a different story. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Bush’s remarks. But White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders played down the Times report at a White House briefing on Nov. 27. “The President hasn’t changed his position. I think if anything that the president questions, it’s the media’s reporting on that accuracy,” Sanders said. Bush laughed on the video as Trump spoke and he lost his job as a host of NBC’s flagship morning “Today” show after the tape was leaked to the media in October, upending Trump’s campaign to become president. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrat cites drafting error in proposed capital rule amendment;NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Democratic U.S. senator is backing away from a proposed legislative tweak that would have helped big banks lessen their capital burden, according to a statement provided to Reuters on Monday. Senator Christopher Van Hollen, of Maryland, had submitted an amendment to a financial regulatory reform bill that would give banks a partial reprieve from a rule known as the supplemental leverage ratio, according to the document Reuters reported on earlier on Monday. However, Van Hollen is against the changes and is not offering the amendment to the Senate Banking Committee as written, his spokeswoman Bridgett Frey told Reuters. She attributed the difference to an error in drafting the amendment, whose changes consisted of two paragraphs. “This is a drafting error,” said Frey. “To be clear, Senator Van Hollen opposes changing capital requirements for non-custodial banks, and he is fighting to ensure that the Federal Reserve writes a strong rule that governs the supplementary leverage ratio rules for custodial banks.” “To avoid any misinterpretation of his intent, he will not be offering the amendment as written,” she added. Wall Street bankers have complained about the supplemental leverage ratio for years, and changes to the rule are high on big lenders’ wish list as the financial reform bill works its way through Congress. The rule requires big banks that are subject to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual stress test to hold additional capital to reflect risks they pose to the broader system. Van Hollen’s abandoned amendment would have changed a part of the rule that requires lenders to hold capital against certain assets held at central banks. The change was one of more than 100 sought by banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co(JPM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), lobbyists said. The bill being drafted by the Senate Banking Committee was proposed by Republican Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo and is due to be formally discussed by lawmakers this week. Van Hollen is one of 11 lawmakers in the Democratic minority who sit on the committee. The stated intention of the bill is to reduce regulatory burdens on small- and mid-sized financial companies. However, that has not stopped large institutions from lobbying hard to secure regulatory relief they have been hoping for since Republican Donald Trump was elected president last year. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says Putin not influenced by ex-Trump official Flynn;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin had taken a decision to hold off responding to new U.S. sanctions last year independently and had not been influenced by former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into the actions of President Donald Trump’s inner circle before he took office. U.S. prosecutors said Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, then Russian ambassador to the U.S., last December discussed economic sanctions that the Obama administration had just imposed on Moscow for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election, something Moscow denies. Obama at the time expelled 35 Russian diplomats and the U.S. authorities seized two Russian diplomatic compounds in the United States. But Putin said he would wait to see how relations developed with the new Trump administration before responding. Russia only went ahead and took retaliatory measures this summer. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had taken the decision to hold off retaliating independently and had not known of Flynn’s alleged request to Russia to refrain from an immediate response. Flynn was not in a position to ask Kislyak, the then Russian Ambassador to the U.S., to do anything, said Peskov, calling the idea “absurd.” “Of course Putin took the decision, it was his decision,” Peskov told a conference call with reporters. “It (the decision) could not have been connected to any requests or recommendations. The president takes his decisions absolutely independently.” ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exiled son of Yemen's Saleh takes up anti-Houthi cause;SANAA/DUBAI (Reuters) - The powerful exiled son of Yemen s slain ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed on Tuesday to lead a campaign against the Houthi movement that killed his father after he switched sides in the civil war. The intervention by Ahmed Ali Saleh, a former leader of the elite Republican Guard once seen as a likely successor to his father, gives the anti-Houthi movement in Sanaa a potential figurehead, after a week of fighting that saw the Houthis rout Saleh s supporters in the capital. Yemen s war, pitting the Iran-allied Houthis who control Sanaa against a Saudi-led military alliance backing a government based in the south, has brought what the United Nations calls the world s worst humanitarian crisis. The world body says millions of people may die in one of the worst famines of modern times, caused by warring parties blocking food supplies. Saleh had helped the Houthis win control of much of the country s north including Sanaa, and his decision to switch allegiances and abandon the Houthis in the past week was the most dramatic change on the battlefield in years. But the Houthis swiftly crushed a pro-Saleh uprising in the capital and shot him dead in an attack on his convoy. Tens of thousands of Houthi supporters staged a rally in the capital on Tuesday to show support for their leader and celebrate the death of Saleh. They chanted slogans against Saudi Arabia and its allies. Mahmoud Ali al-Houthi, head of the movement s Revolutionary Committee, denied allegations that the group was executing members of Saleh s party after their capture: We have been treating some of Saleh s sons and we haven t executed them, he told the crowd. Sanaa saw no fresh fighting on Tuesday after five days of combat that the Red Cross said killed more than 230 people. The Saudi-led coalition struck the city with 25 air strikes overnight, but U.N. and Red Cross aid flights were able to land at the airport, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said. People are now emerging from their houses after five days being locked down basically as prisoners, McGoldrick told a U.N. briefing by phone from Sanaa. They are now seeking safety, moving their families in case things erupt again and at the same time seeking medical treatment and trying to pacify very terrified kids who have endured five days of relentless shelling, shooting and ground fire and air strikes. The Saudi cabinet, in a statement that did not mention Saleh by name, said it hoped the Sanaa uprising against the Houthis would help rid sisterly Yemen of repression, death threats, ... explosions and seizure of private and public property . The death of Saleh, who once compared ruling Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, deepens the complexity of the multi-sided war. Much is likely to depend on the future allegiances of his loyalists, who had previously helped the armed Houthi group, which hails from the Zaidi branch of Shi ite Islam that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in northern Yemen until 1962. In a statement sent to Reuters by an aide, his son said his father was killed at the hands of the enemies of God and the country . Ahmed Ali said he would confront the enemies of the homeland and humanity, who are trying to obliterate its identity and its gains and to humiliate Yemen and Yemenis . In an earlier statement carried by Saudi state media, Ahmed Ali said he would lead the battle until the last Houthi is thrown out of Yemen ... the blood of my father will be hell ringing in the ears of Iran. The Arabian peninsula s poorest country, Yemen is one of the most violent fronts in a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who have also backed opposing sides in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere across the Middle East. The Saudi-led coalition appears to have been counting on Saleh s decision to switch sides to tip the balance of the war. Saleh, who ruled in Sanaa from 1978-2012, had a strong following in Yemen, including army officers and armed tribal leaders who once served under him. During the years the ex-president was allied to the Houthis, Yemeni political sources say Ahmed Ali was living incommunicado under house arrest at a guarded villa in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, where he had served as ambassador. The UAE is a key member of the mostly Gulf Arab alliance that sees the Houthis as a proxy of their arch-enemy Iran. The Gulf countries had struggled to make gains against the Houthi-Saleh alliance despite thousands of air strikes backed by Western arms and intelligence. They have used their air and sea power to tightly restrict imports, action that the United Nations says could lead to mass hunger. Ahmed Ali may be the family s last chance to win back influence. A nephew of the former leader, Tareq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, a senior military commander, was also killed during clashes with the Houthis, Saleh s party said on Tuesday. Residents reported that fighting had subsided but that Saudi-led coalition jets pounded several targets, including the downtown presidential palace where a governing body led by Houthi-Saleh politicians had regularly convened. The Houthi leader, Abdul Malek al-Houthi, hailed Saleh s death in a speech on Monday as a victory against a treasonous conspiracy by Yemen s Saudi enemies and called for Tuesday s mass rally at a parade ground near the site of the air strikes. In the southern city of Aden, where the Saudi-backed government is based, residents set off fireworks and expressed joy. Saleh was hated throughout southern Yemen after he launched a war to unify the country in 1994, lobbing ballistic missiles at the city. But his legacy is mixed. He is still loved in much of the north and many supporters will bear a grudge towards his killers. Some feared Saleh s death would only create more instability in Yemen. We expect things will get worse for us. This will be the beginning of a new conflict and more bloodshed. The war will not end soon, said Aswan Abdu Khalid, an academic at the psychology department at the University of Aden. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump criticizes treatment of Flynn as unfair;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was being treated unfairly, implicitly criticizing the U.S. special counsel’s charges against him even though Flynn pleaded guilty. “I feel badly for General Flynn,” Trump told reporters at the White House, and went on to accuse his Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, of having lied last year. Flynn, a retired Army general who was a senior adviser in Trump’s election campaign, pleaded guilty on Friday to having lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. He was charged as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion by Trump campaign aides. Trump did not provide evidence or detail about his accusation against Clinton. Clinton answered questions in July 2016 about her use of a private server for government emails while she was secretary of state. There was never any indication from the FBI that Clinton did not tell the truth. “Hillary Clinton on the 4th of July weekend went to the FBI Not under oath. It was the most incredible thing anyone’s ever seen,” Trump said. “She lied many times, nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and it’s like, they ruined his life. Very unfair.” Moscow has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied collusion by his campaign. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump delays announcement on whether U.S. embassy to be moved to Jerusalem;ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will not announce a decision on Monday on whether he will again delay moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a White House spokesman said, despite Monday’s deadline for doing so. An announcement on the decision will be made “in coming days,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters aboard Air Force One as Trump was returning from a trip to Utah. Trump had been due to decide whether to sign a waiver that would hold off relocating the embassy from Tel Aviv for another six months, as every U.S. president has done since Congress passed a law on the issue in 1995. Senior U.S. officials have said that Trump is expected to issue a temporary order, the second since he took office, to delay moving the embassy despite his campaign pledge to go ahead with the controversial action. But the officials have said Trump is likely to give a speech on Wednesday unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a step that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. They have said, however, that no final decisions have been made. “The president has been clear on this issue from the get-go;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mulvaney says no plans to fire U.S. consumer bureau's English;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mick Mulvaney, White House budget chief and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said on Monday he has no intention of firing Leandra English, who had attempted to block him from taking control of the agency. Former CFPB head Richard Cordray had named English to lead the bureau following his resignation last month, but that appointment had been mired in turmoil after U.S. President Donald Trump had assigned Mulvaney to the same role. A U.S. District Court judge last week sided with Trump, saying the law gave Mulvaney the right to lead the consumer finance watchdog, but English is challenging the decision. During a news briefing at the CFPB on Monday, Mulvaney told reporters he would “absolutely not” consider firing English and that he would like her to continue to serve as deputy director but had not had any direct contact with her. English could not immediately be reached for comment through her lawyer, Deepak Gupta. Since arriving at the CFPB, Mulvaney has implemented a hiring freeze and suspended all new regulations for 30 days. On Monday, he said he was also reviewing more than 100 pending enforcement actions, including litigation as well as private settlement talks and investigations. He declined to comment on specific cases, but said there were two litigation actions he has asked to delay and separately cited the CFPB’s case against mortgage company PHH Corp (PHH.N) as one that “has issues” without elaborating. The budget chief said data security was also a top priority and that he had instructed the bureau to stop collecting personally identifiable information until data security problems highlighted by the bureau’s independent audit office had been addressed. Mulvaney this week brought in Republican congressional lawyer Brian Johnson as a senior adviser and plans to quickly bring on board more political hires to help him review the bureau’s existing and pending regulations, the budget chief said. “Then I’m going to get down to the weeds of something I enjoy which is the budget, and how the agency ... is funded, how it’s structured, personnel, those types of things,” he added. Trump “wants to move expeditiously” on naming a permanent replacement but the Senate confirmation process is likely to take some time and Mulvaney expects to be in the interim role for up to seven months, he said in an interview Reuters. English is expected to formally file a preliminary injunction against Mulvaney and Trump this week, according to court filings. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-U.S. consumer bureau head Cordray set to run for Ohio governor;(Reuters) - Richard Cordray, a Democrat whose resignation as head of the U.S. consumer bureau last month triggered a political battle over who should replace him, plans to run for governor of Ohio, an advisor said on Monday. Cordray will make the announcement at an event on Tuesday at a restaurant in his home town of Grove City, Ohio, said the advisor, who asked to remain anonymous. Cordray will later tour Ohio, meeting with Democratic activists, community leaders and voters, the advisor said. When he resigned last month, Cordray named his deputy to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But the appointment was mired in turmoil after President Donald Trump assigned White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney to the role. A federal judge last week sided with Trump, but the deputy, Leandra English, is challenging the decision. The 2018 election is to replace Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who cannot seek a third term because of term limits in the pivotal election battleground state. Kasich ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016. Many Democrats have said Cordray, with his reputation for being tough on banks and defending consumers, is their best hope for taking the Ohio governor’s mansion and chipping away at Republicans’ dominance in state government. Several candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties announced they would run for Ohio governor, according to local media. Cordray delivered a campaign-style speech at a Labor Day celebration in Cincinnnati in September, but at the time he stopped short of saying whether he intended to run for governor. The Ohio native was the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a consumer watchdog agency created under former President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. In Washington, Mulvaney on Monday said he has no intention of firing English. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. embassy to Russia to resume some visa services after diplomatic row;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy to Russia said on Monday it would restart some visa services in U.S. consulates which it had previously canceled due to diplomatic expulsions that had left it short-staffed. The United States began to scale back its visa services in Russia in August, drawing an angry reaction from Moscow three weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered Washington to more than halve its embassy and consular staff. The U.S. step meant Russian citizens wanting to visit the United States for business, tourism or educational reasons were no longer able to apply via U.S. consulates outside Moscow and had to travel to the Russian capital instead. The embassy said in a statement on Monday some visa services would resume on Dec. 11. “On December 11, the U.S. consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok will begin to offer limited interviews for non-immigrant visas,” it said. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. defense chief urges Pakistan to redouble efforts against militants;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders on Monday and urged them to “redouble” their efforts to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in neighboring Afghanistan. Mattis, on a one-day visit to Pakistan, said the South Asian nation had made progress in the fight against militancy inside its borders but needed to make more. More than 100 days since U.S. President Donald Trump announced a South Asia strategy that calls for a firmer line toward Islamabad, U.S. officials and analysts say there has been only limited success and it is not clear how progress will be made. U.S. officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistan’s reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan. “The Secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Mattis, who visited Pakistan for the first time as defense secretary, said before the trip that the goal for his meetings with Pakistani officials would be to find “common ground”. In his discussion with Mattis, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the two allies shared objectives. “We’re committed (to) the war against terror,” he said. “Nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan.” Mattis also met with high-ranking officials from Pakistan’s powerful military, including army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lieutenant-General Naveed Mukhtar, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency that U.S. officials say has links with Haqqani and Taliban militants. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mattis’ conversations had been “straightforward” and specific. The official said one of the topics of conversation was getting Pakistan to help bring the Taliban to the negotiating table In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. But beyond that, the Trump administration has done little to articulate its strategy, experts say. U.S. officials say they have not seen a change in Pakistan’s support for militants, despite visits by senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis ... we have not seen those changes implemented yet,” General John Nicholson, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said last week. Pakistani officials have pushed back on the U.S. accusations and say they have done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down militants. U.S. official expressed hope relations could improve after a U.S.-Canadian couple kidnapped in Afghanistan were freed in Pakistan in October with their three children. While the Trump administration has used tougher words with Pakistan, it is has yet to change Islamabad’s calculus. Some experts say the United States loses clout in Pakistan when it is seen as bullying. While Mattis traveled to the region earlier this year, he did not stop in Pakistan, but visited its arch rival, India, a relationship that has grown under the Trump administration. “There is not an effective stick anymore because Pakistan doesn’t really care about U.S aid, it has been dwindling anyway and it is getting the money it needs elsewhere ... treat it with respect and actually reward it when it does do something good,” said Madiha Afzal, with the Brookings Institution. Mattis’ brief visit to Islamabad comes a week after a hardline Pakistani Islamist group called off nationwide protests after the government met its demand that a minister accused of blasphemy resign. Separately, a Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai was freed from house arrest. The White House said the release could have repercussions for U.S.-Pakistan relations. “I think for Pakistan, the timing is very bad. There is talk about progress being made against extremists and here you have a situation where religious hardliners have basically been handed everything they wanted on a silver platter,” said Michael Kugelman, with the Woodrow Wilson think tank in Washington. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump backs Alabama Republican Senate candidate Moore;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore on Monday, throwing his weight behind the embattled Alabama Republican before a special election next week that has been rocked by allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore. The White House said Trump endorsed the campaign in a call to Moore. In a post on Twitter, the president said Republicans needed the former Alabama Supreme Court justice to win to secure votes on key issues such as taxes and immigration. “Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama,” Trump wrote. Moore thanked the president for his backing. “I look forward to fighting alongside the President to #MAGA!” Moore said on Twitter, using Trump’s hashtag for his slogan “Make America Great Again.” In his tweet, Moore quoted Trump as saying, “Go get ‘em, Roy!” Trump had supported Moore’s rival, U.S. Senator Luther Strange, in the Republican primary in September, in line with Senate Republicans. He has slammed the Democratic candidate, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, as soft on crime and a potential puppet for Democratic leaders in Congress. On Monday, Trump said having a Democrat win the Dec. 12 election “would hurt our great Republican Agenda.” The White House has said Trump would not campaign for Moore but he is scheduled to hold a rally on Friday in Pensacola, Florida, adjacent to Alabama. The Alabama Republican Party also has backed Moore even as some Republicans in Congress have remained distant given the sexual misconduct allegations that surfaced last month. Moore has denied the allegations. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last month said he believed Moore’s accusers and joined other senators in urging him to quit the race. But on Sunday McConnell said it was up to Alabama voters to decide whether to send Moore to Washington. “I’d have a real hard time voting for Roy Moore,” Republican U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz told CNN, calling the allegations against him very serious. But Alabama voters “very well may hold their nose and vote for” him rather than a Democrat. Moore led Jones by six percentage points in a CBS News poll on Sunday, with most Alabama Republicans saying the allegations against him are false. A Washington Post poll last week showed Moore ahead by three percentage points, a lead within the survey’s 4.5 point margin of error. Several women have accused Moore of sexual assault or misconduct when they were teenagers and Moore was in his early 30s. Reuters has not independently verified the reports. Moore, 70, returned to the campaign trail last week calling the allegations against him “dirty politics.” ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. document certifies Honduras as supporting rights amid vote crisis;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has certified that the Honduran government has been fighting corruption and supporting human rights, clearing the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. aid, a document seen by Reuters showed. The document, dated Nov. 28, which was seen by Reuters on Monday, showed that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified Honduras for the assistance, two days after a controversial presidential election that has been claimed by an ally of Washington. Honduras has faced violent protests over the disputed results of the election, which has still not produced a clear winner over a week after the vote ended. The decision to issue the certification prompted concern from some congressional Democrats that Republican President Donald Trump’s administration could be seen to be taking sides. “What kind of message does that send?” one congressional aide asked. State Department officials did not have an immediate response when questioned about the timing of the certification. Honduras is required to fulfill about a dozen requirements in order to receive its share of $644 million appropriated by the U.S. Congress under a program to assist Central American governments. Among those requirements are combating corruption - including investigating and prosecuting current and former government officials alleged to be corrupt - and protecting the rights of political opposition parties. Honduras struggles with violent drug gangs, one of the world’s highest murder rates and endemic poverty. In recent years, many Hondurans - including children - have attempted to migrate to the United States. In hopes of stemming this migration, former President Barack Obama’s administration in 2015 came up with a plan that included sending hundreds of millions of dollars in additional aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Congress agreed to provide the money, if the governments were found to be taking steps to fight crime and corruption. A preliminary ballot count in Honduras on Monday pointed to a narrow victory for President Juan Orlando Hernandez over opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla, although the electoral tribunal has not declared a winner. Early last week, Nasralla, a former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory over Hernandez. The counting process suddenly halted for more than a day and began leaning in favor of Hernandez after resuming. Opposition leaders said they wanted a recount and have accused the government of stealing the election. Hernandez, 49, implemented a military-led crackdown on gang violence after taking office in 2014. He has been supported by Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly. Nasralla, 64, is one of Honduras’ best-known faces and is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says encouraging Hatch to run for re-election, possibly blocking a Romney bid;SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday said he supports Utah Senator Orrin Hatch running for re-election next year, as speculation mounts that fellow Republican and frequent Trump critic Mitt Romney hopes to take the seat. Asked whether he was encouraging Hatch, who is the Senate president pro tempore and chairs its powerful Finance Committee, to run for re-election, Trump said “Yes.” While he and Hatch toured a Salt Lake City food pantry alongside leaders of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Trump sidestepped questions of whether he was trying to block Romney from running, saying only “He’s a good man.” Romney and Hatch are Mormons. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. appeals courts to consider legality of Trump's latest travel ban;(Reuters) - Federal appeals courts in the states of Washington and Virginia are set to hear arguments this week on the legality of President Donald Trump’s most recent travel ban, which sharply limits visitors and immigrants from eight countries, six of them Muslim-majority. Challengers, including the state of Hawaii and immigrant advocacy organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argue the ban is discriminatory and violates the U.S. Constitution. The Trump administration says it is necessary to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in San Francisco, will hold a hearing in Seattle, Washington on Dec. 6 and the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has its hearing on Dec. 8. Soon after taking office in January, Trump signed an order temporarily barring all refugees and visitors from seven predominately Muslim countries. The decision led to chaos at airports and numerous legal challenges and the administration eventually replaced it with a second, somewhat narrower order. When the second ban expired in September, Trump replaced it with a presidential proclamation indefinitely restricting travel from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, North Korea and barring certain government officials from Venezuela. The administration said the restrictions were put in place after a worldwide review of each country’s ability to issue reliable passports and share data with the United States. After the most recent order was issued, the same challengers who sued to stop the earlier bans went back to court. They said the new version still discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuits did not dispute the restrictions placed on Venezuela and North Korea. All refugees were temporarily barred as part of Trump’s first order but were not addressed in the latest ban. Instead, under a separate directive issued Oct. 24, refugees from 11 countries mostly in the Middle East and Africa now face additional security screening. The 9th circuit appeals court on Nov. 13 ruled the ban could go partially into effect for everyone without close family relationships to people in the United States. The White House has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift those partial restrictions while the cases are moving forward in lower courts so that the ban would apply to everyone. The government argues the president has broad authority to decide who can come into the United States, but detractors say the expanded ban violates a law forbidding the government from discriminating based on nationality when issuing immigrant visas. The administration has repeatedly said the ban is not discriminatory and pointed out that many Muslim-majority countries are unaffected by it. Trump has made statements, however, that his legal opponents say reinforce their contention that his actions are based in anti-Muslim sentiments. Last week, for example, the president shared on Twitter anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right British party leader. In response to the tweet, Neal Katyal, attorney for the State of Hawaii Tweeted: “Thanks! See you in court next week.” The ACLU said in a letter sent to the Supreme Court on Monday that the group planned to file a motion that would expand the record to include the recent statements by the President. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top Democrats in Congress accept Trump offer to meet on year-end priorities;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders in Congress said on Monday they had accepted an invitation from President Donald Trump to meet with him and Republican leaders to discuss year-end legislative priorities, including efforts to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who canceled a previous meeting with Trump after he issued a disparaging note on Twitter, said in a statement they hoped the president would remain open-minded about reaching a deal with Democrats. “We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home,” they said, listing a series of political priorities. “There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.” ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House: Trump spoke to Moore, endorsed his Senate campaign;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump spoke to U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama on Monday and endorsed his campaign, the White House said. “The president had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the president endorsed Judge Moore’s campaign,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a statement. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Massachusetts Senate president steps aside as husband faces probe;BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts Senate President Stan Rosenberg is taking a temporary leave of absence as his husband faces allegations that he used his political connections to sexually harass men. Rosenberg, a Democrat, will step aside immediately and will remain away during an investigation by the Senate, he said in a statement on Monday. “I want to ensure that the investigation is fully independent and credible, and that anyone who wishes to come forward will feel confident that there will be no retaliation,” Rosenberg wrote. Last week, Rosenberg, 68, said he supported the investigation and that his husband, Bryon Hefner, 30, was planning to enter an inpatient treatment center for alcohol dependency. The Boston Globe reported that four unnamed men said Hefner, had groped them or made other unwanted sexual contact. The newspaper said the men asked to remain anonymous for fear that speaking out against the powerful lawmaker’s spouse would endanger their work as political advocates. Reuters could not confirm the allegations, which the newspaper said stemmed from incidents in 2015 and 2016. The accusations are the latest in a wave of sexual assault and sexual harassment claims levied against powerful men in U.S. politics, entertainment and journalism. ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Expats go home': Amsterdam's visitor boom angers locals;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch politicians gave each other high-fives when they won a contest to host the European Medicines Agency last month, but not everyone in the capital is celebrating the expected influx of highly-paid pharmaceutical experts. Amsterdam s residents and media, already sick of the numbers of tourists searching out stag-do strip joints on their streets, are increasingly vexed about another group of visitors - white-collar, expatriate workers. A Nice Brexit Trophy, But Can The City Handle It? newspaper NRC Handelsblad said in a headline, referring to the decision to move the regulatory agency from London to Amsterdam after Britain leaves the EU. The EMA will come with around 900 staff - a wonderful economic boost, according to supporters of the move. Detractors say it s just another group of foreigners with big pay packets driving up rents and property prices. Home Buyers Will Pay The Price For Drugs Agency In Amsterdam, said national broadcaster NOS. On social media, many also mourned the death of the city s free-wheeling and edgy spirit, killed off, they said, by the likes of the EMA s army of bureaucrats. The sanitation of Amsterdam has been going on for more than a decade. Advertising campaigns have focused on the city s canals, the Anne Frank House, the museums packed with Van Gogh and Rembrandt s greatest works. Legislators have helped the re-branding by shuttering a third of the city s brothels in 2008 and starting a program to close marijuana cafes near schools in 2011. The number of overnight tourists nearly doubled from 2011 to 2016, according to Amsterdam Marketing. Amsterdam and its 850,000 residents now welcome more than 6 million foreign tourists a year. That has all coincided with a surge in the number of well-heeled expatriates - numbers have also doubled to 77,000 in 2015 from 39,000 in 2009, according to the city s statistics office. Amsterdam has always been an open city, said Reinier van Dantzig, leader of the largest faction in city parliament from the centrist D-66 party. Immigrants were an integral part of the city s 17th-Century golden age and were continuing to contribute to the current economic boom, he added. That s why I have such difficulty with people who say that people from outside who want to become Amsterdammers would be some kind of danger - I think they re an addition. The city, he said, was building housing for 70,000 more people, with extra space allotted to apartments for low and medium-income families. Too little, too late for Danielle van Diemen, a 5th-generation Amsterdammer. The city is being defined by a mix of Western foreigners who think that Amsterdam is edgy but that s no longer true, she said, pointing to a ban on squatting that went into effect in 2010. The gap between wealthy expats who don t speak Dutch and locals is all but unbridgeable, she added. So: expats go home and leave the city to us. I am like a visitor in my own neighborhood, said Bert Nap, who lives near the center. We have lost all our bakers and other shops to tourism-orientated shops, he added, echoing complaints across Europe s holiday hotspots. A survey by apartment-searching website Nestpick in April ranked Amsterdam #1 on its global list of best cities for millennials, citing its tolerance, night life and thriving startup scene. These people have qualifications, they have skills, they are networked, and so the fact is that they compete for houses and jobs with people who don t have those qualifications, said Jan Rath, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam. You could argue that what s happening ... is actually a replacement of the population he said. Real estate prices have soared, leading to a squeeze on unskilled workers, whether they are native Dutch or Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 40 percent of young couples leave the city within four years of having their first child, driven out by the lack of affordable housing. Resentment also stems from a policy that allows skilled immigrants to receive 30 percent of their income tax-free. On a salary of 100,000 euros that amounts to 15,000 euros in extra take-home pay for an expat over a Dutch person doing the same job. Property prices rose 13 percent in the third quarter of 2017 from the same period a year earlier, according to the CBS, above their 2008 highs. Listings have dried up. As one real estate agent put it, the market has boiled dry . Michiel van Hemert, a kitchen assistant, said government priorities were wrong. Imagine the economic boom that would come from retraining 40 and 50-year-olds, which is clearly needed, he said. He recommended more funding for educators, police, nurses and other public servants. I speak for myself and two or three generations before me. ;worldnews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. corporate alternative minimum tax should be removed: House Republican;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The alternative minimum tax on corporations, which had been included in the U.S. Senate’s tax bill, should be eliminated in the final legislation, Kevin McCarthy, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, said on Monday. “I think that has to be eliminated because that would destroy R&D,” McCarthy said in an interview with CNBC. “ ... Especially when you look at California, the engine that actually creates from a lot of entrepreneurs and others, that should be eliminated for sure.” ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Dec 4) - Roy Moore, Stock Market;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet! [0617 EST] - Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more. Look at your 401-k’s since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back [0700 EST] - With the great vote on Cutting Taxes, this could be a big day for the Stock Market - and YOU! [0703 EST] - A must watch: Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz was just on @foxandfriends talking of what is going on with respect to the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history. Enjoy! [0735 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;JUST IN: SUPREME COURT Rules On Trump Travel Ban;Another winner for America and for President Trump! The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the travel ban! Guess who voted against it Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place. Is anyone surprised by the two lefty judges? Not us!Fox News reports:Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of President Trump s travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.The justices said the policy can take full effect despite multiple legal challenges against it that haven t yet made their way through the court system.The ban applies to people from Syria, Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.Lower courts had said people from those countries with a bona fide relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.The nine-member high court said in two one-page orders late Monday afternoon that lower court rulings that partly blocked the ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco take up the case.Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.Both courts are scheduled to hear arguments in those cases this week.Both courts are also dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions with appropriate dispatch. Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.Trump s travel ban has been challenged in separate lawsuits by Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both have argued the ban discriminates against Muslims and should not go into effect under immigration laws.;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FBI AGENT Who ‘Found Nothing’ on Huma and Anthony Weiner’s Laptops in Record Time Right Before Election is Same Agent FIRED by Mueller for Anti-Trump Texts;"Holy moly! We ve been covering the FBI agent who was fired for his anti-Trump tweets but now this BOMBSHELL:The agent is the one who quickly looked over thousands of emails from the Weiner computer and said there was nothing there! You can bet this is now a big problem for the FBI. President Trump is correct when he says the FBI is in tatters Reddit reported:OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE FIRED ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT: This is an interesting development in the Mueller investigation because we don t trust the FBI. Is this new news from the New York Times an effort to make Mueller and McCabe appear unbiased? We re not buying it because this guy was the lead investigator in the Hillary email case Really??? Talk about compromised! Please see our previous report below on the FBI giving special status to Hillary s email investigation.Robert Mueller kicked a top FBI agent off the special counsel investigation this summer over potential anti-Trump texts he sent, per a new report today.According to The New York Times, Peter Strzok not only helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton s emails, but he played a major role in the Trump-Russia investigation.But he is no longer on the investigation:Mr. Strzok was reassigned this summer from Mr. Mueller s investigation to the F.B.I. s human resources department, where he has been stationed since. The people briefed on the case said the transfer followed the discovery of text messages in which Mr. Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear anti-Trump.ABC News reported back in August that Strzok had left the investigation, but said at the time it s unclear why Strzok stepped away from Mueller s team of nearly two dozen lawyers, investigators and administrative staffers. And The Washington Post s report today on Strzok contains some rather, well, personal details:During the Clinton investigation, Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.The extramarital affair was problematic, these people said, but of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season, in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton Officials are now reviewing the communications to see if they show evidence of political bias in their work on the cases, a review which could result in a public report, according to people familiar with the matter. Via: mediaiteFBI INVESTIGATORS GAVE SPECIAL STATUS TO HILLARY:Friday on Fox News Channel s Fox & Friends, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said evidence had been uncovered showing that the FBI gave the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton s improper use of an unauthorized email server while secretary of state a special status. According to the Florida Republican, who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the process afforded to Clinton was different than it would have been for any other American. We now have evidence that the FBI s investigation of Hillary Clinton did not follow normal and standard procedures, he said. The current deputy director of the FBI Andrew McCabe sent emails just weeks before the presidential election saying that the Hillary Clinton investigation would be special that it would be handled by a small team at headquarters, that it would be given special status. GOETZ CALLED FOR AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION: I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton. Rep. Gaetz: ""I am immediately calling for an investigation into the special treatment that the FBI gave Hillary Clinton."" #IngrahamAngle pic.twitter.com/EHkQfyeWDK Fox News (@FoxNews) November 22, 2017Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Goetz is calling for an investigation into why Hillary Clinton s FBI case was labelled special by the FBI s Andrew McCabe:The Hill reports:Shortly before last year s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given special status, according to documents released Wednesday.McCabe s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI s headquarters in Washington. As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team, McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI s Washington office. [The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a special and I was not given any details about it, he wrote.FBI officials on Wednesday night refused to answer what McCabe meant by calling the Clinton email probe a special or why it was restricted to a small team at headquarters when it began. We don t have anything to add to the documents that were released, bureau spokeswoman Carol Cratty wrote The Hill.The note was contained in more than 70 pages of emails the FBI released on its public records site known as The Vault.The emails chronicled McCabe s efforts to address a separate controversy involving his wife s 2015 campaign for political office.McCabe s references to a special status for the Clinton probe are likely to be used as ammunition by Republican lawmakers critical of former FBI Director James Comey s handling of the Clinton investigation.Remember that the DOJ s Loretta Lynch also wanted Clinton s case to be called an incident and not an investigation. It looks like all intel agencies were doing all they could to protect Clinton. Was it to save themselves from exposure in the Uranium One case or something else?";politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DEMOCRAT DERSHOWITZ Slaps Down Feinstein’s Effort to Say Trump Guilty of Obstruction: ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about’ [Video]; I think this is hope over reality longtime Democrat and Harvard Law professor Allen Dershowitz ripped into Senator Diane Feinstein for making accusation of obstruction of justice against President Trump. He went through all of the reason why there is nothing to the claim by Feinstein that POTUS committed a crime. Dershowitz compared Trump to the crimes of past presidents and concluded that Trump is in the clear. He detailed crimes that Nixon and Clinton clearly committed but said that it s within the Constitutional powers that Trump did what he did by firing former FBI Director James Comey: You cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power. @AlanDersh pic.twitter.com/dPZBrIcsLh FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) December 4, 2017 She simply doesn t know what she s talking about Dershowitz on Senator Diane Feinstein s claim that President Trump obstructed justice.This woman is another one who needs to go! She s gotten rich off of being in Washington and will probably only retire if she s pulled out of her office kicking and screaming. It s been a lucrative business for Diane and we re sure she doesn t want to see it end. Is she pushing the envelope politically because she knows her delusional liberal base will approve? Reelection over truth and integrity wins out with these people every time ;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH MINNESOTA DEM MAYOR Shake and Cry About ‘White Privilege’ [Video];The latest liberal meltdown comes from Minnesota This reminds of the mayor who was stopped by the police and had a fake meltdown too. Do these liberals all have a meltdown handbook ?SDA reports:If you re a Social Justice Warrior, here s a standard set of tactics to get your way:Proclaim anything you wish, no matter how ludicrous.If anyone dares disagree with you, call them a racist, bigot, homophobe, or Islamophobe.If they dare object, scream at them that they are out of order and to stop interrupting you.Start shaking and crying, proclaiming how passionate you are about what you re saying.Do whatever you need to do to make yourself out to be the victim.Now that you understand this playbook, watch New Brighton, Minnesota mayor Val Johnson follow this script:Vote this crazy liberal lunatic out ;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YES! TRUMP’S UTAH AUDIENCE Chants ‘Four More Years!’ [Video];President Trump was in Utah today for the signing of a rollback on federal land overreach. He s basically giving land back to the states that Clinton and Obama took for the federal government.The local leaders have applauded this move by Trump but the environmentalists are freaking out:President Trump signed two proclamations Monday shrinking federally protected lands in Utah in the largest rollback of national monument designations in history.The Bears Ears National Monument will shrink to 220,000 acres from its current 1.5 million-acre size, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be cut in half to about 1 million acres, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said.Trump s decision to roll back federal protections marks an unprecedented use of presidential power to shrink the national monument designations made by two of his predecessors.Trump said previous administrations overstepped their authority in declaring vast tracts of western lands off limits to use and development, abusing the purpose, spirit and intent of a century-old law known as the Antiquities Act. That law requires presidents to limit the monument designation to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected. These abuses of the Antiquities Act give enormous power to faraway bureaucrats at the expense of people who work here, live here, and make this place their home, Trump said at the Utah State Capital in Salt Lake City. Because we know that people who are free to use their land and enjoy their land are the people who are most determined to preserve their land. Read more: USA Today;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: MEGHAN MCCAIN RIPS Into Joy Behar For Her Embarrassing Reaction To Brian Ross’ FAKE NEWS Report On “The View”; The View co-host, and rabid, liberal, activist, Joy Behar, made a colossal ass of herself on Friday when she was handed a breaking news story in the middle of her show. Joy Behar paused the show to read the breaking news statement aloud to her viewers: ABC News Brian Ross is reporting Michael Flynn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team, and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians! Yes! Joy proceeded to throw her hands in the air and toss the card containing what ended up being a fake news story, into the air, as a sign of her jubilation over the news that they finally got Donald Trump. Joy was not only telling her audience something that wasn t true, she was showing what it looks like when a partisan hack puts their own selfish desires above a potentially serious issue that, if it were found to be true, could potentially be a serious national security issue.Watch:joy behar getting handed the flynn news is the definition of, well, joy pic.twitter.com/Ush7sH5K3r David Mack (@davidmackau) December 1, 2017Meghan McCain, who was clearly disturbed by her co-host Joy Behar s unprofessional behavior on Friday, gave Behar, and the rest of the liberal The View panel a piece of her mind on the show today.Watch:The funniest and most delusional part of the video happens when fellow unhinged, liberal, activists and co-hosts of The View attempt to convince their viewers how Hillary could never get away with half of the things Donald Trump has done. EW- When it happened in real time, I think everyone who was watching the show could see my discomfort at the room erupting like the Dodgers had just won the World Series, she said when the topic of the correction was first brought up. She then compared Behar s initial reaction to that of Rush Limbaugh saying that he hoped Barack Obama would fail as president. McCain explained, If we re celebrating a breach of national security it s going to tear our country apart. McCain then lambasted her co-hosts for spreading fake news with her on the panel. I went to a Christmas party over the weekend;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: FBI Supervisor Fired For Anti-Trump Texts Oversaw Michael Flynn Interviews;A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller s Special Counsel s Office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the bureau s interviews of embattled former National Security advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one-count of lying to the FBI last week.FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, which took place on Jan. 24, at the White House, said several sources. The other FBI special agent, who interviewed Flynn, is described by sources as a field supervisor in the Russian Squad, at the FBI s Washington Field Office, according to a former intelligence official, with knowledge of the interview.Strzok was removed from his role in the Special Counsel s Office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton s email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia s election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee s Chairman Devin Nunes chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the Special Counsel three months ago, according to a statement given by the Chairman.The former U.S. intelligence official told this reporter, with the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the Special Counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 of Flynn s interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question. The most logical thing to happen would be to call the other FBI Special Agent present during Flynn s interview before the Grand Jury to recount his version, the former intelligence official added.The former official also said that Strzok s allegiance to (Deputy Director Andrew) McCabe was unwavering and very well known. Flynn, a retired three-star general, issued a statement on Dec. 1, saying, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. According to another source, with direct knowledge of the Jan. 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called, the source said.McCabe told Flynn some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate, the source said. It wasn t until after they were already in (Flynn s) office that he realized he was being formerly interviewed. He didn t have an attorney with him, they added.Flynn s attorney Robert Kelner did not respond for comment. A former FBI agent said the investigation into Strzok and the reported text messages between him and Page, shows a bias that cannot be ignored particularly if he had anything to do with Flynn s interview and his role in it. The former U.S. intelligence official questioned, how logical is it that Flynn is being charged for lying to an agent whose character and neutrality was called into question by the Special Counsel. According to an anonymous source in The Washington Post, Strzok s and Page had exchanged a number of texts that expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton. For entire story: Sara Carter, Hannity.com ;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PELOSI LOSES IT: Calls Tax Cuts ‘End of the World’…’Armageddon!’ [Video];Nancy Pelosi just got even more embarrassing than ever She pulled the drama card while commenting on the tax cuts: No this is the end of the world. The debate on health care is life or death. This is Armegeddon! This is a really big deal. Because you know why? It s really hard to come back from this This has been the way Pelosi has behaved lately OUR RECENT REPORT ON PELOSI: Nancy Pelosi spoke for less than 8 minutes to the LBJ Foundation on Wednesday, but some attendees may have left the event wondering what is wrong with the House Minority Leader. She was seen repeating words, having trouble speaking and botched Lyndon Baines Johnson twice.OUR PREVIOUS REPORTS ON PELOSI S ANTICS: es, another brain freeze moment from Nancy Pelosi Why does she do this to herself? She continues to be the poster child for term limits!Comedian James Corden challenged Pelosi to say something nice about several prominent Republicans but he asked last about Trump Say one nice thing about Paul Ryan, Corden said, holding up a picture of the Speaker of the House.After some awkward silence, Pelosi acknowledged that Ryan is a gentleman. Corden followed up with Ted Cruz. Memorized the Constitution, Pelosi said. That s a good thing. It s a good thing, it s not a nice thing about him, Corden persisted. Ok, Ted Cruz, good father, Pelosi replied. Ok, time for the big dog, Corden said, pulling out a picture of Trump. Is there one nice thing you can say about Donald Trump? Flag pin, Pelosi said, pointing to the pin on Trump s lapel. I don t know that that counts, Corden said, That s not about Donald Trump, he probably didn t even put that on himself. Is there one nice thing you can say about Donald Trump? he repeated.Several seconds later, Pelosi replied: I hope so. I hope I can. But not today? Corden said. President, Pelosi said after another long pause. He s president. You can t think of one nice thing to say about him? Corden prodded. He s nice to me, Pelosi said. Is he? Is he respectful? Corden said. Yeah, respectful, Pelosi said. Read more: American Mirror;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Basketball Dad LaVar Ball Yanks His Son Out of UCLA…You Won’t Believe Why!;The father of the UCLA basketball player who had been suspended for shoplifting in China has just pulled his son from the college. He believes the suspension of his son was unfair Can you believe this guy? He s so lucky his son isn t still stuck in China but was lucky enough to have President Trump save his azz TMZ reported the following:It s a stunning move LiAngelo Ball will no longer be on the UCLA basketball team and, in fact, he will not be a student at UCLA because his father, LaVar Ball, is removing him from the institution TMZ Sports has learned. We re told LaVar believes the suspension was unfair, especially since the charges were dropped. LaVar s people tell TMZ Sports the famous dad thinks, There s no need to break down a kid s spirit for making a mistake. Our sources say LiAngelo is not officially withdrawn from the school but he s at home and will not return to UCLA. This is huge news, but hardly surprising. The writing has been on the wall for this one ever since it happened. UCLA suspended him as soon as he returned to America, and now it looks like he ll never ever play a single second on the court for the Bruins.What a wild turn of events. One day you re a big time recruit for UCLA, the next you re getting arrested in China and before long you re out of school.This father made the wrong move too bad for his son.IN CASE YOU HAVEN T HEARD OF WHAT A TOTAL JERK THIS FATHER WAS TO PRESIDENT TRUMP:Send this kid back to China! The ungrateful attitude of the father of LiAngelo Ball is so classless. What s even worse the dad makes excuses and even dismisses the son s crime as no big deal: They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. LaVar Ball, father of UCLA player with sticky fingers And we wonder why we have little thugs who aren t remorseful for their crimes? The sense of entitlement stinks to high heaven! Bad parenting LaVar Ball! WHO? Days after President Donald Trump touted his role in the release of three UCLA basketball students who were arrested in China, LaVar Ball, the father of one of those players, suggested the President had little to do with the matter. Who? Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump s involvement in the situation. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Trump s social media director, Dan Scavino, fired back at Ball on his personal Twitter account Saturday afternoon, saying Ball s son, LiAngelo, would be in China for a long, long, long time without the President s assistance. Wannabe @Lakers coach, BIG MOUTH @Lavarbigballer knows if it weren t for President @realDonaldTrump, his son would be in China for a long, long, long time! #FACT, Scavino wrote.LiAngelo Ball, along with two other players, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, were arrested last week on suspicion of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store while their team was in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. Trump had said he personally asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to intervene in the case.On Wednesday, Trump issued a call for gratitude from the players on twitter. He did get a thanks for their release after his tweet.STICKY FINGERS NO BIG DEAL?Athletic Director Dan Guerrero confirmed the trio shoplifted from three stores near their hotel Monday night. The three were identified the next morning after police searched their bags and found the stolen items.LaVar Ball told ESPN he was happy to have his son back, and also seemed to downplay his alleged crime. As long as my boy s back here, I m fine, he said. I m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes. I m from L.A. I ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. All three players have been suspended from the UCLA basketball team indefinitely.;politics;04/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TUCKER CALLS OUT CLINTON ADVISER: That is a ‘cover up’ [Video];Tucker Carlson had an intense debate with Clinton adviser and paid spokesliar Richard Goodstein tonight about whether the recent commotion about fired anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok exposes the political double standard at the FBI:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In break with decades of U.S. policy, Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will announce on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there, breaking with longtime U.S. policy and potentially stirring unrest. Despite warnings from Western and Arab allies, Trump in a 1 p.m. (1800 GMT) White House speech will direct the State Department to begin looking for a site for an embassy in Jerusalem as part of what is expected to be a years-long process of relocating diplomatic operations from Tel Aviv. Trump is to sign a national security waiver delaying a move of the embassy, since the United States does not have an embassy structure in Jerusalem to move into. A senior administration official said it could take three to four years to build an embassy. Still, Trump s decision, a core promise of his campaign last year, will upend decades of American policy that has seen the status of Jerusalem as part of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as their capital. Washington s Middle East allies all warned against the dangerous repercussions of his decision when Trump spoke to them on Tuesday. The president believes this is a recognition of reality, said one official, who briefed reporters on Tuesday about the announcement. We re going forward on the basis of a truth that is undeniable. It s just a fact. Senior Trump administration officials said Trump s decision was not intended to tip the scale in Israel s favor and that agreeing on the final status of Jerusalem would remain a central part of any peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. In defending the decision, the officials said Trump was basically reflecting a fundamental truth: That Jerusalem is the seat of the Israeli government and should be recognized as such. The Palestinians have said the move would mean the kiss of death to the two-state solution. The political benefits for Trump are unclear. The decision will thrill Republican conservatives and evangelical Christians who make up a large share of his political base. But it will complicate Trump s desire for a more stable Middle East and Israel-Palestinian peace and arouse tensions. Past presidents have put off such a move. The mere hint of his decision to move the embassy in the future set off alarm bells around the Middle East, raising the prospect of violence. Our Palestinian people everywhere will not allow this conspiracy to pass, and their options are open in defending their land and their sacred places, said Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh. Islamist militant groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah have in the past tried to exploit Muslim sensitivities over Jerusalem to stoke anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiment. The decision comes as Trump s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, leads a relatively quiet effort to restart long-stalled peace efforts in the region, with little in the way of tangible progress thus far. The president will reiterate how committed he is to peace. While we understand how some parties might react, we are still working on our plan which is not yet ready. We have time to get it right and see how people feel after this news is processed over the next period of time, one senior official said. Trump spoke to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan s King Abdullah and Saudi King Salman to inform them of his decision. The Jordanian king affirmed that the decision will have serious implications that will undermine efforts to resume the peace process and will provoke Muslims and Christians alike, said a statement from his office. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. We have always regarded Jerusalem as a final-status issue that must be resolved through direct negotiations between the two parties based on relevant Security Council resolutions, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Trump has weighted U.S. policy toward Israel since taking office in January, considering the Jewish state a strong ally in a volatile part of the world. Still, deliberations over the status of Jerusalem were tense. Vice President Mike Pence and David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel, pushed hard for both recognition and embassy relocation, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis opposed the move from Tel Aviv, according to other U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. An impatient Trump finally weighed in, telling aides last week he wanted to keep his campaign promise. Abbas warned Trump of the dangerous consequences that moving the embassy would have for peace efforts and regional stability, Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said. But Trump assured Abbas that he remained committed to facilitating an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, one U.S. official said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German trains collide near Duesseldorf, several people injured;BERLIN (Reuters) - Several people were injured in a train crash on Tuesday near the German city of Duesseldorf, fire department and police spokesmen said. Rail operator Deutsche Bahn said a passenger train of the regional provider National Express drove into a freight train from DB Cargo about 1830 GMT in the town of Meerbusch. The Meerbusch fire department said up to 150 passengers were on the train and that 5 people suffered injuries. A police spokesman earlier had told German broadcaster ARD that about 50 people had been injured in the train crash. A German government spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel had been briefed on the situation. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain needs 'new paradigm' for financial services trade with EU: Hammond;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will need a new paradigm to sell financial services to the European Union after Brexit as existing trade deals the EU has with foreign countries do not go far enough, the country s finance minister said on Tuesday. Philip Hammond, widely viewed as the most pro-European of Prime Minister Theresa May s senior colleagues, said in a speech at the annual dinner of finance association CityUK that future trading arrangements with the EU had to be durable and fair . Britain has yet to start serious trade talks with the EU ahead of its March 2019 departure, as the process is currently bogged down in disagreements over border arrangements between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. May came under pressure on Tuesday from opposition parties and some allies to soften the EU divorce by keeping Britain in the single market and customs union after Brexit, hours after an attempt to break the logjam over the Irish border collapsed. Hammond said he would not comment on the events of last two days concerning Northern Ireland, but added that Britain and the EU had made good progress in talks over recent weeks. I am optimistic that we will achieve sufficient progress at the Council next week, and move on to the next stage of the negotiations, Hammond said, referring to a scheduled meeting of EU leaders on Dec. 14 and 15. Britain wants to protect its existing trading arrangements with the EU, and the type of deal the EU has struck with other countries in the past is not acceptable, Hammond said. We must develop a new paradigm for our future trading relationship in financial services, he said. No existing trade agreement, nor third-country access to the EU, could support the scale and complexity of reciprocal trade in financial services that exists between the UK and the EU, he added. Earlier on Tuesday, the Bank of England reiterated its warning that without legislative changes in Britain and the EU, tens of billions of pounds of cross-border insurance contracts risk legal uncertainty after Brexit, and said it was considering if banks needed to hold extra capital. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Investors see shades of Quebec in Catalonia vote;" (Removes erroneous reference to Montreal as Quebec s capital in this Dec. 5 story) By Sonya Dowsett and Allison Lampert MADRID/MONTREAL (Reuters) - A flight by businesses from Catalonia s independence crisis has drawn comparisons with Quebec, the French-speaking Canadian province that deterred investors with a decades-long independence push. Opinion polls showed support for pro-independence parties at just under 50 percent as campaigning for a Dec. 21 election began on Tuesday, enough to dampen the Madrid government s hopes the vote would end a volatile standoff over secession. Carrying on as before means chaos, said Jordi Alberich, managing director of Cercle d Economia, a business association based in the Catalan capital, Barcelona. What has happened is tremendously serious and it could get even worse. The election is seen by pro-independence parties as a de-facto referendum on a split from Spain following a banned plebiscite which led to clashes between Spanish police and protesters on Oct 1 and the subsequent dismissal of the Catalan government by Madrid. While it may not propel secessionist forces back into regional government, it could end up sustaining their cause and thereby putting off investors over the longer term. Almost 3,000 firms have shifted their headquarters outside the region, many to Madrid, mirroring the flight of companies from Quebec s Montreal for Toronto before and after its first referendum in 1980 delivered defeat for independence. The Catalan exodus has so far been administrative rather than physical, with companies effectively shifting domiciles, the brass plate of the business, to avoid legal and tax complications rather than moving staff or operations. They fear secession would leave them outside the euro zone and exposed to the uncertain policies and possible tax grabs of a new republic burdened by the region s existing large debts. Madrid, eager for unionist parties to score a clear victory on Dec. 21 and put the crisis to rest, says the economic impact will be only short term, but there are signs the uncertainty is already affecting longer-term investment decisions. If I had been contacted by an American investor asking: Should I open a small office in Barcelona? three or four years ago, I would have said: Yes, of course , said the Spain country head for an international investment bank. Now I can t say that anymore ... The pain inflicted by the independence process scares money away. He, like other bankers and chief executives, declined to speak publicly because the issue is divisive. Those who speak out for one side or other can become targets of criticism and abuse. The Spanish government has already trimmed its 2018 economic growth forecast to 2.3 percent due to the Catalan crisis, and its Independent Authority of Fiscal Responsibility has warned of a bigger impact next year if it is not resolved. Tourism to the region and its main draw card, Barcelona, has slumped, leading to Spain s first fall in retail sales for more than three years. Spain s economy minister recently noted a strong deceleration in Catalonia in the final quarter, and the central bank published an analysis last month based on scenarios that implied impacts ranging from modest to dramatic. In the worst case, it said political uncertainty could cut economic growth by 2.5 percentage points between end-2017 and 2019. In a recent report, Catalonia, history repeating? , Canadian bank RBC Capital Markets compared it with the fallout from Quebec s 1995 referendum, which delivered the narrowest of defeats for independence and was followed by economic decline. ""Even if the independence parties fall short of a majority, the damage may have already been done,"" it said of Catalonia's December vote. Graphic tmsnrt.rs/2AGBazV The Spanish region s pro-independence camp says it pays more than its fair share of tax income out of the country s 17 regions and during the five-year economic crisis its stronger economy propped up poorer areas such as Andalusia and Murcia. The biggest pro-independence party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), has dismissed government warnings secession would cause economic damage and launched its campaign focusing on social issues like housing and energy poverty. Quebec s independence movement, triggered by the 1960s push by French-speakers for economic equality, led to a decline in the province s English-speaking population and its economic affluence, with banks and companies moving their head offices from Montreal, then a thriving financial hub. Canada s second-most populous province has made economic strides in recent years, but it continues to lag other provinces in indicators like household income. Between 1970 and 1981, as pro-sovereignty Parti Quebecois gained political momentum, Montreal lost 18,992 head offices in resource, manufacturing and service sectors, according to a 1983 University of Saskatchewan study. Canada s largest life insurance company was among those which left in 1977. Politics was not the only factor. Montreal s older manufacturing economy was already facing competition from Toronto. The relative decline of Montreal and the exodus of headquarters was no doubt exacerbated by politics but was not solely caused by politics, said Richard Shearmur, a professor at McGill University s school of urban planning in Montreal. The Catalan crisis has drawn interest in Quebec: last week, two members of Catalonia s secessionist Candidatura d Unitat Popular (CUP) party spoke at an event organised by a left-leaning Quebec opposition party. But Quebec polls show support for separation, especially among young adults, is in decline, while in Catalonia polls show pro-independence parties continue to command strong support. The last Catalan government was made up of a coalition of pro-independence parties under the name Together for Yes , propped up by CUP lawmakers who did not join the government s ranks. Opinion polls show pro-independence and pro-unity parties almost in a dead heat for December s election. ";worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri rescinds resignation, drawing line under crisis;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri rescinded his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under a month-long crisis triggered when he announced from Riyadh that he was stepping down and remained outside Lebanon for weeks. His coalition government, which includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, reaffirmed a state policy of staying out of conflicts in Arab states. Hariri s Saudi allies accuse Hezbollah of waging war across the Middle East as agents of Iran. Hariri s shock resignation had thrust Lebanon to the forefront of the regional quarrel between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has been played out on battlefields in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Lebanese officials said Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time Saudi ally, into resigning and put him under effective house arrest until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Hariri have denied this. President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, refused to accept his resignation while he remained abroad. Saudi concern over the influence wielded by Shi ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah in other Arab states had been widely seen as the root cause of the crisis, which raised fears for Lebanon s economic and political stability. The Lebanese policy of dissociation was declared in 2012 to keep the deeply divided state out of regional conflicts such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Despite the policy, Hezbollah is heavily involved there, sending thousands of fighters to help President Bashar al-Assad. In its first meeting since Hariri s resignation, the cabinet on Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to the policy. All (the government s) political components decide to dissociate themselves from all conflicts, disputes, wars or the internal affairs of brother Arab countries, in order to preserve Lebanon s economic and political relations, Hariri said. Lebanon, where Sunni Muslim, Shi ite, Christian and Druze groups fought a civil war from 1975-1990, has a governing system designed to share power among sectarian groups. Hariri, a wealthy Sunni businessman with long ties to the kingdom, had denounced Iran during his resignation speech and said he was outside Lebanon because he feared for his family s safety. His father, an ex-prime minister, was assassinated in 2005. In a speech during the cabinet session, Hariri warned that the tensions in the region could easily drag Lebanon down a dangerous route, and the issues which had led to the crisis could not be ignored. Developments in the region suggest a new wave of conflict ... Perhaps the conflict is nearing the end, and Lebanon cannot be plunged into chaos on the finish line. If we are rejecting interference by any state in Lebanese affairs, it cannot be that we accept that any Lebanese side interferes in the affairs of Arab states, Hariri said, an apparent reference to Hezbollah. We have to address this issue, and take a decision announcing our disassociation, in words and deeds, he said. Hariri s resignation was accompanied by a sharp escalation in Saudi statements targeting the Lebanese state, with Riyadh at one point accusing the Beirut government of declaring war against it. Western governments, including the United States, stressed their support for Hariri and Lebanon. Hariri will be in Paris on Friday for a meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group, a body that includes the five members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The meeting, to be opened by French President Emmanuel Macron, aims in part to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran to desist from interference in Lebanon, diplomats said. (This version of the story re-inserts the word not in paragraph 13) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar forces may be guilty of genocide against Rohingya, U.N. says;GENEVA (Reuters) - Myanmar s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority and more of them are fleeing despite a deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh to send them home, the top U.N. human rights official said on Tuesday. The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria. Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was addressing a special session of the Human Rights Council which later adopted a resolution condemning the very likely commission of crimes against humanity by security forces and others against Rohingya. Myanmar s ambassador Htin Lynn said his government dissociated itself from the text and denounced what he called politicisation and partiality . Zeid, who has described the campaign in the past as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing , said that none of the 626,000 Rohingya who have fled violence to Bangladesh since August should be repatriated to Myanmar unless there was robust monitoring on the ground. He described reports of acts of appalling barbarity committed against the Rohingya, including deliberately burning people to death inside their homes, murders of children and adults;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Supporters free ex-Georgian leader Saakashvili from Ukrainian police amid chaotic scenes;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian supporters of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili freed him from a police van on Tuesday after his detention on suspicion of assisting a criminal organisation led to clashes with police in Kiev. Once freed, Saakashvili raised a hand in a V-for-victory sign a handcuff still dangling from his wrist as he stood in a melee of supporters. He then led protesters towards parliament, where he called defiantly for President Petro Poroshenko to be removed from office. Prosecutors said they would make all efforts to regain custody of Saakashvili but the chaotic scenes of his detention and escape are likely to undermine the image of stability that Ukraine s leadership are keen to present to foreign backers. Ukrainian prosecutors suspect Saakashvili of receiving financing from a criminal group linked to former president Viktor Yanukovich which planned to overthrow the current government. He could face up to five years if found guilty. Saakashvili is also wanted in Georgia on criminal charges which he says were trumped up for political reasons. Masked officers had earlier dragged Saakashvili, 49, from an apartment in the Ukrainian capital. But his supporters prevented the police van from moving off, hemming it in and eventually freeing him by breaking its windows and back door. Protesters also started assembling a barricade of tyres, wood and stones ripped up from the street in scenes reminiscent of Ukraine s 2013-14 pro-European Maidan uprising. Today you maybe saved me from death, therefore my life belongs to you, Saakashvili told a crowd at a makeshift camp outside parliament built by opposition supporters in September. The people of Ukraine must assemble and force the Ukrainian parliament to remove from power the criminal group led by the traitor to Ukraine, Poroshenko, he said. General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko said Saakashvili had a 24- hour deadline to present himself to the state security service, but subsequent comments by his press office suggested he could be detained earlier. All legal grounds for his detention have been established, spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. The detention was the latest twist in a prolonged feud between the Ukrainian authorities and Saakashvili, who was invited by Poroshenko to become a regional governor after the Maidan protests ousted a pro-Russian president in early 2014. The two quickly fell out and Saakashvili turned on his one-time patron. It is unclear if Tuesday s events will lead to wider unrest, as Saakashvili enjoys limited support in Ukraine. Only 1.7 percent of voters would support his party, the Movement of New Forces, in elections, according to an October survey by the Kiev-based Razumkov Centre think-tank. In a response to a request for comment on the case and on Saakashvili s comments on Poroshenko, the president s administration said law enforcement had found evidence to back up the claims against Saakashvili. These facts clearly demonstrate the true price of all the political and incriminating statements, which were recently made by Mikheil Saakashvili, it said in a statement. Georgian prosecutors said they had not been informed of Tuesday s developments by their Ukrainian counterparts. Saakashvili made a dramatic return to Ukraine in September, barging his way across the border from Poland despite having been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship and facing the threat of possible extradition to Georgia. He wants to unseat Poroshenko and replace him with a new, younger politician. His supporters have camped in tents outside parliament and launched sporadic protests since his return. We have been waiting for it (the arrest) for months, of course, and especially in the recent weeks, Saakashvili s wife Sandra Roelofs told Georgian TV Rustavi 2. It s illegal and outrageous. Saakashvili received Ukrainian citizenship when he reinveted himself as a Ukrainian politician. He was made governor of the Odessa region in 2015 on the strength of the reforms he carried out in Georgia. But he fell out with Poroshenko, accusing him of corruption, while Poroshenko s office said Saakashvili was trying to deflect from his own shortcomings as an administrator. He was stripped of his citizenship by Poroshenko in July and is now stateless. Saakashvili s supporters see him as a fearless crusader against corruption but critics say there is little substance behind his blustery rhetoric. In his homeland, where he took power after a peaceful pro-Western uprising known as the Rose Revolution in 2003, his time in office was tarnished by what critics said was his attempts to monopolise power and exert pressure on the judiciary. He was president at the time of a disastrous five-day war with Russia in 2008, a conflict that his critics argued was the result of his own miscalculations. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CIA’s Pompeo: ‘Assange Shouldn’t Be Confident of Protecting WikiLeaks Sources’;CIA appointed head Mike Pompeo is now ready to disregard basic press freedoms enshrined in the US Constitution.As the press speculate this week over the imminent exit of Mike Pompeo from Langley to Foggy Bottom, Donald Trump s outgoing CIA head appears to be determined to do as much damage as possible to the US Constitution.This latest reckless power-grab by the CIA is not just about getting Wikileaks this is about requiring all media outlets to divulge their sources in the interests of national security. DCIA Pompeo: WikiLeaks may think they are protecting those who provide them with classified information & other secrets, but they should not be certain of that.#RNDF CIA (@CIA) December 3, 2017RT International reports CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he won t tolerate secrets purloined by the CIA being stolen from the agency, and warned WikiLeaks to be more careful about protecting its sources.The CIA s official Twitter account tweeted Pompeo s comments about the whistleblowing site from an interview he gave at the Reagan National Defense Forum Saturday.Stealing Secrets I never miss an opportunity when I m with my officers to tell them the last thing we can tolerate is to have a secret that we ve stole re-stolen, Pompeo told moderator Brett Baier at the Los Angeles event.READ MORE: WikiLeaks publishes #Vault7: Entire hacking capacity of the CIA It is simply unacceptable. It is our duty to protect them, he added. It is our duty to go after those who stole them, and to prosecute them within the bounds of the law in every way that we can. Mike Pompeo leads the Deep State crusade to destroy Assange and Wikileaks.Pompeo s comments come nine months after WikiLeaks began releasing Vault7, a massive trove of classified CIA documents purportedly detailing the agency s hacking capabilities. The documents include reports of the agency s arsenal of malware and tech exploits, as well as its methods of infiltrating smartphones, TVs and laptops.The CIA is believed to have lost control of this arsenal before WikiLeaks obtained it. The hacking capabilities were doing the rounds among government hackers, one of whom provided WikiLeaks with the collection, the whistleblowing site explained. According to WikiLeaks, the Vault7 source wanted to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons. Some of the biggest revelations in Vault7 were the CIA s ability to mask its hacking exploits to make them appear to be the work of other countries, namely Russia, China and Iran. It has raised questions about security firm Crowdstrike linking the Democratic National Committee email hack to Russian hackers.READ MORE: #Vault7: WikiLeaks reveals Marble tool could mask CIA hacks with Russian, Chinese, ArabicWikileaks Sources I sometimes hear comments from WikiLeaks and Mr Assange thinking that those who have provided him classified information are safe and secure, Pompeo said. He ought to be a bit less confident about that, because we re going to go figure out how to protect this information. We owe it to the American people and our officers who dedicated to it. Just to be clear, WikiLeaks is a national security threat in your eyes? Baier asked Pompeo. Yes. You can go no further than the release of documents by [Chelsea] Manning to see the risk that it presents to the United States of America, the CIA chief responded.Pompeo was referring to US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who released hundreds of thousands of documents from the military along with diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in 2010.While the release revealed the extent of civilian casualties in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and included reports from Guantanamo Bay and the infamous Collateral Murder video depicting a US helicopter attack killing two Reuters employees and injuring two children, a 2011 Department of Defense report published in June found the disclosure had no significant effect on US interests.Pompeo has emerged as a staunch critic of WikiLeaks since becoming head of the CIA, describing the organization as a hostile intelligence agency, and dubbing Assange a narcissist and a fraud. This is a departure from his position when he was a Kansas congressman and was tweeting about the WikiLeaks DNC email release.Tweet sent by CIA Director Mike Pompeo on 24 July 2016 https://t.co/sTMHw2nvOG pic.twitter.com/Qd0mYRl5QF WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 13, 2017The annual RNDF event has been dubbed the Davos of defense. Speakers at this year s event include former CIA head Leon Panetta, national security advisor HR McMaster and a number of congressmen and representatives from defense corporations like Lockheed Martin. 21st Century Wire says: Based on his views during the election, and now his views as CIA director it seems that Mike Pompeo is a hypocrite who loved Wikileaks when it served his own political interests, but now would like to destroy it to protect the interests of the Deep State.SEE MORE WIKILEAKS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Wikileaks FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May faces pressure to soften Brexit divorce after EU exit deal crumbles;LONDON (Reuters) - Hours after a Brexit deal collapsed, British Prime Minister Theresa May came under pressure on Tuesday from opposition parties and even some allies to soften the EU divorce by keeping Britain in the single market and customs union after Brexit. May s ministers said they were confident they would soon secure an exit deal, though opponents scolded the prime minister for a chaotic day in Brussels which saw a choreographed attempt to showcase the progress of Brexit talks collapse at the last minute. The Northern Irish party that props up May s minority government said it was only shown the draft of a deal promising regulatory alignment for both parts of Ireland late on Monday morning. In a sign of just how politically precarious May s Brexit balancing act has become, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) also said it had warned May that it would not support her legislation in parliament unless the draft was changed. The opposition Labour Party said one way for alignment of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to become acceptable was for the whole of the United Kingdom to stay in the single market and the customs union. What an embarrassment - the last 24 hours have given a new meaning to the phrase coalition of chaos , Labour s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer told parliament. Yesterday, the rubber hit the road: Fantasy met brutal reality. Will the Prime Minister now rethink her reckless red lines and put options such as a customs union and single market back on the table for negotiation? Starmer asked. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of Scotland s devolved government, said May s failure could signal a push to keep Britain in both. This could be the moment for opposition and soft Brexit/remain Tories to force a different, less damaging approach - keep the UK in the single market and customs union, Sturgeon said on Twitter. But it needs Labour to get its act together. How about it @jeremycorbyn? Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who has been tipped as a potential future leader of May s party, also suggested May should consider keeping the United Kingdom in the single market and customs union. May has repeatedly said Britain will leave both groupings when the United Kingdom ends its membership of the EU at 2300 GMT on March 29, 2019. But she has also called for a bespoke economic partnership. Brexit minister David Davis said voters had chosen to leave the EU and that included both the single market and the customs union. Davis said the government would never allow one part of the United Kingdom to remain in the single market after Brexit, though he did allow that regulatory alignment for Northern Ireland could apply to the whole of the United Kingdom. Sterling rebounded from a six-day low against the euro on Tuesday to trade flat on the day, with investors cautiously optimistic that a deal on opening up talks on post-Brexit trade would be reached by the end of the week. May, who is now scrambling to thrash out a deal with the EU while keeping Northern Ireland s DUP and her own party onside, may return to Brussels as early as Wednesday to continue talks, a Downing Street official said. We re very confident that we will be able to move this forward, finance minister Philip Hammond said as he arrived for a meeting with EU counterparts in Brussels. A European Commission spokesman said it was ready to resume Brexit negotiations as soon as London signals it is ready. But the EU will only move to trade talks if there is enough progress on three key issues: the money Britain must pay to the EU;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;B-1B bomber joins U.S.-South Korea drills as tensions escalate;SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. B-1B bomber on Wednesday joined large-scale U.S.-South Korean military exercises that North Korea has denounced as pushing the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, as tension mounts between the North and the United States. The bomber flew from the Pacific U.S.-administered territory of Guam and joined U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters in the annual exercises, which run until Friday. The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, as part of a weapons program that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation. Asked about the bomber s flight, China s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing in Beijing: We hope relevant parties can maintain restraint and not do anything to add tensions on the Korean peninsula. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan. Its official KCNA state news agency said at the weekend that U.S. President Donald Trump s administration was begging for nuclear war by staging the drills. It also labeled Trump, who has threatened to destroy North Korea if the United States is threatened, insane . KCNA said on Tuesday that the exercises in which the bomber took part are simulating an all-out war , including drills to strike the state leadership and nuclear and ballistic rocket bases, air fields, naval bases and other major objects... U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday urged the Pentagon to start moving U.S. military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close. The U.S.-South Korea drills coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong Guk met Feltman on Wednesday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and discussed bilateral cooperation and other issues of mutual interest, KCNA said. Feltman, a former senior U.S. State Department official, is the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012. The State Department said on Tuesday he was not carrying any message from Washington. South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit China next Wednesday for a summit with his counterpart Xi Jinping, Seoul s presidential Blue House said. North Korea s increasing nuclear and missile capability would top the agenda, it said. The military exercises, called Vigilant Ace , are designed to enhance joint readiness and operational capability of U.S. extended deterrence, South Korea s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. North Korea has vehemently criticized the drills since the weekend, saying the exercise precipitates U.S. and South Korean self-destruction . China and Russia had proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programs. China is North Korea s lone major ally and fears widespread instability on its border. Russia also has communication channels open with North Korea and is ready to exert its influence, the RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov as saying on Tuesday. North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles, two of which flew over Japan, and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September. It says its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says ready to exert influence on North Korea: Ifax; (Corrects source in headline and first paragraph of Dec. 5 story;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ABC News Suspend Anchor Brian Ross Over Fake News Report on Trump-Flynn ‘Russian Collusion’;After 18 months of rampant speculation over Trump and Russian collusion and alleged Russian hacking in the 2016 election, in a cloud of non-stop, 24/7 fake news being generated by CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, as well as notorious MSM fake news outsourcing agencies like The Daily Beast the Never Trump Resistance has yet to present a single item of evidence to justify their year and a half-long political witch hunt.In this sea of delusion, there are still a number of desperate media persons who are willing to punt on a contrived plot or narrative hoping that theirs will be the one to finally nail the embattled President on grounds for impeachment beyond a reasonable doubt. Already a number of mainstream journalists, including three reporters from CNN, have been fired or let go as networks are now fear legal repercussions from their new normalized practice of lying and inventing plots about the White House and Russian meddling. This week saw another high-profile casualty, ABC s Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, as the resistance continues to launch blind media attacks on the President.On Saturday, ABC News executives announced that star anchor Ross would be suspended for one month without pay over an alleged botched exclusive implicating former national security adviser Michael Flynn.Clueless: ABC s Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross.During Ross s live special report , an invented story-line was fed to a clueless Ross which claimed that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while Trump was still a candidate in the general election.According to FOX News, the fake news report raised the specter of Trump s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting. Later in the day, ABC issued a clarification to Ross s report, saying that Trump s alleged directive came after he d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on World News Tonight, several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.Afterwards, ABC News tried to justify the fake news release, claiming that Ross report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process. Clearly, Ross took one for the team (The Resistance) here, as anyone who works in media will know. He would have been fed the bogus report by news producers, before doing what mainstream media news anchors do everyday of their careers unwittingly reading whatever words are scrolling down his teleprompter.ABC News statement went on to try and gloss over their fake news report saying, It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience. News officials then sounded even more ridiculous as they scrambled to pave-over their propaganda practices claiming that, These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday. What s clear from this story is that when it comes to all things Trump and Russia, the US mainstream media feel they are within their right to dispense with all normal journalistic standards so long as the story falls in line with a specific political agenda.Unfortunately, this is just one more reason to always be cautious when trusting watching mainstream media reporting of any any major news event.READ MORE ABOUT MAINSTREAM FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Fake News FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV ;US_News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Coalition says fewer than 3,000 IS fighters remain in Iraq and Syria;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States-led international coalition fighting Islamic State estimates that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, its spokesman said on Tuesday. Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate has crumbled this year in Syria and Iraq, with the group losing the cities of Mosul, Raqqa and swathes of other territory. Current estimates are that there are less than 3,000 #Daesh fighters left - they still remain a threat, but we will continue to support our partner forces to defeat them, U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon tweeted, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Dillon s tweet was part of his responses to an online question and answer session in which he also said the coalition had trained 125,000 members of Iraqi security forces, 22,000 of which were Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. When asked if the United States planned to build permanent military bases in Iraq or Syria the defeat of Islamic State, Dillon said it would not. No - the Government of #Iraq knows where and how many from Coalition are here to support operation to defeat #Daesh;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistani peace activist reported missing, police say;Karachi, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani peace activist has been reported missing over the weekend from eastern city of Lahore, police and one of his friends said on Tuesday. Raza Mehmood Khan, 40, a member of Aghaz-i-Dosti (Start of Friendship), a group that works on peace building between arch-rivals Pakistan and India, hasn t been heard from since he left home on Sunday, said Rahim-ul-Haq, a friend and an associate. He said the group has offices in both countries. Police official Shehzad Raza said Khan s family reported he had been missing since Saturday. No one has been accused in the report, he said. We re investigating. Several social media activists critical of the army and the country s extremists and militant groups have gone missing in Pakistan in recent months. Four of them were released nearly a month after they disappeared early this year. Two of them - Ahmad Waqas Goraya and Asim Saeed _ later alleged in interviews with BBC and their social media posts that Pakistani intelligence abducted and tortured them in custody. Pakistan s army has denied the accusations. Haq said Khan spoke at a discussion on Saturday on the topic of extremism. Everyone discussed their views and, of course, Raza was very critical, he said. He said that Raza s recent Facebook posts were critical of Pakistani military, especially in view of a recent sit-in protest by hard-liners that paralyzed Islamabad for over two weeks. The extremists won almost all of their demands, including resignation of a minister they accused of blasphemy, in an agreement brokered by the army. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU exec proposes deeper euro zone integration to unite EU;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Wednesday ideas for deeper euro zone integration in an effort to help unite the broader European Union, as eurosceptic sentiment grows across the EU and Britain prepares to leave the EU in 2019. The Commission, the EU s executive arm, presented a package of proposals aimed at giving the 19 countries sharing the euro better protection against future financial crises. But plans to tighten cooperation among the 19 euro countries have sparked concern among the eight non-euro countries that they will become second-class members of the EU, with less say - and less funds - in the future. To alleviate those fears, the Commission stressed that all their proposals were open to all EU members, even though that clashes with the thinking of some euro zone leaders, such as French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron has called for creating a euro zone budget of several hundred billion euros, a euro zone finance minister and a euro zone parliament. The Commission proposed creating cash incentives for countries for structural reforms and special funds for non-euro economies, all of which - except Denmark - are obligated to adopt the euro at some point, to prepare for euro adoption. But heavyweight Germany was quick to pour cold water on one key part of the plans putting in doubt just how far they would get. The Commission backed the idea of setting up what it calls a euro zone stabilisation function , because the monetary policy of the European Central Bank cannot deal with economic crises that hit only one or a few countries in the euro zone. That would be a pool of money to protect investment with loans and a relatively limited grant component , the Commission said. To be effective and credible, it should be big enough to pay out at least 1 percent of GDP and be allowed to borrow. Access to the stabilisation function , managed by the Commission, would be for those who stick to EU rules. The money would come from loans from the EU budget, voluntary contributions from governments and loans from the euro zone bailout fund with guarantees from the EU budget. The Commission said that for this to work, a limited borrowing capacity could be constructed in the next EU budget. Germany expressed reservations though. I don t think it makes sense to prejudge anything, but the outgoing government was not convinced that new buffers at the European level are necessary, Germany s acting finance minister Peter Altmaier said. Instead of a euro zone finance minister, the Commission called for naming a pan-European Minister of Economy and Finance, who would also be a senior member of the European Commission and chair meetings of euro zone finance ministers. The minister would also oversee the work of the euro zone bailout fund as the chairman of its board, much like the head of euro zone finance ministers, the Eurogroup, does now. The job might be created when the next European Commission starts work in November 2019, the Commission said, and whoever gets it would be accountable to the European Parliament. Under the current arrangement, the chair of the euro zone finance ministers, the closest thing the bloc now has to a single finance minister, often testifies before the parliament s economic committee, but it has no power over him or her. Euro zone finance ministers have little enthusiasm for allowing the Commission, which is only an observer at their monthly meetings, to chair their talks. Other euro zone integration ideas, floated by Germany, include transforming the euro zone s government-owned and run bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund. The Commission backed that idea, but said the EMF should become an EU institution, which would be overseen by the European Parliament an idea officials have said would not fly with governments. The EMF, which the Commission hopes to get agreement on by mid-2019 from governments and the European Parliament, would also provide a 60 billion-euro backstop for the bank-funded Single Resolution Fund. The Commission did not address the proposal of Germany and backed by Slovakia and the Netherlands to create a sovereign insolvency mechanism that would put pressure on governments to conduct prudent fiscal policy. Economists were not impressed with the Commission proposals. A first browsing of the documents allows us to conclude that hardly anything will change, ING economist Carsten Brzeski wrote in a note to clients. Today s proposals go in the right direction but are not new and clearly not a game changer. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's PiS may sack PM Szydlo, replace with finance minister: sources;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party may replace Prime Minister Beata Szydlo next week with her government s finance chief, Mateusz Morawiecki, to prepare for a series of elections in coming years, political sources said. Since the eurosceptic PiS won power two years ago, Szydlo, 54, has overseen sweeping changes to state institutions in Poland, which critics in the European Union and Washington say have undermined democracy and the rule of law. Despite the criticism, her conservative government is one of the most popular in Poland since the 1989 collapse of communism, largely due to low unemployment, increases in public spending and a focus on traditional Catholic values in public life. Senior PiS officials have said, however, that a change was needed to prepare the party - led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland s paramount politician - for a string of elections in the next three years. Local elections will be held in 2018, parliamentary in 2019 and presidential in 2020. It s been obvious for a long time that there was no internal communication in the government and individual ministers were often following their own agenda, said one high-ranked official. PiS spokeswoman Beata Mazurek declined to say when a reshuffle could take place and whether Szydlo would be removed. But she told journalists it is not a secret that Morawiecki has been a candidate. We are talking about goals for the future, Mazurek said. It is not about something new , but about what tasks are ahead of us and they are related to the economy - and Deputy Prime Minister Morawiecki is responsible for the economy. Morawiecki, 49, an ex-banker who is also a deputy prime minister, is broadly considered as anointed by Kaczynski, while Szydlo lacks the full trust of the party s chairman, analysts said. As finance minister, Morawiecki has overseen a rise in value-added tax collection of more than 20 percent so far this year, helping fund the government s popular child-subsidy program, cheaper medicine for the elderly, and a cut in the retirement age. He has also pledged billions of euros worth of investment in the economy - a mix of EU funds, and public and private investment. But public investment has faltered and has been slowly recovering only this year, still below expectations. Private investment has been sluggish, with companies worrying about tax burdens and changing legal frameworks as factors keeping them from pumping money into their businesses. The prime minister and Morawiecki have fought for control over the largest state-owned companies. The conflict became public this year during the selection process for the chief executive of PZU, central Europe s biggest insurance company. After weeks of media speculation over a possible government reshuffle, Szydlo wrote on Twitter late on Monday that no matter what happens, Poland is most important , fuelling talk she might lose her job. At the beginning of next week, there will most likely be changes in the government, a high-ranking PiS source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Everything points to Mateusz Morawiecki becoming the new prime minister. Three other PiS and government sources confirmed the information, with a government official saying that the final decision has not yet been made . Market reaction has been muted with analysts saying Morawiecki would likely maintain the government s economic policy. Whoever were to become the prime minister, I do not expect significant changes in economic policy. It is more a matter of whether the new government exhibits a more or a less confrontational attitude towards the EU, said Piotr Bielski, a head analyst at bank BZ WBK. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gulf rulers boycotting Qatar skip annual summit;KUWAIT (Reuters) - Qatar s Emir said on Tuesday he hoped a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Kuwait would help maintain stability in the region, Al-Jazeera TV said, though three Arab heads of state involved in a rift with Qatar stayed away. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain sent ministers or deputy prime ministers to the annual event. The countries and non-GCC member Egypt have imposed economic, diplomatic and trade sanctions on Qatar in a dispute that began in June. Qatar s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said the summit took place in highly sensitive circumstances . He and Kuwait s Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah were the only heads of state to attend the meeting. I am full of hope that the summit will lead to results that will maintain the security of the Gulf and its stability, Tamim said, according to the Doha-based Al-Jazeera. Sheikh Sabah said in a speech at the end of the summit: We proved once again the resilience of our Gulf institution and its ability to be steadfast, simply by holding into the mechanism of convening these meetings. In his opening speech, the Kuwaiti ruler called for a mechanism to be set up in the Western-backed grouping to resolve disputes among its members. Relations within the Gulf have soured since the four Arab states accused Qatar of supporting terrorism. Qatar denies the charges. Kuwait, which had spearheaded unsuccessful mediation efforts since the rift began, had hoped the summit would give leaders a chance to meet face-to-face, two Gulf diplomats said. Earlier, the UAE said it would set up a bilateral cooperation committee with Saudi Arabia, separate from the GCC, on political, economic and military issues. UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan said the new committee would be chaired by Abu Dhabi s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, Mohammed Bin Zayed, state news agency WAM reported. Saudi Arabia has not yet commented. The proposal coincides with an escalation in a conflict in Yemen that involves Saudi Arabia and UAE. Veteran former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in a roadside attack on Monday after switching sides in the war and abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favor of a Saudi-led coalition. The GCC was founded in 1980 as a bulwark against bigger neighbors Iran and Iraq. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras opposition proposes election recount or run-off;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Honduran opposition battling President Juan Orlando Hernandez over a disputed presidential election proposed on Tuesday that a run-off be held if authorities would not recount the entire vote. TV star Salvador Nasralla, who claimed victory in the Nov. 26 election after early results put him ahead of Hernandez, has been locked in a bitter row over the vote count since the process broke down and suddenly swung in the president s favor. The dispute has sparked deadly protests and a night-time curfew in the poor, violent Central American country. On Tuesday, Nasralla said the electoral tribunal should review virtually all the voting cards. If you don t agree with that, let s go to a run-off between (Hernandez) and Salvador Nasralla, he said on Twitter. Former President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a 2009 coup and now backs Nasralla, said that the opposition was seeking a total recount of the vote, or legislation to permit a run-off, which is not used in Honduras. Hernandez, who has been praised by the United States for his crackdown on violent street gangs, indicated later on Tuesday that his party might be willing to check all votes. We re open to checking, that there s a review of one, two, three, however many, he said. They talk about 5,000 (polling stations), of more, of less;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland might consider adding to Brexit border text: Irish Times;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland might consider adding elements to the text of an agreement on the post-Brexit future of Northern Ireland s border as long as they do not undermine those already contained in the deal, the Irish Times reported on Tuesday. British Prime Minister Theresa May has found it difficult to come up with a formula that satisfies both EU member Ireland, which wants to avoid creation of a hard border, and Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which says the British province must quit the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK. The DUP props up May s minority government. A tentative deal on the border, promising regulatory alignment on both sides of the island of Ireland, was agreed on Monday. It was later rejected by the DUP, which says it cannot allow any divergence in regulation between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. Brussels says agreement is needed before it will give the green light for Britain to begin talks on future free trade when European Union leaders meet next week. The Irish Times quoted a spokesman for Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar as saying the adding of elements to assuage the concerns of the DUP doesn t seem unreasonable and was a possibility. The Irish Times suggested such an element might refer to the strength of the UK as a political entity. Asked to comment on the report, a spokesman for Varadkar said the view of the Irish government is that the terms of the deal reached on Monday must stand. It s up to the UK government to work out with the DUP how it proposes to move forward, the spokesman added. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three charged in Malta for murder of anti-corruption journalist;VALLETTA (Reuters) - A magistrate on Tuesday charged three men with murder over a car-bomb blast that killed anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, court officials said. Caruana Galizia died instantly when her car was blown up as she drove out of her home on Oct. 16, a killing that shocked Malta and raised concern within the European Union about the rule of law on the tiny Mediterranean island. All three pleaded not guilty at the arraignment, which was attended by her husband, Peter Caruana Galizia. The men were named as Vince Muscat and brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio. It was not immediately clear whether police thought they had acted on their own or were hit men working for others. Caruana Galizia wrote a popular blog in which she relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged graft targeting politicians of all colors, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Vince Muscat was not a relative. [] Police arrested 10 men on Monday in connection with their investigation into the killing. The other seven were released on bail. A close friend of Caruana Galizia told Reuters that she did not think the journalist had ever investigated the three men charged on Tuesday. She wrote about government officials, politicians and wealthy business types, the friend said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the case. The Malta government had offered a 1 million euro reward leading to information on the murder. It also called in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Europol to assist in investigations. Maltese media said investigators had homed in on the suspects following telephone intercepts known as triangulation data that included the call from a mobile phone which triggered the car bomb. Malta, the smallest nation in the European Union, has been engulfed by a wave of graft scandals in recent months, including accusations of money laundering and influence peddling in government - all of which have been denied. Caruana Galizia exposed many of these cases and was loved by her readers as a fearless, anti-corruption crusader. Critics saw her as a muck-raking fantasist and she had been hit with 36 libel lawsuits in the nine months preceding her death. Much of her criticism was leveled against Prime Minister Muscat and his leftist Labour party, which won power in 2013 after a nearly quarter of a century of uninterrupted rule by the conservative Nationalist Party. In the months before her death, she had also regularly targeted senior Nationalist figures. Italian newspapers have speculated that she might have fallen foul of men who were making a fortune by smuggling fuel out of lawless Libya. However, her friend said she had never looked into the illegal trade and any mention of it in her blog related to articles already published elsewhere. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. pushing sharp increase in migrant returns from Libya;TUNIS (Reuters) - The United Nations migration agency is stepping up the rate at which it flies migrants home from Libya, aiming to evacuate up to 15,000 in the final month of the year. The acceleration of returns is an attempt to ease severe overcrowding in detention centers, where numbers swelled after boat departures for Italy from the smuggling hub of Sabratha were largely blocked this year. It also followed a CNN report showing migrants being sold for slave labor in Libya, sparking an international outcry and calls for migrants to be given safe passage from the country. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has already flown back more than 14,500 migrants to their countries of origin so far this year as part of its voluntary returns program. Nigeria, Guinea, Gambia, Mali and Senegal have seen the highest numbers of returns. Migrant flows through Libya surged from 2014. More than 600,000 crossing the central Mediterranean to Italy over the past three years, but departures from Libya s coast dropped sharply in July when armed groups in Sabratha began preventing boats from leaving. After clashes in the western city in September, thousands of migrants who had been held near the coast surfaced and were transferred to detention centers under the nominal control of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. Numbers in about 16 centers rose to nearly 20,000, from 5,000-7,000 previously, leading to a worsening of already poor conditions. We are seeing an increasing number of migrants wishing to return home especially after what happened in Sabratha, it s all linked to Sabratha, said Ashraf Hassan, head of the IOM returns program. In the aftermath of the CNN report and an African Union visit to Libya, some countries of origin have begun accepting charter flights returning migrants from Libya for the first time. The IOM has shortened procedures for screening migrants Libya, collecting less statistical data and focusing on trying to ensure that migrants will not be put at risk by returning, Hassan said. The agency hopes to have three charter flights leaving per day by Dec. 11, increasing that to five flights by Dec. 15. On Tuesday nearly 400 migrants were flown back to Nigeria on two flights from Tripoli, the capital, and from the western city of Misrata. (This story has been refiled to fix typo in 9th paragraph.) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bus bomb kills eight in Syria's Homs city: state media;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A bomb blast killed eight people and injured 16 others on a bus in Syria s Homs on Tuesday, state media said, citing the city s health authority. Islamic State claimed the attack, saying the blast killed 11 members of the Syrian army, its official news agency AMAQ said. Many of the passengers were university students, Homs Governor Talal Barazi told state-run Ikhbariya TV. The blast in the government-held city hit the Akrama district, near al-Baath University. Footage showed people crowding around the burned shell of a vehicle in the middle of a street. State television said a bomb that terrorists planted in a passenger bus exploded . Islamic State militants had claimed responsibility for a similar attack in Homs in May, when a car bomb killed four people and injured 32 others. A string of bombings have struck cities under government control in Syria this year, including the capital Damascus. The Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda has also claimed some of the deadly attacks. Security agencies are constantly chasing sleeper cells, the Homs police chief said on Ikhbariya. Today, it could be a sleeper cell or it could be an infiltration. Barazi, the governor, said the state s enemies were trying to target stability as the stage of victory drew near. The city of Homs returned to full government control in May for the first time since the onset of Syria s conflict more than six years ago. With the help of Russian jets and Iran-backed militias, the Damascus government has pushed back rebel factions in western Syria, shoring up its rule over the main urban centers. The army and allied forces then marched eastwards against Islamic State militants this year. The United States has voiced concern about Syrian and Russian attacks. The U.S. State Department on Tuesday strongly condemned attacks this week on eastern Ghouta believed to have been carried out by Syrian and Russian jets. The jets struck crowded residential areas in the besieged rebel enclave near Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 27 people, aid workers and a war monitor said. Deliberate tactics to starve Syrian civilians, including women and children, block humanitarian and medical aid, bomb hospitals, medical personnel and first responders in eastern Ghouta, we consider that to be deeply troubling, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. She urged Russia to live up to its obligations to uphold the de-escalation zone in eastern Ghouta. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House confirms Trump discussed Jerusalem with Mideast leaders;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump spoke separately on Tuesday with five Middle East leaders about potential decisions regarding Jerusalem amid reports he plans to move the U.S. Embassy to the city, the White House said in a statement. Trump also reaffirmed his commitment to advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in his calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan s King Abdullah, Saudi King Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the statement said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Paraguay Congress legalizes planting of medical marijuana;ASUNCION (Reuters) - Paraguay s Congress passed a bill on Tuesday creating a state-sponsored system to import marijuana seeds and grow the plant for medical uses, a decision that followed other countries in Latin America. The landlocked South American nation had authorized the importing of cannabis oil in May, under control of the health ministry, and Tuesday s decision was celebrated by patients their and loved ones for making it more readily available. We are very happy because this will also allow for the import of seeds for oil production, said Roberto Cabanas, vice president Paraguay s medicinal cannabis organization. His daughter has Dravet syndrome and the family was paying $300 a month for imported cannabis oil. Peru, Chile, Argentina and Colombia had already legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Uruguay has fully legalized growing and selling marijuana for any use. The bill will likely be signed into law by the executive as it was supported by the health ministry. Growing marijuana for recreational purposes in Paraguay is illegal, yet the country is a key source of illegal marijuana trafficked into Brazil and Argentina. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Shoot-out between Colombia rebels kills 13, government says;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Thirteen people, including civilians, were killed during a confrontation between Colombia s ELN rebels and dissidents from the now-demobilized FARC guerrilla group in a remote area known for drug trafficking, the country s ombudsman said on Tuesday. The incident took place on Nov. 27 in the southwestern Narino region, a place where crime gangs and rebel groups are known to grow, process and smuggle coca, the base ingredient in cocaine. A hard-won peace accord was agreed with the now-disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group last year, ending some five decades of war. But an array of FARC dissidents, National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, right-wing ex-paramilitaries and crime gangs are still active in Colombia, competing for control of lucrative illegal mines and drug trafficking routes. In Narino, fighters from the ELN attacked members of the Rural Resistance, ombudsmen Carlos Alfonso Negret said in a report. The Rural Resistance are FARC dissidents who refused to demobilize following the peace deal. The ombudsman s office visited the area and was able to determine that there was an exchange of fire between the group that calls itself Rural Resistance and the ELN, Negret told journalists. There was crossfire that killed 13 people. Neither the report nor Negret specified how many of the dead were civilians. More than 11,000 fighters and collaborators from the FARC handed over their weapons this year as part of the peace accord. The group has kept its initials in its reincarnation as a political party. But Negret says some 800 former guerrillas did not demobilize, while other security sources and thinktanks put the number of dissident ex-FARC at between 700 and 1,300. The ELN and the government began their first ever bilateral ceasefire in October, part of peace talks taking place in Ecuador. The ceasefire is set to run through Jan. 9 and may be extended. The incident was a violation of the ceasefire, Negret said. It is the second act of violence which has overshadowed the ceasefire, after the ELN admitted to killing an indigenous leader in restive Choco province. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to deliver remarks on decision on Jerusalem embassy: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday will deliver remarks about his decision on whether to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, White House Press Secretary Sarah Saders said on Tuesday, adding that Trump is pretty solid in his thinking on the issue. Trump notified Arab leaders on Tuesday that he intends to make the major change in calls to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan s King Abdullah, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia s King Salman. Many of the leaders warned that unilateral U.S. steps on Jerusalem would derail a fledgling U.S.-led peace effort and unleash turmoil in the region. (This story corrects spelling of press secretary s surname to Sanders instead of Saunders in first paragraph) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's U.N. envoy says he was pushed out by Maduro;CARACAS/HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela s powerful former oil czar Rafael Ramirez said on Tuesday he resigned from his job as U.N. envoy on orders of the president, a sign of growing rifts in the Socialist Party once firmly united under late leader Hugo Chavez. Sources told Reuters last week that leftist President Nicolas Maduro fired Ramirez, a political rival who was thought to have presidential ambitions, and summoned him back to Caracas from New York. Several close allies of Ramirez, as well as a relative, have been arrested in Venezuela in recent weeks as part of a purge in the oil sector over graft allegations, sparking questions about whether Ramirez would dare return to Caracas. Insiders say Maduro is feeling empowered after surviving major political protests this year. He is now moving to strengthen his control of the OPEC member s crucial energy industry and sideline political rivals ahead of presidential elections in 2018. I have been removed for my opinions, said Ramirez via Twitter, where he posted a four-page resignation letter. He has for weeks been writing editorials on a left-wing news site that are harshly critical of Maduro and the state of the oil industry. By attacking me personally, you are affecting the unity of the revolutionary forces and the legacy of Comandante Chavez, he added in the letter addressed to Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, referring to Chavez, who governed Venezuela for 14 years before dying of cancer in 2013. Ramirez, a 54-year-old engineer, did not discuss his next moves in the resignation letter, but a source close to him told Reuters on Tuesday that had left the United States. His press representative did not immediately respond to request for comment. The sacking caps a remarkable downfall for Ramirez, who led state oil company PDVSA and the oil ministry for a decade and was one of Chavez closest confidants. He oversaw vast oil nationalizations and urged workers to wear red shirts in support of Chavez s socialist movement. Ramirez was disappointed when Chavez picked Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, as his successor, according to sources familiar with his thinking. Maduro then narrowly won an election to become president in 2013 and swiftly demoted Ramirez the following year, first to the Foreign Ministry and then to the United Nations. Since then, a protracted rivalry between the two men has increased, insiders said. Ramirez has in recent months openly criticized Venezuela s economy, which has the world s highest inflation and shortages of basic goods. He wrote an article that was perceived as an attack on Maduro himself, one source said. The Information Ministry did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The government said it had appointed Samuel Moncada, a former foreign minister, as U.N. envoy. Separately, state prosecutor Tarek Saab on Tuesday said Venezuela had ordered the arrests of six oil executives for their alleged role in a 2010 drilling contract with inflated prices. The announcement comes amid a months-long crackdown on alleged graft in the energy industry that has led to the arrest of some 65 former executives, including two prominent officials who used to lead both the oil ministry and PDVSA. Corruption has long plagued Venezuela, home to the world s biggest crude reserves, but the socialist government usually blamed smear campaigns for accusations of widespread graft. Maduro has recently changed his tack, blaming thieves and traitors for the country s crisis. PDVSA has already started an arbitration procedure against PetroSaudi, the company that leased the offshore rig in the 2010 contract, to seek damages for what it says was poor performance. PetroSaudi declined to comment. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's former ambassador to U.N. leaves the United States: source;HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela s former ambassador to the United Nations, Rafael Ramirez, has left the United States after being forced to resign by President Nicolas Maduro s government, according to a source with knowledge of his travel plan. Ramirez, who for more than a decade ran OPEC member Venezuela s massive oil industry, said earlier on Tuesday he was removed because of his opinions. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. envoy not carrying U.S. government message on North Korea visit: U.S. official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Nations envoy Jeffrey Feltman, a former high-level U.S. State Department official, is not carrying any message from the U.S. government while visiting North Korea for talks on behalf of the world body, the State Department said on Tuesday. Feltman is currently the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs. Previously he served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. We re certainly aware of his travels under the auspices of his role with the United Nations to North Korea, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters. He s not traveling on behalf of the U.S. government and he s not traveling -I want to make this clear - with any kind of message from the U.S. government. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Big-money gamblers face new scrutiny at British Columbia casinos;VANCOUVER (Reuters) - High-rolling gamblers will face more stringent anti-money-laundering standards in British Columbia casinos, the Canadian province said on Tuesday, as it unveiled the first set of recommendations from a review of its casino sector. Gamblers wanting to deposit cash or bonds worth C$10,000 or more will now need to provide identification and proof of their source of funds, including details on their bank and the account from which the money is sourced, the province said. Two consecutive large transactions will trigger added scrutiny. Regulators will also be placed onsite to provide the increased vigilance needed to ensure anti-money laundering protocols are followed, it said. An internal government report, commissioned by the previous Liberal government and released in September by the current NDP government, found high-risk cash transactions taking place at a Vancouver-area casino popular with high roller Asian VIP clients. Media reports have noted similar issues at other Vancouver-area casinos, in many cases tying the suspicious funds to the West Coast city s runaway housing market. Our government has made clear the urgency around addressing issues of money-laundering at B.C. casinos, and we will ensure these first two recommendations are not only implemented as soon as possible, but enforced on the ground, British Columbia Attorney General David Eby said in a statement. He later told reporters that some details still need to be worked out and noted the regulator, the Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, will need to hire more staff to fill casino roles, particularly people with Mandarin language skills. The recommendations unveiled on Tuesday are the first from investigator Peter German, a former deputy commissioner with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who will provide his final report to the provincial government by the end of March 2018. Eby said it is possible that the recommendations could impact gaming revenues in the province, but that it was a price the government was willing to pay to ensure that British Columbians have confidence that the proceeds of crime are not flowing through B.C. casinos. The province s commercial gambling revenues, excluding horse racing, topped C$2.9 billion ($2.3 billion) in 2014-15, according to government data. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. consulate in Jerusalem issues security message after reports of Trump move on embassy;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem instructed employees on Tuesday to stay away from the occupied West Bank and parts of Jerusalem after President Donald Trump told Middle East leaders he planned to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to the holy city. The decision breaks with decades of U.S. policy and risks fuelling violence in the Middle East. Palestinian factions in Gaza and the West Bank issued calls on Tuesday for protests against Trump s expected moves on Jerusalem. With widespread calls for demonstrations beginning Dec. 6 in Jerusalem and the West Bank, U.S. government employees and their family members are not permitted until further notice to conduct personal travel in Jerusalem s Old City and in the West Bank, the U.S. consulate said in a security message. United States citizens should avoid areas where crowds have gathered and where there is increased police and/or military presence, the message said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jordan's king warns Trump over moving U.S. embassy to Jerusalem: palace;AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan s King Abdullah told U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday that any move by the United States to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel would have dangerous repercussions for regional stability, a Jordanian palace statement said. Trump said he intended to go ahead with a decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in a phone call to the king, according to the palace. The king was quoted as replying that any such decision would have dangerous repercussions for the stability and security of the region and would obstruct U.S. efforts for a resumption of Arab-Israeli peace talks. It would also inflame Muslim and Christian feelings, he said. U.S. endorsement of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would break with decades of U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. Jordanian officials are worried the move could trigger violence in the Palestinian territories and a spillover into Jordan, a country where many people are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948. King Abdullah warned Trump of the risks of any decision that ran counter to a final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on the creation of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the key to achieving peace and stability in the region and the world, the statement said. The monarch also phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and said they had to both work together to confront the consequences of this decision. King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes of status of the disputed city. The monarch warned of the repercussions of Trump s expected move in talks last week in Washington with top administration officials Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al Safadi said his country planned to convene emergency meetings of the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation next Saturday and Sunday on how to face the dangerous consequences of a U.S. decision. These meetings will coordinate Arab and Islamic stances toward the imminent decision (by Trump) that will increase tensions in the region, Safadi said . Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and says the city s fate should only be decided only at the end of a final settlement. All international resolutions and agreements stipulate that the fate of Jerusalem should be decided in final status negotiation ... And all unilateral steps are considered null and void, Safadi added. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria's Senate to probe police brutality allegations;LAGOS (Reuters) - Lawmakers in the upper house of Nigeria s parliament voted on Tuesday to launch an investigation into alleged acts of brutality by a specialist unit of the police. The move follows a social media campaign calling for the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to be scrapped. The campaign, which has gathered pace in the last few days, involves people sharing stories of alleged maltreatment by the unit s officers. Nigeria s police force has been dogged by allegations of human rights abuses for years. It has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The Senate said lawmakers on a security committee would consider the claims about SARS. The committee has been mandated to look into allegations of human rights abuses raised by the general public, make relevant recommendations, and include it in its final report, the Senate said in a statement posted on its official Twitter feed. The inspector general, who heads the Nigeria Police Force, on Monday announced the immediate re-organization of SARS nationwide. He ordered an investigation into all the allegations, complaints and infractions leveled against the unit. Ibrahim Idris, the police chief, also said the division was responsible for a drastic reduction in armed robberies, kidnappings and cattle rustling nationwide. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Deadline of deadlines' in Brexit divorce talks this week;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Theresa May must deliver her offer on a Brexit divorce package this week if she wants European Union leaders to grant Britain s request for talks on future free trade when they meet next week, EU diplomats and officials said on Tuesday. Failure could mean a delay until February, adding to the risk of businesses scaling back investment plans in Britain as uncertainty clouds the outlook beyond Brexit in March 2019. The deadline of deadlines is this week, one senior EU diplomat said, a day after the prime minister had to leave Brussels empty-handed when her Northern Irish allies denounced an offer on the border with Ireland as she was presenting it. May has found it difficult to come up with a formula that satisfies both EU member Ireland, which wants to avoid creation of a hard border, and Northern Ireland s DUP party which says the British province must quit the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK. A tentative deal on the border, promising regulatory alignment on both sides of the island of Ireland, was agreed on Monday. But it was later rejected by the DUP which says it can not allow any divergence in regulation between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. Brussels officials said they had no reason to doubt the confidence being expressed in London that May would sort out the hitch in the coming days and expect her to return to brief EU Brexit negotiators as early as Wednesday. But, they warn, other member states, including powerhouses Germany and France, are growing nervous that they will not have enough time to scrutinize draft guidelines for the trade negotiations if they do not receive them a week before a summit next Friday at which leaders would approve them. If a proposal doesn t come this week, the EU 27 won t have enough time to prepare new guidelines for the summit, the diplomat said. Some leaders had already grumbled that the deadline missed on Monday was too tight. And if governments refuse to sign off on proposals for what the EU should seek in a post-Brexit free trade deal with London, then May s hopes of being able to show those guidelines at home as a trophy won in exchange for giving in to most of the EU s divorce demands would be thwarted. If the trade offer cannot be made at the Dec. 15 summit, a senior EU official said, the whole process might have to be put back until February - a delay which could increase pressure at home on May and raise a risk of disrupting the existing process. Summit chair Donald Tusk said on Monday he had been planning to distribute his draft negotiating guidelines to member states on Tuesday, had the EU executive s negotiator Michel Barnier given the crucial signal that Britain had made sufficient progress on three key elements of the divorce. Bound by previous EU internal agreements not to share the draft until May has formally committed Britain to covering outstanding EU payments, guaranteeing EU citizens rights and an open border for Northern Ireland, Tusk must now wait until May returns and EU negotiator Michel Barnier has signed off a deal. The guidelines, which are likely to include a commitment to the two-year, status-quo transition period May asked for, will then be scrutinized closely in EU capitals. The other 27 have held a common front on making Britain pay for past commitments, but all have varying interests in a trade deal and so will want time to ensure the guidelines defend their own positions. Leaders advisers, known as sherpas , meet in Brussels in Monday to prepare the summit. The less time they have to digest Tusk s draft negotiating guidelines, the shorter and less detailed those are likely to be, said EU officials who expect a further more detailed set of guidelines to be prepared later. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Countdown to Brexit breakthrough?;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Here is a timeline of the coming few days that will determine whether Britain avoids further costly delays in giving business assurances of a smooth exit from the European Union and of free trade with its biggest market in the future: May wants the EU to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations concerning relations after Britain s withdrawal on March 30, 2019. The EU will only do that if there is sufficient progress in agreeing divorce terms, notably on three key issues: a financial settlement, guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain and a soft border with Ireland. A deal on money is effectively done, EU officials said last week. There are indications of agreement on citizens rights. But opposition from British Prime Minister Theresa May s key allies in Northern Ireland to treating the province differently from the mainland in a bid to maintain an open EU land border with EU-member Ireland scuppered a deal on Monday. As part of the choreography for a political deal, the EU set May an absolute deadline of Monday to provide new offers in time for the other EU leaders to approve a move to Phase 2 at a summit of the EU-27 on Dec. 15. That is now pushed back till the end of the week, EU officials say. May is pushing for a simultaneous, reciprocal guarantee from the EU of a soft transition and future trade deal, which she may use to show Britons what her compromises have secured. The EU wants to have firm British offers which the 27 can discuss before leaders commit. The result is some complex dance steps: Wednesday, Dec. 6? May is expected to return to Brussels as soon as Wednesday. If European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier emerge from the meeting to pronounce that sufficient progress has been made, summit chair Donald Tusk will then distribute draft guidelines for the EU negotiating position in trade talks to the other 27 governments. Monday, Dec. 11 EU-27 sherpas meet to prepare the summit - a key moment for national leaders advisers to seek changes to guidelines. Tuesday, Dec. 12 EU affairs ministers of EU-27 meet to prepare summit. Thursday, Dec. 14 4 p.m. - May attends routine EU summit in Brussels. Defense, social affairs, foreign affairs and migration are on the agenda. Friday, Dec. 15 After May has left, EU-27 leaders hold Brexit summit. If they have had enough time, they could acknowledge sufficient progress and endorse the trade negotiating guidelines, including proposed terms for a two-year, status-quo transition period. January - Outline of EU transition offer, to be included in the 2019 withdrawal treaty may be ready. Under it, Britain is likely to retain most rights except voting in the bloc, and meet all its obligations until the end of 2020. February - After fine-tuning their negotiating position, EU-27 may be ready to open talks with London on a free trade pact that Brussels likens to one it has with Canada. The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving. EU officials say there is now agreement after Britain offered to pay an agreed share of most of the items Brussels wanted, especially for committed spending that will go on after 2020. Both sides say there is no precise figure as much depends on future developments. British newspaper reports that it would cost up to 55 billion euros sparked only muted criticism from May s hardline pro-Brexit allies who once rejected big payments. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that London would be paying the EU 60 billion euros on Brexit. Barnier is still seeking a commitment that the rights of 3 million EU citizens who stay on in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, not just by British judges. May has said the ECJ should play no more role in Britain. But the issue could be vital to ensure ratification of the withdrawal treaty by the European Parliament. EU officials say a compromise may be to let the Luxembourg-based ECJ oversee cases on citizens rights for only a few years after Brexit. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said London agreed on Monday that Northern Ireland, a British province, would remain in regulatory alignment with the EU, and hence the Irish Republic, to ensure there was no hard border with police and customs checks that could disrupt peace. However, a hostile reaction from May s pro-Brexit and pro-London allies in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on whom she depends for her slim parliamentary majority, caused her to hold off agreeing the package deal with Juncker. The DUP and many in May s own party fear that means separating the province from the British mainland - or forcing EU rules onto the whole of the UK. Leaders of mainland regions Scotland, Wales and London leapt on the deal to demand similar freedom to perhaps remain in the EU customs union or single market, giving May a new headache. Varadkar said he is willing to see changes in the text - but not something that would change its actual meaning. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi says most people detained in anti-corruption sweep have settled;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s public prosecutor said on Tuesday most of the people detained in a sweeping anti-corruption campaign launched last month have agreed to settlements to avoid prosecution while the rest could be held for months. In a statement, the public prosecutor said a total of 320 people had been subpoenaed to provide information about alleged graft while 159 remain in detention and a number of them have been referred for judicial action. Saudi security forces have rounded up members of the political and business elite, including princes and tycoons, holding them in Riyadh s opulent Ritz Carlton hotel on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in what was billed as a war on rampant corruption. The purge has caused concern about damage to the economy especially among foreign investors the kingdom is seeking to attract to develop its economy away from oil. But the government has insisted it is respecting due process and that the companies of detained businessmen will continue operating normally. The allegations, which could not be verified, include kickbacks, inflating government contracts, extortion and bribery. A Saudi minister told Reuters on Monday that the main wave of arrests was over and the authorities were preparing to channel an estimated $50-$100 billion of seized funds into economic development projects. The first financial settlements were brokered last week with senior Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, once seen as a leading contender for the throne, being freed after agreeing to pay over $1 billion, officials said. [L8N1NZ07R] The public prosecutor said the anti-corruption committee headed by 32-year-old Prince Mohammed, the king s favored son also known as MbS, was expected to finish the settlement phase within a few weeks. The Committee has followed internationally applied procedures by negotiating with the detainees and offering them a settlement that will facilitate recouping the State s funds and assets, and eliminate the need for a prolonged litigation. Detainees are free to contact whomever they like and to reject any settlement offers, the statement said. Those who sign deals are recommended for pardon and an end to criminal litigation. People who refuse to settle are referred to the public prosecutor for additional investigation and potential prosecution, the statement said. They can be held for up to six months with the possibility of court-ordered extension. MbS said in a New York Times interview last month that about one percent of detainees were able to prove they are clean, four percent wanted to go to court and the rest had agreed to settle. While some individuals have been identified - like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the kingdom s best known businessman - most remain unnamed. A Paris-based French diplomatic source told Reuters at least one of those held at the Ritz is a Franco-Saudi national. We were informed by the family of the arrest of one of our compatriots in Saudi Arabia and we asked for information from the Saudi authorities in view of offering consular protection in line with the Vienna convention, the diplomat said. The public prosecutor also said the bank accounts of 376 people in detention and others related remain frozen, down from over 2,000 a few weeks ago. The arrest of royals and top business elite capped a frenetic period of almost three years of growing power by MbS who also oversees the defense and oil strategy. Critics say the government s campaign amounts to a shakedown and is aimed at shoring up the crown prince s power base as he exerts control over the world s leading oil exporter. The authorities deny those claims. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi king warns Trump against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem: agency;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi King Salman told U.S. President Donald Trump that any decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached will inflame the feelings of Muslims, Saudi state-owned media said on Tuesday. They said that King Salman had received a telephone call from Trump about developments in the region and the world. The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques asserted to His Excellency the U.S. president that any American announcement regarding the situation of Jerusalem prior to reaching a permanent settlement will harm peace talks and increase tensions in the area, state news agency SPA said. It quoted King Salman as saying that Saudi Arabia supported the Palestinian people and their historic rights and asserted that such a dangerous step is likely to inflame the passions of Muslims around the world due to the great status of Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa mosque... ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia designates Radio Free Europe and Voice of America as 'foreign agents';MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia designated Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA) as foreign agents on Tuesday, a move aimed at complicating their work in retaliation for what Moscow says is unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. Russia s broadside is likely to further sour battered U.S.-Russia relations and is part of the fallout from allegations that the Kremlin meddled in the U.S. presidential election last year in Donald Trump s favor, something Moscow denies. U.S. intelligence officials accused the Kremlin of using Russian media it finances to influence U.S. voters, and Russian state broadcaster RT last month reluctantly complied with a U.S. request to register a U.S.-based affiliate as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. The Kremlin called the move an attack on free speech and says the new media law in Russia, which Western critics have called a disproportionate response, is retaliation. Moscow s response was widely trailed. Russian lawmakers rushed through the necessary legislation last month and President Vladimir Putin signed off on it on Nov. 25. Russia s justice ministry said in a statement on its website on Tuesday it had now formally designated U.S. government-sponsored VOA and RFE/RL, along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by RFE/RL, as fulfilling the role of foreign agents . RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said in a video statement his organization was committed to continuing its journalistic work in Russia, but was expecting even more limitations on the work of our company . So far the full nature of these limitations is unknown, said Kent. We will study carefully all communications from the ministry and other Russian official organizations. VOA Director Amanda Bennett told Reuters her organization also thought it was unclear what new curbs it would face. The new designation subjects affected U.S.-backed news outlets to the same requirements that are applied to foreign-funded non-governmental organizations under a 2012 law. Under that law, foreign agents must include in any information they publish or broadcast to Russian audiences a mention of their foreign agent designation. They also must apply for inclusion in a government register, submit regular reports on their sources of funding, on their objectives, on how they spend their money, and who their managers are. They can be subject to spot checks by the authorities to make sure they comply with the rules, according to the 2012 law, which has forced some NGOs to close. One of the seven outlets on the justice ministry list provides news on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, one on Siberia, and one on the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region. Another covers provincial Russia, one is an online TV station, another covers the mostly Muslim region of Tatarstan, and the other is a news portal that fact-checks the statements of Russian officials. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Africa trip, France's Macron breaks 50 percent popularity rating;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron s popularity rose above 50 percent for the first time since he was elected in May with people approving of the way he defends the country s interests abroad, a poll showed on Tuesday. The poll, conducted by Ifop-Fiducial for Paris Match magazine, saw the head of state s popularity jump 6 percent compared to the same survey in November. It comes after Macron undertook a three-day tour to Africa promising a break from the past. During the trip, he was praised for his direct approach with students at a university in Burkina Faso. The French appreciate his way of making contact with people and to speak openly even if he didn t announce anything, said IFOP s deputy chief Frederic Dabi. Seventy-three percent of the 978 people surveyed said Macron defended the country s interests well, a 5 percent rise from November. The jump in popularity also comes at a time when the French right is more fractured than at almost any point in the modern-day Fifth Republic, leaving opposition to Macron negligible. On the negative side, 57 percent of people said they believed that Macron was not in tune with the concerns of the French. The poll, carried out between December 1-2, said that some 42 percent of people saw the far-left Insoumise party as the main opposition to Macron compared to just 22 percent for the conservative The Republicans and 21 percent for the far-right National Front. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Embassy move can be done in 'two minutes': Jerusalem mayor;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel s mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat said on Tuesday that moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the holy city can take two minutes . Senior U.S. officials have said President Donald Trump is likely on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital while delaying relocating the embassy from Tel Aviv for another six months, though he is expected to order his aides to begin planning such a move immediately. The officials said, however, that no final decisions have been made as an outcry grew across the Middle East and among world powers against any unilateral U.S. decision on Jerusalem. Barkat said the United States would only have to convert one of its existing assets in the city, such as its consulate located in West Jerusalem. They just take the symbol of the consulate and switch it to the embassy symbol - two American Marines can do it in two minutes, and give the ambassador David Friedman a space to sit in, Barkat told Israel Radio. The implementation of this decision is immediate and then later slowly start moving the employees in a more structured manner to begin providing services in Jerusalem, Barkat said. The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks in decades of on-and-off Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Israel considers all of the city its indivisible, eternal capital. Jerusalem is home to sites holy to Islam, Judaism and Christianity Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed it, a move not recognized internationally. U.S. endorsement of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would break with decades of U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jordan to convene Arab League, OIC meetings over Trump's Jerusalem moves: foreign minister;AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan plans to convene emergency meetings of the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation next Saturday and Sunday on how to face the dangerous consequences of U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to move Washington s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the foreign minister said. The kingdom is holding consultations with Arab League members in its capacity as president of the Arab summit and also with Turkey which holds the chairmanship of the OIC, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al Safadi told Reuters. These meetings will coordinate Arab and Islamic stances toward the (Trump) decision.. Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Jordanian, Islamic, and Christian issue and any attempts to decide its fate unilaterally are null and void, Safadi said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spain withdraws international arrest warrant for former Catalan leader;MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s Supreme Court on Tuesday withdrew an international arrest warrant for Catalonia s former leader, now in self-imposed exile in Belgium after an illegal independence referendum, in a move to bring his case back solely into Spanish jurisdiction. Carles Puigdemont and four of his cabinet members went to Belgium when Madrid imposed direct rule on the wealthy northeastern region after an Oct. 27 declaration of independence by his local government. The decision to withdraw the warrant leaves Puigdemont without an international legal stage on which to pursue his independence campaign. He is likely to be detained if he returns to Spain, pending investigation on charges of sedition, rebellion, misuse of public funds, disobedience and breach of trust. The battle between Madrid and Catalan secessionists has hurt the Spanish economy and prompted thousands of companies to shift their legal headquarters outside of Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of Spain s economy. On Tuesday, campaigning began for the Dec. 21 Catalan regional election that Madrid called in an attempt to resolve the crisis by installing an administration in favor of Spanish unity. However, pro-independence parties view the election as a proxy vote on a split from Spain. Polls show the two sides neck and neck on a high turnout. A Spanish court issued the international arrest warrant for Puigdemont on Nov. 3. On Monday, a Spanish court declared it would keep Puigdemont s former vice president, Oriol Junqueras, in custody in Madrid while he is investigated for his role in preparing the independence referendum. Removing the international warrant takes Belgium s legal system out of Puigdemont s case. Months of legal wrangling would have ensued if appeals against his extradition were moved through the Belgian courts. Investigating magistrate Pablo Llarena of the Supreme Court said it was important that just one legal entity oversaw proceedings against the former independence leaders to ensure they get equal treatment. The Brussels prosecutor s office said in a statement it had received the Spanish Supreme Court s decision and on Wednesday it would ask the judge to re-examine the extradition process. The judge would set a date for a hearing at which they will have no choice but to declare the affair void, the statement said. Afterwards, Puigdemont would be able to leave Belgium. Puigdemont s lawyer, Paul Bekaert, said legal proceedings in Belgium were now over. Puigdemont would be arrested if he went to Spain, he said. The Spanish court said Puigdemont and his cabinet members had shown a willingness to return from Belgium to Spain to take part in the election. Puigdemont gave a televised address from Belgium at a campaign rally on Monday, telling the central government in Madrid that his party would win the election. I m very sorry I can t be with you now, he said to cheers from members of his pro-independence Junts per Catalunya party, which organized the rally. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sisi cautions Trump against 'complicating' matters in Middle East: Egyptian presidency;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday there was no need to complicate matters in the Middle East after Trump phoned him to talk about his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a Cairo presidential statement said. It said Sisi cautioned Trump against taking measures that would undermine the chances of peace in the Middle East . The Egyptian president affirmed the Egyptian position on preserving the legal status of Jerusalem within the framework of international references and relevant U.N. resolutions, the statement said. U.S. endorsement of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would break with decades of U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Trump names career diplomat to head Cuban embassy - sources; ((This December 4 story has been corrected to change last year to 2015 in sixth paragraph, June to July in 11th paragraph)) By Marc Frank HAVANA (Reuters) - The Trump administration has named career diplomat Philip Goldberg to head the all-but-abandoned U.S. embassy in Havana, according to three sources familiar with the matter, at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba. Goldberg has lengthy experience in a number of countries, and was described by a U.S. congressional aide on Monday as career and the best of the best . But his appointment may ruffle feathers in Havana. He was expelled from Cuba s socialist ally Bolivia in 2008 for what President Evo Morales claimed was fomenting social unrest. The appointment has not been publicly announced. If approved by Cuba, Goldberg will arrive at a low moment in bilateral relations. The embassy was reopened in 2015 for the first time since 1961, as part of a fragile detente by former Democratic U.S. president Barack Obama. But the administration of Republican President Donald Trump has returned to Cold War characterizations of the Cuban government and imposed new restrictions on doing business in Cuba and travel. It has charged Cuba with responsibility for health problems affecting some two dozen diplomats or their family members, which it has termed attacks. Cuba denies the charges. The U.S. embassy has been reduced to a skeleton staff and has suspended almost all visa processing after the Trump administration in October pulled 60 percent of embassy personnel and ordered a similar reduction at the Cuban embassy in Washington, expelling 15 diplomats. The position is not an ambassador role and does not need to be approved by the U.S. Congress. There has been no ambassador since the embassy re-opened, after the Republican-controlled Senate opposed Obama s pick. Instead, Goldberg will take over from Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who left in July, as Charge d Affaires. Goldberg s other previous posts include the chief of mission in Kosovo. Most recently he has been the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines. Appointing Ambassador Goldberg to head the U.S. Embassy in Cuba is rather provocative since he was expelled from Bolivia, American University professor of government William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert, said. But Ambassador Goldberg is a Foreign Service professional and will ably represent the policies of Trump s administration. Time will tell if he has been instructed to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor ... or carry out a more hostile policy, he said. The embassy was closed in 1961 when the United States broke diplomatic relations. The countries maintained lower level interests sections in each other s capitals from 1977 to 2015, under the auspices of Switzerland. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey investigates reports that folk dancers sought asylum;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is investigating reports that 11 Turkish folk dancers applied for asylum after attending a folk dance festival in the Hungarian capital Budapest, state-run news agency Anadolu said. Ankara prosecutors have launched an investigation into the dancers, who received special passports to attend the festival, as only five dancers of a group of 16 returned to Turkey. It was not clear where the remaining dancers may have sought asylum. The Hungarian Immigration Office said they did not submit asylum requests in Hungary, but gave no further details. The folk dance team from Ankara arrived on Nov 1, four days before the event, the private Dogan News Agency said. The team had previously attended an event in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July, and the whole team had returned to Turkey afterwards, according to media reports. It was not immediately clear why the dancers sought refuge. Turkey has jailed more than 50,000 people in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt last year and is seeking thousand of others for alleged ties to the coup. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian long-range bombers hit Islamic State targets in Syria: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Six Russian long-range bombers struck Islamic State targets in Syria s Deir al-Zor province, Russian news agencies quoted Russia s Defence Ministry as saying on Tuesday. The TU-22M3 bombers took off from a base in Russia, flew to Syria and bombed IS targets as well as weapons and ammunitions depots, they said. It was unclear when the bombing run was carried out. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Finland suspects Russian aircraft violated airspace;HELSINKI/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Finland s defense ministry said on Tuesday it suspected a Russian aircraft had violated Finnish airspace over the Baltic Sea earlier in the day. The ministry said a Tupolev TU-154, a Russian passenger and transport plane, had been detected south of Porvoo and that the border guard was investigating the matter. A ministry spokesman declined to say whether Finland had scrambled jets to identify the plane. The Russian defense ministry was not immediately available to comment. Finland, which is preparing to celebrate 100 years of independence on Wednesday, has accused Moscow of several airspace violations since the Ukraine crisis began in 2014. Last year, Estonia and Finland blamed Russia for entering their airspace as Finland was signing a defense pact with the United States. In a separate incident, two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea. Finland was part of the Russian Empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian revolution, then nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two. It is now an EU member state which does not belong to NATO military alliance. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Egypt interior minister Habib al-Adly arrested: security sources;CAIRO (Reuters) - Former Egyptian interior minister Habib al-Adly has been arrested after failing to attend his sentencing in a trial over corruption charges, two security sources said on Tuesday. Adly, who served under ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, was due to attend the final hearing in April and hand himself over to authorities, but did not show up and had been missing since then. A copy of the April verdict obtained by Reuters showed that Adly and two other ministry officials were ordered to refund a total of 1.95 billion Egyptian pounds($109.83 million) and were fined the same amount. Adly, who has denied the charges, is due back before the Court of Cassation, Egypt s top civil court, for an appeal in January. His lawyer could not be reached immediately for comment. Egypt s state news agency MENA earlier reported that Adly had been located, but did not disclose his location or whether he had been arrested. A long-serving official at the head of Egypt s feared internal security apparatus, Adly was acquitted of other graft charges two years ago. He was also cleared in 2014, along with Mubarak and six aides, of charges related to killing protesters during the 2011 uprising which had led to their downfall. ($1 = 17.7550 Egyptian pounds) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bus bomb kills eight in Syria's Homs city: state media;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A bomb blast killed eight people and injured 16 others on a bus in Syria s Homs on Tuesday, state media said, citing the city s health authority. Islamic State claimed the attack, saying the blast killed 11 members of the Syrian army, its official news agency AMAQ said. Many of the passengers were university students, Homs Governor Talal Barazi told state-run Ikhbariya TV. The blast in the government-held city hit the Akrama district, near al-Baath University. Footage showed people crowding around the burned shell of a vehicle in the middle of a street. State television said a bomb that terrorists planted in a passenger bus exploded . Islamic State militants had claimed responsibility for a similar attack in Homs in May, when a car bomb killed four people and injured 32 others. A string of bombings have struck cities under government control in Syria this year, including the capital Damascus. The Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda has also claimed some of the deadly attacks. Security agencies are constantly chasing sleeper cells, the Homs police chief said on Ikhbariya. Today, it could be a sleeper cell or it could be an infiltration. Barazi, the governor, said the state s enemies were trying to target stability as the stage of victory drew near. The city of Homs returned to full government control in May for the first time since the onset of Syria s conflict more than six years ago. With the help of Russian jets and Iran-backed militias, the Damascus government has pushed back rebel factions in western Syria, shoring up its rule over the main urban centers. The army and allied forces then marched eastwards against Islamic State militants this year. The United States has voiced concern about Syrian and Russian attacks. The U.S. State Department on Tuesday strongly condemned attacks this week on eastern Ghouta believed to have been carried out by Syrian and Russian jets. The jets struck crowded residential areas in the besieged rebel enclave near Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 27 people, aid workers and a war monitor said. Deliberate tactics to starve Syrian civilians, including women and children, block humanitarian and medical aid, bomb hospitals, medical personnel and first responders in eastern Ghouta, we consider that to be deeply troubling, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. She urged Russia to live up to its obligations to uphold the de-escalation zone in eastern Ghouta. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey detains 17 people in investigation related to gold trader Zarrab: agency;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police have detained 17 people as part of an investigation related to gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with prosecutors in a U.S. trial, state-run Anadolu news agency said on Tuesday. Police detained three of Zarrab s employees on suspicion of delivering documents from the network of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen to U.S. prosecutors, Anadolu said. Ankara says U.S. prosecutors have based their case on documents fabricated by Gulen s followers, who it also blames for orchestrating last year s failed coup in Turkey. Zarrab, a Turkish and Iranian national, has pleaded guilty to charges that he schemed to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions, and is testifying for U.S. prosecutors against an executive from a Turkish state-owned bank for related charges. The executive has pleaded innocent and the bank has said all of its transactions complied with international regulations. The case has strained ties between the United States and Turkey, both members of the NATO military alliance. It has infuriated President Tayyip Erdogan, who has cast the trial as an attempt to undermine Turkey and its economy. It is right that there is a plot allegation in the trial s indictment, but it is a plot against Turkey, not against the United States, Erdogan told members of his ruling AK Party in parliament. This trial is an international coup attempt, a process at the center of which is FETO, he said, using the Turkish government s term for Gulen s network. Gulen, who has lived in the United States since 1999, has denied charges he was behind the coup, and condemned the military intervention. Police searched the houses of the three employees and found electronic copies of documents, Anadolu said. It said fourteen more people had been detained as part of the investigation. No one was immediately available for comment at Istanbul police headquarters. Last week the Istanbul prosecutor s office decided to seize the assets of Zarrab and those of his acquaintances as part of the investigation, Anadolu reported. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia hopes U.S. will not recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has expressed hope the United States would not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and warned such a decision would have serious implications, state news agency SPA reported on Tuesday. The recognition will have very serious implications and will be provocative to all Muslims feelings, SPA said quoting an unnamed official source at the Saudi Foreign Ministry. The United States administration should take into account the negative implications of such a move and the Kingdom s hope not to take such a decision as this will affect the U.S. ability to continue its attempt of reaching a just solution for the Palestinian cause, the statement added. On Monday, Saudi Arabia s Ambassador in Washington Prince Khalid bin Salman said any U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem before a final settlement is reached in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would hurt the peace process and heighten regional tensions. The kingdom s policy - has been - and remains in support of the Palestinian people, and this has been communicated to the U.S. administration, Prince Khalid said in a statement. U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital but has not yet made a decision, his son-in-law and envoy for Middle East peace Jared Kushner said on Sunday. A senior administration official said last week Trump could make such an announcement on Wednesday. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern portion of it to be the capital of a future state. U.S. policy for decades has been to reserve judgment on both claims until the parties agree Jerusalem s status in a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;London security alert ends as package ruled non-suspicious;LONDON (Reuters) - London police said an item that had prompted a security alert in the financial district of the city on Tuesday morning was non-suspicious, after authorities had closed St Paul s underground station as a precaution. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Afghan suspect arrested in Germany over migrant deaths at sea;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police on Tuesday arrested an Afghan citizen on suspicion of smuggling migrants by sea from Turkey to Greece resulting in the death of several dozen people when the boat sank, federal police and prosecutors said. The man is believed to have been on board the smugglers boat which had 90 migrants on board when it capsized in poor weather in January 2016, federal police and prosecutors in the northwestern city of Osnabrueck said in a joint statement. Only 24 of the people on board were rescued. The Greek coastguard retrieved 35 bodies from the water, while the rest remain missing, they said. Germany, the main destination for migrants in Europe, has been prosecuting individuals suspected of belonging to the smuggling rings that charge thousands of euros for the short sea journey from Turkey to Greece. The suspect arrested in Osnabrueck, who was not named in the statement, was saved and presented himself to Greek authorities as a refugee before seeking asylum in Germany in a month later. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump tells Abbas intends to move embassy to Jerusalem: Abbas spokesman;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump informed Palestinian President Mahmolud Abbas on Tuesday that he intends to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Abbas s spokesman said. The statement did not say whether Trump elaborated on the timing of such a move. President Mahmoud Abbas received a telephone call from U.S. President Donald Trump in which he notified the President (Abbas) of his intention to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said in a statement. The statement did not say whether Trump elaborated on the timing of such a move. President Abbas warned of the dangerous consequences such a decision would have to the peace process and to the peace, security and stability of the region and of the world, Abu Rdainah said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romania's former king Michael dies in Switzerland at age of 96;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s former King Michael died in Switzerland at the age of 96 on Tuesday, the Royal House was quoted by Digi 24 TV as saying on Tuesday. King Michael of Romania withdrew from public life because of illness in 2016. A cousin of Britain s Queen Elizabeth, Michael was forced to abdicate in 1947 after the post-war Communist takeover of Romania and has lived in exile in the West for decades. He underwent surgery for leukaemia and cancer. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia MPs rush to disclose parentage amid citizenship crisis;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Several lawmakers filed family history documents in Australia s parliament to meet a government deadline on Tuesday to try to prove their citizenship and stem a crisis that has so far claimed nine MPs and cost the government its majority. Australia s 116-year-old constitution bans dual citizens from holding national office and the High Court adopted a strict interpretation of it in October in a country where half the population were either born overseas or have a parent who was. The crisis may yet plunge Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition into minority rule, should it lose another lawmaker, or a crucial by-election set for Dec. 19. The ruling center-right pairing lost its one-seat lower-house majority when the High Court found Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to be a New Zealander and therefore ineligible for office. He has since rescinded his New Zealand citizenship and regained his seat in parliament. But another member has since quit his place and now as many as a dozen more now face referral to the court after the deadline to disclose the birthplace of parents and grandparents passed on Tuesday. The disclosures show that nearly every lawmaker has at least one foreign parent or grandparent. While some provide citizenship records dating back to the 19th century, others give few details or documents, prompting calls for the High Court to consider their cases. There are a few grey areas, there s no doubt about that, MP Christopher Pyne said on Perth radio station 6PR, adding that parliament would decide on Thursday which cases to send to the court. One opposition Labor Party member has already told parliament it remains unclear whether he is British, after the Home Office could not find the paperwork to prove he renounced his citizenship a decade ago. Labor argues that seven government lawmakers filed unconvincing or incomplete disclosures, while the government raised doubts over four opposition MPs, and there is a cloud over another independent lawmaker. Although Joyce easily regained his seat at a by-election on Saturday, the crisis still has the government precariously clinging to power and has already dented its ability to pursue its political agenda. If it loses a by-election in Sydney on Dec. 19, or the court ousts another lower-house MP, it would be forced to depend on a handful of independent lawmakers to retain power and pass laws. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Brussels, Tillerson offers EU strong U.S. support;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday said the United States remains committed to Europe, offering a public statement of support for European allies worried about foreign policy under President Donald Trump. The partnership between America and the European Union... is based upon shared values, shared objectives for security and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic and we remain committed to that, Tillerson said before a lunch with 28 EU foreign ministers. Tillerson, in brief statements with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini after which the two took no questions, said his visit showed the strong commitment the U.S. has to the European alliance, the important role that the European alliance plays in our shared security objectives. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Toll in Sanaa fighting rises to 234 killed, 400 wounded: ICRC;GENEVA (Reuters) - The toll in fighting in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in nearly a week has risen to 234 killed and 400 wounded, including 383 severely injured, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday. Robert Mardini, ICRC regional director for the Middle East, also said in a tweet: Our @ICRC_ye teams are now doing all they can to supply hospitals with medicines, surgical materials and fuel. The ICRC said on Monday that there were at least 125 killed and 238 wounded in the clashes. Sanaa was quiet on Tuesday after five days of fighting that culminated in the death of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and U.N. and Red Cross flights have landed at the airport, the United Nations said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU court adviser says Britain was wrong to refuse transgender woman's pension;LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Britain s rejection of a transgender woman s claim for a women s state pension because she was still married to her spouse from before her transition is discriminatory, an EU court adviser said on Tuesday. Advocate General Michal Bobek of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) stated in a non-binding opinion that marriage status does not play a role in accessing state retirement pensions for people who are not transgender. This amounts to direct discrimination on the basis of sex, which is not open to objective justification, a news release of the opinion stated. The opinion was issued for a case where a transgender woman - who was registered as a boy at birth but has lived as a woman since 1991 and had gender reassignment surgery in 1995 - in the UK applied for a state retirement pension when she turned 60 in 2008. According to UK law, a woman born before Apr. 6, 1950 must be 60 to access the state retirement pension, whereas for a man born before Dec. 6 1953 the age is 65. Her application was denied because she didn t apply for a full gender recognition certificate due to the fact that she remained married to a woman and her marriage would have been annulled at the time as same-sex marriage was not legal in Britain. The UK Supreme Court asked the ECJ if the requirement to be unmarried to recognize a change in gender, and thus determine the qualifying age for a state pension, was allowed under EU law. The Advocate General concludes that there is unequal treatment since marital status does not play any role for cisgender persons in order to access a state retirement pension, whereas married transgender persons are subject to the requirement to annul their marriage, the court s press release said. The court tends to follow the advice given by the advocate general in most cases, but it is not bound to do so. The advocate general stressed that this was not a case about same-sex marriage. Member states are not compelled to recognize same-sex marriage, and they can still determine the conditions under which a change of gender will be legally recognized. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. says fighting stops in Sanaa, Saleh funeral expected;GENEVA (Reuters) - Yemen s capital Sanaa was quiet on Tuesday after five days of fighting that culminated in the death of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and U.N. and Red Cross flights have landed at the airport, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Street battles in the capital had stopped despite 25 air strikes overnight, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said. The funeral of Saleh was expected later on Tuesday. He was killed by his erstwhile Houthi allies on Monday, two days after announcing he was switching sides in the war to oppose them. His family s allies have battled the Houthis since last week, a dramatic turn in a conflict that had been largely stalemated for much of the past three years. The United Nations says a food shortage caused by warring parties blocking supplies has created the world s worst humanitarian crisis. Millions of people could die in one of the worst famines of modern times. People are now emerging from their houses after five days being locked down basically as prisoners, McGoldrick told a regular U.N. briefing, speaking by phone from Sanaa. They are now seeking safety, moving their families in case things erupt again and at the same time seeking medical treatment and trying to pacify very terrified kids who have endured five days of relentless shelling, shooting and ground fire and air strikes. The air strikes overnight struck government buildings, palaces and bridges, and people were now bracing themselves in case of more fighting or air strikes, McGoldrick said, describing the situation as very uncertain times . We know the Saudi-led coalition has sent some messages to the people in Sanaa to stay away from Houthi installations for fear of air strikes, so we are trying to wait and see when things become slightly more clear and we can move around more freely. A Saudi-led military coalition has been fighting on behalf of a government based in the south against the Houthis, a Shi ite movement backed by Iran that had teamed up with Saleh and controlled much of the country including the capital. So far about 125 people are known to have died in the latest fighting in the capital with 200 injured, but aid workers are likely to have a better idea of the death toll later on Tuesday, McGoldrick said. McGoldrick had no details of Saleh s funeral later on Tuesday and did not know if it would coincide or clash with an event planned by the Houthis to celebrate his killing. He said there had been a report that there would be a ceremony around the main mosque, and the U.N. mission should avoid the area because of traffic. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran asks Muslims to disrupt Israeli ties in region: TV;ANKARA (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged Muslims on Tuesday to disrupt what he called a plot by unnamed countries in the region to build ties with Israel. He gave no more details on the states. But an Israeli cabinet minister said last month that his government had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia linked to their common concerns over Tehran. Some regional Islamic countries have shamelessly revealed their closeness to the Zionist regime (Israel), Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live by state TV. I am sure that the Muslims around the world will not let this sinister plot bear fruit. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel view Iran as the main threat to the Middle East. Increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together. The Saudis have not publicly responded to the reports and Riyadh maintains that any relations with Israel hinge on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war - territory Palestinians seek for a future state. Regional rivalry between Sunni Muslim monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran has overflowed into conflicts in Syria and Iraq. A Saudi-led military coalition has also been fighting in the Arabian peninsula s poorest country, Yemen, on behalf of a government based in the south against the Houthis, a Shi ite movement backed by Iran. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico presidency hopeful eyes tax cuts to counter Trump reform;MONTERREY (Reuters) - A Mexican presidential hopeful and governor of a wealthy border state said he would cut taxes to compete with lower rates in the United States if President Donald Trump s fiscal reform passes Congress, hinting at a broader potential response in Mexico. Jaime Rodriguez, the governor of Nuevo Leon who is seeking to become the first independent to take the presidency, said he would lower many taxes if successful. We re going to compete, he told Reuters on Monday. If I make it and am able to be president, I would lower taxes, he added, though he declined to give details. Mexico s government has been watching Trump s fiscal plans closely, and some senior officials and lawmakers say the country may have to cut taxes if the United States does. The U.S. Senate approved a bill on Saturday that could see corporation tax slashed to 20 percent from 35 percent, raising questions over whether this could make investment in Mexico, where the corporate tax rate is 30 percent, less attractive. Two years ago, Rodriguez pulled off a surprise win with a social media-led campaign and became the first independent governor of a Mexican state. Nuevo Leon, home to the major industrial hub of Monterrey, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which spurred an influx of investment from companies seeking access to U.S. consumers. That included a $1 billion investment from South Korea s Kia Motors under a 2014 deal, although Rodriguez and others were critical of the incentives the company received. We don t want any more car assembly plants, he said. We won t give incentives like the ones we gave to Kia to any other company, it s excessive. Trump has threatened to withdraw from NAFTA if he cannot rework it in favor of the United States. However, Rodriguez, who in May 2016 predicted that Trump would win the presidency, was adamant that NAFTA would survive. It s not going to collapse, he said. Known in Mexico as El Bronco due to his blunt style, the 59-year-old Rodriguez leads aspiring independents to gather the 866,593 signatures needed by Feb. 19 to get on the ballot for the July 1 election, according to statistics from electoral regulator INE. However, he has reached the threshold of 1 percent of voters in just three states, and the law requires getting that share in 17 states. Polls so far suggest Rodriguez is unlikely to mount a serious challenge for the presidency. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq accused of violating due process for Islamic State suspects;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi federal and Kurdish regional judiciaries are violating the rights of Islamic State suspects with flawed trials, arbitrary detentions under harsh conditions and broad prosecutions, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. As the Sunni Muslim militant group s self-proclaimed caliphate crumbles following defeats in Iraq and Syria, thousands suspected of joining it have been captured, detained, and put on trial. At least 200 have been sentenced and at least 92 executed, an HRW report said. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, at a weekly news conference on Tuesday, denied that Iraq puts Islamic State suspects on trial without evidence but did not address other parts of the HRW report. His government faces the task of exacting justice on Islamic State members while preventing revenge attacks on people associated with the group that could only undermine efforts to create long-term stability. New York-based HRW said that an 80-page report it released early on Tuesday finds serious legal shortcomings that undermine efforts to bring (Islamic State) fighters, members, and affiliates to justice. A spokesman for Iraq s Supreme Judicial Council, which supervises the federal judiciary, declined to comment on the contents of the report ahead of its release. Issues highlighted by the HRW report: - It is too easy to accuse someone of belonging to Islamic State and have them detained. Wanted lists or community accusations without evidence can result in the detention of suspects for months even if wrongly accused. - Detention centers are overcrowded and authorities fail to separate children from adult detainees. Iraqi law states detainees should be brought to a judge within 24 hours of capture but this does not happen. - Detainees are often subject to torture, not granted access to lawyers, and their families are not informed of their whereabouts. Iraqi authorities say they have investigated these allegations but have not released any findings. - The reliance of Iraqi and Kurdish courts on counter terrorism laws to prosecute suspects rather than on laws in the criminal code means crimes are not prioritized by gravity and victims are not included in the process as suspects are not tried for individual acts of murder, rape, torture or slavery. - Proving guilt under counter-terrorism laws is easier as a judge only needs proof that a defendant was a member of Islamic State to find them guilty. This means that anyone from cooks and doctors serving under the group to actual fighters is subject to the same sentences, which range from life in prison to death. This stretches Iraq s resources thin as casting such a wide net means the courts lack the time or manpower to go through all cases, the HRW report says, which prevents victims from getting personal justice. HRW said that when it raised concerns about prosecutors not charging suspects with crimes under the criminal code, Iraqi judicial authorities said there was no need. Genocide and terrorism are the same crime, why would we need a separate charge for genocide? the report quoted one counter-terrorism judge as saying. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Northern Irish DUP says will not accept divergence between North Ireland and rest of UK;LONDON (Reuters) - The Northern Irish party which props up Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday it would not accept any Brexit deal that saw Northern Ireland diverging either economically or politically from the United Kingdom. We will not allow any settlement to be agreed which causes the divergence politically or economically of Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom, Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said. There is now an agreement that the United Kingdom stands together and nothing will happen that will cause the breakup of this great United Kingdom, Dodds said. Brexit minister David Davis said Dodds was right. Davis also said the issue of a frictionless border between the UK and Ireland was best dealt with in the next phase of Brexit talks. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. rights boss urges Mexico not to enshrine army's role;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights boss called on Mexico s Senate on Tuesday not to adopt a proposed law on internal security, saying it would enshrine the role of the military in law enforcement at a time when a stronger police force was needed. Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that more than a decade after the armed forces were deployed in the war on drugs , violence had not abated and extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances continue to be committed by various state and non-state actors . In a statement recognizing Mexico s huge security challenge and violence sown by powerful organized crime groups, Zeid said: Adopting a new legal framework to regulate the operations of the armed forces in internal security is not the answer. The current draft law risks weakening incentives for the civilian authorities to fully assume their law enforcement roles. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's supreme court paves way for same-sex marriage from 2019;VIENNA (Reuters) - Same-sex couples will be allowed to marry in Austria from 2019, the country s supreme court ruled on Tuesday and said a law to the contrary violated the principle of non-discrimination. The move brings Austria into line with many other European nations including Germany, France, Britain and Spain. It also comes at a time when stories of sexual harassment under the #MeToo hashtag have flooded social media, sparking a rethink of attitudes towards sexual discrimination. Today is a truly historic day, said lawyer Helmut Graupner, who represented the two female plaintiffs in court. Austria is the first European country to recognize marriage equality for same-gender couples as a fundamental human right. All the other European states with marriage equality introduced it (just) the political way, he said in a Facebook post. Austria s constitutional court examined a 2009 law that allows registered partnerships for same-sex couples but prevents them from getting married. It acted at the request of two women who were rejected by two lower authorities. The distinction between marriage and registered partnership can no longer be upheld without discriminating against same-sex couples, the court said in a statement. The resulting discriminatory effect is seen in the fact that ... people living in same-sex partnerships have to disclose their sexual orientation even in situations, in which it is not and must not be relevant, and ... are highly likely to be discriminated against, the court said in its ruling. The conservative People s Party (OVP), who s leader Sebastian Kurz is expected to be sworn in as chancellor next month, said it will accept the ruling. The far-right Freedom Party (FPO), Kurz s chosen government coalition partner criticized the ruling. Now there is equal treatment for something that s not equal, said Herbert Kickl, FPO General Secretary, in a statement. A marriage between women and men needs protection as only these partnerships can create children, he said. The OVP and the FPO voted against same-sex marriage in parliament a few months ago. The court decision comes days after French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a plan to curb violence against women and weeks after Scotland apologized to gay men for historical convictions. The Homosexual Initiative Vienna (HOSI) welcomed the court s decision. We are very happy, said HOSI chairman Christian Hoegl. We want to use the opportunity for a renewed call for a fundamental reform of marriage. Same-sex marriage is legal in 25 countries. Australia aims to pass a law to this effect early next month after 62 percent of voters favored marriage equality in a national survey. In Germany, women and men are allowed to wed to a same sex partner since October. The first country to legalize same-sex marriage was the Netherlands in 2001. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spain's Rajoy says he expects next phase of Brexit talks soon;LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he expected Britain and the European Union to progress soon into the next phase of Brexit negotiations, despite Prime Minister Theresa May s problems in getting the political backing at home to move ahead. I am absolutely convinced that, as soon as possible, we will get into the second phase of Brexit negotiations, Rajoy said in a meeting with May in London on Tuesday. May failed to clinch a deal on Monday to open talks on post-Brexit free trade with the EU after a tentative agreement with Dublin to keep the bloc s rules in Northern Ireland angered her allies in Belfast, the Democratic Unionist Party. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish academics to be tried in April over Kurdish letter;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish court on Tuesday adjourned for four months the trial of 10 academics who signed a letter to the Turkish government last year calling for violence against Turkey s Kurds to end. The academics are the first group from 148 who are being prosecuted for signing the open letter. They are accused of insulting the Turkish government and carrying out propaganda for a terrorist group. In total, 1,128 academics from Turkey and abroad, including philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky, signed the January 2016 letter, titled We will not a be party to this crime! It called for an end to violence in Kurdish-majority towns in eastern Turkey, which escalated after the collapse in 2015 of a ceasefire between the Turkish government and the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In the letter, published a few months after the violence erupted, they said the Turkish state was condemning residents in the mainly Kurdish southeastern provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks . It also accused authorities of deploying heavy weapons that should only be used in war. We demand the government to prepare the conditions for negotiations and create a road map that would lead to a lasting peace which includes the demands of the Kurdish political movement, it said. Tuesday s hearing, against six academics from Galatasaray University and four from Istanbul University, was adjourned to April 12 after the court rejected the lawyers submission that the letter was a criticism of the government, not an insult. Criticizing the government is not punishable under Turkey s penal code, while insulting it is. It is obvious, from a legal standpoint, that there is no crime here, but, politically, (the authorities) want to turn it into something else, a defense lawyer for three academics from Istanbul University told Reuters. The PKK took up arms in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have died in the conflict since then. The group is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The academics published their letter six months before last year s failed military coup. Since then, thousands of academics have been fired for alleged links to terrorist organizations. Some academics say Turkey s progress in academia in recent years is now in jeopardy. Rights groups accuse President Tayyip Erdogan of using a state of emergency declared after the coup to quash political dissent. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police raid flats in hunt for G20 rioters;BERLIN (Reuters) - Police raided apartments across Germany on Tuesday, hunting for evidence on anti-capitalist protesters who clashed with officers during July s Group of 20 leaders summit in Hamburg. Officers searched 23 properties believed to be used by Black Bloc anti-capitalist group in eight German states, the Hamburg force said. They seized 26 computers and 36 mobile phones, but made no arrests. Around 200 police officers were hurt in July in scuffles with the left-wing group, named after its members black hoods and masks. Police described how 150-200 people separated themselves off from peaceful marches, donned scarves, masks and dark glasses, then grabbed stones from the pavement and projectiles from building sites to hurl at police. We are talking about a violent mob, acting together ... Whoever participates in this is, in our view, making themselves culpable, Jan Hieber, head of the police Special Commission, told reporters. The militant action was not accidental. There must have been a degree of planning and agreement, he said. Police said nearly 600 officers raided properties in states from Hamburg and Berlin to western North Rhine-Westphalia and southern Baden-Wuerttemberg. They also carried out searches in the southern city of Stuttgart and Goettingen in northern Germany - home to well-known centers of left-wing activism. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab League says U.S. should not take measures that alter Jerusalem status: MENA;CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Tuesday that the United States should not take any measures that would alter Jerusalem s legal and political status, Egypt s state news agency MENA reported. He said the possible move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital reportedly being considered by President Donald Trump would be a dangerous measure that would have repercussions across the region. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump speaking by phone with Israel's Netanyahu, Jordan king, Abbas: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump was speaking on Tuesday with a number of Middle East leaders, the White House said, in advance of his expected announcement about the U.S. embassy in Israel. Trump had spoken to or planned to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan s King Abdullah, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. The president has calls scheduled this morning with Prime Minister Netanyahu, King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian Authority President Abbas. We will have a readout on these calls later today, Sanders said. Trump was expected to announce as soon as Wednesday that he will again delay moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but stress that he will wants to do so, a senior administration official said. The official said Trump was also likely to say that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq opposed to U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq is opposed to the United States recognising Jerusalem as Israel s capital and moving its embassy there, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday, warning that such a decision would negatively affect Middle East stability. U.S. President Donald Trump told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday that he intends to shift the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, breaking with decades of U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians. The Iraqi government received this news with the utmost worry and warns about this decision s ramifications on the stability of the region and the world, the Iraqi cabinet said in a statement. Abadi and his government joined a mounting chorus of voices saying Trump s move would unleash turmoil. A senior U.S. official told Reuters last week that Trump was also likely to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The European Union, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Arab League all warned that any such declaration would have repercussions across the Middle East. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri rescinds resignation, drawing line under crisis;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri rescinded his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under a month-long crisis triggered when he announced from Riyadh that he was stepping down and remained outside Lebanon for weeks. His coalition government, which includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, reaffirmed a state policy of staying out of conflicts in Arab states. Hariri s Saudi allies accuse Hezbollah of waging war across the Middle East as agents of Iran. Hariri s shock resignation had thrust Lebanon to the forefront of the regional quarrel between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has been played out on battlefields in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Lebanese officials said Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time Saudi ally, into resigning and put him under effective house arrest until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Hariri have denied this. President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, refused to accept his resignation while he remained abroad. Saudi concern over the influence wielded by Shi ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah in other Arab states had been widely seen as the root cause of the crisis, which raised fears for Lebanon s economic and political stability. The Lebanese policy of dissociation was declared in 2012 to keep the deeply divided state out of regional conflicts such as the civil war in neighbouring Syria. Despite the policy, Hezbollah is heavily involved there, sending thousands of fighters to help President Bashar al-Assad. In its first meeting since Hariri s resignation, the cabinet on Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to the policy. All (the government s) political components decide to dissociate themselves from all conflicts, disputes, wars or the internal affairs of brother Arab countries, in order to preserve Lebanon s economic and political relations, Hariri said. Lebanon, where Sunni Muslim, Shi ite, Christian and Druze groups fought a civil war from 1975-1990, has a governing system designed to share power among sectarian groups. Hariri, a wealthy Sunni businessman with long ties to the kingdom, had denounced Iran during his resignation speech and said he was outside Lebanon because he feared for his family s safety. His father, an ex-prime minister, was assassinated in 2005. In a speech during the cabinet session, Hariri warned that the tensions in the region could easily drag Lebanon down a dangerous route, and the issues which had led to the crisis could not be ignored. Developments in the region suggest a new wave of conflict ... Perhaps the conflict is nearing the end, and Lebanon cannot be plunged into chaos on the finish line. If we are rejecting interference by any state in Lebanese affairs, it cannot be that we accept that any Lebanese side interferes in the affairs of Arab states, Hariri said, an apparent reference to Hezbollah. We have to address this issue, and take a decision announcing our disassociation, in words and deeds, he said. Hariri s resignation was accompanied by a sharp escalation in Saudi statements targeting the Lebanese state, with Riyadh at one point accusing the Beirut government of declaring war against it. Western governments, including the United States, stressed their support for Hariri and Lebanon. Hariri will be in Paris on Friday for a meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group, a body that includes the five members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The meeting, to be opened by French President Emmanuel Macron, aims in part to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran to desist from interference in Lebanon, diplomats said. (This version of the story re-inserts the word not in paragraph 13) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spain makes largest cocaine bust in 18 years;MADRID (Reuters) - Spain has made its largest cocaine bust in 18 years, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday, after more than 5,800 kg of the drug were discovered on a container ship traveling from Medellin in Colombia. The ship, stopped in the southern port of Algeciras, was carrying bananas from Colombia to El Prat de Llobregat, the location of the international airport in Catalonia, the ministry said. Three people had been arrested in relation to the haul, including the Spanish head of the import company using the container, and more arrests have not been ruled out with at least two more under investigation, it said. The cocaine, which was discovered Nov. 28 and had a street value of some 210 million euros ($250 million), was divided into 1 kg blocks and marked to identify its eventual distribution to a number of destinations and organizations, the ministry said. ($1 = 0.8430 euros) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar says working to ensure returns of Rohingya refugees;GENEVA (Reuters) - Myanmar told the United Nations on Tuesday that it was finalizing terms for a joint working group with Bangladesh that will launch the process of safe and voluntary return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees within about two months. Htin Lynn, Myanmar s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told a special session of the Human Rights Council that his government was ready to work with all international partners to ensure the voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable repatriation and resettlement of the displaced - whom he did not refer to as Rohingya. There will be no camps, he added. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia, citing concerns over China, cracks down on foreign political influence;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia, concerned about rising Chinese influence, will ban foreign political donations as part of a crackdown aimed at preventing external interference in domestic politics, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Tuesday. Turnbull told reporters in Canberra that foreign powers were making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process in Australia and the world. He cited disturbing reports about Chinese influence . Australia and neighbouring New Zealand are among roughly a third of countries worldwide that allow foreign donations to political parties. Such donations are prohibited in the United States, Britain and several European countries. Australia s new laws, modelled in part on the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, would criminalise foreign interference and require the registration of lobbyists working for nation states, Turnbull said. The announcement came as concern grows that Beijing may be extending its influence and as relationships between Australian politicians and Chinese government interests have become increasingly contentious. Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in June on a concerted campaign by China to infiltrate Australian politics to promote Chinese interests. China denies the claims. In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had no intention of interfering with Australia s internal affairs or using political funding to influence them. At the same time, we want to again urge Australia to remove their biases and take an objective and positive attitude to assess China and its relations with Australia, he added. However, leading opposition Senator Sam Dastyari quit some senior Labor Party positions last week after a tape surfaced of him appearing to endorse China s contentious expansion in disputed areas of the South China Sea, against his party s platform. The tape, which showed him standing next to property developer Huang Xiangmo, a major Chinese political donor, was leaked to the media. I take those reports, as do my colleagues, very seriously, Turnbull said. However, the new laws are not about any one country , he said. Foreign interference is a global issue ... for example, we re all familiar with very credible reports that Russia sought to actively undermine the United States election ... the threat is real, Turnbull said. The new laws, should they pass parliament, would ban foreign donations to political parties or any political group that has spent more than A$100,000 ($76,350) campaigning in the past four years - a rule that could also likely affect environmental and other campaign groups. Australia expressed deep concern last month over a crackdown on pro-democracy groups in Cambodia. Despite that, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said foreign donations to activist group GetUp!, a non-partisan but vocal critic of the centre-right government, would be banned under Australia s new laws. GetUp! said in a statement only 0.5 percent of its donations come from overseas. It criticised the proposed laws as an attempt to avoid scrutiny of government policies and for failing to curtail donations from multinational corporations. The definitions of treason and espionage would also be broadened under the new laws to include possessing or receiving sensitive information, rather than just transmitting it. Since the controversial sale of the port of Darwin to a Chinese company in 2015, the government has been at pains to demonstrate limits to its ties to China, its biggest export partner, blocking sales of Australia s biggest cattle station and biggest power grid to Chinese interests. ($1 = 1.3098 Australian dollars) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Abbas asks Pope, world powers, to intervene against U.S. Embassy move: spokesman;RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday urged the Pope and the leaders of Russia, France and Jordan to intervene against Trump s declared intention to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Abbas s spokesman said. President Abbas spoke after his call with President Trump with the presidents of Russia and France, with the Pope and with King Abdullah of Jordan. He told them such a move was rejected and he urged them to intervene to prevent it from happening, Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters. He said Abbas was not informed about the timing of the planned transfer of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin tells Palestinians' Abbas he supports talks on Jerusalem - Kremlin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to tell him Moscow backs a resumption of talks between Israel and Palestinian authorities, including on the status of Jerusalem, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. No other details on the issue were provided. Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump told Abbas that he intends to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem amid a growing outcry across the Middle East against any unilateral U.S. decision on the ancient city. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain says 'conceivable' Manchester attack might have been stopped;LONDON (Reuters) - A suicide attack at a pop concert in Manchester that killed 22 people in May might have been prevented if the security services had responded differently to intelligence in the months before the attack, a government report has found. Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old Briton born to Libyan parents, blew himself up at the end of a show by U.S. singer Ariana Grande in the deadliest militant attack in Britain for 12 years. His victims included seven children. A government-commissioned report by David Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, found security services were passed two pieces of information on the bomber earlier this year. The report said security services did not consider the intelligence terror-related at the time, but now says it was highly relevant . It is conceivable that the Manchester attack in particular might have been averted had the cards fallen differently, the report said. The finding follows a review of the roles of the security services in four attacks in London and Manchester between March and June this year that left 36 innocent people dead. Three of the six attackers were known to the security services, but only person was under active investigation, the report said. Overall, it said Britain s security services had performed well amid a growing threat from Islamist militants. It is not the purpose of the internal reviews, or of this report, to cast or apportion blame. But though investigative actions were for the most part sound, many learning points have emerged, the report said. Britain has thwarted nine plots in the last 12 months, Prime Minister Theresa May s spokesman said on Tuesday. Interior minister Amber Rudd told parliament the intelligence services and counter-terrorism police are currently carrying out over 500 live investigations, up a third since the beginning of the year and are investigating over 3,000 people. The review found that Abedi was one of a small group of former suspects of interest whom Britain s security services were considering investigating further. A meeting was due to be held to discuss the potential threat on May 31 - nine days after the attack on the Manchester Arena. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump speaks with Palestinian leader Abbas - source;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday amid reports the United States is planning to formally recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a source familiar with the call told Reuters. A senior administration official said last week that Trump would likely make the announcement on Wednesday, a decision that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said the president had not yet made a final decision. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. rights forum condemns crimes against Rohingya, seeks access, justice;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday condemned the very likely commission of crimes against humanity against Rohingya in Myanmar and called on the government to ensure justice for victims and access for U.N. investigators and aid workers. The 47 member forum adopted a resolution brought by Bangladesh, which is sheltering 626,000 Muslim Rohingyas who fled violence that erupted in northern Rakhine state in August. The vote was 33 in favor, three against including China, with nine abstentions, and two delegations absent. Myanmar s ambassador Htin Lynn told the Geneva forum that his government disassociated itself from the resolution. Politicisation and partiality seem to be taking root in our work...Any effort by the international community should not be fanning the flames on the ground, he said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazilian prosecutor accuses ex-minister, congressman of money laundering: media;SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil s prosecutor general officially presented money laundering and criminal association charges against six people, including a former federal minister and a congressman, Brazilian media reported on Monday evening. According to newspapers Estad o and O Globo, the prosecutor general sent the formal accusations to Brazil s Supreme Court, which will now decide on further actions. The prosecutor officially accused Geddel Vieira Lima, the papers said, who was in charge of President Michel Temer s relations with Congress until November 2016. The charges related to a previously disclosed corruption probe, in which his fingerprints were found in bags hiding more than 51 million reais ($15.7 million) in cash. The prosecutor also accused Geddel s brother and a federal congressman, L cio Vieira Lima, their mother, Marluce Vieira Lima, a former advisor to L cio, Job Ribeiro, the ex-director of the civil defense force for the city of Salvador, Gustavo Ferraz, and a partner at construction company Cosbat, Luiz Fernando Costa Filho, O Globo reported. Among the possible sources of the 51 million reais of cash, the prosecutor said according to the paper, were bribes from embattled construction firm Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] and kickbacks related to President Temer s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMBD). The prosecutor general s office, a lawyer for Vieira Lima and representatives of Odebrecht did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside normal business hours. Lawyers for the other defendants could not immediately be reached for comment. Brazil has been wracked by corruption cases that have reached all levels of business and government in recent years, shattering the public s faith in the political class. Just weeks ago, police arrested the head of the Rio state assembly and two other state assemblymen on corruption charges, all of whom were also members of Temer s PMDB. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. rights team warns Mexico of 'crisis' in journalists' safety;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Monday the Mexican government is struggling to keep journalists safe and prosecute their oppressors, after officials toured regions of the country that are among the most dangerous in the world for reporters. Mexican federal prosecutors have yet to secure any convictions for crimes against reporters due to ineffective probes and scant resources, said the U.N. s special rapporteur for freedom of expression, David Kaye, and his counterpart from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Edison Lanza. They released a preliminary report describing a profound crisis of safety after a week-long tour of Mexico City and the violent states of Veracruz, Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, and plan to release detailed recommendations in the spring. Past prosecutors didn t have the same political will to actually get the job done, said Kaye, expressing cautious hope that current prosecutors will do more to address the problem. There s a bit more attention to getting this done right. I hope what we heard wasn t just words because we are here, he added after the two met with 250 reporters on their trip. A news photographer in the state of San Luis Potosi last October was the 11th journalist murdered so far this year, according to advocacy group Article 19, equaling the death toll in 2016, which was the bloodiest year for journalists on record in Mexico. Murders are on track to reach a record high this year, as Mexico continues grappling with turf wars between violent drug gangs that have convulsed the country for more than a decade. In the past 17 years, 111 journalists have been killed in Mexico, 38 of them under the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto. Kaye said the prosecutor s office tasked with investigating attacks on reporters, formed in 2006, needs to deter such crimes by committing substantial resources to solving a single high-profile case, or a handful of them. Until that happens, there will be very little prevention, and very little ending of this cycle of violence, Kaye said. He and Lanza also said Mexico s government must devote more funding and staff to a journalist protection program launched in 2012, taking measures such as daily monitoring of the situation in states where reporters are most at risk, and helping them to continue to work if they are forced to leave their homes. It has an amount of money that s absurdly insufficient for the emergency that it s facing, Lanza said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Leftist leader backs Guillier in Chile's run-off presidential election;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - The leader of an influential leftist bloc in Chile endorsed center-left presidential hopeful Alejandro Guillier on Monday over conservative Sebastian Pinera in next week s run-off election. Beatriz Sanchez, the flagbearer for the hard-left Frente Amplio coalition, said Pinera s suggestion that ballots had been tampered with in the first-round election had changed her mind about staying quiet on whom she would vote for in the run-off. That crosses the line and that s why today I ve decided...to vote against Sebastian Pinera, Sanchez told journalists. My vote will be for Alejandro Guillier. Winning over Sanchez voters has been seen as essential for a Guillier triumph over Pinera in the second-round vote. As Frente Amplio s presidential candidate, Sanchez secured twice as many votes as expected by opinion polls and came two points short of moving onto the run-off election with Pinera. But it was unclear if Sanchez somewhat reluctant endorsement of Guillier would be enough to get her supporters excited about heading to polls Dec. 17. Last week, Frente Amplio refrained from endorsing Guillier and demanded he clarify his proposals. Pinera, a former president who governed Chile between 2010 and 2014, had been expected to easily win this year s election before his disappointing performance in the Nov. 19 first-round vote. On Monday, Pinera said on a local radio program that some voters had reported that ballots were pre-marked in favor of his rivals in the first-round election and that he would have more supporters supervising voting stations in the run-off vote. Chile s electoral authority said it had received no complaints of irregularities and Pinera s remarks were widely criticized. Let s be responsible and not discredit our democratic institutions, outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet said on Twitter. Pinera said in an impromptu news conference later on Monday that he did not mean to cast doubt over election results but reiterated that he believed ballots had been tampered with. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan wants missiles with enough range to strike North Korea: sources;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is preparing to acquire precision air-launched missiles that for the first time would give it the capability to strike North Korean missile sites, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. Japan plans to put money aside in its next defense budget starting April to study whether its F-15 fighters could launch longer-range missiles including Lockheed Martin Corp s extended-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM-ER), which can hit targets 1,000 km (620 miles) away, said one the sources with knowledge of the plan. There is a global trend for using longer range missiles and it is only natural that Japan would want to consider them, he said. The sources asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to talk to media. Japan is also interested in buying the 500 km-range Joint Strike Missile designed by Norway s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to be carried by the F-35 stealth fighter, Fuji Television reported earlier. Neither of those two items are included in a 5.26 trillion yen ($46.76 billion) budget request already submitted by Japan s Ministry of Defence, however additional funds would be made available to evaluate the purchase of these missiles, the sources said. The change suggests that the growing threat posed by North Korean ballistic missiles has given proponents of a strike capability the upper hand in military planning. Restrictions on strike weapons imposed by its war-renouncing constitution means Japan s missile force is composed of anti-aircraft and anti-ship munitions with ranges of less than 300 kms (186 miles). Any decision to buy longer range weapons capable of striking North Korea or even the Chinese mainland would therefore be controversial, but proponents argue that the strike weapons can play a defensive role. We are not currently looking at funding for this, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said on Tuesday at a regular press briefing. We rely on the United States to strike enemy bases and are not looking at making any changes to how we share our roles, he added. Before he took up his post in August, Onodera led a group of ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers that recommended Japan acquire strike weapons to deter Pyongyang from launching any attack on Japan. North Korea has since fired ballistic missiles over Japan and last week tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile that climbed to an altitude of more than 4,000 km before splashing into the Sea of Japan within Japan s exclusive economic zone. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Labour says May should consider keeping UK in EU customs union and single market;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s opposition Labour Party called on Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday to put post-Brexit membership of the single market and the customs union under discussion in talks with the European Union. What an embarrassment - the last 24 hours have given a new meaning to the phrase coalition of chaos, Labour s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer told parliament after a tentative deal with Brussels was dashed at the last minute on Monday. Will the Prime Minister now rethink her reckless red lines and put options such as a customs union and single market back on the table for negotiation? Starmer asked. Speaking of Northern Ireland, Brexit Minister David Davis said any suggestion that the British government would leave only one part of the United Kingdom in the customs union was wrong. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macau suspends pro-democracy lawmaker as critics protest;HONG KONG (Reuters) - Macau has suspended a pro-democracy lawmaker for alleged disobedience after he took to the street instead of staying on a sidewalk during a protest, as activists warn suppression of civil rights is growing in the China-ruled gambling hub. The suspension of the lawmaker is the first since 1999, when the former Portuguese colony returned to China within a one country, two systems framework that allows a free press and an independent judiciary, liberties denied on the mainland. It s a dark day for Macau, said Jose Coutinho, one of four legislators who voted against the suspension in Monday s secret ballot, which drew 28 votes in favor. I am sad and disillusioned with this outcome. There were numerous illegalities in the ballot and the lawmaker, 26-year-old Sulu Sou, should have been given an opportunity to defend himself, Coutinho added. Sou is awaiting trial over a protest in 2016 against a perceived conflict of interest in the transfer of 100 million yuan ($15 million) from the charitable government-linked Macau Foundation to a Chinese university on whose board its chief executive, Fernando Chui, sits. No date has been set for Sou s trial, but the assembly vote strips him of his duties, and he can only return if he is found not guilty or gets a jail term shorter than 30 days. Many in Macau fear the decision signals authorities intend to follow a path similar to that of former British colony Hong Kong, which has jailed several pro-democracy activists, including a lawmaker, Nathan Law, in the past year. This may be the beginning of the death sentence to Macau s rule of law, and it will end up having an impact in the casino industry, said Jorge Menezes, a lawyer who has lived in Macau since 1997. Sou was stripped of his rights to participate in the debate and vote in a clear violation of the assembly s rules, said Menezes, adding that such violations could apply elsewhere in Macau, including the casino industry. Macau is the world s biggest gambling hub, home to U.S. companies Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM Resorts as well as Melco Resorts, Galaxy Entertainment and SJM Holdings. The casinos have all reaped billions of dollars in the only place where Chinese citizens are allowed to gamble but will be at the mercy of authorities when their licenses start to expire in 2020. Sou, who has challenged the government on several issues since becoming a lawmaker in September, vowed to fight on. We stick together for the very same goal that put us on this course to fight for justice, grassroots supporter the New Macau Association, which has stood by him, said on social media site Facebook. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New Zealand foreign minister praises China ties, damps fears of protectionism;WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand will develop a close relationship with China, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Tuesday, putting to rest fears that his protectionist campaign rhetoric would fuel tension with a key trading partner. The 40-year political veteran played a decisive role in bringing the centre-left Labour Party to power in October after an inconclusive election left his nationalist New Zealand First party holding the balance of power. But many in China see New Zealand as a model for the Asian giant s relationship with Western countries, with President Xi Jinping last year calling the depth of the bond unprecedented . Our record of trade and economic firsts is dramatic, Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, told academics and diplomats in Wellington, setting out his stance on China for the first time since taking office. New Zealand will continue to seek closer cooperation with China as both countries focus on sustainable economic development and the wellbeing of our peoples, Peters said, giving a complimentary account of 45 years of diplomatic ties. Peters had campaigned on a protectionist platform, vowing to slash immigration and curb foreign investment, which fueled concern he could anger the Asian giant, the country s top destination for goods exports. On the previous National government s watch, New Zealand became the first developed country to join the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and helped usher in other Western countries, according to treasury officials. Trade between the two countries has grown to more than NZ$24 billion ($16.54 billion) a year and New Zealand was the first Western nation to formally sign up to China s sweeping Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative in March. The two are in the midst of negotiations to upgrade their 2008 free trade pact, which Peters said would serve as a demonstration to our shared commitment to trade liberalization . He also defended China s human rights record, which has at times drawn fire from rights groups. When you have hundreds of millions of people to be re-employed and relocated with the change of your economic structure you have some massive, huge problems, Peters said. Sometimes commentators in the West should have a little more regard to that, and the economic outcome for those people, rather than constantly harping on about the romance of freedom. China s crackdown on activists and lawyers in its campaign to stifle dissent was alarming , New York-based Human Rights Watch said in September. ($1=1.4512 New Zealand dollars) ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Northern Irish DUP says it told UK it could not accept Brexit deal text;LONDON (Reuters) - The Northern Irish party that props up Prime Minister Theresa May said it only got the text of the draft Brexit deal late on Monday morning and that the party told the British government that the terms were unacceptable. Despite several briefings over the course of the last few weeks, we only received written texts late yesterday morning, Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said. We understand this was due in part to delays caused by the Irish government and the EU negotiating team, Dodds told reporters. Upon immediate receipt of that text we indicated to senior government representatives that it was clearly unacceptable in its current form. Dodds said the party would work for as long as needed to get the Brexit deal right. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy police arrest woman mafia boss, 24 others in Palermo dragnet;PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) - Police in the Sicilian capital of Palermo scooped up 25 suspected mobsters on an array of charges on Tuesday, including a woman accused of filling in as boss for her imprisoned husband. More than 200 police, two helicopters and five canine units took part in the early morning roundup of the suspects. They are accused of extortion, handling stolen goods, vandalism and being mafia members, according to the arrest warrant seen by Reuters. With extensive use of wiretaps and ambient recordings, police reconstructed territorial divisions in the city and the internal power struggle that made Maria Angela Di Trapani, 49, a powerful figure inside one of the city s historic clans. Her husband, Salvatore Salvino eyes of ice Madonia, who is in jail for murder. Police said she carried messages from her husband to clan members and organized monthly payments to the families of imprisoned mobsters. She also designated who should be running the mob family s business, or who should be acting boss , on behalf of her husband. In one wiretap, an accused clan member refers to her as the mistress of the house , and the police statement on the arrests said she was the real boss of the Resuttana neighborhood. For all intents and purposes, she acts like a real man, a turncoat told investigators, according to the court documents. The Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra, has been hurt by a series of arrests in recent years, weakening the crime network, especially compared to the Calabrian Ndrangheta. With many bosses in jail, their wives have begun to play larger roles. While Cosa Nostra has been much weakened by the result of judicial investigations, this case shows the continuing ability to use violence, intimidation, and the mafia code to force business and shop owners to pay extortion, the warrant reads. During the two-year investigation, police documented 33 separate crimes and 22 attempts, many successful, to extort shops and businesses, police said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi has completed main wave of arrests in anti-graft purge, minister says;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has completed the main wave of arrests in its sweeping crackdown on corruption and is preparing to channel billions of dollars of seized funds into economic development projects, a Saudi minister said on Monday. As far as I know, this is the case, Minister of Commerce and Investment Majid bin Abdullah al-Qasabi told Reuters when asked whether authorities had finished taking large numbers of top officials and businessmen into custody. Now the government will not keep its mouth shut when it sees a corrupt case. So definitely it will act. But this is in terms of its magnitude, in terms of scale, in terms of how, in terms of why, in terms of now, that s it, he said. Dozens of princes, officials and businessmen were detained last month, about 200 people questioned, and over 2,000 bank accounts frozen in the purge, which has strengthened the authority of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Some suspects will go to court but authorities are seeking to reach financial settlements with most and said last week that the first deals had been done. Senior prince Miteb bin Abdullah, once seen as a leading contender for the throne, was freed after agreeing to pay over $1 billion, officials said. A special Ministry of Finance account has been opened to receive such funds, which the public prosecutor s office has estimated should eventually total between $50 billion and $100 billion, Qasabi said during a visit to Washington to meet U.S. businessmen. This money definitely will be used for housing, for the general public needs, because it is the money for the people. It will not be used for any other issue but for development projects. The public prosecutor is expected in a few days to issue a statement on the status of the investigation, including how many people are detained and how many face legal charges, Qasabi added. Riyadh is seeking huge amounts of U.S. and foreign investment to reduce its dependence on oil exports. Qasabi conceded that U.S. businessmen were somewhat concerned by the potential impact of the crackdown on corruption. They re worried about if this is ... will be, the end of it or where it will stop, he said. But they all think this will be good for the country, because the country s leadership stood visibly to fight corruption, and ultimately this will be a level playing field for everybody. The economic reforms include a privatization program that is to raise some $300 billion. In the past 18 months, there has been little concrete progress as deals have been slowed by red tape, legal uncertainties and high asking prices for assets, foreign businessmen say. Qasabi said the program was on track and the government, having identified sectors to be privatised, was working on the complex mechanics of asset transfers that would take place by mid-2019. Sea ports will be a major area of activity, he said. Privatization of grain mills under the Saudi Grains Organisation is in its final phase and could be completed by mid-2018, Qasabi added. The economy has been hit hard in the past couple of years by low oil prices and government austerity measures. Authorities have promised stimulus steps and Qasabi noted they had this year increased the capital of the Saudi Industrial Development Fund, which makes soft loans to businesses. More stimulus measures are likely to be announced with the 2018 state budget, expected to be released in late December, or before then, he added. Financial incentives offered by the government could total 70 billion riyals ($18.7 billion). Qasabi chairs a program that encourages strategic Saudi companies to expand globally in sectors such as food, logistics, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. The government will allocate money to help them grow by acquiring other firms locally, he said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. focus on internal issues will change world order: Germany;BERLIN (Reuters) - Less involvement by the United States in international affairs under President Donald Trump will have an impact on Germany and its European neighbors, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Tuesday, warning of a shifting world order. The withdrawal of the United States under Donald Trump from its reliable role as a guarantor of western-led multilateralism accelerates a change of the world order with immediate consequences for German and European interests, Gabriel said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte orders police to provide active support in drug war;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the police to actively support the drugs enforcement agency in his war on drugs, his spokesman said on Tuesday. The drugs enforcement agency, known as PDEA, will remain the lead agency in the war on drugs, but the spokesman, Harry Roque, said the police along with other agencies shall resume to provide active support to PDEA, citing a memorandum signed by Duterte. Duterte suspended the police s anti-narcotics operations in January, after questions were raised about police conduct. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top al-Qaeda leader killed in eastern Afghanistan;KABUL (Reuters) - A top leader of militant group al-Qaeda was killed along with 80 people in a joint military operation by Afghan army, intelligence and NATO-led forces, the South Asian nation s intelligence service said on Tuesday. Omar Khetab, also known as Omar Mansoor, was the most senior member of his branch of the group killed in Afghanistan, the National Directorate of Security said in a statement. Security forces also arrested 27 individuals in the operation in the eastern Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Paktia and Zabul, the agency said, without giving further details. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab League says death of Saleh risks 'explosion' in Yemen: MENA;CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League on Tuesday condemned the killing of Yemeni ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh saying his death threatened to cause an explosion in the Gulf country s security situation, Egypt s MENA state news agency reported. The Arab League s general secretariat also condemned the Houthi movement which killed Saleh as a terrorist organization , demanding that the international community view it as such. All means must be used to rid the Yemeni people of this nightmare, it said, referring to the Houthis. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Stopping militancy spread in ASEAN a priority for Singapore: minister;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Southeast Asian countries must step up their fight against religious militancy taking root in their region, including in Myanmar s troubled Rakhine State, Singapore s foreign minister said on Tuesday. The minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, said the weakening of Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East and the recent occupation of the Philippine town of Marawi by IS-supporting gunmen had renewed concern that the region could become a magnet for militants. We saw some returning fighters to Marawi in the southern Philippines and there are other potential hotbeds for terrorists in our region, Balakrishnan said in a lecture on Singapore s priorities as it prepares to take over as chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Even our concern about the Rakhine state is also related to our anxiety that this becomes another sanctuary, another hotbed for extremism, he said. It is not just a Middle East phenomenon. ASEAN includes Indonesia, which has the world s biggest Muslim population, mostly Muslim Malaysia and Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where a campaign of violence against members of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State has brought U.N. accusations of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rejects the accusations. Nevertheless, both Indonesia and Malaysia have pressed it over the plight of the Rohingya, more than 600,000 of whom have fled to Bangladesh since late August. Singapore has offered humanitarian help for those displaced by the violence. ASEAN members have pledged greater cooperation and intelligence sharing to combat the threat of Islamic militancy. The mostly Christian Philippines has over the past year faced the region s most serious militant violence, which began when hundreds of gunmen, including some from elsewhere in the region, occupied Marawi, sparking the country s most serious fighting since World War Two. Indonesia and Malaysia say thousands of their citizens sympathize with IS and hundreds are believed to have traveled to Syria to join the group. Indonesian authorities last year disrupted a plot by militants to launch an attack in multi-ethnic Singapore. Singapore will be chair of the 10-member ASEAN in 2018. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia expects new sanctions to further sour its ties with U.S. in 2018: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow expects new complications in its relationship with the United States in early 2018 because of possible new U.S. sanctions on Russia, the RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Tuesday. Ryabkov said Washington could resort to new destructive impulses ahead of next year s Russian presidential election, RIA reported. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan says Turkey will destroy those in Syria linked to Kurdish militants;ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey will very soon completely destroy those in Syria linked to Kurdish militants. Turkey has been angered by U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters who have spearheaded the Western-backed military campaign against Islamic State. Ankara says the YPG is an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Hammond says 'very confident' of deal on Brexit talks;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said on Tuesday he was confident the EU and Britain could reach a Brexit deal in talks this week. We re very confident that we will be able to move this forward, Hammond said on arrival at a meeting of EU finance ministers. Discussions are going on right now and will go on throughout the day. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Brexit deal crumbles, Britain's May to speak to Northern Irish party;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May and other British officials will speak to Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) on Tuesday after a tentative deal on Brexit with the European Union over the border with Ireland was dashed at the last minute. An official at her Number 10 official residence said the British leader may return to Brussels as early as Wednesday to try to save a deal to open the way for talks on future trade after Britain leaves the EU that involved accepting regulatory alignment on the island of Ireland to avoid a hard border. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey could break off ties with Israel over Jerusalem: Erdogan;ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday Turkey could go as far as breaking off diplomatic ties with Israel if the United States formally recognizes Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, a move he said would be a red line for Muslims. U.S. officials have said Trump is likely to give a speech on Wednesday unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a step that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. I am saddened by the reports that the U.S. is getting ready to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, Erdogan said. Mr. Trump, Jerusalem is the red line of Muslims. It is a violation of international law to take a decision supporting Israel while Palestinian society s wounds are still bleeding, he told a parliamentary meeting of his ruling AK Party. ...this can go as far as severing Turkey s ties with Israel. I am warning the United States not to take such a step which will deepen the problems in the region. Israeli government spokesmen had no immediate reaction, but Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a senior partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s coalition government, brushed off Erdogan s comments. There will always be those who criticize, but at the end of the day it is better to have a united Jerusalem than Erdogan s sympathy, he said. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germans see Trump as bigger problem than North Korea or Russia;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germans see U.S. President Donald Trump as a bigger challenge for German foreign policy than authoritarian leaders in North Korea, Russia or Turkey, according to a survey by the Koerber Foundation. Topping the list of foreign policy concerns were refugees, with 26 percent of respondents worried about Germany s ability to cope with inflows of asylum seekers. Relations with Trump and the United States ranked second, with 19 percent describing them as a major challenge, followed by Turkey at 17 percent, North Korea at 10 percent and Russia at 8 percent. Since entering the White House in January, Trump has unsettled Germans by pulling out of the Paris climate accord, refusing to certify an international agreement on Iran s nuclear programme and criticizing Germany s trade surplus and its contributions to the NATO military alliance. Trump s actions prompted the usually cautious German Chancellor Angela Merkel to say earlier this year that Berlin may not be able to rely on the United States in the future. She also urged Europe to take its fate into its own hands. In the poll of 1,005 Germans of voting age, carried out in October, 56 percent of Germans described the relationship with the United States as bad or very bad. Despite Merkel s pledge, the survey showed deep scepticism in the population about Germany taking a more active role in international crises, with 52 percent of respondents saying the country should continue its post-war policy of restraint. That may reflect the fact that neither Merkel nor her main challengers in the recent election campaign talked much about how Germany should respond to the challenges posed by Trump s disruptive presidency and Britain s looming departure from the European Union. Last week, Norbert Roettgen, a member of Merkel s conservative party and head of the foreign affairs committee in the Bundestag, decried a deplorable lack of leadership in educating Germans about the need to invest more in their own defense and security. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov, U.S. Tillerson to discuss North Korea in Vienna: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to discuss the North Korean crisis with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during the meeting in Vienna this week, RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Support for anti-immigration Sweden Democrats tumbles: poll;STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Support for the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party has fallen to its lowest level since surging during the migration crisis of 2015, a government poll showed on Tuesday. The Sweden Democrats approval rating shot to nearly 20 percent in November 2015 after hundreds of thousands of people arrived in Sweden to seek asylum. But a stricter immigration policy has led to a big reduction in numbers, and the issue has slipped from the top of the political agenda. Support for the Sweden Democrats stood at 14.8 percent in November, compared to 18.4 percent in June, Sweden s Statistics Office found in its twice yearly poll for which it interviewed 9,000 people between Oct. 27 and Nov. 28. The government, comprised of the Social Democrats and Greens, had a 36.4 percent approval rating, compared with 35.6 percent in the June poll. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has wooed voters with a pledge to boost spending by almost 44 billion crowns ($5.23 billion) in the budget for 2018 with much of the money going on welfare, education and the police. Immigration is no longer dominating the political debate in Sweden, Jonas Hinnfors, political scientist at Gothenburg University said. Together with the Left Party, which supports the coalition in parliament, the government has 43.4 percent support, up from 41.9 percent in June. At its current level of support, the Sweden Democrats would still have enough clout to block either the centre-left or centre-right blocs from forming a government after the next election in September 2018, should they fail to reach a majority. The Sweden Democrats, shunned by all the major parties due to their far-right roots, have said they would help vote down either a centre-left or centre-right coalition in 2018, making it unclear how either bloc will be able to form a government. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. official's visit to North Korea sparks hope of mediation role; ((This Dec. 5 story corrects year in 2nd paragraph to 2011 from 2012)) By Michelle Nichols and David Brunnstrom UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman arrived in North Korea on Tuesday for a rare visit that some analysts and diplomats hope could spark a U.N.-led effort to defuse rising tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear and missile programs. The former senior U.S. State Department official is the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2011. During a four-day visit he is due to meet Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern. This is broadly a policy dialogue with (North Korea). I think we have to wait and see what comes out, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday. All key member states ... were informed and briefed of the visit. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Russia, Japan, the United States, China and North and South Korea in August he was available to help broker talks. So-called six-party talks on North Korea s nuclear program stalled in 2008. A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described expectations for Feltman s visit as modest and high at the same time, meaning that they depend on what our hosts are thinking as well. We need to find a way to scale back tensions, the official said. I don t think we will have a major breakthrough being announced at the end of this trip. But the visit could serve as a step to build a framework for engagement. Suzanne DiMaggio of the New America Foundation think tank, a participant in recent unofficial talks with North Korea, said Feltman could propose during his visit to Pyongyang that Guterres play a mediation role. I do think that the Trump administration would like to explore talks about talks at this stage. I think the North Koreans are assessing the timing of when to do that, she told a seminar in Washington on North Korea. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Feltman was not traveling on behalf of the U.S. government. And he s not traveling - I want to make this clear - with any kind of message from the U.S. government ... He s going on behalf of the U.N., not the U.S. government, she told a regular news briefing. Nauert said Washington remained open to talks if North Korea showed it was serious about giving up its nuclear weapons, but added: The activities they have been engaged in recently have shown that they are not interested, they are not serious about sitting down and having conversations. North Korea has been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the United States in defiance of U.N. sanctions. It conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test in September and last week tested a missile capable of reaching anywhere in America. Feltman told the 15-member Security Council last week that its unity creates an opportunity for sustained diplomatic engagement an opportunity that must be seized in these dangerous times to seek off-ramps and work to create conditions for negotiations. In September, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia urged a return to dialogue, including by leveraging mediation efforts by Guterres. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said on Tuesday that Pyongyang was seeking dialogue with Washington on its nuclear program, according to RIA news agency. Morgulov, at a conference in Berlin, was quoted as saying Russia had communication channels with North Korea open and was ready to exert its influence on Pyongyang. Sweden s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Carl Skau told reporters he hoped Guterres could mediate in probably the largest threat to international peace and security at the moment. Britain s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Allen said Feltman had our backing and I think he goes to represent the U.N. family as a whole. ;worldnews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: UK LEADER Who Criticized President Trump For Tweeting About ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS Is Victim Of Assassination Plot By ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS;According to CNN UK Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a rare public admonishment to US President Donald Trump on Thursday, declaring that he was wrong to share anti-Muslim videos posted online by a hateful British far-right group.May, facing intense pressure to cancel a planned state visit by Trump, was forced to address the controversy in person after the President criticized her on Twitter. But she insisted the US-UK relationship would survive the storm, and suggested the visit by Trump would go ahead.As the extraordinary diplomatic clash stretched into a second day, the British ambassador to the US revealed he had expressed concerns to the White House about the affair. Trump also faced an unprecedented barrage of criticism in UK Parliament, where MPs variously called him racist, fascist and evil. Some suggested he should quit Twitter.Donald Trump responded to Theresa May s criticism of his Britain First retweets by tweeting back to her: Theresa@theresamay, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! Many, including us, wonder if British Prime Minister Theresa May is still feeling the same way about Islamic extremists in the UK after her own life was threatened by the same group of people she attempted to defend last week.Less than one week later, British Intelligence announced that they ve foiled a plot by Islamic extremists to assassinate Prime Minister Theresa May.The disrupted plot against May included an explosive device that terrorists planned to detonate in front of May s residence on Downing Street, according to Sky News. It is in essence an extreme Islamist suicide plot against Downing Street, Sky correspondent Martin Brunt said. Essentially police believe that the plan was to launch some sort of improvised explosive device at Downing Street and in the ensuing chaos attack and kill Theresa May, the Prime Minister. Sky s Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said: It s the latest in a number of terror plots that police and MI5 believe they ve foiled this year. I understand that the head of MI5, Andrew Parker, briefed Cabinet ministers today, such is the seriousness of what they believed they have uncovered. It is in essence an extreme Islamist suicide plot against Downing Street. Essentially police believe that the plan was to launch some sort of improvised explosive device at Downing Street and in the ensuing chaos attack and kill Theresa May, the Prime Minister. This is something which has been pursued over several weeks at least by Scotland Yard, MI5 and West Midlands Police. It came to a head last week with the arrest of two men, by armed police, who were charged with preparing acts of terrorism. Naa imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, from north London and Mohammed Aqib Imran, 21, from south-east Birmingham are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on terror charges on Wednesday morning.On Tuesday MI5 revealed that it had prevented nine terror attacks in the UK in the past year but several attackers have still got through.The plot was just one in a number of planned attacks this year that cops and British security services have been able to prevent, Sky said.It was not clear Tuesday night what stage the plot was in or if any suspects have been arrested. NYP ;left-news;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: What to watch in negotiations over details of U.S. tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders are aiming to send their tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature by the end of the year. To do that, negotiators from the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate will need to iron out differences between their two versions of the legislation. Here are some of the main points they will need to address. The Senate bill repeals a provision of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that levies a penalty on taxpayers who do not purchase health insurance. The House bill did not repeal the mandate’s penalty but leaders there have indicated they would be open to doing so it if the Senate could pass it. The House bill consolidates seven individual income tax rates into four but keeps the top rate at 39.6 percent. The Senate version keeps seven brackets and sets the top rate at 38.5 percent. PASS-THROUGH BUSINESSES The House legislation capped at 25 percent the tax rate on 30 percent of pass-through business income, with the remaining 70 percent taxed at individual wage rates. The House excluded taxpayers in professional services, who would continue paying individual tax rates on all income. The Senate bill leaves all pass-through income in the individual system but establishes a deduction for 23 percent of pass-through income. The Senate version allows those in services professions to use the deduction if their income is less than $250,000 per year, or $500,000 for a married couple. Pass-through businesses include partnerships and other companies not organized as public corporations, encompassing most American business enterprises from mom-and-pop concerns to large financial and real estate organizations. The House bill repeals the deduction for medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of a taxpayer’s annual income. The Senate version retains the deduction for two years and drops the threshold to 7.5 percent of income. The House bill repeals the individual and corporate alternative minimum taxes, or AMT, which are intended to make sure high-income taxpayers do not unduly lower their tax liabilities by combining numerous credits and deductions. The Senate bill repeals the individual AMT but keeps the 20 percent corporate AMT. By also cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, some corporations have said this means they would not be able to use popular tax breaks such as the research-and-development credit. The House bill limited a popular individual tax deduction to interest on home mortgages of $500,000 or less. The Senate bill would allow taxpayers to deduct interest on mortgages of $1,000,000 or less. The House bill would allow companies to fully deduct the value of machinery and equipment and other costs for five years. The Senate bill allows businesses to do the same but then phases it out over five years. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson seeks to reassure worried Europe over Trump;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a message of support to European allies in Brussels on Tuesday but their concerns about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy have created a rift on a host of issues. European allies are troubled by Trump’s “America first” rhetoric, his decision not to certify Iran’s compliance with a nuclear deal, his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and now plans to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Tillerson told Europe’s foreign ministers at the European Union and NATO that the U.S. government remains committed to transatlantic ties that Trump has previously questioned. Tillerson also sought to reassure U.S. diplomats posted abroad that his ideas to revamp the country’s foreign service were bearing fruit, saying he would reveal a modernization plan for the U.S. State Department soon. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said his visit showed “the strong commitment the U.S. has to the European alliance, the important role that the European alliance plays in our shared security objectives.” Before a lunch with EU foreign ministers, Tillerson stressed “shared values, shared objectives for security and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.” Trump visited the U.S.-led NATO alliance in May to admonish European leaders on their low defense spending. During his visit on Tuesday, Tillerson offered a more generous appraisal and gave an “unwavering” U.S. commitment to NATO’s mutual defense clause, which considers an attack on one ally as an attack on all. Tillerson ignored questions from reporters about whether he would be ousted from the White House, while his senior adviser R.C. Hammond said no EU or NATO foreign ministers raised the issue of whether Tillerson’s job was secure. In his first substantive public comments since reports last week of a White House plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him, Tillerson said despite “a little criticism”, he was on top of his job. “While we don’t have any wins on the board yet, I can tell you we’re in a much better position to advance America’s interests around the world than we were 10 months ago,” he told senior U.S. diplomats and U.S. embassy staff at the U.S. mission to Belgium in Brussels. Tillerson’s trip will also take him to Vienna and Paris. While Trump said last week he was not leaving and Tillerson said the reports were untrue,, Trump has also said he alone determines U.S. foreign policy, saying in a tweet on Friday: “I call the final shots.” Tillerson told U.S. diplomats gathered at the embassy in Belgium that it had been “a bit of a shock” to meet Trump for the first time when he was approached as a possible secretary of state late last year. Diplomats said EU governments face a dilemma because Tillerson’s views are more closely aligned with theirs but may not reflect those of Trump. Foreign ministers had been open about sharing disagreements with the United States on various issues, Hammond said. One EU diplomat said it was “fairly predictable” given tensions on issues, including Trump’s handling of the North Korea nuclear crisis and his threat to “totally destroy” the secretive country. “Allies have been very frank today in sharing some of their views,” Hammond said, although he said it was important to be honest, adding that: “dialogues only work if they go two ways.” In a speech in Berlin before flying to Brussels, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that the European Union could no longer rely on the United States as its closest ally. “The withdrawal of the United States under Donald Trump from its reliable role as a guarantor of Western-led multilateralism accelerates a change of the world order with immediate consequences for German and European interests,” Gabriel said. Standing next to Tillerson on the podium at the EU headquarters in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini also warned the Trump administration about a possible plan to the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Trump is considering recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which Gabriel also said could unleash turmoil. “A lot of member states, including us, are concerned that the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will not calm the conflict but rather inflame it,” Gabriel said at NATO after the EU ministers’ lunch with Tillerson. The European Union, as the Palestinians’ biggest aid donor and Israel’s top trade partner, says it has a right to make its voice heard in any U.S. initiatives in the Middle East. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House tax panel chair to urge longer-lasting individual tax rate cuts;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. House of Representatives’ tax-writing panel on Tuesday said he would push to make tax rate cuts for individuals more permanent as the House and Senate reconcile their two versions of a sweeping tax overhaul. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, speaking to reporters, also said he was concerned about the Senate tax bill’s restoration of the corporate alternative minimum tax. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Party backs embattled Senate candidate Moore: official;(Reuters) - The Republican Party will resume funding the embattled U.S. Senate campaign of Roy Moore after President Donald Trump endorsed the Alabama Republican, who is accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls. The Republican National Committee will return to the Alabama race to support Moore, an official said on Tuesday. “We are the political arm of the president and we stand with the president,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The RNC cut ties with Moore last month after several women accused the former Alabama judge of sexual assault or misconduct when they were teenagers and Moore was in his early 30s. Moore, 70, has denied the accusations. Reuters has not independently verified the reports. On Monday, the White House said Trump had called Moore to give him his support. In a tweet that acknowledged the president’s endorsement, Moore quoted Trump as saying, “Go get ‘em, Roy!” In a sign of the deep divide within the Republican Party around the allegations facing Moore, former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney voiced strong opposition to Trump’s endorsement. “Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation,” Romney wrote on Twitter. “Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last month said he believed Moore’s accusers and joined other senators in urging him to quit the race. But on Sunday, the Republican McConnell said it was up to Alabama voters to decide whether to send Moore to Washington. Moore will face off with Democratic candidate and former U.S. attorney Doug Jones in a special election on Dec. 12. Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon will campaign with Moore in Alabama on Tuesday, Breitbart News reported. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Brussels, Tillerson offers EU strong U.S. support;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday said the United States remains committed to Europe, offering a public statement of support for European allies worried about foreign policy under President Donald Trump. “The partnership between America and the European Union... is based upon shared values, shared objectives for security and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic and we remain committed to that,” Tillerson said before a lunch with 28 EU foreign ministers. Tillerson, in brief statements with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini after which the two took no questions, said his visit showed “the strong commitment the U.S. has to the European alliance, the important role that the European alliance plays in our shared security objectives.” ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU warns Trump against recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said on Tuesday that “any action that would undermine” peace efforts to create two separate states for the Israelis and the Palestinians “must absolutely be avoided”. Mogherini was speaking alongside U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a visit to Brussels, as U.S. President Donald Trump is considering recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. “A way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states,” Mogherini said, stressing the EU’s support for unlocking meaningful peace talks. She said the EU’s 28 foreign ministers will jointly discuss the matter with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Brussels next Monday, to be followed by a similar meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas early next year. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress moves closer to final tax bill with House vote;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted on Monday to go to conference on tax legislation with the Senate, moving Congress another step closer to a final bill. The House voted 222-192 to go to conference with the Senate, setting up formal negotiations on the legislation that could take weeks to complete. Seven Republicans voted “no.” The Republican-led Senate was expected to hold a similar conference vote later this week. House Speaker Paul Ryan named nine fellow Republican House members to the conference committee, including Kevin Brady, head of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, who will chair it. The other Republican representatives Ryan appointed were: Rob Bishop, Diane Black, Kristi Noem, Devin Nunes, Peter Roskam, John Shimkus, Greg Walden and Don Young. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi appointed five members of her party: Kathy Castor, Lloyd Doggett, Raúl Grijalva, Sander Levin, Richard Neal. The Senate narrowly approved its version of the tax overhaul early on Saturday, moving President Donald Trump a step closer to realizing one of his main campaign promises. The House passed its bill last month. The overhaul would be the largest change to U.S. tax laws since the 1980s. Republicans want to add $1.4 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt to finance changes that they say would boost an already growing economy. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump lawyer's account about tweets raises questions about what president knew;(Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer’s legal arguments in defense of the president’s tweets about former U.S. national security advisor Michael Flynn have been greeted with some skepticism by legal experts. In seeking to explain a Trump tweet on Saturday lawyer John Dowd told Reuters on Sunday that he wrote and “bollixed up” the president’s tweet in which Trump said he fired Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI and not just misleading U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Some observers have said the tweet showed Trump knew Flynn had committed a crime and sought to obstruct justice by, among other actions, firing then FBI director James Comey. Dowd denied Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI, but raised new questions by also providing a further account of the January meetings in which former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates warned White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn was a security risk because he had lied about his conversations with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. According to Dowd, Yates told McGahn that Flynn said the same thing to the FBI as he did to Pence but Yates did not convey that Flynn was facing criminal prosecution. Dowd said McGahn reported the conversation to Trump in that manner. “You may conclude that’s a lie, but the Department of Justice, that had the power to charge, did not,” Dowd said. “The first time the president knows for a fact this guy lies was when he was charged.” But several lawyers said, regardless of whether Yates explicitly said Flynn lied to the FBI, the White House counsel should have seen that possibility and communicated it to the president. “It’s not every day that the acting attorney general comes over to the White House with that sort of message,” said Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor now teaching at Harvard Law School. “It had to have been obvious to McGahn that Flynn probably lied to the FBI whether Yates said it or not.” Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, called Dowd’s argument “a stretch” but said there might be a “bit of credibility” in the idea that McGahn might have been waiting for more clarity before informing the president about Flynn’s criminal liability. Neither Yates nor McGahn could be reached for comment on Monday. Dowd also declined requests for further comment on Monday. Yates’ testimony in May before a Senate committee, in which she said she declined to answer McGahn when he asked about Flynn’s FBI interview, appears to conflict with Dowd’s account. According to a person familiar with the matter, Yates never said that Flynn told FBI agents the same thing he told Pence. Dowd said he stood by his version of events. Flynn pleaded guilty last Friday to a charge of lying to the FBI brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading a probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the Trump administration. Russia has denied meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and Trump has denied any collusion took place between Russia and his election campaign. Dowd also argued on Sunday that Trump could not commit the crime of obstruction of justice because “he’s the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S.” Former prosecutor Robert Ray said there was some merit to the argument that Trump could not obstruct justice by firing Comey because he had the power do so. But several other lawyers took issue with Dowd’s comments, noting President Richard Nixon faced impeachment for obstruction of justice prior to his resignation over the Watergate scandal. “It’s a patently absurd argument,” said Andrew Wright, a former White House lawyer under President Barack Obama. “The president as the chief executive sits on top of the org chart, but he has to take care to see that the law is followed.” ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House, Senate Republicans face challenge over corporate AMT tax;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republicans in Congress are grappling with a thorny question about corporate taxes as they work to reconcile competing tax bills from the Senate and House of Representatives into a unified measure that they hope President Donald Trump will sign into law before the end of the year. The Senate bill that squeaked through on a 51-49 vote last week jettisoned a long-held Republican goal of repealing the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT) to help pay for last-minute deals that secured the Republican votes for passage. That puts Senate Republicans on a collision course with Republicans in the House of Representatives, whose own tax bill repeals the corporate AMT and who are already calling for the tax to be eliminated in final legislation. House and Senate Republicans also face potential sticking points over how their bills treat so-called pass-through enterprises, top earners, the estate tax on inheritances and international tax policy for corporations. But the corporate AMT could be the biggest challenge, because removing it could require lawmakers to cover a $40 billion revenue loss over a decade, possibly by scaling back their plan to cut the corporate income tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent. The 20 percent corporate AMT is an alternative to the regular corporate income tax in computing taxes owed. It is designed to limit the ability of corporations to reduce their tax bills through various deductions and credits, such as a credit for research and development that is especially popular with Silicon Valley technology companies. Corporations must compute taxes using both methods and then pay whichever rate is higher. With the top corporate rate now at 35 percent, few wind up paying the AMT. Because both the House and the Senate bills would reduce the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, the same as the corporate AMT, there is concern that corporations would not be able to use the R&D credit. “I think that has to be eliminated,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California said of the corporate AMT in a CNBC interview on Monday. The House voted 222-192 on Monday to go to conference with the Senate on tax legislation, setting up formal negotiations that could take weeks to complete. A similar Senate vote could come later this week. The decision to retain the corporate AMT in the Senate bill helped keep the legislation’s overall revenue loss within an agreed-upon limit of $1.5 trillion. “There would need to be some sort of alternative to raise that revenue and there isn’t a lot of latitude to make further trades,” said Jared Walczak, senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, a Washington think tank. Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate called that “the $64,000 question. “The money’s got to come from somewhere,” Cornyn said. “That’s one of the things we’ll have to explore if (House Republicans) want to make some changes.” Trump has already signaled flexibility on the corporate tax rate, saying on Saturday that it could end up at 22 percent rather than 20 percent in both bills. His comments could help justify a bump up in corporate taxes to cover the cost of eliminating the corporate AMT. But Republicans worry that increasing the corporate income tax rate above 20 percent could make the U.S. economy less attractive in a global marketplace where national tax rates have fallen. “I would hope that we would not change the corporate rate,” Cornyn said. “I hope we don’t undermine our own message.” ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to nominate former NASA chief Griffin for defense undersecretary;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump intends to nominate Michael Griffin, a former administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, the White House said on Monday. The White House had said in October that Trump intended to tap Griffin for principal deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. Monday’s announcement did not give a reason for the change. Griffin most recently served as chairman and chief executive officer of the Schafer Corporation, a provider of scientific, engineering, and technical services and products in the national security sector, the White House said. He held the top NASA job from 2005 to 2009. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; John McCain Wanted Another 74 Twitter Followers, But His Plan Backfired Miserably (TWEETS);"All Senator John McCain wanted to achieve on the morning of Monday, December 4 was to hit that magic milestone of three million Twitter followers, a goal of which he was just 74 followers shy. So what was McCain s approach to gaining those new followers? Simple, he would go on Twitter and rely on word-of-mouth, how could that possibly fail?We're only 74 Twitter followers away from 3M spread the word & help us reach this big milestone! John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) December 4, 2017There was just one little thing Senator McCain had forgotten to factor in His significantly waning popularity since he voted for the Republican tax bill. Being the Republican Senator for Arizona, some may have seen this as him just batting for his own team, but let s not forget that John McCain was one of the few glimmers of hope as he was also one of the only Republicans that has been openly critical of President Trump and this is a terrible tax bill.Not only will the new tax measures raise taxes on those earning less than $75,000 per annum, it would also take healthcare from 13 million Americans and raise the national debt by almost $1.5 trillion dollars over the coming decade! To add insult to injury, the 479-page bill wasn t even completed when it was released on Friday night, with some pages crossed out and others with hand-written amendments in the margins. Furthermore, nobody even had a chance to read it when they were forced to vote on it, but that didn t sway McCain and the bill somehow managed to pass the Senate.UPDATE: Senate Republicans are so desperate to pass their tax bill tonight that they're now making handwritten changes to their already handwritten changes Seriously. pic.twitter.com/KQfW7bOyk1 Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) December 2, 2017Some people had grown to believe that Senator McCain wasn t too bad for a Republican, but when he shocked everyone and voted in favor of the new tax bill, one where 13 million taxpayers will lose their healthcare but still subsidize his treatment for brain cancer, he proved he was no different and people decided to revolt. So when McCain put out the plea for another 74 followers to reach the three million mark, Twitter-users instead instigated a massive unfollow campaign using the hashtag #UnfollowMcCain, costing him hundreds of followers every minute.Over 5,000 people have unfollowed you since you sent this this two hours ago.One reason is you because you a man undergoing cancer treatment voted to strip $25 BILLION dollars from the part of Medicare which pays for CANCER TREATMENT.#unfollowmccain https://t.co/gWl6KsAaLE Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) December 4, 2017I m happy to report that @SenJohnMcCain has lost more than 10,000 followers since I posted the below tweet. Please retweet to spread the word!! #UnfollowMcCain https://t.co/TSb8B9Oj1B Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) December 4, 2017Yeah, I'm a 'no' on that. You can have all the Twitter followers you want AFTER you prove that you care more about this country than you do about the corrupt GOP & your stinking donors by voting *NO* on the #GOPTaxScam.Meantime: #UnfollowMcCain jessica james (@MontaukBuzz) December 4, 2017His vote alone would've made it 50/50 giving time to fight/fix whatever,, he's the one who so openly said ""No"" gaining more trust & support from Dems. He blew it giving his family tax-free $. He also said yes to drilling in the Arctic reserve. #UnfollowMccain Suomi_Tytt (@musiikkia) December 4, 2017I am so disgusted in your #GOPTaxScam vote. Your legacy as an American Hero and a Maverick ended right there. Denying cancer treatment for Medicare/Medicaid patients gets you #UnfollowMcCain JustDe (@bobnde79) December 4, 2017So, how bad has the #UnfollowMcCain campaign been for the Arizona Senator? Well, at the time of writing this article he needed approximately another 30,000 followers to achieve his goal. Probably just should have kept quiet at 74 and hoped for things to improve organically.Featured image via William Thomas Cain/Getty Images";News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Donald Trump’s Eating Habits Could Be Dramatically Affecting His Wellbeing And Our Safety;We ve all heard the stories of Donald Trump preferring a well-done steak with ketchup and shunning any new delicacies, despite living a lifestyle that offers him all the luxuries one could ever desire, however, it s not just that the President has terrible gastronomical taste, a new memoir suggests that his diet is one of several poor lifestyle choices that could very well shorten his life.According to an excerpt from Let Trump be Trump, an upcoming book by Trump s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and aide David Bossie, we get to enter the inner circle where the President of the United States having a 2,400-calorie McDonald s dinner is par for the course. Trump s appetite seems to know no bounds when it comes to McDonald s, with a dinner order consisting of two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted, is just one of the claims made in the book. To put that meal in perspective, Trump s dinner contains 3,400 grams of sodium, despite the American Heart Foundation recommending just 1,500 grams per day, plus enough white bread to last most people a week. Remember, this is just one meal, but it only gets worse. On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke, the authors write about traveling with Trump during the early days of his presidency, but there may be a valid reason for it Not only is he a fan of manufacturing, Trump is also a renowned germaphobe who allegedly won t eat from a package that has already been opened, which would also explain the plane s cupboards being stacked with Vienna Fingers, potato chips, pretzels, and many packages of Oreos. Those well-done steaks make a little more sense now, as well. But a little bit of bacteria is probably the least of the President s worries. This is a 71-year-old man who gets next to no exercise (it s hard to include his golf when he barely even walks while playing), gets very little sleep, and is constantly throwing tantrums, so add in that diet and you have the perfect recipe for a heart attack. The diet alone, especially the snacks, is almost an open-invite for diabetes, too.What makes this frightening for the rest of us is that this is a man who is currently responsible for a nuclear standoff with North Korea, as well as dealing with rapidly warming oceans and an ever-increasing tax bill. If he has this lack of concern for his own wellbeing, then what does it say of his risk-assessment abilities?Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images;News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Republican National Committee: Better A Pedophile Than A Democrat In The U.S. Senate;By now, the whole world knows that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R-Of Course) was banned from an Alabama mall and the YMCA for creeping on little girls. He has been accused of molesting young girls as young as age fourteen. Of course, when the allegations first came out and the uproar and backlash began, everyone, regardless of politics, reacted with outrage. However, the GOP s outrage was often much more muted. Further, it took awhile for the Republican National Committee to pull their support for Moore, despite the deeply disturbing allegations of his being a pedophile. Well, now that the rage has died down, the RNC is back with a new message regarding this Senate race: Better a pedophile than a Democrat.Under cover of night, the RNC reinstated their support for Roy Moore, and an RNC official confirmed to The Hill that, quote, We can confirm our involvement in the Alabama Senate race. So, there you have it, folks. They literally want a child molester in the United States Senate rather than a Democrat. There are only a few voices from the right who are being brave on this one and none of them are seeking re-election. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tweeted that the GOP must not tolerate Moore:Roy Moore in the US Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation. Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity. Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 4, 2017Outgoing Arizona GOP Senator Jeff Flake has actually said that he would vote for the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, if he lived in Alabama, and former Jeb Bush adviser Tim Miller has actually endorsed and donated to Jones. Outgoing Pennsylvania moderate Republican Charlie Dent said he never supported Moore in the first place. Here s the video of Dent s takedown of Moore:There is also outspoken Trump critic and longtime GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, who went on national television and called Moore a pedophile:Other than that, though, it has been radio silence. After all, they need that vote. Besides, let s face it the GOP writ large showed America and the world what they stand for when they elected Donald Trump.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images;News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Sitting GOP Senator Has Had ENOUGH, Donates To Alabama Democrat For Senate (IMAGE);Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake has never been a fan of Donald Trump or his incendiary, divisive brand of politics. Now, he is a leading GOP voice against electing Roy Moore (R-AL) to the United States Senate. Moore is an accused child molester, and has a lifetime history of making all kinds of bigoted and incendiary comments. He has said that homosexuality should be illegal, and that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress. Moore was also removed twice from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to comply with higher court rulings. Well, Flake has finally had enough of his party enabling characters like Moore. He had already said that if he lived in Alabama, he d be voting for Democrat Doug Jones. Now, Flake has taken his support of Jones even further, in the wake of the Republican National Committee s decision to support an accused child molester rather than a Democrat.Taking to Twitter, Senator Flake posted an image of a check made out to Doug Jones Senate campaign. Here is the tweet, captioned Country over Party :Country over Party pic.twitter.com/JZMTaEYdxQ Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) December 5, 2017Now, I don t agree with Jeff Flake on anything politically, but I can say that he is trying to act with morality and decency here. One could argue that Flake s plans to retire from the Senate mean that he can do this without consequence, but at this point, that matters not. We do not need a pedophile in the United States Senate, and the GOP apparatus should be ashamed of themselves for trying to get Roy Moore elected. But, hey better a pedophile than a Democrat, right?Featured image Drew Angerer/Getty Images;News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING NEWS: Leftist Media Publishes Major Fake Russian Story AGAIN…Special Counsel Mueller NEVER Subpoenaed Trump’s Deutsche Bank Records;How many times in one week can ABC News publish fake Russian collusion stories and still be considered a reliable source of news? ABC News suspended Brian Ross after he made a false report about Trump directing his NSA Michael Flynn to meet with the Russians during his campaign. After the Stock Market lost 350 points, ABC News was forced to admit that Trump s discussion about meeting with the Russian Ambassador took place while Flynn was part of Trump s transition team and not when Trump was a candidate.Yesterday, ABC News tweeted a story about Paul Manafort, saying that he was working with a Russian Intelligence-connected official. They were forced to tweet a correction seveal hours later , stating that the person Manafort met with was not an official but instead, an individual . Big difference Today, ABC News jumped on the rabid lefitst media bandwagon again today to report that Special Counsel Robert Muller had supbeonaed Deutsche Bank for Trump s financial records. That story also turned out to be fake news.John Roberts of FOX News reports: A source with knowledge of the investigation tells @FoxNews that there has been no subpoena from Robert Mueller s office sent to Deutsche Bank asking for information on @realDonaldTrump financesA source with knowledge of the investigation tells @FoxNews that there has been no subpoena from Robert Mueller's office sent to Deutsche Bank asking for information on @realDonaldTrump finances John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) December 5, 2017President Trump s legal team is pushing back against reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has called on Deutsche Bank to submit data pertaining to its client relationship with President Trump as part of his investigation into alleged Russian election meddling. We have confirmed that the news reports that the special counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false, said Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump s legal team. No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources. Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source, reported that Mueller is seeking information on the German lender and its relationship with Trump and his family. Trump reportedly owes the bank $300 million. Fox News;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Republicans mull length of spending bill as vote looms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives were in discussions on Tuesday about how long to fund the federal government in a short-term spending measure expected to come to a vote as early as Wednesday. “I feel like we’re going to have a majority... for passing the CR (spending measure) we have this week,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after a closed-door meeting with fellow House Republican members. “We’re having a good conversation with our members about timing and date ... and all the rest,” he added. The conservative House Freedom Caucus, which has enough members to block legislation, has pressed Republican leaders to consider a spending measure that expires on Dec. 30, eight days later than the Dec. 22 deadline that House and Senate Republicans have been discussing up to now. Ryan said the end date of the measure, known officially as a continuing resolution, or CR, would become known when it reaches the House floor. But House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions told reporters his panel would consider a continuing resolution that expires on Dec. 22. The committee later rescheduled its hearing on the legislation for 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Wednesday. Several other House Republicans, however, said members were still debating whether the funding would expire on Dec. 22 or on Dec. 30, after the Dec. 25 Christmas holiday. “It’s still being negotiated,” said Representative Greg Walden. A Senate Republican leadership aide sidestepped a question on what Senate leaders thought about the CR date. “If the House makes any changes to their bill, I’m sure they will let everyone know,” the aide said. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Trump aide nomination to be Singapore envoy stalled over Russia concerns;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The nomination to be ambassador to Singapore of K.T. McFarland, a former security adviser to President Donald Trump, has been delayed due to concerns about her testimony to Congress over communications with Russia, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Tuesday. “Her nomination is frozen for a while until that gets worked out,” Republican Senator Bob Corker told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. Trump earlier this year nominated McFarland, a former deputy national security adviser, to be the U.S. envoy to Singapore. The foreign relations committee approved the nomination in September despite the opposition of almost every Democratic member, but no vote on McFarland has been scheduled in the full Senate. McFarland said in a written response to a question from Democratic Senator Cory Booker, a foreign relations committee member, that she was “not aware” of communications between Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, when Kislyak was ambassador to Russia. However, the New York Times reported on Monday that it had obtained an email McFarland sent on Dec. 29, 2016, the day former President Barack Obama’s administration authorized new sanctions against Russia, saying Flynn would talk to Kislyak that evening. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russia, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into the actions of Trump’s inner circle before he took office. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Trump, Obama dominate Twitter year, but chicken nuggets prevail;(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump continued to dominate Twitter in 2017 even though former President Barack Obama’s tweets were more liked and both were blown away by one man’s quest for free chicken nuggets. Twitter revealed the year’s most liked and retweeted tweets on Tuesday, reflecting how a nation bitterly divided between Republicans and Democrats is likewise split on social media. Trump, whose 44 million followers of @realDonaldTrump rank him 21st on Twitter, was the most tweeted about world leader and U.S. elected official. Likewise @FoxNews, the conservative cable news channel, was the top tweeted news outlet, led by @SeanHannity, the host who is a friend and ally of the president. Obama was also well-represented. The former president, whose @BarackObama ranked as the third-most-followed Twitter account behind @katyperry and @justinbieber, posted the most popular tweet: nearly 4.6 million likes for the Nelson Mandela quote, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion,” with a picture of Obama greeting a diverse group of babies through a window. That was also the second most retweeted item at 1.7 million times. No president could compete with free nuggets, however. A 16-year-old named Carter Wilkerson, @carterjwm, garnered 3.6 million retweets in his campaign for a year’s supply of nuggets from Wendy’s. He came up short of Wendy’s target of 18 million retweets, but Wendy’s still gave him the nuggets and a $100,000 donation in his name to the Wendy’s-linked Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The top four new U.S. political accounts were some of Trump’s most forceful critics, led by @PreetBharara, the former federal prosecutor he fired. Next came @SallyQYates, the former acting attorney general who was also fired by Trump. Third was former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, @brhodes, followed by Obama’s former official photographer, @PeteSouza, who has tweeted flattering pictures of Obama during some of Trump most criticized moments. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, @SHSanders45, rounded out the top five. Other results underscored the punch and counterpunch of politics. Right behind @FoxNews on the top tweeted news outlet list was @CNN, which Trump derides as fake news. The most tweeted activist hashtag was #Resist, as in resist Trump, followed by #MAGA for Trump’s slogan Make America Great Again. Among national leaders, Trump was followed by @narendramodi of India, @NicolasMaduro of Venezuela and @RT_Erdogan of Turkey. (This story corrects paragraphs 8 and 9 to show request was for one year of free nuggets instead of lifetime supply) ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says tax conference will go well, 'pretty quickly';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he expected the conference committee hammering out tax legislation in Congress will work well and get the job done fast. “I think something’s going to be coming out of conference pretty quickly,” Trump told reporters at the White House before meeting with Senate Republicans. “We’re all on the same page. There’s a great spirit in the Republican party like I’ve never seen before, like a lot of people have said they have never seen before. They’re never seen anything like this, the unity.” ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 5) - Utah national monuments;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Yesterday, I was thrilled to be with so many WONDERFUL friends, in Utah’s MAGNIFICENT Capitol. It was my honor to sign two Presidential Proclamations that will modify the national monuments designations of both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante... here [1246 EST] - Join me this Friday in Pensacola, Florida at the Pensacola Bay Center! Tickets: here [1813 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Party backs Senate candidate Moore: official;(Reuters) - The Republican Party will resume funding the U.S. Senate campaign of Roy Moore after President Donald Trump endorsed the Alabama Republican, who is accused of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls. The Republican National Committee had transferred $50,000 to the Alabama Republican Party in support of Moore, an RNC official said on Tuesday. No RNC staff have been deployed to the state. The state party can use the money as it sees fit, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Later on Tuesday, an RNC official said a second transfer for the sum of $120,000 was made to the Alabama state Republican Party on Moore’s behalf, making the total $170,000. The RNC cut ties with Moore last month after several women accused the former Alabama judge of sexual assault or misconduct when they were teenagers and Moore was in his early 30s. Moore, 70, has denied the accusations. Reuters has not independently verified the reports. On Monday, the White House said Trump had called Moore to give him his support. In a tweet that acknowledged the president’s endorsement, Moore quoted Trump as saying: “Go get ‘em, Roy!” In a sign of the deep divide within the Republican Party around the allegations facing Moore, former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized Trump’s endorsement, as did former RNC Chairman Michael Steele. “Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation,” Romney wrote on Twitter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month he believed Moore’s accusers and joined other senators in urging him to quit the race. But on Sunday, the Republican McConnell said it was up to Alabama voters to decide whether to send Moore to Washington. Moore will face off with Democratic candidate and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones in a special election on Dec. 12. “As I have said before - I believe these women. And so should you,” Jones said in speech on Tuesday. At the White House, Trump told reporters he thought Moore was going to do “very well” in next week’s election. “We don’t want to have a liberal Democrat in Alabama,” Trump said. “We want strong borders, we want stopping crime, we want to have the things that we represent. And we certainly don’t want to have a liberal Democrat that’s controlled by Nancy Pelosi and controlled by Chuck Schumer,” he added in reference to the Democratic leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate confirms Trump's pick for Homeland Security secretary;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a post that opened after John Kelly became Trump’s chief of staff earlier this year. Senators voted 62-37 to confirm Kirstjen Nielsen, formerly Kelly’s deputy in the White House and his chief of staff when he led DHS. She is considered a cyber security expert and previously served in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush. Nielsen, 45, will take the reins of a department with more than 240,000 employees responsible for immigration enforcement, U.S. border and airport security, disaster response, and protecting U.S. infrastructure from cyber attacks. The agency is at the center of Trump’s efforts to enact broad changes to the U.S. immigration system. Elaine Duke, a civil servant and the DHS deputy secretary, had been serving as acting secretary since Kelly’s departure for the White House in July. In the last five months she ha been responsible for several controversial DHS decisions, including the end of temporary protected status for thousands of immigrants living in the United States. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a DHS entity, came under criticism for its response to the humanitarian disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria when it struck Puerto Rico in September. In a statement, Duke said she looked forward to working as Nielsen’s deputy, and said Nielsen has “a deep understanding of the issues facing the Department.” Eleven Democrats voted with nearly all Republicans to confirm Nielsen. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander did not vote, and no Republicans voted against her confirmation. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, said in a statement that Nielsen would bring “the expertise and leadership needed to successfully run the Department.” Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson said in a statement that Nielsen had not yet shown “she has the ability to lead a workforce of 240,000 while keeping the country safe and secure,” and said DHS had so far been used as a “political tool of the White House.” ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump lawyer denies Deutsche Bank got subpoena on Trump accounts; FRANKFURT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal investigator probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election asked Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) for data on accounts held by President Donald Trump and his family, a person close to the matter said on Tuesday, but Trump’s lawyer denied any such subpoena had been issued. Germany’s largest bank received a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller several weeks ago to provide information on certain money and credit transactions, the person said, without giving details, adding that key documents had been handed over in the meantime. Deutsche Bank has lent the Trump Organization hundreds of millions of dollars for real estate ventures and is one of the few major lenders that has given large amounts of credit to Trump in the past decade. A string of bankruptcies at his hotel and casino businesses during the 1990s made most of Wall Street wary of extending him credit. Mueller is investigating alleged Russian attempts to influence the election, and potential collusion by Trump aides. Russia has denied U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that it meddled in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion with Moscow. Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, said Deutsche Bank has not received any subpoena for financial records relating to the president as part of Mueller’s probe. “We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false,” Sekulow told Reuters in a statement. “No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources.” He later said the bank in question was Deutsche Bank. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment. A Deutsche Bank spokesman in New York had no immediate comment beyond the statement the bank issued earlier on Tuesday which said the bank takes “its legal obligations seriously and remains committed to cooperating with authorized investigations into this matter.” A U.S. official with knowledge of Mueller’s probe said one reason for the subpoenas was to find out whether Deutsche Bank may have sold some of Trump’s mortgage or other loans to Russian state development bank VEB or other Russian banks that now are under U.S. and European Union sanctions. VEB, as well as the Russian Agricultural Bank and Gazprombank GZPRI.MM did not immediately reply to emailed requests for comment. “No one from the VTB Group (VTBR.MM) representatives has received a subpoena because there are absolutely no grounds for it,” a bank representative said in response to a request from Reuters. “Deutsche Bank did not contact us regarding people connected with the Trump administration.” “We would not comment on the existence of any such request, had one been received,” responded a representative of Sberbank (SBER.MM). Holding Trump debt, particularly if some of it was or is coming due, could potentially give Russian banks some leverage over Trump, especially if they are state-owned, said a second U.S. official familiar with Russian intelligence methods. “One obvious question is why Trump and those around him expressed interest in improving relations with Russia as a top foreign policy priority, and whether or not any personal considerations played any part in that,” the second official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. A source close to Deutsche Bank said the bank had run checks on Trump’s financial dealings with Russia. During his election campaign, Trump said he would seek to improve ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which were strained during President Barack Obama’s administration. The subpoena was earlier reported by German daily Handelsblatt. During a photo opportunity with senators at the White House on Tuesday, Trump declined to answer shouted questions from reporters about whether Mueller had crossed a line by asking Deutsche Bank for information. In a July 9 interview with the New York Times, Trump said Mueller should not extend his investigation into Trump’s finances if they were not directly related to the Russia accusations. Asked if delving into his and his family’s finances unrelated to the Russia probe would cross a red line, Trump replied, “I would say yeah. I would say yes.” Deutsche Bank earlier this year rebuffed efforts by Democratic U.S. lawmakers to get more information on its dealings with Trump as well as any information it may have about whether the Republican, his family or advisers had financial backing from Russia. Trump had liabilities of at least $130 million to Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, a unit of the German bank, according to a federal financial disclosure form released in June by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The Deutsche debts include a loan exceeding $50 million for the Old Post Office, a historic property he redeveloped in downtown Washington, mortgages worth more than $55 million on a golf course in Florida, and a $25 million-plus loan on a Trump hotel and condominium in Chicago, the disclosure shows. All of those loans were taken out in 2012 and will mature in 2023 and 2024, according to the disclosure. Trump and Deutsche Bank have not always been on good terms. Trump sued the bank and other lenders in 2008, demanding $3 billion in damages, claiming they broke agreements in the construction and financing of a Chicago hotel. Deutsche Bank countersued and the two sides eventually settled. Internal Deutsche Bank documents seen by Reuters feature the names of Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his wife, Kathleen, in a series of client profiles. But it was not immediately clear what their relationship with the bank is or had been. According to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Manafort and his wife do not have Deutsche Bank accounts. The bank declined to comment on whether Manafort is or has ever been a client. A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment. In October, Manafort pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy against the United States. The charges were brought as part of Mueller’s investigation. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate committee advances bill easing banking regulations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate committee advanced legislation Tuesday that would ease financial rules for banks for the first time since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The Banking Committee advanced the legislative package by a vote of 16 to 7, where it now heads to the full Senate for consideration. The bill would ease regulatory requirements for banks with under $250 billion in assets, among other changes to rules imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The bill is supported by nearly every Republican in the Senate and at least 12 Democrats, making its passage extremely likely. The high likelihood the changes may become law has led to intense lobbying by industry groups eager to see legal changes included in the measure that they view as beneficial. Over 100 amendments were proposed to the bill, primarily by Democrats looking to trim favorable provisions for banks and boosting consumer protections. But the four moderate Democrats on the committee joined with the panel’s 12 Republicans to oppose any changes to the compromise package, which was first announced in November. While the bill seems likely to pass the Senate, its path forward remains unclear. Lawmakers are facing a busy December schedule, including efforts to finalize a tax cut package and the need to pass a funding bill to avert a government shutdown. “Financial regulation should promote safety and soundness while enabling a vibrant and growing economy,” said committee Chairman Mike Crapo. “The bill we are marking up today is the product of a thorough, robust process, and honest, bipartisan negotiations.” Proponents argue the bill would help spur the economy by encouraging lending. But critics argue it increases the risk of future crises while aiding banks that already enjoy record profits. “This bill is about helping the banks, including the largest of the largest,” said Senator Sherrod Brown. The legislation makes a number of changes to heightened financial rules enacted as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, with the relief aimed primarily at smaller banks and credit unions. However, there are a handful of provisions beneficial to larger banks, most notably exempting some larger banks from heightened regulatory scrutiny as “systemically important” financial institutions. The bill raises the threshold by which banks face those stricter rules from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion. Banks with assets between $50 billion and $100 billion would be exempt once the bill is enacted, while those with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion would be exempted 18 months later. The Federal Reserve would have flexibility to release banks from stricter rules sooner, or reinstate them for scrutiny under certain conditions as part of the legislation. The bill also exempts banks with less than $10 billion in assets from several regulatory requirements, including the “Volcker Rule” ban on proprietary trading. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump lawyers say judge lacks jurisdiction for defamation lawsuit;NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers told a New York state judge on Tuesday that under the U.S. Constitution she had no jurisdiction over the president and therefore urged her to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by a woman who has accused Trump of sexual harassment. The lawsuit by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” contends that Trump’s denials of her accusations amounted to false and defamatory statements. Being “branded a liar” by Trump, the lawsuit said, has harmed her and her business. Trump’s lawyers, led by Marc Kasowitz, said the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prevented the judge from letting Zervos’s lawsuit proceed in a state court. The hour-long hearing was held in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where Zervos’s lawyers responded that there was no legal precedent preventing a state court from ruling on the conduct of a president outside his official duties. “The motion today has nothing to do with putting anyone above the law,” Kasowitz told Justice Jennifer Schecter. Under the Supremacy Clause, he said, “a state court may not exercise jurisdiction over the president of the United States while he or she is in office.” Schecter occasionally stopped Kasowitz to ask him to clarify his views on her jurisdiction. She asked him if it mattered that she would not be directing the president in his official duties, only potentially ruling on whether his comments as a candidate defamed Zervos. Kasowitz said it made no difference. “What that means is the president being haled into court, and once the president is haled into court there are innumerable obligations that flow from that,” he said, saying this would amount to inappropriate “control” over the president. Mariann Wang, the lead lawyer for Zervos, argued, “There is no case that holds that a federal official cannot be held to account in a state court.” Trump’s lawyers did not dispute this. Wang acknowledged that the president holds a unique position but noted that even the president has downtime. They could, for example, meet Trump during one of his weekend visits to his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida to record a video deposition, she suggested. The judge said she would rule later. Trump’s lawyers have said in court filings that Zervos is making false, self-contradictory and politically motivated accusations and that the president’s remarks were “non-actionable fiery rhetoric.” Zervos has accused Trump of groping her during meetings in 2007. She filed her lawsuit in January, three days before Trump’s inauguration. In March, she subpoenaed Trump’s presidential campaign for any documents concerning similar allegations against him. Trump has said accusations by Zervos and other women who last year accused him of sexual harassment are false. If the case went ahead, it could lead to Trump being compelled to hand over any documents from his campaign related to any accusations of sexual impropriety made against him. Zervos’s lawyers, including Gloria Allred, have cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Clinton v. Jones, which allowed former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton to proceed in 1997 while he was still U.S. president. The decision led to Clinton’s impeachment after he lied under oath about his sexual relationship with another woman, Monica Lewinsky. Trump’s lawyers have said that Clinton v. Jones only applies to lawsuits in federal courts, not state courts. Zervos met Trump after becoming a contestant on NBC’s “The Apprentice” in 2005. She has accused Trump of kissing her against her will at his New York office in 2007 and later groping her in a hotel in Beverley Hills after she met with him about a possible job. She was one of several women who made accusations against Trump after the emergence last year of a conversation caught on an open microphone in 2005 in which he spoke in vulgar terms about trying to have sex with women. Trump has said the comments amounted to “locker room banter,” and his campaign issued a statement in which he apologized if anyone was offended. Since the lawsuit was filed, numerous accusations of sexual misconduct have been made against powerful men in politics, media and entertainment. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mueller's Russia probe cost his office $3.2 million in first four months;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has spent about $3.2 million in the first 4-1/2 months of its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the Justice Department revealed in a report on Tuesday. In addition, the department said that its various offices have also spent another $3.5 million to help assist the probe, though those expenditures would have occurred “irrespective of the existence of the” special counsel’s office. Although the expenditures that took place between mid-May and Sept. 30 for the special counsel’s operations are relatively low compared with what many had anticipated, they could provide additional fodder for Republicans who have been critical of Mueller’s work. That money has helped fund 17 attorneys working on the probe, as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, support staff, travel, rent, acquisitions of equipment and other expenses. The bulk of the spending - $1.7 million - has been on personnel salary and benefits, according to the report. Some of the attorneys working on the probe were hired from law firms, but many were already on the government payroll and were detailed from their regular Justice Department jobs. Equipment acquisitions marks the second-highest expense, coming in at more than $733,000, followed by costs for rent and utilities, travel and transportation, and contractual services. The special counsel’s overall budget has not been made public. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog, last month sued the Justice Department in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia for a copy of the budget, after seeking it through a Freedom of Information Act request. In November, several Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives also introduced a resolution calling on Mueller to resign, saying he never disclosed to Congress the details of a bribery case involving the subsidiary of a Russian company that purchased U.S. uranium mines during his tenure as director of the FBI. Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who drafted the measure, conceded Tuesday that the dollar figure is relatively low, but said he remains concerned that Mueller’s investigation is still a waste. “The cost of the Mueller investigation is far more than dollars and cents,” he told Reuters in an interview. “This investigation is impairing the legitimate conduct of the legitimately elected President of the United States.” Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a statement calling Mueller’s spending “entirely reasonable.” Since the probe began in May, the special counsel has charged four people, two of whom have pleaded guilty. The combined $6.7 million spent by Mueller’s office and other offices supporting his investigation only covers the special counsel’s investigation, not the various congressional investigations of Russia’s meddling in the election. Mueller’s next expense report is due at the end of March. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrats flex muscles as Congress confronts a government shutdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats have a rare chance to win major concessions in a U.S. Congress they do not control by taking advantage of a battle within the Republican Party over keeping the government open. With a Friday deadline looming when most funding for federal agencies runs out, Democrats finally have some clout. But their power is strongest while the Republicans in Congress remain fractured and fighting. The showdown with Republicans could come to a head on Thursday when Democrats are expected to press their demands to President Donald Trump at a White House meeting. For Trump, the complex, and very public, battle over the shutdown will also be a demonstration of his ability to deliver on a central 2016 campaign promise of adding billions of dollars to the U.S. military budget. That issue is at the core of Republicans’ behind-the-scenes negotiations with Democrats. Most Republicans want a defense buildup. But many also want to limit government spending. While many Democrats also support bolstering defense, they insist on raising spending on non-defense programs too. Democrats’ top two demands include passage of legislation that has eluded them for 16 years: protecting from deportation nearly 700,000 young people known as “Dreamers,” whose parents brought them illegally to the United States as children. The Democrats also want to shore up Obamacare by reversing Trump’s decision to stop monthly subsidy payments to insurance companies offering healthcare policies to lower-income people. Democrats will enter the White House meeting knowing their support is crucial to Senate Republicans passing any spending bills. Republicans control the chamber by 52-48, but need 60 vote for passage of most spending measures. While a partial government shutdown would keep emergency services and the military mainly operating, thousands of operations would be suspended, such as the operation of national parks. Republicans have clear control of the House of Representatives. But a core of conservative Republicans who consistently vote against funding bills in their drive for smaller government could balk. Democrats have a history of strongly supporting stopgap funding bills, providing the cushion for victory in the Republican House. Conservative Republicans said on Tuesday they would try to pass temporary spending bills without House Democrats’ support. If so, it is unclear whether such a bill could clear the Senate, where Democratic votes are necessary to pass most bills. There is another wild card for both parties in Thursday’s meeting: Trump. Democrats will test the unpredictable president to see whether he is willing to go the bipartisan route in order to keep federal agencies running smoothly or whether he will be in a confrontational mood. In May, angry he did not win money to build his promised wall along the border with Mexico, Trump said the United States needed a “good shutdown” to force his agenda on Congress. Just last week, he wrote on Twitter about the spending bills: “I don’t see a deal.” Democrats are counting on the bipartisan Trump showing up, betting that he and fellow Republicans in Congress do not want to leave the immigration legislation, popularly known as the Dreamers Act, to fester until a March deadline, so close to the 2018 congressional election season. Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader, are calculating that voters’ wrath would rain down on Republicans if the government lights go out. Republicans would blame Democrats. At a news conference last Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that if Democrats vote against the temporary spending bill because they have not won their demands, “then they will have chosen to shut the government down.” Republicans already are trying to exploit possible differences among Democrats over whether to link support for the stopgap spending bill to the immigration measure. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said she expected Democrats to vote for the government funding bill this week, telling Reuters in an interview that while it “is important to all of us” to take care of the Dreamers, “I don’t think we should shut the government down.” Senator Dick Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, told the Washington Post last week he would oppose any spending bill if Congress had not first taken care of the Dreamers. On Tuesday, Schumer noted there were “good negotiations” under way on the immigration measure. This week’s vote to keep the government operating on temporary funding is likely to be the first of a three-step process that could stretch to Jan. 31. A second step would be another short-term funding bill, followed by one to fund the government through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Credit union sues to block Mulvaney from leading CFPB;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal credit union has sued to block President Donald Trump from installing Mick Mulvaney as his preferred head of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Citing “regulatory chaos” caused by the fight over who is the legal leader of the regulator, the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union called on a federal court to remove Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, and affirm Leandra English, the CFPB’s deputy director, as the proper acting head of the bureau. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, represents a new legal front in an ongoing battle over who should be running the regulator. English has insisted she should run the agency after being named deputy director by Richard Cordray, who resigned in November. But Mulvaney has been named acting director by Trump, and has announced a freeze on new regulatory work while he reviews agency policies. English has her own lawsuit against the administration pending in federal court, but Tuesday’s lawsuit marks the first legal challenge against the administration by an entity regulated by the CFPB. “The Credit Union does not know who is validly in charge of the CFPB, who is authorized to make the rules, or whose rules to follow,” the credit union said in its complaint. “The Court must resolve this regulatory chaos. It must determine who is in charge of the Bureau. To the Credit Union, it is plain that Leandra English is the only lawful Acting Director in charge of the CFPB,” the lawsuit said. A Mulvaney spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A U.S. District Court judge last week sided with Trump and ruled against English, allowing Mulvaney to serve as the agency’s acting head. English has continued to pursue her case. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Republican tax chief says lawmakers want AMT repeal;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief Republican tax writer in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday that House Republicans want tax legislation to eliminate the corporate and individual alternative minimum taxes. “House members ... feel strongly that the House position should be to repeal permanently both the individual and the corporate,” U.S. Representative Kevin Brady told reporters. He spoke after meeting with Republican lawmakers to discuss upcoming negotiations with the Senate aimed at reconciling the two chambers’ tax bills into a unified piece of legislation that Republican President Donald Trump can sign into law. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says government shutdown always a possibility;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the U.S. Congress worked to reach agreement on a short-term spending measure to keep the federal government open, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Tuesday a shutdown could still happen. “It is always a possibility but it’s certainly not what we hope for,” she said at a media briefing, adding that the top Democrats in Congress, Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, would meet with Trump this week. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH SANDERS Asked If Trump Visiting Civil Rights Museum Is ‘Insulting’…She Drops Truth Bomb [Video];"Sarah Sanders announced during the White House press briefing Tuesday that President Trump would visit Mississippi this weekend. On his trip, Trump will participate in the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Sanders was asked later in the briefing if Trump s visit to the civil rights museum was a good idea. American Urban Radio reporter April Ryan asked about various members of the NAACP and black ministers who are protesting the visit. .@PressSec on @POTUS's statement regarding Charlottesville violence in August: ""I think @POTUS got his statement very clear when he condemned all forms of racism, bigotry, and violence. There's no gray area there "" pic.twitter.com/1OCs4W48Pq Fox News (@FoxNews) December 5, 2017 There are comments from people from the NAACP from black ministers who are planning on protesting and boycotting this weekend for the president s visit to the Civil Rights Museum. What say you? Ryan asked.Sanders called the planned protests to Trump s visit sad, saying:I think that would be honestly very sad. I think this is something that should bring the country together, to celebrate the opening of this museum and highlighting civil rights movement and the progress that we ve made and I would hope those individuals join in instead of protesting. Ryan continued her questioning, asking if Trump s statement on the riots in Charlottesville would be seen as an insult to those in attendance. Ryan said They take it as an insult that he s coming. As we ve had issues of Charlottesville. The president didn t get his statement straight on Charlottesville Sanders cut Ryan off, slamming the door on the line of questioning:I think he s statement was very clear. He made it very clear. He s against violence and bigotry.After the riots in Charlottesville, Trump said:We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.VIA: DAILY CALLER ";politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JOHN BOLTON GETS IT: ‘This is the First Attempted Coup D’etat in America’s History’…Who’s Behind It? [Video];Ambassador Bolton gets it! He and so many others see what s going on and how the left is trying to destroy the Trump administration Ambassador Bolton: They are trying to prove the administration is illegitimate.Lou Dobbs: That s what you can see.Ambassador Bolton: They are the ones who are illegitimate The Wall Street Journal says this is the first coup d tat in American History. It s a mini coup d tat but it goes right along with the idea that they should have won the election.. And one recalls the famous scene in the debate where during the debates where, I believe it was Chris Wallace, who asked both candidates if you lose will you accept the result LOU DOBBS WHO S BEHIND IT? THIS IS HUGE! Lou Dobbs joined Sean Hannity to discuss the constant effort to destroy President Trump. Dobbs has mentioned a coup before (SEE BELOW) but is doubling down on his concern that the deep state and lefty media are in a full court press to get Trump out of office ASAP.Lou Dobbs had this to say about the effort to destroy Trump: The double standard is more than that by a long measure. This is an effort to subvert the administration of President Donald Trump. It is nothing less. It is an effort by the Deep State to roll over a duly elected president and a legitimate government and to break the will of the American people. This is no longer about Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, this is about a full-on assault by the left, the Democratic party to absolutely carry out a coup d etat against President Trump.LOU DOBBS AND CLINTON CASH AUTHOR DISCUSS THE DEEP STATE AND THE EFFORT TO TAKE DOWN TRUMP: Never in American history has there been a more highly organized group of people, the deep state , attempting to subvert the will of the American people, in this case, the Trump presidency. Peter Schweizer discusses the efforts of the deep state , their conspiracy campaign against Donald Trump and its potential impact on President Trump s administration.TAKE NOTES AND CALL OUT YOUR CONGRESSMEN IF THEY RE NOT SUPPORTING PRESIDENT TRUMP!;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THE DOJ TOOK $7 MILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS AND STARTED A BONFIRE…’Russian Meddling’ Probe Goes off The Rails;The DOJ is reporting that they basically took American taxpayer dollars and started a bonfire with it In light of the fact that key investigators are severely compromised, this case is just a witch hunt that s gone off the rails. A few key details about the fired anti-Trump investigator who wasn t fired but moved to Human Resources by Comey:Peter Strzok sent anti-Trump messages to his girlfriend aka mistress then was just moved to HR. He s a part of the Comey/McCabe group. He handled the Fake Trump Dossier inside the FBI alongside McCabe. He was hand-picked by Comey to run the Hillary e-mail investigation. He was also hand-picked by Mueller for the senior investigative staff. Coincidences like this simply don t exist .BURNING YOUR HARD-EARNED DOLLARS:The Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday that nearly $7 million has been spent so far on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.The costs cover a five-month period from May 17, when the Department of Justice appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel for the Russia investigation, to Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, CNN reports.Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentstein authorized the budget for the probe.The expenditures can be divided into two main categories: approximately $3.2 million spent by Mueller, and an additional $3.5 million spent on other Department of Justice components to support the investigation, including investigators from the FBI. Tuesday s revelation marks the first time the public has learned about how much taxpayer money has been spent on the Russia investigation.Congress has also been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, with multiple congressional committees conducting their own probes in both the House and Senate.Mueller s investigation has so far resulted in President Donald Trump s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., and the indictment of Trump s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, along with a longtime business associate.;Government News;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Trump names career diplomat to head Cuban embassy - sources; ((This December 4 story has been corrected to change “last year” to 2015 in sixth paragraph, June to July in 11th paragraph)) By Marc Frank HAVANA (Reuters) - The Trump administration has named career diplomat Philip Goldberg to head the all-but-abandoned U.S. embassy in Havana, according to three sources familiar with the matter, at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba. Goldberg has lengthy experience in a number of countries, and was described by a U.S. congressional aide on Monday as “career and the best of the best”. But his appointment may ruffle feathers in Havana. He was expelled from Cuba’s socialist ally Bolivia in 2008 for what President Evo Morales claimed was fomenting social unrest. The appointment has not been publicly announced. If approved by Cuba, Goldberg will arrive at a low moment in bilateral relations. The embassy was reopened in 2015 for the first time since 1961, as part of a fragile detente by former Democratic U.S. president Barack Obama. But the administration of Republican President Donald Trump has returned to Cold War characterizations of the Cuban government and imposed new restrictions on doing business in Cuba and travel. It has charged Cuba with responsibility for health problems affecting some two dozen diplomats or their family members, which it has termed attacks. Cuba denies the charges. The U.S. embassy has been reduced to a skeleton staff and has suspended almost all visa processing after the Trump administration in October pulled 60 percent of embassy personnel and ordered a similar reduction at the Cuban embassy in Washington, expelling 15 diplomats. The position is not an ambassador role and does not need to be approved by the U.S. Congress. There has been no ambassador since the embassy re-opened, after the Republican-controlled Senate opposed Obama’s pick. Instead, Goldberg will take over from Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who left in July, as Charge d’Affaires. Goldberg’s other previous posts include the chief of mission in Kosovo. Most recently he has been the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines. “Appointing Ambassador Goldberg to head the U.S. Embassy in Cuba is rather provocative since he was expelled from Bolivia,” American University professor of government William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert, said. “But Ambassador Goldberg is a Foreign Service professional and will ably represent the policies of Trump’s administration. Time will tell if he has been instructed to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor ... or carry out a more hostile policy,” he said. The embassy was closed in 1961 when the United States broke diplomatic relations. The countries maintained lower level interests sections in each other’s capitals from 1977 to 2015, under the auspices of Switzerland. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump lawyer: Deutsche Bank has not received subpoena for Trump records;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) has not received any subpoena for financial records relating to the president or his family as part of the special counsel’s Russia probe. “We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false,” Sekulow told Reuters in a statement. “No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources.” He confirmed the bank in question was Deutsche Bank. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior lawmaker Conyers leaves U.S. Congress after harassment accusations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat John Conyers, the longest serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, stepped down on Tuesday after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, the first member of Congress to leave his seat during a wave of high-profile harassment allegations. Conyers, a leading figure in civil rights and Democratic politics who represented the Detroit area for over half a century, endorsed his son to take his place. “I am in the process of putting my retirement plans together and will have more on that very soon ... I am retiring today,” Conyers, 88, said in a radio interview from a hospital where he is being treated for stress-related illness. “I have a great family here and especially in my oldest boy, John Conyers III, who incidentally I endorse to replace me in my seat in Congress,” Conyers said. His resignation letter was later read in the House chamber, making his departure official. Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, said he would review dates for a special election. Conyers’ great-nephew has also announced he would run. The growing number of accusations against Conyers, a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus who hired Rosa Parks as an aide after winning his first term in 1964, troubled party leaders. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi was criticized for calling Conyers an “icon” before calling for his resignation. But others said the issue was clear, if difficult. “We have to recognize and be able to hold the dueling possibilities that somebody can be a great man and have done great things for our country and for civil rights, but also have done terrible things that require accountability,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal. The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation last week. Conyers repeated his denial of harassment allegations in the radio interview. “They are not accurate or they are not true.” Congress has been grappling with harassment policy amid a string of cases involving prominent men, including Republican President Donald Trump, Democratic Senator Al Franken and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Trump and Moore have denied wrongdoing. Franken apologized. Conyers, who had risen to be chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, stepped down last month as the panel’s senior Democrat. Several former women aides have accused him of misdeeds such as inappropriate touching and showing up for a meeting in only his underwear. But others issued a statement defending him, saying they did not see him behave inappropriately. ;politicsNews;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING NEWS: Leftist Media Publishes Major Fake Russian Story AGAIN…Special Counsel Mueller NEVER Subpoenaed Trump’s Deutsche Bank Records;How many times in one week can ABC News publish fake Russian collusion stories and still be considered a reliable source of news? ABC News suspended Brian Ross after he made a false report about Trump directing his NSA Michael Flynn to meet with the Russians during his campaign. After the Stock Market lost 350 points, ABC News was forced to admit that Trump s discussion about meeting with the Russian Ambassador took place while Flynn was part of Trump s transition team and not when Trump was a candidate.Yesterday, ABC News tweeted a story about Paul Manafort, saying that he was working with a Russian Intelligence-connected official. They were forced to tweet a correction seveal hours later , stating that the person Manafort met with was not an official but instead, an individual . Big difference Today, ABC News jumped on the rabid lefitst media bandwagon again today to report that Special Counsel Robert Muller had supbeonaed Deutsche Bank for Trump s financial records. That story also turned out to be fake news.John Roberts of FOX News reports: A source with knowledge of the investigation tells @FoxNews that there has been no subpoena from Robert Mueller s office sent to Deutsche Bank asking for information on @realDonaldTrump financesA source with knowledge of the investigation tells @FoxNews that there has been no subpoena from Robert Mueller's office sent to Deutsche Bank asking for information on @realDonaldTrump finances John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) December 5, 2017President Trump s legal team is pushing back against reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has called on Deutsche Bank to submit data pertaining to its client relationship with President Trump as part of his investigation into alleged Russian election meddling. We have confirmed that the news reports that the special counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false, said Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump s legal team. No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources. Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source, reported that Mueller is seeking information on the German lender and its relationship with Trump and his family. Trump reportedly owes the bank $300 million. Fox News;left-news;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: UK LEADER Who Criticized President Trump For Tweeting About ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS Is Victim Of Assassination Plot By ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS;According to CNN UK Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a rare public admonishment to US President Donald Trump on Thursday, declaring that he was wrong to share anti-Muslim videos posted online by a hateful British far-right group.May, facing intense pressure to cancel a planned state visit by Trump, was forced to address the controversy in person after the President criticized her on Twitter. But she insisted the US-UK relationship would survive the storm, and suggested the visit by Trump would go ahead.As the extraordinary diplomatic clash stretched into a second day, the British ambassador to the US revealed he had expressed concerns to the White House about the affair. Trump also faced an unprecedented barrage of criticism in UK Parliament, where MPs variously called him racist, fascist and evil. Some suggested he should quit Twitter.Donald Trump responded to Theresa May s criticism of his Britain First retweets by tweeting back to her: Theresa@theresamay, don t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine! Many, including us, wonder if British Prime Minister Theresa May is still feeling the same way about Islamic extremists in the UK after her own life was threatened by the same group of people she attempted to defend last week.Less than one week later, British Intelligence announced that they ve foiled a plot by Islamic extremists to assassinate Prime Minister Theresa May.The disrupted plot against May included an explosive device that terrorists planned to detonate in front of May s residence on Downing Street, according to Sky News. It is in essence an extreme Islamist suicide plot against Downing Street, Sky correspondent Martin Brunt said. Essentially police believe that the plan was to launch some sort of improvised explosive device at Downing Street and in the ensuing chaos attack and kill Theresa May, the Prime Minister. Sky s Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said: It s the latest in a number of terror plots that police and MI5 believe they ve foiled this year. I understand that the head of MI5, Andrew Parker, briefed Cabinet ministers today, such is the seriousness of what they believed they have uncovered. It is in essence an extreme Islamist suicide plot against Downing Street. Essentially police believe that the plan was to launch some sort of improvised explosive device at Downing Street and in the ensuing chaos attack and kill Theresa May, the Prime Minister. This is something which has been pursued over several weeks at least by Scotland Yard, MI5 and West Midlands Police. It came to a head last week with the arrest of two men, by armed police, who were charged with preparing acts of terrorism. Naa imur Zakariyah Rahman, 20, from north London and Mohammed Aqib Imran, 21, from south-east Birmingham are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on terror charges on Wednesday morning.On Tuesday MI5 revealed that it had prevented nine terror attacks in the UK in the past year but several attackers have still got through.The plot was just one in a number of planned attacks this year that cops and British security services have been able to prevent, Sky said.It was not clear Tuesday night what stage the plot was in or if any suspects have been arrested. NYP ;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HYPOCRISY: DEMOCRAT SENATOR Criticizes President Trump For Moving U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem After She Voted To Move U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem;You just can t make up stories like these Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) on Tuesday castigated the idea of moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, saying it would be a terrible decision despite previously voting for the embassy move to take place. Reports indicate the president will move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the California senator tweeted. I wrote him last week to explain why that would be a terrible decision. In an attached letter to Trump dated Dec. 1, Feinstein wrote that moving the embassy would spark violence and embolden extremists on both sides of this debate. Here is the tweet:Reports indicate the president will move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I wrote him last week to explain why that would be a terrible decision. pic.twitter.com/MV1o73nyDk Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) December 5, 2017The California Democrat stressed that the U.S. must remain neutral in the debate over Jerusalem s status, and that moving the U.S. embassy there or recognizing the city as the capital of Israel would undermine any remaining hope for a two-state solution. Feinstein s tweet came on the same day that President Donald Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders that he plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the embassy there. Trump is expected to announce his decision on Wednesday.Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would be in line with a law that Congress passed in 1995 requiring the relocation of the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The measure, which also called for the U.S. to recognize the city as the undivided capital of Israel, passed the Senate by an overwhelming 93-5 margin.Among the senators who voted for the initial Jerusalem Embassy Act was one Dianne Feinstein.Feinstein actually played a key role in getting the bill passed by inserting a provision that would allow the president to issue a waiver to delay the embassy move six months at a time, if the president determined it was in the U.S. national security interest.Feinstein s move led 10 additional Democratic members to support the bill, giving it a veto-proof majority.Via: WFB;left-news;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HYPOCRISY: DEMOCRAT SENATOR Criticizes President Trump For Moving U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem After She Voted To Move U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem;You just can t make up stories like these Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) on Tuesday castigated the idea of moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, saying it would be a terrible decision despite previously voting for the embassy move to take place. Reports indicate the president will move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the California senator tweeted. I wrote him last week to explain why that would be a terrible decision. In an attached letter to Trump dated Dec. 1, Feinstein wrote that moving the embassy would spark violence and embolden extremists on both sides of this debate. Here is the tweet:Reports indicate the president will move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I wrote him last week to explain why that would be a terrible decision. pic.twitter.com/MV1o73nyDk Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) December 5, 2017The California Democrat stressed that the U.S. must remain neutral in the debate over Jerusalem s status, and that moving the U.S. embassy there or recognizing the city as the capital of Israel would undermine any remaining hope for a two-state solution. Feinstein s tweet came on the same day that President Donald Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders that he plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the embassy there. Trump is expected to announce his decision on Wednesday.Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would be in line with a law that Congress passed in 1995 requiring the relocation of the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The measure, which also called for the U.S. to recognize the city as the undivided capital of Israel, passed the Senate by an overwhelming 93-5 margin.Among the senators who voted for the initial Jerusalem Embassy Act was one Dianne Feinstein.Feinstein actually played a key role in getting the bill passed by inserting a provision that would allow the president to issue a waiver to delay the embassy move six months at a time, if the president determined it was in the U.S. national security interest.Feinstein s move led 10 additional Democratic members to support the bill, giving it a veto-proof majority.Via: WFB;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CIA’s Pompeo: ‘Assange Shouldn’t Be Confident of Protecting WikiLeaks Sources’;CIA appointed head Mike Pompeo is now ready to disregard basic press freedoms enshrined in the US Constitution.As the press speculate this week over the imminent exit of Mike Pompeo from Langley to Foggy Bottom, Donald Trump s outgoing CIA head appears to be determined to do as much damage as possible to the US Constitution.This latest reckless power-grab by the CIA is not just about getting Wikileaks this is about requiring all media outlets to divulge their sources in the interests of national security. DCIA Pompeo: WikiLeaks may think they are protecting those who provide them with classified information & other secrets, but they should not be certain of that.#RNDF CIA (@CIA) December 3, 2017RT International reports CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he won t tolerate secrets purloined by the CIA being stolen from the agency, and warned WikiLeaks to be more careful about protecting its sources.The CIA s official Twitter account tweeted Pompeo s comments about the whistleblowing site from an interview he gave at the Reagan National Defense Forum Saturday.Stealing Secrets I never miss an opportunity when I m with my officers to tell them the last thing we can tolerate is to have a secret that we ve stole re-stolen, Pompeo told moderator Brett Baier at the Los Angeles event.READ MORE: WikiLeaks publishes #Vault7: Entire hacking capacity of the CIA It is simply unacceptable. It is our duty to protect them, he added. It is our duty to go after those who stole them, and to prosecute them within the bounds of the law in every way that we can. Mike Pompeo leads the Deep State crusade to destroy Assange and Wikileaks.Pompeo s comments come nine months after WikiLeaks began releasing Vault7, a massive trove of classified CIA documents purportedly detailing the agency s hacking capabilities. The documents include reports of the agency s arsenal of malware and tech exploits, as well as its methods of infiltrating smartphones, TVs and laptops.The CIA is believed to have lost control of this arsenal before WikiLeaks obtained it. The hacking capabilities were doing the rounds among government hackers, one of whom provided WikiLeaks with the collection, the whistleblowing site explained. According to WikiLeaks, the Vault7 source wanted to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons. Some of the biggest revelations in Vault7 were the CIA s ability to mask its hacking exploits to make them appear to be the work of other countries, namely Russia, China and Iran. It has raised questions about security firm Crowdstrike linking the Democratic National Committee email hack to Russian hackers.READ MORE: #Vault7: WikiLeaks reveals Marble tool could mask CIA hacks with Russian, Chinese, ArabicWikileaks Sources I sometimes hear comments from WikiLeaks and Mr Assange thinking that those who have provided him classified information are safe and secure, Pompeo said. He ought to be a bit less confident about that, because we re going to go figure out how to protect this information. We owe it to the American people and our officers who dedicated to it. Just to be clear, WikiLeaks is a national security threat in your eyes? Baier asked Pompeo. Yes. You can go no further than the release of documents by [Chelsea] Manning to see the risk that it presents to the United States of America, the CIA chief responded.Pompeo was referring to US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who released hundreds of thousands of documents from the military along with diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in 2010.While the release revealed the extent of civilian casualties in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and included reports from Guantanamo Bay and the infamous Collateral Murder video depicting a US helicopter attack killing two Reuters employees and injuring two children, a 2011 Department of Defense report published in June found the disclosure had no significant effect on US interests.Pompeo has emerged as a staunch critic of WikiLeaks since becoming head of the CIA, describing the organization as a hostile intelligence agency, and dubbing Assange a narcissist and a fraud. This is a departure from his position when he was a Kansas congressman and was tweeting about the WikiLeaks DNC email release.Tweet sent by CIA Director Mike Pompeo on 24 July 2016 https://t.co/sTMHw2nvOG pic.twitter.com/Qd0mYRl5QF WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 13, 2017The annual RNDF event has been dubbed the Davos of defense. Speakers at this year s event include former CIA head Leon Panetta, national security advisor HR McMaster and a number of congressmen and representatives from defense corporations like Lockheed Martin. 21st Century Wire says: Based on his views during the election, and now his views as CIA director it seems that Mike Pompeo is a hypocrite who loved Wikileaks when it served his own political interests, but now would like to destroy it to protect the interests of the Deep State.SEE MORE WIKILEAKS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Wikileaks FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ABC News Suspend Anchor Brian Ross Over Fake News Report on Trump-Flynn ‘Russian Collusion’;After 18 months of rampant speculation over Trump and Russian collusion and alleged Russian hacking in the 2016 election, in a cloud of non-stop, 24/7 fake news being generated by CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, as well as notorious MSM fake news outsourcing agencies like The Daily Beast the Never Trump Resistance has yet to present a single item of evidence to justify their year and a half-long political witch hunt.In this sea of delusion, there are still a number of desperate media persons who are willing to punt on a contrived plot or narrative hoping that theirs will be the one to finally nail the embattled President on grounds for impeachment beyond a reasonable doubt. Already a number of mainstream journalists, including three reporters from CNN, have been fired or let go as networks are now fear legal repercussions from their new normalized practice of lying and inventing plots about the White House and Russian meddling. This week saw another high-profile casualty, ABC s Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, as the resistance continues to launch blind media attacks on the President.On Saturday, ABC News executives announced that star anchor Ross would be suspended for one month without pay over an alleged botched exclusive implicating former national security adviser Michael Flynn.Clueless: ABC s Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross.During Ross s live special report , an invented story-line was fed to a clueless Ross which claimed that Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while Trump was still a candidate in the general election.According to FOX News, the fake news report raised the specter of Trump s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting. Later in the day, ABC issued a clarification to Ross s report, saying that Trump s alleged directive came after he d been elected president. Ross himself appeared on World News Tonight, several hours after the initial report, to clarify his error.Afterwards, ABC News tried to justify the fake news release, claiming that Ross report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process. Clearly, Ross took one for the team (The Resistance) here, as anyone who works in media will know. He would have been fed the bogus report by news producers, before doing what mainstream media news anchors do everyday of their careers unwittingly reading whatever words are scrolling down his teleprompter.ABC News statement went on to try and gloss over their fake news report saying, It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience. News officials then sounded even more ridiculous as they scrambled to pave-over their propaganda practices claiming that, These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday. What s clear from this story is that when it comes to all things Trump and Russia, the US mainstream media feel they are within their right to dispense with all normal journalistic standards so long as the story falls in line with a specific political agenda.Unfortunately, this is just one more reason to always be cautious when trusting watching mainstream media reporting of any any major news event.READ MORE ABOUT MAINSTREAM FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Fake News FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV ;Middle-east;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARA CARTER Drops Shocker On Why A Shake-Up Is Eminent At The FBI [Video];Sara Carter has been right on everything she s reported on with the Mueller investigation. She s a gem of a reporter who does the hard work that so many other journalists just don t. She tells why she believes the FBI will have a major shake-up soon there are 27 leakers that the IG is looking at! Yes, 27 leakers!Sara Carter: We re going to see parts of that report before December (end of the month). We re going to see other parts of his report coming out after January. And they re looking at Peter Strzok. They re looking at Comey. They re looking at 27 leakers. It would not surprise me if there was a shake-up at the FBI and a housecleaning.Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch is another incredible researcher and stubborn investigator. Thank goodness for all of the FOIA requests and lawsuits he s filed to force information to come out of the FBI and DOJ. His latest discovery is an explosive email that exposes anti-Trump Mueller operatives:THANK GOODNESS FOR JUDICIAL WATCH! They pushed for emails from the DOJ and got a treasure trove of incriminating evidence of anti-Trump bias. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said it best when he said the email is an astonishing and disturbing find A top prosecutor who is now a deputy for Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe praised then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates (see more on Yates below) after she was fired in January by President Trump for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban.The email, obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, shows that on the night of Jan. 30, Andrew Weissmann wrote to Yates under the subject line, I am so proud. He continued, And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects. The disclosure follows confirmation that another Mueller investigator, FBI official Peter Strzok, was fired over the summer after allegedly sending anti-Trump texts to an FBI lawyer with whom he was romantically involved.His alleged actions revived concerns about the objectivity of the FBI probes of both Hillary Clinton s email setup and Russia election meddling.Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the new Weissmann document an astonishing and disturbing find. Andrew Weisman, a key prosecutor on Robert Mueller s team, praised Obama DOJ holdover Sally Yates after she lawlessly thwarted President Trump, he said in a statement. How much more evidence do we need that the Mueller operation has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans? CATHERINE HERRIDGE:DOJ POLITICAL HACK SALLY YATES YOU RE FIRED! The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.Tonight, President Trump relieved Ms. Yates of her duties and subsequently named Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as Acting Attorney General until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons. I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed. I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected, said Dana Boente, Acting Attorney General.;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: AS ANOTHER ACCUSER COMES FORWARD…JohnConyers Makes Major Announcement…It’s Not What The Media Expected;What pushed Democrat Congressman John Conyers to resign instead of just announce he would retire at the end of his term?The Detroit Free Press reports another accuser came forward just last night:The most recent, Elisa Grubbs, made accusations against Conyers on Monday night, saying in a statement that Conyers put his hand up her skirt at a church, among other allegations.As late as Tuesday morning, there were reports that Conyers would fight on, choosing to remain in office til the end of his current term and then retire in early 2019. But speaking on Mildred Gaddis show on WPZR-FM (102.7), Conyers said he was resigning.FORCED TO RESIGN:Facing a rising chorus of voices demanding he step down because of sexual harassment claims, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Detroit, resigned the seat he has held for more than five decades, a swift and crushing fall from grace for a civil rights icon and the longest-serving active member of Congress.ENDORSES HIS SON TO REPLACE HIM:Saying he was finalizing his plans for retirement, Conyers added he would endorse his son, John Conyers III, to replace him Congress. My legacy can t be compromised or dimished in any way by what we re going through now. This too shall pass. My legacy will continue through my children, Conyers told Mildred Gaddis on her Detroit radio show.As for the accusations against him, Conyers said, They re not accurate, they re not true and they re something I can t explain where they came from. Conyers, 88, resigned two weeks after an article on BuzzFeed.com detailed a secret settlement of more than $27,000 with former staffer, MARION BROWN who accused him of making sexual advances toward her and paying her out of funds from his taxpayer-supported office.MARION BROWN CAME FORWARD WITH SHOCKING DETAILS:The descriptions below of what went on at the office of Rep. John Conyers will make your blood boil. He felt entitled to treat the women in his office like he owned them in every way. It s pretty disgusting.We re still waiting to hear what s going to happen with Conyers. Democrat leaders have called for him to resign but his lawyer has been pushing back trying to make the accuser look bad. He treads a fine line with his threats to the accuser and to others in D.C. We re hoping he spills the beans on the others who have used our tax dollars to pay off sexual harassment victims.Marion Brown, a former staff member whose accusations have sparked the scandal surrounding embattled U.S. Rep. John Conyers, described in an interview Thursday how the Detroit congressman allegedly created a hostile work environment for his female staffers and, at times, pressed her for sexual favors, particularly when his wife was away. He owns you when you are there, Brown said in the interview with Stephen Henderson, host of Detroit Today on WDET-FM (101.9) and editorial page editor at the Free Press. At one time, it was said amongst staff members females that he thinks that his initials, J.C., stand for Jesus Christ, she said.Brown said Conyers would invite me to a hotel in the guise of business, and then it turns into something else. And this happened too often. And that was throughout. She said the sexual advances intensified whenever his wife, Monica Conyers, was out of town. He seemed to have taken on the attitude that I m gonna go for it now. My wife s away, and I have these needs and I m going to call you up in the middle of the night, Brown said. I know it s because he decided that he wanted to stop the hunting game, Brown said. He had no more interest in trying to persuade and seduce me into, you know, sex or being his side piece. During that interview, she shared details of Conyers alleged sexual advances toward her, including how Conyers in 2005 allegedly invited her to his Chicago hotel room and, while in his underwear, pointed to his genitals and asked her to touch it. ;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRESIDENT TRUMP Goes Shopping…He’s a Hit!;The photos from President Trump s visit to the food storehouse for LDS families in need are great. President Donald Trump created quite a stir when he pushed a shopping cart down a food aisle at the LDS Church Bishops Central Storehouse in Salt Lake City.The state-of-the-art facility from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was built to better enable the church to help families in need.THUMBS UP! This is very exciting for me, Trump added. I know so many people that are in your church, the Latter-day Saints. The job you ve done is beyond anything you could think of taking care of people the way you take care of people and the respect that you have all over the world. CHECKING HIS LISTTrump said Monday that he s pressing Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who accompanied the president on his visit, to run for an eighth term, but when asked if he was trying to block Mitt Romney from running for the seat, the president was complimentary of the former GOP presidential nominee. He s a good man. Mitt s a good man, he said, according to the Deseret News. But, without a doubt, the best part of the visit was photographs of Trump wheeling the full cart of food;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PELOSI TWEETS to California Republicans: ‘You don’t belong here’…Is Immediately Destroyed On Twitter;Nancy Pelosi just embarrassed herself by saying the Republican tax cuts are The end of the world (see below) and now this:Nancy Pelosi decided to tell California Republicans they don t belong and was immediately trashed on twitter: I want every single California Republican to understand this. Your ideology doesn t come first. Your party doesn t come first. The PEOPLE come first. If you fail to recognize that, you don t belong here. I want every single California Republican to understand this. Your ideology doesn t come first. Your party doesn t come first. The PEOPLE come first. If you fail to recognize that, you don t belong here. https://t.co/xjbyOTI2MC Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) December 5, 2017Pelosi was immediately hit with responses:Shut up, clown. We have a homeless crisis here, our kids are stepping in human feces and junkies needles, There s tent cities under freeway overpasses, public domains, and public streets from San Diego to San Francisco you don t give a damn about people https://t.co/uNwCHD7CRt RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) December 5, 2017Hysterical video of the Chuck and Nancy show:The Chuck and Nancy show pic.twitter.com/mQums9x8y3 Mike (@Fuctupmind) December 5, 2017Sorry California, you have a very bitter representative. Starting a tweet attacking an entire party in your state and then claiming people come first either means she is confused or doesn't see Republicans as people.California you can do better. Paleo Libertarian (@bolderthanu) December 5, 2017Third generation Californian weighs in:Don t EVER tell me, as a 3rd generation Californian where I belong I ll go where ever I damn well please within the US & CA this is not your country (CA) Greg Orr (@Gregorr22) December 5, 2017PELOSI GOES OFF ABOUT TAX CUTS:Nancy Pelosi just got even more embarrassing than ever She pulled the drama card while commenting on the tax cuts: No this is the end of the world. The debate on health care is life or death. This is Armegeddon! This is a really big deal. Because you know why? It s really hard to come back from this This has been the way Pelosi has behaved lately OUR RECENT REPORT ON PELOSI: Nancy Pelosi spoke for less than 8 minutes to the LBJ Foundation on Wednesday, but some attendees may have left the event wondering what is wrong with the House Minority Leader. She was seen repeating words, having trouble speaking and botched Lyndon Baines Johnson twice.OUR PREVIOUS REPORTS ON PELOSI S ANTICS: Another brain freeze moment from Nancy Pelosi Why does she do this to herself? She continues to be the poster child for term limits!Comedian James Corden challenged Pelosi to say something nice about several prominent Republicans but he asked last about Trump Say one nice thing about Paul Ryan, Corden said, holding up a picture of the Speaker of the House.After some awkward silence, Pelosi acknowledged that Ryan is a gentleman. Corden followed up with Ted Cruz. Memorized the Constitution, Pelosi said. That s a good thing. It s a good thing, it s not a nice thing about him, Corden persisted. Ok, Ted Cruz, good father, Pelosi replied. Ok, time for the big dog, Corden said, pulling out a picture of Trump. Is there one nice thing you can say about Donald Trump? Flag pin, Pelosi said, pointing to the pin on Trump s lapel. I don t know that that counts, Corden said, That s not about Donald Trump, he probably didn t even put that on himself. Is there one nice thing you can say about Donald Trump? he repeated.Several seconds later, Pelosi replied: I hope so. I hope I can. But not today? Corden said. President, Pelosi said after another long pause. He s president. You can t think of one nice thing to say about him? Corden prodded. He s nice to me, Pelosi said. Is he? Is he respectful? Corden said. Yeah, respectful, Pelosi said. Read more: American Mirror;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THE DOJ TOOK $7 MILLION TAXPAYER DOLLARS AND STARTED A BONFIRE…’Russian Meddling’ Probe Goes off The Rails;The DOJ is reporting that they basically took American taxpayer dollars and started a bonfire with it In light of the fact that key investigators are severely compromised, this case is just a witch hunt that s gone off the rails. A few key details about the fired anti-Trump investigator who wasn t fired but moved to Human Resources by Comey:Peter Strzok sent anti-Trump messages to his girlfriend aka mistress then was just moved to HR. He s a part of the Comey/McCabe group. He handled the Fake Trump Dossier inside the FBI alongside McCabe. He was hand-picked by Comey to run the Hillary e-mail investigation. He was also hand-picked by Mueller for the senior investigative staff. Coincidences like this simply don t exist .BURNING YOUR HARD-EARNED DOLLARS:The Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday that nearly $7 million has been spent so far on the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.The costs cover a five-month period from May 17, when the Department of Justice appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel for the Russia investigation, to Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, CNN reports.Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentstein authorized the budget for the probe.The expenditures can be divided into two main categories: approximately $3.2 million spent by Mueller, and an additional $3.5 million spent on other Department of Justice components to support the investigation, including investigators from the FBI. Tuesday s revelation marks the first time the public has learned about how much taxpayer money has been spent on the Russia investigation.Congress has also been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, with multiple congressional committees conducting their own probes in both the House and Senate.Mueller s investigation has so far resulted in President Donald Trump s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., and the indictment of Trump s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, along with a longtime business associate.;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MUELLER TOP PROSECUTOR Praised DOJ Official for Defying Trump Travel Ban [Video];THANK GOODNESS FOR JUDICIAL WATCH! They pushed for emails from the DOJ and got a treasure trove of incriminating evidence of anti-Trump bias. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said it best when he said the email is an astonishing and disturbing find A top prosecutor who is now a deputy for Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe praised then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates (see more on Yates below) after she was fired in January by President Trump for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban.The email, obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, shows that on the night of Jan. 30, Andrew Weissmann wrote to Yates under the subject line, I am so proud. He continued, And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects. The disclosure follows confirmation that another Mueller investigator, FBI official Peter Strzok, was fired over the summer after allegedly sending anti-Trump texts to an FBI lawyer with whom he was romantically involved.His alleged actions revived concerns about the objectivity of the FBI probes of both Hillary Clinton s email setup and Russia election meddling.Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the new Weissmann document an astonishing and disturbing find. Andrew Weisman, a key prosecutor on Robert Mueller s team, praised Obama DOJ holdover Sally Yates after she lawlessly thwarted President Trump, he said in a statement. How much more evidence do we need that the Mueller operation has been irredeemably compromised by anti-Trump partisans? CATHERINE HERRIDGE:DOJ POLITICAL HACK SALLY YATES YOU RE FIRED! The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States. This order was approved as to form and legality by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel.Ms. Yates is an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.It is time to get serious about protecting our country. Calling for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.Tonight, President Trump relieved Ms. Yates of her duties and subsequently named Dana Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, to serve as Acting Attorney General until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons. I am honored to serve President Trump in this role until Senator Sessions is confirmed. I will defend and enforce the laws of our country to ensure that our people and our nation are protected, said Dana Boente, Acting Attorney General.;politics;05/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French court demands 40 million euro bail for Russian lawmaker;MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - A French judge has ordered a prominent Russian businessman and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov pay a 40 million euro ($47.25 million) bail for his release pending a tax fraud and money laundering investigation, a judicial source said on Wednesday. Kerimov was arrested on Nov. 20 in Nice on the French Riviera, prompting the Kremlin to intervene and say it would do everything in our power to protect his lawful interests . Kerimov appeared before a judge for the bail hearing on Tuesday, the source said. Russia s state-run Rossiya 24 TV station reported after his arrest that Kerimov had denied any guilt. Another Russian lawmaker, Rizvan Kurbanov, last month described Kerimov s arrest as an unprecedented demarche by the French . Originally from the mainly Muslim Russian region of Dagestan, Kerimov built his lucrative natural resources business through a combination of debt, an appetite for risk, and political connections. He owned top flight soccer club Anzhi Makhachkala until he sold it in 2016. Kerimov s fortune peaked at $17.5 billion in 2008 before slumping to just $3 billion in 2009, according to Forbes magazine. The investigation centers on the purchase of several luxury residences on the French Riviera via shell companies, something that could have enabled Kerimov to reduce taxes owed to the French state, a source close to the investigation told Reuters after Kerimov s arrest. ($1 = 0.8465 euros) ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia's High Court to rule in new citizenship test case;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia faces a series of by-elections that could topple the government, which trails in opinion polls and has lost its slender majority, in a bizarre citizenship crisis that has engulfed both sides of parliament. Senator Katy Gallagher and lower-house member David Feeney, both from the opposition Labor party, were referred to the High Court on Wednesday to determine whether they hold British, as well as Australian, citizenship. Neither is a member of the government, but the outcome of Gallagher s case in particular, which rests on whether she made reasonable steps to renounce her British citizenship, will set a precedent that could later unseat government members. Dual citizens are ineligible for elected office under Australia s 116-year-old constitution. In a nation in which half the population were either born overseas or have parents who were, the rule has disqualified nine lawmakers, and left Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition clinging to a minority government. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce briefly lost his seat when it was found he also held New Zealand citizenship. But he won it back in a by-election last weekend. A by-election in former tennis star John Alexander s theoretically safe Sydney seat on Dec. 19 will determine whether the government regains its one-seat majority. However, a victory may not be lasting, since the citizenship status of another four lower-house government lawmakers was called into question after a deadline for politicians to disclose the birthplace of their parents and grandparents passed on Tuesday. There are many inadequate disclosures that ask more questions than provide answers, Labor leader Bill Shorten told reporters in Canberra. The government, behind in opinion polls and keen to avoid any more by-elections, voted down a Labor proposal to refer those lawmakers cases to the High Court and said it would not revisit the matter until after the Gallagher case was heard. Gallagher filed paperwork, and paid processing fees, to renounce her British citizenship more than two months before being elected in July 2016. But she did not get confirmation from the British Home Office that her renunciation had been processed until after she was voted in, her disclosure documents show. Several other lawmakers are in a similar bind. It will be a test case, constitutional law expert George Williams, dean of law at the University of New South Wales, told Reuters by telephone. But it leaves open the possibility that now this will go on for quite some time. There s large question marks over quite a number of people. Turnbull s government would have to rely on the support of a handful of independent MPs to retain power if Alexander loses his Dec. 19 by-election, or if the High Court ousts another coalition lawmaker from the lower house. It s uncertain territory, we still don t know for sure who is eligible and who s not, University of Queensland politics lecturer Chris Salisbury told Reuters. (Refiles to add dropped word loses in paragraph 17) ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man appears in court accused of plotting to kill British PM May;LONDON (Reuters) - A man appeared in a London court on Wednesday on suspicion of plotting to kill Prime Minister Theresa May. A prosecution lawyer told Westminster Magistrates Court that the plot was to detonate an explosive device at the gates of Downing Street, gain access to May s office at Number 10 and to kill her. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as capital important for Israel: minister;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. recognition that Jerusalem is Israel s capital would be important for Israel even if it delayed moving its embassy there, Israel s minister for public security, Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday. This declaration is very important for us, but we only see it as a reflection of what is happening on the ground in reality, no game-changer, Erdan told reporters in Brussels. In reality, nothing is going to change. We don t think this is an excuse for a new wave of violence and we won t be afraid of this, he continued. U.S. President Donald Trump is expected on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. embassy to the ancient city. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. plan to move Israel embassy sign of 'failure', Iran's leader says;BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S. plans to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem are a sign of incompetence and failure, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there, breaking with longtime U.S. policy and potentially stirring unrest. That they claim they want to announce Quds as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure, Khamenei said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem, according to his official website. He made the remarks to a group of top Iranian officials, regional officials and religious figures attending a conference in Tehran. Iran has long supported a number of Palestinian militant groups opposed to Israel. The issue of Palestine today is at the top of the political issues for Muslims and everyone is obligated to work and struggle for the freedom and salvation of the people of Palestine, Khamenei said. At the same gathering, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said, Quds belongs to Islam, Muslims and the Palestinians, and there is no place for new adventurism by global oppressors, according to Mizan, the news site for the Iranian judiciary. Iran wants peace and stability in the region but will not tolerate the violation of Islamic holy sites, Rouhani said. No Muslim population, including Iran, will tolerate the violation of oppressors and Zionists against Islamic holy sites, Rouhani said, according to Mizan. The United States has not been able to reach its goals and seeks to destabilize the region, Khamenei said. On the issue of Palestine, (U.S.) hands are tied and they cannot advance their goals, Khamenei said, saying the Palestinian people would be victorious. American government officials have said themselves that we have to start a war in the region to protect the security of the Zionist regime (Israel), Khamenei said. Certain rulers in the region are dancing to America s tune Khamenei said, an indirect reference to Iran s main regional rival Saudi Arabia. Whatever America wants, they ll work against Islam to accomplish it, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain urges U.S. to come forward with Mideast peace plan;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called on the United States on Wednesday to present its proposal to revive the Middle East peace process as a matter of priority. Before a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at NATO, Johnson said the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Israel makes it more important than ever that the long-awaited American proposals on the Middle East peace process are now brought forward, he said. That should happen as a matter of priority, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greece, Turkey seek closer ties with Erdogan visit, but no quick fixes;ATHENS/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayip Erdogan will make a historic visit to Greece this week, a sign that relations between the two countries are improving, although a long list of grievances remains on both sides. Erdogan visited Greece as prime minister, in 2004 and 2010, but he will be the first Turkish head of state to visit Athens since Celal Bayar in 1952. He is also scheduled to visit Thrace in northern Greece, home to a large Muslim community. Greece and Turkey came to the brink of war as recently as 1996, but tensions have eased since. The two now cooperate in a deal brokered between Ankara and the European Union on stemming mass migration to Europe through Greece. Turkey s ties with some other European Union governments are strained, however, so Erdogan s visit on Dec. 7-8 will be important for Athens. It will help to ensure that communication continues over the migrant crisis and other bilateral issues. Issues that concern the two countries will be on the agenda of talks - tensions in the Aegean Sea, the refugee crisis, economic relations with a focus on energy, trade and transport, Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said. What we anticipate is a substantive upgrade of our relationship with Turkey ... We expect very constructive talks. In Turkey, a government official said: This will be a visit from which we expect solution to problems. I think Erdogan and (Greek Prime Minister Alexis) Tsipras will show a common will for the solution of some of the problems. At odds over everything from uninhabited islets, airspace and the boundaries of Greece s continental shelf to the ethnically divided island of Cyprus, differences between the two countries have outlived the Cold War. None of those issues has ever been resolved. The fallout of a failed coup attempt against Erdogan in 2016 has also tested their relations;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No comment on Trump's Jerusalem move from Netanyahu in first speech;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not comment on the planned U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital on Wednesday during his first public remarks since the White House confirmed the new policy. In his 21-minute speech to a Jerusalem diplomatic conference, Netanyahu outlined Israel s economic strengths and international outreach, emphasising the importance of ties with the United States. But he did not mention the U.S. President Donald Trump s Jerusalem announcement, due later on Wednesday. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says Trump plan to move embassy in Israel could spark 'new hostility';BEIJING (Reuters) - China expressed concern on Wednesday about U.S. President Donald Trump s reported intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and relocate the U.S. Embassy to the ancient city, saying it could spark new hostility. Senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital on Wednesday and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the city from Tel Aviv, a decision that risks fuelling violence in the Middle East. The endorsement of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would reverse long-standing U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as capital of their future state. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing that the status of Jerusalem was a complicated and sensitive issue and China was concerned the U.S. decision could sharpen regional conflict . All parties should do more for the peace and tranquillity of the region, behave cautiously, and avoid impacting the foundation for resolving the long-standing Palestine issue and initiating new hostility in the region, Geng said. China has long maintained that Palestinians must be allowed to build an independent state, although it has traditionally played little role in Middle East conflicts or diplomacy, despite its reliance on the region for oil. The process of moving the U.S. embassy is expected to take three to four years, according to U.S. officials, though Trump will not set a timetable. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Christine Keeler, woman at the centre of Britain's biggest sex scandal, dies;LONDON (Reuters) - Christine Keeler, the model and dancer whose liaisons with a British minister and a Soviet diplomat at the height of the Cold War shocked Britain and embroiled the government in a notorious political sex scandal, has died aged 75. Keeler s relationship with married Minister of War John Profumo, whom she met, aged 19, while swimming naked at the grand Buckinghamshire estate of his colleague William Astor, shocked socially conservative Britain in the early 1960s. Front-page revelations that she was also having an affair with a Soviet naval attache, Yevgeny Ivanov, titillated the public and shone a light on the social and sexual mores of Britain s secretive ruling establishment. Profumo was forced to resign after lying to parliament about their relationship. The political and diplomatic firestorm helped bring down the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the 1963 Profumo affair is still seen as a watershed moment that changed British attitudes to sex and class. Keeler s son, Seymour Platt, told The Guardian newspaper she had died on Tuesday night after suffering for months from a form of lung disease. She had led a humble lifestyle after the scandal but never escaped the notoriety it brought her. There was a lot of good around Chris s rather tragic life, because there was a family around her that loved her, Platt was quoted as saying. I think what happened to her back in the day was quite damaging. The black-and-white photograph of a naked Keeler sitting astride an Arne Jacobsen chair remains the defining image of the lurid scandal that has been retold several times on screen and stage, including as a musical. It even added an expression to the British lexicon. At the trial of Stephen Ward, the man who brought Keeler and Profumo together, a fellow showgirl was told that another establishment figure denied having sex with her. Well, he would, wouldn t he?, responded Mandy Rice-Davies. In later life, Keeler had regrets about how the scandal unfolded and said she had been a victim. I wish, that at that time, I had been older so that I would have been able to have answered or spoke up for myself and Stephen but I was only a young girl, she said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;KATIE HOPKINS WARNS AMERICANS Of Grave Danger Ahead: “Do Not Let This Great Country Become The United Kingdom” [VIDEO];Former British Army officer, outspoken, conservative, radio and tv talk show host, Katie Hopkins warned Americans to fight back against the appeasement and political correctness in the United States of America.British conservative icon, Katie Hopkins gave a blistering speech about the dangers of political correctness and appeasement at the David Horowitz Restoration weekend in Palm Beach, Florida. Look at us, let us be a warning. Be better than us. I ve watched my country fall apart, and I want to warn others before they let their country do the same. And believe me, I love my country. Katie touched on many topics that most Americans are afraid to address. Hopkins reveals a horrifying story of a Muslim woman, who along with her boyfriend, was recently sentenced to prison, after a plot to behead Hopkins was uncovered. Hopkins also shares horrifying stories of multiple British citizens who have lost their lives, their limbs or suffer serious scars, as a result of acts of jihad against them by Muslim immigrants in their homeland of Great Britain, after their nation welcomed them in with open arms. Do not allow America to fall as Europe has fallen, Hopkins told the crowd.Hopkins started out her speech with her usual biting and politically incorrect humor, by assuring the crowd she is not the outspoken, gay, conservative Milo Yiannopoulis. She then assured the audience that she was not gay simply because she wears her short. In fact, Hopkins calls herself a minority in London, because she s a white, married, mother of three, telling the audience that she s now on the extinct list in the UK.Hopkins tells of the time she spent in the migrant camps in Calais and tells horrifying stories of how the workers conform to the rule of Islam, so as not to offend the migrants they are taking care of. She tells a story of a mother who dresses her young daughter as a son, so the migrant men don t come into their tent to rape her daughter at night. Hopkins admitted that she was naive , and that she quickly realized, Migrants don t come for a new life and leave their old life behind. They bring them with them. All the old conflicts from back home. The Eritreans hate the Somalis who hate the Afghanis who don t speak to the Libyans. And they re still fighting. They come, they do not start a new life, they bring their conflicts from back home. Watch Hopkins powerful speech here (some language may be offensive):;politics;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey warns U.S. that Jerusalem embassy move is 'grave mistake';BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday that it would be a grave mistake for the United States to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and that he had warned U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Before a bilateral meeting with Tillerson at NATO headquarters, Cavusoglu said: It would be a grave mistake (to move the U.S. embassy). It will not bring any stability ... but rather chaos and instability. The whole world is against this, he said, adding that he had already told Tillerson how he felt and would reiterate it at the meeting at NATO during the alliance s foreign ministers meeting. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's ANC wants to avoid split after vote: senior official;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress (ANC) is doing everything possible to avoid a split in the party after elections for a new leader this month, a senior official running for the top job said on Wednesday. The ANC has been beset by infighting as factions supporting different candidates to succeed President Jacob Zuma as party leader have jostled for influence. Splits are never planned, but we are doing everything to ensure that there is no need for members of the ANC to split, Zweli Mkhize, the ANC s treasurer general, told Reuters. The party - one of Africa s oldest liberation movements - splintered in 2008 when members, angered by the ousting of former president Thabo Mbeki from the leadership, split away to form the Congress of the People (COPE). Some analysts have predicted an even bigger rupture could happen after the vote at the party s Dec. 16-20 conference, particularly if Zuma s preferred candidate, his former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, gets elected. The leadership contest is still too close to call, with most grassroots ANC members backing Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa or Dlamini-Zuma for ANC leader. Members are also divided on who should occupy the other senior party positions which are up for grabs. Mkhize said the best way to ensure the December vote did not weaken the ANC was for it to elect new leaders who appealed to a broad cross section of the party s membership. The party should avoid having a leadership where people say it represents one faction, he said. Mkhize did not comment on his own chance of winning - the ANC, which presents itself as a collective that discourages personal ambition, frowns upon its members openly campaigning for posts well ahead of an election. But analysts say Mkhize - one of the ANC s top six most powerful officials - is someone who could reconcile the opposing factions supporting Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa, or be nominated at the conference as a compromise candidate. Although Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma have been nominated for party leader by far more ANC branches, Mkhize could still mount a serious challenge if he is nominated by a large number of party members at the conference itself. Whoever the ANC elects as leader will probably become the next president of South Africa because of the party s electoral dominance. All seven ANC leadership hopefuls pledged to Zuma at a meeting last month that they would accept the outcome of the leadership vote in the interests of keeping the 105-year-old organization intact. Mkhize, a medical doctor by training and former party boss in Zuma s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, said that after the conference, the ANC should focus on tackling corruption, raising economic growth from a near standstill and addressing crime so it can win a 2019 national election. The ANC must be seen to be championing those issues, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya launches voter registration with election date unclear;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan electoral officials announced on Wednesday the opening of a two-month voter registration period, though it is unclear when elections will next be held in the divided nation. The United Nations is supporting the voter registration process as it seeks to reconcile rival factions and relaunch a political transition that would lead to new polls. The U.N. Libya mission has previously said it hopes elections can be held by the end of next year, but has also acknowledged complex security, political and legislative challenges to organizing a vote. Libya last held elections in 2014 but the results were disputed, deepening divisions that emerged after the country s 2011 uprising. The poll led to an escalation of armed conflict and to rival parliaments and governments being set up in the capital and the east. Some Libyan political figures have called for elections as a way to break the deadlock after the stalling of a U.N.-backed peace deal signed in late 2015, with a new U.N. push to amend that deal so far producing no breakthrough. U.N. Libya envoy Ghassan Salame expressed sympathy with that view at a joint press conference with Libya s High National Election Commission (HNEC) on Wednesday, calling elections the best way to separate competitors . I heard a large number of those demanding elections, some of whom decided on the type of elections and some who left it vague, Salame said. But he said certain conditions had to be met first, including electoral legislation being passed and Libyans agreeing to accept the results in advance. You do not want these elections to be another area of disagreement between Libyans, Salame said. The voter registration period is aimed at updating the voter register and allowing citizens who have not registered in the past to do so, said HNEC head Emad Alsayah. The registration process will last for 60 days, and the extension of process can be considered as required, he said. Libyans living abroad will be able to register online from Feb. 1. Turnout in national elections in 2014 was low, with 630,000 out of the 1.5 million registered casting a vote. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem may further worsen Israel-Palestinian relations;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia was concerned that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian authorities could be aggravated further by U.S. President Donald Trump s plans to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. However, we would not discuss the decisions which have not been taken yet, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Trump on Wednesday will deliver remarks about his decision on whether to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, White House Press Secretary Sarah Saders said on Tuesday. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump undermining stability with Jerusalem move: Germany's Schulz;BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is undermining international stability with his decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the U.S. embassy there, the leader of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) said on Wednesday. Affirming his support for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, Martin Schulz said Trump s decision, taken despite warnings from a wide range of U.S. allies, risked setting back the peace process in the Middle East. Trump is due to announce later on Wednesday that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there, breaking with longtime U.S. policy and possibly stirring unrest. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Respect 'status quo' of Jerusalem, says Pope in response to Trump move;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, speaking hours before U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement on Jerusalem, called on Wednesday for the city s status quo to be respected, saying new tension in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts. Trump is due on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the ancient city, senior U.S. officials said, a decision that upends decades of U.S. policy and risks fuelling further violence in the Middle East. In an appeal at the end of his weekly general audience, Francis called for all to honor United Nations resolutions on the city, which is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. I make a heartfelt appeal so that all commit themselves to respecting the status quo of the city, in conformity with the pertinent resolutions of the United Nations, he said. The Vatican backs a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with both sides agreeing on the status of Jerusalem as part of the peace process. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, whereas Israel has declared the whole city to be its united and eternal capital. The pope told thousands of people at his general audience: I cannot keep quiet about my deep worry about the situation that has been created in the last few days. He said he hoped wisdom and prudence prevail, in order to avoid adding new elements of tension to a global panorama that is already convulsed and marked by so many and cruel conflicts. In 2012, the Vatican called for an internationally guaranteed special statute for Jerusalem, aimed at safeguarding the freedom of religion and of conscience, the identity and sacred character of Jerusalem as a Holy City, (and) respect for, and freedom of, access to its holy places. Before making his public comments, Francis met privately with a group of Palestinians involved in inter-religious dialogue with the Vatican. The Holy Land is for us Christians the land par excellence of dialogue between God and mankind, he said. He spoke of dialogue between religions and also in civil society . The primary condition of that dialogue is reciprocal respect and a commitment to strengthening that respect, for the sake of recognizing the rights of all people, wherever they happen to be, he said to the group. The pope spoke by telephone to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about the crisis on Tuesday. The Vatican and Israel established full diplomatic relations in 1994. Francis, former Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II all visited Israel and Palestinian territories. When Francis visited the Holy Land in 2014, he flew directly by helicopter from Jordan to what the Vatican program called the State of Palestine and visited Israel last. This irked Israel because his predecessor had always gone first to Israel and entered the territories from Israel. The Vatican signed its first treaty with the State of Palestine the following year. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea boats off Japan spark spy scare;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech president appoints Andrej Babis as new prime minister;PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech billionaire businessman Andrej Babis was appointed prime minister on Wednesday after his ANO party came first in an October election, and he must now focus on securing parliamentary backing for a minority administration. Running on pledges to fight migration and make the state more efficient, ANO won 29.6 percent of the vote, nearly three times the support won by second-placed center-right Civic Democrats. Despite that strong showing, however, it is unclear whether Babis will be able to win a confidence vote for his government by mid-January as required by the constitution. He also faces the threat of prosecution in connection with his business interests. ANO holds 78 seats in the 200-seat lower house but has so far failed to win the backing of any of the other eight parties. Should he lose such a vote, Babis would stay in power until a new arrangement is found. But given his party s size, it would also most likely have to lead any other arrangement. In a televised ceremony on Wednesday, President Milos Zeman appointed Babis, 63, who set up ANO in 2011 as a protest movement when mainstream parties were embroiled in corruption scandals. Babis s new cabinet will take power on Dec. 13, allowing him to take part in a European Union leaders summit the following day. He has pledged to keep the budget in shape but also boost infrastructure investments and public sector wages, and play a more active role in the European Union, especially in securing the EU s external border to stop illegal migration. The Czechs are facing a possible EU suit over refusing to accept migrants under an EU quota system, which Babis said was his first European task. I will first have to negotiate and convince the European Commission not to sue us and to find a different solution, he told a news conference after his appointment. Quotas are not a solution, and the solution is outside Europe, and we have to win over other member states for this. The far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party and the Communists have lent ANO support in several initial votes in return for committee posts for their members, raising the prospect that they may have some kind of agreement to back ANO. But Babis said on Wednesday he had no deal in place and would talk to all parties to either back the cabinet or abstain from the vote to help it win. In the week of Dec. 18, we will present the program manifesto and negotiate on whether someone will go into government with us or give us tolerance, Babis said. Rival parties have criticized Babis, the second-richest person in the country, worth $4 billion according to Forbes, for conflicts of interests. He owns a farming, chemicals, food and media group which has contracts with the state and receives European subsidies. The main sticking point is a police request that parliament strip Babis of his immunity so he can be prosecuted for suspected fraud in tapping European Union subsidies. He denies any wrongdoing. If police drop the case or parliament refuses to lift immunity, Babis may win some votes from other factions. Analysts say a second attempt to form a cabinet, with or without Babis, may have a greater chance of success because many parties suffered losses in the October vote and are keen to avoid an early election, which a prolonged crisis could eventually lead to. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai court jails man for 27 years over Bangkok hospital bomb;BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court sentenced a 62-year-old man to 27 years in prison on Wednesday for planting a bomb at a Bangkok hospital that wounded 21 people. The explosion hit the Phramongkutklao Hospital in the Thai capital, Bangkok, in May on the third anniversary of a 2014 military coup. The hospital is popular with soldiers and their families and retired military officers. Police arrested Watana Pumret, a retired government employee, after the blast and said he had confessed to the bombing because he despises the military. From the evidence we believe the accused committed the offence ... the accused confessed to it, a judge said. Courts in Thailand often do not identify the names of judges, with the exception of some high-profile legal cases. Watana was seen crying after the verdict. He hugged his wife and refused to answer reporters questions, according to a Reuters reporter at the court. Reuters was unable to contact Watana s lawyer after the verdict. Thailand s military launched a coup in May 2014 after months of street protests that took a toll on Southeast Asia s second-biggest economy. The military promised to unite the politically divided country and restore stability but it has been accused by critics of not wanting to relinquish power. The military government has promised to hold a general election in November 2018 to return Thailand to democracy but senior government figures have said more time was needed to complete laws related to the vote. The government has also cited security concerns as a reason for not lifting a ban on politics that has been in place since 2014, despite increasing pressure from groups of all political stripes to lift the ban. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: EU Commission proposals on euro zone reform;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Wednesday a package of legislative and non-binding measures to reform the euro zone and make it more resilient to future crises. Below are the main proposals: The euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) should be transformed into a European Monetary Fund (EMF) with more responsibilities. In addition to providing loans to member states in financial trouble, the EMF would be a backstop for the euro zone s lender-funded bank resolution fund, the Single Resolution Fund. To make it more nimble, the EMF would in an emergency be able to take decisions with a majority vote, rather than with unanimity, as is the rule now. It could also develop new financial instruments that could be used to provide further support to states hit by financial shocks. A European Minister of Economy and Finance could start working from November 2019 when a new commission will take office. The minister would be at the same time a vice president of the commission, the chair of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers and would oversee the work of the new European Monetary Fund. The minister would promote and support the coordination and implementation of reforms in EU countries and would also be responsible for identifying an appropriate fiscal policy for the euro area as a whole. This new instrument would help countries hit by a crisis to maintain the same level of investment as in good times thanks to EU financial support. This could accelerate the recovery of troubled states. An ailing state could receive automatic support with a mix of loans and grants from the EU budget and the EMF. The financial aid would be strictly conditional on clear criteria and continuous sound policies, in particular those leading to more convergence within the euro area . EU states will be encouraged to carry out structural reforms with funds from the EU budget that could be made available already from next year. Technical and financial support would be provided to the EU countries that are not members of the 19-state euro zone and which want to join the common currency area. The intergovernmental Fiscal Compact treaty that has introduced stricter budgetary rules for all EU countries except Croatia, the Czech Republic and Britain which did not sign it, should be incorporated into EU law. The process is to increase the democratic legitimacy of EU fiscal rules, but faces opposition from countries like Italy that fear the tight provisions of the compact will become permanent. It is also criticized in Germany, where many fear it could lead to a softening of the current fiscal rules. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian air strikes kill 21 in eastern Syria: monitor;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russian air strikes killed 21 people in a village on the eastern side of the Euphrates River in east Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday. The strikes in Deir al-Zor province were to support the Kurdish-led U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting Islamic State, which had attempted to launch an attack on the town earlier this week, the war monitor said. Russia has been carrying out air strikes in the province mainly in support of the Syrian army which, alongside allied Shi ite militias, has been waging its own assault against Islamic State on the western side of the Euphrates. The separate assaults have advanced along opposite sides of the river, which bisects oil-rich Deir al-Zor, mostly staying out of each other s way. The U.S.-led coalition and the Russian military have held deconfliction meetings to prevent clashes between them, though the two offensives have sometimes come into conflict. The Observatory also reported on Wednesday that the Syrian army and its allied forces had finished the presence of Islamic State on the western bank of the river. On Sunday, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which spearheads the SDF, announced it had fully captured Deir al-Zor s eastern countryside from Islamic State with the help of both the U.S.-led coalition and Russia. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico's ruling party presidential hopeful trails leftist: poll;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Former Mexico finance minister Jose Antonio Meade, who resigned to seek the presidential nomination of the ruling party, is lagging far behind in public support ahead of next year s election, according to a newspaper poll published on Wednesday. Meade, who is widely expected to receive the nomination of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), came in third in two scenarios polled by Mexican newspaper El Universal, while leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador maintained a strong lead in both instances. The survey found that 31 percent of respondents would vote for Lopez Obrador, who leads the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party, followed by the conservative National Action Party s (PAN) Ricardo Anaya, leading a coalition of parties, with 23 percent. Meade came in third with 16 percent. When Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera was entered into the mix for the coalition, Obrador had 32 percent support, followed by Mancera with 22 percent and Meade with 15 percent. The poll was conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 4, after Meade resigned to seek the presidency. Meade, who has served in both PRI and PAN administrations, has a reputation for honesty that PRI officials hope will help the party recover from a spate of corruption scandals. But he remains unknown to much of the Mexican public. A victory for the combative and nationalist-leaning Lopez Obrador, who promises to revive economic growth by battling graft, could stoke tensions with the Trump administration just as the United States, Mexico and Canada seek to seal a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Support for MORENA and the PAN slipped 1 percentage point from the previous poll in November, while support for the PRI held steady at 16 percent, according to El Universal. The survey by pollster Buendia & Laredo included 744 face-to-face interviews and has a +/- 4.1 percent margin of error. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Abu Dhabi Crown Prince offers condolences to exiled son of slain Yemeni ex-leader in UAE;DUBAI (Reuters) - The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi offered his condolences to the son of slain former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh at his residence in Abu Dhabi, according to his official twitter account. The account tweeted a picture of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces visiting Ahmed Ali at his residence in the United Arab Emirates capital. Ahmed Ali, a former commander of Yemen s elite Republican Guards, once served as Yemen s ambassador to the UAE before it joined ally Saudi Arabia to make war against the Houthis. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Many years of rhetoric reflect conflict over Jerusalem;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - In the 50 years since Israel captured Jerusalem, the rhetoric of leaders in the Middle East has reflected the deep division over the fate of the city. Jerusalem remains at the heart of the conflict in the region. Here are some of the statements made since 1967: * Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president from 1970 to 1981, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem in 1977: There are Arab lands which Israel occupied and continues to occupy through armed force. We insist on the complete withdrawal from them, including Arab Jerusalem ... It is inadmissible that anyone should conceive the special status of the city of Jerusalem within the framework of annexation or expansionism. * Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, to Time Magazine in 1973: Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided - not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing. The only way we will lose Jerusalem is if we lose a war, and then we lose all of it. * Yasser Arafat, Palestinian president and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization until his death in 2004, said more than once: Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian state. Whoever accepts this, fine. Whoever does not, let him drink from the sea at Gaza. There is absolutely nobody among us who will surrender one grain of the soil of noble Jerusalem. * Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, in a speech to the Knesset in 1995, the year of his assassination: I said yesterday, and repeat today, that there are not two Jerusalems;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson takes tough line on Russia, open to peacekeepers;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday there could be no normal relations with Russia until Moscow ended its support for separatists in Ukraine and returned Crimea, in comments likely to reassure Western allies. Speaking after a dinner where he discussed Russia with NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday, Tillerson took a tougher stance than U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said last month after meeting Putin in Vietnam that he believed Putin s denial of accusations that Moscow meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. That was despite U.S. intelligence agencies evidence of Russian interference. At NATO, Tillerson criticized Russia s continued use of hybrid warfare and its attempts to undermine Western institutions in a reference to the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West. This stands as a significant obstacle to normalizing our relations, Tillerson told reporters. At the NATO dinner with ministers, Tillerson also blamed Russia for interfering in the U.S. election, said a diplomat who was present. Russia has denied meddling. Trump, whose former aides are being investigated after accusations that Putin influenced the election that brought him to the White House, has repeatedly emphasized that it would be better if Russia and the United States could work together. Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, has spent much of his time as secretary of state trying to smooth the America First foreign policy that has alarmed Trump s allies, but the president has publicly undercut the secretary of state s diplomatic initiatives. His trip to Europe this week was partly overshadowed by reports the White House had a plan to replace him, which Tillerson denied on Wednesday. [L8N1O63LC] Tillerson stressed to ministers that the Ukraine crisis, which was sparked by Moscow s 2014 annexation of Crimea, was the central issue that blocked better U.S.-Russia ties because seizing sovereign territory was unacceptable, according to a second diplomat present. The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters. People are still dying every day from that violence, Tillerson said. Tillerson, who in 2013 as head of Exxon Mobil was awarded the Order of Friendship by Putin, a Russian state honor, said he hoped to agree to deploy U.N. troops to eastern Ukraine, an idea the Russian president floated in September. With an internationally-agreed ceasefire long broken and efforts to revive a 2015 peace deal stalled, peacekeepers could end hostilities and allow trade to resume between Russia and Ukraine. But Tillerson warned there was still a significant difference between the mandate that a peacekeeping force would be given and the scope of their mandate . We hope we can close those gaps, Tillerson said. Russia is keen to see the end of Western sanctions imposed over the Ukraine crisis but European officials fear U.N. peacekeepers would freeze the conflict rather than solving it. Tillerson also cautioned against treating Russia as a partner, saying all meetings with Moscow should be based on issues, not agreed on the basis of a calendar, quashing any hopes of a detente in Moscow s relations with Washington. I think there is broad consensus among all the NATO members that there is no normalization of dialogue with Russia today, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Air strike reported near Somalia's capital, official says Shabaab targeted;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - An air strike hit a village south of Somalia s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday and a local official said the attack targeted Islamist al Shabaab militants fighting to topple the country s central government. It was not immediately clear who had carried out the air strike but the United States frequently conducts such attacks to bolster Somalia s army in its fight against al Shabaab. A local government official told Reuters the strike occurred in Ilimey village, about 130 km (80 miles) southwest of Mogadishu. The area is mostly controlled by al Shabaab. The target, he said, was a car used by the militants to transport supplies to a squad preparing bombs. The strike hit the car ... but we do not know details of casualties, Ali Nur, deputy governor of Somalia s lower Shabelle region told Reuters. But Mohamed Abu Usama, al Shabaab s governor for the same region, denied that al Shabaab personnel had been attacked and instead said the strike had killed civilians. The strike hit a makeshift tea shop and thus killed 7 civilians and injured three others, he said. Somalia has been trapped in chaos and lawlessness since 1991 when dictator Siad Barre was toppled. Al Shabaab wants to topple the Western-backed central government and establish its own rule based on its strict interpretation of Islam s sharia law. An African Union peace keeping force AMISOM pushed the group from Mogadishu and other former strongholds. But the Islamists remain a formidable force, carrying out frequent bombings and other assaults on AMISOM, Somali army and civilian targets. In October over 500 people died in one of Somalia s deadliest bombings when a truck bomb exploded outside a busy hotel at Mogadishu s K5 intersection lined with government offices, restaurants and kiosks. A second blast struck Medina district two hours later. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria replaces commander in fight against Boko Haram after six months;MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria is replacing the military commander of the fight against Boko Haram after half a year, an army spokesman said on Wednesday, following a string of insurgency attacks despite years of official claims the group has almost been defeated. The shake-up underscores the fragility of the security situation in Nigeria s northeast, where the conflict with the Islamist insurgent group is now in its ninth year, despite assertions by President Muhammadu Buhari s administration that it is on its last legs. A military spokesman confirmed the replacement of Ibrahim Attahiru, theater commander of the operation against Boko Haram, in a text message to Reuters. Major General Rogers Nicholas will take his position. The spokesman did not provide further details. Attahiru s removal comes in the wake of a series of embarrassing attacks, two military sources told Reuters. They said the conduct of the war against the insurgents is now being reviewed. The attacks, which occurred during Attahiru s command, include the kidnapping of members of an oil prospecting team which led to at least 37 people being killed in July, and deadly assaults on the towns of Magumeri, Biu and Madagali, the sources said. A spokesman for the president, who serves as Nigeria s commander-in-chief, declined to comment. The governor of Borno state, which is at the epicenter of the insurgency, has said the government s long-term plan now is to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns - effectively ceding the countryside to Boko Haram. That plan and the spate of deadly attacks have raised questions about assertions by the government and military that Boko Haram has been all but wiped out, as well as doubts about Nigeria s ability to retain sovereign integrity in the northeast. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab League to hold emergency meeting on Jerusalem on Saturday;CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League is to hold an emergency meeting on Saturday on U.S. plans to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the head of the Palestinian delegation to the body said on Wednesday. The Palestinians and Jordan had requested the meeting which will take place at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT), Ambassador Diab al-Louh told Reuters by phone. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians seethe at Trump's 'insane' Jerusalem move;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinians seethed with anger and a sense of betrayal over U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Many heard the death knell for the long-moribund U.S.-sponsored talks aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They also said more violence could erupt. Trump wants to help Israel take over the entire city. Some people may do nothing, but others are ready to fight for Jerusalem, said Hamad Abu Sbeih, 28, an unemployed resident of the walled Old City. This decision will ignite a fire in the region. Pressure leads to explosions, he said. Jerusalem specifically its eastern Old City, home to important shrines of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli captured Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War then later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want it to be the capital of a future independent state and resolution of its status is fundamental to any peace-making. Trump is due to announce later on Wednesday that the United States recognizes the city as Israel s capital and will move its embassy there from Tel Aviv, breaking with longtime policy.. This is insane. You are speaking about something fateful. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine and neither the world nor our people will accept it, said Samir Al-Asmar, 58, a merchant from the Old City who was a child when it fell to Israel. It will not change what Jerusalem is. Jerusalem will remain Arab. Such a decision will sabotage things and people will not accept it. Palestinian newspapers also decried the move. Trump Defies the World, thundered Al-Ayyam. Another, Al-Hayat, roared Jerusalem is the Symbol of Palestinian Endurance in a red-letter headline over an image of the city s mosque compound flanked by Palestinian flags. Palestinian leaders have also warned the move could have dangerous consequences. Although winter rains dampened protests called for East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, few doubted fresh bloodshed now loomed. Israeli security forces braced for possible unrest but police said the situation in Jerusalem was calm for now. That could quickly change, given the religious passions that swirl around the Old City, where Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam s third-holiest shrine, abuts the Western Wall prayer plaza, a vestige of two ancient Jewish temples. Palestinians mounted two uprisings, or intifadas, against Israeli occupation from 1987 to 1993 then from 2000 to 2005, the latter ignited by a visit by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the shrine area, known to Jews as Temple Mount. Violent confrontations also took place in July when Israel installed metal detectors at an entrance to Al-Aqsa compound after Arab gunmen holed up there killed two of its policemen. Four Palestinians and three Israelis died in ensuing violence. In the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza, demonstrators chanted Death to America , Death to Israel and Down with Trump . They also burned posters depicting the U.S., British and Israeli flags. Youssef Mohammad, a 70-year-old resident of a refugee camp, said Trump s move would be a test for Arab leadership at a time of regional chaos and shifting alliances. Let him do it. Let s see what Arab rulers and kings will do. They will do nothing because they are cowards, the father of eight said. The Jerusalem uproar could affect Egyptian-brokered efforts to bring Gaza, which has been under Islamist Hamas control for a decade, back under the authority of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who favors negotiation with Israel. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Trump s planned moved showed the United States was biased. The United States was never a neutral mediator in any cause of our people. It has always stood with the occupation (Israel), he said. He said Abbas administration should rid itself of the illusion that rights can be achieved through an American-backed deal . (Corrects Ariel Sharon s title to opposition leader) ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian leader to respond to Trump's Jerusalem announcement in TV speech;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver a televised speech on Wednesday in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s anticipated announcement that Washington recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a Palestinian official said. The president (Abbas) will first listen to President Trump s speech, and will then give a response, the official told Reuters, adding that the remarks would be broadcast on Palestine TV. Trump s announcement on Jerusalem, a city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was set for 1 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far held off on commenting explicitly about Trump s planned policy shift. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man appears in court accused of trying to kill British PM May;LONDON (Reuters) - A 20-year-old man appeared in court on Wednesday accused of plotting to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May by first detonating an explosive device to get into her Downing Street office. Naa imur Rahman, of north London, has been charged with preparing to commit acts of terrorism. He was remanded in custody after a brief appearance at Westminster Magistrates Court. Prosecutor Mark Carroll told the court Rahman planned to detonate an improvised explosive device at the gates of Downing Street and gain access to May s office in the ensuing chaos and kill her. The secondary attack was to be carried out with a suicide vest, pepper spray and a knife, he told the court. Rahman was carrying two inert explosive devices when he was arrested last week, the court heard. His purpose was to attack, kill and cause explosions, Carroll said. Rahman appeared with a co-defendant, 21-year-old Mohammed Imran, from Birmingham, who is also charged with preparing to commit acts of terrorism. Carroll said Imran was accused of trying to join the Islamic State militant group in Libya. Rahman and Imran gave no indication as to their plea so a not guilty plea was entered on their behalf. There was no application for bail. The men will appear at London s Old Bailey central criminal court on Dec. 20. No. 10 Downing Street is the official residence of British prime ministers. It is heavily guarded and there is a gate at the end of the street preventing members of the public from getting close to the house. In 1991, Irish Republican Army (IRA) militants launched a mortar bomb attack on No. 10. John Major, the prime minister at the time, was inside but not hurt. A Downing Street spokesman declined immediate comment on the case. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek top court to decide Dec. 13 on Russia cyber suspect extradition;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece s Supreme Court will decide on Dec. 13 whether to extradite a Russian to the United States where authorities want to put him on trial for laundering $4 billion via a bitcoin platform. Alexander Vinnik, who says he is a bitcoin consultant, is accused by U.S. authorities of running the BTC-e exchange, which they allege was a conduit for laundering proceeds from illicit activities. Vinnik denies the charges and is fighting his extradition to the United States. I don t think there is independent justice in the United States for a Russian citizen, Vinnik told the court in session in Athens. He also said conditions in American prisons were terrible . Addressing the court, a Greek public prosecutor recommended Vinnik s extradition. The 38-year-old was arrested in northern Greece on the basis of a U.S. warrant in July, one of seven Russians arrested or indicted worldwide this year on U.S. cybercrime charges. Since his arrest, Russia has also sought Vinnik s extradition there on lesser charges of fraud. Vinnik has agreed to be extradited to Russia. In competing requests of this nature, the final decision of where Vinnik will be extradited rests with Greece s justice minister. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary charges Jobbik MEP with spying on EU for Russia;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A Hungarian European Parliament member who belongs to the nationalist opposition Jobbik party has been charged with spying on European Union institutions for Russia, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The charges against Bela Kovacs, which include using forged private documents, stem from an investigation dating from April 2014, when Hungarian authorities first reported the suspected espionage and filed for his immunity to be lifted. This was followed by declaring reasonable suspicion, the essence of which was that the member of parliament had been involved in espionage on behalf of a foreign state for its secret service, the prosecutors said in a statement. The foreign state in question was Russia, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor s office said. Kovacs himself said the case against him was based on fantasy and added he looked forward to the court proceedings, where he expected to exonerate himself. I am very happy that we finally made it to this point and I can clear my name in court and put an end to this saga, he told Reuters by phone. No date has been announced for a trial. The charges against Kovacs follow a probe by Hungarian prosecutors into the financial reporting practices of Jobbik, the strongest opposition party. The issue of collusion with Russia is especially touchy in Hungary because Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also often been charged with having uncomfortably close ties with Moscow. He struck a giant nuclear power deal with Russia, along with other major business deals, has criticized the EU embargo on Russia and meets annually with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orban s ruling Fidesz party, which is runaway favorite to win a third successive term in power, declined comment on Kovacs s remarks. For more than a decade in the 1980s and 1990s Kovacs lived in Moscow, a fact that he has never denied. He returned to Budapest in 2003 and two years later joined Jobbik, then a nascent political movement. Asked about that path now, Kovacs said the stories that paint him as a spy were strange to my eyes, too. All the red and green dossiers ... fantasy is boundless. Kovacs added that his case, which the Hungarian secret services first brought during the 2014 election season, was probably a political tool in the hands of the ruling Fidesz party used to deflect the stigma of association with Russia away from Fidesz onto Jobbik. I am almost positive this has a political relevance, Kovacs said. It is no coincidence that it was brought up before elections. Now the court dates will probably fall in the thick of the election campaign, and clearly will be used to attack my party. Kovacs told Reuters that he would quit Jobbik as of Wednesday to spare the party political smears, but said he would hold onto his MEP mandate until it expired in 2019. The European Parliament lifted Kovacs immunity in the spy case after a lengthy process in October 2015. Following a report by European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), Hungarian prosecutors also launched an investigation in 2015 against Kovacs over the fictitious employment of interns. Kovacs and his associates are suspected of defrauding the European Parliament of funds worth 21,076 euros ($24,909.72) in total, Hungarian prosecutors said. Kovacs also denies that charge but told Reuters he will repay that sum in the next couple of months. ($1 = 0.8461 euros) ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;PM May working towards EU summit, progress made in talks - spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May is working towards unlocking Brexit talks at an EU summit later this month and, despite there being more work to be done, has made good progress, her spokesman said on Wednesday. Asked whether there was any truth in reports that there would be no deal with Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party over the border with EU member Ireland this week, the spokesman said: As the PM said earlier this week, good progress has been made but there is work still to do. We continue to work towards making further progress at the EU Council later this month. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May's spokesman warns against 'speculating' that money involved in DUP Brexit row;LONDON (Reuters) - A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May warned on Wednesday against the idea that discussions with Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party to resolving a Brexit row could involve the Northern Irish budget. I d warn you against speculating in that direction, the spokesman told reporters when asked if talks involved financial issues and Northern Ireland s budget. He said the government would not be providing further details of a telephone call between May and DUP leader Arlene Foster earlier in the day. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France says Syrian government obstructing peace talks;PARIS (Reuters) - France accused the Syrian government on Wednesday of obstructing U.N.-led peace talks with its refusal to return to Geneva and called on Russia not to shirk its responsibilities to get Damascus to the negotiating table. Talks on ending the war in Syria resumed on Wednesday, but with no sign of President Bashar al-Assad s negotiators returning to the table in Geneva. The process began last week. But after a few days with little apparent progress, the U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said the Syrian government delegation led by Bashar al-Ja afari was returning to Damascus to consult and refresh . France condemns the absence of the delegation of the regime and its refusal to engage in good faith in the negotiations to achieve a political solution, French foreign ministry deputy spokesman Alexandre Georgini told reporters. This refusal highlights the obstruction strategy of the political process carried out by the Damascus regime, which is responsible for the absence of progress in the negotiations, he added. He said Russia, as one of President Bashar al-Assad s main backers, needed to assume its responsibilities so that the Syrian government finally entered the negotiations. De Mistura had said he expected talks to resume around Tuesday Dec. 5, but Ja afari said before leaving that he might not come back because the opposition had stated that Assad could not play a role in a future interim government. During last week s sessions, de Mistura shuttled between the representatives of the two warring sides, who did not meet face-to-face. He had planned to continue the round until Dec. 15. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;London mayor calls for UK apology over colonial-era massacre in India;LONDON (Reuters) - Mayor of London Sadiq Khan called on the British government on Wednesday to make a formal apology for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which nearly 400 Sikhs were shot dead by British Indian army soldiers. During a visit to the Golden Temple at Amritsar in northern India, the most important pilgrimage site of Sikhism, Khan called the massacre one of the most horrific events in Indian history. On Sunday 13 April 1919, some 50 soldiers began shooting at unarmed civilians who were taking part in a peaceful protest against oppressive laws enforced in the Punjab by British colonial authorities. At least 379 Sikhs were killed, but the figure is still disputed. It is wrong that successive British governments have fallen short of delivering a formal apology to the families of those who were killed, he said. I m clear that the government should now apologize, especially as we reach the centenary of the massacre. This is about properly acknowledging what happened here and giving the people of Amritsar and India the closure they need through a formal apology. Khan, who is from the opposition Labour Party, does not speak for Britain s Conservative government. Former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron visited Amritsar at the end of a trade mission to India four years ago in a show of contrition over the massacre but stopped short of making a formal apology. Khan is on a six-day mission to India and Pakistan to strengthen cultural and economic ties with the British capital. The British Foreign Office said in a statement: As the former Prime Minister said when he visited the Jallianwala Bagh in 2013, the massacre was a deeply shameful act in British history and one that we should never forget. It is right that we pay respect to those who lost their lives and remember what happened. The British Government rightly condemned the events at the time. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;SPD leader promises to push Germany to embrace Macron;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) will do everything in their power to ensure that Berlin embraces the European ideas of French President Emmanuel Macron, SPD leader Martin Schulz said on Wednesday. Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives are hoping to form a coalition with the SPD after failing to get a three-way coalition with the liberal Free Democrats and Greens off the ground. The SPD will debate the idea of once again joining such a coalition at a congress on Dec. 7-9. Schulz criticized Merkel indirectly for not embracing Macron s ideas, which include closer cooperation in defense, migration and a deeper integration of the euro zone. Our congress will be about this tomorrow. What are our possibilities, our options, our instruments for ensuring that Germany embraces these French ideas, Schulz said at an SPD conference in the party s Berlin headquarters. France is making proposals and Germany is not engaging. This is not acceptable, he added. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;PM May to speak to Trump on Jerusalem, says its status should be determined by negotiation;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said she intended to speak to U.S. President Donald Trump about the status of Jerusalem, which she said should be determined as part of a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. May said the ancient city should ultimately be shared between Israel and a future Palestinian state. She said there should be a sovereign and viable Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution. I m intending to speak to President Trump about this matter, May said. The status of Jerusalem should be determined in a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Jerusalem should ultimately form a shared capital between the Israeli and Palestinian states, May said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Briton accused of terrorism offences posted picture of Prince George: court;LONDON (Reuters) - A British man posted a picture of Prince George, 4, and the address of his London school as part of a series of possible targets for Islamist militants, a court heard on Wednesday. Husnain Rashid, 31, is accused of posting information on the Telegram messaging service to encourage jihadis to carry out attacks along with information to help them with possible targets such as stadia. Prosecutor Rebecca Mundy told London s Westminster Magistrates Court that this included posting a picture of Prince George, son of Queen Elizabeth s grandson Prince William and Kate and destined to be the future king, next to a silhouette of a jihadi fighter. The post included the address of his school in southwest London which he started attending in September and was accompanied with the caption even the royal family will not be left alone , the court heard. Rashid, from Nelson in Lancashire, northern England, is charged with preparing terrorism acts, which involved plans to travel to Syria to engage in fighting, and preparing to assist others to commit terrorist acts. He did not apply for bail and indicated he would plead not guilty to the charges. He was remanded in custody until Dec. 20 when he will appear at London s Old Bailey central criminal court. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin says to decide soon if he will run for re-election;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he would decide very soon whether to run for re-election next year, something he is widely expected to do and comfortably win. Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000. If, as expected, he contests and wins what would be a fourth presidential term in March, he would be eligible to serve another six years until 2024. In a glitzy event in Moscow attended by young people, a host asked Putin if he would be running for re-election in March. The Russian leader, who polls regularly show enjoys a popularity rating of around 80 percent, asked the audience if they supported him running in the elections. Yes, the audience shouted back, applauding him loudly. I understand that this decision must be taken in the near future and it will be taken in the near future, Putin told the audience. And when taking it I will of course take into account our conversation today and your reaction. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK government still undecided on final Brexit aims: Hammond;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s government has not yet decided what it wants from a final Brexit deal because it is still waiting to clear preliminary talks with Brussels, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Wednesday. With the clock ticking towards Britain s scheduled March 2019 exit from the European union, the government is focused at the moment on getting a green light for the negotiations on future trade relations with the EU, Hammond said. The cabinet has had general discussions about our Brexit negotiations but we haven t had a specific mandating of an end-state position, he told lawmakers in Britain s parliament. Prime Minister Theresa May s top ministers have big differences over what Brexit should mean for Britain, and over the extent of concessions that the country should offer in return for preferential access to the EU s single market. Hammond said a group of key government ministers would deal with the issue once Britain is given the go-ahead by other EU countries that it can proceed with negotiations for a new, post-Brexit trade deal. That go-ahead is on hold pending an agreement by the bloc s other 27 member states that Britain has done enough on the terms of its divorce, now stuck on differences over how open the future border between Ireland and Northern Ireland should be. We are not yet at that stage and it would have been premature to have that discussion until we reach that stage, Hammond told parliament s Treasury Committee. A spokesman for May, asked about Hammond s comments, told reporters that government ministers would discuss the preferred outcome of the Brexit talks before the end of the year. We re not into phase two (of negotiations) yet, and Brussels have been clear that they re not prepared to discuss end state , the spokesman said. Earlier on Wednesday Brexit minister David Davis inflamed critics of the government s handling of Brexit when he said he had not conducted formal sector-by-sector analyses of the effect of Brexit on the economy, arguing they were not yet necessary. Hammond has previously said he favors striking a pragmatic deal with the EU to minimize Brexit s impact on businesses and the economy, angering some Brexit supporters who favor a more definitive rupture with Brussels. On Wednesday, Hammond reiterated that Britain would leave the EU s single market and its customs union but that need not represent a big change to Britain s relationship with the bloc, if Britain replicates most of the current arrangements. Now, that would have consequences and some of our colleagues would not find that palatable, but it would be logically possible to approach it in that way, he said. May hopes to secure the launch of the second phase of the Brexit negotiations when she meets other EU leaders next week. But she suffered a setback this week when her allies in a political party from Northern Ireland objected to proposals for post-Brexit rules for the border with Ireland. The Democratic Unionist Party said on Wednesday the stand-off increased the likelihood of a no deal Brexit - the nightmare scenario for many British businesses. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Glimmer of hope' as food and fuel arrives in Yemen ports: NRC;GENEVA (Reuters) - A blockade of Yemen s key ports appeared to have been broken on Wednesday as ships arrived with food and fuel for the desperate population, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), an humanitarian aid agency, told Reuters. A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen has blockaded Yemeni ports since Nov. 6, after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh. Although it later eased the restrictions by allowing U.N. flights and aid ships, that has not changed Yemen s dire situation much. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. Today for the first time (there was) a little glimmer of hope... the first commercial goods have arrived in port, and the first ships that were let through this iron grip, NRC chief Jan Egeland said. Egeland said the first food and fuel had arrived in the key ports of Hodeidah and Saleef, but it remained a trickle compared to what was needed, since Yemen s population of 27 million is almost entirely reliant on imports for food, fuel and medicine. We need a lot of ships every single day and now we ve had months with no ships, so I still fear the famine, I still fear starvation, I still fear epidemic disease in new areas. Citing information from the U.N.-led logistics cluster of aid agencies, Egeland said three vessels had berthed at Hodeidah with 87,000 tonnes of food, and one with 38,000 of food had arrived at the anchorage area of Saleef port. There were seven other vessels with more than 177,000 tonnes of food waiting to enter Hodeidah anchorage area, as well as three vessels with 52,000 tonnes of fuel. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Panama recalls EU ambassador over tax haven list;PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama recalled its ambassador to the EU from Brussels for consultations after the Central American country was included on a European Union blacklist of countries deemed as tax havens, the government said on Wednesday. European Union finance ministers adopted a blacklist of 17 jurisdictions deemed tax havens on Tuesday, in an unprecedented step to counter worldwide tax avoidance, although they did not agree on financial levies for the listed countries. Given the unfortunate incorporation of the country in this discriminatory list, the Republic of Panama has decided to call its Ambassador to the European Union, Dario Chiru, to assess the steps to be followed moving forward, the government said in a statement. The list also included American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates (UAE). The government of the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago said on Wednesday that it soon would take two bills to parliament to reform its tax codes. Passage of those bills could help it get removed from the EU blacklist, the government said. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago shares the goals of the EU with respect to fighting tax abuse and reassures that we will act with alacrity on this matter, the country s attorney general said in a statement ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians call general strike, rallies to protest Trump Jerusalem move;GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian secular and Islamist factions on Wednesday called a general strike and midday rallies to protest U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, they said in a joint statement. Answering the call for strike on Thursday, the Palestinian education ministry declared a day off and urged teachers as well as high school and university students to take part in the planned rallies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas in Jerusalem. In a speech in Washington, Trump said he had decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the U.S. embassy to the city. Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East condemned the U.S. decision, calling it an incendiary move. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan's slide into war chronicled in Emperor Hirohito's memoir;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Japan s Emperor Hirohito did not veto his advisers decision to declare war on the United States in 1941 because he feared triggering an internal conflict that would destroy his country, he said in an account dictated to an adviser. Set for auction in New York on Wednesday, the handwritten document throws light on Japan s role in World War Two, as it records events dating from the 1920s, such as Hirohito s resolve not to oppose future cabinet decisions, even if he disagreed. He realized that if he wanted to be in power, he had to do what they wanted, Tom Lamb, director of the books and manuscripts department at auction house Bonhams, told Reuters. And that is an interesting fact, since, throughout the late 1930s and through the 1940s, military decisions were made, which he could not contest, he said. The auctioneers have put an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 on the manuscript, which consists of two browning twine-bound notebooks written in pen and pencil by Terasaki Hidenari, an interpreter and adviser to the emperor, in 1946. The memoir concludes with the emperor s statement that if he had vetoed the decision to go to war, it would have resulted in a civil conflict that would have been even worse and Japan would have been destroyed, the auction house said on its website. Known in Japanese as Dokuhakuroku , or The Emperor s Monologue , the remarks may offer insight into the role the monarch played in the war campaign. This is a topic academics say has never been fully pursued in Japan, largely due to U.S. occupation authorities decision to retain the emperor as a symbol of a newly democratic nation. The Americans needed Emperor Hirohito to bind the country together, which he did, Lamb added. The whole of Japan changed from a rather military pre-war style to a postwar economic powerhouse, and obviously the emperor was part of that. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. officials warn of ISIS' new caliphate: cyberspace;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The collapse of Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate has not diminished the militant group s ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet, U.S. national security officials told senators on Wednesday. The Sunni Muslim extremist group has been building its external operations over the past two years and has claimed or been linked to at least 20 attacks against Western interests since January, said Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center. Unfortunately, we don t see ISIS loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks, she told a U.S. Senate committee. ISIS capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs, Shiao said, using the government s acronym for homegrown violent extremists. The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014. ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight. Yet the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations, said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations/low-intensity conflict. As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire stray dog attacks by vulnerable people. Senators questioned the security officials about U.S. efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists. This is the new caliphate - in cyberspace, said Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The experts described an evolving threat including ISIS ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process. The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message, said Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a possible reference to Trump s use of Twitter, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked Floris, Has the FBI examined the role that social media posts or videos from our own government officials affect the online recruitment tactics used by ISIS? The answer was no. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. warns citizens against travel to Honduras due to protests;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Wednesday advised U.S. citizens to delay or cancel unnecessary travel to mainland Honduras due to ongoing political protests and the potential for violence. The travel alert, which the department said in a statement expires on Dec. 31, follows a dispute over the result of a Nov. 26 presidential election that has sparked deadly protests and a night-time curfew in the poor, violent Central American country. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek police fire teargas at protesters on anniversary of riots;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police fired teargas on Wednesday at youths marching in Athens to mark the ninth anniversary of the killing of a teenager by police in an incident that sparked the worst riots for decades in a country with a history of street violence. Before Wednesday s march, Reuters witnesses saw young people wearing hoods smashing paving stones to use as projectiles and street poles to break window displays. A few hundred students, among them dozens of black-clad youths, marched through central Athens chanting Resist! , waving red and black flags in a tribute to 15-year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos who was shot dead in 2008. Some of the protesters set garbage containers on fire and hurled stones at police who responded with teargas and had formed protective cordons outside parliament and hotels in central Athens. More than 2,000 police were deployed in Athens, a day before a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On Wednesday evening, hundreds of protesters marched outside parliament chanting This bullet did not fall by accident, keep your hands off the youth and held banners reading These days belong to Alexis . After the march, police clashed with protesters hurling petrol bombs at them in the bohemian Exarchia district, where the unarmed boy was shot dead. There were more demonstrations in other cities across the country. Clashes broke out during protests in the northern city of Thessaloniki. On the night of December 6, 2008, hours after Grigoropoulos was shot dead, thousands took to the streets of Athens, torching cars and smashing shop windows. The riots, that were also fueled by anger over unemployment and economic hardship in the prelude to Greece s debt crisis, lasted for weeks. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain to propose new language on Irish border, Irish PM says;DUBLIN (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May told her Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar that she would propose suggestions to Brexit negotiators over the next 24 hours to try to break an impasse on the issue of the Irish border, Varadkar said on Wednesday. A tentative deal on the border, which is required if Brexit talks are to move to the next phase, was agreed with Dublin s blessing on Monday after negotiators guaranteed regulatory alignment on both sides of the border that Ireland has with the British province of Northern Ireland. But the Northern Irish party that props up May s minority government rejected the agreement, saying it could not allow any divergence in regulations between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK, putting up a fresh obstacle a week before EU leaders meet to decide whether to open trade talks. We discussed the idea certainly but we didn t discuss any particular words or combination of words or language but I certainly indicated a willingness to consider any proposals that the UK side have, Varadkar told a news conference after speaking to May by telephone earlier on Wednesday. Having consulted with people in London, she wants to come back to us with some text tonight or tomorrow. I expressed my willingness to consider that because I want us to move to phase two if that is possible next week. Varadkar said he had a very good call with May but that he reiterated the firm Irish position on issue of the border and that any new language proposed by London must be consistent with the text May had originally agreed to on Monday. The leader of Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party Arlene Foster also spoke to May earlier on Wednesday and a spokesman for the party said there was still work to be done on any border deal. Brussels says Britain must present its offer this week or it will be too late for a decision. Varadkar was speaking at a news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte who assured Dublin that a satisfactory deal on the Irish border was essential if EU leaders are to declare that sufficient progress has been made in phase one of the talks when they meet on Dec. 15. Rutte also agreed with Varadkar that if an agreement cannot be reached next week, then they will have to move into January It is the desire and ambition and wish of this government that we should move onto the phase two talks but if it isn t possible to move to phase two next week because of the problems that have arisen, well then we can pick it up in the new year, Varadkar earlier told parliament. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian protests break out in Jordan over Trump's move on Jerusalem;AMMAN (Reuters) - Protests broke out on Wednesday in areas of Jordan s capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, witnesses said. Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the city s outskirts, hundreds of youths roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordan s government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America.. America is the mother of terror, they chanted. King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes in the status of the city, whose eastern sector was captured by Israel from Jordan in a 1967 war. Many people in Jordan are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain to propose new language on Irish border, Irish PM says;DUBLIN (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May told her Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar that she would propose suggestions to Brexit negotiators over the next 24 hours to try to break an impasse on the issue of the Irish border, Varadkar said on Wednesday. We discussed the idea certainly but we didn t discuss any particular words or combination of words or language but I certainly indicated a willingness to consider any proposals that the UK side have, Varadkar told a news conference after speaking to May by telephone earlier on Wednesday. Having consulted with people in London, she wants to come back to us with some text tonight or tomorrow. I expressed my willingness to consider that because I want us to move to phase two if that is possible next week. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands march in Helsinki in far-right, anti-facist demonstrations;HELSINKI (Reuters) - Supporters of the far right in Finland and anti-facists staged rival marches in the capital on Wednesday as the country celebrated 100 years of independence. Police in riot gear reinforced by security personnel from around the country made 10 arrests due to scattered fights and misbehavior. Around 2,000 people joined the anti-facist march while demonstrations by two far right groups also gathered up to 2,000 people, the police said. Anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise in the Nordic EU member country of 5.5 million. About 32,500 migrants and refugees arrived during Europe s migrant crisis in 2015. The number came down to 5,600 last year. No nazis in Helsinki! shouted anti-fascist demonstrators. Far-right marchers held a slogan saying Towards freedom and many carried torches. Last week, a court banned a neo-Nazi group called Nordic Resistance Movement but it took part in a march as the decision is yet to be implemented. Finland was part of the Russian Empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian revolution, then nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Checks for free: a Mexican plan to combat poverty;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - An opposition alliance in Mexico wants to launch a universal basic wage to combat the poverty that blights the lives of almost half the population, touting an experimental reform discussed globally as a solution to job losses from automation. The center-right National Action Party and center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution are running on a joint ticket with the leftist Citizens Movement (MC) for next July s presidential election, and the income plan is a key part of their manifesto. Officials inside the alliance say details of the plan are still being worked out, though its contours are emerging. A basic income of 10,000 pesos ($537) per year for everyone, including children, could be provided by consolidating funds from federal, state and municipal welfare programs, Jorge Alvarez, an MC congressman working on the plan told Reuters in a recent interview. If you multiply that by four or five, which is the typical size of a Mexican family, you get an annual income of 40,000 to 50,000 pesos per family, Alvarez said, adding that providing the income to children could be conditional on school enrollment. Home to the richest man in Latin America, Carlos Slim, Mexico is laden with oil and minerals, boasts a large manufacturing base and has the world s 15th biggest economy. But poverty has remained stubbornly stuck above 40 percent of the population for decades. Government social development agency Coneval defines poverty as a person living on no more than 2,925 pesos a month in cities and 1,892 pesos in rural areas. The agency also takes into account other factors like healthcare and education. Getting to 40,000 or 50,000 pesos per family could be achieved without increasing taxes, Alvarez said. Still, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development argues that providing an unconditional basic income to everyone of working age would do little to combat poverty if not funded by extra taxes. The idea of universal basic income has gained currency due to the increasing robotization of the workforce. Finland is running a pilot project to test whether unconditional payments could serve as a plausible alternative welfare model. Mexico has seen job growth in recent years thanks to a manufacturing boom, and could face a smaller workforce as robots take over more tasks. Swiss voters rejected a basic income plan in a referendum last year, while the defeated Socialist candidate in France s presidential election this year, Benoit Hamon, championed it, saying it would be funded by a tax on robots that replace human labor. Mexican gross domestic product was worth $1.046 trillion in 2016, according to the World Bank, but some 53.4 million Mexicans, or 43.6 percent of the population, live below the poverty line, according to Coneval. ($1 = 18.6239 Mexican pesos) ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police suspect car bomb that killed Maltese reporter was triggered from boat;VALLETTA (Reuters) - Maltese investigators believe a man charged with murdering an anti-corruption journalist set off the car bomb which killed her via SMS from a cabin cruiser out at sea, police sources said on Wednesday. Three men were charged on Tuesday over the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose car was blown up as she drove out of her home on Oct. 16. The crime shocked the Mediterranean island and raised concerns among European Union lawmakers about the rule of law there. The three, named as Vince Muscat, and brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, have all pleaded not guilty. Police sources said investigators suspected George Degiorgio sent the text message after receiving a signal from his brother Alfred, who they believe acted as a lookout. A boat has been impounded. There was no immediate statement from the men s lawyers. Caruana Galizia wrote a popular blog which highlighted cases of alleged graft and targeted politicians in government, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and the opposition. Seven other men were arrested in connection with the probe and then released without charge, police said. Caruana Galizia s family, which has criticized the handling of the case, said in a statement on Wednesday that the murdered journalist had not been investigating any of the 10 people arrested. Simon Busuttil, former leader of the opposition in the Maltese parliament, tweeted a link to the statement, adding: This can only mean that those who commissioned the assassination of #DaphneCaruanaGalizia are still out at large. Evidence gathered so far suggests the bomb was placed inside her rented car while it was parked in an alley outside her house six miles from Valletta on the night before her death. Mobile phones were recovered from the sea in Marsa, an inland area of Valletta harbor, the sources said. Prime Minister Muscat has called the killing an attack on press freedom, and asked the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to help local police investigate. Caruana Galizia s son said she was killed because of her work. Members of an EU fact-find mission said last week there was a perception of impunity in Malta. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May disagrees with U.S. decision to move embassy to Jerusalem: spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May disagrees with the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel because it is unlikely to help efforts to bring peace to the region, her spokesman said on Wednesday. Jerusalem should ultimately be shared between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the spokesman said. We disagree with the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital before a final status agreement, the spokesman said. We believe it is unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite warnings from around the world that the gesture further drives a wedge between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump sparked outrage in Britain last week after he issued a sharp rebuke of May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. May s spokesman welcomed Trump s desire to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We encourage the US Administration to now bring forward detailed proposals for an Israel-Palestinian settlement, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's former PM Renzi loses more allies as election nears;ROME (Reuters) - Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose Democratic Party (PD) is shedding support in opinion polls, suffered a further setback on Wednesday when two allies said they would not contest next year s election. Renzi quit as prime minister a year ago after losing a referendum on his planned constitutional reforms. He aims to return to power at the vote due by May, but the PD has split under his leadership and his prospects seem to be dwindling. On Wednesday Giuliano Pisapia, a former mayor of Milan, announced that his small leftist party, called The Progressive Camp (CP), which had been expected to join forces with the PD at the election, was disbanding. Pisapia said it had proved impossible to continue talks with the PD , and complained in particular about Renzi s unwillingness to push through a contested law making it easier for the children of immigrants to obtain Italian citizenship. Hours later, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, leader of the centrist Popular Alternative party (AP) which governs with the PD, said he would not be running at the election, throwing into doubt the future of the party he founded. The CP and AP have less than 3 percent of the vote each, according to opinion polls, but the latest defections weaken the center-left in which a declining PD is now virtually without any allies. The left and the PD are crumbling away, said Renato Brunetta, lower house leader of Silvio Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party which is the lynchpin of a center-right alliance that is expected to win most seats at the election. On Sunday, leftist parties which had already quit the PD joined forces under the leadership of Senate Speaker Piero Grasso to form Free and Equal, a new grouping already credited with around 6 percent of the vote and expected to grow further at the expense of the PD. Posing a potential further headache for Renzi, a parliamentary commission on banking decided later on Wednesday to call a former top banker who a prominent journalist alleged had been put under pressure by a close ally in his government. In a book published earlier this year, the previous director of one of Italy s biggest newspapers said Renzi s reform minister Maria Elena Boschi had in 2015 asked Federico Ghizzoni, then chief executive of UniCredit, to look into buying a struggling bank where her father held a senior position. The cross-party commission investigating banking crises said in a statement it had voted unanimously to call Ghizzoni to speak. A source said his hearing would be held by Dec. 23. Boschi, who is now cabinet secretary, denies ever asking anyone to buy Banca Etruria, which was eventually rescued by the state. She said this week she was taking legal action. Renzi s PD critics say he has dragged the traditionally left-leaning party to the right and lament what they say is his autocratic, domineering leadership style. The party has been steadily losing support since it won over 40 percent of the vote at European elections in 2014. Surveys suggest it would now poll around 25 percent, some 3 points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The center-right bloc is made up of Forza Italia and the anti-immigrant Northern League, each with around 15 percent, and the right-wing Brothers of Italy, on around 5 percent. While the center-right is seen winning most seats at the election, opinion polls suggest it will not win an absolute majority, making a hung parliament the most likely outcome. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Time to move on from Algeria's colonial past, says France's Macron;ALGIERS/PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron, visiting Algeria, said on Wednesday he would not be held hostage by France s colonial involvement there and urged young Algerians to build for the future and not dwell on past crimes . The relationship is scarred by the trauma of the 1954-1962 independence war in which the North Africa country broke with France. Hundreds of thousands of Algerians were killed and both sides used torture. Macron was in the capital Algiers for talks with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and senior officials, a rite of passage for all new French presidents. Many in Algeria had wondered whether Macron would offer an official apology for the past given his statement earlier this year when he described France s colonial rule as a crime against humanity . But he did not go any further than his predecessor, Francois Hollande, who sought a more conciliatory tone but stopped short of saying sorry. Instead, Macron s message to young Algerians was not to harbor grudges from the past but look to the future. I ve already said we need to recognize what we did, but Algeria s youth can t just look to its past. It needs to look forward and see how it will create jobs, Macron said, answering questions from people as he walked through downtown Algiers. I m not here to judge those in the past. There have been crimes and there were people that also did good things. Your generation must not allow this. It s not an excuse (to blame the past) for what is happening today, he said. When asked by reporters about the past, a visibly annoyed Macron, said it was time to stop asking questions from 20 years ago. These benchmarks block our bilateral relationship. They don t interest me because the ambition I have for the relationship between Algeria and France has nothing to do with what was done for decades. It s a new story that s being written, he told a news conference. Facing high unemployment, low oil prices, austerity and political uncertainty, Algeria s youth is likely to warm to Macron s call to look to the future more than the war veterans. An inter-governmental forum presided by the countries prime ministers will take place in Paris on Thursday to discuss how to develop an economic roadmap. Economic ties between the two countries have marginally progressed since 2012 and France is now behind China as the main partner. Annual trade stands at about 8 billion euros compared with 6.36 billion five years ago. More than 400,000 Algerians are given visas for France annually, almost twice as many as in 2012. While walking near the university, young Algerians came out in force, calling out: Visas, Please! Highlighting just how divided opinion remains some others called out: Go home! We don t want you here. This morning I saw too many people simply asking me for visas. That s not a life project, Macron told reporters. Franco-Algerian relations are also a sensitive subject in France. Macron past condemnation of France s colonial rule angered many at home. There must be no taboos between us. But there has to a be a project for the future and I think the Algerians must build their future from Algeria, Macron said responding to more questions in the streets. But the thorny issues are unlikely to disappear just yet. Excuse me but France will have to apologize for the martyrs we lost, said a woman who gave her name as Nadia. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;OAS may recommend new Honduras election unless irregularities fixed;(Reuters) - The Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday called for an immediate return of constitutional rights in Honduras and said it may call for new elections if irregularities mean it is impossible to be sure of the results of a disputed Nov. 26 vote. The Honduran government suspended some rights to free movement by imposing a curfew last week when protests erupted over irregularities in the way results were released from the presidential election. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Algeria says Jerusalem announcement 'blatant violation' of U.N. resolutions;TUNIS (Reuters) - Algeria is deeply concerned about a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, saying it was a blatant violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, state news agency APS said on Wednesday. Algeria learned with deep concern about the U.S administration s decision to recognize Jerusalem as capital Israel s, APS said, quoting a foreign ministry statement. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top German conservative embraces Macron's EU proposals;BERLIN (Reuters) - The premier of Germany s most populous state has become the most senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservative bloc to throw his weight behind French President Emmanuel Macron s proposals for deepening and reforming the European Union. In an article for Thursday s Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, Armin Laschet, premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, embraced proposals for a common European army, intelligence service and, in the long term, a common finance minister. The proposals could offer a basis for cooperation with the Social Democrats (SPD), who vote on Thursday on whether to enter talks on supporting a new conservative-led government. SPD leader Martin Schulz, a former European Parliament president, is an outspoken advocate of closer European integration. In a time of eurosclerosis , with (eurosceptic) populists inside Europe and instability on the periphery, Macron wants to work with us to overcome the crisis, wrote Laschet, his party s vice-president. Europe s crisis, forced by Brexit, offers the chance at last to confront the challenges. Merkel and most of her party colleagues have been more cautious in their reception of Macron s reform proposals, which include closer cooperation on defense, migration and a deeper integration of the euro currency zone. He was less specific in addressing Macron s proposals for changing the euro zone s governance mechanisms, saying only: We need better conditions for investment, and we need harmonization of corporation tax. Schulz has said that the SPD, reluctant to repeat the bruising experience of being deserted by voters after governing for four years with Merkel in coalition, will discuss Macron s proposals at its three-day party congress starting on Thursday. What are our possibilities, our options, our instruments for ensuring that Germany embraces these French ideas? Schulz asked earlier on Wednesday. France is making proposals and Germany is not engaging. This is not acceptable. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump asks Saudi Arabia to allow immediate aid to Yemen;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump called for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to immediately allow humanitarian aid to reach the Yemeni people, suggesting Washington had run out patience with a Saudi-led blockade that has been condemned by relief organizations. The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned armed Houthi movement in Yemen s civil war started a blockade of ports a month ago after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh from Yemen. Although the blockade later eased and showed signs of breaking on Wednesday, Yemen s situation remained dire. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. I have directed officials in my administration to call the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it, Trump said in a statement, without elaborating. This must be done for humanitarian reasons immediately, Trump said. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said the first food and fuel had arrived in Hodeidah and Saleef ports, but supplies were at a trickle compared to what was needed, since Yemen s population of 27 million was almost entirely reliant on imports for food, fuel and medicine. Oxfam International applauded Trump s statement, calling it long overdue but hugely important. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who has called for restrictions on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, said he expected the Kingdom to heed Trump s call. Trump s brief, one-paragraph statement is one of the clearest signs of U.S. concern over aspects of Saudi Arabia s foreign policy. Saudi Arabia has also split with Trump over his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Publicly, Trump, his top aides and senior Saudi officials have hailed what they say is a major improvement in U.S.-Saudi ties compared with relations under former President Barack Obama, who upset the Saudis by sealing a nuclear deal with their arch-foe Iran. Even as ties improve, however, U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts privately express anxiety over some of the more hawkish actions by Saudi Arabia s crown prince, especially toward Yemen and Lebanon, as Saudi Arabia seeks to contain Iranian influence. In turn, Saudi Arabia has been unusually public about its concerns over U.S. policy on Jerusalem. King Salman told Trump ahead of his Jerusalem announcement on Wednesday that any decision on the status of Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement was reached would harm peace talks and increase tensions in the area, according to Saudi state-owned media. A White House official said Trump s statement on aid to Yemen did not represent retaliation for the Saudi position on Jerusalem. It has to do with the fact that there is a serious humanitarian issue in Yemen and the Saudis should and can do more, the official said. The fuel shortages caused by the blockade have meant that areas hardest hit by war, malnutrition and cholera lack functioning hospital generators, cooking fuel and water pumps. It also makes it harder to move food and medical aid around the country. The Saudi-led military coalition stepped up air strikes on Yemen s Houthis on Wednesday as the armed movement tightened its grip on Sanaa a day after the son of slain former president Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed revenge for his father s death. Saleh, who was killed in an attack on his convoy, plunged Yemen deeper into turmoil last week by switching allegiance after years helping the Houthis win control of much of northern Yemen, including the capital. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the killing of Saleh would likely worsen an already dire humanitarian situation in the country in the short term. This is where we ve all got to roll up our sleeves and figure out what you re going to do about medicine and food and clean water, cholera, Mattis said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says U.S. threats make war unavoidable, China urges calm;SEOUL (Reuters) - Two U.S. B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea on Thursday amid warnings from North Korea that the exercises and U.S. threats have made the outbreak of war an established fact. The annual U.S.-South Korean Vigilant Ace exercises feature 230 aircraft, including some of the most advanced U.S. stealth warplanes, and come a week after North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to date, which it says can reach all of the United States. North Korea s foreign ministry blamed the drills and confrontational warmongering by U.S. officials for making war inevitable. The remaining question now is: when will the war break out? it said in a statement. We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it. China, North Korea s neighbor and lone major ally, again urged calm and said war was not the answer, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said North Korea wanted direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security, something Moscow was ready to facilitate. We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. The outbreak of war is not in any side s interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna that U.S. military exercises and aggressive rhetoric were causing an unacceptable escalation in tension. Lavrov said he had passed on to Tillerson Pyongyang s desire for direct talks. We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations, Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said direct talks with North Korea were not on the table until they are willing to denuclearize. It is something that Russia says it agrees with;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arabs, Europe, U.N. reject Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital;LONDON (Reuters) - Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday condemned the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was abandoning its leading role as a peace mediator. The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Major U.S. allies came out against Trump s reversal of decades of U.S. and broad international policy on Jerusalem. France rejected the unilateral decision while appealing for calm in the region. Britain said the move would not help peace efforts and Jerusalem should ultimately be shared by Israel and a future Palestinian state. Germany said Jerusalem s status could only be resolved on the basis of a two-state solution. Israel, by contrast, applauded Trump s move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that it was an important step towards peace and it was our goal from Israel s first day . He added that any peace accord with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israel s capital and he urged other countries to follow Trump s example. [L8N1O660O] Trump upended decades of U.S. policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risks aggravating conflict in the tinderbox Middle East. The status of Jerusalem is home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek. Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital dating to antiquity, and its status is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a pre-recorded speech, said Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine and that Trump s move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator. The last round of U.S.-brokered talks foundered in 2014 over issues including Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and Israeli accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence and refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since soon after Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005, said Trump had committed a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people . Hamas urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine U.S. interests in the region and to shun Israel . Protests broke out in parts of Jordan s capital Amman inhabited by Palestinian refugees, with youths chanting anti-American slogans. In the Baqaa refugee camp on Amman s outskirts, hundreds roamed the streets denouncing Trump and urging Jordan to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America...America is the mother of terror, they chanted. Angry Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and in Ramallah. A tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehem s Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the grave of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness. All Palestinian factions called for a general strike and protest rallies at midday on Thursday. The Saudi Royal Court issued a statement saying that the kingdom followed with deep sorrow Trump s decision and warned of dangerous consequences of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem . The statement described the move as a big step back in efforts to advance the peace process , and urged the U.S. administration to reverse its decision and adhere to international will. Egypt, which forged the first Arab peace deal with Israel in 1979, brushed off Trump s decision and said it did not change Jerusalem s disputed legal status. Jordan said Trump s action was legally null because it consolidated Israel s occupation of East Jerusalem. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Trump s Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of Middle East peace. He said the move would put back the peace process by decades and threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability. Qatar s foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said Trump s undertaking was a death sentence for all who seek peace and called it a dangerous escalation . Turkey said Trump s move was irresponsible . We call upon the U.S. Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. A few hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, though some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate. Iran seriously condemns Trump s move as it violates U.N. resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state media reported. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in the day that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israel s security. In Southeast Asia, the leaders of Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia denounced Trump s action. This can rock global security and stability, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, leader of the world s largest Muslim-majority nation, told a news conference in which he called for the United States to reconsider its decision. British Prime Minister Theresa May disagreed with Trump s embrace of Jerusalem as Israel s capital before a final-status agreement as this was unlikely to help nurture peace in the region, her spokesman said. However, May s spokesman welcomed Trump s stated wish to end the conflict and his acknowledgement that the final status of Jerusalem, including boundaries within the city, must be subject to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not support Trump s unilateral move. The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, Macron told reporters in Algiers. France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security within recognised international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said. For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there was no alternative to a two-state solution and Jerusalem was a final-status matter only to be settled through direct talks. I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing longtime U.S. policy;WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. Trump announced his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and one that his predecessors opted not to take to avoid inflaming tensions. The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump s announcement as a historic landmark, but other close Western allies of Washington such as Britain and France were critical. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts, and Palestinian secular and Islamist factions called for a general strike and rallies on Thursday to protest. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, believing its status should be resolved in negotiations. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Trump s decision fulfills a campaign promise and will please Republican conservatives and evangelicals who make up a sizeable portion of his domestic support. I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said in a speech at the White House. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. Trump s decision risks further inflaming a region already grappling with conflict in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Protests broke out in areas of Jordan s capital, Amman, inhabited by Palestinian refugees, and several hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to Trump s announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Netanyahu said any peace deal with Palestinians must include Jerusalem as Israel s capital. That would be a non-starter for Palestinians in any negotiations if it meant the entire city would be under Israeli control. For a graphic on possible Jerusalem U.S. Embassy sites, click tmsnrt.rs/2jIXIoq Abbas on Wednesday called the city the eternal capital of the state of Palestine. He said Trump s decision was tantamount to the United States abdicating its peace mediator role. Jordan said Trump s decision was legally null. I think it s pretty catastrophic, frankly, said Hussein Ibish at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, adding that Trump did not distinguish in any meaningful sense between West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinian Islamist group Hamas accused Trump of a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people. Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in Bethlehem on Wednesday night to protest Trump s move. Trump has tilted U.S. policy toward Israel since taking office in January. He cannot expect to side entirely with Israel on the most sensitive and complex issues in the process, and yet expect the Palestinians to see the United States as an honest broker, said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer. Pope Francis called for Jerusalem s status quo to be respected. China and Russia expressed concern the move could aggravate Middle East hostilities. A statement from the Saudi Royal Court said the Saudi government had expressed condemnation and deep regret about the move. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May called the U.S. decision unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. The United Nations Security Council is likely to meet on Friday over Trump s decision, diplomats said on Wednesday. Trump said his move was not intended to tip the scale in favor of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties. He insisted he was not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Other key disputes between the two sides include the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements built on occupied land. Trump made no mention of settlements. He said he remained committed to the two-state solution if the parties want one. The president called on the region to take his message calmly. There will of course be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement but we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a place of greater understanding and cooperation, Trump said. U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, a pro-Israel Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who is often critical of Trump s foreign policy, said: This decision is long overdue and helps correct a decades-long indignity. Trump acted under a 1995 law that requires the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. His predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, consistently put off that decision. Trump ordered a delay to any embassy move from Tel Aviv since the United States does not have an embassy in Jerusalem to move into. A senior administration official said it could take three to four years to build one. The Jerusalem decision has raised doubts about the Trump administration s ability to follow through on a peace effort that Trump s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations. There was no indication Trump asked Netanyahu for anything in return when he notified the Israeli leader of his Jerusalem decision on Tuesday, a person familiar with the matter said. But Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, said Trump, who has long touted himself as a master negotiator, might be setting the stage for seeking Israeli concessions later. This might be the case where Trump applies a little honey now to show the Israelis he s the most pro-Israel president ever, and then applies a little vinegar later, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD backs talks with Merkel after impassioned Europe speech;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) voted on Thursday to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a government after their leader made an impassioned plea for a free hand to work for a social United States of Europe . The vote clears the way for talks that could resolve the impasse into which Europe s economic powerhouse was plunged after Merkel and the SPD shed support in a September election, greatly complicating the parliamentary arithmetic. Martin Schulz urged reluctant center-left SPD members to be open to Merkel s overtures to renew the coalition that has governed for the past four years, saying the party had a responsibility to revive social democracy in Germany. A new grand coalition with the reluctant SPD is Merkel s best hope of extending her 12 years in power after talks with two smaller parties failed, giving the smaller SPD greater leverage in any negotiations. The question isn t grand coalition or no grand coalition, he said in a speech to his party s biennial congress, Nor minority government or fresh elections. No - it s about how we exercise our responsibility, including to the next generation. Schulz said the party would only recover if it could offer a clear vision of a Germany and a Europe that worked for their citizens, calling for deeper European integration and a United States of Europe by 2025. Europe does not always work for its people, rather too often for the big companies, he said, outlining a populist vision that goes well beyond Merkel s own openness to limited structural reforms and bureaucratic streamlining. Talks between the two parties are expected to begin in earnest in the new year. A special congress will have to be convened at which party members will vote on whether to support a final agreement, which could fall short of a formal coalition, and could include tolerating a minority government. Stephan Weil, the influential premier of the state of Lower Saxony, said the SPD would want to see its policies reflected in return for supporting any government. I think the majority of the delegates see themselves as a European party and they expect that Germany becomes a driving force in Europe again, he said of Schulz s proposals regarding the European Union. Schulz s proposals were received more cautiously by Merkel. The (EU s) ability to act should be at the forefront now, she said at a Berlin press conference. So I will concentrate on more cooperation in defense by 2025 and on other issues, including employment and innovation. Outside the congress hall, SPD youth activists, many of whom want the party to chart a distinctive course after spending eight of the past 12 years in centrist coalitions, handed out red cards reading No Grand Coalition . Merkel leads this country without direction, said one speaker addressing the conference. She has no plan for Europe, she leads the country from week to week. We need a strong social democracy in this country. Schulz, who initially said his party should go into opposition after being punished for participating in the previous grand coalition under Merkel, apologized for his party s disastrous electoral result. Schulz attacked European moves to support big banks while doing little to counter high youth unemployment. When states can t balance their budgets they face draconian sanctions from Brussels. If we can mobilize billions for bank rescues but have to fight for paltry sums to support jobs for young people, then this is definitely not my Europe. He struck a tone that was more critical of big companies than French President Emmanuel Macron, who is pushing for deeper euro zone integration and pro-business reforms under a euro zone finance minister. He took aim at U.S. technology firms Apple, Facebook and Google, saying a strong Europe was needed to make them stick to the rules and protect the rights of workers in a changing economy. We don t want an app-directed service society but we want digitalization to lead to more individual freedom, he said to applause, calling for steps to protect the digital economy s self-employed from becoming self-exploiters . On the issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkel s first attempt at a coalition, the SPD opposes a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some accepted asylum seekers. There can be no upper limit to the right to protection from war and persecution, Schulz told delegates, rejecting conservative demands for a ceiling of 200,000 immigrants a year. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Olympic ban strengthens Putin's re-election hand;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Opinion polls show Vladimir Putin is already a shoo-in to win a fourth presidential term. But a ban on Russia taking part in the Winter Olympics is likely to make support for him even stronger, by uniting voters around his message: The world is against us. Putin announced on Wednesday that he would run for re-election in March s presidential vote, setting the stage for him to extend his dominance of Russia s political landscape into a third decade. With ties between the Kremlin and the West at their lowest point for years, the International Olympic Committee s decision to bar Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games over doping is seen in Moscow as a humiliating and politically tinged act. Putin, echoing his familiar refrain that his country is facing a treacherous Western campaign to hold it back, said he had no doubt that the IOC s decision was absolutely orchestrated and politically-motivated . Russia will continue moving forwards, and nobody will ever be able to stop this forward movement, Putin said. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the upper house of parliament s foreign affairs committee, had been among the first to cast the move as part of a Western plot against Russia, which sees sport as a barometer of geopolitical influence. They are targeting our national honor ... our reputation ... and our interests. They (the West) bought out the traitors ... and orchestrated media hysteria, Kosachyov wrote on social media. The IOC ruling is also seen by many in Russia as a personal affront to Putin, who was re-elected president in 2012 after spending four years as prime minister because the constitution barred him from a third consecutive term as head of state. The sport-loving leader cast his hosting of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, at which the IOC says there was unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system, as a symbol of Russia s success under his rule. But Putin has often extracted political benefit from crises, and turned international setbacks into domestic triumphs, by accusing the West of gunning for Russia and using this to inspire Russians to unite. Outside pressure on Russia, understood as politically motivated and orchestrated from the U.S., leads to more national cohesion, Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said on Wednesday. Various sanctions are being turned into instruments of nation-building. Putin s popularity, supported by state television, is already high. Opinion polls regularly give him an approval rating of around 80 percent. But casting the IOC ban as a Western plot to hurt Russia, something he did when Russian athletes were banned from last year s Summer Olympics in Rio over doping, could help him mobilize the electorate. Public anger over the IOC move could help Putin overcome signs of voter apathy and ensure a high turnout which, in the tightly controlled limits of the Russian political system, is seen as conferring legitimacy. There were early signs that fury over the IOC s decision was duly stirring patriotic fervor. Russia is a superpower, Alexander Kudrashov, a member of the Russian Military Historical Society, told Reuters on Moscow s Red Square after the IOC ruling. Without Russia, he said, the Olympics would not be valid. He linked the decision to a Western anti-Russian campaign which many Russians believe took hold after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Choosing between the people in Crimea, who wept when the Russian flag was run up and who were doomed to genocide, and sportspeople taking first place on the podium, I choose the people who couldn t defend themselves, Kudrashov said. Blaming the West is an approach the Kremlin has often used before when faced with international allegations of wrongdoing over Crimea s annexation, the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger plane over Ukraine in July 2014 and charges of meddling in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists rebelled against rule from Kiev after Crimea was annexed. The tactic taps into Russians patriotism and makes Putin almost bullet-proof when it comes to scandal. The 65-year-old former KGB agent is regarded by many voters as a tsar-like father-of-the-nation figure who has brought their country back from the brink of collapse. When at the start of the year it seemed there was a window to repair relations with the West after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he wanted better ties, the narrative of Russia versus the world was muted. But when it became clear that U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in Trump s election precluded any rapprochement, Putin doubled down on the narrative. In October, he launched a stinging critique of U.S. policy, listing what he called the biggest betrayals in U.S.-Russia relations. Sources close to the Russian government say the IOC ban, along with continued Western sanctions over Ukraine and the prospect of new sanctions, will help the authorities rally voters around the banner of national unity which Putin embodies. Outside pressure just makes us stronger, said one such source who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, set the tone on social media in comments that found ready support from many Russians. What haven t we been forced to suffer from our partners in the course of our history, she wrote. But they just can t bring us down. Not via a world war, the collapse of the Soviet Union or sanctions ... We soak it up and survive. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese state media tells readers how to survive a nuclear attack; (In this Dec. 6 story, corrects newspaper location to Jilin province, from Jilin city, paragraph one) BEIJING (Reuters) - A state-run newspaper in China s Jilin province, which borders North Korea and Russia, on Wednesday published a page of common sense advice on how readers can protect themselves from a nuclear weapons attack or explosion. China has voiced grave concern over North Korea s nuclear and missiles program, as well as calling on the United States and South Korea to stop provoking Pyongyang. U.S. bombers will fly over the Korean peninsula on Wednesday as part of a large-scale joint military drills with South Korea. The North has warned the drills would push the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war . The full page article in the Jilin Daily, which does not mention possible attacks by North Korea or any other country, explains how nuclear weapons differ from traditional arms and instructs people how to protect themselves in the event of an attack. Nuclear weapons have five means of causing destruction: light radiation, blast waves, early-stage nuclear radiation, nuclear electro-magnetic pulses and radioactive pollution, the article explained. It said the first four kill instantly. People who find themselves outside during a nuclear attack should try to lie in a ditch, cover exposed skin in light colored clothing or dive into a river or lake to try and minimize the possibility of instantaneous death, it said. Cartoon illustrations of ways to dispel radioactive contamination were also provided, such as using water to wash off shoes and using cotton buds to clean ears, as well as a picture of a vomiting child to show how medical help can be sought to speed the expulsion of radiation through stomach pumping and induced urination. The influential state-backed Global Times in a commentary on Wednesday described the article as a public service announcement due to the situation on the Korean peninsula. If war breaks out, it is not possible to rule out the Korean peninsula producing nuclear contaminants, and countermeasures must be seriously researched and spoken openly about to let the common folk know. But at the same time, there is absolutely no reason to be alarmed, the Global Times said. North Korea last week tested what it called its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach all of the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has warned he would destroy the North Korean regime if it threatened the United States with nuclear weapons. China has rejected military intervention and called for an end to the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin, pulling no surprises, says he'll seek re-election;NIZHNY NOVGOROD/MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin confirmed Russia s worst kept political secret on Wednesday, saying he would run for re-election in March 2018 - a contest he seems sure to win comfortably and extend his grip on power into a third decade. Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000, longer than veteran Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and outstripped only by dictator Josef Stalin. If he wins what would be a fourth presidential term, he will be eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Backed by state TV, Putin regularly enjoys approval ratings of around 80 percent, and his decision to run for re-election which he announced at a car-making factory in the Volga river city of Nizhny Novgorod was widely expected. I will put forward my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian Federation, Putin said, in answer to a question from a factory worker who told the Russian leader that everyone without exception in the hall supported him. There s no better place or opportunity to make this announcement, said Putin. I m sure that everything will work out for us. The workers then broke into a chant of Russia! Allies laud Putin as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. Critics accuse him of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of illegally annexing Ukraine s Crimea in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is unlikely to be allowed to run against Putin due to what he says is a trumped up criminal conviction, said Putin was overstaying his welcome. He wants to be in power for 21 years, Navalny wrote on social media. To my mind, that s too long. I suggest we don t agree. Despite the Central Election Commission ruling him ineligible to stand, Navalny has organized mass protests and set up campaign headquarters across the country, hoping he can pressure the authorities into allowing him to stand. The challenge for Putin though is not other candidates nobody, including Navalny, looks capable of unseating him. Instead, his toughest task will be to mobilize an electorate showing signs of apathy to ensure a high turnout which in the tightly-controlled limits of the Russian political system is seen as conferring legitimacy. Whilst next year s election in March is devoid of real suspense about who will win, what follows is more unpredictable as attention will turn to what happens after Putin s final term - under the current constitution - ends. There is no obvious successor. Many investors say the lack of a clear succession plan, and likely jockeying for position among Russian elites for dominance in the post-Putin era, is becoming the biggest political risk. Putin, once re-elected, will have to choose whether to leave Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister, or to appoint someone else. That decision will trigger a round of intrigue over the succession, as whoever holds the prime minister s post is often viewed as the president s heir apparent. In the meantime, perhaps the Kremlin s biggest task will be to make it look as if Putin faces real electoral competition. In a move critics suspect is a Kremlin ploy to split the liberal opposition vote while injecting a patina of interest, TV celebrity Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin s political mentor, is standing against him, offering voters unhappy with his rule someone to back. A political ing nue, Sobchak has scant chance of winning. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied her candidacy is a Kremlin ploy. Sobchak said on Wednesday that Putin would probably win as always, but that she still planned to run to represent people who wanted change. Otherwise, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, 73, and nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, 71, - both political retreads - are likely to run. They are broadly supportive of the Kremlin s policies and have repeatedly run for president, behavior critics say is a ruse to create the illusion of genuine political choice. Putin draws much of his support from outside the two biggest cities Moscow and St Petersburg where many credit him with raising their living standards despite an economic crisis Russia is only now recovering from. State TV, where many Russians still get their news, affords Putin blanket and uncritical coverage while ignoring or denigrating his opponents. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanese president says Trump decision threatens stability;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump s Jerusalem decision was dangerous and threatened the credibility of the United States as a broker of the peace process in the region. He said the decision had put back the peace process by decades, and had threatened regional stability and perhaps global stability. Lebanon s Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Twitter that Lebanon rejected the decision and had the utmost solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. The leader of Lebanon s Hezbollah movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, will speak on Thursday about the issue of Jerusalem, the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Manar TV station reported. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel hails Trump's 'historic' declaration, Palestinians condemn;JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH (Reuters) - Israel hailed U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as its capital on Wednesday, but the Palestinians condemned the move and said it diminished Washington s role as a peace mediator. In a landmark speech in Washington, Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy in defiance of warnings from around the world that the gesture risked creating further unrest in the Middle East. Past U.S. presidents have insisted that the status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions - must be decided in negotiations between the two sides. Palestinian factions called a general strike on Thursday throughout the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas of Jerusalem and for rallies to be held at midday (1000 GMT) in protest at Trump s move, raising the chances of violent clashes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message that Trump s decision had made for a historic day and was an important step toward peace . He added that any peace deal with the Palestinians would have to include Jerusalem as Israel s capital and he urged other countries to follow the U.S. lead by also moving their embassies to the city. He said there would be no change to access to Jerusalem s holy sites. Israel will always ensure freedom of worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Trump s move was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator and declared Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the State of Palestine . Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state which they want to establish in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. With this announcement, the American administration has chosen to violate all international and bilateral agreements and resolutions and it has chosen to violate international consensus, Abbas said. The move, he said, would serve the extremist groups which try to turn the conflict in our region into a religious war that will drag the region ... into international conflicts and endless wars. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen since 2014. Trump s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is leading Trump s efforts to restart them but those efforts have shown little progress. Israel s West Bank settlement building has been one of the main obstacles. Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, said Trump s move was flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people and urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine the U.S. s interests in the region and to shun Israel. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians switch off Christmas lights in Bethlehem in anti-Trump protest;RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinians switched off Christmas lights at Jesus traditional birthplace in Bethlehem on Wednesday night in protest at U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. A Christmas tree adorned with lights outside Bethlehem s Church of the Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, and another in Ramallah, next to the burial site of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, were plunged into darkness. The Christmas tree was switched off on the order of the mayor today in protest at Trump s decision, said Fady Ghattas, Bethlehem s municipal media officer. He said it was unclear whether the illuminations would be turned on again before the main Christmas festivities. In a speech in Washington, Trump said he had decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the U.S. embassy to the city. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump s move marked the beginning of a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said it was an historic landmark . Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East condemned the U.S. decision, calling it an incendiary move in a volatile region and the European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at the possible repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ITER nuclear fusion project faces delay over Trump budget cuts;PARIS (Reuters) - ITER, an international project to build a prototype nuclear fusion reactor in southern France, said it is facing delays if the Trump administration does not reconsider budget cuts. Seven partners - Europe, the United States, China, India, Japan, Russia and South Korea - launched the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) 10 years ago but the project has experienced years of delays and budget overruns. ITER hopes to generate power from a process similar to the nuclear fusion that powers the sun, unlike existing nuclear reactors that produce energy by splitting atoms. ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot, in Washington for talks with the U.S. administration, said the U.S. 2017 contribution had been cut from a planned $105 million to $50 million and its 2018 contribution from a planned $120 million to $63 million. The United States has already spent about $1 billion on the prototype reactor and was scheduled to contribute up to another $1.5 billion through 2025, when ITER is scheduled to run a first operational test. If we do not respect deadlines in the beginning, we cannot respect them in the end, Bigot told Reuters by telephone. Bigot said that following a letter from French President Emmanuel Macron to President Donald Trump in August, Trump had asked his administration to reconsider the issue. We hope for a decision this weekend or this week, he said. If the U.S. does not provide the necessary funds in 2018, then there will be an impact on the entire project, he added. Earlier this year, ITER s total budget was revised upwards from 18 to 22 billion euros ($21-26 billion), with a U.S. share of nine percent. The Trump administration is conducting a review of civilian nuclear policy, including research and development, which will inform U.S. policy toward ITER in the future, said Shaylyn Hynes, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has told Macron that we understand the history and the scale of the project, she said. Bigot said that after Trump cut the U.S. energy department s budget, the department reduced funding for the U.S. companies making ITER components. ITER member countries finance the manufacturing of ITER components via their own national companies. The parts are then shipped to France and assembled on ITER s Cadarache, southern France site. ITER s main U.S. supplier is California-based General Atomics, which is building its central solenoid, an 18-metre tall pillar-like magnet that will be one of the first components to be installed by 2020. The project is now half way towards the first test of its super-heated plasma by 2025 and first full-power fusion by 2035. ITER says nuclear fusion will not produce nuclear waste like traditional nuclear power plants and will be much safer to operate. But the challenges of replicating the sun s fusion on earth are enormous and critics say that it remains unclear whether the technology will work and can eventually be commercially viable. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior North Korean diplomat meets U.N. political affairs chief;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea s vice foreign minister met visiting U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman on Wednesday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, the North s state media said. The North Korean official, Pak Myong Guk, and Feltman discussed bilateral cooperation and other issues of mutual interest, the KCNA news agency reported. Feltman, a former senior U.S. State Department official, is the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. to deny visas to Cambodian officials over opposition crackdown;WASHINGTON/PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it would restrict entry to people involved in the Cambodian government s actions to undermine democracy, including the dissolution of the main opposition party and imprisonment of its leader. The visa sanctions were the toughest steps by any Western country since a crackdown on critics of Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of an election next year in which the authoritarian leader seeks to extend more than three decades in power. We call on the Cambodian government to reverse course by reinstating the political opposition, releasing Kem Sokha, and allowing civil society and media to resume their constitutionally protected activities, the State Department said in a statement. The secretary of state will restrict entry into the United States of those individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia. In certain circumstances, family members of those individuals will also be subject to visa restrictions, it added. Cambodia s Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), last month at the government s request. Kem Sokha was arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government with U.S. help. He has rejected the accusation as a political ploy. The dissolution of the CNRP has been condemned by some Western countries as the most serious blow to democracy since an international peace deal and U.N.-run elections in the early 1990s ended decades of war and genocide. Cambodia s government condemned the visa restrictions announced by Washington. This statement shows that the United States is destroying democracy, government spokesman Phay Siphan told Reuters, saying that the actions against the opposition had been legal and took place through the courts and parliament. The CNRP are not politicians, they are rebels and terrorists, he said. The United States said after the banning of the CNRP that the election will not be legitimate, free or fair, and withdrew an offer to help fund it. The European Union has raised the possibility of withdrawing trade preferences which are vital for the garment industry that accounted for well over 60 percent of Cambodia s exports last year. Hun Sen has dismissed Western pressure and built closer ties to China, while opposing U.S. efforts to rally Southeast Asian countries to stand up to Beijing s expanding power in the region. Earlier on Wednesday, Hun Sen accused Sam Rainsy, who stepped down as CNRP leader earlier this year in a bid to forestall a ban on the party, of committing treason by inciting soldiers to defy orders. Hun Sen said Rainsy, who lives in exile in France, would face new legal action over the comments. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;OAS may request new Honduras election to correct 'irregularities';TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Organization of American States (OAS) said on Wednesday it may call for new Honduran elections if any irregularities undermine the credibility of results in last month s disputed vote that has sparked a crisis in the Central American nation. In a statement, the OAS also called for an immediate return of constitutional rights such as freedom of movement. The Honduran government imposed a curfew last week when protests erupted over the vote count in the Nov. 26 presidential election, which has been tarnished by allegations of electoral fraud. The statement, released by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, said the election result was not yet certain, and measures including a partial recount should be undertaken to clarify the outcome and restore credibility. It is clear that it is not possible, without an exhaustive and meticulous process of verification that determines the existence or not of an electoral fraud ... to restore the confidence of the population, the statement said. Official results showed Honduras conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez with a narrow 1.6 percentage point lead over center-left opposition leader Salvador Nasralla. However, no victor has yet been declared by the election tribunal. Nasralla on Wednesday evening called for an international arbiter to oversee the recount, saying he no longer recognized the Honduran tribunal because of its role in the process. If we hadn t had international participation, we would truly be in the law of the jungle, he said. David Matamoros, head of the country s electoral tribunal, told reporters that the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, which Nasralla fronts, must still deliver its voting tally sheets and documentation so the tribunal can review the election results. Then the tribunal will discuss the OAS recommendations and what can be done to implement them, Matamoros added. When asked about the possibility of a new election, Matamoros said if the complaints about the process are borne out, the whole issue of the vote will need to be revalidated. However, this would only be possible if the tribunal was in a position to review all the tally sheets, he added. Eight Latin American governments said in a joint statement on Wednesday they supported the tribunal s decision to hold a total recount of the disputed ballots, and urged Hondurans to remain calm while awaiting final results. Uruguay was added to a list of seven originally issued by Mexico s foreign ministry. Nasralla has demanded a recount and encouraged his supporters to protest, triggering demonstrations. At least 14 people - including two police - have died in the protests, according to a human rights group in Honduras known as COFADEH. Hernandez s center-right National Party said it would hold a march in Tegucigalpa on Thursday to show solidarity with the president, pledging a turnout in the thousands. The U.S. State Department on Wednesday advised U.S. citizens to delay or cancel unnecessary travel to mainland Honduras due to ongoing political protests and the potential for violence. The election results also show Hernandez s National Party winning the most seats in Congress. But third-placed presidential candidate Luis Zelaya, of the Liberal Party, said on Wednesday that irregularities in the vote had polluted the results for legislators as well as the presidency, and reiterated that Nasralla had won the top job. He did not specify what the alleged irregularities were but said his party would share its copies of ballot sheets, including those disputed by the opposition, with the OAS. On Tuesday, Nasralla said the electoral tribunal should review virtually all the ballots. If the tribunal was unwilling to do that, he proposed a run-off between himself and Hernandez, something not allowed for under Honduran law. Hernandez, who as president has won praise from the United States for his crackdown on violent street gangs, has not claimed victory in broadcast comments in recent days and indicated on Wednesday that his party would support a recount. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's Ramirez attacks efforts to link him to corruption;HOUSTON (Reuters) - Venezuela s former oil czar Rafael Ramirez said on Wednesday the government would make one of its worst political moves if investigators target him in an anti-corruption purge, which is gaining traction ahead of the country s 2018 presidential election. Friction between Ramirez and President Nicolas Maduro reflect growing rifts in the Socialist Party once firmly united under late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. This comes amid a deep economic recession and financial sanctions imposed by the United States on what it considers a dictatorship. Ramirez, who spoke with Reuters from an undisclosed location after being pushed out last week as Venezuela s ambassador to the United Nations, said he is waiting for the right time to return to his country. The 54-year-old engineer also said he has not yet decided if he will launch a run in the 2018 Venezuelan presidential election, in which Maduro is expected to seek another term. Ramirez, who led state-run oil company PDVSA for a decade under Chavez, said he has not been approached by Venezuelan or U.S. prosecutors investigating corruption cases linked to PDVSA and its subsidiaries. Some of those probes focus on incidents that occurred under his watch as one of Chavez longest serving officials. I have not been involved in any act of corruption. I have been very careful to follow internal control mechanisms, he said. Thus far, the expanding corruption probe by the state prosecutor s office has resulted in authorities accusing over 100 people, including two former PDVSA presidents who also served as oil ministers under Maduro. Ramirez said he is prepared to fight back if investigators target him or his close family, some of whom served as advisors of the Venezuelan government in international arbitration cases. That scenario would be offbeat. Who aims to attack my family is going to find me, he said. He added that he trusts Venezuelan institutions will confirm his family members have faithfully served Venezuela, not charging the government for their work. One of Ramirez s relatives, Diego Salazar, was detained last week under accusations of corruption and money laundering. Still, Ramirez said accusations from corruption scandals should not be taken lightly because they hurt PDVSA s reputation and its ability to recover from a deep production decline. The country s oil output has fallen this year to its lowest level in almost three decades, down 1 million barrels per day from its 2013 level. But he also criticized the government s focus on PDVSA in its corruption accusations, while excluding public institutions that oversaw a long-standing currency control system used to convert and distribute billions of dollars coming from exports. The company should be investigated without subjecting its employees to a moral lynching, he said. I will believe that a corruption probe is genuine when it includes the whole Venezuelan economy. Ramirez in 2014 submitted an economic plan to the government before moving to his position in the United Nations. But no action was taken due to the central government s lack of confidence in him, he said. In the following years, the government s failure to take needed actions, which also has been criticized by analysts and the opposition, have led to a greater financial instability, spiraling inflation and mounting debt, which Maduro is now struggling to restructure. Economic action has to be taken with urgency, he said. A lack of motivation among PDVSA s workers, delayed crude output due to infrastructure problems and a very low currency exchange rate impacting PDVSA s cash flow also have to be addressed, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. Security Council to meet Friday on Jerusalem: diplomats;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday at the request of eight states on the 15-member body over U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, diplomats said on Wednesday. The request for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to publicly brief the Security Council meeting was made by France, Bolivia, Egypt, Italy, Senegal, Sweden, Britain and Uruguay, said diplomats. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday, generating outrage from Palestinians and defying warnings of Middle East unrest. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The U.N. has given Jerusalem a special legal and political status, which the Security Council has called upon the international community to respect. That is why we believe the Council needs to address this issue with urgency, Deputy Swedish U.N. Ambassador Carl Skau said on Wednesday. A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in December last year underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations. That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration, which defied heavy pressure from long-time ally Israel and Trump for Washington to wield its veto. After Trump spoke on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters: I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians. In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he said. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley praised Trump s decision as the just and right thing to do. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jordan rejects Trump's move on Jerusalem as legally 'null';AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan on Wednesday rejected the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, calling it legally null because it consolidated Israel s occupation of the eastern sector of the contested city. Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told state news agency Petra that the announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump violated long-standing U.N. Security Council resolutions that stipulated the non-recognition of the Israeli occupation of the city s eastern sector and the adjacent West Bank. The staunch U.S. ally considered all unilateral moves that seek to create new facts on the ground as null and void , the spokesman added. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said later in a tweet that the move frustrated peace efforts, adding that the status of Jerusalem must be determined in direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis. Jordan rejects the decision and all its implications and will continue to work for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Safadi added. Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank to Israel during the 1967 war and says the city s fate should only be decided at the end of a final settlement. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of a future state. Israel regards Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital. Jordan s King Abdullah warned of the repercussions of Trump s expected move in talks last week in Washington with top administration officials and warned of a backlash across the Middle East. The king s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Jordan sensitive to any changes in the status of the city. A government source said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was due to hold talks with the monarch on Thursday in a stepped-up diplomatic offensive to counter Trump s plan. Several protests broke out in areas of Jordan s capital, Amman, inhabited by Palestinian refugees in response to Trump s announcement. Youths chanted anti-American slogans in Amman, while in the Baqaa refugee camp on the city s outskirts, hundreds of youths roamed the streets denouncing Trump and calling on Jordan s government to scrap its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Down with America. America is the mother of terror, they chanted. Jordanian deputies in a special parliamentary session on Wednesday condemned the move and urged the government to expel the U.S. ambassador and boycott U.S. goods. A dozen activists staged a sit-in near the gates of the U.S. embassy. Many people in Jordan are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948. Jordan s powerful mainstream Islamist movement, the country s largest political party and opposition group, said it would stage several major rallies across the country in the next few days and after Friday prayers. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Morocco expresses deep concern over Jerusalem decision, summons U.S. charge d'affaires;RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco summoned the U.S. charge d affaires to express its deep concern over the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, state news agency MAP said on Wednesday. Morocco s foreign minister reiterated the constant support and full solidarity of the Kingdom of Morocco towards the Palestinian people so that they can recover their legitimate rights, a statement carried by MAP said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU seriously concerned about Trump's Jerusalem decision;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union expressed serious concern on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, saying it could have repercussions for peace prospects. The aspirations of both parties must be fulfilled and a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and saying Washington would begin the process of moving its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian president says Jerusalem to be Palestinian capital;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Palestinian cause will stay alive among Arabs until the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the Syrian president s office said on Wednesday in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s Jerusalem decision. The future of Jerusalem is not determined by a state or a president but is determined by its history and by the will and determination in the Palestinian cause, President Bashar al-Assad s office said on an official social media feed. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ireland open to adding to border text but clock ticking;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is open to adding to a tentative Irish border agreement that collapsed on Monday but movement will be needed by the end of the week if Brexit talks are to move onto the next phase this year, the country s European Affairs Minister said on Wednesday. A deal on the border, which is required if negotiations are to progress to trade talks, was agreed on Monday with Dublin s blessing after Brexit negotiators guaranteed regulatory alignment on both sides of the border that Ireland shares with the British province of Northern Ireland. While the Northern Irish party propping up the British government rejected the deal, Dublin insists it will not accept any change to the substance of the agreement ahead of a meeting of EU leaders on Dec. 15 to decide whether to open trade talks. The text that has been agreed, we feel it s appropriate, it s workable, there is compromise on both sides and addresses our concerns of upholding what we ve all been asking for, that there would be no return to a hard border, Helen McEntee told Reuters in an interview. If there is clarification needed on the text, if there is possibly additional wording that would clarify what s already in the text that would be agreeable to us... I wouldn t see how that would be a problem. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has said it cannot allow any divergence in regulation between Northern Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom. Dublin is waiting for the British government to come back to the EU s negotiating team with any suggestions or a request for further clarity, McEntee said. EU diplomats and officials say Britain must deliver its Brexit divorce package offer this week and McEntee added that if it s felt by Monday that a deal is not going to happen, then she would expect chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to inform the General Affairs Council of EU ministers of that a day later. However, she said the huge amount of work officials put in last weekend to bring the sides to the brink of a deal on Monday showed how much progress can be made in a few short days. Realistically you would want things to be moving by the end of the week and there to be some sort of agreement coming into the general affairs council, she said. I think the fact that it was agreed shows most people were happy with that and I think it s just to move from there and I would be hopeful that we would be able to reach that agreement by next week. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. energy chief says to start negotiations on nuclear pact with Riyadh;ADU DHABI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is interested in reaching a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Washington, the U.S. government s energy chief said on Wednesday, a step which would allow American companies to participate in the kingdom s civil nuclear program. Saudi Arabia has invited U.S. firms to take part in developing the kingdom s atomic energy program, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Monday. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who this week visited Saudi Arabia on his first official trip to the region told Reuters that negotiations between the two allies will start soon to tackle the details of the pact - known as a 123 agreement. We heard that message that ... we want the United States to be our partner in this , Perry said, referring to discussions he had during his meetings with Falih and the top Saudi leadership. Perry met with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman during his trip. But one potential sticking point could prove to be Riyadh s ambitions to have the ability of one day enriching uranium - the process for producing fissile material which can have military uses. Riyadh has said it wants to tap its own uranium resources for self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel and it was not interested in diverting nuclear technology to military use. But under Article 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, a peaceful cooperation agreement is required for the transfer of nuclear materials, technology and equipment. Washington usually requires a country to sign a pact that blocks it from making nuclear fuel which has potential bomb-making applications. In previous talks Saudi Arabia has refused to sign up to any agreement that would deprive it of the possibility of one day enriching uranium itself. Perry declined to comment whether that issue was raised during his visit to Saudi Arabia. It is not for me to negotiate the deal but we have agreed to move forward ... We are going to get a negotiating team together going forward and try to hash out any details. But I feel comfortable that progress was made on that front, he said. The world s top oil exporter says it wants nuclear power to diversify its energy supply mix, enabling it to export more crude rather than burning it to generate electricity. Riyadh sent a request for information to nuclear reactor suppliers in October in a first step towards opening a multi-billion-dollar tender competition for two nuclear power plants, and plans to award the first construction contract in 2018. Riyadh s main reason for leaving the door open to enrichment in the future may be political - to ensure the Sunni Muslim kingdom has the same potential to enrich uranium as Shi ite Muslim Iran, industry sources and analysts say. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ivory Coast to retire 1,000 soldiers to slim down military;ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast will cut its armed forces by about 1,000 troops by the end of the year, the government spokesman said on Wednesday, in a bid to rationalize a costly and sometimes unruly military. Government spokesman Bruno Kone told reporters after a cabinet meeting that the 997 soldiers had accepted voluntary retirement this year as part of an initiative to conform to accepted standards , partly by reducing the ratio of non-commissioned officers to lower ranks. Ivory Coast does not give details on the size of its military, but security sources estimate there are more than 25,000 troops in a country with a population of about 24 million. Francophone West Africa s biggest economy suffered two army mutinies this year that damaged its reputation among investors and forced the government to agree to costly pay rises. The distribution of Ivory Coast s army is out of step with the standards accepted in modern armies, Kone said. The former French colony, once known as one of the most stable states in West Africa, is still recovering from a brief civil war fought after President Alassane Ouattara won a disputed election in 2010 but incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down. Ouattara has struggled to assert his authority over the army, which was cobbled together in an uneasy merger of the northern New Forces rebels who supported him and the professional troops who had fought against him. The soldiers being taken out of action included three senior officers, 634 non-commissioned officers and 354 regular foot soldiers, Kone said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kazakh leader tells cabinet: Make state firms move cash home or you're fired;ASTANA (Reuters) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev threatened on Wednesday to sack his cabinet if they failed to make large state companies bring back cash held abroad. Nazarbayev, who wields sweeping powers in the oil-rich nation, also poured scorn on executives in private sector companies who, he suggested, were enjoying lavish lifestyles while keeping funds in foreign accounts. Enough of toying around, look at them, carried away with their games, keeping their money abroad, buying yachts and mansions in multiple countries, he said at a meeting with central government and regional officials. It is safer to keep money here, at home, we will ensure it is safe. Nazarbayev ordered Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev to investigate why state-controlled companies had tripled their foreign cash holdings to $6 billion in the first half of 2017. He did not cite a source for that figure. If you fail to do this, I warn you in front of the whole Kazakhstan, I will use other ways to return that money to Kazakhstan, but you will not be here any more, he told his cabinet. Nazarbayev said he also expected private sector companies to move cash back, citing Tengizchevroil, a joint venture led by Chevron, and state firm KazMunayGaz, as examples of groups keeping funds in foreign accounts. Tengizchevroil $4.5 billion, National Company KazMunayGaz - $3 billion, KazMunaiGas Exploration and Production - $2 billion. Again, he did not give a source for those figures. Tengizchevroil said it would comment later this week and KazMunayGaz could not immediately be reached for comment. Why are you doing this? You keep your money there while profiting from Kazakhstan s resources. Why is this money not being put to work in Kazakhstan? Nazarbayev said. Citing central bank data, he said some companies had also abused liberal foreign exchange regulations to delay the transfer to Kazakhstan of $7.7 billion in export revenue. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Netanyahu says Israel expanding Middle East ties, but not with Iran;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel is expanding ties throughout the Middle East but not with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, accusing his country s arch-foe of trying to dominate the region. Addressing a Jerusalem diplomatic conference, Netanyahu said Israel has relations with nearly every single one of nations that do not formally recognize it, due to their growing need for its economic and security expertise. See that country in red? By the way that s not on our list of diplomatic allies, he said, pointing to Iran on a regional map. He deemed Iran an aggressive regime seeking nuclear arms and a land bridge via its allies to the Mediterranean sea. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;GSK, other drugmakers bet on post-Brexit UK science;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain won a vote of confidence from its economically important life sciences sector on Wednesday as several major drug companies committed to invest in the country under the government s industrial strategy plans after Brexit. The move is welcome news for Prime Minister Theresa May, who has struggled to win over large sections of industry as Britain prepares to leave the European Union. Thanks to the strength of UK universities and the presence of two major pharmaceuticals companies in GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, the drugs industry has been a bright spot in the British economy for many years. But the highly regulated sector faces potential obstacles to trade as a result of Brexit unless London and Brussels manage to align regulatory regimes for medicines. In a bid to soften the blow, the government has backed a report by immunologist and geneticist John Bell designed to boost the pharmaceutical sector via fresh public-private collaborations. That has paved the way for the Life Sciences Sector Deal, which will see GSK invest 40 million pounds ($54 million) of new money in genomic research, including a plan to sequence DNA from all 500,000 volunteer participants enrolled in UK Biobank, the world s most detailed biomedical database. GSK s head of research Patrick Vallance said the deal showed Britain remained an attractive place for drug discovery, but he cautioned: The UK needs to recognize going forward that science is an international endeavor, not a parochial endeavor. Other investments by pharma companies include plans by Johnson & Johnson and the Medicines Co to work on new clinical trials and genetic research by AstraZeneca. U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co had already announced plans to expand UK research operations under the deal last week. In all, the government said the deal brought together existing and future commitments by 25 global organizations. Other companies in discussions with the government about investments include Philips, Roche Diagnostics, Siemens, GE Healthcare and Toshiba Medical Systems. As a key part of the deal, the government said it was committed to increasing investment in R&D to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2027 and 3 percent over the longer term. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Saudi-led blockade cuts fuel lifeline to Yemen;LONDON (Reuters) - No fuel shipments have reached Yemen s largest port for a month, a Reuters analysis of port and ship tracking data shows, as a Saudi Arabian-led blockade on the war-torn country tightens despite international calls for the siege to end. Tankers laden with oil have turned away from Hodeida, the biggest entry point for cargo to the devastated north, without unloading. The United Nations body tasked with inspecting ships seeking to enter the area said on Wednesday it could not say when such ships would be allowed through. The shortage means areas hardest hit by war, malnutrition and cholera lack functioning hospital generators, cooking fuel and water pumps. It also makes it harder to move food and medical aid around the country. At least one in four people in the nation of 28 million is starving, according to the United Nations, as a three-year civil war, stoked by regional foes Saudi Arabia and Iran, rages on. The United Nations and individual governments including Britain have urged Saudi Arabia over the past few weeks to loosen its blockade on Yemen s northern Red Sea ports. In a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson for the U.N. inspection body, the Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM), said the Saudi-led coalition forces have refused tankers permission to enter Hodeida despite its approval, and repeated attempts by the vessels to proceed ... The coalition has repeatedly said their priority is food only. The coalition has turned away up to 12 tankers in recent weeks, the UNVIM spokesperson said, adding: UNVIM is unable to say when the coalition will allow fuel tankers to enter Yemen s Red Sea ports anchorage areas. Saudi Arabia and its allies, with the backing of the United States, first positioned warships in Yemeni waters in 2015. Since then, commercial shipments to Hodeida and other ports controlled by Iran-backed Houthi militia have suffered severe restrictions and delays. In early November, after a Houthi ballistic missile was fired into Riyadh, Saudi Arabia blocked all Yemen s ports, preventing any shipments - including humanitarian aid - from entering the country. Since then, Riyadh has reopened southern ports, including Aden, which are under the control of the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government, and allowed humanitarian aid into Hodeida. But the squeeze on commercial shipments to Hodeida has tightened. According to Hodeida port records, Saudi-led military forces last month ordered at least six oil tankers to leave the port before unloading. Captain Mohammed Ishaq, executive chairman of the Yemen Red Sea Ports Corporation, which operates Hodeida, told Reuters on Tuesday no fuel shipments had reached the port since Nov. 6. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned last week that water systems in nine cities including Hodeida had run out of fuel stocks. Since then, as a last resort, it said it has supplied fuel to the water authorities of Hodeida and Taiz to help provide clean water to over one million people, as well as to several hospitals in the embattled capital of Sanaa. A spokesman for the Saudi coalition could not be reached for comment. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters last month that no country in the world had provided more aid to Yemen than Saudi Arabia. Al-Jubeir said the aid was only distributed in government-held areas and not Houthi areas, because the Houthis steal the aid and they sell it for profit. But aid agencies say aid can only cover a fraction of the nation s needs. We re facing the worst famine seen in decades, and that won t change unless commercial shipments of food and fuel are allowed in, said Shane Stevenson, Yemen country director with aid group Oxfam. Residents of Hodeida say the shortage has pushed up the price of existing fuel. The price of 200 liters of petrol on the black market costs 11,000 Yemeni riyals compared with 5,200 riyals before the conflict, residents say. A 50 kg bag of flour has climbed to 8,500 riyals from 7,000 riyal before the closures on Nov. 6. Iman Ahmed, a 43-year-old teacher in Hodeida, said in late November the high price of diesel was having a devastating effect in rural areas outside of the port city. Fisherman have stopped working because of warships and coalition air strikes. Farmers have stopped work because of a sharp rise in the price of diesel. Abdo Haidar, a 43-year-old father of seven, said separately: Life has become so hard. Before the war things were going OK, there were jobs, I was able to feed my family. Now ... gas is barely available and basic necessities cost double. Most of the time our food is now bread and tea. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Why is there uproar over Trump's Jerusalem declaration?; JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that it will move its embassy to the holy city. In doing so, Trump is breaking with longtime U.S. policy and potentially threatening regional stability, despite warnings from Western and Arab allies. Why is President Trump planning to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the embassy there? There has long been pressure from pro-Israel politicians in the United States to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and Trump made it a signature promise of his campaign during the 2016 presidential election. It is a decision that will likely be popular with many conservative and evangelical Christians in his political base. Many of them support political recognition of Israel s claim to the city. Vice President Mike Pence and David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel appointed by Trump, are thought to have pushed hard for both recognition and embassy relocation. Why does Jerusalem play such an important role in the Middle East conflict? Religion, politics and history. Jerusalem is a city that is sacred to three of the great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and each has sites of great religious significance there. It has been fought over for millennia by its inhabitants, by invading Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans and the British Empire, and by the modern states of Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel s government regards Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the country, although that is not recognized internationally. Palestinians feel equally strongly, saying that East Jerusalem must be the capital of an eventual Palestinian state. The city even has different names. Jews call it Jerusalem, or Yerushalayim, and Arabs call it Al-Quds, which means The Holy . But the city s significance goes beyond the two parties most immediately involved. At the heart of Jerusalem s Old City is the hill which is known to Jews across the world as Har ha-Bayit, or Temple Mount, and to Muslims internationally as al-Haram al-Sharif, or The Noble Sanctuary. It was home to the Jewish temples of antiquity but all that remains of them above ground is a restraining wall for the foundations built by Herod the Great. Known as the Western Wall, this is a sacred place of prayer for Jews. Within yards of the wall, and overlooking it, are two Muslim holy places, the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was built in the 8th century. Muslims regard the site as the third holiest in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. The city is also an important pilgrimage site for Christians, who revere it as the place where they believe that Jesus Christ preached, died and was resurrected. What is the city s status now and does any other country have an embassy in Jerusalem? When British rule ended in 1948, Jordanian forces occupied the Old City and Arab East Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. In 1980 the Israeli parliament passed a law declaring the complete and united city of Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, but the United Nations regards East Jerusalem as occupied, and the city s status as disputed until resolved by negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Other countries have had embassies in Jerusalem in the past, but moved them out of the city some years ago. The King of Jordan retains a role in ensuring the upkeep of the Muslim holy places. What is likely to happen next? Has Jerusalem been a flashpoint before? Tensions are running high in Jerusalem, and violence has erupted before over matters of sovereignty and religion. In 1969 an Australian Messianic Christian tried to burn down the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He failed, but caused damage. So charged was the Middle East s political climate - just two years after the Six Day War - that there was fury across the Arab world. In 2000, the Israeli politician Ariel Sharon, then opposition leader, led a group of Israeli lawmakers onto the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif complex. Palestinians protested, and there were violent clashes that quickly escalated into the second Palestinian uprising, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Deadly confrontations also took place in July this year after Israel installed metal detectors at the entrance to the complex following the killing of two Israeli policemen there by Arab-Israeli gunmen. In recent days, Palestinian factions have called for protests, and Arab leaders across the Middle East have warned that a unilateral American move could lead to turmoil, and hamper U.S. efforts to restart long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. asks officials to defer travel to Israel, West Bank to December 20;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department issued a cable to all its diplomatic posts worldwide on Wednesday asking its officials to defer non-essential travel to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank until Dec. 20 according to a copy of the cable seen by Reuters. Embassy Tel Aviv and Consulate General Jerusalem request that all non-essential visitors defer their travel to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank from December 4-December 20, 2017, said the cable, which did not specify a reason for the request. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., France urge Russia to 'deliver' Assad delegation to Syria peace talks;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States and France called on Russia on Wednesday to deliver the delegation of President Bashar al-Assad to Syria peace talks in Geneva after discussions on ending the six-year war resumed with no sign of the government attending. The eighth round of negotiations began last week and after a few days with little apparent progress, U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said the government delegation, led by Bashar al-Ja afari, was returning to Damascus to consult and refresh . De Mistura expected talks to resume around Tuesday Dec. 5, but Ja afari left Geneva on Saturday and said he might not come back because the opposition had stated that Assad could not play a role in a future interim government. A source close to the Syrian government s negotiating team told Reuters the delegation was still in Damascus on Wednesday. We have said to the Russians it is important that the Syrian regime be at the table and be part of these negotiations and part of the discussion, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a news conference in Brussels. We have left it to the Russians to deliver them to table. A diplomat in Geneva said it was likely, but not confirmed, that the delegation would return to Geneva on Friday. Russia s RIA news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying they would arrive on Sunday or Monday. Syrian officials have not said if Ja afari will return to the talks but opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi said on Monday a government boycott would be an embarrassment to Russia , which is keen to see a negotiated end to the war. The opposition negotiating team arrived at the U.N. offices in Geneva on Wednesday morning to resume talks with de Mistura, who declined to comment late on Tuesday when asked about the absence of Ja afari s negotiators. It takes two to Tango, but at the same time you need to talk to the other party, Aridi told reporters on Wednesday. If they are quite serious about bringing peace to Syria, well they should show up. France, a key backer of the Syrian opposition, accused the government of blocking the U.N.-led effort and refusing to engage in good faith to achieve a political solution. This refusal highlights the obstruction strategy of the political process carried out by the Damascus regime, which is responsible for the absence of progress in the negotiations, French foreign ministry deputy spokesman Alexandre Georgini told reporters. He also said that Russia, as one of Assad s main supporters, needed to assume its responsibilities so that the Syrian government finally entered the negotiations. The Russian mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to requests for comment. During last week s sessions, de Mistura shuttled between representatives of the warring sides, who did not meet face-to-face. He had planned to continue the round until Dec. 15. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Putin declares ""complete victory"" on both banks of Euphrates in Syria";MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday a complete victory had been achieved over Islamic State militants on both banks of the Euphrates river in Syria. In comments released by the Kremlin, Putin said the military operation in the area was now finished, and that the focus would switch to a political process that would eventually involve presidential and parliamentary elections. Putin did not specify whether he was referring to the end of military operations in the whole of Syria, or just the areas around the Euphrates valley. Russia s military intervention in Syria s civil war in 2015 has turned the tide of the conflict in favor of Moscow s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and against rebel groups fighting to oust him. Western governments and rights groups have alleged Russian air strikes killed civilians, an allegation Moscow has denied. Two hours ago, the (Russian) defense minister reported to me that the operations on the eastern and western banks of the Euphrates have been completed with the total rout of the terrorists, Putin said. Naturally, there could still be some pockets of resistance, but overall the military work at this stage and on this territory is completed with, I repeat, the total rout of the terrorists, he said. We need to ... move, undoubtedly, on to the next stage - the start of a political process. Putin also said it was important to establish the Congress of Syrian Peoples, a proposed peace conference that Russia has offered to host, which would lead to the preparation of a new constitution and then presidential and parliamentary elections. But it is a big and prolonged task, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says his decision on Jerusalem is long overdue;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is long overdue. I think it s long overdue. Many presidents have said they want to do something and they didn t do it, he said in a Cabinet meeting ahead of his midday speech on Israel. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe court again postpones former finance minister's bail hearing;ZIMBABWE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean court has postponed to Thursday the bail hearing of former finance minister Ignatius Chombo, who is facing charges of corruption dating back two decades. Chombo, who did not appear at the court on Wednesday, was detained after the military seized power in Operation Restore Legacy mid-November, which it said was meant to remove criminals around former President Robert Mugabe. The High Court had been due to sit on Wednesday to hear Chombo s appeal against a lower court ruling last week denying him bail pending his trial on Dec. 8, but the state prosecutor said he needed time to prepare his case. This is the second time the court has postponed the hearing after an initial sitting on Friday was delayed for the same reasons. His lawyer says Chombo will deny the allegations at his trial. Chombo was among members of the G40 political faction allied to 93-year-old Mugabe and his wife, Grace, who were also expelled from the ruling ZANU-PF party. Ousted ZANU-PF Youth League leader Kudzanai Chipanga s bail hearing was also postponed to Thursday. Chipanga is facing charges of making statements undermining public confidence in the military which helped end Mugabe s 37-year rule. Some supporters of new President Emmerson Mnangagwa have called for unspecified action against G40 but the president has urged citizens not to undertake any form of vengeful retribution . Mnangagwa, who was sworn in on Nov. 24, and is under pressure to root out rampant corruption stifling the economy. Last week, he opened a three-month amnesty window for the return of public funds illegally stashed abroad by individuals and companies. Upon the expiry of the amnesty at end of February next year, the government will arrest and prosecute those who have failed to comply, he said in a statement. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish academic on lengthy hunger strike appeals jail term;ANKARA (Reuters) - A sacked Turkish professor who has been on hunger strike for almost nine months and is barely half her original weight said on Wednesday she had appealed a court ruling that linked her to a banned far-left group and handed her a six-year jail sentence. Nuriye Gulmen, 35, lost her job as a literature professor during large-scale purges of universities, the civil service, judiciary and military following last year s failed coup against President Tayyip Erdogan. After going on hunger strike and staging protests against the purges, Gulmen was arrested in May and last week a court convicted her of being a member of the outlawed militant leftist DHKP-C group, a charge she denies. However, the court also ordered her release pending an appeal and she has vowed to continue her hunger strike until she gets her job back. We will take (the appeal) all the way up, and then to the European Court of Human Rights. There is no evidence linking me to the DHKP-C, apart from some secret witnesses testimony, Gulmen told Reuters in her apartment in the capital Ankara. On the 273rd day of a diet of sugar and salt solutions, water and herbal tea, Gulmen weighs only 34 kilograms, barely half her weight when she started the hunger strike, but she said she remained optimistic. I am not sick, I don t need to be hospitalized. I am carrying out a hunger strike of my own will. I was completely isolated at the intensive care unit, although I rejected any treatment, said an emaciated-looking Gulmen. Surrounded on her patient bed by hand sanitizers and surgical masks to avoid contracting an infection, Gulmen said the Turkish state feared those ready to protest against its post-coup purges, in which more than 150,000 people have lost their jobs and some 50,000 jailed. Our sit-in protest was creating waves and I was detained because the government was having nightmares that it would widen into a Gezi-scale protest, Gulmen said, referring to an earlier wave of anti-government protests in Turkey in 2013. The government wants absolute surrender. You can commit suicide for all they care, but they don t want you to raise your voice, added Gulmen, who describes herself as a leftist. The Ankara court said Gulmen was staging her hunger strike on the orders of the militant DHKP-C group, which is classed as a terrorist organization in Turkey. She denies any link. No one can stay hungry on the orders of others. It s impossible to carry on unless it s coming from inside you. No one melts their bodies on (somebody else s) orders, she said. Gulmen said she found strength and courage on bad days from a book about Bobby Sands, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, who died in 1981 on the 66th day of his hunger strike against prison conditions in Northern Ireland. Turkish authorities accuse U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his supporters of organizing the July 2016 coup attempt. Gulen condemned the coup and denies involvement. Human rights groups and the European Union have said Erdogan is using the crackdown on suspected Gulen supporters to stifle dissent in Turkey. Many leftists and others have also been caught up in the purges. Erdogan and his government deny they are trying to muzzle opponents and say the clampdown is necessary in view of the security challenges Turkey faces. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey links U.S. judge in sanctions case to wanted cleric;ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan s spokesman said on Wednesday the U.S. judge hearing the trial of an executive at Turkey s state-owned Halkbank had taken part in events organized by a cleric Ankara blames for last year s failed military coup. The issue has gone beyond a legal case, it has become a political case, spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in reference to the New York trial of a deputy general manager at the bank, who is charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. The executive has pleaded not guilty and Halkbank says it has abided by Turkish and international law. Erdogan s government has portrayed the case as a plot against Turkey by the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who it alleges engineered last year s coup attempt. It is known that the judge has participated in events upon Gulen s invitation, Kalin told a news conference, without giving details. Turkish newspapers have said Judge Richard Berman attended a legal symposium in Istanbul in 2014 organized by Gulen supporters. Berman could not be reached for comment. At the first hearing in the case he said he was one of five U.S. legal experts who spoke at the symposium and moderated a panel discussion on independent and effective judiciary. In response to previous criticism from Turkey, the United States has said its judicial processes are independent. Already strained ties between NATO allies Ankara and Washington have deteriorated further over the court case, in which Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, has detailed a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Zarrab has implicated top Turkish politicians, including Erdogan. Zarrab said on Thursday that when Erdogan was prime minister he had authorized a transaction to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Although he has not yet responded to the courtroom claims, Erdogan has dismissed the case as a politically motivated attempt, led by Gulen, to bring down the Turkish government. We will continue watching it within the framework of the law, but the public is seeing how this is trying to be used as an instrument of blackmail, Kalin said. We have not done anything in violation of international laws, we carried out our activities transparently, Kalin said. Turkey has repeatedly requested Gulen s extradition, but U.S. officials have said the courts require sufficient evidence before they can extradite the elderly cleric, who has denied any involvement in the coup. Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi air strikes on Yemen intensify, residents in capital stay indoors;ADEN/DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi-led coalition stepped up air strikes on Yemen s Houthis on Wednesday as the Iran-allied armed movement tightened its grip on Sanaa a day after the son of slain former president Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed revenge for his father s death. Former president Saleh plunged the country deeper into turmoil last week by switching allegiances after years helping the Houthis win control of much of the country s north including the capital. He was killed in an attack on his convoy on Monday. The pro-Houthi Al Masirah television station said on Wednesday Saudi Arabia and its allies had bombed Saleh s residence and other houses of his family members now controlled by the Houthis. Air strikes also hit northern provinces including Taiz, Hajjah, Midi and Saada, it said. There was no immediate word on casualties. The intervention by Saleh s son Ahmed Ali, a former commander of the elite Republican Guard who lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates and was once seen as a successor to his father, has provided the anti-Houthi movement with a potential figurehead. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the de facto leader of the UAE, visited Ahmed Ali at his residence to offer his condolences, according to Sheikh Mohammed s Twitter account. He posted a picture of himself sitting near Ahmed Ali. Ahmed Ali had been widely expected to leave the UAE, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, for Yemen to help in the war amid media reports that some Saleh loyalists have been switching sides. Many Sanaa residents were staying indoors on Wednesday out of fear of a Houthi crackdown. On Tuesday, Saleh supporters said his nephew Tareq, another top commander, and the head of his party, Aref Zouka, had both been killed. There s a scary calm in the city, said Ali, a 47-year-old businessman who declined to use his full name. People are reporting that there are many arrests and they are trying to shoot military men and (Saleh party) members. Yemen s conflict, pitting the Houthis against the Saudi-led military alliance which backs a government based in the south, has unleashed what the United Nations calls the world s worst humanitarian crisis. The proxy war between regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia - armed and given intelligence by the West has killed more than 10,000 people, with more than two million displaced. Saleh s decision to abandon the Houthis was the most dramatic development in three years of stalemate. Top Houthi officials called it high treason backed by their Saudi enemies. Tens of thousands of Houthi supporters staged a rally in Sanaa on Tuesday to celebrate what the Houthis had said was the defeat of a major conspiracy by Saleh, chanting slogans against Saudi Arabia and its allies. Political sources said the Houthis had arrested dozens of Saleh s allies and army officers affiliated with his party in and around the city. Several had been killed in the raids. On Wednesday, several dozen women gathered in a main Sanaa square holding Saleh s portrait and demanding his body be handed over for burial, but they were forcibly dispersed by Houthi security forces, eyewitnesses said. The Houthi-controlled interior ministry distributed a video of dozens of seated barefoot men it said were pro-Saleh fighters detained in one of its party headquarters. Media rights group Reporters Without Borders appealed for the release of 41 journalists it said have been held hostage by the group since it overran the headquarters of the Saleh-owned al-Yemen al-Youm TV station on Saturday. Nearly a million people in Yemen have been hit by a cholera outbreak, and famine caused by warring parties blocking food supplies threatens much of the country. The UN secretary-general s special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, called on all parties to show restraint. Increased hostilities will further threaten civilian lives and exacerbate their suffering, he said in a briefing to the Security Council on Tuesday. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the killing of Saleh would likely worsen an already dire humanitarian situation in the country in the short term. Speaking with reporters on a military aircraft en route to Washington, Mattis said his death could either push the conflict towards U.N. peace negotiations or make it an even more vicious war. The commander of Iran s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, praised what he called the Houthis swift quashing of the coup against the holy warriors , the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Much is likely to depend on the future allegiances of Saleh loyalists who previously helped the Houthi group, which hails from the Zaidi branch of Shi ite Islam that ruled a thousand-year kingdom in northern Yemen until 1962. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cameroon escalates military crackdown on Anglophone separatists;YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Cameroon s government has ordered thousands of villagers to leave their homes in the Anglophone Southwest region as it deploys troops to root out armed separatists who have vowed to loosen President Paul Biya s long grip on power. The deployment marks an escalation of Biya s year-long crackdown on peaceful protests in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions that has killed dozens of civilians and forced thousands to flee their homes in fear of reprisals. Now, the government is using force to confront an insurgency that has sprung up alongside the civil unrest. The separatists have killed at least eight soldiers and policemen over the past month as part of their campaign to break from the capital Yaounde in Francophone Cameroon and form a separate state called Ambazonia. Authorities of the Manyu Division in the Southwest on Dec. 1 gave the order to evacuate 16 villages across the region. They warned that anyone deciding to stay will be treated as accomplices or perpetrators of ongoing criminal occurrences. Motorbikes, a preferred mode of transport for separatist attackers, were ordered off the roads between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. People ran helter skelter when they saw the statement, said Agbor Valery, a lawyer in Mamfe, which is near some of the evacuated villages. He said people were afraid of being rounded up and put in jail, as has happened since September in other areas of the English-speaking part of the country. If you go to the villages, everyone has fled. Only the old people stayed. The streets are quiet. It is highly militarized. At night, you hear gunfire. Valery said he saw hundreds of troops and truck loads of military equipment arrive in Mamfe on Sunday that were then deployed to the surrounding villages. Reuters was unable to independently verify his account but two military sources in the city of Bamenda in Northwest region confirmed that additional security forces have been deployed in the English-speaking regions. The separatist movement compounds problems for 84-year-old Biya, who has ruled Cameroon since 1982 and plans to stand for another term next year. The economy has slowed sharply since 2014, while attacks in the Far North region by Islamist militant group Boko Haram have strained the military. The fall last month of Zimbabwe s leader Robert Mugabe after decades in power highlights the potential vulnerability of Africa s long serving rulers amid a growing grassroots push for strict term limits for presidents. Last week Biya vowed to flush out secessionists, whom he called criminals . Defense minister Joseph Beti Assomo said on Monday the new deployment would prevent terrorists from harming others . Violence has spiraled since last year when government forces crushed peaceful protests by Anglophone teachers and lawyers protesting their perceived marginalization by the French-speaking majority. The heavy-handed government response fuelled support for the separatist movement, which has existed on the fringes of Cameroonian politics for decades. The response has also forced thousands out of their homes. More than 5,000 have fled Anglophone Cameroon across the border to Nigeria since Oct. 1, the United Nations said. Nigeria is also English speaking. The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said it is making preparations for up to 40,000 refugees. Refugees stories have been slow to emerge because of government-imposed internet outages that have blocked messaging and social media sites like Facebook and Whatsapp. But they are beginning to shed light on what new refugees will likely face. Abia David told Reuters that he left Bamenda in Northwest Cameroon on Oct. 27 amid widespread arrests in the town. He heard from friends that the police were coming to arrest him because he is a member of an opposition political group. To escape Bamenda, and avoid its increasingly crowded jail, he cycled 16 kilometers into the countryside to the head of a bush road. From there he walked some 100 km (62 miles) alone north through a series of remote villages towards Nigeria. There was no time to carry food. I had one change of clothes but I lost that. He slept on strangers floors and arrived in Nigeria a week later, where he fell ill with malaria. He said NGOs on the border had estimated an extra 1,000-odd people had arrived since the weekend. The UNHCR is offering provisions like mosquito nets and is helping refugees find housing. So far there is no central camp for refugees and they rely on the hospitality of Nigerians for room and board. For David, it beats going home. Asked if he planned to return, he said: Go home to where? Go home to be killed? To go to jail without trial? I can only go back once this is resolved. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine police fail to find Saakashvili in protest camp raid;KIEV (Reuters) - Dozens of Ukrainian police in riot gear raided a protest camp outside parliament on Wednesday in a failed attempt to detain former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who was freed from custody by supporters a day earlier. Saakashvili later said police had searched the wrong tent at the camp, continuing a surreal hide-and-seek game between him and Ukrainian law enforcement ever since he barged across the border from Poland three months ago. Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship and invited by President Petro Poroshenko to become governor of the Odessa region after the Maidan protests ousted a pro-Russian president in early 2014, but the two later fell out. The saga threatens to embarrass the pro-Western leadership in Kiev, although Saakashvili s party, which is now seeking to unseat Poroshenko at the ballot box, does not have nationwide support, opinion polls show. Protesters defended the camp, which was set up in September, leading to clashes in which four policemen and an unknown number of civilians were wounded, Kiev police said in a statement. General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko later acknowledged that the operation could have been carried out more effectively, but said police had acted in accordance with the law. Saakashvili will be detained and the best thing he could do, if he were a man, if he really loved Ukraine even a little, would be to come today to Volodymyrska Street (security service headquarters) to testify to investigators, he told parliament. The situation near parliament was calm at around 1230 GMT, although an increased number of armored police stood guard around the building, according to a Reuters witness. Lutsenko has vowed to make all efforts to regain custody of Saakashvili, who was freed by his supporters from a police van in a chaotic scene on Tuesday after being detained on suspicion of assisting a criminal organization. In a televised briefing on Wednesday, Saakashvili supporters see him as a fearless crusader against corruption said he would not present himself to law enforcement officials, as requested by the General Prosecutor s office. I am prepared to meet an investigator of the prosecutor in the tent city, he said. His detention was the latest twist in a prolonged feud between the Ukrainian authorities and Saakashvili, who has turned on his one-time patron Poroshenko, accusing him of corruption and calling for his removal from office. Poroshenko s office said prosecutors have evidence to back up the claims against Saakashvili, whom they accuse of receiving financing from criminals linked to former president Viktor Yanukovich who planned to overthrow the current government. Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by Poroshenko in July while abroad and is now stateless. The 49-year-old is facing the threat of possible extradition to Georgia, where he is wanted on criminal charges he says were trumped up for political reasons. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Catalan leader says to stay in Belgium for time being;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, facing arrest in Spain for organising an illegal independence referendum in October, said on Tuesday he would stay in Belgium for the time being. Spanish authorities dropped an international arrest warrant for him on Monday in order to bring his case solely under Spanish jurisdiction and avoid a lengthy extradition process through the Belgian courts. For the moment we will stay here, Puigdemont said at a press conference in Brussels. Puigdemont declared the northeastern region of Catalonia an independent republic on Oct. 27, leading Madrid to impose direct rule on the regional government and fire the pro-independence administration. The resulting political uncertainty has led to thousands of companies moving their legal base from Catalonia and has dented tourist figures and retail sales in the wealthy Mediterranean region. Puigdemont and four ex-cabinet members travelled to Brussels shortly after he was sacked by the central government. His former No. 2, Oriol Junqueras, is in custody in a Madrid jail while his role in the organisation of the referendum is investigated. Puigdemont faces charges of rebellion, sedition, misuse of public funds, disobedience and breach of trust in Spain. His party, Together for Catalonia , is campaigning on a pro-independence ticket for Dec. 21 elections called by Madrid in an effort to resolve the crisis. The central government hopes the elections will usher in a new administration that favours unity with Spain. Puigdemont said he hoped to be able to return to Spain if he was elected a member of the Catalan parliament, but he was not sure if he would be arrested and put in custody. We have to carefully consider such a decision before taking it, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron regrets Trump's 'unilateral' Jerusalem decision;ALGIERS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he did not support U.S. President Donald Trump s unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and called for calm across the region. This decision is a regrettable decision that France does not approve of and goes against international law and all the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council, Macron told reporters at a news conference in Algiers. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said he would move the embassy to the city, despite warnings from around the world that the gesture further drives a wedge between Israel and the Palestinians. The status of Jerusalem is a question of international security that concerns the entire international community. The status of Jerusalem must be determined by Israelis and Palestinians in the framework of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, he said. Macron, who has developed a good working relationship with Trump since taking office in May, spoke to the U.S. leader earlier this week to try to convince him to change his mind. France and Europe are attached to a two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - leaving side by side in peace and security within recognized international borders with Jerusalem the capital of both states, he said, adding that Paris was ready to work with partners to find a solution. He called for calm. For now, I urge for calm and for everyone to be responsible. We must avoid at all costs avoid violence and foster dialogue, he said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain has not formally assessed impact of Brexit on economy - Brexit minister;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has not conducted formal sector-by-sector analyses of the impact that leaving the European Union will have on the economy, Brexit minister David Davis said on Wednesday, arguing they were not necessary yet. The comments inflamed critics of the government s handling of the complex divorce process at a time when talks with Brussels have stalled because of a row over how to manage the Irish border after Brexit. Davis has become embroiled in a long-running argument with lawmakers including from the ruling Conservative Party over what preparatory work the government has undertaken, and how much of it should be made public. There s no systematic impact assessment I m aware of, Davis told a parliamentary committee, saying it would be more appropriate to conduct such analysis later in the negotiating process. His remarks drew immediate criticism from lawmakers on the committee, who said Davis was contradicting his previous statement that the government had analyses of the sectoral impact that went into excruciating detail . Whether it s through incompetence or insincerity, David Davis has been misleading parliament from the start, said Wera Hobhouse, a member of the Brexit committee from the Liberal Democrat party. It is unbelievable that these long-trumpeted impact assessments don t even exist, meaning the government has no idea what their Brexit plans will do to the country. Opposition lawmakers have pressured the government into releasing a summary of its analysis to the committee. On Wednesday, they complained that the analysis given to them was incomplete and called for more detail. But the committee scrutinising government policy on leaving the EU said they were satisfied that the government had fulfilled its obligations to publish the documents. Nevertheless, pro-EU Labour lawmaker Chuka Umunna said he has written to the speaker of the House of Commons to ask if the government has misled parliament. Davis and his team of ministers have previously said its sectoral analysis is not a formal impact assessment a technical document submitted to parliament and that publishing the work it has done could undermine Britain s negotiating position. We will at some stage do the best we can to quantify the effect of different negotiating outcomes as we come up to them bearing in mind we haven t started phase two (negotiations) yet, Davis said, referring to the second phase of talks which will focus on trade. He said those assessments would look at the impact of different outcomes on sectors including financial services, manufacturing and agriculture. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi king, Turkish president discuss regional developments after U.S. embassy move decision: agency;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s King Salman discussed the most prominent developments in the region in a telephone call from the Turkish president, the Saudi state news agency reported, after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. Embassy in Israel would be moved to Jerusalem. The agency gave no further details on the discussions. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam s holiest sites, and regional Muslim power Turkey have both warned against any attempt to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital or move the embassy to city. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran condemns U.S. decision to move embassy to Jerusalem;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran seriously condemns the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem and its recognition of the city as Israel s capital, read a statement on Wednesday from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried by state media. The move violates international resolutions, the statement said. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier that the United States was trying to destabilize the region and start a war to protect Israel s security. The U.S. action will incite Muslims and inflame a new intifada and encourage extremism and violent behavior for which the responsibility will lie with (the United States) and the Zionist regime (Israel), the foreign ministry statement said. The statement also called on the international community to pressure the United States not to go through with the embassy move or the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Islamic Republic of Iran has reiterated that the most important reason for the falling apart of stability and security in the Middle East is the continued occupation and the biased and unequivocal support of the American government for the Zionist regime, the statement said. And the deprivation of the oppressed Palestinian people from their primary rights in forming an independent Palestinian government with the noble Quds as its capital, it said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico says will keep its embassy in Israel in Tel Aviv;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it will keep its Israeli embassy in Tel Aviv, following U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to move the nation s embassy to Jerusalem. Mexico will continue to adhere to United Nations resolutions recognizing the status of Jerusalem, the foreign ministry said in a statement. Mexico will continue to maintain a close and friendly bilateral relationship with the state of Israel, as evidenced by the recent visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to our country, and will also continue supporting the historical claims of the Palestinian people, the statement read. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Abbas says Jerusalem is eternal Palestinian capital, dismisses U.S. peace role;RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday that Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the State of Palestine in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement that he was recognizing the city as Israel s capital. In a pre-recorded speech played on Palestine TV, Abbas rejected Trump s announcement which included a decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a move he said was tantamount to the United States abdicating its role as a peace mediator. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt's Sisi discusses repercussions of U.S. embassy decision with Palestinian President Abbas: presidency statement;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received a phone call from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the repercussions of the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, a statement from the Egyptian presidency said on Wednesday. Sisi expressed Egypt s rejection of the move and of any implications resulting from it, the statement said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tunisian labor union says Jerusalem decision a 'declaration of war', calls for protests;TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia s powerful labor union UGTT said U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital and decision to move the U.S. embassy to the city was a declaration of war, a statement said on Wednesday. We call...for mass protests, the labor union said in a statement. Tunisia s foreign ministry said in a separate statement Trump s move seriously threatens to undermine the foundations of the (Israeli-Palestinian) peace process. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Frustration and fury among Arabs at Trump's Jerusalem declaration;CAIRO/AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Arabs denounced President Donald Trump s plan to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as a slap in the face but few thought their governments would do much in response. Trump phoned allies in the Middle East late on Tuesday to tell them the United States would acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday and prepare to move its embassy there. It incites feelings of anger among all Muslims and threatens world peace, said Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Imam of Egypt s al-Azhar mosque, one of Islam s most important institutions. The gates of hell will be opened in the West before the East, he added, warning of the possible reaction. Israel s sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which it seized in the 1967 war, is not recognized internationally, and under the U.S.-brokered Oslo accords of 1993 the city s status was to be decided in negotiations with Palestinians. Arab governments issued statements of concern or condemnation and emergency meetings of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have been called. But the U.S. decision has been taken. In a bitterly divided region, backing for Palestinians is often seen as a unifying position, but it is also often a source of internal recriminations over the extent of that support. A cartoon in al-Arabi al-Jadeed, a London-based Arabic news website, showed Trump raising a hand against an Arab as if to slap him, wearing a large glove marked with the Israeli flag. In Lebanon, the Daily Star newspaper ran a full page photograph of Jerusalem on its cover with the headline No offense Mr. President, Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine . Around the Arab world - including Egypt and Jordan, its only two countries to recognize Israel - and across the bitter divide between allies of regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, people denounced the move. Neither I nor my children nor my children s children will give up our right to Palestine and Jerusalem, said Hilmi Aqel, a Palestinian refugee born in Jordan s al-Baqaa camp after his family fled the fighting that accompanied Israel s creation. America does what it wants because it s powerful and thinks it won t feel the consequences ... Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, not of Israel. It never can be, said Nada Saeed, 24, a property broker in Cairo. This is a provocation for the Arabs, said Mahdi Msheikh, 43, a taxi driver in Beirut s Hamra district. However, few people Reuters interviewed on Wednesday expected their governments to take any real action. What saddens me most about this is that Palestine in the past was an ultimate rights cause for us as Syrians and Arabs ... Palestine has retreated from our priorities, said a lecturer at Damascus university, who asked not to be named. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam s holiest sites, pushed a plan in 2002 offering Israel peace with all Arab countries in return for a Palestinian state including east Jerusalem. But a recent newspaper report suggested it was willing to compromise on several areas that are regarded by Palestinians and some other Arab countries as red lines. Riyadh has denied that and called on Trump not to move the embassy. The current events on the world stage and especially in the Gulf help Trump take this step because the most important thing is that Saudi Arabia is not against it, said Adnan, a 52-year-old trader in Beirut. The kingdom s top clergy issued a mild statement saying Saudi Arabia supported Jerusalem, but did not explicitly denounce Trump s move. Many Saudi Twitter users posting under the hashtag Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine , shared a film clip of the late King Faisal, who launched the 1973 Arab oil embargo against the West, pledging never to accept Israel. But one Twitter user posting with a common Saudi family name said that while Muslims and Arabs would be provoked by the move, its top royals would not be. Instead, they would suppress any move or call to jihad against the Zionist enemy , he wrote. In Cairo, Khaled Abdelkhalik, a lawyer, said: We paraded Trump as an ally of the Arabs, but he turned out dirtier than his predecessors. Jordan, which agreed peace with Israel in 1994 while the peace process with the Palestinians still seemed on track, held a special session of parliament. I call on my colleagues to tear up the treaty of humiliation and shame, said MP Yahya Saoud, referring to the peace deal. Jordan, like Lebanon, is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. This is a conspiracy that is denying us our rights, the first of which is to return. They think we are a branch of thorns that they can step on and break, said Fadia, a social worker with two daughters in Lebanon s Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp. But we are a bomb. If they step on it, it explodes, she said. In Israel, analysts said that despite such warnings, they expected little violence or opposition. The moderate camp in the Arab world needs the United States as well as Israel in order to face their main threat, which is Iran, said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies. We may see some public announcements maybe denouncing the American decision, but in substantive terms I don t think much will change. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Qatar calls Trump's Jerusalem move 'death sentence for peace';DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar s foreign minister said on Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a death sentence for all who seek peace, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera television reported. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani called the move a dangerous escalation . Qatar s foreign ministry said earlier on Twitter that Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani had warned of serious implications from the decision in a telephone conversation with Trump. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Text: Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The following is the text of an address made by President Donald Trump announcing the recognition by the United States of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look at the world s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches. My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city and so importantly is Israel s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago. Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law s waiver, refusing to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital city. Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result. Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. I ve judged this course of action to be in the best interests of the United States of America and the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement. Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital. Acknowledging this as a fact is a necessary condition for achieving peace. It was 70 years ago that the United States, under President Truman, recognized the State of Israel. Ever since then, Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times. Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the Prime Minister and the President. It is the headquarters of many government ministries. For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of state, and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year. Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs. Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque. However, through all of these years, presidents representing the United States have declined to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. In fact, we have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all. But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel s capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It s something that has to be done. That is why, consistent with the Jerusalem Embassy Act, I am also directing the State Department to begin preparation to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This will immediately begin the process of hiring architects, engineers, and planners, so that a new embassy, when completed, will be a magnificent tribute to peace. In making these announcements, I also want to make one point very clear: This decision is not intended, in any way, to reflect a departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. We want an agreement that is a great deal for the Israelis and a great deal for the Palestinians. We are not taking a position of any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders. Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question, Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. The United States would support a two-state solution if agreed to by both sides. In the meantime, I call on all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem s holy sites, including the Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif. Above all, our greatest hope is for peace, the universal yearning in every human soul. With today s action, I reaffirm my administration s longstanding commitment to a future of peace and security for the region. There will, of course, be disagreement and dissent regarding this announcement. But we are confident that ultimately, as we work through these disagreements, we will arrive at a peace and a place far greater in understanding and cooperation. This sacred city should call forth the best in humanity, lifting our sights to what it is possible;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Belgian police commissioner nominated to lead Europol;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian police commissioner Catherine De Bolle has been nominated to become the next head of Europe s police agency, the European Union Council said on Wednesday. De Bolle, 47, will take over from British diplomat Rob Wainwright following a formal confirmation process when his term expires on May 1, 2018. The executive director of Europol is appointed for a four-year term, renewable once. Located in The Hague, Europol coordinates police operations between E.U. member states against organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and people smuggling. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hamas urges action against U.S. interests over Trump's 'flagrant aggression';GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital and decision to move the U.S. embassy to the city was a flagrant aggression against the Palestinian people . In a speech in Washington, Trump said his announcement marked the beginning of a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip, urged Arabs and Muslims to undermine the U.S. interests in the region and to shun Israel. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt rejects U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem: Foreign Ministry;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt rejected the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday. It added that Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital did not change the city s legal status. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey condemns U.S. move on Jerusalem as 'irresponsible';ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned a decision by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as irresponsible and called on Washington to reconsider the move. Several hundred protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The protest was largely peaceful, although some of the demonstrators threw coins and other objects at the consulate. We condemn the irresponsible statement of the U.S. administration... declaring that it recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and it will be moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the foreign ministry said in a statement. We call upon the US Administration to reconsider this faulty decision which may result in highly negative outcomes and to avoid uncalculated steps that will harm the multicultural identity and historical status of Jerusalem, it said. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. chief says no alternative to two state solution in Middle East;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that there was no alternative to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and that Jerusalem was a final-status issue that should be resolved through direct talks. I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he told reporters. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Palestinian figure Dahlan urges exit from peace talks over Trump's Jerusalem move;GAZA (Reuters) - Influential exiled Palestinian politician Mohammed Dahlan said on Wednesday Palestinians should reject any future peace talks and halt security coordination with Israel over U.S. plans to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Dahlan was speaking via his Twitter account shortly before Trump confirmed in a speech that Washington was breaking with longstanding U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy to the city from Tel Aviv. Palestinian leaders have denounced the planned move and said it could have dangerous consequences, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said immediately after Trump s speech that the president s announcement was a historic landmark and urged other countries to follow suit. I call for withdrawal from the absurd and endless negotiations with Israel after the principle of inviolability of the status of Jerusalem has been breached, said Dahlan, an elected member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas s Fatah party central committee. I call for ending all forms of coordination, especially security coordination, with Israel and USA, he added from the United Arab Emirates, where he had lived since a quarrel with Abbas drove him out of the Palestinian territories in 2011. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern half, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Under 1990s interim peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians, the future of Jerusalem is one of the key issues to be settled in final peace negotiations between the sides. The last round of negotiations collapsed in 2014 over issues such as Israel s expansion of settlements in occupied territory where Palestinians seek statehood, and efforts to restart them have failed. In a speech at the White House, Trump said his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something expected to take years. Abbas planned a televised speech on Wednesday in response to Trump s address. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson to visit Africa in first quarter of 2018: adviser;RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is planning a trip to Africa in the first three months of next year, a senior aide said on Wednesday, amid speculation how long Tillerson might stay in the job. Earlier on Wednesday, Tillerson said there was no truth to reports that President Donald Trump intended to fire him and replace him with CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Directly addressing the issue at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tillerson dismissed the reports that overshadowed his week-long trip to Europe which highlighted the yearning of allies for stability in U.S. foreign policy. Secretary Tillerson is planning a trip to Africa in the first quarter of 2018, senior adviser R.C. Hammond told reporters at Germany s Ramstein Air Base. Hammond spoke during a stopover en route to Vienna where Tillerson is due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday to discuss issues such as North Korea. Tillerson has said there can be no normal U.S. relations with Russia until Moscow ends its support for separatists in Ukraine and returned the Crimea region it annexed in 2014 - comments likely to reassure Western allies. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany, France warn citizens in Jerusalem amid planned U.S. recognition;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is concerned that violent clashes could erupt in the Middle East following reports that U.S. President Donald Trump would recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital, its Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. France s Foreign Ministry also warned on its website that demonstrations were expected and that its nationals should avoid them and any large crowds in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. In an update of its travel advice for Israel and the Palestinian territories, the German ministry in Berlin said: From December 6, 2017, there may be demonstrations in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Violent clashes can not be ruled out. It advised its travellers in Jerusalem to closely monitor the situation via local media and avoid the affected areas. Senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Trump will recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital on Wednesday and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the city. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany against Trump's Jerusalem decision: Merkel;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany does not support the Trump administration s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. The German government does not support this position, because the status of Jerusalem is to be resolved in the framework of a two-state solution, she was quoted as saying in a tweet by the government spokesman. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government condemns U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem: SANA;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government on Wednesday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, Syrian state news agency SANA said. (The move) is the culmination of the crime of usurping Palestine and displacing the Palestinian people, SANA said, quoting a Foreign Ministry source. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Watch: Trump Supporting Coal CEO Upset Trump Is Wiping Out ‘Thousands’ Of Coal Mining Jobs;While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to revive the coal industry and after he took power, he signed an executive order rolling back a temporary ban on mining coal and a stream protection rule that was imposed by the Obama administration. Trump vowed to bring back thousands of mining jobs in struggling rural areas. I made them this promise, Trump said, we will put our miners back to work. That was then and this is now.Coal CEO Robert Murray, a fierce supporter of Trump s, warns that if the Senate version of tax reform is enacted by the current occupant of the White House, he will be destroying thousands of coal mining jobs in the process.Murray said the Senate legislation will raise Murray Energy s taxes by $60 million a year, notwithstanding the other so-called benefits the Senate has proposed, CNBC reports. This means that very capital-intensive, highly leveraged employers, like coal-mining companies, will be forced out of business, with tragic consequences for our families and for many regions of our country, Murray said. We won t have enough cash flow to exist. It wipes us out, Murray told CNNMoney in an interview on Tuesday. This wipes out everything that President Trump has done for coal, said Murray, the head of one of America s largest coal companies.CNN reports:Murray warned that a bankruptcy of his Ohio-based company would hurt its 5,500 employees along with their families. Asked if other coal mining companies could go out of business, he said: Most certainly. Watch:Murray hosted a fundraiser for Trump during the campaign. And today, Murray warns that the GOP tax plan will wipe out coal mining jobs.Who saw this coming? Besides all of us. Trump supporters have been suckered.Image via screen capture. ;News;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House passes measure to limit aid to Palestinians over 'martyr payments';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to sharply reduce the annual $300 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it take steps to stop making what lawmakers described as payments that reward violent crime. The House backed by voice vote the Taylor Force Act, named after a 29-year-old American military veteran fatally stabbed by a Palestinian while visiting Israel last year. The measure is intended to stop the Palestinians from paying stipends, referred to as “martyr payments,” to the families of militants killed or imprisoned by Israeli authorities. The payments can reach $3,500 per month. “This perverse ‘pay-to-slay’ system uses a sliding scale. The longer the jail sentence, the greater the reward. The highest payments go to those serving life sentences - to those who prove most brutal,” Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said before the vote. Force’s attacker was killed by Israeli police, and his killer’s family receives such a monthly payment. To become law, the measure must also be passed by the U.S. Senate and signed by President Donald Trump. Similar legislation has been passed by two Senate committees, but there was no immediate word on when the Senate might take up the bill. Its passage reflected strong pro-Israel sentiment in Washington. Separately on Tuesday, Trump told Israeli and Arab leaders that he intends to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, changing decades-old U.S. policy, despite the Palestinians’ desire to have their capital in East Jerusalem. Trump’s fellow Republicans control majorities in both the House and Senate. Palestinian officials have said they intend to continue the payments, which they see as support for relatives of those imprisoned by Israel for fighting against occupation or who have died in connection with that cause. The measures moving through Congress now are not as severe as had been proposed. The legislation passed by the House had been amended to allow exceptions such as continued funding for water projects and children’s vaccinations. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House tax positions begin to emerge ahead of talks with Senate;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in U.S. House of Representatives began staking out their positions on final tax legislation on Tuesday, days ahead of talks with the Senate to shape the tax package lawmakers hope to send to President Donald Trump by year end. While lawmakers expect a smooth reconciliation of rival House and Senate tax bills, House Republicans have taken issue with several items in the Senate’s legislation - from a one-year delay in cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent to the sunsetting of individual tax cuts after 2025. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said lawmakers are determined to eliminate the alternative minimum taxes (AMTs) on corporations and individuals that the Senate bill retained. “House members ... feel strongly that the House position should be to repeal permanently both the individual and the corporate,” said Brady, who is expected to chair the House-Senate negotiations that could begin next week. The corporate and individual AMTs are designed to limit the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to reduce their payments through tax breaks and credits. But jettisoning them could require tough decisions on how to keep the legislation below a $1.5 trillion ceiling on revenue losses. Republicans must also bridge differences on taxes for corporate and pass-through businesses, top earners, inheritances, individual tax brackets and repeal of the Obamacare individual health insurance mandate. Republicans hope to approve a final bill and deliver it to Trump’s desk before Christmas. If they succeed, it will be the first major U.S. tax overhaul in 31 years and the first big Republican legislative victory since Trump took office in January. The House voted to go to conference with the Senate on Monday, and Republicans named nine conference delegates. Senate Republicans could name delegates as early as Wednesday. “My hope is that we’re done with this within 10 days to two weeks,” said Representative Kristi Noem, a Republican conference delegate and member of Brady’s committee. House Republicans are also considering a new approach to the deduction for state and local taxes. Both the House and Senate bills eliminate deductions for income and sales taxes but retain one for $10,000 in property taxes. Republicans from high-tax states, including New York and New Jersey, have been angered by the change. But Brady said Republicans are considering the possibility of giving taxpayers an option to deduct $10,000 in state and local property taxes, income taxes or sales taxes. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's first year in office marked by controversy, protests;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump took office, his presidency started generating controversy. Photographs showing that the crowd at Trump’s swearing-in was smaller than at Barack Obama’s first presidential inauguration in 2009 caused the first ruckus in his administration - but not the last. Trump’s first year in office was colored by an investigation into whether his campaign colluded with the Russian government to affect the election outcome, insults and threats of war with North Korea, and an effort to pass business-friendly legislation. From the start, the White House took a combative approach, accusing the media of framing photographs of the inauguration in a way that appeared to understate the crowd size. Press Secretary Sean Spicer argued that the images were not what they seemed and that crowds of historic size watched Trump take the oath of office. Protests would become a hallmark of Trump’s first year. On Jan. 21, the day after the inauguration, hundreds of thousands of women jammed the streets of Washington to demonstrate opposition to Trump. A week after taking office, the Republican president signed an executive order to prevent citizens of seven predominately-Muslim countries from traveling to the United States. Known by critics as the “Muslim ban,” protesters quickly demonstrated at airports in opposition. Trump would ignite protests again in August, when he was asked to respond to white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, including one who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman. The president argued there were bad people “on both sides.” Following his remarks, business leaders resigned from Trump’s business councils and the panels were disbanded. A defining feature of Trump’s first year in office was the investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia during the election. Trump ignited a political firestorm in May when he fired Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into possible collusion by the Trump 2016 presidential campaign with Russia to influence the election outcome. Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied any collusion. Soon afterward, the Justice Department named former FBI chief Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the investigation. Paul Manafort, who had briefly served as Trump’s campaign manager, and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted by Mueller’s team in October, accused of illegally lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. A month later, Michael Flynn, who briefly served under Trump as U.S. national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador in Washington just weeks before Trump took office. Trump has also found himself embroiled in a war of words with North Korea over its missile program, exchanging insults and threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At home, Trump has struggled to enact sweeping changes he promised on the campaign trail. He threatened to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but business lobbyists persuaded him to renegotiate it. Trump signed an executive order setting up talks on the trilateral trade deal, which has hit roadblocks with Mexico and Canada. Trump’s team also failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare despite Republican control of the White House and Congress. It was not until December that Trump made headway on major legislative change as both chambers of Congress passed a sweeping tax overhaul. The bill must be reconciled with a different version approved by the House of Representatives, but the Senate bill is expected to remain largely intact. (Click on reut.rs/2Asabau to see a related photo essay) ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate to vote later on Wednesday to work with House on tax bill: McConnell;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will vote later on Wednesday on whether to send its tax legislation to a conference to hammer out differences with the U.S. House of Representatives’ version of the plan. Speaking on the chamber’s floor, McConnell also said Congress later this week would pass a short-term continuing resolution measure to continue funding the federal government while lawmakers work on a longer-term spending bill. He did not give any dates. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'You're wrong', Tillerson says of reports he will be fired;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there was no truth in reports that the White House had a plan to fire him and replace him with CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Directly addressing the issue at a news conference at NATO, Tillerson dismissed last week’s reports that have overshadowed his week-long trip to Europe, as allies yearn for stability in U.S. foreign policy. “This is a narrative that keeps coming up about every six weeks and I would say you need to get some new sources because your story keeps being wrong,” he told reporters when asked whether the White House was pushing him out. While Trump said last week he was not leaving and Tillerson said the reports were “laughable”, Trump has also said he alone determines U.S. foreign policy, saying in a tweet on Friday: “I call the final shots.” In a trip that will also take him to Vienna and Paris, Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive who has been at odds with Trump over issues such as North Korea, has sought to reassure European governments and U.S. diplomats that he is in control. In Brussels on Tuesday, Tillerson said the U.S. State Department, which still has top positions unmanned, was “in a much better position to advance America’s interests around the world than we were 10 months ago.” Under the White House plan reported by Reuters and other media last week, Tillerson would be replaced within weeks by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist and foreign policy hard-liner, under a White House plan to carry out the most significant staff shake-up so far of the Trump administration. U.S. Republican Senator Tom Cotton, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress, would be tapped to replace Pompeo at the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Tillerson, 65, has spent much of his tenure trying to smooth the rough edges of the “America First” foreign policy that has alarmed Trump’s allies, but the president has publicly undercut the secretary of state’s diplomatic initiatives. At the EU and NATO this week, Tillerson espoused a more traditional U.S. foreign policy, defending the Iran nuclear deal agreed by world powers in 2015, warning of a more assertive Russia and saying he had become “quite close” with Germany’s foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump ally Bannon campaigns for Moore in Alabama;(Reuters) - A day after President Donald Trump endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon campaigned in the state, telling a crowd that allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore were part of a smear campaign to keep him from office. “They want to destroy Judge Roy Moore and you know why?” Bannon asked at the rally in Fairhope, Alabama. “They want to take your voice away.” Trump originally supported Moore’s opponent in the Republican primary, Luther Strange, who was favored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of the Republican establishment. Moore defeated Strange in the primary and now faces Democrat Doug Jones in the Dec. 12 special election to replace Jeff Sessions, who became U.S. Attorney General in the Trump administration. Bannon, who left the White House in August after a power struggle and rejoined the Breitbart News Network right-wing website, was a major proponent of Trump’s “America First” agenda during the 2016 election campaign. Trump, Bannon said, “understands where Roy Moore stands.” He called the Alabama Senate race “a referendum on the Trump program.” Moore, 70, has been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Moore denies the allegations. Reuters has not independently verified the reports. The allegations initially had Trump keeping his distance from Moore, but he has grown more vocal in his support this week, as public opinion polls show Moore holding a slight lead over Jones. Bannon remained steadfast in support of Moore. Bannon has pledged to back candidates in Senate primaries next year who oppose retaining McConnell as the Senate’s leader, contending that he has stalled Trump’s policy agenda. When the accusations against Moore were first reported, McConnell called on Moore to drop out of the race. More recently, however, McConnell has tempered his view, saying Alabama voters should determine whether Moore should be elected. In his remarks, Moore repeatedly mocked McConnell. “The folks in Alabama were always going to decide, Mitch,” he said. “They have no interest in what you have to say.” And while Republicans appear divided over Moore’s candidacy, Trump’s endorsement prompted the Republican National Committee to reverse course and expend resources to back Moore. The RNC cut ties with Moore last month when the accounts of women who said he had sexually abused them were reported in the Washington Post. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Franken, facing resignation calls, to make announcement on Thursday: office;(Reuters) - U.S Democratic Senator Al Franken will make an announcement on Thursday, his office said, after several Democratic senators called for him to step down in light of allegations of sexual misconduct against him. His office offered no further details in a brief statement on Wednesday. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress tax negotiators may have final bill before Dec. 22;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress may be able to wrap up tax negotiations before Dec. 22 and send a final bill to President Donald Trump, Republican Senator John Cornyn said on Wednesday. The Senate will vote on Wednesday whether go to conference with the House of Representatives on tax legislation. The House voted on Monday. Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said he thought tax negotiators should be able to meet a Trump administration request to iron out the differences between the two bills before Dec. 22. “They won’t be rewriting the bills, they’ll just be trying to reconcile those differences and I hope that can be done quickly because we need to get this to the president,” Cornyn told reporters. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No. 2 Democrat in Senate calls on Franken to resign;(Reuters) - U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said on Wednesday that fellow Democrat Al Franken should resign in light of sexual misconduct allegations against him. “Senator Franken’s behavior was wrong. He has admitted to what he did. He should resign from the Senate,” Durbin said on Twitter. Durbin marked the 15th Democratic senator, including third-ranking Democrat Patty Murray, to call on Wednesday for Franken to step down. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Justice Department seeks warrant to seize ancient ring trafficked by ISIS;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday it is seeking a warrant so it can seize an ancient ring believed to be trafficked by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the militant organization also known as “ISIS.” The department also said it was amending a year-old forfeiture complaint it had filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to add three more antiquities. The ancient ring being sought by the U.S. government is believed to be in the hands of Turkish law enforcement, after it was confiscated from a Syrian antiquities trafficker. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuts to homeowner tax breaks could cost Republicans in 2018 races; SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Laura Russo is just the kind of voter the Republicans need, but the party’s proposed tax overhaul, which includes limits on the deductions for mortgage interest, state taxes and property taxes, is pushing her away. “I would be dramatically affected,” she said. An airline pilot and single mother of two, she says that like many in her affluent Loudoun County, Virginia, neighborhood she stretched to buy her home. She fears it will become harder to sell that house or pay her other tax bills if President Donald Trump signs the plan into law. Russo, 52, said she had voted for the Republican in every presidential race since 1992 until last year when she picked Hillary Clinton. She still voted for Barbara Comstock, the Republican who represents her district in Congress. “I will not do that again,” she said. “The tax bill is the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Russo is one of thousands of homeowners in Republican-leaning areas who could be hit by the elimination or reduction of tax breaks for homeowners, a Reuters analysis of federal mortgage and tax data shows, potentially opening those districts to a Democratic challenge in the November 2018 mid-term elections. The plans are expected to affect mainly the Democratic-leaning “blue states” such as California, New Jersey and New York where homes are expensive, mortgages are huge and state and local taxes tend to be high. But while these blue states will be hardest hit, county level data also shows there is a significant number of Republican enclaves in districts expected to be hotly contested in next year's polls that will feel the pain. Republican leaning pockets in blue or swing states, such as Orange County, California, or Loudoun County, Virginia, tend to have high property values – and thus the higher mortgages. Many of these areas also tend to have higher state and local income taxes.  Larry Sabato, director of the non-partisan Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, estimates that there are 16 counties where 2018 races will be toss-ups between Republican incumbents and Democratic challengers. Reuters data shows that almost half of those counties have an above-average share of new mortgages worth more than $500,000, which is a proposed cap for tax deductions. The results are similar for districts selected as 50-50 ones by The Cook Political Report, a non-partisan newsletter that analyzes U.S. elections. Among those on Cook’s list is a district in Harris County in the deep-red state of Texas. Even though the state has no income tax, thousands of residents of the district, which includes Houston, deduct taxes owed in other states because of work or business done there, and property taxes - the nation’s sixth-highest. Democrats need 24 more seats to win lower house majority from the Republicans, who now control the White House and both houses of Congress. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, said in a fundraising note Democrats were rushing out “rapid-response ads” targeting swing voters to capitalize on the concerns, while Kevin Brady, Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on CNBC on Tuesday his party’s leadership was working on ways to mollify Republicans in blue states. That concern is felt on the ground too. Will Estrada, chairman of the Republican party in Loudoun County, said he firmly believed the tax plan would deliver savings to most people. But he said that if Democrats are right and many middle class voters face higher bills, “the GOP is going to be toast in 2018.” The bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 16 let homeowners who take out new mortgages deduct only the interest paid on the first $500,000 of a mortgage. It also ends deductions for state and local income taxes, and caps deductions for property taxes at $10,000. The Senate’s plan, passed on Saturday, would keep the mortgage interest deduction as is, on any mortgage up to $1 million, but agrees with the House on state, local and property taxes. The two houses of Congress are now reconciling the two versions. The Reuters data analysis shows that 37 percent of the total mortgages issued in Orange County in 2016 were above $500,000 and 26 percent in Loudon County. Both include districts represented by Republicans and have some of the highest rates of expensive mortgages in the country. Comstock, who retained her Virginia seat by 3 percentage points, voted for the House bill, but later asked for changes on deductions, saying through a spokesman that she sought “the best possible tax package for all of her constituents.” In Orange County, Republican Representative Darrel Issa voted against the House version, in part, because of how it will affect homeowners. Neither California Republican Dana Rohrabacher, who also voted against the bill, nor Issa would comment on a possible backlash from voters. Home buyers in expensive areas count on the mortgage interest deduction to make their payments manageable, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, which opposes any changes to the deductions. Yun says his analysis suggests curbing the mortgage interest deduction would lead to as much as an 8 percent drop in housing values nationwide, and cutting property tax deductions could lead to a further drop of up to 3 percent because it would make buying and selling homes more costly. “Not just in high cost states like Illinois and California, but relatively speaking in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, which were critical in swaying the presidential election,” he said. Other economists think the impact may be smaller. As refinancing of mortgages becomes less popular and consumers begin paying debt down faster, the market would rebalance, said Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California, who forecasts a 5 percent decline in home values. California’s Placer County northeast of Sacramento, where the median home sells for more than $440,000, remains a Republican enclave. But local Republicans have noticed that each year fewer residents vote Republican and their web page bears the slogan, “Keep Placer Red.” To do that, the party will have to keep the loyalty of Republicans like Rudy Coscia, a 36-year-old plastic surgeon who just took out a $900,000 mortgage to buy a four-bedroom house in Granite Bay for $1.1 million. Coscia is counting on mortgage interest and property tax deductions as he is also making payments on $200,000 worth of medical school loans and $400,000 he borrowed to get his practice started. “They’re hurting their base,” he said. “You’d think they’d be trying not to hurt the people who voted for them.” ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Utah Republicans defend Romney after Bannon's 'Mormon' jab;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Utah Republicans on Wednesday rallied around Mitt Romney, their party’s former presidential nominee, a day after former senior White House aide Steve Bannon accused him of having used his Mormon religion to avoid military service. Bannon’s attack on Romney’s character came in a fiery speech in Alabama where the former chief strategist for President Donald Trump was campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. “You avoided service, brother ... you hid behind your religion,” Bannon said at the rally, adding that Romney’s sons had also not served in the military and pointing to Moore’s service during the Vietnam War. The war of words was the latest episode highlighting the schism in the Republican party between establishment conservatives and the rise of Trump and his one-time strategist Bannon. Romney, 70, a former governor of Massachusetts who later moved to Utah, has mulled a run for the seat of Utah Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, 83, who is deciding whether to retire. Hatch was among Utah Republicans who came to Romney’s defense. “Bannon’s attacks ... are disappointing and unjustified,” said Hatch, a fellow Mormon like many in the state. Utah Governor Gary Herbert, in a tweet, praised Romney and his family as honorable and said “Utahns reject the ugly politics and tactics of @SteveKBannon. #stayout.” “You can’t credibly call into question his patriotism or moral character—especially on the basis of his religious beliefs or his outstanding service as a missionary,” U.S. Senator Mike Lee also said, calling Romney “a good man.” Romney, who lost the 2012 election to Democratic former president Barack Obama, has been a vocal critic of Trump as well as Bannon’s politics. Trump has fired back and criticized Romney’s failed presidential run. Tensions between Trump and Romney have lingered even though Trump once considered him for secretary of state. On Monday, Trump told reporters he wanted Hatch to seek re-election. A day later, he called Romney, according to White House officials. “It was a good and positive conversation,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. A source close to Romney confirmed the conversation, describing it as “a courtesy call.” ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. attorney general calls for efficient review of immigration cases;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday called on the nation’s immigration courts to decide cases more efficiently, amid a burgeoning backlog that is hampering the Trump administration’s efforts to deport more illegal immigrants. Sessions’ memo to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency under the Department of Justice that conducts immigration court proceedings, called on judges and staff to do what they can “consistent with the law” to “increase productivity, enhance efficiencies, and ensure the timely and proper administration of justice.” President Donald Trump’s administration has so far brought on 50 new immigration judges, Sessions said, in an effort to pare back a backlog of more than 600,000 cases. Sessions said in his memo that the Justice Department plans to hire 60 more judges in the next six months to cut the pending case load in half by 2020. Statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday showed that although the government arrested far more people suspected of being in the United States illegally in 2017 than it did last year, it deported fewer illegal immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed approximately 226,000 people from the country in the 2017 fiscal year, down 6 percent from the previous year and lower than at any time during the Obama administration. Trump has made strict immigration enforcement a major priority of his administration. The slowdown is in part because fewer people appear to be trying to cross the U.S. border illegally. Another reason is that although immigration arrests are up, the court backlog has slowed the removal of immigrants who claim they will be harmed if they are deported to their home countries or have other justifications for staying in the United States. Under U.S. policy, many of those claims must be adjudicated by an immigration judge. In his memo, Sessions touted a surge of immigration judges to the U.S. border and said the agency completed about 2,800 more cases than projected. In April, Reuters reported that two of the eight immigration judges deployed to the U.S. border with Mexico to process asylum requests from migrant women and children were being recalled because they had so few cases to hear. The department also said that from February through November, removal orders were up 30 percent over the same time last year, and the percentage of final decisions on cases was up nearly 17 percent compared with last year. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Only Cares About Trump;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Corporate AMT likely will not be in final U.S. tax bill: Hatch;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee said on Wednesday a final tax bill Republicans hope to get to President Donald Trump by Christmas likely will not retain a corporate alternative minimum tax. “Right now it doesn’t look like it but you never know,” Republican Senator Orrin Hatch told reporters when asked if the corporate AMT would survive in the final bill. Republicans in the House of Representatives want to get rid of the AMT, which is designed to limit the ability of corporations to reduce their payments through tax breaks and credits. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate votes to begin tax bill negotiations with House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted on Wednesday to go to a conference committee to resolve differences between its tax legislation and a rival version passed by the House of Representatives, moving the Republican-led Congress a step closer to a final bill. Republican leaders are aiming to finalize tax legislation to pass it and send it to President Donald Trump by the end of the year. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump hopes to avoid government shutdown in meeting with lawmakers: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump hopes to find a way to avert a government shutdown later this week in a Thursday meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the White House said on Wednesday. Congressional Republican leaders as well as U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are scheduled to meet with Trump on Thursday. Pelosi and Schumer did not attend a previously scheduled meeting with Trump last week after he said on Twitter that he did not expect to reach a deal with the Democratic leaders. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Corporate alternative minimum tax threat hits pharma, tech;(Reuters) - The tax overhaul legislation passed by the U.S. Senate jettisoned a long-held Republican goal of repealing the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT), a move seen as hurting companies that invest heavily in research and development. The Senate’s inclusion of the AMT puts the bill, passed narrowly last Saturday, on a collision course with Republicans in the House of Representatives, whose version would repeal the corporate AMT. House Republicans are calling for the tax to be eliminated in final legislation to be hammered out by a House-Senate conference committee. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, said on Wednesday a final tax bill that congressional Republicans hope to get to President Donald Trump for his signature by the Dec. 25 Christmas holiday likely will not retain the AMT. Here are some details on the impact of the AMT and which companies and industries invest the most in R&D. — The 20 percent corporate AMT is an alternative to the regular corporate income tax in computing taxes owed, designed to limit the benefit of deductions and tax credits, including credits for R&D that are popular with Silicon Valley. — With the top corporate rate now at 35 percent, few wind up paying the AMT. But since congressional Republicans want to cut the tax rate to 20 percent, the AMT could affect many companies. — “Retaining the AMT in reform is even more harmful than it is in its present form,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce business lobby group said on its website. “This cannot be the intended impact from a Congress who has worked for years to enact a more globally competitive tax code.” — Companies in the U.S. pharmaceutical and medical research industry plowed about 17 percent of total revenue into R&D in their most recent fiscal year, according to Thomson Reuters data. — The software industry and IT services invested 14 percent of revenue in R&D while technology and equipment companies invested 12 percent of their revenue in R&D. — The healthcare services and equipment sector spent 5.6 percent of its revenue on R&D in the most recent fiscal year. — Manufacturers also invest significantly in R&D, with Boeing (BA.N) investing 5 percent of its revenue in R&D last year. — “Research and development is the lifeblood of manufacturing. The NAM supports pro-growth tax reform, and is working with key policymakers to ensure the final bill does not inadvertently harm manufacturing,” said Chris Netram, vice president for tax and domestic economic policy at the National Association of Manufacturers lobby group. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Franken to resign on Thursday: Minnesota Public Radio;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken, facing allegations of sexual misconduct, will resign on Thursday, Minnesota Public Radio reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed Democratic official. A Franken staff member told the Democratic official that the Minnesota senator had gone to his home in Washington to discuss his plans with family, Minnesota Public Radio said. Franken said on Twitter earlier on Wednesday he would make an announcement on Thursday. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bill letting people bring concealed guns across state lines passes U.S. House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People would be able to bring legal, concealed guns into any U.S. state under legislation the House of Representatives approved on Wednesday that would also bolster the national background check system and require a study of the “bump stocks” used in October’s Las Vegas mass shooting. The country’s long-standing fight over gun ownership has grown more heated since a single person killed 58 people and injured more than 500 at a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, the deadliest mass shooting carried out by an individual in U.S. history. Stephen Paddock boosted his firearms with bump stocks to shoot thousands of bullets over 10 minutes. On a vote of 231 to 198, the Republican-led House approved the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would require states to recognize each others’ permits for carrying hidden and loaded firearms while in public. States’ requirements on concealed guns vary widely. Some states deny permits to people who have committed domestic violence or other crimes. Eight do not require permits at all. Supporters of the bill, which still must be approved by the Senate, say states recognize each others’ drivers licenses and other permits, making concealed-carry permits the exception. Detractors say the bill tramples states’ rights and that gun permits differ from drivers’ licenses, which are generally uniform across the country. They also say that, under the legislation, gun owners will only have to abide by requirements of the most lenient states. The bill passed eight days before the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting in which 20 children and six adults perished. So far this year, 14,412 people have died and 29,277 have been injured in firearm-related incidents in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. About 8 percent of them were children and teenagers. Bill supporters also pointed to last month’s Texas shooting, where a man fired his rifle on a fleeing gunman who had just killed 26 worshippers at a church. The gunman was later found dead in his car. “We know that citizens who carry a concealed firearm are not only better prepared to act in their own self-defense, but also in the defense of others,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican. The legislation also included a bipartisan measure to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has already begun studying bump stocks, and could soon ban them. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate votes to pursue tax bill negotiations with House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans agreed to talks with the House of Representatives on sweeping tax legislation on Wednesday, amid early signs that lawmakers could bridge their differences and agree on a final bill ahead of a self-imposed Dec. 22 deadline. The Republican-led Senate voted 51-47, along party lines with Democrats opposed, to begin formal conference negotiations to reconcile rival House and Senate tax bills passed last week. The move, which follows similar House action this week, brings Congress a step closer to sending President Donald Trump a tax overhaul that he can sign into law. House and Senate negotiators will need to work out differences on issues ranging from business taxes to the repeal of the Obamacare mandate that Americans obtain health insurance or face a penalty before lawmakers can pass a final version. But John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said he was optimistic House and Senate tax negotiators would be able to work out an agreement within the next two weeks. “Given the similarities between the House and the Senate bills, I think there are some obvious targets where they need to focus their attention but obviously they won’t be rewriting the bills,” Cornyn said. Republican negotiators must be careful not to agree to changes that could diminish support in the Senate, where they can afford to lose support from no more than two party members. There has been no major tax overhaul since 1986, when Republican Ronald Reagan was president. While there are significant differences between the House and Senate bills, both would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, provide tax relief for “pass-through” enterprises including small businesses where earnings are taxed at individual rates, and both benefit the wealthiest Americans and reduce the tax burden for most middle-class taxpayers. Republicans claim the legislation will spur enough economic growth to pay for the tax cuts with new revenue, but the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that Senate bill would still add $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit over a decade, even with an economic upswing. U.S. stock prices have rallied on growing optimism that tax legislation will become law. But on Wednesday, the head of sovereign credit ratings at S&P Global told Reuters that the rising deficit and looser fiscal policy could prompt negative action on U.S. credit ratings unless Washington addressed long-term budgetary issues. “If U.S. tax reform is approved, it seems certain to increase the federal budget deficit,” Moritz Kraemer, S&P’s sovereign global chief rating officer, said in an interview. “A meaningful relaxation of fiscal policy without countervailing measures to address the longer-term fiscal challenges of the U.S. could lead to a negative rating action.” Senate Republicans later voted down a Democratic motion instructing tax negotiators to produce a deficit-neutral bill. Passage of the tax bill would provide a badly needed legislative victory for Trump and Republicans after their failure earlier this year to enact legislation repealing President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. Trump and his Republican allies see enacting the tax overhaul that they promised voters as crucial to their strategy for the 2018 U.S. congressional elections, when all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the 100-member Senate will be up for election. Democrats have been united against the bill, calling it a handout to corporations and the rich that would drive up the federal deficit. In an early sign of progress on reconciling the House and Senate versions, Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee, said he did not think that the final bill would retain a corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT). The House bill calls for a repeal of the corporate AMT, which is designed to limit the ability of corporations to reduce their payments through tax breaks and credits. Corporate AMT repeal is not part of the Senate version. Getting rid of the corporate AMT would be popular with many businesses and would also be a concession toward the House bill. But repeal would also require lawmakers to replace the $40 billion in revenues that retaining the corporate AMT would raise over a decade. Increasing the corporate income tax target from 20 percent is seen as one way to pay for the AMT repeal and other potential changes. “I’ll keep it at 20 if I can, but there’s a drive to get it to 22. They want more money, that’s why,” Hatch told reporters. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump would sign bill that funds government through December 22: statement;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump would sign a stop-gap spending measure funding the government through Dec. 22 that is being considered by the House of Representatives, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday. Trump and Congress are facing a deadline of Friday at midnight to pass fresh spending legislation. If they cannot agree on the terms, parts of the federal government could shut down. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump warns of government shutdown threat ahead of meeting with lawmakers;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday again raised the possibility of a U.S. government shutdown - blaming Democrats for that possible outcome - one day before he is due to host Republican and Democratic congressional leaders for talks on spending bills. Trump and Congress are facing a deadline of Friday at midnight to pass fresh spending legislation. If they cannot agree on the terms, parts of the federal government could shut down. Late on Wednesday, a bill advanced in the House of Representatives to extend current federal funding through Dec. 22, with the chamber expected to take up the bill on Thursday. If that measure clears the House and Senate, as expected, major fights are in the offing over the next funding bill, which could fund the government until sometime in January. Trump’s warning about a shutdown came as conservative House members pushed for increases in military spending along with either a freeze or reduction in domestic programs. Their bid is likely to be rejected by Democrats, who make up a minority in Congress, and could further complicate months of behind-the-scenes negotiations by congressional leaders aimed at figuring out government spending through the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2018. While the House potentially could pass upcoming spending bills without any Democratic support, that tactic would not work in the Senate where procedural rules give Democrats bargaining power. As a condition of backing new spending, many Democrats have demanded legislative protections for the nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States as children. Trump pushed back, saying it could set the stage for impasse. “The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous for our country,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They are looking at shutting down.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi countered in a tweet: “President Trump is the only person talking about a government shutdown. Democrats are hopeful the president will be open to an agreement to address the urgent needs of the American people and keep government open.” The infighting came as Republican congressional leaders labored to demonstrate that they can govern and spare the country the chaos of a government shutdown at Christmas time that likely would not sit well with voters. A partial government shutdown would leave “essential” services operating, but could disrupt programs ranging from the operation of national parks to educational programs and scientific research. A Politico/Morning Consult opinion poll found that 63 percent of voters want Congress to avoid any shutdown, with 18 percent in favor if it helps lawmakers achieve policy goals. In October 2013, conservative Republicans used the need to pass a funding bill to try to force repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. They failed but in the process forced a 17-day disruption of many federal agency activities. The end-of-year fight over appropriations, which should have been settled nine weeks ago, is attracting a series of controversial add-ons from both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans want to add as much as tens of billions of dollars to military spending this year and impose new work requirements for some recipients of Medicaid benefits, the healthcare program for the poor and disabled. Democrats want to attach the immigration measure and a restoration of Obamacare subsidy payments for low-income people that Trump terminated. Both parties seek additional disaster aid for Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and other states. Republican Representatives Mark Meadows, who heads the House Freedom Caucus, and Representative Mark Walker, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, are touting the effort to pump up Pentagon spending without any increases to non-defense programs. But Democrats have argued that inaction on the non-defense side of the ledger would usher in a new round of automatic spending cuts for those programs next month, short-changing programs that fight opioid addiction, fund medical research, veterans programs and an array of other activities. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 6) - America, California's wildfires;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! [1000 EST] - Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone in the path of California’s wildfires. I encourage everyone to heed the advice and orders of local and state officials. THANK YOU to all First Responders for your incredible work! [1111 EST] - Join me live from the @WhiteHouse via #Periscope [1305 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Good to go': Top Trump aide gave inaugural day ok to nuclear plan - congressman;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As President Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address on Capitol Hill in January, his incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn, sitting a few yards away, texted a former business partner that a nuclear power project that would require lifting sanctions on Russia was “good to go,” a senior House Democrat said in a letter released on Wednesday. Quoting a confidential informant, Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote that Alex Copson, the managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners, told the informant that Flynn would see that the sanctions on Moscow were “ripped up.” In the letter to Representative Trey Gowdy, the panel’s Republican chairman, Cummings demanded that Gowdy subpoena documents on the nuclear power plan from the White House, Flynn, Copson, their partners and associates. Cummings said he had found the unnamed informant to be “authentic, credible, and reliable,” and offered to produce the individual for Gowdy. Reuters was unable to identify the informant or independently confirm the information in Cummings' letter, which can be seen here: tmsnrt.rs/2AvwKex. Gowdy told reporters later on Wednesday that he was not going to have the Oversight Committee look into the issues raised in Cummings letter, because it falls outside the scope of the committee’s responsibilities. He suggested the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, take up the matter. Copson and ACU did not immediately respond to detailed requests for comment, while an attorney for Flynn declined to comment. The White House referred inquiries to Trump’s personal White House attorney, Ty Cobb, who declined to comment. If true, the informant’s story adds new evidence that the project’s promoters believed that Flynn and Trump backed the plan for a consortium of U.S., Russian and French firms to build and operate 45 nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. Reuters last week published documents that showed Copson and other plan proponents believed they had Flynn and Trump in their corner. The documents also revealed previously unreported aspects of the ACU proposal, including the involvement of a Russian nuclear equipment manufacturer currently under U.S. sanctions. Flynn was a consultant to ACU from April 2015 to June 2016, according to amended financial disclosure forms he filed in August 2017. Flynn, who served only 24 days as Trump’s national security adviser, pleaded guilty last week to lying to FBI agents working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller about his contacts with a senior Russian diplomat. Mueller is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 elections. Cummings wrote that he delayed releasing the letter at Mueller’s request until the special counsel “completed certain investigative steps. They have now informed us that they have done so.” Cummings said the informant, who contacted his staff in June, met Copson at a Jan. 20 inaugural event in Washington. The two had not known each other, Cummings said. Copson described the nuclear project and told the informant that he had “just got this text message” from Flynn saying that the plan was “good to go” and that Copson should contact his colleagues to “let them know to put things in place,” Cummings wrote. Copson showed the informant the text message, according to Cummings. While the informant did not read the message, he saw the time stamp of 12:11 pm, which was about 10 minutes into Trump’s inaugural address. “Mike has been putting everything in place for us,” Copson told the informant, Cummings wrote. “This is going to make a lot of wealthy people.” “The whistleblower was extremely uncomfortable with the conversation,” Cummings wrote. “While at the event, the whistleblower made brief notes of Mr. Copson’s name and the discussion. The whistleblower left the event shortly thereafter.” ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's eldest son questioned in Congress about Russia;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., declined to discuss with lawmakers on Wednesday a conversation he had with his father about emails related to a June 2016 meeting he attended with Trump associates and Russians, a congressional panel member said. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee investigating allegations of Russian interference in last year’s U.S. election, said Trump Jr. answered the “overwhelming majority” of questions from committee members in his hours of testimony. But Trump Jr. claimed attorney-client privilege in declining to respond to queries about that discussion with his father because a lawyer was in the room when it took place. The discussion between then-Republican candidate Trump and his son took place after the emails became public, Schiff said. Trump Jr. released the emails in July. “In my view there is no attorney-client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son,” Schiff told reporters after the closed-door testimony had ended. “We will be following up with his counsel,” Schiff said. Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican leading the investigation, said Trump Jr. had answered all of his questions. “Mr Trump was cooperative at all times,” Conaway said. Trump Jr. arrived and left without being seen by reporters. Lawmakers said they want to question him about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York at which he had said he hoped to get information about the “fitness, character and qualifications” of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who was his father’s presidential election opponent. It was at least the second time Trump Jr. has testified to a congressional committee investigating any Russian meddling in the election and possible collusion with Moscow by the Trump campaign. He arrived shortly before 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) and was questioned for most of the next eight hours by members of the intelligence panel. A person familiar with knowledge of Trump Jr’s testimony said Trump had said repeatedly he did not remember things he was asked about, including some details about information provided by Russians during the Trump Tower meeting. Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also investigating. He has announced the first charges of Trump associates, and Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. The House intelligence panel also released on Wednesday a transcript of testimony last week of Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and founder of the Blackwater military contractor. A focus of that testimony was a report that Prince tried to set up a “back channel” for communications between Trump associates and Russia. Prince denied such a plan. Trump Jr.’s appearance coincided with criticism of the Russia probes from some of his father’s fellow Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and accuse investigators of bias against Trump. Other lawmakers, Republicans as well as Democrats, say the goal of the investigations is to guarantee the integrity of U.S. elections, not to target Trump and his associates. Trump Jr., like his father, denies collusion with Russia. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 campaign to boost Trump’s chances of defeating Clinton. Moscow denies any such effort. Some Republicans criticized Mueller, the FBI and the Department of Justice at a news conference on Wednesday, ahead of congressional testimony on Thursday by the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray. Republican House members accused the Justice Department and the FBI of bias against the president and having been too easy on Clinton during the investigation of her use of a private email server while leading the State Department. However, Clinton has made no secret of her belief that then-FBI Director James Comey’s announcement just before the election that the bureau was investigating potential new evidence in the lengthy email probe cost her the White House. Also on Wednesday, Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced a hearing next week with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, citing “serious concerns” about reports on the political motives of staff on Mueller’s team. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democratic Senator Franken faces pressure to resign, announcement looms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Al Franken faced intense pressure from members of his own party on Wednesday to resign from the U.S. Senate over accusations of sexual misconduct. Minnesota Public Radio reported Franken would resign on Thursday. Franken’s office said in an email that no final decision had been made and that the senator was still discussing the issue with his family. After accusations began surfacing three weeks ago, Franken said he would remain in office and work to regain the trust of voters in Minnesota, the state he represents. But on Wednesday, calls for him to resign came from the majority of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, including Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and almost all of the Democratic women in the chamber, putting great pressure on him to quit. “I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately,” Schumer said in a statement. Franken said on Twitter that he would make an announcement on Thursday, but he offered no details. In its report, Minnesota Public Radio cited a Democratic official who had spoken to the senator and aides. Late on Wednesday, news website Politico reported that Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton was expected to appoint Democratic Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith to take Franken’s seat if he resigned. She would hold the seat until a special election in 2018. That move would leave the Minnesota race wide open because Smith would not run in the special election to finish Franken’s term, which goes through 2020, Politico said, citing people familiar with Dayton’s thinking. Franken is one of a number of prominent American men in politics, media and entertainment who have been accused in recent months of sexual harassment and misconduct. Another accusation against Franken surfaced on Wednesday when Politico reported that a congressional aide said Franken had tried to forcibly kiss her in 2006, before he was first elected as a senator. Franken denied the allegations, Politico reported. Franken’s office did not reply to a request for comment on the report. The calls on Wednesday marked the first time Franken’s Democratic colleagues had publicly pressed for him to step down since the accusations surfaced. The party’s chairman, Tom Perez, also pressed for him to resign. Schumer called Franken immediately after the Politico story was published and told him that he needed to relinquish his Senate seat, according to a person familiar with the situation. “I’ve struggled with this decision because he’s been a good senator and I consider him a friend,” Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii wrote on Twitter. “But that cannot excuse his behavior and his mistreatment of women.” Franken apologized for his behavior after earlier accusations and said he would cooperate with a Senate Ethics Committee investigation. Reuters has not independently verified the claims against him. Democrats are seeking the moral high ground in the wake of sexual misconduct accusations against numerous public figures, including Republican Roy Moore of Alabama, who is running for the Senate, and Democratic Representative John Conyers, who resigned on Tuesday. Both of those men have denied the accusations against them. Several Republican lawmakers initially called on Moore to step out of the race, but have since said the decision is ultimately up to Alabama voters. President Donald Trump has endorsed the candidate. The election is Tuesday. Franken, a former comedian who rose to national prominence as a cast member on the long-running television program “Saturday Night Live,” had been considered a rising star in the Democratic party since he was first elected in 2008. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who was among those saying Franken should resign, told reporters that Democrats had been “having conversations” about Franken for a while. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell joined the groundswell against Franken, saying in a statement, “I do not believe he can effectively serve the people of Minnesota in the U.S. Senate any longer.” Franken’s Minnesota colleague, Senator Amy Klobuchar, wrote on Twitter, “Sexual harassment is unacceptable. This morning I spoke with Senator Franken and, as you know, he will be making an announcement about his future tomorrow morning. I am confident he will make the right decision.” ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Blackwater founder Prince details meeting with Russian in Seychelles; (This version of the Dec 6 story corrects paragraph 3 and adds new paragraph 4 to clarify the nature of U.S. sanctions) By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Erik Prince, founder of military contractor Blackwater and a supporter of President Donald Trump, told U.S. lawmakers he had discussed U.S.-Russia relations during a meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian business executive with ties to the Kremlin, but insisted they did not discuss sanctions. In a transcript released on Wednesday of Prince’s testimony last week to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Prince said he and Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF, met for about half an hour in a bar at the suggestion of officials from the United Arab Emirates. The RDIF was put on a U.S. sanctions list in 2015 because at the time it was a subsidiary of VEB, the Russian state development bank. While it no is longer owned by the bank, it remains subject to limited sanctions. Americans are prohibited from providing extended debt and equity financing to sanctioned entities and their subsidiaries, such as RDIF. However, the fund does not raise debt or equity financing from third parties, according to a lawyer who represents the fund. The House intelligence panel is one of three congressional committees and a special counsel investigating U.S. allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and the possibility of collusion between Trump associates and Moscow. Russia denies attempting to influence the U.S. campaign. Trump denies any collusion. Prince was called to testify because of the Seychelles meeting on Jan. 11, 2017, which The Washington Post later described as an effort to connect the incoming Trump administration with Moscow. He met with the committee voluntarily, and did not have an attorney with him. Prince said he had traveled to the Seychelles for a business meeting with UAE officials, who included Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and they suggested he talk to Dmitriev. “After the meeting, they mentioned a guy I should meet who was also in town to see them, a Kirill Dmitriev from Russia,” Prince told members of the House committee, according to the transcript. “I didn’t fly there to meet any Russian guy,” Prince said. Prince told reporters after his interview that the panel had wasted time and taxpayer money on a “fishing expedition.” Prince donated to Trump’s campaign, made multiple visits to Trump Tower in New York and said he wrote some foreign policy memos for the Republican candidate, which he delivered to Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon. Democratic committee members noted that Prince said Bannon had told him about a secret meeting at Trump Tower in December 2016 with UAE officials, shortly before the January Seychelles meeting. Prince said he had met Trump just once, at a fundraiser, before he was elected president in November 2016. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump’s Secretary of Education. Prince said he had discussed U.S.-Russia relations with Dmitriev, but only in the broadest terms. “If Franklin Roosevelt can work with Joseph Stalin after the Ukraine terror famine, after killing tens of millions of his own citizens, we can certainly at least cooperate with the Russians in a productive way to defeat the Islamic State,” Prince said he told Dmitriev. Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said after the testimony was released that Prince had been less than forthcoming and sought to represent his meeting with Dmitriev as coincidental. “Prince also could not adequately explain why he traveled halfway around the world to meet with UAE officials and, ultimately, the head of the Russian fund,” Schiff said in a statement. ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says declaring Jerusalem Israel's capital will start 'fire with no end in sight';ANKARA (Reuters) - The Turkish government s spokesman on Wednesday said that the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will plunge the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight . Declaring Jerusalem a capital is disregarding history and the truths in the region, it is a big injustice/cruelty, shortsightedness, foolishness/madness, it is plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter. I call on everyone to act logically, respect the agreements they signed and behave reasonably, avoid risking world peace for domestic politics or other reasons, he said. U.S. officials have said President Donald Trump is likely to give a speech on Wednesday unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a step that would break with decades of U.S. policy. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama Democrat turns up attacks on Roy Moore in Senate race's final stretch;BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Reuters) - Name-calling is not unusual in U.S. politics. But “child abuser” is not usually one of the names. In the final stretch of a bruising U.S. Senate race in Alabama, Democrat Doug Jones has cranked up his attacks on Republican Roy Moore over allegations of sexual misconduct and made those charges central to his argument that Moore is an unsuitable choice. Jones, who avoided directly addressing the sexual allegations when they surfaced in early November, has begun to cite them to attack Moore’s character. On Tuesday, one week before the Dec. 12 special election and a day after Republican President Donald Trump endorsed Moore, Jones said women who allege that Moore assaulted or pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s deserved to be believed. “I believe these women and so should you. This is about rising above political party to do what’s right for Alabama, and for the country,” Jones told voters during a speech in Birmingham. Moore, a 70-year-old Christian conservative, has denied the misconduct allegations and said they were a result of “dirty politics.” He said last week he had never met any of the women involved. Reuters has not independently verified any of the accusations. Moore, who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, was a “source of embarrassment” for the people of Alabama, Jones said. The raw tone has become typical of a race transformed by the Moore allegations, opening the door for a possible Democratic upset in the conservative Southern state that would deal a blow to Trump’s agenda and dramatically improve Democratic chances of regaining Senate control in next year’s congressional elections. Jones has cranked up his attacks as the initial wave of voter outrage over the allegations has shown signs of fading, enabling Moore to regain a slight lead in several recent opinion polls in a state that went for Trump by 28 percentage points last year. Alabama has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992. Jones, who holds a fundraising advantage on Moore and has accumulated four times as much cash on hand for the stretch drive, has launched an advertising blitz focusing on the misconduct allegations. “They were girls when Roy Moore immorally pursued them. Now they are women,” the narrator says in one ad as pictures of the accusers flash by. “Will we make their abuser a U.S. senator?” On the campaign trail, Jones, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan members convicted of a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham that killed four young girls, has cited his own background to draw a contrast with Moore. “I damn sure believe and have done my part to ensure that men who hurt little girls should go to jail - not the U.S. Senate,” Jones said in Birmingham. Moore’s rebound in the polls highlights the challenge for Jones as he tries to boost turnout among the state’s African-American voters while peeling away support from moderate Republicans alienated by Moore in a state where many voters are resistant to the Democratic label. “He is the Republican candidate and I am a Republican. I stand in support of what he supports,” Jenny Mann, 35, said of Moore. Mann, a self-described stay-at-home mom in Ider, Alabama, said the allegations against Moore “would concern anybody, but I also believe you are innocent until proven guilty.” Jones, making his first run for public office, has cast himself as a problem solver who would work across the aisle to help Alabamans on “kitchen-table” issues like healthcare and jobs, while Moore has portrayed him as a liberal Democrat straight out of Washington. Jones supports abortion rights and opposes repealing former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, unpopular stances in Alabama. But he said he never considered moderating his views to improve his chances. “The key to any campaign and any public official is being true to what you believe, and that’s what we’re putting out there,” Jones said in an interview last month. Trump’s endorsement freed the Republican National Committee to open its wallet for Moore, who had been cut off by the national party when the misconduct allegations became public. Not every Republican is falling in line. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has frequently tangled with Trump, tweeted a photo of his $100 donation to Jones. “Country over Party,” Flake captioned it. Some of Alabama’s black leaders worry about the risk of lackluster turnout among African-Americans, who make up about a quarter of the state electorate and vote strongly Democratic. “There is not a high level of energy in the black community about this race,” said Democratic state Senator Hank Sanders. Sanders might have been talking about Freddy Haley, 55, a black retired military veteran from Fayette who said he was a Democrat but had not kept up with politics. “With the holidays and everything, I haven’t had time to check it out,” Haley said while Christmas shopping in a Birmingham suburb with his family. “When is the election?” ;politicsNews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Completely SCREWS The Middle East Peace Process, Just Another Wednesday For Him;On Wednesday, Donald Trump took a step no previous president had ever dared to consider. He has declared that the United States now officially recognizes the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and announced plans to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.The only problem is, the city isn t just holy to the country of Israel.While Trump indicated that he wasn t taking a position on any contested land, that s really a misleading statement, since declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in effect gives the city to the Israelis, a position that essentially declares the debate on who all of the land belongs to over.Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator in the peace process, was quick to respond, saying that Trump had destroyed any possibility of peace and that he was pushing this region towards chaos [and] violence. Mustafa Marghouti, an independent Palestinian politician, told Al-Jazeera that: This is not a single act. This US administration that did not speak even once about a two-state solution. This American administration did not say or mention the words Palestinian state once. This American administration has failed to exercise any pressure on Israel on the issue of settlements, although Israel has enhanced settlement activities in the occupied territories by no less than 100 percent since President Trump was elected. Many expect to see outrage across the Middle East as news of the decision comes in.The European Union, for their part, insists that their position has not changed, and issued a statement almost immediately declaring that they intended to continue working toward recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of two distinct states Israel AND Palestine.Just as he does here at home, Trump seems to be uniting people against him, even some that seem to be unlikely pairings. Both the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and King Abdullah II of Jordan warned that ignoring the Palestinian, Muslim, and Christian rights in Jerusalem will only fuel further extremism and undermine the war against terrorism. But the decision does make Trump s evangelical supporters in America happy. Their desire to hasten the end of days has been a constant source of bafflement for those seeking to understand the strange relationship between the Jewish state and evangelicalism. According to Christian traditions, the Jews will all die in the Apocalypse, as will everyone who doesn t share their specific beliefs.No wonder they re mostly Republicans.Watch Trump s announcement here:Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;News;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigerian police official defends unit against brutality accusations;ABUJA (Reuters) - A police official defended a unit of the Nigeria Police Force that has been accused of human rights violations, saying many claims of brutality were unfounded and the country needed to be defended against violent crime. A social media campaign has called for the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to be disbanded. It has gathered pace in recent days as people shared stories of alleged maltreatment by the unit s officers, as well as photographs and videos. Lawmakers in the Senate, the upper house of parliament, voted on Tuesday to open an investigation into the allegations. Nigerian police have been dogged by accusations of human rights abuses for years. The police force has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. When you check most of these allegations ... it is somebody else that is saying that something happened to another person, said Abayomi Shogunle, who heads the Nigeria Police Force s complaints unit. We have reached out to all these people: tell us who this victim is, tell us the place where it took place, tell us the date and time. They are not forthcoming, said Shogunle, an assistant police commissioner. The social media campaign gathered pace after a video was circulated on social media of a youths chasing police after a man was allegedly shot dead by officers in the commercial capital, Lagos. Reuters could not verify whether the incident took place or details of when and where the video footage was filmed. The campaign, which has seen the EndSARS hashtag trending on Twitter, on Monday prompted the head of the police force to announce an immediate re-organisation of SARS nationwide and an investigation into abuse allegations. Shogunle said a specialist crime unit was needed in a country where kidnapping for ransom is a common problem in some regions, along with burglary. Clashes between semi-nomadic herdsmen and farmers over herding rights have also led to bloodshed in central and northern parts of the country. More than 30 people were killed in such clashes in a northeastern town last month. The question is what do we replace them with? Who will perform those tough, difficult, life-threatening duties that SARS are performing at the moment? he said. Street protests are also being planned in Nigerian cities. This has been going on for a long time and it s crazy that the people actually supposed to be your friend, to protect you, are the ones assaulting and abusing you, said Charles Oputa, who is planning to hold an event in the capital, Abuja. He said he did not believe the restructuring announced by the country s police chief would take place. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China calls for restraint after a U.S. B-1B bomber flies over Korean peninsula;BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday it hopes relevant parties can exercise restraint over North Korea, after the South Korean military said that U.S. B-1B bomber flew over the Korean peninsula during a large-scale joint aerial drill. Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang made the comments at a regular briefing. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen humanitarian situation likely to worsen with Saleh death: Mattis;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the killing of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh would, in the short term, likely worsen an already dire humanitarian situation in the country. Saleh was killed in a roadside attack on Monday after switching sides in Yemen s civil war, abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favor of a Saudi-led coalition. Coupled with a Saudi-led blockade and internal clashes, the stalemate has contributed to a human catastrophe. Some 7 million people are on the brink of famine, while one million are suspected to be infected with cholera. Mattis, speaking with reporters on a military aircraft en route to Washington after a brief trip to parts of the Middle East and South Asia, said it was too early to say what impact the killing would have on the war. He said it could either push the conflict towards U.N. peace negotiations or make it an even more vicious war. (But)one thing I think I can say with a lot of concern and probably likelihood is that the situation for the innocent people there, the humanitarian side, is most likely to (get) worse in the short term, Mattis said. He did not explain his reasoning. The war has already killed more than 10,000 and displaced millions. So this is where we ve all got to roll up our sleeves. Now, what are you going to do about medicine and food and clean water and cholera, Mattis said. I think there has got to be a lot more focus on the humanitarian side right now. Analysts said Saleh s death would be a huge moral boost for the Houthis and a serious blow to the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in the conflict to try to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Saudi Arabia and its allies receive logistical and intelligence help from the United States. Mattis said he did not believe the U.S. military would play a role in easing the humanitarian situation. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY TRUMP IS RIGHT To Recognize Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital;After it was announced that President Trump was seriously considering moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, he was roundly criticized by the anti-Trump media. Today, Democrats have announced they are drawing up the impeachment papers. Pope Francis appealed to President Trump to reconsider his decision so as not to offend anyone. In his appeal, Pope Francis said, Jerusalem is a unique city, sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims who venerate the holy places of their respective religions, and has a special vocation to peace. And yawn in Gaza, where the more things change, the more they stay the same, Palestinians burned the U.S. and Israeli flags.The media will try to make everyone believe that Palestinians loved us when Obama was President, even though there is no truth to that fantasy. (See image below)Daily Mail President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that America formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital city, changing decades of U.S. policy in a brief afternoon speech and casting the move as a bid to preserve, not derail, aspirations for regional peace.Appearing in the White House s Diplomatic Reception Room against an elaborate backdrop of Christmas decorations, He also said the United States embassy in Israel would, over time, be moved there from Tel Aviv.Israel is the only country where the United States has an embassy in a city that the host nation does not consider its capital. I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today I am delivering. When I came into office I promised to look at the world s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking, he said, leaning heavily on a mid-1990s federal law that demanded the embassy s relocation. We have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all, Trump added. But today we finally acknowledge the obvious, that Jerusalem is Israel s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It is something that has to be done. Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon seems to think so. Continetti wrote the best piece on Trump s bold decision to move the embassy that we have seen to date.Not only is President Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy there one of the boldest moves of his presidency. It is one of the boldest moves any U.S. president has made since the beginning of the Oslo peace process in 1993. That process collapsed at Camp David in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected President Clinton s offer of a Palestinian state. And the process has been moribund ever since, despite multiple attempts to restart it.That is why the warnings from Trump critics that his decision may wreck the peace process ring hollow. There is no peace process to wreck. The conflict is frozen. And the largest barriers to the resumption of negotiations are found not in U.S. or Israeli policy but in Palestinian autocracy, corruption, and incitement. Have the former Obama administration officials decrying Trump s announcement read a newspaper lately? From listening to them, you d think it would be all roses and ponies in the Middle East but for Trump. In fact, the region is engulfed in war, terrorism, poverty, and despotism;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean President Moon to visit China Dec. 13-16: Xinhua;BEIJING (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit China from Dec. 13-16, China s official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday, citing Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang. Xinhua did not give further details but the visit will come at a time of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula. The two countries are seeking to mend ties frayed by a year-long spat over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. The anti-missile system was deployed amid growing concern over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican army hit by execution finding as Senate mulls new military powers;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican soldiers arbitrarily executed two people after an illegal raid last year, a national rights body said on Tuesday, releasing its findings as protests disrupted a debate in the Senate over a contentious bill to give the military more powers. The military, deployed in Mexico s war on drug gangs for over a decade, has been embroiled in several rights scandals including the extrajudicial killings of gang members and the disappearance of 43 students near one of its bases in 2014. The case reported by the National Human Rights Commission on its website on Tuesday related to a raid on a home in the western state of Jalisco last year. The Commission, chosen by the Senate and autonomous from Mexico s federal government and its president, said the soldiers had tortured and sexually abused people they found there. After arbitrary detention, soldiers killed two of them by breaking their necks, the Commission said. While its rulings are not binding, the Commission s recommendations are influential and require a response from the institutions it reports on. The timing is awkward for President Enrique Pena Nieto s government, as it faces widespread criticism over legislation passed in the lower house and now in the Senate that seeks to enshrine in law the use of the military in crime fighting. The United Nations human rights chief on Tuesday called on Mexican lawmakers not to pass the bill, saying Mexico needed a stronger police force. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said the law did not contain strong enough controls to protect civilians from abuses in Mexico, where extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances are carried out by both security forces and criminal gangs. Adopting a new legal framework to regulate the operations of the armed forces in internal security is not the answer. The current draft law risks weakening incentives for the civilian authorities to fully assume their law enforcement roles, Zeid said in a statement. Protesters successfully blocked discussion of the bill for much of Tuesday, barring access points to the Senate, and laying out placards warning against the militarization of the country while pointing to a massive rise in killings since President Felipe Calderon first put the army on the streets in 2016. In his presidential campaign, Pena Nieto promised to develop a large new national police force, but has ended up relying on military forces for high-profile operations. Murders in Mexico in 2017 are on track to be the worst on record, with 20,878 nationwide in the first 10 months. Lawmakers are expected to push the bill through committees and later put the measure to a full vote on the Senate floor. Lower house lawmakers moved quickly on the bill last week after it had languished in committees for years. The law has broad support from the ruling party and members of the opposition National Action Party who say it will give clear rules limiting the use of soldiers to fight crime. The law is aimed at avoiding the discretional use of the armed forces by the president, PAN Senator Roberto Gil Zuarth told reporters. Right now there are no rules. He doesn t have to tell anybody. However, rights campaigners worry the law opens the door to military intervention in protests, as well as expanding military powers to spy on citizens. It is opposed by the party of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which has only a handful of senators, but wants to return soldiers to their barracks over time. Julia Klug, 65, an activist from Mexico City protesting outside the Senate with no violence written on her face, said the law would entrench the role of the armed forces in a struggle with criminals that was not theirs to fight. It s the Navy that s committing murder, it s the Army that s carrying out kidnappings. The police was corrupt, but these guys are criminals, she said holding up a Mexican flag with the eagle at the centre of it spattered in red. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SECRETARY OF STATE REX TILLERSON Shuts Down Obnoxious Press Asking Why He ‘Puts Up With’ Trump [Video];Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just shut down the obnoxious press. He responded to rumors of tension with President Donald Trump and reports that the White House is planning to push him out of his position, telling reporters that they need to get some new sources. BOOM!Tillerson s no nonsense style hit this reporter right between the eyes:Tillerson s comments came during a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where Associated Press reporter Josh Lederman asked the nation s top diplomat why he has not quit amid multiple reports, citing Trump administration officials, that the White House has developed a plan to oust Tillerson and replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who in turn would be replaced by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.). On several occasions, the president has publicly undermined your diplomatic efforts, Lederman said. In recent days, White House officials have said that you are going to be pushed out. And these are not media inventions;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bone fragments found in Mexico to be tested for DNA links;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican authorities said on Tuesday they will aim to identify some 3,000 bone fragments, apparently human, found at the weekend in the northern state of Coahuila, where organized crime has been blamed for the loss of thousands of lives. State prosecutors said they were sending the remains to a genetic laboratory to assess whether they could be linked to people who have disappeared. According to government data, nearly 18,600 people have disappeared since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012. In November, he signed into law a national commission dedicated to finding people who have disappeared. It will add some 469 million pesos ($25 million) to fund search efforts in its first stage. Gang violence has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past decade and authorities are often unable to identify bodies found in mass graves. VIDA, a Coahuila-based group representing 77 people whose relatives have gone missing, found the fragments in a field on Saturday after a tip-off about the location. The group, accompanied by prosecutors, experts and members of the military, also found a metal barrel, gun casings, two buttons and a buckle. VIDA spokeswoman Silvia Ortiz said similar previous discoveries indicated that victims bodies had been dismembered and burned for hours before the bones were broken apart with shovels. State prosecutors said they could not yet determine how many people the bones belonged to, according to a spokesman. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China accuses Australia of paranoia over foreign influence laws;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - China accused Australia of hysteria and paranoia on Wednesday after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull vowed to ban foreign political donations in a move to curb external influence on its domestic politics. Foreign powers were making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process in Australia and the world, Turnbull told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday. He had cited disturbing reports about Chinese influence . The announcement came as concern grows that Beijing may be extending its soft power efforts in the country and as relationships between Australian politicians and Chinese government interests become increasingly contentious. Some Australian media have repeatedly fabricated news stories about the so-called Chinese influence and infiltration in Australia, the Chinese Embassy in Australia said in an English-language statement on its website. Those reports, which were made up out of thin air and filled with cold war mentality and ideological bias, reflected a typical anti-China hysteria and paranoid (sic). The statement said that irresponsible remarks by some Australian politicians and government officials had damaged trust between the countries and that it categorically rejected all allegations. China s soft power has come under renewed focus this week after a politician from Australia s opposition Labor party was demoted from government having been found to have warned a prominent Chinese business leader and Communist Party member that his phone was being tapped by intelligence authorities. In June, Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on a concerted campaign by China to infiltrate Australian politics to promote Chinese interests. Australia and neighboring New Zealand are among roughly a third of countries worldwide that allow foreign donations to political parties. Such donations are prohibited in the United States, Britain and several European countries. The new laws, modeled in part on the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, would criminalize foreign interference and require the registration of lobbyists working for nation states, Turnbull said. China has no intention to interfere in Australia s internal affairs or exert influence on its political process through political donations, the embassy said. We urge the Australian side to look at China and China-Australia relations in an objective, fair and rational manner. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese state media takes praise for leader to new heights as Xi tightens grip;BEIJING (Reuters) - The official newspaper of China s ruling Communist Party has lavished unusually high levels of praise on President Xi Jinping s signature leadership, as China s strongest leader in decades consolidates his personal power. Xi s leadership was cast as having forged a new way of governance for China that the paper said had been applauded worldwide and had brought China to new heights of economic, political and diplomatic success. The paean, even more effusive than usual for the state mouthpiece, came in two parts written under the official nom de plume of the People s Daily for important commentaries and was carried on its front page on Tuesday and Wednesday. Billed as an exposition on the changes in leadership, thought, mission and rejuvenation for China revealed during a course-setting meeting of the top party leadership in October, it marked the latest assault in a propaganda onslaught vaunting Xi s contributions to China and the world. Xi has amassed positions and accolades at a level much higher than his immediate predecessors, being named the core of the party leadership last year and having his named theory written into the party charter in October. Such an honor has not been given to a sitting leader since Mao Zedong, communist China s founding leader. Chinese state media has taken praise for Xi to new levels since the twice-a-decade conclave. Xi was given Mao-like prominence with his portrait taking up nearly the entire front page of the People s Daily. A unique path, a unique theory, a unique system, a unique culture;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK Labour Party wants to leave single market, customs union option open after transition;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain should leave open the option remaining in the single market and customs union after a Brexit transition period, the Brexit spokesman for the opposition Labour Party said on Wednesday. Our position is in the customs unions and single market in the transition period and leave the options on the table for after the transition period, Keir Starmer told BBC radio. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's Sam Rainsy to be sued over 'treasonous' call to soldiers: PM;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodia s exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy has committed treason by inciting soldiers to defy orders, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Wednesday, and he will face new legal action over the comments. The threat of more legal action against Sam Rainsy, who has lived in France since 2015 to avoid a series of convictions, comes weeks after a court dissolved his opposition party, removing any significant challenge to Hun Sen extending his decades-long rule in a general election next year. The dissolution of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has been condemned by the opposition, rights groups and some Western countries as the most serious blow to democracy since an international peace deal and U.N.-run elections in the early 1990s ended decades of war and genocide. The United States has withdrawn an offer to help fund the election and the European Union has raised the possibility of withdrawing trade preferences. Sam Rainsy, who stepped down as leader of the CNRP this year in what turned out to be a futile bid to forestall a ban on his party suggested in a video posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday that soldiers would not obey orders to shoot civilians. Around the world, at any time, armed forces don t obey orders given by dictators to kill people and we say that Hun Sen is not immortal, we must not protect Hun Sen, Sam Rainsy told supporters in Paris. Hun Sen, who has held power for more than 32 years, a said the military would file a lawsuit in response. This is a treasonous crime, an incitement of soldiers to disobey orders, Hun Sen told garment workers in Phnom Penh. The Supreme Court banned the CNRP after its leader, Kem Sokha, who took over after Sam Rainsy stepped down, was arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government with American help. Kem Sokha, who rejected the accusation, is in prison. In an interview with Reuters last month, Sam Rainsy said Cambodia was at a tipping point and that Hun Sen would be driven from power like Zimbabwe s Robert Mugabe. He urged Western states to impose targeted sanctions. A government crackdown on dissent has included the prosecution of several rights activists, reporters and the closure of several media outlets. Sam Rainsy served as finance minister in an ill-fated coalition set up when Hun Sen refused to give up power after losing a U.N.-organised election in 1993. Hun Sen purged his coalition partners in a 1997 putsch. Hun Sen has built close ties to China and dismisses Western pressure to improve rights. He has warned of a return to civil war if he were to lose the election. (This version of the story amends headline to show Hun Sen said the opposition leader would be sued) ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran denies U.S. accusation of destabilizing the region;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran s foreign ministry denied on Wednesday U.S. accusations that the Islamic Republic is playing a destabilizing role in the region, state media reported. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said on Tuesday that Iran is carrying out destabilizing actions by supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, supplying missiles to Houthi forces in Yemen and sending weapons and militia fighters to Syria. Repeating the groundless accusations and lies will not help solve the large and strategic mistakes America has made in recent decades against Iran and the region, foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi was quoted as saying by state media. While there s time remaining, Mr. Tillerson should become more familiar with the realities and history of the region and American policies, and its effects which has led to serious instability and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children and people. Tillerson also said during a visit to Brussels on Tuesday that Iran must comply with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal under which the Islamic Republic agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of a number of sanctions. U.S. president Donald Trump dealt a blow to the pact in October by refusing to certify that Tehran was complying with the accord even though international inspectors said it was. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian lawmakers vote to bar entry to reporters of U.S. media;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The State Duma lower house of Russia s parliament voted on Wednesday to bar correspondents of U.S. mass media, including The Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, from attending its sessions, the Interfax news agency reported. On Tuesday, these two media outlets were officially designated as foreign agents by Russia s justice ministry, a move aimed at complicating their work in retaliation for what Moscow says is unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BARACK OBAMA GOES THERE…Compares President Trump To Hitler In Front Of Chicago Audience;Crains Chicago Business American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.Obama s comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman before she eventually asked him what he s learned as a world citizen of sorts.One thing he s learned is that things don t happen internationally if we don t put our shoulder to the wheel, Obama said, speaking of the U.S. No other country has the experience and bandwith and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn t do it, it s not going to happen. Obama gave one specific example, but it was a solid one: Ebola. To fight the virus the U.S. did everything from build an airport tarmac in Africa to send in medical teams and ferry medicos from other countries. We probably saved a million lives by doing that, he said.At least indirectly, those comments could be seen as criticism of Trump, whose foreign policy focuses on an America first paradigm that critics say distracts from this country s unique role.Obama moved from that to talking about a nativist mistrust and unease that has swept around the world. He argued that such things as the speed of technical change and the uneven impact of globalization have come too quickly to be absorbed in many cultures, bringing strange new things and people to areas in which people didn t (used to) challenge your assumptions. As a result, nothing feels solid, he said. Sadly, there s something in us that looks for simple answers when we re agitated. Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital. The danger is grow(ing) complacent, Obama said. We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly. That s what happened in Germany in the 1930s which, despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. Sixty million people died. . . .So, you ve got to pay attention. And vote. ;politics;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bomb blast kills nine people in Pakistan, near Afghan border;MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - A bomb rigged to a motorcycle exploded in a militant-plagued part of northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border, killing nine people, officials said on Wednesday, the latest violence in a recent rise in attacks in the nuclear-armed country. The bomb was detonated by remote control late on Tuesday when an army vehicle passed in Mir Ali town in the North Waziristan region, said three Pakistani officials who declined to be identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media. A spokesman for the Pakistani army, which is responsible for security in the volatile, ethnic Pashtun region, did not respond to calls seeking comment. Waziristan is bleeding once again, said police official Tahir Khan in Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, who said he had heard about the blast but had no details. No militant group claimed responsibility. North Waziristan was long home to Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda until the Pakistani army launched a major push against them in mid-2014. The military offensive cleared the militants from their bases and largely broke up their networks, forcing them to flee either over the porous border into Afghanistan or to other parts of Pakistan. But the militants have struck back, sometimes with major attacks. Last Friday, three Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers stormed a college in Peshawar, killing eight students and a guard. A week earlier, a senior police commander was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Peshawar. On Tuesday, the Pakistani Taliban killed a member of an anti-Taliban faction in another part of the northwest, while a bomb aimed at members of another pro-government faction killed five people a week earlier. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Pakistan this week to urge it to redouble efforts to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in Afghanistan. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British foreign secretary 'concerned' about planned U.S. recognition of Jerusalem;LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that he was concerned about reports that U.S. President Donald Trump s would recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Lets wait and see what the president says exactly. But, you know, we view the reports that we have heard with concern because we think that Jerusalem obviously should be part of the final settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he told reporters in Brussels. Senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital on Wednesday and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to the city. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COMEDIAN LENA DUNHAM WARNED Hillary’s Campaign “Harvey Weinstein’s A RAPIST”…What Clinton’s Campaign Did Next Is Disgusting;Actress Lena Dunham said she warned Hillary Clinton s campaign about disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and was uncomfortable with his presence during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a report out Tuesday.The Girls star told The New York Times that she heard stories about Weinstein from other actresses who claimed they had troubling interactions with him, so in March of 2016 she warned Clinton campaign deputy communications manager Kristina Schake about him. I just want you to let you know that Harvey s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point, Dunham said she told the campaign. I think it s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault. Dunham, who has professed an incredible allegiance to Hillary, claimed Schake told her she d relay the message to campaign manager Robby Mook, but that she was surprised at the warning.The controversial actress said she also told another Clinton campaign member, spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod, about Weinstein. Dunham said the campaign had not responded to her concerns about the disgraced megaproducer, who s been accused of sexually assaulting or harassing more than 100 women.Weinstein donated thousands of dollars to Clinton s political campaigns over the years, and it took the former secretary of state five days to break her silence following the accusations made against him. I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said in a statement through campaign communications director Nick Merrill. The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior. Fox News ;politics;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HANDPICKED SUCCESSOR And Son Of DISGRACED Lawmaker John Conyers Reportedly Body-Slammed, Spit Upon and Slit His Girlfriend With Knife;The disgraced Representative John Conyers (D-MI) was not about to quit his job as an elected official before he hand-selected his son as his successor. Never mind that his son has absolutely no experience in politics. His last name is Conyers , and that s apparently enough for the 88-year old politician. But is that really all they need to know about the 27-year old son of the disgraced lawmaker and the former Detroit councilwoman, Monica Conyers, who was recently released from prison after serving 2 years of a 3-year term for bribery? And should anyone be surprised by anything that comes out of the mouth of the 88-year old lawmaker, who, in 2010, was caught on video, as he brazenly read a Playboy magazine on a domestic flight in plain view of other passengers, and who has recently been accused by multiple women of either sexually assaulting or attempting to sexually assault them. John Conyers III also has an interesting background.According to NBC News, on February Feb. 15, John Conyers was arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse but wasn t charged, after his girlfriend called the police. The unidentified woman said the younger Conyers accused her of cheating on him, then body slammed her on the bed and then on the floor where he pinned her down and spit on her, according to a district attorney s report quoted by NBC News. The woman claimed that Conyers III took her phone when she tried to call the police, he chased her into the kitchen and swung a knife at her, resulting in a cut on her arm.Conyers III asserted that the woman had been drinking and using marijuana and tried to throw him out of her home before they began pushing and shoving one another. He said she threatened him with a knife and cut herself as they struggled.NBC reported that the Los Angeles County District Attorney s Office chose not to move forward with the case, citing a lack of independent witnesses and investigators conclusions that it could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim s injury was not accidentally sustained. FOX NewsConyers III also likes to think of himself as a rapper . He recently made this video where interestingly, he refers to his father as a f*cking player : Conyers III also caused public headaches for his father in 2010.Chicago Tribune In 2010, MLive.com reported that John Conyers III was cited for speeding in his father s Cadillac Escalade or rather, the government-leased vehicle his father used as a member of Congress.There were also reports that year that the younger Conyers had driven the vehicle to a rap concert and that it was broken into, according to MLive.com. The then-20-year-old reported to police that two laptops had been stolen from the Cadillac, along with tens of thousands of dollars worth of concert tickets.After the incident, the elder Conyers apologized.;politics;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NOT GETTING What You Want for Christmas? Don’t Worry, This Hillary Tree Topper has an Excuse for it!;Yes, this is real These Hillary supporters are officially a cult!Those looking to celebrate Resist-mas now have the perfect accessory: a Hillary Clinton tree topper.The newly-released 3D-sculpted ornament features the former first lady in her iconic power suit with angelic wings. The tree topper sells for $107 for a standard-size tree and more than $900 for a tree taller than 10 feet.U.K.-based Women to Look Up To is selling the item, along with similar ones to honor Beyonce and Serena Williams:Celebrating Women On TopThe Christmas Angel, Fairy, Tree Topper, by whatever name you call her, is a woman from a bygone era;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;KATIE HOPKINS WARNS AMERICANS Of Grave Danger Ahead: “Do Not Let This Great Country Become The United Kingdom” [VIDEO];Former British Army officer, outspoken, conservative, radio and tv talk show host, Katie Hopkins warned Americans to fight back against the appeasement and political correctness in the United States of America.British conservative icon, Katie Hopkins gave a blistering speech about the dangers of political correctness and appeasement at the David Horowitz Restoration weekend in Palm Beach, Florida. Look at us, let us be a warning. Be better than us. I ve watched my country fall apart, and I want to warn others before they let their country do the same. And believe me, I love my country. Katie touched on many topics that most Americans are afraid to address. Hopkins reveals a horrifying story of a Muslim woman, who along with her boyfriend, was recently sentenced to prison, after a plot to behead Hopkins was uncovered. Hopkins also shares horrifying stories of multiple British citizens who have lost their lives, their limbs or suffer serious scars, as a result of acts of jihad against them by Muslim immigrants in their homeland of Great Britain, after their nation welcomed them in with open arms. Do not allow America to fall as Europe has fallen, Hopkins told the crowd.Hopkins started out her speech with her usual biting and politically incorrect humor, by assuring the crowd she is not the outspoken, gay, conservative Milo Yiannopoulis. She then assured the audience that she was not gay simply because she wears her short. In fact, Hopkins calls herself a minority in London, because she s a white, married, mother of three, telling the audience that she s now on the extinct list in the UK.Hopkins tells of the time she spent in the migrant camps in Calais and tells horrifying stories of how the workers conform to the rule of Islam, so as not to offend the migrants they are taking care of. She tells a story of a mother who dresses her young daughter as a son, so the migrant men don t come into their tent to rape her daughter at night. Hopkins admitted that she was naive , and that she quickly realized, Migrants don t come for a new life and leave their old life behind. They bring them with them. All the old conflicts from back home. The Eritreans hate the Somalis who hate the Afghanis who don t speak to the Libyans. And they re still fighting. They come, they do not start a new life, they bring their conflicts from back home. Watch Hopkins powerful speech here (some language may be offensive):;left-news;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BARACK OBAMA GOES THERE…Compares President Trump To Hitler In Front Of Chicago Audience;Crains Chicago Business American democracy is fragile, and unless care is taken it could follow the path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.Mixed in with many softer comments, that was the somewhat jaw-dropping bottom line of Barack Obama last night as, in a Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago, the Chicagoan who used to be president dropped a bit of red meat to a hometown crowd that likely is a lot closer to him than the man whose name never was mentioned: President Donald Trump.Obama s comments came after a series of playful questions from moderator and Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson in the great Batman vs. Superman debate, for instance, we learned Obama sides with Batman before she eventually asked him what he s learned as a world citizen of sorts.One thing he s learned is that things don t happen internationally if we don t put our shoulder to the wheel, Obama said, speaking of the U.S. No other country has the experience and bandwith and ideals. . . .If the U.S. doesn t do it, it s not going to happen. Obama gave one specific example, but it was a solid one: Ebola. To fight the virus the U.S. did everything from build an airport tarmac in Africa to send in medical teams and ferry medicos from other countries. We probably saved a million lives by doing that, he said.At least indirectly, those comments could be seen as criticism of Trump, whose foreign policy focuses on an America first paradigm that critics say distracts from this country s unique role.Obama moved from that to talking about a nativist mistrust and unease that has swept around the world. He argued that such things as the speed of technical change and the uneven impact of globalization have come too quickly to be absorbed in many cultures, bringing strange new things and people to areas in which people didn t (used to) challenge your assumptions. As a result, nothing feels solid, he said. Sadly, there s something in us that looks for simple answers when we re agitated. Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital. The danger is grow(ing) complacent, Obama said. We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly. That s what happened in Germany in the 1930s which, despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. Sixty million people died. . . .So, you ve got to pay attention. And vote. ;left-news;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY TRUMP IS RIGHT To Recognize Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital;After it was announced that President Trump was seriously considering moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, he was roundly criticized by the anti-Trump media. Today, Democrats have announced they are drawing up the impeachment papers. Pope Francis appealed to President Trump to reconsider his decision so as not to offend anyone. In his appeal, Pope Francis said, Jerusalem is a unique city, sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims who venerate the holy places of their respective religions, and has a special vocation to peace. And yawn in Gaza, where the more things change, the more they stay the same, Palestinians burned the U.S. and Israeli flags.The media will try to make everyone believe that Palestinians loved us when Obama was President, even though there is no truth to that fantasy. (See image below)Daily Mail President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that America formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital city, changing decades of U.S. policy in a brief afternoon speech and casting the move as a bid to preserve, not derail, aspirations for regional peace.Appearing in the White House s Diplomatic Reception Room against an elaborate backdrop of Christmas decorations, He also said the United States embassy in Israel would, over time, be moved there from Tel Aviv.Israel is the only country where the United States has an embassy in a city that the host nation does not consider its capital. I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump said. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today I am delivering. When I came into office I promised to look at the world s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking, he said, leaning heavily on a mid-1990s federal law that demanded the embassy s relocation. We have declined to acknowledge any Israeli capital at all, Trump added. But today we finally acknowledge the obvious, that Jerusalem is Israel s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It is something that has to be done. Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon seems to think so. Continetti wrote the best piece on Trump s bold decision to move the embassy that we have seen to date.Not only is President Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy there one of the boldest moves of his presidency. It is one of the boldest moves any U.S. president has made since the beginning of the Oslo peace process in 1993. That process collapsed at Camp David in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected President Clinton s offer of a Palestinian state. And the process has been moribund ever since, despite multiple attempts to restart it.That is why the warnings from Trump critics that his decision may wreck the peace process ring hollow. There is no peace process to wreck. The conflict is frozen. And the largest barriers to the resumption of negotiations are found not in U.S. or Israeli policy but in Palestinian autocracy, corruption, and incitement. Have the former Obama administration officials decrying Trump s announcement read a newspaper lately? From listening to them, you d think it would be all roses and ponies in the Middle East but for Trump. In fact, the region is engulfed in war, terrorism, poverty, and despotism;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COMEDIAN LENA DUNHAM WARNED Hillary’s Campaign “Harvey Weinstein’s A RAPIST”…What Clinton’s Campaign Did Next Is Disgusting;Actress Lena Dunham said she warned Hillary Clinton s campaign about disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and was uncomfortable with his presence during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a report out Tuesday.The Girls star told The New York Times that she heard stories about Weinstein from other actresses who claimed they had troubling interactions with him, so in March of 2016 she warned Clinton campaign deputy communications manager Kristina Schake about him. I just want you to let you know that Harvey s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point, Dunham said she told the campaign. I think it s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault. Dunham, who has professed an incredible allegiance to Hillary, claimed Schake told her she d relay the message to campaign manager Robby Mook, but that she was surprised at the warning.The controversial actress said she also told another Clinton campaign member, spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod, about Weinstein. Dunham said the campaign had not responded to her concerns about the disgraced megaproducer, who s been accused of sexually assaulting or harassing more than 100 women.Weinstein donated thousands of dollars to Clinton s political campaigns over the years, and it took the former secretary of state five days to break her silence following the accusations made against him. I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said in a statement through campaign communications director Nick Merrill. The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior. Fox News ;left-news;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HANDPICKED SUCCESSOR And Son Of DISGRACED Lawmaker John Conyers Reportedly Body-Slammed, Spit Upon and Slit His Girlfriend With Knife;The disgraced Representative John Conyers (D-MI) was not about to quit his job as an elected official before he hand-selected his son as his successor. Never mind that his son has absolutely no experience in politics. His last name is Conyers , and that s apparently enough for the 88-year old politician. But is that really all they need to know about the 27-year old son of the disgraced lawmaker and the former Detroit councilwoman, Monica Conyers, who was recently released from prison after serving 2 years of a 3-year term for bribery? And should anyone be surprised by anything that comes out of the mouth of the 88-year old lawmaker, who, in 2010, was caught on video, as he brazenly read a Playboy magazine on a domestic flight in plain view of other passengers, and who has recently been accused by multiple women of either sexually assaulting or attempting to sexually assault them. John Conyers III also has an interesting background.According to NBC News, on February Feb. 15, John Conyers was arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse but wasn t charged, after his girlfriend called the police. The unidentified woman said the younger Conyers accused her of cheating on him, then body slammed her on the bed and then on the floor where he pinned her down and spit on her, according to a district attorney s report quoted by NBC News. The woman claimed that Conyers III took her phone when she tried to call the police, he chased her into the kitchen and swung a knife at her, resulting in a cut on her arm.Conyers III asserted that the woman had been drinking and using marijuana and tried to throw him out of her home before they began pushing and shoving one another. He said she threatened him with a knife and cut herself as they struggled.NBC reported that the Los Angeles County District Attorney s Office chose not to move forward with the case, citing a lack of independent witnesses and investigators conclusions that it could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim s injury was not accidentally sustained. FOX NewsConyers III also likes to think of himself as a rapper . He recently made this video where interestingly, he refers to his father as a f*cking player : Conyers III also caused public headaches for his father in 2010.Chicago Tribune In 2010, MLive.com reported that John Conyers III was cited for speeding in his father s Cadillac Escalade or rather, the government-leased vehicle his father used as a member of Congress.There were also reports that year that the younger Conyers had driven the vehicle to a rap concert and that it was broken into, according to MLive.com. The then-20-year-old reported to police that two laptops had been stolen from the Cadillac, along with tens of thousands of dollars worth of concert tickets.After the incident, the elder Conyers apologized.;left-news;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: 3 PRESIDENTS Before Trump Promised To Move U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem;On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California blasted President Trump for saying he would move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Feinstein claimed it would be a terrible decision even though she previously voted for the embassy to be moved. The hypocrisy of the left doesn t stop there Today, President Donald Trump announced that America formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital city, changing decades of U.S. policy in a brief afternoon speech and casting the move as a bid to preserve, not derail, aspirations for regional peace.The critics of Donald Trump attacked his decision. Meanwhile, the truth is, that for decades, some of the most beloved Democrats have used the promise of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a way to get votes.In 1999, while campaigning for New York s US Senate seat, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter, that she considered Jerusalem to be the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel and will be an active advocate if elected to New York s Senate seat to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.In a letter that became public Thursday, Mrs. Clinton wrote: If I am chosen by New Yorkers to be their senator, or in whatever position I find myself in the years to come, you can be sure that I will be an active, committed advocate for a strong and secure Israel, able to live in peace with its neighbors, with the United States Embassy located in its capital, Jerusalem. Hillary s not the only one to promise, that if elected, they would move heaven and earth to make Jerusalem the rightful capital of Israel. As it turns out, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama (twice) also made the same promise. The only problem is, none of them had the courage to do it.Watch:When President @realDonaldTrump announced that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he fulfilled another campaign promise, in addition to those that go back 25 years . pic.twitter.com/P7M2dEx2qT Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) December 7, 2017Here s why our courageous president, Donald Trump was right to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon wrote the best article on Trump s bold decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem that we have seen to date.Not only is President Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy there one of the boldest moves of his presidency. It is one of the boldest moves any U.S. president has made since the beginning of the Oslo peace process in 1993. That process collapsed at Camp David in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected President Clinton s offer of a Palestinian state. And the process has been moribund ever since, despite multiple attempts to restart it.That is why the warnings from Trump critics that his decision may wreck the peace process ring hollow. There is no peace process to wreck. The conflict is frozen. And the largest barriers to the resumption of negotiations are found not in U.S. or Israeli policy but in Palestinian autocracy, corruption, and incitement. Have the former Obama administration officials decrying Trump s announcement read a newspaper lately? From listening to them, you d think it would be all roses and ponies in the Middle East but for Trump. In fact, the region is engulfed in war, terrorism, poverty, and despotism;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian envoy says U.S. recognition of Jerusalem is 'declaring war';LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump would effectively be making a declaration of war if he recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the Palestinians chief representative to Britain said on Wednesday. If he says what he is intending to say about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, it means a kiss of death to the two state solution, Manuel Hassassian said in a BBC radio interview. He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims (and) hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel, Hassassian added. Senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital on Wednesday and set in motion the relocation of the U.S. embassy to the city. ;worldnews;06/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: 3 PRESIDENTS Before Trump Promised To Move U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem;On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California blasted President Trump for saying he would move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Feinstein claimed it would be a terrible decision even though she previously voted for the embassy to be moved. The hypocrisy of the left doesn t stop there Today, President Donald Trump announced that America formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel s capital city, changing decades of U.S. policy in a brief afternoon speech and casting the move as a bid to preserve, not derail, aspirations for regional peace.The critics of Donald Trump attacked his decision. Meanwhile, the truth is, that for decades, some of the most beloved Democrats have used the promise of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a way to get votes.In 1999, while campaigning for New York s US Senate seat, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter, that she considered Jerusalem to be the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel and will be an active advocate if elected to New York s Senate seat to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.In a letter that became public Thursday, Mrs. Clinton wrote: If I am chosen by New Yorkers to be their senator, or in whatever position I find myself in the years to come, you can be sure that I will be an active, committed advocate for a strong and secure Israel, able to live in peace with its neighbors, with the United States Embassy located in its capital, Jerusalem. Hillary s not the only one to promise, that if elected, they would move heaven and earth to make Jerusalem the rightful capital of Israel. As it turns out, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama (twice) also made the same promise. The only problem is, none of them had the courage to do it.Watch:When President @realDonaldTrump announced that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he fulfilled another campaign promise, in addition to those that go back 25 years . pic.twitter.com/P7M2dEx2qT Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) December 7, 2017Here s why our courageous president, Donald Trump was right to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon wrote the best article on Trump s bold decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem that we have seen to date.Not only is President Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy there one of the boldest moves of his presidency. It is one of the boldest moves any U.S. president has made since the beginning of the Oslo peace process in 1993. That process collapsed at Camp David in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected President Clinton s offer of a Palestinian state. And the process has been moribund ever since, despite multiple attempts to restart it.That is why the warnings from Trump critics that his decision may wreck the peace process ring hollow. There is no peace process to wreck. The conflict is frozen. And the largest barriers to the resumption of negotiations are found not in U.S. or Israeli policy but in Palestinian autocracy, corruption, and incitement. Have the former Obama administration officials decrying Trump s announcement read a newspaper lately? From listening to them, you d think it would be all roses and ponies in the Middle East but for Trump. In fact, the region is engulfed in war, terrorism, poverty, and despotism;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Qatar flexes financial muscle with 12 billion euros of French deals;DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar will buy fighter jets and armored vehicles as part of 12 billion euros worth of commercial contracts it agreed with France on Thursday, bolstering its military capability and its international ties as it faces a boycott by other Arab states. The latest contracts underscored how Doha can use the wealth it has accumulated as the world s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas to defy some of the largest and wealthiest Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and trade relations with the emirate almost six months ago. They accuse the Qataris of backing terrorism, which Qatar denies. Our position on this blockade was very clear. Qatar s position was very clear - to resolve this problem, if we saw problems between us and our neighbors - we should be at a table and speak honestly, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said at a news conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron, who has tried to play a mediation role between the sides, was in Doha to discuss how to combat the financing of terrorism at a time when the Middle East is locked in a regional power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran. Restoring stability to the Gulf is a priority for us because we have a lot of friends here, Macron said. Our wish is that we find a quick resolution to today s situation. Paris has strong commercial and political ties with Qatar. It has promoted deeper business interests in the country and encouraged Qatari investment in France, where the Gulf state already has assets of about $10 billion. Macron said some 12 billion euros ($14.13 billion) worth of deals were agreed on Thursday. They included Qatar s taking up an option from 2015 to buy 12 more Dassault Aviation-made Rafale fighters, and saying it could purchase a further 36. It has already bought 24 planes for about 6 billion euros, including missiles. It also committed to buying 490 armored vehicles from defense firm Nexter. Doha has repeatedly called for dialogue with its neighbors, although it has strengthened its military as relations with them have deteriorated. It has secured this year alone military equipment deals with the United States, Russia and Britain. In total, it amounts to nearly 12 billion euros which was signed today and which underlines the closeness of our economic cooperation, Macron said. Among other deals signed, Suez SEVI.PA will dredge and clean Qatar s lagoon and a rail consortium of RATP and SNCF will build and operate a metro system in the Qatari capital. Qatar Airways also placed a new order for Airbus A321neo civilian aircraft to replace an earlier A320neo order. The new deal for larger planes is worth an extra $930 million at current list prices for Airbus and involves a switch of engine supplier to a French-American venture co-owned by Safran (SAF.PA)< and General Electric (GE.N). ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland ready to defend migration stance in EU top court;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland is ready to defend its decision in the European Union s top court to refuse to accept migrants from Africa and the Middle East under an EU plan to redistribute them, Deputy Foreign Minister Konrad Szymanski said. He spoke after the EU executive sued Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the European Court of Justice on Thursday for their refusal to host these migrants. Poland is ready to defend its position in the Court, Szymanski told state news agency PAP. No one will lift the duty of providing public safety from the Polish government. The government of Poland s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party has said it will not admit migrants, citing security concerns amid deadly Islamist attacks in western Europe and problems with ascertaining the identify of migrants. The Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it had signed a deal with the European Investment Bank to give 50 million euros to help countries and territories affected by the migration crisis, mainly Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank. Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said that Poland - a country of 38 million - is already hosting migrants as it had issued more than a million work permits for people from neighboring Ukraine last year alone. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Evicted white Zimbabwean farmer told he's going home;HARARE (Reuters) - A white Zimbabwean farmer kicked off his property at gunpoint in June has been told he will be going home within days, the first signs of the post-Robert Mugabe government making good on promises to respect agricultural property rights. Rob Smart, a 71-year-old farmer from the eastern district of Rusape, said he understood his case had been taken up by new President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who heard of Smart s violent eviction while at an investment conference in Johannesburg. Apparently Mnangagwa saw that and flipped his lid, Smart told Reuters by telephone, saying new provincial minister of state Monica Mutsvangwa had assured him the eviction would be reversed. Our new governor is getting us back on the farm, he said. According to media reports at the time, Smart and his family, including two small grandchildren, were kicked off their Lesbury farm along with scores of workers in early June by riot police armed with tear gas and AK-47 assault rifles. They came with guns and riot gear and tear gas - it wasn t just us, it was all our workers as well, the whole compound, Smart said. In all, the eviction would have hit the livelihood of as many as 5,000 people, he said. Reuters reported in September that Mnangagwa was plotting with the military, liberation war veterans and businessmen including current and former white farmers to take over from 93-year-old Mugabe. In the latter half of his 37 years in power, Zimbabwe s economy collapsed, especially after the violent and chaotic seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms under the banner of post-colonial land reform. Mugabe resigned last month in the wake of a de facto military coup, paving the way for Mnangagwa, who had been purged as his deputy only a week before, to take over as leader of the southern African nation. War veterans leader Chris Mutsvangwa, husband of Monica Mutsvangwa and now a special adviser to Mnangagwa, said Smart s treatment made clear the new administration was serious about restoring the rule of law and sanctity of property rights. Land reform is over. Now we want inclusiveness. All citizens who had a claim to land by birthright, we want them to feel they belong and we want them to build a new country because this economy is shattered, he told Reuters. Smart said he was working with the local authorities in Rusare who were under orders to track down looted and stolen property to allow him and his staff to bring the farm back to production. We will have a Christmas with no decorations in a house that s a bit empty, Smart said. But mentally it s going to be a bloody nice one. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai court issues arrest warrants over arms cache;BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court issued arrest warrants against five people on Thursday over the discovery of a cache of weapons, including figures with links to the Red Shirt followers of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Police said they found the cache in a swamp south of Bangkok and believed the weapons were hidden during the instability that led up to a coup in 2014. Among those named in the arrest warrants was exiled dissident Jakrapob Penkair, 50, who served as Thaksin s spokesman from 2003 to 2005 and then as a minister in a later government backed by Thaksin. Police said another of the five, retired Lieutenant General Manas Paolik, 68, had given himself up. He had served as commander for Thailand s Third Army under Thaksin, He faces charges including illegal procession of weapons and ammunition as well as organized crime, said police colonel Suwat Sangnoom, deputy head of the Crime Suppression Division. Thailand s longstanding political divide is between a populist movement led by Thaksin, who was overthrown in 2006, and the Yellow Shirt supporters of a conservative Bangkok-based establishment. The army seized power in 2014 in the name of ending street protests against Thaksin s sister, Yingluck, who was prime minister at the time. Both Shinawatras fled into exile. Thailand s ruling junta has said intelligence reports show groups plotting against the government, citing that as a reason to maintain a ban on political activity. It has promised to hold elections in a year s time. Critics of the government accuse it of using the alleged plots as a pretext to prolong military rule. The junta had initially promised to hold elections in 2015. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli siren app says rockets fired at Israel near Gaza Strip;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli siren phone application sounded that rockets were fired at Israel at various locations near the Gaza Strip on Thursday but there was no initial confirmation of any hits in Israel, the military said. The siren warning sounded on a day of heightened tensions following protests in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank in which Palestinians protested at U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement on Wednesday that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital city. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says U.S. Jerusalem decision tramples on law;ATHENS (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump s unfortunate decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was trampling on international laws . Erdogan speaking in Athens after talks with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, also said Turkey wanted to see a lasting solution on the island of Cyprus, but said Greek Cypriots were avoiding talks. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;On Trump's Jerusalem move, Merkel says Germany sticking to U.N. resolutions;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that Germany would stand by U.N. resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. We re sticking to the relevant U.N. resolutions - they make clear that the status of Jerusalem needs to be negotiated as part of negotiations on a two-state solution for Israel and that s why we want this process to be revived, she said. On Wednesday Merkel had already said Germany does not support the Trump administration s decision. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU steps up pressure on Hungary over Soros university, NGO laws, migration;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union s executive on Thursday stepped up its pressure on the nationalist government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary over its treatment of immigrants, non-governmental groups and a prominent university. Orban has been locked in a series of running battles with the EU, where Western states and the Brussels-based executive Commission decry what they see as his authoritarian leanings, the squeezing of the opposition and the free media. In a series of legal announcements, the European Commission said it was taking Budapest to the bloc s top court, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, over its NGO laws as well as a higher education law that targets a university founded by U.S. financier George Soros, a public enemy of Orban. Brussels, influenced by the Soros Empire, has released a burst of fire on Hungary. The legal procedures are now openly used as tools of political blackmail and exerting pressure, Orban s Fidesz party said in reaction to the announcements. Brussels also confirmed it was taking Hungary - along with eastern EU peers Poland and the Czech Republic - to the tribunal over refusing to host asylum-seekers under an EU-wide quota system. The ECJ cases could lead to financial penalties but take months, or years, to conclude. The Commission has also stepped up its legal case against Budapest over Hungary s asylum laws. Separately, European lawmakers were debating on Thursday whether the rule of law and democratic standards in Hungary were under threat more generally, and to an extent that would merit the triggering of an unprecedented EU punishment against Budapest. The so-called Article 7 procedure would shame Orban by denouncing his government as undemocratic and could even lead to the maximum - though practically highly unlikely - sanction of stripping Hungary of its voting rights in the EU. Hungary s case has been the first time the European Parliament has called for the launching the Article 7 mechanism. At the debate in one of parliament s committees, some lawmakers said Orban was making untruthful accusations against the EU and diverging from European values with his brand of illiberal democracy . Even before the debate, Orban s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs likened it to an amalgamation of a medieval witch hunt and communist-era show trial. The Commission s First Vice-President Frans Timmermans, however, made clear the executive arm did not side with the parliament s broader and at times tougher view of Hungary. We believe that we are dealing with very specific issues where we have disagreements with the Hungarian government, Timmermans told a news conference. The situation in Hungary is not in that sense comparable to the systemic threats to the rule of law which we see in Poland, he said of Orban s closest EU ally, the eurosceptic, nationalist Polish government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party. In power for two years, PiS has sought to replicate some of ideas Orban has introduced over his seven years in office. The party s moves on the courts and the media have provoked concern elsewhere in the EU that the biggest ex-communist member in the bloc is backpedalling on democracy and the rule of law. Warsaw faces its own Article 7 proceedings from the Commission. Warsaw and Budapest, which share a broad world view that often goes against the more liberal one of the western EU states, have each other s back in their battles with the bloc and have vowed to shield one another from any sanctions. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Northern Ireland's DUP says talks with UK government continuing;BELFAST (Reuters) - Talks between Democratic Unionist Party and the British government to secure a deal on the post-Brexit future of the region s border continued on Thursday, a spokesman for the Northern Ireland party said. The British government needs to agree a text with both the DUP and Irish government before the European Union will agree to move onto the next phase of Brexit talks. We have been talking to the government over the last couple of days and that is continuing today, the DUP spokesman said, saying deputy party leader Nigel Dodds and party Chief Whip Jeffrey Donaldson were involved but that party leader Arlene Foster remained in Northern Ireland. Ultimately if there is an agreement she will go over, he said. Flights can be booked reasonably quickly but there is not an expectation of her going today. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PHILADELPHIA Committee Passes Bill Forcing Store Owners to Remove Bullet-Proof Glass…Because it’s Offensive;What s more important, protecting the dignity of customers who shop in local liquor stores, or the innocent employees and store owners who come in every day, knowing that the only thing that ensures they will go home alive, is the bullet-proof glass between them and the criminal element who enters their store? Well, according to one Philadelphia councilwoman, it s the dignity of the customers. Philadelphia s Public Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill Monday to ban shop owners from protecting themselves with bulletproof plexiglass.Philadelphia 8th District Councilwoman Cindy Bass, who is behind the bill, said previously that having to see plexiglass represents an indignity to her constituents and should, therefore, be banned. Information LiberationFOX News Philadelphia is one step closer to getting rid of bulletproof glass in many of its small businesses as part of a larger effort to crack down on loitering, public urination, and potential drug sales but the potential ban has triggered a backlash from shopkeepers.The city s Public Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill Monday enabling Philadelphia s Department of Licenses and Inspections to regulate the bullet-resistant barricades that stand between customers and cash registers in many neighborhood corner stores, according to FOX29. No establishment required to obtain a Large Establishment license shall erect or maintain a physical barrier that requires the persons serving the food either to open a window or other aperture or to pass the food through a window or other aperture, in order to hand the food to a customer inside the establishment, the bill states. It also calls for larger establishments to have bathrooms for customers.Here s a great example of the crime Philadelphia officers deal with every day in a city where the elected officials are more worried about passing laws to protect the dignity of liquor store customers, and not the people who bravely come to work every day to sell goods in dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhoods. ;left-news;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pro-Kurdish opposition leader's trial opens in Turkey;ANKARA (Reuters) - The jailed leader of Turkey s pro-Kurdish opposition was remanded in prison for at least two more months on Thursday at the opening of his trial on terrorism-related charges. Selahattin Demirtas, the co-leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) who has already been in detention more than a year, was not allowed to appear in court for security reasons and refused to take part via video link. The former human rights lawyer faces up to 142 years in prison in a case closely watched by rights groups and Western governments. The judge ruled he should be kept in detention until the next hearing on Feb 14. This trial bears all the hallmarks of a theater play. It s clear that this case was brought on orders. We demand an immediate end to this injustice, HDP quoted one of Demirtas lawyers as telling the court. The court ruled that Demirtas be kept in jail, in line with the prosecutor s demand. Demirtas was arrested on Nov. 4 last year, one of more than a dozen HDP lawmakers who were detained in a crackdown following last year s attempted coup. A crowd of several hundred gathered to show support for Demirtas in snowy weather outside the court near the capital Ankara. They joined hands and danced around small fires, singing songs in Kurdish. Demirtas is our honor, they chanted. Demirtas and other detained HDP members are mostly accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has conducted a decades-old insurgency in which 40,000 people have been killed. The group is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and Europe. All of the accused deny the charges. The HDP is the third-largest party in Turkey s parliament. The party s other co-leader, Figen Yuksekdag, also jailed pending trial on terrorism charges, was remanded in custody by an Ankara court on Wednesday. Demirtas is held in a jail in the northwestern city of Edirne. The case was to be held within the city of Ankara itself but was moved to the Sincan prison complex outside the capital, two days before the trial, because of security concerns. European parliamentarians, Western diplomats and rights group representatives attended the session in the small court room with a capacity of 120 people. The HDP said 1,250 lawyers sought to defend Demirtas. The HDP said in a statement the indictment largely consists of press releases and speeches Demirtas has made at conferences, panels and similar legal and political activities. The charges aimed at Demirtas included establishing a terrorist organization , spreading terror group propaganda and praising crimes and criminals . Authorities banned protests across Ankara province for the three days until Friday for security reasons after the HDP called for protests to mark the hearing of Demirtas and other party officials, the governor s office said in a statement. About 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended and roughly 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial since last year s failed coup. Rights groups and some Western allies say Erdogan has used the putsch as an excuse to quash dissent. The HDP says as many as 5,000 of its members have been detained. Erdogan says such measures were necessary given the danger represented by the putsch in which 250 people were killed. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Al Qaeda condemns Trump's Jerusalem move, calls for action;DUBAI (Reuters) - Islamist militant group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has condemned the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and called on militants to close ranks to support Palestinians. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In the statement carried by the U.S. SITE monitoring group, the Yemen-based AQAP said Trump s decision was the result of what it said were normalization steps between some Gulf Arab countries and Israel. It is also a clear challenge to the Muslim world that sees the centrality of the Palestinian cause, the group said. In the face of this serious events, we stand by our people in Palestine and support them with all we possess. Addressing Islamist militants, the group called on them to close ranks to be ready to support Palestinians and urged Muslims to help with money and weapons. If you do not move, God forbid, then tomorrow the holiest of places and the Muslims Qiblah, Mecca, will be sold and you will find then no one to defend it, it said. The AQAP, which was formed in 2009 by the merger of al Qaeda s Saudi and Yemeni branches, is regarded by the United States as one of the most dangerous groups of the network founded by Osama bin Laden. The United States has repeatedly carried out drone strikes on members and leaders of the group, which makes remote areas in southern Yemen as its main base. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia celebrates 'day for love' as it allows same-sex marriage;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia became the 26th nation to legalise same-sex marriage on Thursday, prompting cheers and singing from a packed parliament public gallery in a country where some states ruled homosexual acts to be illegal until just 20 years ago. Lawmakers, who had cast aside a conservative push to allow religious objectors to refuse service to same-sex couples, waved rainbow flags and embraced on the floor of the chamber, after the overwhelming vote in favour of the bill. Fewer than five of 150 MPs voted against it. What a day. What a day for love, for equality, for respect, said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. It is time for more marriages. The law, which will also recognise same-sex marriages solemnised in foreign countries, takes effect from Saturday. Because a month s notice is required for the state to recognise a marriage, the first legal same-sex unions will be in January. Five-time Olympic gold-medal winner, the swimmer Ian Thorpe, who came out in 2014, said the law reflected contemporary Australia and would support people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual queer or intersex (LGBTQI). It will give each of us the sense of what modern Australia is, and is, in fact, the way that most of us see this country as being, and will allow LGBTQI people in our nation to know that fairness is one of our values, he told reporters in Canberra. Australians had overwhelmingly endorsed legalising same-sex marriage in a postal survey. What a moment for the country, said Christine Forster, a Sydney councillor and the sister of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, standing among throngs of rainbow-clad campaigners for a Yes vote, outside parliament with her female partner. She said she planned to go to her brother s house to celebrate. Abbott, who is still a member of parliament, was one of the most prominent no campaigners. He left the chamber before the vote. The bill cleared the upper house last month. During the debate in the lower house on Monday, a politician proposed to his same-sex partner. Both Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition government and the main opposition Labor Party had said they wanted to pass it by Dec. 7. But despite the support of the main parties, religious organisations and conservative lawmakers had voiced strong opposition and proposed dozens of amendments. During the debate, they pressed for broad protections for religious objectors, among them florists and bankers, to refuse service to same-sex couples. But their efforts were rejected. These amendments, rather, are a shield for people and organisations that hold to a traditional view of marriage. They are not a sword to be wielded in the service of bigotry, government MP Andrew Hastie said in parliament. Amendments to permit lay celebrants to decline to solemnise same-sex marriages and businesses opposed to the unions to refuse service at wedding receptions were all defeated, one after the other, during three days of debate. Love has won, and it s time to pop the bubbly, Greens MP and same-sex marriage supporter Adam Bandt said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon emerges from crisis with Iran on top, but risks remain;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran s allies in Lebanon have emerged even stronger from a crisis triggered by Saudi Arabia, which achieved little more than to force the Saudis main Lebanese ally - Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri - closer to Tehran s friends in Beirut. Saudi Arabia aimed to hurt Iran in Lebanon by forcing Hariri s resignation on Nov. 4 and torpedoing his coalition deal with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and its allies, using its influence over the Sunni leader to cause trouble for the Shi ite group. Instead, the move backfired as Western states censured Riyadh over a step they feared would destabilize Lebanon, despite their shared concerns over the regional role of the heavily armed Hezbollah. Hariri revoked his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under the crisis caused by his announcement from Riyadh. Lebanese officials say he was put under house arrest before French intervention led to his return home. Riyadh and Hariri deny this. But while the crisis has abated, its causes - Hezbollah s growing military influence in the region and Saudi Arabia s determination to counter Iran - seem likely to bring more trouble Lebanon s way sooner or later. Hariri has identified possible Gulf Arab sanctions as a major risk to the Lebanese economy. Analysts also see a risk of another war with Hezbollah s old foe, Israel, which is alarmed by the group s strength in Lebanon and Syria. The episode also leaves big questions over Lebanese politics, long influenced by Saudi Arabia, a patron of the Lebanese Sunni community. One senior Lebanese politician said the experience had left a big scar on Hariri, once the the spiritual son of Saudi Arabia . After this, it will not be easy to have a normal relationship again. Meeting on Tuesday for the first time since the resignation, Hariri s government indirectly acknowledged Saudi concerns over Hezbollah s role outside Lebanon. At Hariri s behest, it reaffirmed its policy of staying out of Arab conflicts. A top Lebanese official said Western pressure forced Saudi Arabia to retreat from its Lebanon plan but further Saudi moves could not be ruled out: Can we restrain Saudi from going toward madness? In my view, no. A Western diplomat said Saudi measures targeting the Lebanese economy were a genuine possibility at some point though the international community would likely try to influence how tough any sanctions would be. I think the Saudis have understood from the international reaction that Lebanon isn t a pitch on which they are playing alone. There are other players who have interests who don t want to see those undermined, the diplomat said. At the same time, the international community s patience isn t unlimited. It will be hard to protect Lebanon indefinitely if there is no tangible progress on rolling back Hezbollah. Hezbollah was the only group allowed to keep its weapons at the end of Lebanon s 1975-90 civil war to fight Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon. Its militia has been a source of controversy in Lebanon since the Israeli withdrawal of 2000. With Saudi backing, Hariri led a Lebanese political alliance to confront the group, but that resulted in Hezbollah s takeover of Beirut in 2008 during a brief civil war. Hezbollah s stature has grown in the chaos that swept the Arab world after 2011. It has backed President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and helped in the war against Islamic State in Iraq. But its role in the Yemen conflict is seen as the main factor behind the crisis in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran and Hezbollah of military support for the Iranian-allied Houthis in their war with a Saudi-led coalition. Hariri has repeatedly flagged Yemen as the cause of the latest crisis, and warned that Lebanon s economy is at stake. The economy depends on remittances from expat workers, particularly in the Gulf. Any threat to inflows is seen as a risk to the system that finances the heavily indebted state. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has appeared to recalibrate his rhetoric in response to the crisis. Last month, he denied his group was fighting in Yemen, or sending weapons to the Houthis, or firing rockets at Saudi Arabia from Yemeni territory. He also indicated Hezbollah could pull its fighters from Iraq. The remarks on the eve of Hariri s return were seen as appeasing , a source close to Hariri said. Hariri has twice led coalition governments including Hezbollah despite his enmity toward the group: five Hezbollah members have been charged by a U.N.-backed tribunal with the 2005 assassination of his father, Rafik al-Hariri. Hezbollah denies any involvement. Hariri s willingness to compromise with Hezbollah was a factor behind the Saudi move against him and has drawn criticism from within the Sunni community. His status as Lebanon s most influential Sunni will be put to the test in parliamentary elections next year. Ashraf Rifi, a hawkish Sunni politician, said the way Hariri reversed his resignation was a farce and a surrender to the Hezbollah project . The senior politician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah may offer Hariri a gesture over its regional role but saw little prospect of the group fundamentally changing course. President Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, could pressure the group a little bit to be cooler on certain issues , the politician said. But Lebanese in Saudi Arabia still had reason to be afraid for their livelihoods: I think with time the Lebanese will try to disentangle themselves from Saudi Arabia, but this will cost Lebanon a lot because revenues will be reduced. The Hariri crisis marked an unprecedented intervention in Lebanon, even in a country with a long history of foreign meddling. It also underlined the different priorities of Saudi Arabia and its Western allies in Lebanon - a major recipient of aid to help it host 1.5 million Syrian refugees. On the last day of Hariri s stay in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman summoned him for a meeting and kept him waiting for hours, delaying his departure for France where President Emanuel Macron was waiting for him, the senior politician and a top Lebanese official said. Macron was calling Saad to find out where he was, said the senior politician, adding that Macron then called Crown Prince Mohammad to tell him he was expecting Hariri for lunch. Western states want stability in Lebanon, the politician said. They need Lebanon as a platform for observing the Arab world. They have invested a lot here, and if there is a civil war, (there is the question of) what to do with all the Syrian refugees. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rohingya refugees still fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh: UNHCR;DHAKA (Reuters) - Rohingya refugees continue to flee Myanmar for Bangladesh even though both countries set up a timetable last month to allow them to start to return home, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR)said on Thursday. The number of refugees appears to have slowed. 625,000 have arrived since Aug. 25. 30,000 came last month and around 1,500 arrived last week, UNHCR said The refugee emergency in Bangladesh is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world, said deputy high commissioner Kelly Clements. Conditions in Myanmar s Rakhaine state are not in place to enable a safe and sustainable return ... refugees are still fleeing. Most have little or nothing to go back to. Their homes and villages have been destroyed. Deep divisions between communities remain unaddressed and human access is inadequate, she said. Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Nov. 23 to start the return of Rohingya within two months. It did not say when the process would be complete. Myanmar s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, according to the top U.N. human rights official this week. Mainly Buddhist Myanmar denies the Muslim Rohingya are its citizens and considers them foreigners. UNHCR would make a fresh appeal to donors for funds after the end of February in next year, Kelly said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian military: mission accomplished, Islamic State defeated in Syria;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s military said on Thursday it had accomplished its mission of defeating Islamic State in Syria, and there were no remaining settlements there under the group s control. Russian bombers had used unprecedented force in the final stages to finish off the militant group, a senior Russian officer said. The mission to defeat bandit units of the Islamic State terrorist organization on the territory of Syria, carried out by the armed forces of the Russian Federation, has been accomplished, Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi, head of the general staff s operations, said on Rossiya 24 TV channel. Syrian government forces were now combing and de-mining areas where Islamic State had had their strongholds, he said. The final stage of the defeat of the terrorists was accompanied by the unprecedented deployment and intense combat use of Russia s air force, he said. The air strikes included 14 sorties of groups of long-range bombers from Russia made in the past month, he said. Russia s military deployed in Syria would now focus on preserving ceasefires and restoring peaceful life, he said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'This is not a life': migrants stranded on Greek island;"LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) - Syrian migrant Bashar Wakaa and his heavily pregnant wife are days away from the birth of their third child, stranded on the Greek island of Lesbos in a muddy, garbage-strewn olive grove with no running water or toilets. Nearby, three Syrian men share a flimsy tent designed for two. Like the expectant couple, they arrived by rubber dinghy from Turkey only to find the island s migrant camp in a disused military base was severely overcrowded. This is not a life for humans, said 23-year-old Anas Bakour, one of the men who shares the rain-sodden tent. The animals have a better life. The hundreds sleeping in the woods are among more than 8,500 asylum-seekers stuck on Lesbos, where facilities for migrants were only designed to accommodate about 3,000. Thousands more are on four other Greek islands close to Turkey. A deal between the European Union and Turkey struck in 2016 stemmed the uncontrolled exodus of nearly a million people across the Aegean Sea the year before. Under the agreement, anyone crossing to Greece from Turkey who does not qualify for asylum must be deported. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras discussed cooperation on migration with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who arrived in Athens on Thursday for the first visit to the country by a Turkish head of state since 1952. Though arrivals collapsed in 2016 following the deal, they have recently ticked up. In the four months to November, 15,800 asylum-seekers arrived on Greek islands, up 27 percent from last year, according to data from the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR). The data does not give monthly arrivals by country of origin but a UNHCR spokesman in Greece said most were Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, as has been the case throughout the crisis. Aid groups and experts on Europe s migration crisis say the main problem is a lack of political will to improve conditions on the Greek islands, in the hope of dissuading more migrants from risking the sea crossing. ""No one will admit it but it's a discouraging factor, a discouraging message for anyone who may want to come,"" said Konstantinos Filis, research director at Greece's Institute for International Relations. (For a graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2AABfSV) Aid workers say there is now an acute shortage of medical care, the conditions are horrendous and more and more depressed asylum-seekers are cutting themselves or attempting suicide. Camp residents say gangs, some armed with knives, roam at night, drugs and alcohol circulate freely and women cower in their shelters for fear of attack. Any girl in this camp expects at any moment that she will be attacked, said Shahed Naji, 22, an Iraqi woman. The EU-Turkey deal does not explicitly forbid asylum-seekers from leaving the islands until claims are assessed but the process takes months and stranded asylum-seekers grow desperate and frustrated, said charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). People need to get off the island as soon as possible, said Aria Danika, MSF s field coordinator in Lesbos. Turkish officials said the increase in crossings to the Greek islands in recent months did not reflect any slippage on their part in implementing its agreement with the EU. Some camp residents on Lesbos said they were not aware of the deal blocking their journey onwards to northern Europe. Others said they left Turkey because they could not find work and found life unbearable. No one puts his life in danger to come by small boat if Turkey is good and he can live there, said Amal Adwan, a Palestinian born in Syria now on Lesbos. Adwan, who made seven attempted sea crossings before reaching Lesbos, said she might have had second thoughts if she had know what the conditions were like. If I knew before, maybe I wouldn t have come, she said. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told Reuters there was a certain general resistance to moving people from the islands, not to create a pull factor . Greece s migration ministry, which manages the Lesbos camp, has said it is trying to ease overcrowding but could not remove people in large numbers because of the EU-Turkey pact. It declined to give an immediate comment on conditions on Lesbos and other islands. Ahead of Erdogan s visit, Prime Minister Tsipras told a Turkish news agency on Wednesday that the EU-Turkey deal was difficult but necessary . The European Commission, which has offered Greece millions in emergency aid, said on Thursday it was working on a daily basis with the Greek authorities to try to improve the conditions on the islands but more needed to be done. I have earlier, also in Athens, expressed my frustration over the fact that although we have put so much money at the disposal of all the authorities, that still the situation on some of the islands is unacceptable, the Commission s First Vice-President Frans Timmermans told reporters. On Lesbos, the once-welcoming community is fed up. On Saturday, residents used cars to try to block a ferry from unloading containers intended to house more refugees. The island s mayor, Spyros Galinos, said EU policies had turned the island into an open prison and called for protests and strikes against the deal. Sitting in his office overlooking the port, he compared Lesbos to a weightlifter being asked to lift heavier and heavier barbells: Today, we re buckling. When we get crushed the situation will be completely unmanageable and explosive. Back in the olive grove, Wakaa and his pregnant wife are despondent. If they can t accommodate these people then why are they accepting them in the first place? Wakaa asked. Let them drown in the sea. At least they will die and rest. (For photo essay from Lesbos: reut.rs/2AYs5Ci) ";worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moscow says Russian Olympic ban designed to sour pre-election mood;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that a decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) this week to ban the Russian team from next year s Winter Olympics had been deliberately taken to sour the pre-election mood. Medvedev was referring to a March presidential election in which incumbent Vladimir Putin is standing for re-election. This is politics, said Medvedev, in comments broadcast on state television. The decision was made in the run-up to the presidential elections in our country, aiming to create a certain mood in our society. Abroad, they understand very well the importance attached in our country to high achievement in sports. For millions of our people, the decision was a heavy blow. Medvedev, addressing the government, said that allegations that Russia had run a state-sponsored doping program were an outright lie. Medvedev s comments came a month after Putin suggested that doping bans against some Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Sochi Games were an attempt to sow discontent ahead of next year s presidential elections. The IOC on Tuesday banned Russia from the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics after evidence emerged of unprecedented systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system but left the door open for some Russians to compete as neutrals if they demonstrate they have a doping-free background. Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would not prevent its athletes from competing in Pyeongchang as neutrals, damping down calls from some Russians to boycott the Games. Russia is expected to make a final decision on its stance regarding the IOC ban at a meeting of Russian Olympic authorities next week. In the weeks ahead of the decision, the IOC banned more than 20 Russian athletes for life from the Olympics as a result of an investigation into the alleged tampering of Russian athletes positive tests by laboratory and security officials at the 2014 Sochi Games. Russian authorities have never acknowledged the state s alleged role in the scandal but have pledged to work with international sports bodies to help curb the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the country. Russia s athletics federation, Paralympic Committee and national anti-doping agency RUSADA remain suspended over doping scandals. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary's Jobbik party says fine risks making it insolvent ahead of 2018 vote;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary s main opposition party would be unable to compete at an election next April if state auditors impose a heavy fine in a campaign finance case, a vice chairman for the nationalist Jobbik party told Reuters on Thursday. The party, which was once on the far right but has moved toward the center in recent years, lags far behind the ruling party Fidesz, according to opinion polls. The case could hurt Jobbik s bid to take the political center ground from the populist and nativist Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has ruled Hungary since 2010. Jobbik should pay a fine of 331 million forints ($1.24 million), equal to a price advantage it received illegally for a billboard campaign. Its annual state subsidy should also be cut by the same sum as a penalty, the auditors said on Wednesday in a preliminary finding. Jobbik denies wrongdoing and has 15 days to respond to the findings. The auditor, called ASZ, will deliver a final ruling in a few weeks and Jobbik would then have to pay the fine even if it challenges the decision in court. The penalties are more than Jobbik s 476 million forint annual state subsidy, which is the party s largest source of funding as it receives only small contributions from donors, Jobbik vice chairman Janos Volner said. This case has been so absurd that anything is possible, he said, adding that the inquiry could be a pretext to try to dissolve the party. They will shake us down for every last penny we have, he told Reuters by phone. The auditor is independent and non-political, said its spokesman Balint Nemeth. ASZ Chairman Laszlo Domokos is a former Fidesz lawmaker while Chief Prosecutor Peter Polt is a former Fidesz member twice appointed to his post by Fidesz-dominated parliaments. On Wednesday, prosecutors also pressed espionage charges against Jobbik European Parliament member Bela Kovacs, who subsequently quit the party. In its ad campaign Jobbik accused Orban and some of his associates of corruption. The party used billboards owned by a tycoon named Lajos Simicska for the campaign. Simicska was once a key ally of Orban who has since become a supporter of Jobbik. In stormy debates with Jobbik party leader Gabor Vona in parliament, Orban has repeatedly said Jobbik has been hijacked by Simicska and accused it of doing his bidding. Jobbik and Simicska deny this. Fidesz restricted the use of privately-owned billboards by political parties in a recent law. Jobbik then bought more than 1,000 billboards outright. The party has declined to detail the sources it used for that deal. ($1 = 266.53 forints) ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit deal on Irish border possible by Friday: EU Commission;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain s Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker may meet early on Friday to reach a deal on the Irish border after Brexit, a Commission spokesman said on Thursday. We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night. Early morning meeting possible, the spokesman said on Twitter. Juncker spoke by telephone to May and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, the spokesman said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says U.S. 'pulled the pin on bomb' with Jerusalem decision;ANKARA (Reuters) - The United States has primed a bomb in the Middle East with its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Thursday. Yildirim said Turkey s stark differences with Washington, which have already strained ties between the NATO allies, meant that an overwhelming majority of the Turkish people were now unsympathetic toward the United States. The United States has pulled the pin on a bomb ready to blow in the region, Yildirim told a conference in Ankara. President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and promising to move the U.S. Embassy there. Following the decision, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK electoral body says investigating Labour-backing campaign group Momentum;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Electoral Commission said on Thursday it was investigating campaign group Momentum - which backed the opposition Labour Party at a June election - over whether it breached campaign finance rules. Momentum is closely associated with left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and has helped the party attract new voters, contributing to its unexpectedly strong performance at the June vote in which Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May lost her parliamentary majority. The Electoral Commission has today announced it has opened an investigation to establish whether Momentum, a registered non-party campaigner at the 2017 UK Parliamentary General Election, breached campaign finance rules in relation to spending, the commission said in a statement. The Electoral Commission, Britain s election watchdog, said it was looking into a range of issues, including whether the campaign group exceeded spending limits or submitted incomplete or inaccurate expenditure records. Momentum is registered as a non-party campaigner and is subject to different spending rules to Labour and other political parties. Momentum are a high profile active campaigning body. Questions over their compliance with the campaign finance rules at June s general election risks causing harm to voters confidence in elections, said Bob Posner, the Electoral Commission s Director of Political Finance and Regulation and Legal Counsel. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian ex-minister Ulyukayev: I am victim of 'monstrous set up';MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev, accused of taking a $2 million bribe from Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin, told a court on Thursday he was the victim of a monstrous and cruel provocation. State prosecutors said the bribe was given last year on Nov. 14 in exchange for Ulyukayev approving the sale of state-controlled oil company Bashneft to Rosneft. Ulyukayev denies the charges. He says he thought the bag holding the bribe was a gift of expensive alcohol. A monstrous and cruel provocation was carried out against me, Ulyukayev told the court in his final statement before it hands down a verdict on Dec. 15. This trial has aroused public interest similar to that of a circus, he added. The charges are absurd, the evidence is absurd, and at its base lies the cruelty and impunity of the provocateur. Rosneft head Sechin, a witness in the trial and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has not appeared in court, citing work commitments. Russian prosecutors earlier this month sought a sentence of 10 years in jail for Ulyukayev. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France and Qatar sign deals worth 12 billion euros: Macron;QATAR (Reuters) - France and Qatar signed commercial contracts worth around 12 billion euros ($14.15 billion) on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said, adding that the deals underscored the close relationship between the two countries. Qatar has agreed to buy 12 more Rafale fighter planes from Dassault Aviation, will employ France s Suez to dredge and clean Qatar s lagoon and has retained France s RATP and SNCF to build and operate a metro system in Qatar. In total, it amounts to nearly 12 billion euros which was signed today and which underlines the closeness of our relations, Macron said at a press conference with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. Macron also reiterated he disapproved of U.S President Donald Trump s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital, saying the status of the city needed to be determined via negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. ($1 = 0.8482 euros) ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Qatar's Tamim ready to resolve row with Gulf Arabs, says sovereignty sacred;DOHA (Reuters) - Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said on Thursday Qatar was ready to sit down with fellow Gulf Arab states to resolve any dispute but he said sovereignty was not subject to compromise. Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting French President Emanual Macron, Tamim also said that Qatar has been committed to fighting terrorism from the beginning, adding that reports being floated had been investigated and were shown to be erroneous. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek president tells Turkey's Erdogan no treaty revision;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Thursday ruled out a revision of an international treaty defining the borders of Greece and Turkey. The Treaty of Lausanne defines the territory and the sovereignty of Greece and of the European Union and this treaty is for us non-negotiable. It has no flaws, it does not need to be reviewed, or to be updated, Pavlopoulos said during a meeting with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, on a two day official visit to the neighbouring country. Erdogan was quoted earlier in a Greek newspaper interview suggesting a revision to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders of modern-day Turkey. In comments to Pavlopoulos, Erdogan said there were some details in the Lausanne Treaty which are not clear. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Emperor Hirohito's memoir bought by Japan surgeon criticized for praising Nazis;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese cosmetic surgeon criticized for praising Nazis and playing down Japan s wartime atrocities won an auction for a memoir by Emperor Hirohito that chronicles the nation s slide into World War Two, paying $275,000 for the document. Katsuya Takasu, who often appears on TV shows in Japan, has been blasted by a Jewish human rights body, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for violating all norms of decency by dismissing as fabrications the Holocaust and the Nanjing massacre in China. I think both Nanjing and Auschwitz are fabrications, Takasu said in a message on social network Twitter in October 2015. There was no doubt that the Jews were persecuted, he has tweeted, but also praised Nazi scientists contributions to science, medicine and other fields. Contacted by Reuters on Thursday, Takasu said he bought the handwritten document, known as the Emperor s Monologue , because he thought it contained a message to royals and the Japanese people, and should be kept in Japan. The document record events dating from the 1920s, such as Hirohito s stated resolve not to oppose future cabinet decisions. It caused a sensation when made public in 1990, reigniting a debate over the emperor s responsibility for the war. The account was dictated to one of Hirohito s aides in 1946, when a defeated Japan was occupied by Allied forces and the emperor faced the possibility of being tried as a war criminal - a step that ultimately was not taken. In a telephone interview, Takasu said his social media posts had been intentionally misunderstood. It (the criticism) is from those who have skillfully picked out some of my tweets and maliciously interpreted them and it is a misunderstanding, he said. If you look at all my tweets, I am clearly against Nazism. But I do highly evaluate the wonderful medicine of that era. But Takasu added that he thought the number of people killed in the Holocaust and the Nanjing massacre had been exaggerated - a stance common among Japanese ultra-nationalists. China says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in Nanjing between December 1937 and January 1938, while an Allied tribunal put the death toll at about half that. What I wanted to say was that it is said that six million or seven million were killed (in the Holocaust) but was that not several tens of thousands? Takasu asked. It is said that 300,000 were killed in the Nanjing massacre but was that not 6,000 to 7,000 people instead? That is what I meant by fabrication. Hirohito s memoir ends with his statement that if he had vetoed the decision to go to war, it would have resulted in a civil conflict that would have been even worse and Japan would have been destroyed, auction house Bonhams said on its website. Academics say Hirohito s responsibility for the war has never been fully pursued in Japan, largely due to U.S. occupation authorities decision to retain the emperor as a symbol of a newly democratic nation. Asked about Hirohito s responsibility for the war, Takasu said that, in his view, the late emperor was absolved when he said he would give his life for the Japanese people. At the point the emperor made that comment, he had no sin, he added. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai police arrest Hells Angels gang members;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai police have arrested four members of a Hells Angels biker gang accused of drug crimes, violence and posing a threat to society, the Tourist Police said on Thursday. Three Australians and a Canadian were arrested on Wednesday in Pattaya, a major tourist resort with a reputation as a hub for foreign gangs, drug dealing and the sex industry. Piyapong Ensarn of the Pattaya Tourist Police told Reuters that two of the accused gang members would be deported and the two others would be charged with drug offences. Traces of cocaine were found on them, he said. Reuters was unable to contact either the accused or their lawyers for comment. Pattaya is 100 km (60 miles) southeast of the Thai capital, Bangkok. Police said they were still looking for three Australians believed to be members of the gang. A British member of the gang had fled the country before he could be arrested, Piyapong said. The gang made headlines in 2015 when one of its members was murdered by an Australian man, who was sentenced to death in February for the killing. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swearing in unofficial president is 'treason', Kenya attorney general says;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Swearing in an alternative president of Kenya would be an act of treason, the country s attorney general said on Thursday, days before an opposition leader expects to be inaugurated by an unofficial people s assembly. Such an inauguration would worsen the rifts opened by an acrimonious election season, when more than 70 people died in political violence. The extended campaigns eventually led to President Uhuru Kenyatta s re-election. Attorney General Githu Muigai did not name anyone, but opposition leader Raila Odinga said last month that he would be inaugurated by a people s assembly on Dec. 12 - Kenya s Independence Day. Unless a candidate was declared the victor in an election by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the swearing-in was conducted by the Kenyan chief justice, Muigai told a news conference, such a inauguration is a process wholly unanticipated by the constitution and is null and void . The criminal law of the Republic of Kenya stipulates that sort of process is high treason, he said. It is high treason of the persons involved, and any other person facilitating that process. Under Kenyan law, treason is punishable by death. Muigai said people s assemblies proposed by the National Super Alliance, Odinga s opposition coalition, were illegal as well. These institutions are unconstitutional they are illegal, they are null and void. The persons involved in their creation are involved in extra-constitutional activity and may be visited by the full force of the law, he said. So far, 12 Kenyan counties have passed motions supporting the formation of a people s assembly, most of them counties that had backed the opposition in Kenya s protracted voting. Odinga and Kenyatta faced off in an election in August that Kenyatta won. But the Supreme Court nullified the result, and a repeat election was held on Oct. 26. Odinga boycotted that vote, saying reforms needed to avoid illegalities and irregularities had not been made. Kenyatta won again, with 98 percent of the vote. The United States had urged opposition leaders to work within the law and avoid actions like the proposed inauguration ceremony , a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi said on Wednesday, following a visit to Kenya by Donald Yamamoto, the acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Without directly mentioning the ceremony or the United States, Odinga said on Thursday that Kenyans should be left to solve their own problems. Our friends can give us advice ... in privacy. Don t come and shout at us, and tell us that we are going to violate the constitution. Which constitution, my foot, Odinga told reporters in Nairobi. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians speed up Gaza handover talks amid anger at U.S., Israel;GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian factions stepped up efforts on Thursday to finalize a Hamas handover of the Gaza Strip to President Mahmoud Abbas as protests broke out in the enclave against the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Under Egyptian mediation, the factions have sought to end a schism dating back to 2007, when Islamist Hamas seized Gaza in a civil war with Abbas s Fatah. A Dec. 1 deadline for giving Gaza to Abbas was postponed to Dec. 10 amid disputes. U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement on disputed Jerusalem on Wednesday infuriated Palestinians, who see the city as their future capital, prompting Hamas to call for a revolt against Israel and demand that Abbas abandon American-sponsored peace-making. Worried that the recrimination could disrupt the reconciliation efforts, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza on Thursday to meet Hamas. This historical stage requires that we all unite and speed up the steps of uniting the homeland, Al-Hamdallah told reporters. After Hamas call for an intifada , or uprising, dozens of Palestinians gathered at two points on the Gaza border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side. One Palestinian was wounded by army fire, medics said. An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was checking the report. In cities inside Gaza, thousands of Palestinians rallied, some chanting: Death to America! Death to the fool Trump! and burning tires. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK criticizes Muslim Brotherhood, defends Western policy;LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign secretary Boris Johnson singled out the Muslim Brotherhood and its associates for criticism on Thursday in a speech calling for a renewed western diplomatic push in the Middle East to tackle Islamic extremism. Speaking to diplomats and experts at the Foreign Office in London, Johnson called for better engagement with Muslim populations worldwide and argued that blaming Western intervention for the rise of Islamist extremism played into the jihadi narrative. He said the West needed to collectively re-insert itself in the process towards peace in Syria and called for the United States to bring fresh impetus to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Johnson said the Muslim Brotherhood - a global Islamist organization which started in Egypt in 1928 - was one of the most politically savvy operators in the Muslim world, but he also criticized its conduct in the Middle East and Britain. It is plainly wrong that Islamists should exploit freedoms here in the UK - freedoms of speech and association - that their associates would repress overseas and it is all too clear that some affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood are willing to turn a blind eye to terrorism, he said. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was designated as a terrorist organization in that country in 2013. A 2015 British government review into the organization concluded that membership of or links to it should be considered a possible indicator of extremism but stopped short of recommending that it should be banned. Johnson admitted there had been policy missteps in Iraq and Syria interventions, but said that did not justify a diplomatic retreat from the region. British foreign policy is not the problem, it is part of the solution, he said, calling for a renewed role in Syria, more work to halt conflict in Yemen and progress in bringing factions together in Libya. We need more engagement, not less, he said. His remarks come a day after the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, drawing international criticism. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said that decision was wrong, and Johnson repeated the government criticism that the U.S. move was premature. We ... think that the future of Jerusalem must be settled as part of the negotiated agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and as part of the two-state solution, he said. This decision, having been announced by President Trump, the world would like to see some serious announcements by the U.S. about how they see the Middle East peace process and how to bring the two sides together. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq demands U.S. backtrack on Jerusalem, summons ambassador;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq demanded on Thursday that the U.S. government backtrack on a decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and summoned the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad to protest the decision. U.S. President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. Shi ite-majority Iraq is the only country to have an alliance with regional powerhouse Iran and the United States, who do not see eye-to-eye. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and that it would hand him a memo protesting Trump s decision. We caution against the dangerous repercussions of this decision on the stability of the region and the world, an Iraqi government statement said. The U.S. administration has to backtrack on this decision to stop any dangerous escalation that would fuel extremism and create conditions favorable to terrorism, it said. Iraq s top Shi ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the decision and called on the Umma , or Islamic nation, to unite its efforts and reclaim Jerusalem. This decision is condemned and decried, it hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, his office said in a statement. But it won t change the reality that Jerusalem is an occupied land which should return to the sovereignty of its Palestinian owners no matter how long it takes, it said. Dozens of Iraqis protested the decision in Baghdad, carrying signs saying Jerusalem is Arab and vowing to return in greater numbers the following day after Friday prayers. A prominent Iraqi militia, the Iran-backed Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, said Trump s decision could become a legitimate reason to attack U.S. forces in Iraq. Trump s stupid decision to make Jerusalem a capital for the Zionist will be the big spark for removing this entity from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces, said the group s leader Akram al-Kaabi. The United States is leading an international coalition helping Iraq fight Islamic State and has provided air and ground support. It has more than 5,000 troops in Iraq. Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters, is one of the most important militias in Iraq. Though made up of Iraqis, it is loyal to Iran and is helping Tehran create a supply route through Iraq to Damascus. It fights under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a mostly Iranian-backed coalition of Shi ite militias that played a role in combating Islamic State. The PMF is government sanctioned and formally reports to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi s office. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia to criticize Trump stance on Jerusalem at U.N. Security Council: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will criticize U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the United Nations Security Council, the RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying on Thursday. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lavrov: U.S. pressure on Russian diplomats and media is unacceptable;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his U.S. counterpart Rex Tillerson that U.S. pressure on Russian diplomats and media was unacceptable, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. This includes recruitment attempts by the U.S. intelligence services, the ministry cited Lavrov as saying at a meeting with Tillerson on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Johnson says Trump's recognition of Jerusalem not helpful;LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Thursday U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital was not helpful and that the world would like to see some serious announcements from President Donald Trump on how to resolve Middle Eastern issues. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libyan mayors meet for more leverage to tackle country's meltdown;TUNIS (Reuters) - More than 90 mayors from across Libya s political divides are meeting for the first time in an effort to shore up their role in tackling conflict-linked crises and promote themselves as a unifying movement. Local councils are one of the few parts of the vast North African state still functioning in a country where rival camps have split the government and major institutions as they vie for power and a share of shrunken oil revenues. When a citizen grumbles or complains about a service, he goes to the municipality. There is no other place for him to go, said Abdulrahman el-Abbar, mayor of the eastern city of Benghazi, before the three-day meeting that began on Wednesday in Hammamet in neighboring Tunisia - security risks and political schisms make meeting inside Libya difficult. You need to reinforce (the municipality s) powers so that it can provide the right services to the people. Despite Libya s oil wealth, public services were weak under Muammar Gaddafi s long rule. As Libya splintered and lawlessness set in following the 2011 uprising that ousted Gaddafi, services steadily collapsed. A U.N.-backed government has largely replaced a self-declared rival in the capital Tripoli, but a third, almost powerless government, has held out in eastern Libya, aligning itself with military commander Khalifa Haftar. All have overseen a worsening of living conditions, leaving residents seeking local or improvised solutions. Abdulrahman al-Hamedi, mayor of Tripoli s Abu Salim district, says he has few resources to support residents crushed by rapid inflation, cash shortages and disrupted services. In what used to be one of the region s richest countries, monthly wages are now often worth less than $100 because of the sharp depreciation of the Libyan dinar on the black market, Hamedi said. Abu Salim has been shaken by militia battles from the revolution until earlier this year, and is also home to large numbers of displaced people from other conflict-ridden areas. Currently the security situation is relatively stable, said Hamedi. The economic situation is really terrible, given the lack of basic services that the citizen would normally be provided with, such as electricity or water or gas, or obtaining cash or even food products. The United Nations relaunched a peace process in September, but the mayors have little hope of quick progress. The Hammamet meeting, which was facilitated by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Geneva-based private diplomacy organization, brings elected mayors from the west aligned with the U.N.-backed government together with eastern mayors, some of whom, like Abbar, owe their positions to Haftar. They are discussing ways to act as a force for reconciliation as well as pressing for devolved powers. All the Libyan municipalities are in contact from the extreme east to the extreme west and the south;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says Trump's Jerusalem decision is splitting international community;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has complicated the situation in the Middle East and is causing a split in the international community, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bosnian suspected of plotting Christmas market attack in Austria's Graz;VIENNA (Reuters) - A 25-year-old Bosnian man has been arrested in the Austrian city of Graz on suspicion of planning an attack on its Christmas market, police said on Thursday. The Muslim man was detained on Dec. 1 at an emergency shelter where others saw him watching videos about last year s attacks in Nice and Berlin on a computer, a force spokesman said. Witnesses heard him talking about Berlin and death, the spokesman added. He had visited mosques, but it was not yet clear whether he had been radicalized or had any accomplices, police said. A Tunisian man killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin a year ago. The failed asylum seeker had pledged allegiance to Islamic State. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ousted Turkish beauty queen may face jail time over tweet;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A former Turkish beauty pageant winner may face up to a year in prison over a tweet referring to last year s failed military coup that cost her Miss Turkey title, the private Dogan news agency said on Thursday. An Istanbul prosecutor has indicted 18-year-old Itir Esen, who in September was stripped of her title after one day, for publicly humiliating a segment of the society following three official complaints over her tweet, Dogan reported. On July 16 this year, Esen tweeted: I had my period on July 15 morning to celebrate the day to commemorate martyrs. As a representation of our martyrs blood, I am commemorating this day by bleeding. She later deleted the tweet and deactivated her Twitter account. Dogan said the indictment included a statement by Esen in which she said her tweet was shared in an ironic way to commemorate those who died on July 15, 2016 and there was no intent to insult any part of Turkish society. Around 250 people, mostly unarmed civilians were killed and over 1,000 wounded in the failed coup bid on July 15, 2016. The day was later declared Democracy and National Unity Day and a public holiday in Turkey. More than 150,000 state employees have been suspended or sacked and over 50,000 have been jailed pending trial in a security crackdown following the attempted coup. Rights groups and some of NATO-member Turkey s Western allies have voiced disquiet about the crackdown, fearing the government is using the coup as a pretext to quash dissent. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man with Palestinian flag smashes Jewish restaurant windows in Dutch capital;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A man with a Palestinian flag yelling God is great was detained by police in the Netherlands on Thursday after smashing the windows of a kosher Jewish restaurant in Amsterdam. The violent outburst came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that reversed decades of U.S. foreign policy, angered much of the Muslim world and was widely rejected by Western leaders. The assailant, who was wearing a black-and-white-checkered head scarf, smashed several windows of the restaurant HaCarmel before he was pushed to the ground and hand-cuffed by police, a video of the incident posted on local media websites showed. We are disgusted, the Organization of Jewish Communities in The Netherlands said in a statement. The attack was an act of revenge, meant to instil fear, and is no less than an act of terror. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU vows push to make Jerusalem capital for Palestinians too;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU s top diplomat pledged on Thursday to reinvigorate diplomacy with Russia, the United States, Jordan and others to ensure Palestinians have a capital in Jerusalem after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized the city as Israel s capital. The European Union, a member of the Middle East Quartet along with the United States, the United Nations and Russia, believes it has a duty to make its voice heard as the Palestinians biggest aid donor and Israel s top trade partner. The European Union has a clear and united position. We believe the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states and with Jerusalem as the capital of both, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told a news conference. She said she would meet Jordan s foreign minister on Friday, while she and EU foreign ministers would discuss Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Brussels on Monday. The European Union will engage even more with the parties and with our regional and international partners. We will keep working with the Middle East Quartet, possibly in an enlarged format, said Mogherini, citing Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Norway. We remain convinced that the role of the United States ... is crucial, she said. Mogherini, who also spoke to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, threw her weight behind Jordan s King Abdullah, saying he was a very wise man that everyone should listen to as the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Trump s decision stirred outrage across the Arab and Muslim world and alarm among U.S. allies and Russia because of Jerusalem s internationally disputed status, and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel. Mogherini stressed all 28 EU governments were united on the issue of Jerusalem and seeking a solution envisaging a Palestinian state on land Israel took in a 1967 war, but policy divisions within the bloc have weakened its influence. This is the consolidated European Union position, she said, saying EU foreign ministers made that clear to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday in Brussels. Hurdles for the EU include its range of positions, ranging from Germany s strong support for Israel to Sweden s 2014 decision to officially recognize the state of Palestine. The EU is also perceived by some in Israel as being too pro-Palestinian, partly because of the EU s long-held opposition to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, diplomats say. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says U.S. decision on Jerusalem may worsen Israeli-Palestinian conflict;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The decision by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel risks aggravating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Russia s foreign ministry said on Thursday, while calling on all sides involved to show restraint. Russia calls on all the parties concerned to refrain from actions that risk dangerous and uncontrollable consequences , the ministry said in a statement. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine - biggest obstacle to normal Russia ties, says Tillerson;VIENNA (Reuters) - The United States would badly like to lift sanctions against Russia but will not do so until Moscow has pulled its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, calling that the main obstacle to normal ties. Tillerson is on a visit to Europe during which he has reassured allies with tougher rhetoric against Moscow than that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also attended by his Russian counterpart, Tillerson said Moscow was to blame for increased violence in eastern Ukraine and that had to stop. We ve made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine, Tillerson told a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz. It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do. On Wednesday, Tillerson met NATO foreign ministers and criticized Russia for the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West. The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations that it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the OSCE conference that all the responsibility is with Ukraine as far as violence in the east was concerned. In his speech to the gathering, Tillerson went even further in spelling out Russia s involvement in the conflict and the consequences it faced than he had the day before in Brussels. We should be clear about the source of this violence, Tillerson said, referring to increasing ceasefire violations recorded by OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine. Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment, and there was little sign of concrete progress at Thursday s meeting. We will continue to work with Russia to see if we could not agree a peacekeeping force that could enter Ukraine (and) reduce the violence, Tillerson told the news conference. He and Lavrov met on the sidelines of the conference, though both ignored reporters questions when the meeting began. Asked later what commitments he had received at the meeting, Tillerson said: I m not going to tell you specifically what we get. We get progress, that s what we get. We get dialogue, we get cooperation, we don t have it solved. You don t solve it in one meeting. In his speech, he referred to the 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreement, brokered in the Belarussian capital by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass (region) and meets its Minsk commitments, Tillerson said. He also made clear that Washington did not accept Russia s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. We will never accept Russia s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine, he said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moldova ruling party chief says framed by Russia in bogus cases;KIEV/CHISINAU (Reuters) - The powerful head of Moldova s ruling party Vlad Plahotniuc on Thursday accused Russian authorities of harassing him and other officials with dozens of bogus legal cases, ratcheting up a long-running diplomatic row between the two countries. Plahotniuc was charged in absentia by Russian investigators this week of orchestrating the attempted murder of a banker in London in 2012, according to Russian media outlets. Without referring to any particular case, Plahotniuc told Reuters that Russian officials had sought to frame him to put him on international law enforcement watch lists. Plahotniuc expects further retaliation after the Moldovan parliament on Thursday passed a law to prevent the dissemination of foreign fake news, on Russian-language and other channels. Russian security services are falsely accusing us of ethnic, political and ideological hatred, murder, theft, virtually anything they could think of, he said by email through a representative. They have seen their attempts failing so far, thus, they already went on with tougher and more explicit abuses. The Russian foreign ministry and general prosecutor s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, at a briefing in November accused the Moldovan government and lawmakers of some openly anti-Russian actions and hampering attempts by Moldova s president to foster closer ties. Nevertheless, Russia is open to long-term development of friendly, partner relations with a neutral Moldova, relations based on long-standing historical ties between our peoples, she said. Ex-Soviet Moldova is politically divided between a pro-Western government, which favors closer integration with the European Union, and Russian-backed President Igor Dodon. Moldova and Russia have been embroiled in a series of spats this year. The Chisinau government in March accused Russia s security apparatus of seeking to derail a Moldovan probe into a Russian-led money laundering operation by harassing Moldovan officials as they traveled to or through Russia. Plahotniuc said that behavior continued in recent months because of ongoing investigations into the case known locally as the Russian Laundromat . Russia s behavior toward my colleagues and me is an explicit act of blackmail and political harassment.. abusive and illegal behavior, which will not change our commitment to the democratic and European development of Moldova, he said. The Moldovan parliament adopted a bill on Thursday aimed at combating foreign propaganda, banning television channels from airing news and analytical programs from countries that have not signed up a European broadcasting agreement, such as Russia. Nobody is banning any channels from any particular country. This is not a question of banning channels from broadcasting, but about banning specific programs whose purpose is manipulation, propaganda and disinformation, the author of the bill, MP Serdjiu Sirbu, told parliament. Dodon said he would refuse to sign the bill into law. Under no circumstances will I sign a bill limiting the broadcasting of Russian TV channels in the republic. This document contradicts all the European norms of freedom of speech, as well as the constitution of Moldova, he said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hezbollah urges new Palestinian uprising, escalation of 'resistance';BEIRUT (Reuters) - The powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Thursday it supported calls for a new Palestinian uprising in response to the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and urged support for resistance against the move. We support the call for a new Palestinian intifada (uprising) and escalating the resistance which is the biggest, most important and gravest response to the American decision, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised speech. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ARE SENATOR AL FRANKEN and REP JOHN CONYERS Being Sacrificed By The Democrat Party For A Much Larger Goal?;After two days of being criticized by mostly female, (and even some male) members of Congress, over multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, Democrat Al Franken just announced he s resigning from his US Senate seat. Democrat Representative John Conyers met a similar onslaught of criticism from fellow House members earlier in the week, which left him feeling isolated from his own party as he faced multiple allegations of sexual assault, misconduct and even accusations of a veiled death threat by one woman.After years of looking the other way while numerous women courageously stepped forward to accuse former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault and even rape, Democrats not only looked the other way, they nominated his wife who was accused by the same women of enabling his behavior as their choice for President of The United States.So why the sudden outrage over Franken and Conyers? Could it have something to do with the upcoming election for Senator in Alabama, where hard-core conservative Republican Judge Roy Moore appears to be ahead in the polls against Democrat candidate Doug Jones, despite being accused by several women of sexual misconduct that took place decades ago? So far, the motives or tactics of almost every one of Moore s accusers has been called into question. But this is not just any race, it s a race that the Democrats have dumped millions into, in hopes of taking a Senate seat they would otherwise have no chance of gaining in a deeply red state that overwhelmingly went for Trump in 2016. Democrat Senate candidate Doug Jones has never run for political office, opposes tax cuts for the rich and supports an expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. The 63-year-old also is staunchly pro-choice, putting him at odds with embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is staunchly pro-life.There s one thing we know about the Democrats they know how to fight. If the Democrats can make an 11th-hour show of how moral they are, because they are suddenly able to rally against sexual predators in leadership roles in their party (even though they spent decades ignoring the Clinton s, or the biggest elephant in the room) perhaps they can convince voters to support Democrat Doug Moore over the moral-less Republican-backed candidate Roy Moore, and gain a Senate seat they could only have dreamed about 6 months ago. The Democrats haven t won a senate seat in Alabama since 1992.Let s face it, Senator Franken resides in a solidly blue state who went for Hillary in 2016. There s not much likelihood that they ll elect a Republican to replace him. When it comes to the 88-year old Conyers, he s not only nearing the end of his career, he s a representative in Detroit, where it doesn t matter who runs as long as they have a (D) behind their name. It s a 100% safe seat.So if sacrificing a few members of their own party means gaining a Senate seat, it s all worth it, right? After all, the media wouldn t dare call out their allies in the Democrat Party for their decades of hypocrisy, and for their undying support of accused rapist Bill Clinton and his lovely, enabling wife Meanwhile, the blue state of Minnesota still loves Al Franken:Minnesota s Star Tribune calls Senator Al Franken (D-MN) A star in his party After eight years in the Senate, Franken had emerged as a powerful voice on progressive causes and forceful critic of the Trump administration, frequently generating national headlines with aggressive questioning of Trump s Cabinet officers. He was a star attraction for the Democratic Party, raising millions of dollars for candidates around the country and appearing frequently on nationally broadcast talk shows and in other high-profile venues.Franken s celebrity preceded his political career. He was hired as a staff writer for Saturday Night Live in its first season in 1975 and quickly became a regular on-air performer as well. He served two long stints on the show s staff, the second ending in 1995. After that, he published several bestselling books of political satire from a liberal point of view and hosted a nationally syndicated radio show for several years.Franken, who had been a vocal champion of women s rights and a popular, in-demand spokesman for various progressive causes, found himself caught up in a growing cultural movement around outing bad behavior toward women by men in positions of power. By abandoning Franken along with former U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who resigned earlier this week, Democrats are drawing a distinction between their party and Republicans at a time when President Trump has thrown his full weight behind Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, accused of sexual abuse of underage girls.A Democratic source told the Star Tribune that Dayton is likely to appoint Lt. Gov. Tina Smith and that she is not expected to run in the special election.88-year old Representative John Conyers (D-MI) was the longest-serving House Member in US history. ;left-news;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya says pushing to be removed from Trump travel ban list;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya s internationally recognized government has appealed to the United States to drop or ease a travel ban imposed on its citizens by U.S. President Donald Trump, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. The Libyan Foreign Ministry, through its embassy in Washington, has begun to take measures to lift Libya from the list of countries and to ease the restrictions on Libyan citizens, the ministry said in a statement. Libya is one of six Muslim-majority countries subject to the travel ban. This week the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ban to take full effect while litigation over its ultimate validity continues. The ban was also discussed at a meeting between Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Siyala and U.S Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke on Monday, the statement said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Liberian court clears way for presidential run-off vote;MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia s supreme court cleared the way for a presidential run-off election, ruling on Thursday that it had not found enough evidence of fraud to halt the whole process. Ex-soccer star George Weah will now face off against Vice-President Joseph Boakai in a vote that could mark Liberia s first peaceful transition of power in seven decades. The court dismissed a complaint from the third-place finisher Charles Brumskine s Liberty Party, which had said fraud had undermined the first round of voting in October. In the absence of sufficient evidence, the court cannot order a re-run of the election, Justice Philip Banks said, reading out the court s decision. There were over 5,000 polling places, (so) to present evidence of just a few is problematic, the judge said. The evidence should have (shown) ... that they were committed in such magnitude that they could have altered the results. The winner of round two will replace Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as leader of the small West African country, one of the world s poorest despite abundant diamonds and iron ore. The delays caused by all the legal wrangling have ratcheted up tensions in a country still recovering from decades of civil war that killed tens of thousands. However, a spokesman for the Liberty Party said it would accept the result. If we did not respect the judiciary, we would not have come, Darius Dillion said. Liberia has won, our democracy has won. Liberians are eager for change after Johnson Sirleaf s 12-year rule, which sealed a lasting peace that many doubted was possible, but which has failed to tackle corruption or significantly lift living standards of the country s poorest. Authorities still have to name a date for the run-off. NEC spokesman Henry Flomo told reporters outside the court he believed one could be held in two weeks, but said the date would be announced shortly. The judges made the ruling with a 4-1 majority. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalan separatists march in Brussels;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Nearly 50,000 people marched through Brussels European quarter on Thursday in support of Catalan independence and the region s ousted president, who has avoided arrest in Spain by taking refuge in Belgium. Before Carles Puigdemont addressed the crowd, many draped in Catalan flags, police estimated its size at 45,000. There were chants of Puigdemont, President from a generally good-natured throng, many of whom had traveled from Spain. Some carried placards criticizing the European Union for not pressuring Madrid. One sign showed the face of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker with the question: Democracy? Some defend it when it suits them. Shame on them. Puigdemont, who like many in the crowd wore yellow in support of jailed separatist leaders, addressed the crowd in Catalan before switching to French to direct a message to Juncker. Is there any place in the world that holds demonstrations like this to support criminals? he said. So maybe we are not criminals. Maybe we are democrats. Spain s Supreme Court on Tuesday withdrew an international arrest warrant for Puigdemont in order to bring his case back solely under Spanish jurisdiction, leaving him without an international legal stage to pursue his independence campaign. Puigdemont and four of his cabinet members fled to Belgium when Madrid imposed direct rule on Catalonia and sacked his government after an Oct. 27 declaration of independence by his local government. He is likely to be detained if he returns to Spain, pending investigation on charges of sedition, rebellion, misuse of public funds, disobedience and breach of trust. Puigdemont said on Wednesday he would remain in Belgium for the time being. Brussels is a kind of a loudspeaker for us, said Gloria Cot, a clerk from Barcelona at Thursday s march who had just arrived by coach. It is a loudspeaker so that people can know that we really don t have a 100 percent democracy in Spain and that Catalonia has always been subjected to problems with Spain. Juncker s deputy Frans Timmermans said he welcomed the very positive atmosphere of the demonstration, which took place as campaigning gets under way for a Catalan election on Dec. 21. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy hopes pro-independence parties will lose their majority in the Catalan parliament in the election and end the deadlock created by his government s refusal to recognize a banned independence vote Puigdemont held in September. Polls have separatists and unionist parties in a tie. Timmermans said there was no change to Commission policy that the dispute with Catalan authorities remains an internal one in which the EU has no need to intervene because Spain s democratic constitution is functioning in line with EU values. He accused Puigdemont and his allies of undermining the rule of law by choosing to ignore a Spanish constitutional ban on secession rather than trying to change the constitution. If you do not agree with the law, you can organize yourselves to change the law or the constitution, he said. What is not permissible under the rule of law is to just ignore the law. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Sistani condemns U.S. decision on Jerusalem;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq s senior shi ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned on Thursday U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. This decision is condemned and decried, it hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, said a statement from Sistani s office. But it won t change the reality that Jerusalem is an occupied land which should return to the sovereignty of its Palestinian owners no matter how long it takes, it said, calling on the Umma , or Islamic nation, to combine its efforts that purpose. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Kuczynski says graft probe went too far with latest raid;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said on Thursday that authorities leading an expanding graft investigation into Brazilian builder Odebrecht had gone too far by raiding the offices of the rightwing opposition party that rules Congress. The attorney general s office has spent the past year working to identify the recipients of bribes that Odebrecht has admitted paying to secure contracts over a decade-long period in Peru, one of a dozen nations where it has acknowledged crimes. After entangling two former presidents this year, the investigation has gathered steam again in recent weeks, with four executives of local construction companies jailed pending trial and a former mayor named as a suspect. On Thursday, prosecutors investigating Odebrecht s financing of political campaigns searched the offices of the rightwing opposition party Popular Force, prompting party representatives to accuse the attorney general s office of political bias. In a rare gesture of sympathy for a party that often attacks him, Kuczynski called for prosecutors and other state authorities to respect the rules of the game. It worries me to read the news about a raid this morning on the Lima offices of the political party that dominates Congress. And I m not saying this to ingratiate myself with Congress. I m saying this because if there isn t respect for due process, we won t be respected internationally, Kuczynski said in a televised speech at an event with local mayors. Kuczynski s remarks come as Popular Force is preparing legislation to oust Attorney General Pablo Sanchez, who has repeatedly denied political bias and said his office was only working to fight corruption and impunity. Sanchez did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The raids at the offices of Popular Force were authorized by Judge Richard Concepcion, who earlier this year ordered ex-Presidents Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo to be held in pre-trial detention while prosecutors prepare criminal charges. This is an affront to the party, Popular Force Secretary General Jose Chlimper told reporters in front of one of the party s offices as prosecutors worked inside. They re looking for something that they re not going to find. Popular Force s leader, twice-defeated presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, is under investigation for allegedly laundering money for Odebrecht during her 2011 campaign, which she has repeatedly denied. In recent weeks, Popular Force lawmakers have criticized Kuczynski for declining to undergo questioning in Congress after local media reported he worked for Odebrecht as a consultant. Kuczynski has denied the allegations and sent written responses to lawmakers questions. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish ruling party replaces PM ahead of elections;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s ruling conservatives named in an expected move Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as the country s new prime minister on Thursday as they gear up for a series of elections in the coming years. Morawiecki, who has also been a deputy prime minister, will replace the largely popular Beata Szydlo, marking the midpoint of the parliamentary term and in what is the beginning of an expected broader government reshuffle. Sources told Reuters this week that Morawiecki, 49, was the most likely candidate to replace Szydlo, 54, to prepare the party - led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland s paramount politician - for elections due in the next three years. Local elections will be held in 2018, parliamentary in 2019 and presidential in 2020. Morawiecki, an ex-banker, is broadly favoured by Kaczynski, while Szydlo lacked the full trust of the party s chairman, analysts say. It is obvious that Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the leader of this camp and he is the one who distributes the cards regardless of who is the prime minister, Henryk Domanski, from the Polish Academy of Sciences, said. Dramatic changes in Poland s economic policy are not expected with observers saying Morawiecki will keep strict control over Poland s finances and economy. Local market reaction has been muted this week amid speculation about his new role. But it remains to be seen whether Poland, once a champion of democratic changes after the fall of Communism and now at loggerheads with the European Union over sweeping changes to state institutions, which critics say have subverted democracy and the rule of law, will change its relations with Brussels. Three sources told Reuters on Thursday that Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski may be replaced with Krzysztof Szczerski, a top adviser to President Andrzej Duda, who wants to have a greater say on Poland s foreign policy. The parliament is to vote on a new government at its next session on Tuesday and any ministerial changes are expected to be announced after that. Despite the criticism from abroad, Szydlo s eurosceptic government, in power for two years, was one of the most popular in Poland since the 1989 collapse of communism, largely due to low unemployment, increases in public spending and a focus on traditional Catholic values in public life. Earlier in the day, the lower house of parliament rejected a vote of no confidence in the government, submitted by the opposition, and the visibly changed Szydlo was awarded with an enthusiastic round applause and flowers from her party. The last two years - it was an extraordinary time for me and the service to Poland and Poles was an honor, Szydlo said on Twitter after the decision of her replacement was announced in the evening. Szydlo and Morawiecki have fought for months for control over the largest state-owned companies. The conflict became public this year during the selection process for the chief executive of PZU, central Europe s biggest insurance company. Analysts say that although the talk of the government reshuffle has been going on for weeks, the replacement of Szydlo, a loyal party member who made few mistakes, is surprising. The explanation may be that in the eyes of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Beata Szydlo turned out to be too weak and that the government was seeded by internal conflicts and factional struggles, Domanski said. Beata Szydlo was a predictable politician and therefore there were fewer risks associated with her premiership. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rohingya widows find safe haven in Bangladesh camp;COX S BAZAR (Reuters) - Dawn hues of pink and purple reveal a dusty valley in Bangladesh s southern hills quilted with a dense settlement of red tents home to more than 230 women and children grieving for lost husbands and fathers. They are among more than 625,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh since late August, following a crackdown by the Myanmar military in response to attacks on security forces by Rohingya militants. Roshid Jan, who walked for 10 days with her five children to Bangladesh after soldiers burned their village, wept when she spoke about her missing husband. He was accused of being a member of the Rohingya militants and arrested with four other villagers 11 months ago, she said. She had not seen him or heard about his fate since then. Aisha Begum, a 19-year-old widow, said her husband was killed by Myanmar soldiers as their band of refugees headed for Bangladesh. I was sitting there by his body and just crying, crying, crying, she said. He was caught and killed with knives. I found his body by the road. It was in three pieces, she cried, recounting the events that brought her to the camp. (Click reut.rs/2BHPPax for a photo essay) Most Rohingya are stateless and seen as illegal immigrants by Buddhist-majority Myanmar. The United Nations and United States have described the military s actions as ethnic cleansing, and rights groups have accused the security forces of atrocities, including rape, arson and killings. Myanmar s government has denied most of the claims, and the army has said its own probe found no evidence of wrongdoing by troops. There are 50 tents and no men in the camp for widows and orphans, the biggest of three sites built with donor funds from Muslim-majority Pakistan in the refugee settlement of Balukhali not far from Bangladesh s resort town of Cox s Bazar. Two makeshift kitchens provide space for cooking in small holes in the ground, a new well is being dug to supplement a water pump, and a big tent serves for prayers. For those who can t pray, we have learning sessions on Monday and Friday in a special room, said 20-year-old Suwa Leha, who serves as the camp s unofficial leader. Praying and reading the Muslim holy book, the Koran, was one of two conditions for admittance set by religious and group leaders, Suwa said. The other was that widows and orphans be selected from among the most vulnerable and needy. The camp is marooned amid ponds and streams of dirty water left by the washing of clothes and dishes. Behind are thousands of dwellings in a vast refugee camp that sprang up during the crisis. Still, the women are relieved to have their own space. For those with no protection, a camp like this is much safer, said 22-year-old Rabiya Khatun, who lives there with her son. No man can enter that easily. Also, the rooms are bigger and we have more chances of receiving some aid. Women and girls number about 51 percent of the distressed and traumatized Rohingya population in the Cox s Bazar camps, the U.N. Women agency said in October. Women and children are also at heightened risk of becoming victims of human trafficking, sexual abuse or child and forced marriage, it added. Women and adolescent girls aged between 13 and 20 arriving from Myanmar typically had two to four children each, it said, with some of them pregnant. No relief agencies officially run the camp for the widows and orphans but aid groups and individuals help out. Rihana Begum lives with her five children in a room that is bare except for a few tomatoes, some religious books and clothes. On a thin mat lies her daughter, ill with fever, but fear of missing food handouts keeps them away from the doctor. I m afraid to miss aid distribution. I can t afford to miss it, she said on the day ration cards from the World Food Program were distributed in the camp. This week, Myanmar said it was finalizing terms for a joint working group with Bangladesh to launch the process of safe and voluntary return of the Rohingya refugees within two months. That may not be enough to allay Rihana Begum s fears. I m so afraid that I will never go back to Myanmar, she said. I would rather die here. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hamas calls for Palestinian uprising over Trump's Jerusalem plan;JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. Palestinian factions called for a Day of Rage on Friday, and a wave of protest in the West Bank and Gaza on Thursday brought clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops. At least 31 people were wounded by Israeli gunfire and rubber bullets, medics said. The Israeli military said an aircraft and a tank had targeted two posts belonging to militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after three rockets were launched at Israel. A jihadist Salafi group in Gaza called the Al-Tawheed Brigades - which does not heed the call from the enclave s dominant force, Hamas, to desist from firing rockets - claimed responsibility for the launches. The military said it was reinforcing troops in the occupied West Bank. Some protesters threw rocks at soldiers and others chanted: Death to America! Death to the fool Trump! Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday by recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, angering the Arab world and upsetting Western allies. The status of Jerusalem, home to sites considered holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, is one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada (Palestinian uprising) in the face of the Zionist enemy, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza. On Friday s Day of Rage, rallies and protests are expected near Israeli-controlled checkpoints in the West Bank and along the border with Gaza. Friday prayers at the Muslim shrine of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem could also be a flashpoint. Naser Al-Qidwa, an aide to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior official in his Fatah party, urged Palestinians to stage peaceful protests. Abbas on Thursday met Jordan s King Abdullah, whose dynasty is the traditional custodian of Jerusalem s holy places. Jordan is a staunch U.S. ally but has dismissed Trump s move as legally null . Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of their own to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognised internationally. No other country has its embassy there. U.S. officials told Reuters that when Trump forewarned the Palestinian president of his intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, he assured him that a peace plan being put together would please the Palestinians. Trump s decision has raised doubts about his administration s ability to follow through on the peace effort that his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has led for months aimed at reviving long-stalled negotiations. Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Gallant said he would next week bring to the Cabinet for approval 14,000 housing units, some 6,000 of which are slated for construction in areas in Arab East Jerusalem and are already at various planning stages. Following President Trump s historic declaration, I intend to promote and reinforce building in Jerusalem, Gallant said in a statement. Trump said on Wednesday that his administration would begin a process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a step expected to take years and which his predecessors had opted not to take in order to avoid inflaming tensions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump s announcement as a historic landmark and said many countries would follow the U.S. move and contacts were under way. He did not name the countries. The White House said it was not aware of any other country that planned to follow Trump s lead. President Trump has immortalised himself in the chronicles of our capital. His name will now be held aloft, alongside other names connected to the glorious history of Jerusalem and of our people, he said in a speech at Israel s Foreign Ministry. Close Western allies of Washington, including France and Britain, have been critical of Trump s move. The EU s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state. A senior Palestinian official with Fatah said that U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, due to visit the region later this month, was unwelcome in Palestine. A spokesman for Pence said the vice president was planning to meet Abbas on the trip. Deputy Palestinian U.N. envoy Feda Abdelhady-Nasser complained to the U.N. Security Council late on Wednesday about Trump s decision. The Security Council is likely to meet on Friday. Haniyeh called on Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. Abbas said on Wednesday the United States had abdicated its role as a mediator in peace efforts. We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine, Haniyeh said. Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organisation. Hamas does not recognise Israel s right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005. Fearing disruption to reconciliation efforts between Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah and other Fatah delegates arrived in Gaza on Thursday to meet Hamas. Trump said his move, which fulfilled a campaign promise, was not intended to tip the scales in favour of Israel and that any deal involving the future of Jerusalem would have to be negotiated by the parties. But the move was seen almost uniformly in Arab capitals as a sharp tilt towards Israel. The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to the announcement because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters. In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah backed calls for a new intafada and said: We are facing blatant American aggression. Islamist militant group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said Trump s decision was the result of normalisation steps between some Gulf Arab countries and Israel. Protests have broken out since Trump s announcement in Jordan, outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul and in Pakistan. Thousands of Tunisians protested in several cities on Thursday. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Trump Team Didn’t Just Collude with Israel, Kushner was Acting as Foreign Agent for Tel Aviv;Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireMuch was made this week in the US media about Michael Flynn s recent guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI, as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller s never-ending Russia probe. Beyond the political window dressing however, there s a much bigger and more profound story lingering in the background. Although court documents show Flynn has admitted to giving false statements in reference to his reaching out to Russia s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak the mere act of initiating contact with any foreign official is neither illegal nor is it a violation of ethics. Putting the current Red Scare aside, this would normally be viewed as standard statecraft for members of any incoming US administration. Even if Flynn had promised the Russian Ambassador, as claimed this week by Resistance leader Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, that a Trump government would rip-up sanctions, such a promise by Flynn would not be unlawful. Anyone can make a promise, we should point out here that neither Flynn, nor Donald Trump would be in any position to make good on such a promise without the blessing of the US Congress and Senate. Just look at what happened when Trump took office. Were any sanctions lifted?That said, after 18 months of fabricating fake news about Russian hacking, Russian meddling and Russian collusion, it s not surprising that the New York Times would get the Flynn story wrong too, and on an even bigger scale than many of their past made-up stories about Trump scandals. Here we have yet another hand-wringing Resistance writer, Harry Litman, claiming that Flynn s testimony will go down in history next to Watergate and Iran-Contra: The repercussions of the plea will be months in the making, but it s not an exaggeration to say that the events to which Mr. Flynn has agreed to testify will take their place in the history books alongside the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals. He might be right, if only the media coverage and the federal hearing would focus on the correct country with whom the Trump team was colluding, which unfortunately was not Russia. Funny how partisan writer Litman did not even mention the word Israel once in his report. Perhaps this is why certain persons in Washington like Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, John McCain and others, along with their corrupt media counterparts like CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times have been incessantly pushing their fictional Russia did it narrative for the last 18 months because Russiagate serves as a convenient overlay for Israelgate.Mehdi Hassan from The Intercept writes: Why aren t more members of Congress or the media discussing the Trump transition team s pretty brazen collusion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to undermine both U.S. government policy and international law? Shouldn t that be treated as a major scandal? Thanks to Mueller s ongoing investigation, we now know that prior to President Donald Trump s inauguration, members of his inner circle went to bat on behalf of Israel, and specifically on behalf of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, behind the scenes and in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy. That s the kind of collusion with a foreign state that has gotten a lot of attention with respect to the Kremlin but colluding with Israel seems to be of far less interest, strangely. Yes, you heard that right. This was at minimum collusion with Israel. But it goes much deeper than that. If this story is accurate, and we have every reason to believe it is (especially by the large silence in the American media, usually a positive indication of media avoidance), this would indicate that the then President-elect s close advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was clearly acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the state of Israel. The fact the US media are not taking this story more seriously should serve as a reminder as to how much power the Israeli Lobby wields in the US, not just over politicians, but over mainstream media as well. Granted, this is a very serious charge which comes with some serious consequences if Kushner would ever be indicted, but the facts clearly demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt, that then President-elect s son-in-law was using his proximity to the incoming Commander and Chief to execute a series of highly sensitive foreign policy maneuvers at the request of a foreign country.The history of Israeli spying and outright meddling in US affairs is no secret to anyone willing to research it (unofficially a forbidden topic in US mainstream media), but this latest episode with Trump and Kushner is even more disturbing considering this week s controversial East Jerusalem announcement (21WIRE warned about an East Jerusalem provocation 12 months ago).Beyond this, many will argue that the radical fundamentalist Zionist agenda which Kushner is aggressively pursuing on behalf of Tel Aviv is not in the interest of the wider Middle East, nor is it good for America s European partners, and may even contribute to a further destablization of the region as evidenced by recent violence which has erupted following Trump s provocative move. The result is not necessarily in America s interests, even if it is certainly in Israel s interests.Author Mehdi Hassan continues:Here s what we learned last week when Mueller s team unveiled its plea deal with Trump s former national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn. In December 2016, the United Nations Security Council was debating a draft resolution that condemned Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories as a flagrant violation under international law that was dangerously imperiling the viability of an independent Palestinian state.The Obama administration had made it clear that the U.S. was planning to abstain on the resolution, while noting that the settlements have no legal validity and observing how the settlement problem has gotten so much worse that it is now putting at risk the two-state solution. (Rhetorically, at least, U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements has been a long-standing and bipartisan position for decades: Ronald Reagan called for a real settlement freeze in 1982 while George H.W. Bush tried to curb Israeli settlement-building plans by briefly cutting off U.S. loan guarantees to the Jewish state in 1991.)Everyone expected that the upcoming UN vote on illegal Israeli settlements was going to be a divisive issue, but with only weeks before Trump s fast approaching inauguration, Israel had its trojan horse in position. Hassan goes on to explain Tel Aviv s covert mechanism for manipulating the UN vote: On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed Flynn to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution, reads the statement of offense against Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. On or about December 22, 2016, Flynn contacted the Russian Ambassador about the pending vote. Flynn informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. BFFs: Donald Trump talks to his chief foreign policy advisor, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu.So who was this very senior member of Trump s team who sought to execute orders from the office of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu? Hassan explains:Who was the very senior member of the transition team who directed Flynn to do all this? Multiple news outlets have confirmed that it was Jared Kushner, Trump s son-in-law and main point man on the Middle East peace process. Jared called Flynn and told him you need to get on the phone to every member of the Security Council and tell them to delay the vote, a Trump transition official revealed to BuzzFeed News on Friday, adding that Kushner told Flynn this was a top priority for the president. According to BuzzFeed: After hanging up, Flynn told the entire room [at the Trump transition team HQ] that they d have to start pushing to lobby against the U.N. vote, saying the president wants this done ASAP. Flynn s guilty plea, BuzzFeed continued, revealed for the first time how Trump transition officials solicited Russia s help to head off the UN vote and undermine the Obama administration s policy on Middle East peace before ever setting foot in the White House. Even during the height of the Neocon era, with multiple Israeli loyalists in the cabinet (including some dual passport holders) shaping White House Middle East policy ultimately into a ditch with Iraq, the level of manipulation wasn t this overt. Trump s decision to reverse successive US administrations new policy on East Jerusalem is inconceivable, if not for some other x-factor which the PNAC-dominated George W. Bush could not even manage.The facts of the case against Kushner have not been contested, and in fact Kushner has even been gloating out on the speaking circuit, with his doting wife Ivanka proudly advertizing her husband s accomplishment on behalf Israel.My husband, Jared Kushner, had a great conversation on the Middle East with Haim Saban today at the Saban Forum. #Saban17https://t.co/BUbGfd1YNr Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 4, 2017 None of this has been contested. In fact, on Sunday, Kushner made a rare public appearance at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Trump administration s plans for the Middle East and was welcomed by the forum s sponsor, the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, who said he personally wanted to thank Kushner for taking steps to try and get the United Nations Security Council to not go along with what ended up being an abstention by the U.S. Kushner s response? The first son-in-law smiled, nodded, and mouthed thank you to Saban.Meanwhile, the Israelis have been pretty forthcoming about their own role in all of this, too. On Monday, Ron Dermer, Israel s ambassador to the U.S. and a close friend and ally of Netanyahu, told Politico s Susan Glasser that, in December 2016, obviously we reached out to [the Trump transition team] in the hope that they would help us, and we were hopeful that they would speak to other governments in order to prevent this vote from happening. Got that? The Trump transition team in the form of key Trump advisers Kushner and Flynn reached out to the Russian government in order to undermine the U.S. government because the Israeli government asked them to. According to these reports, Kushner was using his position in the transition team to act on Israel s behalf outside of any governmental framework of accountability. If Flynn inadvertently found himself in a Russian trap, it was because Israel and its in-house operative demanded it.If Flynn is guilty of anything, it would be going along with Kushner s Israel First scheme ahead of the United Nations vote. What is odd though, is why the entire US mainstream media is not interested in this part of the story. Even the Never Trump Resistance seem to be afraid of taking this narrative on. I guess even the Resistance has its limits. Rather than go for a case where the evidence is sitting right there on a silver salver, instead they will go for the Russian conspiracy theory. Alas, old habits die hard.SEE ALSO: The Genealogy of Trump s U-Turn on PalestineThis series of events is all the more pertinent when considering this week s announcement by President Trump that the US is to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to East Jerusalem. Many are already calling this the kiss of death to the Israel-Palestine peace process. In a predictable succession of events, the Jerusalem provocation was a fait accompli after Trump had announced in October that the US would be withdrawing from support for UNESCO, the UN body which is meant to help maintain the neutrality of Jerusalem as an internationally protected area. The Trump administration justified its resignation from the key UN agency on the grounds that it is biased against Israel. But the neutrality of Jerusalem is an essential policy for maintaining peace in a less than ideal situation with Palestine still under a brutal military occupation by an illegitimate and illegal (by international law and successive UN Resolutions) Israeli jackboot.In addition to all this, this past summer the United States announced the establishment of a permanent military installation inside of Israel. What s scary is how many people do not know this has happened.So Trump s minence grise, the wunderkind, who some people have called the President In-Law, is really Israel s man inside the White House.Landed on his feet: President In-law Jared Kushner.So what exactly are Jared Kushner s credentials in international relations and diplomacy that he has been charged with negotiating Middle East affairs for the United States of America? Without sounding too cruel here, it s difficult to find anything to say in his defense. In the end, his only visible qualification is that he s married to the President s daughter, and that s he s a good friend of Netanyahu. That s really it.Credit where credit s due though. Aside from marrying into the dynasty, Kushner is also the former owner of a mediocre website, The New York Observer, and has also managed to parlay his family status to help finance a number of high-profile New York City property deals with foreign buyers (no doubt with the help of his father-in-law).Isn t that what Kushner is doing right now using his inherited clout to help close friend Benjamin Netanyahu broker property deals (highly illegal by international law) in the Middle East, only this time with his Uncle Sam acting as the guarantor? It certainly looks that way. The question is, will anyone in the US do anything about it?When this latest episode of hubris by the White House and Israel eventually unravels, the public and the media might then turn on Kushner and Trump, but by then the damage will have already been done.Meanwhile, men like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer will still be chasing those illusive Russian hackers clear into the 2020 election cycle, which is probably a stupid move for the Resistance, but if the last 18 months have taught us anything it s that there isn t much clear thinking going on in that corner of the galaxy.Until then, Netanyahu can feel safe in the knowledge that Israel, not Washington, is currently in control of US foreign policy.One final note to the brave Never-Trump Resistance: if a foreign state actor is blackmailing this President or the White House, it s probably not Russia.*** Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting of the conflict Syria, Iraq and the Middle East.READ MORE ISRAEL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Israel FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Defector says thousands of Islamic State fighters left Raqqa in secret deal;ANKARA (Reuters) - A high-level defector from Kurdish-led forces that captured the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State has recanted his account of the city s fall, saying thousands of IS fighters - many more than first reported - left under a secret, U.S.-approved deal. Talal Silo, a former commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces, said the SDF arranged to bus all remaining Islamic State militants out of Raqqa even though it said at the time it was battling diehard foreign jihadists in the city. U.S. officials described Silo s comments as false and contrived but a security official in Turkey, where Silo defected three weeks ago, gave a similar account of Islamic State s defeat in its Syrian stronghold. Turkey has been at odds with Washington over U.S. backing for the Kurdish forces who led the fight for Raqqa. Silo was the SDF spokesman and one of the officials who told the media in mid-October - when the deal was reached - that fewer than 300 fighters left Raqqa with their families while others would fight on. However, he told Reuters in an interview that the number of fighters who were allowed to go was far higher and the account of a last-ditch battle was a fiction designed to keep journalists away while the evacuation took place. He said a U.S. official in the international coalition against Islamic State, whom he did not identify, approved the deal at a meeting with an SDF commander. At the time there were conflicting accounts of whether or not foreign Islamic State fighters had been allowed to leave Raqqa. The BBC later reported that one of the drivers in the exodus described a convoy of up to 7 km (4 miles) long made up of 50 trucks, 13 buses and 100 Islamic State vehicles, packed with fighters and ammunition. The Turkish government has expressed concern that some fighters who left Raqqa could have been smuggled across the border into Turkey and could try to launch attacks there or in the West. Agreement was reached for the terrorists to leave, about 4,000 people, them and their families, Silo said, adding that all but about 500 were fighters. He said they headed east to Islamic State-controlled areas around Deir al-Zor, where the Syrian army and forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad were gaining ground. For three days the SDF banned people from going to Raqqa, saying fighting was in progress to deal with militants who had not given themselves up. It was all theater, Silo said. The announcement was cover for those who left for Deir al-Zor , he said, adding that the agreement was endorsed by the United States which wanted a swift end to the Raqqa battle so the SDF could move on towards Deir al-Zor. It was not clear where the evacuees from Raqqa ended up. The Syrian Democratic Forces deny that Islamic State fighters were able to leave Raqqa for Deir al-Zor, and the U.S.-led military coalition which backs the SDF said it does not make deals with terrorists . The coalition utterly refutes any false accusations from any source that suggests the coalition s collusion with ISIS, it said in a statement. However, a Turkish security official said that many more Islamic State personnel left Raqqa than was acknowledged. Statements that the U.S. or the coalition were engaged in big conflicts in Raqqa are not true, the official added. He told Reuters Turkey believed those accounts were aimed at diverting attention from the departure of Islamic State members, and complained that Turkey had been kept in the dark. Ankara, a NATO ally of Washington s and a member of the U.S.-led coalition, has disagreed sharply with the United States over its support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters who spearheaded the fight against Islamic State in Raqqa. Turkey says the YPG is an extension of the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the United States and European Union. Silo spoke to Reuters in a secure location on the edge of Ankara in the presence of Turkish security officers. He said the security was for his own protection and he denied SDF assertions that he had been pressured into defecting by Turkey, where his children live. A member of Syria s Turkmen minority, Silo said his decision to speak out now was based on disillusionment with the structure of the SDF, which was dominated by Kurdish YPG fighters at the expense of Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian allies, as well as the outcome in Raqqa, where he said a city had been destroyed but not the enemy. The Raqqa talks took place between a Kurdish SDF commander, Sahin Cilo, and an intermediary from Islamic State whose brother-in-law was the Islamic State emir in Raqqa, Silo said. After they reached agreement Cilo headed to a U.S. military base near the village of Jalabiya. He came back with the agreement of the U.S. administration for those terrorists to head to Deir al-Zor, Silo said. The coalition said two weeks ago that one of its leaders was present at the talks but not an active participant in the deal which it said was reached despite explicit coalition disagreement with letting armed ISIS terrorists leave Raqqa . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP-HATING, Anti-Gun “COMEDIAN” And Author Of “A Child’s First Book Of Trump” Credits His Kids For Inspiring All of His “BABY RAPE Jokes;Rabid, Trump-hating, anti-gun, comedian, and so-called author , Michael Ian Black took to Twitter to answer a question about how having children has changed his comedy . His answer is not what most American would expect. The comedian, who is consumed with hate for President Trump and his followers responded: They inspired all my baby rape jokes. Here is how Michael Ian Black s tweet read:Here is the actual tweet:Question I keep getting in interviews is whether having kids changed my comedy. Yes. They inspired all my baby rape jokes. Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) October 7, 2011It s not the first time Black made a joke about molesting kids. When Subway s spokesman Jared Fogel was convicted of possessing child pornography and crossing state lines to have sex with children, Black responded to a tweet about Fogel by saying (jokingly?): We used to molest kids together Black also believes the NRA is a terrorist group In light of the House passing today s gun bill, a friendly reminder that the NRA is a terrorist organization. Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) December 6, 2017Black is the author of a disgusting anti-Trump book called A Child s First Book Of Trump . If you want to check out (or review) Michael Ian Black s book, you can find it for purchase on Amazon and the Barnes and Noble website. Here is the Barnes and Noble Overview of Black s book from their website:OverviewA Child s First Book of Trump by Michael Ian Black, Marc Rosenthal A New York Times bestseller!What do you do when you spot a wild Trump in the election season? New York Times bestselling author and comedian Michael Ian Black has some sage advice for children (and all the rest of us who are scratching our heads in disbelief) in this perfectly timely parody picture book intended for adults that would be hysterical if it wasn t so true.The beasty is called an American Trump. Its skin is bright orange, its figure is plump. Its fur so complex you might get enveloped. Its hands though are, sadly, underdeveloped.The Trump is a curious creature, very often spotted in the wild, but confounding to our youngest citizens. A business mogul, reality TV host, and now political candidate? Kids (and let s be honest many adults) might have difficulty discerning just what this thing that s been dominating news coverage this election cycle is. Could he actually be real? Are those words coming out of his mouth? Why are his hands so tiny? And perhaps most importantly, what on earth do you do when you encounter an American Trump?With his signature wit and a classic picture book style, comedian Michael Ian Black introduces those unfamiliar with the Americus Trumpus to his distinguishing features and his mystifying campaign for world domination sorry President of the United States.Michael Ian Black is scheduled to appear in Boston at the Laugh House Nov. 9 11th. You can contact the Laugh House at this number and let them know how you feel about them supporting Black at their venue: (617) 725-2844Black can also be found acting with an entire cast of rabid Trump-hating liberal actors on Netflix movie: Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, and previously in Wet Hot American Summer.;left-news;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. aviation agency not eyeing 'no-fly' zone around North Korea: sources;MONTREAL (Reuters) - The United Nations aviation agency is not considering the creation of a no-fly zone around North Korea because the direction of Pyongyang s tests are not predictable, two sources familiar with the organization s thinking said on Thursday. Airlines are already avoiding North Korean airspace and some have re-routed flights to avoid portions of the Sea of Japan because of the missile tests. European carriers Air France KLM SA and Lufthansa did so in August, while Singapore Airlines Ltd on Friday said its flight routings did not traverse near the missile trajectories because it had been avoiding the northern part of the Sea of Japan since July. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd on Monday said the crew of a San Francisco-Hong Kong flight reported a suspected sighting of a missile re-entry from North Korea s latest test on Nov. 29. In a statement, the airline said the aircraft was far from the location and there were no plans to change flight routes at this stage. Data from flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows the CX893 flight path was over land in Japan, to the east of the Sea of Japan. OPSGROUP, which provides safety guidance to airlines, said in September that the western portion of Japanese airspace is a risk area due to multiple North Korean missile re-entries into the same area, according to its website. International Air Transport Association (IATA) director general Alexandre de Juniac was quoted in the South China Morning Post on Thursday saying that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) could declare a no-fly zone in the region. Montreal-based ICAO cannot impose rules, such as ordering countries to close their domestic airspace, but regulators from its 191-member states almost always adopt and enforce the standards it sets for international aviation. ICAO has condemned North Korea for launching missiles without notice, a move that could represent a threat to commercial flights. The missile tests are worrisome for civil aviation authorities in the wake of the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine. So far, North Korea has not heeded requests by ICAO to give advance notice of any launches, one of the sources said. An IATA spokeswoman said by email on Thursday that de Juniac s remarks were in reference to the airline trade group s support of a recent decision by ICAO to strongly condemn North Korea s continued launching of ballistic missiles over and near international air routes. While ICAO has urged airlines to take precautions, the agency is not advocating for a no-fly zone, because such a move would be disruptive for carriers and it s not clear where North Korea will fire missiles during tests. It is so random, it (a no fly zone) becomes ineffective, one of the sources said. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with media. An ICAO spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Tensions in the region have risen markedly in recent months after repeated North Korean missile tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions and the detonation of what Pyongyang said was a hydrogen bomb on Sept. 3. On Thursday, two American B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-backed fighters capture coastal area in Yemen from Houthis;DUBAI (Reuters) - A Western-backed Saudi-led coalition scored its first major gains in Yemen since former President Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed on Monday when local fighters captured an area on the Red Sea coast from Houthi rebels, residents said on Thursday. Saleh, who had made common cause with the Houthis after they captured the capital Sanaa in 2014, switched sides in an announcement last week that plunged the country deeper into turmoil. Residents said southern Yemeni fighters and allied local forces captured al-Khoukha district located some 350 km (220 miles) south-west of Sanaa after heavy fighting over Wednesday night which also involved coalition forces. Houthi forces control Sanaa and much of the rest of the impoverished country, where three years of war has killed more than 10,000 people and brought it to the verge of famine. Saleh had helped the Houthis win control of Sanaa and much of the north and his decision to abandon them had major implications on the battlefield. The Houthis crushed a pro-Saleh uprising in the capital and shot him dead in an attack on his convoy on December 4. Saleh s body remained at a military hospital in Sanaa while the Houthis - who control the capital - and members of his party sparred over burial plans, sources close to the family said. The sources said the Houthis had demanded that Saleh s body be buried in a family ceremony at his home village of Sanhan, south of Sanaa, while the family was insisting that the Houthis hand over the body without any conditions. The Houthis said they had found stashes of gold and cash at Saleh s residence, which they had over-run and seized before his death on Monday, and confiscated it for the benefit of the state treasury. The group gave no details on the amount and the report could not independently be verified. U.N.-appointed investigators said in 2015 that Saleh was suspected of having corruptly amassed as much as $60 billion, equivalent to Yemen s annual GDP, during his 33 years in office. The U.S. and U.K.-backed Saudi-led coalition has stepped up air strikes on Yemen since Saleh s death as Houthi forces have tightened their grip on the capital. Residents said fighters known as the Southern Resistance, together with other local forces and backed by coalition advisers from the United Arab Emirates, launched attacks on al-Khoukha on Wednesday. At least 25 people from both sides were killed before Yemeni fighters captured the town of al-Khoukha and a small fishing port. A spokesman for the Houthi movement could not immediately be reached for comment. The Houthi-run Saba news agency has reported heavy air strikes by the coalition on Sanaa and in the Saada province in northern Yemen, but made no mention of any ground offensive in al-Khoukha area. Saba reported at least seven members of the same family killed in an air strike on their house in Nihem district outside Sanaa, including three children. It was not possible to independently verify the report. A Saudi-led coalition air strike on al-Khoukha in March killed at least 22 civilians. When Saleh switched sides he announced he was ready to end a nearly three-year-old war - widely seen as a proxy war between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran - if the Saudi-led coalition agreed to stop attacks on the country. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Temer, congressional leaders delay Brazil pension vote;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s President Michel Temer has agreed with congressional leaders to delay a key vote on pension legislation in the lower house until the week of Dec. 18, the speaker of the body, Rodrigo Maia, said on Thursday. The pension overhaul, a cornerstone of Temer s efforts to reduce Brazil s budget deficit, is seen by investors as crucial to boosting the nation s fiscal health. Brazil s currency and benchmark Bovespa stock index slipped on Thursday amid concerns that Temer lacked support to put the measure to a vote. If a vote were further delayed to next year, it could infringe on campaigning for elections due in 2018, a move most investors see as reducing the likelihood that the unpopular measure would be approved. The bill seeks to increase the age at which Brazilians can retire and collect social security. It would also make pension payouts in Brazil - some of the most generous in the world - more modest. Temer has held a flurry of meetings in recent weeks with the heads of allied parties to whip the votes he will need to win the bill s passage and send it to the Senate. Among the carrots he has offered is increasing the size of the budget each legislator is given to spend on social projects in their districts. Congressional leaders have said in recent days that the coalition supporting the bill is more organized than in weeks past. However, the government has not yet been able to secure the 308 votes the measure will need for passage. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina's Fernandez charged with treason, arrest sought;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A federal judge in Argentina indicted former President Cristina Fernandez for treason and asked for her arrest for allegedly covering up Iran s possible role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people, a court ruling said. As Fernandez is a senator, Congress would first have to vote to strip her of parliamentary immunity for an arrest to occur. The judge, Claudio Bonadio, also indicted and ordered house arrest for Fernandez s Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, the 491-page ruling said. Fernandez called a news conference in Congress to deny wrongdoing and accuse Bonadio and President Mauricio Macri of degrading the judiciary. It is an invented case about facts that did not exist, she said, dressed in white. Timerman s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. While removing immunity from lawmakers is rare in Argentina, Congress voted on Oct. 25 to do so for Fernandez s former planning minister Julio De Vido and he was arrested the same day. De Vido is accused of fraud and corruption, which he denies. Argentina s legislature has entered a period of judicial recess until March but can be convened for urgent matters. Fernandez and her allies have been the focus of several high profile cases with arrests and indictments since center-right Mauricio Macri defeated her chosen successor and was elected president in late 2015. Fernandez left office just a few months before the Congress in neighboring Brazil impeached another leftist female leader, Dilma Rousseff for breaking budget laws. The cover-up allegations against Fernandez gained international attention in January 2015, when the prosecutor who initially made them, Alberto Nisman, was found shot dead in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment. An Argentine appeals court a year ago ordered the re-opening of the investigation. Nisman s death was classified as a suicide, though an official investigating the case has said the shooting appeared to be a homicide. Nisman s body was discovered hours before he was to brief Congress on the bombing of the AMIA center. GRAINS-FOR-OIL Nisman said Fernandez worked behind the scenes to clear Iran and normalize relations to clinch a grains-for-oil deal with Tehran that was signed in 2013. The agreement created a joint commission to investigate the AMIA bombing that critics said was really a means to absolve Iran. Argentine, Israeli and U.S. officials have long blamed the AMIA attack on Hezbollah guerrillas backed by Iran. Tehran has denied links to the attack. Earlier on Thursday, two lower level allies of Fernandez were arrested based on the same ruling from judge Bonadio: Carlos Zannini, a legal adviser, and Luis D Elia, the leader of a group of protesters supporting her government. Zannini s lawyer, Alejandro Baldin, told local media the detention was arbitrary, illegal and ran over constitutional and individual rights, after leaving a police station in Rio Gallegos, where Zannini was held. D Elia s lawyer, Adrian Albor, told radio Del Plata that Bonadio had no respect for the law, rights, justice. They are coming for everyone in the previous government. Bonadio wrote in his ruling that evidence showed Iran, with the help of Argentine citizens, had appeared to achieve its goal of avoiding being declared a terrorist state by Argentina. The crime of treason is punishable by 10 to 25 years in prison, Argentina s maximum sentence. The next step in the case would be an oral trial and sentences can be appealed on first instance, which could be a long process. Macri s leader in the Senate, Federico Pinedo, said on Twitter that Congress would analyze the request to strip immunity with sincerity and responsibility. Macri s coalition performed better than expected in Oct. 22 mid-term elections, gaining seats in Congress, but it is not clear if lawmakers will vote to strip Fernandez s immunity. Fernandez, who governed from 2007 to 2015, finished second to a Macri ally in the Buenos Aires province Senate race but won a seat under Argentina s list system. She was sworn in last week. She was also indicted in late 2016 on charges she ran a corruption scheme with her public works secretary. Fernandez has admitted there may have been corruption in her government but personally denies wrongdoing. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Displaced by mining, Peru villagers spurn shiny new town;NUEVA FUERABAMBA, Peru (Reuters) - This remote town in Peru s southern Andes was supposed to serve as a model for how companies can help communities uprooted by mining. Named Nueva Fuerabamba, it was built to house around 1,600 people who gave up their village and farmland to make room for a massive, open-pit copper mine. The new hamlet boasts paved streets and tidy houses with electricity and indoor plumbing, once luxuries to the indigenous Quechua-speaking people who now call this place home. The mine s operator, MMG Ltd, the Melbourne-based unit of state-owned China Minmetals Corp, threw in jobs and enough cash so that some villagers no longer work. But the high-profile deal has not brought the harmony sought by villagers or MMG, a testament to the difficulty in averting mining disputes in this mineral-rich nation. Resource battles are common in Latin America, but tensions are particularly high in Peru, the world s No. 2 producer of copper, zinc and silver. Peasant farmers have revolted against an industry that many see as damaging their land and livelihoods while denying them a fair share of the wealth. Peru is home to 167 social conflicts, most related to mining, according to the national ombudsman s office, whose mission includes defusing hostilities. Nueva Fuerabamba was the centerpiece of one of the most generous mining settlements ever negotiated in Peru. But three years after moving in, many transplants are struggling amid their suburban-style conveniences, Reuters interviews with two dozen residents showed. Many miss their old lives growing potatoes and raising livestock. Some have squandered their cash settlements. Idleness and isolation have dulled the spirits of a people whose ancestors were feared cattle rustlers. It is like we are trapped in a jail, in a cage where little animals are kept, said Cipriano Lima, 43, a former farmer. Meanwhile, the mine, known as Las Bambas, has remained a magnet for discontent. Clashes between demonstrators and authorities in 2015 and 2016 left four area men dead. Nueva Fuerabamba residents have blocked copper transport roads to press for more financial help from MMG. The company acknowledged the transition has been difficult for some villagers, but said most have benefited from improved housing, healthcare and education. Nueva Fuerabamba has experienced significant positive change, Troy Hey, MMG s executive general manager of stakeholder relations, said in an email to Reuters. MMG said it spent hundreds of millions on the relocation effort. Mining is the driver of Peru s economy, which has averaged 5.5 percent annual growth over the past decade. Still, pitched conflicts have derailed billions of dollars worth of investment in recent years, including projects by Newmont Mining Corp and Southern Copper Corp. To defuse opposition, President Pablo Kuczynski has vowed to boost social services in rural highland areas, where nearly half of residents live in poverty. But moving from conflict to cooperation is not easy after centuries of mistrust. Relocations are particularly fraught, according to Camilo Leon, a mining resettlement specialist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Subsistence farmers have struggled to adapt to the loss of their traditions and the very urban, very organized layout of planned towns, Leon said. It is generally a shock for rural communities, Leon said. At least six proposed mines have required relocations in Peru in the past decade, Leon said. Later this month, Peru will tender a $2-billion copper project, Michiquillay, which would require moving yet another village. MMG inherited the Nueva Fuerabamba project when it bought Las Bambas from Switzerland s Glencore Plc in 2014 for $7 billion. Under terms of a deal struck in 2009 and reviewed by Reuters, villagers voted to trade their existing homes and farmland for houses in a new community. Heads of each household, about 500 in all, were promised mining jobs. University scholarships would be given to their children. Residents were to receive new land for farming and grazing, albeit in a parcel four hours away by car. Cash was an added sweetener. Villagers say each household got 400,000 soles ($120,000), which amounts to a lifetime s earnings for a minimum-wage worker in Peru. MMG declined to confirm the payments, saying its agreements are confidential. Built into a hillside 15 miles from the Las Bambas mine, Nueva Fuerabamba was the product of extensive community input, MMG said. Amenities include a hospital, soccer fields and a cement bull ring for festivals. But some residents say the deal has not been the windfall they hoped. Their new two-and-three story houses, made of drywall, are drafty and appear flimsy compared to their old thatched-roof adobe cottages heated by wood-fired stoves, some said. Many no longer plant crops or tend livestock because their replacement plots are too far away. Jobs provided by MMG mostly involve maintaining the town because most residents lack the skills to work in a modern mine. Many villagers spent their settlements unwisely, said community president Alfonso Vargas. Some invested in businesses but others did not. They went drinking, he said. Now basics like water, food and fuel - once wrested from the land - must be paid for. Everything is money, Margot Portilla, 20, said as she cooked rice on a gas stove in her sister-in-law s bright-yellow home. Before we could make a fire for cooking with cow dung. Now we have to buy gas. Some residents said they have benefited from the move. The new town is cleaner than the old village, said Betsabe Mendoza, 25. She invested her settlement in a metalworking business in a bigger town. Portilla, the young mom, says her younger sisters are getting a better education than she did. Still, the streets of Nueva Fuerabamba were virtually deserted on a recent weekday. Vargas, the community leader, said many residents have returned to the countryside or sought work elsewhere. Alcoholism, fueled by idle time and settlement money, is on the rise, he said. Some villagers have committed suicide. Over the 12 months through July, four residents killed themselves by taking farming chemicals, according to the provincial district attorney s office. It could not provide data on suicides in the old village of Fuerabamba. MMG, citing an independent study done prior to the relocation, said the community previously suffered from high rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, illiteracy and poverty. While the company considers the new town a success, it acknowledged the transition has not been easy for all. Connection to land, livelihood restoration and simple adaptation to new living conditions remain a challenge, MMG said. Nueva Fuerabamba residents continue pressuring the company for additional assistance. Demands include more jobs and deeds to their houses, which have yet to be delivered because of bureaucratic delays, said Godofredo Huamani, the community s lawyer. MMG said it stays apace of community needs through town hall meetings and has representatives on hand to field complaints. While villagers fret about the future, many cling to the past. Flora Huamani, 39, a mother of four girls, recalled how women used to get together to weave wool from their own sheep into the embroidered black dresses they wear. Those were our traditions, said Huamani from a bench in her walled front yard. Now our tradition is meeting after meeting after meeting to discuss the community s problems. Graphic: 'Relocating a village' click tmsnrt.rs/2AwftBU ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands of Tunisians protest against Trump's Jerusalem decision;TUNIS (Reuters) - Thousands of Tunisians protested in several cities on Thursday against U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital and decision to move the U.S. Embassy there, residents said. Labor unions and other groups have called for even bigger protests in the capital Tunis and other cities in the North African country after Friday prayers. Thursday s demonstrations went peacefully with several hundreds alone gathering in central Tunis, holding up Palestinian flags and banners, residents said. Protesters burned a U.S. flag and others stepped on images of Israeli flags. Tunisia s President Beji Caid Essebsi sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemning the U.S. decision, saying it undermined Palestinian rights, officials said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Slightly modified' Irish border text under consideration: governing party MEP;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Brexit negotiators in Brussels, Dublin and London are working on a new text on the post-Brexit Irish land border with Northern Ireland that might be modified somewhat from a version that was almost agreed earlier this week, a member of the European Parliament from Ireland s governing party said on Thursday. My understanding is all the parties are working on a new text, Fine Gael s Brian Hayes told Irish broadcaster RTE. It s not that the text is changed in substance from the original but that it might be modified somewhat, new language, but as we speak those negotiations are continuing and have intensified. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine shelves controversial corruption law after donor pressure;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian lawmakers on Thursday shelved a draft law that critics say would have undermined the independence of anti-corruption institutions, which Ukraine s foreign backers this week said were under attack from vested interests. Reformists welcomed the removal of the bill from parliament s agenda as a win at a time when Ukraine s Western-backed corruption fight faces pushback on several fronts. But the victory was swiftly tempered by a separate vote later to dismiss the European Union-backed head of parliament s anti-graft committee Yegor Sobolev. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank earlier said the authorities must protect the anti-graft bureau known as NABU, following similar warnings from the United States and EU. The criticism helped persuade MPs to drop the law, which would have given parliament the power to dismiss the heads of anti-corruption institutions, lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem said. They have retreated, he said in a post on Facebook. The clear heads of individual politicians, the reaction of the public, the media and personal contacts of many activists in international organizations played an important role in this story. The United States, EU and Canada have thrown financial and diplomatic support behind the leadership that took power in Kiev after the 2014 Maidan protests ousted the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovich. But perceived backsliding on reform commitments has delayed billions of dollars in IMF loans and tested the patience of Ukraine s allies even as Kiev pushes for closer EU integration and more foreign investment. We are deeply concerned by recent events in Ukraine that could roll back progress that has been made in setting up independent institutions to tackle high-level corruption, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said in a statement. Later on Thursday parliament voted to dismiss Sobolev, a member of the opposition Samopomich faction, which helped the committee drive key reforms through parliament. The leaders of political forces no longer feel untouchable. They don t feel they are above the law. That is the reason for my dismissal, Sobolev said. Ukraine s backers are concerned too about actions by prosecutors that they say threaten the independence of NABU, set up after the Maidan protests and which has been at loggerheads with other law enforcement bodies. Lagarde called on Ukrainian authorities and parliament to safeguard the independence of NABU and repeated a call for the creation of an independent anti-corruption court. Parliament s failure to pass legislation to set up such a court has delayed the disbursement of an IMF loan tranche under a $17.5 billion aid-for-reforms program. President Petro Poroshenko urged parliament to speed up the process. If at the beginning of next week I don t see progress, I ll independently prepare and submit the relevant draft law, he said in a statement. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South African police summon author of book critical of Zuma;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The South African author of a book critical of President Jacob Zuma said on Thursday he had been summoned by police, but no reason had been given for the meeting. The President s Keepers - Those keeping Zuma in power and out of prison by journalist Jacques Pauw alleges millions of dollars in taxpayers money flowed into the bank accounts of spies and members of Zuma s government. The president s office has denied the accusations in the book. Pauw confirmed in an interview with eNCA television that his attorney had received a request for him to meet with police on Monday or Tuesday. We don t know what the meeting is about. Anyway, we are going to cooperate, Pauw said. South Africa s State Security Agency said last month it had made a criminal complaint against Pauw relating to the contravention of several sections of the Intelligence Services Act. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain says Brexit talks ongoing after calls with Irish and EU's Juncker;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday that talks about moving the Brexit process forward were ongoing after Prime Minister Theresa May spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The Prime Minister has this evening spoken with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in separate telephone calls, a spokesman for May said. Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing, he said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says it believes Saudi Arabia will open Yemen port;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday it believed that Saudi Arabia would allow a blocked port in Yemen to open after President Donald Trump urged Riyadh to lift a blockade to let humanitarian aid reach the Yemeni people. The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned armed Houthi movement in Yemen s civil war started blockading ports a month ago after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh from Yemen. Although the blockade later eased, Yemen s situation remains dire. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. Yemen s population of 27 million is almost entirely reliant on imports for food, fuel and medicine. I believe there are actions that are taking place for a port to open and we ll keep you posted as those details become more available, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. Trump called for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to completely allow food, fuel, water, and medicine to reach the Yemeni people , suggesting Washington had run out patience with the blockade that has been condemned by relief organizations. Progress has not been seen yet, but we hope that advocacy and those strong messages will open up the port from being a partially open port to being a fully open port, Jamie McGoldrick, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, told reporters in New York. McGoldrick said there were 15 ships, carrying mainly food and fuel, waiting to enter the Yemeni ports of Hodeidah and Salif. Around 80 percent of Yemen s food imports arrive through Hodeidah. They need to come onshore now, said McGoldrick, speaking via telephone from Sanaa. There are some boats which are offshore which have been cleared by Riyadh already ... We see no reason why they should not be able to come onshore now. A Reuters analysis of port and ship tracking data has shown that no fuel shipments have reached Yemen s largest port for a month. What we have got right now is food trickling in to Yemen through the various ports, but we can t get it to the people without the fuel, McGoldrick said. Yemen s humanitarian response needs millions of liters of fuel a month to keep hospital generators running, transport food and to pump water. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German voters punish FDP leader for coalition walkout: poll;BERLIN (Reuters) - German voters are punishing the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) for walking out of three-way coalition talks last month as a poll showed on Thursday support for the party falling and the popularity of its leader Christian Lindner tumbling. The FDP in mid-November quit exploratory talks to form a coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the environmentalist Greens. Lindner said back then it was better not to govern than to govern the wrong way. Some observers speculated that the FDP had planned the move well in advance to boost its standing among voters from the center-right political spectrum and to show the party puts policy principles before power. But the monthly DeutschlandTrend survey, conducted by Infratest Dimap pollster for ARD public broadcaster, showed that support for the FDP fell 3 percentage points to 9 percent, making it the smallest party in parliament. Merkel s conservatives gained 2 percentage points to 32 percent, the Social Democrats (SPD) were unchanged at 21 percent. The far-right Alternative for Germany stood at 13 percent, followed by the Greens with 11 percent and the Left party with 10 percent. The popularity of FDP leader Lindner plunged 17 percentage points to only 28 percent. Merkel s popularity fell 3 percentage points to 54 percent, her lowest level in the survey since October 2016. The list of Germany s most popular politicians was topped by SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel who shot up 8 percentage points to 65 percent. Greens co-leader Cem Ozdemir came in second with an approval rating of 57 percent. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Army chief says Pakistan should 'revisit' Islamic madrassa schools;QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan s army chief on Thursday criticized madrassas that have mushroomed nationwide for mostly teaching only Islamic theology, saying the country needs to revisit the religious school concept. Modernizing madrassa education is a thorny issue in Pakistan, a deeply conservative Muslim nation where religious schools are often blamed for radicalization of youngsters but are the only education available to millions of poor children. General Qamar Javed Bajwa s remarks, apparently off-the-cuff during a prepared speech, were a rare example of an army chief criticizing madrassas, which are often built adjacent to mosques and underpin Islamisation efforts by religious hardliners. Bajwa said a madrassa education in Pakistan was inadequate because it did not prepare students for the modern world. I am not against madrassas, but we have lost the essence of madrassas, Bajwa told a youth conference in Quetta, the capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Bajwa said he was recently told that 2.5 million students were being taught in madrassas belonging to the Deobandi, a Sunni Muslim sub-sect that shares the beliefs of the strictly orthodox Wahhabi school of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula. So what will they become: will they become Maulvis (clerics) or they will become terrorists? Bajwa asked, saying it was impossible to build enough mosques to employ the huge number of madrassa students. We need to look (at) and revisit the concept of madrassas...We need to give them a worldly education. Pakistan has over 20,000 registered madrassas, though there are believed to be thousands more unregistered ones. Some are single-room schools with a handful of students studying the Koran. Security services have kept a close eye on madrassas associated with radicalizing youths and feeding recruits to Islamist militant outfits that have killed tens of thousands of people in the South Asian country since 2000. But only a handful of the schools have been shut down, the authorities hand stayed by fears of a religious backlash. Islamist hardliners hold great sway in Pakistani society, with the capital, Islamabad, paralyzed for nearly three weeks last month by a blockade staged by a newly formed ultra-religious party. Bajwa said poor education was holding back the nation of 207 million people, and especially in madrassas. Most of them are just teaching theology. So what are their chances? What is their future in this country? The military last year proposed a plan to deradicalize religious hard-liners by mainstreaming some into political parties, a plan initially rejected by the civilian government but which now appears to be taking form. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan, Pope say in phone call attempts to change Jerusalem's status should be avoided: Turkish sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Pope Francis agreed in a phone call on Thursday that any attempts to change Jerusalem s status should be avoided, sources in Erdogan s office said. Emphasising that Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, President Erdogan and Pope Francis stated that any attempt to change the city s status should be avoided, the sources said. President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. to assess if either side trying to 'sabotage' Syria talks;GENEVA (Reuters) - The mediator of U.N.-led Syrian peace talks in Geneva will assess next week whether either side is trying to sabotage the process, he said on Thursday, after President Bashar al-Assad s negotiators said they would turn up five days late. We shall assess the behavior of both sides, government and opposition, in Geneva, U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said. And based on that we will then decide how this... can be a building up or not, or a sabotage of Geneva. If either side were seen to be sabotaging the process it could have a very bad impact on any other political attempt to have processes elsewhere, he said. He said the Geneva rounds of talks were the only peace process backed by the U.N. Security Council, although there were many other initiatives being planned. He did not elaborate, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seeking re-election next year, has suggested holding a Syrian Congress in the Russian city of Sochi early in 2018. Diplomats see Putin s plan as a bid to draw a line under the war after seven years of fighting and to celebrate Russia s role as the power that tipped the balance of the war and became the key player in the peace process. Opposition negotiator Basma Kodmani told reporters the government side had wasted the chance for a week of direct negotiations, while the opposition was doing all it could. I think we are showing, through our presence, our behavior, the number of documents we have submitted, the issues we are raising with the U.N., that we are here for a very constructive engagement with the United Nations, and that we have no partner so far to talk to, she said. They are physically not here. The absence of the government delegation, led by chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari, has effectively halted a peace process which has made little progress in eight rounds. The latest round began last week with de Mistura hoping to discuss an agenda including constitutional and electoral reform. But Ja afari arrived a day late and left after two days, saying the opposition had mined the road to the talks by insisting that Assad could not play any interim role in Syria s political transition. The delegation returned to Damascus to consult and refresh , but Ja afari initially threatened not to come back, which the opposition said would be an embarrassment to Russia . De Mistura said on Thursday that Ja afari s delegation had confirmed it would return on Sunday, five days later than expected, for another stretch of talks lasting until Dec. 15. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan, Putin say U.S. decision on Jerusalem will have negative impact on region: sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call on Thursday that the U.S. decision on Jerusalem will negatively impact the region s peace and stability, sources in Erdogan s office said. President Erdogan emphasized that the latest move by the U.S. government would negatively impact the peace and stability in the region. Russian President Putin stated he shared the same views, the sources said. Earlier on Thursday, Turkish presidential sources said Erdogan and Pope Francis had agreed in a phone call that any attempts to change Jerusalem s status should be avoided, after President Donald Trump on Wednesday reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD votes for talks with Merkel's conservatives;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Social Democratic Party (SPD) members voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to allow their party s leadership to enter talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a government. The party congress s vote means leaders can discuss options including a renewed grand coalition , an informal cooperation or a formal agreement to tolerate a conservative minority government by not voting down certain parliamentary motions. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Albania woos luxury hotel brands with tax breaks;TIRANA (Reuters) - Albania is planning to try to lure five-star hotel brands with tax breaks, including scrapping profit and property taxes, to increase its appeal for the higher-end of the tourist trade. With travel and tourism accounting for 8.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2016, rising demand to visit the country between Montenegro and Greece washed by the Adriatic and Ionian Seas is not being met by present facilities and infrastructure. One of Europe s poorest but also most unspoiled countries, Albania has been wooing tourists by encouraging them to Go Your Own Way , counting on the appeal of adventure tourism. Now, to lure international hotel brands, the government is to pass a law this month to exempt them from profit tax for 10 years, scrap infrastructure tax and property taxes and have them pay a VAT tax of 6 percent for any service on their hotels or resorts. International hotel chains or anyone possessing a franchise from them is welcome provided they invest no less than eight million euros for a four-star hotel and no less than 15 million euros for a five-star hotel, said Elton Orozi, an official at the tourism ministry. Albania is trying to offer more to tourists who spend more time and money so as to get acquainted with the culture, history and nature, added Orozi. The incentives will apply to developers only if they do not sell on the units since the government wants to avoid villas being built on the seashore by wealthy Albanians using them as second homes. Building luxury hotels will also depend on whether the investors steer clear of land ownership troubles, which doomed an effort to lure the French Club Med holiday company to Albania more than a decade ago. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe judge frees ousted finance minister on bail;HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean judge freed ousted finance minister Ignatius Chombo on bail on Thursday in a ruling that underlined judicial independence just three weeks after the army helped depose Robert Mugabe. Chombo, a senior member of the G40 faction of the ruling party that was targeted in the military s Nov. 15 intervention, was dragged from his home in the middle of the night and held incommunicado by soldiers at an undisclosed location for a week. During that time he was beaten, according to his lawyer. He was arrested by police on his release and charged with fraud and abuse of office relating to his time as a government minister over a decade ago. The Harare magistrate s court denied him bail. However, High Court judge Edith Mushore condemned that ruling as littered with mis-directions and wading into the muddy court of public opinion after the massive army-backed protests that helped topple Mugabe after 37 years in power. Chombo, 65, was ordered to be released on $5,000 bail, surrender his passport and the title deeds of his Harare mansion and report to a police station in the capital three times a day. The tone and substance of Mushore s ruling also sent a stern message to the army-backed administration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa about the independence of the courts and the primacy of the law, aspects of public life often ignored by Mugabe. During his detention by the military, Chombo had been denied basic rights enshrined in the constitution such as access to justice and presumption of innocence, Mushore said. In particular, she said Zimbabweans needed to know they can sleep at night without the fear of arbitrary detention in secret locations beyond the reach of lawyers or family - a common feature of the police state run by Mugabe. The public in Zimbabwe needs to know that they have a right to access to justice, she said. Chombo was one of several G40 figures detained during the military s Operation Restore Legacy that was officially launched to remove criminals around Mugabe. Most Zimbabweans interpreted this as meaning Mugabe s 52-year-old wife Grace, who was positioning herself as a successor to her 93-year-old husband at the expense of Mnangagwa, who was purged from the ruling party in early November. Chombo s lawyer says he will deny the charges when his trial starts. In a cursory analysis, Mushore characterized the state s case against him as mere allegation . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hezbollah urges Palestinian uprising over Trump's Jerusalem decision;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s Hezbollah group joined calls on Thursday for a new Palestinian uprising in response to the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. U.S. President Donald Trump s decision amounted to an act of blatant aggression against the Arab and Muslim world, the leader of the Shi ite Muslim political and military movement, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised speech. Governments across the region and beyond warned that Trump s reversal of decades of American policy on Jerusalem would imperil Middle East peace efforts. Palestinian factions called for a Day of Rage on Friday, and Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians to abandon negotiations and launch a new uprising against Israel. We support the call for a new Palestinian intifada (uprising) and escalating the resistance, Nasrallah said. It is the biggest, most important and gravest response to the American decision. Nasrallah, who described Trump s move as a major historical injustice , did not outline any direct actions that Hezbollah would take. He called for a mass protest in Beirut s southern suburbs on Monday. The people of Palestine stand today at the first line of defense for Jerusalem and its shrines, he added. Iran-backed Hezbollah, which Israel views as the biggest threat on its borders, has sent arms to the Palestinian territories before, Nasrallah said last month. Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006 that killed around 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them troops. The two have avoided major confrontation since that month-long battle, though tensions had risen again earlier this year. Nasrallah asked listeners around the region to confront the U.S. move and stand in solidarity with Palestinians. He appealed to Arab states to cut off any kind of diplomatic ties to Israel, and to summon their U.S. ambassadors in formal protest. Such steps will certainly make Trump regret (it), he said. The status of Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - represents one of the biggest obstacles to a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. Under the U.S.-brokered Oslo accords of 1993, negotiations should decide the city s status. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Hezbollah s parliamentary bloc said earlier that Trump s decision would have catastrophic repercussions that threaten regional and international security and stability . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: OBAMA APPOINTED JUDGE Presiding Over Michael Flynn’s Case SUDDENLY Recuses Himself…CLINTON Appointed Judge Will Sentence Flynn;Now, a Clinton appointed judge who took Flynn s guilty plea has suddenly recused himself and Flynn will now face an Obama appointed judge for his sentencing. Hmmm Politico President Donald Trump s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, will face a different judge to be sentenced than the one who took Flynn s guilty plea to a felony false statement charge last week, court records show.Judge Emmet Sullivan was randomly assigned to take over the case after Judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself.A court spokeswoman confirmed to POLITICO that the reassignment of the case was due to Contreras recusal, but did not immediately respond to a query about the reason.Sullivan is an appointee of President Bill Clinton, while Contreras was appointed by President Barack Obama.Flynn pleaded guilty last Friday to a false statement charge brought by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. ;left-news;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit Irish border deal possible within hours;BRUSSELS/DUBLIN (Reuters) - The United Kingdom and Ireland could reach agreement in hours on how to run their post-Brexit Irish land border, paving the way for a deal that would remove the last obstacle to opening free-trade talks with the European Union. A carefully choreographed attempt to showcase the progress of Brexit talks collapsed at the last minute on Dec. 4 when the Northern Irish party which props up Prime Minister Theresa May s government vetoed a draft deal already agreed with Ireland. Since then, May has been scrambling to clinch a deal on the new UK-EU land border in Ireland that is acceptable to the European Union, Dublin, her own lawmakers and Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party, which keeps her government in power. May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker could meet early on Friday to seal a border deal, the European Commission s chief spokesman said. We are making progress but not yet fully there, Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said. Talks are continuing throughout the night. Early morning meeting possible. A spokesman for PM May said Brexit discussions were ongoing while a senior Irish official said talks were moving swiftly and that a deal was possible in hours. It is moving quite quickly at the moment, the Irish official told a British Irish Chamber of Commerce event in Brussels. I think we are going to work over the next couple of hours with the UK government to close this off. I say hours because I think we are very close. Later on Thursday, the political editor of the BBC said the leadership of the DUP in Belfast had not signed off on the border deal, meaning it could yet stumble, but May continued to plan to meet Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk early on Friday in Brussels to finalize the agreement. The political editor of Sky News, quoting a DUP source, said the party would continue to work on the border issue on Friday. Moving to talks about trade and a Brexit transition are crucial for the future of May s premiership, and to keep trade flowing between the world s biggest trading bloc and its sixth largest national economy after Britain leaves on March 29, 2019. But the EU will only move to trade talks if there is enough progress on three key issues: the money Britain must pay to the EU;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says Pyongyang wants direct talks with Washington: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that North Korea wants direct talks with the United States to seek guarantees on its security from Washington, Russian news agencies reported. Lavrov said he had passed on Pyongyang s desire for direct talks to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when the two men met on the sidelines of a conference in Vienna on Thursday, the agencies reported. We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations, Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying. Our American colleagues, (including) Rex Tillerson, have heard this. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli troops clash with Palestinian protesters in West Bank, Gaza;GAZA (Reuters) - At least 31 people were wounded by Israeli army gunfire and rubber bullets, medics said, in Palestinian protests in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip on Thursday after the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital. In the West Bank cities of Hebron and Al-Bireh, thousands of demonstrators rallied with chants of Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Palestine , witnesses said. Some Palestinians threw stones at soldiers. Eleven protesters was hit by live fire and another 20 by rubber bullets, medics said. A military spokeswoman said soldiers had used riot-dispersal gear against hundreds of rock-throwers. In the Gaza Strip, dozens of protesters gathered near the border fence with Israel and threw rocks at soldiers on the other side. Seven protesters were wounded by live fire, one was in a critical condition, the health ministry said. Four people were wounded by live gunfire in the West Bank and another 20 were hit by rubber bullets, health officials said. An Israeli military spokeswoman had no immediate comment. Palestinian authorities called a general strike in protest at U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement about Jerusalem on Wednesday. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Member of armed groups including from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas s Fatah faction, appeared at a news conference in Gaza, their faces hidden by masks and called for a resumption of armed resistance in the West Bank. Abbas traveled to the Jordanian capital, Amman, to meet King Abdullah where he updated him on the latest developments, the Wafa news agency said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;33-Yr Old Skier LINDSEY VONN Says She Won’t Represent President Trump At Upcoming Olympics;Has there ever been a US Olympic athlete who, before representing the United States in the Olympic games, discussed whether or not they would be representing our President? Aren t the U.S. Olympic athletes made aware fairly early on, that they re representing our nation? I don t remember ever seeing any of our athletes carrying a flag with a picture of the President of the United States, or wearing apparel covered with the President s image or name. So why is Lindsey Vonn making a statement about how she s not going to be representing President Trump? Does anyone really care about Lindsey Vonn s opinion about President Trump? FOX News Olympic gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn says she ll represent the United States, but not President Trump, when she returns to the Winter Games in February.Vonn, who won a gold medal in the women s downhill competition in 2010 in Vancouver, skipped the 2014 Sochi games because of knee injuries. I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president, Vonn said this week amid the buildup to the 2018 games in PyeongChang, South Korea. I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremonies, she added. I want to represent our country well, and I don t think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that. Vonn also told CNN that she would absolutely not accept an invitation to the White House.Isn t this really more about a former Olympic athlete with an over-inflated ego and an overblown sense of how important her opinions are to the American people than anything else? ;left-news;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House not aware of other nations planning to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday it was not aware of any other country that planned to follow President Donald Trump s lead and recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. I m not aware of any countries that we anticipate that happening at any point soon, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. I m not saying that they aren t, but I m not aware of them. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Vice President Pence 'unwelcome in Palestine': Fatah official;GAZA (Reuters) - A senior Palestinian official in President Mahmoud Abbas s ruling Fatah party said on Thursday that U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, due to visit the region later this month, is unwelcome in Palestine . In the name of Fatah I say that we will not welcome Trump s deputy in the Palestinian Territories. He asked to meet (Abbas) on the 19th of this month in Bethlehem, such a meeting will not take place, Jibril Rajoub said. Aides for Abbas were not immediately available for comment. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's 5-Star sheds anti-EU image, calls for reform;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement supports the European Union and wants significant law-making powers transferred from governments to the European Parliament, its leader Luigi Di Maio told Reuters. 5-Star, which leads opinion polls ahead of an election to be held by May, is trying to reassure Italy s partners and financial markets that it can be trusted in government, and distance itself from its previously eurosceptic positions. We are pro-EU and we intend to contribute to creating the future of Europe, the 31-year-old lower house deputy, who was elected in September as 5-Star s leader and prime minister candidate, said in an interview. He said if 5-Star wins power it will negotiate with Italy s partners to try to set up EU-wide welfare policies to tackle growing poverty and inequality in many countries in the bloc, including Italy, the EU s fourth largest economy. If it reforms, the EU can be a solution to many of our problems, Di Maio said, calling for more law-making powers for the European Parliament as the only directly elected EU body. He said 5-Star s stance on Europe and the euro had shifted since 2014, when it lobbied for a referendum to take Italy out of the common currency zone and joined the eurosceptic group of Britain s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the European Parliament. He said the defeat of traditional parties in France and the difficulties in forming stable, majority governments in Germany, Spain and Portugal meant there is no longer the wide EU support for austerity policies that 5-Star has opposed. It has not totally withdrawn the idea of a referendum on the euro, but it now calls it a last resort to be employed only if Italy wins no concessions on EU governance from its partners. We set out with strong opposition to the euro because back then there was too much difference between our positions and the monolithic, pro-austerity position promoted by Germany which dominated in Europe, he said. But now things have changed. 5-Star tried this year to leave the UKIP group in the European Parliament to join the pro-Europe Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), but the switch fell through due to resistance from some ALDE members. Di Maio said that after the next European elections in 2019 5-Star would avoid linking up with any extremist, populist, xenophobic or old-style leftist movements. Domestically, 5-Star bases its support on an anti-corruption drive and policies that bridge the traditional left-right divide such as clean energy, tax cuts for small businesses and more public investment in infrastructure and education. As part of a charm offensive as the election nears, last month Di Maio visited Washington to burnish 5-Star s image with the U.S. administration, and party officials met in Rome with representatives of large international banks and hedge funds. He spoke to Reuters on the sidelines of a conference organized by Italian media website EUnews. 5-Star, which shuns alliances with Italy s traditional parties, leads opinion polls with around 28 percent of the vote, some 3 points ahead of the ruling Democratic Party, but it seems sure to fall well short of a parliamentary majority. Di Maio said 5-Star s plan was to form a minority government and seek support from other parties for its policies on a case-by-case basis. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Tusk to make Brexit statement early Friday;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Council President Donald Tusk will make a statement on Brexit early on Friday, his office said on Thursday, prompting speculation on the fate of British Prime Minister Theresa May s plans for a deal with Brussels. She was in Brussels about to agree outline divorce terms on Britain s withdrawal on Monday, Dec. 4, when she was interrupted by objections from her Northern Irish allies to a planned wording on the Irish border. Talks have been continuing since then to try to resolve the dispute so that EU leaders will agree at a summit next Friday, Dec. 15, to open talks on future trade. No details were available of Tusk s plans for the morning, when he will brief reporters at 7:50 a.m. (0650 GMT). An EU official noted, however, that he would be departing for a scheduled visit to Hungary at 8:15 a.m. Earlier, a spokesman for European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said May had an effective deadline of Sunday night if she wants to return to Brussels to seal a deal and hope to have agreement on trade talks next Friday. Tusk s role in the delicate choreography of reaching an accord had been to wait until May strikes a deal on making sufficient progress on divorce terms with Juncker s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. Tusk would then confirm that he is asking the other 27 EU national leaders to consider draft guidelines on trade negotiations for approval at the summit he will chair. However, Tusk has also warned that time is running out for him to secure the agreement of the other leaders to opening the trade talks on such a tight schedule after May and Barnier reach agreement. Failure, officials say, would push any deal back into the new year, unnerving already worried investors in Britain. Tusk said in October that if London failed to settle divorce terms by the end of this year, the EU would have to reconsider its approach to negotiations intended to limit disruption when Britain leaves the European Union in March 2019. Senior officials have said this week that a more immediate consequence of failing to strike a deal this month could be new pressure on May at home to step down which in itself could greatly disrupt the negotiating process. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greece and Turkey trade barbs as Erdogan visits Athens;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece and Turkey squared up over old disputes on Thursday during a state visit to Athens by President Tayyip Erdogan that quickly descended into verbal sparring over a list of historical grievances. Designed to boost relations between the two nations, the first visit of a Turkish president in 65 years quickly turned into a blunt grudge-fest between the NATO allies. The two countries agreed to revive a consultation process for confidence-building measures, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said. By the end of the first day, both sides appeared to pull back from what threatened to be a massive diplomatic flop. There is a lot more which unites us, from that which divides us, as long as there is will, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos told a state banquet in Erdogan s honor. We can live side by side, Erdogan said in a translation provided by Greek state TV. Our aim is to build the future differently, with unity, coexistence and solidarity, he said. Earlier, he and Erdogan turned what was expected to be a staid welcoming ceremony into an unprecedented bout of diplomatic sparring over a host of differences. The topics vented ranged from discrimination against Muslims in northern Greece to Turkey s military presence in ethnically-split Cyprus, and loose interpretations of an international treaty defining the borders of the two countries. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne covered a range of issues and defined the borders of modern-day Turkey, and by extension, Greece. Erdogan told Greek media outlets before he even landed that the treaty needed a revision, putting Greeks in a defensive mode. At the noon meeting, Pavlopoulos ruled out any change to the treaty while a stern-looking Erdogan, seated beside him, said there were details in the treaty which required clarity. Though Erdogan focused on religious rights of the Turkish Muslim community in northern Greece, he said there were also problems on military topics . The truth, is I m a little confused regarding if what he is putting on the table is to modernize, to update, to comply with the Lausanne Treaty, Tsipras said at a news conference as Erdogan stood at his side. SHOW-STOPPER The long exchange between Erdogan and the Greek president was the show-stopper, however. This is the bedrock of our friendship, said Pavlopoulos, referring to the treaty and pointedly telling his VIP guest he was a Professor of Law. It has no flaws, it does not need to be reviewed or updated, he said. Erdogan responded by saying it was a treaty signed 94 years ago and did not apply only to Greece or Turkey but also included countries such as Japan. It was also supposed to protect the Turkish minority in northern Greece, whom Erdogan said were still discriminated against. You can t find such treatment of my Greek citizens in Turkey, Erdogan said in a 30-minute, back-and-forth exchange where notes were slipped to both him and Pavlopoulos by ministers. Erdogan is the first Turkish president to visit Athens since 1952. He is now doing his best to make sure that the next visit will not take place in the next 150 years, said Wolfango Piccoli, Co-President of Teneo Intelligence. In Northern Greece, Erdogan said, Greece insisted on calling the Turkish community there Muslim rather than using the term Turkish . There are more than 100,000 of them in the area known as Western Thrace. They can t accept the word Turk being written outside a school, said Erdogan, who is due to visit the region on Friday. Tsipras told Erdogan he too had sensitivities on religious freedoms. The Greek government, he said, had moved ahead with the reconstruction of a series of mosques around the country. Yet not once did it cross our mind to hold an Orthodox religious ceremony in Fethiye mosque (in Athens) as wrongly, in my view, is taking place repeatedly in Hagia Sophia, he said of the imposing structure in Istanbul that was once a church, converted into a mosque and now a museum. There have been readings of the Koran in Hagia Sophia in recent years. The NATO partners teetered on the brink of war in 1974, 1987 and 1996 over long-running disputes on ethnically divided Cyprus, mineral rights in the Aegean Sea and sovereignty over uninhabited islets in that sea. We allowed your re-entry to NATO, Erdogan told Pavlopoulos, referring to the departure of Greece from the bloc in 1974 after Turkey s invasion of Cyprus in response to a brief Greek-inspired coup. It rejoined in 1980. If it wasn t for us, you wouldn t have been able to (rejoin), Erdogan said. While relations have improved, many Greeks believe Turkey has territorial aspirations against their country, an issue Erdogan said on at least two occasions was not the case. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel strikes Gaza militant posts after rockets fired at Israel: army;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said on Thursday that an aircraft and a tank had targeted two posts belonging to militants in the Gaza Strip after three rockets were launched at Israel. Sirens sounded in Israel at various locations on a day of heightened tension following demonstrations in the coastal enclave and the occupied West Bank as Palestinians protested at U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement on Wednesday that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Two rockets launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip fell short inside the Palestinian enclave earlier in the evening and a third, fired later, landed in an open area in Israel causing no casualties or damage, an army spokeswoman said. Gaza residents said there were no casualties from the Israeli attack and that two unmanned lookout posts were hit. A Jihadist Salafi group in Gaza called the Al-Tawheed Brigades - which does not heed the call from the enclave s dominant force, Hamas, to desist from firing rockets - claimed responsibility for the launches. In response to ... projectiles fired at Israel throughout the day ... an IDF tank and an IAF aircraft targeted two military posts in the Gaza Strip. The IDF holds Hamas responsible for the hostile activity perpetrated against Israel from the Gaza Strip, an army statement said. During the Gaza war in 2014, Israel s Iron Dome rocket interceptor system largely protected the country s heartland from thousands of rocket barrages fired by militants. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Ex-South Carolina cop gets 20 years in prison for black motorist's death;CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - The white former policeman caught on video shooting an unarmed black man in the back after a 2015 traffic stop in South Carolina was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison, with a federal judge ruling that the killing amounted to murder. The decision came a year after Michael Slager s state murder trial for the death of 50-year-old Walter Scott ended with a deadlocked jury. Slager, 36, is one of the few police officers in recent years in the United States to receive prison time for an on-duty shooting. Everyone recognizes that this was a tragedy, U.S. District Judge David Norton told a Charleston courtroom packed with members of both men s families. What s just for the Scott family is not necessarily just for the Slager family, and what s just for the Slager family is not necessarily just for the Scott family, he said. It s a zero-sum game. Slager was a patrolman in North Charleston when he pulled over Scott, a father of four, for a broken brake light on April 4, 2015. He said he opened fire because he felt threatened after the motorist tried to take his stun gun during a struggle. Yet he pleaded guilty in May to violating Scott s civil rights by using excessive force, a charge that carried a possible lifetime prison sentence. Slager shot at Scott eight times, hitting him five times. State prosecutors dropped the murder charge in exchange for the federal plea. On Thursday, Slager expressed remorse. I wish this never would have happened, said Slager, jailed since his plea and dressed in an inmate s gray and white jumpsuit. I wish I could go back and change events, but I can t and I am very sorry for that. A bystander s cellphone video of the shooting drew national attention to the case, renewing concerns about police treatment of minorities. The footage was a centerpiece of the four-day sentence hearing, with both prosecutors and defense lawyers arguing it bolstered their cases. Norton sided with the government, finding that Slager had committed second-degree murder and obstructed justice by lying to investigators about Scott trying to grab his Taser. The judge rejected the defense argument that Slager was provoked or acted in the heat of passion. Scott s relatives and their lawyers said the punishment marked a historic moment for justice. They called on law enforcement to rethink the use of deadly force. Before court ended, several family members told Slager they had forgiven him. But their pain has not diminished. We will never be the same again, said Anthony Scott, the motorist s older brother. How could someone shoot someone in the back like that as they were running away? ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Neapolitan pizza making wins world heritage status;JEJU, South Korea (Reuters) - The art of Neapolitan pizza making won world heritage status on Thursday, joining a horse-riding game from Iran and Dutch wind mills on UNESCO s culture list. UNESCO accepted the art of Neapolitan pizzaiuoli, or pizza makers, on the world body s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Congratulations #Italy! it said in a tweet after a meeting in Jeju, South Korea where the decision was made. Italy argued the practice of the pizzaiuoli - preparing and flipping the dough, topping it and baking it in a wood-fired oven - was part of the country s cultural and gastronomic tradition. In Rome, pizzeria owner Romano Fiore celebrated the decision. I am honored, like all Italians and Neapolitans are...pizza has centuries of history, he said. Archetypal Neapolitan pizza has a relatively thin crust with the exception of the rim, which, when baked, bloats like a tiny bicycle tire. It is made in a wood-burning brick oven and has two classic versions: Marinara (tomato, garlic, oregano and oil) and, the most famous, Margherita (tomato, mozzarella, oil and basil), giving it the red, white and green colors of the Italian flag. Tradition holds that the Margherita pizza was created in 1889 by a local chef in honor of Queen Margherita, who was visiting Naples, south of Rome on Italy s Tyrrhenian coast. As pizza has become a favorite dish around the world, foreign innovations in toppings have often left Italians perplexed and aghast. Matteo Martino, a customer at Fiore s pizzeria, said before the expected announcement, I think, and I hope, that this could be the chance to make foreigners understand how pizza is made, without Nutella or pineapple. UNESCO also accepted Chogan, an Iranian horse-riding game accompanied by music and storytelling, and the craft of millers operating windmills and watermills in the Netherlands. Traditional boat making on the Indonesian island of South Sulawesi, and Nsima, a maize-based culinary tradition from the African country of Malawi, also joined the list. Food culture already on the UNESCO list includes Turkish coffee culture and tradition, the gingerbread craft of northern Croatia and the traditional ancient Georgian method of Qvevri wine-making. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hamas calls for Palestinian uprising against Israel;GAZA (Reuters) - The powerful Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called on Thursday for a new uprising against Israel after U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. We should call for and we should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a speech in Gaza. Haniyeh, elected the group s overall leader in May, urged Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to hold rallies against the U.S decision on Friday, calling it a day of rage . Let December 8 be the first day of the intifada against the occupier, he said. Israel and the United States consider Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007, a terrorist organization. It does not recognize Israel s right to exist and its suicide bombings helped spearhead the last intifada, from 2000 to 2005. We have given instruction to all Hamas members and to all its wings to be fully ready for any new instructions or orders that may be given to confront this strategic danger that threatens Jerusalem and threatens Palestine, said Haniyeh. United Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim, and it is the capital of the state of Palestine, all of Palestine, he said, referring to territory including Israel as well as the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Haniyeh called on Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from peacemaking with Israel and on Arabs to boycott the Trump administration. It should be announced that the so-called peace agreement was buried, once and for all, and that there is nothing called a partner for the Palestinians in peace, he said. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate confirms top EPA enforcement official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Thursday confirmed the Environmental Protection Agency’s third high-level official after Administrator Scott Pruitt, approving Susan Bodine to become the agency’s top enforcement official. Bodine will serve as assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, leading the agency’s enforcement actions against polluters. In September, two senators threatened to hold up her confirmation out of concern that she was serving as special counsel to Pruitt while she waited out the confirmation process, a possible violation of a federal law, and because she was slow to respond to Senate Democrats’ oversight queries. Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware said on Thursday that he was “satisfied” with the responses she and EPA officials sent, clearing the way for her confirmation. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;President's son had legitimate reasons to not answer House panel questions: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that Donald Trump Jr. was on solid legal ground when he refused to answer questions from a congressional committee about a conversation he had with his father, President Donald Trump, about emails relating to a meeting he attended with Trump associates and Russians. Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the White House believed there was a “legitimate reason and basis for not answering those questions.” She declined to provide details. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;FBI Director Wray defends bureau in wake of Republican criticism;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation defended his employees on Thursday against a growing chorus of accusations by Republicans, including President Donald Trump, that its agents were allowing political bias to seep into their investigations. In testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray said he believed the reputation of the FBI was not, as Trump recently wrote on Twitter, “in tatters.” “The agents, analysts and staff of the FBI are big boys and girls. We understand we will take criticism from all corners,” Wray said. “My experience has been that our reputation is quite good.” Republicans had in recent weeks stepped up criticism of the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump campaign aides had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The move is widely seen as a tactic to undermine Mueller’s investigation, which has so far led to criminal charges against four people from Trump’s inner circle. It comes as Republicans prepare to head into a potentially challenging midterm 2018 congressional election cycle. Republicans have sought to re-litigate questions relating to the FBI’s handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, and questioned whether Justice Department officials gave her preferential treatment in their decision not to charge her with a crime. They have criticized former FBI Director James Comey for publicly announcing a decision not to refer Clinton for prosecution and asked whether the decision-making was politically tainted. Wray took over the helm of the FBI after Trump abruptly fired Comey earlier this year. Most recently, Republicans got fresh ammunition against Mueller and the FBI, after media reports said FBI agent Peter Strzok was removed from the Russia probe because he had exchanged private text messages that disparaged Trump and supported Clinton. Strzok was involved in both the Clinton email and Russia investigations. Wray acknowledged Thursday that Strzok was removed from Mueller’s investigation, but said he was reassigned, not disciplined. “We cannot afford for the FBI - which has traditionally been dubbed the premier law enforcement agency in the world - to become tainted by politicization or the perception of a lack of even-handedness,” Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said. Wray repeatedly refused to weigh in on how his predecessor handled the Clinton matter, and deferred to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is conducting a wide-ranging review into the topic. Horowitz recently told lawmakers he expects his review to be complete by late winter or early spring. “When those findings come to me, I will take appropriate action if necessary,” Wray said. Democrats, meanwhile, urged Wray to stand up against bullying by the president. “Your job requires you to have the courage to stand up to the president, Mr. Director,” said the committee’s Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler. “There are real consequences for allowing the President to continue unchecked in this manner.” ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pentagon wants 12 month procurement time for major weapons programs, official;(Reuters) - The Pentagon’s acquisition chief said on Wednesday she wants to cut the time for major procurements to 12 months from an average of 2.5 years, speaking during a congressional hearing on the reorganization of the Defense Department’s procurement system. The Pentagon typically takes months and often years to make procurement decisions, especially for major weapons programs. A more rapid procurement process could accelerate the pace of orders for weapons makers like Lockheed Martin Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp. During the hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, panel chairman Senator John McCain called the Pentagon’s buying program a “system of organized irresponsibility.” The Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Ellen Lord, was asked her goal for cutting back time for weapons procurement and she responded “12 months for major programs.” Lord, who began working at the Pentagon in August, was formerly chief executive of defense contractor Textron Systems, an aerospace and defense company that makes drones and missiles. If the acquisition process is shortened it would be good for larger weapons makers because time is money, Byron Callan, a defense analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, said in an interview. The move could also increase competition from smaller companies that often lack the financial resources to wait out lengthy Pentagon procurements, he said. The Pentagon’s weapons procurement process generally begins by soliciting proposals from industry, often includes a competitive process to find a vendor, as well as product testing before delivery and final payment. Critics say the decision-making part of the current procurement process takes too long and could be reduced. Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army, said his office was examining a way to reduce the requirements development process, where the military articulates the concept of what it needs, to 12 months from five years. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) changed the structure of the Pentagon’s Office of Acquisition by splitting it into two new positions, an undersecretary for research and engineering focusing on innovation, and an undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment focusing on program management. That process is still unfolding, but during the hearing testimony showed the initial effect was that decision making for some procurement processes had moved to individual branches of the U.S. military. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pelosi says Democrats will not back short-term funding bill on Thursday;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday her party would not support a short-term funding bill being brought up for a vote later in the day because it did not include any key Democratic priorities. Pelosi said Democrats were seeking funding for fighting opioid addiction, veterans, the children’s health program, community health centers, disaster funding and a solution for young undocumented immigrants to the United States. Her statement suggested Republicans would have to find the votes they need to pass the bill among their own members. If a short-term funding measure is not approved by the Republican-led Congress and signed by Republican President Donald Trump, all but the most essential parts of the federal government will shut down. Pelosi told a news briefing that “Democrats are not willing to shut government down,” but she also said her members “will not leave here (for the holidays) without a ... fix” to the problem of illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, who are sometimes referred to as “Dreamers.” Pelosi said the temporary spending measure before the House on Thursday was a “waste of time.” “It has nothing about (the) opioid epidemic. There’s nothing about veterans’ funding, nothing about CHIP— CHIP — children’s health insurance, community health centers, nothing about, well, the DREAM Act, among other things,” she said. The short-term spending bill does provide some short-term help for states that are running out of money to finance the children’s health insurance program for lower-income children, but it stops short of renewing the program, which Congress allowed to expire at the end of September. Pelosi, discussing the immigration issue, said Democrats were willing to accept new funding for border security, but not for a border wall. “We’re not going to turn this country into a reign of terror of domestic enforcement and have the Dreamers pay that price,” she said. Republicans have a majority in both the House and Senate. But they will need some Democratic support to get the temporary spending bill past Senate procedural hurdles that require 60 votes, since there are only 52 Republicans in the 100-member chamber. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya says pushing to be removed from Trump travel ban list;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya’s internationally recognized government has appealed to the United States to drop or ease a travel ban imposed on its citizens by U.S. President Donald Trump, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. “The Libyan Foreign Ministry, through its embassy in Washington, has begun to take measures to lift Libya from the list of countries and to ease the restrictions on Libyan citizens,” the ministry said in a statement. Libya is one of six Muslim-majority countries subject to the travel ban. This week the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ban to take full effect while litigation over its ultimate validity continues. The ban was also discussed at a meeting between Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Siyala and U.S Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke on Monday, the statement said. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: White House doesn't foresee shutdown, Trump wants 20 percent corporate tax;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is confident it can craft a deal to avoid a government shutdown and foresees a compromise with lawmakers that will include increases in defense and non-defense spending, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said on Thursday. In an interview with Reuters, Short also said Trump wanted a corporate tax rate of 20 percent in the tax cut package being debated in Congress despite the president saying recently that it could end up higher. Trump held a meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress on Thursday to work on bridging differences over the U.S. budget and avoid a stop in government services. “We have been willing to go along with additional spending on the non-defense side,” Short said of a potential compromise deal on government spending. “I’m hopeful that ... we find a pathway to get a two-year budget cap deal” that enables budget writers to put together a bill for fiscal year 2018 with boundaries for fiscal year 2019 as well, he said. Short said the White House stood firmly behind the goal of a 20-percent corporate tax rate as part of the planned tax overhaul currently in Congress. Trump’s recent reference to a possible 22-percent corporate tax rate was only a product of conversations he had had with lawmakers, Short said. “I think he was just reflecting what conversations he had heard from them, but that ... wasn’t intended to signal: this is an endorsement of raising the corporate rate,” he said. “When you’re seeing countries like Great Britain go below 20, you’re seeing Ireland at 12 percent, potentially going to single digits, 20 percent is about as high as we feel comfortable going.” Short said he expected Congress to approve the Republicans’ tax effort this year, though Trump may not sign it until 2018. He said the White House supported a deal agreed with Senator Susan Collins that would restore billions of dollars of subsidy payments, called cost-sharing reductions, or CSRs, to health insurers, in exchange for her support for the tax bill. “The reduction of corporate tax rates, the delivery of tax rates for middle income families, the simplification of the tax code for the price of CSR payments was a transaction we were willing to make with Susan Collins,” he said. Short said the president was eager to find a legislative solution for immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children and previously received protection under the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) program. “He is anxious to solve that problem, but doesn’t feel like the funding of our military and the funding of our government should be held hostage by that,” Short said. Democrats have made a solution for DACA a key priority, but House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday they would not shut the government over the issue. Short said he was confident that a shutdown would be avoided. “Not just markets, but Americans shouldn’t worry about it. We’re going to make sure that government stays open and funded. That’s a priority,” he said. Short said the administration planned to outline its priorities for welfare reform next year. That, along with an infrastructure bill, would be top legislative priorities in 2018, though their timing would depend on the congressional calendar, he said. Short also said the White House would support legislation that lays out how to address sexual misconduct by lawmakers. “The White House is supportive, but also I think that we recognize the ability of Congress to self-regulate,” he said. Short, who is the top interlocutor between the White House and Congress and has become a frequent guest on television to explain Trump’s policies, suggested he was staying put despite a recent report saying he could leave the administration. “I have no plans to go anywhere,” he said. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Funding bill clears hurdle in House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to extend funding for the U.S. government through Dec. 22 and avert agency shutdowns on Saturday cleared a procedural hurdle in the House of Representatives on Thursday, paving the way for a vote on passage later in the day. By a vote of 238-188, the House approved the rules for debating the stop-gap funding bill. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Manafort's work on draft op-ed does not violate gag order: defense lawyer;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort did not violate a court gag order when he helped edit an opinion piece about his political work in Ukraine, his defense lawyer Kevin Downing said in a court filing on Thursday. The filing comes after prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller earlier this week said they could no longer agree to more lenient bail terms for Manafort, after discovering he was working with a colleague tied to Russian intelligence agencies to ghost-write an opinion piece that cast his political work in a favorable light. Downing said in the Thursday filing that his client was only involved in editing the piece to ensure accuracy, and that it would not prejudice the case because it was ultimately published in a Ukrainian newspaper, not an American one. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump open to biofuel policy reform, senators say after meeting;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is open to reforming the country’s biofuels policy if it can be done in a way that protects jobs in both the refining and agriculture industries, senators said on Thursday after a meeting with Trump on the issue. Nine lawmakers had requested the meeting to argue that the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, a law requiring refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels like corn-based ethanol into the fuel supply every year, was threatening to put refineries in their districts out of business. The Trump administration had ruled in favor of Big Corn and against the refining industry in a series of decisions this year, with senators on both sides using parliamentary procedures like holds on administrative appointments to punish rivals. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the lawmaker delegation, said Trump was open to a “win-win” solution. “The group as a whole agreed with the president to reconvene next week and to expand the group and work together to find a (solution) that is a win for blue-collar workers, a win for jobs, but also a win for farmers at the same time,” he told Fox News after the meeting. Republican Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and James Lankford of Oklahoma also said Trump expressed a desire to help refiners in a way that protected the interests of farmers, but that more discussions were needed. “It was just a recognition that this is a more complicated problem and we’re going to have to get everybody together from all sides,” Lankford told reporters. The White House said the meeting was productive and that Trump remained committed to the RFS, farmers and energy workers. “He understands there are differing views on this issue, and the Administration looks forward to working with all the stakeholders toward a mutually agreeable path forward,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement. The RFS was introduced more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions, and has since fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year. Refiners oppose the RFS because they say it costs them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in blending and regulatory expenses while propping up demand for rival fuels. Refiners that do not have the facilities to blend biofuels must purchase credits, called RINs, from those that do and hand them into the EPA once a year. A refining lobbyist briefed on Thursday’s meeting said one possible solution discussed was capping the RINs - an idea that is opposed by the Renewable Fuels Association, the largest biofuel trade group. The refining industry has requested tweaks to the policy in the past that would cut the annual volume targets for biofuels, allow ethanol exports to be counted against those targets, or shift the blending burden to supply terminals. While the leadership of the EPA, which administers the RFS, had considered some of the changes, it ultimately rejected them under pressure from Midwestern lawmakers, and slightly increased biofuels volumes targets for 2018. The meeting with Trump could set the stage for negotiations over legislation, but any measure would likely require cooperation from representatives of the corn belt. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said this week he was not invited to the meeting and called it “a waste of time.” Biofuels industry representatives did not attend the meeting. Cruz has said he would block Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey’s nomination to a key post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture until he gets a meeting about biofuels that includes all sides on the issue. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress passes bill to temporarily fund government, avert shutdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress, rushing to beat a Friday midnight deadline, on Thursday passed legislation funding the government through Dec. 22. By a vote of 235-193, the House of Representatives passed the bill and rapidly sent it to the Senate, which then approved it 81-14, sending it to President Donald Trump for signing into law. While a Saturday shutdown of government agencies was averted, Congress and Trump will now have to come up with a deal to keep the government operating beyond Dec. 22. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Paul Manafort, Special Counsel Mueller tussle over Ukrainian op-ed;"(Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort did not violate a court gag order when he helped edit an opinion piece about his political work in Ukraine, his defense lawyer Kevin Downing argued in a court filing on Thursday. A federal grand jury indicted Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates in October as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The charges against Manafort include conspiracy to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, who was ousted in 2014. Thursday’s filing came after prosecutors working for Mueller said earlier this week that they no longer could agree to more lenient bail terms for Manafort after discovering that he was working with a colleague tied to Russian intelligence agencies on an opinion piece that cast his work in a favorable light. Mueller’s office argued that his efforts to work behind the scenes on the piece as recently as November 30 ran afoul of the judge’s November 8 order instructing all parties to refrain from making statements to the media or in public settings that could prejudice the case. Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, declined to comment. Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for Mueller, also declined to comment. Downing said in Thursday’s filing that his client was involved only in editing the piece to ensure accuracy, and that it would not prejudice the case because it was ultimately published in a Ukrainian newspaper, not an American one. “The defense did not, and does not, understand that the court meant to impose a gag order precluding Mr. Manafort from addressing matters, which do not ‘pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice to this case,’” Downing wrote. Earlier in the week, prosecutors said in a filing that they had reached out to Manafort’s lawyers when they discovered the draft and had been assured that it would not be published. The piece appeared online in the English-language Kyiv Post on Thursday. The article, which was authored by Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry, praised Manafort’s political work in helping Ukraine secure better relations with the European Union. “I can only wonder why some American media dare falsely claim that Paul Manafort lobbied Russian interests in Ukraine,” the piece said. “Without his input Ukraine would not have had the command focus on reforms that were required to be a nation candidate to the EU.” Brian Bonner, the chief editor at the Kyiv Post, told Reuters that the article was submitted on Monday. Bonner said Voloshyn claimed to have written the article and then sent it to Manafort and the American’s longtime Russian colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik, for fact-checking before submission. Bonner said he did not immediately publish the article because he was suspicious of the contents and wanted to confirm that Voloshyn had written it. “It was blatantly pro-Manafort with an opinion about his activities that most people don’t share and that his record in Ukraine doesn’t support,” Bonner wrote in an email. Voloshyn told Reuters he was not immediately in a position to comment. It was not clear when U.S. District judge Amy Berman Jackson would decide the issue, but Manafort and Gates are due to appear before her on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for a status hearing. ";politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Intelligence chairman cleared of disclosing classified information;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee on Thursday cleared the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee of charges that he had disclosed classified information, potentially clearing the way for him to resume leadership of the panel’s Russia investigation. Republican Representative Devin Nunes, who had consistently denied wrongdoing, thanked the committee for its finding, but said the probe had taken too long and the accusations against him were politically motivated. Nunes stepped aside from leading the intelligence committee’s investigation of Russia and the 2016 U.S. presidential election in April as the Ethics panel said it was investigating allegations that he had disclosed classified information. The accusations against Nunes arose after President Donald Trump tweeted in March, without giving evidence, that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, had wiretapped him as he competed for the presidency. Two and a half weeks later, Nunes, a Trump ally, told reporters that an unidentified source had shown him intelligence reports containing “unmasked” names of Trump associates swept up in foreign surveillance, prompting accusations that Nunes had disclosed classified information to provide cover to Trump. Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress have frequently raised the “unmasking” issue during the investigation of allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s chances of defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton and whether Trump associates colluded with Russia. Russia had denied the accusations, and Trump has dismissed any talk of collusion. Some Republicans contend that the potential surveillance of Americans and release of their names, possibly for political purposes, should be addressed by investigators. Former Obama administration officials have denied such accusations and labeled the issue a distraction from serious investigations of U.S. election integrity. Nunes criticized the ethics panel for taking “an unbelievable eight months” to dismiss the matter, and called on the panel to publicly release all transcripts related to his case. Ethics committee staff could not immediately be reached for comment. In a statement, the panel said intelligence experts had concluded the information Nunes disclosed was not classified, so it would take no further action and the matter was closed. It was not clear whether Nunes would formally resume leadership of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation. His spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Republican Representative Mike Conaway has been leading it since April. Nunes has remained chairman of the intelligence panel. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 7) - Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Go get the new book on Andrew Jackson by Brian Kilmeade...Really good. @foxandfriends [0808 EST] - National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day - “A day that will live in infamy!” December 7, 1941 [1004 EST] - Today, our entire nation pauses to REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR—and the brave warriors who on that day stood tall and fought for America. God Bless our HEROES who wear the uniform, and God Bless the United States of America. #PearlHarborRemembranceDay [1116 EST] - Today, the U.S. flag flies at half-staff at the @WhiteHouse, in honor of National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. instagram.com/p/BcaeCLLAEkl/ [1504 EST] - Today, as we Remember Pearl Harbor, it was an incredible honor to be joined with surviving Veterans of the attack on 12/7/1941. They are HEROES, and they are living witnesses to American History. All American hearts are filled with gratitude for their service and their sacrifice. [1552 EST] - Across the battlefields, oceans, and harrowing skies of Europe and the Pacific throughout the war, one great battle cry could be heard by America’s friends and foes alike: -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress averts government shutdown for now;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress moved rapidly on Thursday to send President Donald Trump a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown this weekend, leaving fights over budget priorities and a range of other controversial issues for the coming weeks. The House of Representatives, working against a Friday midnight deadline, approved legislation in a 235-193 vote to fund a wide range of federal programs through Dec. 22. The Senate followed up by approving the bill 81-14. The White House has said Trump will sign it into law. The measure creates more time for a reckoning between Republicans and Democrats about budget differences, which Trump discussed in a meeting with leading lawmakers at the White House earlier in the day. “We hope that we’re going to make some great progress for our country. I think that will happen,” Trump said. The White House said negotiations would resume on Friday. Leaders now have about two weeks to find common ground on a host of thorny issues for the next government funding bill in order to prevent a partial government shutdown on Dec. 23. Both sides want to avoid having parts of the government close, particularly during the holidays, for fear of a public backlash, and leaders from both parties have preemptively blamed the other for such a potential outcome. That political blame game is likely to continue in the next two weeks while, behind the scenes, leaders hammer out a compromise. Republicans mainly want a big increase in defense spending for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2018. But Democrats are insisting that any added Pentagon funding be accompanied by increases to other domestic programs. Democrats also want to enact into law protections for nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who were children when they were brought into the United States. Republicans want a much wider series of immigration law changes to further clamp down on foreign arrivals, and they want immigration negotiations to be held on a separate track from the government funding bill. Democrats also want to shore up the Affordable Care Act, known as “Obamacare,” by reviving federal subsidies for low-income people in the program. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer joined Trump and Republican congressional leaders for the talks after canceling a similarly planned meeting last week when the president posted a note on Twitter attacking their policy positions. The two Democrats said in a statement that the meeting on Thursday was productive but nothing specific had been agreed. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis joined the group to discuss military matters. The White House foresees a compromise with lawmakers that will include increases in defense and non-defense spending, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told Reuters. He said the White House wants a deal that covers spending for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Earlier on Thursday, Schumer said Trump seemed to be rooting for a shutdown and warned that, if one occurs, “it will fall on his shoulders.” “His party controls the Senate, the House and the presidency,” he said. “Nobody here wants to see a shutdown. We Democrats are not interested in one.” Pelosi said Democrats were not willing to shut down the government over the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) immigration program, but she also said “we will not leave here without a DACA fix.” ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aide tries to refocus U.S. tax debate after Trump's corporate rate remark;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s weekend remark about a scaled-back tax cut for corporations sparked behind-the-scenes debate in the U.S. Congress, with a White House aide trying on Thursday to minimize the impact of the president’s comment. Two rival tax bills, passed separately by the Senate and the House of Representatives, propose cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent, but they differ in other areas that Republicans are trying to merge into final legislation. Speaking to reporters after the Senate approved its tax bill on Saturday, Trump said the corporate tax rate in the final legislation, expected soon from lawmakers, “could be 22 (percent) ... it could also be 20 (percent).” The remark whetted the interest of some Republicans who see a slight upward bump in the proposed corporate tax rate as capturing needed federal revenue that would help solve other problems with the legislation, according to lobbyists. “The 20 percent rate ought to be our goal,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, who is expected to head a bicameral House-Senate negotiating committee. “My view is the president is giving us flexibility in that area if it’s needed. No decision’s been made on if that’s needed,” the Texas Republican told reporters. But White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told Reuters on Thursday that Trump was not voicing support for a higher proposed corporate rate. Instead, he may have been only expressing views conveyed to him by Republican senators. “I think he was just reflecting what conversations he had heard from them, but that ... wasn’t intended to signal: this is an endorsement of raising the corporate rate,” Short said. “We believe that 20 percent is the right number ... 20 percent is about as high as we feel comfortable going,” he said in an interview. Trump and his Republican allies have plenty riding on what happens over the next few weeks. A sweeping U.S. tax overhaul, which has not been achieved since 1986, would give Republicans their first major legislative victory of 2017, after their failure to overturn former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. Without a win, Republicans fear they could lose their control of the House and Senate in the 2018 congressional elections. But it may be too late to avoid confusion over priorities as the tax debate moves forward in Congress. Lobbyists said many perceive that Trump and his advisers would accept a corporate rate higher than 20 percent. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Thursday that a 22 percent corporate rate would not undermine the economic boost that Republicans say tax cuts will create. Analysts say the corporate income tax rate could be a ready source of revenue for lawmakers, as they move toward a final bill that can lose no more than $1.5 trillion in revenue over the next decade under Senate rules. Republicans are considering a more costly deduction for state and local taxes than the $10,000 property tax deduction contained in the House and Senate bills. One version would allow taxpayers to choose a $10,000 deduction for either property or income taxes. House lawmakers also want to adopt the House bill’s repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax, which would cost about $40 billion in revenue over a decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Senate retained the tax. A House limit on the amount of debt interest payments that businesses can deduct from their income would also cost about $136 billion more than the Senate version, the JCT said. Analysts say a one percentage point change in the corporate rate equals about $100 billion in revenues over a decade. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House approves stop-gap government funding bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives, working against a Friday midnight deadline, approved legislation on Thursday to fund a wide range of federal programs through Dec. 22 and avoid a partial government shutdown when existing money expires. By a vote of 235-193, the House approved the stop-gap spending bill, sending it to the Senate for passage, which is expected by Friday. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. regulators offer Congress olive branch on loans;NEW YORK (LPC/IFR) - U.S. regulators said they are open to revising restrictions on leveraged lending, offering an olive branch to a GOP-controlled Congress keen to roll back banking regulations. The three main U.S. bank regulatory agencies, in recent letters seen by Reuters, said they could revisit the guidelines they put in place in 2013. Critics say those guidelines have hampered business, and members of Congress started pressing for a rollback shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. In theory, the guidelines prevent banks from loaning money when doing so would put the borrower’s leverage at six times or higher, or for companies that could not quickly pay down debt. They were broadly intended to prevent the kind of egregious and wanton lending widely seen as contributing to the last global financial crisis. US Senator Pat Toomey asked the Government Accountability Office - the investigative arm of Congress - if the guidelines rose to the level of formal rules. The GAO decided in October that they do, meaning Congress has the right to amend or eliminate the guidelines - which many bankers feel have hampered growth - altogether. But to forestall that development, the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said they could seek further feedback on the guidelines. The three agencies sent their letters to Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer, head of the House Financial Services Subcommittee, who asked them to stop enforcing the guidelines. “This is positive,” said Richard Farley, head of the leveraged finance group at law firm Kramer Levin. “It seems both Congress and regulators are looking towards a revised guidance from the agencies to avoid the 2013 guidance being revoked and leaving the market in limbo.” Several specialists with knowledge of the situation said the response from regulators indicated a desire to avoid a protracted battle with a Congress inclined against regulation. Under the 1996 Congressional Review Act, Congress is entitled to review - and vote to eliminate - formal regulations issued by government agencies. Senator Toomey asked the GAO to decide whether the leveraged lending guidelines, created after the financial crisis, rose to the level of regulations that fall under the Act. Experts say the three agencies have decided to revisit the guidelines, rather than risk a fight on Capitol Hill that could limit the ability to issue similar guidance in future. Two people closely following the matter said the regulators had given Congress the opportunity to declare victory, while preserving their prerogatives. Both described the decision as a purely political one that had little to do with the actual leveraged lending restrictions. “If Congress votes them down, then the agencies are basically barred from coming back,” said Jacques Schillaci, a banking regulation specialist at law firm Linklaters. “If the agencies now come out with something that addresses the concerns and gives banks a bit more leeway, it gives Toomey the ability to say: we got what we wanted.” The three agencies declined to comment. Requests for comment went unanswered by the offices of Luetkemeyer and Toomey. Bankers have frequently complained that the guidelines do not prevent highly leveraged lending from occurring, but only keep their own regulated institutions from getting the business. Instead, they say, lenders not subject to the guidelines, such as non-bank investment firms, get to pick up the business that they cannot touch - and the numbers suggest they are right. According to data from LPC, two-thirds of leveraged buyouts through the first three quarters of 2017 had leverage above six times - and more than 26% topped seven times. The last time the percentage of LBOs with seven times leverage was this high was in 2007, just before the financial crisis kicked in. And not all of that is from institutions exempt from the guidelines: mainstream banks are still able to arrange deals well in excess of the six-times leverage threshold. This can be done by inflating a company’s Ebitda through adjustments - which makes the leverage seem smaller - or by showing the company can generate enough cash to bring leverage down quickly thereafter. Recent financings for Tekni-Plex and Avantor, for example, were all marketed with leverage of around or above seven times. Whatever the methodology, the fact that the guidelines have not entirely prevented leverage topping six times suggests to some in the market that the fuss about them is overblown. “The leveraged lending guidelines are a non-issue,” said Jay Ptashek, a leveraged finance partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis. “People understand the guard rails and are complying, whatever that means. Leverage is generally being maxed out within those guidelines.” ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says focused on getting lowest possible corporate tax rate;(Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday it was focusing on getting the lowest corporate rate possible in tax reform legislation being considered on Capitol Hill. “Fifteen (percent) is better than 20, 20 is better than 22 and 22 is better than what we have,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawmakers propose ban on arbitration of sexual misconduct claims;(Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has introduced a bill that would ban agreements to keep sexual harassment and discrimination claims out of court, amid a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men. Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives unveiled the bill on Wednesday, saying mandatory arbitration agreements had forced women to privately arbitrate misconduct claims, effectively silencing victims and enabling serial harassers. An arbitration case is similar to a lawsuit, but the proceedings are typically confidential. Dozens of prominent American men in politics, media and entertainment have been accused in recent months of sexual harassment and misconduct. In some of those cases, their accusers had been required to sign agreements with their employers to keep work-related legal claims in arbitration. The bill would make those agreements unenforceable in sexual harassment and discrimination cases brought under federal law. Lawmakers said an estimated 60 million U.S. workers have mandatory arbitration agreements. The issue of sexual harassment was in focus in Washington on Thursday as Senator Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, announced he would step down after several women accused him of unwanted touching. Franken has denied some of the claims and apologized to other accusers. On Tuesday, Representative John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan, resigned after allegations that he sexually harassed staffers. Conyers, who was the longest-serving member of Congress, has denied the claims. Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business have said in the past that arbitration can benefit both employers and workers who want to keep their claims confidential. The bill is sponsored in the Senate by Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California, and Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. It also has two sponsors from each party in the House. The lawmakers were joined at a news conference in Washington by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who sued former network chief Roger Ailes for harassment last year. The claims led to Ailes’ resignation and a $20 million settlement for Carlson. Ailes and Fox denied any wrongdoing. Carlson said arbitration agreements like the one she signed with Fox allow harassers to stay in their jobs, even when victims are pushed out or fired. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP-HATING, Anti-Gun “COMEDIAN” And Author Of “A Child’s First Book Of Trump” Credits His Kids For Inspiring All of His “BABY RAPE Jokes;Rabid, Trump-hating, anti-gun, comedian, and so-called author , Michael Ian Black took to Twitter to answer a question about how having children has changed his comedy . His answer is not what most American would expect. The comedian, who is consumed with hate for President Trump and his followers responded: They inspired all my baby rape jokes. Here is how Michael Ian Black s tweet read:Here is the actual tweet:Question I keep getting in interviews is whether having kids changed my comedy. Yes. They inspired all my baby rape jokes. Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) October 7, 2011It s not the first time Black made a joke about molesting kids. When Subway s spokesman Jared Fogel was convicted of possessing child pornography and crossing state lines to have sex with children, Black responded to a tweet about Fogel by saying (jokingly?): We used to molest kids together Black also believes the NRA is a terrorist group In light of the House passing today s gun bill, a friendly reminder that the NRA is a terrorist organization. Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) December 6, 2017Black is the author of a disgusting anti-Trump book called A Child s First Book Of Trump . If you want to check out (or review) Michael Ian Black s book, you can find it for purchase on Amazon and the Barnes and Noble website. Here is the Barnes and Noble Overview of Black s book from their website:OverviewA Child s First Book of Trump by Michael Ian Black, Marc Rosenthal A New York Times bestseller!What do you do when you spot a wild Trump in the election season? New York Times bestselling author and comedian Michael Ian Black has some sage advice for children (and all the rest of us who are scratching our heads in disbelief) in this perfectly timely parody picture book intended for adults that would be hysterical if it wasn t so true.The beasty is called an American Trump. Its skin is bright orange, its figure is plump. Its fur so complex you might get enveloped. Its hands though are, sadly, underdeveloped.The Trump is a curious creature, very often spotted in the wild, but confounding to our youngest citizens. A business mogul, reality TV host, and now political candidate? Kids (and let s be honest many adults) might have difficulty discerning just what this thing that s been dominating news coverage this election cycle is. Could he actually be real? Are those words coming out of his mouth? Why are his hands so tiny? And perhaps most importantly, what on earth do you do when you encounter an American Trump?With his signature wit and a classic picture book style, comedian Michael Ian Black introduces those unfamiliar with the Americus Trumpus to his distinguishing features and his mystifying campaign for world domination sorry President of the United States.Michael Ian Black is scheduled to appear in Boston at the Laugh House Nov. 9 11th. You can contact the Laugh House at this number and let them know how you feel about them supporting Black at their venue: (617) 725-2844Black can also be found acting with an entire cast of rabid Trump-hating liberal actors on Netflix movie: Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, and previously in Wet Hot American Summer.;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ARE SENATOR AL FRANKEN and REP JOHN CONYERS Being Sacrificed By The Democrat Party For A Much Larger Goal?;After two days of being criticized by mostly female, (and even some male) members of Congress, over multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, Democrat Al Franken just announced he s resigning from his US Senate seat. Democrat Representative John Conyers met a similar onslaught of criticism from fellow House members earlier in the week, which left him feeling isolated from his own party as he faced multiple allegations of sexual assault, misconduct and even accusations of a veiled death threat by one woman.After years of looking the other way while numerous women courageously stepped forward to accuse former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault and even rape, Democrats not only looked the other way, they nominated his wife who was accused by the same women of enabling his behavior as their choice for President of The United States.So why the sudden outrage over Franken and Conyers? Could it have something to do with the upcoming election for Senator in Alabama, where hard-core conservative Republican Judge Roy Moore appears to be ahead in the polls against Democrat candidate Doug Jones, despite being accused by several women of sexual misconduct that took place decades ago? So far, the motives or tactics of almost every one of Moore s accusers has been called into question. But this is not just any race, it s a race that the Democrats have dumped millions into, in hopes of taking a Senate seat they would otherwise have no chance of gaining in a deeply red state that overwhelmingly went for Trump in 2016. Democrat Senate candidate Doug Jones has never run for political office, opposes tax cuts for the rich and supports an expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare. The 63-year-old also is staunchly pro-choice, putting him at odds with embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is staunchly pro-life.There s one thing we know about the Democrats they know how to fight. If the Democrats can make an 11th-hour show of how moral they are, because they are suddenly able to rally against sexual predators in leadership roles in their party (even though they spent decades ignoring the Clinton s, or the biggest elephant in the room) perhaps they can convince voters to support Democrat Doug Moore over the moral-less Republican-backed candidate Roy Moore, and gain a Senate seat they could only have dreamed about 6 months ago. The Democrats haven t won a senate seat in Alabama since 1992.Let s face it, Senator Franken resides in a solidly blue state who went for Hillary in 2016. There s not much likelihood that they ll elect a Republican to replace him. When it comes to the 88-year old Conyers, he s not only nearing the end of his career, he s a representative in Detroit, where it doesn t matter who runs as long as they have a (D) behind their name. It s a 100% safe seat.So if sacrificing a few members of their own party means gaining a Senate seat, it s all worth it, right? After all, the media wouldn t dare call out their allies in the Democrat Party for their decades of hypocrisy, and for their undying support of accused rapist Bill Clinton and his lovely, enabling wife Meanwhile, the blue state of Minnesota still loves Al Franken:Minnesota s Star Tribune calls Senator Al Franken (D-MN) A star in his party After eight years in the Senate, Franken had emerged as a powerful voice on progressive causes and forceful critic of the Trump administration, frequently generating national headlines with aggressive questioning of Trump s Cabinet officers. He was a star attraction for the Democratic Party, raising millions of dollars for candidates around the country and appearing frequently on nationally broadcast talk shows and in other high-profile venues.Franken s celebrity preceded his political career. He was hired as a staff writer for Saturday Night Live in its first season in 1975 and quickly became a regular on-air performer as well. He served two long stints on the show s staff, the second ending in 1995. After that, he published several bestselling books of political satire from a liberal point of view and hosted a nationally syndicated radio show for several years.Franken, who had been a vocal champion of women s rights and a popular, in-demand spokesman for various progressive causes, found himself caught up in a growing cultural movement around outing bad behavior toward women by men in positions of power. By abandoning Franken along with former U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who resigned earlier this week, Democrats are drawing a distinction between their party and Republicans at a time when President Trump has thrown his full weight behind Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, accused of sexual abuse of underage girls.A Democratic source told the Star Tribune that Dayton is likely to appoint Lt. Gov. Tina Smith and that she is not expected to run in the special election.88-year old Representative John Conyers (D-MI) was the longest-serving House Member in US history. ;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;33-Yr Old Skier LINDSEY VONN Says She Won’t Represent President Trump At Upcoming Olympics;Has there ever been a US Olympic athlete who, before representing the United States in the Olympic games, discussed whether or not they would be representing our President? Aren t the U.S. Olympic athletes made aware fairly early on, that they re representing our nation? I don t remember ever seeing any of our athletes carrying a flag with a picture of the President of the United States, or wearing apparel covered with the President s image or name. So why is Lindsey Vonn making a statement about how she s not going to be representing President Trump? Does anyone really care about Lindsey Vonn s opinion about President Trump? FOX News Olympic gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn says she ll represent the United States, but not President Trump, when she returns to the Winter Games in February.Vonn, who won a gold medal in the women s downhill competition in 2010 in Vancouver, skipped the 2014 Sochi games because of knee injuries. I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president, Vonn said this week amid the buildup to the 2018 games in PyeongChang, South Korea. I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremonies, she added. I want to represent our country well, and I don t think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that. Vonn also told CNN that she would absolutely not accept an invitation to the White House.Isn t this really more about a former Olympic athlete with an over-inflated ego and an overblown sense of how important her opinions are to the American people than anything else? ;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY THE MUELLER ‘WITCH HUNT’ On President Trump Is Dead;Special Counsel Robert Mueller s anti-Trump witch hunt is dead, even if he doesn t realize it. While his investigation stumbles onward, with life support provided by the biased media, from a legal perspective the viability of any criminal case that Mueller could possibly bring has been effectively gutted thanks to the news (suppressed for months by Mueller s team) that the FBI s key agent in both the Russia investigation and the Clinton email probe was an ardent Hillary supporter with an anti-Trump bias.Under federal law, a prosecutor is required to disclose exculpatory and impeachment information to criminal defendants and to seek a just result in every case. Specifically, pursuant to Giglio v. United States:As a result, in any prosecution brought by Mueller against a Republican target, defense counsel would be entitled under the Constitution to all evidence in the government s possession relevant to exploring the apparent biases of FBI agent Peter Strzok and his animosity toward Trump and the Republican Party. This, in and of itself, could be a case-killer because it is very unlikely that Mueller or the DOJ would want defense counsel poring through all the records and documents, emails, and texts in the DOJ s and Strzok s possession revealing the agent s biases since this could fatally undermine any other cases or investigations the agent has worked on such as the FBI s decision to recommend charging General Flynn with lying to federal agents even though Hillary Clinton s besties, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, were given a free pass despite apparently doing the same thing.Significantly, the fatal damage done to Mueller s anti-Trump investigation does not only rest in the fact that defense counsel will be able to conduct an unlubricated prostate examination on the FBI s key agent at trial. Instead, the real reason why Mueller will not risk a criminal trial is the lasting damage that would be done to the FBI s reputation by having Strzok s baggage brought into the daylight:For example, Jim Jordan skewered Chris Wray today on the Peter Strzok angle of investigation THIS is just the tip of the iceberg on what could be brought forward on this weasel:REMEMBER THAT STRZOK PLAYED A KEY ROLL IN ANALYZING THE TRUMP DOSSIER: Let s remember a couple of things about the dossier, he said. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it s been reported that this dossier was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document that it became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans. [ ] The easiest way to clear it up is tell us what s in that application and who took it there, Jordan said. [ ]Jordan finished with this: Here s what I think I think Peter Strozk Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he s the guy who took the application to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened, if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats campaign, taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets. JAMES ROSEN HAS THIS:KABOOOOOM !! Mueller Investigation CRUMBLES !!First Strzok and Paige then Weissmann, then Rhee and NOW Bruce Ohr BUSTED w/ both hands in the Fake Trump Dossier cookie jar !!#FireMueller #ShutItDown Investigating the Investigators pic.twitter.com/u9YgFa6421 STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterVIP) December 7, 2017Read more: Daily Caller;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: OBAMA APPOINTED JUDGE Presiding Over Michael Flynn’s Case SUDDENLY Recuses Himself…CLINTON Appointed Judge Will Sentence Flynn;Now, a Clinton appointed judge who took Flynn s guilty plea has suddenly recused himself and Flynn will now face an Obama appointed judge for his sentencing. Hmmm Politico President Donald Trump s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, will face a different judge to be sentenced than the one who took Flynn s guilty plea to a felony false statement charge last week, court records show.Judge Emmet Sullivan was randomly assigned to take over the case after Judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself.A court spokeswoman confirmed to POLITICO that the reassignment of the case was due to Contreras recusal, but did not immediately respond to a query about the reason.Sullivan is an appointee of President Bill Clinton, while Contreras was appointed by President Barack Obama.Flynn pleaded guilty last Friday to a false statement charge brought by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. ;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Bombshell! Rep. Jim Jordan: FBI Paid for Fake Trump Dossier…Used It to Wiretap Trump [Video];Thank goodness for Rep. Jim Jordan s masterful grilling of FBI Director Chris Wray today (see video of testimony below) regarding the Trump investigation. The videos below reveal bombshell information that this is a set up by FBI agent Strzok who took the fake dossier to the FISA Court in the beginning THIS IS A BIG DEAL!JORDAN ON LOU DOBBS AFTER HIS QUESTIONING OF WRAY: There are a couple of fundamental questions here. Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele? I asked that of the Attorney General two weeks ago he wouldn t answer the question. Did they actually vet this dossier? Because it s been disproven, a bunch of lies, a bunch of National Enquirer garbage and fake news in this thing. Did they actually check it out before they brought it to the FISA Court which I m convinced they did. And all of this can be cleared up if they release the application that they took to the court I think they won t give it to us because they did pay Christopher Steele. I think they did use the dossier as the basis for the warrants to spy on Americans associated with President Trump s campaign. Strzok is the guy who took the dossier to the FISA Court.Politically Corrupt FBI @Jim_Jordan: I believe the FBI paid Christopher Steele, and then used the discredited, fake news dossier to spy on @POTUS and his campaign. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DTS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/bfgk37LbFC Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) December 8, 2017Earlier in the day, Rep. Jim Jordan grilled Chris Wray about the dossier: Let s remember a couple of things about the dossier, he said. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it s been reported that this dossier was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document that it became the basis for a warrant to spy on Americans. The easiest way to clear it up is tell us what s in that application and who took it there, Jordan said.Jordan finished with this: Here s what I think I think Peter Strozk Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he s the guy who took the application to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened, if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats campaign, taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets. ;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PHILADELPHIA Committee Passes Bill Forcing Store Owners to Remove Bullet-Proof Glass…Because it’s Offensive;What s more important, protecting the dignity of customers who shop in local liquor stores, or the innocent employees and store owners who come in every day, knowing that the only thing that ensures they will go home alive, is the bullet-proof glass between them and the criminal element who enters their store? Well, according to one Philadelphia councilwoman, it s the dignity of the customers. Philadelphia s Public Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill Monday to ban shop owners from protecting themselves with bulletproof plexiglass.Philadelphia 8th District Councilwoman Cindy Bass, who is behind the bill, said previously that having to see plexiglass represents an indignity to her constituents and should, therefore, be banned. Information LiberationFOX News Philadelphia is one step closer to getting rid of bulletproof glass in many of its small businesses as part of a larger effort to crack down on loitering, public urination, and potential drug sales but the potential ban has triggered a backlash from shopkeepers.The city s Public Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill Monday enabling Philadelphia s Department of Licenses and Inspections to regulate the bullet-resistant barricades that stand between customers and cash registers in many neighborhood corner stores, according to FOX29. No establishment required to obtain a Large Establishment license shall erect or maintain a physical barrier that requires the persons serving the food either to open a window or other aperture or to pass the food through a window or other aperture, in order to hand the food to a customer inside the establishment, the bill states. It also calls for larger establishments to have bathrooms for customers.Here s a great example of the crime Philadelphia officers deal with every day in a city where the elected officials are more worried about passing laws to protect the dignity of liquor store customers, and not the people who bravely come to work every day to sell goods in dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhoods. ;politics;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Don Jr. Tries To Mock Al Franken’s Resignation, Backfires Immediately;When Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) announced his plans to resign Thursday, he specifically called out Donald Trump over the Access Hollywood video and Roy Moore, an alleged pedophile who is running for the Senate seat in Alabama with the GOP s blessing. Donald Trump Jr., not known for being a brainiac, decided to mock Franken on Twitter as if he didn t listen to the Democrat s amazing speech. Junior invoked one of the former comedian s Saturday Night Live most well-known characters, writing, because I m good enough, I m smart enough, and God-darnit people like me and included the hashtag #Franken. because I m good enough, I m smart enough, and God-darnit people like me. #Franken Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 7, 2017Twitter gave Junior a wake-up call:pic.twitter.com/NmuRm5MgMz liberalgranny50 (@peppersandeggs) December 7, 2017I am sure daddy @realDonaldTrump can sympathize as he is a fellow sexual predator pic.twitter.com/Qesftp1u28 Matt Slavin (@tHemAttsLavin) December 7, 2017 Grab em by the pussy. Donald Trump. Mrs. SMH (@MRSSMH2) December 7, 2017Did you wear a diaper when you tweeted this? Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) December 7, 2017 And when you re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab em by the pussy. your dad Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 7, 2017Your father is a rapist. Ask your mom if you don t believe me.Also: you ll be in prison this time next year, traitor. Greg Olear (@gregolear) December 7, 2017This is coming from Donald I do not recall Trump Jr. Rep. Jackie Sharp (@JackieSharp) December 7, 2017Can t wait to tweet joke about you when you go to prison. pic.twitter.com/JajOLBYqc6 American Dad (@okiedokiepokey) December 7, 2017pic.twitter.com/zB2kijzXk1 Meghan Morris (@seaghost78) December 7, 2017 I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. Your Dad #Franken #25thAmendmentNow Lesley Abravanel (@lesleyabravanel) December 7, 2017Calm down Fredo, go shoot a sedated animal or something, it s what you re good at. Motive of Christmas Past (@Falsemotive) December 7, 2017Yes, Jr, your Father (Sexual Predator) such a shining example to your 2 daughters. Nothing in the world like First Rate P*ssy he said. cantblameobamaanymor (@DrRev_Mustafa1) December 7, 2017Franken said during his speech, I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party. Trump and Moore support each other.Photo by Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images;News;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; BREAKING: Cop Finally Gets His Due, Walter Scott’s Killer Sentenced To Prison (DETAILS);In America, we have been having a conversation about police brutality against black Americans. Despite the countless black people murdered unjustly by police, there is usually no justice. Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Keith Lamont Scott, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray too many to mention here, really. All of those people were senselessly murdered by cops who chose to be their judges, juries, and executioners, and they did so with impunity and without consequence. However, there is hope, and it is coming out of South Carolina, of all places.North Charleston police officer Michael Slager murdered Walter Scott, a black man who was fleeing after a routine traffic stop in cold blood in 2015. He would have gotten away with it, too, had it not been for a citizen who was brave enough to tape the murder. The tape showed that Slager had lied about his life being in danger, and it showed him cuffing Scott s lifeless body, and then planting a taser as evidence. Here is the news report of that damning tape:Thanks to that tape, Slager was arrested and charged with murder. Now, fast forward two years later, and Slager has been convicted of murder. U.S. District Judge David Norton decided to throw the book at Slager, and sentenced the murdering ex-cop to 19-24 years in prison.The original case ended in a mistrial, but the state of South Carolina seemed determined to get justice for Walter Scott, and that happened on December 7, 2017. Of course, Slager s family begged for mercy from the judge, but luckily those calls were ignored. Michael Slager is a murderer, and he deserves the sentence he got.So many times, these cases end with the murderous cops back on the force, out in the streets after what amounts to nothing more than a paid vacation, free to murder another black person at will again. Thankfully, for once, the system worked as it should. For once, I am proud to be a South Carolinian. Hopefully this sets a precedent, and helps us turn a corner toward the arc of justice.Watch the video of the remarks of the Scott family below: Featured image via Grace Beahm-Pool/Getty Images;News;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Watch: Is This Proof Trump Is Unfit for Service?;New questions are being asked about President Donald Trump s ability to lead after he slurred his words during a speech about his Jerusalem decision. Possible reasons for this include: fatigue, a dry mouth (the White House explanation), the use of drugs or alcohol, a problem with his dentures or more troubling issues dealing with his mental or physical health. Morning Joe reported this morning that, unlike other presidents, Trump has opted not to get his physicals at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.Questions about Trump s mental stability have been growing over the last few months. While he has never been viewed as a stable person in the traditional sense, his tweets and comments have gotten more erratic. He was widely criticized recently when he retweeted several anti-Muslim videos that were posted by radicals in the United Kingdom.One psychiatrist talk to MSNBC s Lawrence O Donnel about his impressions of Trump s state of mind.Many think that any degradation in Trump s mental state may be due to the increased pressure he is feeling from Robert Mueller s investigations into collusion between his campaign and the Russian government. This has increased since former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.All of this talk is leading to more people to ask if Trump should be removed from office, citing the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Rep. Jamie D. Raskin (D-MD) has circulated a dear colleague letter suggesting just that. As published in the Washington Post, it says: Please join a rapidly growing group of colleagues in cosponsoring H.R. 1987, the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act. It sets up and defines the Congressionally-appointed body called for by the 25th Amendment. Under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, the Vice-President and a majority of the Cabinet or the Vice-President and a majority of such other body as Congress may by law provide can determine that the President is for reasons of physical or mental incapacity unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. The 25th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1967, but in the last 50 years Congress never created the body that its language contemplated. Perhaps it never occurred to prior Congresses that setting up this body was necessary. For obvious reasons, it is indeed necessary, and now is the time for us to do it. While the Republicans in the Cabinet and Congress may not yet be ready to take this step, it is out there.Featured image via Andrew Burton/Getty Images;News;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. appeals court hears arguments on Trump travel ban;SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday wrestled with a bid by President Donald Trump to show that his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries is legal. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in Seattle came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Trump’s travel ban to take effect while litigation over its ultimate validity unfolds. The ban targets people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. The Republican president has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism. The state of Hawaii, however, challenged it in court, and a Honolulu federal judge said it exceeded Trump’s powers under immigration law. Trump’s ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect. The same three judge 9th Circuit panel which limited a previous version of Trump’s ban heard arguments on Wednesday. Some of the judges appeared more cautious toward the idea of blocking the president’s policy. Judge Michael Daly Hawkins asked Hawaii’s lawyers whether Trump’s latest proclamation is more sound than prior versions. The current one, he said, is based on specific findings that some foreign governments do not share enough information to properly vet immigrants. “You would trust Kim Jong Un to say this person is this person, you gotta let him in?” Hawkins said. Judge Ronald Gould said the court would issue a ruling “as soon as practicable.” Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, which caused chaos at airports and mass protests. He issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. That expired in September after a long court fight, and was replaced with the current version. The ban has some exceptions. Certain people from each targeted country can still apply for a visa for tourism, business or education purposes, and any applicant can ask for an individual waiver. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear a separate challenge to the ban on Friday, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to ultimately decide the issue in the coming months. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democratic lawmakers question Kushner on New York property: letter;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday wrote to Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, asking whether in his talks with foreign officials he had ever discussed financing for a deeply indebted Kushner Companies property in Manhattan. The property at 666 Fifth Avenue has a $1.15 billion mortgage due in less than two years, and has raised concerns among lawmakers that it could pose a conflict of interest for Kushner. Kushner headed Kushner Companies until he sold his interest to a family trust earlier this year. He is a senior adviser to the president and has been involved in Middle East policymaking. The 13 Democratic lawmakers, in their two-page letter to Kushner and seen by Reuters, said: “We are concerned that you may be leveraging your White House position to seek financial assistance for 666 Fifth Avenue, which according to various reports has at least $1.2 billion in debt, of which more than half is owned” by Kushner Companies. A White House spokesman declined comment on the letter and referred the matter to Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell. Lowell could not immediately be reached for comment. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has questioned Kushner. It is not known whether Mueller’s team is looking into issues involving 666 Fifth Avenue. Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow officials. The letter from the lawmakers, led by Rep. Ted Lieu of California, asked whether, since Trump’s election on Nov. 8, 2016, Kushner has discussed the property “with any foreign nationals or entities” in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, China, Israel, France or other countries. If so, they asked, “did you discuss anything related to helping finance, purchase, or assist with the debt on 666 Fifth Avenue?” The lawmakers asked Kushner to respond by Dec. 12. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump administration sides against unions in high court fees case;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Wednesday said it would oppose public sector unions in a major case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, reversing the view taken by the Obama administration in an identical dispute. The Justice Department filed a friend-of-the-court brief against the unions in a case brought by a non-union government employee in Illinois that targets fees his state and many others compel such workers to pay to unions in lieu of dues to fund collective bargaining and other organized labor activities. He is arguing that such fees violate the free speech rights of non-union members. The high court heard a similar challenge out of California in January 2016 and had appeared headed toward ruling the fees unconstitutional. But conservative justice Antonin Scalia died a month later and the short-handed court ended up with a 4-4 split in April 2016 that left the law intact but set no nationwide precedent. In that case, the Obama administration filed a brief backing the unions. Addressing the change of position, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said in the court filing that after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the new case “the government reconsidered the question and reached the opposite conclusion.” The Trump administration has already adopted opposing positions to those taken by the Obama administration in other major cases pending at the Supreme Court, including another labor case on whether employers should be able to require workers to sign contracts that prevent them from making class action claims. The administration also reversed an Obama administration stance by supporting Ohio in its bid to revive a state policy of purging people from voter-registration lists if they do not regularly cast ballots. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Franken to make 11:45 a.m. announcement after harassment accusations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken, facing intense pressure to step down following allegations of sexual misconduct, will make an announcement at 11:45 a.m. (1645 GMT) on Thursday, his office said. Franken spokesman Michael Dale-Stein said Franken would make a statement on the Senate floor but did not elaborate. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Interior Department wants more oil drilling, expedite ANWR permits;(Reuters) - The Department of the Interior, the U.S. government’s second largest revenue generator behind the IRS, is trying to be a better business partner to oil companies to curb falling revenues, Vincent DeVito, energy advisory to the Secretary of the Interior, said on Thursday. The department plans to expedite permitting on drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, DeVito said at the S&P Global Platts Energy outlook in New York. Expediting the process would not be at the expense of environmental stewardship, he said. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democratic Senator Franken to resign: CNN, citing sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken will announce his resignation on Thursday, a day after a majority of his Democratic Senate colleagues called for him to step down following a string of sexual misconduct allegations against him, CNN reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ryan feels good about spending bill, wants budget cap talks;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said he felt good about the vote count on a government spending bill coming before House on Thursday afternoon that is aimed at keeping the government from shutting down this week. “I feel good where we are,” Ryan told reporters. He also said Republicans want to talk to Trump and other congressional leaders about budget caps. “It would be nice to get back to the table and start negotiating caps and all the other things we have to do,” he said ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rep. Franks to resign after staff members' complaints of harassment;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Representative Trent Franks said on Thursday he would resign after two female staffers complained that he had discussed surrogacy with them. Franks, 60, who has been a member of Congress from Arizona since 2003, said in a statement that he would step down on Jan. 31. The House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Thursday it had opened an investigation into accusations of sexual harassment against Franks. The congressman said he was resigning because coverage of the committee’s investigation in the “current cultural and media climate” would “damage those things I love most.” Franks said he and his wife had struggled with infertility and sought a surrogate in order to have another child after they had twins with a surrogate. “I have recently learned that the Ethics Committee is reviewing an inquiry regarding my discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable,” Franks said. “I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress,” he said. Franks denied he ever “physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff.” U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan was briefed on the allegations on Nov. 29 and urged Franks to resign in a conversation the following day, Ryan’s office said in a statement. “The speaker takes seriously his obligation to ensure a safe workplace in the House,” the statement said. Franks, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, a mainly suburban area of Phoenix. He won re-election in 2016 with 68.5 percent of the vote. Republican President Donald Trump carried the district by 21 points last year. Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey will call a special election to fill the seat. The nominating primary must be held between 80 and 90 days after the vacancy and the general election must be conducted 50 to 60 days after the primary, according to state law. Numerous prominent men in U.S. politics, media and entertainment have been accused in recent months of sexual harassment and misconduct. Earlier on Thursday, Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota said he would resign in a few weeks following allegations of sexual misconduct. U.S. Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan resigned on Tuesday after accusations of sexual harassment were leveled against him. Conyers denied the allegations, while Franken said some of the accusations against him were untrue and he remembered other incidents differently from his accusers. Reuters has not verified the allegations against either man. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Franken and Franks resign as misconduct charges batter Congress;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken announced his resignation on Thursday after facing a series of sexual misconduct allegations, and Republican Representative Trent Franks also said he was stepping down as he too was hit with ethics charges. Franken, buffeted for weeks by sexual harassment charges and under pressure from party colleagues, said on the Senate floor he would leave in a few weeks, although he denied some of the allegations against him and questioned others. The 66-year-old former comedian from Minnesota had been seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party. “I know in my heart that nothing I’ve done as a senator - nothing - has brought dishonor on this institution,” he said. “Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.” Hours later, Franks announced his resignation after two former staff members complained about discussions he had with them about his efforts to find a surrogate mother. “I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress,” said Franks, who was first elected to his Arizona congressional seat in 2002 and is an outspoken opponent of abortion. Franks said in a statement that he and his wife “have long struggled with infertility.” The developments came with Congress already held in low regard by voters. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 20 percent approved of the way Congress was handling its job, with 70 percent disapproving. In recent weeks, charges of sexual misconduct have taken down prominent people in the worlds of entertainment, media and politics. It is somewhat rare for members of the Senate or House of Representatives to resign from office, but veteran Democratic Representative John Conyers also resigned earlier this week amid sexual harassment accusations that he has denied. The House Ethics Committee said on Thursday it was investigating yet another lawmaker. Blake Farenthold, a Republican representative from Texas, faces allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation involving a former female staff member. Franken has the highest profile of the lawmakers hit by allegations in the past few weeks. Reuters has not independently verified the accusations against Franken, Franks, Conyers or Farenthold. Franken’s seat will initially be filled by a Democrat appointed by Minnesota’s Democratic governor, meaning the Republicans’ slim majority in the Senate will not change. Allegations that Franken had groped and tried to kiss women without their consent began to surface three weeks ago. He initially said he was embarrassed and ashamed by his behavior but would not resign. But the majority of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate called on Wednesday for his resignation after a new allegation, denied by Franken, hit the news. “Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently,” Franken said on Thursday. Striking a tone of defiance, he also sought to contrast himself with two prominent Republicans - President Donald Trump and Senate candidate Roy Moore. “I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate, with the full support of his party,” he said. Trump was heard bragging about kissing and forcibly touching women in a 2005 videotape that surfaced last year as he was running for the White House. He apologized for the remarks, but called them private “locker-room talk” and said he had not done the things he talked about. Trump also denied allegations at that time by at least 12 women of sexual advances and groping in the past. Moore, who is running for the Senate in Alabama in a special election on Tuesday, has been accused by several women of sexual assault or misconduct when they were teenagers and Moore was in his early 30s. Moore, 70, has denied the accusations, which Reuters has not independently verified. Trump has backed Moore, but Senate Republicans have been cooler toward his candidacy. In pressing Franken to step aside, Democrats have tried to capture the moral high ground and draw a distinction between their party and Republicans. “In every workplace in America, including the U.S. Senate, we must confront the challenges of harassment and misconduct,” said Amy Klobuchar, Franken’s fellow Democratic senator from Minnesota. Similarly, House Republican Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday he had told Franks that he should resign. A special election will be scheduled to determine a replacement for Franks. While a Democrat will be appointed initially to replace Franken, his departure could complicate the party’s efforts to maintain or build on the 46 Senate seats they hold. Two independent senators also vote with the Democrats. Republicans are defending eight seats in the congressional elections in November 2018 but Democrats will be defending 26 if Minnesota holds a special election for Franken’s seat. The election to fill Franken’s seat could be close. When he ran in 2008, the race was decided after an extensive recount, with Minnesota’s Supreme Court weighing in. In the 2016 presidential election, Democrat Hillary Clinton won the state by less than 2 percentage points. ;politicsNews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Trump Team Didn’t Just Collude with Israel, Kushner was Acting as Foreign Agent for Tel Aviv;Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireMuch was made this week in the US media about Michael Flynn s recent guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI, as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller s never-ending Russia probe. Beyond the political window dressing however, there s a much bigger and more profound story lingering in the background. Although court documents show Flynn has admitted to giving false statements in reference to his reaching out to Russia s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak the mere act of initiating contact with any foreign official is neither illegal nor is it a violation of ethics. Putting the current Red Scare aside, this would normally be viewed as standard statecraft for members of any incoming US administration. Even if Flynn had promised the Russian Ambassador, as claimed this week by Resistance leader Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, that a Trump government would rip-up sanctions, such a promise by Flynn would not be unlawful. Anyone can make a promise, we should point out here that neither Flynn, nor Donald Trump would be in any position to make good on such a promise without the blessing of the US Congress and Senate. Just look at what happened when Trump took office. Were any sanctions lifted?That said, after 18 months of fabricating fake news about Russian hacking, Russian meddling and Russian collusion, it s not surprising that the New York Times would get the Flynn story wrong too, and on an even bigger scale than many of their past made-up stories about Trump scandals. Here we have yet another hand-wringing Resistance writer, Harry Litman, claiming that Flynn s testimony will go down in history next to Watergate and Iran-Contra: The repercussions of the plea will be months in the making, but it s not an exaggeration to say that the events to which Mr. Flynn has agreed to testify will take their place in the history books alongside the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals. He might be right, if only the media coverage and the federal hearing would focus on the correct country with whom the Trump team was colluding, which unfortunately was not Russia. Funny how partisan writer Litman did not even mention the word Israel once in his report. Perhaps this is why certain persons in Washington like Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, John McCain and others, along with their corrupt media counterparts like CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times have been incessantly pushing their fictional Russia did it narrative for the last 18 months because Russiagate serves as a convenient overlay for Israelgate.Mehdi Hassan from The Intercept writes: Why aren t more members of Congress or the media discussing the Trump transition team s pretty brazen collusion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to undermine both U.S. government policy and international law? Shouldn t that be treated as a major scandal? Thanks to Mueller s ongoing investigation, we now know that prior to President Donald Trump s inauguration, members of his inner circle went to bat on behalf of Israel, and specifically on behalf of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, behind the scenes and in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy. That s the kind of collusion with a foreign state that has gotten a lot of attention with respect to the Kremlin but colluding with Israel seems to be of far less interest, strangely. Yes, you heard that right. This was at minimum collusion with Israel. But it goes much deeper than that. If this story is accurate, and we have every reason to believe it is (especially by the large silence in the American media, usually a positive indication of media avoidance), this would indicate that the then President-elect s close advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was clearly acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the state of Israel. The fact the US media are not taking this story more seriously should serve as a reminder as to how much power the Israeli Lobby wields in the US, not just over politicians, but over mainstream media as well. Granted, this is a very serious charge which comes with some serious consequences if Kushner would ever be indicted, but the facts clearly demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt, that then President-elect s son-in-law was using his proximity to the incoming Commander and Chief to execute a series of highly sensitive foreign policy maneuvers at the request of a foreign country.The history of Israeli spying and outright meddling in US affairs is no secret to anyone willing to research it (unofficially a forbidden topic in US mainstream media), but this latest episode with Trump and Kushner is even more disturbing considering this week s controversial East Jerusalem announcement (21WIRE warned about an East Jerusalem provocation 12 months ago).Beyond this, many will argue that the radical fundamentalist Zionist agenda which Kushner is aggressively pursuing on behalf of Tel Aviv is not in the interest of the wider Middle East, nor is it good for America s European partners, and may even contribute to a further destablization of the region as evidenced by recent violence which has erupted following Trump s provocative move. The result is not necessarily in America s interests, even if it is certainly in Israel s interests.Author Mehdi Hassan continues:Here s what we learned last week when Mueller s team unveiled its plea deal with Trump s former national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn. In December 2016, the United Nations Security Council was debating a draft resolution that condemned Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories as a flagrant violation under international law that was dangerously imperiling the viability of an independent Palestinian state.The Obama administration had made it clear that the U.S. was planning to abstain on the resolution, while noting that the settlements have no legal validity and observing how the settlement problem has gotten so much worse that it is now putting at risk the two-state solution. (Rhetorically, at least, U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements has been a long-standing and bipartisan position for decades: Ronald Reagan called for a real settlement freeze in 1982 while George H.W. Bush tried to curb Israeli settlement-building plans by briefly cutting off U.S. loan guarantees to the Jewish state in 1991.)Everyone expected that the upcoming UN vote on illegal Israeli settlements was going to be a divisive issue, but with only weeks before Trump s fast approaching inauguration, Israel had its trojan horse in position. Hassan goes on to explain Tel Aviv s covert mechanism for manipulating the UN vote: On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed Flynn to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution, reads the statement of offense against Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. On or about December 22, 2016, Flynn contacted the Russian Ambassador about the pending vote. Flynn informed the Russian Ambassador about the incoming administration s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. BFFs: Donald Trump talks to his chief foreign policy advisor, Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu.So who was this very senior member of Trump s team who sought to execute orders from the office of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu? Hassan explains:Who was the very senior member of the transition team who directed Flynn to do all this? Multiple news outlets have confirmed that it was Jared Kushner, Trump s son-in-law and main point man on the Middle East peace process. Jared called Flynn and told him you need to get on the phone to every member of the Security Council and tell them to delay the vote, a Trump transition official revealed to BuzzFeed News on Friday, adding that Kushner told Flynn this was a top priority for the president. According to BuzzFeed: After hanging up, Flynn told the entire room [at the Trump transition team HQ] that they d have to start pushing to lobby against the U.N. vote, saying the president wants this done ASAP. Flynn s guilty plea, BuzzFeed continued, revealed for the first time how Trump transition officials solicited Russia s help to head off the UN vote and undermine the Obama administration s policy on Middle East peace before ever setting foot in the White House. Even during the height of the Neocon era, with multiple Israeli loyalists in the cabinet (including some dual passport holders) shaping White House Middle East policy ultimately into a ditch with Iraq, the level of manipulation wasn t this overt. Trump s decision to reverse successive US administrations new policy on East Jerusalem is inconceivable, if not for some other x-factor which the PNAC-dominated George W. Bush could not even manage.The facts of the case against Kushner have not been contested, and in fact Kushner has even been gloating out on the speaking circuit, with his doting wife Ivanka proudly advertizing her husband s accomplishment on behalf Israel.My husband, Jared Kushner, had a great conversation on the Middle East with Haim Saban today at the Saban Forum. #Saban17https://t.co/BUbGfd1YNr Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 4, 2017 None of this has been contested. In fact, on Sunday, Kushner made a rare public appearance at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Trump administration s plans for the Middle East and was welcomed by the forum s sponsor, the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban, who said he personally wanted to thank Kushner for taking steps to try and get the United Nations Security Council to not go along with what ended up being an abstention by the U.S. Kushner s response? The first son-in-law smiled, nodded, and mouthed thank you to Saban.Meanwhile, the Israelis have been pretty forthcoming about their own role in all of this, too. On Monday, Ron Dermer, Israel s ambassador to the U.S. and a close friend and ally of Netanyahu, told Politico s Susan Glasser that, in December 2016, obviously we reached out to [the Trump transition team] in the hope that they would help us, and we were hopeful that they would speak to other governments in order to prevent this vote from happening. Got that? The Trump transition team in the form of key Trump advisers Kushner and Flynn reached out to the Russian government in order to undermine the U.S. government because the Israeli government asked them to. According to these reports, Kushner was using his position in the transition team to act on Israel s behalf outside of any governmental framework of accountability. If Flynn inadvertently found himself in a Russian trap, it was because Israel and its in-house operative demanded it.If Flynn is guilty of anything, it would be going along with Kushner s Israel First scheme ahead of the United Nations vote. What is odd though, is why the entire US mainstream media is not interested in this part of the story. Even the Never Trump Resistance seem to be afraid of taking this narrative on. I guess even the Resistance has its limits. Rather than go for a case where the evidence is sitting right there on a silver salver, instead they will go for the Russian conspiracy theory. Alas, old habits die hard.SEE ALSO: The Genealogy of Trump s U-Turn on PalestineThis series of events is all the more pertinent when considering this week s announcement by President Trump that the US is to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to East Jerusalem. Many are already calling this the kiss of death to the Israel-Palestine peace process. In a predictable succession of events, the Jerusalem provocation was a fait accompli after Trump had announced in October that the US would be withdrawing from support for UNESCO, the UN body which is meant to help maintain the neutrality of Jerusalem as an internationally protected area. The Trump administration justified its resignation from the key UN agency on the grounds that it is biased against Israel. But the neutrality of Jerusalem is an essential policy for maintaining peace in a less than ideal situation with Palestine still under a brutal military occupation by an illegitimate and illegal (by international law and successive UN Resolutions) Israeli jackboot.In addition to all this, this past summer the United States announced the establishment of a permanent military installation inside of Israel. What s scary is how many people do not know this has happened.So Trump s minence grise, the wunderkind, who some people have called the President In-Law, is really Israel s man inside the White House.Landed on his feet: President In-law Jared Kushner.So what exactly are Jared Kushner s credentials in international relations and diplomacy that he has been charged with negotiating Middle East affairs for the United States of America? Without sounding too cruel here, it s difficult to find anything to say in his defense. In the end, his only visible qualification is that he s married to the President s daughter, and that s he s a good friend of Netanyahu. That s really it.Credit where credit s due though. Aside from marrying into the dynasty, Kushner is also the former owner of a mediocre website, The New York Observer, and has also managed to parlay his family status to help finance a number of high-profile New York City property deals with foreign buyers (no doubt with the help of his father-in-law).Isn t that what Kushner is doing right now using his inherited clout to help close friend Benjamin Netanyahu broker property deals (highly illegal by international law) in the Middle East, only this time with his Uncle Sam acting as the guarantor? It certainly looks that way. The question is, will anyone in the US do anything about it?When this latest episode of hubris by the White House and Israel eventually unravels, the public and the media might then turn on Kushner and Trump, but by then the damage will have already been done.Meanwhile, men like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer will still be chasing those illusive Russian hackers clear into the 2020 election cycle, which is probably a stupid move for the Resistance, but if the last 18 months have taught us anything it s that there isn t much clear thinking going on in that corner of the galaxy.Until then, Netanyahu can feel safe in the knowledge that Israel, not Washington, is currently in control of US foreign policy.One final note to the brave Never-Trump Resistance: if a foreign state actor is blackmailing this President or the White House, it s probably not Russia.*** Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting of the conflict Syria, Iraq and the Middle East.READ MORE ISRAEL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Israel FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India's Modi fights to protect home base in election;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in the final phase of campaigning on Thursday to retain power in his home state and stave off the most serious challenge yet from a combined opposition. The election for a new legislature in the western state of Gujarat this weekend is turning out to be a greater challenge for Modi than anticipated, the polls show, as rival parties seize on discontent caused by a slowing economy. Gujarat is where Modi earned his spurs as a business-friendly chief minister who cut red tape and graft and turned it into an economic powerhouse. But an unpopular national tax and a shock move last year to withdraw most currency in a fight against graft has hurt Gujarat, like the rest of the country, and its businessmen are making loud complaints. Three big polls carried out in the run-up to the vote on Saturday and next week have predicted a victory for Modi s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but with a greatly reduced majority. An ABP-CDS poll this week gave the BJP 91-99 seats in the 182-member state house and the main opposition Congress 78-86, suggesting a close fight. To win a party needs 92 seats. The surveys have often gone wrong, though, and Modi himself remains far more popular across the country than his rivals including Rahul Gandhi who is leading the Congress charge to weaken Modi in his home base. Modi has thrown himself into the campaign, addressing dozens of rallies over the past month, saying he alone could deliver on development. On Thursday, he was due to address party colleagues on their mobile phones to ensure a strong voter turnout. Amit Shah, the president of the BJP, said the party had full confidence in Modi s ability to deliver an emphatic victory. He knows that only an absolute majority in Gujarat polls will legitimize his reforms and silence critics, Shah said. Votes from the election will be counted on Dec.18 and the results announced the same day. Gujarati businesses - who form the core of Modi s support base - have complained about the new Goods and Services Tax as aggravating tough economic conditions. Jagdip Desai, a sanitary ware manufacturer, said the complex tax procedures had come on top of slowing demand and he had to fire 3,000 workers. Modi will have to pay a political price for our financial distress. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malaysian PM Najib urges Muslims to strongly oppose Jerusalem as Israel's capital;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called on Muslims everywhere to strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that was condemned by the Muslim countries across the world. I call on all Muslims across the world to let your voices be heard, make it clear that we strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital for all time, Najib said in his speech at an annual gathering of the ruling party in Kuala Lumpur. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico senators propose law change to curb presidential impunity;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A group of Mexican opposition senators proposed a constitutional reform on Wednesday that would enable a sitting president to face trial for corruption for up to three years after leaving office, in a bid to bolster the fight against graft. Mechanisms exist under the constitution to prosecute public officials, from senators to state governors and supreme court judges, via impeachment and removal from office. However, the constitution does not provide for impeachment of the president and mandates that the incumbent can only be put on trial for treason and serious crimes, such as murder. You can t even touch the president with a rose petal, said Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, a member of the center-right National Action Party and one of five senators behind the initiative. The proposal sets out changes in the constitution that would allow a serving president to be impeached and face trial for acts of corruption and other crimes. The president would also be liable for any crimes committed in office for up to three years after leaving the job. Public discontent over corruption has become a major issue in the run-up to the July 2018 presidential election. Graft scandals within the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and allegations of conflict of interest surrounding President Enrique Pena Nieto and several top aides, have battered the credibility of Mexico s highest office. Those in favor of preserving existing protections argue they are necessary to prevent political witch-hunts after changes of power in Mexico, where the president cannot seek re-election. The PRI is the strongest party in Congress, making the proposal unlikely to prosper without support across the aisle. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia condemns U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli capital;Bogor, INDONESIA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo, leader of the world s largest Muslim-majority nation, onThursday condemned the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Indonesia strongly condemns the United States unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and asks the U.S. to reconsider the decision, Widodo told a news conference. This can rock global security and stability, he said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Girding Malaysian ruling party for election, Najib rallies Muslims over Jerusalem;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called on Muslims worldwide to strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, as he rallied his party ahead of a tough election due next year. Muslim majority Malaysia, a significant U.S. ally in Southeast Asia, warned of grave repercussions as it joined other countries condemning President Donald Trump s decision on Wednesday to reverse decades of U.S. policy and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. How can we accept that? Najib said in his speech at an annual gathering of the ruling United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) party in Kuala Lumpur. I call on all Muslims across the world to let your voices be heard, make it clear that we strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital for all time. The opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) said it would hold a protest outside the U.S. Embassy on Friday to condemn the decision. Dogged by a long-running multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund that he founded, Najib is expected to court Muslim sensibilities as he seeks a third term in next year s election, though the strategy could lose votes for his coalition partners from Malaysia s sizable Chinese and Indian minorities. At this father of all elections, we will fight to the end, Najib said, leading three cheers of God is Great from the thousands of UMNO delegates in the conference hall. Najib s greatest challenge is expected to come from an opposition alliance that has re-grouped under 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad - who led Malaysia for 22 years - and charismatic leader Anwar Ibrahim, rather than from the Islamists. Observers still expect Najib to steer UMNO and the multi-racial Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition to victory despite the controversy over state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Najib has denied any wrongdoing in a scandal that is being investigated in at least six countries including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States. On Monday, U.S. attorney-general Jeff Sessions described the Malaysian graft case as the worst form of kleptocracy, and said the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) was working to provide justice to the victims. Holding onto power, Najib has purged dissent among the 3.4 million members of UMNO, clamped down on media and civil society, and blocked a damaging internal probe on him related to graft at 1MDB. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Support for Irish PM's party surges on back of Brexit row;DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar s Fine Gael party surged into an 11-point lead in a poll on Thursday, gaining credit for the government s Brexit negotiating stance and indicating its recent near-collapse had not hurt his popularity. Varadkar has played a key role in negotiations over Britain s withdrawl from the European Union this week, insisting that a tentative deal struck on the Irish border on Monday must be fulfilled if talks are to move onto the next phase, as London wants. That was in sharp contrast to a week earlier when his deputy prime minister had to resign to avert a government collapse and election before Christmas, an episode that members of Fine Gael feared would damage both the party and its leader. Yet support for Fine Gael rose by five points to 36 percent in the Irish Times/MRBI poll, while fellow centre-right rival Fianna Fail has fallen four points to 25 percent since October. The left-wing Sinn Fein party was unchanged on 19 percent. The most recent survey taken by another polling company, conducted during the government crisis, showed that the two main parties were almost neck and neck. The number of undecided voters was far higher in the MRBI sample. Satisfaction with the government also rose by five points to 41 percent in Thursday s poll, the highest level achieved by any government in almost a decade. Today s poll proves that timing is everything, said MRBI director Aisling Corcoran. Interviewing took place on Monday and Tuesday against the backdrop of Brexit negotiations and the government has been credited with approaching the negotiations with clarity and determination. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia condemns Trump decision to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel;CAIRO (Reuters) - The kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Thursday condemned the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Saudi Royal Court issued a statement saying that the kingdom followed with deep sorrow Trump s decision and warned of dangerous consequences of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem . The statement also urged the U.S. administration to reverse its decision and adhere to international will. Saudi Arabia described the decision as an unjustified and irresponsible step and said it represents a bias against rights of Palestinian people . Saudi Arabia also said the move represents a big step back in efforts to advance the peace process and said it was a violation of the U.S. Neutral position regarding Jerusalem . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says U.S. decision on Jerusalem disregards United Nations;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital completely disregarded a 1980 United Nations resolution regarding the status of the city. Erdogan also said the decision would throw the region into a ring of fire . He was speaking to supporters at the airport in Ankara before departing to Greece for an official visit. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UAE denounces U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital: agency;DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has denounced the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, state news agency WAM reported on Thursday, citing a foreign ministry statement. The ministry expressed deep concern over the repercussions of this decision on the region s stability as it inflames the emotions of the Arab and Muslim people due to the status of Jerusalem in the conscience of Arabs and Muslims, the statement added. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pro-Iran Iraqi militia says Jerusalem decision could make U.S. troops a target;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A prominent Iraqi militia backed by Iran, Harakat Hezbollah al- Nujaba, said on Thursday U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital could become a legitimate reason to attack U.S. forces in Iraq. Trump s stupid decision ... will be the big spark for removing this entity (Israel) from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces, the group s leader Akram al-Kaabi said in a statement. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britons who join Islamic State should be hunted and killed: defence minister;LONDON (Reuters) - Britons who have joined the Islamic State militant group in Syria and Iraq should be hunted down and killed, Britain s new defence minister said. Gavin Williamson said that Britons who had gone to Syria or Iraq to fight for Islamic State hated what Britain stands for, and that air strikes could be used against the estimated 270 British citizens who are still out there. Quite simply my view is a dead terrorist can t cause any harm to Britain, Williamson told the Daily Mail in an interview published late on Wednesday. We should do everything we can do to destroy and eliminate that threat, he said, adding that he believed any British fighters who joined Islamic State should never be allowed to return to the United Kingdom. Williamson, 41, has been defence minister for little over a month, replacing Michael Fallon after he quit in a sexual harassment scandal. Prominent British militants such as Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, and Sally Jones, have been reportedly killed by British or U.S. forces since travelling to fight for Islamic State. After the death of Jones, who was known as the White Widow , Fallon said that British nationals who chose to leave the UK and fight for Islamic State were a legitimate target . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq demands U.S. backtrack on Jerusalem, militia says troops a target;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq demanded on Thursday that the U.S. government backtrack on a decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital to avoid fuelling terrorism, and a prominent Iraqi militia said the decision was a reason to attack U.S. troops. President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. We caution against the dangerous repercussions of this decision on the stability of the region and the world, an Iraqi government statement said. The U.S. administration has to backtrack on this decision to stop any dangerous escalation that would fuel extremism and create conditions favorable to terrorism, it said. The Iran-backed Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba said Trump s decision could become a legitimate reason to attack U.S. forces in Iraq. Trump s stupid decision to make Jerusalem a capital for the Zionist will be the big spark for removing this entity from the body of the Islamic nation, and a legitimate reason to target American forces, said the group s leader Akram al-Kaabi. The U.S. is leading an international coalition helping Iraq fight Islamic State and has provided key air and ground support. It has more than 5,000 troops deployed to Iraq. Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters, is one of the most important militias in Iraq. Though made up of Iraqis, it is loyal to Iran and is helping Tehran create a supply route through Iraq to Damascus. It fights under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a mostly Iranian-backed coalition of Shi ite militias that played a role in combating Islamic State. The PMF is government sanctioned and formally reports to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi s office. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China criticises India over crashed drone on border;BEIJING (Reuters) - China expressed strong dissatisfaction with India on Thursday over the recent crash of an Indian drone in Chinese territory, an incident that could cause more friction along their disputed border. Indian and Chinese troops confronted each other between June and August this year - at one stage even resorting to scuffling and throwing stones - on a remote plateau near the borders of India, its ally Bhutan, and China, in the most serious and prolonged standoff in decades. The nuclear-armed Asian giants have tried to develop their ties in recent years but there is still deep distrust over their disputed border, which triggered war in 1962. China s defence ministry said in a statement the Indian drone had crashed in recent days but it did not give a location. This action by India violated China s territorial sovereignty. We express strong dissatisfaction and opposition, Zhang Shuili, a military official in China s western battle zone command, was quoted as saying in a ministry statement. China s border defence forces took a professional and responsible attitude in conducting an inspection of the device, Zhang said, adding that the military would resolutely defend China s sovereignty and security. The Indian army said an unmanned aerial vehicle was on a training mission over Indian territory when it developed technical problems and crossed a so-called line of actual control separating the countries militaries. Indian border guards alerted their Chinese counterparts about the drone soon afterwards, an Indian army spokesman said. China had provided the Indian army with details about where the drone came down and Indian authorities were investigating, Colonel Aman Anand said in a statement. The matter is being dealt with in accordance with the established protocols, Anand said. China also lodged diplomatic representations with India, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular briefing. China asks India to immediately stop its activities of using unmanned aircraft near the border, and to work alongside China to maintain the border area s peace and tranquillity, he said. After the weeks of confrontation on the wind-swept Doklam plateau this year, the two sides agreed to an expeditious disengagement of troops about a week before Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in an effort to mend ties at a summit in China in September. But the mountainous border remains sensitive for both sides. In November, China criticised a visit by Indian President Ram Nath Kovind to the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims, saying China opposed any activities by Indian leaders in disputed areas. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: EU parliament details UK concessions on rights;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain will guarantee rights for as yet unborn children who join EU parents after Brexit and accept EU judges rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution seen by Reuters on Thursday. The document, drafted on Monday for a vote next week before an EU summit that may launch talks on a future EU-UK free trade pact, also supports British Prime Minister Theresa May s call for an agreement from Brussels that British citizens in the EU will be able to live freely in any member state after Brexit though an EU official said that would only be negotiated later. The resolution was prepared on the basis of an agreement May was about to sign on Monday before objections from her allies in Northern Ireland forced a postponement due to concerns on a plan to keep regulatory alignment between the province and the EU to ensure no hardening of the border on the island of Ireland . It also lays out demands from the legislature, which must approve any treaty. These include limiting British benefits from any future agreement and an insistence London continue to abide by the European human rights convention. It also insists that Britain automatically adopt any new EU legislation passed after it loses its vote during a transition period after March 2019. The draft makes no mention of a point under discussion on Monday when talks were interrupted that would end supervision of EU citizens rights by the European Court of Justice after a certain number of years. Two EU sources said that a compromise of 10 years - midway between a British offer of five and an EU demand of 15 years - appears the most likely solution. One EU source said the compromise may be presented as two years during the transition period plus eight years after that. May has insisted that the ECJ hold no more sway in Britain but the European Parliament has made the court s involvement one of its priorities in safeguarding the position of some 3 million citizens of other EU states now living in Britain. The parliamentary resolution, drafted by five parties which hold the vast majority in the chamber, notes British agreement in detail to honour financial commitments to the bloc and to avoid a hard Irish border, two of three conditions on which the EU wants sufficient progress toward a divorce deal before it will launch the negotiations May wants on a free trade pact. It goes into more detail on citizens rights, notably on issues where London had been resisting lawmakers demands. These included that core family members and persons in a durable relationship currently residing outside (Britain) shall be protected by the Withdrawal Agreement and that this is also the case for children born in the future and outside (Britain) . London, which does not grant its own citizens automatic rights to bring in foreign spouses, had sought to apply that to EU citizens after Brexit and also wanted to deny rights to British residence to any children born abroad after Brexit. Britain has also, according to the draft, accepted that EU citizens can export all exportable benefits as defined by EU legislation after the country leaves the European Union. And it has accepted the competence of the (ECJ) in relation to the interpretation of the Withdrawal Treaty . Citizens rights will be guaranteed through a declaratory, light touch, proportionate procedure, consisting of a single form per family, the resolution stated going some way to addressing lawmakers complaints that costs of hundreds of euros could be incurred by families making several declarations. Lawmakers are still pressing for the procedure to be free. In five months of negotiation, May has largely given way on EU demands. In one sign of a potential concession, the parliamentary resolution states that British citizens living in an EU state on Brexit Day, March 29, 2019, should retain their right ... to reside and move freely in the whole EU . However, an EU official familiar with the negotiations said Brussels had not yet confirmed this point and that it should be negotiated with the 27 member states in the next phase of talks. For now, Britons would only be guaranteed EU rights they already have if they remain living in the same EU state after Brexit. Setting out demands for the new phase of negotiations to be launched at the Dec. 15 summit if May confirms her offers, the parliament stressed that any transition period of not more than three years to avoid a cliff edge scenario depends on a deal on the whole divorce package and would mean Britain being bound by all EU structures while no longer having a say on them. It ruled out any trade off in negotiations between British contributions to EU security and economic benefits for Britain and said the latter could not be as good as membership of the EU or of the EEA, whose members include Norway and Iceland. In any free trade agreement, market access to services a big part of British exports, notably in finance will always be subject to exclusions, reservations and exceptions . Any security and defence cooperation would be subject to EU rules on data protection, the resolution added, reflecting concern among lawmakers that Britain will seek an exception in return for sharing its recognised prowess in intelligence. Seeking to meet a end-of-the-week EU deadline for a deal on divorce terms in order to give EU states time before the summit to agree their offer on opening trade talks, May plans to present tweaked proposals on the Irish border in the coming day, the Irish prime minister said. Should she miss it, senior EU officials say, it could be February before they return to the issue raising concern that businesses will start switching more investment out of Britain. That delay, EU officials believe, could put May s own weak position in jeopardy, and throw new doubt on the process. A senior official closely involved in the talks said however that member states, including power couple Germany and France, seem in no mood to ease demands on Britain to ensure a quick accord. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two U.S. B-1B bombers join U.S.-South Korean military drills;(Reuters) - Two U.S. B-1B bombers took part in joint U.S.-South Korean military drills on Thursday, an official at Seoul s defense ministry told Reuters, exercises which North Korea has said are taking the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war. The planes, which scrambled from a U.S. air base in Guam, joined some 20 fighter aircraft of the two countries which have been staging a large-scale aerial exercise in South Korea since Monday, the official said. One bomber joined the exercises on Wednesday. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian govt delegation to return to Geneva on Sunday for peace talks: SANA;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s negotiating team is set to arrive in Geneva on Sunday to participate in peace talks, Syria s state news agency SANA reported on Thursday, quoting a foreign ministry source. The delegation, led by Bashar al-Ja afari, walked out last week and returned to Damascus. Negotiations resumed on Wednesday without the Syrian government delegation. The talks began last week and after a few days with little apparent progress, the U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said that the government delegation was returning to Damascus to consult and refresh . The government delegation blamed its departure on the opposition s uncompromising stance on Assad s future. Last month, the opposition drew up a statement in a meeting in Riyadh that rejected any future role for Assad in Syria. During last week s sessions, de Mistura shuttled between the representatives of the two warring sides, who did not meet face-to-face. He had planned to continue the round until Dec. 15. The opposition negotiating team arrived at the U.N. offices in Geneva on Wednesday morning to resume talks with de Mistura. France accused the Syrian government on Wednesday of obstructing the peace talks with its refusal to return to Geneva and called on Russia not to shrink its responsibilities to get Damascus to the negotiating table. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nepal votes in final round of polls at the end of long democratic transition;KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepalis began voting in the final round of parliamentary elections on Thursday, a key step to complete a near decade-long democratic transition after the abolition of the centuries-old monarchy and the end of a civil war against Maoist guerrillas. The first phase of the election was held on Nov. 26, with final results not expected for about another 10 days because of the cumbersome vote-counting procedure, officials said. Officials said more than 200,000 soldiers and police had been deployed to maintain security at polling centers after one person was killed and dozens wounded in a series of small blasts in the run-up to the polls. Hundreds of activists, including from a splinter group of Maoists opposed to the election, have been detained for creating trouble, army spokesman Nain Raj Dahal said. More than 15 million people were eligible to vote for the 275-member parliament - 165 through first-past-the-post and 110 on a proportional basis in both rounds. Voters will also choose representatives to seven state assemblies for the first time since Nepal became a federal democracy under the first republican constitution in 2015. The country will achieve political stability after the election ... and will move ahead solidly on the path of economic and social prosperity, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari said in a statement. Nepal has seen 10 government changes in as many years. Instability has given rise to corruption, retarded growth and slowed recovery from a 2015 earthquake that killed 9,000 people. I voted in hopes for a stable government that can concentrate on development and create jobs so our children don t have to go abroad to work, Binita Karki, 57, said after casting her ballots in a Kathmandu suburb, where armed soldiers stood nearby. Her son works on a construction site in Qatar. The election pits the centrist Nepali Congress party of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who heads a loose alliance that includes the Madhesi parties from Nepal s southern plains and former royalists, against a tight-knit alliance of former Maoists and the moderate Communist UML party. The Nepali Congress party is considered a pro-India group, while the opposition alliance is seen as closer to China. Nepal is a natural buffer between the two and the outcome could indicate whether China or India gets the upper hand in the battle for influence in a nation rich in hydropower and home to Mount Everest. Nepal emerged from a civil war in 2006 and abolished its 239-year-old Hindu monarchy two years later. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Latin American countries say support Honduran recount;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Seven Latin American governments said on Wednesday that they supported the decision by Honduras electoral tribunal to proceed with a total recount of disputed ballots in the country s Nov. 28 election. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru expressed the position in a statement issued by Mexico s foreign ministry. We urge Honduran citizens to wait in a peaceful manner for the vote recount, the statement said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Netanyahu sees 'many' nations following U.S. move on Jerusalem;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday many countries would follow the United States in recognising Jerusalem as Israel s capital and contacts were underway. Wednesday s announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump reversed decades of peace-making policy on Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim, and drew censure from many countries, among them key allies of Washington. I would like to announce that we are already in contact with other countries which will issue a similar recognition, Netanyahu said in a speech at Israel s Foreign Ministry. He did not name any of these countries. The United States plans to open an embassy in Jerusalem, a move it says could take three to four years. The U.S. Embassy is currently in Tel Aviv, Israel s economic hub, as are those of other countries. I have no doubt that the moment the American Embassy moves to Jerusalem, and even before then, there will be a movement of many embassies to Jerusalem. The time has come, Netanyahu said. Palestinian Islamist group Hamas called on Thursday for a new uprising against Israel after Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli troops reinforce West Bank after U.S. move over Jerusalem;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said it was reinforcing troops deployed in the occupied West Bank on Thursday as Palestinians protested against the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Several new army battalions would be deployed and other forces put on standby, a military statement said, calling the measures part of the IDF s (Israel Defence Forces) readiness for possible developments . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somali man found guilty in kidnapping of Canadian journalist;(Reuters) - A Somali national has been convicted in an Ontario court for his role in the 2008 kidnapping of Canadian Amanda Lindhout, who was held captive in Somalia for 460 days and released only after her family paid a ransom, Canadian media reported on Wednesday. Ali Omar Ader, 40, was found guilty of one charge of hostage-taking for his role as negotiator for the kidnappers, in a decision handed down on Wednesday in Ontario Superior Court in Ottawa. Lindhout, a freelance journalist, was taken hostage in Somalia on Aug. 23, 2008, along with Australian photographer Nigel Brennan, while working on a story. They were released for ransom in November 2009. Ader was lured to Canada from Somalia in 2015 and arrested in Ottawa as part of a sting operation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in which an officer posed as a publisher interested in a book Ader was writing on Somalia, according to court documents. Prosecutors argued that Ader had been the main spokesman for the hostage-takers, negotiating first with Lindhout s mother and later with a private consultant hired by the families of Lindhout and Brennan. According to court documents, he referred to himself as a commander and repeatedly threatened that the hostages would be harmed or killed unless the ransom was paid. During his trial, Ader said that he too had been kidnapped by the group holding Lindhout captive, and was forced to act as their spokesman, as he spoke some English. In his ruling, Justice Robert Smith said Ader s claims were completely unbelievable, numerous Canadian media outlets reported. Reuters has not read the ruling. Ader faces up to life in prison. Sentencing in the case is not expected until next year. Lindhout has said she was repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted during her captivity, and both she and Brennan have said they were tortured and starved. In 2013, Lindhout recounted her experience in the book A House in the Sky. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. asks Israel to restrain response to Jerusalem move - document;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is asking Israel to temper its response to the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as its capital because Washington expects a backlash and is weighing the potential threat to U.S. facilities and people, according to a State Department document seen by Reuters on Wednesday. While I recognize that you will publicly welcome this news, I ask that you restrain your official response, the document dated Dec. 6 said in talking points for diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to convey to Israeli officials. We expect there to be resistance to this news in the Middle East and around the world. We are still judging the impact this decision will have on U.S. facilities and personnel overseas, the document said. A second State Department document seen by Reuters, which was also dated Dec. 6, said the agency had formed an internal task force to track worldwide developments following the U.S. decision on Jerusalem. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it was standard to set up a task force any time there is a concern about the safety and security of U.S. government personnel or U.S. citizens. The State Department had no immediate comment on either document. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting U.S. friends and adversaries alike. The first document also laid out talking points for officials at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, the U.S. Embassies in London, Paris, Berlin and Rome and the U.S. mission to the European Union in Brussels. In its message for the European capitals, the document asked European officials to argue that Trump s decision did not prejudge so-called final status issues that Israel and the Palestinians need to hammer out in any peace agreement. You are in a key position to influence international reaction to this announcement and we are asking you to amplify the reality that Jerusalem is still a final status issue between Israelis and Palestinians and that the parties must resolve the dimensions of Israel s sovereignty in Jerusalem during their negotiations, it said. You know that this is a unique Administration. It makes bold moves. But it is bold moves that are going to be needed if peace efforts are finally going to be successful, it said. The status of Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions, is one of the biggest obstacles to reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of their own to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Push by evangelicals helped set stage for Trump decision on Jerusalem;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An intense and sustained push by U.S. evangelicals helped drive President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and eventually relocate the U.S. embassy there, activists said on Wednesday. While Trump had long pledged to move the embassy, the Republican president s conservative Christian advisers repeatedly pressed the case in regular meetings at the White House, the conservative activists said. I have no doubt that evangelicals played a meaningful role in this decision, said Johnnie Moore, a California pastor who serves as a spokesman for a council of leading evangelicals that advises the White House. I don t believe it would have happened without them. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Many U.S. evangelicals have expressed strong solidarity with conservatives in Israel and feel a connection rooted in the Bible to the Jewish state. Conservative Christians have long argued that formally recognizing Jerusalem, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions, was long overdue following a 1995 congressional mandate to move the embassy from Tel Aviv. In Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, they found their most sympathetic audience. Activists efforts included an email campaign launched by the group My Faith Votes. The group is chaired by Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential candidate and father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. The group posted a form on its website and urged people to contact the White House to press for recognition of Jerusalem as the capital. Another evangelical group, American Christian Leaders for Israel, which includes conservative activists Gary Bauer and Penny Nance, sent a letter to Trump warning that time was of the essence in moving the embassy. Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital was criticized by Palestinian leaders and others in the international community, who fear it will spark unrest in the region. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. In June, Trump, like Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him, signed a waiver delaying the embassy move to Jerusalem in the hope of boosting his nascent efforts at brokering a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. With a deadline approaching for another such waiver, evangelical advocates saw a window to increase the pressure. American Christian Leaders for Israel, in the letter to Trump posted on its website, said they were gravely concerned that with every passing day it will become more difficult to move the embassy and if you do not do it now, it may never happen. Trump first convened a circle of evangelical advisers during his presidential campaign, and he was the overwhelming favorite of white evangelical voters in last year s election. Moore, a member of the evangelical group advising the administration, said a prominent Christian conservative was in the White House just about every day. Much of the access comes through the Office of Public Liaison and its deputy director, Jennifer Korn, whose portfolio includes faith groups. I ve sat in many meetings with evangelicals in the White House since the administration began, and I can tell you this issue came up again and again and again, Moore said. He said evangelicals made it clear to the White House that it was a priority of theirs and they wanted action soon. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and a close Trump adviser, said he had never talked to the president about the issue but had received emails from other leading evangelicals in the past several days asking me to support this or tweet that, and try to get the word out. The faith community has talked to the administration for months and months about the need to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, said Robert Jeffress, pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas and an evangelical adviser to Trump. But the fact is, we didn t have to do any convincing of this administration. This was a campaign promise that President Trump was happy to keep because he feels that way, Jeffress said in a telephone interview with Reuters on Wednesday. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia goes all-in on China in casino port city;"SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia (Reuters) - Between Sihanoukville s beaches and its multiplying casinos, Lao Qi and Bun Saroeun run restaurants barely a hundred dusty meters apart. But their fortunes could not be more different. For while Lao Qi is riding the Chinese boom that brought him and thousands of others from China to the Cambodian resort, Bun Saroeun s business was built on low-budget Western visitors. It is far less profitable and now he faces eviction. Sihanoukville starkly illustrates how Cambodia s ever tightening relationship with China is transforming the country. Just as China s aid and investment have helped Prime Minister Hun Sen defy Western criticism of a crackdown on his opponents, they are also binding Cambodia s economy ever more closely to China s. Sihanoukville, which has Cambodia s only deep-water port, was carved out of the jungle in the 1960s and named after former King Norodom Sihanouk. Once a playground for Cambodia s elite, it fell on hard times during the Khmer Rouge genocide and conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s before becoming a stop for backpackers and other Westerners looking for sun, sea, sand and - for some - sex. But a steady trickle of Chinese money into its casinos has now swelled to a tide that promises to remodel a city touted by developers as the first port of call on China s Belt and Road . This is like China 20 years ago. The opportunity is huge, said Lao Qi, 33, who goes by his nickname and first moved here from China s Zhejiang province to work in a casino. His noodles and fried rice can now make him hundreds of dollars a day. Down the road at the Ecstatic Pizza restaurant, 59-year-old Bun Saroeun counts himself lucky to make over $100 a day. Rising hotel prices and the noise of construction are discouraging Western visitors and Cambodian tourists from the city, he says. A few Chinese came here but now they have their own restaurants, said Bun Saroeun, whose landlord is now evicting him to redevelop the prime property near the Occhuteal Beach. The Chinese influx is very much by design. In charge of the city is governor Yun Min, the former regional military commander and a close ally of Hun Sen. He made trips to China himself to encourage investors and offer them protection. We want more of them to come, he told Reuters, estimating that Chinese already rent half the property in the city. We benefit from them. Cambodia's ""Chinese"" resort city IMG - tmsnrt.rs/2AtY4cS Estimates for the numbers of Chinese now resident in the city of 250,000 run from the thousands to the tens of thousands, but no figures are made public. Across Sihanoukville, Mandarin signs are proliferating. Supermarkets packed with Chinese goods are commonplace - the only Cambodian items tend to be beer and bottled water. Yet the current Chinese influx into Sihanoukville is nothing compared to what is forecast. Near the once tranquil Independence Beach, concrete towers have sprouted in months, promising casinos, hotels and thousands of apartments. This is Macau Two, boasts Chen Hu, the 48-year-old general manager at the $200 million 38-storey Blue Bay Resort development, comparing the city to the world s biggest gambling center. At his showroom, groups of prospective condominium buyers from China admire the model. About 20 percent of at least 700 apartments have already been sold, he says. Prices range from around $125,000 to $500,000. A lot of people complain, but a lot of people also benefit from the injection of money from China, said William Van, 60, who owns an apartment block now filled largely with Chinese workers and has seen the value of his investment soar. A clear attraction for all Chinese investors, developers say, has been the close Cambodia-China relationship - strengthened by Hun Sen s repeated trips to Beijing and Chinese President Xi Jinping s visit to Phnom Penh late last year. On his latest trip to Beijing last week, Hun Sen won offers of investment of $7 billion from Chinese companies in a highway, a satellite city near Phnom Penh, and projects in education, entertainment and banking. It was unclear how new or firm the promises were, but they highlight the accelerating investment trend. Business is following the flag China has planted in Cambodia. It s continuing and may even be exploding, said U.S. based academic Sophal Ear, co-author of a book on China s quest for resources abroad. We are talking orders of magnitude now beyond what anyone else is doing...They re crowding out other investors with the sheer volume and scale of their activities. Pictures of Xi and Hun Sen feature prominently in one of the glossy handouts from the Prince Real Estate Group as it markets apartments in Phnom Penh and now starts work on two projects costing $1 billion in Sihanoukville. It is a core location of the Belt and Road initiative, said marketing director Hu Tian Lu, referring to China s infrastructure-led development and diplomatic initiative. A short drive from the port is an expanding Special Economic Zone, where 90 percent of the 110 companies now operating there are Chinese, enjoying tax-free imports and exports and corporate tax holidays. China is due to build a four-lane highway to Phnom Penh, the international airport in Sihanoukville is being expanded - some 70 percent of international flights are already to Chinese destinations - and improved rail links are eventually planned under the Belt and Road program. Although Sihanoukville is a focal point for Chinese investment, the phenomenon is far from localized. More tourists to Cambodia come from China than any other nation - 635,000 in the first seven months of the year, or a fifth of the total. Cambodia hopes to draw two million Chinese tourists a year by 2020. Chinese investment over the 2012-16 period was over $4 billion - more than 30 times that from the United States, even including a $100 million Coca-Cola plant which opened last year. China s $265 million in aid last year was well over twice that of Japan s and nearly four times that from the United States. Chinese dams provide most of Cambodia s electricity";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Extremism stems from repressive states, not Western policy, says UK's Johnson;LONDON (Reuters) - Repressive states are to blame for breeding terrorism, Britain s foreign minister Boris Johnson will say on Thursday, in a speech defending Western foreign policy and denouncing Islamist extremism. Britain suffered four deadly attacks in London and Manchester between March and June this year that killed 36 people, and on Wednesday a man appeared in court accused of plotting to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May. Speaking to diplomats and experts at the Foreign Office in London, Johnson will call for better engagement with Muslim populations worldwide and argue that blaming Western intervention for the rise of Islamist extremism plays into the jihadi narrative, according to a briefing note issued by the Foreign Office. To assert, as people often do, that the terrorism we see on the streets of Britain and America is some kind of punishment for adventurism and folly in the Middle East is to ignore that these so-called punishments are visited on peoples Swedes, Belgians, Finns or the Japanese hostages murdered by Daesh - with no such history in the region, he will say according to advanced extracts of his speech. He will say that Islamist jihadism can have the addictive power of crack cocaine . ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No Brexit deal worst-case scenario for Britain: Lords committee;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will fail to agree a free trade deal with the EU before it plans to leave the bloc in 2019 and should seek a transition period to avoid a worst-case scenario of crashing out without an agreement, lawmakers from parliament s upper house said. The House of Lords EU committee s report Brexit: deal or no deal said on Thursday Britain should consider extending membership of the European Union or set a later date for leaving to give the government longer to negotiate a trade deal. The overwhelming weight of evidence suggests that no deal would be the worst possible outcome for the UK, in terms of the economy, security, the environment and citizens rights, said Michael Jay, a member of the Lords EU committee and former head of Britain s diplomatic service. Britain s Prime Minister Theresa May s hopes of progressing the Brexit talks collapsed at the last minute on Monday as her Northern Irish allies denounced a proposed offer on the border with Ireland. May has found it difficult to come up with a formula that satisfies both EU member Ireland, which wants to avoid creation of a hard border, and Northern Ireland s DUP party, which says the British province must quit the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK. With the clock ticking down to the March 2019 exit date, the report says the biggest risk factor that there may be no trade deal is the shortage of time. Despite scepticism in Brussels over the tight timetable, May and her chief negotiator David Davis have been clear they want to have a full post-Brexit free trade deal sealed by the time Britain leaves. While we support David Davis ambition to secure a comprehensive agreement by 29 March 2019, almost nobody outside the Government thinks this will be possible, Jay said. ;worldnews;07/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian killed in Gaza clashes over Trump's Jerusalem move;GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man on Friday near the Gaza border in clashes over U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said hundreds of Palestinians were rolling burning tires and throwing rocks at soldiers across the border. During the riots IDF soldiers fired selectively toward two main instigators and hits were confirmed, the army statement said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. calls on social media giants to control platforms used to lure African migrants;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. migration agency called on social media giants on Friday to make it harder for people smugglers to use their platforms to lure West African migrants to Libya where they can face detention, torture, slavery or death. The smugglers often use Facebook to reach would-be migrants with false promises of jobs in Europe, International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesman Leonard Doyle said. When migrants are tortured, video is also sometimes sent back to their families over WhatsApp, as a means of extortion, he said. We really ... ask social media companies to step up and behave in a responsible way when people are being lured to deaths, to their torture, Doyle told a Geneva news briefing. There were no immediate replies from Facebook or WhatsApp to requests by Reuters for comment. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014 and 3,091 have died en route this year alone, many after passing through Libya. This year, the number of migrants entering Europe is 165,000, about 100,000 fewer than all of last year, but the influx has presented a political problem for European countries. IOM has been in discussions with social media providers about its concerns, Doyle said, adding: And so far to very little effect. What they say is please tell us the pages and we will shut them down . It is not our job to police Facebook s pages. Facebook should police its own pages, he said. Africa represents a big and expanding market for social media but many people are unemployed and vulnerable, he said. Facebook is pushing out, seeking market share across West Africa and pushing out so-called free basics, which allows ... a dumb phone to get access to Facebook. So you are one click from the smuggler, one click from the lies, he said. Social media companies are giving a turbo-charged communications channel to criminals, to smugglers, to traffickers, to exploiters , he added. Images broadcast by CNN last month appeared to show migrants being auctioned off as slaves by Libyan traffickers. This sparked anger in Europe and Africa and highlighted the risks migrants face. Doyle called for social media companies to invest in civic-minded media outreach and noted that on Google, pop-up windows appear if a user is looking at pornography images, to warn of danger or criminality. The IOM has helped 13,000 migrants to return voluntarily to Nigeria, Guinea and other countries from Libya this year. It provides them with transport and pocket money and documents their often harrowing testimonies. Doyle said it was currently repatriating 4,000 migrants to Niger. Switzerland said on Friday it was willing to take in up to 80 refugees in Libya in need of protection, among 5,000 whom the UN refugee agency says are in a precarious position. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Serbian president says Serbia does not plan to join NATO: TASS;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Serbia has embarked on a pro-European course but it has no plans to join the NATO defence alliance, the TASS news agency on Friday cited Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic as saying in an interview. Nine days ago I was in Brussels, at the NATO headquarters, and in front of the 29 leaders of the NATO member states I declared that Serbia has no aspiration to joint NATO, Vucic, who plans to visit Moscow soon, told TASS. Serbia will preserve its military neutrality, this was and will be Serbia s policy. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iranians rally against Trump's Jerusalem move, burn U.S. flags: TV;ANKARA (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranians took part in rallies across the country on Friday to condemn U.S. President Donald Trump s decision this week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, state TV reported. Leaders of Iran, where opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause has been central to foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution, have denounced Trump s move, including his plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. State TV aired footage of marchers chanting Death to America and Death to Israel , holding up Palestinian flags and banners saying: Quds belongs to Muslims , using the Arabic name for the city. In several cities protesters burned effigies of Trump, Iranian media reported. Iran regards Palestine as comprising all of the holy land, including the Jewish state, which it does not recognize. It has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and backs several Islamic militant groups in their fight against Israel. Describing the United States and Israel as oppressors, Iran s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that Trump s decision was a sign of incompetence and failure. Opposition to Trump s move has united Iran s hardline and pragmatist factions, with both pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani and commanders of the hardline Revolutionary Guards urging Iranians to join nationwide Day of Rage rallies. Some protesters burned pictures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while chanting Death to the Devil . Rouhani rejected Trump s decision as wrong, illegitimate, provocative and very dangerous . Senior cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers at Tehran University that Muslims around the world should unite against Israel, state TV reported. We will not leave Palestinians alone, worshippers chanted at Friday prayers in Tehran, TV reported. Iran s army chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri said Trump s decision on Jerusalem was unwise and could fuel tension in the crisis-hit Middle East, Iran s state news agency IRNA reported. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian Muslim leader rejects meeting with U.S. Pence over Jerusalem: statement;CAIRO (Reuters) - One of Egypt s top Muslim leaders, the Imam of Al Azhar mosque, rejected a meeting requested by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in protest against a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, Al Azhar said in a statement on Friday. Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb had rejected a request from the United States for Pence to meet him on Dec. 20 at Al Azhar saying President Donald Trump must reverse his decision on Jerusalem. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain, EU clinch Brexit 'breakthrough' with move to trade talks;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union struck a divorce deal on Friday that paves the way for arduous talks on future trade ties, easing immediate pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May and boosting hopes of an orderly Brexit. May rushed to Brussels before dawn to seal a European Commission agreement that sufficient progress had been made to begin talks about trade and a two-year Brexit transition period that will start when Britain leaves the EU on March 29, 2019. Negotiators in London, Brussels and Dublin worked through the night before breaking an impasse over the status of the Irish border, the last major obstacle to the opening of trade talks which EU leaders are due to bless at a summit on Dec. 15. But though the Irish prime minister called a British pledge to avoid a destabilising hard border for Northern Ireland a bullet-proof commitment, one senior EU official conceded that wording to appease May s Belfast allies was a fudge which had simply put off until later the need to square the circle . While Northern Ireland would remain aligned with the rules of the EU s single market and customs union under which member state Ireland operates, May s government is officially committed to leaving both the single market and customs union. Actual negotiations on a trade pact that may take several years to agree may not start for some months. But EU officials said they should be ready to start rapid talks in January to give May the transition period she wants to reassure business that not much will change for a couple of years after Brexit. Speaking before sunrise at the EU executive s headquarters after a hurried flight on a Royal Air Force plane, May said opening up trade talks would bring certainty for citizens and businesses about Britain s future after quitting the EU. The most difficult challenge is still ahead, European Council President Donald Tusk cautioned. We all know that breaking up is hard. But breaking up and building a new relationship is much harder. May, looking weary after just a couple of hours sleep, spoke after Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced the breakthrough, first in English and then in German and French. The move to agree trade talks 18 months after the United Kingdom s shock vote to exit the EU allayed some fears of a disorderly Brexit that could disrupt trade between the world s biggest trading bloc and its sixth-largest national economy. Sterling was dented when last-minute objections from Belfast forced May to abort a deal on Monday while already in Brussels, but it climbed to a six-month high against the euro EURGBP=D3 on Friday. It later gave up earlier gains and turned lower on the day against the EU common currency as investors took profits after a sharp rally in recent days. Facing 27 other members of the bloc, May largely conceded to the EU on the structure, timetable and substance of the negotiations. Moving to talks about trade and a Brexit transition was crucial for May s own future after her premiership was thrown into doubt when she lost the ruling Conservative Party its majority in an unwisely called snap election in June. I very much welcome the prospect of moving ahead, said May, a 61-year-old Anglican vicar s daughter who herself voted to stay in the EU in the June 2016 referendum but has repeatedly insisted Britain will make a success of Brexit. A senior British banker said the deal signalled May would stay in power for now and that Britain was heading toward a much closer post-Brexit relationship with the EU than many had feared. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar agreed. ...What phase one was always about was narrowing the parameters, and we are now funnelling and directing things into a situation where I believe the United Kingdom including Northern Ireland will remain in alignment with the EU on lots of regulations, he told Irish national broadcaster RTE on Friday evening. Heralding pitfalls ahead, however, Scotland s leader Nicola Sturgeon swiftly cited the promise of free trade on the Irish border as removing an argument used to dissuade Scots from breaking their union with England to rejoin the European Union. Draft guidelines showed the transition period, which would start on March 30, 2019, could last around two years, as May has requested. During that time, Britain will remain part of the EU s customs union and single market but no longer take part in EU institutions or have a vote. It will also still be subject to EU law. Pro-Brexit Conservative lawmakers rallied around her after the deal. This looked like a signal that the party, which has been split over EU membership for generations, was not preparing to ditch her immediately despite the election fiasco in June that left her government dependent on the support of Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who spearheaded the 2016 Brexit campaign, congratulated May, adding that Britain would now take back control of its laws, money and borders. Supporters of a radical Brexit were tougher. Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage struck a jarring note saying it was extraordinary a British premier had conceded so much in the middle of the night, agreeing to all the demands of Juncker, Tusk and EU negotiator Michel Barnier. The British prime minister has to fly through the middle of the night to go and meet three unelected people, who condescendingly say: Now, jolly well done May, you ve met every single one of our demands, thank you very much, we can now move on to the next stage . Asked for an example of the EU conceding something to London, which says it will pay 40-45 billion euros over many years to meet EU obligations, Barnier said Brussels dropped a demand that Britain bear relocation costs for two EU agencies that are leaving London - costs in the hundreds of millions. Juncker once put the Brexit bill at some 60 billion euros ( 52.7 billion) but Barnier said it was not possible to calculate a firm figure as much depended on future developments. Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist leader of Britain s main opposition Labour party, said on Friday he wanted to see much more information about the divorce deal before he could judge whether it was a breakthrough. Corbyn said Labour had consistently called for maintaining the benefits of belonging to the EU s customs union and single market during a transitional period as Britain leaves the bloc. The transitional period is unspecific and I think she needs to bring some clarity to that, he said on a visit to Geneva. The EU had insisted it would only move on to trade talks if there was enough progress on three key issues: the money Britain must pay to the EU;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss propose house arrest for people seen as security threats;ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss government proposed on Friday allowing house arrest for people seen as posing a security threat even if they are not suspected of a specific crime. The step is part of an anti-terrorism package the country is drawing up to plug what it sees as gaps in its legal system when it comes to people it calls potential threats . At the moment police and justice officials have their hands tied in acting effectively against such people as long as no criminal investigation is under way, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommargua told a news conference. She cited the example of three Iraqis convicted in 2016 of supporting banned jihadist group Islamic State who are now free after being released from prison even though authorities still view them as a security threat. Under the proposals, which are open for comment before they go to parliament, the state could require such people to report regularly to authorities as some soccer hooligans now do, and restrict their movements and contacts. House arrest would be the last resort and require a judge s approval. Sommaruga said the government would carefully balance the need for security against protecting the rule of law. If we would put whole groups under blanket suspicion, for instance via sweeping surveillance of mosques or demanding preventative custody for as many as possible, we would only be creating red tape and spinning our wheels, which costs a lot and in the end brings nothing, she said. Switzerland on Monday released a national plan to prevent violent extremism, including training teachers and sports coaches to recognize warning signs. The Swiss so far have avoided the kind of attacks that have hit neighboring Germany and France, but the Swiss Intelligence Service said last month it was tracking 550 people deemed a potential risk as part of its jihad monitoring program, up from 497 at the end of 2016. Last month, Swiss and French police combined in a cross-border anti-terrorism swoop in which 10 people were arrested. Several high-profile criminal prosecutions have targeted people accused of supporting banned groups such al Qaeda or Islamic State. Neutral Switzerland has not fought in the conflicts in the Middle East, but some fear domestic policies could put it in the crosshairs of militants. Voters in 2009 banned the construction of new minarets, and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino banned facial coverings. Bern is also tightening anti-terrorism laws, a push that could toughen sentences for people who support militancy and boost cooperation with foreign intelligence services. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam police arrest ex-politburo member over misconduct;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese police on Friday arrested a former top Communist Party official suspected of misconduct while he was chairman of the main state energy firm, the first former politburo member to face prosecution in decades. Police issued arrest and prosecution orders for Dinh La Thang, 56, for suspected violation of state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences , the Ministry of Public Security said on its website. Thang is the most senior official so far caught up in a widespread crackdown on fraud in the energy and banking sectors, which has gathered pace since the security establishment gained greater influence in the party last year. Police are investigating two cases related to Thang s tenure as chairman of state oil and gas firm PetroVietnam that involved a loss of investment in local Ocean Bank and suspected wrongdoing at a PetroVietnam subsidiary, PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corp (PVC) (PVX.HN), police said. Thang was not available for comment. The corruption crackdown made global headlines in August when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former chairman of PVC, in Berlin after he applied for asylum there. The party has said it aimed to let Thanh go on trial next month. Government critics have voiced suspicions that the corruption crackdown is politically motivated, at least in part, and aimed against those close to former prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who lost out in an internal power struggle in 2016. This development represents a major event in Vietnamese politics and reflects a concerted effort by those in the commanding heights of the party to rein in and prosecute instances of large scale corruption and serious cases of malfeasance among high ranking party and state officials, said Vietnam expert Jonathan London of Leiden University. Thang was dismissed from the politburo after the Communist Party found him responsible for financial losses at PetroVietnam. It also stripped him of his role as party head of Ho Chi Minh City to penalise him further. Prosecuting a former politburo member in the one-party state is not unprecedented. In 1979, a former politburo official, Hoang Van Hoan, was handed a death sentence in absentia after he had fled the country. On Friday, police also issued an arrest order for Nguyen Quoc Khanh, a former chairman of PetroVietnam. In September, another former PetroVietnam chairman was sentenced to death for embezzlement among other crimes. Khanh was also temporarily dismissed from his current role at the trade ministry on Friday, the ministry said in a statement. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After stinging Athens, Turkey's Erdogan woos crowds in northern Greece;KOMOTINI, Greece (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gave out toy cars and dolls to children on the final leg of a visit to Greece on Friday, a trip meant to boost ties but which has exposed the deep rifts between the two neighbors. Erdogan visited the Muslim community in Komotini, a town in northern Greece which once belonged to the Ottoman Empire. A day earlier, he riled his Greek hosts by suggesting the 130,000 Muslims in the region were discriminated against by Athens. We have made very important decisions to meet the needs of our ethnically Greek citizens, and it is our right to expect similar behavior from Greece, he told cheering crowds outside a school in the region. Turkey has frequently found fault with the appointment by Athens of local Muslim clerics - known as Muftis - instead of recognizing those elected by the local population. Erdogan is the first Turkish president to visit Greece in 65 years, but he has put Athens on the defensive by remarking that a decades-old treaty needs revision. The treaty, among other things, defines the boundaries between the two countries. None of that controversy was apparent on Friday, as hundreds of well-wishers gathered outside a mosque in Komotini to welcome Erdogan. Aides carried bags stuffed with toys, which Erdogan gave out to children. Some supporters shouted Leader as he made his way through the crowds. Greek police snipers were stationed on nearby buildings and security was tight. Erdogan is very popular among the Muslim community in the area. He is an ordinary person close to the people, said Ahmet Hoca, 57, a farmer. Closer to Istanbul than to Athens, this community in northern Greece sometimes feels uneasy with the disputes between the two countries, which range from airspace in the Aegean Sea to minority rights. When someone asks you whom you love more, your mother or your father, what are you supposed to answer? You love them both, said resident Hussein Kara, 64. After World War One and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne pushed modern Turkey s borders eastwards. About 1.3 million ethnic Greeks, and 356,000 Turks, moved between Turkey and Greece in a population exchange. The deal excluded Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace, which includes Komotini, and more than 200,000 Greeks then living in Istanbul. Fewer than 3,000 ethnic Greeks now live in Istanbul. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's president designates finance minister Morawiecki as new PM;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s President Andrzej Duda designated Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki as the country s new prime minister after Beata Szydlo tendered her resignation. The ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party decided on Thursday to swap Szydlo for Morawiecki as they gear up for a series of elections due in the next three years. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Criticism of Ukraine's language law justified: rights body;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine s neighbors have a right to criticize a new Ukrainian law banning schools from teaching in minority languages beyond primary school level, a leading European rights watchdog said on Friday. Ukraine has sizeable Russian, Hungarian and Romanian minorities but passed the school-language legislation on Sept. 5, angering Hungary in particular, which threatened to retaliate by blocking Kiev s hopes of EU integration. Kiev has submitted the law for review by the Venice Commission, a body which rules on rights and democracy disputes in Europe and whose decisions member states, which include Ukraine, commit to respecting. In an opinion adopted formally on Friday, the commission said it was legitimate for Ukraine to address inequalities by helping citizens gain fluency in the state language, Ukrainian. However, the strong domestic and international criticism drawn especially by the provisions reducing the scope of education in minority languages seems justified, it said in a statement. It said the ambiguous wording of parts of the Article 7 legislation raised questions about how the shift to all-Ukrainian secondary education would be implemented while safeguarding the rights of ethnic minorities. As of 2015, Ukraine had 621 schools that taught in Russian, 78 in Romanian, 68 in Hungarian and five in Polish, according to education ministry data. The commission said a provision in the new law to allow some subjects to be taught in official EU languages, such as Hungarian, Romanian and Polish, appeared to discriminate against speakers of Russian, the most widely used non-state language. The less favorable treatment of these (non-EU) languages is difficult to justify and therefore raises issues of discrimination, it said. Language is a sensitive issue in Ukraine. After the pro-European Maidan uprising in 2014, the decision to scrap a law allowing some regions to use Russian as an official second language fueled anti-Ukrainian unrest in the east that escalated into a Russia-backed separatist insurgency. The latest education bill has damaged Ukraine s ties with its Western neighbors however. In October, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the issue had driven relations to their lowest since Ukraine won independence following the Soviet Union s break-up in 1991. Ukraine said it was willing to discuss minorities concerns and will bear the commission s opinion and recommendations in mind when fine-tuning the law. In a statement released while the commission was still in session, the education ministry said the watchdog s position was balanced and constructive. Together with national communities, the ministry will work on further developing various approaches on education of minorities, taking into account their educational needs, the statement said. The main goal is to provide a sufficient level of fluency in both the state and native languages. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson calls on Saudis to be 'more thoughtful' in Middle East;PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday questioned some of Saudi Arabia s recent moves in the Middle East, suggesting it should consider its actions more carefully, a rare rebuke when Washington s own policies in the region are under fire. Publicly, U.S. President Donald Trump, his top aides and senior Saudi officials have hailed what they say is a major improvement in U.S.-Saudi ties compared with relations under former President Barack Obama, who upset the Saudis by sealing a nuclear deal with their arch-foe Iran. However, U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts privately express anxiety over some of the more hawkish actions by Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, especially towards Yemen, Qatar and Lebanon, as Saudi Arabia seeks to contain Iranian influence. With respect to Saudi Arabia s engagement with Qatar, how they re handling the Yemen war that they re engaged in, the Lebanon situation, we would encourage them to be a bit more measured and a bit more thoughtful in those actions to, I think, fully consider the consequences, Tillerson told a news conference alongside his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian. In Yemen, Riyadh is leading an Arab military coalition against the Houthi movement that controls the capital. In recent weeks it imposed a blockade of ports, threatening to worsen what the United Nations says could become one of the worst famines in modern times. Saudi Arabia has also led neighboring Gulf Arab countries this year in cutting off trade and diplomatic ties with their neighbor Qatar, which Riyadh says supports terrorism. Qatar is an important American ally and home to a big U.S. air base. A month ago, the prime minister of Lebanon announced he was resigning while on a visit to Saudi Arabia. He returned home two weeks later and withdrew his resignation last week, drawing a line under the episode. Tillerson s comments were the latest sign of U.S. concern over aspects of the kingdom s foreign policy after Trump on Wednesday issued a one-paragraph statement demanding the Saudis allow immediate humanitarian aid to reach the Yemeni people. Although the blockade showed signs of breaking this week, Yemen s situation remains dire. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. We have called for a complete end of the blockade in Yemen and the opening of all ports. We are asking Saudi Arabia to allow that access, Tillerson said. Tillerson s comments appear to be the first time the United States had publicly linked Saudi Arabia to the political crisis that broke out in Lebanon after Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri announced his resignation last month in Riyadh. I think as to Lebanon, things have worked out in a very positive way, Tillerson said. Perhaps even more positive than before, because there have been very strong statements of affirmation for Lebanon, which will only be helpful. Tillerson s rebuke comes at a time when Washington needs support from its major Arab ally, after Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel earlier this week. When asked whether there was room for Palestinians also to achieve their goal of having part of Jerusalem as their capital, Tillerson emphasized that Trump s move was not intended to shut down their demands over the city. In fact, he was very clear, I think, the final status of Jerusalem, including the borders, would be left to the parties to negotiate and decide, Tillerson said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU ready to start Brexit transition talks early in 2018;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union should be ready to start negotiating details of a post-Brexit transition period with Britain early in the new year, a senior EU official said on Friday, but talks on future trade will take longer. Both sides were already fairly clear on the structure of a transition period likely to last for around two years after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 and involve London accepting almost all EU rules without having a say in making them. We could easily engage on those issues very early in the new year, the official told reporters after the EU executive accepted that Britain had offered enough on divorce terms for it to recommend to governments that they discuss the future. For negotiations to start on the principles of a future relationship, the EU would need more details from Britain on what it wants after the transition and would then have to draw up a fuller set of guidelines for negotiators probably at a summit in February or March, though possibly later, the official said. The intention would be to have a framework agreement on future relations ready by the time Britain leaves. Formal negotiations on a full free trade agreement would not, however, start until Britain is no longer a member. EU negotiator Michel Barnier has said he believes that a full trade agreement can be negotiated in about three years, so that it could be ready by the end of the transition period. If it is not, the EU official noted, then there would a cliff edge scenario for trade relations when the transition period ends. He stressed that the EU would not agree to a long transition, though it has not specified how long that should be. The EU notes that Britain has asked for a transition of around two years. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 45 killed in ethnic fighting in South Sudan: official;JUBA (Reuters) - At least 45 people have died in fighting between ethnic groups in South Sudan s northern state of Western Lakes, a local official said, in a new source of violence in a country already devastated by a four-year civil war. Shadrack Bol Maachok, the state s information minister, said the clashes in Malek county started after a group of young people from the Ruop ethnic group attacked rival youth from the Pakam tribe on Wednesday and Thursday. Early on Friday, the Pakam fighters launched a revenge assault on the Ruop, with the fighting still raging late into the day. It was a very heavy fighting, it has left more than 45 people dead and many injured, he said. The death toll is likely to climb as the area is remote and officials are still trying to gather information on the incident, he said. In the clashes, houses were burned down and properties destroyed, Maachok said, adding that South Sudan s military, SPLA, had deployed troops from the state capital Rumbek to try to stop the violence. The UN mission in South Sudan UNMISS estimated the death toll at more than 50 and said it had dispatched a military patrol to the area to establish the level of destruction and the impact on civilians. We hope to engage the leaders of the fighting parties to press the need to refrain from revenge attacks. We will also intensify patrols to deter further violence, UNMISS said. South Sudan was plunged into war in 2013 after a political disagreement between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president Riek Machar escalated into a military confrontation. The fighting has killed tens of thousands, uprooted about a quarter of the country s population of 12 million people and left its small, oil-dependant economy moribund. Violence between rival communities is common in parts of South Sudan, often triggered by quarrels over scarce grazing land and cultural and political grievances. But the death toll is rarely large. The minister said this week s skirmishes stemmed from disputes dating back to 2013 but it was not clear what exactly sparked the grievances. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Questions on free movement, red tape linger in Brexit citizens' deal;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s agreement with the European Union over key Brexit terms still leaves major issues like freedom of movement undecided, some campaigners said on Friday. Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled an agreement earlier on the Irish border, citizens rights and the Brexit bill, opening the way for talks on trade and a transition period. While the status of the EU s only land border with the United Kingdom was perhaps the thorniest issue, the deal safeguarding the rights of 3 million EU citizens in Britain and around 1.2 million Britons living elsewhere in the EU will affect households across the continent. London and Brussels agreed to offer equal treatment in social security, health care, employment and education and to let British judges ask the European Court of Justice to weigh in when necessary for eight years after Brexit. But Jane Golding, who heads British in Europe, a coalition of 10 citizens groups representing around 35,000 Britons living in the rest of the bloc, said fundamental issues had not been dealt with. The really big one is free movement, and we are worried that that is just simply going to be deferred until the next phase, Golding, a Briton who has lived in Berlin for nine years, told Reuters. In future, if you don t have the right of free movement, the right to go and work and live in those other countries and have your qualifications recognized in those other countries, you could be passed up for those opportunities, and that s going to impact your career, she said. EU and British officials say that British citizens on the continent will, as things stand, only have rights in the member state they are living in on the day of Brexit. However, the two sides are prepared to negotiate further on this next year. Britain, for example, had earlier offered a lifetime guarantee of residence rights but that is, for the time being, off the table, with people losing those rights if they leave the country for five years. However, that is an area where both sides may continue to look for tradeoffs. Getting a deal that works is crucial to both Britain, the world s sixth-largest economy, and the EU, the world s biggest trading bloc. Britons hold positions in major businesses across the continent and take advantage of overseas study schemes such as Erasmus, while tens of thousands of elderly people rely on EU agreements for access to public services and their pensions in countries such as Spain. EU citizens fill key roles in Britain s state-run health service, construction sector and many professional jobs, with British business leaders keen to retain unfettered access to the continent s labor market. Nicolas Hatton, co-chair of campaign group the3million, said he was unhappy that the deal backed Britain s stance of making EU citizens apply to remain in the country. All EU citizens here will need to apply to stay, while so far we were granted residents rights, he told Reuters. This application process will be made with the Home Office and with the current hostile environment policy ... We are very worried. There will be errors, there will be mistakes, people will be affected by these mistakes, he said. Responding to fears of overly bureaucratic barriers, Friday s joint report from the negotiators emphasized that the process for applying to remain will be as transparent and easy as possible. Application forms will be short, simple, user-friendly and adjusted to the context of the Withdrawal Agreement, it reads. But Britons in the EU face uncertainty as to what the process may involve in different member states, while Europeans in Britain have complained about the need to fill in an 85-page application form for residency and to produce tax returns and provide details of their movements over the last five years. At an early morning media conference in Brussels, May offered reassurance to Europeans: They will be able to go on living their lives as before, she said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bahrain's Shi'ite spiritual leader undergoes surgery, activists say;DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain s top Shi ite Muslim cleric underwent surgery on Friday, activists said, after he was hospitalized following months under virtual house arrest. News of Ayatollah Isa Qassim s fragile health has stoked tension in Bahrain as the Sunni Muslim-led monarchy pursues a crackdown on dissent by majority Shi ites. The leading Shia cleric was transferred this morning at 7:30 am to Ibn al-Nafees Hospital to undergo urgent surgery, the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said in a statement. Upon his arrival, he went into surgery and he is expecting further operations. Qassim, who is believed to be in his 70s, was suffering constant pain and excreting blood, citing a groin hernia, diabetes and a form of heart disease, the group said on Nov 27. The Interior Ministry said in June 2016 that Qassim s citizenship had been revoked, accusing him of trying to divide Bahraini society, encourage youths to violate the constitution and promote a sectarian environment in the Gulf Arab state. The decision sparked angry protests in Bahrain and drew sharp condemnation from regional Shi ite power Iran and statements of concern from the United States and Britain. In May, five people were killed when security forces raided Qassim s homevillage to disperse followers. The Sunni-ruled kingdom where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based has pursued a crackdown on members of the Shi ite community since, with Saudi help, it quashed 2011 Arab Spring protests calling for more rights and representation. Authorities have closed opposition political groupings, revoked dissidents passports and arrested suspected militants accused of being backed by its arch-foe, Shi ite Iran. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CREEPY BERNIE Calls For Trump To Step Down…What About Disgusting Essay BERNIE SANDERS WROTE About Women Fantasizing About Being Gang Raped or Men Fantasizing About Sexually Abusing Women?;"Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went on a media blitz that was clearly coordinated by the Democrat Party, at about the same time Senator Al Franken (D-MN) was reluctantly resigning. Sanders took to his allies in the media to call on President Trump to resign over unproven allegations of sexual misconduct that were made against him during his campaign. By the way, it should not go without mentioning that we haven t heard a peep from any of Trump s accusers since he won the election. The Democrats are not going to give up that easily when it comes to ousting President Trump. Just this week, Democrats gave up the fight for Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Senator Al Franken (D-MN) (both of whom represented safe districts for Democrats), after multiple allegations of sexual assault and abuse. It was a clear play at attempting to convince voters that the Democrats are suddenly the party of morals.Do Democrats really believe Americans will be duped into believing that the party who cheated Bernie Sanders, (who wrote about how women fantasize about being gang-raped) out of the chance to be the Democrat nominee for President, to make Hillary Clinton, (a woman who has been accused of enabling her accused rapist husband, who has also been accused several times of sexual assault, and was impeached for lying about having sex with a 19-year old intern under his desk in the Oval Office) is somehow now the moral party?Here s what Bernie had to say about President Trump yesterday:Washington Examiner We have a president of the United States who acknowledged on a time widely seen all over this country that he assaulted women, so I would hope that maybe the POTUS might pay attention to what s going on and also think about resigning, Sanders told CBS News on Thursday.Bernie recently said it was not up to the Senate or Democrat Party to call on Senator Franken to step down. Watch, as Sanders glosses over the question when asked about his previous statement (before Democrats decided Franken was a scalp they could spare for the sake of the party).""What I worry about right now, as we speak, in restaurants and in offices all over this country where you have bosses who are not famous, there is harassment of women and women are being intimidated. We need a cultural revolution in this country."" @SenSanders pic.twitter.com/GTxAf0PVGA CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) December 7, 2017Watch Sanders (the presumtive leader of the Democrat Party) as he calls on President Trump to step down:""We have a POTUS who acknowledged on a tape widely seen all over the country that he's assaulted women, so I would hope maybe the president of the United States might pay attention of what's going on and also think about resigning."" @SenSanders pic.twitter.com/fy4ucYUEkv CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) December 7, 2017The senator was referencing a tape from Access Hollywood made public during the 2016 election on which the president was heard talking about grabbing women without their consent. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.Several of Sanders colleagues in Congress have been accused of inappropriate behavior, and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is expected to make a speech on the Senate floor addressing the allegations against him late Thursday morning.Speaking of words Trump used decades ago when referring to a woman, during a private conversation with another man, what about the disgusting and degrading essay Bernie Sanders wrote about women in 1972?Daily Wire A 1972 essay written by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) expressed his views on human sexuality in which he claimed that women fantasize about being gang-raped and men fantasize about sexually abusing women.The article Man and Woman, came to light after Mother Jones published it during the 2016 presidential election before Sanders started to gain significant momentum in the race.Sanders piece was originally published in the Vermont Freeman and was a reflection on his views of gender and sexuality, the Washington Examiner reported.The first two-paragraphs in Sanders article drew the most controversy:A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.A woman enjoys intercourse with her man as she fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously.Sanders was 31 years old at the time he wrote the essay and had just launched his first campaign for Senate, which proved to be the first of several losing campaigns before he became mayor of Burlington nine years later.WATCH:Bernie Sanders 1972 essay:""A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.""""A woman enjoys intercourse with her man as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.""A sitting US Senator thinks these things. pic.twitter.com/WyxY9CFFwu Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 26, 2017";politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. warns against any hasty returns of Rohingya to Myanmar;GENEVA (Reuters) - Peace and stability must be restored in Myanmar s northern Rakhine state before any Rohingyas can return from Bangladesh, under international standards on voluntary repatriation, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday. Some 20,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar to Bangladesh in November, and at least 270 so far in December, bringing the total since violence erupted on August 25 to 646,000, according to the UNHCR and International Organization of Migration (IOM). The two countries have signed an agreement on voluntary repatriation which refers to establishing a joint working group within three weeks of the Nov. 23 signing. UNHCR is not party to the pact or involved in the bilateral discussions for now. It is critical that the returns are not rushed or premature, UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing. People can t be moving back in into conditions in Rakhine state that simply aren t sustainable. Htin Lynn, Myanmar s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said on Tuesday that his government hoped returns would begin within two months. He was addressing the Human Rights Council, where the top U.N. rights official said that Myanmar s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority. The UNHCR has not been formally invited to join the working group, although its Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements is holding talks in Bangladesh, Edwards said, adding that discussions were still at a very preliminary stage . He could not say whether UNHCR was in talks with Myanmar authorities on its role, but hoped the agency would be part of the joint working group. Edwards, asked whether the two-month time was premature, said: The return timeline of course is something that we are going to have to look closely at ... We don t want to see returns happening either involuntarily or precipitously and before conditions are ready. In all, Bangladesh is hosting a total of more than 858,000 Rohingya, including previous waves, IOM figures show. We have had ... a cycle of displacement from Rakhine state over many decades, of people being marginalized, of violence, of people fleeing and then people returning, Edwards said. Now this cycle has to be broken, which means that we have to find a way to ensure that there is a lasting solution for these people. WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said that it had distributed food to 32,000 people in northern Rakhine in November. Everybody agrees that the situation is very dire on ground, that all of the U.N. agencies need more access, that the violence has to stop and that these people can live in safety where they want to live, she said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine president denies hampering anti-corruption efforts;VILNIUS/KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denied on Friday interfering with the work of law enforcement bodies investigating corruption and he urged such agencies to refrain from playing politics. Ukrainian authorities this week have faced accusations of deliberately sabotaging anti-corruption reforms, which are a key condition for international support for the country as it grapples with a Russian-backed separatist insurgency. Perceived backsliding by Kiev on its reform commitments, including delays in establishing an independent court to handle corruption cases, has held up billions of dollars in loans under Ukraine s $17.5 billion IMF program. Over the last 2.5 years of activity of the anti-corruption institutions, everybody, including the heads of these institutions, has said there has not been a single instance of interference by the president in their work, Poroshenko said. We consider it unacceptable when the leaders of any law enforcement bodies, including anti-corruption, begin to play in the political field, he told a news conference during a visit to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. They must be independent, protected from political influence. Action by Ukraine s parliament and prosecutors against existing anti-corruption bodies such as the NABU investigative bureau provoked a wave of criticism this week from reformers and Kiev s foreign backers including the IMF. Poroshenko s faction is the largest in parliament and the president also nominates the general prosecutor. Corrupt Empire Strikes Back read the headline of the English language newspaper Kyiv Post on Friday. The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said she had urged Poroshenko during a telephone conversation late on Thursday to speed up the fight against corruption. Lagarde said she and Poroshenko had discussed the need to safeguard the independence of NABU and similar institutions and that they agreed on the urgency of establishing an anti-corruption court. On Friday Poroshenko said he would soon introduce a draft law to set up such a court, taking into account recommendations by the Venice Commission, a leading European rights watchdog. The effectiveness of the work of anti-corruption bodies should not be in the number of press conferences (they give), but in the number of corrupt officials who are put behind bars, he added. Poroshenko was asked about the current furor surrounding former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili after Ukrainian law enforcement officials twice failed to detain him this week on charges of aiding a criminal organization. The situation with Saakashvili is not worthy of international attention, because there are specific crimes that were committed and we must ensure transparency of the investigation and absolute openness, Poroshenko said. If he flees from the investigation, this undermines his credibility, he added. Saakashvili became a regional governor in Ukraine in 2015 at Poroshenko s invitation but they later fell out, with the former Georgian leader accusing the president of corruption. Saakashvili denies the charges against him. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK opposition leader Corbyn wants close relationship with Europe;GENEVA (Reuters) - Britain s opposition Labour party wants a close relationship with the rest of Europe after Brexit, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told an audience at the United Nations in Geneva on Friday. We want to see a close and cooperative relationship with our European neighbors outside the European Union, based on solidarity as well as mutual benefit and fair trade, along with a wider proactive internationalism across the globe, he said. My own country, Britain, is at a crossroads, he said. The vote last year to leave the European Union meant hard thinking had to be done about Britain s role in the world, he said. There are some who want to use Brexit to turn Britain in on itself, rejecting the outside world, viewing everyone as a feared competitor, he said. Others want to use Brexit to put rocket boosters under our current economic system s insecurities and inequalities. Turning Britain into a deregulated corporate tax haven, low wages, with limited rights, cut-price public services, in a wholly destructive race to the bottom. Corbyn said his party stood for a completely different future, drawing on the internationalist traditions of the Labour movement and of Britain. In a wide-ranging speech about human rights and multilateralism, he did not immediately comment on the Brexit divorce deal struck by Britain s Prime Minister Theresa May and the European Commission earlier on Friday. The European Commission said that enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations to allow a second phase of talks on future relations to begin. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary's Jobbik asks voters to help pay 'court-martial' fine;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary s main opposition Jobbik party has launched a crowd funding campaign to raise money for a state audit authority fine that it said could cripple it in the run-up to 2018 elections. Hungarians will vote for a new Parliament in April and Prime Minister Viktor Orban s populist Fidesz party is far ahead in the polls, with Jobbik its nearest rival. Jobbik, once on the far right, has turned toward the center and in the past year campaigned nationwide against Orban, whom they depicted as the leader of a criminal gang on thousands of billboard ads. Orban has rejected corruption charges, saying he has spent his entire life in politics and his financial standing was an open book . The State Audit Office (ASZ) earlier this week ruled that the party had purchased the posters far below market prices, breaching rules on political funding. The ASZ slapped Jobbik with a 663 million forint ($2.5 million) penalty. Jobbik said it has no money to pay the fine. It has 15 days to respond before the ASZ ruling, which cannot be appealed in court, becomes final. The ASZ, acting as a court-martial in the manner of the darkest dictatorships, levied on Jobbik a fine whose only real aim is to block the party from running at the elections, Jobbik said in a statement on its website. This is the first step in the final eradication of what is left of Hungarian democracy. ASZ Chairman Laszlo Domokos is a former Fidesz lawmaker, while Chief Prosecutor Peter Polt, whose office worked with ASZ on the Jobbik case, is a former Fidesz member twice appointed to his post by Fidesz-dominated parliaments. The ASZ was an independent and non-political body, its spokesman Balint Nemeth said. The prosecution does its job independently, in accordance with the laws, prosecution spokesman Geza Fazekas said. The prosecution did not participate in the ASZ probe in any way, he said. He added that the ASZ asked the prosecutors to investigate whether Jobbik blocked auditors from reviewing its files. That investigation has a March 6 deadline. Laws apply to everyone, and Jobbik is no exception, Fidesz spokesman Balazs Hidvegi said. Jobbik must obey the law, and if they do they will have no problems. The audit crackdown triggered broad criticism. Miklos Ligeti, a director at anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, said Fidesz has been by far the largest beneficiary of undue price advantages on services that was the basis of Jobbik s fine. 2014 election ads cost Fidesz at least 4 billion forints at list prices, about four times the legal limit, Ligeti said based on their own calculations. Fidesz said on its disclosures it had spent 984 million forints. Other parties, including Jobbik, overshot their 2014 limit by 40-50 percent at most, he estimated. The auditors have clearly got on Jobbik s case, as they should, Ligeti said. They should do the same with every other party but clearly don t. Which one they strike down and which they spare seems to be a party political decision. Fidesz was not immediately available to comment on the Transparency International calculations. For the campaign Jobbik used billboards owned by a tycoon named Lajos Simicska, once a key ally of Orban who fell out with the premier in 2015. Orban says Simicska hijacked Jobbik. Both the party and the tycoon deny this. ($1 = 267.83 forints) ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Head of Zimbabwe election commission quits, source says;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairwoman Rita Makarau resigned on Friday, months before a vote whose credibility is crucial to the new army-backed government s efforts to re-engage international lenders and lure investors, a senior government source said. Makarau, seen as an ally of 93-year-old former president Robert Mugabe, gave no reason for her resignation, the official, who declined to be named, said. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was sworn in two weeks ago in the wake of the de facto military coup that ended Mugabe s 37-year rule, pledged to hold elections as scheduled next year. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa mentioned the credibility of the elections at least five times in a budget speech on Thursday, a sign of the vote s importance in shoring up Harare s democratic legitimacy. Opposition parties have demanded reforms to an electoral system they say is skewed in the ruling ZANU-PF party s favor. Makarau, who has been accused of being partisan, was overseeing an overhaul of the voters roll, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has described as shambolic . Makarau did not answer her mobile phone. A spokesman for the ZEC was unable to confirm Makarau s departure. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;World powers push Saudis, Iran to stop interfering in Lebanon;PARIS (Reuters) - World powers attempted to shore up Lebanon s stability on Friday by pushing Saudi Arabia and Iran to stop interfering in its politics and urging Hezbollah to rein in its regional activities. Lebanon plunged into crisis on Nov. 4 when Saad al-Hariri resigned as prime minister while he was in Saudi Arabia, saying he feared assassination and criticizing the Saudis regional arch-rival Iran along with its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. After international pressure and negotiations between Lebanese political factions, he rescinded his resignation on Tuesday and his coalition government, which includes Hezbollah, reaffirmed a state policy of staying out of conflicts in Arab states. The International Lebanon Support Group (GIS), a body that includes the five members of the U.N. Security Council Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States met in Paris on Friday to try to reinforce Hariri s hand to prevent a new escalation. Disassociation applies to everyone - inside and outside, Jean-Yves Le Drian said at a news conference with Hariri after the meeting. These principles were reaffirmed this morning, he said, later referring specifically to both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Without naming Hezbollah, he urged all sides not to import regional tensions into Lebanon. Hariri said that any breach of the policy of non-interference would drag Lebanon back into the danger zone . The disassociation policy is in the overarching interest of Lebanon, he said. The meeting had earlier been opened by President Emmanuel Macron. He has invested political capital in the crisis and leveraged France s close relations with both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to secure a deal that saw Hariri travel to Paris and open the door to a resolution of the crisis last month. (The Group) calls upon all Lebanese parties to implement this tangible policy of disassociation from and non-interference in external conflicts, as an important priority, the final communique read. Saudi concern over the influence wielded by Shi ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah in other Arab states had been widely seen as the root cause of the crisis, which raised fears for Lebanon s economic and political stability. The Lebanese policy of dissociation was declared in 2012 to keep the deeply divided state out of regional conflicts such as the civil war in neighboring Syria. Despite the policy, Hezbollah is heavily involved there, sending thousands of fighters to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He said that while the diplomatic language for the final declaration would not single out any party, the message was that Saudi Arabia and Iran should not influence Lebanese politics and that Hezbollah should rein in its regional activities. Friday s meeting isn t anti-Saudi or anti-Iranian, it s pro-Lebanon, a senior French diplomat said before the meeting. Highlighting the difficulties of upholding such a policy, Hezbollah backed calls on Thursday for a new Palestinian uprising in reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of disputed Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The stability of Lebanon may seem like a small miracle given the many conflicts that destabilize the region, but it is maintained at the cost of sacrifice, dialogue and compromise, Hariri said earlier alongside Macron. Those attending Friday s meeting also committed to strengthening the Lebanese army through a conference in Rome and to support a meeting in Brussels also in 2018 to discuss how to help Lebanon cope with the 1.4 million refugees it hosts. A separate donor conference will also take place in March in Paris to boost the country s economy with a view to stimulating investments once expected legislative elections take place in May. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;The last hours of Yemen's Saleh;DUBAI (Reuters) - A day before they killed Yemen s former president, gunmen from the Iran-aligned Houthi militia group overran one of Ali Abdullah Saleh s fortified compounds in Sanaa. Ransacking the villa, they snapped photos of liquor flasks and vodka bottles and posted them online. This is how the traitor (Saleh) and his family lived during a time of war, siege and cholera, Hamid Rizq, a senior Houthi official, said on his official Twitter account. The Houthi gunmen acted fast and mercilessly to punish the 75-year-old Saleh for having appeared to switch sides in Yemen s three-year civil war - a proxy battle for influence between regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia. Allied with the Houthis for three years, Saleh had called on Saturday for a new page in relations with Saudi Arabia. The murder is a setback for Riyadh, which had hoped the backing of Saleh and his loyalist army units in northern Yemen - would help close a war that has killed 10,000 people and caused one of the world s most acute humanitarian crises. Saudi Arabia fears the Houthis will become as powerful a force in the Middle East as Lebanon s Iran-backed Hezbollah. The Houthis are holding their ground despite air strikes by Saudi Arabia and its allied forces and a naval blockade that has prevented food, medicine and fuel from arriving in Houthi-controlled northern areas, bringing the region to the brink of famine. Last month, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile into Riyadh. Now, the Saudis are turning their hopes to Saleh s son Ahmed Ali and his good ties with Saudi ally United Arab Emirates to do the job his father couldn t. Photos of Ahmed Ali, a military leader admired by thousands of soldiers in Houthi-run lands, appeared on the front page of UAE newspapers on Wednesday meeting the UAE s de-facto leader Mohammed bin Zayed. Saleh s death caps a 40-year political career that charts Yemen s tragic modern history. A country with few natural resources, awash in weapons and fractured along tribal and religious lines, Yemen has long been buffeted by its powerful neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia. Saleh was the first leader of a unified Yemen in 1990. But he shifted loyalties various times - fighting the Houthis in the 2000s, for example - as the plates of influence shifted in the Middle East. In this latest geopolitical drama, the UAE is emerging as playmaker in the Yemen crisis. The UAE has been financing and training armed groups that have been pushing toward the Red Sea port of Hodeida, a Houthi stronghold and entry point for supplies getting to millions of civilians in northern Yemen. The Saleh family has long enjoyed good relations with the wealthy Gulf state, which had over the decades funded infrastructure projects in Yemen before becoming a key member of the Saudi-led coalition. Hamza al-Houthi, a top Houthi leader, said the Houthis had suspected the Saleh family s allegiance to the Saudi-held coalition for some time and that tensions had been brewing since August. Al-Houthi said his troops had intercepted UAE arms shipments bound for Saleh s family late last month. As punishment, the Houthis killed his nephew Tareq on Monday. Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said the latest events mean the war in Yemen is likely to escalate. The Houthis, while an important military force, are not particularly adept at politics or governance. Their reach...in the population is limited, and over time that will play into their opponents hands. But that won t happen anytime soon, so it looks like the conflict will worsen. Saleh s relationship with Saudi Arabia and its allies has been marked by politics and prayer. Over the past few decades, Riyadh has tried, in succession, to quash an anti-royalist revolution, Marxism and al Qaeda militancy in Yemen. Riyadh backed Saleh, an Arab nationalist strongman, between 1978 and 2012 to help him quash those ideologies before they could seep next door to Saudi Arabia. But as Arab Spring protests rocked Yemen swept through the Middle East, Riyadh realized Saleh was no longer strong enough for the job and backed a transition to his deputy Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. When the Houthis attacked Sanaa in 2014 and swept Hadi into Saudi exile, Riyadh began the bombing campaign that continues today. At that time, Saleh took one of the riskiest gambles of his turbulent career, allying himself to the Houthis, heirs to a theocratic sect that ruled Yemen for a thousand years. Saleh s Yemeni military which had jets, tank brigades and long-range missiles had fought the Houthis in six wars over ten years at the time Saleh had allied himself with Saudi and Western powers. With Saleh s experience administering the country and cultivating a strong military, the Houthis made major military gains around the country and together their forces withstood thousands of Saudi-led air strikes. But the Houthi-Saleh entente cracked in August when a Houthi leader passed over a trusted Saleh confidante for a key military position, according to people in the General People s Congress Party, the grouping of technocrats and tribal grandees that did Saleh s bidding throughout his rule. Saleh loyalists itched for revenge, they said. Fearing disloyalty, the Houthis restricted Saleh to his fief in Sanaa s political district. Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen of the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the Houthis then waged their war largely without him. Saleh was largely a spent force by the time he died in a weekend s fighting, wrote Feierstein in a policy brief. On November 29, tensions exploded. Rumors swirled in the city of Sanaa that the Houthis were planning to paint the domes of a giant mosque and palace that Saleh had built and named after himself in their trademark green. When Houthi militia neared the palace, Saleh s guards fired. The Houthis, experts in mountain guerrilla warfare, overran the palace with grenades and seized it. The Houthis wanted Saleh to hand over his weapons and disarm his fighters, a senior Saleh party official told Reuters. He refused. Another party official said that, contrary to reports that Saleh was in his car trying to flee when he was killed on Dec. 4, the former president had been executed with a gunshot to the head after making a last stand at his house. Now, the Saleh associate says he and his colleagues are afraid the Houthis will turn against all of them. The Houthis want to kill us all. For a graphic on Yemen's stalemated war, click tmsnrt.rs/2zqGyq9 ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil president sees lower house pension reform vote December 18 week;SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian President Michel Temer said on Friday that the pension reform bill that is indispensable to reduce the nation s budget deficit must be voted on this year in the lower house of Congress before the 2018 election year. Speaking at a chemical industry event, Temer appealed to businessmen to lobby Congress for approval of the unpopular pension overhaul that is seen by investors as crucial to restoring Brazil s fiscal health. Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of the lower house, said this week he would not put the bill to the vote until the government had secured the 308 votes the measure will need for passage. To allow more time for negotiations with reluctant lawmakers, Temer agreed with congressional leaders on Thursday to delay the lower house vote on the bill until the week of Dec. 18, the last before the Christmas recess. Once it clears the lower chamber, Temer expects the legislation to be voted on in the Senate in February. Reform of the pension system is indispensable. It will allow Brazil to move forward, Temer said. But this must be the work of all of us. We need to show that we support this bill. Temer acknowledged that lawmakers facing re-election next October had legitimate concerns about supporting the bill. The reform proposal seeks to increase the age at which Brazilians can retire and collect social security. It would also make pension payouts in Brazil, among the most generous in the world, more modest. If a vote is further delayed until next year, its chances of approval will be limited as lawmakers become more sensitive to the demands of voters when the election campaign gets underway. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov: U.S. decision on Jerusalem contradicts common sense;VIENNA (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital by the United States runs counter to common sense. This announcement runs counter to common sense, Lavrov told a news conference in Vienna, referring to an announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump that Washington was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May's Brexit deal wins her some peace at home - at least for now;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Theresa May won a temporary reprieve from rival factions within her own party on Friday by striking a overnight agreement with the European Union that some business leaders hope will increase prospects of an orderly exit from the bloc. After all-night negotiations and an early morning dash to Brussels by May, she and EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker agreed to start talking about trade and a post Brexit transition period, declaring sufficient progress had been made on the cost and detailed terms of the separation. This took some of the heat out of a conflict between Conservative lawmakers that had threatened May s fragile grip on the party s leadership, and eased pressure on her minority government from business leaders who have repeatedly warned of a post-Brexit exodus. Everyone s won a reprieve here, said Anand Menon, director of The UK in a Changing Europe think tank. This isn t a deal, it s a progress report ... It s exactly what she wanted - all she wanted was progress. The Conservative Party s historical divisions over Britain s relationship with the EU had threatened to erupt earlier in the week when a carefully choreographed announcement of a deal spectacularly collapsed after the small Northern Irish party propping up her government objected to the terms. That raised the prospect of a fourth successive Conservative prime minister being forced from power over a row about Europe - a flashpoint that played a major part in the downfall of David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher. Pro-Brexit supporters said the only solution to the impasse over how to manage the Irish border after Brexit was to walk away from talks;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan, Putin to discuss Syria, Jerusalem during meeting in Turkey: sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will make an official visit to Turkey on Monday, Dec. 11, to discuss developments in Syria and Jerusalem with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish presidential sources said on Friday. The Kremlin confirmed the visit by Putin on Friday, saying the two leaders would discuss energy projects and key international problems . Erdogan and Putin held a phone call on Thursday where they agreed that the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital will negatively impact the region s peace and stability. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran's defense minister to visit Russia soon: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami plans to visit Russia soon, the RIA news agency reported on Friday, citing a source at the Iranian defense ministry. He is expected to hold talks with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, RIA reported. Hatami plans to discuss the military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran and the latest developments in the region, according to the agency. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli minister sees Trump 'hint' at Jerusalem partition with Palestinians;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli cabinet minister said on Friday the phrasing of U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital suggested an openness to eventual Palestinian control of part of the city, though he predicted Israel would oppose this. Trump s announcement reversed decades of U.S. policy, angering the Arab world and alarming Western allies. But he also said Washington was not laying down a position on final-status issues including boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, which the two parties would have to decide in negotiations. Israel has long deemed Jerusalem its eternal, indivisible capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they seek on land Israel took in a 1967 war. Its eastern sector is laden with Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites that inject deep religious sensitivities into the dispute over sovereignty. In his speech on Wednesday, Trump did not include words echoing Israel s traditional description of Jerusalem. Asked about this, minister Zeev Elkin said: I think that his leaving this out of the speech was premeditated. He even hinted that borders in Jerusalem will also be set as a result of negotiations, which presupposes an option of partition, said Elkin, who holds the Jerusalem Affairs portfolio in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s government. Elkin was referring to Trump s caveat that the new U.S. decision on Jerusalem did not constitute taking a position of any final-status issues, including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, or the resolution of contested borders . Those questions are up to the parties involved, added Trump, who said Washington still wanted Israelis and Palestinians to agree on a two-state solution for peace. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson echoed those remarks on Friday. With respect to the rest of Jerusalem the president ... did not indicate any final status for Jerusalem. He was very clear that the final status, including the borders, would be left to the two parties to negotiate and decide, Tillerson told reporters in Paris. Like other world powers, and in keeping with U.N. Security Council resolutions since the 1967 war, Washington had long held off on recognizing any sovereignty in Jerusalem, one of the most treacherous issues in the Middle East conflict. Elkin said he would have been happy had Trump described Jerusalem as Israel s united capital. But he played down any possibility of partition, saying Trump s administration would only pursue the idea if the Netanyahu government consented. This is a very, very important factor, and I currently have no doubt that Israel would not agree. Ultimately, in actuality, this is what matters, Elkin said in his remarks, carried by Tel Aviv 102 FM radio. Trump spoke of Jerusalem as the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times (and) the seat of the modern Israeli government, with freedom of worship for all faiths. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded angrily, saying Washington had abdicated its role as peace mediator and deeming Jerusalem a Palestinian, Arab, Christian and Muslim city, the eternal capital of the state of Palestine . Abbas used the Arabic term Al Quds , which he has generally qualified to refer to East Jerusalem rather than the whole city. In three public statements welcoming the U.S. move, Netanyahu has not asserted Jerusalem s indivisibility under Israel - heretofore stock rubric for him, as for previous prime ministers. A Netanyahu spokesman did not immediately respond to a Reuters query about the seeming omission. Israel s ambassador to the United States, speaking before the Trump announcement, appeared to acknowledge that - in the eyes of foreign mediators, at least - Jerusalem being the Israeli capital may not rule out Palestinian sovereignty there. Every single peace plan that s ever been put down has Jerusalem be a capital of Israel, Ron Dermer told Politico on Dec. 4. There have been other peace plans that have suggested it be capital of two states, which is a separate issue. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it. But world powers and the United Nations have not recognized Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, saying it must be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians, whose last peace talks collapsed in 2014. No other country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinians protested in a day of rage on Friday in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and in East Jerusalem against Trump s move on the ancient city. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arrests, judicial reforms under Macri worry Argentina opposition;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s President Mauricio Macri has pushed out the chief prosecutor, argued for federal judges to be fired and is planning judicial reforms as charges pile up against his predecessor s government. Macri s supporters have cheered what they see as an overdue effort to reform Argentina s sluggish judiciary. But his opponents smell a witch hunt against former leader Cristina Fernandez and fear the government is trying to use the courts to eliminate opponents. On Thursday, a federal judge dealt the hardest blow yet to Fernandez, asking for Congress to remove her immunity as a senator so she could be arrested. The judge indicted Fernandez for treason and allegedly covering up Iran s role in a 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people. That followed the arrest of two key officials from Fernandez s administration days after Macri s coalition swept mid-term elections on Oct. 22. Former planning minister Julio De Vido was detained on Oct. 25, followed by former vice president Amado Boudou on Nov. 3. Both deny wrongdoing. Fernandez has denied personal wrongdoing and accuses Macri of using the judiciary for political persecution. I d like to tell President Macri that the campaign ended in October, although some people have not noticed, Fernandez told a news conference on Thursday. She was also indicted a year ago on charges she ran a corruption scheme with her public works secretary, who was caught trying to stash millions of dollars in a convent. Fernandez has admitted there may have been corruption in her government but personally denies wrongdoing. Macri, meanwhile, has pledged to strengthen the judiciary and says he will make it more independent. He plans changes to the federal prosecutors office and a reform of the Judicial Council, which appoints judges. The reforms would require congressional approval and a source from Macri s coalition said they would be presented next year, after higher profile tax and labor reforms are debated. Unions and allies of Fernandez oppose many of the center-right Macri s economic measures. So do many judges, who are historically staunch defenders of workers rights. They are using the Council to tame judges who dare to make rulings that reverse government decisions, said Rodolfo Tailhade, a Judicial Council member and a lawmaker allied with Fernandez. Tailhade and a federal judge, who requested anonymity, both said the reform may allow the removal of judges for poor performance with a simple majority rather than the current nine out of 13 votes. The Council is a mix of political appointments, judges and lawyers. The justice ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Justice Minister German Garavano recently told Radio 10 the executive branch does not exert pressure on judges. He said the judicial system needs structural change to reduce a backlog of cases. Tensions with prosecutors, some of whom are allied with Fernandez, have also increased. Former chief prosecutor Alejandra Gils Carbo resigned in October over accusations she hampered corruption investigations of Fernandez s government. Macri described Gils Carbo as a political activist who misused her power. Among the names mentioned as a possible replacement for her are officials who have advocated more aggressive investigation of the previous government. Another prosecutor, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information, said colleagues are worried about potential government intervention. However, some recent court cases have also involved people close to Macri. A prosecutor last week recommended courts freeze 54 billion pesos ($3.12 billion) in assets belonging to construction magnate Angel Calcaterra, a cousin of Macri, over suspicion of bribe payments linked to Brazil s Odebrecht. Calcaterra denies wrongdoing but sold his stake in the company, Iecsa, to avoid conflicts of interest that could arise due to Macri s position. Even opponents of Fernandez have warned Macri to tread carefully with judicial reform. The reform...cannot be used to pursue judges or prosecutors, said congresswoman Margarita Stolbizer, a member of a more moderate opposition party. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump signs temporary spending bill as budget talks intensify;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed legislation to fund the federal government for two weeks, giving congressional negotiators more time to work out budget priorities through next September and other thorny policy matters. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a post on Twitter that Trump, as expected, signed the stop-gap funding bill that averts a shutdown of federal agencies at midnight when existing money runs out. For months, Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress have been working behind the scenes to hammer out a deal to fund government for fiscal 2018, which began on Oct. 1. Absent that deal, Washington has been operating on temporary spending bills. Much of the negotiation centers around Republican demands for increased military spending. Democrats say the Pentagon does need more money, but they argue that an array of other domestic programs also face shortfalls. A senior Senate Democratic aide said on Friday that the negotiators are trying to figure out how to divide up $200 billion over two years in additional funding. That much of a spending increase is setting off alarms among conservative Republicans. Representative Mark Meadows, who heads the House Freedom Caucus comprised of about three dozen of some of the most conservative members of Congress, said that $70 billion to $80 billion in added spending would be more reasonable. The caucus is pushing for Pentagon increases without more money for other domestic programs. Besides the spending levels, the Democratic aide said negotiators are hoping to come to a deal on protecting around 700,000 undocumented immigrants, who were brought to the United States as children, from possible deportation. Other elements of the negotiations include new disaster relief funds for Puerto Rico and U.S. states hard-hit by hurricanes and wildfires, as well as funding for a children’s health-insurance program for low-income families and money for community health centers. Many in Congress hope the negotiations on these issues can be wrapped up before Dec. 22, when current funding expires and lawmakers hope to leave Washington for a winter break. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military says airstrikes kill five al Qaeda militants in Yemen;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Friday it carried out airstrikes on Nov. 20 in Yemen s al Bayda province that killed five militants from al Qaeda s affiliate there, including Mujahid al-Adani, whom it described as one of the group s leaders. Al-Adani maintained a significant influence within AQAP as well as close ties to other AQAP senior leaders, the U.S. military s Central Command said in a statement, using an acronym for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's conservatives choose leader to rattle Macron's perch;PARIS (Reuters) - In his first seven months in office, President Emmanuel Macron has faced little opposition. But come Sunday, the once-dominant Republicans elect a new leader they hope might recover the party s voice. Frontrunner to lead the party of former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy is Laurent Wauquiez, an ambitious 42-year-old who like Macron passed through the elite ENA school and promises to shake up the political establishment. There are few policy parallels between the two men, however. Wauquiez is a relentless critic of the 39-year-old president, dismissing him as out of touch with rural France, weak on security and too much in favor of closer European integration. In his campaign to lead the party, Wauquiez has charted a rightward path to attack Macron s social and economic reforms. The Right is waking up. It is back and I want to be clear: we re not going to be told what we can say or think any more, Wauquiez told Reuters. The future of France s democracy cannot be a centrist swamp that gathers both Socialists and right-wingers around Macron. He will inherit a party in disarray, divided in its response to both Macron s poaching of party stalwarts and economic policy that encroaches on their turf. Its candidate Francois Fillon was eliminated in the first round of this year s presidential election, and the party has had a caretaker interim leader since. Wauquiez bills himself as the champion of small-town, rural France - a France, he says, with which Macron has no connection as he pursues a start-up nation . They have no roots, they are completely out of touch with reality in this country, Wauquiez told a rally in Provins, outside Paris, referring to Macron and his lieutenants. Addressing campaign rallies in open-collar shirts, Wauquiez says Macron s tax policy will hammer the middle class and pensioners, denounces his labor reforms as a sham and accuses the government of being too soft on radical Islam. He has also drawn up future battlelines over the deeper European integration sought by Macron. He is the leader the Right needs, said Jacqueline Mercier, 72, after a rally in Paris. He is young, he is dynamic and his ideas truly represent us. Not all party loyalists agree and there is discord among its lawmakers too. While Wauquiez is popular with more conservative supporters, his bid to take the party fishing in waters of the far-right National Front alarms party moderates. Several senior-ranking party members have warned they could jump ship. If the right turns its back on the center, we will be in opposition for 20 years, said Mael de Calan, one of two junior politicians challenging Wauquiez s leadership bid. Even so, inside Macron s camp, some ministers are cautioning against underestimating the threat of Wauquiez. We need to be wary because he is very gifted, very strong and there s nothing he won t do. He will establish a violent fight, Gerald Darmanin, Macron s budget minister and former member of The Republicans, told the newspaper Le Monde. Polls show Wauquiez winning 60 to 75 percent of the votes on Sunday for an outright first-round win. More than 230,000 party members have the right to take part in the online election, but far fewer are expected to do so. France is due to hold its next presidential election in 2022. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japanese man kills wife and priestess sister with sword in bizarre family feud: media;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese man wielding a sword killed his sister, a Shinto priestess, on the grounds of a Tokyo shrine, then stabbed his wife to death before committing suicide, police and media said. Police declined to comment on a motive for Thursday s killings or the family feud. Shigenaga Tomioka, 56, attacked Nagako Tomioka, 58, chief priestess of the Tomioka Hachimangu shrine, as she got out of a car. Media reports said she was his sister. His 49-year-old wife, Mariko, stabbed and wounded the driver of the car with a sword, police said, before she too was killed. Shigenaga sent a threatening letter to his sister in 2006, saying he would send her to hell , the Sankei newspaper said. Shinto is the traditional religion of Japan and many shrines dot the country. The Tomioka Hachimangu shrine, established in 1627, has a close link with sumo and the emperor and empress visited in 2012. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two dead in 'Day of Rage' over Jerusalem, Palestinian president defiant;JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - At least two people were killed in clashes with Israeli troops on Friday when thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital and the Palestinian president said Washington could no longer be a peace broker. Across the Arab and Muslim worlds, thousands more protesters took to the streets on the Muslim holy day to express solidarity with the Palestinians and outrage at Trump s reversal of decades of U.S. policy. Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man near the Gaza border, the first confirmed death in two days of unrest. Scores of people were wounded on the Day of Rage . A second person later died of their wounds, a Gaza hospital official said. The Israeli army said hundreds of Palestinians were rolling burning tyres and throwing rocks at soldiers across the border. During the riots IDF soldiers fired selectively towards two main instigators and hits were confirmed, it said. More than 80 Palestinians were wounded in the occupied West Bank and Gaza by Israeli live fire and rubber bullets, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service. Dozens more suffered from tear gas inhalation. Thirty-one were wounded on Thursday. As Friday prayers ended at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, worshippers made their way toward the walled Old City gates, chanting Jerusalem is ours, Jerusalem is our capital and We don t need empty words, we need stones and Kalashnikovs . Scuffles broke out between protesters and police. In Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus, dozens of Palestinians threw stones at Israeli soldiers who fired back with tear gas. In Gaza, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, calls for worshippers to protest sounded over mosque loudspeakers. Hamas has called for a new Palestinian uprising like the intifadas of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, which together saw thousands of Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis killed. Whoever moves his embassy to occupied Jerusalem will become an enemy of the Palestinians and a target of Palestinian factions, said Hamas leader Fathy Hammad as protesters in Gaza burned posters of Trump. We declare an intifada until the liberation of Jerusalem and all of Palestine. Protests largely died down as night fell. Rocket sirens sounded in southern Israeli towns near the Gaza border, and the Israeli military said it had intercepted one of at least two projectiles fired from Gaza. No casualties were reported. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group linked to Abbas s Fatah party, claimed responsibility for firing one of the rockets, and said it was in protest against Trump s decision. The military said another rocket hit the Israeli town of Sderot. No casualties were reported. Israel s military said that in response to the rocket fire, its aircraft bombed militant targets in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 25 people were wounded in the strikes, including six children. The Israeli military said it had carried out the strikes on a militant training camp and on a weapons depot. Witnesses said most of the wounded were residents of a building near the camp. At the United Nations, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Washington still had credibility as a mediator. The United States has credibility with both sides. Israel will never be, and should never be, bullied into an agreement by the United Nations, or by any collection of countries that have proven their disregard for Israel s security, Haley told the U.N. Security Council. But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared defiant. We reject the American decision over Jerusalem. With this position the United States has become no longer qualified to sponsor the peace process, Abbas said in a statement. He did not elaborate further. France, Italy, Germany, Britain and Sweden called on the United States to bring forward detailed proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement . Trump s announcement on Wednesday has infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies. The status of Jerusalem has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians for generations. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future independent state of their own. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War, to be occupied territory. It includes the Old City, home to sites considered holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. For decades, Washington, like most of the rest of the international community, held back from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, saying its status should be determined as part of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. No other country has an embassy there. The Trump administration argues that the peace process has become moribund, and outdated policies need to be jettisoned for the sides in the conflict to make progress. Trump has also noted that Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all promised as candidates to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. I fulfilled my campaign promise - others didn t! Trump tweeted on Friday with a video montage of campaign speeches on the issue by his three predecessors. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday it would still be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to hammer out all other issues surrounding the city in future talks. With respect to the rest of Jerusalem, the president ... did not indicate any final status for Jerusalem. He was very clear that the final status, including the borders, would be left to the two parties to negotiate and decide. Still, some Muslim countries view the Trump administration s motives with particular suspicion. As a candidate he proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States, and in office he has tried to block entry by citizens of several Muslim-majority states. In Ramallah, the seat of Abbas s Palestinian Authority, the leader s religious affairs adviser said Trump s stance was an affront to Islam and Christianity alike. America has chosen to elect a president who has put it in enmity with all Muslims and Christians, said Mahmoud al-Habbash. In Iran, which has never recognized Israel and supports anti-Israel militants, demonstrators burned pictures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while chanting Death to the Devil . In Cairo, capital of Egypt, a U.S. ally which has a peace treaty with Israel, hundreds of protesters who had gathered in Al-Azhar mosque and outside in its courtyard chanted Jerusalem is Arab! O Trump, you madman, the Arab people are everywhere! Al Azhar s Imam, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, rejected an invitation to meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Large demonstrations also took place in Jordan, Tunisia, Somalia, Yemen, Malaysia and Indonesia, and hundreds protested outside the U.S. embassy in Berlin. France said the United States had sidelined itself in the Middle East. The reality is they are alone and isolated on this issue, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam police arrest ex-politburo member over misconduct;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese police on Friday arrested a former top Communist Party official suspected of misconduct while he was chairman of the main state energy firm, the first former politburo member to face prosecution in decades. Police issued arrest and prosecution orders for Dinh La Thang, 56, for suspected violation of state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences , the Ministry of Public Security said on its website. Thang is the most senior official so far caught up in a widespread crackdown on fraud in the energy and banking sectors, which has gathered pace since the security establishment gained greater influence in the party last year. Police are investigating two cases related to Thang s tenure as chairman of state oil and gas firm PetroVietnam that involved a loss of investment in local Ocean Bank and suspected wrongdoing at a PetroVietnam subsidiary, PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corp (PVC) (PVX.HN), police said. Thang was not available for comment. The corruption crackdown made global headlines in August when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former chairman of PVC, in Berlin after he applied for asylum there. The party has said it aimed to let Thanh go on trial next month. Government critics have voiced suspicions that the corruption crackdown is politically motivated, at least in part, and aimed against those close to former prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who lost out in an internal power struggle in 2016. This development represents a major event in Vietnamese politics and reflects a concerted effort by those in the commanding heights of the party to rein in and prosecute instances of large scale corruption and serious cases of malfeasance among high ranking party and state officials, said Vietnam expert Jonathan London of Leiden University. Thang was dismissed from the politburo after the Communist Party found him responsible for financial losses at PetroVietnam. It also stripped him of his role as party head of Ho Chi Minh City to penalise him further. Prosecuting a former politburo member in the one-party state is not unprecedented. In 1979, a former politburo official, Hoang Van Hoan, was handed a death sentence in absentia after he had fled the country. On Friday, police also issued an arrest order for Nguyen Quoc Khanh, a former chairman of PetroVietnam. In September, another former PetroVietnam chairman was sentenced to death for embezzlement among other crimes. Khanh was also temporarily dismissed from his current role at the trade ministry on Friday, the ministry said in a statement. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;European states push U.S. for detailed Middle East peace proposals;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy called on the United States on Friday to put forward detailed proposals for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and described as unhelpful a decision by President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Trump s reversal of decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday sparked a Palestinian day of rage on Friday. Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated, scores were hurt and at least one was killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Amid anger in the Arab world and concern among Washington s Western allies, the United Nations Security Council met on Friday at the request of eight of the 15 members - Britain, France, Sweden, Bolivia, Uruguay, Italy, Senegal and Egypt. In a joint statement after the meeting, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy said the U.S. decision, which includes plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, was unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region. We stand ready to contribute to all credible efforts to restart the peace process, on the basis of internationally agreed parameters, leading to a two-State solution, they said. We encourage the U.S. Administration to now bring forward detailed proposals for an Israel-Palestinian settlement. Egypt s U.N. Ambassador Amr Aboulatta said the U.S. decision would have a grave, negative impact on the peace process. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the Washington has credibility as a mediator with both Israel and the Palestinians and accused the United Nations of damaging rather than advancing peace prospects with unfair attacks on Israel. Israel will never be, and should never be, bullied into an agreement by the United Nations, or by any collection of countries that have proven their disregard for Israel s security, Haley said. Haley said Trump was committed to the peace process and that the United States had not taken a position on Jerusalem s borders or boundaries and was not advocating any changes to the arrangements at the holy sites. Our actions are intended to help advance the cause of peace, she said. We believe we might be closer to that goal than ever before. Earlier on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a news conference in Paris that any final decision on the status of Jerusalem would depend on negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. United Nations Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov warned there was a risk of violent escalation. There is a serious risk today that we may see a chain of unilateral actions, which can only push us further away from achieving our shared goal of peace, Mladenov told the U.N. Security Council. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future independent state of their own. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War, to be occupied territory, including the Old City, home to sites considered holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike. A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in December last year underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations. That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration, which defied heavy pressure from long-time ally Israel and Trump, who was then president-elect, for Washington to wield its veto. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. envoy for North Korean affairs travels to Japan, Thailand;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. envoy for North Korea will travel to Japan and Thailand next week to discuss how to increase pressure on Pyongyang after its latest ballistic missile test, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. North Korea, formally called the Democratic People s Republic of Korea (DPRK), last week tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), saying the device could reach all of the United States. Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, will travel to Japan and Thailand Dec. 11-15 to meet government officials to discuss ways to strengthen the pressure campaign following the DPRK s latest ballistic missile test, the State Department said in a brief written statement. The United States looks forward to continuing its partnership with both these nations so that the DPRK will return to credible talks on denuclearization, it added. Tensions have risen markedly in recent months over North Korea s development, in defiance of repeated rounds of U.N. sanctions, of nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the United States. Last week s missile test prompted a U.S. warning that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. The Pentagon has mounted repeated shows of force after North Korean tests. The United States has sent mixed signals about its interest in talks with the North, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying that Washington was pursuing such contacts but President Trump tweeting that this was a waste of time. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In push for Yemen aid, U.S. warned Saudis of threats in Congress;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has warned Saudi Arabia that concern in Congress over the humanitarian situation in Yemen could constrain U.S. assistance, as it pushed Riyadh to allow greater access for humanitarian aid, a U.S. official said on Friday. The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned armed Houthi movement in Yemen s civil war started a blockade of ports a month ago after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh from Yemen. Although the blockade later eased, Yemen s situation has remained dire. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. That has led the White House to take the rare step of issuing two written statements in a week on Yemen, including one on Friday calling on the Saudi-led coalition to help facilitate the free flow of humanitarian aid and critical goods, like fuel. I think there has just been mounting concern over the continued humanitarian conditions in Yemen, and while we have seen progress, we haven t seen enough, said a senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. We want to see more in the coming weeks. The White House also called on the Houthis to allow food, medicine and fuel to be distributed and accused them of political repression and brutality. The Yemen war s heavy toll on civilians has long been a sore point with members of Congress, triggering threats to block U.S. assistance to the Saudi-led coalition. That includes U.S. refueling of coalition jets and the provision of limited U.S. intelligence support. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and longtime critic of U.S. support for the Yemen campaign, cheered Trump s push for humanitarian aid this week. But in the same breath, he warned about U.S. assistance to the Saudis. The Trump administration must continue to make clear to Saudi Arabia that the U.S. will not support a campaign that intentionally starves civilians into submission, Murphy said. Trump administration officials have underscored those concerns in Congress to Riyadh. We wanted to be very clear with Saudi officials that the political environment here could constrain us if steps aren t taken to ease humanitarian conditions in Yemen, the official said. Publicly, Trump, his top aides and senior Saudi officials have hailed what they say is a major improvement in U.S.-Saudi ties compared with relations under former President Barack Obama, who upset the Saudis by sealing a nuclear deal with their arch-foe Iran. Even as ties improve, however, U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts privately have expressed anxiety over some of the more hawkish actions by Saudi Arabia s crown prince, especially toward Yemen and Lebanon, as Saudi Arabia seeks to contain Iranian influence. In turn, Saudi Arabia has been unusually public about its concerns over President Donald Trump s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Trump administration shares Saudi Arabia s concerns over Iran and emphasized that point on Friday. In its statement, the White House squarely blamed Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its partners for arming, advising, and enabling the Houthis violent actions. We condemn the Houthis brutal repression of political opponents in Sanaa, Friday s statement by White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. That includes the Houthis killing last weekend of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen s former president, to punish him for switching sides in Yemen s three-year civil war. The killing was a setback for Riyadh, which had hoped the backing of Saleh and his loyalist army units in northern Yemen - would help close a war that has killed 10,000 people and caused one of the world s most acute humanitarian crises. The White House said political negotiations were necessary to end violence in the country, free of the malign influence of Iranian-backed militias. The Iranian-backed Houthi militias must allow food, medicine, and fuel to be distributed throughout the areas they control, rather than diverted to sustain their military campaign against the Yemeni people, Sanders added. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Protesters gather in Kiev after police recapture ex-Georgia leader Saakashvili;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian police recaptured the former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday, prompting further protests in central Kiev by his supporters who freed him from police custody earlier this week. The development is the latest twist in a long feud between Ukrainian authorities and Saakashvili, who has turned on his one-time patron President Petro Poroshenko, accusing him of corruption and calling for his removal from office. General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, who says Saakashvili is suspected of assisting a criminal organization, said the opposition leader had been detained by police and was in a temporary detention facility. As promised, security officers did everything to avoid extreme violence and bloodshed, he said in a post on Facebook. Saakashvili s recapture follows a surreal game of hide-and-seek that saw him clamber on a roof to avoid law enforcement, before being broken out of a police van by protesters amid clashes with hundreds of riot police on Tuesday. Ally and fellow Georgian, Davit Sakvarelidze, who was fired in March from his post as a senior prosecutor for Ukraine, called on Kiev residents to take to the streets to protest Saakashvili s recapture. Today Poroshenko broke all records and went down in history as a dictator who does this to political opponents, he told channel NewsOne near the detention centre in central Kiev. As of 2200 GMT, a few hundred protesters had gathered near the facility not far from the parliament, shouting Shame! and Kiev, get up! while a large number of police in riot gear stood guard. Saakashvili became a regional governor in Ukraine in 2015 at Poroshenko s invitation but they later fell out. Saakashvili denies the allegations against him. The saga threatens to embarrass the pro-Western authorities at a time when they face a chorus of criticism from reformers and foreign donors over perceived backtracking on reforms and attacks on anti-corruption institutions. On Friday, Poroshenko said the case against Saakashvili was legitimate and that he should cooperate with investigators. If he flees from the investigation, this undermines his credibility, he said. After escaping police custody, Saakashvili called for a rally against Poroshenko in Kiev to be held on Sunday, although he has kept a low profile in recent days after reportedly catching a cold while sleeping in makeshift protest camp outside parliament. The politician s latest detention followed a failed attempt by police to recapture him in a raid on the camp on Wednesday, which led to violent clashes with protesters. While Saakashvili has a core base of supporters, he enjoys limited support across Ukraine. Only 1.7 percent of voters would support his party, the Movement of New Forces, in elections, according to an October survey by the Kiev-based Razumkov Centre think-tank. His backers see him as a fearless crusader against corruption but critics have said that there is little substance behind his rhetoric. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In push for Yemen aid, U.S. warned Saudis of threats in Congress;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has warned Saudi Arabia that anger in Congress over the humanitarian situation in Yemen could constrain U.S. assistance, as it pushed Riyadh to allow great access for humanitarian aid, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. We wanted to be very clear with Saudi officials that the political environment here could constrain us if steps aren t taken to ease humanitarian conditions in Yemen, the senior Trump administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official added that while we have seen progress, we haven t seen enough. We want to see more in the coming weeks. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Danish government wins backing for budget but junior partner has conditions;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The populist Danish People s Party (DF), upon whose support the minority government depends to pass laws, gave its backing on Friday to a fiscal budget for 2018 but one of the coalition parties said it still wanted an agreement on tax cuts. The Liberal Alliance (LA), a junior partner in the three-way coalition led by Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen s Liberals and also including the Conservative party said it would not support the budget in parliament unless a deal to cut taxes was agreed. But DF, which is not a member of the coalition, said it could not guarantee that a deal involving historically big tax cuts could be reached. If LA does not vote to give the budget final approval, Rasmussen could be forced either to hand power to the Social Democrat-led opposition or to call a snap election. We don t know how this will all end, DF s negotiator Ren Christensen told reporters. Otherwise we would have had three deals now, he said, referring to another proposal by DF that would tighten rules on granting residency to refugees. Economy minister Simon Emil Ammitzboll-Bille, a LA lawmaker, said the budget negotiations had been chaotic and there had been a crisis of confidence between the parties, but that the confidence had now been re-established. Tax cuts have been on the right-leaning government s wish list for a long time, but pro-welfare DF has been less eager to back that part of the government s policies. The parties will meet again after the weekend to discuss the proposed tax cuts and DF s proposal to make it easier for authorities to revoke residence permits for refugees from war once there is peace in their home countries. The budget deal includes among other things increased spending on health and elderly care and on infrastructure. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. presses Russia to comply with nuclear missile treaty;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is reviewing military options, including new intermediate-range cruise missile systems, in response to what it says is Russia s ongoing violation of a Cold War-era pact banning such missiles, the State Department said on Friday. Washington is prepared to cease such research and development activities if Russia returns to compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. Nauert also hinted at possible economic sanctions, saying the United States is pursuing economic and military measures intended to induce the Russian Federation to return to compliance. The warning was the Trump administration s first response to U.S. charges first leveled in 2014 that Russia had deployed a ground-launched cruise missile that breaches the pact s ban on testing and fielding missiles with ranges of 500-5,500 kms (310-3,417 miles). U.S. officials have said the Russian cruise missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and that Moscow has refused to hold in-depth discussions about the alleged breach. Russia has denied it is violating the accord. In a statement issued before Nauert s, the Russian foreign ministry said it was ready for talks with the United States to try to preserve the treaty and would comply with its obligations if the United States did. In a statement marking the 30th anniversary of the treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, the ministry said Moscow considered the language of ultimatums and sanctions unacceptable. The U.S. allegation has further strained relations between Moscow and Washington. U.S. and Russian officials are to discuss the issue at a meeting in coming weeks of the special commission that oversees the treaty, said a U.S. official, who requested anonymity. In the U.S. statement, Nauert said the United States remains firmly committed to the INF Treaty and continues to seek the Russian Federation s return to compliance. The administration firmly believes, however, that the United States cannot stand still while the Russian Federation continues to develop military systems in violation of the treaty, she said. The U.S. spokeswoman did not disclose the U.S. economic measures under consideration to secure Russian compliance with the treaty but offered some details on the military measures. These, she said, involve a review of military concepts and options that include researching new ground-launched conventional cruise missile systems. This step will not violate our INF Treaty obligations, Nauert said. We are also prepared to cease such research and development activities if the Russian Federation returns to full and verifiable compliance with its INF Treaty obligations. Her statement came a week after Congress sent to President Donald Trump for signing a fiscal 2018 defense policy bill authorizing $58 million to develop a new INF-busting road-mobile conventional cruise missile and U.S. defenses against the Russian weapon. The bill also called on Trump to submit to Congress a plan to impose U.S. sanctions on Russians responsible for ordering or facilitating non-compliance with the treaty. It was unclear when Trump would sign the bill. The United States already has sanctions on Russian entities and individuals, including people close to President Vladimir Putin, for Moscow s 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. Moscow denies that it interfered in the election. A senior administration official, speaking recently on condition of anonymity, said the administration wanted to preserve the INF Treaty rather than rip it up. If we took the Russian approach, we d all sort of say happy things about what a nice treaty we have and we would both go about violating it secretly, said the senior administration official. But that s not how we roll. It s because we like arms control when it s done properly. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rebels kill 15 peacekeepers in Congo in worst attack on U.N. in recent history;GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Suspected Ugandan rebels killed at least 15 Tanzanian U.N. peacekeepers and wounded 53 others in a raid on a base in Congo that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday called the worst attack on the organization in recent history. Tanzania s President John Magufuli said he was shocked and saddened by the deaths, which come amid rising violence against civilians, the army and U.N. troops in Democratic Republic of Congo s eastern borderlands. The U.N. chief said the attack constituted a war crime and called on Congolese authorities to investigate and swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice . I want to express my outrage and utter heartbreak at last night s attack, Guterres told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. There must be no impunity for such assaults, here or anywhere else. The United Nations Security Council condemned the attack on Friday and held a moment of silence for the victims. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter that the United States was appalled by the horrific attack . U.N. troops were still searching for three peacekeepers who went missing during the more than three-hour firefight that broke out at dusk on Thursday evening, Ian Sinclair, the director of the U.N. Operations and Crisis Centre, said. U.N. officials said they suspected militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) staged the assault on the base in the town of Semuliki in North Kivu s Beni territory. The ADF is an Islamist rebel group that has been active in the area. Congo s U.N. mission, MONUSCO, said it was coordinating a joint response with the Congolese army and evacuating wounded from the base. Five Congolese soldiers were also killed in the raid, MONUSCO said in a statement. Congo s army said only one of its soldiers was missing, however, while another had been injured, adding that 72 militants had been killed. Rival militia groups control parts of mineral-rich eastern Congo nearly a decade and a half after the official end of a 1998-2003 war in which millions of people died, mostly from hunger and disease. The area has been the scene of repeated massacres and at least 26 people died in an ambush in October. The government and U.N. mission have blamed almost all the violence on the ADF but U.N. experts and independent analysts say other militia and elements of Congo s own army have also been involved. In response to the growing unrest, and in an effort to protect civilians, the U.N. s Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Pierre Lacroix said MONUSCO had stepped up its activities in the area. They don t want us there. And I think this attack is a response ... to our increasingly robust posture in that region, he told reporters. Thursday s raid was the third attack on a U.N. base in eastern Congo in recent months. Increased militia activity in the east and center of the country has added to insecurity in Congo this year amid political tensions linked to President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down when his mandate expired last December. An election to replace Kabila, who has ruled Congo since his father s assassination in 2001, has been repeatedly delayed and is now scheduled for December 2018. Established in 2010, MONUSCO is the United Nations largest peacekeeping mission and had recorded 93 fatalities of military, police and civilian personnel. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 25 wounded in Israeli retaliation strikes in Gaza;GAZA (Reuters) - Israel s military said its aircraft bombed militant targets in Gaza on Friday and the Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 25 people were wounded in the strikes, including six children. The Israeli military said it had carried out the strikes on a militant training camp and on a weapons depot in response to rockets fired earlier from Gaza at Israeli towns. Witnesses said most of the wounded were residents of a building near the camp. At least one Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli troops earlier on Friday and dozens wounded in day of rage protests against U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Maldives rushes through trade pact with China despite opposition;MALE (Reuters) - The Maldives government signed a free trade agreement with China during a visit to Beijing by its leader, Abdulla Yameen, it said on Friday, despite criticism from the opposition over the speed at which the deal was concluded. Under the deal - a document of more than 1,000 pages that the Maldives parliament signed off on last week after less than an hour of discussion - China and the archipelago nation will impose no tariffs on imports from each other. Fisheries are the main export from the Maldives, an Indian Ocean country of 400,000 that also relies heavily on tourism. The free trade agreement between China and Maldives signed during the visit was a milestone in the development of China-Maldives economic and trade relations, Yameen s official website said in a joint communique. The Maldives government also endorsed China s proposed Maritime Silk Road business development project, part of its vast Belt and Road infrastructure project. China s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping as telling Yameen that the Belt and Road program matched up with the Maldives development strategies. President Yameen s government has had good relations with China since taking power in 2013. China has been striking deals with countries in Asia and Africa to improve its imports of key commodities and boost its diplomatic clout. The main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said in a statement that the FTA contained technical details that should have been thoroughly reviewed and called for its implementation to be suspended until an independent feasibility study is conducted. The government says the FTA will help diversify the $3.6 billion economy and boost fisheries exports, crucial since the European Union declined in 2014 to renew a tax concession on them. Fisheries account for 5 percent of Maldives economic output and earned the country $140 million in 2016. The EU declined to extend the tax exemptions because the country has failed to comply with international conventions on freedom of religion, European diplomats in Colombo say. Maldives law prohibits the practice by citizens of any religion other than Islam, while non-Muslims are barred from voting, gaining citizenship or holding public office. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's president loses minister as PSDB party quits coalition;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Michel Temer accepted the resignation on Friday of his minister of political affairs, whose party is abandoning the ruling coalition to ready for the 2018 election. Antonio Imbassahy of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) has handled the government s relations with Congress, keeping an unwieldy coalition united in blocking the prosecution of Temer on corruption charges earlier this year. However the PSDB, Temer s largest ally, has split over whether to stick with the unpopular president in the run-up to a general election next October, when the party plans to field its own presidential candidate. The PSDB will hold its national convention in Brasilia on Saturday, when it is expected to elect Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin as its new party leader, replacing Senator Aecio Neves, who is under investigation for graft. That would make Alckmin the PSDB s most likely candidate in next year s presidential race. Allies say Alckmin plans to continue his party s disengagement from the Temer government, where the PSDB still has two ministers, including Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes, who is expected to stay on the job based on personal conviction. Still, Alckmin is expected to mobilize PSDB support for Temer s signature legislation proposal, the overhaul of Brazil s costly social security system. Investors consider the measure crucial to closing a huge budget deficit that cost Latin America s largest economy its investment-grade credit rating. Temer needs the PSDB s 46 votes in the lower house of Congress to win passage of the pension reform bill, which is set for a vote the week of Dec. 18. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish parliament, defying EU, approves judiciary overhaul;WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish lawmakers approved an overhaul of the judiciary on Friday, giving parliament de facto control over the selection of judges in defiance of the European Union. The legislation, if agreed by the Senate and President Andrzej Duda, will heighten tensions with the EU which has threatened legal action over proposed reform that it says will subvert the rule of law. The eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party, which holds a majority in parliament, argues the judiciary needs to be changed to repair a corrupt system and make courts more efficient. The EU says giving politicians a say in appointing judges will threaten the impartiality of the courts. Critics of the deeply conservative government see the proposed reforms as part of a broader shift toward authoritarianism by the deeply conservative government. The EU is also at loggerheads with the PiS over migration policy, logging in an ancient forest in Poland and the government s efforts to take control of other state institutions such as public media. A panel of constitutional law experts of the Council of Europe human rights body said on Friday the proposed reforms imperiled all parts of the judiciary and would lead to a far reaching politicization of this body . Under the legislation, heavily supported by PiS lawmakers, parliament would have a virtual free hand in choosing members of the National Judiciary Council (KRS), a powerful body that decides judicial appointments and promotions which was a right earlier reserved chiefly for the judges themselves. A second bill, also approved, envisages lowering the mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court judges to 65 years from 70, which would force a significant part of them to leave. We are moving forward with reforms of the justice system, and the Supreme Court reform is an element of this process, said Pawel Mucha, an adviser to Duda. The KRS has repeatedly voiced its opposition to the plans. Spokesman Waldemar urek said: In my opinion, these changes will hurt the citizens because politicization of courts means that no citizen will be assured that a judge presiding over a case isn t being influenced by politicians. Despite criticism abroad as well, the PiS government remains one of Poland s most popular governments since the 1989 collapse of communism, because of low unemployment, generous public spending and its adherence to traditional Catholic values. Friday s votes came a day after the PiS sacked its prime minister, Beata Szydlo, and replaced her with Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, a loyalist of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the party leader and Poland s paramount politician. Morawiecki told Trwam television on Friday his priorities would be economic development, social cohesion, fighting tax evasion and an improvement of Poland s reputation abroad. Analysts said the changeover was spurred by Kaczynski s desire to quell infighting within the cabinet and put more emphasis on economic policy as the party faces three consecutive years of elections. A local ballot is held next year, a parliamentary vote in 2019 and a presidential election in 2020. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Despite furor over Jerusalem move, Saudis seen on board with U.S. peace efforts;BEIRUT/RIYADH/AMMAN (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia pulled no punches when it condemned President Donald Trump s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But Palestinian officials say Riyadh has also been working for weeks behind the scenes to press them to support a nascent U.S. peace plan. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday with his announcement and instructions to begin the process of moving the embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite warnings that it would drive the wedge between Israel and the Palestinians deeper. The Saudi royal court described the decision as unjustified and irresponsible and a big step back in efforts to advance the peace process. But Arab officials privately say that Riyadh appears to be on board with a broader U.S. strategy for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan still in its early phases of development. Four Palestinian officials, who spoke on condition they not be named, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas discussed in detail a grand bargain that Trump and Jared Kushner, the president s son-in-law and adviser, are expected to unveil in the first half of 2018. One official said Prince Mohammed asked Abbas to show support for the U.S. administration s peace efforts when the two met in Riyadh in November. Another Palestinian official said Prince Mohammed told Abbas: Be patient, you will hear good news. This peace process will go ahead. The U.S.-Saudi relationship has improved dramatically under Trump, partly because the leaders share a vision of confronting Riyadh s arch-rival Iran more aggressively in the region. Kushner, 36, whose father knew Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, has also nurtured strong personal ties with the 32-year-old crown prince as he asserts Saudi influence internationally and amasses power for himself at home. The Saudi royal court did not respond to requests for comment. A White House official said Kushner did not ask the crown prince to talk to Abbas about the plan. Palestinian officials fear, and many Arab officials suspect, that by closing the door on East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state, Trump will align with Israel in offering the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967. The Palestinian officials said they were concerned that the proposal that Prince Mohammed communicated to Abbas, which purportedly came from Kushner, presents exactly that scenario. As told to Abbas, the proposal included establishing a Palestinian entity in Gaza as well as the West Bank administrative areas A and B and 10 percent of area C, which contains Jewish settlements, a third Palestinian official said. Jewish settlements in the West Bank would stay, there would be no right of return, and Israel would remain responsible for the borders, he said. The proposal appears to differ little from existing arrangements in the West Bank, widening Palestinian control but falling far short of their minimum national demands. This is rejected by Palestinians. Abu Mazen (Abbas) explained the position and its danger to the Palestinian cause and Saudi Arabia understood that, the official said. The White House official denied that Kushner communicated those details to Prince Mohammed: It does not accurately reflect any part of the conversation. Trump sought to temper the blow from his Jerusalem announcement with a phone call to Abbas on Tuesday, stressing that the Palestinians stood to gain from the plan being drawn up by Kushner and U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt. President Trump in a phone call told Abu Mazen: I will have some proposals for you that you would like . When Abu Mazen pressed him on details, Trump didn t give any, the first Palestinian official said. A Saudi source said he believed an understanding on Israeli-Palestinian peace would nonetheless begin to emerge in the coming weeks. Do not underestimate the businessman in (Trump). He has always called it the ultimate deal, the source said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. I don t think our government is going to accept that unless it has something sweetened in the pipeline which (King Salman and the crown prince) could sell to the Arab world that the Palestinians would have their own state. Trump s decision on Jerusalem is seen almost uniformly in Arab capitals as a sharp tilt toward Israel, which has only signed peace deals with Egypt and Jordan. Jordan, a U.S. ally which has played a key role in the peace process since inking its bilateral deal with Israel in 1994, insists that no peace can be achieved without Jerusalem. Jordanian political analyst Oraib Rantawi, who spoke with King Abdullah after the monarch met with top U.S. administration officials last week, said Amman is worried about being bypassed in favor of Saudi Arabia. There are direct dealings and a desire to present a deal that is unfair to the Palestinians in return for securing U.S. backing and paving the way for Gulf-Israeli cooperation to confront Iran, he said. Most Arab states are unlikely to object to Trump s announcement because they find themselves more aligned with Israel than ever, particularly on countering Iran, said Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington, If Saudi officials, including the crown prince himself, were particularly concerned with Jerusalem s status, they would presumably have used their privileged status as a top Trump ally and lobbied the administration to hold off on such a needlessly toxic move, he wrote in an article published in The Atlantic. It s unlikely Trump would have followed through if the Saudis had drawn something resembling a red line. Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a member of the security cabinet, told Army Radio in November that Israel has had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia, a disclosure of long-rumored secret dealings between the two countries which have no official ties. Saudi Arabia denied the reports. It maintains that normalizing relations hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state. But with both Saudi Arabia and Israel viewing Iran as a major main threat in the Middle East, shared interests may push them to work together. Under Prince Mohammed, the kingdom is pushing back at what it sees as growing Iranian influence in and around its borders. They ve got an unprecedented level of support from Washington right now and seem to be making the most of it, said a diplomat in the region. They re not willing to jeopardize that. They ve got bigger fish to fry. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Prize-winning Cameroonian writer detained after criticizing govt.: wife;DOUALA (Reuters) - A celebrated Cameroonian writer who wrote a piece critical of the government s handling of a separatist crisis in its Anglophone region was detained at Douala airport on Thursday, his wife and lawyer said. Patrice Nganang, a prize-winning poet, professor and author who lives in New York, was due to board a Kenya Airways flight to Nairobi and then onwards to Harare to join his wife on Thursday but never arrived. After 24 hours of trying to track him down, Nyasha Bakare said he had been found by his lawyers at a government detention center in Yaounde, the capital. He s apparently OK. That s the main thing, Bakare said, adding that the authorities appeared to be preparing for a legal hearing. His lawyer Emmanuel Simh said: He is accused of insulting the president of the republic, and after the hearings we will be able to give further information. A spokesman at the government s communications department was not immediately available to comment. Last week the government ordered thousands of villagers to leave their homes in the Anglophone Southwest region as it deployed troops to root out armed separatists. The move marked an escalation of a year-long crackdown on peaceful protests in the English-speaking western part of the country that has killed dozens of civilians and forced thousands to flee to Nigeria. Are we going towards the forced relocation of populations and the creation of (refugee) camps? Nganang wrote in Paris-based Jeune Afrique on Dec. 5, describing this as offensive . So bilingual Cameroonians can be enemies in a country whose president has never said a single speech in English? he added. President Paul Biya has ruled Cameroon since 1982 and plans to stand for another term next year. The separatist stirrings add to headaches over the economy slowing sharply since 2014 and attacks in the north by Islamist militant group Boko Haram which have strained the military. The linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the League of Nations divided the former German colony of Kamerun between the allied French and British victors. Biya s 35-year rule has grown increasingly intolerant of dissent, with opposition activists, journalists and intellectuals routinely arrested and sometimes charged. In April, a Cameroonian reporter for Radio France International was jailed for 10 years by a military court on terrorism charges, including for failing to report acts of terrorism to authorities. The verdict attracted international criticism. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Corbyn wants much more information on EU divorce deal;GENEVA (Reuters) - British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said on Friday he wanted to see much more information about the Brexit divorce deal struck between Prime Minister Theresa May s government and the European Commission. May sealed the deal after a pre-dawn dash to Brussels, thereby clearing the way for the start of arduous talks on future trade ties between Britain and the EU after Brexit. Asked if he thought the deal with the EU was a breakthrough, Corbyn told reporters: Until I see more of it, no. Speaking in Geneva after a visit to the United Nations, Corbyn said his party stood ready for another parliamentary election in Britain at any time, noting May s reliance for her majority on Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). They (the DUP) seem to be calling the shots all the time. They scuppered a deal she was trying to make a few days ago and they clearly put conditions on this, which is why I want to see a much fuller statement than we ve had thus far, he said. The next election in Britain is not due until 2022, but there has been much media speculation that it could come much earlier due to May s lack of a parliamentary majority and deep divisions within her governing Conservative Party over Brexit. Corbyn said Labour had consistently called for maintaining the benefits of belonging to the EU s customs union and single market during a transitional period as Britain leaves the bloc. The transitional period is unspecific and I think she needs to bring some clarity to that, he said. The transition should be long enough to guarantee UK and EU jobs and to deal with common problems, such as regulating airspace, he said. It should also ensure that consumers , workers and environmental rights were put into British law. The statements that have been made this morning do not specify what regulatory framework there will be in the future and that remains to be seen, because there are still many people in the Conservative Party who want to live in a de-regulated environment, where Britain basically lowers wages and conditions and the tax take on large corporations. Corbyn said he hoped Friday s deal included sections on the rights of family reunion for EU and British citizens, adding they should be granted unilaterally and not negotiated. A reference in the deal to involving the European Court of Justice on citizenship issues for up to eight years was a sign that the government accepted the need for judicial oversight of citizens rights, he said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: What's in the Brexit divorce deal?;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday that enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations to allow a second phase of talks on future relations to begin. The following is a summary of a joint EU-UK report showing the agreements on three key topics: Refers to British citizens, including spouses and children, living in an EU state and other EU nationals living in Britain on date of its withdrawal. It does not give British citizens a right to move from one EU state to another and retain the same rights, while rights for EU and British citizens lapse if they leave their original host country for five years. Negotiations may continue in the second phase, with Britain looking for onward movement rights for its citizens on the continent and the EU interested in citizens keeping permanent residence rights even after longer spells absent from the host country. Citizens with permanent residence documents should get new ones free of charge. Equal treatment will cover rights with respect to social security, health care, employment and education. Benefits will be exportable as they are now. Future spouses, children and other core family members can join citizens enjoying protected rights. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is the ultimate arbiter of EU law. The agreement states that UK courts shall therefore have due regard to relevant decisions of the (ECJ) . The EU and Britain have agreed to set up a mechanism enabling UK courts to ask the ECJ to weigh in when necessary during an eight-year period following Brexit. Eight years is enough to build up a body of common jurisprudence, officials say. Even at present, EU courts are not obliged to allow appeals to the ECJ. In Phase Two, the sides will negotiate on how the withdrawal treaty can be enforced - for example, if the EU believes UK courts are systematically misinterpreting EU citizens rights. Britain promises to preserve the integrity of its own internal market and Northern Ireland s place within it. It says it does not want a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, saying it aims to avoid checks and controls there via a future EU-UK economic relationship. If this is not possible, Britain says it will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances . In the absence of such solutions, Britain will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 (Good Friday peace) Agreement. It pledges to ensure there are no new regulatory barriers and unfettered access for Northern Ireland s businesses to the rest of Britain. Both parties acknowledge that the 1998 agreement recognizes the birth right of all people of Northern Ireland to be Irish, British or both. Both Parties have agreed a methodology for the financial settlement ... drawn up and paid in euro. The settlement will be calculated in terms of a percentage of the budget for 2014-2020, with Britain contributing as if it had stayed in the EU for 2019 and 2020 and including a British rebate. Following its withdrawal from the EU, the UK will continue to participate in the EU programs financed by the 2014-2020 budget until their closure. Beyond then, Britain will remain liable for its share of the EU s contingent liabilities, such as financial assistance or operations managed by the European Investment Bank (EIB): The UK liability will be limited to decisions on each financial operation adopted prior to the date of withdrawal. To avoid a disruption to the EIB s operations, Britain will provide a guarantee for an amount equal to its callable capital. This guarantee will decrease over time. The UK share of the paid-in capital will be reimbursed in 12 annual installments starting at the end of 2019. The first eleven installments will be 300 million euros each and the final one will be 195,903,950 euros. On the European Central Bank, the paid-in capital of the UK in the ECB will be reimbursed to the Bank of England (BoE) after the date of withdrawal . British officials said they estimated the final bill at some 40-45 billion euros. The EU, which once estimated the cost at around 60 billion, declined to offer its own estimate, arguing that too much is dependent on future variables, such as whether loan guarantees advanced by the EU end up being exercised. Britain would pay 17-18 billion euros to the EU budget between Brexit and the end of the current EU seven-year budget plan in December 2020, British officials estimate, and a further 21-23 billion after that to settle ongoing commitments, plus 2-4 billion euros on net liabilities, including EU staff pensions. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope singles out Rome's decay, corruption on traditional feast day;ROME (Reuters) - Pope Francis lamented the decay and degradation of Rome on Friday, using a traditional prayer on a national feast day to highlight problems such as environmental blight and corruption in the Italian capital. Francis made his comments at the base of Rome s famed Spanish Steps, where each year popes pay homage to a statue of the Madonna on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Rome has fallen into disrepair and degradation in recent years, with streets full of pot holes, piles of garbage and neglected public gardens where weeds grow as tall as a person. Francis, who is also bishop of Rome, prayed that the residents of the city develop antibodies against some viruses of our times . Those he listed included resignation to environmental and ethical degradation, civic incivility, contempt for the common good, and fear of immigrants. In July, two leaders of a crime ring that plundered Rome city coffers were convicted along with some 40 politicians, officials and businessmen, at the end of one of the biggest corruption trials in the Italian capital. Gang members were accused of infiltrating Rome city hall and using bribery and intimidation to get their hands on lucrative public contracts, including those for the running of centers housing immigrants who have flooded into Italy from Africa. On Friday, the pope spoke of the need to help so many people who have emigrated here from places of war and hunger . The investigation of the crime ring laid bare systemic corruption in the city as politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen hooked up with lowlife criminals to rig public tenders. The corruption was seen as the one of the causes of the recent disrepair and degradation, which has received widespread cover in the foreign media, blemishing the city s appeal as a tourist destination. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;With opposition split, Venezuela mayoral vote will strengthen Maduro;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans vote on Sunday in nationwide mayoral polls boycotted by major opposition parties and likely to help leftist President Nicolas Maduro consolidate power ahead of a probable 2018 re-election bid. After withstanding massive street protests, international sanctions and dissent within his ruling Socialist Party, the 55-year-old president saw his candidates win a surprise majority in October gubernatorial elections. Now, with 335 mayorships up for grabs, the socialists seem certain to repeat the feat, helped by opposition abstentionism, which would delight Maduro after the international opprobrium he has faced all year. The crumbling opposition coalition s main parties - Justice First, Popular Will and Democratic Action - have opted out of Sunday s vote, alleging the election system is biased and designed purely to keep a dictatorship in power. It is crazy not to participate, said political analyst Dimitris Pantoulas. The government most likely will have one of the best results in its history ... Maduro will be very strong after this election. He has the political momentum. The socialists already hold more than 70 percent of Venezuela s mayorships, and are forecast to increase that share, extending their grip at a grassroots level just as Maduro mulls standing for a second six-year term in the OPEC nation. Despite presiding over one of the worst economic meltdowns to hit any country in modern history, and with ratings barely half when he was elected, Maduro is enjoying a political upturn after the October gubernatorial vote. He is the favorite to be the government s candidate at the 2018 presidential election and could win if the opposition does not re-unite and re-enthuse supporters. Despite the boycott by major parties, moderate opposition supporters were still planning to vote on Sunday, arguing that it was the only way to stop the socialists amassing power. Some of the smaller parties are fielding candidates, fuelling acrimony and in-fighting within the coalition. There s huge frustration at everything that has happened this year ... but we cannot throw in the towel, said one of those candidates, Yon Goicoechea of Progressive Advance party. Just out of jail for allegedly plotting against Maduro, Goicoechea was running for El Hatillo mayorship outside Caracas. I can t say when we will achieve democracy - maybe months, maybe years - but we have to fight with our only weapon: votes. The election was taking place at the end of a fourth year of crushing economic recession that has brought hunger, hardship and shortages to Venezuelans. Yet with the opposition in such disarray, Maduro and his allies are buoyant. We are going to have a great victory! said Erika Farias running for a Caracas district mayorship. We are fulfilling the legacy of our commander Hugo Chavez. With many Venezuelans angry at both the government and opposition, some independents have registered for Sunday s mayorship races, though there is still no sign of a third-way presidential candidate. The country is demanding an alternative. Mine is a protest campaign, said Nicmer Evans, running against Farias in the capital s Libertador district for his recently-founded party, New Vision For My Country. As well as the mayoral elections, voters in oil-rich western Zulia state were choosing a new governor. The opposition took that state in the October gubernatorial race but the election was annulled after winning candidate Juan Pablo Guanipa refused to swear loyalty to a pro-Maduro legislative superbody. Results were expected to start coming in on Sunday evening. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's Jerusalem plan revives tensions in EU diplomacy;PARIS/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France said on Friday the United States had sidelined itself in the Middle East by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, but the EU s top diplomat insisted Washington remains a mediator as Europe struggled for unity in its diplomacy. U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem revived old tensions between EU governments that want to see peace in the Middle East but have varying degrees of sympathy towards Israel and the Palestinians. I hear some, including Mr Tillerson, say things will happen in time and the hour is for negotiations. Until now (the U.S.) could have had a mediation role in this conflict, but it has excluded itself a little, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, referring to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is in Paris for talks after visiting Brussels and Vienna. The reality is they are alone and isolated on this issue, he told France Inter radio. With Britain distracted by its planned exit from the European Union, France is trying to lead Europe in Middle East negotiations, organizing a peace conference last January. But it is EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini who represents the bloc in the Middle East Quartet of the United States, United Nations, the EU and Russia. On Thursday, Mogherini pledged to reinvigorate diplomacy with Russia, the United States, Jordan and others to ensure Palestinians have a capital in Jerusalem too. She said Washington was still a pivotal peacemaker. But Hungary blocked a statement planned by all EU 28 governments in response to Trump s announcement of Wednesday, leaving it to Mogherini to deliver a rejection of it. There is no change in Hungary s Middle East policy compared with the recent past. We have made it clear previously that we urge a negotiated solution, the foreign ministry said in response to a Reuters request, declining to comment on the U.S. decision. We do not consider a joint statement by the 28 member states of the European Union necessary on the matter. On Wednesday evening, the Czech foreign ministry said it would begin considering moving the Czech Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem only based on results of negotiations with key partners in the region and in the world . Many in Israel saw the Czech ministry s statement as an endorsement of Trump s move. But Mogherini said on Friday Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek had reassured her the statement was definitely not an act of support for the U.S. administration s decision. He guaranteed to me that the Czech Republic stays firmly with the common European consolidated position, Mogherini told a news conference with Jordan s foreign minister. Prague accepts Israel s sovereignty only over West Jerusalem, diplomats say. Palestinians want the capital of a future state they seek to be in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Mogherini stressed that all EU governments were united on the issue of Jerusalem and in seeking a solution envisaging a Palestinian state in territory - the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem - that Israel took 50 years ago. The EU believes it has a duty to make its voice heard as the Palestinians biggest aid donor and Israel s biggest trade partner, but policy divisions within the bloc have weakened its influence. EU foreign ministers will aim to present a unified front to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting in Brussels on Monday. A senior French diplomat said it was crucial that EU governments had a clear message for the Israeli premier. What we are going to try and do is convince our European partners when we meet Netanyahu ...to tell him that what is happening with the United States is a serious issue for him, Israel and any peace prospect, the diplomat said. Netanyahu will first stop off in Paris on Sunday to hold talks with President Emmanuel Macron. EU governments have a range of positions, from the Czech Republic s strong support for Israel, also shared by Germany, to Sweden s 2014 decision to recognize a future state of Palestine. The EU is also perceived by some in Israel as being too pro-Palestinian, partly because of the EU s long-held opposition to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD says outcome uncertain for impending government talks;BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior member of Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) said her party would start talks next week with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a governing coalition, a move that could end a political impasse in Europe s largest economy. The SPD voted on Thursday to open discussions with the conservatives despite having earlier pledged to go into opposition after suffering its worst election result in the post-war era in September. The consultations - between Merkel, her Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer and SPD leader Martin Schulz, as well as the parliamentary leaders of the three parties - will begin in Berlin on Wednesday evening. The result of the talks remains open and a grand coalition between the SPD and conservatives was no foregone conclusion, Andrea Nahles, the SPD s parliamentary leader, told Deutschlandfunk radio on Friday. It s no more and no less than having talks, Nahles said. It s not automatic that we ll end up in a grand coalition - rather tough discussions will be necessary, and I don t know what the conservatives are prepared to work with us on. Merkel, who has been at the helm in Germany for 12 years, hopes the SPD will agree to a re-run of the grand coalition that has governed Germany for the last four years. She was forced to turn to the SPD after talks with the environmentalist Greens and liberal Free Democrats (FDP) on a three-way alliance collapsed. Her conservative bloc has welcomed the SPD s decision to start initial talks. They would still need to decide later whether to proceed to full-blown coalition talks. The majority of Germans (70 percent) expect a grand coalition to form, a Forsa poll for broadcaster ZDF showed on Friday. It found almost half of Germans (47 percent) would be happy with such an alliance. Around a third (36 percent) disapproved of another conservative alliance, which would make the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) the biggest opposition party. The SPD gained two points in the Forsa poll to 23 percent;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Charlie Manson, Serial Killers, LSD, Hippie Culture, Cults and Bitcoin Explosion – Boiler Room EP #138;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Andy Nowicki of the Nameless Podcast, and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE contributor) and the rest of the boiler gang for the hundred and thirty eighth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.On this episode of Boiler Room the ACR Brain-Trust is having a barstool discussion about Charlie Manson, serial killers, LSD, Hippie culture, Cults, Dave McGowan and the Bitcoin value skyrocketing at the end of 2017.Direct Download Episode #138 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;US_News;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venice Commission: Polish judiciary reforms pose a serious risk;WARSAW (Reuters) - The Venice Commission, a panel of constitutional law experts of the human rights body Council of Europe, said on Friday that Poland s proposed court overhaul poses serious risks to all parts of the country s judiciary. The Commission also said that giving the Polish parliament the right to select members of the National Judiciary Council, in conjunction with the proposed immediate replacement of the currently sitting members, will lead to a far reaching politicization of this body. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sri Lanka parliament backs tax exemptions for port deal with Chinese;COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka s parliament approved on Friday a raft of tax concessions for a Chinese-led joint venture which will handle the southern port of Hambantota under a $1.1 billion deal that has sparked public anger and concerns in India and elsewhere. The deal, signed in July, leases the port to a Chinese firm for 99 years and the tax concessions include an income tax holiday of up to 32 years. The port is near the main shipping route from Asia to Europe and likely to play a key role in China s Belt and Road initiative. The joint venture comprises the China Merchants Port Holdings, which holds a 70 percent stake, and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), which has the remaining 30 percent. Today the parliament approved two motions... to grant certain tax incentives to those two companies operating the Hambantota port, Ports Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told Reuters. In the 225-member parliament 72 lawmakers backed the tax concessions and seven voted against. Many opposition deputies boycotted the vote. The government pressed ahead with the vote despite a suggestion from opposition lawmaker Dinesh Gunawardena, who suggested the measures should require a two-thirds majority, or more than 150 votes, given the strategic nature of the issue. Government and diplomatic sources have told Reuters that the United States, India and Japan had raised concerns that China might use the port as a naval base and could be a threat to security and stability in the Indian Ocean. An initial plan to give the Chinese firm an 80 percent stake triggered protests by trade unions and opposition groups, forcing the government to make some revisions that limit China s role to running commercial operations while retaining for Colombo oversight for broader security issues. The government will hand over the port, built with Chinese loans at a cost of $1.5 billion, to the joint venture on Saturday and will receive $300 million, or around 30 percent of the deal, Samarasinghe said. He also said the SLPA and the Chinese firm had signed the lease agreement just before parliament s approval of the tax exemptions. There has also been widespread public anger over plans for a 99-year lease of 15,000 acres (23 sq miles) to develop an industrial zone next to the port. This land lease is under negotiation. The parliamentary vote came a day after Sri Lanka s Supreme Court set a date for Jan. 11 to rule on three petitions against the leasing of land around the port to China. Sri Lanka has said the Chinese firm will invest an additional $600 million to make Hambantota port operational and $1.12 billion from the deal will be used for debt repayment. India is in advanced talks with Sri Lanka to operate an airport near Hambantota port. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's PM designate says will continue fighting tax evasion;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will continue fighting tax evasion, allowing the government to keep public debt in check and finance its public spending agenda, Prime Minister-designate Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday. He also told the Catholic Trwam television that value added tax revenue would most likely increase by 30 billion zlotys ($8.41 billion) this year and the nominal increase in public debt in 2017 would be lowest in more than two decades. We are taking money away from mafias and tax criminals and giving it to the people, Morawiecki said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian negotiator says 'no talking' with U.S. until Trump reverses Jerusalem decision: Al Jazeera;CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera TV on Friday that the Palestinians will not talk to the United States until President Donald Trump has reversed his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the channel reported. Erekat also said the Palestinian leadership was considering all options in response to Trump s announcement, the channel reported in a newsflash, without giving further details. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian president says U.S. can no longer broker peace;GAZA (Reuters) - The United States cannot broker the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday, in response to President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. We reject the American decision over Jerusalem. With this position the United States has become no longer qualified to sponsor the peace process, Abbas said in a statement. He did not elaborate further. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish lower house of parliament backs judiciary council changes;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s lower house of parliament on Friday approved changes to the country s National Judiciary Council, a part of a broader overhaul of the courts system pushed by the ruling conservatives. Under the new rules, which still need Senate and presidential approval, parliament will have the responsibility for choosing members of the council which in turn nominates all judges. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgaria says border treaty revision not beneficial for regional stability;SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria s Foreign Ministry said on Friday any discussion about a revision of the treaty defining the borders of its neighbors Greece and Turkey would not help stability in the region. The statement comes a day after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to Greece that some details in the Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders of modern-day Turkey, were unclear and that a lasting solution to issues in the Aegean and Cyprus was needed. Bulgaria believes that a discussion of peace treaties and existing borders is not beneficial to the international community and stability in the region, the ministry said. Any revision of international treaties may only be done by mutual agreement between the countries in accordance with international law, it said, urging its neighbors to continue on the path of dialogue . The ministry said it had discussed the issue with the Turkish ambassador to Sofia. Erdogan, making the first visit by a Turkish president to Greece in 65 years, said Muslims in the Greek border region of Western Thrace were not able to choose their own chief mufti, while Christian communities in Turkey enjoyed greater freedom to choose their patriarchs, suggesting the treaty was not being applied fairly. Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos also ruled out a revision of the 1923 Lausanne treaty. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. has credibility with both Israel, Palestinians: Haley;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States still has credibility as a mediator with both Israel and the Palestinians, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Friday after President Donald Trump s decision earlier this week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. She said the United Nations has damaged rather than advanced the prospects for Middle East peace. The United States has credibility with both sides. Israel will never be, and should never be, bullied into an agreement by the United Nations, or by any collection of countries that have proven their disregard for Israel s security, Haley told the U.N. Security Council. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Muslims in Asia protest against Trump's Jerusalem plan;KABUL/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters in Muslim-majority countries in Asia rallied on Friday to condemn the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, as authorities tightened security outside U.S. embassies. Leaders in Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan have joined a global chorus of condemnation of President Donald Trump s decision. Hundreds of protesters gathered in Afghanistan s capital with placards, effigies of Trump and at least one burning U.S. flag. Death to America! Death to Trump and Israel! the crowds chanted. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, a staunch U.S. ally, has not commented on the Trump decision. In Indonesia, a few hundred demonstrators mostly clad in white rallied outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, capital of the world s biggest Muslim-majority country. Some wore checkered scarves and waved Palestinian flags. We re standing here in the name of justice and humanity. We ve gathered to defend our Palestinian brothers and sisters, said one rally leader in Jakarta. Trump said on Wednesday the United States would move its embassy to Jerusalem in the coming years. Protests have erupted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as the Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians to launch a fresh uprising against Israel. The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Its eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek. In Malaysia, protesters gathered in front of the American embassy in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. Mr President, this is an illegal announcement. Jerusalem is an occupied territory, Minister for Youth and Sports Khairy Jamaluddin said through a loudspeaker towards the embassy. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Thursday called on Muslims worldwide to strongly oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. About 3,000 people in Bangladesh gathered in front of the main mosque in the capital, Dhaka, to protest. In Pakistan s major cities, hundreds of Islamists hardliners rallied in small groups. Down with America, down with Israel and no to Israel occupation, chanted protesters in the cities of Lahore and Peshawar. Controversial Pakistani cleric Hafiz Saeed promised bigger protests over Jerusalem and urged the government to convene a conference of Muslim-majority states. Pakistan should take the lead, being the only nuclear state of the Islamic world, said Saeed, who was released from house arrest last month by a Pakistani court. The United States and India blame Saeed as the mastermind of the attacks that killed 166 people in India s financial capital, Mumbai. In Kashmir, small groups of people protested in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian portion of the divided Muslim-majority region that is claimed by both India and Pakistan. We condemn the idiot Trump s decision, said a placard on an effigy of the U.S. president. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia: U.S. military drills likely aimed at provoking N.Korea;VIENNA (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that military drills held by the United States and South Korea seemed to have aimed at provoking North Korea to hold more missile tests. He also said Moscow condemns North Korea s missile tests. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Dutch 'blood timber' businessman arrested in South Africa;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A Dutch businessman convicted in April of selling weapons to ex-Liberian president and warlord Charles Taylor was arrested in South Africa on a Dutch warrant, officials said on Friday. Blood timber trader Guus Kouwenhoven was sentenced as an accessory to war crimes for providing arms to Taylor s government in violation of a U.N. embargo. Kouwenhoven, 75, has been living in Cape Town and had refused to return to the Netherlands for trial, citing health problems. He was not present at the trial. Dutch prosecution spokesman Bart Vis said Kouwenhoven would appear before a judge in South Africa on Friday and a court there would rule later on the Dutch extradition request. Known in Liberia as Mister Gus , Kouwenhoven ran two timber companies in the West African state in 2000-03 and used them as cover to smuggle arms, according to the Dutch court that sentenced him to 19 years in prison. At the time, Liberia was in the grip of a civil war between then-President Taylor s government and several rebel factions. Liberia s string of conflicts since the 1990s left an estimated 250,000 people dead. Thousands more were mutilated and raped and all sides in the conflict used child soldiers. Taylor stepped down in 2003. He was arrested in 2006 and in 2012 sentenced to 50 years in prison for aiding and abetting war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Professors head to courts, threaten strike after Estacio layoffs in Brazil;SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A battle between Brazilian private college operator Estacio Participacoes SA and the country s professors arrived in the courts on Thursday, as unions and students protested against the company s recent move to fire over 1,000 teachers. On Wednesday, newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo reported that the company was planning to fire 1,200 of its 10,000 professors in December, as many are being paid above-market rates. In response, the CSB, a Brazilian umbrella union, filed a motion in a court in capital Brasilia on Thursday demanding that the layoffs be halted. That motion was quashed by a judge. Estacio declined to comment on the judicial proceedings, but emphasized that Brazilian law requires that it make any staffing cuts within a limited period of the calendar year. It s important to remember that Brazilian legislation requires that potential layoffs of professors occur only within a very restricted window, the company said in a statement. Augusta Raeffray, a lawyer for the CSB, said by telephone that mass layoffs must be negotiated with union, which she said Estacio did not do. She added that the company had already filed paperwork for 230 layoffs in the city of Sao Paulo, almost 100 in Ribeirao Preto and 50 in Belo Horizonte. In Rio de Janeiro, where 33 of 93 Estacio units are located, the citywide teachers union is planning a Friday protest and students are planning a Monday demonstration, union head Joao Paulo Camara Chaves said in a telephone conversation. The body was also considering a teachers strike during the beginning of lessons next year, he added. The layoffs and subsequent protests at Estacio have raised wider questions about the treatment of academic professionals in Brazil, where professors say salaries and contracts have become more precarious both in the private and public sector, especially as the state tightens its belt. Some state universities are paying professors salaries in installments. Other private universities are using an intermittent or hourly pay schedule, said Jacob Paiva, director of Brazil s nationwide professors union, by phone. Shares in Estacio fell 2 percent on Thursday to 30.71 reais ($9.33), their biggest intraday loss in over a week. ($1 = 3.29 reais) ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China jails 21 people for 2015 nursing home fire: Xinhua;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has jailed 21 people for their roles in a deadly fire that killed 39 elderly people at a private nursing home two years ago, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Xinhua said the nursing home in the central Henan province had been illegally extended and flammable materials had been used on the extension. Fan Huazhi, legal representative for the nursing home, received a prison term of nine years while contractor Feng Chunjie, who did not have the appropriate work certificate, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. The other defendants, including firefighting officers and managers at the nursing home, received jail terms ranging from two-and-a-half to eight years. Reuters was unable to reach Fan or Feng for comment. China has had a history of similar disasters as workers are often poorly trained or ill-equipped to protect themselves from accidents. In January, a fire at another nursing home in northeastern China killed seven people. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson to meet Lebanon's Hariri in Paris on Friday: U.S. State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri in Paris on Friday, the State Department said in a statement on Thursday. The two will meet during a ministerial meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group, a body that includes the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. Hariri rescinded his resignation on Tuesday, drawing a line under a month-long crisis triggered when he announced from Riyadh that he was stepping down and remained outside Lebanon for weeks. His coalition government, which includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, reaffirmed a state policy of staying out of conflicts in Arab states. The State Department statement said Tillerson would encourage the Lebanese government and other nations to move more aggressively in limiting Hezbollah s destabilizing activity in the region. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: “Pit Bull” Attorney For Special Counsel Robert Mueller Attended Hillary’s Election Night Party;Is there a single person left on Robert Mueller s Trump-Russian collusion team who isn t in bed with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?An attorney for special counsel Robert Mueller attended Hillary Clinton s election night party in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.Andrew Weissmann s attendance at the party is one of many signs pointing to a troubling bias from the attorney. Weissmann has been described by The New York Times as Mueller s lieutenant and pit bull. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained an email Tuesday that revealed Weissmann praised former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates defiance of Trump. I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects, Weissmann wrote to Yates on Jan. 30. The email followed Yates instruction to the DOJ not to defend an executive order banning immigration from seven nations, an act that led to her dismissal by President Trump.Weissmann is one of several Democratic donors that have been hired by Mueller, a registered Republican. The special counsel s pit bull donated a combined $6,600 to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.The special counsel s probe has been criticized by Trump s allies, but the White House maintains Trump has no intention to fire Mueller. Daily Caller ;politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump dangles Middle East peace plan to limit Jerusalem outcry;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When President Donald Trump told the Palestinian president of his intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, he assured him a peace plan being put together would please the Palestinians, officials said, an apparent effort to limit fallout over his break with longtime U.S. policy. Trump s phone call to Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, the day before he made his bombshell announcement on Jerusalem, appeared to shed new light on behind-the-scenes efforts by White House advisers to craft a peace blueprint expected to be rolled out in the first half of 2018 but which has now been thrown into doubt because of an angry outcry across the Middle East. With Palestinians declaring it will be difficult for the United States to act as an honest broker after essentially siding with Israel on one of the central disputes in the conflict, administration officials said they expected a cooling-off period. Trump s team, led by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, will press on with development of a plan to serve as the foundation for renewed Israeli Palestinian negotiations, hoping the furor will blow over and that any pause in diplomatic contacts with the Palestinians will not last long, U.S. officials said. But amid protests in the Palestinian territories and uncertainty about whether the Palestinians will stay engaged in the peace effort, one U.S. official said the process could still be disrupted. If they are still saying they re not going to talk, we re not going to do it then, the official said. Washington s major Western and Arab allies have warned that Trump s decision on Jerusalem could doom attempts to achieve what the U.S. president has called the ultimate deal of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Details of the negotiating framework have yet to be finalized and there is little indication of tangible progress. But officials said it would deal with all the major issues, including Jerusalem, borders, security, the future of Jewish settlements on occupied land and the fate of Palestinian refugees, and would also call for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to provide significant financial support to the Palestinians. In his call to Abbas on Tuesday, Trump sought to temper the blow from his Jerusalem announcement by stressing that the Palestinians stood to gain from the peace plan that Kushner and U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt were crafting, according to two U.S. and two Palestinian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump told Abbas, a Western-backed moderate, that the final peace blueprint would offer the Palestinians an important settlement that they would be pleased with, but did not provide specifics, the sources said. Abbas told Trump in response that any peace process must result in the Palestinians having their capital in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian official said. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. A senior U.S. official said Trump told Abbas he wanted to discuss the issues in person and invited him to visit the White House, although the timing was unclear. Palestinians have grown increasingly concerned that any plan Trump unveils will shortchange them, a fear that deepened with Trump s formal endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, upending decades of U.S. policy that the ancient city s status must be decided in negotiations. Jerusalem is home to sites holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians. Kushner, who had no government or diplomatic experience before joining his father-in-law s White House, has mostly kept his discussions under wraps. U.S. officials say Kushner backed Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and order the eventual relocation of the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, although he was aware of the potential for complicating his peace efforts. But one White House official said that because the peace effort had not yet led to negotiations between the two sides, Kushner s team believed the initial outcry over the Jerusalem decision could eventually be overcome. The official said the plan, which he described as comprehensive and going beyond frameworks put forth by previous U.S. administrations, would likely be unveiled before the middle of next year. A key test of keeping the peace efforts on track will be whether Abbas goes ahead with a scheduled meeting with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence when he visits the region in mid-December. A senior Palestinian official said on Thursday that Pence was unwelcome in Palestine. Trump, the officials said, had insisted that U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital was not meant to prejudge the outcome of future negotiations on that issue or others between the two sides. U.S. officials acknowledged that Trump s Jerusalem moves could also put a damper on cooperation from Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, which the administration is trying to enlist in the peace process. They contended, however, that the broader Arab world was also concerned about keeping Trump involved in confronting Iran and fighting Islamic State militants and was therefore unlikely to remain disengaged for long from efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One U.S. official said the Palestinians were in such a weak position that they would ultimately have no choice but to stay involved in U.S.-led peace efforts. Another argument that Trump s aides will likely make to Palestinians is that having granted Israel recognition of its claim to Jerusalem, the U.S. leader might now have more leverage for seeking concessions later on from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the U.S. official said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: MUELLER’S “Right Hand Man” Represented IT Staffer Who Destroyed Hillary’s Blackberrys With A Hammer!;You just can t make this stuff up Yet another key member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe appears to have deep ties to the Democratic Party.From PJ Media: Aaron Zebley served previously as Mueller s chief of staff at the FBI and as a senior counselor in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the National Security and Terrorism Unit in Alexandria, Virginia.Also, in 2015 when he was a lawyer, he represented Justin Cooper, the IT staffer who personally set up Hillary Clinton s unsecured server in her Chappaqua home, Fox News Tucker Carlson revealed on his show Thursday.Cooper, it so happens, is also the aide who destroyed Clinton s old BlackBerries with a hammer.Watch the brilliant television ad Ted Cruz s team made during the election, that mocked Hillary Clinton and Justin Cooper for destroying evidence of her crimes, when they smashed her Blackberrys with a hammer:Documents obtained by Fox News show that Senate investigators grew frustrated with Zebley after being repeatedly stonewalled when they were trying to set up a meeting with Cooper. Mr. Zebley telephoned Homeland Security [Committee] staff to inform them that Cooper had chosen to cancel the interview, the documents said.In a letter to Cooper, congressional investigators complained: We are troubled by your attorney s [referring to Zebley] complete refusal to engage the committee in a discussion about how to further assuage your concerns. Let this sink in. The same attorney who played a defensive role for Hillary Clinton was tapped by Mueller in June to play an offensive role against Clinton opponent Trump.But Zebley isn t the only questionable hire. Out of a team of fifteen lawyers, nine of them have donated to Democratic candidates. None of them seem to have Republican leanings.Jeannie Rhee, who was hired by Mueller last summer to work on the probe, was the personal attorney of Ben Rhodes and also represented the Clinton Foundation, Fox News Laura Ingraham reported on Wednesday.;politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“DONALD TRUMP DIET”…LIFELONG LIBERAL Tells  How His Leftist Friends Caused Him To Lose 7 Pounds After He Defended Donald Trump [VIDEO];Every single day, liberals provide more and more evidence that Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing. After the treatment liberal Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz received from his leftist friends for defending the law, and in the process defending President Trump, will he ever be able to embrace the people he used to believe were tolerant and open-minded ? WFB Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Friday that he has lost seven pounds because his liberal friends have stopped inviting him to dinner parties for defending President Donald Trump against Democrats calling for him to be charged with obstruction of justice. Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal who has donated thousands of dollars to Democrats, about liberals shunning him, noting that he usually agrees with liberals when he appears on the show. Well, I call it the Donald Trump diet, Dershowitz said with a smile. I ve lost seven pounds because my liberal friends have stopped inviting me to dinner parties. After four years, I ll be back to my high school weight. He added that many liberals do not want to understand his view and immediately accuse him of being on Trump s side.WATCH: I m on nobody s side. I m on the side of the rule of law, the Constitution, and the Constitution is clear [that if] a president exercises his constitutional authority by firing somebody or by pardoning somebody, that cannot be the basis for obstruction of justice, Dershowitz said. If he goes further and lies or tells his people to destroy evidence, of course, that s different. That s how [Richard] Nixon and [Bill] Clinton got in trouble, but President [Trump] cannot be charged with obstruction for simply exercising his Article 2 power under the Constitution. And that s the point of view you expressed on this program a couple of days ago, co-host Steve Doocy added. And then the president of the United States retweeted, Hey you should watch Alan Dershowitz on Fox and Friends make that case, but then your liberal friends, their heads started exploding, and I understand somebody even suggested that you re being paid off by the Trump people. Dershowitz mocked the idea that he is being paid off or that he wants to become a Supreme Court justice at the age of 79. He then mentioned that he also is being attacked for his article supporting Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. I m being criticized for that by people because that s what Trump said, and if Trump said it, that means Dershowitz can t say it because that means Dershowitz is on Trump s side, Dershowitz said. I m on the side of justice and fairness. ;politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Charlie Manson, Serial Killers, LSD, Hippie Culture, Cults and Bitcoin Explosion – Boiler Room EP #138;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Andy Nowicki of the Nameless Podcast, and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE contributor) and the rest of the boiler gang for the hundred and thirty eighth episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.On this episode of Boiler Room the ACR Brain-Trust is having a barstool discussion about Charlie Manson, serial killers, LSD, Hippie culture, Cults, Dave McGowan and the Bitcoin value skyrocketing at the end of 2017.Direct Download Episode #138 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;Middle-east;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;#VeryFakeNewsCNN BUSTED After Getting MAJOR Detail In Donald Trump Jr.-Wikileaks Story Wrong;"Would CNN even know the truth if it bit them in the a**?The media s quest to prove Donald Trump Jr. colluded with Wikileaks is all wrong.The Sept. 14 email to Trump campaign advertising WikiLeaks emails promoted publicly available info, was riddled with typos and came from a Trump backer who had given $40 to the campaign months earlier, per email viewed by @WSJ. Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) December 8, 2017Legal Insurrection CNN originally reported an email from Trump Jr. was sent 10 days later, a factual inaccuracy that led to a false timeline and essentially, fake news. The timeline is crucial because it proves Trump Jr. was not trading unknown information, but that someone was alerting him to information already made public. Despite claims to the contrary, Trump Jr. was not aware (as far as records prove) ofCNN has published a CORRECTION and updated this story. Originally CNN said the email was dated Sept. 4, based on ""accounts from two sources who had seen the email."" CNN now has a copy of the email, and it's dated Sept. 14, not Sept. 4. https://t.co/EpvrB43jyU Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2017From CNN s report, which has been updated to reflect the WaPos findings:Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Organization received an email in September 2016 offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.The September 14 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race.CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 10 days earlier based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email. The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information. The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.After this story was published, The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email Friday afternoon and reported that the email urged Trump and his campaign to download archives that WikiLeaks had made public a day earlier. The story suggested that the individual may simply have been trying to flag the campaign to already public documents.CNN has now obtained a copy of the email, which lists September 14 as the date sent and contains a decryption key that matches what WikiLeaks had tweeted out the day before.After obtaining the emails, the WaPo corrected the record:A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.The email sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 noted that Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC and included a link and a decryption key, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.Legal Insurrection tweeted about CNN s latest VeryFakeNews story:Washington Post proving that CNN scoop was fake news. Happy Friday! https://t.co/GHfZdRf9Zv Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) December 8, 2017 ";politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan's Oxford-educated crown prince to bring global view to Chrysanthemum Throne;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s Oxford-educated crown prince, Naruhito, looks set to bring a more global outlook to the ancient imperial institution while carrying on Emperor Akihito s legacy of promoting peace and reconciliation with Asia when he ascends the throne in 2019. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s cabinet on Friday signed off on an April 30, 2019 date for the octogenarian Akihito s retirement - the first abdication by a Japanese monarch in two centuries. Akihito, who turns 84 on Dec. 23, has spent much of his nearly three decades on the throne trying to heal the wounds of a war fought in his father Hirohito s name and highlighting the needs of the vulnerable in society. He said in August 2016 that he feared age would make it hard to fulfil his duties. As an Oxford-educated scholar and well traveled crown prince, Naruhito can draw on a wealth of international experience in carrying out the duties his father pioneered, said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. Naruhito, 57, is an advocate for environmental causes, and has taken part in international conferences on clean water. Certainly, on environmental issues, he s very passionate, said Shihoko Goto, a senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Washington-based Wilson Center. He is also very concerned about women s rights ... the idea of empowering women and giving them a position of dignity that goes beyond their place in the traditional world. Naruhito defied palace officials to marry Masako Owada, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated diplomat who has suffered from stress-related illness brought on by the demands of palace life and pressure to bear a royal heir. At one point, he shocked the public with his blunt defense of his wife from criticism and pressure, drawing a rebuke from his younger brother and sorrowful remarks from his father. Masako s daughter, 16-year-old Aiko, cannot inherit the males-only throne. A one-off law allowing Akihito to abdicate was enacted in June, but did not address the controversial issue of female succession - a matter that is becoming increasingly pressing as the royal family shrinks and ages. Akihito has only one grandson, 11-year-old Prince Hisahito. How Masako, 53, copes with the role of empress will be closely watched. My hope is that ... she will be able to express herself and embrace some of the things she wants to do and be at the forefront of imperial diplomacy, the Wilson Center s Goto said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras election tribunal says to hold partial re-count in presidential vote;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras election tribunal will re-count 4,753 ballot boxes that have cast a shadow on the results of the country s presidential election, the tribunal chief said on Thursday, bowing to a demand by the Organization of American States (OAS). Nearly two weeks since Honduras Nov. 26 presidential election, the result remains unknown, with allegations of electoral fraud sparking protests and a chorus of international concern over events in the poor Central American nation. Official results showed Honduras conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez with a narrow 1.6 percentage point lead over center-left opposition leader Salvador Nasralla. However, no victor has yet been declared by the election tribunal. The tribunal declared Nasralla the leader in an announcement on the morning after the vote, with just over half of the ballot boxes counted. However, it gave no further updates for about 36 hours. Once results then started flowing again, Nasralla s lead quickly started narrowing. On Thursday, after meeting with the United States top diplomat in Honduras and the OAS country representative, tribunal chief David Matamoros said there would be a re-count of ballot boxes that arrived after the 36-hour pause, and which the opposition has claimed are tainted. This is a process we want to undertake in front of the eyes of the world, and we want to invite civil society, Matamoros said at a press conference in the capital, Tegucigalpa. The OAS, which on Wednesday said it may call for new Honduran elections if irregularities undermine the credibility of results, had previously called for a recount of those 4,753 ballot boxes. It remains to be seen if the opposition will accept the tribunal s offer. Nasralla on Wednesday evening called for an international arbiter to oversee a recount of the entire 18,000-odd ballot boxes, saying he no longer recognized the Honduran tribunal because of its role in the process. Separately, Honduras security ministry said on Thursday it was removing the curfew from three more departments, meaning only six of the country s 18 departments are still under curfew. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British foreign minister to visit Iran, lobby for jailed aid worker;LONDON (Reuters) - British foreign minister Boris Johnson will travel to Iran on Saturday to lobby counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif for the release of jailed Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The trip will be only the third by a British foreign minister to Iran in the last 14 years, and takes place against a complex backdrop of historical, regional and bilateral tensions. Johnson has vowed to leave no stone unturned in Britain s efforts to free Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, who was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. The Foreign Secretary will urge the Iranians to release dual nationals where there are humanitarian grounds to do so, a foreign office spokesman said. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not the only dual national being held in Iran, but has become the most high profile after Johnson said she had been teaching people journalism before her arrest in April 2016, in remarks critics said could have prompted Iran to extend her sentence. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News, said Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been on holiday and had not been teaching journalism in Iran. Johnson has since apologized for his comments. There were calls for his resignation - something which threatened to destabilize Prime Minister Theresa May s minority government at a crucial point in Britain s Brexit negotiations. Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been told she will appear in court on Dec. 10, her husband Richard has said. The visit will be sandwiched between meetings in Oman and the United Arab Emirates as Johnson - a key proponent of Britain s exit from the European Union - takes advantage of a gap in a domestic parliamentary calendar dominated by Brexit. Johnson was a surprise choice for Britain s top diplomat when he was appointed by May in 2016. He has a record of political gaffes and use of florid and sometimes undiplomatic language. The visit will test his ability to navigate a political landscape littered with potential pitfalls. Iran s 1979 Islamic Revolution turned it into a pariah state for most of the West and many Middle Eastern neighbors. International sanctions have only recently been lifted as part of a multilateral nuclear deal to curb Iran s disputed uranium enrichment program. That deal is under threat after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to decertify Iran s compliance with the terms of the agreement. Britain has voiced its continued support for the nuclear deal but is one of a number of Western powers voicing concerns about Tehran s destabilizing influence in the region. This visit comes at a crucial time for the Gulf region and provides an opportunity to discuss a peaceful solution to the conflict in Yemen, the future of the Iran nuclear deal and the current volatility in the Middle East, the spokesman said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aide to EU Commission head tweets picture of white smoke at Brexit meeting with May;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Martin Selmayr, a top aide to the head of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, signaled on Friday there was an agreement on Britain s divorce terms with the EU by tweeting a picture of white smoke that is a symbol of the election of a new pope. Juncker, Selmayr and the EU s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier are at a working breakfast with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Substantive changes to Brexit border text, says Northern Ireland's DUP leader;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has made substantive changes to its proposed text for a deal with the European Union, the leader of Northern Ireland s Democratic Unionist Party said on Friday as Prime Minister Theresa May arrived in Brussels to present the deal. We re pleased to see those change because for me it means there s no red line down the Irish Sea and we have the very clear confirmation that the entirety of the United Kingdom is leaving the European union, leaving the single market, leaving the customs union, Arlene Foster told Sky News. There are still matters there that we would have liked to have seen clarified, we ran out of time essentially, we think that we needed to go back again and talk about those matters but the prime minister has decided to go to Brussels in relation to this text. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Juncker says Brexit talks to move to second phase;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said on Friday that Brexit talks would move on to the second phase to talk about trade after he judged that sufficient progress had been made on the divorce deal. The Commission has just formally decided to recommend to the European Council that sufficient progress has now been made on the strict terms of the divorce, he told an early morning press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Juncker said a lot of work still remained to be done. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Special Counsel Mueller filing shows Manafort drafted Ukraine op-ed despite gag order;WASHINGTON (Reuters on Friday ) - U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller late on Friday unveiled a trove of evidence against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to convince a judge that he violated a gag order by ghost-writing an article to bolster his public image. The evidence Mueller revealed in a filing, which is a fraction of what he said earlier on Friday he has collected, is the first clear indication of the depth of his investigation and the nature of what his investigators have found. In the 41-page filing, prosecutors in Mueller’s office produced emails, drafts with tracked edits and records showing that a computer user named “paul manafort” created a version of the op-ed and made numerous changes on November 29 “between 8:41 p.m. and 9:11 p.m.”, and “last saved at 9:12 p.m.”. They also produced records indicating that the op-ed, published on Thursday in the English-language Kyiv Post over Mueller’s objections, tracked talking points Manafort and his business associate Richard Gates wrote in August 2016. That was after Manafort was forced to resign from Trump’s campaign because of political work he had done for pro-Russian figures including former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Mueller also claimed in the filing that Manafort collaborated on the piece with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian to whom Mueller alluded in a filing earlier this week as having ties to Russian intelligence. The filing did not disclose how Mueller’s team acquired the data, and Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, declined to comment on it. In the filing, Mueller’s team argued that U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson should deny a request by Manafort to lift his house arrest, saying the op-ed violated her gag order and demonstrated that he cannot be trusted. “Bail is fundamentally about trust,” the filing said. “Even taken in the light most favorable to Manafort, this conduct shows little respect for this Court and a penchant for skirting (if not breaking) rules.” Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing on Thursday denied that his client had violated the gag order, saying an article published in a Ukrainian newspaper would not substantially prejudice the case in the United States. [L1N1O72H6] Downing acknowledged in a filing on Thursday that Manafort had helped edit the piece, but said it was his client’s First Amendment right to defend himself. He did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Mueller’s second filing. Mueller’s team responded to Downing’s First Amendment argument by citing a Supreme Court case that found that free speech does not “disable a district court “ from taking steps to protect cases that could be harmed by “the creation of a ‘carnival atmosphere’ in high profile cases.” A federal grand jury indicted Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates in October as part of Mueller’s investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Russia has denied any meddling and Trump has dismissed any suggestions of collusion. The charges against Manafort include conspiracy to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, who was ousted in 2014. Manafort and Gates are under house arrest and electronic monitoring, but they have been negotiating to have those conditions lifted. All parties were ordered by the judge on Nov. 8 not to discuss the case in public or with the media in a way that could substantially prejudice a fair trial. Earlier this week, Mueller’s team discovered the draft op-ed was in the works and ordered Manafort’s lawyers to shut it down. It was published on Thursday under the byline of Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry. [L1N1O71RK] On December 5, Voloshyn emailed the U.S. Embassy claiming credit for writing the piece and accusing Mueller of “deliberately twist(ing) the reality,” according to an email in the filing. The article praised Manafort’s work helping Ukraine secure better relations with the European Union and said he lobbied for pro-Western values, not Russian interests. Documents Mueller filed with the court showed that Gates and Manafort worked together in August and September of 2016 to craft “narratives” to deflect negative press about Manafort after his resignation from the campaign. “Need to beat back the idea that this was nefarious work,” a document said. “Your efforts were in support and promotion of pro-democratic values around the world.” The “narratives” also claimed that Manafort “never worked in Russia or for Russians,” that his work was “centered on pro-Ukraine efforts to enter the EU,” and that he “never took cash payments.” Manafort and Gates are scheduled to appear in court on Monday for a status conference hearing, where the judge is likely to address the dispute. Earlier on Friday, Mueller revealed in another filing that his office has turned over more than 400,000 emails, financial records and other documents to Manafort’s lawyers to demonstrate what evidence the government has against him ahead of a 2018 trial. In addition, they provided imaged copies of 36 electronic devices such as laptops, telephones and thumb drives, copies of 15 search or seizure warrants, and 2,000 so-called “hot” documents, or those that contain potentially crucial evidence. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK to remain in sync after Brexit with EU rules supporting Irish peace;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain will maintain full alignment after Brexit with the European Union s single market and customs union rules that support peace, cooperation and economy on the island of Ireland, an agreement between the bloc and London said on Friday. It added that Britain will ensure that no new regulatory barriers develop between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. For the full text of the agreement, please see: here ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump lifts refugee ban, but admissions still plummet, data shows; WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In late October, President Donald Trump lifted a temporary ban on most refugee admissions, a move that should have cleared the way for more people fleeing persecution and violence to come to the United States. Instead, the number of refugees admitted to the country has plummeted. In the five weeks after the ban was lifted, 40 percent fewer people were allowed in than in the last five weeks it was in place, according to a Reuters analysis of State Department data. That plunge has gone almost unnoticed. As he lifted the ban, Trump instituted new rules for tougher vetting of applicants and also effectively halted, at least for now, the entry of refugees from 11 countries deemed as high risk. The latter move has contributed significantly to the precipitous drop in the number of refugees being admitted. The data shows that the Trump administration’s new restrictions have proven to be a far greater barrier to refugees than even his temporary ban, which was limited in scope by the Supreme Court. The State Department data shows that the kind of refugees being allowed in has also changed. A far smaller portion are Muslim. When the ban was in place they made up a quarter of all refugees. Now that it has been lifted they represent just under 10 percent.  Admissions over five weeks is a limited sample from which to draw broad conclusions, and resettlement numbers often pick up later in the fiscal year, which began in October. But the sharp drop has alarmed refugee advocates. “They’re pretty much shutting the refugee program down without having to say that’s what they’re doing,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International. “They’ve gotten better at using bureaucratic methods and national security arguments to achieve nefarious and unjustifiable objectives.” Trump administration officials say the temporary ban on refugees, and the new security procedures that followed, served to protect Americans from potential terrorist attacks. Supporters of the administration’s move also argue that the refugee program needed reform and that making it more stringent will ultimately strengthen it. “The program needed to be tightened up,” said Joshua Meservey, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, who formerly worked in refugee resettlement in Africa. “I’m all for strengthening the vetting, cracking down on the fraud, being really intentional on who we select for this, because I think it protects the program ultimately when we do that.” A State Department official attributed the drop in refugee admissions to increased vetting, reviews aimed at identifying potential threats, and a smaller annual refugee quota this year of 45,000, the lowest level in decades. “Refugee admissions rarely happen at a steady pace and in many years start out low and increase throughout the year. It would be premature to assess (the 2018 fiscal year’s) pace at this point,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Trump has made controlling immigration a centerpiece of his presidency, citing both a desire to protect American jobs and national security. During the 2016 presidential campaign he said Syrian refugees could be aligned with Islamist militants and promised “extreme vetting” of applicants. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. After the ban was lifted the new rules imposed included a requirement that refugees provide 10 years of biographical information, rather than five years, a pause in a program that allows for family reunification, and a “detailed threat analysis and review” of refugees from 11 countries. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that 90-day review began on Oct. 25, the day after Trump lifted the ban. Officials have said that during the review period, refugees from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen will be allowed in on a case by case basis, but they have also said priority will be given to other applicants. For each of the last three years, refugees from the 11 countries made up more than 40 percent of U.S. admissions. While nine of the 11 countries are majority Muslim, it is often their religious minorities, including Christians and Jews, who seek asylum in the United States. And in practice, of the 11 countries only Iran, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Syria produce refugees who resettle in the United States in meaningful numbers. Trump administration officials have said the 90-day review does not amount to a bar on refugees from the 11 countries. But just as the review launched, the number of refugees coming from those countries ceased almost entirely. In the five weeks before the ban was lifted, 587 refugees from the 11 countries were allowed in, despite tough eligibility rules, according to the Reuters review of the State Department data. In the five weeks after Trump lifted the ban, just 15 refugees from those countries were allowed in. From all countries, 1,469 refugees were admitted to the United States in the five weeks between Oct. 25 and Nov. 28, according to the State Department data. That was 41 percent lower than during the final five weeks of the ban, when nearly 2,500 refugees gained entry. Just 9 percent of refugees admitted to the United States between Oct. 25 and Nov. 28 were Muslim, and 63 percent were Christian. In the five weeks prior, 26 percent were Muslim and 55 percent were Christian. More refugees were allowed in during the period the temporary refugee ban was in place because the Supreme Court, in okaying the ban in June, required refugees with ”bona fide” ties to the United States be exempted. The new rules have been challenged in court, but no rulings have yet been issued. Each twist in U.S. refugee policy has left Alireza, a gay Iranian refugee living in Turkey, confused, desperate for information, and less hopeful he will ever make it to the United States. Alireza, 34, had already been interviewed by U.S. officials and was on track for resettlement when Trump issued his first refugee ban in January. He declined to share his last name because his family does not know he is gay, but he shared documents with Reuters on his case to confirm his identity and refugee status. When Trump’s ban was initially blocked by federal courts, Alireza was able to continue the vetting process and was close to the point of being resettled. Then came the Supreme Court ruling reinstating the ban, and then the new restrictions replacing the ban. As a refugee from one of the 11 countries targeted for additional scrutiny, he is once again in limbo. Alireza questions the national security logic of the new review. He and his boyfriend of 13 years fled to Turkey in 2014 after facing harassment, beatings and extortion in Iran. Human rights groups say that discriminatory laws in Iran against sexual minorities put them at risk of harassment and violence. In Turkey, he said, they scrape by with unstable part-time work and feel threatened by what they see as a rise in anti-gay sentiment in Turkish society. “We ourselves have been hurt by the Islamist system in Iran,” he said in a recent telephone interview from Eskisehir, in northwestern Turkey. “Why would we suffer for three years (in Turkey) so that we could come to America and commit terrorism?” ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawyer defending travel ban grilled in court over Trump's tweets;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal appeals court judges on Friday asked about President Donald Trump’s sharing of anti-Muslim videos on his Twitter account, as they grilled a U.S. government lawyer about the legality of the president’s latest travel ban. Judge Pamela Harris asked government lawyer Hashim Mooppan about Trump’s Nov. 29 online sharing of three anti-Muslim videos posted on Twitter by a far-right British party leader. Lawyers say that and earlier statements by Trump prove the policy is aimed at blocking the entry of Muslims, rather than the president’s stated goal of preserving national security. “Even with deference, construing them in the light most favorable to the president, it’s a little tricky to find the national security rationale in those” Twitter posts, Harris said at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing in Richmond, Virginia, monitored by Reuters over audio feed. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect while litigation over its ultimate validity unfolds. Certain categories of people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen are barred from entering the United States, as well as people from North Korea and some government officials from Venezuela. The Republican president has said the ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism. However, Judge James A. Wynn Jr. said Trump “tweets the very thing” that his opponents claim is behind the ban. “What do we do with that?” On Wednesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing over the ban, in a separate case brought by the state of Hawaii. A lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union argued against the ban on behalf of several refugee groups, civil rights groups and individual American Muslims who say they are harmed by the ban. Mooppan argued on behalf of the government that the latest travel ban should be considered on its own merits, and separately from statements Trump has made on social media or elsewhere that could be construed to be anti-Muslim. He noted that the latest iteration of the ban came after a review by government agencies. “I need you to explain to me how a review process by subordinate executive branch officials is an independent act that can cure the taint from presidential statements,” Harris, an Obama appointee, said to Mooppan. Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, also an Obama appointee, asked why nationality was more relevant than other factors such as gender in considering the potential for terrorist acts. “Could he ban the entry of all men until evidence showed further that men are not the ordinary and customary perpetrators of terrorist activity?” Keenan asked. “If 99 percent of terrorist acts are committed by men, aren’t we really protecting this country if we just keep out the men?” Mooppan pointed to previous bans on the entry of Iranians by Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Cubans by Republican President Ronald Reagan as examples of presidents who barred people based on nationality. ACLU attorney Cecillia Wang faced tough questioning from Judge Paul Niemeyer, who asked when it would be justified for courts to question the national security determinations of the president. “All foreign policy is a black box and it should be,” said Niemeyer, a George H.W. Bush appointee. Trump issued his first travel ban in January. The order, which targeted several Muslim-majority countries, caused chaos at airports and was blocked by courts. He revised it in March, and that ban expired in September after a long court fight. It was replaced with the current version. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to ultimately decide the issue in the coming months. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax repatriation plan may not cure long-term dollar weakness;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors looking for the U.S. Republican tax bill to prompt multinational companies to convert foreign profits into dollars and end the worst slide in the greenback in a decade may have to temper their hopes for a prolonged rebound. The plan, designed in part to give U.S. multinationals a reason to repatriate the roughly $2.6 trillion in profits held by their foreign subsidiaries, would slash tax rates on such previously accumulated earnings. Companies have been slow to recognize those profits on their balance sheets so they can avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes, which stand at a rate of 35 percent. (Graphic: Overseas Cash Stash - reut.rs/2ABRzTu) The dollar is down roughly 8.1 percent so far this year against a basket of currencies. The greenback has suffered as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates more slowly than expected and President Donald Trump has not been able to sign any major legislation into law. (Graphic: Dollar Rise During 2005 Tax Holiday - reut.rs/2A77Y5o) Yet analysts say that even if the tax bill becomes law, the dollar may not benefit in the long term because the legislation gives companies little incentive to convert their foreign profits right away. At the same time, many large companies already have those profits in dollar-denominated securities. The Republicans’ proposals differ from the last tax break on foreign profits, which global financial services company Unicredit said brought roughly $300 billion to the United States. The bill President George W. Bush signed in October 2004 drastically reduced tax rates to 5.25 percent over a 12-month window and, along with aggressive tightening by the Federal Reserve, helped send the dollar nearly 13 percent higher the following year. This time, however, the Republican bills before a conference committee would permanently change how U.S. companies’ foreign profits are taxed. The United States would no longer collect taxes on most future earnings a company makes beyond its borders. As a result, companies would have fewer incentives to bring previously accumulated foreign profits home quickly because rates are not scheduled to revert higher. Up to $250 billion in foreign earnings could be repatriated over an indefinite period, according to TD Securities. While that could provide some boost to the dollar, repatriation will probably not be a significant ongoing factor in the $4.5 trillion global currency market, analysts said. “It was a one-off repatriation and mandatory in 2005 so companies took advantage of it, and the dollar benefited from it,” said Mark McCormick, North American head of FX strategy at TD Securities in Toronto. “But this tax bill doesn’t have that same urgency.” So far, there is no final version of the tax bill. Legislation passed by the House of Representatives would allow companies to bring back foreign profits at a 14 percent repatriation tax rate, as opposed to the current 35 percent, over eight years. The Senate bill, approved over the weekend, puts the rate at 14.49 percent. Neither bill requires companies to convert foreign profits into dollars. Prospects of a tax break on companies’ foreign earnings and expectations of wider U.S. budget deficits helped boost the dollar to its highest levels since 2002 soon after Trump’s presidential victory in November 2016. Now that the tax bills have passed both houses of Congress, “dollar bulls have started banging their drums” again, analysts at Unicredit said. However, they said this attitude is misguided because the vast majority of the earnings that companies will repatriate are probably already in dollar-denominated securities in the United States. “Even a significant wave of repatriation might not lift the dollar directly, as some of the largest U.S. corporations already hold a lot of cash in dollar-denominated assets,” said Shaun Osborne, chief FX strategist at Scotiabank in Toronto. In many cases, foreign profits are based in dollars held in accounts at U.S. banks, yet are treated as overseas assets on a company’s balance sheet. As a result, they are not recognized as U.S. income and are therefore not subject to U.S. taxes. The Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, estimates that at the 15 U.S. companies with the largest cash balances abroad, 95 percent of foreign profits are held in U.S. dollar-denominated cash or equivalents. For example, Microsoft Corp noted in its annual report that as of June 30, roughly 92 percent of the cash and short-term investments held by its foreign units was already invested in U.S. dollar assets. Despite some skepticism about U.S. repatriation flows, some analysts say the dollar could get a short-term boost. “Immediately after tax reform is passed, you’re going to hear this giant sucking sound as money is heading home very quickly,” said David Woo, head of global rates and currencies research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Yet he does not expect a dollar rally to continue beyond the second quarter of 2018, partly due to concerns about the tax plan’s impact on the U.S. fiscal deficit. Over the long term, the dollar will probably continue to slide, said Brian Jacobsen, multi-asset strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management. The effects of the tax bill are already largely priced into the currency market, leaving little unexpected demand over the following 12 months, he said. “We are positioning client portfolios for a little more dollar weakness,” he said. “Not strength.” ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aide tries to refocus tax debate after Trump's corporate rate remark;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s weekend remark about a scaled-back tax cut for corporations sparked behind-the-scenes debate in the U.S. Congress, with a White House aide trying on Thursday to minimize the impact of the president’s comment. Two rival tax bills, passed separately by the Senate and the House of Representatives, propose cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent, but they differ in other areas that Republicans are trying to merge into final legislation. Speaking to reporters after the Senate approved its tax bill on Saturday, Trump said the corporate tax rate in the final legislation, expected soon from lawmakers, “could be 22 (percent) ... it could also be 20 (percent).” The remark whetted the interest of some Republicans who see a slight upward bump in the proposed corporate tax rate as capturing needed federal revenue that would help solve other problems with the legislation, according to lobbyists. “The 20 percent rate ought to be our goal,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, who is expected to head a bicameral House-Senate negotiating committee. “My view is the president is giving us flexibility in that area if it’s needed. No decision’s been made on if that’s needed,” the Texas Republican told reporters. But White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told Reuters on Thursday that Trump was not voicing support for a higher proposed corporate rate. Instead, he may have been only expressing views conveyed to him by Republican senators. “I think he was just reflecting what conversations he had heard from them, but that ... wasn’t intended to signal: this is an endorsement of raising the corporate rate,” Short said. “We believe that 20 percent is the right number ... 20 percent is about as high as we feel comfortable going,” he said in an interview. Trump and his Republican allies have plenty riding on what happens over the next few weeks. A sweeping U.S. tax overhaul, which has not been achieved since 1986, would give Republicans their first major legislative victory of 2017, after their failure to overturn former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. Without a win, Republicans fear they could lose their control of the House and Senate in the 2018 congressional elections. But it may be too late to avoid confusion over priorities as the tax debate moves forward in Congress. Lobbyists said many perceive that Trump and his advisers would accept a corporate rate higher than 20 percent. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Thursday that a 22 percent corporate rate would not undermine the economic boost that Republicans say tax cuts will create. Analysts say the corporate income tax rate could be a ready source of revenue for lawmakers, as they move toward a final bill that can lose no more than $1.5 trillion in revenue over the next decade under Senate rules. Republicans are considering a more costly deduction for state and local taxes than the $10,000 property tax deduction contained in the House and Senate bills. One version would allow taxpayers to choose a $10,000 deduction for either property or income taxes. House lawmakers also want to adopt the House bill’s repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax, which would cost about $40 billion in revenue over a decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Senate retained the tax. A House limit on the amount of debt interest payments that businesses can deduct from their income would also cost about $136 billion more than the Senate version, the JCT said. Analysts say a one percentage point change in the corporate rate equals about $100 billion in revenues over a decade. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax revamp still incomplete as Republicans eye social program cuts;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even before completing their overhaul of the U.S. tax code, Republicans in Washington have begun turning their attention to changes and possible cuts in the social safety net of government programs for the poor, children, elderly and disabled Americans. President Donald Trump, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republican officials in recent remarks have made clear that welfare or “entitlement reform,” as they often call it, will be a top priority for them in 2018. “Next year, we’re going to have to get back to entitlement reform,” Ryan said on a radio talk show on Wednesday. In Republican parlance, “entitlement” programs mean food stamps, housing assistance, Medicare and Medicaid health insurance for the elderly, poor and disabled, as well as other programs created to assist the needy. Democrats in Washington have seized on Ryan’s remarks, saying they show that Republicans will attempt to pay for their tax overhaul, still incomplete on Friday but nearing the finish line, by pivoting to seeking cuts in entitlement spending. Republican plans to slash taxes on corporations and the rich would raise the federal budget deficit and U.S. debt by about $1 trillion over 10 years. For months, most Republicans - who have long argued against running up the deficit - have downplayed that impact. But next year, Democrats are predicting that Republicans will return to a more customary message for them - that deficits and debt do matter, and that the best way to address that problem is by cutting federal spending. “The Republicans’ next chapter will be, ‘Oh, we have a deficit, we have to do something about it, let’s cut Medicare and let’s cut Medicaid,” Democratic Senator Ben Cardin told a news conference on Thursday. Negotiators from the Senate and House on Friday were still hammering out a final version of a Republican tax bill that they want to send to Trump by the end of the month to sign into law. Crafting a single tax bill acceptable to both the Senate and the House is proving difficult. Though lawmakers are working on a tight timetable and talks could still falter, Republican leaders are expressing confidence that a deal will be struck. “When they finish their work, members of both chambers will have the opportunity to pass this tax reform legislation and send it to President Trump,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday, calling the tax legislation the “single most important thing” Republicans can do to help the economy grow. The rival Republican tax bills already passed by the House and Senate both would deliver roughly $1.5 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade, with businesses and wealthy Americans scoring the biggest gains. The bills would add about $1 trillion to the federal deficit over the same period, according to government estimates, even after taking into account projected economic growth. ‘PAY-AS-YOU-GO’ Enacting the tax bill would trigger automatic cuts to a variety of programs, including Medicare, due to a congressional budget rule that requires laws that increase the deficit to offset it with cuts to mandatory spending programs. The “pay-as-you-go” rule applies to the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, but cuts to that program would be capped at 4 percent, or up to $28 billion in 2018, according to government estimates. Medicaid, the Social Security retirement program, food stamps and other programs for the poor are exempt from such automatic cuts. To secure the Republican votes needed to pass the Senate’s version of tax legislation on Dec. 2, Ryan and McConnell pledged not to allow automatic cuts to Medicare. “This will not happen,” they said in a joint statement. Congress must pass separate legislation to override automatic Medicare cuts triggered by passage of the tax bill. As a presidential candidate last year, Trump said he would not cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. But Ryan said on Wednesday that in private conversations with the president, he believes he has started convincing Trump that changes to Medicare may be needed. Trump last month said that “very shortly after taxes,” the White House would be “looking very strongly at welfare reform.” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said at a Thursday event hosted by the pro-business American Council on Capital Formation group that the White House has been studying possible changes to the welfare system. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said during debate last week on the Senate tax bill that Republican talk about entitlement or welfare reform was “code” for cutting Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. “You’re going to hear a lot of lingo about entitlement reforms and welfare reforms,” Wyden said on Thursday. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congressman Franks says resigning immediately;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Trent Franks said on Friday that he would resign from Congress effective immediately, instead of the Jan. 31 date he previously had set following the announcement of a probe into accusations of sexual harassment against him. “Last night, my wife was admitted to the hospital in Washington, D.C., due to an ongoing ailment. After discussing options with my family, we came to the conclusion that the best thing for our family now would be for me to tender my previous resignation effective today, December 8th, 2017,” Franks said in an emailed statement. Late on Thursday, Franks, who has represented a district in the Phoenix, Arizona, area since 2003, issued a statement saying that two women on his staff complained that he had discussed with them his efforts to find a surrogate mother, but he denied he had ever “physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff.” The news website Politico on Friday quoted unnamed sources that it was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating them through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization. The Associated Press reported that a former aide to Franks said the congressman offered her $5 million to carry his child. Reuters has not confirmed either report. The House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Thursday it had opened an investigation into accusations of sexual harassment against Franks. The 60-year-old lawmaker also said that he and his wife “have long struggled with infertility.” Franks’ departure comes just days after Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan announced his immediate retirement amid sexual harassment allegations that he has denied. On Thursday, Democratic Senator Al Franken announced on the Senate floor that he too would resign his Minnesota seat amid harassment claims. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Farenthold should resign if misconduct accusations true: senior House Republican;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, on Friday told Fox News Channel that fellow Republican Representative Blake Farenthold should resign if an ethics investigation finds that sexual misconduct accusations against him have merit. “If these allegations are proven to be true ... I would hope that he would step aside,” said McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference. Farenthold’s office was not immediately available to comment on her remarks. The House Ethics Committee said on Thursday it was investigating Farenthold, 55, over allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation involving a former female staff member. It said it was also looking into whether the Corpus Christi, Texas, congressman made inappropriate statements to other members of his staff. Farenthold said on Thursday he was relieved that the ethics panel was going to look into the accusations. “Once all the facts are released, I‘m confident this matter will once and for all be settled and resolved,” he said. Politico reported last week that the congressional Office of Compliance had paid $84,000 from a public fund on behalf of Farenthold for a sexual harassment claim. In 2014, Farenthold’s former communications director Lauren Greene sued him, alleging a hostile work environment, gender discrimination and retaliation, court documents showed. Farenthold and Greene reached a mediated agreement in 2015 to avoid costly litigation, but the settlement’s details were confidential, according to a statement released at the time in which Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing. A number of lawmakers have been accused of sexual misconduct. This week, Democratic Representative John Conyers and Republican Representative Trent Franks resigned, while Democratic Senator Al Franken said he would be stepping down in the coming weeks. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Millions would lose mortgage, gift write-offs under U.S. tax bill: study;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millions of households would no longer benefit from federal tax deductions for charity donations, mortgage interest payments and property tax under Republican tax plans being debated in the U.S. Congress, a think tank said on Thursday. The left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said that up to 29 million U.S. households now writing off donations, home loan interest and state and local property tax payments would no longer be able to do so under either of the two plans. While all three deductions are maintained in some form in one or both of the rival Senate and House of Representatives bills, far fewer taxpayers could take advantage of them because of other proposed changes, said the Washington-based group. “The House and Senate have voted to fundamentally transform those write-offs in ways that most people don’t understand,” said Carl Davis, research director of the institute. Under the bills, the mortgage interest and charitable deductions would be “worthless for most people”, Davis said. “Less than one in 10 people is going to be able to write-off their donations to their churches or local nonprofits if this legislation is signed into law.” President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are racing to complete a sweeping tax code overhaul by the end of 2017. If they can, it would represent their first major legislative achievement since Trump took power in January. Trump has promised to simplify the tax code, part of which involves ending tax breaks for special interests. That goal is encountering resistance from interests that would be hurt. The Senate and the House have approved separate tax bills and are now trying to craft one unified bill to send to Trump for his signature. As drafted, the two bills call for roughly doubling the “standard deduction,” a key part of the tax code, to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples filing jointly. The standard deduction is a fixed dollar amount, claimed by about two-thirds of taxpayers, that reduces taxable income. Instead of claiming the standard deduction, about one-third of taxpayers, mostly high-earning Americans, itemize deductions. Doing that is worthwhile, in most cases, if the total of itemized deductions exceeds the standard deduction. Both the Senate and House bills also curtail the deduction for state and local tax (SALT) payments, with the House preserving it for state and local property taxes up to $10,000. Tax experts estimate that the combination of doubling the standard deduction and curtailing the SALT deduction would mean that far fewer Americans would itemize. Since itemizing is the only way to claim the deductions for charity, mortgage interest and state and local tax payments, claims for those deductions are also expected to plummet, especially among middle-class Americans. The institute estimated that the percentage of U.S. households writing off charitable donations, under the Republican plans, would fall to 8 percent from 26 percent. A similar decline would be seen in households claiming the mortgage interest deduction, it said. “The mortgage interest deduction would be left in place for precisely the families who are least likely to need to the deduction to become homeowners. More than three-fourths of middle-income families claiming a mortgage interest deduction today would no longer receive that deduction,” it said. “There are good reasons to consider reforming itemized deductions to improve their effectiveness or fairness. But the House and Senate’s approach to that task leave much to be desired,” the institute said. (The story is refiled to correct last name in second reference to Davis from David in fifth paragraph.) ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Trump adviser interviewed in Congress in Russia probe;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Walid Phares, a former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on Friday in its investigation of possible Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. election. Phares did not speak to reporters as he entered the committee’s classified meeting room around 11 am EDT (1600 GMT) or when he left about four hours later. In response to a request for comment Phares’ assistant told Reuters: “Dr. Phares is not making any comments for now.” The House Intelligence panel does not discuss details of most of the dozens of interviews conducted behind closed doors during its months-long investigation, but it has been disclosed publicly that Phares has come under congressional scrutiny over his connections with Russia. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote last month to Phares, who was a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, asking him to turn over “documents related to Russian contacts and the Republican Party’s position on Ukraine.” In her letter to Phares, Feinstein said she was interested in a meeting that he and two other Trump advisers allegedly held during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016 with Sergei Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the United States. On Nov. 29, when Feinstein announced her request, a Phares aide said he maintains Kislyak was just one of many foreign diplomats present at a panel discussion, which could not “fairly” be described as a meeting with Russian officials. The Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence panels are also investigating Russia and last year’s election and possible collusion between Trump associates and Moscow, as is Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia sought to influence the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump win the White House. Russia denies any such effort and Trump has dismissed talk of collusion. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Civil rights pioneer to eschew museum opening after Trump says will attend;(Reuters) - Longtime U.S. congressman from Georgia John Lewis, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, said on Thursday that he would not attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this weekend because President Donald Trump planned to attend. “President Trump’s attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum,” Lewis said in a statement. The statement by the Georgia Democrat, who has served in Congress for 31 years, and Mississippi Democratic U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson mentioned Trump’s “disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants, and National Football League players.” Trump said earlier this week that he would attend the opening of the museum in Jackson, the state capital. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has denounced Trump’s planned attendance. Lewis and Thompson said in their statement that Trump had shown “disrespect” for people who fought for civil rights in Mississippi. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, responding to the Lewis-Thompson statement, said, “We think it’s unfortunate that these members of Congress wouldn’t join the president in honoring the incredible sacrifice civil rights leaders made to right the injustices in our history. The President hopes others will join him in recognizing that the movement was about removing barriers and unifying Americans of all backgrounds.” ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Judge presiding over Michael Flynn criminal case is recused: court;(Reuters) - The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judge presiding over the criminal case for President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been recused from handling the case, a court spokeswoman said on Thursday. According to a court filing, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, who presided over a Dec. 1 hearing where Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russia, will no longer handle the case. Court spokeswoman Lisa Klem did not say why Contreras was recused, and added that the case was randomly reassigned. Reuters could not immediately learn the reason for the recusal, or reach Contreras. An attorney for Flynn declined to comment. Now, Flynn’s sentencing will be overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. Sullivan was appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging probe into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential collusion by Trump aides. Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has dismissed any suggestion of collusion. Flynn has agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s ongoing investigation. A sentencing date has not yet been set, but the parties are due to return to court on February 1 for a status report hearing. Contreras was appointed to the bench in 2012 by former Democratic President Barack Obama. He was also appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in May 2016 for a term lasting through 2023. That court issues warrants that allow Justice Department officials to wiretap individuals, a process that has been thrown into the spotlight amid the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election. The most recent controversy related to FISA warrants involves Peter Strzok, a senior FBI agent who was removed from the Russia investigation for exchanging text messages with a colleague that expressed anti-Trump views. At a hearing on Thursday at the House Judiciary Committee, Republican lawmaker Jim Jordan pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray on whether a former British spy’s dossier of allegations of Russian financial and personal links to Trump’s campaign and associates was used by Strzok to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump’s transition team. Judge Sullivan previously served on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals under appointments by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, respectively. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House ethics panel probing Rep. Farenthold over harassment allegations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Thursday it was investigating Republican Representative Blake Farenthold over allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation involving a former female staff member. The panel said in a statement it was also looking into whether the Corpus Christi, Texas, congressman made inappropriate statements to other members of his official staff. Farenthold, 55, said in a statement he was relieved that the ethics panel was going to look into the allegations. “Once all the facts are released, I’m confident this matter will once and for all be settled and resolved,” he said. Politico reported last week that the U.S. Congress’ Office of Compliance had paid $84,000 from a public fund on behalf of Farenthold for a sexual harassment claim. In 2014, Farenthold’s former communications director Lauren Greene sued him, alleging a hostile work environment, gender discrimination and retaliation, court documents showed. Farenthold and Greene reached a mediated agreement in 2015 to avoid costly litigation, but the settlement’s details were confidential, according to a statement released at the time, where Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing. Farenthold told KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi on Monday that he would return the sum. Capitol Hill has been rocked in recent weeks by allegations of sexual misconduct by lawmakers, and outrage that public money may have been paid to settle harassment suits against members of Congress. Three lawmakers said this week they would resign amid sexual harassment allegations: Democratic Senator Al Franken, Democratic Representative John Conyers and Republican Representative Trent Franks. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House pressures Big Corn to meet on U.S. biofuels policy;(Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration called two lawmakers from the U.S. corn belt to convince them to join talks about potential changes to biofuels policy to ease the burden on oil refineries, according to a spokesman for one of the lawmakers and a source briefed on the matter. The effort is the clearest sign yet Trump is seeking to mediate the long-running dispute between the U.S. oil industry and corn growers over the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a law requiring refiners to blend increasing volumes of biofuels like corn-based ethanol every year into the nation’s fuels. Refiners say the law is putting them out of business, but ethanol interests have vehemently opposed any changes. White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly on Thursday called Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of corn-growing state Iowa - a leading supporter of the biofuels industry - to discuss the possibility of a meeting, Grassley’s office told Reuters on Friday. And Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue called Republican Senator Joni Ernst, also of Iowa, on the issue, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters, asking not to be named. Trump and senior cabinet officials met with nine Republican senators from states with oil refineries on Thursday, including Ted Cruz of Texas. Some of the senators said after the meeting that Trump was interested in having all sides on the issue work together toward a solution. A spokesman for Grassley’s office said that Grassley “would of course meet with any senator who requests a meeting.” The spokesman, Michael Zona, added that Kelly, in his call to Grassley, “reiterated the president’s unwavering commitment to ethanol, the RFS and Midwestern farmers.” Officials in Ernst’s office and at the White House did not respond to a request for comment. A new meeting could be scheduled as early as next week, according to the source briefed on the matter. The talks could lay the groundwork for potential future legislation to overhaul the RFS program, but would require co-operation from representatives of the corn industry to pass Congress. The RFS was introduced more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions, and has since fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year. Refiners oppose the RFS because they say it costs them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in blending and regulatory expenses, while propping up demand for rival fuels. The industry has requested tweaks to the policy in the past that would cut the annual volume targets for biofuels, allow ethanol exports to be counted against those targets, or shift the blending burden to supply terminals from refiners. But the Trump administration has ruled in favor of Big Corn and against the refining industry in a series of decisions this year. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator which administers the RFS, slightly increased biofuels volumes targets for 2018. Senators on both sides of the debate have used parliamentary procedures like holds on administrative appointments to punish rivals. For example, Cruz has said he would block Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey’s nomination to a key post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture until he gets a meeting about a biofuels compromise that includes all sides. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. top court takes up Republican challenge to Maryland electoral district;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday added a second case to its docket on a contentious issue that could have major consequences for American elections, agreeing to decide whether Democratic lawmakers in Maryland unlawfully drew a congressional district in a way that would prevent a Republican candidate from winning. The court’s agreement to take up an appeal by Republican voters in Maryland regarding the U.S. House of Representatives district came two months after the justices heard arguments in a high-profile challenge by Democratic voters to Republican-drawn state legislative districts in Wisconsin. Both cases target a practice known as partisan gerrymandering that aims to entrench one party in power and that critics have called a distortion of the democratic process. The justices have not yet issued a ruling in the Wisconsin case. Each case presents a different legal theory as to why limits should be placed on partisan gerrymandering, and the court’s decision to take up a second case on the issue hints that at least some of the nine justices are seriously considering cracking down on it. Gerrymandering, a practice dating back two centuries in American politics, involves manipulating boundaries of legislative districts to benefit one party and diminish another. Legislative districts around the United States are redrawn every decade after the national census to reflect population changes. The “redistricting” in most states is done by the party in power though some states assign the task to independent commissions. The Supreme Court for decades has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps on the grounds of racial discrimination but never those drawn simply for partisan advantage. In the Maryland case, the Republican voters targeting the Democratic-drawn electoral map appealed a 2-1 ruling in August by a panel of three federal judges sitting in Baltimore rejecting their challenge. Maryland’s sixth congressional district, the focus of the case, was previously held by a Republican and now is held by Democrat John Delaney. When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Wisconsin case on Oct. 3, the justices appeared closely divided, with conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy likely to cast the deciding vote. The Republican challengers in Maryland take aim at a single electoral district, not the whole state as in the Wisconsin case. They argue that the district should be struck down because it was drawn by Democrats as a form of retaliation on the basis of past party affiliation based on the Constitution’s guaranteed rights of free association and free speech. The challengers in the Wisconsin case argued that the Republican electoral map violated Democratic voters’ rights to equal protection under the law as well as free speech and association. In the Wisconsin case, the legal argument advanced by the Democratic challengers was that an electoral map would be unlawful if the intent was to discriminate against minority party voters, the map had a sizable effect in accomplishing that goal and that there was no other justification for the map. The theory was based in part on measuring the number of “wasted” votes in each district cast for a losing candidate and comparing each party’s total wasted votes on a statewide basis. The results, plaintiffs said, show whether one party’s votes are more likely to be wasted than the other party’s, which would show evidence of unconstitutional extreme partisan gerrymandering. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Special Counsel Mueller produces evidence that Manafort drafted op-ed;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller unveiled a trove of documents on Friday showing what he said was “irrefutable evidence” that President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort violated a court gag order by ghost-writing an opinion piece designed to improve his public image. In a 41-page court filing, prosecutors provided emails, copies of documents tracking edits of the draft, and other materials they said proved that Manafort wrote a positive article about his political work in Ukraine. That opinion article, which was published on Thursday in an English-language Ukrainian newspaper, also closely tracked talking points that Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates created as far back as August 2016, when Manafort was forced to resign from the Trump campaign. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump senior aide Dina Powell to resign early next year: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Adviser for strategy, Dina Powell, plans to resign early next year but will continue to have a role in Middle East diplomacy, the White House said on Friday. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Powell, a key player in U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, had always planned to stay one year at the Trump White House and then return to her home in New York. Powell could be one of several administration officials to leave at the one-year mark of Trump’s presidency. Speculation has centered on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who officials say could be replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and top economic adviser Gary Cohn may possibly leave also. Powell’s replacement is likely to be Nadia Schadlow, a National Security Council aide who has been working with Powell on a new U.S. national security strategy expected to be released in the next couple of weeks, a senior administration official said. Powell has been one of Trump’s inner circle and a key aide to National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. She engaged in diplomacy throughout the Middle East with Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “Dina has done a great job for the administration and has been a valued member of the Israeli-Palestinian peace team. She will continue to play a key role in our peace efforts and we will share more details on that in the future,” Kushner said in a statement. Trump’s move to have the United States officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has been denounced across much of the Arab world. His team is working on a framework for a potential Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that aides say could be released early next year. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House committee 'may reconsider' WHO cancer agency funds;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. congressional committee members warned on Friday that Washington’s funding of the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency could be halted unless it is more open about its operations. In a letter to the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) - a semi-autonomous unit of the WHO - the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology (SST) Committee warned it “may reconsider U.S. taxpayer funding” if IARC “does not demonstrate transparency”. No-one at IARC, which is based in Lyon, France, was immediately available to comment. Since 1985, IARC has received more than $48 million from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, $22 million of which has gone to IARC’s “monograph” program, which assesses whether various substances can cause cancer in people. Friday’s letter is the latest twist in an ongoing feud between IARC and two congressional committees. They began an investigation in 2016 after a number of IARC’s assessments - that substances as diverse as coffee, mobile phones and processed meat cause cancer - sparked controversy. The lawmakers said their concerns were also fueled by the cancer agency’s review of glyphosate, the primary ingredient of Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup. A Reuters investigation in October found that a draft of a key section of IARC’s assessment of glyphosate underwent significant changes before the report was made public. In their letter, SST Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Vice Chairman Frank Lucas, and Chairman of the Environment Subcommittee, Andy Biggs, repeated an earlier request to IARC’s director, Christopher Wild, to provide potential witnesses for a hearing before their committee. “If IARC does not provide a full response to the request for potential witnesses, the committee will consider whether the values of scientific integrity and transparency are reflected in IARC Monographs and if future expenditures of federal taxpayer dollars to this end need to continue,” they wrote. Smith and Biggs had last month written to Wild asking him for more information about IARC’s operations and a list of potential witnesses for a hearing. Wild responded in a letter on Nov. 20 in which he defended IARC’s monographs as “consensus evaluations developed by working groups of independent experts, free from vested interests”. He declined to provide a list of potential witnesses for the hearing, but said Smith and Biggs would be welcome to visit IARC and question him and his staff. In Friday’s letter, the lawmakers said their concerns about IARC were of a “serious nature” and “should not be disregarded by IARC”. They asked Wild to respond by Dec. 15. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Trump on Twitter (Dec 8) - Hanukkah, Roy Moore, Wells Fargo;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Tonight, @FLOTUS Melania and I were thrilled to welcome so many wonderful friends to the @WhiteHouse – and wish them all a very #HappyHanukkah bit.ly/2B1EO7q [0036 EST] - I fulfilled my campaign promise - others didn’t! [0041 EST] - Big crowd expected today in Pensacola, Florida, for a Make America Great Again speech. We have done so much in so short a period of time...and yet are planning to do so much more! See you there! [0811 EST] - LAST thing the Make America Great Again Agenda needs is a Liberal Democrat in Senate where we have so little margin for victory already. The Pelosi/Schumer Puppet Jones would vote against us 100% of the time. He’s bad on Crime, Life, Border, Vets, Guns & Military. VOTE ROY MOORE! [1006 EST] - Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased. I will cut Regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating! [1018 EST] - MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! [1246 EST] - “The unemployment rate remains at a 17-year low of 4.1%. The unemployment rate in manufacturing dropped to 2.6%, the lowest ever recorded. The unemployment rate among Hispanics dropped to 4.7%, the lowest ever recorded...” @SecretaryAcosta @USDOL [1402 EST] - On my way to Pensacola, Florida. See everyone soon! #MAGA [1825 EST] - Just arrived at the Pensacola Bay Center. Join me LIVE on @FoxNews in 10 minutes! #MAGA [2004 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's chronic shortages give rise to 'medical flea markets';SAN CRISTOBAL/MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela s critical medicine shortage has spurred medical flea markets, where peddlers offer everything from antibiotics to contraceptives laid out among the traditional fruits and vegetables. The crisis-wrought Latin American nation is heaving under worsening scarcity of drugs, as well as basic foods, due to tanking national production and strict currency controls that crimp imports. The local pharmaceutical association estimates at any given time, there is a shortage of around 85 percent of drugs. Sick Venezuelans often scour pharmacies and send pleas on social media to find treatment. Increasingly, however, they are turning to a flourishing black market offering medicines surreptitiously bought from Venezuelan hospitals or smuggled in from neighboring Colombia. Here I can find the vitamins I need for my memory, said 56-year-old Marisol Salas, who suffered a stroke, as she bought the pills at a small stand at the main bus terminal in the Andean city of San Cristobal. Around her, Venezuelans asked sellers for medicine to control blood pressure as well as birth control pills. People are looking for anticonvulsants a lot recently, said Antuam Lopez, 30, who sells medicine alongside vegetables, and said hospital employees usually provide him with the drugs. Leftist President Nicolas Maduro says resellers are in league with a U.S.-led conspiracy to sabotage socialism and are to blame for medicine shortages. In the middle of a market in the humid and sweltering city of Maracaibo, dozens of boxes full of medicines including antibiotics and pain killers are stacked on top of each other. The packaging is visibly deteriorated: The cases are discolored and some are even dirty. Doctors warn these drugs usually smuggled in from Colombia, a few hours drive from Maracaibo pose risks. We ve found that a lot of them have not been maintained at proper temperatures, warned oncologist Jose Oberto, who leads the Zulia state s doctors association. Still, some Venezuelans feel they have no choice but to rely on contraband medicine. I had to buy medicine from Colombia, and it worried me because the label said hospital use, said retiree Esledy Paez, 62. But they are often prohibitively expensive for Venezuelans, many of whom earn just a handful of dollars a month at the black market rate due to soaring inflation. Norkis Pabon struggled to find antibiotics for her hospitalized husband to prevent his foot injury from worsening due to diabetes. But the treatment costs 900,000 bolivars ($9.43;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit deal guarantees no hard border in Ireland: Irish foreign minister;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The agreement reached by Brexit negotiators early on Friday fully guarantees that there can be no hard border on the island of Ireland once Britain leaves the European Union, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said. Deal Confirmed! Ireland supports Brexit negotiations moving to Phase 2 now that we have secured assurances for all on the island of Ireland - fully protecting GFA (Good Friday Agreement), peace process, all-Island economy and ensuring that there can be NO HARD BORDER on the Island of Ireland post Brexit, Coveney said on Twitter. Very good outcome for everyone on the island of Ireland - no Hard Border guaranteed!, he added. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May promises to uphold N. Ireland peace process as Brexit impasse ends;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday she would continue to govern in the interests of all Northern Ireland and uphold the agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence in the province. The statement comes as an impasse over the future of the Irish border once Britain leaves the European Union looked to have been resolved. This Government will continue to govern in the interests of the whole community in Northern Ireland and uphold the Agreements that have underpinned the huge progress that has been made over the past two decades, a statement published on the government s website said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"China warns of imminent attacks by ""terrorists"" in Pakistan";BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Friday warned its nationals in Pakistan of plans for a series of imminent terrorist attacks on Chinese targets there, an unusual alert as it pours funds into infrastructure projects into a country plagued by militancy. Thousands of Chinese workers have gone to Pakistan following Beijing s pledge to spend $57 billion there on projects in President Xi Jinping s signature Belt and Road development plan, which aims to link China with the Middle East and Europe. Protecting employees of Chinese companies, as well as individual entrepreneurs who have followed the investment wave along what is known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, has been a concern for Chinese officials. It is understood that terrorists plan in the near term to launch a series of attacks against Chinese organizations and personnel in Pakistan, the Chinese embassy in Pakistan said in a statement on its website. The embassy warned all Chinese-invested organizations and Chinese citizens to increase security awareness, strengthen internal precautions, reduce trips outside as much as possible, and avoid crowded public spaces . It also asked Chinese nationals to cooperate with Pakistan s police and the military, and to alert the embassy in the event of an emergency. It did not give any further details. Pakistan s foreign ministry could not be reached immediately for comment. China has long worried about disaffected members of its Uighur Muslim minority in its far western region of Xinjiang linking up with militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the same time, violence in Pakistan s southwestern Baluchistan province has fueled concern about security for planned transport and energy links from western China to Pakistan s deepwater port of Gwadar. The Taliban, sectarian groups linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State all operate in Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan and is at the center of the Belt and Road initiative. In addition, separatists there have long battled the government for a greater share of gas and mineral resources, and have a long record of attacking energy and other infrastructure projects. Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing two kidnapped Chinese teachers in Baluchistan in June, prompting the government in Islamabad to pledge to beef up security for Chinese nationals. It had already promised a 15,000-strong army division to safeguard projects along the economic corridor. China s security concerns abroad have grown along with its global commercial footprint. In 2016, a suspected suicide car bomber rammed the gates of the Chinese embassy in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, killing the attacker and wounding at least three people. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Johnson congratulates PM May on Brexit talks progress;LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who spearheaded the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, congratulated Prime Minister Theresa May on agreeing a divorce deal with the EU to move Brexit talks on to trade on Friday. Congratulations to PM for her determination in getting today s deal, he said on Twitter. We now aim to forge a deep and special partnership with our European friends and allies while remaining true to the referendum result - taking back control of our laws, money and borders for the whole of the UK. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China complains to Australia over Turnbull comments on interference;BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday it had lodged a complaint with Australia after its prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said he took reports very seriously that China s Communist Party had sought to interfere in his country. Turnbull said this week that foreign powers were making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process in Australia and the world. He cited disturbing reports about Chinese influence . Turnbull, speaking to parliament on Thursday during the introduction of legislation to stop external interference in domestic politics, reiterated those concerns. Media reports have suggested that the Chinese Communist Party has been working to covertly interfere with our media, our universities and even the decisions of elected representatives right here in this building. We take these reports very seriously, he said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in Beijing he was shocked at what Turnbull had said. Such comments pandered to certain irresponsible reports in Australian media, were full of prejudice against China, were baseless and poisoned the atmosphere of China-Australia relations, Geng told a daily news briefing. We express strong dissatisfaction at this, and have already lodged solemn representations with the Australian side, he said. Geng said China had always respected the principle of non-interference in internal affairs in dealing with Australia We strongly urge the relevant Australian person to spurn Cold War thinking and prejudice towards China, immediately stop making wrong comments that harm political mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation, and take effective steps to dispel negative effects, he added. Geng s remarks were China s latest and strongest broadside against Australia on the issue. The Chinese embassy in Australia on Wednesday accused Australia of hysteria and paranoia after Turnbull vowed to ban foreign political donations to curb external influence in domestic politics. China s soft power has come under renewed focus this week after a politician from Australia s opposition Labor party was demoted from government having been found to have warned a prominent Chinese business leader and Communist Party member that his phone was being tapped by intelligence authorities. In June, Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on a concerted campaign by China to infiltrate Australian politics to promote Chinese interests. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe court postpones U.S. citizen's subversion case to January;HARARE (Reuters) - A Zimbabwean court has postponed to Jan. 4 the trial of a U.S. citizen accused of attempting to undermine the authority of former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe s government. Martha O Donovan, 25, who is currently free on bail, denies the charges which center on a Twitter post the state says she wrote in October calling 93-year-old Mugabe a selfish and sick man . Mugabe resigned a few weeks later in the wake of a de facto military coup and was succeeded by Emmerson Mnangagwa, who Mugabe had sacked as his deputy only a week before. The state said it needed more time to complete its investigations into the allegations against O Donovan, who works for Magamba TV, which describes itself as Zimbabwe s leading producer of political satire. When he released her on bail last month, High Court Judge Clement Phiri said there was patent absence of facts in the state s case against her. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK estimates cost of Brexit bill at 40-45 billion euros: source;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain estimates the ultimate cost of meeting its financial obligations to the European Union on Brexit at 40 to 45 billion euros, a British source said on Friday. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU-Canada trade deal is only model that fits Britain's terms: EU's Barnier;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The future free trade agreement between the European Union and Britain will have to be along the same lines as the one the EU has with Canada, the EU s chief Brexit negotiation Michel Barnier said on Friday. Barnier said that there was no other option, given Britain s terms for a future relationship with the EU, after it leaves the bloc in 2019. Britain does not want to be part of the EU s single market, customs union or be subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice. If you take that - what are you left with? Just one thing: a free trade agreement on the Canadian model, Barnier told a news conference. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Soccer: Born in Japan, playing for North Korea under shadow of missile crisis;TOKYO (Reuters) - Born and raised in Japan, three North Korean soccer players are expecting to face boos from the home crowd in a match that comes less than two weeks after the latest North Korean test missile splashed into the Sea of Japan. An Byong Jun, Kim Song Gi and Lee Yong Jick, who play their club soccer for J League division 2 sides, will represent North Korea when they take on Japan in Tokyo on Saturday in the final round of the East Asian Football Championship. The sporting contest is being held with the world still on edge after the North heightened alarm in South Korea, Japan and the United States by test firing an intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29 that appeared to demonstrate increasing range. North Korea has test-fired missiles over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido twice earlier this year and has threatened to sink Japan into the sea with a nuclear bomb. Unsurprisingly, Kim, a 29-year-old central defender, who hails from Hyogo prefecture in western Japan and plays his club soccer for Machida Zelvia in Tokyo, expects a hostile reception from Japanese supporters. Bring on the booing, said Kim. Being booed actually gets me fired up. I was brought up that way and it doesn t really bother me. He is eager to avenge a one-nil loss when he first played against Japan for North Korea six years ago. Kim, An and Lee all took up soccer when they were children attending Pyongyang-affiliated schools in Japan and saw playing as a North Korean international as the path to the highest level. Soccer was all I thought about when I was a kid and it was my dream to play for North Korea, Kim said. My biggest goal now is to go to the World Cup. Japanese nationality is inherited through parents, not place of birth, meaning the three players of North Korean descent are considered foreigners and ineligible to play for Japan s national team. The players status as permanent residents in Japan is a throwback to the complex and conflicted relationship between the countries. Many Koreans were forced to move to Japan during its occupation of the Korean peninsula before and during World War Two, and suffered discrimination. They and their descendants are now eligible to become naturalized Japanese citizens, but many are loath to do so because that would involve giving up their Korean nationality and suffering a perceived loss of cultural identity. There were about 339,000 people with special permanent resident status - mostly those with Korean or Taiwanese ancestry - living in Japan last year, government data shows. I ve never thought of taking Japanese citizenship, said Kim. My soul is 100 percent North Korean. Lee, a 26-year-old Osaka native playing his first match against Japan, said he wasn t sure how the fans would react, noting that the team had expected boos when they played in South Korea but received applause instead. It s complicated, said the Kamatamare Sanuki defender, who switches to midfield for North Korea. I hope we re treated the same as other teams that play against Japan. To be honest I hope we don t get booed. Regarding political tensions, he said that things might seem bad looking only at the news in Japan but that he and his teammates had also seen a good side to North Korea on their trips to Pyongyang, on school trips and for training camp. An, who will also be playing his first match against Japan, said he was looking forward to playing in his hometown Tokyo and expected a good turnout from ethnic Korean fans. He said he had a lot of J League friends on the Japanese squad with whom he exchanges text messages and he was looking forward to a good match regardless of international tensions. Soccer s great because teams can play fair and square and those kind of politics don t matter, said the 27-year-old Roasso Kumamoto forward. All I want to do is go out and represent my country as a soccer player. Japan and North Korea last met in 2015, at the East Asia Football Championship in China, where North Korea prevailed 2-1. This year s men s tournament, which also features China and South Korea, runs Dec. 9-16. The women s tournament, comprising the same countries, is being held Dec. 8-15. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Special election to replace Conyers to be held Nov. 2018: governor;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said on Friday the state would hold a special election on Nov. 6, 2018, to replace Representative John Conyers, the Democrat who resigned this week amid accusations of sexual misconduct. “Having ample time for candidates to make a decision about running for office and file their paperwork gives people more options,” Snyder said in a statement. ;politicsNews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ONE IMAGE PERFECTLY Captures Who’s Really Behind The Trump-Russian Collusion “Investigation”;Unfounded claims that President Trump was filmed with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel surfaced in the closing stretch of last year s White House race.Mrs. Clinton s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reportedly helped fund the research.According to US media reports, Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and DNC, hired intelligence firm Fusion GPS in April 2016. BBCYesterday, another bombshell was revealed by Rep. Jim Jordan on the Lou Dobbs show, when Jordan told Dobbs that he believes the FBI paid Christopher Steele, the creator of the Trump dossier and that they used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign. Jordon told Dobbs: There are a couple of fundamental questions here. Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele? I asked that of the Attorney General two weeks ago he wouldn t answer the question. Did they actually vet this dossier? Because it s been disproven, a bunch of lies, a bunch of National Enquirer garbage and fake news in this thing. Did they actually check it out before they brought it to the FISA Court which I m convinced they did. And all of this can be cleared up if they release the application that they took to the court I think they won t give it to us because they did pay Christopher Steele. I think they did use the dossier as the basis for the warrants to spy on Americans associated with President Trump s campaign. Strzok is the guy who took the dossier to the FISA Court. Watch:Politically Corrupt FBI @Jim_Jordan: I believe the FBI paid Christopher Steele, and then used the discredited, fake news dossier to spy on @POTUS and his campaign. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DTS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/bfgk37LbFC Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) December 8, 2017While Democrats desperately try to convince the American public that Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat one of the most unpopular candidates they ve ever stuck their party with, real journalists continue to uncover the real collusion, and it s looking more and more like sadly, it s between the FBI, Obama s DOJ and investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.This one image by cartoonist Antonio Branco, pretty much sums up who s really in charge of the phony Trump-Russian collusion sham of an investigation:;politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WI GOV. SCOTT WALKER: If You’re Able-Bodied and Want Welfare, You’re Going To Be Drug-Tested;If you live in Wisconsin and want your working neighbors to fund your existence, you may need to start peeing in a cup to prove your dependency on the government isn t related to your dependency on drugs. The governor of Wisconsin is a love em or hate em kind of leader. Conservatives love him for making public sector unions pay more of their own benefits, liberals hate him for daring to stand up to the powerful, organized mega-donors of the Democrat Party. Governor Walker is about to shake things up again in the blue state of Wisconsin, and liberals are not gonna be happy Gov. Scott Walker is moving forward with an effort to drug test some food stamp recipients, with testing expected to begin in as little as a year absent action from lawmakers or the federal government.Wisconsin s Republican governor has submitted a plan to state lawmakers for drug testing able-bodied recipients of the state s Food Share program. If the state Legislature doesn t object within 120 days, the plan will go into effect, though it will take at least a year for actual testing to begin.The program won t necessarily have a massive effect, however. The Walker administration estimated in October that only about 220 food stamp recipients statewide or just 0.3% of able-bodied adults would test positive in the first year. Employers have jobs available, but they need skilled workers who can pass a drug test, Walker said in a statement. This rule change means people battling substance use disorders will be able to get the help they need to get healthy and get back into the workforce. A year ago, Walker had asked then President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration to clear the way for the change in the food stamp program, which is overseen by the state but largely funded by federal taxpayers. So far that hasn t happened but a Walker spokesman said Monday that the governor believes the state can proceed without any federal action. Our position is we have the authority to implement the rule, spokesman Tom Evenson said.The now-departed appointees of President Barack Obama didn t see it that way. In January 2017, right before Trump took over the White House, the former U.S. official in charge of the replacement program to food stamps said such testing would require a change in federal law. The law clearly does not allow it, said Kevin Concannon, undersecretary at the federal Food and Nutrition Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Walker s office forwarded that request to us and it was very clear, we consulted the legal counsels here and the law absolutely does not allow it. The Trump administration, however, may not see the issue in the same light. Journal Sentinel ;politics;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany: A lot of Brexit work remains even if talks enter phase two;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany regards Friday s joint report on progress made in the negotiations on Britain s departure from the European Union as a step forward but believes much work remains even if the initial stage of Brexit talks is concluded, a spokesman said. I think everyone understands that there is still much work for negotiators to do even if the European Council decides to move into phase two of Brexit negotiations, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular news conference on Friday. He added that the second phase would be highly complex . The leaders of the other 27 EU countries are due to decide next Friday whether to accept the European Commission s recommendation that sufficient progress has been made on exit talks to begin discussions on Britain s future relationship with the bloc. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: ROY MOORE Accuser ADMITS to FORGING Yearbook;The credibility of Beverly Young Nelson, the woman who accused Roy Moore of making sexual advances toward her when she was a teen, has been shattered. Shortly after Nelson appeared on television with leftist attorney Gloria Allred, her stepson made the difficult decision of coming out and saying that his stepmother was lying in a Facebook video he made to set the record straight about his father s wife.Watch video:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trial over 'Love Parade' deaths begins in Germany;BERLIN (Reuters) - Ten people went on trial in Germany on Friday for alleged failures in planning the Love Parade music festival in 2010 when 21 people were killed and more than 650 injured in a stampede. Prosecutors have charged the defendants, four employees of the company that planned the event in the industrial city of Duisburg and six from the local authority, with negligent manslaughter and bodily harm. The defendants have denied wrongdoing in the disaster. Eight foreigners from Spain, Bosnia, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy and China were among those killed on July 24, 2010, when panic broke out in a packed underpass that was the only entrance route to the venue for the techno music festival. The trial has been moved to a congress center in the nearby city of Duesseldorf as the court rooms in Duisburg were too small for what is expected to be one of the biggest trials in postwar Germany, with dozens of lawyers and plaintiffs. The trial is expected to take until at least the end of next year. But there is a ticking clock on proceedings as the statute of limitations runs out in July 2020. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon, foreign powers urged to maintain non-interference policy;PARIS (Reuters) - World powers sent a clear message on Friday that the Lebanese policy of staying out of regional affairs should be adhered to and that foreign governments should not interfere in the country s politics, France s foreign minister said. Disassociation applies to everyone - inside and outside, Jean-Yves Le Drian said at a news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri after an international meeting on Lebanon. These principles were reaffirmed this morning. Hariri warned that any breach of the policy of mutual non-interference would drag Lebanon back into the danger zone . ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: British business organizations react to Brexit talk progress;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union struck a divorce deal on Friday that paves the way for talks on trade, easing pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May and boosting hopes of an orderly Brexit. British business groups broadly welcomed the progress and urged swift progress toward a formal transition agreement that would preserve existing trading relations until a new deal is struck. BRITISH CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE DIRECTOR GENERAL ADAM MARSHALL Businesses will be breathing a sigh of relief that sufficient progress has been achieved. After the noise and political brinksmanship of recent days, news of a breakthrough in the negotiations will be warmly welcomed by companies. Business will particularly cheer the mutual commitment to a transition period to support business confidence and trade, and will want the details confirmed swiftly in the new year. For business, a swift start to trade talks is crucial to upcoming investment and growth decisions. Companies all across the UK want absolute clarity on the long-term deal being sought, and want government to work closely with business experts to ensure that the details are right. CONFEDERATION OF BRITISH INDUSTRY DEPUTY DIRECTOR GENERAL JOSH HARDIE Today s announcement will lift spirits in the run-up to Christmas. Sufficient progress is a present (businesses) have spent months waiting for. It s now time to focus on the true prize of a new relationship and a deal that starts from 40 years of economic integration. There are two things that are top of the list. First is the final step for those EU citizens working here, and UK citizens abroad. It must be unequivocal that they are welcome, whatever the final deal. This cannot be their second Christmas where their rights are dependent on negotiations. Next is transition. Concrete assurances will build confidence and help firms across the UK and Europe to pause their contingency planning. TheCityUK FINANCIAL SERVICES TRADE BODY CEO MILES CELIC This agreement in principle between the UK and the EU to move beyond phase one is a positive and encouraging step. For the financial and related professional services industry, our critical issues must now be progressed. The sand in the timer is running out - leave it too late and damage will be done to both the UK and the EU. European competitiveness will ultimately be weakened as functionality will likely leave Europe for other international financial centers. Given the dominance of services to both the British and EU economies, it is essential that a Free Trade Agreement covers goods and services, and is based on mutual recognition and regulatory cooperation. This will be in the best interests of the UK, the EU27 and for global stability. It is also vital that existing services contracts can be grandfathered post-Brexit. EEF MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION CHIEF EXECUTIVE STEPHEN PHIPSON This is one step forward in a complex and long process. So we need to pin down the transition arrangements, which will be in place after March 2019, to ensure it s business as usual for companies for as long as it takes until a final deal is reached. Until we get to that point, many businesses will need to prepare for any and every eventuality. Many employers will be relieved that their EU employees have more certainty going forward, and government must now clarify the rights of EU citizens by Christmas so that they are not concerned about their future. FEDERATION OF SMALL BUSINESSES NATIONAL CHAIRMAN MIKE CHERRY The UK s millions of small businesses will be pleased to hear that finally it appears the Brexit talks are about to move onto the second stage. The focus must now shift to the UK s future trading relationship with the EU. This should include by early next year a guarantee that there will be no cliff-edge moment on Brexit day, but instead an orderly, time-limited transition period so that small firms only have one set of rule changes. The final deal must have as few barriers to trade as possible. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malaysia's ruling party unites behind Najib as election looms;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia s ruling party united behind scandal-tainted Prime Minister Najib Razak as he prepares for a general election due by August by deciding on Friday that he could stand unopposed in a party leadership contest due some time next year. Najib is hoping to win a third term despite the multi-billion dollar corruption scandal at 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) that has dogged his premiership for the last two years. Najib has consistently denied any wrongdoing at the state fund, which he founded and served as chairman of the advisory board. At its last annual party conference before a general election, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) gave both Najib and his deputy, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, a free pass to retain their posts in a party leadership ballot next year. Therefore, in the spirit of togetherness and mutuality... state-run news agency Bernama quoted permanent chairman Badruddin Amiruldin as saying, it is decided at this assembly that the post of president held by Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the post of deputy president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, will not be contested in the coming elections. When the 1MDB controversy first erupted in 2015, Najib quashed an internal revolt after some UMNO leaders asked him to step down and he blocked an inquiry into the affair. Leadership elections were postponed as he went on to purge the party of dissent while he also dropped his former liberal image, cracking down on opponents and civil society, as he moved UMNO closer to conservative Islamist values, worrying Malaysia s sizable Chinese and Indian minorities. Addressing the conference earlier this week, Najib called for loyalty from UMNO s 3.4 million members. Have absolute loyalty and obey all the instructions of the top leadership, he said in a keynote address to the party faithful. Four years ago, UMNO crept back into power despite registering its worst ever election performance, as an opposition front led the charismatic Anwar Ibrahim called foul after losing despite winning the popular vote. This time, however, the challenge is coming from the veteran Mahathir Mohamad - who gave up the premiership in 2003 after 22 years in power and had been Najib s political mentor. Mahathir, has come out of retirement to team up with Anwar - who is languishing in jail having been convicted in a case that both he and independent observers say was politically motivated. A rebounding economy and strengthening ringgit currency have helped Najib improve his image among Malaysians, who have been frustrated with the corruption and rising living costs. But the 1MDB scandal refuses to go away, with U.S. Attorney General this week referring to the case as the worst example of kleptocracy that the Department of Justice had investigated. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain, EU agree on divorce bill, Northern Ireland, citizens' rights: joint report;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union have agreed on the three key divorce issues of a financial settlement, citizens rights and how to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Britain leaves the EU, a joint report said. The report did not specify a sum that Britain would owe the EU as a result of its exit from the bloc in 2019, but said: Both Parties have agreed a methodology for the financial settlement. On Northern Ireland, the report said that unless otherwise agreed, Britain would keep laws in Northern Ireland aligned with those of the European Union s internal market and customs union to avoid the need for a border. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement, the report said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Impossible to calculate Brexit bill figure at present: EU's Barnier;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday it was not possible to put a concrete figure on the amount of money Britain will have to pay the EU upon exiting the bloc because numbers may change in the future. I have never quoted any figures and will not start today ... because they can change, Barnier told a news conference. He said he was satisfied with the agreement between the EU and Britain that no EU country, including Britain, would have to pay more or receive less as a result of Britain s decision to leave the bloc in 2019. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain won't pay EU more, or sooner, than if it were EU member: Barnier;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain will honor all its financial obligations to the European Union as part of its divorce bill, but the payments will not be required any earlier than if Britain had remained an EU member, the EU s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said. The European Commission declared earlier on Friday that sufficient progress in the divorce talks with Britain was reached to move on to discussions of a transition period and a future trade deal. Barnier repeated the words of British Prime Minister Theresa May that no EU country, including Britain would have to pay more or receive less as a result of Brexit. The UK will honor all the commitments entered into during its EU membership, Barnier told a news conference. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says ready for talks with U.S. to try to save arms pact;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s Foreign Ministry said on Friday it was ready for talks with the United States to try to keep a landmark arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War alive and that Moscow would comply with its obligations if the U.S. did. The ministry was referring to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which was signed in 1987 and banned all Soviet and American short and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles. Its statement was published to mark the 30th anniversary of the treaty, which was signed with the Soviet Union. The ministry said Moscow was ready to hold talks with the U.S. on problems that have arisen around the treaty, but considered the language of ultimatums and attempts to pressure Russia by imposing sanctions unacceptable. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit campaigner Farage says UK set for 'next stage of humiliation';LONDON (Reuters) - Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage said Britain was now ready to move on to the next stage of humiliation after Prime Minister Theresa May agreed the terms of Britain s divorce from the European Union. A deal in Brussels is good news for Mrs May as we can now move on to the next stage of humiliation, he said on Twitter. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Border agreement puts floor under EU/UK trade talks: Irish foreign minister;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Brexit agreement on the Irish border that assures Northern Ireland will remain aligned with the European Union s customs union and single market puts a floor under what is possible in negotiations on trade after Britain leaves the EU, Ireland s foreign minister said. What it means is any deal that is done has to be better than the default position, otherwise we won t be able to agree it, Simon Coveney told national broadcaster RTE after the deal was struck early on Friday. I think what that does is, it puts a floor under what is possible in terms of the outcome that we can t fall below, so Ireland obviously has a huge interest in the phase two negotiations. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Scotland's Sturgeon says staying in EU customs union now the only sensible option;EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Scotland s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if Britain is leaving the European Union then single market and customs union membership were the only sensible option , adding that now the negotiations would move on to a new tougher level. Move to phase 2 of talks good - but devil is in the detail and things now get really tough. If Brexit is happening (wish it wasn t) staying in single market & customs union is only sensible option. And any special arrangements for NI must be available to other UK nations, she said on Twitter. Earlier the European Commission and Britain agreed that Brexit talks can move on to the second phase of negotiations, which will focus on trade. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Hammond says Brexit deal is a boost to the economy;LONDON (Reuters) - The divorce deal agreed by London and Brussels on Friday is a boost to the British economy, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday, as he urged both sides to now move on to a trade deal that supports jobs and prosperity. Delighted a deal agreed in Brussels that paves way for further progress on talks about future UK/EU relationship, he said on Twitter. A positive step. Congratulations @theresa_may Today s announcement in Brussels is a boost for Britain s economy. Now let s conclude a trade deal that supports Britain s jobs, businesses and prosperity. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Contenders emerge for No.2 Fed job, search to narrow; (In this Dec. 8 story, corrects Peters’ affiliation in paragraph 12 to reflect company name change) By Jonathan Spicer and Rob Cox NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York will soon narrow its search for candidates to fill what is considered the Fed’s second-most powerful job after having scouted a diverse field, from a local business school dean to a former Fed governor. New York Fed President William Dudley steps down in mid-2018 and people in contact with the directors leading the search for his successor say they have so far considered several economists, academics, investors, bankers and policymakers. “They are looking beyond the traditional mold” of an expert in banking, markets or monetary policy, and plan to start trimming a preliminary list of candidates in coming days, said one person in contact with the directors. The New York Fed president is at the intersection of U.S. monetary policy and financial markets, and is responsible for the policing of Wall Street and the diplomacy with central bank counterparts around the world. Unlike other top roles with a permanent vote on policy, the New York Fed boss is nominated by the regional bank’s board of directors rather than the White House and does not require Congressional approval. Dudley’s successor could play an even greater role guiding the Fed through a historic leadership change in which U.S. President Donald Trump can fill six of the seven seats on the Fed Board of Governors. He has so far named Jerome Powell and Randal Quarles - lawyers, not PhD economists - to top positions in Washington, with Powell replacing Chair Janet Yellen who unlike her predecessors will only serve one term. Both men support the Republican push for Wall Street deregulation. Yet their relatively limited experience with monetary policy compared with their predecessors has raised questions over the Fed’s tightening plans and how it might tackle any severe economic downturn. By now the New York Fed directors have kept open what an ideal candidate profile should look like, according to people familiar with the search. Two of those people, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the process, said search firms have contacted among several others Peter Blair Henry, 48, dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business, and former Fed governor Kevin Warsh. Warsh, 47, who was in the running for Fed Chair before Trump picked Powell last month, declined to be considered for the New York job, they said. One of these people said Henry appeared to be the early front-runner. Henry and a spokeswoman for Warsh at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where he is a visiting fellow, did not respond to requests for comment. The permanent-voting Fed governors need a White House nod and Senate approval. The other 11 district presidents vote every two or three years under a century-old rotation meant to emphasize New York's unique role as a counterbalance to the Washington-based board. Its president enjoys broad independence and also serves as vice chair of the central bank's rate-setting committee. (For a graphic of the Fed's ideological doves and hawks, see: goo.gl/5BpTex) “It’s a critical position and more important than the Fed’s vice chair from a market standpoint,” Greg Peters, senior investment officer at PGIM Fixed Income, which oversees $695 billion in assets, told Reuters. Still, the Fed’s Board of Governors would need to approve the nominee chosen by New York’s four-member search committee led by liberal-leaning directors Sara Horowitz and Glenn Hutchins. Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union which advocates for independent workers, chairs the New York Fed’s board. Hutchins is co-founder of private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners and a noted public-policy philanthropist. Several weeks before Dudley’s resignation announcement in early November, the two were already hitting the phones and holding meetings to cast a wide net for potential candidates diverse primarily in terms of professional background, but also race and gender, according to those familiar with the effort. The New York Fed declined to comment. In a video posted on its website last month, the search committee said they sought a range of attributes from team-building and sensitivity to local economic trends, to intellectual leadership and crisis management. The initial search effort suggests the next New York Fed chief could have a different background than Dudley and his predecessors, who tended to be bankers or market economists with Wall Street or U.S. Treasury experience, and who were all white and male. Dudley was chief economist at Goldman Sachs before joining the Fed where he became a key architect of its crisis response and later the No. 2 policymaker behind Yellen. At the time of his departure, the New York Fed will have only begun the tricky task of trimming its currently $4.4-trillion portfolio of assets accumulated since the crisis, a task that would favor candidates with market experience. Jamaica-born Henry, who will step down as Stern’s dean at year end, would instead bring his expertise in global trade and shore up the number of economists in the Fed’s upper ranks. A review of Henry’s public papers and comments reveal little about his views on U.S. monetary policy or financial supervision, though his expertise in capital flows could bolster the New York Fed’s role as foreign liaison. If chosen he would become the institution’s first black president. Those who have spoken to New York Fed directors said past and present insiders, as well as outsiders, were considered. Among them were: Simon Potter, the head of the New York Fed’s markets desk;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Brexit minister says today is a big step forward in delivering EU exit: Twitter;LONDON (Reuters) - Brexit minister David Davis said Britain had taken a big step forward in delivering the country s departure from the European Union on Friday, commenting on a deal with the EU Commission to move to the next stage of negotiation. Today is a big step forward in delivering Brexit. Been a lot of work but glad the Commission have now recommended that sufficient progress has been reached, Davis said on Twitter. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;IMF's Lagarde tells Ukraine president to speed up reforms;KIEV (Reuters) - The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said she had a constructive phone call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko late on Thursday in which she urged him to speed up the fight against corruption. Perceived backsliding on reform commitments, including delays in establishing an independent court to handle corruption cases, has held up billions of dollars in loans under Ukraine s $17.5 billion IMF program. Action by parliament and prosecutors against existing anti-corruption institutions such as the NABU investigative bureau also provoked a wave of criticism this week from reformists in Ukraine and its foreign backers, including the IMF. I had a constructive and open discussion with President Poroshenko on Ukraine s efforts to fight corruption, Lagarde said in a statement. Lagarde said she and Poroshenko discussed the need to safeguard the independence of NABU and similar institutions and that they agreed on the urgency of establishing an anti-corruption court. I assured the President that the IMF stands ready to continue to support Ukraine, along with other international partners, in the fight against corruption and encouraged the authorities to accelerate the implementation of reforms, she said. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France says progress in Brexit talks shows common sense prevailing;PARIS (Reuters) - Common sense is prevailing in Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union, France s foreign minister said on Friday, as he welcomed signs that talks were moving into a new phase after an initial breakthrough. The European Commission said on Friday enough progress had been made in Brexit negotiations with Britain and that a second phase of discussions should begin, ending an impasse over the status of the Irish border. The work that has been done on negotiations ... is gradually leading us to common sense, Jean-Yves Le Drian told France Inter radio. We wanted the conditions for (Britain s) withdrawal to be clearly defined to be able to move into another phase. That s what s going to happen now, I hope. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vatican should bring money-laundering cases to trial, watchdog agency says;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican needs to bring cases of suspected money laundering to trial, a European finance watchdog urged on Friday, saying the good progress made by its financial regulators needed to be matched by judicial muscle. Moneyval, the monitoring body of the Council of Europe, said the Vatican s prosecutor also should be more proactive in other financial crimes, such as corruption, embezzlement or abuse of office, and actively consider appealing sentences which he considers unduly lenient . On the law enforcement side, after five years of development of (anti-money laundering legislation) it is somewhat surprising that no prosecution or indictment has so far been brought before the (Vatican) tribunal which involves a count of money laundering, the report said. It said the success rate of the prosecutor before the Tribunal is so far not encouraging . In a statement, the Vatican acknowledged there are still areas for further improvement, in particular as regards law enforcement and the judicial side . Pope Francis has made cleaning up Vatican finances a priority since his election in 2013, and Holy See staff worked with the Moneyval evaluators. But his efforts appear to have hit obstacles in recent months. The Vatican s finance minister, Cardinal George Pell, has taken an indefinite leave of absence to face accusations of historical sexual offences in his native Australia. He denies them. In June, the Vatican s first auditor general resigned, and last week, the Vatican bank s deputy director general was fired under circumstances that the Vatican has not made clear. The 200-page report generally praised the work of the Vatican s financial intelligence authority, known by its Italian acronym AIF and headed by Swiss lawyer Rene Bruelhart. It said the number and quality of suspicious activity reports sent to the AIF by Vatican departments or individuals had increased significantly, meaning the bureaucratic reporting procedures have steadily improved . The AIF passes on reports it deems worthy of further investigation to the prosecutor s office. But the report lamented the lack of prosecution in cases of suspected money laundering. In 2015, for example, an investigation was opened after an internal report said a department of the Holy See that oversees real estate and investments was used in the past for possible money laundering by Italian bankers, insider trading and market manipulation. The case still has not gone to trial. In April, Italy put the Vatican on its white list of states with cooperative financial institutions, ending years of mistrust. Hundreds of suspicious or dormant accounts at the Vatican bank, which was the officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) have been closed in recent years. The Moneyval report said the AIF s supervision of the IOR is now firmly established . ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior pro-Brexit minister Gove backs PM May deal on EU exit: BBC;LONDON (Reuters) - British minister Michael Gove, an influential pro-Brexit voice in Prime Minister Theresa May s cabinet, gave his support on Friday to a deal announced in Brussels to move negotiations forward. This is a significant personal political achievement for the Prime Minister... Earlier this week, there were all sorts of doomsayers who thought there would be no prospect of an agreement. They ve been proven wrong, he told BBC radio. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU negotiator says British withdrawal deal must be ready by Oct. 2018;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain s withdrawal agreement from the European Union must be ready by October, the bloc s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday as London and the 27 remaining states sealed a deal to move their negotiations forward. We will need to have the final version of the withdrawal agreement ready by October 2018, in less than one year, Barnier told a news conference. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish PM cautious over two-year Brexit transition period;DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Brexit transition period of around two years envisaged in EU draft guidelines on Friday is a decent amount of time but a longer period could be needed to ratify a future trade deal, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said. Two years is a decent amount of time, we would be happy for it to be longer but we re also comfortable with two years, Varadkar told a news conference after hailing Friday s agreement on the Irish border as a very significant day for the whole of the island. I would add one word of caution to having a transition phase of two years, obviously what we re going to want to do is negotiate new treaties between the UK and EU. It can take many years to negotiate treaties and how long the transition phase should be, in my view, must be linked to how long it will take us to secure ratification of those treaties. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan to acquire air-launched missiles able to strike North Korea;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is to acquire medium-range, air-launched cruise missiles, capable of striking North Korea, a controversial purchase of what will become the longest-range munitions of a country that has renounced the right to wage war. Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera did not refer to North Korea when announcing the planned acquisition and said the new missiles would be for defence, with Japan still relying on the United States to strike any enemy bases. We are planning to introduce the JSM (Joint Strike Missile) that will be mounted on the F-35A (stealth fighter) as stand-off missiles that can be fired beyond the range of enemy threats, Onodera told a news conference. Japan is also looking to mount Lockheed Martin Corp s extended-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM-ER) on its F-15 fighters, he said. The JSM, designed by Norway s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace , has a range of 500 km (310 miles). The JASSM-ER can hit targets 1,000 km away. The purchase plan is likely to face criticism from opposition parties in parliament, especially from politicians wary of the watering down of Japan s renunciation of the right to wage war enshrined in its post-World War Two constitution. But the growing threat posed by North Korean ballistic missiles has spurred calls from politicians, including Onodera, for a more robust military that could deter North Korea from launching an attack. Japan s missile force has been limited to anti-aircraft and anti-ship munitions with ranges of less than 300 km (186 miles). The change suggests the growing threat posed by North Korea has given proponents of a strike capability the upper hand in military planning. North Korea has recently test-fired ballistic missiles over Japan and last week tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile that climbed to an altitude of more than 4,000 km before splashing into the sea within Japan s exclusive economic zone. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron says external powers must stop interfering in Lebanon;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron called on all foreign powers to stop interfering in Lebanese politics and urged all Lebanese sides to fully implement a pact to keep out of regional conflicts. For Lebanon to be protected from regional crises it s essential that all Lebanese parties and regional actors respect the principle of non-interference, Macron said at the opening of international meeting on Lebanon in Paris. The meeting today must show the will of international community to see the policy of regional disassociation put into place effectively by all in the country. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam reviews toll road after rare protests;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam s government has promised a full review of charges at a toll gate on a new road after protests there posed a rare challenge to the Communist authorities and showed signs of spreading. Charges at the Cai Lay toll road in southern Vietnam were suspended by the government on Monday after protesting drivers caused long tailbacks by paying fees in bundles of tiny denomination bills. There is little tolerance of dissent in Vietnam and the government is acutely sensitive to any sign of public disaffection, particularly if it spreads on social media. In comments published on the government s website on Friday, Transport Minister Nguyen Van The said he was investigating alternative proposals for operating the toll road. We will carry out our research and complete the report to the government, he was quoted as saying. Whichever option we choose for Cai Lay will have an impact on other BOT (Build Operate and Transfer) projects. He dismissed accusations on social media that officials had benefited from connections to the company operating the toll gate. Vietnam is also in the midst of a crackdown on corruption. There are some 88 toll stations on Vietnamese roads set up by investors under BOT schemes to finance construction. But the one on the Cai Lay toll road caused anger when it opened in Aug. 1, because its location meant even drivers who were not going to use the new road had to pay. The investor said that was fair because it had also repaired the old road, but drivers pointed out those repairs cost very little. Charges were suspended when protests started after the toll gate first opened, but the toll booths reopened on Nov. 30. To protest, some drivers paid tolls of 25,000 ($1.10) to 140,000 dong using low-value notes sometimes requiring the toll gates to count hundreds of bills for a single transaction. Similar protests then appeared on roads in other parts of the country, causing long hold-ups for traffic in one of Southeast Asia s fastest growing economies. Authorities needed handle the situation sensitively, said one Facebook user, who commented: This could become a bigger problem if they shield each other against this legitimate protest by the people . The toll gate protest is one of the biggest public displays of anger in Vietnam since demonstrations in 2016 against a toxic spill from a steel plant and the slow government response to the marine environmental disaster it caused. The Vietnamese company that built the new road, National Highway No. 1 Tien Gang Investment Co. Ltd., told media that unhappy road users should understand that it was a business with workers and their families to support. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tusk says EU to start transition talks with Britain;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The chairman of European Union leaders, Donald Tusk, said the bloc is ready to start negotiating a transition period with Britain after it leaves the EU, and it wanted more clarity from London on how it sees their new relationship after leaving. Tusk said Britain will have to respect all EU laws during the transition, as well as respect its budgetary commitments and the bloc s judicial oversight. But it would no longer take part in decision-making that will be done by the 27 remaining states. We are ready to start preparing a close UK-EU partnership in trade but also fight against terrorism and international crime, as well as security, defense and foreign policy, Tusk told reporters after British PM Theresa May arrived in Brussels with a Brexit deal. Tusk said, however, too much time was spent on negotiating the outlines of Britain s exit, which he said was the relatively easier part. We all know that breaking up is hard but breaking up and building a new relation is much harder, he said. So much time has been devoted to the easier task and now ... we have de facto less than a year, left of talks before Britain is due to leave in March, 2019. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South African court rules Zuma appointment of state prosecutor invalid;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s High Court ruled on Friday that President Jacob Zuma s appointment of a state prosecutor to decide whether to reinstate corruption charges against him was not valid and should be set aside immediately. The court also ruled that Zuma should not make a new appointment and that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa should appoint a new public prosecutor within 60 days. The ruling is a stinging rebuke for Zuma, who is due to step down in 2019 after more than a decade in power. Zuma s office said he would appeal the decision. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), whose head prosecutor Shaun Abrahams was removed from his post by the High Court ruling, also said it would appeal. The rand was buoyed by the court ruling, with analysts saying markets saw Zuma s influence curtailed. Judge President Dunstan Mlambo said at the Pretoria High Court the appointment of Abrahams as the National Director of Public Prosecutions was invalid and set aside. In his ruling, Mlambo said: In our view, President Zuma would be clearly conflicted in having to appoint a National Director of Public Prosecutions, given the background ... and particularly the ever present specter of the many criminal charges against him that have not gone away. The charges against Zuma relate to a 30 billion rand ($2 billion) government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s and have amplified calls for Zuma to step down before his term as president ends in 2019. In October the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld an earlier decision by a lower court that the nearly 800 corruption charges filed against Zuma before he became president be reinstated. It then fell to Abrahams, appointed by Zuma as chief state prosecutor in 2015, to decide whether or not the NPA would pursue a case against Zuma. Abrahams gave Zuma until the end of November to make representations to prevent the charges being brought against him. Abrahams has not commented on whether Zuma presented any submissions of what decision he has taken on the matter. The case in the Pretoria High Court had been brought by a trio of civil society organizations seeking an order declaring the previous state prosecutor s removal was invalid. Zuma has faced a string of corruption allegations during his time in office, many of them over leaked emails that suggest his friends the Gupta family may have used their influence to secure lucrative state contracts for their companies. Zuma and the Guptas deny wrongdoing. The African National Congress (ANC), which is set to elect Zuma s successor next week, said it would allow the parties involved to reflect on the judgment and its implications as well as decide whether to appeal or not. ;worldnews;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CREEPY BERNIE Calls For Trump To Step Down…What About Disgusting Essay BERNIE SANDERS WROTE About Women Fantasizing About Being Gang Raped or Men Fantasizing About Sexually Abusing Women?;"Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went on a media blitz that was clearly coordinated by the Democrat Party, at about the same time Senator Al Franken (D-MN) was reluctantly resigning. Sanders took to his allies in the media to call on President Trump to resign over unproven allegations of sexual misconduct that were made against him during his campaign. By the way, it should not go without mentioning that we haven t heard a peep from any of Trump s accusers since he won the election. The Democrats are not going to give up that easily when it comes to ousting President Trump. Just this week, Democrats gave up the fight for Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Senator Al Franken (D-MN) (both of whom represented safe districts for Democrats), after multiple allegations of sexual assault and abuse. It was a clear play at attempting to convince voters that the Democrats are suddenly the party of morals.Do Democrats really believe Americans will be duped into believing that the party who cheated Bernie Sanders, (who wrote about how women fantasize about being gang-raped) out of the chance to be the Democrat nominee for President, to make Hillary Clinton, (a woman who has been accused of enabling her accused rapist husband, who has also been accused several times of sexual assault, and was impeached for lying about having sex with a 19-year old intern under his desk in the Oval Office) is somehow now the moral party?Here s what Bernie had to say about President Trump yesterday:Washington Examiner We have a president of the United States who acknowledged on a time widely seen all over this country that he assaulted women, so I would hope that maybe the POTUS might pay attention to what s going on and also think about resigning, Sanders told CBS News on Thursday.Bernie recently said it was not up to the Senate or Democrat Party to call on Senator Franken to step down. Watch, as Sanders glosses over the question when asked about his previous statement (before Democrats decided Franken was a scalp they could spare for the sake of the party).""What I worry about right now, as we speak, in restaurants and in offices all over this country where you have bosses who are not famous, there is harassment of women and women are being intimidated. We need a cultural revolution in this country."" @SenSanders pic.twitter.com/GTxAf0PVGA CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) December 7, 2017Watch Sanders (the presumtive leader of the Democrat Party) as he calls on President Trump to step down:""We have a POTUS who acknowledged on a tape widely seen all over the country that he's assaulted women, so I would hope maybe the president of the United States might pay attention of what's going on and also think about resigning."" @SenSanders pic.twitter.com/fy4ucYUEkv CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) December 7, 2017The senator was referencing a tape from Access Hollywood made public during the 2016 election on which the president was heard talking about grabbing women without their consent. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.Several of Sanders colleagues in Congress have been accused of inappropriate behavior, and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is expected to make a speech on the Senate floor addressing the allegations against him late Thursday morning.Speaking of words Trump used decades ago when referring to a woman, during a private conversation with another man, what about the disgusting and degrading essay Bernie Sanders wrote about women in 1972?Daily Wire A 1972 essay written by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) expressed his views on human sexuality in which he claimed that women fantasize about being gang-raped and men fantasize about sexually abusing women.The article Man and Woman, came to light after Mother Jones published it during the 2016 presidential election before Sanders started to gain significant momentum in the race.Sanders piece was originally published in the Vermont Freeman and was a reflection on his views of gender and sexuality, the Washington Examiner reported.The first two-paragraphs in Sanders article drew the most controversy:A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.A woman enjoys intercourse with her man as she fantasizes being raped by three men simultaneously.Sanders was 31 years old at the time he wrote the essay and had just launched his first campaign for Senate, which proved to be the first of several losing campaigns before he became mayor of Burlington nine years later.WATCH:Bernie Sanders 1972 essay:""A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.""""A woman enjoys intercourse with her man as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.""A sitting US Senator thinks these things. pic.twitter.com/WyxY9CFFwu Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) November 26, 2017";left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: ROY MOORE Accuser ADMITS to FORGING Yearbook;The credibility of Beverly Young Nelson, the woman who accused Roy Moore of making sexual advances toward her when she was a teen, has been shattered. Shortly after Nelson appeared on television with leftist attorney Gloria Allred, her stepson made the difficult decision of coming out and saying that his stepmother was lying in a Facebook video he made to set the record straight about his father s wife.Watch video:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: “Pit Bull” Attorney For Special Counsel Robert Mueller Attended Hillary’s Election Night Party;Is there a single person left on Robert Mueller s Trump-Russian collusion team who isn t in bed with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?An attorney for special counsel Robert Mueller attended Hillary Clinton s election night party in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.Andrew Weissmann s attendance at the party is one of many signs pointing to a troubling bias from the attorney. Weissmann has been described by The New York Times as Mueller s lieutenant and pit bull. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained an email Tuesday that revealed Weissmann praised former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates defiance of Trump. I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects, Weissmann wrote to Yates on Jan. 30. The email followed Yates instruction to the DOJ not to defend an executive order banning immigration from seven nations, an act that led to her dismissal by President Trump.Weissmann is one of several Democratic donors that have been hired by Mueller, a registered Republican. The special counsel s pit bull donated a combined $6,600 to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.The special counsel s probe has been criticized by Trump s allies, but the White House maintains Trump has no intention to fire Mueller. Daily Caller ;left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: MUELLER’S “Right Hand Man” Represented IT Staffer Who Destroyed Hillary’s Blackberrys With A Hammer!;You just can t make this stuff up Yet another key member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe appears to have deep ties to the Democratic Party.From PJ Media: Aaron Zebley served previously as Mueller s chief of staff at the FBI and as a senior counselor in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the National Security and Terrorism Unit in Alexandria, Virginia.Also, in 2015 when he was a lawyer, he represented Justin Cooper, the IT staffer who personally set up Hillary Clinton s unsecured server in her Chappaqua home, Fox News Tucker Carlson revealed on his show Thursday.Cooper, it so happens, is also the aide who destroyed Clinton s old BlackBerries with a hammer.Watch the brilliant television ad Ted Cruz s team made during the election, that mocked Hillary Clinton and Justin Cooper for destroying evidence of her crimes, when they smashed her Blackberrys with a hammer:Documents obtained by Fox News show that Senate investigators grew frustrated with Zebley after being repeatedly stonewalled when they were trying to set up a meeting with Cooper. Mr. Zebley telephoned Homeland Security [Committee] staff to inform them that Cooper had chosen to cancel the interview, the documents said.In a letter to Cooper, congressional investigators complained: We are troubled by your attorney s [referring to Zebley] complete refusal to engage the committee in a discussion about how to further assuage your concerns. Let this sink in. The same attorney who played a defensive role for Hillary Clinton was tapped by Mueller in June to play an offensive role against Clinton opponent Trump.But Zebley isn t the only questionable hire. Out of a team of fifteen lawyers, nine of them have donated to Democratic candidates. None of them seem to have Republican leanings.Jeannie Rhee, who was hired by Mueller last summer to work on the probe, was the personal attorney of Ben Rhodes and also represented the Clinton Foundation, Fox News Laura Ingraham reported on Wednesday.;left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“DONALD TRUMP DIET”…LIFELONG LIBERAL Tells  How His Leftist Friends Caused Him To Lose 7 Pounds After He Defended Donald Trump [VIDEO];Every single day, liberals provide more and more evidence that Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing. After the treatment liberal Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz received from his leftist friends for defending the law, and in the process defending President Trump, will he ever be able to embrace the people he used to believe were tolerant and open-minded ? WFB Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Friday that he has lost seven pounds because his liberal friends have stopped inviting him to dinner parties for defending President Donald Trump against Democrats calling for him to be charged with obstruction of justice. Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal who has donated thousands of dollars to Democrats, about liberals shunning him, noting that he usually agrees with liberals when he appears on the show. Well, I call it the Donald Trump diet, Dershowitz said with a smile. I ve lost seven pounds because my liberal friends have stopped inviting me to dinner parties. After four years, I ll be back to my high school weight. He added that many liberals do not want to understand his view and immediately accuse him of being on Trump s side.WATCH: I m on nobody s side. I m on the side of the rule of law, the Constitution, and the Constitution is clear [that if] a president exercises his constitutional authority by firing somebody or by pardoning somebody, that cannot be the basis for obstruction of justice, Dershowitz said. If he goes further and lies or tells his people to destroy evidence, of course, that s different. That s how [Richard] Nixon and [Bill] Clinton got in trouble, but President [Trump] cannot be charged with obstruction for simply exercising his Article 2 power under the Constitution. And that s the point of view you expressed on this program a couple of days ago, co-host Steve Doocy added. And then the president of the United States retweeted, Hey you should watch Alan Dershowitz on Fox and Friends make that case, but then your liberal friends, their heads started exploding, and I understand somebody even suggested that you re being paid off by the Trump people. Dershowitz mocked the idea that he is being paid off or that he wants to become a Supreme Court justice at the age of 79. He then mentioned that he also is being attacked for his article supporting Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. I m being criticized for that by people because that s what Trump said, and if Trump said it, that means Dershowitz can t say it because that means Dershowitz is on Trump s side, Dershowitz said. I m on the side of justice and fairness. ;left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ONE IMAGE PERFECTLY Captures Who’s Really Behind The Trump-Russian Collusion “Investigation”;Unfounded claims that President Trump was filmed with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel surfaced in the closing stretch of last year s White House race.Mrs. Clinton s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reportedly helped fund the research.According to US media reports, Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and DNC, hired intelligence firm Fusion GPS in April 2016. BBCYesterday, another bombshell was revealed by Rep. Jim Jordan on the Lou Dobbs show, when Jordan told Dobbs that he believes the FBI paid Christopher Steele, the creator of the Trump dossier and that they used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign. Jordon told Dobbs: There are a couple of fundamental questions here. Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele? I asked that of the Attorney General two weeks ago he wouldn t answer the question. Did they actually vet this dossier? Because it s been disproven, a bunch of lies, a bunch of National Enquirer garbage and fake news in this thing. Did they actually check it out before they brought it to the FISA Court which I m convinced they did. And all of this can be cleared up if they release the application that they took to the court I think they won t give it to us because they did pay Christopher Steele. I think they did use the dossier as the basis for the warrants to spy on Americans associated with President Trump s campaign. Strzok is the guy who took the dossier to the FISA Court. Watch:Politically Corrupt FBI @Jim_Jordan: I believe the FBI paid Christopher Steele, and then used the discredited, fake news dossier to spy on @POTUS and his campaign. #MAGA #TrumpTrain #DTS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/bfgk37LbFC Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) December 8, 2017While Democrats desperately try to convince the American public that Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat one of the most unpopular candidates they ve ever stuck their party with, real journalists continue to uncover the real collusion, and it s looking more and more like sadly, it s between the FBI, Obama s DOJ and investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.This one image by cartoonist Antonio Branco, pretty much sums up who s really in charge of the phony Trump-Russian collusion sham of an investigation:;left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;#VeryFakeNewsCNN BUSTED After Getting MAJOR Detail In Donald Trump Jr.-Wikileaks Story Wrong;"Would CNN even know the truth if it bit them in the a**?The media s quest to prove Donald Trump Jr. colluded with Wikileaks is all wrong.The Sept. 14 email to Trump campaign advertising WikiLeaks emails promoted publicly available info, was riddled with typos and came from a Trump backer who had given $40 to the campaign months earlier, per email viewed by @WSJ. Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) December 8, 2017Legal Insurrection CNN originally reported an email from Trump Jr. was sent 10 days later, a factual inaccuracy that led to a false timeline and essentially, fake news. The timeline is crucial because it proves Trump Jr. was not trading unknown information, but that someone was alerting him to information already made public. Despite claims to the contrary, Trump Jr. was not aware (as far as records prove) ofCNN has published a CORRECTION and updated this story. Originally CNN said the email was dated Sept. 4, based on ""accounts from two sources who had seen the email."" CNN now has a copy of the email, and it's dated Sept. 14, not Sept. 4. https://t.co/EpvrB43jyU Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 8, 2017From CNN s report, which has been updated to reflect the WaPos findings:Candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and others in the Trump Organization received an email in September 2016 offering a decryption key and website address for hacked WikiLeaks documents, according to an email provided to congressional investigators.The September 14 email was sent during the final stretch of the 2016 presidential race.CNN originally reported the email was released September 4 10 days earlier based on accounts from two sources who had seen the email. The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information. The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.After this story was published, The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email Friday afternoon and reported that the email urged Trump and his campaign to download archives that WikiLeaks had made public a day earlier. The story suggested that the individual may simply have been trying to flag the campaign to already public documents.CNN has now obtained a copy of the email, which lists September 14 as the date sent and contains a decryption key that matches what WikiLeaks had tweeted out the day before.After obtaining the emails, the WaPo corrected the record:A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.The email sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 noted that Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC and included a link and a decryption key, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.Legal Insurrection tweeted about CNN s latest VeryFakeNews story:Washington Post proving that CNN scoop was fake news. Happy Friday! https://t.co/GHfZdRf9Zv Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) December 8, 2017 ";left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WI GOV. SCOTT WALKER: If You’re Able-Bodied and Want Welfare, You’re Going To Be Drug-Tested;If you live in Wisconsin and want your working neighbors to fund your existence, you may need to start peeing in a cup to prove your dependency on the government isn t related to your dependency on drugs. The governor of Wisconsin is a love em or hate em kind of leader. Conservatives love him for making public sector unions pay more of their own benefits, liberals hate him for daring to stand up to the powerful, organized mega-donors of the Democrat Party. Governor Walker is about to shake things up again in the blue state of Wisconsin, and liberals are not gonna be happy Gov. Scott Walker is moving forward with an effort to drug test some food stamp recipients, with testing expected to begin in as little as a year absent action from lawmakers or the federal government.Wisconsin s Republican governor has submitted a plan to state lawmakers for drug testing able-bodied recipients of the state s Food Share program. If the state Legislature doesn t object within 120 days, the plan will go into effect, though it will take at least a year for actual testing to begin.The program won t necessarily have a massive effect, however. The Walker administration estimated in October that only about 220 food stamp recipients statewide or just 0.3% of able-bodied adults would test positive in the first year. Employers have jobs available, but they need skilled workers who can pass a drug test, Walker said in a statement. This rule change means people battling substance use disorders will be able to get the help they need to get healthy and get back into the workforce. A year ago, Walker had asked then President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration to clear the way for the change in the food stamp program, which is overseen by the state but largely funded by federal taxpayers. So far that hasn t happened but a Walker spokesman said Monday that the governor believes the state can proceed without any federal action. Our position is we have the authority to implement the rule, spokesman Tom Evenson said.The now-departed appointees of President Barack Obama didn t see it that way. In January 2017, right before Trump took over the White House, the former U.S. official in charge of the replacement program to food stamps said such testing would require a change in federal law. The law clearly does not allow it, said Kevin Concannon, undersecretary at the federal Food and Nutrition Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Walker s office forwarded that request to us and it was very clear, we consulted the legal counsels here and the law absolutely does not allow it. The Trump administration, however, may not see the issue in the same light. Journal Sentinel ;left-news;08/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's foreign minister to meet Iran's president on Sunday: UK Foreign Office;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s foreign minister Boris Johnson is expected to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday to discuss bilateral and regional issues, a UK Foreign Office official said on Saturday. Johnson held talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and other officials in Tehran on Saturday, where he stressed Britain s support for Iran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and raised concerns about dual national consular cases between the countries. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya and Italy to set up operations room to tackle migrant smuggling;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya s U.N.-backed government agreed with Italy on Saturday to establish a joint operations room for tackling migrant smugglers and traffickers as part of efforts to curb migrant flows toward Europe, according to a statement. Libya is the main gateway for migrants trying to cross to Europe by sea, though numbers have dropped sharply since July as Libyan factions and authorities have begun to block departures under Italian pressure. More than 600,000 have made the journey over the past four years. The agreement to set up the operations room was announced after a meeting in Tripoli between the head of the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), Fayez Seraj, Libyan Interior Minister Aref Khodja, and his Italian counterpart Marco Minniti. A statement from Seraj s office said the center would consist of representatives from the coastguard, the illegal migration department, the Libyan attorney general and the intelligence services, along with their Italian counterparts. No details were given on the location of the center and how it would operate. In the past, migrant smugglers have worked with impunity in western Libya, where the GNA has little authority over armed groups that have real power on the ground. The Italian navy already has a presence in Tripoli port, providing technical assistance to Libya s coastguard, according to Italian and Libyan officials. The coastguard, which is receiving funding and training from the European Union, has become more assertive in recent months in intercepting migrants and bringing them back to Libya. Activists have criticized the policy, since migrants often face extreme hardship and abuse in Libya, including forced labor. Migrants who are caught trying to cross to Italy are put in severely overcrowded detention centers authorized by the interior ministry. The GNA has said it is investigating reports of migrants being auctioned as slaves in Libya, after CNN broadcast footage appearing to show such auctions. According to Saturday s statement, Seraj told Minniti that despite the successes achieved in the migration file, the number of illegal immigrants outside shelters remains large and we need more cooperation, especially in securing the borders of southern Libya through which these migrants flow . ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Norway's Liberal Party seeks to join government;OSLO (Reuters) - Norway s Liberal Party will launch formal negotiations to join the right-wing cabinet of Prime Minister Erna Solberg, it said on Saturday, although the government would still be ruling in a minority even if the small centrist group is included. Informal talks have taken place since the government won re-election in September, and bringing in the Liberals could give a boost to policies favoring small businesses, the environment and education. We are going to give ourselves a chance ... to find a common platform we can agree on, Liberal Party leader Trine Skei Grande told a meeting of her party in parliament on Saturday, adding it would be a challenging and difficult process. Adding the Liberals to the coalition of the Conservatives and the anti-immigration Progress Party could make day-to-day governing easier for Solberg, although she would still require backing from another small party, the Christian Democrats. The prime minister has sought to include both of the small centrist groups, but the Christian Democrats, which back Solberg on fiscal matters, have rejected the offer. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq declares final victory over Islamic State;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over Islamic State on Saturday after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq s territory. The announcement comes two days after the Russian military announced the defeat of the militants in neighboring Syria, where Moscow is backing Syrian government forces. Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria, the military said. Honorable Iraqis: your land has been completely liberated. The dream of liberation is now a reality, Abadi said in a televised address. He was speaking with five Iraqi flags and dozens of servicemen from different branches behind him. We have accomplished a very difficult mission. Our heroes have reached the final strongholds of Daesh and purified it. The Iraqi flag flies high today over all Iraqi lands. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Several squadrons of Iraqi helicopters flew over Baghdad carrying Iraqi flags at noon, in an apparent rehearsal for a victory parade that Iraq is planning to hold in coming days. The government said the declaration meant Iraqi forces had secured the western desert and the entire Iraq-Syria border, and marked the end of the war against Islamic State. Abadi declared Dec. 10 a national holiday to be celebrated every year. State television aired celebratory songs praising government forces and militias, and showed scenes of celebration on the streets of Baghdad and other provinces. The U.S.-led coalition that has been supporting the Iraqi forces against Islamic State welcomed the news, as did Brett McGurk, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy to the coalition. We congratulate the Prime Minister and all the Iraqi people on this significant achievement, which many thought impossible, he said in a series of tweets. We honor the sacrifices of the Iraqi people, its security forces, and the Kurdish Peshmerga, and admire the unity in their ranks that had made this day possible. The U.S. State Department also issued a statement of congratulation. Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, fell in July after a grueling nine-month campaign backed by a U.S.-led coalition that saw much of the northern Iraqi city destroyed. Islamic State s Syrian capital Raqqa also fell to a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led coalition in September. The forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare, a tactic the militants have already shown themselves capable of. Abadi said Iraq had entered the post-victory over Daesh phase and must be prepared for future threats. Daesh s dream is over and we must erase all its effect and not allow terrorism to return. Despite announcing final victory, we must remain vigilant and prepared against any terrorist attempt on our country, for terrorism is an eternal enemy. The war has had a devastating impact on the areas previously controlled by the militants. About 3.2 million people remain displaced, a U.N. statement said on Saturday. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who in 2014 declared in Mosul the founding of a new Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria, released an audio recording on Sept. 28 indicating he was alive following several reports of his death. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks. Baghdadi is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert in the border area. His followers imposed a reign of terror on the populations they controlled, alienating even many of those Sunni Muslims who had supported the group as allies against the heavy-handed rule of the Shi ite majority-led government of the time. The militants took thousands of women from the Yazidi minority, which lives in a mountain west of Mosul, as sex slaves and killed the men. Driven from Mosul and Raqqa, Islamic State was progressively squeezed this year into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert, straddling the frontier between the two countries, by enemies that include regional states and global powers. In Iraq, the group faced mainly U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and Iranian-trained Shi ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation. Abadi praised the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and Iraq s top Shi ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose fatwa calling volunteers to fight Islamic State led to PMF s creation. Still, the prime minister said the state should have a monopoly on the use of arms. Disarming the PMF is seen as Abadi s most difficult test after Islamic State s defeat. Weapons should only be in the state s hands. The rule of law and respect for it are the way to build the state and achieve justice, equality, and stability, he said. Abadi called for unity, which he said was the main reason for the victory, a reference to the contribution of different communities, including Sunni tribal fighters. However, Iraq faces a fresh internal conflict after it retaliated economically and militarily against the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government for holding a referendum on independence despite Baghdad s opposition. The joy of victory is complete with Iraq s unity after it was on the verge of division. The unity of Iraq and its people is the most important and greatest accomplishment, he said. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;IT’S WORSE THAN THEY THOUGHT: Doctors Discover US Embassy Victims In Cuba Have BRAIN ABNORMALITIES…”Never Before Seen Illness”;In a last-minute attempt to create a legacy for himself, Obama traveled to Cuba to hang out with Raul Castro and prove to Americans how easy it is to form relations with brutal dictators of oppressive regimes. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, it was not his finest moment, and his attempt to normalize relations with Cuba didn t work out so well for members of our US Embassy, who have now been diagnosed with brain abnormalities , after experiencing some sort of attack that many experts suspect was inflicted with a sonic weapon. The left rejoiced when President Barack Obama decided to normalize relations with the Cuban regime, reopened our embassy, and allowed travel to the island.But most of that has come to a screeching halt after mysterious attacks on our diplomats, which have caused serious health problems. The State Department has decided to recall all non-essential personnel from the embassy and urged Americans not to travel to Cuba. Legal InsurrectionThe leftist Boston Globe publication gushed over Barack Obama s historic visit to Cuba.When President Obama travels to Cuba on Sunday with his family, he is making a vital foreign policy statement, and not just about the small island off the tip of Florida. The bigger principle at play is the value of diplomatic engagement over isolation, cooperation versus Cold War thinking. The visit the first time a sitting American president has been to Cuba in almost 90 years is a manifestation of the hope that democratic ideals can spread over time once normalized relations are established.Obama will not only be meeting with President Raul Castro, but also with middle-class Cubans, entrepreneurs, and political dissidents, a symbolic yet reassuring move on behalf of democracy and fairness. Already the opening of relations is bearing fruit, with new businesses sprouting and a flourishing tourism industry taking root.Legal Insurrection The attacks on American officials at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, keeps getting stranger and stranger. The latest information revealed that doctors have found brain abnormalities in the victims. From The Associated Press:It s the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.Some of the victims woke up in the middle of the night and heard disembodied chirping in the room, or a strange, low hum, or the sound of scraping metal. Others described how they felt a phantom flutter of air pass by as they listened. There are some victims that did not notice anything.But the victims felt the effects of these noises or non-noises 24 hours later. These symptoms included nausea, loss of hearing or sight, headaches, vertigo, and dizziness. Symptoms appeared to have gone away once the victims came back to America. At first officials and doctors believed a sonic weapon caused the issues. Now they don t know.The officials did not say if the doctors found these changes in all of the victims. Elisa Konofagou, a Columbia University biomedical engineering professor, told the AP that acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brain s white matter tracts and she would be very surprised if that is the cause of the abnormalities.From The Washington Post: Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness, the AP wrote, and expect to monitor the victims for the rest of their lives, although most have fully recovered from their symptoms by now.The physicians are working with FBI agents and intelligence agencies as they look for a source, and U.S. officials have not backed down from their accusations against the Cuban government, which denies any involvement despite a history of animosity between the two countries.In October, experts provided the mysterious noise to the Ap. It s high pitched, almost like nails on a chalkboard. They do not know what kind of mechanism produced this sound or who developed it. Those who heard a sound heard the same thing:Yet the AP has reviewed several recordings from Havana taken under different circumstances, and all have variations of the same high-pitched sound. Individuals who have heard the noise in Havana confirm the recordings are generally consistent with what they heard. That s the sound, one of them said.As the number of affected have risen, the State Department had no choice but to take action to protect our people. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson decided in late September to bring home all non-essential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, thus cutting the staff by 60% and halt citizen travel to the island.A few days later, Tillerson decided to expel 15 diplomats from the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.Instead of a legacy of a great man who built much-needed bridges with legitimate foreign nations, Barack Hussein Obama, the community organizer turned President, is left with the legacy of creating the most divided United States of America since the Civil War. ;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam news agency apologizes over false report on prosecutions;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam s state-run news agency apologized on Saturday for issuing what it said was a false report that two more officials of state energy firm PetroVietnam were to be prosecuted over financial losses. The original report had also been carried on the government s official website. Vietnam News Agency said in a statement that it had apologized to Phung Dinh Thuc and Do Van Hau over the false report. It also apologized to their families and to police. The news agency said it had failed to verify its information carefully enough before publication. PetroVietnam is at the heart of a sweeping high-level corruption crackdown in the communist state. Former PetroVietnam chairman Dinh La Thang, 56, was arrested on Friday. The former member of Vietnam s politburo is the most senior executive arrested so far. Thang s brother, Dinh Manh Thang, former chairman of a PetroVietnam unit, was also arrested on allegations of violating state regulations on economic management. Government critics have voiced suspicions that the corruption crackdown is politically motivated, at least in part, and aimed against those close to former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who lost out in an internal power struggle in 2016. The corruption crackdown made global headlines in August when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping former executive Trinh Xuan Thanh in Berlin to face trial over a separate case. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pro-Palestinian march in Paris ahead of Netanyahu visit;PARIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on Saturday staged a protest in Paris against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s planned visit to France on Sunday. Protestors carried Palestinian flags and photos of French President Emmanuel Macron marked accomplice for hosting Netanyahu following the U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Netanyahu, who has welcomed Trump s move, will meet with Macron on Sunday ahead of a meeting with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. France said on Friday the United States had sidelined itself in the Middle East by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on French TV that the U.S. move went against international law . Trump says he has a project. Let him present it, so that this intervention can be wiped out by the restart of the peace process, he said. Macron and Turkey s President Tayyip Erdogan will work together to try to persuade the United States to reconsider the decision, a Turkish presidential source said on Saturday. France has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause. In 2014, the French National Assembly passed a non-binding motion calling on the government to recognize Palestine, but the government has not officially done so. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING NEWS: Woman Who Narrated BRUTAL TORTURE, Scalping of Mentally Disabled Young Man On Live Facebook Video Gets DISTURBING Sentence;When four Chicago thugs videotaped the brutal tortured a young mentally disabled man they kidnapped in a live Facebook video, Americans were stunned. Almost immediately after the discovery was made, the spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department called it a stupid mistake .The superintendent of the building where the torture took place, shrugged off the horrific event by simply saying, Kids make stupid mistakes. It looks like not much has changed in the attitudes of Chicago officials tasked with holding criminals accountable, especially in the case of four repulsive young thugs, who scalped the young 18-year old man, made him drink from a toilet, forced him to yell, F*ck Trump and F*ck white people , and repeatedly hit him while his hands were tied and his mouth was covered with duct tape.The video is hard to watch but is an honest look at the anti-Trump and racist monsters who ve been given a pass by our media. Go HERE to watch the disturbing video. (***Warning***the video is very graphic).It was just announced that in a plea deal, Brittany Covington, 19, the narrator of the video, who had been held at the Cook County Jail without bond since January, will be the first of the four to be released. In a shocking case of injustice, the plea deal states that Covington will remain on probation for four years and is barred from contact with 2 of the other 3 co-criminals, Cooper and Hill, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.Other terms of the plea agreement bars Covington from using social media for four years, the Cook County State s Attorney s Office tells CBS 2.Brittany Covington narrated Facebook Live video of the others tormenting an 18-year-old white man in the apartment she shared with her sister.The victim, a Crystal Lake man who had been classmates with Hill at a west suburban alternative high school, appears terror-stricken as he was taunted with racially-tinged insults including calling him a supporter of then-President-elect Donald Trump. Hill and Cooper allegedly cut his clothing with a knife, punched and kicked him. In another video, the man was forced to drink water from a toilet bowl.In one of the videos the defendants allegedly posted on Facebook, a man threatened the victim with a knife. Someone told the victim, kiss the floor, b -! and nobody can help you anymore. At one point, someone told the victim, say I love black people. When a woman who lived in the building complained about the the noise and threatened to call the police, the sisters kicked in the woman s door in anger and took some of her property, police said. While the others had run to the other apartment, the victim managed to escape, and police found him, wearing shorts and his torn clothing in the January weather, a block away. Streamwood police officials say the victim s parents had made a missing-persons report after their son didn t return home.During the Streamwood police investigation, the victim s parents started receiving text messages from persons claiming to be holding him captive, officials said.Plea negotiations are ongoing with her three co-defendants, all of whom also have been in custody. CBS2 ;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's Hariri denounces Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary's visit to border;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The head of an Iran-backed Iraqi Shi ite militia has visited Lebanon s border with Israel accompanied by Hezbollah fighters, a video released on Saturday showed, in a show of Iranian influence that Lebanon s prime minister called illegal. Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Iraqi paramilitary group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, declared his readiness to stand together with the Lebanese people and the Palestinian cause , in the video footage widely circulating on social media. His appearance at the frontier is likely to be seen in the Middle East as an example of Tehran demonstrating its reach, and could add to tension in Lebanon, caught in a regional tussle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri issued a statement saying the border visit by a paramilitary in uniform violated Lebanese law. He had instructed security chiefs to prevent any person from carrying out activities of a military nature on the country s territory and to prevent any illegal actions , and barred Khazali from entering the country, it said. Lebanon is still recovering from a crisis triggered a month ago, when Hariri announced his resignation while visiting Saudi Arabia, accusing Iran and Hezbollah of meddling in regional conflicts in violation of Lebanon s policy of non-intervention. Hariri returned to Lebanon two weeks later and withdrew his resignation last week, while his government restated its non-intervention policy. Hezbollah, a heavily armed Shi ite group that fights openly in Syria as an ally of Iran, serves in the power-sharing government with Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician with deep business and political ties to Saudi Arabia. A commander in an alliance between Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said al-Khazali was accompanied by officers from Asaib Ahl al-Haq and visited the entire border with occupied Palestine . The commander did not say when the visit took place. In the video, an unidentified commander, presumably from Hezbollah, gestures toward military outposts in northern Israel and explains to Khazali that they were hit by Hezbollah missiles in previous confrontations between the group and Israel. We are now on the border separating southern Lebanon with occupied Palestine with our brothers in Hezbollah, and announce our full preparedness to stand united...against the Israeli occupier, Khazali says in the video. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in June that any future war waged by Israel against Syria or Lebanon could draw in fighters from countries including Iran and Iraq. Iran s Revolutionary Guards, who established Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1982, have mobilized Shi ite militias from around the region in recent years. They have fought Islamic State in Iraq and helped President Bashar al-Assad in the war in Syria. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! Lindsey Vonn Gets Hit With Big Dose Of Karma After Trash-Talking President Trump On CNN;Only 3 days ago, Lindsey Vonn told CNN that she wouldn t be representing President Trump in the 2018 Olympics. She also boldly proclaimed that she wouldn t visit the White House if she were invited. I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremonies. I want to represent our country well, and I don t think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that. Is it really appropriate for an Olympic athlete representing the United States of America to make her performance in the Olympics about her hate for Donald Trump?Was it really necessary for Vonn to spew her hate on a network that is not only being called into question for their inaccurate (fake news) reporting on a regular basis but is also known for their extremely unfair coverage of our President?Well, after her miserable showing in Switzerland yesterday, it looks like Lindsey needs to focus a little more on her skiing technique, and a little less on her anti- Trump rhetoric.According to the AP Lindsey Vonn finished a World Cup super-G in extreme pain Saturday and was treated by race doctors for a back injury.The American star crossed the finish line in obvious distress, in 24th place and 1.56 seconds behind the winner, and slumped to the snow.She compressed her back on the fifth gate, according to U.S. Ski & Snowboard.Vonn stayed in the finish house to be treated, and one hour later limped slowly into a waiting car to be driven from the St. Moritz course.Minutes earlier, her father Alan Kildow told The Associated Press his daughter was OK. In a race interrupted several times by gusting crosswinds, Vonn wore the No. 4 bib and was left standing at the start gate during the first delay of about three minutes. She stayed warm with a thick jacket draped on her shoulders.The surprise winner was Jasmine Flury of Switzerland, who had a career-best World Cup finish of fifth before Saturday.Perhaps the outspoken Lindsey Vonn will get her wish and not have to represent the President or decline his invitation to the White House ;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Kuczynski acknowledges having advised Odebrecht project;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski acknowledged that he worked as a financial adviser for an irrigation project owned by the Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] on Saturday, contradicting his previous denials of having any links to the company. Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal and has admitted to paying about $30 million in bribes to secure contracts in Peru over a decade. Kuczynski worked in the Cabinet of former President Alejandro Toledo, who prosecutors say took a $20 million bribe from Odebrecht during his 2001-2006 term. However, Kuczynski has not been named as a suspect in the far-reaching graft probe by the attorney general s office. In a televised interview with local broadcaster RPP, Kuczynski denied being a partner in an investment fund that allegedly had links to Odebrecht. However, he said he had worked as a financial adviser for several companies that needed to raise funds for big projects, including an Odebrecht firm. They use bankers, said Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker elected president in 2016. I ve been a banker, in New York, for a very prestigious bank. I ve been one of the founders of what s called project financing. So sometimes, I was hired. For H2Olmos, an irrigation project. Odebrecht owns H2Olmos SA, which was formed in 2009 to build and operate one of its landmark projects in Peru - carving a 20-kilometer (12-mile) tunnel through the Andes to transport water to irrigate agricultural fields in the desert. Kuczynski s comments could provide more ammunition for the opposition-controlled Congress as it targets him in its probe into Odebrecht s links to politicians. Kuczynski had previously denied reports in local media that Odebrecht hired him as an adviser a decade ago to mend ties with him after he opposed highway contracts awarded to the company in Toledo s government. Kuczynski did not provide additional details about his work for H2Olmos, and his office did not respond to requests for comment. However, he stressed in the interview that the advising work was done when he was a private citizen and denied favoring any company while in public office. Odebrecht reached a deal to sell H2Olmos to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP and Suez SA a year ago. However, the sale has not closed. While the attorney general s office reopened a preliminary probe related to Odebrecht and Kuczynski a year ago, it has not accused Kuczynski of wrongdoing. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says it is fully committed to nuclear missile pact;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Saturday it was fully committed to a Cold War-era pact with the United States banning intermediate-range cruise missiles, a day after Washington accused Moscow of violating the treaty. The U.S. State Department said on Friday Washington was reviewing military options, including new intermediate-range cruise missile systems, in response to what it said was Russia s ongoing violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The warning was the first response by President Donald Trump s administration to U.S. charges first leveled in 2014 that Russia had deployed a ground-launched cruise missile that breaches the pact s ban on testing and fielding missiles with ranges of 500-5,500 kms (310-3,417 miles). Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said those allegations were absolutely unfounded . They are not supported by the technical characteristics of the launch installation which allegedly does not comply with the treaty, or by flight telemetry data. Nothing. And it is understandable why - because it simply does not exist, he said in written comments published by the foreign ministry. Echoing previous Russian statements, Ryabkov said Moscow was fully committed to the treaty, had always rigorously complied with it, and was prepared to continue doing so. However, if the other side stops following it, we will be forced, as President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has already said, to respond in kind, he added. The U.S. allegation has further strained relations between Moscow and Washington, and the State Department on Friday hinted at possible economic sanctions over the issue. Washington has already sanctioned Russian entities and individuals, including people close to Putin, for Moscow s 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the election. Ryabkov said the attempts to frighten us with sanctions were laughable. It s time for American politicians and diplomats to understand that economic and military pressure on Russia will not work, he said. (This version of the story has been refiled to clarify in paragraph 2 that it is U.S. administration, not State Department, reviewing military options) ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras opposition parties ask for disputed election to be annulled;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras two main opposition parties on Friday presented formal requests to annul the results of the still-unresolved presidential election, deepening a political crisis that has roiled the poor, violent Central American nation. The Nov. 26 vote has been marred by accusations of electoral fraud, sparking protests, a widespread curfew and a growing chorus of international concern over the situation in Honduras, which has one of the world s highest murder rates. Opposition leader Salvador Nasralla, who trails conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez by 1.6 percentage points according to the widely criticized official count, arrived at the election tribunal shortly before the midnight deadline to present his center-left coalition s request. We re asking for the result to be declared null at the presidential level, due to the scandalous fraud we have discovered, Nasralla said. Earlier, Octavio Pineda, the secretary of the third-placed Liberal Party, presented a similar document, saying the vote should be annulled due to a violation of constitutional norms. There have been violations since the president of the republic was allowed to participate in the electoral process when the constitution prohibited it, Pineda said. The Liberal Party s candidate, Luis Zelaya, has repeatedly said Nasralla won the election. Hernandez s bid for a second term, which was made possible by a 2015 Supreme Court decision on term limits, divided opinion in the coffee-exporting nation of 9 million people. The election has been plagued with problems since voting stations closed. The tribunal declared Nasralla the leader in an announcement on the morning after the vote, with just over half of the ballot boxes counted. However, it gave no further updates for about 36 hours. Once results then started flowing again, Nasralla s lead quickly started narrowing, sparking a major outcry. On Thursday, tribunal chief David Matamoros said there would be a re-count of 4,753 ballot boxes that arrived after the 36-hour pause, and which the opposition has claimed are tainted. The OAS, which on Wednesday said it may call for new elections if irregularities undermine the credibility of results, had previously called for a recount of those 4,753 ballot boxes. Marlon Ochoa, Nasralla s campaign manager, reiterated that the coalition wants a full recount of the complete 18,000-odd ballot boxes. On Wednesday, Nasralla said he no longer recognized the Honduran tribunal because of its role in the process. The tribunal has 10 days to respond to the requests. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indians vote in first stage of election seen as acid test for Modi;SURENDRANAGAR, India (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Indians voted in the first stage of assembly elections in the western state of Gujarat on Saturday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces his toughest electoral test since coming to power with a landslide victory in 2014. Modi has himself led the campaign to ensure that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retains power in his home state, as a combined opposition mounted the biggest challenge ahead of the general election in 2019. Three big polls carried out in the run-up to the vote on Saturday and next week have predicted a victory for BJP but with a greatly reduced majority. Voters started turning up early in the morning and some had to wait for about 15 minutes due to a malfunction in the electronic voting machine. In the first few hours, more than 15 percent of voters in Surendranagar district cast their ballot, according to state government officials. An ABP-CDS poll this week gave the BJP 91-99 seats in the 182-member state house and the main opposition Congress 78-86, suggesting a close fight. To win, a party needs 92 seats. The surveys have often gone wrong, though, and Modi himself remains far more popular across the country than his rivals, including Rahul Gandhi who is leading the Congress charge to weaken Modi in his home base. Votes from the election will be counted on Dec. 18 and the results announced the same day. In the first stage of state assembly elections on Saturday, 977 candidates are trying their luck in 89 constituencies spread across 19 districts of Gujarat, according to the Election Commission. More than 21 million people will vote during the first stage of the election on Saturday. Modi has thrown himself into the campaign, addressing dozens of rallies over the past month, saying he alone could deliver on development. Gujarati businesses, which form the core of Modi s support base, have complained that the Goods and Services Tax introduced this year and late last year s shock move to abolish 500 and 1,000 rupee bank notes, accounting for 86 percent of cash in circulation, aggravated already tough economic conditions. Hindu-majority Gujarat is one of India s richest and fastest growing states but also one of its most communally divided. About 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed after a wave of riots rocked Gujarat in 2002, when Modi was chief minister. A Supreme Court investigation found no case against Modi, who denied any wrongdoing. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nepal leftist alliance appears heading for election victory;KATHMANDU (Reuters) - A leftist alliance between Nepal s former Maoist rebels and moderate communists appeared to be heading for a victory in elections aimed at completing a transition to democracy after the abolition of the monarchy and end to civil war. Early tallies from Thursday s vote show the leftists lead in 63 out of 80 constituencies where counting has begun. Nepal has seen 10 government changes in as many years. Instability has given rise to corruption, retarded growth and slowed recovery from a 2015 earthquake that killed 9,000 people. The election pits the centrist Nepali Congress party of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who heads a loose alliance that includes the Madhesi parties from Nepal s southern plains and former royalists, against the tight-knit alliance of former Maoists and the moderate Communist UML party. The Nepali Congress party is considered a pro-India group, while the opposition alliance is seen as closer to China. Nepal is a natural buffer between the two and the outcome could indicate whether China or India gets the upper hand in the battle for influence in a nation rich in hydropower and home to Mount Everest. Nepal emerged from a civil war in 2006 and abolished its 239-year-old Hindu monarchy two years later. Guna Raj Luintel, editor of the daily Nagarik, said it was almost certain the leftist alliance would win. Trends so far suggest they could win a two-thirds majority. If that happened, that will be a landslide win, Luintel said. There are 165 seats to be decided on a first-past-the-post basis for which voting was held on Thursday with another 110 seats decided by proportional representation. Few results are in from the southern plains, home to nearly half of the population, and communists are thought to have weaker support there. Final results of the election, Nepal s first under its republican constitution approved by a special Constituent Assembly in 2015, could take around 10 days due to cumbersome counting procedures. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico right-left coalition presents bid to run in 2018 election;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s newest political force formally emerged on Friday when a right-left coalition presented its official request with the electoral institute to compete in next year s presidential election. The coalition, known as For Mexico in Front, brings together the conservative National Action Party (PAN), the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Citizens Movement party. The coalition will compete against the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and leftist frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), in next July s vote. President Enrique Pena Nieto is constitutionally barred from running again. With the formalizing of the coalition, the contours of the election are beginning to take shape. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen who For Mexico in Front will pick as its candidate. PAN president Ricardo Anaya is seen as the most likely figure, although Mexico City s PRD Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera is also seen as a contender. Former Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala broke with the PAN in October in order to run as an independent. Last week, Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade resigned to seek the presidential nomination of the PRI, which has broken with tradition by seeking outside help to clean up its tarnished image and stay in office for another six years. The PRI faces an uphill battle to reclaim the presidency, and is banking on Meade, who is not a PRI member and has a reputation for honesty, to win over voters tired by years of graft, violence and lackluster growth. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says U.N. envoy expressed willingness to ease tensions;SEOUL (Reuters) - U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, who visited North Korea this week, expressed willingness to ease tension on the Korean peninsula, state media said on Saturday, amid a rising war of words over the North s missile and nuclear programs. North Korea also said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency that the U.N. envoy acknowledged the negative impact of sanctions on humanitarian aid to North Korea. Feltman, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2012, was not immediately available for comment. The United Nations expressed concerns over the heightened situation on the Korean peninsula and expressed willingness to work on easing tensions on the Korean peninsula in accordance with the U.N. Charter which is based on international peace and security, KCNA said. North Korea is pursuing nuclear and missile weapons programmes in defiance of U.N. sanctions and international condemnation. On Nov. 29, it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile which it said was its most advanced yet, capable of reaching the mainland United States. The United States and South Korea conducted large-scale military drills this week, which the North said have made the outbreak of war an established fact . KCNA said North Korean officials and Feltman agreed that his visit helped deepen understanding and that they agreed to communicate regularly. Feltman visited Pyongyang from Tuesday to Saturday, KCNA said. Last month s missile test prompted a U.S. warning that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. The Pentagon has mounted repeated shows of force after North Korean tests. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States and says its weapons programmes are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan arrests North Korean crew amid mystery boat arrivals;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police arrested three crew of a North Korean boat on Saturday for stealing a generator from a hut on an uninhabited island, public broadcaster NHK said, the latest drama amid increasing arrivals of North Korean fishing boats off Japan. The boats, some in distress, some abandoned and some with dead bodies on board, have raised fears about infiltration by spies as tension with North Korea surges over its missile and nuclear programs. North Korea has test-fired two missiles over Japan, a country it has threatened to destroy. Most experts say the wooden boats are just carrying fishermen including soldiers drafted to fish. There has been no suggestion the crew are defectors. A boat, with 10 crew on board, was found moored at the island, off Hokkaido, last month and several crew said they picked up electronic goods from the hut, according to NHK. Police arrested three of them for theft and other crew members will be sent to the Immigration Bureau, NHK said. Hokkaido police were not immediately available to comment. A spokesman at the Japan coast guard declined to comment. There were 28 cases of boats adrift off Japan or grounded on its shores in November, the coast guard has said, compared with just four in November last year. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uber agrees to settle U.S. lawsuit filed by India rape victim;SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc and a woman who accused top executives of improperly obtaining her medical records after a company driver raped her in India have agreed to settle a civil lawsuit the woman filed against Uber in June, according to a U.S. federal court filing on Friday. The Uber driver was convicted of the rape, which occurred in Delhi in 2014, in a criminal case in India. He was sentenced in 2015 to life in prison. The Indian woman had previously settled a civil U.S. lawsuit against Uber in 2015, but sued the company again in a San Francisco federal court saying that shortly after the incident, a U.S. Uber executive met with Delhi police and intentionally obtained plaintiff s confidential medical records. Uber kept a copy of those records, the lawsuit said. The woman was living in the United States when she filed the lawsuit. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed in the court document. A spokesman for San Francisco-based Uber declined to comment. An attorney for the woman could not immediately be reached for comment. The settlement comes as new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who took the top job in August, is seeking to put several scandals behind the company following eight years of CEO Travis Kalanick s pugnacious leadership, which led to rule-breaking around the world. The lawsuit cited several media reports that said Kalanick and others doubted the victim s account of her ordeal. Uber executives duplicitously and publicly decried the rape, expressing sympathy for plaintiff, and shock and regret at the violent attack, while privately speculating, as outlandish as it is, that she had colluded with a rival company to harm Uber s business, the lawsuit said. A source with knowledge of the matter previously told Reuters that Kalanick had told other Uber executives he believed the incident had been staged by Indian ride-services rival Ola. In a prior statement, while Kalanick was CEO, Uber said: No one should have to go through a horrific experience like this, and we re truly sorry that she s had to relive it. A spokesman for Kalanick was not immediately available for comment on Friday. Uber s actions have led to a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice of whether managers violated U.S. bribery laws, specifically the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in June. The Justice Department did not say on what country or countries the investigation centered on. Bloomberg said it focused on activity in at least five Asian countries. Uber has also notified U.S. authorities about payments made by Uber staff to police officers in Indonesia, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. Uber previously hired law firm O Melveny & Myers LLP to investigate how it obtained the medical records of the rape victim, Reuters reported in June. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican president asks Senate to broaden discussion over security bill;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday asked Senate lawmakers to include civil society s views in their discussion of a divisive bill that critics say would give the military greater powers and deepen its role in the country s drug war. The bill, which enjoys cross-partisan support, aims to regulate federal defense forces involvement in the drug war, which has claimed well over 100,000 lives in the last decade. But the United Nations, Amnesty International and Mexican human rights organization have all criticized the bill for prioritizing the military instead of seeking to improve Mexico s police. Pena Nieto s unusual comments reflect the growing international pressure his government has come under over. I d like to make a call to the Senate to broaden the space for dialogue with civil society organizations in order to hear all voices and enrich what will eventually be decided, the president said at a human rights event in Mexico City. The bill has already passed the lower house, and is due to be discussed in the Senate next week, but could potentially be delayed in the wake of Pena Nieto s comments. Lawmakers who support the bill say it will give clear rules that limit the use of soldiers to fight crime. However, rights campaigners worry the law opens the door to military intervention in protests, as well as expanding military powers to spy on citizens. It is opposed by the party of leftist presidential frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which has only a handful of senators. The bill comes during a particularly violent year, with the 2017 murder tally almost certain to be the highest since modern records began twenty years ago. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe names diplomat Isaac Moyo as top spy;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has named a former diplomat as the head of its intelligence agency, state-owned newspaper The Herald said on Saturday. Isaac Moyo, who was serving as an ambassador to neighboring South Africa and Lesotho, replaces retired army general Happyton Bonyongwe, the paper quoted chief secretary to the president, Misheck Sibanda, as saying. No one was immediately available to comment in President Emmerson Mnangagwa s office. The Herald is a mouthpiece for the government. Moyo takes over a domestic spy network, the Central Intelligence Organisation, that permeates every institution and section of society and has been used by former President Robert Mugabe to stay in power. He has served as a member of the African Union s Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA), intelligence provider to the union s 55 states. Mnangagwa, who was sworn in two weeks ago in the wake of the de facto military coup that ended Mugabe s 37-year rule, has been ringing in changes in his administration including appointing leading military officials to top posts in his cabinet. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britons can change terms of Brexit to diverge from EU: pro-Brexit minister Gove;LONDON (Reuters) - British voters will be able to change the terms of the country s relationship with the European Union after leaving the bloc if they don t like the final Brexit deal, senior cabinet minister and pro-Brexit lawmaker Michael Gove said on Saturday. Britain and the EU achieved sufficient progress in Brexit negotiations on Friday to allow them to move on to discussing future trade ties, in a move welcomed by Gove and other Brexit supporters in Prime Minister Theresa May s Conservative Party. However, while Gove, who is Britain s environment minister, reiterated his support for May, he gave succour to critics of the deal by saying that if Britons were dissatisfied with the terms of Brexit, future governments could change it. The British people will be in control. By the time of the next election, EU law and any new treaty with the EU will cease to have primacy or direct effect in UK law, Gove wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph. If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge. Britain is due to exit the EU in March 2019. The next election is not scheduled until 2022, though there has been speculation in British media that it could come earlier, given May s lack of a parliamentary majority and deep divisions within her party about Brexit. Some eurosceptic voices outside the government have said that May has betrayed British leave voters and given in to EU demands with the agreement. It has been a tough week for May after Northern Ireland s small Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) - whose support she needs in parliament - unexpectedly blocked an initial deal on Monday, leaving Britain and the EU scrambling to find wording acceptable to all sides ahead of next week s summit of EU leaders. While agreement was eventually reached on Friday, Gove said that all UK proposals were provisional on a final deal being done, and even then, that arrangement could be revisited by future governments. Matthew Parris, an anti-Brexit columnist and former Conservative lawmaker, told BBC radio that Gove might envisage a situation in which he would be spearheading a new approach to Brexit. But Gove, who was briefly in the running to lead the party last year, praised May on Saturday, and said the deal was a result of her tenacity and skill . Fellow pro-Brexit cabinet colleague Andrea Leadsom defended his comments, saying it did not imply that May would be replaced before the next election. It s simply the case that in taking back control (from Brussels)... it will be for the voters to determine what future governments do, Leadsom told BBC radio. I think it is a statement of the obvious. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's Gabriel denies report he is eyeing finance minister post;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Saturday denied a report that said the Social Democrat, whose party has agreed to enter talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on forming a coalition, was eyeing the post of finance minister. News magazine Der Spiegel reported that Gabriel had recently told senior members of his SPD party that he was interested in becoming German finance minister if the SPD agreed to a re-run of the current grand coalition with Merkel s conservatives. What Spiegel is writing is sheer nonsense, Gabriel told Deutschlandfunk radio. I m in a caretaker government and no one knows what the next government will look like. More than two months after a national election, Germany has not managed to form a new government, so the conservative coalition from the last legislative period is still in power. Merkel, who lost many supporters to the far-right in September s election, is banking on the SPD to extend her 12-year tenure after attempts to cobble together an awkward three-way alliance with the liberal Free Democrats and environmentalist Greens crumbled. If the SPD were to agree to another grand coalition - an option that the SPD says is by no means a foregone conclusion - and demand the finance ministry, it would likely result in changes to Germany s European policy such as more focus on spending and investment rather than austerity. Wolfgang Schaeuble, who was Germany s conservative finance minister until he took on the role of president in October, became unpopular among struggling euro zone states during his eight years in office due to his focus on austerity. SPD leader Martin Schulz said on Thursday that Europe could not afford to undergo another four years of the kind of European policy that Schaeuble had practiced. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenyan lecturers end strike, say deal reached with government;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Lecturers in Kenya s public universities ended a strike on Saturday after reaching agreement with the government over pay and other issues, according to a statement from their union. They had gone on strike at the beginning of November in protest at the government s failure to implement a March deal to increase salaries and housing allowance. In their statement the lecturers said they had struck a broad agreement with the government on a range of issues including negotiations on better pay, clearing outstanding pensions, and a pledge not to victimize anyone for participating in the strike. We have now achieved the objectives of our strike. The strike is over, the statement said. Strikes by public workers in the East African country have grown in frequency in recent years, often fueled by grievances over pay. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt's Coptic Church rejects meeting with Pence over Jerusalem move;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s Coptic Church has rejected a meeting requested by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during his visit later this month in protest against Washington s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, MENA state news agency reported on Saturday. The Church excused itself from hosting Mike Pence when he visits Egypt, citing President Donald Trump s decision at an unsuitable time and without consideration for the feelings of millions of people , MENA said. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan and Macron to urge U.S. to turn back on Jerusalem decision: sources;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s Tayyip Erdogan and France s Emmanuel Macron will work together to try to persuade the United States to reconsider its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a Turkish presidential source said on Saturday. The two leaders agreed during a phone call that the move is worrisome for the region, the source said, adding that Turkey and France would make a joint effort to try to reverse the U.S. decision. Erdogan also spoke on the phone to the presidents of Kazakhstan, Lebanon and Azerbaijan on Saturday regarding the issue, the source said. On Wednesday, he called an urgent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Turkey next week. President Donald Trump s announcement on Wednesday has upset U.S. allies in the West. At the United Nations, France, Italy, Germany, Britain and Sweden called on the United States to bring forward detailed proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement . Palestinians took to the streets following the U.S. decision. Demonstrations also took place in Iran, Jordan, Tunisia, Somalia, Yemen, Malaysia and Indonesia, and outside the U.S. embassy in Berlin. The status of Jerusalem has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians for generations. France has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause. In 2014, the French National Assembly passed a non-binding motion calling on the government to recognize Palestine, but the government has not officially done so. Paris has pointed out in the past its conviction that a two-state solution requires the recognition of Palestine. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nobel peace laureate group tells U.S., North Korea to negotiate;OSLO (Reuters) - A survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and the leader of the group that won this year s Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday urged the United States and North Korea to tone down their rhetoric and negotiate together to avoid a nuclear strike. Tensions have risen markedly in recent months over North Korea s development, in defiance of repeated rounds of U.N. sanctions, of nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the United States. A missile test last week prompted a U.S. warning that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. The Pentagon has mounted repeated shows of force after North Korean tests. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded this year s Nobel Peace Prize by a Nobel committee that cited the spread of nuclear weapons by countries like North Korea and the growing risk of an atomic war. Graphic of Nobel laureates: tmsnrt.rs/2y6ATVW Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, and Beatrice Fihn, ICAN s executive director, will receive the prize together on Sunday at Oslo City Hall in front of King Harald and Queen Sonja. No human being should suffer what we suffered, Thurlow, who was 13 at the time of the attack and is now an ICAN campaigner, told reporters on Saturday. I deeply and strongly urge the leaders of North Korea and the U.S. never to use nuclear weapons ... Negotiate. A diplomatic solution is the only solution. ICAN s Fihn said that the risk of a nuclear war had increased over the past year. There is an urgent threat right now, she told reporters. I would very strongly urge the leaders (of North Korea and the U.S.) to back down from their very dangerous rhetoric. Stop threatening to use weapons of mass destruction. Engage in a diplomatic solution. ICAN is a coalition of grassroots non-governmental groups in more than 100 nations that began in Australia. It has campaigned for a U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted by 122 nations in July. It needs to be ratified by 50 states to come into force. So far only three have done so: the Holy See, Thailand and Guyana. The treaty is not signed by - and would not apply to - any of the states that already have nuclear arms, which include the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France, as well as India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel is also widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, although it neither confirms nor denies it. The U.S., Britain and France are sending second-rank diplomats to the award ceremony, which Fihn said was some kind of protest . ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian President Abbas won't meet Pence in region: foreign minister;CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during his visit to the region and there will be no communication between U.S. and Palestinian officials Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki said on Saturday. Maliki comments were made before an Arab League meeting in Cairo to discuss President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital and after Abbas said Washington could no longer be a peace broker. We will seek a new mediator from our Arab brothers and the international community, a mediator who can help with reaching a two-state solution, Maliki told reporters in Cairo. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“NEVER-TRUMP” BUSTED! Former Jeb Bush Staffer ADMITS To Planting Roy Moore Story In Washington Post;Just another member of the swamp who s about to be sucked down the drain In 2015, leftist rag Politico called it a Big hire when Jeb Bush landed Tim Miller as his top communications aide.Jeb Bush plans to name Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising PAC, as his top communications aide, Republican sources told POLITICO on Friday.Miller initially will be a senior adviser to Bush s Right to Rise PAC, and is expected to become communications director if Bush launches his campaign. Kristy Campbell, who has been the PAC s chief spokesperson, likely will be national press secretary of the campaign, or have some senior communications adviser role.Now, thanks to Big League Politics, every member of the GOP can see the type of traitors to the Republican Party Jeb Bush hired to work on his campaign.A Friday Big League Politics report claims Tim Miller, a Republican operative prominent in the Never Trump movement, helped pitch the Washington Post story in which the first allegations of sexual misconduct nearly 40 years ago were made against Alabama GOP senatorial nominee Roy Moore.The report contains screenshots of what are alleged to be text messages between Miller and conservative publisher Charles C. Johnson of GotNews.com. The texts show Miller insulting Judge Moore s fitness for office and bragging about how Beth is good to work with. He is implied to be referring to Beth Reinhard, one of the two authors of the original Washington Post story.Reinhard, before joining the Washington Post, worked at the Wall Street Journal during the 2016 GOP presidential primaries as the embedded reporter covering the Bush campaign. She, therefore, likely had regular interaction with Miller since at least 2015.Miller, who served as Jeb Bush s communications director in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, categorically denies any involvement in the Washington Post story. He told Breitbart News:I had no involvement in pitching the Washington Post story or any others where women spoke out about Judge Moore. Moore allies have tried to pitch this to 10+ outlets, conservative and mainstream, who have all rejected the story after examining the facts because there is no truth to it.Big League Politics Editor-in-Chief Patrick Howley makes his case as follows:These text messages reveal a few things: the Republican Establishment s relationship with the Post s anti-Moore coverage, the cunning of writer Charles Johnson in trapping Miller, and former Bush staffer Miller s cluelessness about how to conduct himself in the world of political subterfuge. Miller denied to BLP that he was involved in the Washington Post story or any others where women spoke out about Judge Moore, but the text messages below leave no doubt as to his involvement [sic][.]During and after the 2016 primaries, Miller was one of the leading voices against eventual GOP nominee Donald Trump. He played a role in the decidedly unsuccessful attempt by Never Trumpers to disregard the will of Republican voters and deny Trump the nomination through the use of convention rules.Miller remains an outspoken critic of Trump and consistently opposes Republicans of the pro-Trump or populist-nationalist bent. He has frequently appeared on cable news programs as an anti-trump Republican voice and now is one of far-left Salon.com s 25 favorite conservatives. Miller has aggressively campaigned for Judge Moore s liberal Democratic opponent Doug Jones. on Twitter, announcing last month that he had donated money to Jones:I just donated to a Democrat for the first time in my life if any of yall want to do so as well. Enough is enough. https://t.co/YlDXTXSnyJ Tim Miller (@Timodc) November 21, 2017 ;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UAE's Gargash says Trump's decision on Jerusalem is 'gift to radicalism';MANAMA (Reuters) - A senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official said on Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a boon to extremists. These issues are a gift to radicalism. Radicals and extremists will use that to fan the language of hate, said Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash, speaking at the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JAMES WOODS Has Social Media In Tears After Tweeting HILARIOUS Videos Of Two of The Most Ignorant Liberals In America [VIDEOS];Conservative Hollywood actor, James Woods, is known for his brilliant wit and his great sense of humor on Twitter, but today he really outdid himself when he posted two hilarious videos on Twitter, proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that liberalism really is truly a mental disorder. His first video was a retweet of Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson, who, in 2010 actually questioned Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, about a proposal to move 8,000 Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. Johnson expressed his concern over moving too many US troops to the very small island of Guam because too many people on the island may cause it to tip over and capsize .Here is the transcript of the unbelievable exchange between Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson and Admiral Rober Willard:Johnson: This is a[n] island that at its widest level is what twelve miles from shore to shore? And at its smallest level uh, smallest location it s seven miles between one shore and the other? Is that correct?Willard: I don t have the exact dimensions, but to your point, sir, I think Guam is a small island.Johnson: Very small island, about twenty-four miles, if I recall, long, twenty-four miles long, about seven miles wide at the least widest place on the island and about twelve miles wide on the widest part of the island, and I don t know how many square miles that is. Do you happen to know?Willard: I don t have that figure with me, sir, I can certainly supply it to you if you like.Johnson: Yeah, my fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.Willard: We don t anticipate that the Guam population I think currently about 175,000 and again with 8,000 Marines and their families, it s an addition of about 25,000 more into the population.How the Admiral was able to keep a straight face during this question and answer session is beyond our comprehension. Here is what Woods had to say about the tweet from Based Monitored : My favorite #LiberalTribute video ever My favorite #LiberalTribute video ever https://t.co/afHPsh9flM James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 10, 2017Here is the video originally tweeted by Based Monitored :Rep. Hank Johnson just called the FBI Director his homeboy ridiculous.But it gives me an excuse to show everyone how dumb he truly is. Here s a video of him thinking that the island of Guam will tip over and capsize . pic.twitter.com/bk7lEB60yz Based Monitored (@BasedMonitored) December 7, 2017Next up on Woods liberal hit list was Chelsea Handler. Recently, during an interview, the not-funny comedian and unhinged liberal Chelsea Handler, called Sarah Huckabee Sanders a harlot with summer-whore lipstick and a trollop. James Woods didn t waste any time reminding Twitter users about the disgusting video of Chelsea Handler, where she s swimming in the water while actor and comedian Jason Biggs is standing above her on a boat, peeing all over her face. Handler seems unfazed by Biggs peeing on her face, as she looks around smiling, and acting like a human urinal.Woods tweeted about Handler: This person berates the character of @SarahHuckabee on a daily basis. #ChelseaHandlerHumanUrinalThis person berates the character of @SarahHuckabee on a daily basis. #ChelseaHandlerHumanUrinal https://t.co/Y07Q0Rmcw6 James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 9, 2017Only 3 days ago, Handler doubled down on stupid, when she tweeted about having to evacuate her California home due to the wildfires. Handler, who claims she was fleeing from her home, took time from her daring escape, to tweet about her unfortunate circumstance, and to blame President Trump for setting the world on fire , because well, why not?Just evacuated my house. It s like Donald Trump is setting the world on fire. Literally and figuratively. Stay safe everyone. Dark times. Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) December 6, 2017;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OUCH! President Trump Takes Off The Gloves…BLASTS Democrats For Using AMNESTY For Illegals As Bargaining Chip For Funding Government: “‘Help me, Dad!’ Those were the last words spoken by Kate Steinle, as she lay dying on a San Francisco Pier” [VIDEO];When candidate-Trump promised he would put America first, he wasn t kidding. President Trump posted a powerful video on Twitter tonight, blasting Democrats for putting their desire to give illegal aliens amnesty before the safety and security of American citizens, as they demand amnesty as a condition for funding the government.Here is the transcript of President Trump s powerful speech that he posted on Twitter only minutes ago: Help me, Dad! Those were the last words spoken by Kate Steinle, as she lay dying on a San Francisco Pier. A precious young American woman, killed in the prime of her life. Kate s death is a tragedy that was entirely preventable. She was shot by an illegal alien, and a 7-time convicted felon, who had been deported 5 times, but he was free to harm an innocent American, because our leaders refuse to protect our border, and because San Francisco is a sanctuary city.In sanctuary states and cities, innocent Americans are at the mercy of criminal aliens because state and local officials defy federal authority and obstruct the enforcement of our immigration laws. Last week, in a final injustice, Kate s killer was acquitted of all of most serious charges, yet one more reason why Americans are so upset by sanctuary cities and open-border politicians who shield criminal aliens from federal law enforcement and all of the problems involved with the whole concept of a sanctuary city. They re no good!We mourn for all of the American families of all backgrounds, who will have any empty seat at Christmas this year because our immigration laws were not enforced. No American should be separated from their loved ones because of preventable crime committed by those illegally in our country. Our cities should be sanctuaries for Americans, not for criminal illegals. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress not only oppose our efforts to stop illegal immigration, and crack down on sanctuary cities, now they are demanding amnesty as a condition for funding the government, holding troop funding hostage, and putting our national security at risk. We cannot allow it. Every Senator and Congressman will have to make a choice, do they want to protect American citizens, or do they want to protect criminal aliens? Reasonable people can disagree on many things, but there can be no disagreement that the first duty of government is to serve, protect and defend American citizens. People can have different views on the technical details of budget policy or transportation, but no one who serves in office should disagree that our highest priority must be the safety and well-being of our nation s citizens. Thank you. Watch:No American should be separated from their loved ones because of preventable crime committed by those illegally in our country. Our cities should be Sanctuaries for Americans not for criminal aliens! pic.twitter.com/CvtkCG1pln Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2017;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP CALLS OUT Washington Post #FakeNews Reporter For Posting Fake Pictures Of Rally Hours Before It Started…Posts Actual Pictures Of Packed Stadium;Washington Post reporter took to Twitter to post an image of the venue where Trump was to appear in several hours. The only problem is, the Washington Post reporter didn t say the image was taken several hours before President Trump appeared on stage.Here is Dave Weigel s #FakeNews post, that he has since deleted:As someone who attended Trump s final campaign rally, the night before the election in Grand Rapids, MI, I can attest to the incredible amount of security Trump supporters must go through before entering the venue. Trump supporters were lined up for miles to get into the event we attended, and after several hours, many of his supporters were seen trickling in, hours after the event started, after waiting to get through security..@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017Here are a few of the pictures Trump posted in his tweet above to show the actual size of the crowd: After the Washington Post reporter was outed by President Trump, for lying on Twitter about the size of Trump s crowd at his rally, he apologized:Sure thing: I apologize. I deleted the photo after @dmartosko told me I'd gotten it wrong. Was confused by the image of you walking in the bottom right corner. https://t.co/fQY7GMNSaD Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 9, 2017President Trump responded to Dave Weigel s apology on Twitter. Trump called for his firing for pushing #FakeNews on Twitter..@daveweigel of the Washington Post just admitted that his picture was a FAKE (fraud?) showing an almost empty arena last night for my speech in Pensacola when, in fact, he knew the arena was packed (as shown also on T.V.). FAKE NEWS, he should be fired. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017Many of Trump s supporters came to his defense on Twitter as well, posting images of a packed stadium for everyone to see:Here s what the line outside of the Trump rally actually looked like:HAPPENING NOW!Trump Rally Pensacola!pic.twitter.com/549Oq74upD TRUMP News 24/7 (@MichaelDelauzon) December 8, 2017Here are several shots of the Pensacola venue from inside:STADIUM PACKED at Trump Rally in Pensacola, Fl!We aren't going ANYWHERE! We are just getting started .again! Make America Great Again #ThingsITrustMorethanCNN #ResistanceIsImportant #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/61RcSUG2dO Kambree Kawahine Koa (@KamVTV) December 9, 2017For those saying Pensacola Bay Center was empty tonight for Trump Rally pic.twitter.com/zZqVYK8xIf Bard Law (@TwoLameDucks) December 9, 2017Crowds gather for Trump Rally in Pensacola today!! pic.twitter.com/eRJy92nz6m ssd (@Pismo_B) December 8, 2017A video view from inside the Pensacola Trump rally tonight, as the president talked about illegal immigration pic.twitter.com/VoPbEBqijE David Martosko (@dmartosko) December 9, 2017;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians to snub Pence during visit over Jerusalem move;CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during Pence s visit to the region this month in a snub over the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Saturday. Violence erupted for a third day in Gaza in response to President Donald Trump s announcement on Wednesday, which overturned decades of U.S. policy towards the Middle East. Israeli air strikes killed two Palestinian gunmen on Saturday after militants fired rockets from the enclave into Israel on Friday, which had been declared a day of rage by Palestinian factions. Trump s recognition of Jerusalem has infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies, who say it is a blow to peace efforts and risks sparking more violence in the region. Late on Saturday, Arab foreign ministers urged the United States to abandon its decision and said the move would spur violence throughout the region. The Arab League, in a statement issued after an emergency session in Cairo, called Trump s announcement a dangerous violation of international law which had no legal impact and was void. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted to critics in a statement before meetings in Paris on Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron to be followed by a meeting with European foreign ministers in Brussels. I hear (from Europe) voices of condemnation over President Trump s historic announcement but I have not heard any condemnation for the rocket firing against Israel that has come (after the announcement) and the awful incitement against us, Netanyahu said. Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory, and say the status of the city should be left to be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. The Trump administration says it is still committed to Palestinian-Israeli talks, that Israel s capital would be in Jerusalem under any serious peace plan, and that it has not taken a position on the city s borders. It says the moribund negotiations can be revived only by ditching outdated policies. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said the Palestinians will be looking for a new peace talks broker instead of the United States and would seek a United Nations Security Council resolution over Trump s decision. We will seek a new mediator from our Arab brothers and the international community, Maliki told reporters in Cairo before the Arab League meeting on Trump s Jerusalem decision. A Turkish presidential source said Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron will work together to try to persuade the United States to reconsider the move. A possible meeting with Pence has also been turned down by Egypt s Coptic Church, MENA state news agency reported. White House and U.S. State Department officials did not respond to requests for comment. Palestinian officials said Pence had been due to meet Abbas on Dec. 19. Trump s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is leading efforts to restart negotiations, though his bid has shown little public progress so far. Palestinian militants launched at least three rockets towards Israeli towns from Gaza after dark on Friday and Israel said it responded with air strikes that targeted a weapons depot, a military compound and two weapons manufacturing facilities. Hamas, which controls Gaza, confirmed the two men killed in the pre-dawn strikes belonged to the group, which has urged Palestinians to keep up the confrontation with Israeli forces. However, Palestinian protests on Saturday were less intense than on the previous two days. About 60 Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers across the Gaza-Israel border and the health ministry said at least 10 were wounded by Israeli fire. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians set fire to tires and threw stones and firebombs at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and, in a few instances, live fire. The Israeli military said one protester was arrested. In East Jerusalem about 60 people demonstrated near the walled Old City, where paramilitary border police and officers on horseback tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas. Thirteen demonstrators were arrested and four officers were lightly injured by stones, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. On Friday, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in protest and two Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops on the Gaza border. Scores more were wounded there and in the West Bank. Across the Arab and Muslim worlds, thousands more protesters had gathered to express solidarity. The Turkish presidential source said Erdogan and Macron agreed during a phone call that Trump s move was worrying for the region and that Turkey and France would make a joint effort to try to reverse the U.S. decision. Erdogan also spoke to the presidents of Kazakhstan, Lebanon and Azerbaijan on Saturday, the source said. On Wednesday, he called an urgent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Turkey next week. A senior United Arab Emirates (UAE) official said on Saturday that Trump s move was a gift to radicalism . Radicals and extremists will use that to fan the language of hate, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said at the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab states urge U.S. to abandon Jerusalem move;CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab foreign ministers late on Saturday urged the United States to abandon its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, saying the move would increase violence throughout the region. The announcement by President Donald Trump on Wednesday was a dangerous violation of international law , had no legal impact and was void , the Arab League said in a statement after a session attended by all its members in Cairo. Trump s endorsement of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would reverse long-standing U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The decision has no legal effect ... it deepens tension, ignites anger and threatens to plunge region into more violence and chaos, the Arab League said at 3 a.m. local time after hours of meetings that began on Saturday evening. It said it would seek a U.N. Security Council resolution rejecting the U.S. move. Lebanon s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said during the emergency meeting that Arab nations should consider imposing economic sanctions against the United States to prevent it moving its Israel embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Pre-emptive measures (must be) taken ... beginning with diplomatic measures, then political, then economic and financial sanctions, he said, without giving specific details. The Arab League statement made no mention of economic sanctions. Arab criticism of Trump s plan contrasted sharply with the praise Washington s traditional Arab allies heaped on him at the beginning of his administration in January. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. envoy told North Korea urgent need to open channels to cut conflict risk; ((This Dec. 9 story corrects year in 2nd paragraph to 2011 from 2012)) By Jane Chung and Michelle Nichols SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations political affairs chief told senior North Korean officials during a visit to Pyongyang this week that there was an urgent need to prevent miscalculations and open channels to reduce the risks of conflict, the world body said. Jeffrey Feltman, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2011, met with Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk, the United Nations said in a statement on Saturday after Feltman arrived back in Beijing. Feltman emphasized the need for the full implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and that the international community was committed to achieving a peaceful solution. He also said there can only be a diplomatic solution to the situation, achieved through a process of sincere dialogue. Time is of the essence, the United Nations said. They ... agreed that the current situation was the most tense and dangerous peace and security issue in the world today. North Korea is pursuing nuclear and missile weapons programs in defiance of U.N. sanctions and international condemnation. On Nov. 29, it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile which it said was its most advanced yet, capable of reaching the mainland United States. North Korea said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency that expressed willingness to ease tension on the Korean peninsula and acknowledged the negative impact of sanctions on humanitarian aid to North Korea. The United Nations expressed concerns over the heightened situation on the Korean peninsula and expressed willingness to work on easing tensions on the Korean peninsula in accordance with the U.N. Charter which is based on international peace and security, KCNA said. KCNA said North Korean officials and Feltman agreed that his visit helped deepen understanding and that they agreed to communicate regularly. Feltman did not speak to reporters upon arriving back from Pyongyang at Beijing airport on Saturday morning after spending four days in North Korea. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the situation on the Korean peninsula had entered a vicious circle of shows of strength and confrontation, and the outlook was not optimistic, China s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. But at the same time it can be seen that hopes for peace have yet to extinguished. The prospects for negotiations still exist, and the option of resorting to force cannot be accepted, Wang was quoted as saying. The United States and South Korea conducted large-scale military drills this week, which the North said have made the outbreak of war an established fact . Last month s missile test prompted a U.S. warning that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. The Pentagon has mounted repeated shows of force after North Korean tests. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States and says its weapons programs are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Liberal Group Trolls Trump At Roy Moore Rally In The Best Possible Way (VIDEO);Donald Trump held a rally for Alabama Senate candidate and alleged pedophile Roy Moore in Pensacola, Florida on Friday night which he later claimed was packed to the rafters but the venue was barely half-filled with supporters. Outside of the rally, a liberal group targeted the former reality show star and Moore by using Ivanka Trump s own words.American Bridge used a mobile billboard featuring Ivanka Trump s criticism of Moore. The truck displayed, There s a special place in hell for people who prey on children along with Trump s daughter s picture emblazoned across it.Happening now at @realDonaldTrump s rally: we re driving a mobile billboard promoting @IvankaTrump s condemnation of Roy Moore. https://t.co/XpDJYFZjzn #alsen pic.twitter.com/exQIAjZJ05 American Bridge (@American_Bridge) December 9, 2017The group s site says that the quote above and I have no reason to doubt the victims accounts by Ivanka were blasted over a loudspeaker outside of the rally.Watch:We re in Pensacola promoting @IvankaTrump s comments on Roy Moore pic.twitter.com/NJ3evTw0mw American Bridge (@American_Bridge) December 9, 2017 There is a special place in hell for people who prey on children, Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press after Moore s scandal became public. I ve yet to see a valid explanation, and I have no reason to doubt the victims accounts. Trump has given Moore his full support despite the Alabama Senate candidate being accused by multilple women of targeting them when they were teenagers and he was in this thirties and working as a district attorney.The truck was reportedly parked across the street from the rally, and was eventually driven around the crowd by American Bridge staffers, The Hill reports.Donald Trump has been accused of sexual harassment or assault by 19 women and yet, conservatives rewarded him by electing him to the highest seat in the land. Right-wing Alabama evangelicals seem to take no issue with Moore s scandalous past, which includes hating Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and allegedly creeping up on young girls.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.;News;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German conservatives reject 'United States of Europe' ahead of coalition talks;BERLIN (Reuters) - Senior members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on Saturday rejected the vision for a United States of Europe put forward by the Social Democrats (SPD), with whom they are hoping to form a governing coalition. SPD leader Martin Schulz said on Thursday his party, which suffered its worst post-war election result in September, would only gain support by providing a clear vision of Europe, and called for a United States of Europe by 2025. Merkel s conservatives, who lost voters to the far-right due to their liberal migrant policy, want the SPD to agree to a last-ditch alliance with them after talks on a tie-up with two smaller parties collapsed. Discussions on maintaining the conservative-SPD coalition, which has governed Germany since 2013, are due to start on Wednesday but the two parties look set to clash over the issue of Europe, which is likely to play a key role in talks. Senior conservative Volker Kauder said Schulz s European proposal posed a danger to the EU and citizens approval of Europe and Peter Altmaier, Merkel s chancellery chief, said the idea, and especially the timeframe, was unrealistic. An Emnid poll for Bild newspaper found less than a third of Germans (30 percent) supported Schulz s idea while almost half (48 percent) rejected it. Kauder told the Tagesspiegel newspaper it was necessary to strengthen Europe but also important to recognize that at the moment people longed for the reliability that they believe they can find in national states . He added: The proposal would also jeopardize the work of unification that is unique in the history of the world because the majority of member states certainly wouldn t participate in creating a united states. Altmaier told the Rheinische Post newspaper that Schulz s proposal had surprised him and it would be better to tackle specific problems in Europe such as unemployment, the protection of external borders and coordination of economic policy. The discussion about whether Europe should be a federal state, confederation or a united states is one for academics and journalists - not for German foreign policy, Altmaier said. A United States of Europe would transfer member states sovereignty to Brussels and there would not be a majority for that in many EU states, he added. Merkel has also been skeptical, saying on Thursday she would rather concentrate on more cooperation in defense by 2025, on employment and on innovation. The Christian Social Union (CSU) - the Bavarian sister party to Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) - also rejected Schulz s plan. Senior CSU member Markus Soeder told Welt am Sonntag his party did not want Germany becoming an administrative unit of the European Commission in a European superstate . But the SPD defended Schulz s plan, with Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel telling Deutschlandfunk radio it would ensure Europe s voice is heard on the global stage at a time when the influence of Asia, Latin America and Africa is growing. The SPD is stressing that the outcome of talks with the conservatives is still open but Schulz said on Saturday if the SPD had the chance to prevent old-age poverty, improve nursing care and affordable housing, it needed to take that opportunity. Other options are a Merkel-led minority government or new elections. The SPD has not ruled out either possibility, and newly elected SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil told Bild newspaper he would immediately start preparing for a possible election campaign. The SPD had initially planned to revamp itself in opposition after its poor election showing but agreed to talk to the conservatives when other coalition talks collapsed. An Emnid poll showed 61 percent of Germans thought joining another grand coalition would weaken the SPD further. Kauder said the conservatives would go into talks prepared to make compromises but added his party had some absolutely key demands like capping migration and suspending the right to family reunions for some asylum seekers. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands march in Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu, corruption;TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday for the second consecutive week against government corruption and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under criminal investigation over allegations of abuse of office. Police estimated the number of demonstrators at about 10,000 and they followed last Saturday s demonstration, which was by far the largest of the recent weekly anti-corruption protests when an estimated 20,000 people participated. The protests have been sparked by corruption allegations against Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing. The four-term leader is suspected of involvement in two cases. The first involves receiving gifts from wealthy businessmen and the second involves negotiating a deal with a newspaper owner for better coverage in return for curbs on a rival daily. If charged, he would come under heavy pressure to resign or could call an election to test whether he still had a mandate to govern. Netanyahu s right-wing Likud party said in a Facebook post that the protest was a left-wing demonstration. It called on all Israelis to back their prime minister as he defends Israel against international criticism following U.S. President Donald Trump s acceptance of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Instead of uniting with all the people behind Jerusalem and showing the world a unified front, the left cannot contain itself and it prefers to create division, part of the statement said. Over weeks of demonstrations, protesters have identified themselves as supporting both left- and right-wing parties. On Saturday they held banners reading: Neither left, nor right (we demand) integrity, We are fed up with corrupt (politicians) and Sweep the corrupt away. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina blocks two activists from entry on eve of WTO meeting;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina blocked two European activists from entering the country on the eve of the World Trade Organization s ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires, the two told a local radio program on Saturday. Sally Burch, a British activist and journalist for the Latin American Information Agency, said Argentina had already revoked credentials given to her by the WTO to attend the meeting but thought she would be able to enter the country as a tourist. They found my name on a list and started asking questions ... supposedly I was a false tourist, Burch said on Radio 10. It s not very democratic of Argentina s government. Petter Titland, the spokesman for the Norweigan NGO Attac Norge, said authorities denied him entry without explaining why. Late last month, Argentina rescinded the credentials of some 60 activists who had been accredited by the WTO to attend the meeting because it determined they would be more disruptive than constructive. WTO meetings often attract protests by anti-globalization groups, but they have remained largely peaceful since riots broke out at the 1999 meeting in Seattle. WTO s spokesman, Keith Rockwell, reiterated on Saturday that it disagreed with Argentina s decision to revoke activists credentials. We didn t have the same perspective but we re now moving on, Rockwell told journalists. Argentina s President Mauricio Macri has promoted business-friendly policies since taking office in December 2015, and Argentina will host global events as chair of the G20 group of major economies next year. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aftershocks likely from September test detected from North Korea nuclear site: USGS;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two minor tremors were detected on Saturday from near North Korea s nuclear test site and were probably aftershocks from the country s massive nuclear test in early September, a U.S. Geological Survey official said. The aftershocks, of magnitude 2.9 and 2.4, were detected at 0613 and 0640 GMT (1:13 a.m. and 1:40 a.m. EST) respectively, said the USGS and Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. A tweet from Zerbo said analysts had confirmed that the activity was tectonic in origin. The USGS official said the tremors had been in the vicinity of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where North Korea conducted its sixth and largest underground nuclear test on Sept. 3. They re probably relaxation events from the sixth nuclear test, the official said. When you have a large nuclear test, it moves the earth s crust around the area, and it takes a while for it to fully subside. We ve had a few of them since the sixth nuclear test. Pyongyang said the September test was of an H-bomb, and experts have estimated it was 10 times more powerful than the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. A series of quakes since then has prompted experts and observers to suspect the test might have damaged the mountainous location of its site in the northwest tip of North Korea, where all of the country s nuclear tests have been conducted. South Korea s spy agency told South Korean lawmakers in October that North Korea might be readying two more tunnels at the site. North Korea hinted its next nuclear test could be above ground after U.S. President Donald Trump warned in September that the United States would totally destroy North Korea if it threatened America. Another possible obstacle to North Korea s use of Punggye-ri for tests is the nearby active volcano of Mount Paektu, which North Koreans consider a sacred site. Its last eruption was in 1903, and experts have debated whether nuclear testing could trigger another. North Korea s official media reported on Saturday that national leader Kim Jong Un had scaled Mount Paektu with senior military officials to emphasize his military vision after completion of the country s nuclear force. Kim declared the nuclear force complete after the test of North Korea s largest ever intercontinental ballistic missile last month, which experts said puts all of America within range. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. says missiles fired at Saudi Arabia have 'common origin';UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations officials have found that missiles fired at Saudi Arabia by Yemen s Houthi rebels appear to have a common origin, but they are still investigating U.S. and Saudi claims that Iran supplied them, according to a confidential report. The officials traveled to Saudi Arabia to examine the debris of missiles fired on July 22 and Nov. 4, wrote U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the fourth biannual report on the implementation of U.N. sanctions and restrictions on Iran. They found that the missiles had similar structural and manufacturing features which suggest a common origin, said Guterres in the Friday report to the U.N. Security Council, seen by Reuters on Saturday. The report comes amid calls by the United States for Iran to be held accountable for violating U.N. Security Council resolutions on Yemen and Iran by supplying weapons to the Houthis. Saudi-led forces, which back the Yemeni government, have fought the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen s more than two-year-long civil war. Saudi Arabia s crown prince has described Iran s supply of rockets to the Houthis as direct military aggression that could be an act of war. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons, saying the U.S. and Saudi allegations are baseless and unfounded. Guterre s report said the U.N. officials saw three components, which Saudi authorities said came from the missile fired on Nov. 4. The components bore the castings of a logo similar to that of the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group - a U.N.-blacklisted company. The officials are still analyzing the information collected and will report back to the Security Council, wrote Guterres. The Saudi-led coalition used the Nov. 4 missile attack to justify a blockade of Yemen for several weeks, saying it was needed to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. Although the blockade later eased, Yemen s situation has remained dire. About 8 million people are on the brink of famine, with outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria. A separate report to the Security Council last month by a panel of independent experts monitoring sanctions imposed in Yemen found that four missiles fired this year into Saudi Arabia appear to have been designed and manufactured by Iran. However, the panel said it as yet has no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier of the missiles, which were likely shipped to the Houthis in violation of a targeted U.N. arms embargo imposed on Houthi leaders in April 2015. Most U.N. sanctions on Iran were lifted in January last year when the U.N. nuclear watchdog confirmed that Tehran fulfilled commitments under a nuclear deal with Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United States. But Iran is still subject to a U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions. U.S. President Donald Trump dealt a blow to the nuclear deal in October by refusing to certify that Tehran was complying with the accord and warning that he might ultimately terminate it. International inspectors have said Iran is in compliance. I encourage the United States to maintain its commitments to the plan and to consider the broader implications for the region and beyond before taking any further steps, Guterres wrote. Similarly, I encourage the Islamic Republic of Iran to carefully consider the concerns raised by other participants in the plan, he said. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GERMANY: Afghan “Teen” Refugee Who RAPED and KILLED Female Med Student and Refugee Volunteer Is Actually 33-Years Old…And There’s MORE!;On September 5, 2017, the Daily Mail reported:Afghan asylum seeker accused of raping and murdering EU official s teenage daughter attacked her to satisfy his sexual urges before leaving her unconscious in a river to drown Hussein Khavari, 22, who claims to be from Afghanistan has been accused of ambushing Maria Ladenburger, 19, as she cycled home after a party, raping her and then drowning her in Freiburg, Germany last October.He was linked through his DNA to medical student Maria, who volunteered at various shelters that house migrants in her spare time in Freiburg.Hussein claimed to be Afghani but the court heard that there is evidence he is Iraqi. And his claim to be 17 at the time of the offense was disputed by a specialist saying he was at least 22. According to Bild newspaper, during a morning session of hearings in which press and public were excluded, he claimed to be 19.He said he claimed to be 16 upon his arrival in Germany in 2015 because the situation is better here for underage migrants. The court must decide if he is to be tried as a juvenile or an adult.A murder conviction as a juvenile would mean a maximum ten-year jail term, as an adult a possible life sentence.As it turns out, the fake teenager who admitted to raping and murdering the actual teenager, is pretty far removed from his teenage years. According to the Voice of Europe, the Afghan refugee, who is now on trial for the rape and murder of the medical student Maria Ladenburger in October 2016, is older than previously thought.Hussein Khavari entered Germany in November 2015 without identity papers. He told authorities that he was born in 1999 in Afghanistan and that his father was killed during the war.But it now appears that his father is still alive. According to German media source, Bil.de, his father said his son was born in 1984 and that he is 33-years-old.The Local Germany says about it: Prosecutors were able to track down Hussein K. s father when they came across a contact on his mobile phone. The defendant told them that they could contact his mother on the number. But when an interpreter called the number in the presence of two judges, the person who picked up was his father .Maria Ladenburger s father is a senior legal adviser to the European Commission in Brussels. Maria herself was volunteering as a refugee worker in various shelters and asylum homes. ;politics;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's PSDB picks Sao Paulo Gov. Alckmin to lead it into 2018 race;BRASILIA (Reuters) - The centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB, elected four-time Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin as its leader on Saturday, making him its most likely presidential nominee in next year s elections. Alckmin threw the party s weight behind a social security overhaul that is currently before Congress and would cut generous pensions for public-sector employees. Pension reform is necessary so that we do not have two classes of Brazilian citizens, he told the convention, which elected him by a 470-3 vote. Alckmin said former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a likely rival in the 2018 race, had led Brazil into its worst recession and biggest corruption scandal. Lula wants to return to the scene of the crime, he told cheering supporters. Be sure, we will defeat him at the polls. Alckmin was picked to unite a divided party, with both supporters and opponents of Brazil s unpopular President Michel Temer. He plans to complete the PSDB s withdrawal from the governing coalition. But Alckmin made it clear the PSDB would back Temer s pension proposal, which investors consider crucial for closing a huge budget deficit that cost Latin America s largest economy its investment-grade credit rating. With elections less than a year away, PSDB lawmakers want to distance themselves from Temer. Half of its 46 congressmen did not back him when the lower house voted in August to block corruption charges against him. Alckmin must overcome the party s own brush with Brazil s ongoing political corruption scandal. He succeeds Senator Aecio Neves, the party s defeated 2014 presidential candidate who is under investigation for allegedly asking jailed Joesley Batista, owner of meatpacker JBS SA for 2 million reais ($607,500) in illegal funding. Neves was booed and quickly left the convention after casting his vote. The PSDB s disengagement from the Temer administration was almost completed on Friday with the resignation of Antonio Imbassahy, the president s minister of political affairs. Alckmin, 65, was governor of Brazil s richest and most populous state from 2001-2006 and again from 2011 to now. He ran for president in 2006 but lost to Lula, who is still Brazil s most popular politician despite a corruption conviction that could bar him from running or even land him in prison. Former Brazilian President and PSDB founder Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who won two elections against Lula, said it was better to defeat him at the polls than to put him in jail. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OUCH! President Trump Takes Off The Gloves…BLASTS Democrats For Using AMNESTY For Illegals As Bargaining Chip For Funding Government: “‘Help me, Dad!’ Those were the last words spoken by Kate Steinle, as she lay dying on a San Francisco Pier” [VIDEO];When candidate-Trump promised he would put America first, he wasn t kidding. President Trump posted a powerful video on Twitter tonight, blasting Democrats for putting their desire to give illegal aliens amnesty before the safety and security of American citizens, as they demand amnesty as a condition for funding the government.Here is the transcript of President Trump s powerful speech that he posted on Twitter only minutes ago: Help me, Dad! Those were the last words spoken by Kate Steinle, as she lay dying on a San Francisco Pier. A precious young American woman, killed in the prime of her life. Kate s death is a tragedy that was entirely preventable. She was shot by an illegal alien, and a 7-time convicted felon, who had been deported 5 times, but he was free to harm an innocent American, because our leaders refuse to protect our border, and because San Francisco is a sanctuary city.In sanctuary states and cities, innocent Americans are at the mercy of criminal aliens because state and local officials defy federal authority and obstruct the enforcement of our immigration laws. Last week, in a final injustice, Kate s killer was acquitted of all of most serious charges, yet one more reason why Americans are so upset by sanctuary cities and open-border politicians who shield criminal aliens from federal law enforcement and all of the problems involved with the whole concept of a sanctuary city. They re no good!We mourn for all of the American families of all backgrounds, who will have any empty seat at Christmas this year because our immigration laws were not enforced. No American should be separated from their loved ones because of preventable crime committed by those illegally in our country. Our cities should be sanctuaries for Americans, not for criminal illegals. Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress not only oppose our efforts to stop illegal immigration, and crack down on sanctuary cities, now they are demanding amnesty as a condition for funding the government, holding troop funding hostage, and putting our national security at risk. We cannot allow it. Every Senator and Congressman will have to make a choice, do they want to protect American citizens, or do they want to protect criminal aliens? Reasonable people can disagree on many things, but there can be no disagreement that the first duty of government is to serve, protect and defend American citizens. People can have different views on the technical details of budget policy or transportation, but no one who serves in office should disagree that our highest priority must be the safety and well-being of our nation s citizens. Thank you. Watch:No American should be separated from their loved ones because of preventable crime committed by those illegally in our country. Our cities should be Sanctuaries for Americans not for criminal aliens! pic.twitter.com/CvtkCG1pln Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2017;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JAMES WOODS Has Social Media In Tears After Tweeting HILARIOUS Videos Of Two of The Most Ignorant Liberals In America [VIDEOS];Conservative Hollywood actor, James Woods, is known for his brilliant wit and his great sense of humor on Twitter, but today he really outdid himself when he posted two hilarious videos on Twitter, proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that liberalism really is truly a mental disorder. His first video was a retweet of Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson, who, in 2010 actually questioned Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, about a proposal to move 8,000 Marines from the Japanese island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. Johnson expressed his concern over moving too many US troops to the very small island of Guam because too many people on the island may cause it to tip over and capsize .Here is the transcript of the unbelievable exchange between Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson and Admiral Rober Willard:Johnson: This is a[n] island that at its widest level is what twelve miles from shore to shore? And at its smallest level uh, smallest location it s seven miles between one shore and the other? Is that correct?Willard: I don t have the exact dimensions, but to your point, sir, I think Guam is a small island.Johnson: Very small island, about twenty-four miles, if I recall, long, twenty-four miles long, about seven miles wide at the least widest place on the island and about twelve miles wide on the widest part of the island, and I don t know how many square miles that is. Do you happen to know?Willard: I don t have that figure with me, sir, I can certainly supply it to you if you like.Johnson: Yeah, my fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.Willard: We don t anticipate that the Guam population I think currently about 175,000 and again with 8,000 Marines and their families, it s an addition of about 25,000 more into the population.How the Admiral was able to keep a straight face during this question and answer session is beyond our comprehension. Here is what Woods had to say about the tweet from Based Monitored : My favorite #LiberalTribute video ever My favorite #LiberalTribute video ever https://t.co/afHPsh9flM James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 10, 2017Here is the video originally tweeted by Based Monitored :Rep. Hank Johnson just called the FBI Director his homeboy ridiculous.But it gives me an excuse to show everyone how dumb he truly is. Here s a video of him thinking that the island of Guam will tip over and capsize . pic.twitter.com/bk7lEB60yz Based Monitored (@BasedMonitored) December 7, 2017Next up on Woods liberal hit list was Chelsea Handler. Recently, during an interview, the not-funny comedian and unhinged liberal Chelsea Handler, called Sarah Huckabee Sanders a harlot with summer-whore lipstick and a trollop. James Woods didn t waste any time reminding Twitter users about the disgusting video of Chelsea Handler, where she s swimming in the water while actor and comedian Jason Biggs is standing above her on a boat, peeing all over her face. Handler seems unfazed by Biggs peeing on her face, as she looks around smiling, and acting like a human urinal.Woods tweeted about Handler: This person berates the character of @SarahHuckabee on a daily basis. #ChelseaHandlerHumanUrinalThis person berates the character of @SarahHuckabee on a daily basis. #ChelseaHandlerHumanUrinal https://t.co/Y07Q0Rmcw6 James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) December 9, 2017Only 3 days ago, Handler doubled down on stupid, when she tweeted about having to evacuate her California home due to the wildfires. Handler, who claims she was fleeing from her home, took time from her daring escape, to tweet about her unfortunate circumstance, and to blame President Trump for setting the world on fire , because well, why not?Just evacuated my house. It s like Donald Trump is setting the world on fire. Literally and figuratively. Stay safe everyone. Dark times. Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) December 6, 2017;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GERMANY: Afghan “Teen” Refugee Who RAPED and KILLED Female Med Student and Refugee Volunteer Is Actually 33-Years Old…And There’s MORE!;On September 5, 2017, the Daily Mail reported:Afghan asylum seeker accused of raping and murdering EU official s teenage daughter attacked her to satisfy his sexual urges before leaving her unconscious in a river to drown Hussein Khavari, 22, who claims to be from Afghanistan has been accused of ambushing Maria Ladenburger, 19, as she cycled home after a party, raping her and then drowning her in Freiburg, Germany last October.He was linked through his DNA to medical student Maria, who volunteered at various shelters that house migrants in her spare time in Freiburg.Hussein claimed to be Afghani but the court heard that there is evidence he is Iraqi. And his claim to be 17 at the time of the offense was disputed by a specialist saying he was at least 22. According to Bild newspaper, during a morning session of hearings in which press and public were excluded, he claimed to be 19.He said he claimed to be 16 upon his arrival in Germany in 2015 because the situation is better here for underage migrants. The court must decide if he is to be tried as a juvenile or an adult.A murder conviction as a juvenile would mean a maximum ten-year jail term, as an adult a possible life sentence.As it turns out, the fake teenager who admitted to raping and murdering the actual teenager, is pretty far removed from his teenage years. According to the Voice of Europe, the Afghan refugee, who is now on trial for the rape and murder of the medical student Maria Ladenburger in October 2016, is older than previously thought.Hussein Khavari entered Germany in November 2015 without identity papers. He told authorities that he was born in 1999 in Afghanistan and that his father was killed during the war.But it now appears that his father is still alive. According to German media source, Bil.de, his father said his son was born in 1984 and that he is 33-years-old.The Local Germany says about it: Prosecutors were able to track down Hussein K. s father when they came across a contact on his mobile phone. The defendant told them that they could contact his mother on the number. But when an interpreter called the number in the presence of two judges, the person who picked up was his father .Maria Ladenburger s father is a senior legal adviser to the European Commission in Brussels. Maria herself was volunteering as a refugee worker in various shelters and asylum homes. ;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“NEVER-TRUMP” BUSTED! Former Jeb Bush Staffer ADMITS To Planting Roy Moore Story In Washington Post;Just another member of the swamp who s about to be sucked down the drain In 2015, leftist rag Politico called it a Big hire when Jeb Bush landed Tim Miller as his top communications aide.Jeb Bush plans to name Tim Miller, executive director of America Rising PAC, as his top communications aide, Republican sources told POLITICO on Friday.Miller initially will be a senior adviser to Bush s Right to Rise PAC, and is expected to become communications director if Bush launches his campaign. Kristy Campbell, who has been the PAC s chief spokesperson, likely will be national press secretary of the campaign, or have some senior communications adviser role.Now, thanks to Big League Politics, every member of the GOP can see the type of traitors to the Republican Party Jeb Bush hired to work on his campaign.A Friday Big League Politics report claims Tim Miller, a Republican operative prominent in the Never Trump movement, helped pitch the Washington Post story in which the first allegations of sexual misconduct nearly 40 years ago were made against Alabama GOP senatorial nominee Roy Moore.The report contains screenshots of what are alleged to be text messages between Miller and conservative publisher Charles C. Johnson of GotNews.com. The texts show Miller insulting Judge Moore s fitness for office and bragging about how Beth is good to work with. He is implied to be referring to Beth Reinhard, one of the two authors of the original Washington Post story.Reinhard, before joining the Washington Post, worked at the Wall Street Journal during the 2016 GOP presidential primaries as the embedded reporter covering the Bush campaign. She, therefore, likely had regular interaction with Miller since at least 2015.Miller, who served as Jeb Bush s communications director in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, categorically denies any involvement in the Washington Post story. He told Breitbart News:I had no involvement in pitching the Washington Post story or any others where women spoke out about Judge Moore. Moore allies have tried to pitch this to 10+ outlets, conservative and mainstream, who have all rejected the story after examining the facts because there is no truth to it.Big League Politics Editor-in-Chief Patrick Howley makes his case as follows:These text messages reveal a few things: the Republican Establishment s relationship with the Post s anti-Moore coverage, the cunning of writer Charles Johnson in trapping Miller, and former Bush staffer Miller s cluelessness about how to conduct himself in the world of political subterfuge. Miller denied to BLP that he was involved in the Washington Post story or any others where women spoke out about Judge Moore, but the text messages below leave no doubt as to his involvement [sic][.]During and after the 2016 primaries, Miller was one of the leading voices against eventual GOP nominee Donald Trump. He played a role in the decidedly unsuccessful attempt by Never Trumpers to disregard the will of Republican voters and deny Trump the nomination through the use of convention rules.Miller remains an outspoken critic of Trump and consistently opposes Republicans of the pro-Trump or populist-nationalist bent. He has frequently appeared on cable news programs as an anti-trump Republican voice and now is one of far-left Salon.com s 25 favorite conservatives. Miller has aggressively campaigned for Judge Moore s liberal Democratic opponent Doug Jones. on Twitter, announcing last month that he had donated money to Jones:I just donated to a Democrat for the first time in my life if any of yall want to do so as well. Enough is enough. https://t.co/YlDXTXSnyJ Tim Miller (@Timodc) November 21, 2017 ;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! Lindsey Vonn Gets Hit With Big Dose Of Karma After Trash-Talking President Trump On CNN;Only 3 days ago, Lindsey Vonn told CNN that she wouldn t be representing President Trump in the 2018 Olympics. She also boldly proclaimed that she wouldn t visit the White House if she were invited. I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremonies. I want to represent our country well, and I don t think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that. Is it really appropriate for an Olympic athlete representing the United States of America to make her performance in the Olympics about her hate for Donald Trump?Was it really necessary for Vonn to spew her hate on a network that is not only being called into question for their inaccurate (fake news) reporting on a regular basis but is also known for their extremely unfair coverage of our President?Well, after her miserable showing in Switzerland yesterday, it looks like Lindsey needs to focus a little more on her skiing technique, and a little less on her anti- Trump rhetoric.According to the AP Lindsey Vonn finished a World Cup super-G in extreme pain Saturday and was treated by race doctors for a back injury.The American star crossed the finish line in obvious distress, in 24th place and 1.56 seconds behind the winner, and slumped to the snow.She compressed her back on the fifth gate, according to U.S. Ski & Snowboard.Vonn stayed in the finish house to be treated, and one hour later limped slowly into a waiting car to be driven from the St. Moritz course.Minutes earlier, her father Alan Kildow told The Associated Press his daughter was OK. In a race interrupted several times by gusting crosswinds, Vonn wore the No. 4 bib and was left standing at the start gate during the first delay of about three minutes. She stayed warm with a thick jacket draped on her shoulders.The surprise winner was Jasmine Flury of Switzerland, who had a career-best World Cup finish of fifth before Saturday.Perhaps the outspoken Lindsey Vonn will get her wish and not have to represent the President or decline his invitation to the White House ;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING NEWS: Woman Who Narrated BRUTAL TORTURE, Scalping of Mentally Disabled Young Man On Live Facebook Video Gets DISTURBING Sentence;When four Chicago thugs videotaped the brutal tortured a young mentally disabled man they kidnapped in a live Facebook video, Americans were stunned. Almost immediately after the discovery was made, the spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department called it a stupid mistake .The superintendent of the building where the torture took place, shrugged off the horrific event by simply saying, Kids make stupid mistakes. It looks like not much has changed in the attitudes of Chicago officials tasked with holding criminals accountable, especially in the case of four repulsive young thugs, who scalped the young 18-year old man, made him drink from a toilet, forced him to yell, F*ck Trump and F*ck white people , and repeatedly hit him while his hands were tied and his mouth was covered with duct tape.The video is hard to watch but is an honest look at the anti-Trump and racist monsters who ve been given a pass by our media. Go HERE to watch the disturbing video. (***Warning***the video is very graphic).It was just announced that in a plea deal, Brittany Covington, 19, the narrator of the video, who had been held at the Cook County Jail without bond since January, will be the first of the four to be released. In a shocking case of injustice, the plea deal states that Covington will remain on probation for four years and is barred from contact with 2 of the other 3 co-criminals, Cooper and Hill, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.Other terms of the plea agreement bars Covington from using social media for four years, the Cook County State s Attorney s Office tells CBS 2.Brittany Covington narrated Facebook Live video of the others tormenting an 18-year-old white man in the apartment she shared with her sister.The victim, a Crystal Lake man who had been classmates with Hill at a west suburban alternative high school, appears terror-stricken as he was taunted with racially-tinged insults including calling him a supporter of then-President-elect Donald Trump. Hill and Cooper allegedly cut his clothing with a knife, punched and kicked him. In another video, the man was forced to drink water from a toilet bowl.In one of the videos the defendants allegedly posted on Facebook, a man threatened the victim with a knife. Someone told the victim, kiss the floor, b -! and nobody can help you anymore. At one point, someone told the victim, say I love black people. When a woman who lived in the building complained about the the noise and threatened to call the police, the sisters kicked in the woman s door in anger and took some of her property, police said. While the others had run to the other apartment, the victim managed to escape, and police found him, wearing shorts and his torn clothing in the January weather, a block away. Streamwood police officials say the victim s parents had made a missing-persons report after their son didn t return home.During the Streamwood police investigation, the victim s parents started receiving text messages from persons claiming to be holding him captive, officials said.Plea negotiations are ongoing with her three co-defendants, all of whom also have been in custody. CBS2 ;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;IT’S WORSE THAN THEY THOUGHT: Doctors Discover US Embassy Victims In Cuba Have BRAIN ABNORMALITIES…”Never Before Seen Illness”;In a last-minute attempt to create a legacy for himself, Obama traveled to Cuba to hang out with Raul Castro and prove to Americans how easy it is to form relations with brutal dictators of oppressive regimes. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, it was not his finest moment, and his attempt to normalize relations with Cuba didn t work out so well for members of our US Embassy, who have now been diagnosed with brain abnormalities , after experiencing some sort of attack that many experts suspect was inflicted with a sonic weapon. The left rejoiced when President Barack Obama decided to normalize relations with the Cuban regime, reopened our embassy, and allowed travel to the island.But most of that has come to a screeching halt after mysterious attacks on our diplomats, which have caused serious health problems. The State Department has decided to recall all non-essential personnel from the embassy and urged Americans not to travel to Cuba. Legal InsurrectionThe leftist Boston Globe publication gushed over Barack Obama s historic visit to Cuba.When President Obama travels to Cuba on Sunday with his family, he is making a vital foreign policy statement, and not just about the small island off the tip of Florida. The bigger principle at play is the value of diplomatic engagement over isolation, cooperation versus Cold War thinking. The visit the first time a sitting American president has been to Cuba in almost 90 years is a manifestation of the hope that democratic ideals can spread over time once normalized relations are established.Obama will not only be meeting with President Raul Castro, but also with middle-class Cubans, entrepreneurs, and political dissidents, a symbolic yet reassuring move on behalf of democracy and fairness. Already the opening of relations is bearing fruit, with new businesses sprouting and a flourishing tourism industry taking root.Legal Insurrection The attacks on American officials at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, keeps getting stranger and stranger. The latest information revealed that doctors have found brain abnormalities in the victims. From The Associated Press:It s the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.Some of the victims woke up in the middle of the night and heard disembodied chirping in the room, or a strange, low hum, or the sound of scraping metal. Others described how they felt a phantom flutter of air pass by as they listened. There are some victims that did not notice anything.But the victims felt the effects of these noises or non-noises 24 hours later. These symptoms included nausea, loss of hearing or sight, headaches, vertigo, and dizziness. Symptoms appeared to have gone away once the victims came back to America. At first officials and doctors believed a sonic weapon caused the issues. Now they don t know.The officials did not say if the doctors found these changes in all of the victims. Elisa Konofagou, a Columbia University biomedical engineering professor, told the AP that acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brain s white matter tracts and she would be very surprised if that is the cause of the abnormalities.From The Washington Post: Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness, the AP wrote, and expect to monitor the victims for the rest of their lives, although most have fully recovered from their symptoms by now.The physicians are working with FBI agents and intelligence agencies as they look for a source, and U.S. officials have not backed down from their accusations against the Cuban government, which denies any involvement despite a history of animosity between the two countries.In October, experts provided the mysterious noise to the Ap. It s high pitched, almost like nails on a chalkboard. They do not know what kind of mechanism produced this sound or who developed it. Those who heard a sound heard the same thing:Yet the AP has reviewed several recordings from Havana taken under different circumstances, and all have variations of the same high-pitched sound. Individuals who have heard the noise in Havana confirm the recordings are generally consistent with what they heard. That s the sound, one of them said.As the number of affected have risen, the State Department had no choice but to take action to protect our people. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson decided in late September to bring home all non-essential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Havana, thus cutting the staff by 60% and halt citizen travel to the island.A few days later, Tillerson decided to expel 15 diplomats from the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.Instead of a legacy of a great man who built much-needed bridges with legitimate foreign nations, Barack Hussein Obama, the community organizer turned President, is left with the legacy of creating the most divided United States of America since the Civil War. ;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukrainian author of Manafort op-ed says sought input to avoid errors;KIEV (Reuters) - The author of an article that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller believes Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort ghost-wrote in violation of a gag order said on Saturday he had sought input on the op-ed before publishing to avoid errors. On Friday, Mueller unveiled evidence against Manafort to convince a judge that he wrote the article to improve his public image. Manafort is facing charges as part of an investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The op-ed was published on Thursday in the English-language Kyiv Post under the byline of Oleg Voloshyn, a former spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry. In a telephone call with Reuters, Voloshyn said he wrote the article, but before publishing had shown it to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian whom Mueller alluded to in a filing earlier this week as having ties to Russian intelligence. Voloshyn said he had decided to write the article to correct misrepresentations of Manafort in the media without prejudicing the U.S. trial and had consulted Kilimnik, who is close to Manafort, to make sure the text was accurate. “I didn’t want to write any stupid things in it that would worsen his (Manafort’s) already difficult position,” Voloshyn said. “I sent the text to Kilimnik and it was Kilimnik’s idea to send it to Paul (Manafort) for a look.” “He (Kilimnik) sent it back to me with some comments and suggestions. Whether these were his comments and suggestions or Paul’s suggestions is not a question I can answer,” he said. Voloshyn said allegations of Kilimnik’s ties to Russia were groundless and that Kilimnik, whom Reuters has not been able to reach, did not want to talk to news media. Voloshyn said he was prepared to testify that he had no direct contact with Manafort in the run-up to the publication of the article, which praised Manafort’s work promoting European Union-Ukraine relations and said he lobbied for pro-Western values, not Russian interests. “In September or in the summer, when he started having problems, I sent him a letter of support. He did not respond,” Voloshyn said. On Monday, Mueller’s team had said in a court filing that they had been assured by Manafort’s counsel that they had taken steps to prevent the article from being published. Voloshyn told Reuters that he was not contacted by Manafort’s lawyers in an attempt to stop him from publishing it. “Who could forbid me?” he said. “What right does Mueller have to forbid me to do something?” Manafort’s attorney has acknowledged that his client helped edit Voloshyn’s article but denies he violated the gag order, saying an article published in a Ukrainian newspaper would not substantially prejudice the case in the United States. The charges against Manafort include conspiracy to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, who was ousted in 2014. All parties were ordered by the judge on Nov. 8 not to discuss the case in public or with the media in a way that could substantially prejudice a fair trial. Earlier this week, Mueller’s team discovered the draft op-ed was in the works and ordered Manafort’s lawyers to shut it down. ;politicsNews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump attends civil rights museum opening;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Johnson in Iran talks to lobby for jailed aid worker;DUBAI (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson flew to Tehran on Saturday to seek the release of a jailed British-Iranian aid worker. The Foreign Office said Johnson spoke frankly with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif about consular cases of dual nationals such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who Britain says was visiting family on holiday when she was jailed by Iran for attempting to overthrow the government. The case has taken on domestic political importance in Britain, especially since Johnson said last month that Zaghari-Ratcliffe trained journalists, which her employer denies. Johnson later apologized. Opponents have called for him to resign if his comments lead to her serving longer in prison. Johnson is also expected to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday to discuss bilateral and regional issues, a Foreign Office official said, during just the third visit by a British foreign minister to Iran in the last 14 years. Talks with Zarif were constructive , Johnson s office said, despite differences between the two countries. They both spoke frankly about the obstacles in the relationship, including the Foreign Secretary s concerns about the consular cases of British-Iranian dual nationals, a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said in a statement. The two-day visit takes place against a complex backdrop of historical, regional and bilateral tensions. Johnson stressed Britain s support for Iran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in the meeting, the spokeswoman said. International sanctions against Iran have only recently been lifted as part of the multilateral nuclear deal to curb Tehran s disputed uranium enrichment program. That deal is under threat after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to decertify Iran s compliance with its terms. Johnson told Zarif he believed the deal should be fully implemented. Johnson also met Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran s Supreme National Security Council, and parliament speaker Ali Larijani during the first day of his two-day visit, Iran s state news agency IRNA reported. The Foreign Office statement did not mention Zaghari-Ratcliffe by name, although Johnson has vowed to leave no stone unturned in Britain s efforts to free her. A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, she was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not the only dual national being held in Iran, but has become the most high-profile case. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. It says Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been on holiday and had not been teaching journalism in Iran. Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been told she will appear in court on Dec. 10, her husband Richard has said. The visit is a test of Johnson s ability to navigate a political landscape littered with potential pitfalls. Iran s 1979 Islamic Revolution turned it into a pariah state for most of the West and many Middle Eastern neighbors. Britain has voiced its continued support for the nuclear deal but is one of a number of Western powers voicing concerns about Tehran s destabilizing influence in the region. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech PM designate: EU should not push us over migrants - paper;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The designated Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said that the European Union should not push Czechs over their refusal to shelter asylum-seekers, because it could strengthen extremist parties in the country. The European Union s executive will sue Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the bloc s top court for their refusal to host asylum-seekers, Brussels said on Thursday. Babis, whose government is due to be appointed by President Milos Zeman on Dec. 13, repeated his country s stance on migrants. The (European) Commission can withdraw the charge at any moment. We have to negotiate on this and to offer different models, like guarding the borders or help to other countries. But we don t want any refugees, Babis said in an interview published on Saturday by the Pravo daily paper. He will represent his country at the EU summit on Dec. 14 and Dec. 15, where European leaders will discuss migration. The Czechs have declined to shelter asylum-seekers despite an overall drop in arrivals due to tighter borders and projects beyond the EU s frontiers to discourage migration to Europe. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) cases could lead to financial penalties but may take months, or years, to conclude. Babis said that by pushing on with the case, the EU might embolden extremist elements. The EU has to understand, that if it won t listen to our proposals, then the influence of extremist parties like (Germany s) AfD or (Czech) SPD will grow, whose strategy actually is to destroy the EU, he said. Despite his ANO party winning the parliamentary election by a landslide in October, it is unclear whether Babis will be able to win a confidence vote for his government by mid-January as required by the constitution. He also faces the threat of prosecution in connection with his business interests. The far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party and the Communists have lent ANO support in several initial votes in parliament in return for committee posts for their members, raising the prospect that they may have some kind of agreement to back ANO. But Babis reiterated in the Pravo interview that there was no deal in place and he would talk to all parties to either back the cabinet or abstain from the vote to help ANO win. ;worldnews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump urges Alabama voters to back Roy Moore;PENSACOLA, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday voiced support for Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican Senate candidate dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct, during a rally that foreshadowed themes for next year’s midterm elections. Trump, speaking to a stadium of supporters in Pensacola, Florida, near the Alabama state line, touted his work to quit or renegotiate trade deals and called on Democrats to support a measure that would avert a government shutdown. Trump highlighted familiar themes from his political rallies: criticism of violence in Chicago, which he suggested was less safe than Afghanistan, as well as his commitment to improving U.S. border security and to crack down on immigration. But he made a point of using the rally to note his desire to get Moore elected. “Get out and vote for Roy Moore,” Trump said ahead of Tuesday’s election. The race in the heavily Republican state heated up last month with accusations that Moore sexually assaulted or behaved inappropriately with several women when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Moore, a conservative Christian and former state judge, denies the allegations, and Trump formally endorsed him on Monday. “We cannot afford - this country, the future of this country - cannot afford to lose a seat in the very, very close United States Senate,” Trump said. Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate. Trump said Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, is a “total puppet” of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. “He will never, ever vote for us. We need somebody in that Senate seat who will vote for our Make America Great Again agenda,” Trump said. Moore’s race against Jones, a former attorney, has come amid an array of allegations of sexual misconduct that have brought down men in media, politics, and entertainment. U.S. Senator Al Franken said on Thursday he would resign in the coming weeks after allegations of sexual misconduct. Franken said it was ironic that he was leaving while Moore campaigned with backing of his party and Trump, who last year faced allegations of sexual misconduct, remained in the Oval Office. Trump’s support for Moore puts him at odds with other lawmakers in the Republican Party, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In his speech, Trump did not directly address the sexual harassment allegations against Moore, but he mocked the fact that one of Moore’s accusers acknowledged on Friday that part of an inscription that she had said Moore had written in her high school yearbook was in fact penned by her. “Did you see what happened today? You know, the yearbook? ... There was a little mistake made - she started writing things in the yearbook,” Trump said. The accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, said last month Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 and he was a prosecuting attorney in his 30s. Moore denies ever having known Nelson. Nelson says the yearbook entry shows that they were acquainted. Nelson’s attorney Gloria Allred said on Friday a handwriting analysis had concluded that Moore had signed the yearbook. The White House reiterated on Friday that Moore had denied the accusations against him. “We find these allegations to be troubling and concerning, and they should be taken seriously. Roy Moore has also maintained that these allegations aren’t true, and that should also be taken into account,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters on Air Force One during Trump’s flight to Florida. After initially abandoning Moore, the Republican Party resumed contributing funding to his election effort after Trump’s endorsement. ;politicsNews;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP CALLS OUT Washington Post #FakeNews Reporter For Posting Fake Pictures Of Rally Hours Before It Started…Posts Actual Pictures Of Packed Stadium;Washington Post reporter took to Twitter to post an image of the venue where Trump was to appear in several hours. The only problem is, the Washington Post reporter didn t say the image was taken several hours before President Trump appeared on stage.Here is Dave Weigel s #FakeNews post, that he has since deleted:As someone who attended Trump s final campaign rally, the night before the election in Grand Rapids, MI, I can attest to the incredible amount of security Trump supporters must go through before entering the venue. Trump supporters were lined up for miles to get into the event we attended, and after several hours, many of his supporters were seen trickling in, hours after the event started, after waiting to get through security..@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017Here are a few of the pictures Trump posted in his tweet above to show the actual size of the crowd: After the Washington Post reporter was outed by President Trump, for lying on Twitter about the size of Trump s crowd at his rally, he apologized:Sure thing: I apologize. I deleted the photo after @dmartosko told me I'd gotten it wrong. Was confused by the image of you walking in the bottom right corner. https://t.co/fQY7GMNSaD Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 9, 2017President Trump responded to Dave Weigel s apology on Twitter. Trump called for his firing for pushing #FakeNews on Twitter..@daveweigel of the Washington Post just admitted that his picture was a FAKE (fraud?) showing an almost empty arena last night for my speech in Pensacola when, in fact, he knew the arena was packed (as shown also on T.V.). FAKE NEWS, he should be fired. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017Many of Trump s supporters came to his defense on Twitter as well, posting images of a packed stadium for everyone to see:Here s what the line outside of the Trump rally actually looked like:HAPPENING NOW!Trump Rally Pensacola!pic.twitter.com/549Oq74upD TRUMP News 24/7 (@MichaelDelauzon) December 8, 2017Here are several shots of the Pensacola venue from inside:STADIUM PACKED at Trump Rally in Pensacola, Fl!We aren't going ANYWHERE! We are just getting started .again! Make America Great Again #ThingsITrustMorethanCNN #ResistanceIsImportant #TrumpRally pic.twitter.com/61RcSUG2dO Kambree Kawahine Koa (@KamVTV) December 9, 2017For those saying Pensacola Bay Center was empty tonight for Trump Rally pic.twitter.com/zZqVYK8xIf Bard Law (@TwoLameDucks) December 9, 2017Crowds gather for Trump Rally in Pensacola today!! pic.twitter.com/eRJy92nz6m ssd (@Pismo_B) December 8, 2017A video view from inside the Pensacola Trump rally tonight, as the president talked about illegal immigration pic.twitter.com/VoPbEBqijE David Martosko (@dmartosko) December 9, 2017;left-news;09/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Violence flares at protest near U.S. Embassy in Lebanon;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese security forces fired tear gas and water canons at protesters near the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon on Sunday during a demonstration against President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Protesters, some of them waving Palestinian flags, set fires in the street and threw projectiles toward security forces that had barricaded the main road to the U.S. Embassy in the Awkar area north of Beirut. Security personnel used force to disperse most of the protesters and detained some, witnesses said. Addressing the protesters, the head of the Lebanese Communist Party Hanna Gharib declared the United States the enemy of Palestine and the U.S. Embassy a symbol of imperialist aggression that must be closed. Protesters burned U.S. and Israeli flags. We came to say to the U.S. Embassy that it is an embassy of aggression and that Jerusalem is Arab and will stay Arab, said Ahmad Mustafa, an official in the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was among the demonstrators. Trump s recognition of Jerusalem has infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies, who say it is a blow to peace efforts and risks causing further unrest in the Middle East. Late on Saturday Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo urged the United States to abandon its decision and said the move would spur violence throughout the region. Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be left to be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. The government of Lebanon, which hosts about 450,000 Palestinian refugees, has condemned Trump s decision. Lebanese President Michel Aoun last week called the move a threat to regional stability. The powerful Iran-backed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah on Thursday said it backed calls for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel in response to the U.S. decision. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also called for a protest against the decision in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yazidis caught in 'political football' between Baghdad, Iraqi Kurds;SINJAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Since Iraqi forces pushed the Kurds out of the Yazidis mountainous heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in October, residents are wondering what could happen to them next. Food and money are in short supply since aid organizations stopped delivery after Iraq s advance. Buildings collapsed in the fighting and of those still standing, many are marked with bullets and littered with IEDs. Water and electricity barely work. The Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions, have long been viewed with suspicion and repeatedly persecuted by other groups in Iraq. In 2014, more than 3,000 were killed by Islamic State militants in a campaign described by the United Nations as genocidal. Now the land they have lived on for centuries is caught up in a tug of war between Baghdad and Iraq s Kurds, who had controlled it since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. We re trapped in this game of political football, between Iraq and the Kurds, said a Yazidi resident of Sinjar, Kamal Ali. But neither of them cares about our future. The militias have hoisted Iraq s tricolor flag over government buildings and any remaining Kurdish flags have been scrawled over with the words Iraq and Allahu Akbar , the blazing sun at its center scribbled over in black marker. Sinjar is politically important because it s in the disputed territories, ethnically mixed areas across northern Iraq, long the subject of a constitutional dispute between Baghdad and the Kurds, who both claim them. Sinjar fell under the Kurds control, despite lying outside Iraqi Kurdistan s recognized borders. Baghdad did little to challenge the arrangement until its October offensive, launched to punish the Kurds for their Sept. 25 independence referendum. Iraqi forces have seized the disputed areas the Kurds had expanded into including Sinjar. The referendum reignited long-simmering tensions over geographic dominance in the oil-rich north, between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), who fought side by side to defeat Islamic State. The Yazidis are divided about what should happen now. Some are glad the Kurds have gone and see an opportunity for increased autonomy now that they are under federal control following the offensive by Iraq s security forces last October. Kurdish forces handed over Sinjar without a fight to the Lalesh Brigades, a Yazidi militia backed by Baghdad s Shiite paramilitary forces (PMF). Most Yazidis speak a Kurdish dialect, but many don t see themselves as ethnically Kurdish. We re happy the Kurds have left, said Abu Sardar, a 47-year-old Yazidi man. We re Yazidis we re not Kurds, we do not want to be part of Kurdistan. Like others, Abu Sardar complained that the Kurds forced him to vote in the Kurdish referendum, accusations the KRG denies. He returned two months ago to the ruins of his home in the Sinuni district of Sinjar and expressed bitter disappointment that little had changed since he left in 2014: hospitals and schools remain shuttered while the city is still mostly rubble. He hopes that Baghdad and its militias will rebuild Sinjar. Others lament the Kurds departure. The KRG and allied Yazidi groups hold former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki responsible for the campaign by Islamic State. They say his troops desertion of Mosul allowed militants to capture billions of dollars in weapons later used to attack the minority. Yazidi commander Qassem Shesho says Iraq s government is too sectarian and dislikes the Yazidis as much as Islamic State. Like many others, he blames the Kurds for the attack by Islamic State. But they re all we ve got, he said. Shesho is allied to Iraqi Kurdistan s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, even though the Kurds cut his fighters salaries after the Lalesh Brigades took over Sinjar. Some days, residents say, there are only bones in Sinjar. Nearly 50 mass graves have been uncovered outside the town since 2014. Sinjar is a city of ghosts, said the Lalesh Brigades leader Ali Serhan Eissa, also known as Khal Ali. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled the militant onslaught and headed for Mount Sinjar. Of those who didn t reach the mountain, about 3,100 were killed with more than half shot, beheaded, burned alive and disposed of in mass graves. Others were sold into sexual slavery or forced to fight, according to a report by the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. Some are still on the mountain, about to spend a third freezing winter in tents. Before the attack, Sinjar was home to about 400,000 people mainly Yazidis and Arab Sunnis. Only 15 percent of Yazidis have returned home, according to humanitarian estimates. Most Yazidis remain in IDP camps in the Kurdistan region, along with most of the area s displace Sunnis. Aid workers worry the camps will be closed if tensions between Baghdad and the Kurds flare up. The presence of fighters from Turkey s separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) further complicates the picture. Many Yazidis credit them with opening up a land route to allow those stranded on Mount Sinjar to escape the militants in 2014. The PKK entrenched itself in the community, even creating a local unit, the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) which controls multiple checkpoints around Sinjar. Turkey and neighboring Iran are closely watching the power shift in Sinjar. Tehran wants to secure this north-western region of Iraq as it sits on the border with Syria, while Turkey wants the region free of the outlawed PKK. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan says over 300 Baloch separatist militants surrender;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - More than 300 Baloch separatist militants have surrendered over the past few months, Pakistani government officials said, after a ceremony to mark the downing of guns and militants return to civilian life. The surrenders are part of government efforts to end a decade-long insurgency in the southwestern Baluchistan province by offering amnesties and financial rewards to soldiers and commanders to help them re-integrate into the society. In a high-profile ceremony on the lawn of the Baluchistan provincial assembly in the western city of Quetta, the regional capital, some 313 militants from three separatist movements handed over weapons to Nawab Sanaullah Zehri, the Chief Minister of the province. I will hug all that who believe in integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan but will not tolerate (those) who will challenge the writ of the State, Zehri said at the ceremony on Saturday. Pakistani government officials say about 2,000 militants have surrendered over the past 18 months. In April, the government held a similar ceremony where about 400 militants handed over their guns. The latest ceremony saw surrenders by 143 militants from the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), 125 fighters from the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and 17 from Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), according to officials. Under the agreement, foot soldiers are given 500,000 rupees ($4,700) and the top-level commanders receive about 1 million rupees ($9,500) to help them and their families build a life after militancy. Baluchistan s government and the powerful army, which has a huge say in the running of Pakistan s poorest province, tout the amnesties as an effective way to reduce the power of separatists who accuse Islamabad of exploiting Baluchistan. While security has improved in Baluchistan over the past few years, critics and human rights groups say the army has crushed dissent and free speech, while separatists accuse security officials of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances. The military denies abuse claims. Pakistan s desire to dismantle the insurgencies has grown in urgency amid vast Chinese investment from Beijing s Belt and Road infrastructure splurge. China has frequently urged Pakistan to improve security, especially in Baluchistan. A new transport corridor (CPEC) through Baluchistan, linking Western China with Pakistan s Arabian Sea port of Gwadar, is due to become operational in late 2018. Separatists have vowed to disrupt CPEC, and earlier this week China warned its citizens of a security threat inside Pakistan. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands of Romanians protest against proposed judicial reforms;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Thousands of Romanians rallied in the capital Bucharest and other cities on Sunday, protesting against plans by the ruling Social Democrats (PSD) to overhaul the country s judicial system which is seen as undermining efforts to combat corruption. The PSD-led coalition, which holds a strong majority in parliament, is debating proposed new legislation which the European Commission and thousands of magistrates have said would put the judicial system under political control. Sunday s protests mark three weeks since a special parliamentary commission began debates on the bill, which the ruling party aims to approve by the end of this year. The commission is headed by PSD veteran, former justice minister Florin Iordache who had to quit in February after a decree on corruption that he drafted, triggered the biggest rallies since the 1989 anti-communist Romanian revolution. Thieves and mobsters nest, , United we save Romania, shouted thousands of protesters braving gusting winds, in front of the government s headquarters. About 10,000 are estimated to have rallied in Bucharest and overall, 20,000 across the country overall. Bucharest s Victory Square witnessed large street protests at the start of the year following attempts by the ruling Social Democrats to decriminalize some graft offences and has been a gathering place for largely peaceful protests ever since. Contested elements of the bill include changes to a judicial inspection unit which oversees the conduct of magistrates, the way in which chief prosecutors are appointed and giving the president the right to vet prosecutor candidates. Transparency International ranks Romania among the European Union s most corrupt states and Brussels keeps Romania s justice system under special monitoring. In a Nov. 15 report the European Commission said reform of the justice system has halted this year and challenges to judicial independence remain a persistent source of concern. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nepal's Oli, most likely next PM, wins parliament seat;KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Former Nepali prime minister K.P. Oli on Sunday looked set for a return to power after winning his seat in parliament and his Communist UML party and Maoist allies on course to win a majority. Counting is still under way following an election on Thursday that capped a near-decade long transition to democracy from monarchy and a civil war in which more than 17,000 people died. Oli, 65, has vowed to form a government that lasts its full five-year term, something no prime minister has achieved since parliamentary democracy was established in 1990. His campaign has called for the extension of the Chinese railway network into Nepal and implement of hydroelectric, airport and other infrastructure projects to create jobs. We can expect Oli to lead a stable government with the Maoists as strong allies, said Bipin Adhikari, a constitutional expert. Once there is political stability he can implement a development agenda and attract foreign investment. Instability has spooked investors, curbed growth, spurred corruption and slowed reconstruction after a 2015 earthquake that killed 9,000 people. Nepal is a natural buffer between China and India, with the ruling Nepali Congress party considered pro-India and the left alliance seen closer to China. If Oli leads the new government, he will be forced to be pragmatic in maintaining a geo-political balance with both, said Kunda Dixit, editor of the weekly Nepali Times. Final election results are expected to take about a week, election officials said. Home to Mount Everest, Nepal is one of the world s poorest countries. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian stabs Israeli in Jerusalem;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Philippines defied experts' advice in pursuing dengue immunization program;MANILA (Reuters) - As she announced in January 2016 that the Philippines would immunize one million children with a new dengue vaccine, the nation s then health secretary Janette Garin boasted it was a world-first and a tribute to her country s expertise in research. At the time, it seemed the Philippines could be on the cusp of a breakthrough to combat a potentially lethal tropical virus that had been endemic in large parts of the Southeast Asian nation for decades. Almost two years later, the program lies in tatters and has been suspended after Sanofi Pasteur, a division of French drug firm Sanofi, said at the end of last month the vaccine itself may in some cases increase the risk of severe dengue in recipients not previously infected by the virus. Documents reviewed by Reuters that have not been disclosed until now, as well as interviews with local experts, show that key recommendations made by a Philippines Department of Health (DOH) advisory body of doctors and pharmacologists were not heeded before the program was rolled out to 830,000 children. After Garin s announcement, the Formulary Executive Council (FEC) of advisers urged caution over the vaccine because it said its safety and cost-effectiveness had not been established. After twice meeting in January, the panel approved the state s purchase of the vaccine on Feb 1, 2016 but recommended stringent conditions, minutes of all three meetings show. Based on the available scientific evidence presented to the Council, there is still a need to establish long-term safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, the FEC told Garin in a letter on that day. The letter was reviewed by Reuters. The FEC said Dengvaxia should be introduced through small-scale pilot tests and phased implementation rather than across three regions in the country at the same time, and only after a detailed baseline study of the prevalence and strains of dengue in the targeted area, the FEC letter and minutes of the meetings said. The experts also recommended that Dengvaxia be bought in small batches so the price could be negotiated down. An economic evaluation report commissioned by Garin s own department had found the proposed cost of 1,000 pesos ($21.29) per dose was not cost-effective from a public payer perspective, the minutes from the meetings reveal. For reasons that Reuters was unable to determine, these recommendations were ignored. The DOH purchased 3 million doses of Dengvaxia in one lot, enough for the required three vaccinations for each child in the proposed immunization program and paid 1,000 pesos per dose, a copy of the purchase order reviewed by Reuters shows. It did conduct a limited baseline study in late February and March 2016, but the survey looked at common illnesses rather than the prevalence of dengue, according to guidelines issued by Garin s office at the time and reviewed by Reuters. Garin, who was part of the government of former president Benigno Aquino and replaced when President Rodrigo Duterte took power in June, 2016, did not respond to requests for comment on why she ignored the local experts recommendations. A physician, Garin has defended her conduct and a program that she said was implemented in accordance with WHO guidance and recommendations . I understand the concern, she told Philippine TV station ABS-CBN on Friday. Even us, we re also very angry when we learned about Sanofi s announcement about severe dengue. I m also a mother. My child was also vaccinated. I was also vaccinated. DOH spokesman Lyndon Lee Suy also did not respond to text messages or questions emailed to him. Sanofi Philippines declined comment on the Philippines government decision. However, Dr. Su-Peing Ng, Global Medical Head of Sanofi Pasteur, told Reuters: We communicated all known benefits and risks of the vaccine to the Philippines government. Rontgene Solante, former president of the Philippines Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, said health officials were motivated to end the debilitating impact of dengue on the Philippines, where there are about 200,000 reported cases each year and many more unreported. Over 1,000 people died of the disease in the country last year. Two months after the FEC wrote to the health secretary, the DOH began immunizing one million students around the age of 10 in all three target areas in April 2016, in accordance with its original plan but at odds with the FEC s recommendations to conduct a slow roll-out of the vaccine. The usual process for the DOH that has protected our children for so many decades was not followed. That s a fact, said Susan Mercado, a former Philippines health department undersecretary and former senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO said in April 2016 that the Philippines campaign appeared to meet its criteria for using Dengvaxia because the targeted regions had high levels of dengue exposure;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Qatar goes ahead with $6.7 billion Typhoon combat jets deal with UK's BAE Systems;LONDON (Reuters) - BAE Systems and Qatar have entered into a contract valued at around 5 billion pounds ($6.7 billion) for the country to buy 24 Typhoon combat aircraft, the British defense group said on Sunday. The company said delivery was expected in late 2022 and that the contract was subject to financing conditions and receipt by the company of first payment, which are expected to be fulfilled no later than mid-2018 . At a ceremony in Doha British Defence Minister Gavin Williamson and Qatari Minister of State for Defence Affairs Khalid bin Mohammed al Attiyah, oversaw the signing of a deal which the British minister called a massive vote of confidence, supporting thousands of British jobs and injecting billions into our economy . We are delighted to begin a new chapter in the development of a long-term relationship with the State of Qatar and the Qatar Armed Forces, and we look forward to working alongside our customer as they continue to develop their military capability, Charles Woodburn, BAE s chief executive, said in a statement. In September Qatar s defense minister was reported to have signed a letter of intent to buy the 24 Typhoon jets from BAE in a move that could anger other Gulf countries boycotting Doha. ($1 = 0.7472 pounds) ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Grounded ferry in Calais refloated, passengers disembarked;LILLE, France (Reuters) - A P&O ferry with more than 300 people on board which had run aground in Calais harbor in northern France has been refloated and all passengers have disembarked, a P&O Ferries spokesman said on Sunday. The Dover-bound Pride of Kent had run aground on a sand bank around midday as she tried to leave the Calais harbor in stormy weather. Nobody was injured. The ship, supported by two tug boats, was refloated as the tide came in early evening and all passengers have disembarked. The spokesman said most passengers would continue their journey to the UK on other P&O ferries tonight, while some would stay overnight in Calais on P&O s expense. UK-based P&O operates 20 ferries which carry nine million passengers per year between France, Belgium, The Netherlands and across the Irish Sea. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands of Saakashvili supporters stage protest against Ukraine president;KIEV (Reuters) - Several thousand people marched through central Kiev on Sunday to protest against the detention of Ukrainian opposition figure Mikheil Saakashvili and call for the impeachment of President Petro Poroshenko. Saakashvili, president of his native Georgia for nine years until 2013, moved to Ukraine after a popular uprising there and served under Poroshenko as a regional governor from 2015-2016, before falling out with the Ukrainian leader. He was detained in Kiev on Friday, following a dramatic standoff earlier in the week where he clambered on a roof to avoid law enforcement and was freed from a police van by his supporters. He accuses the Ukrainian authorities of widespread corruption. Prosecutors accuse him of assisting a criminal organization, charges he says were trumped up to undermine his political campaign against Poroshenko. A large number of police in riot gear guarded Sunday s rally, which was peaceful in contrast with protests last week that resulted in clashes between Saakashvili s supporters and law enforcement. A lot of people are looking for the changes. It is more difficult when Mikheil is not with us, his wife, Sandra Roelofs, said in a speech at the rally. We remember his words: When they catch me, you continue despite anything, because Ukraine wants changes, Ukraine has to become a better country , she said. Protesters shouted Shame and Impeachment as they marched to Maidan square, the scene of the 2013-14 pro-European protests that ousted a Moscow-backed president and installed a new leadership that promised to eliminate entrenched corruption. A few snowballs were thrown at the windows of a branch of Roshen, the confectionary business owned by Poroshenko, who was a wealthy chocolatier before he went into politics. Saakashvili has launched a hunger strike to protest against his detention, which will last until a court rules on whether to release him under house arrest. The saga has attracted international attention to Ukraine at a time when the authorities face a chorus of criticism from reformers and foreign donors over perceived backtracking on reforms and attacks on anti-corruption institutions. While Saakashvili has a core base of supporters, he enjoys limited support across Ukraine. Only 1.7 percent of voters would support his party, the Movement of New Forces, in elections, according to an October survey by the Kiev-based Razumkov Centre think-tank. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan, U.S., South Korea to hold missile tracking drill amid North Korea crisis;TOKYO (Reuters) - The United States, Japan and South Korea will hold two days of missile tracking drills starting on Monday, Japan s Maritime Self-Defence Force said, as tensions rise in the region over North Korea s fast-developing weapons programmes. The United States and South Korea conducted large-scale military drills last week, which the North said made the outbreak of war an established fact . North Korea has fired missiles over Japan as it pursues nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. sanctions and international condemnation. On Nov. 29, it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile which it said was its most advanced yet, capable of reaching the mainland United States. This week s exercises will be the sixth drills sharing information in tracking ballistic missiles among the three nations, the defence force said. It did not say whether the controversial THAAD system would be involved. The installation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea has angered China, which fears its powerful radar could look deep into China and threaten its own security. North Korea s missile test last month prompted a U.S. warning that North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. The Pentagon has mounted repeated shows of force after North Korean tests. The United States has also pressured China and other nations to cut trade and diplomatic ties with North Korea, as part of international efforts to dry up Pyongyang s illegal cash flows that could fund its weapons programmes. On Sunday, South Korea said it would impose new unilateral sanctions on 20 institutions and a dozen individuals in North Korea, barring any financial transactions between those sanctioned and any South Koreans. This unilateral sanction will prevent illegal funds flowing to North Korea and contribute to reinforce international communities sanctions against North Korea, South Korea s finance ministry said in a statement. The move is largely symbolic as trade and financial exchanges between the two Koreas have been barred since May 2010 following the torpedoing of a South Korean warship, which the North denied. Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said the ministry plans to include 730 million yen ($6.4 million) to help build a new missile interceptor system, the Aegis Ashore, in its next fiscal year budget request, public broadcaster NHK reported. North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, Japan and the United States and says its weapons programmes are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. ($1 = 113.4800 yen) ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte to seek one-year extension of Mindanao martial law;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte will ask Congress to extend martial law in the volatile southern island of Mindanao to quell an insurgency, cabinet officials said on Sunday. Duterte placed the restive region of 22 million people under military rule on May 23 after Islamist militants took over parts of the southern Marawi City in what was the Philippines biggest security crisis in years. Martial law is due to expire on Dec. 31. The Philippine leader will formally request on Monday a one-year extension of martial law, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea told reporters. The 23-member Senate and the 296-member House of Representatives will vote once they convene in joint session. Lawmakers are due to go on recess on from Dec. 16 to Jan. 14, 2018. Military rule should be extended in Mindanao given threats from Maoist guerrillas, Islamist militants and separatist groups, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said. Militants linked to Islamic State, which tried to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia by capturing parts of Marawi City, are strengthening their recruitment programs, Andanar said. There were intelligence reports saying they are planning to attack another city, Andanar told a radio interview. The request comes nearly two months after Duterte declared the liberation of Marawi City. More than 1,100 people - mostly militants - were killed and 350,000 displaced by the Marawi unrest. Continuing martial law beyond the initial 60-day limit requires lawmakers approval, but the constitution does not restrict how long it can be extended. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German intelligence unmasks alleged covert Chinese social media profiles;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s intelligence service has published the details of social network profiles which it says are fronts faked by Chinese intelligence to gather personal information about German officials and politicians. The BfV domestic intelligence service took the unusual step of naming individual profiles it says are fake and fake organizations to warn public officials about the risk of leaking valuable personal information via social media. Chinese intelligence services are active on networks like LinkedIn and have been trying for a while to extract information and find intelligence sources in this way, including seeking data on users habits, hobbies and political interests, they said. Nine months of research had found that more than 10,000 German citizens had been contacted on the LinkedIn professional networking site by fake profiles disguised as headhunters, consultants, think-tankers or scholars, the BfV said. There could be a large number of target individuals and fake profiles that have not yet been identified, they added. Speaking in Beijing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the accusations were baseless. We hope the relevant German organizations, particularly government departments, can speak and act more responsibly, and not do things that are not beneficial to the development of bilateral relations, Lu said. Among the faked profiles whose details were published were that of Rachel Li , identified as a headhunter at RiseHR , and an Alex Li , a Project Manager at Center for Sino-Europe Development Studies . Many of the profile pictures show stylish and visually appealing young men and women. The picture of Laeticia Chen , a manager at the China Center of International Politics and Economy was nicked from an online fashion catalogue, an official said. A Reuters review of the profiles showed that some were connected to senior diplomats and politicians from several European countries. There was no way to establish whether contacts had taken place beyond the initial social media add . The warning reflects growing concern in European and western intelligence circles at Chinese covert activities in their countries and follows warnings from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency over attempts by the economic giant s security services to recruit U.S. citizens as agents. The BfV invited concerned users to contact them if they encountered social media profiles that seemed suspect. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Anti-Semitism has no place in Germany, minister says after Israeli flags burned;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said there was no place for anti-Semitism in Germany after demonstrators angered by U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel burned Israeli flags in Berlin. On Sunday, about 2,500 people demonstrated in Berlin against Trump s decision and one Israeli flag was burned, police said, adding that investigations into 11 people had been launched, with one of those related to the flag burning. On Friday, hundreds of people gathered outside the U.S. embassy in the German capital for Day of Rage protests. Police said later on Twitter that they had detained 10 people during the protest and that 12 criminal charges had been brought - including for burning Israeli flags. Maas told Bild newspaper s Monday edition: Any kind of anti-Semitism is an attack on everyone. Anti-Semitism must never be allowed to have a place (in society) again. Anti-Semitism remains a very sensitive issue in Germany more than 70 years after the end of the Nazi-era Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed. Germany regards itself as one of Israel s closest allies. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told Bild that while criticism of Trump s decision was understandable, people had no right or reason to burn the Israeli flag, stir up hatred against Jews or question Israel s right to exist. He said whoever did that was taking a stand not only against Israel but also against the German constitution and Germany would not tolerate that. Gabriel said Germany only permitted peaceful demonstrations and would not allow conflicts in which people were prepared to use violence to be brought to Germany from other countries. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nobel peace laureate group urges nuclear powers to adopt ban-the-bomb treaty;OSLO (Reuters) - The leader of the group that won this year s Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday urged nuclear nations to adopt a United Nations treaty banning atomic weapons in order to prevent the end of us . The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded this year s Nobel Peace Prize by a Nobel committee that cited the spread of nuclear weapons and the growing risk of an atomic war. ICAN is a coalition of 468 grassroots non-governmental groups that campaigned for a U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by 122 nations in July. The treaty is not signed by - and would not apply to - any of the states that already have nuclear arms. Beatrice Fihn, ICAN s Executive Director, urged them to sign the agreement. It provides a choice. A choice between the two endings: the end of nuclear weapons or the end of us, she said in her speech at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. The United States, choose freedom over fear. Russia, choose disarmament over destruction. Britain, choose the rule of law over oppression, she added, before urging France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to do the same. Israel is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, although it neither confirms nor denies it. A moment of panic or carelessness, a misconstrued comment or bruised ego, could easily lead us unavoidably to the destruction of entire cities, she added. A calculated military escalation could lead to the indiscriminate mass murder of civilians. Fihn delivered the Nobel lecture together with Setsuko Thurlow, an 85-year-old survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and now an ICAN campaigner. Thurlow recalled on stage on Sunday some of her memories of the attack on Aug. 6, 1945. She was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 mile) from Ground Zero, she said. Most of her classmates, who were in the same room, were burned alive. Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen, she said. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the air. The United States, Britain and France sent second-rank diplomats to the Nobel ceremony, which Fihn earlier told Reuters was some kind of protest . Japan, which is the only country to suffer atomic bombings and now relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, has also not signed the treaty. In a statement late on Sunday, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono expressed respect for the efforts of atomic bombings survivors toward a nuclear-weapons free world. But he added: It is essential to steadily seek ways to advance nuclear disarmament realistically, while responding appropriately to real threats, including North Korea s nuclear and missile development programs. Graphic of Nobel laureates - tmsnrt.rs/2y6ATVW ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swedish PM condemns attempted arson attack at synagogue as three arrested;STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Three people were arrested early on Sunday after an attempted arson attack at a synagogue in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, prosecutors said. There were no reports of injuries and the fire did not reach the synagogue or an adjacent meeting house where Jewish youths had gathered when the attack took place late on Saturday, Swedish media reported. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a statement he was outraged by the attack. There is no place for anti-Semitism in Swedish society, he said in the statement, which also referred to a demonstration in the city of Malmo on Friday, at which Lofven said participants had incited violence against Jews. Swedish newspapers reported that around 200 people had attended Friday s demonstration at which some participants chanted anti-Jewish slogans, two days after the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The World Jewish Congress, which represents Jewish communities in 100 countries, also condemned the attack on the Swedish synagogue. The Swedish Security Service said it was helping the police in the investigation and was also trying to prevent new attacks. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq holds victory parade after defeating Islamic State;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi military parade in Baghdad s heavily fortified Green Zone celebrated final victory over Islamic State on Sunday, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi looking on as troops marched in formation, their bodies spelling victory day in Arabic. Abadi, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces, listened solemnly to Quranic verses from a chapter titled al-Nasr, meaning victory. Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert, marking the end of the war against the militants three years after they had captured about a third of Iraq s territory. The forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare. Watching the parade on Sunday, state television showed Abadi sat on a throne-like chair placed between two Iraqi flags with the country s official seal behind him, and with all other officials sat at a distance from him. Abadi declared Dec. 10 would be an annual national holiday. Fighter jets were seen and heard flying over Baghdad s skies. An announcer introduced various factions who took on Islamic State as troops marched, tanks rolled by and helicopters hovered, all brandishing Iraqi flags as Abadi stood up and waved. Those who fought were drawn from the army, air force, federal and local police, elite counter-terrorism forces, as well as Shi ite and Sunni paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. They received key air support from a U.S.-led global coalition. In his victory speech, delivered on Saturday, Abadi did not mention the Peshmerga, who played a big part in the fight against Islamic State. The central government in Baghdad is in conflict with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government after the latter unilaterally held an independence referendum in September. Instead Abadi hailed the Iranian-trained and backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a group of Shi ite militias, many of whom are loyal to Iran. He also said that the state should have a legitimate monopoly on arms, however. Disarming the PMF is seen as Abadi s greatest challenge after Islamic State s defeat. The man who many saw as weak and ineffectual when he took over in 2014 from a predecessor who was blamed for the Islamic State takeover now heads towards an election next year as the commander who freed Iraqi lands. Or as one Western diplomat described him - the most popular man in Iraq. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalan separatists to lose majority in tight election: poll;BARCELONA (Reuters) - Catalonia s independence movement could suffer a serious setback in elections this month, according to a poll published on Sunday, which suggests separatist parties will narrowly fail to secure a majority in the regional parliament. The three parties which supported Catalonia s frustrated push to split from Spain in October are seen as returning a total of 66 or 67 seats in the Dec. 21 election, just shy of the 68 seats they would need to control the regional parliament, according to the poll in Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. Unionist parties combined are also seen as falling short of an absolute majority, the poll finds, opening the door to a possible hung parliament with CatComu-Podem, the Catalan arm of the anti-austerity Podemos party, as a potential kingmaker. Market friendly unionist party Ciudadanos and two pro-independence parties, ERC and Junts per Catalunya, the party of former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, are in a dead heat to be the largest parliamentary force, according to the poll based on interviews between Dec. 4 and Dec. 7. Turnout for the election, which was forced by the central government in an effort to break the political crisis that seized the region in recent months, is predicted to reach a record 82 percent. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. agency to help Iraq recover from IS despite Trump aid cuts;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from three years of war against Islamic State despite President Donald Trump cutting the foreign aid budget, a senior official in its main government aid agency has said. Thomas Staal, the Counselor of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the agency would continue to provide basic humanitarian services and additional support for minority groups such as psychosocial support to those who suffered genocide, slavery, and gender-based violence. The budget that the president submitted included a 30 percent cut, but for Iraq actually we are looking at additional funding, especially for the victims of Islamic State, Staal told Reuters in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Trump staked out his position on foreign aid on the campaign trail, casting it as a waste of U.S. tax dollars. The White House proposed slashing the budget for foreign aid by a third. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over Islamic State on Saturday after Iraqi forces drove the last remnants of the group from the country, three years after the militants captured about a third of Iraq s territory. The war has had a devastating impact on the areas previously controlled by the militants. About 3.2 million people remain displaced, the United Nations says. The last estimate by Abadi put the cost of post-war reconstruction at $50 billion, a figure calculated before Iraqi forces retook Mosul, which severely damaged the biggest city in northern Iraq. The U.S. government has provided nearly $1.7 billion in humanitarian assistance for Iraq since the Islamic State takeover of the north in 2014, Staal said. That includes a total of $265 million donated to the United Nations Development Programme s Iraq stabilization fund in 2016 and 2017. USAID has asked UNDP to focus on the minority areas, said Staal, who met with Christian and Yazidi leaders during a five-day visit to Iraq. The primary request from everybody was security, said Staal, who also met with two young women who were sold into slavery by Islamic State fighters. In 2014, more than 3,000 Yezidis were killed by Islamic State in what the United Nations described as a genocidal campaign. Others were sold into sexual slavery or forced to fight. Iraq is exempted from Trump s policy of cutting aid because of the especially terrible plight experienced by Islamic State s victims, Staal said, but it was a short term focus. The long term solution is that the Iraqi government is going to have to provide services to people in a more effective, efficient way, he said. USAID is working directly with Iraqi ministries to train staff and improve efficiency, with procurement reform high up on the agenda, Staal said. Corruption is rife in all levels of government in Iraq, which in 2016 ranked 166 out of 176 countries in Transparency International s Corruption Perception Index. Abadi has repeatedly said that once Islamic State was beaten, fighting corruption would be his next focus. (The story was refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 2) ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras tribunal says partial vote recount shows same result;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras electoral tribunal said on Sunday that a partial recount of votes from the disputed presidential election showed broadly the same result as previously, giving the lead to current President Juan Orlando Hernandez. In the partial recount of 4,753 ballot boxes, the conservative Hernandez won 50.1 percent of the votes, against some 31.5 percent for his rival Salvador Nasralla from the center-left coalition Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship. The tribunal did not specify exactly how many votes from the Nov. 26 election were recounted. There are some 18,000 ballot boxes overall. Including all votes, Nasralla trails conservative Orlando Hernandez by 1.6 percentage points according to the official count, which has been questioned by the two main opposition parties and a wide swathe of the diplomatic corps. Observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) issued a series of recommendations this week to authorities including a recount of disputed ballots. What we can say is that the results of the recount are extremely consistent with what we had originally, David Matamoros, president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) said. The election has been plagued with problems since voting stations closed, sparking concerns of deepening political instability in the poor, violent Central American nation. The tribunal declared Nasralla the leader in an announcement on the morning after the vote, with just over half of the ballot boxes counted. However, it gave no further updates for about 36 hours. Once results then started flowing again, Nasralla s lead quickly started narrowing, sparking a major outcry. Since early December, the government imposed a curfew which is still in place in 5 of the country s 18 departments. Opposition parties on Friday presented formal requests to annul the election. On Sunday afternoon, opposition groups were expected to take to the streets to protest the results. The electoral tribunal has until December 26 to declare a winner. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican opposition leader Anaya to seek presidency in coalition;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican opposition leader Ricardo Anaya said on Sunday he would seek to win the presidency in a left-right alliance after stepping down as head of the conservative National Action Party (PAN). Anaya resigned as leader of the PAN on Saturday, a day after his party officially joined forces with the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Citizens Movement party in the For Mexico in Front coalition. If selected, Anaya will likely take on leftist former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and former Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, who is seeking the nomination for the ruling centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Meade, who has served in both PRI and PAN administrations, resigned as finance minister in November and PRI officials hope he will help the party recover from a spate of corruption scandals. This corrupt and inefficient PRI government has been an absolute national disaster, Anaya said on Sunday, adding that his own party did not make fundamental structural changes during its two presidential terms from 2000 to 2012. Anaya saw a split in his party in October when former first lady Margarita Zavala left to launch a bid for the presidency as an independent candidate. Zavala, the wife of former President Felipe Calderon, said she quit the PAN because the party base had been subordinated to the interests of its leadership. The left-right coalition on Friday presented its official request with the electoral institute to compete in the July 2018 vote. The group must still pick its leader, with Anaya, who had been leader of the PAN since 2015, considered the front-runner. Anaya, 38, has faced criticism in the Mexican press for his family s inexplicable level of wealth, although he denies any wrongdoing. In a voter poll published on Wednesday, Anaya came in second behind Lopez Obrador, who leads the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party, but ahead of Meade. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, who was seen as a contender for the coalition, said on Saturday he would not run and criticized what he said was an undemocratic selection process. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's conservatives choose leader to rattle Macron's perch;PARIS (Reuters) - In his first seven months in office, President Emmanuel Macron has faced little opposition. But on Sunday, the once-dominant Republicans, now the biggest opposition party in parliament, elected a new leader they hope will recover their voice. The conservatives ambitious new chief, 42-year old Laurent Wauquiez, is a hard-hitting critic of the 39-year-old centrist president, whom he dismisses as out of touch with rural France, weak on security and too much in favor of closer European integration. Wauquiez wants the party to pull its weight after months when internal divisions and the shock from failing to make the run-off in this year s presidential election held them back. Tonight, the Right is back! he told supporters. France needs the Right because the president of the Republic (Macron) is passive against crime ... and not firm enough against radical Islam, said Wauquiez, who wants to relaunch the Republicans by taking them further to the right. He won an overwhelming mandate with three quarters of the near 100,000 votes cast by party members on Sunday. Wauquiez bills himself as the champion of small-town, rural France - a France, he says, with which Macron has no connection as he pursues a start-up nation . While there are few policy parallels between the two men, Wauquiez and Macron actually have some traits in common. Both are younger than French political leaders usually are and are graduates from the country s top elite schools who promise to shake up the political establishment. Inside Macron s camp, some ministers have cautioned against underestimating the threat of Wauquiez. We need to be wary because he is very gifted, very strong and there s nothing he won t do. He will establish a violent fight, Gerald Darmanin, Macron s budget minister and former member of the Republicans, told the newspaper Le Monde. But Wauquiez s main challenge may well come from within. He inherits a party divided in its response both to Macron s poaching of party stalwarts and economic policy that encroaches on its turf. Moderate veterans, ill at ease with his wooing of far-right National Front voters, have warned they could leave the party if he does not water down his hardline views. And opinion polls show he is not popular with voters overall. Both far-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen have so far been viewed as stronger opponents to Macron, polls have shown. Now the hard part begins, said Jean-Daniel Levy, head of Harris Interactive pollsters. Wauquiez has time to turn the party around. French voters will next go to the polls only in 2019, for the European parliament election. The next presidential and parliamentary elections will be in 2022. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House: unfortunate that Palestinians declined meeting with Pence;WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - The White House said on Sunday it was unfortunate that Palestinians were declining to meet with Vice President Mike Pence during an upcoming trip to the region in the aftermath of President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. It s unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is walking away again from an opportunity to discuss the future of the region, but the administration remains undeterred in its efforts to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and our peace team remains hard at work putting together a plan, said Jarrod Agen, a deputy chief of staff and spokesman for Pence. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope prays for nuclear disarmament;MILAN (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Sunday called on world leaders to work in favor of nuclear disarmament to protect human rights, particularly those of weaker and underprivileged people. The pontiff said that there was a need to work with determination to build a world without nuclear weapons , speaking from the window of the papal apartment overlooking St. Peter s Square and citing his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Si (Praised Be). His remarks came on the day that the group which won this year s Nobel Peace Prize urged nuclear nations to adopt a U.N. treaty banning atomic weapons. With rising tensions between the United States and North Korea, the pope has repeatedly warned against the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of nuclear devices and has called for a third country to mediate the dispute. At his weekly Angelus prayer, Pope Francis added that men and women in the world had the liberty, the intelligence and the capacity to guide technology, limit their power, at the service of peace and true progress . Speaking aboard the plane back from his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, the pope suggested that some world leaders had an irrational attitude toward nuclear weapons. Last month he appeared to harden the Catholic Church s teaching against nuclear weapons, saying countries should not stockpile them, even for the purpose of deterrence. Pope Francis, a strong defender of environmental protection, also hoped that an upcoming Paris summit would adopt efficient decisions to contrast climate change. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya's opposition says postpones 'swearing-in' of alternative president;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya s opposition said on Sunday it had postponed plans to swear in its leader Raila Odinga as an alternative president, easing political tensions and opening a window for possible talks with the government of President Uhuru Kenyatta. Opposition coalition NASA had planned to publicly inaugurate Odinga at a rally on Tuesday, Kenyan independence day, in what the attorney general said this week would be an act of treason. Kenyatta was re-elected as Kenya s president with 98 percent of the vote in a repeat election held on Oct. 26 which Odinga boycotted. He had beaten Odinga in the original poll, held in August, which was nullified by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds following opposition allegations of vote-rigging and other malpractices. NASA said in a statement it would postpone the swearing-in after consultations and engagement with a wide range of national and international interlocutors . It did not specifically name any mediators involved in the talks. The coalition said it would be announcing a new date for the swearing in ceremony and the launch of its People s Assembly as well as a more vigorous and prolonged resistance . The plan to install Odinga as an alternative president had threatened to exacerbate rifts opened by an acrimonious election season that left more than 70 people dead in political violence. The United States had also urged opposition leaders to work within the law and avoid actions like the proposed inauguration ceremony. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron asks Netanyahu to make gestures to break peace impasse;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron told Israel s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday that he needed to make gestures to the Palestinians to enable to break the impasse between the two sides. Netanyayu was in Paris ahead of a meeting with EU foreign ministers on Monday when they will try present a unified front after U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While condemning all acts of terrorism against Israel, Macron said that he told Netanyahu that he was against Trump s decision, which was a dangerous threat to peace. I asked Prime Minister Netanyuhu to make some courageous gestures toward the Palestinians to get out of the current impasse, he said, suggesting that a freeze of settlement construction could be s first step. He reaffirmed that France believed that a two-state solution was the only viable option to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. European countries, like most nations, have criticized the Trump administration s decision last week which reversed decades of U.S. policy. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital, while the Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as capital of a future independent state. Most countries have maintained the position that decisions about Jerusalem s status should be left to future negotiations. The Trump administration argues that any future peace deal is likely to place Israel s capital in Jerusalem, and old policies need to be abandoned to revive the moribund peace process. Netanyahu responded to Macron by saying that once the Palestinians recognized the reality that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, it would enable peace efforts sooner. The most important thing about peace is first of all to recognize that the other side has a right to exist, he said. One of the manifestations of this refusal is the mere refusal to sit down with Israel. Here is the gesture I offer .. to Mr Abbas to sit down and negotiate peace. That s a gesture for peace. Nothing could be simpler, he said, referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Macron said that he did not expect any breakthrough in the short-term, but it was important to see what a proposed U.S. peace initiative expected early next year would look like before writing Washington off as a mediator in the conflict. I don t think we need more initiatives, Macron said, ruling out a new French mediation effort after holding a peace conference in Paris last January. When asked about discontent across the region over Trump s decision, including harsh criticism from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Netanyahu said he would not be given morality lectures by the Turkish leader. He said that many Arab nations were increasingly aligned with Israel to tackle Iran s regional threat. Many Arab countries recognize that Israel is not their enemy but their indispensable ally, he said. Countries in the region who do not have formal relations with us yet. Those can grow, but it doesn t mean there will be a formal peace without some progress with the Palestinians. Netanyahu said he sought to use closer ties with Arab countries to isolate extremists and counter Iran. What Iran is trying to do is to entrench itself militarily with land, air and naval forces in Syria with the express purpose of fighting and destroying Israel. We will not tolerate that and we back up our words with actions, he said. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt's Sisi invites Palestinian president to Cairo to discuss Trump's Jerusalem move;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Cairo on Monday to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a presidential statement said on Sunday. The statement said Sisi wanted to discuss ways to deal with the crisis in a manner that preserves the rights of the Palestinian people and their national sanctities and their legitimate right to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital . ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Johnson meets Iran president as he lobbies for jailed aid worker;DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held almost an hour of talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday after flying to Tehran to seek the release of a jailed British-Iranian aid worker. Both spoke forthrightly about the obstacles in the relationship and agreed on the need to make progress in all areas, said a spokeswoman for Britain s Foreign Office after Johnson concluded what was only the third visit to Iran by a British foreign minister in the past 14 years. The Foreign Office confirmed Johnson had raised consular cases of dual nationals during talks. These cases include Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who Britain says was visiting family on holiday in April 2016 when she was jailed by Iran for attempting to overthrow the government. The woman s husband later told Sky News that a court appearance scheduled in Iran for Sunday had been postponed. I think I am very optimistic today, Richard Ratcliffe said. He added that he hoped his wife would be home before Christmas but cautioned that there could still be setbacks. Without doubt having the foreign secretary there was a big thing. Without doubt the court case not happening is a big thing. There may be a number of big things that have to happen before she s home, but ... as I sit here I am a lot more optimistic than I was. Iranian state television had reported that bilateral relations, the nuclear deal and regional developments made up the axis of the talks , between the president and Johnson. TWO-DAY VISIT The case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe has taken on domestic political importance after Johnson said last month that she had been teaching journalists in Iran, which her employer denies. Johnson later apologized. Opponents have called for him to resign if his comments lead to her serving longer in prison. Johnson met Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran s Atomic Energy Organization earlier on Sunday and had talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday. The two-day visit took place against a complex backdrop of historical, regional and bilateral tensions. It has been a worthwhile visit and we leave with a sense that both sides want to keep up the momentum to resolve the difficult issues in the bilateral relationship and preserve the nuclear deal, the Foreign Office spokeswoman added. International sanctions against Iran have only recently been lifted as part of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal to curb Tehran s disputed uranium enrichment program. That deal is under threat after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to decertify Iran s compliance with its terms. Johnson told Zarif he believed the deal should be fully implemented. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not the only dual national being held in Iran, but has become the most high profile case. A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, she was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. It says Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been on holiday and had not been teaching journalism in Iran. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Brexit, UK aims for trade deal with EU that tops Canada pact;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is aiming to secure a comprehensive free trade deal with the European Union and wants it to be signed shortly after it leaves the bloc in 2019, Brexit minister David Davis said on Sunday. After securing an initial agreement on Friday to move Brexit talks to a second phase, Prime Minister Theresa May is keen to start discussing future ties with the EU, and especially the type of trading agreement to try to offer greater certainty for businesses. But despite Davis striking a confident tone, EU officials say they will only launch negotiations on a legally binding treaty after Britain leaves and becomes a third country , according to draft negotiating guidelines. It s not that complicated, it comes right back to the alignment point ... We start in full alignment, we start in complete convergence so we can work it out from there, Davis told the BBC s Andrew Marr show. The thing is how we manage divergence so it doesn t undercut the access to the market, he said, describing his preferred deal as Canada plus plus plus . The EU has been considering a post-Brexit free trade deal with Britain along the lines of one agreed last year with Canada. But the UK economy is nearly twice the size of Canada s and British officials have said that their current alignment with EU standards and much closer trading links with the continent give them scope for an even deeper relationship. May has been hailed by many in her deeply divided Conservative party for rescuing the agreement to unlock the Brexit talks by offering EU member Ireland and her allies in Northern Ireland a pledge to avoid any return of a hard border. By playing with the wording, May agreed that if the two sides failed to agree an overall Brexit deal, the United Kingdom would keep full alignment with those rules of the EU s single market that help cooperation between Ireland s north and south. Davis described the commitment as more of a statement of intent than a legally binding measure something that might reassure hardline Brexit campaigners who fear that it could imply that Britain was leaving the EU in name only. Despite last week s progress, May will enjoy little respite. The second phase of talks is expected to expose the rifts in her top team of ministers over what Britain should look like once it leaves the EU. On Saturday, environment minister Michael Gove, a Brexit campaigner, opened up the possibility of changing the terms of any agreement with the EU after Brexit if Britons felt that the deal had not reflected their demands to take back control . If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge, Gove wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain has ways to secure no hard border with Ireland post-Brexit, says minister;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has two proposals on how to secure a frictionless border with EU member Ireland after Brexit, a new customs partnership or a highly streamlined approach to customs, Northern Ireland minister James Brokenshire said on Sunday. We set out two proposals in relation to how we would deal with the issue of tariffs, how we would deal with those sorts of elements in relation to customs whether that be a new customs partnership where we would effectively apply a similar or the same tariff that the EU currently applies to goods coming into the EU, or a highly streamlined approach with effectively exemptions that would apply for small business, he told Sky News. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Implementation of U.S. decision on Jerusalem will not be easy, says Erdogan;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Decisions made at the approaching meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will show that U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital will not be easy to implement, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday. A spokesman for Erdogan on Wednesday had announced that the OIC would a hold an urgent meeting in Turkey on Dec. 13 to coordinate a response to the decision by the United States. The OIC, established in 1969, consists of 57 member states with a Muslim majority or a large Muslim population. We explained to all our interlocutors that the United States decision does not comply with international law, diplomacy or humanity, Erdogan said at a Justice and Development Party (AKP) assembly in Turkey s central province of Sivas, referring to phone calls he made to leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and the Pope. With the roadmap we will create during the OIC meeting, we will show that the decision will not be easy to implement, he said, adding that Turkey considers U.S. President Trump s Jerusalem announcement void. The Arab League, in a statement issued after an emergency session in Cairo on Saturday, called the announcement a dangerous violation of international law and said it would seek a U.N. Security Council resolution rejecting the U.S. move. The Arab League, which consists of Arabic-speaking nations, currently has 22 active member states. Trump s announcement has also upset U.S. allies in the West. At the United Nations, France, Italy, Germany, Britain and Sweden called on the United States to bring forward detailed proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement . Palestinians took to the streets after the U.S. announcement. Demonstrations also took place in Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Somalia, Yemen, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as outside the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Berlin police say bags of bullets found near Christmas market not linked to terrorism;BERLIN (Reuters) - There is no reason to suspect that two bags of bullets found near a Christmas market and mosque in western Berlin have anything to do with terrorism and the find was related neither to the market nor to the mosque, police said on Sunday. Asked about a possible link with terrorism, a police spokesman said: Not at all. Ammunition is always being found in Berlin, he added. Somebody was probably clearing their cellar out and found something from their grandfather. Germany is on high alert for militant attacks, nearly a year after a Tunisian Islamist rammed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 11 people as well as the driver. Earlier this month, experts made safe a device filled with nails that was delivered to a pharmacy near a Christmas market in the German city of Potsdam near Berlin. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel says it has destroyed Hamas attack tunnel from Gaza;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli forces on Sunday destroyed a significant cross-border attack tunnel from the Gaza Strip, which the military said was being dug by the enclave s dominant Islamist group, Hamas. The announcement, cleared by Israeli censors who had previously barred reports of detection work around the central Gaza frontier, followed a surge of Palestinian unrest in response to last week s U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. It also came as Palestinian factions tried to meet Sunday s deadline for an Egyptian-mediated handover of Gaza by Hamas to Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas after a decade s schism. A network of Gaza tunnels allowed Hamas gunmen to blindside Israel s superior forces during the 2014 war and the Israelis, with U.S. help, have since stepped up work on counter-measures. The tunnel destroyed on Sunday ran hundreds of meters into Israeli territory and, though unfinished, was a new project that showed a significant effort by Hamas , military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters. He did not elaborate on how Israel knew Hamas was responsible for the tunnel, which he said reached to within 1km (0.6 miles) of the nearest Israeli civilian community. Hamas did not respond immediately to a request for comment. The previous such announcement was on Oct. 30, when Israel blew up a tunnel dug by Islamic Jihad. In the process of that demolition, 10 gunmen from the group and another two from Hamas were killed - deaths that Israeli sources described as an unintended result of the passage s collapse within Gazan turf. Conricus said that to the best of our knowledge there were no such casualties on Sunday, though he added that the tunnels could be death traps for Gaza gunmen. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will continue to discover, expose and demolish these terror tunnels, he said. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Buoyed by mayoral votes, Venezuela socialists eye presidency race;CARACAS (Reuters) - President Nicolas Maduro has set his sights on Venezuela s 2018 presidential election after the ruling Socialist Party dominated mayoral polls with the help of a partial boycott by a divided opposition. Enjoying a political breather after a year of ferocious domestic protests and damaging foreign sanctions, the 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez said the government had won at least 90 percent of the 335 mayorships in Sunday s election. Latest official results gave him 21 of 23 state capitals as well as Caracas main district, with full results due later on Monday. The landslide win for the socialists was no surprise, given three of the biggest opposition parties did not field candidates. The elections left Maduro favorite to be the socialist candidate in next year s presidential race, despite the ambitions of rivals within government and an economic crisis that has pummeled the OPEC nation since his 2013 election. Let s get ready for 2018! he told cheering supporters in a Caracas square shortly before midnight on Sunday, next to a statue of Venezuela s independence hero Simon Bolivar. Maduro also declared fixing Venezuela s broken economy a priority. But opponents and even some government dissenters say it is his stubborn adherence to Chavez-era economic policies, such as currency controls, that is to blame for the crisis. Venezuela s 30 million people are enduring one of the worst economic meltdowns in recent Latin American history. Millions are skipping meals, missing medicines, and lining up for hours at shops during acute shortages and crippling inflation. Opposition parties said Sunday s vote was full of irregularities and meaningless, and reiterated demands for changes to the electoral system for the 2018 vote. What we saw yesterday was an electoral farce that in no way represents the will of the people, said Popular Will party leader Juan Andres Mejia, citing abuse of state resources and coercion of government employees to vote. MADURO WELL-POSITIONED FOR RE-ELECTION Three of the opposition coalition s main parties - Popular Will, Justice First and Democratic Action - boycotted Sunday s polls, saying the election board was a pawn of the government. But other opposition parties did put up candidates, adding to confusion and acrimony within opposition ranks. Maduro said the three abstaining parties should be banned from participating in future elections. That brought a rebuke from the U.S. State Department, which called his remarks another extreme measure to close democratic space in Venezuela and consolidate power in his authoritarian dictatorship. Venezuela s presidential election has traditionally been held in December, but there is speculation in political circles that it will be brought forward to the first half of 2018 so the socialists can take advantage of the opposition s disarray. Despite the regime s economic incompetence and the inherent weaknesses of Maduro s authoritarianism, he is well positioned to achieve re-election next year, said Nicholas Watson, of the Teneo Intelligence consultancy. With its most popular leaders barred - Leopoldo Lopez is under arrest and Henrique Capriles is prohibited from office - the opposition may struggle to find a flagbearer. Uniting parties and reigniting enthusiasm among despondent grassroots supporters will also be huge challenges. Street protests earlier in 2017 put pressure on Maduro and left 125 people dead. Foreign pressure hardened too, with U.S. President Donald Trump imposing sanctions on Venezuela for alleged government rights abuses and corruption. Yet after facing down demonstrators, pushing through a controversial legislative superbody in a July vote also boycotted by the opposition, and notching a majority in October gubernatorial polls, Maduro has ridden out the storm for now. I think the current government can fix things if they are allowed to get on with it, said mechanic Melix Jordan, 56, voting for the government in a rural part of Paraguana. Social discontent is running deep, however. There is no sign so far of an alternative presidential candidate, despite calls in some quarters for popular billionaire businessman Lorenzo Mendoza to run. My vote maybe doesn t change anything, said gardener Hector Machado, 64, who voted for the opposition in Tachira state. But I still have hope for something better next year. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government returns to Geneva talks, Western envoys skeptical;GENEVA (Reuters) - The Syrian government s delegation returned to Geneva on Sunday for the resumption of talks with United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura after more than a week s absence, but Western diplomats voiced scepticism about its willingness to engage. Bashar al-Ja afari, Syria s ambassador to the U.N. and chief negotiator in talks aimed at finding a political solution to end the nearly seven-year-old war, landed in a snowstorm on a flight from Beirut, a Reuters reporter on board said. Ja afari declined to comment. De Mistura convened an eighth round of separate talks with the government and unified opposition delegations on Nov. 28, focusing on constitutional reform as well as elections. But Ja afari arrived a day late and left after two days, saying the opposition had mined the road to the talks by insisting that President Bashar al-Assad could not play any interim role in Syria s political transition. De Mistura told reporters last Thursday that he would assess this week whether either side is trying to sabotage the process. The opposition has been extremely constructive and willing to get down to it, a senior Western diplomat said. They are in a difficult place while being criticized internally and pressured by the fact that the regime is bombing away in eastern Ghouta and other places. The diplomat told Reuters that the government s failure to return as scheduled on Dec. 5 had been a clear sign of not being interested in engaging in the political process . Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested holding a Syrian congress in the Russian city of Sochi early in 2018. Diplomats see his plan as a bid to draw a line under the war and celebrate Moscow s role as the power that tipped the balance of the war and became the key player in the peace process. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: SEAN HANNITY Offers To Step In After He Sees Heartbreaking Viral Video Of Young Boy Crying Over Being Bullied For His Appearance;What a brave boy and what a sad world we live in where adults would allow such a beautiful child to be repeatedly tortured by classmates, without stepping in and preventing it from happening. At the very least, our children should know that they are safe in the classroom, on the playground, and in the cafeteria, where they attend school. Students who are being bullied in school should know that they will be protected by teachers and staff who should be paying attention to the children who need them most. Where was the lunch staff when this young boy was being humiliated and bullied by classmates? Fat. Gay. Or just different from the crowd. These are the reasons children are being bullied sometimes to death in America s schools, with at least 14 students committing suicide in the past year alone. ABCKnox News The anti-bullying video of a Union County middle schooler went viral over the weekend, garnering the attention of the Tennessee Titans and the University of Tennessee Vols football teams.Kimberly Jones posted the video of her son, Keaton, on her Facebook page Friday shortly after 12:30 p.m. She said she had just picked Keaton up from school because he was too afraid to go to lunch as a result of bullying. For the record, Keaton asked to do this AFTER he had me pick him up AGAIN because he was afraid to go to lunch, Jones wrote in her Facebook post. My kids are by no stretch perfect, and at home, he s as all boy as they come, but by all accounts, he s good at school. Talk to your kids. I ve even had friends of mine tell me (their) kids were only nice to him to get him to mess with people. We all know how it feels to want to belong, but only a select few know how it really feels not to belong anywhere, she wrote.In the video, Keaton, crying in the passenger seat, describes having milk poured on him and ham put down his clothes. Just out of curiosity, why do they bully? What s the point of it? Keaton began. Why do you find joy in taking innocent people and finding a way to be mean to em? It s not okay. Keaton said kids at school make fun of his nose, call him ugly and tell him he has no friends.Watch:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PORTRAIT OF HILLARY Sets Off Security Dogs…Briefly Shuts Down Art Tent;A portrait of Punk Hillary set off two security dogs at an Art Miami tent we think they know a criminal when they see one. The truth is that the police still don t have an answer of on this mystery. We just want to know who would pay $4,000 for such a horrendous portrait of Crooked Hillary .Via Tampa Bay Times:When two security dogs reacted to a suspicious crate before an Art Miami tent opening early Saturday morning, Miami police officers briefly shut down the area for a few hours to investigate the possible threat.But when they opened up the offending crate, officers found something else instead: a punky portrait of Hillary Clinton in a studded jacket and shaggy pink haircut, in a neon picture frame to match.Fair director Nick Korniloff said that the two dogs reacted to the crate during a pre-show check shortly after 8 a.m., prompting organizers to clear the site. Both the Art Miami tent and a tent for Context, connected by a tunnel, were closed off. The package was then searched and the painting of the former Democratic presidential candidate was found inside.Police officers ran the 16 inch by 20 inch acrylic-on-wood artwork through an X-ray machine, which turned up no suspicious material. We had to err on the side of caution, Korniloff said. Both tents eventually reopened around 10 a.m.After the delay Saturday morning, both paintings were hung side-by-side in the Context tent, in a booth for a gallery called Spoke Art based in both New York and San Francisco.Gallery owner Ken Hashimoto said police still were unsure Saturday morning what about the art had caused the dogs to react.WE THINK THEY KNOW A CRIMINAL WHEN THEY SEE ONE READ MORE: TAMPA BAY;politics;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Maxine Waters Makes Teens Chant ‘Impeach 45′ at ‘Teen Vogue Summit’: ‘Let’s talk about it in church’ [Video];Shame on Teen Vogue! Maxine Waters was a guest of Teen Vogue and was interviewed about why she s calling on young teens to resist our president. This sick behavior by a grown woman smells like sedition. Just read the answer to the question below:Teen Vote asked: What advice would you give to burgeoning young activists who want to help the #resist movement and create effective political change? What can citizens do you help you as a congresswoman achieve change?MW: There are several things that can be done. I love that they dominate social media, and the way that they can communicate with people [by sharing] what I m doing and retweet what I m doing. Every time they bring another person in to listen and to read about what is going on, we gain another supporter, who not only can continue to speak up and convince other people that we have to bring down this president, but now I know they will become voters and that they re going to vote because they have investments in this political process. WE HAVE TO BRING DOWN THIS PRESIDENT Congresswoman Maxine Waters is desperate to Impeach 45, and she s pleading with teenagers to follow her example and push her political agenda in church, and everywhere else.Waters led a chant of Impeach 45 her rally cry to unseat President Trump at The Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles last weekend, before urging the mostly teenage female crowd to take on her cause and repeat her mantra everywhere they go. Impeach 45! That s right, Waters said. Let s sing that song all over this country wherever we are. Let s talk about it in the workplace, let s talk about it in our churches, let s talk about it with organized labor, let s get people coming to the forefront. Waters, 79, apparently believes that a mob of young girls, many not old enough to vote, chanting Impeach 45! will convince Republican lawmakers to reverse course on a plan to lower taxes for Americans, and to remove a president from their own party.So far, Waters calls for her colleagues in Congress to impeach Trump have fallen on deaf ears. Lawmakers voted 364-58 against a resolution to consider the move this week, Fox News reports.Read more: American Mirror;politics;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's Saleh buried in Sanaa with handful of relatives present: sources;DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemen s Houthi group has buried the body of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa, allowing only a handful of relatives to attend, sources from his General People s Congress (GPC) party said on Sunday. Saleh, 75, was killed by the Iran-aligned Houthis on Monday, after he had called for a new page in ties with a Saudi-led coalition that his supporters together with the Houthis had fought for nearly three years. A GPC source, who has asked not to be identified, said the Houthis allowed less than 10 people from Saleh s relatives to attend the night-time burial in the capital Sanaa, but gave no details on the exact location. GPC Secretary-General Aref al-Zouka, who was killed with Saleh, was buried on Saturday in his native al-Saeed district of Shabwa province in southern Yemen after the Houthis handed over his body to tribal leaders, media and GPC officials said. Relatives said on Thursday that Saleh s family had refused conditions demanded by the Houthis for handing over the body. Some said they wanted to bury the body in the courtyard of a mosque he had built near the presidential compound in southern Sanaa. Saleh ruled Yemen for 33 years before being forced to step down in 2012 in a Gulf-brokered transition plan following months of Arab Spring protests demanding democracy. He remained in politics as the head of the GPC, Yemen s largest political party, and in 2015 he joined forces with the Iran-aligned Houthis after they captured the capital Sanaa in a move that precipitated Saudi-led military intervention on the side of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: SEAN HANNITY Offers To Step In After He Sees Heartbreaking Viral Video Of Young Boy Crying Over Being Bullied For His Appearance;What a brave boy and what a sad world we live in where adults would allow such a beautiful child to be repeatedly tortured by classmates, without stepping in and preventing it from happening. At the very least, our children should know that they are safe in the classroom, on the playground, and in the cafeteria, where they attend school. Students who are being bullied in school should know that they will be protected by teachers and staff who should be paying attention to the children who need them most. Where was the lunch staff when this young boy was being humiliated and bullied by classmates? Fat. Gay. Or just different from the crowd. These are the reasons children are being bullied sometimes to death in America s schools, with at least 14 students committing suicide in the past year alone. ABCKnox News The anti-bullying video of a Union County middle schooler went viral over the weekend, garnering the attention of the Tennessee Titans and the University of Tennessee Vols football teams.Kimberly Jones posted the video of her son, Keaton, on her Facebook page Friday shortly after 12:30 p.m. She said she had just picked Keaton up from school because he was too afraid to go to lunch as a result of bullying. For the record, Keaton asked to do this AFTER he had me pick him up AGAIN because he was afraid to go to lunch, Jones wrote in her Facebook post. My kids are by no stretch perfect, and at home, he s as all boy as they come, but by all accounts, he s good at school. Talk to your kids. I ve even had friends of mine tell me (their) kids were only nice to him to get him to mess with people. We all know how it feels to want to belong, but only a select few know how it really feels not to belong anywhere, she wrote.In the video, Keaton, crying in the passenger seat, describes having milk poured on him and ham put down his clothes. Just out of curiosity, why do they bully? What s the point of it? Keaton began. Why do you find joy in taking innocent people and finding a way to be mean to em? It s not okay. Keaton said kids at school make fun of his nose, call him ugly and tell him he has no friends.Watch:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian Protesters Attack US Embassy in Lebanon;The US Embassy in Lebanon went on lock-down today after demonstrators gathered outside on Sunday morning, as Pro-Palestinian protesters showed their outrage over U.S. President Donald Trump s provocative decision to recognize illegally occupied Jerusalem as the Zionist entity s capital city. Evetns turned violent after protesters hurled projectiles at police, and also set fires to makeshift barricades erected on the street in front of the US Embassy secure compound, located north of Beirut, Lebanon.Protesters also reportedly burned US, Israeli flags and an effigy of US President Donald Trump.Later, angry protestors manged to pull down a portion of the front metal gates to the US Embassy.Lebanese security forces deployed tear gas and water cannons to try and repel angry mobs.Reuters reports: Late on Saturday Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo urged the United States to abandon its decision and said the move would spur violence throughout the region.Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be left to be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks.The government of Lebanon, which hosts about 450,000 Palestinian refugees, has condemned Trump s decision. Lebanese President Michel Aoun last week called the move a threat to regional stability.The powerful Iran-backed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah on Thursday said it backed calls for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel in response to the U.S. decision.Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also called for a protest against the decision in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday. STAY TUNED FOR UPDATESREAD MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Palestine FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Collins says undecided on final tax bill vote;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins, whose support was crucial in passing the Senate tax reform bill earlier this month, said on Sunday she has not yet decided whether she will back the final measure negotiated by House and Senate leaders. The moderate Republican from Maine has laid out conditions for her support of a final “conference committee” version of the tax proposal. They include assurances that federal Medicare payments will not be cut and that Republicans will support two separate health care bills aimed at reducing premium costs. Republican Senate leaders worked hard to get Collins’ support for the legislation, the largest change to U.S. tax laws since the 1980s that would slash the corporate tax rate. The bill would lower the rate to as low as 20 percent, which Republican leaders say would encourage U.S. companies to invest more and boost economic growth. Democrats say the proposed cuts are a giveaway to businesses and the rich, financed with billions of dollars in taxpayer debt. Collins’ vote was important since the Senate approved the bill by 51-49 vote after an 11th-hour scramble. With Republican Senator Bob Corker voting against the bill, there is little margin for losing support. “I’m going to look at what comes out of the conference committee meeting to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House bill. So I won’t make a final decision until I see what that package is,” she said on the CBS “Face the Nation” program on Sunday. If Collins and Corker vote against the final tax bill, leading to a 50-50 tie, Republican Vice President Mike Pence would cast the winning vote. But if more than two Republican senators vote no, it would fail. The House–Senate conference will hold an open meeting on Wednesday afternoon as it starts to reconcile differences. Collins voted for the Senate’s tax reform legislation after Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, promised to support legislation to prop up U.S. health insurance markets. But last week The Hill newspaper reported that House Speaker Paul Ryan told his staff that he wasn’t part of the deal that Collins brokered with Senate leaders. Collins said she is “absolutely confident” of the leaders’ support and both McConnell and Ryan have put in writing that they will not allow a 4 percent cut in Medicare payments to take effect. “I have read in correspondence that memorializes the agreement that the 4 percent cut in Medicare that could go into effect will not go into effect,” she said. She added that she has the support of President Donald Trump, with whom she has discussed the issue three times. “I have no reason to believe that that commitment will not be kept,” she said. ;politicsNews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian Protesters Attack US Embassy in Lebanon;The US Embassy in Lebanon went on lock-down today after demonstrators gathered outside on Sunday morning, as Pro-Palestinian protesters showed their outrage over U.S. President Donald Trump s provocative decision to recognize illegally occupied Jerusalem as the Zionist entity s capital city. Evetns turned violent after protesters hurled projectiles at police, and also set fires to makeshift barricades erected on the street in front of the US Embassy secure compound, located north of Beirut, Lebanon.Protesters also reportedly burned US, Israeli flags and an effigy of US President Donald Trump.Later, angry protestors manged to pull down a portion of the front metal gates to the US Embassy.Lebanese security forces deployed tear gas and water cannons to try and repel angry mobs.Reuters reports: Late on Saturday Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo urged the United States to abandon its decision and said the move would spur violence throughout the region.Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be left to be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks.The government of Lebanon, which hosts about 450,000 Palestinian refugees, has condemned Trump s decision. Lebanese President Michel Aoun last week called the move a threat to regional stability.The powerful Iran-backed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah on Thursday said it backed calls for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel in response to the U.S. decision.Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also called for a protest against the decision in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday. STAY TUNED FOR UPDATESREAD MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Palestine FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrats eye gains in Pennsylvania trial on 'goofy' gerrymandering;LOWER MERION, Pa. (Reuters) - In Pennsylvania state Senator Daylin Leach’s bid to win a seat vital to the Democratic Party’s chances in 2018 elections of taking control of the U.S. Congress, his opponents may not be his biggest obstacle. Leach is running in one of the country’s most gerrymandered congressional districts, one with such a twisting, winding shape that it has earned the derisive nickname “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.” The 7th congressional district has become a national poster child for critics of gerrymandering, the process by which one party draws district boundaries to ensure an advantage among voters. Democrats say the lines have helped Republicans like U.S. Representative Patrick Meehan, the four-term incumbent Leach seeks to unseat, to stay in office. That could soon change, however. On Monday in state court in Harrisburg, one of three lawsuits challenging those boundaries heads to trial. The outcome could shift several battleground districts in Pennsylvania and in turn boost the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, where they last held the majority from January 2007 to January 2011. The 7th district is so precisely engineered that at one point it narrows to the width of a single seafood restaurant, snaking past two other congressional districts so it can link two far flung Republican-leaning areas. “Three congressional districts all converge on this spot,” Leach said from the parking lot at Creed’s Seafood and Steaks last week, as cars whizzed overhead on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. “This is the sixth;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Roy Moore campaign casts Alabama race as referendum on Trump;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The campaign of Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for U.S. senator in Alabama who has been accused of sexual misconduct, appealed on Sunday to President Donald Trump’s supporters, saying a vote for Moore would be a vote for Trump’s agenda. In the final days before Tuesday’s special election, opinion polls show a tight race between Moore, a 70-year-old conservative Christian and former state judge, and Democrat Doug Jones, a 63-year-old former U.S. attorney. Dean Young, chief political strategist for Moore, cast Jones as a liberal who would vote against Trump’s priorities such as building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and cutting taxes. “If the people of Alabama vote for this liberal Democrat Doug Jones, they’re voting against the president who they put in office at the highest level,” Young told ABC’s “This Week.” “So it’s very important for Donald Trump. ... If they can beat him, they can beat his agenda, because Judge Moore stands with Donald Trump and his agenda.” Moore has been accused of sexual misconduct toward women when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, including one woman who said he tried to initiate sexual contact with her when she was 14. Moore has denied the misconduct allegations and said they were a result of “dirty politics.” He has said that he never met any of the women involved. Reuters has not independently verified any of the accusations. As the race tightens, Jones has cranked up his attacks on Moore over the allegations and made those charges central to his argument that Moore is an unsuitable choice. The effort by the Moore campaign to align itself as closely as possible with Trump raises the stakes for the president in the Alabama race. Trump has endorsed Moore and praised him on Friday at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, near the Alabama state line. The president’s support of Moore came despite efforts by other senior Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to distance themselves from Moore. Alabama voters went strongly for Trump in last year’s presidential election, favoring him by 62 percent to 34 percent over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Washington has been roiled by sexual misconduct scandals, with accusations leading to the resignations last week of three members of Congress. The growing wave of women reporting abuse or misconduct has brought down powerful men, from movie producer Harvey Weinstein to popular television personality Matt Lauer. Republican leaders have said that if Moore wins, he could face an immediate investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. Republican Richard Shelby, the senior U.S. senator from Alabama, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he did not vote for Moore and instead backed a write-in candidate. The editorial board of the AL.com website, which covers Alabama news, has endorsed Jones. In an editorial on Sunday, the website urged conservative voters in Alabama to follow Shelby’s lead and consider a write-in candidate if they did not want to vote for Jones. ;politicsNews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Haley: Women accusers should be heard, even if Trump is target;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that any woman who has felt violated or mistreated by a man has every right to speak up, even if she is accusing President Donald Trump. “Women who accuse anyone should be heard,” Haley said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “They should be heard, and they should be dealt with.” Washington has been roiled by sexual misconduct scandals, with accusations leading to the resignations last week of three members of Congress. The growing wave of women reporting abuse or misconduct has brought down powerful men, from movie producer Harvey Weinstein to popular television personality Matt Lauer. Haley, discussing that cultural shift, applauded the women who have come forward: “I’m proud of their strength. I’m proud of their courage.” Asked how people should assess the accusers of the president, Haley said, it was “the same thing.” More than 10 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct before he was president. While filming a segment of the television program “Access Hollywood,” he talked about kissing and groping women. Trump has denied the misconduct allegations, although he apologized for his comments, which he called “locker room” talk. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Thursday that sexual harassment allegations against Trump were addressed by the American people when they voted him into office in November 2016. Asked whether Trump’s election settled the matter, Haley said: “That’s for the people to decide. I know that he was elected, but women should always feel comfortable coming forward, and we should all be willing to listen to them.” On Tuesday, voters in the heavily Republican state of Alabama will cast their ballots in a race involving Republican Roy Moore, a former state judge, and Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney. Moore has been accused of sexual misconduct toward women when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One woman said he tried to initiate sexual contact with her when she was 14. Reuters has not independently verified the accusations, which Moore, a conservative Christian, has denied. Many Republicans, including Alabama’s senior U.S. senator, Richard Shelby, have distanced themselves from Moore. But Trump has endorsed him, saying he wants to see the Senate seat stay in Republicans’ hands. ;politicsNews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; WATCH: Fox Host Calls For A ‘Cleansing’ Of The FBI, And To Arrest Everyone Investigating Trump; Judge Jeanine Pirro has continued her screamy ragey meltdown over special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into any possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The Fox host is trying to discredit the FBI and we re wondering where the Blue Lives Matter crowd is as she tries to take down law enforcement officials. On Saturday night, Pirro said there needs to be a cleansing at the FBI and the Department of Justice.Pirro claims that quite a few officials are protecting Hillary Clinton who does not hold public office or are destroying Donald Trump, and singled out Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, FBI official Peter Strzok, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, former FBI Director James Comey and you guessed it: Special Counsel Robert Mueller all of whom she says need to be arrested and placed in handcuffs. There have been times in our history where corruption and lawlessness were so pervasive, that examples had to be made, she shrieked. This is one of those times. There is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice it needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired. But who need to be taken out in cuffs, Pirro declared.Watch:.@JudgeJeanine: There have been times in our history where corruption and lawlessness were so pervasive, that examples had to be made. This is one of those times. pic.twitter.com/I2a1Uz5DGK Fox News (@FoxNews) December 10, 2017Pirro has been trying to work Trump up into a frenzy over Hillary Clinton by using conspiracy theories. She got so out of hand that even Trump became visibly agitated and walked out on her during her rant.Pirro s husband was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion in 2000. For that, he was sentenced to spend over two years locked up in prison for improperly deducting $1.2 million of his personal expenses as business write-offs while living a lavish lifestyle. Mr. Pirro was convicted on all 34 counts.Pirro split with her hubby after he admitted to fathering a child with another woman. He told the press and Pirro failed to give him enough attention. I know! Maybe if he changed his name to Hillary Clinton then he d get all the attention he needs.Pirro s hatred for Hillary Clinton goes way back and it appears to stem from jealousy.Maybe Pirro should heed the advice from Pirro in 2016 when she said, We cannot have a country run by a president subject to ongoing criminal investigations, potential indictments and never-ending hearings [W]hether she s indicted or even guilty, it doesn t matter. I ll just leave this here:When you re attacking FBI agents because you re under criminal investigation, you re losing https://t.co/SIoAxatCjp Sarah Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) November 3, 2016Image via screen capture. ;News;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel defence minister says hopes Palestinian protests waning;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday he hoped the violence that erupted in Palestinian protests against President Donald Trump s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital was abating. Our hope is that everything is calming down and that we are returning to a path of normal life without riots and without violence, Lieberman told Army Radio. Violence erupted for a third day on Saturday in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in response to Trump s announcement on Wednesday in which he overturned decades of U.S. policy towards the Middle East. Pre-dawn Israeli air strikes on Saturday killed two Palestinian gunmen after militants fired rockets from the enclave into Israel on Friday. However, street protests in Gaza and the West Bank were less intense on Saturday than on the previous two days and the military said there were no rocket launchings on Saturday night. Trump s recognition of Jerusalem has infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies, who say it is a blow to peace efforts and risks causing further unrest in the Middle East. Late on Saturday, Arab foreign ministers urged the United States to abandon its decision and said the move would spur violence throughout the region. Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory, and say the status of the city should be left to be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. The Trump administration says it is still committed to Palestinian-Israeli talks, that Israel s capital would be in Jerusalem under any serious peace plan, and that it has not taken a position on the city s borders. It says the moribund negotiations can be revived only by ditching outdated policies. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's Jerusalem decision could help militants: UAE's Sheikh Mohammed;DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital could provide a lifeline to militants after the setbacks they suffered this year, the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has warned. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan also said that the UAE hopes that Washington would reconsider its decision. Trump s announcement has sparked widespread opposition across the Middle East, with many warning it could affect Washington s role as a Middle East peace broker. The U.S. move could throw a lifebuoy to terrorist and armed groups, which have begun to lose ground in the region, said Sheikh Mohammed, speaking to a delegation from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The comments were carried in a report on state news agency WAM published late on Saturday. Iraq on Saturday declared final victory over Islamic State after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country, while the group is on the back foot in neighboring Syria, where an offensive backed by Russia has driven the group out of most of its strongholds. Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, to be the capital of a state they hope would be emerge from peace talks with Israel. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally and regards the area as part of its capital. Sheikh Mohammed said Trump s unilateral decision violates U.N. resolutions, and urged Washington to reconsider its move and work basically in an effective and neutral manner to draft true principles for peace that serve all and realize development and stability in the region , according to WAM. Turning to Yemen, Sheikh Mohammed said the Saudi-led Arab coalition, which includes the UAE, remained committed to a political solution to end the war that began in 2015 when the Iran-aligned Houthis advanced on the southern port city of Aden forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile. But he said that any solution will also not be at the expense of enabling a military militia that operates outside the state authority and posing a direct threat to the security and stability of the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the region at large. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab states urge U.S. to abandon Jerusalem move: statement;CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab foreign ministers on Sunday urged the United States to abandon its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, saying the move would increase violence throughout the region. The announcement by President Donald Trump on Wednesday was a dangerous violation of international law and had no legal impact, the Arab League said in a statement after several hours of meetings attended by all its members in Cairo. ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands of Indonesians again protest Trump's Jerusalem move;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Thousands protested outside the U.S. Embassy in the Indonesian capital on Sunday against U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, many waving banners saying Palestine is in our hearts . Leaders in Indonesia, home to the world s largest Muslim population, have joined a global chorus of condemnation of Trump s announcement, including Western allies who say it is a blow to peace efforts and risks sparking more violence. Thousands of protesters in Muslim-majority countries in Asia have rallied in recent days to condemn the U.S. move. Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state and say Trump s move has left them completely sidelined. Palestinian people were among the first to recognize Indonesia s independence in 1945, Sohibul Iman, president of the controversial Islamist opposition Prosperous Justice Party which organized the rally, told protesters. Indonesia should be more proactive in urging the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) member states and U.N. Security Council and the international community to respond immediately with more decisive and concrete political and diplomatic actions in saving the Palestinians from the Israeli occupation and its collaborator, the United States of America, Iman said. Indonesia as the world s largest Muslim country has the largest responsibility toward the independence of Palestine and the management of Jerusalem, he told reporters, adding that he hoped Indonesia would take a leading role within the OIC on the matter. Trump has disrupted world peace. It s terrible, one protester, Yusri, told Reuters. The decision was a major disaster for the Palestinian people, while the Palestinian s own rights have been taken away for a long time, said Septi, a student at the rally. Violence erupted for a third day in Gaza on Saturday in response to Trump s decision, which overturned decades of U.S. policy towards the Middle East. Indonesia s foreign minister left for Jordan on Sunday to meet the Palestinian and Jordanian foreign ministers to convey Indonesia s full support for Palestine . ;worldnews;10/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuelan migrants pose humanitarian problem in Brazil;BOA VISTA, Brazil (Reuters) - Last August, Victor Rivera, a 36-year-old unemployed baker, left his hometown in northern Venezuela and made the two-day journey by road to the remote Amazonian city of Boa Vista, Brazil. Although work is scarce in the city of 300,000 people, slim prospects in Boa Vista appeal more to Rivera than life back home, where his six children often go hungry and the shelves of grocery stores and hospitals are increasingly bare. I see no future in Venezuela, said Rivera, who seeks odd jobs at traffic lights in the small state capital just over 200 km (124 miles) from Brazil s border with the Andean country. Countries across Latin America and beyond have received a growing number of Venezuelans fleeing economic hardship, crime and what critics call an increasingly authoritarian government. The once-prosperous country, home to the world s largest proven oil reserves, is struggling with a profound recession, widespread unemployment, chronic shortages and inflation that the opposition-led Congress said could soon top 2,000 percent. At least 125 people died this year amid clashes among government opponents, supporters and police. As conditions there worsen, nearby cities like Boa Vista are struggling with one of the biggest migrations in recent Latin American history. With limited infrastructure, social services and jobs to offer migrants, Brazilian authorities fear a full-fledged humanitarian crisis. In Roraima, the rural state of which Boa Vista is the capital, the governor last week decreed a social emergency, putting local services on alert for mounting health and security demands. Shelters are already crowded to their limit, said George Okoth-Obbo, operations chief for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, after a visit there. It is a very tough situation. He noted the crush of migrants also hitting Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean country to Venezuela s north, and Colombia, the Andean neighbor to the west, where hundreds of thousands have fled. Not even Venezuela s government knows for certain how many of its 30 million people have fled in recent years. Some sociologists have estimated the number to be as high as 2 million, although President Nicolas Maduro s leftist government disputes that figure. Unlike earlier migration, when many Venezuelan professionals left for markets where their services found strong demand, many of those leaving now have few skills or resources. By migrating, then, they export some of the social ills that Venezuela has struggled to cope with. They re leaving because of economic, health and public safety problems, but putting a lot of pressure on countries that have their own difficulties, said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University. International authorities are likening Venezuela s exodus to other mass departures in Latin America s past, like that of refugees who fled Haiti after a 2010 earthquake or, worse, the 1980 flight of 125,000 Cubans by boat for the United States. In Brazil, Okoth-Obbo said, as many as 40,000 Venezuelans have arrived. Just over half of them have applied for asylum, a bureaucratic process that can take two years. The request grants them the right to stay in Brazil while their application is reviewed. It also gives them access to health, education and other social services. Some migrants in Boa Vista are finding ways to get by, finding cheap accommodation or lodging in the few shelters, like a local gym, that authorities have provided. Others wander homeless, some turning to crime, like prostitution, adding law enforcement woes to the social challenges. We have a very serious problem that will only get worse. said Boa Vista Mayor Teresa Surita, adding that the city s once quiet streets are increasingly filled with poor Venezuelans. Most migrants in Boa Vista arrive by land, traveling the southward route that is the only road crossing along more than 2,100 kms of border with Brazil. Arriving by public transport in the Venezuelan border town of Santa Elena, they enter Brazil on foot and then take buses or hitch rides further south to Boa Vista. Staffed only during the day, the border post in essence is open, allowing as many as 400 migrants to enter daily, according to authorities. For a state with the lowest population and smallest economy of any in Brazil, that is no small influx. Brazil s government is not ready for what is coming, said Jes s L pez de Bobadilla, a Catholic priest who runs a refugee center on the border. He serves breakfast of fruit, coffee and bread to hundreds of Venezuelans. Despite a long history of immigration, Latin America s biggest country has struggled this decade to accommodate asylum seekers from countries including Haiti and Syria. Although Brazil has granted asylum for more than 2,700 Syrians, the refugees have received scant government support even in Sao Paulo, Brazil s richest state. A senior official in Brazil s foreign ministry, who asked to remain anonymous, said the country will not close its borders. Okoth-Obbo said his U.N. agency and Brazil s government are discussing ways to move refugees to larger cities. Boa Vista schools have admitted about 1,000 Venezuelan children. The local hospital has no beds because of increased demand for care, including many Venezuelan pregnancies. In July, a 10-year-old Venezuelan boy died of diphtheria, a disease absent from Roraima for years. Giuliana Castro, the state secretary for public security, said treating ill migrants is difficult because they lack stability, like a fixed address. There is a risk of humanitarian crisis here, she said. Most migrants in Boa Vista said they do not intend to return to Venezuela unless conditions there improve. Carolina Coronada, who worked as an accountant in the northern Venezuelan city of Maracay, arrived in Brazil a year ago with her 7-year-old daughter. She has applied for residency and works at a fast-food restaurant. While she earns less than before, and said she makes lower wages than Brazilians at the restaurant, she is happier. There was no milk or vaccines, she said. Now I can sleep at night, not worried about getting mugged. Others are faring worse, struggling to find work as Brazil recovers from a two-year recession, its worst in over a century. One recent evening, dozens of young Venezuelan women walked the streets of Caimb , a neighborhood on Boa Vista s west side. Camila, a 23-year-old transsexual, left Venezuela nine months ago. She said she turns tricks for about $100 a night - enough to send food, medicine and even car parts to her family. Things are so bad in Venezuela I could barely feed myself, said Camila, who declined to give her last name. Rivera, the unemployed baker, one afternoon sheltered from the equatorial sun under a mango tree. He has applied for asylum and said he is willing to miss his family as long as he can wire his earnings from gardening, painting and bricklaying home. It s not enough to live on, but the little money I can send home feeds my family, he said. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Dordogne idyll, Brits unimpressed with Brexit talks;EYMET, France (Reuters) - Britain s prime minister may be hailing a new sense of optimism in Brexit talks. But David and Iona Stent, who sold their English home three years ago to start anew in the sun-kissed vineyards of France s Dordogne, are having none of it. The couple are frustrated as London inches ahead in its divorce with the European Union, and say Friday s interim deal offers them scant reassurance for the future of their Franglais Foods market stall business. Under the agreement, the 1.2 million Britons with permanent residence in EU states will be allowed to stay and receive the same treatment over social security, healthcare and employment as the 3 million Europeans living in Britain. But the deal was only sealed with a handshake. It is just words from politicians. It gives me no confidence at all, said Iona, who sells fudge, Scottish cakes and quiches in the bastide village of Eymet and surrounding areas. The couple are determined to stay in France. If they can, they will apply for French citizenship, but they are not sure if they will be eligible. Eymet s warm climate, good wine and cheap, tumbledown farmhouses have been a magnet for British expatriates since the 1970s. The village boasts an English pub, tea room and a grocery store offering Marmite, Heinz Baked Beans and custard powder. There is even a cricket club. While Friday s deal outlined the terms of Britain s separation from the EU, pitfalls lie ahead. Tough discussions over Britain s trade relationship with the bloc could widen differences within Prime Minister Theresa May s cabinet over how Britain should look after it leaves. We don t know what situation we ll find ourselves in, said Iona. We joke about turning up at the Jungle (migrant camp) in Calais. We ve got this idea they re going to reinstate it for all the Brits. On the far side of the medieval village s central Place Gambetta, clipped English accents fill Le Treize cafe as Stephen and Liz Chorlton ponder their pension income. Britain s pound has fallen 13 percent against the euro since the vote to leave the EU, eroding UK-based earnings, pensions and investment incomes. We ve got nothing left in the UK other than a few savings, said Stephen, 60, who quit his job in Manchester in 2010 after the finiancial crisis hit the shop-fitting industry and moved to southwestern France. Sterling s slump means he and his wife now juggle drawing down their pound-denominated private pensions and tapping the income they earn from a French investment fund. I had a conversation with my financial adviser last week. He reckons I could live until I am in my 90s and says if I keep drawing out at the level I m allowed, my spending will be unsustainable, said Liz. There are about 300 Britons among Eymet s 2,600-strong population, a number which swells in the summer. Many lament the divisive nature of the Brexit debate in Britain. Others fume at former prime minister David Cameron s decision to hold the vote in the first place and what they see and the incoherence of his successor s negotiating strategy. None of us got the vote. It s like being shat on from a great height and we have no say about it, said pensioner Andrew Cardle as carafes of wine lubricated a game of indoor-skittles between The Sinners and Eymet Cricket Club. For all the uncertainty, few Britons in Eymet believe they will be thrown out. The influx of foreigners here pulled Eymet back from the dead, said Keith Mcbride, a 54-year-old former City broker with a broad Essex accent and two golden labradors. Come Brexit, no one knows what the rules will be, he said. But they re not going to backtrack and say people who are in the system are now out of the system, because we pay contributions. Nonetheless, some are contemplating an insurance policy: French nationality. If I have to I ll take (French) citizenship. Piece of cake, if I can pass that bloody language exam, said David Horlock, who runs a small plastering business. In a sign some in Britain are still considering a move to France before Brexit hits, Terrie Simpson, whose Agence Eleonor estate agency has seen revenues rise over the past two years, said there was still demand from Britons. We ve had people come in and say we re so fed up with Brexit that we want to buy a house in France, said Simpson, whose office front door carries a sticker in the colors of the EU flag reading: Bollox to Brexit . It might sound arrogant to say they need the English here, but they do. They spend their money in the restaurants, their money is in the banks and young families pay taxes and send their children to the school, said Simpson. Many locals do fret that the shutters will come down on Eymet s cafes and local businesses if Brexit leads to an exodus of Britons. If the are no English here, we re screwed! said cheesemonger Philippe Barbe. They re a big part of our local economy. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man arrested trying to climb wall at UK's Buckingham Palace;LONDON (Reuters) - British police on Monday said they had arrested a man who tried to climb a wall at Queen Elizabeth s Buckingham Palace home in central London, but said that the incident was not terrorism-related. The 24-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of trespass on Sunday evening, three minutes after he stepped over a low outer perimeter fence near the palace, the Metropolitan Police said. The man was not found in possession of any offensive weapons and the incident is not being treated as terrorist related, police said in a statement. He has been released on conditional bail and has undergone a mental health assessment. British police are on high alert after five attacks blamed on terrorism this year. In August, a man wielding a sword outside the palace was charged under terrorism laws. Three police officers suffered minor injuries detaining him. A number of people have tried to get into the palace grounds in recent years. A woman was arrested in October for attempting to scale the gates of the palace. In May 2016, a man with a conviction for murder climbed over the wall and walked for about 10 minutes around the grounds of the palace before being arrested. He was jailed for four months. Four years ago, a man armed with a knife tried to enter through a gate and was later jailed for 16 months. A month earlier, two men were arrested following a break-in at the palace. One of the biggest security breaches at Buckingham Palace happened in 1982 when an intruder, Michael Fagan, climbed a wall and wandered into a room where the queen was in bed. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Burundi will raise funds from citizens to pay for 2020 election;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi plans to raise money for an election in 2020 by deducting part of civil servants salaries and taking contributions directly from citizens, a government minister said on Monday, as it seeks to replace dwindling external funding. Until 2015, Burundi used external aid to pay for elections, but donors have suspended their assistance since a political crisis erupted when President Pierre Nkurunziza sought and won a third term. Pascal Barandagiye, the minister for interior, said the government will also be seek contributions from every household, which will pay up to 2000 francs ($1.14) a year. Gross national income per capita stood at $280 in 2016, and close to 65 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to World Bank data. The total amount of the election cost is not yet known ... But as soon as the needed fund is got the fundraising campaign will be halted, Barandagiye told a news conference. That contribution should be given voluntarily, it shouldn t be seen as a head tax. Students of voting age will contribute 1000 francs annually. Civil servants will contribute at least a tenth of their monthly salaries, Barandagiye said. Foreign help would also be accepted, he said. Burundi has been gripped by a political crisis since April 2015, when Nkurunziza announced he would stand for a third term, which the opposition said violated the constitution as well as a 2005 peace deal that ended a 12-year civil war. He won a vote largely boycotted by the opposition, but protests sparked a government crackdown. More than 700 people have been killed and 400,000 displaced to neighbouring countries. The economy has stagnated. The aid-dependent nation now has to rely on domestic tax collection and modest revenue from coffee and tea exports. Key donors, such as the European Union, cut direct financial support to the government over accusations of human rights violations and the crackdown on opponents, which Burundi rejects. At the end of October, Burundi s cabinet adopted draft legislation seeking to change the current constitution to allow Nkurunziza to run for a fourth term in the 2020 election. The proposed amendments, which are likely to go to a referendum by next year, seek to abolish the two-term limit and lengthen the presidential terms to seven years. ($1 = 1,750.4900 Burundi francs) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romania's lower house approves controversial courts bill;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s lower house of parliament, which is dominated by the ruling Social Democrats, approved a bill on Monday that will change the way magistrates are supervised and which critics say threatens judicial independence and efforts to fight corruption. Thousands of Romanians have rallied in the capital Bucharest and other cities over the past weeks protesting against government plans to overhaul the judicial system in one of European Union s most graft-prone member states. Lawmakers approved the bill by 179 votes to 90 vote. Parliament has been debating the legislation, which the European Commission and thousands of magistrates have said would put the judicial system under political control, since mid-November. The parliamentary commission which has debated the changes is headed former justice minister Florin Iordache, who quit in February after a decree on graft that he drafted triggered the biggest rallies since the 1989 anti-communist revolution. Contested elements of the bill include changes to a judicial inspection unit which oversees the conduct of magistrates. It will also change the way in which chief prosecutors are appointed and strip the president of the right to vet candidates, as well as amending the definition of prosecutors activity to exclude the word independent . Prosecutors carry out their work according to the principles of legality, impartiality, hierarchical control, under the authority of justice minister, reads the bill. The bill also refers to the finance ministry s obligation to recoup any losses triggered by a judicial error from the judge who issued the sentence, instead of from state funds. Experts have said this would could potentially distort court judgments. The bill will be sent to the upper house, the senate, for debates. A vote in the senate, which has the final say on the bill, could be scheduled for later this month. Transparency International ranks Romania among the European Union s most corrupt states and Brussels keeps Romania s justice system under special monitoring. In a Nov. 15 report the European Commission said justice reform has stagnated this year and challenges to judicial independence remain a persistent source of concern. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin says Russia ready 'in principle' to resume direct passenger flights to Egypt;CAIRO (Reuters) - Russia is ready in principle to resume direct passenger flights to Egypt and an agreement is expected to be signed in the near future, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after meeting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hezbollah's Nasrallah says group to focus on Israel;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of Lebanon s Hezbollah group, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, on Monday said the group and its allies in the region would renew their focus on the Palestinian cause after what he called their victories elsewhere in the region. Nasrallah called on Hezbollah s allies to put in place a united strategy in the field to confront Israel. The Iran-backed group has been fighting Islamic State in Syria alongside regional allies and the group has been largely defeated. Nasrallah was speaking by video link to a large protest in Beirut over the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there. On Saturday a video was released of the commander of an Iraqi Shi ite militia allied to Hezbollah visiting Lebanon s border with Israel, apparently accompanied by a Hezbollah commander. Nasrallah said in June that any future war waged by Israel against Lebanon or Syria could draw in fighters from countries including Iran and Iraq. On Monday he repeated a call he made last week for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel and called on Arab states to abandon the peace process, describing negotiations with the United States as futile. Today the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah, will return as its most important priority ... Jerusalem and Palestine and the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance in all its factions, he said. Hezbollah was formed in the 1980s as a resistance movement against Israel s occupation of southern Lebanon and they remain bitter enemies. Israel and Hezbollah fought a brief war in 2006 and tensions rose again this year as Israel struck Hezbollah arms stores and convoys in Syria. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian military chief criticizes U.S., Japan and South Korea drills;TOKYO (Reuters) - Russia s military chief warned on Monday that military exercises by Japan, the United States and South Korea aimed at countering North Korea only raise hysteria and create more instability in the region. Russian Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov, issued his warning in Tokyo as the United States, Japan and South Korea began a two-day exercise to practice tracking missiles amid rising tension over North Korea s weapons programs. Carrying out military training in regions surrounding North Korea will only heighten hysteria and make the situation unstable, Gerasimov said at the beginning of a meeting with Japanese Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera. This week s exercise by the United States and its two Asian allies, in which they will share information on tracking ballistic missiles, comes just days after large-scale drills by U.S. and South Korean forces that North Korea said made the outbreak of war an established fact . North Korea says its weapons programs are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. On Nov. 29, North Korea test-fired its latest ballistic missile, which it said was its most advanced yet, capable of reaching the mainland United States. China has also repeatedly called for the United States and South Korea to stop their exercises, which North Korea sees as preparation for an invasion. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked in Beijing about the latest U.S., South Korean and Japanese drills, said the situation was in a vicious cycle that if followed to a conclusion would not be in anyone s interests. All relevant parties should do is still to completely, precisely and fully implement the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions toward North Korea, and do more for regional peace and stability and to get all parties back to the negotiating table. Not the opposite, mutual provocation, Lu said. Gerasimov s visit to Japan is the first by a senior Russian military official in seven years and follows the resumption of two-plus-two defense and foreign minister talks in March after Russia annexed Crimea. Relations between Russia and Japan have been hampered for decades over the ownership of four islands north of Japan s Hokkaido, captured by Soviet forces at the end of World War Two. Japan has declined to sign a formal peace treaty with Russia until the dispute is resolved. Gerasimov also met Katsutoshi Kawano, the chief of staff of Japan s Self Defence Forces. China s Defence Ministry said on Monday it had begun a planned joint simulated anti-missile drill with Russia in Beijing, which had important meaning for both countries in facing the threat from missiles. It said the exercise was not aimed at any third party. China and Russia both oppose the development of global anti-missile systems, the ministry added in a statement. China and Russia both oppose the deployment in South Korea of the advanced U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system. China in particular fears the system s powerful radar could look deep into its territory, threatening its security. The United States and South Korea say the system is needed to defend against the threat of North Korean missiles. It is not clear if this week s exercise by U.S., South Korean and Japanese forces will involve the THAAD system. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India files sex assault case against airline passenger for allegedly molesting Bollywood actress;MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian police have filed a sexual assault case against an airline passenger after a 17-year-old Bollywood actress said the male passenger had molested her during a New Delhi-Mumbai flight, police said on Monday. A special court ordered police to detain the passenger for interrogation until Wednesday, when the case will be heard next. It can take months for formal charges to be filed in India. Zaira Wasim, the actress, was seen sobbing in a video she posted on Instagram after getting off a Vistara flight. She alleged she was attacked by the passenger seated behind her. He kept nudging my shoulder and continued to move his foot up and down my back and neck, Wasim said in the post. Is this how we are going to take care of girls? The video sparked outrage on social media with fans coming out in support of Wasim, who shot to fame through her role as a child wrestler in the 2016 blockbuster Bollywood drama Dangal . Police have registered a case against a man identified as Vikas Sachdeva, under Section 354 - for assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty - and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, a Mumbai police control room official said. Vistara is jointly owned by Tata and Singapore Airlines. We are investigating fully and will support Zaira in every way required, Vistara chief strategy and commercial officer Sanjiv Kapoor said. We have zero tolerance for this kind of thing. Neither Sachdeva or his lawyers could be reached for comment. In court, Sachdeva s lawyer accused Wasim of making the allegations for publicity, and asked why she had not complained to crew members during the flight. Local media quoted the suspect s wife, Divya Sachdeva, as saying her husband was innocent and that she was returning from a funeral and had been asleep on the flight. She accused Wasim of having made the allegations for publicity. A spokeswoman for the airline said it had provided details to the police and aviation authorities and its senior management had flown to Mumbai to assist Wasim in the investigation. We are deeply concerned and regret the unfortunate experience Ms. Zaira Wasim had onboard our flight last night. India s National Commission for Women, a government-appointed body fighting for women s rights, has asked the airline to explain why the crew did not step in to help the actress, according to local media reports. This is not done at all, Wasim, who hails from the northern Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, was seen saying in the video while wiping away tears. This is not...how people should be made to feel. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain steps up battle against money laundering;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Monday it would create a new national economic crime center to crack down harder on money laundering by drug dealers and people traffickers who are expected to net 90 billion pounds ($120.3 billion) this year. As a unit of the existing National Crime Agency (NCA), the center will be tasked with coordinating a national response among the agencies that tackle money laundering and fraud and with increasing the confiscation of crime proceeds. Britain s interior minister, Amber Rudd, said the new initiative was part of a package of measures in response to a review of the country s economic crime agencies. The measures we have announced today will significantly improve our ability to tackle the most serious cases of economic crime by ensuring our agencies have the tools and investment they need to investigate, prosecute and confiscate criminal assets, Rudd said in a statement. Britain s plan to exit the European Union in 2019 has raised fears of a bonfire of regulation that could occur thereafter and result in the City of London losing its top global financial center ranking. Strengthening the integrity of Britain as a financial center will be a top priority under the package, which also includes proposed new laws. These would allow the new center to directly task the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to investigate the worst offenders in a step that will buttress the SFO, whose future as a standalone entity has been in doubt. SFO Director David Green is due to step down next year. Separately on Monday, the Attorney General s Office, a government department, said the SFO would continue to act as an independent organization, supporting the multi-agency response led by the NCA. We will begin recruitment for the SFO s next director very soon, the AGO said in a statement. The government estimates that financial fraud costs the country 6.8 billion pounds a year, or more than 100 pounds per person. Rudd will chair a new economic crime strategic board to ensure the right resources are allocated across law enforcement agencies to tackle economic crime, the interior ministry statement said. With only a modest portion of criminal proceeds confiscated, the package announced on Monday makes further commitments to seizing criminal assets through greater use of existing powers by the SFO, the NCA and tax authorities. There will also be a review of existing rules on confiscating proceeds of crime in order to improve the process by which confiscation orders are made and applied. ($1 = 0.7479 pounds) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Corsica's nationalists dream bigger after election win;AJACCIO, France (Reuters) - Corsican nationalists said on Monday it was time for talks with Paris on greater autonomy for the French Mediterranean island, after they won nearly two thirds of seats in local elections. Support for their cause in Sunday s vote was boosted by dissatisfaction with France s mainstream parties, a trend that has fueled secessionist ambitions in other parts of Europe. Nationalist leader Gilles Simeoni hailed the start of a new era after the two-party Pe a Corsica (For Corsica) alliance that he heads took over 56 percent of Sunday s vote and 41 of 63 seats. Unlike in Catalonia, nationalists in Corsica have downplayed any ambitions for secession, saying the island - where Napoleon was born in 1769 - lacked the Spanish region s demographic and economic clout. But Simeoni said he was seeking a greater say for local authorities on fiscal issues, official status for the Corsican language, and limiting the right to buy property in some areas to people who had lived on the island for at least five years. This is a time many of us thought we would never witness, he told applauding supporters after the win, referring to the fact that nationalists only started to make headway in Corsican elections two years ago. Our dream is becoming reality. Calling for discussions to find a political solution, Simeoni told Reuters: It s the start of a new era, the ball is in the government s court. The nationalist vote also benefited from the island s most active clandestine group, the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC), having laid down its weapons in 2014 after a near four-decade long rebellion. Turnout for the run-off election, in which the top parties from an initial Dec. 3 ballot participated, was barely above 50 percent. But in a sign that the government may be heeding the call for dialogue, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Sunday called Simeoni to congratulate him on his win and told him he was willing to see him soon in Paris, Philippe s office said. Corsica has a population of just 320,000 people and a tiny 8.6 billion euro ($10.13 billion) economy. ($1 = 0.8488 euros) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Car bomb kills journalist in Somali capital;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A Somali television journalist was killed in a car bombing in the capital Mogadishu on Monday, an editor for the TV station and local authorities said. Mohamed Ibrahim Gabow had borrowed the car from a friend, Mohamed Moalim Mustaf, an editor at Kalsan TV, told Reuters. Unexpectedly it exploded and he died on the spot. We do not know who was behind it, he added. Local government officials confirmed the incident. The journalist ... died after a bomb planted in a car he drove exploded. His body has now been taken to a hospital. The police will investigate, said Abdifatah Omar Halane, the spokesman for the mayor of Mogadishu. Gabow is the fourth journalist killed this year in Somalia, currently ranked 167th out of 180 countries for journalist safety by Reporters Without Borders. No group has ever claimed the killing of a journalist in the capital. Somalia has been convulsed by instability, violence and lawlessness since early 1990s following the toppling of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK govt. accepts lawmakers' demands for scrutiny of Brexit law changes;LONDON (Reuters) - The British government will grant lawmakers more oversight of the process of severing ties with the European Union, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday. The concession, designed to head off a potential rebellion in parliament, will be incorporated into the EU withdrawal bill - the legislation that forms a central plank of May s Brexit strategy. Several lawmakers, including members of the governing Conservative Party, have challenged her administration over its plans to copy and paste EU rules into British legislation, saying they give ministers power to change laws without the agreement of parliament. To address these concerns, a committee of lawmakers has proposed adding an extra layer of parliamentary scrutiny of such changes. We have studied the Procedure Committee s report in detail and listened to the representations, and we are announcing today that we will be accepting this amendment, the spokesman told reporters. The plan is to create a sifting committee to look at each of the proposed changes as they are published by the government and recommend how they are then approved by parliament. Although all changes will receive parliamentary approval, some can be recommended for more detailed scrutiny. The transfer of EU law into British law is designed to give businesses legal certainty after Britain s departure in March 2019. Parliament has described is as one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU to resume political contact 'at all levels' with Thailand: statement;BANGKOK (Reuters) - The European Union will resume political contact at all levels with Thailand, its foreign affairs council said on Monday, after putting relations on hold following a 2014 coup by the Thai military. The move comes after Thailand s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha announced in October that a general election would take place in November 2018 - the most precise date the junta has given after many delays since the 2014 coup. The government, however, has yet to end a political ban that would allow political parties to campaign ahead of the vote. The EU is Thailand s third trade partner after China and Japan. Thailand is the EU s third-largest trading partner in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Thailand exported goods worth 19.6 billion ($23.11 billion) to the EU in 2015, according to the European Commission. The Council decided to resume political contacts at all levels with Thailand in order to facilitate meaningful dialogue on issues of mutual importance, including on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the road towards democracy, the EU s Foreign Affairs Council said in a statement. In June 2014, the EU said it would keep its relations with Thailand under review and put on hold the signing of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), which was aimed at closer economic and political ties with Thailand. It has expressed concerns over freedom of expression in the country and has called for a swift return to democracy. The signing of PCA and talks on EU-Thailand Free Trade Agreement (FTA) could resume with a democratically elected civilian government under the new Constitution, the statement said. The United States also downgraded ties with Thailand following the coup, scaling back joint military exercises, among other things. According to the European Commission, the EU exported goods worth 13.4 billion ($15.80 billion) to Thailand in 2015, including machinery and transport equipment. ($1 = 0.8480 euros) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran foreign minister defends missile program, asks European support;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran s foreign minister on Monday defended its ballistic missile program and urged European countries not to be influenced by U.S. President Donald Trump s confrontational policy towards Tehran. In an op-ed article in the New York Times, Mohammad Javad Zarif also urged European powers to help preserve the landmark 2015 deal under which Iran curbed its disputed nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of a number of international sanctions. In October Trump struck a blow against the deal, approved by his predecessor Barack Obama, by refusing to certify that Iran is complying with the terms of the deal despite findings to the contrary by U.N. nuclear inspectors. Trump has also called Iran an economically depleted rogue state that exports violence. Europe should not pander to Washington s determination to shift focus to yet another unnecessary crisis - whether it be Iran s defensive missile program or our influence in the Middle East, Zarif wrote. His remarks seemed to be at least partly aimed at France which has been critical of the Islamic Republic s missile tests and regional policy, including involvement in Syria s war, in recent weeks. Last month French President Emmanuel Macron said he was very concerned by the missile program and called for talks about it, an appeal rejected by Iranian officials. Iran s missiles are for defensive purposes only, Zarif wrote in the op-ed. We have honed missiles as an effective means of deterrence. And our conscious decision to focus on precision rather than range has afforded us the capability to strike back with pinpoint accuracy, he wrote. Nuclear weapons do not need to be precise. Conventional warheads, however, do. While criticizing the missile program, European powers that were party to the nuclear deal - France, Britain and Germany - have reaffirmed their commitment to the nuclear deal and voiced concern at Trump calling it into question. Zarif also criticized rival Saudi Arabia s regional policy and military campaign in Yemen but also called for dialogue. As Iran and its partners labor to put out fires, the arsonists in our region grow more unhinged. They re oblivious to the necessity of inclusive engagement, Zarif wrote. (Refile with full name of minister, para 2, inserts dropped word labor in last para) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait replaces oil and finance ministers in cabinet reshuffle;DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait replaced its oil, finance and defense ministers in a cabinet reshuffle on Monday, state news agency KUNA reported. Bakhit al-Rashidi was appointed the new oil minister of the OPEC member state and Nayef Falah al-Hajraf was named the new finance minister, KUNA said, citing a royal decree. Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad, son of the ruling Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, was appointed the new minister of defense. The previous cabinet resigned on Oct. 30 when its information minister was questioned by parliament and faced a no-confidence vote over alleged violations of budgetary and legislative rules. Mohammed Nasser Al-Jabri was named the new minister. The major oil producer has the oldest legislature among the Gulf Arab states and experiences frequent cabinet reshuffles. The previous government was formed in February. Rashidi, who replaced Essam al-Marzouq as oil minister, is chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), the international downstream subsidiary of state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. There was no immediate announcement about his KPI post but in the past, Kuwaiti ministers have resigned positions as corporate executives when they take government posts. Rashidi, who has an engineering background, is also a former executive of state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co. Hajraf replaced Anas al-Saleh, who had been finance minister since early 2014. Hajraf was previously chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Capital Markets Authority, the securities regulator. He has also served as an acting finance minister. Saleh was named deputy prime minister and state minister for cabinet affairs. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Magnitude 6.0 earthquake hits western Iran: state media;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit western Iran on Monday, state media reported. The center of the quake was near the town of Ezgele, but tremors were also felt in Kermanshah, the largest city in the area. Last month, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit western Iran, killing at least 530 and injuring thousands. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Emirates and flydubai resume operating some flights over Iraq;DUBAI (Reuters) - Emirates and flydubai have resumed using Iraqi airspace for flights to other countries, the Middle East airlines said on Monday, two days after Iraq declared victory in its years-long fight against Islamic state. Several airlines stopped flying over Iraq in 2014 on safety concerns because of the conflict and after a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet was shot down over Ukraine the same year. Airlines have instead been flying longer routes over Iran and other countries, increasing congestion in the region, with many airlines also avoiding Syrian airspace. The use of Iraqi airspace is likely to help Emirates and flydubai to save on fuel costs by shortening flying hours and also reduce regional airspace congestion. Emirates has resumed utilizing Iraqi airspace and a very small number of our flights overfly Iraqi airspace each day , an airline spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. The spokeswoman said that Emirates reviews its flight operations regularly, in line with advice from regulators and authorities. Safety, security and operational efficiency will always be the top considerations when planning flight paths, the spokeswoman said. Emirates did not say when it started flying over Iraq again or which routes were affected. Airlines flying through the region have in the past used Iraqi airspace for flights to Europe and the United States. Flydubai started using eastern Iraqi airspace again on Nov. 28, mostly affecting flights to and from Eastern Europe and Turkey, a spokeswoman said in an email. All the necessary risk and security assessments were conducted prior to the start of overflying, the spokeswoman said. Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under Islamic State control along the border with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert, marking the end of the war against the militants three years after they had captured about a third of Iraq s territory. Emirates and flydubai have continued flying to and from Iraq since 2014 but with temporary suspensions on some flights from time to time. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Emboldened by change, some Uzbek imams turn on loudspeakers for call to prayer;TASHKENT (Reuters) - Some mosques in Uzbekistan are starting to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer from loudspeakers for the first time in a decade as they take advantage of a more tolerant official attitude toward Islam since President Islam Karimov died last year. The imams are amplifying the Adhan call to prayer without asking for government permission. Under Karimov, an imam who took such a liberty would have faced losing his job or possible imprisonment. The new boldness is a response to decisions by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to liberalize the ex-Soviet nation of 32 million people whose main religion is Islam. Mirziyoyev has overseen the release of several prominent political prisoners, relaxed some security measures and this week he pardoned 2,700 convicts, saying that in the past many sentences had been unjust. Western countries and human rights groups accused the government of repression under Karimov who ruled the Central Asian nation from 1989 until his death in September 2016. The leader cracked down on public displays of Islamic practice including hijabs and beards because he feared the country was vulnerable to Islamist militancy. His government blamed militants for bombings in the capital in 1999 and unrest in the city of Andijan in 2005. Around 200 people died in all, according to official figures, and the incidents were the bloodiest since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. After government troops clashed with armed protesters in Andijan, Uzbek mosques stopped using loudspeakers for the call to prayer though the practice was never formally banned. Over the last few months, however, some imams have begun to broadcast the Adhan from mosques again. A Reuters reporter heard it at three mosques in Tashkent, though it was only audible to people near the buildings. The call is part of the soundscape in many Muslim cities, blasting from speakers on minarets five times each day and extra loud on Friday, which is the day of prayer. Worshippers in Tashkent welcomed the change. People should hear that it s prayer time. That s what Muslim life is about, said a young man outside one of the mosques. He declined to give his identity. A cleric at one of Tashkent s main mosques said the matter was being discussed within the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan, which is close to the government. No ruling has been made. Some imams took the initiative and turned on their loudspeakers at their own risk once the talks with the Board had started, said the cleric who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to comment publicly. Another source close to the clergy said some imams had argued that without a formal ban there was no need for formal permission to restart. There have been no reports of clerics being prosecuted for breaking the informal ban. The government declined to comment on the matter. Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon, an Uzbek writer who recently returned to Tashkent after living in exile for more than a year, said he saw the cautious return of Adhan as a sign of a broader change in the state s attitude to religion under Mirziyoyev. (Mirziyoyev s) decree on developing and introducing Halal standards was another important step, he said. Mirziyoyev ordered the government last month to develop standards for food products that adhere to Islamic dietary laws, which prohibit the consumption of pork and alcohol among other things. The move could boost Uzbek sales of halal food both domestically and overseas. Previously, we were banned from using the word halal . I know because I used to work at ... a religious magazine .... Halal restaurants were closed down. The word halal was removed from product labels, he said. In another break with Karimov-era policy, Mirziyoyev said in September Uzbekistan had removed about 16,000 people from a 17,000-strong security blacklist of potential Muslim religious extremists and dissidents. He said he wanted to bring them (back) into our society and educate them. The issue of Islamist militancy in Uzbekistan has spread beyond the country s borders. This year, at least 60 people have died in attacks abroad carried out by Uzbek nationals or ethnic Uzbeks. The most deadly was a shooting in an Istanbul nightclub in which 39 people died. In the late 1990s, the government fought the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a militant group that sought to make Uzbekistan an Islamic state. It later moved to Afghanistan to join forces with the Taliban. Hundreds of Uzbeks have also joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Authorities fear radicalized youths may return home. Nowadays they are talking about driving the terrorists out of Syria, Mirziyoyev said in a public speech this month. But the question is, where will they go now? We should think about it. At the same time, he said many of Uzbekistan s convicted prisoners had been sentenced unjustly and he vowed to crack down on abuses such as torture and fabricated evidence. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hungary not planning to move Israeli embassy to Jerusalem: PM;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary is not planning to move its Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday, adding that the government s Middle East policy was unchanged. This (option) has not come up, Orban told reporters in response to a question in parliament according to an audio recording of his remarks published on the website of private broadcaster HirTV. Hungary sees no reason to change its Middle East policy, Orban said. We will continue with the balanced politics we have been pursuing. He did not elaborate. On Friday Hungary blocked a statement planned by all EU 28 governments in response to Trump s announcement and the Foreign Ministry said Hungary was in favor of a negotiated solution in the Middle East. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin, Egypt's Sisi discuss restart of flights, sign nuclear deal;CAIRO (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday, agreeing to resume civilian flights which Moscow halted more than two years ago after militants bombed a Russian tourist jet over the Sinai. Putin s latest visit to Cairo reflects the deepening ties between Russia and Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel and a strategic U.S. partner in the Middle East because of its control of the Suez Canal. Putin, who flew on to Turkey, briefly visited a Russian base in Syria before arriving in Egypt and ordered Russian forces to start withdrawing from Syria after a two-year military campaign there. In Cairo, Egyptian and Russian ministers signed a $21 billion deal to start work on Egypt s Dabaa nuclear power plant and Putin said Moscow was ready to resume Russian civilian flights to Egypt. Moscow halted civilian air traffic to Egypt in 2015 after militants detonated a bomb on a Russian Metrojet flight, downing the jet leaving from the tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and killing 224 people on board. The attack and Moscow s decision damaged Egypt s already struggling tourism industry. Egyptian airport inspections and talks to resume flights have been going on for months. The Russian security services have reported to me that, on the whole, we are ready for opening the direct air link between Moscow and Cairo, Putin said. This would require signing a corresponding intergovernmental protocol. Russia s transport minister told reporters flights could resume in early February, and Russia was prepared to sign a protocol with Egypt this week. Earlier, Russian state nuclear company Rosatom said the Dabaa nuclear station it will build in Egypt will have four reactors and cost up to $21 billion. Construction is expected to finish in 2028-2029. Moscow and Cairo signed an initial agreement in 2015 for Russia to build the plant, with Russia extending a loan to Egypt to cover the cost of construction. Sisi said the two leaders had also discussed industrial projects, trade and Russian investments in Egypt, including in the Suez Canal Economic Zone. Sisi and Putin also discussed Syria and mutual rejection of U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move that has triggered protests across the region and from European capitals. We had a detailed exchange of views on key international issues. Our approaches either coincide completely or are really quite close, Putin said. The high-level Russian visit comes after the U.S. government in August decided to deny Egypt $95.7 million in aid and to delay another $195 million because of its failure to make progress on human rights and democratic norms. Russia launched a military operation to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015, and there are signs Moscow is keen to expand its military presence in the region. Neither leader on Monday mentioned an announcement from November when Russia s government published a draft agreement between Russia and Egypt allowing both countries to use each other s air space and air bases for their military planes. But Putin has been steadily building relations with Egypt. On his first visit to Cairo in 2015, he was the first leader of a major power to meet with Sisi after the former Egyptian army commander ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in 2013. That prompted Washington to cool relations with Egypt, and the U.S. government suspended some military aid. Since then the two leaders have increased cooperation, reviving the historical alliance between Egypt and Soviet Union of the 1970s. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain urged Iran to release detained dual nationals: Johnson;LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Monday he urged Iran to release detained dual nationals during a visit to the Islamic Republic. I urged their release, on humanitarian grounds, where there is cause to do so, Johnson told the British parliament. These are complex cases involving individuals considered by Iran to be their own citizens, and I do not wish to raise false hopes. But my meetings in Tehran were worthwhile, he said. It is too early to be confident about the outcome. Johnson said he raised with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif the official harassment of journalists working for BBC Persian and their families inside Iran. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada to make fighter jets announcement on December 12: official;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will make an announcement about fighter jets at 1 pm ET (1800 GMT) on Tuesday, a government official said on Monday, declining to give more details. Sources told Reuters last week that the Canadian government is scrapping a plan to buy 18 Boeing Co Super Hornets and will instead acquire a fleet of second-hand Australian jets. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;PM May's deputy to keep job after pornography claims, ITV says;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May s senior minister will not have to resign over claims that police found pornography on a work computer and that he made an inappropriate sexual advance against a young woman, ITV political editor Robert Peston said on Monday. First Secretary of State Damian Green will be told on Wednesday that the Cabinet Office and the prime minister will inform him that he can keep his job, Peston said on his Facebook page. May s office declined to comment on the report. Peston said no other women came forward to present evidence against Green and that police testimony does not prove he watched the porn on the parliamentary computer. Two retired police officers alleged the pornography was discovered on Green s computer by officers during an inquiry into government leaks in 2008. Earlier on Monday, a spokesman for the prime minister said there are procedures to go through in the investigation and once they are complete the government will publish the findings. Green, who is a close ally of May, has denied the allegations. If Green is cleared it would be a boost to the prime minister after she lost two ministers last month: one was forced to quit in a sexual harassment scandal and another over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Leading French conservative quits party after right winger wins leadership;PARIS (Reuters) - Right-wing heavyweight Xavier Bertrand quit France s main conservative party, The Republicans, on Monday, highlighting the challenges its new chief will face in trying to keep the party together. The move comes a day after party members overwhelmingly elected Laurent Wauquiez as a their new boss, following a campaign during which he said President Emmanuel Macron was too weak on security and immigration. I don t recognize my political family, so I decided to leave it, Bertrand, a former health minister and current head of Hauts-de-France, a region in northern France, said on France 2 TV station. Bertrand s move underlines growing concern among moderate members of The Republicans about the party s direction, after a disastrous presidential campaign that saw its candidate eliminated in the first round. Some have said Wauquiez was hauling the party too far to the right and running after the National Front, whose leader Marine Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election last May. Xavier Bertrand obviously considers that he has no place (in the party). It s his choice. I respect it, Wauquiez said on TF1 TV station, in reaction to the news. I move forward, I look to the future and what I want is to make a new generation emerge, this new right that live to its ideas, he said. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May hails new optimism in Brexit talks after deal;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May hailed a new sense of optimism in Brexit talks, telling parliament on Monday an agreement to move negotiations on to future trade ties is progress and will reassure those concerned Britain may leave with no deal. May, weakened after losing her Conservatives majority at a June election, rescued an agreement last week to move the talks to unravel more than 40 years of union on to a second phase after easing the concerns of her Northern Irish allies over the future role of the border with EU member Ireland. But the discussion of Britain s trade relationship with the EU after Brexit contains many pitfalls and could widen differences among her top team of ministers, or cabinet, over how Britain should look after it leaves the bloc. In a statement to parliament, May took to task those who doubted that she could move the talks beyond the initial stage of agreeing terms on how much Britain should pay, citizens rights and the border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. This is good news for people who voted leave who were worried we were so bogged down in the tortuous negotiations it was never going to happen, she told parliament. It is good news for people who voted remain who were worried were going to crash out without a deal. May will head to Brussels on Thursday for a summit meeting at which she expects the leaders of the other 27 EU states to approve an assessment by negotiators that the sides have made sufficient progress to move on to phase two. But she warned that the government will only pay a financial settlement if Britain and the EU secure a future trade deal. The deal to launch further talks looked in jeopardy a week ago when May was forced to abandon a choreographed meeting in Brussels intended to seal the deal after her allies in Northern Ireland expressed fears she was proposing a special status for the region - out of sync with the rest of the United Kingdom. After days of diplomacy, there was a compromise - if no overall Brexit deal is secured, Britain will keep full alignment with those rules of the EU s single market that help cooperation between Ireland s north and south. But those words have reverberated in both London and Belfast, with Brexit minister David Davis saying they were more a statement of intent than a legally binding move. On Monday, Davis told LBC radio his words had been taken out of context and denied he was backing away from the commitment, which the EU described as a deal between gentlemen . And it is the clear understanding that it is fully backed and endorsed by the UK government, the European Commission s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters in Brussels. Davis comments may have been aimed at members of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May s Conservative minority government in parliament after the party expressed concerns about how alignment could work without Britain staying in the EU s single market and customs union. Or he may have wanted to ease the fears of some campaigners for Britain to leave the EU, who say the possibility of having to follow the bloc s rules would mean that they would have Brexit in name only. But May said the commitments made in the first round of talks which includes a payment of 35-39 billion pounds over many years to meet EU obligations were necessary to sever ties with the bloc. In doing so we can move on to building the bold new economic and security relationships that can underpin the new deep and special partnership we all want to see, she said. A partnership between the European Union and a sovereign United Kingdom that has taken control of its borders, money and laws once again. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU tells Netanyahu it rejects Trump's Jerusalem move;BRUSSELS/CAIRO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took his case to Europe to ask allies to join the United States in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, but met a firm rebuff from EU foreign ministers who saw the move as a blow against the peace process. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, took his own case to Egypt on Monday and was expected to fly to Turkey for a meeting of Muslim countries this week, cementing support from leaders who say the U.S. move was a dire error. President Donald Trump announced last Wednesday the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, breaking with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that the city s status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian talks. Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel and the Israeli military said it responded with air strikes and tank fire targeting a position of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the enclave. On the ground in the Palestinian territories, violent clashes with Israeli security forces in which scores of Palestinians have been injured and several killed since the U.S. announcement last week appeared to have mostly subsided. Netanyahu, on his first visit to EU headquarters in Brussels, said Trump s move helped peace, because recognizing reality is the substance of peace, the foundation of peace . Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it in a 1967 war, considers the entire city to be its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state. The Trump administration says it remains committed to the peace process and its decision does not affect Jerusalem s future borders or status. It says any credible future peace deal will place the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and ditching old policies is needed to revive a peace process frozen since 2014. But even Israel s closest European allies have rejected that logic and say recognizing Israel s capital unilaterally risks inflaming violence and further wrecking the chance for peace. After a breakfast meeting between Netanyahu and EU foreign ministers, Sweden s top diplomat said no European at the closed-door meeting had voiced support for Trump s decision, and no country was likely to follow the United States in announcing plans to move its embassy. I have a hard time seeing that any other country would do that and I don t think any other EU country will do it, Margot Wallstrom told reporters. Israel s position does appear to have more support from some EU states than others. Last week, the Czech foreign ministry said it would begin considering moving the Czech Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, while Hungary blocked a planned EU statement condemning the U.S. move. But Prague later said it accepted Israel s sovereignty only over West Jerusalem, and Budapest said its long-term position seeking a two-state solution in the Middle East had not changed. On Monday, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek said of Trump s decision: I m afraid it can t help us. I m convinced that it is impossible to ease tension with a unilateral solution, Zaoralek said. We are talking about an Israeli state but at the same time we have to speak about a Palestinian state. The Palestinian president, Abbas, met Egypt s President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Cairo, as well as the head of the Arab League. Egypt, a U.S. ally with a peace treaty with Israel, has brokered Israeli-Palestinian deals in the past. Moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would have dangerous effects on peace and security in the region , Sisi said on Monday at an earlier meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin. Abbas was also due to fly to Turkey. Trump s announcement has triggered a war of words between Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Netanyahu, straining ties between the two U.S. allies which were restored only last year after a six-year breach that followed the Israeli storming of a Turkish aid ship. On Sunday, Erdogan called Israel a terror state . Netanyahu responded by saying he would accept no moral lectures from Erdogan who he accused of bombing Kurdish villages, jailing opponents and supporting terrorists. On Monday Erdogan took aim directly at Washington over Trump s move: The ones who made Jerusalem a dungeon for Muslims and members of other religions will never be able to clean the blood from their hands, he said in a speech in Ankara. With their decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the United States has become a partner in this bloodshed. Trump s announcement triggered days of protests across the Muslim world and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. In Beirut, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest at a march backed by Hezbollah, the heavily-armed Iran-backed Shi ite group whose leader called last week for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel. An announcer led the crowd in chants of Death to America! Death to Israel! Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told the crowd by video link the group was turning its focus back toward the fight against Israel: Today the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah, will return as its most important priority ... Jerusalem and Palestine and the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance in all its factions. Netanyahu, who has been angered by the EU s search for closer business ties with Iran, said Europeans should emulate Trump s move and press the Palestinians to do so, too. It s time that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish state and also recognize the fact that it has a capital. It s called Jerusalem, he said. In comments filmed later on his plane, he said he had told the Europeans to stop pampering the Palestinians , who need a reality check . The decision to recognize Jerusalem could also strain Washington s ties with another of its major Muslim allies, Saudi Arabia, which has sought closer relations with Washington under Trump than under his predecessor, Barack Obama. Saudi Arabia shares U.S. and Israeli concerns about the increasing regional influence of Iran, and was seen as a potential broker for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace deal. But Saudis have suggested that unilateral decisions over Jerusalem make any such rapprochement more difficult. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States and veteran ex-security chief, published a strongly-worded open letter to Trump on Monday. Bloodshed and mayhem will definitely follow your opportunistic attempt to make electoral gain, the prince wrote in the letter, published in the Saudi newspaper al-Jazeera. Your action has emboldened the most extreme elements in the Israeli society ... because they take your action as a license to evict the Palestinians from their lands and subject them to an apartheid state, he added. Your action has equally emboldened Iran and its terrorist minions to claim that they are the legitimate defenders of Palestinian rights. Iran s defense minister said Trump s recognition of Jerusalem would hasten Israel s destruction, while a top Revolutionary Guards commander, Qassem Soleimani, phoned two Palestinian armed groups and pledged support for them. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson set to meet Trudeau for North Korea crisis talks: source;OTTAWA (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau next week for talks on how to address the crisis over North Korea s nuclear weapons program, an Ottawa source said on Monday. Canada and the United States are due to co-host a meeting of foreign ministers in Vancouver in January to discuss North Korea. North Korea has fired missiles over Japan as it pursues nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. sanctions. Last week it said U.S. and South Korean military drills meant the outbreak of war was an established fact . During a day trip to Ottawa on Dec. 19 Tillerson will also meet Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, said the source, who requested anonymity because the meetings have not yet been formally announced. A Canadian government source confirmed that Tillerson and Trudeau plan to meet but declined to give a precise date, saying scheduling issues still had to be worked out. The U.S. embassy in Ottawa declined to comment. Freeland said last month that the Vancouver talks would show the unity of the international community in applying pressure on Pyongyang. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's Jerusalem move will hasten Israel's destruction: Iran;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital will hasten the country s destruction, Iran s defense minister said on Monday, while a top Revolutionary Guards commander phoned two Palestinian armed groups and pledged support for them. Leaders of Iran, where opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause has been central to foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution, have denounced last week s announcement by the U.S. president, including a plan to move the U.S. embassy to the city. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. (Trump s) step will hasten the destruction of the Zionist regime and will double the unity of Muslims, Iran s defense minister, Brigadier General Amir Hatami, said on Monday, according to state media. The army s chief of staff, General Mohammad Baqeri, said Trump s foolish move could be seen as the beginning of a new intifada, or Palestinian uprising. Iran has long supported a number of anti-Israeli militant groups, including the military wing of Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which the deputy commander of Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said was stronger than the Zionist regime. Similarly, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the branch of the Guards that oversees operations outside of Iran s borders pledged the Islamic Republic s complete support for Palestinian Islamic resistance movements after phone calls with commanders from Islamic Jihad and the Izz al-Deen Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, on Monday according to Sepah News, the news site of the Guards. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday stepped up efforts to rally Middle Eastern countries against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, which EU foreign ministers meanwhile declined to support. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. decision on Jerusalem is destabilizing Middle East: Russia's Putin;ANKARA (Reuters) - Russia and Turkey agree that a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is destabilizing the situation in the Middle East, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. Speaking in Ankara alongside Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Putin also said Russia hoped to sign credit agreements for the defense industry with Turkey in the near future. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Accused Child Molesting Senate Candidate Roy Moore Sides With Putin Over Reagan (VIDEO);Ronald Reagan is largely seen as the Messiah of the Republican Party. Despite how long it has been since the man was president, he has always remained the high standard of GOP morality for potential office holders. That is, until now. Reagan is likely rolling over in his grave at the idea of the state of his party with Donald Trump as its standard-bearer, and he s likely doing the same at the prospect of a bigoted accused child molester like Roy Moore (R-AL) being the next GOP Senator from Alabama. Well, now Reagan has another reason to hate Moore: He s clearly in the pocket of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin just like Donald Trump is.During an interview where he s talking about Americans being the face of evil in the world right now, Moore indicates that Putin s harsh and murderous treatment of LGBTQ people in Russia is something he would like to see happen in the United States. Then, he does something most appalling, and goes on to give Putin a message in Russian. Now, no one knows where a bigoted, backwoods buffoon like Roy Moore would learn Russian. After all, he s barely left Alabama, where he has spent the last 40+ years wreacking havoc and just basically cementing Alabama s place as America s bigoted boil on the butt of humanity wherever and whenever he can. However, he managed to learn enough Russian to dog whistle to Putin in that interview. That should disturb us all. Not only is the man being a homophobe, a racist, a misogynist, and more than likely a child molester, he s also a Russian stooge.America, we can do better. We have enough Russian puppets at the highest levels of government. Lord knows we don t need one in the United States Senate.Watch the appalling video below:Please watch this until the end, Roy Moore sides with Putin over Reagan, says that America is the focus of evil in the world, and sends a nice message to Putin in Russian. pic.twitter.com/wFgDkvzEhT The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) December 10, 2017Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images;News;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukrainian judge frees Saakashvili from detention;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian opposition figure Mikheil Saakashvili was freed from detention on Monday, after a Ukrainian judge turned down the prosecutors request to place him under house arrest - the latest twist in his dramatic standoff with the authorities. President of his native Georgia for nine years until 2013, Saakashvili moved to Ukraine after a popular uprising there and served under Poroshenko as a regional governor from 2015-2016, before falling out with the Ukrainian leader. The 49-year-old accuses the Ukrainian authorities of widespread corruption. Prosecutors wanted him placed under house arrest while investigators look into accusations he assisted a criminal organization, charges he says were trumped up to undermine his campaign to unseat Poroshenko. The prosecutors petition ... is dismissed, Judge Larysa Tsokol told the court. A crowd of several hundred supporters, who had remained outside the courthouse throughout the eight-hour hearing, cheered the judge s decision. The judge is good. She did everything correctly and in accordance with the law, Saakashvili said. It means not everything is lost in Ukraine. The case against him remains open. Speaking after the ruling, which was attended by several prominent opposition lawmakers, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Saakashvili said he planned to continue his political work. Together with other opposition politicians he will prepare for a peaceful but very important and necessary change in leadership in Ukraine , he said. Saakashvili, who launched a hunger strike to protest against his detention, sang the Ukrainian national anthem at the beginning of the hearing. The courtroom was so packed with journalists and Saakashvili s supporters that his lawyer asked the judge to move the session to a larger room. The investigation provoked violent clashes between protesters and riot police last week, while on Sunday several thousand people attended a peaceful rally in central Kiev to support Saakashvili and call for Poroshenko s impeachment. While the protest does not represent a significant risk to government stability at the moment, it will likely attract the attention of Ukraine s international supporters and donors, London-based research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note. Saakashvili is also facing the threat of possible extradition to Georgia, where he is wanted on criminal charges. Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko told Reuters the extradition request was being considered but no final decision had yet been made. He denied the case was politically motivated. Every person who lives in Ukraine must respect the basic laws, he said. Unfortunately so far we only see things that are unworthy behavior of such a person. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Morawiecki sworn in as Polish PM amid dispute with EU;WARSAW (Reuters) - Mateusz Morawiecki was sworn in as Poland s new prime minister on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk called on the new leader to pursue European unity. Poland s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is at odds with the EU over immigration, logging in an ancient forest and government attempts to control the courts and the media. Critics say the eurosceptic party s policies have subverted democracy and the rule of law. At the same time, acrimony between Tusk and the PiS dates back years. Poland, acting on orders from the PiS boss and long-time Tusk adversary Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was the sole member of the 28 EU members to vote in March against Tusk s re-election. Morawiecki, 49, replaced Beata Szydlo, who became a deputy prime minister. PiS sacked the popular Szydlo last week in a bid to improve Poland s image abroad and prepare the conservatives for a series of elections. Morawiecki will remain finance minister and economy minister. All other ministers have kept their jobs for now, although some ministerial changes are expected in weeks to come. Morawiecki said his government will continue the work of Szydlo. He is expected to outline his policies on Tuesday. Tusk, a former Polish prime minister before PiS came to power in 2015, said he counts on good cooperation. Acting for Poland s strong position in the European Union and for the unity of all member states is the need of the moment, Tusk wrote. Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who is a critic of the PiS said on Twitter: The circus has stayed the same, only the clowns have changed their roles. Walesa led protests and strikes that shook communist rule in the 1980s. Szydlo s government was one of the most popular in Poland since the 1989 collapse of communism. It registered around 40 percent approval due to low unemployment, increases in public spending and a focus on traditional Catholic values in public life. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Detained Saudi billionaire al-Sanea seeks to end debt dispute;DUBAI (Reuters) - A detained Saudi billionaire who led the collapsed Saad Group is seeking to repay part of a multi-billion dollar debt to creditors under a deal that could allow his release, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The businessman, Maan al-Sanea, was detained in October in the kingdom s Eastern Province for unpaid debts, and has since been in a civil detention center in the city of Khobar, according to several sources. Reemas Group, a financial consultancy hired by Saad Group, has outlined a proposed settlement covering $4 billion in debt. In an email sent by Reemas to creditors, of copy of which Reuters has obtained, it suggests that they would get more of their money back than under a court-enforced liquidation of the company, albeit over a longer period. At the height of his success, al-Sanea held investments in a number of large companies, including a 3.1 percent stake in British-based bank HSBC bought in 2007. That year, when his net worth was estimated at over $10 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as one of the world s 100 richest men. But al-Sanea s fortunes turned in 2009, when his business collapsed under heavy debts, unleashing a series of long-running legal disputes. Al-Sanea was detained a few weeks before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a crackdown on corruption in which dozens of Saudi princes and businessmen are being held. However, there is no indication that al-Sanea s case is linked with this campaign, as he was detained by the Saudi authorities for unpaid debts rather than alleged graft. Sources told Reuters that al-Sanea has access to a telephone to speak to his legal team and advisers, and has been trying to organize the debt settlement with the help of some members of his family. A source at the Ministry of Justice in Riyadh said al-Sanea could be released if his debts with creditors are settled. Khobar General Court could not immediately be reached for comment. Reemas Group, which has branches in Khobar and Bahrain, said in the email that 34 financial institutions had obtained court judgments in the case worth 15.7 billion riyals ($4.19 billion). We have contacted 90 percent either directly or via their local representative over the past few days. They have welcomed the idea, and we are yet to receive their preliminary consent in order to proceed with the next step, said the email, which was sent to other creditors last month. Reemas said in the email that rather than auctioning off Saad Group s assets under the liquidation process, they would be moved into a special purpose vehicle, with creditors owning the new company. The initiative would protect the (assets) from substantial reduction in value and enhance the debt coverage ratio to reach at least 20-25 percent, it said. Reemas Group did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Saad Group, once one of the largest business conglomerates in the Gulf, collapsed under the weight of its debts in 2009 along with the family-owned Saudi conglomerate Ahmad Algosaibi and Brothers (AHAB). Since then, the two groups have been battling each other in the courts, with creditors seeking to recover billions of dollars. AHAB said it had yet to approached about the proposed debt settlement. We are happy to engage in the dialogue and feel we should be included and if we re not included we will pursue all avenues available to us, said Simon Charlton, AHAB s chief restructuring officer and acting chief executive. The debt settlement efforts, sources said, came after an entity established by the Supreme Judicial Council in Saudi Arabia, called the Joint Directorate of Enforcement at the General Court in Al-Khobar (JDEK), took over al-Sanea s personal assets and began a liquidation process for Saad Group. The proposed settlement suggests creditors would recover the funds over a five-year period. Two sources said that according to the debt recovery path indicated by JDEK, they would get only 6 to 8 cents in the dollar but more quickly, over a period of one to three years. According to the terms of the settlement, the special purpose vehicle would be supervised by a steering committee headed by Saudi Arabia s Arab National Bank. Arab National Bank did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Two of the sources familiar with the matter confirmed that a consensual and speedy settlement would show al-Sanea is serious about repaying creditors and could potentially accelerate his release. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two-thirds of Mexicans reject amnesty for gang members: poll;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Two-thirds of Mexicans reject offering an amnesty to members of criminal gangs as a way of reducing violence in the country, a poll showed on Monday, days after a top leftist presidential candidate floated the idea of exploring the step. At the start of December, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told supporters in the violence-wracked state of Guerrero he was prepared to analyze all the options, including an amnesty, to bring peace to Mexico after years of violence between gangs. You can t fight fire with fire, he said. Asked by a reporter whether his amnesty could include drug cartel bosses, Lopez Obrador his campaign would consider it in a recording published by newspaper El Universal. A telephone survey by polling firm Buendia & Laredo for El Universal showed only 23 percent of the respondents agreed somewhat or strongly with the idea of brokering an amnesty with the gangs in exchange for pledges to reduce violence. Some 66 percent took the opposite view, while eight percent said they had no opinion either way. The rest gave no answer. Violence between drug cartels and security forces has been blamed for well over 100,000 deaths in the past decade, and Mexico is on track to register its highest murder total this year since it began keeping regular monthly tallies in 1997. Lopez Obrador, who has led most of the early polls for the July 2018 election, did not provide details about the potential scope of the amnesty, and aides to the 64-year-old consulted by Reuters have so far declined to flesh out how one might work. A former mayor of Mexico City, Lopez Obrador was runner-up in the last two elections, and his adversaries seized on the amnesty to paint the proposal as a threat to security and an affront to the victims of organized crime. A gang truce in El Salvador in 2012 initially cut violence, but when it broke down, murders soared to new heights. The Buendia & Laredo survey, which polled 600 people Dec. 7-8, said that only 16 percent of those polled felt the amnesty would improve the security situation in Mexico, while 62 percent took the opposite view. Some 18 percent believed it would make no difference and the rest gave no answer. The poll was conducted had a margin of error of 4.0 percentage points, El Universal said. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin, in Syria, says mission accomplished, orders partial Russian pull-out;MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin flew into Syria and ordered a significant part of Moscow s military contingent there to start withdrawing on Monday, declaring their work largely done. Putin, who polls show will be re-elected comfortably in March, made the announcement during a surprise visit to Russia s Hmeymim air base in Syria - his first since Russia intervened in the conflict. He held talks with President Bashar al-Assad and addressed Russian forces. The first leg in a three-country one-day whirlwind diplomatic visit which sees Putin also meeting his Egyptian and Turkish counterparts, Putin is keen to leverage the heightened Middle East influence that Syria has given him to cast himself as a leader who can do diplomacy as well as military force. The Kremlin first launched air strikes in Syria in September 2015 in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, turning the tide of the conflict in Assad s favor. Now that it regards that mission complete, Putin wants to help broker a peace deal. In just over two years, Russia s armed forces and the Syrian army have defeated the most battle-hardened group of international terrorists, Putin told Russian servicemen. A significant part of the Russian force could now return home. The conditions for a political solution under the auspices of the United Nations have been created, said Putin. The Motherland awaits you. Washington was skeptical about Putin s statement. Russian comments about removal of their forces do not often correspond with actual troop reductions, and do not affect U.S. priorities in Syria, said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon. Putin made clear in any case that Russia would retain enough firepower to destroy any possible Islamic State comeback. Syrian state television quoted Assad as thanking Putin for Russia s help, saying the blood of Moscow s martyrs had been mixed with the blood of the Syrian army. It also showed the two men watching what it called a victory parade with Russian troops dressed in desert uniforms marching past. Russia s main contribution has been air strikes, and with Iran-backed Shi ite militias doing much of the fighting on the ground, the partial Russian withdrawal may not make a huge difference when it comes to the military situation. Russia s campaign, which has been extensively covered on state TV at home, has not caught the imagination of most Russians. But nor has it stirred unease of the kind the Soviet Union faced with its calamitous 1980s Afghanistan intervention. The use of private military contractors, something which has been documented by Reuters but denied by the defense ministry, has allowed Moscow to keep the public casualty toll fairly low. Officially, less than 50 Russian service personnel have been killed in the campaign, but the real number, including private contractors, is estimated to be much higher. Russia s mission accomplished moment in Syria may help Putin increase the turnout at the March presidential election by appealing to the patriotism of voters. Though polls show he will easily win, they also show that some Russians are increasingly apathetic about politics, and Putin s supporters are keen to get him re-elected on a big turnout, which in their eyes confers legitimacy. Putin, who with the help of state TV has dominated Russia s political landscape for the last 17 years, told Russian servicemen they would return home as victors. Speaking in front of a row of servicemen holding Russian flags, Putin said his military had proved its might and that Moscow had succeeded in keeping Syria intact as a sovereign independent state. I congratulate you! Putin told the servicemen. Putin is keen to organize a special event in Russia - the Syrian Congress on National Dialogue - that Moscow hopes will bring together the Syrian government and opposition and try to hammer out a new constitution. When asked about Putin s announcement, Yahya Aridi, spokesman for the Syrian opposition in Geneva, said it welcomed any step that brought Syria closer to real peace. Putin made clear however that while Russia might be drawing down much of its forces, its military presence in Syria was a permanent one and that it would retain enough firepower to destroy any Islamic State comeback. Russia will keep its Hmeymim air base in Syria s Latakia Province and its naval facility in the Syrian Mediterranean port of Tartous on a permanent basis, said Putin. Both bases are protected by sophisticated air defense missile systems. Putin was told by the military that it had begun withdrawing 25 aircraft, a detachment of Russian military police, a detachment of Russian special forces, a military field hospital and a de-mining center. However, Russia has announced partial force draw-downs before only to later bring in different capabilities. We ve seen such announcements before, which turn about to be less significant than they might have initially appeared, said one European diplomat who declined to be named. The most significant contribution Russia can make to advancing peace in Syria is to pressure the Assad regime to engage seriously in Geneva (peace talks). Absent that, the suspicion will be that this announcement may have more to do with Russian politics than the Syrian situation. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany favors Eurofighter as it seeks to replace Tornado;BERLIN (Reuters) - The German Defence Ministry said on Monday that the European fighter jet was the leading candidate to replace its Tornado jets, which it wants to start phasing out in 2025. The ministry s position appears to contradict that of the German air force, whose chief indicated last month that he preferred Lockheed Martin s F-35, which meets the military s requirements of stealth and long-distance operational capabilities. In a letter to a Greens lawmaker who had inquired about the deliberations, the ministry said the F-35 and Boeing s F-15 and F-18 fighters were secondary options. The indicated view of the inspector of the air force that the F-35 Lightning II is an especially suitable successor to the Tornado system is not the position of the federal government, Deputy Defence Minister Ralf Brauksiepe wrote in the letter. The Eurofighter Typhoon is a joint project between British defense group BAE, France s Airbus and Italy s Finmeccanica. The ministry s preference for the Typhoon is no surprise;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More than 8 million Yemenis 'a step away from famine': U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - Warring sides must let more aid get through to 8.4 million people who are a step away from famine in Yemen, a senior U.N. official said on Monday. A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen s civil war blockaded ports last month after a missile was fired toward Riyadh. Jamie McGoldrick, the humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said the blockade has since been eased, but the situation remained dire. The continuing blockade of ports is limiting supplies of fuel, food and medicines;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran will treat jailed aid worker as Iranian citizen: foreign ministry;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran will treat a British-Iranian aid worker as an Iranian citizen and she will serve her sentence as determined by the judiciary, Iran s foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson discussed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe s case with Iranian officials after flying to Tehran over the weekend to try to seek her release. One of the issues that Johnson brought up in Tehran was the issue of Ms. Zaghari, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi was quoted by state media as saying. With regard to her dual nationality, from our point of view of course she is Iranian and she has been sentenced by the judiciary and she will serve the period of her sentence. Britain says Zaghari-Ratcliffe was visiting family on holiday in April 2016 when she was jailed by Iran for attempting to overthrow the government. Johnson said he urged the release of dual nationals. I urged their release, on humanitarian grounds, where there is cause to do so, Johnson told the British parliament. These are complex cases involving individuals considered by Iran to be their own citizens, and I do not wish to raise false hopes. But my meetings in Tehran were worthwhile, he said. It is too early to be confident about the outcome. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not the only dual national being held in Iran, but her case has taken on political significance in Britain after Johnson said last month that she had been teaching journalists in Iran, which her employer denies. Johnson later apologized. Opponents have called for him to resign if his comments lead to her serving longer in prison. Qassemi said the Iranian foreign ministry would follow up on Zaghari-Ratcliffe s case but said that it was ultimately a matter for the judiciary. A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. It says Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been on holiday and had not been teaching journalism in Iran. Johnson also said he raised with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif what he called the official harassment of journalists working for BBC Persian and their families inside Iran. The BBC has called on Iran to reverse a court order which it said effectively froze the non-liquid assets of 152 staff, former staff and contributors in Iran. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Passing pension bill in 2018 would be hard: Brazil minister;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s planning minister on Monday acknowledged the possibility of delaying a key vote on a bill cutting social security spending to 2018 but said its approval would be difficult then, an election year. Speaking at an event in Bras lia, Planning Minister Dyogo Oliveira said lawmakers must pass the unpopular bill, which curtails the costly pension system, or risk endangering the nation s fiscal situation. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top U.N. officials warn that North Korea sanctions harming aid delivery;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Top United Nations officials warned the Security Council on Monday that its sanctions on North Korea over the country s nuclear and missile programs may be harming the delivery of humanitarian aid to the impoverished, isolated Asian state. The 15-member Security Council held its fourth annual meeting on human rights abuses in North Korea, despite objections by China, who said it was not the right forum and warned the move could further escalate tensions in the region. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein said U.N. agencies and aid groups were literally a life-line for some 13 million vulnerable North Koreans, but sanctions may be adversely affecting this essential help. Zeid and deputy U.N. political affairs chief Miroslav Jenca said aid groups were facing difficulties accessing international banking channels, transporting goods into the North Korea, and rising fuel prices hindering delivery of aid. In an Oct. 27 letter to the council sanctions committee on North Korea, seen by Reuters, the top U.N. official in Pyongyang, Tapan Mishra, also said there were customs problems. Crucial relief items, including medical equipment and drugs, have been held up for months despite being equipped with the required paperwork affirming that they are not on the list of sanctioned items, Mishra wrote. Zeid asked the Security Council on Monday to assess the impact of the sanctions on human rights and take action to minimize their adverse humanitarian consequences. In a statement on Friday, the council sanctions committee reiterated that the nine sanctions resolutions adopted since 2006 are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of North Korea. North Korea has repeatedly rejected accusations of rights abuses and blames sanctions for the humanitarian situation. The North Korean U.N. mission condemned Monday s meeting as a desperate act of the hostile forces which lose the political and military confrontation with the DPRK (North Korea) that has openly risen to the position of nuclear weapon state. Japan s U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho told reporters on Monday: The humanitarian situation and human rights situation in North Korea is very dire and that s because of the authorities. For the fourth time, China unsuccessfully tried to stop the public meeting by calling a procedural vote. A minimum of nine votes are needed to win such a vote and China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France cannot wield their vetoes. Ten members voted in favor of the meeting, China, Russia and Bolivia voted against, and Egypt and Ethiopia abstained. Council members and relevant parties should engage themselves with finding ways to ease tensions on the Peninsula. They should avoid mutual provocation and words or actions that might further escalate the situation, China s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Wu Haitao told the council. He said the discussion of human rights in North Korea was counterproductive. The systematic human rights violations and abuses of the North Korean government are more than the cause of its people s suffering. They are a means to a single end: Keeping the Kim Jong Un regime in power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the council. The Security Council is due to hold a ministerial meeting on North Korea s nuclear and missiles programs on Friday. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia lifts cinema ban, directors and movie chains rejoice;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinemas on Monday, prompting celebrations from film fans, directors and movie chains eyeing the last untapped mass market in the Middle East. The first theaters could start showing films as early as March, the government said, part of a liberalizing reform drive that has already opened the door to concerts, comedy shows, and women drivers over the past year. Cinemas were banned in the early 1980s under pressure from Islamists as Saudi society turned towards a particularly conservative form of the religion that discouraged public entertainment and public mixing between men and women. But reforms led by 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have eased many of those restrictions, as the government tries to broaden the economy and lessen its dependence on oil. Opening cinemas will act as a catalyst for economic growth and diversification, said Minister of Culture and Information Awwad bin Saleh Alawwad. By developing the broader cultural sector we will create new employment and training opportunities, as well as enriching the Kingdom s entertainment options. In a nod to conservatives, the government said the films would be censored to make sure they remain in line with values and principles in place and do not contradict with Sharia Laws and moral values in the kingdom. The details of that censorship were not announced, but could be extensive in a country where images of women are often crossed out on advertising. There was no immediate reaction from the kingdom s Wahhabi clergy and conservative groups, who have responded to past suggestions about bringing back cinema with outraged social media campaigns. Public objections to the reforms have been more muted in recent months, after authorities launched a spate of arrests clamping down on critics of the program. Up to now, the kingdom s film pioneers have had to focus on foreign markets to get their works shown. Saudi Arabia is always in the news, but it s nice to be in the news in this way, said Los Angeles-based Saudi director Haifaa Al Manour, who released the first full-length feature shot entirely in the kingdom, Wadjda, in 2012. I feel like we re about to relive what Egypt was like in the 50s, she said, referring to the explosion of film-making in what is now the epicenter of Arabic popular cinema. Prince Mohammed has also sought to promote a more tolerant form of Islam and crack down on extremism, a cause Mansour said would be furthered by films. If you want to fight terrorism, you need to give people a love of life. A love of life comes from joy, and cinema is joy. Thousands of Saudis currently travel to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and other countries for their entertainment. The government has said it wants to retain the money spent on those trips. Regional cinema chains have also been eyeing the Saudi market, keen to tap the spending power of the young people who make up roughly 70 percent of the kingdom s population. Dubai-based mall operator Majid Al Futtaim, which owns the VOX Cinemas chain, said it wanted to open the first movie theater there. We are very happy about this announcement, as you can imagine, we have been waiting for it for quite some time, said chief executive Alain Bejjani. The government said it expected to open more than 300 cinemas with more than 2,000 screens by 2030, building an industry that would contribute more then 90 billion riyals ($24 billion) to the economy and create 30,000 permanent jobs over the same period. A commission chaired by Alawwad will announce details of licensing and regulations over the next few weeks, it added. Locations for the first cinemas are still under study, but would likely be in top population centers, Fahad al-Muammar, the supervisor of cinema in the kingdom s General Commission for Audiovisual Media, told state TV al-Ekhbariya. ($1 = 3.7502 riyals) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EDF wants to take part in Saudi nuclear plans: CEO;PARIS (Reuters) - French state-controlled utility EDF (EDF.PA) wants to take part in Saudi Arabia s plans to build nuclear power reactors, its chief executive told Reuters on Monday. Saudi Arabia, which wants to reduce oil consumption at home, is considering building 17.6 gigawatts of nuclear-powered electricity generating capacity by 2032 and has sent a request for information to international suppliers to build two reactors. Sources familiar with the situation said last month EDF has already held talks with Saudi Arabia about selling Areva-designed European Pressurized Reactors (EPR) and that it wants to participate in a possible Saudi nuclear tender. Levy said that EDF wants to take part in the country s move away from relying on fossil fuels for its energy supplies. We will respond to this opportunity in all the energy technologies in which we have competencies, that is in solar, wind and nuclear, Levy said. Russian and South Korean companies have already said they plan to bid for the Saudi work on nuclear power while sources have said Toshiba-owned U.S. firm Westinghouse (6502.T) is in talks with U.S. peers to form a bidding consortium. In 2009 EDF and Areva lost out to South Korea s KEPCO (052690.KS) in the bidding to build nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates, the first such project in the Middle East. EDF is set to buy French nuclear group Areva s reactor engineering division Areva NP in a deal expected to be finalised before the end of this year. Levy said EDF is on track to finalize the deal before the end of this month. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel, Social Democrats seek clarity on coalition talks;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) say they hope to find clarity soon on prospects for a new ruling coalition as they gear up for exploratory talks this week. The conservatives, meeting on Monday to map out their negotiating positions, believe compromises can be reached to renew the grand coalition that governed for the past four years. The two blocs must overcome differences over the future of Europe, pensions, health care and education. Merkel, whose CDU/CSU alliance last month failed to cut a coalition deal with two smaller parties after an inconclusive national election in September, is due to brief the media at 1 pm (1200 GMT). Senior conservatives on Saturday rejected the vision for a United States of Europe put forward by SPD leader Martin Schulz, weakened after his party posted its worst post-war election result in September. But Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the conservative premier of the Saarland region, told broadcaster ARD that she hoped some progress could emerge from this week s talks with the SPD. Maybe we can take a first big step in this direction this week, she said. SPD Secretary General Lars Klingbeil told ARD his party was open to all possibilities, including a renewed coalition with conservatives or a minority government. The ball is now in Mrs. Merkel s court, Klingbeil said, adding that the pace of negotiations depended to a large extent on the core demands of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The SPD made its positions clear at its party conference. Now we ll listen to what the CDU leader wants, what the CSU wants, and it will be clear very quickly if further discussions are worth it, he said. A poll published on Monday by broadcaster RTL and n-tv showed 71 percent of SPD members welcomed the party s decision to talk with conservatives about forming a new ruling coalition, while 81 percent wanted the party to conduct tough negotiations. Klingbeil said his party would seek clear commitments from the CDU to spend more on education and combat childhood poverty before entering coalition talks. Julia Kloeckner, deputy leader of the CDU, warned the SPD against making exaggerated demands and criticised comments Klingbeil made over the weekend suggesting that talks could stretch as long as May. If the SPD thinks we have time forever, that is not our view, she said. Monday s poll showed that 71 percent of German voters favored rapid negotiations on forming a new government. Kloeckner said it was clear that the two political blocs would have to revisit issues such as integration, digitalization and development of rural areas before agreeing to a new coalition. A continuation of the previous grand coalition cannot happen, she said. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish air strikes kill 29 Kurdish militants in northern Iraq: army;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq on Monday and killed 29 of the group s militants, Turkey s armed forces said. The PKK fighters were believed to be preparing an attack on Turkish border posts from the Hakurk and Metina regions of northern Iraq, the army said in a written statement. Several caves and shelters used by the militants were destroyed in the air strikes, it said. The PKK, which has been waging an insurgency in southeast Turkey since the 1980s, is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian leader Abbas in Cairo, Istanbul to rally region over Jerusalem;CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday intensified efforts to rally Middle Eastern countries against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, setting up talks with Arab leaders beginning in Cairo. Abbas met with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, which has been a key broker in past peace talks with Israel and between fighting Palestinian factions. Abbas and Sisi agreed to continue high-level coordination and to use the widespread rejection of the U.S. move to maintain the rights of the Palestinians, a statement from the Egyptian presidency said. Palestinian Presidency Spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said there would be an Arab move to preserve the rights of the Palestinian people soon. Abbas will later head to Istanbul to give a speech at a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Arab states condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s Jerusalem decision last week, and vowed to press international bodies to take action against it. The Arab Parliament held an emergency meeting on the issue in Cairo on Monday, state news agency MENA reported. Sisi, after a separate meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the U.S. moving its Israel embassy to Jerusalem would have dangerous effects on peace and security in the region . Abbas met the head of the Arab League in Cairo on Monday, local media reported. Arab foreign ministers held an hours-long emergency meeting at the weekend and vowed to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution rejecting the U.S. move, but gave few details on other measures they would take. The Palestinians hope for concrete action. Daring Palestinian and Arab decisions are required in the coming stage, which is very important, Abbas s spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Palestinian official news agency WAFA. World powers have said the U.S. move will impede peace efforts in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict as anger spreads across the region. The Trump administration says it is still committed to the peace process. Abbas will not meet Mike Pence during the U.S. Vice President s visit to the region later this month, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Saturday. Egypt s top Muslim and Christian religious leaders also said they would not meet Pence. Egypt has also brokered reconciliation deals between Abbas s Fatah party and Gaza-based Islamist group Hamas, which called for a new uprising against Israel last week. The planned handover of control of Gaza to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority under the latest deal hit another delay on Sunday, with a Fatah official blaming obstacles without elaborating. Israel launched fresh air strikes in Gaza on Saturday in response to rocket fire from the enclave, where it fought a war in 2014 which killed more than 2,000 people, most of them civilians. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Saudi prince condemns Trump's 'opportunistic' Jerusalem move;DUBAI (Reuters) - Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, in one of the sharpest reactions emanating from the U.S.-allied kingdom. In a letter to Trump published in a Saudi newspaper on Monday, Prince Turki, a former ambassador to Washington who now holds no government office but remains influential, called the move a domestic political ploy which would stoke violence. Bloodshed and mayhem will definitely follow your opportunistic attempt to make electoral gain, Prince Turki wrote in a letter published in the Saudi newspaper al-Jazeera. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and veered from international consensus last week by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Most countries say the city s status must be left to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Your action has emboldened the most extreme elements in the Israeli society ... because they take your action as a license to evict the Palestinians from their lands and subject them to an apartheid state, Prince Turki wrote. Your action has equally emboldened Iran and its terrorist minions to claim that they are the legitimate defenders of Palestinian rights, he added, referring to the kingdom s arch-foe Shi ite Iran. Saudi Arabia has sought better ties with Washington under Trump than it had under his predecessor Barack Obama, who alarmed Riyadh by signing a nuclear agreement with Iran, Saudi Arabia s arch enemy. Prince Turki is a son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. His brother, Saud al-Faisal, served as foreign minister for 40 years until 2015, and their branch of the family is seen as influential over Saudi foreign policy, even as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has solidified his authority. Prince Saud championed a 2002 Arab peace initiative which called for normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel in return for Israel s withdrawal from occupied territories. Although most foreign policy in Saudi Arabia is now overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed, a source at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies which Prince Turki chairs said he still meets King Salman every week. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Women who have accused Trump of inappropriate conduct;(Reuters) - Three of the women who have accused U.S. President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct called on Monday for a congressional probe of his behavior amid similar accusations against powerful men in Hollywood, the media and politics. Over the past two years, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances against them long before he entered politics. Trump has denied the accusations, and the White House has accused the women of lying. Among his accusers are a Miss Utah beauty pageant winner, a businesswoman, a reporter and a receptionist. The following are the three women who on Monday renewed their call for action: ** Jessica Leeds recounted in a video interview posted on The New York Times website in October 2016 that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt on a flight on which she was traveling to New York in or around 1980 when she was a 38-year-old businesswoman. ** Rachel Crooks, formerly a receptionist at a real estate firm in Trump Tower, told The New York Times in a report published in October 2016 that Trump “kissed me directly on the mouth” in 2005 at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22. ** Samantha Holvey, the 2006 Miss North Carolina and a former contestant in the Miss USA pageant, told NBC’s “Today” program on Monday that Trump walked into the pageant dressing room in 2006 while contestants were naked and in bathrobes. She told CNN in an October 2016 report that Trump personally inspected each woman prior to the contest, “eyeing us from head to toe like we were meat, we were sexual objects.” Here are other women who have made accusations against Trump: ** Summer Zervos, a contestant on Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice” in 2006, told an October 2016 news conference that Trump tried to get her to lie down on a bed with him when she met him in 2007 to discuss a possible job. Zervos said she complied with a request to sit next to Trump and, “He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast.” Trump has denied the allegation. Zervos sued Trump in January, contending that his denials of her accusations amounted to false and defamatory statements and that being “branded a liar” by Trump has harmed her and her business. ** In a video posted on The Washington Post website in October 2016, Kristin Anderson accused Trump of putting his hand up her skirt in a crowded New York nightclub in the early 1990s in an unwanted advance. “He did touched my vagina through my underwear, absolutely,” Anderson said in the video interview. ** Lisa Boyne said in a short film titled “16 Women and Donald Trump” that she met Trump in the early 1990s at a dinner party he hosted in New York. Boyne said that Trump picked up her and another person in his limousine, and he made inappropriate remarks about famous actresses. “He asked us to rate them from 1 to 10,” Boyne said. Boyne said that at the party, Trump “used his table as a ‘casting couch,’ instructing women who attended to model above the table. He then looked under the dresses of each women and made comments of what he saw.” ** Jessica Drake, an adult film actress, told a news conference in Los Angeles in October 2016 that Trump pressured her to have sex with him 11 years ago when they met at a golf tournament. Trump’s campaign said the accusations were false. ** Jill Harth, a former Trump beauty pageant business associate, filed a $125 million lawsuit in 1997 against Trump alleging that on Jan. 24, 1993, at Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Trump “forcibly removed plaintiff to a bedroom, whereupon defendant subjected plaintiff to defendant’s unwanted sexual advances.” A Trump spokesperson was quoted by The New York Times in October 2016 as saying, “Mr. Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms. Harth.” The lawsuit was dropped in May 1997. ** Cathy Heller said that in 1997 Trump tried to kiss her during a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago. Heller, her husband, her three children and her in-laws attended the event. When she was introduced to Trump, “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,” she told The Guardian newspaper in October 2016. She said she turned her head and Trump kissed her on the side of the mouth. ** Ninni Laaksonen, a former Miss Finland, accused Trump of groping her in 2006 when she was representing her country in the Miss Universe beauty contest. Laaksonen told the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper in October 2016 that he had grabbed her behind before she appeared on a television show in New York with other contestants. “He really grabbed my butt. I don’t think anybody saw it but I flinched and thought: ‘What is happening?’,” she was quoted as saying in the newspaper. ** In October 2016 Mindy McGillivray told the Palm Beach Post that she was a 23-year-old photographer’s assistant at a Jan. 24, 2003, event at Mar-a-Lago when Trump grabbed her buttocks. ** Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter, wrote a first-person account that described Trump kissing her without her consent in December 2005 at Mar-a-Lago while she was working on an article about him and his third wife, Melania, for People magazine. In the account published by People in October 2016, Stoynoff said “he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.” ** Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, said Trump twice kissed her on the lips while she was a contestant for the Miss USA pageant in 1997 when she was 21 years old. “What he did made me feel so uncomfortable that I ended up cutting my trip short, bought my own plane ticket, flew home and never spoke to him again,” Taggart said at an October 2016 press conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred. ** At an October 2016 news conference, yoga instructor Karena Virginia said Trump approached her outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1998 when she was 27 years old. She alleged that Trump commented on her legs and then touched her breast before she was able to get into a car and be driven away. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgaria asks Russia to overhaul MiG fighter jets;SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria has asked Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG to overhaul and maintain its 15 aged MiG-29 fighter jets in a four-year deal worth up to 81.3 million levs ($49 million), the country s defense ministry said on Monday. NATO and EU member Bulgaria needs to keep its Soviet-era aircraft operational after plans to buy eight new fighter jets hit another snag. The defense ministry will have to virtually restart the process and is yet to send requests for proposals to aircraft makers. Main contenders remain Swedish manufacturer Saab s Gripen jets, Portugal and the United States with secondhand F-16s and Italy with secondhand Eurofighter Typhoons. Defence Minister Krasimir Karakachanov has said Bulgaria may also send a request to Boeing for F-18 aircraft. ($1 = 1.6586 leva) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Pro-ISIS Terrorist Who Intended to Blow Up NYC Bus Terminal During Rush Hour Came To U.S. Through CHAIN MIGRATION Program Democrats Are Fighting For;In September, President Donald Trump tweeted a new condition for a potential deal with Democrats on immigration. Trump warned that he would not budge on allowing the failed chain migration program to continue in the United States. CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration! he wrote.CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017 Business Insider attempted to paint a softer picture of the harsh realities (like terrorism) that chain migration brings with the unpopular program to the United States.Chain migration is a term almost exclusively used by immigration hardliners when referring to the family-reunification-based component of the US immigration system, through which US citizens or lawful permanent residents may sponsor close family members to join them in the US.Prominent anti-immigration groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA have frequently denounced chain migration, describing it as a process that admits indefinite numbers of unskilled immigrants based on family connections alone and that prompts foreigners to view US immigration as a right or entitlement. Immigration proponents, however, describe family-based immigration as essential in helping new immigrants assimilate into US society. The American Immigration Council argues that newcomers who can bring family members with them when they immigrate to the US have stronger social and economic support that helps them navigate the system. Trump s tweet about chain migration on Friday could signal a new bump in the road for any immigration deal with Democrats. The bipartisan Dream Act, recently reintroduced in Congress by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, includes a pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, whose protections under the DACA program will be phased out over the next six months.FOX News reports An attempted suicide bomber who set off a rush-hour explosion at the nation s busiest bus terminal is a Bangladeshi national living in Brooklyn who was inspired by ISIS, law enforcement officials said.The suspect in Monday morning s blast at Port Authority in midtown Manhattan was identified as Akayed Ullah, 27. Ullah strapped a pipe bomb to his body with Velcro and zip ties, and it detonated in a subway corridor, police said.From police sources: pic.twitter.com/xFNagGmoh6 Joe Borelli (@JoeBorelliNYC) December 11, 2017Ullah lived in Brooklyn after he entered the U.S. in 2011 from Bangladesh on a chain migration visa, Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Tyler Houlton said in a statement.The DHS said Ullah came to the U.S. on an F43 visa, a preferential visa available for those with family in the U.S. who are citizens.He was considered a Lawful Permanent Resident from Bangladesh, Houlton told Fox News. ;left-news;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY ROY MOORE’S ELECTION WIN Is Critical For President Trump To Replace Leftist Federal and U.S. Supreme Court Activist Judges;Tomorrow, Alabama residents (including thousands of felons who have been registered by Al Sharpton s alleged brother) will go to the polls to decide who they want to represent them in the US Senate. The Democrats have contributed over $10 million to their leftist, virtually unknown candidate, Doug Jones. So, why are they so eager to take this Senate seat?In June 2017, the Democrats spent an astounding $30 million in Georgia s 6th congressional district, to lose a House seat in a special election. They falsely believed that the only thing they needed for Democrat candidate John Ossoff to win the race, was enough Georgians who hated Donald Trump to come out and vote.Is history repeating itself in Alabama?Democrat Senate candidate Doug Jones raised nearly six times Moore s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent.Jones raked in nearly $10.2 million compared to Jones $1.8 million. Jones also spent roughly 5 times as much as Moore during that period, nearly $8.7 million compared to Moore s $1.7 million.Conservative Pat Buchanan asks, Why would Christian conservatives in good conscience go to the polls Dec. 12 and vote for Judge Roy Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers leveled against him? Answer: That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned. The lives of millions of unborn may be the stakes.There is, however, so much more at stake than the single issue of abortion in this hotly contested Senate race. Democrats are not going to sit back and allow President Trump a pathway to remaking the radical leftist judicial system they ve worked so hard to put in place. Today, the GOP, holding Congress and the White House, has a narrow path to capture the Third Branch, the Supreme Court, and to dominate the federal courts for a decade. For this historic opportunity, the party can thank two senators, one retired, the other still sitting.The first is former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.In 2013, Harry exercised the nuclear option, abolishing the filibuster for President Obama s judicial nominees. The Senate no longer needed 60 votes to confirm judges. Fifty-one Senate votes could cut off debate, and confirm.Iowa s Chuck Grassley warned Harry against stripping the minority of its filibuster power. Such a move may come back to bite you, he told Harry. Grassley is now judiciary committee chairman.And this year a GOP Senate voted to use the nuclear option to shut down a filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, who was then confirmed with 55 votes.Yet the Democratic minority still had one card to play to block President Trump s nominees the blue slip courtesy. If a senator from the state where a federal judicial nominee resides asks for a hold on proceedings, by not returning a blue slip, the judiciary committee has traditionally honored that request and not held hearings.Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota used the blue slip to block the Trump nomination of David Stras of Minnesota to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Franken calls Stras too ideological, too conservative.But Grassley has now decided to reject the blue slip courtesy for appellate court judges, since their jurisdiction is not just over a single state like Minnesota, but over an entire region.Not only are the federal court vacancies almost unprecedented, a GOP Senate and Trump are working in harness to fill them before January 2019, when a new Congress is sworn in.If Republicans blow this opportunity, it is unlikely to come again. For the Supreme Court has seemed within Republican grasp before, only to have it slip away because of presidential errors.Both Trump, by whom he nominates, and a Republican Senate, with its power to confirm with 51 votes, are indispensable if we are to end judicial dictatorship in America. Pat Buchanan, Yellow Hammer News ;left-news;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! RATINGS CRASHER Megyn Kelly Is DESTROYED On Social Media For Using Her NBC Show To Give Liberal Trump Sexual Assault Accusers A Platform;"Last week, President Trump totally humiliated ABC News on Twitter, as he pointed out their embarrassing attempt at gotcha journalism when Brian Ross erroneously reported in a BREAKING NEWS story, that Michael Flynn was told by Donald Trump to talk to the Russian Ambassador during his campaign. Brian Ross was suspended for a month. President Trump suggested should be fired for his #fakenews reporting.Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017This week, it was NBC s Never-Trump Megyn Kelly s chance to exact revenge on President Trump, who after attacking him during his first debate, lost her conservative Fox News fanbase and basically saw her promising career come to a screeching halt. NBC picked up Kelly in a $23 million per year contract in a gamble that liberals would warm up to the formerly conservative host. NBC has since found out that conservatives no longer want anything to do with Kelly, and liberals despise her for her past performances as a top-rated host on conservative-leaning FOX News.Twitter users were on fire after Megyn Kelly did her part to help tear down President Trump (again):Megyn Kelly,You and your employer need to smear Trump but there's nothing left to accuse him of so you're going to re-interview Trump accusers who've already been proven pos liars?How desperate you must be. Philip Schuyler (@FiveRights) December 11, 2017Today, Megyn Kelly traipsed out a trio of Donald Trump accusers on her failing show. Rest assured, there will be many more liberal accusers who come out against Donald Trump, as racism appears to have lost its glow, as a means to draw voters into the Democrat Party, as Americans have become tired of watching Democrats constantly drawing from the bottom of the deck, as a way to cloud Trump s Make America Great Again agenda of a pro-growth economy, jobs, education, lower taxes, and America first.Megyn Kelly, who is desperate for ratings, must have been incredibly disappointed when breaking news of a botched suicide bomber attack in New York City was reported at the same time her Democrat Donald Trump accuser was telling her story on her show.Daily Mail A trio of the president s accusers reemerged on Monday to hound him for sexually harassing them.Samantha Holvey, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks had previously made allegations against Trump and appeared on Megyn Kelly Today to demand justice as the White House resumed its claim that the issue had been litigated in last year s election. All of a sudden, he s all over, me, kissing and groping and groping and kissing, said Leeds, a self-proclaimed Democrat, who says she revealed her story because I wanted people to know what kind of a person that Trump really is what a pervert he is. This is the same Jessica Leeds that accused Trump of sexual harassment.Think Megyn Kelly will bring this picture up?Think she ll bring up the time that Jessica Leeds was in a two year property law suit with Trump? pic.twitter.com/AvdEyYu8Ew WhiteNitemare (@Carl_Anthony215) December 11, 2017Leeds claims that Trump assaulted on a plane in the 70s and called her a c*** when he ran into her some time later at a party in New York while he was still married to his first wife Ivana.Megyn Kelly asked former Trump accuser Jessica Leeds what she wants other women to know about sexual harassment. Leeds replied, We have a problem in that we have been enculturated all of this time for all of this time, for years and years and years, to be compliant. Leeds went on to say, For the woman who voted for Trump, they just didn t want to vote for a woman It became reasonably difficult to believe a single work Leeds had to say when she used the word enculturated when referring to her alleged meeting with Donald Trump. It became impossible to believe a word she said when Leeds followed up her comment by exposing her bitter feelings towards women for not voting for Hillary. The only thing missing from Leeds during her appearance on the Megyn Kelly show was her pussy hat and an I m a committed Democrat Feminist tattoo on her forehead. Watch:WATCH: ""If there are other women out there, what do you want them to know?"" Megyn asks Trump accusers Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey & Rachel Cooks on #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/YPt1CxieUA Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 11, 2017Watch Crooks tell Megyn her alleged story here: Is it true he [Trump] asked for your phone number? @megynkelly Yeah I remember saying, What do you need that for? Trump accuser Rachel Crooks on @MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/OCX1ZpnV2J TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 11, 2017Watch the obvious excitment of Megyn Kelly to be able to pretend as though she s relevant with a breaking news announcemnt with the official White House response to the allegations:WATCH: Statement the @WhiteHouse just provided to #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/0hahP6goW1 Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 11, 2017Daily Mail The two other women said that Trump s conduct while he was a businessman left them shocked and devastated and feeling very gross and very dirty. I was so uncomfortable, and a little, yeah, threatened, like I didn t have a choice, Crooks on Monday said.Kelly s program was preempted in New York as an explosion went off in Manhattan. Her show aired in other parts of the country, however, including Washington.Holvey, a former Miss USA contestant, said that Trump came backstage in 2006 and reviewed the women while they were indecent.She recalled thinking at the time that it would be a meet and great with Trump. But it wasn t.The former Miss North Carolina says Trump was just looking me over like I was just a piece of meat. I was not a human being. I did not have a brain I did not have a personality. I was just simply there for his pleasure. It left me feeling very gross, very dirty, like this is not what I signed up for. Here s how Twitter responded to Megyn s show: You know the Russia narrative is over when Megyn Kelly is having Trump accusers on her show.It will be never ending the next 3-7 years.The media is becoming the little boy that cried wolf.If they ever did find REAL dirt on Trump, no-one will believe them. Josh (@JoshNoneYaBiz) December 11, 2017Megyn Kelly is interviewing the lying 3 blind mice Trump accusers to save her failing show. Hope it s the final blow revealing to all that it s all about Megyn, for Megyn & nothing but Megyn s self serving ass who owes Trump gratitude for her relevancy. Tiff (@LATiffani1) December 11, 2017 ";left-news;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hardline Indonesian Muslim groups burn U.S., Israeli flags over Trump's Jerusalem move;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Hardline Muslim groups in Indonesia burned photos of U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as U.S. and Israeli flags, on Monday during a protest outside the U.S. embassy against Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Indonesia, home to the world s largest Muslim population, has joined a global chorus of condemnation of Trump s controversial move on Israel, which they say threatens security and stability in the Middle East and the world. The status of Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Jerusalem s eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state that they seek, while Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Hundreds attended the protest outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, which was barricaded by barbed wire and dozens of police officers. Let us witness the destruction of Israel s hegemony, one protest leader shouted into a megaphone as protesters burned an Israeli flag. We will support Palestine with our blood. Many protesters waved Palestinian flags and carried banners supporting intifada , or an uprising against Israel, and rally leaders also shouted anti-Semitic slogans. The protest was led by the Islamic Defenders Front, an aggressive vigilante group that calls for sharia, or Islamic religious law, to be imposed in Indonesia, a secular country. The demonstration followed a much larger protest at the weekend, where thousands called for diplomatic relations with the United States to be severed and for the U.S. ambassador to be expelled. Indonesia supports a two-state solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THE LIST of 34 House Republicans DEMANDING Permanent AMNESTY For Obama’s DACA “Kids”;Who wants to deport Dreamers ? Not many people, it turns out. Even veteran immigration restrictionists seem willing to legalize this subset of immigrants in the country illegally if it is part of a package deal. That s true even though a lot of what s said about the DACA recipients is PR-style hooey.For example, it s often said indeed, former President Barack Obama just recently said that the approximately 800,000 of them were brought to this country by their parents. Well, many were. But that s not required to qualify as a protected Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipient under the various plans, including Obama s. You just have to have entered the country illegally before age 16. You could have decided to sneak in against your parents wishes. You re still a Dreamer! Likewise, we re told DACA recipients are college-bound high school grads or military personnel. That s an exaggeration. All that s actually required is that the person enroll in a high school course or an alternative, including online courses and English-as-a-second-language classes. Under Obama s now-suspended program, you didn t even have to stay enrolled.Compared with the general population, DACA recipients are not especially highly skilled. A recent survey for several pro- Dreamer groups, with participants recruited by those groups, found that while most DACA recipients are not in school, the vast majority work. But their median hourly wage is only $15.34, meaning that many are competing with hard-pressed lower-skilled Americans.The DACA recipients you read about have typically been carefully selected for their appeal. They re valedictorians. They re first responders. They re curing diseases. They root for the Yankees. They want to serve in the Army. If DACA recipients are the poster children for the much larger population of immigrants in the country illegally, these are the poster children for the poster children. Chicago Tribune34 Republicans in Congress are not about to let the pesky facts about Obama s Dreamers get in the way of lobbying Speaker Ryan to grant them permanent citizenship.Numbers USA reports Thirty-four Republicans in the House of Representatives signed a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan calling for passage of a permanent DACA amnesty before the end of the year. Reps. Scott Taylor (R-Va.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) led the effort.While the lawmakers stop short of demanding passage of a DACA amnesty before the end of the year or including an amnesty in this month s must-pass spending bill, they don t insist on any other immigration-related provisions that would stop future flows of illegal immigration by calling for mandatory E-Verify or to reduce the numerical impact of the amnesty by calling for an end to Chain Migration.The letter reads:Dear Speaker Ryan,We write in support of passing of a permanent legislative solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients before the end of the year. DACA recipients young people brought to America through no fault of their own are contributing members of our communities and our economy. For many, this is the only country they have ever known. They are American in every way except their immigration status.Since DACA s inception, the federal government has approved approximately 795,000 initial DACA applications and 924,000 renewals. Since being approved for DACA status, an overwhelming majority of these individuals have enrolled in school, found employment, or have served in the military. Studies have shown that passing legislation to permanently protect these individuals would add hundreds of billions to our country s gross domestic product (GDP). That is why the business community, universities, and civic leaders alike support a permanent legislative solution.We agree with President Trump that executive action was not the appropriate process for solving this issue, as was done under the previous administration, and we believe Congress should act. We are compelled to act immediately because many DACA recipients are about to lose or have already lost their permits in the wake of the program s rescission. Not acting is creating understandable uncertainty and anxiety amongst immigrant communities.While we firmly believe Congress must work to address other issues within our broken immigration system, it is imperative that Republicans and Democrats come together to solve this problem now and not wait until next year. We all agree that our border must be enforced, our national security defended, and our broken immigration system reformed, but in this moment, we must address the urgent matter before us in a balanced approach that does not harm valuable sectors of our economy nor the lives of these hard-working young people. We must pass legislation that protects DACA recipients from deportation and gives them the opportunity to apply for a more secured status in our country as soon as possible. Reaching across the aisle to protect DACA recipients before the holidays is the right thing to do.Here s the list of 34 Republicans who need to be drained from the swamp:Rep. Scott Taylor (VA-2) Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA-4) Rep. Mia Love (UT-4) Rep. Mark Amodei (NV-2) Rep. David Valadao (CA-21) Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-8) Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-8) Rep. Mike Coffman (CO-6) Rep. Charles Dent (PA-15) Rep. Frank LoBiando (NJ-2) Rep. Peter King (NY-2) Rep. Carlos Curbelo (FL-26) Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27) Rep. Ryan Costello (PA-6) Rep. Fred Upton (MI-6) Rep. Jeff Denham (CA-10) Rep. Rodney Davis (IL-13) Rep. John Faso (NY-19) Rep. John Katko (NY-24) Rep. Chris Stewart (UT-2) Rep. Susan Brooks (IN-5) Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) Rep. Glenn T. Thompson (PA-5) Rep. Mike Simpson (ID-2) Rep. Mimi Walters (CA-45) Rep. Leonard Lance (NJ-7) Rep. Pat Meehan (PA-7) Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-21) Rep. Tom McArthur (NJ-3) Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-4) Rep. Jenniffer Gonzales-Colon (PR) Rep. Joe Barton (TX-6) Rep. Will Hurd (TX-23) Rep. Bruce Poloquin (ME-2)Numbers USA does an amazing job of exposing the truth about illegal immigration and what it really costs the American taxpayer. Nearly all funding for NumbersUSA Action comes from individuals giving $10, $25 and $100 donations over the internet. If you can afford to make even a small donation, it will help them to continue to help Americans change immigration policies. You can donate to Numbers USA HERE.;left-news;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bahraini civil society group under pressure after Israel visit;DUBAI (Reuters) - A Bahraini civil society group has defended sending a delegation to Israel as a gesture of tolerance and coexistence, state news agency BNA has reported, after news of the visit sparked wide anger on social media. The visit came amid high emotions in the Arab world over U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, a move that was widely condemned across the Arab world. The visit by 24 delegates from the group called This is Bahrain has prompted a hashtag #Bahrain_resists_normalisation, in which twitter users declaring their opposition to what some called an act of treason against Palestinians and Bahrainis. In a statement carried by state news agency BNA late on Sunday, the group said the visit was a private initiative to Israel and occupied Jerusalem comprising Bahrainis and expatriates of various faiths. The initiative by This is Bahrain is based on the principle of tolerance and coexistence, an approach embraced by the Kingdom of Bahrain and a feature of its society, and aims to visit Islamic, Christian, Jewish and other holy sites across the world, the group said. Most Arab countries see Israel as an occupier of Arab lands, and say any normalization of ties with the Jewish state must be in line with an Arab peace plan that calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China starts formal legal proceedings against disgraced senior politician;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s prosecutor began on Monday formal legal proceedings against disgraced senior politician Sun Zhengcai, once considered a contender for top leadership, who has been accused of corruption and other crimes. Sun was abruptly removed from his post as party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing - one of China s most important cities - in July and replaced by Chen Miner, who is close to President Xi Jinping. Later that month, he was put under investigation and in September, the party announced he would be prosecuted for corruption. Sun was accused of leaking secrets, bribery and abusing his power. In a brief statement, the prosecutor said that it had begun proceedings against Sun for suspected bribery and had approved the taking of coercive measures against him, a Chinese legal term that generally refers to detention. The case is proceeding, it added, without giving any other details. Sun was expelled from parliament last month, removing his immunity from prosecution that he had enjoyed as a member of that body. Chongqing is perhaps best known outside China for its association with Bo Xilai, another disgraced former party boss of the city. He, too, was once a contender for top leadership. He was jailed for life in 2013 after a dramatic corruption scandal. It has not been possible to reach Sun or a representative for comment since he was put under investigation. It s unclear if he has been allowed to retain a lawyer. The next likely step against Sun will be to put him on trial, where he is certain to be found guilty as the legal system is controlled by the ruling Communist Party which will not challenge the party s accusations against him. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's Maduro says government wins 90 percent of mayorships;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s ruling Socialist Party won at least 90 percent of the 335 mayorships contested in Sunday s local elections, President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday. According to the national election board s latest official count, the socialists won 41 of 42 mayorships counted by late evening. But Maduro said results overnight would show his government had won more than 300 of the polls. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela socialists win Zulia state governorship;CARACAS (Reuters) - The candidate for Venezuela s ruling Socialist Party, Omar Prieto, won the governorship of western Zulia state with 57 percent of the ballots in a rerun of an October vote, election authorities said on Sunday. Turnout for nationwide mayoral elections, also being held on Sunday, was 47 percent, the national election board said. Three major opposition parties were boycotting the polls, alleging the election authorities were biased towards the socialists. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Moore embraces Trump message on eve of Alabama election;BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Reuters) - Dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct toward teenagers, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore cast himself as a staunch ally of President Donald Trump at a rally on the eve of Tuesday’s election in Alabama. Despite Trump’s endorsement for Moore, some polls suggest Democrat Doug Jones, 63, a former U.S. attorney, could pull off an upset victory by becoming the first non-Republican to be sent to the Senate by deeply conservative Alabama in two decades. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and executive at the right-wing Breitbart News site, joined Moore in Midland City for the Monday night rally, labeled a “Drain the Swamp” event, in an echo of Trump’s 2016 campaign pledge to get rid of Washington insiders. “I want to make America great again with President Trump,” Moore said. “I want America great, but I want America good, and she can’t be good until we go back to God.” Moore, a 70-year-old conservative Christian and former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, has been accused by several women of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, including one woman who said he tried to initiate sexual contact with her when she was 14. Moore has denied any misconduct. Reuters has not independently verified any of the accusations. The Alabama race has divided Trump’s Republican Party. The sexual misconduct accusations prompted many senior Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to distance themselves from Moore. “There’s a special place in hell for Republicans who should know better,” Bannon told the rally, framing the Alabama election as a showdown between establishment elites and populist power. A Fox News Poll conducted on Thursday and released on Monday put Jones ahead of Moore, with Jones potentially taking 50 percent of the vote and Moore 40 percent. Fox said 8 percent of voters were undecided and 2 percent supported another candidate. An average of recent polls by the RealClearPolitics website showed Moore ahead by a slight margin of 2.2 percentage points. Trump taped a “robo-call” that the campaign has rolled out urging voters to back the Republican candidate in order to help support the president’s agenda. Democrats also made robo-calls using two of their party’s own big guns - former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden. Jones has said he wanted to be a “voice for reason” for Alabama and has touted a record that includes prosecuting former Ku Klux Klan members responsible for the 1963 bombing of a black church in Birmingham in which four girls were killed. Jones has spent the past week rallying African-Americans, the most reliably Democratic voters in the state, and hammering Moore in television ads. He has told supporters that his campaign is a chance to be on the “right side of history for the state of Alabama.” If Jones wins on Tuesday, Republicans would control the Senate by a slim 51-49 margin, giving Democrats much-needed momentum ahead of the November 2018 congressional elections, when control of both chambers of Congress will be at stake. Moore’s campaign has cast Jones as a liberal out of step with Alabama voters, seizing on the Democrat’s support of abortion rights. Many Republican officials in Alabama, including Governor Kay Ivey, say they will vote for Moore. But the state’s senior Republican senator, Richard Shelby, said he did not vote for Moore and instead backed a write-in candidate on his absentee ballot, telling CNN that Alabama “deserves better” than Moore. Moore, who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, may find a chilly reception in Washington if he wins. Republican leaders have said Moore could face an ethics investigation if Alabama voters send him to the U.S. Senate. Democrats have signaled they may use Moore’s election to tar Republicans as insensitive to women’s concerns at a time when allegations of sexual harassment have caused many prominent men working in politics, entertainment, media and business to lose their jobs. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China, Taiwan spar over Chinese diplomat's invasion threat;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - A threat by a senior Chinese diplomat to invade Taiwan the instant any U.S. warship visits the self-ruled island has sparked a war of words, with Taipei accusing Beijing of failing to understand what democracy means. China considers Taiwan to be a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. The United States has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is its main source of arms. Beijing regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States. In September, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year, which authorises mutual visits by navy vessels between Taiwan and the United States. At a Chinese embassy event in Washington on Friday, diplomat Li Kexin said he had told U.S. officials that China would activate its Anti-Secession Law, which allows it to use force on Taiwan if deemed necessary to prevent the island from seceding, if the United States sent navy ships to Taiwan. The day that a U.S. Navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force, Chinese media at the weekend quoted Li as saying, referring to Taiwan s main port. Taiwan s Foreign Ministry said late on Saturday that, while Chinese officials seemed to want to try and win over hearts and minds in Taiwan, they also had been repeatedly using threats that hurt the feelings of Taiwan s people. These methods show a lack of knowledge about the real meaning of the democratic system and how a democratic society works, the ministry said. China suspects Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, wants to declare the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. Relations between China and Taiwan were becoming even more complex and severe, Zhang Zhijun, head of China s policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office, told a visiting delegation of the New Party, a small pro-China Taiwan opposition party on Monday. Taiwan independence forces are trying to root out Chinese culture in Taiwan and are the gravest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, the official Xinhua news agency cited Zhang as saying. China will never back down over Taiwan, influential Chinese tabloid the Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party s official People s Daily, said earlier on Monday. Li s words have sent a warning to Taiwan and drew a clear red line, it said in an editorial. If Taiwan attempts to hold an independence referendum or other activities in pursuit of de jure Taiwan independence , the PLA will undoubtedly take action. China would continue to maintain the principle of peaceful unification, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Monday. At the same time, we will resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, he told reporters. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's top paper says Australian media reports are racist;BEIJING (Reuters) - Australian media reports on Chinese interference in Australia are racist and paranoid, China s top newspaper said on Monday, stepping up a war of words over concerns in Australia about Chinese influence in the country. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said last week he took reports very seriously that China s Communist Party had sought to interfere in his country. Turnbull said that foreign powers were making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process in Australia and the world. He cited disturbing reports about Chinese influence . The Chinese government has already protested the remarks, and on Monday the ruling Communist Party s official People s Daily stepped up the attacks. The reports in Australian media have been full of imagination, making baseless attacks on the Chinese government and have maliciously slandered Chinese students and people living in Australia, the paper said in a commentary. This type of hysterical paranoia had racist undertones, and is a stain on Australia s image as a multicultural society, the People s Daily said. The commentary was published under the pen name Zhong Sheng, meaning Voice of China, which is often used to give the paper s view on foreign policy issues. China s soft power has come under renewed focus last week after a politician from Australia s opposition Labor party was demoted from government having been found to have warned a prominent Chinese business leader and Communist Party member that his phone was being tapped by intelligence authorities. In June, Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on a concerted campaign by China to infiltrate Australian politics to promote Chinese interests. Turnbull has vowed to ban foreign political donations to curb external influence in domestic politics. The People s Daily said that China had no intention of interfering in Australian politics or using financial contributions to curry influence. China is Australia s largest trading partner. The two countries have no historical enmity or conflicts over each others basic interests and can absolutely forge good relations, it added. China urges the Australian government and media to cast aside political prejudice and bigotry and stick to the principle of using the facts in handling issues of relations with China , the paper wrote. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Women accusing Trump of sexual misconduct seek congressional probe;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three women who have accused U.S. President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct called on Monday for a congressional investigation into his behavior amid a wave of similar accusations against prominent men in Hollywood, the media and politics. Over the past two years, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances against them years before he entered politics. Three of his accusers, Jessica Leeds, Rachel Crooks, and Samantha Holvey said at a news conference on Monday that the accusations warranted new consideration given the broader discussion of sexual harassment in U.S. society. Brave New Films, a nonprofit filmmaker, produced a video featuring 16 of Trump’s accusers and organized the news conference in New York on Monday. In the film, women accused Trump of kissing them without permission, grabbing their private parts, putting his hand up their skirts, or making other unwanted advances. Congress should “put aside their party affiliations and investigate Mr. Trump’s history of sexual misconduct,” said Crooks, a former receptionist for a real estate firm, who was flanked by Leeds and Holvey. The women said they do not think Trump will resign over the allegations but that he should be held accountable. Trump and White House officials have denied the allegations, some of which date back to the 1980s. “These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement on Monday, questioning the women’s timing and political motives.  Trump, a Republican, faces legal action in one related case. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand told CNN that Trump should resign over the accusations. “These allegations are credible,” Gillibrand said in an interview on Monday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “They are numerous. I’ve heard these women’s testimony, and many of them are heartbreaking.” Gillibrand recently said former President Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat, should have stepped down during the 1990s scandal that led the House of Representatives to vote to impeach him. On Monday, she said that if Trump does not immediately resign, Congress “should have appropriate investigations of his behavior and hold him accountable.” A number of powerful and high-profile men have been accused in recent months of sexual misconduct, including three members of Congress, Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein and former NBC news anchor Matt Lauer. Reuters has not independently verified the accusations against Trump, Weinstein, Lauer or the three congressmen. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and one of the most high-profile women in Trump’s administration, said on Sunday that any woman who has felt mistreated by a man has the right to speak up, even if she is accusing the president. Democrat Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary panel, said it was unlikely that the Republican-controlled Congress would act on the accusations, which were known before the November 2016 presidential election. “My hunch is it gets reviewed at the next election,” Coons told CNN. Sexual harassment accusations have also been made against Republican candidate Roy Moore who is running in a U.S. Senate race this week in Alabama. Trump has backed Moore, a former judge, even as congressional Republicans denounced the candidate and called on him to pull out of the race. The accusations against Trump emerged during the 2016 presidential campaign when a videotape surfaced of a 2005 conversation caught on an open microphone in which Trump spoke in vulgar terms about trying to have sex with women.     Trump apologized for the remarks, but called them private “locker-room talk” and said he had not done the things he talked about. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Judge tells ex-Trump adviser Manafort to stop communicating with media;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Monday issued a stern warning to President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to refrain from making statements to the media that could harm his right to a fair trial. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson chided Manafort for ghost-writing an opinion piece that was published last week in the Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper in Ukraine, lauding Manafort’s political work for Ukraine. Jackson said she would consider any similar future behavior to be a violation of her Nov. 8 gag order not to discuss the case with the media or make public statements in ways that could affect the case’s outcome. Jackson stopped short of granting a request from Special Counsel Robert Mueller to deny Manafort’s proposal for more lenient bail terms, saying she would take Manafort’s proposal to lift his house arrest in exchange for posting four real estate properties as collateral under advisement and rule at a later date. Prosecutors had previously asked her to deny Manafort’s request, saying his behind-the-scenes ghost-writing violated her order and raised issues of trust. “Mr. Manafort, that order applies to you, and not just your lawyer,” Jackson said. She added that the op-ed, while not published in a United States newspaper, could potentially taint a local jury pool because of the global nature of media. “All that has to happen is for that favorable article, which is going to ... look on its face to be entirely independent, but is actually in part a message crafted and shaped by you ... is to have somebody you know post it on Facebook, Twitter or a blog, and you have accomplished your goal, given the power of retweeting,” she said. Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates are facing charges including conspiracy to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government. Jackson set the next status conference hearing for Jan. 16. Jackson said she has some outstanding concerns about Manafort’s proposed bail package, including his reliance on the real estate website Zillow to come up with some of the property value estimates. Manafort earlier this month pledged about $8 million in real estate assets in New York City and elsewhere, as well as life insurance worth about $4.5 million as security for bond. In a court filing on Monday, Manafort provided information including real estate tax assessments, appraised market values and comparable sales data for the properties in New York, Virginia and Florida. Many items cited Zillow. Jackson also expressed frustration that the defendants were not always giving pre-trial services ample notice about their whereabouts, saying, “It has to be more than an hour in advance.” She added that Gates has repeatedly filed requests to get out of house arrest on the weekends to go to his children’s’ sporting events, and she urged his lawyers to reach a bail agreement with the government so the court could “get out of the business of monitoring soccer practice.” ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tories lead for the first time since June election: Times;(Reuters) - UK Prime Minister Theresa May s conservative party is leading in polls for the first time since the June election, according to a YouGov poll for the Times. Theresa May s advantage over Labour party s Jeremy Corbyn has doubled, the newspaper said. The YouGov poll, conducted on Sunday and Monday among 1,680 adults, suggested that May s Brexit deal appears to have improved her public standing and pushed the Tories ahead on 42 per cent with Labour at 41 per cent of the vote. Liberal Democrats were at 7 per cent and the rest on 10 per cent, Times said. The public still does not think that the government is doing a good job on Brexit, but, Theresa May was the preferred choice for best prime minister with 37 percent of the votes. Only 28 percent voted for Jeremy Corbyn. The paper added that public did not shift its view on the referendum with 44 percent saying that Britain was right to vote to leave, and, 45 per cent said it was the wrong choice. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military must accept transgender recruits by Jan. 1, judge rules;(Reuters) - Transgender recruits will be able to join the U.S. military as of Jan. 1 after a federal judge on Monday denied a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce his ban on transgender troops while the government appeals an order blocking it. In a ruling, with which the Pentagon said it would comply, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington refused to lift part of her Oct. 30 order stopping the ban from taking effect until the case is resolved, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law. The White House said the Justice Department was reviewing its options. The Pentagon said in a statement that it would follow court orders and begin processing transgender applicants on Jan. 1. It added, however, that it and the U.S. Department of Justice “are actively pursuing relief from those court orders in order to allow an ongoing policy review scheduled to be completed before the end of March.” The administration had argued that the Jan. 1 deadline was problematic because tens of thousands of personnel would have to be trained on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants, and the military was not ready for that. Kollar-Kotelly rejected the concerns, saying preparations for accepting transgender troops were under way during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. “The directive from the Secretary of Defense requiring the military to prepare to begin allowing accession of transgender individuals was issued on June 30, 2016 - nearly one and a half years ago,” the judge said. Several transgender service members filed a lawsuit after Trump said in July he would ban transgender people from the military, citing concern over military focus and medical costs. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender individuals from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty personnel. Defense Secretary James Mattis had previously delayed a deadline that had been set during the Obama administration to begin enlisting transgender recruits to Jan. 1, which Trump’s ban then put off indefinitely. The Pentagon said on Monday there were a number of guidelines that would have to be met by the applicants. It said that sex reassignment or genital reconstruction would be disqualifying factors unless a medical provider certified that a period of 18 months had passed since the most recent surgery, no complications persisted and additional surgeries are not required. The service members who sued Trump, Mattis and military leaders in August had been serving openly as transgender people in the U.S. Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. They said Trump’s ban discriminated against them based on their sex and transgender status. In her October ruling, Kollar-Kotelly said the Trump administration’s reasons for the ban “do not appear to be supported by any facts” and cited a military-commissioned study that debunked concerns about military cohesion or healthcare costs. A federal judge in Maryland also halted the ban in Nov. 21 ruling. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nuclear plan backer denies Inauguration Day text with top Trump aide;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A company promoting a plan for the United States and Russia to jointly build nuclear reactors in the Middle East denied in a letter made public on Monday that its director received an Inauguration Day text message from incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn saying the project was “good to go.” Citing a confidential informant, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week said Flynn and Alex Copson, managing director of ACU Strategic Partners, communicated during President Donald Trump’s inaugural address about the project, which would have required lifting U.S. sanctions on Moscow. Thomas Cochran, a business partner of Copson, wrote in a letter to the lawmaker, Representative Elijah Cummings, that the informant’s allegations are “patently false and unfounded.” Reuters was unable to identify the confidential informant or independently confirm the informant’s information that was provided by Cummings. Copson has not responded to numerous requests for comment in recent months. Cochran attached to the letter records for Copson’s cell phone which, he said, show that he exchanged three text messages on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, none of them with Flynn. “Since Mr. Copson did not receive a text message from General Flynn during the Inauguration, other allegations of the ‘whistleblower’ are equally false and unfounded,” wrote Cochran, who is ACU Strategic Partners’ senior scientist. Flynn is a retired Army general. Reuters and other news organizations have reported that Flynn continued to promote a version of the nuclear project after he began work at the White House. As part of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, special counsel Robert Mueller is looking at whether Flynn or other Trump aides tried to influence U.S. policy to improve relations with Russia. Proponents of the reactors project argued it would provide nuclear energy in the Middle East without the threat of weapons proliferation, improve U.S.-Russia relations and revive the U.S. nuclear industry. Flynn served just 24 days as Trump’s national security adviser before being fired for misleading Vice President Michael Pence about whether he discussed U.S. sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to Washington. He pleaded guilty on Dec. 1 to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts. Reuters reported that day that documents it had reviewed showed that ACU Strategic Partners bragged after Trump’s Nov. 8, 2016, election that it had Flynn’s backing. Cummings wrote back to Copson on Monday, requesting that he participate in a transcribed interview “so that our staff attorneys could ask you questions about your relationship and communications with General Flynn.” “It remains unclear why your colleague sent this letter rather than you,” he wrote. Cummings’ office released Cochran’s letter but not the attached phone records. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Powell faces early test of policy view as tax cuts near approval;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Incoming Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, chosen by U.S. President Donald Trump to keep the recovery humming, appears set to let an expected trillion=dollar tax cut run its course through the economy as weak wage growth and inflation buttress his view that the economy remains underpowered. Powell in statements throughout the year, culminating with his recent Senate confirmation hearing, has been clear he sees little risk of inflation that would prompt the Fed to raise rates faster than expected, and takes weak wage growth as a sign that sidelined workers remain to be drawn into jobs. New data added evidence to that view on Friday. Employment in November grew faster than expected, but wage growth remained muted. The share of working age adults with jobs continued a steady, six-year recovery that is approaching its pre-crisis peak. Even with the unemployment rate at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, “there’s no sense of an overheating economy or a particularly tight labor market,” Powell told members of the Senate Banking Committee, saying that the Fed should raise rates only gradually. Debate among Powell’s colleagues, meanwhile, has highlighted other risks if the Fed speeds its pace of rate increases. Some policymakers feel the central bank has already undercut its credibility by raising interest rates while inflation remains so weak. Others have noted that if the Fed continues raising short-term rates while long-term rates remain stalled, it could turn the shape of the bond yield curve upside down, a typical signal of recession. “If the Fed gets its paradigm wrong and sees inflation that ultimately doesn’t materialize, and they take rates too far, then markets would feel aggrieved,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, and a former senior risk official at the Fed Board. Other analysts are starting to see a potential dovish surprise when Powell takes over in February, the tax cuts could kick in, and the Fed stands aside. With a background as an investment banker rather than as an economist rooted in a particular analytical framework, Powell will lead “a more data-driven Fed, which at the current juncture means a more dovish Fed,” until and if inflation recovers, said Robin Brooks, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. He expects the Fed under Powell to only raise rates twice next year. Policymakers will give an initial reading on the impact of the Republican tax plan when they meet next week. They are expected to raise interest rates for the third time this year. They will also update their economic and interest rate projections for 2018 and beyond, the first such forecasts since the outlines of the tax overhaul became clear. Top Republicans from the House and the Senate are rushing to complete negotiations to push the tax plan into law. Though Janet Yellen remains Fed chair until February, her final scheduled press conference on Wednesday afternoon will set the policy backdrop Powell inherits. The 64-year-old lawyer will attend the meeting as a sitting governor, and help shape the statement issued that day by the Federal Open Market Committee. It is a group struggling with a fundamental issue. The economy is arguably as much as a half a percentage point below full employment, a condition in which prices and wages should be rising. Yet both remain weak. Into that mix, the tax cut legislation would put tens of billions of dollars back in the hands of corporations and households. If there is still “slack” in the economy, that could produce faster real growth as spending and investment increase, and more workers are hired. However, if the economy is near or above its potential, as some measures indicate, it may merely cause faster-than-desired price increases, or a jump in stock and other asset values that raise concerns of a bubble. As the tax plan advanced in Congress, forecasting shops at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others penciled in a faster pace of Fed rate increases - essentially expecting the Fed would need to lean against the inflationary outcome. The tax package is “ultimately worth almost two additional Fed hikes” in coming years, Goldman Sachs economists David Mericle and Alec Phillips wrote in a recent analysis. But the new chair’s own public speeches and comments throughout the past year have shown an evolving faith that the Fed’s go-slow approach can continue, giving more time for workers to rebound from the 2007-2009 crisis without creating other economic risks. “Accommodative policy did not generate high inflation or excessive credit growth;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to give speech on U.S. tax overhaul on Wednesday: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will deliver a speech on the plan to overhaul the nation’s tax code on Wednesday, the White House said on Monday. “As we work with Congress to achieve historic tax cuts, the president plans to speak Wednesday to the American people on how tax reform will lead to a brighter future for them and their families,” said Lindsay Walters, the deputy press secretary. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Treasury tax study slammed as 'fake math' by Democrats;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday released a one-page analysis of the economic and fiscal impact of a Republican tax overhaul plan that was swiftly criticized by a number of tax experts and attacked as “fake math” by Democrats. Treasury said the tax plan would more than pay for itself in 10 years, basing its forecast on a 2.9 percent annual economic growth assumption, a level well above most economists’ expectations, as well other changes on which the White House has made little progress. “We are pleased to release an analysis demonstrating the revenue impact of the administration’s economic agenda,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) banker, said in a statement. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a conservative fiscal watchdog in Washington, said the Mnuchin analysis “makes a mockery of dynamic scoring and analysis,” referring to methods for forecasting the impact of tax changes on the economy. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the Treasury analysis was “nothing more than one page of fake math.” “It’s clear the White House and Republicans are grasping at straws to prove the unprovable and garner votes for a bill that nearly every single independent analysis has concluded will blow up the deficit and generate almost no additional economic activity to make up for it,” he said in a statement. The sparring over economic forecasts came as Republicans resumed efforts to reconcile two tax-overhaul bills, one approved by the Senate and one by the House of Representatives. President Donald Trump wants a single tax bill on his desk soon so he can sign it into law before the end of the year, in what would be his first major legislative achievement since taking office in January. The Republican president will deliver a speech on Wednesday “to the American people on how tax reform will lead to a brighter future for them and their families,” the White House said in a statement. Republicans are driving toward approval of a debt-financed package of deep tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy and a mixed bag of results for middle-class Americans. Although the Republicans see the effort as crucial to their prospects in November 2018’s congressional elections, nearly half of Americans oppose the plan, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. The Treasury analysis was meant to help bolster long-standing promises from Republicans, including Mnuchin, that their proposed tax cuts would super-charge an already growing economy and raise more than enough new tax revenue to offset a large federal deficit increase. Congressional researchers have estimated the Republican plan would add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years, before any projected positive effects on the economy, or $1 trillion after such effects. In its analysis, Treasury said its projected 2.9 percent annual growth over the next decade would result not only from tax cuts but “a combination of regulatory reform, infrastructure development, and welfare reform as proposed in the administration’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget.” The Trump administration sent a budget to Congress earlier this year that lawmakers largely ignored. While the White House has rolled back some regulations, it has made no substantial progress on infrastructure development or welfare changes. Growth of 2.9 percent would produce $1.8 trillion in new tax revenues over 10 years, more than enough to offset the revenue that the tax plan would lose, the department said. “We acknowledge that some economists predict different growth rates,” it added in a statement accompanying its analysis, which focused on the tax plan as approved more than three weeks ago by the Senate Finance Committee. The full Senate on Dec. 2 approved a somewhat different plan, which would boost gross domestic product by 0.7 percent in 2018 and have little effect on GDP in the decade ahead, said the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, in a report on Monday. Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania also issued a report on Monday finding the plan approved by the full Senate would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, “even with assumptions favorable to economic growth.” ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Justice Department reviewing options after ruling on transgender recruits: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday said the Justice Department was reviewing its options after a federal judge denied a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce his ban on transgender troops while the government appeals an order blocking it. “The Department of Justice is currently reviewing the legal options to ensure the president’s directive is implemented,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nearly half of Americans still oppose Republican tax bill: Reuters/Ipsos poll;WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Republicans in the U.S. Congress rush to finish their tax plan, the legislation is not getting more popular with the public, with nearly half of Americans still opposed to it, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday. Of adults who were aware of the plan being considered by Congress, 49 percent said they were opposed to it, a sentiment that has not changed much in the past few weeks, the poll showed. In addition to the 49 percent who said they opposed the Republican tax bill, 31 percent said they supported it and 20 percent said they “don’t know,” according to the online opinion poll of 1,499 adults conducted Dec. 3 to 7, with 1,138 adults saying they were aware of the tax legislation. A poll taken at the end of November also showed 49 percent opposed to the plan. Tax negotiators are trying to reconcile the differences between separate bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, then to send a final bill to President Donald Trump, who want to sign it into law before year’s end. Accomplishing this feat would represent the Republicans’ first major legislative victory since they took control of both chamber of Congress and the White House in January. Republican tax legislation would slash the corporate tax rate, eliminate some taxes paid only by rich Americans and offer a mixed bag of temporary cuts to other individuals and families. Trump, who is expected to give a speech on the tax overhaul on Wednesday, praised it in a tweet on Sunday by saying the “end result will be not only important, but SPECIAL!” When asked about Trump’s handling of tax policy, 53 percent of those polled said they disapproved, 38 percent approved and 9 percent said they “don’t know,” the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. When asked who stands to benefit most from the Republican plan, more than half of American adults surveyed selected either the wealthy or large U.S. corporations. Twelve percent chose “all Americans,” 8 percent picked the middle class and 2 percent chose lower-income Americans. The Reuters/Ipsos poll has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 about percentage points. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released on Sunday showed that 32 percent of Americans support the Republican tax plan, with more than half predicting it would not lower tax bills for their families or help the economy in a major way. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian army and Iranian-backed militias push towards Idlib province;AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian army and Iranian-backed militias backed by Russian air power stepped up a military campaign against rebels in eastern Hama province in a push towards the rebel stronghold of Idlib province in northwestern Syria, rebels and witnesses said. They said dozens of aerial strikes believed to be conducted mainly by Russian jets in the last 48 hours hit opposition held villages and towns in the northeastern Hama countryside and the southern part of Idlib province. The Islamist Hayat Tahrir al Sham and some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel faction in control of these areas said they were sending reinforcements to seize back a string of villages in the northeastern Hama countryside, near the town of Rihjan, that the army had earlier announced were captured in heavy fighting. The army said the villages of Um Turayka, Bilil, and Rujum al Ahmar were seized, forcing the rebels to flee to areas close to the administrative boundaries of Idlib province. The Syrian army had lost the strategically located Idlib province to insurgents when the provincial capital fell to rebels in 2015. It has since become the only province that is fully under opposition control. The Syrian army s first goal was to retake strategic Abu al Dhour military airport, one of the largest airports in the north of the country that fell to rebels in 2015. It was heavily bombed on Sunday, a rebel source said. The regime movements seek to besiege Idlib province with the help of Shi ite militias fighting with them, said Colonel Mustafa Bakour, a commander in the Jaish al Izza rebel faction. Tahrir al Sham, which is spearheaded by the former al Qaeda branch in Syria, is the main rebel force in the province, raising fears among civilians and rebels alike that Moscow and the Syrian army and its allies would soon turn it into a major battlefield. The strategically located province that borders Turkey is part of the Russian-led de-escalation zones that seek to shore up ceasefires in western Syria. Idlib has been a haven for tens of thousands of rebels and civilians who were forced to abandon their homes in other parts of western Syria that the government and its foreign military allies have recaptured from rebels. It has already been the target of intensive strikes by the Russia and Syrian air forces in the past year that have killed thousands of civilians and destroyed hospitals and civil defense centers. Tahrir al Sham also repelled simultaneously an offensive by Islamic State militants who have been for the last few weeks pushing into the opposition-controlled territory to extend a small enclave they have in that area, among the few they retain across Syria. The ultra hardline militants also seized a string of villages that brought them within kilometers of Idlib province. The Russian and Syrian army advance towards Idlib is also piling pressure on Turkey which had since October begun a major military deployment in the province it considers within its sphere of influence. Ankara s intervention seeks to rein in Russian strikes and prevent Idlib from facing a similar fate to Mosul or Aleppo, according to a senior rebel commander briefed on Turkish policy. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Treasury adds cash management measures due to debt limit;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday announced cash management measures to avoid a U.S. default. In a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, Mnuchin said the Treasury would no longer be able to fully invest in two retirement funds for federal workers. They are the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, according to the letter. All the funds would be made whole once the debt limit is increased, Mnuchin said. The U.S. Treasury is bumping up against the cap on how much money it can borrow to cover the budget deficit that results from Washington spending more than it collects in taxes. Only Congress can raise that limit. A temporary measure that suspended the debt limit expired on Dec. 8, although the Treasury has emergency means to continue to pay all its bills through January, the department has said. The United States is one of only a few nations that requires the legislature to approve periodic increases in the legal limit on how much money the federal government can borrow. ;politicsNews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain committed to no hard Irish border, whatever outcome of Brexit talks - Davis;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain intends to prevent a hard border in Ireland after leaving the European Union whatever the outcome of talks with the bloc, UK s Brexit minister said on Monday, saying comments that this was not legally enforceable were taken out of context. Davis on Sunday said that a pledge on the Irish border agreed as part of a divorce settlement was a statement of intent rather than a legally binding move, but said the media had twisted his words. Of course it s legally enforceable, under the withdrawal agreement, but even if that didn t for some reason, if something went wrong, we would still be seeking to provide a frictionless, invisible border, Davis told LBC radio. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Authorities Allowed NYC Chain Migration Terrorist To Stop Interrogation Several Times To Pray After Admitting He Was Triggered By CHRISTMAS Posters;The poor little ISIS-inspired, chain migration, snowflake, terrorist can t even walk by a Christmas poster without being triggered. How long before Mayor DeBlasio starts the dialogue about removing triggering signs of Christmas from NYC, so as not to offend non-Christians? The taxi driver behind the failed terror attack in a New York City told investigators he meant to detonate his homemade pipe bomb in the busy subway station after seeing the walls festooned with Christmas posters in revenge for violence against Muslims all over the world.While initial reports suggested the crude pipe bomb, made from a pipe, a 9-volt battery, match heads, sugar, Christmas tree lights and screws, had detonated prematurely, suspect Akayed Ullah, 27, insisted he set off the bomb deliberately.Ullah, who was arrested and taken for questioning after the bomb only partially detonated, told police he was walking through the underground tunnel at 7.20am, between the Port Authority station towards Times Square, when he saw the Christmas-themed posters on the wall, which reminded him of ISIS calls last month for militants and lone wolves to attack holiday markets. He acknowledges he purposely set it off then and there, a senior law enforcement official told the New York Post.The Bangladeshi immigrant added that he was specifically inspired by ISIS, not Al-Qaeda .Authorities say that if the explosive had fully detonated in the busy Midtown Manhattan subway station, there would have been more injuries and doubtless loss of life.The attack came days after Ullah s Brooklyn neighbors say they heard a huge row coming from his home, reporting yelling and screaming over the past two nights.Ullah, who was allowed to stop and pray multiple times during his interrogation, was taken to Bellevue Hospital to be treated for serious burns and lacerations to his abdomen and hands but is expected to survive. At the hospital, the Brooklyn resident told investigators that he was inspired to carry out the attack by the recent flare ups between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Monday s attack was the first terror attack on U.S. soil since that proclamation, but only one of many violent demonstrations across the world since the controversial move was announced last Wednesday. It was also the second time in two months that New York City was the target of a terrorist attack.President Trump said in a statement that lax immigration policies were to blame for the attack, and urged Congress to enact legislative reforms to protect the American people .Authorities say Ullah took the A train subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal stop Monday morning, and started walking east towards Times Square via an underground terminal when a pipe bomb hidden underneath his clothes prematurely exploded. Law enforcement officials don t believe the passageway was the intended target since the low-tech bomb attached to Ullah with Velcro and zip ties did not explode fully.The chemical explosive appears to have ignited but the pipe itself did not burst. Screws were found at the scene, indicating that they may have filled the pipe and were intended to be used as shrapnel.In the end, Ullah was the only one seriously injured by the explosive (three others reported to hospitals for ringing in the ears and headaches). Daily Mail ;left-news;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia detains 18 in pre-emptive bid to boost Christmas security;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian anti-terrorism police have detained 18 people with links to militant groups in a bid to cut the risk of attacks during Christmas and the New Year in the world s biggest Muslim-majority country, police said on Monday. Near-simultaneous attacks on churches in the capital, Jakarta, and elsewhere on Christmas Eve in 2000, killed nearly 20 people. Ever since, authorities have stepped up security at churches and tourist spots for the holiday. Police Chief Tito Karnavian said while there was no evidence of a specific plot, the detentions were made in a bid to head off trouble. We re doing a pre-emptive strike, Karnavian told reporters. The majority of them have links to previous incidents (and people) who we had arrested earlier, he said. Police said that 12 people had been detained in South Sumatra, four in West Kalimantan, one in Malang in East Java and one in Surabaya in the same province. Under Indonesia s anti-terrorism laws, investigators can hold people for seven days before determining whether they will be designated suspects or released, said police spokesman Setyo Wasisto. Indonesia has seen its share of militant attacks over the years aimed at foreign, Christian and government targets including blasts on the tourist island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people. Since then, police have managed to stamp out or weaken many militant networks although there has been a resurgence in radicalism in recent years, inspired largely by Islamic State. A series of small-scale attacks since early 2016 has been linked to Islamic State, which is believed to have thousands of sympathizers in Indonesia. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia urges India to line up behind China's Belt and Road initiative;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Russia threw its weight behind China s massive Belt and Road plan to build trade and transport links across Asia and beyond, suggesting to India on Monday that it find a way to work with Beijing on the signature project. India is strongly opposed to an economic corridor that China is building in Pakistan that runs through disputed Kashmir as part of the Belt and Road initiative. India was the only country that stayed away from a May summit hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping to promote the plan to build railways, ports and power grids in a modern-day recreation of the Silk Road. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said New Delhi should not let political problems deter it from joining the project, involving billions of dollars of investment, and benefiting from it. Lavrov was speaking in the Indian capital after a three-way meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj at which, he said, India s reservations over the Chinese project were discussed. I know India has problems, we discussed it today, with the concept of One Belt and One Road, but the specific problem in this regard should not make everything else conditional to resolving political issues, he said. Russia, all the countries in central Asia, and European nations had signed up to the Chinese project to boost economic cooperation, he said. Those are the facts, he said. India, I am 100 percent convinced, has enough very smart diplomats and politicians to find a way which would allow you to benefit from this process. The comments by Russia, India s former Cold War ally, reflected the differences within the trilateral grouping formed 15 years ago to challenge U.S.-led dominance of global affairs. But substantial differences between India and China, mainly over long-standing border disputes, have snuffed out prospects of any real cooperation among the three. India, in addition, has drawn closer to the United States in recent years, buying weapons worth billions of dollars to replace its largely Soviet-origin military. Swaraj said the three countries had very productive talks on economic issues and the fight against terrorism. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian police arrest French journalist for filming in Kashmir;SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - An Indian court on Monday remanded in custody a French journalist for five days after he was arrested in the disputed Kashmir region for filming a documentary without permission and violating visa regulations, police said. The freelance journalist, Paul Comiti, was arrested on Sunday in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir where Muslim separatists have been waging a violent campaign against Indian rule since the late 1980s. Comiti held an Indian business visa which did not permit him to make a documentary on political or security-related issues, Senior Superintendent of Police Imtiyaz Ismael Parray told Reuters. Comiti had met a separatist leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and filmed protesters throwing stones at members of the security forces, said another senior police official, who declined to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media. He had also met victims of anti-riot pellet guns that the security forces use against protesters. More than 3,800 people have been wounded and one killed by the weapons since a new round of protests against Indian rule erupted last year, with more than 100 partially or fully blinded, official figures show. We called him to ask him about his activities, but he refused to present himself before the police, the second police official said. He was not authorized to film here because he was on a business visa. He was finally arrested. Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed in full but ruled in part by mostly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan and has been at the heart of nearly seven decades of hostility between the neighbors. Comiti had asked the defense ministry for permission to film in Kashmir, but it had been denied because he was on a business visa, said the second police official. A French Embassy s consular official based in New Delhi met Comiti at the police station in Srinagar, police said. An embassy spokesman was not available for comment. An insurgency by separatist militants raged in Kashmir through the 1990s and into the 2000s but it had died down more recently. But the killing by the security forces of a young, popular separatist leader in July 2016 sparked a new wave of protests by a new generation in India s only Muslim-majority state. India s interior minister said last year the government planned to reconsider the use of the pellet guns to control crowds, after the multiple casualties stirred public anger and condemnation by rights groups. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Pictures of the Year: A picture and its story;(Reuters) - Reuters photographers witnessed the biggest stories of 2017 from Donald Trump s first year as U.S. president to the flight of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, from Venezuela s crisis to the fall of Islamic State and a tower block inferno in London. This feature presents some of their strongest images. It also gives the photographers a chance to tell the stories behind their pictures and explain in their own words how the images were taken. They talk about trekking through the night in South Sudan and flying over the Pacific Ocean to photograph a total eclipse. They talk about watching drowning migrants being rescued in the Mediterranean and finding the best vantage point to capture Air Force One as it takes off from Las Vegas in the wake of the worst gun massacre in recent U.S. history. Through it all, the photographers raise a question that shows how close they were to the action: in moments of crisis, should they take pictures or try to help? It is always hard to come to the realization that I am most helpful when I am taking pictures, said photographer Jonathan Bachman on his image of residents wading through flood waters from Tropical Storm Harvey in Houston. As an observer of suffering you have to believe that your images can make a difference. Not all of the images are serious, of course. Some are quirky and fun and the boy who was enjoying mowing the White House lawn so much that he ignored Trump is just one example. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India's Rahul Gandhi takes helm of Congress party to challenge Modi;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India s main opposition Congress party on Monday elevated Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the country s most fabled political dynasty, as its president, preparing to challenge the dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of national polls in 2019. In a long-awaited move, Gandhi, the great-grandson of India s founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was elected unopposed to head the party. He will take the reins from his mother Sonia, the party s longest-serving president, since 1998. Calling it a historic occasion , the Congress party said Gandhi would take charge as president on Dec. 16. Television broadcast images of party supporters celebrating and distributing sweets outside Congress offices in the capital, New Delhi, and the financial hub of Mumbai. Gandhi s ascent coincides with state polls in Modi s western home state of Gujarat that are shaping as a test for the prime minister, who has been facing criticism for softening economic growth and poor implementation of a nationwide sales tax. The Congress hopes a round of state elections offers the party, and Gandhi, a shot at revival ahead of the next national elections, due in 2019. Modi s depiction of Gandhi as an undeserving prince has helped sideline Gandhi since the last national election, during which time Congress has suffered some of its worst results in local elections. The Nehru-Gandhi family has ruled the country for most of its 70 years since independence from Britain. Gandhi s father and grandmother were both prime ministers, and both assassinated. Following Congress defeat in the 2014 polls, Gandhi struggled to convince voters, as well as many within his party, of his leadership skills. But senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said Gandhi was now ready for the next challenge. The entire country has lots of expectations from Rahul Gandhi, Azad said. Much before he was elected he has shown his mettle. He knows his responsibility. Modi s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swiftly dismissed Gandhi s election, saying he had become president only on the basis of dynastic principle . The new India is loath to (accept) dynastic principle and the family character of the Congress further diminishes its appeal, BJP spokesman G.V.L. Narasimha Rao told Reuters. Gandhi, until now a vice-president of Congress, is widely seen as a prime ministerial candidate if the party returns to power one day. The 47-year-old has increasingly gone public in slamming Modi s governance since the last national polls, as he looks to shed the reticent image that has for years been synonymous with his political dynasty. But he has also faced political backlash. In 2015, for example, he took nearly two months of leave, prompting Modi s party to accuse him of holidaying while parliament was in session. Modi still trumps Gandhi in popularity rankings, however. Nearly nine of 10 Indians have a favourable opinion of him and more than two-thirds are satisfied with the direction in which he is taking the country, a Pew survey found in November. Modi s favourable rating was 30 points more than Gandhi s, it showed. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin, Egypt's Sisi to sign nuclear power station deal - Kremlin;CAIRO (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will sign an agreement on Monday about the construction of a nuclear power station in Egypt and supplies of nuclear fuel, according to a document provided by the Kremlin. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ICC reports Jordan to U.N. Security Council for not arresting Sudan's Bashir;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Monday it would refer Jordan to the U.N. Security Council for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited Amman in March. The court issued arrest warrants for Bashir in 2009 and 2010 over his alleged role in war crimes including genocide in Sudan s Darfur province. Jordan, as a member of the ICC, is obliged to carry out its arrest warrants. Sudan is not a member of the Hague-based permanent international war crimes court, and the ICC therefore does not have automatic jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes there. However, the U.N. Security Council referred the case to the international court in March 2005. The Security Council has the power to impose sanctions for a failure to cooperate with the ICC, but has so far not acted on court referrals. A diplomatic row broke out when Bashir visited South Africa in 2015 and Pretoria failed to arrest him. South Africa s government argued that doing so would have been a violation of the immunity Bashir enjoys as a head of state. That argument was rejected by South African courts as well as the ICC. The ICC ultimately did not refer South Africa to the Security Council, however, saying it was not clear that doing so would have any effect. Kenya and South Africa have threatened to withdraw from the ICC over perceived bias against African countries. Burundi, which is under ICC investigation, has actually withdrawn. Bashir is accused by ICC prosecutors of five counts of crimes against humanity including murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape, as well as two counts of war crimes for attacking civilians and pillaging. He faces three counts of genocide allegedly committed against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur, Sudan, from 2003 to 2008. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;What's behind Vietnam's corruption crackdown?;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam s crackdown on high level corruption has led to the arrest of dozens of officials from state oil firm PetroVietnam and the banking sector. As well as shedding light on graft, mismanagement and nepotism within state firms at a time privatization is accelerating, the arrests show the ascendancy of a more conservative faction within the ruling Communist Party. How many people are involved? At least 51 have been arrested across PetroVietnam and the banking sector. Some have been tried and sentenced already. The most senior figure arrested is former PetroVietnam Chairman Dinh La Thang. He is the first former politburo member to face prosecution in decades. Neither he nor his lawyer was available for comment. Germany has accused Vietnam of kidnapping one PetroVietnam suspect, Trinh Xuan Thanh. More than 100 other officials are also under threat of prosecution or have been demoted or fired. What is PetroVietnam? PetroVietnam is a tangled enterprise of 15 direct units, 18 subsidiaries and 46 affiliates in which it owns smaller stakes. Hundreds of millions of dollars in losses have been racked up at units ranging from banks to construction firms and power plants to textile mills. The scandals at PetroVietnam are connected to the banking sector through a deal in which the oil firm lost $35 million in an investment in Ocean Bank. The lender s former chief executive - a previous PetroVietnam chairman - was sentenced to death. What does the crackdown mean politically? It shows a concerted effort to rein in large-scale corruption through which some officials had secured massive personal wealth and tarnished the ruling party s image. But it has also allowed the current Communist Party leadership to strengthen its hand under General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong after winning out in a power struggle with former prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung last year. Whether or not the arrests go even higher, Trong s supremacy is assured through a term that lasts until 2021 and the faction is better placed to maintain its dominance even beyond. What divides the different groups in the ruling party? Although the party presents a public image of unity, there are diverse views on everything from the pace and openness of reforms to Vietnam s delicate diplomatic balancing between China, the United States and other powers. What best characterizes the current leadership is conservatism in preserving the party s absolute authority in close alignment with the security establishment. It marks a change of style from the leadership under Dung and his allies, some of whom emerged as personalities in their own right and showed signs of readiness for greater political openness. Alongside the corruption arrests, Vietnam has also arrested more bloggers, activists and other critics this year than in any other since a 2011 crackdown on youth activists. How popular is the corruption crackdown? Few tears are shed in Vietnam over the arrests of former officials, but there is also scepticism over the real motives. The day-to-day corruption of low-level officials and police is still a factor of Vietnamese life. What impact has this had on PetroVietnam? PetroVietnam s net profit margin in 2016 was its lowest in at least seven years at just over 7 percent from over 15 percent in 2009. The company told Reuters the oil price was the biggest factor, but it has also said failed projects, wrongdoing by officials and the investigations themselves had an impact. PetroVietnam s shares are not listed on a stock exchange, but some of its units have underperformed its Thai peer PTT since 2009. What does this mean for reform and privatization? Although the crackdown points to the political strengthening of the party, the leadership has shown less sign of delaying economic reform than the previous administration. Facing pressure because of its budget deficit, the government has accelerated plans to sell major stakes in the most attractive assets - brewery Sabeco and Vinamilk. It is also selling stakes in three units of PetroVietnam. Some economic and business analysts believe the fear among officials of being branded corrupt could further hold up bureaucratic decision making in state-run firms and ministries. ($1=22,710 dong) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S.-backed Syrian forces, Iraqi army coordinate at border: SDF;BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S.-backed militias in Syria said they have formed a joint military center with the Iraqi army to protect their common border region after ousting Islamic State militants. Commanders of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, met with Iraqi military leaders on Sunday. They discussed protecting the Syrian-Iraqi border in the region adjacent to Deir al-Zor province, and how to finally eradicate Daesh mercenaries there, the SDF said in a statement. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. The two sides decided to form a joint coordination center to guarantee the security of the border, it said. Last week, the SDF declared victory in its assault in Syria s Deir al-Zor, which borders Iraq. The offensive focused on seizing territory east of the Euphrates river that bisects the oil-rich province. The Kurdish-led SDF has been battling for months with the help of jets and special forces from the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State (IS). On the other side, Iraqi forces recaptured the last swathes of territory still under Islamic State control along the frontier with Syria on Saturday and secured the western desert. It marked the end of the war against IS, three years after they overran about a third of Iraq s territory. Iraqi forces who fought IS came from the army, air force, police, elite counter-terrorism forces as well as Shi ite and Sunni paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. They received key air support from the U.S.-led global coalition. Syrian government forces and their allies, backed by Russian air power, have taken most of the remaining areas of Deir al-Zor province. They are mostly on the western side of the Euphrates, while the SDF is on the eastern bank. Russia and the United States set up a communications channel to reduce the chance of fighting between the two rival campaigns against Islamic State. Forces arrayed against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now anticipate a new phase of guerrilla warfare. Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the coalition, said Iraqi security forces and the SDF had linked up at their shared stretch of the frontier on Sunday. Secure international border protects Iraqis (and) Syrians from remnant Daesh movement into (and) across the region as terrorist fighters/leaders attempt to flee the battlefield, he wrote on Twitter. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May shook on gentlemen's agreement on Brexit deal, EU says;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - An interim Brexit deal struck by Theresa May and the European Commission is not legally binding but the British prime minister has committed her government to honoring a gentlemen s agreement, an EU spokesman said on Monday. Formally speaking, the joint report is not legally binding, the European Commission s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters when asked about suggestions from some of May s ministers that the terms of Friday s accord could change. But we see the joint report of Michel Barnier and David Davis as a deal between gentlemen and it is the clear understanding that it is fully backed and endorsed by the UK government, he added, referring to each side s negotiator. Referring to EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker, he said: President Juncker had a meeting with Prime Minister May last Friday morning to ascertain that this is precisely the case. They shook hands. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Situation on Korean Peninsula risks moving into 'hot phase': Ifax cites Russian foreign minister;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The situation on the Korean Peninsula risks to move into a hot phase , Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Monday, the Interfax news agency reported. Lavrov was speaking after a trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of Russia, India and China. He said all three countries did not want tensions on the Korean Peninsula to escalate any further, Interfax reported. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's graft watchdog warns officials over 'concealed' extravagance;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials trying to hide dishonest spending with tricks such as throwing extravagant parties in private will be targeted in a sustained campaign to root out hedonism, the top anti-graft watchdog said on Monday. Concealing spending by holding lavish dinners in private homes, passing off pampering at a spa as recuperation from work and going sightseeing while on business trips are all in the sights of the graft busters. President Xi Jinping has waged a five-year war on graft at all levels of the ruling Communist Party, from high-level tigers to lowly flies and has pledged to keep up the fight until officials dare not, cannot and do not want to be corrupt. A crackdown on hedonism and extravagance in a drive to improve professionalism is to go on in Xi s second term, an unidentified official from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection told the official Xinhua news agency. Efforts to address such misconduct should not be stopped and the work to improve the party s conduct and work styles should never end, Xinhua cited Xi as saying in a personal stamp of approval. Petty corruption such as trying to hide extravagance in concealed locations will be targeted, as will the use of public funds to organize holidays in the name of recuperation, the official said. Officials have been trying to get big spending through by organizing things such as weddings and funerals bit by bit , staggering gift giving and accepting electronic gift cards or red packets of money via online payment platforms, the official said. Although the anti-graft drive had improved the atmosphere in society, there could be no intermission and no rests , the official said. The CCDI official also warned that officials still suffer from excess formalism and bureaucratism , Communist Party terms for failing to carry out central party orders. When hosting visiting officials, some local-level cadres just take them on the same tourist trail where they speak to the same people as if watching a fashion show , said the official. Some attempt to cook the books, or beautify their data, to claim success and secure a quick promotion without actually getting the job done, while others simply take a laissez-faire attitude to improving work style. Cadres fond of formalism and bureaucratism who create a negative influence or grave results will be strictly punished, without tolerance, the official said. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libyan forces suffer casualties as fighting drags on in Benghazi;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan forces fighting in Benghazi have lost four men and seen 10 wounded so far in December, five months after declaring victory in a campaign to control the eastern city, a medical source said on Monday. Three of the dead from the Libyan National Army (LNA) were killed by snipers and one by a landmine as it faces resistance from a group of fighters in the Benghazi district of Khreibish. There have been daily clashes in the area and occasional air strikes. LNA commander Khalifa Haftar declared victory in a three-year military campaign against an array of Islamist militants and other fighters in Benghazi in early July. The fighting is part of a broader conflict that developed following the 2011 fall of strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Haftar has opposed a U.N.-backed government based in the capital, Tripoli, as he has gradually strengthened his position on the ground. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine senator criticizes 'reckless disregard' in dengue vaccine program;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine public officials showed reckless disregard of processes in carrying out a program to immunize hundreds of thousands of children, a senator leading an investigation into the government s use of a new dengue vaccine said on Monday. On Dec. 1, the Philippines halted use of Dengvaxia after its maker, French drug firm Sanofi said the vaccine itself might, in some cases, increase the risk of severe dengue in recipients not previously infected by the virus. Dengue is not as serious as malaria, but it kills about 20,000 people each year and infects hundreds of millions as it spreads rapidly in many parts of the world. The Philippines reports an average of 200,000 cases every year, the DOH said. Senator Richard Gordon, chairman of the investigation panel, said the program s approval and procurement were done with undue haste , given how quickly the department of health (DOH)got funding for the 3.5-billion-peso ($69.55-million) campaign. Gordon said rushed approval was given to a vaccine that has not been proven to be totally effective . But Sanofi insisted otherwise. We at Sanofi assure each and everyone of you that Dengvaxia is, and continues to be, a safe and efficacious vaccine, said Thomas Triomphe, Asia-Pacific head of Sanofi Pasteur. To permanently remove the vaccine from the Philippine market...would be a regression in the country s approach to solving a major public health concern and a disservice to the Filipino people. The roll out of the mass vaccination program was premature, some doctors and pharmacologists on a DOH advisory body told the senate inquiry. They were the same group of experts who in January 2016 urged caution over the vaccine, saying its safety and cost-effectiveness had not been established. After two meetings in January, the Formulary Executive Council (FEC) of advisers approved the government s purchase of the vaccine on Feb 1, 2016 but recommended stringent conditions, minutes of all three meetings show. However, these recommendations were not heeded by then health secretary Janette Garin before the program was rolled out to 830,000 children, documents reviewed by Reuters, as well as interviews with local exports, show. The same recommendations and minutes of the meetings were discussed during the five-hour senate hearing. Garin said the procurement of the vaccine was above board. I categorically deny any wrongdoing, she told the inquiry. I am not involved in any corruption and I am willing to be investigated. Many parents are anxious and worried over the safety of the vaccine. Iris Alpay, one of the parents who attended the hearing, admonished health officials for using their children as experimental rats . ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. is a partner in bloodshed with Jerusalem move, Erdogan says;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital had made Washington complicit in violence. His comments on the U.S. move have strained fragile relations between Turkey and Israel, which only restored ties last year following a six-year diplomatic rift. Erdogan, a frequent critic of Israel, has said the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump will spark violence in the region. The ones who made Jerusalem a dungeon for Muslims and members of other religions will never be able to clean the blood from their hands, Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara. With their decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the United States has become a partner in this bloodshed, he said, adding he did not consider Trump s decision binding. Trump s decision last week overturned longstanding U.S. policy on Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. The status of Jerusalem has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians for generations. Over the weekend Erdogan referred to Israel as a terror state and an invader state , prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire back. I m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people, Netanyahu said at a news conference. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group has fought a decades-old insurgency with the Turkish state in which more than 40,000 people have been killed. The conflict flared up after the collapse of a ceasefire in 2015. Last year Israel and Turkey restored ties following a six-year rupture that occurred after Israeli marines stormed an aid ship in 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, killing 10 Turkish activists on board. The normalization of ties between both countries has been driven in part by the prospect of lucrative Mediterranean gas deals as well as by mutual concerns about regional security. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Macedonian rightist PM resigns party leadership;SKOPJE (Reuters) - Former Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski, head of the opposition rightist VMRO-DPMNE party, resigned on Monday following an election defeat last year and unrest that rocked the small Balkan country in April. Gruevski, 47, led the ex-Yugoslav republic for almost a decade, and his party bloc since 2003, until January 2016 when a wiretapping scandal brought down the ruling VMRO-DPMNE bloc. A snap election in December 2016 ended inconclusively and a long parliamentary stalemate ensued, ending in May when Social Democrat Zoran Zaev formed a coalition with ethnic Albanian parties that represent a third of the 2 million population. VMRO-DPMNE said its Central Committee had scheduled a leadership congress for Dec. 22-23 after Gruevski s irrevocable resignation. Gruevski said that ... his resignation was a moral act, as it is natural that the person in whom everyone had confidence should take the responsibility for the (electoral) defeat, a party statement said. In April, protesters including VMRO-DPMNE supporters stormed parliament and assaulted Zaev as Social Democrats and its ethnic Albanian allies elected an ethnic Albanian as parliament speaker. Dozens were injured in riots. The VMRO-DPMNE suffered a further setback last month when police arrested Mitko Cavkov, a former interior minister, and a number of its lawmakers and activists on charges related to the disturbances in April. The April unrest marked the worst crisis in Macedonia since 2001 when Western diplomats narrowly averted a full-scale civil war arising from an ethnic Albanian insurgency, promising Skopje a pathway to membership of the European Union and NATO. Macedonia, which won independence in 1991 from then-federal Yugoslavia in 1991, has made little progress towards EU and NATO membership due to a name dispute with Greece. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesian parliament speaker quits amid graft investigation;JAKARTA (Reuters) - The speaker of Indonesia s parliament, who is being investigated for his suspected involvement in a $170 million graft scandal, has tendered his resignation, two members of the assembly said on Monday. Setya Novanto was arrested last month over his suspected role in the scandal linked to a national electronic identity card scheme. Anti-corruption investigators then took him into custody from where he sent a letter to assembly leaders pleading to be allowed to keep his job while he fought the charges. Mr Novanto has resigned, member of parliament Yandri Susanto told Reuters, referring to a letter in which Novanto announced his decision. He didn t say why. A replacement for him as speaker was expected to be decided by his party, Golkar, at an extraordinary meeting on Dec. 19, said Dito Ganinduto, a member of parliament from Novanto s Golkar party. Novanto had not resigned as chairman of Golkar, Ganinduto said. A lawyer for Novanto, Maqdir Ismail, deferred questions on the matter to acting Golkar chairman Idrus Marham. Marham could not be reached for comment. Novanto had clung to power through several previous corruption cases. His latest battle with the graft agency has gripped Indonesia, where newspapers have splashed the story on front pages and social media posts mocking him have been widely shared. Before his detention last month he had for months declined to answer summonses for questioning by the Corruption Eradication Commission, known by its Indonesian initials KPK. The allegations against Novanto have reinforced the perception among Indonesians that their parliament, long regarded as riddled with entrenched corruption, is a failing institution. Indonesia was ranked last year at 90 out of 176 countries on Transparency International s corruption perception index. The watchdog has singled out parliament as Indonesia s most corrupt institution, and in July called on President Joko Widodo to protect the KPK against attempts by the legislature to weaken the commission s powers. Critics inside and outside the parliament say the root problem is money politics. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. seeks 1,300 places for refugees from Libya;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Monday to countries worldwide to take in 1,300 mainly African refugees stranded in Libya, many of them mistreated while kept in appalling conditions in detention. Niger has agreed to temporarily host the most vulnerable being evacuated, including unaccompanied children and single mothers, pending their processing and departure for resettlement, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. In order to address the immediate protection needs and extreme vulnerabilities of the persons of concern who will be evacuated to Niger, UNHCR urgently requests 1,300 places for resettlement for this situation, the agency said. The UNHCR intends to evacuate between 700 and 1,300 people from Libya to Niger by the end of January 2018, it said, calling for the resettlement places to be made available by the end of March. A first group of 25 refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan were evacuated from Libya to Niger last month, it added. This is a desperate call for solidarity and humanity. We need to get extremely vulnerable refugees out of Libya as soon as possible, said Volker Turk, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. Images broadcast by CNN earlier this month appeared to show migrants being auctioned off as slaves by Libyan traffickers, sparking outrage in Europe and anger in Africa. Numbers of detainees swelled after boat departures for Italy from the smuggling hub of Sabratha were largely blocked this year. On Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), called on social media giants to make it harder for people smugglers to use their platforms to lure West African migrants to Libya where they can face detention, torture, slavery or death. Facebook and WhatsApp did not reply to requests by Reuters for comment. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss urge voters to keep fee for public broadcasters;ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss government urged voters on Monday to keep the annual license fee that finances public broadcasters, saying taxpayer money played a crucial role in supporting cultural diversity and political discourse in the media. Its call seeks to defuse support for the No Billag initiative that comes to a binding vote on March 4 and which opinion polls show has around 57 percent support. Proponents want to scrap the Billag fee that last year raised 1.37 billion Swiss francs ($1.38 billion) as the financial lifeblood for public broadcasters at the federal, regional and local levels. National broadcaster SRG, which operates in the four national languages, gets 75 percent of its budget from the fee. A varied media offering is important for a small, polyglot country like Switzerland with its direct democracy, President Doris Leuthard said in a statement. Switzerland says it would be the first country in Europe to abolish fees for public broadcasting should the measure be adopted. This would push advertising revenue to mostly foreign-controlled commercial media. The government is cutting the fee levied on homes with a radio or TV set to 365 francs per private household from 2019 from around 450 now. Businesses will pay up to 35,590 francs a year based on a sliding scale of annual sales. ($1 = 0.9915 Swiss francs) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ivory Coast offering $26,000 buy-outs to reduce army size: documents;ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast will pay thousands of soldiers 15 million CFA francs ($25,782) each as part of buy-outs aimed at reducing the size of its unruly and mutiny-prone military, documents showed on Monday. Africa s fastest growing economy in 2016, Ivory Coast was hit earlier this year by successive uprisings by low-ranking troops. The costly bonuses paid to end the unrest helped balloon the budget deficit this year, and the episode tarnished its image as one of the continent s rising economic stars. The government said last week that it would retire around 1,000 soldiers by the end of the year as part of efforts to bring the force - estimated at about 25,000 troops - in line with accepted standards . A spokesman did not say last week how much the soldiers would receive under the voluntary scheme. However, a document obtained by Reuters outlining the plan stated that each retired soldier would receive a payment of 15 million CFA francs. Neither the spokesman nor Ivory Coast s defense minister were available to comment on Monday. Diplomats said the move signaled that the government was beginning to implement a military reform law. According to a copy of the law seen by Reuters, 4,400 troops are to leave the army over four years. It was not immediately clear if that figure includes soldiers already scheduled to retire during the period. Ivory Coast s army was thrown together from rival loyalist and rebel factions at the end of a 2011 civil war that brought President Alassane Ouattara to power after his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo rejected his defeat in a 2010 run-off election. It remains plagued by internal divisions. Diplomats and analysts say the force is bloated with unqualified personnel and vulnerable to political manipulation. An adviser to Parliament Speaker Guillaume Soro, considered a leading candidate to replace term-limited President Ouattara in 2020, was arrested in October after a secret arms cache at his home helped mutinying soldiers halt a loyalist advance. Soro and his supporters say the charges were politically motivated. ($1 = 581.8000 CFA francs) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Party without parliamentary seats leads in Slovenia opinion poll;LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - A centre-left party that has no seats in Slovenia s parliament and is led by a former comedian topped an opinion poll published by daily newspaper Delo on Monday, about six months ahead of an expected general election. The Lista Marjana Sarca (LMS) under Marjan Sarec, mayor of the city of Kamnik, drew the support of 15.7 percent with a junior governing coalition party, the Social Democrats, in second place with 12.6 percent and the leading opposition party, the centre-left Slovenian Democratic Party, with 12.2 percent. The Party of Modern Centre led by Prime Minister Miro Cerar came in sixth with 5.5 percent. Last month, the Social Democrats led the same poll with 19.8 percent while the LMS was not yet included in the survey. Sarec surprised many last month when he was narrowly beaten in a presidential run-off election, gathering about 47 percent to incumbent Borut Pahor s 53 percent. Analysts said Sarec s party, which has so far been active only at local level, could win a parliamentary vote amid general dissatisfaction with the centre-left government, above all its inability to improve the inefficient national health system. The government of the southeast European country is also under heavy pressure from various public sector unions demanding wage hikes at a time of strong economic growth, expected to be 4.4 percent this year, up from 3.1 percent in 2016. Pahor will call a general election in the coming months and it is expected to be held in the first half of June. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;S.African prosecutors extend deadline for Zuma to file arguments over revived graft charges;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Monday it had extended the deadline for President Jacob Zuma to submit arguments on why he should not be prosecuted for corruption. They must submit their representation on the 31st of January, said NPA spokesman Luvuyo Mfaku. The 783 charges against Zuma relate to a 30 billion rand ($2.20 billion) government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s. They were filed but then dropped by the NPA shortly before he ran for the presidency. ($1 = 13.6572 rand) ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Seeking to extend martial law in Philippine south, Duterte says militants regrouping;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday asked Congress to extend martial law on the southern island of Mindanao for a year, arguing that Islamist militants have been regrouping since a five-month urban conflict ended there in October. He said fighters who survived the battle for Marawi City were determined to establish a Southeast Asian wilayat or governorate - for Islamic State and named militant Abu Turaifie as potentially the radical group s next regional emir . The previous emir , Isnilon Hapilon, and another rebel commander loyal to Islamic State were killed in October as the military closed in on fighters who had occupied the heart of Marawi since May 23. More than 1,100 people - mostly militants - were killed and 350,000 displaced by the Marawi unrest. In his letter to the Senate and House of Representatives, Duterte said militants were radicalizing and recruiting local people, reorganizing themselves and building their finances. These activities are geared towards the conduct of intensified atrocities and armed public uprisings, he said, adding that they were aimed at establishing a global Islamic caliphate and a wilayat , not only in the Philippines but the whole of Southeast Asia. A group led by Turaifie - who heads a splinter group of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and, according to Duterte, is said to be Hapilon s potential successor - was planning bombings in the Cotabato province south of Marawi. Intelligence reports indicate that militants are plotting to attack another city, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said on Monday. Duterte placed restive Mindanao, which has a population of 22 million, under military rule after the attack on Marawi, and martial law was due to be lifted there on Dec. 31. Lawmakers will vote on his request for a one-year extension at a joint session on Wednesday, Congress majority leader Rodolfo Farinas told reporters. Continuing martial law beyond the initial 60-day limit requires lawmakers approval, but the constitution does not limit any extensions. Martial law allows for tougher surveillance and arrests without warrant, giving security forces greater rein to go after suspected extremist financiers and facilitators. Duterte has long warned that Mindanao faced contamination by Islamic State, and experts say Muslim parts of the predominantly Catholic southern Philippines are fertile ground for expansion, due to their history of marginalization and neglect. Critics of Duterte, who has held open the possibility of extending military rule to the whole country, have slammed the imposition of martial law in Mindanao as a misuse of power and evidence of the president s authoritarian tendencies. Martial law is a sensitive issue in the Philippines, bringing back memories of the 1970s rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was accused of exaggerating security threats to justify harsh measures to suppress dissent. Human rights group Karapatan questioned why martial law should be extended in Mindanao nearly two months after the military s victory in Marawi City. This is a dangerous precedent that inches the entire country closer to a nationwide declaration of martial rule, it said in a statement. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalan protesters clash with police over 'plunder' of religious artefacts;BARCELONA (Reuters) - Protesters clashed with police trying to reclaim disputed religious artefacts from a museum in Catalonia on Monday, in the latest display of tension between Catalan separatists and Spain s central government ahead of a Dec. 21 election. A monastery in neighboring Aragon region says over 44 of its artefacts were sold illegally to Catalonia in the 1980s and the issue has become a symbol of broader disagreement between opponents and supporters of Catalan independence. Culture Minister Inigo Mendez de Vigo angered Catalan nationalists in November by using special temporary powers to accept a petition by a judge from Aragon calling for the artefacts to be returned to their previous home, the Monastery of Sijena. The previous month, Madrid took control of Catalonia to quell the crisis over secession and called a snap regional election. Hundreds of demonstrators on Monday massed at the museum of Lleida in western Catalonia where the artefacts were kept and pro-independence groups called supporters to stop the police from removing them. There were minor scuffles, though no injuries were reported and the artefacts were eventually taken away at around noon. Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, currently in self-imposed exile in Brussels, criticised the move on Twitter and blamed the three principal unionist parties running in upcoming elections, the ruling People s party (PP), the socialist party and Ciudadanos. Carried out at night and using a militarised police force, as always, and taking advantage of a coup d etat to plunder Catalonia with complete impunity: This is the model that Ciudadanos, PSC and PP defend, Puigdemont said. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said his government could not oppose court rulings because it would mean stepping outside the rule of law. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia has started military withdrawal from Syria: RIA cites minister;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Monday that elements of Moscow s military contingent to Syria had already begun returning to Russia, the RIA news agency reported. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey, Russia will meet to finalize S-400 defense deal in coming week;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish and Russian officials will meet to finalize Turkey s S-400 surface-to-air missile systems deal in the coming week, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. Turkey has been negotiating with Russia to buy the system for more than a year. Washington and some of its NATO allies see the decision as a snub because the weapons cannot be integrated into the alliance s defenses. Turkey expects to receive its first such system in 2019, defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said in November adding that the deal includes two S-400 systems while one was optional. Our officials will come together in the coming week to finalize the S-400 issue, Erdogan said during a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Turkey has been working to develop its own defense systems and equipment and has lined up several projects for the coming years including combat helicopters, tanks, drones and more. Erdogan also said Ankara and Moscow were on the same page regarding the U.S. move on Jerusalem and added that two leaders would keep in contact on the issue. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN’S Trump Dossier Hand Off…The “Go-Between” Speaks Out;The exclusive below from Fox news skips the fact that the Trump dossier had been circulated around but was NEVER proven to be true AT ALL! Why did John McCain feel it necessary to bring this fake dossier to the attention of anyone in the U.S. intel community? The Deep State desperately wants to destroy President Trump and this happens to be Exhibit Numero Uno:The man who says he acted as a go-between last year to inform Sen. John McCain about the controversial dossier containing salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump is speaking out, revealing how the ex-British spy who researched the document helped coordinate its release to the FBI, the media and Capitol Hill. My mission was essentially to be a go-between and a messenger, to tell the senator and assistants that such a dossier existed, Sir Andrew Wood told Fox News in an exclusive interview with senior executive producer Pamela K. Browne.Fox News spoke to Wood at the 2017 Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada. As Britain s ambassador to Moscow from 1995-2000, Wood witnessed the end of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the rise of Vladimir Putin.Just after the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, Arizona GOP Sen. McCain spoke at the same security conference. Wood says he was instructed by former British spy Christopher Steele to reach out to the senior Republican, whom Wood called a good man, about the unverified document.HERE S WHAT MCCAIN HAD TO SAY A FEW MONTHS AGO PUT THIS IN THE CONTEXT OF WHAT WE KNOW NOW:THE RUSSIAN LAWYER MET WITH SIMPSON OF FUSION GPS BEFORE THE MEETING WITH TRUMP JR IT WAS A SET-UP!Watch RINO Senator John McCain express his concern overt the seriousness of Donald Trump Jr. s meeting with the Russian lawyer about the lifting US sanctions on Russian adoption. It s curious that the reporter never asked McCain about his efforts to smear our president with a unsubstantiated dirty dossier from an ex-spy:In August 2016, Steele came to me to tell me what was in it, and why it was important, Wood said. He made it very clear yes, it was raw intelligence, but it needed putting into proper context before you could judge it fully. August 2016 is a critical period, just after the FBI opened the Russia meddling probe, and after then-director James Comey recommended against prosecution for Clinton s mishandling of classified information.Wood said Steele had already been in contact with the FBI at the time. He said there was corroborating evidence in the United States, from which I assumed he was working with an American company, Wood said.British court records reviewed by Fox News as well as U.S. congressional testimony revealed that Steele was directed and paid at least $168,000 by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson to push the research that fall to five American media outlets. According to British court documents, Steele met with The New York Times (twice), The Washington Post (twice), CNN, The New Yorker and Yahoo News (twice). Each of these interviews was conducted in person and with a member of Fusion also present, according to the records associated with separate civil litigation against Steele and Fusion GPS.Wood said he d heard of Fusion GPS, as the group Steele was working with, but had never heard of Mr. Simpson. Three weeks after Trump won the presidential election, at the Canadian security conference, the details were finalized for the dossier hand-off to McCain.Read more: Fox News;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THE LIST of 34 House Republicans DEMANDING Permanent AMNESTY For Obama’s DACA “Kids”;Who wants to deport Dreamers ? Not many people, it turns out. Even veteran immigration restrictionists seem willing to legalize this subset of immigrants in the country illegally if it is part of a package deal. That s true even though a lot of what s said about the DACA recipients is PR-style hooey.For example, it s often said indeed, former President Barack Obama just recently said that the approximately 800,000 of them were brought to this country by their parents. Well, many were. But that s not required to qualify as a protected Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipient under the various plans, including Obama s. You just have to have entered the country illegally before age 16. You could have decided to sneak in against your parents wishes. You re still a Dreamer! Likewise, we re told DACA recipients are college-bound high school grads or military personnel. That s an exaggeration. All that s actually required is that the person enroll in a high school course or an alternative, including online courses and English-as-a-second-language classes. Under Obama s now-suspended program, you didn t even have to stay enrolled.Compared with the general population, DACA recipients are not especially highly skilled. A recent survey for several pro- Dreamer groups, with participants recruited by those groups, found that while most DACA recipients are not in school, the vast majority work. But their median hourly wage is only $15.34, meaning that many are competing with hard-pressed lower-skilled Americans.The DACA recipients you read about have typically been carefully selected for their appeal. They re valedictorians. They re first responders. They re curing diseases. They root for the Yankees. They want to serve in the Army. If DACA recipients are the poster children for the much larger population of immigrants in the country illegally, these are the poster children for the poster children. Chicago Tribune34 Republicans in Congress are not about to let the pesky facts about Obama s Dreamers get in the way of lobbying Speaker Ryan to grant them permanent citizenship.Numbers USA reports Thirty-four Republicans in the House of Representatives signed a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan calling for passage of a permanent DACA amnesty before the end of the year. Reps. Scott Taylor (R-Va.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) led the effort.While the lawmakers stop short of demanding passage of a DACA amnesty before the end of the year or including an amnesty in this month s must-pass spending bill, they don t insist on any other immigration-related provisions that would stop future flows of illegal immigration by calling for mandatory E-Verify or to reduce the numerical impact of the amnesty by calling for an end to Chain Migration.The letter reads:Dear Speaker Ryan,We write in support of passing of a permanent legislative solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients before the end of the year. DACA recipients young people brought to America through no fault of their own are contributing members of our communities and our economy. For many, this is the only country they have ever known. They are American in every way except their immigration status.Since DACA s inception, the federal government has approved approximately 795,000 initial DACA applications and 924,000 renewals. Since being approved for DACA status, an overwhelming majority of these individuals have enrolled in school, found employment, or have served in the military. Studies have shown that passing legislation to permanently protect these individuals would add hundreds of billions to our country s gross domestic product (GDP). That is why the business community, universities, and civic leaders alike support a permanent legislative solution.We agree with President Trump that executive action was not the appropriate process for solving this issue, as was done under the previous administration, and we believe Congress should act. We are compelled to act immediately because many DACA recipients are about to lose or have already lost their permits in the wake of the program s rescission. Not acting is creating understandable uncertainty and anxiety amongst immigrant communities.While we firmly believe Congress must work to address other issues within our broken immigration system, it is imperative that Republicans and Democrats come together to solve this problem now and not wait until next year. We all agree that our border must be enforced, our national security defended, and our broken immigration system reformed, but in this moment, we must address the urgent matter before us in a balanced approach that does not harm valuable sectors of our economy nor the lives of these hard-working young people. We must pass legislation that protects DACA recipients from deportation and gives them the opportunity to apply for a more secured status in our country as soon as possible. Reaching across the aisle to protect DACA recipients before the holidays is the right thing to do.Here s the list of 34 Republicans who need to be drained from the swamp:Rep. Scott Taylor (VA-2) Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA-4) Rep. Mia Love (UT-4) Rep. Mark Amodei (NV-2) Rep. David Valadao (CA-21) Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-8) Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-8) Rep. Mike Coffman (CO-6) Rep. Charles Dent (PA-15) Rep. Frank LoBiando (NJ-2) Rep. Peter King (NY-2) Rep. Carlos Curbelo (FL-26) Rep. Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27) Rep. Ryan Costello (PA-6) Rep. Fred Upton (MI-6) Rep. Jeff Denham (CA-10) Rep. Rodney Davis (IL-13) Rep. John Faso (NY-19) Rep. John Katko (NY-24) Rep. Chris Stewart (UT-2) Rep. Susan Brooks (IN-5) Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL-16) Rep. Glenn T. Thompson (PA-5) Rep. Mike Simpson (ID-2) Rep. Mimi Walters (CA-45) Rep. Leonard Lance (NJ-7) Rep. Pat Meehan (PA-7) Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY-21) Rep. Tom McArthur (NJ-3) Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-4) Rep. Jenniffer Gonzales-Colon (PR) Rep. Joe Barton (TX-6) Rep. Will Hurd (TX-23) Rep. Bruce Poloquin (ME-2)Numbers USA does an amazing job of exposing the truth about illegal immigration and what it really costs the American taxpayer. Nearly all funding for NumbersUSA Action comes from individuals giving $10, $25 and $100 donations over the internet. If you can afford to make even a small donation, it will help them to continue to help Americans change immigration policies. You can donate to Numbers USA HERE.;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THE PLOT THICKENS: DEMOTED DOJ OFFICIAL’S WIFE Worked for Firm Responsible for anti-Trump Dossier During 2016 Election;This is a big deal even though we re sure the main stream media will ignore it. The connection between a now demoted DOJ official and Fusion GPS just got closer. His wife worked for the opposition research firm responsible for THE ANTI-TRUMP DOSSIER! The plot thickens Fox News reports:A senior Justice Department official demoted last week for concealing his meetings with the men behind the anti-Trump dossier had even closer ties to Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the incendiary document, than has been disclosed, Fox News has confirmed: The official s wife worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr s duties including whether she worked on the dossier remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016. Read more: Fox NewsJAMES ROSEN HAS THIS ON BRUCE OHR:KABOOOOOM !! Mueller Investigation CRUMBLES !!First Strzok and Paige then Weissmann, then Rhee and NOW Bruce Ohr BUSTED w/ both hands in the Fake Trump Dossier cookie jar !!#FireMueller #ShutItDown Investigating the Investigators pic.twitter.com/u9YgFa6421 STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterVIP) December 7, 2017Read more: Daily Caller;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH SARAH SANDERS Slam CNN’s Jim Acosta Over Lies By The Main Stream Media: “I’m not finished” [Video];Sarah Huckabee Sanders was hot today when she went off on CNN s Jim Acosta over the fake news that s been constant the past few days. Jim Acosta also would not be quiet so Sanders had to get loud and forceful: I m not finished Sanders was making a point about reporters making a mistake vs when they report fake news on purpose There is a big difference.Go Sarah! There s a big difference between making honest mistakes and purposely misleading the American people something that happens regularly. Sarah Huckabee SandersFox News Insider reports:White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders battled CNN reporter Jim Acosta, accusing the mainstream media of purposefully putting out false information.As he began a question, Acosta told Sanders at Monday s press briefing that journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn t mean it s fake news. Sanders started to answer but Acosta and another reported interjected. I m sorry. I m not finished! she countered. There s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly, she shot back.Acosta asked for an example of a story that was intentionally false and meant to mislead Americans.Sanders called out the false report by ABC News Brian Ross on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which earned Ross a four-week suspension.She called it very telling that Ross was suspended. Acosta kept pushing Sanders to let him ask his original question about allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, but she refused.;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CNN DEMONSTRATION BACKFIRES: Is Trump Drinking 12 Diet Cokes A Day “Super Crazy Harmful”? [Video];Does anyone REALLY care what our president drinks? CNN thinks they do. They thought it would be a great idea to bring on a doctor who would tell them how horrible it is for Trump to drink lots of Diet Coke. Well, they thought wrong This one backfires on Brooke Baldwin LOL!Near the close of Brooke Baldwin s CNN program Monday afternoon, she invited on a board-certified gastroenterologist to assess the effect on President Donald Trump s health of his massive Diet Coke intake.VISUAL AIDE:The discussion came with a visual aide of a dozen Diet Coke cans, representing the 12 Trump knocks back per day in the White House, according to a recent New York Times report.Dr. Samantha Nazareth noted the diet soda had less calories than regular soda, but drinking 12 essentially replaces what other liquids will provide to your body. You should be drinking water, not this, she said.Baldwin wondered if drinking that many Diet Cokes could be super crazy harmful to the body, but Nazareth said not necessarily. Instead, it might encourage the drinker to engage in more sweets. You need to think of the body in its entirety. What are you drinking? What are you eating? Nazareth asked. How much are you sleeping? How much stress are you getting a day? This all affects the body. It s not just 12 cans. Trump called the New York Times story an example of fake news because of its report on his reported TV-watching habits, but he didn t push back on the detail about the Diet Cokes.Via: WFB;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Pro-ISIS Terrorist Who Intended to Blow Up NYC Bus Terminal During Rush Hour Came To U.S. Through CHAIN MIGRATION Program Democrats Are Fighting For;In September, President Donald Trump tweeted a new condition for a potential deal with Democrats on immigration. Trump warned that he would not budge on allowing the failed chain migration program to continue in the United States. CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration! he wrote.CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017 Business Insider attempted to paint a softer picture of the harsh realities (like terrorism) that chain migration brings with the unpopular program to the United States.Chain migration is a term almost exclusively used by immigration hardliners when referring to the family-reunification-based component of the US immigration system, through which US citizens or lawful permanent residents may sponsor close family members to join them in the US.Prominent anti-immigration groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA have frequently denounced chain migration, describing it as a process that admits indefinite numbers of unskilled immigrants based on family connections alone and that prompts foreigners to view US immigration as a right or entitlement. Immigration proponents, however, describe family-based immigration as essential in helping new immigrants assimilate into US society. The American Immigration Council argues that newcomers who can bring family members with them when they immigrate to the US have stronger social and economic support that helps them navigate the system. Trump s tweet about chain migration on Friday could signal a new bump in the road for any immigration deal with Democrats. The bipartisan Dream Act, recently reintroduced in Congress by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, includes a pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, whose protections under the DACA program will be phased out over the next six months.FOX News reports An attempted suicide bomber who set off a rush-hour explosion at the nation s busiest bus terminal is a Bangladeshi national living in Brooklyn who was inspired by ISIS, law enforcement officials said.The suspect in Monday morning s blast at Port Authority in midtown Manhattan was identified as Akayed Ullah, 27. Ullah strapped a pipe bomb to his body with Velcro and zip ties, and it detonated in a subway corridor, police said.From police sources: pic.twitter.com/xFNagGmoh6 Joe Borelli (@JoeBorelliNYC) December 11, 2017Ullah lived in Brooklyn after he entered the U.S. in 2011 from Bangladesh on a chain migration visa, Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Tyler Houlton said in a statement.The DHS said Ullah came to the U.S. on an F43 visa, a preferential visa available for those with family in the U.S. who are citizens.He was considered a Lawful Permanent Resident from Bangladesh, Houlton told Fox News. ;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY ROY MOORE’S ELECTION WIN Is Critical For President Trump To Replace Leftist Federal and U.S. Supreme Court Activist Judges;Tomorrow, Alabama residents (including thousands of felons who have been registered by Al Sharpton s alleged brother) will go to the polls to decide who they want to represent them in the US Senate. The Democrats have contributed over $10 million to their leftist, virtually unknown candidate, Doug Jones. So, why are they so eager to take this Senate seat?In June 2017, the Democrats spent an astounding $30 million in Georgia s 6th congressional district, to lose a House seat in a special election. They falsely believed that the only thing they needed for Democrat candidate John Ossoff to win the race, was enough Georgians who hated Donald Trump to come out and vote.Is history repeating itself in Alabama?Democrat Senate candidate Doug Jones raised nearly six times Moore s amount ahead of the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Jones headed into the final weeks of the race with roughly four times as much money in the bank than his GOP opponent.Jones raked in nearly $10.2 million compared to Jones $1.8 million. Jones also spent roughly 5 times as much as Moore during that period, nearly $8.7 million compared to Moore s $1.7 million.Conservative Pat Buchanan asks, Why would Christian conservatives in good conscience go to the polls Dec. 12 and vote for Judge Roy Moore, despite the charges of sexual misconduct with teenagers leveled against him? Answer: That Alabama Senate race could determine whether Roe v. Wade is overturned. The lives of millions of unborn may be the stakes.There is, however, so much more at stake than the single issue of abortion in this hotly contested Senate race. Democrats are not going to sit back and allow President Trump a pathway to remaking the radical leftist judicial system they ve worked so hard to put in place. Today, the GOP, holding Congress and the White House, has a narrow path to capture the Third Branch, the Supreme Court, and to dominate the federal courts for a decade. For this historic opportunity, the party can thank two senators, one retired, the other still sitting.The first is former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.In 2013, Harry exercised the nuclear option, abolishing the filibuster for President Obama s judicial nominees. The Senate no longer needed 60 votes to confirm judges. Fifty-one Senate votes could cut off debate, and confirm.Iowa s Chuck Grassley warned Harry against stripping the minority of its filibuster power. Such a move may come back to bite you, he told Harry. Grassley is now judiciary committee chairman.And this year a GOP Senate voted to use the nuclear option to shut down a filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, who was then confirmed with 55 votes.Yet the Democratic minority still had one card to play to block President Trump s nominees the blue slip courtesy. If a senator from the state where a federal judicial nominee resides asks for a hold on proceedings, by not returning a blue slip, the judiciary committee has traditionally honored that request and not held hearings.Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota used the blue slip to block the Trump nomination of David Stras of Minnesota to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Franken calls Stras too ideological, too conservative.But Grassley has now decided to reject the blue slip courtesy for appellate court judges, since their jurisdiction is not just over a single state like Minnesota, but over an entire region.Not only are the federal court vacancies almost unprecedented, a GOP Senate and Trump are working in harness to fill them before January 2019, when a new Congress is sworn in.If Republicans blow this opportunity, it is unlikely to come again. For the Supreme Court has seemed within Republican grasp before, only to have it slip away because of presidential errors.Both Trump, by whom he nominates, and a Republican Senate, with its power to confirm with 51 votes, are indispensable if we are to end judicial dictatorship in America. Pat Buchanan, Yellow Hammer News ;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER CIA DIRECTOR Admits Guilt of Intel Agencies Out to Get Trump: “I don’t think I fully thought through the implications”;Remember former CIA Director Mike Morell s lies about Benghazi? He totally covered for Hillary and the Obama administration after Benghazi:Could this be connected to the reason Morell is now coming clean about targeting Trump?WHY IS HE ADMITTING GUILT NOW?Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell thinks that intelligence agencies were too harsh to Trump during the campaign and presidential transition, according to an interview released Monday.Morell, who left the CIA in 2013 after serving as its acting director twice, endorsed Hillary Clinton in an August 2016 New York Times op-ed.Politico s Susan Glassner asked Morell if getting involved was a mistake and the former CIA official said that it wasn t, but that there were downsides to it that I didn t think about at the time. I was concerned about what is the impact it would have on the agency, right? Very concerned about that, thought that through. But I don t think I fully thought through the implications, Morell said. So, let s put ourselves here in Donald Trump s shoes. So, what does he see? Right? He sees a former director of CIA and a former director of NSA, Mike Hayden, who I have the greatest respect for, criticizing him and his policies. Right? And he could rightfully have said, Huh, what s going on with these intelligence guys? Right? And then he sees a former acting director and deputy director of CIA criticizing him and endorsing his opponent, Morell continued. And then he gets his first intelligence briefing, after becoming the Republican nominee, and within 24 to 48 hours, there are leaks out of that that are critical of him and his then-national security advisor, Mike Flynn. Morell is referring to an NBC report that said Flynn was repeatedly interrupting briefers during the session. And so, this stuff starts to build, right? And he must have said to himself, What is it with these intelligence guys? Are they political? The current director at the time, John Brennan, during the campaign occasionally would push back on things that Donald Trump had said, Morell told Politico.The former CIA acting director continued to reference leaked reports during the interview. Then he becomes president, and he s supposed to be getting a daily brief from the moment he becomes the president-elect. Right? And he doesn t. And within a few days, there s leaks about how he s not taking his briefing. So, he must have thought right? that, Who are these guys? Are these guys out to get me? Is this a political organization? Can I think about them as a political organization when I become president? He concluded: So, I think there was a significant downside to those of us who became political in that moment. So, if I could have thought of that, would I have ended up in a different place? I don t know. But it s something I didn t think about. ;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Authorities Allowed NYC Chain Migration Terrorist To Stop Interrogation Several Times To Pray After Admitting He Was Triggered By CHRISTMAS Posters;The poor little ISIS-inspired, chain migration, snowflake, terrorist can t even walk by a Christmas poster without being triggered. How long before Mayor DeBlasio starts the dialogue about removing triggering signs of Christmas from NYC, so as not to offend non-Christians? The taxi driver behind the failed terror attack in a New York City told investigators he meant to detonate his homemade pipe bomb in the busy subway station after seeing the walls festooned with Christmas posters in revenge for violence against Muslims all over the world.While initial reports suggested the crude pipe bomb, made from a pipe, a 9-volt battery, match heads, sugar, Christmas tree lights and screws, had detonated prematurely, suspect Akayed Ullah, 27, insisted he set off the bomb deliberately.Ullah, who was arrested and taken for questioning after the bomb only partially detonated, told police he was walking through the underground tunnel at 7.20am, between the Port Authority station towards Times Square, when he saw the Christmas-themed posters on the wall, which reminded him of ISIS calls last month for militants and lone wolves to attack holiday markets. He acknowledges he purposely set it off then and there, a senior law enforcement official told the New York Post.The Bangladeshi immigrant added that he was specifically inspired by ISIS, not Al-Qaeda .Authorities say that if the explosive had fully detonated in the busy Midtown Manhattan subway station, there would have been more injuries and doubtless loss of life.The attack came days after Ullah s Brooklyn neighbors say they heard a huge row coming from his home, reporting yelling and screaming over the past two nights.Ullah, who was allowed to stop and pray multiple times during his interrogation, was taken to Bellevue Hospital to be treated for serious burns and lacerations to his abdomen and hands but is expected to survive. At the hospital, the Brooklyn resident told investigators that he was inspired to carry out the attack by the recent flare ups between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Monday s attack was the first terror attack on U.S. soil since that proclamation, but only one of many violent demonstrations across the world since the controversial move was announced last Wednesday. It was also the second time in two months that New York City was the target of a terrorist attack.President Trump said in a statement that lax immigration policies were to blame for the attack, and urged Congress to enact legislative reforms to protect the American people .Authorities say Ullah took the A train subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal stop Monday morning, and started walking east towards Times Square via an underground terminal when a pipe bomb hidden underneath his clothes prematurely exploded. Law enforcement officials don t believe the passageway was the intended target since the low-tech bomb attached to Ullah with Velcro and zip ties did not explode fully.The chemical explosive appears to have ignited but the pipe itself did not burst. Screws were found at the scene, indicating that they may have filled the pipe and were intended to be used as shrapnel.In the end, Ullah was the only one seriously injured by the explosive (three others reported to hospitals for ringing in the ears and headaches). Daily Mail ;politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. citizen on the run after busting out of Bali prison;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian police are hunting for a U.S. citizen who escaped on Monday from an overcrowded prison on the holiday island of Bali by cutting through steel bars in a ceiling, the jail s second breakout of foreign inmates this year. The Kerobokan prison, about 10 km (six miles) from the main tourist beaches in the Kuta area, often holds foreigners facing drug-related charges. Cristian Beasley, who was a suspect in crimes related to narcotics but had not been sentenced, escaped at 4.10 a.m. (2010 GMT Sunday), said Badung Police chief Yudith Satria Hananta. It is thought that the prisoner escaped ... by cutting through the steel bars above the ceiling, he said in a statement, without giving details of how Beasley escaped without being detected. Beasley, 32, from California, is believed to have then used a rope to climb down a wall before getting over a perimeter wall in an area being refurbished. Police had questioned witnesses and guards and were hunting for Beasley, Hananta said. Another American, Paul Anthony Hoffman, 57, was captured while also trying to escape, Hananta said. Representatives of Beasley and Hoffman could not immediately be reached for comment. In June, an Australian, a Bulgarian, an Indian and a Malaysian tunneled to freedom about 12 meters (13 yards) under the prison s walls. The Indian and the Bulgarian were caught soon after in neighboring East Timor, but Australian Shaun Edward Davidson and Malaysian Tee Kok King remain at large. Davidson has taunted authorities by saying he was enjoying life in various parts of the world, in purported posts on Facebook. Kerobokan has housed a number of well-known foreign drug convicts, including Australian Schappelle Corby, whose 12-1/2-year sentence for marijuana smuggling got huge media attention. Indonesia has executed several foreign drug convicts in recent years. Indonesian prisons are often overcrowded, partly because a war on drugs led by the government of President Joko Widodo has led to a surge in the number of people locked up. As of June, Kerobokan housed 1,378 inmates, more than four times its planned capacity of 323, government data show. Prison escapes are fairly common in Indonesia, which launched an investigation this year after about 350 inmates broke out of a prison on the island of Sumatra. ;worldnews;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Amnesty says EU is complicit in violations of migrant rights in Libya;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European governments are complicit in grave human rights violations in Libya through their support for authorities there who often work with people smugglers and torture refugees and migrants, Amnesty International said on Tuesday. Amnesty said up to 20,000 people are now held in Libyan detention centers for migrants and are subject to torture, forced labor, extortion, and unlawful killings . Other human rights organizations have said similar things in recent months. The European support for Libyan authorities is part of a plan to cut African immigration across the Mediterranean. It aims to lower the number of people who drown during the crossing and curb the scale of a political problem high arrivals cause to EU governments. Italy has spearheaded the plan, in particular by training and equipping the coastguard and by spending millions to back U.N. agencies working on relief efforts in Libya. European governments have not just been fully aware of these abuses;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! RATINGS CRASHER Megyn Kelly Is DESTROYED On Social Media For Using Her NBC Show To Give Liberal Trump Sexual Assault Accusers A Platform;"Last week, President Trump totally humiliated ABC News on Twitter, as he pointed out their embarrassing attempt at gotcha journalism when Brian Ross erroneously reported in a BREAKING NEWS story, that Michael Flynn was told by Donald Trump to talk to the Russian Ambassador during his campaign. Brian Ross was suspended for a month. President Trump suggested should be fired for his #fakenews reporting.Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017This week, it was NBC s Never-Trump Megyn Kelly s chance to exact revenge on President Trump, who after attacking him during his first debate, lost her conservative Fox News fanbase and basically saw her promising career come to a screeching halt. NBC picked up Kelly in a $23 million per year contract in a gamble that liberals would warm up to the formerly conservative host. NBC has since found out that conservatives no longer want anything to do with Kelly, and liberals despise her for her past performances as a top-rated host on conservative-leaning FOX News.Twitter users were on fire after Megyn Kelly did her part to help tear down President Trump (again):Megyn Kelly,You and your employer need to smear Trump but there's nothing left to accuse him of so you're going to re-interview Trump accusers who've already been proven pos liars?How desperate you must be. Philip Schuyler (@FiveRights) December 11, 2017Today, Megyn Kelly traipsed out a trio of Donald Trump accusers on her failing show. Rest assured, there will be many more liberal accusers who come out against Donald Trump, as racism appears to have lost its glow, as a means to draw voters into the Democrat Party, as Americans have become tired of watching Democrats constantly drawing from the bottom of the deck, as a way to cloud Trump s Make America Great Again agenda of a pro-growth economy, jobs, education, lower taxes, and America first.Megyn Kelly, who is desperate for ratings, must have been incredibly disappointed when breaking news of a botched suicide bomber attack in New York City was reported at the same time her Democrat Donald Trump accuser was telling her story on her show.Daily Mail A trio of the president s accusers reemerged on Monday to hound him for sexually harassing them.Samantha Holvey, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks had previously made allegations against Trump and appeared on Megyn Kelly Today to demand justice as the White House resumed its claim that the issue had been litigated in last year s election. All of a sudden, he s all over, me, kissing and groping and groping and kissing, said Leeds, a self-proclaimed Democrat, who says she revealed her story because I wanted people to know what kind of a person that Trump really is what a pervert he is. This is the same Jessica Leeds that accused Trump of sexual harassment.Think Megyn Kelly will bring this picture up?Think she ll bring up the time that Jessica Leeds was in a two year property law suit with Trump? pic.twitter.com/AvdEyYu8Ew WhiteNitemare (@Carl_Anthony215) December 11, 2017Leeds claims that Trump assaulted on a plane in the 70s and called her a c*** when he ran into her some time later at a party in New York while he was still married to his first wife Ivana.Megyn Kelly asked former Trump accuser Jessica Leeds what she wants other women to know about sexual harassment. Leeds replied, We have a problem in that we have been enculturated all of this time for all of this time, for years and years and years, to be compliant. Leeds went on to say, For the woman who voted for Trump, they just didn t want to vote for a woman It became reasonably difficult to believe a single work Leeds had to say when she used the word enculturated when referring to her alleged meeting with Donald Trump. It became impossible to believe a word she said when Leeds followed up her comment by exposing her bitter feelings towards women for not voting for Hillary. The only thing missing from Leeds during her appearance on the Megyn Kelly show was her pussy hat and an I m a committed Democrat Feminist tattoo on her forehead. Watch:WATCH: ""If there are other women out there, what do you want them to know?"" Megyn asks Trump accusers Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey & Rachel Cooks on #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/YPt1CxieUA Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 11, 2017Watch Crooks tell Megyn her alleged story here: Is it true he [Trump] asked for your phone number? @megynkelly Yeah I remember saying, What do you need that for? Trump accuser Rachel Crooks on @MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/OCX1ZpnV2J TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 11, 2017Watch the obvious excitment of Megyn Kelly to be able to pretend as though she s relevant with a breaking news announcemnt with the official White House response to the allegations:WATCH: Statement the @WhiteHouse just provided to #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/0hahP6goW1 Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 11, 2017Daily Mail The two other women said that Trump s conduct while he was a businessman left them shocked and devastated and feeling very gross and very dirty. I was so uncomfortable, and a little, yeah, threatened, like I didn t have a choice, Crooks on Monday said.Kelly s program was preempted in New York as an explosion went off in Manhattan. Her show aired in other parts of the country, however, including Washington.Holvey, a former Miss USA contestant, said that Trump came backstage in 2006 and reviewed the women while they were indecent.She recalled thinking at the time that it would be a meet and great with Trump. But it wasn t.The former Miss North Carolina says Trump was just looking me over like I was just a piece of meat. I was not a human being. I did not have a brain I did not have a personality. I was just simply there for his pleasure. It left me feeling very gross, very dirty, like this is not what I signed up for. Here s how Twitter responded to Megyn s show: You know the Russia narrative is over when Megyn Kelly is having Trump accusers on her show.It will be never ending the next 3-7 years.The media is becoming the little boy that cried wolf.If they ever did find REAL dirt on Trump, no-one will believe them. Josh (@JoshNoneYaBiz) December 11, 2017Megyn Kelly is interviewing the lying 3 blind mice Trump accusers to save her failing show. Hope it s the final blow revealing to all that it s all about Megyn, for Megyn & nothing but Megyn s self serving ass who owes Trump gratitude for her relevancy. Tiff (@LATiffani1) December 11, 2017 ";politics;11/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. judge orders special counsel to turn over evidence on Michael Flynn;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Tuesday to turn over any potential evidence that could be material for when he sentences President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during his interview in Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Flynn has agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. Moscow has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told the government in a filing to turn over any exculpatory evidence, known as “Brady” material, that could potentially help Flynn’s defense or information that is “material either to the defendant’s guilt or punishment.” The order by the judge is considered routine, and the government by law is required to turn over such information to the defense if it exists. A sentencing date has not been set, but a status report ahead of sentencing is due by Feb 1. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Congress to let Iran deadline pass, leave decision to Trump;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress will allow a deadline on reimposing sanctions on Iran to pass this week, congressional and White House aides said on Tuesday, leaving a pact between world powers and Tehran intact at least temporarily. In October, Trump declined to certify that Iran was complying with the nuclear agreement reached among Tehran, the United States and others in 2015. His decision triggered a 60-day window for Congress to decide whether to bring back sanctions on Iran. Congressional leaders have announced no plans to introduce a resolution to reimpose sanctions before Wednesday’s deadline and aides say lawmakers will let the deadline pass without action. By doing that, Congress passes the ball back to Trump, who must decide in mid-January if he wants to continue to waive energy sanctions on Iran. Trump’s failure to do so would blow apart the deal, a course opposed by European allies, Russia and China, the other parties to the accord, under which Iran got sanctions relief in return for curbing its nuclear ambitions. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denies it has aimed to build an atomic bomb. It has said it will stick to the accord as long as the other signatories respect it, but will “shred” the deal if Washington pulls out. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was not asking for sanctions to be reimposed. “The administration continues to make encouraging progress with Congress to fix the U.S.–Iran deal and address long-term proliferation issues,” she told a daily press briefing. Efforts to find common ground with Europe on the Iran deal were complicated again last week, when Trump announced Washington would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, breaking with international consensus. Trump has called the Iran pact the “worst deal ever” and has threatened to pull the United States out of it. His fellow Republicans control both chambers of Congress but their Senate majority is so small that they need some Democratic support to advance most legislation. Senate Democrats, even those who opposed it two years ago, do not want to tear up the nuclear accord. Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declined to say whether he thought Trump would carry through on a threat to tear up the nuclear pact in January if Congress does not pass legislation to further clamp down on Iran. Corker told reporters he and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin met national security adviser H.R. McMaster last week to see “if there’s language that fits the bill here within Congress but also ... keeps them (the Europeans) at the table with us and not feeling like we’ve gone off in a different direction.” Corker declined to elaborate on specifics of the discussions. Trump threatened to withdraw from the nuclear agreement if lawmakers did not toughen it by amending the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, or INARA, the U.S. law that opened the possibility of bringing sanctions back. Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations panel, has said he would not support changes to the nuclear pact that are not supported by Europe. Democrats also insist that while sanctions should be imposed over Iran’s ballistic missiles program or human rights violations, they must be separate from the nuclear agreement. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey chides Arabs for 'weak' reaction ahead of Jerusalem summit;ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey criticized what it said was a feeble Arab reaction to the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, saying on the eve of Wednesday s Muslim summit in Istanbul that some Arab countries were scared of angering Washington. President Tayyip Erdogan, who has accused the United States of ignoring Palestinian claims to Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem and trampling on international law , has invited leaders from more than 50 Muslim countries to agree a response. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third holiest site and has been at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement last week recognizing the city as Israel s capital angered many Muslim countries, but few governments have matched Turkey s warning that it would plunge the world into a fire with no end . Several countries had still not said who they would send to Istanbul, a Turkish minister said. Some Arab countries have shown very weak responses (on Jerusalem), Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. It seems some countries are very timid of the United States. He said Egypt and the United Arab Emirates would send foreign ministers while Saudi Arabia had yet to say how it would participate. All three countries have delicate ties with Turkey, seeing links between the policies of Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party and regional Islamist movements they oppose. Other countries had also not said who they would send, Cavusoglu said, adding that the meeting of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries must stand up to what he called Washington s I am a super power, I can do anything mentality. We will make a call for countries that have so far not recognized Palestine to do so now, he said. ...We want the United States to turn back from its mistake. Trump s announcement triggered days of protests across the Muslim world and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, an action not recognized internationally. On Monday, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Beirut to protest at a march backed by Hezbollah, the heavily armed Iran-backed Shi ite group whose leader called last week for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is expected to attend the Istanbul summit, said his country supported a new uprising against Israel to safeguard the Palestinian people s rights . Rouhani said Muslim countries would undoubtedly voice their protest to the world at Wednesday s meeting. Iran supports several anti-Israel militant groups. The mainly Shi ite country is also competing for power and influence in the Middle East with predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally. Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami said Trump s decision would strengthen Israel, and accused some Muslim states of cooperating covertly with the Israeli government. We strongly believe that this decision is the result of interaction between Israel and some Muslim countries, he told his Turkish counterpart in a telephone call on Tuesday, Iran s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. Qassem Soleimani, head of the branch of the Revolutionary Guards that oversees operations outside Iran, pledged complete support for Palestinian Islamic resistance movements on Monday. The Trump administration says it remains committed to reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians and its decision does not affect Jerusalem s future borders or status. It says any credible future peace deal will place the Israeli capital in Jerusalem, and ditching old policies is needed to revive a peace process frozen since 2014. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senators say effort to protect 'Dreamers' making progress;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan push in the Senate to protect undocumented people who immigrated to the United States as children is gaining momentum as lawmakers try to wrap up negotiations, Republican Senator Jeff Flake said on Tuesday. Both Republican and Democratic senators said a deal would include measures to improve border security, something which Republicans have repeatedly stressed is a priority and which Democrats have said they would meet as part of a deal. President Donald Trump said in September he was terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and he challenged Congress to come up with legislation to protect around 700,000 “Dreamers” from the threat of deportation. Trump’s Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama, created DACA by executive order. “We’re still working ... we’re very close” to an agreement, Flake, one of a few Republicans and Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate leading the effort, told reporters. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday said, “We are in the process of negotiating with Republicans to provide a significant investment in border security in exchange for DACA. These talks continue to progress, and I’m hopeful we can reach an agreement.” Trump said the current program will be terminated in March, but already some participants have seen their enrollments expire. Trump’s tone toward Dreamers has varied. While he has vowed “a great love” for these youths, on Saturday he referred to them as “criminal aliens.” The president would have to sign off on legislation before it could become law. Democrats in Congress have been pushing to attach legislation restoring the immigration program to a must-pass spending bill either later this month or sometime next month. Another Republican active in the effort, Senator Thom Tillis, also was upbeat. “When we sit down and talk (with bipartisan groups of senators) we see that we’re not that far apart,” Tillis said in a brief interview on Monday night. But Tillis said additional law enforcement efforts in the interior of the country - and not just at the border - must be part of any deal. Many Democrats have said they would support increased southwestern border enforcement efforts such as more electronic and drone surveillance. But at least publicly they have not embraced some of the enforcement steps for the country’s interior that Republicans seek. Negotiations, which have been closely held as senators engaged in high-profile fights over revamping the U.S. tax code and funding federal programs in order to avert government shutdowns, had been slow-going. There have been differences over how many Dreamers would be covered by legislation, the length of temporary protections from deportation and whether Dreamers would eventually qualify for permanent residence and citizenship. These decisions have been complicated by Republicans’ immigration enforcement demands. Any deal negotiated by No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin - a lead negotiator for Democrats and who along with Republican Lindsey Graham introduced the Senate bill that is the focal point - and his fellow senators would still have to be sold to the full Senate. Durbin has been pushing to help Dreamers for the past 16 years. Legislation would face an even tougher struggle in the House of Representatives from a core of hard-line opponents to granting “amnesty” to anyone who arrived illegally, even children brought by their parents. Immigration advocacy groups were heartened by a letter sent on Dec. 5 by 34 House Republicans urging the passage of legislation by year’s end. A broad coalition, including the U.S. business community and evangelicals, have joined forces to pass legislation. Neil Bradley, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said failure “would have a negative impact on the economy and our community,” and that for the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who have work authorizations under DACA it would “literally rip them out of the work place.” ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson seeks to ease skepticism about U.S. State Department reorganization;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rex Tillerson, dogged by media speculation about how long he will last as U.S. secretary of state, tried on Tuesday to ease skepticism among staff about his leadership and planned State Department reorganization. Tillerson has alienated some staff by relying on a narrow group of aides while nudging out some of the department’s most senior foreign service officials, and for making erroneous statements about the top echelon of U.S. diplomats during a recent appearance. During a town hall meeting at the State Department, the chief U.S. diplomat laid out steps such as merging agency email lists, allowing more telecommuting for employees and partially easing a hiring freeze as part of his effort to win over workers unhappy about previously announced plans to reduce staff and to carry out the White House’s proposed 30 percent budget cuts. Tillerson did not break new ground in his speech on policy challenges such as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, Syria’s civil war and Russia’s occupation of Crimea. Among the organizational steps he laid out were moving to cloud-based systems for email and collaboration;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. envoy urges Security Council to visit Myanmar, Bangladesh;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A top U.N. official recounted to the Security Council on Tuesday heartbreaking and horrific accounts of sexual atrocities by Myanmar soldiers against Rohingya Muslim women, urging the body to visit the region and demand an end to attacks on civilians. Pramila Patten, special envoy of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on sexual violence in conflict, said one woman told her she was held by Myanmar troops for 45 days and raped repeatedly, while another woman could no longer see out of one eye after it was bitten by a soldier during a sexual assault. Some witnesses reported women and girls being tied to either a rock or a tree before multiple soldiers raped them to death, Patten told the Security Council. Some women recounted how soldiers drowned babies in the village well. A few women told me how their own babies were allegedly thrown in the fire as they were dragged away by soldiers and gang raped, she said. Patten said the 15-member Security Council should visit Myanmar - also known as Burma - and Cox s Bazar in Bangladesh, where more than 626,000 refugees have fled to since violence erupted in Myanmar s northern Rakhine State on Aug. 25. She said that a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate end to violations against civilians in Rakhine state and outlining measures to hold the perpetrators accountable would send an important signal. Myanmar s army released a report last month denying all allegations of rapes and killings by security forces. This is unacceptable, said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Burma must allow an independent, transparent and credible investigation into what has happened. While we are hearing promises from the government of Burma, we need to see action, she said. Myanmar has been stung by international criticism for the way its security forces responded to Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants on 30 security posts. Last month the Security Council urged the Myanmar government to ensure no further excessive use of military force in Rakhine state. China s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Wu Haitao said the crisis had to be solved through an agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh and warned that any solution reached under strong pressure from outside may ease the situation temporarily but will leave negative after effects. The two countries signed an agreement on voluntary repatriation Nov. 23. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman pushed on Tuesday for the United Nations to be involved in any operation to return Rohingya. Plans alone are not sufficient. We hope Myanmar will draw upon the wealth of expertise the U.N. can offer, Feltman told the Security Council. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Despicable Trump Suggests Female Senator Would ‘Do Anything’ With Him For Campaign Money (TWEET);Donald Trump is afraid of strong, powerful women. He is a horrific misogynist, and has shown himself to be so over and over again. That is nothing new. He has mocked the weight of a beauty queen, made repeated suggestions about women s menstrual cycles, and had repeatedly called women who accuse men including himself of sexual harassment and sexual assault of being liars and threatened to sue him. Now, he has gone even lower with an attack on Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY).In an early morning tweet, Trump actually suggested that Senator Gillibrand would have sex with him for campaign money. No, I m not kidding. Here is the tweet:Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017For one thing, I don t think Kirsten Gillibrand has to beg the likes of Donald Trump for anything, and she certainly would not stoop anywhere near doing what Trump is suggesting for campaign money. Think about this, folks: the sitting president is actually saying that a sitting Senator offered him sex in exchange for campaign money. That is truly beyond the pale. We already knew that Donald Trump was a sexist asshole, but this is a new low, even for him.General Kelly, General McMaster, and whomever else is running that White House DO SOMETHING about this fool s Twitter habit. It is way out of control, and he does great damage to the nation with ever 140 280 character outburst. This is outrageous. Forget the fact that the orange overlord is currently squatting in the Oval Office no adult, period, should be acting like this.In this watershed Me Too moment in America, it is time to call out the Sexist-in-Chief for what he is a complete misogynist who has no respect for women and never has. Ivanka, Melania, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hope Hicks, and all the other women in Trump s orbit need to step up and say that there s been more than enough. Curtail this man s sexist behavior, or turn in your woman card. Every last one of you.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images;News;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; White House: It Wasn’t Sexist For Trump To Slut-Shame Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (VIDEO);A backlash ensued after Donald Trump launched a sexist rant against Kirsten Gillibrand Thursday morning, saying that the Democratic Senator would do anything for a campaign contribution. Trump was calling Gillibrand a whore.White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders somehow denied that Trump s tweet was sexist. There is no way that is sexist at all, Sanders told reporters.Then Sanders tried to explain what Trump really meant (we all know what he really meant). According to Sanders, Trump was merely accusing Gillibrand of being controlled by contributions, and hammering home his pledge to drain the swamp in Washington, according to The Hill. I think that the president is very obvious, she said. This is the same sentiment the president has expressed many times before when he has exposed the corruption of the entire political system. Sanders claims that Trump does not owe Gillibrand an apology if his words were taken as sexist. I think only if your mind is in the gutter you would have read it that way, so no, she said.Watch:Gillibrand called on Trump to resign after Trump s accusers came back into the spotlight by hosting a press conference in which they called for an investigation into his past behavior. Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Trump tweeted this morning.Gillibrand responded to Trump s attack, saying that she won t be silenced. You cannot silence me or the millions of women who have gotten off the sidelines to speak out about the unfitness and shame you have brought to the Oval Office, she tweeted.Yeah, Trump, you called her a whore.Image via screen capture.;News;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan's Constitutional Democrats: a little party with big ambition;TOKYO (Reuters) - The leader of the small Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which out-performed expectations in an October vote, now hopes that by offering clear policy alternatives he can oust Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s coalition in the next election. One key to achieving that ambitious goal, said party founder Yukio Edano, is an economic platform that puts more weight on redistributing wealth, including by raising corporate taxes to push firms to use their cash reserves to raise wages. Unless we have reasonable redistribution to achieve growth, domestic demand will not expand, Edano, 53, told Reuters in an interview. That is a clear difference from the LDP, he said, referring to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The CDPJ was formed less than three weeks before the Oct. 22 election, after the then-main opposition Democratic Party s leader decided not to field candidates and encouraged them to run on Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike s novice conservative party s slate. It grabbed the top opposition spot in the lower house poll, although its 54 seats are dwarfed by the 283 won by Abe s conservative LDP. Since we are the biggest opposition party, we must aim at a change in government in the next election, or else democracy is not functioning, said Edano, who said he was surprised by his party s success. That is our responsibility. The next general election must be held by October 2021. The CDPJ opposes Abe s proposal to revise Article 9 of Japan s post-war constitution, which bans a standing military but has been interpreted to allow armed forces exclusively for self defence, and unlike the more authoritarian LDP, stresses civil rights rather than obligations to the state. The party appears to have a long way to go, given support at 7.9 percent against 38.1 percent for the LDP in a survey by NHK public broadcaster this week. Edano s fighting words, however, mark a contrast from the failed Democratic Party s stance in recent polls, when it aimed only to keep Abe s coalition from winning a two-thirds super majority rather than ousting it. Edano said he would not repeat the mistakes of the Democrats, which from the start was an amalgam of conservatives, liberals and ex-socialists and ended up being plagued by infighting during its 2009-2012 term in office. Our positions were clear, he said, explaining why he thought the CDPJ outperformed opposition rivals. We must not make our ideas and policies vague just to broaden (the party). Edano said Abe s biggest defect was his apparent belief that a majority entitled him to do whatever he wanted. Abe, whose support was at 49 percent in the NHK poll, saw his ratings sink this year partly due to perceptions he had grown arrogant. Democracy doesn t mean you get a blank cheque, Edano said. (This version of the story fixes typo in PM s name in first paragraph) ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; CNN CALLS IT: A Democrat Will Represent Alabama In The Senate For The First Time In 25 Years;Alabama is a notoriously deep red state. It s a place where Democrats always think that we have zero chances of winning especially in statewide federal elections. However, that is just what happened on Tuesday night in the Special Election to replace Senator Jeff Sessions. Doug Jones, the Democratic Senate candidate who is known in the state for prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan members who bombed a church during the Civil Rights Movement and killed four little African American girls, will be the next Senator from Alabama. CNN has just called the race, as there seems no more GOP-leaning counties out there.To contrast, Roy Moore had been twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court as Chief Justice for violating the law, and was also credibly accused of being a sexual predator toward teen girls. Despite all of that, though, the race was a nail biter, because Moore has a long history and a deep base in Alabama. Of course, decent people including Republicans were horrified at the idea of a man like Roy Moore going to the Senate. Despite the allegations of sexual predation, Moore also had said many incendiary things, such as putting forth the idea that Muslims shouldn t be allowed in Congress, that homosexuality should be illegal, and that America was great when slavery was legal. And that s just for starters, too.Thank you Alabama, for letting sanity prevail in this race. Oh, and a message to Democrats this is proof we can compete everywhere. Get a fifty state strategy going so we can blow the GOP outta the water in 2018.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images;News;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Meghan McCain Tweets The Most AMAZING Response To Doug Jones’ Win In Deep-Red Alabama;As a Democrat won a Senate seat in deep-red Alabama, social media offered up everyone s opinion because that s what social media does. Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated accused pedophile and serial sexual assaulter Roy Moore in a special election for the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he was appointed Attorney General. And some Republicans aren t exactly heartbroken about this.Take Meghan McCain John McCain s daughter. She went right after one of Trump s biggest supporters Steve Bannon as soon as the election results were announced:Suck it, Bannon Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) December 13, 2017Three simple words. It s amazing what three simple words can say.Steve Bannon spoke at Moore s election night rally, which we assume was supposed to be a night of celebration. Bannon endorsed Moore early on, against Luther Strange, whom Donald Trump himself campaigned for earlier this year. Bannon s support for Moore remained steadfast even in the wake of multiple allegations surfaced against him of sexual assault, harassment and even pedophilia. Bannon even said, There s a special place in hell for those who refuse to support Moore.On Dec. 12, the people of Alabama rejected Roy Moore s penchant for pursuing, even assaulting, teenage girls. They rejected his hate and bigotry. They rejected an asshat who has been removed from Alabama s Supreme Court twice for violating federal court orders, thus demonstrating he has no respect for the rule of law. And they sent a message to the Republican Party that this bullshit will no longer be tolerated. If deep-red Alabama can elect a Democrat, then anyone can. And that should have Republicans scared out of their minds.Well, we re going there, along with Meghan McCain and anyone else who believed Moore shouldn t ever hold public office. Even Republicans have their limits, it seems.Featured image via Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images;News;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. wary of Putin's declaration of military victory in Syria;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is voicing skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin s announcement of a major withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria and is arguing that his declaration of victory against Islamic State was premature. Putin, during a surprise visit on Monday to Russia s Hmeymim air base in Syria, declared that the work of Russian forces was largely done in backing the Syrian government against militants in the country s war following the defeat of the most battle-hardened group of international terrorists. Still, U.S. officials are challenging the Russian and Syrian portrayal of Syria as a country poised for peace once the final enclaves of the Islamic State militant group, known as ISIS, are recaptured. Syrian government forces, U.S. officials said, are too few, too poor and too weak to secure the country. Islamic State, and other militants in Syria, have ample opportunity to regroup, especially if the political grievances that drove the conflict remain unresolved, the officials said. We think the Russian declarations of ISIS defeat are premature, a White House National Security Council spokeswoman said. We have repeatedly seen in recent history that a premature declaration of victory was followed by a failure to consolidate military gains, stabilize the situation, and create the conditions that prevent terrorists from reemerging . The U.S. military in Syria, which unlike the Russians are operating there without the blessing of Damascus, has long been skeptical of Moscow s announced drawdowns. Marine Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said the United States had not observed any significant withdrawal since Putin s announcement. Although he did not predict future moves, he said: There have been no meaningful reductions in combat troops following Russia s previous announcements planned departures from Syria. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Moscow s past announcements of pullouts led to a recalibration of Russian forces. Russia has previously used claims of partial withdrawals in order to rotate out select units for refit-and-repair, remove redundant capabilities, and reinsert alternative weapons systems better suited for the next phase of pro-regime operations, it wrote in a research note on Tuesday. The U.S. military still has around 2,000 troops in Syria and has announced that any withdrawal will be conditions-based, arguing a longer-term presence of American forces would be needed to ensure Islamic State s lasting defeat. Russia s announcement, however, suggested a different image of Syria in which foreign forces were becoming unnecessary. After turning the tide of the conflict in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s favor, Putin wants to help broker a peace deal. A senior Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the United States believed Assad would fail if he attempts to impose victor s peace. The odds of Syria breaking into a civil war again would be high without meaningful political reconciliation, the official said. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday stressed the importance of a roadmap for peace, including elections that would allow voting by Syrians overseas who fled to the conflict. And it is our belief that through that process, the Assad regime will no longer be part of that leadership, Tillerson said. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to meet House, Senate tax cut negotiators Wednesday: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday will host congressional negotiators for lunch to discuss their progress toward tax cut legislation, the White House said. The lunch will take place ahead of a speech on tax cuts Trump is to deliver. “Tomorrow afternoon the president will host the House and Senate conferees for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act... for lunch at the White House to discuss the progress they have made towards delivering historic tax reform for the American people,” said White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;World is losing the battle against climate change, Macron says;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a bleak assessment on the global fight against climate change to dozens of world leaders and company executives on Tuesday, telling them: We are losing the battle . We re not moving quickly enough. We all need to act, Macron said, seeking to breathe new life into a collective effort that was weakened this summer when President Donald Trump said he was pulling the United States out of an international accord brokered in the French capital two years ago. Macron, who has worked to establish his role as a global leader since his sweeping election win in May, said modern-day science was revealing with each day the danger that global warming posed to the planet, he said. We are losing the battle, he said, urging a new phase in the fight against global warming. France announced a raft of 12 non-binding commitments, from a $300 million pledge to fight desertification to accelerating the transition toward a decarbonized economy. But there was no headline promise likely to reassure poor nations on the sharp end of climate change that they will be better able to cope. Public and private financial institutions pledged to channel more funds to spur the transition to a green economy and investors said they would pressure corporate giants to shift toward more ecologically friendly strategies. Among the commitments, more than 200 institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets under management said on Tuesday they would step up pressure on the world s biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to combat climate change. That, they said, would be more effective than threatening to pull the plug on their investments in companies, which include Coal India (COAL.NS), Gazprom (GAZP.MM), Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (600028.SS). The European Commission, meanwhile, said it was looking positively at plans to reduce capital requirements for environmentally-friendly investments by banks in a bid to boost the green economy. Climate change is causing more frequent and severe flooding, droughts, storms and heatwaves as average global temperatures rise to new records, sea ice melts in the Arctic and sea levels rise. Developing nations say the rich are lagging with a commitment dating back to 2009 to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 - from public and private sources alike - to help them switch from fossil fuels to greener energy sources and adapt to the effects of climate change. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced 9 billion euros worth of investments targeting sustainable cities, sustainable energy and sustainable agriculture for Africa and EU neighborhood countries. Yet the United Nations Environment Programme says the cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries could rise to between $280 billion and $500 billion per year by 2050. Despite the hype, the One Planet summit is delivering little for the world s people who are the most vulnerable to climate change, said Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA. Rich countries continue to pretend that new schemes for businessmen to increase their profits will be the center of the solution for the poor. Macron used the eve of the summit to award 18 grants to foreign climate scientists, most of whom are currently U.S.-based, to come and work in France. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. aid chief says no sign Yemen port blockade easing to allow aid in;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are no signs that a blockade of Yemen s ports by a Saudi-led military coalition has eased to allow aid to reach communities increasingly at risk of starvation, the head of the U.S. government s aid agency said on Tuesday. USAID administrator Mark Green called on the Saudi-led military coalition to open Yemen s ports and for Yemen s Houthis to cease firing to allow food and medical supplies to flow to tens of thousands of Yemenis caught in the fighting. Green was speaking after the U.S. announced another $130 million in emergency food aid for Yemen, bringing U.S. assistance to nearly $768 million since October 2016. The new funds includes nearly $84 million in U.S. food aid and $46 million in emergency disaster assistance. Unfortunately I can t tell you there has been an easing of the blockade, Green told Reuters. We re trying to signal with this announcement that we re ready to respond to this humanitarian catastrophe. Green said he was deeply concerned on so many fronts about the crisis in Yemen, but in particular the failure to get fuel into the country so people have access to clean water. That means a number of communities are either without clean water or will be very shortly, and in both cases that is a terrible concern from the cholera perspective and the survival perspective, he added. The U.N. s coordinator for Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, said on Monday the blockade has been eased but the situation remained dire with some 8.4 million people a step away from famine in Yemen. A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement blockaded ports last month after a missile was fired toward Riyadh. Washington last week warned Saudi Arabia that concern in Congress over the humanitarian situation in Yemen could affect U.S. assistance to allies in the Saudi-led coalition, including the U.S. refueling of coalition jets and some intelligence sharing. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Prayer, principle guide women voters in Roy Moore's Alabama hometown;GADSDEN, Ala. (Reuters) - In a U.S. Senate race rocked by allegations of sexual misconduct against Republican candidate Roy Moore, some women in his hometown said they were sticking by the embattled nominee while others said prayer would guide their votes on Tuesday. Caroll Norman, a retired middle school teacher in Gadsden, said she did not know if she would vote for a Democrat for the first time in her life or write in another name on her ballot. Perusing a candle shop downtown Monday evening, the Trump supporter said not even the president’s vocal backing of the embattled Republican nominee had swayed her. “I’ll have to pray about it and make a decision in the morning,” the 64-year-old Republican said. Reuters spoke to more than a dozen women in the religious, working-class city of about 36,000 people an hour from Birmingham. Gadsden landed in an unwelcome spotlight after multiple women came forward last month to accuse Moore of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was a local prosecutors in his 30s. One accuser said he tried to initiate sexual contact with her when she was 14. Moore denounced the allegations as political attacks and refused to heed national Republicans’ calls to leave the race. Reuters has not independently confirmed any of the accusations. Norman said there were inconsistencies in the women’s stories, as well as in some of Moore’s responses. Nearby at a bus stop downtown, where Christmas music played from speakers on light poles, Republican Sara Teet, 35, said she also remained conflicted. “I just don’t know what to believe,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.” But at the Gadsden Mall, Republican Debbie Handy said she was voting for “the judge,” as many locals refer to Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice. “I’ve known him a long time and he’d never have anything to do with those women,” Handy, 40, said. “He’s a man of integrity. He’s a strong Christian.” Handy said she also liked Moore because he supports Trump, who last year won 73 percent of the presidential vote in Etowah County, where Gadsden is the county seat. “Trump and Moore will bring America back to what it should be,” she said. Robin Gibson, 61, a store clerk and self-described liberal Democrat, said she knew one of Moore’s accusers and she believed the allegations against him. Her vote on Tuesday for Democrat Doug Jones would have nothing to do with thwarting Trump or trying to erode the slim margin Republicans hold in the Senate, she said. “This isn’t a race about Trump’s plans for our country. It’s about who represents my state,” Gibson said. Around town, where there were noticeably few campaign signs for either candidate, many voters echoed the sentiments of Pat Miller in the final hours of the race. “We’ve had CNN and the Washington Post and some fellas from New York City all over the place,” said Miller, 54, as she walked out of the Gadsden Variety Café with a bowl of hot chili. “All I can say is that we all can’t wait for this to be over.” ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Egyptian singer jailed over video inciting debauchery;CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court jailed a little-known singer for two years on Tuesday for inciting debauchery, judicial sources said, after she appeared in a music video in her underwear and suggestively eating a banana. Shyma s song, titled I have issues , sparked controversy on social media in the conservative country. The singer, who was fined 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($560), can appeal the verdict to a higher court. The director of the video was also fined and sentenced to two years in prison, but in absentia. Both defendants were accused of inciting debauchery and producing a video harming public morality. Shyma, whose real name is Shaimaa Ahmed, was arrested on Nov. 18 before being referred to the prosecution for investigation. She denied the accusations, saying the director included the controversial scenes without her consent. Tens of young Egyptians were arrested in September for attending a concert in Cairo where a rainbow flag was raised. They were also accused of debauchery, harming public morality and other accusations. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson says U.S. willing to talk to North Korea without pre-condition;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday that the United States was willing to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, appearing to back away from U.S. demands that Pyongyang first accept that any negotiations would have to be based on North Korean disarmament. Let s just meet, Tillerson said in a speech to a Washington think tank, offering a new diplomatic opening amid heightened tensions over North Korea s weapons advances. We can talk about the weather if you want. We can talk about whether it s going to be a square table or a round table. Then we can begin to lay out a map, a road map, of what we might be willing to work towards, Tillerson said, suggesting that any initial contacts would be about setting the ground rules for formal negotiations. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico's presidential front-runner vows more welfare, formalizes bid;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican front-runner for next year s election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, formalized his bid for the presidency on Tuesday and promised his government would spend on the young, elderly and farmers. Left-winger Lopez Obrador, who had a 12-point lead in one recent poll, wants to significantly change Mexico s approach to the economy, security and education, vowing more support for the poorest but without new taxes or higher debt levels. He promised cheap fertilizer and fixed produce prices for farmers with a goal of making Mexico self-sufficient in food. He also offered paid apprenticeships for unemployed youth, grants for students and higher pensions for the elderly - expanding on popular welfare programs introduced when he governed Mexico City. A win by the 64-year-old self-declared nationalist on July 1 could reverse a Latin American trend toward right-leaning governments and set the stage for friction with U.S. President Donald Trump over his anti-migrant language and policies. Lopez Obrador promised friendly ties with the U.S. government but said he would not accept racist, hegemonic or arrogant attitudes. He also proposed a shakeup of government, saying he would move more than a dozen ministries and federal bodies including state oil company Pemex from the capital to regional towns. The federal government will be decentralized, Lopez Obrador said, in a speech in the capital after registering his intention to run for his National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party. He also promised not to increase fuel prices. In the clearest language yet, he repeated his intention to consult with victims of drug crime about the possibility of offering amnesty to criminals who commit to rehabilitation. The only aim, there is no other, is to explore all the possibilities to curb the violence and guarantee peace for the people of Mexico, he said. A poll this week found that two-thirds of Mexicans rejected the idea of amnesty, in a country on track for its deadliest year in modern history with nearly 21,000 murders through October. Lopez Obrador, who has unsuccessfully run for the presidency twice before, will likely face Jose Antonio Meade, running for the ruling party, and Ricardo Anaya, who heads a left-right coalition of opposition parties. He did not say how he would finance his spending plans, but in the past has said all new spending would be funded by ending government corruption and waste. (This story has been refiled to add Meade s full name, paragraph 11) ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New Polish PM: must defend national interest in debate on EU future;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland should defend its national identity and interests at a time when the European Union is debating its own future, the country s new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told parliament on Tuesday. Warsaw has grown increasingly isolated in the European Union since the Law and Justice party (PiS) won power two years ago. Critics say its efforts to assert control over the courts and public media have subverted democratic standards. Morawiecki, 49, was named prime minister last week in a government reshuffle, replacing Beata Szydlo as the PiS party gears up for elections over the next three years. Morawiecki said Warsaw s economic policy - based on generous public spending and a growing focus on domestic capital instead of foreign investment - should not change. Echoing the eurosceptic PiS s calls for more say in Brussels policy-making for national governments, Morawiecki said Polish sovereignty and tradition should be used in defending national interests . The future of the European project is being decided now, Morawiecki told deputies. Poland fits perfectly into the European puzzle, but it cannot be forced in incorrectly. By doing so, you will destroy both the puzzle and the piece, the former bank executive said. Britain s decision to leave the bloc has also meant that Poland lost an important ally in its calls to curb further EU integration, while the election of French President Emmanuel Macron has fanned new fears in Warsaw of losing influence. Morawiecki said Poland would oppose the idea of a multi-speed Europe, which Macron supports but which countries in the EU s east fear would mean deeper cooperation in the West at the expense of the bloc s single market. We don t want further divisions ... we oppose splitting of Europe between those are who better and those who are inferior. Morawiecki said he wholeheartedly supported PiS s overhaul of the judiciary, approved by the lower house of parliament on Friday despite the European Union s reservations. EU officials say the legislation, which gives lawmakers de facto control over the selection of judges, will threaten the impartiality of the courts. Addressing economic policy, Morawiecki said Poland should strive to find a golden middle between a lean state which abandons its citizens and a bureaucracy. We don t want either. Our national sovereignty and tradition are an advantage in efforts to modernise Poland, not a burden, as some are trying to tell us, he said. PiS has gained in popularity since becoming the first in post-communist Poland to govern without a coalition. It has benefited from fast economic growth, record low unemployment, generous welfare and an increased emphasis on traditional Catholic values in public life. However, private investment remains weak, with economists saying companies are reluctant to spend amid uncertainty over taxation and the government s influence over the economy. Morawiecki, who as finance minister was also responsible for economic development policy before his appointment as prime minister, has long called for a greater role for domestic capital in the economy. Parliament is due to hold a vote of confidence on Morawiecki and his cabinet overnight. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish teachers linked to Erdogan foe detained in Afghanistan;KABUL (Reuters) - One Afghan and three Turkish teachers linked to an organization regarded with suspicion by the Turkish government were detained by Afghan intelligence officials on Tuesday, the organization s head said. The move against Afghan Turk CAG Educational NGO (ATCE), the body that runs the schools, appeared to be part of a Turkish campaign against followers of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric it accuses of being behind a coup attempt in July 2016 aimed at ousting President Tayyip Erdogan. ATCE, which says it is an independent organization, runs schools in several cities including the capital, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar and Herat and has been in Afghanistan since 1995. Around 7 a.m., four of our teachers traveling in two different cars were picked up by (Afghan intelligence), said Human Erdogan, the chairman of ATCE. Other intelligence officials later went to the group s girls school nearby looking for another teacher, he said. He said the men presented themselves as members of the National Directorate of of Security (NDS), Afghanistan s intelligence agency. Neither the NDS nor the Afghan government immediately responded to requests for comment. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was on his way to Istanbul onTuesday to attend the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)Summit. In March, Afghanistan ordered the schools to be transferred to a foundation approved by Ankara. Last year, shortly before a visit to Islamabad by the Turkish president, Pakistan ordered Turkish teachers at schools run by a body called PakTurk International Schools and Colleges to leave the country. Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan who now lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, promotes a moderate form of Islam, supporting inter-faith communication and Western-style education and inspiring schools in different parts of the world. He has denied any involvement in the 2016 failed coup attempt. (This version of the story fixes garbled wording in headline;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's attack on Senator Gillibrand 'nasty': Senator Schumer;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s tweeted attack on Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was “nasty,” but Schumer did not join Gillibrand’s call for Trump to resign the presidency over sexual misconduct accusations. “That tweet was nasty, unbecoming of a president,” Schumer told reporters. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, on Monday called for Trump to resign over sexual misconduct allegations. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances, which he has denied. Trump lambasted Gillibrand on Twitter on Tuesday writing, “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.” ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LYNCH MOB WINS By Less Than 1%…Why Republicans Are To Blame For LEFTIST DOUG JONES’ Victory;They threw everything but the kitchen sink at Judge Roy Moore. Democrats outspent Moore 10-1, and more importantly, the Democrat Party unified, like they always do, to get behind their candidate (think Hillary Clinton), no matter their flaws, or how weak of a candidate he or she may be. Meanwhile, the Republicans did exactly what they always do they splintered, they argued amongst themselves, and they waited until the 11th hour to get behind Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who was accused (without evidence) by several women (one of whom admitted to committing forgery in a high school yearbook used as evidence of her claim against him) of sexual misconduct several decades ago. The media will try to blame this loss on President Trump, but the truth of the matter is, that the Republican Party came late to the game with funding and with support for Roy Moore, while half of the party either sat on their hands or openly condemned their candidate. The spineless Republican Party can take credit for the historic loss tonight in Alabama.AP In a stunning victory aided by scandal, Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama s special Senate election on Tuesday, beating back history, an embattled Republican opponent and President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed GOP rebel Roy Moore despite a litany of sexual misconduct allegations.It was the first Democratic Senate victory in a quarter-century in Alabama, one of the reddest of red states, and proved anew that party loyalty is anything but sure in the age of Trump. It was a major embarrassment for the president and a fresh wound for the nation s already divided Republican Party.A number of Republicans declined to support him, including Alabama s long-serving Sen. Richard Shelby. But Trump lent his name and the national GOP s resources to Moore s campaign in recent days.;left-news;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate leader says he's confident of deal to keep government open after Dec. 22;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday he was confident the U.S. Congress would be able to reach an agreement to fund the government when the current spending bill ends on Dec. 22 and that there would be no forced government shutdown. “There isn’t any chance we are going to shut the government down. We’re in discussions, not only on a cap deal, but also on the way forward on appropriations, McConnell told reporters. “The American people need not worry that there is going to be any kind of government shutdown.” But U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a full-year defense funding bill with short-term money for other programs would fail in the Senate. “Democrats will oppose any budget deal that would allow defense spending to increase while holding down domestic priorities,” he said to reporters. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson says U.S. ready to talk to North Korea;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LYNCH MOB WINS By Less Than 1%…Why Republicans Are To Blame For LEFTIST DOUG JONES’ Victory;They threw everything but the kitchen sink at Judge Roy Moore. Democrats outspent Moore 10-1, and more importantly, the Democrat Party unified, like they always do, to get behind their candidate (think Hillary Clinton), no matter their flaws, or how weak of a candidate he or she may be. Meanwhile, the Republicans did exactly what they always do they splintered, they argued amongst themselves, and they waited until the 11th hour to get behind Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who was accused (without evidence) by several women (one of whom admitted to committing forgery in a high school yearbook used as evidence of her claim against him) of sexual misconduct several decades ago. The media will try to blame this loss on President Trump, but the truth of the matter is, that the Republican Party came late to the game with funding and with support for Roy Moore, while half of the party either sat on their hands or openly condemned their candidate. The spineless Republican Party can take credit for the historic loss tonight in Alabama.AP In a stunning victory aided by scandal, Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama s special Senate election on Tuesday, beating back history, an embattled Republican opponent and President Donald Trump, who urgently endorsed GOP rebel Roy Moore despite a litany of sexual misconduct allegations.It was the first Democratic Senate victory in a quarter-century in Alabama, one of the reddest of red states, and proved anew that party loyalty is anything but sure in the age of Trump. It was a major embarrassment for the president and a fresh wound for the nation s already divided Republican Party.A number of Republicans declined to support him, including Alabama s long-serving Sen. Richard Shelby. But Trump lent his name and the national GOP s resources to Moore s campaign in recent days.;politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigerian court drops most asset declaration charges against Senate president; (This version of the December 12th story corrects headline and paragraph one to remove references to corruption) By Camillus Eboh ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria s court of appeal on Tuesday dismissed 15 charges against the Senate president related to alleged false declarations of assets, but it upheld three other charges against him. Bukola Saraki s three-year tenure as president of the upper house has been marred by numerous accusations of misconduct and investigations, though none have led to convictions. The original charges are related to allegations that Saraki falsely declared his assets when he was a state governor from 2003 to 2011, to which he pleaded not guilty. A Code of Conduct Tribunal cleared the Senate president of the charges in June, saying the case against him lacked substance. The government mounted a legal challenge which led to Tuesday s ruling by the court of appeal that Saraki should be retried by the tribunal on three of the 18 charges against him. The three counts relate to Saraki s acquisition of two houses in Ikoyi, an upmarket district in the southern commercial metropolis of Lagos. The appeal is dismissed in part in respects of the other 15 counts , said the judge, Tinuade Akomolafe-Wilson, at the appeal court in the capital Abuja. The Senate president s camp has previously denied any wrongdoing and on Tuesday issued a statement in which it said Saraki had been victorious due to the 15 charges being dropped. The full details of the judgement on the final three charges against Saraki have not been released and will be addressed by his lawyers once they have been, the Senate president said in a statement. Saraki ran unopposed for the post of Senate president, mainly with the backing of the opposition. He was not the ruling party s preferred candidate, which led to strains in his relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari. The Senate president has been dogged by legal cases since taking office. In October 2016 Saraki was cleared of altering Senate rules to get himself elected, and in March this year lawmakers cleared him of any wrongdoing over allegations that he attempted to evade payment of customs duties on a car. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House Democratic women seek probe of Trump misconduct accusations;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 50 female Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Monday for a congressional investigation into allegations by various women of sexual misconduct against President Donald Trump, who has denied the accusations. “We cannot ignore the multitude of women who have come forward with accusations against Mr. Trump,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter, though a formal inquiry was unlikely to result because Republicans control the agenda in Congress. The letter, spearheaded by the Democratic women’s working group, which is composed of all the party’s female members in the House, was signed by 56 lawmakers. It followed a call earlier on Monday by three women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct for a congressional investigation into his behavior. The lawmakers’ request for a probe was sent to leaders of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the main investigative committee in the House. Over the past two years, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances against them in the years before he entered politics. Monday’s letter from the Democrats said there were at least 17 accusers and listed names. “The president’s own remarks appear to back up the allegations,” the letter said, saying Trump had boasted “that he feels at liberty to perpetrate such conduct against women.” “The president should be allowed to present evidence in his own defense,” said the lawmakers. The letter was addressed to oversight panel Chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican, and top Democrat Elijah Cummings. Trump last year apologized for talking about groping women in a 2005 tape recording that surfaced weeks before the presidential election, and said he had not done the things he talked about. More recently, Trump has told allies that the voice on the recording was not his, The New York Times reported recently. Trump and White House officials have denied the sexual misconduct allegations against him, some of which date back to the 1980s. “These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts, were addressed at length during last year’s campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement on Monday. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;RUDE! WATCH MEGYN KELLY Ask Pastor Who Supports Moore: ‘Aren’t You Worried About the Teenage Girls in the D.C. Area?’;"WOW! MEGYN KELLY IS CLEARLY DESPERATE FOR RATINGS You won t believe this interview. Megyn Kelly keeps attacking Alabama Pastor Mike Allison in a cringe-inducing interview. She should be ashamed of herself for this interview. It s awful!KELLY: Aren t you worried at all about the teenage girls in the D.C. area if it is true?ALLISON: No. I m not worried about the teenage girls in the D.C. area because of Roy Moore. There s absolutely no record of him carrying on like this at all. And these allegations, from what I understand, are all 30 and 40 years of age. I believe if he was that type of an individual, there would be a strong string of this stuff going on. It hasn t happened.Pastor Mike Allison is fantastic in his commentary against a clearly desperate Kelly. She s embarrassing herself!OUR LAST REPORT ON MEGYN KELLY SHOWS SHE S JUMPED ON THE BANDWAGON OF THE ME TOO CROWD ALL FOR RATINGS:Last week, it was NBC s Never-Trump Megyn Kelly s chance to exact revenge on President Trump, who after attacking him during his first debate, lost her conservative Fox News fanbase and basically saw her promising career come to a screeching halt. NBC picked up Kelly in a $23 million per year contract in a gamble that liberals would warm up to the formerly conservative host. NBC has since found out that conservatives no longer want anything to do with Kelly, and liberals despise her for her past performances as a top-rated host on conservative-leaning FOX News.Twitter users were on fire after Megyn Kelly did her part to help tear down President Trump (again):Megyn Kelly,You and your employer need to smear Trump but there's nothing left to accuse him of so you're going to re-interview Trump accusers who've already been proven pos liars?How desperate you must be. Philip Schuyler (@FiveRights) December 11, 2017Megyn Kelly traipsed out a trio of Donald Trump accusers on her failing show. Rest assured, there will be many more liberal accusers who come out against Donald Trump, as racism appears to have lost its glow, as a means to draw voters into the Democrat Party, as Americans have become tired of watching Democrats constantly drawing from the bottom of the deck, as a way to cloud Trump s Make America Great Again agenda of a pro-growth economy, jobs, education, lower taxes, and America first.Megyn Kelly, who is desperate for ratings, must have been incredibly disappointed when breaking news of a botched suicide bomber attack in New York City was reported at the same time her Democrat Donald Trump accuser was telling her story on her show.Daily Mail A trio of the president s accusers reemerged on Monday to hound him for sexually harassing them.Samantha Holvey, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks had previously made allegations against Trump and appeared on Megyn Kelly Today to demand justice as the White House resumed its claim that the issue had been litigated in last year s election. All of a sudden, he s all over, me, kissing and groping and groping and kissing, said Leeds, a self-proclaimed Democrat, who says she revealed her story because I wanted people to know what kind of a person that Trump really is what a pervert he is. This is the same Jessica Leeds that accused Trump of sexual harassment.Think Megyn Kelly will bring this picture up?Think she ll bring up the time that Jessica Leeds was in a two year property law suit with Trump? pic.twitter.com/AvdEyYu8Ew WhiteNitemare (@Carl_Anthony215) December 11, 2017Leeds claims that Trump assaulted on a plane in the 70s and called her a c*** when he ran into her some time later at a party in New York while he was still married to his first wife Ivana.Megyn Kelly asked former Trump accuser Jessica Leeds what she wants other women to know about sexual harassment. Leeds replied, We have a problem in that we have been enculturated all of this time for all of this time, for years and years and years, to be compliant. Leeds went on to say, For the woman who voted for Trump, they just didn t want to vote for a woman It became reasonably difficult to believe a single work Leeds had to say when she used the word enculturated when referring to her alleged meeting with Donald Trump. It became impossible to believe a word she said when Leeds followed up her comment by exposing her bitter feelings towards women for not voting for Hillary. The only thing missing from Leeds during her appearance on the Megyn Kelly show was her pussy hat and an I m a committed Democrat Feminist tattoo on her forehead. Watch:WATCH: ""If there are other women out there, what do you want them to know?"" Megyn asks Trump accusers Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey & Rachel Cooks on #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/YPt1CxieUA Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 11, 2017Watch Crooks tell Megyn her alleged story here: Is it true he [Trump] asked for your phone number? @megynkelly Yeah I remember saying, What do you need that for? Trump accuser Rachel Crooks on @MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/OCX1ZpnV2J TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 11, 2017Watch the obvious excitment of Megyn Kelly to be able to pretend as though she s relevant with a breaking news announcemnt with the official White House response to the allegations:WATCH: Statement the @WhiteHouse just provided to #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/0hahP6goW1 Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) December 11, 2017Daily Mail The two other women said that Trump s conduct while he was a businessman left them shocked and devastated and feeling very gross and very dirty. I was so uncomfortable, and a little, yeah, threatened, like I didn t have a choice, Crooks on Monday said.Kelly s program was preempted in New York as an explosion went off in Manhattan. Her show aired in other parts of the country, however, including Washington.Holvey, a former Miss USA contestant, said that Trump came backstage in 2006 and reviewed the women while they were indecent.She recalled thinking at the time that it would be a meet and great with Trump. But it wasn t.The former Miss North Carolina says Trump was just looking me over like I was just a piece of meat. I was not a human being. I did not have a brain I did not have a personality. I was just simply there for his pleasure. It left me feeling very gross, very dirty, like this is not what I signed up for. Here s how Twitter responded to Megyn s show: You know the Russia narrative is over when Megyn Kelly is having Trump accusers on her show.It will be never ending the next 3-7 years.The media is becoming the little boy that cried wolf.If they ever did find REAL dirt on Trump, no-one will believe them. Josh (@JoshNoneYaBiz) December 11, 2017Megyn Kelly is interviewing the lying 3 blind mice Trump accusers to save her failing show. Hope it s the final blow revealing to all that it s all about Megyn, for Megyn & nothing but Megyn s self serving ass who owes Trump gratitude for her relevancy. Tiff (@LATiffani1) December 11, 2017";politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;POCAHONTAS CALLS Trump’s Comments To Dem Senator Gillibrand “Slut-Shaming”…So Why Didn’t She Call Trump’s Comments About Romney During The Campaign “Slut-Shaming”? [VIDEO];"How quickly the Democrats and their allies in the media forget, that when the bear is poked, he fights back. Donald Trump has never been shy about punching back when he s being unfairly attacked, and Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) is no exception. When she came after President Trump for allegations made by women for alleged sexual misconduct by then candidate-Trump, suggesting he should resign, Trump reminded everyone of how Gillibrand came to Trump, the former billionaire NYC business tycoon, begging him for campaign contributions.Here is Gillibrand s tweet calling for President Trump to either resign or threatening that Congress should investigate decades-old unfounded claims of sexual misconduct:President Trump should resign. But, of course, he won't hold himself accountable. Therefore, Congress should investigate the multiple sexual harassment and assault allegations against him. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) December 11, 2017Donald Trump responded: Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017Fake Indian Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MS) took to Twitter in an attempt to shame President Trump. Here is the tweet by the female Senator who is more commonly known as Pocahontas :Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you're picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump. Nevertheless, #shepersisted. https://t.co/mYJtBZfxiu Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 12, 2017Clearly Senator s Warren and Gillibrand never saw Trump attacking Mitt Romney during the campaign, otherwise, they surely would have tweeted about Trump slut-shaming him right?Watch:Donald Trump on Mitt Romney: ""He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees.' He would have dropped to his knees.""Was Trump sexually harassing/slut shaming Romney?No, this type of language is a part of Trump's vernacular. pic.twitter.com/DwwOYCGljJ Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 12, 2017When Trump attacked Romney during the campaign, the Business Insider reported about the incident:GOP frontrunner Donald Trump responded to Mitt Romney s broadside on Thursday by saying that the former Republican presidential candidate had begged for his endorsement. He was begging for my endorsement, Trump said at a rally later in Portland, Maine. I could ve said, Mitt, drop to your knees. He was begging me, Trump said.Trump was referring to the 2012 race for president in which Romney, the GOP nominee that year, sought Trump s endorsement.But if they were friendly four years ago, that relationship has clearly deteriorated.Earlier Thursday, Romney gave a speech in which he railed against Trump, whom he called a fraud, con man, phony, and fake, among other things. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University, Romney jabbed. He s playing the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat. Throughout Trump s subsequent speech in Maine, the real-estate developer repeatedly and extensively lashed back out at Romney. Mitt is a failed candidate he failed badly, Trump said. That is a race that should have been won. He repeatedly called Romney a choke artist throughout the speech, an insult he s used against Marco Rubio, a top Trump rival for the 2016 nomination. He s a choke artist, I started hitting him so hard, Trump said. We can t take another loss. He choked, he choked like nobody I ve ever seen except for Rubio, he continued.At other points in his speech, Trump called Romney a disaster candidate in 2012. The billionaire businessman then mentioned a fundraiser he held for Romney that ruined his carpet. Trump said Romney did not compensate him for the damages Senator Gillibrand was clearly not above cozying up to sexual predators for contributions or for leveraging their political clout. This Twitter user posted a picture of Gillibrand with Harvey Weinstein, the most notorious sexual predator in Hollywood:Senator Gillibrand is also a close friend of Harvey Weinstein. So much for being a strong feminist ally. pic.twitter.com/eXNO0iZSBx DEPLORABLE MEDIA (@correctthemedia) December 12, 2017And here s Gillibrand posing with former President Bill Clinton the accused rapist and sexual assaulter, who was impeached for lying about having sex under the Oval Office desk with a 19-year old intern: ";politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama win thrills Democrats as Republicans point fingers;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats said on Wednesday their U.S. Senate victory in Alabama could lead to a sweeping comeback for the party in 2018 elections, while Republicans sought to assess blame for a defeat in one of the country’s most conservative states. Doug Jones, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor, won the special election on Tuesday night after a bitter campaign that drew national attention amid sexual misconduct accusations against conservative Republican candidate Roy Moore. President Donald Trump had endorsed Moore and the loss was a stunning upset for him and fellow Republicans, narrowing their majority in the Senate to 51-49. It also boosted Democrats who hope to retake control of Congress in elections next November. Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the Alabama outcome would not affect his policy agenda. Republicans are rushing to pass a tax overhaul package by the end of the year. Jones is expected to take office in early January after the election results are certified. “Wish we would have gotten the seat,” Trump said. “A lot of Republicans feel differently. They’re very happy with the way it turned out.” At a news conference in Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday, Jones said he received congratulatory calls from Trump, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. Some congressional Republicans were quick on Wednesday to slam former Trump strategist Steve Bannon for his steadfast support of Moore, saying it split the party and paved the way for Jones’ shocking victory. Jones, 63, was the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century and the party sees potential nationwide. “This campaign has given a lot of people a reason to believe,” Jones said. Schumer said the defeat of Moore reflected a distaste among voters for Trump’s policies, which he said help the wealthy and powerful to the detriment of the middle class. “Things are looking good for us,” Schumer told reporters. “If they (Republicans) continue to run the government for the benefit of the few special powerful wealthy interests, there will be many more Alabamas in 2018.” Some Senate Republicans expressed relief that Moore would not be joining their ranks, including Bob Corker, a frequent Trump critic who is retiring next year. “I know we’re supposed to cheer for our side of the aisle ... but I’m really, really happy with what happened for all of us in our nation, for people serving in the Senate, to not have to deal with what we were likely going to have to deal with should the outcome have been the other way,” Corker said. Bannon, Trump’s former chief White House strategist, worked hard for Moore as part of his broader campaign against more centrist Republican leaders, and his critics were quick to attack on Wednesday. “This guy does not belong on the national stage,” Republican Representative Peter King said on CNN. “He’s not representing what I stand for. I consider myself a conservative Republican. ... And he sort of parades himself out there with his weird, alt-right views that he has. And, to me, it’s demeaning the whole governmental and political process.” Moore, a hard-line conservative who was twice removed from his seat on the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to abide by federal law, became the Republican candidate by beating incumbent Senator Luther Strange in a primary race earlier this year. Strange had been appointed to fill the seat vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions when he became Trump’s attorney general. McConnell and other Republican leaders in Congress backed Strange in that race and then pressured Moore to withdraw his candidacy after he faced allegations from several women that he sexually assaulted or pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s Moore, 70, denied the accusations. McConnell, who has been a frequent Bannon target, declined to address Bannon’s role in the race when speaking to reporters on Wednesday. “It was quite an impressive election,” McConnell said. “It was a big turnout and an unusual day.” Strange had harsh words for Bannon. “He has accomplished one thing that I don’t think anybody in America thought was possible, and that’s getting a Democrat elected in the state of Alabama,” Strange said on Fox News Channel. Trump backed Strange in the Republican primary but then endorsed Moore and threw his full support behind him even as other party leaders in Washington walked away. Trump tried to minimize the damage to his own credibility on Wednesday. “The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right!” he said on Twitter. “Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!” Some Republicans defended Trump. “It had zero to do with Donald Trump,” Republican Representative Bradley Byrne of Alabama told MSNBC, calling the race “a purely weird, unique election.” As of Wednesday night, Moore had not conceded the race to Jones, saying in a video statement that there are military and provisional ballots still to be counted and that the campaign was waiting for certification by the Secretary of State. “We are indeed in a struggle to preserve our republic, our civilization, and our religion and to set free a suffering humanity,” he said. “And the battle rages on.” Jones’ victory was not expected to affect pending votes in Congress on funding the government or the Republican overhaul of the tax code. Republican congressional leaders have vowed to get the tax changes approved before Christmas. The Alabama outcome could push Democrats to make sexual harassment a key election issue at a time when many powerful men in entertainment, the media and politics - including Trump - have faced accusations of misconduct. Such a move could help boost support from women. The results also highlighted Jones’ success in mobilizing African-Americans voters, who constituted about 30 percent of those voting on Tuesday and overwhelmingly voted Democratic, according to network exit polls. Jones also fared surprisingly well in suburban counties outside of cities such as Birmingham and Huntsville, a trend that has Republicans nervous ahead of next year’s elections, when dozens of congressional districts are likely to be highly competitive. Part of the reason for that in Alabama was that many upscale Republican voters did not vote as compared with last year’s presidential election. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba tells U.S. suspension of visas is hurting families; (Corrects paragraph 7 to show Trump issued a warning on travel to Cuba, not a ban on travel to Cuba) HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba told senior U.S. officials during talks on migration in Havana on Monday that the U.S. decision to suspend visa processing at its embassy on the island was “seriously hampering” family relations and other people exchanges. Relations between the former Cold War foes became strained after Donald Trump became the U.S. President, partially reversing the thaw seen during Barack Obama’s presidency. In September, after allegations of incidents affecting the health of its diplomats in Havana, the U.S. administration reduced its embassy to a skeleton staff, resulting in the suspension of almost all visa processing. “The Cuban delegation expressed deep concern over the negative impact that the unilateral, unfounded and politically motivated decisions adopted by the U.S. government ... have on migration relations between both countries,” the Cuban foreign ministry said in a statement. The statement was issued after delegations led by Cuba’s Foreign Ministry chief for U.S. Affairs Josefina Vidal and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs John Creamer met to discuss migration issues. Many Cubans said they were heartbroken because they could not visit, or be with, their loved ones. While Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people, there are an estimated 2 million Cuban Americans in the United States. The Trump administration also issued a warning on travel to Cuba and in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from Washington. The Cuban foreign ministry said this had “seriously affected the functioning of the diplomatic mission, particularly the Consulate and the services it offers to Cubans residing in the United States”. The U.S. decision to cancel the visits of official delegations to Cuba was also having a “counterproductive effect” on cooperation in fields like migration, the ministry said. On the positive side, both the U.S. and Cuban delegations commented on the drop in illegal Cuban migration to the United States during the talks as a result of past moves towards normalizing relations. Obama, who announced the detente with Cuba nearly three years ago, eliminated a policy granting automatic residency to virtually all Cubans who arrived on U.S. turf in January, just before leaving office. Cuba had asked for the change for years, saying that policy encouraged dangerous journeys and people trafficking. “Apprehensions of Cuban migrants at U.S. ports of entry decreased by 64 percent from fiscal year 2016 to 2017, and maritime interdictions of Cuban migrants decreased by 71 percent,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Trump said in June he was canceling Obama’s “terrible and misguided deal” with Havana, returning to Cold War rhetoric, and his administration has tightened trade and travel restrictions. He has however in practise left in place many of Obama’s changes including restored diplomatic relations and resumed direct U.S.-Cuba commercial flights and cruise-ship travel. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ON FIRE! Sarah Sanders Shuts Down April Ryan: “Your mind is in the gutter” [Video];If you watched this live, you had to be loving Sarah Sanders. She was on fire!APRIL RYAN BROUGHT UP THE TWEET FROM POTUS (see below) earlier today that has gotten so much attention from the left. The liberal media went crazy when President Trump tweeted that Senator Gillibrand would come to his office and do anything to get a donation from him.Fast forward and you have April Ryan trying to get in the gutter by claiming Trump s comment was sexist in nature. Sarah Sanders shot back that you would believe that only if your mind is in the gutter Sarah Huckabee SandersWRECKS Gutter Girl April Ryan Only if your mind is in the gutter would u interpret it that way. She was referring to saying Senator Gillibrand would do anything for a contribution. U don't need to read into that. #PressBriefingpic.twitter.com/sLX90wrDPg STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterVIP) December 12, 2017HERE S WHAT PRESIDENT TRUMP TWEETED:Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017Anyone who knows Washington should know that donations do buy access. It s the truth.SARAH SANDERS JUST SHUT DOWN CNN S JIM ACOSTA IN AN EPIC BACK AND FORTH: I M NOT FINISHED Sarah Huckabee Sanders was hot today when she went off on CNN s Jim Acosta over the fake news that s been constant the past few days. Jim Acosta also would not be quiet so Sanders had to get loud and forceful: I m not finished Sanders was making a point about reporters making a mistake vs when they report fake news on purpose There is a big difference.Go Sarah! There s a big difference between making honest mistakes and purposely misleading the American people something that happens regularly. Sarah Huckabee SandersFox News Insider reports:White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders battled CNN reporter Jim Acosta, accusing the mainstream media of purposefully putting out false information.As he began a question, Acosta told Sanders at Monday s press briefing that journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn t mean it s fake news. Sanders started to answer but Acosta and another reported interjected. I m sorry. I m not finished! she countered. There s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly, she shot back.Acosta asked for an example of a story that was intentionally false and meant to mislead Americans.Sanders called out the false report by ABC News Brian Ross on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which earned Ross a four-week suspension.She called it very telling that Ross was suspended. Acosta kept pushing Sanders to let him ask his original question about allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, but she refused.;politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's push to cut federal jobs has modest impact, mostly in defense;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s campaign to shrink the “bloated federal bureaucracy” so far has made a small dent in the federal workforce, and that largely because of a decline in civilian defense jobs. Days after his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump ordered a hiring freeze later replaced with an order for federal agencies to cut staff immediately, and in March he proposed a 2018 budget that sought to shift $54 billion to the military from other departments. However, federal civilian jobs declined around 6,000 in the first nine months of this year, or just 0.3 percent of 2.1 million such jobs tracked by the Office of Personnel Management, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest OPM data published in late October. The White House Office of Management and Budget declined to comment on the overall drop in federal employment or the mix of job gains and losses across agencies. The Office issued in April the order for agencies to start near-term staffing cuts and to submit plans for longer-term reductions by September. Trump has not detailed how much “fat” he aims to cut, but spoke of “billions and billions of dollars” of government waste and his aim to shrink the “bloated federal bureaucracy” while preparing his budget proposals in March. Independent watchdogs agree the federal government could be made more efficient, with Congress’s Government Accountability Office estimating in April that overlap and duplication lead to “tens of billions” of dollars in unnecessary spending. Before Trump, Democrats Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush have all spearheaded various efforts to streamline government bureaucracy. David Lewis, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University, said this year’s numbers showed that Trump’s executive orders had limited power to reshape the federal bureaucracy. Ultimately, the Congress controlled the budgets and had the biggest sway over agencies’ staffing, said Lewis, whose research has largely focused on executive branch politics and public administration. The White House has said agencies’ longer-term workforce reduction plans will serve to develop Trump’s 2019 budget proposal. The overall decline in federal staffing this year is largely due to a roughly 9,500 drop at the Department of Defense to about 731,000, a 1.3 percent decline, even though Trump’s budget proposal envisaged small increases between 2016 and 2018 in employment measured by hours worked. Pentagon spokesman Dave Eastburn said hiring was slow during the White House-ordered freeze, but exemptions allowed recruitment for mission-critical positions and military readiness was never affected. He described the decrease in staffing this year as “well within historical norms.” In fact, the number of active-duty service personnel, which was exempt from the hiring freeze, grew by about 7,000 in the 12 months through September, according to Defense Department data. Still, cuts in the civilian staff could push more work onto relatively expensive contractors and military officers, potentially raising costs over time, said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan watchdog group. “If we’re just cutting jobs to cut jobs then mistakes are likely to be made,” Amey said after reviewing Reuters’ calculations of OPM data. Mallory Barg Bulman, a researcher at the Partnership for Public Service, a non-partisan nonprofit, said targeting the number of jobs in general was not the best way of improving how the bureaucracy works. “A hiring freeze is not the answer to making the government more effective,” said Barg Bulman. Instead, agencies should invest more in training to boost productivity, she said. The OPM figures, which exclude the postal service and some smaller independent agencies, showed the declines were in part offset by staffing gains - totaling about 9,000 - at the homeland security and veterans affairs departments. Much of the gains were in divisions that control immigration and in medical care for former soldiers, areas Trump has identified as priorities. The Department of Veterans Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman at the Department of Homeland Security said staffing increases owed to revised recruitment strategies as well as temporary hiring for hurricane relief efforts. Some staffing ups and downs at agencies are part of long-standing budget issues or seasonal factors. The Treasury Department lost staff largely due to budget cuts ordered by Congress in past years for its tax collection service, while the departments of interior and agriculture saw increases due to seasonal hiring. (This version of the story has been refiled to clarify description of the Partnership for Public Service in paragraph 15) ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SENATOR GILLIBRAND Pulled Strings So Muslim Athlete Who Molested 12-Year Old Girl Could Come To U.S. After His Visa Was Denied;Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand (NY) likes to think of herself as a champion of women. After multiple women came forward to accuse fellow Democrat Senator Al Franken of sexual assault (photos were also supplied as evidence of one of the accuser s claims), Gillibrand finally called for Franken to step down. Was Gillibrand s call for her fellow Senator to step down part of a larger plan to appear neutral, as she then attacked President Donald Trump for unfounded allegations against him only months before the election? Isn t it kind of hypocritical for Gillibrand to call anyone out of sexual misconduct after she fought to bring a Muslim athlete to upstate New York who molested an innocent 12-year old girl while he was in America?The media CHEERED when NY Democrat Senator s Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer helped a 24-yr old Muslim man enter the U.S. after he was denied entry The media was strangely SILENT, however, after he molested a 12-yr-old upstate NY girl while she was with her family at an event celebrating the Muslim athlete. Yesterday, it was discovered that the Islamic extremist who killed 9 people and injured dozens of others, when he rammed his truck into them on a busy bike path in New York City, entered our country on a Diversity visa that was the brainchild of none other than the Democrat Senator from NY, Chuck (I always put diversity before our nation s security) Schumer An Indian athlete who overcame a visa denial with the help of U.S. lawmakers and a local mayor to attend the World Snowshoe Championship in New York has been arrested on charges of the abuse of a minor.It was a long journey for Indian snowshoe champion Hussain and his coach to the World Snowshoe Championships in Saranac Lake, New York last weekend.The US embassy in New Delhi rejected Tanveer Hussain s application for a visa so he could compete in the World Snowshoe Championship last month, Fox News reported.Local officials then appealed for help to Schumer and Gillibrand, and their offices reached out to the New Delhi embassy, which let Hussain successfully reapply for a visa.Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, an outspoken opponent of President Trump s position on stricter immigration policies for immigrants and visa holders coming into the United States, bragged about getting around Trump s temporary travel restrictions to bring convicted pedophile Tanveer Hussain to New York on his Facebook page:Schumer s office told Fox he often intervenes to help international competitions. As we often do when local communities ask for help, at the request of Saranac Lake we helped to navigate the visa process so these athletes could compete at a local competition. The charges against one member of the group, who is accused of a serious crime and abusing our visa program, are extremely troubling. If he s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, a rep said.Gillibrand s office offered a similar response, adding that the charges are extremely serious. Hussain hails from the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim. Although India is not one of the seven countries that were part of the initial travel ban, Hussain and Khan had alleged they were victims of it when their first attempt at procuring visas to travel to the United States was turned down in late January, the first business day after Trump s travel ban was put in place.Khan told the BBC that an employee at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi told them they were being rejected because of current policy. U.S. officials said at the time that the denial was not connected to the travel ban. An embassy spokesman said they were preparing a statement for release later in the day. National PostTanveer Hussain was indicted in August 2017, by an Essex County grand jury for allegedly having inappropriate contact with a 12-year-old Saranac Lake girl earlier this year.Tanveer is pictured below surrounded by young teenagers at Saranac Middle School. Taneer is pictured in center-left with his arms around a young girl.The grand jury returned the indictment charging Tanveer Hussain with one count of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a report in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise quoted a press release from Essex County District Attorney Kristy Sprague as saying.The reckless and irresponsible acts of Democrat legislators like Senator Chuck Schumer, perfectly illustrates why Trump was right about demanding that we put additional vetting measures in place for immigrants.Hussain and team manager Abid Khan arrived Feb. 23 in the bucolic Adirondacks town, which had been following their visa ordeal and extended them a hero s welcome. Locals offered congratulations and free lodgings at an inn that in the snow looked like a fairy tale scene from a movie, Khan said in a Facebook post.The fairy tale was shattered Wednesday, when Hussain, 24, was arrested and charged with felony sexual abuse and child welfare endangerment, police said.The parents of the 12-year-old girl allegedly involved said the incident happened Monday, after the end of the three-day snowshoe competition, and reported it to local authorities.Chief Charles A. Potthast Jr. of the Saranac Lake Village police force said the girl was playing pool Monday afternoon with other young people at the inn where Hussain was staying. There was a moment when the two were alone, and that s when the incident occurred, Potthast said. The girl told police there was a passionate kiss and that Hussain touched her in an intimate area on top of her clothing.During their time in Saranac Lake, Hussein and his coach were honored with a special reception by the mayor and gave a talk about Kashmir at Saranac Lake Middle School, where students had waged a letter-writing campaign on their behalf. Pack your bags. Next year you are coming to Kashmir, Hussain told them, according to one of Khan s Facebook posts. Washington Post;politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COWARDLY CHAIN MIGRATION TERRORIST Who Entered US During Obama’s Second Term, Mocked President Trump Just Before Failing To Blow Himself Up;Yesterday, a cowardly recipient of America s generosity, via a broken chain migration policy, walked through the busy subway terminal near the Port Authority Transit hub, where he planned to use a homemade bomb strapped to his body as a weapon to terrorize as many people as possible. The chain migration terrorist claims he chose the Port Authority site because the poor little radicalized Muslim who America welcomed with open arms, was triggered by the Christmas posters that hung in the hallways of the terminal. The chain migration terrorist, who was inspired by ISIS, failed miserably.The media will show their true colors when they ignore the ease with which radical Muslims from hotbed terror nations have been allowed to enter the United States, and will instead, will focus on Ullah s statement about wanting to punish President Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The media will also ignore the fact that we wouldn t even be having this conversation if Ullah was not allowed to enter the United States during Obama s presidency. It was actually during Barack Hussein Obama s second term in 2014, that Ullah began to explore ways to commit acts of terror against Americans, as a way to show his allegiance to the cowardly terror group, ISIS. (See paragraph f. )Port Authority bomber Akayed Ullah wanted to send a message straight to the White House: Trump you failed to protect your nation. Here is a screenshot of the complaint filed by Assistant United States Attorneys:That s what the 27-year-old ISIS adherent wrote on his Facebook page while on his way to blow himself up at the bustling transit hub Monday morning, according to the federal complaint filed Tuesday.He had also written in his passport: O AMERICA, DIE IN YOUR RAGE. The charges also reveal that the 27-year-old Bangeldesh-born cabbie s online radicalization began in 2014, and he began researching how to build bombs a year ago although he only constructed his crude explosive device at his Brooklyn home a week ago.Ullah built the bomb for maximum damage, federal prosecutors charge filling it with metal screws and performed the bombing on a workday because he believed that there would be more people. NYP ;politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN Pollster Tries Desperately To Turn Alabama Voters Against Roy Moore…Gets BIG Surprise;Establishment Republican pollster Frank Luntz looked more like a CNN host than a Republican pollster in a room full of committed Roy Moore voters. Luntz was obviously frustrated, as Alabama voters dug in their heels, and refused to back down on their support for Judge Roy Moore in today s Senate election to fill AG Jeff Sessions seat in Alabama.MONTGOMERY, Alabama Frank Luntz, a GOP establishment messaging consultant, was visibly flabbergasted as every single one of his focus group participants in a Birmingham area Vice News-produced panel backed Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate. Titled Why These Alabama Voters Are Sticking By Roy Moore, Luntz s Vice News focus group aired on Vice News Tonight on Dec. 8 on HBO. Are you all Christians here? Luntz opens the seven-and-a-half-minute long segment. Yes, all of the focus group participants, who joined Luntz in a Birmingham area restaurant, replied. Is Roy Moore a good Christian? he followed up. Yes, one woman replied. Absolutely, another said. Absolutely? Luntz followed up in disbelief. Yes, the woman shot back. Without any doubt whatsoever? Luntz asked again.After some more back and forth, a man in the focus group spoke up. Scottie Porter, a real estate developer, said:He s not my choice, I m not voting for him because I like him. I m voting for him because I don t want Doug Jones. But Roy Moore is entitled to the presumption of innocence in the law and in the Bible just like anybody else should be. There are only accusations. There have been no charges filed. All you have is a group of women who have come forward. How many? How many? Luntz pressed Porter. Seven, he replied. There s really only three, one woman yelled out. How many women have to come forward before you say wait a minute, where there s smoke there s fire ? Luntz asked the group.Chuck Moore, a retired sales consultant, replied: It s about the legitimacy, not just how many. How many are not being paid? Or being coerced to do this? How many of them do you think are being paid? Luntz asked the group. All of them, some replied in unison. By a show of hands, how many of you think all the women are being paid? Luntz asked the full group.Three hands in the group went up. Seriously? Luntz asked in disbelief, before the camera turned to homemaker Jane Wade. To me, there are only two women that have a smoking gun but the women s their reputations are questionable at the time, Wade said. Is this how you want to be treated as a woman if something were to happen to you? Do you want to be dismissed that way? Luntz asked Gina Doran, a retired school bus driver. You better have proof, Doran fired back at Luntz.Watch: Breitbart News;politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump signs defense policy bill, urges U.S. Congress to fund it;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump signed the annual defense policy bill on Tuesday and urged Congress to fully fund the measure and lift the budget caps that have forced limits on U.S. defense spending for several years. Trump signed the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act at a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House surrounded by high-ranking defense officials. The NDAA sets policy for the U.S. military but does not provide funding, which is approved with other legislation. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia will keep bases in Syria to strike at insurgents: Kremlin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will keep a naval and an air base in Syria capable of carrying out strikes against insurgents if required after a partial military pull-out announced by President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. Putin on Monday ordered a significant part of Moscow s military contingent to start pulling out of Syria, declaring their work largely done. Putin made the announcement during a surprise visit to the Russian Hmeymim air base, where he met President Bashar al-Assad and addressed Russian forces. Thanks to the fact that the operation to save Syria and the liberation of Syrian land from terrorists have been completed, there is no longer a need for broad-scale combat strength, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. But he added that Russia would keep the Hmeymim air base in Syria s Latakia Province and its naval facility in the port of Tartous. The President stressed that the terrorists might try to walk tall again in Syria. If that happens, crushing blows will be carried out, Peskov said. Russia s military operation in Syria, which began in September 2015, turned the tide of the conflict in favor of Moscow s ally, Assad. It also established Russia as a power broker in the Middle East, regaining a role it had relinquished after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Assad s opponents, Western governments and some human rights organizations alleged that Russian air strikes on Syria had killed large numbers of civilians. Moscow has denied the allegation. The Kremlin has presented the partial withdrawal of its forces as evidence that its mission in Syria has been largely accomplished. That gives a boost to Putin as he launches his campaign for re-election. Opinion polls show that he will comfortably win the presidential election, scheduled for March. But the Kremlin fears that, since some voters see the election as a foregone conclusion, they may not turn out, weakening Putin s mandate. Russia had previously announced a partial drawdown of its forces in Syria, in March last year. However, a powerful Russian contingent remained in place and there was little sign of operations being scaled back. Back home in Russia, many people consider the Syrian mission a successful operation to restore peace - as well as an opportunity for Moscow to flex its military muscles. The official death for Russian forces killed in combat is 38, according to a Reuters tally. That is far below the level of losses sustained when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, the last time Moscow waged a major campaign far beyond its borders. However, many of the losses in Syria were borne by private military contractors working with the Russian military whose deaths have not been officially acknowledged, according to friends, relatives and colleagues of the contractors. The Russian defense ministry denies that there are any Russian contractors in Syria. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN Pollster Tries Desperately To Turn Alabama Voters Against Roy Moore…Gets BIG Surprise;Establishment Republican pollster Frank Luntz looked more like a CNN host than a Republican pollster in a room full of committed Roy Moore voters. Luntz was obviously frustrated, as Alabama voters dug in their heels, and refused to back down on their support for Judge Roy Moore in today s Senate election to fill AG Jeff Sessions seat in Alabama.MONTGOMERY, Alabama Frank Luntz, a GOP establishment messaging consultant, was visibly flabbergasted as every single one of his focus group participants in a Birmingham area Vice News-produced panel backed Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate. Titled Why These Alabama Voters Are Sticking By Roy Moore, Luntz s Vice News focus group aired on Vice News Tonight on Dec. 8 on HBO. Are you all Christians here? Luntz opens the seven-and-a-half-minute long segment. Yes, all of the focus group participants, who joined Luntz in a Birmingham area restaurant, replied. Is Roy Moore a good Christian? he followed up. Yes, one woman replied. Absolutely, another said. Absolutely? Luntz followed up in disbelief. Yes, the woman shot back. Without any doubt whatsoever? Luntz asked again.After some more back and forth, a man in the focus group spoke up. Scottie Porter, a real estate developer, said:He s not my choice, I m not voting for him because I like him. I m voting for him because I don t want Doug Jones. But Roy Moore is entitled to the presumption of innocence in the law and in the Bible just like anybody else should be. There are only accusations. There have been no charges filed. All you have is a group of women who have come forward. How many? How many? Luntz pressed Porter. Seven, he replied. There s really only three, one woman yelled out. How many women have to come forward before you say wait a minute, where there s smoke there s fire ? Luntz asked the group.Chuck Moore, a retired sales consultant, replied: It s about the legitimacy, not just how many. How many are not being paid? Or being coerced to do this? How many of them do you think are being paid? Luntz asked the group. All of them, some replied in unison. By a show of hands, how many of you think all the women are being paid? Luntz asked the full group.Three hands in the group went up. Seriously? Luntz asked in disbelief, before the camera turned to homemaker Jane Wade. To me, there are only two women that have a smoking gun but the women s their reputations are questionable at the time, Wade said. Is this how you want to be treated as a woman if something were to happen to you? Do you want to be dismissed that way? Luntz asked Gina Doran, a retired school bus driver. You better have proof, Doran fired back at Luntz.Watch: Breitbart News;left-news;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COWARDLY CHAIN MIGRATION TERRORIST Who Entered US During Obama’s Second Term, Mocked President Trump Just Before Failing To Blow Himself Up;Yesterday, a cowardly recipient of America s generosity, via a broken chain migration policy, walked through the busy subway terminal near the Port Authority Transit hub, where he planned to use a homemade bomb strapped to his body as a weapon to terrorize as many people as possible. The chain migration terrorist claims he chose the Port Authority site because the poor little radicalized Muslim who America welcomed with open arms, was triggered by the Christmas posters that hung in the hallways of the terminal. The chain migration terrorist, who was inspired by ISIS, failed miserably.The media will show their true colors when they ignore the ease with which radical Muslims from hotbed terror nations have been allowed to enter the United States, and will instead, will focus on Ullah s statement about wanting to punish President Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The media will also ignore the fact that we wouldn t even be having this conversation if Ullah was not allowed to enter the United States during Obama s presidency. It was actually during Barack Hussein Obama s second term in 2014, that Ullah began to explore ways to commit acts of terror against Americans, as a way to show his allegiance to the cowardly terror group, ISIS. (See paragraph f. )Port Authority bomber Akayed Ullah wanted to send a message straight to the White House: Trump you failed to protect your nation. Here is a screenshot of the complaint filed by Assistant United States Attorneys:That s what the 27-year-old ISIS adherent wrote on his Facebook page while on his way to blow himself up at the bustling transit hub Monday morning, according to the federal complaint filed Tuesday.He had also written in his passport: O AMERICA, DIE IN YOUR RAGE. The charges also reveal that the 27-year-old Bangeldesh-born cabbie s online radicalization began in 2014, and he began researching how to build bombs a year ago although he only constructed his crude explosive device at his Brooklyn home a week ago.Ullah built the bomb for maximum damage, federal prosecutors charge filling it with metal screws and performed the bombing on a workday because he believed that there would be more people. NYP ;left-news;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SENATOR GILLIBRAND Pulled Strings So Muslim Athlete Who Molested 12-Year Old Girl Could Come To U.S. After His Visa Was Denied;Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand (NY) likes to think of herself as a champion of women. After multiple women came forward to accuse fellow Democrat Senator Al Franken of sexual assault (photos were also supplied as evidence of one of the accuser s claims), Gillibrand finally called for Franken to step down. Was Gillibrand s call for her fellow Senator to step down part of a larger plan to appear neutral, as she then attacked President Donald Trump for unfounded allegations against him only months before the election? Isn t it kind of hypocritical for Gillibrand to call anyone out of sexual misconduct after she fought to bring a Muslim athlete to upstate New York who molested an innocent 12-year old girl while he was in America?The media CHEERED when NY Democrat Senator s Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer helped a 24-yr old Muslim man enter the U.S. after he was denied entry The media was strangely SILENT, however, after he molested a 12-yr-old upstate NY girl while she was with her family at an event celebrating the Muslim athlete. Yesterday, it was discovered that the Islamic extremist who killed 9 people and injured dozens of others, when he rammed his truck into them on a busy bike path in New York City, entered our country on a Diversity visa that was the brainchild of none other than the Democrat Senator from NY, Chuck (I always put diversity before our nation s security) Schumer An Indian athlete who overcame a visa denial with the help of U.S. lawmakers and a local mayor to attend the World Snowshoe Championship in New York has been arrested on charges of the abuse of a minor.It was a long journey for Indian snowshoe champion Hussain and his coach to the World Snowshoe Championships in Saranac Lake, New York last weekend.The US embassy in New Delhi rejected Tanveer Hussain s application for a visa so he could compete in the World Snowshoe Championship last month, Fox News reported.Local officials then appealed for help to Schumer and Gillibrand, and their offices reached out to the New Delhi embassy, which let Hussain successfully reapply for a visa.Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, an outspoken opponent of President Trump s position on stricter immigration policies for immigrants and visa holders coming into the United States, bragged about getting around Trump s temporary travel restrictions to bring convicted pedophile Tanveer Hussain to New York on his Facebook page:Schumer s office told Fox he often intervenes to help international competitions. As we often do when local communities ask for help, at the request of Saranac Lake we helped to navigate the visa process so these athletes could compete at a local competition. The charges against one member of the group, who is accused of a serious crime and abusing our visa program, are extremely troubling. If he s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, a rep said.Gillibrand s office offered a similar response, adding that the charges are extremely serious. Hussain hails from the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim. Although India is not one of the seven countries that were part of the initial travel ban, Hussain and Khan had alleged they were victims of it when their first attempt at procuring visas to travel to the United States was turned down in late January, the first business day after Trump s travel ban was put in place.Khan told the BBC that an employee at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi told them they were being rejected because of current policy. U.S. officials said at the time that the denial was not connected to the travel ban. An embassy spokesman said they were preparing a statement for release later in the day. National PostTanveer Hussain was indicted in August 2017, by an Essex County grand jury for allegedly having inappropriate contact with a 12-year-old Saranac Lake girl earlier this year.Tanveer is pictured below surrounded by young teenagers at Saranac Middle School. Taneer is pictured in center-left with his arms around a young girl.The grand jury returned the indictment charging Tanveer Hussain with one count of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a report in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise quoted a press release from Essex County District Attorney Kristy Sprague as saying.The reckless and irresponsible acts of Democrat legislators like Senator Chuck Schumer, perfectly illustrates why Trump was right about demanding that we put additional vetting measures in place for immigrants.Hussain and team manager Abid Khan arrived Feb. 23 in the bucolic Adirondacks town, which had been following their visa ordeal and extended them a hero s welcome. Locals offered congratulations and free lodgings at an inn that in the snow looked like a fairy tale scene from a movie, Khan said in a Facebook post.The fairy tale was shattered Wednesday, when Hussain, 24, was arrested and charged with felony sexual abuse and child welfare endangerment, police said.The parents of the 12-year-old girl allegedly involved said the incident happened Monday, after the end of the three-day snowshoe competition, and reported it to local authorities.Chief Charles A. Potthast Jr. of the Saranac Lake Village police force said the girl was playing pool Monday afternoon with other young people at the inn where Hussain was staying. There was a moment when the two were alone, and that s when the incident occurred, Potthast said. The girl told police there was a passionate kiss and that Hussain touched her in an intimate area on top of her clothing.During their time in Saranac Lake, Hussein and his coach were honored with a special reception by the mayor and gave a talk about Kashmir at Saranac Lake Middle School, where students had waged a letter-writing campaign on their behalf. Pack your bags. Next year you are coming to Kashmir, Hussain told them, according to one of Khan s Facebook posts. Washington Post;left-news;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;POCAHONTAS CALLS Trump’s Comments To Dem Senator Gillibrand “Slut-Shaming”…So Why Didn’t She Call Trump’s Comments About Romney During The Campaign “Slut-Shaming”? [VIDEO];"How quickly the Democrats and their allies in the media forget, that when the bear is poked, he fights back. Donald Trump has never been shy about punching back when he s being unfairly attacked, and Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) is no exception. When she came after President Trump for allegations made by women for alleged sexual misconduct by then candidate-Trump, suggesting he should resign, Trump reminded everyone of how Gillibrand came to Trump, the former billionaire NYC business tycoon, begging him for campaign contributions.Here is Gillibrand s tweet calling for President Trump to either resign or threatening that Congress should investigate decades-old unfounded claims of sexual misconduct:President Trump should resign. But, of course, he won't hold himself accountable. Therefore, Congress should investigate the multiple sexual harassment and assault allegations against him. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) December 11, 2017Donald Trump responded: Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017Fake Indian Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MS) took to Twitter in an attempt to shame President Trump. Here is the tweet by the female Senator who is more commonly known as Pocahontas :Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you're picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump. Nevertheless, #shepersisted. https://t.co/mYJtBZfxiu Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 12, 2017Clearly Senator s Warren and Gillibrand never saw Trump attacking Mitt Romney during the campaign, otherwise, they surely would have tweeted about Trump slut-shaming him right?Watch:Donald Trump on Mitt Romney: ""He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees.' He would have dropped to his knees.""Was Trump sexually harassing/slut shaming Romney?No, this type of language is a part of Trump's vernacular. pic.twitter.com/DwwOYCGljJ Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 12, 2017When Trump attacked Romney during the campaign, the Business Insider reported about the incident:GOP frontrunner Donald Trump responded to Mitt Romney s broadside on Thursday by saying that the former Republican presidential candidate had begged for his endorsement. He was begging for my endorsement, Trump said at a rally later in Portland, Maine. I could ve said, Mitt, drop to your knees. He was begging me, Trump said.Trump was referring to the 2012 race for president in which Romney, the GOP nominee that year, sought Trump s endorsement.But if they were friendly four years ago, that relationship has clearly deteriorated.Earlier Thursday, Romney gave a speech in which he railed against Trump, whom he called a fraud, con man, phony, and fake, among other things. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University, Romney jabbed. He s playing the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat. Throughout Trump s subsequent speech in Maine, the real-estate developer repeatedly and extensively lashed back out at Romney. Mitt is a failed candidate he failed badly, Trump said. That is a race that should have been won. He repeatedly called Romney a choke artist throughout the speech, an insult he s used against Marco Rubio, a top Trump rival for the 2016 nomination. He s a choke artist, I started hitting him so hard, Trump said. We can t take another loss. He choked, he choked like nobody I ve ever seen except for Rubio, he continued.At other points in his speech, Trump called Romney a disaster candidate in 2012. The billionaire businessman then mentioned a fundraiser he held for Romney that ruined his carpet. Trump said Romney did not compensate him for the damages Senator Gillibrand was clearly not above cozying up to sexual predators for contributions or for leveraging their political clout. This Twitter user posted a picture of Gillibrand with Harvey Weinstein, the most notorious sexual predator in Hollywood:Senator Gillibrand is also a close friend of Harvey Weinstein. So much for being a strong feminist ally. pic.twitter.com/eXNO0iZSBx DEPLORABLE MEDIA (@correctthemedia) December 12, 2017And here s Gillibrand posing with former President Bill Clinton the accused rapist and sexual assaulter, who was impeached for lying about having sex under the Oval Office desk with a 19-year old intern: ";left-news;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'We are one': Palestinian Christians and Muslims unite against Trump's Jerusalem call;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Less than an hour after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, Palestinians protested by turning off the lights on the Christmas tree outside Bethlehem s Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus. It was a timely reminder that while headlines focused on Islamist calls for uprisings and Trump s references to Jewish historical ties, the president s words also stirred deep feelings among the Palestinians small Christian community. Coming out of the Sunday service in his Assyrian Catholic church in Jerusalem, Fredrick Hazo accused Trump of dragging all the world into trouble , and called on the U.S. leader to reverse his decision. We are united - Christians, Muslims, we are one, said the 59-year-old Palestinian musician, standing in an alley in the heart of the Old City, surrounded by shops selling religious trinkets. He was frustrated by the politics, but confident the delicate balance the three faiths kept in the holy city would prevail. In this sacred place, God is protecting us all. We are guarded by his angels in Jerusalem, Hazo added. Christians make up around just one percent of the Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - though they punch above their weight in local and national politics. Back in July, Hazo protested alongside Muslims against Israel s installation of security scanners at the nearby al-Aqsa mosque - Islam s third holiest site - after two Arab-Israeli gunmen shot dead two Israeli police officers at the site. It removed the metal detectors after days of bloody clashes, scenes that have not been repeated in the city since Trump s declaration. The appeals to religious unity inside Jerusalem s walls stand in contrast to the more divided voices outside. In the hours running up to Trump s statement, Pope Francis called for the status quo in the city to be respected. The Episcopal Church of the United States said Trump s announcement could have profound ramifications on the peace process and the future of a two-state solution . But Trump s decision found strong backing from another corner of the Christian community - many among his own country s politically powerful evangelicals who see God s hand in the modern-day return of Jews to a biblical homeland. Trump convened a circle of evangelical advisers during his presidential bid, and he was the overwhelming favorite of white evangelical voters in last year s U.S. election. We are all bible-believers and we believe that this is the bible-land and that Jerusalem is the ancient capital of Israel back to the days of King David, said Dallas-based Mike Evans, part of an evangelical group that met Trump on Monday. So for our president to stand up and declare it makes us extremely proud and honored. For Palestinian supermarket cashier Mohammed al-Hawa, however, Trump s words and the logic behind them ignored the more complex reality on the ground. People of all faith in Jerusalem were united in prayer, the 33-year-old said, even if they were divided over politics. Christians, Jews and Muslims live in this city together. There is no problem between them. Only the politics. The governments want to make wars, he said. This is my city - my blood, my life, added a 70-year-old Palestinian, walking through the pilgrim-packed courtyard of Jerusalem s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, revered by Christians as the site of Jesus s tomb. The church is packed into a small parcel of land that also holds the al-Aqsa compound and Judaism s Western Wall I can go to the church, to anywhere in Jerusalem, not Trump nor Netanyahu can stop me, added the man who identified himself only as a Jerusalemite . ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea conducts anti-terror drills ahead of Winter Games;PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (Reuters) - Set to host the Winter Olympics in February, South Korea conducted a series of security drills on Tuesday to prepare against terror attacks ranging from a hostage situation, a vehicle ramming a stadium and a bomb-attached to a drone. Police and firemen were among around 420 personnel participating in the exercise, held in front of the Olympic Stadium at Pyeongchang, just 80 km (50 miles) from the heavily fortified border with North Korea. During the simulated drills, members of a SWAT team shot down a drone with a bomb attached that was flying toward a bus carrying athletes. In another part of the mock exercise a terrorist took hostage athletes on a bus, and tried to ram the vehicle into the stadium before being gunned down by police. Officers in gas masks also removed a chemical bomb. Anxiety on the Korean Peninsula has been rising in recent months due to a series of missile tests by North Korea as it continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of U.N. sanctions and warnings from the United States. Please keep in mind that accidents always happen where no one has expected, South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said. Please check until the last minute whether there are any security loopholes. Lee did not mention North Korea, but South Korea s Defense Ministry on Friday flagged risks that North Korea could resort to terrorist or cyber attacks to spoil international events. Some 5,000 armed forces personnel will be deployed at the Winter Games, according to South Korean government officials and documents reviewed by Reuters. Pyeongchang s organizing committee for the 2018 Games (POCOG) has also hired a private cyber security company to guard against a hacking attack from the North, tender documents show. To minimize the risk of provoking an aggressive North Korean reaction during the games, South Korea has asked Washington to delay regular joint military exercises until after the Olympics, the Financial Times reported. A spokesman for South Korea s defense ministry said on Tuesday that nothing has been decided. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump will announce new U.S. security strategy on Monday: adviser;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will announce a new security strategy on Monday, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said on Tuesday. The new security blueprint will focus on protecting the U.S. homeland, advancing U.S. prosperity, preserving “peace through strength” and advancing American Influence, McMaster said at an appearance with his British counterpart, Mark Sedwill. McMaster condemned what he said was Russian involvement in a new generation of warfare, including internal political subversion, as well as economic aggression by China. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House to host fresh biofuels talks to help refiners: sources;(Reuters) - The White House will host talks between the rival oil and ethanol industries on Wednesday in hopes of brokering a deal to help refiners struggling to meet the country’s biofuels policy, according to sources familiar with the matter. The meeting comes after the White House last week pressured Midwest lawmakers to take part in talks over possible tweaks to the Renewable Fuels Standard, a law that requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels, mainly corn-based ethanol, into the nation’s fuel supply each year. A handful of refiners say the law is threatening to put them out of business. But ethanol interests have said the refineries can pass along the costs at the pumps and have vehemently opposed any changes to the regulation. The meeting on Wednesday will include staff from the offices of Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, both representing the oil-refining industry, according to the sources. On the corn side, staff will be present from the offices of Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa, along with Deb Fischer of Nebraska, the sources said. Staff from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture were also expected to attend. A spokesman for Grassley confirmed that “staff-level dialogue and meetings” were under way but did not provide details. Officials for the other senators and the White House did not comment. One source familiar with the matter said the meeting would likely focus on short-term fixes to help oil refiners on the U.S. East Coast who say they are struggling with the costs of meeting the RFS requirements. Refining companies - like Philadelphia Energy Solutions PESC.N and Monroe Energy, both of Pennsylvania, along with Texas giant Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) - that do not have adequate facilities to blend biofuels into their products are required to purchase blending credits called RINs from rivals that do. RINs prices have surged this year. The source said talks on Wednesday could center on solutions like a price cap for RINs or waivers to certain refiners that are at risk of going bankrupt without relief. The governors of both Texas and Pennsylvania have already formally requested such waivers from the administration. The industry has requested tweaks to the policy in the past that would cut the annual volume targets for biofuels, allow ethanol exports to be counted against those targets, or shift the blending burden to supply terminals from refiners. But the Trump administration has ruled in favor of Big Corn and against the refining industry in a series of decisions this year. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator which administers the RFS, slightly increased biofuels volumes targets for 2018. The refining industry has also been seeking a longer-term overhaul of the RFS before it expires in 2022, but such a change would require an act of Congress and has met with stiff resistance from the corn lobby. The RFS was introduced more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions, and it has since fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Speaker Ryan says he believes upbeat Treasury tax study;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday defended a one-page analysis by the Treasury Department that asserted a tax plan pushed by the Republican-led Congress would pay for itself in 10 years. “I think that estimate makes a lot of sense. ... I do believe the Treasury when they say that this is going to unleash a lot of economic growth, which will accrue more revenues,” Ryan told reporters. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, called the estimate “fake math” on Monday. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela to start criminal probe into ex-oil czar Ramirez;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela said on Tuesday it would start a criminal investigation into powerful former oil czar Rafael Ramirez, in an escalation of a purge of alleged corruption that has resulted in the arrest of dozens of oil executives. President Nicolas Maduro and Ramirez have long been rivals in the OPEC nation s ruling Socialist Party. Insiders say tensions between the two politicians have spiked in recent weeks after Ramirez wrote articles criticizing the leftist leader s management of Venezuela s tanking economy and crumbling oil industry, home to the world s largest crude reserves. Maduro, who is seeking to consolidate power ahead of next year s presidential election, last month stripped Ramirez of his most recent job as Venezuela s representative at the United Nations in New York. Ramirez, a former oil minister and head of state oil company PDVSA [PDVSA.UL], then left the United States for an undisclosed location last week. On Tuesday, state prosecutor Tarek Saab accused Ramirez of being involved in the brokering of oil sales together with his cousin Diego Salazar, who was arrested this month in Caracas. In one of the documents that was found, the citizen Diego Salazar, who is Rafael Ramirez cousin, directly signals him, incriminates him directly as his direct partner, Saab told journalists. He did not provide evidence. It was unclear what Ramirez, who did not respond to a request for comment, would do next. He has denied involvement in corruption, and recently told Reuters that the government would make one of its worst political moves if investigators target him. Opposition critics say the recent spate of arrests is arbitrary and motivated by internal divisions in the government. They insist that Maduro has turned a blind eye to corruption when it was politically expedient to do so. Last year, the opposition-led Congress said $11 billion went missing at PDVSA between 2004 and 2014, when Ramirez was in charge of the company. Prosecutor Saab has refuted accusations that investigations are politically motivated. He pointed to the arrests of some 67 oil managers, including two former executives who had both served as oil minister and PDVSA president, as proof of the seriousness of the probe. Last month, Maduro appointed a National Guard major general with no known significant experience of the oil industry to lead PDVSA, sparking fears by industry analysts that mismanagement would increase. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. to ease visa restrictions on Gambia from Dec. 12;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that visa restrictions imposed on Gambia earlier this year will be lifted as of Dec. 12 after Banjul took steps to ensure its citizens ordered to leave the United States are re-admitted to the West African country. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe voters need more time to register after turmoil: parties;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s political parties want to give voters another two months to sign up for next year s election after political turmoil disrupted the registration process, an opposition official said. The ruling party and opposition groups will ask electoral authorities on Wednesday to extend next week s voter registration deadline into February, said Douglas Mwonzora, the secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change. The army forced former president Robert Mugabe out of office last month, ousting the only leader the country has known since independence. The military coup disturbed a lot of things. During that period, many potential voters did not go out to register because there was serious political uncertainty in the country, said Mwonzora, who also co-chairs an inter-party group monitoring voter registration. So after taking all this into account we realized that we need to extend the registration exercise. If we don t we will see voter apathy next year, he added. Zimbabwe started registering voters in September. But its Electoral Commision said on Tuesday just over 4 million voters out of a target of 7 million had signed up, eight days before the deadline to end the process. Part of the problem, said Mwonzora, was that thousands of potential voters - who are classified as aliens because their parents are from other countries in southern Africa - have only been able to register since last week, after a court ruling. Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from Mugabe, will be running to keep the job in the presidential and parliamentary elections due to take place by July. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria ex-finance minister goes on trial accused of corruption;VIENNA (Reuters) - An Austrian former finance minister went on trial on Tuesday accused of bribery and embezzlement in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country s recent history. Karl-Heinz Grasser and 15 former high-ranking politicians, managers and bankers are charged in connection with the privatization of state housing company Buwog in 2004. Grasser, 48, was one of Austria s most popular politicians and became the country s youngest finance minister in 2000 when he was appointed aged 31 to serve in a coalition between the conservatives and the far right Freedom Party. He is accused of embezzling part of a commission for the sale of 60,000 federal apartments. He denies the accusations and said in a television interview on Monday he was glad the trial was starting so he could prove his innocence. Defense lawyers say the case is politically motivated at a time when conservatives and the far-right are working to form a government to replace a coalition led by social democrats. Investigators spent eight years gathering evidence and working on an indictment that runs for more than 800 pages. It says he under-priced the biggest ever sale of state-owned flats. The tender came down to two bidders and the contract was awarded to a financial consortium that offered just 1 million euros ($1.2 million) more than its competitor. After the sale, millions of euros in commissions flowed to two Grasser associates suggesting insider dealing, according to prosecutors. Grasser, who is married to socialite Fiona Swarovski, the heir of the Swarovski crystal manufacturers, says he is a victim of prejudice from the media and the judiciary. The trial is the latest to stem from the tenure of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel who took power in 2000. Others have concerned the telecoms and real estate sectors. The court rejected a petition by Grasser s defense lawyer Manfred Ainedter to remove the chief of the four judges, Marion Hohenecker, due to conflict of interest because of tweets critical of Grasser sent by her husband who is also a judge. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson to back North Korea diplomacy, reject Syria's Assad: U.S. official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in remarks later on Tuesday, plans to say that he is optimistic about North Korea denuclearization talks and that there is no role for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria s future, a U.S. official said. The secretary is very optimistic that we can achieve denuclearization through negotiation. We are in the middle of that path and that continues, the official told reporters ahead of two planned speeches by Tillerson. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: One Planet summit turns to private sector for climate action;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting dozens of world leaders along with global companies and movie superstars at a summit in Paris to accelerate efforts to combat climate change. The One Planet summit will not announce internationally binding commitments, but is counting on mobilizing money from public and private financial institutions and from corporations. Below are some key pledges made around the summit. * More than 200 institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets under management said they would step up pressure on the world s biggest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to fight climate change. They said that would be more effective than threatening to pull the plug on their investments in such firms. Divestment would only be a last resort. If big emitters refuse to cooperate, shareholders could ratchet up pressure with public statements, resolutions and votes. * The European Commission is looking positively at plans to lower capital requirements for environmentally friendly investments by banks in a bid to boost the green economy and counter climate change. The move could be part of a broader set of measures the European Union plans to present in March to meet the target of cutting carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030, for which it estimates around 180 billion euros ($212.2 billion) in additional low-carbon investments are needed per year. * The World Bank said it will no longer finance upstream oil and gas projects after 2019, apart from certain gas projects in the poorest countries in exceptional circumstances. As a global multilateral development institution, the World Bank said it is continuing to transform its own operations in recognition of a rapidly changing world. * Belgium will issue its first bond for use in financing projects to reduce the country s carbon emissions, following a number of countries that have sold or plan to sell green bonds . Poland became the first a year ago, followed by France with a 7 billion euro issue in January. Belgium plans to sell 3 to 5 billion euros ($3.5-6 billion) in the first quarter of 2018. * Dutch bank ING (INGA.AS) said that by end 2025 it will stop funding any utility that relies on coal for more than 5 percent of its energy. It will support new clients whose reliance on coal is less than 10 percent as long as they have a strategy in place to cut that to close to zero by 2025. ING also will phase out lending to individual coal-fired power plants by then. * French insurer AXA (AXAF.PA) will quadruple investments in environmentally friendly projects, adding 9 billion euros ($10.6 billion) by 2020, and divest further from the coal industry. Axa will target firms deriving more than 30 percent of their revenue from coal. It also will not insure any new coal mines or oil sands projects, including associated pipeline businesses. * French state-owned power utility EDF (EDF.PA) plans a big push into solar energy in France that is likely to cost around 25 billion euros. EDF aims to build 30 gigawatt of solar capacity by 2035 in response to a government drive for a massive deployment of renewables. * French gas and power utility Engie (ENGIE.PA) is prepared to invest 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) to improve energy efficiency in France over the next five years, its CEO said ahead of the Paris summit. Engie says energy efficiency contracts already make up 700 million euros of its operating income and that this is likely to increase fourfold by 2026. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump signs into law U.S. government ban on Kaspersky Lab software;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump signed into law on Tuesday legislation that bans the use of Kaspersky Lab within the U.S. government, capping a months-long effort to purge the Moscow-based antivirus firm from federal agencies amid concerns it was vulnerable to Kremlin influence. The ban, included as part of a broader defense policy spending bill that Trump signed, reinforces a directive issued by the Trump administration in September that civilian agencies remove Kaspersky Lab software within 90 days. The law applies to both civilian and military networks. “The case against Kaspersky is well-documented and deeply concerning. This law is long overdue,” said Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who led calls in Congress to scrub the software from government computers. She added that the company’s software represented a “grave risk” to U.S. national security. Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied that it has ties to any government and said it would not help a government with cyber espionage. In an attempt to address suspicions, the company said in October it would submit the source code of its software and future updates for inspection by independent parties. U.S. officials have said that step, while welcomed, would not be sufficient. In a statement on Tuesday, Kaspersky Lab said it continued to have “serious concerns” about the law “due to its geographic-specific approach to cybersecurity.” It added that the company was assessing its options and would continue to “protect its customers from cyber threats (while) collaborating globally with the IT security community to fight cybercrime.” On Tuesday, Christopher Krebs, a senior cyber security official at the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters that nearly all government agencies had fully removed Kaspersky products from their networks in compliance with the September order. Kaspersky’ official response to the ban did not appear to contain any information that would change the administration’s assessment of Kaspersky Lab, Krebs said. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba tells U.S. suspension of visas is hurting families; (Corrects paragraph 7 to show Trump issued a warning on travel to Cuba, not a ban on travel to Cuba) HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba told senior U.S. officials during talks on migration in Havana on Monday that the U.S. decision to suspend visa processing at its embassy on the island was seriously hampering family relations and other people exchanges. Relations between the former Cold War foes became strained after Donald Trump became the U.S. President, partially reversing the thaw seen during Barack Obama s presidency. In September, after allegations of incidents affecting the health of its diplomats in Havana, the U.S. administration reduced its embassy to a skeleton staff, resulting in the suspension of almost all visa processing. The Cuban delegation expressed deep concern over the negative impact that the unilateral, unfounded and politically motivated decisions adopted by the U.S. government ... have on migration relations between both countries, the Cuban foreign ministry said in a statement. The statement was issued after delegations led by Cuba s Foreign Ministry chief for U.S. Affairs Josefina Vidal and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs John Creamer met to discuss migration issues. Many Cubans said they were heartbroken because they could not visit, or be with, their loved ones. While Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people, there are an estimated 2 million Cuban Americans in the United States. The Trump administration also issued a warning on travel to Cuba and in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from Washington. The Cuban foreign ministry said this had seriously affected the functioning of the diplomatic mission, particularly the Consulate and the services it offers to Cubans residing in the United States . The U.S. decision to cancel the visits of official delegations to Cuba was also having a counterproductive effect on cooperation in fields like migration, the ministry said. On the positive side, both the U.S. and Cuban delegations commented on the drop in illegal Cuban migration to the United States during the talks as a result of past moves towards normalizing relations. Obama, who announced the detente with Cuba nearly three years ago, eliminated a policy granting automatic residency to virtually all Cubans who arrived on U.S. turf in January, just before leaving office. Cuba had asked for the change for years, saying that policy encouraged dangerous journeys and people trafficking. Apprehensions of Cuban migrants at U.S. ports of entry decreased by 64 percent from fiscal year 2016 to 2017, and maritime interdictions of Cuban migrants decreased by 71 percent, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Trump said in June he was canceling Obama s terrible and misguided deal with Havana, returning to Cold War rhetoric, and his administration has tightened trade and travel restrictions. He has however in practise left in place many of Obama s changes including restored diplomatic relations and resumed direct U.S.-Cuba commercial flights and cruise-ship travel. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France expects slow but massive impact from labor reforms: minister;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron s labor reforms will be slow to bear fruit but eventually have a massive impact on France s stubbornly high unemployment, his labor minister said Tuesday after data showed a slowdown in new job creation. Though business and consumer confidence has been soaring, France s strengthening economy has so far only translated into limited labor market gains. Job creation was the slowest in two years in the third quarter, when the economy added 44,500 new jobs, the fewest since the third quarter of 2015 and down from 88,300 in the previous three months, statistics agency INSEE said on Tuesday. In his first major reform as president, Macron overhauled France s labor rules in September to give companies more freedom to set working conditions, a move aimed at encouraging them to hire more workers. We can t expect a massive effect in the very short term. It will only come in the medium term. However it will be robust and more massive, Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud told journalists in a quarterly update on the jobs market. Despite the improving economy, the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.7 percent in the third quarter from 9.5 percent in the previous three months. Economists say this was probably caused by the end of a hiring premium for small firms and a reduction in the number of government-subsidised job contracts. Only two percent of 1,000 French employers surveyed by staffing firm ManpowerGroup expect to expand their hiring plans in the first quarter of 2018, down from four percent expected for the final three months of this year. However, the outlook varies widely by firm size, with 19 percent of companies employing more than 250 people expecting a net increase in hiring in the first quarter, according to ManpowerGroup s survey. After the labor reform, the government next wants to overhaul the professional training system, which currently receives 32 billion euros annually in public and private funds ($37.67 billion) but has little impact on unemployment. Companies cannot find skilled labor even though their order books are full. I hear that every day, said Penicaud, who is a former human resources director at Danone. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit minister says agrees with EU negotiator Verhofstadt on last week's deal;LONDON (Reuters) - British Brexit minister David Davis said on Tuesday that he and the European Parliament s negotiator Guy Verohfstadt agreed about the importance of last week s deal between Britain and the EU to move divorce talks to the next phase. Earlier Verhofstadt had said it will insist on quickly making the deal reached between the European Union and Britain on divorce terms legally binding, worried London may not honor a gentleman s agreement. Pleasure, as ever, to speak to my friend @guyverhofstadt - we both agreed on the importance of the Joint Report. Let s work together to get it converted into legal text as soon as possible, Davis said on Twitter. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Denmark's government at risk in row with nationalists over Syrian refugees;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Demands from the nationalist Danish People s Party (DF) that Syrian refugees be sent home as soon as possible are threatening to bring down the country s centre-right minority government. The government depends on the right-wing DF to pass budget and tax legislation, although it is not a part of the ruling coalition. DF is seeking tighter immigration rules in return for tax cuts. It wants to make it easier for authorities to revoke residence permits for refugees who fled from war once there is peace in their home countries. Such a move, however, could violate international human rights guarantees, posing a problem for the government. On Friday DF gave its backing to the 2018 fiscal budget, leaving broader negotiations on tax reforms and stricter immigration policies to be resumed after the New Year. However, junior government partner Liberal Alliance said it wants to pass tax reforms along with the budget and would not support the budget in parliament unless a deal to cut taxes was agreed. If LA does not vote to give the budget final approval, Rasmussen could be forced either to hand power to the Social Democrat-led opposition or to call a snap election. The final vote on the budget is on December 22. The government can bring itself down before Christmas if it actively works for it, it is possible, DF leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl told reporters on Tuesday. Of course it will have consequences if a government can t even vote for its own budget in parliament. The prime minister has to relate to that. It s his responsibility, Dahl said. Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who was in Paris on Tuesday for a climate conference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, has expressed confidence that his government will vote in favor of the budget. DF s proposal would impact the more than 10,000 Syrians that have sought asylum in Denmark since the beginning of 2015 under rules to protect people fleeing from war and not just refugees that are personally persecuted. The proposed tightening comes on top of already strict policies for people with temporary residence permit that are not allowed to seek family reunification until after three years. Refugees should be able to work or go to school while in Denmark, but those activities should not be targeted at integrating them into the Danish society or qualify them for permanent citizenship, DF said. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French government dampens Corsican nationalists' autonomy hopes;PARIS (Reuters) - France s government on Tuesday ruled out major concessions towards autonomy sought by Corsica s nationalists after they won a regional election, but said it was open to talks that took account of the island s distinctive character. The nationalists on Sunday won two thirds of the seats in the new regional council that takes office on Jan. 1. Their ambitions are relatively modest among the wave of secessionist movements that have sprung up in parts of Europe as its traditional political forces have lost traction. Unlike Catalonia s nationalists, they do not target outright independence, but they do seek official status for the Corsican language and a greater say on fiscal issues. Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said there were Corsican specifics to be taken into account in the discussions that Paris holds with all new regional authorities. (But) let s be clear ... this was not a referendum or a vote on autonomy or independence, he told France 2 TV. The Corsican nationalists also want to be able to decide who can buy properties and they seek liberty for those they call political prisoners, who have been condemned for attacks or are awaiting judgment. The sun-drenched island, the birthplace of Napoleon and known as much over recent decades for its sometimes violent independence movements as for its stunning landscapes, has long been a thorn in the side of French governments. Clandestine group the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC) laid down its weapons in 2014 after a near four-decade long rebellion, in a major shift that helped boost the popularity of the moderate nationalists who won Sunday s election. Asked about prisoners, Griveaux said: The law must be respected. When there have been crimes and a court ruling, when people have been condemned, the sentence should be carried out. Asked about Corsican becoming an official language on the island alongside French, Griveaux said provision had already been made in various regions to allow the use of a local language, for instance in some schools. But the language of the Republic is French, he added. Political analyst Andre Fazi, a lecturer at the University of Corsica, said it would be hard for the nationalists to get what they wanted. But with Sunday s election win, it would also be risky for the government to not do anything, he said. Shutting the door completely could boost calls for outright independence, as was the case in Catalonia. In a sign that the government might be taking this into account, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Sunday called nationalist leader Gilles Simeoni to congratulate him on his win and told him he was willing to see him soon in Paris. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Return of defeated IS fighters 'real threat' to Russia: RIA cites FSB chief;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former militants from bandit units in Syria are now a real threat after the defeat of Islamic State, as many of them may be now planning to return to Russia, the RIA news agency cited the head of Russia s FSB security service as saying on Tuesday. The FSB head, Alexander Bortnikov, also told a meeting of Russia s National Anti-Terrorism Committee the security service had uncovered an underground cell of extremists from Central Asia planning to carry out terrorist acts during the New Year and Russia s 2018 presidential campaign in the Moscow region. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Be careful, murdered Iranian activist's daughter tells European exiles;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The daughter of an Iranian Arab activist killed in the Netherlands last month linked his death to political conflict in the Middle East, and warned other exiles in Europe to be on their guard. Ahmad Mola Nissi, 52, was gunned down by an unidentified assailant in front of his home in The Hague on Nov. 8 in a suspected political killing. Hawra Ahmad Nissi said her father s death was reminiscent of a string of murders of Iranian dissidents in Europe in the 1990s. Europe seems safe, but be careful, she told Reuters in an interview. The conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran is not confined to the Middle East. It is spreading into Europe. Relations between Shi ite Muslim Iran and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia have soured in recent months, with the struggle for influence between the two long-standing regional rivals played out through increasingly bitter proxy confrontations, notably in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. Mola Nissi established the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), which seeks a separate state in Iran s oil-rich southwestern Khuzestan province, in 1999. Since his murder, his family have been under Dutch police protection at a safe house. We came here to be safe but we don t feel safe. European governments should do more to secure the safety of activists, Hawra Nissi, 25, said. Ahvazi Arabs are a minority in mainly ethnic Persian Iran, and some see themselves as victims of occupation and want independence or autonomy. Tehran, which has condemned Mola Nissi s killing and promised to investigate it, accuses Riyadh of funding separatist groups active in Iran, a charge the Saudis deny. A source close to Mola Nissi s family, who asked not to be named due to security concerns, said he had accepted Saudi financial support but did not want the Ahvazi cause to be used as a pawn in the proxy war. This attitude could have made him an obstacle to efforts to bring the ASMLA movement under Saudi influence, the source said. The family is open to all scenarios. Iran is a prime suspect, but not the only suspect, Hawra Nissi said. Police are exploring a possible link between Mola Nissi s killing and the unsolved murder of another Iranian near Amsterdam in December 2015, a spokeswoman said. They are looking for two suspects believed to have gunned down Ali Motamed. The police declined to comment on the circumstances of Motamed s death or a motive, but Iranian media have linked him to exiled Iranian opposition Shi ite group the People s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), which would have made him a potential target. A man detained in relation to Mola Nissi s death has since been released, the spokeswoman added. The most prominent among a string of killings and disappearances of Iranian dissidents in the 1980s and 1990s was the shooting of three Iranian Kurdish opposition leaders in Berlin in 1992, which a German court ruled had been ordered by the government in Tehran. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hundreds of thousands in Israel mourn 104-year-old ultra-Orthodox rabbi;BNEI BRAK, Israel (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews crammed into the streets of a Tel Aviv suburb on Tuesday to mourn a 104-year-old rabbi who had significantly influenced a succession of Israeli coalition governments. Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman led a council of sages that controlled the small Degel Hatorah lawmakers faction, part of the United Torah Judaism party, which has often held the balance of power in Israel. In particular, Shteinman broke with tradition by giving tacit consent to the enlistment of religious soldiers in the first ultra-Orthodox unit set up by the Israeli military. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government includes ultra-Orthodox political parties, said the Jewish people had lost a central beacon of spirit, heritage and morality . Special buses and trains ferried mourners to Bnei Brak, a religious town on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Police estimated that several hundred thousand people gathered for the funeral procession, dressed in traditional black ultra-Orthodox garb. Shteinman, born in what is now Belarus, had led his community of Lithuanian-rooted ultra-Orthodox Jews since 2012. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bomb kills bomb disposal expert in Somalia's Puntland, al Shabaab suspected;BOSASO, Somalia (Reuters) - An army colonel in the semi-autonomous Puntland region who also headed the region s bomb disposal unit was killed on Tuesday after a roadside bomb he was defusing exploded, a military official said. The incident occurred on a road that links Bosaso, Puntland s second biggest city, with Galgala Hills which is controlled by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group. Colonel Osman Abshir Omar was killed after he started dismantling the bomb on Tuesday, one of his colleagues said. We were with the Colonel. He stopped the car, got down and started dismantling a bomb but it suddenly went off and killed him on the spot, Major Abdirizak Mohamed, who was among thesoldiers accompanying Omar, told Reuters. Al Shabaab claimed responsibility. We targeted the Colonel. We exploded the bomb, Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab s spokesman for military operations, said. Militant attacks in Puntland are rare compared to the rest of Somalia mainly because its security forces are relatively regularly paid and receive substantial U.S. assistance. Al Shabaab, which aims to topple Somalia s government and impose its strict version of Islam on the Horn of Africa state, has become more active in Puntland after being pushed out of its stronghold further south by African Union peacekeepers and the Somali army, officials say. This year there has been rise in violence in Puntland by a splinter group linked to Islamic State have attacked government troops. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;War-scarred neighborhoods in Ukraine's rebel-held Donetsk;DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ruined houses, shell craters and deserted streets - this is a typical scene in the Oktyabrsky district of Donetsk, the largest city of Ukraine s pro-Russian rebel region that bears the same name. The self-styled Donetsk and next-door Luhansk people s republics broke away from central rule in 2014 after months of violent street protests in Kiev toppled Ukraine s Moscow-leaning president and propelled pro-Western nationalists to power. In this calm suburb of Donetsk, many people stood aloof of politics. But then fierce clashes broke out between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists for control over the nearby Donetsk Airport. A glistening air hub of steel and glass, specially built for the UEFA Euro 2012 of which Donetsk was a venue, the local airport was leveled to the ground, and many of the buildings in Oktyabrsky shared its fate. A Reuters photo essay (reut.rs/2jONmoo ) captures images of hardship and despair of the dwellers of this district on the frontline of many battles. Restored water and electricity supplies to local homes, with some households enjoying even gas supplies and heating, give a slight relief to some of the lucky locals as winter cold starts to bite. I try to keep away from politics, I only care about my family, said Marina, aged 30. The woman, her husband and three children, one of whom is seriously ill, lost their house in 2014 when an artillery shell hit it. With no money, we were left in the street, with absolutely nothing. Everything burned, nothing was left ... even spoons and forks were gone, she said. Her family changed several apartments, moving from one friend to another, before deciding that they would restore their house, using the bricks that had remained intact to build new walls. But they fast ran out of cash to buy construction materials. The fragile ceasefire agreed in 2015 is often shattered by outbursts of gunfire and explosions of shells. More than 8,000 private homes and more than 2,000 apartment houses were badly damaged in Donetsk, according to data provided by its administration. Most of these homes are uninhabitable and cannot be rebuilt. A total of 64 temporary shelters for those who lost their homes in the war have been organized in various parts of Donetsk, a city of around one million residents. Sometimes, student hostels accommodate the homeless. They include Alexandra Nikolayevna, 68, who survives with her several grandchildren at University Hostel No.4 mainly due to handouts of humanitarian aid. The fourth year of this ordeal has failed to shatter her political views. We must be only with Russia, we only hope for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to take us under his wing, she repeats. Anyway, everyone says it s Russian land. The feeling of relative normalcy which prevails in most parts of Donetsk, dissipates when you realise the city center is just slightly more than 10 km (6.3 miles) from the frontline. The war is felt in the volatile rates of several currencies circulating in the city, in low wages and poor quality of local food. And it is felt in the families which lost loved ones in the war that has claimed a total of more than 10,000 lives so far. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China warns against livestreaming after 'rooftopper' falls to death;BEIJING (Reuters) - A young Chinese climbing enthusiast s fatal fall from a skyscraper while making a selfie video on a $15,000 rooftopping dare has spurred warnings by state media against the perils of livestreaming. Wu Yongning plunged to his death from a 62-storey building in central China on Nov. 8, the day he stopped posting videos of his skyscraper exploits on Weibo, China s equivalent of Twitter. A month later, his girlfriend confirmed the death of the 26-year old in a Weibo post. Wu, who had more than 60,000 followers of his Weibo account, was looking to win a prize of 100,000 yuan ($15,110) for a filmed stunt atop Huayuan Hua Center in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, media said over the weekend. His death was a reminder of the need for stronger supervision of livestreaming apps, the official China Daily said on Tuesday. Some of them try to hype things up with obscene and dangerous things, and their purpose is to attract more eyeballs and make a profit, it said in a commentary. Tens of thousands of Chinese post videos of themselves in a bid for stardom on the livestreaming scene, whose popularity has grown rapidly, particularly in the e-commerce, social networking and gaming sectors. Wu, who used to post videos of himself scaling tall buildings with no safety equipment, hoped to use the prize to pay his mother s medical bills, the Changsha Evening News said. It was unclear which livestreaming platform Wu intended to post on. There should be a bottom line for livestreaming platforms, and supervision should leave no loopholes, ran a comment in the online edition of the People s Daily. Wu s videos on his Weibo microblog had attracted several million views each. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU suspends funding for Cambodian election;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The European Union has suspended funding for Cambodia s 2018 general election because the vote cannot be credible after the dissolution of the main opposition party, according to a letter sent to the national election committee on Tuesday. The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved by the country s highest court last month at the request of the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen after the arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha for alleged treason. An electoral process from which the main opposition party has been arbitrarily excluded cannot be seen as legitimate, the letter said. Under these circumstances, the European Union does not believe there is a possibility of a credible electoral process. Some Western donors have condemned the CNRP dissolution as the most serious blow to democracy since an international peace deal and U.N.-run elections in the early 1990s ended decades of war and the Khmer Rouge genocide that killed at least 1.8 million Cambodians in the 1970s. A government spokesman said the EU decision would not affect the election, in which Hun Sen is expected to extend more than three decades in office that make him the world s longest serving prime minister. This is their will, spokesman Phay Siphan told Reuters on Tuesday. We have our own money. The European Union and Japan are the biggest donors to Cambodia s election commission, which is in theory independent. Asked if Japan would also suspend aid for the election, the Japanese embassy said it would continue to give assistance for electoral reform and would monitor the situation closely. It is of utmost importance to have next year s national election reflect the will of the Cambodian people, Hironori Suzuki, a counselor at the embassy, told Reuters by email. The United States last month said it would suspend funding for the election. It later said it would impose visa sanctions on those involved in the government s actions to undermine democracy. Kem Sokha, leader of the CNRP, was arrested for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government with U.S. help. He has rejected the accusation as a political ploy. The European Union in October warned Cambodia it could face EU action over duty-free access it enjoys under a deal for some of the world s poorest countries if the nation s human rights situation deteriorates further. Cambodia s biggest donor and investor is now China, which has voiced support for the opposition crackdown, saying it supports government efforts to ensure stability and economic development. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian credit to cover part of S-400 missile deal with Turkey: agency;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will offer Turkey partial financing for Ankara s purchase of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, the Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a Russian presidential aide. Turkey has been in talks to buy the system for more than a year. Washington and some of its NATO allies see the move as a snub because the weapons cannot be integrated into the alliance s defenses. Turkish and Russian officials would meet to finalize the deal next week, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in Ankara that credit for the defense industry would be signed with Turkey in the near future. When asked by Interfax whether the Russian financing would cover the full cost of the deal, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Kozhin said: Not the whole, partially. Technical questions are being discussed, the interest rate. Everything is in the Finance Ministry, he said of the deal. Turkey expects to receive the first missile system in 2019, Turkish Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said in November. The deal included two S-400 systems and a third optional one. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: We see Trump's tweets as official statements;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump are viewed in Moscow as his official position and read by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. A prolific user of Twitter before he was elected late last year, Trump has continued to use the social media platform to voice his views on policy and world affairs since moving into the White House. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday it was not his place to comment on Trump s actions, but added: In any case, everything which is published from his authorised Twitter account is perceived by Moscow as his official statement. Naturally, it is reported to Putin along with other information about official statements by politicians, Peskov said, adding that Putin was not a Twitter user himself. Trump s activity on Twitter have previously cause controversy. His tweets sparked outrage in Britain last month and a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Theresa May when he retweeted anti Islam videos from a British far-right group. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. condemns threat to ban Venezuela opposition from elections;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department on Monday condemned Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro s threat to ban opposition parties from participating in next year s presidential elections. The Venezuelan people deserve the right to express their views and consent to governance through a free and fair democratic process that is open to all candidates, the department said in a statement. After three opposition parties boycotted mayoral elections on Sunday, Maduro said on Monday they should be banned from participating in future elections. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Wife of disgraced Mexican governor taking 'refuge' in UK: report;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The wife of a detained former Mexican governor is living in Britain and has demanded back artwork, golf clubs and crystal that were seized by the government, according to a letter obtained by news site Animal Politico. Karime Macias is the wife of former ruling party Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte, who is awaiting trial on charges of embezzlement and organized crime, in a case that public auditors said was the worst they had ever seen in Mexico. In the letter, which the news site posted online, Macias said she was forced to leave the country and shelter in the UK because of persecution at home. Reuters did not obtain the letter and could not verify its authenticity. Macias lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. Macias has not been charged with any crime. Neither the attorney general s office nor the Veracruz government responded to requests for comment. Macias confirmed in the letter that diaries in which she had reportedly written I deserve abundance repeatedly were hers, and said that her phrases were of a spiritual nature. Macias said she wanted back personal items including paintings, luxury pens, golf clubs and books that she said were seized by prosecutors without a warrant, adding that she feared other items found were planted there. In April, Duarte was arrested in a Guatemala hotel where he had been with his wife after fleeing the country. He has denied any wrongdoing, and Macias was not detained. Top Mexican auditor ASF said in 2016 that the irregularities in public funds under Duarte were the highest amount it had ever seen. Prosecutors say Duarte headed an organization consisting of at least nine other people, whose criminal operations were carried out in Veracruz, the eastern Gulf state of Campeche and Mexico City between 2011 and 2016. At a hearing in July, a judge gave prosecutors six months to proceed with the investigation against Duarte. He is one of four ex-governors detained this year from President Enrique Pena Nieto s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Corruption is one of the central issues in Mexico s July 2018 election, with public discontent widespread over a spate of conflict-of-interest rows that have dogged the Cabinet and Pena Nieto himself. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China conducts 'island encirclement' patrols near Taiwan;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s air force has conducted more island encirclement patrols near Taiwan, its military said on Tuesday, after a senior Chinese diplomat threatened that China would invade the self-ruled island if any U.S. warships made port visits there. China considers Taiwan to be a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. Numerous Chinese fighter jets, bombers and surveillance aircraft conducted routine and planned distant sea patrols on Monday to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke said on the military branch s microblog. H-6K bombers, Su-30 and J-11 fighter jets, and surveillance, alert and refueling aircraft flew over the Miyako Strait in Japan s south and the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines to test real combat capabilities , Shen said. Taiwan Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan said in a statement they had dispatched aircraft and ships to monitor the activity of the Chinese military and that the drills were not unusual and people should not be alarmed. China has conducted numerous similar patrols near Taiwan this year, saying such practices have been normalized as it presses ahead with a military modernization program that includes building aircraft carriers and stealth fighters to give it the ability to project power far from its shores. Beijing regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States. Taiwan is well armed, mostly with U.S. weaponry, but has been pressing Washington to sell it more high-tech equipment to better deter China. In September, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year, which authorizes mutual visits by navy vessels between Taiwan and the United States. That prompted a senior U.S.-based Chinese diplomat to say last week that China would invade Taiwan the instant any U.S. navy vessel visited Taiwan. China suspects Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, wants to declare the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea's Moon, China's Xi to talk North Korea, trade in Beijing summit;SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - Curbing North Korea s nuclear ambitions will top South Korean President Moon Jae-in s agenda in Beijing during a visit this week aimed at breaking the ice after a furious row over Seoul s deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system. While both South Korea and China share the goal of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and stop testing increasingly sophisticated long-range missiles, the two have not seen eye-to-eye on how to achieve this. China has been particularly angered at the deployment of U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea, saying its powerful radar can see far into China and will do nothing to ease tension with North Korea. At his third meeting this year with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday in Beijing, Moon is expected to reaffirm South Korea s agreement with China in late October that they would normalise exchanges and move past the dispute over THAAD, which froze trade and business exchanges between the two. The THAAD disagreement had dented South Korea s economic growth, especially its tourism industry, as group tours from China came to a halt while charter flights from South Korea were cancelled. While China still objects to THAAD, it has said it understands South Korea s decision to deploy it. In an interview with Chinese state television shown late on Monday, Moon said THAAD s presence was inevitable due to the looming North Korean threat but assured it would not be used against China. South Korea will be extremely careful from here on out that the THAAD system is not invasive of China s security. South Korea has received promises from the United States multiple times regarding this, Moon said. Joint efforts by China and South Korea could have good results if they work together to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, he added. North Korea has shown little sign it wants to engage in formal talks, with its state media citing leader Kim Jong Un as saying on Tuesday North Korea should develop and manufacture more diverse weapons to completely overpower the enemy . Kim was addressing a rare munitions conference on Monday to laud the North s latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). North Korea last month test-launched what it called its most advanced ICBM in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation as it presses on with its mission to create a nuclear-tipped missile that can hit the United States. Speaking over the weekend, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Moon had chosen to have friendly cooperation with China, and China was willing to work with South Korea to bring peace and stability to the Korean peninsula. During his first visit to China since taking office in May this year, Moon is expected to get bilateral economic exchanges back on track. According to South Korean media, Moon will be accompanied by the biggest business entourage ever with more than 220 businesses taking part in the four-day visit. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mugabe flies to Singapore, first trip since ouster;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s former president Robert Mugabe has left the country for medical checks in Singapore, his first foreign travel since the army forced him from office last month, a state security official said on Tuesday. The 93-year-old, who ruled the southern African nation for 37 years, resigned after the army and his ruling ZANU-PF party turned against him when it became clear that his 52-year-old wife, Grace, was being groomed as his successor. Until recently the world s oldest head of state, Mugabe had a reputation for extensive and expensive international travel, including regular medical trips to Singapore - a source of public anger among his impoverished citizens. He left Harare with Grace and aides on Monday evening, the official said. He is expected to make a stop-over in Malaysia, where his daughter, Bona, is expecting a second child. He has gone for a routine medical trip to Singapore, said the official, who has organized Mugabe s security protection but who is not authorized to speak to the media. He was due for a check-up but events of the last few weeks made it impossible for him to travel. The trip means Mugabe will not be in Zimbabwe when ZANU-PF endorses President Emmerson Mnangagwa as its leader and presidential candidate for next year s elections during a one-day special congress on Friday. The security official would not say how Mugabe was traveling although the privately owned NewsDay newspaper said he was on a state-owned Air Zimbabwe plane. Mugabe was granted immunity from prosecution and assured of his safety under his resignation deal, a source of frustration to many Zimbabweans who accused him of looting state coffers and destroying the economy during his time in power. Another government official told Reuters last month Mugabe had been due to travel to Singapore on Nov. 16 but was unable to leave because the military had confined him to his private home the previous day. George Charamba, a senior information ministry official, declined to comment. Under Zimbabwe s Presidential Pension and Retirement Benefits Act, a former head of state is entitled to perks including limited foreign travel and medical insurance. These are very standard features of a retired president, another government official said, trying to head off any controversy. You are making a storm out of nothing. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai PM says no trade with North Korea, ahead of U.S. envoy's visit;BANGKOK (Reuters) - No trade takes place between Thailand and North Korea, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Tuesday, ahead of an expected visit by a U.S. envoy seeking to step up pressure on North Korea over its weapons programs. The United States has been urging Southeast Asian countries to do more to cut funding streams for North Korea as tension mounts over its development of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them as far as the United States. Thailand guarantees ... that we have abided by the United Nations resolutions, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters at his official Government House offices. There have been reports about North Korean boats in our waters ... I prohibited them a long time ago. There is no trade ... there is no commerce, he said. Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, is due in Bangkok this week to discuss stepping up pressure on North Korea which has been pressing ahead with its weapons tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions. During a visit to Bangkok in August, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed Thailand, the United States oldest ally in Asia, for more action on North Korea. At the time, the United States said it believed North Korean companies were active in Thailand and said it was encouraging the Thailand to close them. Following Tillerson s visit, Thailand s foreign ministry said trade with North Korea had dropped by as much as 94 percent over the previous year. It did not give any more detail. North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile late last month. The U.N. Security Council is due to hold a ministerial meeting on North Korea s nuclear and missiles programs on Friday. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll from fighting in South Sudan's Great Lakes rises to 170;JUBA (Reuters) - The death toll from inter-clan fighting in South Sudan s Great Lakes region last week - a new source of violence in a country devastated by a four-year civil war - has reached at least 170, officials said on Tuesday. The clashes in the province s Malek county broke out after a group of young men from the Ruop ethnic group attacked rival youth from the Pakam group on Wednesday and Thursday. Revenge attacks have since taken place. Dharuai Mabor Teny, a member of parliament from the region, updated an earlier death toll of 45. Right now, from both sides, we have 170 plus people who lost their lives. 342 houses have been burnt and almost 1,800 people displaced, Teny told Reuters. The violence prompted the government to declare a three-month state of emergency in the region and surrounding areas on Monday. The military has also been ordered to deploy troops to quell the unrest. Shadrack Bol Maachok, the regional government s spokesman, said the widespread availability of arms complicated efforts to control the conflict. Those arms in the hands of the civilians are going to be taken away and heavy forces are going to be brought here, he told Reuters. The UN mission in South Sudan UNMISS said its troops were helping remove roadblocks mounted by the clashing groups in a bid to open up routes for movement and trade. South Sudan was plunged into war in 2013 after a political disagreement between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president Riek Machar escalated into a military confrontation. The fighting has killed tens of thousands, uprooted about a quarter of the population of 12 million people and left its small, oil-dependent economy moribund. Violence between rival communities is common in parts of South Sudan, often triggered by quarrels over scarce grazing land and cultural and political grievance ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan air force drills with U.S. bombers, stealth fighters near Korean peninsula;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese F-15 fighters on Tuesday held drills with U.S. B1-B bombers, F-35 stealth aircraft and F-18 multirole combat jets above the East China Sea, south of the Korean peninsula, Japan s Air Self Defence Force (ASDF) said. The exercise was the largest in a series aimed at pressuring North Korea following its ballistic missile tests. The latest launch, on Nov. 29, featured a new missile type the North said could hit targets in the United States, such as Washington D.C. The drill was meant to bolster joint operations and raise combat skills, the ASDF said in a statement. Two U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flew from Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam, joined by six F-35s four F-18s and a tanker aircraft from U.S. bases in Japan. The Japanese air force dispatched four F-15 jet fighters and a patrol aircraft. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Prominent Australian opposition lawmaker quits over claims of China links;SYDNEY (Reuters) - A prominent Australian opposition senator, Sam Dastyari, said on Tuesday he would resign from parliament after a series of allegations emerged about his links with Chinese-aligned interests in Australia. Relations between Australia and China have become strained since Australia announced last week it would ban foreign political donations as part of a crackdown aimed at preventing external influence in domestic politics. In announcing the ban, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull specifically singled out China, citing disturbing reports about Chinese influence . China hit back, with the ruling Communist Party s official People s Daily describing media reports about its interference as racist and paranoid . Dastyari, widely viewed as a rising star of the center-left Labor opposition party, has been under fire since domestic media reported he had sought to encourage the party s deputy leader not to meet a Chinese pro-democracy activist opposed to Beijing s rule in Hong Kong in 2015. Today, after much reflection, I ve decided that the best service I can render to the federal parliamentary Labor Party is to not return to the Senate in 2018, Dastyari told reporters in Sydney. Asked about Dastyari s resignation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said it was an internal affair for Australia and China did not comment on other countries affairs. The latest allegations came just days after Turnbull on Monday told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Dastyari had warned Chinese political donor Huang Xiangmo that his telephone might be tapped. Dastyari had already quit some senior Labor positions after a tape surfaced of him appearing to endorse China s contentious expansion in disputed areas of the South China Sea, against his party s platform. The tape showed him standing next to Huang. Turnbull accused the Labor Party of failing to put Australia first , rhetoric that analysts said could widen divisions between Canberra and Beijing. The row has erupted and it has claimed a political scalp, said Euan Graham, director, international security program at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank. China could retaliate through non-official sanctions such as reduced tourist numbers or through buying of goods elsewhere. China, which is easily Australia s biggest trading partner, bought A$93 billion ($70 billion) worth of Australian goods and services last year. But growing trade ties are only one side of a delicate balancing act for Australia, whose unshakeable security relationship with the United States has limited how cosy it gets with China. The recent political focus on Dastyari s China links has been a welcome distraction for Turnbull, who is suffering a slump in popularity in a country where three prime ministers have been ousted by their own parties since 2010. The fragility of his center-right government will be tested on Saturday when a by-election in the blue-ribbon conservative constituency of Bennelong in Sydney could see Turnbull again lose his majority in parliament, should Labour win. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia suspends diplomatic presence in Yemen, moves envoy to Riyadh: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has suspended its diplomatic presence in Yemen and all its staff have left the country due to the situation in the capital Sanaa, the RIA news agency cited Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on Tuesday. The Russian ambassador to Yemen and some diplomatic staff will be working temporarily out of the Saudi capital Riyadh, the Interfax news agency cited the ministry as saying. Yemen s conflict, pitting the Houthi movement against a Saudi-led military alliance which backs a government based in the south, has unleashed what the United Nations calls the world s worst humanitarian crisis. A Russian plane evacuated embassy staff and some Russian nationals from Sanaa earlier on Tuesday, Saudi state news agency SPA said, citing the Saudi-led military coalition fighting against the Houthi movement that controls the Yemeni capital. The agency quoted an official source in the coalition as saying it had received a request for permission for a Russian plane to evacuate the personnel, and that the plane had left Sanaa airport. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Grassley expresses reservations on two Trump judge nominees;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate committee that handles judicial nominations on Tuesday raised concerns about two of President Donald Trump’s picks for lower court positions, citing controversial statements each has made. Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the influential judiciary committee, in comments first reported by CNN cast doubt on whether the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate will vote to confirm the two nominees. Grassley told CNN the White House should “reconsider” the nomination of Jeff Mateer for a district judgeship in Texas and “should not proceed” on the nomination of Brett Talley for a district court vacancy in Alabama. “Chairman Grassley has been concerned about statements made by nominees Mateer and Talley, and he’s conveyed those concerns to the White House,” say Taylor Foy, a Grassley spokesman. Grassley did not specify what statements he was referring to. But Talley was reported by online magazine Slate to have posted online sympathetic comments about the early history of white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, often known as the KKK. He also failed to disclose that his wife works in the White House Counsel’s office, which overseas judicial nominations. Mateer has run into trouble over speeches he made in 2015. In one, he referred to transgender children as being part of “Satan’s plans,” CNN reported. Talley’s nomination has already been approved by the committee, but Foy said the statements that troubled Grassley only became public after that vote on Nov 9. No action has been taken on Mateer’s nomination, and the Senate has not scheduled a vote on Talley. Trump has made significant progress in filling vacancies on the federal courts with conservative judges. So far the Senate has confirmed 16 of his nominees to district and appeals courts as well as his appointee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Gillibrand calls Trump Twitter post 'sexist smear';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand fired back at President Donald Trump on Tuesday and said she would not be silenced after he attacked her on Twitter for calling for an investigation into accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct against him. Six U.S. senators, including Gillibrand, have said Trump should resign. Trump lambasted Gillibrand on Twitter on Tuesday writing, “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.” Schumer is the Senate Democratic leader. Gillibrand, whose name has been floated as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, said she would not back down. “It was a sexist smear attempting to silence my voice, and I will not be silenced on this issue,” she told reporters at a news conference. Trump did not answer a reporter’s question at a White House event later on Tuesday when asked what he meant by the tweet. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, told that some people thought Trump’s tweet contained sexual innuendo, said, “Only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way ... it’s obviously talking about political partisan games that people often play and the broken system.” Sanders told a regular White House briefing that Trump had used similar language previously to refer to men of both major parties. Other Democratic lawmakers rallied behind Gillibrand, including U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, another possible 2020 presidential candidate. In a tweet directed at Trump, Warren wrote on Tuesday, “Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you’re picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump. Nevertheless, #shepersisted.” U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s attack on Gillibrand was “nasty, unbecoming of a president,” but he did not join her call for Trump to resign the presidency over sexual misconduct accusations. More than a dozen women have accused Trump, a New York-based real estate developer and former reality television star, of making unwanted sexual advances against them years before he entered politics. Trump, a Republican, has denied the allegations. Reuters has not independently verified the accusations against Trump. Interest in accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct came to the fore again on Monday when three women who had previously accused Trump of misconduct called on the U.S. Congress to investigate his behavior. On Tuesday, a fourth woman who had also previously made similar accusations backed their call for an investigation during an interview with NBC. Nearly 60 female Democratic U.S. lawmakers called for an investigation in a letter on Monday. By Tuesday, the group said many male colleagues had also joined on, bringing the number to more than 100 lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives. Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, responded to the group in a letter on Tuesday that said, “The specific allegations set forth in your letter constitute crimes,” both federal and state. Gowdy noted that congressional panels cannot prosecute crimes so he was forwarding the group’s letter to the Justice Department. He added that any charges not alleging crimes should go to the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over “allegations related to fitness for office and non-criminal matters.” Trump has called the accusations fabricated stories and he has said he did not know his accusers. On Monday, Gillibrand called the allegations credible and called on Trump to resign over them. The attention to sexual harassment accusations against Trump comes amid a wave of similar accusations against prominent men in Hollywood, the media and politics in recent months. Federal Election Commission records showed Trump gave $4,800 to Gillibrand’s Senate campaign in 2010, and that he donated $2,100 to her in 2007 while she was a member of the House of Representatives. Concerns over sexual impropriety have become a political issue the United States, leading to the resignations of two Democratic and one Republican lawmaker. Reuters has not independently verified accusations against them. The issue of sexual harassment has also become central to Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Alabama after accusations of misconduct were made against Republican candidate Roy Moore. The White House said on Monday that the women’s accusations against Trump were false and “totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts” and later promised to provide a list of those accounts to reporters. On Tuesday, the White house sent a list of three 2016 media reports, including a New York Post interview with a British man who disputed one of the accusers’ accounts of alleged groping and said he never saw it happen. It also included New York Daily News and CNN reports with two other former pageant participants supporting Trump. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Partial power-share can end German political dilemma, some in SPD say;BERLIN (Reuters) - Wary of renewing a coalition with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany s Social Democrats are instead contemplating a so-called cooperation arrangement that would see them agree on a minimal program but leave contested matters up for debate. With talks on a new government starting on Wednesday, the cooperation suggestion is seen by some in the party as an answer to the dilemma of a centre-left party that fears sharing power with conservatives blurs its identity in voters minds. Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz said he would lead the SPD into opposition after a disastrous showing in September s national election, but was forced to reconsider after Merkel s attempts at forming a three-way government collapsed, leaving Europe s economic powerhouse without a new government. But SPD members and lawmakers are reluctant to sign up for a simple repeat of the four-year Merkel-led grand coalition, after which voters rewarded the junior partner with its worst-ever post-war election result. In a paper seen by Reuters on Tuesday, lawmaker Matthias Miersch, leader of the SPD s parliamentary left caucus, suggested the two parties agree to cooperate on a minimal program while leaving other matters open. The idea, under which the SPD would contribute ministers to a Merkel-led cabinet, would allow the party to support Merkel s conservatives in areas where both parties were in agreement but leave other areas subject to ad hoc haggling between parliamentary parties. All options were discussed, said an SPD spokesman of an SPD parliamentary caucus meeting on Monday. No single model was settled on. Under Miersch s proposal, the two blocs would agree a common program in areas of broad agreement like house-building, a European investment program and climate policy. They would also agree which party provided which ministry. In some areas, including passing a budget and European and foreign affairs, the parties would agree always to seek a consensus, while in others they would agree to disagree, potentially seeking ad hoc majorities for their own measures from other parliamentary parties. The proposal could help win over party faithful, who must give their blessing to any SPD participation in a future government. But it is far from a done deal, with some of the SPD s own leadership believing early elections were better, party officials said. Merkel s own bloc has been clearer. I have no interest in half-agreements with the SPD, said Julia Kloeckner, vice-chair of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU). Either you want to govern or you don t. Having all the ministerial jobs but no full government responsibilty is cherry picking. You can t be a little bit pregnant, she tweeted. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lafarge paid 13 million euros to armed groups to keep operating in Syria: rights group;PARIS (Reuters) - French cement group Lafarge paid close to 13 million euros ($15.2 million) to armed groups including Islamic State militants to keep operating in Syria from 2011-2015, human rights lawyers said on Tuesday. They were speaking at a news conference on the course of French prosecutors preliminary inquiry into Lafarge s operations launched in June on suspicion of financing of a terrorist enterprise . The lawyers for rights group Sherpa said a large part of the money went directly or indirectly into the pockets of Islamic State and that payments lasted until well after the closure of Lafarge s Jalabiya plant in September 2014. They were citing a figure pinpointed by prosecutors examining Lafarge s activities in Syria, in the throes of civil war since 2011, and drawn from an internal report by U.S. law firm Baker and McKenzie for Lafarge. As part of the inquiry, the precise figure retained is 12,946,000 euros paid by Lafarge between 2011 and 2015 to terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Sherpa lawyer Marie Dose said. Lafarge became LafargeHolcim, the world s largest cement maker, in 2015 after a takeover by Swiss Holcim. Former LafargeHolcim CEO Eric Olsen resigned in April after the company admitted it had paid armed groups to keep a factory operating in Syria. His lawyer has said Olsen will appeal against being put under investigation. Sherpa and other human rights groups in France as well as the French Finance Ministry have filed suit against Lafarge. Sherpa wants the company to be placed under formal criminal investigation, like Olsen, and also accuses Lafarge of not cooperating with authorities and trying to hide important elements from the investigation. A LafargeHolcim spokeswoman on Tuesday rejected these accusations but would not comment on the 13-million-euro figure. LafargeHolcim fully cooperates with the justice (authorities). Thousands of documents have been given by the group to magistrates or seized during a search, she said. We strongly contest that the company is trying in any way to limit the right of its employees or former employees to defend themselves...or (limit) their capacity to cooperate in a judicial inquiry, she added. Being placed under formal investigation in France means that prosecutors believe they have serious or consistent evidence that could result in prosecution. It is a step toward a possible trial, though the investigation can still be dropped. Last Friday the Paris prosecutor also placed Olsen s predecessor as CEO, Bruno Lafont, and his ex-deputy for operations under formal investigation as part of the inquiry into Lafarge activities in Syria, the two men s lawyers said. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam prosecutes former state rubber firm chairman amid corruption crackdown;HANOI (Reuters) - A former chairman of state-run Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG) and four other officials from its units have been issued with prosecution and probation orders for alleged violations of state rules, Vietnamese police said on Tuesday. Communist Vietnam is in the middle of a sweeping corruption crackdown at state firms, banks and provinces, in a campaign that made global headlines this year when Germany accused the country of kidnapping a Vietnamese businessman in Berlin. Le Quang Thung, a former chairman of VRG, and four other officials including one current head accountant at VRG units were accused of deliberately acting against state regulations on economic management, police said on its website. Representatives from the company could not be reached for comment. Police said they are expanding investigations into alleged violations at VRG, two of its subsidiaries and related parties. Ho Chi Minh City-based VRG is the biggest state firm in the rubber industry. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU pushes to curb Africa migration more, still split on hosting refugees;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders will discuss how to further curb immigration from across the Mediterranean over dinner on Thursday, but are as divided as ever on how to take care of refugees who still make it to Europe. Their chairman, Donald Tusk, proposed creating a new financing tool in the bloc s next multi-year budget from 2021 to stem illegal migration , replacing the ad hoc calls for money that EU states have seen since arrivals peaked in 2015. Despite heavy criticism by human rights groups that it is aggravating the suffering of refugees and migrants on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the EU is sticking to its policy of providing various kinds of assistance to the governments and U.N. agencies in the Middle East and Africa in order to prevent people making the trek north. While implementing these plans in some places, notably the lawless Libya, is proving difficult, all EU states and institutions in Brussels agree on the approach. However, the question of how to handle refugees who have made it to the EU is as divisive now as it was two years ago. Italy, Greece and other frontline states on the Mediterranean, as well as the rich destination countries such as Germany, want all member states to be obliged to take in a set allocation of asylum-seekers. But several eastern ex-communist EU members reject mandatory quotas, saying accepting Muslim refugees would undermine their sovereignty and security, and the homogeneous makeup of their societies. They want to help instead with money, equipment and personnel for controlling the bloc s frontiers. The Commission is already suing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for failing to take in their allotment of asylum-seekers from the peak of the EU s migrant crisis in 2015. Recent proposals for future solutions go in opposite directions, giving little hope of a deal by the target date of June. The bloc s current chair Estonia suggested sticking to the obligatory scheme when immigration is extremely high, but adding some flexibility by legislating that the receiving and sending states must agree on any relocation. That plan has been quickly dismissed as a non-starter by diplomats from several EU states. The bloc s executive, the European Commission, proposed that the bloc approve compulsory and automatic relocation for times of mass immigration, but rely on voluntary help in normal circumstances. The European Parliament wants mandatory relocation at all times, regardless of migratory pressures. But now Tusk himself has also come out against quotas, telling EU leaders in a note that they had proven highly divisive and ineffective . The Commission s migration chief, Dimitris Avramopoulos, told a news conference on Tuesday that Tusk s paper was undermining one of the main pillars of the European project - the principle of solidarity . For now, immigration figures remain so low compared to the peak of 2015-2016 that the public pressure on EU leaders to come up with a quick fix has eased. That could yet change, however, with Italy s parliamentary election next spring, coinciding with the start of a new migration season. Germany, currently consumed with trying to form a new government, has long suggested that if no consensus can be reached, an asylum reform could be passed by majority vote - something that would inevitably deepen the divisions and mistrust between member states. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Albania plans ambitious road revamp, energy market;TIRANA (Reuters) - Albania will upgrade its road network with one billion euros from private capital over the next four years, and it plans to open an energy exchange in early 2019, an official said. Economic projections show businesses can build the roads first and be repaid over 12 years, Damian Gjiknuri, the infrastructure and energy minister, told Reuters on Tuesday. One of Europe s poorest countries, Albania has built highways to its major towns and ports, but clogged two-lane roads make up the rest of its system. Gjiknuri said the country wants to build high-speed roads of European standards linking areas with tourism or industrial potential, bringing closer its towns and its Balkan neighbors. The financing will come from the budget revenue under a normal scenario of economic growth. We do not see big risks affecting the normal growth of Albania, Gjiknuri said. These investment will be spread over time, up to 12 years for the payments to be made, but the infrastructure will be ready in three years, four at the most, he added. Albania s gross domestic product is forecast to grow around four percent in 2017. Its 2018 budget projects four percent growth in 2018 and a decline in public debt by 2.5 percentage points to 68.6 percent of GDP. Similar or higher growth rates are expected in the medium term. The International Monetary Fund has cautioned the government over the way it will account for the debt, spreading it over years rather than treating it as a lump sum at the time a contract is issued. The other alternative would be to wait until we have all the money, but that means stagnation, Gjiknuri said. Under the plan, businesses would build roads - those with a feasibility study would get a bonus - and pay the cost. The state would repay them in 10 to 12 years. Sitting between Montenegro and Greece, Albania hopes to build a Blue Highway, linking it to Croatia via Montenegro. A European Union grant is being used for a feasibility study. A net importer of energy, Albania has written a draft law to create an energy market. Parliament is expected to approve the bill this year or early in 2018. Gjiknuri said Nord Pool Consulting is now advising Albania establishing the market. Neighboring Kosovo and possibly a foreign company may join it. Our goal is to create a liquid private market in order to stimulate not just the trading but also the production of electrical power, Gjiknuri said. To be an optimist, I think it will start working early in 2019. That is our strategic objective, Gjiknuri said. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans propose to delay, pause Obamacare taxes;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Republicans proposed on Tuesday to delay or suspend several taxes under former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, including a tax on medical devices and the so-called “Cadillac” tax on generous health insurance plans. The move represents a new Republican attempt to roll back provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act widely known as Obamacare, after repeated failures by Congress’ majority party this year to repeal the law. Republicans in the House and Senate are also in the final stages of reconciling tax overhaul legislation, including a proposal to scrap Obamacare’s individual mandate, which imposes a tax penalty on Americans who do not obtain health insurance. A spokeswoman for the House Ways and Means Committee said the additional proposed healthcare tax rollbacks would not be part of the broader tax overhaul bill. Republicans could try to merge the healthcare tax proposals with a must-pass government funding bill that is expected to be passed by Dec. 22, when current funding runs out. But to succeed, Republicans in the Senate, who hold a slim majority of seats, would need an assist from Democrats to get past procedural hurdles. In a statement, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady announced five new Republican-sponsored bills to provide targeted relief from Obamacare taxes, saying he looked forward to “advancing legislation in the weeks ahead.” One proposed bill would retroactively eliminate Obamacare penalties for employers who did not offer health insurance to their employees over the last three years, as well as for next year. The bill would also delay for one year the Cadillac tax on high-cost employer-sponsored insurance, which is otherwise scheduled to go into effect in 2020. Labor unions oppose this tax because their members often receive more generous healthcare plans, and they fear it would increase their costs. Another bill would suspend for five years the tax on medical devices, such as pacemakers and artificial hips. It was first imposed in January 2013 as a funding mechanism for Obamacare, a law that has brought medical coverage to millions of previously uninsured Americans. The medical device tax has powerful opponents in both parties and manufacturers have lobbied heavily against it. Other proposals in the package would suspend a tax on health insurers for two years, and provide two years of relief from a tax on over-the-counter medications. ;politicsNews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran upholds death sentence for Iranian academic with Swedish residency;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran s Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence against an Iranian academic with Swedish residency convicted of espionage, Amnesty International and his family said on Tuesday. Ahmadreza Djalali, a doctor and lecturer at the Karolinska Institute, a Stockholm medical university, was accused of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists. Djalali was arrested in Iran in April 2016 and later convicted of espionage. He denied the charges, Amnesty said. At least four scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said was a program of assassinations meant to sabotage its efforts to develop nuclear energy. Western powers and Israel said Iran aimed to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran denied this. The Islamic Republic hanged a man in 2012 over the killings, saying he had links to Israel. Djalali s lawyers were told on Saturday that the Supreme Court had considered his case and upheld his Oct. 24 sentence in a secret process without allowing them to file defense submissions, London-based Amnesty said. This is not only a shocking assault on the right to a fair trial but is also in utter disregard for Ahmadreza Djalali s right to life, Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement. Vida Mehrannia, Djalali s wife, said the whole family were in shock at the decision and that they had informed the Swedish government about the latest development in the case. The judicial process was not fair and legal from the beginning. None of the court sessions was held in public and the interrogators imposed their decision on the judges, she told Reuters by telephone from Stockholm. The Iranian judiciary could not be reached for comment. Amnesty said in October that the court verdict against Djalali stated he had worked with the Israeli government which then helped him obtain a Swedish residency permit. Djalali was on a business trip to Iran when he was arrested and sent to Evin prison. He was held in solitary confinement for three months of his detention and tortured, Amnesty said. It said Djalali wrote a letter inside Evin last August stating he was being held for refusing to spy for Iran. Sweden condemned the sentence in October and said it had raised the matter with Iranian envoys in Stockholm and Tehran. Seventy-five Nobel prize laureates petitioned Iranian authorities last month to release Djalali so he could continue his scholarly work for the benefit of mankind . They said Djalali has suggested it was his refusal to work for Iranian intelligence services that led to this unfair, flawed trial . The United Nations and international human rights organizations regularly list Iran as a country with one of the world s highest execution rates. Rights groups have criticized Iran for its regular resort to capital punishment. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's new PM voices backing for nuclear, green energy in future;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will remain reliant on coal for power generation for now but in future should consider turning to nuclear energy and renewable sources, the new prime minister said on Tuesday in his first policy speech. Mateusz Morawiecki, a Western-educated former banker fluent in German and English, was sworn in on Monday, replacing Beata Szydlo, a coalminer s daughter, who had promised to keep mining jobs when the industry struggled to survive in 2015. Morawiecki s did not signal a major departure for now from the pro-coal policies of his ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), but his comments did suggest the government could give a push to a much-delayed plan to build Poland s first nuclear power plant. Today coal is the basis of our energy industry and we cannot and do not want to give it up, Morawiecki said. For our future generations, I would also like alternative energy sources to develop freely in Poland. Our task is to guarantee Poland the energy independence at low carbon emissions and this is why we look favorably at nuclear energy, he said. He also said the nation should consider renewable power sources. A project to build a nuclear power plant was announced in 2009, but has been hit by several delays, with financing posing one of the main obstacles. Energy Minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski has been pushing to build the nuclear plant but needs cabinet approval for a renewed push. Morawiecki may have given those plans a boost. PiS has long championed Poland s use of coal, a fuel that is falling out of favor in a global push to cut greenhouse gases. But global pressures to shift away from coal and Poland s shrinking deposits are encouraging the country to consider its future plans for power generation, analysts say. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU readies 'David Davis-proof' Brexit summit;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union plays down talk by Britain s Brexit minister that last week s interim accord is not binding and will launch new talks on Friday that are David Davis-proof , a senior EU official said. The comment on Tuesday followed Brexit Secretary Davis s weekend remark that outline divorce terms were more a statement of intent than legally binding. The EU official told reporters that EU leaders meeting on Friday will ram home in guidelines to their negotiator that Britain must honor its agreements so far if it wants to discuss the future free trade treaty it wants. Davis himself pledged to convert last Friday s deal into legal text as soon as possible after he spoke to the European Parliament s Brexit point man. Guy Verhofstadt branded Davis s earlier comment unhelpful and said that what the EU executive calls a gentleman s agreement must be made legal. British and EU officials said that would mean agreeing the formal withdrawal treaty within the coming year so that it can be ratified by their parliaments before Brexit in March 2019. Davis s EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, said he aimed in the new year to present a draft of a withdrawal treaty that would reflect the accords struck with Prime Minister Theresa May last week on settling financial obligations, the rights of expatriate citizens and ensuring no hard EU border with Northern Ireland. Adding to the debate over how far London is bound by May s deal, Barnier insisted there should be no backtracking if London is to have the trade negotiations it so much wants. That is spelled out in legal language in the negotiating guidelines which leaders are expected to approve on Friday after May has left the summit: Negotiations in the second phase can only progress as long as all commitments undertaken during the first phase are respected in full and translated faithfully into legal terms as quickly as possible, the draft guidelines read. That, the senior EU official said, made clear there could be no going back, as Davis had implied might be possible: The guidelines are David Davis-proof, the official said. Guidelines were sent by summit chair Donald Tusk to the 27 other national leaders on Friday. They were little changed when their aides met on Monday to prepare the meeting, principally to spell out more clearly the timing of the next steps in the process and to emphasize continuing obligations on London. An intention to start negotiating a transition period from Brexit to a future trade pact early in 2018 now includes a plan to be able to launch talks in January. The new draft makes clearer that talks on what happens after transition will start only after further guidelines are agreed in March. Tusk, in his formal letter on Tuesday inviting leaders to the summit, warned there was no time to lose and highlighted a gnawing concern in Brussels that keeping divergent interests among the 27 in check may be much harder when it comes to a free trade treaty than it has been in settling Britain s divorce. This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key, Tusk wrote. And the experience so far has shown that unity is a sine qua non of an orderly Brexit. EU officials expect relatively straightforward talks on the transition period, given British desire for a quick deal and EU insistence that it be as simple as possible;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Fierce and formidable' Dlamini-Zuma eyes South Africa's presidency;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is a fierce campaigner against racial inequality whose hostility to big business has rattled investors in South Africa. She is also one of two front runners to be the country s next president. The 68-year-old is vying to succeed her ex-husband, President Jacob Zuma, as leader of the ruling African National Congress at a party vote this weekend, an outcome that would make her favourite for the presidency after a parliamentary election due in 2019. A medical doctor and former chair of the Commission of the African Union, a pan-continental grouping, Dlamini-Zuma has pledged during her campaign to radically tackle the racial inequality that persists in South Africa 23 years after the end of white minority rule. Backers of her main rival, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, say she is peddling populist rhetoric and would rule in the mould of her former husband, whose decade in power has been plagued by corruption scandals. Dlamini-Zuma declined to be interviewed for this story. The choice between Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa will influence South Africa s economic policy trajectory, as well the country s role in Africa and beyond. Investors are worried by Dlamini-Zuma s hostility towards international companies, which she says form part of a white monopoly capital cabal dominating South Africa s wealth. A Dlamini-Zuma victory would signal a sharp rhetorical shift towards more leftist economic policy, said John Ashbourne, an Africa-focused economist at Capital Economics. A further credit ratings downgrade would be almost inevitable. Yet Dlamini-Zuma s supporters point to a commitment to changing the lives of South Africa s black majority. Lynne Jones, a psychiatrist and author who lived with Dlamini-Zuma when they were students together in the English city of Bristol in the 1970s, says her determination to fight injustice is rooted in her own personal story. Jones remembers a day four decades ago when Dlamini-Zuma lay on her bed and wept after being forced to miss her brother s funeral because the apartheid-era security services had hounded her out of South Africa. She was fiercely intelligent and determined, said Jones. Here was someone who had put their whole life on the line and given up home and family for what they believed. It was eye-opening. The race between Ramaphosa, a unionist-turned-millionaire businessman, and Dlamini-Zuma is too close to call, political analysts say. Her campaign team told Reuters in written comments it was confident she would be elected ANC leader. Ramaphosa, who is popular among swathes of the ANC disillusioned with Zuma, is promising to end corruption, boost a flatlining economy and deliver jobs to the poor in a country where more than a quarter of the population is unemployed. Dlamini-Zuma, by contrast, is an African nationalist and has the support of the influential ANC youth and women s leagues, which both tend to support socialist policies. Known for her fierce temper and hostility towards the West, she was described in one 2001 U.S. diplomatic cable on WikiLeaks as a truculent and petulant foreign minister . Another cable to Washington suggested she could be charming. Belying her reputation as fierce and formidable, the Minister was soft spoken and smiling in this meeting - articulate but gentle, candid but warm, Donald Gips, then U.S. ambassador to South Africa, wrote in 2010. The most common criticism of Dlamini-Zuma is that she is beholden to Zuma and his powerful patronage network. Zuma has publicly endorsed her. She is bold and you can t fool her. She is someone you can trust, Zuma told a rally recently. The couple met in Swaziland in the 1980s, when they were both in the ANC underground. They were married for more than a decade and have four children together. In a rare interview last month, Dlamini-Zuma challenged her opponents to find any evidence of corruption in her long political career. I don t loot government coffers. I ve never done so, and I will not do so, she told ANN7 television. But for some senior figures in the ANC, she has not done enough to distance herself from the corruption scandals that have dogged President Zuma. She has not said anything on state capture , ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told Reuters, using a South African term to describe private interests unduly controlling government funds. Dlamini-Zuma says accusations that she is piggy-backing off Zuma are insulting given her career, first as a doctor to ANC leaders fighting apartheid and then as a cabinet minister under every South African president since 1994. As health minister in Nelson Mandela s cabinet, she laid the foundations for free public healthcare for the poor, took a hard line on smoking and made medicines more accessible. As foreign minister she fostered friendships with African countries and emerging economies like China, even when this angered the West. But she also made errors of judgment. In 1996, Dlamini-Zuma awarded a contract for more than $3 million to a friend for a play, Sarafina II, to raise awareness about AIDS and was later found to have ignored tender rules. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said that paled in comparison to recent government malpractice. He said: 14 million rand in the Sarafina scandal now seems like peanuts when compared with the looting under Zuma. (For a graphic on 'ANC election in South Africa' click here) (For a graphic on 'South African economy' click here) ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Le Drian says 'no' to Iran Mediterranean axis;PARIS (Reuters) - France s foreign minister criticized Iran s regional ambitions, saying Paris could not accept Tehran s military expansion to the Mediterranean, and accused Russia of failing to use its influence to push U.N.-led Syrian peace talks and curb violence. Speaking in an interview with France 2 television to be broadcast later on Tuesday as part of a documentary on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Jean-Yves Le Drian said it was time for Moscow and Tehran to work with the U.N. Security Council to end the six-year-old conflict in Syria. The Iranian presence and the desire to make an axis from the Mediterranean to Tehran, (I say) no! Le Drian said in the interview. There is a Syria that needs to exist. Many Arab leaders argue that by fighting Islamic State and supporting Assad militarily, Iran is projecting its power across Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, creating an arc of regional influence stretching from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean. Tensions between Iran and France have increased in recent weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron said that Tehran should be less aggressive in the region and clarify its ballistic missile program. Le Drian also denounced Tehran s hegemonic temptations during a visit to Saudi Arabia last month. Iran s foreign minister on Monday urged European countries not to be influenced by U.S. President Donald Trump s confrontational policy towards Tehran. Under Macron s instruction, Le Drian has sought not take sides in the Middle East and attempted to improve ties with Russia after the previous French administration s relationship with Moscow suffered especially over Syria, where Russia and Iran are staunch allies of Assad. In Syria Iran brings its militias, supports (heavily-armed Lebanese Shi ite group) Hezbollah, Le Drian said. Syria must become a sovereign state again and that means (a country) independent of the pressure and presence of other countries. With Assad by his side Russian President Vladimir Putin flew into Syria on Monday and ordered a significant part of Moscow s military contingent there to start withdrawing. The two met last week in the Russian city of Sochi. If you can summon Assad to Sochi, you can also tell him to stop (bombing) and allow aid to everyone, he said referring to the besieged rebel-held region of Eastern Ghouta. Paris has nuanced its approach to U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva, saying that Assad s departure from power should not be a pre-condition for negotiations. However, Le Drian made it clear that Russia was not doing enough. The main actors in this affair are Russia and Iran. They need to use their weight to lead a political solution with the other members of the Security Council, Le Drian said, repeating that Assad was not the solution. He is barbaric, but he is there, so we have to a start the process that leads to a (new) constitution and elections under the U.N. he said. I struggle to imagine that populations who have suffered so much consider him part of the solution. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO chief Stoltenberg wins extended term to late 2020;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO allies extended Jens Stoltenberg s term as secretary-general of the Western military alliance until late 2020 on Tuesday, giving the former Norwegian prime minister a rare six-year mandate in the top job. Stoltenberg, who took up the post on Oct. 1 2014, will now step down two years later than planned on Sept. 30 2020, after strong support from Germany and the United States, NATO s dominant power, which has welcomed his efforts to increase defense spending in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May both congratulated Stoltenberg on Tuesday. If he completes his term as the alliance s top civilian, Stoltenberg would be the first NATO chief to serve a six-year term since Germany s Manfred Worner, who died in office in 1994. The post has always gone to a European and at a time when the Trump administration is at odds with many of its allies on a host of foreign policy issues, Stoltenberg is seen by many as a skilful operator and consensus-builder. Stoltenberg, 58, who visited Donald Trump at the White House in April and hosted the U.S. president in Brussels in May, said transatlantic ties would be a priority for the remainder of his term. My main task is to maintain that unity, he told reporters, referring to relations between North America and Europe. Stoltenberg has also struck a more conciliatory tone towards Moscow than his Danish predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, even as he has overseen NATO s biggest military build-up since the end of the Cold War, prompted by Russia s 2014 seizure of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. I believe in dialogue with Russia but I am also here to ensure security in Europe, he said. NATO, seen by some as a Cold War relic until the Crimea annexation, has gained new relevance as the West confronts a resurgent Russia, state-sponsored computer hackers, security threats on its borders and militant attacks on European cities. Stoltenberg has also thrown his weight behind diplomatic efforts to contain the North Korea nuclear crisis, visiting U.S. allies Japan and South Korea in October. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Key players in South Africa's ANC leadership race;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress elects a new party leader to succeed President Jacob Zuma at a conference starting on Saturday. The winner will be favorite to become president of the country after a 2019 national election. Below are the main ANC leadership hopefuls. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa are the two front runners. NKOSAZANA DLAMINI-ZUMA The former minister and chairwoman of the African Union Commission has served in the cabinets of every South African president in the post-apartheid era. Dlamini-Zuma was married to President Zuma for over a decade and has four children with him. She is backed by the ANC s influential women s and youth leagues, as well as by Zuma and provincial party leaders close to him. For a profile of Dlamini-Zuma, see. The deputy president and former trade union leader is one of South Africa s richest people. Ramaphosa played an important role in the negotiations to end apartheid and in the drafting of South Africa s progressive 1996 constitution. He is supported by a diverse group of labor unions, communists and ANC members disillusioned with Zuma. For a profile of Ramaphosa, see. The ANC s treasurer general is one of the ruling party s top six senior leaders. A medical doctor by training, Mkhize also served as a party boss in the KwaZulu-Natal province, from where Zuma and Dlamini-Zuma hail. Some analysts see Mkhize as a compromise candidate for ANC leader who could reconcile the opposing factions supporting Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa. For a Reuters interview with Mkhize, see:. The human settlements minister is the daughter of anti-apartheid activist Walter Sisulu, a close friend of Nelson Mandela. Sisulu says Ramaphosa approached her to be his running mate but she turned down the offer. The minister in the presidency has also held senior cabinet positions including public enterprises minister. He served in underground structures of the ANC during white minority rule and was imprisoned on Robben Island, where the apartheid government kept political prisoners. The former premier of the Mpumalanga province has also worked as the ANC s treasurer general. Phosa has demanded that nominations for ANC leader in Mpumalanga be re-run, as he says he has proof that party members were told how to vote. Mpumalanga s current premier is a Zuma loyalist, David Mabuza, who is viewed by some as a kingmaker in the ANC race. The speaker of South Africa s lower house of parliament also briefly served as deputy president. She has said she has held talks with other leadership hopefuls to discuss the possibility of working together. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May nudges UK towards a friendly EU divorce;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May s divorce deal with the European Union is the strongest signal since the shock 2016 Brexit referendum that the United Kingdom is heading towards an orderly departure that preserves very close trade ties. May rushed to Brussels before dawn on Friday to secure the European Commission s agreement that sufficient progress had been made to begin talks about trade and a two-year Brexit transition period that will start when Britain leaves the EU on March 29, 2019. Below are some scenarios for Brexit. An orderly Brexit, with a clear transition and the hope of a trade deal to keep the UK and EU economies as close as possible, would cheer investors and business chiefs. Friday s deal appeared to put Britain on course for an orderly Brexit. May largely conceded to the EU on the structure, timetable and substance of the negotiations. At least for now, she has convinced her divided party and the Northern Irish lawmakers who prop up her minority government that she can deliver a deal that is acceptable to them. If all sides stay happy enough to keep the talks on track May is aiming to strike a transition deal early in 2018 and a free trade deal to be signed shortly after exit day. The EU says any transition deal in the next few months will be interim in the sense that nothing is definite until the Withdrawal Treaty is ratified in 2019. The EU thinks a free trade deal would be negotiated during the transition. May is committed to the UK leaving the single market and customs union. But she agreed with the EU that the rules between Northern Ireland and Ireland would stay if they could not work out another way to avoid a hard border on the island. That indicates that the UK will keep significant alignment with EU rules, at least for the first few years after the transition. Brexit negotiator David Davis has said his preferred deal would be similar to Canada s CETA deal with the EU but Canada plus plus plus .[L8N1NL26Q] May has said she wants a bespoke British deal. The Canadian deal focuses on access to goods but services is more important for Britain as it accounts for about 4/5 of the economy. Brexit does look more benign if you think there will be a transition and a trade deal, said Mark Essex, director of Brexit at KPMG. At the very least, Canada, or CETA, plus banking seems a smart move. Such a benign Brexit assumes that May can stay in power long enough to deliver one. The talks came close to collapse in Brussels on Dec. 4 when the Northern Irish party which props up May s government vetoed a draft deal already agreed with Ireland. Many companies fear that events in either Britain or the EU could still derail a final deal. Cliff edge Brexit is still a possibility, said Essex After what we saw in Brussels last week, you have to have a lot of faith to assume it will be plain sailing all the way to next March. The shock Brexit vote on June 23 2016 thrust Britain into its deepest political crisis since the Suez crisis of 1956. May, who pitched her premiership as a way to calm the turmoil, increased uncertainty when she lost her party its majority in a June snap election which strengthened Jeremy Corbyn s position as opposition Labour Party leader. With her authority weakened and her minority government dependent on 10 lawmakers from the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, May has to constantly gauge how far she can bring her party and her allies with her on Brexit. May is like fatigued metal: she is going to break but you just don t know when the collapse will come, said one former British diplomat. The Conservatives will never allow her to fight another general election so the question is whether she lasts until Brexit, if we do indeed (do) Brexit. Foreign diplomats in London are already trying to figure out which candidates could win the top job when she is gone. So far May s survival has been dependent on the absence of a clear successor and fear in her party that if she is toppled then opposition leader Corbyn could win a national election. Betting markets indicate a 29 percent probability of a UK election in 2018. Corbyn has the lowest odds on being the next prime minister after May, followed by Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. A YouGov poll showed May s Conservatives were ahead of Labour in the first time since the June election. A Labour government is now seen as such a real possibility that some major financial services companies are trying to gauge just how radical Corbyn, a lifelong socialist, and his finance chief, John McDonnell, will be. While Labour s official policy is to leave the EU, Corbyn has barely detailed the party s Brexit position. Many of his lawmakers want to stay in the EU but many traditional Labour supporters voted to leave. Labour s Brexit chief Keir Starmer has said Britain should keep the closest possible trading ties with the EU. Brexit doesn t happen: The $2.6 trillion economy stalls, prompting calls for a second EU referendum that - if held during a deep recession - could produce a vote to remain in the EU. Ever since the referendum, Brexit opponents - from French President Emmanuel Macron and former British prime minister Tony Blair to billionaire investor George Soros - have suggested Britain could change its mind and avoid what they say will be disastrous economic consequences. Reversing Brexit assumes the fall of May, who triggered Article 50 of the treaty on March 29. The legalities of reversing Brexit are unclear as the EU s treaties do not cover such an eventuality. John Kerr, a former British ambassador to the EU, who drafted Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty said Britain could unilaterally scrap its divorce plans. In Brussels, there is no single view on how a reverse Brexit might work. While the EU would be likely to welcome a Brexit reversal, it might require the agreement of all 27 other members and some of Britain s special favors, such as the rebate on its payments could come under attack. Supporters of Brexit have repeatedly said that any attempt to have another referendum, or to undermine Brexit, would catapult the world s sixth largest economy into crisis. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Make EU gentleman's agreement with Britain binding: EU lawmakers;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Parliament will insist on quickly making the deal reached between the European Union and Britain on divorce terms legally binding, worried London may not honor a gentleman s agreement, the parliament s chief Brexit coordinator said. The EU and Britain, which is will leave the EU in March 2019, agreed last Friday on the divorce terms in three key areas a financial settlement, citizens rights and how to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. The European Commission said on Monday the deal was not legally binding yet, but it regarded it as a deal between gentlemen with the clear understanding that it is fully backed and endorsed by the UK government . But Britain s Brexit minister David Davis said on Sunday that the deal, which allows both sides to start talks on a future trade agreement crucial for Britain, was more of a statement of intent than a legally binding measure. This caused concern among EU officials that London may want to go back on the agreement. Remarks by David Davis that Phase One deal last week not binding were unhelpful and undermines trust. European Parliament text will now reflect this and insist agreement translated into legal text as soon as possible, Guy Verhofstadt, who leads the European Parliament Brexit coordination team, tweeted. He said that after Davis s unacceptable remarks , the European Parliament will ask EU leaders meeting on Brexit on Friday to formally make negotiations on a future trade agreement with London conditional on including the agreement so far in full in the treaty on Britain leaving the EU. A draft text which leaders are set to adopt on Friday already states that negotiations in the second phase can only progress as long as all commitments undertaken during the first phase are respected in full and translated faithfully in legal terms as quickly as possible . ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two dead in Gaza blast, Israeli military denies it carried out an attack;GAZA (Reuters) - Two Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants riding on a motorcycle in Gaza were killed in an explosion on Tuesday which the group implied was caused by an accidental detonation during preparations for an attack. Israel s military denied accounts by local residents that the militants were killed in an air strike. Violence along the Israel-Gaza border has flared since U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition last week of Jerusalem as Israel s capital and the Israeli military s demolition on Sunday of a cross-border tunnel it said was dug by Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the small coastal enclave. On Monday, Israel s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted a rocket fired by militants in Gaza. Shortly afterward, Israel responded with tank fire and air strikes targeting positions of Hamas. In a statement after Tuesday s explosion, Islamic Jihad said: We mourn the men - martyrs of preparation . The group usually employs the term to refer to casualties caused by the accidental detonation of weapons or explosives used in attacks against Israel. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Botswana court orders government to recognize transgender woman as female;GABORONE (Reuters) - A transgender woman has won a legal battle against Botswana s government to be recognized as female in a landmark victory for the rights of the lesbian, gay and transgender community. A conservative southern African nation of 2 million people, Botswana has been reluctant to fully acknowledge the rights of the LGBT community. Tshepo Ricki Kgositau, the executive director of South African-based Gender Dynamix, an organization that advocates for the human rights of transgender and gender-variant people, had sued Botswana for refusing to change the gender on her identity document from male to female. On Tuesday, Justice Leatile Dambe ordered that Kgositau s gender be changed to female in the national registry within seven days. The director of the National Registration is ordered to issue the applicant with a new Identity Card identifying her as a female within 21 days of this court order, Dambe ordered. In court papers, Kgositau argued that she had since an early age identified as a woman and that the different gender on her identity document was causing her emotional distress and increased her vulnerability to abuse and violence. The application included supporting evidence from her mother, siblings and relatives, as well as psychological and medical evidence to the effect that her innate gender identity is, and has since an early age, always been female and that her family has embraced her and loved her as a woman . In 2014, a judge overturned a government ban on a gay rights lobbying group, ruling that Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana be allowed to register and campaign for changes to legislation. However, it reiterated that it was still illegal to engage in homosexual acts. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's nearly man Ramaphosa may lead country at last;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The nearly man of South African politics, Cyril Ramaphosa, is at last in with a chance of becoming president after being overlooked for years. Ramaphosa s political abilities have been apparent for decades. Whenever Nelson Mandela needed a breakthrough in talks to end apartheid, he would turn to the then trade union leader with a reputation as a tenacious negotiator. Using skills honed in pay disputes with mining bosses, Ramaphosa steered those talks to a successful conclusion, allowing Mandela to sweep to power in 1994 as head of the African National Congress. Mandela wanted Ramaphosa to be his heir but was pressured into picking Thabo Mbeki by a group of ANC leaders who had fought apartheid from exile. It has taken more than two decades for Ramaphosa, now deputy president, to get another chance to run the country. The 65-year-old is one of the two favorites to become ANC leader at a party vote this weekend. Whoever wins the ANC race will probably be the country s next president because of the ruling party s electoral dominance. Ramaphosa s ambition for the presidency has been clear through his whole adult life. He was quite clearly wounded by his marginalization in the Mbeki period, said Anthony Butler, a politics professor who has written a biography of Ramaphosa. The choice between Ramaphosa and his main rival for the ANC s top job, former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, will help determine the pace of reform in South Africa and affect how the country gets on with with foreign powers. A trained lawyer with an easygoing manner, Ramaphosa has vowed to fight corruption and revitalise an economy which has slowed to a near-standstill under President Jacob Zuma. That message has gone down well with foreign investors and ANC members who think Zuma s handling of the economy could cost the party dearly in 2019 parliamentary elections. Dlamini-Zuma, who clashed with Western countries while foreign minister, has promised a radical brand of wealth redistribution which is popular with poorer ANC voters who are angry at racial inequality. While Ramaphosa, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has backed radical economic transformation , an ANC plan to tackle inequality, he tends to couch his policy pronouncements in more cautious terms. Analysts say the race between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma, who was previously married to President Zuma, is too close to call. Unlike Zuma or Dlamini-Zuma, Ramaphosa was not driven into exile for opposing apartheid, which some of the party s more hardline members hold against him. He fought the injustices of white minority rule from within South Africa, most prominently by defending the rights of black miners as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). A member of the relatively small Venda ethnic group, Ramaphosa was able to overcome divisions that sometimes constrained members of the larger Zulu and Xhosa groups. A massive miners strike led by Ramaphosa s NUM in 1987 taught business that Cyril was a force to be reckoned with, said Michael Spicer, a former executive at Anglo American. He has a shrewd understanding of men and power and knows how to get what he wants from a situation, Spicer said. The importance of Ramaphosa s contribution to the talks to end apartheid is such that commentators have referred to them in two distinct stages: BC and AC, Before Cyril and After Cyril. Ramaphosa also played an important role in the drafting of South Africa s post-apartheid constitution. After missing out on becoming Mandela s deputy, Ramaphosa withdrew from active political life, switching focus to business. His investment vehicle Shanduka - Venda for change - grew rapidly and acquired stakes in mining firms, mobile operator MTN and McDonald s South African franchise. Phuti Mahanyele, a former chief executive at Shanduka, recalled that Ramaphosa was a passionate leader who required staff to contribute to charitable projects aimed at improving access to education for the underprivileged. By the time Ramaphosa sold out of Shanduka in 2014, the firm was worth more than 8 billion rand ($584 million in today s money), making Ramaphosa one of South Africa s 20 richest people. To his supporters, Ramaphosa s business success makes him well-suited to the task of turning around an economy grappling with 28 percent unemployment and credit rating downgrades. In the Johannesburg township of Soweto last month, Ramaphosa called for a new deal between business and government to spur economic growth. Pravin Gordhan, a respected former finance minister, told Reuters that if Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader, the whole narrative about South Africa s economy would change for the better within three months . Signs that Ramaphosa has done well in the nominations by ANC branches that precede the leadership vote have driven a rally in the rand in recent weeks. But Ramaphosa has his detractors too. He was a non-executive director at Lonmin when negotiations to halt a violent wildcat strike at its Marikana platinum mine in 2012 ended in police shooting 34 strikers dead. An inquiry subsequently absolved Ramaphosa of guilt. But some families of the victims still blame him for urging the authorities to intervene. My conscience is that I participated in trying to stop further deaths from happening, Ramaphosa said recently about the Marikana deaths. Others are unconvinced that Ramaphosa, who has been deputy president since 2014, will be as tough on corruption as his campaign rhetoric suggests. Bantu Holomisa, an opposition politician and former ANC member who worked closely with Ramaphosa in the 1990s, said he was by nature cautious. Cyril has been part of the machinery and has not acted on corruption so far, Holomisa said. It is not clear whether he will if he gets elected. (For a graphic on 'ANC election in South Africa' click here) (For a graphic on 'South African economy' click here) ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma rejects reports his office is drafting emergency laws;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma has rejected local news reports that his office has started drafting regulations for a state of emergency, the president s office said on Tuesday. Emergency laws were last deployed in parts of Africa s most industrialized economy in 1985 under former president P.W. Botha, the face of white South Africa as president at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle. The Presidency rejects the media reports alleging that The Presidency has started composing draft regulations for a state of emergency and that President Jacob Zuma has appointed a team to draw up such regulations, Zuma s office said in a statement. The Presidency is not working on regulations for a state of emergency. Emergency powers have not been used in South Africa since the country s 1994 transition to multi-racial democracy after decades of white apartheid rule. The Rapport newspaper had reported that Zuma had ordered that regulations for a state of emergency be prepared to be part of the State of Emergency Act passed in 1997. The newspaper said the detailed regulations that would outline what should happen during a state of emergency were never passed into law when the main legislation was enacted. It cited documents showing that Zuma had set up a team to make the draft regulations. According to Rapport the draft regulations would ban anyone from writing publishing or broadcasting threatening material and give security forces power to use as much force as necessary to restore law and order. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tight race as South Africa's ANC prepares to elect Zuma successor;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress holds an election this weekend to replace Jacob Zuma as party leader in a closely fought contest whose winner is likely to emerge as the nation s next president. The front runners are Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader and one of South Africa s richest people, and Zuma s preferred candidate, his ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former minister and chairwoman of the African Union Commission. In a race seen as too close to call, seven candidates are seeking to succeed Zuma, who has been at the helm of the party for a decade. The stakes are high because the ANC s electoral dominance means whoever wins the party s top job is likely become the next president of South Africa after a national election in 2019. The party holds its conference in Johannesburg between Dec. 16-20. All seven ANC leadership hopefuls pledged to Zuma at a meeting last month that they would accept the outcome of the leadership vote in the interests of keeping the 105-year-old organization intact and avoid splits that could weaken its strength at the national elections in 2019. Ramaphosa edged Dlamini-Zuma by getting the majority of nominations to become leader of the party, but the complexity of the leadership race means it is far from certain he will become the next party leader and therefore the likely next president. Adding another level of complexity, delegates are not bound to vote for the candidate their ANC branch nominated. Zuma said last week he was very happy to be stepping down as ANC president. He can remain as head of state until 2019. Political uncertainty over the ANC race is a major threat to the country s credit rating. S&P Global Ratings and Fitch rate South Africa s debt as junk . Analysts have said South Africa s business and consumer confidence has been dented in recent years by allegations of corruption in Zuma s government and influence-peddling by the Gupta family - businessmen who are close friends of the president. Zuma and the Guptas have denied the allegations. Ramaphosa is viewed as more investor friendly and has pledged to fight the corruption that has plagued Zuma s tenure. Dlamini-Zuma has said she is not tainted by graft and it is fine if the country s white business community will not endorse her. She has said her priority is to improve the prospects for the black majority. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron says world is losing battle against climate change;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday told dozens of world leaders and company bosses gathered at a climate summit in Paris that we are losing the battle against climate change. We re not moving quick enough. We all need to act, Macron said, seeking to breath new life into efforts to combat global warming after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of an international accord brokered in the French capital two years ago. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Liberia to hold run-off vote on December 26: electoral commission;MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberia will hold a delayed presidential run-off vote on Dec. 26, the electoral commission chief said on Tuesday. Former soccer star George Weah faces Vice-President Joseph Boakai in the poll that was held up for several weeks by a court challenge by the candidate who came third in round one. The winner replaces Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president in what will be, if it goes smoothly, Liberia s first peaceful handover of power in 70 years. The Supreme Court last week dismissed a complaint from third-place finisher Charles Brumskine s Liberty Party, which had said fraud had undermined the first round in October. Electoral Commission chairman Jerome Korkoya said campaigning could start immediately but must end by December 24. Liberians are eager for change after Nobel Peace Prize winning Sirleaf s 12-year rule, which sealed a lasting peace in a country that for decades had only known war, but which has failed to tackle corruption or much improve the lot of the poorest. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Barnier rules out full EU-UK trade pact in time for Brexit;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - There is no possibility that Britain and the European Union can conclude a free trade agreement by the time Britain leaves in March 2019, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barner said on Tuesday. Asked about suggestions in London that a trade deal could be ready for signature shortly after Britain is no longer an EU member, Barnier reiterated the EU s official line that only a political declaration outlining future trading relations would be ready at the time of Britain s withdrawal. He told reporters after he had briefed EU ministers ahead of a leaders summit on Friday that negotiating a free trade pact would take longer. He also stressed that there must be no backtracking by Britain on an outline divorce package agreed last week if it wants to negotiate the future relationship. He said that after the summit he hoped he would be able to present draft language early in the new year on the withdrawal treaty, elements of which were agreed last Friday. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German soldier accused of planning to kill politicians, frame refugees;BERLIN (Reuters) - A German soldier was charged on Tuesday with plotting to kill senior politicians because of their support for refugees and trying to make it look like asylum seekers carried out the murders. The officer, named only as Franco Hans A., was arrested in April in a case that shocked Germans and stirred a debate about the depth of right-wing radicalism in the Bundeswehr military. Motivated by a nationalist attitude, he planned to carry out an attack at an unknown time on high-ranking politicians and public figures who stood up for what the accused regarded as an especially refugee-friendly policy, the federal prosecutor s office said. He wanted people to believe that his attacks were related to radical Islamist terrorism committed by somebody who had been granted asylum, it added. The statement did not say whether the soldier had denied the charges or include any statement from his lawyer. Among the targets were Justice Minister Heiko Maas, a senior Social Democrat, Greens politician Claudia Roth as well as human rights activists and journalists, the prosecutor s office added. Prosecutors suspect that Franco Hans A., along with two accomplices, wanted to implicate refugees in their planned attack by posing as an asylum seeker. The case had put pressure on centre-right Chancellor Angela Merkel s government - with her close ally Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen facing criticism for first failing to deal with right-wing extremism in the army and then implying that most soldiers were right-wing radicals. The federal prosecutor s office said the soldier was accused of committing a serious act of violent subversion and violating the military weapons control law, as well as gun and explosives laws. Franco Hans A., who served with an army battalion stationed in France, had used a fake identity to register as a Syrian refugee and moved into a shelter for migrants in Bavaria even though he speaks no Arabic, the prosecutors said. The soldier had previously been detained in late January by Austrian authorities on suspicion of having hidden an illegal gun in a bathroom at Vienna s main airport, they added. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's new prime minister says opposes multi-speed Europe;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s new prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said on Tuesday in his first policy speech that he was opposed to a multi-speed Europe and that Warsaw wants to have a say in forming the future of the bloc. Deeper euro zone integration is sometimes called a multi-speed Europe because it would lead to different rates of convergence within the 28-member bloc. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgaria freezes assets of independent media publisher;SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria has frozen assets and property and bank accounts belonging to businessman and media owner Ivo Prokopiev, who said the state was trying to silence the country s independent media. The Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture is preparing to file a claim against Prokopiev and his businesses to seize assets and property worth 199 million levs ($119 million), which it believed were derived from a rogue privatization of a plant 17 years ago, said the commission s chairman, Plamen Georgiev. Bulgaria, one of the European Union s poorest and, according to Transparency International, its most corrupt country, set up the commission in the 2000s to confiscate the illegally obtained assets of corrupt businessmen and officials and organized crime bosses. Prokopiev, 46, denied any wrongdoing. He said the commission has been used to intimidate the journalists at the influential financial newspaper Capital and the news website Dnevnik. He is the majority owner of both. He also said a Bulgarian court had ruled in 2004 that nothing was wrong with the privatization of mineral maker Kaolin, the basis of the accusations against him. We are witnessing how a state institution with very wide powers is being used as a bat and an instrument for repression, Prokopiev told a news conference. We do not have any doubt about the ultimate goal of this .... to subdue the editorial position of two of the few independent media in Bulgaria. Georgiev told a news conference a regional court in Bulgaria had frozen shares and stakes of Prokopiev in over 40 companies on commission s request, but said the actions would not impede the work of the news organizations. Five right-wing political parties that are not represented in the parliament protested against the commission s move. Some political analysts also saw it as an attempt to silence the independent newspapers in the country. This act really seems to be directed against people who are representatives of free media in Bulgaria, said Daniel Smilov, an analyst with Sofia-based Center for Liberal Strategies. Bulgaria ranked 109th out of 180 countries, lower than any EU member, in the 2017 World Press Freedom Index compiled by the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders. Bulgaria ranked 51st in 2007, when it joined the EU. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Furious race against time' to complete Brexit treaty: EU's Tusk;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Council President Donald Tusk warned on Tuesday that completing a Brexit treaty and agreeing on future relations with Britain would be a furious race against time where EU states would have to stick together to avoid economic disruption. Writing to national leaders ahead of a summit he will chair in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, Tusk noted his plan to seek their approval to launch a second phase of negotiations, on transition and future ties, after achieving sufficient progress last week and agreeing an outline of the divorce. The conclusion of the first phase of negotiations is moderate progress, since we only have 10 months left to determine the transition period and our future relations with the UK, Tusk wrote. This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key. And the experience so far has shown that unity is a sine qua non of an orderly Brexit. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST RELEASED: Texts Between Anti-Trump Mueller Team Members Call Trump ‘Loathsome Human’…’Awful’;Fox News just revealed what we knew but it s out in the open now: Text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and mistress Lisa Page in 2016 referred to then-candidate Donald Trump as a loathsome human and an idiot. HOW CAN THEY EVEN BEGIN TO BE NEUTRAL IN THIS SHAM OF AN INVESTIGATION?More than 10,000 texts between Strzok and Page were being reviewed by the Justice Department after Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe after it was revealed that some of them contained anti-Trump content.The bulk of the messages obtained by Fox News were sent on March 4 of last year, as Trump held a sizable lead in the GOP primary race. God, Trump is a loathsome human, Page texted Strzok on that date. Yet he many[sic] win, Strzok responded. Good for Hillary. Later the same day, Strzok texted Page, Omg Trump s an idiot. He s awful, Page answered. America will get what the voting public deserves, said Strzok, to which Page responded. That s what I m afraid of. WHY REASSIGNED AND NOT FIRED?Strzok, who was an FBI counterintelligence agent, was reassigned to the FBI s human resources division after the discovery of the exchanges with Page, with whom he was having an affair. Page was briefly on Mueller s team, but since has returned to the FBI.The messages disclosed were sent during the 2016 campaign and contain multiple discussions about various candidates BUT THE MOST DAMAGING ARE THE RIPS ON TRUMP. ;politics;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. warns of new Syrian refugee wave to Europe if aid dries up;GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian refugees could again seek to reach Europe in droves if aid programs are not sustained in five neighboring countries hosting the bulk of them, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was giving details of the $4.4 billion appeal to support 5.3 million Syrian refugees in surrounding countries as well as to host communities in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt that have taken them in. The agency, which has received only 53 percent of its $4.63 billion appeal for 2017, needs international support, Amin Awad, director of UNHCR s Middle East and North Africa bureau, told a news briefing. He listed many reasons , including: The vast number of refugees that we have in the region, the geopolitical status of that region, the risk that a population of 5.3 million people can bring to an area, a small region already volatile as it is, if there is no assistance. We had the experience of 2015, we don t want to repeat that, he said. The lack of funding led to an acute shortage of services that year, when one million refugees fled to Europe, he added. About half were Syrians, UNHCR figures show. An EU-Turkey deal has largely halted the flow, but a UNHCR funding shortfall has led to fresh cutbacks in vital programs providing food, health care, education and shelter to Syrian refugees, Awad said. That means we re not able to provide stoves, we are not able to deliver kerosene, we are not able to deliver enough thermal blankets, we are not able to winterise tents, we are not able to drain water and snow from camps, we are not able to do engineering work to insulate some of the buildings. People are sitting in cold, open buildings, he said. Turkey currently hosts 3.3 million Syrian refugees, the largest number, followed by Lebanon with one million. These are the biggest donors, these are the real donors. They provided space, international protection, Awad said. Now the material assistance is left to the donors and international community... And that s not coming through. So we have to be prepared for consequences, he said. Awad, asked about countries in the region closing their borders to Syrian refugees, replied: Borders are managed, in some instance are closed. Host countries have cited concerns over security, economic crises, and xenophobia, but Syrians continue to arrive, he said. Lebanon is still accepting vulnerable cases, medical cases, so is Turkey, Awad said. There have been cases of refoulement , returning refugees to places where they could face war or persecution, in violation of law, he said. We are seeing expulsion, we are seeing people sent back. UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards declined to provide specifics on Syrian refugees being expelled. ;worldnews;12/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House and Senate leaders reach agreement 'in principle' on tax plan: AP;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have reached an agreement in principle on tax reform legislation, the Associated Press reported on Twitter on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. The AP gave no further details and Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the report. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Analyst View: Democrat Jones wins Alabama U.S. Senate seat in blow to Trump;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democrat Doug Jones won a bitter fight for a U.S. Senate seat in deeply conservative Alabama on Tuesday, dealing a political blow to President Donald Trump in a race marked by sexual misconduct accusations against Republican candidate Roy Moore. KEY POINTS: The stunning upset makes Jones the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama in a quarter-century and will trim the Republicans’ already narrow Senate majority to 51-49, opening the door for Democrats to possibly retake the chamber in next year’s congressional elections. PETER CARDILLO, CHIEF MARKET ECONOMIST AT FIRST STANDARD FINANCIAL IN NEW YORK: “If anything it prompts Congress to get the tax bill signed before year end and they have another week. If they don’t they do have a problem.” “From that perspective yesterday’s defeat is good news in terms of tax legislation. They’re not going to risk tax reform because of the election. While it’s a defeat it’s actually a positive.” “If the President doesn’t sign legislation by year end we have a major problem. That would just speed up the process of a correction. Would it affect the economy, reverse the economic growth? Not in 2018, perhaps in 2019.” “It was a defeat for the Republican Party and Mr. Trump but it also motivates the Republicans to get their act together and get a bill signed.” KEITH LERNER, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, SUNTRUST ADVISORY SERVICES IN ATLANTA, GA: “Tax reform is still likely to go through. What happened overnight may present an obstacle to the GOP agenda in 2018, but that’s arguably less important than tax reform. Perhaps there will be some obstacles to infrastructure, entitlement reform. But from a market perspective, those weren’t high-probability anyway. “The high probability is (tax) gets through. The Republicans have tried to fast-track it before (Jones) gets seated, so it’s unlikely his victory will change that. “We’ll have a short-term setback (if the tax bill doesn’t pass), and it may cap the upside of the market since companies won’t be getting an earnings boost. But if there’s a pullback, I think it will be in the 5 to 10 percent range, as opposed to a bear market. “It’s still early, but there looks certainly to be big changes in the midterm with the makeup of the House and Senate. “As long as the economy is on sound footing, gridlock in Washington is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not necessarily preferable, but with the majority so slim as it is, it’s more of a question, does the economy chug along? If the economy continues to move forward, it’s less important.” GENNADIY GOLDBERG, INTEREST RATES STRATEGIST, TD SECURITIES, NEW YORK: “We think one of the possible biggest impact is on the deficit. With the Jones win, it makes it more difficult to pass the tax-cut bill. “This puts pressure on the Republicans to pass tax cuts before year-end. The question is can they do it? Are we going to see special provisions or deals to get it done. I think it’s a ‘get it done’ mentality. If not, it does bleed into early 2018. “It lowers the odds of getting anything done in 2018.”   L. THOMAS BLOCK, FUNDSTRAT GLOBAL ADVISORS, WASHINGTON POLICY STRATEGY (from research note): “Bottom line is that the Alabama Senate race doesn’t change the basic (Washington) DC headlines, first that tax bill should pass by Christmas, and that there are tough negotiations ahead to solve the budget issues and avoid a government shutdown.” MARC CHANDLER, GLOBAL HEAD OF CURRENCY STRATEGY, BROWN BROTHERS HARRIMAN (from research note): “(The dollar) did slip to the low for the week against the yen, when it became clear that the Republicans were going to lose the Senate seat in Alabama. This reduced the Republican majority to one in the Senate. Owing the fissures in the party, this is putting at risk other parts of Trump’s agenda, which Treasury Secretary Mnuchin acknowledged earlier this week is necessary to achieve the kind of growth levels that the tax bill assumes.” U.S. stock futures and the dollar dipped on Wednesday, although equities turned around by the open and the S&P 500 Index was last up 0.2 percent. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman resigns;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former reality television star-turned political aide to U.S. President Donald Trump, has resigned from the White House to “pursue other opportunities,” Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday. Newman served as assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House’s Office of Public Liaison. A former star of Trump’s TV show “The Apprentice,” Newman worked as the director of African-American outreach on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders said Newman’s departure would take effect Jan. 20, 2018. Newman had what sometimes appeared to be an ambiguous role in the White House orbit. The New York Times reported in September that chief of staff John Kelly had put her on a “no-fly list” of aides who he did not consider fit to attend serious meetings. Sources with ties to the White House have said they expect a wave of departures from the administration once Trump has completed his first year in office. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top U.S. Senate Democrat hopeful Congress will help 'Dreamers' by year end;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate said bipartisan negotiations to protect undocumented people who immigrated to the United States as children were making very good progress, and that he hoped a bill could clear Congress by year-end. “There are very good negotiations going on between Democrats and Republicans,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. “We’re very hopeful that there will be bipartisan support so that we can get DACA done by the end of the year,” he added, referring to legislation to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Donald Trump is terminating. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Judges consider HK double murder appeal by convicted former British banker;HONG KONG (Reuters) - Three judges in Hong Kong s Court of Appeal are set to decide the fate of a former British banker who was jailed for life last year for the murder of two Indonesian women he tortured and raped after his appeal hearing closed on Wednesday. Rurik Jutting, 32, a former Bank of America employee, had denied murdering Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, in his luxury apartment in 2014 on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to alcohol and drug abuse and sexual disorders. The Cambridge-educated Jutting pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in a case that gripped the Asian financial hub. During the one and a half day appeal hearing in the former British colony, Jutting s lawyers said the judge who presided over the gruesome trial last year had misdirected the jury. Defence lawyer Gerard McCoy argued that the judge had narrowed down the scope of the defence case by conflating an abnormality of mind with a psychiatric disorder. Jutting s defence is that while a disorder can cause an abnormal mind, his mental state can be abnormal without a disorder. McCoy said Jutting showed severe traits of psychiatric disorders, far beyond the normal range and was therefore not in control of his actions, said McCoy. Abnormality of mind is absolutely not confined to a disorder or a disease. Here the judge locks it down, reinforcing to the jury it is disorder, he said. Jutting, dressed in a navy blue shirt and thick squared glasses, watched animatedly throughout the hearing and occasionally chuckled, particularly during the presentations by prosecutor John Reading. Reading stated that the previous judge had exercised considerable care in crafting his directions on the law in consultation with both sides . Judges Michael Lunn, Andrew Macrae and Kevin Zervos are to return judgement on the appeal which may include granting Jutting the opportunity for a new trial, but they did not give a time frame. Deputy High Court Judge Michael Stuart-Moore said in strongly worded closing remarks at the end of the trial last year that the case was one of the most horrifying the Chinese-ruled territory had known. He described Jutting as the archetypal sexual predator who represented an extreme danger to women, especially in the sex trade, and cautioned that it was possible he would murder again if freed. The jury unanimously found Jutting, the grandson of a British policeman in Hong Kong and a Chinese woman, guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison in November 2016. Jutting s defence team had previously argued that cocaine and alcohol abuse, as well as personality disorders of sexual sadism and narcissism, had impaired his ability to control his behavior. The prosecution rejected this, stating Jutting was able to form judgments and exercise self-control before and after the killings, filming his torture of Ningsih on his mobile phone as well as hours of footage in which he discussed the murders, bingeing on cocaine and his graphic sexual fantasies. In previous high profile murder cases such as that of Nancy Kissel, an American woman serving a life sentence for the milkshake murder of her Merrill Lynch banker husband, retrials have been given. Kissel lost her final appeal against her conviction in 2014. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China marks Nanjing Massacre anniversary but Xi low key;BEIJING (Reuters) - China marked the 80th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre on Wednesday with a call to work with Japan for peace, but President Xi Jinping kept a low profile and left the main public remarks to another senior official. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 massacre in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll in the eastern city of Nanjing at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all. Ties between China and Japan, the world s second- and third-largest economies, have been plagued by a long-running territorial dispute over a cluster of East China Sea islets and suspicion in China about efforts by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to amend Japan s pacifist constitution. However the two countries have sought to get relations back on track, and Abe and Xi met last month on the sidelines of a regional summit in Vietnam. Speaking at a memorial in Nanjing, Yu Zhengsheng, who heads a high-profile but largely ceremonial advisory body to China s parliament, said China and Japan were neighbours with deep historic ties. China would deepen relations with all its neighbours, including Japan, on the basis of amity, sincerity and friendship, Yu said, in comments carried live on state television. China and Japan must act on the basis of both their people s basic interests, correctly grasp the broad direction of peaceful and friendly cooperation, take history as a mirror, face the future and pass on friendship down the generations, Yu said. A sombre Xi, wearing a white flower in his lapel to symbolise mourning, stood in the audience but did not speak. Doves to signify peace flew overhead after Yu finished speaking. Xi later met massacre survivors, the official Xinhua news agency said, telling them, Lessons learned from the past can guide one in the future . South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who arrived in Beijing for a four-day visit, offered condolences to the victims in a speech to businessmen, in what his office called the first such public mention of the massacre by a South Korean leader. In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga spoke of the importance of looking to the future. The leaders of Japan and China have agreed in past meetings to further improve relations and it is important, while cherishing this trend, to together show a future-oriented stance, Suga told a regular news conference: It was the second time Xi has attended the event since China marked its first national memorial day for the massacre in 2014. At that time, he called on China and Japan to set aside hatred and not allow the minority who led Japan to war to affect relations now. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump loses his big bet on Alabama U.S. Senate race;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In backing Roy Moore in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race even though the candidate faced allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, President Donald Trump made a risky bet - and lost big. The victory by Democrat Doug Jones over the Republican Moore in the Alabama special election on Tuesday was a catastrophe for Trump, portending a Democratic wave next year that could cost Republicans control of one or both houses of Congress. The stakes in Alabama were that high. Democrats already were confident they had a strong chance to retake the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s congressional elections. Jones’ narrow victory increases their once-long odds of retaking control of the Senate as well. If Democrats were to recapture both chambers, they would serve as a check on Trump’s agenda and might even initiate impeachment proceedings against him. “That Republicans lost in one of the most Republican states in the nation is a wake-up call no matter how flawed their candidate was,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Democrats never expected to have a chance in Alabama, where they had not won a U.S. Senate race in 25 years. But the combination of Trump’s unpopularity, the sexual misconduct allegations that erupted against Moore in November, and Trump’s enthusiastic support of him anyway gave them the opportunity, experts said. “Trump was the one who got Jones within firing range, and Moore allowed Jones to win,” said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. Even as Democrats lost several special congressional elections this year, they consistently showed higher levels of turnout and engagement, which is attributable to Trump, Kondik said. The Alabama race showed there were limits both to Trump’s endorsement power and his judgment. Even as senior Republicans urged Trump to abandon Moore, the president decided instead in the campaign’s final days to throw the full weight of his office behind him. In the end, that was not enough, and early turnout reports suggested that many Republicans stayed home. Moreover, despite the sexual misconduct allegations against Moore, the race near the end increasingly seemed to become about the president. Moore’s camp this week said the contest was specifically a referendum on Trump and his presidency. “It is Donald Trump on trial in Alabama,” Dean Young, a strategist for Moore, told ABC News. Trump congratulated Jones on Twitter “on a hard fought victory” and added: “Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time.” The loss was also a body blow to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top strategist, who backed Moore in the primary against the Republican incumbent, Luther Strange, because he viewed Moore as a more reliable ally. Bannon also frequently characterized the race as less about Alabama and more about furthering Trump’s economic nationalist agenda. Bannon is looking to wage an insurgency against the Republican establishment in the 2018 congressional elections, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who condemned Moore after several women accused him of unwanted sexual contact when they were in their teens and he was in his 30s. Moore, 70, has denied the allegations, and Reuters has not independently verified them. ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT Beyond Moore, Bannon is supporting anti-establishment candidates such as Kelli Ward in Arizona, Danny Tarkanian in Nevada and Kevin Nicholson in Wisconsin, all of whom oppose McConnell staying on as Senate leader. Bannon also may ultimately support challenges against sitting Republicans in Mississippi and Wyoming. But Moore’s loss seems certain to dampen that effort, and Republicans who fear losing control of Congress may be even less likely to back outsider candidates who may turn off mainstream voters. It is now an open question whether Trump will inject himself into more Republican primaries, given his setback in Alabama. “When you nominate candidates who are unqualified and an embarrassment to the party, you run the risk of ruining your entire brand,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican consultant and close ally of McConnell. Bannon’s supporters say rank-and-file Republican voters are more likely to blame McConnell, not Bannon, for the loss in Alabama, arguing that McConnell and his well-resourced Senate Leadership Fund did nothing to help Moore. McConnell “actively opposed the Republican candidate in Alabama and threatened our Senate majority by helping to put a liberal Democrat in that seat,” said Andy Surabian, a former Bannon protégé who now advises a pro-Trump advocacy group, Great America Alliance. Even with the Alabama win, Democrats face a significant challenge next year if they are to take control of the Senate. They must defend 10 incumbents in states that were won by Trump and they must gain two seats currently held by Republicans. Their best opportunities to secure those seats lie in Arizona and Nevada, and perhaps Tennessee. Democrats need 24 seats to retake the House, but that is viewed as a more realistic goal because of the number of congressional districts where they are competitive, particularly in suburban areas. Brian Walsh, president of another pro-Trump group, America First Policies, said Trump could not be blamed for Moore’s loss, arguing that the president’s late endorsement almost won the race for Moore, a deeply flawed candidate. “He was trying to push a boulder up a hill,” Walsh said. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;FBI officials said Clinton 'has to win' race to White House: NYT;(Reuters) - Senior FBI officials who helped probe Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign told a colleague that Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had to win the race to the White House, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Peter Strzok, a senior FBI agent, said Clinton “just has to win” in a text sent to FBI lawyer Lisa Page, the Times reported. The messages showed concern from Strzok and Page that a Trump presidency could politicize the FBI, the report said, citing texts turned over to Congress and obtained by the newspaper. nyti.ms/2AOHylP Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is investigating the texts in a probe into FBI’s handling of its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server for official correspondence when she was Secretary of State under former President Barack Obama, the report added. Strzok was removed from working on the Russia probe after media reports earlier this month suggested he had exchanged text messages that disparaged Trump and supported Clinton. Strzok was involved in both the Clinton email and Russia investigations. Republicans, including Trump, have in recent weeks ramped up their attacks on the FBI and questioned its integrity. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are investigating possible links between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections. The FBI, the Democratic National Committee and the White House did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. Reuters was unable to contact Peter Strzok and Lisa Page for comment. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's May defeated in parliament over Brexit blueprint;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May s government was defeated on Wednesday, when lawmakers forced through changes to its Brexit blueprint that ministers said could endanger Britain s departure from the European Union. In a blow to May, already weakened after losing her Conservative Party s majority in a June election, the 650-seat parliament voted 309 to 305 in favor of an amendment to hand lawmakers more say over a final exit deal with the EU. Up until the last minute of an often bitter debate in parliament, May s team tried to convince lawmakers in her party to give up their demands and side with a government fearful that the move will weaken its hand in tough Brexit negotiations. Members of Parliament (MPs) are debating the EU withdrawal bill, which will repeal the 1972 legislation binding Britain to the EU and copy existing EU law into domestic law to ensure legal continuity after Exit Day on March 29, 2019. In focus on Wednesday was an amendment put forward by Conservative lawmaker and former attorney general Dominic Grieve who wants parliament to have a meaningful vote on any deal before it is finalised and for it to be written into law. There is a time for everybody to stand up and be counted, Grieve told parliament earlier, criticizing some fellow members of the Conservative Party for calling him a traitor over his decision to vote against the government. He dismissed a last-minute pledge by justice minister Dominic Raab for government to write the promise of a meaningful vote into law later on its journey through both houses of parliament as coming too late . The government was disappointed by the vote, a spokeswoman said in a statement, adding that this amendment does not prevent us from preparing our statute book for exit day . But with May due at an EU summit on Thursday to encourage the other 27 leaders to approve a move to the second phase of Brexit talks and begin a discussion about future trade, the defeat comes at a difficult time for the prime minister. In the European Parliament, which must also ratify any withdrawal treaty with Britain, its Brexit coordinator cheekily tweeted that his British counterparts had taken back control - a reference to the catchphrase of pro-Brexit campaigners. A good day for democracy, added Guy Verhofstadt. The EU withdrawal bill has been the focus of seven days of often bitter debate, underscoring the deep divisions over Brexit not only among the Conservatives but also in the main opposition Labour Party and across the country. It has also highlighted May s weakness. In June, she gambled on a snap election to strengthen her party s majority in the 650-seat parliament but instead bungled her campaign and ended up with a minority government propped up by the 10 votes of a small, pro-Brexit Northern Irish party. Since then she has struggled to assert her authority over a Conservative Party which is deeply divided over the best route out of the EU. This defeat is a humiliating loss of authority for the government on the eve of the European Council meeting, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a statement. Theresa May has resisted democratic accountability. Her refusal to listen means she will now have to accept Parliament taking back control. Earlier, May had tried to persuade lawmakers to vote with the government for her Brexit blueprint, saying Grieve s amendment would put added time pressure on a government which wants to make Britain ready to leave the EU in March 2019. That could be at a very late stage in the proceedings which could mean that we are not able to have the orderly and smooth exit from the European Union that we wish to have, she told parliament before an hours-long debate on the exit plan. Her spokesman said the government had in good faith come forward with a strong package of concessions to deal with the spirit of the amendment . Pro-Brexit lawmakers fear the amendment could force Britain to weaken its negotiating stance by offering parliament the opportunity of forcing ministers back to the negotiating table if it feels any final deal is not good enough. Raab said that could convince the EU that Britain would not walk away from a bad deal. Actually if that looked likely we d end up with worse terms, and we d be positively incentivizing the EU to give us worse terms, he told parliament. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump congratulates Democrat for Alabama U.S. Senate victory in tweet;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Democrat Doug Jones on Tuesday for winning a bitter U.S. Senate race in Alabama against the Republican candidate the president backed. In a tweet, Trump congratulated Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney, who beat Republican Roy Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, who was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct against teenagers. “The Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!” Trump tweeted. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. expert says torture persists at Guantanamo Bay;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Toronto airport requires extra security checks after 'customs breach';TORONTO (Reuters) - Some U.S.-bound flights from Toronto s main international airport were delayed on Wednesday afternoon due to an incident that prompted authorities to require some passengers to go through customs a second time, a spokeswoman said. A customs breach occurred shortly after 3:30 p.m. (2030 GMT) in Terminal 3, Toronto Pearson International Airport spokeswoman Beverly MacDonald said in an email. Boarding was held while the situation was investigated and some passengers (had) to be reprocessed through U.S. Customs, she said, adding that the breach was resolved around 5 p.m. (2200 GMT). The breach occurred when passengers deplaning a flight from Calgary were inadvertently given access to a bypass door to the U.S. departures area, WestJet Airlines Ltd (WJA.TO) spokeswoman Lauren Stewart said in an email to Reuters. Terminal 3 serves flights to the United States on Alaska Air Group Inc (ALK.N), American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O), Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N) and WestJet, according to the airport s website. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House to stop using public funds for harassment settlements: speaker;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Wednesday that Congress was working on a package of reforms that would prohibit using taxpayer money for settlements in sexual harassment claims lodged against lawmakers’ offices. “That’s among the things we’re working on right now,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview with Wisconsin radio station WISN a week after three lawmakers said they were stepping down after sexual harassment or misconduct claims.A wave of sexual misconduct allegations has emerged in recent weeks against high-profile figures in journalism, entertainment and politics. Democratic Representative John Conyers resigned after reports he had used public funds to settle a woman’s claim. Conyers acknowledged his office had settled with a former staffer over harassment allegations, but denied wrongdoing. The congressional office that handles employment disputes also said it had paid settlements on two claims involving sex discrimination allegations and one sexual harassment accusation since 2013. Politico reported that the sexual harassment settlement, which amounted to $84,000, was made on behalf of Texas Republican Representative Blake Farenthold. In a statement after he reached a settlement agreement in 2015, Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two Reuters journalists arrested in Myanmar, face official secrets charges;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s government said on Wednesday that police had arrested two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. The reporters had been working on stories about a military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rahkine State that has caused almost 650,000 people to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. The Ministry of Information said in a statement on its Facebook page that the journalists and two policemen face charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, said the statement, which was accompanied by a photo of the pair in handcuffs. It said they were detained at a police station on the outskirts of Yangon, the southeast Asian nation s main city. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo went missing on Tuesday evening after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at Battalion 8 s compound at around 8 pm and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say their exodus from the mainly Buddhist nation was triggered by a military counter-offensive in Rakhine state that the United Nations has branded a textbook example of ethnic cleansing . Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been reporting on events of global importance in Myanmar, and we learned today that they have been arrested in connection with their work, said Stephen J. Adler, president and editor-in-chief of Reuters. We are outraged by this blatant attack on press freedom. We call for authorities to release them immediately, he said. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed that the two journalists had been arrested. Not only your reporters, but also the policemen who were involved in that case, spokesman Zaw Htay said. We will take action against those policemen and also the reporters. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert emphasized that the agency was following this closely. She said that U.S. Ambassador Scot Marciel on Wednesday had a conversation with two government officials in Myanmar who seemed genuinely unaware of the situation. We care about the safety and security of international reporters who are simply just trying to do their jobs. So we re going to continue to try to stay on that, Nauert said. The U.S. embassy in Yangon said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday it was deeply concerned by the highly irregular arrests of two Reuters reporters after they were invited to meet with police officials in Yangon last night . For a democracy to succeed, journalists need to be able to do their jobs freely, the embassy said. We urge the government to explain these arrests and allow immediate access to the journalists. The European Union s mission in Yangon also voiced concern. The EU delegation is closely following their case and we call on the Myanmar authorities to ensure the full protection of their rights, it said in a statement. Media freedom is the foundation of any democracy. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called for the reporters immediate and unconditional release. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance, said Shawn Crispin, CPJ s senior Southeast Asia representative. Wa Lone, who joined Reuters in July 2016, has covered a range of stories, including the flight of Rohingya refugees from Rakhine in 2016 and, in much larger numbers, this year. He has written about military land grabs and the killing of ruling party lawyer Ko Ni in January. This year he jointly won an honorable mention from the Society of Publishers in Asia for Reuters coverage of the Rakhine crisis in 2016. He previously worked for The Myanmar Times, where he covered Myanmar s historic 2015 elections, and People s Age, a local weekly newspaper, where his editor was Myanmar s current Minister of Information Pe Myint. Kyaw Soe Oo, an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist from state capital Sittwe, has worked with Reuters since September. He has covered the impact of the Aug. 25 attacks on police and army posts in the northern Rakhine, and reported from the central part of the state where local Buddhists have been enforcing segregation between Rohingya and Rakhine communities. He previously worked for Root Investigation Agency, a local news outlet focused on Rakhine issues. I have been arrest were the four words that Wa Lone texted to Reuters Myanmar Bureau Chief Antoni Slodkowski on Tuesday evening to let him know what was happening. Very soon after that Wa Lone s phone appeared to have been switched off. Over the next 24 hours, Reuters colleagues in Yangon filed a missing persons report, went to three police stations, and asked a series of government officials what had happened to the two reporters. They got no official information until Wednesday evening. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House and Senate reach deal on U.S. tax legislation: Hatch;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said on Wednesday that Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives had reached a deal on tax reform legislation. Asked by reporters, if an agreement had been reached in negotiations to hammer out differences between two competing tax bills, Hatch said: “We have. I think we have a deal.” Hatch said it was more than just an agreement in principle. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GOWDY ON FIRE! Rips Into Deputy AG Rosenstein: “What in the HELL is going on at the DOJ and FBI?” [Video];"Rep. Trey Gowdy SC: This conflict of interest-free senior agent of the FBI can t think of a single solitary American who would vote for Donald Trump .@TGowdySC: ""This 'conflict of interest-free' senior agent of the FBI can't think of a single solitary American who would vote for @realDonaldTrump."" pic.twitter.com/BSLBtPG4Qi Fox News (@FoxNews) December 13, 2017Trey Gowdy calls out the Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein who can t seem to make eye contact with Gowdy during the entire rant that goes through the corruption of both the FBI and DOJ.The fact is that the corruption and weaponization of the intel agencies has never been so bad. You can thank Obama and his minions for this. The American people deserve better from their government. This is Banana Republic Stuff. If you haven t heard yet, over 10,000 texts from former Mueller team members were released last night that could shut the door on this entire Mueller sham investigation: p class= speakable >Fox News just revealed what we knew but it s out in the open now: Text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and mistress Lisa Page in 2016 referred to then-candidate Donald Trump as a loathsome human and an idiot. HOW CAN THEY EVEN BEGIN TO BE NEUTRAL IN THIS SHAM OF AN INVESTIGATION?More than 10,000 texts between Strzok and Page were being reviewed by the Justice Department after Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe after it was revealed that some of them contained anti-Trump content.The bulk of the messages obtained by Fox News were sent on March 4 of last year, as Trump held a sizable lead in the GOP primary race. God, Trump is a loathsome human, Page texted Strzok on that date. Yet he many[sic] win, Strzok responded. Good for Hillary. Later the same day, Strzok texted Page, Omg Trump s an idiot. He s awful, Page answered. America will get what the voting public deserves, said Strzok, to which Page responded. That s what I m afraid of. WHY REASSIGNED AND NOT FIRED?Strzok, who was an FBI counterintelligence agent, was reassigned to the FBI s human resources division after the discovery of the exchanges with Page, with whom he was having an affair. Page was briefly on Mueller s team, but since has returned to the FBI.The messages disclosed were sent during the 2016 campaign and contain multiple discussions about various candidates BUT THE MOST DAMAGING ARE THE RIPS ON TRUMP. ";politics;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Mueller Team Uniform? ‘Democratic Donkey Jerseys’ and ‘I’m With Hillary T-Shirts’ says Congressman;Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, amid new questions about Anti-Trump text messages sent by FBI employees assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller s Russia investigation. Rosenstein testified that Mueller is running his office appropriately and without bias.In a colorful exchange between Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) and Rosenstein, Chabot asked the Deputy AG: How with a straight face, can you say that this group of Democrat partisans are unbiased, and will give President Trump a fair shake? After a brief stammer, Rosenstein replied that political affiliation and the issue of bias are different things, and that we should trust the experience Mueller and the Justice Department have in managing investigation teams, adding: We recognize that we have employees with political opinions, and it s our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions. To which Chabot argued how can anyone possibly reach that conclusion: I was at first encouraged. It seemed like a serious matter and deserved a serious investigation. And I assumed, as many of us did, that Mr. Mueller would pull together an unbiased team. But, rather than wearing stripes as umpires and referees might wear, I would submit that the Mueller team overwhelmingly, uh, oughta be attired with Democratic donkeys on their jerseys or I m with Hillary t-shirts, certainly not with Let s Make America Great Again and I think that s a shame. Because I think the American people deserve a lot better than the very biased team they re getting under Robert Mueller. And I think it s really sad. Things get awkwardly amusing at the 50 minute mark WATCH: READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire RussiaGate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;UPDATE: BUSTED By The Secret Service…CNN’s April Ryan Called Out for Fake Report On Trump Aide’s Firing [Video];"The Secret Service pushed back on a CNN reporter s claim that a fired Trump aide was physically removed from the White House:Reporting regarding Secret Service personnel physically removing Omarosa Manigault Newman from the @WhiteHouse complex is incorrect. U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) December 13, 2017Earlier today, CNN s April Ryan reported Trump administration aide Omarosa Manigault had to be escorted out of the White House by Secret Service officers after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly. American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan told the story about the aide s firing on CNN:.@AprilDRyan reports Omarosa is leaving the White House because General Kelly ""was tired of all the drama."" She ""was very vulgar, she was cursing"" when he let her know and tried to go see Trump in his residence, but was escorted out by Secret Service https://t.co/tXu1J9HEOw Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) December 13, 2017THE LEFTY TRUMP HATERS WERE GLEEFUL: Watch how nasty Angela Rye is about a fellow black woman Shame on her!""Bye girl, bye You have never represented the community. Good riddance, goodbye, deuces out!"" @angela_rye celebrates the departure of Omarosa Manigault from the White House https://t.co/t2w0NBvunL https://t.co/1uHDdvobgy Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) December 13, 2017THE SECRET SERVICE TWEETED OUT A SECOND TWEET THAT THEY JUST TOOK THE PASS OF THR PERSON LET GO:The Secret Service was not involved in the termination process of Ms Manigault Newman or the escort off of the complex. Our only involvement in this matter was to deactivate the individual's pass which grants access to the complex. U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) December 13, 2017";politics;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DOCTOR MENTIONED In Hillary Email Released By Wikileaks Found DEAD In Apartment…Police Say He Committed Suicide By Stabbing Himself To Death??;54-year-old Dr. Dean Lorich, Associate Director of Orthopaedic Trauma Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery, as well as the Chief of the Orthopedic Trauma Service at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was found dead in his apartment earlier this week.According to New York City police, he committed suicide by stabbing himself to death.That s a pretty normal way to commit suicide right?It s like the time when former President of the United Nations General Assembly John Ashe, was found dead in his apartment only days before he was set to testify against the Clintons in a corruption case. The official reports indicated that Ashe died of a heart attack.The problem, however, is that police on the scene reported Ashe died when his throat was crushed during a work-out accident.Adding to the mysterious nature of Ashe s death was the fact that he had been slated to be in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, from whom he reportedly received over $1 billion in donations during his term as president of the U.N. General Assembly. And then there was this: During the presidency of Bill Clinton, Seng illegally funneled several hundred thousand dollars to the Democrat National Committee.Now ABC News is reporting:An acclaimed trauma surgeon was found dead with a knife in his torso Sunday in his Park Avenue apartment in a suspected suicide, New York City police said.Dr. Dean Lorich, 54, was the associate director of the orthopedic trauma service at the Hospital for Special Surgery who treated Bono in 2014 after the U2 frontman was badly injured in a cycling accident in Central Park.Lorich was also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College.His death is being investigated as an apparent suicide, a New York Police Department official told ABC News.Initial investigations did not find any signs of forced entry at his apartment, the official said. Authorities have not found a suicide note.Police responding to a 911 call of an assault in a Park Avenue apartment at 1:05 p.m. Sunday found Lorich unconscious and unresponsive with a knife in his torso, according to the NYPD. Emergency medical service responders pronounced him dead.The email Wikileaks published, was highly critical of the failed relief efforts in Haiti and was shared by Cheryl Mills with Hillary Clinton.In 2010, Lorich was part of a relief effort that flew to Haiti as a volunteer to offer his skills for civilians who had been injured during the earthquakes that devastated the region.Within 24 hours of the earthquake, a 13-member team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, and operating room nurses was assembled, with a massive amount of orthopedic operating room equipment, and flew to Port-au-Prince with Dr. Lorich.Bill and Hillary Clinton s charitable Clinton foundation led the relief effort in Haiti raising millions of dollars from around the world to help the people recover from the natural disaster. Sadly, most of the funds never reached the people of Haiti, but instead, lined the pockets of the Clintons associates who were meant to redevelop the nation, but never delivered.Dr. Lorich and his team were there to help save the limbs of those injured, which without the proper medical treatment, would have meant amputation for a lot of people.Lorich described amputation in those conditions as a death sentence and hoped to treat as many sufferers as possible, saying: We expected many amputations. But we thought we could save limbs that were salvageable, particularly those of children. We recognized that in an underdeveloped country, a limb amputation may be a death sentence. It does not have to be so. With the amount of money that was being donated to Haiti for the victims, Lorich and his team expected to have full support when their plane touched down.Instead, he described the situation as shameful and witnessed, first hand, a huge misappropriation of funds, with the people affected by the disaster receiving no help whatsoever.Dr. Lorich was disgusted by what he saw and sent an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s Chief of Staff Cheryl D. Mills to report what he had seen.In July 2017, a 50-year-old Haitian tied to the Clinton Foundation was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head.It s no secret that the Clinton Foundation has been facing credible reports of robbing impoverished Haitians who were devastated by Hurricane Hanna in 2008, through their foundation. Haitians have been protesting for years outside of the Clinton Foundation offices over the theft of money that was donated by individuals and businesses to the Clinton Foundation that never made it to the poorest of the poor.One man was set to testify against the Clinton Foundation next week. That man was 50-year-old former Haitian government official Klaus Eberwein. He was found dead in his Miami home with a gunshot to the head that s been ruled a suicide by the Miami-Dade s medical examiner records supervisor. (Think Vince Foster)Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official who was expected to expose the extent of Clinton Foundation corruption and malpractice next week, has been found dead in Miami. He was 50.Eberwein was due to appear next Tuesday before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors.Eberwein, who had acknowledged his life was in danger, was a fierce critic of the Clinton Foundation s activities in the Caribbean island, where he served as director general of the government s economic development agency, Fonds d assistance conomique et social, for three years.According to Eberwein, a paltry 0.6% of donations granted by international donors to the Clinton Foundation with the express purpose of directly assisting Haitians actually ended up in the hands of Haitian organizations. A further 9.6% ended up with the Haitian government. The remaining 89.8% or $5.4 billion was funneled to non-Haitian organizations. The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace, Eberwein said at a protest outside the Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan last year.The former director general of Haiti, who also served as an advisor to Haitian President Michel Martelly, was also a partner in a popular pizza restaurant in Haiti, Muncheez, and even has a pizza the Klaus Special named after him.According to the Haiti Libre newspaper, Eberwein was said to be in good spirits , with plans for the future. His close friends and business partners are shocked by the idea he may have committed suicide. It s really shocking, said Muncheez s owner Gilbert Bailly. We grew up together;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; KY GOP State Rep. Commits Suicide Over Allegations He Molested A Teen Girl (DETAILS);In this #METOO moment, many powerful men are being toppled. It spans many industries, from entertainment, to journalism, to politics and beyond. Any man that ever dared to abuse his power to sexually harass, molest, or assault women better brace himself for being rooted out, publicly shamed, and forced into early retirement.Well, unfortunately, the latest bombshell story has actually resulted in the suicide of a lawmaker. Kentucky State Representative Dan Johnson left a suicide note on Facebook and then shot himself on a bridge, according to reports from local authorities. Bullitt County Sheriff Donnie Tinnell reported to local station WDRB that Johnson s body was found after his suicide note from Facebook was reported to the local police. Here is that note:Now, nobody wants to celebrate a suicide. This man should have resigned gracefully and faced his accuser, who was a friend of his daughter s, who says that Johnson molested her while she was passed out drunk in his home. Apparently, Johnson, who referred to himself as some kind of pope, routinely engaged in parties with plenty of alcohol with minors. Johnson s home was called the Pope s House, and he was the preacher at the Heart of Fire City Church, where the alleged molestation took place.Now, innocent until proven guilty and all of that, but if someone commits suicide, it s likely there could be some merit there. That s a rather extreme measure to take. Further, by all accounts, this guy was no saint. He was heavily pro-gun, opposed any and all abortion rights, and has referred to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys on his Facebook page, among other racist messages and images.Again, we re not glad the man is dead. But, it is important for people to remember him for exactly who he was. We grieve for the loss his children, wife, and grandchildren suffered, for nobody deserves such a loss. However, methinks the people of Kentucky are much better off. Sad to say, but true.Featured image via screen capture;News;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Backed by Putin, Russian military pushes into foreign policy;MOSCOW (Reuters) - From Damascus to Doha, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has been showing up in unexpected places, a sign of the military s growing influence under Vladimir Putin. In the past few months, at times wearing his desert military uniform, Shoigu has held talks with Syria s president in Damascus, met Israel s prime minister in Jerusalem and been received by the Emir of Qatar in Doha. The defense ministry s forays into areas long regarded as the preserve of the foreign ministry are raising eyebrows in Russia, where strict protocol means ministers usually hold talks only with their direct foreign counterparts. The military is reaping political dividends from what the Kremlin saw as its big successes in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine after Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms seized control of the peninsula in 2014, and Syria, where Russian forces helped turn the tide of war in President Bashar al-Assad s favor. That has translated into more top-table influence, said a long-serving Russian official who interacts with the defense ministry but declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. The Kremlin and the defense ministry did not respond to detailed requests for comment for this article, but three sources who know both ministries well confirmed the trend. The foreign ministry, in a Dec.15 statement to Reuters, said it was baffled by what it called assumptions it likened to rumors and gossip. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the leading but not the sole government department involved in foreign policy making, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman, said in the statement. Foreign policy making has long become a multi-faceted complex process involving many parts of government. One part of government seizing some kind of monopoly in international relations will not be beneficial and is hardly possible. The military s increased influence has, however, caused discontent among some Russian diplomats and unease among Western officials about the harder edge it is giving Russia s foreign policy. Foreign policy-making has become more bellicose and more opaque, and this makes new Russian military adventures more likely, some Western officials say. If you allow the defense ministry a bigger say in foreign policy it s going to be looking for trouble, said one, who declined to be named because of the subject s sensitivity. Shoigu s high profile has also revived talk of the long-time Putin loyalist as a possible presidential stand-in if Putin, who is seeking a fourth term in an election in March, had to step down suddenly and was unable to serve out a full six-year term. Shoigu, 62, is not involved in party politics but opinion polls often put him among the top five most popular presidential possibles. His trust rating is also often second only to Putin, with whom he was pictured on a fishing trip this summer. The military s influence has ebbed and flowed in Russia and, before that, the Soviet Union. It had huge clout at the end of World War Two and in the 1950s after the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin when Georgy Zhukov, a commander credited with a crucial role in defeating Nazi Germany, was defense minister. But the ignominious Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed in 1989, two wars Russia fought in Chechnya after the Soviet Union s collapse, and the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine with the loss of all 118 people on board in 2000 left the military s prestige in tatters. Under Putin, a former KGB agent who as president is the armed forces commander-in-chief, its stock has risen. Defence spending has soared, the military has been deployed in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria and its actions are used to foster patriotism. The military s growing political and foreign policy muscle is most noticeable when it comes to Syria. After going to Damascus twice earlier this year for talks with Assad, Shoigu was at Putin s side this week when the president flew in to meet the Syrian leader. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has not visited Syria at all in 2017. Unusually for a defense minister, Shoigu has been involved in diplomatic efforts to bring peace to Syria. In this role he has spoken about the importance of a new draft constitution for the country, met the U.N. special envoy on Syria and had talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. A Western official who has direct contact with the foreign and defense ministries said the Russian military had real heft in Damascus of a kind the foreign ministry did not. There was strong mutual trust between the Russian military and senior people in Damascus, the official said, because the Russians saved their asses and the Syrians respect that. The foreign ministry retains strong Middle East experts and continues to play an important Syria role, helping run peace talks taking place in Kazakhstan. But Lavrov s own efforts to secure a U.S.-Russia deal on cooperating in Syria have shown how differently the foreign and defense ministries sometimes think. Lavrov is still seen as a formidable diplomat whom Putin trusts and respects. But Western officials say he is not summoned to all important meetings and is not informed about major military operations in Syria. The military s other foreign policy interventions include a role in Russia s alleged interference in last year s U.S. presidential election, U.S. intelligence agencies say. They say the GRU, Russia s military foreign intelligence agency, hacked email accounts belonging to Democratic Party officials and politicians, and organized their leaking to the media to try to sway public opinion against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump s main rival. The Kremlin denies the allegations. Other policy interventions included a news briefing in December 2015 at which the defense ministry said it had proof that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his family were benefiting from illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq. Erdogan said the allegations, made at a briefing held a week after a Turkish air force jet shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian-Turkish border, amounted to slander. The defense ministry s response to the incident was much sharper than that of Russian diplomats, part of a wide-ranging communications policy that has included frequent criticism of the U.S. State Department and Washington s foreign policy. Other areas of interest for the defense ministry have included Egypt, Sudan and Libya. Shoigu was involved in talks between Putin and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Moscow last month and the ministry hosted Khalifa Haftar, Eastern Libya s dominant military figure, aboard its sole aircraft carrier in January. During the visit, Haftar spoke to Shoigu via video link about fighting terrorism in the Middle East. One Western official told Reuters such incidents were fuelling fears that Russia plans to expand its footprint beyond Syria, where it has an air base and a naval facility, to centers such as Yemen, Sudan or Afghanistan. The military s influence in domestic policy-making has expanded too, Russian analysts and Western officials say, with Putin seeking its views on everything from the digital economy to food security. That is in part because Putin, since the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, has altered the way he takes decisions and widened the scope of what the Security Council, which he chairs, discusses to include many domestic policy questions. At a time when there s a feeling that Russia is increasingly surrounded by enemies, Putin is consulting the intelligence services and the military more when he takes all decisions. He s meeting them all the time, said Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the analytical department at the Center for Political Technologies think tank. Stanovaya said that did not mean the military was initiating ideas, but that its opinions were taken into account far more by Putin now than in the past and that it now had an important voice on domestic policy areas. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JIM JORDAN BLASTS DEPUTY AG ROSENSTEIN On Key Anti-Trump Text Saying “We can’t let” Trump Be President…”We need an insurance policy” [Video];"The Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified today about the clear cases of corruption and political bias in our intel agencies. Changing Hillary s charge from grossly negligent to extremely careless is disturbing enough but it s clear that Jim Jordan knows this goes much deeper. Hillary was protected by the political hacks in the intel agencies but a target was put on President Trump s back using the FISA court to open up spying on the him and those around him using a doctored up opposition research document that was never proven to be anywhere close to true The questioning from Jordan is well worth watching:JIM JORDAN JUST SPOKE WITH LOU DOBBS:.@Jim_Jordan on Peter Strzok: ""In case the American people, in his mind, are crazy enough to elect Donald Trump we need something else to stop Trump. That's what this guy was thinking at the highest levels at the FBI."" pic.twitter.com/vNWUhDvDuE FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 14, 2017BYRON YORK:An insurance policy? From the Strzok-Page texts. https://t.co/Ru5P1dWFXI pic.twitter.com/hiyApwb7Jg Byron York (@ByronYork) December 13, 2017BRET BAIER:Text-from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page (Andy is Andrew McCabe): ""I want to believe the path u threw out 4 consideration in Andy's office-that there's no way he gets elected-but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.It's like an insurance policy in unlikely event u die be4 you're 40"" Bret Baier (@BretBaier) December 13, 2017ANDREW MCCARTHY COMMENTED ON THE TWEET THAT EXPOSED THE AGENTS FOR THEIR POLITICAL BIAS:Obviously, this is not political banter. Clearly indicates professional duties infected by political viewpoints, which is disqualifying. I was going on the published accounts I'd seen, which didn't include this one. Should follow my own advice to wait til all facts in. https://t.co/fXk7GPnk5U Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 13, 2017";politics;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: INTERNATIONAL SHOPLIFTING PUNK LiAngelo Ball Makes Disgusting Admission About His Apology To President Trump…Proves He’s No Better Than His Ungrateful Dad;It s beyond sad to watch these young men sitting through an interview with their overbearing, loudmouth dad controlling their every move. It s especially disturbing to see Lavar Ball and the hosts of The Breakfast Club laughing about LiAngelo and his fellow UCLA basketball players stealing Louis Vuitton sunglasses in China.He certainly isn t doing them any favors LiAngelo Ball said he wouldn t have apologized to President Trump if UCLA didn t make him do so.After Ball and teammates Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were arrested and released for shoplifting in China, the trio held a press conference after arriving in the United States where they thanked Trump for his role in their release. But according to LiAngelo, who along with his dad, LaVar, spoke about the apology with The Breakfast Club Wednesday morning, an apology wouldn t have been in the cards if he knew he wasn t going to play for UCLA again.Watch, as Lavar Ball, the father of 2 of these 3 unfortunate young men that were part of the interview with The Breakfast Club, talks about how differently he d be treated if he were white. Perhaps someone should explain to Lavar that the real reason he offends everyone within earshot of his big mouth, is because he s an arrogant ass, who owes any attention he gets from the media to his son s athletic abilities (which of course, he takes full credit for). They wanted to hear that, and he tweeted about it before my speech so I had to add it in there right before I gave it, LiAngelo told the Power 105.1 morning show.According to the middle Ball son, the school reminded him about Trump right before he went up to speak to the press. If they didn t tell me to do it, it wouldn t have been in there, Ball said on the program, in reference to the Trump apology.Trump fired off a tweet after the UCLA players returned questioning whether they would thank him for facilitating their release.Trump s tweet then prompted LaVar Ball to question how exactly Trump helped. Who? Ball told ESPN. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Ball s response led to more beef between the two, with Ball reigniting the feud earlier in December when he tweeted a cartoon showing him dunking on the commander-in-chief.LiAngelo, who was suspended indefinitely by UCLA, left the school weeks later and, along with his younger brother, LaMelo, signed a professional contract with Lithuania basketball club Prienu Vytautas this week. NYPOn November 21, 2017, we published an article about how a family member revealed the SICK reason LaVar Ball allegedly wouldn t let his sons see their mother after surgery to remove portion of her skull So who is this crackpot LaVar Ball, and why would anyone in their right mind make such arrogant and ignorant remarks after the President of the United States just helped their son to escape a prison sentence in a foreign country? Andrew Stephens of the Armchair All Americans did a pretty good job of summing up what a horrible human being the self-serving, money, and fame-obsessed LaVar Ball really is. In his article, Stephens reveals a sick man, who is so controlling of his 3 sons and their basketball careers, that he wouldn t even let them visit their very sick mother in the hospital, over fears that it could create media attention that could damage his merchandise brand.On March 15, 2017, Andrew Stephens of Armchair All Americans published an article about Lavar Ball titled Lavar Ball: The epitome of what is wrong with modern sports. It touched on helicopter parenting and the monetization of potentially profitable children.Stephens claimed that in the article, without commenting on upbringing tactics, I attempted to delve into Lavar Ball s seemingly unnecessary promotion of his own sons for his personal benefit.About an hour after the article was run, I received a comment on it from a member of the Ball family, who wishes to remain anonymous. The comment (which has since been removed to protect the email address and identity of the commenter) read as follows:- Wow. You nailed it. Although you don t even know the half of it. Lavar took over the high school program, added the Coach, his puppet (which is why he quit last year after becoming the national coach of the year) and Lavar stepped on and crushed countless other kids careers and love for the game to get his kids on the court. If you are allowed to shoot at any time from anywhere and never come out of the game, any decent idiot could score 30 points.Also, Tina Ball, his wife had a stroke on Feb 21. She had life-threatening skull surgery to relieve brain pressure guess where Lavar was during the operation that could have killed his wife? at the CHHS vs. LB Poly game with his sons, including Lonzo. He still has not allowed his kids to see their sick mother due to the media attention it would bring to him, and cause BBB sales to diminish. [Name of hospital] in [City of hospital], CA Tina is there now and he only visits for 1 hour a few days a week, while her Mother has yet to leave her side. Pathetic!!! ;politics;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;UPDATE: TRUMP AIDE VICTIM OF FAKE NEWS…WAS NOT Tossed From The White House [Video];"Earlier today, CNN s April Ryan reported Trump administration aide Omarosa Manigault had to be escorted out of the White House by Secret Service officers after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly. American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan told the story about the aide s firing on CNN:.@AprilDRyan reports Omarosa is leaving the White House because General Kelly ""was tired of all the drama."" She ""was very vulgar, she was cursing"" when he let her know and tried to go see Trump in his residence, but was escorted out by Secret Service https://t.co/tXu1J9HEOw Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) December 13, 2017THE LEFTY TRUMP HATERS WERE GLEEFUL:""Bye girl, bye You have never represented the community. Good riddance, goodbye, deuces out!"" @angela_rye celebrates the departure of Omarosa Manigault from the White House https://t.co/t2w0NBvunL https://t.co/1uHDdvobgy Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) December 13, 2017The problem is that the Secret Service pushed back in a tweet saying this did not happen:Reporting regarding Secret Service personnel physically removing Omarosa Manigault Newman from the @WhiteHouse complex is incorrect. U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) December 13, 2017";politics;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Despite Tillerson overture, White House says not right time for North Korea talks;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - No negotiations can be held with North Korea until it improves its behavior, a White House official said on Wednesday, raising questions about U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson s offer to begin talks with Pyongyang any time and without pre-conditions. Given North Korea s most recent missile test, clearly right now is not the time, a White House official told Reuters. Tillerson said on Tuesday the United States was ready to talk any time North Korea would like to talk, appearing to back away from a key U.S. demand that Pyongyang must first accept that any negotiations would have to be about giving up its nuclear arsenal. The White House has declined to say whether President Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher rhetorical line against North Korea than Tillerson, gave approval for the overture. A day after Tillerson s comments at Washington s Atlantic Council think tank, the White House official, who declined to be named, laid out a more restrictive formula for any diplomatic engagement with North Korea. The administration is united in insisting that any negotiations with North Korea must wait until the regime fundamentally improves its behavior, the official said. As the secretary of state himself has said, this must include, but is not limited to, no further nuclear or missile tests. In his speech, however, Tillerson did not explicitly set a testing freeze as a requirement before talks can begin. He said it would be tough to talk if Pyongyang decided to test another device in the middle of discussions and that a period of quiet would be needed for productive discussions. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Wednesday appeared to walk back part of Tillerson s proposal, saying there would have to be a suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile tests for an undefined length of time before any talks could take place. And we certainly haven t seen that right now, she told reporters, insisting Tillerson had not unveiled a new policy and was on the same page as the White House. Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korea s weapons advances have grown this year and recent exchanges of bellicose rhetoric have fueled fears over the risk of military conflict. Tillerson s relationship with Trump has been strained by differences over North Korea and other issues, and he has seen his influence diminished within the administration. Senior administration officials said late last month that Trump was considering a plan to oust Tillerson, though the secretary of state has dismissed that. Tillerson said in his speech that Trump has encouraged our diplomatic efforts. Trump, however, tweeted in October that Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with North Korea. Tillerson s overture came nearly two weeks after North Korea said it had successfully tested a breakthrough intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire United States mainland within range. North Korea has made clear it has little interest in negotiations with the United States until it has developed the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile, something most experts say it has still not proved. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said following Tillerson s speech that China welcomed efforts to ease tension and promote dialogue to resolve the North Korea standoff. Russia also welcomed Tillerson s statement, the Interfax news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying. Ahead of Tillerson s speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to develop more nuclear weapons while personally decorating scientists and officials who contributed to the development of Pyongyang s most advanced ICBM, state media said on Wednesday. Despite that, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tillerson s remarks followed speculation North Korea might be willing to talk having announced it had completed a major milestone with last month s missile test and suggested he was trying to take advantage of a potential opening. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! #VeryFakeNewsCNN Claims Anderson Cooper’s Twitter Account Was Hacked After He Tweeted Nasty Message To President Trump;After Roy Moore s ugly loss in the Alabama Senate race last night, President Trump took the high road and congratulated Democrat candidate Doug Jones who won by less than 1% of the vote. President Trump tweeted: Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends! Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017Trump then tweeted an explanation as to why he didn t get behind Roy Moore in the primary, and chose instead, to support his Republican opponent Luther Strange.President Trump tweeted: The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him! The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017The verified Anderson Cooper account responded to President Trump s tweet by saying, Oh Really? You endorsed him you tool! Twitter user Blackish Jimmy Kimmel took a screen shot of Cooper s tweet before it was deleted:This is CNN #FactsFirst That awkward moment when You're @AndersonCooper trying to convince people that #FakeTweets are being made from your Verified twitter account. pic.twitter.com/tHexTfDv2e Blackish JimmyKimmel (@StrokerAce90) December 13, 2017#VeryFakeNewsCNN s communication team got out ahead of the sh*t storm and tweeted, This morning someone gained access to the handle @andersoncooper and replied to POTUS. We re working with Twitter to secure the account. This morning someone gained access to the handle @andersoncooper and replied to POTUS. We're working with Twitter to secure the account. CNN Communications (@CNNPR) December 13, 2017Normally, we d give the Twitter user the benefit of doubt, but in the case of #VeryFakeNewsCNN, they haven t proven that they re ethical or fair in their treatment of President Donald Trump in the past, so there s really no reason for most of America to believe that Anderson s tweet to President Trump wasn t sent by him.What are you thoughts? Do you believe CNN, or do you think Cooper Anderson simply sent a response to Donald Trump that he deleted after he realized he exposed his hate for our President? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.;politics;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;UPDATE: BUSTED By The Secret Service…CNN’s April Ryan Called Out for Fake Report On Trump Aide’s Firing [Video];"The Secret Service pushed back on a CNN reporter s claim that a fired Trump aide was physically removed from the White House:Reporting regarding Secret Service personnel physically removing Omarosa Manigault Newman from the @WhiteHouse complex is incorrect. U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) December 13, 2017Earlier today, CNN s April Ryan reported Trump administration aide Omarosa Manigault had to be escorted out of the White House by Secret Service officers after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly. American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan told the story about the aide s firing on CNN:.@AprilDRyan reports Omarosa is leaving the White House because General Kelly ""was tired of all the drama."" She ""was very vulgar, she was cursing"" when he let her know and tried to go see Trump in his residence, but was escorted out by Secret Service https://t.co/tXu1J9HEOw Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) December 13, 2017THE LEFTY TRUMP HATERS WERE GLEEFUL: Watch how nasty Angela Rye is about a fellow black woman Shame on her!""Bye girl, bye You have never represented the community. Good riddance, goodbye, deuces out!"" @angela_rye celebrates the departure of Omarosa Manigault from the White House https://t.co/t2w0NBvunL https://t.co/1uHDdvobgy Deena Zeina Zaru (@Deena_CNN) December 13, 2017THE SECRET SERVICE TWEETED OUT A SECOND TWEET THAT THEY JUST TOOK THE PASS OF THR PERSON LET GO:The Secret Service was not involved in the termination process of Ms Manigault Newman or the escort off of the complex. Our only involvement in this matter was to deactivate the individual's pass which grants access to the complex. U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) December 13, 2017";left-news;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DOCTOR MENTIONED In Hillary Email Released By Wikileaks Found DEAD In Apartment…Police Say He Committed Suicide By Stabbing Himself To Death??;54-year-old Dr. Dean Lorich, Associate Director of Orthopaedic Trauma Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery, as well as the Chief of the Orthopedic Trauma Service at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was found dead in his apartment earlier this week.According to New York City police, he committed suicide by stabbing himself to death.That s a pretty normal way to commit suicide right?It s like the time when former President of the United Nations General Assembly John Ashe, was found dead in his apartment only days before he was set to testify against the Clintons in a corruption case. The official reports indicated that Ashe died of a heart attack.The problem, however, is that police on the scene reported Ashe died when his throat was crushed during a work-out accident.Adding to the mysterious nature of Ashe s death was the fact that he had been slated to be in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, from whom he reportedly received over $1 billion in donations during his term as president of the U.N. General Assembly. And then there was this: During the presidency of Bill Clinton, Seng illegally funneled several hundred thousand dollars to the Democrat National Committee.Now ABC News is reporting:An acclaimed trauma surgeon was found dead with a knife in his torso Sunday in his Park Avenue apartment in a suspected suicide, New York City police said.Dr. Dean Lorich, 54, was the associate director of the orthopedic trauma service at the Hospital for Special Surgery who treated Bono in 2014 after the U2 frontman was badly injured in a cycling accident in Central Park.Lorich was also a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College.His death is being investigated as an apparent suicide, a New York Police Department official told ABC News.Initial investigations did not find any signs of forced entry at his apartment, the official said. Authorities have not found a suicide note.Police responding to a 911 call of an assault in a Park Avenue apartment at 1:05 p.m. Sunday found Lorich unconscious and unresponsive with a knife in his torso, according to the NYPD. Emergency medical service responders pronounced him dead.The email Wikileaks published, was highly critical of the failed relief efforts in Haiti and was shared by Cheryl Mills with Hillary Clinton.In 2010, Lorich was part of a relief effort that flew to Haiti as a volunteer to offer his skills for civilians who had been injured during the earthquakes that devastated the region.Within 24 hours of the earthquake, a 13-member team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, and operating room nurses was assembled, with a massive amount of orthopedic operating room equipment, and flew to Port-au-Prince with Dr. Lorich.Bill and Hillary Clinton s charitable Clinton foundation led the relief effort in Haiti raising millions of dollars from around the world to help the people recover from the natural disaster. Sadly, most of the funds never reached the people of Haiti, but instead, lined the pockets of the Clintons associates who were meant to redevelop the nation, but never delivered.Dr. Lorich and his team were there to help save the limbs of those injured, which without the proper medical treatment, would have meant amputation for a lot of people.Lorich described amputation in those conditions as a death sentence and hoped to treat as many sufferers as possible, saying: We expected many amputations. But we thought we could save limbs that were salvageable, particularly those of children. We recognized that in an underdeveloped country, a limb amputation may be a death sentence. It does not have to be so. With the amount of money that was being donated to Haiti for the victims, Lorich and his team expected to have full support when their plane touched down.Instead, he described the situation as shameful and witnessed, first hand, a huge misappropriation of funds, with the people affected by the disaster receiving no help whatsoever.Dr. Lorich was disgusted by what he saw and sent an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s Chief of Staff Cheryl D. Mills to report what he had seen.In July 2017, a 50-year-old Haitian tied to the Clinton Foundation was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head.It s no secret that the Clinton Foundation has been facing credible reports of robbing impoverished Haitians who were devastated by Hurricane Hanna in 2008, through their foundation. Haitians have been protesting for years outside of the Clinton Foundation offices over the theft of money that was donated by individuals and businesses to the Clinton Foundation that never made it to the poorest of the poor.One man was set to testify against the Clinton Foundation next week. That man was 50-year-old former Haitian government official Klaus Eberwein. He was found dead in his Miami home with a gunshot to the head that s been ruled a suicide by the Miami-Dade s medical examiner records supervisor. (Think Vince Foster)Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official who was expected to expose the extent of Clinton Foundation corruption and malpractice next week, has been found dead in Miami. He was 50.Eberwein was due to appear next Tuesday before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors.Eberwein, who had acknowledged his life was in danger, was a fierce critic of the Clinton Foundation s activities in the Caribbean island, where he served as director general of the government s economic development agency, Fonds d assistance conomique et social, for three years.According to Eberwein, a paltry 0.6% of donations granted by international donors to the Clinton Foundation with the express purpose of directly assisting Haitians actually ended up in the hands of Haitian organizations. A further 9.6% ended up with the Haitian government. The remaining 89.8% or $5.4 billion was funneled to non-Haitian organizations. The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace, Eberwein said at a protest outside the Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan last year.The former director general of Haiti, who also served as an advisor to Haitian President Michel Martelly, was also a partner in a popular pizza restaurant in Haiti, Muncheez, and even has a pizza the Klaus Special named after him.According to the Haiti Libre newspaper, Eberwein was said to be in good spirits , with plans for the future. His close friends and business partners are shocked by the idea he may have committed suicide. It s really shocking, said Muncheez s owner Gilbert Bailly. We grew up together;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: INTERNATIONAL SHOPLIFTING PUNK LiAngelo Ball Makes Disgusting Admission About His Apology To President Trump…Proves He’s No Better Than His Ungrateful Dad;It s beyond sad to watch these young men sitting through an interview with their overbearing, loudmouth dad controlling their every move. It s especially disturbing to see Lavar Ball and the hosts of The Breakfast Club laughing about LiAngelo and his fellow UCLA basketball players stealing Louis Vuitton sunglasses in China.He certainly isn t doing them any favors LiAngelo Ball said he wouldn t have apologized to President Trump if UCLA didn t make him do so.After Ball and teammates Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were arrested and released for shoplifting in China, the trio held a press conference after arriving in the United States where they thanked Trump for his role in their release. But according to LiAngelo, who along with his dad, LaVar, spoke about the apology with The Breakfast Club Wednesday morning, an apology wouldn t have been in the cards if he knew he wasn t going to play for UCLA again.Watch, as Lavar Ball, the father of 2 of these 3 unfortunate young men that were part of the interview with The Breakfast Club, talks about how differently he d be treated if he were white. Perhaps someone should explain to Lavar that the real reason he offends everyone within earshot of his big mouth, is because he s an arrogant ass, who owes any attention he gets from the media to his son s athletic abilities (which of course, he takes full credit for). They wanted to hear that, and he tweeted about it before my speech so I had to add it in there right before I gave it, LiAngelo told the Power 105.1 morning show.According to the middle Ball son, the school reminded him about Trump right before he went up to speak to the press. If they didn t tell me to do it, it wouldn t have been in there, Ball said on the program, in reference to the Trump apology.Trump fired off a tweet after the UCLA players returned questioning whether they would thank him for facilitating their release.Trump s tweet then prompted LaVar Ball to question how exactly Trump helped. Who? Ball told ESPN. What was he over there for? Don t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out. Ball s response led to more beef between the two, with Ball reigniting the feud earlier in December when he tweeted a cartoon showing him dunking on the commander-in-chief.LiAngelo, who was suspended indefinitely by UCLA, left the school weeks later and, along with his younger brother, LaMelo, signed a professional contract with Lithuania basketball club Prienu Vytautas this week. NYPOn November 21, 2017, we published an article about how a family member revealed the SICK reason LaVar Ball allegedly wouldn t let his sons see their mother after surgery to remove portion of her skull So who is this crackpot LaVar Ball, and why would anyone in their right mind make such arrogant and ignorant remarks after the President of the United States just helped their son to escape a prison sentence in a foreign country? Andrew Stephens of the Armchair All Americans did a pretty good job of summing up what a horrible human being the self-serving, money, and fame-obsessed LaVar Ball really is. In his article, Stephens reveals a sick man, who is so controlling of his 3 sons and their basketball careers, that he wouldn t even let them visit their very sick mother in the hospital, over fears that it could create media attention that could damage his merchandise brand.On March 15, 2017, Andrew Stephens of Armchair All Americans published an article about Lavar Ball titled Lavar Ball: The epitome of what is wrong with modern sports. It touched on helicopter parenting and the monetization of potentially profitable children.Stephens claimed that in the article, without commenting on upbringing tactics, I attempted to delve into Lavar Ball s seemingly unnecessary promotion of his own sons for his personal benefit.About an hour after the article was run, I received a comment on it from a member of the Ball family, who wishes to remain anonymous. The comment (which has since been removed to protect the email address and identity of the commenter) read as follows:- Wow. You nailed it. Although you don t even know the half of it. Lavar took over the high school program, added the Coach, his puppet (which is why he quit last year after becoming the national coach of the year) and Lavar stepped on and crushed countless other kids careers and love for the game to get his kids on the court. If you are allowed to shoot at any time from anywhere and never come out of the game, any decent idiot could score 30 points.Also, Tina Ball, his wife had a stroke on Feb 21. She had life-threatening skull surgery to relieve brain pressure guess where Lavar was during the operation that could have killed his wife? at the CHHS vs. LB Poly game with his sons, including Lonzo. He still has not allowed his kids to see their sick mother due to the media attention it would bring to him, and cause BBB sales to diminish. [Name of hospital] in [City of hospital], CA Tina is there now and he only visits for 1 hour a few days a week, while her Mother has yet to leave her side. Pathetic!!! ;left-news;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! #VeryFakeNewsCNN Claims Anderson Cooper’s Twitter Account Was Hacked After He Tweeted Nasty Message To President Trump;After Roy Moore s ugly loss in the Alabama Senate race last night, President Trump took the high road and congratulated Democrat candidate Doug Jones who won by less than 1% of the vote. President Trump tweeted: Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends! Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017Trump then tweeted an explanation as to why he didn t get behind Roy Moore in the primary, and chose instead, to support his Republican opponent Luther Strange.President Trump tweeted: The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him! The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017The verified Anderson Cooper account responded to President Trump s tweet by saying, Oh Really? You endorsed him you tool! Twitter user Blackish Jimmy Kimmel took a screen shot of Cooper s tweet before it was deleted:This is CNN #FactsFirst That awkward moment when You're @AndersonCooper trying to convince people that #FakeTweets are being made from your Verified twitter account. pic.twitter.com/tHexTfDv2e Blackish JimmyKimmel (@StrokerAce90) December 13, 2017#VeryFakeNewsCNN s communication team got out ahead of the sh*t storm and tweeted, This morning someone gained access to the handle @andersoncooper and replied to POTUS. We re working with Twitter to secure the account. This morning someone gained access to the handle @andersoncooper and replied to POTUS. We're working with Twitter to secure the account. CNN Communications (@CNNPR) December 13, 2017Normally, we d give the Twitter user the benefit of doubt, but in the case of #VeryFakeNewsCNN, they haven t proven that they re ethical or fair in their treatment of President Donald Trump in the past, so there s really no reason for most of America to believe that Anderson s tweet to President Trump wasn t sent by him.What are you thoughts? Do you believe CNN, or do you think Cooper Anderson simply sent a response to Donald Trump that he deleted after he realized he exposed his hate for our President? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.;left-news;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil captures most wanted arms trafficker in Paraguay;RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil s most wanted arms trafficker, an alleged weapons supplier for Rio de Janeiro s biggest criminal gang the Red Command (CV), was captured in southern Paraguay on Wednesday, Rio authorities said, as they battle growing crime in the city. Marcelo Pinheiro Veiga, known as Marcelo Piloto, was arrested in the town of Encarnaci n after hiding out for years in Paraguay, which neighbors Brazil. From there he sent arms, drugs and ammunition to favelas dominated by Rio s largest gang, Rio state authorities said in a statement on Wednesday. A police source who declined to be named confirmed that the gang was the CV. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration participated in the arrest of Veiga, who is wanted for murder, trafficking, and criminal association, the statement said. Rio s authorities are seeking to combat rising crime in the seaside tourist destination. Earlier this month, they arrested Rogerio Rogerio 157 Avelino, a drug trafficker whose turf war with his former gang chief fueled spiraling violence in Rio s Rocinha favela. Crime has spiked this year, as police have struggled to maintain security gains made in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics. A deep economic crisis has spurred big cutbacks in spending on police and other services. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Donald Trump Jr. wants 'leak' probe, as Congress' Russia probes press on;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s eldest son asked a House of Representatives committee on Tuesday to investigate possible leaks of information about his Dec. 6 interview with lawmakers, as congressional probes of Russia and the 2016 election picked up steam ahead of the New Year. Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Donald Trump Jr., asked Representative Michael Conaway, the Republican leading the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the election, to look into comments he said came from committee members and staff that were included in media reports. “To maintain the credibility of the Investigation, this Committee should determine whether any member or staff member violated the Rules,” he said in a letter to Conaway. A spokeswoman for Conaway declined comment. Separately, the Associated Press reported that Trump Jr. was due to appear in Congress again on Wednesday, this time before the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing a source familiar with the matter. Republican Senator Richard Burr, the committee’s chairman, would not confirm the report. Other committee members and their aides declined comment. Futerfas also declined comment. The Senate and House Intelligence panels are conducting the main congressional investigations after U.S. intelligence agencies found that Moscow attempted to influence the campaign to help the Republican Trump defeat his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. They are also working to determine whether Trump associates colluded with Russia. Moscow denies seeking to influence the election, and Trump has dismissed any talk of collusion. The two committees, sometimes members and sometimes staff, have been conducting frequent interviews with a variety of witnesses, seeking to wrap up their investigations well before the U.S. congressional elections in November 2018. Burr said he felt “some urgency” related to election security related to next year’s vote. He said he expected the Senate committee’s investigation would last into 2018, and that there were dozens more people still to be interviewed. “So it’s going to carry over (into next year), but it’s not going to carry over far unless the basket of people (to be interviewed) changes, and the only way that changes is if we learn of individuals that we didn’t know about today,” Burr told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. He said the committee did not now plan any more public hearings in its Russia probe. Separately, Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign official, was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee for more than four hours on Tuesday. He came to the attention of investigators after a report that he encouraged George Papadopoulos, a one-time Trump foreign policy campaign adviser, to improve relations between the United States and Russia. Clovis’ attorney denied those reports. She did not respond immediately to a request for comment about his House testimony on Tuesday. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans forge tax deal, final votes seen next week;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans reached a deal on final tax legislation on Wednesday, clearing the way for final votes next week on a package that would slash the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21 percent and cut taxes for wealthy Americans. Under an agreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate, the corporate tax would be 1 percentage point higher than the 20 percent rate earlier proposed, but still far below the current headline rate of 35 percent, a deep tax reduction that corporations have sought for years. As they finalized the biggest tax overhaul in 30 years, Republicans wavered for weeks on whether to slash the top income tax rate for the wealthy. In the end, they agreed to cut it to 37 percent from the current 39.6 percent. That was despite criticism from Democrats that the Republican plan tilts toward the rich and corporations, offering little to the middle class. “I think we’ve got a pretty good deal,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch told reporters. The emerging agreement would repeal the corporate alternative minimum tax, set up to ensure profitable companies pay some federal tax, and expand a proposed $10,000 cap for state and local property tax deductions to include income tax, lawmakers and sources familiar with the negotiations said. It was also expected to limit the popular mortgage interest deduction to home loans of no more than $750,000 and provide the owners of pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships, with a 20 percent business income deduction. The deal would gut part of the Obamacare health law by repealing a federal fine on individuals who fail to obtain health insurance, while authorizing oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Both add-on measures were part of nailing down sufficient votes for passage. Moving the corporate tax target rate to 21 percent from 20 percent gave tax writers enough revenue to make the tax cuts immediate, Republican Senator Ron Johnson told reporters. News of the deal began circulating just before a formal House-Senate conference committee began debating it in public, leading Democrats to decry the gathering as a sham. A final bill could be formally unveiled on Friday, with decisive votes expected next week in both chambers. Despite expressions of confidence about passage from party leaders, the path to a final vote in the Senate could still be perilous. Republicans, who hold a 52-48 majority in the 100-seat Senate, can lose no more than two votes on the tax bill. Republican Senator John McCain, who has brain cancer, was in a military hospital to undergo treatment for the side effects of cancer therapy. At least three other Senate Republicans still seemed to be undecided, including Arizona’s Jeff Flake, who was not specific about his hesitation in brief hallway remarks to reporters. Bob Corker, a fiscal hawk, said he was undecided on whether to support the bill. He told reporters: “My deficit concerns have not been alleviated.” Susan Collins, who helped sink her fellow Republicans’ efforts to dismantle former Democratic President Barack Obama’s healthcare law earlier this year, said she would not make a final decision on which way to vote “until I see the bill.” In a White House speech, Trump said the Internal Revenue Service had advised that if he signs the bill into law before Christmas, the tax cuts would take effect in February. The IRS had no immediate comment. But a Trump administration official said the IRS would have to readjust its paycheck tax withholding tables for employers and that new withholding levels would take effect in February. Under the bill, tax returns being filed next year for 2017 would not be affected, but returns filed in 2019 for 2018 would. Trump appeared in the White House with several middle-class families he said would benefit from the tax bill. The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, both nonpartisan research units of Congress, have forecast that wealthy taxpayers and businesses would gain disproportionately from the debt-financed Republican proposals. As drafted, the Republican plan was expected to add as much as $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt in 10 years. With that in view, Republicans have been urgently trying to finalize details of their package without increasing its estimated impact on the federal deficit and the debt. At a tax event held by Democrats, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said the Republican bill, if enacted, would cause interest rates to rise, meaning the benefits of a lower corporate tax rate would be “completely washed out.” Stock markets have rallied for months in anticipation of lower taxes for businesses. The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average Index .DJI closed up 0.33 percent at 24,585.43. With their defeat on Tuesday in an Alabama special U.S. Senate election, Republicans were under pressure to complete their tax overhaul before Christmas and before a new Democratic senator can be formally seated in the Senate. Democrat Doug Jones’ victory in Alabama came hours ahead of the final tax deal. When Jones arrives in Washington, the Republicans’ already slim Senate majority will narrow to 51-49. Fast action by Republicans on taxes would prevent Jones from upsetting expected vote tallies since he will not likely be seated until late December or early January. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called on Republicans to delay a vote on overhauling the tax code for the first time in 30 years until Jones can be seated. But that was unlikely. “Who would’ve thought they could have made the bill even less favorable to the middle class and more slanted towards the wealthy?” Schumer told a news conference. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's eldest son testifies to Senate committee in Russia probe;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest son met with the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday as part of the panel’s investigation into Russia, the 2016 U.S. election and whether his father’s election campaign colluded with Moscow. Donald Trump Jr. arrived at a Senate office building shortly after 10 a.m. Capitol police officers tried to keep journalists from witnessing his arrival, but he was spotted by reporters as he rushed to a room the committee uses for classified briefings. He testified for nine hours, a person familiar with the matter said. U.S. intelligence agencies said after Trump’s victory in the November 2016 presidential election that they had concluded Russia sought to influence the campaign to boost Trump’s chances of defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his Democratic challenger. Moscow has denied any such activity, and Trump has dismissed talk of possible collusion as a “witch hunt” led by Democrats disappointed about his victory. The Senate committee is conducting one of the main congressional investigations. Richard Burr, the panel’s chairman, told reporters on Tuesday he expected its probe to last into 2018, but likely not for many months into the new year. Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also investigating the matter. Trump Jr. testified to the House Intelligence Committee last week. Lawmakers are interested in talking to him about a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York at which he said he hoped to get information about the “fitness, character and qualifications” of Clinton. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Control of Virginia state House at stake as recounts begin;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Virginia officials started recounts on Wednesday in the first of four state House of Delegates races, a process that could lead to a Democratic takeover of the chamber after the party’s historic election gains last month. Republicans have a narrow 51-49 majority in the House after Democrats erased a two-to-one advantage in November, part of the party’s first big wave of victories since Republican Donald Trump won the White House last year. Four of the legislative races were close enough to lead to recounts. If Democrats gain one seat in the House, the chamber would be tied 50-50 with no tiebreaking mechanism. Governor-elect Ralph Northam is a Democrat, and Republicans hold a 21-19 edge in the state Senate. The first recount was scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in suburban Washington’s District 58, where Republican incumbent Tim Hugo narrowly won re-election by 106 votes over Democrat Donte Tanner. Others are planned for next week, including one where the Republican leads by only 10 votes. In a recount set for Dec. 21 in northern Virginia’s District 28, Democrat Joshua Cole trails Republican Robert Thomas by 82 votes. The state elections board has said at least 147 voters were assigned to the wrong district, and voters have filed a federal lawsuit to hold a new election. Andrea Gaines, a state elections spokeswoman, said in an email that she had no information on when results for the recounts would be announced. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Corker says he is still undecided on tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker on Wednesday said he was still undecided on whether to support his party’s tax legislation even as congressional Republicans announced a deal on a final plan. Corker, whose party has a slim majority in the Senate and can only afford to lose two votes, told reporters: “My deficit concerns have not been alleviated, so like in many tough votes around here, you’ve got to make a decision.”  ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Schumer: delay tax overhaul vote until new Alabama senator seated;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday called on Republicans to delay a vote on pending tax overhaul legislation until the new U.S. senator from Alabama, a Democrat, is seated. Schumer wants to slow down the legislation - which Republican leaders want to vote on before Christmas - so that Democrat Doug Jones, who won an upset victory in deeply conservative Alabama on Tuesday night, can cast a vote in the closely divided chamber. Schumer said that under Alabama law, Jones could not be sworn in until at least the end of December. But Republicans are expected to reject the Democratic leader’s plea for a delay in voting on the tax bill. Speaking to reporters, Schumer cast Alabama’s senate election results as a repudiation of the policies being pursued by President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress, including the tax legislation. “The Republican brand, even in deep red Alabama, is positively toxic,” he said. “The president keeps talking like he’s helping the middle class, but his policy after policy helps the wealthy and the powerful and hurts the middle class.” Schumer said Jones’ defeat of Republican candidate Roy Moore was in part a referendum on the Republican tax bill, especially in the suburbs, where he said voters were worried about the bill’s proposed elimination of the state and local tax deduction. Schumer said Republicans should abandon their effort and start over in cooperation with Democrats. “Pausing on this tax bill and going back to the drawing board is the right thing for Republicans to do,” he said. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Alabama upset, Democrats see new prospects in U.S. South;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The solidly Republican South suddenly looks a little less solid. Tuesday’s upset win by Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama, coupled with last month’s Democratic sweep in Virginia, has given the party new optimism about its 2018 prospects in the South and other conservative, heavily rural regions where Republicans have dominated for decades. Jones, a former federal prosecutor, took advantage of the controversy over sexual misconduct allegations against his Republican opponent Roy Moore to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in Alabama in a quarter-century. The Jones campaign also offered a template for how Democrats can win in the South, strategists said: Field a strong candidate, crank up turnout among the region’s sizable bloc of African-American voters, keep the liberal national party brand at arm’s length and compete hard in every county and region. Add in the grass-roots energy of the liberal resistance to President Donald Trump, the disaffection of moderate suburbanites turned off by Trump and a conservative wing sapped of enthusiasm by Republican infighting, and Democrats see an opportunity for a brighter future in the South starting in next year’s midterm elections. “You can hear that Republican wall in the South cracking. Doug Jones and Virginia are just the beginning,” said Phil Noble, a Democratic business and technology consultant who is running for governor in South Carolina. Republicans are not convinced, citing years of still unrealized Democratic predictions that demographic changes would turn Republican-dominated conservative states like Georgia and Texas into toss-ups. “Democrats still have issues with their brand in large swaths of the country. They are the party of Nancy Pelosi, and that image is cemented in many voters’ minds,” said Brian Walsh, a former strategist for the Republican party’s Senate campaign committee, referring to the House of Representatives Democratic leader, a liberal from San Francisco. In the fight for control of Congress next year, wins on once hostile Southern turf could be crucial to the Democratic cause. In the Senate, where Republicans’ already narrow majority will be shaved to 51-49 once Jones is seated, Democrats will have to defend 26 seats, including 10 in states won by Trump. They would need to pick up two more Republican-held states to reclaim control. Nevada and Arizona had been viewed as the only Republican-held seats vulnerable to a takeover next year. But Democrats now see possibilities in Tennessee, where popular former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen has jumped into the race for the seat of retiring Republican Bob Corker, and Mississippi, where incumbent Republican Roger Wicker could face a bruising primary challenge. In the House of Representatives, Democrats need to gain 24 seats to win a majority. Their target list of 91 districts includes one each in Alabama, Arkansas and Kentucky, two in Georgia and four in North Carolina. “If the election were held today, I do think you could see Democrats winning in some areas of the country where Democrats haven’t won in the last decade,” said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster based in Alabama. In addition to the congressional races, governors’ contests in Georgia and South Carolina and state legislative races across the region will give Democrats a shot to compete in areas where they once dominated local politics but are now a minority party defined by liberal views on cultural issues such as abortion and gay rights. McCrary said Jones and Democrat John Bel Edwards, who won the Louisiana governor’s office in 2015, have shown it is possible to build a winning coalition in the South by energizing African-American voters while also appealing to white swing voters, soft Republicans and independents. In Alabama, Jones made inroads with voters in Shelby County, the Republican suburbs of the state’s biggest city, Birmingham, outpolling the results of Hillary Clinton there in last year’s presidential election by about 20 percentage points. That should be a warning sign to Republicans after Trump’s weak performance in wealthier, more educated suburban districts in 2016 and Democrat Jon Ossoff’s strong, though ultimately losing bid in a special election earlier this year for a congressional seat in a suburban Atlanta district that has been long held by Republicans, said David Hughes, a professor at Auburn University-Montgomery in Alabama. “If Democrats want to get out of the ditch they are in in Alabama and the South, they will do it in the suburbs,” said Hughes, an expert on Southern politics and judicial elections. In the nine states that form the political backbone of the Republican-dominated South - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South and North Carolina - Republicans will hold 17 of the 18 Senate seats once Jones takes office as well as 56 of the 70 House seats. Democratic Party Chairman Tom Perez acknowledged on Wednesday that the national party kept a low profile in Alabama even as it pumped money into turnout efforts targeting blacks and young voters because it knew that publicity about its involvement would not help Jones. But Perez said the victory showed that the party, which has launched a 50-state organizing effort aimed at electing candidates at the local and state levels, can compete in the South and elsewhere. “We can win in every zip code in America,” Perez told reporters. Democrats in Alabama said the party can start by learning lessons from Jones, who campaigned in every corner of the state and portrayed himself as a bridge builder who would listen to voters’ concerns and work across the aisle to help Alabama. “This is what we need to be doing more of, and not just at election time,” Thomas Jackson, a black Alabama state representative, said at a fish fry attended by Jones in rural Alabama last month. “We can get a lot accomplished if we just sit down and talk with people more.” ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In elaborate hoax, websites say NFL Redskins renamed as Redhawks;(Reuters) - Native American advocates launched an elaborate hoax on Wednesday, creating authentic-looking web pages of major media that purported to report that the National Football League’s Washington Redskins had changed their name to the Redhawks. The campaign, led by a group called the Rising Hearts Coalition, created web pages that appeared strikingly similar to the real pages of those of The Washington Post, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Bleacher Report, plus one for the team itself with a new Redhawks logo. Some Native Americans consider the Redskins name highly offensive and evocative of the genocide of North American tribes by American settlers of European descent. “We created this action to show the NFL and the Washington Football franchise how easy, popular and powerful changing the name could be,” Rebecca Nagle of the Cherokee Nation said in a news release that identified her as “one of the organizers of the stunt.” “What we’re asking for changes only four letters. Just four letters! Certainly the harm that the mascot does to Native Americans outweighs the very, very minor changes the franchise would need to make,” Nagle said. All the online pages added disclaimers announcing the website as a parody and not endorsed by nor affiliated with sites they were imitating. A Washington Post spokeswoman provided a link to the newspaper’s own report on the stunt, but declined to comment further. U.S. President Donald Trump regularly derides the mainstream media as “fake news,” raising the stakes for news organizations that might be victims of a hoax. The Redskins have long declined to change their name, saying their fans support keeping it. A Washington Post poll released last year found 90 percent of Native Americans were not offended by the name, but a rival study by the Center for Indigenous Peoples Studies at California State University, San Bernardino found 67 percent of Native Americans considered the name racist. “This morning, the Redskins organization was made aware of fraudulent websites about our team name,” Tony Wyllie, the team’s senior vice president for communications, said in a statement. “The name of the team is the Washington Redskins and will remain that for the future.” ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. prepares to open doors on billion-dollar London embassy;LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy in London moves next month to a new billion-dollar home overlooking the River Thames — just as U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions have placed strains on the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States. Britain’s closest ally will leave behind an imposing 1960 stone and concrete embassy in London’s upmarket Grosvenor Square — an area known as ‘Little America’ during World War Two, when the square also housed the military headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The old embassy was also a focus for British discontent with U.S. policy. Anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s drew thousand of Britons, including celebrities of the day like Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. The new 12-storey building on the south bank of the river is at the heart of a huge regeneration project in a former industrial zone known as “Nine Elms”. Set in what will become an urban park, it will open for business on Jan. 16, hosting 800 staff and about 1,000 visitors each day. “This embassy, when you look out through the windows, it reflects the global outlook of the U.S. going forward in the 21st century: rather looking out, than looking in,” said Woody Johnson, Trump’s appointed U.S. ambassador to Britain. The U.S. State Department ran a competition to design the new building in 2008. Its $1 billion construction was wholly funded by the sale of other properties in London. The glass structure “gives form to core democratic values of transparency, openness and equality” a State Department briefing document said. Inside the cube, visitors will be greeted by an imposing stone facade featuring the bald eagle of the United States’ Great Seal. The embassy is also designed to exacting security specifications, set back at least 100 feet (30 meters) from surrounding buildings - mostly newly-erected high-rise residential blocks - and incorporating living quarters for the U.S. Marines permanently stationed inside. “This isn’t just a new office, though, it signifies a new era of friendship between out two countries. President Trump wants us to work more closely than ever with the UK,” Johnson said. The British relationship with its former colony is a broad political, cultural and military alliance forged over the last century and exercised on battlefields around the world. But it has been tested in recent months. Prime Minister Theresa May was the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump’s surprise election in November 2016 and used the trip to invite him for a full state visit. While the two leaders have committed to strengthen trade links and have spoken regularly, their governments have disagreed on several issues, such as Trump’s decision to decertify Iran’s compliance with a multilateral nuclear deal, and his move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. A possible state visit by Trump remains a contentious issue among Britons, with lawmakers and campaign groups calling for the offer to be rescinded and promising to take to the streets in protest if he does come to Britain. “The right to protest is a basic right in this country and our country. Expressing one’s view is well within the bounds of reasonableness,” Johnson said. He said he hoped Trump could attend an as-yet unscheduled opening ceremony for the new building but that there were no firm plans in place. This month, May publicly criticized Trump for reposting British far-right anti-Islam videos from his Twitter accounts. He responded with a rebuke, telling May to focus on Islamic extremism in Britain. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says he would accept 21 percent corporate tax rate;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would accept a corporate tax rate of 21 percent and would sign a bill with that number. The White House has previously said it preferred a 20 percent tax rate for corporations, down from 35 percent at current levels. “If it got down to 21 ... I would be thrilled,” he said. “We haven’t set that final figure yet.” ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two Trump judicial nominations rebuffed by Senate;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees will not be confirmed by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate following criticism over controversial statements they made, a White House official said. The official said on Wednesday that the two nominations “will not be moving forward” in the U.S. Senate. One of the nominees, Brett Talley, selected for a district court position in Alabama, had already said he would withdraw. The other, Jeff Mateer, nominated to serve as a district court judge in Texas, was already hanging by a thread although he has not officially withdrawn. Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican who chairs the influential Senate committee that overseas judicial nominations, said on Wednesday that he “doesn’t anticipate that either nominee would be confirmed,” a spokesman said. The move came a day after Grassley raised concerns about the statements the two nominees had made. Talley was reported by online magazine Slate as having posted online sympathetic comments about the early history of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) white supremacist group. He also failed to disclose that his wife works in the White House Counsel’s office, which overseas judicial nominations. Mateer has run into trouble over speeches he made in 2015. In one, he referred to transgender children as being part of “Satan’s plans,” CNN reported. Trump has made significant progress in filling vacancies on the federal courts with conservative judges. He also appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator McCain treated for side effects of cancer therapy;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain was undergoing treatment at a military hospital outside Washington for side effects of cancer therapy, his office said on Tuesday. McCain, 81, who was diagnosed with brain cancer during the summer, will return to work as soon as possible, a statement from his office said. “Senator McCain is currently receiving treatment at Walter Reed Medical Center for normal side effects of his ongoing cancer therapy,” the statement said. “Senator McCain looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible.” McCain, an Arizona Republican who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008, was found to have an aggressive form of brain tumor, glioblastoma, after surgery in July for a blood clot above his left eye. He has been receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatment in the Washington area while continuing to work in the Senate. He has missed Senate votes this week. A critical vote on the Republican tax overhaul is expected in the Senate early next week. McCain’s absence would make it more difficult, but not impossible, for Republicans to pass the bill. McCain was re-elected to a sixth Senate term last year. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Mueller Team Uniform? ‘Democratic Donkey Jerseys’ and ‘I’m With Hillary T-Shirts’ says Congressman;Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, amid new questions about Anti-Trump text messages sent by FBI employees assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller s Russia investigation. Rosenstein testified that Mueller is running his office appropriately and without bias.In a colorful exchange between Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) and Rosenstein, Chabot asked the Deputy AG: How with a straight face, can you say that this group of Democrat partisans are unbiased, and will give President Trump a fair shake? After a brief stammer, Rosenstein replied that political affiliation and the issue of bias are different things, and that we should trust the experience Mueller and the Justice Department have in managing investigation teams, adding: We recognize that we have employees with political opinions, and it s our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions. To which Chabot argued how can anyone possibly reach that conclusion: I was at first encouraged. It seemed like a serious matter and deserved a serious investigation. And I assumed, as many of us did, that Mr. Mueller would pull together an unbiased team. But, rather than wearing stripes as umpires and referees might wear, I would submit that the Mueller team overwhelmingly, uh, oughta be attired with Democratic donkeys on their jerseys or I m with Hillary t-shirts, certainly not with Let s Make America Great Again and I think that s a shame. Because I think the American people deserve a lot better than the very biased team they re getting under Robert Mueller. And I think it s really sad. Things get awkwardly amusing at the 50 minute mark WATCH: READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire RussiaGate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior justice official dismisses Republican charges of bias in Trump probe;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday dismissed Republican lawmakers’ charges that government attorneys and agents investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election are biased against President Donald Trump. Republicans have attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has charged four Trump associates in his investigation, which is also looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow officials. Testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Rosenstein said he was “not aware” of any impropriety by Mueller’s team. When the committee’s ranking Democrat asked if he had any good cause for firing Mueller, he replied: “No.” Russia denies the conclusions by three U.S. intelligence agencies that Moscow used hacking and disinformation to affect the election, and Trump says there was no collusion. At the hearing, Republicans on the committee increased their criticism of Mueller, highlighting text messages between two Federal Bureau of Investigation employees, including an agent on his investigating team, as evidence of bias against Trump. So far, however, congressional Republicans have stopped short of calling on Trump to fire Mueller. Republicans said they had reviewed more than 300 anti-Trump text messages exchanged last year between FBI lawyer Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who worked on Mueller’s probe. Members of the committee read aloud the contents of some of the text messages between Strzok and Page. Some texts call Trump an “idiot” and a “loathsome human,” according to copies of a sampling of the texts reviewed by Reuters. In one July 2016 exchange they poked fun at Trump’s campaign during the Republican National Convention. “My god, I’m so embarrassed for them. These are like second-run stars,” Page responded to Strzok. “And wow, Donald Trump is an enormous d*uche.” The texts showed “extreme bias against President Trump, a fact that would be bad enough if it weren’t for the fact that these two individuals were employed as part of the Mueller ‘dream team’ investigating the very person for whom they were showing disdain,” said Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In some of the texts seen by Reuters, however, Strzok did not seem excited about Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, either. Describing himself as a “conservative Democrat,” he in one text openly worried about her getting elected, and at one point complained that certain news media outlets were biased for downplaying her ties to the oil and gas industry. “This is clear and utter bias by the media specifically the NYTIMES, WAPO, and CNN who if you look at all of them have large donors for Clinton,” he wrote. Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, said the special counsel properly removed Strzok from the probe after the Justice Department inspector general brought the texts to light, and added he was confident Mueller is not letting political bias color the investigation. He also said he thinks Mueller is the “ideal choice” to lead the investigation, and said that just because a person is affiliated with a political party does not mean he or she will be biased. He said he had discussed the issue of bias with Mueller and that Mueller “is running that office appropriately.” ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Stop-gap bill unveiled to fund U.S. government until Jan. 19;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday introduced a bill to fund the government until Jan. 19 while Congress works on longer-term legislation, the panel said in a statement. The bill unveiled by Republican Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen would fully fund national defense programs for the entire 2018 fiscal year and includes money for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the statement said. Congress must pass a funding bill by Dec. 23 to prevent a partial government shutdown. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Minnesota lieutenant governor to replace Franken in Senate;(Reuters) - Minnesota’s Democratic Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith was appointed as U.S. senator on Wednesday to replace Al Franken, who resigned after being accused of sexual harassment. Smith, 59, will serve a one-year term concluding in January 2019, Governor Mark Dayton said at a news conference, and will run in a special election for the seat in November next year. Dayton said he listened to the views of many Minnesotans before deciding on Smith. “There is no one I trust more to assume the responsibilities of this important office,” Dayton said. “I know that she will be a superb senator, representing the best interests of our state and our citizens.” Smith told reporters at the news conference that she will be a fierce advocate on behalf of the state, pushing for economic opportunity and fairness. “This is a difficult moment for us but even now I am now filled with optimism,” she said. “Though I never anticipated this moment, I am resolved to do everything I can to move Minnesota forward.” Smith became lieutenant governor in January 2014. She previously worked as Dayton’s chief of staff and held positions at General Mills and Planned Parenthood. Last week Franken, 66, also a Democrat, announced his resignation from the seat he has held since 2009. The former comedian has denied some of the allegations against him and questioned others. Reuters has not independently verified the accusations against him. During Wednesday’s news conference, Smith thanked Franken for his service and called him a “champion” for the state. She said she respected his decision to resign. “Sexual harassment is disrespectful to people and can’t be tolerated,” Smith said. “I can promise you that I’ll be working on these issues when I get to Washington, D.C.” Smith will be an excellent senator, Franken said. “Her record of accomplishment as Lieutenant Governor demonstrates that she’ll be an effective senator who knows how to work across party lines to get things done for Minnesota,” Franken said in a statement on Wednesday. Minnesota will soon have two women senators, as Smith will join fellow Democrat Amy Klobuchar, 57, who in 2006 became the state’s first female elected senator and was re-elected in 2012. Minnesota’s first female senator, Muriel Humphrey, was appointed in 1978 to fill the seat of her husband, Hubert Humphrey, following his death. The Republican Party of Minnesota said Smith will be entering office with what it called the “political baggage” of the Dayton administration, as well as a “well-established track record of far-left policies.” “Minnesota Republicans look forward to electing a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2018,” its chairwoman, Jennifer Carnahan, said in a statement. The Republican Party’s slim majority in the U.S. Senate will not be affected by the move to replace Franken. Democrats will gain a seat to cut Republican’s majority in the 100-member Senate to 51 after Tuesday night’s victory by Doug Jones over Republican candidate Roy Moore in a special election in Alabama. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin must nudge Syria into U.N. peace deal, mediator says;GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura urged Russia on Wednesday to convince its ally the Syrian government of the need to clinch a peace deal to end the nearly seven-year-old war. De Mistura, speaking on Swiss television station RTS, said failure to make peace quickly through United Nations mediation could lead to a fragmentation of Syria . Russian President Vladimir Putin during a surprise visit on Monday to Russia s Hmeymim air base in Syria, declared that the work of Russian forces was largely done in backing the Assad government against militants, following the defeat of the most battle-hardened group of international terrorists. De Mistura, asked what signal Putin could give from his position of force, said: Convince the (Syrian) government that there is no time to lose.... You can think you win territory militarily but you have to win the peace. And to win the peace, you have to have the courage to push the government to accept that there has to be a new constitution and new elections, through the United Nations, he said. The nearly seven-year civil war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven more than 11 million from their homes. All previous diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict have ended in failure over the opposition s demand that President Bashar al-Assad leave power and his refusal to go. The Kremlin first launched air strikes in Syria in September 2015 in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, turning the tide of the conflict in Assad s favor. Now that it regards that mission complete, Putin wants to help broker a peace deal and is keen to organize a special event in Russia - a Syrian Congress on National Dialogue - that Moscow hopes will bring together the Syrian government and opposition and try to hammer out a new constitution. But De Mistura made clear that peace negotiations must be through the United Nations in Geneva, as mandated by the U.N. Security Council, adding: Otherwise it is not worth it.... This is a complicated war, it is only in Geneva through the U.N. The U.N. envoy has conducted shuttle diplomacy between the Syrian government delegation led by chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari and a unified opposition delegation. The opposition told me clearly when they arrived here, and again yesterday and this morning too, that they are ready to meet the government right away to have a hard, difficult discussion. The government is not ready, it has said it is not ready to meet the opposition. That is regrettable but diplomacy has many means, de Mistura said. A senior Western diplomat said that the government delegation had failed to engage with de Mistura on a new constitution and elections during a round of negotiations due to end on Thursday. Clearly they did not have any intention to engage in this political process. And clearly they are not under sufficient pressure to do so, the diplomat told Reuters. The clear impression is the regime wants to avoid the U.N.-led political process at any cost. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump 'dossier' firm: Republicans leaked bank records in retaliation;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A firm that commissioned a “dossier” detailing links between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia said in a court filing that Republicans leaked the company’s banking data to the media for partisan political purposes. Democrats have said Republicans use leaks to undermine investigations into Trump’s campaign both by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Republicans have accused Democrats of leaking information to undermine the Trump administration. Republican attacks on Mueller’s probe of U.S. allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump and possible collusion with Moscow officials have included efforts to discredit the dossier. The Kremlin denies the allegations of meddling and Trump denies any collusion. Fusion GPS, in a notice to a federal judge in Washington late on Tuesday, said that a subpoena sent by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and its chairman, Devin Nunes, to the firm’s bank was “part of an ongoing effort to discredit Fusion in retaliation for its role in undertaking research” into Trump during the election. Fusion’s court document said that information its founder, Glenn Simpson, provided to the committee during closed door testimony in November then surfaced in media reports. Nunes and Representative Mike Conaway, the Republican panel member who has led some of its Trump-related investigations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  Information Simpson provided to the committee that was reported in the media included Simpson meeting with Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official, the court document said. Ohr had been assigned to the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the prosecutor who appointed Mueller to lead the Russia probe. Ohr has been moved out of Rosenstein’s office to a Justice Department unit dealing with drugs and organized crime, the department said. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ohr meeting with Simpson. Fusion also complained about a Fox News report which said Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, had worked as a subcontractor for Fusion. An expert on Russia and the former Soviet Union who studied at Harvard and Stanford universities, her dealings with Fusion were confidential until Simpson told the closed committee hearing about them, the court filing said. Nellie Ohr could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Fusion GPS said she had done work for the firm. A source familiar with Fusion’s work said the Ohrs are experts on Russian organized crime, which is how they came in contact with Simpson and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier.  Trump and his supporters have denied the dossier’s contents outlining Russian financial and personal links to Trump’s campaign.  ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ecuador court sentences VP to six years in jail in Odebrecht graft case;QUITO (Reuters) - An Ecuadorean court on Wednesday sentenced Vice President Jorge Glas to six years in jail after finding him guilty of receiving bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht [ODBCT.UL] in return for handing the scandal-ridden firm state contracts. A close ally of leftist ex-President Rafael Correa, Glas served as Correa s vice president from 2013 and retained the position under current President Lenin Moreno. But Moreno, who has largely broken from Correa, suspended Glas in August, accusing him of not being a team player. An Ecuadorean judge in October then ordered pre-trial detention for Glas as part of the investigation into Odebrecht. The public prosecutor s office accused him of pocketing a roughly $13.5-million bribe from Odebrecht via his uncle. Glas constructed, with (former Odebrecht executive) Jose Conceicao Santos, the awarding of public contracts in return for payment, Judge Edgar Flores said on Wednesday as he read the decision. Glas, a 48-year-old electrical engineer, has been accused by senior members of Correa s government of corruption while serving as strategic sectors minister and vice president. His lawyer slammed the decision as unjust and vowed to appeal. Glas downfall highlights how fallout from the massive Odebrecht corruption scandal has continued to ripple across South America. The company, which has admitted to paying bribes to win contracts in a number of countries, has paid $3.5 billion in settlements in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland. Odebrecht allegedly paid $33.5 million in bribes to secure contracts in Ecuador. The opposition says that Correa s government was slow to investigate, although he rejects that. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In another blow to Zuma, South African top court orders influence-peddling inquiry;PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa s High Court ruled on Wednesday that President Jacob Zuma must set up a judicial inquiry into state influence-peddling within 30 days, the latest in a series of judicial blows to his scandal-tinged administration. Upholding a recommendation by South Africa s corruption-fighting Public Protector, High Court Judge President Dunstan Mlambo said an application by Zuma challenging the inquiry was ill-advised and reckless and an abuse of the judicial process. The ruling comes days after the same court dealt a stinging rebuke to Zuma by ruling that his appointment of a state prosecutor to decide whether to reinstate corruption charges against him was not valid and should be set aside immediately. Zuma had challenged the right of the Public Protector to call for a judicial inquiry and the appointment by the chief justice of a judge to head it, saying it was the president s prerogative whether to set up such an inquiry. It was not immediately clear if Zuma would appeal against Wednesday s ruling and his spokesman was not immediately available to comment. The 75-year-old president has faced and denied numerous corruption allegations since taking office in 2009 and has survived several votes of no-confidence in parliament. In October, the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld an earlier High Court decision reinstating nearly 800 corruption charges relating to an arms deal that were filed against Zuma but shelved before he ran for president in 2009. The revival of the charges could increase pressure on Zuma to step down before his term ends in 2019. Several judicial setbacks have undermined Zuma s authority and some analysts say it could diminish his influence over who succeeds him when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) chooses a new leader this month. Political instability, including questions over who will replace Zuma has been cited by credit rating agencies as a major factor behind their decision to cut South Africa to junk . Africa s most industrialized economy has grown lethargically over the last six years and the jobless rate stands near record levels. Analysts say the political crisis is making it hard to reform the economy, improve social services and fight crime. The influence-peddling inquiry was recommended in a report released a year ago by the Public Protector, whose job is to uphold standards in public life. Zuma also sought to block the release of the report, entitled State of Capture , which focused on allegations that Zuma s friends, the businessmen and brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, had influenced the appointment of ministers. Zuma and the Guptas have denied all accusations of wrongdoing. Ordering Zuma to pay the costs of the latest court challenge, Judge President Mlambo said the South African leader s conduct was clearly objectionable ... and amounts to clear abuse of the judicial process . A judicial commission was best suited to investigate the allegations against Zuma, Mlambo said, adding: The allegations ... detailed in the report are extremely serious. The court ordered that once the inquiry is set up, it should complete its task and present its report to Zuma within 180 days. The president would then have to inform parliament within 14 days of what action he planned to take based on the inquiry s findings, the court said. In a statement, the ANC some of whose lawmakers are critical of Zuma said a judicial inquiry was crucial in verifying the allegations in the watchdog s report. We therefore trust President Jacob Zuma will implement this judgment without delay in the interest of our country, it said. Opposition leader Mmusi Maimane, who was at the court, welcomed the ruling. The judgment lays out a timeline ... we hope to get to the bottom of this, Maimane said, adding that his party would oppose any appeal in the case should Zuma launch one. Thuli Madonsela, the report s author, who was also at the court, said: An allegation that the state has been captured in the interests of the president and his friends is an allegation that needs to be investigated immediately. Her 355-page report stopped short of asserting that crimes had been committed, saying the watchdog lacked the resources to reach such conclusions and that they should be investigated by a judicial inquiry. Zuma has said he will appeal against the High Court s ruling on Friday that his appointment of a state prosecutor was not valid and that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa should instead appoint a new public prosecutor within 60 days. Ramaphosa, the main rival for the ANC leadership to former African Union chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is Zuma s favored candidate and ex-wife, has recently stepped up criticism of Zuma s scandal-plagued government. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel's conservatives keen, but SPD still coy on German government talks;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives said they were willing to open formal talks on forming a government with Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) - but her chosen partner was expected to take two more days to decide how to proceed. Weakened by heavy election losses to the far-right and then by the collapse last month of talks on a three-way alliance, Merkel is pinning her hopes on the SPD for a fourth term as chancellor and to avoid new elections. Leaders of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) and her Bavarian conservative allies (CSU) sought to persuade their SPD counterparts to drop their objections to a renewal of the grand coalition the two parties have been governing in since 2013. The CDU and CSU representatives made clear that they wanted to begin exploratory talks with the SPD on creating a stable government, the conservative camp said in a statement. But an SPD official said the party first needed to hold consultations before announcing a decision on Friday. After four years of governing with Merkel, the center-left party scored its worst election result since 1933 - and few members want to repeat that experience. Sensing that Merkel s lack of alternatives leaves it in a strong position, the SPD has said it would agree to share power only if it wins commitments on more generous social policy. A decisive point for the SPD is that the social agenda has more prominence in Germany, leading Social Democrat Carsten Schneider told German television ahead of the talks, demanding fairness for ordinary heroes. But the mood between the two parties is still sour and Merkel herself has been a frequent target of criticism by the Social Democrats. The secrecy surrounding the talks underlined their sensitivity. With both sides having a lot to lose, the parties plan no public statements when talks conclude on Wednesday evening. SPD leader Martin Schulz has made a pitch for EU integration leading to a United States of Europe by 2025, and the SPD wants a big spending boost on education, more nursery spots and a big healthcare reform. Merkel wants to maintain Germany s solid finances, cut some taxes and expand the digital infrastructure. The SPD had vowed to go into opposition after its dismal election result and only softened its approach, agreeing to meet Merkel, due to pressure from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who wants to avoid new elections. The SPD pulled no punches in attacking Merkel during the election campaign. Schulz has described Merkel, known for pragmatism rather than vision, as a vacuum cleaner of ideas and has also accused her of silencing debate on issues. A row last month over a conservative minister breaking protocol to back an extension for an EU license for a weed-killer despite SPD opposition hurt ties at a crucial time. One of the SPD s deputies, Ralf Stegner, adopted a combative tone on Wednesday, saying nobody could dictate the terms to the SPD as the conservative bloc needed the party to rule. Some in the SPD are prepared to contemplate another grand coalition, albeit with a clear SPD signature, but others prefer the idea of tolerating a minority government under Merkel. One other option is a KoKo (cooperation coalition) agreement under which the SPD would agree to work with Merkel in some areas, such as the budget and European and foreign affairs, but force her to seek ad-hoc majorities for other policies. This idea is unpopular with conservatives who prefer a grand coalition. We have to try it - but please, seriously, Carsten Linnemann, head of a group representing small and medium-sized businesses in the conservative bloc, told ARD television. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean firms flock to Beijing hoping summit will hasten thaw with China;SEOUL (Reuters) - Hoping a thaw in relations with China will reopen opportunities after a diplomatic spat earlier this year cost many of them business, some 300 South Korean executives joined President Moon Jae-in for the start of his four-day trip to China on Wednesday. The delegation was the largest to accompany a South Korean leader abroad, and reflected the value the firms placed on mending ties with their country s biggest trading partner. Trade and business exchanges between the two countries froze earlier this year after South Korea deployed U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system regardless of vehement objections from Beijing. Among those who traveled were executives from some of the firms hit hardest by the backlash, including Lotte Group and cosmetics and entertainment firms such as Amorepacific and S.M. Entertainment. Addressing around 500 Chinese and South Korean businessmen at a forum in Beijing, Moon stressed the need to build a systemic foundation for a stable economic cooperation . Moon said he expects to sign a memorandum with President Xi Jinping at a summit on Thursday, a step toward follow-up negotiations of the South Korea-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) concerning services and investments. This is expected to expand the entry of both countries companies into service industries, and revitalize mutual investments, he said. The THAAD disagreement knocked about 0.4 percentage points off expected economic growth in South Korea this year and resulted in lost revenues of around $6.5 billion from Chinese tourists in the first nine months of the year, as the number of visitors fell by half. Anti-South Korean sentiment also battered firms sales of entertainment, cosmetics and cars in China. Multiple officials from South Korea s largest companies told Reuters they hoped that Moon s visit to China would mark the next step toward improving ties after the two governments reached an initial agreement in late October to move past the dispute. Still, they were doubtful whether a sudden turnaround in business relations would be achieved over the coming days. If you look at earlier cases, it takes several, gradual steps for unspoken reprisals to be eased, said an official from a Korean firm accompanying Moon who declined to be identified as the matter was sensitive. We re hoping this is a key step. Reuters spoke to around 20 of the South Korean firms represented in the delegation, and none had any fresh investment or business deal announcements planned. Instead, an official at game developer Wemade Entertainment Co Ltd, whose CEO attended the forum, said executives would be looking to reopen dialogue with Chinese counterparts. Rather than having a specific agenda, we are hoping for a space to discuss various matters, the official said. In late November, China allowed travel agencies in Beijing and Shandong to resume some sales of group tours to South Korea, but tour agencies were told not to include South Korean retail-to-chemicals giant Lotte Group in travel packages. Lotte, which provided the land where the THAAD system was installed, was hardest hit in the diplomatic standoff. Its chain of hypermarkets and supermarkets in China were largely shuttered, and it is expected to sell the stores for a fraction of what it invested. The conglomerate previously said it planned to sell the stores by the end of this year, but the talks have been in a stalemate, a Lotte Group official said, declining to be identified due to the sensitivities. Still, the official hoped the summit would ease the way for the planned sales of hypermarkets in China and lead to a full lifting of group tour bans. We have big hopes about the summit, the official said. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin calls U.S. allegations of subversive activity 'groundless';MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday that U.S. allegations it was involved in a new generation of warfare, including internal political subversion, against the United States, were groundless and not backed by facts. White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster made the allegations on Tuesday. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China warns Taiwan not to rely on foreigners after attack threat;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan will fail to get foreign support for its cause, the Chinese government said on Wednesday after a Chinese diplomat threatened the self-ruled island with attack, while Taiwan said it was committed to peace. China considers Taiwan to be a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. The United States has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help it defend itself and is its main source of arms. Beijing regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States. In September, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year, which authorizes mutual visits by navy vessels between Taiwan and the United States. That prompted a senior U.S.-based Chinese diplomat to say last week that China would attack Taiwan the instant any U.S. navy vessel visited the island. Asked about the remarks at a regular news briefing in Beijing, An Fengshan, spokesman for China s policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office, said Taiwan was an internal matter and China opposed any form of military contacts between Taipei and Washington. What I want to stress and point out is that any relying on foreigners to build oneself up or plots to harm national sovereignty and territorial integrity will be opposed by the entire Chinese nation, and cannot succeed, An said. China suspects Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, wants to declare the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. The Chinese air force has this year carried out a series of drills near Taiwan, prompting Taiwan to scramble jets to shadow the mainland aircraft. Speaking at a security forum in Taipei, Taiwan Vice President Chen Chien-jen said China had been sending more naval vessels and aircraft through the East China Sea, in addition to its provocative behaviors in the South China Sea, where Taiwan is also party to a festering territorial dispute. Nevertheless, we remain committed to maintaining the status quo of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but this requires cooperation from both sides, Chen said. We are looking for positive dialogue between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and hope it will happen soon. That would benefit the people on both sides, our region and our world. Since Tsai took office, China has suspended a regular dialogue mechanism with Taiwan and has been slowly siphoning off its remaining diplomatic allies. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron to attend Russia investor forum in 2018: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron will be a guest of honor at an economic forum to be held in Russia s second-largest city St. Petersburg next year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, the RIA news agency reported. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jordan's King rejects change in status of Jerusalem, its holy sites;CAIRO (Reuters) - Jordan s King Abdullah on Wednesday rejected any attempt to change the status of Jerusalem or its holy sites, and said peace would not come to the region without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All violence... is a result of a failure to find a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue, he told an emergency summit of Muslim leaders in Turkey. King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman particularly sensitive to any changes of status after the Trump s administration s decision to recognize it as Israel s capital. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran calls on Muslim nations to step up efforts against Trump's Jerusalem decision;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday all Muslim nations should work together to defend the rights of Palestinians against Donald Trump s decision last week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Speaking in an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Turkey s Istanbul city, Rouhani said the Muslim countries should resolve their internal disputes through dialogue and called for unity against Israel. Rouhani said Israel had planted seeds of tension in the crisis-hit region. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan needs $1.7 billion humanitarian aid in 2018;JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudan needs $1.7 billion in aid next year to help 6 million people half of its population cope with the effects of war, hunger and economic decline, the government and the United Nations announced on Wednesday. South Sudan slid into civil war in late 2013, two years after gaining independence from Sudan and a third of its 12 million population has fled their homes. The conflict was sparked by a feud between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar, who is being held in South Africa, and eventually led to a fight along ethnic lines. We are calling for $1.72 billion to continue providing life-saving assistance and protection for 6 million people most in need in South Sudan, Alain Noudehou, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, told a news conference. Humanitarian assistance was needed for people suffering the effects of displacement, food insecurity, malnutrition, violence and economic decline, Noudehou said. Since the conflict began, about 4 million people have been forced to flee their homes, with nearly 1.9 million people who have internally displaced and about 2.1 million who have fled to neighboring countries, he said. The conflict has also led to a cut in crude oil production, which is a key foreign exchange earner, and the ensuing insecurity has hampered cultivation of food. Also at the news conference was South Sudan s Humanitarian Affairs Minister Hussein Mar Nyuot. I believe if we don t get the amount ($1.72 billion) and the donors don t respond to this more crisis in South Sudan will happen. That means 2018 might be worse than 2017, he said. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine Congress gives Duterte green light to extend martial law in south;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly backed President Rodrigo Duterte s plan to extend martial law for all of next year in Mindanao, an island he called a flashpoint for trouble and atrocities by Islamist and communist rebels. The extension, until Dec. 31 next year, would mark the longest period of martial law since the 1970s era of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, one of the darkest and most oppressive chapters of the country s recent history. At a joint session of Congress, 240 out of 267 lawmakers agreed with Duterte on the need for tough measures to stop Muslim militants recruiting fighters and preparing a new wave of attacks after occupying Marawi City for five months this year. Duterte thanked Congress for its support and said the communist New People s Army and militants loyal to Islamic State were equally threatening. There is a need for me to come up with something, otherwise Mindanao will blow apart, he told reporters. The government worries that mountainous, jungle-clad Mindanao, a region the size of South Korea that is home to the Muslim minority, could attract international extremists. The Marawi City assault was the Philippines biggest security crisis in decades, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly militants. The armed forces took 154 days to win the battle, and 185 extremists are estimated to still be at large. Duterte enjoys massive public support, but his frequent threats to expand martial law are contentious in a country that suffered nine years of oppression under Marcos before his ouster in 1986. Marcos was accused of inventing security threats to justify tightening his grip on power and crushing detractors. Duterte has frequently praised the leadership of Marcos. Duterte s opponents lament his authoritarian streak and speculate that his end game is to emulate Marcos by declaring martial law nationwide, as he has often threatened. Asked several times on Wednesday if he was prepared to go that far, he said, It depends on the enemies of the state. Minority lawmakers said the extension of martial law was illegal because Duterte had cited security threats, rather than rebellion or invasion, the conditions under which martial law can be invoked. Duterte scoffed at the notion that the conflict in Mindanao, his home for most of his life, did not constitute rebellion. There is actually rebellion in Mindnanao, it is ongoing, the fighting is going on, he said. Congressman Tom Villarin said martial law would cost a huge amount of money, calling broad support for it a death blow to our democracy . We have made martial law the new normal, absent of any proof of invasion or rebellion, he said. Martial law now desensitizes the people to wrongly equate it with good governance and democracy. In his request to Congress on Monday, Duterte had argued that a little-known operative active in Mindanao, Abu Turaifie, was said to be Islamic State s potential point man in Southeast Asia. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestine's Abbas says U.S. Jerusalem decision 'greatest crime';CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday, the Trump administration s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was the greatest crime and a flagrant violation of international law. Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Palestine, he told an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Turkey. He said the United States was giving away Jerusalem as if it were an American city. It crosses all the red lines, he said. Abbas said it was unacceptable for the United States to have a role in the Middle East peace process because it was biased in favor of Israel. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South African court upholds watchdog recommendation to set up inquiry on influence-peddling;PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa s High Court ruled on Wednesday that an inquiry into alleged state influence-peddling in President Jacob Zuma s government should be established as recommended by the anti-graft watchdog in a report released a year ago. Zuma had challenged the right of the report s author to call for a judicial inquiry and the appointment of a judge to head it by the Chief Justice. Zuma said it was his prerogative to set up such an inquiry. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Points of contention in talks on German coalition;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative Bavarian allies meet the leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) on Wednesday to start exploring the possibility of governing together. The two groups have ruled in a grand coalition for the last four years, but the SPD had vowed to go into opposition after voters rewarded it with its worst-ever post-war election result. The collapse of talks on a three-way coalition forced the SPD to re-consider in the interests of political stability. The conservative bloc and SPD are likely to clash over healthcare, immigration, Europe, work regulations and pensions. The SPD wants to introduce citizen insurance, to end the differences between Germany s private and public systems which, it argues, cater for the rich and poor respectively. The SPD wants everyone to be insured in the same way via citizen insurance. However, conservatives, including Merkel, have rejected this, saying switching to one healthcare system would decrease market competition and lead to worse healthcare. The SPD wants to stabilize pensions at 48 percent of the average wage by 2030, to be financed from reserves in the pension fund in the next few years. It aims to raise the contribution rate faster from 2024. The total cost of the SPD s proposal will amount to 19.2 billion euros ($22.55 billion) in 2030. The conservatives want to first form a commission to debate what is necessary to do. The two parties agree in broad terms on a pro-Europe agenda for Germany, but the SPD wants deeper integration than the conservatives. SPD leader Martin Schulz has called for closer EU integration, with the aim of achieving a United States of Europe by 2025. This goes too far for Merkel s conservatives. [L8N1O90IU] Last October, Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) agreed with her conservative Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), to put a number on how many people Germany would accept per year on humanitarian grounds. The SPD rejects such a cap. The two parties also disagree on the suspension of family reunifications for asylum seekers who were granted humanitarian protection in Germany. The SPD is against a conservative plan to extend a suspension for reunifications which will expire in March 2018. The two blocs are also at odds on the repatriation of Syrian refugees accused of crimes. [L1N1NZ1LI] ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Red Cross says life has stopped in Myanmar's Rakhine;GENEVA (Reuters) - Life has stopped in its tracks in Myanmar s northern Rakhine state where an estimated 180,000 Rohingya remain, fearful after violence drove 650,000 to flee to Bangladesh, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday. Dominik Stillhart, ICRC director of operations, speaking after a three-day mission to the remote area, said continuing tensions in the Muslim and dominant Buddhist communities were preventing Muslim traders from reopening shops and markets. The ICRC is one of the only aid agencies to operate in northern Rakhine after Myanmar s military waged a campaign the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in response to Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts. The situation in the northern Rakhine has definitely stabilized, there are very sporadic incidents, but tensions are huge between the communities, Stillhart told reporters. You get a sense, especially of the two main communities being deeply scared of each other. What surprised me is the fact that not only the Muslim communities are scared, but that the others are actually scared as well, he said. Stillhart went to Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung in northern Rakhine, where the ICRC is providing food, water and other aid 150,000 people. By year-end, it hopes to reach all of the 180,000 Rohingya it estimates remain in the politically-sensitive region, among 300,000 throughout Rakhine, he said. You travel through the countryside and you really see on both sides of the road, villages that are completely destroyed. It just gives you a bit of a sense of the scale of destruction. There is also this pervasive sense of absence. It is as if life has stopped in its tracks, people do not move, markets are closed in Muangdaw town, Stillhart said. Myanmar s army released a report last month denying all allegations of rapes and killings by security forces. The main problem for the Muslim communities today is not that they are being attacked, or that there are incidents, Stillhart said. Rather it is fear and uncertainty, and the very limited possibilities for them to access their own livelihoods like fields, and especially markets and services , he said. Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement last month for the voluntary repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya within several months. The returns must be voluntary and safe, Stillhart said. But for now we really don t see a significant return movement and I m also not expecting that we will see massive return anytime soon, he said. About 300 Muslims still flee daily, he added, citing U.N. figures. The ICRC visits detainees held in Rakhine, including Rohingya arrested since Aug 25, he said. What I can tell you is there are very few people who have been rounded up, surprisingly few people have been rounded up. So it s not as if we met like hundreds or thousands of people rounded up in these detention centres. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia corruption court indicts ex-parliament speaker after delays;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian prosecutors charged a former parliament speaker on Wednesday in connection with a $170 million graft scandal after he held up proceedings for hours at the opening of his trial, saying he was ill. Setya Novanto has been brought to trial by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which suspects extensive pilfering of public funds linked to a national identity card program. Novanto, who resigned as speaker of parliament this week, has denied wrongdoing. He had managed to cling to power through several previous corruption cases and repeatedly missed summonses for questioning by the anti-graft agency in connection with this case in recent months, saying he needed heart surgery. Novanto, who arrived at court in a white shirt and a bright orange jacket usually worn by the KPK s graft suspects, said he had diarrhea and needed medical attention. Prosecutors from the KPK said he was lying and that doctors had given him a clean bill of health earlier on Wednesday. He declined to confirm to the court details like his name or place of birth. After long delays to allow doctors to examine Novanto, the presiding judge at the Jakarta corruption court let prosecutors read out the charges, which included unlawful intervention in the procurement process of the ID cards. We are sure the defendant is healthy and can follow the court proceedings. This is part of the defendant s lies, prosecutor Irene Putri said as defense lawyers called for more medical examinations for their client. The KPK is investigating state losses amounting to about $170 million linked to the national electronic identity card scheme after allegations that sums ranging from $5,000 to $5.5 million - generated by marking up procurement costs - were divided up among politicians in parliament. KPK investigators last month put Novanto under armed guard in hospital and then took him into custody. Novanto s case has riveted the media and captured the attention of social media users, many of whom have mocked him in widely shared posts. The allegations against Novanto have reinforced the perception among Indonesians that their parliament, long regarded as riddled with entrenched corruption, is a failing institution. Indonesia was ranked last year at 90 out of 176 countries on Transparency International s corruption perception index. The watchdog has singled out parliament as Indonesia s most corrupt institution, and in July called on President Joko Widodo to protect the KPK against attempts by the legislature to weaken the commission s powers. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran urges Muslim nations to defend Palestinians after Trump move;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday all Muslim nations should work together to defend the rights of Palestinians following Donald Trump s decision last week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Rouhani, attending an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders, said the U.S. president s move showed the United States lacked any respect for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian nation. Iran is ready to cooperate with all Muslim countries without any precondition to defend the legitimate rights of Palestinians, Rouhani told the gathering in the Turkish city Istanbul. Unity among Muslim countries is very important and Quds (Jerusalem) should become our top priority. Opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause have been central to Iran s foreign policy since the Islamic revolution of 1979 that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Iran, the leading Shi ite Muslim power, and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia are competing for influence in the Middle East, where they support rival groups in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Tehran and Riyadh see each other as the paramount threat to regional peace and stability. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Iran in 2016 after Iranian protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in Tehran and the city of Mashhad following Riyadh s execution of a prominent Shi ite cleric. Rouhani said Muslim countries should resolve their disputes through dialogue and he also accused Israel of planting seeds of tension across the Middle East. On his Twitter account, Rouhani said Trump s move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital showed that Washington was not an honest mediator and never will be , adding that it only wanted to secure the interests of the Zionists . Iran does not recognize Israel and regards Palestine as comprising all of the holy land, including Israeli territory. Iranian leaders have repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. Tehran backs several militant Islamist groups in their fight against Israel. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Dutch join Austria's lawsuit against German road toll plan;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government said on Wednesday it is joining Austria s lawsuit against Germany at the European Court of Justice over plans for a road toll for foreign drivers. The toll would apply to foreign-registered cars using German highways at a cost of up to 130 euros ( 116.5) a year. German drivers will be able to recover the costs through tax deductions. At the heart of the Dutch objection is that the German toll plan is in violation of European rules, a statement said. The Dutch government believes just as Austria does that the toll plans are discriminatory and violate the basic right to free movement. The toll also will create an impediment to free trade, with 60-100 million euros in estimated annual costs for Dutch taxpayers, largely hurting people and businesses in the border region, the statement said. The German parliament approved the road toll in March, but it is unlikely to come into effect before 2019, the year a ruling by the court is expected. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy national election likely set for March 4: parliamentary source;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s parliament will be dissolved between Christmas and the New Year with national elections likely set for March 4, a parliamentary source in contact with the president s office said on Wednesday. The source said the vote could also be held on March 11, with a final decision due to be taken shortly. A national election must be held by May, but most political parties are keen to hold elections as soon as possible. While the centre-right is seen winning most seats at the forthcoming ballot, opinion polls suggest it will not win an absolute majority, making a hung parliament the most likely outcome. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mozambique president replaces energy and foreign ministers;MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has sacked four ministers, including those with the foreign affairs and energy portfolios, his office said late on Tuesday, without giving a reason. Energy is a key portfolio in Mozambique, which has vast untapped offshore gas reserves that are being developed by oil majors such as Italy s Eni. Nyusi s office said Ernesto Max Elias Tonela had replaced Leticia da Silva Klemens as minister of energy and mineral resources and Jose Condugua Antonio Pacheco was the new foreign minister, replacing Oldemiro Baloi. The president also replaced the ministers of industry and trade and of agriculture and food security. Tonela, the new energy minister, previously served as commerce minister. An economist by training, Tonela has also worked previously on the board of the Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB) company responsible for Mozambique s 2,000 megawatt hydroelectric dam. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May says lawmakers to vote on final Brexit deal;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that the final Brexit withdrawal agreement will be put to a vote in both houses of parliament. We will put the final withdrawal agreement between the UK and the EU to a vote in both houses of parliament before it comes into force, May told parliament. We expect the UK parliament to vote ahead of the European parliament so we fully expect parliament to vote well before March 2019, she added. Of course after we leave, the withdrawal agreement will be followed up by one or more agreements covering different aspects of the future relationship and we will introduce further legislation where it is needed to implement this into UK law, providing yet another opportunity for proper parliamentary scrutiny. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rights group criticizes China for mass DNA collection in Xinjiang;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have collected DNA and other biometric data from the whole population of the volatile western region of Xinjiang, Human Right Watch said on Wednesday, denouncing the campaign as a gross violation of international norms. Hundreds of people have been killed in Xinjiang in the past few years in violence between Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people, and ethnic majority Han Chinese, which Beijing blames on Islamist militants. The unrest has fueled a sweeping security crackdown there, including mass rallies by armed police, tough measures that rights advocates say restrict religious and cultural expression, and widespread surveillance. Police are responsible for collecting pictures, fingerprints, iris scans and household registration information, while health authorities should collect DNA samples and blood type information as part of a Physicals for All program, the New York-based group said in a statement, citing government a document. The mandatory databanking of a whole population s biodata, including DNA, is a gross violation of international human rights norms, and it s even more disturbing if it is done surreptitiously, under the guise of a free health care program, Human Rights Watch s China director Sophie Richardson said. According to the Xinjiang-wide plan posted online by the Aksu city government in July, main goals for the campaign include collecting the biometric data for all people between the age of 12 and 65, and verifying the region s population for a database. Blood type information should be sent to the county-level police bureaus, and DNA blood cards should be sent to the county police bureaus for inspection, the plan said. Data for priority individuals should be collected regardless of age, it said, using a term the government has adopted to refer to people deemed a security risk. Government workers must earnestly safeguard the peoples legal rights , plan said, but it made no mention of a need to inform people fully about the campaign or of any option for people to decline to take part. Xinjiang officials could not be reached for comment. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, asked about the report by Human Rights Watch, accused the group of making untrue statements. He told a regular news briefing in Beijing the general situation in the region was good. Human Rights Watch cited an unidentified Xinjiang resident saying he feared being labelled with political disloyalty if he did not participate, and that he had not received any results from the health checks. State media, reporting on the campaign checks, have said participation was voluntary. The official Xinhua news agency in November cited health authorities as saying 18.8 million people in the region had received such physicals in 2017 for a 100 percent coverage rate. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. urges Cambodia to reverse steps against democracy;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The United States has called on Cambodia to reverse steps that backtracked on democracy before a general election next year, a visiting U.S. official said on Wednesday. Relations between Cambodia and the United States have hit their lowest in years after the arrest of a rival of long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen, Kem Sokha, and the dissolution of his opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Hun Sen accused Kem Sokha and his party of a U.S.-backed anti-government plot. The opposition leader and the United States denied that. We are advising that these steps that have taken place here that have backtracked on democracy could be reversed, said Patrick Murphy, deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia, the most senior U.S. official to visit since the CNRP was dissolved. Murphy told reporters in Phnom Penh that Cambodia still had time before the general election in July to conduct an electoral process that is legitimate . Hun Sen looks set to extend his 32-year rule easily next year after eliminating the CNRP, which had made big gains in the last general election in 2013. On Tuesday, the European Union followed a U.S. lead in suspending funding for the election. Kem Sokha has been accused of plotting treason with unidentified Americans and the Cambodian Supreme Court dissolved his party last month at the government s request. Kem Sokha said the charges were a political ploy. Murphy said allegations of a U.S.-backed plot were a fabrication. We want a good relationship, he said. There is a little bit of friction, a little bit of noise in the official bilateral relationship but we remain optimistic. During his visit, Murphy met senior officials but no government ministers. He also met civil society groups. Ouch Borith, secretary of state at the foreign ministry, who met Murphy on Tuesday, told reporters their talks had been about improving the relationship. He defended his government s actions. What we ve done is in the legal framework to defend Cambodia s independence, peace and stability. We didn t do anything illegal, he said. Reaction to the dissolution of the CNRP has been largely muted in Cambodia. Rights groups have decried what they say is an increasingly repressive atmosphere in the Southeast Asian nation, and have condemned the detention of several reporters and closure of some media outlets. Hun Sen has shrugged off criticism from the West. China, Cambodia s largest aid donor, has leant its support to Hun Sen saying it respects Cambodia s right to defend its national security. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan tells Muslim summit Jerusalem is capital of Palestine;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on world powers to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine on Wednesday and said the United States should reverse a decision recognizing the city as Israel s capital. Addressing a summit of Muslim leaders in Istanbul, Erdogan described Washington s decision last week as a reward for Israeli terror acts and said the city was a red line for Muslims. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Russian diplomat hails U.S. readiness to start talks with North Korea: Ifx;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia welcomes U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson s statement that Washington is ready to begin direct talks with North Korea, the Interfax news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Wednesday. Tillerson said direct talks with Pyongyang might start without pre-conditions, backing away from a key U.S. demand that North Korea must first accept that giving up its nuclear arsenal would be part of any negotiations. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrat wins U.S. Senate seat in Alabama in setback for Trump;(Reuters) - Democrat Doug Jones won Alabama’s election for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, scoring an upset victory in a deeply conservative state against a Republican candidate who was backed by President Donald Trump, U.S. media said. Jones, 63, a former federal prosecutor, prevailed over Roy Moore, whose campaign was dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct toward teenagers. While Republicans maintain control of both houses of Congress, Jones’ victory will reduce their majority in the U.S. Senate to 51-49, possibly making it harder for Trump to advance his policy agenda. ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 12) - Democrats, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Despite thousands of hours wasted and many millions of dollars spent, the Democrats have been unable to show any collusion with Russia - so now they are moving on to the false accusations and fabricated stories of women who I don’t know and/or have never met. FAKE NEWS! [710 EST] - Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED![803 EST] - Wishing all of those celebrating #Hanukkah around the world a happy and healthy eight nights in the company of those they love. 45.wh.gov/XpFsZu [1713 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombian ex-official sentenced to jail for Odebrecht bribes;BOGOTA (Reuters) - A Colombian judge sentenced a former vice-minister of transport to five years and two months in prison on Tuesday after the ex-official admitted to taking millions of dollars in bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Gabriel Garcia Morales, who served under former President Alvaro Uribe, accepted $6.5 million in pay-offs to help Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] win a 2010 road construction contract valued at over $1 billion, the attorney general s press office told Reuters. Garcia Morales has promised to testify against other public officials who received bribes, the attorney general s office said on Twitter. The Brazilian firm is at the center of one of the largest corruption scandals in Latin America, and has admitted paying bribes from Peru to Panama. Ecuador jailed its vice president over the scandal and last year the company agreed to pay $3.5 billion in settlements in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland. Colombia s attorney general said Odebrecht paid more than $27 million in bribes in the Andean country. One former and one current lawmaker, the former director of the national infrastructure agency, and others have also been arrested in connection with the case. Morales, who was also fined $21,000, was originally sentenced to 10 years but the sentence was reduced because he accepted responsibility. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil appeals court schedules early decision on Lula appeal;BRASILIA (Reuters) - A Brazilian appeals court on Tuesday said it would decide on Jan. 24 on an appeal by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against a corruption conviction that could bar him from running in the 2018 presidential race. Despite the conviction and four other charges of corruption, the leftist icon and former labor union leader remains Brazil s most popular politician and is leading early opinion polls ahead of next year s poll. Brazil s benchmark Bovespa stock index rallied on the news, first reported on the website of newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, to close 1.4 percent higher. Investors had been wary that a delay in the appeals court decision until later next year would give Lula more time to consolidate himself as the front-runner in the campaign, making it harder for judges to bar his candidacy. Lula s lawyers criticized the record speed at which the appeals process was being brought to a decision. If the TRF-4 regional appeals court in Porto Alegre upholds the conviction, Lula can appeal to higher courts, but he would be blacklisted and unable to run for office. A Datafolha survey published on Dec. 2 showed Lula gaining at least 34 percent of the votes if the election were held today, double the support for his nearest rival. It also showed him winning a runoff against likely contenders, Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin, far-right Congressman Jair Bolsonaro or environmentalist Marina Silva. Lula was Brazil s first working-class president and millions of Brazilians were lifted from poverty by social programs introduced during his two terms in office from 2003-2010. His handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached last year for breaking budget laws, ending 13 years of rule by Lula s Workers Party. Critics say his legacy was Brazil s worst economic recession and its biggest corruption scandal. Lula was sentenced in July to nearly 10 years in jail for accepting 3.7 million reais ($1.1 million) in bribes from an engineering firm in return for help winning public contracts. Prosecutors said the money was spent refurbishing a beach resort apartment for him. In recent months, Lula has toured Brazil as if he were already campaigning, rallying crowds of supporters in rural areas that benefited from his poverty relief programs. But in an interview in August he told Reuters that the conviction might mean his party will have to field a candidate other than him in the Oct. 7 election. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea would not commit to peace talks but 'door ajar': U.N. envoy;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman said on Tuesday that senior North Korean officials did not offer any type of commitment to talks during his visit to Pyongyang last week, but he believes he left the door ajar. Feltman, the highest-level U.N. official to visit North Korea since 2011, met with Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk during a four-day visit that he described as the most important mission I have ever undertaken. Time will tell what was the impact of our discussions, but I think we have left the door ajar and I fervently hope that the door to a negotiated solution will now be opened wide, Feltman told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council behind closed doors on his visit. They need time to digest and consider how they will respond to our message, he said, adding that he believed Ri would brief North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on their discussions. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Tuesday to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, backing away from U.S. demands that Pyongyang must first accept that any negotiations would have to be about giving up its nuclear arsenal. Feltman said he asked North Korea to signal that it was prepared to consider engagement like possible talks about talks and to open technical channels of communication, such as the military-to-military hotline, to reduce risks, to signal intentions, to prevent misunderstandings and manage any crisis. They listened seriously to our arguments ... They did not offer any type of commitment to us at that point, said Feltman. They agreed it was important to prevent war ... How we do that was the topic of 15-plus hours of discussions. He said the United Nations could act as a facilitator. North Korea is pursuing nuclear and missile weapons programs in defiance of U.N. sanctions and international condemnation. On Nov. 29, it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile which it said was its most advanced yet, capable of reaching the mainland United States. Feltman described his visit as constructive and productive and said the North Koreans agreed to continue a dialogue. The people who we met listened carefully to our arguments, they explored our thinking, they asked questions, they argued with us, but ultimately they have to take what we said and talk about it internally, talk about it with their leadership, he said. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean army says it conducted successful helicopter missile drill;SEOUL (Reuters) - The South Korean army said on Wednesday it conducted a successful air-to-air missile firing drill from Apache helicopters which was designed to respond to any provocation from the enemy . It was the first time the South Korean army test-fired Stinger missiles from Apache attack helicopters, which were introduced to the army in May last year, the South s army forces said in a statement. The statement did not mention whether the drill was conducted specifically to address North Korean provocations. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan says it and U.S. share stance pressure needed on North Korea;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and the United States are in 100 percent agreement that pressure should be maximized on North Korea over its weapons and nuclear program, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Wednesday. Suga, Japan s top government spokesman, said this was a stance they had previously affirmed. He made the comment when asked about U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson s remark that the United States was open to holding direct talks with the rogue state. Tillerson offered on Tuesday to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, backing away from a key U.S. demand that Pyongyang must first accept that any negotiations would have to be about giving up its nuclear arsenal. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Human Rights Watch calls on Singapore to relax free speech, assembly laws;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Singapore government s laws limiting critical speech and peaceful assembly are overly broad and make the country a repressive place severely restricting what can be said and published, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. In its first wide-ranging report on Singapore in 12 years, the group called on the government to amend or repeal laws and rules that restrict speech and assembly and drop charges against individuals for peaceful speech and assembly. Singapore s Ministry of Communications and Information did not immediately have a comment on the report. The government has held the position that Singapore s laws and regulations were needed to maintain social order and harmony. The Singapore s attorney-general s office has started contempt of court proceedings against the prime minister s nephew and authorities are prosecuting a prominent human rights activist for organizing assemblies without permit. Beneath the slick surface of gleaming high-rises, however, it is a repressive place, where the government severely restricts what can be said, published, performed, read, or watched, the 133-page report said. Singapore promotes itself as a modern nation and a good place to do business, but people in a country that calls itself a democracy shouldn t be afraid to criticize their government or speak out about political issues, the group s Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said. Human Rights Watch called on the Singapore government to amend or repeal in entirety laws that it said were too broadly worded and used to arrest, harass, and prosecute critical voices, including the Sedition Act and the Public Order Act. The report is partly based on interviews with civil society activists, journalists, lawyers, academics and opposition politicians, many of whom declined to be identified due to fear of possible repercussions, the group said. Late in November, Singapore authorities charged human rights activist Jolovan Wham for organizing public assemblies without a police permit. In August, the Singapore attorney-general s office began court proceedings against Li Shengwu, the grandson of the country s founder, over a Facebook post in which he said the government is very litigious and has a pliant court system. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Window falls from U.S. Marines helicopter onto school grounds in Japan's Okinawa;TOKYO (Reuters) - A window fell from a U.S. helicopter onto a school sports field near a U.S. Marines air base on Okinawa on Wednesday, the Marines said, the latest in a series of accidents that have fanned safety concerns on Japan s southern island. Japan s central government and Okinawa authorities have been at odds for years over the Futenma base. Residents complain about what they see as the unfair burden they carry in supporting the U.S. military presence in Japan. A 10-year-old boy suffered a minor injury but the exact cause was unclear, an Okinawa prefecture official told Reuters. The boy was among about 50 children on the elementary school grounds when the window fell from a U.S. CH-53E transport helicopter. Japan s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said: This sort of incident creates anxiety not only among those involved with the school but the people of Okinawa and should never happen. Suga told a regular news conference that the government would respond appropriately after getting an explanation from U.S. officials. The U.S. Marines on Okinawa said in a statement the helicopter had immediately returned and reported the incident. We take this report extremely seriously and are investigating the cause of this incident in close coordination with local authorities, the statement said. This is a regrettable incident and we apologize for any anxiety it has caused the community, it said. The Futenma base is surrounded by schools, hospitals and shops, and residents worry about air crashes. Crime committed by U.S. servicemen has also occasionally angered residents. Okinawa Governor Takeshi Onaga has led the campaign to get the base off the island, while the central government has proposed moving it to a less populated part of the island called Henoko. A U.S. Marines CH-53E helicopter made an emergency landing and burst into flames in a U.S. military training area in northern Okinawa in October. No one was injured. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Latest fire in Chinese capital kills five despite safety blitz;BEIJING (Reuters) - A fire in a southern neighbourhood of Beijing early on Wednesday killed five people, the Chinese government said, just weeks after another deadly blaze in the city prompted a crackdown against migrant workers sparking widespread anger. The fire in a house in Baiqiangzi, a migrant village in the Chinese capital, was caused by two electric bikes, a fireman who gave his family name as Qiu told Reuters at the scene. Eight people were injured and had been taken to hospital, the government said. Police detained the house owner who had rented it out, state news agency Xinhua said. A resident in his 30s, who declined to be identified, said he was in the building when the fire broke out just before 1 a.m. (1700 GMT Tuesday). He said that the room where electric bikes are charged was full of flames. He helped carry people out, some of whom were burnt from head to toe , he said. It was terrifying but I had to help, he told Reuters. Fireman Qiu said the cause was still being investigated. The fire itself was not very big but the plastic material on the outside of the ebikes created lots of poisonous smoke that led to deaths, Qiu said. Beijing s municipal government launched a 40-day special operation targeting fire code and building safety violations last month after a Nov. 18 apartment fire in another southern part of the city killed 19 people, almost all of them migrants. The city-wide fire safety blitz has forced thousands of migrant workers out of their homes and businesses, igniting unusually direct criticism of city government measures seen by some people as unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass. Beijing s Communist Party chief Cai Qi has visited migrant workers in an apparent effort to address those concerns, telling them the city cannot do without their hard work, the official Beijing Daily said on Wednesday. Our city needs sanitation, cleaning, security, logistics, housekeeping, courier, catering and other ordinary workers, the paper quoted Cai as saying. Whether in city operations or normal daily life, we can t do without them. Companies in all sectors in Beijing rely on migrant workers and they have used their sweat to contribute to the city s development, Cai said. We need to give these workers full respect and show even more care and love for them, work hard to address their hardships and anxieties, to give them a sense of belonging, he said. Xinhua said Cai had visited the site of the latest fire and also been to see the survivors in hospital. The government has come under increasing pressure in the wake of the crackdown on migrant workers, including sporadic protests and an open letter from more than 100 prominent academics, lawyers and intellectuals denouncing the steps. Such open criticism of government is increasingly rare as officials have clamped down on various aspects of civil society under President Xi Jinping. Some non-profit groups that sought to offer assistance said they had been obstructed by police, with their online advertisements blocked by censors. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine lawmakers approve one-yr extension of martial law in south;MANILA (Reuters) - A joint session of the Philippine Congress on Wednesday approved a one-year extension of martial law on the southern island of Mindanao, backing a move by President Rodrigo Duterte to tackle Muslim extremists. Security officials had earlier told Congress militants loyal to Islamic State were regrouping and recruiting young fighters to launch attacks in the region of 22 million people, home to the country s Muslim minority. Opponents had said one year was excessive and the measure did not satisfy a constitutional requirement for a rebellion to be taking place. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's new government wins vote of confidence in parliament;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s new government led by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki won a vote of confidence in parliament just before midnight on Tuesday, voting records showed, opening the way for the Cabinet to start functioning. Morawiecki, 49, was named prime minister last week in a government reshuffle, replacing Beata Szydlo as the ruling Law and Justice party gears up for elections over the next three years. He said Warsaw s economic policy - based on generous public spending and a growing focus on building domestic capital - should not change, but his government would aim to improve Poland s external relations. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia defense ministry delegation arrives in Pyongyang: Interfax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian defense ministry delegation has arrived in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the Interfax news agency cited North Korea s embassy to Russia as saying on Wednesday. No details of the visit were immediately available. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Judges consider HK double murder appeal by convicted former British banker;HONG KONG (Reuters) - Three judges in Hong Kong s Court of Appeal are set to decide the fate of a former British banker who was jailed for life last year for the murder of two Indonesian women he tortured and raped after his appeal hearing closed on Wednesday. Rurik Jutting, 32, a former Bank of America employee, had denied murdering Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, in his luxury apartment in 2014 on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to alcohol and drug abuse and sexual disorders. The Cambridge-educated Jutting pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in a case that gripped the Asian financial hub. During the one and a half day appeal hearing in the former British colony, Jutting s lawyers said the judge who presided over the gruesome trial last year had misdirected the jury. Defence lawyer Gerard McCoy argued that the judge had narrowed down the scope of the defence case by conflating an abnormality of mind with a psychiatric disorder. Jutting s defence is that while a disorder can cause an abnormal mind, his mental state can be abnormal without a disorder. McCoy said Jutting showed severe traits of psychiatric disorders, far beyond the normal range and was therefore not in control of his actions, said McCoy. Abnormality of mind is absolutely not confined to a disorder or a disease. Here the judge locks it down, reinforcing to the jury it is disorder, he said. Jutting, dressed in a navy blue shirt and thick squared glasses, watched animatedly throughout the hearing and occasionally chuckled, particularly during the presentations by prosecutor John Reading. Reading stated that the previous judge had exercised considerable care in crafting his directions on the law in consultation with both sides . Judges Michael Lunn, Andrew Macrae and Kevin Zervos are to return judgement on the appeal which may include granting Jutting the opportunity for a new trial, but they did not give a time frame. Deputy High Court Judge Michael Stuart-Moore said in strongly worded closing remarks at the end of the trial last year that the case was one of the most horrifying the Chinese-ruled territory had known. He described Jutting as the archetypal sexual predator who represented an extreme danger to women, especially in the sex trade, and cautioned that it was possible he would murder again if freed. The jury unanimously found Jutting, the grandson of a British policeman in Hong Kong and a Chinese woman, guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison in November 2016. Jutting s defence team had previously argued that cocaine and alcohol abuse, as well as personality disorders of sexual sadism and narcissism, had impaired his ability to control his behavior. The prosecution rejected this, stating Jutting was able to form judgments and exercise self-control before and after the killings, filming his torture of Ningsih on his mobile phone as well as hours of footage in which he discussed the murders, bingeing on cocaine and his graphic sexual fantasies. In previous high profile murder cases such as that of Nancy Kissel, an American woman serving a life sentence for the milkshake murder of her Merrill Lynch banker husband, retrials have been given. Kissel lost her final appeal against her conviction in 2014. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says it welcomes all efforts to ease tension on Korean peninsula;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it welcomed all efforts to ease tension on the Korean peninsula after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions. Ministry spokesman Lu Kang made the comment at a daily news briefing in the Chinese capital. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian PM says government at risk if it loses Sydney by-election;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday his government s future was at risk if it lost a Sydney by-election this weekend and failed to regain its one-seat majority, forcing it to rely on independents to survive in power. Turnbull s conservative voter base in the harbourside seat of Bennelong, usually a safe blue-ribbon seat, has collapsed, according to an opinion poll on Tuesday. The Newspoll in The Australian newspaper said Turnbull s Liberal-National coalition and the opposition Labor each have a 50 percent chance of winning on a two-party preferred vote, with Liberal voters deserting to a newly formed conservative party. It is a tight race. It is very high cost. If Labor were to win in Bennelong, then (Labor leader) Bill Shorten would be very close to becoming prime minister, Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. If Turnbull loses Bennelong, it would only take the loss of support from key independents in a vote of no confidence to see his minority government topple. Centre-left Labor has not held power since 2013. Turnbull has led a minority government since October after his deputy prime minister was forced to quit parliament for holding dual citizenship. Under Australia s constitution, national politicians can only have Australian citizenship. The deputy prime minister was re-elected on Dec. 2 after renouncing his New Zealand citizenship, but Turnbull failed to regain his one-seat majority because Bennelong s Liberal incumbent, former tennis champion John Alexander, quit parliament because he believed he might hold dual Australian-British citizenship. Turnbull s future now rests on the voters of the affluent Bennelong electorate, where 13 percent of electors were born in either China or Hong Kong. But a strain in relations between Australia and China in the past week may cost Turnbull votes. Turnbull announced last week a ban on foreign political donations aimed at preventing external influence in domestic politics. He singled out China in announcing the ban, prompting a rebuke in China s People s Daily newspaper. Australia must recognise China is now leading the world. The government s attitude towards China will cost them votes, said Cao Gui Dong, a candidate for the Christian Democrat Party in Bennelong. A loss in Bennelong would also see Turnbull s grip on the prime ministership again come under scrutiny, with one Liberal politician already calling for him to quit before Christmas. Turnbull has fought off leadership speculation for most of 2017, amid a slump in polls as voters flock to far-right parties, but has vowed to lead his government to the next election due in 2019. (This version of the story fixes typo paragraph six) ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. criticizes Poland for fining U.S.-owned broadcaster TVN;WARSAW (Reuters) - The United States criticized a decision by Poland s media regulator to slap a $415,000 fine on TVN, a U.S.-owned private broadcaster, saying the ruling appeared to undermine media freedom. The broadcaster was fined by regulator KRRiT on Monday over its coverage of protests in parliament last year. This decision appears to undermine media freedom in Poland, a close ally and fellow democracy. Free and independent media are essential to a strong democracy, the U.S. Department of State said in a statement on Tuesday. It added that it remained confident in the ability of Polish authorities to ensure democratic institutions were fully functioning and respected. The regulator said it had fined the broadcaster s TVN24 channel for promoting illegal activities and encouraging behavior that threatens security, without giving details. TVN24 is the most widely watched independent channel in Poland, and critics on Monday interpreted the fine as an effort to mute its criticism of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party amid speculation the state may take the broadcaster over. Since taking office in late 2015, the PiS has been at loggerheads with the European Union over policy, including placing the country s media under increased state control. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistani court summons police in case of missing peace activist;LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani court on Wednesday summoned a police officer investigating the case of a missing peace activist who is believed to have been kidnapped by unidentified men this month. Four activists critical of the army and its attitude towards militant groups went missing this year but reappeared after about a month. Two later said Pakistani military intelligence agents abducted and tortured them. The military denied the accusations. The latest activist to go missing is Raza Mehmood Khan, 40, a member of Aghaz-i-Dosti (Start of Friendship) group that works to build peace between arch-rivals Pakistan and India. He has not been heard from since Dec. 2 and his family filed a writ of habeas corpus in a court in the eastern city of Lahore in the belief he has been unlawfully detained, a lawyer acting for his family said. The Lahore High Court took up the case on Wednesday and the presiding judge, Anwar ul Haq, asked for the officer in charge of the police station handling the case to appear at the next hearing on Dec. 19. The lawyer, Usama Malik, told Reuters a neighbor had called police on the night of Dec. 2 to report that Khan was being kidnapped by unknown men. Khan s brother and police arrived to find Khan gone, along with his mobile telephones and computer, the lawyer said. Police were not available for comment on the court summons on Wednesday. Police said earlier they had no suspect in the case and they were investigating. On the day of his disappearance, Khan had spoken at a forum on militancy. Everyone discussed their views and, of course, Raza was very critical, said a friend, Rahim-ul-Haq. Khan had also posted comments on Facebook critical of the military and its suspected link to some Islamist hardliners who at the time were protesting against the civilian government. Liberals in Pakistan have long criticized what they see as the military s use of some militant factions to further its political and security objectives. The army denies sponsoring militant factions. It regards security policy, especially towards neighbors India and Afghanistan, as its responsibility. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia ready to consider easing arms embargo for Libya: Ifx cites diplomat;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is ready to consider easing an arms embargo for Libya, the Interfax news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying on Wednesday. Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj said this month he was hopeful that a U.N.-imposed arms embargo would be partially lifted against some branches of the country s military. The Libyan government is allowed to import weapons and related materiel with the approval of a U.N. Security Council committee overseeing the embargo imposed in 2011. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Muslim leaders call on world to recognize East Jerusalem as Palestinian capital;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Muslim leaders on Wednesday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and called on the world to respond by recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who hosted the summit of more than 50 Muslim countries in Istanbul, said the U.S. move meant Washington had forfeited its role as broker in efforts to end Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From now on, it is out of the question for a biased United States to be a mediator between Israel and Palestine, that period is over, Erdogan said at the end of the meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member states. We need to discuss who will be a mediator from now on. This needs to be tackled in the U.N. too, Erdogan said. A communique posted on the Turkish Foreign Ministry website said the emirs, presidents and ministers gathered in Istanbul regarded Trump s move as an announcement of the U.S. Administration s withdrawal from its role as sponsor of peace . It described the decision as a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts, an impetus (for) extremism and terrorism, and a threat to international peace and security . Leaders including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Iran s President Hassan Rouhani and Jordan s King Abdullah, a close U.S. ally, all criticized Washington s move. Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Palestine, Abbas said, adding Trump s decision was the greatest crime and a violation of international law. Asked about the criticism at a State Department briefing in Washington, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that despite the inflammatory rhetoric from the region, Trump is committed to this peace process. That type of rhetoric that we heard has prevented peace in the past, she said, urging people to ignore some of the distortions and focus on what Trump actually said. She said his decision did not affect the city s final borders, which were dependent upon negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians. But when asked whether East Jerusalem could similarly be recognized as the capital of a future Palestinian state, Nauert said that determination should be left to final status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. We re taking a position on how we view Jerusalem, she said. I think it s up to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide how they want to view the borders - again final status negotiations. Abbas told OIC leaders in Istanbul that Washington had shown it could no longer be an honest broker. It will be unacceptable for it to have a role in the political process any longer since it is biased in favor of Israel, he said. This is our position and we hope you support us in this. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. The communique on the Turkish ministry website and a separate Istanbul Declaration distributed to journalists after the meeting said the leaders called on all countries to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. We invite the Trump administration to reconsider its unlawful decision that might trigger...chaos in the region, and to rescind its mistaken step, the declaration said. Iran, locked in a regional rivalry with Saudi Arabia, said the Muslim world should overcome internal problems through dialogue so it could unite against Israel. Tehran has repeatedly called for the destruction of the Israeli state and backs several militant groups in their fight against it. America is only seeking to secure the maximum interests of the Zionists and it has no respect for the legitimate rights of Palestinians, Rouhani told the summit. King Abdullah, whose country signed a peace treaty with Israel more than 20 years ago, said he rejected any attempt to alter the status quo of Jerusalem and its holy sites. Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is custodian of Jerusalem s Muslim sites, making Amman sensitive to any changes in the city. Not all countries were represented by heads of government. Some sent ministers and Saudi Arabia, another close ally of Washington s, sent a junior foreign minister. Summit host Turkey has warned that Trump s decision would plunge the world into a fire with no end in sight . Erdogan described it as reward for Israeli actions including occupation, settlement construction, land seizure and disproportionate violence and murder . Israel is an occupying state (and) Israel is a terror state, he told the summit. I invite all countries supporting international law to recognize Jerusalem as the occupied capital of Palestine, Erdogan told OIC leaders and officials. Trump s declaration has been applauded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Washington had an irreplaceable part to play in the region. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swedish 'laser man' killer stands trial for murder in Germany;FRANKFURT (Reuters) - One of Sweden s most notorious criminals appeared in a court in Germany on Wednesday, charged with a murder he is accused of having committed in Frankfurt more than 25 years ago. The man, John Ausonius, went on a racially motivated spree in Sweden in 1991 and 1992 in which he killed one person and injured 10 others in attacks in the Stockholm area, for which he is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden. Dubbed the laser man by Swedish media for his use of a laser sight and rifle for some of the shootings, he is thought to have inspired anti-immigrant attacks such as the 2011 massacre by Norwegian Anders Breivik and shootings by Peter Mangs in Sweden. Ausonius, now 64, is suspected of having shot dead a woman in broad daylight in Frankfurt in 1992 while on the run from the authorities after the shootings in Sweden. He had accused the 68-year-old woman of stealing an electronic notebook from his coat pocket in the cloakroom of the Frankfurt hotel in which she worked, a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt prosecutor s office said on Wednesday. The prosecution believes that the defendant thought the woman had his electronic notebook in her handbag, she told Reuters TV outside the courthouse. Ausonius has denied killing the woman but has not objected to being transferred to Germany for the trial on condition he serves any possible jail sentence in Sweden. After the murder trial ends, he is to be returned to Sweden where a court sentenced him to life in 1995 for the Stockholm shootings as well as a string of bank robberies. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's new prime minister: a gamble that could backfire;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s new prime minister faces a difficult balancing act trying to repair bruised relations with the European Union without alienating the eurosceptic government s core voters. A Western-educated former banker who is fluent in German and English and was sworn in on Monday, Mateusz Morawiecki boasts the credentials needed to negotiate with Brussels. But any compromises to improve relations with Brussels, which sees the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party as a threat to democracy, would risk upsetting the traditional, Catholic supporters who propelled it into power two years ago. It is a gamble that could backfire, and it is not yet clear how far Morawiecki, 49, and his party, dominated by former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, are ready to go to please Brussels. The idea to build up international credibility seems rational, said Jaroslaw Flis, a sociologist at the Jagiellonian University. But such actions would have to be in complete contrast with what Mateusz Morawiecki would have to do domestically to prevent the PiS from falling apart. The PiS government has alienated many people at home and abroad with its nationalist rhetoric and changes to state institutions which the EU says subvert the bloc s laws. The European Commission, the EU executive, opened an inquiry into the rule of law in Poland in January 2016 and the European Parliament has started a process that could deprive Poland of its voting rights in the 28-nation bloc. Any hope in Brussels that Morawiecki s appointment signals a change of course by PiS will have been tempered by Polish parliament approving legal changes to the judiciary in defiance of the EU on Friday - the day after his nomination. The changes give parliament, where PiS has a majority, de facto control over the selection of judges. EU leaders looking for clues about Morawiecki s plans will also have taken little comfort from comments he has made since being nominated, making clear he backs a tough line on the EU and believes in PiS s traditional vision of the Polish state. We want to transform Europe, this is my dream, to re-christianise it, Morawiecki told the Catholic Radio Maryja broadcaster. We want Poland to be strong, but also to contain ... Christian values. We will defend them against the background of laicisation and a deepening consumerism. Asked by the radio interviewer about demands by French President Emmanuel Macron for Poland to face sanctions over a subversion of democratic rules, Morawiecki said he would not bow down to blackmail. In comments to parliament on Tuesday, Morawiecki suggested Poland might relent in a conflict with Brussels over logging in an ancient forest, which an EU court has said contravenes EU laws. But he said Poland s national interests came first in any debate over the future of the EU and that he wholeheartedly supported PiS s overhaul of the judiciary. Like Beata Szydlo, whom he replaced as prime minister, Morawiecki is likely to have to defer to PiS leader and co-founder Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Prime minister from July 2006 to November 2007, Kaczynski is widely seen as the power behind the party and Poland s main decision-maker. How much scope that will leave Morawiecki to carve out his own path remains to be seen. Former Polish President Lech Walesa, a PiS critic, has suggested that nothing of substance will change. The circus has stayed the same, only the clowns have changed their roles, Walesa, who led the Solidarity trade union movement that ended communist rule, said on Twitter. The appointment of Morawiecki, whose father founded and led a radical offshoot of Solidarity in the 1980s, appears designed in part to present a new face of Poland to the EU. Szydlo, 54, at times responded angrily to EU criticism and relations with the bloc soured under her government. Underlining PiS opposition to Muslim immigration, she said last month Poland wanted to be sure Christian traditions were not subject to ideological censorship in the EU. Along with Hungary, Poland has refused to take in any of its quota of the wave of refugees from Syria and elsewhere who have come to Europe since 2015, on the grounds that Muslim immigrants are a threat to national security and stability. Such comments appeal to core PiS voters, and Szydlo s government, which promised generous welfare payouts and a dedication to traditional Catholic values, was one of Poland s most popular since communist rule ended in 1989. A relative newcomer to politics, Morawiecki lacks Szydlo s broad appeal. But he has overseen significant economic achievements since becoming finance minister in 2016, a position he has retained in the new government. Tusk has welcomed what he sees as signs that Morawiecki is a liberal economist who wants better ties with the EU. There is no doubt that (Morawiecki s) liberal bias and some pro-western gestures could be a sign that there is a lurking desire to improve relations, Tusk said last week. But an economic stimulus plan Morawiecki unveiled in 2016 has been criticized by economists who say it depends heavily on private investment, which is low in Poland despite fast economic growth. What Morawiecki sees as a solution, meaning more political influence in the economy, is actually dangerous, said Leszek Balcerowicz, a former finance minister who coordinated the transition to a market economy after decades of communist rule. Any hint of protectionism is also likely to worry EU leaders, who seek to break down trade barriers. Morawiecki has called the privatization of state-owned companies a tragedy and said he will give more power to domestic capital at the expense of foreign investors. In his comments to parliament on Tuesday, he said economic policy should not change. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU parliament backs starting next phase of Brexit talks;STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Parliament urged EU leaders on Wednesday to allow the next phase of Brexit negotiations to start, backing a motion that recognised the talks had advanced sufficiently as a well a line criticising Britain s lead negotiator David Davis. European Union leaders are almost certain to judge on Friday that sufficient progress has been made on the rights of citizens, the Brexit divorce bill and the Irish border to allow negotiations to move to the next phase. The EU executive recommended last week that leaders approve the start of trade talks. The European Parliament will have to approve any Brexit deal, although its motion on Wednesday, backed by 556 votes for to 62 against, was not binding. The EU s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told lawmakers the next phase of talks would focus on a short and defined transition period and initial discussions on a future relationship. Future talks, he said, would be no less difficult. They are tough, very tough because the issues are extremely complicated and because the consequences of Brexit are very serious, he said, adding that British Prime Minister Theresa May was courageous and deserved respect. Nigel Farage of the anti-EU UKIP party called her Theresa the appeaser and said she had yielded on virtually everything. Barnier stressed that Britain could not renege on commitments made to ensure the talks moved on. The agreement presented in a joint report last Friday was, in the view of some in Brussels, undermined by Davis s comment that it was more a statement of intent than legally binding. Davis has subsequently said he wants the accord swiftly translated into a legal text. We will not accept any going back on this joint report. This progress has been agreed and will be rapidly translated into a withdrawal accord that is legally binding in all three areas and on some others that remain to be negotiated, Barnier said. A lot more steps were required to secure an orderly withdrawal, he added. We are not at the end of the road, neither regarding citizens rights nor for the other subjects of the orderly withdrawal. We remain vigilant, Barnier told the parliament. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan orders George Soros foundation, other aid groups to close;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has told at least 10 foreign-funded aid groups to close, an umbrella agency said on Wednesday, including a charity founded by hedge fund billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, the group said. Pakistan has toughened its stance towards domestic and international non-governmental groups in recent years, accusing some of using their work as a cover for espionage. In January, it ordered about a dozen groups working on women s issues and human rights to halt their operations. A representative of the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF), which represents 63 international aid groups, said the Ministry of Interior had issued 10 of its members letters of rejection , meaning their applications to register had been rejected. The forum did not identify the 10 groups but two international groups, the Pakistani branch of the Soros charity the Open Society Foundations, and ActionAid, said they had been told they had to close. We obviously find what has happened both disappointing and surprising, and are urgently seeking clarification, the executive director of the Open Society s Pakistani office, Saba Khattak, said in a statement. The group had spent $37 million on grants and relief assistance in Pakistan since 2005, she said. The interior ministry did not respond to requests for comment. However, the ministry, in a letter to one of the 10 groups and seen by Reuters, said its registration application had been denied. Wind up operations/activities of above said INGO within 60 days, the ministry said in the letter. It did give a reason why the group had to stop its work. The ministry lists 139 international non-governmental organizations (INGO) on its website that have submitted registration applications, of which 72 are still being processed. There is no list of those whose applications have been denied. During the lengthy INGO registration process we provided all the information and documents required and are confident we comply with all necessary rules and regulations, ActionAid country director Iftikhar Nizami said in a statement. This year, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres was ordered to stop work at three facilities in violence-plagued ethnic Pashtun areas bordering Afghanistan, although the interior ministry lists the group as an approved INGO. The Save the Children aid group fell afoul of the government in 2011, when it was linked to a Pakistani doctor recruited by the CIA to help in the hunt that led to the killing of al Qaeda militant leader Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad. Save the Children s foreign staff were expelled from Pakistan soon after the accusations surfaced, but more than 1,000 local staff continued to operate. The charity denied any links with the doctor or the CIA. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanese army to get $120 million in U.S. aid;BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States, which wants to prevent violence spilling over from Syria into Lebanon, will give the Lebanese army $120 million more in aid to boost border security and counter-terrorism work, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon said on Wednesday. Lebanon will get six MD 530G light attack helicopters, six Scan Eagle drones, and communication and night vision equipment under the new programs, Ambassador Elizabeth Richard said after she met Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. The United States has given the Lebanese Armed Forces more than $1.5 billion in assistance over the past ten years, the Embassy has said previously. The United States hopes to strengthen the Lebanese army to stop the spread of violence over the border from neighboring Syria and help it become the sole military force defending the country. Lebanon s Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which Washington regards as a terrorist organization, is a powerful military force in the country and also fights in Syria for President Bashar al-Assad. Lebanon hosts around 1.5 million Syrian refugees. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru prosecutor probing alleged abuse seeks to jail Catholic society founder;LIMA (Reuters) - A public prosecutor in Peru is seeking the pre-trial detention of Luis Figari, founder of an elite Catholic society who is accused of sexually and physically abusing children and former members of the group, the attorney for the victims of the alleged abuse told Reuters on Wednesday. The prosecutor will ask a judge to order Figari and three other former leaders of Sodalitium Christianae Vitae to spend up to nine months in jail ahead of trial, said Hector Gadea. Gadea said he received a copy of the prosecutor s so-called preventive prison request earlier on Wednesday and a hearing on the request has yet to be scheduled. The prosecutors office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gadea said prosecutor Maria Leon is charging Figari and other former leaders of the Sodalitium of conspiracy to commit crimes because statute of limitations would prohibit charges for most of the alleged abuse. Figari, who denies wrongdoing, lives in Rome. He is not clergy but Sodalitium has pontifical approval. The accusations against him come ahead of a trip to Peru by Pope Francis, who has promised to hold all sex abusers in the Church accountable. Juan Armando Lengua, Figari s attorney, said on local broadcaster Canal N that the request had no legal basis and no evidence had been found to prove any abuse took place. The attorney general s office first opened a probe into Figari in 2015 following the publication of a book into the alleged abuse by Peruvian investigative journalists Pao Ugaz and Pedro Salinas. Salinas once belonged to Sodalitium, whose members include businessmen, writers and politicians from Lima s upper classes. The book described Figari as cult-like leader who raped and molested vulnerable boys and young men in the group. He also regularly committed physical and psychological abuse to exert control over his followers, the authors wrote. The probe was closed early this year and later was reopened by a new prosecutor. Without a doubt this is redemption for the victims. This is no longer a struggle we re fighting alone, Gadea said. Sodalitium was founded in 1971 before expanding in Latin America, Italy and the United States. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's opposition takes EU human rights prize, urges world scrutiny;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s opposition received a European Union prize for human rights on Wednesday and urged the world to keep a close eye on an upcoming presidential election where it aspires to end two decades of socialist rule in the OPEC nation. Foes of President Nicolas Maduro failed to dislodge him during months of street protests this year that turned violent killing more than 125 people, and have been dismayed to see him consolidate his power in recent months. But they hope a presidential vote due in 2018 will galvanize exhausted and despondent supporters, and want foreign pressure for reforms to an election system they say is at the service of Maduro s dictatorship . In the next few months, there should be a presidential election and we ask Europe and the free world to pay full attention, Julio Borges, head of the opposition-led National Assembly, said, receiving the Sakharov Prize. The regime has kidnapped democracy, and installed hunger and misery, he added during the ceremony at the EU parliament in Strasbourg. The prize, named after Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was awarded this year to Venezuela s National Assembly and all political prisoners , according to the citation. Venezuela s opposition won National Assembly elections in 2015, but the legislature has been sidelined by verdicts from the pro-government Supreme Court and the controversial election this year of a pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly superbody. Another opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, who recently escaped house arrest in Venezuela and fled to Spain, said the EU prize ceremony was a painful moment because of the scores of opposition activists still jailed. I cannot be happy receiving this prize knowing that in the dungeons of Venezuela there remain, unjustly deprived of liberty, more than 300 political prisoners, he said. Maduro, the 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez who has ruled Venezuela since 2013, denies the existence of political prisoners, saying all activists in detention are there for legitimate charges such as coup-plotting and violence. Favorite to be the Socialist Party s candidate for the presidential vote, Maduro says he has faced down a U.S.-backed coup attempt by opponents this year. He frequently mocks both Borges and Ledezma in public speeches. The opposition has a dilemma in choosing its candidate for the 2018 race, given that its most popular figures cannot run: Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest, while Henrique Capriles is prohibited from holding office. The European Union last month imposed an arms embargo on Venezuela, adding it to a list that includes North Korea and Syria. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congo fighters jailed for life for child rape ceremonies: rights groups;GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Eleven Congolese militia fighters were jailed for life on Wednesday for raping dozens of girls as young as 18 months during ceremonies meant to give the men supernatural powers, rights groups observing the trial said. Human rights campaigners hailed the court s verdict as a landmark decision in a country where they say rape by armed groups is commonplace and often unpunished. The fighters from Djeshi ya Yesu - the Army of Jesus - militia were accused of raping at least 37 girls near the village of Kavumu in Democratic Republic of Congo s South Kivu province between 2013 and 2016, the rights groups said. According to the prosecution, the group s leader, provincial lawmaker Frederic Batumike, employed a spiritual adviser who told the fighters that raping very young children would give them mystical protection against their enemies. Militia members, including Batumike, were also convicted of murder, membership in a rebel movement and illegal weapons possession. The court ruled that the rapes and murders amounted to crimes against humanity, the rights groups said. The crimes triggered an international outcry. Rights groups accused the government of a slow response. This was necessary. The victims have been waiting. It s a strong signal to anyone who would contemplate this kind of offense, Charles Cubaka Cicura, a lawyer for the victims, told Reuters after the verdict was announced. Millions died in eastern Congo in regional wars between 1996 and 2003, most from hunger and disease. Dozens of armed groups continue to prey on local population and fight for control of the area s rich natural resources. Experts say Congo has made some progress in combating sexual violence and several high-level militia and army commanders have been prosecuted in recent years, but the problem remains pervasive. This trial demonstrated that justice can be served in the Congo ... even when the accused wield significant power and are highly organised, said Karen Naimer of Physicians for Human Rights, one of the groups supporting the victims. The mobile court which set up in Kavumu village allocated $5,000 in compensation to each rape victim and $15,000 to the families of men murdered by the militia, the groups said. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Irish parliament committee backs referendum on abortion up to 12 weeks;DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish parliamentary committee on Wednesday recommended that an abortion referendum due next year should offer the choice of allowing terminations with no restrictions up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy, a more liberal position than some had anticipated. The cross-party committee s recommendations are not binding and the final wording of the planned referendum to change some of the world s strictest abortion laws will be down to the government and require the support of parliament. Abortion remains an acutely divisive issue in Ireland, where the once all-pervasive political influence of the Roman Catholic church has lessened in the past 20 years. Legislation was changed only in 2013 to allow terminations in cases where the mother s life was in danger, after a woman who was having a miscarriage died of sepsis in a hospital where her medical team refused her pleas to end the failed pregnancy. The government last year began a lengthy process to consider further changes and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar reiterated on Wednesday that he would like to call a referendum for next May once parliament has considered the committee s recommendations. A IPSOS/MRBI poll in October showed that 57 percent of voters would support abortion in cases of rape, fatal foetal abnormality or a real risk to the life of the mother. This was widely seen as a likely option to be offered to voters. Just 24 percent in the same poll said they would support a right to abortion in all circumstances up to the 22nd week of pregnancy. In supporting a recommendation to legalize the termination of pregnancy with no restriction as to reason up to 12 weeks, the committee cited the complexities of legislating for the termination of pregnancy for reasons of rape and incest. The measure was passed by 12 votes to five with four abstentions. The committee, which has been holding hearings on the matter for the past three months, voted against a recommendation to allow abortion up to the 22nd week of pregnancy. The committee s proposals will be included in a report due to be handed to government on Dec. 20. Some pro-choice activists have campaigned for a more liberal regime, closer to that of England, which allows terminations to be carried out up to 24 weeks after conception, while anti-abortion supporters demand no further changes to the law. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Sahel coalition' wants victories against Islamist militants by mid-2018;LA CELLE-SAINT-CLOUD/PARIS (Reuters) - A French-backed West African military force to tackle Islamist militants must secure its first victories by the middle of 2018 to prove its worth and ensure more concrete support from the United Nations, the French and Malian leaders said on Wednesday. The G5 Sahel - composed of the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - launched a symbolic military operation to mark its creation in October amid growing unrest in the region, whose porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State. However, France which has some 4,000 troops in the region, has bemoaned that the militants have scored military and symbolic victories in West Africa while the G5 force has struggled to win financing and become operational. To give the force a boost, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the leaders of the five participating countries, Germany and Italy as well as the Saudi and Emirati ministers at a summit. In a sign Gulf Arab states are upping their influence in the region, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates committed 130 million euros ($152.75 million) on Wednesday, although the initiative has not won support from key regional player Algeria. As far as the G5 are concerned, we are aware that the clock is ticking, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Ke ta told a news conference after the summit of some 15 nations to discuss the force s implementation. There is an urgency today that we quickly achieve results in the fight against terrorism, he said, warning of a possible jihadist rush from the Middle East to West Africa. Thousands of U.N. peacekeepers, French troops and U.S. military trainers and drone operators have failed so far to stem the growing wave of jihadist violence, leading world powers to pin their hopes on the new force. Despite French efforts, U.S. reluctance at the United Nations has meant the force does not have direct financial backing from the U.N. making it harder to secure almost $500 million in initial funding for the operation and much-need equipment. Macron sees the full implementation of the G5 force as a long-term exit strategy for his own forces that intervened in 2013 to beat back an insurgency in northern Mali. We have a very simple objective which is to have the first victories in the first half of 2018, Macron said. He added that the aim was to ensure 5,000 men were ready by then. Macron has personally backed the force, including asking Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to contribute to it and prove the kingdom s intention to tackle extremist ideology. Saudi Arabia on Wednesday confirmed it would provide 100 million euros for the force, while the UAE will provide 30 million euros, bringing commitments to more than half the amount targeted. A separate donor conference is to be held on Feb. 23. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia are interested in the Sahel. Getting a seat at the table, being seen as security stakeholders, is something that fits in their respective strategies, said Jalel Harchaoui, a geopolitics researcher at Paris 8 University. Macron said he wanted to push the Security Council to divert funds from the more than 10,000-strong MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali to the G5. One notable absence in Paris was Algeria. Authorities in Paris are concerned it is not fully co-operating in tackling militants roaming along its border or pushing the implementation of Malian peace talks that it brokered. All those who want to take part in the Sahel coalition are welcome. I went to Algeria last week and I invited Algeria to co-operate more actively to the work today. It s Algeria s decision, but I want (their help), Macron said in reply to a journalist s question. Algiers remains suspicious of military activity by its former colonial ruler near its border. Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia has said the mission duplicates existing activities since Algeria has already been co-ordinating counter-terrorism efforts with the G5 for over 10 years. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: After Grenfell fire, same builders rehired to replace dangerous cladding, Reuters finds;LONDON (Reuters) - Some building companies that installed dangerous cladding on social housing blocks across Britain are now winning new contracts following the Grenfell Tower blaze to remove their original work and install panels that can pass safety tests, a Reuters review shows. The safety of high-rise buildings has come under scrutiny since the Grenfell disaster in June which killed 71 people. The British government, which ordered a series of tests to establish which types of cladding panels met fire safety rules, said those on the London tower block did not comply. A Reuters review identified 65 other towers with cladding of a type that was approved by local building inspectors, but which government tests found did not comply with the statutory regulations. The towers were clad by major builders including French groups Engie (ENGIE.PA) and Bouygues (BOUY.PA), and Britain s Galliford Try (GFRD.L), Forrest, Wates Group, Rydon Group and Willmott Dixon. The Reuters review was based on publicly available building planning permission documents, which detail the work carried out and the materials used, as well as visits to the towers and statements from housing providers and builders. For 29 of the buildings, the same builders that installed the cladding have won new contracts to remove or replace the panels, according to the owners of the buildings, who said they were paying millions of pounds for the work. The rehired companies are Willmott Dixon, Wates and Engie. Willmott Dixon and Rydon said their cladding work complied with safety regulations, but did not say how. Wates, Bouygues, Galliford Try and Engie declined to answer questions on whether their work complied with regulations. Following the Grenfell tragedy, we have been supporting the relevant councils, and removed the cladding where requested. Our primary concern is to ensure all residents in these buildings are secure and safe, said an Engie spokesman. In the wake of Grenfell, the government ordered an independent review into building regulations and fire safety, and the way the rules are complied with and enforced. The review is due to report its findings early next year. The 65 towers in question are owned by local governments - known as councils - or housing associations, which are publicly funded, non-profit bodies that provide housing intended for low-income people. At the time all the panels were installed, building inspectors - usually council workers but sometimes staff of inspection firms licensed by councils - signed off the work as being compliant with safety regulations, according to the owners of the blocks and the building firms involved. Chris Blythe, CEO of trade body the Chartered Institute of Building, said builders hired to carry out high-rise cladding projects used many subcontractors and advisers, and that this could lead to misunderstandings, with one party thinking another had ensured work was compliant. The business model we have is almost geared up for potential failure, said Blythe, adding that if fewer parties were involved, there would be less room for confusion over responsibilities. For all 65 blocks identified by Reuters, the councils or council-licensed firms whose inspectors approved the work as compliant either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment while the independent review was ongoing. The government has already acknowledged problems with the inspection process, with Fire Service Minister Nick Hurd saying in July there was a system failure, built up over many years in the area of regulation enforcement. However a spokeswoman for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which ordered the cladding tests and regulations review, said sign-off by inspectors did not absolve contractors of responsibility to meet safety standards. Cladding systems are panels put up on the outside of buildings to improve their aesthetics and energy efficiency. Since 2006, building regulations have required materials used in cladding on high-rise buildings to be able to pass the BS 8414 test which measures combustibility. After Grenfell, the DCLG ordered a series BS 8414 tests to establish which types of cladding met fire safety rules. It said that, of around 600 social housing towers in England that had cladding, 161 had systems of a type that failed the tests. But it did not name the towers. Reuters identified 60 blocks which, since 2006, had been cladded with aluminum panels with polyethylene cores - a form of cladding that failed the DCLG s test, and which the prime minister and three other ministers have said breaches safety regulations when used in tall buildings. Five other blocks, also cladded since 2006, had combinations of panel and insulation board that failed the test. The three companies that were rehired to replace the cladding on 29 of the towers had all originally fitted aluminum panels with polyethylene cores. Wates secured contracts with Westminster council in central London and One Manchester housing association to reclad 14 towers it covered in 2007 and 2010. Willmott Dixon has received contracts from Oxford council and west London s Octavia housing association to replace panels it installed on three blocks early this year and in 2013. Engie has been hired by Barnet Homes in north London to replace cladding on three blocks it clad in 2012. It also has a contract to remove cladding from nine blocks in Salford, north England, owned by the local council that it clad around 2016. Engie has been hired to remove panels from 12 blocks it clad in 2012 and 2016, and install new cladding on three of them. The contracts are with housing associations Barnet Homes in north London, and Pendleton Together in Salford, north England. The three building companies declined to comment on how much the contracts were worth. However five of the six owners of the buildings told Reuters how much money they were paying for the work. Oxford council said about 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) for its two blocks;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Parliamentary defeat will not stop preparations for Brexit day: UK government;LONDON (Reuters) - The British government is disappointed by a vote in parliament to change Prime Minister Theresa May s Brexit blueprint, but it will not stop legal preparations for Britain to leave the European Union, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday. We are disappointed that parliament has voted for this amendment despite the strong assurances that we have set out, the government spokeswoman said in a statement. This amendment does not prevent us from preparing our statute book for exit day. We will now determine whether further changes are needed to the (EU withdrawal) bill to ensure it fulfils its vital purpose. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British lawmakers defeat May's government on Brexit law;LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers defeated Prime Minister Theresa May s government on Wednesday, voting to change her Brexit blueprint in a move which could complicate her efforts to sever ties with the European Union. The parliament voted 309 to 305 in favor of an amendment to demand parliament pass a separate bill to approve any final deal with the EU. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy likely to hold national elections on March 4;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s parliament will be dissolved between Christmas and the New Year, a parliamentary source said on Wednesday, opening the way for national elections in early March that look unlikely to produce a clear winner. The source said the most likely date for the vote was March 4 but added that March 11 remained a possibility, with a final decision due shortly. A national election must be held by May, but most political parties are keen to hold elections as soon as possible, with the last major piece of legislation, the 2018 budget, scheduled to be approved before the end of the year. A vote on March 4? That would be excellent. The sooner we go to the polls the better, said Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right Northern League party. Italy s 10-year bond yield rose to a two-week high on the election reports, with investors concerned about political uncertainty in the euro zone s third biggest economy. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi s center-right alliance is seen winning the most seats at the forthcoming ballot, opinion polls say. But he looks unlikely to secure enough votes to hold an absolute majority. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement is predicted to emerge as the largest single party in the next parliament, but it has repeatedly ruled out joining any coalition. Berlusconi said at a book presentation on Wednesday that Italy should return to the polls if the vote produces no clear majority, with current Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni carrying on for at least three months during a new election campaign. The often fractious alliance between Berlusconi and Salvini creaked on Wednesday when Salvini threatened to break off talks after Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party declined to back a League proposal to toughen sanctions for violent crime. The two parties have no common platform and have not settled on a commonly agreed candidate for prime minister. Support for the ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD), headed by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, has fallen steadily in recent months, with the group heavily penalized by deep schisms and personality clashes. The parliamentary source, who was in contact with President Sergio Mattarella, said the head of state would almost certainly dissolve both houses after Gentiloni had held a traditional end-of-year news conference, set for Dec. 28. Gentiloni will remain as a caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed, helping to guarantee political stability in the interim. Italy s economy is finally pulling clear of years of recession and is expected to post growth of 1.5 percent this year and next still lagging most of its euro zone peers. Employers association Confindustria warned on Wednesday that the recovery could be jeopardized by political uncertainty. The next elections will be very important, placing the country at a crossroads, with one path leading to a continuation of reforms and the other leading nowhere, it said in a report, warning parties against pursuing demagogic measures . Political leaders have already made a rash of promises that economists warn could damage the country s fragile finances, including pledges of generous handouts for pensioners and large tax cuts. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romania's lower house passes judicial overhaul bills;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s lower house of parliament approved on Wednesday legislation to overhaul its justice system, legislation that the European Commission, the U.S. State Department and the country s president have criticized as threatening judicial independence. Two bills, and a third which was approved on Monday, are part of a wider overhaul that has triggered street protests across the country in recent weeks and which thousands of magistrates oppose The European Union state, ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, joins its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, defying EU concerns over the rule of law. Romania s ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the protesters. Changes approved on Wednesday include setting up a special unit to investigate criminal offences committed by judges and prosecutors. This makes magistrates the only professional category with a system dedicated to investigating them. The bills also enforce more restrictive criteria for prosecutors seeking to join anti-corruption and anti-organized- crime prosecuting units. On Monday, lawmakers approved a bill that changes the way magistrates are supervised and amends the definition of prosecutor activity to exclude the word independent . The three bills must now be approved by the senate, with a vote expected next week. Opposition parties and President Klaus Iohannis could also challenge the bills at the Constitutional Court, but the outcome of that was unclear. The ruling Social Democrats also plan changes to the country s criminal code. In November, the European Commission said justice reform has stagnated this year and challenges to judicial independence remain a persistent source of concern. At the start of this year, attempts by the Social Democrats to decriminalize several corruption offences triggered the country s largest street protests in decades. Romanian prosecutors have investigated thousands of public officials in an unprecedented crackdown on top-level graft. The lower house and senate speakers are both currently on trial in separate cases. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi King Salman says determined to confront corruption;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s King Salman bin Abdulaziz said on Wednesday his government was determined to confront corruption with justice and decisiveness , signalling continued support for a crackdown on sleaze involving mass arrests of top Saudis including royals. In a televised speech to the country s consultative Shura council, Salman also said the world s largest oil exporter will work to enable the private sector to become a partner in the kingdom s economic diversification drive away from petroleum. Saudi security forces rounded up hundreds of members of the political and business elite, including princes and tycoons, in early November: Riyadh said it was a crackdown on corruption but the move was also widely seen as helping Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tighten his grip on power. The purge has caused concern about damage to the economy, especially among foreign investors the kingdom is seeking to attract. But the government has insisted it is respecting due process and that the companies of detained businessmen will continue operating normally. In a speech focused on economic issues, Salman said the kingdom was pushing ahead with its Vision 2030 economic reform plan to find new sources of revenue for the OPEC powerhouse. But he said that corruption was one of the main threats to economic development. We have decided, with God s help, to confront it (corruption) with justice and decisiveness so that our country can enjoy the renaissance and development that every citizen aspires for, he said. Signaling his support for the campaign of arrests, he said that he had ordered the formation of a higher committee against corruption headed by the crown prince. Thanks be to God that those are a few (people), he said, referring to the number of arrestees. The public prosecutor said last week that most of those detained in the anti-corruption campaign have agreed to settlements to avoid prosecution, while the rest could be held for months. Salman said the restructuring the kingdom was undertaking did not contradict its Islamic values, which he said were based on moderate Islam. There is no place among us for an extremist who sees moderation as deviation, or who would exploit our benevolent faith to achieve his goals, he added. Salman also reiterated Saudi Arabia s condemnation of President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the U.S. embassy to the city. In an apparent reference to arch-foe Iran, Salman also said Saudi Arabia was working with its allies to confront any tendency for external interference in the internal affairs and fan the flames of sectarian sedition, and undermine regional security and stability . He did not elaborate. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's Temer undergoes urinary tract surgery;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Michel Temer had minor surgery on Wednesday for a narrowing of his urethra and the operation was successful, his office said. It was the second time the 77-year-old president had surgery on his urinary tract in two months. In October, he was operated on to reduce an enlarged prostate that had caused a urinary obstruction. Temer canceled his scheduled meetings on Wednesday and flew to S o Paulo for tests that were followed by surgery at the city s S rio-Liban s Hospital. In November, Temer underwent an angioplasty procedure to implant stents in three coronary arteries after his doctors found what they said was a bigger obstruction in one of the arteries. Wednesday s tests came at a crucial moment in Temer s presidency, as he scrambles to secure votes to pass a pension overhaul bill to help bring Brazil s huge budget deficit under control. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish police summon FBI official: Anadolu;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police summoned a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official on Wednesday over statements made in a U.S. court by a former Turkish police investigator who fled the country last year, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. Anadolu said the FBI official was summoned following testimony given by Huseyin Korkmaz in the trial of a former executive at Turkish state-run bank Halkbank, who is charged with taking part in a scheme to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert confirmed that an FBI attache at the U.S. Embassy had been brought in to the Turkish ministry . She provided no details. The former bank executive, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, has pleaded not guilty. Halkbank has denied involvement with any illegal transactions. Korkmaz told jurors in a New York court on Monday that he fled Turkey in 2016 out of fear of retaliation from the government after leading a corruption investigation involving high-ranking officials. He said he took his evidence with him. Korkmaz said he had received $50,000 from the FBI and financial assistance from U.S. prosecutors for his rental payments. The FBI declined to comment on Wednesday. Turkish police said they could not immediately comment on the report that they had summoned an official from the U.S. agency. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Ankara said the embassy was aware of the report but had no immediate comment. Already strained ties between NATO allies Ankara and Washington have deteriorated further over the court case, in which Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, has detailed a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. Korkmaz is testifying for the prosecution at the trial. He told the court this week that he began investigating Zarrab in 2012. Zarrab has implicated top Turkish politicians, including Erdogan. Zarrab said on Thursday that when Erdogan was prime minister he authorised a transaction to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Although he has not yet responded to the courtroom claims, Erdogan has dismissed the case as a politically motivated attempt, led by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, to bring down the Turkish government. The government blames Gulen s network for last year s failed military coup in Turkey. Gulen has denied any involvement. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. prepares to open doors on billion-dollar London embassy;LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy in London moves next month to a new billion-dollar home overlooking the River Thames just as U.S. President Donald Trump s actions have placed strains on the special relationship between Britain and the United States. Britain s closest ally will leave behind an imposing 1960 stone and concrete embassy in London s upmarket Grosvenor Square an area known as Little America during World War Two, when the square also housed the military headquarters of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The old embassy was also a focus for British discontent with U.S. policy. Anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s drew thousand of Britons, including celebrities of the day like Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. The new 12-storey building on the south bank of the river is at the heart of a huge regeneration project in a former industrial zone known as Nine Elms . Set in what will become an urban park, it will open for business on Jan. 16, hosting 800 staff and about 1,000 visitors each day. This embassy, when you look out through the windows, it reflects the global outlook of the U.S. going forward in the 21st century: rather looking out, than looking in, said Woody Johnson, Trump s appointed U.S. ambassador to Britain. The U.S. State Department ran a competition to design the new building in 2008. Its $1 billion construction was wholly funded by the sale of other properties in London. The glass structure gives form to core democratic values of transparency, openness and equality a State Department briefing document said. Inside the cube, visitors will be greeted by an imposing stone facade featuring the bald eagle of the United States Great Seal. The embassy is also designed to exacting security specifications, set back at least 100 feet (30 meters) from surrounding buildings - mostly newly-erected high-rise residential blocks - and incorporating living quarters for the U.S. Marines permanently stationed inside. This isn t just a new office, though, it signifies a new era of friendship between out two countries. President Trump wants us to work more closely than ever with the UK, Johnson said. The British relationship with its former colony is a broad political, cultural and military alliance forged over the last century and exercised on battlefields around the world. But it has been tested in recent months. Prime Minister Theresa May was the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump s surprise election in November 2016 and used the trip to invite him for a full state visit. While the two leaders have committed to strengthen trade links and have spoken regularly, their governments have disagreed on several issues, such as Trump s decision to decertify Iran s compliance with a multilateral nuclear deal, and his move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. A possible state visit by Trump remains a contentious issue among Britons, with lawmakers and campaign groups calling for the offer to be rescinded and promising to take to the streets in protest if he does come to Britain. The right to protest is a basic right in this country and our country. Expressing one s view is well within the bounds of reasonableness, Johnson said. He said he hoped Trump could attend an as-yet unscheduled opening ceremony for the new building but that there were no firm plans in place. This month, May publicly criticized Trump for reposting British far-right anti-Islam videos from his Twitter accounts. He responded with a rebuke, telling May to focus on Islamic extremism in Britain. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea's Kim Jong Un fetes rocket scientists, promises more weapons;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea s leader Kim Jong Un vowed to develop more nuclear weapons on Tuesday while personally decorating scientists and officials who contributed to the development of Pyongyang s most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15. Hwasong-15, which was test-launched on Nov. 29, has been largely perceived by analysts and government officials to have a range that can reach all of the mainland United States. However, experts believe North Korea still has some technical points it needs to improve before fully completing its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile that can hit the entirety of the United States. Kim Jong Un said on Tuesday the scientists and workers would continue manufacturing more latest weapons and equipment to bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity , the North s central news agency reported on Wednesday. The North Korean leader was speaking at the close of a rare two-day munitions conference to celebrate the Hwasong-15. Kim also said North Korea should develop and manufacture more diverse weapons. Kim personally awarded medals to those in the field of defense science who most faithfully and perfectly carried out the Party s plan for building strategic nuclear force, successfully test-fired ICBM Hwasong-15 and thus demonstrated the dignity and might of our powerful state all over the world once again, KCNA said without naming the recipients. They were given several medals, including the Order of Kim Il Sung and Order of Kim Jong Il, the highest orders of the DPRK, an acronym for North Korea s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. In addition to the medals, KCNA said the scientists and officials were given watches engraved with the names of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader s grandfather and father. He solemnly declared that the development of new strategic weapon systems including A-bomb, H-bomb and ICBM Hwasong-15 with indigenous efforts and technology and the realization of the great cause of completing the state nuclear force serve as a great historic victory of our Party and people of the country, North Korea s state media added citing Kim. The isolated state has previously said it has succeeded in developing atom bombs and hydrogen bombs as it carried out six nuclear tests from 2006, with the latest in September this year, although no outside entity has been able to confirm the North s announcements. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada says defense firms can now sell small arms to Ukraine;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said on Wednesday that defense contractors would be allowed to sell weapons such as automatic firearms and electric stun guns to Ukraine, a move the government in Kiev has long pressed for. The Canadian foreign ministry said in a statement it would closely examine every bid and noted that exportation of these items is limited. Ukraine, which says it needs the weapons to help counter Russian-backed separatists who have occupied eastern parts of the country, also wants to buy arms from the United States. Washington though has yet to make a decision. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the United States not to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. A war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces has killed more than 10,000 people in three years. Around 200 Canadian troops are stationed in Ukraine to help train local soldiers. The mission is due to end in March 2019. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland is a strong critic of Russia, in particular its decision in 2014 to annex the Ukrainian region of Crimea. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea shows no sign it is serious about talking: U.S. official;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said Wednesday that the United States would be open to talking to North Korea when the time is right but that it could not happen now because Pyongyang has shown no sign of a willingness to halt its missile and nuclear testing. Despite U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson s offer on Tuesday to start talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said there would first have to be a period of calm in which Pyongyang suspends testing before any negotiations could begin. Tillerson, in a speech to a Washington think tank on Tuesday, did not explicitly establish such a freeze as a requirement that North Korea must meet ahead of talks. Nauert, speaking at the State Department s daily briefing, insisted that Tillerson was not establishing new policy in his speech, even though he appeared to back away from a key U.S. demand that Pyongyang must first accept that any negotiations would have to be about giving up its nuclear arsenal. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU reopens feud over quotas for hosting refugees;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rivals from the two sides of the European Union s migration dispute will meet in Brussels on Thursday in a goodwill gesture just as the bloc reopens a bitter feud over hosting refugees. Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy, which has at times been overwhelmed with mass arrivals of African refugees and migrants, will talk to the leaders of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in Brussels before all 28 EU leaders discuss migration over dinner. The four eastern EU states have persistently refused to accept asylum-seekers to ease the burden on Italy and Greece, the other sea gateway to Europe, even at the height of arrivals in 2015 when more than a million people reached the bloc. Since then on, Italy, Germany and other wealthy destination countries have called for an obligatory system of moving some of those arriving to other EU states when immigration spikes. They see it as a matter of European solidarity, which also manifests itself in the generous handouts the richer west provides. But the easterners flatly reject any mandatory quotas on accepting people from the mainly-Muslim Middle East and Africa, saying that risks compromising their security after a raft of Islamist attacks in Europe since late 2015. Instead, on Thursday the four will offer Gentiloni some 35 million euros ($41 mln) for EU-backed projects Rome has been leading in Libya to prevent people from trekking north to Europe. But internally, the EU has been unable to agree on relocation, something one senior EU diplomat likened to fighting trench warfare that has badly undermined member states trust in each other. Right before the EU leaders summit in Brussels this Thursday and Friday, their chairman, Donald Tusk, reignited the dispute by coming out out strongly against divisive and ineffective obligatory quotas. An EU scheme agreed for two years in 2015 - despite opposition by Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic - to relocate 160,000 people has only seen some 32,000 transfers from Italy and Greece. In an unusually public row between the EU s Brussels institutions, the bloc s executive arm, which has been a strong proponent of a mandatory and automated relocation, lashed out at Tusk. The executive European Commission s migration chief, Dimitris Avramopoulos, called Tusk s intervention unacceptable and anti-European . The disagreement between Tusk and the Commission translates into divisions between member states, casting doubt on whether they will be able to reach an agreement by their June target date. Another senior EU diplomat had only modest expectations of the leaders migration discussion on Thursday evening, meaning they were not expected to take any decisions but, at best, make a small step towards unlocking a future agreement. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Portugal bogus sect members jailed for ritual sex abuse of boys;LISBON (Reuters) - A Portuguese court has handed long prison sentences to six members of a bogus religious cult that sexually abused boys, including their own children, under the pretence of rituals on a farm just southeast of Lisbon. Tuesday s verdict by the Setubal district court sentenced Rui Pedro, the 36-year-old leader of the self-proclaimed Celestial Truth sect, to 23 years after finding him guilty of rape, procuring prostitution, child pornography and other crimes, a court official said on Wednesday. His wife and four other men were sentenced to prison terms of between 7 and 19 years. Two women were acquitted. The crimes were committed between 2011 and 2015, mostly on a farm rented by the group in 2014. Prosecutors told the court that the cult was fake, and its rituals set up as a means to lure and scare the children. The eight victims, including the leader s son and the son of another of the sentenced men, had been told that the sect s Master had supernatural powers and could perform acts of purification on them, which was the term for sexual abuse. The boys, aged between 5 and 16 at the time of the crimes and mostly from the Setubal area, were kept in fear of his powers so they never disclosed what happened to anyone. Their families had been led to believe the children played football or studied and received psychological counselling or religious guidance on the farm. Police arrested the group in 2015 after one of the members, Andre Marques, reported them to the authorities. He was still sentenced to 19 years, as the court ruled that he had only cooperated to save his own skin , daily newspaper Publico reported. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Report shows 1,300 unfilled jobs, strain for German defense procurement;BERLIN (Reuters) - The German military s procurement agency has 1,300 unfilled jobs, accounting for about 20 percent of its entire workforce, a report by the Defence Ministry showed on Wednesday, putting further strains on an already troubled acquisition system. The gaps affect mainly high-level jobs in the technical and military sectors, which means the situation will remain problematic for the medium- to long-term, necessitating continued use of external consulting firms, the report said. Lack of qualified personnel affects the processing of complex weapons programs, many of which have run into delays in recent years in the wake of reforms instituted by Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen after she took office in 2013. Use of external support services should not be understood as the beginning of a long-term solution, but as an efficient tool to bridge the time until personnel changes can fully take effect, the report said. Von der Leyen kicked off reforms to improve the transparency and efficacy of the military acquisition system, but critics say the changes have complicated the process and resulted in delays. The ministry failed to sign contracts for two of the biggest programs, a new missile defense system and the MKS180 warship, during von der Leyen s first tenure in the job. The ministry did sign a contract for five new corvettes, but faced criticism for awarding the contract without a competition. Von der Leyen had argued that no competition was needed since the ships were follow-on orders for an existing design. Separately, a ministry spokesman said at-sea testing of the new F125 frigate built by ThyssenKrupp and privately held Luerssen, would be delayed due to unexpected repairs. The first new F125 frigate was now expected to enter into service in early 2018 instead of December, the spokesman said. ThyssenKrupp said delays could happen with any complicated weapons program, but the ship was still expected to be delivered to the German military next year. The first of the four new F125 warships, slated to cost 650 million euros each, was initially slated to enter service in 2014. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria NGOs slam civil society bill as grave threat to freedoms;ABUJA (Reuters) - A bill proposed by Nigerian lawmakers to regulate non-governmental organizations (NGOs) threatens freedoms by handing the government sweeping powers over civil society, an array of groups said on Wednesday. In a public hearing in Nigeria s capital of Abuja, representatives from several NGOs called for the bill to be killed, describing it as extremely dangerous , crippling for civil society and potentially endangering to life. For organizations that engage in human rights advocacy, government accountability, and the promotion of democracy, interference in their operations portends grave risks to both their work and on the lives of their personnel, said Nigerian NGO Spaces for Change in a statement. Nigeria s Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) warned that there is no doubt that the first victims of the bill would be NGOs that are traditionally active in the area of ensuring accountability and transparency of government to its citizens. The sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives, Nigeria s lower parliamentary chamber, has alleged that some NGOs were using donated funds to support the activities of armed militants and insurgents such as Boko Haram in the country s northeast, according to Nigerian media reports. The sponsor, Umar Jibril, has not made public any evidence supporting his allegations. The draft law, which passed a second reading in the lower house of parliament and is being publicly debated ahead of a final reading and vote, would regulate NGOs funding, activities and foreign affiliation in the name of national security, and have control over NGOs assets. The bill would also create an NGO Regulatory Commission, with which civil society bodies would need to register or be in breach of the law. The commission would have discretion over which groups can register, and all must re-register every two years. At present setting up an NGO is a simpler process, with many groups registering with the corporate affairs commission as a not-for-profit organization. While the constitution guarantees Nigerians assembly and association rights, the Freedom House rights watchdog says Nigeria, Africa s most populous democracy, is only partly free. In a 2017 report, Freedom House said the country had a broad and vibrant civil society but government forces continued to commit gross human rights violations with impunity, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary mass arrests, illegal detentions, and torture of civilians . NGO representatives at the public hearing described how, by giving the regulatory commission discretion to approve projects, lives could be at stake in emergencies, such as when funds are urgently needed for vaccines during an outbreak of disease. Others criticized as vague the bill s repeated justification of maintaining national security, saying it was open to broad interpretations that could give the government ample opportunity for misuse of state power without accountability. An Amnesty International statement said the bill will keep Nigerians from freely sharing their opinions, holding open discussion forums or organizing people to protest. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says U.S. 'muscle flexing' in South Korea fraught with grave consequences;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Muscle flexing by U.S. armed forces in South Korea is fraught with grave consequences for the entire region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday. Moscow called on the United States and North Korea to get down to talks to find a political solution to problems on the Korean Peninsula, Zakharova told a weekly news briefing. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 39 Yemenis dead in Saudi-led raid on police camp in Sanaa: official;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi-led coalition aircraft struck a military police camp in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday, killing at least 39 people and wounding 90 more, including some prisoners, an official and witnesses said. The strike is part of an air campaign by the Western-backed coalition on the Iran-allied Houthis that has escalated since the Houthis crushed an uprising last week led by former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and killed him. One official in the camp said the coalition aircraft had launched seven raids on the camp, located in the eastern part of Sanaa, where some 180 prisoners were being held. The official said rescue teams had pulled out 35 bodies from the rubble, while the rest were not accounted for. It was the latest in a string of air raids the coalition has conducted on Sanaa and other parts of the country, sometimes causing multiple casualties among civilians. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment on the report. The coalition denies that it targets civilians. The United States and Britain provide political backing as well as weapons and logistical support for the Saudi-led coalition, which has been fighting since 2015 to restore Yemen s internationally-recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New Czech government to seek confidence vote on January 10: PM;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech government will seek a vote of confidence on Jan. 10, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Wednesday after his cabinet was sworn in. Babis s ANO party finished first in a national election in October but has failed to attract other parties to join a coalition and has formed a minority cabinet instead. It has yet to secure a parliamentary majority for the confidence vote. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Greek top court clears way for U.S. extradition of Russian cybercrime suspect;ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece s top court cleared the way on Wednesday for the extradition to the United States of a Russian man, also wanted in Moscow, suspected of having laundered billions of dollars in the digital currency bitcoin. A final decision on where Alexander Vinnik is extradited to now lies with the Greek justice minister, who steps in to resolve competing requests. Vinnik, the alleged mastermind of a $4 billion bitcoin laundering ring, is one of seven Russians arrested or indicted worldwide this year on U.S. cybercrime charges. U.S. authorities accuse him of running BTC-e a digital currency exchange used to trade bitcoin to facilitate crimes ranging from computer hacking to drug trafficking since 2011. He denies the charges against him and says he was a technical consultant to BTC-e and not its operator. Since Vinnik s arrest in a village in northern Greece in July, Moscow has also requested he be returned home, as it has done before with other nationals wanted by the United States. Vinnik has agreed to be returned to Russia, where he is wanted on lesser fraud charges amounting to 10,000 euros, but he appealed to the Greek Supreme Court against a ruling that he be extradited to the United States. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal on Wednesday. Bitcoin was the first digital currency to successfully use cryptography to keep transactions secure and anonymous, making it difficult to subject them to conventional financial regulations. The price of bitcoin has soared this year and hit another all-time high on Tuesday, two days after the launch of the first bitcoin futures contract on a U.S. exchange. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As resistance builds, Macron shifts focus away from euro reform;PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron, concerned that a divisive discussion over euro zone reform might undermine his broader European agenda, has begun prioritizing other areas of EU cooperation, French officials say. Macron hinted at the shift at an EU summit in October when he described his plan to create a budget for the 19-nation currency bloc as a long-term project whose logic would become clear once Europe moved towards closer integration in other areas, such as defense, migration, energy and digital. Since then, French officials have told Reuters the Elysee does not want to get bogged down in a technical debate over euro zone reform at a time when the EU can deliver on other fronts that may resonate more with the public. The euro zone is just one piece of the puzzle and I don t necessarily think it s the best one to start with, one senior official said. It is not our goal to have a technocratic discussion about the budget and how it would work. During his election campaign, 39-year-old Macron talked intently about euro zone reform, seeing it as critical to strengthening the European project after years of tumult and ensuring another sovereign debt crisis didn t occur. After barely two decades of the euro, he wanted to make sure the single currency project had the strength and flexibility to last the long-run, while remaining responsive to the 350 million EU citizens who depend on it daily. French officials stress that Macron has not discarded his ideas for the euro zone. But the decision to shift them down the priority list is a recognition of the political realities in Europe. It also underscores an irony: for years German Chancellor Angela Merkel waited for an ambitious partner in France. Now she has one, but is less able to deliver herself. Germany, with which Macron had hoped to agree deep changes to euro area governance in the first half of 2018, faces months of political limbo as Merkel tries to cobble together a coalition. Early signals from Germany and other EU members have underscored how difficult it will be for Macron to deliver on his euro zone ambitions, which call for the budget, a finance minister and a separate parliament for the currency bloc. It did not go unnoticed in Paris that the new Dutch government, in its October coalition agreement, voiced opposition to any euro zone fiscal mechanism to cushion economic shocks. Earlier this month, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte spoke of his opposition to more European integration and other ideas coming from France . A new right-wing government in Austria could adopt a similar stance to the Dutch. Focusing on the technical details of European reform is the wrong approach, said Sylvie Goulard, a former member of the European Parliament who served briefly as Macron s defense minister. You really need to focus on the bigger picture - the challenge from (U.S President Donald) Trump and from China, she said, echoing the view from people in Macron s entourage. On Friday, leaders of the 19 nations that use the euro meet in Brussels to discuss how to strengthen their currency union. The meeting is unlikely to produce anything concrete, due to political uncertainty in Berlin, and the EU goal of agreeing concrete proposals by June now looks ambitious. The prospect of another German grand coalition that includes the Macron-friendly Social Democrats (SPD) has alleviated some of concerns in Paris. SPD leader Martin Schulz made clear in a speech last week that he would put Europe at the top of his party s agenda in looming negotiations with Merkel, calling for a United States of Europe by 2025. But whether the weakened Schulz, who barely talked about Europe during the election campaign, can push Merkel towards Macron on the issue of euro zone reform is questionable. I am very skeptical. I don t share the big hopes for the Merkel and Macron couple, Henrik Enderlein, who heads the Berlin office of the Delors Institute, said last week at an event at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. The more cautious stance in Paris also reflects doubts about Merkel s own commitment to the changes Macron is seeking. During her coalition talks with the Free Democrats and Greens, which collapsed last month, Merkel was not an enthusiastic advocate for Macron s ideas, according to several participants from the Greens party. One central difference between Berlin and Paris has become obvious in recent months. While Macron has pushed for a multi-speed Europe in which France and Germany lead the way, there is a cross-party consensus in Berlin that any reform push should include a broad swathe of EU members. That s a position that is also backed by the European Commission. The contrast was apparent during French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire s visit to Berlin last month, where he sparred with the Greens on the inclusiveness issue, participants said. Officials in Berlin have been impressed by Macron s domestic reform push and there is a broad consensus in Merkel s party that the next German government must find ways to work with the French president. On Monday, she vowed to work with France on a joint corporate tax policy, digital initiatives and the harmonization of arms export policies. But there was no mention of his euro zone ideas. There is still the old instinct to do as little as possible on the euro area, said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, a former official in the German economy ministry who developed euro zone reform ideas with Macron s team when he was French economy minister. But the old instinct to do as little as possible to accommodate France, that is gone. There is a sense that something constructive must be done. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Abbas: Palestinians will go to Security Council over full U.N. membership;CAIRO (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday the Palestinians will go to the United Nations Security Council over full U.N. membership after the U.S. decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Abbas, who spoke at an extraordinary meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, did not elaborate on how the Palestinians intended to become a full member state. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;OIC draft declaration says Trump's Jerusalem move marks U.S. withdrawal from peace process;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A draft declaration prepared for a summit of Muslim leaders on Wednesday said they considered Washington s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a sign of U.S. withdrawal from its role as a sponsor of Middle East peace. The draft statement said leaders, ministers and officials from more than 50 Muslim countries declare East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine, and invite all countries to recognize the State of Palestine and East Jerusalem as its occupied capital. A copy of the draft declaration, tweeted by Turkey s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, said the meeting rejected and condemned the U.S. move in the strongest terms . It described the U.S. decision as a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts, an impetus (for) extremism and terrorism, and a threat to international peace and security . Wednesday s summit was hosted by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan who has bitterly criticized the United States, a NATO ally, for its stance on Jerusalem. The city, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Supporters of Egypt presidential hopeful arrested, say security sources, family;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces have arrested three supporters of presidential hopeful and former prime minister Ahmed Shafik, security sources and members of his party said on Wednesday. The men were charged with spreading false information harmful to national security, two security sources familiar with the incident said, on condition of anonymity. Egypt s interior ministry could not be reached for comment after several attempts to contact it on Wednesday. Shafik announced last month his intention to run against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt s upcoming presidential election early next year. No date has been set for the vote. The former premier and ex-air force commander is seen by Sisi s critics as the most serious potential challenger to the incumbent. Those arrested were all members of Shafik s Egyptian National Movement party. One of them, Hany Fouad, was arrested at his family s home on the outskirts of Cairo, his brother Wael Fouad said. Hany is very close to (Shafik), he said. Security forces entered the family home around 3 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) and searched the house, confiscating two mobile phones and giving no reason for the arrest, he said. Sisi has yet to announce that he will seek a second term but is widely expected to do so. Shafik made his announcement from the United Arab Emirates where he has lived in exile since 2012, when he fled Egypt after a narrow electoral defeat to former president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was removed from office in a military takeover led by Sisi in 2013. Shafik returned to Cairo ten days ago and said he was still deciding whether to run. He has not made any public appearances since. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says U.S. can no longer be a mediator between Israel and Palestinians;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that the United States could no longer be a mediator in efforts to end Israeli-Palestinian conflict after its decision to recognize Israel as the capital of Israel. From now on, it is out of the question for a biased United States to be a mediator between Israel and Palestine, that period is over, Erdogan told a news conference after a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul. We need to discuss who will be a mediator from now on. This needs to be tackled in the UN too, Erdogan said. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia and China discuss coordination on North Korea;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov had held talks with China s ambassador to Russia Li Hui about Moscow and Beijing coordinating action on North Korea at the U.N. Security Council. The officials exchanged views on joint steps, the ministry said in a statement. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jewish groups in Germany urge crackdown on anti-Semitic acts;BERLIN (Reuters) - Jewish groups in Germany are pressing the authorities to crack down on anti-Semitic acts following the burning of Jewish symbols and Israeli flags at protests. The American Jewish Committee Berlin, the JSUD group of Jewish university students, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and the German-Israeli Society have called for tougher law enforcement and for new laws to make it easier to ban or disband anti-Semitic demonstrations. Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top German officials have condemned anti-Semitic acts seen at demonstrations against U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and vowed to prosecute illegal acts. The American Jewish Committee Berlin said a new study by an Indiana University professor showed broader efforts were also needed to fight anti-Semitic attitudes among Muslim migrants from Syria and Iraq. German has opened its borders to more than 1 million migrants mainly fleeing Middle East wars since 2015, sparking concerns about a further bump in already increasing anti-Semitism. Politicians must guarantee that anti-Semitic attitudes will not be tolerated and that infractions to laws and regulations will be prosecuted, said the group s director, Deidre Berger. She reiterated a longstanding call for the German government to appoint an anti-Semitism commissioner to focus attention on the issue. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas and Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller vowed during a menorah lighting at the Brandenburg Gate on Tuesday to combat all forms of anti-Semitism, while demonstrators continued to voice anger at the U.S. move at a separate event near Berlin s main train station. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany has also condemned anti-Semitic actions. Indiana University s Guenther Jikeli, the author of the study, said group interviews of 68 migrants aged 18 to 52 conducted last year revealed widespread anti-Semitic attitudes. They showed rejection of the state of Israel and ignorance about the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe by the Nazis during World War Two, he said. There are strong anti-Semitic views among refugees that need to be addressed because otherwise they could become the norm, he told Reuters TV. Kurds and other refugees persecuted as minorities in their home countries had more nuanced views and more clearly rejected anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli perspectives, he said. Fabian Weissbarth, spokesman for AJC, said the study should spur efforts to tackle anti-Semitism among migrants to ensure the findings were not misused by anti-immigrant far-right groups like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. If we don t address it as a society, then the AfD will, and that will lead to hate and incitement, he said. We need a differentiated view that recognizes that not all refugees are the same, and we need to look at solutions, such as integration measures, what needs to be included in integration courses, and changes in how social workers and politicians react. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Presidential hopeful wants Finland out of EU, says nationalists will bounce back;HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland will leave the European Union and position itself as the Switzerland of the north to protect its independence if Laura Huhtasaari, the presidential candidate of the eurosceptic Finns Party has her way. She also told Reuters in an interview she wants to tighten immigration rules. Huhtasaari dubbed Finland s Marine Le Pen after France s National Front leader is a long-shot. But she believes she has a real chance in the January election as her party has taken a fresh start following its removal from the coalition government in June. The rise in Europe of parties that are critical towards the EU and immigration is due to bad, unjust politics, she said. The role for Finland in the euro zone is the role of a loser and payer... I do not want Finland to become a province of EU, Finns must stand up for Finland s interests. The Finns Party, formerly called True Finns , rose from obscurity during the euro zone debt crisis with an anti-EU platform, complicating the bloc s bailout talks with troubled states. It expanded into the second-biggest parliamentary party in 2015 and joined the government, but then saw its support drop due to compromises in the three-party coalition. This June, the party picked a new hard-line leadership and got kicked out of the government, while more than half of its lawmakers left the party and formed a new group to keep their government seats. Huhtasaari, 38, who was picked as deputy party leader in June, said voters were still confused after the split-up but that the party would eventually bounce back. The game is really brutal. The biggest parties want us to disappear from the political map. No-one is in politics looking for friends. The Finns party ranks fifth in polls with a support of 9 percent, down from 17.7 percent in 2015 parliamentary election, while the new Blue Reform group, which has five ministers, is backed by only 1-2 percent. Incumbent President Sauli Niinisto, who originally represented the centre-right NCP party, is widely expected to be elected for a second six-year term by a wide margin. A poll by Alma Media last week showed 64 percent of voters supporting Niinisto while 12 percent backed lawmaker Pekka Haavisto from the Greens. Huhtasaari, a first term lawmaker, was backed by 3 percent of those polled. Things happen slowly when you re fighting against the hegemony... I still have time before the elections, she said. Huhtasaari, who supports U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain s former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, said the European eurosceptic movement was gradually strengthening despite a series of blows to anti-establishment parties. France s National Front and Italy s 5-Star Movement failed in attempts to win legislative and civic elections while UKIP won no seats in the British parliament, albeit that its goal of Brexit won a referendum. Any change takes time, a step forward and step back... But the movement strengthens all the time, she said, noting Austria s Freedom Party s strong performance in October elections. Markku Jokisipila, the director at the Center for Parliamentary Studies of the University of Turku, said Huhtasaari was unlikely to succeed in the Jan 28 election. Around 70 percent of Finns support EU membership and the centre-right government is committed to the euro. There s no way around it, she is very inexperienced politically for this election, Jokisipila said. He added that the Finns party had become more united after the June split-up, but that it was now too focused on its anti-immigration and anti-EU platforms to be able to increase support. They will not disappear from the Finnish politics. The challenge is to broaden their profile... but they have also proved that they do have surprise potential. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fatal crash closes Swiss Gotthard road tunnel for hours;ZURICH (Reuters) - The Gotthard road tunnel under the Alps in Switzerland was closed for hours on Wednesday after a truck and a passenger car collided, killing two people and damaging the key transit route, police said. Police in the canton of Uri said four people were also hurt in the head-on crash in the 10-mile (16.9-km) tunnel, a main north-south route for Europe. It said the driver of a car with German number plates crossed the center line for unknown reasons and collided with the truck around 09:15 local time (0815 GMT). The tunnel reopened around 1430 GMT, police said. In October 2001, a head-on collision in the tunnel between two trucks caused a massive fire, killing eleven and injuring many others. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabweans wait to see whether Mnangagwa's VPs will add new blood;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe takes its next step into the post-Mugabe era soon, when its new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, names two vice presidents - appointments that will signal whether he is breaking with the country s old guard. Mnangagwa, whose sacking as vice-president triggered the removal of Robert Mugabe, made no comments to the media on Wednesday before the first meeting of the ruling ZANU-PF party s bosses. Party spokesman Simon Khaya-Moyo has said he will choose his deputies either this week or later. Khaya-Moyo told reporters after the meeting that Mnangagwa assured senior party officials they would serve their full terms, comments that allayed concerns of a purge of the G40 faction loyal to Mugabe and his wife, Grace. Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, who was considered an ally of the G40, has already been sacked from the party and his post, and some Mnangagwa supporters have called for unspecified action against G40. But the president has urged citizens not to undertake any form of vengeful retribution . Party and government officials have refused to comment on speculation in privately owned newspapers and on social media that Mnangagwa is likely to make military chief General Constantine Chiwenga one of his deputies, as a reward for spearheading the de facto coup that ended Mugabe s rule. The new president has been criticized by some Zimbabweans and opposition parties for appointing Air Marshall Perrance Shiri as lands, agriculture and rural resettlement minister and Major-General Sibusiso Moyo as foreign and international trade minister, rather than bringing in younger candidates less associated with the Mugabe era. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who is the party s legal affairs secretary, presented a report on the economy at Wednesday s meeting, where he reiterated that the new dispensation in the country had brought hope and confidence in the economy, Khaya-Moyo said. Chinamasa promised in a budget speech last week to re-engage with international lenders, curb spending and attract investors to revive the economy. Mnangagwa is under pressure to reverse the economic decline before elections next year and has vowed to focus on rejuvenating the struggling economy and creating jobs. Once seen among Africa s most promising economies, Zimbabwe now has an unemployment rate exceeding 80 percent. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU leaders likely to give go-ahead to new phase of Brexit talks;PARIS (Reuters) - The leaders of the European Union s remaining 27 member states are very likely to approve this week the deal struck by their chief negotiator with Britain and move to a second phase of exit talks, a French presidency source said on Wednesday. EU leaders are almost certain to judge on Friday that sufficient progress has been made on the rights of citizens, the Brexit divorce bill and the Irish border to allow negotiations to move to the next phase. The EU executive recommended last week that leaders approve the start of trade talks. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech PM Babis takes office but so far lacks parliamentary backing;PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a billionaire businessman who ran on an anti-establishment ticket, took office with his cabinet on Wednesday, but it was unclear whether his tenure will survive a confidence vote next month. Babis, who built a business empire in food, farming, chemicals and media before entering politics in 2011, will have one month to gain confidence under the constitution for his minority government. He said after being formally appointed by Czech President Milos Zeman, that the confidence vote should take place on Jan. 10. Running on pledges to fight immigration and make the state more efficient, Babis s ANO party won 29.6 percent of the vote in an October national election that saw the rise of other parties preaching against the establishment. As finance minister over the past three years, Babis saw the central state budget swing to a surplus and has vowed to further cut public debt ratio to GDP, currently at a half of the European Union average. His problem is that ANO holds just 78 seats in the 200-seat lower house and does not have the firm backing of any of the other eight parties. The far-right, anti-EU SPD party and the far-left Communists have lent ANO support in initial parliamentary votes in return for committee posts, but no deal has been announced on their backing for the cabinet. Babis will need a few parties to either support the cabinet or leave before the confidence vote to lower the threshold the government needs to pass. Babis s government includes non-partisan ministers, in line with his pledge to bring more managerial style to governance. His first tack will be representing the country at the European Union summit on Thursday and Friday, where he will push for strengthening EU borders and stopping illegal migration. If Babis loses the confidence vote, his government will stay in power until an alternative is formed. Zeman reiterated on Wednesday his willingness to give Babis a second try if the first attempt fails, and signaled this may be the way forward. (I have) the impression that several (parties) wanted to be coaxed, but in order not to lose their dignity or prestige, they will want to be coaxed only in the second round, Zeman said. Most parties have called for Babis himself to stay out of the government due to a police case looking at whether he illegally hid ownership of a farm and conference center a decade ago to get a 2 million euro ($2.35 million) EU subsidy meant for small businesses. Babis has denied any wrongdoing. Some parties also criticize Babis for conflicts of interest as an owner of two national newspapers and a businessman whose firms have numerous contracts with the state and benefit from public aid. He placed his firms into a trust fund earlier this year, overseen by his close collaborators and his wife. Daily Hospodarske Noviny reported on Wednesday that the outgoing ruling party, the leftist Social Democrats, could support a Babis-led government in a second round of talks, if his first cabinet fails. It cited unnamed sources within that party. The other member of the outgoing coalition, the Christian Democrats, have also said they could negotiate with ANO. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Facebook says Russian-linked accounts spent just 97 cents on ads over Brexit;LONDON (Reuters) - Russian-based operatives placed three adverts on Facebook in the run-up to Britain s 2016 referendum on EU membership, spending just 97 cents to raise the issue of immigration, the social media platform said on Wednesday. Some British lawmakers have called for an inquiry into whether Russia meddled in Britain s vote to leave the EU after social media platforms said Russian operatives sought to interfere in the U.S. election of Donald Trump. Russia denies meddling in Brexit or the U.S. election. Facebook sent its findings to the Electoral Commission which is examining how digital campaigning is affecting politics in Britain, including activity funded from outside the country. Facebook said it had examined whether any account profiles or pages linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) had funded ads during the Brexit vote. The IRA is a Russian organization that according to researchers employs hundreds of people to push pro-Kremlin content on social media. We have determined that these accounts associated with the IRA spent a small amount of money ($0.97) on advertisements that delivered to UK audiences during that time, Facebook said. This amount resulted in three advertisements (each of which were also targeted to U.S. audiences and concerned immigration, not the EU referendum) delivering approximately 200 impressions to UK viewers over four days in May 2016. A separate cross-party British parliamentary committee is also investigating whether any Facebook ads were bought by Russian-linked accounts around the EU referendum and the 2017 UK election. The issue of whether Russia intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is the subject of multiple investigations. Facebook said in October that Russia-based operatives published about 80,000 posts on the social network over a two-year period in an effort to sway U.S. politics and that about 126 million Americans may have seen the posts during that time. The Electoral Commission, which oversees the running of British elections, said it would say more about its findings in due course. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Algeria's ruling caste set on orderly succession, when the time comes;ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerians are facing the eventual departure of their long-serving president, the ailing Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in the knowledge that all is being done to ensure little changes when he goes. The 80-year-old leader, who has ruled the North African country for nearly two decades, was incapacitated by a stroke in 2013 but may decide to run again in the next presidential election due in May 2019. Should he bow out, though, many Algerians believe the person elected to replace him will be secondary. Just as now, observers say, a powerful ruling caste dominated by the army will run the show from behind the scenes. That may be good news for an aged and thinning party elite from the Front de Liberation National (FLN), allied business tycoons and generals - collectively known as Le Pouvoir or The Powers That Be - that has long managed Algeria s politics. It is a source of frustration, however, for young Algerians who have known no other leader. They worry less about who is in charge and more about jobs at a time of high unemployment, low oil prices and economic austerity. For Samir Abdelaoui, who studies at a private English language school, leaving the country may offer the way out. I don t care about politics, all I need is a decent job, if not here, then overseas. I want a visa, not a president, said Abdelaoui, who is learning English to increase his chances of getting a work visa abroad. Speculation is rife abroad over what will happen to Algeria after the departure of Bouteflika, who has visited Europe several times for treatment and remained in hospital in France for months after his stroke. But inside Algeria, an apparent oasis of stability in a chaotic region, the regime s allies regard the problem as settled. After Bouteflika the military command will organize the succession. The political class is weak here, said Anis Rahmani, Chairman of Ennahar TV, an insider close to the authorities. One liberal Algerian analyst also expected continuity. The institutions in Algiers are stronger than the men. The men go but the institutions stay, the analyst said, requesting anonymity. The institutions are functioning well, whether Bouteflika is sick, in Algiers or abroad. As long as his health allows him to he will continue beyond 2018. Hopes for the election of a reformist, modernizing president who will bring in a competitive democracy and open society, have all but faded away. The priority, according to observers of Algeria s system, is the stability that its citizens see as incarnated in Bouteflika. The former French colony, which freed itself in a brutal independence struggle that ended in 1962, is haunted by memories of a 1990s civil war that erupted after the state canceled elections when an Islamist party appeared set to win. That conflict killed 200,000 people, leaving many Algerians wary later of the unrest that toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in the Arab Spring revolts of 2011. Algeria is a country in a very bad neighborhood and because we are in a bad neighborhood the army should remain involved. I don t think the army would want to seize power after Bouteflika but they will be part of the political process, said another Algerian political analyst who also requested anonymity. Young Algerians, who form two thirds of the population of 41 million, nevertheless feel left out and disconnected with a remote political class. By contrast, French President Emmanuel Macron walked through the streets of Algiers on a visit last week and talked directly with excited young people - something they have not experienced with their own leader for a long time. One of the analysts described the ruling class as totally obsolete in a country of youths . We dream of a young class that has vitality, but the political class is not ready to give them one inch, said the analyst Bouteflika, in power since 1999, is rarely seen and has not spoken in public since his stroke. Yet if he or his circle decides he will run for a fifth term, sources close to Le Pouvoir say, he would be without doubt elected. The ruling FLN and the pro-government National Rally for Democracy dominate parliament while the opposition including leftists and Islamists is weak and divided. If Bouteflika doesn t run, the tight circle of army generals and intelligence officials could produce a joker candidate from outside the political class. For now, though, the possible alternatives are all members of the old elite such as Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia or former premier Abelmalek Sellal. Any succession scenario involving Said Bouteflika, the president s younger brother and a close aide, would be controversial as the military men don t favor hereditary rule, observers say. Foreign diplomats say they expect the generals to arrange a smooth transition. Instead they worry more about how the country, which relies on oil and gas exports, will manage the state-controlled economy in an era of low energy prices. The government spends about $30 billion a year to subsidize everything from basic foodstuffs and fuel to healthcare, housing and education. This system has helped to keep the social peace, but the government has failed to develop industries beyond the energy sector and is fiscally strapped. Algeria has done little to encourage foreign investment despite the desperate need for jobs, and even less to ease visa restrictions or build hotels to attract tourists to its beaches, mountains and desert wilderness, all a short flight from Europe. So far the uncontested success has been security. Even Western diplomats move freely without the convoys that accompany them in many other Arab capitals. Still, remnants of al Qaeda remain active and have declared allegiance to Islamic State. A twin car bombing killed 67 in Algiers in 2007 and at least 38 hostages died when jihadis seized a gas plant in 2013. The security services have also uncovered and infiltrated sleeper cells while Algeria has closed all its border crossings with Libya, Mali, Niger, Morocco and Mauritania, turning them into military zones to prevent jihadis scattered across the Sahel region from connecting with each other. The next president should be a strongman who will guarantee security because we are in a state of war against terrorism, said Rahmani. There is an external threat. The borders are all on fire. The next president should have a military background, power and authority to decide. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil police raid homes of two lawmakers in bribery probe;BRAS LIA (Reuters) - Brazilian police raided the offices and homes of two members of Congress on Wednesday in the country s latest corruption probe as the government makes a last-ditch effort to vote on an overhaul of the national pension system. Dubbed Operation pia, the probe centers on alleged bribery of civil servants and politicians in return for rigged bids on road work totaling 850 million reais ($258 million) in the state of Tocantins in central Brazil. Federal police said in a statement they were serving 16 search warrants and delivering subpoenas to eight people in connection with the probe. Dulce Miranda and Carlos Gaguim, lawmakers from Tocantins, are implicated in the investigation, police said. Gaguim denied any wrongdoing, noting the accusations against him are baseless. Miranda s representatives said she would cooperate with the investigation. President Michel Temer has said the lower house of Congress would vote by Tuesday on his proposed pension reform, which many consider crucial to reining in Brazil s surging public debt, or the debate will have to wait until next year. ;worldnews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Crucial details of Republican tax plan in flux as deal deadline looms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Crucial details of the Republican tax plan, including the proposed corporate rate, were in flux late on Tuesday as negotiators from the U.S. Congress rushed to finalize the plan ahead of a self-imposed Wednesday deadline. Republican tax writers were tinkering with how to best reconcile differences between bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, without exacerbating the deficit impact of legislation that could add as much as $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to independent estimates. With a meeting of the official bipartisan negotiating committee scheduled for Wednesday, Republicans were still weighing how to best scale back popular individual deductions for mortgage interest and local tax payments, and whether the proposed corporate rate of 20 percent in both bills may rise to 21 percent. “We’re still talking,” No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn said of a possible 21 percent corporate rate. Both the Senate and House bills proposed reducing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from the current 35 percent, eliminating or scaling back some taxes paid only by rich Americans and offering a mixed bag of cuts to other individuals and families, some of which would be short term. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, head of the Senate tax-writing committee and one of the negotiators, told reporters in reference to the corporate tax rate, “I hesitate to give any figure at this point because it’s still being debated.” Analysts have said that a 1 percentage point change in the corporate rate equals about $100 billion in revenue over a decade. Shifting it even slightly could help negotiators who are attempting to keep the bill within preset budget parameters. Congressional researchers have estimated the tax plans, as written, would add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt over 10 years, before any projected positive effects on the economy, or $1 trillion after such effects. President Donald Trump wants to sign a tax bill by year’s end, potentially marking the Republicans’ first major legislative victory since Trump’s victory gave the party control of the White House as well as both chambers of Congress. Trump is scheduled to host Republican tax negotiators at the White House for lunch on Wednesday and to deliver a speech laying out his closing argument for the legislation alongside five middle-class families who would benefit, senior administration officials told reporters on Tuesday. Trump is expected to counter claims that the tax plan largely benefits corporations and the wealthy by highlighting how it would also cut rates for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, who could see additional benefits such as higher wages following the corporate rate cut, the officials said. Independent government analyses by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which assists congressional tax writers, and the Congressional Budget Office, which examines the budget impact of legislation, both concluded that wealthier taxpayers would disproportionately benefit from the Republican proposals. When asked who stands to benefit most from Republican tax legislation, more than half of American adults selected either the wealthy or large U.S. corporations, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday. Senator Susan Collins, a key moderate Republican whose support was critical to passage of the Senate bill but who has said she will need to review the final package before casting another vote, was critical on Tuesday about talks to cut the top individual tax rate. “There has been a lot of discussion” about lowering the top individual rate to 37 percent, and “having the corporate rate not be as low,” Collins said. The House tax plan would maintain the top individual tax rate paid by the wealthy at 39.6 percent. The Senate plan would cut it to 38.5 percent. “I don’t think lowering the top rate is a good idea,” Collins told reporters.  ;politicsNews;13/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CLOAKED IN CONSPIRACY: Overview of JFK Files Reopens Door to Coup d’état Claims & Cold War Era False Flag Terror;Shawn Helton 21st Century WireSince late October, an ongoing release of intelligence files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have reignited decades old conspiracy claims. While the material released is reportedly a mix of new and old, some critics have declared that the recently declassified files reveal even more startling evidence regarding the death of 35th president of the United States.Upon reviewing pivotal historical elements linked to the Kennedy assassination, we re told that the vast majority of CIA and FBI records regarding the JFK files have been released, though many are still pending.Despite claims that newly revealed files contain smoking gun evidence in the enigmatic case, the murder of President John F. Kennedy is perhaps an act that will forever be shrouded in conspiracy and mystery as the controversial case is unlikely to bever e officially reopened during our lifetime. CLOAKED IN CONSPIRACY JFK assassination claims have been reignited following the CIA and FBI case record releases. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)NOTE* While the JFK files have been making their way to The National Archives website since late October, some material released contains names of certain individuals that will remain redacted due to apparent concerns over national security.Although the JFK case is one of America s most compelling conspiracies, it s doubtful that there will ever be complete transparency regarding any information concerning a larger premeditated plot. Among the mountain of theories and credible information concerning the 35th president s assassination, is the likely inclusion of red herrings, false leads, misinformation and media tripwire s that will forever float in the ether of conspiracy realms in an effort to misdirect the public.In the early 1950 s, the CIA ran a cloaked wide-scale program called Operation Mockingbird. The controversial program infiltrated the American news media in order to influence the public, while also disseminating propaganda through various front organizations, magazines and cultural groups.At the start of 2017, more than 12 million declassified documents from the CIA were reportedly published online. While the intelligence docu-dump was believed to have shed additional light on covert war programs, psychic research and the Cold War era, it also contained more evidence confirming the symbiotic relationship between the CIA and American media. DARK DAY The JFK motorcade traveling through Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. Later that fateful day, Kennedy was scheduled to give a speech at the Dallas Trade Mart. One month earlier, Kennedy had discussed plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam. (Image Source: businessinsider)Over the course of this article, we ll take a look at one of America s most puzzling crimes, while examining some of the most intriguing aspects related to the recently declassified JFK files Guarding the Hen HouseAlthough the CIA s declassified JFK documents offer a window into a web of clandestine operatives, cloaked mafia figureheads and uncanny politically connections at play throughout the tension inducing Cold War era, one should remain skeptical and cautious, as it s very unlikely that any new release would result in a criminal case against the producers of such a large conspiratorial crime, even if such a plot revealed irrefutable evidence. TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS After Jim Garrison s case against Shaw, the DA was found not guilty on charges of bribery in a separate trial regarding illegal pinball gambling. Garrison represented himself in 3-hour much ballyhooed closing statement and was easily acquitted on all charges. (Image Source: nola)Moreover, while it s tempting to take the claims of the US intelligence apparatus at face value, an astute observer should tread lightly when viewing any new disclosures related to the JFK assassination.In fact, the very institutions releasing these files today, were at the heart of a controversial investigation conducted by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, whose CIA related conspiracy claims regarding President Kennedy s assassination led to charges against a well-known New Orleans businessman and former WW2 military intelligence officer named Clay Shaw. After having been decorated with several prestigious military merits without ever having seen fire in the battlefield Shaw quickly rose through the ranks of the military, even joining the counterintelligence squad known as the Special Operations Section.Shaw s military pedigree recalls the prototype for modern Deep State intelligence programs and the formation of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), an intelligence propaganda agency in 1941 that was succeeded by Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a wartime intelligence apparatus created in 1942 which focused on psychological warfare prior to the formation of the CIA. OSS agents also worked closely with British Security Coordination (BSC). Additionally, the notorious right-wing paramilitary group Organisation arm e secr te (OAS) in France from 1954-1962 had close ties with the CIA through various front organizations connected to the agency.Below is passage concerning the formation of the CIA as illuminated by Jay Dyer of Jay s Analysis. Here we see that the inception of the CIA was a direct result of the passing of the National Security Act of 1947, as well as the influence of powerful political US-UK think-tanks coordinating in the background: First, the CIA (preceded by the OSS) was set up as a result of the National Security Act of 1947 [signed] under [Harry S. Truman after the OSS creation by] Franklin D. Roosevelt, springing in part from the Pratt House in New York (future home of the Council on Foreign Relations), itself modelled from the British Secret Intelligence Service. Likewise, the over-arching institutions that control and run the intelligence agencies in the West, like the Council on Foreign Relations, were modelled on the Oxford Round Table Groups and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Indeed, the Pratt House s British counterpart was the Chatham House. From America to Europe, the spectre of intelligence operations has loomed large throughout much of the last century and in the suspicious death of JFK, this was never more apparent CONSPIRATOR? A brooding Clay Shaw photographed during the JFK assassination trial in 1968. (Image Source: nola)Company Men & SpymastersIn the aftermath of WW2, Shaw was stated to have been officially discharged from military duty. This prompted the published playwright and Chevalier of the Order of the Crown in Belgium (Knight of Malta) to then travel to New Orleans, whereupon he supposedly received support from the entrepreneurial millionaire Theodore Brent, a local businessman known for rail and shipping operations, including the Mississippi Shipping Company, an organization believed to be a CIA intelligence front that allegedly focused on gathering information on Latin America. Incidentally, the former OSS intelligence officer Shaw, held his first post-war position with the Mississippi Shipping Company.In 1943, Brent helped charter the International House with a collection of leaders of commerce, trade and banking insiders. It would become one of two predecessors before the creation of the world s first trade center.In 1947, Shaw became a founder and managing director of International Trade Mart, a New Orleans financial partner housed in a 33-story cross-shaped building that played a large role in international commerce. The Trade Mart as it was called, merged with the International House to form the World Trade Center (see left photo) of New Orleans in 1968. Upon the apparent sponsorship of the trade center, the group sought to expand trade operations in Basel, Switzerland, a project that was backed by a slew of well-connected financiers that brought to fruition the organization known as Permindex. Over the years, many researchers have examined extremely compelling ties between the CIA and Permindex, as one of the holding company s main backers, a lawyer named Lloyd J. Cobb held a Covert Security Clearance issued by the CIA in October of 1953. In addition, Shaw served on the board of directors at Permindex, as Cobb would later become president of Trade Mart in 1962, providing further evidence of the kind of international reach held by the CIA-linked group of partners. Interestingly, one of the Trade Mart s stated goals would not only be to act as a conduit for foreign trade but the organization would also counter communist propaganda. This is something that would later fall in line with other CIA-linked operations over that time period.Temple University professor and well-known JFK researcher Joan Mellen, found a number of other links between the CIA and the International Trade Mart that aroused suspicion. Here s a short passage from her book entitled A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK s Assassination, And the Case That Should Have Changed History: The International Trade Mart was run by CIA operatives, its public relations handled by David G. Baldwin, who would later acknowledge his own CIA connections. Baldwin s successor, Jesse Core, was also with the CIA. It was a matter of saving the Agency shoe leather, Core would say. The Trade Mart donated money to CIA asset Ed Butler s INCA. Every consulate within its bowels was bugged. Furthermore, not only were Trade Mart and Permindex linked to the CIA but (see left photo) they were also suspected of ties to organized crime.In March of 1967, according to the Italian newspaper Paese Sera, Permindex was said to have been CIA front for the purposes of political espionage in Europe, including claims that the company took part in an attempted assassination on the French Prime Minister Charles de Gualle alongside the extremist French group OAS in 1961. There were some 30 attempts on de Gaulle s life in the early 1960 s, which many believe was linked to him granting Algeria independence. In 1966, de Gaulle also bucked the established order by withdrawing France from the NATO Military Command Structure. In 1958, after the inception of Permindex, Shaw, along with Cobb and other banking and trade insiders, including David Rockefeller, created a Permindex subsidiary in Rome known as Centro Mondaiale Commerciale (CMC). Permindex/CMC, were later kicked out of Italy due to implications that the CIA front organizations were involved in the subversion of European governments.After Shaw s arrest, Joan Mellen s husband Ralph Schoenman sent the Paese Sera newspaper articles to Garrison from London. The Italian paper according to Mellen, exposed the CIA s pernicious attempt to influence European electoral politics and thwart the democratic process in more than one country. Adding to that, Mellen explained in her book mentioned above, that the family of former CIA Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles (left photo), had been very interested in Permindex. In 2005, Dr. Daniele Ganser stated that a highly secretive CIA-backed paramilitary army was born out of the head of Allen Dulles in his seminal book, NATO s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. According Ganser s research, documents revealed that the CIA s covert armies were used to subvert the political interests of various nations through the implementation of a Cold-War era strategy of tension. As the former Swiss Director of the OSS, Dulles, had a tainted past tied to a program which sought to assimilate Nazi scientists into America after WW2 under the code name Operation Paperclip. A decade later in 1953, Dulles as head of the CIA approved $1 million dollars in the lead up to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in what became known as Operation Ajax (aka the TPAJAX project). One year later, in 1954, he was the mastermind of a Guatemalan coup.In the aftermath of the JFK assassination, Dulles would be appointed as one of a seven member panel on the controversial Warren Commission headed by fellow Freemason Chief Justice Earl Warren. Rather intriguingly, David Talbot s book entitled The Devil s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America s Secret Government, recently raised more questions concerning the potential role played by Dulles in the death of Kennedy.During the Dulles era as CIA chief, Shaw s served as an informant in the CIA s Domestic Contacts Service throughout 1948-1956. Given Shaw s extensive military intelligence background, it stands to reason any connection to the CIA would have been extremely significant.Prior to the formation of the top-secret project QKENCHANT in 1952, Shaw was granted a five-agency clearance in 1949. According to FOIA documents obtained by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, Subject [Shaw] was granted a Provisional Security Approval for use under Project QKENCHANT on an unwitting basis on 10 December 1962. The Agency project QKENCHANT was allegedly used to grant security approvals to non-Agency personnel, along with closely tied entities for the purpose of proposing future projects, activities and the formation of new relationships. Interestingly, project QKENCHANT also used the services of another individual swirling in the JFK assassination stratosphere named E. Howard Hunt. Years later, the former CIA operative and White House aide Hunt, would become a well-known name as he was tagged as one of five Watergate burglars that stained the Nixon administration after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The list of additional accomplices included three other apparent anti-communist Cuban exiles, along with G. Gordon Liddy, and James McCord who would also be implicated in the White House Plumbers plot.In 2007, although Hunt declined direct participation, he released a 2004 controversial confession that suggested he played a benchwarmer role in the plot to kill Kennedy. While Hunt s apparent allegations caused quite a stir, he fingered several suspected plotters such as the anti-Castro Frank Sturgis and Cuban exile leader of Alpha 66, Antonio Veciana, a man who claims to have inadvertently witnessed a meeting with the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy s death.In Michael Benson s Who s Who in the JFK Assassination: An A to Z Encyclopedia, according to Garrison, CMC represented the paramilitary right in Europe, along with the Italian fascists, American CIA and other interests. Here s a compelling passage from Benson s book that links CMC, Permindex, the CIA and organized crime: According to evidence in the WC [Warren Commission] hearings, Permindex was suspected of funding political assassinations and laundering money for organized crime. Shaw was also on the board of directors for Permindex s sister corporation, Centro Mondaiale Commerciale CMC.Benson s book also cites other well researched claims regarding CMC and the apparent money laundering of their liquid assets. According to a 1958 State Department document, the CMC, the World Trade Center of Rome, was indeed modeled after the CIA-created Trade Mart in New Orleans.More recently, important groundbreaking documents associated with the construct of CMC were unearthed in 2016 by the Italian journalist Michele Metta.According to well-known researcher and writer Jim Marrs a tangled web of intelligence operations linked to Permindex and CMC were further described in his book entitled Cross Fire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. Below is a revealing passage from the seminal JFK researcher: The Trade Mart was connected with the Centro Mondaiale Commerciale CMC through yet another shadowy firm named Permindex (Permanent Industrial Expositions), also in the business of international expositions. Continuing, Cross Fire exposed other suspicious intelligence links: The Italian media reported that [Ferenc] Nagy was president of Permindex and the board chairman and major stockholder was Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield a powerful Montreal lawyer who represented the Bronfmans, a Canadian family made wealthy by the liquor industry, as well as serving US intelligence services. Reportedly Bloomfield established Permindex in 1958 as part of the creation of worldwide trade centers connected with CMC. As reported in investigative work by David Goldman and Jeffery Steinberg in 1981, Bloomfield was stated to have been recruited to be part of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1938. later the Montreal lawyer obtained an official rank in the US Army, OSS intelligence and the FBI s counterespionage Division Five unit as confirmed by Marrs. Additionally, Bloomfield held close ties with Master Mason FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Tibor Rosenbaum, a head of finance for Israeli intelligence.Further conspiratorial claims would be levied on Rosenbaum s Geneva-based Banque de Credit International (BCI), a Mossad-linked bank that allegedly laundered Permindex money to finance assassination attempts on de Gaulle. BCI was also the predecessor to the scandal plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) that was later found to be peddling in terror funding, arms deals and prostitution. BCCI would later be implicated in the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report called The BCCI Affair. In 1974, Rosenbaum himself was said to have owed BCI some $60 million after his business associate Baron Edmond de Rothschild of the Israel Corporation, discovered an apparent an open and shut case of unauthorized conversion of company funds, that were transferred to the insolvent Inter Credit Trust of Vaduz instead of BCI. COVERT OPERATOR? Lee Harvey Oswald seen handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans in August of 1963. (Image Source: neworleanspast)The Dallas Plot & The Cuban ProjectIn March of 1967, Garrison, the ex-FBI agent turned DA, indicted Shaw on conspiracy charges related to the assassination of President Kennedy. It would take 22 months before the court proceedings would begin in a trial which lasted 34 days. Aspects of the Shaw trial became popularized following Oliver Stone s much debated and controversial thriller entitled JFK (1991).At the start of the trial in 1969, Garrison s opening statement contended that Shaw, a man believed to have used the alias known as Clay Bertrand (also Clem) within the New Orleans socialite scene and gay underground, was also a well-connected former military intelligence officer with no formal background in trade that allegedly participated in a plot to kill the 35th president of the United States. Garrison would further assert that Shaw met with a former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald and an airline pilot for Eastern Airlines, David Ferrie on several occasions over the summer of 1963, eventually culminated in a meeting at Ferrie s New Orleans apartment where Garrison s star-witness a 25-year-old insurance salesman for Equitable Life Assurance Society named Perry Raymond Russo, apparently overheard the men discussing critical details regarding a JFK assassination plot in September of 1963.Below is screen shot depicting a portion of a NY Times article discussing Russo s testimony of the JFK plot Russo s account of what happened was a major part of the trial and has been one of the most controversial aspects of Garrison s case against Shaw ever since. Over the years, researchers and mainstream critics have debated the credibility of Russo after receiving hypnosis prior to his testimony.JFK case critics believe that due to the combination of the credibility of witnesses called into question, the possibility of planted witnesses and the untimely deaths of some 18 material witnesses, including the controversial death of Ferrie, who was not able to be deposed, Shaw was acquitted in 54 minutes in the only JFK assassination case to make it to trial.A documentary entitled The JFK Assassination;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;KARMA? DEM REP Knocked off Stage By Falling Sign…After Republicans Had Received Death Threats [Video];Is this karma? Republicans have been receiving death threats (see below) from Democrats who SUPPORT net neutrality and are furious that it could be repealed: But if you don t support net neutrality, I will find you and your family and I will kill you all. Angry Supporter of Net NeutralitySo this could be a sign Right?A Democratic congressman was knocked off the stage at a rally for net neutrality on Thursday when the sign behind him fell down on him:Rep. Jose Serrano (D., N.Y.) was speaking at a rally in Washington, D.C., on the same day the Federal Communications Commission is expected to repeal net neutrality regulations enacted by the Obama administration.As Serrano spoke in favor of net neutrality, the alarm-clock style sign behind him that said Wake up call fell down and pushed Serrano off the stage. He kept his footing and made a joke about it. Wow. I have never been hit that hard in the South Bronx, he said, going on to speak from the ground. But I ll speak from here, and I m doing that with a pulled muscle in my leg.REPUBLICANS HAD RECEIVED DEATH THREATS OVER NET NEUTRALITY:A New York man was arrested for making a death threat against Rep. John Katko over the net neutrality debate, the latest in a string of threats from advocates of the liberal policy.Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai has received numerous threats since announcing the agency s intention earlier this year to repeal the Obama era rules that expanded federal regulation over the internet.Katko, a Republican who represents upstate New York and has no role in the FCC agenda, received a threatening voicemail from Patrick Angelo, who vowed to kill Katko s family if he supports repealing net neutrality. Listen Mr. Katko, if you support net neutrality, I will support you, Angelo said, according to a complaint filed in federal court. But if you don t support net neutrality, I will find you and your family and I will kill you all. Do you understand? I will literally find all of you and your progeny and just wipe you from the face of the earth. Angelo was charged with threatening to kill a U.S. congressman and is facing up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. I condemn in the strongest possible terms any attempts to intimidate government officials with violent threats, and in particular, efforts to target their families, said Chairman Pai. I would also like to express my sympathy to Congressman Katko and his family and thank law enforcement officials for taking this matter seriously. GOING AFTER THE CHILDREN OF FCC CHAIRMAN PAI:The net neutrality debate has become increasingly heated, with Chairman Pai reporting this week of threatening signs targeting his family. Protest signs of the repeal policy, which Pai formally released last week, turned up in his neighborhood naming and targeting his young children. Dad murdered democracy, one sign read, and another featured Pai s children s names.YES, THIS IS THE UNHINGED BEHAVIOR FROM THOSE ON THE LEFT WHO WANT TO KEEP NET NEUTRALITY. PRETTY SICK!Read more: WFB;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! SARAH SANDERS MOCKS CNN’s April Ryan…Sends Hilarious Tweets To Verify Authenticity Of Her Homemade Pecan Pies;One month ago, CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan took to Twitter, and without any evidence, suggested that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn t actually bake the Thanksgiving Day pecan pie she posted on Twitter.Here s the tweet from Sanders showing the pie she baked with the message: I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Never one to let the bad behavior of a leftist member of the media sharks go unnoticed, Sarah Sanders decided to share a step-by-step pictorial of her Christmas pecan pies for the petty CNN reporter April Ryan. Sanders tweeted directly to April Ryan this time, asking Ryan for her opinion on how to best prepare her pie: It s pie time! With or without bourbon @AprilDRyan? #piegate It s pie time! With or without bourbon @AprilDRyan? #piegate pic.twitter.com/2xw58FDFg6 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Sanders then thanked VP Chief of Staff Nick Ayers for supplying the pecans from his family farm in Georgia:Thanks to @VP Chief of Staff @Nick_Ayers for supplying the pecans from his family farm in Georgia #piegate pic.twitter.com/Lx7LpMwF4V Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Sanders even offered to provide CNN s April Ryan with further documentation if she needed further proof to verify the authenticity of her homemade pecan pies:Ingredients all mixed up and pies in the oven! @AprilDRyan let me know if you need further documentation #piegate pic.twitter.com/OVYLg1gBgO Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Finally, Sanders ended her series of tweets with a zinger: Excited to share these at tomorrow s press potluck. Merry Christmas to the WH press corps! Excited to share these at tomorrow s press potluck. Merry Christmas to the WH press corps! pic.twitter.com/PKqfHk3nXJ Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Could there be a classier or wittier person than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when it comes to dealing with our rabid, Trump-hating, leftist media?;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GOP’s Jim Jordan to Lou Dobbs: It’s jail time! Evidence shows FBI went after Republican Party nominee [Video];"GOP Rep. Jim Jordan on Lou Dobbs: Listen you can t make this stuff up. It gets worse each and every day. What deep down scares me, if this actually happened the FBI had a concerted effort with the people at the top to go after one party s nominee to help the other party s nominee. If that actually happened in the United States of America and everything each and every day points to more and more likely that that is what took place, it is sad for our country if that took place. And I think it did based on everything I am seeing. All the evidence points to that..@Jim_Jordan on Peter Strzok: ""In case the American people, in his mind, are crazy enough to elect Donald Trump we need something else to stop Trump. That's what this guy was thinking at the highest levels at the FBI."" pic.twitter.com/vNWUhDvDuE FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 14, 2017The Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified yesterday about the clear case of corruption and political bias in our intel agencies. Changing Hillary s charge from grossly negligent to extremely careless is disturbing enough but it s clear that Jim Jordan knows this goes much deeper. Hillary was protected by the political hacks in the intel agencies but a target was put on President Trump s back using the FISA court to open up spying on the him and those around him using a doctored up opposition research document that was never proven to be anywhere close to true The questioning from Jordan is well worth watching:BYRON YORK:An insurance policy? From the Strzok-Page texts. https://t.co/Ru5P1dWFXI pic.twitter.com/hiyApwb7Jg Byron York (@ByronYork) December 13, 2017BRET BAIER:Text-from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page (Andy is Andrew McCabe): ""I want to believe the path u threw out 4 consideration in Andy's office-that there's no way he gets elected-but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.It's like an insurance policy in unlikely event u die be4 you're 40"" Bret Baier (@BretBaier) December 13, 2017ANDREW MCCARTHY COMMENTED ON THE TWEET THAT EXPOSED THE AGENTS FOR THEIR POLITICAL BIAS:Obviously, this is not political banter. Clearly indicates professional duties infected by political viewpoints, which is disqualifying. I was going on the published accounts I'd seen, which didn't include this one. Should follow my own advice to wait til all facts in. https://t.co/fXk7GPnk5U Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 13, 2017";politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Documents Reveal Hillary Clinton “Struck a Deal” to Keep Records Private;Here s yet another reason to be very suspicious of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton:Via Free Beacon: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a deal with the State Department while serving in the Obama administration that allowed her to take ownership of records she did not want made public, according to recently released reports.Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were personal materials and unclassified, non-record materials. Judicial Watch made the revelation after filing a FOIA request with the State Department and obtaining a record of the agreement:The newly released documents show the deal allowed Clinton and Abedin to remove documents related to particular calls and schedules, and the records would not be released to the general public under FOIA. Abedin, for instance, was allowed to remove electronic records and five boxes of physical files, including files labeled Muslim Engagement Documents. The released records included a list of designated materials that would not be released to the general public under FOIA and were to be released to the Secretary with this understanding. Electronic copy of daily files which are word versions of public documents and non-records: speeches/press statements/photos from the website, a non-record copy of the schedule, a non record copy of the call log, press clips, and agenda of daily activitiesElectronic copy of a log of calls the Secretary made since 2004, it is a non-record, since her official calls are logged elsewhere (official schedule and official call log)Electronic copy of the Secretary s call grid which is a running list of calls she wants to make (both personal and official)16 boxes: Personal Schedules (1993 thru 2008-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State.29 boxes: Miscellaneous Public Schedules during her tenure as FLOTUS and Senator-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State1 box: Personal Reimbursable receipts (6/25/2009 thru 1/14/2013)1 box: Personal Photos1 box: Personal schedule (2009-2013) STICKY FINGERS CLINTON:A physical file of the log of the Secretary s gifts with pictures of gifts was also handed over to Clinton. Gifts received by government employees is highly regulated, and often strictly limited. However, gifts that are motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship may be accepted without limitation.;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chronology: It only took seven decades: the path to EU's defense pact;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Twenty-five EU governments have agreed a defense pact to mark a new era of greater European military integration after Britain s decision to quit the bloc. Below is a list of dates in European defense cooperation: 1949 - The United States, Canada and European countries set up the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a U.S.-led military alliance. 1950 - The European Defence Community is proposed as a European alternative to NATO to incorporate West Germany and create a European army, a joint budget and shared arms. 1954 - The French parliament rejects the European Army plan. Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Britain form the Western European Union, a common defense group with a shared air force and joint command. 1993 - The EU s Maastricht Treaty redefines European integration and introduces a Common Foreign and Security Policy as one of its goals, allowing European governments to take joint action in foreign policy. 1998 - Britain and France agree to common defense in the Saint-Malo Declaration, and London pledges to play a central role in the security and defense policy of the European Union. 2003 - The European Union launches its first independent military mission outside of Europe, Operation Artemis, with United Nations backing, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 2004 - The European Defence Agency is formed to help EU governments develop their military capabilities. 2007 - Rapid-reaction forces of about 1,500 soldiers, called EU Battlegroups, are formed under control of the Council of the European Union. However, they are never used. 2009 - The EU s Lisbon Treaty strengthens the Common Foreign and Security Policy, creating an EU foreign policy chief. 2011 - France and Britain lead a campaign to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi but cannot impose no-fly zone without U.S. aircraft, munitions. 2017 - 25 EU governments launch a defense pact to integrate military planning, weapons development and operations that will rely on a 5 billion-euro ($5.83 billion) defense fund. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COMEY EDITS REVEALED: Clinton Probe Remarks Watered Down…Edited to Omit Criminality;"How did the FBI handle the Clinton email case two words: WATERED DOWN! The big question on this watered down document is WHO MADE THE EDITS?JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Jim Comey owns it no matter who edited it :""The job of the @FBI is not to decide whom to prosecute, but to present the evidence to professional prosecutors in the DOJ and let them make the decision."" @Judgenap on Comey's @HillaryClinton email probe statement #SpecialReport https://t.co/X5Mhju9rsU pic.twitter.com/Kmo1SjRRhS Fox News (@FoxNews) December 14, 2017NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS:Newly released documents reveal that then-FBI Director James Comey s draft statement on the Hillary Clinton email probe was edited numerous times before his public announcement, in ways that seemed to considerably water down the bureau s findings.Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, released copies Thursday of the edits to Comey s highly scrutinized statement.WATERED DOWN LANGUAGE:One showed language was changed to describe the actions of Clinton and her colleagues as extremely careless as opposed to grossly negligent. This is a key legal distinction.Johnson, writing about his concerns in a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the original could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton s handling of classified material. The edited statement deleted the reference to gross negligence a legal threshold for mishandling classified material and instead replaced it with an exculpatory sentence, he wrote.The original also said it was reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s private email account. That was later changed to say that scenario was merely possible. The final statement also removed a reference to the sheer volume of classified information discussed on email. While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey s statement in at least three respects, Johnson wrote Thursday.That includes, Johnson said, repeated edits to reduce Secretary Clinton s culpability in mishandling classified information. Read more: Fox News";politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. bill to allow property and income or sales tax deductions: key lawmaker;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee indicated on Thursday that a Republican tax bill will allow property and income or sales taxes to be deducted under the state and local income tax deduction. Republican Representative Kevin Brady, asked if it was true that the so-called SALT deduction would include property and income or sales taxes under a compromise bill forged by House and Senate Republicans, told reporters: “Yes.” ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax bill to preserve key renewable energy credits, sources say;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The final version of comprehensive tax legislation being negotiated by House and Senate lawmakers will preserve key renewable energy tax credits that were once at risk of being removed, congressional and business sources said on Thursday. Congressional Republicans reached a deal on tax legislation on Wednesday, clearing the way for final votes next week on a package that would slash the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21 percent and cut taxes for wealthy Americans. Congressional and business sources briefed on the status of these talks have confirmed that the production tax credit for wind energy and the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, which the House version of the bill had targeted, will remain in the final bill. Lawmakers have been working to produce a tax package after the Republican-controlled House and Senate passed different versions of legislation. The president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, Gregory Wetstone, sent a note to members on Wednesday saying that he knew “with certainty” that the legislation also did not include the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for corporations that would have reduced the value of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind projects. Meanwhile, the renewable energy industry is awaiting final details on how congressional negotiators will address problems created by a provision included in the Senate-passed bill called the Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT). This measure was intended to prevent multinational companies from abusing the tax code but would make tax credits like the PTC for wind less valuable. This provision would have chilled investment by international companies like Vestas, and banks in the renewable energy sector, industry experts said. Wetstone said negotiators are working on a fix that would allow the PTC to offset at least 80 percent of the BEAT tax imposed on multinational companies. Another source briefed on the negotiations said that as much as 90 percent of credits could be used to offset the BEAT tax. “We are still unclear about the precise terms of deal, but it’s good news for the whole sector,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist with Bracewell focused on tax, infrastructure and energy. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Lee undecided on tax bill, seeks child credit changes: aide;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Mike Lee has not decided whether to support a Republican tax bill and wants changes to the child tax credit, an aide to the lawmaker said on Thursday. Both Lee and Republican Senator Marco Rubio want more of the proposed child tax credit to be refundable, Conn Carroll, Lee’s communications director said, adding Lee is “undecided on the tax bill as currently written.” The sweeping tax bill needs a simple majority to pass in the Senate, in which Republicans hold 52 of the 100 seats and no Democrats are expected to support it. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says will work with Rubio on child tax credit;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday it would continue to work with Republican Senator Marco Rubio as he seeks a further expansion of a child tax credit in a tax overhaul bill, but that it was proud lawmakers were already considering doubling it. “We’re really proud of the work that we’ve done already, up until this point with Senator Rubio, already doubling the child tax credit,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “We’re going to continue working with the senator, but we think we’ve made great strides.” ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican House Speaker Ryan told Trump retirement report was rumors were not true: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Speaker Paul Ryan has told President Donald Trump a report on Thursday that Ryan was considering retiring was not true, the White House said. “The speaker assured the president that those were not accurate reports, and that they look forward to working together for a long time to come,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters at a news briefing. Politico reported that Ryan would like to retire after the November congressional election. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Republicans to keep an eye on as Senate nears vote on tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. Congress reached a deal this week on a final version of their debt-financed legislation to cut taxes for businesses and wealthy Americans, with House and Senate votes expected early next week. Republicans control both chambers but have only a 52-to-48 Senate majority, meaning they can lose no more than two votes and still pass their tax bill, which Democrats oppose. The following are the Republican lawmakers to watch: The Florida senator and former presidential contender said on Thursday he will vote against the tax plan if its proposed refundable amount for the child tax credit is not increased. Rubio told reporters that tax negotiators have made many changes to the legislation, including lowering the top rate paid by wealthy individuals. “My concern is that if you found the money to lower the top rate ... you can’t find a little bit to at least somewhat increase the refundable portion of it?” Rubio asked. The Utah senator also is unhappy with the legislation’s child tax credit approach and “undecided” on whether he will vote for the measure if there are no changes, his spokesman has told Reuters. Lee and Rubio are in negotiations aimed at making more of the tax credit refundable so more low-income families can benefit from it, his office said on Thursday. The Maine moderate has said she cannot say whether she will be supportive “until I see the bill.” Republican leaders persuaded Collins’ to support the Senate’s version of the bill earlier this month by promising to take up two healthcare provisions before the end of the year that would help mitigate her concerns about repealing Obamacare’s “individual mandate.” Republican tax writers also included amendments offered by Collins to woo her support. One preserves the deductibility of property-tax payments at a cap of $10,000. The final bill goes further by preserving the same deduction for state and local income-tax payments. Corker, a deficit hawk from Tennessee, stalled momentum on the Senate tax bill earlier this month, then ended up voting against it due to its expansion of the federal deficit. Nonpartisan government estimates have shown the Republican tax bill will expand the deficit by about $1.5 trillion in a decade, or $1 trillion after accounting for economic growth. Corker has said this week of the compromise bill: “My deficit concerns have not been alleviated.” The Arizona conservative voted for the Senate tax bill earlier this month after announcing he had succeeded in eliminating an $85 billion expensing “budget gimmick.” Flake also got a commitment from Senate leaders and the Trump administration to work on permanent protections for immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. Flake has not yet said whether he will support the compromise bill and was not specific about his hesitation in brief hallway remarks to reporters this week.     The Arizona senator, war hero and former presidential nominee voted for the Senate bill but his office said this week he is undergoing treatment for side effects of cancer therapy at a military hospital outside Washington. McCain, 81, missed non-tax votes this week. His office said he “looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible.” The Mississippi senator, who also voted for the Senate bill, was absent from Capitol Hill for nearly a month earlier this year and has missed votes in recent weeks. Cochran’s office said the 80-year-old senator is in Washington and expects to vote for tax legislation next week. Vice President Mike Pence has delayed a planned trip to the Middle East in case his vote is needed to break a tie on the final tax bill. Pence has played the role of dealmaker during Senate negotiations, assuring both Collins and Flake their concerns about the legislation would be addressed. Johnson endorsed the Senate bill after getting a 23 percent tax deduction for pass-through business income. The Wisconsin senator has said he is encouraged by the compromise bill, which has a 20 percent tax deduction for pass-through business income, and a lower top individual rate of 37 percent. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator McCain will vote on tax bill -No. 2 Republican;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator John McCain, who is receiving treatment for brain cancer and has missed votes this week, will be available next week to vote on the tax compromise bill, John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the U.S. Senate, said on Thursday. “He’s just resting up,” Cornyn said. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fund managers seek stocks benefiting from Democratic gains in 2018 U.S. elections;NEW YORK (Reuters) - The surprise victory by Democrats in Tuesday’s Alabama election for a U.S. senator is prompting fund managers to prepare for more losses by the Republican party in the 2018 mid-term Congressional elections. Fund managers from Federated Investors, Wells Fargo, James Funds and LPL Financial are among those that are moving into the shares of retailers, banks, industrials and technology firms that may benefit from strong global economic growth abroad and tax cuts for high income wage earners at home, even if the Democratic party makes gains in next year’s elections. With a strong economy, continuing deregulation by the administration of President Trump, and the benefits of corporate tax cuts expected to be passed by the Republican-led Congress in coming days, cyclical companies ranging from Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) to Allstate Corp (ALL.N) will outperform as long as Washington stays out of the way, according to fund managers. “Tax reform was the big thing from an economic perspective, and if I’ve got it then I’ve got it. If this (next year’s election) makes it harder for Republicans to pass an immigration bill or trade restrictions then that’s even better” because it reduces threats to global economic growth, said Steven Chiavarone, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors in New York, which has $363 billion in assets under management. As a result, Chiavarone is holding on to large-capitalization technology stocks like Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Amazon, despite each company’s stock gaining more than 45 percent for the year to date, because he expects them to be the largest beneficiaries of the global economic expansion. “You are going to have more money in the pockets of both consumers and of corporations, and these companies are most exposed to where that money will be spent,” he said. Historically, the U.S. stock market has done well during periods when opposing political parties have control of the presidency and at least one house of Congress. This time, however, the more influential factor looks to be the strength of the global economy. In the U.S, the economy grew at its fastest pace in three years during the third quarter this year, while the economy of the eurozone is on pace for its largest expansion in a decade. In October, the International Monetary Fund raised its outlook for global economic growth to a rate of 3.7 percent in 2018, helping to push emerging market stocks up to six-year highs. “We haven’t had anything like this on a global growth scale since 2010,” said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist for LPL Financial, which has $560 billion in assets under management. “Against that backdrop, more gridlock in Washington is not a bad thing, because you won’t have any extreme moves one way or another.” Detrick expects cyclical value stocks, especially financials and industrials, to outpace the market in the year ahead as the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates and corporations start to increase their capital expenditures. Financial stocks slightly outperformed the broad market on Wednesday following the victory in the Alabama election by Democrat Doug Jones, with the Financial Select SPDR Fund (XLF.P), a measure of financial companies in the benchmark S&P 500 stock index, gaining 0.3 percentage points while the index as a whole was little changed. The move to invest in stocks that might benefit from gridlock in Washington D.C., if the Democrats regain at least one house in Congress next year, is a reversal from a year ago, when fund managers piled into infrastructure, defense and small-capitalization stocks in anticipation of Republican legislative victories in the 2016 elections. Dubbed the ‘Trump Trade’ last year, the move helped push the U.S. dollar up to multi-year highs and sent the broad S&P 500 index up more than 10 percent between November and March this year. Now, however, fund managers are looking at companies that can benefit even if Republicans are not able to legislate in Congress. Barry James, portfolio manager of the $3 billion James Balanced Golden Rainbow fund, is also moving into financial stocks such as Allstate and Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N) because he expects the Trump administration to continue to reduce regulations in the industry, a policy that it can continue if Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress. At the same time, he is increasing his position in retail companies such as Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) and Target Corp (TGT.N) that get the majority of their revenues in the U.S. and are well-positioned to benefit from the Republican-led corporate tax cut likely to be passed soon. He expects that Democrats will win at least at least one house of Congress in 2018, limiting the impact of Washington on the stock market until the presidential election in 2020. “It’s looking more and more like the tax plan will be the one legislative victory that Republicans will have, and there won’t be anything else out of Washington unless it is truly bi-partisan,” he said. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Representative Farenthold will not seek re-election;AUSTIN, Texas/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Representative Blake Farenthold said he would not seek re-election in November, denying allegations of sexual harassment by former staffers but admitting he allowed an unprofessional culture to flourish in his Capitol Hill office. The 55-year-old congressman from Corpus Christi, Texas, made the announcement on Thursday, a week after the House Ethics Committee said it was investigating him over allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation involving a former female staff member. The committee said it was also looking into whether Farenthold had made inappropriate statements to other members of his staff. In a videotaped statement on his campaign’s Facebook page, Farenthold said he was a political novice unprepared for his new responsibilities when he came to Washington for his first term in 2011. “I had no idea how to run a congressional office, and as a result, I allowed a workplace culture to take root in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional,” he said. Politico reported last week that the congressional Office of Compliance had paid $84,000 from a public fund on behalf of Farenthold for a sexual harassment claim. In 2014, his former communications director, Lauren Greene, filed a lawsuit accusing him of creating a hostile work environment, gender discrimination and retaliation, court documents showed. The two reached a confidential mediated agreement in 2015, according to a statement from Farenthold’s office that denied any wrongdoing by him. Reuters has been unable to verify the allegations against Farenthold, who said on Thursday that the charges were false. “This issue has become a political distraction,” he said. “Quite simply, my constituents deserve better.” House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan called the allegations disconcerting, including reports outlining “unacceptable behaviors.” “I think he’s made the right decision to retire,” Ryan said. Congress is reviewing its workplace policies on sexual harassment after a number of lawmakers have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent weeks amid a wave of such allegations against powerful men in entertainment, politics and the media. Last week, Democratic Representative John Conyers and Republican Representative Trent Franks resigned, while Democratic Senator Al Franken said he would be stepping down in the coming weeks. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Speaker Ryan mulls retirement after 2018 elections: Politico;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has told confidants he would like to retire after the 2018 congressional elections, Politico reported on Thursday, but the Wisconsin lawmaker and an aide played down the report, saying he wasn’t quitting any time soon. “Ryan has made it known to some of his closest confidants that this will be his final term as speaker,” Politico said. Politico said it interviewed three dozen people who knew Ryan - including lawmakers, congressional and administration aides, conservative intellectuals and Republican lobbyists - and that “not a single person believed Ryan will stay in Congress past 2018.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said President Donald Trump had spoken to Ryan “and made sure that the speaker knew very clearly and in no uncertain terms that if that news was true, he was very unhappy with it.” “The speaker assured the president that those were not accurate reports and that they looked forward to working together for a long time to come,” Sanders said. Ryan is a long-time champion of tax reform who has helped bring Republicans in Congress to the cusp of a tax overhaul for the first time in a generation. If passed, it would be Trump’s first major legislative victory since he took office in January despite being helped by Republican control of Congress. When asked by reporters on Thursday if he was planning to quit, Ryan said with a chuckle: “I’m not, no.” Asked later about the Politico report, Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong did not directly deny it, instead saying: “This is pure speculation. As the speaker himself said today, he’s not going anywhere any time soon.” Ryan would be unlikely to publicize any planned departure because it could hurt his fundraising capacity on behalf of fellow Republicans and undercut his ability to make deals in the House of Representatives. A budget hawk who was Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate in 2012, Ryan reluctantly took over as speaker in 2015 following the resignation of John Boehner, who had held the post since early 2011 after Republicans won control of the chamber from Democrats. Boehner’s tenure as speaker was marked by fractious divisions among competing groups within the Republican Party. Ryan has tried to move the party beyond those disputes with only limited success. Party divisions earlier this year prevented Republicans from delivering a promised overhaul of healthcare legislation, and the path toward tax reform has also been complicated by internal disagreements and intense lobbying from industry groups. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Provisions of the U.S. Republicans' final tax bill;(Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. Congress reached a deal on tax legislation on Wednesday, clearing the way for final votes next week on a package that, if approved, would be sent to President Donald Trump to sign into law. Formal language of the legislation, expected to add at least $1 trillion to the $20-trillion national debt over a decade, has not been released. The following are known provisions on which House of Representatives and Senate tax writers have agreed, based on conversations with aides and lawmakers: CORPORATE TAX RATE: Falls to 21 percent from 35 percent. The House and Senate bills, as well as Trump, had earlier proposed 20 percent. Going to 21 percent gave tax writers more federal revenue needed to allow the tax cut to take effect immediately. U.S. corporations have been seeking a large tax cut like this for many years. PASS-THROUGH BUSINESSES: Creates a 20 percent business income deduction for owners of pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships. The House had proposed a 25 percent tax rate;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican governors meet with Pence over NAFTA concerns;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican governors from four U.S. states on Thursday met with Vice President Mike Pence to voice deep concerns over proposed changes to NAFTA that could affect jobs and manufacturing in their states, officials who attended the meeting said. The meeting at the White House included Governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Rick Snyder of Michigan, Bill Haslam of Tennessee and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, as well as President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. After the meeting, Pence, also a former governor of Indiana tweeted: “great discussion...about how @POTUS’ priorities of pro-growth tax cuts & better trade deals will result in MORE JOBS & stronger US manufacturing.” Reynolds emphasized during the meeting the importance of the North American Free Trade Agreement to Iowa’s farmers and manufacturers while expressing support for an updated NAFTA, her spokeswoman Brenna Smith said later. “The governors had a healthy discussion, but the conversation is ongoing,” Smith added. Arkansas’ Hutchinson said in a statement afterwards that the United States should be careful not to harm global trade as it revises NAFTA. “The administration was clear that it wants to be able to negotiate a better NAFTA deal for American manufacturers and workers,” Hutchinson said. “I respect that negotiating position, but my message is that Arkansas must be able to continue its access to North American markets unimpeded by trade barriers. Otherwise, there will be serious harm to Arkansas agriculture, and retail and manufacturing sectors.” On Tuesday, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, accompanied by representatives from Subaru , Fiat Chrysler, Honda, General Motors and Toyota also met with Pence to discuss NAFTA, the Republican governor’s office said. In a letter to Lighthizer in October, Holcomb urged the administration to safeguard the trade relations with Canada and Mexico, especially in the car industry. He emphasized that the auto industry represented about $2 billion in exports and 100,000 jobs in Indiana in 2016. Both Mexico and Canada have pushed back at demands by the Trump administration during negotiations that would require regional content for autos be raised to 85 percent from 62.5 percent, with 50 percent of the content coming produced in the United States. Neither Canada nor Mexico have offered counterproposals but have argued that the U.S. demands would cause serious damage to North American automotive manufacturing. The meetings this week took place as NAFTA negotiators from the United States, Canada and Mexico met behind closed doors at a downtown Washington hotel to update the decades-old accord, which Trump has blamed for American job losses and big trade deficits for his country. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As Republican tax vote nears, more senators waver;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s drive to win passage of a sweeping Republican tax bill in the U.S. Congress hit potential obstacles on Thursday as two more Republican senators insisted on changes, joining a list of lawmakers whose support is uncertain. Florida’s Marco Rubio, a former presidential contender, told reporters on Capitol Hill that if the bill’s proposed refundability to taxpayers of the child tax credit is not expanded, “I’m a no ... It has to be higher than $1,100.” Rubio and Mike Lee of Utah are in talks with other senators about expanding child tax credit refundability, said Conn Carroll, a Lee spokesman. Lee is now “undecided on the tax bill as currently written,” Carroll said in a telephone interview. The child tax credit now in the U.S. tax code is meant to lower the tax bills of working families with children. As the fast-moving Republican tax package has evolved, it has tilted increasingly toward benefiting businesses and wealthy taxpayers, a trend that aides were saying privately is a growing concern for some lawmakers. Provisions for offsetting the revenue costs of last-minute changes also were becoming worrisomely unclear, they said. After resisting demands for weeks to cut the top income tax rate for the richest taxpayers, the bill’s authors did agree in recent days to lower it to 37 percent from 39.6 percent. “My concern is that if you found the money to lower the top rate ... you can’t find a little bit to at least somewhat increase the refundable portion” of the child credit? Rubio said. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the White House will continue to work with Rubio on the child tax credit. The headline feature of the bill is a deep cut to 21 percent from 35 percent of the corporate income tax rate, a step that corporate tax lobbyists have been pursuing for many years. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate tax committee and one of the bill’s chief authors, said the Senate would probably vote on a final Senate-House measure on Monday. He said he hoped Rubio’s concerns could be addressed. “He’s important to us,” Hatch said. “I don’t know what leadership wants to do on that. It’s a problem, no question.” The Senate approved a wide-ranging tax bill of its own on Dec. 2 by a vote of 51-49. Senator Bob Corker was the only Republican to join all 46 Senate Democrats and two independents in voting against the bill. Earlier, the House of Representatives had approved its own tax legislation. In recent days negotiators from both chambers have been scrambling to reconcile the two bills, changing specific parts on the fly to lock in enough votes to pass it. Trump has said he wants a final bill on his desk for enactment before Christmas. If it is enacted, the bill would be the first major legislative achievement for Trump and the Republicans since he took office in January. Corker, a leading Republican fiscal hawk, reiterated that his concerns about the bill’s expansion of the federal deficit have not been addressed. Independent and nonpartisan tax analysts have estimated that the bill will expand the $20 trillion national debt by at least $1 trillion in the next 10 years. Moderate Senator Susan Collins also has been non-committal on the bill, in part out of concern about its provision to repeal an Obamacare federal fine imposed on Americans who do not buy health insurance. The Senate vote outlook has been further muddled by Senator John McCain’s admission to the hospital for treatment for side effects of cancer therapy. His office said he “looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible.” Carroll said if the child tax credit were to be made fully refundable, it would cost about $7 billion in lost revenues over 10 years. Lee and Rubio want expanded refundability. Under current law, a maximum child tax credit of $1,000 per eligible child under 17 is allowed on a portion of family earnings. In its current form, the legislation expands that credit but Lee and Rubio are seeking more help for families, especially in lower-income brackets. The two senators failed in an effort to do that on the Senate floor when the tax bill initially was debated. Republicans have a 52-vote Senate majority. So they can lose no more than two of their own votes and still win approval, with Vice President Mike Pence able to vote to break a tie. Pence has delayed a planned trip to the Middle East in case his vote is needed on the final tax bill. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans join push to lift secrecy around misconduct in Congress;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prominent Republican senators on Thursday embraced a push to overhaul rules for addressing sexual harassment in the U.S. Congress, signing on to a bill that would protect victims and require lawmakers to pay for their own settlements. The legislation builds on demands to lift the veil of secrecy around sexual harassment and misconduct on Capitol Hill, and has gained steam in recent months as a wave of women have come forward with accusations against prominent American men in politics, media and entertainment. The bipartisan push signaled momentum in the Republican-led U.S. Congress for overhauling a process for handling misconduct allegations that many lawmakers say is antiquated and stacked against victims. The Senate bill, called the Congressional Harassment Reform Act, draws from proposals that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Jackie Speier, both Democrats, have been developing. “Congress is really behind the eight-ball. I think that, in many respects, the private sector has acted more swiftly than we have in terms of addressing sexual harassment,” Speier said in an interview. High-profile Republican senators co-sponsoring the bill include John Cornyn, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama Senate race winner urges Republican rival to 'move on';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alabama Democrat Doug Jones, who won a bitter fight for a U.S. Senate seat this week, on Thursday called on his Republican opponent to concede the race and help heal the Southern state after a deeply divisive contest. Roy Moore, the conservative Christian Republican whose campaign was tainted by accusations that he pursued teenaged girls while in his 30s, made a second statement on Wednesday night in which he did not concede the election. Jones, a former federal prosecutor, will be the first Democrat to hold a Senate seat in Alabama in a quarter-century, narrowing Republicans’ majority in the Senate to 51 of 100 seats and potentially making it more difficult for them to pursue President Donald Trump’s agenda. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Jones had a lead of 1.5 percentage points over Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court Justice. Alabama’s secretary of state, a Republican, has said the remaining ballots from Tuesday’s election were unlikely to shrink the victory to the half a percentage point margin required to trigger a recount. Jones said in an interview with NBC that he was confident of the outcome. “It’s time to move on,” he said. “The people of Alabama have now spoken ... Let’s get this behind us so the people of Alabama can get someone in there and start working for them.” Asked whether Moore should concede, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters, “I’m surprised. It sounds like it ... should have already taken place.” Jones on Wednesday said he had received congratulatory phone calls from Trump, who had endorsed Moore, as well as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “The president’s already called and congratulated Doug Jones and expressed his willingness to work with him and meet with him when he arrives,” Sanders said. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nominee for U.S. EPA chemical safety withdraws: Bloomberg; (In this Dec. 13 story, corrects third paragraph to say Dourson is a former professor at the University of Cincinnati) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former chemical industry consultant nominated by the Trump administration to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety and pollution prevention office has withdrawn his nomination, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Michael Dourson notified the administration of his decision on Wednesday after Republican senators raised concerns about his past work and possible conflicts of interest, said Bloomberg, which cited an unnamed official for the report. Dourson, a former professor at the University of Cincinnati who has worked as a consultant for chemical companies, was one of several people whose nominations for top EPA positions were approved by the Senate environment panel in October in a 11-10 vote along party lines. Bloomberg said several Republican senators refused to support Dourson, including Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both of North Carolina, who raised concerns about contaminated water at the Camp Lejeune military base in their state. The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. A spokeswoman for Burr said she could not confirm that Dourson had withdrawn. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate environment panel, said in a statement, “Dourson, an individual who has spent most of his career promoting less protective chemical safety standards, had no business overseeing our nation’s chemical safety laws.” Environmental group Earthjustice hailed the news as a “victory for all children, workers and communities who deserve the strongest protections from exposure to toxic chemicals and pesticides.” Dourson, while a consultant, had assessed some chemicals, including PFOA, used to make Teflon non-stick surfaces, to be safe at levels far higher than considered acceptable by the EPA. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pence delays Middle East trip in case needed for U.S. tax vote;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will delay an upcoming Middle East trip by a few days in case a tie-breaking vote is needed from him for tax cut legislation in Congress, a senior White House official said on Thursday. Pence will now leave some time on Tuesday on a trip that will begin with a visit to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the official said. He had initially planned to leave late on Saturday. As vice president, Pence can cast a tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate, and with a close vote expected along party lines on the tax legislation, it was decided to keep him in the country just in case. Republican Senator John McCain, who is fighting brain cancer, was in hospital on Wednesday. “We don’t expect his vote to be needed but we don’t want the scenario where he’s on the other side of the world and we have to come back,” the official said. Pence is set to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday in Jerusalem. Pence’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said that during the trip, Pence would reaffirm the U.S. commitment to U.S. allies in the Middle East and to working together with them in the fight against Islamist militants. “He looks forward to having constructive conversations with both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Sisi to reaffirm President Trump’s commitment to our partners in the region and to its future,” she said in a statement. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to meet with Pence in protest of President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Kentucky lawmaker a 'probable suicide' amid sexual misconduct accusations;(Reuters) - Kentucky state Representative Dan Johnson, who was facing sexual assault accusations, died in a probable suicide on Wednesday, Bullitt County Coroner Dave Billings said. Johnson, 57, also the leader of the Louisville-area Heart of Fire Church, held a news conference on Tuesday at which he denied accusations contained in a report by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The report, published earlier in the week, included accusations from a woman that Johnson molested her in 2013 when she was a teenager. Johnson, whose press conference was widely reported by local media, also defied calls by some legislators to step down. On Wednesday evening, Johnson was found dead in a probable suicide from a single gunshot wound near Louisville, the coroner said, adding that an autopsy would be performed on Thursday. Billings said law enforcement officials had been searching for Johnson after someone read a post on his Facebook page, became concerned and contacted police. The post has since been taken down, but the Courier-Journal reported that it appeared to be a farewell and read in part, “the accusations from NPR are false, GOD and only GOD knows the truth. Nothing is the way they make it out to be.” The death comes amid a national reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse that has included allegations of misconduct in a number of state legislatures, including in Kentucky. Kentucky Republican Jeff Hoover recently resigned his post as Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations. “Saddened to hear of tonight’s death of KY Representative Dan Johnson,” Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin wrote on Twitter. “My heart breaks for his family tonight...these are heavy days in Frankfort and in America...may God indeed shed His grace on us all...we sure need it.” Michael Skoler, President of Louisville Public Media, which operates the investigative reporting center, said in a statement on social media that the organization reached out to Johnson numerous times during its seven-month investigation but that he declined to discuss the group’s findings. Johnson was elected in 2016 despite becoming known for a 2016 Facebook post comparing President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama to monkeys, WDRB-TV has reported. ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS Ends #PieGate…Makes April Ryan Eat “Humble” Pie [Video];When CNN White House correspondent April Ryan challenged Sarah Sanders pie making skills during the Thanksgiving holiday (see below), Sarah was determined to prove she actually makes pecan pies that look that good.Fast forward: Sarah trolled April with a tweet showing the pie-making ingredients:Ingredients all mixed up and pies in the oven! @AprilDRyan let me know if you need further documentation #piegate pic.twitter.com/OVYLg1gBgO Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Sarah has handled this with great humor and grace: @PressSec is a TRUE role model Beautiful, Intelligent, witty & talented! Just like dad, @GovMikeHuckabee you bring us class, love & hope. This looks amazing Sarah! #SarahHuckabeeSanders#IAlwaysStandWithSarah#WHPressCorpsPotluck#PieGate NO @AprilDRyan#MAGA pic.twitter.com/pT0SmXKqBy FeistyChristine (@FeistyCovfefe) December 14, 2017So today, Sarah brought the cooked pies to give to April We call that Humble Pie While all indications point to extensive @FBI and DOJ POLITICAL CORRUPTION, the Media and @AprilDRyan are focused on #piegate, and questioning whether @PressSec Sarah Sanders can make homemade Chocolate pecan pie pic.twitter.com/hFiF83jEuP Boston Bobblehead (@DBloom451) December 14, 2017Press Secretary Sarah Sanders shares home made pecan pies with April and the press. #piegate pic.twitter.com/Fn7xQRp8pB TrumpSoldier (@DaveNYviii) December 14, 2017HOW PIEGATE STARTED:CNN political analyst just spent her Thanksgiving Day so consumed with hate for President Trump s White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that she removed any doubt her Twitter followers may have had about the possibility of having an objective bone in her body.CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan suggested, without any evidence, Friday that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders actually didn t actually cook the pecan pie Sanders said she did.Here is Sanders tweet that got under April Ryan s skin:I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan is frequently praised by liberals for being a nuisance in the White House press briefing room, but she failed to present any evidence Friday, except for the claims of random Twitter users, that Sanders faked the pie. Ryan did not respond to this reporter when asked for proof.A reverse image search did not find any other pictures of the pecan pie that Sanders posted.The White House press secretary responded to Ryan s criticism and said that she will make the journalist a pie of her own.-Daily CallerDon t worry @AprilDRyan because I m nice I ll bake one for you next week #RealPie #FakeNews https://t.co/5W3mGbKs4J Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 24, 2017While hundreds of liberal Twitter users jumped on Ryan s thread, as a way to drum up hate for the brilliant and witty conservative Press Secretary, Sanders definitely got her fair share of support. Conservative actor James Woods didn t make any secret about how he is thankful on Thanksgiving Day for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. One final reason to be thankful today: @SarahHuckabee She is the best thing to happen to modern American journalism. The #CNN and other liberal minions melt before her intelligence, her wit, and her sheer fortitude like snowflakes in the desert. James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 24, 2017Twitter user, Vanessa Vega nailed it with her tweet in response to Sanders reply to Ryan s ridiculous claim:It burns them up. That a graceful intelligent woman like you holds the WH positions, rocks at it, is an amazing mother and baked a pie during a traditional American Holiday. keep doing you @PressSec !! We are grateful for you & the haters are entertaining to watch Vanessa Vega (@EscbrRoX2017) November 25, 2017;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP CHANNELS Successful Developer Days…Cuts Ribbon To Celebrate SHOCKING Number of Regulation Rollbacks…Businesses Cheer!;WASHINGTON President Trump said on Thursday that his administration was answering a call to action by rolling back regulations on environmental protections, health care, financial services and other industries as he made a push to showcase his accomplishments near the end of his first year in office.The remarks highlighted an area where Mr. Trump has perhaps done more to change the policies of his predecessor than any other, with regulatory shifts that have affected wide sections of the economy. We are just getting started, Mr. Trump said, speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He described progress so far as the most far-reaching regulatory reform in United States history, a claim he did not back up. In 1960, there were approximately 20,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. Today there are over 185,000 pages, as seen in the Roosevelt Room. Today, we CUT THE RED TAPE! It is time to SET FREE OUR DREAMS and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Dec 14, 2017 at 12:39pm PSTEchoing his days as a real estate developer with the flair of a groundbreaking, Mr. Trump used an oversized pair of scissors to cut a ribbon his staff had set up in front of two piles of paper, representing government regulations in 1960 (20,000 pages, he said), and today a pile that was about six feet tall (said to be 185,000 pages).His efforts his staff said that the rules already rolled back had saved $8.1 billion in regulatory costs over their lifetime, or a total of an estimated $570 million a year have brought cheers from the business community, most notably from companies that will benefit from the rollbacks.Several economic indicators and comments from companies large and small suggest that a shift in federal regulatory policy is building business confidence and accelerating economic growth, developments Mr. Trump certainly took credit for on Thursday.A survey of chief executives released this month by the Business Roundtable found that, for the first time in six years, executives did not cite regulation as the top cost pressure facing their companies. C.E.O.s appear to be responding to the administration s energetic focus on regulation, Joshua Bolten, the roundtable s president, said this month. New York Times ;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;WATCH: “IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR”…Trump Style;With mainstream media and establishment politicians stacked against him from the moment he announced his run for the presidency, Donald J. Trump has been in an ongoing pitched battle to communicate his plans and his eventual successes to Americans. Through public rallies and social media, he has managed to bypass the traditional information gatekeepers and has spoken directly to the people.Yet, Americans are subjected to a relentless drumbeat from the Democratic Party, amplified by virtually the entire establishment press, that Trump is not only undisciplined, unfit for office and possibly racist, but that embarrassingly little has been accomplished by the Trump administration.But we Deplorables know better When Dana Kamide made this pro-Trump video last year, it was an instant hit. The hilarious video reminded Americans of why we re so blessed to have President Trump as our President. To date, the It s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year viral video has been seen over 5.6 million times. This Christmas, let s all count our blessings and remember to be thankful for the bullet we dodged in 2016. Enjoy WND And while he has befuddled and disappointed some with major promises such as Obamacare repeal and a border wall unfulfilled or put on the backburner the stunning reality is this: Donald Trump has amassed a long and remarkable list of actions and accomplishments that will surprise average Americans, even those who support the president and consider themselves well-informed politically.Below, is an accounting of the truly significant achievements of the first eight months of the Trump presidency. The accomplishments are all the more noteworthy as they have been carried out in an environment of unrelenting negativity on the part of not only the Democrats and almost the entire news media, but the Beltway establishment itself, the entire donor class, the Deep State, and even many Republicans wedded to the D.C. swamp. DECEMBERRegulatory reform: President Trump announced Dec. 14 his administration has far exceeded its promise to eliminate regulations at a 2:1 ratio and impose no lifetime net regulatory costs. In total, agencies issued 67 deregulatory actions while imposing only three new regulatory actions, a ratio of 22:1. Federal agencies also achieved $8.1 billion in lifetime net regulatory cost savings, the equivalent of $570 million per year. Jobs: Some 228,000 new jobs were created in November, highlighting the strongest U.S. labor market since the turn of the century. The government also reported Dec. 8 that unemployment was unchanged at 4.1 percent, but that s still nearly a 17-year low. Military: The Trump administration asked a federal court Dec. 7 for an emergency stay to delay a court order to begin opening the military to transgender recruits by Jan. 1. Israel: While the previous three U.S. presidents promised during their election campaigns to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, President Trump on Dec. 6 became the first to follow through. In his official order, Trump also ordered the U.S. Embassy to be moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded: President Donald Trump, thank you for today s historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful. Immigration: The Department of Homeland Security released figures Dec. 4 showing Trump is delivering on his pledge to more strictly control immigration and deter would-be border-crossers. Border Patrol arrests dropped to a 45-year low in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, down 25 percent from a year earlier. ICE said the number of people apprehended away from the border jumped 25 percent this fiscal year. The increase is 37 percent after Trump s inauguration compared to the same period the year before. States rights: President Trump signed two executive orders Dec. 4 that gave back about 2 million acres of land to the state of Utah by modifying executive orders by President Obama. Arguing the Antiquities Act requires that any reservation of land as part of a monument be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects of historic or scientific interest to be protected, Trump reduced the federal government s control of the Bear s Ear National Monument to just 201,876 acres, pointing out that the important objects of scientific or historic interest described described in Obama s proclamation are protected under existing laws and agency management designations. He also reduced the Grand Staircase National Monument in Utah from nearly 1.9 million acres to about 1 million. Immigration: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced Dec. 3 the Trump administration is withdrawing from the Global Compact on Migration, arguing the pact would undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders. Tillerson made the announcement just before the opening of a global conference on migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Tax reform: Propelled by the engagement of President Trump, the Senate on Dec. 1 passed the biggest rewrite of the nation s tax system since 1986, reducing rates for businesses and individuals. The Republican-led House passed a similar bill in November. The two chambers of Congress will negotiate a reconciliation of the two bills that they expect to put on the president s desk before the end of the year. Health care: The Senate tax-reform bill passed Dec. 1 eliminates Obamacare s individual mandate, the linchpin of Obama s government-controlled health-care system, which penalizes taxpayers for choosing not to buy health insurance.NOVEMBERStocks: The Dow Jones industrial average surged more than 331 points Nov. 30 to close above 24,000 for the first time in history. Stocks were buoyed by the possibility of the Senate passing the Republican tax-reform bill championed by President Trump. Mining: Mining increased 28.6 percent in the second quarter and was the leading contributor to growth for the nation and in the three fastest-growing states of North Dakota, Wyoming, and Texas, according to the Commerce Department s Bureau of Economic Analysis. North Korea: In response to North Korea s buildup of nuclear weapons and missiles, the communist nation was officially designated a state sponsor of terror by the Trump administration on Nov. 20. The Treasury Department followed up with sanctions on organizations and companies doing business with North Korea. Regulation reform: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Nov. 17 the Department of Justice will cease the practice initiated by President Obama of issuing guidance memos to enact new regulations that sometimes have had the effect of changing federal laws. Iran: Trump issued a memorandum Nov. 16 determining that the U.S. has enough petroleum coming from countries other than Iran to permit a significant reduction in the volume of petroleum and petroleum products purchased from the mullah-led nation. China trade: During President Trump s visit to China in November, trade and investment deals worth more than $250 billion were announced that are expected to create jobs for American workers, farmers and ranchers by increasing U.S. exports to China and stimulating investment in American communities. Government transparency: The federal government on Nov. 9 made public more than 13,000 additional documents from its files on President John F. Kennedy s assassination, under orders from President Trump. It was the fourth released since October, when the president allowed the immediate release of 2,800 records by the National Archives. International liberty: President Trump proclaimed Nov. 7, the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, as the National Day for the Victims of Communism Religious liberty: The Department of Agriculture issued a guidance Nov. 6 that ensures Christians who opposed same-sex marriage would not be discriminated against for their beliefs. Job growth: President Trump announced in the Oval Office Nov. 2 that the semiconductor manufacturing company Broadcom Limited is moving its headquarters from Singapore to the United States. Broadcom is a Fortune 100 company that already employs more than 7,500 workers in the United States, and that number is expected to grow exponentially, with an estimated $20 billion to be spent on employees annually. Broadcom CEO Hock E. Tan said the decision to relocate Broadcom was driven by his desire to give back to this country that has given me so much. Government reform: EPA Director Scott Pruitt placed 66 new experts on three different EPA scientific committees who espouse more conservative views than their predecessors. To prevent conflicts of interest, Pruitt signed a directive Oct. 31 banning scientists who receive EPA grants from serving on the agency s independent advisory boards.OCTOBERJob growth: The White House announced Oct. 25 a new drone Integration Pilot Program that will accelerate drone integration into the national airspace system. Under the program, the Department of Transportation will enter into agreements with state, local, and tribal governments to establish innovation zones for testing complex UAS operations and to attempt different models for integrating drones into local airspace. Calling drones a critical, fast-growing part of American aviation, increasing efficiency, productivity, and jobs, the White House said they present opportunities to enhance the safety of the American public, increase the efficiency and productivity of American industry, and create tens of thousands of new American jobs. Government reform: Melania Trump, while embracing a more active and public schedule as first lady, is running one of the leanest East Wing operations in recent history, according to a Fox News analysis of White House personnel reports that found she has significantly reduced the number of aides on the first lady s office payroll in comparison to her predecessor, Michelle Obama. During President Obama s first year in office, 16 people were listed working for Michelle Obama, earning a combined $1.24 million a year. This year, just four people were listed working for Melania Trump as of June, with salaries totaling $486,700. Obamacare: Trump signed an executive order Oct. 12 that directs three federal agencies to rewrite regulations to encourage the establishment of cheaper health plans that can be purchased across state lines and are not bound by certain Obamacare rules and regulations. The directive would allow small-business owners, trade groups and others to join together to purchase health insurance. The plans would not be required to include benefits such as prescription drugs. Trump also wants to expand the sale of stopgap policies that don t cover pre-existing conditions, mental health services and other costly benefits. Consumer optimism: U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly surged to a 13-year high as Americans perceptions of the economy and their own finances rebounded following several major hurricanes, a University of Michigan survey showed Oct. 13. Iran nuclear agreement: President Trump announced Oct. 13 he will not certify the Iran nuclear deal and vowed that the U.S. would pull out unless changes are made. He also unveiled a new strategy, the culmination of nine months of deliberation with Congress and allies, on how to best protect American security from the rogue mullah-led regime. The plan includes denying the regime funding and any paths to a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles. The Department of the Treasury sanctioned more than 25 entities and individuals involved in Iran s ballistic missile program. The U.S. also sanctioned 16 entities and individuals that have supported Iran s military and Revolutionary Guard Corps in the development of drones, fast attack boats and other military equipment. United Nations: The United States is quitting the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, announced the move will be made before the end of the year This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO. Homeland security: The Supreme Court dismissed a major challenge to President Trump s travel ban on majority-Muslim countries Oct. 10 because it has been replaced by a new version, sending the controversy back to the starting block. The ruling is a victory for the Trump administration, which had asked the court to drop the case after Trump signed a proclamation Sept. 24 that replaced the temporary travel ban on six nations with a new, indefinite ban affecting eight countries. That action made the court challenge moot, the justices ruled. EPA reform: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Oct. 9 a new set of rules that will override the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama s drive to curb global climate change. The agency is moving to undo, delay or block more than 30 environmental rules, the largest regulatory rollback in the agency s 47-year history. Immigration: The Trump administration submitted to Congress Oct. 8 a 70-point proposal that calls for increased border security, interior enforcement of immigration laws and a merit-based immigration system. It includes funding and completing construction of a southern border wall, improving expedited removal of illegal aliens, protecting innocent people in sanctuary cities, ending extended-family chain migration and establishing a point-based system for green cards to protect U.S. workers and taxpayers. Religious liberty: Attorney General Sessions on Oct. 6 issued guidance to all administrative agencies and executive departments regarding religious liberty protections in federal law in keeping with Trump s May 4 executive order. The guidance interprets existing protections for religious liberty in federal law, identifying 20 high-level principles that administrative agencies and executive departments can put to practical use to ensure the religious freedoms of Americans are lawfully protected. Attorney General Sessions also issued a second memorandum to the Department of Justice, directing implementation of the religious liberty guidance within the department. Among the principles are the freedom of religion extends to persons and organizations, Americans do not give up their freedom of religion by participating in the marketplace, partaking of the public square, or interacting with government and government may not restrict acts or abstentions because of the beliefs they display. Missile defense: The Department of Defense reprogrammed approximately $400 million for U.S. missile defense systems. Religious liberty: The Trump administration expanded religious and moral exemptions for mandated contraceptive coverage under Obamacare. Obama s signature legislation required that nearly all insurance plans cover abortion-inducing drugs and contraception, forcing citizens to violate sincerely held religious or moral beliefs, pay steep fines, or forgo offering or obtaining health insurance entirely. The interim final rules note that the United States has a long history of providing conscience protections in the regulation of health care entities and individuals with objections based on religious beliefs and moral convictions. The rule aligns with the U.S. Supreme Court s unanimous ruling protecting the Little Sisters of the Poor, which says the government cannot fine religious groups for following their faith. Immigration: Amid strong Democratic opposition, the House Homeland Security Committee gave first approval to the broad scope of President Trump s border wall Oct. 4, clearing a bill that would authorize $10 billion in new infrastructure spending, new waivers to speed up construction, and 10,000 more border agents and officers to patrol the U.S.-Mexico line. Space exploration: President Trump revived the National Space Council for the first time in 25 years to assist him in developing and implementing long-range strategic goals for the nation s space policy. The pace program will refocus on human exploration and discovery. Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the National Space Council s Oct. 5 meeting, said the administration aims to establish a renewed American presence on the moon and from that foundation become the first nation to bring mankind to Mars. The administration also will renew America s commitment to creating the space technology needed to protect national security. And Pence pointed out the intelligence community reports that Russia and China are pursuing a full range of anti-satellite technology designed to threaten our U.S. military effectiveness. Abortion: The Office of Management and Budget on Oct. 2 issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) to strongly support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 36), which would generally make it unlawful for any person to perform, or attempt to perform, an abortion of an unborn child after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Protecting life: The president issued a statement Oct. 1 renewing the nation s strong commitment to promoting the health, well-being, and inherent dignity of all children and adults with Down syndrome. The president observed there remain too many people both in the United States and throughout the world that still see Down syndrome as an excuse to ignore or discard human life. He said Americans and their government must always be vigilant in defending and promoting the unique and special gifts of all citizens in need and should not tolerate any discrimination against them, as all people have inherent dignity. Protecting life: The Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft of a new strategic plan that states in its introduction that life begins at conception. The personhood of the unborn child is central to the abortion debate as even the justice who wrote the landmark Roe v. Wade opinion has acknowledged because, if established in law, it would nullify a right to abortion. The largely overlooked HHS strategic plan for 2018-22 states the agency accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception. Tax reform: Trump is working with Congress to lower taxes by seven points for the middle class and lower business taxes to a 15 percent rate.SEPTEMBERLower courts: Trump is filling up lower courts with lifetime appointees. In the estimation of Democratic official Ron Klain, a massive transformation is underway in how our fundamental rights are defined by the federal judiciary. Klain, lamenting Trump s moves, said the president is proving wildly successful in one respect: naming youthful conservative nominees to the federal bench in record-setting numbers. On Sept. 28, Trump announced an eighth wave of judicial candidates, with nine more names. Canada trade: In September, the Commerce Department, siding with Boeing, slapped a 219 percent tariff on the import of Canadian-made Bombardier jets, arguing they are supported by subsidies from the governments of Canada and the U.K., creating an unfair market. Korea trade: Trump began the process of renegotiating the United States-South Korea Free Trade Agreement in September. Climate: In September, Trump shut down a climate-change advisory panel under the direction of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that critics have contended was formed largely to promote President Obama s climate policies, arguing it lacked representation from those who think the empirical evidence points to human actions contributing little to global warming and that attempting to reduce it would slow the conquest of poverty around the world. The EPA also has decided not to renew the appointments of dozens of scientists on various scientific advisory panels. Economy: Household wealth reached a record high of $1.7 trillion in the second quarter due to rising property values and gains in financial assets, according to a Federal Reserve report. Homeland security: In September, Trump signed an executive order to enhance vetting capabilities and processes for detecting attempted entry into the United States by terrorists or other public-security threats. North Korea: After some 25 years of failed negotiations to contain Pyongyang s nuclear program, the communist regime s latest threatening actions were met by President Trump with a warning that military action, including a preemptive nuclear attack, would be considered. After Trump s warnings, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un backed off on his threat to attack the U.S. territory of Guam. North Korea: On Sept. 7, the U.S. fully deployed the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea despite objections from Pyongyang s chief ally, China. North Korea: In September, Trump signed an executive order significantly expanding U.S. authority to target individuals, companies and financial institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea, most of which are Chinese. Meanwhile, China s central bank has ordered banks in its massive banking system to immediately stop doing business with North Korea. United Nations: In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump told the global body in September, I put America first and you should do the same with your nations. In the speech, he also explicitly denounced socialism and communism, pointing to Venezuela as an example of what happens when socialism is successfully implemented. Immigration: President Trump, in September, rescinded Obama s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order, which gave de facto amnesty to some 800,000 people who came to the country as children with their illegal-alien parents. Trump delayed implementing his order for six months to give Congress time to come up with a legislative solution. Stock markets: Through the first week of September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had 34 record highs. From Election Day to the Inauguration, the Dow rose more than 1,500 points. It climbed another 2,500 points from Inauguration Day, reaching more than 22,400 in mid-September, a gain of more than $4 trillion in wealth since Trump was elected. The Dow s spike from 19,000 to above 21,000 in just 66 days was the fastest 2,000-point rise ever. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ also have set all-time highs. On Aug. 7, the Dow closed with an all-time high for the ninth day in a row, the first time the market has had a run of that length twice under one presidency.For the entire list, go to WND ;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SENATOR REVEALS Shocking FBI Corruption in “Watered Down” Exoneration of Hillary Clinton [Video];The interview below is pretty much what we all knew but now it s out in the open. Notice how Senator Johnson calls on the DOJ to act:Senator Ron Johnson told Tucker Carlson tonight that the corruption in the intel agencies is much worse that we thought. He believes that the entire investigation into Hillary s emails was a sham used to protect her and not investigate her. He says the same cast of characters is being used to investigate Trump scary stuff!Fox News reports:WASHINGTON Newly released documents obtained by Fox News reveal that then-FBI Director James Comey s draft statement on the Hillary Clinton email probe was edited numerous times before his public announcement, in ways that seemed to water down the bureau s findings considerably.Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to the FBI on Thursday that shows the multiple edits to Comey s highly scrutinized statement.In an early draft, Comey said it was reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s private email account. That was changed later to say the scenario was merely possible. Another edit showed language was changed to describe the actions of Clinton and her colleagues as extremely careless as opposed to grossly negligent. This is a key legal distinction.Johnson, writing about his concerns in a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the original could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton s handling of classified material. ;politics;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Documents Reveal Hillary Clinton “Struck a Deal” to Keep Records Private;Here s yet another reason to be very suspicious of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton:Via Free Beacon: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a deal with the State Department while serving in the Obama administration that allowed her to take ownership of records she did not want made public, according to recently released reports.Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were personal materials and unclassified, non-record materials. Judicial Watch made the revelation after filing a FOIA request with the State Department and obtaining a record of the agreement:The newly released documents show the deal allowed Clinton and Abedin to remove documents related to particular calls and schedules, and the records would not be released to the general public under FOIA. Abedin, for instance, was allowed to remove electronic records and five boxes of physical files, including files labeled Muslim Engagement Documents. The released records included a list of designated materials that would not be released to the general public under FOIA and were to be released to the Secretary with this understanding. Electronic copy of daily files which are word versions of public documents and non-records: speeches/press statements/photos from the website, a non-record copy of the schedule, a non record copy of the call log, press clips, and agenda of daily activitiesElectronic copy of a log of calls the Secretary made since 2004, it is a non-record, since her official calls are logged elsewhere (official schedule and official call log)Electronic copy of the Secretary s call grid which is a running list of calls she wants to make (both personal and official)16 boxes: Personal Schedules (1993 thru 2008-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State.29 boxes: Miscellaneous Public Schedules during her tenure as FLOTUS and Senator-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State1 box: Personal Reimbursable receipts (6/25/2009 thru 1/14/2013)1 box: Personal Photos1 box: Personal schedule (2009-2013) STICKY FINGERS CLINTON:A physical file of the log of the Secretary s gifts with pictures of gifts was also handed over to Clinton. Gifts received by government employees is highly regulated, and often strictly limited. However, gifts that are motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship may be accepted without limitation.;Government News;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;WATCH: “IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR”…Trump Style;With mainstream media and establishment politicians stacked against him from the moment he announced his run for the presidency, Donald J. Trump has been in an ongoing pitched battle to communicate his plans and his eventual successes to Americans. Through public rallies and social media, he has managed to bypass the traditional information gatekeepers and has spoken directly to the people.Yet, Americans are subjected to a relentless drumbeat from the Democratic Party, amplified by virtually the entire establishment press, that Trump is not only undisciplined, unfit for office and possibly racist, but that embarrassingly little has been accomplished by the Trump administration.But we Deplorables know better When Dana Kamide made this pro-Trump video last year, it was an instant hit. The hilarious video reminded Americans of why we re so blessed to have President Trump as our President. To date, the It s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year viral video has been seen over 5.6 million times. This Christmas, let s all count our blessings and remember to be thankful for the bullet we dodged in 2016. Enjoy WND And while he has befuddled and disappointed some with major promises such as Obamacare repeal and a border wall unfulfilled or put on the backburner the stunning reality is this: Donald Trump has amassed a long and remarkable list of actions and accomplishments that will surprise average Americans, even those who support the president and consider themselves well-informed politically.Below, is an accounting of the truly significant achievements of the first eight months of the Trump presidency. The accomplishments are all the more noteworthy as they have been carried out in an environment of unrelenting negativity on the part of not only the Democrats and almost the entire news media, but the Beltway establishment itself, the entire donor class, the Deep State, and even many Republicans wedded to the D.C. swamp. DECEMBERRegulatory reform: President Trump announced Dec. 14 his administration has far exceeded its promise to eliminate regulations at a 2:1 ratio and impose no lifetime net regulatory costs. In total, agencies issued 67 deregulatory actions while imposing only three new regulatory actions, a ratio of 22:1. Federal agencies also achieved $8.1 billion in lifetime net regulatory cost savings, the equivalent of $570 million per year. Jobs: Some 228,000 new jobs were created in November, highlighting the strongest U.S. labor market since the turn of the century. The government also reported Dec. 8 that unemployment was unchanged at 4.1 percent, but that s still nearly a 17-year low. Military: The Trump administration asked a federal court Dec. 7 for an emergency stay to delay a court order to begin opening the military to transgender recruits by Jan. 1. Israel: While the previous three U.S. presidents promised during their election campaigns to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, President Trump on Dec. 6 became the first to follow through. In his official order, Trump also ordered the U.S. Embassy to be moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded: President Donald Trump, thank you for today s historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful. Immigration: The Department of Homeland Security released figures Dec. 4 showing Trump is delivering on his pledge to more strictly control immigration and deter would-be border-crossers. Border Patrol arrests dropped to a 45-year low in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, down 25 percent from a year earlier. ICE said the number of people apprehended away from the border jumped 25 percent this fiscal year. The increase is 37 percent after Trump s inauguration compared to the same period the year before. States rights: President Trump signed two executive orders Dec. 4 that gave back about 2 million acres of land to the state of Utah by modifying executive orders by President Obama. Arguing the Antiquities Act requires that any reservation of land as part of a monument be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects of historic or scientific interest to be protected, Trump reduced the federal government s control of the Bear s Ear National Monument to just 201,876 acres, pointing out that the important objects of scientific or historic interest described described in Obama s proclamation are protected under existing laws and agency management designations. He also reduced the Grand Staircase National Monument in Utah from nearly 1.9 million acres to about 1 million. Immigration: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced Dec. 3 the Trump administration is withdrawing from the Global Compact on Migration, arguing the pact would undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders. Tillerson made the announcement just before the opening of a global conference on migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Tax reform: Propelled by the engagement of President Trump, the Senate on Dec. 1 passed the biggest rewrite of the nation s tax system since 1986, reducing rates for businesses and individuals. The Republican-led House passed a similar bill in November. The two chambers of Congress will negotiate a reconciliation of the two bills that they expect to put on the president s desk before the end of the year. Health care: The Senate tax-reform bill passed Dec. 1 eliminates Obamacare s individual mandate, the linchpin of Obama s government-controlled health-care system, which penalizes taxpayers for choosing not to buy health insurance.NOVEMBERStocks: The Dow Jones industrial average surged more than 331 points Nov. 30 to close above 24,000 for the first time in history. Stocks were buoyed by the possibility of the Senate passing the Republican tax-reform bill championed by President Trump. Mining: Mining increased 28.6 percent in the second quarter and was the leading contributor to growth for the nation and in the three fastest-growing states of North Dakota, Wyoming, and Texas, according to the Commerce Department s Bureau of Economic Analysis. North Korea: In response to North Korea s buildup of nuclear weapons and missiles, the communist nation was officially designated a state sponsor of terror by the Trump administration on Nov. 20. The Treasury Department followed up with sanctions on organizations and companies doing business with North Korea. Regulation reform: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Nov. 17 the Department of Justice will cease the practice initiated by President Obama of issuing guidance memos to enact new regulations that sometimes have had the effect of changing federal laws. Iran: Trump issued a memorandum Nov. 16 determining that the U.S. has enough petroleum coming from countries other than Iran to permit a significant reduction in the volume of petroleum and petroleum products purchased from the mullah-led nation. China trade: During President Trump s visit to China in November, trade and investment deals worth more than $250 billion were announced that are expected to create jobs for American workers, farmers and ranchers by increasing U.S. exports to China and stimulating investment in American communities. Government transparency: The federal government on Nov. 9 made public more than 13,000 additional documents from its files on President John F. Kennedy s assassination, under orders from President Trump. It was the fourth released since October, when the president allowed the immediate release of 2,800 records by the National Archives. International liberty: President Trump proclaimed Nov. 7, the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, as the National Day for the Victims of Communism Religious liberty: The Department of Agriculture issued a guidance Nov. 6 that ensures Christians who opposed same-sex marriage would not be discriminated against for their beliefs. Job growth: President Trump announced in the Oval Office Nov. 2 that the semiconductor manufacturing company Broadcom Limited is moving its headquarters from Singapore to the United States. Broadcom is a Fortune 100 company that already employs more than 7,500 workers in the United States, and that number is expected to grow exponentially, with an estimated $20 billion to be spent on employees annually. Broadcom CEO Hock E. Tan said the decision to relocate Broadcom was driven by his desire to give back to this country that has given me so much. Government reform: EPA Director Scott Pruitt placed 66 new experts on three different EPA scientific committees who espouse more conservative views than their predecessors. To prevent conflicts of interest, Pruitt signed a directive Oct. 31 banning scientists who receive EPA grants from serving on the agency s independent advisory boards.OCTOBERJob growth: The White House announced Oct. 25 a new drone Integration Pilot Program that will accelerate drone integration into the national airspace system. Under the program, the Department of Transportation will enter into agreements with state, local, and tribal governments to establish innovation zones for testing complex UAS operations and to attempt different models for integrating drones into local airspace. Calling drones a critical, fast-growing part of American aviation, increasing efficiency, productivity, and jobs, the White House said they present opportunities to enhance the safety of the American public, increase the efficiency and productivity of American industry, and create tens of thousands of new American jobs. Government reform: Melania Trump, while embracing a more active and public schedule as first lady, is running one of the leanest East Wing operations in recent history, according to a Fox News analysis of White House personnel reports that found she has significantly reduced the number of aides on the first lady s office payroll in comparison to her predecessor, Michelle Obama. During President Obama s first year in office, 16 people were listed working for Michelle Obama, earning a combined $1.24 million a year. This year, just four people were listed working for Melania Trump as of June, with salaries totaling $486,700. Obamacare: Trump signed an executive order Oct. 12 that directs three federal agencies to rewrite regulations to encourage the establishment of cheaper health plans that can be purchased across state lines and are not bound by certain Obamacare rules and regulations. The directive would allow small-business owners, trade groups and others to join together to purchase health insurance. The plans would not be required to include benefits such as prescription drugs. Trump also wants to expand the sale of stopgap policies that don t cover pre-existing conditions, mental health services and other costly benefits. Consumer optimism: U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly surged to a 13-year high as Americans perceptions of the economy and their own finances rebounded following several major hurricanes, a University of Michigan survey showed Oct. 13. Iran nuclear agreement: President Trump announced Oct. 13 he will not certify the Iran nuclear deal and vowed that the U.S. would pull out unless changes are made. He also unveiled a new strategy, the culmination of nine months of deliberation with Congress and allies, on how to best protect American security from the rogue mullah-led regime. The plan includes denying the regime funding and any paths to a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles. The Department of the Treasury sanctioned more than 25 entities and individuals involved in Iran s ballistic missile program. The U.S. also sanctioned 16 entities and individuals that have supported Iran s military and Revolutionary Guard Corps in the development of drones, fast attack boats and other military equipment. United Nations: The United States is quitting the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman, announced the move will be made before the end of the year This decision was not taken lightly, and reflects U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO. Homeland security: The Supreme Court dismissed a major challenge to President Trump s travel ban on majority-Muslim countries Oct. 10 because it has been replaced by a new version, sending the controversy back to the starting block. The ruling is a victory for the Trump administration, which had asked the court to drop the case after Trump signed a proclamation Sept. 24 that replaced the temporary travel ban on six nations with a new, indefinite ban affecting eight countries. That action made the court challenge moot, the justices ruled. EPA reform: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Oct. 9 a new set of rules that will override the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama s drive to curb global climate change. The agency is moving to undo, delay or block more than 30 environmental rules, the largest regulatory rollback in the agency s 47-year history. Immigration: The Trump administration submitted to Congress Oct. 8 a 70-point proposal that calls for increased border security, interior enforcement of immigration laws and a merit-based immigration system. It includes funding and completing construction of a southern border wall, improving expedited removal of illegal aliens, protecting innocent people in sanctuary cities, ending extended-family chain migration and establishing a point-based system for green cards to protect U.S. workers and taxpayers. Religious liberty: Attorney General Sessions on Oct. 6 issued guidance to all administrative agencies and executive departments regarding religious liberty protections in federal law in keeping with Trump s May 4 executive order. The guidance interprets existing protections for religious liberty in federal law, identifying 20 high-level principles that administrative agencies and executive departments can put to practical use to ensure the religious freedoms of Americans are lawfully protected. Attorney General Sessions also issued a second memorandum to the Department of Justice, directing implementation of the religious liberty guidance within the department. Among the principles are the freedom of religion extends to persons and organizations, Americans do not give up their freedom of religion by participating in the marketplace, partaking of the public square, or interacting with government and government may not restrict acts or abstentions because of the beliefs they display. Missile defense: The Department of Defense reprogrammed approximately $400 million for U.S. missile defense systems. Religious liberty: The Trump administration expanded religious and moral exemptions for mandated contraceptive coverage under Obamacare. Obama s signature legislation required that nearly all insurance plans cover abortion-inducing drugs and contraception, forcing citizens to violate sincerely held religious or moral beliefs, pay steep fines, or forgo offering or obtaining health insurance entirely. The interim final rules note that the United States has a long history of providing conscience protections in the regulation of health care entities and individuals with objections based on religious beliefs and moral convictions. The rule aligns with the U.S. Supreme Court s unanimous ruling protecting the Little Sisters of the Poor, which says the government cannot fine religious groups for following their faith. Immigration: Amid strong Democratic opposition, the House Homeland Security Committee gave first approval to the broad scope of President Trump s border wall Oct. 4, clearing a bill that would authorize $10 billion in new infrastructure spending, new waivers to speed up construction, and 10,000 more border agents and officers to patrol the U.S.-Mexico line. Space exploration: President Trump revived the National Space Council for the first time in 25 years to assist him in developing and implementing long-range strategic goals for the nation s space policy. The pace program will refocus on human exploration and discovery. Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the National Space Council s Oct. 5 meeting, said the administration aims to establish a renewed American presence on the moon and from that foundation become the first nation to bring mankind to Mars. The administration also will renew America s commitment to creating the space technology needed to protect national security. And Pence pointed out the intelligence community reports that Russia and China are pursuing a full range of anti-satellite technology designed to threaten our U.S. military effectiveness. Abortion: The Office of Management and Budget on Oct. 2 issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) to strongly support the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 36), which would generally make it unlawful for any person to perform, or attempt to perform, an abortion of an unborn child after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Protecting life: The president issued a statement Oct. 1 renewing the nation s strong commitment to promoting the health, well-being, and inherent dignity of all children and adults with Down syndrome. The president observed there remain too many people both in the United States and throughout the world that still see Down syndrome as an excuse to ignore or discard human life. He said Americans and their government must always be vigilant in defending and promoting the unique and special gifts of all citizens in need and should not tolerate any discrimination against them, as all people have inherent dignity. Protecting life: The Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft of a new strategic plan that states in its introduction that life begins at conception. The personhood of the unborn child is central to the abortion debate as even the justice who wrote the landmark Roe v. Wade opinion has acknowledged because, if established in law, it would nullify a right to abortion. The largely overlooked HHS strategic plan for 2018-22 states the agency accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception. Tax reform: Trump is working with Congress to lower taxes by seven points for the middle class and lower business taxes to a 15 percent rate.SEPTEMBERLower courts: Trump is filling up lower courts with lifetime appointees. In the estimation of Democratic official Ron Klain, a massive transformation is underway in how our fundamental rights are defined by the federal judiciary. Klain, lamenting Trump s moves, said the president is proving wildly successful in one respect: naming youthful conservative nominees to the federal bench in record-setting numbers. On Sept. 28, Trump announced an eighth wave of judicial candidates, with nine more names. Canada trade: In September, the Commerce Department, siding with Boeing, slapped a 219 percent tariff on the import of Canadian-made Bombardier jets, arguing they are supported by subsidies from the governments of Canada and the U.K., creating an unfair market. Korea trade: Trump began the process of renegotiating the United States-South Korea Free Trade Agreement in September. Climate: In September, Trump shut down a climate-change advisory panel under the direction of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that critics have contended was formed largely to promote President Obama s climate policies, arguing it lacked representation from those who think the empirical evidence points to human actions contributing little to global warming and that attempting to reduce it would slow the conquest of poverty around the world. The EPA also has decided not to renew the appointments of dozens of scientists on various scientific advisory panels. Economy: Household wealth reached a record high of $1.7 trillion in the second quarter due to rising property values and gains in financial assets, according to a Federal Reserve report. Homeland security: In September, Trump signed an executive order to enhance vetting capabilities and processes for detecting attempted entry into the United States by terrorists or other public-security threats. North Korea: After some 25 years of failed negotiations to contain Pyongyang s nuclear program, the communist regime s latest threatening actions were met by President Trump with a warning that military action, including a preemptive nuclear attack, would be considered. After Trump s warnings, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un backed off on his threat to attack the U.S. territory of Guam. North Korea: On Sept. 7, the U.S. fully deployed the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea despite objections from Pyongyang s chief ally, China. North Korea: In September, Trump signed an executive order significantly expanding U.S. authority to target individuals, companies and financial institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea, most of which are Chinese. Meanwhile, China s central bank has ordered banks in its massive banking system to immediately stop doing business with North Korea. United Nations: In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump told the global body in September, I put America first and you should do the same with your nations. In the speech, he also explicitly denounced socialism and communism, pointing to Venezuela as an example of what happens when socialism is successfully implemented. Immigration: President Trump, in September, rescinded Obama s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order, which gave de facto amnesty to some 800,000 people who came to the country as children with their illegal-alien parents. Trump delayed implementing his order for six months to give Congress time to come up with a legislative solution. Stock markets: Through the first week of September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had 34 record highs. From Election Day to the Inauguration, the Dow rose more than 1,500 points. It climbed another 2,500 points from Inauguration Day, reaching more than 22,400 in mid-September, a gain of more than $4 trillion in wealth since Trump was elected. The Dow s spike from 19,000 to above 21,000 in just 66 days was the fastest 2,000-point rise ever. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ also have set all-time highs. On Aug. 7, the Dow closed with an all-time high for the ninth day in a row, the first time the market has had a run of that length twice under one presidency.For the entire list, go to WND ;left-news;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP CHANNELS Successful Developer Days…Cuts Ribbon To Celebrate SHOCKING Number of Regulation Rollbacks…Businesses Cheer!;WASHINGTON President Trump said on Thursday that his administration was answering a call to action by rolling back regulations on environmental protections, health care, financial services and other industries as he made a push to showcase his accomplishments near the end of his first year in office.The remarks highlighted an area where Mr. Trump has perhaps done more to change the policies of his predecessor than any other, with regulatory shifts that have affected wide sections of the economy. We are just getting started, Mr. Trump said, speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He described progress so far as the most far-reaching regulatory reform in United States history, a claim he did not back up. In 1960, there were approximately 20,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. Today there are over 185,000 pages, as seen in the Roosevelt Room. Today, we CUT THE RED TAPE! It is time to SET FREE OUR DREAMS and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Dec 14, 2017 at 12:39pm PSTEchoing his days as a real estate developer with the flair of a groundbreaking, Mr. Trump used an oversized pair of scissors to cut a ribbon his staff had set up in front of two piles of paper, representing government regulations in 1960 (20,000 pages, he said), and today a pile that was about six feet tall (said to be 185,000 pages).His efforts his staff said that the rules already rolled back had saved $8.1 billion in regulatory costs over their lifetime, or a total of an estimated $570 million a year have brought cheers from the business community, most notably from companies that will benefit from the rollbacks.Several economic indicators and comments from companies large and small suggest that a shift in federal regulatory policy is building business confidence and accelerating economic growth, developments Mr. Trump certainly took credit for on Thursday.A survey of chief executives released this month by the Business Roundtable found that, for the first time in six years, executives did not cite regulation as the top cost pressure facing their companies. C.E.O.s appear to be responding to the administration s energetic focus on regulation, Joshua Bolten, the roundtable s president, said this month. New York Times ;left-news;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: FCC VOTES To Repeal Obama’s Net Neutrality Rules After BOMB THREAT Clears Room;Today, the FCC voted to repeal the net neutrality rules that govern internet service providers and how they treat certain websites. The left, along with major social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were all openly opposed to repealing Obama s net neutrality rules.ABC News The five commissioners of the FCC voted along party lines three Republicans to two Democrats to roll back the rules, imposed in 2015 under President Barack Obama.JUST IN: FCC votes 3-2 to repeal Obama-era #NetNeutrality rules. https://t.co/4VEkXXEf23 pic.twitter.com/M7pYZa4dlT ABC News (@ABC) December 14, 2017The left reacted to their decision with apocalyptic style tweets.Here s a typical leftist reaction on Twitter to the repeal of Obama s net neutrality:Me after finding out #NetNeutrality was repealed. pic.twitter.com/e7V05o0DJ8 (@exsuzx) December 14, 2017America s most prominent Socialist weighed in on the topic:This is an egregious attack on our democracy. The end of #NetNeutrality protections means that the internet will be for sale to the highest bidder. When our democratic institutions are already in peril, we must do everything we can to stop this decision from taking effect. https://t.co/8GGrJFMdrU Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 14, 2017Of course, #VeryFakeNewsCNN lied about the vote:Hey @CNN, absurd headlines like this are why people don't trust you. pic.twitter.com/dnAL7RM3NK Curtis Kalin (@CurtisKalin) December 14, 2017The public debate over the rules had been heated at times and Thursday s decision came after a brief delay when, on the advice of security, FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced that they would need to take a recess and the hearing room was evacuated.Watch, as the room is cleared during the net neutrality vote:NEW: FCC meeting on net neutrality takes abrupt recess due to security concerns https://t.co/Vxi2egdIqZ pic.twitter.com/sEIW14RmGy CBS News (@CBSNews) December 14, 2017Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was in the middle of his speech during a hearing on net neutrality Thursday when he was interrupted by security responding to a bomb threat. I am being advised by security that we are going to have to take a break, Pai calmly told the audience. Soon after, a security guard could be heard loudly advising everyone in the room both the Commissioners and the public visitors to exit and leave their belongings in the federal agency chambers.Foundation that there was a specific bomb threat. Another senior official in the room said someone called into the office and said a briefcase was set to explode.The Commissioners and the audience were eventually allowed back in after Federal Protective Services surveilled the area and situation.A bomb threat occurring right during the middle of Pai s testimony is not surprising as public intrigue around the issue of net neutrality has become so intense that many incensed people have resorted to vile, racist actions. Daily CallerIs This The New Normal For The Left When They Don t Get Their Way?Repeal supporters claimed the rules unnecessarily regulated the industry and impeded upon the free market.Under the rules rescinded Thursday, internet service providers were prohibited from influencing loading speeds for specific websites or apps. The vote rolled back the policies that treated the internet like a utility and could potentially lead to the creation of different lanes of speeds for websites or content creators willing to pay for them. Critics worry that those costs could be passed along to consumers.Internet service providers will have to disclose whether they engage in certain types of conduct, such as blocking and prioritization, following Thursday s decision. They must further explicitly publicize what is throttled and what is blocked, with the information posted on an easily accessible website hosted by the company or the FCC.Repeal is a hallmark victory for the FCC s Republican chairman Ajit Pai whose 11-month tenure has seen him strongly advocate for reduced regulation. Pai was named FCC chairman in January by President Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his interest in reigning in Obama-era business regulations.In July 2017, net neutrality supporters organized a Day of Action in support of net neutrality regulations;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LOL! SARAH SANDERS MOCKS CNN’s April Ryan…Sends Hilarious Tweets To Verify Authenticity Of Her Homemade Pecan Pies;One month ago, CNN political analyst and American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan took to Twitter, and without any evidence, suggested that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn t actually bake the Thanksgiving Day pecan pie she posted on Twitter.Here s the tweet from Sanders showing the pie she baked with the message: I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! I dont cook much these days, but managed this Chocolate Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving at the family farm! pic.twitter.com/rO8nFxtly7 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 23, 2017Ryan responded by actually demanding that Sanders do more than post a picture of the pie with a white background, and that she show Twitter users the pie on her table!Show it to us on a table. https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Ryan then took it a step further and doubled down, letting her Twitter users know that the legitimacy of Sanders claim that she baked the pecan pie was no laughing matter.I am not trying to be funny but folks are already saying #piegate and #fakepie Show it to us on the table with folks eating it and a pic of you cooking it. I am getting the biggest laugh out of this. I am thankful for this laugh on Black Friday! https://t.co/ifeSBlSZW7 AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) November 24, 2017Never one to let the bad behavior of a leftist member of the media sharks go unnoticed, Sarah Sanders decided to share a step-by-step pictorial of her Christmas pecan pies for the petty CNN reporter April Ryan. Sanders tweeted directly to April Ryan this time, asking Ryan for her opinion on how to best prepare her pie: It s pie time! With or without bourbon @AprilDRyan? #piegate It s pie time! With or without bourbon @AprilDRyan? #piegate pic.twitter.com/2xw58FDFg6 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Sanders then thanked VP Chief of Staff Nick Ayers for supplying the pecans from his family farm in Georgia:Thanks to @VP Chief of Staff @Nick_Ayers for supplying the pecans from his family farm in Georgia #piegate pic.twitter.com/Lx7LpMwF4V Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Sanders even offered to provide CNN s April Ryan with further documentation if she needed further proof to verify the authenticity of her homemade pecan pies:Ingredients all mixed up and pies in the oven! @AprilDRyan let me know if you need further documentation #piegate pic.twitter.com/OVYLg1gBgO Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Finally, Sanders ended her series of tweets with a zinger: Excited to share these at tomorrow s press potluck. Merry Christmas to the WH press corps! Excited to share these at tomorrow s press potluck. Merry Christmas to the WH press corps! pic.twitter.com/PKqfHk3nXJ Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 14, 2017Could there be a classier or wittier person than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when it comes to dealing with our rabid, Trump-hating, leftist media?;left-news;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;The growth of Syria's humanitarian crisis;LONDON (Reuters) - While 2017 saw the tide of the military conflict in Syria seemingly turn against Islamic State forces, the humanitarian crisis prompted by the conflict intensified in severity and in the breadth of the areas of the country it affects. For a graphic on Syria's population needs, click tmsnrt.rs/2AGP18C As a result of the conflict, more than 13 million Syrian civilians are classified as being in need - over 5.5 million of them in acute need - and are facing threats to their physical security, basic rights and living conditions. For a graphic on Syrian IPD camps, click tmsnrt.rs/2jqdybT These Reuters graphics chart a range of measures of the effects of Syria s crisis between 2016 and 2017, from internally displaced people to the severity of humanitarian needs. For a graphic on population exposed to hostilities, click tmsnrt.rs/2ApEsHA In addition, other graphics look at the 2017 data revealing the amount that the country s population that has exposed to hostilities and communities where vital services have become overburdened. For a graphic on overburdened communities in Syria, click tmsnrt.rs/2A21vHU The data reveals growth in both the areas of the country that have been affected by the conflict, and the intensity of the humanitarian situation in those areas, using data provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Congress prepares to oust President Kuczynski;LIMA (Reuters) - President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski s chances of surviving the political crisis gripping Peru faded on Friday after Congress passed a motion to start presidential vacancy procedures with enough votes to unseat him within a week. The opposition-controlled Congress voted 93-17 on Friday to seek his removal from office over graft allegations, which he denies. Eighty-seven votes will be needed to oust him in a session scheduled for Dec. 21, when he will be asked to defend himself. A Brazilian construction company at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal disclosed this week payments totaling $4.8 million to companies owned by Kuczynski or a close friend, triggering calls for him to resign. Kuczynski had previously denied any links to the Brazilian company, Odebrecht, and said on Thursday there was nothing improper about the payments. Flanked by his Cabinet, Kuczynski vowed not to resign in a defiant message to the nation. However, Kuczynski was aware his chances of surviving the scandal were slim, said a government source who asked not be identified. By resisting calls to step down, he hopes to clear his name and defend due process as the Odebrecht graft investigation widens, the source said. This is a national disgrace, said opposition lawmaker Lourdes Alcorta. The less harmful option for Peru would be his resignation. He s forcing us to impeach him. Odebrecht has rocked politics in Latin America since agreeing a year ago to provide details on bribery schemes across the region - landing elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic and nearly toppling a president in Brazil. Two former presidents in Peru, Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo, have been ensnared in the Odebrecht probe over alleged payments they deny. Humala was jailed pending trial in July and authorities are seeking Toledo s extradition from the United States. Opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, whom Kuczynski unexpectedly defeated in last year s presidential election, is also under investigation and denies wrongdoing. If Kuczynski is forced out, he would be replaced by First Vice President Martin Vizcarra, a former governor of a copper-rich mining region and Peru s current ambassador to Canada. Kuczynski was once lauded by many as a brilliant technocrat who would help uproot widespread corruption in Peru. But his 16 months in office have been marked by clashes with the right-wing opposition party that controls Congress. Kuczynski said late on Thursday he was the owner, but not the manager, of a company paid by Odebrecht while he held senior government posts. He also acknowledged providing financial services for an Odebrecht project as a consultant for a friend s firm when he did not hold public office. The opposition slammed the explanation as too little, too late. It s really unfortunate that President Kuczynski has put the country in this situation, said congresswoman Cecilia Chacon. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: What is in the U.S. Republicans' final tax bill;(Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. Congress reached a deal on final tax legislation on Wednesday, clearing the way for final votes next week on a package that, if approved, would be sent to President Donald Trump to sign into law. Formal language of the legislation has not been released. The following are known provisions on which House of Representatives and Senate tax writers have agreed, based on conversations with aides and lawmakers: CORPORATE TAX RATE: Falls to 21 percent from 35 percent. The House and Senate bills, as well as Trump, had earlier proposed 20 percent. Going to 21 percent gave tax writers more federal revenue needed to make the tax cut immediate. U.S. corporations have been seeking a large tax cut like this for many years. PASS-THROUGH BUSINESSES: Creates a 20 percent business income deduction for owners of pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships. The House had proposed a 25 percent tax rate;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;What is in the Republicans' final tax bill;(Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. Congress reached a deal on final tax legislation on Wednesday, clearing the way for final votes next week on a package that, if approved, would be sent to President Donald Trump to sign into law. Formal language of the legislation has not been released. The following are known provisions on which House of Representatives and Senate tax writers have agreed, based on conversations with aides and lawmakers: CORPORATE TAX RATE: Falls to 21 percent from 35 percent. The House and Senate bills, as well as Trump, had earlier proposed 20 percent. Going to 21 percent gave tax writers more federal revenue needed to make the tax cut immediate. U.S. corporations have been seeking a large tax cut like this for many years. PASS-THROUGH BUSINESSES: Creates a 20 percent business income deduction for owners of pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships and partnerships. The House had proposed a 25 percent tax rate;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Do not expect postcard-sized tax return from Republican plan: experts;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since mid-2016, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has carried around a “postcard” that he has said shows how easy it will be for Americans to file their taxes once Republicans are finished their tax overhaul. And as recently as Thursday President Donald Trump touted Americans being able to “file their taxes on a single, little beautiful sheet of paper.” With lawmakers finalizing the biggest tax reform in 30 years and the president ready to sign it into law before the end of the year, the moment should be near when Ryan’s postcard stops being a rhetorical prop and becomes a reality. Right? “It’s kind of crazy to say you can file on a postcard when, first, no one is going to put their Social Security number on a postcard. And second, you already have a giant postcard in the form of the 1040EZ,” Mark Mazur, a director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said, citing a 14-line Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax form. Representatives from the $11 billion U.S. tax preparation industry said that the legislation so far seemed unlikely to render their services unnecessary. “I don’t think you’re going to have millions of people filing their taxes on a cell phone,” said Mark Steber, chief tax officer at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc [JAKHT.UL]. “I think the demise of the tax business is a bit premature.” The IRS would not discuss changes that might come from the proposed tax overhaul. However, the IRS estimates that, despite its efforts to make filing taxes easier, 90 percent of Americans use tax preparation services such as Jackson Hewitt, H&R Block Inc and Liberty Tax Inc or tax software such as TurboTax from Intuit Inc. If Congress enacts the Republican plan into law, it would not affect 2017 tax-year returns filed in 2018. But in 2019, millions of middle-class Americans would no longer gain from a wide range of deductions, credits and other tax breaks. A key driver of this, according to independent analyses, would be a proposed doubling of the standard deduction and a curtailment of the deduction for state and local tax payments. In combination, these two changes would mean that about 29 million people would no longer benefit from itemizing. So they would stop writing off their charitable donations, mortgage interest and state and local tax payments, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank. Itemized deductions for medical expenses, investment interest, unreimbursed employee expenses and tax preparation fees could also be dropped by many. Personal exemptions for individual taxpayers, which now take up a lot of space on tax forms, would also be eliminated. Such changes would mean simpler taxes and possibly allow a number of taxpayers to use shorter forms. The IRS expects 24 million people in 2018 to file the longest and most widely used IRS form today, the Form 1040, which is 79 lines long. About 4.6 million people will use the 14-line 1040EZ. Wealthy Americans likely would still itemize under the Republican plan. Owning businesses, homes and other factors could also lead to taxes being more complicated than what filers could describe on a postcard. “Even though we’re talking about simplification for a large number of taxpayers, there’s still many taxpayers who will have complicated tax situations and we’ll be there to help them as well,” said David Williams, chief tax officer for TurboTax. (Adds first name, title in 4th paragraph) ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mulvaney says U.S. tax bill votes could be Tuesday, Wednesday: CNBC;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Thursday he believed votes on tax overhaul legislation could occur in the Senate and House of Representatives as early as Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. “We’re very cautiously optimistic with some great news coming out of the Hill in the last 12, 24 hours,” Mulvaney said in an interview with CNBC. While the compromise bill has not been finalized, he said, “If they stay on that schedule we could have a vote in the Senate as early as Tuesday of next week and in the House as early as Wednesday.” ;politicsNews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: FCC VOTES To Repeal Obama’s Net Neutrality Rules After BOMB THREAT Clears Room;Today, the FCC voted to repeal the net neutrality rules that govern internet service providers and how they treat certain websites. The left, along with major social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were all openly opposed to repealing Obama s net neutrality rules.ABC News The five commissioners of the FCC voted along party lines three Republicans to two Democrats to roll back the rules, imposed in 2015 under President Barack Obama.JUST IN: FCC votes 3-2 to repeal Obama-era #NetNeutrality rules. https://t.co/4VEkXXEf23 pic.twitter.com/M7pYZa4dlT ABC News (@ABC) December 14, 2017The left reacted to their decision with apocalyptic style tweets.Here s a typical leftist reaction on Twitter to the repeal of Obama s net neutrality:Me after finding out #NetNeutrality was repealed. pic.twitter.com/e7V05o0DJ8 (@exsuzx) December 14, 2017America s most prominent Socialist weighed in on the topic:This is an egregious attack on our democracy. The end of #NetNeutrality protections means that the internet will be for sale to the highest bidder. When our democratic institutions are already in peril, we must do everything we can to stop this decision from taking effect. https://t.co/8GGrJFMdrU Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 14, 2017Of course, #VeryFakeNewsCNN lied about the vote:Hey @CNN, absurd headlines like this are why people don't trust you. pic.twitter.com/dnAL7RM3NK Curtis Kalin (@CurtisKalin) December 14, 2017The public debate over the rules had been heated at times and Thursday s decision came after a brief delay when, on the advice of security, FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced that they would need to take a recess and the hearing room was evacuated.Watch, as the room is cleared during the net neutrality vote:NEW: FCC meeting on net neutrality takes abrupt recess due to security concerns https://t.co/Vxi2egdIqZ pic.twitter.com/sEIW14RmGy CBS News (@CBSNews) December 14, 2017Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai was in the middle of his speech during a hearing on net neutrality Thursday when he was interrupted by security responding to a bomb threat. I am being advised by security that we are going to have to take a break, Pai calmly told the audience. Soon after, a security guard could be heard loudly advising everyone in the room both the Commissioners and the public visitors to exit and leave their belongings in the federal agency chambers.Foundation that there was a specific bomb threat. Another senior official in the room said someone called into the office and said a briefcase was set to explode.The Commissioners and the audience were eventually allowed back in after Federal Protective Services surveilled the area and situation.A bomb threat occurring right during the middle of Pai s testimony is not surprising as public intrigue around the issue of net neutrality has become so intense that many incensed people have resorted to vile, racist actions. Daily CallerIs This The New Normal For The Left When They Don t Get Their Way?Repeal supporters claimed the rules unnecessarily regulated the industry and impeded upon the free market.Under the rules rescinded Thursday, internet service providers were prohibited from influencing loading speeds for specific websites or apps. The vote rolled back the policies that treated the internet like a utility and could potentially lead to the creation of different lanes of speeds for websites or content creators willing to pay for them. Critics worry that those costs could be passed along to consumers.Internet service providers will have to disclose whether they engage in certain types of conduct, such as blocking and prioritization, following Thursday s decision. They must further explicitly publicize what is throttled and what is blocked, with the information posted on an easily accessible website hosted by the company or the FCC.Repeal is a hallmark victory for the FCC s Republican chairman Ajit Pai whose 11-month tenure has seen him strongly advocate for reduced regulation. Pai was named FCC chairman in January by President Donald Trump, who has made no secret of his interest in reigning in Obama-era business regulations.In July 2017, net neutrality supporters organized a Day of Action in support of net neutrality regulations;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Congress prepares to oust President Kuczynski;LIMA (Reuters) - President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski s chances of surviving the political crisis gripping Peru faded on Friday after Congress passed a motion to start presidential vacancy procedures with enough votes to unseat him within a week. The opposition-controlled Congress voted 93-17 on Friday to seek his removal from office over graft allegations, which he denies. Eighty-seven votes will be needed to oust him in a session scheduled for Dec. 21, when he will be asked to defend himself. A Brazilian construction company at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal disclosed this week payments totaling $4.8 million to companies owned by Kuczynski or a close friend, triggering calls for him to resign. Kuczynski had previously denied any links to the Brazilian company, Odebrecht, and said on Thursday there was nothing improper about the payments. Flanked by his Cabinet, Kuczynski vowed not to resign in a defiant message to the nation. However, Kuczynski was aware his chances of surviving the scandal were slim, said a government source who asked not be identified. By resisting calls to step down, he hopes to clear his name and defend due process as the Odebrecht graft investigation widens, the source said. This is a national disgrace, said opposition lawmaker Lourdes Alcorta. The less harmful option for Peru would be his resignation. He s forcing us to impeach him. Odebrecht has rocked politics in Latin America since agreeing a year ago to provide details on bribery schemes across the region - landing elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic and nearly toppling a president in Brazil. Two former presidents in Peru, Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo, have been ensnared in the Odebrecht probe over alleged payments they deny. Humala was jailed pending trial in July and authorities are seeking Toledo s extradition from the United States. Opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, whom Kuczynski unexpectedly defeated in last year s presidential election, is also under investigation and denies wrongdoing. If Kuczynski is forced out, he would be replaced by First Vice President Martin Vizcarra, a former governor of a copper-rich mining region and Peru s current ambassador to Canada. Kuczynski was once lauded by many as a brilliant technocrat who would help uproot widespread corruption in Peru. But his 16 months in office have been marked by clashes with the right-wing opposition party that controls Congress. Kuczynski said late on Thursday he was the owner, but not the manager, of a company paid by Odebrecht while he held senior government posts. He also acknowledged providing financial services for an Odebrecht project as a consultant for a friend s firm when he did not hold public office. The opposition slammed the explanation as too little, too late. It s really unfortunate that President Kuczynski has put the country in this situation, said congresswoman Cecilia Chacon. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. calls Syria talks a 'big missed opportunity', seeks new ideas;GENEVA (Reuters) - A round of Syria peace talks that ended on Thursday was a big missed opportunity but there may be more talks next month if ideas can be found to encourage President Bashar al-Assad s government to engage, U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said. He said neither side had actually sabotaged the latest talks by refusing to attend, but he laid most of the blame for the failure of the round at the feet of the government side. De Mistura voiced milder disappointment with the Syrian opposition, after they arrived in Geneva ruling out any future role for Assad. But he said that tough public stance had been tempered by a mature position in the closed-door discussions. The goal we had was to bring about real negotiations, de Mistura told a news conference. Let me be frank. We did not achieve, we did not achieve these negotiations. In other words, negotiations in reality did not take place. I would conclude by saying (it was) a big missed opportunity. A golden opportunity at the end of this year when in fact there is a clear indication by many sides that the military operations are coming to a close, he added. De Mistura said he was leaving Geneva for consultations in New York with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, followed by a meeting with the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. I will probably need to come up with new ideas, parameters, about how to move the talks forward, particularly on constitution and elections, he said, adding that plans for a new round of Geneva talks in January depended on their outcome. Civil war has ravaged Syria for more than six years. Chief opposition negotiator Nasr Hariri said the international community needed to do more to persuade government negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari to come to the table, warning that the talks were in great danger . The international community needs to find a new approach, otherwise this stalemate will continue and unfortunately it will be at the expense of Syrians, he said. One European diplomat said the talks had been a charade because of the government s behavior. Although the regime has presented itself here, that is all that it has done. I would go further: it s not just a kind of disengagement that they ve shown, it s an extraordinary contempt, he said. I understand that a large amount of their time here was spent negotiating personal admin matters and expenses, rather than the substance of the talks. As he left the talks, Ja afari accused the opposition, backed by Western countries and Saudi Arabia, of sabotaging the round. Ja afari said Damascus did not want the talks to fail but the opposition had put down a precondition last month by concluding a conference known as Riyadh 2 with a declaration that Assad had no role in Syria s political transition. De Mistura said the Damascus government had wanted him to insist that the opposition withdraw the statement. That was not possible or a logical approach because to me it sounded like a precondition. The government engaged me with only on (discussions about) terrorism. The truth is there is not one single subject they accepted except that one. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Defiant Syrian envoy blames West, Saudis and U.N. as peace talks end;GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Ja afari accused its opposition, backed by Western countries and Saudi Arabia, of sabotaging a round of U.N.-led peace talks that ended in Geneva on Thursday without any results. He said Damascus did not want the talks to fail but the opposition had put down a precondition last month by concluding a conference known as Riyadh 2 with a declaration that President Bashar al-Assad had no role in Syria s political transition. The Riyadh 2 Communique is blackmail of the Geneva process, Ja afari told reporters. Those who drew up the Riyadh 2 statement were the ones who sabotaged this round. I mean by that the other side. I mean the Saudis and the Saudi handlers themselves who are the Western countries. They do not want the Geneva process to succeed. Ja afari said that the Syrian delegation at the Geneva talks had engaged seriously in the round, which he said had focused on counter-terrorism. The mediator of the talks, U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, used a television interview on Wednesday to urge Russia to convince its ally Assad of the need to clinch a peace deal to end the nearly seven-year-old war. Ja afari said that Russia was its ally but that de Mistura had made an error in the interview with Swiss television channel RTS. His mandate as facilitator of the talks would be reviewed in the light of his report to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Ja afari said. Nobody can exert pressure on us, Ja afari told reporters. We have allies, we have friends, we have people on the ground fighting with us. Therefore what the Special Envoy may mistakenly say does not reflect our relationship with our allies. Although the Geneva process has made almost no progress, there was some hope at the start of the round that de Mistura would succeed in getting the two sides to meet, rather than shuttling between them. But Ja afari ruled that out while the opposition stuck to its Riyadh statement, and dismissed a question about what he might say if he were to meet the opposition face-to-face at a possible Syria meeting in Sochi early in 2018, which Russia is trying to organize. We are politicians, we don t work in science fiction, he said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More than 20 Islamic State militants killed in Syria: U.S.-led coalition;WASHINGTON/AMMAN (Reuters) - A Pentagon-backed rebel group and the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State killed more than 20 Islamic State fighters and detained a number of militants in the southern Syrian desert near a base, the coalition said on Thursday. In a statement, the coalition said the Maghawir al Thawra, the rebel group, and the coalition detected a convoy near at-Tanf, near the Syrian border with Jordan and Iraq, early on Wednesday and carried out an operation to prevent their further incursion. Despite the presence of Russian-backed, pro-Syrian regime forces in the area, Daesh still finds ways to move freely through regime lines and pose a threat, Brigadier General Jonathan Braga, the director of operation for the coalition, said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the convoy had come within the established 55 km (34 miles) around the Tanf base, where U.S. special forces operate. Another U.S. official said more than a dozen militants had been captured by the rebel group. The statement added that Islamic State militants have been moving freely through areas controlled by pro-Syrian regime forces. This is the second time this month small groups and convoys of Daesh are moving from the eastern areas of Syria toward the southern area through areas controlled by the regime, the Russians and Shi ite militias, Colonel Muhanad al Talaa, commander of Maghawir al Thawra told Reuters. There are Daesh convoys that are moving and that the regime and the Russians are not seeing them, this is a matter that is strange, Talaa said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Conservative leader in Canada's Alberta seeks to enter legislature;CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - The Conservative leader in Canada s oil-rich Alberta, Jason Kenney, ran in a special election on Thursday to obtain a seat in the legislature that could lay the groundwork for his efforts to challenge the ruling party in the 2019 provincial polls. Kenney, 49, is running in an electoral district in Canada s oil capital of Calgary, which was vacated by its previous representative so the new party leader could quickly enter the legislature, as is customary. He is expected to win in the district, which has traditionally voted Conservative. A victory would allow Kenney, a former federal politician, to question the ruling party in the legislature and position him to become premier if his faction wins in the 2019 election. Kenney was the architect of a merger this year of splintered right-leaning factions that created the United Conservative Party (UCP), which will challenge the incumbent, left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP capitalized on divisions among conservatives, taking power in 2015. Alberta, where the Conservatives held power for 40 years before the NDP unexpectedly took over, is home to Canada s vast oil sands and is the largest exporter of crude oil to the United States. The province has been struggling with a three-year slump in global oil prices and a C$10.3 billion ($8.24 billion) budget deficit. Kenney, who was elected UCP leader in October, has been eager to develop policies aimed at cutting costs for the oil and gas sector, and is likely to be welcomed by the energy industry. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Bad news for our enemies': EU launches defense pact;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union nations, now unfettered by Britain s decision to quit, achieved a 70-year-old ambition on Thursday to integrate their defenses, launching a pact between 25 EU governments to fund, develop and deploy armed forces together. European Council President Donald Tusk deemed the move bad news for our enemies . First blocked by the French parliament in the 1950s and later by Britain, which feared creation of an EU army, the pact aims to end the squandering of billions of euros by splintered defense policies. It is also aimed at lowering Europe s heavy reliance on the United States. More than half a century ago, an ambitious vision of the European Defence Community was created but what was missing was the unity and courage to put it into practice, Tusk, who chairs EU summits, said of the failed 1950s attempt. The dream was at odds with reality. Today this dream becomes reality, he said in a speech in front of EU leaders and military personnel from each of the 25 countries involved. Denmark, which has an opt out from EU defense matters, and Malta, were the only EU countries not to sign up, along with Brexiting Britain. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose election victory in May gave new impetus to efforts to revive defense cooperation after Britons voted in 2016 to leave the bloc, hailed concrete progress. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the pact would make the EU more agile abroad and would support NATO. The pact, called Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, is meant as a show of unity and a tangible step in EU integration, diplomats said, particularly after Britain s decision to leave. Caught off guard by Russia s Crimea annexation in 2014 and facing threats ranging from state-sponsored computer hackers to militant attacks, EU governments say the pact is justified by EU surveys showing most citizens want the bloc to provide security. EU governments proved unable to act as a group in the 1990s Balkan wars and relied on U.S.-led NATO to stop the bloodshed on their doorstep. In Libya in 2011, a Franco-British air campaign ran out of munitions and equipment and was again forced to turn to the United States, in what is considered an enduring embarrassment for the EU, a major economic power. U.S. President Donald Trump s criticism of low European defense spending, a host of divisions on foreign policy, and Trump s warnings to allies that they could no longer rely on the United States if they did not pay up, have also played a role. It s sad that we needed Donald Trump to give us a boost, but whatever, it is the right outcome, said former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, who as minister backed NATO s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 but opposed the 2003 Iraq war. Unlike past attempts at European defense integration, NATO backs the project, but NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who attended part of the summit, warned against duplication. Twenty-two EU countries are also members of NATO. There has to be coherence between the capability developments of NATO and the European Union. We cannot risk ending up with conflicting requirements from the EU and from NATO to the same nations, he told reporters. Forces and capabilities developed under EU initiatives also have to be available for NATO because we only have one set of forces, Stoltenberg said. Issues remain about financing future EU missions. An EU defense fund, with money from the European Commission for the first time, still needs to be approved, although a pilot phase is already underway for defense research. In one irony noted by EU diplomats, British Prime Minister Theresa May, who attended the summit, was left seeking a way into the project now that it was an actuality. A 1998 Anglo-French EU defense accord is considered the genesis of Thursday s agreement. In a possible compromise on PESCO, Britain may be able to join in later on, but only on an exceptional basis if it provides funds and expertise. Britain and France, both nuclear-armed, are Europe s two biggest military powers, and in 2010 set up a Combined Joint Expeditionary Force to cement long-standing ties in defense. We do face a number of threats across Europe, May said. I m very clear that although the British people took a sovereign decision to leave the EU, that does not mean that we were going to be leaving our responsibilities in terms of European security, she told reporters. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya president's election campaign used firm hired by Trump: privacy group;NAIROBI (Reuters) - In the run-up to Kenya s August presidential election, the ruling party used divisive social media campaigns created by a U.S. company whose previous clients include President Donald Trump, a Britain-based privacy advocacy group said on Thursday. Two websites - one detailing the accomplishments of President Uhuru Kenyatta and the other attacking opposition leader Raila Odinga - share an IP address with Texas-based Harris Media LLC, according to Privacy International s report. Privacy International said the company used data analytics to target audiences using information gleaned from social media accounts in Kenya, where 1,200 people were killed in inter-ethnic violence after a disputed election a decade ago. Kenyans vote largely along ethnic lines, and candidates appeal to voters on that basis. This raises serious concerns about the role and responsibility of companies working for political campaigns in Kenya, in which tribal affiliation and region of origin are particularly politically sensitive data, and volatile coded language was widely deployed, Privacy International said. Social media in the East African nation were flooded with ads linking to the Real Raila and Uhuru for Us sites in the weeks before the Aug. 26 vote. An official for Kenyatta s Jubilee Party denied the report, saying it handled all its campaigns locally. The company, U.S.-based Harris Media LLC, did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment on the report. But the allegations by Privacy International recalled how, for the first time in Kenya s history, social media including fake news, hashtags and trolls dominated the public discussion and stoked tensions in the run-up to the hotly contested presidential election on Aug. 26. Kenyans went to the polls amid concerns over the credibility of the vote and bitter online hate campaigns stoking ethnic tensions, leading to fears of a return to the bloodshed that followed the disputed 2007 vote. The August vote was eventually nullified by the Supreme Court over irregularities. Kenyatta won an October re-run that Odinga boycotted. But violence marred the extended election season, and more than 70 people were killed, mainly by police. Raphael Tuju, Jubilee Party secretary general, denied the party had hired or used Harris Media. We have heard a lot of those kinds of accusations. We were running a campaign from the Jubilee Headquarters, and we employed local communications experts, led by our own team, and that is it for us, he told Reuters by phone. Days before the August vote, Facebook released a tool enabling Kenyan users to evaluate content displayed prominently when they log on. The tool contained tips on how to spot fake news, including checking web addresses and looking for other reports on the topic. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Candidate platforms in Chile presidential runoff;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Center-left Senator Alejandro Guillier and conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera will go head to head in a runoff for Chile s presidency on Sunday, after securing the top two spots in the Nov. 19 first-round vote. There have been no major polls in the past month, leaving few indications of who will succeed outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet in the world s top copper producer. Below are the main proposals from both candidates: - The former journalist, elected to the Senate in 2013, has promised to deepen the progressive tax, education and labor reforms of ideological ally Bachelet. His spending plan includes investments in housing and infrastructure and carries a price tag of $10 billion. - Guillier has pledged to diversify Chile s economy away from copper, or add value to exports by processing the metal at home. He would seek a plebiscite in 2018 to rewrite the dictatorship-era constitution to include more protections for workers and indigenous communities. - Since the first round, Guillier and Pinera have both endorsed a public option to compete with Chile s private pension funds. Once widely praised worldwide, they have been criticized for delivering too-small payouts. Guillier has also recommended a new, mandatory contribution from employers. - Guillier and Pinera have both called for repeal of state-run copper producer Codelco s mandatory contribution of 10 percent of profits to the military. Guillier has signaled he would seek to maintain the government s strong ties with Codelco workers, something that has spared the company from strikes that have hit private miners under Bachelet. - The billionaire businessman, who served as president from 2010 to 2014, has promised to make Chile the first country in Latin America to achieve developed nation status in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based club of wealthy nations. - Pinera, the investor favorite, would cut corporate taxes to increase investment. He said his policies would double Chile s economic growth and eliminate poverty by 2025. - Pinera s $14 billion, four-year spending plan includes an overhaul of Bachelet s tax reform, and $2.7 billion in new investments in infrastructure and hospitals. Pinera said he would pay for his proposals by cutting unnecessary government spending and simplifying the tax code. - Pinera wants to revitalize and increase competition in Chile s private pension system. His plan includes new subsidies to raise pensions for women and the middle class, as well as incentives to encourage workers to retire later. - He wants Codelco to deploy a realistic investment plan using existing resources and to focus on existing assets rather than new projects. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hamas will reverse Trump's Jerusalem move, leader tells Gaza rally;GAZA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Palestinians including hundreds of gunmen rallied in Gaza on Thursday to mark the 30th anniversary of Hamas s founding and its chief vowed to reverse U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Earlier in the day, Israel shut its border crossings with Gaza in response to daily rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled enclave since Trump s announcement on Dec. 6, which stirred anger across the Arab and Muslim world and concern among Washington s European allies as well as Russia. We will knock down Trump s decision. No superpower is capable of offering Jerusalem to Israel, there is no Israel that it should have a capital named Jerusalem. Our souls, our blood, our sons and our homes are a sacrifice for Jerusalem, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told the rally in Gaza City. With gunmen from other Palestinian militant groups showing support for Hamas, Haniyeh added, We are marching towards Jerusalem, sacrificing millions of martyrs along the way, and the crowd repeated his chants. Israeli aircraft struck three Hamas facilities before dawn after the latest rocket salvo, Israel s military said. It said it targeted training camps and weapons storage compounds. Hamas usually evacuates such facilities when border tensions rise. Two of the rockets fired by militants were intercepted by Israel s Iron Dome anti-missile system and a third exploded in an open area of southern Israel. There were no reports of casualties on either side of the frontier. The military said in a statement that due to the security events and in accordance with security assessments , Kerem Shalom crossing - the main passage point for goods entering Gaza - and the Erez pedestrian crossing would be shut as of Thursday. It did not say how long the closure would last. Around 15 rockets have been fired into southern Israel since Trump s announcement. None of the projectiles has caused serious injury or damage. The attacks have drawn Israeli air strikes that have killed two Hamas gunmen. Two other Palestinians have been killed in confrontations with Israeli troops during stone-throwing protests along the border. Israeli cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi said on Israel Radio that while Hamas, which last fought a war with Israel in 2014, was not responsible for the rocket fire, it needed to rein in militants from breakaway groups or it would find itself in a situation where it has to contend with the Israeli military. In Istanbul on Wednesday, a summit of more than 50 Muslim countries condemned Trump s move and urged the world to respond by recognizing East Jerusalem, captured by Israel along with the West Bank in a 1967 war, as the capital of Palestine. Palestinians want East Jerusalem for the capital of a future state they seek in Israeli-occupied territory. Trump s declaration has been applauded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a recognition of political reality and Jews biblical links to Jerusalem, a city that is also holy to Muslims and Christians. Nazareth, the Israeli Arab city where Jesus is thought to have been raised, has canceled some Christmas celebrations in protest at Trump s move, officials there said. There was no word from Bethlehem, the Palestinian West Bank town that is Jesus s traditional birthplace, whether it was also weighing a cutback on its celebrations at a crucial time of year for the its tourist trade. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel must enact law if it wants to hold militants' remains as bargaining chips: court;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the state could not keep the bodies of Palestinian gunmen for use as bargaining chips to get back its own dead unless it enacted legislation permitting it to do so. A three-justice panel ruled in favor of militants families who petitioned to force Israeli authorities to return to them for burial the bodies of militant relatives killed in attacks on Israelis. The court gave the state six months to enact legislation if it wanted to keep the bodies. Israel has said it was holding the bodies to help it effect the return the remains of the two Israeli soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip in 2014 and two Israeli civilians, whose whereabouts are unknown and whom Israel believes are alive and being held in the enclave by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. But in a majority ruling, the court said the bodies were being held without authorization because there was no law on the Israeli statute books to regulate their being kept. It should be emphasized that Israel, a state governed by the rule of law, cannot hold bodies for the purposes of negotiations while there is no specific, clear law in place permitting it to do so, part of the ruling s summary said. Israel has in the past carried out swaps of prisoners and of militants remains with Hamas and with the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah in exchange for Israeli soldiers and their remains. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin, on track for easy re-election, laments dearth of rivals;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he faced no credible high-profile political opponents as he prepared to run for re-election in March, but would work to try to create a more balanced political system. Putin, whom critics have accused of using state TV, the courts and the police to demonize and marginalize the liberal opposition, said earlier this month he would run for re-election in March 2018 - a contest he seems sure to win comfortably and extend his grip on power into a third decade. But in a sign the former KGB officer is keen to strengthen his role as a father of the nation figure rather than as a party political figure, Putin said he planned to run as an independent candidate and garner support from more than one party. The ruling United Russia party has traditionally backed Putin and is likely to do so again this time, but Putin clearly wants to generate a higher turnout by styling himself as someone who is above the often grubby fray of Russian party politics. Putin said it was too early to set out his electoral program, but named priority issues, aside from helping forge what he called a flexible political system, as nurturing a high-tech economy, improving infrastructure, healthcare, education, productivity and increasing people s real incomes. Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000, longer than veteran Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and outstripped only by dictator Josef Stalin. With an approval rating of around 80 percent if, as expected, he wins what would be a fourth presidential term, he will be eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Putin said he was aware he faced no real competition. The political environment, like the economic environment, needs to be competitive, Putin told an audience of more than 1,600 Russian and foreign reporters gathered in a Moscow conference hall for his annual news conference. I will strive for us to have a balanced political system. He said he regretted the lack of competition, but accused his political opponents of failing to come up with any positive ideas to tackle Russia s problems. It s important not to just make noise on public squares and speak about the regime, said Putin. It s important to propose something to make things better. But when you start to compare what the leaders of the opposition are proposing, especially the leaders of the non-systemic (liberal) opposition, there are a lot of problems. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is unlikely to be allowed to run against Putin due to what he says is a trumped up criminal conviction, posted an instant riposte on social media. He said he had launched his own program this week but accused Putin of doing his best to ignore it. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin says U.S. gripped by fabricated spymania, praises Trump;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the United States was in the grip of a fabricated spymania whipped up by President Donald Trump s opponents but he thought battered U.S.-Russia relations would recover one day. Putin, who said he was on first name terms with Trump, also praised the U.S. president for what he said were his achievements. I m not the one to evaluate the president s work. That needs to be done by the voters, the American people, Putin told his annual news conference in Moscow, in answer to a question. (But) we are objectively seeing that there have been some major accomplishments, even in the short time he has been working. Look at how the markets have grown. This speaks to investors trust in the American economy. Trump took office in January, saying he was keen to mend ties which had fallen to a post-Cold War low. But since then, ties have soured further after U.S. intelligence officials said Russia meddled in the presidential election, something Moscow denies. Congress is also investigating alleged contacts between the Trump election campaign and Russian officials amid allegations that Moscow may have tried to exercise improper influence. Putin dismissed those allegations and the idea of a Russia connection as fabricated. He shrugged off accusations that Russia s ambassador to the United States had done something wrong by having contacts with Trump campaign figures saying it was international practice for diplomats to try to have contacts with all candidates in an election. What did someone see that was egregious about this? Why does it all have to take on some tint of spymania?, said Putin. This is all invented by people who oppose Trump to give his work an illegitimate character. The people who do this are dealing a blow to the state of (U.S.) domestic politics, he added, saying the accusations were disrespectful to U.S. voters. Moscow understood that Trump s scope for improving ties with Russia was limited by the scandal, said Putin, but remained keen to try to improve relations. Washington and Moscow had many common interests, he said, citing the Middle East, North Korea, international terrorism, environmental problems and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. You have to ask him (Trump) if he has such a desire (to improve ties) ... or whether it has disappeared. I hope that he has such a desire, said Putin. We will normalize our relations and will develop (them) and overcome common threats. However, Putin lashed out at U.S. policy on North Korea, warning a U.S. strike there would have catastrophic consequences. In one of the most dramatic moments of the news conference, Ksenia Sobchak, a TV personality who has said she plans to run against Putin in a presidential election in March, asked him about what she said was the lack of political competition. Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since the end of 1999. In particular, Sobchak asked about the case of opposition leader Alexei Navalny who looks unlikely to be allowed to run in the election due to what Navalny says is a trumped up criminal case. Putin, who polls suggest will be comfortably re-elected, warned that candidates like Navalny would destabilize Russia and usher in chaos if elected. Do you want attempted coups d etat? We ve lived through all that. Do you really want to go back to all that? I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens do not want this. Putin said the authorities were not afraid of genuine political competition and promised it would exist. Navalny, commenting on social media, said Putin s response showed that barring him from taking part in next year s presidential election was a political decision. It s like he s saying we re in power and we ve decided that it (Navalny running) is a bad idea, Navalny said. Putin disclosed he planned to run as an independent candidate and garner support from more than one party, in a sign the former KGB officer may be keen to strengthen his image as a father of the nation rather than as a party political figure. Putin named as priority issues nurturing a high-tech economy, improving infrastructure, healthcare, education and productivity and increasing people s real incomes. He coughed his way through the first part of the news conference at times, and misread a placard held up by a journalist which he incorrectly thought said Bye Bye Putin, an error he quipped was due to age affecting his eyesight. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Putin says Poland should ""grow up"" and stop blaming Moscow for air crash";MOSCOW/WARSAW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was tired of hearing allegations from Warsaw that a 2010 plane crash that killed then Polish President Lech Kaczynski was the result of a Russian conspiracy, drawing a sharp rebuke from Warsaw. Responding to a question from a Polish reporter at an annual news conference, Putin said it was time for Poland to move beyond the plane crash, turn a new page, and grow up . A Polish Air Force Tu-154 plane crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk on April 10, 2010, killing all 96 people on board, including President Kaczynski, whose twin brother Jaroslaw is now the leader of Poland s ruling Law and Justice Party, in power since 2015. A previous Polish government concluded that pilot error was to blame for the crash, but Law and Justice ordered a new investigation which concluded this year that the plane was brought down by explosions on board. The crash remains deeply divisive in Poland, where many politicians emerged from an anti-Communist tradition that long saw Moscow as an enemy. Poland s defense minister denounced Putin s comments. In the mouth of the leader of a country that is responsible for the Katyn genocide, as well as for the Smolensk tragedy, such words are really shocking, Antoni Macierewicz told public radio PR 24, referring to a Soviet massacre of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals during World War Two, as well as the Smolensk crash. President Putin should finally face the truth: two explosions which eventually destroyed the Tu-154 were incontestably identified by official expertise, Macierewicz said. The new investigatory commission created by Macierewicz said in April this year that blasts most likely tore the plane into pieces killing all 96 people seconds before it hit the ground. It repeated allegations that Russian air traffic controllers had deliberately set the plane on the wrong descent path. Polish prosecutors said then they would press charges against two controllers. Moscow rejected the allegations. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU Parliament calls on Myanmar to free Reuters journalists;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The president of the European Parliament on Thursday called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and urged its government to release two Reuters journalists arrested this week. I hope the authorities in Myanmar will free them as soon as possible, Antonio Tajani told reporters during an EU summit in Brussels. Light should be shed on this case and human rights and press freedom should be respected. A former journalist, the Italian conservative politician said the arrests of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who had been working on stories about a military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority, increased the EU s concerns over the Rohingya crisis. The EU has sanctions in place against Myanmar barring the sale of arms and equipment that can be used for repression. In response to the Rohingya crisis, in October it also suspended invitations to Myanmar military officers. The EU legislature has a limited role in foreign policy. The Union s executive is also looking into the arrests of the journalists. Its mission in Myanmar said in a statement: We call on the Myanmar authorities to ensure the full protection of their rights. Media freedom is the foundation of any democracy. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary chief seeks to put troops under national army;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The commander of Iraq s biggest Shi ite Muslim paramilitary group told its fighters on Thursday to take their orders from the national military and cut their ties with the group s political wing. Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the Iran-backed Badr Organisation, also called on the group s fighters to withdraw from the cities under their control. The move paves the way for Amiri to stand in parliamentary elections on May 12. Participation in the election by members of Iraq s Iran-backed Shi ite paramilitaries, collectively known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), has been hotly debated in Iraq. PMF members cannot run for office unless they formally resign their posts. Amiri is the second commander to issue such a call in as many days. He called on those in charge of his armed wing to cut their ties with the group s political party, which holds 22 seats in the Iraqi parliament. I also call on all my brothers, the commanders of various formations, to clear cities of all signs of militarisation, he said in a speech. Badr, which says it is loyal to both Iraq and Iran, is the biggest group within the PMF, which fought alongside security forces against Islamic State. Sunni Muslims and Kurds have called on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who declared victory over Islamic State last week, to disarm the PMF, which they say are responsible for widespread abuses. The PMF were officially made part of the Iraqi security establishment by law and formally answer to Abadi in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Abadi has said the state should have a monopoly on the legitimate use of arms. Qais al-Khazali, head of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, announced a similar move on Wednesday when he said he would place his fighters under Abadi s command. The fighters and their political wing were now separate entities, he said. Powerful Shi ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr set out conditions on Monday for his followers to give the government the weapons they used to fight Islamic State. Iran-backed Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, which has about 10,000 fighters and is one of the most important militias in Iraq, said last month it would give any heavy weapons it had to the military once Islamic State was defeated. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran says weaponry displayed by Haley is 'fabricated';UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iran rejected as unfounded a U.S. accusation on Thursday that it supplied a missile fired at Saudi Arabia from Yemen on Nov. 4, describing weaponry displayed by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley as fabricated. Iran s mission to the United Nations said in a statement that the accusation by the United States was irresponsible, provocative and destructive. These accusations seek also to cover up for the Saudi war crimes in Yemen, with the U.S. complicity, and divert international and regional attention from the stalemate war of aggression against the Yemenis, the statement said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Before election, Putin proposes writing off part of Russians' debts;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is running for re-election in March, has proposed writing off some of the tax debts accumulated by Russian individuals and small businesses. A total of about 80 billion roubles ($1.4 billion) would be written off under Putin s proposal, a high-ranking official told Reuters. Speaking at his annual news conference, Putin said that some of the debt accumulated because of flaws in Russia s tax system. I think that people should be freed from these payments, and it should be done in the most de-bureaucratic way, without the need to apply to a tax inspection, he added. He estimated that debts of 42 million people worth 41 billion roubles should be written off. The high-ranking official told Reuters that Putin was speaking about debts for property tax and penalties accrued before 2015 that the tax service recognizes as uncollectible. The debts of 2.9 million self-employed entrepreneurs worth more than 15 billion roubles should also be written off, Putin said. He also proposed writing off profit tax, accumulated by some Russian citizens on their so-called waived debts. According to the high-ranking official, the latter would mean writing off 22 billion roubles. ($1 = 58.8600 roubles) ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's Kurz says pro-EU stance secured in deal with far right;VIENNA (Reuters) - Coalition talks between Austria s far-right Freedom Party and conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz are drawing to a close and have laid down guarantees that the next government will be pro-European, Kurz said on Thursday. Kurz, who is just 31, led the People s Party (OVP) to victory in a parliamentary election on Oct. 15, taking a hard line on immigration that often overlapped with that of the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO), which came third . People familiar with their coalition talks, which began on Oct. 25, said a deal might be reached as early as Friday evening and is likely to be struck over the weekend. That would end more than a decade in opposition for the FPO, which was led by the late Joerg Haider when it last entered government in 2000. The FPO has backed away from calling for Austria to follow Britain by holding an Oexit referendum on leaving the European Union. It now says it is pro-European but critical of the bloc and wants to prevent further political integration. It was important to the president, and to me, that the new government have a pro-European orientation. From my point of view, that has been secured, Kurz told reporters after meeting President Alexander Van der Bellen, adding that he was confident of a deal before Christmas. Kurz did not say what those points were, but the talks are well advanced, with the parties having produced joint lists of planned policies, from lowering taxes while staying within EU budget rules to providing refugees with a light version of regular benefit payments for five years. While those plans have often been expressed vaguely, Kurz and his party have obtained some specific concessions that would limit the FPO s options if it were to turn against the EU. Points already agreed include moving some Foreign Ministry departments in charge of European affairs to the chancellor s office, which Kurz will head, a person close to the coalition talks said. Those include the task force in charge of preparing for Austria s EU presidency in the second half of next year and the section in charge of coordinating policy for various EU forums, including that of envoys to Brussels, the person said. Items still being discussed include making it possible to call referendums by petition. Both sides agree on the principle, but the OVP wants a higher threshold around 10 percent of voters, while the FPO is pushing for 4 percent. Under the draft terms of their coalition deal, however, direct democracy is restricted so that an `Oexit referendum is not possible , one person familiar with the talks said, which a second confirmed. The deal will also ensure support for EU sanctions against Russia, one added, to guard against the FPO s pro-Russian stance. Ministerial appointments have yet to be decided but the Foreign, Defence and Interior Ministries are set to come under the FPO s control, that source said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU gives itself June deadline for deal on refugees;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders appealed for unity in a last-ditch effort to break their deadlock on sharing out refugees by June, telling reluctant eastern states they could otherwise be outvoted on a dispute that has shaken the bloc s foundations. Coming out from a fraught discussion among 28 EU leaders that went into the small hours on Friday morning in Brussels, rivals in the two-year-old dispute all stuck to their guns, hemmed in by expectations they have raised with their own voters. The Mediterranean frontline states Italy and Greece, and the rich destination countries including Germany, Sweden, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are demanding that all countries host some refugees as a way to demonstrate solidarity. Their four ex-communist peers Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic refuse to accept people from the mostly-Muslim Middle East and North Africa, saying that would threaten their security after a raft of Islamic attacks in Europe. There are areas where there is no solidarity and this is something I find unacceptable, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters. At one point during the two days of talks in Brussels, cameras caught Merkel, the bloc s paramount national leader, as she appeared to become agitated when talking with the leaders chairman, Donald Tusk, making her displeasure with him clear. That came after Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, came out strongly against ineffective and highly divisive obligatory refugee quotas, ruffling the feathers of those states that back them as well as the executive European Commission. The manner in which the principle of solidarity was being questioned does not only undermine the discussion on the refugee issue, but the future of Europe, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told reporters after what he called intense talks. Tusk said the ineffectiveness of relocation schemes was demonstrated by the fact that only 35,000 asylum seekers had been transferred from Greece and Italy under a 2015 plan meant to move 160,000 people. Mandatory quotas remain a contentious issue, Tusk told a joint news conference with the Commission s head Jean-Claude Juncker, the disagreement between the two playing out visibly despite their usually friendly rapport. Relocation is not a solution to the issue of illegal migration. Will a compromise be possible? It appears very hard. But we have to try our very best, he said, stressing the bloc was in full agreement about making further efforts to tighten its borders and chip in for development and migration-related projects in the Middle East and Africa. After sealing a deal with Ankara in 2016 that cut off arrivals from Turkey to EU state Greece, the bloc is now pushing to stem African immigration to Italy through Libya. Tusk, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other leaders said they wanted to make permanent financing available for such activities in the bloc s next long-term budget from 2021. But it is the feud over how to share the burden of caring for those refugees who still make it to Europe that has weakened the bloc s cohesion and undermined member states trust in each other at a time they need unity to face Brexit. After many months of letting the open wound fester, the backers of quotas made clear they want to move on and would vote on the broader reform of the bloc s asylum system by majority if no compromise acceptable for all is found by June on relocation. I am not a fan of qualified majority decision-taking but... it can be used, Juncker said. Some of our colleagues were openly saying yesterday night that if there is no progress, they will propose qualified majority decision-making procedure. That would inevitably deepen divisions in the EU and the four eastern states warned that the bloc would shoot itself in the foot should it go down this track. The only proposal the EU has on the table on asylum reform has most recently been updated by Estonia and attempts to bridge the divide by proposing that any relocation of asylum-seekers from one EU state to another, while obligatory at times of extremely high arrivals, would in fact only take place if both involved agreed voluntarily to the terms. Diplomats in Brussels hoped Italy would be more willing to compromise after it holds elections, most likely in March, and said Germany could reassume the lead on the file after it forms a ruling coalition following an election last September. A senior EU diplomat from one of the pro-quota countries said they would seek to break the united front of the four eastern states to bring down the number of countries that would eventually be defeated in a vote if everything else fails. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military orders additional probe into August Somalia raid;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of U.S. forces in Africa has ordered an additional investigation into an August raid in Somalia by Somali and American forces, the U.S military said on Thursday. Last month, the U.S. military said it did not kill any civilians when it accompanied Somali forces on a deadly raid in the village of Bariire. At the time, it described the dead as enemy combatants and that they were members of al Shabaab, the al-Qaeda linked insurgent group. However, eyewitnesses have told Reuters that 10 civilians were killed and that the military had been drawn into a local clan conflict. In a statement, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said it had referred the incident to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service after media reports alleged misconduct by U.S. personnel to ensure a full exploration of the facts given the gravity of the allegations. AFRICOM takes all allegations of misconduct seriously and will leverage the expertise of appropriate organizations to ensure such allegations are fully and impartially investigated, the statement said. The United States has stepped up operations in Somalia this year after President Donald Trump loosened restrictions on the military s operations in March. A Navy SEAL was killed in Somalia in May, the first U.S. combat casualty there since Somali militiamen shot down U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in 1993. The United States has also ramped up its use of air strikes, conducting twice as many strikes this year as last year. Somalia has been riven by civil war since 1991. It now has a weak, internationally-backed government, supported by African peacekeepers. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Undercover Israeli agents in action;EL-BIREH, West Bank (Reuters) - Reuters photographer Mohamad Torokman found himself staring down the barrel of a gun when he captured the moment an undercover Israeli military group shut down a Palestinian protest, in a rarely witnessed infiltration technique. Photo essay: reut.rs/2Ap07MI Torokman was on assignment near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, close to the Palestinian hub city of Ramallah, on Wednesday where protests were underway against U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Hundreds turned out, as they had done for days following Trump s announcement. Some burnt tires, others hurled stones at Israeli troops, all oblivious to the surprise military move that awaited them. The undercover personnel were posing as Palestinian protesters and were standing behind the stone-throwers, said Torokman, who has covered clashes in the region for nearly two decades. All of a sudden, they started to fire their pistols into the air and throw sound grenades at the same time. The din of the grenades and guns caused panic among the protesters. Torokman saw eight Israeli personnel, wearing masks fashioned from Arab headdresses or the Palestinian flag, leap into action and detain protesters. He kept photographing, thereby capturing the moment as an undercover agent grappling with a protester swung round, briefly pointing his gun directly at Torokman. He shouted at me and told me to go away, said Torokman, who described the atmosphere as terrifying. I heeded his order for my own safety and I quickly moved away. The remaining protesters fled as uniformed Israeli troops moved in. Torokman took photographs from a safer location. The incident was over in less than five minutes. It was the third time Torokman saw at first hand the work of the undercover commandos, known in Hebrew as Mistaravim or in Arab disguise , but this was by far the most scary. The level of risk was the highest this time as the personnel were aiming their weapons at me, he said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arms supplied by U.S., Saudi ended up with Islamic State, researchers say;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Arms provided by the United States and Saudi Arabia to Syrian opposition groups frequently ended up in the hands of Islamic State, an arms monitoring group that analyzed weapons found on the battlefield said on Thursday. Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said most Islamic State weapons were looted from the Iraqi and Syrian armies. But some were originally provided by other countries, mainly the United States and Saudi Arabia, to Syrian opposition groups fighting against President Bashar al-Assad. These findings are a stark reminder of the contradictions inherent in supplying weapons into armed conflicts in which multiple competing and overlapping non-state armed groups operate, the group said in a 200-page report. CAR documented at least 12 cases of weaponry purchased by the United States that ended up in Islamic State s hands, either captured on the battlefield or acquired through shifting alliances within the Syrian opposition. Most of these items later ended up in Iraq, the monitor said. In one case, it took only two months for Islamic State fighters in Iraq to get their hands on a guided anti-tank missile the United States bought from a European country and supplied to a Syrian opposition group. All of the items were made in EU states, and in most cases the United States broke contractual clauses prohibiting retransfers by giving the weapons to armed groups in Syria. Evidence collected by CAR indicates that the United States has repeatedly diverted EU-manufactured weapons and ammunition to opposition forces in the Syrian conflict. IS forces rapidly gained custody of significant quantities of this materiel. CAR said it similarly traced numerous items used by Islamic State back to exports from Bulgaria to Saudi Arabia, and that these were also subject to non-retransfer clauses that should have barred them from being supplied to Syrian warring parties. Around 90 percent of weapons and ammunition used by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq were made in China, Russia, and Eastern European countries, CAR said, with China and Russia alone accounting for over 50 percent. These findings support widespread assumptions that the group initially captured much of its military materiel from Iraqi and Syrian government forces, the report said. Russian-made weapons used by Islamic State in Syria outnumbered Chinese ones, presumably reflecting Russian supplies to the Syrian regime, CAR said. Russia is allied with Assad and launched air strikes in Syria in September 2015, its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, turning the tide of the conflict in his favor. On Saturday Iraq declared final victory over Islamic State, which seized more than a third of the country s territory in 2014. Last week Russia declared victory over the group in Syria. CAR reported last year that Islamic State had been making its own weapons on a scale and with sophistication matching national military forces, and that it had standardized production across its realm. Link to the CAR report: here ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Indian tycoon's extradition hearing told of abuse of UK ""Chennai Six""";LONDON (Reuters) - One of the Chennai Six group of ex-British soldiers jailed in India was dragged to a psychiatric hospital and force-fed anti-psychotic tablets during his time in jail, a London court considering whether to extradite Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya was told on Thursday. Mallya, 61, is wanted in India on fraud and money-laundering charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines and Indian authorities want to recover about $1.4 billion they say Kingfisher owes. The businessman, co-owner of the Force India Formula One team, who moved to Britain in March last year, says the case him is politically motivated and is fighting extradition on several grounds including a claim that jail conditions in India are incompatible with British human rights laws. As part of this, his lawyer quizzed prison conditions expert Dr Alan Mitchell about a conversation he had had two days ago with one of the former British soldiers who had been held for four years in India on weapons-smuggling charges after the vessel they were working on strayed into Indian waters in 2013. The soldiers were released from jail in Chennai, eastern India, after a successful appeal and began arriving back in Britain last week. The ex-soldier, named only as A , said he had been grabbed by 15 prison guards and prisoners and taken to a psychiatric hospital because he had been excessively walking around the prison, Mitchell told London s Westminster Magistrate Court. While in the psychiatric hospital, he stated he was tied up, gagged, he was beaten and he was forcibly injected. In addition he described being force-fed anti-psychotic tablets that he managed to spit out, Mitchell said. Asked by Mallya s lawyer Clare Montgomery about assurances given over the treatment of Mallya, who she said had diabetes, coronary artery disease and sleep apnoea, Mitchell said the British government had likewise told parliament that the Chennai Six were being well looked after. Despite assurances having been given in parliament, A was extremely disappointed by what effect the involvement of the High Commission and the UK government had on conditions in which he and his fellow prisoners were held, he said. Mark Summers, the lawyer representing the Indian government, said Mitchell s evidence involved an uncorroborated account which could be used as a platform for a compensation claim against the UK government . He said conditions in Chennai would bear no relation to the jail in Mumbai where Mallya would be held. Another hearing in the London extradition case against Mallya will be held on Jan. 10 with a decision expected at a later date. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria to release $1 billion from excess oil account to fight Boko Haram;ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian state governors on Thursday approved the release of $1 billion from the country s excess oil account to the government to help fight the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency. The account holds foreign reserves from excess earnings from sales of crude. It currently totals $2.3 billion, according to Nigeria s accountant general. We are pleased with the federal government achievements in the insurgency war and in that vein state governors have approved that the sum of $1 billion be taken from the excess crude account by the federal government to fight the insurgency war to its conclusion, said Godwin Obaseki, Edo state governor. The money will cover the whole array of needs which includes purchase of equipments, training for military personnel and logistics, he told reporters after a meeting of Nigeria s national economic council. The release of such a large sum could raise concerns over corruption, endemic in Nigeria. The next presidential and gubernatorial national elections are scheduled for February and March 2019. Historically, the run-up to elections has seen rampant graft and theft of public funds as politicians build war chests to contest the vote. The insurgency in the northeast is in its ninth year. Deadly attacks on the military and civilians continue, and large areas are out of government control. Officials have siphoned off funds meant for aid for 8.5 million people in the region. In October, President Muhammadu Buhari sacked the country s top civil servant, accused of having inflated the value of contracts for aid projects, part of a suspected kickback scheme. The United Nations appealed to donors for $1.05 billion to fund humanitarian aid in the northeast in 2017, and says it will require another $1.1 billion in 2018. Nigeria, which has Africa s largest economy, has come under fire for devoting little of its own resources to humanitarian aid. Military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said troops are undersupplied and underpaid, with weapons, vehicles and other basic equipment often in disrepair or lacking. Some have alleged their own officers are skimming from already-meagre supplies. The release of the funds is a further sign the Nigerian government and military may be abandoning their two-year narrative that Boko Haram has been all but defeated. Nigeria s long-term plan is now to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns - effectively ceding the countryside to Boko Haram. Earlier this month, Nigeria replaced the military commander of the campaign against Boko Haram after half a year in the post. Military sources told Reuters that came after a series of embarrassing attacks by the Islamists. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Planned changes to criminal code in Romania seen as weakening anti-graft fight;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A fresh row over judicial changes in Romania broke out on Thursday with prosecutors and the political opposition warning that proposed amendments to the criminal code would weaken the fight against corruption and other crimes. A parliamentary commission will start next Monday to debate the changes which have been introduced by the ruling Social Democrats. Under the proposals, prosecutors will have to tell potential suspects they are about to be investigated and restrict the types of evidence prosecutors can use to prove cases. Temporary 30-day arrest warrants, much used by police and prosecutors in corruption cases, might be scrapped. Prosecutors may also be restricted from drawing on wiretaps, street camera footage and digital evidence. They could also be forbidden from publicly disclosing the names of suspects until their cases effectively go to trial. Another proposed change would have witnesses give testimony in the presence of the accused - something which could prove to be an ordeal for a victim of human trafficking, for example. Romania s anti-corruption prosecution unit (DNA) has sent 72 deputies and senators to trial since 2006 alongside cabinet ministers, a sitting Prime Minister and hundreds of mayors and other public officials. Transparency International ranks Romania among the European Union s most corrupt states though Brussels, which has Romania s justice system under special monitoring, has praised magistrates for their efforts to curb graft. Prosecutors said the changes, if they went through, would seriously hinder the fight for law and order. Approving these changes will limit prosecutors ability to carry out their activities as well as exercising their constitutional role of representing society s general interest and defending the rule of law and citizens rights, the prosecutor general s office said in a statement. These changes could have a devastating impact on criminal investigations because they eliminate the indispensable legal instruments needed to investigate, the DNA said in a statement. While the Social Democrats have said the changes are needed to bring legislation in line with an EU directive, the Commission has criticized the proposed overhaul. The Social Democrats have already used their solid majority to approve a judicial overhaul in the lower house that threatens to put the justice system under political control. The senate, which has the final say, is expected to approve the bills next week. The proposed reforms have been criticized by the European Commission, the U.S. State Department, thousands of magistrates and centrist President Klaus Iohannis. Thousands of Romanians staged protests against them in recent weeks but the coalition has so far shrugged them off. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Six months on, Grenfell fire survivors weep at London memorial;LONDON (Reuters) - Survivors of a blaze that killed 71 people six months ago in the Grenfell Tower social housing block in west London wept during a multi-faith memorial service at St Paul s Cathedral on Thursday attended by members of the royal family. Bereaved relatives held pictures of their loved ones as they commemorated Britain s deadliest fire since World War Two, a tragedy that has profoundly shocked the nation. Fire broke out in the middle of the night on June 14 and quickly gutted the 24-storey building, which was home to a multi-ethnic community living in a poor area within one of London s richest boroughs, Kensington and Chelsea. The disaster highlighted the area s extreme disparities in living conditions between rich and poor and fueled a debate over why safety concerns voiced by tower residents before the fire had been ignored. The service reflected the multi-cultural character of the Grenfell community, with Christian and Muslim prayers and music from Middle Eastern, Caribbean and Western traditions. It also addressed the anger of many survivors over what they perceive as the neglect of their community before and after the fire. A majority of the hundreds of people displaced by the fire are still staying in hotels because suitable permanent homes have not been provided yet. Today we ask why warnings were not heeded, why a community was left feeling neglected, uncared for, not listened to, Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington, told the congregation. Today we hold out hope that the public inquiry will get to the truth of all that led up to the fire at Grenfell Tower ... and we trust that the truth will bring justice. Police are investigating the fire and say charges may be brought against individuals or organizations. A separate public inquiry is under way on the causes of the fire and the authorities response. Prime Minister Theresa May, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his sons Prince William and Prince Harry were among those attending the service along with bereaved families and firefighters who took part in the rescue effort on the night. The devastation inside Grenfell Tower was such that it took police and forensic scientists several months to recover and identify all human remains. The final death toll was 53 adults and 18 children. The service began when a white banner bearing a large green heart emblazoned with the word Grenfell was carried through the congregation to the pulpit by a Catholic priest and Muslim cleric from the area around the charred tower. Later, a young Syrian musician played a mournful tune on the oud, an instrument commonly played in the Middle East and parts of Africa, where many Grenfell residents had ties. A choir of Muslim schoolgirls performed a song called Inshallah , and survivor Nadia Jafari, who escaped from the tower but lost her elderly father Ali, read a poem called Remember Me by the 13th century Persian poet and scholar Rumi. The service also included a rendition of Leonard Cohen s Hallelujah performed by a Caribbean-style steel band, and a performance of Somewhere from the musical West Side Story. Schoolchildren from the Grenfell area scattered green hearts, a symbol of solidarity with the victims and survivors, around the cathedral s altar. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK urgently needs Brexit transition deal, and more time after that, lawmakers say;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain urgently needs a standstill deal to keep its ties with the European Union unchanged in a post-Brexit transition period, and will probably need an adaptation phase after that for sectors such as financial services, a group of lawmakers said. A transition agreement - which is widely expected to last for two years - must be done with Brussels in a matter of weeks to stop companies from moving more operations away from Britain, the cross-party Treasury Committee said. It is highly likely that, for certain sectors, including financial services, the standstill transition period will have to be followed by an adaptation period, the committee said on Thursday in a report, summing up its work so far on Brexit. Many companies are drawing up contingency plans ahead of Britain leaving the EU in March 2019, given the lack of clarity about their future access to the bloc which accounts for nearly half of Britain s exports. Banks have previously said they want a deal to bridge the period between the end of a Brexit transition phase and the start of Britain s new, permanent relationship with the EU in order to phase in changes to the way they operate. At this stage, the committee makes no recommendations about the design or duration of this subsequent period, except that, unlike the standstill period, it need not involve the UK applying the existing framework of EU rules across all sectors, the committee said. Prime Minister Theresa May last week secured a deal with Brussels that will pave the way for talks on a transition deal and for negotiations about the future permanent UK-EU trade relationship after Brexit. Nicky Morgan, a lawmaker from May s Conservative Party who chairs the Treasury Committee, said time was of the essence and London should accept EU terms for a transition deal, including temporarily remaining subject to the European Court of Justice. Delays to agreements caused by arguments over arcane points of principle could damage the economy, Morgan said. The government should be prepared to accept the terms on which transition is offered by the EU-27. Some Brexit supporters have said Britain must no longer be bound by ECJ rulings after Brexit. But under last week s initial divorce deal, Britain will enable its judges to ask the court to weigh in on issues affecting EU citizens for eight years. The committee also warned the government against assuming that last-minute deals would be reached to avoid disruption in areas such as aviation. The history of international trade diplomacy is replete with examples of short-sighted political considerations prevailing over economic self-interest, it said. And the conclusion of such agreements may come too late for firms that are intending to activate their contingency plans in the first quarter of 2018. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Heathrow launches environmental consultation on expansion;LONDON (Reuters) - Heathrow Airport announced a public consultation on the proposed development of a third runway at Europe s biggest airport, saying it aimed to mitigate the environmental impact of expansion. Prime Minister Theresa May backed a $22 billion expansion of the London hub in October 2016, after decades of government indecision. But the plan has been controversial, with critics highlighting the possible impact on air quality in London and noise levels in the local community. Heathrow said it would seek the views of locals on the environmental impact of expansion and how the airspace around Heathrow is managed. Over the past year, we ve been working hard to evolve our expansion plans and have come up with several new options to deliver it more responsibly and affordably, said the airport s Executive Director for expansion Emma Gilthorpe. The new discussions are separate from a previously announced government consultation on a National Policy Statement on airports, and is focused on the airport s plans for infrastructure and the impact on the local community. Transport secretary Chris Grayling has said that the government aims to give the go-ahead to the new runway in the first half of 2018. The latest consultation will launch on Jan. 17 and run for 10 weeks. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Odebrecht paid firms linked to Peru's Kuczynski $4.8 million: document;LIMA (Reuters) - Brazilian builder Odebrecht transferred $4.8 million to companies linked to Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski between 2004 and 2012, some of which was paid to a company Kuczynski controlled when he held senior government roles, according to a document the company sent to Congress. In a brief recorded message broadcast on local radio program RPP after lawmakers made the contents of the document public on Wednesday, Kuczynski denied wrongdoing but did not deny the transfers took place. Kuczynski s office declined further comment. Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] declined to comment. A source in the company who spoke on condition of anonymity said the document seen by Reuters was authentic. The transfers shown in the document contradicted Kuczynski s previous denials about his ties to Odebrecht and prompted some lawmakers in the opposition-controlled Congress to call for his resignation. Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal and has admitted to paying about $30 million in bribes to officials in Peru over a decade, including during the 2001-2006 term of ex-President Alejandro Toledo, when Kuczynski was finance minister and prime minister. After Odebrecht s public acknowledgement a year ago, Kuczynski repeatedly denied ever taking money from Odebrecht or having any professional connections to the company. But on Saturday Kuczynski announced on a local radio program that he once worked as a financial adviser for an Odebrecht project when he did not hold public office;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia's population growth outpaces world as migrants rush in;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s population is expanding at the fastest pace in the developed world as skilled migrants flock to the resource-rich nation, a fillip to economic growth overall but perhaps also a source of puzzling weakness in wages. Government figures released on Thursday showed the number of people resident in Australia increased 388,100 in the year to June, a rise of 1.6 percent on 2015/16. That was far above the global increase of 1.1 percent, and well ahead of the United States gain of 0.7 percent and Canada s 0.9 percent. There s still plenty of room for more, given the giant continent still only has 24.6 million people, putting it at 53rd in United Nations global population rankings. Much of Australia s growth came in net overseas migration, which surged more than 27 percent in the year to June to 245,500. That was the highest 12-month total since 2009, while the flow into the states of New South Wales and Victoria beat records. A strong labor market is attracting interstate and overseas migrants to Melbourne, while better housing affordability and jobs growth is driving population growth in Queensland and Tasmania, said Ryan Felsman, a senior economist at CommSec. Overall the stronger rate of population growth is boosting spending, demand for infrastructure, demand for homes, and overall economic growth. Leading migrant countries include China, India, Britain and New Zealand. The flood of newcomers, mostly on skilled migrant programs, is one reason property prices have been on a tear in recent years, especially in Sydney and Melbourne. The extra demand created by all these new Australians was also a major reason the economy grew a brisk 2.8 percent in the year to September. Indeed, strip away population growth and the economy would have expanded by just 1.3 percent. Yet the influx of able bodies has also expanded the workforce right at the time when employers were ramping up their demand for labor, restraining wages growth. Separate figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Thursday showed a barnstorming 383,000 net new jobs were created in the year to November. But wages still grew at a pedestrian annual pace of 2 percent, a perfect case of expanding supply benefiting employers rather than those already employed. Policymakers at Australia s central bank have been baffled by the divergence between employment and wages, citing the mystery as an argument against a rise in interest rates anytime soon. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudis welcome U.N. report, U.S. stand on Iran's missile supplies to Houthis: agency;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Thursday welcomed a United Nations report and a U.S. stand on Iran s missile supplies to Yemen s Houthis and demanded immediate action to hold Tehran accountable for its actions, state news agency SPA reported. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomes the U.N. report that asserted that the hostile Iranian intervention and its support for the terrorist Houthi militia with advanced and dangerous missile capabilities threatens the security and stability of the kingdom and the region, SPA said. The agency said Saudi Arabia also welcomed the U.S. position announced by Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who presented pieces of what she said were Iranian weapons supplied to the Iran-aligned Houthi and described them as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions. SPA said the evidence, which emerged after the Houthis fired a missile toward the capital Riyadh last month, was proof of violations of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 2216 and 2231 on Yemen, and 1559 and 1701, which relate to Lebanon. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia demands the international community to take immediate measures to implement the aforementioned Security Council resolutions and to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its hostile actions, it said. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of smuggling missiles to the Houthis through ports used to deliver humanitarian aid and food shipments to Yemen. It said the evidence means the United Nations should tighten its inspection and verification regime for vessels allowed into Yemen. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia, North Korea military commission starts first meeting in Pyongyang: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - A delegation of Russia s defense ministry is taking part in the first meeting of a Russian-North Korean military commission in Pyongyang, the RIA news agency cited Russian diplomats as saying on Thursday. The Russian delegation arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday, Russian media reported at the time. No details of its agenda in the reclusive nation have been available. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil pension vote put off until February;BRASILIA (Reuters) - The lower house of Brazil s Congress will delay a vote on a bill trimming social security benefits until Feb. 19, Speaker Rodrigo Maia said on Thursday, pushing a decision on the cornerstone of President Michel Temer s fiscal reforms into an election year. Temer had said he hoped for a vote by next week, but he has struggled to rally lawmaker support for the unpopular pension cuts, which many investors consider essential to reining in Brazil s surging public debt. Brazil s currency, the real, weakened to a seven-month low of 3.34 per U.S. dollar and the benchmark Bovespa stock index fell 0.8 percent after Maia s comments. Investors fear that failure to streamline social security could weaken Brazil s recovery from a deep economic downturn, forcing the central bank to raise interest rates from an all-time low and potentially triggering new sovereign rating downgrades in 2018. This raises the possibility that the reform will not be approved next year, given political uncertainty surrounding the presidential elections, said Samar Maziad, a senior analyst at Moody s Investors Service, calling the delay credit negative. Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said he plans to meet next week with credit rating agencies to discuss the fate of the legislation, adding that he hoped it could be enacted by March. The bill would require Brazilians to work longer before retiring and cut generous pensions for public-sector employees. Lawmakers may be more reluctant to back that as elections approach in October, but Maia suggested they would rise to the challenge. Even though 2018 is an election year, the fiscal crisis is so big that it will be possible to get pension reform approved, he said. Temer s last-ditch effort to sell the bill this year was cut short on Wednesday, when he had to fly to Sao Paulo for surgery to treat a narrowing of his urethra. His office said the surgery was successful and that he would remain in the hospital until Friday to recover. But it forced Temer to cancel meetings to muster votes. It became clear this week that Temer did not have the three-fifths super majority, or 308 votes, needed to pass the bill in the lower house of Congress. While ministers were still working to gather more votes, the government s chief whip in the Senate stunned the administration on Wednesday by saying the vote had to be put off to February. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cameroon's Anglophones flee to Nigeria as crackdown grows;IKOM, Nigeria (Reuters) - When soldiers burst into her village in southwest Cameroon last month with guns blazing, small farmer Eta Quinta, 32, raced into the forest with three of her children. I found a canoe and I used it to cross over with my kids, not knowing where my husband and my (other) two kids are, she told Reuters across the border in Nigeria, where thousands of English-speaking Cameroonians have fled in past weeks. What began last year as peaceful protests by Anglophone activists against perceived marginalisation by Cameroon s Francophone-dominated elite has become the gravest challenge yet to President Paul Biya, who is expected to seek to renew his 35-years in power in an election next year. Government repression - including ordering thousands of villagers in the Anglophone southwest to leave their homes - has driven support for a once-fringe secessionist movement, stoking a lethal cycle of violence. The secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia on Oct. 1. Since then, 7,500 people have fled to Nigeria, including 2,300 who fled in a single day on Dec. 4 fearing government reprisals after raids by separatists militants killed at least six soldiers and police officers. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR is preparing for up to 40,000 refugees. Quinta and her children walked for three days through the dense forests to reach a border crossing at the Agbokim Waterfalls. They remain without news of the rest of the family. There are many pregnant women in the forest, Quinta said as she held her sick two-month-old baby whose head was covered by a white wooly hat. I have friends in the forest and am not sure if I will get to see them again or their kids. At the end of World War One, Germany s colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors, laying down the basis for a language split that still persists. English speakers make up less than a fifth of the population of Cameroon, concentrated in former British territory near the Nigerian border that was joined to the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. Cameroonian authorities say the English-speaking separatists pose a security threat that justifies their crackdown. The new arrivals in Nigeria live mainly with host families who have supported them with food, clothing and shelter. The integration, a UNHCR official said, was made easier by the pidgin English spoken on either side of the border. Food and medicine are in limited supply. Four people have died of sicknesses since coming to Nigeria and the refugees sometimes sleep as many as 50 to a five-by-seven meter room. Their anger has grown toward a government they feel no longer represents them, which could provide the separatists with easy recruits. We were walking for peaceful demonstrations ... but it s because of the killing of our innocent people that is why our own people have started reacting, said Tiku Michael, a businessman, farmer, father of six and now a refugee. Even ... God himself, he will not allow things to go (on) like that. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen's Houthis say Iranian missile charges a distraction from Jerusalem decision;DUBAI (Reuters) - A spokesman for Yemen s Houthi group on Thursday dismissed U.S. accusations that Iran had supplied a missile fired at Saudi Arabia last month, saying it was an attempt to divert attention from the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. After three years of war, America suddenly finds evidence that Iran supports the Houthis, Abdel-Malek al-Ejri said in a message on his Twitter account. America did not find any evidence in all the missiles fired from Yemen until now. The story is clear. They want to give Arabs a story to divert their attention from Jerusalem. Instead being angry at Israel, they wave the Iranian bogey, he added. The United States on Thursday presented for the first time pieces of what it said were Iranian weapons supplied to the Iran-aligned Houthis, describing it as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with such weaponry and on Thursday described the arms displayed as fabricated. President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 announced U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, stirring anger across the Arab and Muslim world and concern among Washington s European allies as well as Russia. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In first, U.S. presents its evidence of Iran weaponry from Yemen;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday presented for the first time pieces of what it said were Iranian weapons supplied to the Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen, describing it as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions. The arms included charred remnants of what the Pentagon said was an Iranian-made short-range ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Nov. 4 at King Khaled International Airport outside Saudi Arabia s capital Riyadh, as well as a drone and an anti-tank weapon recovered in Yemen by the Saudis. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with such weaponry and on Thursday described the arms displayed as fabricated. The United States acknowledged it could not say precisely when the weapons were transferred to the Houthis, and, in some cases, could not say when they were used. There was no immediate way to independently verify where the weapons were made or employed. But U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley expressed confidence the transfers could be blamed on Tehran. These are Iranian made, these are Iranian sent, and these were Iranian given, Haley told a news conference at a military hangar at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, just outside Washington. All of the recovered weapons were provided to the United States by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said. Saudi-led forces, which back the Yemeni government, have been fighting the Houthis in Yemen s more than two-year-long civil war. The unprecedented presentation - which Haley said involved intelligence that had to be declassified - is part of President Donald Trump s new Iran policy, which promises a harder line toward Tehran. That would appear to include a new diplomatic initiative. You will see us build a coalition to really push back against Iran and what they re doing, Haley said, standing in front of what she said were the remnants of the Nov. 4 missile. Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who view Tehran as a threat, seized upon the U.S. presentation in calls on Thursday for international action. Still, it was unclear whether the new evidence would be enough to win support for sanctions on Iran from some U.N. Security Council members, like Russia or China. British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said he didn t think there s anything that could convince some of my council colleagues to take U.N. action against Iran. Still, he said we re going to be pursuing with them nonetheless. Under a U.N. resolution that enshrines the Iran nuclear deal with world powers, Tehran is prohibited from supplying, selling or transferring weapons outside the country unless approved by the U.N. Security Council. A separate U.N. resolution on Yemen bans the supply of weapons to Houthi leaders. Iran rejected the U.S. accusations as unfounded and Iran s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, on Twitter, drew a parallel to assertions by then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in 2003 about U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. The Pentagon offered a detailed explanation of all of the reasons why it believed the arms came from Iran, noting what it said were Iranian corporate logos on arms fragments and the unique nature of the designs of Iranian weaponry. That included the designs of short-range Qiam ballistic missiles. The Pentagon said it had obtained fragments of two Qiam missiles, one fired on Nov. 4 against the airport and another fired on July 22. The Pentagon cited corporate logos it said matched those of Iranian defense firms on jet vanes that help steer the missile s engine and on the circuit board helping drive its guidance system. It also said the missile s unique valve-design was only found in Iran. Iran, it said, appeared to have tried to cover up the shipment by disassembling the missile for transport, given crude welding used to stitch it back together. The point of this entire display is that only Iran makes this missile. They have not given it to anybody else, Pentagon spokeswoman Laura Seal said. We haven t seen this in the hands of anyone else except Iran and the Houthis. A Dec. 8 U.N. report monitoring Iran sanctions found that the July 22 and Nov. 4 missiles fired at Saudi Arabia appeared to have a common origin, but U.N. officials were still investigating the claims that Iran supplied them. A separate Nov. 24 U.N. report monitoring Yemen sanctions said four missiles fired into Saudi Arabia this year appear to have been designed and manufactured by Iran, but as yet there was no evidence as to the identity of the broker or supplier. The U.N. Iran and Yemen sanctions monitors saw a majority of the weaponry displayed by Haley, said a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. The Pentagon put on display other weapons with designs it said were unique to Iran s defense industry. It pointed to a key component of a Toophan anti-tank guided missile and a small drone aircraft, both of which it said were recovered in Yemen by the Saudis. It also showed components of a drone-like navigation system like the one the Pentagon says was used by the Houthis to ram an exploding boat into a Saudi frigate on Jan. 30. The United Arab Emirates seized the system in late 2016 in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said. The U.N. Security Council is due to be briefed publicly on the latest U.N. report monitoring Iran sanctions on Tuesday. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chile presidential hopefuls end campaigns before Sunday vote;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile s presidential hopefuls ended their campaigns in downtown Santiago on Thursday ahead of an uncertain runoff election whose outcome will determine whether the world s top copper producer turns to the right or maintains its center-left track. Voters on Sunday will choose between billionaire conservative Sebastian Pinera and center-left senator and journalist Alejandro Guillier. During the November first-round election, a surprise surge by harder leftists confounded pollsters, sent markets plummeting and set the stage for a tighter-than-expected runoff. Everything points to a narrow margin of victory, said Guillermo Holzmann, a professor at the University of Valparaiso. It s an unusual race in that it s been difficult to gauge the electorate. Both Pinera and Guillier would keep in place the longstanding free-market economic model in Latin America s most developed country. But candidates with more extreme views on both the right and left performed better than expected in November, leading both men to make concessions to try to win over voters whose first-round choice dropped out. Uruguay former president Jose Pepe Mujica, a leftist icon in a Latin America that has largely turned to the political right, turned out to support Guillier. The conservative right has no future in Chile, Guillier told his fans. Pinera, 68, a former president and the market favorite, placed first with 36.6 percent of the vote in the first round. He has vowed to boost growth by cutting the corporate tax rate and scaling back outgoing President Michelle Bachelet s tax, labor and education reforms that Guillier has vowed to deepen. At Santiago s Caupolic n theater, he promised a new and better treatment of the middle class, older adults and children. The bearded Guillier, 64, from northern Chile, garnered 22.7 percent of the vote in November from backers hoping to preserve gains made in Bachelet s government for students, women and workers, measures such as lower university fees and laws empowering unions. Guillier has courted leftists by proposing to overhaul the country s privatized pension system and rewrite the constitution. Pinera has sought to appeal to centrist voters by calling for free technical education for the poor and a public pension option. Guillier narrowly edged out third place finisher Beatriz Sanchez of the leftist Frente Amplio. She received support from 20 percent of voters with promises to tax the super-rich to boost social spending and fight inequality. Sanchez s 1.3 million voters are seen as pivotal in the upcoming election. Voting is voluntary in Chile, and abstention has run high in recent years. It comes down to how many people stay home, and particularly, how many people stay home on Guillier s side, said University of Chile professor Robert Funk. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump discusses North Korea situation with Putin: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Trump spoke by phone on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the two leaders discussed working together to resolve the very dangerous situation in North Korea, the White House said in a statement. Trump also thanked Putin for acknowledging America s strong economic performance in his annual press conference, the statement said. The Kremlin said in a statement that Trump and Putin discussed bilateral relations and the situation in the Korean Peninsula. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Splits on Italian right buoy opponents as campaigning starts;ROME (Reuters) - The leader of Italy s far-right Northern League said on Thursday he was suspending contacts with his main political ally, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, because of a disagreement over how tough courts should be on murderers and rapists. The public fight over law and order delighted the rightists opponents just as campaigning picked up ahead of a national election that look certain to be held in early March. I always said the (right) as a coalition didn t exist, said Luigi Di Maio, the prime ministerial candidate of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. We are getting ever closer to government. The right bloc, which includes Berlusconi s Forza Italia! (Go Italy), is ahead in the polls, with 5-Star in second place. Pollsters predict no-one will win an outright majority, raising the specter of political instability in the euro zone s third-largest economy. Northern League leader Matteo Salvini has regularly sparred with Berlusconi, but his anger bubbled over this week after Forza Italia lawmakers voted against efforts to prevent courts from offering sentence reductions for murder and rape. We are receiving hundreds of calls and emails from men and women angry and disappointed by Forza Italia s astonishing decision to protect rapists and murderers, Salvini was quoted as saying by AGI news agency. As far as we are concerned ... we are suspending all our contacts and discussions with Forza Italia and Berlusconi until there is an official clarification, he added. Berlusconi promised to talk to Salvini shortly, saying he was unsure why his parliamentarians had spurned the reform. Support for the right bloc has risen steadily in recent months with Berlusconi returning to frontline politics after years of sex and finance scandals. However he has failed to paper over divisions between himself and Salvini who has pushed the Northern League to the far-right of European politics, aligning himself with Marine Le Pen s National Front in France. Whereas the right is committed to running together in the forthcoming election, the ruling centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has split from its traditional leftist allies, who have refused to form any electoral alliance. (The right) will argue before, during and, above all, after the election, but on the day itself they will pretend to be united to scrape together a few more seats, PD leader Matteo Renzi wrote on Facebook on Thursday. This is pure hypocrisy because everyone knows the truth but pretends not to see. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump speaks by phone to Russia's Putin: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Trump spoke by phone on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a statement about their conversation will be released later in the day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. President Trump spoke with Putin earlier today and a read out will be sent later tonight, she said in an emailed statement. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina Congress suspends pension reform vote due to protests;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s lower house on Thursday suspended a vote on President Mauricio Macri s pension reform plan, after the debate became a shouting match and protesters and police clashed violently outside Congress. The bill, which passed the Senate last month, is crucial for Macri s efforts to cut the fiscal deficit but has drawn criticism from opposition politicians and labor unions, who say it will hurt retirees and welfare recipients. Before Thursday s scheduled vote, the country s top union called a general strike for the following day. Demonstrators threw stones at metal barriers set up outside parliament, and security forces responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. The incident showed strong obstacles remain for Macri s pro-business agenda, which includes tax and labor reforms. While his Let s Change coalition swept October s legislative midterm vote, he lacks a majority in either chamber. We will not back down, opposition lawmaker Mirta Tundis told local television. It is outrageous that year after year, those who have less are affected most. The pension reform would change the formula used to calculate benefits. Payments would adjust every quarter based on inflation, rather than the current system of twice-yearly adjustments linked to wage rises and tax revenue. Economists say the current formula means benefits go up in line with past inflation. Left unchanged, that could harm Macri s efforts to cut the fiscal deficit. Under the new formula, benefits would increase by 5 percentage points above inflation, according to Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena. The plan would take effect at a time of lower inflation expectations, hence slowing the pace of pension benefit increases. This formula guarantees the sustainability of the system and that retirees will not lose to inflation, Macri-allied lawmaker Luciano Laspina told reporters. Macri is aiming to cut the fiscal deficit to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product next year from 4.2 percent this year, and to reduce inflation to 8-12 percent from above 20 percent this year. ($1 = 17.4300 Argentine pesos) ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Four French schoolchildren killed as train plows into bus;PARIS (Reuters) - Four adolescents were killed when a train smashed into a school bus on a level crossing outside the town of Perpignan in southwestern France on Thursday. Images from the scene showed the bus split in two, with a long line of emergency vehicles on an approach to the crossing. Another 20 people were injured in the crash, 11 of them seriously, according to French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who traveled immediately to the scene. Most of the injured were schoolchildren aboard the bus, aged 13-17. Philippe told reporters the authorities were focused on getting accurate information to families, a process made difficult by the question of identification of those who have died and some of the injured. A crisis coordination center has been set up at Millas town hall on Perpignan s western outskirts, about 850 kilometers (530 miles) from Paris. According to local media reports, the bus was transporting pupils from the town s Christian Bourquin college. All my thoughts (are with) the victims and their families, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter. The causes of the crash are unknown, pending a full investigation, officials said. The bus and train drivers both survived and will be interviewed by police. The train was carrying 25 passengers and traveling at 80 kmh, the regulatory speed for the section of track where the collision occurred, a spokeswoman for the national SNCF railway told Reuters. Three train passengers sustained relatively minor injuries, according to the interior ministry. Witnesses had reported that the barriers of the crossing were down at the moment of impact, the SNCF spokeswoman said, adding that all such preliminary information was subject to confirmation by investigators. France has suffered several serious rail accidents in recent decades. One of the deadliest was in 1988, when a commuter train heading into Paris Gare de Lyon crashed into a stationary train, killing 56 people, after its brakes failed. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's new PM sees punishment from Brussels coming;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Poland s new prime minister said on Thursday he expected the European Commission to launch an unprecedented punishment procedure against Warsaw next week after months of wrangling over the rule of law. Several thousand people gathered in Poland s largest towns on Thursday evening to protest against a judiciary system overhaul, while the upper chamber of parliament discussed the proposed legislation. Mateusz Morawiecki, who took over as Poland s premier this week, has defended the judicial changes pushed over two years by his predecessor from the same Law and Justice (PiS) party, saying they were necessary to heal the courts. Western European Union peers, the bloc s executive Commission, opposition at home and democracy advocates say the reforms undermine court independence by putting them under more direct government control. Under the legislation, parliament would have a virtual free hand in choosing members of the National Judiciary Council (KRS), a body that decides judicial appointments and promotions - a right earlier reserved chiefly for the judges themselves. A second bill envisages lowering the mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court judges to 65 years from 70, which would force a significant part of them to leave. This, as well as the eurosceptic, nationalist PiS s changes to the state media, have prompted the Commission to threaten for many months to launch the so-called Article 7 against Warsaw. PiS faced renewed accusations that it was muzzling free media after Poland s media regulator slapped a $415,000 fine on a leading, U.S.-owned news broadcaster TVN24 over its coverage of opposition protests in parliament last year. Morawiecki rejected the view that the penalty amounted to an assault on the freedom of media in Poland, saying the country of 38 million people enjoyed full media pluralism. He expected TVN to challenge the move in courts which would make the final call. PiS has also locked horns with the EU over large-scale logging in the unique Bialowieza forest, which Warsaw says is necessary to keep the woods healthy but Brussels and environmental groups say violate wildlife protection laws. Bitter feuds over migration - which Morawiecki on Thursday called a political hot potato - have added to the growing isolation of the bloc s largest ex-communist country since PiS won elections in late 2015. Article 7 would see Poland s government denounced as undemocratic and could lead to the suspension of Warsaw s voting rights in the EU. The latter, however, is unlikely as it would require the unanimous backing of all the other EU states, something PiS ally Hungary has vowed to block. But Morawiecki, speaking ahead of his first summit of EU leaders in Brussels, seemed to accept that the blow was coming. If a process has started and, as far as I understand, the decision has already been made that next Wednesday the European Commission plans to start (the procedure), then it will most likely be triggered, he told reporters. From the start of such an unfair procedure for us, until it ends, we will certainly talk to our partners. A senior EU official said the Commission s head, Jean-Claude Juncker would still seek to dissuade Warsaw from going ahead with the two judiciary laws, which were passed by Poland s lower chamber of parliament. They must still go through the PiS-dominated upper house and be signed by the PiS-allied president to take effect. If the court changes go through then we will trigger Article 7, the senior official said. If the changes are postponed until January, then we will see. Morawiecki stuck to his guns over the courts and Poland s refusal to host some of the refugees who reach the bloc. He said Poland would respect the final ruling of the bloc s top court on the Bialowieza forest. So far, Warsaw has continued the logging despite an interim order by the court to stop immediately. Morawiecki added he would seek to convince France to soften its stance on a reform of the bloc s labor laws. President Emmanuel Macron wants them tightened because he sees them as giving too much of a competitive edge to cheaper labor from the poorer eastern Europe at the expense of France s own workers. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada G7 presidency to focus on women, gender equality: Trudeau;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has made gender equality a priority, on Thursday said empowering women would be one of the main themes when Canada takes over the presidency of the Group of Seven next year. Trudeau, whose first act after taking power in 2015 was to appoint a cabinet with an equal number of women and men, told an event broadcast on Facebook that ending inequalities between the sexes was the right thing to do and would benefit the economy. Advancing gender equality and women s empowerment will be a part of every ministerial meeting, it will be part of the broader G7 agenda, and it will be considered every step of the way as we plan out all of our events, said Trudeau. The G7 groups some of the world s leading industrialized nations. Leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, will gather for a summit on June 8-9 in the Quebec region of Charlevoix. Trudeau said the other main themes for Canada s presidency were investing in growth that worked for everyone, preparing for jobs of the future, climate change and building a more peaceful and secure world. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nephews of Venezuela's first lady sentenced to 18 years in U.S. drug case;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two nephews of Venezuela s first lady were sentenced to 18 years in prison on Thursday following their convictions in New York on U.S. drug trafficking charges. U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty sentenced the two men, Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, 32, and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, 31, at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan. The two are cousins, both nephews of Cilia Flores, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro s wife. Lawyers for both defendants had asked for a shorter sentence of 10 years, while prosecutors had sought 30. Crotty said 30 years would be excessive, noting that Flores de Freitas and Campo Flores had no previous criminal history. What moves me is that Mr. Campo Flores and Mr. Flores de Freitas were perhaps not the most astute drug dealers who ever existed, he said. They were in over their heads. Both cousins spoke briefly before being sentenced. I know that I have made very serious mistakes in this case, Campo Flores said, going on to apologize to his wife and children. I ve always been a good person, Flores de Freitas said. Even in jail I tried to help those who were in a worse psychological situation than I find myself in. He asked that the judge allow him to return to Venezuela soon to be near his son. Lawyers for the two men had no immediate comments after the sentencing. Flores de Freitas and Campo Flores were arrested in Haiti in November 2015 in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation. Prosecutors said in a court filing they tried to make $20 million through drug trafficking to help keep their family in power. Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas were convicted in November 2016 by a jury of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. Lawyers for the two men said in a court filing earlier this year that prosecutors had proven only bungling discussions of a drug plot that could never actually have been executed. Days after the conviction, Maduro blasted the case in a speech as an instance of U.S. imperialism. Maduro has frequently cast U.S. accusations of drug trafficking as a pretext for meddling in Venezuela and trying to topple him. Under Maduro, oil-producing Venezuela has fallen into an economic and political crisis in which more than 120 people have died in four months of protests. The United States announced new sanctions against Maduro s government in July. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico presidential front-runner unveils planned cabinet;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The leftist front-runner for Mexico s 2018 presidential election on Thursday proposed a moderate U.S.-trained economist for finance minister, unveiling a planned cabinet made up of men and women in equal measure. Former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had a 12-point lead in one recent poll. He wants to overhaul Mexico s approach to the economy, security and education, vowing more support for the poorest but without new taxes or higher debt. For the finance portfolio, Lopez Obrador tapped Carlos Manuel Urzua, an academic who served as finance minister of the Mexico City government from 2000 to 2003 when the candidate, 64, was mayor of the capital. A veteran campaigner, Lopez Obrador was runner-up in the last two presidential contests. A self-declared nationalist, he hopes Mexico will elect him next July, reversing a Latin American trend towards right-leaning governments. If he wins, it could increase friction with U.S. President Donald Trump over his anti-migrant language and policies. Lopez Obrador, or AMLO as he is often known, proposed a cabinet of eight men and eight women, including a onetime interior minister for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and a respected former supreme court judge. The naming of Urzua encouraged the view that AMLO would be a more pragmatic manager of Latin America s second biggest economy than critics have warned he would be. We see an AMLO administration as increasingly moderate from a macroeconomic perspective and the signaling of Mr. Urzua, who is not an extremist economist by any means, corroborates this view, Marcos Casarin, head of Latin America macro services Oxford Economics, said in emailed comments. An author, researcher and university professor, Urzua earned a PhD and Master in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and a degree in Mathematics from Mexico s Tecnologico de Monterrey. He is also a poet who writes about inequality. For interior minister, Lopez Obrador selected Olga Sanchez, a former Supreme Court justice who helped move the country s top tribunal in a more liberal direction during two decades in the job. For education, Lopez Obrador picked Esteban Moctezuma, who served as interior minister under former President Ernesto Zedillo. For energy, he named Rocio Nahle, a chemical engineer and lower house leader of his MORENA party. In the July 1 election, AMLO looks likely to face former finance minister Jose Antonio Meade for the PRI, and Ricardo Anaya at the head of a right-left opposition coalition. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After London setback, May wins Brexit cheer in Brussels;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May made clear her desire on Thursday to move Brexit talks forward to a discussion of a future trade relationship at a dinner with EU leaders who applauded her for progress made so far. A day after she suffered a defeat in parliament over her blueprint for quitting the EU, May told her peers at a summit in Brussels that she was on course to deliver Brexit and urged them to speed up the talks to unravel more than 40 years of union. Offering her reassurance that they will endorse on Friday the launch of a second phase of negotiations on a free trade pact and an initial transition period, leaders responded to May s remarks by a brief round of applause before she was to leave the summit to allow them to discuss Brexit without her. A British government official said the prime minister made no secret of wanting to move on to the next phase and to approaching it with ambition and creativity . I believe this is in the best interests of the UK and the European Union, she told the leaders over a dinner of roasted langoustine and capon chicken. A particular priority should be agreement on the implementation period so we can bring greater certainty to businesses in the UK and across the 27, she added. Officials said German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated May on bringing the negotiations last week to the stage of sufficient progress that will enable leaders to accept opening the next phase of talks. Summit chair Donald Tusk will call May on Friday to update her after leaders have discussed their next moves on Brexit. May, weakened after losing her Conservative Party s majority in a June election, has so far carried her divided government and party with her as she negotiated the first phase of talks on how much Britain should pay to leave the EU, the border with Ireland and the status of EU citizens in Britain. But the second, more decisive phase, of the negotiations will further test her authority by exposing the deep rifts among her top team of ministers, or cabinet, over what Britain should become after Brexit. Acknowledging tough talks ahead, Tusk warned them that only the unity they had displayed so far would deliver a good deal on trade an issue on which the member states have different interests: I have no doubt that the real test of our unity will be the second phase of Brexit talks, he told reporters. May s team was upbeat. Look at what s been achieved so far. The deal on phase one which many commentators said couldn t be done, has been done, the British government official said. Look at the language from the other European leaders today ... All the signals from them are that they are looking forward to continue to negotiate with the prime minister. The EU is willing to start talks next month on a roughly two-year transition period to ease Britain out after March 2019 but wants more detail from London on what it wants before it will open trade negotiations from March. The deal almost fell apart last week, when May s Northern Irish allies rejected an initial agreement for fear that a promise to protect a free border with EU member Ireland could separate the region from the rest of the UK. After days of often fraught diplomacy, May rescued the deal to meet the EU s requirements for sufficient progress but the last-minute wobble by the Democratic Unionist Party, which she depends on in parliament to get laws passed, and the defeat in parliament on Wednesday, underline the struggles she faces. I m disappointed with the amendment, she told reporters as she arrived at the summit. But the EU withdrawal bill is making good progress through the House of Commons and we re on course to deliver on Brexit. May s success so far has won her some respite at home from political in-fighting between enthusiasts and sceptics of Brexit in her ruling party, and has reduced the prospect of a disorderly departure from the bloc. At the summit, she was again keen to show that Britain was an active member of the bloc, committing to staying in the Erasmus university programme until the end of 2020 and taking part in discussions on the bloc s plan for closer defence cooperation. Over dinner, leaders also discussed responses to the migration crisis from Africa and the Middle East, and lingering deep divisions over how to share the load. They confirmed a rollover of sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis and reaffirmed their opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump s move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;What a difference a year makes - EU warms to Britain's May;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - What a difference a year makes. A year ago, Prime Minister Theresa May was pictured standing alone at an EU summit, nervously playing with her sleeve as other leaders embraced and chatted around her - an image that summed up her isolation after Britain voted for Brexit. On Thursday, with the leaders of the other 27 states poised to agree to move Brexit talks forward to the decisive phase of discussing future ties, the 61-year-old was greeted with a show of support, including applause and a round of congratulations during a summit dinner. She needs it: the second phase of talks is likely to be even more difficult than the first and could widen divisions in her government, her party and the country over what Britain should become after Brexit. May also faces an emboldened parliament at home. Rebels in her Conservative Party joined forces with opposition lawmakers to vote against the government on her Brexit blueprint - something they may try to repeat next week when May plans to write Britain s departure date into law. But the change in atmosphere in Brussels improves the chances of a friendlier divorce, reducing the possibility of Britain crashing out without a deal. It may be a change born of necessity. A weakened May could be forced from office and the EU does not want to see a new, possibly hardline negotiator across the table half way through the talks. She is the best we ve got. She s all we got, said a senior EU official, comparing her positively with her Brexit minister, David Davis, whose comment that the initial deal was a statement of intent rather than a legal pact annoyed many in the bloc. For many Conservatives too, May is seen as the leading contender for securing Britain s exit in March 2019. I think the prime minister is certainly far and away best placed to do that, said British lawmaker and Brexit supporter David Jones, who was moved from his position as a Brexit minister earlier this year. She s done very well in connection with this first stage of the agreement against the odds ... What she has actually achieved is acceptance on the part of the European Union that not only are we leaving but we can leave without causing a problem to them internally. ACCIDENT-PRONE May was appointed prime minister shortly after Britain voted 18 months ago to leave the EU and she is committed to honoring that decision and unraveling four decades of EU membership. But the path has not been smooth. After losing her party s majority at a June election, May has been almost unnaturally accident-prone. An attempt to reassert her authority collapsed in a coughing fit during a speech at a Conservative party conference in October. Last week, a choreographed attempt to seal the deal to move on to the second phase of talks with the EU fell apart after her Northern Irish allies refused to sign off on it. That was when European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker hailed May as a tough negotiator , one who is defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has . An embarrassing defeat in parliament on Wednesday has underlined her weakness in relying on the support of a small Northern Irish party to pass legislation. But after two failed attempts from within her party to oust her, May has proved many detractors wrong, pushing on with Brexit, which has sapped the government s ability to pursue other policies and will define her time in power. The government s defeat on the amendment will make our exit more complicated, and there is now an incentive for the EU not to negotiate a good deal, said Conservative lawmaker John Baron. However, this process was hardly ever going to be smooth, and we remain on course to honor the referendum result. So for now, she is carrying her divided party with her. But the agreement to move to phase two, which some Conservatives described as a compromise, has shown some fraying at the edges of the coalition. The key is for her to keep her cabinet ministers on board. It s a fudge to get to the next stage ... but Leave cabinet members have been reassured they will get the Brexit they want, said a senior Conservative source. That may mean keeping the possibility open of Britain moving away from EU regulations after it leaves, which could worry EU officials. The British people will be in control, environment minister Michael Gove said last week. If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COLLUSION FUSION: DOJ Official’s CIA Wife Was Hired to ‘Research’ Trump;21st Century Wire says More evidence of collusion has surfaced this week just not the kind mainstream media has been incessantly reporting for months.Zero Hedge is reporting that Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, admitted in a court filing this week that his firm paid Nellie Ohr, wife of U.S. Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, to help dig up dirt in 2016 on then presidential candidate Donald Trump.Mr. Ohr was demoted from his senior post at the DOJ as associate deputy attorney general after it was revealed he met with Simpson and Christopher Steele, a retired British intelligence officer who assembled the now infamous Trump-Russia dodgy dossier. Read more at Zero Hedge, including details about the DNC s law firm Perkins Coie READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire RussiaGate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CLOAKED IN CONSPIRACY: Overview of JFK Files Reopens Door to Coup d’état Claims & Cold War Era False Flag Terror;Shawn Helton 21st Century WireSince late October, an ongoing release of intelligence files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have reignited decades old conspiracy claims. While the material released is reportedly a mix of new and old, some critics have declared that the recently declassified files reveal even more startling evidence regarding the death of 35th president of the United States.Upon reviewing pivotal historical elements linked to the Kennedy assassination, we re told that the vast majority of CIA and FBI records regarding the JFK files have been released, though many are still pending.Despite claims that newly revealed files contain smoking gun evidence in the enigmatic case, the murder of President John F. Kennedy is perhaps an act that will forever be shrouded in conspiracy and mystery as the controversial case is unlikely to bever e officially reopened during our lifetime. CLOAKED IN CONSPIRACY JFK assassination claims have been reignited following the CIA and FBI case record releases. (Photo Illustration 21WIRE s Shawn Helton)NOTE* While the JFK files have been making their way to The National Archives website since late October, some material released contains names of certain individuals that will remain redacted due to apparent concerns over national security.Although the JFK case is one of America s most compelling conspiracies, it s doubtful that there will ever be complete transparency regarding any information concerning a larger premeditated plot. Among the mountain of theories and credible information concerning the 35th president s assassination, is the likely inclusion of red herrings, false leads, misinformation and media tripwire s that will forever float in the ether of conspiracy realms in an effort to misdirect the public.In the early 1950 s, the CIA ran a cloaked wide-scale program called Operation Mockingbird. The controversial program infiltrated the American news media in order to influence the public, while also disseminating propaganda through various front organizations, magazines and cultural groups.At the start of 2017, more than 12 million declassified documents from the CIA were reportedly published online. While the intelligence docu-dump was believed to have shed additional light on covert war programs, psychic research and the Cold War era, it also contained more evidence confirming the symbiotic relationship between the CIA and American media. DARK DAY The JFK motorcade traveling through Dallas on November 22nd, 1963. Later that fateful day, Kennedy was scheduled to give a speech at the Dallas Trade Mart. One month earlier, Kennedy had discussed plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam. (Image Source: businessinsider)Over the course of this article, we ll take a look at one of America s most puzzling crimes, while examining some of the most intriguing aspects related to the recently declassified JFK files Guarding the Hen HouseAlthough the CIA s declassified JFK documents offer a window into a web of clandestine operatives, cloaked mafia figureheads and uncanny politically connections at play throughout the tension inducing Cold War era, one should remain skeptical and cautious, as it s very unlikely that any new release would result in a criminal case against the producers of such a large conspiratorial crime, even if such a plot revealed irrefutable evidence. TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS After Jim Garrison s case against Shaw, the DA was found not guilty on charges of bribery in a separate trial regarding illegal pinball gambling. Garrison represented himself in 3-hour much ballyhooed closing statement and was easily acquitted on all charges. (Image Source: nola)Moreover, while it s tempting to take the claims of the US intelligence apparatus at face value, an astute observer should tread lightly when viewing any new disclosures related to the JFK assassination.In fact, the very institutions releasing these files today, were at the heart of a controversial investigation conducted by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, whose CIA related conspiracy claims regarding President Kennedy s assassination led to charges against a well-known New Orleans businessman and former WW2 military intelligence officer named Clay Shaw. After having been decorated with several prestigious military merits without ever having seen fire in the battlefield Shaw quickly rose through the ranks of the military, even joining the counterintelligence squad known as the Special Operations Section.Shaw s military pedigree recalls the prototype for modern Deep State intelligence programs and the formation of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI), an intelligence propaganda agency in 1941 that was succeeded by Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a wartime intelligence apparatus created in 1942 which focused on psychological warfare prior to the formation of the CIA. OSS agents also worked closely with British Security Coordination (BSC). Additionally, the notorious right-wing paramilitary group Organisation arm e secr te (OAS) in France from 1954-1962 had close ties with the CIA through various front organizations connected to the agency.Below is passage concerning the formation of the CIA as illuminated by Jay Dyer of Jay s Analysis. Here we see that the inception of the CIA was a direct result of the passing of the National Security Act of 1947, as well as the influence of powerful political US-UK think-tanks coordinating in the background: First, the CIA (preceded by the OSS) was set up as a result of the National Security Act of 1947 [signed] under [Harry S. Truman after the OSS creation by] Franklin D. Roosevelt, springing in part from the Pratt House in New York (future home of the Council on Foreign Relations), itself modelled from the British Secret Intelligence Service. Likewise, the over-arching institutions that control and run the intelligence agencies in the West, like the Council on Foreign Relations, were modelled on the Oxford Round Table Groups and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Indeed, the Pratt House s British counterpart was the Chatham House. From America to Europe, the spectre of intelligence operations has loomed large throughout much of the last century and in the suspicious death of JFK, this was never more apparent CONSPIRATOR? A brooding Clay Shaw photographed during the JFK assassination trial in 1968. (Image Source: nola)Company Men & SpymastersIn the aftermath of WW2, Shaw was stated to have been officially discharged from military duty. This prompted the published playwright and Chevalier of the Order of the Crown in Belgium (Knight of Malta) to then travel to New Orleans, whereupon he supposedly received support from the entrepreneurial millionaire Theodore Brent, a local businessman known for rail and shipping operations, including the Mississippi Shipping Company, an organization believed to be a CIA intelligence front that allegedly focused on gathering information on Latin America. Incidentally, the former OSS intelligence officer Shaw, held his first post-war position with the Mississippi Shipping Company.In 1943, Brent helped charter the International House with a collection of leaders of commerce, trade and banking insiders. It would become one of two predecessors before the creation of the world s first trade center.In 1947, Shaw became a founder and managing director of International Trade Mart, a New Orleans financial partner housed in a 33-story cross-shaped building that played a large role in international commerce. The Trade Mart as it was called, merged with the International House to form the World Trade Center (see left photo) of New Orleans in 1968. Upon the apparent sponsorship of the trade center, the group sought to expand trade operations in Basel, Switzerland, a project that was backed by a slew of well-connected financiers that brought to fruition the organization known as Permindex. Over the years, many researchers have examined extremely compelling ties between the CIA and Permindex, as one of the holding company s main backers, a lawyer named Lloyd J. Cobb held a Covert Security Clearance issued by the CIA in October of 1953. In addition, Shaw served on the board of directors at Permindex, as Cobb would later become president of Trade Mart in 1962, providing further evidence of the kind of international reach held by the CIA-linked group of partners. Interestingly, one of the Trade Mart s stated goals would not only be to act as a conduit for foreign trade but the organization would also counter communist propaganda. This is something that would later fall in line with other CIA-linked operations over that time period.Temple University professor and well-known JFK researcher Joan Mellen, found a number of other links between the CIA and the International Trade Mart that aroused suspicion. Here s a short passage from her book entitled A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK s Assassination, And the Case That Should Have Changed History: The International Trade Mart was run by CIA operatives, its public relations handled by David G. Baldwin, who would later acknowledge his own CIA connections. Baldwin s successor, Jesse Core, was also with the CIA. It was a matter of saving the Agency shoe leather, Core would say. The Trade Mart donated money to CIA asset Ed Butler s INCA. Every consulate within its bowels was bugged. Furthermore, not only were Trade Mart and Permindex linked to the CIA but (see left photo) they were also suspected of ties to organized crime.In March of 1967, according to the Italian newspaper Paese Sera, Permindex was said to have been CIA front for the purposes of political espionage in Europe, including claims that the company took part in an attempted assassination on the French Prime Minister Charles de Gualle alongside the extremist French group OAS in 1961. There were some 30 attempts on de Gaulle s life in the early 1960 s, which many believe was linked to him granting Algeria independence. In 1966, de Gaulle also bucked the established order by withdrawing France from the NATO Military Command Structure. In 1958, after the inception of Permindex, Shaw, along with Cobb and other banking and trade insiders, including David Rockefeller, created a Permindex subsidiary in Rome known as Centro Mondaiale Commerciale (CMC). Permindex/CMC, were later kicked out of Italy due to implications that the CIA front organizations were involved in the subversion of European governments.After Shaw s arrest, Joan Mellen s husband Ralph Schoenman sent the Paese Sera newspaper articles to Garrison from London. The Italian paper according to Mellen, exposed the CIA s pernicious attempt to influence European electoral politics and thwart the democratic process in more than one country. Adding to that, Mellen explained in her book mentioned above, that the family of former CIA Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles (left photo), had been very interested in Permindex. In 2005, Dr. Daniele Ganser stated that a highly secretive CIA-backed paramilitary army was born out of the head of Allen Dulles in his seminal book, NATO s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. According Ganser s research, documents revealed that the CIA s covert armies were used to subvert the political interests of various nations through the implementation of a Cold-War era strategy of tension. As the former Swiss Director of the OSS, Dulles, had a tainted past tied to a program which sought to assimilate Nazi scientists into America after WW2 under the code name Operation Paperclip. A decade later in 1953, Dulles as head of the CIA approved $1 million dollars in the lead up to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in what became known as Operation Ajax (aka the TPAJAX project). One year later, in 1954, he was the mastermind of a Guatemalan coup.In the aftermath of the JFK assassination, Dulles would be appointed as one of a seven member panel on the controversial Warren Commission headed by fellow Freemason Chief Justice Earl Warren. Rather intriguingly, David Talbot s book entitled The Devil s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America s Secret Government, recently raised more questions concerning the potential role played by Dulles in the death of Kennedy.During the Dulles era as CIA chief, Shaw s served as an informant in the CIA s Domestic Contacts Service throughout 1948-1956. Given Shaw s extensive military intelligence background, it stands to reason any connection to the CIA would have been extremely significant.Prior to the formation of the top-secret project QKENCHANT in 1952, Shaw was granted a five-agency clearance in 1949. According to FOIA documents obtained by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, Subject [Shaw] was granted a Provisional Security Approval for use under Project QKENCHANT on an unwitting basis on 10 December 1962. The Agency project QKENCHANT was allegedly used to grant security approvals to non-Agency personnel, along with closely tied entities for the purpose of proposing future projects, activities and the formation of new relationships. Interestingly, project QKENCHANT also used the services of another individual swirling in the JFK assassination stratosphere named E. Howard Hunt. Years later, the former CIA operative and White House aide Hunt, would become a well-known name as he was tagged as one of five Watergate burglars that stained the Nixon administration after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The list of additional accomplices included three other apparent anti-communist Cuban exiles, along with G. Gordon Liddy, and James McCord who would also be implicated in the White House Plumbers plot.In 2007, although Hunt declined direct participation, he released a 2004 controversial confession that suggested he played a benchwarmer role in the plot to kill Kennedy. While Hunt s apparent allegations caused quite a stir, he fingered several suspected plotters such as the anti-Castro Frank Sturgis and Cuban exile leader of Alpha 66, Antonio Veciana, a man who claims to have inadvertently witnessed a meeting with the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy s death.In Michael Benson s Who s Who in the JFK Assassination: An A to Z Encyclopedia, according to Garrison, CMC represented the paramilitary right in Europe, along with the Italian fascists, American CIA and other interests. Here s a compelling passage from Benson s book that links CMC, Permindex, the CIA and organized crime: According to evidence in the WC [Warren Commission] hearings, Permindex was suspected of funding political assassinations and laundering money for organized crime. Shaw was also on the board of directors for Permindex s sister corporation, Centro Mondaiale Commerciale CMC.Benson s book also cites other well researched claims regarding CMC and the apparent money laundering of their liquid assets. According to a 1958 State Department document, the CMC, the World Trade Center of Rome, was indeed modeled after the CIA-created Trade Mart in New Orleans.More recently, important groundbreaking documents associated with the construct of CMC were unearthed in 2016 by the Italian journalist Michele Metta.According to well-known researcher and writer Jim Marrs a tangled web of intelligence operations linked to Permindex and CMC were further described in his book entitled Cross Fire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. Below is a revealing passage from the seminal JFK researcher: The Trade Mart was connected with the Centro Mondaiale Commerciale CMC through yet another shadowy firm named Permindex (Permanent Industrial Expositions), also in the business of international expositions. Continuing, Cross Fire exposed other suspicious intelligence links: The Italian media reported that [Ferenc] Nagy was president of Permindex and the board chairman and major stockholder was Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield a powerful Montreal lawyer who represented the Bronfmans, a Canadian family made wealthy by the liquor industry, as well as serving US intelligence services. Reportedly Bloomfield established Permindex in 1958 as part of the creation of worldwide trade centers connected with CMC. As reported in investigative work by David Goldman and Jeffery Steinberg in 1981, Bloomfield was stated to have been recruited to be part of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in 1938. later the Montreal lawyer obtained an official rank in the US Army, OSS intelligence and the FBI s counterespionage Division Five unit as confirmed by Marrs. Additionally, Bloomfield held close ties with Master Mason FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Tibor Rosenbaum, a head of finance for Israeli intelligence.Further conspiratorial claims would be levied on Rosenbaum s Geneva-based Banque de Credit International (BCI), a Mossad-linked bank that allegedly laundered Permindex money to finance assassination attempts on de Gaulle. BCI was also the predecessor to the scandal plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) that was later found to be peddling in terror funding, arms deals and prostitution. BCCI would later be implicated in the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report called The BCCI Affair. In 1974, Rosenbaum himself was said to have owed BCI some $60 million after his business associate Baron Edmond de Rothschild of the Israel Corporation, discovered an apparent an open and shut case of unauthorized conversion of company funds, that were transferred to the insolvent Inter Credit Trust of Vaduz instead of BCI. COVERT OPERATOR? Lee Harvey Oswald seen handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans in August of 1963. (Image Source: neworleanspast)The Dallas Plot & The Cuban ProjectIn March of 1967, Garrison, the ex-FBI agent turned DA, indicted Shaw on conspiracy charges related to the assassination of President Kennedy. It would take 22 months before the court proceedings would begin in a trial which lasted 34 days. Aspects of the Shaw trial became popularized following Oliver Stone s much debated and controversial thriller entitled JFK (1991).At the start of the trial in 1969, Garrison s opening statement contended that Shaw, a man believed to have used the alias known as Clay Bertrand (also Clem) within the New Orleans socialite scene and gay underground, was also a well-connected former military intelligence officer with no formal background in trade that allegedly participated in a plot to kill the 35th president of the United States. Garrison would further assert that Shaw met with a former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald and an airline pilot for Eastern Airlines, David Ferrie on several occasions over the summer of 1963, eventually culminated in a meeting at Ferrie s New Orleans apartment where Garrison s star-witness a 25-year-old insurance salesman for Equitable Life Assurance Society named Perry Raymond Russo, apparently overheard the men discussing critical details regarding a JFK assassination plot in September of 1963.Below is screen shot depicting a portion of a NY Times article discussing Russo s testimony of the JFK plot Russo s account of what happened was a major part of the trial and has been one of the most controversial aspects of Garrison s case against Shaw ever since. Over the years, researchers and mainstream critics have debated the credibility of Russo after receiving hypnosis prior to his testimony.JFK case critics believe that due to the combination of the credibility of witnesses called into question, the possibility of planted witnesses and the untimely deaths of some 18 material witnesses, including the controversial death of Ferrie, who was not able to be deposed, Shaw was acquitted in 54 minutes in the only JFK assassination case to make it to trial.A documentary entitled The JFK Assassination;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COLLUSION FUSION: DOJ Official’s CIA Wife Was Hired to ‘Research’ Trump;21st Century Wire says More evidence of collusion has surfaced this week just not the kind mainstream media has been incessantly reporting for months.Zero Hedge is reporting that Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, admitted in a court filing this week that his firm paid Nellie Ohr, wife of U.S. Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, to help dig up dirt in 2016 on then presidential candidate Donald Trump.Mr. Ohr was demoted from his senior post at the DOJ as associate deputy attorney general after it was revealed he met with Simpson and Christopher Steele, a retired British intelligence officer who assembled the now infamous Trump-Russia dodgy dossier. Read more at Zero Hedge, including details about the DNC s law firm Perkins Coie READ MORE RUSSIAGATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire RussiaGate FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two dead, several wounded in stabbing in southern Dutch city Maastricht: police;AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - At least two people were killed and several others wounded by stabbings in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht on Thursday evening, police said. The police said in a statement there were two stabbing incidents with a few hundred meters (yards) of each other in a residential neighborhood in northern Maastricht, which borders Germany and Belgium. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain First leader whom Trump re-tweeted arrested again in Belfast;BELFAST (Reuters) - A leader of a British far-right group, whose anti-Islamic posts were retweeted by U.S. President Donald Trump causing outrage in Britain, was arrested in Northern Ireland on Thursday minutes after being bailed over a separate incident. Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the fringe anti-immigrant Britain First group, appeared at a court in Belfast to face charges of using threatening, abusive or insulting words in a speech at a rally in the city in August. She was remanded on continuing bail until January 9 on condition that she does not go within 500 meters of any rally or demonstration before the case is finished. As she left court, Fransen, 31, was then arrested and charged with breaking the same law in a separate incident on Wednesday near one of the peace walls that separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods, police said. Police declined to give any further details of the incident. Britain First s leader Paul Golding, 35, was also arrested as he accompanied Fransen to the courthouse and later charged in connection with the August incident. Trump s sharing of Fransen s anti-Muslim videos, posted on Twitter, provoked outrage in Britain last month, drawing a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Theresa May and straining relations between two close allies. An attempt by police to restrict Fransen s use of social media - Twitter and Facebook - was rejected by the judge on Thursday. Fransen was fined last month after being found guilty by a court in England of religiously aggravated harassment for shouting abuse at a Muslim woman wearing a hijab. Her lawyer told Belfast Magistrates Court on Thursday she would be pleading not guilty to the charges she faces in relation to the August rally. Golding is a former senior figure in the far-right British National Party and founded Britain First in 2011. The group describes itself as a patriotic political party and street movement . Critics denounce it as a racist organization. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian opposition says U.N. talks are in 'great danger';GENEVA (Reuters) - The international community must do more to persuade the Syrian government to negotiate in U.N.-led talks, which were in great danger , the head of the opposition delegation said after an eighth round ended in failure in Geneva on Thursday. Opposition negotiator Nasr Hariri told a news conference that the government of President Bashar al-Assad hated the talks process and rejected all negotiations, and although there was pressure from its ally Russia, another state was putting obstacles in the path of the Geneva talks. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Four killed in Canada helicopter crash;(Reuters) - Four people were killed on Thursday when a helicopter belonging to utility Hydro One crashed in central Ontario, the company said in a statement. Hydro One did not provide details on its four employees who were killed in the crash, saying names would not be released until next of kin had been notified. The company, which is based in Ontario, said emergency services were on site in the Tweed area of rural central Ontario, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Toronto. It said it had notified the appropriate oversight groups. The Ontario Provincial Police said in a statement that officers responded to the crash shortly after 12:30 pm ET (1730 GMT), and were joined by emergency response services, including a forensic identification unit. Police said Canada s Transportation Safety Board would investigate. A woman named Kim Clayton tweeted that Hydro One staff had been working on power lines on her property before the crash. On Wednesday a small airplane carrying 22 passengers and three crew members crashed after taking off in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombia urgently crafting law to allow crime gangs to surrender;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia s government is urgently working with Congress on a law that would lay out terms of surrender for crime gangs such as the Gulf Clan, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday, after the gang declared a unilateral ceasefire. The Gulf Clan, also known as the Usuga Clan and the Autodefensas Gaitanistas, has been accused of operating drug trafficking routes in partnership with Mexican cartels and taking part in illegal gold mining. It announced a ceasefire on Wednesday and has said its members were willing to turn themselves in. Santos, speaking at a event about the eradication of coca crops in Antioquia province, hailed the ceasefire and said a surrender of the group would be welcome, but added that security forces will not halt actions against the group. If this organization wants to surrender to justice it s very welcome and we re working with the justice minister to put together some decrees and there s a law in Congress to facilitate the collective surrender of the Gulf Clan that we are classing as urgent, Santos said. The president has said the government will not negotiate with the group because members are criminals and not politically motivated rebels like the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) or National Liberation Army (ELN). Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas, speaking at the same event, said operations against the Clan will continue. The fact that they won t shoot is good news but if they continue to commit crimes they will be targeted, he said. We are not going to suspend operations or lower our guard. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU agrees to extend economic sanctions on Russia until mid-2018;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to prolong for another six months the bloc s economic sanctions on Russia, imposed over the annexation of Ukraine s peninsula of Crimea and Moscow s support for rebels in east Ukraine. The sanctions, which target Russia s energy, defense and financial sectors, would otherwise expire at the end of January 2018. Donald Tusk, the chairman of EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, said the 28 were united on roll-over of economic sanctions on Russia. Moscow says it will never return Crimea, which it annexed in 2014 in a move that has not been recognized internationally. The West says Russia has also been providing a lifeline to separatists in eastern Ukraine, where a conflict with Kiev troops has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine leader welcomes EU's extension of sanctions on Russia;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday the EU s decision to extend economic sanctions on Russia was an important political decision on behalf of his country. The EU announced the six-month extension earlier in the day of the sanctions imposed in retaliation for Russia s annexation of Ukraine s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backing of separatist rebels in Ukraine s eastern Donbass region. (It is) an important political decision by the leaders of the European Union to continue economic sanctions against Russia for violating Ukraine s territorial integrity and unwillingness to stop hybrid aggression against our country, Poroshenko wrote on his official Facebook page. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Watchdog says Gulf rift taking toll on ordinary citizens;DUBAI (Reuters) - Families are being torn apart by the rift between Qatar and three other Gulf Arab states which began six months ago, Amnesty International said on Thursday, despite measures to ease the impact of the crisis on ordinary citizens. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, along with Egypt, imposed travel, economic and diplomatic sanctions on Qatar in June over allegations of supporting terrorism. Doha denies the charge. The human rights group, citing interviews with individuals and Qatari officials, said thousands of people had been affected by the rift, which has split families, raised food prices for foreign workers and made visits to Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia more difficult. Officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain could not immediately be reached to comment on the report. But the three U.S.-allied countries had announced measures in June to ease the impact of the dispute on mixed families, including setting up hotlines to deal with humanitarian issues. Saudi Arabia has also said it was allowing visits to holy sites and opened its doors to Muslims in Qatar to perform the annual Muslim haj pilgrimage. Diplomatic efforts led by Kuwait to resolve the dispute have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough. The report was based on interviews with 44 affected individuals conducted in late November in Qatar as well as meetings with Qatari officials. Despite measures to allow families in mixed marriages to visit, many were finding it difficult to comply with procedures required to apply for a laissez-passer that allows residents of Qatar to travel to see loves ones in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or the UAE, the report said. It said that there was scant, or no, information about the application process on official UAE and Saudi ministry websites, while travel to Bahrain had become more difficult since Manama imposed an entry visa requirement for Qatari nationals and residents at a time when the embassy in Doha is closed. Affected families told Amnesty International that hotlines announced by the Bahrain, Saudi Arabian and UAE governments were difficult to access, the rights watchdog said. Lynn Maalouf, Director of Research for the Middle East at Amnesty International, said that by imposing travel restrictions on ordinary people, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have violated the right to family life, education and freedom of expression . Since this dispute began in June, our fears about its potential to rip families apart have been cruelly and emphatically realized, Maalouf said in a statement. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada spy agency settles lawsuit alleging homophobia, racism;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada s spy agency has settled a lawsuit by five employees who accused their bosses of homophobia, racism and Islamophobia and it will work to stamp out harassment, the head of the agency said on Thursday. The employees filed a C$35 million ($27.4 million) lawsuit in July against the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), saying they had been bullied for more than a decade. CSIS Director David Vigneault said in a statement that the settlement was in the best interest of all those concerned but gave no details. CSIS does not tolerate harassment, discrimination, or bullying under any circumstances ... we will be working to ensure that the behavior of all employees reflects the CSIS employee code of conduct principles of respect, he added. CSIS, which employs 3,300 people, has suffered a number of problems since it was created in 1984. Last November, a court declared it had illegally kept data collected during investigations and threatened sanctions. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. suspends aid to Somalia's battered military over graft;NAIROBI (Reuters) - The United States is suspending food and fuel aid for most of Somalia s armed forces over corruption concerns, a blow to the military as African peacekeepers start to withdraw this month. African Union (AU) troops landed in Mogadishu a decade ago to fight al Shabaab Islamist militants and Somali forces are supposed to eventually take over their duties. But the United States, which also funds the 22,000-strong peacekeeping force, has grown frustrated that successive governments have failed to build a viable national army. Diplomats worry that without strong Somali forces, al Shabaab could be reinvigorated, destabilize the region and offer a safe haven to other al Qaeda-linked militants or Islamic State fighters. The U.S. suspension of aid came after the Somali military repeatedly failed to account for food and fuel, according to private correspondence between the U.S. and Somali governments seen by Reuters. During recent discussions between the United States and the Federal Government of Somalia, both sides agreed that the Somali National Army had failed to meet the standards for accountability for U.S. assistance, a State Department official told Reuters last week, on condition of anonymity. We are adjusting U.S. assistance to SNA units, with the exception of units receiving some form of mentorship, to ensure that U.S. assistance is being used effectively and for its intended purpose, the official said. The U.S. suspension comes at a sensitive time. The AU force - with troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda - is scheduled to leave by 2020. The first 1,000 soldiers will go by the end of 2017. The State Department official said Washington would continue to support small, Somali special forces units mentored by U.S. personnel and would work with the Somali government to agree criteria that could restore support to other units. It is true that some concerns have been raised on how support was utilized and distributed. The federal government is working to address these, Somali Minister of Defence Mohamed Mursal told Reuters. Documents sent from the U.S. Mission to Somalia to the Somali government show U.S. officials are increasingly frustrated that the military is unable to account for its aid. The documents paint a stark picture of a military hollowed out by corruption, unable to feed, pay or arm its soldiers - despite hundreds of millions of dollars of support. Between May and June, a team of U.S. and Somali officials visited nine army bases to assess whether the men were receiving food the United States provides for 5,000 soldiers. We did not find the expected large quantities of food at any location ... there was no evidence of consumption (except at two bases), the U.S. team wrote to the Somali government. At one base, less than a fifth of the soldiers listed by Somali commanders were present. The best-staffed base had 160 soldiers out of 550. Only 60 had weapons. Many appeared to be wearing brand new uniforms. This implied they were assembled merely to improve appearances, the letter, seen by Reuters, said. An ongoing assessment of the Somali military this year by the Somali government, African Union and United Nations drew similar conclusions. The joint report seen by Reuters said many soldiers lacked guns, uniforms, food, vehicles or tents. Troops relied on support from AU forces or local militias to survive. The SNA is a fragile force with extremely weak command and control, the report said. They are incapable of conducting effective operations or sustaining themselves. Most units don t have radios, leaving soldiers to rely on runners to get help when mobile networks go down, the report said. Troops lacked paper to write reports, toilets, boots and medical equipment such as tourniquets. Many slept under trees. SNA units were at 62 percent of their authorized strength on average. Only 70 percent of them had weapons, the report said. Although the report was deeply critical, diplomats praised the government for trying to quantify the scope of the problem. The government deserves massive praise for doing it and being willing to talk about it, Michael Keating, the U.N. s top official in Somalia, told Reuters. The United States also suspended a program paying soldiers $100 monthly stipends in June after the federal government refused to share responsibility for receiving the payments with regional forces fighting al Shabaab. Washington has spent $66 million on stipends over the past seven years but has halted the program several times, concerned the money was not going to frontline soldiers. One Somali document seen by Reuters showed members of a 259-strong ceremonial brass band were receiving stipends this year meant for soldiers fighting militants. The State Department s watchdog said in a report published in October there were insufficient checks on the program and U.S. stipends could fund forces that commit abuses - or even support insurgents. Officially, Somalia s military is 26,000 strong, but the payroll is stuffed with ghost soldiers, pensioners and the dead, whose families may be receiving their payments, diplomats say. Intermittent payments from the government have forced many active soldiers to sell their weapons, ammunition or seek other work - practices the U.S. stipends were designed to curb. Washington has whittled down the number of troops it pays to 8,000 from over 10,000 but there is still no reliable payroll, said a Mogadishu-based security expert. Defence Minister Mursal said the United Nations is creating a biometric database and plans to help the Somali government make cash payments directly to soldiers via mobile phones. The new government will also set up a separate system for widows, orphans, and the wounded so the payroll would adequately represent military strength, he said. The weakness of Somali forces has deadly consequences. The insurgency is striking with ever larger and more deadly attacks in the capital Mogadishu and major towns. A truck bomb killed more than 500 people in October and a suicide bomber killed at least 18 at a police academy on Thursday. Yusuf, a 35-year-old Somali soldier stationed near the Indian Ocean port of Kismayu, knows what it s like to depend on local militias and AU forces to stay alive. On Sept. 26, insurgents attacked his base at Bula Gadud, killing 15 colleagues and wounding scores more before the local Jubaland militia and AU peacekeepers saved them. We lost several key members in that battle especially my close friend, he told Reuters. We tried to retreat ... after using all the ammunition we had. A senior Somali security source said when the attack happened, the battalion of more than 1,000 soldiers had only been issued 300 guns. Defence Minister Mursal said the Somali troops at Bulagadud have since been sent more weapons. Somalia s national security plan calls for a military of 18,000 soldiers, funded by the central government and operating country-wide. Getting there will be hard. Security experts say the military is dominated by a powerful clan, the Hawiye, which would be reluctant to lose control of the lucrative security assistance revenue stream. Many regional governments within Somalia already see the Hawiye-dominated federal forces as rivals rather than allies. The government s ability to push reforms depends on balancing demands from federal member states, lawmakers, clan leaders and international partners, the U.N. s Keating said. It s going to take a long time and its going to run into massive clan resistance, he said. Some clans are very dominant in the security forces. Somalia s partners also need to get serious and coordinate better, said Matt Bryden of the think-tank Sahan Research. According to Sahan, donors - including the EU, AU, Turkey and Uganda - have trained more than 80,000 Somali soldiers since 2004. Bryden said records are so poor it was not clear if many had taken multiple courses, or just quit afterwards. It s like sand through your fingers where are they all? ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. jets fire flares to warn Russian jets in Syria;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. F-22 fighter aircraft fired warning flares on Wednesday after two Russian Su-25 jets entered an agreed upon deconfliction area in airspace east of the Euphrates river in Syria, the U.S. military said. Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the F-22 aircraft were providing air cover to partnered ground forces when the Russian jets came into airspace near Albu Kamal. The incident lasted for about 40 minutes and coalition officials contacted the Russians through a communication link to avoid a miscalculation. At one point, Pahon said, a Russian jet came close enough that one of the F-22 aircraft had to aggressively maneuver to avoid a midair collision. U.S. officials have said that as the battlefield against Islamic State shrinks, they expect Russian and U.S. aircraft to be in closer proximity. Since early November, Russian jets have flown east of the Euphrates river in the deconflicted airspace about six to eight times a day, according to the U.S. military. It s become increasingly tough for our pilots to discern whether Russian pilots actions are deliberate or if these are just honest mistakes, Pahon said. The Coalition s greatest concern is that we could shoot down a Russian aircraft because its actions are seen as a threat to our air or ground forces, he added. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said the U.S. military will fight Islamic State in Syria as long as they want to fight, describing a longer-term role for U.S. troops after the insurgents lose all of the territory they control. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. chief presses for release of arrested Reuters journalists in Myanmar;TOKYO/YANGON (Reuters) - The arrest of two Reuters journalists in Yangon this week was a signal that press freedom is shrinking in Myanmar and the international community must do all it can to get them released, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday. Guterres said his main concern over Myanmar was the dramatic violations of human rights during a military crackdown in Rakhine State that forced more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the country for southern Bangladesh, and the arrest of the journalists was probably related. It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country, he told a news conference in Tokyo, referring to the detention of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who had been working on stories about the strife in Rakhine State. And probably the reason why these journalists were arrested is because they were reporting on what they have seen in relation to this massive human tragedy, he added. Myanmar s Ministry of Information said in a statement on Wednesday that the Reuters journalists and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media , the ministry said in its statement, which was accompanied by a photo of the two reporters in handcuffs. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say their exodus from the mainly Buddhist nation was triggered by a military offensive in response to Rohingya militant attacks on security forces at the end of August. The United Nations has branded the military s campaign in Rakhine State a textbook example of ethnic cleansing of the minority Rohingya. Guterres said the international community should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. He called for aid to be delivered, violence contained and reconciliation promoted in Rakhine State, and for the Rohingyas right of return to be fully respected and implemented. Britain has expressed grave concerns to the government of Myanmar over the arrest of the two journalists, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters in London on Thursday. We are committed to freedom of speech and people s ability to report the facts and bring into the public domain what is happening in Rakhine state, he said. Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Freedom of the press is essential for democracy and must be preserved, she said. And the president of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani also called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo went missing on Tuesday evening after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner on the outskirts of Yangon. The authorities have not confirmed where the journalists are being held and, as of Thursday evening, Reuters had not been formally contacted by officials about their detention. At Htaunt Kyant police station, where the journalists were charged, family members of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were told that the pair were being detained at another location by an investigative team. They are not here, said Police Second Lieutenant Tin Htway Oo, according to Pann Ei, wife of reporter Wa Lone. The police investigation team took them soon after they were arrested. He said he did not know where the journalists were, Pann Ei added, but he did tell her they would be brought back to the station in two to three days at most. Reuters could not immediately reach Tin Htway Oo for comment. Police Lieutenant Colonel Myint Htwe of the Yangon Police Division told Reuters the reporters location would not be disclosed until the investigation was complete. It will be known later. Please wait a while, he said. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said in a statement on Wednesday: We are outraged by this blatant attack on press freedom. We call for authorities to release them immediately. The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in the country. In a statement, it called on the authorities to ensure the safety of the reporters and allow their families to see them. The foreign correspondents club in neighbouring Thailand said it was alarmed by the use of this draconian law with its heavy penalties against journalists simply doing their jobs . Wielding such a blunt legal instrument has an intimidating effect on other journalists, and poses a real threat to media freedom, the Bangkok-based club said in a statement, calling for the journalists to be released. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia, North Korea discuss bilateral 2015 treaty: Russian embassy;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The first meeting of a Russian-North Korea military commission is discussing the implementation of a 2015 agreement on preventing dangerous military activities signed by the two nations in 2015, Russia s embassy to Pyongyang said on its Facebook page on Thursday. Russia s defense ministry delegation arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday. It will stay in North Korea until Saturday, an embassy official told the RIA news agency. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China complains about Taiwan content in U.S. defense act;BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday it had complained to the United States about the signing into law of an act which authorizes the possibility of mutual visits by navy vessels between self-ruled Taiwan and the United States. Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a daily news briefing that China was firmly opposed to the Taiwan content in the act. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Deadly Austria gas blast likely caused by loose filter cap: operator;VIENNA (Reuters) - Tuesday s blast at Austria s Baumgarten gas hub, which killed one person and disrupted European gas flows, was most likely caused by a loose seal on a filter cap, operator Gas Connect Austria (GCA) said. The hub in eastern Austria is a major regional transfer node, taking gas from as far away as Russia and pumping it towards neighbors including Italy - its biggest recipient - as well as Germany, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. The investigating authorities believe that the incident was caused by the seal on the cap of the filter separator, GCA, a unit of energy company OMV, said on its website. The cap had come loose and was propelled with great force against another part, causing damage to this part as well. The gas which subsequently escaped was then ignited, leading to a gas fire at two points of origin. To see the GCA statement, click here: here GCA added that the parts in question were isolated from the rest of the site in accordance with an emergency plan, allowing gas flows to return to normal on Wednesday. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin, ahead of election, says opposition would destabilize Russia;MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that some of his opponents would destabilize Russia and usher in chaos if they were elected in a presidential election next year, but promised genuine political competition. Putin, who is running for re-election in March, was answering a question at his annual news conference about opposition leader Alexei Navalny who looks unlikely to be allowed to contest the election due to what Navalny says is a trumped up criminal case. The question was put to him to Ksenia Sobchak, a television personality who has said she plans to run against Putin in the same election, which polls suggest Putin will comfortably win. Putin, in response, accused Sobchak, who has said she wants to attract voters who are against all candidates, of not offering any positive solutions to the problems facing Russia. He likened Navalny to former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili who came to power in his own country in 2004 after a peaceful revolution and is now heavily involved in politics in Ukraine, where he is calling for the impeachment of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Do you want tens of people like Saakashvili to be running around public squares? Putin asked Sobchak, when asked about Navalny not being allowed to take part in the election. Those who you ve named (Navalny) are the same as Saakashvili, only the Russian version. And you want these Saakashvilis to destabilize the situation in the country? Do you want attempted coups d etat? We ve lived through all that. Do you really want to go back to all that? I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens do not want this. Putin said the authorities were not afraid of genuine political competition and promised such competition would exist. Navalny, commenting on social media, said Putin s response showed the reasons for barring him from taking part in next year s presidential election were due to a political decision. It s like he s saying we re in power and we ve decided that it (Navalny running) is a bad idea, Navalny said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kosovo prosecutor drops extradition case over alleged Turkey coup links;PRISTINA (Reuters) - A Kosovo prosecutor withdrew his bid on Thursday to extradite a Turkish citizen accused by Turkey of being part of a group linked to a failed coup there in 2016, saying Ankara had not provided enough evidence to back the case. Ugur Toksoy was arrested in October at the request of prosecutors in the Turkish region of Hatay, on charges of working for an NGO in Kosovo linked to U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of masterminding a failed coup attempt in 2016. The Hatay prosecutors said Toksoy had participated in the attempted coup. Gulen has denied any involvement in the attempted coup. The Kosovo prosecutor told the judge in withdrawing his case that he had asked the Turkish embassy to provide more evidence but had not received any. He said he could start the case again if Turkey sends more evidence. Justice in Kosovo has won with this verdict because there was no evidence for extradition, Toksoy s lawyer Adem Vokshi said after the session was over. If Turkey had proof about him, they would have sent it by now. Toksoy is one of two Kosovo-based Turks named on a Turkish wanted list of 11 people issued by the public prosecutor in Hatay province bordering Syria and seen by Reuters. The others are listed as living in Austria, Thailand, Mauritania, Romania and Lithuania. Gulen-linked schools and foundations have been facing funding problems and closing in the Balkans and elsewhere. Kosovo has refused to close Gulen schools on its soil, while Turkish government-supported schools are also being opened across the country. Turkey remains one of the biggest supporters of Kosovo s independence and its companies run the country s sole airport, own electricity distribution and have won the tenders to build two highways worth around $2 billion. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's new eastern leaders stick to guns on refugees;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The new prime ministers of Poland and the Czech Republic vowed not to give any ground on the divisive issue of hosting refugees as they arrived in Brussels on Thursday for their first summit of European Union leaders. More than two years after a massive influx of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa created deep divisions in the EU, members are still feuding over how to share the burden of caring for asylum seekers. The row pits frontline countries Italy and Greece, and rich destination countries like Germany, against four ex-communist states on the EU s eastern edge - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - that have refused to welcome refugees. Poland s Mateusz Morawiecki and the Czech Republic s Andrej Babis, who both took office this month and said they wanted good and pragmatic ties with the EU, made clear that they would maintain the hard line of their predecessors on migration. It is worth investing considerable amounts of money in helping refugees in (regions) they are fleeing from. The help on the ground there is much more effective, said Morawiecki, explaining Warsaw would do that instead of accepting refugees. The four eastern prime ministers offered 35 million euros to Italy on Thursday to support EU-backed migration projects in Libya aimed at curbing immigration to Europe. [L8N1OB30J] Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, arriving at the summit, welcomed the financial contribution but said the four still needed to accept refugees. I think it was a very important decision, he said of the money pulled together by the four easterners. Differences, however, remain. We will continue to insist that a commitment on the relocation of refugees is needed. Two years after the biggest influx of refugees and migrants into Europe since World War Two, an EU deal with Turkey has shut the main eastern Mediterranean route through Greece and across the Balkans used by more than 1 million people in 2015. The biggest remaining route is from Libya across the Mediterranean to Italy. Hundreds of thousands have been making the trip each year and thousands have died at sea. New efforts to curb smuggling from Libya s coast have reduced the numbers in recent months, but human rights groups say thousands of African migrants are now stuck in squalid conditions in Libyan camps. The southern EU countries where most migrants first arrive, and the wealthier northern countries where many seek asylum, want all EU states to accept at least some refugees. The ex-communist eastern states say this amounts to bullying them to help solve political problems for their wealthier neighbors. All EU leaders will discuss the issue over dinner in Brussels on Thursday, though no decisions are expected, with a French source stressing the controversy would take much more time to untangle. [L8N1OD360]. The dispute reopened this week when Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who now chairs the summits, came out against obligatory relocation quotas, ruffling feathers in many EU states and the bloc s executive Commission. Divisions on migration...are accompanied by emotions which make it hard to find common ground. We should work even more intensively to keep our unity, Tusk said ahead of the summit. But his intervention upset Italy, Germany and other proponents of the quotas, who warn they could force the waverers to accept refugees in a majority vote if no compromise is found by June. It won t happen, Babis told reporters ahead of the summit, highlighting that any attempt to impose nonsensical quotas in a majority vote would only widen the divisions in the EU. Slovakia s Robert Fico also said unanimity must prevail in the EU, especially on such thorny issues. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Do not expect postcard-sized tax return from Republican plan: experts;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Since mid-2016, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has carried around a postcard that he has said shows how easy it will be for Americans to file their taxes once Republicans are finished their tax overhaul. And as recently as Thursday President Donald Trump touted Americans being able to file their taxes on a single, little beautiful sheet of paper. With lawmakers finalizing the biggest tax reform in 30 years and the president ready to sign it into law before the end of the year, the moment should be near when Ryan s postcard stops being a rhetorical prop and becomes a reality. Right? It s kind of crazy to say you can file on a postcard when, first, no one is going to put their Social Security number on a postcard. And second, you already have a giant postcard in the form of the 1040EZ, Mark Mazur, a director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said, citing a 14-line Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax form. Representatives from the $11 billion U.S. tax preparation industry said that the legislation so far seemed unlikely to render their services unnecessary. I don t think you re going to have millions of people filing their taxes on a cell phone, said Mark Steber, chief tax officer at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc [JAKHT.UL]. I think the demise of the tax business is a bit premature. The IRS would not discuss changes that might come from the proposed tax overhaul. However, the IRS estimates that, despite its efforts to make filing taxes easier, 90 percent of Americans use tax preparation services such as Jackson Hewitt, H&R Block Inc and Liberty Tax Inc or tax software such as TurboTax from Intuit Inc. If Congress enacts the Republican plan into law, it would not affect 2017 tax-year returns filed in 2018. But in 2019, millions of middle-class Americans would no longer gain from a wide range of deductions, credits and other tax breaks. A key driver of this, according to independent analyses, would be a proposed doubling of the standard deduction and a curtailment of the deduction for state and local tax payments. In combination, these two changes would mean that about 29 million people would no longer benefit from itemizing. So they would stop writing off their charitable donations, mortgage interest and state and local tax payments, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank. Itemized deductions for medical expenses, investment interest, unreimbursed employee expenses and tax preparation fees could also be dropped by many. Personal exemptions for individual taxpayers, which now take up a lot of space on tax forms, would also be eliminated. Such changes would mean simpler taxes and possibly allow a number of taxpayers to use shorter forms. The IRS expects 24 million people in 2018 to file the longest and most widely used IRS form today, the Form 1040, which is 79 lines long. About 4.6 million people will use the 14-line 1040EZ. Wealthy Americans likely would still itemize under the Republican plan. Owning businesses, homes and other factors could also lead to taxes being more complicated than what filers could describe on a postcard. Even though we re talking about simplification for a large number of taxpayers, there s still many taxpayers who will have complicated tax situations and we ll be there to help them as well, said David Williams, chief tax officer for TurboTax. (Adds first name, title in 4th paragraph) ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N.'s Guterres warns against 'sleepwalking' into war over North Korea;TOKYO (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, warning against the danger of sleepwalking into war, said on Thursday that Security Council resolutions on North Korea s nuclear and missile programs must be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries. Guterres made the comments to reporters after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo just days after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions. The White House said Wednesday that no negotiations could be held with North Korea until it improves its behavior. The White House has declined to say whether President Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher rhetorical line toward Pyongyang, gave approval to Tillerson s overture. It is very clear that the Security Council resolutions must be fully implemented first of all by North Korea but by all other countries whose role is crucial to ... achieve the result we all aim at, which is the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Guterres said. Guterres added that Security Council unity was also vital to allow for the possibility of diplomatic engagement that would allow denuclearisation to take place. The worst possible thing that could happen is for us all to sleepwalk into a war that might have very dramatic circumstances, he said. Japan says now is the time to keep up maximum pressure on Pyongyang, not start talks on the North s missile and nuclear programs. China and Russia, however, have welcomed Tillerson s overture. Abe, who spoke to reporters with Guterres, reiterated that dialogue needed to be meaningful and aimed at denuclearisation. We fully agreed that the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is indispensable for the peace and stability of the region, Abe said. Tillerson s overture came nearly two weeks after North Korea said it had successfully tested a breakthrough intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that put the entire United States mainland within range. In September, North Korea fired a ballistic missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the second to fly over Japan in less than a month. North Korea appears to have little interest in negotiations with the United States until it has developed the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile, something most experts say it has still not proved. United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman, who visited Pyongyang last week, said on Tuesday senior North Korean officials did not offer any type of commitment to talks, but he believes he left the door ajar . ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Luxembourg PM says May's task complicated by need for parliament vote;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Luxembourg s prime minister on Thursday said British counterpart Theresa May s ability to negotiate her country s withdrawal from the European Union is complicated by her need for parliament s approval at home. This is not good for Theresa May because the agenda is not going to move, Xavier Bettel told reporters on arrival to a summit of European leaders in Brussels. As soon as she negotiates something she will need to go back to London and get approval from Parliament. This is not making her life easier. This does not change the agenda, it just makes it more difficult for the UK government. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Broke South Sudan hike fees, blocks aid despite appeal for cash;NAIROBI (Reuters) - South Sudan is hiking fees for humanitarians and blocking them from reaching hungry families, even as the oil-rich country appeals for nearly 2 billion dollars to help avert starvation amid a civil war, five aid groups told Reuters. The government and the United Nations announced on Wednesday that South Sudan needs $1.7 billion in aid next year to help 6 million people half its population cope with the effects of war, hunger and economic decline. But aid groups said bureaucracy, violence and rocketing government fees were stopping their work, despite a promise from President Salva Kiir to allow unhindered access after the United States threatened to pull support to the government in October. All the aid workers spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of expulsion from the country. Alain Noudehou, the U.N. s top humanitarian official in the country, said the increased fees are a major concern. [It] will take away from the resources we have to address the crisis, Noudehou, humanitarian coordinator for the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), said on Wednesday. Juba announced plans in March to charge each foreign aid worker $10,000 per annual permit but later dropped them. It revised the fees steeply upwards last month, however, requiring some foreign aid workers to pay $4,000 for a permit 16 times the old rate. At least two aid groups have paid, they told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Humanitarian Affairs Minister Hussein Mar Nyout said on Wednesday he had received many complaints over the new fees and restrictions on travel for some aid workers. This is not in the spirit of the president and we are going to implement the order of the president, he said in response to questions at a news conference. About one-third of South Sudan s 12 million population have fled their homes since the civil war began in 2013, two years after it won independence from Sudan. The United Nations describes the violence as ethnic cleansing. Earlier this year, pockets of the country plunged briefly into famine. The economy has nosedived, there is hyperinflation, and the government is unable to pay civil servants and soldiers because oil production has collapsed and official corruption is rampant. The confusion over permits delays aid, organizations said. Nobody understands who is giving directives and who is supposed to implement, said the head of one international aid group in South Sudan. He said customs have seized his organization s IT equipment, despite an import tax waiver for aid groups. Last week, a team of doctors said they were denied permission to travel outside the capital because they had not received work permits they had paid for. Another aid group said it is unable to bring in foreign medical staff to complete a government-approved project because authorities said even a consultant visiting South Sudan for a week had to pay $4,000 for a permit that takes months to obtain. The first issue is the inherent absurdity and impracticality of the rules, said an employee of the aid group. The second is that laws are being tried inconsistently by four government agencies that are at loggerheads. South Sudan expelled the Norwegian Refugee Council s country director last year, while some 28 aid workers have been killed this year, with nine shot dead in November alone, according to the United Nations. UNMISS staff are exempt from the work permit requirement but the government has forced some contractors to pay, in violation of an agreement with the U.N., an UNMISS spokeswoman said. Juba is not honoring a similar treaty exempting aid agencies receiving U.S. funding, a Western diplomat said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police raid locations linked to Islamist militants;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police investigating four people suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated attack raided nine locations in Berlin and the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt on Thursday, prosecutors said. The four suspects, aged between 18 and 21, are accused of being members of the Islamic State group, prosecutors and police said in a statement. Three are believed to be in Syria: two traveled from Berlin via Istanbul to Islamic State-held territory in Syria in November 2016 and a third is accused of receiving military training in Syria. The fourth is believed to have helped the other three travel there. Prosecutors did not say if any arrests were made in the raids, mounted by some 130 officers, including special forces, who confiscated electronic devices. The General Prosecutor s Office in Berlin is investigating four suspects aged between 18 and 21 who are suspected of membership in a terrorist organization (IS) as well as of preparing a serious crime against the state, the statement said. Bild newspaper said police had arrested a number of people suspected of having links to a failed asylum seeker who killed 12 people by driving a truck into crowds at a Berlin Christmas market last year. Tunisian Anis Amri escaped after launching the Dec. 19 attack and was shot by Italian police in Milan less than a week later. The affair exposed failings by intelligence agencies who had stopped surveillance of Amri after concluding he posed no danger. Security at Christmas markets has been beefed up this year with guards and concrete blocks. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa calls for end to Western sanctions;HARARE (Reuters) - New President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday called for the removal of Western sanctions on members of Zimbabwe s ruling elite and said elections due in 2018 were nearer than you expect . The United States maintains a travel and economic embargo on several ZANU-PF party officials, top military figures and some government-owned firms. It imposed it during former president Robert Mugabe s rule over what it called violations of human rights and democracy. The EU lifted most of its sanctions in 2014 but kept them on Mugabe and his wife Grace. We call for the unconditional lifting of the political and economic sanctions, which have crippled our national development, Mnangagwa told a meeting of the ZANU-PF central committee in downtown Harare. We realize that isolation is not splendid or viable as there is more to gain through solidarity, mutually beneficial partnerships. Mnangagwa, 75, became leader of the southern African nation last month after the military and ruling ZANU-PF turned against Mugabe, who had ruled the country for 37 years and was thought to be grooming his wife to succeed him. In the latter half of Mugabe s rule, the economy collapsed, especially after violent and chaotic seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. The issuance of billions of dollars of domestic debt to pay for a bloated civil service triggered a collapse in the value of Zimbabwe s de facto currency and hyperinflation. The International Monetary Fund has promised to send a staff mission to Zimbabwe soon to meet with officials of the new government and assess the country s fiscal and economic situation. The international community will also be closely watching the next elections in 2018. The vote is due at the end of July in 2018 but there is talk it could be brought forward to as early as March. Government will do all in its powers to ensure that the elections are credible, free and fair. These elections are nearer than what you expect, Mnangagwa said without elaborating. The ruling and opposition parties have said they will ask electoral authorities to extend next week s voter registration deadline into February after the de facto military coup last month disrupted the registration process. Mnangagwa will be confirmed as party leader and its candidate for the presidential elections at a special one-day congress on Friday with Mugabe absent. The 93-year-old former leader reportedly visited a hospital in Singapore for medical checks this week. In comments suggesting he intends to draw a line under years of endemic corruption and impunity, Mnangagwa said he would name and shame those who failed to return stolen public funds after a three-month amnesty ending in February next year. He is under pressure to deliver, especially on the economy, which is in the grip of severe foreign currency shortages. I have given three months for those who have taken money out of this country to bring it back, the president said. I didn t say that without knowledge. I have a list of who took money out, so in March when the period expires, those who have not heeded my moratorium, I will name them and shame them, he said to loud applause. Separately, Former Zimbabwe finance minister Ignatius Chombo faced new corruption charges on Thursday. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe ex-leader Mugabe visits Singapore hospital: sources;SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe visited a hospital in Singapore this week apparently for medical checks, his first trip outside his country since he was ousted from office last month, sources in Singapore said on Thursday. The 93-year-old former leader who ruled the southern African nation for 37 years, resigned after the army and his ruling ZANU-PF party turned against him when it became clear that his 52-year-old wife, Grace, was being groomed as his successor. Mugabe left Harare with his wife and aides on Monday evening, a Zimbabwe state security official said this week. He was expected to also visit Malaysia where his daughter is expecting a child. An Air Zimbabwe flight arrived in Singapore on Tuesday. Mugabe visited a private hospital in central Singapore on Wednesday with an entourage that included his security guards, the sources who were familiar with the visit told Reuters. They spoke on the condition they were not identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media. A spokesman at the hospital said he would not be able to confirm whether Mugabe had visited its clinics. Mugabe has a reputation for extensive international travel, including regular medical trips to Singapore - a source of public anger among his impoverished citizens. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel says good chance to start next phase of Brexit talks;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she believed there was a good chance that the next phase of Brexit negotiations could begin. Progress has been made regarding the exit of Great Britain, but there are some open questions so it is good that we will talk about it tomorrow, she said before a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. She said she welcomed the work the EU s chief Brexit negotiator had made on agreeing an outline deal on divorce issues. Therefore I see a good chance that we can now begin phase two, she said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In-flight sexual assaults often unreported;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO's Stoltenberg says EU and NATO stronger together;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg welcomed greater cooperation between the Western military alliance and European Union on Thursday, saying the two were stronger together. Forces and capabilities developed under EU initiatives have to be available also for NATO because we only have one set of forces, NATO s secretary general told reporters on arrival at a summit of European leaders. Together we are stronger. With Brexit also on the summit s agenda, he said that Britain s withdrawal from the EU would not change its relationship with the military alliance. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy adopts living wills allowing patients to refuse treatment;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s Senate passed into law on Thursday a bill allowing severely ill people to refuse treatment that would prolong their lives. The bill passed 180 votes to 71 in the face of opposition from right wing parties. It allows all adults to prepare a document to express their preferences on how to be treated if they lose the faculty to choose or express their choice. Some 10 years after legislation on patients rights to choose what care to receive at the end of their lives was first proposed, the lower house of parliament approved the bill in April. This will be one of the government s last acts before parliament is dissolved ahead of elections next year. The ruling Democratic Party (PD) had pledged another civil rights measure, making it easier for the children of migrants to obtain citizenship, but this law now looks unlikely to pass. Parliament s decision makes everyone takes a step forward in terms of civilization for the country and of human dignity, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who is not a party leader and is unlikely to run in the election, said in Brussels. By Italian parliamentary standards, the bill s passage was relatively swift thanks to an agreement between two of the biggest parties - the PD and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement - to vote it through. The deal was a rare example of cooperation between the two parties, which are usually bitter enemies. The anti-immigrant Northern League, which vies with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi s Forza Italia party for the most votes on the right, fiercely fought the bill. Forza Italia also opposed it, though less strongly. This law is a precursor to euthanasia, said Northern League senator Gian Marco Centinaio. Final discussion of the bill coincided with the high-profile case of a disc jockey paralyzed and blinded in a road accident who went to Switzerland to be helped to die. A Radical party member and right-to-die activist who accompanied Fabiano Antoniani, known as DJ Fabo, to the Swiss clinic, is currently on trial in Milan for aiding suicide. In the living wills, which can be recorded on video if the patient cannot write, food and water can be refused as well as medical treatment. However if a patient refuses treatment, the doctor is still obliged to reduce their suffering, and can also use sedation. The law also gives doctors scope to object on conscientious or religious grounds. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India PM Modi's party seen sweeping state polls in popularity boost;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi s ruling group will sweep an election in his home state of Gujarat, surveys showed on Thursday, shaking off the most serious challenge yet from a combined opposition. The election for a new state assembly in Gujarat is seen as a litmus test for Modi ahead of a national election in 2019. Voting closed on Thursday. A win would help him dismiss critics who said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party s support base was eroding after last year s shock move to ban high-value currency notes in the fight against graft, and poor implementation of a national sales tax this year hit businesses. The Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi and teaming up with regional politicians has run a tough campaign aiming to weaken Modi in his home base and rouse public discontent over lack of jobs and a softening economy. But three separate television exit polls at the close of the final round of voting on Thursday showed the BJP winning more than 100 seats in the 182-member state house, well clear of the half-way mark of 92 required to rule. Congress, the main opposition party, will win 70-74 seats, the polls showed, better than in the past but not enough to oust the BJP from power. Another exit poll, conducted by a Today s Chanakya group, gave the BJP a two-thirds victory. The actual votes will be counted on Monday and exit polls and other surveys have often gone wrong in India, where millions vote. The Congress party said it was too quick to call the election based on exit polls. The BJP has ruled Gujarat since 1998, with Modi as its chief minister for more than a decade before he became prime minister three years ago. Modi has won praise for transforming the coastal state into an economic powerhouse and deploying business-friendly policies to lure foreign investors. To ensure his party s prospects, Modi led from the front to campaign in the state and addressed dozens of public rallies, performed rituals and even waved from a sea plane on the last day of his campaign trail. On Thursday, Modi cast his ballot in Gujarat s Ahmedabad city and then hit the streets again, showing off his inked finger as he walked, surrounded by hundreds of supporters. In separate exit surveys released for state polls held in Himachal Pradesh state also showed Modi s party emerging as a winner. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain expresses grave concerns over arrest of Reuters journalists in Myanmar;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has expressed grave concerns to the government of Myanmar over the arrest of two Reuters journalists, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Thursday. Myanmar s Ministry of Information said in a statement on Wednesday that the journalists and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. We have already expressed our grave concerns to the Burmese government, Johnson told reporters in London. We are committed to freedom of speech and people s ability to report the facts and bring into the public domain what is happening in Rakhine state, he said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Kuczynski loses key ministers' support amid scandal: sources;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has lost support of senior cabinet officials after it emerged he had business links to scandal-plagued Brazilian company Odebrecht, two government sources said on Thursday, amid opposition calls for him to resign. Cabinet members were shocked to learn on Wednesday about payments Odebrecht said it had made to a company controlled by Kuczynski, who had repeatedly denied having any ties to the construction firm, the sources said. Key ministers and lawmakers within Kuczynski s party want him to step down, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Kuczynski has denied any improper earnings and offered to explain the matter to Congress. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says war must not be allowed on Korean peninsula;BEIJING (Reuters) - The crisis over North Korea s weapons programs must be resolved through talks, not war, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, while U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the danger of sleepwalking into conflict. Xi made his comments to visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Tuesday to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions. But the White House said on Wednesday that no negotiations could be held until North Korea improved its behaviour. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tillerson s offer of direct contacts with North Korea was a very good signal while warning that any U.S. strike on the country would have catastrophic consequences. Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump discussed North Korea during a phone call, the White House and Kremlin said in separate statements. The two leaders talked about working together to resolve the very dangerous situation, the White House said on Thursday. Tillerson is to attend a U.N. Security Council ministerial meeting on North Korea in New York on Friday at which he plans to urge countries to maintain a U.S.-led campaign to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its weapons programs through sanctions. North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29, which it said could put all of the United States within range, in defiance of international pressure and U.N. sanctions. The United States has said all options were on the table in dealing with North Korea, including military action. Meeting in Beijing s Great Hall of the People, Xi told Moon the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula must be stuck to, and war and chaos cannot be allowed, Chinese state media said. The peninsula issue must, in the end, be resolved via dialogue and consultation, Xi was cited as saying. China and South Korea have an important shared interest in maintaining peace, and China was willing to work with South Korea to promote talks and support North and South to improve relations, Xi said. South Korea s Yonhap news agency said Xi and Moon agreed war on the peninsula would not be tolerated and they would cooperate in applying sanctions and pressure on North Korea. The apparently warm tone of their talks followed nearly a year of tense relations between the two countries. China has been furious about the deployment of the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea, saying its powerful radar can see far into China. China and South Korea agreed in October to normalise exchanges and move past the dispute, which froze trade and business exchanges. Xi reiterated China s position on THAAD and said he hoped South Korea would continue to appropriately handle the issue. Guterres, speaking to reporters in Tokyo after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said Security Council resolutions on North Korea s nuclear and missile programmes must be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries. He said he expected Friday s Security Council meeting would deliver a strong expression of unity and the need for diplomacy to resolve the issue. The worst possible thing that could happen is for us all to sleepwalk into a war, he said. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said after meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in London on Thursday that military options in North Korea did not look attractive and the best way forward was to intensify economic pressure. Both China and Russia have welcomed Tillerson s apparent overture. Putin said a U.S. strike on North Korea would have catastrophic consequences and that he hoped to work with Washington eventually to resolve the crisis. Putin told a news conference that Russia did not accept North Korea s nuclear status, but some U.S. actions had provoked North Korea. We believe the two sides should now stop aggravating the situation, he said. North Korea justifies its weapons programmes as necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention. North Korea s state news agency KCNA said Trump was taking a big step towards nuclear war in seeking a naval blockade and North Korea would take merciless self-defence measures if the United States tried to impose one. North Korea would regard a naval blockade as an act of war and a wanton violation of its sovereignty and dignity, the agency cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying, while reiterating that North Korea was a responsible nuclear power that would fulfil its non proliferation commitments. It was not immediately clear if the latter remark was a response to Tillerson s statement this week that Washington could not accept Pyongyang as a nuclear power as it was a proliferation risk. Washington has not publicly called for a blockade of North Korea, but has sought tougher U.N. steps, including non-consensual inspections of shipping to North Korea. Stepped-up U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed in September after North Korea s sixth nuclear test called on states to inspect vessels on the high seas, with the consent of the flag state, if they had reasonable grounds to believe the ships were carrying prohibited cargo. A tougher U.S.-drafted resolution was watered down to win the support of Russia and China. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;While focus is on North Korea, China continues South China Sea buildup: think tank;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While attention in Asia has been distracted by the North Korean nuclear crisis in the past year, China has continued to install high-frequency radar and other facilities that can be used for military purposes on its man-made islands in the South China Sea, a U.S. think tank said on Thursday. Chinese activity has involved work on facilities covering 72 acres (29 hectares) of the Spratly and Paracel islands, territory contested with several other Asian nations, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of Washington s Center for Strategic and International Studies. The report cited satellite images. The United States and its allies oppose China s building of artificial islands in the South China Sea and their militarization, given concerns Beijing plans to use them to deny access to strategic routes. It s completely normal for China to conduct peaceful construction and build essential defense equipment on its own sovereign territory, China s foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular press briefing on Friday, in response to a question about the report. We believe certain people who have ulterior motives are making mountains out of molehills and stirring up trouble. The report said that in the last several months China had constructed what appeared to be a new high-frequency radar array at the northern end of Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys. Subi Reef had seen tunnels completed that were likely for ammunition storage and another radar antenna array and radar domes, the report said. Construction on Mischief Reef included underground storage for ammunition and hangars, missile shelters and radar arrays. Smaller-scale work had continued in the Paracel Islands, including a new helipad and wind turbines on Tree Island and two large radar towers on Triton Island. It said the latter were especially important as waters around Triton had been the scene of recent incidents between China and Vietnam and multiple U.S. freedom-of-navigation operations, which the U.S. navy has used to assert what it sees as its right to free passage in international waters. Woody Island, China s military and administrative headquarters in the South China Sea, saw two first-time air deployments that hint at things to come at the three Spratly Island air bases farther south, the report said. At the end of October, the Chinese military released images showing J-11B fighters at Woody Island for exercises, while on Nov. 15, AMTI spotted what appeared to be Y-8 transport planes, a type that can be configured for electronic surveillance. The Pentagon has conducted several patrols near Chinese-held South China Sea territory this year, even as it has sought China s help in northeast Asia to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reiterated a call for a freeze in China s island building and said it was unacceptable to continue their militarization. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nazareth cuts back Christmas celebrations to protest Trump's Jerusalem move;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Nazareth, the Israeli Arab city where Jesus is thought to have been raised, has canceled some Christmas celebrations in protest at U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, an official said. Trump announced the move last week, reversing decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, jeopardizing Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. Nazareth, the largest Arab town in Israel with a Muslim and Christian population of 76,000, is one of the Holy Land s focal points of Christmas festivities. We have decided to cancel the traditional Christmas singing and dancing because we are in a time of dispute, because of what Trump has said about Jerusalem, city spokesman Salem Sharara said. Nazareth is traditionally thought to be where Jesus grew up. The imposing Basilica of the Annunciation in central Nazareth is built on a site which many Christian faithful believe was the childhood home of Jesus mother, Mary. Sharara said the town s market stalls and the traditional Christmas church services would be held as they are every year. Within an hour of the announcement, the Palestinian towns of Bethlehem, Jesus s traditional birthplace, and Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank briefly switched off their Christmas lights in protest. There was no word from the Bethlehem municipality whether it was also weighing a cutback on its celebrations at a crucial time of year for the town s tourist trade. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraq hangs 38 Sunni militants in mass execution: justice ministry;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq hanged 38 Sunni Muslim militants on Thursday after they were sentenced to death on terrorism charges, the justice ministry said in a statement. The mass executions were carried out at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, the statement said quoting the Justice Minister. On Sept. 24, Iraq executed 42 Sunni Muslim militants on terrorism charges ranging from killing members of security forces to detonating car bombs. The justice ministry said all the convicted were members of Islamic State. Officials have said all the appeal options available to the condemned had been exhausted, according to the statement. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea's Moon tries K-Pop and TV stars in China charm offensive;BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in will unveil an array of TV talent and K-Pop celebrities at events, including a state dinner, in China on Thursday as he attempts to smooth out a year of difficult diplomacy with a star-laden charm offensive. South Korean celebrities, including some of those accompanying Moon, had been shut out of Chinese television and concert halls as relations cooled between the East Asian neighbors as they faced the threat posed by North Korea s missile and nuclear programs. The thorniest issue was South Korea s deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system that China sees as a threat to its security. Moon is hoping to use his first visit to China since taking office in May to build support for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis that has grown steadily through the year. Pyongyang tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29, which it said could put all of the United States within range, in defiance of international pressure and U.N. sanctions. Meeting in Beijing s Great Hall of the People, Moon told Chinese President Xi Jinping he would be discussing North Korea with him. I expect to reaffirm and discuss specific cooperation with President Xi about our common position that we ll address the North Korean nuclear issue, which is threatening peace and security of not only the northeast Asia region but the entire world, in a peaceful manner and establish eternal peace on the Korean peninsula, Moon said in comments in front of reporters. Moon also oversaw the signing of a memorandum on follow-up negotiations about services and investments under a South Korea-China Free Trade Agreement. Top South Korean actress Song Hye-kyo, star of 2016 s hit drama Descendants of the Sun and the face of many South Korean cosmetics brands, will join Moon and Xi in a state dinner later on Thursday. Song will be joined by married South Korean and Chinese actors, Choo Ja-yeon and Xiaoguang Yu. Boy band EXO, one of the top-earning artists of major K-Pop talent agency S.M. Entertainment, joined Moon and Song at a bilateral business event earlier on Thursday. The presence of such celebrities reflects Seoul s hope to break the ice after the row over its deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system. China complains that the THAAD system s powerful radar can see far into its territory and does nothing to ease tension with North Korea. The THAAD deployment cost South Korean firms such as K-Pop businesses dearly as China retaliated. Concerts in China by major K-Pop artists have been halted since the second half of 2016, South Korean celebrities dropped from advertisements and South Korean dramas all but disappeared from Chinese TV channels this year, Korean entertainment industry officials said. Xi told Moon that relations between their countries had experienced some setbacks - likely a reference to the THAAD dispute - but that he hoped his visit would be an important opportunity to improve them. As friendly neighbors and strategic partners, China and South Korea have broad common interests in keeping the region peaceful and promoting mutual developments, Xi said. South Korea and China share the goal of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and stop testing its increasingly sophisticated long-range missiles, but the two have not seen eye-to-eye on how to achieve this. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Tuesday to begin talks with North Korea at any time and without pre-conditions, but a White House official later said no negotiations could be held until North Korea improved its behavior. Moon, whose trip ends on Saturday, has been accompanied by the largest business delegation ever to accompany a South Korean leader abroad. The THAAD disagreement is estimated to have knocked about 0.4 percentage points off expected economic growth in South Korea this year and resulted in lost revenues of about $6.5 billion from Chinese tourists in the first nine months of 2017, according to the Bank of Korea and Korea Tourism Organisation. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says naval blockade would be 'act of war', vows action;SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Thursday warned it would take merciless self-defensive measures should the United States enforce a naval blockade, which Pyongyang sees as an act of war , the isolated nation s state media said. Citing a foreign ministry spokesman, the North s KCNA news agency said a naval blockade would be a wanton violation of the country s sovereignty and dignity. U.S. President Donald Trump was taking an extremely dangerous and big step towards the nuclear war by seeking such a blockade, it added. It was not immediately clear what U.S. proposal the agency was referring to. Should the United States and its followers try to enforce the naval blockade against our country, we will see it as an act of war and respond with merciless self-defensive counter-measures as we have warned repeatedly, the agency said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin says stronger Russia-China ties a major boon for everyone;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Stronger ties between Russia and China are good for everyone, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, adding that Moscow and Beijing would remain long-term strategic partners regardless of the result of Russia s 2018 presidential polls. Putin also told his annual news conference that China was looking with great interest at Russia s northern sea route in the Arctic which could significantly cut the time for shipments of goods between Asia and Europe. Putin said Russia would support China s further involvement in Russian projects, including in the energy sector. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China summons Australian envoy over political meddling allegations;SYDNEY (Reuters) - China summoned Australia s ambassador to lodge a complaint last week over Canberra s allegation that Beijing had sought to interfere in Australian politics, a source familiar with the diplomatic action told Reuters on Thursday. Relations between Australia and China became strained in recent weeks after Canberra said it would ban foreign political donations as part of a crackdown aimed at preventing external influence in domestic politics, sharpening the focus on China s soft power. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull singled out China as he said foreign powers were making unprecedented and increasingly sophisticated attempts to influence the political process in Australia. In response, China summoned Ambassador Jan Adams to a meeting at the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs on December 8 to lodge a complaint, the source said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang confirmed the ministry had an important discussion with the Australian ambassador. The Australian side should be very clear about China s position on the relevant issue, Lu told a daily news briefing, without elaborating. China s Foreign Ministry said last week Turnbull s allegations were full of prejudice against China, were baseless and poisoned the atmosphere of China-Australia relations. Turnbull s allegations have been criticized by Australia s opposition Labor Party as showing an anti-China bias that could jeopardize bilateral trade. China, which is easily Australia s biggest trading partner, bought A$93 billion ($70 billion) worth of Australian goods and services last year. Australia s unshakeable security relationship with the United States, however, has limited how cosy it gets with China. Turnbull denied indulging in anti-Chinese rhetoric, insisting Labour was using the issue to win favor with a large voter block ahead of a make-or-break by-election on Saturday that analysts said will determine his political future. I am disappointed they have tried to turn Australians against each other, Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moscow, Cairo may sign deal on Friday to resume Russian flights to Egypt: TASS;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Egypt may sign an agreement on Friday allowing to resume Russian civilian flights to Egypt, the TASS news agency cited Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov as saying on Thursday. Egypt s aviation minister will travel to Russia on Thursday to sign protocol agreements to resume the flights that were suspended after the 2015 bombing of a Russian tourist jet, two ministry sources said in Cairo. Moscow halted civilian air traffic to Egypt in 2015 after militants detonated a bomb on a Russian Metrojet flight, downing the jet leaving from the tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and killing 224 people on board. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sweden to raise minimum pension age as retirees live longer;STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden will raise the minimum age at which workers can take their state pension over the coming years, a move designed to match an increase in average life spans, the major political parties said on Thursday. Workers can currently choose to take their state pension from the age of 61. This will be raised successively to 64 by 2026. The current pension system was designed around 20 years ago and Swedes now live around 2.5 years longer on average. That is positive but it means that pensions ... have to last a longer time, the parties said in a statement. In order to maintain a good and sustainable pension level, therefore, people need to work longer. The reforms will also make it harder for companies to get rid of people who want to continue to work after the mandatory pension age and tighten requirements for funds providers in the pension system after a number of scandals. [L8N1CU16Y] The deal, which will not affect state finances either positively or negatively, was agreed between the minority coalition of the Social Democrats and Greens, the Moderates - the biggest opposition party - and the Center, Liberal and Christian Democrat parties. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico Senate committees pass controversial security bill;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican Senate committees on Wednesday approved a controversial security bill that human rights groups say risks granting excessive power to the armed forces in their already checkered role in combating organized crime in the country. The bill, which enjoys some cross-party support between conservatives and centrists, will now pass to the floor of the upper house of Congress for discussion and possible approval late on Wednesday or on Thursday morning. The Law of Internal Security aims to regulate the armed forces role in combating drug cartels, a conflict which has claimed well over 100,000 lives in the last decade. Senate committees approved the bill on Wednesday, a senate spokesman said. Lawmakers who support the bill say it will set out clear rules that limit the use of soldiers to fight crime. Rights groups have strongly attacked the bill, saying it prioritizes the military s role in fighting the gangs over improving the police, and could open the door to greater abuses and impunity by the armed forces. The military has already been embroiled in multiple human rights scandals including extrajudicial killings of gang members and the disappearance of 43 students near one of its bases in 2014. The United Nations, Amnesty International and Mexican human rights organizations have all criticized the bill. This law should not be approved quickly, it puts liberties at risk by giving more power to the armed forces without designing controls and counterweights, said Santiago Aguirre from the Miguel Agustin Pro Center for Human Rights. Last week, President Enrique Pena Nieto asked lawmakers to include civil society s views in their discussion of the bill, which sparked attempts by protesters to bar access to the upper house of Congress when it reached the Senate. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China angered as U.S. considers navy visits to Taiwan;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - China accused the United States on Thursday of interfering in its internal affairs and said it had lodged a complaint after U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law an act laying the groundwork for possible U.S. navy visits to self-ruled Taiwan. Tensions have risen in recent days after a senior Chinese diplomat threatened China would invade Taiwan if any U.S. warships made port visits to the island which China claims as its own territory. On Monday, Chinese jets carried out island encirclement patrols around Taiwan, with state media showing pictures of bombers with cruise missiles slung under their wings as they carried out the exercise. On Tuesday, Trump signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year, which authorizes the possibility of mutual visits by navy vessels between Taiwan and the United States. Such visits would be the first since the United States ended formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 and established ties with Beijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said while the Taiwan sections of the law were not legally binding, they seriously violate the One China policy and constitute an interference in China s internal affairs . China is resolutely opposed to this, and we have already lodged stern representations with the U.S. government, Lu told a daily news briefing. China is firmly opposed to any official exchanges, military contact, or arms sales between Taiwan and the United States, he added. Proudly democratic Taiwan has become increasingly concerned with the ramped up Chinese military presence, that has included several rounds of Chinese air force drills around the island in recent months. Taiwan is confident of its defenses and responded quickly to the Chinese air force drills this week, its government said, denouncing the rise in China s military deployments as irresponsible. Taiwan presidential spokesman Alex Huang, speaking to Taiwan media in comments reported late on Wednesday, said the defense ministry had kept a close watch on the patrols and responded immediately and properly. Taiwan can ensure there are no concerns at all about national security, and people can rest assured , Huang said. Both sides of the narrow Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan from its giant neighbor, have a responsibility to protect peace and stability, he added. Such a raised military posture that may impact upon and harm regional peace and stability and cross-strait ties does not give a feeling of responsibility, and the international community does not look favorably upon this, Huang was quoted as saying. Relations have soured considerably since Tsai Ing-wen, who leads Taiwan s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, won presidential elections last year. China suspects Tsai wants to declare the island s formal independence, a red line for Beijing. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. Taiwan is well equipped with mostly U.S. weapons but has been pressing for more advanced equipment to deal with what it sees as a rising threat from China. The United States is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-backed military alliance to help G5 Sahel fight: minister;PARIS (Reuters) - A Saudi-backed Islamic military coalition will provide logistical, intelligence and training to a new West African counter-terrorism force that is struggling to get off the ground, Saudi Arabia s foreign minister said. The announcement by Adel al-Jubeir signals the involvement in the Sahel of a Muslim military alliance widely seen as a vehicle for countering the growing influence of Riyadh s rival Iran. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday agreed to provide about $150 million to the G5 Sahel force, which is composed of the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, a sign that Gulf Arab states are upping their influence in the region. The Sunni Muslim kingdom is seeking to check the ambitions of Shi ite power Iran to expand its clout in West Africa and across the Muslim world. Speaking in an interview with France 24 television, Adel al-Jubeir said his country s contribution would go much further by using the platform of the recently-established Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition to support the G5 Sahel. Because of our commitment to fighting terrorism and extremism we made the commitment to provide 100 million euros to these forces and we made this commitment also to provide logistics, training, intelligence and air support through the Islamic military coalition to this effort, Jubeir said. Some 40 Muslim-majority nations met in Riyadh at the end of November to begin fleshing it out details of the alliance first conceived two years by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but that until now has yet to take any decisive international action in its mandate to fight terrorism. The crown prince has said he would encourage a more moderate and tolerant version of Islam in the ultra-conservative kingdom and wants the coalition, which will have a permanent base in Riyadh, to help combat terrorist financing and ideology. We will be hosting a meeting of this new group to coordinate this military support to those (G5) countries, Jubeir said, referring to a meeting the Islamic Alliance, adding that Riyadh would also provide humanitarian assistance. The G5 Sahel launched a symbolic military operation to mark its creation in October amid growing unrest in the Sahel, whose porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State. However, France, which has 4,500 troops in the region, has been dismayed to see the militants score military and symbolic victories in West Africa while the G5 force has struggled to win financing and become operational. After a meeting in Paris on Wednesday, the French and Malian leaders said they hoped the G5 would secure its first victories by the middle of 2018 to prove its worth and ensure more concrete support from the United Nations. In Rome, a defense ministry official said Italy will send several hundred troops to Niger, a member of the G5 Sahel, next year to help train local forces battling jihadi militants. Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni signaled the initiative on Wednesday, telling the G5 meeting in France that Italy would divert some of its forces in Iraq to Niger, a country that straddles an expanse of the Sahara desert. Niger has requested help with training men involved in border controls and we will certainly be setting up a mission there, the defense ministry official said, declining to be named. The official declined to confirm a report in la Repubblica newspaper that some 470 men would be sent to Niger to help with both training and surveillance, saying full details of the operation had not yet been finalised. Despite agreement on principles, members of the Saudi-backed alliance have voiced different priorities slowing its implementation. Critics say the coalition could become a means for Saudi Arabia to implement an even more assertive foreign policy by winning the backing of poorer African and Asian nations with offers of financial and military aid. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma appeals court ruling on state prosecutor's appointment: local media;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s President Jacob Zuma has filed an appeal against a court ruling that his appointment of a state prosecutor to decide whether to reinstate corruption charges against him was not valid, local media reported on Thursday. The High Court ruled last week that Zuma s appointment of head prosecutor Shaun Abrahams should be set aside immediately and that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa should appoint a new public prosecutor within 60 days. The ruling was among a series of judicial blows to his administration, which has been hit by a series of scandals. Zuma filed papers saying that people exercise presidential powers at the same time, according to television station eNCA. Zuma s spokesman could not immediately comment. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has also said it will appeal the ruling. In October the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld an earlier decision by a lower court that the nearly 800 corruption charges filed against Zuma before he became president be reinstated. It then fell to Abrahams, appointed by Zuma, to decide whether or not the NPA would pursue a case against him. The charges against Zuma relate to a 30 billion rand ($2.22 billion) government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s and have amplified calls for Zuma to step down before his term as president ends in 2019. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt minister set to sign deal to resume Russian flights: agencies;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s aviation minister will travel to Russia to sign protocol agreements as early as Friday to allow the resumption of Russian flights that were suspended after the 2015 bombing of a tourist jet, Egyptian sources and Russia s minister said on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin met Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo this week to discuss resuming flights and to sign a deal for a nuclear power plant as part of growing bilateral cooperation. Two Egyptian sources said the minister would leave on Thursday for Russia, but did not confirm the date for signing the agreement. The two governments may sign a deal on Friday allowing to resume Russian civilian flights, the TASS news agency cited Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov as saying on Thursday. We expect that he (the Egyptian minister) will come on Friday, Sokolov said, according to the RIA news agency. Asked whether an aviation security protocol with Egypt will be signed, he said: We expect that it will be signed. Moscow halted civilian air traffic to Egypt in 2015 after militants detonated a bomb on a Russian Metrojet flight leaving the tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and killing 224 people on board. The bombing and the Russian suspension were blows to Egypt s tourism industry, a key source of hard currency. The industry has been struggling after the upheaval triggered by a 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak s 30-year rule. The return of Russian flights and tours could be a massive boost to tourist numbers that are still well below the 14.7 million visitors annually Egypt saw in 2010 before the uprising a year later and the unrest that followed. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian court rejects Siemens claim that Crimea turbines sale was invalid;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow s Arbitration Court on Thursday rejected a claim by Germany s Siemens that the sale of its turbines which were delivered to Crimea was invalid. In August, the same court rejected a request by Siemens to seize its gas turbines, which had turned up in Crimea contrary to EU sanctions. Russia is under Western sanctions for its involvement in the Ukraine crisis, including Moscow s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Reuters was the first to report this year that Russian firms had shipped the Siemens turbines to Crimea, which has been subject to EU sanctions on energy technology. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin says will run as independent candidate for new Kremlin term;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, seeking a new term in office in a March election, said on Thursday he would run as an independent candidate while hoping for support from more than one political party. Putin, 65, told an annual news conference that Russia s political system must be competitive, but the opposition lacked a strong candidate to challenge him because his opponents, while creating a lot of noise, had very little to offer the nation. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian Hindu tried to raise money with video of killing of Muslim: police;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A Hindu man in India tried to raise money for a campaign against minority Muslims by issuing an appeal for donations with a video he took and posted online showing him killing a Muslim, police said on Thursday. The killing last week is the latest to roil India s minority Muslims who have faced attacks from mobs who accuse them of killing cows, which Hindus consider sacred. Hindu fringe groups also campaign against Muslim men marrying Hindus. The Hindu man, Shambu Lal Regar, has been arrested on suspicion of hacking and burning a Muslim laborer in the western state of Rajasthan, police said. Regar had posted a video of the attack along with his bank details for donations to finance his anti-Muslim campaign, police officer Anand Shrivastava said. More than 700 people from across India deposited 300,000 rupees ($4,665) into the account. The accused wanted to become a Hindu hero after killing a Muslim man, his main aim was to collect money after committing the hate crime, said Shrivastava. Regar s video went viral on social media before authorities took it down. Police investigators had frozen the bank account and were tracking down donors, Shrivastava said. Shrivastava said the video had showed Regar claiming to be a proud Hindu trying to stop love jihad - a term used by Hindu hardliners who accuse Muslim men of entrapping Hindu women and girls on the pretext of love in order to convert them to Islam. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who leads the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has been criticized for failing to do enough to stop attacks on Muslims. The government rejects that. Modi has condemned violence in the name of protecting cows. Muslims account for 172 million of India s 1.32 billion citizens and Modi s critics say Hindu groups linked with his ruling party are trying to marginalize them. The BJP denies any bias against Muslims ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit 'no deal' is massively less probable after EU agreement, Davis says;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is less likely to leave the European Union without an agreed exit deal after last week s decision by the European Commission to recommend that talks move on to the next phase, Brexit minister David Davis said on Thursday. I think no deal has become massively less probable after the decisions of last Friday - and that s a good thing because the best deal is a tariff free, non-tariff barrier-free arrangement, Davis told parliament. He also said the government would have to think about how to respond to a decision by parliament to hand lawmakers more say over a final exit deal with the EU. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia, Saudi Arabia sign atomic energy cooperation roadmap;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Saudi Arabia have signed a roadmap for cooperation in the atomic energy sector, Russian state nuclear company Rosatom said on Thursday. The roadmap comprises a number of steps needed to implement a cooperation program that was signed by the two nations during Saudi King Salman s visit to Russia in October. Saudi Arabia, which wants to reduce oil consumption at home, is considering building 17.6 gigawatts of nuclear-powered electricity generating capacity by 2032 and has sent a request for information to international suppliers to build two reactors in the kingdom. Last month Rosatom said it hoped to win the Saudi tender. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenyan police assaulted and raped women during election: rights group;NAIROBI (Reuters) - Several dozen women in Kenya said police officers attacked them during this year s election season and some said they were raped by men in uniform, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday. More than 70 people were killed in an election in August, later nullified by the Supreme Court, and a repeat presidential poll in October won by President Uhuru Kenyatta. The opposition boycotted the repeat poll and said it would not be fair. The sexual attacks, mostly on women, occurred over this period in some of Nairobi s slums and in two opposition strongholds, Kisumu and Bungoma, in western Kenya, HRW said in a report. Kenyan police dispute rights groups allegations that officers used excessive force to quell election-related unrest. They did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment on the report. One 28-year-old woman in the Nairobi slum of Mathare told Reuters: Four men in police uniforms burst into my home and my children were sleeping, they pulled my husband out. One grabbed my neck, the other pulled off my clothes, another beat me with a stick, and the other forced sex on me. The woman who declined to be identified said she was four months pregnant and miscarried shortly after the rape. I was bleeding and confused afterwards, she said. Another woman, aged 26, said: Two men dragged me away from my friend, stripped off my clothes and one raped me as another one held me down. Kenyan women who have been raped - they are lonely and abandoned and ashamed, said HRW researcher Agnes Odhiambo. It s the Kenyan government who should feel shame for failing to protect them and help them get medical treatment. Kenyan rights groups accuse police of brutality and extrajudicial killings. A government civilian watchdog tasked to oversee the police exists, but few officers are charged and convictions are extremely rare. The sexual violence mirrored widespread violations against women after a disputed 2007 vote, when 1,200 people were killed, HRW said. At the time, the group documented at least 900 cases of sexual violence but said this was likely an underestimate. The new cases related to the August and October 2017 elections demonstrate a disturbing continuum, Tina Alai, a lawyer with New York-based Physicians for Human Rights. Police have continued to perpetrate sexual violence against civilians they are obligated to protect, she said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia court rejects petition to bar consensual sex outside marriage;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s constitutional court on Thursday narrowly rejected a petition by a conservative group to make extramarital sex illegal, but rights activists braced for a renewal of the battle in parliament and other state institutions. Five of nine judges voted for the case to be thrown out, in a slim victory for rights activists who had feared the petition would spur moral policing and further discrimination against the gay community in the world s largest Muslim-majority country. Most Indonesians adhere to a moderate form of Islam under an officially secular system, but there has been rise of a hardline, politicized Islam in recent years, which until recently had stayed on the fringe of the nation s politics. Constitutional court chief justice Arief Hidayat said existing laws on adultery did not conflict with the constitution and it was not the court s authority to create new policies. The judge said the question could be put to parliament, which is currently deliberating revisions to the national criminal code. The plaintiff should submit their petition to lawmakers, and there it should be an important input in the ongoing revision of the national criminal code, Hidayat said, as he read a summary of the 600-page ruling. Based on that view, the constitutional court is of the opinion that the petition is not legally sound. Rights activists were comforted by the court s decision, while expecting more challenges to come. The decision is a relief because it shows it s possible to challenge the creeping conservatism in society, said Dede Oetomo, a prominent gay rights activist. But it s not over. There s parliament, there are other state institutions, they can turn to education, social organisations, he added. The Family Love Alliance (AILA), a group of conservative academics and activists which put forward the petition, said it would not give up its fight. Aside from legal avenues, we can also go through government policy and programs so that sexual deviance is minimised and is an agenda for all of us, Euis Sunarti, a member of AILA, told reporters after the ruling. AILA s petition had called for the definition of adultery to apply not just to married couples but to anyone in a marriage or outside it - effectively making all sex outside of marriage a crime. In their complaint, AILA said certain articles in the national criminal code threaten the resilience of families and therefore of Indonesia itself. Some rights activists said the petition was partly aimed at criminalizing gay sex, which is currently not regulated by the law except in the ultra-conservative province of Aceh and in cases of child abuse. Activists say such changes to the law would make it vulnerable to abuse, like the country s draconian anti-pornography laws, to target the LGBT community. Islamic parties pushed the anti-pornography laws in parliament soon after Indonesia ushered in its democratic era in 1998 and actively push an anti-LGBT agenda today. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State threatens U.S. attacks over Jerusalem decision: statement;CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State threatened attacks on U.S. soil in retaliation for the Trump administration s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, one of the group s social media accounts reported on Thursday without giving any details. In a message on one of its accounts on the Telegram instant messaging service titled Wait for us and ISIS in Manhattan , the group said it would carry out operations and showed images of New York s Times Square and what appeared to be an explosive bomb belt and detonator. We will do more ops in your land, until the final hour and we will burn you with the flames of war which you started in Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Syria and Afghan. Just you wait, it said. The recognition of your dog Trump (sic) Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will make us recognize explosives as the capital of your country. Washington triggered widespread anger and protests across the Arab world with its decision on Jerusalem. The disputed city is revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, and is home to Islam s third holiest site. It has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Islamic State was driven out of its Iraqi and Syrian capitals this year and squeezed into a shrinking pocket of desert straddling the border between the two countries. The forces fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria now expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare there. Militants including people claiming allegiance to Islamic State have carried out scores of deadly attacks in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the United States over the past two years. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's Xi says war cannot be allowed on Korean peninsula;BEIJING (Reuters) - War must never be allowed to take place on the Korean peninsula and the issue must be resolved via talks, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in on Thursday, state television reported. Xi and Moon were meeting in Beijing. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. probes alleged abduction of North Korean restaurant workers, official says;SEOUL (Reuters) - A senior United Nations human rights official on Thursday said he was investigating North Korea s allegations that a dozen restaurant workers who arrived in the South from China last year were abducted against their will. Tomas Ojea Quintana, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said he spent part of a four-day visit to Seoul looking into the claims surrounding the biggest mass defection case involving North Koreans in several years. I have received testimony taken by people in my office that shows inconsistencies in what may have happened, Quintana told a news briefing. North Korea says the 12 waitresses were abducted, and a manager who defected with them tricked them into making the journey. It has demanded the return of the women, but officials in Seoul say they traveled voluntarily and were admitted on humanitarian grounds. Some of the workers are now university students, according to several sources who have met them, but all have kept a low profile and mystery still surrounds their trip. Relatives in the North had also raised objections, Quintana added. I was told the father of one of these women recently passed away without meeting his daughter, adding to a long list of victims who continue to pay the absurd cost of division, he said. The briefing was briefly interrupted by Kim Ryon Hui, a woman who said she had been forcibly held in South Korea for seven years. Quintana said he had met Kim the previous day, but did not have the authority to comment on human rights issues in South Korea. North Korean officials have said the 12 waitresses and Kim must be allowed to return before they allow family visits to resume. In an interview with Reuters in November, Kim said she first arrived in the South to seek a better job, without realizing her return home would be blocked by its laws that the government must approve visits to, or contact with, the North. Allowing Kim s permanent return would violate the law, says the South s Ministry of Unification, which estimates 881 defectors to have arrived from the North this year. Quintana urged that international sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons program be tailored to avoid any adverse impact on human rights and economic livelihoods. Restrictions on international financial transfers, for example, should not affect U.N. programs that provided humanitarian assistance, he said. While Pyongyang has condemned the sanctions, Quintana called for the government to substantiate its criticism with substantive data , and provide access for international human rights monitors. Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South have been in a technical state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. A North Korean soldier who defected to the south in November was shot five times by border guards and critically wounded in his desperate dash through the demilitarized zone dividing the two. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suicide bomber kills at least 18 at police academy in Somalia's capital;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A suicide bomber disguised as a policeman blew himself up inside a police training camp in Somalia s capital Mogadishu on Thursday and killed at least 18 officers, officials said. Police spokesman Major Mohamed Hussein said the attacker strapped explosives to his body and infiltrated the General Kahiye Police Training Academy during an early morning parade. Police were preparing for the 74th anniversary of police day. As they wanted to start exercise, a suicide bomber came in and blew up himself. We lost 18 police officers and 15 others were injured, Muktar Hussein Afrah, Somalia s deputy police commander, told reporters at the blast scene. Police will always continue their work despite death. Police earlier put the death toll at 15. Reuters witnesses who attempted to visit the site of the blast said police had sealed it off. Hours later when they were allowed in, a witness saw body parts suspected to be from the bomber on the ground in the field where police officers had been training. The witness said the ground nearby had also been washed to remove blood stains and people were burying bodies at the police academy. The militant Islamist group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack and gave a higher death toll. We killed 27 police (officers) and injured more, Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group s military operations spokesman, told Reuters. Al Shabaab carries out frequent bombings in Mogadishu and other towns. The group, which is allied to al Qaeda, is waging an insurgency against the U.N.-backed government and its African Union allies in a bid to topple the weak administration and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam. The militants were driven out of Mogadishu in 2011 and have since been steadily losing territory to the combined forces of African Union peacekeepers and Somali security forces. On Tuesday, the U.S. Africom said the U.S. military had conducted an air strike on a vehicle they said was strapped with explosives some 65 km southwest of Mogadishu. Thursday s attack comes at a time when the African Union is finalizing plans to trim its peacekeeping mission called AMISOM. The 22,000-strong AU force is scheduled to leave by 2020 and some security experts say al Shabaab could find it easier to stage attacks as the peacekeeping forces are reduced because government forces will find it hard to replicate their work. At the same time, Somalia could become a safe haven for militants linked to al Qaeda currently in Yemen, the experts said. The peacekeepers were deployed to help secure a government that has struggled to establish central control in a country that plunged into civil war in the early 1990s. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin warns against U.S. strike on North Korea;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that a strike on North Korea by the United States would have catastrophic consequences and that he hoped to work with Washington eventually to resolve the crisis on the Korean peninsula. Russia does not accept North Korea s nuclear status, Putin told an annual news conference. But he also said that some of Washington s past actions had provoked North Korea into violating a 2005 agreement to curb its nuclear program. We believe the two sides should now stop aggravating the situation, Putin said. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin laments 'spymania' gripping Washington;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that spymania had been artificially whipped up between Russia and the United States, and that eventually relations between the two countries would get back to normal. He said that contacts between Russian officials and members of U.S. President Donald Trump s team during his election campaign had been routine, but had been twisted by Trump s opponents. Asked by a reporter what he thought about Trump s record in office, Putin said it was not for him to judge, but that he saw significant achievements from the Trump administration. ;worldnews;14/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Second phase of Brexit talks will be harder than first: EU's Juncker;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The second phase Brexit negotiations will be significantly harder than an already difficult first phase of talks, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Friday. The leaders of the 27 countries remaining in the European Union will give the go-ahead on Friday for the EU s chief negotiator Michel Barnier to begin talks with London on a transition period and future trade ties with Britain. I have extraordinary faith in the British Prime Minister. She has agreed with me and Mr Barnier that the withdrawal agreement will first be formalized and will be voted on and then we will see. The second phase will be significantly harder than the first and the first was very difficult, Juncker told reporters on arriving for the second day of the EU summit. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;KARMA: Race-Obsessed Detroit Free Press Editorial Editor Who Led Effort To Destroy Kid Rock’s Career Is FIRED Over Allegations of Inappropriate Behavior With Female Colleagues;In September 2016, Stephen Henderson, the editorial editor of the Detroit Free Press, used the power of his pen to unjustly attack Kid Rock, after liberals feared Rock might actually be serious about running as a Republican contender against the do-nothing Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow. As a Michigan resident, I can say with a great level of confidence, that besides Mike Illitch, the now deceased owner of the Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, Kid Rock has done more for the city of Detroit and for the black community than almost anyone in this state. When the Illitch s asked Detroit legend and philanthropist, Kid Rock to perform for the opening of their much anticipated Little Caesar s Arena, no one could have dreamed that the Detroit Free Press Stephen Henderson would have used his position to push a lie, that Kid Rock, the single father of a black son, and NAACP award recipient is a racist .Here s what Henderson had to say about Kid Rock, the man who has done so much for the city of Detroit:This is a musician who got rich off crass cultural appropriation of black music, who used to wrap his brand in the Confederate flag a symbol inextricably linked to racism, no matter what its defenders say and who has repeatedly issued profane denouncements of the very idea of African Americans pushing back against American inequality. Just last week, he trashed Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who s jobless right now because he dared challenge the nation s racism with a silent, kneeling protest during the pre-football game singing of the national anthem. Having Kid Rock open this arena is erecting a sturdy middle finger to Detroiters nothing less. And the Ilitches, who ve done so much for this city and also taken so much from it, should be the last to embrace that kind of signaling.Here is how Kid Rock responded on his Facebook page:People! Pay NO attention to the garbage the extreme left is trying to create! (and by the way, fuck the extreme left and the extreme right!)They are trying to use the old confederate flag BS, etc. to stir the pot, when we all know none of this would be going on if I were not thinking of running for office. Pretty funny how scared I have them all and their only agenda is to try and label people / me racist who do not agree or cower to them!! No one had a word to say when we sold out the 6 shows at LCA back in January! My track record in Detroit and Michigan speaks for itself, and I would dare anyone talking trash to put theirs up against mine. I am also a homeowner and taxpayer in the city of Detroit, so suck on that too!I am the bona fide KING OF DETROIT LOVE and it makes me smile down deep that you haters know that! Your jealousy is merely a reflection of disgust for your own failures and lack of positive ideas for our city.I am however very disappointed that none of the people, businesses or charities I have so diligently supported in Detroit have had anything to say about all these unfounded attacks from these handful of jackasses and The Detroit Free Press. So for the unforeseen future I will focus my philanthropy efforts on other organizations besides the ones I have supported in the past. I would however employ that NAN go ahead and make up these losses since they claim to be so good for Detroit and do not want me opening the arena and generating tons of jobs and tax dollars for the city and people I LOVE IDIOTS! .. (Has Al Sharpton even paid his back taxes yet?)Today, the race-obsessed Stephen Henderson, got some very bad news AP The Detroit Free Press fired Stephen Henderson, its managing director of opinion and commentary, after finding what it called credible allegations of inappropriate behavior with female colleagues, the newspaper announced Friday.Free Press Editor and Vice President Peter Bhatia announced Henderson s termination in a story that said the allegations go back several years. Gannett Co. Inc., the newspaper s parent company, says Henderson s behavior has been inconsistent with company values and standards. Henderson said in a statement to The Detroit News and Crain s Detroit Business that he is stunned. I dedicated 18 years to this newspaper over three decades, all of it performing at the highest level, Henderson said. I may have more to say on this later, but for now there is much other work to be done here in the city of Detroit. Stephen is a magnificent journalist and a treasured colleague who has done so much for Detroit, Bhatia said. He added there were no accusations of sexual assault, but said the incidents involving inappropriate behavior and comments directed at Free Press employees ran counter to company policies.Less than 2 months ago, Henderson appeared on Meet The Press and called America a racist nation with a racist history:Rich Lowry of the National Review appeared with Stephen Henderson on Meet The Press to discuss Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who disrespect the flag as a way to support Black Lives Matter. Henderson argued, Some of the words in the national anthem are racist. Henderson argued that it was appropriate to show disrespect for the American flag because he thinks America is a country whose history is racist. Henderson told the panel, I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy, and the anthem reflects that in its very words (inaudible) . Lowry responded to Henderson by saying, It s also a nation with very important ideals that have worn down those injustices over time and created a more just society. And people have died under that flag for those ideals. Watch:;left-news;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Middle-class Egypt adapts to survive as austerity bites;CAIRO (Reuters) - Swapping new cars for cheaper models, cutting back on pricy supermarket shopping and giving up holidays abroad, middle-class Egyptians are finding strategies to stay afloat after a currency reform a year ago sent their living costs soaring. Egypt floated its pound in November 2016 as part of a $12 billion International Monetary Fund loan package, and the currency lost half its value, eroding spending power and pushing inflation to record highs over 30 percent this summer. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi s government has been praised by IMF and World Bank economists for reform progress and for measures to shield the poorest from the fallout. But middle-income Egyptians say it has been a year of cutbacks, cost saving and crisis management. Presidential elections are due early next year and Sisi is expected to seek another term. But some Egyptians are finding that their new economic reality is crowding out politics as they struggle to maintain standards. Others are digging deep and insist that despite the pain of austerity, Sisi remains the only candidate to provide stability after the years of turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Overcoming voter apathy may be a challenge if the former military commander decides to run when critics say he will face little competition after what rights groups describe as an unprecedented crackdown on opponents and dissidents. Low turnout was a worry in 2014, when Sisi won by a landslide, as a popular figure who had overthrown president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood after mass protests the previous year. The rise in prices changed things, said Ayman, a Cairo bookstore owner. We hoped for good things from President Sisi ... He is a good man and I voted for him, but we are not feeling the progress, all I care about is giving my son a good life, a good home. Economic reforms have come at a fast pace. The IMF deal called for broad adjustments to Egypt s state subsidies to slash deficits as part of Sisi s promise to revive an economy hit hard by unrest, protests and militant attacks in the last six years. Backed by the IMF and the World Bank, Sisi s government says the overhaul will lead to long-term growth and the return of foreign investment. Officials have adopted programs to provide the poor and vulnerable with cash and other protections. Still, fuel costs have doubled with two increases in subsidized prices. Electricity prices are up and a new tax helped push inflation to more than 30 percent in July. That has now eased to 25 percent and is expected to fall further soon. But it has been a crushing struggle for some. Hisham Azz al Arab, chairman of Egypt s largest private bank CIB, said those on middle and upper incomes were the most affected by the economic reforms, but it would take time for their impact to balance out for those families. We saw that clearly in their behavior of spending, it started to change, he told CNBC. For the middle and upper class it is a matter of time before income and productivity start to catch up to pre-reform levels. A 2016 World Bank survey found the middle class represented around 10 percent of the country s population of about 90 million just before the Arab Spring protests. Middle-class activists were among the leaders of the 2011 uprising. For professionals like Karim, a Cairo small business owner, it was a stark adjustment. Monthly food bills went from 1,200 pounds ($67) to 3,200 pounds ($179). That meant for the first time bargain-hunting for food, giving up luxury goods, and using the car less to cut back on fuel spending. It also meant paying employees more to keep them, while at the same time making sacrifices to keep his children in school. The middle class has only two options, fall into the lower class, which is hard for them to do, or get more enterprising, he said. Everyone is trying to show they are still in the middle class, people want to tell themselves that. For others, maintaining a middle-class lifestyle has meant dipping into savings and giving up restaurants or even turning to relatives for help with the cost of family holidays. It s extinct, said Islam Askar, a contracting company owner, of the country s middle class. There isn t a household in Egypt that hasn t been hit by the decrease in the pound and the rise in the prices. Economists say middle-class erosion had been reflected in figures for car sales, the weakness in some consumer stocks and in outbound tourism. For some, like Mahmoud Al-Abadaly, hunting for bargains among the crash-damaged vehicles at a second-hand car shop, politics comes second to cash considerations. A car normally worth 300,000 pounds ($17,000) can be fixed up and had for half that price, he said. When a car has been in an accident, its price drops, he said. Everyone is trying to do this now because they need to save. But Egypt s inflation outlook is already improving a year after the float, falling to 26 percent in November. Finance Minister Amr el-Garhy said that would fall to around 14 percent by August next year. What impact a year of austerity will have on Sisi s popularity is unclear. He has yet to announce his intentions, though supporters have already started a petition campaign for him to run for a second term. For his hardcore backers, it is time to rally behind him despite hard times. I will be for Sisi again for the presidency even with inflation, rising prices and the poor state of the economy, said Ali Abou Al-Saoud, a sales representative. But some of the president s high-profile backers have turned against him, partly over the economy. Turnout may be key for credibility, analysts say, as the government rebrands Egypt as a more stable bet for foreign investment after years of unrest. In 2014, turnout was about 47 percent, less than Sisi had called for. At the time, Sisi was idolized by many, although his support base has since slipped, critics say. However, protests are now restricted by law and secular activists have been rounded up. Other Egyptians say political fatigue has set in. There is still a strong sense of wanting to maintain and enjoy the relative security, said Ziad Bahaa Eldin, a deputy former prime minister who now works as an economist. People are suffering from inflation but they want stability. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's electoral commission head denounces changes to electoral code;WARSAW (Reuters) - Changes to Poland s electoral code approved by parliament on Thursday threaten the election process by introducing large new powers of the interior minister in overseeing elections, head of the State Electoral Commission (PKW) said. Wojciech Hermelinski told reporters that the bill approved by the lower chamber of parliament will incapacitate the PKW. De facto the minister will take decisions, not us, he told a press conference, adding the bill threatened the whole election process. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: TRUMP Will Remove “Climate Change” From List Of National Security Threats;Thank goodness we finally have a President who refuses to dump our taxpayer funds into climate scam that our former President actually identified as a national security threat According to The Federalist, The Trump administration will reverse course from previous Obama administration policy, eliminating climate change from a list of national security threats. The National Security Strategy to be released on Monday will emphasize the importance of balancing energy security with economic development and environmental protection, according to a source who has seen the document and shared excerpts of a late draft. Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system, a draft of the National Security Strategy slated to be released on Monday said. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty. During his successful campaign, Trump mocked Obama s placement of climate change in the context of national security. Here s a sample of his approach from a campaign speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, in late 2015:So Obama s always talking about the global warming, that global warming is our biggest and most dangerous problem, OK? No, no, think of it. I mean, even if you re a believer in global warming, ISIS is a big problem, Russia s a problem, China s a problem. We ve got a lot of problems. By the way, the maniac in North Korea is a problem. He actually has nuclear weapons, right? That s a problem.We ve got a lot of problems. We ve got a lot of problems. That s right, we don t win anymore. He said we want to win. We don t win anymore. We re going to win a lot if I get elected, we re going to win a lot. (Applause)We re going to win so much we re going to win a lot. We re going to win a lot. We re going to win so much you re all going to get sick and tired of winning. You re going to say oh no, not again. I m only kidding. You never get tired of winning, right? Never. (Applause)But think of it. So Obama s talking about all of this with the global warming and the a lot of it s a hoax, it s a hoax. I mean, it s a money-making industry, OK? It s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air and I want clean water. That s my global I want clean, clean crystal water and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don t have to destroy our businesses, we don t have to destroy our And by the way, China isn t abiding by anything. They re buying all of our coal;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU leaders to give mandate for next phase of Brexit talks: Lithuanian president;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders will agree on Friday to move forward with Britain s exit negotiations to prepare a future trade deal, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite said. We will give the mandate for preparation for the Commission and ourselves for the negotiations for the future of our relations, that will probably start in March, she said. Asked if Britain might agree a trade deal with the European Union going beyond the bloc s deal with Canada, sometimes described as Canada Plus , she said: We hope to have a lot of pluses for all sides. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hong Kong 'milkshake' murderer challenges her life sentence;HONG KONG (Reuters) - An American serving a life sentence in a Hong Kong jail for the 2003 milkshake murder of her Merrill Lynch banker husband made a fresh challenge against her sentence on Friday. Nancy Kissel, who is in her mid 50s, has been in jail since 2005 when she was found guilty of murdering her husband after giving him a drug-laced milkshake and then clubbing him to death with a metal ornament in their luxury home. She was convicted a second time in a 2011 retrial and failed in a final appeal against her conviction in 2014. Kissel lodged a judicial review against the Long-Term Prison Sentences Review Board, Hong Kong court records showed. She is arguing that the board had deprived her of the right to make an informed submission to challenge the rationality of its decision. A lawyer for Kissel said the board should have recommended to the Chinese controlled city s chief executive that a fixed prison term should have replaced an indefinite life sentence, public broadcaster RTHK said. The murder gripped Hong Kong s business and expatriate communities with its tales of domestic violence, rough sex and adultery that cast a shadow over the high-flying lifestyles of financial professionals in the former British colony. Kissel s latest move comes the same week that British former Bank of America Merrill Lynch employee Rurik Jutting appealed against a life sentence handed down last year for murdering two Indonesian women he tortured and raped. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian parliament sets March 18 as presidential election date;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The upper house of the Russian parliament voted on Friday to set March 18 as the date of next year s presidential election. The decision was approved by the Russian senators unanimously, speaker Valentina Matvienko said after the vote. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says open to working with U.S. to try to resolve Libya crisis: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is open to working with the United States to try to solve the crisis in Libya, Russia s ambassador to Libya was cited as saying on Friday by the RIA news agency. He was also cited as saying that Moscow was ready to initiate the lifting of an international arms embargo on Libya, but that was something he said could only be done once the North African country had a united army. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia and Egypt still in talks over resumption date for Russian flights - TASS;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on Friday that Russia and Egypt were still in talks to decide on the date that Russia would resume regular flights to Egypt, the TASS news agency reported. He said that Russia and Egypt would discuss the date on Friday and sign documents if they reached an agreement, according to TASS. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's Hun Sen challenges EU and U.S. to freeze assets;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen encouraged the United States and European Union on Friday to freeze the assets of Cambodian leaders abroad in response to his government s crackdown on the opposition and civil society. Hun Sen, the strongman who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades, has taken a strident anti-Western line ahead of a 2018 election and has dismissed donor criticism of the dissolution of the main opposition party. The United States and European Union have suspended funding for next year s election and Washington has put visa curbs on some Cambodian leaders. There is no current proposal for asset freezes by either the United States or European Union, but some lawmakers have floated the idea. I encourage the European Union and United States to freeze the wealth of Cambodian leaders abroad, Hun Sen told a group of athletes in Phnom Penh, the capital. Hun Sen said he has no money abroad and any actions by the EU and the U.S. would not hurt him. The U.S. embassy made no comment. EU Ambassador George Edgar said on Friday there had been no decision on further measures by the bloc. The Supreme Court dissolved the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) last month at the request of the government, on the grounds it was plotting to seize power. Hun Sen accused Kem Sokha, the leader of the CNRP of a U.S.-backed anti-government plot. The opposition leader and the United States denied that. China, Cambodia s largest aid donor, has leant its support to Hun Sen, saying it respects Cambodia s right to defend its national security. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says not ready to strangle North Korea economically: Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said on Friday that Russia was not ready to sign up to new sanctions on North Korea that would strangle the Asian country economically, the Interfax news agency reported. He was also cited as saying that pressure on North Korea was approaching a red line and that U.S. security guarantees for North Korea could be the subject of talks between Pyongyang and the United States. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. negotiator says direct diplomacy needed on North Korea;BANGKOK (Reuters) - The chief U.S. negotiator for North Korea said on Friday the United States should engage in direct diplomacy with Pyongyang alongside sanctions imposed over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered on Tuesday to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, but the White House later said no negotiations could be held until North Korea improved its behaviour. We should exercise direct diplomacy as well as sanctions. That is our policy, which is based on pressure and engagement, and we do want to engage in pressure and diplomacy, Joseph Yun, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy, told reporters in Bangkok. Yun travelled to Japan and Thailand this week to meet officials to discuss ways to build pressure on North Korea after its latest ballistic missile test. On Thursday, Yun met the head of Thailand s National Security Council, General Wallop Rohsanoh, and deputy foreign minister Weerasak Futrakul. We had very constructive, open-ended discussion, said Yun. The United States had no specific requests for Thailand, he said. Thailand s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Tuesday no trade takes place between Thailand and North Korea and that Thailand has abided by United Nations resolutions regarding North Korea. We had no specific requests ... It seems like, as the deputy foreign minister said, they are fully complying with United Nations resolutions, Yun told reporters. Thailand s ties with North Korea have been in the spotlight this year. Tillerson pressed Thailand, the United States oldest ally in Asia, for more action on North Korea during a visit to Bangkok in August. North Korea has an embassy in the Thai capital, Bangkok. Despite Tillerson s call for talks with Pyongyang without pre-conditions, the White House said now was not the right time and that any negotiations would have to be about giving up its nuclear arsenal. I think what Secretary Tillerson spoke two or three days ago ... is that we do want to have a dialogue with them. We are open to dialogue and we hope that they will agree to have a dialogue ... he made it clear that we were open, said Yun. The U.S. delegation said in August it believed North Korean companies operated in Thailand and urged the Thais to shut them. In response, Thailand s foreign ministry told reporters that trade with North Korea had dropped by as much as 94 percent over the previous year. It did not give specific details. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says high-level contacts with North Korea possible: Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Moscow had not had high-level contacts with the new North Korean leadership but they were possible, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday. In theory they (contacts) are possible, Interfax quoted Morgulov as saying. Morgulov said Russia had many communication channels with North Korea, which in one way or another are bearing fruit . ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain says West must defend undersea cables from Russian navy;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and its NATO allies must defend deep sea cables against a potentially catastrophic attack by the Russia navy that could disrupt trillions of dollars in financial transactions, the head of Britain s armed forces warned. The cables which crisscross the world s oceans and seas carry 95 percent of communications and over $10 trillion in daily transactions. There is a new risk to our way of life, which is the vulnerability of the cables that criss-cross the seabeds, the BBC quoted Stuart Peach, chief of the defense staff, as saying. Peach said the Russian President Vladimir Putin s modernization of the once mighty Soviet navy now posed a serious threat to Western communications. Russia in addition to new ships and submarines continues to perfect both unconventional capabilities and information warfare, Peach said. Russia has repeatedly dismissed Western concerns about its renewed assertiveness as Cold War hysteria, though Kremlin supporters praise Putin at home for putting restoring Russia s clout after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says its people have more civil, political rights than ever before;BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday that its people today enjoy the greatest level of political and civil rights ever, in a report issued just days after the European Union and United States expressed extreme concern over a deterioration in human rights in China. In the last five years, Chinese president Xi Jinping has presided over what rights groups decry as an elevated crackdown on the country s rights activists and lawyers, with dozens arrested and hundreds detained. Ahead of Human Rights Day last Sunday, the European Union and the United States released statements saying they were extremely concerned about a deterioration of human rights in China, citing measures such as internet restrictions and detentions of lawyers. Chinese citizens have never before enjoyed as ample economic, social, cultural, as well as civil and political rights, as they do today, the State Council, China s cabinet, said in an annual white paper. The paper heralded a new era where greater legal protection ensures human rights in China, citing as evidence the ruling Communist Party s recent establishment of a central leadership group to guide legal reform. Rights group says the lack of an independent judiciary to keep a check on the ruling party leads to abuse of rights. China rejects criticisms of its human rights record, saying that the critics place too much emphasis on political and civil rights, without recognizing the social and economic freedoms being provided to its citizens. Diplomats from liberal democracies say that the Chinese definition is overly broad and ignores aspects like free speech that are essential to the accepted definition of human rights used by the United Nations. China considers its human rights successes to include, for example, using law to control infringement on the health and property rights of its citizens by closing down polluting companies, according to the report. Controversial legislation on spying, counter-espionage and internet security, as well as others in a series of new laws to bolster China s national security, are also cited as helping to protect citizen s security and property. The paper further says that China is actively working to promote human rights overseas and to build a international legal system to protect them. Up to August 2017, 36,000 Chinese military peacekeepers have been sent abroad to take part in UN peacekeeping operations and now have a standing force of 8,000 troops, the paper said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Battle lines drawn for South Africa's ANC on eve of leadership vote;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa s ruler since the end of apartheid, faces perhaps the most pivotal few days in its recent history when it meets over the weekend to choose a successor to Jacob Zuma as party leader. The ANC s electoral dominance means whoever wins the job is likely to become South Africa s next president. But Zuma s presidency, tainted by corruption and scandal, has badly tarnished the ANC s image both at home and abroad. The party once led by Nelson Mandela is now deeply divided. Investors will also be watching events closely. Economic growth in Africa s traditional powerhouse has been lethargic over the last six years and the jobless rate stands near record levels. Political instability, including the questions over who will replace Zuma, has been cited by credit rating agencies as a big factor behind their decision to cut South Africa to junk . The two frontrunners in the race are Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former cabinet minister and ex-wife of the president, who is backing her. Ramaphosa s promises to fight corruption and revitalize the economy have gone down well with foreign investors and ANC members who think Zuma s handling of the economy could cost the party dearly in the next national election set for 2019. Dlamini-Zuma is associated with a radical brand of wealth redistribution which is popular with poorer ANC voters angry at racial inequality. Analysts say the outcome of the leadership contest is too close to call and that the bitterness of the power struggle between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma has increased the chances of the party splitting before the national election. The Ramaphosa camp sees the faction aligned with Zuma and Dlamini-Zuma as having seized control of the ANC and betrayed the values of the anti-apartheid struggle which it led. Dlamini-Zuma s team thinks Ramaphosa would not be decisive enough in addressing the gaping racial inequalities that persist in South Africa - the core of her campaign. Some analysts say Zuma s influence over who succeeds him has been diminished by his travails. The 75-year-old president has faced and denied numerous corruption allegations since taking office in 2009 and has survived several votes of no-confidence in parliament. The ANC expects to announce the winner early on Sunday, the second day of a five-day party conference which only takes place once every five years, ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa said. Party officials insist members will accept the outcome of the leadership vote and avoid a fallout. We need to take out this item from the conference agenda as quickly as possible, ANC spokesman Kodwa told radio station 702 on Friday. Disillusioned ANC members have left to form new political groupings on several occasions the most recent example being the African Democratic Change party founded by former ANC lawmaker Makhosi Khoza this year. In August, Zuma narrowly survived another attempt in parliament to force him from office after some members of his party voted with the opposition. Enoch Godongwana, who chairs a party committee on economic policy, said there had been interactions between the main opposing party factions to prevent the party splintering. If the ANC collapses, do you have anything in its place which can hold this country together on a national basis? I would argue that at this stage in time you simply do not have a replacement for the ANC, he told reporters on Thursday. Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader who became one of South Africa s richest people, is seen as more business-friendly than Dlamini-Zuma and the five other leadership contenders. Ramaphosa edged Dlamini-Zuma by getting the majority of nominations to become leader of the party, but it is far from certain he will become the next leader and therefore the likely next president. He is expected to be backed by ANC veterans, labor unions and civil society organizations. If Dlamini-Zuma wins, a split is very likely, because the Ramaphosa camp views itself as the old ANC . This is a last attempt by them to regain control of the party from the Zuma faction, said Darias Jonker, director for Africa at Eurasia Group. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said he thought Dlamini-Zuma would win the leadership, partly because of her strong support in KwaZulu-Natal province, which is sending the most delegates to the conference. As well as Zuma s support, she also has the backing of the ANC s influential women s and youth leagues. The rand rallied on Friday on signs that her bid for the ANC leadership was weakened by court cases which will obstruct some delegates who back her from attending the party conference in Johannesburg. As well as electing a new leader, the ANC will choose senior officials such as the secretary general and members of the National Executive Committee. It will also set policy priorities for the leadup to the 2019 election. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan adopts additional sanctions against North Korea: Suga;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will impose additional sanctions on North Korea following repeated threats by Pyongyang s missiles and nuclear program, Japan s top government spokesman said on Friday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that Japan would freeze assets of 19 more North Korean institutions. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 15) - Quantico;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - To each member of the graduating class from the National Academy at Quantico, CONGRATULATIONS! [1235 EST] - You are always there for us – THE MEN AND WOMEN IN BLUE. Thank you to our police, thank you to our sheriffs, and thank you to our law enforcement families. God Bless you all, and GOD BLESS AMERICA! #LESM [1428 EST] - Today, it was my tremendous honor to visit Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1) at the Marine Corps Air Facility in Quantico, Virginia. I am honored to serve as your Commander-in-Chief. On behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for your sacrifice and service. We love you! [1658 EST] - DOW, S&P 500 and NASDAQ close at record highs! #MAGA [1900 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Attorney General Sessions has lukewarm praise for FBI after Trump attack;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Friday offered a tepid endorsement of the nation’s leading law enforcement agency, which has been under attack by President Donald Trump and other Republicans. Trump said earlier this month that the FBI’s reputation was in “tatters” after news came to light that an FBI agent on a team investigating links between Russia and Trump’s election campaign had exchanged anti-Trump text messages with an FBI lawyer. Sessions on Friday defended the bureau, which is part of the Department of Justice that he leads, but it was not an enthusiastic endorsement. “I don’t share the view that the FBI is not functioning at a high level all over the country,” he told a news conference. Sessions’ comments came at a time when former FBI director Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. A sampling of texts between agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page was released to Congress and the media earlier this week. The two referred to Trump as an “idiot,” but also took aim at other politicians, including Democrat Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 election, and independent Bernie Sanders, who had sought the Democratic nomination for president. Strzok was transferred off Mueller’s team, but the texts provided fresh fodder for some Republicans who have fiercely criticized Mueller in a move that Democrats say is an effort to discredit his Russia investigation. Russia has denied meddling in the 2016 election, and Trump has repeatedly said his campaign did not collude with Russia. Sessions is the latest senior official to defend the FBI. His comments were much milder than those of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in recent testimony to Congress. Sessions said Trump does support the FBI and noted that Trump spoke earlier on Friday to a class of domestic and international law enforcement managers graduating from an FBI training program in Quantico, Virginia. However, the audience did not consist of FBI agents, and Trump’s speech was to local and state police officers. Sessions also ducked a question about whether he will appoint a second special counsel to investigate some of the bias allegations against Mueller’s team, as some Republicans have demanded. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate Democrats to force vote on FCC net neutrality repeal;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. Senate Democrat said on Friday he would force a vote on the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to repeal landmark net neutrality rules, but the move was unlikely to block a ruling that could reshape the digital landscape. The FCC voted Thursday along party lines to reverse the Obama era rules barring internet service providers from blocking or throttling internet traffic, or offering paid fast lanes. A group of state attorneys general vowed to sue. On Friday, Senator Charles Schumer of New York said he would force a vote on the FCC action under the Congressional Review Act. Republicans scuttled internet privacy rules adopted under the Obama administration using the same procedural vehicle. “There will be a vote to repeal the rule that the FCC passed. It’s in our power to do that,” Schumer said in New York. “Sometimes we don’t like them, when they used it to repeal some of the pro environmental regulations, but now we can use the CRA to our benefit and we intend to.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes Schumer’s effort and backed the FCC repeal, a spokesman for the Republican said Friday. A reversal of Thursday’s FCC vote would need the approval of the Senate, U.S. House and President Donald Trump. Trump also backed the FCC action, the White House said Thursday. This week’s FCC order grants internet providers sweeping new powers to block, throttle or discriminate among internet content, but requires public disclosure of those practices. Internet providers have vowed not to change how consumers get online content. The FCC rules also seek to bar states from imposing their own net neutrality requirements. The FCC said the rules would take effect once the White House Office of Management and Budget approved the new transparency rules, which could take several months. Democrats say net neutrality is essential to protect consumers, while Republicans say the rules hindered investment by providers and were not needed. Moody’s Investors Service said in a note Friday the FCC vote was “credit positive” for internet service providers that could have faced rate regulation under the 2015 rules that would have treated them like public utilities. Moody’s said providers “will tread lightly when it comes to engaging in paid prioritization and throttling, as there could be significant negative public reaction to these acts.” Moody’s said “at least in the near term, the cost of negative publicity on their existing businesses far outweighs the benefit of additional revenue streams these companies can generate from paid prioritization agreements.” ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawmaker probed on sex reports, second congressman denies charges;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee said on Friday it had begun an investigation into public reports that Democrat Ruben Kihuen engaged in sexual harassment, and a second lawmaker denied a former aide’s allegations of sexual misconduct. The ethics panel said that announcing the probe was not a sign the committee already had determined the Nevada representative violated any rules. “As I’ve said previously, I intend to fully cooperate, and I welcome an opportunity to clear my name,” said Kihuen in a statement provided to Reuters. The news website Buzzfeed has reported that Kihuen, currently finishing his first year in Congress, harassed a staff member on his 2016 political campaign, and on Thursday there were multiple reports of an anonymous lobbyist’s description of his unwanted advances. Reuters has not independently confirmed the reports. Lawmakers from both U.S. political parties have recently been ensnared in allegations of sexual misconduct, prompting the committee to launch a probe this month of all House members and their staffs. On Friday a second Democratic congressman, Bobby Scott of Virginia, was accused by former legislative aide Macherie Reese Everton of touching her leg and back without permission in 2013 and offering to advance her career in exchange for sex and said she was wrongfully dismissed from her job. Scott, who has served 25 years in Congress, rejected Everton’s charges and said he had never sexually harassed anyone. “I absolutely deny this allegation of misconduct,” he said in a statement. “I am confident that this false allegation will be seen for what it is when the facts are adequately reviewed.” Reuters has not independently verified the claims. This week Republican Representative Blake Farenthold said he would not seek re-election after accounts surfaced that he created a hostile work environment. In a Facebook post, Farenthold denied allegations of sexual harassment by former staff members but admitted he allowed an unprofessional culture to flourish in his Capitol Hill office. Members of Congress are working on legislation to update the body’s rules on sexual harassment. Representative Carolyn Maloney said she will introduce a bill on Friday that says companies cannot block sexual harassment victims from publicly disclosing the details of their allegations, which often are included in settlement agreements. Allegations of misconduct in recent weeks have also been made against movie-makers, television interviewers and other men in the private sector. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump officials brief Hill staff on Saudi reactors, enrichment a worry;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration briefed congressional staff this week on how the White House was considering non-proliferation standards in a potential pact to sell nuclear reactor technology to Saudi Arabia, but did not indicate whether allowing uranium enrichment would be part of any deal, congressional aides said. Non-proliferation advocates worry that allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich fuel in a nuclear power deal could also enable it to one day covertly produce fissile material and set off an arms race with arch-rival Iran that could spread more broadly throughout the Middle East. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff members were briefed by State Department and Department of Energy officials in a meeting on Wednesday, the aides said. They learned the administration “is working to develop a position on non-proliferation standards” should they begin talks with Saudi Arabia on a civilian nuclear cooperation pact known as a 123 agreement, a committee aide said. The administration is still mulling whether any agreement would allow uranium enrichment, the aide said. The race to build Saudi Arabia’s first nuclear power reactors is heating up among U.S., South Korean, Chinese and Russian companies. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited Saudi Arabia last week, telling Reuters then that new talks between the two allies on a 123 agreement would start soon. An agreement would allow U.S. companies to participate in Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear program. Riyadh has said it wants to be self-sufficient in producing nuclear fuel and that it is not interested in diverting nuclear technology to military use. In previous talks, Saudi Arabia has refused to sign an agreement with Washington that would deprive it of enriching uranium. Uranium fuel for reactors is enriched to only about 5 percent, lower than the 90 percent level for fissile material in nuclear bombs. Some senators with proliferation concerns worry the administration is moving too quickly on talks about nuclear plants and enrichment with Saudi without consulting Congress. As required by a 2008 law, the president is required to keep the committees in the House and Senate that deal with foreign relations “fully and currently informed” on any initiative and talks relating to new or amended 123 agreements. “We’re frustrated by the lack of briefings and having to yet again learn about potential foreign policy developments from the press,” a congressional aide said. A day before the senate briefing, a report by Bloomberg citing sources said that the administration may allow uranium enrichment as part of an agreement. The congressional aide said there are concerns that plans for an agreement are only being conducted by a small number of people controlled by the White House. “It also appears that this is policy being driven out of the White House, which makes congressional oversight that much harder,” said the aide. If lawmakers oppose a civilian nuclear deal signed by the president they can try to fight it with legislation or other measures. The Trump administration and the previous Obama administration have pushed for selling nuclear power technology abroad, partly to keep the country competitive with Russia and China in nuclear innovation. A State Department official said the United States and Saudi Arabia have been in talks since 2012 regarding a 123 agreement but declined to comment on the discussions. Energy Department officials did not immediately comment on the briefing. Toshiba-owned Westinghouse is in talks with other U.S.- based companies to form a consortium for a bid in a multibillion-dollar tender for two nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia. Winning a bid would be a big step for Westinghouse. It went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year and abandoned plans to build two advanced AP1000 reactors in the United States. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. judge to lift house arrest for former Trump campaign manager Manafort;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge on Friday said she would release former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort from house arrest once he meets certain conditions, expressing satisfaction that the $10 million he agreed to forfeit would be available if he ever failed to appear for court proceedings. In her order, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said to be released from home confinement, Manafort must execute documents agreeing to forfeit four properties, including two in New York, one in Alexandria, Virginia, and his Florida home. He will be subject to restrictions including a curfew and electronic GPS monitoring but will be allowed to leave his home in Alexandria for his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, once he meets the conditions. Manafort is charged with conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent working on behalf of the government of Ukraine’s former pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych. He is being prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as part of Mueller’s investigation into accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. In case the forfeited properties do not raise $10 million, the judge said, Manafort’s wife, Kathleen, has deposited $5 million in an account and his daughter Andrea Manafort Shand, $2 million in a separate account, to make up any difference. The assets cannot be touched without a court order. Once in Florida, Manafort must stay within the area, unless he is traveling to Washington for court appearances or meetings with counsel, according to the order. He needs permission for any other domestic travel and cannot leave the country. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Corker says he will support tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Bob Corker, a staunch fiscal hawk who has been a critic of emerging tax legislation, said on Friday he will support the sweeping tax overhaul that Republicans hope to approve next week. “I have decided to support the tax reform package we will vote on next week,” Corker, who had expressed concerned about the bill’s impact on the federal deficit, said in a statement released on Twitter. The details of the legislation are expected to be released later on Friday, with votes expected in the Senate and House of Representatives next Tuesday. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rubio signals support for tax bill after child tax credit tweaks;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Marco Rubio signaled his support for a sweeping tax bill on Friday, saying changes that had been made at his urging to increase the refundability of a child tax credit marked “a solid step toward broader reforms.” “Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker,” Rubio, who had threatened to vote against the bill, said on Twitter. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax negotiators raising refundable portion of child tax credit: congresswoman;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Representative Kristi Noem said on Friday that the refundable portion of an expanded child tax credit in the tax bill under negotiation on Capitol has risen to $1,400 from $1,000, an apparent bid to win support from Republican Senator Marco Rubio. “I believe we’re in a good spot and should be able to earn his support,” said Noem, a member of the conference committee that is working on a final tax bill. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans have finalized compromise U.S. tax bill -chief House tax writer;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief tax writer in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Friday that Republicans had finalized a tax bill they hope to vote on next week and that details would be released in a “few hours.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters the text of the bill would be posted when the House comes into session at 5:30 p.m. (2230 GMT) on Friday. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Rubio will back tax bill: CNBC, citing sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Marco Rubio will support a compromise tax bill when it comes up for a vote next week in Congress, CNBC reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources. The Florida lawmaker earlier on Friday repeated his concerns that an expansion of child tax credits in the bill was too little to win his support, keeping a cloud over prospects for the legislation’s passage. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Senator Cruz wants to cap renewable fuel credits at 10 cents - document;NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Ted Cruz wants to place a cap of 10 cents each on renewable fuel credits - a fraction of their current value - to help U.S. refiners cope with the nation’s biofuels policy, according to a document viewed by Reuters on Thursday. The proposal marks the latest step in talks being mediated by the White House between oil industry backers and rivals in the ethanol industry over the Renewable Fuels Standard. Refiners claim complying with the law, known a the RFS, costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year and could put them out of business. Introduced more than a decade ago to help farmers, cut oil imports and reduce emissions, the RFS requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels into the U.S. fuel supply every year, or purchase credits called RINs from other companies that do the blending instead. Congress members from corn states this week had asked Cruz, a Texas Republican, and other lawmakers allied with the refining industry to offer specific proposals that could lower credit costs without injuring the RFS, a program defended fiercely by Midwestern states like Iowa and Nebraska. Cruz’s proposals call for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the RFS, to sell “fixed price waiver credits” at 10 cents each that would satisfy all categories under the Renewable Fuel Standard. The senator also proposed forming a working group of administration officials, lawmakers and stakeholders to devise a longer-term solution. The proposals were circulated to administration officials. Prices of renewable fuel (D6) credits were trading at roughly 70 cents on Friday, down from 74 cents earlier this week to the lowest level since early October. The credits had been trading at 90 cents each at the end of November. Officials in the offices of Cruz and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the proposal. Officials for Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst declined to comment, saying Cruz’s office had not yet contacted them about the proposals. The ethanol industry has said in the past that placing caps on the credits was a non-starter, and has instead argued for policies to increase volumes of ethanol in the U.S gasoline supply. They claim this would boost supplies of the credits, lowering their prices. “Ted Cruz and his backers don’t seem to be taking the White House seriously. President Trump vowed to protect rural America,” Brooke Coleman, the Executive Director of Advanced Biofuels Business Council, said in release on Friday accompanying a letter signed by 85 supporters of the biofuels industry urging the White House to protect the program. The RFS was introduced by President George W. Bush. It has fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year. Refiners like Philadelphia Energy Solutions and Monroe Energy, both of Pennsylvania, along with Texas giant Valero Energy Corp, lack adequate facilities to blend biofuels into their products. Valero put its cost of complying with the RFS at around $750 million last year. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump administration issues new rules on U.S. visa waivers;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration put new requirements in place on Friday for the 38 countries participating in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, including that they use U.S. counterterrorism data to screen travelers, officials said. The program allows citizens of mainly European countries to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. Citizens from the 38 countries are required to obtain a so-called travel authorization to enter the United States. President Donald Trump has sought to tighten the rules for those seeking to visit or live in the United States in several ways, saying restrictions are necessary for security reasons. The changes will apply to all countries in the program. One change is that they will be required to use U.S. information to screen travelers crossing their borders from third countries. Many countries in the program already do that, one administration official said. Countries whose citizens stay longer than authorized during visits to the United States at a relatively higher rate will be required to conduct public awareness campaigns on the consequences of overstays, the officials said. One existing penalty is that people who overstay a visit may not travel visa-free to the United States in the future. The threshold for the overstay rate triggering the public information campaign requirement is two percent, the officials said. In the 2016 fiscal year, of the VWP countries, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and San Marino, a wealthy enclave landlocked inside central Italy, had total overstay rates higher than two percent, according to a report by the Department of Homeland Security. The overall overstay rate for VWP countries is 0.68 percent, lower than non-VWP countries excluding Canada and Mexico, which is at 2.07 percent, according to the DHS report. Members of Congress have expressed concern about the security risks of overstays. A May 2017 report by the DHS inspector general found the department lacked a comprehensive system to gather information on departing visitors, forcing it to rely on third-party data to confirm departures, which is sometimes faulty. The United States will also start assessing VWP countries on their safeguards against “insider threats” at their airports, especially those with direct flights to the United States, officials said. The goal is to ensure countries “make sure that airport employees, aviation workers et cetera, aren’t corrupted or are co-opted to pose a threat to aircraft, especially those that are U.S.-bound,” an official said. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump urges Moore to concede Alabama Senate race;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump called on fellow Republican Roy Moore on Friday to concede to Democrat Doug Jones in the Alabama U.S. Senate race, following the party’s stinging loss in the southern U.S. state earlier this week. Moore, whose controversial candidacy was beset by allegations that he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, has so far refused to admit defeat in Tuesday’s election that saw Jones win by 1.5 percentage points with 99 percent of the ballots counted. The embattled Republican has made two statements since his loss, but has not conceded even as Trump and others have reached out to congratulate Jones, a former prosecutor, on his win. “I would certainly say he should,” Trump, who endorsed Moore in the final stage of the campaign, told reporters at the White House. “He tried,” Trump added, referring to Moore’s campaign efforts and reiterating his earlier comments that as the party’s top leader he would have liked to keep the seat in Republican hands. Jones defeated the former judge in a special election to replace Jeff Sessions, who left the Senate to serve as U.S. Attorney General under Trump. State officials have said the outcome is unlikely to change even as provisional ballots are counted. The Democratic win would narrow Republicans’ hold on the Senate to 51 out of 100 seats. It has also buoyed Democrats’ hopes of a potential comeback for the party in the 2018 midterm elections. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Net neutrality repeal gives Democrats fresh way to reach millennials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission vote on Thursday to roll back net neutrality rules could galvanize young voters, a move Democrats hope will send millennials to the polls in greater numbers and bolster their chances in next year’s elections. Democrats are hoping to paint the repeal of the rules by the FCC, which is now chaired by President Donald Trump appointee Ajit Pai, as evidence Republicans are uninterested in young people and consumer concerns at large. “The American public is angry,” said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat. She added that the actions of the Republican majority have “awoken a sleeping giant.” Attitudes toward “net neutrality,” or rules that prevent internet providers from limiting customers’ access to certain websites or slowing download speeds for specific content, are largely split along party lines in Congress. The heated debate has turned into the kind of election issue that Democrats think will help them. Studies show young people disproportionately use the internet compared with older Americans and polls have shown they feel passionately about fair and open internet access. Democrats believe the issue may resonate with younger voters who may not be politically active on other issues like taxes or foreign policy. U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter “young people need to take the lead on net neutrality. It’s possible for Millennial political leadership to make a real difference here.” The scrapping of the Obama administration’s rules is likely to set up a court battle and could redraw the digital landscape, with internet service providers possibly revising how Americans view online content. The providers could use new authority to limit or slow some websites or offer “fast lanes” for certain content. Republicans on the FCC have sought to reassure young people that their ability to access the internet will not change after the rules take effect. People who favor the move argue that after users realize that little or nothing has changed in their internet access, it will not resonate as a political issue. Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist, said polls have found young people are favoring Democrats in the most recent elections and that the net neutrality issue could be used to gather support in the 2018 midterm congressional elections. He said while older voters tend to care about Medicare, polls are finding that younger voters are motivated by net neutrality. “Net neutrality is the latest data point for voters that the administration is more interested in doing what big companies want them to do, than what people think is in their interest,” Ferguson said. “That’s a narrative that is politically toxic for Republicans.” In November 2018, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as will 34 seats in the Senate. Democrats hope to gain control of one or both chambers by capitalizing on the unpopularity of Trump. Republicans currently control both chambers as well as the White House. To regain power, Democrats will need a strong showing of support among young voters, who traditionally have not shown up in large numbers for elections held in years when there is no presidential contest. Liberal groups are using net neutrality as an issue to criticize Republican incumbents. Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, echoed that sentiment, telling Reuters on Thursday that net neutrality will have “huge political legs ... This is something that everyone across the country understands - the importance of the internet.” The group End Citizens United announced last week a $35 million advertising campaign targeting 20 Republican House members for their stances on issues that relate to business, including net neutrality. Democrats facing difficult election battles next year are already weighing in strongly in favor of net neutrality rules. Senator Bill Nelson likely will face a difficult battle in Florida and sent a letter earlier in the week opposing the change in net neutrality rules. Several Democratic candidates are sending campaign fundraising appeals citing net neutrality. The changes could also become issues in a number of House races across the country, where Democrats will need to win more than 25 seats to control the chamber. Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also publicly opposed the rule changes, a sign that she wanted to be sure to stake a Democratic position on the issue. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (December 14) - Stock market, federal regulations;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Republican Tax Cuts are looking very good. All are working hard. In the meantime, the Stock Market hit another record high! [0859 EST] - As a candidate, I promised we would pass a massive tax cut for the everyday, working Americans. If you make your voices heard, this moment will be forever remembered as a great new beginning – the dawn of a brilliant American future shining with PATRIOTISM, PROSPERITY AND PRIDE! [1205 EST] - Today, we gathered in the Roosevelt Room for one single reason: to CUT THE RED TAPE! For many decades, an ever-growing maze of regs, rules, and restrictions has cost our country trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, countless American factories, & devastated entire industries. [1513 EST] - When Americans are free to thrive, innovate, & prosper, there is no challenge too great, no task too large, & no goal beyond our reach. [1527 EST] - In 1960, there were approximately 20,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. Today there are over 185,000 pages, as seen in the Roosevelt Room. [1535 EST] - “Manufacturing Optimism Rose to Another All-Time High in the Latest @ShopFloorNAM Outlook Survey” [1620 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House committee questions head of Trump campaign data firm: sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Members of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Thursday interviewed the head of a data analysis firm to determine whether Donald Trump’s election campaign team sought his help to find thousands of emails missing from Hillary Clinton’s private server, three sources familiar with the session said. Trump’s campaign hired Alexander Nix and the company, Cambridge Analytica, in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million through last December, according to Federal Election Commission records. The month after his firm was hired, Nix emailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for help tracking down some 33,000 emails that Clinton supposedly had deleted from her private server, the Daily Beast and The Wall Street Journal reported in October. Nix wanted to convert the missing and potentially damaging emails into a searchable database for use by the Trump campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee, the Journal reported. WikiLeaks confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that it was approached by Nix, but a representative said it turned down his request. The intelligence committee is investigating possible collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia during the 2016 election. The matter is also being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and three other congressional committees. Russia has denied meddling in the election, and Trump has said there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign. Representatives Elijah Cummings and Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, on Thursday asked their Republican committee chairmen to issue subpoenas for documents from Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale, another data analysis firm that worked for the Trump campaign. Spokesmen for Cambridge Analytica and Giles-Parscale did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment.  Cummings and Nadler said they sent their letter after the two companies declined to answer questions about whether they had contacts with foreign actors during the 2016 presidential campaign. The sources said the intelligence committee members met at a Washington law office on Thursday to conduct the interview with Nix by Skype because he was not in the United States. The sources said the interview lasted some 90 minutes. The CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency said in January that Russia used propaganda, social media and other means to meddle in the 2016 election to try to help Trump defeat Clinton. In their report, the agencies said Russian intelligence services hacked emails and other documents from the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic Party organizations, and used Wikileaks to release them. ;politicsNews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's Temer says pension bill 2 to 3 dozen votes short;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s government has secured between 270 and 280 of the 308 votes needed to approve a bill to overhaul the country s bloated social security system in February, President Michel Temer said on Friday. It was the first time Temer has said how many votes are still needed to reach the three-fifths super majority to pass the unpopular legislation that investors see as vital to bringing a huge budget deficit under control. That is the reason why we put off the vote until February, Temer said at the swearing-in of a cabinet minister who will be responsible for mustering the votes shortfall. The measure is due to be put to the vote on Feb. 19, after the Christmas to Carnival Congressional recess, when it could meet with greater reluctance from lawmakers as the 2018 general election approaches. The delay has increased market skepticism over Brazil s ability to rein in a deficit that caused the loss of its investment grade credit rating. Temer s new minister of political affairs, Carlos Marun, said the bill s approval will be his biggest challenge as he takes over government relations with Congress. Marun was sworn in to succeed Antonio Imbassahy, whose PSDB party quit Temer s governing coalition and is split over delivering its 46 votes in the lower house to help pass Temer s pension plan. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China tells Australia off over South China Sea stance;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s naval chief has told his Australian counterpart that his country s actions on the South China Sea run counter to the general trend of peace and stability in the disputed waterway. Australia, a close ally of the United States, has repeatedly expressed concern over the disputed South China Sea, where China has built manmade islands, some of which are equipped with runways, surface-to-air missiles and radars. Australia has previously drawn criticism from China for running surveillance flights over the South China Sea and supporting U.S. freedom of navigation exercises there. However, Australia has not conducted a unilateral freedom of navigation voyage of its own. China claims most of the South China Sea, a strategic waterway where $3 trillion worth of goods passes every year. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei all have overlapping claims. Meeting in Beijing, China s navy commander Shen Jinlong told Australian Vice Admiral Tim Barrett that at present the situation in the South China Sea was steady and good , China s Defence Ministry said in a statement late on Thursday. But in the last year the Australian military s series of actions in the South China Sea have run counter to the general trend of peace and stability, the ministry cited Shen as saying, without pointing to any specific examples. This does not accord with the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries nor the atmosphere of the forward steps in cooperation in all areas between the two countries, Shen added. This also is not beneficial to the overall picture of regional peace and stability. Over the past week or so China and Australia have also traded barbs over Canberra s allegation that Beijing had sought to interfere in Australian politics, with China summoning Australia s ambassador to complain last week. China has continued to install high-frequency radar and other facilities that can be used for military purposes on its man-made islands in the South China Sea, a U.S. think tank said on Thursday. In August, Australia, Japan and the United States urged Southeast Asia and China to ensure that a South China Sea code of conduct they have committed to draw up will be legally binding and said they strongly opposed coercive unilateral actions . ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Kuczynski says will not resign over Odebrecht scandal;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said late on Thursday that he would not resign over a scandal involving payments that Brazilian builder Odebrecht paid a decade ago to a company he controlled while holding public office. In a televised address to the nation flanked by members of his cabinet, Kuczynski denied any wrongdoing and said that while he owned the company, Westfield Capital Ltd, he was not manager of it when it received the payments. Prior to the message, the leaders of several parties in the opposition-controlled Congress said they would seek to oust him if he would not resign. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing evictions leave migrant workers in limbo as winter deepens;BEIJING (Reuters) - Winter is bringing a frigid existence and an uncertain future for migrant workers in Beijing deprived of electricity and heating as they resist a month-long campaign to evict them from the city s urban villages. A deadly fire in a hamlet of ramshackle dwellings on the capital s southern fringes last month prompted a fire safety blitz by the authorities, forcing thousands of the workers out of homes and businesses. But not everyone has left, and a handful of holdouts are preparing for tough times as temperatures plunge below freezing. There s no electricity when we re coming home. We can t see where we re going, said Feng, a migrant worker hailing from the southwestern province of Sichuan, pointing to a pile of blankets. Feng, who was willing to reveal only his surname, had been renting a room in a shared apartment block built and run by migrants in Picun, a village in northeast Beijing, until the authorities cut off their power and ordered everyone to leave. I sold my house in the northeast, there is nothing to go back to, said another worker, Wang Liping, who said she paid 200,000 yuan ($30,000) to buy part of the apartment block where migrants like Feng rent rooms for a few hundred yuan each month. I d rather freeze to death than leave here, added Wang, who is refusing to leave despite efforts to remove her. The evictions have sparked unusually direct criticism from China s intellectuals, students and journalists, who say the government is unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass. Originally it was just a fire, but they used the fire as an excuse to force people young and old onto the streets in the middle of the coldest days of winter, independent political commentator Zhang Lifan told Reuters. But the city could not do without migrants, Cai Qi, the city s Communist Party chief and a close ally of President Xi Jinping, said during a visit to the migrants this week, in a bid to allay the fears. The capital s need for cheap labor has attracted thousands of workers, even though they are denied official residency permits because of government curbs on internal migration. Migrant enclaves have grown into full-fledged communities today, from clusters of shanty towns. Picun, one of the most developed, has its own literature society and houses numerous aspiring artists and musicians. One young couple living by torchlight in their block said they were considering going to Tangshan, a steel-producing hub in their home province of Hebei, but after 10 years of living in Beijing, they would miss the lifestyle. To be honest, if it wasn t for all the migrants, Beijing wouldn t be any better than any other city, the woman, who is surnamed Xiang, told Reuters. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Final Republican tax bill slashes U.S. corporate rate, voting next week;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans on Friday unveiled the final version of their dramatic U.S. tax overhaul - debt-financed cuts for businesses, the wealthy and some middle-class Americans - and picked up crucial support from two wavering senators ahead of planned votes by lawmakers early next week. Passage of the biggest U.S. tax rewrite since 1986 would provide Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump their first major legislative victory since he took office in January. Prospects for approval soared after Republican senators Marco Rubio and Bob Corker pledged support. Three Republican senators, enough to defeat the measure in a Senate that Trump’s party controls with a slim 52-48 majority, remained uncommitted: Susan Collins, Jeff Flake and Mike Lee. The final version hammered out between Senate and House of Representatives Republicans after each chamber previously passed competing versions contained no surprises. It would cut the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, according to a summary distributed to reporters by congressional tax writers. Corporate tax lobbyists have been seeking a tax cut of this magnitude for many years. The bill, the summary showed, would create a 20-percent business income tax deduction for owners of “pass-through” businesses, such as partnerships and sole proprietorships;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon sets May date for first parliamentary vote in nearly a decade;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon has set a date of May 6 next year to hold its first legislative election in nearly a decade, potentially transforming the politics of a country caught in a confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk signed a decree setting the date on Friday, allowing the vote to go ahead at last. The election has been postponed three times since the last vote in 2009, with politicians citing security concerns, political crisis and a dispute over the election law. Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s coalition government, which took office a year ago, agreed on the new election law in June, but setting the date was held up while officials debated technical details and registered Lebanese citizens abroad. Lebanon s political landscape has shifted dramatically since the last election. Hariri s pro-Western, Saudi-backed political alliance has split up. For the past year he has led a power-sharing government which includes the heavily armed, Iran-backed Shi ite movement Hezbollah, despised by his Saudi allies. Hariri sparked a political crisis last month by announcing his resignation while in Riyadh and denouncing Hezbollah and Iran. He stayed abroad for two weeks before returning, and finally withdrew his resignation last week. Lebanon has a complex electoral system designed to maintain civil peace in a country where Sunnis, Shi ites, Christians and Druze fought numerous civil wars since independence in 1943. The 128-seat parliament includes 64 Christians apportioned among seven denominations, and 64 Muslims, including equal numbers of Sunnis and Shi ites. The country is divided into districts that each vote for multiple lawmakers according to strict religious quotas. The president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shi ite Muslim, representing the three biggest groups in parliament. The international community has repeatedly stressed the importance of Lebanon holding timely elections to restore confidence in its institutions and maintain stability. Machnouk said Lebanese abroad would be able to vote on April 22 and 28. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian ex-minister Ulyukayev jailed for eight years over $2 million bribe;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev was found guilty of soliciting a $2 million bribe and sentenced to eight years in jail on Friday, in a case that has shone a rare light on infighting among the elite ahead of a presidential election. Ulyukayev, the most senior serving official to be arrested in decades, was found guilty of accepting the bribe last year from Rosneft (ROSN.MM) chief executive Igor Sechin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin. Sechin took part in an elaborate sting operation on Nov. 14 2016 involving Russia s FSB security service which ended in the arrest of Ulyukayev, 61, the latest twist in what several sources said was a Kremlin turf war. People have ambitions and they are fighting over them, said one senior source who knows several of the people involved in the case. Ulyukayev, who denied the charges, said he d been set up. He said he thought the bag with the bribe was a gift of expensive alcohol. He said he would appeal and a source close to Ulyukayev said his lawyers hoped Putin might pardon him if that failed. The case s denouement comes just months before a March presidential election which incumbent Putin is expected to win. If, as expected, he is re-elected he will be 71 at the end of his new term and is barred by the constitution from running for a third consecutive term. With that deadline looming, turf wars take on extra importance because they could help decide who runs Russia after Putin. The verdict and the harsher-than-expected sentence Ulyukayev was widely forecast to get a suspended sentence is likely to be interpreted as a sign that Sechin s place at Putin s side is safe and that he is increasingly influential, something that has alarmed other members of the elite. We re dealing with a court that has been hijacked by personal interests, Gleb Pavlovsky, an ex-Putin adviser, wrote on social media. State prosecutors had said that Ulyukayev had asked for the bribe in exchange for approving the sale of the state-controlled oil company Bashneft (BANE.MM) to Rosneft, something he initially opposed. Boris Neporozhniy, a state prosecutor, hailed Friday s verdict as a sign of the supremacy of the law, while a spokesman for Rosneft, the oil firm Sechin runs, said Ulyukayev had been caught red-handed and that the evidence against him had been rock solid. Before his arrest, Ulyukayev had been one of the leading figures in a faction of economic liberals who argued for less state control over the economy. Sechin is widely seen as the main champion of the opposite view, that the state should consolidate its grip, particularly over the energy sector that provides a large share of Russia s state revenue through its two biggest companies, Rosneft and Gazprom. He is backed by others, many of them with a background in state security, who share his view. Two sources said the way Ulyukayev s trial had been conducted showed that his rivals for influence in the ruling elite had used the trial to try to push back against him. They did that by lobbying officials for the trial to be held in public, and by leaking elements of the prosecution case to the media, the two sources said. Sechin has publicly opposed the court s decision to release audio tapes of the sting operation. The fact that the trial has been held in public and not behind closed doors showed the limits of Sechin s influence, the sources said. Ulyukayev, who was handcuffed and placed in a courtroom cage after the verdict, looked shocked and said he had been treated unfairly. Of course it s unjust, he told reporters. When one reporter pointed out he d received the minimum custodial sentence for the charges, Ulyukayev held up his handcuffed hands and said: You call this the minimum? When asked about the case on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment. Former Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin, an adviser to Putin and a strong advocate of less state control over the economy, strongly criticised the verdict. It s a terrible, groundless verdict, Kudrin said on social media. It s weak work by the investigation... Many face such injustice these days. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Multi-summit Macron burns energy in hunt for results;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - If European leaders earned points for the amount of time they spend at summits, French President Emmanuel Macron would probably top the rankings this week. A two-day gathering in Brussels - with talks running past midnight on Thursday - was merely the icing on the cake for Macron, who had already hosted a global climate conference and a counter-terrorism summit in the past four days. He certainly comes with a lot of energy and ideas, one European Council official said of the 39-year-old, who in seven months in office has earned a reputation for burning the candle at both ends, stretching his youthful staff. We just hope we can find a way to channel it. The question is, is it delivering results? When it comes to Europe, the report card is so far mixed, although that s not necessarily Macron s fault. During his election campaign and early months in office, he put euro zone reform at the heart of his program, hoping to work hand-in-hand with Germany and other member states on it. But the German election in September weakened Chancellor Angela Merkel s position and she is still trying to put together a coalition, a process unlikely to be completed before March. Without her, Macron lacks a partner to push things along. The discussions he wanted to have on ideas like a separate budget for the single currency area have been pushed back, an acknowledgement that the timing is not right. There are talks on migration, security and defense, all topics addressed by EU leaders on Thursday, but progress is slow and halting, particularly on migration, which led to divisive discussions late into the night. Macron, who in recent weeks has made trips to Africa, met Middle East leaders and brokered the return of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri from Saudi Arabia, is at the heart of all the exhausting debates. He may want to steer a course somewhere between former President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose hyperactive EU style drove some partners to distraction, and his immediate predecessor Francois Hollande, who was at times considered too low-key. His energy is much appreciated, especially after the blow of Brexit, but he must also try to stay a bit realistic, said a diplomat, mentioning that Macron had managed to raise the Ukraine crisis, the Middle East, euro zone reform and demands that the bloc offer more social protection to citizens. One problem the former investment banker faces is that getting 28 EU leaders to agree on a single course of action is always hard. When he acts outside the EU bubble, he has arguably had more success. His One Planet summit this week drew new green pledges from corporations and international organizations, keeping the battle against climate change high up the global agenda. An unscheduled stop in Saudi Arabia last month for talks with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman helped clinch the release of Hariri, who flew to Paris and then back to Lebanon, where he withdrew his resignation as prime minister. Macron has in some ways taken the international reins at a time when several Western leaders are otherwise engaged - Britain s Theresa May is tied up with Brexit, Merkel is bogged down in coalition politics and President Donald Trump s first year in office has been chaotic and unpredictable. His main rival for geopolitical engagement is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has invited him to be guest of honor at the economic forum in St. Petersburg next May. No confirmation yet of whether Macron will find the time to go. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says U.S. wants Russia's help on North Korea;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington hoped to receive more help from Russian President Vladimir Putin in efforts to convince North Korea to abandon its missile and nuclear weapons program. The primary point was to talk about North Korea, because we would love to have his help on North Korea. China s helping, Russia s not helping;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malaysia's Mahathir calls Trump a 'villain' for Jerusalem plan;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Muslim-majority Malaysia s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad on Friday called U.S. President Donald Trump an international bully and a villain for his move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Trump last week reversed decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and said the United States would move its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in the coming years. The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The anger from Trump s decision will lead to what is called terrorism , the 93-year-old Mahathir told a protest rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Today we have an international bully. Trump, go find someone your own size. This (Jerusalem plan) will only stir the anger of the Muslims, said Mahathir, the chairman of Malaysia s opposition coalition. We must use all our power to oppose this villain who is the president of the United States, he said, urging all Muslim countries to cut ties with Israel. Muhyiddin Yassin, another opposition leader, called on the Malaysian government to not proceed with planned investments in the United States. Last week, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak urged Muslims worldwide to oppose any recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Social media users in Muslim-majority Malaysia vowed to boycott U.S. companies, such as McDonald s Corp, following Trump s decision. The chain s Malaysian franchise said it did not support or engage in any political or religious conflicts. Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Ahamd Hamidi on Friday said Najib and the leader of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) would lead a protest rally next Friday in Malaysia s administrative capital of Putrajaya, media said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says Iran nuclear deal breakdown would hurt effort to manage North Korea;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a possible breakdown of the Iran nuclear deal would send the wrong signal when it came to trying to resolve the situation around North Korea, the RIA and Interfax news agencies reported on Friday. Any attempts to provoke a military scenario for North Korea would lead to catastrophe, the agencies quoted Lavrov as saying in the Russian parliament. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Belgian trial of Paris attacker Abdeslam postponed: court;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Belgian trial of one of the suspects behind the 2015 Islamist attacks in Paris has been postponed, a Brussels court said. French national Salah Abdeslam fled to Belgium after the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, hiding from police for months before being detained. Days after his arrest Brussels was hit by another deadly militant attack. He is standing trial in Belgium over his involvement in a shootout with police in the days leading up to his arrest. Abdeslam, initially set to stand trial on Monday, has appointed a new lawyer who had asked for more time to prepare his case. The court will set a new date for his trial on Monday. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;From life as thugs to baking, El Salvador's ex-gang members seek peace;SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - Gang life in the poor Central American country of El Salvador is hard, but for a dozen former members of the feared 18th Street Gang, building a new life outside is no less difficult. Wilfredo Gomez, 40, joined a gang as an adolescent in Los Angeles, the U.S. city to which his parents emigrated. He said he was enticed by the guns, the girls and the camaraderie of gang life. He wound up in jail before being deported back to his native country. With few links to El Salvador, he quickly returned to gang life. A 10-year jail sentence for stealing an Uzi submachine gun gave him time to reckon with his choices. Returning to civil society is arduous in the midst of the government s militarized battle against the maras, which has led to claims of rights abuses and, according to police, an average daily tally of 16 dead. Former gang members often struggle to find lodging and work, and may be rejected by their families. For Gomez and 12 other ex-gangsters, the Eben-Ezer evangelical church in the gang-ridden neighborhood of Dina in San Salvador, the capital, has been a lifeline, offering food, accommodations, and a spiritual second chance. I ve only had losses being part of the gang, Gomez said. I haven t won anything. I lost my youth, which was spent in jail. I lost my family due to my bad decisions. I lost my home, my woman, my son, and I lost the best years of my life due to a pointless ideology. Gomez now runs a bakery that employs 10 other former gang members. Now, my fun, my enjoyment, is to see them smile, to have dreams, Gomez said. They say they re going to open a bigger bakery, and that one day we ll have our own store and compete against Pizza Hut. Rejected by a society weary of violence, they nonetheless struggle to eradicate the stain of gang life. In October, police went to the bakery and stripped the employees to expose their gang tattoos. They were arrested on suspicion of illicit association, a crime that carries a 5-year sentence. A week later, they were released without charges. Once known as The Shadow, Raul Valladares, 34, is undergoing a painful process to remove tattoos from his face and arms. He has received death threats from his former gang associates because removing gang insignia is punishable by death. It s definitely cost me a lot to leave the gang, he said. But I m fighting to keep going. Related photo essay at reut.rs/2j5X7Oj ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top Iraqi Shi'ite cleric says paramilitaries should be part of state security bodies;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi ite paramilitary groups who took part in the war against Islamic State militants should be incorporated into state security bodies, the nation s top Shi ite cleric said. In a message delivered at the Friday sermon in the holy city of Kerbala through one of his representatives, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said all weapons used in fighting the insurgents should be brought under the control of the Iraqi government. Sistani s position is in line with that of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who wants to prevent commanders of the militias known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) from using power and clout they acquired during the war in elections due on May 12. Sistani was the author of a landmark fatwa, or religious decree, which urged Iraqis to volunteer for the war on Islamic State after the government s armed forces collapsed in 2014 and the militants swept towards the gates of Baghdad. The victory over Daesh doesn t mean the end of the battle with terrorism, Sistani s representative Sheikh Abdulmehdi al-Karbalai said, mentioning the existence of sleeper cells . The security apparatus should be supported by the fighters who took part in the war on Daesh, he added in the sermon broadcast on state TV, using an Arab acronym for Islamic State. It is necessary to absorb the fighters in the official and constitutional structures, Sistani said in the sermon, adding that the fatwa should not be used to achieve political aims . Abadi quickly reacted to Sistani s sermon in a statement from his office welcoming his call against using volunteers and fighters in political campaigning . Iraq s Sunni and Kurdish politicians have called on Abadi, who declared victory over Islamic State last week, to disarm the PMF. They say the militias are responsible for widespread abuses including extra-judicial killings, kidnappings and displacing non-Shi ite populations, and in effect report to Tehran, not the government in Baghdad. The PMF says any abuses were isolated incidents and not systematic and that those who committed them have been punished. Two of the most important Iranian-backed paramilitary leaders, Hadi al-Amiri and Qais al-Khazali, announced this week they were putting their militias under Abadi s orders. Their decision to formally separate their armed and political wings could pave the way for them to contest the elections, possibly as part of a broader alliance close to Iran. Iran provided training and supplied weapons to the most powerful PMF groups including Amiri s Badr Organisation and Khazali s Asaib Ahl al-Haq. The Iraqi parliament last year voted to establish the PMF as a separate military corps that reports to Abadi in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Syria, Russia securing position as Assad presses war;BEIRUT (Reuters) - With the map of Syria s conflict decisively redrawn in President Bashar al-Assad s favor, his Russian allies want to convert military gains into a settlement that stabilizes the shattered nation and secures their interests in the region. A year after the opposition s defeat in Aleppo, government forces backed by Russia and Iran have recovered large swathes of territory as Islamic State s caliphate collapses. As U.N.-backed talks in Geneva fail to make any progress, Russia is preparing to launch its own political process in 2018. President Vladimir Putin declared mission accomplished for the military on a visit to Russia s Syrian air base this week, and said conditions were ripe for a political solution. Though Washington still insists Assad must go, a senior Syrian opposition figure told Reuters the United States and other governments that have backed the rebellion had finally surrendered to the Russian vision on ending the war. The view in Damascus is that this will preserve Assad as president. A Syrian official in Damascus said it is clear a track is underway, and the Russians are overseeing it . There is a shift in the path of the crisis in Syria, a shift for the better, the official said. But analysts struggle to see how Russian diplomacy can bring lasting peace to Syria, encourage millions of refugees to return, or secure Western reconstruction aid. There is no sign that Assad is ready to compromise with his opponents. The war has also allowed his other big ally, Iran and its Revolutionary Guard, to expand its regional influence, which Tehran will not want to see diluted by any settlement in Syria. Having worked closely to secure Assad, Iran and Russia may now differ in ways that could complicate Russian policy. Assad and his allies now command the single largest chunk of Syria, followed by U.S.-backed Kurdish militias who control much of northern and eastern Syria and are more concerned with shoring up their regional autonomy than fighting Damascus. Anti-Assad rebels still cling to patches of territory: a corner of the northwest at the Turkish border, a corner of the southwest at the Israeli frontier, and the Eastern Ghouta near Damascus. Eastern Ghouta and the northwest are now in the firing line. The Revolutionary Guards clearly feel they have won this war and the hardliners in Iran are not too keen on anything but accommodation with Assad, so on that basis it is a little hard to see that there can be any real progress, said Rolf Holmboe, a former Danish ambassador to Syria. Assad cannot live with a political solution that involves any real power sharing, said Holmboe. The solution he could potentially live with is to freeze the situation you have on the ground right now. The war has been going Assad s way since 2015, when Russia sent its air force to help him. The scales tipped even more his way this year: Russia struck deals with Turkey, the United States and Jordan that contained in the war in the west, indirectly helping Assad s advances in the east, and Washington pulled military aid from the rebels. Though Assad seems unbeatable, Western governments still hope to effect change by linking reconstruction aid to a credible political process leading to a genuine transition . While paying lip service to the principle that any peace deal should be concluded under U.N. auspices, Russia aims to convene its own peace congress in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The aim is to draw up a new constitution followed by elections. The senior Syrian opposition figure said the United States and other states that had backed their cause - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Turkey - had all given way to Russia. Sochi, not Geneva, would be the focal point for talks. This is the way it has been understood from talking to the Americans, the French, the Saudis - all the states, the opposition figure said. It is clear that this is the plan, and there is no state that will oppose this ... because the entire world is tired of this crisis. Proposals include forming a new government to hold elections that would include Syrian refugees. But the time frame: six months, two years, three years, all depends on the extent of understanding between the Russians and Americans , the opposition figure said. If the Russians and Americans differ greatly, the whole table could be overturned. Russia is serious about accomplishing something with the political process, but on its own terms and turf, said senior International Crisis Group analyst Noah Bonsey. I am not sure they have a good sense of how to accomplish that and to the extent that they seek to accomplish things politically, they may run into the divergence of interests between themselves and their allies, he said. The Syrian Kurdish question is one area where Russia and Iran have signaled different goals. While a top Iranian official recently said the government would take areas held by the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces, Russia has struck deals with the Kurds and their U.S. sponsors. From the start of the crisis, there s been a difference between the Russians and the Iranians and the regime, said Fawza Youssef, a top Kurdish politician. The Russians believe the Kurds have a cause that should be taken into account . Damascus, while issuing its own warnings to the Kurds, may continue to leave them to their own devices as it presses campaigns against the last rebel-held pockets of western Syria. The situation in the southwest is shaped by different factors, namely Israel s determination to keep Iran-backed forces away from its frontier, which could prompt an Israeli military response. There are still major questions and a lot of potential for escalating violence in various parts of Syria, said Bonsey. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Italy plans big handover of sea rescues to Libya coastguard;ROME/TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Italy wants Libya s coastguard to take responsibility within three years for intercepting migrants across about a tenth of the Mediterranean even as Libyan crews struggle to patrol their own coast and are accused of making deadly mistakes at sea. Six years after the revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, Libya is split between rival governments in the east and west while ports and beaches are largely in the hands of armed groups. For a graphic on Italy's handover of sea rescues to Libya, click tmsnrt.rs/2o1wLC6 Migrant smuggling has flourished, with more than 600,000 making the perilous journey across the central Mediterranean in four years. Migrants transiting through Libya often endure appalling conditions, including rape, torture and forced labor. The Italian plan, outlined in a slide presentation seen by Reuters, shows that Italy and the European Union are focusing on rebuilding Libya s navy and coastguard so they can stop boats. But aid groups say the Libyans are poorly trained and accuse them of mishandling a rescue last month in which some 50 people are thought to have died. The Libyans return all migrants, including refugees, to Libya even though the situation on the ground there is far from resolved. Italy has been coordinating rescues off the Libyan coast since 2013. The 30 slides show spending of 44 million euros ($52 million) to expand Libya s capacity by 2020, equipping the coastguard and enabling it to establish its own rescue coordination center as well as a vast maritime search-and-rescue region. It also foresees a pilot project for monitoring Libya s southern border. The project draws on European Union and Italian funds, and needs EU approval. The plan was presented by the Italian coastguard at a conference hosted by the EU s anti-trafficking mission, Sophia, in Rome last month. Representatives from the EU, non-governmental groups and various Mediterranean navies and coastguards attended the closed-door presentation, said a source who was present. Libya s coastguard has already been pushing further into international waters, often firing warning shots or speeding close to charity boats. Over the summer, three charities abandoned rescue operations in part because of fears of the increasing Libyan sea presence. Arrivals to Italy have fallen by two-thirds since July from the same period last year after officials working for the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Italy s partner, persuaded human smugglers in the city of Sabratha to stop boats leaving. The Libyan coastguard also increased the rate of its interceptions, turning back about 20,000 this year, though it still only stops a portion of the boats. The crisis remains a major issue in Italy. State shelters for asylum seekers are nearly full, and with elections looming politicians across the spectrum insist the flows from North Africa be stopped, which the new scheme is likely to address. Italy s coastguard did not reply to a request for comment. The prime minister s office referred questions to the interior ministry, which is spearheading the effort to fight people smuggling in Libya and also had no comment. Each nation has the right to declare its own search-and-rescue zone, and to carry out search-and-rescue operations, a Defence Ministry spokesman said, citing international law. Ayoub Qassem, a Libyan coastguard spokesman, said he did not have details of the plan, but both sides recognized the need to cooperate in tackling irregular migration. Recently the Italian side has been eager to cooperate with Libya because it s more effective than working without Libya that s natural, he said. Italy has supplied Libya with four refurbished vessels so far, and six more have been promised, while the EU has trained about 220 Libyan coastguards. But rights groups and aid workers say partnering with Libya s unprofessional coastguard risks exposing migrants to drowning during rescues or to further rights abuses if sent back to detention centers inside Libya. From the testimony we hear from the migrants, we know that people intercepted at sea have then re-entered the circle of violence and imprisonment and abuse that they were fleeing, said Nicola Stalla, search-and-rescue chief for SOS Mediterranee, one of the charities still operating off Libya. Activists also point to incidents such as one on Nov. 6, when crew members of the German humanitarian ship Sea Watch 3 witnessed a Libyan naval vessel draw alongside an inflatable migrant boat. When people fell into the water, Sea Watch used small rubber speedboats to pull people from the water while the Libyans looked on. Some migrants who climbed on board the Libyan vessel were whipped with ropes, and the Libyan boat sped off with a man still dangling in the water, according to videos shot by Sea Watch and crew member Gennaro Giudetti, who pulled the body of a lifeless 2 1/2-year-old Nigerian boy named Great from the water. They watched us and shot videos. They even threw potatoes at us. That s not how you save lives, said Giudetti. Libya s naval coastguard accused Sea Watch of obstructing the rescue and trying to lure away migrants who had already boarded their ship. Some migrants jumped into the water to try to reach Sea Watch rescuers. The Libyans said their smaller speedboats, which are mounted on larger patrol vessels and are the safest to use for rescues, were broken. We have only one or two of these boats and they do not work, so how we can put them into the water? Qassem, the coastguard spokesman, told Reuters. The expansion of Libyan patrols has led to confusion and competition over who should take the lead during rescues. Some charity ships say they have been directed to hold off rescues to allow the Libyans to arrive, putting migrants at risk. Libya s search-and-rescue region extends 90 miles from shore in some places, and 200 miles in others, Qassem said. This summer the Libyans notified the International Maritime Organization about plans to take over a large search and rescue region, but withdrew the notification this month, saying it would resubmit a new one soon, an IMO spokeswoman said. It would be the first time Libya has set up a search-and-rescue region, she said. The Italian plan proposes helping Libya formally declare such a zone. It would also provide for training, maintenance, new cars, ambulances and buses, communications equipment and clothing. Full operation capability is seen by the end of 2020. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Holocaust must be bigger part of migrant courses: German minister;BERLIN (Reuters) - More emphasis should be placed on the Holocaust in integration courses for migrants, Germany s justice minister said, reflecting heightened unease among leading politicians about a spate of anti-Semitic acts including Israeli flag burnings. More than a million migrants have arrived in Germany in the last three years, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East, causing concern that anti-Semitism could increase. German police have reported protesters setting Israeli flags ablaze and using anti-Semitic slogans in Berlin and other cities in demonstrations against U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. In a piece for weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Justice Minister Heiko Maas wrote that the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed six million Jews, and its significance needed to become an even more important part of integration courses and migrants should be tested on it in the examination at the end of their course. The lessons from the Holocaust need to be one of the guiding ideas in those lessons and not just some chapter of German history, he said. Racism has no place in Germany, so everyone who wants to stay in Germany for the long term needs to be clear that we fight the Neonazis anti-Semitism and we won t tolerate any imported anti-Semitism from immigrants either, Maas added. Jens Spahn, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Der Spiegel he thought immigration from Muslim countries was one of the causes of recent anti-Semitic demonstrations in Berlin. Spahn said incidents in recent days were related to immigration from a culture in which people are not prissy about how they deal with Jews and homosexuals . Speaking at an event marking the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Friday Germany needed to remember its historical responsibility, including the lessons of two world wars, the Holocaust, ensuring Israel s security and rejecting any form of racism and anti-Semitism. There s no end to this responsibility for people born afterwards and no exceptions for immigrants, he said, adding that those who burned Israeli flags did not understand or respect what it meant to be German. In an interview with the Funke newspaper consortium, Israel s ambassador in Berlin Jeremy Issacharoff called for a ban on burning flags. Anyone who burns flags questions Israel s right to exist, he said. Stephan Kramer, the head of a state intelligence agency in the eastern region of Thuringia, warned in Der Spiegel that anti-Semitism was becoming ever more uninhibited and many Jews were too scared to identify themselves as such. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German SPD leaders vote to start exploratory talks with conservatives;BERLIN (Reuters) - Leaders of Germany s Social Democrats have voted unanimously to begin exploratory talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives about forming a coalition government, Andreas Nahles, head of the SPD s parliamentary group, said on Friday. Nahles said party leaders would work on substantive issues in the talks, with a party conference in January to determine the way forward. She said the SPD, which suffered its worst post-war election losses in September, planned to enter the talks with an open and constructive attitude with an eye to improving the lives of ordinary Germans. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italian woman jailed in Denmark for ordering murder online in bitcoin;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - An Italian woman who ordered the murder of her boyfriend through a website and paid a hitman in bitcoin digital currency was sentenced on Friday to six years in a Danish jail. The 58-year-old woman ordered the murder - which was never carried out - in March, transferring 4.1 bitcoin, then worth around $4,000, to the hitman s virtual wallet, the court found. Bitcoin can be transferred electronically between users without an intermediary such as a bank, making it potentially attractive for buying illegal goods or services. The woman, who has lived in Denmark for 30 years, will be expelled after serving her sentence, the court said. The intended murder victim was present at the court hearing north of Copenhagen on Friday and spoke with the woman after the verdict, the Danish public broadcaster said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Explainer: What can possibly go wrong? Nine Brexit bear traps for 2018;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders gave a green light to the main phase of Brexit negotiations on Friday after applauding Prime Minister Theresa May s efforts to settle divorce terms for Britain s withdrawal in March 2019. But despite a surge in optimism that the coming year can set a smooth glide path to a free trade pact via a seamless period of transition, 2018 is studded with pitfalls to test the nerves of negotiators, businesses and millions of ordinary folk. This is the theory. EU negotiator Michel Barnier is set to calm worried investors and in January offer May the roughly two-year transition she wants to offer stability while a future trade agreement is hammered out. Like all tempting quick deals, though, it comes at a price and the EU s demands are not ones May will find easy to sell to Brexit enthusiasts. You can keep single market membership, Barnier tells Britain, but you will keep paying Brussels and be bound by all EU rules including ones not yet made, without having a say on making them. Plus, there are quite a few wrinkles that mean status quo cannot be quite so simple. Stand by for more long arguments. EU leaders want to agree their common negotiating position on trade at a summit on March 22-23, allowing talks with Britain to start some weeks after that. But while the 27 member states quickly agreed this year on what to demand from London on the divorce notably money and rights for their citizens living in Britain they have divergent interests for the future. Close neighbors do a lot of trade with Britain, others further east are more interested in keeping Britain s military muscle on hand than in tariff-free commerce. The EU has done big trade deals before, but none with an economy so big and so close. This might take some time though time is in short supply. On the other side of the Channel, there is also internal negotiation to be done before trade talks open. Barnier says he understands what Britain doesn t want being in the single market and customs union, accepting EU court rulings, and open immigration. But, he says, what does Britain want? He s looking for an answer before finalizing the EU position. And May is facing battles inside her own government team, or cabinet, and with opponents in parliament, where she has a slim majority, on whether quitting the single market and/or customs union is really such a good idea for the British economy. Those keen on Brexit want a clean slate to cut deals with other parts of the world, but many worry about the cost of new barriers in Europe. One reason her fellow leaders gave May a round of applause over dinner on Thursday night was to offer encouragement for her perseverance, despite deep splits in her own party, in keeping a semblance of order in a Brexit process she did not want. But can she keep it up? A host of scenarios could see May out before Brexit. Dependent on Northern Irish allies after a botched snap election in June, she was defeated on Wednesday in a vote that now gives parliament a final say on a Brexit deal. When her strongest card seems to be that no one else is keen to take on a thankless job with little future, then stability is not a given. Last week s joint report with Barnier that unlocked the EU agreement to open trade talks depended on fudging how they will avoid erecting the infrastructure of a hard EU-UK border that could disrupt peace in Belfast. Brussels and Dublin will say May must honor a pledge to keep Northern Ireland in regulatory alignment with the EU to the south effectively in a customs union. But she also promised to keep the north aligned with the rest of the UK and to let the UK diverge from the EU. With her Belfast allies determined to avoid any barriers with mainland Britain and pro-Brexit London ministers set on breaking with EU regulations, May faces a tough task agreeing a framework for future relations before Brexit. Despite all those problems, both sides are clear that a treaty settling the terms of withdrawal including as yet undecided and potentially explosive issues such as how they will be enforced must be ready by about October. That is so the process of ratification in the European and British parliaments can be completed in good time for Brexit in March 2019. But months of negotiations so far have produced relatively little in the way of detailed outcomes, so that target looks ambitious. The risk for both sides is that failure to reach any deal will see a cliff edge Brexit in which Britain, under Article 50 of the EU treaty, simply ceases to be a member as midnight chimes in Brussels going into Saturday, March 30, 2019. Without any treaty, that will open up a vast expanse of legal limbo. No one can rule out extending the deadline, though neither side wants it to be long British Brexit voters want delivery on their referendum and EU states, though they are sorry to see it go, do not want the upset of endless negotiations with Britain. May s government talks about having a free trade deal ready to be signed almost as soon as Britain leaves it cannot be signed before. But Brussels says the best Britain can hope for as it leaves is a political declaration , alongside the withdrawal, on what the framework of a future relationship will be. That will not be legally binding and leaves huge scope for the kind of detailed trade negotiation that usually takes years. Barnier says an agreement, similar to one the EU has with Canada, can be ready by January 2021, when the transition may end. But that uncertainty also creates another cliff edge . Could the transition period go on longer, with Britain, like Norway today, a taker of EU rules without having a say on them? France and others want that kind of endless limbo avoided, though some in Brussels can envisage an extra year or so. Brexit supporters hate the idea but some of who campaigned against leaving including Scottish nationalists eyeing a new bid for independence see a tempting possibility to stay in the Union s ante-chamber before trying to get back in. Cue more furious debate in Britain, and an uncertain response in Europe. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron aiming for eurozone 'convergence' with Germany by March;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday he hoped to make progress with Germany on ideas to reform the euro zone by March, once Germany has a new coalition government in place, and agree a roadmap with all eurozone leaders by June next year. Speaking at a news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel after an EU summit, Macron said a stable, strong Germany was in everyone s interests to advance European integration and that decisions would flow from that. Our aim is to have an agreement in March because at that stage a political step will have been completed in Germany and we will have the capacity to construct together much more clearly on these issues, Macron said of eurozone reform. Do I think that we can have a joint position and have joint solutions? I not only think we can, but I want it. Asked about his ideas for a eurozone budget, Macron said that in his Sorbonne speech in September, delivered two days after the German election, he had not made any mention of a specific size for the budget in terms of points of GDP. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's Temer to leave hospital, return to Brasilia;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Michel Temer was cleared to leave hospital in Sao Paulo on Friday and will return to Brasilia in the afternoon, his office said. Temer, 77, underwent minor surgery on Wednesday for a narrowing of his urethra. [L1N1OD2AC] ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian conservatives bring far right into government;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria is set to become the only western European country with a far-right party in government after the anti-immigration Freedom Party and Sebastian Kurz s conservatives struck a coalition deal to share power almost equally. In an early policy pronouncement, Kurz, the future chancellor, said the new government would not hold a referendum on European Union membership. Kurz, who is just 31, and Freedom Party (FPO) leader Heinz-Christian Strache announced their deal on Friday night, handing the far right a share of power for the third time in the Alpine republic, after more than a decade in opposition. The FPO will take control of much of Austria s security apparatus, in charge of the foreign, interior and defense ministries. The People s Party (OVP) led by Kurz will control the powerful finance ministry as well the justice and agriculture portfolios. No one need be afraid, Austrian news agency APA quoted the incoming interior minister and chairman of the FPO, Herbert Kickl, as saying. Kickl began his career as a speechwriter for the late Joerg Haider, who praised Adolf Hitler s employment policies and led the party to its first mainstream electoral success. Kurz will head the government as chancellor and the OVP will have eight ministries including his office. The FPO will have six, including Strache s office as vice chancellor. Kurz has repeatedly said his government will be pro-European despite including the FPO, which was founded by former Nazis and campaigned against Austria joining the bloc when it was put to a referendum in 1994. The coalition plans to make referendums more widely available. Unlike France s National Front, the FPO has backed away from calling for a referendum on leaving the European Union but Kurz obtained a guarantee that a Brexit-style vote will not be held. There will be no votes on our membership of international organizations, including the European Union, Kurz told a joint news conference with Strache. Kurz s office will also take over some European departments from the FPO-run foreign ministry to give him greater control over EU matters. The 180-page coalition agreement listed plans such as sinking taxes and cutting public spending through streamlined administration though it often did not say how such goals would be achieved. Austria s parliamentary election two months ago was dominated by Europe s migration crisis, in which the affluent country took in a large number of asylum seekers. Kurz s party won with a hard line on immigration that often overlapped with the FPO s, pledging to cut benefits for refugees and never to allow a repeat of 2015 s wave of arrivals. The FPO came third in the election with 26 percent of the vote. Kurz and Strache held their news conference outlining the agreement on the Kahlenberg, a hill on the outskirts of the capital famed as the site of the 1683 Battle of Vienna, which ended a siege of the city by Ottoman Turks. While there was no specific mention of repelling that Muslim invasion, the symbolism is clear for two parties that have warned Muslim parallel societies are emerging in Austria. Kurz, however, told reporters: I did not take the decision on where the press conference should be held.... I would not read too much symbolism into it. Strache and Kurz oppose Turkish membership of the EU, a position that polls regularly show most Austrians support. We both recognize about 75 percent of ourselves in the program, said Strache, who accused Kurz during the campaign of stealing his party s ideas. That might have something to do with the fact that one or the other maybe took on the other s policy points before the election. Anti-establishment parties have been winning over more voters in Europe, capitalizing on dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians handling of the economy, security and immigration. While other far-right parties have gained ground this year, entering parliament in Germany and making France s presidential run-off, the FPO is going further by entering government and securing key ministries. It is excellent news for Europe, Marine Le Pen said of the coalition deal at a Prague meeting of her National Front party s European grouping, which includes the FPO. These successes show that the nation states are the future, that the Europe of tomorrow is a Europe of the people. Both the OVP and FPO believe the EU should focus on fewer tasks, like securing its external borders, and hand more power back to member states. When the FPO last entered government in 2000 other EU countries imposed sanctions on Vienna in protest. There is unlikely to be a similar outcry this time, given the rise of anti-establishment parties across the continent. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian conservative-far right coalition talks near finish line;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s conservatives and far-right Freedom Party (FPO) could complete coalition talks as soon as Friday evening and be sworn in on Monday, officials from both parties said. A deal between the center-right People s Party (OVP) led by 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz and the anti-immigration Freedom Party would mark a major victory for a European far-right party after a flurry of elections this year. We are putting effort into this and we would be happy if it was possible to announce an agreement to you today, but I cannot promise it yet, said Gernot Bluemel, a close Kurz ally and leader of the conservatives in Vienna. We hope that we can properly conclude (the last issues) over the course of today. If you want to compare it to a skiing race, we are now doing the last turns before the finish line... I am in good spirits. Conservative Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka, whom local media and a source close to the coalition talks have named as a candidate for finance minister, told ORF radio a new government will be sworn in on Monday . An FPO source confirmed the envisaged timing for an agreement and swearing-in ceremony, adding a news conference with Kurz and Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache was planned for 1800 Vienna time (1700 GMT) on Friday. The Freedom Party last entered government in 2000, triggering European sanctions against Austria. Such a step has not been flagged this time around, with many European countries having shifted to the political right. Kurz, whose party won just over 31 percent in October s parliamentary elections, is all but certain to become chancellor with Strache whose FPO got 26 percent for third place after the Social Democrats as his deputy. Freedom Party officials are set to fill major ministries, including the interior, foreign, defense, health and social affairs and infrastructure portfolios. This list has been neither confirmed nor denied by party officials. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. appalled at 30-year sentence for woman under El Salvador abortion law;GENEVA (Reuters) - A 30-year prison sentence for a woman in El Salvador who said her child was stillborn is appalling, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell said on Friday. The Second Court of Appeal of San Salvador on Wednesday upheld the sentence for Teodora Vasquez, who was convicted in 2008 of aggravated homicide in the death of her child the previous year. Prosecutors said Vasquez strangled the baby after birth. Her lawyers said she suffered health complications and the baby was stillborn. Since 1997, El Salvador has had one of the world s most severe laws against women who have abortions or are suspected of assisting them. It is absolutely astounding, astonishing, appalling that these women are in essence being convicted of having a miscarriage, having a child stillborn, Throssell said. They are basically being convicted for being women, for losing a child and for being poor, she said, adding that at least 41 other women have been similarly convicted over the past decade or so. The U.N. was not aware of El Salvador jailing any women from wealthier backgrounds under the same law, Throssell said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. asks urgent reforms to end arbitrary detention in Sri Lanka;COLOMBO (Reuters) - The United Nations on Friday urged the Sri Lankan government to urgently implement reforms to end war-time arbitrary detention and strengthen independent monitoring of tough legislation. Sri Lanka has used the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to pursue a tough line to prevent aiding and abetting terrorism in the island nation s long conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels. That legislation gives wide powers to police to arrest a suspect without informing the immediate family, restricts access to lawyers and allows detention of up to 18-months without charging. The war ended in 2009, but the government has not repealed PTA, though it had promised to end arbitrary detentions. Many ethnic minority Tamils who have been arrested under the PTA have complained of years of detention without being charged. The U.N. is now asking Sri Lanka to repeal the draconian law and introduce an internationally acceptable law. The government says it has begun moves to replace the PTA and is in the process of introducing new legislation. There are no effective safeguards against arbitrariness in this context and there is an urgent need to strengthen mechanisms for independent monitoring and oversight, Leigh Toomey, a member of the UN working group on arbitrary detention told reporters in Colombo after concluding a 11-day mission. She said they had identified significant challenges to the right of personal liberty in Sri Lanka, resulting in arbitrary detention across the country. The Working Group also said their attention had been drawn to a loss of liberty among the socially vulnerable, such as children, women, elderly people, people with psycho-social problems and the poor. Sri Lanka is under criticism from the rights groups over its slow progress on the commitments it made to the UN human Rights council following a U.N. resolution that called for post-war reconciliation and an investigation of all alleged war crimes. Sri Lanka ended a 26-year-civil war crushing the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan in 2009. The United Nations and rights groups have accused the military of killing thousands of civilians, mostly Tamils, during the final weeks of the conflict. The Tamil Tigers were also accused of widespread abuses during the war, such as using child soldiers and targeting civilians with suicide bombers. In November European lawmakers said they were disappointed about Sri Lanka s slow roll-out of human rights reforms that it had promised in exchange for trade concessions. A U.N. rights watchdog in 2016 called on Sri Lanka to investigate documented allegations of torture and rape of detainees by security forces and to rein in broad police powers. The U.N. Committee against Torture described continuing reports of abductions, deaths in custody, poor conditions of detention and the use of forced confessions in court. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistani top court rejects bid to bar opposition leader Imran Khan;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan s Supreme Court cleared opposition leader Imran Khan on Friday of accusations of failing to declare assets, but barred his party s secretary general from parliament. The top court dismissed a petition to disqualify the cricket hero as an MP, months after his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was removed from parliament by the court on similar charges. No dishonesty or omission can be attributed to (Khan). This petition has no merits and is hereby dismissed, Chief Justice Saqib Nisar told the court. The ruling on Khan was hailed as a vindication by his opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which will face off against Sharif s ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in elections next year. Khan had led the legal drive that led to Sharif being disqualified in July over unreported income and the opening of a criminal corruption case against the former prime minister. A lawmaker from Sharif s ruling party filed a separate complaint late last year alleging Khan and PTI secretary general Jahangir Tareen owned offshore companies and had not disclosed their assets. The Supreme Court disqualified Tareen. The respondent is declared not to be an honest person. He ceased to be member of the parliament. The respondent is disqualified, Nisar said of Tareen. PTI spokesman Naeem Ul Haq said the party was disappointed with that judgment. Tareen himself was not immediately available for comment. I gave 60 documents to the Supreme Court ... Nawaz Sharif, took 300 billion rupees out of this country which he has to answer for ... and for that he produced only one document, Khan said at a press briefing after the verdict was announced. A senior PML-N leader, Miftah Ismial, told Reuters the party questioned details of the court s ruling, but accepted it as final. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Despite failed round, U.N. Syria talks only viable peace effort, France says;PARIS (Reuters) - France on Friday firmly backed U.N.-led peace talks on Syria in Geneva and said the responsibility of the failed negotiations since the end of November fell entirely on the government delegation. A round of Syria peace talks that ended on Thursday was a big missed opportunity, but there may be more talks in January if ideas can be found to encourage President Bashar al-Assad s government to engage, U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday. There is no alternative to a negotiated political solution agreed by both parties under the auspices of the United Nations, deputy foreign ministry spokesman Alexandre Georgini told reporters in a daily briefing, reiterating Paris support for de Mistura. We deplore the attitude of the Syrian regime, which has refused to engage in the discussion. The Syrian regime is responsible for the lack of progress in the negotiations, he said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sports sector wins reprieve in EU copyright reform;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Soccer leagues such as England s Premier League and Germany s Bundesliga won a reprieve on Friday when EU ambassadors agreed to exclude them from the scope of a copyright reform that would help make content more easily available online. The entertainment and sports industries have been fiercely lobbying against the European Commission s proposed reform of EU copyright law to make films and TV program more available across borders, arguing it would undermine the financing model of the whole sector. Films and TV program are often financed by selling exclusive distribution rights on a country-by-country basis. Rights to show sports, such as Premier League soccer matches, can fetch billions of pounds. The Commission has said it is not seeking to force anyone to make content more available online, but merely to make it easier for broadcasters to obtain the necessary rights. EU member states agreed on Friday to exclude all sports events, TV program co-produced by broadcasters and other third parties, as well as content licensed to a broadcaster by a third party. That means that only content produced and financed entirely by the broadcaster will be able to be shown online across the EU after the rights are obtained in the home country. That mostly includes TV shows made by public broadcasters for home audiences, as opposed to blockbuster TV shows such as Game of Thrones . At issue is the so-called country of origin principle , which allows satellite broadcasters to acquire the rights for content in their home country rather than in every country where the program is received by satellite. Under the Commission s proposal broadcasters could choose to make their catch-up TV and live streaming services available online across the EU after securing the rights in their home country. The agreement is not final and means EU member states can enter into negotiations with the European Parliament to strike a final deal. The Parliament had restricted the scope of the reform even further, limiting it to just news and current affairs program. The Commission has pointed to the large number of European citizens living abroad who may want to watch content from their home country online without resorting to piracy. It says 67 percent of all films are only shown in one EU country and that its proposal could help free up over 50 percent of own productions from broadcasters like the BBC, should they choose to make it available. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson: No preconditions for North Korea talks;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday said the United States would not accept any preconditions for diplomatic talks with North Korea, saying the Trump administration and the international community would continue to pressure Pyongyang We are not going to accept preconditions, Tillerson told reporters after earlier remarks at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Pyongyang s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Congratulations': EU moves to Brexit phase two but warns will be tough;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Friday to move Brexit talks onto trade and a transition pact but some leaders cautioned that the final year of divorce negotiations before Britain s exit could be fraught with peril. EU leaders, who had offered British Prime Minister Theresa May a rare summit round of applause over dinner in Brussels the night before, took just 10 minutes to agree that she had made sufficient progress on divorce terms last week and to give negotiators a mandate to move on to the main phase of talks. This is an important step on the road to delivering the smooth and orderly Brexit that people voted for in June of last year, May said outside her home in Berkshire, southern England. There is still more to do but we re well on the road to delivering a Brexit that will make Britain prosperous, strong and secure, May said, reassuring her party s ardent Brexit supporters that departure is certain on March 29, 2019. Summit chair Donald Tusk said the world s biggest trading bloc would start exploratory contacts with Britain on what London wants in a future trade relationship, as well as starting discussion on the immediate post-Brexit transition. A transition period is crucial for investors and businesses who fear that a cliff-edge Brexit would disrupt trade flows and sow chaos through financial markets. The head of the EU executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, cast May as a tough, smart, polite and friendly negotiator a polite nod to a woman facing ferocious and complex pressures at home, whose downfall Brussels fears would complicate talks further. Juncker, a veteran premier of Luxembourg, knows what it s like to be a prime minister in trouble , one EU official said. While there was a sigh of relief at the summit table that Brexit talks can move forward, EU leaders said talks on a future free trade pact will not begin until after March a date underlined by guidelines that set out how to proceed as Britain seeks to unravel more than 40 years of membership. The talks will be tough. We have made good progress, the second phase of talks can start, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. But this will mean even tougher work - that was clear today in the discussion - than we have experienced so far. Sterling GBP=D3 reversed gains and fell 0.8 percent on the day to $1.3327. Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern went further, saying even a primary school student could see that the first phase deal on the Irish border would come back to haunt the talks because it was impossible for Britain to leave the bloc s single market while avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. Our primary school students can see that there is a riddle to be solved, the Austrian leader told reporters. In more formal language, leaders used the nine-point guidelines they agreed at the summit to support May s call for a two-year transition out of the bloc, which aims to help British business and citizens adjust to life after the European Union. Both sides see it as looking pretty much like membership of the EU without a say in its rules, though there are also a host of issues that will again demonstrate the complexity of Brexit. Leaders reiterated their position that Britain cannot conclude a free-trade accord with the European Union until it has left and become a third country . And it may take longer than the 15 months from now that some in London are hoping for. Noting a call from Britain s Brexit Secretary David Davis for a Canada plus plus plus deal that would go beyond the pact the EU signed with Ottawa, one senior EU official noted that last year s agreement ran to 1,598 pages of legal text. Nine months on Brexit have produced 15 pages of non-legal text, he said, adding that even launching trade talks in March would be quite ambitious , let alone completing them in 2019. In coded language aimed at ensuring that Britain s departure will not set a precedent for others and further undermine the bloc, leaders also agreed to ensure a balance of rights and obligations during Britain s transition period. The question of how Britain might continue to benefit from the EU s free trade deals with other countries, such as Canada or Japan, has yet to be settled legally, EU officials said. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar cautioned that there were quite divergent opinions on how a new relationship and transition would look. EU officials are unsure exactly how far Britain should continue to receive the full, unfettered economic benefits of EU membership during a transition after it leaves, even if it loses political representation in Brussels. May, weakened after losing her Conservative Party s majority in a June election, has so far carried her divided government and party with her as she negotiated the first phase of talks. But the next, more decisive phase is likely to lay bare the deep rifts among her top team of ministers over what Britain should become after Brexit. The Dutch, traditionally British allies, said May should explain to voters just what the cost of leaving the EU s single market and customs union would mean for the economy. It means, for example, that the financial sector of London will have a considerable disadvantage to the position they have now, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korean envoy ignores U.S. call for testing freeze in U.N. speech;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday ignored a U.S. call for a cessation of weapons testing to allow for talks with Pyongyang on its nuclear program and said his country would not pose a threat to any state, as long as its interests were not infringed upon. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier told a meeting of the U.N Security Council on Pyongyang s nuclear and ballistic missile programs that a sustained cessation of North Korea s threatening behavior was needed before talks could occur between Washington and Pyongyang. North Korea s U.N. ambassador, Ja Song Nam, made no mention of Tillerson s call in his speech to the session, which he called a desperate measure plotted by the U.S. being terrified by the incredible might of our Republic that has successfully achieved the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey wants former police investigator repatriated from U.S.: sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey s justice minister has told his U.S. counterpart that a former Turkish police investigator who testified at the trial of a Turkish banker in New York this week is wanted by Ankara and should be swiftly returned, ministry sources said on Friday. Huseyin Korkmaz gave evidence at the New York trial of a Turkish banker who is charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, in a case which has strained ties between NATO allies Turkey and the United States. It has been requested by our judicial offices that (Korkmaz) be temporarily arrested with the aim of being repatriated, based on alleged crimes, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said in a letter to U.S. Justice Secretary Jeff Sessions, according to the sources at his ministry. We expect that the request is met on positive terms and the previously mentioned person be repatriated as soon as possible. The Turkish government has said followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who it blames for last year s failed military coup, are behind the case brought in the United States. Gulen has denied any role in the coup attempt. I want to point out that a fugitive, a terror suspect facing serious allegations, taking part in this case in your country as a witness is big enough a scandal, Gul said, adding that the case could cause irreparable damage to relations if action was not taken. Korkmaz told the trial at Manhattan federal court this week that he feared he would be tortured if he returned to Turkey, where he led an investigation involving Turkish officials and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the bank executive on trial in New York. Gul s letter repeated Turkish allegations of contact between members of the judiciary who have handled the case and members of the Gulen network. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said the cases showed the extent to which Gulen had infiltrated American state institutions, including its judiciary. Needless to say, those claims are ridiculous, Acting U.S. Attorney, Kim H. Joon said last month in response to such accusations. The case has been handled by career prosecutors concerned only with U.S. law, not Turkish politics, Kim said, adding: They re not Gulenists. Prosecutors have accused Atilla, an executive at Turkey s state-owned Halkbank, of working with Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and others to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions through fraudulent gold and food transactions. Atilla, 47, has pleaded not guilty. Zarrab, 34, pleaded guilty and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for almost 15 years, has dismissed the case as a politically inspired attempt to bring down the Turkish government. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian abuse report calls for end to sanctity of confession;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia should introduce a law forcing religious leaders to report child abuse, including Catholic priests told of abuse during confession, said a report on Friday which detailed institutional abuse, particularly in the Catholic Church. One the country s top catholics, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, said such a law would undermine a central tenet of Catholicism, the confidentiality of the confessional, and warned that any priest breaking the seal of confession would be excommunicated. The 17-volume document from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse marks the end of one of the world s biggest inquiries into child abuse and leaves it to the government to decide whether to enact its recommendations. The five-year investigation found multiple and persistent failings of institutions to keep children safe, the cultures of secrecy and cover-up, and the devastating affects child sexual abuse can have on an individual s life , the commission said in a statement. The report detailed tens of thousands of child victims, saying their abusers were not a case of a few rotten apples . We will never know the true number, it read. In a statement, the Vatican said the report deserves to be studied seriously but made no mention of its specific suggestions. The Holy See remains committed to being close to the Catholic Church in Australia lay faithful, religious, and clergy alike as they listen to and accompany victims and survivors in an effort to bring about healing and justice, the statement said. The inquiry spanned religious, government, educational and professional organizations but heard many accounts alleging abuse cover-ups in the Australian Catholic Church, including allegations of moving priests suspected of abuse between parishes to avoid detection. Of survivors who reported abuse in religious institutions, more than 60 percent cited the Catholic Church, which demonstrated catastrophic failures of leadership , particularly before the 1990s, the report said. The Vatican statement said Pope Francis had made clear that the Church is called to be a place of compassion, especially for those who have suffered, and reaffirmed that the Church is committed to safe environments for the protection of all children and vulnerable adults. The Royal Commission report said clergy told of child abuse in the confessional should be required by law to report it and called for the Catholic Church to make celibacy voluntary for clergy, adding that it contributed to child abuse. I would feel terribly conflicted, and I would try even harder to get that person outside confessional, but I cannot break the seal, Hart told reporters. The penalty for any priest breaking the seal is excommunication, being cast out of the church, so it s a real, serious, spiritual matter, and I want to observe the law of the land ... but as part of my identity as a priest, I have to observe the seal of the confession. A similar recommendation was made during Ireland s 2009 child abuse inquiry, leading to a mandatory reporting law in 2015. Some U.S. states have similar requirements. The Australian report also called for a National Office for Child Safety and national child safety standards, child abuse reporting and record keeping, which would cover all institutions engaged in child-related work. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the inquiry had exposed a national tragedy and that the government would consider the recommendations and respond in full next year. Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher, said in a statement that he was appalled by the sinful and criminal activity of some clergy, religious and lay church-workers (and) ashamed of the failure to respond by some church leaders . The inquiry heard previously that the Australian Catholic Church had paid A$276 million ($212 million) in compensation to thousands of child abuse victims since 1980. ($1 = 1.3040 Australian dollars) ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;NATO sounds alarm on banned Russian missile system;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO allies on Friday publicly raised concern about a Russian cruise missile system that the alliance says may break a Cold War-era pact banning such weapons, in a show of support for Washington. The United States believes Russia is developing a ground-launched cruise missile system with a range that is prohibited by a 1987 treaty, which could give Russia the ability to launch a nuclear strike on Europe on short notice. Allies have identified a Russian missile system that raises serious concerns, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said in a statement. NATO urges Russia to address these concerns in a substantial and transparent way, and actively engage in a technical dialogue with the United States. In a separate statement, the U.S. envoy to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, said: Russia s behavior raises serious concerns. Russia has denied it is violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. U.S.-led NATO s concerns are likely to further strain relations between Moscow and the West that are already at a low over Russia s 2014 seizure of Crimea, Western sanctions on the Russian economy and U.S. accusations that Moscow used computer hackers to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Moscow denies that it interfered in the election. The NATO statement follows a meeting between Russia and the United States in Geneva this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. According to an April U.S. State Department report, Washington determined in 2016 that Russia was in violation of its treaty obligations not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km (310-3,417 miles), or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles. Last week, the State Department said it is reviewing military options, including new intermediate-range cruise missile systems, the first response by U.S. President Donald Trump s administration to the U.S. charges. The Russian foreign ministry said last week it was ready for talks with the United States to try to preserve the treaty and would comply with its obligations if the United States did. In a statement marking the 30th anniversary of the IMF treaty last week, the Russian foreign ministry said Moscow considered the language of ultimatums and sanctions unacceptable. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico enshrines army's role in drug war with divisive law;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s Congress on Friday approved a law that enshrines the use of the army in the country s long war against drug cartels, overriding protests from the United Nations rights body and activists who fear it will encourage abuses by the military. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and some members of the center-right opposition National Action Party backed the bill, which now will head to President Enrique Pena Nieto s desk to be signed into law. Known as the Law of Internal Security, the bill establishes rules for the military s role in battling drug gangs, a conflict that has claimed well over 100,000 lives in the last decade. The military has been mired in several human rights scandals, including extra-judicial killings of suspected gang members and the 2014 disappearance of 43 students near an army base. Supporters of the legislation say it will set out clear rules that limit the use of soldiers to fight crime. Rights groups are not convinced, saying the bill empowers security forces instead of improving the police and could usher in greater abuses and impunity. The United Nations, Amnesty International and Mexican human rights organizations all lobbied lawmakers not to pass the bill. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico's Senate picks new electoral prosecutor amid graft spat;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s Senate on Friday named the country s new top prosecutor for election-related crimes, after the official previously in the post was fired amid a graft scandal involving a close former aide of President Enrique Pena Nieto. Hector Marcos Diaz, a lawyer and academic with a long career in Mexico s electoral bodies, was approved as the newest prosecutor for electoral crimes with 92 senators votes, the Senate said in a statement. The previous incumbent, Santiago Nieto, was fired by Mexico s acting attorney general in October on the grounds that he broke a code of conduct for officials. Nieto had given a newspaper interview in which he accused Emilio Lozoya, the former boss of state oil firm Pemex and a senior member of the president s 2012 campaign team, of writing to him to ask that he be declared innocent of funneling cash from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht into Pena Nieto s campaign. Odebrecht is at the heart of a Brazilian bribery and kickback probe, known as Lava Jato or Car Wash, that has reverberated across Latin America. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has been trying to shake a reputation for graft that threatens to undermine the party s efforts to stay in power in next July s presidential election. The firing of Nieto was widely seen as a setback to those efforts. The PRI has overseen the arrest of various former state governors, but Lozoya poses a more difficult challenge, given his proximity to the president. Both Pena Nieto and Lozoya have denied involvement in any wrongdoing related to the 2012 campaign. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli troops kill four Palestinians, wound 160 in protests over Jerusalem;GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians and wounded 150 others with live fire on Friday, medical officials said, as protests over U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital entered a second week. Most of the casualties were on the Gaza Strip border, where thousands of Palestinians gathered to hurl rocks at Israeli soldiers beyond the fortified fence. Medics said two protesters, one of them wheelchair-bound, were killed and 150 wounded. In the occupied West Bank, another area where Palestinians are seeking statehood along with adjacent East Jerusalem, medics said two protesters were killed and 10 wounded by Israeli gunfire. One of the dead was a man who Israeli police troopers said was shot after he stabbed a member of their unit. Reuters witnesses said the Palestinian held a knife and wore what looked like a bomb belt. A Palestinian medic who helped evacuate the man for treatment said the belt was fake. Palestinians and the wider Arab and Muslim world were incensed at Trump s Dec. 6 announcement, which reversed decades of U.S. policy reticence on Jerusalem, a city where both Israel and the Palestinians want sovereignty. Washington s European allies and Russia have also voiced worries about Trump s decision. Gaza s dominant Hamas Islamists, which reject coexistence with Israel, called last week for a new Palestinian uprising, but any such mass-mobilisation has yet to be seen in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. There have been almost nightly Gazan rocket launches into Israel, so far without casualties. Israel has responded with air strikes on Hamas facilities, one of which killed two gunmen. The Israeli military said that, on Friday, about 3,500 Palestinians demonstrated near the Gaza border fence. During the violent riots IDF (Israel Defence Force) soldiers fired selectively towards main instigators, the military said in a statement. A military spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the wheelchair-bound protestor, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya. Abu Thuraya, 29, was a regular at such demonstrations. In media interviews, he said he had lost both his legs in a 2008 Israeli missile strike in Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israeli military said that about 2,500 Palestinians took part in riots, rolling flaming tires and throwing fire bombs and rocks at soldiers and border police. Israel captured East Jerusalem, an area laden with Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines, from Jordan in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians hope that part of the city will be the capital of a future independent state and Palestinian leaders say Trump s move is a serious blow to a moribund peace process. Israel has welcomed Trump s announcement as recognizing political reality and biblical Jewish roots in Jerusalem. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit Israel, as well as Egypt, next week. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump aide Greenblatt heads to Israel after Jerusalem announcement;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump s U.S. Middle East peace negotiator Jason Greenblatt will return to Israel next week for talks related to the peace efforts, a senior administration official said on Friday. The trip is Greenblatt s first to the region since Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, which created an international uproar. Greenblatt, whose title is special representative for international negotiations, will meet with Fernando Gentilini, the European Union s special representative to the Middle East and stay for U.S. Vice President Mike Pence s trip to Israel later in the week, the official said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to marry on May 19;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Prince Harry and his American fianc e, Meghan Markle, will marry on Saturday May 19, his office Kensington Palace said on Friday. Queen Elizabeth s grandson, fifth-in-line to the throne, and Markle, who stars in the U.S. TV legal drama Suits , announced their engagement last month with the marriage to take place in St George s Chapel at Windsor Castle. His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales and Ms. Meghan Markle will marry on 19th May 2018, Kensington Palace said in a statement. The couple said they had chosen to marry in Windsor, west of London, because it was a special place for them , having spent time there regularly since they met in July 2016 after being introduced through a mutual friend. Harry s 91-year-old grandmother, Elizabeth, will attend the ceremony. However, the date they have chosen clashes with English soccer s FA Cup Final which is usually attended by Harry s elder brother Prince William who, as President of the Football Association, awards the trophy to the winners. The couple of course want the day to be a special, celebratory moment for their friends and family, Harry s Communications Secretary Jason Knauf said last month. They also want the day to be shaped so as to allow members of the public to feel part of the celebrations too and are currently working through ideas for how this might be achieved. The wedding is likely to attract huge attention across the world, as did the marriage of William to his wife Kate in 2011 which was watched by an estimated two billion people. The royal family have said they will pay for the core aspects of the wedding, such as the church service and reception. Markle, 36, who attended a Catholic school as a child but identifies as a Protestant, will be baptized and confirmed into the Church of England before the wedding. She intends to become a British citizen, though she will retain her U.S. citizenship while she goes through the process. The Gothic St George s Chapel is located in the grounds of Windsor Castle, which has been the family home of British kings and queens for almost 1,000 years. Within the chapel are the tombs of ten sovereigns, including Henry VIII and his third wife Jane Seymour, and Charles I. On Wednesday, Kensington Palace announced Markle would join the queen and other senior Windsors for their family Christmas celebrations at her Sandringham estate in eastern England in what commentators said was a break with royal protocol under which such an invitation would normally only be extended to Markle after the wedding. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ethiopian ex-official gets Dutch life sentence for war crimes;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Dutch judges jailed a onetime aide to Ethiopia s former communist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam for life on Friday for war crimes carried out during Ethiopia s Red Terror purges of the 1970s, including the execution of 75 prisoners. Eshetu Alemu, 63, was found guilty at his trial in the Hague of ordering the 1978 killing of camp detainees - many of them under 18 years of age - who were taken from their cells and strangled with ropes in a church. In the hearings held under Dutch universal jurisdiction, Alemu, a former Mengistu regional representative, was convicted of all charges brought by prosecutors, including arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment, torture and mass murder. The fact that the majority of victims were children younger than 18 makes the crimes all the more cruel, said presiding judge Mariette Renckens. Alemu came to the Netherlands as an asylum seeker in 1990 and had been in custody since 2015. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges but was not present when the verdict was read out. Negus Gebeyehu, a prisoner in a camp under Alemu s control, gave an emotional speech in the Hague court following the verdict as other victims cheered. Justice has been done for Ethiopia, he said. I was imprisoned as a young man and I survived. This is also the day for us to forgive. An Ethiopian court had sentenced Alemu to death in absentia in 2007 for his role in the Red Terror , which Mengistu s communist military junta conducted after Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, was ousted in 1974. Mengistu was found guilty in absentia of genocide in the same trial in 2007, where he and top members of his military government were accused of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. Today s verdict shows perpetrators that the Netherlands will not be a safe haven, Jirko Patist of the national prosecutor s office said. The Netherlands is one of the European countries that has established an international crimes prosecution unit to prosecute alleged war criminals residing in the Netherlands even if their crimes were committed abroad. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French investigators piece together deadly train, bus collision;PARIS (Reuters) - Investigators on Friday reconstructed the seconds before a train plowed into a school bus at a level crossing in southern France and killed at least five children, an incident the prime minister described as horrific . The collision on Thursday afternoon ripped the bus apart and authorities worked into the night to identify the first victims. The official death toll came after a source close to the investigation earlier said six youngsters had lost their lives in an incident that stunned the small community of Millas, near Perpignan. Hospitals appealed for blood to help them treat seven others who remain in a critical condition. Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said the cause of the crash was still unclear. It occurred at a crossing which was not considered dangerous. Investigators are looking into whether the automatic barriers and lights on the level crossing malfunctioned and have taken blood samples from the driver for toxicology studies, French media reported. The driver, a 49-year-old woman who was injured in the collision, was described lucid by the manager of the bus company in an interview with BFM TV. The bus was well maintained, he added. The train was carrying 25 passengers and traveling at 80 kmh, the regulatory speed for the section of track where the collision occurred, the national SNCF railway said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan says North Korea not interested in meaningful talks;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Japan s Foreign Minister Taro Kono told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that North Korea was nowhere near ready to abandon its nuclear and missile programs and was not interested in a meaningful dialogue. He noted that North Korea s intercontinental ballistic missile launch last month came 75 days after its previous tests. Some optimistic views labeled 75 days of silence as a positive signal. However, the missile launch in November made it clear that North Korea was continuing to relentlessly develop its nuclear and missile programs even while they were seemingly silent, he told the 15-member council. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan says Turkey seeking to annul Trump decision on Jerusalem at U.N.;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is launching an initiative at the United Nations to annul a decision by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Erdogan was speaking two days after a Muslim leaders meeting in Istanbul condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s decision, calling on the world to respond by recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. We will work for the annulment of this unjust decision firstly at the UN Security Council, and if a veto comes from there, the General Assembly, Erdogan told crowds gathered in the central Anatolian city of Konya via teleconference. The United States is a permanent Security Council member with veto powers, meaning any move to overturn Washington s decision at the council would certainly be blocked. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. Trump s decision broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that the city s status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian talks, leading to harsh criticisms from Muslim countries and Israel s closest European allies, who have also rejected the move. A communique issued after Wednesday s summit of more than 50 Muslim countries, including U.S. allies, said they considered Trump s move to be a declaration that Washington was withdrawing from its role as sponsor of peace in the Middle East. Asked about the criticism during an interview with Israel s Makor Rishon daily, the U.S. ambassador to Israel said Trump had done what is good for America . President Trump...does not intend to reverse himself, despite the various condemnations and declarations, Ambassador David Friedman said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France cautious over U.S. 'evidence' on Iran weaponry in Yemen;PARIS (Reuters) - France reacted cautiously on Friday to U.S. evidence which allegedly proved Iran supplied weapons to Houthi militia in Yemen, saying it was still studying information at its disposal and the United Nations had yet to draw any conclusions. The United States on Thursday presented for the first time pieces of what it said were Iranian weapons supplied to the Houthis, describing it as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions. The arms included charred remnants of what the Pentagon said was an Iranian-made short-range ballistic missile fired from Yemen on Nov. 4 at King Khaled International Airport outside Saudi Arabia s capital Riyadh, as well as a drone and an anti-tank weapon recovered in Yemen by the Saudis. When asked whether Paris believed that evidence was irrefutable, foreign ministry deputy spokesman Alexandre Giorgini declined to respond directly. The United Nations secretariat has not, at this stage, drawn any conclusions. France continues to examine the information at its disposal, he said. Tensions between Iran and France have increased in recent weeks after President Emmanuel Macron said Tehran should be less aggressive in the region and clarify its ballistic missile program. Giorgini said France remained concerned by Iran s ballistic missile program and urged it to abide fully by U.N. Security Council resolution 2231. Resolution 2231, which enshrined the landmark nuclear deal with world powers, calls on Iran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear bombs, including launches using such technology. It stops short of explicitly barring such activity. France s foreign minister is due in Washington on Monday to in part to discuss Iran and will travel to Tehran at the start of January. (Corrects spelling of spokesman surname) ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan's Kiir promotes three generals facing U.N. sanctions;KAMPALA (Reuters) - South Sudan s president has given top jobs to three generals facing U.N. sanctions over alleged violations during a four-year-old civil war. Campaign group Human Rights Watch called the promotions a slap in the face of justice - but the presidency said the three men were good officers who had been falsely accused. In a decree read out on state radio late on Thursday, President Salva Kiir appointed Marial Chanuong as his new head of army operations, training and intelligence, and Santino Deng Wol as the head of ground forces. Gabriel Jok Riak was named deputy chief of defense. The U.N. Security Council imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the three and others in 2015. It accused Chanuong of commanding troops who led the slaughter of Nuer civilians in and around (the capital) Juba in December 2013, including hundreds it said were reportedly buried in mass graves. I am in my country. I can do anything in my own country, Chanuong told Reuters Friday. The United Nations said Wol commanded troops who killed children, women and old men during a 2015 offensive, while Riak violated a ceasefire in early 2014. Kiir s spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, said the three generals were very genuine, obedient commanders who had been falsely accused. But Human Rights Watch said the announcement, made on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the war s outbreak, showed the impunity enjoyed by commanders accused of abuses. Having these people nominated to new positions is a slap in the face of justice and a slap in the face of the international community, the organization s Jonathan Pednault told Reuters. South Sudan plunged into civil war in December 2013 when a political crisis escalated into fighting between forces loyal to Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and rebels allied with his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer. The conflict has reopened ethnic fault lines and spread across the country, where more than a dozen armed groups are battling for land, resources, revenge, and power amid widespread reports of rape, murder and torture. Several ceasefires have been agreed but broken. Tens of thousands have been killed since the war broke out. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. concerned about shelling in ethnically-mixed Iraqi town;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights office is seriously concerned about the shelling of residential areas in Iraq s northern town of Tuz Khurmatu in which civilians were killed, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday. It was not clear who was doing the shelling, which took place on Dec. 9 and 12 and came from the mountains overlooking the area, the spokeswoman, Liz Throssell, told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva. Iraqi forces are still working to discover the exact locations from which the shelling has come and the identity of those responsible, she said. The shelling of the ethnically-mixed town happened after many of its Kurdish population was displaced following clashes with Turkmen paramilitary groups. Tuz Khurmatu is made up of Turkmen, Kurds and Arabs located 75 km (47 miles) south of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. It came under the full control of Iraqi government forces and mostly Iran-backed Shi ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) in October. It had been under control of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters since 2014. Iraq s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) unilaterally held an independence referendum on Sept. 25 and Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede, defying Baghdad and alarming neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. The referendum was held in Kurdish areas and disputed territories claimed by both Baghdad and Erbil. The Iraqi government responded by seizing Kurdish-held Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government, including Tuz Khurmatu. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings. Clashes broke out between the Peshmerga and Turkmen PMF units in recent weeks, Throssell said, leaving an unconfirmed number of deaths from both groups. U.N. human rights officers visited the town on Dec. 7 and 14 to investigate reports of the burning of homes and looting of businesses and found some 150 premises burned. Thousands of residents, mainly Kurds, left for the KRG, and many have not returned. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“BIGGER THAN WATERGATE”: Sara Carter’s Take On FBI, DOJ Crimes and Who’s “In Trouble” [Video];Sean Hannity interviewed Greg Jarrett, Judicial Watch s Tom Fitton and the amazing Sara Carter last night it was fireworks on what s being exposed:Sara Carter speaks up at the 3:30 point but the entire video is well worth watching:We were told yesterday that the fix was in In so many ways, this is beyond corrupt and is blatant criminality by the intel agencies, Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.It s worse than you even know Tom Fitton THE FIX WAS IN Watered Down Document Clears Clinton:The interview below is pretty much what we all knew but now it s out in the open. Notice how Senator Johnson calls on the DOJ to act:Senator Ron Johnson told Tucker Carlson tonight that the corruption in the intel agencies is much worse that we thought. He believes that the entire investigation into Hillary s emails was a sham used to protect her and not investigate her. He says the same cast of characters is being used to investigate Trump scary stuff!Fox News reports:WASHINGTON Newly released documents obtained by Fox News reveal that then-FBI Director James Comey s draft statement on the Hillary Clinton email probe was edited numerous times before his public announcement, in ways that seemed to water down the bureau s findings considerably.Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to the FBI on Thursday that shows the multiple edits to Comey s highly scrutinized statement.In an early draft, Comey said it was reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s private email account. That was changed later to say the scenario was merely possible. Another edit showed language was changed to describe the actions of Clinton and her colleagues as extremely careless as opposed to grossly negligent. This is a key legal distinction.Johnson, writing about his concerns in a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the original could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton s handling of classified material. (read more)Former Speaker Newt Gingrich calls out the DOJ s Sessions:CLINTON AND ABEDIN STRIKE A DEAL TO TAKE DOCUMENTS: Here s yet another reason to be very suspicious of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton:Via Free Beacon: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a deal with the State Department while serving in the Obama administration that allowed her to take ownership of records she did not want made public, according to recently released reports.Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were personal materials and unclassified, non-record materials. Judicial Watch made the revelation after filing a FOIA request with the State Department and obtaining a record of the agreement:The newly released documents show the deal allowed Clinton and Abedin to remove documents related to particular calls and schedules, and the records would not be released to the general public under FOIA. Abedin, for instance, was allowed to remove electronic records and five boxes of physical files, including files labeled Muslim Engagement Documents. The released records included a list of designated materials that would not be released to the general public under FOIA and were to be released to the Secretary with this understanding. Electronic copy of daily files which are word versions of public documents and non-records: speeches/press statements/photos from the website, a non-record copy of the schedule, a non record copy of the call log, press clips, and agenda of daily activitiesElectronic copy of a log of calls the Secretary made since 2004, it is a non-record, since her official calls are logged elsewhere (official schedule and official call log)Electronic copy of the Secretary s call grid which is a running list of calls she wants to make (both personal and official)16 boxes: Personal Schedules (1993 thru 2008-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State.29 boxes: Miscellaneous Public Schedules during her tenure as FLOTUS and Senator-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State1 box: Personal Reimbursable receipts (6/25/2009 thru 1/14/2013)1 box: Personal Photos1 box: Personal schedule (2009-2013) STICKY FINGERS CLINTON:A physical file of the log of the Secretary s gifts with pictures of gifts was also handed over to Clinton. Gifts received by government employees is highly regulated, and often strictly limited. However, gifts that are motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship may be accepted without limitation.;politics;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Strong quake hits Indonesia's Java, kills three;JAKARTA (Reuters) - A powerful magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck the island of Java in Indonesia just before midnight on Friday, with authorities reporting three deaths and damage to hundreds of buildings. The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of the quake was located at a depth of 92 km (57 miles), about 52 km southwest of Tasikmalaya. Indonesia s national disaster management agency said the quake activated early tsunami warning systems in the south of Java, prompting thousands to evacuate from some coastal areas, but no tsunami was detected. Tremors were felt in central and west Java. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the disaster agency, said in a press briefing on Saturday three people had been killed, seven injured and hundreds of buildings damaged, including schools, hospitals, and government buildings in West and Central Java. Dozens of patients had to be helped to safety from a hospital in Banyumas and were given shelter in tents, he said. He posted on his Twitter page photos of people scouring collapsed buildings. The quake swayed buildings for several seconds in the capital Jakarta. Some residents of high rise apartment buildings in central Jakarta quickly escaped their apartments, local media reported. Indonesia s meteorology and geophysics agency said a magnitude 5.7 quake early on Saturday also struck south of West Java. It said the quake did not have tsunami potential. Java, Indonesia s most densely populated island, is home to more than half of its 250 million people. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NEWT GINGRICH Slams DOJ’s Sessions: “It’s time for the Attorney General to step up to the plate and do his job.” [Video]; A cesspool of corruption Newt Gingrich calls out Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He says it s time for Sessions to step up to the plate. We couldn t agree more!THE LATEST DIRT TO COME OUT ON THE FBI:Sean Hannity interviewed Greg Jarrett, Judicial Watch s Tom Fitton and the amazing Sara Carter last night it was fireworks on what s being exposed:Sara Carter speaks up at the 3:30 point but the entire video is well worth watching:We were told yesterday that the fix was in In so many ways, this is beyond corrupt and is blatant criminality by the intel agencies, Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.It s worse than you even know Tom Fitton THE FIX WAS IN Watered Down Document Clears Clinton:The interview below is pretty much what we all knew but now it s out in the open. Notice how Senator Johnson calls on the DOJ to act:Senator Ron Johnson told Tucker Carlson tonight that the corruption in the intel agencies is much worse that we thought. He believes that the entire investigation into Hillary s emails was a sham used to protect her and not investigate her. He says the same cast of characters is being used to investigate Trump scary stuff!Fox News reports:WASHINGTON Newly released documents obtained by Fox News reveal that then-FBI Director James Comey s draft statement on the Hillary Clinton email probe was edited numerous times before his public announcement, in ways that seemed to water down the bureau s findings considerably.Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to the FBI on Thursday that shows the multiple edits to Comey s highly scrutinized statement.In an early draft, Comey said it was reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s private email account. That was changed later to say the scenario was merely possible. Another edit showed language was changed to describe the actions of Clinton and her colleagues as extremely careless as opposed to grossly negligent. This is a key legal distinction.Johnson, writing about his concerns in a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the original could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton s handling of classified material. CLINTON AND ABEDIN STRIKE A DEAL TO TAKE DOCUMENTS: Here s yet another reason to be very suspicious of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton:Via Free Beacon: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a deal with the State Department while serving in the Obama administration that allowed her to take ownership of records she did not want made public, according to recently released reports.Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were personal materials and unclassified, non-record materials. Judicial Watch made the revelation after filing a FOIA request with the State Department and obtaining a record of the agreement:The newly released documents show the deal allowed Clinton and Abedin to remove documents related to particular calls and schedules, and the records would not be released to the general public under FOIA. Abedin, for instance, was allowed to remove electronic records and five boxes of physical files, including files labeled Muslim Engagement Documents. The released records included a list of designated materials that would not be released to the general public under FOIA and were to be released to the Secretary with this understanding. Electronic copy of daily files which are word versions of public documents and non-records: speeches/press statements/photos from the website, a non-record copy of the schedule, a non record copy of the call log, press clips, and agenda of daily activitiesElectronic copy of a log of calls the Secretary made since 2004, it is a non-record, since her official calls are logged elsewhere (official schedule and official call log)Electronic copy of the Secretary s call grid which is a running list of calls she wants to make (both personal and official)16 boxes: Personal Schedules (1993 thru 2008-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State.29 boxes: Miscellaneous Public Schedules during her tenure as FLOTUS and Senator-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State1 box: Personal Reimbursable receipts (6/25/2009 thru 1/14/2013)1 box: Personal Photos1 box: Personal schedule (2009-2013) STICKY FINGERS CLINTON:A physical file of the log of the Secretary s gifts with pictures of gifts was also handed over to Clinton. Gifts received by government employees is highly regulated, and often strictly limited. However, gifts that are motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship may be accepted without limitation.;politics;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;KARMA: Race-Obsessed Detroit Free Press Editorial Editor Who Led Effort To Destroy Kid Rock’s Career Is FIRED Over Allegations of Inappropriate Behavior With Female Colleagues;In September 2016, Stephen Henderson, the editorial editor of the Detroit Free Press, used the power of his pen to unjustly attack Kid Rock, after liberals feared Rock might actually be serious about running as a Republican contender against the do-nothing Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow. As a Michigan resident, I can say with a great level of confidence, that besides Mike Illitch, the now deceased owner of the Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, Kid Rock has done more for the city of Detroit and for the black community than almost anyone in this state. When the Illitch s asked Detroit legend and philanthropist, Kid Rock to perform for the opening of their much anticipated Little Caesar s Arena, no one could have dreamed that the Detroit Free Press Stephen Henderson would have used his position to push a lie, that Kid Rock, the single father of a black son, and NAACP award recipient is a racist .Here s what Henderson had to say about Kid Rock, the man who has done so much for the city of Detroit:This is a musician who got rich off crass cultural appropriation of black music, who used to wrap his brand in the Confederate flag a symbol inextricably linked to racism, no matter what its defenders say and who has repeatedly issued profane denouncements of the very idea of African Americans pushing back against American inequality. Just last week, he trashed Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who s jobless right now because he dared challenge the nation s racism with a silent, kneeling protest during the pre-football game singing of the national anthem. Having Kid Rock open this arena is erecting a sturdy middle finger to Detroiters nothing less. And the Ilitches, who ve done so much for this city and also taken so much from it, should be the last to embrace that kind of signaling.Here is how Kid Rock responded on his Facebook page:People! Pay NO attention to the garbage the extreme left is trying to create! (and by the way, fuck the extreme left and the extreme right!)They are trying to use the old confederate flag BS, etc. to stir the pot, when we all know none of this would be going on if I were not thinking of running for office. Pretty funny how scared I have them all and their only agenda is to try and label people / me racist who do not agree or cower to them!! No one had a word to say when we sold out the 6 shows at LCA back in January! My track record in Detroit and Michigan speaks for itself, and I would dare anyone talking trash to put theirs up against mine. I am also a homeowner and taxpayer in the city of Detroit, so suck on that too!I am the bona fide KING OF DETROIT LOVE and it makes me smile down deep that you haters know that! Your jealousy is merely a reflection of disgust for your own failures and lack of positive ideas for our city.I am however very disappointed that none of the people, businesses or charities I have so diligently supported in Detroit have had anything to say about all these unfounded attacks from these handful of jackasses and The Detroit Free Press. So for the unforeseen future I will focus my philanthropy efforts on other organizations besides the ones I have supported in the past. I would however employ that NAN go ahead and make up these losses since they claim to be so good for Detroit and do not want me opening the arena and generating tons of jobs and tax dollars for the city and people I LOVE IDIOTS! .. (Has Al Sharpton even paid his back taxes yet?)Today, the race-obsessed Stephen Henderson, got some very bad news AP The Detroit Free Press fired Stephen Henderson, its managing director of opinion and commentary, after finding what it called credible allegations of inappropriate behavior with female colleagues, the newspaper announced Friday.Free Press Editor and Vice President Peter Bhatia announced Henderson s termination in a story that said the allegations go back several years. Gannett Co. Inc., the newspaper s parent company, says Henderson s behavior has been inconsistent with company values and standards. Henderson said in a statement to The Detroit News and Crain s Detroit Business that he is stunned. I dedicated 18 years to this newspaper over three decades, all of it performing at the highest level, Henderson said. I may have more to say on this later, but for now there is much other work to be done here in the city of Detroit. Stephen is a magnificent journalist and a treasured colleague who has done so much for Detroit, Bhatia said. He added there were no accusations of sexual assault, but said the incidents involving inappropriate behavior and comments directed at Free Press employees ran counter to company policies.Less than 2 months ago, Henderson appeared on Meet The Press and called America a racist nation with a racist history:Rich Lowry of the National Review appeared with Stephen Henderson on Meet The Press to discuss Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who disrespect the flag as a way to support Black Lives Matter. Henderson argued, Some of the words in the national anthem are racist. Henderson argued that it was appropriate to show disrespect for the American flag because he thinks America is a country whose history is racist. Henderson told the panel, I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy, and the anthem reflects that in its very words (inaudible) . Lowry responded to Henderson by saying, It s also a nation with very important ideals that have worn down those injustices over time and created a more just society. And people have died under that flag for those ideals. Watch:;politics;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘I Don’t Think You Have a Standard’: NYT Reporter Called Out Over Claim Obama Told 18 Lies While POTUS [Video]; I Don t Think You Have a Standard Tim Carney to New York Times reporter on different standards for different presidentsWe have a huge scandal at the FBI but these so-called journalists decide to discuss this? The entire video below is a pitiful display of partisan hackery we ve come to expect from MSNBC. This is why the American people are so FED UP with the main stream media Perhaps MSNBC should practice what they preach and start telling the truth. You have to ask yourself how these people stay employed when they can t even tell the truth about either POTUS. The funny thing to watch in the video is just how serious they are when discussing the topic of lying. It really is the definition of irony Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney called out a NYT reporter on Morning Joe Friday over the latter s report that President Barack Obama told just 18 distinct lies during his two terms in office.CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?Both of these reporters and the entire panel are absolutely bonkers for even having this discussion! This is a perfect example of just how off kilter these so-called journalists are. Do they not have anything else to report???The New York Times juxtaposed President Donald Trump with Obama on lies told in office in a report Thursday, with the newspaper claiming Obama told 18 distinct falsehoods during his entire presidency compared to Trump s 103 in less than a year in office.The Free Beacon reported that Obama, according to fact-checker PolitiFact, had made 98 separate mostly false, false, and pants on fire statements in his administration, with the Times leaving many of them out of its analysis.Carney wrote a piece for the Examiner in which he stated Trump was far more detached from the truth than most politicians, but he hit the newspaper for omitting so many of Obama s lies from the piece, such as claiming during a State of the Union address that his administration had eliminated lobbyists from policy-making jobs.Carney said it didn t seem to be a proper use of data journalism to say one would count up the lies when it left out so many of Obama s. Read more: WFB;politics;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. chief urges communication with North Korea to avoid escalation;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Friday it was time to immediately re-establish and strengthen communication channels with North Korea, including inter-Korean and military to military channels, to reduce the risk of a misunderstanding escalating into conflict. While all concerned seek to avoid an accidental escalation leading to conflict, the risk is being multiplied by misplaced over-confidence, dangerous narratives and rhetoric, and the lack of communication channels, Guterres told the U.N. Security Council. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel questions Iranian blogger after giving her asylum;JERUSALEM/LONDON (Reuters) - An Iranian blogger granted asylum in Israel has been questioned by its Shin Bet internal security service on suspicion of illegal communication with Iran, an Israeli official said on Friday. Israel admitted Neda Amin, 33, who was previously based in Turkey, on humanitarian grounds in August, saying that she faced forced repatriation to Iran and would be at risk given her writings for an Israeli news site. Amin, who is originally from Tehran, says her father was Jewish. Israeli law bars contact with the military or similar state agencies of its enemy Iran. As home to thousands of Iranian Jewish immigrants, Israel has in the past allowed citizens to visit family in Iran. But it outlawed these trips a decade ago over Shin Bet concerns that Tehran could recruit them as spies. A Shin Bet statement said that, after moving to Israel, Amin communicated with Iranian representatives and was questioned about this by the security service, whose responsibilities include counter-espionage. Asked by Reuters for clarification, an Israeli security official said only that the people with whom Amin was accused of communicating were not her relatives, and were inside Iran. Amin was not under arrest, said the Israeli official, who requested anonymity, adding: Whether there is a (criminal) case here is still being investigated. Amin later told Reuters she had been questioned for eight days over her contacts with a person she believed was an Israeli intelligence agent, but who her Shin Bet interrogators told her was in fact an Iranian government operative. A Farsi-speaking man had called her in Turkey, describing himself as an Israeli intelligence officer who wanted to protect her from Ankara s security services, she said, adding that they stayed in touch after she moved to Israel. Whenever the man phoned, Amin said, his number came up on her screen with an Israeli prefix. They never met, she said. They told me I am innocent as I have been in touch with an impostor, without knowing it, she said. I have spoken to this man, but I have done nothing against Israel s security. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Day of Rage' - a knife, a fake bomb belt, a death;NEAR RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - I went to the road just outside Ramallah, as on previous days, because that is one of the places in the West Bank where Palestinians have been protesting against U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The 100-metre stretch leads from the city limits of Ramallah to the Jewish settlement of Beit El, and has a filling station and a traffic circle. Earlier on Friday, which Palestinians were calling a Day of Rage , I had tried working at the Kalandia crossing point into the West Bank, but the Israelis had thrown tear gas and I knew this would make taking good photographs difficult. Outside Beit El, a group of paramilitary Israeli police had driven back hundreds of Palestinians who were throwing rocks and burning tyres. I was photographing the protesters, and did not see another Palestinian who apparently emerged close to the Israeli squad from a hiding place near the traffic circle. I heard the Israeli police shooting, and turned around. On instinct, I started taking pictures, all the time trying to keep well out of the line of fire. When the Palestinian fell, I could see that he was holding a knife, and wearing what looked like a suicide bomb vest. Israeli police said he had managed to stab and wound one of their number before being shot. Palestinian medics later said the attacker was dead, and that his bomb belt had been fake. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's conservatives reach coalition deal with far right: Kurz;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s conservative People s Party (OVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) reached a coalition deal on Friday, conservative leader Sebastian Kurz said. We can inform you that there is a turquoise-blue agreement, Kurz told journalists, referring to the colors of the two parties. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland gives government key election role, opposition sounds alarm;WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland s parliament has passed a bill that gives the government, rather than a panel of top judges, control over who conducts elections, a move the opposition called satanic . Minutes before midnight on Thursday, lawmakers of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party and their allies approved a bill that allows the interior minister to nominate all candidates for head of the National Election Bureau. The PiS has said its bill will make voting more transparent, but critics have said the real aim is to boost the electoral prospects of the party, which has denied European Commission accusations of eroding democratic standards. The head of the judges panel, the State Electoral Commission (PKW), said the bill would undermine the electoral process. De facto, the minister will take decisions, not us, PKW head Wojciech Hermelinski told reporters on Friday. Poland is already at risk of sanctions from the EU over a PiS judicial reform;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalan election to return hung parliament: poll;MADRID (Reuters) - An election in Catalonia will fail to conclusively resolve a political crisis over an independence drive in the region, the final surveys before the Dec. 21 vote showed on Friday. The ballot will result in a hung parliament, a Metroscopia poll showed, with parties favoring unity with Spain tipped to gain a maximum of 62 seats and pro-secession factions 63, both short of a majority in the region s 135-seat legislature. Spain s worst political crisis since its transition to democracy four decades ago erupted in October, when Madrid cracked down on an independence referendum it had declared illegal and took control of the wealthy northeastern region. The standoff has bitterly divided society, led to a business exodus and tarnished Spain s rosy economic prospects, with the central bank on Friday blaming events in Catalonia for a cut in its growth forecasts for 2018 and 2019. Both the Metroscopia poll, published in El Pais, and a second survey in another newspaper, La Razon, predicted a record turnout for a Catalan election. But the vote looks likely to trigger weeks of haggling between different parties to try to form a government. Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is campaigning from Brussels, where he moved shortly after he was fired by Madrid following a unilateral declaration of independence by the region. With Friday the last day polls were permitted before the ballot, the El Pais survey - which questioned 3,300 people in Catalonia between Dec. 4 and Dec. 13 - showed his party winning 22 seats. Pro-unity party Ciudadanos, which has backed the minority central government of Mariano Rajoy s People s Party (PP) in parliamentary votes, will win most seats, closely followed by pro-independence ERC. But at a maximum of 36 for Ciudadanos and 33 for ERC, both fall far short of the 68 seats needed for a majority. The survey s inconclusive split between pro-unity and pro-independence parties would leave the regional offshoot of left-wing party Podemos, which supports unity but wants a referendum on independence, as potential kingmaker. Further muddying the waters, its leader Xavier Domenech favors a left-wing alliance across parties that both back and reject independence. The La Razon poll, which surveyed 1,000 Catalans also between Dec. 4 and Dec. 13, showed parties in favor of independence winning 66 seats and unity supporters 60, leaving the Catalan Podemos arm with nine. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. appalled at Iraq's latest mass hanging: spokeswoman;GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights office is appalled at the hanging of 38 prisoners in Iraq, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday, a day after the executions at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya. We are deeply shocked and appalled at the mass execution, the spokeswoman, Liz Throssell, told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva, adding that the human rights office had huge concerns about Iraq s use of the death penalty and - not for the first time - urged the government to halt all executions. Given the flaws of the Iraqi justice system, it also appears extremely doubtful that strict due process and fair trial guarantees were followed in these 38 cases. This raises the prospect of irreversible miscarriages of justice and violations of the right to life. The 38 male prisoners were convicted by Iraq s judiciary for terrorism-related crimes, she said. She did not have information on their ages or nationalities. In September, Iraq hanged 42 prisoners in a single day, and the U.N. has learned of 106 executions this year, Throssell said. Last year the Ministry of Justice announced 88 executions, but the U.N. believes the number may have been as high as 116. The world body had repeatedly asked the Ministry of Justice for data about prisoners, sentencing and executions but no such information had been provided since 2015, she said. Previously the United Nations had spoken of about 1,200 people being on death row, but it was now impossible to confirm that information, she said. The Justice Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that all those convicted were members of Islamic State. Officials have said all the appeal options available to the condemned had been exhausted, according to the statement. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Supporters of Hungarian Jobbik opposition party protest over crackdown;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - About a thousand Hungarians protested on Friday against a crackdown on the main opposition party Jobbik which has been threatened by a record political campaign fine that the party leader describes as a death sentence for democracy. Despite the gloomy rhetoric and Jobbik saying it was fighting for survival, support for the demonstration was well down on other similar rallies over the past year. Hungarians will vote for a new parliament in April and Prime Minister Viktor Orban s conservative, anti-migrant Fidesz party is far ahead in the polls, with Jobbik its nearest rival. Jobbik, once on the far right, has turned toward the center in a bid to attract more support and is now campaigning nationwide against Orban, depicting him as the leader of a criminal gang. Orban, rejecting the charges, says his financial standing is an open book . Last week the state audit office (ASZ) ruled Jobbik had bought political posters far below market prices, breaching rules on political funding, then it slapped a 663 million forint ($2.5 million) penalty on the party. The protesters, waving Jobbik flags and posters deriding the ruling elite, gathered outside the headquarters of Orban s Fidesz party. What we see unfolding is not an audit office investigation. It is not an official penalty. This is a death sentence with Jobbik s name on it. But in reality, it is a death sentence for Hungarian democracy, Jobbiik leader Gabor Vona told the crowd. A government spokesman could not comment immediately on his remarks. ASZ chairman Laszlo Domokos is a former Fidesz lawmaker, whom Jobbik and other critics accuse of making decisions in favor of Orban. The audit office denies that. On Friday, ASZ again called on Jobbik to submit information that would challenge its findings, saying it acted fully within its rights throughout the probe. The ruling Fidesz party and the government have denied any involvement in the ASZ probe. This case has nothing to do with the election campaign, Orban aide Janos Lazar said on Thursday. For over a year Fidesz has targeted Jobbik, whose move to the center could upend the longstanding status quo of a dominant Fidesz with weaker opponents to its left and its right, said analyst Zoltan Novak at the Centre for Fair Political Analysis. Gyorgy Illes, a 67-year-old pensioner attending the rally, said he used to be a Socialist supporter but got disillusioned as the party struggled to overcome its internal divisions. This ASZ probe is a clear sign that Orban is way past any remedy. It is a ruthless attack on everything we hold dear. Democracy, the rule of law, equality, you name it, he said. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia detains seven members of Islamic State cell planning attack: Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s FSB security service said on Friday it had detained seven members of an Islamic State cell who had been planning attacks in public places, the Interfax news agency reported, citing an FSB statement. The members of the group had been detained in St Petersburg on Dec. 13-14, the FSB said, according to Interfax. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man with knife shot at Amsterdam airport;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;SPD agrees to talks on joining German government, Merkel urges quick action;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) agreed to open exploratory talks on forming a government with Chancellor Angela Merkel, party leader Martin Schulz said, providing a chance to end a rare period of political deadlock in Europe s largest economy. The decision is a painful about-face for the center-left party, whose members fear it risks losing its identity and sustaining further electoral defeats if it signs up for another grand coalition with Merkel s conservatives. The SPD, Merkel s junior coalition partner since 2013, was punished by voters in September with its worst election result since World War Two. It initially planned to go into opposition, but was persuaded to consider a new coalition after Merkel failed to form a three-way government with two smaller parties. Schulz said the SPD had a responsibility to consider backing the government to contribute to Germany s stability. But he promised party faithful he would take a new approach to keep the SPD s identity stronger in coalition than previously. He would strive for a different kind of governing culture in which ministers communicated more directly with citizens, and demand more healthcare and education spending. We won t just keep doing as we ve been doing now and there won t be a continuation of the grand coalition we ve had until now in the form that we knew it. Merkel welcomed the SPD s decision during a speech at a congress of the CSU, the arch-conservative Bavarian sister party of her Christian Democrats, in Nuremburg. She urged quick action on forming a stable government, 11 weeks after the vote. I have great respect for this decision when I look at the path the Social Democrats have taken since Sept. 24, she said. We have a huge responsibility to form a stable government. Merkel, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Brussels on Friday, said Germany needed to ensure its ability to work with France to strengthen the European Union. A coalition with the SPD is Merkel s only realistic chance of securing a fourth term in office without a new election, after both her conservatives and the SPD suffered punishing losses in September. SPD leaders hope to sell the about-face to skittish members by forcing Merkel s conservatives to concede a raft of popular worker-friendly measures in exchange for their support, either for a coalition or a minority government. Schulz said talks would not begin in earnest before early January. Party members must still ratify any plan to return to government, meaning a final result could still be months away, even as much of the continent looks to Germany for leadership on euro zone governance reform and security policy. The SPD s desire to extract meaningful concessions could slow things further, particularly if the parties seek common ground on immigration. The SPD wants to retain the right for successful asylum seekers to bring their families to Germany, but Merkel s conservative Bavarian allies, fearing defeat in regional elections next year, are equally adamant it should be scrapped. A poll for ARD television showed that 61 percent of voters would support a renewed grand coalition between the conservatives and the SPD. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian conservatives reach coalition deal with far right: source;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz have reached a coalition deal with the anti-immigration Freedom Party, a source said on Friday, paving the way for Austria to become the only western European country with a far-right party in government. The deal, in the wake of an Oct. 15 parliamentary election dominated by Europe s migration crisis, brings the Freedom Party back into government for the first time in more than a decade. A person familiar with the talks confirmed that a deal had been reached shortly after it was initially reported by Austrian news agency APA. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU gives formal green light to new Brexit phase;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders gave their formal approval on Friday to the opening of a second phase of Brexit negotiations with Britain, focusing on a transition period and future trading relationship. EU leaders agree to move on to the second phase of Brexit talks, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted during a Brussels summit that he was chairing. Congratulations PM @Theresa, he added, a day after leaders acknowledged British Prime Minister Theresa May s efforts to conclude an outline divorce settlement by giving her a round of applause. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. says it wants Syrian government to negotiate 'seriously' with opposition;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday urged supporters of the Syrian government to press it to participate fully in negotiations with the opposition, saying a lack of a political resolution in the war-torn country threatened indefinite instability. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the State Department said the United States wanted the government s supporters to use their leverage to urge the regime to participate fully in tangible negotiations with the opposition in Geneva. The United States urges all parties to work seriously toward a political resolution to this conflict or face continued isolation and instability indefinitely in Syria, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. A United Nations negotiator characterized a round of peace talks that ended on Thursday as a missed opportunity, and he laid most of the blame at the feet of Syria s government. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Forgetful ministers keep Mugabe's name alive at Zimbabwe congress;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s Robert Mugabe may have been deposed as president, but some of the ruling party s senior officials are struggling to stop mentioning the man who dominated their country for 37 years. Two government ministers were left embarrassed at a party congress on Friday when they used the name of the veteran leader when referring to the man who replaced him after last month s de facto coup, new president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Energy Minister and ZANU-PF spokesman Simon Khaya-Moyo chanted Forward with President Mugabe! in the native Shona language before hastily correcting himself to Forward with President ED Mnangagwa . Mnangagwa, who was sworn in as president of the southern African country on Nov. 24, initially sat stony-faced before breaking into a smile when another official whispered to him. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa also started referring to Mugabe as the party s candidate for elections due in 2018 before correcting himself. Mnangagwa was endorsed as the ZANU-PF leader and candidate for the top job for the vote which he said on Thursday said could be sooner than expected. Mugabe himself was out of the country. Sources said he visited a hospital in Singapore this week, apparently for medical checks. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemeni army pushes Houthis from outpost in southern Yemen; ((Refiles December 15 story to clarify areas of control in Shabwa, Marib in paragraph 3)) ADEN (Reuters) - The Yemeni army and allied fighters on Friday drove Houthi militants from a town that was one of the last positions they held in the country s south, military sources and local officials said. The forces advanced into Bayhan, about 300 km (190 miles) southeast of the Houthi-held capital Sanaa, killing dozens of the militants in clashes, the sources said. Bayhan is important in Yemen s war because it is located on a major road linking Shabwa province with Marib province, part of which is held by the Houthis, to the north. The army s advance means that the Houthis have been expelled from most of Shabwa, sources said. Yemen s more than two-year-old war pits the Iran-allied Houthis, who control Sanaa, against a Saudi-led military alliance that backs the government now based in the southern port of Aden. The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people and triggered a humanitarian crisis. The government-run Sabanew agency said the remaining Houthis had fled after battles for strategic positions in the Bayhan area which had left hundreds of them dead and wounded. The agency said the army also seized other positions in the area, where the movement of heavy artillery had been difficult because of sand dunes. This month the Saudi-led coalition, which is backed by U.S. and British weapons and intelligence, intensified air strikes after the Houthis killed former president Ali Abdullah Saleh when he switched sides in the civil war. There has been relatively little change in positions on the ground around the capital. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says to defend rights of Kerimov, businessman accused by France of tax charges;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia would do all it could to defend the rights of Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov who has been accused of tax evasion in France. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thyssenkrupp has offered help to Argentina over disappeared submarine;FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany s Thyssenkrupp, has offered assistance to Argentinian authorities in an investigation into the disappearance of a submarine last month, a spokesman said on Friday. The ARA San Juan was delivered in 1985 and built by a unit of Thyssen AG, which merged with Krupp to form Thyssenkrupp in 1999. We have offered our support for the technical investigation into this tragedy and are in contact with the Argentinian navy in this respect, the spokesman said. He said maintenance of the submarine was not conducted by Thyssenkrupp. The submarine went missing on Nov. 15 with 44 crew members aboard in South Atlantic waters. The navy said on Nov. 27 that water that entered the submarine s snorkel caused its battery to short circuit before it went missing. The tragedy underscored what some critics have described as the parlous state of Argentina s military, which has faced dwindling funding for years. German magazine WirtschaftsWoche earlier reported that a delegation of the Argentinian Navy had traveled to Kiel in northern Germany to discuss questions about the submarine with Thyssenkrupp. It did not identify its sources. Argentinian President Mauricio Macri has called for a serious and deep investigation into the incident. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pence trip to Middle East overshadowed by Trump's Jerusalem decision;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will underscore the U.S. partnership with Israel during a trip to the Middle East next week while seeking to shore up U.S. relations with the Arab world after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Pence, a strong supporter of Trump s decision, will spend three days in the region with stops in Israel and Egypt, the first high-level official to visit after the president reversed decades of U.S. policy and announced the United States would start the process of moving its embassy from Tel Aviv. The status of Jerusalem, which holds Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trump s move and have declined to meet with Pence. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal capital, while Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Pence, an evangelical Christian who had planned to highlight the plight of Christian minorities during his trip, will not meet with Palestinian Christians or with officials from the Coptic Christian church, who declined a meeting in response to the U.S. move. Officials said Pence still would discuss the persecution of Christians as well as the Jerusalem decision, countering Iran, defeating Islamic State militants and fighting extremist ideology. The dates of his trip have been in flux because of Trump s U.S. tax overhaul push and the possibility that Pence would be needed to provide a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. He is now scheduled to depart Washington on Tuesday, arriving in Cairo on Wednesday for a meeting with Egypt s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He flies to Israel later on Wednesday and will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, deliver a speech to the Israeli parliament, and visit Jerusalem s Western Wall. We can t envision a scenario under which the Western Wall would not be part of Israel, one administration official told reporters on a conference call. The trip will be dominated by the continuing fallout from Trump s announcement. The last couple weeks in the region have been a reaction to the Jerusalem decision, another administration official said. This trip is part of ... the ending of that chapter, and the beginning of what I will say is the next chapter. That view may not be shared by Arab leaders. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States abdicated its responsibility as a mediator on peace and Pence s planned visit to Bethlehem was scrapped. Pence does not plan to encourage Egypt to pressure the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, an official said. We think it s appropriate for the Palestinians to digest what has happened. And once they review the president s remarks clearly, they will realize that nothing has changed in terms of being able to reach an historic peace agreement, he said. Arab legislators have announced they will stay away from Pence s speech to the Knesset. In Egypt, the Sisi government will have a chance to discuss the recent U.S. decision to suspend some of Egypt s military aid package because of Washington s concerns over civil liberties. Egypt is a strategic U.S. partner because of its control of the Suez Canal and Sisi presents himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants in the region. On Friday Pence departs Israel for Germany, where he will visit U.S. troops on his way back to Washington. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Security tight as Germany marks anniversary of Christmas market attack;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has tightened security at Christmas markets across the country a year after a deadly truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market, with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel under fire from victims relatives for her handling of the case. Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck on Dec. 19, killed the driver and then plowed it into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 11 more people and injuring dozens of others. About 2,600 Christmas markets reopened in late November with added security staff on patrol and concrete barriers to protect shoppers. Merkel this week paid a surprise visit to the site of the attack, where a permanent memorial for victims will be unveiled on Tuesday. She will meet on Monday with relatives of victims, many of whom say they felt neglected by the government after the attack. In an open letter to Merkel published in Der Spiegel magazine this month, victims and survivors complained that the chancellor had not met with them personally. Kurt Beck, a Social Democratic politician who is representing victims and survivors, told reporters Merkel s handling of the tragedy stood in contrast with how the French government had responded to terrorist attacks in Paris. He also blasted what he called an unbelievable case in which the family of one victim was sent a bill for an autopsy and then hounded by bill collectors. There are incidents which must not be repeated, Beck said, urging the government to increase hardship compensation for the victims relatives and the survivors. German officials say they have tightened security and increased information sharing among security forces after investigations exposed a range of failures in the Amri case. But experts say much work remains to be done. Cooperation between intelligence agencies and between police authorities must be improved, said Malte Roschniski, a Berlin security expert. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentine Congress to make fresh attempt at pension debate on Monday;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s lower house of Congress will try on Monday to debate the government s pension bill, lawmakers said on Friday, after the first attempt at discussing it this week ended with violent protests that forced the legislature to suspend session. The bill, key to President Mauricio Macri s effort to lower business costs and reduce Argentina s fiscal deficit, has already passed the Senate, leaving the lower house to give final legislative approval. But Thursday s debate was suspended after it sparked riots in the capital that were put down by police firing rubber bullets and tear gas. Opposition protesters, politicians and unions say the legislation will hurt pensioners. For Monday s debate, the bill will be amended to provide a bonus to the country s most needy retirees, the government said. The move may increase its chances of passage. The amendment will make a strong effort to compensate those most in need, Macri-allied house member Mario Negri told reporters. The agreement to include the bonus came after a long meeting on Friday among lawmakers, provincial governors and Macri administration officials. Macri is aiming to cut the fiscal deficit to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product next year from 4.2 percent this year, and to reduce inflation to between 8 and 12 percent from above 20 percent this year. The pension bill would change the formula used to calculate benefits. Payments would adjust every quarter based on inflation, rather than the current system of twice-yearly adjustments linked to wage rises and tax revenue. Economists say the current formula means benefits go up in line with past inflation. Left unchanged, that could harm Macri s efforts to cut the fiscal deficit. Under the new formula, benefits would increase by 5 percentage points above inflation, according to Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena. The plan would take effect at a time of lower inflation expectations, hence slowing the pace of pension benefit increases. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Key policies of Austria's conservative/far-right coalition;VIENNA (Reuters) - The leader of Austria s main conservative party, Sebastian Kurz, has reached a deal to form a governing coalition with Heinz-Christian Strache s far-right Freedom Party (FPO). Below are some of the policies that Kurz s People s Party (OVP) and the FPO have already agreed on. For the entire program in German please click [here] ** Oppose deeper political integration among EU members states, seek to have more powers returned to national governments. Oppose Turkey s bid to join the EU. ** Rule out a referendum on Austrian membership of the EU. ** Move some departments that deal with European affairs, including the task force preparing Austria s EU presidency in the second half of 2018, to the chancellery headed by Kurz. (The FPO will take control of the Foreign Ministry). ** Push for more relaxed relationship between West and Russia. ** Introduce tougher minimum sentences for violent and sex crimes. ** Make fighting political Islam a priority. ** Secure Austria s borders nationally to stop illegal immigration until the EU has secured external frontiers. ** Put around 2,100 more policemen on the streets. ** Extend the maximum working day to 12 hours from 10. ** Facilitate immigration only for qualified workers in sectors that are struggling to find suitable Austrian employees. ** Simplify administrative framework in highly federalized Austria. ** Support construction of third runway at Vienna Airport. ** Focus on improving test results in basic skills such as reading, writing and numeracy, allow children to start school only if their German is good enough. ** Cut social benefits for parents who fail to comply with certain requirements, like ensuring attendance and that their child speaks German well enough. ** Cut public spending to fund tax cuts. Kurz and Strache repeatedly said during their campaigns that they planned to cut public spending by around 12 billion euros ($14.1 billion). ** Reduce corporate tax burden, for example by exempting profit reinvested in Austria. ** Not introduce wealth or inheritance taxes. ** Introduce public debt brake in the constitution. ** Push, also at a European level, for higher taxes on online transactions with foreign companies. ** Block newcomers from accessing many social services in Austria in their first five years in the country. ** Cap the main basic benefit payment at 1,500 euros a month for families and provide refugees with a light version of regular benefits. ** Cut benefits for refugees and turn cash payments into benefits in kind so as to minimize what they say is a pull factor attracting immigrants to the country. ** Reform the state pension system to reflect Austria s aging population. ** Give families a tax cut worth 1,500 euros per child per year. ** Merge Austria s 22 public health and other social security funds into five entities to cut administrative costs. ** Produce 100 percent of Austria s power from renewable sources by 2030, compared with roughly 33 percent at present, and keep the national ban on nuclear power plants. ** Gradual introduction of legislation to allow a referendum to take place if at least 900,000 voters support the issue. ** Rule out referendums on Austrian membership of the EU;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canadian police probe 'suspicious' deaths of billionaire couple;TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian police said they were investigating the mysterious deaths of Barry Sherman, founder of Canadian pharmaceutical firm Apotex Inc, and his wife, Honey, one of the nation s wealthiest couples whose bodies were found in their mansion on Friday. Police said they learned of the deaths after responding to a midday (1700 GMT) medical call at the Sherman s home in an affluent section of northeast Toronto. Two bodies covered in blankets were removed from the home and loaded into an unmarked van on Friday evening. The circumstances of their death appear suspicious and we are treating it that way, said Constable David Hopkinson. Homicide detectives later told reporters gathered outside the home that there were no signs of forced entry. Their neighbors, business associates and some of Canada s most powerful politicians said they were saddened by the deaths. Our condolences to their family & friends, and to everyone touched by their vision & spirit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on Twitter. Toronto Mayor John Tory said in statement he was shocked and heartbroken to learn of the deaths, noting that the couple had made extensive contributions to the city. Toronto Police are investigating, and I hope that investigation will be able to provide answers for all of us who are mourning this tremendous loss, Tory said. The Shermans recently listed their home for sale for nearly C$7 million ($5.4 million). A real estate agent discovered the bodies in the basement while preparing for an open house, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, citing a relative. Sherman, 75, founded privately held Apotex in 1974, growing it by introducing large numbers of low-cost generic drugs that took market share from branded pharmaceuticals. He stepped down as chief executive in 2012 but remained executive chairman. Forbes has estimated Sherman s fortune at $3.2 billion. Apotex is the world s No. 7 generic drugmaker with 11,000 employees and annual sales of more than C$2 billion in more than 45 countries, according to its website. The couple was known for their philanthropy, giving tens of millions of dollars to hospitals, universities and Jewish organizations, CBC reported. They were extremely successful in business, but also very, very giving people, former Ontario Premier Bob Rae told CBC. It s going to be a very, very big loss. The Globe and Mail reported in February that Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd was investigating a complaint about a 2015 political fundraiser that Trudeau had attended. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Powerful Mexico former union boss granted house arrest;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The powerful former leader of Mexico s largest teacher s union, Elba Esther Gordillo, will be let out of jail under house arrest more than four years after her detention on embezzlement charges, government and judicial sources said on Friday. Gordillo, 72, was unexpectedly arrested in 2013 in the first year of President Enrique Pena Nieto s government, in what appeared to show the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) taking a stand against corruption. But the attorney general (PGR) this week stopped fighting Gordillo s lawyer s attempts to get her out of prison, and a tribunal approved, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The judicial source said that in a matter of hours or days she would be allowed to go home. The decision to let Gordillo see out her trial under house arrest came as the political party she founded, the New Political Alliance Party (Panal), said it would back the PRI in the 2018 election. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson urges long halt to North Korea weapons tests before any talks;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday urged North Korea to carry out a sustained cessation of weapons testing to allow the two countries to hold talks about Pyongyang s nuclear and missile programs. Tillerson s remarks were a retreat from his position earlier this week when he offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without preconditions, backing away from a key U.S. demand that Pyongyang must first accept that giving up its nuclear arsenal would be part of any negotiations. But the White House distanced itself from those remarks by Tillerson and said now is not the time for negotiations. North Korea must earn its way back to the table. The pressure campaign must and will continue until denuclearization is achieved, Tillerson told a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on North Korea s weapons programs. He did not specify how long the lull should last. He told reporters after the meeting that the United States would not accept any preconditions for talks with North Korea. Tillerson had raised hopes this week that the United States and North Korea could negotiate to resolve their standoff when he said that the United States was ready to talk any time North Korea would like to talk. North Korea s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday made no mention of Tillerson s call for a halt to testing when he addressed the same U.N. meeting. Ambassador Ja Song Nam said his country would not pose a threat to any state, as long as its interests were not infringed upon. He described the Security Council session as a desperate measure plotted by the United States being terrified by the incredible might of our Republic that has successfully achieved the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force. North Korea has made clear it has little interest in negotiations with the United States until it has developed the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile, something most experts say it has yet to prove. North Korea conducted missile tests at a steady pace since April, then paused in September after firing a rocket that passed over Japan s Hokkaido island. But it renewed tests in November when it fired a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15, which flew higher and further than previous tests. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono told the Security Council that North Korea was nowhere near ready to abandon its nuclear and missile programs and was not interested in a meaningful dialogue. He said any lull in missile tests did not mean that North Korea was sitting idly. The latest launch was conducted 75 days after North Korea s provocations in September. Some optimistic views labeled 75 days of silence as a positive signal. However, the missile launch in November made it clear that North Korea was continuing to relentlessly develop its nuclear and missile programs even while they were seemingly silent, Kono said. Tillerson also urged China and Russia on Friday to increase pressure on North Korea by going beyond the implementation of U.N. sanctions, but the two countries were wary of the idea. China s deputy U.N. ambassador, Wu Haitao, said all parties must implement U.N. sanctions, but said that unilateral sanctions undermine the unity of the Security Council and hurt the legitimate right and interests of other countries and should therefore be abandoned. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow was committed to implementing U.N. sanctions on North Korea and echoed China s concerns about unilateral sanctions. U.S. President Donald Trump wants China, North Korea s main ally and trading partner, to impose an oil embargo on Pyongyang, over and above Beijing s adherence to U.N. sanctions. The Security Council has ratcheted up sanctions on North Korea over its weapons programs since 2006. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Friday it was time to immediately re-establish and strengthen communication channels with North Korea, including inter-Korean and military-to-military channels, to reduce the risk of a misunderstanding escalating into conflict. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Victims of Mexico military abuses shudder at new security law;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Human rights activist Juan Carlos Soni fears a new security law passed by Mexico s Congress on Friday could mean his death after he suffered beatings, electrocution and abduction at the hands of the armed forces four years ago. Bucking widespread protests from rights groups, Congress approved the Law of Internal Security, which will formally regulate the deployment of the military in Mexico more than a decade after the government dispatched it to fight drug cartels. Proponents of the law argue it is needed to delimit the armed forces role in combating crime, while critics fear it will enshrine their purview, encouraging greater impunity and abuses in a country where justice is often notoriously weak. Multiple human rights groups and international organizations, including the United Nations, attacked the bill, mindful of the dozens of reported cases of abuses by members of the military in Mexico over the past 11 years. Soni, 46, a teacher from the central state of San Luis Potosi, whose case was documented by Mexico s national human rights commission, related how in 2013 he was detained, blindfolded and tortured by marines after being warned by them to stop looking into alleged rights abuses. While being held in a cellar, Soni said, he was made to leave fingerprints on guns and bags of marijuana and cocaine. He was then arrested on charges of carrying an illegal weapon and drug possession, and spent 16 months in prison until he was released with the aid of U.N. representatives in Mexico. If they give them that power and send out the Navy again, I m going to seek political asylum in another country, Soni told Reuters shortly before the law passed Congress. Much though I love my country, if I stay, they ll kill me. The Navy subsequently acknowledged participating in abuses against Soni, but he said he has yet to receive any restitution. The Navy did not immediately reply to request for comment. Well over 100,000 people have been killed in turf wars between the gangs and clashes with security force since former President Felipe Calderon first sent in the military to combat drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006. Reports of abuse gradually crept up as the battle with the cartels intensified, and tens of thousands of people have gone missing or disappeared in the tumult. Many of the most damaging scandals, from extra-judicial killings of suspected gang members to questions over the army s failure to stop the disappearance of 43 students near a base in 2014, have come under President Enrique Pena Nieto. Opponents of the military deployment say it has undermined trust in one of the most respected institutions in Mexico, as exposure to sickening violence and organized crime corroded the Army and the Navy just as it had the police. We don t want to be on the streets, but this is the job we were asked to do, said a soldier who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Noting that personnel were often separated from their families for long periods, the soldier said the task of attempting to keep order was made harder by the lack of regulations governing how the military should proceed. It should be the police who are doing this, but they don t have the necessary training, he said. Under Calderon and Pena Nieto, the armed forces played a major role in capturing or killing most of the top capos in Mexico. But they have not managed to pacify the country. October was the most violent month on record since the government began keeping regular monthly tallies 20 years ago. Relatives of the victims of abuses believe the new law will only give the military more cover to do what it wants. The Law of Internal Security won t just protect them, it offers them more faculties to carry out human rights violations masquerading as security operations, said Grace Mahogany Fernandez, whose brother was kidnapped and disappeared by the armed forces in December 2008 in the northern state of Coahuila. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: “It’s VERY Clear Intel Conspired to Frame Trump” (VIDEO);"JOE DIGENOVA has been around D.C for decades and has seen it all. He probably didn t see his one coming. The incoming president was set-up to be taken down. A soft coup is in the works and DiGenova has this to say about it:""It's very clear that they conspired to frame the incoming President of the United States."" Joe diGenova on allegations of anti-Trump bias at FBI and TheJusticeDept #Tucker https://t.co/qUNjAenzJc pic.twitter.com/VDlhb45Ghi G. Ashley Hawkins (@g_ashleyhawkins) December 16, 2017DiGenova on Tucker Carlson tonight: Inside the FBI and Department of Justice under Obama was a brazen plot to do two things. To exonerate Hillary Clinton because of an animous for Donald Trump, and then if she lost to frame the incoming president for either a criminal act or impeachment. This is one of the most disgusting performances by the senior officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice that everyone of these agents should be fired and the people who are still in the Justice Department be fired including Mr. Ohr and they impanel a federal grand jury to investigate the conduct of McCabe and Strzok and Page and Comey and Ohr and everybody in the Obama Justice Department that even touched this. It s very clear that they conspired to frame the incoming president of the United States.DIGENOVA S WIFE VICTORIA TOENSING IS REPRESENTING A FORMER FBI INFORMANT WHO HAS THE GOODS ON THE URANIUM ONE DEAL: DC lawyer Victoria Toensing is one smart cookie. She s representing a former FBI informant who has evidence on kickbacks and bribery involving the transportation of uranium in the US. She recently told Sean Hannity her client will brief Congress about Russian involvement in the U.S. uranium market. This includes widespread bribery and actions that involved the Clintons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDVndQRW22Q I m not going into detail, attorney Victoria Toensing said on the Oct. 24 Hannity. You know that, Sean. But the informant will give an overview and specific conversations that he had with Russians in what they were thinking about the money that they were spending. I mean, let me just be that general and it involves the Clintons. The director of the FBI at that time was Robert Mueller, and he is now the special counsel investigating alleged Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign. The undercover investigation involving Toensing s client occurred between 2009 and 2014, and the senior attorney on the case was Rod Rosenstein, who is now the deputy attorney general of the United States and the official who appointed Mueller as special counsel.Further, all this information indicates that many senior Obama administration officials knew about instances of bribery and money laundering involving at least one Russian official, at a time when Russia wanted to expand its uranium market in the United States, and when the administration through a special committee had to approve or deny the sale of a company, Vancouver-based Uranium One, to Rosatom. (Rosatom is the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation.)Some of the people on that Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States included then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napalitano, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.The committee approved the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom in October 2010. That sale gave Russia, and President Vladimir Putin, control over 20% of U.S. uranium production. (At least nine investors in Uranium One prior to, during, and after that sale donated $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.) So, Mueller, [Rod] Rosenstein, maybe even [James] Comey at the time, and the president of the United States certainly Eric Holder was the head of the DOJ they all knew that they had all this evidence that the Russians had infiltrated with the purpose of a criminal enterprise to corner the market on uranium, the foundational material of nuclear weapons? asked Hannity.Toensing said, That is correct. Via: cns news";politics;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar faces mounting calls for release of Reuters journalists;UNITED NATIONS/YANGON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that the United States was demanding the immediate release of two Reuters reporters arrested in Myanmar or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. The United States joined mounting demands for the reporters to be freed. The United Nations, United Kingdom, Sweden and Bangladesh, among others, have denounced the arrests. The journalists, Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, went missing on Tuesday after being invited to meet police officials over dinner on the northern outskirts of the city of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, which has triggered the flight of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh since late August. As of Friday, Reuters had not been formally contacted by officials about the detention of the reporters. The Ministry of Information has said that Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of the pair in handcuffs. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler has called for the immediate release of the journalists, saying in a statement on Wednesday that the global news organization was outraged by this blatant attack on press freedom. A court official in the northern district of Yangon where they were detained said that no paperwork had been filed relating to either journalist. The official said that usually cases are lodged 20-30 days after an arrest as suspects can be held in custody for up to 28 days without being charged. On Wednesday, Myanmar s Ministry of Information said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, though officials have since disclosed that they have not been charged. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. Last month, the United States called the Myanmar military operation against the Rohingya population ethnic cleansing and threatened targeted sanctions against those responsible for what it called horrendous atrocities. Tillerson said at the United Nations on Friday that the United States had identified one individual as a sanctions target and was examining others over the campaign in Myanmar against minority Rohingya Muslims. Myanmar s 2-year-old government, led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the Rohingya crisis, though it has no control over the generals with whom it shares power. Rights monitors have accused Myanmar s military of atrocities, including killings, mass rape and arson, against the stateless Rohingya during so-called clearance operations after Rohingya militants Aug. 25 attacks on 30 police posts and an army base. Amnesty International has called for a comprehensive arms embargo against Myanmar as well as targeted financial sanctions against senior Myanmar military officials. In calling for release of the Reuters reporters on Friday, Tillerson said, A free press is vital to Myanmar s transition and becoming a viable democracy, and we want Myanmar s democracy to succeed. He said the U.S. embassy in Myanmar was expressing our concerns over the detention of individuals, demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. The embassy said in a statement on its Facebook page on Friday, We remain concerned about Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. Their families and others have not been allowed to see them, and don t even know where they are being held. Tillerson s comments came in the wake of a rising chorus of concern in the West over Myanmar s action. The leaders of the U.S. Senate Human Rights Caucus, Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Chris Coons, said they were gravely concerned about the arrests. Earlier on Friday at the United Nations, British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. The nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists also called for the reporters unconditional release, saying, These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance. Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said the arrests were a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region . We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear, Wallstrom told reporters on Friday at the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that the arrests were a signal that press freedom is shrinking in Myanmar and the international community must do all it can to get the reporters released. Britain has expressed grave concerns to the government of Myanmar over the arrest of the two journalists, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters in London on Thursday. We are committed to freedom of speech and people s ability to report the facts and bring into the public domain what is happening in Rakhine state, he said. Bangladesh, which is struggling to cope with the influx of refugees into its southern tip, also condemned the arrests of reporters working for an agency that had shone a light for the world on the strife in Rakhine state. We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting, said Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s spokesman Motosada Matano, said his government is closely watching the situation. He said Japan has been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: TRUMP Will Remove “Climate Change” From List Of National Security Threats;Thank goodness we finally have a President who refuses to dump our taxpayer funds into climate scam that our former President actually identified as a national security threat According to The Federalist, The Trump administration will reverse course from previous Obama administration policy, eliminating climate change from a list of national security threats. The National Security Strategy to be released on Monday will emphasize the importance of balancing energy security with economic development and environmental protection, according to a source who has seen the document and shared excerpts of a late draft. Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system, a draft of the National Security Strategy slated to be released on Monday said. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty. During his successful campaign, Trump mocked Obama s placement of climate change in the context of national security. Here s a sample of his approach from a campaign speech in Hilton Head, South Carolina, in late 2015:So Obama s always talking about the global warming, that global warming is our biggest and most dangerous problem, OK? No, no, think of it. I mean, even if you re a believer in global warming, ISIS is a big problem, Russia s a problem, China s a problem. We ve got a lot of problems. By the way, the maniac in North Korea is a problem. He actually has nuclear weapons, right? That s a problem.We ve got a lot of problems. We ve got a lot of problems. That s right, we don t win anymore. He said we want to win. We don t win anymore. We re going to win a lot if I get elected, we re going to win a lot. (Applause)We re going to win so much we re going to win a lot. We re going to win a lot. We re going to win so much you re all going to get sick and tired of winning. You re going to say oh no, not again. I m only kidding. You never get tired of winning, right? Never. (Applause)But think of it. So Obama s talking about all of this with the global warming and the a lot of it s a hoax, it s a hoax. I mean, it s a money-making industry, OK? It s a hoax, a lot of it. And look, I want clean air and I want clean water. That s my global I want clean, clean crystal water and I want clean air. And we can do that, but we don t have to destroy our businesses, we don t have to destroy our And by the way, China isn t abiding by anything. They re buying all of our coal;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mattis says North Korean ICBM not yet a 'capable threat' against U.S;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that analysis continued on North Korea s most recent missile test, but he did not believe its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) posed an imminent threat to the United States. It has not yet shown to be a capable threat against us right now ... we re still doing the forensics analysis, Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon. Last month, North Korea said it had successfully tested a new type of ICBM that could reach all of the U.S. mainland and South Korea and U.S.-based experts said data from the Nov. 29 test appeared to support that. Mattis did not elaborate on what was lacking in the test to show it was not a capable threat. He said himself immediately after the test that the missile had gone higher than any previous North Korean launch and that it was part of a research and development effort to continue building ballistic missiles that can threaten everywhere in the world, basically. U.S.-based experts, some of whom have been skeptical about past North Korean claims, said last month that data and photos from the test appeared to confirm North Korea had a missile of sufficient power to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in America. But experts and U.S. officials have said questions remain about whether it has a re-entry vehicle capable of protecting a nuclear warhead as it speeds toward its target and about the accuracy of its guidance systems. South Korea s Defense Ministry said this latest test put Washington within range, but Pyongyang still needed to prove it had mastered re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation. Some U.S. based experts believe North Korea could be only two or three tests away from being able to declare the missile operational. U.S. President Donald Trump vowed it won t happen after North Korean said in January is was in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the United States. Trump has said all options are on the table, including military ones, although his administration has made clear it prefers a diplomatic solution. It continues to be a diplomatically led effort, Mattis said. When we re ready to have conversations ... dialogues, that will be up to the president and secretary of state. At a U.N. Security Council session on the crisis on Friday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged North Korea to carry out a sustained cessation of weapons testing to allow the two countries to hold talks. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. says identified target for sanctions over Myanmar crackdown;WASHINGTON/YANGON (Reuters) - The United States has identified one person it might impose sanctions on over the brutal crackdown in Myanmar against minority Rohingya Muslims and is examining others, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday. Tillerson, who last month declared the violence against the Rohingya to be ethnic cleansing, has said Washington was considering targeted sanctions against those deemed responsible. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to southern Bangladesh since the end of August. We are continuing to examine the circumstances around all of the events since the August attacks that have led to the enormous migration of people out of Myanmar, and have already identified one individual and we are examining other possible individuals to hold responsible for targeted sanctions from the U.S., Tillerson told reporters at the United Nations. U.S. officials told Reuters that President Donald Trump s administration was considering only limited action at this stage. They said it was preparing narrow, targeted U.S. sanctions against Myanmar s military and could roll out the punitive measures by year-end. The sanctions will be aimed at increasing pressure on Myanmar authorities, but are not expected to hit the highest levels of the military leadership and will stop short of reimposing broad economic restrictions suspended under former President Barack Obama, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The limited nature of any new sanctions is expected to be seen as little more than a warning for Myanmar and are not likely to satisfy international human rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers who have accused Myanmar s armed forces of crimes against humanity. Other world powers and the United Nations called Myanmar s campaign against the Rohingya population ethnic cleansing well before the United States did so in late November. U.S. officials in Washington and Yangon have been looking in particular at ways to use the Global Magnitsky Act, a law originally designed to target Russian human rights violators, but which has recently been expanded to allow sanctions for abuses anywhere in the world, the sources said. That can take the form of U.S. asset freezes as well as bans on travel to the United States. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department said the administration was in the final stages of preparing this year s Global Magnitsky report and had taken an expansive view of implementation of the act in the past year, but could not say when it might be delivered. Myanmar s powerful army chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, is expected to be spared from the latest sanctions, according to three U.S. officials and a congressional aide familiar with the matter. In November, Myanmar s military said it had replaced Major General Maung Maung Soe, the general in charge in Rakhine state, but gave no reason for his transfer from a post as the head of the country s Western Command. It was not immediately clear how far down the chain of command the U.S. measures would reach and who might be named. Two of the U.S. officials said the Trump administration is considering only limited action at this stage to avoid upsetting the delicate political balance in Myanmar, where the civilian-led government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi must still contend with an influential military. Washington also wants to hold tougher options in reserve to escalate the U.S. response if needed, the officials said. Although the sanctions plan was still being finalized, the U.S. officials said the aim was to roll it out before the end of December, possibly before Christmas, though one person close to the matter said an announcement could be delayed until early next year. We have nothing to announce on sanctions, a White House National Security Council spokesman said when asked the coming measures. He declined comment on who might be named. Preparations for Myanmar sanctions come at the same time that Washington has expressed concern over the detention this week of two Reuters journalists. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had worked on stories about the military crackdown on the Rohingya population in Rakhine state. Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say their exodus from the mainly Buddhist country was triggered by a military offensive in response to attacks by Rohingya militant on security forces. Washington has sought to balance its wish to nurture the civilian government in Myanmar, where it competes for influence with China, with its desire to hold the military accountable for the abuses. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Protesters injured in Honduras clashes as electoral crisis rumbles on;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Over two dozen people were injured in clashes on Friday between Honduran security forces and protesters demanding a vote recount for last month s contentious and still unresolved presidential election, according to the Red Cross. Supporters of the center-left Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, led by TV star Salvador Nasralla, set fire to tires across the country, blocking major thoroughfares in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and the second city of San Pedro Sula. Police and soldiers responded with tear gas to rock-throwing protesters who set fire to a vehicle for carrying soldiers in Tegucigalpa. Near San Pedro Sula, protesters blocked a road leading to the key Puerto Cortes port, before being moved on by security forces. The Honduran branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross said that 27 people had been injured in the clashes. At least five of those injured in the northern city of Villanueva, near San Pedro Sula, had been shot, it said. Honduras has been roiled by political instability in the wake of the Nov. 26 vote, which remains unresolved. Nasralla trails conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez by 1.6 percentage points according to the official count, which has been questioned by the two main opposition parties and a wide swathe of the diplomatic corps. Honduras electoral tribunal said on Sunday that a partial recount of votes showed broadly the same result as previously, maintaining Hernandez s lead. It has until Dec. 26 to declare a winner. Last week, Honduras two main opposition parties presented formal requests to annul the results of the election. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's ruling party must fix economy to win vote: president;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s President Emmerson Mnangagwa told members of his ruling ZANU-PF party on Friday they would have to start fixing the economy if they wanted a chance of winning next year s vote. Mnangagwa spoke at a party congress that drew a line under the rule of ousted veteran leader Robert Mugabe by formally expelling his wife Grace and her allies from the organization and by endorsing Mnangagwa as party chief and candidate. We will only win at the ballot box if we can show signs that we are reviving our economy and at the same time we will only be able to make economic gains if we can secure re-election, he said. Zimbabwe s economy collapsed in the latter half of Mugabe s rule, especially after violent and chaotic seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. The southern African nation could hold elections as early as March, Mnangagwa said this week, which would be just five months after the de facto military coup which ended Mugabe s 37-year reign. Democracy bids that as a political party, ZANU-PF must always compete for office through pitting itself against opposition parties in elections which must be credible, free, fair and transparent, Mnangagwa, 75, told the congress in downtown Harare. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said late last month that financial support for the new government to stabilize its currency system and help it clear World Bank and African Development Bank arrears depended on democratic progress . In a sign of the military further consolidating its political power, Mnangagwa made three generals members of the party s Russian-styled executive Politburo, the supreme decision-making organ of ZANU-PF. Major General Engelbert Rugeje was appointed political commissar, a job focused on revamping party structures and preparing for elections. Mnangagwa said he would name two deputies in a few days. Defence Forces Commander General Constantino Chiwenga is a strong contender for one of the vice presidency slots as a reward for spearheading the de facto coup that ended Mugabe s rule. Mnangagwa, whose sacking as vice-president set off the chain of events that led to Mugabe s removal, said the ZANU-PF congress should define a new trajectory - which he did not spell out - and put behind it the victimization of members seen in the past. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Air traffic controllers end strike at new Senegal airport;DAKAR (Reuters) - Air traffic controllers ended a strike at Senegal s main airport on Friday, a union leader said, after shutting it down for most of the day over demands for more training and transportation stipends. The government says the new $680 million airport, which was inaugurated on Dec. 7, will help make Senegal a transport hub in West Africa and boost the tourism sector. But air traffic controllers complained that they had not been adequately trained to work at the new facility before it opened and said they launched their walkout for people s security . They also wanted increased stipends for employees transport to the airport, which lies some 45 km (28 miles) outside the city center. Late on Friday, however, Mame Alioune Sene, the president of the union representing the workers, said that it was suspending the strike. Our decision was motivated by security issues. We think that the authorities have understood, he said. We re going back to work to allow planes to take off and land. Sene did not say if the workers specific demands had been met. The airport is Senegal s busiest and is used by international carriers including Air France, Ethiopian Airlines [ETHA.UL], Brussels Airlines, Iberia, South African Airways, TAP Portugal and Kenya Airways. An airport management official said the strike meant around 30 flights serving some 5,000 passengers had to be canceled or delayed. The airport is Senegal s busiest and is used by international carriers including Air France, Ethiopian Airlines [ETHA.UL], Brussels Airlines, Iberia, South African Airways, TAP Portugal and Kenya Airways. Senegal, a fish and peanut exporter, is looking to take advantage of its reputation for political stability to expand tourism to its extensive Atlantic coastline. Last year, the country launched a new national carrier, Air Senegal, which ordered two new Airbus A330 jets last month. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. top diplomat calls for release of two reporters arrested in Myanmar;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that the U.S. government has demanded the release of two Reuters reporters being held in Myanmar. Our local representatives at the mission in Myanmar, at the embassy, are expressing our concerns over the detention of individuals, demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance, Tillerson told reporters. Myanmar s information ministry said on Wednesday that the reporters faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, though officials have since said they have not been charged. ;worldnews;15/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian PM future safeguarded in crucial Sydney by-election;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia s conservative coalition government regained its razor-thin parliamentary majority on Saturday after inner Sydney voters re-elected a former professional tennis player in a special poll triggered by a constitutional crisis. The Liberal Party victory in the blue-ribbon Sydney seat of Bennelong is a much-needed relief for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whose leadership has been increasingly unpopular with the public over the past two years. A loss in Bennelong would have plunged his government into a parliamentary minority, forcing it to rely on independent lawmakers to complete its agenda. A loss would also have placed Turnbull s personal position in danger. With around 73 percent of the two-party preferred vote counted by late Saturday, the opposition Labor Party candidate Kristina Keneally has secured a swing of about 5.6 percent against the Liberal Party s John Alexander, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. While a sizeable swing, that was well short of the 10 percent plus needed to install Keneally, a high-profile former premier of New South Wales, Australia s most populous state, in federal politics, and the Labor Party conceded defeat. The battle for Bennelong was bitterly fought. Turnbull campaigned personally for Alexander in the electorate both in the run-up to the vote and on the day of the poll. Thank you Bennelong, the people of Bennelong have put their faith in this man, Turnbull told cheering supporters as he raised Alexander s arm in a victory celebration. Liberals have come from across the state, across the nation. But Keneally, who ran a robust campaign urging voters to use the by-election to punish the federal government, warned Turnbull that he should be concerned about the swing to Labor. The verdict is in, the message is clear, we have had enough of your lousy leadership, she said in her concession speech. Malcolm Turnbull injected himself in this campaign, he owns this result. Turnbull s coalition has been forced to govern in minority since October, when a citizenship crisis cost him several cabinet members and wiped out his flimsy majority. Among those forced out was Turnbull s deputy, Barnaby Joyce, who has since won back his seat. Turnbull, who has lagged in opinion polls all year, and his minority government were forced to accept a widespread banking inquiry after independent members in parliament flexed their new-found power. The race tightened in recent days amid a diplomatic spat between Australia and China, sparked when Turnbull accused Beijing of improper interference in Canberra. One in five Bennelong voters has Chinese heritage, raising fears of a backlash. Alexander was forced to re-contest his seat after becoming one of 10 lawmakers, alongside Joyce, to leave parliament in recent months as they were swept up in the citizenship crisis. Alexander left parliament because he believed he might hold dual British citizenship, which he has since rescinded. Australia s constitution bars foreign nationals from sitting in parliament to prevent split allegiances. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nazareth Christmas celebrations will be held as normal: mayor;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Nazareth, the Israeli Arab city where Jesus is thought to have been raised, will celebrate Christmas as usual, its mayor said, denying the festivities would be curtailed in protest at the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. On Wednesday, a city spokesman said there would be some cuts to the celebrations to protest against President Donald Trump s decision on Jerusalem that angered Palestinians as well as U.S. allies in the Middle East and the rest of the world. Mayor Ali Salam told Reuters on Saturday that three singers who had been due to perform would not appear. He gave no reason for their absence, but said that the celebrations would proceed as normal. I don t know why people thought that there would be cuts to the celebrations. Everything, except for three singers who will not be coming, will be held as normal. We have already welcomed 60,000 people to the city today, Salam said. Nazareth, the largest Arab town in Israel with a population of 76,000 Muslims and Christians, is one of the Holy Land s focal points of Christmas festivities which begin officially on Saturday evening. Nazareth s imposing Basilica of the Annunciation is built on a site that many Christian faithful believe was the childhood home of Jesus mother, Mary. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands of Romanians mourn former king Michael;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Thousands of Romanians lined the streets of Bucharest on Saturday for the funeral of the country s former king Michael, one of the last surviving World War Two European heads of state. Born in 1921, Michael ruled Romania twice, switched its alliance away from Nazi Germany to the Allied side during the war and was subsequently forced into exile by a Communist takeover in 1947. He died in Switzerland on Dec. 5 at the age of 96, having retired from public life due to severe illness in 2016. On Saturday, Bucharest churches rang their bells and mourners, many in tears, threw white flowers at the funeral procession, chanting King Michael and Down with communism . European royalty attended, including Spain s former king, Juan Carlos, Britain s Prince Charles, King Carl Gustaf of Sweden and his wife Queen Silvia. Even though the restoration of the monarchy is not an issue in the European Union state, Michael commanded great respect from Romanians who saw him in sharp opposition to a political class which they link with poverty and corruption. His death comes at a time of deep divisions in Romanian society. Massive street protests against attempts by the ruling Social Democrats to weaken the fight against corruption and the rule of law have taken place on and off throughout 2017. Earlier this month, the Social Democrats used their solid majority to approve a judicial overhaul in the lower house that threatens to put the justice system under political control. On Monday, lawmakers begin debating changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. A descendant of the German Hohenzollern dynasty and a cousin of Britain s Queen Elizabeth, Michael was in his early twenties when he participated in a 1944 coup that overthrew fascist leader Marshal Ion Antonescu. Romania then broke with Nazi Germany and switched to the Allied side. Historians have said his actions might have shortened the war and saved thousands of lives. After communism collapsed, politicians fearing Michael s influence blocked his first few attempted visits after decades of exile in Switzerland, Britain and the United States. He finally returned to Romania in 1992 and regained citizenship in 1997. With his passing, the Romanian royal family s relevance will likely fade, since his children have little public standing. Princess Margareta, his eldest daughter, remains custodian of the crown. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Fierce and formidable' Dlamini-Zuma eyes South Africa's presidency;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is a fierce campaigner against racial inequality whose hostility to big business has rattled investors in South Africa. She is also one of two front runners to be the country s next president. The 68-year-old is vying to succeed her ex-husband, President Jacob Zuma, as leader of the ruling African National Congress at a party vote this weekend, an outcome that would make her favorite for the presidency after a parliamentary election due in 2019. A medical doctor and former chair of the Commission of the African Union, a pan-continental grouping, Dlamini-Zuma has pledged during her campaign to radically tackle the racial inequality that persists in South Africa 23 years after the end of white minority rule. Backers of her main rival, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, say she is peddling populist rhetoric and would rule in the mould of her former husband, whose decade in power has been plagued by corruption scandals. Dlamini-Zuma declined to be interviewed for this story. The choice between Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa will influence South Africa s economic policy trajectory, as well the country s role in Africa and beyond. Graphic: ANC election in South Africa - here Graphic: South African economy - here Investors are worried by Dlamini-Zuma s hostility toward international companies, which she says form part of a white monopoly capital cabal dominating South Africa s wealth. A Dlamini-Zuma victory would signal a sharp rhetorical shift toward more leftist economic policy, said John Ashbourne, an Africa-focused economist at Capital Economics. A further credit ratings downgrade would be almost inevitable. Yet Dlamini-Zuma s supporters point to a commitment to changing the lives of South Africa s black majority. Lynne Jones, a psychiatrist and author who lived with Dlamini-Zuma when they were students together in the English city of Bristol in the 1970s, says her determination to fight injustice is rooted in her own personal story. Jones remembers a day four decades ago when Dlamini-Zuma lay on her bed and wept after being forced to miss her brother s funeral because the apartheid-era security services had hounded her out of South Africa. She was fiercely intelligent and determined, said Jones. Here was someone who had put their whole life on the line and given up home and family for what they believed. It was eye-opening. The race between Ramaphosa, a unionist-turned-millionaire businessman, and Dlamini-Zuma is too close to call, political analysts say. Her campaign team told Reuters in written comments it was confident she would be elected ANC leader. Ramaphosa, who is popular among swathes of the ANC disillusioned with Zuma, is promising to end corruption, boost a flatlining economy and deliver jobs to the poor in a country where more than a quarter of the population is unemployed. Dlamini-Zuma, by contrast, is an African nationalist and has the support of the influential ANC youth and women s leagues, which both tend to support socialist policies. Known for her fierce temper and hostility toward the West, she was described in one 2001 U.S. diplomatic cable on WikiLeaks as a truculent and petulant foreign minister . Another cable to Washington suggested she could be charming. Belying her reputation as fierce and formidable, the Minister was soft spoken and smiling in this meeting - articulate but gentle, candid but warm, Donald Gips, then U.S. ambassador to South Africa, wrote in 2010. The most common criticism of Dlamini-Zuma is that she is beholden to Zuma and his powerful patronage network. Zuma has publicly endorsed her. She is bold and you can t fool her. She is someone you can trust, Zuma told a rally recently. The couple met in Swaziland in the 1980s, when they were both in the ANC underground. They were married for more than a decade and have four children together. In a rare interview last month, Dlamini-Zuma challenged her opponents to find any evidence of corruption in her long political career. I don t loot government coffers. I ve never done so, and I will not do so, she told ANN7 television. But for some senior figures in the ANC, she has not done enough to distance herself from the corruption scandals that have dogged President Zuma. She has not said anything on state capture , ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told Reuters, using a South African term to describe private interests unduly controlling government funds. Dlamini-Zuma says accusations that she is piggy-backing off Zuma are insulting given her career, first as a doctor to ANC leaders fighting apartheid and then as a cabinet minister under every South African president since 1994. As health minister in Nelson Mandela s cabinet, she laid the foundations for free public healthcare for the poor, took a hard line on smoking and made medicines more accessible. As foreign minister she fostered friendships with African countries and emerging economies like China, even when this angered the West. But she also made errors of judgment. In 1996, Dlamini-Zuma awarded a contract for more than $3 million to a friend for a play, Sarafina II, to raise awareness about AIDS and was later found to have ignored tender rules. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said that paled in comparison to recent government malpractice. He said: 14 million rand in the Sarafina scandal now seems like peanuts when compared with the looting under Zuma. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian far right to control foreign, interior ministries - spokesman;VIENNA (Reuters) - A coalition deal between Austria s conservatives and far right will give the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) control of the foreign, interior and defence ministries, among others, a conservative spokesman said. FPO Chairman Herbert Kickl will become interior minister while Mario Kunasek will run the defence ministry and international law expert Karin Kneissl, though not an FPO member, will become foreign minister on an FPO ticket, the spokesman said on Saturday. The People s Party of Sebastian Kurz, expected to become the next Austrian chancellor, will run ministries including finance, justice and agriculture, the spokesman added. Kurz confirmed earlier on Saturday that insurance executive Hartwig Loeger would become finance minister. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Key players in South Africa's ANC leadership race;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress elects a new party leader to succeed President Jacob Zuma at a conference starting on Saturday. The winner will be favorite to become president of the country after a 2019 national election. Below are the main ANC leadership hopefuls. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa are the two front runners. NKOSAZANA DLAMINI-ZUMA The former minister and chairwoman of the African Union Commission has served in the cabinets of every South African president in the post-apartheid era. Dlamini-Zuma was married to President Zuma for over a decade and has four children with him. She is backed by the ANC s influential women s and youth leagues, as well as by Zuma and provincial party leaders close to him. For a profile of Dlamini-Zuma, see. The deputy president and former trade union leader is one of South Africa s richest people. Ramaphosa played an important role in the negotiations to end apartheid and in the drafting of South Africa s progressive 1996 constitution. He is supported by a diverse group of labour unions, communists and ANC members disillusioned with Zuma. For a profile of Ramaphosa, see. The ANC s treasurer general is one of the ruling party s top six senior leaders. A medical doctor by training, Mkhize also served as a party boss in the KwaZulu-Natal province, from where Zuma and Dlamini-Zuma hail. Some analysts see Mkhize as a compromise candidate for ANC leader who could reconcile the opposing factions supporting Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa. For a Reuters interview with Mkhize, see:. The human settlements minister is the daughter of anti-apartheid activist Walter Sisulu, a close friend of Nelson Mandela. Sisulu says Ramaphosa approached her to be his running mate but she turned down the offer. The minister in the presidency has also held senior cabinet positions including public enterprises minister. He served in underground structures of the ANC during white minority rule and was imprisoned on Robben Island, where the apartheid government kept political prisoners. The former premier of the Mpumalanga province has also worked as the ANC s treasurer general. Phosa has demanded that nominations for ANC leader in Mpumalanga be re-run, as he says he has proof that party members were told how to vote. Mpumalanga s current premier is a Zuma loyalist, David Mabuza, who is viewed by some as a kingmaker in the ANC race. The speaker of South Africa s lower house of parliament also briefly served as deputy president. She has said she has held talks with other leadership hopefuls to discuss the possibility of working together. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian and French foreign ministers discussed situation in Syria;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian discussed the situation in Syria and other issues during a phone conversation on Dec. 14, the Russian ministry said in a statement on Saturday. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian insurance executive to be next finance minister: Kurz;VIENNA (Reuters) - Insurance executive Hartwig Loeger will be Austria s next finance minister, conservative leader Sebastian Kurz said on Saturday, as he presented his party s ministers. Loeger, 52, heads the Austrian unit of insurance company Uniqa. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's nearly man Ramaphosa may lead country at last;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The nearly man of South African politics, Cyril Ramaphosa, is at last in with a chance of becoming president after being overlooked for years. Ramaphosa s political abilities have been apparent for decades. Whenever Nelson Mandela needed a breakthrough in talks to end apartheid, he would turn to the then trade union leader with a reputation as a tenacious negotiator. Using skills honed in pay disputes with mining bosses, Ramaphosa steered those talks to a successful conclusion, allowing Mandela to sweep to power in 1994 as head of the African National Congress. Mandela wanted Ramaphosa to be his heir but was pressured into picking Thabo Mbeki by a group of ANC leaders who had fought apartheid from exile. It has taken more than two decades for Ramaphosa, now deputy president, to get another chance to run the country. Graphic: ANC election in South Africa - here Graphic: South African economy - here The 65-year-old is one of the two favorites to become ANC leader at a party vote this weekend. Whoever wins the ANC race will probably be the country s next president because of the ruling party s electoral dominance. Ramaphosa s ambition for the presidency has been clear through his whole adult life. He was quite clearly wounded by his marginalization in the Mbeki period, said Anthony Butler, a politics professor who has written a biography of Ramaphosa. The choice between Ramaphosa and his main rival for the ANC s top job, former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, will help determine the pace of reform in South Africa and affect how the country gets on with foreign powers. A trained lawyer with an easygoing manner, Ramaphosa has vowed to fight corruption and revitalize an economy which has slowed to a near-standstill under President Jacob Zuma. That message has gone down well with foreign investors and ANC members who think Zuma s handling of the economy could cost the party dearly in 2019 parliamentary elections. Dlamini-Zuma has promised a radical brand of wealth redistribution which is popular with poorer ANC voters who are angry at racial inequality. While Ramaphosa, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has backed radical economic transformation , an ANC plan to tackle inequality, he tends to couch his policy pronouncements in more cautious terms. Analysts say the race between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma, who was previously married to President Zuma, is too close to call. Unlike Zuma or Dlamini-Zuma, Ramaphosa was not driven into exile for opposing apartheid, which some of the party s more hardline members hold against him. He fought the injustices of white minority rule from within South Africa, most prominently by defending the rights of black miners as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). A member of the relatively small Venda ethnic group, Ramaphosa was able to overcome divisions that sometimes constrained members of the larger Zulu and Xhosa groups. A massive miners strike led by Ramaphosa s NUM in 1987 taught business that Cyril was a force to be reckoned with, said Michael Spicer, a former executive at Anglo American. He has a shrewd understanding of men and power and knows how to get what he wants from a situation, Spicer said. The importance of Ramaphosa s contribution to the talks to end apartheid is such that commentators have referred to them in two distinct stages: BC and AC, Before Cyril and After Cyril. Ramaphosa also played an important role in the drafting of South Africa s post-apartheid constitution. After missing out on becoming Mandela s deputy, Ramaphosa withdrew from active political life, switching focus to business. His investment vehicle Shanduka - Venda for change - grew rapidly and acquired stakes in mining firms, mobile operator MTN and McDonald s South African franchise. Phuti Mahanyele, a former chief executive at Shanduka, recalled that Ramaphosa was a passionate leader who required staff to contribute to charitable projects aimed at improving access to education for the underprivileged. By the time Ramaphosa sold out of Shanduka in 2014, the firm was worth more than 8 billion rand ($584 million in today s money), making Ramaphosa one of South Africa s 20 richest people. To his supporters, Ramaphosa s business success makes him well-suited to the task of turning around an economy grappling with 28 percent unemployment and credit rating downgrades. In the Johannesburg township of Soweto last month, Ramaphosa called for a new deal between business and government to spur economic growth. Pravin Gordhan, a respected former finance minister, told Reuters that if Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader, the whole narrative about South Africa s economy would change for the better within three months . Signs that Ramaphosa has done well in the nominations by ANC branches that precede the leadership vote have driven a rally in the rand in recent weeks. But Ramaphosa has his detractors too. He was a non-executive director at Lonmin when negotiations to halt a violent wildcat strike at its Marikana platinum mine in 2012 ended in police shooting 34 strikers dead. An inquiry subsequently absolved Ramaphosa of guilt. But some families of the victims still blame him for urging the authorities to intervene. My conscience is that I participated in trying to stop further deaths from happening, Ramaphosa said recently about the Marikana deaths. Others are unconvinced that Ramaphosa, who has been deputy president since 2014, will be as tough on corruption as his campaign rhetoric suggests. Bantu Holomisa, an opposition politician and former ANC member who worked closely with Ramaphosa in the 1990s, said he was by nature cautious. Cyril has been part of the machinery and has not acted on corruption so far, Holomisa said. It is not clear whether he will if he gets elected. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. says did everything possible to help Italy cyber investigation;ROME (Reuters) - The United States has denied suggestions it undermined an investigation into a massive data breach at the Italian cybersecurity firm Hacking Team, saying it did everything it could to help in the case. A Milan magistrate last week recommended shelving an investigation into six people who were suspected of orchestrating the 2015 data theft. A senior judicial source criticized U.S. officials for not handing over a computer belonging to a key suspect, saying it might have contained information vital to the probe. But in a comment emailed to Reuters, the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington denied the United States was to blame for the case floundering. The United States assisted Italy to the greatest extent possible and the relevant Italian authorities know that, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson wrote. Magistrates opened their investigation in July 2015 after hackers downloaded 400 gigabytes of data from the firm, which makes software that allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to tap into the phones and computers of suspects. Much of the data later showed up on the WikiLeaks website. The company said at the time it believed former employees had stolen vital code that gave them access to its systems. It also speculated that a foreign government might have been behind the hacking. The Italian probe led magistrates to a suspect living in Nashville, Tennessee. U.S. authorities raided his house and took the man in for questioning, however a senior judicial source in Milan, with direct knowledge of the case, said his computer was never sent to Italy for technical assessment. We could not carry out the checks on the computer to see if it contained the evidence that we were looking for because the United States did not give it to us. We did not receive an explanation for this decision, the source said. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela talks to resume in January after government, opposition fail to reach deal;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s government and opposition leaders will hold a new round of talks in January after failing on Friday to reach an agreement to ease a deep political and economic crisis in the troubled OPEC country. Expectations have been low for the talks being held in the Dominican Republic. Some critics have described them as a stalling tactic by the ruling Socialist Party which is struggling to control a worsening economic crisis. We will meet again on January 11 for a meeting with the Venezuelan opposition, said Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez, leader of the government delegation, in a brief statement released by state television. Opposition leaders are demanding that President Nicolas Maduro accept humanitarian assistance from abroad to ease the crisis, which has left millions of people unable to eat properly due to triple-digit inflation and chronic product shortages. They also want the release of several hundred jailed opposition activists. Government leaders want the opposition to help seek the elimination of sanctions by Washington, which have been levied this year by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump on accusations that Maduro is undermining democracy. An initial round of talks two weeks ago in the Dominican Republic also ended without a agreement. We want an agreement that can be fulfilled, said opposition legislator Luis Florido. Because we have not concluded discussion of all the issues, we need another meeting so that there can be a permanent agreement. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's ANC says party officials barred by courts will not vote at conference;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s African National Congress said on Saturday its executive committee had decided that ANC officials barred by courts from attending its leadership conference this weekend would not take part in voting. We had a special (committee meeting), which was urgent, to deal with the three court cases that were given yesterday. All the structures that were nullified will not be voting delegates at conference, ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told reporters. We don t want to contaminate the conference... They will not vote on any matter. Courts ruled that senior officials in two provinces seen as backing Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for party leader had been illegally elected and therefore could not attend, sparking a rally in the rand with investors betting that the decision favored her rival, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Key figures in Austria's new coalition government;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s center-right People s Party (OVP) led by Sebastian Kurz and the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) have agreed to form a coalition government. The deal marks a major victory for a European far-right party after a flurry of elections this year, in which right-wing parties have made gains but failed to enter coalitions elsewhere in Western Europe. Here are the main figures in the new government: Kurz became a conservative junior minister at 23, Europe s youngest foreign minister at 27 and leader of the People s Party at 30, moving it further to the right of the political spectrum. He has yet to complete his law degree while he pursues politics. An early critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s open-border policy as Europe s migration crisis escalated in 2015, he infuriated Berlin when he spearheaded the closure of the Balkan route into Europe. Known for his slicked-back hair, he speaks eloquently but often eschews discussing policy details in public. He won October s parliamentary elections promising to break with Austria s decades-old political consensus which shares power among conservatives, Social Democrats, labor and employer associations. HEINZ-CHRISTIAN STRACHE (FPO), VICE-CHANCELLOR The 48-year-old former dental technician is the longest-serving party chief in Austria and enters government for the first time. During the campaign he accused Kurz of stealing the FPO s ideas, but Strache toned down his rhetoric during coalition negotiations stressing joint political targets. Strache is keen on ridding his party of its neo-Nazi image, portraying it as a mainstream defender of the middle class. He has called for zero immigration and wants to ban political Islam. The multilingual Middle East and international law expert got her new job on an FPO ticket. She has never been a member of the FPO, which has expressed sympathy for Israel s desire to host embassies in Jerusalem and has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin s party. Kneissl, 52, has criticized Merkel s open-door policy toward refugees and has called the European Union s migrant deal with Turkey nonsense in newspaper comments. Kneissl, who owns a farm in Lower Austria province, worked in the foreign ministry under a conservative minister in the 1990s. The Freedom Party s general secretary is seen as its mastermind and powerbroker who wields influence in all party matters. The 49-year-old future police supremo, who started his career as speechwriter for charismatic late FPO chief Joerg Haider, is known for his sharp tongue. The political hardliner has been a member of parliament for more than a decade. The hardliner inherits a legal dispute with Europe s largest aerospace company Airbus over a 2003 fighter jet purchase and will soon have to decide how to modernize the neutral country s aerial defenses. Kunasek, 41, called for a night-time curfew for asylum seekers in 2016 and curbing asylum seekers access to health services in 2015, according to human rights group SOS Mitmensch. Last year, he published an article in Die Aula, a magazine linked to Austria s right-wing extremist scene, according to the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance that researches the far right. Loeger has no university degree, but over 30 years of experience in the insurance sector, where he has been the chief executive of Uniqa s Austrian unit since 2013. The 52-year-old manager, a surprise ministerial appointee who has not held public office before, enjoys sports and art. A close ally of Kurz s, whom he knows from their time in the conservatives youth wing, 36-year-old Bluemel studied philosophy in Austria and France, focusing on Christian social teachings . After various posts in the party he became chief of the conservatives in Vienna, a traditional Social Democratic stronghold, in 2015. He is in charge of the party s media portfolio. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico presidential race roiled as leftist front-runner embraces right wing party;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The front-runner in Mexico s 2018 election has embraced a small, socially conservative party in his bid for the presidency, sparking criticism among progressives that could splinter his support in what is expected to be a tight race. Earlier this week, two-time presidential runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador entered into a coalition with the Social Encounter Party (PES), a tiny party with religious roots that pushes an anti-gay and anti-abortion agenda. The coalition is led by Lopez Obrador s left-of-center MORENA party and also includes the socialist-leaning Labor Party. Lopez Obrador, who is leading in most polls, has been Mexico s best-known leftist since he served as mayor of the capital a decade ago. In previous elections he favored tie-ups with left-wing parties. Some political analysts said a coalition with social conservatives could provide Lopez Obrador with the margin he needs to prevail in a crowded field of candidates, including first-time independents. But cracks in his progressive base are emerging. It looks like our rights will have to keep waiting, said Lol Kin Castaneda, a leading gay rights activist who helped push Mexico City s approval of marriage equality in 2010. Mexico s Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is lawful. Still, fewer than half of the country s 32 states have laws on the books that permit civil marriage for gays and lesbians, and individual same-sex couples in most states must fight to be recognized, often at great cost. It s an error for MORENA to join forces with PES... In this alliance, PES wins, Andres Lajous, a left-leaning writer and television pundit, posted on Twitter. Leo Zuckermann, a socially liberal commentator, suggested that Lopez Obrador, popularly known by his initials AMLO, is revealing his true colors by aligning himself with the PES. People of the left, it s time to recognize that AMLO is a conservative on these issues, he wrote in newspaper Excelsior. Lopez Obrador, like many Latin American leftists, has traditionally focused on fighting poverty and graft, not divisive social issues like gay rights or a woman s right to an abortion. In the past, he has said such issues are not so important compared to the fight against corruption. He has also proposed putting same-sex marriage and abortion to a popular vote, which rankles activists like Castaneda. Asked if she might still support Lopez Obrador, Castaneda was quick to answer. Right now, I haven t made a decision. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian police arrest Christian priest after complaint by Hindu group;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian police arrested a Christian priest and were questioning members of a seminary after a hardline Hindu group accused them of trying to convert villagers to Christianity by distributing Bibles and singing carols, police said on Saturday. The priest was arrested on Friday after a member of the Bajrang Dal, a powerful Hindu group associated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi s ruling party, accused 50 members of a seminary of distributing the Bible, photos of Jesus Christ and singing carols in a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Our members have registered a criminal case because we have proof to show how Christian priests were forcibly converting poor Hindus, said Abhay Kumar Dhar, a senior member of the Bajrang Dal in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. The Bajrang Dal has direct links with Modi s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Madhya Pradesh, governed by the BJP, has strict religious conversion laws. People must give formal notice to local administrators in order to change religion. We have arrested the priest but have not booked him under the anti-conversion law because the probe into the allegations is still on, said Rajesh Hingankar, the investigating official in Satna district, where the incident occurred. The Catholic Bishops Conference of India said they were shocked, and pained at the unprovoked violence against Catholic priests and seminarians . We were only singing carols, but the hardline Hindus attacked us and said we were on a mission to make India a Christian nation ... that s not true, said Anish Emmanuel, a member of the St. Ephrem s Theological College in Satna. Two senior police officials in Bhopal said they had detained six members of the Bajrang Dal who had allegedly torched a car owned by a Christian priest in Satna, 480 km (300 miles) northeast of Bhopal. Religious conversion is a sensitive issue in India, with Hindu groups often accusing Christian missionaries of using cash, kind and marriage to lure poor villagers to convert to their faith. Modi s government has been criticized for failing to do enough to stop attacks on minority Christians and Muslims by hardline Hindu groups. The government rejects the allegation and denies any bias against Christians or Muslims. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa to increase spending on higher education: Zuma;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa will raise subsidies to universities to 1 percent of gross domestic product over the next five years from nearly 0.7 percent at present as recommended by a commission on higher education funding, President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday. As a result of this substantial increase in subsidy to universities, there will be no tuition fee increment for students from households earning up to 600,000 rand a year during the 2018 academic year, Zuma said in a statement. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Detained asylum-seekers win right to sue PNG government for compensation;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - A Papua New Guinea court has given hundreds of asylum-seekers who were held for years in a controversial Australian detention center the right to sue the PNG government for compensation, Australian media reported on Saturday. Papua New Guinea s Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the PNG government to stop the asylum-seekers seeking compensation on Friday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. The government had tried to argue that the time frame for such attempts to sue for compensation had passed but the court rejected its application. The finding opens the way to a major compensation and also for consequential orders against both the PNG and Australian governments, Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul told Australian Associated Press. The decision comes two months after the PNG government closed the detention center on remote Manus Island, which had housed about 400 male asylum-seekers. Conditions in the camp, and another on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, have been widely criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups. The two camps have been cornerstones of Australia s contentious immigration policy, under which it refuses to allow asylum-seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores. The policy, aimed at deterring people from making a perilous sea voyage to Australia, has bipartisan political support. The closure of the Manus island camp, criticized by the United Nations as shocking , caused chaos, with the men refusing to leave the compound for fear of being attacked by Manus island residents. Staff left the closed compound and the men were left without food, water, power or medical support before they were expelled and moved to a transit camp. Papua New Guinea s Supreme Court declared in 2016 that the detention of asylum-seekers on behalf of the Australian government was illegal and that it breached asylum-seekers fundamental human rights. The asylum-seekers will now go back to court in February to seek orders from Australia and Papua New Guinea for them to be settled in a safe third country. The United States announced on Friday that it had agreed to accept about 200 more refugees from Manus island and Nauru under a deal struck between Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former U.S. President Barack Obama. Another 50 refugees had already been accepted as part of the deal, under which Australia agreed to accept refugees from Central America. U.S President Donald Trump has called the deal dumb . ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Wounded North Korean defector transferred to South Korean military hospital;SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean soldier who suffered critical gunshot wounds during a defection dash across the border to South Korea has been transferred to a military hospital, a South Korean intelligence official said on Saturday. The North Korean soldier, 24-year-old Oh Chong Song, was transferred to the military hospital on Friday from a trauma center at Ajou University Hospital south of Seoul, where his treatment for gunshot wounds and pre-existing conditions included two major operations. Oh has been transferred to South Korea s military hospital and South Korea s intelligence services will soon schedule the security questioning process depending on Oh s condition, the intelligence official told Reuters. The official, who declined to be identified, also declined to provide a specific schedule for Oh s questioning. Oh was shot and badly wounded by his fellow North Korean soldiers while fleeing across the border into the South in November. Three South Korean soldiers brought Oh to safety and he was immediately taken aboard a U.S. Black Hawk military helicopter and rushed into surgery. Medical staff at the Armed Forces Hospital will continue to provide proper care and treatment for Oh, a South Korean defense ministry official. Surgeon John Cook-Jong Lee accompanied Oh, along with a few South Korean intelligence services agents and other medical crew, as he was airlifted by a South Korean military helicopter to the Korean Armed Forces Capital Hospital in Seongnam, south of Seoul. Oh is still recovering from two major surgeries and other minor injuries. He has not gained full strength yet, but his condition has been much stabilized, said a person familiar with Oh s condition, who declined to be identified. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since late August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts is not known. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at Battalion8 s compound and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said the arrests were a blatant attack on press freedom and called for the immediate release of the journalists. Here are reactions to their detention from politicians and press freedom advocates around the world: ** U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. ** British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, I absolutely strongly disapprove of the idea of journalists, going about their everyday business, being arrested. We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. ** Swedish Foreign Minister Margot called the arrests a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region. She said, We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear ... To be able to send journalists to this particular area is of crucial importance. ** U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. Guterres said, It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country. He added: And probably the reason why these journalists were arrested is because they were reporting on what they have seen in relation to this massive human tragedy. ** Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, the former editor of Thomson Reuters Digital, tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Freedom of the press is essential for democracy and must be preserved, she said. ** President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two reporters. ** Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said, We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting. ** Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s spokesman Motosada Matano said his government was closely watching the situation, and that Japan has been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general. ** The Committee to Protect Journalists said, We call on local authorities to immediately, unconditionally release Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance. ** The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in Myanmar. It called on authorities to ensure the reporters safety and allow their families to see them. ** The Foreign Correspondents Club in neighboring Thailand said it was alarmed by the use of this draconian law with its heavy penalties against journalists simply doing their jobs. The club called for the journalists to be released. Wielding such a blunt legal instrument has an intimidating effect on other journalists, and poses a real threat to media freedom, it said. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican tax bill retains U.S. electric vehicle tax credit;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A compromise Republican tax bill released late Friday does not eliminate a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit as Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives had previously proposed. The measure follows the lead of the Senate version approved last month that did not eliminate the credit. Killing the credit could have hurt automakers like General Motors Co (GM.N), Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE), Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and Nissan Motor Co (7201.T). Consumers under current law are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit to defray the cost of plug-in electric vehicles. The electric vehicle tax credit starts to phase out after a manufacturer sells 200,000 plug-in vehicles. After an automaker hits that point, the $7,500 tax credit is still available for at least three more months before phasing out. Consumers are currently allowed to take the credit on vehicles until the manufacturer hits 200,000 plug-in vehicles sold. Electric vehicles have expensive batteries that make them pricier than gasoline-powered vehicles. The Electric Drive Transportation Association said in a statement late Friday it was pleased the credit would remain in law. “The credit supports innovation and job creation while helping drivers access advanced vehicle technology,” the group said. More than 50 automakers and other companies and groups released a letter earlier this week urging Congress to retain the credit, including Ford Motor Co (F.N), BMW AG (BMWG.DE), GM, Uber Technologies Inc. Former President Barack Obama repeatedly proposed hiking the tax credit for electric vehicles to $10,000 and converting it to a point-of-sale rebate, but Congress did not approve the measure. Automakers face mandates from California and a dozen other states to produce a rising number of zero-emission vehicles and have said the credits are essential to meeting requirements. ;politicsNews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congressman will not seek relection amid misconduct probe;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Ruben Kihuen announced on Saturday that he will not seek re-election, becoming the latest member of Congress to end his legislative career in the face of sexual harassment allegations. The first-term Nevada Democrat, who is the subject of an ethics investigation in the House of Representatives, denied the allegations against him but concluded that the charges would distract from “a fair and thorough discussion of the issues” on the campaign trail. “It is in the best interests of my family and my constituents to complete my term in Congress and not seek reelection,” Kihuen, 37, said in a statement issued by his campaign committee. The news website BuzzFeed has reported allegations that Kihuen sexually harassed a staff member of his 2016 political campaign. This week, there were also multiple reports of an anonymous lobbyist’s description of his unwanted advances. Reuters has not independently confirmed the reports. Kihuen is the latest in a growing roster of male lawmakers in Congress who have been accused of sexual misconduct amid a wave of such allegations against powerful men in entertainment, politics and the media. Lawmakers are working on legislation to update the body’s rules on sexual harassment. On Friday, Democratic Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia was accused of touching a former aide without permission and offering to advance her career in exchange for sex. The aide also said she was wrongfully dismissed from her job. Scott denied the charges. Republican Representative Blake Farenthold also said this week that he would not seek re-election after accounts surfaced that he created a hostile work environment. He denied allegations of sexual harassment but admitted allowing an unprofessional culture in his Capitol Hill office. Last week, Democratic Representative John Conyers and Republican Representative Trent Franks resigned, while Democratic Senator Al Franken said he would step down in the coming weeks. ;politicsNews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump allies say Mueller unlawfully obtained thousands of emails;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An organization established for U.S. President Donald Trump’s transition to the White House said on Saturday the special counsel investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election had obtained tens of thousands of emails unlawfully. Kory Langhofer, counsel to the transition team known as Trump for America, Inc. (TFA), wrote a letter to congressional committees to say Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team had improperly received the emails from the General Services Administration (GSA), a government agency. Career staff members at the agency “unlawfully produced TFA’s private materials, including privileged communications, to the Special Counsel’s Office,” according to the letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. It said the materials included “tens of thousands of emails.” Trump’s transition team used facilities of the GSA, which helps manage the U.S. government bureaucracy, in the period between the Republican’s November presidential election victory and his inauguration in January. The Trump team’s accusation adds to the growing friction between the president’s supporters and Mueller’s office as it investigates whether Russia interfered in the election and if Trump or anyone on his team colluded with Moscow. Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “We continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel and expect this process to wrap up soon.” The special counsel’s office waved off the transition team’s complaint. “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process,” said Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel’s office. The GSA did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Democrats say there is a wide-ranging effort by the president’s allies on Capitol Hill and in some media outlets to discredit Mueller’s investigation. Trump himself has loudly declared Mueller’s effort a waste of time. “There is absolutely no collusion. That has been proven,” Trump told reporters on Friday. Russia denies interfering in the election. On Friday, Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said he fears the committee’s Republican majority intends to close its investigation of the topic prematurely. Some Republicans have argued that Mueller is biased against Trump and should be fired. Langhofer’s letter was sent to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. It asked for Congress to act immediately “to protect future presidential transitions from having their private records misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives.” The letter said Mueller’s office obtained the emails despite the fact that it was aware the GSA did not own or control the records. It said the special counsel’s office has “extensively used the materials in question, including portions that are susceptible to claims of privilege” without notifying the Trump for America team. On the transition team were a number of aides who were later caught up in Mueller’s investigation, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty this month to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. Langhofer, the Trump transition team lawyer, wrote in his letter that the GSA’s transfer of materials was discovered on Dec. 12 and 13. The FBI had requested the materials from GSA staff on Aug. 23, asking for copies of the emails, laptops, cell phones and other materials associated with nine members of the Trump transition team responsible for national security and policy matters, the letter said. The FBI requested the materials of four additional senior members of the Trump transition team on Aug. 30, it said. Langhofer argued that, while such transition teams are involved in executive functions, they are considered private, non-profit organizations whose records are private and not subject to presidential records laws. ;politicsNews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump defends tax plan as 'great Christmas gifts' to middle class;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday defended a Republican tax-cut plan against Democratic charges that it favors the rich, saying it will be “one of the great Christmas gifts” for the middle class with just days to go before Congress votes. With a vote on the biggest tax rewrite in three decades set for Tuesday, Republicans were working to ensure party members were holding the line in favor of the legislation against entrenched Democratic opposition. The plan was finalized on Friday after Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Corker pledged their support. Three Republican senators, enough to defeat the measure in a Senate that Trump’s party controls with a slim 52-48 majority, remained uncommitted: Susan Collins, Jeff Flake and Mike Lee. Passage in Congress would provide Republicans and Trump with their first major victory since he took office in January. “It’s going to be one of the great Christmas gifts to middle-income people,” Trump told reporters at the White House before he boarded a helicopter for meetings at Camp David. “The Democrats have their sound bite, the standard sound bite before they even know what the bill is all about,” he added. The proposed package would slash the U.S. corporate tax rate to 21 percent and cut taxes for wealthy Americans. Under an agreement between the House of Representatives and the Senate, the corporate tax would be 1 percentage point higher than the 20 percent rate earlier proposed, but still far below the current headline rate of 35 percent, a deep tax reduction that corporations have sought for years. Democrats have slammed the plan as a giveaway to corporations and the rich that would drive up the federal deficit. For months, Trump has touted the bill as a middle-class tax cut. Studies from independent analysts and non-partisan congressional researchers have projected that corporations and the rich would benefit disproportionately. Trump repeated on Saturday that the tax overhaul would help bring in $4 trillion in foreign profits from U.S. companies. The tax plan proposes new rules for repatriating cash held overseas. “This is going to bring money in. As an example, we think $4 trillion is going to be flowing back into the country,” he said. “That’s money that’s overseas that’s stuck there for years and years.” ;politicsNews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai tour guide arrested for inappropriate behavior at Buddhist temple;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai authorities have arrested a local tour guide for indecent behavior at a temple after she posted a photograph online that showed her standing on a pagoda, police said on Saturday. The arrest came as photographs of Naranon Narakamin 44 circulated on social media earlier in the week, including one that showed her standing behind a tourist with one of her foot placed on a pagoda at Bangkok s iconic Temple of Dawn. It is unclear when the photograph of Naranon was taken but it has outraged many conservatives who say her behavior was disrespectful to Buddhism. Tourist Police Deputy commissioner Police Major General Surachet Hakpal told a press conference on Saturday that the tour guide has exhibited inappropriate behavior at a Buddhist temple, and set a bad example for Thais and foreign tourists. Naranon, who has publicly apologized for her action, will be charged with breaching the national archaeological site act and could face up to one month jail term and a fine of up to 10,000 baht ($307.50), the police said. In Thailand, using feet to point at people or objects, particularly sacred objects is considered very rude. Revealing clothing and inappropriate action at places of worship is also considered offensive in the predominantly Buddhist country. Last month two American tourists were arrested and fined for public indecency after posing for a butt selfie at a temple in Bangkok. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma says influence-peddling in his government to be investigated;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday allegations of private businesses wielding undue influence in his government will be investigated by a judicial commission of inquiry. The country s High Court ruled on Wednesday that Zuma must set up a judicial inquiry into state influence-peddling within 30 days, upholding the findings of a graft watchdog report entitled State of Capture . The report focused on allegations that Zuma s friends, the businessmen and brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, had influenced the appointment of ministers. Zuma and the Guptas have denied all accusations of wrongdoing. Zuma was speaking on Saturday at the start of a weekend conference of his African National Congress that will vote on a new party leader. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Mystery Surrounds Obama Appointee Judge Who Recused Herself From Fusion GPS Case Also Handling DNC Corruption in Awan Brothers Case;A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has recused herself from a second case involving Trump dossier firm Fusion GPS.Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, recused herself on Monday from a case involving a dispute over subpoenas issued for Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the dossier.This Obama appointee is like so many others controversial. Change.org has a petition calling for her impeachmentA SUPPORTER COMMENT OF THE PETITION: There is Clear and Present Danger, in our Government and to our Country. Judge Chutkin needs to do her duty, as Sworn by Oath, to let in ALL of the evidence pertaining to Imran Awan and Hina Alvi. As it stands today, 9/12/2017, Judge Chutkin is not doing her duty to protect the interests and lives of the Citizens of The United States. For this reason, I am standing with others, shoulder to shoulder, and calling for the Removal and Impeachment of Federal District Judge Tanya S. Chutkin. Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive accused in the dossier of hacking Democrats computer systems, has sought to subpoena Fusion GPS records and to depose its employees to find out more about the research firm s work on the dossier.Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed for defamation for publishing the dossier earlier this year. He denies the allegations laid out in the document, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele.Chutkan recused herself last month from another case involving Fusion GPS. The firm had filed suit against its bank, TD Bank, to keep it from complying with a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee, which sought Fusion s bank records.Chutkan presided over that case from Oct. 20 to Nov. 9. It was reassigned to Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. Since taking over the case, Leon has indicated that he plans to allow more transparency into the court proceedings involving the battle over Fusion s bank records. He has ordered several documents be unsealed and made public.Chutkan has presided over the case involving the lawsuit against BuzzFeed since Aug. 31. Her replacement is Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who assumed office in October.The reasons for Chutkan s recusals remain a mystery Chutkan refused to comment on the recusal but her work with a medical technology firm also represented by Fusion GPS could be the reason.In any case, this is yet another case of the Obama hand in just about everything that has to do with corruption and intel agencies.Read more: Daily Caller;Government News;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian presidential hopeful apologizes to arrested supporters;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafik apologized on Saturday to supporters who were arrested this week and called on authorities to resolve the situation. Police arrested three members of Shafik s Egyptian National Movement on Wednesday and charged them with spreading false information harmful to national security, two security sources told Reuters. Shafik, a former prime minister and ex-air force commander who is seen as the most serious potential challenger to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in an election due early next year, apologized for the trouble caused to the detainees and their families. I call on the relevant authorities to clarify the situation quickly, for it is dangerous, Shafik said on his Twitter account. President Sisi, a former military chief, is seen by many Egyptians as the only person able to provide stability after years of turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising that ousted veteran leader Hosni Mubarak. Shafik recently returned from exile in the United Arab Emirates to where he fled in 2012 after a narrow electoral defeat to Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mursi was removed from office in a military takeover led by Sisi in 2013. Two weeks ago, Shafik said he was still deciding whether or not to run for the presidency in 2018. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Mystery Surrounds Obama Appointee Judge Who Recused Herself From Fusion GPS Case Also Handling DNC Corruption in Awan Brothers Case;A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has recused herself from a second case involving Trump dossier firm Fusion GPS.Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, recused herself on Monday from a case involving a dispute over subpoenas issued for Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the dossier.This Obama appointee is like so many others controversial. Change.org has a petition calling for her impeachmentA SUPPORTER COMMENT OF THE PETITION: There is Clear and Present Danger, in our Government and to our Country. Judge Chutkin needs to do her duty, as Sworn by Oath, to let in ALL of the evidence pertaining to Imran Awan and Hina Alvi. As it stands today, 9/12/2017, Judge Chutkin is not doing her duty to protect the interests and lives of the Citizens of The United States. For this reason, I am standing with others, shoulder to shoulder, and calling for the Removal and Impeachment of Federal District Judge Tanya S. Chutkin. Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive accused in the dossier of hacking Democrats computer systems, has sought to subpoena Fusion GPS records and to depose its employees to find out more about the research firm s work on the dossier.Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed for defamation for publishing the dossier earlier this year. He denies the allegations laid out in the document, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele.Chutkan recused herself last month from another case involving Fusion GPS. The firm had filed suit against its bank, TD Bank, to keep it from complying with a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee, which sought Fusion s bank records.Chutkan presided over that case from Oct. 20 to Nov. 9. It was reassigned to Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. Since taking over the case, Leon has indicated that he plans to allow more transparency into the court proceedings involving the battle over Fusion s bank records. He has ordered several documents be unsealed and made public.Chutkan has presided over the case involving the lawsuit against BuzzFeed since Aug. 31. Her replacement is Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who assumed office in October.The reasons for Chutkan s recusals remain a mystery Chutkan refused to comment on the recusal but her work with a medical technology firm also represented by Fusion GPS could be the reason.In any case, this is yet another case of the Obama hand in just about everything that has to do with corruption and intel agencies.Read more: Daily Caller;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Liberal, Man-Hating Movement DESTROYS Career Of Top TX Lawyer For Posting #MeToo Letter From A Rape Survivor: “If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore”; Lauren McGaughy of The Dallas Morning News did a disgusting hit job on a top Texas lawyer and former judge. As a mother of 3 girls, I m offended by journalists like Lauren McGaughy, who wrote about a lawyer who was fired from his law firm for posting an article written by a rape survivor about her views on the now hijacked feminazi #metoo movement. It s sad to see the left grabbing onto the serious issue of sexual assault and doing the exact same thing they did to racism, using it as a political football, and trying to make it a Republican or conservative thing. If everyone s a racist, then no one is a racist. Lauren McGaughy, a reporter for Dallas Morning News didn t stop at exposing the firing of a top Texas lawyer over an article he shared on his personal Facebook page about the #MeToo movement (that was written by a rape survivor), she went after him with a bizarre vengeance, as though she had been personally harmed by his words. McGaughy didn t stop after pointing out that his law firm fired Andrew D. Leonie in a shameful case of censorship, she went on to tie him to conservatives and prove that he s actually (gasp) supported Republican candidates in the past. McGaughy took it a step further, and provided evidence that this horrible human being was also involved in litigating a case against are you ready? Muslim students praying in public schools!McGaughy wrote: Leonie was behind an AG s office letter that blasted a Frisco-area high school for allowing Muslim students to use an empty classroom to pray. The letter, which alleged the school might be infringing on the constitutional rights of its non-Muslim students, was called a political stunt by district staff who said the room was open to all students.From the Dallas Morning News article:A top lawyer in the Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton resigned Thursday after reports he wrote a Facebook post that called women s sexual misconduct allegations pathetic. The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday morning Associate Deputy Attorney General Andrew D. Leonie posted on Facebook this week: Aren t you also tired of all the pathetic me too victim claims? If every woman is a victim , so is every man. If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore. The post went up at 2:40 a.m. on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, Leonie had resigned. In a press release, Paxton s office said Leonie s exit was effective immediately. The views he expressed on social media do not reflect our values, Paxton s Director of Communications Marc Rylander wrote. The OAG is committed to promoting and maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment. Leonie s post was removed late Thursday afternoon. His bio was changed from Associate Deputy Attorney General to Retired. The Dallas Morning News was fortunately, able to get a screen shot of the offensive post for everyone to see:His Facebook post linked to an article from the conservative website The Federalist titled, Can we be honest about women? The teaser to the article, which was written by a woman, states: Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty. He previously worked for Paxton s predecessor, Gov. Greg Abbott, as a regional chief for consumer protection and special litigator, according to Leonie s LinkedIn. His salary was listed as $150,984 in April on the Texas Tribune s salary explorer.Leonie s post comes as some conservatives question the increasing number of sexual harassment and assault claims against the nation s most powerful men in media, politics and business. While the stories have led to a number of high-profile resignations and apologies in the private sector, change is slower in the political realm, where it s usually up to voters to oust elected officials accused of sexual misconduct.In Texas, for example, Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold on Thursday decided not to run for reelection after allegations he made lewd comments and unleashed profanity-laced tirades on staffers. The decision was made after Farenthold declined to resign for weeks after news broke he once used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settlement a harassment claim. Accusations against state lawmakers as well as concerns over the ability of elected officials to harass with impunity have also led to new training requirements in the Legislature.OOPS! It looks likeThe Federalist-reported that Leonie s Facebook post linked to an article entitled Can We Be Honest About Women? authored by McAllister, who is a survivor of sexual assault. Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty, McAllister writes. Why? Because it is part of their nature. As a society, we need to encourage both sexes to become comfortable with who they are naturally and all the messy, uncomfortable, stumbling, tantalizing, and glorious twists and turns that come with it, she continues. Men and women need to show each other grace and respect as they engage as sexual beings in whatever sphere they interact. The article explicitly condemns sexual assault but argues that what some call sexual assault doesn t deserve that label and expanding its definition into innocent behavior hurts both men and women. In the past, McAllister has written about how our society has emboldened men in positions of power to think they can get away with sexually harassing or assaulting women.In a post entitled It s Not Up To Women To End Sexual Harassment, she explains why men need to step up their efforts to protect women from such evils. She has also criticized aspects of the #MeToo movement, writing recently that it is destroying trust between men and women because the social media movement denies human nature.The sexual tension between men and women will always exist, and if women assume a man s sexuality is a threat instead of a powerful complement to their own sexuality, they will always be on guard. In this environment of suspicion, there can be no privacy between a man and a woman. If there is any kind of interaction or discourse, even if it s not sexual, the man can t trust that the woman won t use it against him so communication is silenced. Fear is generated on both sides, and fear is the death of trust. It is also the death of love.Throughout McAllister s critiques of the #MeToo movement and discussions of sexual topics, she has repeatedly stated that women ought to be respected and that sexual assault and sexual harassment are wrong a fact left out of the numerous media accounts of Leonie s resignation and her article.;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;In Liberal Utopia of Chicago, Where Americans are​ Dying Left & Right…Rahm Emanuel Unveils Fancy ID For Illegals;Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is really working hard to make Chicagoans feel a part of the city the only problem is he s focusing his efforts on the illegal aliens who live there. To add insult to injury, Chicago s murder rate is sky high with no end in sight but, but, but the illegals have a new fancy ID to give them the same benefits as everyone else in the city at a cost of millions to taxpayers. The card is free to the freeloaders while the taxpayers foot the bill The name municipal ID was initially floated for the program, but Emanuel revealed that Chicago s city IDs would actually be called City Keys. He said City Keys were designed to give a person who doesn t have an ID or a driver s license essentially the same benefits as those who do. When somebody says, Can I see your driver s license? what that unlocks and what that smooths out and all the speed bumps that literally get eliminated because you have a driver s license, Emanuel said.The mayor says the IDs will also provide benefits including discounts at cultural centers, on public transit and for veterans and senior citizens at locations across the city. Chicagoans will be able to link their public transit and library card to the ID and potentially even open bank accounts with it.Critics of the program say it might be a way for undocumented workers or people illegally in the U.S. to obtain a valid ID.GREAT POINT!Read more: Fox News ;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NFL NIGHTMARE CONTINUES…Seahawks Player Caught On Video Taunting Female Officer During Arrest: “Are you scared of me?”…“I got a lot of f**king money you broke-ass n*ggas”;In case anyone was confused about how the whole kneeling for the national anthem thing came about, it was the former 49er s quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who had the bright idea to kneel, as a way to bring attention to how unfairly blacks are treated by law enforcement.A few days ago, the entitled NFL athlete, Seattle Seahawks rookie, defensive-lineman, Malik McDowell, found himself in a little hot water with the law. Unfortunately for McDowell, his disrespectful interaction with the female law enforcement officer who was attempting to arrest him for disorderly conduct was all caught on camera and shared with TMZ.From Deadspin: The video features a male officer who appears to be tasked with transporting McDowell, but not the one who originally arrested him putting handcuffs on McDowell. At the same time, McDowell is taunting a female cop standing nearby. Are you scared of me? he asks her repeatedly. Why is you a cop then? McDowell and the officer go back and forth about why he was arrested for disorderly conduct, and he calls her a bitch multiple times. Bitch, I got money. That s why I can talk shit, McDowell says, adding that the officers will never make as much money as he s made in the past few months.McDowell then apparently shouts at some passersby, Hey, they re trying to plant some shit on me! which causes the officers to laugh. I got a lot of fucking money you broke-ass niggas, McDowell says as they search him. Put me in fucking jail, please, so I can bond out. NFL fans reacted to the kneeling players disrespect for our flag, our active and retired military and law enforcement officers by turning off their TV s and skipping the games, leaving empty seats in NFL stadiums across the nation for 11 weeks in a row.;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DIAMOND & SILK: Liberals Respect President Trump or Get Out! [Video];"Diamond and Silk: Liberals are trying to destroy this country. They want us to live in a third-world country. We don t want socialism. I don t want globalism I want to live free. I want to be happy, and I want to help President Trump make America great again. .@DiamondandSilk: ""Liberals are trying to destroy this country. They want us to live in a third-world country. We don't want socialism. I don't want globalism I want to live free. I want to be happy, and I want to help @POTUS make America great again."" pic.twitter.com/2MVgYGQbDr Fox News (@FoxNews) December 16, 2017The ladies are spot on! They are fighting the good fight for President Trump. If you don t love America then you can leave!The ladies visited the White House recently:We had a magnificent time with our man, the @POTUS, @realDonaldTrump and @FLOTUS Melania Trump at the White House Christmas Party while hanging out with @ScottBaio (Chachi from Happy Days) and so many more beautiful people on the Trump Train. Merry Christmas. We Love You all. pic.twitter.com/GDSLDEHygD Diamond and Silk (@DiamondandSilk) December 13, 2017OUR FAVORITE DIAMOND & SILK MOMENT IS A VISIT ON THE VIEW : They re President Trump s #1 fans and they ve been with him from the start of his campaign. The wildly popular, hilarious and outspoken Diamond and Silk duo have been hitting it out of the park on YouTube with their videos that rely entirely on pro-Trump commentary. They never use vulgarity or threats and their videos are always G-rated (Well, okay, a few of their videos may be PG-13). Apparently supporting the President of the United States now violates YouTube s monetization policies. Their videos have received millions of hits and had such an effect on liberals that Youtube recently made the decision to pull 95% of their revenue.Conservative Trump supporters Lynnette Hardway and Rochelle Richardson of North Carolina, know they re never going to get an invitation to leftist The View show, so, by using a few special effects, Diamond and Silk have decided to make a surprise visit to The View hags and give them a piece of their mind. The result is hilarious!Watch, as Diamond and Silk school Whoopie, Joy Behar and the rest of the liberal hags on The View about who is, and who is not our President, and remind them of what the President s role is and what is expected of Congress.Enjoy:.@DiamondandSilk have been anxious to get Whoopi & the ladies from The View straighten out because they've gotten a lot of stuff twisted. pic.twitter.com/ddkgKcW7yF Diamond and Silk (@DiamondandSilk) September 9, 2017WE LOVE THESE LADIES! ";politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Mueller Improperly Obtained Transition Documents in Russia Probe…”Unlawful Conduct”;This bombshell just in is more evidence of the swamp trying to bring down President Trump using unlawful conduct . Please note that GSA career staff aka swamp dwellers gave the Trump documents to the special counsel s office Fox News reports:A lawyer for the Trump presidential transition team is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller s office of inappropriately obtaining transition documents as part of its Russia probe, including confidential attorney-client communications and privileged communications.In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team s attorney alleges unlawful conduct by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel s office.Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in the letter that the special counsel s office is aware that the GSA did not own or control the records in question. But, Langhofer says, Mueller s team has extensively used the materials in question, including portions that are susceptible to claims of privilege. The Trump transition team lawyer argued the actions impair the ability of future presidential transition teams to candidly discuss policy and internal matters that benefit the country as a whole. Langhofer requests in the letter that Congress act immediately to protect future presidential transitions from having their private records misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives. ;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CHAFFETZ CALLS FOR SESSIONS TO RESIGN: “It’s time to go…some deep systemic problems” [Video];"Jason Chaffetz just went there! He said what everyone else is saying about the DOJ s Jeff Sessions TIME TO GO!Fox News Contributor and former Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz argued that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should step down..@jasoninthehouse: ""I think it's time for [Jeff Sessions] to go."" pic.twitter.com/aOgLa4FIvg Fox News (@FoxNews) December 16, 2017Chaffetz said, I ve got to tell you, and it pains me to say this a little bit, but I don t think the attorney general is up to the job that he s doing. He s absent from this. The reason there s a special counsel is because he had to recuse himself from everything. And I just, my own personal opinion, I think it s time for the attorney general to go. Because you need leadership there, some deep systemic problems there. Chaffetz also cited the DOJ not turning over documents on the Fast & Furious program and Sessions refusal to prosecute Clinton tech aide Bryan Pagliano for defying a Congressional subpoena. Via: Breitbart";politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's conservative-far right government says will be reliable EU partner;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s newly formed conservative far-right coalition government said on Saturday it would be a reliable partner in a European Union it seeks to reform to return more power to national governments. We will contribute as an active and reliable partner to the further development of the EU, in the sense that the principle of subsidiarity should be the focus, the parties said in their government program. The program by the People s Party (OVP) and the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO), which has a partnership agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin s party, also listed relaxing relations between Russia and the West as one of their aims. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BIZARRE 2006 FILM Starring Former White House Staffer OMAROSA Surfaces With Crazy Plot Around Stealing Donald Trump’s Hair;There are conflicting reports about why the outrageous Omarosa Manigault Newman is leaving her undefined job at the White House. It was first reported that she was escorted out of the White House by Secret Service after General Kelly had enough of her nonsense, and fired her. Omarosa appeared on Good Morning America the following day to refute those claims, saying she resigned from her job and was not fired or escorted out of the White House as reported. So who is Omarosa, and why is she such a polarizing figure? Does this 2006 video that just emerged offer any clues?A pop-culture polymath sent Page Six a link to Soul Sistahs, an ultra-camp, hyper-kitsch, uber-low-budget 10-minute sci-fi short film.While the plot is virtually incomprehensible, as far as we can tell it focuses on an intergalactic yenta in a housecoat who kidnaps Omarosa in an attempt to steal Donald Trump s hair as part of a difficult-to-understand get-rich-quick scheme.The mini-flick was made back in 2006 two years after Omarosa shot to fame on Trump s NBC show The Apprentice. In this vaguely Barbarella -inspired work, the aging villain drugs Omarosa by feeding her spiked cake, whereupon the red PVC-clad former director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison goes off on a motorcycle to steal the future president s hair in a showdown on top of a CGI-created Trump Tower.The film, which has been viewed a mere 6,000 times as our source put it: It s a cult classic. I m the cult was made by former In Touch Weekly photo director Michael Todd, tabloid veteran Matt Coppa and his brother Andrew Coppa. NYP ;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar journalists' group to don black T-shirts over arrest of Reuters' reporters;YANGON (Reuters) - A group of Myanmar journalists said they would begin wearing black T-shirts on Saturday in protest at the detention of two Reuters reporters accused of violating the country s Official Secrets Act, as pressure builds on Myanmar to release the pair. The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, a group of local reporters who have demonstrated against past prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . In a statement on Facebook, the committee said its members would don black T-shirts to signify the dark age of media freedom in Myanmar. They demanded the unconditional and immediate release of the two reporters, Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27. Journalists all over the country are urged to take part in the Black Campaign, the group said. It said it also planned to stage official protests and prayers. The group has staged several protests on behalf of arrested reporters from other media this year, including one in June in which around 100 journalists took part. It was not immediately clear how many journalists have joined the black T-shirt protest. The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists was formed in response to the arrest in June of a newspaper editor over the publication of a cartoon that made fun of the military, said video journalist A Hla Lay Thu Zar - one of the group s 21-member executive committee. A reporter must have the right to get information and write news ethically, said A Hla Lay Thu Zar in reference to the case of the two Reuters journalists. Myo Nyunt, deputy director for Myanmar s Ministry of Information, told Reuters the case had nothing to do with press freedom. It s related to the Official Secrets Act, he said. Journalists should be able to tell what is secret and what is not... We already have press freedom. There s freedom to write and speak... There s press freedom if you follow the rules. Asked about the local reporters black campaign , he said: Everyone can express his feelings. The journalists were arrested on Tuesday evening after they were invited to dine with police officers on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, and government officials from Canada, Britain, Sweden, and Bangladesh, have all called for their release. The two reporters had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown on militants in western Rakhine state. The Ministry of Information said the journalists had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media , and released a photo of the pair in handcuffs. It said they were being investigated under the 1923 Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. Human rights advocates say press freedom is under attack in Myanmar, where the young civilian-led government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi shares power with the military that ran the country for decades. At least 11 journalists have been detained in 2017, although some have since been released. Police told Wa Lone s wife on Thursday that the reporters were taken from Htaunt Kyant police station in north Yangon by an investigation team to an undisclosed location shortly after their arrest. They added the reporters would be brought back to the station in two to three days at most . It is now four days since they were detained. Separately, police lieutenant colonel Myint Htwe of the Yangon Police Division told Reuters on Thursday the reporters location would not be disclosed until the investigation was complete. Since then, the authorities have not provided any further information on their whereabouts. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Republican Senator Gets Dragged For Going After Robert Mueller;Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) thought it would be a good idea to attack Special Counsel Robert Mueller over the Russia probe. As Mueller s noose tightens, Republicans are losing their sh-t and attacking Mueller and the FBI in order to protect probably the most corrupt president ever.Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted on Friday, Speaking on behalf of the vast majority of the American people, Republicans in Congress be forewarned: any attempt to remove Bob Mueller will not be tolerated. Cornyn retweeted Holder to say, You don t. You don t https://t.co/7lHYkIloyz Senator JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) December 16, 2017Bloomberg s Steven Dennis tweeted on Saturday that [Cornyn] s beef is with Holder, not Mueller, but Cornyn responded to say, But Mueller needs to clean house of partisans. But Mueller needs to clean house of partisans https://t.co/g8SwgAKtfH Senator JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) December 16, 2017The Washington Post s Greg Sargent asked Cornyn, Will you accept the findings of the Mueller probe as legitimate, @JohnCornyn? Makes sense to me to wait to see what they are first, Cornyn responded.Makes sense to me to wait to see what they are first https://t.co/9lCqpYujKN Senator JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) December 16, 2017Republicans are trying to discredit Mueller and Twitter users took notice.If you even THINK of firing Mueller I ll make it my life s mission to make sure this is your last term, buddy. Mrs. SMH (@MRSSMH2) December 16, 2017Carrollton, TX here Ready and willing to help get Cruz and Cornyn out Jules012 (@JulesLorey1) December 16, 2017Garland, TX here Same! Bye Bye TDK (@ejkmom1998) December 16, 2017Austin, TX. #IStandWithMueller. Cronyn is a fake representative. He represents his own interests and anything to profit himself Vj (@Tex92eye) December 16, 2017I stand with Mueller! Kenneth Shipp (@shipp_kenneth) December 16, 2017He speaks for me Its BS how you cover up for a Russia pawn If Trump not gulity why would Mueller be fired to cover up Ellen Reeher Morris (@EllenMorris1222) December 16, 2017@EricHolder speaks for 69% of Americans according to recent polling. That s vast majority in my book. You were around for the Saturday Night Massacre @JohnCornyn. Firing Mueller would be X100! Lori Winters (@LoriW66) December 16, 2017Country over party. pic.twitter.com/NXEX9rGBgu PittieBoo (@PittieBoo) December 16, 2017He speaks for me, @JohnCornyn , and he speaks for the vast majority of American citizens who, you should remember, vote. See you in 2018. Andrew Silver (@standsagreenoak) December 16, 2017I might just move to Texas to get those cronies tossed out of office. Blue wave is coming for the corrupt. Ollie (@marciebp) December 16, 2017Good try, John. History will not be kind to you.Photo by Ann Heisenfelt/Getty Images;News;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; In A Heartless Rebuke To Victims, Trump Invites NRA To Xmas Party On Sandy Hook Anniversary;It almost seems like Donald Trump is trolling America at this point. In the beginning, when he tried to gaslight the country by insisting that the crowd at his inauguration was the biggest ever or that it was even close to the last couple of inaugurations we all kind of scratched our heads and wondered what kind of bullshit he was playing at. Then when he started appointing people to positions they had no business being in, we started to worry that this was going to go much worse than we had expected.After 11 months of Donald Trump pulling the rhetorical equivalent of whipping his dick out and slapping it on every table he gets near, I think it s time we address what s happening: Dude is a straight-up troll. He gets pleasure out of making other people uncomfortable or even seeing them in distress. He actively thinks up ways to piss off people he doesn t like.Let s set aside just for a moment the fact that that s the least presidential behavior anyone s ever heard of it s dangerous.His latest stunt is one of the grossest yet.Everyone is, by now, used to Trump not talking about things he doesn t want to talk about, and making a huge deal out of things that not many people care about. So it wasn t a huge surprise when the president didn t discuss the Sandy Hook shooting of 2012 on the fifth anniversary of that tragic event. What was a huge surprise was that he not only consciously decided not to invite the victims families to the White House Christmas party this year as they have been invited every year since the massacre took place, along with others who share those concerns.In each of the past 4 years, President Obama invited gun violence prevention activists, gun violence survivors (including the Sandy Hook families) and supportive lawmakers to his Christmas party. Zero gun lobbyists were in attendance. pic.twitter.com/QePW9FtbSh Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 15, 2017The last sentence of that tweet is important, because that s exactly who Donald Trump did invite to the White House Christmas party. Instead of victims. On the anniversary day.Yesterday was the 5 year mark of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook School, which went unacknowledged by the President. On the same day, he hosted a White House Christmas party to which he invited @NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. Here he is at the party with @DanPatrick. pic.twitter.com/mUbKCIWGxB Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 15, 2017Wayne LaPierre is the man who, in response to the Sandy Hook massacre, finally issued a statement that blamed gun violence on music, movies, and video games, and culminated with perhaps the greatest bit of irony any man has ever unintentionally conceived of: Isn t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? Yes. Yes, it is, Wayne.Anyway, Happy Holidays Merry Christmas from Donald Trump, everyone!Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images;News;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Liberal, Man-Hating Movement DESTROYS Career Of Top TX Lawyer For Posting #MeToo Letter From A Rape Survivor: “If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore”; Lauren McGaughy of The Dallas Morning News did a disgusting hit job on a top Texas lawyer and former judge. As a mother of 3 girls, I m offended by journalists like Lauren McGaughy, who wrote about a lawyer who was fired from his law firm for posting an article written by a rape survivor about her views on the now hijacked feminazi #metoo movement. It s sad to see the left grabbing onto the serious issue of sexual assault and doing the exact same thing they did to racism, using it as a political football, and trying to make it a Republican or conservative thing. If everyone s a racist, then no one is a racist. Lauren McGaughy, a reporter for Dallas Morning News didn t stop at exposing the firing of a top Texas lawyer over an article he shared on his personal Facebook page about the #MeToo movement (that was written by a rape survivor), she went after him with a bizarre vengeance, as though she had been personally harmed by his words. McGaughy didn t stop after pointing out that his law firm fired Andrew D. Leonie in a shameful case of censorship, she went on to tie him to conservatives and prove that he s actually (gasp) supported Republican candidates in the past. McGaughy took it a step further, and provided evidence that this horrible human being was also involved in litigating a case against are you ready? Muslim students praying in public schools!McGaughy wrote: Leonie was behind an AG s office letter that blasted a Frisco-area high school for allowing Muslim students to use an empty classroom to pray. The letter, which alleged the school might be infringing on the constitutional rights of its non-Muslim students, was called a political stunt by district staff who said the room was open to all students.From the Dallas Morning News article:A top lawyer in the Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton resigned Thursday after reports he wrote a Facebook post that called women s sexual misconduct allegations pathetic. The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday morning Associate Deputy Attorney General Andrew D. Leonie posted on Facebook this week: Aren t you also tired of all the pathetic me too victim claims? If every woman is a victim , so is every man. If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore. The post went up at 2:40 a.m. on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, Leonie had resigned. In a press release, Paxton s office said Leonie s exit was effective immediately. The views he expressed on social media do not reflect our values, Paxton s Director of Communications Marc Rylander wrote. The OAG is committed to promoting and maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment. Leonie s post was removed late Thursday afternoon. His bio was changed from Associate Deputy Attorney General to Retired. The Dallas Morning News was fortunately, able to get a screen shot of the offensive post for everyone to see:His Facebook post linked to an article from the conservative website The Federalist titled, Can we be honest about women? The teaser to the article, which was written by a woman, states: Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty. He previously worked for Paxton s predecessor, Gov. Greg Abbott, as a regional chief for consumer protection and special litigator, according to Leonie s LinkedIn. His salary was listed as $150,984 in April on the Texas Tribune s salary explorer.Leonie s post comes as some conservatives question the increasing number of sexual harassment and assault claims against the nation s most powerful men in media, politics and business. While the stories have led to a number of high-profile resignations and apologies in the private sector, change is slower in the political realm, where it s usually up to voters to oust elected officials accused of sexual misconduct.In Texas, for example, Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold on Thursday decided not to run for reelection after allegations he made lewd comments and unleashed profanity-laced tirades on staffers. The decision was made after Farenthold declined to resign for weeks after news broke he once used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settlement a harassment claim. Accusations against state lawmakers as well as concerns over the ability of elected officials to harass with impunity have also led to new training requirements in the Legislature.OOPS! It looks likeThe Federalist-reported that Leonie s Facebook post linked to an article entitled Can We Be Honest About Women? authored by McAllister, who is a survivor of sexual assault. Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty, McAllister writes. Why? Because it is part of their nature. As a society, we need to encourage both sexes to become comfortable with who they are naturally and all the messy, uncomfortable, stumbling, tantalizing, and glorious twists and turns that come with it, she continues. Men and women need to show each other grace and respect as they engage as sexual beings in whatever sphere they interact. The article explicitly condemns sexual assault but argues that what some call sexual assault doesn t deserve that label and expanding its definition into innocent behavior hurts both men and women. In the past, McAllister has written about how our society has emboldened men in positions of power to think they can get away with sexually harassing or assaulting women.In a post entitled It s Not Up To Women To End Sexual Harassment, she explains why men need to step up their efforts to protect women from such evils. She has also criticized aspects of the #MeToo movement, writing recently that it is destroying trust between men and women because the social media movement denies human nature.The sexual tension between men and women will always exist, and if women assume a man s sexuality is a threat instead of a powerful complement to their own sexuality, they will always be on guard. In this environment of suspicion, there can be no privacy between a man and a woman. If there is any kind of interaction or discourse, even if it s not sexual, the man can t trust that the woman won t use it against him so communication is silenced. Fear is generated on both sides, and fear is the death of trust. It is also the death of love.Throughout McAllister s critiques of the #MeToo movement and discussions of sexual topics, she has repeatedly stated that women ought to be respected and that sexual assault and sexual harassment are wrong a fact left out of the numerous media accounts of Leonie s resignation and her article.;left-news;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NFL NIGHTMARE CONTINUES…Seahawks Player Caught On Video Taunting Female Officer During Arrest: “Are you scared of me?”…“I got a lot of f**king money you broke-ass n*ggas”;In case anyone was confused about how the whole kneeling for the national anthem thing came about, it was the former 49er s quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who had the bright idea to kneel, as a way to bring attention to how unfairly blacks are treated by law enforcement.A few days ago, the entitled NFL athlete, Seattle Seahawks rookie, defensive-lineman, Malik McDowell, found himself in a little hot water with the law. Unfortunately for McDowell, his disrespectful interaction with the female law enforcement officer who was attempting to arrest him for disorderly conduct was all caught on camera and shared with TMZ.From Deadspin: The video features a male officer who appears to be tasked with transporting McDowell, but not the one who originally arrested him putting handcuffs on McDowell. At the same time, McDowell is taunting a female cop standing nearby. Are you scared of me? he asks her repeatedly. Why is you a cop then? McDowell and the officer go back and forth about why he was arrested for disorderly conduct, and he calls her a bitch multiple times. Bitch, I got money. That s why I can talk shit, McDowell says, adding that the officers will never make as much money as he s made in the past few months.McDowell then apparently shouts at some passersby, Hey, they re trying to plant some shit on me! which causes the officers to laugh. I got a lot of fucking money you broke-ass niggas, McDowell says as they search him. Put me in fucking jail, please, so I can bond out. NFL fans reacted to the kneeling players disrespect for our flag, our active and retired military and law enforcement officers by turning off their TV s and skipping the games, leaving empty seats in NFL stadiums across the nation for 11 weeks in a row.;left-news;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FOX NEWS BOMBSHELL REPORT: Trump Transition Team Lawyer Accuses Robert Mueller Of Improperly Obtaining Documents Related To Russian Probe;On Friday, Democrats were doing their best to push a rumor that President Trump is about to fire special counsel Robert Mueller before Christmas. According to The Hill Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that rumors on Capitol Hill suggest President Trump could fire special counsel Robert Mueller before Christmas, after Congress leaves Washington for the winter recess. The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week. And on Dec. 22, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller, Speier told California s KQED News.The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), also said Friday that he is worried that Republicans leading the committee are seeking to shut down the committee s investigation by the end of the year. Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in 2017 [sic]. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on, he tweeted Friday.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rumors that Trump could fire Mueller have swirled since Mueller s appointment in May.While Democrats are spreading rumors about Mueller s firing, Fox News has dropped another Mueller bombshell.FOX News A lawyer for the Trump presidential transition team is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller s office of inappropriately obtaining transition documents as part of its Russia probe, including confidential attorney-client communications, privileged communications and thousands of emails without their knowledge.In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team s attorney alleges unlawful conduct by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel s office.The transition legal team argues the GSA did not own or control the records in question and the release of documents could be a violation of the 4th Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday s letter that the GSA handed over tens of thousands of emails to Mueller s probe without any notice to the transition.The attorney said they discovered the unauthorized disclosures by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel s office. We understand that the special counsel s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims, Langhofer writes.The transition attorney said the special counsel s office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.Trump for America is the nonprofit organization that facilitated the transition between former President Barack Obama to President Trump.The GSA, an agency of the United States government, provided the transition team with office space and hosted its email servers. We continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel and expect this process to wrap up soon, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Saturday.The special counsel s office declined to comment Saturday. ;left-news;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SPOT ON! TRUMP SUPPORTER Slams New World Of “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” Being Used To Oust Trump [Video];This is so worth the watch! Brit Paul Joseph Watson slams the left and their desire to invalidate the wishes of the people when they voted to elect Trump:This is one guy to follow on YouTube. Paul Joseph Watson gets to the point every time. In the second half of the video, he addresses Brexit.This comment by Jim O Connor is spot on: If our votes get to the point that they really don t matter, then paying taxes and obeying laws really won t matter then. These so called good people are tyrants, who want to enslave all of humanity. In 1776 a group of imperfect people stood up against such tyranny. Tyranny similar to the CIA running drugs to destroy people and fund themselves, Soros buying elections and influence, the banksters funding war, the propaganda media (no news). I hope Trump shuts down the federal reserve, shuts down the CIA and corrupt FBI, issues US currency, and puts the Satanic pedophiles in the worst prisons possible for the rest of their miserable lives. If he doesn t, the deep (creep) state will destroy his family in front of his eyes. Those in the Cabinet who voted to have Trump declared incompetent, need to be in front of a Marine firing Squad. This sedition cannot stand. We ve been following Watson for some time. Here s a good and very funny example:;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR on Anti-Trump FBI Agent: “He belongs in Leavenworth. He belongs behind bars.” [Video];"WE COULDN T AGREE MORE! Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom on the Peter Strzok anti-Trump texts: He belongs in Leavenworth. He belongs behind bars. These things cannot happen in a democracy. Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom on the Peter Strzok anti-Trump texts: ""He belongs in Leavenworth. He belongs behind bars. These things cannot happen in a democracy."" @FoxBusiness @LizMacDonaldFOX pic.twitter.com/tMkX7wBoA9 Risk & Reward (@RiskRewardFBN) December 14, 2017THERE ARE SEVERAL PLAYERS IN THIS ANTI-TRUMP SCAM BUT FBI AGENT STRZOK IS THE MAIN CULPRIT:FBI Supervisor Fired For Anti-Trump Texts Oversaw Michael Flynn Interviews:Wow! Could this charade of an investigation into Trump-Russian collusion get any more embarrassing for special counsel Robert Mueller?A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller s Special Counsel s Office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the bureau s interviews of embattled former National Security advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one-count of lying to the FBI last week.FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, which took place on Jan. 24, at the White House, said several sources. The other FBI special agent, who interviewed Flynn, is described by sources as a field supervisor in the Russian Squad, at the FBI s Washington Field Office, according to a former intelligence official, with knowledge of the interview.Strzok was removed from his role in the Special Counsel s Office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton s email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia s election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee s Chairman Devin Nunes chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the Special Counsel three months ago, according to a statement given by the Chairman.The former U.S. intelligence official told this reporter, with the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the Special Counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 of Flynn s interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question. The most logical thing to happen would be to call the other FBI Special Agent present during Flynn s interview before the Grand Jury to recount his version, the former intelligence official added.The former official also said that Strzok s allegiance to (Deputy Director Andrew) McCabe was unwavering and very well known. Flynn, a retired three-star general, issued a statement on Dec. 1, saying, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. According to another source, with direct knowledge of the Jan. 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called, the source said.McCabe told Flynn some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate, the source said. It wasn t until after they were already in (Flynn s) office that he realized he was being formerly interviewed. He didn t have an attorney with him, they added.Flynn s attorney Robert Kelner did not respond for comment.A former FBI agent said the investigation into Strzok and the reported text messages between him and Page, shows a bias that cannot be ignored particularly if he had anything to do with Flynn s interview and his role in it. The former U.S. intelligence official questioned, how logical is it that Flynn is being charged for lying to an agent whose character and neutrality was called into question by the Special Counsel. According to an anonymous source in The Washington Post, Strzok s and Page had exchanged a number of texts that expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton. For entire story: Sara Carter, Hannity.com ";politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FOX NEWS BOMBSHELL REPORT: Trump Transition Team Lawyer Accuses Robert Mueller Of Improperly Obtaining Documents Related To Russian Probe;On Friday, Democrats were doing their best to push a rumor that President Trump is about to fire special counsel Robert Mueller before Christmas. According to The Hill Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that rumors on Capitol Hill suggest President Trump could fire special counsel Robert Mueller before Christmas, after Congress leaves Washington for the winter recess. The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week. And on Dec. 22, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller, Speier told California s KQED News.The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), also said Friday that he is worried that Republicans leading the committee are seeking to shut down the committee s investigation by the end of the year. Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in 2017 [sic]. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on, he tweeted Friday.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rumors that Trump could fire Mueller have swirled since Mueller s appointment in May.While Democrats are spreading rumors about Mueller s firing, Fox News has dropped another Mueller bombshell.FOX News A lawyer for the Trump presidential transition team is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller s office of inappropriately obtaining transition documents as part of its Russia probe, including confidential attorney-client communications, privileged communications and thousands of emails without their knowledge.In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team s attorney alleges unlawful conduct by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel s office.The transition legal team argues the GSA did not own or control the records in question and the release of documents could be a violation of the 4th Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday s letter that the GSA handed over tens of thousands of emails to Mueller s probe without any notice to the transition.The attorney said they discovered the unauthorized disclosures by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel s office. We understand that the special counsel s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims, Langhofer writes.The transition attorney said the special counsel s office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.Trump for America is the nonprofit organization that facilitated the transition between former President Barack Obama to President Trump.The GSA, an agency of the United States government, provided the transition team with office space and hosted its email servers. We continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel and expect this process to wrap up soon, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Saturday.The special counsel s office declined to comment Saturday. ;politics;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: What's in the final U.S. Republican tax bill;(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is expected to vote this week on sweeping, debt-financed tax legislation. Here are key parts of the bill. CORPORATE TAX RATE: Cuts corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, beginning Jan. 1, 2018. PASS-THROUGHS: Creates a 20 percent deduction for the first $315,000 of qualified business income for joint filers of pass-through businesses such as partnerships and sole proprietorships. For income above that threshold, the legislation phases in limits, producing an effective marginal tax rate of no more than 29.6 percent. CORPORATE MINIMUM TAX: Repeals the 20 percent corporate alternative minimum tax, set up to ensure profitable corporations pay at least some tax. TERRITORIAL SYSTEM: Exempts U.S. corporations from U.S. taxes on most future foreign profits, ending the present worldwide system of taxing profits of all U.S.-based corporations, no matter where they are earned. This would align the U.S. tax code with most other industrialized nations, undercut many offshore tax-dodging strategies and deliver to multinationals a goal they have pursued for years. REPATRIATION: Sets a one-time mandatory tax of 8 percent on illiquid assets and 15.5 percent on cash and cash equivalents for about $2.6 trillion in U.S. business profits now held overseas. This foreign cash pile was created by a rule making foreign profits tax-deferred if they are not brought into the United States, or repatriated. That rule would be rendered obsolete by the territorial system. ANTI-BASE EROSION MEASURES: Prevents companies from shifting profits out of the United States to lower-tax jurisdictions abroad. Sets an alternative minimum tax on payments between U.S. corporations and foreign affiliates, and limits on shifting corporate income through transfers of intangible property, including patents. In combination, these measures with the repatriation and territorial system provisions, represent a dramatic overhaul of the U.S. tax system for multinationals. CAPITAL EXPENSING: Allows businesses to immediately write off, or expense, the full value of investments in new plant and equipment for five years, then gradually eliminates this 100 percent expensing over five years beginning in year six. INTEREST DEDUCTION LIMIT: Caps business deductions for debt interest payments at 30 percent of taxable income, regardless of deductions for depreciation, amortization or depletion. CLEAN ENERGY: Preserves tax credits for producing electricity from wind, biomass, geothermal, solar, municipal waste and hydropower. CARRIED INTEREST: Leaves in place “carried interest” loophole for private equity fund managers and some hedge fund managers, despite pledges by Republicans including President Donald Trump to close it. These financiers can now claim a lower capital gains tax rate on much of their income from investments held more than a year. A new rule would extend that holding period to three years, putting the loophole out of reach for some fund managers, but preserving its availability for many. BRACKETS: Maintains the current seven tax brackets, but temporarily changes most of the income levels and rates. For married couples filing jointly, effective Jan. 1, 2018 and ending in 2026, income tax would be: 10 percent up to $19,050, versus 10 percent up to $18,650 under existing law;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina fires head of navy over submarine tragedy;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina fired the head of its navy a month after a submarine disappeared in the South Atlantic with 44 crew members onboard, a government spokesman said on Saturday. Letting go of Navy Admiral Marcelo Eduardo Hip lito Srur was the first known disciplinary action taken by President Mauricio Macri s administration since contact was lost with the ARA San Juan on Nov. 15. It was decided to remove him, a government spokesman said. Families of the crew members criticized Macri s government for not clearly communicating with them and for abandoning rescue efforts. The navy said on Nov. 27 that water that entered the submarine s snorkel caused its battery to short-circuit before it went missing. The navy had previously said international organizations detected a noise that could have been the submarine s implosion the same day contact was lost. Hope of rescuing survivors was abandoned on Nov. 30. The navy said it searched for double the amount of time the submarine would have had oxygen. An international search for the submarine is still underway. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zuma says South Africa's free higher education to be done in a fiscally sustainable manner;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s government plan to offer free higher education for students from poor and working class households will be implemented in a fiscally sustainable manner , President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday. Following a recommendation by a commission on higher education funding, Zuma said the government will increase subsidies to universities to 1 percent of gross domestic product over the next five years from nearly 0.7 percent at present. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian far-right leader says has ruled out Brexit-style vote;VIENNA (Reuters) - The Austrian far-right Freedom Party (FPO) has agreed to rule out a referendum on Austria leaving the European Union as part of a coalition deal with conservatives led by Sebastian Kurz, FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache said on Saturday. At a joint news conference with Kurz on details of their coalition deal, Strache said the two had agreed to expand direct democracy progressively. Kurz also said Austria s stance on Russian sanctions would not change with the pro-Moscow FPO joining the government. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libyan coast guard rescues more than 250 migrants trying to reach Italy;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya s coastal guard has rescued more than 250 illegal migrants trying to leave the North African country in small boats bound for Italy, officials said on Saturday. Libya s western shores are the main departure point for migrants mainly from sub-Saharan countries fleeing poverty and conflict trying to reach Europe. Arrivals to Italy have fallen by two-thirds since July from the same period last year after officials working for the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Italy s partner, managed to cut back human smuggling in the city of Sabratha west of the capital. That has pushed the trade further east, with the coast guard intercepting several boats off the coast near Qaraboulli and Zliten, two towns located east of Tripoli. The naval forces Ibn Ouf vessel rescued (on Friday) illegal migrants including women, children and men ... they are from different sub-Saharan and Arab countries, Coast Guard Captain Abdulhadi Fakhal told Reuters. They were rescued off Qaraboulli and Zliten towns ... and they are about 250 to 270 persons, Fakhal said. Libya has plunged into chaos since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising. A U.N.-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli has been trying to gain control of territory. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Elysee plays down opulence of Macron birthday at Loire chateau;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron celebrates his 40th birthday this weekend in the grounds of a former royal palace, in what some opponents called another tactless show of wealth. Rivals have branded former investment banker Macron president of the rich for policies such as the scrapping of a wealth tax and cutting housing benefit, moves the president framed as reforms to boost investment and social mobility. Macron is staying with his wife Brigitte in a guest house close to the Chateau de Chambord, a former royal palace on the Loire that dates back to the 16th century. His office denied media reports that the celebrations would take place inside the chateau and said the trip was being paid for by the couple. Left-wing leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who ran against Macron in the presidential election this year, called the chateau stay ridiculous for its royal symbolism. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a right-wing politician who also ran for the presidency, said: Times change but the oligarchy remains detached from the people. Macron s weekend retreat came as several of his ministers were shown to be millionaires. Figures released on Friday by a body charged with ensuring financial transparency in politics showed Labour Minister Muriel Penicaud had the largest personal fortune, around 7.5 million euros ($8.8 million). Penicaud, at the forefront of Macron s push to shake up the economy, has been criticized for a gain made on stock options when she was an executive at food giant Danone. Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot declared personal wealth of over 7 million euros and revealed he owned six cars. The former TV presenter and campaigner has called for France to stop selling petrol and diesel cars by 2040. Career politicians in the government had smaller fortunes, with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe s declaration showing 1.7 million euros and Public Finances Minister Gerard Darmanin just 48,000 euros. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's ANC votes to elect leader to replace scandal-ridden Zuma;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ANC delegates started voting early on Monday to elect a leader to succeed President Jacob Zuma as head of a party that has ruled since the end of apartheid but has faced scandals and corruption allegations. Whoever emerges at the helm of the African National Congress, a 105-year-old liberation movement that dominates Africa s most industrialized economy, is likely to become the country s next president after elections in 2019. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma were the only candidates nominated for the ANC leadership at a party conference on Sunday, an election official said. The vote is perhaps the most pivotal moment for the ANC since it launched black-majority rule under Nelson Mandela s leadership 23 years ago. With scandal and graft accusations having tainted Zuma s presidency, the party is deeply divided and its image tarnished at home and abroad. After procedural delays that held up the start of balloting, the contest remained too close to call. Most grassroots delegates backed Ramaphosa, 65, while Zuma s preferred candidate, his ex-wife Dlamini-Zuma, 68, came second. Ramaphosa drew the majority of nominations from party branches scattered across the country. But the complexity of the leadership race means it is far from certain he will win when the votes are finally counted. Owing to the delays, the outcome is now expected only on Monday, ANC Deputy Secretary General Jessie Duarte said. We don t rush results;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian coalition government to be sworn in on Monday - presidency;ZURICH (Reuters) - Austria s new coalition government of conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party will be sworn in on Monday at 11 a.m. (1000 GMT), President Alexander Van der Bellen s office said on Saturday. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian billionaire Masri detained in Saudi Arabia: sources;AMMAN (Reuters) - Sabih al-Masri, Jordan s most influential businessman and the chairman of its largest lender Arab Bank, was detained in Saudi Arabia for questioning after a business trip to Riyadh, family sources and friends said on Saturday. Masri s detention, which follows the biggest purge of the Saudi kingdom s affluent elite in its modern history, has sent shockwaves through business circles in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, where the billionaire has major investments. A Saudi citizen of Palestinian origin, Masri was detained last Tuesday hours before he was planning to leave after he chaired meetings of companies he owns, according to the sources. He is the founder of Saudi Astra Group, which has wide interests in diversified industries ranging from agro-industry to telecommunications, construction and mining across the region. Masri was heading to the airport and they told him to stay where you are and they picked him up, said a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named. He canceled a dinner in Amman on Wednesday that he had invited board members of Arab Bank and business associates to attend on his return. The Saudi authorities did not respond to requests for comment, while Masri could not be reached for comment. His confidants had warned him not to travel to the Saudi capital after mass arrests of Saudi royals, ministers and businessmen in early November, the sources said. He has been answering questions about his business and partners, said a source familiar with the matter who did not elaborate nor confirm he was held. A source close to the family later said that while Masri is currently restricted from leaving Saudi Arabia, no official charges have been filed against him. Reasons for Masri s detention were not clear but political sources said the Saudis might have used him to put pressure on Jordan s King Abdullah not to attend a Muslim summit last week to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jordanian monarch attended the Istanbul summit, however. He is a custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and has been vocal in criticizing Trump over his decision on Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia, whose relations with the United States have warmed with Trump taking a harder line against its arch-rival Iran than his predecessor, appears to have taken a softer line on the decision on Jerusalem, according to analysts. Riyadh sent a junior minister to the Istanbul meeting. Masri, who comes from a prominent merchant family from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, amassed a fortune from partnering with influential Saudis in a major catering business to supply troops during the U.S.-led military operation to retake Kuwait from Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Reports of his detention surfaced on Thursday in the local media in Jordan where Masri s multi-billion dollar investments in hotels and banking are a cornerstone of the economy. He was elected chairman of Arab Bank in 2012 after the resignation of Abdel Hamid Shoman whose family had founded the bank in Jerusalem in 1930. The bank, which has earned a reputation of resilience in the face of political upheaval, played a prominent role in supporting former Palestinian leader, the late Yasser Arafat during past Middle East turmoil. Arab Bank, which operates in 30 countries and five continents, has an extensive network in Palestinian territories where it is the largest bank. It also owns 40 percent of Saudi Arabia s Arab National Bank ANB. Masri led consortium of Arab and Jordanian investors who bought a 20 percent stake in Arab Bank Group from Lebanon s Hariri family business empire for $1.12 billion last February. He was also instrumental in agreeing in 2015 to settle litigation brought by hundreds of Americans who accused Arab Bank of providing financial services in the West Bank that facilitated militant attacks in Israel. They had sued Arab Bank under the U.S Anti-Terrorism Act, which permits U.S. citizens to pursue claims arising from international terrorism. Masri is also the leading investor in the Palestinian territories with a large stake in Paltel, a public shareholding company, which is the largest private sector firm in the West Bank. Masri s family ranks among the wealthiest in the Palestinian territories, with majority holdings in real estate, hotels and telecommunications firms set up after a self-rule agreement with Israel in 1993. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BIZARRE 2006 FILM Starring Former White House Staffer OMAROSA Surfaces With Crazy Plot Around Stealing Donald Trump’s Hair;There are conflicting reports about why the outrageous Omarosa Manigault Newman is leaving her undefined job at the White House. It was first reported that she was escorted out of the White House by Secret Service after General Kelly had enough of her nonsense, and fired her. Omarosa appeared on Good Morning America the following day to refute those claims, saying she resigned from her job and was not fired or escorted out of the White House as reported. So who is Omarosa, and why is she such a polarizing figure? Does this 2006 video that just emerged offer any clues?A pop-culture polymath sent Page Six a link to Soul Sistahs, an ultra-camp, hyper-kitsch, uber-low-budget 10-minute sci-fi short film.While the plot is virtually incomprehensible, as far as we can tell it focuses on an intergalactic yenta in a housecoat who kidnaps Omarosa in an attempt to steal Donald Trump s hair as part of a difficult-to-understand get-rich-quick scheme.The mini-flick was made back in 2006 two years after Omarosa shot to fame on Trump s NBC show The Apprentice. In this vaguely Barbarella -inspired work, the aging villain drugs Omarosa by feeding her spiked cake, whereupon the red PVC-clad former director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison goes off on a motorcycle to steal the future president s hair in a showdown on top of a CGI-created Trump Tower.The film, which has been viewed a mere 6,000 times as our source put it: It s a cult classic. I m the cult was made by former In Touch Weekly photo director Michael Todd, tabloid veteran Matt Coppa and his brother Andrew Coppa. NYP ;left-news;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's future government to expand direct democracy;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian conservatives and the anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) have agreed to expand voter participation in legislative matters in their coalition deal to bring the state closer to the citizens, the party chiefs said on Saturday. Austria is set to become the only western European country with a far-right party in government after the FPO under Heinz-Christian Strache and Sebastian Kurz s People s Party (OVP) struck a coalition deal on Friday. But their plans for more direct democracy ruled out referendums on Austrian membership of the European Union. Our model does not provide for any referendum ... that contradicts European law or fundamental rights or our constitution, Kurz said. It is also clear that there will be no votes on our memberships in international organizations including the European Union. The introduction of more ways for voters to participate in the legislative process was one of the FPO s main conditions and also one of the most difficult issues in the coalition negotiations. In Austria around 8,000 signatures are needed currently to initiate a popular petition. If the petition then gets more than 100,000 signatures it must discussed in parliament. Such petitions are not legally binding and often do not result in legislation but they can fuel the public debate. In future, if a petition has the support of 900,000 voters and parliament does not support the issue, it can be turned into a legally binding referendum, Kurz said at a news conference in Vienna, where he and Strache presented the coalition program. Austrians will have to vote on this proposal as it will require a comprehensive change to the constitution, for which a vote is already mandatory, Kurz said. There were only two binding referendums in post-1945 Austria: The nuclear power referendum in 1978 and the European Union membership referendum in 1994. History will be written (with this initiative), said Strache. In Europe, the Swiss vote the most, whereas Germany has not as yet held a nationwide referendum. Ireland and Italy are the European Union countries with the most referendums. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mudslide in southern Chile kills five, at least 15 missing;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - A mudslide on Saturday tore through a small village in southern Chile near a popular national park, leaving five people dead and at least 15 missing after a night of torrential downpours, authorities said. A video taken from a helicopter by Chilean police showed a vast swath of the remote town of Villa Santa Lucia, near Chaiten in coastal Patagonia, buried beneath the mud as the landslide plowed its way down a flooded river valley. Four Chileans and a male tourist whose name and nationality have not been disclosed were died in the mudslide, authorities said. Rescue workers were continuing to search through the debris for at least 15 people. The mudslide also destroyed a school and several homes and roadways as well as a voting center ahead of Chile s presidential election on Sunday. President Michelle Bachelet declared the area a disaster zone. I have ordered rescue workers to put all the necessary resources toward protecting the people of Villa Santa Lucia, she said on social media. More than 4.5 inches (11.4 cm) of rain fell in 24 hours, the country s Interior Ministry said, but weather conditions were expected to improve later in the day. Villa Santa Lucia borders Chile s Corcovado National Park, a popular tourist region of volcanoes, fjords and vast forests. The nearby Chaiten volcano erupted in 2008, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. council mulls call for U.S. Jerusalem decision to be withdrawn;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council is considering a draft resolution that would insist any decisions on the status of Jerusalem have no legal effect and must be rescinded after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized the city as Israel s capital. The one-page Egyptian-drafted text, which was circulated to the 15-member council on Saturday and seen by Reuters, does not specifically mention the United States or Trump. Diplomats say it has broad support but will likely be vetoed by Washington. The council could vote early next week, diplomats said. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to pass. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. After the decision, Arab foreign ministers agreed to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution. While the draft is unlikely to be adopted, it would further isolate Trump over the Jerusalem issue. The U.S. mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the draft. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has praised Trump s decision as the just and right thing to do. The draft U.N. resolution affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council. It calls upon all countries to refrain establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. No vote or debate will change the clear reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Israel s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said in a statement. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The draft council resolution demands that all states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions. A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in December last year underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations. That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since late August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts is not known. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at a police compound and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said the arrests were a blatant attack on press freedom and called for the immediate release of the journalists. Here are reactions to their detention from politicians and press freedom advocates around the world: - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. - British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, I absolutely strongly disapprove of the idea of journalists, going about their everyday business, being arrested. We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. - Swedish Foreign Minister Margot called the arrests a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region. She said, We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear ... To be able to send journalists to this particular area is of crucial importance. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. Guterres said, It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country. He added: And probably the reason why these journalists were arrested is because they were reporting on what they have seen in relation to this massive human tragedy. - Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, the former managing director and editor, consumer news, at Thomson Reuters, tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Freedom of the press is essential for democracy and must be preserved, she said. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two reporters. - Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said, We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting. - Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s spokesman Motosada Matano said his government was closely watching the situation, and that Japan has been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said, We call on local authorities to immediately, unconditionally release Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance. - The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests. Daniel Bastard, the head of the group s Asia-Pacific desk, said the charges being considered were completely spurious . - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance asked for the immediate release of the journalists. These two journalists are only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict, said SEAPA executive director Edgardo Legaspi. With this arrest, the government seems to be sending the message that all military reports should be off limits to journalists. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, a group of local reporters who have demonstrated against past prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . A reporter must have the right to get information and write news ethically, said video journalist A Hla Lay Thu Zar - a member of the group s executive committee. - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in Myanmar. It called on authorities to ensure the reporters safety and allow their families to see them. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in neighboring Thailand said it was alarmed by the use of this draconian law with its heavy penalties against journalists simply doing their jobs. The club called for the journalists to be released. Wielding such a blunt legal instrument has an intimidating effect on other journalists, and poses a real threat to media freedom, it said. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's Workers Party formalizes support for ex-president Lula;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s leftist Workers Party (PT) approved a resolution on Saturday formally supporting the candidacy of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as the nation s left continues to rally around the leader despite a corruption conviction. We arrive in 2018, an election year, with the candidacy of Lula consolidated in such a way that it doesn t belong to the PT;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Foreign minister warns UK cannot become 'vassal state' of EU;EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Britain must strike a strong trade deal with the European Union after Brexit and avoid becoming a subordinate state of the bloc, foreign minister and leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson has told the Sunday Times newspaper. Failure to ditch EU law would make the United Kingdom a vassal state, Johnson said in an interview to be published on Sunday. The government must aim to maximize the benefits of Brexit by getting divergence from the bloc s rules so that it could do proper free trade deals with other countries. Prime Minister Theresa May this week secured an agreement with the EU to move Brexit talks on to trade and a transition pact. But she must now unite her deeply divided cabinet over what trade deal Britain actually wants. [nL8N1OF03W] Separately, in a measure of the difficulty May will face in bringing her side together, finance minister Philip Hammond caused a stir amongst some Brexit supporters because he said that after Britain formally leaves the EU in March 2019, it will seek to replicate the current status quo in a transition period. [nL4N1OG05L] Former work and pensions minister Ian Duncan Smith criticized Hammond, as did other leading Brexit supporters, for making a statement which he said was not government policy . Johnson told the Sunday Times he would advance the case for a liberal Brexit in a new intervention in the debate this week in which he would play up the advantages of leaving the EU. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More than half of Britons now want to stay in EU - poll;EDINBURGH (Reuters) - A poll has found that 51 percent of Britons would now keep European Union membership while 41 percent want to leave the bloc, a near reversal of last year s referendum result. The BMG poll of 1,400 people for The Independent published on the newspaper s website on Saturday came as Britain moves into a second phase of negotiations on exiting the EU, which will focus on trade. The Independent said the lead for remain over leave was the biggest in any poll so far since the vote in June 2016. But the head of polling at BMG, quoted in the Independent, said that the reason for the change was a shift in opinion among those who did not vote in last year s referendum, while around nine in 10 leave and remain voters were unchanged in their views. The survey was carried out from December 5 to 8. In the referendum last year, 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the EU and 48 percent voted to remain. Mike Smithson, an election analyst who runs the www.politicalbetting.com website who is also a former Liberal Democrat politician, said on Twitter it was the biggest lead for Remain since (the EU referendum). Prime Minister Theresa May this week secured an agreement with the EU to move Brexit talks on to trade and a transition pact, but some European leaders warned that negotiations, which have been arduous so far, could now become tougher. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canadian police probe mysterious deaths of billionaire pharma couple;TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian police are investigating the mysterious deaths of pharmaceuticals billionaire Barry Sherman, founder of Apotex Inc, and his wife Honey, whose bodies were found in their Toronto mansion on Friday. Authorities were conducting post-mortem examinations on Saturday and treating the deaths as suspicious. A Toronto Police spokesman said that nothing had been ruled out in the probe. Two Canadian newspapers reported that police were investigating the deaths as a possible murder-suicide, citing unidentified police sources. The bodies were found hanging from a railing on the edge of a basement swimming pool, the Globe and Mail and Toronto Sun reported, citing police sources. The newspapers reported that investigators were working on the theory that Barry Sherman, 75, killed his wife, hung her body and then hanged himself at the pool s edge. Apotex released a statement Saturday saying that the Sherman family was disturbed by the reports. We are shocked and think it s irresponsible that police sources have reportedly advised the media of a theory which neither their family, their friends nor their colleagues believe to be true, said the statement, which was attributed to the family of Barry and Honey Sherman. We urge the Toronto Police Service to conduct a thorough, intensive and objective criminal investigation, and urge the media to refrain from further reporting as to the cause of these tragic deaths until the investigation is completed, it said. Toronto Police Constable David Hopkinson said police are awaiting post-mortem results and no determinations have been made as to the cause and manner of deaths. There s a whole bunch of different scenarios here. We are not ruling anything out, he said. About a dozen police officers canvassed neighbors for information on the case Saturday while a forensics photographer took pictures of the snow-covered estate. The deaths shocked Canada s political, business and philanthropic elite, prompting a flood of condolences from business leaders and politicians including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Barry Sherman was a prominent donor to Canada s ruling Liberal Party, drawing on a fortune that Forbes estimated at $3.2 billion. Canadian advocacy group Democracy Watch criticized him last year for involvement in a fundraiser for the Liberals while registered as a government lobbyist. Sherman founded generic drugmaker Apotex in 1974, building it into one of the world s largest pharmaceutical makers. It has annual sales of more than C$2 billion in more than 45 countries, according to its website. He stepped down as CEO in 2012, but stayed on as chairman. Sherman was involved in a series of lawsuits, including a decade-long battle with cousins seeking compensation over allegations he cut them out of the company that would make him rich. Police found out about the Shermans deaths at about midday Friday while responding to an emergency call. Authorities have not said who made the call, though Canadian media reported the couple s bodies were found by a real estate agent helping them sell their home, which was on the market for C$6.9 million ($5.4 million). The real state agent could not be reached for comment. The Shermans, who had four children, were major donors to hospitals, universities and Jewish organizations. Honey Sherman sat on the boards of several hospital, charitable and Jewish foundations, and last month was awarded a Senate medal for community service. She immigrated to Canada as a child when Jewish Immigrant Aid Services relocated her family shortly after the Holocaust, according to a profile of the couple on the Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto s website. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Odebrecht says dealings with Peru president were legitimate;LIMA (Reuters) - Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] said Saturday that its recently-disclosed business ties to embattled Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski were not part of the corrupt deals it struck with politicians that it has acknowledged to prosecutors. The assertion might strengthen Kuczynski s bid to survive a vote to remove him from office on Thursday in the opposition-ruled Congress over allegations he took bribes from Odebrecht, which is at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal. Earlier this week, Odebrecht sent Congress a requested report detailing deposits totaling $4.8 million that it paid to two companies owned by Kuczynski or a close business associate of his for financial and advising services. Kuczynski, who previously denied any links to the company, has resisted calls to resign over the transactions and said there was nothing improper about them. Odebrecht denied accusations by an influential journalist with the newspaper La Republica that the disclosure was an attempt to overthrow Kuczynski in collusion with the right-wing opposition. It was able to disclose the transactions because there was no sign they were part of any of its past criminal activities, which it can only discuss with public prosecutors, Odebrecht said. They were duly paid and officially accounted for, Odebrecht said in a letter to La Republica that it made public on Twitter on Saturday. Odebrecht is obligated by law to send requested information to relevant authorities, including an investigative committee in Congress, the company said. Odebrecht has rocked Latin American politics with its public confession a year ago that it orchestrated sophisticated kickback schemes across a dozen countries for more than a decade - landing elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic. Late on Friday, lawmakers passed a motion to start presidential vacancy procedures with enough votes to unseat Kuczynski in a vote it scheduled for Thursday. The center-right president s supporters cited Odebrecht s letter to La Republica to argue that his only fault was misleading Peru about his connections to Odebrecht. If Kuczynski is ousted by Congress, he would lose his presidential immunity from prosecution and First Vice President Martin Vizcarra would be authorized to replace him for the rest of his term ending in 2021. Two former presidents in Peru, Ollanta Humala and Alejandro Toledo, have been ensnared in the Odebrecht probe over alleged payments they deny. Humala was jailed in July pending trial and authorities hope to extradite Toledo from the United States. ;worldnews;16/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Fusion GPS Sued By 3 Billionaires Over Their “Defamation” In War Against Trump;ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:Three Russian billionaires are hitting back after they say they were defamed by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The Russians lawsuit says the dossier s assertions falsely accuse the three and Alfa of criminal conduct and alleged cooperation with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election. It says Fusion recklessly spread the charges to journalists.FUSION GPS FEELS THE KARMA:Fusion GPS, the producer of the infamous fake Trump dossier, is fending off in court three of Russia s richest oligarchs by painting them as corrupt bankers in bed with President Vladimir Putin.The three primary investors in Moscow s Alfa Bank Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan filed a libel lawsuit against Fusion in October. Fusion s dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, says two of them engineered cash bribes to Mr. Putin. The dossier also implies that the bank colluded with Mr. Putin to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by hacking Democratic Party computers.The lawsuit describes the three billionaires as international businessmen who became collateral damage in Fusion s war to destroy the Donald Trump campaign. This is a defamation case brought by three international businessmen who were defamed in widely disseminated political research reports commissioned by political opponents of candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election cycle, says a Dec. 12 filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The reports are gravely damaging in that, directly or by implication, they falsely accuse the plaintiffs and Alfa, a consortium in which the plaintiffs are investors of criminal conduct and alleged cooperation with Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election, says the complaint by the New York law firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn.Fusion responded in court by relying on Wikipedia and its press citations to paint a dark picture of three oligarchs who, the media say, capitalized on Russia s freewheeling post-communism era to engage in financial scandals. Fusion depicted the three as publicity-seeking financial titans who are public figures under U.S. law.Unlike private citizens, public figures face a high bar in libel lawsuits. In this case, the Russian businessmen, if deemed public figures, must prove that Fusion spread the dossier charges with malice meaning the opposition research firm knew its accusations were untrue or showed reckless disregard for the truth.THREE BILLIONAIRES: Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan are three of the most prominent oligarchs in Russian history, the Fusion memo states. With their incredible wealth and political power, each has had a pronounced influence on the economic and political affairs of Russia. Any search returns an avalanche of articles about their business endeavors, their wealth, their political and economic power, their close relationship with the Kremlin and their misconduct. At issue is Mr. Steele s September 2016 writings devoted to Alfa (which he wrongly spells Alpha), one of 17 memos making up the dossier from June to December 2016.He states that the Alfa Bank paid illicit cash directly from Mr. Fridman and Mr. Aven to Mr. Putin via Oleg Govorun, now a senior Kremlin figure, throughout the 1990s. Mr. Govorun s official resume states that he was an executive for Alfa only from 1997 to 2000.Mr. Steele titled the September memo, Presidential Election: Kremlin-Alpha Group Co-Operation. READ MORE: WT;politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ATLANTA: PANDEMONIUM As World’s Largest Airport Goes DARK…Airport Evacuated…1,161 Flights Canceled [VIDEO];There has to something more to this story than what we re being told. If there isn t more to this story, then Atlanta Airport officials and Georgia Power are going to have some explaining to do A complete power outage at the nation s busiest airport, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, grounded flights Sunday afternoon, threatening to cause a holiday travel nightmare for fliers across the country just over a week before Christmas.Thousands of passengers were stranded and flights were grounded or delayed as a power outage crippled Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport the world's busiest airport pic.twitter.com/WpWQLGu5GD EAGLE WINGS (@NIVIsa4031) December 17, 2017Georgia Power said that repairs are well underway at the airport and power is expected to be restored around midnight on Sunday, and the airport tweeted that Power on Concourse F is back ON! Washington Examiner s Byron York tweeted only two hours ago, that no one seems to know why the power outage happened.The Atlanta airport story is huge. By far the nation's largest airport, it just goes dark, operations shut down. Thousands stranded, in very difficult situations. And nobody seems to know why. Byron York (@ByronYork) December 17, 2017 We are working with great urgency w/ @Georgia Power to restore power through rest of airport, the tweet read.According to FlightAware.com, 1,161 flights have been canceled at Hartsfield-Jackson as of 8:20 p.m. ET.Delta passengers were not happy with how things were being handled, especially the passengers who were stuck on the tarmac for several hours, unable to disembark from the planes:Oh. My. God. Just left ATL airport last night at midnight after 15 hours of travel. If I had been stuck against my will in my plane on tarmac..Gives me anxiety just thinking about it. That s A LOT of ppl in tight space. SidNey (@OhGoSquid) December 18, 2017Fox News reported on the outage:Power outage at Atlanta airport causes 'pandemonium,' grounds flights https://t.co/Och4XslbLi pic.twitter.com/VX5lnpZMFQ Fox News (@FoxNews) December 17, 2017Georgia Power said in a statement Sunday evening that the issue may have involved a fire which caused extensive damage in a Georgia Power underground electrical facility. The airport said power had been restored to one of its six concourses around 7:30 p.m., about seven hours after the initial outage, and Georgia Power said it expects to have power fully restored to the airport by midnight.CNBC News reporter Ethan Kraft reports that Chick-fil-A s CEO Dan Cathy will coordinate meals for thousands of stranded passengers at the airport:Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he spoke with Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy to coordinate meals for thousands of stranded passengers at #ATLairport, who have been in the dark since 2p ET Ethan Kraft (@ethan_kraft) December 18, 2017Fire crews were able to extinguish the fire and had begun assessing damage and beginning repairs, but they had not yet been able to ascertain the cause of the blaze, the utility said. FOX NewsNBC News Airport officials said a large portion of the facility had been affected and that repair teams had been working to address the situation since around 1:30 p.m. ET.Not everyone is buying the fire story however. This Twitter user believes that terror threat is the cause for the evacuation:The #atlairport has been evacuated, passangers are standing outside on the tarmac, no one is allowed to leave. I think a high level #Hivite was trying to get away, or they've disrupted a major terror attack. It's not being reported by @CNN (headquarters in Atlanta) #MediaBlackOut Sarah Ruth Ashcraft (@SaRaAshcraft) December 17, 2017Many citizens are questioning the story they are being told about a simple power outage, and wondering why, in the largest airport in the world, there isn t any back up power?https://twitter.com/tonyabonya/status/942576639887663104Officials with the Atlanta Police Department told WSB-TV the airport is evacuating travelers inside.A spokesperson told The Associated Press that no areas outside the airport were affected by the outage. However, flights at Chicago airports O Hare International and Midway both have canceled flights but it s not yet clear if they were canceled due to Atlanta s outage. Dealing with the power outage at the Atlanta airport was actually insane and I'll post other scary videos later. But the staff was having to slide down the escalators to help people and it was amusing. Finally in the car headed home. #atlantaairport #atl #atlantaA post shared by sarahmanleyy (@sarahmanleyy) on Dec 17, 2017 at 2:54pm PSTDelta Airlines, which is headquartered in Atlanta, said it had canceled approximately 900 mainline and Delta Connection flights. Passengers should check the status of their flights, the airline said. Pending full resumption of power, Delta anticipates a near-full schedule Monday in Atlanta, though some delays and cancellations can be expected, the airline said on its website.The airline said it would issue a waiver to those who were traveling through Atlanta with the airline on Dec. 17 or 18. The airline also said it would give travelers a refund if they would like to cancel their trip because their flight was canceled or delayed more than 90 minutes.Those arriving for their flights were met with long lines and a pitch dark airport. No escalators, elevators or information screens were operational.Brian Moote, 36, the morning host of an Atlanta radio show, said he was returning home on a flight from Dallas when the power went out in the airport. Moote said he and his fellow passengers had been stuck in their plane on the tarmac for nearly six hours, beginning at around 12:30 p.m. ET. ;left-news;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans confident tax bill to become law this week;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. Republicans said on Sunday they expected Congress to pass a tax code overhaul this week, with a Senate vote as early as Tuesday and President Donald Trump aiming to sign the bill by week’s end. John Cornyn, the No. 2 U.S. Senate Republican, said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that he was “confident” the Senate would pass the legislation, “probably on Tuesday.” Republican Representative Kevin Brady said he believed his party had the votes to pass the bill. “I think we are headed - the American people are headed - for a big win on Tuesday,” Brady, the House of Representatives’ top tax writer, said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.” “We’ve worked hard to make sure that those strange Senate rules don’t hang this up in any way,” Brady added. “I am confident that’s the case.” If passed, the bill would be the biggest U.S. tax rewrite since 1986 and provide Republican lawmakers and Trump with their first major legislative victory since they took control of the White House in January in addition to Congress. Republicans have a slim 52-48 Senate majority and cannot lose more than two votes and still pass tax legislation. Democrats are unified against the measure, calling it a giveaway to corporations and the rich that would drive up the federal deficit. Last week, on-the-fence Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Corker said they would support the tax overhaul. Senators Susan Collins and Mike Lee put out positive statements but did not explicitly say they would vote for it. Collins’ office said on Sunday that “she’s still reviewing the bill.” Republican Senator Jeff Flake cast a vote for an earlier Senate version despite deficit concerns, but he is undecided on the final legislation, his office said on Sunday. Senators Thad Cochran and John McCain have been ill in recent weeks and have missed votes. Cochran’s office said last week he was expected to vote on the tax bill. McCain, who is battling an aggressive brain tumor, has returned to his home state of Arizona and does not expect to be back in Washington until January, his office said on Sunday. The tax bill is expected to add at least $1 trillion to the $20 trillion U.S. national debt over 10 years, even after accounting for the economic growth it might spur, according to independent government analyses. The bill would cut the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and create a 20 percent income tax deduction for owners of “pass-through” businesses, such as partnerships and sole proprietorships. It would offer a mixed bag for individuals, including middle-class workers, by roughly doubling a standard deduction that does not require itemization, but eliminating or scaling back other popular itemized deductions and exemptions. The bill would maintain seven individual and family income tax brackets but cut rates. Highest-earning Americans would pay 37 percent, down from 39.6 percent. Most individual provisions, including the lower tax rates, are temporary and would expire, while the corporate rate cut and other business provisions would be permanent. Stock markets have been rallying for months in anticipation of sharply lower tax rates for corporations, with Wall Street’s three major equities indexes closing at record highs on Friday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump expected to realize his goal of signing the tax bill before Christmas. “This is a historic event,” Mnuchin said. “People said we wouldn’t get this done;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says not considering firing U.S. special counsel Mueller;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, when asked on Sunday if he was considering firing U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller, told reporters, “No. I’m not.” Democratic lawmakers in recent days have expressed concern that Trump might fire Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether Trump or anyone on his team colluded with Moscow. Russia denies meddling in the election and Trump has denied any collusion. ;politicsNews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“GUATEMALAN” MAN DIES After Falling Into WASTE GRINDER At Meat Plant…Former Worker Claims They Hire “90% Illegal Aliens”…Including “10-12 Yr Old Kids”;This story is absolutely horrific, but not surprising. Bleeding heart liberals aren t doing illegal aliens any favors by fighting for them to come here, only to be abused by their employers, who hire them, and then hold their illegal immigration status over their heads when they demand safer working conditions. (See video below)A worker caught in a machine at a meat processing plant has died in Ohio, according to local authorities.Samuel Martinez, 62, was killed by the machine on Saturday afternoon at the Fresh Mark plant in Canton, Ohio.The Guatemalan national died at the scene.According to the Stark County Coroner s Office, the man stepped into a chute and was stuck in the waste grinder.In a statement released on Saturday, Fresh Mark said that they would work with local law enforcement to figure out what caused the accident.This afternoon just before 5 pm, we experienced a work-related fatality at our Canton facility, they said. Our primary concern rests with the wellbeing of this employee s family, as well as with the safety and well-being of all our employees in the Canton and other Fresh Mark facilities. We are working with authorities to determine the facts regarding this incident. The incident marks the second of such to happen at the company.In 2011, an employee was electrocuted while trying to plug in a fan as he was standing in water.The company sells pork related meat under the Superior and Sugardale brands. Daily Mail In 2011, Steve Salvi, the founder of Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC interviewed an Ohio worker that made some startling allegations regarding the alleged hiring of underaged illegal aliens at one of Fresh Mark s Sugardale meatpacking plants in Canton, Ohio. In addition to outing the company for hiring underage illegal alien workers, the former Fresh Mark employee claims a veteran returned from Iraq and applied for a job at the meat processing company. The veteran was allegedly turned down until he could prove that he spoke the Spanish language.In May 2017, the very liberal New Yorker published a story about a 17-year old Guatemalan boy who was too young to work in a factory, and lost his leg due to the unsafe working conditions at neighboring Case Farms in Ohio. The New Yorker says the Case Farms plants are among the most dangerous workplaces in America.Osiel sanitized the liver-giblet chiller, a tublike contraption that cools chicken innards by cycling them through a near-freezing bath, then looked for a ladder, so that he could turn off the water valve above the machine. As usual, he said, there weren t enough ladders to go around, so he did as a supervisor had shown him: he climbed up the machine, onto the edge of the tank, and reached for the valve. His foot slipped;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator-elect Jones not joining calls for Trump resignation;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Doug Jones, who scored an upset victory last week in the U.S. Senate race in Alabama, said on Sunday he did not believe President Donald Trump needed to resign over sexual misconduct allegations against him. “I don’t think that the president ought to resign at this point,” Jones told CNN’s State of the Union program. “Those allegations were made before the election, and so people had an opportunity to judge before that election. I think we need to move on and not get distracted by those issues.” More than a dozen women have accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances against them before he entered politics. Accusations of sexual harassment against high-profile men in politics, media and the entertainment industry have put a new spotlight on the allegations against Trump, and several Democratic senators have called on him to resign. Trump and White House officials have denied the allegations. The accusations emerged during the 2016 presidential campaign, when a videotape surfaced of a 2005 conversation caught on an open microphone in which Trump spoke in vulgar terms about trying to have sex with women. Trump apologized for the remarks but called them private “locker-room talk” and said he had not done the things he talked about. Jones prevailed in the Senate race against Republican Roy Moore, who himself had been accused of sexual misconduct. Jones’ victory in the deeply conservative state of Alabama was a political blow to Trump, who had endorsed Moore. ;politicsNews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump administration bans selected words at health agencies: paper;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration has told agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services to avoid using certain words or phrases in official documents being drafted for next year’s budget, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. The newspaper said one of the agencies, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was given a list of seven prohibited words or phrases: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.” Officials at a second agency were also told to use “Obamacare” instead of the Affordable Care Act to describe President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law and to use “exchanges” instead of “marketplaces” in reference to venues where people can buy federally subsidized health insurance, the Post reported. The HHS pushed back on the report. “The assertion that HHS has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process,” spokesman Matt Lloyd said in a statement. “HHS will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. HHS also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions,” he said. The newspaper said State Department documents also now refer to sex education as “sexual risk avoidance.” A briefing at the second HHS agency relied on a document from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which oversees President Donald Trump’s annual budget proposal to Congress, according to the Post. The Post said no explanations were given for the language changes. ;politicsNews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TINGLE UP HIS LEG? NBC Paid Off Chris Matthews Staffer After Sexual Harassment Claim;Here s yet another claim that s really iffy because the victim experienced juvenile and inappropriate comments from Matthews If this is sexual harassment then 99.9% of men AND women have encountered this sort of behavior We re obviously not fans of Matthews but this is a ridiculous claim by a staffer not matter who it is REMEMBER WHEN MATTHEWS WAS CAUGHT ON A HOT MIC OGLING THE FIRST LADY:PAYOUT TO ACCUSER:An MSNBC spokesman confirmed Saturday the company made a separation-related payment to one of Chris Matthews employees after the woman complained about sexual harassment.Matthews paid $40,000 to settle with an assistant producer on his show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, in 1999 after she accused him of harassment. An MSNBC spokesperson contested that claim to the Caller, saying the company instead paid significantly less as part of a severance package.The woman complained to CNBC executives about Matthews making inappropriate comments and jokes about her while in the company of others.The MSNBC spokesman said that they thoroughly reviewed the situation at the time and that Matthews received a formal reprimand. Based on people who were involved in matter, the network concluded that the comments were inappropriate and juvenile but were not intended to be taken as propositions.The woman received separation-related compensation when she left MSNBC and has gone on to work in a number of high-profile media positions. NBC declined to comment on whether the employee left because of Matthews or whether this was the only claim in Matthews history at the company.Read more: Daily Caller;left-news;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: Democrat Heads Are Exploding After What Newly Elected Alabama Senator Doug Jones Just Said In Defense Of President Trump and His Supporters; The newly elected US Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) just won the election by a small margin in a state where a Republican hasn t won for 25 years. Jones was pegged as a liberal and a pro-abortion by his opponents in the highly contentious race against the accused sexual predator, and ultra-conservative candidate, Roy Moore. Jones, however, is no dummy. In a deep-red state who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in 2016, Jones knows that he will be a one-term senator unless he gets behind the wildly popular Donald Trump, and based on his first interview with the press, that s exactly what he plans to do.Senator-elect Doug Jones is already breaking with some prominent Democrats by refusing to call for President Trump to step down over ongoing sexual harassment allegations. I don t think that the president ought to resign at this point, Jones (D-Ala.) told CNN s State of the Union. In his first round of Sunday show interviews since securing a stunning victory in red state Alabama over accused sexual predator Roy Moore, Jones said he doesn t want to get bogged down in Trump s sexual harassment allegations and would rather work on real issues. I think we need to move on and not get distracted by those issues, Jones added. Let s get on with the real issues that are facing the people of this country right now. That s at odds with some high-profile Democrats like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Cory Booker (NJ) who believe the president should step down because at least 19 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.Unlike other politicians who have stepped down, like Sen. Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers, Jones said the difference is the voters knew about these allegations and still elected Trump to the highest office. Those allegations were made and he was elected president of the United States, Jones said. I think the American people spoke. Jones said he s willing to work with Republicans on passing some of Trump s priorities like infrastructure investment said the sexual harassment allegations are not reason to get on Trump s bad side. We need to move on and try to work with some real issues that are facing the country and not worry about getting at odds with the president any more than we have to, Jones said.Gillibrand last week said Trump committed assault according to the very credible allegations and he should resign. Trump, who has routinely denied any wrongdoing, shot back at the junior senator with what was widely panned as a sexually suggestive tweet Tuesday the same day Democrats turned out in droves for Jones in Alabama to defeat a Trump-backed candidate. NYP;left-news;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: DISGRACED DEMOCRAT HARRY REID Funneled MASSIVE Taxpayer Funds To Donor For UFO Research Through SECRET Defense Department Program;The Defense Department secretly set up a program ten years ago to investigate unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, at the urging of then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, according to new reports.Both The New York Times and the website Politico published stories Saturday revealing the existence of the Pentagon s now-defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.The New York Times said the UFO program began in 2007, while Politico reported in began in 2009.According to the reports, Reid, a Nevada Democrat, helped steer money under the program to a donor s aerospace research company.A Pentagon spokesman said the UFO program ended in 2012, though The New York Times said the Defense Department still investigates potential episodes of unidentified flying objects. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 timeframe, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told Politico. It was determined that there were other, higher-priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change. White added: The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed. Politico said the program was not classified but few officials knew about it. Reid secured the funding for the program in 2009 with the help of former Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye and former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who have both since died.Both outlets said Reid s interest in UFOs was the result of friend, and donor Bob Bigelow, who owns Bigelow Aerospace and has said before he is absolutely convinced aliens exist and UFOs have visited Earth.The New York Times said the program had a $22 million annual budget and most of the money went to Bigelow s research company, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program. I m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going, Reid told the newspaper. I think it s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I ve done something that no one has done before. Both outlets said the person who ran the program, Luis Elizondo, resigned in October and complained about a lack of interest from top officials about it. FOX News;left-news;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;IT JUST GOT REAL! GOP Rep. Jim Jordan Tells Judge Jeanine Key Players in anti-Trump Scam Will Be Subpoenaed [Video];"One of the big players in trying to get to the truth about the bias against President Trump just told Judge Jeanine that this is getting serious and very real. Four key players will be subpoenaed!FIREWORKS! GOP Rep. Jim Jordan reveals the House Judiciary Committee will subpoena Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce and Nellie Ohr pic.twitter.com/PO8o6nsI0k Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) December 17, 2017OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON JORDAN: Rep. Jordan is firm in his desire to get to the bottom of what is going on at the FBI and DOJ:GOP Rep. Jim Jordan on Lou Dobbs: Listen you can t make this stuff up. It gets worse each and every day. What deep down scares me, if this actually happened the FBI had a concerted effort with the people at the top to go after one party s nominee to help the other party s nominee. If that actually happened in the United States of America and everything each and every day points to more and more likely that that is what took place, it is sad for our country if that took place. And I think it did based on everything I am seeing. All the evidence points to that..@Jim_Jordan on Peter Strzok: ""In case the American people, in his mind, are crazy enough to elect Donald Trump we need something else to stop Trump. That's what this guy was thinking at the highest levels at the FBI."" pic.twitter.com/vNWUhDvDuE FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 14, 2017The Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified yesterday about the clear case of corruption and political bias in our intel agencies. Changing Hillary s charge from grossly negligent to extremely careless is disturbing enough but it s clear that Jim Jordan knows this goes much deeper. Hillary was protected by the political hacks in the intel agencies but a target was put on President Trump s back using the FISA court to open up spying on the him and those around him using a doctored up opposition research document that was never proven to be anywhere close to true The questioning from Jordan is well worth watching:BYRON YORK:An insurance policy? From the Strzok-Page texts. https://t.co/Ru5P1dWFXI pic.twitter.com/hiyApwb7Jg Byron York (@ByronYork) December 13, 2017BRET BAIER:Text-from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page (Andy is Andrew McCabe): ""I want to believe the path u threw out 4 consideration in Andy's office-that there's no way he gets elected-but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.It's like an insurance policy in unlikely event u die be4 you're 40"" Bret Baier (@BretBaier) December 13, 2017ANDREW MCCARTHY COMMENTED ON THE TWEET THAT EXPOSED THE AGENTS FOR THEIR POLITICAL BIAS:Obviously, this is not political banter. Clearly indicates professional duties infected by political viewpoints, which is disqualifying. I was going on the published accounts I'd seen, which didn't include this one. Should follow my own advice to wait til all facts in. https://t.co/fXk7GPnk5U Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 13, 2017";left-news;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;IT JUST GOT REAL! GOP Rep. Jim Jordan Tells Judge Jeanine Key Players in anti-Trump Scam Will Be Subpoenaed [Video];"One of the big players in trying to get to the truth about the bias against President Trump just told Judge Jeanine that this is getting serious and very real. Four key players will be subpoenaed!FIREWORKS! GOP Rep. Jim Jordan reveals the House Judiciary Committee will subpoena Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce and Nellie Ohr pic.twitter.com/PO8o6nsI0k Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) December 17, 2017OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON JORDAN: Rep. Jordan is firm in his desire to get to the bottom of what is going on at the FBI and DOJ:GOP Rep. Jim Jordan on Lou Dobbs: Listen you can t make this stuff up. It gets worse each and every day. What deep down scares me, if this actually happened the FBI had a concerted effort with the people at the top to go after one party s nominee to help the other party s nominee. If that actually happened in the United States of America and everything each and every day points to more and more likely that that is what took place, it is sad for our country if that took place. And I think it did based on everything I am seeing. All the evidence points to that..@Jim_Jordan on Peter Strzok: ""In case the American people, in his mind, are crazy enough to elect Donald Trump we need something else to stop Trump. That's what this guy was thinking at the highest levels at the FBI."" pic.twitter.com/vNWUhDvDuE FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 14, 2017The Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified yesterday about the clear case of corruption and political bias in our intel agencies. Changing Hillary s charge from grossly negligent to extremely careless is disturbing enough but it s clear that Jim Jordan knows this goes much deeper. Hillary was protected by the political hacks in the intel agencies but a target was put on President Trump s back using the FISA court to open up spying on the him and those around him using a doctored up opposition research document that was never proven to be anywhere close to true The questioning from Jordan is well worth watching:BYRON YORK:An insurance policy? From the Strzok-Page texts. https://t.co/Ru5P1dWFXI pic.twitter.com/hiyApwb7Jg Byron York (@ByronYork) December 13, 2017BRET BAIER:Text-from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page (Andy is Andrew McCabe): ""I want to believe the path u threw out 4 consideration in Andy's office-that there's no way he gets elected-but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.It's like an insurance policy in unlikely event u die be4 you're 40"" Bret Baier (@BretBaier) December 13, 2017ANDREW MCCARTHY COMMENTED ON THE TWEET THAT EXPOSED THE AGENTS FOR THEIR POLITICAL BIAS:Obviously, this is not political banter. Clearly indicates professional duties infected by political viewpoints, which is disqualifying. I was going on the published accounts I'd seen, which didn't include this one. Should follow my own advice to wait til all facts in. https://t.co/fXk7GPnk5U Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 13, 2017";politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: DISGRACED DEMOCRAT HARRY REID Funneled MASSIVE Taxpayer Funds To Donor For UFO Research Through SECRET Defense Department Program;The Defense Department secretly set up a program ten years ago to investigate unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, at the urging of then-Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, according to new reports.Both The New York Times and the website Politico published stories Saturday revealing the existence of the Pentagon s now-defunct Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.The New York Times said the UFO program began in 2007, while Politico reported in began in 2009.According to the reports, Reid, a Nevada Democrat, helped steer money under the program to a donor s aerospace research company.A Pentagon spokesman said the UFO program ended in 2012, though The New York Times said the Defense Department still investigates potential episodes of unidentified flying objects. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 timeframe, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told Politico. It was determined that there were other, higher-priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change. White added: The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed. Politico said the program was not classified but few officials knew about it. Reid secured the funding for the program in 2009 with the help of former Hawaii Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye and former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who have both since died.Both outlets said Reid s interest in UFOs was the result of friend, and donor Bob Bigelow, who owns Bigelow Aerospace and has said before he is absolutely convinced aliens exist and UFOs have visited Earth.The New York Times said the program had a $22 million annual budget and most of the money went to Bigelow s research company, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program. I m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going, Reid told the newspaper. I think it s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I ve done something that no one has done before. Both outlets said the person who ran the program, Luis Elizondo, resigned in October and complained about a lack of interest from top officials about it. FOX News;politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: Democrat Heads Are Exploding After What Newly Elected Alabama Senator Doug Jones Just Said In Defense Of President Trump and His Supporters; The newly elected US Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) just won the election by a small margin in a state where a Republican hasn t won for 25 years. Jones was pegged as a liberal and a pro-abortion by his opponents in the highly contentious race against the accused sexual predator, and ultra-conservative candidate, Roy Moore. Jones, however, is no dummy. In a deep-red state who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in 2016, Jones knows that he will be a one-term senator unless he gets behind the wildly popular Donald Trump, and based on his first interview with the press, that s exactly what he plans to do.Senator-elect Doug Jones is already breaking with some prominent Democrats by refusing to call for President Trump to step down over ongoing sexual harassment allegations. I don t think that the president ought to resign at this point, Jones (D-Ala.) told CNN s State of the Union. In his first round of Sunday show interviews since securing a stunning victory in red state Alabama over accused sexual predator Roy Moore, Jones said he doesn t want to get bogged down in Trump s sexual harassment allegations and would rather work on real issues. I think we need to move on and not get distracted by those issues, Jones added. Let s get on with the real issues that are facing the people of this country right now. That s at odds with some high-profile Democrats like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Cory Booker (NJ) who believe the president should step down because at least 19 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.Unlike other politicians who have stepped down, like Sen. Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers, Jones said the difference is the voters knew about these allegations and still elected Trump to the highest office. Those allegations were made and he was elected president of the United States, Jones said. I think the American people spoke. Jones said he s willing to work with Republicans on passing some of Trump s priorities like infrastructure investment said the sexual harassment allegations are not reason to get on Trump s bad side. We need to move on and try to work with some real issues that are facing the country and not worry about getting at odds with the president any more than we have to, Jones said.Gillibrand last week said Trump committed assault according to the very credible allegations and he should resign. Trump, who has routinely denied any wrongdoing, shot back at the junior senator with what was widely panned as a sexually suggestive tweet Tuesday the same day Democrats turned out in droves for Jones in Alabama to defeat a Trump-backed candidate. NYP;politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BERNIE SANDERS Just Proved His Cluelessness on What Makes Economies Grow [Video];Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said Sunday Democrats would absolutely raise the corporate tax rate if they take back control of Congress. If the Democrats take control of the Senate, and you caucus with the Democrats, what s the promise to America about what will be done to reverse the state of affairs that you re so unhappy with? CBS host John Dickerson asked on Face The Nation. Sanders jumped into income inequality before changing the subject to child health care and the Dreamers before being interrupted by Dickerson to re-ask the original question. If Democrats take control, are corporate taxes going up? Dickerson asked. I think we re going to take a very hard look at this entire tax bill and make it a tax bill that works for the middle class, and working families, not for the top one percent and large multinational corporations, Sanders said.Dickerson continued to press Sanders for an answer to Democrats raising corporate tax if they were to take control after the 2018 elections. The Republican tax bill that could pass this week lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent.Sanders is clueless when it comes to business and taxes probably because he has been on the government dole for life. Sanders is in love with Socialism need we say more.;politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; SNL Hilariously Mocks Accused Child Molester Roy Moore For Losing AL Senate Race (VIDEO);Right now, the whole world is looking at the shocking fact that Democrat Doug Jones beat Republican Roy Moore in the special election to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the United States Senate. Of course, Moore s candidacy was rocked by allegations of sexually harassing and even molesting teenage girls and being banned from the mall in his hometown of Gadsden, Alabama for doing so.Even before that, Moore was an incendiary character in Alabama politics, having been removed as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court not once but twice, and having made statements such as Muslims should not be allowed in Congress and homosexuality should be illegal. Hell, he even said that the last time America was great was when we had slavery. Therefore, he was an extraordinarily damaged candidate as it was. However, despite all of this, Alabama is a deep red state, with many voters agreeing with some of Moore s more extreme positions, and some even insisting that the allegations of sexual misconduct were simply not true. That is why it was such a shock that Doug Jones pulled out a win for that Senate seat.Well, there is one entity that could not resist going all in on the fact that Roy Moore lost this race: Saturday Night Live. While doing a caricature of the results, SNL began, with its Weekend Update host Colin Jost brutally mocking Moore s alleged proclivities fore teen girls: Congratulations to Alabama s newest Senator not Roy Moore. Doug Jones has become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in over 20 years. Said Roy Moore: gross, over 20 years? Jost then got in a dig at Trump, for whom Moore s loss was a humiliating failure, remind everyone what Trump said of Jones win: The Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends! Indeed. If the sane people of America have anything to say about it, it will be a very, very long time after 2018 before the GOP is allowed to control anything. Jost continued mocking Trump: That s it? You just went all in for an accused pedophile and when he lost, [you re] just like, well, we had fun! He could be removed from office tonight and tweet: Congratulations to Robert Mueller on a great investigation. Had a fun time being president. Catch you on the flippity-flop! #DietCokeTime . Oh, if only that could be our reality, to have Trump congratulating Mueller for removing him and his entire treasonous, criminal administration. Until then, we ll have to stick to Weekend Update and the rest of SNL, and hope for the best.Watch the video below:Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images;News;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Mueller Spokesman Just F-cked Up Donald Trump’s Christmas;Trump supporters and the so-called president s favorite network are lashing out at special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI. The White House is in panic-mode after Mueller obtained tens of thousands of transition team emails as part of the Russian probe. Ironically, it will quite possibly be emails that brings Trump down.A lawyer for the Trump transition team is claiming that the emails had been illegally turned over by the General Services Administration because the account owners never received notification of the request and he s claiming that they were privileged communications. In a letter, Trump s attorney requested that Congress act immediately to protect future presidential transitions from having their private records misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives. Mueller spokesman Peter Carr defended the special counsel s work in a statement issued just past midnight on Sunday, several hours after claims of unlawful conduct by Trump s attorney were made, according to Politico. When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner s consent or appropriate criminal process, he said.The words that pop out in the statement are criminal investigation, the account owner s consent and criminal process. While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump asked Russians to hack Hillary Clinton s emails. After the election, Trump s team is claiming that Mueller obtained the transition teams emails illegally, even though that s not the truth. We see a pattern here.Team Trump thought Mueller was on a fishing expedition. Turns out, he was actually reeling in the fish. The White House was not aware at the time that he had the emails. Mueller got them through GSA so that team Trump could not selectively leave any out if they were requested.Merry Christmas, Mr. Trump.Photo by Ann Heisenfelt/Getty Images.;News;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ERIC HOLDER DOUBLES DOWN with Second Threat Against Firing Mueller;Eric Holder just doubled down on threats this old radical is off his rocker. He might be shaking in his boots that his corruption will be exposed too. We know there s plenty of it to go around Benghazi is just one of many ABSOLUTE RED LINE: the firing of Bob Mueller or crippling the special counsel s office. If removed or meaningfully tampered with, there must be mass, popular, peaceful support of both. The American people must be seen and heard they will ultimately be determinative. ABSOLUTE RED LINE: the firing of Bob Mueller or crippling the special counsel s office. If removed or meaningfully tampered with, there must be mass, popular, peaceful support of both. The American people must be seen and heard they will ultimately be determinative. Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 17, 2017We previously reported on Eric Holder and Obama s Ethics Czar threatening against firing Mueller:This is the height of irony. Obama s ethics czar is threatening to take the streets if Mueller is fired. Eric Holder also threatened congress not to fire Mueller:Speaking on behalf of the vast majority of the American people, Republicans in Congress be forewarned:any attempt to remove Bob Mueller will not be tolerated.These are BS attacks on him/his staff that are blatantly political-designed to hide the real wrongdoing. Country not party Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 14, 2017NOW THIS:The federal government s former ethics czar says he is stocking up on gear in order to take the streets in the event that President Trump removes Robert Mueller as special counsel. I m concerned the assault on the rule of law is coming over the holidays when we re distracted. It ll be a defining moment for the Republic, Walter Shaub wrote on Twitter on Friday.Shaub, an Obama appointee who quit his position earlier this year in protest against Trump, circulated a advertisement for an event sponsored by MoveOn.org, the left-wing activist group.He tried to walk back the threatening tweet but if he s in the camp of organizations like MoveOn.org, it s clear he s ready to rumble.Read more: Daily Caller ;politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“GUATEMALAN” MAN DIES After Falling Into WASTE GRINDER At Meat Plant…Former Worker Claims They Hire “90% Illegal Aliens”…Including “10-12 Yr Old Kids”;This story is absolutely horrific, but not surprising. Bleeding heart liberals aren t doing illegal aliens any favors by fighting for them to come here, only to be abused by their employers, who hire them, and then hold their illegal immigration status over their heads when they demand safer working conditions. (See video below)A worker caught in a machine at a meat processing plant has died in Ohio, according to local authorities.Samuel Martinez, 62, was killed by the machine on Saturday afternoon at the Fresh Mark plant in Canton, Ohio.The Guatemalan national died at the scene.According to the Stark County Coroner s Office, the man stepped into a chute and was stuck in the waste grinder.In a statement released on Saturday, Fresh Mark said that they would work with local law enforcement to figure out what caused the accident.This afternoon just before 5 pm, we experienced a work-related fatality at our Canton facility, they said. Our primary concern rests with the wellbeing of this employee s family, as well as with the safety and well-being of all our employees in the Canton and other Fresh Mark facilities. We are working with authorities to determine the facts regarding this incident. The incident marks the second of such to happen at the company.In 2011, an employee was electrocuted while trying to plug in a fan as he was standing in water.The company sells pork related meat under the Superior and Sugardale brands. Daily Mail In 2011, Steve Salvi, the founder of Ohio Jobs & Justice PAC interviewed an Ohio worker that made some startling allegations regarding the alleged hiring of underaged illegal aliens at one of Fresh Mark s Sugardale meatpacking plants in Canton, Ohio. In addition to outing the company for hiring underage illegal alien workers, the former Fresh Mark employee claims a veteran returned from Iraq and applied for a job at the meat processing company. The veteran was allegedly turned down until he could prove that he spoke the Spanish language.In May 2017, the very liberal New Yorker published a story about a 17-year old Guatemalan boy who was too young to work in a factory, and lost his leg due to the unsafe working conditions at neighboring Case Farms in Ohio. The New Yorker says the Case Farms plants are among the most dangerous workplaces in America.Osiel sanitized the liver-giblet chiller, a tublike contraption that cools chicken innards by cycling them through a near-freezing bath, then looked for a ladder, so that he could turn off the water valve above the machine. As usual, he said, there weren t enough ladders to go around, so he did as a supervisor had shown him: he climbed up the machine, onto the edge of the tank, and reached for the valve. His foot slipped;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;ATLANTA: PANDEMONIUM As World’s Largest Airport Goes DARK…Airport Evacuated…1,161 Flights Canceled [VIDEO];There has to something more to this story than what we re being told. If there isn t more to this story, then Atlanta Airport officials and Georgia Power are going to have some explaining to do A complete power outage at the nation s busiest airport, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, grounded flights Sunday afternoon, threatening to cause a holiday travel nightmare for fliers across the country just over a week before Christmas.Thousands of passengers were stranded and flights were grounded or delayed as a power outage crippled Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport the world's busiest airport pic.twitter.com/WpWQLGu5GD EAGLE WINGS (@NIVIsa4031) December 17, 2017Georgia Power said that repairs are well underway at the airport and power is expected to be restored around midnight on Sunday, and the airport tweeted that Power on Concourse F is back ON! Washington Examiner s Byron York tweeted only two hours ago, that no one seems to know why the power outage happened.The Atlanta airport story is huge. By far the nation's largest airport, it just goes dark, operations shut down. Thousands stranded, in very difficult situations. And nobody seems to know why. Byron York (@ByronYork) December 17, 2017 We are working with great urgency w/ @Georgia Power to restore power through rest of airport, the tweet read.According to FlightAware.com, 1,161 flights have been canceled at Hartsfield-Jackson as of 8:20 p.m. ET.Delta passengers were not happy with how things were being handled, especially the passengers who were stuck on the tarmac for several hours, unable to disembark from the planes:Oh. My. God. Just left ATL airport last night at midnight after 15 hours of travel. If I had been stuck against my will in my plane on tarmac..Gives me anxiety just thinking about it. That s A LOT of ppl in tight space. SidNey (@OhGoSquid) December 18, 2017Fox News reported on the outage:Power outage at Atlanta airport causes 'pandemonium,' grounds flights https://t.co/Och4XslbLi pic.twitter.com/VX5lnpZMFQ Fox News (@FoxNews) December 17, 2017Georgia Power said in a statement Sunday evening that the issue may have involved a fire which caused extensive damage in a Georgia Power underground electrical facility. The airport said power had been restored to one of its six concourses around 7:30 p.m., about seven hours after the initial outage, and Georgia Power said it expects to have power fully restored to the airport by midnight.CNBC News reporter Ethan Kraft reports that Chick-fil-A s CEO Dan Cathy will coordinate meals for thousands of stranded passengers at the airport:Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he spoke with Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy to coordinate meals for thousands of stranded passengers at #ATLairport, who have been in the dark since 2p ET Ethan Kraft (@ethan_kraft) December 18, 2017Fire crews were able to extinguish the fire and had begun assessing damage and beginning repairs, but they had not yet been able to ascertain the cause of the blaze, the utility said. FOX NewsNBC News Airport officials said a large portion of the facility had been affected and that repair teams had been working to address the situation since around 1:30 p.m. ET.Not everyone is buying the fire story however. This Twitter user believes that terror threat is the cause for the evacuation:The #atlairport has been evacuated, passangers are standing outside on the tarmac, no one is allowed to leave. I think a high level #Hivite was trying to get away, or they've disrupted a major terror attack. It's not being reported by @CNN (headquarters in Atlanta) #MediaBlackOut Sarah Ruth Ashcraft (@SaRaAshcraft) December 17, 2017Many citizens are questioning the story they are being told about a simple power outage, and wondering why, in the largest airport in the world, there isn t any back up power?https://twitter.com/tonyabonya/status/942576639887663104Officials with the Atlanta Police Department told WSB-TV the airport is evacuating travelers inside.A spokesperson told The Associated Press that no areas outside the airport were affected by the outage. However, flights at Chicago airports O Hare International and Midway both have canceled flights but it s not yet clear if they were canceled due to Atlanta s outage. Dealing with the power outage at the Atlanta airport was actually insane and I'll post other scary videos later. But the staff was having to slide down the escalators to help people and it was amusing. Finally in the car headed home. #atlantaairport #atl #atlantaA post shared by sarahmanleyy (@sarahmanleyy) on Dec 17, 2017 at 2:54pm PSTDelta Airlines, which is headquartered in Atlanta, said it had canceled approximately 900 mainline and Delta Connection flights. Passengers should check the status of their flights, the airline said. Pending full resumption of power, Delta anticipates a near-full schedule Monday in Atlanta, though some delays and cancellations can be expected, the airline said on its website.The airline said it would issue a waiver to those who were traveling through Atlanta with the airline on Dec. 17 or 18. The airline also said it would give travelers a refund if they would like to cancel their trip because their flight was canceled or delayed more than 90 minutes.Those arriving for their flights were met with long lines and a pitch dark airport. No escalators, elevators or information screens were operational.Brian Moote, 36, the morning host of an Atlanta radio show, said he was returning home on a flight from Dallas when the power went out in the airport. Moote said he and his fellow passengers had been stuck in their plane on the tarmac for nearly six hours, beginning at around 12:30 p.m. ET. ;politics;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Second prototype of China's C919 jet conducts test flight: state TV;BEIJING (Reuters) - A second prototype of China s home-built C919 passenger jet took off for a test flight in Shanghai on Sunday, state television reported, another step forward in the country s ambitions to muscle in to the global jet market. A total of six prototypes will eventually conduct test flights, China Central Television reported, with engine tests to be a particular focus. The aim was to conduct another long-distance test flight in late January, chief engineer Wang Wei was quoted as saying. More than 1,000 tests would be carried out. The narrow-body aircraft, which will compete with Boeing s 737 and the Airbus A320, is a symbol of China s ambitions to penetrate the global passenger jet market, estimated to be worth $2 trillion over the next 20 years. The C919 made its maiden flight on May 5 after numerous delays. Analysts have questioned the long periods between previous test flights. It completed its first long-distance flight on Nov. 10, flying for 2 hours and 23 minutes from Shanghai to the central Chinese city of Xi an, covering more than 1,300 km (800 miles) and reaching an altitude of 7,800 meters (25,590 feet). Its manufacturer, the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd (COMAC) [CMAFC.UL], called the maiden flight a milestone that marked the plane s move into an airworthiness certification phase. COMAC is aiming to obtain certification for the plane from Chinese regulators as well as Europe s aviation safety regulator, which agreed in April to start the certification process. The plane has dozens of customers who have placed orders and commitments for 785 jets, COMAC has said. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pinera leads Chile election at partial count: electoral agency;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Conservative Sebastian Pinera took an early lead of more than seven percentage points in Chile s presidential election on Sunday, Chile s electoral agency Servel said. With 9.55 percent of ballots counted, Pinera had 53.6 percent of votes while center-left Alejandro Guillier had 46.4 percent in the runoff vote. Chileans are voting for a successor to President Michelle Bachelet in a race that will determine if the world s top copper producer stays on its center-left course or joins other Latin American nations turning to the right in recent years. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thousands protest in Romania against judicial changes;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Thousands of Romanians protested in freezing weather across the country on Sunday against attempts by the ruling Social Democrats to overhaul the judiciary, which critics said would threaten the rule of law. In Bucharest, an estimated 4,000 protesters marched from government headquarters to parliament, where lawmakers will begin debating changes on Monday to the criminal code. Earlier this month, the Social Democrats used their solid majority to approve a judicial overhaul in the lower house that threatens to put the justice system under political control. The senate is expected to approve the bills next week. The European Commission, the U.S. State Department, the country s centrist president and thousands of magistrates have criticized the changes to judicial legislation, saying they could derail the rule of law. The government denies this is the case. Outside parliament, the marchers chanted Thieves nest and We want justice, not corruption under sleet and rain. Thousands more protested in the cities of Iasi, Cluj, Timisoara and others. Attempts by the ruling Social Democrats to change anti-corruption legislation have taken place on and off throughout 2017 in one of the European Union s most corrupt states. Romania s anti-corruption prosecution unit has sent 72 deputies and senators to trial since 2006 alongside cabinet ministers, a sitting Prime Minister and hundreds of mayors and other public officials. The speakers of parliament s lower house and senate are both currently on trial in separate cases. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican human rights group mulls legal action against security law;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) may take legal action against a bill that would enshrine into law the use of the army in the country s long war against drug cartels, saying it could ask that the measure be ruled unconstitutional. Known as the Law of Internal Security, it will formally regulate the deployment of the military in Mexico more than a decade after the government dispatched it to fight drug cartels in a conflict that has claimed well over 100,000 lives. Bucking widespread protests from rights groups, Congress on Friday gave a green light to the law, which was backed by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and some members of the center-right opposition National Action Party. It will now head to President Enrique Pena Nieto s desk to be signed into law. The new law could lead to the violation of Mexicans basic rights and freedoms, affect the design and constitutionally established balance between institutions, state organs and powers, and lead to states of emergency being imposed on Mexican society, the CNDH said in a statement late Saturday. Supporters of the legislation say it will set out clear rules that limit the use of soldiers to fight crime. Multiple human rights groups and international organizations, including the United Nations, attacked the bill, mindful of the dozens of reported cases of abuses by members of the military in Mexico over the past 11 years. They say it could usher in greater abuses and impunity by the armed forces. Opponents of the bill have taken to the streets to protest and demand the measure not be signed into law. The CNDH said it has asked Pena Nieto to make the necessary changes to the bill to make sure it upholds human and civil rights. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;OAS says Honduran presidential election should be redone;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The Organization of American States (OAS) said late on Sunday that Honduras should hold new presidential elections, after the electoral tribunal declared conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez the official winner of the bitterly contested Nov. 26 presidential vote. The tribunal said that Hernandez beat center-left challenger and TV star Salvador Nasralla by 1.53 percentage points, according to the official count, sparking fraud accusations and calls for renewed street protests. In a nationally televised address, tribunal head David Matamoros said all the challenges presented to it had been resolved and votes were recounted at select polling stations, declaring Hernandez the president-elect for the Republic of Honduras. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro questioned the tribunal s decision. The people of Honduras deserve an electoral process that confers them democratic quality and guarantees. The electoral process that the tribunal concluded today clearly did not provide that, Almagro said in a statement. He said the election was marred by irregularities and deficiencies and called for a new general election. In a video posted on Facebook, Nasralla said it was clear there had been fraud before, during and after the election, calling the tribunal s decision a desperate move. The candidate said he was headed to Washington to meet with Almagro, as well as officials of the U.S. State Department. The outcome of those meetings would help determine what steps to take next, he added. The OAS electoral observer mission said late on Sunday it could not confirm that the election had been intentionally manipulated but added that the process had been riddled with issues. Honduras has been roiled by political instability and violent protests since the vote, which initial counts suggested Nasralla had won. The count has been questioned by the two main opposition parties, including the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, headed by Nasralla, as well as a wide swath of the diplomatic corps. However, European Union election observers said the vote recount showed no irregularities. After comparing a large random sample of voting records provided to us by the Alliance and the original records published on the tribunal s website, the mission observed that the results presented practically no differences, said Jose Antonio de Gabriel, the adjunct head of the EU s mission. Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who backed Nasralla, took to Twitter, saying Hernandez is not our president and urging people to take to the streets in protest. TV broadcast images of protesters setting up flaming barricades and blocking roads in cities around the country. The tribunal had initially declared Nasralla the leader in an announcement on the morning after the vote, with just over half of the ballot boxes counted. It then gave no further updates for about 36 hours. Once results started flowing in again, Nasralla s lead began narrowing and eventually disappeared. That prompted national protests, in which 22 people were killed, including two police officers, according to a tally by the Committee of Detained Disappeared Persons in Honduras. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy 5-star party keeps option on euro referendum open;MILAN (Reuters) - The leader of Italy s main opposition party said he was keeping the option of a referendum on the euro open in the event his party won elections and failed to convince Brussels of the need to change some of the euro zone s economic rules. In comments made on state TV on Sunday, Luigi Di Maio, the man widely tipped to be the candidate for prime minister of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, said he wanted to negotiate concessions on EU governance. If we succeed, Europe will be changed and we won t need a referendum on the euro. Otherwise we ll ask Italians if they want to stay in or not, he said. Earlier this month, Di Maio told Reuters 5-Star had not totally withdrawn the idea of a referendum on the euro, but called it a last resort to be employed only if it was not possible to ease EU governance rules. The comments come just weeks before parliament is expected to be dissolved ahead of elections early next year which look unlikely to produce a clear winner. The 5-Star Movement is predicted to emerge as the largest single party in the next parliament, but it has repeatedly ruled out joining any coalition. Italy has just introduced a new electoral system that is expected to handicap 5-Star, favoring instead mainstream political blocs. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tip-off helped Russia thwart 'major' terrorist plot: White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies provided advanced warning to Russia about a major terrorist plot in St. Petersburg, allowing Moscow to thwart an attack that could have killed large numbers of people, the White House said on Sunday. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called President Donald J. Trump today to thank him for the advanced warning the United States intelligence agencies provided to Russia concerning a major terror plot in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the White House said in a statement. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombia's ELN rebels willing to extend ceasefire if talks progress;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia s leftist ELN rebels said on Sunday they are willing to extend a ceasefire set to expire next month if there is sufficient progress at peace talks with the government. The National Liberation Army (ELN) and the government have been in public peace talks in Quito for 10 months, after a long exploratory phase of negotiations, in a bid to end more than 53 years of war. The group s first-ever ceasefire began in October and is set to expire Jan. 9. It is being supervised by the Catholic Church and the United Nations. We are willing to agree a new ceasefire once we have jointly evaluated at the negotiating table the progress, confidence and results of the current one, the group said in an open letter to the U.N. posted on the ELN s Twitter account. The ELN added that it would also assess the government s willingness to overcome hurdles at the talks. The 2,000-strong ELN, which has regularly bombed oil infrastructure and taken hostages, has continued kidnapping despite the ceasefire. An indigenous leader in Choco province died in October after being detained by the group. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran airs 'confessions' of researcher facing death for spying;LONDON (Reuters) - Iranian state television broadcast on Sunday what it described as the confessions of an Iranian academic with Swedish residency who it said had provided information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists. His wife, speaking by telephone from Stockholm, said he had been forced by his interrogators to read the confession. Iran s Supreme Court upheld last week a death sentence against Ahmadreza Djalali, a doctor and lecturer at the Karolinska Institute, a Stockholm medical university. Djalali was arrested in Iran in April 2016 and later convicted of espionage. He denied the charges. In the television report, Djalali was linked to the assassination of four Iranian scientists between 2010 and 2012 that Tehran said was an Israeli attempt to sabotage its nuclear energy program. Djalali said in the report that he had given the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad information about key nuclear scientists. They were showing me pictures of some people or satellite photos of nuclear facilities and were asking me to give them information about that, Djalali said in the television report. Vida Mehrannia, Djalali s wife, said her husband had been forced to read a pre-agreed confession in front of the camera. After three months in solitary confinement, his interrogators told him that he would be released only if he reads from a text in front of the camera, she told Reuters by telephone from Stockholm. My husband told me that they shouted at him each time he was saying something different from the text and stopped the filming, Mehrannia added. The film said Djalali had agreed to cooperate with Israel in return for money and residency of a European country. We have not received money from anyone and our lifestyle shows that. We don t have a house or a car. We got our Swedish residency after finishing our studies here, Mehrannia said. The film also contained interviews with Majid Jamali Fashi, an Iranian athlete who was hanged in 2012 over the killings of the nuclear scientists. Djalali is the second person found guilty in the same case. Djalali did not have any sensitive information about Iran s nuclear program. If he had, he would have been barred from leaving the country, Mehrannia said. Sweden has condemned the death verdict against Djalali and said it had raised the matter with Iranian envoys in Stockholm and Tehran. Seventy-five Nobel prize laureates petitioned Iranian authorities last month to release Djalali so he could continue his scholarly work for the benefit of mankind . They said Djalali has suggested it was his refusal to work for Iranian intelligence services that led to this unfair, flawed trial . The United Nations and international human rights organizations regularly list Iran as a country with one of the world s highest execution rates. Iran s Revolutionary Guards have arrested at least 30 dual nationals during the past two years, mostly on spying charges. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nuclear, renewables to help French CO2 reduction goals, Macron says;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he would not follow Germany s example by phasing out nuclear energy in France because his priority was to cut carbon emissions and shut down polluting coal-fired production. I don t idolize nuclear energy at all. But I think you have to pick your battle. My priority in France, Europe and internationally is CO2 emissions and (global) warming, he told France 2 television in an interview. Macron, who has worked to establish his role as a global leader since his election win in May, presided over a climate summit in Paris last week to breathe new life into a collective effort to fight climate change. But renewable energy only amounts to a tiny share of French electricity production, which is dominated by nuclear for 75 percent of it. Nuclear is not bad for carbon emissions, it s even the most carbon-free way to produce electricity with renewables, Macron said. The 39-year old, who has sought to forge strong ties with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, did not show any enthusiasm for her decision to phase out nuclear energy, one of her landmark policies. What did the Germans do when they shut all their nuclear in one go?, Macron said. They developed a lot of renewables but they also massively reopened thermal and coal. They worsened their CO2 footprint, it wasn t good for the planet. So I won t do that. Macron said he wanted to boost the growth of renewable energy but would wait for the French nuclear watchdog s opinion before shutting ageing nuclear reactors or upgrading others. The ASN nuclear regulator said last month it would rule on a potential lifespan extension of France s 58 nuclear reactors - all operated by state-owned EDF - in 2020-21. This is what we ll base our decisions on, Macron said. So it ll be rational. So in the face of that, we ll have to shut some plants. Maybe we ll have to modernize others, he said. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron sees February end to fight against Islamic State in Syria;PARIS (Reuters) - The military campaign against Islamic State in Syria should be completed in February following the end of fighting against the militant group in Iraq, French President Emmanuel Macron said. On December 9, Iraqi Prime Minister (Haider al-) Abadi announced the end of the war and the victory over Daesh, and I think that by mid- to late February we will have won the war in Syria, Macron said in a broadcast interview, using the Arab acronym for Islamic State. France would now push for peace talks involving all parties in the six-year-old Syrian conflict, including President Bashar al-Assad, Macron told France 2 televisions, promising initiatives early next year. He did not say how any French proposals would relate to existing negotiations being brokered by the United Nations. Despite being a leading backer of the Syrian opposition, France has sought a more pragmatic approach to the Syrian conflict since the arrival of President Emmanuel Macron, saying that the departure of al-Assad was not a pre-condition for talks. Assad s government has been backed by Russia and Iran. President Vladimir Putin last week announced a significant scaling back of Russian forces in Syria, saying their mission was largely complete. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chilean conservative Pinera seen winning presidency: media forecast;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Billionaire former President Sebastian Pinera will likely win Chile s presidential election on Sunday, Radio Bio-Bio forecast, a result that would likely usher in more market friendly policies in the world s top copper producer. Pinera, a conservative, was seen taking 54.8 percent of the vote, the local broadcaster said after polls closed, with center-left candidate Alejandro Guillier with 45.2 percent in the contest to take over from President Michelle Bachelet. The exit poll from Radio Bio-Bio, a well-known broadcaster, was the most accurate in Chile s first round presidential vote in November. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Female British embassy worker found strangled near Beirut;BEIRUT/LONDON (Reuters) - A female British embassy worker has been found strangled near a highway outside Beirut, a Lebanese security source said on Sunday. The British foreign ministry provided a statement by the family of the woman, Rebecca Dykes, but gave no details of the circumstances of her death. We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Rebecca. We are doing all we can to understand what happened, the family said. Britain s ambassador to Lebanon, Hugo Shorter, tweeted: The whole embassy is deeply shocked, saddened by this news. Lebanon s Internal Security Forces said on Saturday that the body of a woman who had been strangled had been found by a highway outside Beirut. A Lebanese security source named the woman on Sunday as Rebecca Dykes. Dykes, who worked at the British embassy, had described herself on a LinkedIn page as a Programme and Policy Manager with the Department for International Development - a position she had held since January. Dykes had previously worked in London on diplomatic programs related to Iraq and Libya, the LinkedIn page said. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chile's Guillier concedes presidency to Pinera;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Center-left presidential candidate Alejandro Guillier conceded the Chilean presidency to billionaire conservative Sebastian Pinera on Sunday, as Chile followed other South American nations making a political turn to the right. With 96.31 percent of votes counted in the world s top copper producer, former president and market favorite Pinera had won 54.57 percent of ballots, according to electoral agency Servel. Guillier had 45.43 percent. Guillier recognized a harsh defeat but urged Pinera to continue with outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet s reforms. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gunmen assassinate mayor of Libya's biggest port city;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Gunmen fatally shot the mayor of Libya s third-largest city, Misrata, late on Sunday, ambushing his car inside the city, security officials said. The North African oil producer has been in chaos since the 2011 uprising that unseated Muammar Gaddafi, but Misrata, Libya s biggest port, had been relative peaceful until now. Gunmen chased the car of Mayor Mohamed Eshtewi after he left Misrata airport following his arrival on a plane from Turkey, a security official said, adding it was unclear who was behind it. In October, a bomb exploded at the city s court, killing about four people and wounding 40 others in an attack claimed by Islamic state. Misrata, almost 200 km (125 miles) east of Tripoli, is the gateway for food and other imports into Libya and the country s only tax-free zone. It is one of the few places still frequented by foreign business people fearing poor security elsewhere. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Explainer: Myanmar wields colonial-era law against Reuters journalists;(Reuters) - Myanmar has accused Reuters reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, of breaching the country s Official Secrets Act, a little-used hangover from colonial rule. Sam Zarifi, secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), said the law can ensnare working journalists at any time . The two reporters were arrested on Tuesday evening after they were invited to meet police officers for dinner in the north of Yangon. The Ministry of Information said they had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media , and published a photo of the pair in handcuffs standing behind a table with documents laid on it. The law dates back to 1923, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was a province of British India. At the time British administrators worried that rival powers could seek to exploit anti-colonial unrest in its South Asian empire. The act, which amended earlier anti-spying legislation, was controversial in India even at the time, according to a history published in 2009 by the United Service Institution of India, a New Delhi-based think tank. British military officers pushed for the stronger law over concerns about an increase in Bolshevik activity , along with geopolitical threats including the possibility of racial war between Japan and the USA affecting India , the history said. The Official Secrets Act covers trespassing in prohibited areas, handling documents deemed secret and communicating with foreign agents . It carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. Zarifi of the Geneva-based ICJ - a human rights group made up of 60 senior international judges, lawyers and legal academics - said the definition of an official secret in the act is incredibly broad . Just about anyone in possession of unpublished government documents could find themselves facing prosecution and the harsh penalties a conviction may carry, Zarifi said. Under this law many good journalists could be prosecuted at any time. In India, where the same law also remains on the statute book, courts have ruled that it even applies to parliamentary papers such as budget proposals if they are leaked before they are presented in the legislature. Legal experts say prosecutions under the act have been rare in Myanmar in recent decades. The military junta that ruled until 2011 frequently used other laws or the Penal Code - also inherited from the colonial era - to lock up its critics alongside common criminals. The sprawling code was drafted in 1860, and gives magistrates more than 500 sections under which to charge alleged offenders. In 1990, a military court sentenced two leaders of the then opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) to 10 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act after they passed an official letter to foreign embassies. The prosecution was part of a broad crackdown following an election won by the NLD that the junta ignored. They were freed in 1992, in an amnesty, according to a New York Times report at the time. Reports of at least two other cases brought under the act are recorded in the online archives of the Asian Human Rights Commission in 2009 and 2010. The first case involved a man jailed for trespassing on military land and recording video footage to allegedly send abroad. He had been helping a farmer file a land grab complaint against the military. The second concerned a former army officer who was jailed in 2010 for allegedly having secret information on his laptop that he passed to foreign news agencies. The most well-documented recent case involving the Official Secrets Act came in January of 2014, when the Yangon-based weekly, Unity Journal, published a front page article it said exposed a secret chemical weapons factory run by the military in central Myanmar. Police arrested the newspaper s CEO and four journalists involved in publishing the story, raided its offices, and attempted to seize all copies of the edition from newsstands. A civilian court in Pakkoku, near the alleged factory, sentenced them in July 2014 to 10 years in prison with hard labor - later reduced to seven years. The case was widely seen by the domestic media as a warning that military affairs remained off-limits even though direct military rule had ended. The Unity Five were released in an amnesty in April 2016, soon after the NLD, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had come to power following an election in 2015. The Unity Journal subsequently closed. Reuters was unable to reach government legal officials over the weekend and a Monday public holiday to request details of any other past cases in which the Official Secrets Act was used. Little is known of the allegations against the two Reuters journalists, other than that police said they were arrested for possessing important and secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces and are charged under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act. Two policemen are also being investigated in the case, according to police. Section 3 covers entering prohibited places, taking images or handling secret official documents that might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy . Human Rights Watch in 2016 said Section 3 defines the offence of spying extremely broadly . Where a military establishment is involved, section 3(2) of the statute effectively places the burden on the defendant to prove that they are not guilty, the group said. In May 2016, the month after Suu Kyi took power, the 1975 State Protection Act that had been used to keep her under house arrest for years was repealed. The Emergency Provisions Act, introduced in 1950 and frequently used against activists after the military seized power in a 1962 coup, was swept away in October the same year. But the Official Secrets Act and other laws, such as the 1908 Unlawful Associations Act, that have been used to jail journalists and activists, remain in force. Reuters was unable to reach Suu Kyi s spokesman to seek comment from Suu Kyi on the use of the Official Secrets Act to detain the two Reuters journalists. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hoping to extend maritime reach, China lavishes aid on Pakistan town;GWADAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - China is lavishing vast amounts of aid on a small Pakistani fishing town to win over locals and build a commercial deep-water port that the United States and India suspect may also one day serve the Chinese navy. Beijing has built a school, sent doctors and pledged about $500 million in grants for an airport, hospital, college and badly-needed water infrastructure for Gwadar, a dusty town whose harbor juts out into the Arabian Sea, overlooking some of the world s busiest oil and gas shipping lanes. The grants include $230 million for a new international airport, one of the largest such disbursements China has made abroad, according to researchers and Pakistani officials. The handouts for the Gwadar project is a departure from Beijing s usual approach in other countries. China has traditionally derided Western-style aid in favor of infrastructure projects for which it normally provides loans through Chinese state-owned commercial and development banks. The concentration of grants is quite striking, said Andrew Small, an author of a book on China-Pakistan relations and a Washington-based researcher at the German Marshall Fund think tank. China largely doesn t do aid or grants, and when it has done them, they have tended to be modest. Pakistan has welcomed the aid with open hands. However, Beijing s unusual largesse has also fueled suspicions in the United States and India that Gwadar is part of China s future geostrategic plans to challenge U.S. naval dominance. It all suggests that Gwadar, for a lot of people in China, is not just a commercial proposition over the longer term, Small said. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Beijing and Islamabad see Gwadar as the future jewel in the crown of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of Beijing s Belt and Road initiative to build a new Silk Road of land and maritime trade routes across more than 60 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. The plan is to turn Gwadar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built alongside special economic zones from which export-focused industries will ship goods worldwide. A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China s western regions. Port trade is expected to grow from 1.2 million tonnes in 2018 to about 13 million tonnes by 2022, Pakistani officials say. At the harbor, three new cranes have been installed and dredging will next year deepen the port depth to 20 meters at five berths. But the challenges are stark. Gwadar has no access to drinking water, power blackouts are common and separatist insurgents threaten attacks against Chinese projects in Gwadar and the rest of Baluchistan, a mineral-rich province that is still Pakistan s poorest region. Security is tight, with Chinese and other foreign visitors driven around in convoys of soldiers and armed police. Beijing is also trying to overcome the distrust of outsiders evident in Baluchistan, where indigenous Baloch fear an influx of other ethnic groups and foreigners. Many residents say the pace of change is too slow. Local people are not completely satisfied, said Essar Nori, a lawmaker for Gwadar, adding that the separatists were tapping into that dissatisfaction. Pakistani officials are urging Gwadar residents to be patient, vowing to urgently build desalination plants and power stations. China s Gwadar project contrasts with similar efforts in Sri Lanka, where the village of Hambantota was transformed into a port complex - but was saddled with Chinese debt. Last week, Sri Lanka formally handed over operations to China on a 99-year lease in exchange for lighter debt repayments, a move that sparked street protests over what many Sri Lankans view as an erosion of sovereignty. The Hambantota port, like Gwadar, is part of a network of harbors Beijing is developing in Asia and Africa that have spooked India, which fears being encircled by China s growing naval power. But Pakistani officials say comparisons to Hambantota are unfair because the Gwadar project has much less debt. On top of the airport, Chinese handouts in Gwadar include $100 million to expand a hospital by 250 beds, $130 million towards upgrading water infrastructure, and $10 million for a technical and vocational college, according to Pakistani government documents and officials. We welcome this assistance as it s changing the quality of life of the people of Gwadar for the better, said Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees CPEC, including Gwadar. China and Pakistan jointly choose which projects will be developed under the CPEC mechanism, Sayed added. When China suggested a 7,000 meter runway for the new airport, Pakistan pushed for a 12,000 meter one that could accommodate planes as large as the Airbus 380 and be used for military purposes, according to Sajjad Baloch, a director of the Gwadar Development Authority. The scale of Chinese grants is extraordinary, according to Brad Parks, executive director of AidData, a research lab at the U.S.-based William and Mary university that collected data on Chinese aid across 140 countries from 2000-2014. Since 2014, Beijing has pledged over $800 million in grants and concessional loans for Gwadar, which has less than 100,000 people. In the 15 years before that, China gave about $2.4 billion in concessional loans and grants during this period across the whole of Pakistan, a nation of 207 million people. Gwadar is exceptional even by the standards of China s past activities in Pakistan itself, Parks said. There are early signs China s efforts to win hearts and minds are beginning to bear fruit in Gwadar. Baluchistan is backward and underdeveloped, but we are seeing development after China s arrival, said Salam Dashti, 45, a grocer whose two children attend the new Chinese-built primary school. But there are major pitfalls ahead. Tens of thousands of people living by the port will have to be relocated. For now, they live in cramped single-story concrete houses corroded by sea water on a narrow peninsula, where barefoot fishermen offload their catch on newly-paved roads strewn with rubbish. Many of the fishermen say they fear they ll lose their livelihoods once the port starts operating. Indigenous residents fear of becoming a minority is inevitable with Gwadar s population expected to jump more than 15-fold in coming decades. On the edge of town, mansions erected by land speculators are popping up alongside the sand dunes. Analysts say China is aware that previous efforts to develop Gwadar port failed partly due to the security threat posed by Baloch separatists, so Beijing is trying to counter the insurgents narrative that China wants to exploit Baluchistan. That weighs heavily on the minds of the Chinese, Parks added. It s almost certainly true that they are trying to safeguard their investments by getting more local buy-in. Chinese officials, meanwhile, are promoting the infrastructure development they are funding. Every day you can see new changes. It shows the sincerity of Chinese for development of Gwadar, Lijian Zhao, the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, tweeted last month. For its investment in Gwadar, China will receive 91 percent of revenues until the port is returned to Pakistan in four decades time. The operator, China Overseas Ports Holding Company, will also be exempt from major taxes for more than 20 years. Pakistan s maritime affairs minister, Hasil Bizenjo, said the arrival of the Chinese in the region contrasted with the experience of the past two centuries, when Russia and Britain, and later the United States and the Soviet Union, vied for control of the warm water ports of the Persian Gulf. The Chinese have come very smoothly, they have reached the warm waters, Bizenjo told Reuters. What they are investing is less than a peanut for access to warm waters. When a U.S. Pentagon report in June suggested Gwadar could become a military base for China, a concern that India has also expressed, Beijing dismissed the idea. Talk that China is building a military base in Pakistan is pure guesswork, said a Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman, Wu Qian. Bizenjo and other Pakistani officials say Beijing has not asked to use Gwadar for naval purposes. This port, they will use it mostly for their commercial interests, but it depends on the next 20 years where the world goes, Bizenjo said. (This story has been refiled to correct typos in spellings of names of Chinese officials in paragraphs 40, 46) ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. helped thwart major attack in St. Petersburg: U.S., Russia say;MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States provided intelligence to Russia that helped thwart a potentially deadly bomb attack in St. Petersburg, U.S. and Russian officials said on Sunday, in a rare public show of cooperation despite deep strains between the two countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday to thank him for the tip-off, which the Kremlin said helped prevent a militant bomb attack on a cathedral in the Russian city, as well as other sites. The White House did not disclose details about the plot itself, but said the attack could have killed large numbers of people. Neither the Kremlin nor the White House identified the would-be attackers. The U.S. warning allowed Russian law enforcement agencies to arrest the suspects before they could carry out their plans, the White House and Kremlin said. Relations between Washington and Moscow have been damaged by disagreements over the wars in Ukraine and Syria, although Trump pledged during his election campaign to pursue better ties with Moscow. That has been complicated by U.S. allegations - denied by Russia - that the Kremlin meddled in last year s U.S. presidential election to help Trump win. Russian officials say Putin believes Trump is not to blame for the tensions. The phone call on Sunday between Trump and Putin was at least the second such call in the past week. On Thursday, Putin and Trump discussed the crisis in North Korea. The foiled attack was to have been carried out on Kazansky Cathedral, in Russia s second city of St. Petersburg, and on other locations in the city where large numbers of people gather, the Kremlin statement said. The cathedral is a popular tourist site. The White House seized on the foiled plot in St. Petersburg as a sign of what Moscow and Washington could do if they cooperate. Both leaders agreed that this serves as an example of the positive things that can occur when our countries work together, the White House said, adding Trump appreciated the call from Putin. Russian media reported last week that the Federal Security Service had detained followers of the Islamic State group who had been planning a suicide bomb attack on Kazansky Cathedral on Saturday. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to requests for additional details on the foiled plot. Putin said Russia would alert U.S. authorities if it received information about any attack being planned on the United States, the Kremlin said. Russia has repeatedly been the target of attacks by Islamist militant groups, including an attack in April that killed 14 people when an explosion tore through a train carriage in a metro tunnel in St. Petersburg. Russian police detained several suspects in that attack from mainly Muslim states in ex-Soviet central Asia. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since late August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts are not known. Reuters driver Myothant Tun dropped them off at a police compound and the two reporters and two police officers headed to a nearby restaurant. The journalists did not return to the car. Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler said the arrests were a blatant attack on press freedom and called for the immediate release of the journalists. Here are reactions to their detention from politicians and press freedom advocates around the world: - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. - British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, I absolutely strongly disapprove of the idea of journalists, going about their everyday business, being arrested. We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. - Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom called the arrests a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region. She said, We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear ... To be able to send journalists to this particular area is of crucial importance. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. Guterres said, It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country. He added: And probably the reason why these journalists were arrested is because they were reporting on what they have seen in relation to this massive human tragedy. - Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, the former managing director and editor, consumer news, at Thomson Reuters, tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian government department that manages its foreign and trade relations, issued a separate statement on Saturday calling for the reporters release and said that no person should ever face intimidation in the exercise of their profession. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two reporters. - Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said, We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting. - Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s spokesman Motosada Matano said his government was closely watching the situation, and that Japan has been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general. - Australia s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said its embassy in Myanmar was registering Canberra s concern at the arrest of the two journalists. A free and functioning media is an essential part of a modern democracy, the department said in an e-mail to Reuters on Monday. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said, We call on local authorities to immediately, unconditionally release Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. These arrests come amid a widening crackdown which is having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance. - The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests. Daniel Bastard, the head of the group s Asia-Pacific desk, said the charges being considered were completely spurious . - Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded the Myanmar government immediately and unconditionally release the two Reuters journalists. The environment for media right now is as hostile as it s been for years, and if adequate pressure doesn t mount on the civilian and military leadership, we can expect it to worsen, Matthew Smith, chief executive officer of Fortify Rights, said in a statement on Thursday. - Myanmar s Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. The newspaper said that it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed as police normally do to criminals on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime. - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance asked for the immediate release of the journalists. These two journalists are only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict, said SEAPA executive director Edgardo Legaspi. With this arrest, the government seems to be sending the message that all military reports should be off limits to journalists. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, a group of local reporters who have demonstrated against past prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . A reporter must have the right to get information and write news ethically, said video journalist A Hla Lay Thu Zar - a member of the group s executive committee. - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in Myanmar. It called on authorities to ensure the reporters safety and allow their families to see them. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, and the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, have also issued statements of support for the journalists. (Refiles to add dropped surname of Swedish foreign minister.) ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Billionaire Pinera recaptures Chile presidency with resounding win;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Conservative Sebastian Pinera won Chile s presidential election by a wider-than-forecast margin on Sunday, pledging to jump-start economic growth in the world s top copper exporter and opt for more business-friendly policies than his center-left predecessor. Chile s electoral authority called the election for former president Pinera, who won 54.58 percent of votes compared with 45.42 percent for the center-left Alejandro Guillier, in a race that had been considered a toss-up. In the end, the 68-year-old Pinera, who governed from 2010 to 2014, won more votes than any president since Chile s return to democracy in 1990. It was also the biggest ever loss for the center-left coalition that has dominated Chile s politics since the end of Augusto Pinochet s dictatorship. Neither Pinera nor Guillier marked a dramatic shift from Chile s long-standing free-market economic model, but Pinera s victory underscores an increasing tilt to the right in South America following the rise of conservative leaders in Peru, Argentina and Brazil. He is due to be sworn in on March 11. Despite our great differences, there are large points of agreement, Pinera said of Guillier as his supporters waved Chilean flags in downtown Santiago. In the streets of Santiago s wealthy neighborhoods, where Pinera took some 90 percent of votes, residents blared their horns in support. In his concession speech, Guillier called his nine-point loss a harsh defeat and urged his supporters to defend the progressive reforms of outgoing President Michelle Bachelet s second term. Pinera defeated Guillier, a former TV anchorman and current senator, by painting his policies as extreme in a country known for its moderation, and likening him to Venezuela s socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Guillier had championed Bachelet s agenda of reducing inequality by making education more affordable and overhauling the tax code. The investor favorite in the $250 billion economy, Pinera s proposals are seen as pro mining in a country where copper is king. He has pledged support and stable funding for Chile s state-run miner Codelco [COBRE.UL], and has promised to slash red tape which had bogged down projects under Bachelet. The campaign exposed deepening rifts among Chile s once bedrock center-left, an opening Pinera leveraged to rally more centrist voters around his proposals to cut corporate taxes and double economic growth. After a far leftist party made unexpected gains in November s first round, Pinera seized on the division, campaigning on a platform of scaling back and perfecting Bachelet s tax and labor laws. Bachelet s policies were seen by many in the business community as crimping investment at a time slumping copper prices were weighing on the economy. I voted for him for the economy, said Jose Oyaneder, a 54-year-old salesman at campaign headquarters. When he was president my (business) was quite good and I hope this time it s the same. The results were tabulated in just over two hours after nearly 7 million Chileans cast ballots in a country of 17 million people where voting is not mandatory. The son of a prominent centrist politician, Pinera is a Harvard-trained economist who made his fortune introducing credit cards to Chile in the 1980s. As of 2017, he was ranked #745 on Forbes global rich list, with a $2.7 billion fortune. Over months of aggressive campaigning, the former president brandished his business success and first term in office as proof of competence, contrasting himself with Guillier s relative lack of political and executive experience. Pinera s first administration was marked by a vibrant economy lifted by booming copper prices, but is perhaps best remembered for the spectacular rescue in 2010 of 33 miners who were trapped underneath the Atacama desert. His time in power was also marred by incessant street protests by thousands of students seeking an education overhaul, while his government s responses were often seen as out of touch. Pinera has promised to make Chile the first country in Latin America to achieve developed nation status in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based club of wealthy nations. Some things have to be fixed - health, pensions, a lot of discrimination in Chile, said Laura Garcia, 64, who works in a cleaning company. I have faith in Pinera. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran helicopter crash kills six, including president's sister;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The sister of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and five others died when the helicopter they were traveling in crashed on Saturday, the Honduran military said. Hilda Hernandez, 51, was a close advisor to her brother, who is embroiled in political turmoil in the wake of a Nov. 26 presidential election, which remains unresolved. She was previously the government s communications secretary. Two reconnaissance helicopters were sent to comb the missing Eurocopter AS350 Ecureuil helicopter s planned flight path from Toncontin international airport in capital city Tegucigalpa to Comayagua, some 50 miles (80 km) northwest, but because of inclement weather conditions land teams were sent in, the Honduran armed forces said in the statement. The remains of the aircraft were located and no survivors were found, the armed forces said, adding it would investigate the causes of the crash. A government source, who asked not to be named said: The six people aboard the aircraft, including Hilda Hernandez have been found dead. Honduras has been roiled by political instability following the presidential vote, with center-left Salvador Nasralla, a TV star, trailing conservative incumbent Hernandez by 1.6 percentage points according to the official count. The tally has been questioned by the two main opposition parties and a wide swathe of the diplomatic corps. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Landslides kill 26 in storm-hit Philippine province: local officials;MANILA (Reuters) - At least 26 people were killed while several residents were missing in an island province in central Philippines after tropical storm Kai-tak brought heavy rains that triggered landslides, local authorities and media said on Sunday. Kai-tak cut power supplies in many areas, forced the cancellation of several flights, stranded more than 15,000 people in various ports in the region and prompted nearly 88,000 people to seek shelter in evacuation centers. The Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office of Biliran island said 26 residents had died, but the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) has yet to make any official announcement about fatalities. Biliran Governor Gerardo Espina Jr confirmed the deaths in an interview with DZMM radio, with 23 people still missing, he said. We received reports of three deaths coming from the DILG (Department of the Interior and Local Government) but these are for confirmation, said NDRRMC spokeswoman Romina Marasigan. We are still trying to check the others. Many areas were flooded, damaging crops and infrastructure. Kai-tak has weakened to a tropical depression after barrelling through the eastern region of Visayas on Saturday, hitting islands and coastal towns such as Tacloban City where supertyphoon Haiyan claimed 8,000 lives in 2013. Locally known as Urduja, Kai-tak was packing winds of 55 kilometers (31 miles) per hour with gusts of up to 80 km/h, according to a weather bureau bulletin issued at 2000 GMT. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Remains of exiled Italian king return to Italy;MILAN (Reuters) - The remains of Victor Emmanuel III, who reigned as Italy s king through two world wars and died in exile in 1947, were flown back from Egypt on Sunday for reburial at a family mausoleum near Turin. The remains of his wife, Queen Elena, also returned to Italy on Friday for reburial with those of the king at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte, near the Piedmont town of Cuneo, a spokesman for the sanctuary said. Elena died in 1959 and her remains had lain in Montpelier in France. Victor Emmanuel III s 46-year reign, which started in 1900 after the assassination of his father Umberto I, encompassed the period of fascist rule in Italy under dictator Benito Mussolini. He drew criticism for failing to prevent Mussolini s seizure of power in 1922 and for fleeing Rome in 1944 to avoid an invading German army. The monarch - known as sciaboletta , or small sabre, due to his stature - abdicated the throne in 1946 in favor of his son Umberto II in a vain effort to avert a plebiscite to decide whether Italy should remain a monarchy or become a republic. After Italians voted for a republic, Victor Emmanuel went into exile in Alexandria, Egypt, where he died the following year. Italy s post-war constitution barred male descendants of the royal House of Savoy from setting foot in Italy because of the family s support for Mussolini. The ban was lifted in 2002. The grandson of Umberto II, Emanuele Filiberto, told the Italian press recently that he believed the right place for the remains of former Italian kings was the Pantheon in Rome. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru VP says committed to governing if president ousted;LIMA (Reuters) - Neither of Peru s two vice presidents would open the door to new elections by resigning if President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was forced from office, Second Vice President Mercedes Araoz told Reuters late on Sunday. Araoz said she was confident Kuczynski was innocent of wrongdoing regarding recently-disclosed links he once had with Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal. If Kuczynski is as expected unseated by the opposition-run Congress in a vote on Thursday, First Vice President Martin Vizcarra would immediately replace him. New national elections would only be called if both Vizcarra - a former governor of a copper-rich mining region and Peru s current ambassador to Canada - and Araoz resigned or left office before the scheduled end of Kuczynski s term in 2021. But Araoz ruled out that scenario. We re going to ensure that this government continues in power. Peru elected the three of us and both of us vice presidents are going to defend our mandate, Araoz said in a brief phone interview. Araoz remarks were the first explicit assurance by Kuczynski s center-right government that it would not abandon the presidency, and will likely soothe investor fears about the prospect of elections that could sweep anti-establishment candidates to power as the graft scandal roils the country. Odebrecht has sent shockwaves through Latin American politics since admitting a year ago that it had won lucrative public work contracts in Peru and nine countries in the region through a network of bribes and kickback schemes. The scandal has landed elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic, but has hit particularly hard in Peru, where Odebrecht once had an outsized presence. With Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, and two former presidents engulfed in the scandal and several opposition leaders under investigation, a majority of Peruvians want Kuczynski and lawmakers in Congress to leave office and prefer new elections to be called, a poll by Ipsos showed on Sunday. But Araoz said that would risk derailing progress Peru has made since its return to democracy at the turn of the century. We want our economy to keep growing, we want to maintain democracy, we want to avoid dictatorial actions, Araoz said in a veiled swipe at the opposition. Congress is controlled by a right-wing opposition party headed by media-shy Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, who is in prison for graft and human rights violations. Over the past year, Fujimori s foes have alleged that her party would use its majority in Congress to unseat Kuczynski in retribution for unexpectedly defeating her in the 2016 election - warnings that Kuczynski was now seizing on. There s an attack on democratic order, Kuczynski said late on Sunday in a televised interview with a group of local journalists. We have to defend democracy because it s the only tool that guarantees us a path to prosperity... I implore all to continue our trajectory. Fujimori s surrogates have denied she has sought to unseat Kuczynski for political reasons and describe a motion passed on Friday to start presidential vacancy proceedings as part of her party s fight against corruption. Kuczynski once denied having any links to Odebrecht. But last week Odebrecht sent Congress a requested report that detailed $4.8 million in deposits it made over a decade-long period starting in 2004 to companies owned by Kuczynski or a close business associate of his. The payments include about $600,000 in financial services Kuczynski provided for an Odebrecht project as a private citizen and about $800,000 transferred to a company owned by him during and shortly after holding senior government posts. Kuczynski apologized to Peruvians for not having explained his links to Odebrecht properly. He denied taking bribes or anything improper about the business transactions. I m absolutely sure. There was no corruption here, Kuczynski said. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Four dead in ambush of World Food Programme convoy in Nigeria;BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Four people were killed when a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) aid convoy was ambushed in northeast Nigeria, a WFP spokeswoman said on Sunday, in the latest attack in the region as the conflict with Boko Haram nears its ninth year. Attacks on aid workers are relatively rare in the conflict with the Islamist insurgency, compared with assaults on the military and civilians in Nigeria s northeast. The years of fighting have spawned what the United Nations calls one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with 8.5 million people in need of life-saving assistance. WFP can confirm that a convoy escorted by the Nigerian military including WFP-hired trucks was the subject of an attack by armed groups 35 km southwest of Ngala in Borno State on Saturday, she said in an emailed statement. Four people, including the driver of a WFP-hired truck and a driver s assistant, were killed in the incident, the statement said, adding that WFP is working with the authorities to determine the whereabouts of the trucks. The spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the driver and assistant were WFP staff, or give details about the other two people killed. A military spokesman declined to comment. Last year, the United Nations suspended aid deliveries in Nigeria s northeastern state of Borno, the epicenter of the conflict, after a humanitarian convoy was attacked, leaving two aid workers injured. Last week, the Nigerian government approved the release of $1 billion from the country s excess oil account to the government to help fight the Boko Haram insurgency, despite a two-year narrative that Boko Haram has been all but defeated. There are other signs the government and military may be abandoning that narrative. Nigeria s long-term plan is now to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns - effectively ceding the countryside to Boko Haram. Earlier this month, Nigeria replaced the military commander of the campaign against Boko Haram after half a year in the post. Military sources told Reuters that came after a series of embarrassing attacks by the Islamists. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. to vote Monday on call for U.S. Jerusalem decision to be withdrawn;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Monday on a draft resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, diplomats said, a move likely to face a Washington veto. The one-page Egyptian-drafted text, seen by Reuters, does not specifically mention the United States or Trump. Diplomats say it has broad support among the 15-member council, and while it is unlikely to be adopted, the vote will further isolate Trump on the issue. To pass, a resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has praised Trump s decision as the just and right thing to do. The U.S. mission to the United Nations was not immediately available to comment on Sunday. Arab foreign ministers agreed to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution on the issue. The draft U.N. text expresses deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. It affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council. The draft also calls upon all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Israel considers the city its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. No vote or debate will change the clear reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Danny Danon, Israel s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement on Saturday. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The draft council resolution demands that all states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions. A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in December 2016 underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations. That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration, which defied heavy pressure from longtime ally Israel and Trump, who was then president-elect, for Washington to wield its veto. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;East Libyan commander Haftar says U.N.-backed government obsolete, hints may run in elections;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces control parts of the country, said on Sunday the U.N.-backed government was obsolete and he would listen to the will of the people, a firm hint he may run in elections expected next year. Haftar styles himself as a strongman capable of ending the chaos of armed factions that has gripped oil-producing Libya since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. His comments, made at a military graduation ceremony, recall those of Egyptian General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when he was testing the ground before becoming a presidential candidate. Sisi was eventually elected in 2014. Just as Sisi built up wide support after toppling Egypt s Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013, supporters of Haftar speak of a similar situation developing in Libya, with rallies held in some eastern cities calling on him to run. We declare clearly and unequivocally our full compliance with the orders of the free Libyan people, which is its own guardian and the master of its land, Haftar said in a speech. He spoke in the eastern city of Benghazi, from where his forces managed to expel Islamist militants during a three-year battle. Haftar also dismissed a series of United Nations-led talks to bridge differences between Libya s two rival administrations, one linked to him in the east and one backed by the United Nations in the capital Tripoli, which he now declared obsolete. Despite all the brilliant slogans during talks between rivals for power from the dialogue of Ghadames (Libya) and ending in Tunisia via Geneva, Skhirat (Morocco) and others, all of were just ink on paper, he said, listing host cities of U.N. talks. The U.N. has tried to find a solution including Haftar who said his command had been threatened with sanctions should he seek a deal outside the dialogue. Some 1,000 Haftar supporters rallied in Benghazi, demanding the general take over after a U.N. deal for a political solution missed what they said was a self-imposed deadline on Sunday. The U.N. says no such timeline exists and its mediation will continue. The turnout was smaller than initially expected. In Tripoli, home to a government opposed by Haftar, an unknown armed faction opened fire in the air to disperse some 150 supporters of the general on the central martyrs square, witnesses said. Nobody was hurt. The U.N. launched a new round of talks in September in Tunis between the rival factions to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, but they broke off after one month without any deal. A formidable obstacle to progress was the issue of Haftar s own rule. He remains popular among some Libyans in the east weary of the chaos but faces opposition from many in western Libya. In his speech Haftar said his forces, known as the Libyan National Army (LNA), could only be placed under an authority that had been elected by the Libyan people - a further indication that he might take part in the election. The large North African country has been in turmoil since Gaddafi s downfall opened up space to Islamist militants and smuggling networks that have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe. Haftar is just one of many players in Libya, which is controlled by armed groups divided along political, religious, regional and business lines. Aguila Saleh, president of the eastern House of Representatives that backs Haftar, said it was time to start preparing for parliamentary and presidential elections, according to a video posted on social media. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;SPD leader wants Merkel to relinquish finance ministry: Handelsblatt;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s Social Democrats (SPD) leader Martin Schulz wants Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives to leave the powerful finance ministry to his center-left party in coalition talks, a report in business daily Handelsblatt said. SPD leaders agreed on Friday to open exploratory talks on forming a government with Merkel s center-right bloc, providing a chance to end a rare period of political deadlock in Europe s economic powerhouse after an inconclusive federal election. Merkel, who lost many supporters to the far-right in the Sept. 24 election, is banking on the SPD to extend her 12-year tenure after attempts to cobble together an awkward three-way alliance with two smaller parties failed in November. SPD members fear the party risks losing its identity and sustaining further electoral defeats if it signs up for another grand coalition with the conservatives. The SPD was Merkel s junior coalition partner from 2005-2009 and from 2013-2017. Handelsblatt said in a report to be published on Monday that Schulz had told a group of SPD lawmakers that his party should take control of the finance ministry which was led by veteran conservative Wolfgang Schaeuble for the past eight years. The goal is (to get) the Federal Finance Ministry, Schulz was quoted as saying, adding that the past years had shown how important the finance department had become. The SPD was not immediately available to comment on the report. Merkel s conservatives and the SPD are expected to meet next Wednesday to discuss the timetable and agenda of exploratory talks which will not start in serious before early January. Then another SPD party convention will have to give green light to kick off official coalition negotiations, scheduled for mid-January. Any agreement would finally be subject for approval by SPD members afterwards. That could mean that Germany most probably will not have a new government in place before March. If the SPD were to agree to another grand coalition - an option that the SPD says is by no means a foregone conclusion - and demand the finance ministry, it would likely result in changes to Germany s European policy such as more focus on spending and investment rather than austerity. Schaeuble, who has taken on the role of president in the Bundestag lower house of parliament, became unpopular among struggling euro zone states during his eight years in office due to his focus on fiscal restraint and structural reforms. Merkel ally Peter Altmaier has taken over the role as finance minister in the current caretaker government. Schulz has repeatedly said Europe could not afford to undergo another four years of the kind of European policy that Schaeuble had practiced. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea threat on agenda when South Korean foreign minister visits Japan;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s foreign minister will visit Japan this week to meet her Japanese counterpart, the foreign ministry said on Sunday, with Seoul and Tokyo seeking to boost cooperation over the handling of North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. The need to confront the threat posed by North Korea s ballistic missile and nuclear tests comes despite lingering tension over the issue of sexual slavery during Japan s wartime occupation of Korea. Kang Kyung-wha will arrive in Tokyo on Tuesday and meet Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono during her two-day visit, her first trip to Japan as South Korea s top diplomat, the foreign ministry in Seoul said in a statement. The two ministers will exchange views on issues of common interests focusing on bilateral relations and North Korea-related issues, including its nuclear programme, the ministry statement said. South Korea and Japan are seeking to improve security cooperation over North Korea, but there have been conflicting signals over whether they can resolve a feud over comfort women who were forced to work in Japan s wartime military brothels. Ties have been frozen over the issue, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in has promising to renegotiate an unpopular 2015 pact signed with Japan. Under that pact, Japan apologized again to former comfort women and promised 1 billion yen ($8.9 million) for a fund to help them. The two governments agreed the issue would be irreversibly resolved if both fulfilled their obligations. ($1 = 112.5700 yen) ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tens of thousands of Indonesians rally over Trump's Jerusalem stance;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Muslims marched from the main mosque in Indonesia s capital to a square in Jakarta on Sunday to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It was the biggest protest in Indonesia since Trump s controversial move earlier this month to reverse decades of U.S. policy. Police estimated the number attending the rally, organized by various Muslim groups, at about 80,000. The protest was peaceful but rows of police behind coils of barbed wire held back the crowd outside the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. A police spokesman said 20,000 police and members of the military were deployed to ensure security. We urge all countries to reject the unilateral and illegal decision of President Donald Trump to make Jerusalem Israel s capital, Anwar Abbas, the secretary general of the Indonesian Ulema Council, told the crowd. We call on all Indonesian people to boycott U.S. and Israel products in this country if Trump does not revoked his action, Abbas said, reading from a petition due to be handed to the U.S. ambassador in Indonesia. Many of the protesters were clad in white and waved Palestinian flags and held up placards, some reading: Peace, love and free Palestine . There have been a series of protests in Indonesia over the issue, including some where hardliners burned U.S. and Israeli flags. The status of Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is one of the biggest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Jerusalem s eastern sector was captured by Israel in a 1967war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state that they seek, while Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia arrests man accused of trying to sell missile parts for North Korea;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian police said on Sunday they had arrested a man accused of working on the black market to sell missile components and coal on behalf of North Korea, the first charges ever brought in Australia over the sale of weapons of mass destruction. The man had been charged with two counts under an act preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, police said, and with another four under legislation enforcing United Nations and Australian sanctions against North Korea. The Sydney man was identified by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other media as 59-year-old Chan Han Choi, who they said had been living in Australia for more than 30 years and was of Korean descent. He was arrested in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood on Saturday and was due to face court later on Sunday, police said. He came to the attention of authorities earlier this year, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said. This man was a loyal agent of North Korea, who believed he was acting to serve some higher patriotic purpose, AFP Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan told reporters. This case is like nothing we have ever seen on Australian soil, he said. Police will allege the man tried to broker the sale of missile components, including software for the guidance systems of ballistic missiles, as well as trying to sell coal to third parties in Indonesia and Vietnam. Gaughan said the trade could have been worth tens of millions of dollars if successful. Cash-strapped North Korea has come under a new round of stricter United Nations sanctions this year after pressing ahead with its missile and nuclear programmes in defiance of international pressure. Tensions have risen dramatically on the Korean peninsula because of the North s ballistic missile launches and its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, as well as joint military drills between South Korea and the United States that the North describes as preparation for war. Pyongyang claimed that its latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch in November had the range to reach all of the United States. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged North Korea on Friday to carry out a sustained cessation of its weapons testing to allow talks about its missile and nuclear programmes. However, the North has shown little interest in talks until it has the ability to hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile, which many experts say it has yet to prove. Gaughan said the man had been in touch with high-ranking North Korean officials but no missile components ever made it to Australia. He also said there was no indication officials in Indonesia or Vietnam had been involved in the attempted coal sales. This is black market 101, Gaughan said. We are alleging that all the activity occurred offshore, and was purely another attempt for this man to trade goods and services as a way to raise revenue for the government of North Korea, he said. The man faces up to 18 years in jail if convicted. He did not apply for bail and will next face court on Wednesday. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese military transport plane flies near Taiwan;TAIPEI (Reuters) - At least one Chinese Air Force Yun-8 transport plane conducted a long-haul flight near Taiwan on Sunday, the island s Defence Ministry said, amid simmering tensions between the two rivals. Taiwan dispatched its aircraft and ships to monitor and deal with the Yun8, which returned to its base after flying through the Bashi Channel and Miyako waterway, Defense Minister Feng Shih-kuan said. It was unclear whether one plane or more made the flight. There was no untoward incident and the public should not be alarmed, Feng said. He did not give further details. China has considered Taiwan to be a wayward province since Chiang Kai-shek s Nationalist troops fled to the island in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong s Communist forces on the mainland. Beijing suspects Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party wants to declare the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend the island s security. China has never renounced the use of force to bring the self-ruled democratic island under its control. China has conducted numerous similar patrols near Taiwan this year, saying such practices have been normalized as it presses ahead with a military modernization program that includes building aircraft carriers and stealth fighters to give it the ability to project power far from its shores. In September, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year, which authorizes mutual visits by navy vessels between Taiwan and the United States. That prompted a senior Chinese diplomat to say this month China would invade the island if any U.S. warships made port visits there. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit will not be derailed, says May ahead of crunch cabinet meetings;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said on Sunday she would not be derailed from leaving the European Union, laying the groundwork for difficult meetings this week in which she will try to unite a divided cabinet behind her vision for post-Brexit Britain. May was applauded by European Union leaders in Brussels on Friday after securing an agreement to move previously-deadlocked talks forward onto the topic of interim and long-term trading arrangements. The progress has gone some way to easing concerns of businesses and investors who fear Britain could crash out of the bloc without an exit deal, or that May s fragile government could collapse under the pressure of delivering Brexit. Amid all the noise, we are getting on with the job, May wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. My message today is very clear: we will not be derailed from this fundamental duty to deliver the democratic will of the British people. But May can expect some difficult exchanges this week when she and senior ministers discuss the so-called end state of the Brexit negotiations for the first time since Britain voted to leave the EU in a referendum in June 2016. The type of long-term relationship the country should have with the EU is a vexed question at every level in Britain, including within May s cabinet where some want to keep close ties with the EU and others want a more radical divorce from Brussels. Mindful of the need to keep both sides happy, May has so far plotted a careful path. May says she wants a wide-ranging free trade deal with the EU and a more outward-looking trade policy, but has largely steered clear of the more contentious issues such as whether Britain should stay aligned with EU trading rules and the future role of European courts. Meetings expected to take place on Monday and Tuesday are likely to force those issues out into the open. One of the key pro-Brexit voices in the cabinet, foreign minister Boris Johnson, has set out his own view ahead of the meetings, warning May that Britain must avoid becoming subordinate to the EU. What we need to do is something new and ambitious, which allows zero tariffs and frictionless trade but still gives us that important freedom to decide our own regulatory framework, our own laws and do things in a distinctive way in the future, he told the Sunday Times newspaper. He said that mirroring EU laws would leave Britons asking What is the point of what you have achieved? because we would have gone from a member state to a vassal state. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two Danish journalists wounded in Islamist knife attack in Gabon;LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - An attacker wielding a knife and crying Allahu Akbar has wounded two Danish journalists in Gabon s capital Libreville, the Gabonese defense minister said. The two reporters for the National Geographic channel were in a popular market for tourist souvenirs on Saturday, when a Nigerien national living in Gabon lunged at them with the knife, Defence Minister Etienne Kabinda Makaga said in a statement on Gabonese television. After his arrest, the 53-year-old suspect, who has lived in Gabon for two decades, told authorities he was carrying out a revenge attack against America for recognizing Israel s capital as Jerusalem, Makaga said, giving no further explanation. A judicial investigation was immediately opened at the public prosecutor s office of Libreville to establish if the acts of the aggressor were isolated or a conspiracy, Makaga said. Oil-rich Gabon has a small Muslim population consisting mostly of foreign workers, although the precise number is not known. It is not normally considered a high risk country for jihadist violence. (This story corrects to make clear attacker was Nigerien from Niger, not Nigerian from Nigeria) ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's ruling PD party slips further in polls, newspaper reports;MILAN (Reuters) - Italy s ruling Democratic Party (PD) has lost further ground over its rivals after political infighting and fallout from a banking scandal, an opinion poll showed on Sunday. The poll comes just weeks before parliament is expected to be dissolved before elections early next year. The PD share of the vote fell 1 percent, from eight days ago, to 23.4 percent, its lowest level in five years, according to the Ipsos poll in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. Support for the PD, headed by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, has fallen steadily in recent months, with the group damaged by deep schisms and personality clashes. The party has also come under fire over allegations cabinet undersecretary Maria Elena Boschi took steps to try to save Banca Etruria, a local bank based in her home town of Arezzo. Boschi has repeatedly denied exerting any political pressure in deciding the future of Banca Etruria. The Ipsos poll said growing support from smaller allies had raised the center-left bloc s share of the vote to 26.2 percent, as of Dec. 14, from 24.8 percent. That was well short of the 36 percent polled by the center-right bloc led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. It was also behind the 28.2 percent share of the 5-Star anti-establishment party. The 5-Star Movement is predicted to emerge as the largest single party in the next parliament, but it has repeatedly ruled out joining any coalition. Italy has just introduced a new electoral system that is expected to handicap 5-Star, favoring instead mainstream political blocs. Italy s parliament is likely to be dissolved between Christmas and the New Year, opening the way for national elections in early March that look unlikely to produce a clear winner. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian protesters set fire to placards of U.S. vice president in Bethlehem;BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - A small group of Palestinian protesters on Sunday set fire to placards printed with images of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Middle East negotiator Jason Greenblatt outside Jesus s traditional birthplace, days before their arrival in the region. With Bethlehem s illuminated Christmas tree behind them, about 30 people stood quietly holding candles at Manger Square next to the Church of the Nativity, the site Christians believe marks Jesus s birthplace, before setting the placards alight. Bethlehem welcomes the messengers of peace, not the messengers of war , read some placards with pictures of Pence and Greenblatt as they went up in flames. The U.S. vice president is due in the region later this week but the Palestinians have said he is not welcome and President Mahmoud Abbas will not meet him during his visit, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki said last week, a move the White House described as unfortunate . Greenblatt, who has held several rounds of discussions with Israeli and Palestinian officials during the past few months in an effort to restart peace talks that have been frozen since 2014, is also due to arrive this week. Violent protests have been held almost daily in the Palestinian territories over U.S. President Donald Trump s Dec. 6 announcement in which he overturned long-standing U.S. policy on Jerusalem and said he was recognizing it as Israel s capital. Palestinian militants have also increased the firing of rockets at Israel since Trump s announcement and two were launched on Sunday. One landed in an Israeli community close to the Gaza border and damaged property but no casualties were reported initially, a police spokesman said. Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. Israel has welcomed Trump s announcement as recognizing political reality and biblical Jewish roots in Jerusalem. It says that all of Jerusalem a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians is its capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte, in about-face, says he supports same-sex unions;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday expressed his support for same-sex unions, after previously declaring his opposition to gay marriage, in an about-face that may displease bishops in the mainly Roman Catholic country. Speaking at a gathering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in his hometown Davao City, Duterte vowed to protect the rights of homosexuals and invited them to nominate a representative to work in his government. I said I am for (same) sex marriage if that is the trend of the modern times, he said. If that will add to your happiness, I am for it. Duterte previously was quoted by local media as saying he was opposed to gay unions because marriage in the Philippines is only between a man and a woman. Duterte had brought up the gender issue in the past while attacking Western countries that allow it, especially those who criticize his brutal war on drugs. Many countries, mostly in Western Europe and the Americas, have already recognized same-sex unions. Australia is the latest to legalize it. Catholic bishops in the Philippines, who also oppose Duterte s bloody anti-narcotics campaign, have voiced concern over legalizing same-sex marriage after his top ally in Congress vowed earlier this year to push for it. Why impose a morality that is no longer working and almost passed, Duterte said, in an apparent reference to traditional church teaching on the issue. So I am with you. He asked the LGBT community to nominate a representative whom he could appoint to a government post, saying he needed the brightest to replace those he has recently fired over allegations of corruption. You nominate somebody who is honest, hardworking. I give you until the second week of January to nominate, he said. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Christmas market opens in Algerian capital;ALGIERS (Reuters) - A small Christmas market has opened in Algeria s capital, catering to a rising number of Christian African migrants as well as diplomats and locals in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. Around 99 percent of Algeria s population is Sunni Muslim but the number of Christians has been rising due to an influx of migrants from sub-Saharan countries such as Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The market, organized by the Caritas charity, is also a sign of stable security in a country that has rebounded from a decade of Islamist militant violence during which 200,000 people died. Diplomats used to hunker down in fortified embassies, rarely venturing out, but now live alongside Algerians in residential quarters. No militant attack has been reported in Algiers for more than 10 years. Caritas staged a similar Christmas market last year but kept it low profile. This year it advertised the market in advance, calling for a living together between Christians and Muslims. No official figure is available for the number of African migrants, but some estimates put it at around 100,000. It is not about making money, but rather about using the money to help the most vulnerable, whether Algerians, African migrants or Syrians, Caritas Algeria director Maurice Pilloud said. Veiled Muslim women mix with foreigners at the market in Algiers El Biar district, where honey, chocolate, cakes, jewelry and trinkets are sold. Many donations came from Muslims, said Pilloud. The market offers the chance for young people to make a contribution to society in a political system where the ruling party has dominated all aspects of the oil-producing North African state since independence in 1962. Charitable work remains most attractive for a majority of young Algerians who shun political action because it doesn t bring change, said Cherif Lounes, 47, who was visiting the market along with his mother. We need 50 Caritas associations in Algeria to help the vulnerable, whether Algerians or migrants, added Saida, his 79-year-old mother. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian billionaire Masri released by Saudis;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., Russian, Japanese crew blasts off for space station;(Reuters) - A trio of U.S. and Japanese astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan on Sunday for a two-day trip to the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed. Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and flight engineers Norishige Kanai of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Scott Tingle of NASA lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1:21 p.m. local time (0721 GMT/0221 EST). The crew will gradually approach the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, for two days before docking. Shkaplerov, Kanai and Tingle will join Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA, who have been aboard the orbital outpost since September. Onboard cameras showed crew members making thumbs-up gestures after the blast-off. Also visible was a stuffed dog toy chosen by Shkaplerov s daughter to be the spacecraft s zero-gravity indicator. Soyuz was safely in orbit about 10 minutes after the launch. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukrainian police clash with Saakashvili supporters in Kiev;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian police clashed with backers of opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili on Sunday and prevented them from forcing their way into Kiev s October Palace after a rally against President Petro Poroshenko. The confrontation, which included the firing of tear gas canisters, was the latest chapter in the former Georgian president s stand-off with Ukrainian authorities that led to his detention and release from custody last week. The October Palace, a cultural center, became a symbol of revolt when it was a key location in the 2013-14 pro-European uprising that ousted a Moscow-backed president and installed Poroshenko, who promised to eliminate widespread corruption. Saakashvili, president of his native Georgia in 2004-2013, moved to Ukraine after an uprising there and served as a regional governor in 2015-16 before falling out with Poroshenko, whom he accuses of failing to stamp out endemic graft and being corrupt himself. Poroshenko denies the accusations. Sunday s scuffles at the October Palace were an offshoot of a larger, peaceful opposition rally in which several thousand people marched through central Kiev earlier in the day, calling for Poroshenko s impeachment. The situation was relatively calm at the Palace after darkness fell with a large number of riot police blocking the entrance to the center, whose doors protesters had earlier tried to break through, some throwing stones and other objects. We have to be calm, keep the peace, Saakashvili told a few hundred of his supporters, who remained outside the building. No serious injuries were reported in the clashes. Saakashvili accused the authorities of engineering the situation to provoke violence. Earlier, he had called on protesters to set up a headquarters in the building. But later, he condemned any attempt to seize administration buildings. Interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko held Saakashvili responsible for the clashes. Despite all the provocations as a result of which Mikheil Saakashvili wants to spill the blood of Ukrainians, he has not succeeded, he said in a post on Facebook. The comments continue a long-running blame game that has included prosecutor s accusing Saakashvili of assisting a criminal organization, charges he says are trumped up to undermine his campaign to unseat Poroshenko. Police said the attempt to charge into the October Palace occurred while a children s concert was going on inside. Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko, who attended the rally, joined other opposition MPs in condemning Saakashvili s actions. This behavior could destroy the remnants of trust among like-minded political associates and alienate society, he said on Facebook. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Car bomber attacks NATO convoy in Afghanistan;KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A car bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Sunday, killing one civilian and wounding four others but without causing casualties among international forces, officials said. Qudratullah Khushbakht, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor, said the attack happened on the airport road, killing a woman and wounding four other people. However a spokesman for the NATO-led Resolute Support mission said there had been no injuries among troops in the convoy. We can confirm a suicide bomber attempted an attack on a patrol in Kandahar, Afghanistan, earlier today. However, there were no fatalities or injuries sustained by coalition forces, the spokesman said in an emailed statement. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Insurgents burn bus in southern Thailand;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Armed insurgents stopped and torched a Bangkok-bound passenger bus on a highway in southern Thailand on Sunday, police said. All 14 passengers, as well as the bus driver and his assistance, survived the attack, although their luggage were burned with the bus. The attack occurred in Yala, one of the predominantly ethnic Malay Muslim provinces in the south where a separatist insurgency has dragged on for more than a decade. More than 6,500 people have been killed since 2004. Police said at least 10 gunmen were involved in the latest attack. They all escaped, blocking the road with tree trunks and nails to thwart any pursuers. An army spokesman was not available for comment. As with most violence in Thailand s deep south, there was no claim of responsibility. The insurgents are fighting for secession from predominantly Buddhist Thailand. Thailand s military government has, since 2015, held talks brokered by Malaysia, aim at ending the violence. The process, which aim to established a safety-zone as a confidence-building measure by early next year, has been stalled. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran tells France's Macron not to 'blindly follow' Trump;LONDON (Reuters) - Iran on Sunday criticized French President Emmanuel Macron over his tough stance toward Tehran and said Paris would soon lose its international credibility if it blindly follows U.S. President Donald Trump. Tensions between Iran and France have risen in recent months after Macron said Tehran should be less aggressive in the Middle East, citing in particular its involvement in Syria s civil war. Macron, unlike Trump, has reaffirmed his country s commitment to the deal Iran signed in 2015 with world powers under which it curbed its disputed nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of most international sanctions. However, he has been critical of Iran s ballistic missile tests and wants to raise the possibility of new sanctions over the program, which Tehran calls solely defensive in nature. To sustain its international credibility, France should not blindly follow the Americans ... The French president is now acting as Trump s lapdog, Ali Akbar Velayati, the top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. Velayati also criticized U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who last week presented pieces of what she said were parts of an Iranian missile supplied to the Tehran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen. She described the objects as conclusive evidence that Tehran was violating U.N. resolutions. This claim shows she lacks basic scientific knowledge and decency. She is like her boss (Trump) as he also says baseless, ridiculous things. Iran has not supplied Yemen with any missile, Velayati said. Tasnim news agency quoted the spokesman for Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards, Ramezan Sharif, as saying on Sunday that they show a cylinder and say Iran s fingerprints are all over it, while everyone knows that Yemen acquired some missile capabilities from the Soviet Union and North Korea in the past . France took a cautious stance on Haley s report. The United Nations secretariat has not, at this stage, drawn any conclusions. France continues to examine the information at its disposal, Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Alexandre Giorgini said on Friday. Saudi Arabia, who has long accused Iran of smuggling missiles to the Houthis and has intervened against them in Yemen s war to try to restore its internationally recognized government, welcomed Haley s report. Iran has one of the Middle East s biggest missile programs and some of its precision-guided missiles have the range to strike its arch-regional enemy Israel. Israel has also called for world powers to take punitive steps against Iran over its missile ambitions. An Israeli cabinet minister said last month that Israel has had covert contacts with Saudi Arabia amid common concerns over Iran. Velayati said on Sunday that reported meetings between Saudi and Israeli officials were no threat to Iran as both countries were weak and insignificant. Last month, the Revolutionary Guards warned Europe that if it threatens Tehran, the Guards will increase the range of missiles to above 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles). ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suicide bombers attack church in Pakistan's Quetta before Christmas, killing nine;QUETTA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers stormed a packed Christian church in southwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing at least nine people and wounding up to 56, officials said, in the latest attack claimed by Islamic State in the country. Police guards stationed at the church entrance and on its roof killed one of the bombers but the second attacker detonated his explosives-filled vest outside its prayer hall just after Sunday services began in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, said Sarfraz Bugti, the provincial home minister. Baluchistan police chief Moazzam Jah said there were nearly 400 worshippers in the church for the pre-Christmas service. The death toll could have been much higher if the gunmen had forced their way into the sanctuary, he said. Jah said the venue - Bethel Memorial Methodist Church - was on high alert as Christian places of worship are often targeted by Islamist extremists over the Christmas season. We killed one of them, and the other one exploded himself after police wounded him, he said. Islamic State claimed the attack, the group s Amaq news agency said in an online statement, without providing any evidence for its claim. Another police official, Abdur Razaq Cheema, said two other attackers escaped. Broken wooden benches, shards of glass and musical instruments were scattered around a Christmas tree inside the prayer hall that was splashed with blood stains. Kal Alaxander, 52, was at the church with his wife and two children when the attack happened. We were in services when we heard a big bang, he told Reuters. Then there was shooting. The prayer hall s wooden door broke and fell on us ... We hid the women and children under desks. Maryam George, 20, cried at a hospital where her younger sister Alizeh was fighting for life with two broken legs and multiple other wounds. Pakistani Christians, who number around 2 million in a nation of more than 200 million people, have been the target of a series of attacks in recent years. Baluchistan, a strategically important region bordering Iran as well as Afghanistan, is plagued by violence by Sunni Islamist sectarian groups linked to the Taliban, al Qaeda and Islamic State. It also has an indigenous ethnic Baloch insurgency fighting against the central government. Middle East-based Islamic State has created an active branch in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years mostly by recruiting among established militants, and its followers have claimed some of Pakistan s most deadly attacks in recent years. A suicide bomber killed 52 people and wounded over 100 at a Baluchistan Sufi shrine in November last year, in an attack claimed by Islamic State. In February, Islamic State attacked a Sufi shrine in Pakistan s southern Sindh province, killing 83 people. Violence in Baluchistan has fueled concern about security for projects in the $57 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link planned to run from western China to Pakistan s southern deep-water port of Gwadar. The church attack came a day after the third anniversary of a Pakistani Taliban attack on an army-run school that killed 134 children, one of the single deadliest attacks in the country s history. Pakistan s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, condemned the attack. Quetta church attack targeting our brotherly Christian Pakistanis is an attempt to cloud Christmas celebrations, he said. We stay united and steadfast to respond against such heinous attempts. Last year s Easter Day attack in a public park that killed more than 70 people in the eastern city of Lahore was claimed by a Taliban splinter group previously associated with Islamic State. The United States strongly condemned the shocking and brutal attack on innocent worshippers, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan David Hale said in a statement. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Ramaphosa, Dlamini-Zuma formally nominated to run for president of ANC;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress formally nominated Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the only candidates to run for the presidency of the party at a conference on Sunday. The official nominations, announced by an election official, come after months of campaigning across Africa s most industrialized economy set the stage for the start of voting by 4,776 delegates in the tight race between the two candidates. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Children serenade pope on 81st birthday;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims Pakistan church attack: Amaq news agency;CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed an attack on a church in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Sunday which killed at least five people, the group s Amaq news agency said in an online statement. It said two Islamic State members had carried out the attack but provided no evidence for the claim. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan says Turkey aims to open embassy in East Jerusalem;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey intends to open an embassy in East Jerusalem, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, days after leading calls at a summit of Muslim leaders for the world to recognize it as the capital of Palestine. It was not clear how he would carry out the move, as Israel controls all of Jerusalem and calls the city its indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of a future state they seek to be in East Jerusalem, which Israel took in a 1967 war and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally. The Muslim nation summit was a response to U.S. President Donald Trump s Dec. 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. His move broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that the city s status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Erdogan said in a speech to members of his AK Party in the southern province of Karaman that Turkey s consulate general in Jerusalem was already represented by an ambassador. God willing, the day is close when officially, with God s permission, we will open our embassy there, Erdogan said. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third holiest shrine as well as Judaism s Western Wall - both in the eastern sector - and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Foreign embassies in Israel, including Turkey s, are located in Tel Aviv, reflecting Jerusalem s unresolved status. A communique issued after Wednesday s summit of more than 50 Muslim countries, including U.S. allies, said they considered Trump s move to be a declaration that Washington was withdrawing from its role as sponsor of peace in the Middle East. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fifty Chinese couples marry in mass ceremony in Sri Lanka;COLOMBO (Reuters) - Fifty couples from China tied the knot in the Sri Lankan capital on Sunday in a mass wedding ceremony, conducted in the island s Buddhist traditions, as the island aims to woo more tourists. The couples included newly-weds as well as already married couples aiming to re-dedicate their marriages, officials said. Some were dressed in the traditional attire of Sri Lanka s mountainous central region while others wore Chinese or Western clothes at the main ceremony in the central Colombo area. There ll be many more couples who want to come here and celebrate true marriages from China and other parts of the world, Tourism Minister John Amaratunga told Reuters. It ll be an opening to say Sri Lanka is the best destination for foreigners. Chinese tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka have been rising and now account for around 13 percent of the two million tourists a year who visit the country, second only to the number of Indian visitors, official data show. Tourism accounts for around 5 percent of gross domestic product and arrivals this year have already reached about 2.3 million. China is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Sri Lanka for major infrastructure projects and Colombo is one of the major partners in Beijing s One Belt One Road project. This is a beautiful country. We love the traditional ceremony, bridegroom Wei Ying Nang, 28, told Reuters after the wedding, standing beside his wife, who was dressed in a white wedding frock while he wore a suit. Alice Wu, dressed in a golden sari from Sri Lanka s mountainous region, said she was interested in the culture since she studied traditional Kandyan dancing in Sri Lanka three years ago. Her husband, 25-year old Henry Liu, wore a traditional red costume resembling the dress of the ancient kings of Sri Lanka. ;worldnews;17/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia expects de Mistura to visit Moscow in 2017: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Monday that U.N. mediator on Syria Staffan de Mistura might visit Moscow before the end of the year, RIA news agency cited Gatilov as saying. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israeli challenges German court ruling on Kuwait air travel ban;BERLIN (Reuters) - An Israeli man appealed on Monday against a German court s ruling upholding Kuwait Airways right to ban him from boarding a flight due to his citizenship, a legal decision that triggered sharp criticism from German officials and Jewish groups. The appeal argues that the ruling accepted a racist Kuwaiti law and allowed the airline to override German laws requiring that airlines transport any passenger with valid travel documents, according to the Lawfare Project, which filed the appeal. We cannot allow our laws to be subverted by the state-sponsored racism of other nations, said Nathan Gelbart, the German attorney for the group, which fights anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli discrimination around the world. He said the decision by the Frankfurt district court had allowed anti-Semitic discrimination to be imported into our country and helped whitewash and sanitize it. Kuwait Airways has not commented on the decision. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top officials have vowed to fight anti-Semitism and xenophobia with the full force of the law in recent weeks after protests that included the burning of Israeli flags. Merkel s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany had a historic responsibility to stand by Israel and Jews everywhere. Anti-Semitism remains a sensitive issue in Germany, one of Israel s closest allies, more than 70 years after the end of the Nazi-era Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed. The Frankfurt court last month ruled Kuwait Airways had the right to refuse to carry the Israeli man on a flight to Bangkok that began in Frankfurt and included a stopover in Kuwait City since it was abiding by the laws of Kuwait, a country that does not recognize the state of Israel. It said Germany s anti-discrimination law applied only in cases of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic background or religion, not citizenship. The ruling was sharply criticized by German government officials and the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which said the Kuwaiti law was reminiscent of Nazi policies. Three German state parliaments in Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, have passed resolutions condemning the airline for its policy. Acting Transportation Minister Christian Schmidt also raised concerns about the issue in a letter to Kuwaiti officials, saying it was fundamentally unacceptable to exclude citizens because of their nationality, according to the Lawfare Project. No comment was immediately available from Schmidt s office. A foreign ministry spokesman said Germany s ambassador to Kuwait had met Kuwaiti officials on Nov. 28 to deliver the letter and discuss the issue. A spate of anti-Semitic acts in Germany in recent weeks, including the burning of Israeli flags, have triggered concern and calls by top officials to put more emphasis on the Holocaust in integration courses for migrants. Rights groups say anti-Semitism and violent acts have increased in recent years amid growing support for far-right political groups and the influx of over a million migrants from Syria and other countries that are at war with Israel. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kurdish protesters set fire to party offices in northern Iraq;SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurdish protesters, angered by years of austerity and unpaid public sector salaries, set fire to the offices of political parties near the city of Sulaimaniyah on Monday, demanding that Iraq s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) quit. Social media footage showed a building belonging to the ruling Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) on fire and a spokesman for its coalition partner in government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told Reuters an office belonging to them was also set ablaze by protesters. Two other party offices were torched, local media reported. Reuters was able to independently verify only those fires at the KDP and PUK offices, but Iraqi state television reported that the offices of several Kurdish political parties had been set on fire, without naming the parties. Tension has been high in the region since the central government in Baghdad imposed tough measures when the KRG unilaterally held an independence referendum on Sept. 25 and Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede. The move, in defiance of Baghdad, also alarmed neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. At least 3,000 Kurdish demonstrators had gathered in Sulaimaniyah for the protests on Monday against the KRG. Men and women carried signs in Kurdish, Arabic, and English telling the executive and legislative branches of the KRG that they wanted them gone, holding up red cards to further make their point. Stop 26 years of robbery and wrong decisions, one read. Teachers, hospital workers and other public sector employees demanded the regional government pay their wages. Some said they had not been paid in more than three years. These protests are different from earlier ones because the Kurdish public are not asking the government for something, they are asking the executive and legislature to leave, said protester Kameran Gulpi. In the decade following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kurdistan insulated itself against violence plaguing the rest of the country and enjoyed an economic boom fueled by rising Iraqi oil revenues, of which the region received a share. The bubble began to deflate in early 2014 when the Baghdad central government slashed funds to the KRG after it built its own oil pipeline to Turkey in pursuit of economic independence. After the September referendum, the Iraqi government responded by seizing Kurdish-held Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin-backed broadcaster launches French language news channel in wary Paris;PARIS (Reuters) - The Kremlin-funded Russian broadcaster RT was due to launch its French language news channel on Monday night amid heavy suspicion by the government and President Emmanuel Macron who has dubbed it an organ of propaganda . Macron has led official criticism of RT, formerly known as Russia Today , and openly accused it of sowing disinformation about him via its website and social media during the presidential election earlier this year which he won. RT has denied the allegations and RT France s chief executive Xenia Fedorova, speaking at the channel s new offices in a western Paris suburb, again brushed off criticism, saying that RT stood for news not covered by mainstream media . The channel was being cold-shouldered by Macron and the channel had still not been granted accreditation to cover news conferences inside the French presidential Elysee palace, Fedorova said on Monday a few hours before the channel was due to start broadcasting. There was just one example of when we actually managed to visit. That was actually during the Trump visit to Paris, she added, referring to the visit by the U.S. president last in July. A spokesman for the French government said last week that the current administration was concerned by encroachment on freedom of expression but highlighted that RT was owned by a foreign power. Fedorova brushed off the remarks, citing other well-known international news channels that receive public funding such as BBC World, France 24 or Al Jazeera. RT stands for news that are not covered by the mainstream media, she said. We will keep the platform (open) to perspectives and opinions that are either not covered or silenced. RT France has planned a budget of 20 million euros ($24 million) for its launch and aims to recruit a total of 150 people by the end next year. By comparison, BFM TV, France s number one news channel, started with 15 million euros and now has an annual budget of about 60 million euros. RT s first international channel was launched in December 2005. The network broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish and its programs are viewed by 70 million people in 38 countries, it says. The landscape for news channels is already crowded in France, with four round-the-clock local news channels. Unlike its rivals, RT will not reach all French households via the digital terrestrial television technology. Rather, it can be viewed only online or by subscribers of Iliad s broadband services. Bouygues Telecom is also due to distribute RT France from the end of next February. The two biggest French telecom operators, Orange and Altice s SFR Group, are still in discussions with RT France, the firms said, underscoring the low audience level that RT is likely to have in its first few days. Russia s international news outlets have come under the spotlight since 2016 after being accused of meddling in the U.S. presidential election. Russia has denied interfering in the election. In October, Twitter accused RT and Russian news agency Sputnik of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election and banned them from buying ads on its network. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;5-Star leader says Italy should quit euro unless rules change;ROME (Reuters) - The leader of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio, said on Monday that Italy should quit the euro zone unless it manages to change the bloc s rules on public finances. 5-Star, which leads in opinion polls ahead of an election expected in March, says if it wins power it will lobby Italy s EU partners to loosen the so-called Fiscal Compact which imposes steep budget cuts for high-debt countries like Italy. The maverick party threatens to hold a referendum on Italy s euro membership unless it is allowed to boost public investment and raise the budget deficit above the current limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product. Di Maio has recently softened the party s anti-euro rhetoric, saying 5-Star is pro-Europe and calling the euro referendum a last resort to be used only if Italy is unable to win any concessions. If we should arrive at the referendum, which for me is a last resort because first I want to go to Europe and try to change a series of rules ... it s clear that I would vote to leave, because it would mean Europe hasn t listened to us on anything he said in a television interview on Monday. But today I see an opportunity for Europe (to reform) , he told the private station La7. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the leader of the ruling Democratic Party (PD), said in a tweet that this time Di Maio has been clear... he would vote to leave the euro. I say it would be madness for the Italian economy. The PD, which has split under Renzi s leadership, lags 5-Star by some 4 percentage points in most opinion polls, but no party or coalition is seen winning an outright majority at the election, which is expected to result in a hung parliament. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syria's Assad calls U.S.-backed militias 'traitors';BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday described U.S.-backed militias in eastern Syria as traitors , his office said in an online statement. In a meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin at Syria s Hmeimim base, Assad also welcomed a United Nations role in Syrian elections as long as it was linked with Syria s sovereignty, his office cited him as saying. Assad has repeatedly vowed to take back all of Syria. A U.S.-led international coalition against Islamic State has given military support to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias that now controls nearly a quarter of Syria. The SDF said Assad s comments were no surprise, accusing his government of sowing strife and sectarianism. We assert once again that we will go forward without hesitation in chasing terrorism, it said in a statement. This regime ... is itself a definition of treachery that, if Syrians do not confront it, will lead to partitioning the country, which our forces will not allow in any form, the Kurdish-led SDF added. Rogozin was quoted by Russia s RIA news agency as saying after the meeting with Assad that Russia would be the only country to take part in rebuilding Syrian energy facilities. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar government says case against Reuters journalists can proceed;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s civilian President Htin Kyaw, a close ally of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has authorized the police to proceed with a case against two detained Reuters reporters accused of violating the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, a senior government spokesman said. Journalists Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested last Tuesday evening after they were invited to dine with police officers on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon. The Ministry of Home Affairs has already submitted the case to the Office of the President, Zaw Htay, spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi, said by phone late on Sunday. He added that the president s office had given approval for the case to go ahead. Zaw Htay could not be reached on Monday to clarify whether Htin Kyaw or Suu Kyi had been personally involved in the decision, or if other officials had signed off on the president s behalf. Suu Kyi, head of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), is barred from the presidency under a constitution written by the military. But she effectively runs the country in the role of state counselor . Approval from the president s office is needed before court proceedings can begin in a case brought under the Official Secrets Act. Section 13 of the Act states: No Court shall take cognizance of any offense under this Act unless upon complaint made by order of, or under authority from, the President of the Union. A number of governments, including the United States, Canada and Britain, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as well as Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler and a host of journalists and human rights groups have criticized the arrests as an attack on press freedom and called on Myanmar to release the two men. Zaw Htay said the journalists legal rights were being respected. Your reporters are protected by the rule of the law, he said. All I can say is the government can guarantee the rule of law. But two senior figures in the NLD on Monday joined the criticism of how the two men are being treated. Nyan Win, a member of the NLD s central executive committee and one of Suu Kyi s defense lawyers during her years of house arrest under junta rule, said it was unfair that the families of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were not allowed to contact them or be told where they are being held. He said the police were being very secretive and called for openness , although said the NLD was unable to do anything about the issue as it was not being kept informed. Although an NLD-led civilian government took office in April last year the police and home ministry, which are driving the case, remain under the control of the military. Win Htein, another senior figure in the NLD, who was also critical of the journalists detention, suggested they had probably been set up by the police. In my opinion this is a trap, he said. They met with two policemen and then they were arrested somewhere else with the documents. Police Lieutenant Colonel Myint Htwe, of the Yangon Police Division, had no comment when asked about the criticism of the men s detention. Asked on Mizzima Television what he would do for the detained journalists, Information Minister Pe Myint said: When I know all the facts of the current case, I will work to do what I can. Pe Myint is a former editor of the People s Age in Yangon and was Wa Lone s boss when the journalist worked at the paper in his first job as a reporter. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown on militants in western Rakhine state. The Ministry of Information said last week that they had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media , and released a photo of the pair in handcuffs. It said they were being investigated under the 1923 Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The ministry said at the same time that two policemen, Police Captain Moe Yan Naing and Police Sergeant Khin Maung Lin, had also been arrested under the same act. No details have been released on whether a case against them is also proceeding. The authorities have not allowed the journalists any contact with their families, a lawyer or Reuters since their arrest. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) called on the authorities to immediately disclose the whereabouts of the pair. All detainees must be allowed prompt access to a lawyer and to family members, said Frederick Rawski, the ICJ s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, in a statement on Monday. Authorities are bound to respect these rights in line with Myanmar law and the State s international law obligations. Police told Wa Lone s wife on Thursday that the reporters were taken from Htaunt Kyant police station in north Yangon to an undisclosed location by an investigation team shortly after their arrest. They added the reporters would be brought back to the station in two to three days at most . It is now six days since they were detained and there has been no further update on their whereabouts. Lieutenant Colonel Myint Htwe and a second senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Min Han of the Criminal Investigation Department, said on Monday they did not know where the journalists were being held. You don t need to worry for their safety, said Lt Col Myint Htwe. The investigative team will proceed according to the law. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan rebels accuse army of attack as peace talks restart;ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - South Sudanese rebels accused the government army of attacking one of their bases overnight as a new round of peace talks between the warring sides opened in the Ethiopian capital on Monday. Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said government troops attacked a rebel base in the town of Lasu in the south of the country late on Sunday. They are in the IO base, he said, referring to the name of the rebel group. Army spokesmen were not immediately available to comment when called by Reuters on Monday afternoon. The talks in Addis Ababa have been convened by the East African bloc IGAD and are aimed at bringing the warring sides back to the negotiating table after a 2015 peace deal collapsed last year during heavy fighting in the capital, Juba. The war began in 2013 between soldiers of President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and his former vice president, Riek Machar, a Nuer. Tens of thousands of people have died and a third of South Sudan s 12 million population have fled their homes. Highlighting the widespread nature of the violence, army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang earlier said four aid workers from the French organization Solidarites International had been kidnapped a day earlier by the rebels near the western city of Raja. The state government, based in Raja, said in a statement eight civilians had been killed and the four aid workers kidnapped in what it described as an ambush by the rebels. The French organization said it had lost contact with three members of its team on Saturday. It gave no indication of their fate and it was not immediately clear why it gave a different number of those involved. An IO rebel statement said: The SPLA IO forces also rescued four humanitarian staff ... they are currently safe and sound with our forces around Raja and will be handed over ... as soon as possible. It was not immediately clear what the rebels said they had rescued the aid workers from. The war has mutated from a two-way fight into a fragmented conflict, making peace more elusive, the top United Nations peacekeeper in the country told Reuters earlier this year. Diplomats and analysts question whether the will to end the fighting exists, as Kiir s government holds the military upper hand and rebel leader Machar is under house arrest in South Africa. [L3N1NG5D4] Machar sent representatives to the Ethiopian capital for the talks. Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn voiced strong criticism of the warring sides at the forum in Addis Ababa. ... More than half of the people of South Sudan are either refugees in neighboring countries, internally displaced within South Sudan or suffering from food insecurity in their own village, he said. It is equally clear that all this suffering is taking place because you the leaders of South Sudan have repeatedly failed to talk to each other, to negotiate, to be tolerant, to make compromises, he added. Today, I appeal to you to stop this intransigence. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigerian oil union PENGASSAN suspends strike: union president;ABUJA (Reuters) - A major Nigerian oil union suspended a nationwide strike on Monday, the same day it began, after a dispute resolution ended with a domestic oil and gas company recalling laid off staff, the union s president said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. citizen recaptured after Bali jail break;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian police have recaptured a U.S. citizen who escaped a week ago from an overcrowded prison on the holiday island of Bali, the jail s second breakout of foreign inmates this year. Cristian Beasley from California was rearrested on Sunday, Badung Police chief Yudith Satria Hananta said, without providing further details. Beasley was a suspect in crimes related to narcotics but had not been sentenced when he escaped from Kerobokan prison in Bali last week. The 32-year-old is believed to have cut through bars in the ceiling of his cell before scaling a perimeter wall of the prison in an area being refurbished. The Kerobokan prison, about 10 km (six miles) from the main tourist beaches in the Kuta area, often holds foreigners facing drug-related charges. Representatives of Beasley could not immediately be reached for comment. In June, an Australian, a Bulgarian, an Indian and a Malaysian tunneled to freedom about 12 meters (13 yards) under Kerobokan prison s walls. The Indian and the Bulgarian were caught soon after in neighboring East Timor, but Australian Shaun Edward Davidson and Malaysian Tee Kok King remain at large. Davidson has taunted authorities by saying he was enjoying life in various parts of the world, in purported posts on Facebook. Kerobokan has housed a number of well-known foreign drug convicts, including Australian Schappelle Corby, whose 12-1/2-year sentence for marijuana smuggling got huge media attention. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Eurosceptics baulk as May pitches status quo Brexit transition;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament her plan on Monday for a Brexit transition period with broadly the same access to European Union markets but was met with scepticism from pro-Brexit lawmakers fearful of a watered-down EU exit. May secured an agreement with EU leaders last week to move previously-deadlocked talks forward onto the topic of interim and long-term trading arrangements. On Monday, she reported back to parliament on those talks, setting out the framework of a roughly two-year implementation period designed to smooth Britain s EU exit and provide clarity for businesses and citizens. This will help give certainty to employers and families that we are going to deliver a smooth Brexit, May said. She added that negotiating guidelines agreed last week point to a shared desire with the EU to make rapid progress on a deal. The outline of the transition period that May presented is consistent with plans she has previously set out and largely in line with what Brussels wants, but remains subject to negotiation. During this strictly time-limited implementation period which we will now begin to negotiate, we would not be in the single market or the customs union, as we will have left the European Union, May said. But we would propose that our access to one another s markets would continue as now, while we prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin our future partnership. May said during the interim period, Britain wants to begin registering the arrival of EU citizens in the country in preparation for a new immigration system, and would hope to agree, and even sign, trade deals with non-EU states. But the plan was not universally accepted by lawmakers in May s Conservative Party, which is deeply divided over the best route out of the bloc. Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of several pro-Brexit Conservatives to express concern, called on May to reject the EU s negotiating guidelines because they would make Britain no more than a vassal state, a colony, a serf of the European Union. May is reliant on the backing of all members of her party to put her Brexit plans into action, having lost her parliamentary majority in an ill-judged snap election earlier this year which left her needing the support of a small Northern Irish party. Last week May s fragility was exposed by the rebellion of 11 largely pro-European Conservative lawmakers in a parliamentary vote on Brexit legislation that led to an embarrassing defeat. The rebels have since drawn harsh criticism from some party members, and received threats of violence online. We are dealing with questions of great significance to our country s future, so it is natural that there are many strongly held views on all sides of this chamber, May said. But there can never be a place for the threats of violence and intimidation against some members that we have seen in recent days. Earlier on Monday, May met key ministers to discuss the even thornier issue of what the country s long-term relationship with the EU should be - the first time since the June 2016 vote to leave that she has broached the topic with cabinet members. A full cabinet discussion on the so-called end state of the Brexit talks is then due on Tuesday. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As Catalan vote looms, jailed leader offers olive branch to Spain;MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) - The jailed leader of Catalonia s main pro-independence party has backed away from demands for unilateral secession from Spain, days before a regional election that polls suggest will produce a hung parliament. The independence drive has tipped Spain into its worst political crisis since the return of democracy in the 1970s, dividing opinion in the region, denting an economic rebound and prompting a business exodus to other parts of the country. In reply to written questions from Reuters passed to him in prison where he is being held on allegations of rebellion and sedition, Oriol Junqueras struck a conciliatory tone. He wrote that he would continue to pursue independence if he became Catalonia s next president, but also build bridges and shake hands with representatives of the Spanish state. I can assure you that we are democrats before we are separatists and that the aim (of gaining independence) does not always justify the means, he said in comments that appeared to drop his party s earlier demand for unilateral secession. Junqueras Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left) party is tipped to become the largest separatist force in parliament in Thursday s ballot, but surveys suggest neither the pro-independence nor the pro-unity camp will win a majority. He was deputy leader of the Catalan government that was sacked in October after the regional assembly unilaterally declared independence following a referendum that central authorities had deemed illegal. Madrid also dissolved the assembly and called fresh elections. The Spanish justice system s actions against the region s leaders has since then hamstrung the pro-independence camp and further muddied the electoral waters before Thursday s vote. Catalonia s ex-president Carles Puigdemont is campaigning from self-imposed exile in Brussels and Junqueras doing so from jail along with several other politicians. It is unclear if many of those likely to be elected will be able to attend parliament. At separatist rallies across the capital Barcelona in recent days, many supporters appeared to recognize that forcing independence without Spain s consent was no longer an option. Instead, many favored pressuring Madrid into talks and gaining European Union approval for a negotiated split. We can t continue unilaterally. We might lose more than we would gain, said Carles Ortega, a 58-year-old consultant, at a rally at a sports center in Barcelona s outskirts that Puigdemont addressed via videolink. Final polls for the election expected to attract a record turnout showed Esquerra running neck-and-neck with pro-unity party Ciudadanos (Citizens), with both far short of the 68 seats needed to hold a majority. Esquerra previously formed a coalition government with Puigdemont s own center-right party, which leads the Junts per Catalunya platform (Together for Catalonia) which is seen coming third in the vote. The key for unionist and separatist factions will be winning over the regional offshoot of anti-austerity party Podemos, which supports unity but wants a referendum. Its leader favors a left-wing alliance across parties that both back and reject independence. There is a rising risk that pro-independence parties fall a bit short and need to include Podemos and we get a softer push for independence within the institutions, Peter Ceretti, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said. The movement would rumble on, he said, and press Madrid on long-held demands for it to return more of Catalonia s tax revenue and recognize the region as a nation, rather than a nationality, in the Spanish constitution. Many Catalans worry about how the independence drive has obscured all other social issues and could harm the wealthy region s position as Spain s primary driver of economic growth and a magnet for foreign investment. Junqueras said if he was elected regional president he would pay heed to voters who opposed independence. I would tell them everybody has to be respected and that differences always have to be resolved in a democratic way, he said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China defends trade with U.S. as Trump set to brand it a competitor;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Foreign Ministry on Monday defended trade with the United States as a win-win scenario ahead of a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump laying out a new national security strategy that makes clear that China is a competitor. Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping while also demanding that Beijing increase pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program and changes in trade practices to make them more favorable to the United States. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was unable to comment on the strategy until it was unveiled. But in principle, China hopes the strategy can play a constructive role in promoting world peace and stability and promoting China-U.S. strategic mutual trust, Hua told a daily news conference. The essence of China-U.S. trade and economic ties is mutually beneficial and win-win, directly and indirectly supporting 2.6 million U.S. jobs, she added. In 2015, the profits of U.S. firms that invested in China reached $36.2 billion, and China will continue to support trade and investment liberalization, Hua said. We are willing to work hard with the U.S. side to dedicate ourselves to building a robust, stable and healthy trade and economic relationship, she added. That was in the interests of both sides and the expectation of the international community, Hua said. The national security strategy to be rolled out in Trump s speech, should not be seen as a bid to contain China but rather to offer a clear-eyed look at the challenges it poses, said U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump made his first visit as president to China last month, where he lauded his meetings on trade and North Korea as very productive . Washington has refrained from pushing harder on trade because it needs China s cooperation on North Korea, though Xi, at least in public when Trump was in Beijing, went no further than reiterating China s determination to achieve denuclearization through talks. China and the United States have also repeatedly clashed over trade issues, including state support for Chinese firms and intellectual property rights violations in China. On Friday, China s finance ministry said it would cut export taxes on some steel products and ditch those for sales abroad of steel wire, rod and bars from Jan. 1, stirring concern in the United States and Europe that the world s top steel producer may be looking to sell its excess product abroad. It follows a ministerial level G20 meeting in Berlin last month, where China and the United States remained at odds over how to tackle excess steel capacity. The global steel sector is worth about $900 billion a year. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German ex-rightist jailed for plotting Islamist attack on police;BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court sentenced a 27-year-old German supporter of Islamic State to three years and three months in prison on Monday for plotting to lure police or soldiers into a trap and kill them with a home-made bomb. The ruling came with German authorities on high alert ahead of Tuesday s anniversary of an attack last year in which a failed Tunisian asylum-seeker plowed a truck into crowds at an outdoor Christmas market and killed 12 people. Prosecutors said the suspect, identified only as Sascha L., had carried out two successful tests of a home-made explosive device in his hometown in January. An inquiry found two videos of the accused pledging allegiance to Islamic State s leader. However, the court ruled on Monday that there was no evidence that the man had a personal connection with the Islamist militia or that he was financially supported by the militia, German broadcaster NDR reported. NDR said the court granted him leniency since he cooperated with authorities after his arrest and confessed his plans. German magazine Der Spiegel had reported that the man was part of the far-right scene in the past before converting to Salafism, an ultra-conservative Islamist creed. The man, who was arrested in February, admitted planning an attack. Chemicals that could be used to make explosive devices were found during a search of his home in the town of Northeim in central Germany. Three men charged as accomplices of the convicted man also appeared before the court. Two were convicted, with one sentenced to three years probation and the other to 100 hours of community service. The third person was acquitted. Last week, German police raided nine locations in Berlin and the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt in an investigation of four people suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated attack. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgaria arrests gang suspected of smuggling migrants to Western Europe;SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgarian authorities have detained a gang suspected of smuggling migrants from Iraq, Iran and Syria to Western Europe from Turkey, prosecutors said on Monday. The gang of three Kurds and four Bulgarians was charged with smuggling offences after they transported migrants from Turkey into Serbia and Romania, both countries that border Bulgaria. One member of the group was still not detained, prosecutors said. South Eastern Europe was a key point of transit for more than 1 million migrants from the Middle East and Africa who came to Europe in 2015. Many came to escape conflict in Syria. Very few of them, however, stayed in Bulgaria, the European Union s poorest state. Instead, most prefer to journey onwards to wealthier western EU countries like Germany and Sweden. The influx provoked a political crisis for the European Union. Flows of migrants have diminished since then, though the bloc is yet to agree on a migration policy. The evidence gathered indicates that the final destination of the migrants were Western Europe s countries, a spokesman for the prosecutors office told Reuters, adding that some migrants came from countries other than Iraq, Iran and Syria. The migrants paid 2,000 euros ($2,360.60) each for their transportation from Turkey to the Bulgarian capital Sofia. Bulgaria built a fence on its border with Turkey and has bolstered its border controls to prevent illegal migration. Last month Bulgarian authorities smashed another gang suspected of smuggling migrants into Western Europe. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt security forces kill five suspected militants in north: ministry;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces on Monday killed five suspected militants and arrested 10 others in raids in the north of the country, the interior ministry said in a statement. The suspects had planned attacks against public infrastructure and Christians and had links with militants in North Sinai, it said. The raids took place in Alexandria and Qalyubiya provinces. Egypt has regularly carried out arrest raids and reported the killing of militant suspects in recent months as it fights a years-old Islamist insurgency in the remote North Sinai region. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the army and security forces to restore order in Sinai within three months after an attack on a mosque in November that was the deadliest in Egypt s modern history. Islamic State is suspected to have conducted the attack in which more than 300 worshippers died. Security forces have also faced attacks from other Islamists in the west of the country, near the border with Libya. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moldova recalls ambassador from Moscow as dispute escalates;KIEV/CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldova recalled its ambassador to Russia for consultations in response to the harassment and intimidation by Russian authorities of Moldovan politicians and officials, the Moldovan foreign ministry said on Monday. Moldova and Russia have been embroiled in a series of rows this year, including tit-for-tat expulsions of each other s diplomats in May and Moldova declaring the Russian deputy prime minister persona non grata in August. The Chisinau government says its officials are being mistreated partly to derail a Moldovan investigation into an alleged Russian-led money laundering operation. Russia has accused Moldova of some openly anti-Russian actions . In announcing the ambassador s recall, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website: We will look for ways to overcome the current situation so that in the future such actions are avoided, which can spoil Moldovan-Russian relations, which the Moldovan side wants to be friendly, trusting and based on respect for each other. Ex-Soviet Moldova is politically divided between a pro-Western government, which favors closer integration with the European Union, and Russian-backed President Igor Dodon. In December the head of Moldova s ruling party, Vlad Plahotniuc, accused Russian authorities of harassing him and other officials with dozens of bogus legal cases intended to put him on international law enforcement watch lists. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel strikes Hamas targets in Gaza after Palestinian rocket attacks;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said it attacked a Hamas training compound in Gaza on Monday in response to rocket strikes from the Palestinian enclave, which have surged since U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital on Dec 6. Neither side reported any casualties in the overnight shelling exchange, which occurred days before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visits Israel and neighboring Egypt, which also borders Gaza and is involved in its internal politics. Militants in Gaza, territory controlled by the Hamas Islamist group, have launched more than a dozen rockets into southern Israel over the last two weeks, the most intensive attacks since a seven-week-long Gaza war in 2014. Two rockets were fired late on Sunday, one of them exploding inside an Israeli border community and the other hitting an open area, the military said. Another rocket launched early on Monday fell short inside Gaza, it said. Three structures in a Hamas training camp were hit in the Israeli counter-strike, the military said. Hamas usually evacuates such facilities when tensions rise, and Israel s choice of the low-profile target appeared to signal a desire to avoid more serious confrontation with the group. Israel does not seek escalation, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said on Army Radio. But Zeev Elkin, another member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s security cabinet, said in an interview with the radio station that Israel s military response would have to be harshened if the rocket fire did not stop. Israeli officials have blamed the fire on smaller militant groups in Gaza and called on Hamas to rein them in. Should Hamas fail to do so, both Shaked and Elkin said, Israel could eventually target the group s leadership for attack. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians may seek U.N. Assembly support if U.S. vetoes Jerusalem resolution: envoy;DUBAI (Reuters) - The Palestinian leadership may turn to the U.N. General Assembly if Washington vetoes a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to reaffirm Jerusalem s status as unresolved, after President Donald Trump s decision to recognize it as Israel s capital. The Palestinian United Nations envoy raised this option in remarks published in Saudi daily Arab News on Monday, ahead of a Security Council vote on an Egyptian-drafted resolution about Jerusalem s status which the United States is expected to veto. The draft says any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded . Trump s Dec. 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and to move the U.S. Embassy to the city has provoked widespread anger and protests among Palestinians as well as broad international criticism, including from top U.S. allies. Israel says Jerusalem is its indivisible capital. It captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move never recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state they seek in territory Israel captured a half century ago. Arab News quoted Ambassador Riyad Mansour as saying that the Palestinians and Egyptians have worked closely with Security Council members while drafting the resolution to ensure that it gets overwhelming support. The Europeans in particular asked us to avoid terms like denounce and condemn, and not to mention the U.S. by name, it quoted Mansour as saying. We acceded to their request but kept the active clauses rejecting all changes to Jerusalem and the reaffirmation of previous decisions. Israel has long accused the United Nations of bias against it in its conflict with the Palestinians and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump s move again on Sunday. The Palestinians have the option of invoking a rarely-used article of the U.N. Charter that calls for parties to a dispute not to cast a veto, Arab News said. But, it said, they are more likely to take the issue to the General Assembly under Resolution 377A, known as the Uniting for Peace resolution. Resolution 377A was passed in 1950 and used to authorize the deployment of U.S. troops to fight in the Korean war. Mansour said Palestinians resorted to the Uniting for Peace resolution in the 1990s after Israel began building a settlement on Jabal Abut Ghnaim, a hilltop on occupied West Bank land south of Jerusalem, but left that session in suspension. However, they could seek a resumption of the session, he said. If the resolution is vetoed, the Palestinian delegation can send a letter to the U.N. Secretary General and ask him to resume the emergency session, he said, according to Arab News. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Scuffles, flares as Albania picks interim prosecutor;TIRANA (Reuters) - Opposition lawmakers threw a flare at Albania s interim prosecutor general as she took the oath of office in parliament on Monday while their supporters scuffled with police outside. Several protesters and policemen were hurt as the crowd tried to get inside the chamber, egged on by one lawmaker. It later dispersed. Arta Marku, 41, was elected as interim prosecutor general with 69 votes from the ruling Socialist Party. Albania is rebuilding its judiciary to enable it to fight corruption but the body to elect a prosecutor general has yet to be set up because the reform has dragged on. Under pressure from the European Union to crack down on crime and graft, the Socialists chose to elect an interim prosecutor. The opposition was enraged because it says a prosecutor should be installed once some 800 judges and prosecutors are vetted and elected with three-fifths of votes in parliament. Democratic Party head Lulzim Basha accused Prime Minister Edi Rama of a constitutional putsch in an effort to protect corrupt officials, including his former interior minister. We shall not become the facade of this criminal autocracy, Basha told the crowd. He called for protests in January. The Socialists say the opposition Democrats rejected dialogue despite several offers this month. Electing a prosecutor with our votes was legitimate, constitutional, and this was confirmed by the U.S. and EU teams assisting the reform of the judiciary, Rama told reporters. The European Commission has made it clear to Albania it wants to see results in the fight against crime and corruption before asks its members to approve accession talks with Tirana. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Six Ugandan MPs ejected in rowdy debate to extend rule of aging Museveni;KAMPALA (Reuters) - A move to change Uganda s constitution to allow President Yoweri Museveni to rule beyond the age of 75 provoked rowdy scenes in parliament on Monday in which six legislators were ejected from the chamber. Museveni, 73, has ruled the east African country for 31 years. Under the current age cap, the constitution would bar him from standing again as president in 2021. Parliament on Monday began debating a bill, presented by a Museveni loyalist, that proposes removing the stipulation a presidential candidate cannot be more than 75 years old, something which opposition activists and rights groups say opens the door for him to be president for life. Religious leaders and even some MPs from Museveni s National Resistance Movement (NRM) party have criticized the proposed bill, which needs two thirds of all voting house members to pass. But the NRM is expected to easily muster enough votes. Protests against the move have been put down with detentions, teargas and live bullets, leaving at least two dead in October. On Monday, debate proceeded amid heavy deployments of police and military personnel at parliament. After jeering and heckling erupted in the chamber, the six lawmakers were suspended for a single session and ordered out for undermining the authority of the speaker [and] undermining decorum in the house, parliament spokesman Chris Obore told Reuters. The MPs had heckled speaker Rebecca Kadaga and ignored her orders to be seated, Obore said. House proceedings were adjourned for several hours after the MPs were sent out and resumed later in the afternoon to hear a report from a parliamentary committee that conducted public hearings on the bill. A report by the majority of the MPs on the committee endorsed the proposal to scrap the age cap and also recommended that the length of a presidential term be extended to seven from the current five years. Some legislators on the committee disagreed and wrote a minority report. It s our view that the proposal...only seeks to promote life presidency as well as negate modern practices of constitutionalism, MP Monicah Amoding, who read the minority report, said. In the mostly acrimonious debate, legislators often shouted each other down and jeered. Opposition MPs, who dominated the debate, tried unsuccessfully to stall the process. The speaker adjourned the session to Tuesday after she said the chamber s microphones were experiencing a glitch. In late September, lawmakers brawled in parliament for two consecutive days as MPs opposed to the bill attempted to filibuster it but were defeated. At least 25 MPs opposed to the proposed constitutional amendment to prolong Museveni s tenure were forcibly ejected on orders of the speaker for involvement in fighting. Museveni initially won broad international support for his embrace of market economics and restoring political order after years of turmoil in the east African country. But in recent years he has come under a growing spotlight for a range of rights violations, corruption and his unwillingness to give up power. Democracy advocates have expressed alarm at the reemergence of a trend by leaders in the region to seek to change laws, delay elections or use other tactics to extend their tenures. In Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo such maneuvers have provoked instability. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar military says investigating mass grave in Rakhine state;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s army said on Monday that security forces have discovered a mass grave on the edge of a village in Rakhine State, and have launched an investigation. A violent crackdown by the security forces in response to attacks by militants in the state has caused around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh in recent months. In a statement posted on the Facebook page of the military s commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the army said the unidentified bodies had been found at the cemetery in the village of Inn Din, about 50 km (30 miles) north of state capital Sittwe. It did not say how many bodies were uncovered. A preliminary investigation was done by the security forces following a report, by someone who asked not to be named, of people being killed and buried, the army said. As a result of the investigations, unidentified bodies were found at the Inn Din village cemetery and a detailed investigation is being conducted to get to the truth, according to the statement on Facebook, which the army often uses to make announcements. When contacted by Reuters, military spokesman Colonel Myat Min Oo declined to give further details. The village is in Maungdaw township, one of the areas worst affected by the violence that has prompted the United Nations top human rights official to allege that Myanmar s security forces may have committed genocide against the Rohingya. Myanmar s armed forces launched what they termed clearance operations in northern Rakhine, where many of the stateless Muslim minority lived, after Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base on Aug. 25. Rights monitors have accused troops of atrocities, including killings, mass rape and arson during those operations. The United States has said it amounted to ethnic cleansing . The Myanmar military has said its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities. Myanmar s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced fierce international criticism for failing to do more to protect the Rohingya. The civilian government, which has no control over the military, has said the army was engaged in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. It has promised to investigate allegations of abuses in Rakhine if it is given evidence. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kurdish authorities say Iraq forces preparing fresh attack;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somali president vows extra efforts after U.S. suspends aid to military;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The government of Somali will do all it can to pay salaries and buy equipment for its soldiers as it begins to lose international support, the country s president said on Monday. The statement came several days after Reuters reported that the United States was suspending food and fuel aid for most of Somalia s armed forces over corruption concerns. That announcement was a blow to the military, who will begin losing the support of African peacekeepers when they start to withdraw this month. Islamist insurgents are striking with ever-larger and more deadly attacks in the capital and major towns. I hereby certify that if a thing is halted, as a government we shall put effort five hundred percent so that the suspension does not affect anyone, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed said in an address to military officials at the defense ministry that was broadcast on local radio. Whether it is salary or equipment, the government will bring what it can, he said. I am telling you that we should depend on ourselves. We thank the foreigners who were supporting us. If they mentioned criticism, we are required to rectify. The president did not mention a specific donor s support, but added: If you have someone who is ready to lend you a hand, you have to avoid things that can bring suspicion. Reuters reported that the U.S. has grown frustrated that successive governments have failed to build a capable national army. Documents seen by Reuters paint a stark picture of a military hollowed out by corruption, unable to feed, pay or arm its soldiers, despite hundreds of millions of dollars of support. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. vetoes U.N. call for withdrawal of Trump Jerusalem decision;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States was further isolated on Monday over President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital when it blocked a United Nations Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn. The remaining 14 council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. What we witnessed here in the Security Council is an insult. It won t be forgotten, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said after the vote, adding that it was the first veto cast by the United States in more than six years. The fact that this veto is being done in defense of American sovereignty and in defense of America s role in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinians to call for emergency meeting of U.N. General Assembly;RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The Palestinian Foreign Minister said on Monday the Palestinians will call for an emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly after the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of its declaration that Jerusalem is Israel s capital. President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, imperiling Middle East peace efforts and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies alike. We are moving within 48 hours ... to call for an emergency meeting of the General Assembly, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told reporters in Ramallah. He said the international community would consider the decision by president Trump as null and void. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Activist investor files Chevron proxy resolution on Myanmar rights concerns;HOUSTON (Reuters) - An activist investor in Chevron Corp said on Monday it filed a shareholder resolution that would require the oil producer to report on the feasibility of ending operations in Myanmar, where a crackdown on minority Rohingya Muslims has been decried by the United States as ethnic cleansing. The resolution, filed last week by Islamic finance firm Azzad Asset Management, pushes Chevron s board of directors to consider how it could avoid risks posed by doing business with governments complicit in genocide or crimes against humanity. Azzad filed a similar resolution at the last Chevron shareholder meeting, garnering support from 6 percent of votes cast. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to southern Bangladesh since the end of August following a campaign by Myanmar security forces in response to attacks by militants in Rakhine State. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and United Nations officials have decried the crackdown as a form of genocide. Myanmar denies committing atrocities against the Rohingya. Chevron, the second-largest U.S.-based oil producer, does business in Myanmar through a subsidiary, Unocal Myanmar Offshore Co Ltd. It has projects that include a minority interest in natural gas production and a pipeline, according to the company s website. In a statement to Reuters on Monday, Chevron spokeswoman Melissa Ritchie said the company values the ongoing dialogue with the stockholders on this critical issue of violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar. We will continue to work with other U.S. companies and the government to promote the value of U.S. investment in Myanmar and the need to foster a business environment that respects human rights. Chevron has the option of accepting the proposal or asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to block it. If Chevron moves to block, Azzad would have the chance to appeal to the SEC. Chevron s annual meeting is slated for next spring. The filing comes as two Reuters journalists were arrested by Myanmar officials last week. Government officials accuse the pair of violating the country s colonial-era Officials Secrets Act. The arrests have been criticized by several governments as well as journalists and human rights groups. Chevron declined to directly comment on the arrests. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pence delays trip to Egypt, Israel because of U.S. tax vote;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is postponing his trip to Egypt and Israel this week in order to stay in Washington for a congressional vote on President Donald Trump s tax overhaul plan, White House officials said on Monday. Pence had been scheduled to depart on Tuesday night for Cairo. Instead, the trip will be rescheduled for the week of Jan. 14, officials told reporters. The vice president is committed to seeing the tax cut through to the finish line, said Alyssa Farah, a spokeswoman for Pence. The vice president looks forward to traveling to Egypt and Israel in January. Pence has been a key figure in the Republican effort to overhaul U.S. tax law. He could provide a tie-breaking vote in the Senate if needed, though on Monday it looked like bill has enough votes among Senate Republicans to pass. Pence was to have spent three days in the region with stops in Cairo and Jerusalem, the first high-level official to visit after Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. That decision led to uproar and protest in the region. The status of Jerusalem, which holds Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trump s move and have declined to meet with Pence. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city. White House officials said the delay was not related to the reaction in the region to Trump s decision. Two Senate Republican holdouts agreed on Monday to support the tax package. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the body. The tax vote is still in very good shape, but we don t want to take any chances, a White House official said, adding there were several difference scenarios in which Pence might be needed. The timing of the vote made the trip tricky. The House of Representatives was due to vote first at around 1:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Tuesday, according to Republican aides, while the Senate vote is expected to follow either later on Tuesday or on Wednesday. White House officials determined that if Pence could not leave for his trip by Tuesday evening, it would have pushed his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday to a very late hour and left little time to hold meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others in Israel before Friday at sunset, when Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, begins. We ran into time constraints to get it all done before Shabbat, the official said. Even with the postponement to January, the trip will be overshadowed by Trump s decision on Jerusalem. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal capital, while Palestinians want the capital of an independent state of theirs to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Pence, an evangelical Christian who planned to highlight the plight of Christian minorities during his trip, was not scheduled to meet with Palestinian Christians or with officials from the Coptic Christian church, who declined a meeting in response to the U.S. move. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also refused a meeting with Pence. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon detains Uber driver suspected of murdering British embassy worker: security official;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese taxi driver with a previous arrest for drug use has confessed to killing a British woman who worked at the British Embassy in Beirut, a senior Lebanese security official said on Monday. A second security source said preliminary investigations into the murder of Rebecca Dykes showed the motive was purely criminal, not political. The suspect, who worked for the Uber [UBER.UL] taxi service, had immediately confessed to the crime, which took place early on Saturday, the source said. The senior security official said the suspect was 41 years old and had been arrested on drug-related charges in the period 2015-17, which the official said might not show up on his judicial record. The second security source said the suspect had a criminal record but gave no details. Lebanon s state news agency NNA identified the suspect by the first name Tariq and the initial H, and said he had picked Dykes up in his taxi in Beirut s Gemmayzeh district on Friday evening before assaulting and killing her. Uber declined to confirm the suspect s name or how long he had been driving for the service. The incident was the latest to highlight the issue of safety at Uber in various countries around the world. We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victim and her family, said Uber spokesman Harry Porter. We are working with authorities to assist their investigation in any way we can. Porter said the company uses commercially licensed taxi drivers in Lebanon, and the government carries out background checks and grants licenses. Only drivers that have clean background checks and clean judicial records are licensed, he said. The suspect s background check did not show any convictions, or he would not have been licensed, Porter said. Police traced the suspect s car through highway surveillance cameras, they said. Police only said they had arrested a suspect and that it was not a political crime. Dykes, who was strangled, was found by a main highway outside Beirut, a security source said on Sunday. She worked at the British Embassy for the Department for International Development. The whole embassy is deeply shocked, saddened by this news, Britain s ambassador to Lebanon, Hugo Shorter, said on Sunday. We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Rebecca, Dykes family said in a statement. We are doing all we can to understand what happened. In September, San Francisco-based Uber was stripped of its operating license in London over concerns about its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. In India, the company was sued twice by a woman who was raped in 2014 by an Uber driver, first for failing to maintain basic safety procedures and again alleging executives improperly obtained her medical records. The Uber driver was convicted of the rape and sentenced in 2015 to life in prison. Uber settled the first lawsuit and has agreed to settle the second. In Brazil, a company policy of accepting cash payments for rides made drivers the target of robbery and murder. Following a Reuters investigation, Uber in February rolled out new safety requirements, including requiring new cash users to register with a social security number. And in Houston, Texas, a 2016 city investigation found that Uber s background checks were so insufficient the company cleared drivers with criminal histories including murder, assault and 17 other crimes. Uber is facing a host of problems, including allegations of sexual harassment, data privacy violations and a lawsuit and criminal investigation over alleged trade-secrets theft. New Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, who replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick in August, has been critical of past practices and vowed a new era of compliance. The company is in the midst of a stock sale in which Softbank Group will take a stake in the company ahead of an anticipated 2019 initial public offering. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey frees German journalist Tolu but she cannot leave country: Berlin government;ISTANBUL/BERLIN (Reuters) - Turkey has released German journalist Mesale Tolu after nearly eight months in prison on the condition that she does not leave the country, German government officials said on Monday. Ankara has charged Tolu with being a member of a terrorist organization and publishing terrorist propaganda following a failed military coup in July 2016. Her husband, Suat Corlu, a journalist who had been detained earlier, was released last month. Both continue to face charges in Turkey. Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the news with reservations, given curbs on Tolu s ability to travel. Regarding Ms Tolu, it is good news given that she will be freed, but not completely so, because she can t leave the country and the trial continues, Merkel told reporters. Tolu s father, Ali Riza Tolu, was jubilant outside the courthouse, but said Ankara had stolen nearly a year of his daughter s life and there was no proof of any wrongdoing. My daughter is free, he said. We are now a happy family. The decision to release Tolu came two weeks after German federal prosecutors dropped an investigation against a dozen Muslim clerics sent from Turkey who had been suspected of spying in Germany on behalf of the Turkish government. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told broadcaster ARD that Turkey seemed to be gradually making some limited progress in terms of the rule of law but the German government still had many concerns such as about human rights and press freedom. He said Berlin and Ankara, between whom ties have been strained of late, were trying to find ways to deal with their disputes appropriately and that was proving tough but: Small steps are better than none . Merkel s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Berlin would continue to press for the release of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel. Germany has urged Ankara to release Yucel, Tolu and other journalists detained after the abortive coup in July 2016, saying their detentions are unfounded and political. Including Tolu, Ankara is preventing a total of 28 German citizens from leaving the country, she said. Tolu was first detained on April 30. German Green party co-leader Cem Ozdemir, who is of Turkish descent, welcomed the news, but said it did little to change the miserable state of the rule of law in Turkey . I demand that the Turkish government release all political prisoners and immediately allow German citizens like Mesale Tolu to leave the country, Ozdemir said in a statement. Heike Haensel, a member of Germany s far-left Left party who attended Tolu s hearing in Istanbul, said on Twitter that Tolu was required to check in with Turkish authorities every Monday. I would say it is a second-class release, Haensel told Reuters TV. Germany s mainstream parties have been outspoken critics of Turkey s security crackdown since the abortive military coup. Tens of thousands of Turks have been jailed since then, including around a dozen who hold German citizenship. Germany is home to some 3 million people of Turkish heritage. Turkey has criticized Berlin for not handing over asylum seekers it accuses of involvement in the would-be coup. Ankara has blamed U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen for masterminding the failed coup. Gulen denies any involvement. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Nearly man' Ramaphosa edges closer to South Africa's top job;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The nearly man of South African politics, deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, took a big step towards the top job on Monday when he was elected by a whisker as head of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Ramaphosa s ability has been apparent for decades. Whenever Nelson Mandela needed a breakthrough in talks to end apartheid, he turned to the then-trade union leader with a reputation as a tenacious negotiator. Using skills honed in pay disputes with mining bosses, Ramaphosa steered those talks to a successful conclusion, allowing Mandela to sweep to power in 1994 as head of the victorious ANC after South Africa s first democratic vote. Mandela wanted Ramaphosa to be his heir but was pressured into picking Thabo Mbeki by a group of ANC leaders who had fought apartheid from exile. It has taken more than two decades for Ramaphosa to get another chance to run the country. Monday s party vote, which handed him victory by less than 200 of nearly 5,000 ballots, puts that goal firmly within the 65-year-old s grasp. The rand surged as much as 4 percent, suggesting approval of the business community. Ramaphosa s ambition for the presidency has been clear through his whole adult life. He was quite clearly wounded by his materialization in the Mbeki period, said Anthony Butler, a politics professor who has written a biography of Ramaphosa. The choice of Ramaphosa over his main rival for the ANC s top job, former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is likely to chart a reformist course for South Africa, which has lost its lustre under President Jacob Zuma. A lawyer with an easygoing manner, Ramaphosa has vowed to fight corruption and revitalize an economy that has slowed to a near-standstill under Zuma s scandal-plagued leadership. His message went down well with foreign investors and ANC members who thought Zuma s handling of the economy could cost the party dearly in 2019 parliamentary elections. Dlamini-Zuma promised a radical brand of wealth redistribution popular with poorer ANC voters who are angry at racial inequality. While Ramaphosa has backed calls for radical economic transformation , an ANC plan to tackle inequality, he tends to couch his policy pronouncements in more cautious terms. Unlike Zuma or Dlamini-Zuma, Ramaphosa was not driven into exile for opposing apartheid, which some of the party s more hardline members hold against him. He fought the injustices of white minority rule from within South Africa, most prominently by defending the rights of black miners as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). A member of the relatively small Venda ethnic group, Ramaphosa was able to overcome divisions that sometimes constrained members of the larger Zulu and Xhosa groups. A massive miners strike led by Ramaphosa s NUM in 1987 taught business that Cyril was a force to be reckoned with, said Michael Spicer, a former executive at Anglo American. He has a shrewd understanding of men and power and knows how to get what he wants from a situation, Spicer said. The importance of Ramaphosa s contribution to the talks to end apartheid is such that commentators have referred to them in two distinct stages: BC and AC, Before Cyril and After Cyril. Ramaphosa also played an important role in the drafting of South Africa s post-apartheid constitution. After missing out on becoming Mandela s deputy, Ramaphosa withdrew from active political life, switching focus to business. His investment vehicle Shanduka - Venda for change - grew rapidly and acquired stakes in mining firms, mobile operator MTN (MTNJ.J) and McDonald s South African franchise. Phuti Mahanyele, a former chief executive at Shanduka, recalled that Ramaphosa was a passionate leader who required staff to contribute to charitable projects aimed at improving access to education for the underprivileged. By the time Ramaphosa sold out of Shanduka in 2014, the firm was worth more than 8 billion rand ($584 million in today s money), making Ramaphosa one of South Africa s 20 richest people. To his supporters, Ramaphosa s business success makes him well-suited to the task of turning around an economy grappling with 28 percent unemployment and credit rating downgrades. In the Johannesburg township of Soweto last month, Ramaphosa called for a new deal between business and government to spur economic growth. Pravin Gordhan, a respected former finance minister, told Reuters that if Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader, the whole narrative about South Africa s economy would change for the better within three months . But Ramaphosa has his detractors too. He was a non-executive director at Lonmin (LMI.L) (LONJ.J) when negotiations to halt a violent wildcat strike at its Marikana platinum mine in 2012 ended in police shooting 34 strikers dead. An inquiry subsequently absolved Ramaphosa of guilt. But some families of the victims still blame him for urging the authorities to intervene. My conscience is that I participated in trying to stop further deaths from happening, Ramaphosa said about the deaths. Others are unconvinced that Ramaphosa, who has been deputy president since 2014, will be as tough on corruption as his campaign rhetoric suggests. Bantu Holomisa, an opposition politician and former ANC member who worked closely with him in the 1990s, said he was by nature cautious. Cyril has been part of the machinery and has not acted on corruption so far, Holomisa said. It is not clear whether he will if he gets elected. ($1 = 13.6947 rand) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says regrets to see veto of U.N. resolution on Jerusalem;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey regrets the vetoing by the United States on Monday of a U.N. Security Council resolution that called for the U.S. declaration of Jerusalem as Israel s capital to be withdrawn, the Turkish foreign ministry said. The United States was further isolated over President Donald Trump s decision when it blocked a United Nations Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn despite the other 14 members voting in favor of it. The United States being left alone in the vote is a concrete sign of the illegality of its decision on Jerusalem, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. It said the U.S. decision to veto the resolution showed once again that Washington had lost objectivity and that it was unacceptable for the Security Council to be left ineffective with such a move. Later on Monday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and British Prime Minister Theresa May discussed the blocking of the resolution in a phone call, and agreed that new tensions that could endanger the peace process in the region should be avoided, sources in Erdogan s office said. Erdogan has taken a leading position in opposing the U.S. move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, hosting representatives from more than 50 Muslim countries, including U.S. allies, in Istanbul last week for a summit in response. A communique issued after the summit said the participants considered the move to be a declaration that Washington was withdrawing from its role as sponsor of peace in the Middle East. Trump s decision broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that Jerusalem s status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian talks, leading to harsh criticisms from Muslim countries and Israel s closest European allies, who have also rejected the move. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third-holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. Following the U.S. block on the U.N. resolution, a spokesman for Erdogan said that the annulment of Trump s decision would be sought in the U.N. General Assembly. All countries except for the Trump administration acted in unison in this vote. Now the UN General Assembly period will start, Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil's Meirelles to gauge odds before opting to run for President;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said on Monday he would consider his chances of winning before deciding whether to run as a candidate in next year s presidential elections. Meirelles, who has spearheaded President Michel Temer s unpopular reform platform, has polled in low single digits in recent surveys. Still, he said current polls do not give a realistic picture of what would happen once the campaign debate unfolds. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil tries to avert credit downgrade as pension reform doubts grow;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles will speak to major credit rating agencies on Thursday as the government scrambles to avoid a sovereign debt downgrade due to growing doubts that its proposed pension reform can rein in surging public debt. A vote on the unpopular bill to overhaul the social security system, seen as vital to closing the fiscal deficit, has been delayed to 2018 after failing to muster support in Congress. Lawmakers have warned that handling the hot-button issue ahead of next year s elections would reduce the chances of approval. Meirelles said in a radio interview he will tell rating agencies the delay until February does not mean pension reform will not be approved. He told Radio Estad o it would be reasonable for the agencies to wait until the bill is voted on before deciding on a potential downgrade. Lower house Speaker Rodrigo Maia on Monday said pension reform would be hard to approve if the bill is not passed by February. The first vote was put off last week and scheduled for Feb. 19 after the Christmas-to-Carnival holiday recess. Maia told a news conference there is room to discuss a longer transition period for public sector employees, to include those who started working before 2003. While this would add to future pension costs, Maia said the government will refuse to give up one more penny in fiscal savings. The current version of the bill would save 480 billion reais ($146 billion) over 10 years, according to government estimates, down from 800 billion reais in the original proposal, before concessions were made to try to win passage. Brazil s bloated pension system, which is especially generous for public sector employees, is the main cause of a huge budget deficit that cost Latin America s largest nation its prized investment-grade credit rating two years ago. The finance ministry said Meirelles will hold conference calls with rating agency representatives on Thursday. Investors fear that failure to streamline social security could weaken Brazil s recovery from a deep economic downturn, forcing the central bank to raise interest rates from an all-time low and triggering new sovereign rating downgrades in 2018. Last week, Moody s Investors Service calling the delay in voting on the pension bill credit negative . This raises the possibility that the reform will not be approved next year, given political uncertainty surrounding the presidential elections, Moody s said in a note to clients. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe military chief looks set for vice presidency;HARARE (Reuters) - The head of Zimbabwe s military looks set to be appointed vice president as the government said on Monday he would retire pending redeployment in what is seen as a reward for leading a de facto coup last month that ended Robert Mugabe s 37-year rule and brought Emmerson Mnangagwa to power. Mnangagwa has said he will fill the two vice presidential posts in the next few days and Constantino Chiwenga is the top contender in a reflection of the army s consolidation of power since it turned against the 93-year-old Mugabe. Mnangagwa has appointed several senior military officers to his cabinet and the ruling party s executive Politburo since he was sworn in as president on Nov. 24. Army Commander Phillip Sibanda will succeed Chiwenga as defense forces chief, a government statement said. The appointment of Chiwenga..., which I think is inevitable, will be a confirmation that the military is a salient factor in the politics of the country, said Eldred Masunungure, a political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe. It has always exercised its influence in a covert manner but now it s quite overt and this will further consolidate that coalition between the military and the ruling political elite. Mnangagwa appointed Major General Edzai Chimonyo, Zimbabwe s ambassador to Tanzania, to succeed Sibanda as army commander and promoted a number of other senior army officers to major general. The government also announced the retirement of police chief Augustine Chihuri, an unpopular Mugabe loyalist who it said has been on leave since Dec. 15. Chihuri was accused by rights groups of presiding over crackdowns on dissent and popular protest in the 18 months before Mugabe was overthrown. Zimbabwe s economy collapsed in the latter half of Mugabe s rule, especially after violent farm seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. Monday s announcements came hours after army chiefs declared an end to their military intervention and handed back policing to civilian police. Normalcy has now returned to our country. It is for this reason that ... we announce the end of Operation Restore Legacy today, army chief Sibanda said, referring to the name of the intervention which the army said targeted criminals in Mugabe and his wife Grace s entourage. Civic groups have been urging the soldiers to leave the streets since Mnangagwa was sworn in to replace Mugabe as president of the southern African country on Nov. 24. Mnangagwa is under pressure to revive the economy ahead of elections due next year which he said last Friday may be held sooner than expected. The elections are due by July 2018 but some say they may be as early as March. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK sees growing threat from Russian propaganda, cyber-attacks;LONDON (Reuters) - Russia poses an increasing threat and is willing to use propaganda, subversion and cyber-attacks to undermine Britain and the rest of Europe, Britain s national security adviser said on Monday. Mark Sedwill, who is overseeing a review of Britain s security services, told a parliamentary committee that Russia is attempting to sow dissension and undermine democracy in Britain and other western nations. He said the threats from Russia included from unconventional warfare such as disinformation campaigns to the dangers posed from an increase in its military capability in the North Atlantic and in Eastern Europe. We know that the Russian threat is definitely intensifying and diversifying, Sedwill said. The Russian attitude has worsened more generally towards the West and that seems set to continue. Britain has been more vocal in recent weeks about the threat posed by Russia at a time when there is growing concern among some members of the ruling Conservative party about the impact of cuts to defense spending. Prime Minister Theresa May last month in her most outspoken attack on Russia accused the country of meddling in elections and planting fake stories in the media. The head of Britain s armed forces said last week trade and the internet are at risk of damage from any Russian attack on underwater communications cables that could disrupt trillions of dollars in financial transactions. Sedwill accused Russia of planting fake stories in the media about the conduct of soldiers in Eastern Europe, where NATO troops are based to undermine the legitimacy of them being there. He also accused Russia of meddling in the recent French elections even though he said this had no chance of changing the outcome of the vote. It clearly was designed to undermine the citizen s trust in their systems and we see quite a lot elsewhere, he said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson, Canadian counterpart to discuss border security, other issues;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday to discuss border security and other issues, the U.S. Department of State said in a statement. The two will meet in Ottawa to discuss U.S.-Canadian coordination on a range of global and regional topics, the statement said. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tillerson and Freeland will confer on North Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela among other issues. Canada and the United States plan to co-host an international meeting on North Korea in Vancouver in January. Pyongyang has continued to test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The meeting is designed to produce better ideas to ease tensions over North Korea s tests, Canadian officials have said. The two ministers also are likely to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump s demand for revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: U.S. has 'no choice' but to deal with North Korea arms challenge;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump unveiled a new national security strategy on Monday, calling for Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorism and saying Washington had to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea s weapons programs. In a wide-ranging speech, Trump said his security strategy for the first time addresses economic security and would include a complete rebuilding of U.S. infrastructure as well as a wall along the southern U.S. border. Trump said the United States wanted Pakistan to take decisive action to help fight extremism, and that Washington had no choice but to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. Trump said the security strategy would also end mandatory defense spending limits, frequently called sequester, but did not mention if he had consulted with members of Congress about a possible bill to end the caps established in 2013 budget legislation. We recognize that weakness is the surest path to conflict and unrivaled power is the most certain means of defense. For this reason, our security strategy breaks from damaging defense sequester, Trump said. We re going to get rid of that. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;United States calls for delivery of U.N. aid shipments to Yemen;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is pressing for the delivery of World Food Program shipments to Yemen and the installation of new cranes at a key port amid a conflict in the nation that has killed or wounded more than 60,000 people, the State Department said on Monday. John Sullivan, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, discussed Yemen with the leaders of international organizations on Friday and underscored that Washington was pressing for restoration of full humanitarian and commercial access to Yemen, the department said. Sullivan told the leaders the United States was calling for the delivery of World Food Program shipments that have not reached Hudaydah since late November, and the installation of new cranes at Hudaydah port, it said in a statement. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cameroon separatists kill four gendarmes as Anglophone crisis worsens;YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Militants seeking independence for Cameroon s English-speaking regions killed four gendarmes on Monday, the government said, as disputes with the Francophone-dominated government degenerate into open warfare. Several separatists were killed by security forces in ensuing clashes, the government spokesman said. Repression by President Paul Biya s government against what began as peaceful protests a year ago by Anglophone activists over perceived social and economic marginalization has bolstered support for armed militants demanding a full break with Yaounde. The separatists have launched a series of deadly raids on government police and soldiers in recent weeks, leading authorities to escalate a crackdown that has killed dozens of civilians. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon s government spokesman, said the separatists had killed four gendarmes earlier on Monday in the town of Kembong in Southwest region s Manyu Division. The assailants, ensnared by the measures put in place by our defense and security forces, are now reduced to sporadic attacks carried out by hidden faces and using perfidy, Tchiroma said. A representative for the separatists could not be immediately reached for comment. Manyu, with its dense equatorial forests along the Nigerian border, has become the center of the insurgency from which the separatists have launched a series of attacks on security forces in villages. The violence there has fueled a mounting refugee crisis. At least 7,500 people have crossed into Nigeria since Oct. 1, when the secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia, and the U.N. refugee agency says it is bracing itself for as many as 40,000. Cameroon s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the German colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors. The English-speaking regions joined the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. Tensions have long simmered but the recent violence is the most serious to date and has emerged as a serious challenge to Biya s 35-year rule. The 84-year-old is expected to seek a new term in an election next year. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Shots fired by U.S. military personnel to stop man forcing entry onto British base;MILDENHALL, England (Reuters) - U.S. military personnel fired shots on Monday as they stopped a man who tried to force his way into a British military base used by the U.S. Air Force, in an incident that police said was not being treated as terrorism. The Mildenhall Royal Air Force base said security staff locked down the base, used by the United States military to refuel U.S. and NATO aircraft in Europe, at about 1300 GMT following reports of a disturbance. Shots were fired by American service personnel and a man has been detained with cuts and bruises and taken into custody, Suffolk police said. No other people have been injured as a result of the incident. Police said they were not looking for anyone else on the site after the man, a 44 year-old Briton, was arrested on suspicion of criminal trespass. A Western security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Suffolk police were taking the lead on the incident and that specialist anti-terrorism officers were not immediately involved. Suffolk Police confirmed in a statement they were not treating the incident as terrorism and were receiving support from other law enforcement agencies while their investigation continued. The U.S. Air Force said the incident at the base, which is about 77 miles (125 km) northeast of London, had been contained and the suspect had been apprehended. Police said they remained on the base but there was no threat to the base or local community. Mildenhall houses the 100th Air Refueling Wing and some special operations squadrons. The 1,162-acre base, which is home to about 3,100 U.S. military and an additional 3,000 family members, is earmarked for closure after the United States said it was going to move its operations from the base to Germany. The base said in a statement staff had been released from the lockdown about an hour-and-a-half after the incident. Individuals in the area surrounding the installation are asked to avoid the base at this time, it said. In 2016, a delivery driver was convicted of plotting to kill U.S. troops based in England by staging road accidents with soldiers cars and then attacking them with knives and possibly a home-made bomb. Prosecutors said Junead Khan had used his job to scout RAF Mildenhall and two other U.S. bases while on carrying out deliveries. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims attack on spy agency center in Afghan capital;KABUL (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on Monday near a training facility of Afghanistan s main intelligence agency in the capital, Kabul. A group of armed men seized a building under construction in a heavily populated area of the city before being killed by security forces, officials said. Aside from the attackers, no significant casualties were reported. The Afshar area of Kabul where the attack occurred is close to a training facility of the National Directorate of Security, the main Afghan intelligence agency, as well as a private university. Islamic State claimed responsibility in a statement on its Amaq news agency, in which it said two of its fighters had attacked an intelligence agency center in Kabul. The group, which first appeared in Afghanistan in 2015, has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in Kabul over the past several months. But much remains unknown about how it operates and many observers are skeptical about its ability to mount complex attacks on its own. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Death toll from French school bus collision rises to six - official;PARIS (Reuters) - The death toll from a collision between a train and a school bus near the town of Perpignan in southwestern France has risen to six, the region s administrative head said on Monday. The train collided with a school bus carrying children between the age of 11 and 17 on a crossing on Thursday injuring nearly two dozen others. Unfortunately, another victim passed away...taking the toll to six, the Pyrenees-Orientales administrative head said on Twitter. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan, May say international community should be active in solving Jerusalem issue - Turkish sources;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and British Prime Minister Theresa May agreed in a phone call on Monday that the international community should make intense efforts to solve the issue in Jerusalem, sources in Erdogan s office said. The two leaders, who discussed the blocking of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the U.S. declaration of Jerusalem as Israel s capital to be withdrawn, also agreed that any new tensions that could endanger the peace process in the region should be avoided, the sources said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Many police, few protesters as far right enters Austrian government;VIENNA (Reuters) - Hundreds of police sealed off part of central Vienna on Monday as Austria became the only western European country with a far-right party in power, but protests against the swearing-in proved small and largely peaceful. Conservative Sebastian Kurz, who is just 31, became chancellor in a coalition with the far right two months after winning a parliamentary election with a hard line on immigration after Austria was swept up in Europe s refugee crisis in 2015. The last time the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) entered government in Austria, demonstrations were so big that the cabinet took a tunnel from the chancellery to the swearing-in ceremony at the president s office across the street. There was no need for that this time as, almost 18 years on and to a significantly more muted reaction, the country once again became an exception among its peers, but in a very different European political landscape. Protests nearby drew only a fraction of the tens of thousands who gathered in 2000 - and criticism from across the continent has also been more restrained. Police wore riot gear and stationed two water cannon at the main protest site. We will certainly not be going underground to the Hofburg, but rather with our heads held high in the street, FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache said earlier in an interview with regional newspapers. He was referring to the former imperial palace that houses the president s office. This time, police cleared a large area around the head of state s office, keeping several thousand protesters about 100 meters (110 yards) away in a nearby square. Chants could be heard as the new ministers from the FPO and the conservative People s Party crossed the street quietly to the ceremony. The coalition deal hands control of much of Austria s security apparatus to the FPO, which came third in the election with 26 percent. Any crime committed in Austria is one too many, FPO Chairman Herbert Kickl said as he assumed his new position of interior minister. The FPO was also given the foreign and defense ministries. The agreement, which made Strache vice chancellor, includes plans to cut public spending and taxes and curb benefits for refugees. I fear a total shift to the right, a hardening of the domestic political climate and incitement against outsiders, said 69-year-old protester Wolfgang Pechlaner. Police said 1,500 officers were deployed. People marched peacefully, carrying placards saying Nazis out and chanting Strache is a fascist . Police put the number of protesters at 5,000-6,000 and said three arrests were made. Organizers put the turnout as high as 10,000. By late afternoon, the crowds had dispersed. The FPO s success made it an outlier in Europe in the 1990s when it was led by the late Joerg Haider. Now it is one of many anti-establishment parties gaining ground in Europe. Its allies and sister parties this year entered the German parliament and made the French presidential run-off. Swearing in the government, President Alexander Van der Bellen highlighted safeguards built into the coalition agreement. We have achieved a clear consensus that (involvement in) Europe or the European Union and continuity in our foreign policy as well as respecting our fundamental rights and freedoms are important fundamental principles, he said. That was a reference to the coalition having ruled out a referendum on EU membership, and to Austria s support for EU sanctions against Russia despite the FPO s pro-Moscow stance. The FPO, founded in the 1950s by former Nazis, has backed away from calling for a vote on EU membership. It and Kurz s conservatives want the EU to focus on fewer tasks, like securing external borders, and hand more powers back to member states. France and Germany were cautious about future ties with Vienna. We will follow how the EU policy of Austria develops, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. Chancellor (Sebastian) Kurz has the intention of being an active partner in Europe, and I am glad of that. We have lots of problems to solve in Europe. Israel was also less than effusive about dealing with a Foreign Ministry controlled by the FPO, which has courted Jewish voters with limited success. Israel will hold working contacts with the operational echelons of the (Austrian) government departments that are headed by ministers from the Freedom Party, Israel s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Israel wishes to underline its total commitment to fighting anti-Semitism and commemorating the Holocaust. Kurz travels to Brussels on Tuesday to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Council President Donald Tusk. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italian politicians up in arms over Austria passport offer;ROME (Reuters) - Italian politicians denounced on Monday a proposal by Austria s new government to offer passports to German-speaking residents of the northern Italian province of Alto Adige. The idea was included in a 180-page coalition program signed on Saturday after weeks of negotiations by Austria s anti-immigration Freedom Party and the conservative People s Party. The accord risked tearing at fragile ethnic fault lines which run through the autonomous area of Alto Adige, also known as the South Tyrol. Get your hands off Italy, said Giorgia Meloni, the head of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, which is part of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi s center-right opposition bloc. Brothers of Italy will raise the barricades in Alto Adige, in parliament and in every institution, and will ask President (Sergio) Mattarella to stop this undignified insult, she said in a statement. Alto Adige was ceded to Italy by Austria after World War One. Despite moves by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini to settle thousands of ethnic Italians there in the 1920s, German speakers still outnumber Italians by around two to one. Italians and Germans have their own schools and largely frequent different bars and restaurants. But the region enjoys enormous autonomy and generous handouts from Rome, which have helped dampen secessionist sentiments in the province. The new Austrian government portrayed its plan to offer citizenship to Alto Adige residents whose first language is German as a pro-European gesture to promote an ever-closer union of citizens of member states . Benedetto Della Vedova, a junior foreign minister in Rome, dismissed this, saying the offer was couched in a velvet glove of Europeanism but bore the scent of the ethno-nationalist iron fist . Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano was more cautious, saying he would raise the matter at a later date. It will be a conversation that requires enormous delicacy, he was quoted as saying by ANSA agency during a visit to China. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Powerful Afghan regional leader ousted as political picture clouds;KABUL (Reuters) - One of Afghanistan s most powerful regional politicians was ousted as governor of the northern province of Balkh on Monday, setting up a confrontation that adds to the uncertainty around President Ashraf Ghani s Western-backed government. Atta Mohammad Noor is one of the leading figures in Jamiat-e-Islami, a party which mainly represents Afghanistan s Tajik ethnic group, and has used his position in Balkh, on the northern border of the country, as a powerbase to push for a major role on the national stage. His removal, at a time when tensions between Tajiks and Pashtuns, Afghanistan s two biggest ethnic groups, have been rising, injects extra uncertainty to the already fractured political landscape ahead of presidential elections in 2019. My dismissal has no legal or legitimate basis, Noor said on Afghan national television. For now we are only resorting to civil action but if this atrocity continues, there are many other options. Atta Noor is one of a clutch of powerful regional and ethnic leaders whom Ghani has struggled to control since he came to office after the disputed election of 2014. Ghani, a Pashtun, has tried previously to remove him but also discussed a possible role in the government for him. He submitted his resignation several months ago but the move never took effect until Ghani approved it on Monday, announcing at the same time that Mohammad Daoud, also from Jamiat, would become the next governor of Balkh province. The Afghan president has accepted Atta Mohammad Noor s resignation and announced Engineer Mohammad Daoud as the new governor, Shah Hussain Murtazawi a spokesman for Ghani said. In his remarks on Monday, Atta Noor, who has demanded a number of senior positions in the government for some of his allies, said the resignation had been offered with conditions attached and said these had not been respected. Since they didn t meet their responsibilities, I don t accept it, he said. Ghani s national unity government, formed after the 2014 election forced him into an uneasy power-sharing arrangement with his former rival Abdullah Abdullah from Jamiat, retains the support of the international community and the United States. But it has faced mounting criticism from a growing array of opposition groups. Parliamentary elections originally due to be held next year are in doubt and former President Hamid Karzai has called for a loya jirga, or traditional grand council of political leaders and elders to decide the future of the government. The confrontation with Atta Noor comes several months after a standoff with Vice President Rashid Dostum over accusations of the sexual abuse of a political opponent. Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek leader and veteran of decades of Afghan politics, has been in Turkey since May, ostensibly for medical treatment. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Markets cheer as Chile's Pinera gets strong mandate for presidency;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Billionaire conservative Sebastian Pinera will begin a second term as Chile s president in March with a strong mandate after trouncing his center-left opponent in Sunday s election, and local markets soared on hopes of more investor-friendly policies. Still, Pinera will face a divided Congress and an upstart leftist coalition that has promised to fight his plans to lower taxes and refine the progressive policies undertaken by outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet. Pinera s previous stint as president, from 2010 to 2014, was marked by huge student protests. Speaking to reporters after meeting with Bachelet on Monday, Pinera struck a tone of unity, saying he would work to form a broad cabinet, of continuity and change. Chile s peso strengthened more than 2 percentage points against the dollar on Monday, while the IPSA stock index hit an all-time high and was up nearly 7 percent, as investors bet on more business-friendly policies under a Pinera administration. Chile is the world s top copper producer and the country s vast mining industry is also counting on Pinera s support. The business magnate has promised to cut red tape and has pledged support and stable funding for state-run miner Codelco, saying the company is reinventing itself and needs investment. Codelco needs strong management and must improve its efficiency, he told reporters. With his nine-percentage point win over center-left senator Alejandro Guillier in Sunday s runoff presidential election, Pinera, 68, won more votes than any presidential candidate since Chile s return to democracy in 1990. It was the biggest ever loss for the center-left coalition that has dominated Chile s politics since the end of Augusto Pinochet s dictatorship. Other South American countries including Argentina, Peru and Brazil have also shifted to the political right in recent years. The results of a first round vote and a congressional election last month pointed to a more divided country, however. Far-left candidate Beatriz Sanchez captured 20 percent of votes, nearly as many as the more moderate Guillier, suggesting some dissatisfaction with Chile s long-standing free-market model. Guillier on Sunday acknowledged the harsh defeat and urged his supporters to defend Bachelet s progressive policies, which have included overhauls of tax, labor and education laws in an effort to fight persistent inequality in one of South America s most developed economies. Pinera said Bachelet had confirmed she plans to present parliament with a bill to recast Chile s dictatorship-era constitution before her term ends in March. Such a change was also a key campaign promise of Guillier. Pinera said he agreed on perfecting it (the constitution) but in a climate of unity. Pinera s Chile Vamos party has 72 of 155 representatives in the lower house, more than any other bloc. Still, without an outright majority in either chamber of the legislature, Pinera s supporters will have to form alliances to pass most laws. Sanchez s coalition earned its first senate seat and around 20 seats in the lower house in November s election. The Frente Amplio commits to continuing to work for a changing Chile, with more rights and more democracy, she wrote in a tweet congratulating Pinera, referring to the leftist Broad Front party. Efforts by Pinera s ideological allies in Brazil and Argentina to reduce fiscal deficits by cutting spending and reforming pension systems have faced political opposition and sparked protests in recent months. What I think he s going to do is perfect Bachelet s reforms, make them more effective, more efficient, maybe help out business a little bit more, said analyst Kenneth Bunker, of political research group Tresquintos. But he ll be cutting around the edges, he s not going to have power in Congress to do everything he would otherwise. Pinera has sought to strike a conciliatory tone. In a speech at his home following his meeting with Bachelet, he said, Yesterday Chileans handed us a great victory. But I will be the president of all the Chileans, both those who voted for me and those who voted for Alejandro Guillier. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German defense minister says troop withdrawal from Afghanistan too rapid;MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen on Monday said the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan in recent years had been too rapid and she called for a longer-term commitment in the Hindu Kush mountain range. Visiting troops in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, von der Leyen criticized the rapid reduction in forces since the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ended its mission in Afghanistan in 2014 but said the international community had now learned it needed to be more patient. I haven t forgotten how it was at the beginning when we got out of ISAF too quickly with too big a reduction in troop numbers, she said, adding that everyone knew the security situation in Afghanistan remained tense. She said Afghans continued to need support, advice and training from foreign soldiers, adding: There s still a lot to do but I m convinced that we re going in the right direction with our mission there. We ll need to have a lot of stamina - Afghanistan will occupy us for a long time yet, von der Leyen said. U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new open-ended policy toward Afghanistan in August, authorizing an increase in U.S. troop numbers to advise and train Afghan security forces and conduct counter-terrorism operations, with the aim of reversing territorial gains by Taliban insurgents and compelling them to agree to peace talks. At the peak of the ISAF mission around 150,000 foreign soldiers were deployed in Hindu Kush compared with around 17,000 now - of which 10,000 are Americans. U.S. officials are pressing Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan as part of the increased international presence but say they do not expect any decisions until after the formation of a new German government. The German parliament voted last week to extend by three months Germany s military support for the Afghanistan mission to allow a new government to consider a longer-term extension. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya court awards 4 million shillings to girl strip-searched by police;NAIROBI (Reuters) - A Kenyan court on Monday awarded a young woman four million shillings in damages after she was strip-searched by police who said they were looking for drugs. The incident in August 2015 provoked an outcry in the East African country after images of the half-naked 18-year-old schoolgirl were posted on social media. She pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana shortly after the incident and was sentenced to 18 months on probation. In the lawsuit she later filed jointly with a child rights group, the young woman said the photos humiliated her and sought legal compensation. Kenyan high court judge John Mativo said in his ruling that the student was entitled to the four million shillings ($38,815) because her constitutional rights to dignity had been violated. The student had been traveling with more than 40 others on a bus home for the holidays when she was stopped by the police. The court s ruling is a rare victory in the East African country s legal system against the police. Although no police officers were tried or found guilty in the case, the ruling was an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. A government civilian body exists to oversee the police, but few officers are charged and convictions are extremely rare. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As Syrian couples say 'I do,' Lebanon says 'No, not quite';BEKAA, Lebanon (Reuters) - In a tent in Lebanon surrounded by snow, Syrian refugees Ammar and Khadija were married by a tribal leader from their homeland in a wedding they would soon come to regret. What they had hoped would be a milestone on the path back to normal life became the start of a bureaucratic nightmare. One year on, it shows no sign of ending for them, their newly born son or for many other refugees from Syria, whose misery at losing their homes has been compounded by a new fear they may never be able to return. It is a dilemma with knock-on effects for stability in Lebanon, sheltering more than a million Syrian refugees, and potentially for other countries in the Middle East and Europe they may flee to if tension spills over. After they had agreed their union with the sheikh in the insulated tent that had become home to Khadija s family, the newlyweds both spent months digging potatoes in the Bekaa valley, one of Lebanon s poorest districts, to make ends meet. Only after they had a baby boy, Khalaf, did they realize the wedding had been a mistake. When the couple went to register his birth at the local registry, they were told they could not because they had no official marriage certificate. Without registration, Khalaf is not entitled to a Syrian passport or other ID enabling him to go there. Without proper paperwork, he also risks future detention in Lebanon. Asked why they did not get married by an approved religious authority, Ammar and Khadija looked at each other before answering: We didn t know. Laws and legislation seem very remote from the informal settlements in the northern Bekaa Valley, where Syrian refugee tents sit on the rocky ground amongst rural tobacco fields. Marriages by unregistered sheikhs are common but hard to quantify because authorities often never hear of them. For whereas in Syria, verbal tribal or religious marriages are easy to register, Lebanon has complex and costly procedures. You first need to be married by a sheikh approved by one of the various religious courts that deal with family matters, who gives you a contract. Then you have to get a marriage certificate from a local notary, transfer it to the local civil registry and register it at the Foreigners Registry. Most Syrians do not complete the process, as it requires legal residency in the country, which must be renewed annually and costs $200, although the fee was waived for some refugees this year. Now they have had a child, Ammar and Khadija also need to go through an expensive court case. The casual work Ammar depends on picking potatoes, onions or cucumbers in five hour shifts starting at 6 am pays 6,000 LBP ($4) a day, not enough to live on, let alone put aside. One bag of diapers costs 10,000 liras, he said. Sally Abi Khalil, Country Director in Lebanon for UK-based charity Oxfam, said 80 percent of Syrian refugees do not have valid residency, one of the main reasons why they do not register their marriages, alongside the issue of the sheikhs. Babies born to couples who didn t register their marriage risk becoming stateless, she said. D-REUTERSNEWS-T004/I41a553a0111811e6b2f6d9823502ce72 Refugees can only legally make money if they have a work permit, which requires legal residency, a Catch 22 situation partially tackled in February when the fee was waived for those registered with the UNHCR prior to 2015 and without a previous Lebanese sponsor. Lebanon s Directorate General of Personal Status took another step to help the refugees on September 12, when it issued a memo which waived the parents and child s residency prerequisite for birth registration, it said. But if you are married by an unauthorized sheikh, which includes all Syrian sheikhs, the process is more complicated, made worse by a clock ticking over the fate of your offspring, whose birth has to be registered within a year. In registering marriages, the biggest problem we faced was the sheikh, said Rajeh, a Syrian refugee, speaking for his community in a village in southern Lebanon. In Syria, the child would be ten years old and you can register him in one day. If the one-year deadline is missed in Lebanon, parents have to open a civil court case estimated to cost more than one hundred dollars and still requiring legal residency, which Ammar and Khadija, who met in the informal settlement, do not have. Legal residency becomes a requirement in Lebanon at the age of 15. At that point, many Syrians pull their children from school and do not let them stray far from the house or neighborhood for fear they will be stopped and detained. More than half of those who escaped the Syrian conflict that began in 2011 are under 18 years old, and around one in six are babies and toddlers, said Tina Gewis, a legal specialist from the Norwegian Refugee Council. Politicians pressured by some Lebanese saying the country has carried too much of the burden of the refugee crisis are pushing harder for the return of the displaced to Syria, raising the stakes since documentation is required for repatriation. If they have used an unauthorized sheikh, couples are encouraged to redo their marriages, said Sheikh Wassim Yousef al-Falah, Beirut s sharia (Islamic law) judge, who said the court s case load had tripled with the influx of Syrian refugees. But that is not an option for Ammar and Khadija because a pregnancy or the birth of a child rules that option out. Gewis said that in any case new marriages risked complicating future inheritance or other legal issues and costs were prohibitive, with courts charging up to $110 to register even straightforward marriages by an approved sheikh. Ziad al Sayegh, a senior advisor in Lebanon s newly-formed Ministry of State for Displaced Affairs said Beirut was keen to help the refugees overcome their difficulties. We don t want them to be stateless, because if you re stateless you have a legal problem that will affect the child and affect the host country, he said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malaysian PM gets likely boost with electoral boundaries ruling;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Monday likely gained ground ahead of national elections next year when the Court of Appeal ruled that the Election Commission can go ahead with a controversial redrawing of voting boundaries. Critics have called out the government over what they describe as skewing the borders in Najib s favour in the redelineation process as he seeks to win a third term in an election that must be held by August. The government denies the charge. Opponents of the redrawing process say it does not address an imbalanced distribution of voters, instead shoving opposition-inclined voters into opposition-held seats to create super-constituencies and also reshaping constituencies to have more distinct ethnic majorities. Electoral boundaries were last shifted nationwide in 2003, and even then the undefeated Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition was accused of manipulating the process. The commission is now seeking to redraw boundaries for more than 120 parliamentary seats, more than half of the 222 seats in total. The Court of Appeal set aside a lower court s order barring the commission from the redrafting exercise amid a legal challenge by the government of the opposition-held state of Selangor over the constitutionality of the process. The Election Commission has until September 2018 to finish the whole process. There is no urgency, said Elizabeth Wong, an executive councillor with the Selangor state government, outside the court. Something is happening to ensure that the prime minister and BN have this list of delineated seats to help them win Selangor, Wong said in a recording heard by Reuters. The prime minister s office denied Wong s charge, saying the exercise is is entirely normal, free from political interference and managed independently by the commission. The reality is that Malaysia s judiciary is free and fair. Decisions frequently go against the government, as is a matter of public record. The opposition only complain when decisions go against them, Tengku Sariffuddin, Najib s press secretary, said in an emailed statement. Najib is under pressure to improve on BN s disastrous election outing in 2013, when it lost the popular vote. While BN is widely expected to win its 14th straight polls, Najib s prospects are tempered by voters angered by rising living costs and an unprecedented challenge by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has joined hands with jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and now leads the opposition. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel wants outline coalition deal with SPD by mid-January;BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she wanted to conclude exploratory talks on a possible coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) by mid-January to end Germany s political deadlock. Merkel was asked if comments by her and President Emmanuel Macron that Germany and France hope to make progress on ideas to reform the euro zone by March were realistic, given the risk that talks with the SPD could falter. I mentioned March because we want to hold exploratory talks by mid-January, Merkel told reporters after a meeting of the executive board of her Christian Democrats (CDU). Merkel s conservative bloc, weakened in a September election that produced a splintered parliament, will hold their first meeting with the SPD on Wednesday. A deal with the SPD is Merkel s best chance of securing a fourth term as chancellor. She implied there was room for maneuver on policy, but appeared to rule out cooperation outside the framework of a formal coalition. If the exploratory talks are successful, the SPD will move on to negotiate a detailed blueprint with the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, setting out government policy for the next four years. The SPD agreed to enter talks only reluctantly after voters rewarded it in September for the last four years of grand coalition under Merkel by handing it its worst result since 1933. Some in the SPD now want to cooperate with Merkel outside of a formal coalition agreement, in the hope of better preserving a more distinct separate identity in voters minds. But Merkel said a stable government required formal agreements on policy: Anything short of that would mean the exploratory talks were not successful. Should Merkel and SPD leader Martin Schulz fail to reach an agreement, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier could call a new election, something neither party wants as both fear the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) would make more gains. SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil warned Merkel on Monday that party leaders would not win the required blessing from members for renewing their alliance if the SPD gave way on key election promises. He said it would insist on distinctive leftist policies, such as introducing a single citizen s insurance to replace the current dual system: superior private health insurance used mainly by the wealthy, and a more widely accessible public health insurance. Conservatives say switching to a unified system would erode competition and worsen services. But Merkel said on Monday that it was possible to find common ground with the SPD on ways to improve the healthcare system. Immigration is another sticking point. The SPD opposes a conservative plan to prolong a halt to the right of some accepted asylum seekers to bring in family members. It says the measure hampers efforts to integrate the 1.6 million people who entered Germany seeking asylum in 2015 and 2016. Integration works only with families, Klingbeil said. The CSU, which fears losses to the AfD in an election in Bavaria next year, is likely to put up more resistance to SPD policy demands than the CDU, notably on immigration. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Over Half Of The 23 NFL Players Still Kneeling During The National Anthem Are From One Team;Are you one bit surprised by the fact that the one team still doing the most kneeling during the national anthem is the Seattle Seahawks? Seattle happens to be home to many, many social justice warriors so this protest is perfect for the city of Seattle.Daily Caller reports: The national anthem protest has mostly subsided 15 weeks into the NFL season, and the players on just one team outnumber those around the rest of the league who are continuing to kneel.Twelve players on the Seattle Seahawks knelt for the national anthem ahead of their game against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday. Only 11 other players among the other 31 teams in the NFL are also continuing to protest, according to a breakdown by CNS News.The only other team with multiple players kneeling on Sunday was Colin Kaepernick s former team, the San Francisco 49ers. The Oakland Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Miami Dolphins, Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs each had one player kneel.Kaepernick began the national anthem protest at the start of the 2016-17 season when he was still quarterback of the 49ers. The former player turned activist opted out of his contract during the off-season and has not been picked up by another team since.He s a hero to the left and to the perpetual victims out there ;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Obama Regime Helped Terror Group #Hezbollah Traffic Drugs In U.S “So The Iran Nuke Deal Would Go Ahead”…Proceeds Were Allegedly Used To Design New IED’s That Killed US Troops In Iraq;This could be one of the largest scandals of our time. Meanwhile, back in Washington it s all about Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.The Obama administration has been accused of sabotaging an operation to stop Hezbollah smuggling drugs into the US so that the nuclear deal with Iran could proceed.In a stunning expos by Politico, the former US President s officials are said to have opened the door for trafficking and money laundering operations by the terror group founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.The nuclear deal agreed to scrap crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for a promise from to Tehran to stop nuclear development. By putting themselves between the DEA and Hezbollah, the Obama administration helped the militant group grow into a global security threat that is suspected of designing IEDs used to kill American troops, the report said. Donald Trump s White House slapped at his predecessor Sunday night, with press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeting that the story shows a contrast of President Trump s success against ISIS vs. President Obama s appeasement of terrorists. And a Republican House leadership aide told DailyMail.com on Monday that the Obama White House was the worst of the worst when it came to fighting terrorism in the ways that mattered most. The Drug Enforcement Administration led a complex venture called Project Cassandra to tackle the criminality of the Lebanese militant group from 2008 on.But it is claimed Obama s people threw down a number of roadblocks, effectively paving the way for Hezbollah s illegal activities including cocaine smuggling into the US which agents believe raked in $1 billion for the terror group. DEA agents claim the Obama administration stopped them arresting key figures linked to Hezbollah as an agreement on the Iran nuclear deal approached and scrapped Project Cassandra entirely once the terms were agreed in 2015. Hezbollah s $1 billion-a-year international criminal operation. International drug smuggling operation founded by the mastermind of the bombing of Beirut bombing that killed 241 US Marines in 1983.The organization is now expected to be working with the Zetas cartel to smuggle tonnes of cocaine into the United States One of the world s top cocaine traffickers called The Ghost is a Hezbollah operative.Same man accused of selling chemical weapons to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.Hezbollah launders its drugs profits by allegedly shipping used cars from America to Africa and selling them.Money laundering also takes place through South America, the Middle East, and the US.Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad is a suspected top Hezbollah operative, according to Politico, and is believed to report to Vladimir Putin.Fayad is accused of plotting the murder of American government workers.Venezuela s vice president Tareck El Aissami is believed to be deeply involved in cocaine trafficking and is an ally of Hezbollah.Hezbollah is believed to be providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite militias.An alleged Hezbollah drugs kingpin is based in Colombia and is accused of working with the Zetas cartel to smuggle cocaine into the US.Proceeds from the operations were allegedly used to design new IEDs that killed US troops in IraqThe nuclear deal agreed to scrap crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for a promise from to Tehran to stop nuclear development.By putting themselves between the DEA and Hezbollah, the Obama administration helped the militant group grow into a global security threat that is suspected of designing IEDs used to kill American troops, the report said.David Asher, who helped establish Project Cassandra, told Politico: This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision. They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down. He added that the closer Obama came to finalizing the Iran nuclear deal, the more difficult the DEA s job became.The weapons agreement was announced in January 2016, which coincided with Project Cassandra officials being moved on to other assignments. Daily Mail ;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? LATINO IMMIGRANT, ANTI-TRUMP Activist Group With Ties To George Soros and ACORN Awarded More Than $25 MILLION In Taxpayer Funds;The fact that it has taken so long to uncover massive taxpayer funds being used to directly target our President and one of two major political parties in America should frighten ever taxpaying American.WFB A liberal activist group that has been involved in direct action campaigns against President Donald Trump and Republicans was recently awarded $400,000 more in taxpayer-backed government grants, records show.Make the Road New York (MRNY), a New York City-based Latino immigrant group with nearly 20,000 dues-paying members, is closely linked to an $80 million dollar anti-Trump network and an approved funding group of the Democracy Alliance, a secretive liberal donor network.MRNY has already hauled in millions of dollars in government grants. Between 2002 and 2014, the group was the recipient of more than $20 million in grants, the Washington Free Beacon previously reported. The amount that they received in 2015 and 2016 are not fully known, given the group s most recently available tax form is from 2014.According to USASpending, a site that tracks federal government grants, MRNY was given $725,000 in grants in 2015 and more than $4.4 million in 2016. However, figures on the site show only a fraction of the total amount in government grants the group has received in previous years as marked on their tax forms.On August 10, MRNY was awarded another grant totaling $420,000 from the Department of Education, records show.MRNY was behind the widely covered protests at the JFK airport following Trump s initial travel ban. The protests, which were billed as spontaneous at the time, were later found to be in the works since one day after the presidential election.The group was involved in the #DeleteUber campaign after Uber allowed drivers to pick up passengers from the airport during the protests. Travis Kalanick, Uber s founder, stepped down from Trump s advisory council following the activist campaign.MRNY was also a part of the #GrabYourWallet campaign, which targeted retailers that sold Trump family products. Nordstrom dropped Ivanka Trump products following the campaign, but cited declining sales as the reason why it had made the decision.MRNY has partnered with the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York-based liberal nonprofit that contains old chapters of the controversial and now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), on a Corporate Backers of Hate campaign that targeted companies the group s claimed could profit from Trump s policies.The Center for Popular Democracy refers to MRNY as its sister organization in the biography of Ana Maria Archila, one of its co-executive directors, on its website. The two groups have swapped a number of individuals throughout recent years. Archila was the co-executive director of MRNY prior to her current position.Andrew Friedman, the other co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, founded MRNY in 1997 and spent years building up the organization before moving to the Center for Popular Democracy. Friedman also sits on the board of directors of MRNY.Javier Valdes, the co-executive director of MRNY, sits on the board of directors of the Center for Popular Democracy.The groups have additionally transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to each other. In 2013, MRNY passed $122,112 to the Center for Popular Democracy. In 2014, MRNY gave the group $25,000, according to tax forms.The Center for Popular Democracy sent $253,900 to MRNY in 2013 with another $100,000 going to its action fund. The Center for Popular Democracy then sent $286,042 to MRNY in 2015.The Center for Popular Democracy s action fund is also spearheading a massive $80 million dollar anti-Trump network that will span across 32 states with 48 local partners.Members of the Democracy Alliance, a secretive network of deep-pocketed liberal donors that was co-founded by billionaire George Soros, are recommended to donate to the Center for Popular Democracy, which receives generous funding from Soros. ;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany ties Iraq aid to peaceful resolution of conflict with Kurds;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany on Monday said its continued support for Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government was contingent on peaceful efforts by both sides to resolve their differences. The German government has provided more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in humanitarian, development and stabilization aid to Iraq since 2014, making it one of the biggest international donors. Our support is for Iraq as a unified state, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters after meeting with KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani in Berlin. We want to continue that, but the precondition is that Iraq solves its internal conflicts peacefully and democratically, and that we find a way out of the tense situation we are in now. Gabriel noted that Germany had warned the Kurdish region against holding the Sept. 25 referendum, in which Iraqi Kurds voted overwhelmingly to break away from Iraq, and said the goal was to restore dialogue between the two sides. The Kurdish vote was rejected by Baghdad and triggered an Iraqi military offensive that recaptured disputed areas of the north from Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Gabriel said Berlin would push the government in Baghdad to respond to offers of dialogue by the KRG. Barzani urged Germany to play a stronger role in bringing us together . Barzani also thanked Germany for supporting his region s fight against Islamic State, and training Peshmerga fighters. The German parliament voted last week to extend its military mission in northern Iraq, around 150 strong, to the end of March to allow a new government to weigh a longer extension. But the rise in tensions between Kurds and Baghdad has raised concern in Germany about the mission s future. After failing to agree on a new government with two smaller parties, Chancellor Angela Merkel is now trying to rebuild the grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) that has ruled Germany for the past four years. It is unclear if Gabriel, a former SPD leader, would stay on as foreign minister if the two blocs reach a deal. ($1 = 0.8480 euros) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey issues warrants for 106 'matchmakers' in cleric's network;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish authorities issued detention warrants on Monday for 106 people believed to have worked as matchmakers for a network accused of orchestrating last year s failed military coup, a spokesman for the Istanbul police said. Sixty-two of the suspects had been detained in the operation centered in Istanbul and spread over 20 other provinces, he said. Operations to locate the rest were ongoing. The suspects were marriage officials for supporters of the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government says was behind the failed July 2016 coup, the spokesman said. Gulen denies any involvement in the coup attempt. They were believed to have helped set up arranged marriages for some of Gulen s followers, he said. Turkish officials say the Gulen network closely monitored the personal and professional lives of some supporters, including their education, careers and marriages. Turkish police and state intelligence officials identified the suspects in a joint operation using conversations traced on ByLock, an encrypted messaging application commonly used by Gulen s supporters, the spokesman said. Turkey has identified 215,092 users of ByLock and has launched investigations into 23,171 of them, the interior minister said last month. More than 50,000 people, including security officials, military personnel and civil servants, have been detained in the aftermath of the coup. The crackdown has alarmed Turkey s Western allies and rights groups, who say President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle dissent. The government says the measures, taken under emergency rule that was imposed after the coup, are necessary due to the security threats Turkey faces. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says U.S. tip-off about planned attack 'saved many lives';MOSCOW (Reuters) - A U.S. tip-off about a planned attack in St. Petersburg helped save many lives and Russia and the United States should try to cooperate in the same way in future, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. Washington provided intelligence to Russia that helped thwart a potentially deadly bombing, U.S. and Russian officials said on Sunday, in a rare public show of cooperation despite deep strains between the two countries. It cannot be called anything but an ideal example of cooperation in fighting terrorism, Peskov told reporters at a conference call. We should aim for such standards. The tip-off resulted in the detention of seven alleged supporters of the Islamic State militant group in St. Petersburg last week, Peskov said. Russia s Federal Security Service said on Friday that IS had planned attacks in public places on Dec. 16 and weapons and explosives were found when the suspects were searched. Peskov said Russian and American security services have contacts but this was the first time when their cooperation was so efficient. This was very meaningful information that helped to save many lives, the spokesman told reporters. Asked if President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin had discussed a possible meeting, Peskov replied that the issue had not been brought up yet . ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov and Iran's Zarif discuss nuclear issue by phone: Russia;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif discussed the Middle East and Iran s nuclear deal in a phone conversation, Russian foreign ministry said on Monday. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany expects close relationship with new Austrian government;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany expects to work closely together with Austria s new government, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday when asked if Berlin had reservations about the presence in the new coalition of a far-right party. We are open to and prepared for a close and trusting relationship with the new Austrian government, Seibert told a regular news conference held some minutes after the new Vienna government, a coalition of the centre-right with the far-right Freedom Party, was sworn in. Asked if he had concerns about cooperating with a foreign ministry or security services under the control of far-right ministers, he said: We do not comment on ministerial assignments, especially not those made by our friends and neighbours. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Voting to elect president of South Africa’s ANC closes: delegate;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Voting for the new leader of South Africa s ruling ANC ended on Monday about ten hours after delegates began casting ballots for either Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa or Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a senior party source told Reuters. Voting for top 6 is done, said the source, referring to the position of president of the African National Congress and the party s five other senior posts. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yemen air strike kills eight women, two children, say residents;DUBAI (Reuters) - Eight women and two children from the same Yemeni family were killed when an air strike by forces of the Saudi-led coalition involved in the country s three-year-old war hit a wedding party, residents said on Monday. The 10 people were returning on Sunday evening from a wedding in Marib province, an area east of the capital Sanaa held by the Iran-allied Houthi group, when their vehicle was struck, the sources said. A spokesman for the coalition, which denies targeting civilians and says that every report of an attack is investigated, did not respond to an email requesting comment. The residents said the victims, all female, were part of the same family, but gave no further details on their ages or if anyone else was traveling with them. The coalition has been conducting regular air strikes in Houthi-held areas as part of a campaign to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. The United Nations says that more than 60,000 people have been killed or wounded in the conflict, which also displaced more than two million and triggered a cholera epidemic that has infected about one million people. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine Congress backs body cameras for police in bloody war on drugs;MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine Congress approved a bill that removes a proposed 900 million pesos ($17.87 million) for the police war on drugs, now that police are no longer leading the operation, but which provides them with body cameras to record arrests. Senator Loren Legarda, the head of senate s finance committee, said on Monday that Congress re-allotted the police-requested budget because the Drug Enforcement Agency was now leading the controversial war on drugs in which thousand of suspected dealers and users have been killed. The bill, approved by Congress last week, is expected to be endorsed by President Rodrigo Duterte, who launched the crackdown, on Tuesday. Duterte this month ordered the police to return to the drugs war, following a near eight-week layoff, but in a supporting role only. Most of the money steered away from the war on drugs would go towards military and police housing, and the balance would be used to buy body cameras for police engaged in anti-drug operations. Maybe they would be fearful if they are monitored, to lessen if not totally eliminate untoward incidents, Legarda told the ANC news channel. The anti-narcotics crackdown has drawn international criticism, with rights groups pointing out lapses in police operations and alleged executions of drug suspects. Police say they have shot dead more than 3,900 drug suspects in self-defence during the 17-month campaign, but surveys have showed doubts among Filipinos about the validity of police accounts. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India's muted response to Trump's Jerusalem move stokes Arab unease;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A dozen Arab ambassadors have asked India to clarify its position on the U.S recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, diplomatic sources said, after New Delhi s muted response suggested a shift in support for the Palestinian cause. U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Countries around the world, including U.S. allies Britain and France, criticized Trump s decision, but India did not take sides. Instead, the Indian foreign ministry in a brief statement, said India s position was consistent and independent of any third party. The bland statement made no reference to Jerusalem and prompted criticism at home that it was insufficient, vague and anti-Palestinian. Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state and say Trump s move has left them marginalized and jeopardized any hopes of a two-state solution. Last week, envoys from Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait based in New Delhi met Indian junior foreign minister M.J. Akbar to brief the government about an Arab League meeting on Dec. 9 condemning the U.S. decision, a diplomatic and an Indian government source said. The envoys also sought a more forthright Indian response, the sources said. But Akbar gave no assurance and the Indian source said the government had no plans for a further articulation on Jerusalem, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Akbar did not promise anything, the diplomatic source briefed on the meeting said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. India was one of the earliest and vocal champions of the Palestinian cause during the days it was leading the Non-Aligned Movement while it quietly pursued ties with Israel. But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi has moved to a more open relationship with Israel, lifting the curtain on thriving military ties and also homeland security cooperation. Modi s Hindu nationalist ruling group views Israel and India as bound together in a common fight against Islamist militancy and long called for a public embrace of Israel. Modi in July made a first trip to Israel by an Indian prime minister and did not go to Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and a customary stop for leaders trying to maintain a balance in political ties. P.R. Kumaraswamy, a leading Indian expert on ties with Israel at New Delhi s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said a major shift on India s policy had been evident since early this year when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited New Delhi. With the Palestinian president standing by his side, Prime Minister Modi reiterated India s support for Palestinian statehood but carefully avoided any direct reference to East Jerusalem, he said. For decades, India s support for a Palestinian state was accompanied by an explicit reference to East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital. But Delhi has moved to a more balanced position, refusing to take sides in an explosive dispute, he said. During the meeting last week, the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia and the Palestinian Authority spoke, the diplomatic source said. Besides the dozen envoys there were charges d affaires from several other countries in the region. They were expecting more from India, perhaps to denounce Israel and the U.S. said former Indian ambassador to Jordan and Anil Trigunayat. But would it really make a difference, adding one more voice? ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gunmen seize building in Afghan capital, firing on security forces;KABUL (Reuters) - A group of armed men seized a building under construction in the Afghan capital on Monday and were exchanging fire with security forces in a heavily populated area, an official said. The number of attackers, possible casualties and their target is not yet clear, said Najib Danish, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior. The Afshar area of Kabul where the attack was under way is close to a facility of the National Directorate of Security, the main Afghan intelligence agency, as well as a private university. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moscow says U.S. and North Korea should start a dialogue: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow hopes that the United States and North Korea will start a dialogue, Russian state-run RIA news agency reported on Monday. Ryabkov said Washington and Pyongyang should start actual talks instead of discussing conditions for such talks. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia's embattled Turnbull seen weighing cabinet reshuffle to exploit poll win;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will reshuffle his cabinet within a day, media said on Monday, a sign the embattled leader hopes to capitalize on a weekend by-election win to refresh his ministry. Turnbull s center-right government regained its razor-thin parliamentary majority through the poll triggered by a constitutional crisis, shoring up his support in a country where three prime ministers have been ousted by their own party since 2010. The changes could include Attorney-General George Brandis quitting parliament to become the high commissioner, or ambassador, to Britain, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and other media said. Representatives for Turnbull and Brandis did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment. Winning that (byelection), allowing him to send off Brandis to London, and then to put in some new faces and get a bit of movement there, that s the positive message running into Christmas and then the new year, said Stewart Jackson, a specialist in Australian politics at the University of Sydney. He will last until March. If there s a new disaster there, or any more referrals to the High Court, then it will be on for young and old, he added, referring to the crisis over the disqualification of lawmakers holding dual citizenship. When Turnbull unseated then prime minister Abbott in 2015, he said the move was necessary because the latter s government had lost 30 opinion polls in a row. Under Turnbull, the government has lost 25 opinion polls in a row. Many commentators say that if the figure reaches 30, which could happen as soon as March, Turnbull s party may consider removing him. Social services minister Christian Porter and employment minister Michaelia Cash are frontrunners to be the next attorney general, the Australian newspaper said. Turnbull may seek to exploit their relative youth - each is 47 - to appeal to a new generation of conservative voters. A spokesman for Porter declined comment. A representative for Cash did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Australian prime ministers are particularly susceptible to poor polling, as political parties have the power to call a spill, or internal leadership vote, and replace the leader with a more popular candidate. MID-YEAR BOOST Turnbull s hopes to reinvigorate performance in opinion polls strengthened on Monday, as his government predicted the national deficit would shrink faster than expected and return to surplus in fiscal 2021 after a decade of deficits. Treasurer Scott Morrison saw a deficit of about A$23.6 billion ($18.1 billion) for the year to end-June 2018, down from a May forecast of A$29.4 billion, as stronger job creation and higher commodity export earnings offset weakness in wages and consumer spending. The improved outlook enables Turnbull to trumpet his economic credentials by nudging closer to a balanced budget while enabling him to consider income tax cuts in the year before his next scheduled election, in 2019. The stronger fiscal position is a welcome Christmas present for Treasurer Morrison and the Turnbull Liberal-National government, as they head towards the end of an increasingly difficult 2017, said Su-Lin Ong, head of Australian economics at RBC Capital Markets. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 61 dead after days of violence in Ethiopia's Oromiya region;ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - At least 61 people have been killed in clashes between different ethnic groups in Ethiopia s Oromiya region, officials said, the latest bout of violence to highlight increasing instability in a province racked by bloody protests in 2015 and 2016. From Thursday, 29 ethnic Oromos were killed by ethnic Somali attackers in the region s Hawi Gudina and Daro Lebu districts, regional spokesman Addisu Arega Kitessa said. The violence triggered revenge attacks by ethnic Oromos in another district, resulting in the killing of 32 Somalis who were being sheltered in the area following a previous round of violence. The region is working to bring the perpetrators to justice, the spokesman said in a statement. The cause of the latest violence was not known, but it followed protests in Oromiya s Celenko town where the region s officials said 16 ethnic Oromos were shot dead on Tuesday by soldiers trying to disperse the crowd. We do not know who ordered the deployment of the military. This illegal act should be punished, said Lema Megersa, the region s president. The clashes are likely to fuel fears about security in Ethiopia, the region s biggest economy and a staunch Western ally. Lema s comments also illustrate growing friction within Ethiopia s ruling EPRDF coalition, since unrest roiled the Oromiya region in 2015 and 2016, when hundreds of people were killed. At that time, the violence forced the government to impose a nine-month state of emergency that was only lifted in August. The unrest was provoked by a development scheme for the capital Addis Ababa that dissidents said amounted to land grabs and turned into broader anti-government demonstrations over political and human rights. It included attacks on businesses, many of them foreign-owned, including farms growing flowers for export. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines says Maoist rebels attacked soldiers on typhoon relief duty;MANILA (Reuters) - Maoist rebels attacked soldiers delivering relief aid to parts of the central Philippines where a typhoon killed at least 32 people, army and disaster officials said on Monday. Typhoon Kai-tak, which triggered landslides and floods in the deadliest storm to hit the country this year, also left 46 people missing. Military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo said two soldiers were wounded when about 50 rebels of the New People s Army (NPA), the military arm of a communist movement, fired on a convoy of troops carrying relief aid on Samar island on Saturday. The NPA has yet to comment on the accusation and it was not possible to contact the group due to power outages and disrupted communications. The Philippines has not declared a Christmas truce with the rebels for the first time in three decades after President Rodrigo Duterte halted peace talks and this month designated the NPA a terrorist organization. (The attacks) only validated the aptness of the government s decision to terminate the peace negotiations and to discontinue the traditional Christmas truce, Arevalo said. The 3,000-member Maoist rebel forces have been waging a protracted guerrilla warfare for nearly 50 years in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people and stunted growth in resource-rich rural areas. The Philippines also faces Islamist insurgencies in the south. The NPA guerrillas have been targeting mines, plantations and other businesses, demanding revolutionary taxation to finance arms purchases and recruitment. Mina Marasigan, spokeswoman for the national disaster risk reduction and management council, called on the NPA to halt the violence. This is not an armed conflict, she said, adding the rebels should let relief work to go unhampered . Marasigan said emergency workers were working around the clock to restore power, clear debris and make roads and bridges passable to allow humanitarian assistance to reach about 220,000 people affected by the storm. Duterte is expected to visit the worst-hit typhoon areas later in the day to assess the damage. Storms regularly batter the Philippines. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan killed about 8,000 people and left millions homeless in the same region. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to say in security speech that China is competitor: officials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will lay out a new U.S. national security strategy on Monday based on his America First policy and will, among other items, make clear that China is a competitor, two senior U.S. officials said on Saturday. Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping while also demanding that Beijing increase pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program and to change trade practices to make them more favorable to the United States. The national security strategy, to be rolled out in a speech by Trump, should not be seen as an attempt to contain China but rather to offer a clear-eyed look at the challenges China poses, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The strategy, which was still being drafted, may also reverse Democratic President Barack Obama s declaration in September 2016 that climate change is a threat to security, one official said. Trump, a Republican, is to lay out his foreign policy priorities, and will emphasize his commitment to America First policies such as building up the U.S. military, confronting Islamist militants and realigning trade relationships to make the United States more competitive, the officials said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Paraguay senator with dictatorship ties to run for president;ASUNCION (Reuters) - Paraguayan Senator Mario Abdo Benitez, a lawmaker with ties to a former Paraguayan dictator, won the ruling Colorado Party s presidential primary on Sunday in a sharp rebuke for President Horacio Cartes, the party s flagbearer. Abdo, the son of former dictator Alfredo Stroessner s private secretary, beat out ex-finance minister Santiago Pena, a young economist and Cartes hand-picked successor, in a surprise outcome that followed increasing dissatisfaction with Cartes, who has been in power since 2013. Abdo will face lawyer Efrain Alegre, who won the opposition Liberal Party s nomination, in the April presidential election in the land-locked nation of 6.8 million, long one of South America s poorest. The Colorado party has governed Paraguay for nearly 70 years, including during Stroessner s 1954-1989 dictatorship, with a brief interruption when leftist Fernando Lugo was elected in 2008 and impeached in 2012. With over 96 percent of primary votes counted, Paraguay s electoral authority said that Abdo had received 50.9 percent of the vote. Pena had garnered 43.3 percent. The arrogant establishment has been defeated today and forever ... we all have scars but are urging unity for the Colorados and later, Paraguay, Abdo told his supporters following his victory. Cartes, a former soft-drink and tobacco executive, has run a low-tax policy that investors credit with spurring one of the fastest economic growth rates in Latin America. But his attempt to change laws enabling him to run for re-election spurred protests and was widely criticized. Abdo, known in Paraguay by his nickname Marito, has been a harsh critic of Cartes, and aligned with the opposition in Congress to fight his proposed re-election amendment. More than one million members of the Colorado Party voted on Sunday, an estimated turnout of 50 percent. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran presidential candidate Nasralla says election marred by fraud;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran center-left candidate Salvador Nasralla said on Sunday it was clear there had been fraud before, during and after a bitterly contested Nov. 26 presidential election and that he was headed to Washington to meet with U.S. and other officials. Nasralla s comments, made in a video posted on Facebook, followed a decision by the nation s electoral tribunal to declare conservative President Juan Orlando Hernandez the official winner of the vote. The announcement sparked calls for renewed street protests. Nasralla said he had meetings planned with the U.S. State Department and the Organization of American States. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's May to pitch status quo Brexit transition to parliament;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will pitch her plan for a Brexit transition period with unchanged access to European Union markets when she briefs lawmakers on Monday about her latest negotiating trip to Brussels. May secured an agreement last week to move previously-deadlocked talks forward onto the topic of interim and long-term trading arrangements. On Monday she will report back to parliament on those talks, setting out the framework of a time-limited implementation period designed to smooth Britain s EU exit and provide clarity for businesses and citizens. This will help give certainty to employers and families that we are going to deliver a smooth Brexit, May will say, adding that the guidelines agreed last week point to a shared desire with the EU to make rapid progress on a deal. The outline of the transition period that May will present is consistent with plans she has previously set out, and remains subject to negotiation in Brussels. During this strictly time-limited implementation period which we will now begin to negotiate, we would not be in the Single Market or the Customs Union, as we will have left the European Union, May will say according to advance extracts of her statement. But we would propose that our access to one another s markets would continue as now, while we prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin our future partnership. END-STATE TALKS But the plan is not guaranteed to be universally accepted by lawmakers in May s Conservative Party, which is still deeply divided over the best route out of the bloc, and for some even the principle of leaving the EU. May is reliant on the backing of all members of her party to put her Brexit plans into action, having lost her parliamentary majority in an ill-judged snap election earlier this year which left her needing the support of a small Northern Irish party. On Saturday, some Conservatives who want to see Britain make a more radical break with the bloc baulked at a suggestion by Finance Minister Philip Hammond that the implementation phase would amount to recreating the status quo with the EU. May will say that during the interim period, Britain wants to begin registering EU citizens arrival in the country in preparation for a new immigration system, and would hope to agree, and possibly even sign, post-Brexit trade deals with non-EU states. As well as briefing parliament, May is expected to meet key ministers on Monday to discuss the even thornier issue of what the country s long-term relationship with the EU should be - the first time since the June 2016 vote to leave that she has broached the topic with senior cabinet members. A full cabinet discussion on the so-called end state of the Brexit talks is then due on Tuesday. One of the key pro-Brexit voices in the cabinet, foreign minister Boris Johnson, on Sunday set out his own long-term view, warning May that Britain must avoid becoming subordinate to the EU. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N.'s Zeid toughens warning of 'genocide' in Myanmar;GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official has said he would not be surprised if a court one day ruled that acts of genocide had been committed against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, according to a television interview to be shown on Monday. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein told the BBC that attacks on the Rohingya had been well thought out and planned and he had asked Myanmar s leader Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to stop the military action. Zeid has already called the campaign a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and asked rhetorically if anyone could rule out elements of genocide , but his latest remarks put the case plainly, toughening his stance. The elements suggest you cannot rule out the possibility that acts of genocide have been committed, he said, according to excerpts of his interview provided in advance by the BBC. It s very hard to establish because the thresholds are high, he said. But it wouldn t surprise me in the future if the court were to make such a finding on the basis of what we see. Myanmar denies committing atrocities against the Rohingya and has previously rejected U.N. criticism for its politicization and partiality . The Myanmar military says the crackdown is a legitimate counter-insurgency operation. Zeid said Myanmar s flippant response to the serious concerns of the international community made him fear the current crisis could just be the opening phases of something much worse . He told the BBC he feared jihadi groups could form in the huge refugee camps in Bangladesh and even launch attacks in Myanmar, perhaps targeting Buddhist temples there. He did not say, in the excerpts provided, which court could prosecute suspected atrocities. Myanmar is not a member of the International Criminal Court, so referral to that court could be done only by the U.N. Security Council. But Myanmar s ally China could veto such a referral. The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria. Almost 870,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, including about 660,000 who arrived after Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. U.N. investigators have heard Rohingya testimony of a consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson . Zeid said he had phoned Suu Kyi in January, asking her in vain to stop the military operation. Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi s less than two-year old civilian government has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals it has to share power with under Myanmar s transition after decades of military rule. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Mainstream Media Fake News: 21st Century Wire Debates American ‘Liberal’ Academic;This past week saw one of the most colorful debates regarding the CNN and US mainstream media meltdown over the Russia-gate conspiracy.CrossTalk says: Trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. But no one should be surprised and the media has itself to blame. This sad state of affairs is a self-inflicted wound and actually a conscious business model. The media no longer has an interest in reporting news media today propagates ideology. Host Peter Lavele is CrossTalking with guests Eric Alterman (Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress), Patrick Henningsen (21st Century Wire), and Lionel (Lionel Media). Watch:. READ MORE CNN FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire CNN FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV ;US_News;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: OBAMA REGIME Demanded Homeland Security Officials Stop Using “Sharia” and “Jihadist” Language…Look Who Just Changed That Language [VIDEO];President Trump addressed the America people today, as he outlined a new and bold national security strategy. The American people are generous. You are determined, you are brave, you are strong, and you are wise. When the American people speak, all of us should listen. And just over one year ago, you spoke loud and you spoke clear. And On November 8th, 2016, you voted to Make America Great Again. You embraced new leadership, and very new strategies, and also a glorious new hope, that is why we are here today. But to seize the opportunities of the future, we must first understand the failures of the past. America will pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders. Legal Insurrection reports- The White House has unveiled President Donald Trump s national security strategy. It has four main points: Protect America, promote our prosperity, preserve peace through strength, and advance our influence.But one of the biggest points is the return of using jihadist and Sharia, language President Barack Obama s administration tried to avoid.From Fox News: The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations, the document states, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech.A search of the document shows the word jihadist appears 24 times in the 68 page document. Obama s 2015 national security strategy mentioned Islam twice.The document mentions that America will pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders. Trump listed the ways to do this: disrupt terror plots, take direct actions, eliminate terrorist safe havens, sever sources of strength, share responsibility, and combat radicalization & recruitment in communities.David Reaboi at Security Studies Group noted another massive change:Here is my favorite part of the National Security Strategy and it s MASSIVE Admin acknowledges Sharia is goal and driving force behind Islamist terror groups. Obama effectively banned use of any of this terminology. pic.twitter.com/2HVHhnVqjX David Reaboi (@davereaboi) December 18, 2017He is correct. Back in January 2016, Homeland Security released a report that called for officials to stop using jihad and sharia. The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time:Under the section on terminology, the report calls for rejecting use of an us versus them mentality by shunning Islamic language in Countering Violent Extremism programs, or CVE, the Obama administration s euphemism that seeks to avoid references to Islam.Under a section on recommended actions on terminology, the report says DHS should reject religiously-charged terminology and problematic positioning by using plain meaning American English. Government agencies should employ American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like jihad, sharia, takfir or umma, states the June 2016 report by the Council s countering violent extremism subcommittee. The DHS report stated that to avoid a confrontational us versus them stance in public efforts to counter Islamic radicalization, government programs should use the term American Muslim instead of Muslim American. The Obama administration insisted on this even though ISIS made it NO secret that they wanted the world to live under Sharia law. The terrorist group even formed an all female brigade to help enforce Sharia law through brutal and violent means. ;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YOU’LL NEVER GUESS Who The New York Times Is Blaming For North Korea’s Decades-Long Famine;After North Korea s most recent missile launch, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un claimed he had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force. US Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed that North Korea now has the ability to hit everywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the New York Times is blaming the Trump administration for starving the North Koreans, after placing stricter sanctions on the rogue nation.The left-leaning New York Times bizarrely claimed this week that the decades-long famine plaguing North Korea is not the fault of its brutal communist regime, but most likely due to American interference and foreign policy, saying the hunger is devastating. And it s our fault. The article, published over the weekend, lays the blame of millions of starved and tortured North Koreans at the feet of the American administration, saying the US and its allies have crippled Kim Jong Un s ability to feed his own people. Led by the United States, the international community is crippling North Korea s economy, writes the author. In August and September, the United Nations Security Council passed resolutions banning exports of coal, iron, lead, seafood and textiles and limiting the import of crude oil and refined petroleum products. The United States, Japan and South Korea have each imposed bilateral sanctions on Pyongyang to further isolate the country. We are trying to inflict pain on the North Korean regime to stop the development of nuclear weapons and missiles. That s understandable. But in the process, we are also punishing the most vulnerable citizens and shackling the ability of humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to them, the author adds.North Korea s massive food shortages date back to the 1990s when dictator Kim Jong Il s regime was incapable of handling droughts and other natural disasters that cut dwindling food supplies by over 30%. Hannity.com ;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;UNREAL! DEMOTED DEPUTY AG Bailed On Being Interviewed By Senate Intelligence Committee Today;"Did Bruce Ohr get cold feet? Demoted Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr was set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee today. The testimony never happened . These people feel so entitled and above the law that they just don t show up to testify. This really implies guilt on his part for not showing up What s he afraid of if he s above board?Could it be that questions might come up about his wife working for the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Yes, that s certainly a conflict of interest!Demoted Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr was set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee today. The testimony never happened. pic.twitter.com/9vNRe5qukk FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 18, 2017Judicial Watch s Tom Fitton says it s just incredible that Ohr didn t show up to testify today:.@JudicialWatch President @TomFitton on Ohr hearing: ""To have this key official not show up is just incredible."" pic.twitter.com/CAq1TKoiTU FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 18, 2017";politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP’S NATIONAL SECURITY SPEECH Reveals Policy Based on 4 Principles Focusing on ‘America First’;President Trump delivered a speech on national security that ll knock your socks off. He plans on putting America first: America is in the game and America is going to win. His strategy involves four basic principles: protecting the homeland by restricting immigration, pressuring trading partners, building up the military and otherwise increasing U.S. influence globally.What s not to love about that? MAGA!Via Fox News: President Trump on Monday unveiled a national security strategy that enshrines his America First approach into U.S. policy, stressing American strength and economic security and putting rivals like China and Russia on notice. America is in the game and America is going to win, Trump said, making clear that the United States will stand up for itself even if that means acting unilaterally or alienating others on issues such as trade, climate change and immigration.In a 20-minute speech, Trump said the U.S. faces an extraordinarily dangerous world and one of his goals is to make sure the U.S. is leading again on the world stage. America is coming back, and America is coming back strong, he said.Trump, who released his 68-page national security strategy ahead of his speech, said he is making good on campaign pledges that he promised would revitalize the American economy, rebuild our military, defend our borders, protect our sovereignty and advance our values. Trump s national security strategy, a document mandated by Congress, is based on four principles: protecting the homeland by restricting immigration, pressuring trading partners, building up the military and otherwise increasing U.S. influence globally.Trump also took on the rise in North Korea s nuclear aggression and painted China and Russia as U.S. rivals despite his own relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which included two telephone calls last week.Bryan Llenas has the rogue regime s reaction. China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity, the strategy document says. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence. The strategy accuses the two nations of developing advanced weapons and capabilities that could threaten our critical infrastructure and our command and control architecture. While Trump in his address did not mention Russia meddling in U.S. elections, the written strategy also calls out Moscow for using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies and says adversaries like Russia target media, political processes, financial networks and personal data. In a shift from the last administration, Trump s strategy also refers to the jihadist terror threat and Islamist terror groups. We will pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders, it says.Further, the strategy backs off naming climate change as a major threat. The last such strategy document, prepared by then-President Barack Obama in 2015, declared climate change an urgent and growing threat to our national security. ;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Prince William's daughter Charlotte to start at nursery next year;LONDON (Reuters) - Princess Charlotte, the daughter of Britain s Prince William and wife Kate, is to start at a nursery school near the family home in west London early next year, her father s office said on Monday. The two-year-old, fourth-in-line to the British throne behind her father, whose official title is Duke of Cambridge, her elder brother George and grandfather Prince Charles, will attend the Willcocks Nursery School in Kensington. We are delighted that The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have chosen the Willcocks Nursery School for Princess Charlotte, the school said in a statement. We look forward to welcoming Charlotte to our nursery in January. On its website the school, rated as outstanding by government inspectors, describes itself as traditional, saying it strives to maintain its ethos for high standards, excellence and good manners . Fees are 3,050 pounds ($4,072) per term for mornings and 1,800 pounds for afternoons. Unlike previous senior royals, Prince William attended nursery school as a child. His son George made the step up from nursery to primary school in September when he began at Thomas s Battersea, a private school in southwest London which is also close to the family s Kensington Palace home. As well as announcing news of Charlotte s new school, William and Kate released a new portrait photograph of their family which adorns their Christmas cards this year. Kate is pregnant with the couple s third child with the new royal baby due in April. ($1 = 0.7490 pounds) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? LATINO IMMIGRANT, ANTI-TRUMP Activist Group With Ties To George Soros and ACORN Awarded More Than $25 MILLION In Taxpayer Funds;The fact that it has taken so long to uncover massive taxpayer funds being used to directly target our President and one of two major political parties in America should frighten ever taxpaying American.WFB A liberal activist group that has been involved in direct action campaigns against President Donald Trump and Republicans was recently awarded $400,000 more in taxpayer-backed government grants, records show.Make the Road New York (MRNY), a New York City-based Latino immigrant group with nearly 20,000 dues-paying members, is closely linked to an $80 million dollar anti-Trump network and an approved funding group of the Democracy Alliance, a secretive liberal donor network.MRNY has already hauled in millions of dollars in government grants. Between 2002 and 2014, the group was the recipient of more than $20 million in grants, the Washington Free Beacon previously reported. The amount that they received in 2015 and 2016 are not fully known, given the group s most recently available tax form is from 2014.According to USASpending, a site that tracks federal government grants, MRNY was given $725,000 in grants in 2015 and more than $4.4 million in 2016. However, figures on the site show only a fraction of the total amount in government grants the group has received in previous years as marked on their tax forms.On August 10, MRNY was awarded another grant totaling $420,000 from the Department of Education, records show.MRNY was behind the widely covered protests at the JFK airport following Trump s initial travel ban. The protests, which were billed as spontaneous at the time, were later found to be in the works since one day after the presidential election.The group was involved in the #DeleteUber campaign after Uber allowed drivers to pick up passengers from the airport during the protests. Travis Kalanick, Uber s founder, stepped down from Trump s advisory council following the activist campaign.MRNY was also a part of the #GrabYourWallet campaign, which targeted retailers that sold Trump family products. Nordstrom dropped Ivanka Trump products following the campaign, but cited declining sales as the reason why it had made the decision.MRNY has partnered with the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York-based liberal nonprofit that contains old chapters of the controversial and now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), on a Corporate Backers of Hate campaign that targeted companies the group s claimed could profit from Trump s policies.The Center for Popular Democracy refers to MRNY as its sister organization in the biography of Ana Maria Archila, one of its co-executive directors, on its website. The two groups have swapped a number of individuals throughout recent years. Archila was the co-executive director of MRNY prior to her current position.Andrew Friedman, the other co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, founded MRNY in 1997 and spent years building up the organization before moving to the Center for Popular Democracy. Friedman also sits on the board of directors of MRNY.Javier Valdes, the co-executive director of MRNY, sits on the board of directors of the Center for Popular Democracy.The groups have additionally transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to each other. In 2013, MRNY passed $122,112 to the Center for Popular Democracy. In 2014, MRNY gave the group $25,000, according to tax forms.The Center for Popular Democracy sent $253,900 to MRNY in 2013 with another $100,000 going to its action fund. The Center for Popular Democracy then sent $286,042 to MRNY in 2015.The Center for Popular Democracy s action fund is also spearheading a massive $80 million dollar anti-Trump network that will span across 32 states with 48 local partners.Members of the Democracy Alliance, a secretive network of deep-pocketed liberal donors that was co-founded by billionaire George Soros, are recommended to donate to the Center for Popular Democracy, which receives generous funding from Soros. ;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: Obama Regime Helped Terror Group #Hezbollah Traffic Drugs In U.S “So The Iran Nuke Deal Would Go Ahead”…Proceeds Were Allegedly Used To Design New IED’s That Killed US Troops In Iraq;This could be one of the largest scandals of our time. Meanwhile, back in Washington it s all about Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.The Obama administration has been accused of sabotaging an operation to stop Hezbollah smuggling drugs into the US so that the nuclear deal with Iran could proceed.In a stunning expos by Politico, the former US President s officials are said to have opened the door for trafficking and money laundering operations by the terror group founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.The nuclear deal agreed to scrap crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for a promise from to Tehran to stop nuclear development. By putting themselves between the DEA and Hezbollah, the Obama administration helped the militant group grow into a global security threat that is suspected of designing IEDs used to kill American troops, the report said. Donald Trump s White House slapped at his predecessor Sunday night, with press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeting that the story shows a contrast of President Trump s success against ISIS vs. President Obama s appeasement of terrorists. And a Republican House leadership aide told DailyMail.com on Monday that the Obama White House was the worst of the worst when it came to fighting terrorism in the ways that mattered most. The Drug Enforcement Administration led a complex venture called Project Cassandra to tackle the criminality of the Lebanese militant group from 2008 on.But it is claimed Obama s people threw down a number of roadblocks, effectively paving the way for Hezbollah s illegal activities including cocaine smuggling into the US which agents believe raked in $1 billion for the terror group. DEA agents claim the Obama administration stopped them arresting key figures linked to Hezbollah as an agreement on the Iran nuclear deal approached and scrapped Project Cassandra entirely once the terms were agreed in 2015. Hezbollah s $1 billion-a-year international criminal operation. International drug smuggling operation founded by the mastermind of the bombing of Beirut bombing that killed 241 US Marines in 1983.The organization is now expected to be working with the Zetas cartel to smuggle tonnes of cocaine into the United States One of the world s top cocaine traffickers called The Ghost is a Hezbollah operative.Same man accused of selling chemical weapons to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.Hezbollah launders its drugs profits by allegedly shipping used cars from America to Africa and selling them.Money laundering also takes place through South America, the Middle East, and the US.Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad is a suspected top Hezbollah operative, according to Politico, and is believed to report to Vladimir Putin.Fayad is accused of plotting the murder of American government workers.Venezuela s vice president Tareck El Aissami is believed to be deeply involved in cocaine trafficking and is an ally of Hezbollah.Hezbollah is believed to be providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite militias.An alleged Hezbollah drugs kingpin is based in Colombia and is accused of working with the Zetas cartel to smuggle cocaine into the US.Proceeds from the operations were allegedly used to design new IEDs that killed US troops in IraqThe nuclear deal agreed to scrap crippling economic sanctions on Iran in return for a promise from to Tehran to stop nuclear development.By putting themselves between the DEA and Hezbollah, the Obama administration helped the militant group grow into a global security threat that is suspected of designing IEDs used to kill American troops, the report said.David Asher, who helped establish Project Cassandra, told Politico: This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision. They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down. He added that the closer Obama came to finalizing the Iran nuclear deal, the more difficult the DEA s job became.The weapons agreement was announced in January 2016, which coincided with Project Cassandra officials being moved on to other assignments. Daily Mail ;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Over Half Of The 23 NFL Players Still Kneeling During The National Anthem Are From One Team;Are you one bit surprised by the fact that the one team still doing the most kneeling during the national anthem is the Seattle Seahawks? Seattle happens to be home to many, many social justice warriors so this protest is perfect for the city of Seattle.Daily Caller reports: The national anthem protest has mostly subsided 15 weeks into the NFL season, and the players on just one team outnumber those around the rest of the league who are continuing to kneel.Twelve players on the Seattle Seahawks knelt for the national anthem ahead of their game against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday. Only 11 other players among the other 31 teams in the NFL are also continuing to protest, according to a breakdown by CNS News.The only other team with multiple players kneeling on Sunday was Colin Kaepernick s former team, the San Francisco 49ers. The Oakland Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Miami Dolphins, Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs each had one player kneel.Kaepernick began the national anthem protest at the start of the 2016-17 season when he was still quarterback of the 49ers. The former player turned activist opted out of his contract during the off-season and has not been picked up by another team since.He s a hero to the left and to the perpetual victims out there ;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: OBAMA REGIME Demanded Homeland Security Officials Stop Using “Sharia” and “Jihadist” Language…Look Who Just Changed That Language [VIDEO];President Trump addressed the America people today, as he outlined a new and bold national security strategy. The American people are generous. You are determined, you are brave, you are strong, and you are wise. When the American people speak, all of us should listen. And just over one year ago, you spoke loud and you spoke clear. And On November 8th, 2016, you voted to Make America Great Again. You embraced new leadership, and very new strategies, and also a glorious new hope, that is why we are here today. But to seize the opportunities of the future, we must first understand the failures of the past. America will pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders. Legal Insurrection reports- The White House has unveiled President Donald Trump s national security strategy. It has four main points: Protect America, promote our prosperity, preserve peace through strength, and advance our influence.But one of the biggest points is the return of using jihadist and Sharia, language President Barack Obama s administration tried to avoid.From Fox News: The primary transnational threats Americans face are from jihadist terrorists and transnational criminal organizations, the document states, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech.A search of the document shows the word jihadist appears 24 times in the 68 page document. Obama s 2015 national security strategy mentioned Islam twice.The document mentions that America will pursue threats to their source, so that jihadist terrorists are stopped before they ever reach our borders. Trump listed the ways to do this: disrupt terror plots, take direct actions, eliminate terrorist safe havens, sever sources of strength, share responsibility, and combat radicalization & recruitment in communities.David Reaboi at Security Studies Group noted another massive change:Here is my favorite part of the National Security Strategy and it s MASSIVE Admin acknowledges Sharia is goal and driving force behind Islamist terror groups. Obama effectively banned use of any of this terminology. pic.twitter.com/2HVHhnVqjX David Reaboi (@davereaboi) December 18, 2017He is correct. Back in January 2016, Homeland Security released a report that called for officials to stop using jihad and sharia. The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time:Under the section on terminology, the report calls for rejecting use of an us versus them mentality by shunning Islamic language in Countering Violent Extremism programs, or CVE, the Obama administration s euphemism that seeks to avoid references to Islam.Under a section on recommended actions on terminology, the report says DHS should reject religiously-charged terminology and problematic positioning by using plain meaning American English. Government agencies should employ American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like jihad, sharia, takfir or umma, states the June 2016 report by the Council s countering violent extremism subcommittee. The DHS report stated that to avoid a confrontational us versus them stance in public efforts to counter Islamic radicalization, government programs should use the term American Muslim instead of Muslim American. The Obama administration insisted on this even though ISIS made it NO secret that they wanted the world to live under Sharia law. The terrorist group even formed an all female brigade to help enforce Sharia law through brutal and violent means. ;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YOU’LL NEVER GUESS Who The New York Times Is Blaming For North Korea’s Decades-Long Famine;After North Korea s most recent missile launch, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un claimed he had finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force. US Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed that North Korea now has the ability to hit everywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the New York Times is blaming the Trump administration for starving the North Koreans, after placing stricter sanctions on the rogue nation.The left-leaning New York Times bizarrely claimed this week that the decades-long famine plaguing North Korea is not the fault of its brutal communist regime, but most likely due to American interference and foreign policy, saying the hunger is devastating. And it s our fault. The article, published over the weekend, lays the blame of millions of starved and tortured North Koreans at the feet of the American administration, saying the US and its allies have crippled Kim Jong Un s ability to feed his own people. Led by the United States, the international community is crippling North Korea s economy, writes the author. In August and September, the United Nations Security Council passed resolutions banning exports of coal, iron, lead, seafood and textiles and limiting the import of crude oil and refined petroleum products. The United States, Japan and South Korea have each imposed bilateral sanctions on Pyongyang to further isolate the country. We are trying to inflict pain on the North Korean regime to stop the development of nuclear weapons and missiles. That s understandable. But in the process, we are also punishing the most vulnerable citizens and shackling the ability of humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to them, the author adds.North Korea s massive food shortages date back to the 1990s when dictator Kim Jong Il s regime was incapable of handling droughts and other natural disasters that cut dwindling food supplies by over 30%. Hannity.com ;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH SWAMP MONSTER James Clapper Make False Claim That Trump is an “Intelligence Asset” for Putin [Video];Watch some fake news from a swamp creature who should be in jail:Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper referred to President Donald Trump on Monday as an intelligence asset for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The term asset refers to people with countries or organizations being spied upon who serve as resources for outside spies.Clapper appeared on CNN to discuss Trump s national security strategy speech given Monday, where he referred to Russia as a rival but also said he wanted to form a partnership.The two leaders have also expressed recent gratitude to each other, with Putin calling and thanking Trump for sharing intelligence that helped foil a terror plot and Trump thanking Putin for his recent praise of the American economy.IS THIS GUY KIDDING:This is on the same day that we learn the following about the Obama administration:The Obama administration intentionally derailed investigations into the terrorist group Hezbollah s drug trafficking operation to secure the Iran nuclear deal, according to a new bombshell report.Politico spoke with several members of Project Cassandra, a joint effort between the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Pentagon that was founded in 2008 under the Bush administration to identify and prosecute a drug trafficking, money laundering, and smuggling operation run by the Iranian-backed militants.Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.Read more: WFB;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH PALIN’S SON BREAKS Into Family Home…Savagely Beats Dad…Leaves Him Covered In Blood;The eldest son of ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin beat the daylights out of his own father after he broke into his parents home in a drunken rage, according to documents released by local police.Track Palin, 28, was busted Saturday and charged with first-degree burglary, fourth-degree assault and criminal mischief, and remains in custody.A court document said that the younger Palin wanted to visit the home to retrieve a truck.But his father, Todd Palin, told him to stay away because Track Palin was drunk and on pain medication, according to a police affidavit and charging documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Track told him he was [going to] come anyway to beat his ass, according to an affidavit filed by Wasilla Police Officer Adam LaPointe.Todd Palin answered the door armed with a pistol when his son arrived, but Track broke a window to get into the house and then started savagely beating him, cops said.The younger Palin threw his dad to the ground and hit him repeatedly on the head, leaving him covered in blood and with a liquid oozing from his ear, the documents said.Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, called police at 8:30 p.m. and said her son was freaking out and was on some type of medication. When cops arrived, they saw the parents fleeing the house in separate vehicles, Todd Palin with blood running down his face and Sarah Palin looking visibly upset, the paper reported.Police confronted Track Palin, who called them peasants, and told them to lay down their weapons, according to the documents. Eventually, Palin left the house and was handcuffed.He told cops that had told his father to shoot him several times, according to the documents. NYP;left-news;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hearing into murder of Malta journalist case struggles to start;VALLETTA (Reuters) - A second magistrate in less than a week has recused herself from hearing court evidence in Malta against three men accused of the murder of anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia. The double abstention has jeopardized the launch of judicial proceedings against the three men and underscored the interwoven nature of public life on the Mediterranean island of Malta - the smallest nation in the European Union. The initial magistrate assigned to the case stood down last Thursday after defense lawyers complained that she knew one of Caruana Galizia s sisters and had sent her condolences following the Oct. 16 killing. On Monday, a replacement magistrate, Charmaine Galea, said she was also withdrawing from the case because the blogger had written about her and her alleged connections to the government. She said that justice had to be done and be seen to be done. A new magistrate was subsequently assigned to the suit and the preliminary hearing was scheduled to resume on Tuesday. Under Maltese law, the compilation of evidence must be presented within a 30-day time frame and a lawyer for Caruana Galizia s family warned the delays could sink the case. The trio were charged on Dec. 4, giving the court until Jan. 4 to hear the evidence and decide whether to call a trial. The three suspects, brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, and Vince Muscat have denied any wrongdoing. The three were known to local police and had never been the target of any of Caruana Galizia s often fierce blogs. Caruana Galizia was killed instantly when the car she was driving was blown up. According to Maltese media, the three suspects were arrested on the basis of phone intercepts and analysis of triangulation data showing their locations at the time of the murder. The reports said one of the suspects had to call a local telecom company shortly before the bomb went off to top up the credit on the mobile phone that was used to detonate the explosives - a error that led police straight to the trio. The government has announced a one-million-euro ($1.2-million) reward to anyone giving enough information for convictions. Caruana Galizia s family have denounced the handling of the case and expressed fears that those behind the murder will never be brought to justice. ($1 = 0.8482 euros) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India ruling party pulls ahead in election in Modi state after tight race;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was set to win an election in Prime Minister Narendra Modi s home state on Monday, the vote count showed, but with a reduced margin, which will be a boost for the opposition. A combined opposition led by the Congress party had mounted a tough challenge in the western state of Gujarat, hoping to weaken Modi in his home base by exploiting discontent over a lack of jobs and a national sales tax that hit business. The BJP won more than 100 seats in the 182-member state assembly, projections by India Today, CNN News18 and TimesNow showed. A party needs 92 seats to rule the state. Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, who formally took over as party president at the weekend, was set to win more than 70 seats, far better than it had done in the past. A relieved BJP said Modi s popularity remained intact. There is no other leader close, said Shyam Jaju, party vice president. The mood in the BJP headquarters in New Delhi and in Gujarat s main city Ahmedabad was initially tense as early trends showed a close fight. But later workers gathered to shout slogans and cheer victory. Modi s party was also ahead in Himachal Pradesh, the Himalayan state in the north also voting for a new state assembly. Modi faces a general election in 2019, but before then, the opposition aims to slow down Modi s momentum in state elections, with two more next year. Businesses across India have been struggling with the poor implementation of a goods and services tax that aims to harmonize an array of state and federal taxes but entangled them in cumbersome procedures. Modi s shock ban of high-value currency notes in November last year, as part of his fight against corruption, also disrupted small business that forms the bedrock of his support base. Indian stock markets opened weaker, with the 50-share NSE index down almost 2 percent as early trends showed a close contest in Gujarat. But stocks reversed the losses later - the 50-share NSE index was trading up 0.7 percent at 0455 GMT. The partially convertible rupee was trading at 64.32/33 to the dollar versus its previous close of 64.04. The rupee had dropped to a low of 64.74 in early trade. Almost all pre-vote and exit polls had predicted a comfortable victory, but the polls have often gone wrong in the past. To ensure his party s prospects, Modi addressed dozens of rallies during his campaign in Gujarat, performed rituals and even waved from a seaplane on his last day on the campaign trail. If they had lost Gujarat, the BJP would have collapsed like a pack of cards, said Congress member Sharmistha Mukherjee. This is their citadel, they threw everything at it. In the Congress party office in Ahmedabad, posters of Rahul Gandhi were being pasted on the wall. Rahul Gandhi s hard work has paid off in the state and it proves that Modi s governance is not making anyone happy, said a Congress leader, Shaktisinh Gohil. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe army leaves streets a month after Mugabe's ouster;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s army declared an end on Monday to the military intervention that ousted Robert Mugabe, promising to shut down their last roadblocks in the capital and hand over to police. The armed soldiers who took to the streets during last month s de facto coup had largely disappeared from the city center by Monday afternoon. Just a handful could be seen standing around with civilian police. Normalcy has now returned to our country. It is for this reason that ... we announce the end of Operation Restore Legacy today, Commander Phillip Sibanda said, referring to the name of the intervention which the army said targeted criminals in the entourage of the 93-year-old leader and his wife, Grace. Civic groups have been urging the soldiers to leave the streets since Mugabe s former deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was sworn in to replace him as president of the southern African country on Nov. 24. Defence Forces Commander General Constantino Chiwenga, who spearheaded the de facto coup, was initially billed to address reporters, but he did not turn up and no explanation was given for his absence. He is widely seen as a contender to become vice president - a post that Mnangagwa has promised to fill in the next few days. Mnangagwa made three generals members of the ruling ZANU-PF party s executive Politburo on Friday. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Key policies of Austria's conservative/far-right coalition;VIENNA (Reuters) - Ministers from Austria s main conservative People s Party (OVP) and the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) were sworn in on Monday, making it the only western European country with a far-right component in its governing coalition. Below are some of the policies that new chancellor Sebastian Kurz s OVP and Heinz-Christian Strache s FPO have already agreed on. For the entire program in German please click [here] ** Oppose deeper political integration among EU members states, seek to have more powers returned to national governments. Oppose Turkey s bid to join the EU. ** Rule out a referendum on Austrian membership of the EU. ** Move some departments that deal with European affairs, including the task force preparing Austria s EU presidency in the second half of 2018, to the chancellery headed by Kurz. (The FPO will take control of the Foreign Ministry). ** Push for more relaxed relationship between West and Russia. ** Introduce tougher minimum sentences for violent and sex crimes. ** Make fighting political Islam a priority. ** Secure Austria s borders nationally to stop illegal immigration until the EU has secured external frontiers. ** Put around 2,100 more policemen on the streets. ** Extend the maximum working day to 12 hours from 10. ** Facilitate immigration only for qualified workers in sectors that are struggling to find suitable Austrian employees. ** Simplify administrative framework in highly federalized Austria. ** Support construction of third runway at Vienna Airport. ** Focus on improving test results in basic skills such as reading, writing and numeracy, allow children to start school only if their German is good enough. ** Cut social benefits for parents who fail to comply with certain requirements, like ensuring attendance and that their child speaks German well enough. ** Cut public spending to fund tax cuts. Kurz and Strache repeatedly said during their campaigns that they planned to cut public spending by around 12 billion euros ($14.1 billion). ** Reduce corporate tax burden, for example by exempting profit reinvested in Austria. ** Not introduce wealth or inheritance taxes. ** Introduce public debt brake in the constitution. ** Push, also at a European level, for higher taxes on online transactions with foreign companies. ** Block newcomers from accessing many social services in Austria in their first five years in the country. ** Cap the main basic benefit payment at 1,500 euros a month for families and provide refugees with a light version of regular benefits. ** Cut benefits for refugees and turn cash payments into benefits in kind so as to minimize what they say is a pull factor attracting immigrants to the country. ** Reform the state pension system to reflect Austria s ageing population. ** Give families a tax cut worth 1,500 euros per child per year. ** Merge Austria s 22 public health and other social security funds into five entities to cut administrative costs. ** Produce 100 percent of Austria s power from renewable sources by 2030, compared with roughly 33 percent at present, and keep the national ban on nuclear power plants. ** Gradual introduction of legislation to allow a referendum to take place if at least 900,000 voters support the issue. ** Rule out referendums on Austrian membership of the EU;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia to help Syria rebuild energy facilities - Russian Deputy PM; OSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will be the only country to take part in rebuilding Syrian energy facilities, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Monday, after holding talks in Syria with President Bashar al-Assad, the RIA news agency reported. Rogozin was speaking a week after President Vladimir Putin ordered a significant part of Moscow s military contingent in Syria start withdrawing, declaring their work largely done. His comments offered a glimpse of how Moscow hopes it can be involved in Syria s economy, which has been badly damaged by six years of conflict. The Syrian leadership would like to only cooperate with Russia ... in rebuilding all of the country s energy facilities, RIA quoted Rogozin as saying. Mr. President Bashar al-Assad said today that Syria has no desire to work with companies from countries which betrayed Syria at a certain moment, he was cited as saying. The Interfax news agency also quoted Rogozin as saying that Russia and Syria would create a joint company to exploit a Syrian phosphates deposit, while RIA cited him as saying that Moscow planned to use Syrian sea ports to import Russian grain for Syria and other countries like Iraq. These are very important agreements which will allow us to win this war, Interfax quoted Rogozin as saying. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After UK's Grenfell Tower fire deaths review calls for ‘culture change’;LONDON (Reuters) - An interim review into UK building regulations commissioned after the Grenfell Tower social housing block fire in London which killed 71 people in June, has called for a culture change in respect to fire safety. The review, sponsored by the Department For Communities and Local Government (DCLG), said the building industry aimed for minimum compliance , that enforcement measures were poor and that competence levels among builders and regulators was weak. It has become clear that the whole system of regulation, covering what is written down and the way in which it is enacted in practice, is not fit for purpose, leaving room for those who want to take shortcuts to do so, the review said. The Grenfell fire was started by a fridge-freezer but spread quickly, partly because of the use of flammable cladding panels which were afixed to the outside of the 24-storey building, experts have said. The contractor who retrofitted the external insulation on the building said the work was compliant but the manufacturer of the cladding panels had advised in marketing material that non-flammable variants should be used on tall buildings. The building industry s own guidance document said cladding should be able to pass the so-called BS 8414 combustibilty test, which is also stipulated in the building regulations. When tested by DCLG this summer the panels used at Grenfell failed this test. A Reuters review published last week found that 60 high-rise buildings had been fitted with the same kind of cladding as Grenfell since 2006. [nL8N1O120P] The interim report published on Monday, led by Judith Hackitt, a former civil servant and chair of EEF, a manufacturing trade body, also said the building regulations should be clearer. Some industry figures have advocated more specific rules, such as the banning of any flammable materials from the outside of tall buildings. However, many safety experts across different industries say that highly specific rules can invite a box-ticking approach and the emergence of loopholes. After the Piper Alpha offshore oil platform disaster which killed 167 workers in 1988, Britain introduced the safety case offshore regulations. Rather than specify how to be safe, these said rig operators needed to be able to demonstrate that their practices were safe, taking account of industry understanding of risks. The Hackitt review is based on discussions with building contractors, officials and housing authorities about flaws in the current system on the regulations. The DCLG declined to say if it planned to conduct an anlysis of the root causes of the failings at Grenfell or other housing blocks. Experts say root cause analyses are the best way to identify what failed in a system and therefore, what needs to be fixed. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon detains Uber driver suspected of murdering British embassy worker: security official;BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Lebanese taxi driver with a previous arrest for drug use has confessed to killing a British woman who worked at the British Embassy in Beirut, a senior Lebanese security official said on Monday. A second security source said preliminary investigations into the murder of Rebecca Dykes showed the motive was purely criminal, not political. The suspect, who worked for the Uber [UBER.UL] taxi service, had immediately confessed to the crime, which took place early on Saturday, the source said. The senior security official said the suspect was 41 years old and had been arrested on drug-related charges in the period 2015-17, which the official said might not show up on his judicial record. The second security source said the suspect had a criminal record but gave no details. Lebanon s state news agency NNA identified the suspect by the first name Tariq and the initial H, and said he had picked Dykes up in his taxi in Beirut s Gemmayzeh district on Friday evening before assaulting and killing her. Uber declined to confirm the suspect s name or how long he had been driving for the service. The incident was the latest to highlight the issue of safety at Uber in various countries around the world. We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victim and her family, said Uber spokesman Harry Porter. We are working with authorities to assist their investigation in any way we can. Porter said the company uses commercially licensed taxi drivers in Lebanon, and the government carries out background checks and grants licenses. Only drivers that have clean background checks and clean judicial records are licensed, he said. The suspect s background check did not show any convictions, or he would not have been licensed, Porter said. Police traced the suspect s car through highway surveillance cameras, they said. Police only said they had arrested a suspect and that it was not a political crime. Dykes, who was strangled, was found by a main highway outside Beirut, a security source said on Sunday. She worked at the British Embassy for the Department for International Development. The whole embassy is deeply shocked, saddened by this news, Britain s ambassador to Lebanon, Hugo Shorter, said on Sunday. We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Rebecca, Dykes family said in a statement. We are doing all we can to understand what happened. In September, San Francisco-based Uber was stripped of its operating license in London over concerns about its approach to reporting serious criminal offences and background checks on drivers. In India, the company was sued twice by a woman who was raped in 2014 by an Uber driver, first for failing to maintain basic safety procedures and again alleging executives improperly obtained her medical records. The Uber driver was convicted of the rape and sentenced in 2015 to life in prison. Uber settled the first lawsuit and has agreed to settle the second. In Brazil, a company policy of accepting cash payments for rides made drivers the target of robbery and murder. Following a Reuters investigation, Uber in February rolled out new safety requirements, including requiring new cash users to register with a social security number. And in Houston, Texas, a 2016 city investigation found that Uber s background checks were so insufficient the company cleared drivers with criminal histories including murder, assault and 17 other crimes. Uber is facing a host of problems, including allegations of sexual harassment, data privacy violations and a lawsuit and criminal investigation over alleged trade-secrets theft. New Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, who replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick in August, has been critical of past practices and vowed a new era of compliance. The company is in the midst of a stock sale in which Softbank Group will take a stake in the company ahead of an anticipated 2019 initial public offering. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police search Finnish reporter's home after security article;HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finnish police searched a reporter s home and seized her computer after she tried to destroy the hard drive to protect sources linked to a security story, her newspaper reported. The journalist, Laura Halminen, said she tried to smash up her computer with a hammer in her home, but the laptop then started smoking and she called the fire brigade, according to an interview published by her employer Helsingin Sanomat. Police officers who came to her home with the fire service to investigate the blaze then took her computer and searched her property, police said - a rare operation in a country rated high for protecting press freedom. The case centered on a story that Halminen and another journalist wrote on Saturday about a Finnish intelligence center that they said monitored neighboring Russia and, they reported, was about to get new powers to watch Finns online. After the article s publication, Finland s President Sauli Niinisto released a statement saying authorities had launched an investigation in to the leaking of material used in the story. The reporter Halminen told her newspaper in the interview she had decided to destroy the computer to make sure sources were protected in the best possible way . On Sunday, the police s National Bureau of Investigation said, officers went to the property and found the computer burning in the basement. After that, a special home search was ordered to be carried out in the apartment and basement, the force added. It said officers had had to act quickly because they feared material linked to an investigation could be destroyed. There were no reports of anyone being arrested or charged. The newspaper said the police also took phones and memory sticks in what it called a very worrying raid. A house search of this scale targeting a journalist is totally exceptional in Finland, Editor-in-chief, Kaius Niemi, said. Campaign group Reporters Without Borders ranked Finland third in its 2017 World Press Freedom Index, behind only Sweden and Norway. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China air force drills in Sea of Japan and again around Taiwan;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s air force carried out another round of long-range drills on Monday, flying into the Sea of Japan and prompting South Korean and Japanese jets to scramble, and again around self-ruled Taiwan amid growing tension over China s assertiveness. China has in recent months ramped up its long-range air force drills, particularly around Taiwan, claimed by China as its own. The air force said in a statement that fighter and bomber aircraft flew through the Tsushima Strait that separates South Korea from Japan and into international waters in the Sea of Japan. The Sea of Japan is not Japan s, and the drills were lawful and reasonable, air force spokesman Shen Jinke said in the statement, describing the exercises as routine and pre-planned. The Japanese Defence Ministry said in a statement that the aircraft - two SU-30 fighters, two H-6 bombers and one TU-154 reconnaissance plane - had not violated Japan s airspace. In Seoul, South Korea s Joint Chiefs of Staff said five Chinese military planes were spotted entering the Korean Air Defence Identification Zone, and fighter jets scrambled in response. The Chinese aircraft also flew through Japan s Air Defence Identification Zone, they said. Our fighter planes took normal tactical measures, identifying the models of the Chinese planes and flying aerial surveillance until they left, the South Korean statement said. Chinese air force spokesman Shen alluded to the scrambled aircraft, saying they responded to interference from foreign military aircraft but were able to achieve the aim of their drill. Taiwan s military said that China had staged a separate drill at the same time, flying a plane through the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines and then returning to base through the Strait of Miyako, to Taiwan s north and near Japan s southern islands. Taiwan monitored Japan sending F-15 fighters to intercept, Taiwan s defence ministry added in its statement. The Japanese Defence Ministry identified the plane as Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft. There was no violation of Japan s airspace in this instance either, the ministry said. China s air force last week conducted island encirclement patrols near Taiwan, after a senior Chinese diplomat threatened that China would invade the self-ruled island if any U.S. warships made port visits there. China suspects Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, wants to declare the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. China s air force exercises also come amid regional tensions over North Korea s nuclear and missile programmes, with bellicose rhetoric from both North Korea and U.S. President Donald Trump. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somali security forces arrest former minister in raid;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali security forces have arrested a former minister and outspoken government critic after clashing with his bodyguards during an overnight raid on his home, the security ministry said on Monday. Abdirahman Abdishakur was a candidate in a February election won by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed whose United Nations-backed government faces growing pressure over its failure to put an end to an Islamist militant insurgency. Abdishakur was arrested for treason, a spokesman for the Internal Security Ministry Abdiasis Ali told reporters at a news conference, without giving more details. He also declined to comment on reports that five bodyguards were killed and that Abdishakur had been lightly injured during the raid. The former minister was legally arrested by decree from the attorney general and internal security minister. He was accused of treason. His guards fought the security forces, he said. A policeman and a local elder told Reuters earlier that five bodyguards were killed during the raid. The elder, Abdullahi Ali, also said Abdishakur had been injured on the arm by a stray bullet. At the same news conference on Monday, attorney general Ahmed Ali Dahir described Abdishakur s house as a hub for the opposition and a gathering point for people who want to collapse the government. We also warn those who meet at hotels, he added. Many Somali officials including lawmakers live in fortified hotels for the security they offer. Before Sunday s raid Dahir had accused two other lawmakers of treason, prompting Abdishakur to post an angry response on Facebook. Let lawmakers be strangled, let their immunity be removed: This is a hopeless attack which portrays despair. The raid drew condemnation from other politicians. What the government is doing is against Islam and healthy politics, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters. We condemn the government s immoral act. We also order for the release of the ex-minister. The presidential election in February was praised by Western aid donors as a modest step forward from the previous election but the insurgency is striking with ever larger and more deadly attacks in the capital and major towns. More than 500 people were killed in twin bomb blasts in Mogadishu in October. Last week a suicide bomber killed at least 18 people at a Mogadishu police academy. The government is also struggling under political infighting and a very weak central state. Reuters reported last week that the United States is suspending food and fuel aid for most of Somalia s armed forces over corruption concerns, a blow to the military as African peacekeepers start to withdraw this month. [L3N1O64MI] ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Belgian trial of Paris attack suspect postponed to Feb. 5;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Belgian trial of a key suspect in the November 2015 Islamic State attack on Paris was postponed on Monday for seven weeks, after Saleh Abdeslam s newly appointed lawyer asked for more time to study the case. Granting the request, the judge set a new trial date of Feb. 5. A French national but a lifelong Brussels resident, Abdeslam fled back to Belgium after the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, hiding from police for four months before being detained in March last year. Four days later, on March 22, 2016, Brussels was hit by twin bomb attacks that killed 32 people. Investigators believe that those behind the Paris and Brussels suicide attacks were linked and that Abdeslam, whose elder brother blew himself up at a Paris cafe on Nov. 13, 2015, is one of the few surviving participants. Held facing trial in France, he will be transferred to Belgium to first stand trial there, with an alleged accomplice, for attempted murder as Abdeslam evaded capture during a shootout with Brussels police three days before his arrest. Abdeslam, who was not in court on Monday, appointed a new lawyer only last week and his counsel asked for more time to prepare the defense. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel wants initial coalition deal with SPD by mid-January;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she hoped to conclude exploratory talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) on forming a government by mid-January so that both parties can launch official negotiations on renewing their alliance. Merkel made the comments after she was asked if comments by French President Emmanuel Macron that he hoped to make progress with Germany on ideas to reform the euro zone by March were realistic. We want to build a stable government, Merkel said. This means that the success of the exploratory talks means, in the view of the CDU, as well as the CSU, that we need to reach agreement on specific issues during the exploratory talks. From our perspective, anything short of that would mean the exploratory talks were not successful, Merkel added. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lights back on in Venezuela after five-hour blackout;CARACAS (Reuters) - A power outage hit parts of the Venezuelan capital Caracas as well as the nearby states of Miranda and Vargas for around five hours on Monday, in what critics said was another sign of the oil-rich nation s economic meltdown. Authorities blamed the outage, which began around noon (1600 GMT), on the collapse of an important cable linking a power plant and a transmission tower. The fault affected some phone lines, parts of the Caracas metro, and the main Maiquetia airport just outside the capital. Many workers had no choice but to walk home, shops and restaurants closed, and Venezuelans grumbled that another day was disrupted by tumult. The country is already grappling with the world s fastest inflation, rising malnutrition, and disease as the state-led economic system grinds to a halt. Venezuela has fallen apart, said David Garcia, 38, as he queued for a hotdog at a stand in the wealthier Chacao neighborhood. He had spent two hours looking for an open restaurant because he could not cook at home. Venezuela has in recent years suffered frequent blackouts that critics attribute to insufficient investment following the 2007 nationalization of the electricity sector. This is a symptom of a country collapsing due to the negligence of those in power, tweeted opposition lawmaker Tom s Guanipa. The government has in some cases attributed the blackouts to sabotage or accused critics of exaggerating problems. Energy minister Luis Motta on Monday tweeted articles on a recent power outage at Atlanta airport in the U.S. state of Georgia, adding: It happens there too. He did not provide details on the magnitude and effects of Monday s blackout. Shopkeepers complained that the outage had hurt business. It s a lost day, said Armindo Gomes, 24, whose Portuguese family runs two bakeries, as he pointed at dough, cheese and meat that should have been refrigerated. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rush for free food packets kills 10 at Bangladesh prayer meeting;DHAKA (Reuters) - Hundreds of people rushed to a Bangladeshi community centre prayer meeting to get free food packets on Monday, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than 50 in the crush, police said. The family of a former mayor in the southern port city of Chittagong had organised a prayer meet and offered the food packets in his memory. We repeatedly announced on the loudspeaker that there are adequate stock of foods at the centre, but when the gate was opened, hundreds of people tried to enter at the same time, Devashis Paul, a local leader of the ruling Awami League party, said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH PALIN’S SON BREAKS Into Family Home…Savagely Beats Dad…Leaves Him Covered In Blood;The eldest son of ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin beat the daylights out of his own father after he broke into his parents home in a drunken rage, according to documents released by local police.Track Palin, 28, was busted Saturday and charged with first-degree burglary, fourth-degree assault and criminal mischief, and remains in custody.A court document said that the younger Palin wanted to visit the home to retrieve a truck.But his father, Todd Palin, told him to stay away because Track Palin was drunk and on pain medication, according to a police affidavit and charging documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Track told him he was [going to] come anyway to beat his ass, according to an affidavit filed by Wasilla Police Officer Adam LaPointe.Todd Palin answered the door armed with a pistol when his son arrived, but Track broke a window to get into the house and then started savagely beating him, cops said.The younger Palin threw his dad to the ground and hit him repeatedly on the head, leaving him covered in blood and with a liquid oozing from his ear, the documents said.Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, called police at 8:30 p.m. and said her son was freaking out and was on some type of medication. When cops arrived, they saw the parents fleeing the house in separate vehicles, Todd Palin with blood running down his face and Sarah Palin looking visibly upset, the paper reported.Police confronted Track Palin, who called them peasants, and told them to lay down their weapons, according to the documents. Eventually, Palin left the house and was handcuffed.He told cops that had told his father to shoot him several times, according to the documents. NYP;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH SWAMP MONSTER James Clapper Make False Claim That Trump is an “Intelligence Asset” for Putin [Video];Watch some fake news from a swamp creature who should be in jail:Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper referred to President Donald Trump on Monday as an intelligence asset for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The term asset refers to people with countries or organizations being spied upon who serve as resources for outside spies.Clapper appeared on CNN to discuss Trump s national security strategy speech given Monday, where he referred to Russia as a rival but also said he wanted to form a partnership.The two leaders have also expressed recent gratitude to each other, with Putin calling and thanking Trump for sharing intelligence that helped foil a terror plot and Trump thanking Putin for his recent praise of the American economy.IS THIS GUY KIDDING:This is on the same day that we learn the following about the Obama administration:The Obama administration intentionally derailed investigations into the terrorist group Hezbollah s drug trafficking operation to secure the Iran nuclear deal, according to a new bombshell report.Politico spoke with several members of Project Cassandra, a joint effort between the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Pentagon that was founded in 2008 under the Bush administration to identify and prosecute a drug trafficking, money laundering, and smuggling operation run by the Iranian-backed militants.Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.Read more: WFB;politics;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspect in Stockholm truck attack to stand trial in February;STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Rakhmat Akilov, who has confessed to driving a truck that killed five people in an attack in Sweden s capital Stockholm, will stand trial in February, the main prosecutor in the case said on Monday. In April, the hijacked truck sped down a busy street in Stockholm and mowed down shoppers before crashing into a department store, killing three Swedes, a British citizen and a person from Belgium. The youngest victim was 11. The preliminary investigation is almost complete, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Hans Ihrman at the National Security Unit said. As it looks at the moment, we will be able to start the trial at the beginning of February, he told TV4. There is one suspect, no others. Akilov, a failed asylum seeker from Uzbekistan, was subject to a deportation order at the time of the attack. He was taken into custody just hours afterwards. His lawyer said he had confessed to committing a terrorist crime. Under Sweden s legal system, he has yet to be charged. When he is charged, he will face a full trial. Ihrman said the trial was likely to take a couple of months. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina set to pass pension reform despite melee outside Congress;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s Congress was on track to pass a pension reform measure on Monday, even as stone-throwing protesters rushed police outside the capitol building and the country s main union called a 24-hour general strike in opposition to the proposal. President Mauricio Macri, elected in 2015 with a mandate to lift the heavy-handed currency and trade controls favored by his predecessors, says Argentina needs pension reform to cut its deficit, attract investment and promote sustainable growth. Debate on the bill was suspended on Thursday due to violent demonstrations. Macri then promised to decree a bonus payment to the neediest retirees. But that did nothing to satisfy the opposition and union activists who marched on Congress again on Monday as lawmakers debated the proposal inside. Balaclava-wearing protesters used sling shots to fire rocks at police, who answered with water canon and tear gas, turning the vast lawn in front of the capitol into a battleground. This bill will put millions of retirees at risk. It changes the whole pension system, Laura Rivas, a 34-year-old teacher told Reuters, standing back from the most violent protest areas. We are going to have to work more years before we can retire, and then the pension payments we get will be minimal, so it hurts us as workers, she added. Others closer to the front line shouted attacks on Macri, accusing him of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Scores of people were injured, including police officers, and dozens were arrested, authorities said. Macri s Cambiemos, or Let s Change , coalition does not have a majority in Congress. But it was expected to cobble together enough votes to approve the bill on Monday or Tuesday. The measure has already passed the Senate, leaving the lower House to give final legislative approval. Opposition lawmakers joined the protesters in dismissing the bonus sweetener. It will be a one-time bonus payment made in March, opposition lawmaker Agustin Rossi told reporters, adding that the overall bill remained inadequate to meet pensioners needs. The 24-hour-long strike called by Argentina s main CGT labor group started at noon (1500 GMT), threatening to paralyze Tuesday morning commuter traffic. The pension bill would change the formula used to calculate benefits. Payments would adjust every quarter based on inflation, rather than the current system of twice-yearly adjustments linked to wage hikes and tax revenue. Economists say the current formula means benefits go up in line with past inflation. Left unchanged, that could harm Macri s efforts to cut the deficit. Under the proposed formula, benefits would increase by 5 percentage points above inflation. The plan would take effect at a time of lower inflation expectations, hence slowing the pace of pension benefit increases. Macri is aiming to cut the fiscal deficit to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product next year from 4.2 percent this year, and reduce inflation to between 8 percent and 12 percent from more than 20 percent this year. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Mainstream Media Fake News: 21st Century Wire Debates American ‘Liberal’ Academic;This past week saw one of the most colorful debates regarding the CNN and US mainstream media meltdown over the Russia-gate conspiracy.CrossTalk says: Trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. But no one should be surprised and the media has itself to blame. This sad state of affairs is a self-inflicted wound and actually a conscious business model. The media no longer has an interest in reporting news media today propagates ideology. Host Peter Lavele is CrossTalking with guests Eric Alterman (Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress), Patrick Henningsen (21st Century Wire), and Lionel (Lionel Media). Watch:. READ MORE CNN FAKE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire CNN FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV ;Middle-east;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House optimistic Congress will avoid government shutdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House legislative director Marc Short said he expects Congress to pass a short-term spending bill to fund the federal government at least into January, he told CNBC in an interview on Monday, days before current funding expires on Friday. “I don’t think anybody wants to see government shut down,” Short told CNBC. “We’re very optimistic that we’re going to find a resolution this week.” ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 18) - Congressional Races, train accident, tax cuts;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Remember, Republicans are 5-0 in Congressional Races this year. The media refuses to mention this. I said Gillespie and Moore would lose (for very different reasons), and they did. I also predicted “I” would win. Republicans will do well in 2018, very well! @foxandfriends [0623 EST] - Ivanka Trump will be interviewed on @foxandfriends. [0642 EST] - The train accident that just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long! [1341 EST] - My thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved in the train accident in DuPont, Washington. Thank you to all of our wonderful First Responders who are on the scene. We are currently monitoring here at the White House. [1351 EST] - Our deepest sympathies and most heartfelt prayers are with the victims of the train derailment in Washington State. We are closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with local authorities... bit.ly/2Bail99 [1435 EST] - Over the past 11 months, I have travelled tens of thousands of miles, to visit 13 countries. I have met with more than 100 world leaders and everywhere I traveled, it was my highest privilege and greatest honor to represent the AMERICAN PEOPLE! bit.ly/2BajKwn [1519 EST] - When the American People speak, ALL OF US should listen. Just over one year ago, you spoke loud and clear. On November 8, 2016, you voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! bit.ly/2Ba2kQr [1528 EST] - As the world watches, we are days away from passing HISTORIC TAX CUTS for American families and businesses. It will be the BIGGEST TAX CUT and TAX REFORM in the HISTORY of our country! bit.ly/2BbAjI6 [1540 EST] - 70 Record Closes for the Dow so far this year! We have NEVER had 70 Dow Records in a one year period. Wow! [1725 EST] - With the strategy that I announced today, we are declaring that AMERICA is in the game and AMERICA is DETERMINED to WIN!OUR FOUR PILLARS OF NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: bit.ly/2BdrOfJ [1849 EST] - Together, our task is to strengthen our families, to build up our communities, to serve our citizens, and to celebrate AMERICAN GREATNESS as a shining example to the world.... bit.ly/2Bdsjq7 [1954 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'Dreamer' immigration bill not on U.S. Senate agenda this month;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate will not consider an immigration bill as part of year-end legislation but will turn to a measure protecting immigrant youths known as “Dreamers” in January, No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn said on Monday. Cornyn also said that if Congress cannot meet an early March deadline for passing legislation providing the protections against deportation for undocumented immigrants who were brought illegally into the United States as children, President Donald Trump could consider extending the deadline. In interviews over the past several days, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides said that talks on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have been quietly making progress. “The president has given us enough time to deal with this before March and so I think that’s plenty of time and I expect us to meet it,” Cornyn told reporters. “If we can’t, then the president could extend the deadline if he chose to do so. But this is something we’re going to turn to, I’m sure, in January.” Tensions between Republicans and Democrats over the issue of legislative protections for Dreamers increased this fall after Trump took a hard line on the conditions for a deal. An intense lobbying campaign has been underway to urge lawmakers to find a permanent legislative fix after the Republican president ended the DACA program in September. He gave Congress until early March to come up with a legislative replacement. On Capitol Hill, advocates have handed out buttons to lawmakers and aides with the number “122,” referring to the estimated number of Dreamers each day who already are losing the temporary legal status they had under DACA. Immigration advocates have erected a huge monitor on the National Mall. Situated at the base of the U.S. Capitol for lawmakers and tourists alike to see, it broadcasts videos of Dreamers pleading for help. Meanwhile, seven DACA beneficiaries from Mexico, Argentina and Colombia were in the fourth day of a hunger strike to draw attention to the issue. Republican Representative John Carter, a veteran of past immigration debates, said he worried Democrats want to go way beyond the scope of DACA and the approximately 800,000 Dreamers who at one time or another were covered by Democratic former President Barack Obama’s executive order. “They’re talking Dream Act,” Carter said referring to the legislation offered by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. “And that number is about 2 million people. That’s too much.” Past legislative attempts to allow Dreamers to get work permits and drivers licenses, open bank accounts and “come out of the shadows” have stalled as conservative Republicans and lobbying groups objected to giving “amnesty” to anyone who entered the United States illegally - even those who had no choice in the matter and have grown up here. Democratic Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said Republican demands for additional resources for immigration enforcement throughout the United States and not just at the border are a major problem. Her concern is that the Trump administration might use the money to hire more federal agents to nab undocumented relatives of Dreamers. “If you’re going to come in and go to hospitals and go to courtrooms and go to schools” in search of family members, “I’m not going to do that,” she said in an interview. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Warren hits out at 'effort to politicize' U.S. consumer agency;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is taking aim at budget chief Mick Mulvaney’s plan to fill the ranks of the U.S. consumer financial watchdog with political allies, according to letters seen by Reuters, the latest salvo in a broader battle over who should run the bureau. President Donald Trump last month appointed Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), though the decision is being legally challenged by the agency’s deputy director, Leandra English, who says she is the rightful interim head. Mulvaney told reporters earlier this month he planned to bring in several political appointees to help overhaul the agency, but Warren warned in a pair of letters sent Monday to Mulvaney and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees federal hiring, that doing so was inappropriate and potentially illegal. The CFPB is meant to be an independent agency staffed primarily by non-political employees. Hiring political appointees could violate civil service laws designed to protect such employees from undue political pressure and discrimination, Warren said. “Your naked effort to politicize the consumer agency runs counter to the agency’s mission to be an independent voice for consumers with the power to stand up to Wall Street banks,” Warren, who helped create the CFPB, wrote to Mulvaney. In a separate letter, Warren asked the OPM to review Mulvaney’s “unprecedented and unjustified” plans. In a third letter sent to Mulvaney and English, Warren asked for information about a review of ongoing enforcement actions at the CFPB. Reuters reported earlier this month that a potential multimillion-dollar settlement with Wells Fargo is among the enforcement actions under review amid the change in CFPB leadership. Spokespeople for Mulvaney and the OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mulvaney, who also serves directly under Trump as the head of his Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said in the long term he would like to see professional staff alongisde political appointees, mirroring an arrangement in place at the OMB. “We will be staffing up with more permanent political people so the professional staff here have a better feel for where the administration wants to take the bureau,” Mulvaney said. But Warren said such an arrangement, though understandable for bureaus like the OMB which sit directly beneath the White House, was not suitable for independent financial regulators. The leadership of the CFPB has been in question since the agency’s first director, Richard Cordray, resigned in November. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump strategy document says Russia meddles in domestic affairs worldwide;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday that Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries globally, but stopped short of accusing Moscow of meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. The criticism of Russia, laid out in a new national security strategy based on Trump’s “America First” vision, reflects a view long held by U.S. diplomats that Russia actively undermines American interests at home and abroad, despite Trump’s own bid for warmer ties with President Vladimir Putin. “Through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world,” said the document. It avoided directly citing what U.S. intelligence agencies say was Russian meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election. “Russia uses information operations as part of its offensive cyber efforts to influence public opinion across the globe. Its influence campaigns blend covert intelligence operations and false online personas with state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls,’” the document said. Trump has frequently spoken of wanting to improve relations with Putin, even though Russia has frustrated U.S. policy in Syria and Ukraine and done little to help Washington in its standoff with North Korea. In a speech laying out his strategy, Trump noted that he received a call from Putin on Sunday to thank him for providing U.S. intelligence that helped thwart a bomb attack in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. Trump said the collaboration was “the way it’s supposed to work.” “But while we seek such opportunities of cooperation, we will stand up for ourselves and we will stand up for our country like we have never stood up before,” he said at the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington. The audience of about 650 people frequently applauded the speech. It included the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, several Cabinet secretaries, lawmakers, military personnel and officials from the intelligence community and other agencies. A U.S. Justice Department investigation is looking into whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Russia, something that Moscow and Trump both deny. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Russians tried to tip the election to Trump through hacking and releasing emails to embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and spreading social media propaganda. Facebook, Google and Twitter Inc are facing a backlash after saying Russians used their services to anonymously spread divisive messages among Americans in the run-up to the election. Other Western nations, including France, have accused Russia of trying to interfere in their elections. Congress mandates that every U.S. administration set out its national security strategy. The new Trump strategy is influenced strongly by the thinking of top national security officials rather than that of the president himself, said one official involved in preparing the document. The Republican president’s strategy reflects his “America First” priorities of protecting the U.S. homeland and borders, rebuilding the military, projecting strength abroad and pursuing trade policies more favorable to the United States. Talking points sent to U.S. embassies worldwide on what diplomats should say about the new strategy makes clear that the official U.S. position is tough on Russia. An unclassified State Department cable, seen by Reuters, said: “Russia tries to weaken the credibility of America’s commitment to Europe. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia has demonstrated a willingness to use force to challenge the sovereignty of states in the region.”Harry Kazianis, an analyst at the conservative Center for the National Interest think tank, said, “While things with Moscow might be warm and fuzzy for the moment, President Putin will not take too kindly to being labeled as what essentially amounts to as an enemy of America.” It drops Democratic former President Barack Obama’s 2016 description of climate change as a U.S. national security threat, aides said. Trump has vowed to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord unless changes are made to it. The Trump administration lumps together China and Russia as competitors seeking to challenge U.S. power and erode its security and prosperity. The singling out of China and Russia as “revisionist powers” also comes despite Trump’s own attempts to build strong relations Chinese President Xi Jinping. A senior administration official said Russia and China were attempting to revise the global status quo - Russia in Europe with its military incursions into Ukraine and Georgia, and China in Asia by its aggression in the South China Sea. Russia denies the allegations that it meddled with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump has been working with Xi to exert pressure on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The administration warned that intellectual property theft by China is a national security problem. “We need to protect data in different ways. We need to ensure that the legislation we have, like CFIUS, is up to date and reflects the kinds of strategic investments that are taking place by other countries,” an administration official said. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews the purchase of U.S. assets by foreign companies, has recently taken a strong stand against technology transfers to Chinese companies. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Collins says she will vote for tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins said on Monday she would vote for the sweeping tax overhaul her party’s leaders hope to push through Congress this week, all but ensuring its passage despite seemingly universal opposition from Democrats. “The first major overhaul of our tax code since 1986, this legislation will provide tax relief to working families, encourage the creation of jobs right here in America and spur economic growth that will benefit all Americans,” she said in remarks on the Senate floor. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democratic U.S. senator seeks audit of EPA chief's trip to Morocco;WASHINGTON () - The top Democrat on the Senate environment committee on Monday asked the Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog to audit a recent trip to Morocco by the agency’s head to determine if it was in line with the EPA’s mission. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, in a trip to Morocco last week, promoted U.S. liquefied natural gas. Senator Tom Carper asked EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins to expand its current audit of Pruitt’s travel to include the trip to Morocco as part of a U.S. trade mission. “I request that you review the purpose of Administrator Pruitt’s travels to determine whether his activities during each trip are in line with EPA’s mission ‘to protect human health and the environment,’” Carper wrote in the letter to Elkins. Traditionally, the EPA, which regulates clean air and water, does not promote the U.S. energy industry. Last week, the EPA announced that Pruitt attended bilateral meetings in Morocco where he “outlined U.S. environmental priorities for updating the Environmental Work Plan under the U.S.-Morocco Free Trade Agreement and the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy.” Liquefied natural gas is produced by cooling natural gas until it is condensed into a liquid, allowing it to be shipped via tanker instead of moved by pipeline. It is reconverted into gas at the other end. When asked why the head of the EPA was involved in touting LNG, EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said Pruitt discussed the role of U.S. technology and innovation abroad, “including but not limited to LNG.” It “only serves to emphasize the importance this administration has placed on promoting U.S. businesses,” Wilcox said. Carper said the Morocco travel has cost taxpayers $40,000 and that gas exports do not fall within the agency’s jurisdiction. The Inspector General’s office is already reviewing all travel by Pruitt conducted until Sept. 30 after Democratic lawmakers asked for a review of Pruitt’s frequent travels to Oklahoma, his home state. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator Lee says he will vote for tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah said on Monday that he will support legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax system, leaving only two Republicans undecided as the bill approaches a final Senate vote this week. “Just finished reading the final Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It will cut taxes for working Utah families. I will proudly vote for it,” Lee said in a message released on Twitter. Republicans, who control the 100-seat Senate by only a 52-48 margin, can lose support from no more than two party lawmakers if the bill is to pass. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake have yet not said whether they will support the legislation. Senator John McCain, who has brain cancer, will not be present for the vote. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: U.S. has 'no choice' but to deal with North Korea arms challenge;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump unveiled a new national security strategy on Monday, calling for Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorism and saying Washington had to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea’s weapons programs. In a wide-ranging speech, Trump said his security strategy for the first time addresses economic security and would include a complete rebuilding of U.S. infrastructure as well as a wall along the southern U.S. border. Trump said the United States wanted Pakistan to take decisive action to help fight extremism, and that Washington had “no choice” but to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Trump said the security strategy would also end mandatory defense spending limits, frequently called “sequester,” but did not mention if he had consulted with members of Congress about a possible bill to end the caps established in 2013 budget legislation. “We recognize that weakness is the surest path to conflict and unrivaled power is the most certain means of defense. For this reason, our security strategy breaks from damaging defense sequester,” Trump said. “We’re going to get rid of that.” ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump judicial nominee withdraws from consideration;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lawyer nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as a federal judge withdrew from consideration on Monday after video of his Senate confirmation hearing showing him unable to provide answers to rudimentary legal questions went viral last week. Trump accepted Matthew Petersen’s offer to withdraw his nomination as a district court judge in Washington, a White House official said. Petersen, a Republican member of the Federal Election Commission, became the latest of Trump’s judicial nominations to fail as the president seeks to win confirmation of judges who will make the federal judiciary more conservative. “Just because you’ve seen ‘My Cousin Vinny’ doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge,” Republican Senator John Kennedy, who grilled Petersen during his Dec. 13 confirmation hearing, told WWL-TV, referring to the 1992 comedy film about a novice lawyer. Kennedy, who has been critical of some of Trump’s judicial nominees, asked several basic legal questions that Petersen could not answer. The video was shown on cable news shows and widely viewed on the internet. “While I am honored to have been nominated for this position, it has become clear to me over the past few days that my nomination has become a distraction - and that is not fair to you or your administration,” Petersen wrote in his withdrawal letter to Trump. “I had hoped that my nearly two decades of public service might carry more weight than my two worst minutes on television,” Petersen added. Petersen became the third Trump judicial pick whose nomination foundered in the past week. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said last week Trump’s nominations of Jeff Mateer and Brett Talley would not move forward. Both had faced criticism for controversial statements. Talley was reported by online magazine Slate as having posted online sympathetic comments about the early history of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) white supremacist group. He also failed to disclose that his wife works in the White House counsel’s office, which overseas judicial nominations. Mateer ran into trouble over 2015 speeches including one in which he referred to transgender children as being part of “Satan’s plans,” CNN reported. Despite those setbacks, Trump has made significant progress in filling vacancies on the federal courts with conservative judges, including 12 on the important courts of appeal. He also appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Courts, restoring the high court’s conservative majority. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump calls for U.S. infrastructure plan after train derailment;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that the derailment of a train, which sent train cars crashing onto a major highway and killed passengers, in Washington state showed the necessity of an infrastructure plan. “The train accident that just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly,” Trump said. “Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long!” ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austrian leader defends EU credentials in Brussels;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Austria s new chancellor traveled to Brussels on Tuesday on his first foreign trip since being sworn in, aiming to dispel concerns that his coalition with the far right spells trouble for the European Union. Responding to a letter on Monday from European Council President Donald Tusk that underlined EU worries, 31-year-old conservative leader Sebastian Kurz tweeted back that his new government would be clear pro-European and committed to making a positive contribution to the future development of the EU . A day after he took office at the head of a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), Kurz delivered that message in person to Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, whose EU executive has responded to October s election with little of the outrage that greeted the FPO s first taste of government in Austria 17 years ago. At a joint news conference in Brussels, Juncker said he would judge Kurz s government by its deeds. This government has a clear pro-European stance. That is what is important for me, Juncker said. The FPO has distanced itself from its Nazi-apologist, anti-Semitic past, while surges in irregular immigration and militant attacks have pushed the European political mainstream rightward, leading to a much more muted reaction than in 2000. But a French member of the Commission was wary: Things are doubtless different from the previous time, in 2000, tweeted Socialist former finance minister Pierre Moscovici. But the presence of the far right in government is never without consequences. Confirmation of the FPO s return to a share of power raises concern that small, wealthy Austria will be an intractable voice on EU asylum reform and efforts to increase the EU budget. The bluntest criticism has been south of the Alps, where a plan to offer Austrian citizenship to people living in Italy s German-speaking border region has rekindled worries over old territorial arguments. A junior foreign minister in Rome said the offer may be couched in a velvet glove of Europeanism but bore a whiff of the ethno-nationalist iron fist . Kurz assured Italians on Tuesday that he would consult Rome on the plan, which is a long-standing FPO policy, adding he would speak to Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. For an EU battered by mounting nationalism that goes well beyond Brexit, there is concern too that criticism of Brussels in Vienna may help fuel the euroscepticism of former communist member states in Central Europe, including Poland, where the Commission is seriously considering imposing sanctions that were initially designed in response to the FPO s rise early this century. Speaking in Brussels, Kurz said he would make it Austria s task to bridge the gap between EU member states in the east and the west, adding his country would fight to stop illegal immigration into the EU. In a letter of congratulation to Kurz, Tusk made clear his concerns about the new coalition in Austria: I trust that the Austrian government will continue to play a constructive and pro-European role in the European Union, Tusk wrote, noting that Austria will from July enjoy six months of influence in Brussels as chair of EU ministerial councils. Germany and France, the EU s lead powers, also indicated a vigilance about Austria in their comments on Monday which highlighted Kurz s pledges to foster European cooperation. Kurz s visit to Brussels comes on the eve of an important Commission meeting on Wednesday, where Juncker s team will consider recommending sanctions on Poland for its continued defiance of warnings that its new laws on the judiciary are contrary to EU democratic standards. We are in a difficult process, which I hope will turn out to be a process of convergence. But not all bridges to Poland will be burnt tomorrow, Juncker said. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House to vote on tax bill Tuesday afternoon: aides;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on sweeping tax legislation early Tuesday afternoon, aides said, bringing President Donald Trump’s goal of overhauling the U.S. tax system one step closer to fruition. The vote, on a final bill agreed by House and Senate Republicans last week, could come around 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT), the aides said. Both the House and Senate must approve the measure before Trump can sign it into law. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill as early as Tuesday but must complete 10 hours of debate before acting. It was not clear when debate would begin. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. taxpayers rush to claim deductions under threat from tax bill;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Financial advisers and accountants are working overtime as many U.S. taxpayers scramble to pay the rest of their 2017 taxes before Jan. 1 when the proposed Republican tax overhaul would sharply cut the amount they can deduct on federal tax bills. The tax legislation, which top U.S. Republicans said on Sunday they expected Congress to pass this week, caps the amount of state, local and property taxes individuals can deduct from their federal tax bills at $10,000. The average American who itemized his or her tax bill in 2015 claimed more than $27,000 in deductions. While taxpayers have until Jan. 15 to pay the final installment of their 2017 taxes, Tom Holly of the accounting firm PwC said he received dozens of calls over the weekend from concerned clients eager to pay sooner. “It’s going to be a very busy holiday season for advisers,” said Holly, who heads the firm’s wealth and asset management division. Lisa Featherngill, managing director of wealth planning at Wells Fargo’s Abbot Downing, said she was skipping a family trip to the Valero Alamo Bowl football game in Texas on Dec. 28 in order to work. Featherngill said wealthy clients and their accountants were not just trying to figure out if it makes sense to estimate and pay the rest of their 2017 itemized taxes this year, but also working to see if they should itemize at all. Some taxpayers, particularly those in high-tax states who have income above $100,000, may end up paying the alternative minimum tax, which limits the deductions a person can take against his or her federal income tax. “People really have to run the numbers because ... if they are subject to alternative minimum tax, some of those taxes wouldn’t be deductible anyway,” said Featherngill. Last week, according to media reports, state officials in New York received calls from residents asking to pay their 2018 state, local and property taxes before Jan. 1 in an effort to claim the higher amount of deductions before the Republican tax bill takes effect. In response, the U.S. Treasury Department issued guidance over the weekend saying that any pre-payments for 2018 tax liabilities would not be deductible on federal tax bills. If passed, the tax bill would be the biggest U.S. tax rewrite since 1986. The legislation would cut the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent but offer a mixed bag for individuals, including middle-class workers, by roughly doubling a standard deduction that does not require itemization, but eliminating or scaling back other popular itemized deductions and exemptions. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republican Senator John McCain leaves Washington before expected tax vote;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator John McCain is expected to miss an upcoming vote on a tax code overhaul, after his office said he had returned to his home in Arizona following medical treatment. The Senate is expected to vote as early as Tuesday on tax legislation. But McCain, undergoing treatment for brain cancer, will be out of Washington until January, his office said on Sunday. Top U.S. Republicans said on Sunday they expected Congress to pass the tax bill. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Ramaphosa wins election as ANC president;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was elected leader of the African National Congress on Monday in a close-run vote that will set the direction for the country and the scandal-plagued party that has ruled since the end of apartheid. As ANC leader, Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old union leader who became a businessman and is now one of South Africa s richest people, is likely to become the country s next president after elections in 2019. He has promised to fight rampant corruption and revitalize the economy, a message hailed by foreign investors. [nL8N1OG07W] Jacob Zuma s presidency, tainted by corruption and scandal, has badly tarnished the ANC s image both at home and abroad. The party once led by Nelson Mandela is now deeply divided. Ramaphosa narrowly beat Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 68, a former cabinet minister and Zuma s ex-wife, in Monday s vote, marking a pivotal moment for the ANC, which launched black-majority rule under Mandela s leadership 23 years ago. He smiled and hugged other party officials as the results were read out. Zuma sat stony-faced as Ramaphosa s victory was announced. Political instability, including questions over who would replace Zuma, has been cited by credit rating agencies as a big factor behind their decision to cut South Africa to junk . Economic growth in Africa s traditional powerhouse has been lethargic over the last six years and the jobless rate stands near record levels. Zuma has faced allegations of corruption since he became head of state in 2009 but has denied any wrongdoing. The president has also faced allegations that his friends, the wealthy Gupta businessmen, wielded undue influence over his government. Zuma and the Guptas have denied the accusations. The 75-year-old president has survived several votes of no-confidence in parliament over his performance as head of state. Dlamini-Zuma, 68, the president s preferred candidate, had campaigned on pledges to tackle the racial inequality that has persisted since the end of white-minority rule. [nL8N1OG082] The rand currency ZAR=D3 had risen to a nine-month high of 12.5200 earlier, as the market priced in a Ramaphosa victory. Government bonds also closed firmer before the announcement that Ramaphosa had won the race. Ramaphosa was seen as the more investor-friendly of the two main candidates vying to lead the ruling party, Capital Economics Africa economist John Ashbourne said. During the campaign, he promised to clean up corruption within the ruling party and to work with businesses and labor to boost economic growth. In a boost to Ramaphosa, courts ruled last week that officials from some provinces seen as supporting Dlamini-Zuma had been elected illegally and were barred from the conference. Ramaphosa drew the majority of nominations from party branches scattered across the country. But the delegates are not bound by their branches when they vote at the conference. Mmusi Maimane, the opposition leader, said in a statement: Ramaphosa cannot save South Africa, only the voters can in 2019, in reference to the upcoming national elections. Analysts say the bitterness of the power struggle between Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma has increased the chances that the party will find it hard to set policy and could possibly split before the 2019 national election. After his victory, Ramaphosa will be ANC s flag-bearer in that election, but will have to contend with Dlamini-Zuma s allies in his leadership team, meaning that their policies are divergent. Dlamini-Zuma is a fierce campaigner against racial inequality whose hostility to big business has rattled investors in South Africa. Backers of Ramaphosa, say she is peddling populist rhetoric and would rule in the mould of her former husband. To his supporters, Ramaphosa s business success makes him well-suited to the task of turning around an economy grappling with 28 percent unemployment and credit rating downgrades. Prince Mashele, senior research fellow at University of Pretoria, said the ANC s top most decision-making group known as the top six was now split down the middle, consisting of three politicians apiece drawn from Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma s camps, which would make it hard to implement policy. Terrible combination we have in the top six, it s a paralyzed situation. This top six will not make any ground breaking decisions, Mashele, who is also a political commentator and columnist, said. Daniel Silke, an independent political analyst, said: Both sides will continue to vie for ascendancy within the ANC. (This version of the story was refiled to cut extraneous words in paragraph 9, 13, 19, 21) ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House plan would increase Trump's disaster aid request;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled on Monday an $81 billion aid package to deal with hurricanes and wildfires, far above President Donald Trump’s $44 billion request. The legislation would help Puerto Rico and several states recover from devastating hurricanes and California and other Western states cope with wildfires. It was unclear whether the latest natural-disaster aid plan would be rushed through the Republican-controlled Congress this week, before the start of a Christmas recess, or await congressional votes early next year. The bill, introduced by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, includes $27.6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $26.1 billion for community development block grants. “We have a commitment to our fellow citizens that are in the midst of major rebuilding efforts in all areas, including Texas, Florida, California, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican, said in a statement. Earlier this year, Congress approved two disaster aid packages totaling about $52 billion. Trump’s $44 billion request submitted in mid-November was widely criticized by lawmakers as being insufficient. About a third of Puerto Rico’s residents are still without power and hundreds remain in shelters three months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. In California, wildfires have burned more than 1 million acres (400,000 hectares) and destroyed thousands of homes. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans appear all but certain to pass tax legislation;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress appeared all but certain to pass sweeping tax legislation this week after two Senate Republican holdouts agreed on Monday to support a tax overhaul backed by President Donald Trump. As the Republicans’ self-imposed Friday voting deadline loomed, Senators Susan Collins and Mike Lee each said they had decided to back the legislation hammered out last week among Republicans from the Senate and House of Representatives. “The first major overhaul of our tax code since 1986, this legislation will provide tax relief to working families, encourage the creation of jobs right here in America and spur economic growth that will benefit all Americans,” Collins said on the floor of the Senate while announcing her support. The Maine Republican had been undecided on the legislation. Lee had been similarly undecided until the Utah Republican tweeted earlier in the day that he would “proudly” vote for the bill. The House of Representatives, which is also expected to adopt the bill, was due to vote first at around 1:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Tuesday, Republican aides said. The Senate vote is expected to follow either later on Tuesday or on Wednesday. “We will get it on the president’s desk for him to sign into law before Christmas, as we pledged,” predicted No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn, who said the Senate would begin 10 hours of debate after receiving the House-approved measure. White House officials said on Monday that Vice President Mike Pence, who would cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate if necessary, was delaying his trip to Egypt and Israel this week to be in Washington for the vote on the tax plan. “The tax vote is still in very good shape, but we don’t want to take any chances,” a White House official said. The package of tax cuts for businesses and individuals, if enacted, would overhaul the U.S. tax code for the first time in more than 30 years and give Republicans their first major legislative victory of Trump’s presidency. Republicans, who believe they must act to preserve their House and Senate majorities in next year’s congressional elections, insist the tax cuts will drive U.S. economic growth higher and create jobs. Democrats, who oppose it, describe the legislation as a giveaway to corporations and wealthy Americans that will add $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade while raising taxes on some middle-class taxpayers. Lawmakers in the House, where Republicans hold a 239-193 seat majority, are expected to approve the legislation largely along party lines. A smattering of “no” votes is likely from Republican fiscal hawks and lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and California who oppose a provision that would scale back a popular deduction for state and local taxes. Both the House and Senate must approve the measure before Trump can sign it into law. The 100-seat Senate, where Republicans have only a 52-48 majority, proved to be the graveyard for last summer’s Republican drive to overturn former Democratic President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, when three Republicans opposed the measure. The tax overhaul has also faced challenges. But the specter of failure appeared to lift on Monday, as Congress closed in on final votes. Senate Republicans can afford to lose no more than two votes if they intend to pass tax legislation, and they are already down one vote. Senator John McCain, who is undergoing treatment for brain cancer, will not be available to support the bill because he is spending time with family in Arizona. With support from Collins and Lee, only Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona remained undecided. A fifth Republican, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, has missed votes for health reasons this year but was expected to be on hand to support the tax bill. Republican Senator Bob Corker, a fiscal hawk, voted against the initial Senate bill but has said he will support final legislation. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to say in security speech that China is competitor: officials;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will lay out a new U.S. national security strategy on Monday based on his “America First” policy and will, among other items, make clear that China is a competitor, two senior U.S. officials said on Saturday. Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping while also demanding that Beijing increase pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program and to change trade practices to make them more favorable to the United States. The national security strategy, to be rolled out in a speech by Trump, should not be seen as an attempt to contain China but rather to offer a clear-eyed look at the challenges China poses, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The strategy, which was still being drafted, may also reverse Democratic President Barack Obama’s declaration in September 2016 that climate change is a threat to security, one official said. Trump, a Republican, is to lay out his foreign policy priorities, and will emphasize his commitment to “America First” policies such as building up the U.S. military, confronting Islamist militants and realigning trade relationships to make the United States more competitive, the officials said. ;politicsNews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran president ignores new election calls, opponent warns of 'civil war';TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The president of Honduras declared himself re-elected on Tuesday despite calls from the Organization of American States (OAS) for a fresh vote over allegations of fraud and deadly protests following last month s disputed election. In Washington, his rival asked the United States and others to reject the result and cut off aid, warning that protests in which more than 20 people have died could escalate into generalized violence unless there is a new election. The opposition alliance said it would file a legal challenge to the country s electoral tribunal s verdict that President Juan Orlando Hernandez won the Nov. 26 election. Hernandez spoke for the first time since the tribunal issued that verdict on Sunday. A partial recount did not tip the result in favor of his opponent, TV host Salvador Nasralla, the tribunal said. Hernandez, who is an ally of the United States, said in a televised address that he would bring peace, harmony and prosperity to the poor Central American nation. As a citizen and president-elect of all Hondurans, I humbly accept the will of the Honduran people, said Hernandez, a conservative who has led a military crackdown on the country s violent gangs. Nasralla, who leads a center-left coalition, called for a new vote monitored by international observers, saying Hernandez was holding onto power illegally. Honduras runs the risk of falling into an undesired and fratricidal civil war, with unforeseen consequences in the Central American region, he told reporters. At least 24 people, including two police officers, have died in simmering protests around the country since the opposition declared fraud, according to the Honduran human rights group COFADEH, which tracks kidnappings and murders by the state. However, for the most part the protests have been relatively small. Opposition leaders have accused government security forces of firing into barricades and peaceful protests. A military official said troops are firing only into the air and only if they are in imminent danger, such as coming under fire. Opposition leaders deny protesters are armed with guns. The political unrest has hit a country that struggles with violent drug gangs, one of world s highest murder rates - although murders have dropped under Hernandez s crackdown - and endemic poverty. Together, these drive a tide of Hondurans to migrate to the United States. Nasralla traveled on Monday to Washington to meet with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and a senior State Department official. Following his visit, the U.S. State Department urged Honduran political parties to raise any concerns about the official results through a formal legal challenge this week - the step that Nasralla s opposition alliance said later in the day that it would take. However, Nasralla earlier rejected the value of a legal challenge, saying the courts are controlled by Hernandez. Instead, he said the United States, Latin American countries and other foreign powers should push for fresh elections, not recognize the current results and cut off aid to Honduras. In the midst of the post-election chaos, the U.S. State Department certified late last month that the Honduran government has been fighting corruption and supporting human rights, clearing the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. aid. As results rolled in on Nov. 26, Nasralla initially seemed headed for an upset win. But results abruptly stopped being issued. When they restarted, the outcome began to favor Hernandez, arousing suspicion among Nasralla supporters. Shortly after the electoral tribunal backed Hernandez s victory on Sunday, the OAS said the election did not meet democratic standards and called for a re-run. On Monday, one of Hernandez s top officials rejected the call for another vote. Hernandez, 49, has been supported by U.S. President Donald Trump s chief of staff, John Kelly, since Kelly was a top general. ;worldnews;18/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Billionaire Odebrecht in Brazil scandal released to house arrest;RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Billionaire Marcelo Odebrecht, the highest-profile executive imprisoned in Brazil s massive graft scandal, was released from jail on Tuesday to continue his sentence for corruption under house arrest, according to a federal court. The former chief executive officer of Odebrecht SA [ODBES.UL], Latin America s largest construction firm, was arrested in 2015 during an investigation dubbed Car Wash that exposed billions of dollars in kickbacks to politicians and executives at state-run companies in exchange for inflated contracts. Odebrecht was set to travel to Sao Paulo to begin his house arrest under electronic surveillance on Tuesday, according to the federal court in Parana. A representative for the former executive said he remained committed to collaborating with authorities under a leniency deal. Odebrecht was first sentenced to 19 years in prison in one of the many cases related to Car Wash. That was reduced to 10 years after he signed a leniency deal last December in exchange for paying a nearly $2 billion fine, admitting guilt and providing evidence to authorities. He has already served two-and-a-half years in prison. Under the deal, he must serve another two-and-a-half years under house arrest. He will then be permitted to leave his home for work for another two-and-a-half years. He will then be required to do community service for the rest of his 10-year sentence. Separately Tuesday, Brazil s antitrust watchdog Cade said it was investigating two alleged cartels involved in bidding for Sao Paulo infrastructure projects after receiving information provided by Odebrecht executives. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada, U.S. announce January meeting to keep pressure on North Korea;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada and the United States said on Tuesday they will co-host a meeting of foreign ministers in Vancouver in January to demonstrate international solidarity against North Korea s continued nuclear and missile tests. Following a meeting with Canada s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the pressure campaign on North Korea would not abate until the country agreed to give up its nuclear ambitions. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Mexican leftist has 11-point lead ahead of 2018 election - poll;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 11-percentage point lead ahead of next year s presidential election, according to an opinion poll taken in the last week, giving him a sizeable advantage even after new rivals formally entered the race. The former Mexico City mayor Lopez Obrador has vowed to combat inequality and corruption, but some international investors are concerned about suggestions that he might reverse parts of the government s 2013-14 energy legislation. The poll, carried out and financed by Mexican public opinion firm Parametria, was provided exclusively to Reuters ahead of wider publication later on Tuesday. It was taken between Dec.14 and Dec.17. It found that 31 percent of those asked who they would vote for if the election were today would choose Lopez Obrador, followed by former Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, seeking nomination for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), on 20 percent. Ricardo Anaya, former leader of the center-right National Action Party (PAN) was third on 19 percent, the poll said. Anaya resigned this month to pursue the presidency in an alliance with the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The Parametria poll also included potential independent candidates, former first lady Margarita Zavala and Nuevo Leon Governor Jaime Rodriguez, giving them 10 percent and 2 percent respectively. Of the 800 people surveyed, 18 percent answered none of the listed candidates, did not know or did not reply. The Parametria poll is the first conducted since Lopez Obrador joined up with the conservative Social Encounter Party (PES), sparking worries among his progressive backers. But the controversial alliance appears to have had little immediate effect on his advantage. The poll shows Lopez Obrador slightly further ahead than a survey by Mexican newspaper El Universal published in early December that gave him an eight-point lead. A survey by pollster Mitofsky, also from early December, showed a much closer race, with Lopez Obrador on 23 percent of the vote, followed by Anaya with 20 percent support and Meade with 19 percent. Lopez Obrador unveiled his planned cabinet last week, including tapping a moderate U.S.-trained economist for finance minister and splitting the posts evenly between women and men. The Parametria poll was conducted face-to-face and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. Mexican political parties have until March to formally register candidates. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech parliament revokes Communist-era policeman's election to oversight post;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech parliament revoked an election of a Communist-era policeman to a police oversight job on Tuesday after some lawmakers claimed the vote was manipulated. Earlier, the lower chamber entrusted oversight of the police force to Zdenek Ondracek, former member of a Communist-era special unit which tried to crush the peaceful 1989 uprising that helped to bring down Communist rule. The unprecedented appointment of a Communist lawmaker as chairman of parliament s General Inspection of Security Forces commission appeared to be part of complex maneuvering by the new prime minister, billionaire businessman Andrej Babis, and his ANO party to get backing for a minority government. After the secret ballot, some lawmakers challenged the result with claims that it was unclear how many in the 200-seat lower chamber actually participated in the election. Ondracek received 95 votes, but due to the uncertainty it was impossible to determine whether he got the required majority. Speaker of the house, ANO s Radek Vondracek, then declared the vote confused and said that it would be repeated in January. The ANO has 78 seats in the new 200-seat lower house. Babis is seeking support or at least acquiescence from lawmakers of the other eight parties in parliament. The far-left Communists with 15 seats, and far-right, anti-European Union SPD party with 22, have lent support in initial parliamentary votes in return for committee posts, but no deal has been announced on their backing for an ANO cabinet. The secret ballot vote on Tuesday to appoint Ondracek was the first time the Communist party has gained such a post in nearly three decades since the fall of communism. In 1989 his police unit used water cannon, clubs and dogs to disperse anti-regime protests. The demonstrations eventually led to the peaceful overthrow of Communist dictatorship in what became known as the Velvet Revolution. A video from 1989, posted on YouTube, shows Ondracek defending police actions in an interview with state television. It is sad that it happened only one day after we remembered the anniversary of (late president and leading anti-Communist dissident) Vaclav Havel s passing. The times have changed, said Vit Rakusan, deputy chairman of the Mayors and Independents party. Communist party deputy chairman Jiri Dolejs, however, defended the appointment. Police work should be scrutinized by those who understand it, he told reporters. In October, the Communist party suffered the worst election result in its nearly 100-year history. Still, it is the only faction so far to say it could back the ANO government. Direct or indirect support might also come from the SPD party of Czech-Japanese businessman Tomio Okamura. Other parties have shunned Babis, mainly due to pending police charges against him over allegations he concealed his company s ownership of a farm and conference center a decade ago to illegally obtain a 2 million-euro European Union subsidy. Babis denies wrongdoing. Babis, who was appointed prime minister this month and whose cabinet took power last week, has until mid-January to win a confidence vote. President Milos Zeman has said Babis will get a second try if his first attempt to form a government fails. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Colombia names new peace negotiator with ELN, seeks ceasefire extension;BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia s President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday named Gustavo Bell as the government s chief negotiator in peace talks with Marxist ELN rebels and said the government will work toward extending a ceasefire with the insurgent group. Bell, who was vice president under President Andres Pastrana from 1998 to 2002 and is currently ambassador to Cuba, replaces Juan Camilo Restrepo, who guided talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) since they began in February. Santos said in a televised address the government hopes to extend a ceasefire that began in October and ends on Jan. 9. With the ELN, we have for the first time achieved a stoppage of hostilities that, while not perfect, has been positive. We will work toward improving it and extending it in January, Santos said. The ELN on Sunday said it is willing to continue the ceasefire if there is sufficient progress in peace talks. It said it would assess the government s willingness to overcome hurdles. The ELN and the government have been in negotiations in Quito for 10 months, after a long and secret exploratory phase, in a bid to end more than 53 years of war. Santos, who leaves office next year, signed a peace accord in late 2016 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has now become a political party and hopes to fight the government at the ballot box. The ELN s first-ever ceasefire is being supervised by the Roman Catholic Church and the United Nations. The 2,000-strong ELN, which has regularly bombed oil infrastructure and taken hostages, has continued kidnapping despite the ceasefire. An indigenous leader in Choco province died in October after being taken by the group. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since late August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts are not known. We and their families continue to be denied access to them or to the most basic information about their well-being and whereabouts, Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler said in a statement calling for their immediate release. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing, he said. Here are the comments on their detention from governments, politicians, human rights groups and press freedom advocates around the world: - The European Union urged Myanmar on Monday to release the two Reuters reporters as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman for the EU s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said, Freedom of the press and media is the foundation and a cornerstone of any democracy. - Dutch ambassador to Myanmar Wouter Jurgens said on Monday that we urge the government for their immediate release or to provide clarity about their situation and what crimes they are accused of without further delay . - Vijay Nambiar, a former special adviser on Myanmar to the U.N. Secretary-General, said in a statement to Reuters on Monday that the detentions had caused widespread disappointment within and outside the country that is likely to further damage the international reputation and image of Myanmar, already under stress as a result of its handling of the Rakhine crisis. - The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) called on Myanmar authorities to immediately disclose the whereabouts of the pair. All detainees must be allowed prompt access to a lawyer and to family members, Frederick Rawski, the ICJ s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said in a statement on Monday. - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kano said in response to a question from a Reuters reporter on Tuesday: Freedom of the press is extremely important, including in order to protect fundamental human rights. The Japanese government would like to watch (this matter) closely. - Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Chris Coons, the leaders of the U.S. Senate Human Rights Caucus, said they were gravely concerned about the arrests of the Reuters journalists and that freedom of the press was critical to ensuring accountability for violence against the Rohingya. Democratic congressman Ted Lieu, a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, called the arrests outrageous and a direct attack on press freedom. - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert reiterated the U.S. demand for the reporters immediate release. - British Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said, I absolutely strongly disapprove of the idea of journalists, going about their everyday business, being arrested. We will make it clear in the strongest possible terms that we feel that they need to be released at the earliest possible opportunity. - Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom called the arrests a threat to a democratic and peaceful development of Myanmar and that region. She said, We do not accept that journalists are attacked or simply kidnapped or that they disappear ... To be able to send journalists to this particular area is of crucial importance. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and freedom of the press in Myanmar. Guterres said, It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country. - Canada s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, the former managing director and editor, consumer news, at Thomson Reuters, tweeted that she was deeply concerned by the reports about the arrests. Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian government department that manages its foreign and trade relations, issued a statement on Saturday calling for the reporters release and said no person should ever face intimidation in the exercise of their profession. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the two reporters. - Australia s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said its embassy in Myanmar was registering Canberra s concern at the arrest of the two journalists. A free and functioning media is an essential part of a modern democracy, the department said in an e-mail to Reuters on Monday. - Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said, We strongly denounce arrests of Reuters journalists and feel that those reporters be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said the arrests were having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance . - The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests and the charges being considered against the journalists were completely spurious . - Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded the Myanmar government immediately and unconditionally release the two Reuters journalists. The environment for media right now is as hostile as it s been for years, and if adequate pressure doesn t mount on the civilian and military leadership, we can expect it to worsen, Matthew Smith, chief executive officer of Fortify Rights, said on Thursday. - Myanmar s Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. The newspaper said that it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed as police normally do to criminals on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime. - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance said the two journalists were only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, a group of local reporters who have demonstrated against past prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about the state of press freedom in Myanmar. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, The Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong and the Editorial Committee of The Society of Publishers in Asia have also issued statements of support for the journalists. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Convicted 'bookkeeper of Auschwitz' challenges jail time;BERLIN (Reuters) - A 96-year-old German convicted over his role in the murders of 300,000 people at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp has challenged his four-year prison sentence, arguing that imprisonment would violate his right to life, German media reported on Tuesday. A German court on Nov. 29 ruled that Oskar Groening, known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz , was fit to go to prison and rejected his plea for the sentence to be suspended. Groening, who is physically frail, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2015, in one of the last cases against a surviving Nazi, but he has not been incarcerated since then because of the legal argument about his health. Broadcaster ntv quoted Groening s lawyer, Hans Holtermann, as saying that the latest legal challenge asked Germany s constitutional court to determine if imprisonment would violate Groening s right to life, given his medical condition. He told the broadcaster that an expert had concluded that Groening was not fit enough to be imprisoned. Holtermann could not be immediately reached for comment. The Nov. 29 court ruling had said that enforcing Groening s sentence would not breach his fundamental rights and added that special needs related to his age could be addressed in prison. Groening, a former Nazi SS officer, did not kill anyone himself while working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. But a court convicted him in 2015 of aiding and abetting mass murder there through various actions, including by sorting banknotes seized from arriving Jews. He admitted during his trial that he was morally guilty and said he had been an enthusiastic Nazi when he was sent to work at Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 21. Some six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust carried out under Adolf Hitler. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Final arguments in Turkish banker's U.S. trial hinge on gold trader;NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday urged a New York jury to find Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkey s majority state-owned Halkbank, guilty of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, while Atilla s lawyers said he was a blameless pawn. The closing arguments in Manhattan federal court capped off a three-week trial that has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey. This is a case about lies, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard told the jury, saying Atilla lied to U.S. authorities that Halkbank was complying with sanctions. Halkbank has denied involvement in illegal activities. Lockard pointed to the testimony of Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who was charged in the case but pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecutors. Zarrab testified that Atilla helped design fraudulent gold and food transactions that allowed Iran to spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, including through U.S. financial institutions, defying U.S. sanctions. Atilla denied conspiring with Zarrab while testifying in his own defense during the trial. Lockard said Zarrab s testimony was supported by other evidence, including an April 2013 message in which Halkbank s then-general manager, Suleyman Aslan, asked Zarrab if he had any problem with the method proposed by Hakan Atilla. Attempts by Reuters to reach Aslan for comment have been unsuccessful. Lockard also said that Zarrab s scheme continued even as Aslan and others at the bank were replaced. The only person who s been involved at every step is Mr. Atilla, he said. Atilla s lawyer, Victor Rocco, said Zarrab was not credible. He noted that Zarrab had hired prominent American lawyers to try to negotiate his release through diplomacy, and said he decided to turn on Atilla after that failed. Hakan Atilla is a blameless pawn, collateral damage in a story that belongs in The Twilight Zone, not in American court, Rocco said. Rocco argued that evidence pointed to Atilla s innocence. He cited a call in which Zarrab told one of his employees that Atilla threw a wrench in the gears, but that Zarrab resolved the problem by going to Aslan. Rocco also pointed to an April 2013 call in which Zarrab said he lied to Atilla, even though Zarrab had said Atilla was already in on the scheme by October 2012. If in October of 2012 Hakan Atilla was part of a conspiracy with Zarrab, why is Zarrab lying to him six months later? Rocco asked. U.S. prosecutors charged nine people in the criminal case, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, have been arrested by U.S. authorities. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman is expected to instruct the jury Wednesday morning, after which jurors will begin deliberating on the case. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kenya police raid Islamic school, arresting teachers and holding 100 children;MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan police raided an Islamic school on Tuesday, arresting two teachers and taking around 100 children into protective custody in what police described as a counter-terrorism operation involving foreign law-enforcement agencies. Police described the school in Likoni, south of the port city of Mombasa, as a center for indoctrinating young men and children with militant ideology. The place has been monitored for a long time, said a police source who asked not to be named. The police spokesman was unavailable for comment. Kenya is mostly Christian but has a large Islamic population. It is relatively free from religious tension, although it has suffered repeated deadly attacks from Somali Islamist extremists. A local Muslim leader confirmed the operation but said there was no evidence of any illegal activity. A group of local and foreign police officers raided the madrasa (Islamic school) where the pupils were sleeping and took them with their teachers, Sheikh Hassan Omar, a senior official in the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK), an umbrella body for Kenya s religious leaders, told journalists in Mombasa. There are nearly 100 pupils and four madrasa teachers who have been arrested and detained at police headquarters and nobody is telling us what crime they have committed. It was not immediately clear why the police and CIPK gave different totals for the number of teachers arrested. Omar said the officers asked for identification documents, including birth certificates from the children, and their teachers before they took them. Another police source told Reuters the operation was sparked by intelligence information that both foreign and local children were being indoctrinated in the school. We have been assisted by some friends from outside with information and monitoring of this madrasa. That is normal with such cross-border criminal issues, said another senior police officer, who also asked not to be named. He did say which foreign country was involved in the raid. They (the children) will be released one by one after we interrogate and clear them, he said. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump, UK's May talk Middle East peace - White House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May talked about ways to move towards peace in the Middle East in a phone call on Tuesday, the White House said. The president and Prime Minister discussed next steps in forging peace in the Middle East, the White House said in a brief statement that made no mention of Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Both leaders also emphasized the urgency of addressing the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Trump also congratulated May on the decision by European Union leaders to move to the second phase of the Brexit negotiations, the White House said. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chile election ends era of female presidents in Latin America;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - When Chile s President Michelle Bachelet leaves office in March, it will mark the end of a generation of women leaders in Latin America, leaving the region without a female head of state as it shifts to the right politically. At the start of this decade, women held the top jobs in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Chile, collectively representing about 40 percent of the population in a region better known for its machismo. But conservative Sebastian Pinera s victory in the second round of Chile s presidential election on Sunday drew that period to a close. Bachelet was the first of her female counterparts to rise to power in a leftist tide that swept South America during a commodities-fueled economic boom. She served as president from 2006 to 2010 before winning re-election in 2013. Together with Brazil s Dilma Rousseff and Argentina s Cristina Fernandez, Bachelet embodied the major strides made by women across a region that has passed laws deterring rampant violence against women and set quotas for political participation that have given Latin American women a bigger share of parliamentary seats than in Europe. But now some worry that progress on women s rights could stall. We re seeing a shift to conservative politics that is questioning the advances of the last 15 to 20 years, said Eugenia Piza-Lopez, who works on gender in Latin America for the United Nations Development Program. Conservative groups are targeting gender equality across the region, said Piza-Lopez. Protests over curriculums aimed at empowering girls to rise above traditional female duties have helped topple education ministers in Peru and Colombia. During campaigning in Chile, Pinera voiced concerns about the country s declining birth rate as he took aim at changes to abortion laws under Bachelet, who loosened a strict ban to make exemptions for rape, unviable fetuses and the risk of death during labor. While there is no definitive study showing female leaders do more to advance women s wellbeing than men, Farida Jalalzai, a political scientist at Oklahoma State University, said her research on Latin America suggested that was the case. Dilma (Rousseff), for example, would take a policy that was already in existence and reframe it in ways that made it clear it was a women s issue, whether it was poverty or home ownership, Jalalzai said. Piza-Lopez said Fernandez, who ruled Argentina from 2007 to 2015, helped narrow the gender poverty gap with her generous spending on social programs aimed at women. Stella Zervoudaki, head of the European Union delegation in Chile, pointed to Bachelet s creation of a ministry of women, her programs to finance companies led by women and work for marriage equality. I m not sure this would have been as forceful without a woman leader, Zervoudaki said. She said Bachelet had pressed for a chapter on gender in an update to an EU trade agreement that called for progress on equal pay, fair maternity leave and better access to technology for women. In a region where corruption scandals often hurt presidencies, South America s women leaders were no honorable exception. Rousseff was removed from office in 2016 on accusations she manipulated budget laws and was later charged with graft. A judge in Argentina has charged Fernandez, now a senator who is also under investigation for graft, with treason for allegedly covering up Iran s possible role in a 1994 bombing. Both women deny wrongdoing. Rousseff recently visited Fernandez in her apartment in Buenos Aires to commiserate, and has said sexism played a role in her own impeachment. Brazil s conservative President Michel Temer appointed an all-male cabinet after Rousseff s exit. She was voted out after lawmakers held up signs saying bye, dear! In contrast, Pinera said on Monday he would announce the women and men who would form his team, a sign he would create a balanced cabinet, perhaps taking his lead from Bachelet, whose first cabinet was exactly half men and half women. Bachelet s own approval ratings were hit hard after her daughter-in-law was accused of using political ties to get access to a bank loan. Although Latin America is poised to hold six elections next year - in Costa Rica, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil - the chances for another female president are slim. In Mexico, leftist frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has repeatedly referred to his rival Margarita Zavala as the wife of Felipe Calderon - her husband and a former president - angering her supporters, who charge it is sexist. She is polling around 10 percent of votes. In Brazil, Marina Silva, who has lost the presidency twice, recently joined the race and lies third in most polls. A number of female candidates are expected to compete in Colombia s presidential race, though none is expected to win. Maria Eugenia Vidal, the governor of Argentina s largest province of Buenos Aires, is the country s most popular politician, according to several polls, but is not expected to run for president in 2019. Still-rampant sexism and sexual harassment in politics remain deterrents to women who want to rise to the top, said Mercedes Araoz, Peru s Prime Minister and a former presidential candidate. I ve been a victim (of sexual harassment), Araoz recently told journalists. It s important to realize how discouraging it can be. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; The Internet Brutally Mocks Disney’s New Trump Robot At Hall Of Presidents;A new animatronic figure in the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World was added, where every former leader of the republic is depicted in an audio-animatronics show. The figure which supposedly resembles Jon Voight Donald Trump was added to the collection and it s absolutely horrifying. The internet noticed that, too.Here s a few more pictures of the Donald Trump animatronic. #HallOfPresidents pic.twitter.com/a45En9Jwys WDW News Today (@WDWNT) December 19, 2017Trump robot in the Hall of Presidents looks like a 71-year-old Chucky doll. pic.twitter.com/yLCBmhpNvG John Cohen (@JohnCohen1) December 19, 2017Breaking: 7 Disney Princesses and a Storm Trooper have come forward alleging Hall of Presidents Trump made lewd comments to them Brohibition Now (@OhNoSheTwitnt) December 19, 2017Trump s animatronic figure for the Disney Hall of Presidents looks like it was carved out of Play-Doh and left out in the Florida heat, where it was discovered by a dying albino squirrel who settled atop its head and has been left there to decompose. pic.twitter.com/3vMZUTEylx Elizabeth M. (@_ElizabethMay) December 19, 2017In a time w/ so many heavy items, thank you to Disney for the laugh. They did so much so well in the @realDonaldTrump animatronic. Little hands, check Absurdly long tie, check Horrifying face, checkmateWhen Trump is impeached, can they move this to the Haunted Mansion? https://t.co/XrOvu32EV8 State of Resistance (@AltStateDpt) December 19, 2017all the other presidents in Disney s new Hall of Presidents look like they can t believe Donald Trump is president either pic.twitter.com/eMP9UX1bM8 Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 18, 2017Disney unveiled Trump figure at the Hall of Presidents. To save production costs, they pulled the animated hands off of a retired figurine from the Its a Small World ride. Tim Hanlon (@TimfromDa70s) December 19, 2017The best part of Donald Trump being in Disney s Hall of Presidents will be when they remove him from the Hall of Presidents and put him in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride s jail. pic.twitter.com/XViyKFQCET Rex Huppke (@RexHuppke) December 19, 2017Comment today by local news channel anchor in Orlando: Donald Trump robot just added to Disney s Hall of Presidents. I hope they programmed all the former presidents to not roll their eyes and shake their heads while he s talking. Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) December 19, 2017NPR: Disney World Adds Trump Animatronic Figure, But Likeness Is Lacking. But who REALLY wants to look at an accurate Donald? The man is about as presidential looking as a fucking Pokemon. https://t.co/HFYJRkefJ1 Stephen (@Harvest_This) December 19, 2017Could we put the animatronic version in the White House and the real one in Disney World? Asking for 7.6 billion people and the future of the planet. https://t.co/65FhbQHuV4 #Disney #Trump #JonVoight David Schmid (@DavidSchmid1) December 19, 2017We re pretty sure Disney is trolling Trump.Image via Twitter.;News;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia's Turnbull goes rural in a cabinet reshuffle aimed at widening appeal;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Tuesday named a new attorney general and promoted two junior lawmakers from rural Queensland state to his cabinet in a reshuffle he hopes will bolster his flagging popularity. Australian leaders often revamp cabinets before the start of a new year but for center-right Turnbull the move is an attempt to salvage his leadership, ravaged by dismal opinion polls. Last month, Turnbull s ruling Liberal-National coalition made its worst showing in a Queensland election in more than a decade, when it won 34 percent of the vote as Pauline Hanson s populist One Nation clawed into its conservative base. A large number of marginal seats in the country s third most populous state of Queensland often give its voters a crucial say in deciding federal elections. The reshuffle was sparked by the resignation of Attorney General George Brandis from the Senate. Turnbull said he would ask Brandis to be the country s next High Commissioner, or ambassador, to the United Kingdom. Turnbull gave cabinet positions to Queenslanders John McVeigh and David Littleproud, who both took office 18 months ago. He dropped infrastructure minister Darren Chester, from the urban state of Victoria, giving the portfolio to deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, the leader of the Nationals, which features prominently in Queensland. It s a ministry that showcases the depth of the Liberal and National team, with well-earned promotions for talented individuals, a number of young and upcoming MPs bringing new skills and energy to the frontbench, Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. Asked why he removed Chester, whose duties included running the Australian part of the fruitless search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Turnbull said his cabinet had to take into account matters of geography , but did not elaborate. The pitch to voters in the northeastern state of Queensland was obvious, said Stewart Jackson, a specialist in Australian politics at the University of Sydney. Everybody s been spooked by One Nation, Jackson said. The emphasis will shift back towards Queensland where the National Party was traditionally strong. The overhaul also brings youth into a government that has narrowly retained its razor-thin majority in parliament after a constitutional crisis triggered a series of by-elections. The two promoted Queenslanders, Littleproud and McVeigh, are 41 and 52 respectively. The new attorney general, social services minister Christian Porter, from the iron ore-rich state of Western Australia, is 47. Employment minister Michaelia Cash, who takes the expanded title of minister for jobs and innovation, and Nationals member Bridget McKenzie, who joins cabinet as minister for sport, rural health and regional communications, are also 47. Turnbull gave no reason for the departure of Brandis after 17 years, but called him a stalwart who had backed tougher national security laws and the legalization of same-sex marriage, a measure parliament passed this month. In 2015, when Turnbull unseated then prime minister Tony Abbott, he said the move was necessary because Abbott s government had lost 30 opinion polls in a row. Under Turnbull, the government has lost 25 opinion polls in a row. Many commentators say that if the figure reaches 30, which could happen as soon as March, Turnbull s party may consider removing him. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LEBRON JAMES Brags About Being “Well-Spoken”…Proceeds To Use Vocabulary Of A 4-Yr-Old To Trash President Trump;Is anyone else sick and tired of overpaid athletes who can t even formulate a proper sentence, criticizing President Donald J. Trump, one of the most successful businessmen of our time?After taking a stand for harmony and togetherness by wearing black sneaker and white sneakers with the word Equality written on them, to a game in Washington, DC, on Sunday night, NBA star LeBron James took a decidedly less conciliatory tone, in his post-game comments about President Trump.James said, Obviously I ve been very outspoken and well-spoken about the situation that s going on at the helm here, and we re not going to let one person dictate us, us as Americans, how beautiful and how powerful we are as a people. It certainly was nice of James to add that he s been well-spoken, in addition to being outspoken.The three-time NBA champ and future Hall of Famer continued, No matter the skin color, no matter the race, no matter who you are, I think we all have to understand that having equal rights and being able to stand for something and speak for something and keeping the conversation going. James did not elaborate on what rights he felt were in danger, nor did he explain exactly what the conversation was, or where it was going.However, James did speak from a place of unrivaled authority on the subject of being outspoken. In many ways, James has been the anti-Jordan, whereas MJ avoided political entanglements whenever possible, at least since 2012, James has embraced them whenever and wherever possible.James appeared in a photo with his teammates wearing hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death by George Zimmerman in 2012. James wore an I Can t Breathe t-shirt to warm-ups at Madison Square Garden to show support for Eric Garner, a New York man who died after an altercation with police in 2014.The 13-time All-Star has also held nothing back when it comes to President Trump. In September, James called President Trump a bum, after the president rescinded a White House invite to Golden State guard Steph Curry. ;politics;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER DNC AIDES In Hot Water Over Possible Money Laundering Scheme to Fund Terrorism Overseas;The plot thickens with the saga of the IT workers who worked for Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They had access to congressional emails and were quite shady. They made millions just disappear. Is this a case of money laundering to fund terrorism?The Daily Caller s Luke Rosiak described it best with this tweet: Need to take $100k in Hezbollah-linked cash while you can read intelligence committee members emails, as their IT guy? Set up a used car dealership with fake staff, launder it from Iraq thru realtors commissions, and lie about it on House disclosures. Daily Caller reports:The used car dealership known as CIA never seemed like an ordinary car dealership, with inventory, staff and expenses.On its Facebook page, CIA s staff were fake personalities such as James Falls O Brien, whose photo was taken from a hairstyle model catalog, and Jade Julia, whose image came from a web page called Beautiful Girls Wallpaper. If a customer showed up looking to buy a car from Cars International A, often referred to as CIA, Abid Awan who was managing partner of the dealership while also earning $160,000 handling IT for House Democrats would frequently simply go across the street to longstanding dealership called AAA Motors and get one. If AAA borrows a car to Cars International and they have a customer, it was simply take the car across the street and sell it, and then later on give the profit back or not, Nasir Khattak, who ran the longstanding AAA dealership, testified in a lawsuit. There was no documentation which is write every transaction that takes place. If you go and try to dissect, you will not be able to make any sense out of them because there were many, dozens and dozens, of cars transferred between the two dealerships and between other people. Khattak did not explain why he would ruin his existing business to help the Awans. All of those transactions was to support Cars International A from AAA Motors, he testified. That s why I did not make any money from my dealership because my resources were supporting Cars International A. He said only Imran Awan knew what became of the money. It was Imram, [Abid] Awan s brother, who was running the business in full control, he said.Imran Awan and his family members were congressional IT aides who investigators said made unauthorized access to the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times. At the same time as they worked for and could read all the emails of members of the House intelligence, homeland security and foreign affairs committees, they also ran a car dealership that took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive and whose financial books were indecipherable and business patterns bizarre, according to testimony in court records.While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism, according to an explosive new Politico expose.The money that disappeared between the Awans dealership, some $7 million in congressional pay, the equipment suspected of disappearing from Congress under their watch, and their other side businesses all while they displayed few signs of wealth and frequently haggled in court over small amounts of money raise questions about whether the Awans might have been laundering money or sending it to a third party.;politics;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TREY GOWDY ON PETER STRZOK BIAS AGAINST TRUMP: “I wanna know how the HELL he got there”;Sunlight is the best disinfectant That s why we think we can t get enough of the evidence coming out about corrupt FBI agents who took it upon themselves to try and destroy Trump.The Daily Caller reports:South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said Tuesday that FBI agent Peter Strzok s anti-Trump text messages show an unprecedented level of bias you rarely see from FBI officials.In particular, he was asked about a cryptic message that Strzok sent in Aug. 2016 to FBI lawyer Lisa Page referring to an insurance policy that appears to refer to the FBI s investigation of the Trump campaign. I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy s office that there s no way [Trump] gets elected but I m afraid we can t take that risk. It s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you re 40, reads the Aug. 15, 2016 text message. He s in the middle of major investigations, he said of Strzok, adding, Thank God he s gone, but I want to know how the hell he got there in the first place. We say Amen to that!;politics;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PELOSI UNHINGED: GOP Tax Reform Bill Is ‘Brazen Theft’… ‘Does Violence’ to Founder’s Vision [Video];Yes, keeping the money you earned is brazen theft from big government LOL! Check out Kevin McCarthy s rip on Pelosi below the first video. Great stuff! House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called the Republican tax reform bill brazen theft on the floor of the House of Representatives shortly before the bill passed, adding it does violence to the vision of the Founding Fathers. This GOP tax scam is simply theft monumental, brazen theft from the American middle-class and from every person who aspires to reach it, Pelosi said on Tuesday. The GOP tax scam is not a vote for an investment in growth or jobs, it is a vote to install a permanent plutocracy in our nation. They ll be cheering that later. Pelosi went on to say the tax bill does violence to the vision of America s Founding Fathers and disrespects the sacrifice of the service of men and women in uniform.GOP Rep. Kevin mcCarthy calls out Pelosi:;politics;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHOA! PAUL RYAN Channels Trump…Blasts POLITICO During Press Conference Over #FakeNews Story About His Retirement [VIDEO];House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) on Tuesday pushed back against a report from last week that speculated he would not seek reelection in 2018.Ryan spoke at the weekly House Republican leadership press conference and took questions on an array of issues ranging from the House tax bill to speculation that he will not seek reelection in 2018.The speaker was asked about a Politico report that speculated he wouldn t run for reelection, prompting Ryan to push back in a visibly irritated manner. Oh, look. I m not going anywhere anytime soon and let s leave that thing at that, Ryan said. I actually think that piece was very irresponsible. It was a speculative piece and it was faulty speculation, and I want to put it to rest. Watch:Last week, Politico reported they interviewed approximately three dozen people, including fellow lawmakers, congressional and administration aides, conservative intellectuals and Republican lobbyists, about Ryan s future in Congress and whether he would seek reelection. None of the people said they believed Ryan would stay in Congress past 2018, according to the report.The House Republican Conference held a closed-door meeting prior to the press conference where Ryan reportedly first clarified he wasn t going anywhere.Politico reporter Rachael Bade, who co-wrote the initial report, tweeted that Ryan told conference he s not going anywhere and got a standing ovation. .@SpeakerRyan told conference he s not going anywhere and got a standing ovation. Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) December 19, 2017 WFB ;politics;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina Congress passes pension reform after protests, clashes;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s Congress passed a reform to the pension system on Tuesday, after days of demonstrations by the bill s opponents and violent clashes between protesters and police. The measure is central to President Mauricio Macri s plan to slash the fiscal deficit and attract investment. It paves the way for further market-friendly legislation that his Cambiemos, or Let s Change coalition hopes to pass in extraordinary congressional sessions before the end of the year. The law changes the formula used to calculate benefits by linking them to consumer prices instead of tax income and wage hikes. The government says that will make benefits more predictable and sustainable, and they will still increase by more than inflation next year. This formula guarantees that over the next few years, retirees will never lose against a jump in inflation, said Macri, who took office in December 2015 after more than a decade of populist rule. Macri tweaked his proposal, pledging a one-time bonus payment to the neediest retirees, after clashes last Thursday derailed congressional debate. Still, the measure generated fierce criticism from opposition lawmakers and labor unions, who say it will hurt retirees. The debate prompted demonstrations on Monday. Thousands took to the streets of the capital Buenos Aires and around the country, banging pots and pans and blaring car horns. Stone-throwing protesters confronted police, who responded with water canon, rubber bullets and tear gas. Dozens were injured. All these changes generate discomfort, but they are necessary, Macri said after the measure passed the lower chamber of deputies 127-117, with two abstentions, following an all-night debate session. The Senate approved the proposal last month. The government will now press congressional votes on a tax code overhaul and a deal with provinces to limit spending, Macri told reporters. Economists, noting that inflation expectations are lower, said linking benefits to consumer prices would lower spending by around 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) next year. But savings from the pension reform will finance transfers from the national treasury to provinces as part of the fiscal pact, said economist Ariel Barraud of the Argentina Fiscal Analysis Institute in Cordoba, Argentina. Almost all of the savings obtained from the pension formula change will go to compensate the fiscal deal, Barraud told Reuters by phone. Argentina s government is aiming to cut the deficit to 3.2 percent of GDP from 4.2 percent currently. Cambiemos lacks a majority in Congress despite a strong performance in October s legislative midterm. Dozens of votes from opposition lawmakers were needed to pass the pension measure. Other leaders in South America have had a harder time implementing similar business-friendly agendas. In Peru, measures meant to boost growth have stalled as President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has fought efforts to remove him over his ties to scandal-plagued Brazilian builder Odebrecht. Brazil s efforts at its own pension reform were recently pushed back until next year. Despite passage of the pension measure, Macri s agenda still faces substantial popular skepticism. They are encroaching upon the rights of society s most vulnerable, opposition lawmaker Facundo Moyano said during the congressional debate. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HILLARY CLINTON SINGS “Song for Women” In Cameo On The Daily Show [Video];The Daily Show thought it was appropriate in their yearly recap special to acknowledge some of their biggest moments in a song. The surprise of the song comes at the end Hillary sings? She s like a bad penny that just keeps showing up everywhere. This is a Song for Women sung by a woman who brutalized the women who were sexually assaulted by her husband THE HIGHLIGHT IS THE RIP ON MEGYN KELLY:The song covered a lot of ground, including The Women s March, Elizabeth Warren s persistence, Saudi women being able to drive cars, the South Korean President Park Geun-hye s impeachment, Wonder Woman being a box office hit, to Beyonc Knowles twins. But they also took a swipe at NBC s Megyn Kelly: Megyn Kelly went to NBC from Fox, $17 million for a show that sucks, they sang. Hillary Clinton was asked to take us home. It then cuts to the Democratic candidate in a recording booth belting out a solo:;politics;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduran opposition says will formally challenge election result;TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The head of an opposition alliance in Honduras on Tuesday said the group would file a legal challenge to annul the official results of last month s disputed vote that handed victory to the sitting president. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU's Juncker says approves of Austria's pro-European coalition deal;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Tuesday he approved of Austria s coalition agreement, saying he would judge the government of Christian Democrats and the far-right Freedom Party by its deeds. As is the case with all governments, we will assess the Austrian government by its deeds, Juncker told a news conference in Brussels, after meeting with Austria s new Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Juncker said he believed the coalition agreement showed Austria was on a pro-European path. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada jury clears man of terrorism charges in Christmas lights bomb case;MONTREAL (Reuters) - A Canadian jury on Tuesday found a man guilty of possessing an explosive substance but cleared him and his partner of three terrorism-related charges after the government alleged they were trying to build a bomb with ingredients that included Christmas lights. The Montreal couple, El Mahdi Jamali and Sabrine Djermane, were charged with trying to leave Canada to join a terrorist group, possessing an explosive substance, facilitating a terrorist activity and committing an offense for a terrorist group. Jamali, now 20, was found guilty of a reduced charge of possessing explosives without a lawful excuse and acquitted of other charges. Jamali was given credit for time served and ordered released during a Tuesday afternoon hearing. He was also prohibited from owning a firearm for 10 years. Djermane, 21, was acquitted of all charges. The two had been detained since they were arrested in 2015, when they were teenagers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police found a handwritten bomb-making recipe copied from a propaganda magazine published by al Qaeda militants when the police searched a condo rented by the couple in 2015, according to prosecutors. The two were arrested at a time when international security forces reported that college students from Montreal were among waves of young people heading to Syria to join Islamic State militants. RCMP began investigating the couple after receiving a tip, and arrested them days later. Canadian prosecutor Lyne Decarie said she has not ruled out filing an appeal and would examine the judge s instructions to the jury. The government has 30 days to file an appeal. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Detained Reuters journalist wrote children's book on nature and absence;YANGON (Reuters) - At the end of an illustrated book written for children in Myanmar, a much-loved village teacher who has planted many trees and a beautiful garden tells his students that the time has come for him to leave them. Oh students, he says. I won t be here but you will still have the trees to give you fruit and shade and take care of you every year. So you will remember me and not be so sad. The author of The Gardener was Wa Lone, one of two Reuters journalists who were arrested in Yangon last week and accused of violating the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen some 650,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown on militants in the western state of Rakhine. They have not been seen for a week. The Gardener is one of a series published by The Third Story Project, a venture co-founded by Wa Lone that produces books in Burmese, other Myanmar languages and English and distributes them free to children across the country. On the project s website, Wa Lone says the aim was to promote tolerance and harmony in an increasingly multicultural and diverse world. Lack of understanding has led to conflicts between different communities and finally destroyed peace and stability, he wrote. I love every Third Story book because they address important issues for future generations. In Wa Lone s story, which also carries a message of the importance of protecting the environment, the teacher scatters seeds from his bicycle on the journey to school and years later they have grown into huge trees. He also plants a garden with his students and, there, he tells them stories. He leaves them one day to help another village, where all the trees had been cut down and there was no fruit, water or shelter for the people and animals. The last page of the story shows a figure in the distance and the words: The teacher said goodbye to his students and rode his old bicycle down the road toward the other village. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel admits mistakes in the 2016 Christmas market attack;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany should learn from security shortcomings exposed by a deadly truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market a year ago and increase aid to survivors and families of victims, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday. Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck on Dec. 19, 2016, killed the driver and then plowed it into a crowded market place, killing 11 more people and injuring dozens of others. Merkel spoke on the anniversary of the attack at the unveiling of a memorial on the Breitscheidplatz square where it took place. The ceremony came amid criticism from families of the victims and from survivors about the government s handling of the incident. Today is a day for mourning but also a day for the determination of making things better that did not work (in the past), Merkel said. Merkel, who met victims and relatives of those killed at the chancellery on Monday, said she would meet the group again in a few months to provide updates on lessons learned from Germany s worst Islamist militant attack. Hundreds of people gathered with candles at the site after a church service at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church that was also attended by Berlin mayor Michael Mueller and former German President Joachim Gauck. The church bells tolled for 12 minutes, one minute for each of those killed, at 8:02 p.m., the precise time when the attack occurred. The normally crowded Christmas market at the plaza remained closed all day on Tuesday. The memorial shows the names of the victims carved on the steps of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church near the scene of the attack. A long crack filled with metal and gold alloy runs through the steps and the Christmas market. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said support for the victims of the attack came late and had not been sufficient. It s bitter that the state could not protect your relatives, Steinmeier said addressing the families. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the government had not been well enough prepared to avert such an attack. We can only apologize for the victims and the surviving relatives, Maas wrote in an article published in Tagesspiegel paper on Tuesday. The German government has agreed to increase compensation payments to victims families and survivors after complaints that the 10,000 euros ($11,820) compensation the German government had offered was insufficient, Kurt Beck, an advocate for victims and survivors said on Tuesday. Dozens of protesters rallied near the Breitscheidplatz, carrying signs expressing solidarity with the victims but warning against turning the tragic event into a rallying cry against Islam, as some far-right groups have sought to do. I m angry about the right wing s efforts to instrumentalize this, said Martin Pfaff, who organized the event. That s why we re making clear that racism cannot be an answer to terrorism. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. State Department calls for Myanmar to release Reuters journalists;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department called on Tuesday for the immediate release of two Reuters journalists who have been detained for about a week in Myanmar and whose whereabouts have not been reported to their families. We ve been ... following the cases of the two reporters, the Reuters reporters, very closely. We re deeply concerned about their detention. We do not know their whereabouts. That is of concern also, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a news briefing. Today I want to make it clear that we re calling for their immediate release. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French Socialists sell historic headquarters for $53 million;PARIS (Reuters) - France s struggling Socialist Party said on Tuesday it had agreed to sell its historic headquarters in Paris Left Bank for 45.5 million euros ($53.89 million), after a stinging electoral defeat this year left it strapped for cash. The mansion - in Socialist hands since 1980, just before Francois Mitterrand became the party s first leader to rise to the presidency - will be sold to French property developer Apsys. The center-left party won just 29 parliamentary seats in a legislative election this year, down from 280 previously in the 577-strong chamber, causing it to lose state subsidies. The Socialists also suffered an electoral drubbing in the presidential race in May, as centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron took power, blowing apart France s traditional two-party system in the process. The center-left party s candidate limped into fifth place, after Francois Hollande, whose election five years earlier was hailed as a new dawn for French Socialists, did not seek re-election following an unpopular presidency. Center-left parties across Europe have struggled to win back voters in the wake of recessions and a global banking crisis that have spawned newer political parties and increased support in some cases for more radical forces on the left. Macron s upstart Republic on the Move party has now the largest number of seats in the lower house of parliament. Funds from the sale of the Socialist headquarters will partly be used for future campaigns. The party said it would not have to move out until next September. The Socialists are currently being managed by a committee and the party is due to hold a leadership contest next April. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arrested Myanmar reporters: Two book lovers dedicated to their craft;YANGON/BANGKOK (Reuters) - In many ways Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists arrested in Myanmar, symbolize their country s emergence after decades of isolation. Both from modest, provincial backgrounds, they worked hard to pursue careers that would have been impossible in the junta era into which they were born. Following are profiles of the two journalists, who were arrested on Dec. 12 and have been held since then without contact with their families or a lawyer, accused of breaching the country s Official Secrets Act: Wa Lone, 31, grew up in Kin Pyit, a village of some 100 households in the Shwe Bo district north of Mandalay, on Myanmar s dry central plain between the mighty Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers. One of five children, his parents were rice farmers and there was little money. His mother died from cancer when he was young. But he was a good student, according to friends and family, and took a keen interest in news from an early age. One of his brothers, Thura Aung, remembers Wa Lone, aged around 10, watching bulletins on a shared TV in their village. Sometimes he would play at being an anchor, said Thura Aung, 26. He always said he wanted to be a reporter in the future. After finishing school at 16 he enrolled as a student at a government technical university, but left after a couple of semesters because his family could not afford the tuition. Around 2004 he went to Mawlamyine, Myanmar s fourth biggest city, living in a Buddhist monastery where his uncle was a monk. In exchange for a place to stay, he would get up at 5 a.m. to clean and prepare food for the monks before going to work at a photo services business. Wa Lone showed a talent for design and photography, and soon set up a small photo services shop of his own, which he ran with Thura Aung. In December 2010, having saved a little money, the brothers moved back to Yangon, where Wa Lone could pursue his boyhood dream. Living in North Okklapa township, near the city s airport, they re-established their photo services business, while Wa Lone also enrolled in a media training school and later began taking English classes. Mindy Walker, an American teacher who met him in 2012, recalls a skinny kid from the village who had little interaction with foreigners . He was so nervous he fled her English class the first time he was called on to answer a question. We still joke about that moment and he tells every new student in our class that story so that they feel more confident, said Walker in an email. His heart is huge and he is always encouraging others to succeed. Within five or six months Wa Lone had landed his first job in journalism on the weekly People s Age in Yangon, where his editor was Pe Myint - now Myanmar s Minister of Information. In 2014, he joined the English-language daily, Myanmar Times, covering the historic 2015 general election that swept Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to power. As soon as I met Wa Lone, I knew we had to hire him, said the paper s former editor, Thomas Kean. He was thoughtful, articulate and clearly cared deeply about journalism. As well as providing a platform for him to excel as a journalist, the two years he spent at the Myanmar Times was a significant period in Wa Lone s life - it was there that he met his wife Pan Ei Mon who works in the paper s sales and marketing department. The couple married in April last year. Despite the long hours chasing stories and studying, Wa Lone has still found time to write a children s book, The Gardener, a story in Burmese and English with an environmental message that draws on his own rural roots. He co-founded the Third Story Project, a charitable foundation that produces and distributes stories that aim to promote tolerance between Myanmar s different ethnic groups, and is involved in projects working with orphans. Many of his weekends off have been spent visiting poor rural villages - much like the one where he grew up. He brings story books from Third Story and gives them to children, said Pan Ei Mon. He reads to them and does painting competitions and sings with the children. Wa Lone joined Reuters in July 2016 and quickly made his mark with in-depth stories on sensitive subjects including land grabs by the powerful military and the murder of prominent politician Ko Ni, as well as uncovering evidence of killings by soldiers in the northeast. His reporting on the crisis that erupted in northwestern Rakhine state in October 2016 won him a joint honorable mention from the Society of Publishers in Asia in its annual awards. He returned to Rakhine this year, after attacks by Rohingya Muslim militants on security forces in August triggered a crackdown by the army. Covering such subjects is not easy in a country where the transition from decades of junta rule is proving painful. His bravery over the past year, and particularly since Aug. 25, has been incredible. It s hard to describe the tide of ill-feeling towards journalists who question the military-government narrative on Rakhine, said Kean, his former editor. As soon as one of my colleagues said, Have you heard about Wa Lone? , I knew he d been arrested. His reporting has undoubtedly made him a target. It s heartbreaking, infuriating and completely unsurprising. Family and friends of Kyaw Soe Oo say he has always had a love of writing, and composed poetry before becoming a journalist. Min Min, the founder of the Root Investigative Agency, where Kyaw Soe Oo worked after starting his reporting career with the online Rakhine Development News, described the 27-year-old as a joyful person who had many friends. When I first met him in 2013, he was a poet not a journalist and not interested in journalism yet, said Min Min. An ethnic Rakhine Buddhist, Kyaw Soe Oe grew up in the state capital Sittwe, and was one of five siblings. He is a good elder brother, said his sister, Nyo Nyo Aye, adding that her brother always stood out from the crowd. He was always with books. He went to the book store or second-hand booksellers. He spent all his money buying books. . Childhood friend Zaw Myo Thu said he avoided becoming caught up in the communal tensions between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims that have seethed in the city since the upheavals in 2012. He wrote poems. He loved to read, he said. He never fought with anyone. But it was that conflict which drew him into journalism, covering Rakhine issues. He had been with Reuters since September, reporting on the army s crackdown in the aftermath of militant attacks on security forces on Aug. 25. As a journalist, he will cover news, but I think he will do it fairly because he does not discriminate between races, said his sister Nyo Nyo Aye. He just realises all are human. For Reuters, Kyaw Soe Oo worked on an investigative story about Myanmar s plan to harvest the crops of Rohingya farmers who fled to Bangladesh, and reported on how some Buddhists were enforcing local-level segregation in central Rakhine. He didn t tell me about the work and I never asked, said his wife, Chit Thu Win, with whom he has a three-year-old daughter. I believed in him that he is doing the right thing and he s just following his passion. He wanted to be a writer. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru opposition wants vice president to govern if president ousted: lawmaker;LIMA (Reuters) - A leading Peruvian opposition lawmaker on Monday called for the country s Vice President Martin Vizcarra to govern the country if Congress ousts President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski over graft allegations he denies. Enough political parties have committed to backing a motion to oust Kuczynski in a scheduled vote in the opposition-run Congress on Thursday. Kuczynski has repeatedly said there was nothing improper about recently disclosed business ties that he once denied having with Odebrecht [ODBES.UL], a Brazilian builder at the center of Latin America s biggest corruption scandal. If Kuczynski does depart, Vizcarra would be authorized to carry out the rest of Kuczynski s scheduled 2016-2021 term. Congresswoman Luz Salgado denied her party, Popular Force, which has a majority in Peru s single-chamber Congress, would seek to topple Vizcarra as charged by opponents. If he (Vizcarra) does his job well and assumes the role that history if offering to him, he ll have our corresponding support, said Salgado, a key leader in the party. We re thinking about what s best for the country. We re not trying to find fault in anyone. Kuczynski and Vizcarra s offices declined requests for comment. No major policy changes are expected if Kuczynski were replaced by Vizcarra, a former governor of a copper-rich Andean region and Peru s current ambassador to Canada. But the political crisis has spooked investors in one of Latin America s most stable economies. It s going to have an important impact on the economy. Investments are going to be delayed, said Carlos Galvez, the chief financial officer of Peruvian miner Buenaventura. A 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, Kuczynski was part of a rightward shift in South American politics when he was elected last year. His fight for survival underscores the risks facing political leaders with long business resumes as graft scandals roil the region. Kuczynski has described Popular Force s efforts to unseat him as an authoritarian attack on institutions, and criticized the party for not giving him more time to defend himself. We look like a banana republic. Without a proper procedure, Congress is just usurping the presidency, Housing Minister Carlos Bruce told journalists on Monday. Popular Force said it only hopes to uproot corruption and was acting within the bounds of the constitution. The party emerged from the right-wing movement started by the country s former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, who is now in prison for graft and human rights crimes. It is now led by Kuczynski s defeated electoral rival Keiko Fujimori. New elections, which would be the worst-case scenario for investors, would only be called if both Vizcarra and Second Vice President Mercedes Araoz leave office before 2021, a scenario Araoz ruled out in an interview with Reuters on Sunday. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After U.S. veto, U.N. General Assembly to meet on Jerusalem status;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-member United Nations General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, sparking a warning from Washington that it will take names. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for Trump s declaration to be withdrawn, which was vetoed by the United States in the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Monday. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. Mansour said on Monday he hoped there would be overwhelming support in the General Assembly for the resolution. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that the United States would remember those who voted for the resolution criticizing the U.S. decision. The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue, Haley wrote. She echoed that call in a Twitter post: The U.S. will be taking names. Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures if the Security Council fails to act. Only 10 such sessions have been convened, and the last time the General Assembly met in such a session was in 2009 on occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian territories. Thursday s meeting will be a resumption of that session. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington s Western allies. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls on all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Haley said on Monday that the resolution was vetoed in the Security Council in defense of U.S. sovereignty and the U.S. role in the Middle East peace process. She criticized it as an insult to Washington and an embarrassment to council members. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House gives final approval to tax bill, delivering victory to Trump;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, sending a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature. In sealing Trump’s first major legislative victory since he took office in January, Republicans steamrolled opposition from Democrats to pass a bill that slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while giving mixed, temporary tax relief to middle-class Americans. The House approved the measure by 224-201, passing it for the second time in two days after a procedural foul-up forced another vote on Wednesday. The Republican-led Senate had passed it 51-48 in the early hours of Wednesday. “We are making America great again,” Trump said, echoing his campaign slogan at a White House celebration with Republican lawmakers. “Ultimately what does it mean? It means jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.” Trump, who emphasized a tax cut for middle-class Americans during his 2016 campaign, said at an earlier Cabinet meeting that lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent was “probably the biggest factor in this plan.” It was uncertain when the bill would be signed. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the timing depended on whether automatic spending cuts triggered by the legislation could be waived. The administration expects the waiver to be included in a spending resolution Congress will pass later this week, a White House official told reporters. Cohn told Fox News Channel on Wednesday night that Trump could sign the bill as soon as Friday if the resolution was passed by then. “If not, most likely we’ll sign it in the first week of the new year,” Cohn said. In addition to cutting the U.S. corporate income tax rate, the debt-financed legislation gives other business owners a new 20 percent deduction on business income and reshapes how the government taxes multinational corporations along the lines that the country’s largest businesses have recommended for years. Wall Street’s main indexes were little changed on Wednesday, taking a breather after a month-long rally ahead of the long-anticipated tax vote. The S&P 500 has climbed about 4.5 percent since mid-November, led by a rally in sectors such as transport, banks and others that are expected to benefit the most from lower taxes. Under the bill, millions of Americans would stop itemizing deductions, putting tax breaks that incentivize home ownership and charitable donations out of their reach, but also making tax returns somewhat simpler and shorter. The bill keeps the existing number of tax brackets but adjusts many of the rates and income levels for each one. The top tax rate for high earners is reduced. The estate tax on inheritances is changed so far fewer people will pay. Once signed, taxpayers likely would see the first changes to their paycheck tax withholdings in February. Most households will not see the full effect of the tax plan on their income until they file their 2018 taxes in early 2019. In two provisions added to secure needed Republican votes, the legislation also allows oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and removes a tax penalty under the Obamacare health law for Americans who do not obtain health insurance. “We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we’ll come up with something that will be much better,” Trump said. Democrats were united in opposition to the tax legislation, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy that will widen the income gap between rich and poor, while adding $1.5 trillion over the next decade to the $20 trillion national debt. Trump promised during the campaign that he would eliminate the national debt. “Today the Republicans take their victory lap for successfully pillaging the American middle class to benefit the powerful and the privileged,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said. Opinion polls show the tax bill is unpopular with the public and Democrats promised to make Republicans pay for their vote during next year’s congressional elections, when all 435 House seats and 34 of the 100 Senate seats will be up for grabs. “Republicans will rue the day they passed this bill,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. “We are going to continue hammering away about why this bill is so unpopular.” U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the bill, saying support would grow for after it passes and Americans felt relief. “I think minds are going to change,” Ryan said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” television program. A few Republicans, a party once defined by fiscal hawkishness, have protested the deficit spending encompassed in the bill. But most voted for it anyway, saying it would help businesses and individuals while boosting an already expanding economy they see as not growing fast enough. In the House, 12 Republicans voted against the tax bill. All but one, Walter Jones of North Carolina, were from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California, which will be hit by the bill’s cap on deductions for state and local taxes. Despite Trump administration promises that the tax overhaul would focus on the middle class and not cut taxes for the rich, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, estimated middle-income households would see an average tax cut of $900 next year under the bill, while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would see an average cut of $51,000. The House was forced to vote again after the Senate parliamentarian ruled three minor provisions violated arcane Senate rules. To proceed, the Senate deleted the three provisions and then approved the bill. Since the House and Senate must approve the same legislation before Trump can sign it into law, the Senate’s vote sent the bill back to the House. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Persecuted Rohingya Muslims flee violence in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces in Rakhine State triggered a response by the army and Buddhist vigilantes so brutal a senior U.N. official denounced it as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Days, weeks and months after the Aug. 25 violence, more than 600,000 Rohingya fled to Muslim Bangladesh, trekking over mountains and through forests and rice fields inundated by monsoon rain. Many of the refugees were traumatized, exhausted and hungry, some wounded by bullets, knives or clubs, many with burns. Many women said they had been raped. All of the refugees brought accounts of a campaign of murderous violence and arson by the Myanmar security forces and Buddhist civilians that they believed was aimed at driving them out of the country. Mostly Buddhist Myanmar denies the accusations. (Click on reut.rs/2jc8rZe to view a photo essay on the Rohingya refugee crisis.) Myanmar says the rebels responsible for the Aug. 25 attacks on about 30 security posts and an army camp - the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army - are terrorists and it is they who unleashed most of the violence and arson that reduced hundreds of Rohingya villages nestled in emerald-green rice fields to ash. The Rohingya have long faced discrimination and repression in Rakhine State where bad blood with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, stemming from violence by both sides, goes back generations. Rohingya are not regarded as an indigenous ethnic minority in Myanmar - the government even refuses to recognize the term Rohingya , instead labeling them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Most have been denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity. They have long lived under apartheid-like conditions, with little access to even the limited opportunities in education and employment open to their Buddhist neighbors in one of Myanmar s poorest regions. About one million Rohingya were believed to have been living in Rakhine State before the latest violence. Bangladesh was already home to 400,000 of them who had fled earlier repression. The new arrivals, many landing by boat after being ferried across a border river, crammed into the existing refugee camps in the Cox s Bazar district, many camping out in the rain - lucky ones able to string up a piece of plastic - beside muddy tracks. Bangladesh, one of the world s poorest and most crowded countries, initially said the Rohingya were not welcome and ordered border guards to push them back. But it quickly changed its stand in the face of the scale of the exodus and began gearing up, with the help of U.N. and other aid agencies, to cope with the fastest-developing refugee crisis the world had seen in years. The crisis has raised grave doubts about Myanmar s transition from military-ruled pariah to budding democracy, and about the commitment to human rights of the democracy leader who struggled to end nearly 50 years of harsh military rule - Aung San Suu Kyi. The generals remain in full charge of security under a constitution they drafted, even though Suu Kyi runs the government. Analysts say Suu Kyi has to avoid angering the army and alienating supporters by being seen to take the side of a Muslim minority that enjoys little sympathy in a country that has seen a surge of Buddhist nationalism. Nevertheless, the failure of the Nobel peace laureate to speak out forcefully in defense of the Rohingya would seem to have irreparably damaged her reputation overseas. The international community is demanding that the Rohingya be allowed to go home in safety, and Bangladesh and Myanmar have begun talks on repatriation, but huge doubts remain about the Rohingya ever being able to return in peace to rebuild their homes and till their fields. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico journalist shot dead at Christmas celebration at son's school;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A journalist was shot dead on Tuesday in the Mexican state of Veracruz as he attended a Christmas celebration at his son s school, the latest murder in the country s deadliest year on record for media workers. Gumaro Perez, 35, who regularly wrote about security and drug trafficking, was shot at four times and killed in the Acayucan municipality, becoming the third journalist killed in the state, and Mexico s twelfth, this year. Perez worked for Golfo Sur and Voz del Sur, among other media organizations. We re in shock, waiting for them to hand over the body and see what we re going to do together with his family, said journalists group Asociacion de Periodistas Independientes de Acayucan, to which Perez belonged. A lone gunman entered Perez s 6-year-old son s classroom, where the Christmas celebration was being held, and fired at Perez, the group said, citing witnesses. Roberta Jacobson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, condemned Perez s death in a post on Twitter, writing that she was outraged by the death of another brave journalist in Mexico. You don t kill the truth by killing journalists, she added. At least 65 media workers were killed worldwide doing their jobs this year, including 50 professional journalists the organization Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday, adding that Mexico is one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist. [ Since 2000, at least 111 media workers have been killed in Mexico, with 38 deaths since Enrique Pena Nieto became president in December 2012, advocacy group Article 19 says. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;What's in the final Republican tax bill;(Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval on Wednesday to a sweeping, debt-financed tax bill in a midday vote. It now will go to President Donald Trump to sign into law, although the timing of that was unclear. The Senate approved the bill early on Wednesday. Here are the key parts of the bill, representing the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in more than 30 years. CORPORATE TAX RATE: Cuts corporate income tax rate permanently to 21 percent from 35 percent, as of Jan. 1, 2018. PASS-THROUGHS: Creates a 20 percent deduction for the first $315,000 of qualified business income for joint filers of pass-through businesses such as partnerships and sole proprietorships. For income above that threshold, the legislation phases in limits, producing an effective marginal tax rate of no more than 29.6 percent. CORPORATE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Repeals the 20 percent corporate alternative minimum tax, set up to ensure profitable corporations pay at least some tax. TERRITORIAL SYSTEM: Exempts U.S. corporations from U.S. taxes on most future foreign profits, ending the present worldwide system of taxing profits of all U.S.-based corporations, no matter where they are earned. This would align the U.S. tax code with most other industrialized nations, undercut many offshore tax-dodging strategies and deliver to multinationals a goal they have pursued for years. REPATRIATION: Sets a one-time mandatory tax of 8 percent on illiquid assets and 15.5 percent on cash and cash equivalents for about $2.6 trillion in U.S. business profits now held overseas. This foreign cash pile was created by a rule making foreign profits tax-deferred if they are not brought into the United States, or repatriated. That rule would be rendered obsolete by the territorial system. ANTI-BASE EROSION MEASURES: Prevents companies from shifting profits out of the United States to lower-tax jurisdictions abroad. Sets an alternative minimum tax on payments between U.S. corporations and foreign affiliates, and limits on shifting corporate income through transfers of intangible property, including patents. In combination, these measures with the repatriation and territorial system provisions, represent a dramatic overhaul of the U.S. tax system for multinationals. CAPITAL EXPENSING: Allows businesses to immediately write off, or expense, the full value of investments in new plant and equipment for five years, then gradually eliminates this 100 percent expensing over five years beginning in year six. Also makes changes to permit for more expensing by small businesses. INTEREST DEDUCTION LIMIT: Caps business deductions for debt interest payments at 30 percent of taxable income, regardless of deductions for depreciation, amortization or depletion. CLEAN ENERGY: Preserves tax credits for producing electricity from wind, biomass, geothermal, solar, municipal waste and hydropower. CARRIED INTEREST: Leaves in place “carried interest” loophole for private equity fund managers and some hedge fund managers, despite pledges by Republicans including President Donald Trump to close it. These financiers can now claim a lower capital gains tax rate on much of their income from investments held more than a year. A new rule would extend that holding period to three years, putting the loophole out of reach for some fund managers but preserving its availability for many. BRACKETS: Maintains current seven tax brackets, but temporarily changes most income levels and rates for each one. For married couples filing jointly, effective Jan. 1, 2018 and ending in 2026, income tax would be: 10 percent up to $19,050, versus 10 percent up to $18,650 under existing law;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax cuts won't make housing more affordable: analysts;(Reuters) - The U.S. tax overhaul as currently proposed will make housing less affordable, according to nearly half of the property market experts polled by Reuters, with another third saying it would not do anything to improve it. A decade on from the start of the crash that knocked more than a third off U.S. home values and led to a deep global recession, the housing market has bounced back smartly. U.S. house prices are expected to rise next year and in 2019, faster than predicted just a few months ago and at more than double the rate of underlying consumer inflation and wages. That is in sharp contrast to the outlook for Britain. [GB/HOMES] The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of U.S. home prices in 20 metropolitan areas is expected to gain 5.1 percent next year and 4.2 percent in 2019. The main challenge currently is a chronic shortage of homes, which is pushing prices beyond the reach of new buyers, who tend to be young and not particularly well-paid and, if university-educated, already saddled with huge amounts of debt. Now adding to those concerns is an effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to overhaul the tax code, which analysts say could undermine any potential improvements in affordability in the housing market. The Republican tax proposal allows interest payment deductions on mortgage debt up to $750,000, down from the current $1 million. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the tax bill on Tuesday afternoon, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his chamber would vote on Tuesday evening. Twelve of 26 analysts who answered an extra question said the tax bill in its current form will probably make housing more expensive. Eight respondents said it would do nothing and only six expected it would improve affordability. “Losing the tax deduction of mortgage payments and property taxes - of having deductibility limited - makes housing less attractive and less affordable,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics. But he added: “The Trump/Congress plan is such a not-well-thought-out-mess it’s hard to tell how it will impact people in a systematic way.” Asked to rate affordability on a scale of 1 being the cheapest and 10 the most expensive, the median answer was 6. While the latest consensus on U.S. housing affordability has not changed in more than a year of polling, the range of forecasts has narrowed. “We think there’s a possibility that if the tax bill is successful in generating economic growth, housing affordability could take a turn for the worse,” noted Ralph McLaughlin, economist at Trulia in San Francisco. “This is because the housing market has a supply, not a demand problem, so any policies that generate growth without boosting supply could make homes even more expensive than they already are.” Another challenge has been lingering for years. While the unemployment rate has plunged to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, annual wage growth has not broken above 2.9 percent since the Great Recession that ended about eight years ago. “Home prices have been appreciating circa 5-6 percent well above wage growth at 2-2.5 percent, decreasing affordability for the average buyer, particularly first-time homebuyers strapped with student loan debt and facing still modest labor market opportunities,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist at Stifel in Chicago. She also pointed out that eliminating mortgage interest rate deductions will make housing less affordable. The latest housing market data indicates that turnover is still far from the overheating boom rates from before the financial crisis. Existing home sales rose to a seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of 5.48 million units in October, but well below the peak above 7 million units in 2005. Property analysts now forecast annualized existing home sales in each quarter next year to average 5.5-5.6 million, less than the 5.70-million-unit pace hit in March, which was the highest since February 2007. Those latest projections were also weaker than expected in a Reuters poll in August. But data on Monday showed U.S. single-family homebuilding and permits rose in November to a level not seen since August 2007 and confidence among homebuilders soaring to near an 18-1/2-year high in December, in a hopeful sign for a housing market that has been struggling with supply constraints. The U.S. Federal Reserve expects to raise interest rates three times next year. While lifting short-term rates won’t necessarily push up longer-term market rates, the path of least resistance is higher. Still, the latest Reuters consensus for mortgage rates was lower than what was forecast in the previous survey in August. The 30-year mortgage rate is expected to average 4.24 percent next year, rising to 4.65 percent in 2019 and 5.00 percent in 2020. Analysts were evenly split in the poll on whether a faster pace of rate hikes from the Fed would significantly slow activity. “If there are more than three hikes, it is likely that the Fed would be responding to stronger economic growth pushing inflation up – and that stronger growth would offset the rise in rates,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, Ohio. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Banks, healthcare service firms among winners from U.S. tax bill;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sweeping U.S. tax legislation appears to be on the verge of approval, lifting the prospects in particular for banks, telecoms, transports and other industries that stand to gain the most from lower corporate tax rates. The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives hit a last-minute snag on Tuesday in their drive to approve the legislation favored by President Donald Trump. The plan on Capitol Hill was for the Senate to delete three offending provisions in the House version and vote on the bill, then send it back to the House for a vote on Wednesday. The bill slashes the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. That would boost overall earnings for S&P 500 companies by 9.1 percent, according to UBS equity strategists. For an interactive graphic on how the bill ripples through industries: tmsnrt.rs/2kf26gx Momentum behind the tax bill over the past month has helped propel the stock market, which had already rallied sharply this year, to fresh record highs. The S&P 500 has climbed about 5 percent since mid-November when the House of Representatives passed its tax overhaul bill. But the bill, which also includes a one-time tax on profits held overseas and industry-specific measures, would benefit some stocks, industries and sectors more than others. The industries that stand to benefit most from the lower rates are telecoms, transportation, retail and banks, analysts said. But for some groups, such as tech and healthcare, the impact is more mixed. Domestically geared healthcare companies that focus on services are poised to benefit from the lower tax rate. Hospital operator Universal Health Services Inc, lab-testing company Quest Diagnostics Inc and drug wholesaler Cardinal Health Inc are among the service companies set to benefit the most, according to Mizuho Securities. “We believe tax reform should be a significant positive cash flow event, especially for healthcare services companies that tend to have limited international exposure and significant capital expenditures,” Mizuho analysts said in a research note. While many large drugmakers already report adjusted tax rates in the low 20 percent range, a number of companies would benefit from the ability to bring back overseas cash, JPMorgan analyst Chris Schott said in a recent note. According to Schott, Pfizer Inc, with $160 billion in offshore earnings, and Merck & Co Inc, with $70 billion, are particularly poised to gain from repatriating overseas funds. Banks are expected to be among the biggest winners from a lower tax rate. The S&P 500 banks index has soared 9 percent since mid-November as the tax bill began moving swiftly through Congress. Of the major S&P sectors, financials pay the highest effective tax rate at 27.5 percent, according to a Wells Fargo analysis of historical tax rates. Large U.S. banks will see an average 13 percent increase to earnings per share from the lower rate, according to Goldman Sachs analysts, with Wells Fargo & Co and PNC Financial Services Group having the biggest gains. Citizens Financial Group, Regions Financial Corp and M&T Bank Corp would see sizable earnings benefits and are also poised to be relative winners among large bank stocks, UBS analyst Saul Martinez said in a recent note. Banks could benefit indirectly if the tax bill provides an economic boost that spurs increased lending and higher interest rates. The technology sector, which had led the market’s rally for most of 2017, has underperformed the S&P 500 as the tax bill moved forward in Congress. Tech is expected to benefit less than most other sectors from a drop in the corporate rate, with an earnings boost of 5.3 percent, according to UBS. Semiconductors, whose shares have had a particularly rough ride in the past month, are expected to see earnings drop by 3.3 percent due to the overall bill, according to UBS. “Many chip companies have extensive international operations and relatively low blended tax rates,” Wells Fargo analysts said in a recent note. “We see the possibility of changes in the U.S. tax rules as a potential risk for such companies.” One area where large tech companies could benefit is by spending cash held overseas for uses such as stock buybacks that boost earnings per share. UBS points to Cisco Systems Inc and Qualcomm Inc as companies that could see among the biggest buyback boosts. “The tech sector would certainly be among the largest beneficiaries if cash stashed overseas can be repatriated at a low rate and presumably used for stock buybacks or dividends,” according to a recent note from Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. decries Israel's killing of Gaza amputee, Israel denies he was targeted;GENEVA (Reuters) - A senior U.N. official said on Tuesday that Israel s killing of a disabled Palestinian man protesting against U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital was incomprehensible , but Israel said he had not been targeted. A statement issued by Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said wheelchair-bound Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh was shot in the head by Israeli security forces close to the border fence with Israel on Friday. But the Israeli military said its own investigation had found that it was not possible to say what had killed Abu Thurayeh and that no live fire had been directed at him during the dispersal of the violent demonstration. No live fire was aimed at Abu Thurayeh. It is impossible to determine whether Abu Thurayeh was injured as a result of riot dispersal means, or what caused his death, part of the military statement said. It added that protesters hurled explosive devices and rocks and rolled burning tyres with the aim of harming soldiers and destroying security infrastructure and that non-lethal riot dispersal means were mainly used, although a few live rounds fired under supervision were aimed towards main instigators. Zeid said there was nothing to suggest Abu Thurayeh was posing an imminent threat when he was killed and the facts gathered so far by my staff in Gaza strongly suggest that the force used against (him) was excessive. Given his severe disability, which must have been clearly visible to those who shot him, his killing is incomprehensible a truly shocking and wanton act, Zeid s statement said. The Israeli military statement said numerous requests for information on Abu Thurayeh s wounds had not been answered and that if additional details are received, they will be examined and studied. Gaza medical officials said on Friday that Israeli troops had shot dead four people, including Abu Thurayeh, and that 150 others were wounded by live fire during the protests. Most of the casualties were on the Gaza Strip border. In the West Bank, the Israeli military said about 2,500 Palestinians took part in riots against soldiers and border police officers. Abu Thurayeh, 29, was a regular at such demonstrations. In media interviews, he had said he had lost both his legs in a 2008 Israeli missile strike in Gaza. Zeid s statement said the Israeli response had resulted in five people being killed, including three deaths in Gaza, as well as more than 220 injured by live ammunition. International law strictly regulates the use of force in the context of protests and demonstrations, and the lethal use of firearms should only be employed as the last resort when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life, Zeid said. Trump s announcement on Jerusalem infuriated the Arab world and upset Western allies. The status of the city has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians for generations. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future independent state of their own. These events ... can sadly be traced directly back to the unilateral U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem, which breaks international consensus and was dangerously provocative, Zeid said, calling for an independent investigation into the casualties. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress faces tricky path to avoid government shutdown;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is struggling through another contentious week as infighting over defense spending, healthcare and other matters complicates the drive to pass a temporary spending bill by midnight on Friday to avert a partial government shutdown. In a week when President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in Congress are hoping to celebrate the passage of tax overhaul legislation, many in the party showed little appetite for a government shutdown at week’s end. But they sounded resigned to having to navigate through some drama over a package that includes so many disparate components, which could make for a messy process. “I’m going to vote for whatever I need to, to keep the government open,” Republican Representative Chris Collins told reporters. The last time government agencies had to shut down because Washington could not pay its bills was in October 2013. Leading Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives expressed optimism that a funding bill, coupled with a large new disaster aid package, would pass by Friday’s deadline. But some were predicting that lawmakers would bump right up against the cutoff. The House could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation that extends most funding for domestic programs through Jan. 19. Democrats are likely to mainly oppose the bill, arguing that their priorities are being ignored. Conservative Republicans are insisting on higher military funding through the rest of the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30 as part of the House bill. Democrats in the Senate are expected to block that formula if, as expected, it does not also have more money for non-defense programs. The House measure would also include $81 billion in disaster funding to help Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and several U.S. states recover from hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. That price tag has made some Republicans uneasy. Some Republicans are also worried about a Senate strategy to add a bipartisan healthcare proposal to the government funding bill, in keeping with a promise Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made in order to coax Republican Senator Susan Collins to vote for the tax legislation. Conservative House Republicans do not like the bipartisan healthcare proposal because it would fund subsidies for low-income participants in the Obamacare health insurance program, and does not include language that restricts federal funds for abortion. McConnell’s promise to Collins “means squat over here,” said Representative Mark Walker, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest group of conservatives in the House. Some conservatives may vote against the funding bill in protest, he told reporters outside the House. The House bill also would extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program for five years. If Democrats continue to withhold their support for the stopgap spending bill and some Republicans peel off, Congress could find itself struggling to pass a bill as the clock ticks toward midnight on Friday. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate parliamentarian rules against tax bill provisions: Sanders;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate parliamentarian has ruled against three provision of the Republican tax bill, forcing the House of Representatives to hold a second vote on the legislation, Senator Bernie Sanders said on Tuesday. Sanders, an independent on the Senate Budget Committee, said the ruling could mean that provisions related to educational savings accounts for home schooling and private university endowments could be struck from the measure unless 60 members of the Senate vote to uphold them. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate panel snubs Trump's pick to run EXIM, OKs other nominees;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Banking Committee rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Export-Import Bank on Tuesday but approved four other board nominees, enough to restore the trade bank’s full lending powers upon their confirmation by the full Senate. The committee voted 13-10 against Scott Garrett as EXIM president in a rebuke to conservatives who saw the former New Jersey Republican congressman as an ally who would keep tight controls on the government export lender. Garrett helped lead a 2015 effort to shut down EXIM to end a source of “corporate welfare” for giant manufacturers such as Boeing Co and General Electric. After his nomination he pledged to keep the bank “fully open” but struggled to persuade senators that he now believed in the bank’s core mission of providing taxpayer-backed loans and guarantees for U.S. export transactions. “I believe he’s a principled man who simply believes in the abolishment of the bank,” said Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who voted against Garrett along with South Carolina Republican Tim Scott and all Democrats on the panel. The White House’s director of legislative affairs, Marc Short, commented, “We are disappointed that the Senate Banking Committee missed this opportunity to get the Export Import Bank fully functioning again. We will continue to work with the committee on a path forward.” The committee, however, approved Trump’s nominations for EXIM’s first vice president, Kimberly Reed, and three other board members: former Louisiana congressman Spencer Bachus, Claudia Slacik and Judith DelZoppo Pryor. It also approved Mark Greenblatt as the agency’s inspector general. Confirmation of at least three board members will allow EXIM to resume approval of loans and guarantees above $10 million, returning the United States to export financing for major projects such as commercial aircraft, power turbines and petrochemical plants for the first time since June 2015. GE in a statement urged quick confirmation of the remaining EXIM nominees and hailed the committee vote as “a milestone for manufacturers across the U.S. whose customers require a fully-functioning EXIM Bank.” EXIM has a $42 billion backlog of deals in its pipeline awaiting approval, representing about 250,000 U.S. jobs based on Bureau of Labor Statistics multiplier data, said Scott Schloegel, an Obama administration appointee who still serves as the bank’s top officer. Schloegel said with EXIM’s extended absence from large-scale export finance, many U.S. exporters have been unable to compete with China for some major projects in the power and technology sectors. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House will likely need to vote again on tax bill: Republican leader;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday the House would likely need to vote again on tax legislation on Wednesday morning given that Democrats in the Senate were likely to prevail on a procedural objection. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy advised House lawmakers that Senate Democrats were likely to object that the legislation fails to comply with the so-called Byrd rule and were likely to be upheld, necessitating a second House vote. “As such, members are further advised that an additional procedural vote on the Motion to Concur is expected tomorrow morning, which will clear the bill for President Trump’s signature,” McCarthy said in a notice to House lawmakers. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Instant View: House approves biggest tax overhaul in 30 years, Senate next;"(Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives approved sweeping, debt-financed tax legislation on Tuesday, sending the bill to the Senate, where lawmakers were due to take up the package later in the evening. Story: The biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax system in more than 30 years could be signed into law by President Donald Trump as soon as Wednesday, if both chambers of Congress approve it. The bill passed the House by a vote of 227-203, overcoming united opposition from Democrats and 12 Republicans who voted against it. “The bond market today is reassessing the whole thing now that it looks like it’s going to pass. We’ve had a pretty significant rise in yields - we’re back up close to the highs for the quarter. “Stocks on the other hand have been in front of this for a long time, I think initially because lower taxes means more earnings are retained and then companies can distribute those to shareholders or not. But either way, it’s likely to be beneficial to stock prices.” JACK ABLIN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, BMO PRIVATE BANK, CHICAGO “The tax rate we’ve certainly priced in (in stocks), though I certainly expected smallcaps to do a little bit better coming into this vote. What I think is not priced in yet is the economic impact of the incentives. It still remains to be seen what businesses will actually do. Will they buy equipment, invest in technology, hire more workers?” “The assumption right now is financial engineering, buybacks, dividend increases, is where the incentives will go. Redeploying cash, recapitalizing balance sheets, maybe debt repayment.” “I do think there’s a fair amount of skepticism these benefits will ultimately result in expansions. I’m getting a sense investors are pricing in the one-time tax pop, we’ll see if there’s any follow through next year.” On the rise in Treasury yields: “It’s been a monetary policy-led expansion, now we get a fiscal boost and some may be concerned (that) the boost on the fiscal side (may) be offset by monetary tightening. “The big question (for the dollar) is how other central banks will respond to this (U.S.) fiscal stimulus package. That’s probably what’s weighing on investors’ minds right now - celebrating the tax package but recognizing that what central banks have given us in the last years they could begin to take away.” JIM PAULSEN, CHIEF INVESTMENT STRATEGIST, THE LEUTHOLD GROUP, MINNEAPOLIS “As we look back on this a little bit, I really think it might be buy the rumor sell the news. Wall Street has had long enough to vet this thing. And it has been known for a long time that something was going to pass here, at least for the last 30, 45 days. Whether it was going to be 21 percent rate or 20 percent rate is not that significant. It’s more the general parts of it were pretty much known and vetted and I think implemented into the market... If you look at the relative performance in the market today, it’s fairly clearly more of a shot towards better economic growth or even inflation... I think the biggest move today of anything is bond yields. That’s the big story.” AARON KOHLI, INTEREST RATE STRATEGIST, BMO CAPITAL MARKETS, NEW YORK “They seem to have locked up all the necessary votes... I think the markets are still trying to figure out how much should we expect, will people react right away, what will be the second order effects? “There are a lot of questions that still haven’t answered. The first one is, assuming it goes into effect Jan. 1, when is the first time people start seeing any changes in their pay checks? And the answer is it could be a couple of months. Even then for most of middle America you aren’t going to see the savings until tax time, which means you may not see it until April 2019. I’m not sure that’s early enough to help midterms and I think that’s really where the markets’ are going to start to focus next. How do we handicap what it does for Republicans in the midterms? Does it help them? Does it do nothing for them? Or it may even hurt them.” BRIAN PEERY, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, HENNESSY FUNDS IN NOVATO, CALIFORNIA “The market is taking kind of a breather, digesting the news. The market is off a little bit, maybe because the bill is not as popular as the GOP hoped it would be in the public opinion. The overall market looks still really strong and healthy.” “Looking at companies in our portfolio, (the tax bill) will be great for domestic small- and mid-cap companies paying a 30, 35 percent effective tax rate. A lot of them do not have the ability to move profits offshore... I’ll wait and see how much, but I can see another 5 percent rise (in the market) in the next few months as the tax bill kicks in.” ALICIA LEVINE, DIRECTOR OF PORTFOLIO STRATEGY AT BNY MELLON INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, NEW YORK: “The effects of the tax cuts will be immediately accretive to corporate earnings which will support equity markets. Also, the tax package will be positive for growth in the real economy. “The tax cuts add $10 to baseline S&P earnings for 2018 putting 2018 expected earnings at $156 or a 19 percent growth rate over 2017 earnings... This is supportive of equity markets";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate begins debate on final Republican tax bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to begin debate on sweeping tax legislation, setting the stage for lawmakers to hold their final vote on the tax cut package later in the evening. The Senate voted 51-48 to debate the legislation about an hour after the House of Representatives approved what is widely expected to become the first overhaul of the U.S. tax code in more than 30 years. The debate period is due to last 10 hours officially but could be shortened to as little as five hours by parliamentary procedure. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After one week, Myanmar silent on whereabouts of detained Reuters journalists;YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters journalists completed a week in detention in Myanmar on Tuesday, with no word on where they were being held as authorities proceeded with an investigation into whether they violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. Journalists Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested last Tuesday evening after they were invited to dine with police officers on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon. We and their families continue to be denied access to them or to the most basic information about their well-being and whereabouts, Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler said in a statement calling for their immediate release. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing. The news group Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) on Tuesday cited government spokesman Zaw Htay as saying that the journalists were being treated well and in good health . It gave no further details in its online report. Reuters was unable to reach Zaw Htay for comment. Myanmar s civilian president, Htin Kyaw, a close ally of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has authorized the police to proceed with a case against the reporters, Zaw Htay said on Sunday. Approval from the president s office is needed before court proceedings can begin in cases brought under the Official Secrets Act, which has a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown on militants in the western state of Rakhine. A number of governments, including the United States, Canada and Britain, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as well as a host of journalists and human rights groups, have criticized the arrests as an attack on press freedom and called on Myanmar to release the two men. The U.S. State Department on Tuesday called for their immediate release. We ve been ... following the cases of the two reporters, the Reuters reporters, very closely. We re deeply concerned about their detention. We do not know their whereabouts. That is of concern also, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a news briefing. Today I want to make it clear that we re calling for their immediate release. On Monday, the spokeswoman for the European Union s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini, described the arrests as a cause of real concern . Freedom of the press and media is the foundation and a cornerstone of any democracy, the spokeswoman said. Myanmar has seen rapid growth in independent media since censorship imposed under the former junta was lifted in 2012. Rights groups were hopeful there would be further gains in press freedoms after Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi came to power last year amid a transition from full military rule that had propelled her from political prisoner to elected leader. However, advocacy groups say freedom of speech has been eroded since she took office, with many arrests of journalists, restrictions on reporting in Rakhine state and heavy use of state-run media to control the narrative. About 20 local reporters belonging to the Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists (PCMJ) posted pictures on Tuesday of themselves wearing black shirts as a sign of protest. They said their act was meant to signify the dark age of media freedom . By wearing black shirts, all journalists should show unity, said Tha Lun Zaung Htet, a producer and presenter at DVB Debate TV and a leading member of the PCMJ. We must fight for press freedom with unity. But most journalists in Yangon did not take part in the campaign. Mya Hnin Aye, senior executive editor at the Voice Weekly, said few participated because the arrested journalists work for foreign media, much of whose reporting on the Rakhine issue is biased . Myo Nyunt, deputy director for Myanmar s Ministry of Information, told Reuters the case against Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had nothing to do with press freedom, and said journalists have freedom to write and speak . The Ministry of Information said last week that the two journalists had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media , and released a photo of them in handcuffs. The authorities have not allowed the journalists any contact with their families, a lawyer or Reuters since their arrest. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) called on the authorities to immediately disclose the whereabouts of the pair. All detainees must be allowed prompt access to a lawyer and to family members, Frederick Rawski, the ICJ s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said in a statement on Monday. Authorities are bound to respect these rights in line with Myanmar law and the State s international law obligations. On Sunday, spokesman Zaw Htay said the journalists legal rights were being respected. Your reporters are protected by the rule of the law. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bill could make Congress members liable for harassment payouts;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers of both parties are working on legislation that would make members of Congress liable for settlements of sexual harassment claims against them, as new data shows public funds have been used to settle nearly a dozen cases of misconduct over the last decade. From 2008 through 2012, the employment office for Congress paid more than $166,000 in public money to settle eight claims against lawmakers alleging sexual harassment or discrimination, according to data it provided on Tuesday to Representative Gregg Harper, the Republican chairman of the House Administration Committee who is drafting a bill to overhaul how Congress handles sexual harassment. The Office of Compliance previously said it has resolved three other cases since 2013. Provisions in settlement agreements and other legal limits block the office from disclosing details of the payouts it has made on behalf of lawmakers, including identities of those involved, an issue that has come to light as allegations of misconduct swirl around Capitol Hill. A growing wave of women reporting abuse or misconduct has brought down powerful men recently, from movie producer Harvey Weinstein to popular television personality Matt Lauer, as well as one of the longest-serving Democrats in Congress, former Representative John Conyers. Harper said on Tuesday he hopes to file a bipartisan bill by Wednesday evening overhauling how Congress handles sexual harassment that would include making lawmakers personally liable for settlements. “They should have to reimburse” the government for payouts, he told reporters. “There’s no doubt that members have made it clear that taxpayer dollars should not be used for the purposes of settling a sexual harassment claim.” Harper expects swift action, with the House voting on the bill next month. Democratic Representative Jackie Speier, who has proposed similar legislation and has been working with Harper and other Republicans, said she was “thrilled” about the bill. Bipartisan legislation on sexual harassment was introduced in the Senate last week. In a letter to Harper the compliance office’s executive director said it had paid $354,465.85 to settle 16 total claims of employment discrimination, retaliation and harassment from fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2012. According to the letter, eight claims included sexual harassment or discrimination, and often involved other violations such as breaking federal wage rules. Two claims were simply categorized as “retaliation” while the rest were focused on racial, age or disability discrimination. The largest amount paid over those years was $85,000, labeled as “sexual harassment and harassment because of retaliation.” The office does not have investigatory authority and cannot probe allegations, said Executive Director Susan Tsui Grundmann in the letter. Settlements typically have nondisclosure provisions, she said, adding the office has not found an admission of liability in any of the settlement documents. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Democratic leaders urging 'no' vote on spending bill: CNN reporter;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said on Tuesday that House Democratic leaders are asking their rank-and-file members to vote against a stopgap government funding bill, according to a CNN reporter on Twitter. A House Republican aide said earlier on Tuesday that the spending bill would fund the government until Jan. 19, and include funding for disaster aid and a five-year extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pence to preside over Senate tax bill vote, his office confirms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the Senate’s vote on sweeping tax legislation, his office confirmed on Tuesday. “The @VP will preside over the historic vote,” Alyssa Farah, a spokeswoman for Pence, said on Twitter. Republicans may need Pence’s vote in favor of the legislation to break a tie. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate to vote on final tax bill Tuesday evening: McConnell;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate will vote on final tax legislation on Tuesday evening, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said, potentially allowing President Donald Trump to sign the bill into law as early as Wednesday. “Congress is standing at the doorstep of a historic opportunity,” McConnell said on the floor of the Senate as he announced the vote’s timing. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the same legislation at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT). If both chambers of Congress pass the bill, Trump will be able to meet his goal of signing it into law before Christmas. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Court orders Trump administration to give immigrant teens abortion access;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Monday that President Donald Trump’s administration must allow access to abortion for two pregnant teenagers who are in the country illegally, escalating a high-profile legal fight. Judge Tanya Chutkan put her order on hold, however, to give the U.S. Justice Department time to appeal her ruling. The Justice Department filed its notice of appeal shortly afterward to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The judge’s temporary restraining order marked the latest chapter in a legal dispute with the Trump administration over whether minors who are illegal immigrants have the right to seek an abortion during their detention. The issue was ignited by a 17-year-old who petitioned the court in October to have an abortion, and ultimately had the procedure over the Trump administration’s objections. In that instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Oct. 24 that the teen could have an abortion immediately, rejecting the administration’s opposition. The two 17-year-olds in the latest legal action, known to the court as Jane Roe and Jane Poe, requested abortions, but the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement has refused to allow them access to the procedure. In her ruling, Chutkan wrote that the girls’ “constitutional right to decide whether to carry their pregnancies to term” needed to be preserved. She also noted they were likely to succeed on the legal merits of their case, based on the prior ruling in the higher court. “We are deeply disappointed in the decision to grant a temporary restraining order that will compel HHS to facilitate abortions for minors when they are not medically necessary,” a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. “A pregnant minor who has entered the country illegally has the option to voluntarily depart to her home country or identify a suitable sponsor. HHS-funded facilities that provide temporary shelter and care for unaccompanied alien minors should not become way stations for these children to get taxpayer-facilitated abortions.” ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House panel chair introduces $81 billion disaster aid bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee introduced a bill on Monday to provide $81 billion in emergency aid for recent hurricanes and wildfires. The legislation includes $27.6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $26.1 billion for community development block grants, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen said in a statement. President Donald Trump had requested $44 billion last month, which was widely criticized by lawmakers as being insufficient. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump nominates Liberty University professor to Justice Department post;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to nominate Liberty University School of Law professor Caren Harp to oversee the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. If ultimately confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Harp would oversee the Justice Department office that trains and works with state and local communities to develop effective juvenile justice programs and prevent delinquency. Harp previously was director of the National Juvenile Justice Prosecution Center at the American Prosecutors Research Institute. According to Harp’s LinkedIn page, she is in her sixth year as a professor at Liberty, which is located in Lynchburg, Virginia. The law school’s website says its program is “taught from a Christian worldview” and says it offers a “uniquely tailored legal program taught with sound biblical principles.” Harp, who holds a law degree from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, has also worked as both a prosecutor and a public defender, including as chief of the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in New York City, Family Court Division, and as a trial attorney for the Arkansas Public Defender Commission. In an article published in May, Harp raises questions about the role of adolescent neuroscience in the courtroom and writes that the best way to tackle juvenile justice is by teaching youth to accept responsibility and involve them in community-based diversion programs to prevent them from re-offending. “Misplaced reliance on nascent neuroscience and neuroimaging evidence to remove from youth and young adults the consequences of their criminal behavior invites pushback from those who favor a retributive system, and it may create some unintended and unwanted consequences for youth and young adults,” she writes. It is unclear when the Senate may consider Harp’s nomination. There are a handful of key nominees who have been waiting months now for their confirmation votes. Nominees to head the Criminal, Civil and National Security divisions, for instance, are still pending. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump Cabinet officials to visit Puerto Rico to assess recovery;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are set to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday to assess the U.S. territory’s rebuilding in the three months since Hurricane Maria devastated homes, businesses and the power grid. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson will travel to Puerto Rico, where about a third of the island’s 3.4 million residents are still without power, hundreds remain in shelters, and thousands have fled to the U.S. mainland. The visit comes as Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday were planning to unveil a disaster aid package totaling $81 billion, according to a senior congressional aide. Some of that aid would go to Puerto Rico, but also to states like Texas and Florida that were hit by other hurricanes and to California, which is grappling with wild fires. Even before Maria savaged Puerto Rico, the island was contending with $72 billion in debt. Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello has asked the federal government for a total of $94.4 billion in aid, including $31.1 billion for housing and $17.8 billion to rebuild its ruined power grid. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has so far approved more than $660 million in aid for individuals in Puerto Rico as well as more than $450 million in public assistance. Nielsen and Carson will receive detailed briefings on rebuilding efforts and see how federal aid is helping residents to recover, a DHS official said. Nielsen, who oversees FEMA, and Rossello are slated to hold a news conference. The visit comes as Congress prepares to vote on a tax overhaul bill that Puerto Rican officials have said they fear will hurt the commonwealth’s pharmaceutical manufacturing sector - the cornerstone of the island’s economy - at a time when Puerto Rico can least afford to lose jobs and tax revenue. Puerto Rico’s government has said 64 people died because of the hurricane, but after multiple media estimates of dramatically higher figures, Rossello on Monday ordered an official review of the death toll. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia detains Norwegian citizen over suspected spying; (Corrects a Dec. 19 story to make clear in graf 12 that Russia annexed Ukraine s Crimea, not all of Ukraine) By Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Gwladys Fouche MOSCOW/OSLO (Reuters) - Russia has detained a Norwegian citizen it suspects of spying, his Norwegian lawyer and the RIA news agency said on Tuesday, citing a Moscow court which sanctioned the individual s detention. Media reports said Russia s FSB security service had caught the Norwegian taking secret documents about the Russian Navy from a Russian citizen. The detained man is 62-year-old pensioner Frode Berg, a former guard working on the Norwegian-Russian border who was arrested on Dec. 5, his Norwegian lawyer told Reuters. His family says the accusations of espionage are inexplicable, said Berg s lawyer in Oslo, Brynjulf Risnes. He was on a private visit to meet acquaintances from his former job and the cultural work he does ... The family has known for a while that Frode Berg was arrested. They thought it was a misunderstanding and that it would be clarified soon. Berg resides in the Norwegian city of Kirkenes, a town some 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the border with Russia. He is active in a cross-border cultural organisation called Girls on the Bridge. Berg posted a picture of a snow-covered Red Square on his Facebook profile page early on Dec. 5, the day of his arrest, with the message Christmas Time in Moscow! . The maximum penalty for espionage in Russia is 20 years in prison, while the minimum sentence is 10 years, said Risnes. The family is struggling as there is very little information available from the Russian authorities, he said. He said his first priority was to get access to Berg and the second one was to ensure a Russian lawyer who could provide the best possible defence. Often espionage cases have political undertones, he said. So it is important we have a lawyer who fully defends his interests. NATO-member Norway is part of the coalition of countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia following its 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea. It has been concerned about Russia s ability and willingness to use military means to achieve political goals. Norwegian authorities said they had been able to visit their national in detention. The Norwegian consular service has visited the citizen that has been arrested in Moscow and is now in detention, said Frode Overland Andersen, a press spokesman for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He added the Norwegian national had legal representation and that the arrest had taken place on Dec. 5. The spokesman declined to comment on the charges. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia intercepts Houthi missile fired toward Riyadh;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Latest Houthi missile 'bears hallmarks' of Iran arms attacks: U.S.;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said a missile fired by Yemen s Houthi group toward Saudi Arabia on Tuesday bears all the hallmarks of previous attacks using Iranian-provided weapons as she pushed the U.N. Security Council to act. Saudi air defenses shot down the ballistic missile and there were no reports of casualties or damage. In contrast, a U.N. human rights spokesman said coalition air strikes had killed at least 136 noncombatants in war-torn Yemen since Dec. 6. Saudi-led forces, backing Yemen s government, have fought the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen s more than two-year-long war. Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons, saying the U.S. and Saudi allegations are baseless and unfounded. We must all act cooperatively to expose the crimes of the Tehran regime and do whatever is needed to make sure they get the message. If we do not, then Iran will bring the world deeper into a broadening regional conflict, Haley told the council. Haley said she was exploring, with some council colleagues, several options for pressuring Iran to adjust their behavior. However, Haley is likely to struggle to convince some members, like veto powers Russia and China, that U.N. action is needed. Russia s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told council on Tuesday: We need to abandon the language of threats and sanctions and to start using the instruments of dialogue and concentrate on broadening cooperation and mutual trust. Most sanctions on Iran were lifted at the start of 2016 under the nuclear deal brokered by world powers and enshrined in a U.N. Security Council resolution. The resolution still subjects Tehran to a U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions that are technically not part of the nuclear deal. Haley said the Security Council could strengthen the provisions in that resolution or adopt a new resolution banning Iran from all activities related to ballistic missiles. Under the current resolution, Iran is called upon to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years. Some states argue that the language of the resolution does not make it obligatory. We could explore sanctions on Iran in response to its clear violations of the Yemen arms embargo, Haley said. We could hold the IRGC (Iran s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) accountable for its violations of numerous Security Council resolutions. A separate U.N. resolution on Yemen bans the supply of weapons to Houthi leaders and those acting on their behalf or at their direction. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uganda parliament debate on presidential age cap halted as scuffles break out;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda s parliament abruptly adjourned a debate on Tuesday over extending President Yoweri Museveni s decades in power after a lawmaker said soldiers had entered the building and members of parliament scuffled with police. There were so many (soldiers), I saw them. They were in the chaplaincy, legislator Gaffa Mbwatekamwa, among several in Museveni s ruling party who oppose extending his rule, told a local television station. Scuffles broke out between lawmakers and police shortly after speaker Rebecca Kadaga adjourned the debate, just moments starting it early on Tuesday. It was unclear what triggered the confrontation. Television footage showed chaotic scenes of lawmakers and police both trying to address the cameras. The incident followed a similar disruption to a debate on the issue in September. The army did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Police spokesman Emilian Kayima said they had no immediate comment but would issue a statement later. Lawmakers were debating a draft bill that would remove a constitutional age cap that bars Museveni from standing again. The constitution limits the age of a presidential candidate to 75, making 73-year-old Museveni ineligible to stand at the next election in 2021. Museveni has ruled for 31 years but public anger is mounting over corruption, rights violations and poor social services. The opposition, church leaders, and even some members of the ruling party oppose the amendment. Police have put down protests against it using teargas, beatings, detentions and live bullets. At least two people have been killed. A previous attempt to debate the bill in September ended with lawmakers trading punches and throwing chairs and the forcible intervention of security forces. Several legislators were hospitalized with injuries. Mbwatekamwa said he recognized some members of the military in parliament from the fracas in September. Some are in civilian clothes, some of the soldiers are the ones who manhandled us the other time, he said. Proceedings resumed about two hours after they were suspended and stretched on for about seven hours before Kadaga adjourned them again to Wednesday, when a final vote on the bill is expected. The latest attempt to debate the law started on Monday with the presentation of a report by a House committee. The speaker suspended six legislators opposed to the measure on Monday for disorderly conduct. Both police and military have been deployed around parliament this week. Lawmakers say the heavy security is designed to intimidate them, but police say it is to prevent protests. The military usually does not comment on political matters. Several African leaders have amended laws designed to limit their tenure. Such moves have fueled violence in countries including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrat wins by one vote in Virginia legislative election recount; (Corrects spelling of Virginia House of Delegates member David Yancey throughout in this Dec. 19 story.) By Sharon Bernstein (Reuters) - Virginia Democrat Shelly Simonds won a seat in the House of Delegates by one vote, changing the power balance in the state legislature and extending a tide of Democratic victories beginning with November’s capture of the governorship and several legislative seats. Simonds beat incumbent David Yancey in a recount held Tuesday, both parties said in statements released after the unofficial vote recount was completed by officials in Newport News. “Never, ever forget how very much your vote counts,” House of Delegates member David Toscano said on Twitter, one of many Democrats rejoicing that a single vote handed them the seat. “I want to thank the voters who came out on Nov. 7,” Simonds said in a news release. “It wouldn’t have happened without their participation.” Republican leaders in the House of Delegates welcomed Simonds and thanked Yancey for his service, but the chairman of the state party vowed to fight on. “Today, our opponents carried the day,” Republican Party of Virginia Chairman John Whitbeck said in a statement emailed to Reuters. “Tomorrow, we begin again.” Simonds’ election, which still must be affirmed by a panel of three judges, means that the 100-member House of Delegates will have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. That could lead to more moderate policies by forcing the parties to share power. Before the Nov. 7 general election, Republicans held 66 seats to Democrats’ 34, along with a majority in the state senate, according to the election information website Ballotpedia. The GOP still holds a slim margin in the senate. Also on Nov. 7, the state elected Democrat Ralph Northam in a bitter race for governor, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump with a decisive victory over a Republican who had adopted some of the president’s combative tactics and issues. Democrats also picked up a hotly contested Senate seat in Alabama this month, after Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election to replace former Senator Jeff Sessions, now President Trump’s Attorney General. Democratic Party activists hope their candidates can ride to victories in the 2018 Congressional elections on a wave of voter disenchantment with Trump and his Republicans. Four legislative races, including the Simonds-Yancey battle in the 94th District, were slated for recounts. Going into the 94th District recount, Yancey was ahead by just 10 votes. On Tuesday, that changed, and Simonds clinched with a margin of one. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 12 dead in bus crash on excursion to Mexican ruins;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Twelve people died and 18 were injured on Tuesday in Mexico s state of Quintana Roo when a tour bus lost control and rolled over during an excursion to ancient ruins. The bus was carrying 31 passengers, including citizens of the United States, Brazil and Sweden, authorities said. A child was among the dead. Quintana Roo is one of three states on Mexico s Yucatan Peninsula, which has popular tourist sites. Twenty-seven of the passengers had been traveling on Royal Caribbean cruise ships, spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said. Our hearts go out to all those involved in the bus accident, Martinez said in a statement. We are doing all we can to care for our guests, including assisting with medical care and transportation. The tourists were headed to the archaeological zone of Chacchoben, an ancient Mayan ruin south of the resort town of Tulum, when the vehicle veered off the highway early on Tuesday. After the accident, passengers were taken to hospitals, bus company Costa Maya said in a statement. Five have been discharged and the injured were in stable condition, it said. The government of Quintana Roo said in a statement that it was investigating the cause of the accident. The U.S. embassy in Mexico said it was working with authorities to learn whether U.S. citizens were aboard the bus. Last year, 11 tourists were killed in a crash in Quintana Roo when their bus flipped en route to Cancun, the Associated Press reported. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Green groups sue Trump administration over delay of methane rule;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of nearly 20 environmental and Native American tribal groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, challenging its delay of a rule limiting emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas drilling operations on federal lands. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management, part of the Department of the Interior, suspended implementation of the rule for a year, until Jan. 17, 2019, saying it wanted to avoid compliance costs for energy companies as it revises the regulation. The delay “is yet another action taken by the Trump administration to benefit the oil and gas industry at the expense of the American public, particularly the millions of Westerners” who use public lands for ranching, hunting, hiking and other purposes, Darin Schroeder, a lawyer with the Clean Air Task Force, said in a statement. His organization represented the National Wildlife Federation, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit against Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his department. Energy companies say the rule, finalized at the end of the Obama administration in 2016, could cost them tens of thousands of dollars per well. The Trump administration is expected to announce a new draft rule in coming weeks, in line with its policy of maximizing output of oil, gas and coal and dismantling regulations it says prevent job growth. The rule targets accidental leaks and intentional venting of methane from drilling operations on public lands, where about 9 percent of the country’s natural gas and 5 percent of its oil were produced last fiscal year. Some of its 2017 provisions have already been phased in, but the majority of them have yet to go into effect. The lawsuit, also filed by the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Council, and the Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, a Navajo group, seeks to stop the delay and force the Interior Department to implement the rule in January. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. ;politicsNews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malta court hears blogger bomb probably triggered from boat at sea;VALLETTA (Reuters) - The bomb used to kill Maltese anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia was probably triggered by a call from a boat off Malta, an investigator said on Tuesday, laying out initial evidence against three suspects. Caruana Galizia died in the powerful blast as she was driving near her home in the village of Bidnija on Oct. 16 a killing that appalled Europe and raised questions about the rule of law on the tiny Mediterranean island. Brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, and Vince Muscat were arrested earlier this month in connection with the murder. The three men, who were known to police, have denied any wrongdoing. Police started laying out their evidence against the trio to a Malta court which will decide whether to order a trial. One of the chief investigators, Keith Arnaud, described how a team from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, brought in by the Malta government to help solve the crime, had focused on a phone number which received a text message at the time of the explosion in Bidnija. Police say the number was not attached to a mobile phone but to a circuit board used in remote-control devices. The appliance was switched on at 2 a.m. local time in Bidnija on the day of the explosion and went off the grid at the time of the blast. Part of the circuit board was later found in the wreckage of the car. Cell phone data suggested the device was triggered by a call from off the coast. CCTV video showed a boat owned by the Degiorgio brothers putting to sea at around 8 a.m. on the day of the killing. It was later seen still at sea at 2.50 p.m. and was idling at the time of the explosion before returning to harbor. The three suspects had never been the target of any of Caruana Galizia s often fierce blogs, leading to questions over their possible motive. The blogger s family say the people who ordered the killing remain at large. Arnaud revealed that police had already been tapping the phone of George Degiorgio at the time of the murder and had heard him asking two separate people to top up the credit of a mobile phone number on the morning of the blast. He did not go into further details, but local media have reported that the same number might have triggered the bomb. Arnaud was the first person called to testify in the pre-trial hearing, which has been delayed twice over the past week after the initial two magistrates assigned to the case recused themselves. A third magistrate, Claire Stafrace Zammit, rejected calls by the defense for her also to abstain from the case because Caruana Galizia had once praised her husband. She dismissed the request as frivolous. The hearing will resume on Wednesday. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. seeks ship ban over North Korea violations, Moon postponing drills;UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has called on the U.N. Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea, documents showed on Tuesday, while South Korea s President suggested delaying military exercises with Washington to ease tensions ahead of next year s Winter Olympics. Documents seen by Reuters said the 10 vessels had been conducting ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels or transporting North Korean coal in violation of U.N. sanctions imposed over Pyongyang s nuclear and missile programs. The ships would be blacklisted - meaning countries would be required to ban them from entering their ports - if none of the 15 members of the Security Council s North Korea sanctions committee object by Thursday afternoon. North Korea is under a U.N. arms embargo and the Security Council has banned trade in exports such as coal, textiles, seafood, iron and other minerals to choke funding for Pyongyang s missile and nuclear programs. In September, the council put a cap of 2 million barrels a year on refined petroleum products exports to North Korea. The ships targeted for blacklisting were Xin Sheng Hai (flag unknown);;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Anti-money laundering group blasts Mexico in draft report;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican prosecutors are failing to systematically punish money launderers and tax authorities are too lax with potential drug money fronts such as real estate and luxury goods firms, according to a draft report on Mexico s efforts to fight illicit finance. The report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international organization that sets global standards for fighting illicit finance, highlights the tiny dents made by Mexican prosecutors in the financial networks of drug gangs and corrupt officials. Mexico has been slipping in convictions, data in the report shows. The country already lagged regional peers such as Colombia and Brazil, both of which have made strides in setting up independent prosecutors. Money laundering is not investigated and prosecuted in a proactive and systematic fashion, said the draft of the report, sections of which were seen by Reuters. Its publication is set for early January. The finance ministry and attorney general s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Mexico is the top source of illegal drugs to the United States and both countries authorities have been criticized by civil society groups for leaving drug gang finances largely intact. The more than 200-page report commends efforts to clean up the Mexican banking sector after U.S. investigations in the mid-2000s showed global banks processed billions of dollars in drug gang cash. Officials say tighter regulations flushed much illicit money from the banking system. However, the report says Mexican tax authorities did not do enough to monitor businesses outside the financial sector used for money laundering, such as real estate. Since 2014, Mexico s tax authority has had powers to audit more than 64,000 businesses considered high risk. But it has only allocated 16 people to probe those companies and since 2014 they have audited just 118, or less than 0.2 percent, the draft noted. The lack of a national registry of shareholders has made it difficult for authorities to follow the complex money trails used by drug gangs and corrupt officials to hide ill-gotten funds, the report said. The draft seen by Reuters was hammered out at closed-door meetings in Buenos Aires last month. An earlier draft prepared by a team of officials led by the International Monetary Fund was harsher, according to two sources familiar with the issue. The IMF did not respond to a request for comment. The earlier draft noted poor co-ordination between financial officials, prosecutors and security forces within Mexico, and flagged weak co-operation with the United States, the sources said. However, Mexican officials convinced the assessors to tone down the report, they said. During the Argentina meetings, Mexico s government said in a statement that the FATF report identified areas for improvement on its efforts to combat money laundering but affirms that there is good co-ordination between authorities and extensive international co-operation. Mexico is making little headway in seizing illicit cash, according to the government s own estimates. Data in the report provided by Mexico shows the country seized just $32.5 million in 2016. That represents less than 0.1 percent of the $58.5 billion of illicit revenues the government estimates is generated by organized crime annually. Also, fewer investigations than in previous years were based on information from the financial intelligence unit (FIU), a part of the finance ministry, the report notes. Setting up sophisticated FIUs that target major operations is key to effectively fighting money laundering, compared to cases that stem from routine police and customs busts. Yet only 8 percent of investigations in Mexico last year were based on FIU reports, according to data in the FATF report. That is down from around an average of 15 percent in recent years. Mexico is at the bottom of major countries in terms of its efforts to fight money laundering, said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime at Columbia University. While convictions based on FIU data have grown more than fourfold in Brazil and nearly sixfold in Colombia since 2000, Mexico has seen the number drop, according to data compiled by Buscaglia that runs through 2015. The financial intelligence unit is not engaging the criminal networks, Buscaglia said. They are not passing the right kind of data. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia labels calls for U.S. boycott over Jerusalem move 'misguided';JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia s vice president said on Tuesday that calls for a boycott of U.S. goods over President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel were misguided - not least because of the country s reliance on U.S. technology. There have been a series of protests in the world s biggest Muslim-majority country since Trump s controversial move this month to reverse decades of U.S. policy. At a rally of about 80,000 people on Sunday, the Indonesian Ulema Council, a body of Muslim clerics, called for a boycott of U.S. and Israeli products if Trump did not revoke his action. Vice President Jusuf Kalla told reporters that Indonesia was trying to put pressure on Washington through the United Nations and it was not even practical to stop using American products. Do not be emotional... do we dare to boycott iPhones, stop using Google. Can (you) live without them? he asked. (You) cannot live without them now. If you go out of the house now, you put (an iPhone) in your pocket, he said. Kalla said that even if people stopped watching U.S. movies, other American goods such as specialized petroleum equipment were vital in oil-producing Indonesia, Southeast Asia s biggest economy. There have been a series of protests in Indonesia over the issue of Jerusalem, including some where hardliners burned U.S. and Israeli flags. The status of Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is one of the biggest barriers to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Asked about how to proceed after Washington vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the U.S. declaration on Jerusalem to be withdrawn, Kalla said that dialogue was the only solution. There had been three wars, and Palestine s territory has become smaller, so there must be a dialogue, peace, he said. Indonesia enjoys a trade surplus with the United States and is one of 16 countries that the Trump administration has said could be investigated for possible trade abuses. Tutum Rahanta, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Retailers Association, said it was up to consumers whether to buy American products. If it is advice or a call to boycott, it depends on the consumers whether to use the products or not. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tunisia to hold long-delayed municipal vote in 2018;TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia will hold long-delayed municipal elections in 2018, the presidency said on Tuesday, the first such vote since the 2011 uprising unseated autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Activists hope the elections will give a new push for the North African country s democratic transition by giving more power to local councils. Soldiers and security forces will get to vote on April 29 and members of the public on May 6, President Beji Caid Essebsi said in a statement. The vote had been postponed several times, raising fears among activists that figures from the old regime were trying to stall the advances promised after the uprising. In September parliament approved a law granting amnesty to officials liked to the former government accused of corruption. The same month Prime Minister Youssef Chahed unveiled a new cabinet including several officials who had held positions under Ben Ali. The last municipal vote was held in 2010. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine military removes navy chief, but won't say why;MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines relieved its navy commander of duty on Tuesday, four months ahead of his retirement, with the armed forces offering no explanation for his removal. Military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo confirmed to reporters that Vice Admiral Ronald Joseph Mercado was no longer in charge of the 23,000-strong naval forces, but declined to say why. The reason for this change of command will be explained in due time, Arevalo told reporters. Military sources quoted in media reports said Mercado s removal was connected to controversy that had surfaced over the procurement of two frigates from South Korea, which are due to be delivered by 2020. A defence official privy to the decision to remove Mercado said it concerned equipment to be purchased for those frigates. The official told Reuters the former navy chief had lost the trust and confidence of Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana. Lorenzana did not respond to a request for comment on Mercado s removal and calls to Mercado s mobile phone went unanswered. There were some policy differences between the defense department and the navy over the 18 billion pesos ($358 million) acquisition of two brand-new frigates from South Korea, the military official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Rear Admiral Robert Empedrad was promoted to navy commander at a low-key ceremony at the armed forces headquarters in Manila. Congressman Gary Alejano, a former marine officer, said he would request a formal congressional inquiry take place over the navy s frigate acquisition project, having found Mercado s sudden removal unusual . The Philippines is in the midst of a five-year, 125 billion peso ($2.5 billion) plan to modernise its ill-equipped armed forces, acquiring new boats, planes, helicopters, rifles, radars and communication equipment. ($1 = 50.2810 Philippine pesos) ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK counter-terrorism police arrest four, send in bomb disposal team;LONDON (Reuters) - An army bomb disposal team was sent to a house in northern England after police arrested four men on Tuesday on suspicion of planning acts of terrorism. Three men, aged 22, 36 and 41, were held after raids at their homes in Sheffield and a 31-year-old was detained at an address in nearby Chesterfield. The arrests were intelligence-led and pre-planned as part of an ongoing investigation by Counter Terrorism Policing North East and (domestic security agency) MI5, West Yorkshire Police said in a statement. They added: The public may have heard loud bangs at the time police entered the properties. We would like to reassure them that this was part of the method of entry to gain access. Police said the bomb disposal unit had been sent to the Chesterfield house and that nearby residents had been evacuated as a precaution. There were no details about what the men were suspected of planning. They are being questioned on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Britain has suffered five militant attacks so far this year, four of which led to loss of life, while security chiefs say another nine have been thwarted. The country remains on its second-highest threat level meaning an attack is considered highly likely. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thai junta says to allow parties to get ready for 2018 election;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Tuesday he would use a special order that gives the military sweeping powers to allow political parties to prepare for next year s general election. Major parties had urged the government for months to lift a ban on political activity, which has been in place since a 2014 coup, to allow them to get ready for the vote. Prayuth, who is also head of the junta, said he would use the special order, known as Article 44, to solve a political deadlock. The government will have to use Article 44 to solve this problem (political activity deadlock), Prayuth told reporters, referring to a constitutional clause that grants the military absolute powers. Government spokesperson Sansern Kaewkamnerd said Prayuth would allow parties to take some steps outlined in Thailand s new constitution, including reviewing their membership list and ensuring they have at least 500 members to qualify them to run in the November 2018 poll. The meeting is not considering lifting the ban on political activities at the moment, Sansern said. The military has been running Thailand since the May 2014 coup when it ousted the civilian government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, ending years of political turmoil, including pro- and anti-government street protests. A coup in 2006 ousted Yingluck s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose supporters have dominated the polls since 2001. The 2014 coup saw some Western countries downgrade ties with Bangkok. Earlier this month, the European Union said it would resume political contact at all levels with Thailand after putting relations on hold. That announcement came after Prayuth said a general election would he held next November. (Corrects to clarify that PM s order will allow parties to prepare for elections, not lift a ban on politics) ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led air strikes kill 136 civilians in Yemen: U.N.;GENEVA (Reuters) - Air strikes by the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen have killed at least 136 civilians and non-combatants since Dec. 6, the U.N. human rights spokesman said on Tuesday. Other U.N. officials said the coalition was maintaining tight restrictions on ships reaching Yemen even though 8 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine with the country relying on imports for the bulk of its food, fuel and medicine. We are deeply concerned at the recent surge in civilian casualties in Yemen as a result of intensified air strikes by the ... coalition, following the killing of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa on Dec. 4, human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing. Incidents verified by the U.N. human rights office included seven air strikes on a prison in the Shaub district of Sanaa on Dec. 13 that killed at least 45 detainees thought to be loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is backed by Saudi Arabia. One can assume that was a mistake, they weren t intending to kill prisoners from their own side, Colville said. It s an illustration of lack of due precaution. Other air strikes killed 14 children and six adults in a farmhouse in Hodeidah governorate on Dec. 15, as well as a woman and nine children returning from a wedding party in Marib governorate on Dec. 16, he said. Air strikes verified by the U.N. rights office in Sanaa, Saada, Hodeidah and Taiz governorates also injured 87 civilians. If in a specific event due precaution is not taken or civilians are deliberately targeted, that can easily be a war crime, Colville said. It is up to a court to make a ruling, he said, but there had been so many similar incidents in Yemen, it would be hard to conclude war crimes had not taken place. On Tuesday Saudi air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile fired towards the capital Riyadh but there were no reports of casualties, the coalition said, the latest in a series of attacks by the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen. The restrictions on access to Yemen imposed by the coalition became a total blockade on Nov. 6 though conditions were eased on Nov. 25 to allow aid ships and some commercial cargoes to reach the shattered Arabian Peninsula country. The U.N. World Food Programme has brought in enough food for 1.8 million people for two months, but far more is needed. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron rebuffs Assad accusations that France sponsors terrorism;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that Bashar al-Assad was the enemy of millions of his own people and in no position to lecture France, after the Syrian leader accused Paris of supporting terrorism. After a string of strong comments by French officials blaming Assad s government for atrocities and failed talks, Assad said on Monday France was supporting bloodshed in Syria, making it unfit to talk about peace settlements. France spearheaded support for terrorism and their hands are soaked in Syrian blood from the first days and we do not see they have changed their stance fundamentally, Assad was quoted in state media as saying. Those who support terrorism have no right to talk about peace, Assad added. Despite being a leading backer of the Syrian opposition, France has sought a more pragmatic approach to the conflict since the arrival of Macron, saying that Assad s departure was not a pre-condition for talks to end the six-year war. Speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Macron hit back at Assad. I don t think Syria boils down to Bashar al-Assad, Macron said. The Syrian people have an enemy. There are millions of Syrians outside of Syria and they have an enemy who is Bashar al-Assad. That s the reality. On the military front we have a priority which is war against Daesh (Islamic State) and that s why his (Assad s) statements are unacceptable because if there is someone that has fought and can defeat Daesh ... it is the international coalition. France and other members of a U.S.-led coalition have launched air strikes against Islamic State targets. Macron said on Monday he would push for peace talks involving all parties, including Assad, promising initiatives early next year, although it remains unclear how any French proposal would relate to existing United Nations efforts. He criticized separate Russian talks in Astana with Iran and Turkey meant to reduce violence and possibly pave the way to Syrian talks in Sochi next year. Those initiatives would fail, Macron said, because they did not include Assad s opponents and were an attempt to impose a solution on Syrians. I don t believe in a resolution of a conflict by external forces that want to impose a peace ... and I don t believe in indulging someone that thinks their country boils down to them. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea's Moon: Could curb U.S. military exercises before Olympics - NBC;(Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he was willing to take steps to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula ahead of next year s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, including curtailing military exercises with the United States, NBC said on Tuesday. It is possible for South Korea and the U.S. to review the possibility of postponing the exercises. I ve made such a suggestion to the U.S., and the U.S. is currently reviewing it. However, all this depends on how North Korea behaves, Moon said in an interview with NBC News. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Melania's birth country Slovenia sees strong tourism growth;LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Slovenia, birth country of U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, expects revenues from foreign tourists to jump by about 9 percent this year and by at least 5 percent in 2018, Economy Minister Zdravko Pocivalsek said on Tuesday. 2017 will be the fourth record year in a row for Slovenian tourism after revenues from foreign tourists reached some 2.3 billion euros ($2.71 billion) last year, Pocivalsek told a news conference. Tourism in Slovenia rose strongly because of a general increase of tourism in Europe and a successful promotion of Slovenia as a safe country. Officials say it also got something of a boost from Melania Trump having been born in the city of Sevnica in southeastern Slovenia before becoming a fashion model and moving to the United States. We received a lot of attention from (international) journalists because of the U.S. First Lady and we managed to present Slovenia as an attractive, green country, Maja Pak, head of the Slovenian Tourist Organisation, told the same news conference. About 60 percent of Slovenia is covered by forests while the country has some resorts on the Adriatic sea as well as a number of Alpine and spa tourist resorts. Pocivalsek also said Slovenia plans to gradually privative all tourist accommodation infrastructure which should further improve tourism business. At present about 40 percent of hotels in Slovenia are in state hands. I want a well-considered privatization ... which will be in favor of the state and the companies that are being sold, Pocivalsek said. In the first 10 months of 2017 the number of foreign tourists jumped by almost 17 percent year-on-year, the statistics office said last month. In the first nine months of the year, the latest data available, the number of tourists from the United States rose by 23.4 percent, it added. According to the government s tourism strategy the revenues from foreign tourists should rise to at least 3.7 billion euros per year by the end of 2021. ($1 = 0.8472 euros) ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope, Jordan's King Abdullah, discuss Trump's Jerusalem move;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis and Jordan s King Abdullah on Tuesday discussed U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a move that both say is dangerous to Middle East peace. Abdullah and the pope spoke privately for about 20 minutes at the start of the king s visit to the Vatican and France. A Vatican statement said they discussed the promotion of peace and stability in the Mideast, with particular reference to the question of Jerusalem and the role of the Hashemite Sovereign as Custodian of the Holy Places . King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman sensitive to any changes of status of the disputed city. When Trump announced his decision on Dec. 6, the pope responded by calling for the city s status quo to be respected, saying new tension in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts. Among an outpouring of international criticism, Jordan also rejected the U.S. decision, calling it legally null because it consolidated Israel s occupation of the eastern sector of the city. The United States was further isolated over the issue on Monday when it blocked a U.N. Security Council call for the declaration to be withdrawn. Both the Vatican and Jordan back a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with them agreeing on the status of Jerusalem as part of the peace process. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, whereas Israel has declared the whole city to be its united and eternal capital. The statement said both sides wanted to encourage negotiations. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German ban on Islamist group True Religion confirmed as complaints dropped;BERLIN (Reuters) - German federal prosecutors on Tuesday finalised their ban on an Islamist association accused of radicalizing youngsters, saying that complaints about the ban from two members of the group had been withdrawn. Last year, the interior ministry banned the Islamist group True Religion, saying it had persuaded about 140 people to join militants in Iraq and Syria. [nL8N1DG28O] Following the ban, police launched dawn raids across Germany on about 190 mosques, flats and offices linked to the group. The federal prosecutor said that since the association itself had not complained about the ban and the two members complaints had been withdrawn, the prohibition ruling was final. The case comes as Germany commemorates last year s Islamist-motivated attack on a Berlin Christmas Market which killed 12 people and injured many others. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain joins U.S. in blaming North Korea for 'WannaCry' attack;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said North Korea was behind the WannaCry cyber attack that infected computers around the globe earlier this year on Tuesday, joining the United States in blaming Pyongyang for the ransomware incident. Britain s National Cyber Security Centre had assessed it was highly likely that North Korea s Lazarus hacking group was behind the one of the most significant cyber attacks to hit the UK in terms of scale of disruption, the Foreign Office said. We condemn these actions and commit ourselves to working with all responsible states to combat destructive criminal use of cyber space, Foreign Office minister Tariq Ahmad said. The indiscriminate use of the WannaCry ransomware demonstrates North Korean actors using their cyber program to circumvent sanctions, Ahmad said. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"South Africa's Ramaphosa says party's ""Top Six"" combines different views";JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - New ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday the Top Six of South Africa s ruling party comprised politicians from different sides of its ideological divides and he expected the party to emerge from this week s leadership conference stronger. Analysts have warned that the party s top decision-making group could fail to agree on policy, with three politicians apiece drawn from the Ramaphosa camp and that of his rival, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. The leadership that has been chosen is a unity leadership, Ramaphosa told reporters at the conference. It s a leadership that combines different views and approaches that were prevalent in the conference prior to the election. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. to make proposals to kickstart Syrian reform process;UNITED NATIONS/GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations will propose to Syria s warring parties a timeline for elections and guidance on constitutional reform in a bid to revive stalled peace talks, mediator Staffan de Mistura told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. The Council launched the peace process two years ago with instructions to negotiate new governance for Syria, U.N.-supervised elections and constitutional reform. But the eighth round ended last week with no dialogue between the two sides. The U.N. could make recommendations on a timeline to broker elections for all Syrians including refugees and internally displaced people because only such a process would be seen as legitimate by ordinary Syrians, de Mistura said. It could also help to guide constitutional reform and help establish a constitutional commission and a national dialogue body, with the Syrian people solely responsible for writing and approving a new constitution. The time has come for the U.N. to provide some specific elaborations ... and therefore stimulate a wider conversation, he said. The U.N. has provided electoral assistance to a majority of U.N. member states ... so we do have experience. These propositions are advanced in good faith by the U.N. in order to promote fresh thinking in all quarters, he said. He said the reform process would need the backing of parties in the Geneva talks and suggested they had already signed up to the overarching principles and he planned to set out his ideas early in 2018, when a ninth round of talks is penciled in. I cannot hide my disappointment, de Mistura said over the failed eighth round. He said representatives of President Bashar al-Assad had also introduced a new condition by insisting that there could be no political movement until all sovereignty was restored and terrorism defeated in all Syrian territory. That suggested any reforms would be put aside for a long period , which was very worrying, said de Mistura, a 47-year U.N. veteran known for his optimism and reliance on creative ideas to resolve crises that may appear intractable. With fresh thinking, the U.N. mandate could be implemented, even in the context of the realpolitik of 2018 , he said. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK wants to set rules 'right for our situation' after leaving EU: May's spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May told her cabinet on Tuesday Britain s objective in leaving the EU should be a deal that enables it to set rules suited to its situation, her spokesman said after a cabinet meeting to establish long-term goals for exit talks. Having secured a deal to move European Union departure negotiations to the next stage last week, Tuesday s discussion marked the start of May s next battle over Brexit: what kind of long-term relationship will Britain have with the bloc? In making that decision, May must manage deep divisions at home, including among senior ministers, over whether to align Britain s economic future with the EU, or diverge from the bloc and seek a more global role. She will then have to go out and strike a deal in Brussels, where the EU is adamant that Britain cannot enjoy the full benefits of membership after leaving, wary of the need to deter others members from following suit. The PM said it was clear what the cabinet s objective is: a deal which secures the best possible trading terms with the EU, enables the UK to set rules that are right for our situation and facilitates ambitious third-country trade deals, the spokesman said. The meeting lasted almost two hours and saw 25 ministers speak on a subject at the heart of the country s fraught debate over leaving the EU. It was the first time cabinet has tackled the so-called end state of the negotiations since the referendum vote to leave in June last year. Further cabinet talks are expected early next year to firm up the best means of achieving May s goals - the stage of the discussion most likely to push ideological differences between hard and soft Brexiteers out into the open. Asked whether there was agreement on May s key aims, the spokesman said: Yes, it s clear what we want to achieve. It was set out in a good, clear, detailed discussion in which there were contributions from a large majority of the cabinet. On the eve of the meeting, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier offered a reminder of the difficult talks that also lie ahead in Brussels, repeating the bloc s position that London s huge financial sector would not be given special treatment. May s spokesman said she had ruled out a final economic partnership with the EU modeled on the European Economic Area - whose members allow free movement in exchange for full access to the EU s single market - and her aim was to get a more ambitious deal than the one signed between Canada and the EU last year. The Brexit Secretary (David Davis) and the prime minister were clear that Britain would be seeking a bespoke deal. Before talks resume in Brussels, May must maintain a delicate balancing act to keep hardline Brexit ministers like foreign minister Boris Johnson behind her, without alienating those like finance minister Philip Hammond who believe Britain should be more wary of diverging from EU norms and standards. May needs the full backing of her cabinet after a misjudged snap election in June stripped her Conservative Party of its majority in parliament, weakening her authority both at home and in Brussels. Should she stumble, opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says he is ready to take her place, predicting another national election in 2018 in an interview with Grazia magazine. The veteran socialist led Labour to unexpected gains in the June 8 vote, and has promised to deliver a Brexit more focused on protecting jobs and workers rights. That has been interpreted as meaning preserving ties with the EU in many areas. But, May has outlasted many of the dire prognoses offered after her June election flop. That is partly due to fears that fresh elections would put Corbyn in charge, and partly because few Conservative rivals want the task of delivering a decision which remains unpopular with large swathes of the electorate. A poll on Saturday showed 51 percent of Britons would now keep EU membership while 41 percent want to leave the bloc. The shift was mostly among those who did not vote in last year s referendum, while around nine in 10 leave and remain voters were unchanged in their views. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Croatia and Slovenia fail to move forward in talks on border dispute;ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia and Slovenia failed to reach a compromise solution for their border dispute in talks on Tuesday, with Slovenia gearing up to implement an international court ruling which Croatia dismisses as invalid. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in June ruled that most of the Piran Bay area shared between the two neighbors was Slovenia s territorial waters, and that Slovenia should have a sea corridor through Croatian waters to international waters. The Hague-based court s six-month deadline for the states to implement the ruling expires on Dec. 29. Croatia rejects the ruling, saying it withdrew from the process in 2015 because of Slovenia s violation of the arbitration procedure. We intend to implement the ruling and expect Croatia to do the same, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said at a news conference following talks in Zagreb on Tuesday with his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic. Slovenia will start the implementation where it can do it alone, and it will seek dialogue and cooperation from Croatia where it cannot act alone. Plenkovic said the ruling was not obligatory for Croatia, which had withdrawn from the arbitration process after a leaked tape showed that a Slovenian judge on the arbitration panel had improperly exchanged confidential information with the Ljubljana government. The court acknowledged the arbitration violation but concluded that it was not serious enough to halt the case. The issue of borders is an open issue for Croatia, Plenkovic said, adding that Croatia had proposed to Slovenia a legal framework for new talks on the borders. Cerar dismissed the idea, saying the arbitration ruling was final for Slovenia. Plenkovic warned against unilateral acts that could cause incidents on the borders . The two countries have been arguing over their sea and land borders since both declared independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991 as it disintegrated and slid into war. The dispute held up Croatian accession to the EU for many years. Only after both parties agreed to arbitration was Zagreb granted entry to the bloc in 2013. The court ruled that Slovenia should have most of the Piran Bay area recognized as its territorial waters. In addition, the tribunal established a 2.5 nautical mile-wide and some 10 nautical mile-long corridor through Croatian waters to give Slovenia much-coveted direct access to international waters. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Honduras opposition candidate calls on U.S. not to recognize election;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Honduran opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla called on United States on Tuesday not to recognize results announced in his country s presidential election and to suspend aid until a new vote can be held. Speaking at news conference in Washington, Nasralla accused his opponent, U.S.-friendly President Juan Orlando Hernandez, of holding on to power illegally after gross fraud in the Nov. 26 poll. Hernandez declared himself president elect on Tuesday despite a call for new elections by the Organization of American States (OAS) that followed allegations of fraud and deadly protests. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;East London road blocked due to 'significant' police incident;LONDON (Reuters) - A major road in east London was partially closed due to a significant police incident on Tuesday, the British capital s transport operator said. Transport for London said on Twitter that East India Dock Road was partially blocked both ways due to a significant police incident . London police had no immediate comment. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says will take Jerusalem resolution to U.N. General Assembly;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey will take the resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its declaration of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital to the United Nations General Assembly, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. The resolution was introduced to the U.N. Security Council on Monday by Egypt, a non-permanent member, but was vetoed by the United States, despite the 14 other votes in favor. Now, God willing, we will carry the resolution to the U.N. General Assembly, Erdogan a joint news conference with the Djibouti s President Ismail Omar Guelleh. A two-thirds support in the General Assembly would actually mean the rejection of the decision made by the Security Council, he added. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia detains Norwegian citizen over suspected spying; (Corrects a Dec. 19 story to make clear in graf 12 that Russia annexed Ukraine s Crimea, not all of Ukraine) By Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Gwladys Fouche MOSCOW/OSLO (Reuters) - Russia has detained a Norwegian citizen it suspects of spying, his Norwegian lawyer and the RIA news agency said on Tuesday, citing a Moscow court which sanctioned the individual s detention. Media reports said Russia s FSB security service had caught the Norwegian taking secret documents about the Russian Navy from a Russian citizen. The detained man is 62-year-old pensioner Frode Berg, a former guard working on the Norwegian-Russian border who was arrested on Dec. 5, his Norwegian lawyer told Reuters. His family says the accusations of espionage are inexplicable, said Berg s lawyer in Oslo, Brynjulf Risnes. He was on a private visit to meet acquaintances from his former job and the cultural work he does ... The family has known for a while that Frode Berg was arrested. They thought it was a misunderstanding and that it would be clarified soon. Berg resides in the Norwegian city of Kirkenes, a town some 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the border with Russia. He is active in a cross-border cultural organisation called Girls on the Bridge. Berg posted a picture of a snow-covered Red Square on his Facebook profile page early on Dec. 5, the day of his arrest, with the message Christmas Time in Moscow! . The maximum penalty for espionage in Russia is 20 years in prison, while the minimum sentence is 10 years, said Risnes. The family is struggling as there is very little information available from the Russian authorities, he said. He said his first priority was to get access to Berg and the second one was to ensure a Russian lawyer who could provide the best possible defence. Often espionage cases have political undertones, he said. So it is important we have a lawyer who fully defends his interests. NATO-member Norway is part of the coalition of countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia following its 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea. It has been concerned about Russia s ability and willingness to use military means to achieve political goals. Norwegian authorities said they had been able to visit their national in detention. The Norwegian consular service has visited the citizen that has been arrested in Moscow and is now in detention, said Frode Overland Andersen, a press spokesman for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He added the Norwegian national had legal representation and that the arrest had taken place on Dec. 5. The spokesman declined to comment on the charges. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ramaphosa's ANC election win lifts South African banks;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African banking stocks rallied on Tuesday, buoyed by optimism that the newly elected leader of the ruling African National Congress will push through policies aimed at putting the economy on a stronger footing. South Africa s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa - a darling of markets - narrowly beat former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in Monday s vote, marking a pivotal moment for the party that launched black-majority rule under Nelson Mandela s leadership 23 years ago. As ANC leader, Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old union leader turned businessman, is likely to become the next president after elections in 2019 because of his party s electoral dominance. Ratings agency Moody s said Ramaphosa s victory opened up tentative prospects of a policy shift and rise in business confidence that could reverse the gradual deterioration in South Africa s credit fundamentals. Ramaphosa, a former chairman of Africa s biggest telecoms operator MTN Group, is seen by business leaders as well placed to turn around an economy. South Africa s GDP is estimated to grow by less than a percent this year, while the unemployment rate is at near records just shy of 28 percent. In an open letter, Mike Brown, the chief executive of South Africa s No.4 bank, Nedbank, urged Ramaphosa to immediately address governance failures in state-owned companies and ensure that the country retains the last sovereign investment grade from Moody s. It is important that we have stable and rational policies, creating an environment that encourages growth for businesses and individuals, Brown said. Ramaphosa s election victory over Dlamini-Zuma, who was backed by ex-husband President Jacob Zuma, put shares in banks, considered the barometer of both economic and political sentiment, back in demand. In afternoon trade, the blue-chip stock index, the JSE Top-40, added one percent to 51,601 with banks on top of the gainers list. The banking index rose nearly six percent with FirstRand, the largest lender by market value, surging more than seven percent. Government bonds firmed, with the yield on the benchmark instrument due in 2026 falling 16 basis points to 8.695 percent. A local business lobby group, Business Leadership South Africa welcomed the election of Ramaphosa, saying it gave him a chance to address inequality, unemployment and poverty. For this to happen, we require regulatory certainty and policy stability that will accelerate and deepen transformation, said BLSA, which is composed of some of the biggest and most influential names in corporate South Africa. Another key issue facing the ANC s new leader is policy uncertainty in South Africa s mining industry, where companies are challenging a requirement to increase black ownership of firms in the sector to 30 percent from 26 percent. The sector is a major employer and contributed 7.7 percent to gross domestic product in 2016. The sector also accounts for 25 percent of exports in Africa s most industrialized economy. Analysts at U.S. bank JP Morgan raised their economic growth forecast for next year to 1.4 percent from one percent, prompted by Ramaphosa s election. The forecast change largely rests on a lesser purchasing power drag on consumers, as outlined below, and perhaps a modest resumption in the capex cycle, the analysts said in a note. FLAG-BEARER The rand currency retreated on Tuesday from a nine-month high notched up in the previous session. At 1107 GMT, the rand was 0.2 percent weaker against the dollar at 12.7950 rand. Expectations that Ramaphosa would win the ANC race had pushed the rand to 12.5200 per dollar on Monday, its firmest since March 27 before a cabinet reshuffle by Zuma rocked markets and triggered credit ratings downgrades to junk . Ramaphosa will be the ANC s flag-bearer in the 2019 national election, but will have to contend with allies of his defeated rival, Dlamini-Zuma, in his leadership team. Some investors were worried that Ramaphosa may not be able to push through policy changes because the ANC s top decision making group, known as the top-six , was split down the middle, consisting of three politicians apiece drawn from Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma s camps. Ramaphosa s sole rival was Dlamini-Zuma, a veteran campaigner against racial economic inequality and big business interests. There is some concern that the split of the ANC top six (officials) might hinder Cyril Ramaphosa s ability to invoke the much needed reforms he has been campaigning on, said Shaun Murison, currency strategist at IG Markets. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin says ex-Soviet countries threatened by militants: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that former Soviet countries were being threatened by militants using Central Asia and the Middle East as a springboard for expansion, the RIA news agency reported. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Deputy head of nationalist Finns Party quits leadership post after harassment;HELSINKI (Reuters) - A senior politician in Finland s euroskeptic Finns Party said on Tuesday he would step down from the leadership of the party, formerly part of a coalition government, after harassing a lawmaker in parliament. Finnish media quoted a female MP from another party as saying that Teuvo Hakkarainen, a deputy chairman of the nationalist Finns Party, last week grabbed her neck and kissed her in parliament caf despite her objections. I am very sorry for what happened, alcohol does not suit me ... I have hurt (her), Hakkarainen said in his Facebook page. I will step down from the position of the party s second deputy chairman. Finns Party s lawmakers issued a warning to Hakkarainen over the incident, saying any harassment was unacceptable. Hakkarainen will remain a member of the Finns Party parliamentary group. Hakkarainen was part of a new hard-line leadership nominated by the party in June, a development that led to it being kicked out of the government by Prime Minister Juha Sipila. More than half of its lawmakers subsequently left the party and formed a new group to keep their government seats. The Finns Party, formerly called True Finns , rose from obscurity during the euro zone debt crisis with an anti-EU platform, complicating the bloc s bailout talks with troubled states. Hakkarainen was fined earlier this year for a Facebook post calling for a Muslim-free Finland which a district court said amounted to agitation against an ethnic group. The party currently has polling support of about eight percent, down from 18 percent in 2015 general election. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian, American, Malaysian arrested in Indonesia's Bali for drugs;DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian police have arrested an Australian, an American and a Malaysian on the holiday island of Bali for drugs offences, the latest foreigners to run afoul of some of the world s strictest laws against narcotics. The three men, who were arrested in separate cases, appeared before the media at a briefing, dressed in orange prison garb, their faces concealed by balaclava, with armed police officers standing guard. It was not immediately clear if any of the three, who were identified only by their initials, would face the death penalty if convicted. Authorities found methamphetamine and the party drug ecstasy hidden in a plastic bottle and another container in the luggage of the Australian after he arrived on a flight from Bangkok on Monday, the customs office said. Based on the results of the inspection, our officers found five packages containing clear crystals weighing 19.97 grams and 14 tablets weighing a total of 6.22 grams, Bali Airport customs office chief Himawan Indrajono said in the statement. Australia s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance to an Australian man detained in Bali in response to emailed questions on the arrest. It declined to comment further. The U.S. citizen was arrested at a Bali post office on Nov. 30 in connection with a package sent from the United States containing 336.6 grams of e-cigarette liquid containing THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in cannabis. The Malaysian was arrested on Nov. 8 after being found with 3.03 grams of leaves thought to be marijuana and 0.65 grams of a white powder suspected to be narcotics, Idrajono said. Possession of small amounts of drugs can incur lengthy jail sentences in Indonesia and larger amounts can result in a death sentence. The execution by firing squad of two Australians in 2015, along with six other drug convicts from several other countries, strained relations between Jakarta and Canberra. Indonesia says it is facing a drug crisis with an estimated 6.4 million drug users in the country of 250 million people, and needs to impose tough punishments to contained the problem. President Joko Widodo has called for a merciless crackdown on narcotics, and told law enforcers to shoot drug traffickers if they resisted arrest. That echoes a tough stand taken by Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte who has ordered a war against drugs in which several thousand people have been killed since mid-2016. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian yachtsman dies after Philippine fishermen rescue three adrift for days;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine fishermen rescued three Australians adrift at sea for days after their yacht capsized in the country s south, but one died on the way to hospital, police said on Tuesday. Two fishermen picked up the Australians, who waved for help while clinging to a life buoy, about 50 miles (80 km) off a popular surfing town in Surigao province on Sunday. Police in the provincial capital of Tandag said the men had been in the water for several days after the holed yacht capsized near the southern island of Mindanao while sailing to Subic Bay. Unfortunately, Anthony John Mahoney did not make it as he was already unconscious at the time of the rescue, said police official Evelyn Tidula. The Australian embassy in Manila is to help repatriate Mahoney s remains, while the other two are in stable condition in hospital. One of them has an address in the country s north. Police did not immediately explain how the yacht developed a hole. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority alerted Philippine rescue authorities after detecting a distress beacon on Thursday and Friday last week, the agency said in a statement. The Philippine Coast Guard said it found the wreckage of the Sydney-registered yacht at a beach on the Dinagat islands in Leyte Gulf, hundreds of miles from where the Australians were picked up. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Navy chief says forces in Asia may be reinforced with warships from the eastern Pacific;YOKOSUKA (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy s top officer on Tuesday said that vessels from eastern Pacific could be brought forward to reinforce U.S. naval power in Asia as Washington contends with increased threats in the region and accidents that have weakened its maritime force. We will continue to assure that we meet all of our missions here in the Asia Pacific area. It could be something coming forward from Third Fleet or something like that to meet those requirements, Chief of U.S. Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said at a briefing aboard the USS Ronald Reagan carrier in Japan. He declined to say when or how many ships could be transferred. The growing threat posed by North Korea s ballistic missile and nuclear weapon advances coupled with operations to counter China s increasing military might in the South China Sea and other parts of Asia is putting an increased burden on the U.S. Seventh Fleet. That added pressure on crews has been blamed for contributing to a series of accidents involving naval vessels this year including collisions by two destroyers with merchant ships that killed 17 U.S. sailors. In August the USS John S.McCain guided missile destroyer was struck by a merchant ship near Singapore, while its sister ship, the Fitzgerald, almost sank off the coast of Japan in June after colliding with a Philippine container ship. Richardson spoke after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a new national security strategy based on his America First vision that singled out China and Russia as revisionist powers. For its part, China is attempting to revise the global status quo by its aggression in the South China Sea, a U.S. official said. Beijing is building military bases there on manmade islands in waters claimed by other nations. One can only draw certain conclusion about what are the intentions of the Chinese with respect to those islands. We will respond as we have always done, which is that we are going to continue to be present down there, Richardson said. For now, he said, North Korea was the most urgent task for the U.S. Navy in Asia as it became more and more capable with every new missile test. The latest ballistic missile tested on Nov. 29 reached an altitude of more than 4,000 kilometers (2485.48 miles), giving it enough-range, Pyongyang claims, to hit major U.S. cities including Washington D.C. Richardson said his task in 2018 is to build a navy more lethal and dangerous to potential U.S. foes. There is a near unanimous consensus that we need more naval power than we have now, he said. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan minister says agrees with South Korea that China's role vital on North Korea;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and South Korea agreed on Tuesday on the importance of China s role in dealing with the threat from North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono told reporters after meeting his South Korean counterpart. The two U.S. allies are seeking to boost cooperation over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, despite lingering tension between them over the issue of comfort women , a Japanese euphemism for women - many of them Korean - forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and during World War Two. Ties have been frozen over the issue, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in promising to renegotiate a 2015 pact signed with Japan that is unpopular in South Korea. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After U.S. veto, U.N. General Assembly to meet on Jerusalem status;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-member United Nations General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states on U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, sparking a warning from Washington that it will take names. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour said the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for Trump s declaration to be withdrawn, which was vetoed by the United States in the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Monday. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. Mansour said on Monday he hoped there would be overwhelming support in the General Assembly for the resolution. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that the United States would remember those who voted for the resolution criticizing the U.S. decision. The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue, Haley wrote. She echoed that call in a Twitter post: The U.S. will be taking names. Under a 1950 resolution, an emergency special session can be called for the General Assembly to consider a matter with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures if the Security Council fails to act. Only 10 such sessions have been convened, and the last time the General Assembly met in such a session was in 2009 on occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian territories. Thursday s meeting will be a resumption of that session. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington s Western allies. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls on all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Haley said on Monday that the resolution was vetoed in the Security Council in defense of U.S. sovereignty and the U.S. role in the Middle East peace process. She criticized it as an insult to Washington and an embarrassment to council members. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan to expand ballistic missile defense with ground-based Aegis batteries;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan formally decided on Tuesday it would expand its ballistic missile defense system with U.S.-made ground-based Aegis radar stations and interceptors in response to a growing threat from North Korean rockets. A proposal to build two Aegis Ashore batteries was approved by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s Cabinet. The sites without the missiles will likely cost at least $2 billion and are not likely to be operational until 2023 at the earliest, sources familiar with the plan told Reuters earlier. North Korea s nuclear missile development poses a new level of threat to Japan and as we have done in the past we will ensure that we are able to defend ourselves with a drastic improvement in ballistic missile defense, Japanese Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. The decision to acquire the ground version of the Aegis missile-defense system, which is already deployed on Japanese warships, was widely expected. North Korea on Nov. 29 tested a new, more powerful ballistic missile that it says can hit major U.S. cities including Washington, and fly over Japan s current defense shield. That rocket reached an altitude of more than 4,000 km (2,485 miles), well above the range of interceptor missiles on Japanese ships operating in the Sea of Japan. North Korea says its weapons programs are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The new Aegis stations may not, however, come with a powerful radar, dubbed Spy-6, which is being developed by the United States. Without it, Japan will not be able to fully utilize the extended range of a new interceptor missile, the SM-3 Block IIA, which cost about $30 million each. A later upgrade, once the U.S. military has deployed Spy-6 on its ships around 2022, could prove a costly proposition for Japan as outlays on new equipment squeeze its military budget. Initial funding will be ring-fenced in the next defense budget beginning in April, but no decision has been made on the radar, or the overall cost, or schedule, of the deployment, a Ministry of Defence official said at a press briefing. Japan s military planners also evaluated the U.S.-built THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system before deciding on Aegis Ashore. Separately, Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said this month Japan would acquire medium-range cruise missiles it can launch from its F-15 and F-35 fighters at sites in North Korea, in a bid to deter any attack. The purchase of what will become the longest-range munitions in Japan s military arsenal is controversial because it renounced the right to wage war against other nations in its post-World War Two constitution. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. trial of Turkish banker not legal, should be ended: Turkish minister;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said on Tuesday he will tell his U.S. counterpart that the New York trial of a Turkish banker, charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, is not legal and should be ended. Gul told Turkish broadcaster 24 TV in an interview that it would be impossible to accept a verdict contrary to Turkey s interests in the case, which has strained ties between the NATO allies. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia detains Norwegian citizen over suspected spying: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has detained a Norwegian citizen it suspects of spying, the RIA news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a Moscow court which sanctioned the individual s detention. Media reports said Russia s FSB security service had caught the Norwegian taking secret documents about the Russian Navy from a Russian citizen. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba boosts trade ties with Cold War ally Russia as U.S. disengages;HAVANA (Reuters) - Boxy Russian-built Lada automobiles still rattle around Cuba, growing more decrepit by the year, a reminder of vanished Soviet patronage for the Communist-led island. But next month, more than 300 shiny new Ladas are slated to roll onto Havana s potholed streets, the first in more than a decade. Their manufacturer Avtovaz, Russia s biggest carmaker, says it hopes to ramp up exports, thanks to financing from Russian government development bank VEB. Flush with state funding, Avtovaz and other Russian companies are once again increasing sales to the Caribbean isle. It is part of a broader move by Moscow to renew commercial, military and political ties just as the U.S. government is retreating from Cuba under Republican President Donald Trump. Russian exports to Cuba jumped 81 percent on the year to $225 million in the January-September period, official Russian data shows. That is just a quarter of the exports of Cuba s chief merchandise trading partner, China, but growing fast. Russian state oil major Rosneft in May resumed fuel shipments to Cuba for the first time this century. The company s head met with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana on Saturday, the latest sign the two countries are readying a major energy agreement. The nations in the past have discussed increased deliveries of Russian oil to the island and development of Cuba s offshore oil fields. That would be a major assist for Cuba amid slumping shipments of cheap fuel from its troubled socialist ally Venezuela. Last month, private Russian company Sinara delivered the first of 75 locomotives worth $190 million ordered by Cuba in 2016. Russia s largest truck maker KAMAZ has also stepped up exports to Cuba. Negotiations for rail lines and other infrastructure are in the works. We can call this period a renaissance, Aleksandr Bogatyr, Russia s trade representative in Cuba, said in an interview. He forecast bilateral trade could grow to $350 million to $400 million this year, one of its highest levels in nearly two decades, up from $248 million in 2016. Russia s Cuba offensive comes as Trump has halted efforts by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama to normalize U.S.-Cuba ties and ease the decades-old U.S. trade embargo. In June, Trump ordered tighter travel and commercial restrictions again, disappointing U.S. businesses that had hoped to capitalize on the detente. In September, his administration slashed U.S. embassy staffing in Cuba. Moscow is seizing on that rollback as a way to undermine U.S. influence in its own backyard, some foreign policy experts say. Russia sees it as a moment to further its own relationship with Cuba, said Jason Marczak, Director at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. The more the Russian footprint increase in Cuba, the more that will reinforce hardened anti-U.S. attitudes and shut out U.S. businesses from eventually doing greater business in Cuba. Throughout the Cold War, Moscow propped up Fidel Castro s revolutionary government, providing it with billions of dollars worth of cheap grain, machinery and other goods. Those subsidies disappeared with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Trade plunged. Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, who longs to return his nation to superpower status, Moscow over the past decade has sought to revive relations with Latin America, particularly with countries wary of U.S. influence. The turnaround with Cuba got a boost in 2014 when Russia forgave 90 percent of Cuba s $35 billion Soviet-era debt. It also started providing export financing to Russian companies looking to sell to the cash-strapped island. The help has been cheered in Cuba, where Raul Castro is due to step down next year, marking the departure of the generation that led the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Russia may lie half a world away from Cuba, but traces of its historic ties with the Caribbean s largest island are everywhere. Older generations learned Russian and studied in the Soviet Union. At a recent trade fair in the capital, Cubans spontaneously sung along to the folk music played at the opening of Russia s pavilion. Moskvich and Lada cars, Ural motor-bikes and Kamaz trucks chug along the streets. Most Cuban farm equipment is from the former Soviet Union. That legacy alone has sustained some Russian trade. We sell spare parts for ground transport, some planes, agriculture, construction, said Russian businessman Igor Leonov. He set up his import company, Ces Co. Ltd, in Cuba nearly thirty years ago and says there is plenty of demand. The decades-old U.S. trade embargo has also forced Cuba to remain loyal to some Russian manufacturers. The island upgraded its Soviet-era fleet in the 2000s with Russian-built Tupolev, Antonov and Ilyushin planes. Nadezhda Lesova, an executive at the Russian Export Center in Moscow, said her organization regarded Cuba as a strategic region. She said the center is providing support for exports to Cuba, including insurance, loans and subsidies, worth around 430 million euros ($508.60 million). Some major deals are under discussion. State-owned monopoly Russian Railways (RZD) is negotiating to upgrade more than 1000 km of Cuban railroads and install a high-speed link between Havana and the beach resort of Varadero, in what would be Cuba s biggest infrastructure project in decades. It is expected the deal will be worth 1.9 billion euros ($2.26 billion) and will be signed by the end of the year, Oleg Nikolaev, Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the RZD subsidiary RZD International, told Reuters. In October, oil firm Rosneft said it was looking at modernizing the island s Cienfuegos oil refinery. But the optimistic talk could be overblown. Venezuela and China have announced investments in Cuba that came to naught, largely due to the complications of doing business in Cuba. Some Russian companies are already smarting from Cuba s cash crunch. Ces Co. Ltd, the parts importer, said Cuba was behind on $9 million in payments. And it is unclear how long Russia will continue to finance exports, with its own economy struggling amid low oil prices and Western sanctions. Russia s economic constraints are one reason analysts are dubious that Moscow will make good on recent proposals to re-open a former base in Cuba. Shuttered in 2001, the so-called Lourdes base was used for electronic surveillance of the United States. Still, U.S. military experts are concerned that Russia could leverage increased economic influence in Cuba to step up its military and espionage activities on the island. Sixteen high-ranking military officers wrote an open letter to the Trump administration in April asking it to continue Obama s opening with Cuba for national security reasons. If Russia is willing to offset oil supplies from Venezuela and some other things, maybe Cuba doesn t have much of a choice but to let them re-establish political warfare operations there, retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David L. McGinnis, one of the signatories, said in an interview with Reuters. Paul Hare, a former British ambassador to Cuba, sees Russia s renewed interest in Cuba as geostrategic. It s hard to see a business interest, as Cuba can t pay, said Hare, who now lectures at Boston University s Pardee School of Global Studies. The Russians will do just as much as they want to prop up Cuba so as to be a nuisance to the United States. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China urges cooperation after U.S. brands it a competitor;BEIJING (Reuters) - Cooperation between China and the United States will lead to a win-win outcome for both sides, but confrontation will bring mutual losses, China said on Tuesday, after the United States branded it a competitor seeking to challenge U.S. power. China hopes the United States can abandon its mentality of zero-sum games and seek common ground while respecting differences, China s U.S. embassy said on its website. On the basis of mutual respect, China is willing to exist peacefully with other countries including the United States, it said. But the U.S. ought to adapt to, and accept, China s development. China has always been a contributor to global development and a protector of the international order, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said later in Beijing. Cooperation is the only correct choice for China and the United States, she said, adding that it was not surprising for the two to have disagreements but that they should find constructive ways to handle them. China s economic and diplomatic activities around the world are broadly welcomed and no country or report will succeed in distorting the facts or deploying malicious slander, she told a daily news briefing. As the world s two largest economies, China and the United States have a responsibility to protect global peace and stability and promote global prosperity, Hua added. We urge the U.S. side to stop intentionally distorting China s strategic intentions. In a new national security strategy based on U.S. President Donald Trump s America First vision on Monday, the United States lumped China and Russia together as competitors seeking to erode U.S. security and prosperity. The singling out of China and Russia as revisionist powers comes despite Trump s own attempts to build strong relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping as the two sides seek to rein in North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. The new U.S. strategy reflects an unwillingness to accept the reality of China s rise, the state-run Global Times said in an editorial. But because of the enormous size and strength China has already achieved, they won t be able to suppress China, the widely-read newspaper said. However, Trump was basically reiterating his standard line on China rather than threatening any specific action, said Shi Yinhong, head of the Centre for American Studies at Beijing s Renmin University. Since he took office the Chinese government s line on Trump has always been: Don t really look at what he says, but look at what he does, said Shi, who has advised the government on diplomacy. So the strong words against China in the report the Chinese government won t really care about. A senior U.S. administration official said China was attempting to revise the global status quo through its aggression in the South China Sea. China says its expansion of islets in the South China Sea is for peaceful purposes only and it can, in any case, do what it wants, as it has irrefutable sovereignty there. The U.S. administration also warned that intellectual property theft by China was a national security problem. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Korean 'comfort woman' dies in Tokyo, age 95, as issue clouds Seoul-Tokyo ties;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Korean woman who was forced to work at a Japanese wartime military brothel and later lost a Supreme Court case seeking compensation from the Japanese government has died in Japan at the age of 95, a civic group said on Tuesday. The death of Song Shin-do leaves 32 women registered with the South Korean government as surviving comfort women , as those forced to work in wartime brothels are euphemistically known in Japan. Japan s 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean peninsula and the legacy of World War Two remain highly sensitive in South Korea. The issue of comfort women , is especially contentious. Song was born in Korea and said she was forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military for seven years in China, according to the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a Seoul-based civic group that supports the women, which confirmed her death. After the war, Song moved to Japan with a Japanese soldier who later left her. After that, she lived with an ethnic Korean man in Japan, the group said. In 1993, Song filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court seeking an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government. The case eventually went to Japan s Supreme Court, which dismissed her appeal in 2003 on the grounds that Japan had no legal obligation to pay for her suffering because a 20-year stature of limitations had expired, according to a summary by the Columbia Law School s Center for Korean Legal Studies. The South Korean civic group said Song had suffered for seven years as a sex slave for the Japanese military . Some Japanese ultra-conservatives deny that the women were forced to work in the brothels. Japan says the matter of compensation for the women was settled under a 1965 treaty with South Korea. In addition, Japan s then-chief cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono, apologized in a 1993 statement acknowledging authorities involvement in coercing the women. Two years later, Japan created a fund to make payments to the women from donations, budgeted money for their welfare support and sent letters of apology from successive premiers. Under a pact endorsed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in s predecessor, in 2015, Japan apologized again to the women and promised 1 billion yen ($9 million) for a fund to help them. The two governments agreed the issue would be irreversibly resolved if both fulfilled their obligations. But Moon has said the South Korean people did not accept the deal. Reminders of Japan s brutal rule are inflammatory for both sides. Japan wants South Korea to remove a statue near the Japanese consulate in Busan city commemorating Korean comfort women, as well as another near the Japanese embassy in Seoul. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;At least 65 media workers killed doing their jobs in 2017: Reporters Without Borders;BERLIN (Reuters) - At least 65 media workers around the world have been killed doing their jobs this year, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday. Among the dead were 50 professional journalists, seven citizen journalists and eight other media workers. The five most dangerous countries were Syria, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines. Of those killed, 35 died in regions where armed conflict is ongoing while 30 were killed outside of such areas. Thirty-nine of those killed were targeted for their journalistic work such as reporting on political corruption or organized crime while the other 26 were killed while working due to shelling and bomb attacks, for example. It s alarming that so many journalists were murdered outside of war zones, said Katja Gloger, a board member of Reporters Without Borders. In far too many countries perpetrators can assume they ll get off scot-free if they re violent towards media professionals, she added. The organization said more than 300 media workers were currently in prison, with around half of those in five countries, namely Turkey, China, Syria, Iran and Vietnam. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK electoral body fines Liberal Democrats over Brexit vote expenses;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s Electoral Commission said on Tuesday it has fined the Liberal Democrats party 18,000 pounds ($24,069) for breaching campaign finance rules in the 2016 European Union referendum. The party was fined 17,000 pounds for failing to provide acceptable invoices or receipts and 1,000 pounds because some payments were reported in aggregate rather than as individual payments, the commission said in a statement. The reporting requirements for parties and campaigners at referendums and elections are clear, that s why it is disappointing that the Liberal Democrats didn t follow them correctly, said Bob Posner, the Electoral Commission s director of political finance. ($1 = 0.7478 pounds) ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France, U.S. 'determined' to up pressure on Iran over ballistic weapons;PARIS (Reuters) - France and the United States are determined to vigorously raise pressure on Iran over its ballistic missile program, including possibly through sanctions, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said during a visit to Washington. Le Drian was in the American capital on Monday to meet U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster and U.S. President Donald Trump s special adviser Jared Kushner. Tensions between Iran and France have risen in recent months with both sides repeatedly trading barbs in public, including le Drian accusing Iran of hegemonic temptations in the region. Iran on Sunday criticized President Emmanuel Macron over his tough stance toward Tehran and said Paris would soon lose its international credibility if it blindly follows U.S. President Donald Trump. They didn t like the word, but I stand by it, le Drian told reporters. Iran s hegemonic temptations in the region is a matter of urgency because it s within the framework of getting peace in Iraq and Syria that we will stop this process. Iranian officials have been particularly aggrieved by France s criticism of its ballistic missile tests and suggestions of possible new sanctions over the program, which Tehran calls solely defensive in nature. Le Drian, who is due in Iran at the beginning of January, said he would tell them clearly of Paris concerns. We are fully determined to press very vigorously on Iran to stop the development of an increasingly significant ballistic capability , Le Drian said, reiterating that sanctions were possible. Macron, unlike Trump, has reaffirmed his country s commitment to the deal Iran signed in 2015 with world powers under which it curbed its disputed nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of most international sanctions. After talks with the U.S. officials, Le Drian said he believed that Washington was beginning to understand European messages on the need to maintain the accord. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran summons Swiss envoy over U.S.' 'irresponsible' missile claim: Tasnim;ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran summoned the Swiss ambassador on Tuesday to condemn what it called an irresponsible claim by the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. that Tehran supplied a missile fired at Saudi Arabia from Yemen on Nov. 4, Iran s Tasnim news agency reported. The Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in Tehran, where Washington has had no mission since 1980, when Iranian students took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iran s strong protest at (Nikki) Haley s baseless and provocative claim was conveyed to the Swiss ambassador, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin dismisses Trump's 'imperialist' security strategy;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump s new national security strategy as imperialist on Tuesday, but welcomed Washington s willingness to cooperate in some areas. A day earlier, Trump s administration had unveiled a security paper - based on the president s America First push - that accused Russia of interfering in other countries internal affairs. A quick read of the parts of the strategy that mention our country one way or another... (shows) an imperialist character, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. The paper, he added also showed an unwillingness to give up the idea of a unipolar world, moreover, an insistent unwillingness, disregard for a multipolar world. Trump s strategy paper did not include specific accusations from U.S. security agencies that Moscow meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. But it reflected a broader view long held by U.S. diplomats that Russia actively undermines American interests at home and abroad. We can not agree with an attitude that sees our country as a threat to the United States, Peskov said. At the same time, there are some modestly positive aspects, in particular, the readiness to cooperate in areas that correspond to American interests. Trump has frequently spoken of wanting to improve relations with President Vladimir Putin, even though Russia has frustrated U.S. policy in Syria and Ukraine and done little to help Washington in its standoff with North Korea. In a speech laying out his strategy on Monday, Trump said he had received a call from Putin a day earlier to thank him for providing U.S. intelligence that helped thwart a bomb attack in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. A U.S. Justice Department investigation is looking into whether Trump campaign aides colluded with Russia, something that Moscow and Trump both deny. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam orders prosecution of oil firm official in corruption crackdown;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnamese police have ordered the prosecution of an official at scandal-hit state energy firm PetroVietnam over financial losses, the Ministry of Public Security said on Tuesday. PetroVietnam is at the heart of a sweeping high-level corruption crackdown in the communist state. The ministry said in a statement that Phan Dinh Duc, a member of PetroVietnam s board of directors, would face prosecution on suspicion of violation of state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences . PetroVietnam told Reuters in an emailed statement it would cooperate with the authorities in the investigation. Former PetroVietnam chairman Dinh La Thang, 56, was arrested on Dec 8. Thang, also a former member of Vietnam s politburo, was the most senior executive arrested in the scandal. Police have said they are investigating alleged violations of state rules at PetroVietnam, which resulted in a loss of an 800 billion dong ($35.2 million) investment in local lender Ocean Bank. The corruption crackdown made global headlines in August when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former chairman of PetroVietnam s construction unit, in Berlin after he applied for asylum there. Vietnamese police denied he had been kidnapped saying he had turned himself in and returned to Vietnam, where he is in detention. The Communist Party has said Thanh will go on trial next month. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brace for a UK election next year, opposition Labour leader Corbyn says;LONDON (Reuters) - Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said there is likely to be a British national election next year but that he opposes a second referendum on European Union membership, Grazia magazine reported. Prime Minister Theresa May lost her Conservative Party its majority in parliament by betting on a snap election in June, weakening her hand in Brexit negotiations. Labour by contrast did well at the election, making a net gain of 30 seats in Britain s 650-seat parliament. Corbyn, a lifelong socialist, who has repeatedly claimed that he will win power, said there would soon be another election. There will probably be another election in the next 12 months, he was quoted by Grazia as saying. He predicted his Labour Party would win. I m ready to be Prime Minister tomorrow, Corbyn said. Corbyn, who said he voted against EU membership in a 1975 referendum but voted for membership in 2016, said he opposed former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair s proposal for another referendum on membership. Some were extremely irresponsible in what they did and said, but we have to recognize it was the largest participation of people in an electoral process ever in Britain and they chose to leave, Corbyn was quoted as saying. I think we should continue putting pressure on the government to allow a transition period to develop, because at the moment we re in danger of getting into a complete mess in March 2019, Corbyn said, referring to the date Britain is due to leave the EU. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. Embassy in Turkey says visa appointments only available from Jan 2019;ANKARA (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy in Turkey said on Tuesday that visa appointments were only available from early 2019, due to an accumulation of applications following a diplomatic spat that prompted the two NATO allies to mutually suspend granting visas. In spite of long wait times, the U.S. Mission to Turkey continues to process non-immigrant visas. Appointments are available for January 2019, and applicants can as always choose to apply outside of Turkey, it said. The United States in November resumed limited visa services in Turkey after getting what it said were assurances about the safety of its local staff. Washington halted issuing visas at its missions in Turkey in October, citing the detention of two local employees. Turkey soon matched the move, relaxing a visa ban of its own that was instituted in retaliation against Washington. However, Turkey said it had not offered assurances. In May, a translator at the U.S. consulate in the southern province of Adana was arrested and, more recently, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worker was detained in Istanbul. Both are accused of links to last year s coup attempt. The U.S. embassy has said the accusations are baseless. Turkey has been angered by what it sees as U.S. reluctance to hand over the cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1999 and whom Ankara blames for orchestrating the coup. U.S. officials have said courts require sufficient evidence to order his extradition. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines withdraws bid for U.S. grant, says unrelated to rights;MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Tuesday it has withdrawn an application for a second grant from a U.S. aid agency after getting $434 million in 2010 aimed at reducing poverty, but that the move had nothing to do with Western criticism of its human rights record. Projects financed by the aid agency, the Millennium Challenge Corp (MCC), require counterpart funding from the Philippines, but presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the government wanted to channel resources instead into rebuilding Marawi, a southern city devastated in fighting between the military and Islamist insurgents this year. It was deemed that for the time being, we will withdraw our application for the second cycle and we will focus instead on the rebuilding of Marawi, Roque said. The issue of aid has been contentious in the Philippines, with President Rodrigo Duterte objecting to donors attaching conditions, and especially to any expressions of concern about human rights. Nearly 4,000 people have been killed by police since June last year. Police reject allegations they are executing drug users and dealers and say killings were all in self-defence. Several thousand other people have been killed in mysterious circumstances, with the police usually attributing those deaths to gang violence. In August, the MCC upheld the eligibility of the Philippines to secure a fresh grant, after initially deferring a vote amid concern about Duterte s war on drugs. The Southeast Asian country graft-fighting efforts are also in the spotlight after it fell short of the control of corruption target on the MCC s scorecard. But Roque was quick to point out that the decision to withdraw the application for another MCC grant had nothing to do with such issues. He said the government would probably apply for another MCC grant in future. This year, his government rejected about 250 million euros ($295 million) in European Union grants. Officials of the MCC were not available for comment. The U.S. embassy in Manila, without mentioning the Philippines withdrawal of its grant application, said the MCC was pleased with its achievements in the Philippines. Both the MCC and the United States are proud of our longstanding, positive relationship with the Philippines, said embassy press attache Molly Koscina. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Palestinian billionaire Masri back in Jordan after release in Saudi Arabia: family source;AMMAN (Reuters) - Palestinian billionaire Sabih al-Masri, Jordan s most powerful businessman, returned to Amman on Tuesday after his release in Saudi Arabia secured when he agreed to pay an unspecified amount of money, sources close to the matter said. Masri was detained for questioning last week over his alleged links with Saudi business partners among royals, ministers and officials who were rounded up last month in an unprecedented anti-corruption purge. Masri, chairman of Amman-based Arab Bank, Jordan s largest lender, was taken into custody just before he was planning to leave Saudi Arabia after chairing meetings of Saudi companies he owns, informed sources said. He is at his home now in Amman, said a family source. Masri later held meetings in the bank with senior officials. Arab Bank shares, which account for almost a quarter of the $24 billion market capitalization of the Amman exchange, ended 1.48 percent higher as investors reacted favorably to the news of his return. Masri has since taking the helm at Arab Bank in 2012 helped boost confidence in one of the Arab world s largest private financial institutions. The bank, first established in Jerusalem in 1930 and one of the major Middle East financial institutions, has a balance sheet of more than $45 billion and has earned a reputation of resilience in the face of regional political turmoil. Masri, a Saudi citizen, said from his home in Riyadh on Sunday after his release that the Saudi authorities had accorded him all respect . [L8N1OH05J] Saudi officials have not commented on his detention. Jordanian authorities privately said King Abdullah intervened to secure his release. A source familiar with the matter said Masri was freed after reaching a settlement to return an unspecified amount of money. There was no comment from the Masri family. There is no way Masri has been freed without agreeing to some settlement. The Saudis are telling anyone who has made huge sums of money that they have to pay back some of that wealth, the source said. Another source said Riyadh saw these settlements not as blackmail but an obligation to reimburse money taken illegally from the world s top oil producer over several decades. Saudi authorities have already succeeded in reaching financial settlements with dozens of royal family members, senior officials and wealthy businessmen in the crackdown spearheaded by powerful Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Around 200 people in total have been questioned in the crackdown, authorities said last month. Saudi authorities estimate they could eventually recover around $100 billion of illicitly held funds. They have been working on reaching agreements with suspects detained at Riyadh s luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel, asking them to hand over assets and cash in return for their freedom. Masri s detention unnerved business circles in Jordan and the Palestinian Territories as well as many Arab magnates across the Middle East who have made fortunes in Saudi Arabia, according to several investors who asked not to be named. His multi-billion-dollar investments in hotels and banking in Jordan represent a cornerstone of the economy of the kingdom and he is by far the biggest investor in Palestinian areas. A member of a prominent merchant family from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Masri amassed a fortune by joining with influential Saudi royals in a catering business to supply troops during the U.S.-led military operation to retake Kuwait from Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Confidants said Masri had been warned not to travel to the Saudi capital after mass arrests of Saudi royals, ministers and businessmen in early November. Officials and businessmen had warned of the reverberations of the crisis on an aid-strapped Jordanian economy already plagued by high debts. Saudi Arabia is a major donor. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romania's upper house approves judiciary bill critics say is too political;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to enact judicial changes that critics say will undermine graft investigations by weakening the president s oversight. The move brings the country, ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, in line with eastern European Union peers Hungary and Poland in defying EU concerns over the independence of judiciaries and the rule of law. Ruling Social Democrat senators approved the bill by 80-0 with all opposition groupings boycotting the vote. It now goes to the president, who has expresses scepticism about it. He can sign it or send it back for more discussion. The opposition, however, has already said it plans to contest the bill at the constitutional court, which could prolong its adoption by early 2018. Contested elements of the bill include weakening the president s right to vet prosecutor candidates, as well as amending the definition of prosecutors activity to exclude the word independent. The president can refuse to appoint (prosecutors) only once..., reads the bill. Prosecutors carry out their work according to the principles of legality, impartiality, hierarchical control, under the authority of justice minister. Prosecutors are independent in proposing solutions, the bill stipulates. Critics say this amounts to political control. The bill also refers to the finance ministry s obligation to recoup losses triggered by a judicial error from the judge who issued the sentence, instead of from state funds. Experts have said this would could distort court judgments. The bill is are part of a wider judiciary overhaul that has triggered street protests across the country in recent weeks. Romanian prosecutors have investigated thousands of public officials in an unprecedented crackdown on graft in recent years. The lower house and senate speakers, both leaders of the ruling coalition, are on trial in separate cases. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May urges Trump to bring forward proposals on Middle East peace;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May urged Donald Trump to bring forward proposals on achieving peace in the Middle East after the U.S. president recognised Jerusalem as Israel s capital. May spoke to Trump by telephone on Tuesday. They discussed the different positions we took on the recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and agreed on the importance of the US bringing forward new proposals for peace and the international community supporting these efforts, a spokesman for May said. The Prime Minister updated the President on the recent good progress of the Brexit negotiations, and the President set out the progress he had made on his economic agenda, May s spokesman said. They agreed on the importance of a swift post-Brexit bilateral trade deal, the spokesman said. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi PM says will take action if any citizen is attacked in Kurdistan;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday he would take action if any citizen was attacked in the country s northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, state television reporter. We would not stand idly by if any citizen were attacked, the broadcaster quoted him as saying in a weekly news conference. Three people were killed and more than 80 wounded, local officials said earlier, as Kurdish protesters angered by years of austerity and unpaid public-sector salaries took to the streets in a second day of violent unrest amid tensions with Baghdad. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LEBRON JAMES Brags About Being “Well-Spoken”…Proceeds To Use Vocabulary Of A 4-Yr-Old To Trash President Trump;Is anyone else sick and tired of overpaid athletes who can t even formulate a proper sentence, criticizing President Donald J. Trump, one of the most successful businessmen of our time?After taking a stand for harmony and togetherness by wearing black sneaker and white sneakers with the word Equality written on them, to a game in Washington, DC, on Sunday night, NBA star LeBron James took a decidedly less conciliatory tone, in his post-game comments about President Trump.James said, Obviously I ve been very outspoken and well-spoken about the situation that s going on at the helm here, and we re not going to let one person dictate us, us as Americans, how beautiful and how powerful we are as a people. It certainly was nice of James to add that he s been well-spoken, in addition to being outspoken.The three-time NBA champ and future Hall of Famer continued, No matter the skin color, no matter the race, no matter who you are, I think we all have to understand that having equal rights and being able to stand for something and speak for something and keeping the conversation going. James did not elaborate on what rights he felt were in danger, nor did he explain exactly what the conversation was, or where it was going.However, James did speak from a place of unrivaled authority on the subject of being outspoken. In many ways, James has been the anti-Jordan, whereas MJ avoided political entanglements whenever possible, at least since 2012, James has embraced them whenever and wherever possible.James appeared in a photo with his teammates wearing hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager shot to death by George Zimmerman in 2012. James wore an I Can t Breathe t-shirt to warm-ups at Madison Square Garden to show support for Eric Garner, a New York man who died after an altercation with police in 2014.The 13-time All-Star has also held nothing back when it comes to President Trump. In September, James called President Trump a bum, after the president rescinded a White House invite to Golden State guard Steph Curry. ;left-news;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WE GUESS SHE SHOWED ‘EM! Lefty Woman Rips Off Her Top in House Gallery During Protest To Stop Tax Vote [Video];We can t imagine congressmen thinking we d better not pass this bill. Some woman might take her top off. House protesters gone wild: woman takes her top off in the gallery of the House protesting tax vote. Anna Palmer (@apalmerdc) December 19, 2017Reporter Jonathan Allen chimed in that she still had her bra on LOL!Woman protesting tax cut bill takes her top off (still wearing bra) Jonathan Allen (@jonallendc) December 19, 2017This reminds us of the topless women who showed up at Trump s polling place on the morning of the election:Does this tactic ever work? We think not!Fox News reports:The House on Tuesday approved a massive tax overhaul that would usher in steep rate cuts for American companies, double the deduction millions of families claim on their annual returns and make a host of other changes as part of the biggest rewrite of the tax code since the Reagan administration.The bill passed on a 227-203 vote.Here's the moment Speaker Paul Ryan banged a gavel to signify that the House approved the tax reform bill https://t.co/E82gFFdTvV pic.twitter.com/SMxAuwJDfz CNN (@CNN) December 19, 2017The $1.5 trillion bill, presuming it clears the Senate as expected, would hand President Trump his first major legislative victory just days before year s end and the congressional recess.WATCH: House passes GOP tax bill by 227-203 vote. Senate expected to vote this evening. pic.twitter.com/ymdgA664WW NBC News (@NBCNews) December 19, 2017A woman shouts you re lying then Republicans shout throw her ass out WATCH: House passes GOP tax bill by 227-203 vote. Senate expected to vote this evening. pic.twitter.com/ymdgA664WW NBC News (@NBCNews) December 19, 2017;left-news;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHOA! PAUL RYAN Channels Trump…Blasts POLITICO During Press Conference Over #FakeNews Story About His Retirement [VIDEO];House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) on Tuesday pushed back against a report from last week that speculated he would not seek reelection in 2018.Ryan spoke at the weekly House Republican leadership press conference and took questions on an array of issues ranging from the House tax bill to speculation that he will not seek reelection in 2018.The speaker was asked about a Politico report that speculated he wouldn t run for reelection, prompting Ryan to push back in a visibly irritated manner. Oh, look. I m not going anywhere anytime soon and let s leave that thing at that, Ryan said. I actually think that piece was very irresponsible. It was a speculative piece and it was faulty speculation, and I want to put it to rest. Watch:Last week, Politico reported they interviewed approximately three dozen people, including fellow lawmakers, congressional and administration aides, conservative intellectuals and Republican lobbyists, about Ryan s future in Congress and whether he would seek reelection. None of the people said they believed Ryan would stay in Congress past 2018, according to the report.The House Republican Conference held a closed-door meeting prior to the press conference where Ryan reportedly first clarified he wasn t going anywhere.Politico reporter Rachael Bade, who co-wrote the initial report, tweeted that Ryan told conference he s not going anywhere and got a standing ovation. .@SpeakerRyan told conference he s not going anywhere and got a standing ovation. Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) December 19, 2017 WFB ;left-news;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;THE LEFT Freaks Out at Trump’s Water Drinking Skills…”A sure sign of dementia” [Video];The media has become unhinged again at the sight of President Trump drinking water. They re even saying his technique proves he s suffering from dementia. Nope, they can t focus on what a great speech he delivered about our national security. They only want to point out that he drank his water with two hands .Oh Lordy!The Cut reports: President Trump delivered a speech in which he outlined a new America First national security strategy a daunting task which clearly left him parched, because a few minutes in, the president paused to lift a small glass to his mouth with both hands, and sip from it like a tiny, woodland creature lapping from a stream:just an extremely normal way to drink out of a small glass of water pic.twitter.com/GmBbpubBkj Matt Binder (@MattBinder) December 18, 2017Despite having mocked Senator Marco Rubio for the water break he took during his 2013 response to the State of the Union, this is not the first time Trump has become overwhelmed by thirst during a speech. In November, while discussing the U.S. trade deficit, he paused to take an extremely natural swig of Fiji water:pic.twitter.com/0L44F0EFB5 Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) November 15, 2017JUST A SAMPLING OF THE RIDICULOUS TWEETS FROM THE LEFT:;left-news;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Danish government wins backing for 2018 budget, defusing crisis;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark s right-wing government secured backing from a junior partner for the 2018 budget on Tuesday, defusing a crisis that had threatened to bring down the minority coalition. The Liberal Alliance (LA), part of the three-way coalition led by Prime Minister Lokke Rasmussen s Liberals, said it would support the budget in parliament and agreed to postpone the negotiations on tax and immigration reforms it wants until January. The anti-immigrant Danish People s Party (DF), whose support the government needs to pass laws, gave its backing on Dec. 8 for the 2018 budget, but the LA had said it still wanted an agreement on tax cuts. I am willing to make another attempt to secure an ambitious tax reform and a new modern immigration policy, foreign minister and Liberal Alliance leader Anders Samuelsen said at a press conference. The budget will be passed at a parliament vote on Friday, he said. Failure to secure backing from LA could have forced Rasmussen either to hand power to the Social Democrat-led opposition or call a snap election. Tax cuts have been on the right-leaning government s wish list for a long time, but pro-welfare DF has been less eager to back that part of the government s policies. The 2018 budget deal includes among other things increased spending on health and elderly care and on infrastructure. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egyptian army officer jailed after announcing presidential candidacy: lawyer, family;CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian army officer was sentenced to six years in prison on Tuesday after announcing his intention last month to run in the country s 2018 presidential election, his lawyer and wife said. A military court found Colonel Ahmed Konsowa, 42, guilty of expressing political opinions as a serving military officer, his lawyer Asaad Heikal told Reuters. Konsowa appeared in a video last month announcing that he intended to run against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the vote, which will take place early next year. He said he had submitted his resignation from the army in 2014 but it had not been accepted. Konsowa s wife Rasha Safwat said they would appeal against the verdict. Sisi, the former commander of Egypt s military, has yet to announce he will seek reelection, but is widely expected to do so. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. asks U.N. to blacklist 10 ships over banned North Korea cargo;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has proposed that the United Nations Security Council blacklist 10 ships for transporting banned items from North Korea, according to documents seen by Reuters on Tuesday. The vessels are accused of conducting illegal ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels or illegally transporting North Korean coal to other countries for exports, the United States said in its proposal. If none of the 15 members of the Security Council s North Korea sanctions committee object to the ships being designated by Thursday afternoon, the U.S. proposal will be approved. Countries are required to ban blacklisted ships from entering their ports. Four ships were designated for carrying coal from North Korea by the council s North Korea sanctions committee in October. North Korea is under a U.N. arms embargo and the Security Council has banned trade in exports such as coal, textiles, seafood, iron and other minerals to choke funding for Pyongyang s missile and nuclear programs. In September, the council put a cap of 2 million barrels a year on refined petroleum products exports to North Korea. The ships proposed to be blacklisted are: Xin Sheng Hai (flag unknown);;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. to move 10,000 migrants from Libya in 2018;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The United Nations plans to move up to 10,000 illegal migrants from Libya next year, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday, in a bid to relieve the plight of thousands stranded in deteriorating conditions in detention centers there. Libya is the main departure point for migrants fleeing poverty or war to reach Europe by boat as smugglers exploit turmoil gripping the country since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Illegal migrant arrivals in Italy have fallen by two-thirds since July from the same period last year since the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Italy s partner, cut back human smuggling at one major hub. Italy also helps in the Libyan coast guard s operations. But activists say the push has led to worsening of conditions in detention centers, where Human Rights Watch and other groups say migrants face overcrowding, abuse, lack of medical facilities and a shortage of food. The U.N. is repatriating migrants to African countries willing to take them back but it was also in talks with European countries and Canada to take in some refugees, Roberto Mignone, chief mission of the U.N. refugee agency, said. This week we are going to send out of Libya 350 refugees, until the end of January we will send out at least 1000, he told Reuters in an interview. In 2018 we are planning to send out of Libya between 5,000 to 10,000 refugees. We give priority to women, children, elderly, disabled, persons who suffered very seriously. A total of 44,306 had been registered as refugees and asylum seekers in Libya, he said. Libyan officials deny abuses and say they are simply overwhelmed by a surge in arrivals amid little funds to accommodate them as public finances have been hit by a loss of oil revenues. The issue of repatriations has got higher attention abroad since CNN published a video showing what it said was an auction of men offered to Libyan buyers as farmhands and sold for $400. In November, Libya s U.N.-backed government said it was investigating the report and promised to bring the perpetrators to justice. But it has struggled to make an impact as the country is effect controlled by armed factions. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. blames North Korea for 'WannaCry' cyber attack; (In 13th paragraph of Dec. 18 item, corrects to indicate that a separate attack was launched in June that affected FedEx computers) By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration has publicly blamed North Korea for unleashing the so-called WannaCry cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe earlier this year. The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible, Tom Bossert, homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump, wrote in a piece published on Monday night in the Wall Street Journal. North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious, Bossert wrote. WannaCry was indiscriminately reckless. The White House was expected to follow up on Tuesday with a more formal statement blaming Pyongyang, according to a senior administration official. The U.S. government has assessed with a very high level of confidence that a hacking entity known as Lazarus Group, which works on behalf of the North Korean government, carried out the WannaCry attack, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the government s investigation. Lazarus Group is widely believed by security researchers and U.S. officials to have been responsible for the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment that destroyed files, leaked corporate communications online and led to the departure of several top studio executives. North Korean government representatives could not be immediately reached for comment. The country has repeatedly denied responsibility for WannaCry and called other allegations about cyber attacks a smear campaign. Washington s public condemnation does not include any indictments or name specific individuals, the administration official said, adding the shaming was designed to hold Pyongyang accountable for its actions and erode and undercut their ability to launch attacks. The accusation comes as worries mount about North Korea s hacking capabilities and its nuclear weapons program. Many security researchers, including the cyber firm Symantec , as well as the British government, have already concluded that North Korea was likely behind the WannaCry attack, which quickly unfurled across the globe in May to infect more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries. Considered unprecedented in scale at the time, WannaCry knocked British hospitals offline, forcing thousands of patients to reschedule appointments and disrupted infrastructure and businesses around the world. The attack originally looked like a ransomware campaign, where hackers encrypt a targeted computer and demand payment to recover files. Some experts later concluded the ransom threat may have been a distraction intended to disguise a more destructive intent. A separate but similar attack in June, known as NotPetya, hit Ukraine and other nations and caused an estimated $300 million in damages to international shipper FedEx. Some researchers have said they believed WannaCry was deployed accidentally by North Korea as hackers were developing the code. The senior administration official declined to comment about whether U.S. intelligence was able to discern if the attack was deliberate. What we see is a continued pattern of North Korea misbehaving, whether destructive cyber attacks, hacking for financial gain, or targeting infrastructure around the globe, the official said. WannaCry was made possible by a flaw in Microsoft s Windows software, which was discovered by the U.S. National Security Agency and then used by the NSA to build a hacking tool for its own use. In a devastating NSA security breach, that hacking tool and others were published online by the Shadow Brokers, a mysterious group that regularly posts cryptic taunts toward the U.S. government. The fact that WannaCry was made possible by the NSA led to sharp criticism from Microsoft President Brad Smith and others who believe the NSA should disclose vulnerabilities it finds so that they can be fixed, rather then hoarding that knowledge to carry out attacks. Smith said WannaCry provided yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. U.S. officials have pushed back on those assertions, saying the administration discloses most computer flaws that government agencies detect. Last month, the White House published its rules for deciding whether to disclose cyber security flaws or keep them secret as part of an effort to be more transparent about the inter-agency process involved in weighing disclosure. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three people killed as protests turn violent again in Iraqi Kurdistan;SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Three people were killed and more than 80 wounded on Tuesday when Kurdish demonstrators joined a second day of protests against years of austerity and unpaid public sector salaries amid tensions between their region and Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said later he would take action if any citizen were assaulted in Iraq s northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. About 1,250 protesters, mostly teachers, students, and civil servants, protested in the city of Sulaimaniya.The Sulaimaniya provincial council told Reuters three people were killed during clashes with Kurdish security forces in the town of Ranya. Regional health officials said six people were injured when the crowd was shot at with rubber bullets and sprayed with tear gas by security forces. Protesters also attacked several offices of the main political parties in Sulaimaniya province on Tuesday. Acknowledging that protesters had a legitimate right to demonstrate, Iraq s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) nonetheless said the targeting of government offices and party headquarters in Sulaimaniya province was unacceptable. We are concerned with the uncivil actions and the violence used today in a number of cities and towns across Kurdistan, a KRG statement said. It warned that relevant authorities could intervene to prevent further damage after several people were left injured and property was damaged. Later on Tuesday, Kurdish Asayish security forces raided the offices of Kurdish private broadcast NRT in Sulaimaniya, and took the channel off the air, its head told Reuters. The channel was no longer accessible. NRT s chief also said the broadcaster s founder, Shaswar Abdulwahid, was arrested as he landed at Sulaimaniya airport on Tuesday evening. Last month, Abdulwahid said he sold the broadcaster after launching a new political opposition movement, the New Generation. He had agitated against September s referendum on Kurdish independence, leading NRT s offices to be attacked by a mob in August. At a weekly news conference, Abadi called on the KRG to respect peaceful protests. We will not just stand by and watch if citizens are oppressed. The Iraqi citizen is an Iraqi citizen everywhere and if there is an attack or violation against citizens in a way that contradicts the constitution we will punish those responsible, Abadi said. We want there to be freedom for expression and assembly for citizens in the Kurdistan region. Local officials imposed a curfew starting at 7pm (1600 GMT) in several towns including Kifri, Takya and Chamchammal in Sulaimaniya province. In Chamchammal, the curfew will last throughout the day on Wednesday. Tension has been high in the region since the central government in Baghdad imposed tough measures when the KRG unilaterally held an independence referendum on Sept. 25 and Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede. The move, in defiance of Baghdad, also alarmed neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. For the second day, protesters demanded that the KRG quit. They set fire to the offices of Kurdish political parties in the towns of Koya, Kifri and Ranya. Officials have closed roads around Sulaimaniya, a Reuters witness said. Security sources said the road between Darbandikhan and Sulaimaniya, which connects the city to southern towns where there are major protests, has been closed. On Monday, Kurdish political offices were also set ablaze in Sulaimaniya province, including a building belonging to the ruling Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and one belonging to its coalition partner in government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). At least 3,000 Kurdish demonstrators had gathered in Sulaimaniya for the protests on Monday against the KRG. Stringent economic measures taken after the Baghdad central government slashed funds to the KRG in 2014 when it built its own oil pipeline to Turkey in pursuit of economic independence have led to sporadic protests over unpaid civil servant salaries in the last three years. After the September referendum, the Iraqi government responded by seizing Kurdish-held Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French ministers tell anti-graft agency: no law revamp for now;PARIS (Reuters) - Two French ministers said on Tuesday they had no immediate plans to overhaul legislation to make it easier to target corrupt foreign firms - a change demanded by their own anti-graft agency. Charles Duchaine, head of the new AFA anti-graft body, told Reuters last week that the current law, brought in just a year ago, had to be re-drawn as it gave him almost no powers to pursue foreign companies. He repeated the point at a conference on Tuesday. But Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet responded at the same event that she wanted to see how the Sapin 2 legislation worked on the ground before making any alterations. We re not going to rewrite the law every morning, she said. Budget Minister Gerald Darmanin told the conference: It is important that the agency first gets on with its work. Under the law, the AFA agency can only target public bodies and companies with more than 500 employees and turnover of above 100 million euros ($118.19 million), or subsidiaries of foreign companies that are headquartered in France and meet those two criteria. AFA s work has got off to a slow start. It was created by the Sapin 2 act a year ago but only launched its first investigations in October. The ministers said there was funding to increase the number of AFA agents to 70 from 50. ($1 = 0.8461 euros) ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ten bodies found in mass grave in Myanmar: army newspaper;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar authorities have found 10 bodies buried in a mass grave on the edge of a village in Rakhine State, the military-run newspaper Myawady reported on Tuesday, a day after the army said it had launched an investigation at the site. About 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Rakhine state and sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh in recent months after a violent crackdown there by Myanmar security forces in response to attacks by militants. Rights monitors have accused troops of atrocities, including killings, mass rape and arson during the crackdown. The United States has said it amounted to ethnic cleansing . The Myanmar military has said its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities. A team including police, a local administrator, judge and doctor had examined the grave site, at the village of Inn Din, about 50 km (30 miles) north of the state capital Sittwe, on Tuesday and discovered 10 unidentified bodies, Myawady said. This group is continuing the process of investigation to uncover the truth, the report said. Military officials were not immediately available for further comment. The discovery of a mass grave near a cemetery in the village was announced in a statement on the army commander-in-chief s official Facebook page on Monday. The village is in Maungdaw township, one of the areas worst affected by the violence that has prompted the United Nations top human rights official to allege that Myanmar s security forces may have committed genocide against the Rohingya. Myanmar s armed forces launched what they termed clearance operations in northern Rakhine, where many of the stateless Muslim minority lived, after Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base on Aug. 25. Myanmar s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced fierce international criticism for failing to do more to protect the Rohingya. The civilian government, which has no control over the military, has said the army was engaged in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. It has promised to investigate allegations of abuses in Rakhine if it is given evidence. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Multi-stage cyber attacks net North Korea millions in virtual currencies: researchers;SINGAPORE/SEOUL (Reuters) - A series of recent cyber attacks has netted North Korean hackers millions of dollars in virtual currencies like bitcoin, with more attacks expected as international sanctions drive the country to seek new sources of cash, researchers say. North Korea s government-backed hackers have been blamed for a rising number of cyber attacks, including the so-called WannaCry cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe this year. Analysts say the explosive growth in the value of bitcoin makes it and other cryptocurrencies an attractive target for North Korea, which has become increasingly isolated under international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons and missile programs. Bitcoin was trading at over $19,104 per bitcoin at one point on Tuesday, up from less than $1,000 at the beginning of 2017, according to Coinmarketcap.com. Researchers in South Korea, which hosts some of the world s busiest virtual currency exchanges and accounts for 15 to 25 percent of world bitcoin trading on any given day, say attacks this year on exchanges like Bithumb, Coinis, and Youbit have the digital fingerprints of hackers from North Korea. The researchers findings have not been independently verified. North Korea has rejected accusations that it has been involved in hacking. A spokesman for South Korea s Unification Ministry, which handles North Korean affairs, said on Monday the government was considering countermeasures , including more sanctions, over the cyber attacks. Representatives of Bithumb and Coinis declined to comment. On Monday, a Youbit spokeswoman told Reuters the company had not been targeted by North Korean hackers, and on Tuesday the company announced it had suffered another cyber attack that cost it 17 percent of its assets, forcing the exchange to halt operations and file for bankruptcy. The hackers behind the second attack were not identified, but one cyber security researcher, who said he was not authorized to speak about the matter as it was being investigated, said there were similarities between the Youbit hack reported on Tuesday and the earlier attack on the company, which has been linked to North Korea. Another researcher, who worked with Youbit after the first hack in April, said the company has since experienced a consistent string of attacks that used malicious code previously used by North Korea. South Korea s intelligence service reported that some 7.6 billion won ($7 million) worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen in those previous attacks on multiple exchanges, according to South Korea s Chosun Ilbo newspaper. But that amount could now be worth about 90 billion Korean won ($82 million), Moonbeom Park, a researcher at the Korea Internet and Security Agency, told Reuters. Malicious code used in attacks over the summer was virtually identical to previous attacks connected to North Korea, he said. The attacks this year began by targeting the companies themselves, stealing customers personal information, including names and email addresses, Park said. Some of those customers were then targeted with so-called spearphishing emails - infected emails designed to look as if they were from South Korea s taxation agency, the Korean National Tax Service, he said. Other researchers said the attackers had impersonated other official bodies. The emails told the recipient that the agency was about to conduct a tax investigation of the user. An attached document, however, was a Korean-language file infected with a Trojan Horse program that would exploit a vulnerability in the Hanword Korean-language word processing software to allow the hackers to remotely control the user s computer, Park said. From there, the attackers would access the user s bitcoin wallet either on the computer, or on the bitcoin exchange s server, he said. Other researchers said the exchanges were also attacked using fake email accounts. Cristiana Brafman Kittner, principal analyst at the cybersecurity firm FireEye, said she could not confirm whether North Korea had actually stolen any virtual currencies, but said hackers linked to it had targeted multiple exchanges over the past six to nine months. We believe that some of the criminal activity we are observing originating from North Korea is a result of the regime looking for alternative sources of revenue, she said. North Korean cyber threat actors present an immediate risk to the financial services sector worldwide. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria promises to consult Rome on passport offer to Italians;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria s new coalition government will press ahead with plans to offer citizenship to the German-speaking minority in northern Italy, it said on Tuesday, but pledged to consult Rome on the project, which risks reopening century-old wounds. The dual-citizenship plan for the northern Italian region of Alto Adige was included in a 180-page coalition agreement published over the weekend by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz s conservative People s Party and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO). Alto Adige was ceded to Italy by Austria after World War One. Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini tried to settle thousands of ethnic Italians there in the 1920s, but German-speakers still outnumber Italians by around two to one. Italian and German speakers have their own schools and largely frequent different bars and restaurants. But the region enjoys enormous autonomy and generous handouts from Rome, which have helped dampen secessionist sentiment in the province. Kurz has said the scheme, which the FPO has long pushed for, is only meant to encourage cooperation between European states. That is something that of course we only plan to do in close cooperation with Italy and with the government in Rome, Kurz told a joint news conference with FPO chief and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache after their government s first cabinet meeting. Italian politicians have already roundly condemned Austria s plan, calling it a gesture to nationalism and saying it will threaten the delicate ethnic balance in Alto Adige, also known as South Tyrol. Italy s foreign minister was quoted by Italian news agency ANSA on Monday as saying that discussing the issue would be a conversation that requires enormous delicacy . Kurz, however, downplayed any tension. We have excellent contact with Rome. I am a personal friend of the head of government. I am a personal friend of the foreign minister s, said Kurz, who was foreign minister until his new government was sworn in. In our government program, we have complied with a wish of South Tyroleans that was expressed by all parties in South Tyrol and that above all was also expressed by the South Tyrolean provincial government, Kurz said. Strache said Italy already has a similar arrangement in place for Italian minorities in Slovenia and Croatia. The Italian Foreign Ministry website lays out conditions under which people who lost their citizenship when some territories became part of Yugoslavia can apply for an Italian passport. The issue did not feature in Austria s parliamentary election in October, which Kurz s party won with a hard line on immigration that often overlapped with the FPO s. Austria took in a large number of asylum seekers during Europe s migration crisis. Both parties pledged to stop another such influx. In Austrian Tyrol, however, where maps of the province often still show the region to the south that is now part of Italy, it is still an emotional issue. That province, a stronghold of Kurz s conservatives, is due to hold an election for the local parliament in February. The head of Alto Adige s government, Arno Kompatscher, said he supported the plan as long as it was put in a European context of uniting nations rather than dividing them - a possible reference to any objections Italy might have. It therefore has nothing to do with secession or moving borders or anything else. Rather it has to do with this expression of personal connection (to Austria) and the debate should take place in this context, he told a news conference. The criteria on which citizenship would be offered were still open and should be the subject of discussions between Austria and Italy, he added.. Austria and Italy have clashed repeatedly in recent years over Austria s threat to introduce controls at the Brenner crossing, a vital transport link on their shared border, if the number of migrants arriving there from Italy rises sharply. So far that has not happened. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Bolivia's bellwether city, anger at Morales grows;EL ALTO, Bolivia (Reuters) - In El Alto, a former shantytown high in the Andes that has mushroomed into Bolivia s second-largest city, students and professors are growing disenchanted with Evo Morales, the leftist president their protests helped put in power a decade ago. A sprawling settlement of nearly 1 million people on Bolivia s dusty Altiplano plateau, El Alto is a larger and more politically radical extension of the capital La Paz, which sits hundreds of meters below in a canyon. An uprising here in 2003 over the use of revenues from the poor South American nation s natural gas reserves helped force the resignation of U.S.-backed President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. Some 60 residents were killed in the upheaval. The protests were led in part from the campus of El Alto s public university UPEA and opened the way for Morales to take power as Bolivia s first indigenous president three years later. Now, students and teachers feel forgotten. Demonstrations, some violent, have broken out in recent weeks over what teachers and students call insufficient funding for the school, a potential obstacle in Morales plan to win a fourth term in 2019. The government has a pending debt, said Ramiro Limachi Apaza, director of UPEA S communications department and an El Alto resident who protested alongside Morales in 2003 in the so-called gas wars. Morales fulfilled protesters demands to nationalize the gas industry after taking office in 2006, promising to spread natural resource wealth in the country of more than 10 million, long one of Latin America s poorest. Bolivia s economy grew and thousands of Aymara peasants moved to El Alto. While El Alto generally remains poor, some immigrants became wealthy merchants, building glamorous, colorful homes known as cholets and hosting lavish parties. Lines of cable cars, inaugurated by Morales, whisk Bolivians between El Alto and La Paz, above the dizzying mountain traffic. Yet Limachi said the public university, which charges students next to nothing, has been unable to pay its teachers for three months. Morales administration, one of Latin America s few remaining hard-line leftist governments after the region turned to the right in recent years, says it increased spending on education by 25 percent since 2006. It questions UPEA s use of its funding and the number of students enrolled. Due to its history, the recent protests at UPEA have drawn national attention, especially as they coincided with a widely criticized court decision in late November allowing Morales to run for a fourth turn. Bolivia s constitutional court, padded with members of Morales MAS party, argued term limits violate human rights - defying the result of a referendum last year in which 51 percent of Bolivians said they opposed Morales running again. The ruling was criticized by the United States and raised eyebrows in urban areas across Bolivia where support for Morales is weakening. Mining communities, coca farmers and rural villages generally still support him. Across the sprawling city of El Alto, where new homes are being built every day, discontent had been creeping up for some time. Since 2015, the city has had an opposition mayor. It s quite disturbing that our demands are not being listened to, said Celia Quecana, a UPEA sociology student dressed in a traditional Aymara pollera, a flowing skirt worn in the Andes. She said that Bolivia s constitution guarantees funding for public universities. There s a lot of discontent that democracy, in the form of the Feb. 21 (2016) referendum, has not been respected, she said at the university, where trash had not been collected nor bathrooms cleaned for days. In judicial elections on Dec. 3, nearly 54 percent of Bolivians spoiled their ballots rather than voting, as a means of protesting against Morales. Vote null graffiti remains scrawled across walls in El Alto and La Paz. As El Alto has grown, so has the number of students studying at UPEA, the basis for the university s dispute with the government. UPEA says it now has 47,000 students, double the 2011 enrollment when the amount of funding it receives was determined. For Diego von Vacano, a Bolivian political scientist at Yale University, the UPEA protests have legitimate roots and touch on a major problem for Morales. The government did not invest in education, Vacano said. El Alto is one of the most radical areas of Bolivia. A government can quickly fall if it does not get the support of El Alto. The United Nations says Bolivia spent about 7 percent of its gross domestic product on education in 2014, its most recent data, a percentage that is high for Latin America, although one that had not changed much over the past decade. El Alto s explosive growth coincided with the end of a commodities boom felt in Bolivia through lower gas prices, which have halved since 2006. Bolivia s gas production peaked at an average 59.6 million cubic meters per day in 2014 and has fallen for the past two years, according to the government. The gas issue is incredibly important, it affects everything. We had received an impressive amount of money, but it s gone down for everyone, said Nelson Vila, a UPEA professor who was hospitalized after clashes with police in November. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Be careful of lithium ion batteries, Europe warns Christmas air travellers;BERLIN (Reuters) - European aviation safety authorities have urged airlines to remind passengers about how best to transport electronic devices containing lithium ion batteries over the busy Christmas travel period. Lithium ion batteries, found in devices such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets, and electronic cigarettes, are seen as a fire risk, and there are concerns that if a fire were to start in the hold of a plane, it could not easily be extinguished. It is important that airlines inform their passengers that large personal electronic devices should be carried in the passenger cabin whenever possible, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said in a statement on Tuesday. Many airlines in Europe already have their own procedures in place, such as telling passengers that laptops should not be carried in hold baggage. EASA said that where such items are too large to be carried in the cabin, then they must be completely switched off, protected from accidental activation, and packaged suitably to avoid damage. They should also not be carried in the same bag as flammable items such as perfume or aerosols. EASA also said that if devices cannot be carried in the cabin, such as when passengers have to put carry-on bags in the hold due to a lack of space in the cabin, airlines should remember to ask passengers to remove any spare batteries or e-cigarettes. Lithium ion batteries are also used to power so-called smart bags, suitcases which offer GPS tracking and can charge devices, weigh themselves or be locked remotely using mobile phones. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany condemns Houthi's firing missile at Saudi Arabia;BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government condemned Tuesday s firing of a ballistic missile by the Houthi militia toward Riyadh, calling for an immediate ceasefire and U.N.-led peace negotiations. We condemn the renewed missile launch from Yemen against the capital of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the strongest terms, a foreign ministry spokesman said. There can be no justification for such an act. The missile attacks on Saudi Arabia must finally stop. The spokesman said the Yemen conflict could only be solved through diplomatic means. We urge the parties to adopt an immediate ceasefire and to negotiation under the aegis of the United Nations. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt air base attack kills officer in North Sinai: military statement;CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian military officer was killed and two other people were wounded in a shell attack on a military airport near the town of Arish in the North Sinai region on Tuesday, the army spokesman said in a statement on Facebook. It said the attack took place during a visit of Egypt s interior and defense ministers to the area. A security source said neither minister had been hurt during the attack. Those wounded were an officer and a soldier, a second security source said. The statement also said a helicopter had been damaged during the attack, and that security forces had dealt with the source of fire , without elaborating. The Egyptian military is battling a years-long Islamist insurgency in North Sinai that has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen. Attacks claimed by Islamic State s Sinai branch have expanded to include civilian targets in the past year. The group is widely believed to have carried out an attack on a mosque last month, the deadliest in Egypt s modern history, which killed more than 300 people according to state media. However Islamic State did not claim that attack. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany could send more soldiers to Afghanistan: defense minister;MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Germany s defense minister said on Tuesday she wanted to boost the German presence in Afghanistan, in the first public indication that Berlin could accept a U.S. call for more soldiers to help reverse territorial gains by Taliban insurgents. Germany currently has 980 soldiers stationed in the Hindu Kush mountains as part of a NATO mission to train Afghan security forces, the second biggest national contingent after the United States. The soldiers, and especially the trainers, are telling me: We have enough trainers but we could do significantly more if we had better protective components, more security personnel, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said during a visit to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Von der Leyen added that the German parliament would have to approve any additional deployments. The minister is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and has said she hopes to retain her job in a new coalition government currently being negotiated. Merkel hopes to forge another grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) like the one that has led Germany for the past four years. The SPD is generally more cautious about defense spending and sending German troops abroad. U.S. President Donald Trump in August authorized an increase in U.S. troops to train Afghan security forces and carry out counter-terrorism operations, hoping to reverse gains by Taliban insurgents and compel them to agree to peace talks. On Monday von der Leyen criticized the rapid reduction in forces since the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) wound up in Afghanistan in 2014, and she called for a longer-term commitment in the Hindu Kush mountains. At the peak of the ISAF mission around 150,000 foreign soldiers were deployed in the Hindu Kush. There are now around 17,000, of whom 10,000 are Americans. Germany increased the upper limit to its Afghanistan mandate to 980 soldiers from 850 in 2016, at a time when the United States and most other countries were reducing their forces. Von der Leyen called for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, saying the Afghan security forces could apply pressure to those Taliban who were ready to negotiate. Only that will lead to success in the long-term, she added. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Prime Minister May to speak with Donald Trump: spokesman;LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May will speak in a call scheduled for later on Tuesday, her spokesman told reporters. The spokesman gave no further details about the call. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ramaphosa's 'poisoned chalice': new ANC leader may struggle to reform South Africa;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - When Cyril Ramaphosa won the tight vote to become the new leader of the African National Congress on Monday after years of near-misses, his loyal supporters jumped to their feet, pumping their fists and cheering. But as the results for other top positions emerged, the cheers quickly evaporated, as it became clear that ANC officials close to President Jacob Zuma would still control important levers of the ruling party. Ramaphosa, who has served as South Africa s deputy president under Zuma since 2014, narrowly defeated former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma s ex-wife and preferred successor, in the race for the ANC s top job. Ramaphosa is now within touching distance of becoming president, fulfilling a lifelong ambition for the man Nelson Mandela wanted to be his heir after the end of apartheid in 1994. Markets rallied on Ramaphosa s victory, as investors piled into rand assets on hopes Ramaphosa would follow through on campaign promises to uproot corruption and rekindle economic growth. But the mood in the conference hall in Johannesburg where the ANC s new top six most powerful officials were announced told a different story. The Ramaphosa camp fumed that Zuma loyalists David Mabuza and Ace Magashule were named ANC deputy president and secretary general, while Dlamini-Zuma backer Jessie Duarte kept her position as deputy secretary general. We started on a high note, but as we went down the top six we started having problems. The thing is that Cyril has to work with this collective, said Sinenhlanhla Xaba, an ANC member from the Soweto township. On Tuesday supporters of Senzo Mchunu, Ramaphosa s pick for secretary general, disputed the vote count that saw him lose out to Magashule, a sign that Ramaphosa s team was trying to gain greater control of the upper echelons of the ANC. Analysts say the slim margin of Ramaphosa s victory will help keep the ANC together but will make it difficult for Ramaphosa to pursue a pro-growth policy agenda, as the ANC faction that backed Dlamini-Zuma and puts greater emphasis on wealth redistribution will wield considerable influence. Any attempt to remove the 75-year-old Zuma as South African president before his second term ends in 2019 - something which ANC officials close to Ramaphosa have called for - will also be complicated by Zuma allies retaining senior posts. Zuma s scandal-plagued time in office has badly tarnished the ANC s image both at home and abroad and has seen economic growth slow to a near-standstill. Zuma has survived several votes of no confidence because he controls large sections of the ANC through his use of political patronage. Lukhona Mnguni, a political analyst at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the ANC leadership outcome was a poisoned chalice for Ramaphosa because officials aligned with Zuma would constrain his room for maneuver. Ramaphosa s team know this was no victory. He didn t get the people he wanted and hopes for recalling (removing) Zuma have been dampened, Mnguni said. If Zuma is to be recalled, it would only be because Mabuza and Magashule gang up on him, which I don t think is likely. Ramaphosa, 65, told reporters on Tuesday that the ANC s new top six was a unity leadership which reflected the views of different sections of the party. Investors had hoped Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader and millionaire businessman, would secure a decisive win in the ANC race, putting him in a strong position to enact reforms which could help South Africa avoid further credit rating downgrades. Dlamini-Zuma, who President Zuma publicly backed for ANC leader, was seen as more focused on tackling racial inequality and struggled to distance herself from the corruption scandals that have dogged her ex-husband. But in the new ANC top six announced on Monday, three officials were from the slate of Ramaphosa s preferred candidates and three were from Dlamini-Zuma s ticket. With no clear win for either the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma or Cyril Ramaphosa slates, I expect the policy paralysis that we have seen will continue until one side defeats the other, said Geoff Blount, managing director at BayHill Capital. Gwen Ngwenya at the Institute of Race Relations said expectations for sweeping policy change under Ramaphosa were overblown. The Ramaphosa of fantasy, the figure of a decisive man of action, has never manifest himself in reality, she said, noting that promises Ramaphosa made before becoming deputy president never materialized. One important consequence of the compromise leadership outcome seen on Monday is that it lessens the likelihood of the ANC splitting before the 2019 election - which had been raised by analysts as a possibility in the event of a clear victory for the Dlamini-Zuma faction. Attention now shifts to the makeup of the ANC s new National Executive Committee (NEC), a group of around 80 officials which steers the party and will be elected in the coming days. Should the new NEC be just as split as the ANC s top six, that would make the prospects for major reform even more remote. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran says Trump cannot cause collapse of nuclear deal: TV;ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday U.S. President Donald Trump cannot cause its nuclear deal with six major powers to collapse. The nuclear deal will not collapse... Those who hope that Trump will cause its collapse, are wrong, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on State TV. In October, Trump declined to certify that Iran was complying with the nuclear agreement reached among Tehran, the United States and other powers in 2015. His decision triggered a 60-day window for Congress to decide whether to bring back sanctions on Iran. Congress passed the ball back to Trump by letting the deadline on reimposing sanctions on Iran pass last week. Trump must decide in mid-January if he wants to continue to waive energy sanctions on Iran. Under the deal, nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted last year, in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program. Iran has said it will stick to the accord as long as the other signatories respect it, but will shred the deal if Washington pulls out. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., Russian, Japanese crew arrive at space station;(Reuters) - A trio of U.S., Japanese and Russian astronauts arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday, a NASA TV broadcast showed. Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and flight engineers Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Scott Tingle of NASA docked their Soyuz spacecraft about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth at 0839 GMT. The docking completes their two-day journey following Sunday s blast-off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Shkaplerov, Kanai and Tingle join Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA, who have been aboard the space station since September. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's new 3 billion pound warship has a leak;LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s biggest ever warship, the new 3.1 billion pound ($4.2 billion) aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, has a leak and needs repairs, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Tuesday. The 65,000-tonne ship is hailed as Britain s most advanced military vessel and was only commissioned by the queen two weeks ago but it has a problem with a shaft seal that was identified during sea trials, the MoD said. Sea trials are precisely for finding manageable teething problems like this and rectifying them, a Royal Navy spokesman said. Repairs under contract are already underway alongside in Portsmouth and the sea trials will take place as planned in the New Year, when we will continue to rigorously test the ship before she enters service. The Sun newspaper reported that the 280-metre (920-foot) warship, the nation s future flagship vessel, was letting in 200 liters of water every hour and the fix would cost millions of pounds. A defense source said the navy was aware that the ship, which took eight years to build, had an issue when it was handed over by manufacturers and the Sun said the builders would have to foot the repair bill. The Aircraft Carrier Alliance - a consortium including British engineering companies BAE Systems (BAES.L) and Babcock (BAB.L), and the UK division of France s Thales (TCFP.PA) - built the Queen Elizabeth and its sister aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, as apart of a 6.2 billion pound project. It s normal practice for a volume of work and defect resolution to continue following vessel acceptance, BAE Systems said in a statement. This will be completed prior to the nation s flagship re-commencing her program at sea in 2018. BAE said the issue would take just a couple of days to fix with no need for the ship to be taken into a dry dock. Chris Parry, a former senior Royal Navy officer, said all ships took on water. That s why you have pumps, he told Sky News. When you get a brand new car not everything s perfect, you have to send it back to the garage to get a few things tweaked. This is exactly in that bracket. Also on Tuesday, parliament s defense committee raised questions about the procurement of the F-35 fighter jets from a consortium led by Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) which will eventually operate from the Queen Elizabeth. The committee said there had been an unacceptable lack of transparency about the program and the MoD had failed to provide details of the full cost of each aircraft which one newspaper had estimated could be as much as 155 million pounds. We strongly refute any suggestion of a lack of transparency in the F-35 program, an MOD spokesman said. The program remains on track, on time, within costs and not only offers our military the world s most advanced fighter jet but will support over 24,000 British jobs and is very much clear for take-off. When the aircraft carrier was commissioned, British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said: Our new aircraft carrier is the epitome of British design and dexterity, at the core of our efforts to build an Armed Forces fit for the future. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi Kurdish security forces raid local broadcaster NRT, take it off air: NRT chief;SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdistan s internal security forces, Asayish, have raided the offices of Kurdish private broadcaster NRT in the province of Sulaimaniya and taken the channel off the air, its head told Reuters on Tuesday. The channel was not accessible. Earlier, local officials said three people had been killed and more than 80 wounded when Kurdish protesters, angered by years of austerity and unpaid public-sector salaries, took part in a second day of violent unrest amid tensions with Baghdad. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa drops hint military chief set for vice presidency;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa gave his clearest signal yet on Tuesday that he would appoint as vice president the military leader who led the de facto coup that ousted former leader Robert Mugabe last month. At a ceremony marking Constantino Chiwenga s retirement and handover of the military reins to Phillip Sibanda at an army barracks near Harare s international airport, Mnangagwa lauded Chiwenga for his consistency and steadfastness. I therefore urge you to maintain the same loyalty, robustness and dedication to duty as you move to your next assignment which is quite prominent, he said without elaborating. Mnangagwa said on Friday he would fill the two vice presidential posts in the following few days. Chiwenga is the top contender in what is seen as a reward for helping to end Mugabe s 37-year rule. Mnangagwa has appointed several senior military officers to his cabinet and the ruling party s executive politburo since he was sworn in as president on Nov. 24 in what some political analysts say reflects the army s consolidation of power since it turned against the 93-year-old Mugabe. Chris Mutsvangwa, special adviser to the president and the influential leader of the war veterans association, rejected criticism of the military appointments, saying they were not unique to Zimbabwe. He pointed to the former generals in U.S. President Donald Trump s cabinet. He also denied a report by the privately owned NewsDay newspaper that he had said the army would play a role in elections due next year. It s a lie ... I said there was a team which helped to undo the dynastic tendencies of geriatric Mugabe and his mid-wife (sic), he told reporters at his offices in Harare. I promised to the new president that we are going to deliver an electoral victory but that team specifically excludes the army because the army had played a role earlier and because the army is a professional army and does not get involved in election campaigns. The elections are due by July 2018 but Mnangagwa has said they may be held sooner than expected. Mnangagwa told members of his ruling ZANU-PF party on Friday they would have to start fixing the economy if they wanted a chance of winning next year s vote. The southern African nation s economy collapsed in the latter half of Mugabe s rule, especially after the violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. ;worldnews;19/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! Emails Prove Woman Who Accused Trump Of Sexual Assault In The 1990’s Is A Phony…Tried to Get A Job On Trump’s Campaign That Would Require Her To Be Close To Him;Just a few months before reports of her sexual assault lawsuit against Donald Trump rocked the campaign, cosmetics executive Jill Harth lobbied to be the then-candidate s make-up artist.On Monday, The Hill detailed the story of Harth s repeated efforts to become Trump s campaign makeup artist and to pitch her new male cosmetics product line, Made Man. Her solicitations, in both emails and in person, came a few months before her 1997 lawsuit was brought to light, along with several other sexual misconduct allegations against the candidate. The Hill learned of her appeals to Trump in an interview with Harth in December about her friendship with celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House aide sees temporary funding fix for children's health program;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A short-term fix to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program into January will likely be part of a stop-gap government funding bill Congress is expected to approve this week, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said on Wednesday. In an interview with MSNBC, Short also said a measure to protect immigrant youths known as “Dreamers” would probably not be considered until January. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump: Market has not fully digested tax cut changes;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he believed the financial markets have not fully absorbed the tax cut changes in legislation expected to be passed by Congress on Wednesday. “They’re thinking that the market hasn’t fully digested what they’ve got here,” he said, referring to his economic advisers. “I don’t think the market has even begun to realize how good these are, like for instance, full expensing.” ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 20) - Tax Bill;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed. Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M. [0109 EST] - The Tax Cuts are so large and so meaningful, and yet the Fake News is working overtime to follow the lead of their friends, the defeated Dems, and only demean. This is truly a case where the results will speak for themselves, starting very soon. Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! [0932 EST] - I would like to congratulate @SenateMajLdr on having done a fantastic job both strategically & politically on the passing in the Senate of the MASSIVE TAX CUT & Reform Bill. I could have not asked for a better or more talented partner. Our team will go onto many more VICTORIES! [1139 EST] - Together, we are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! [1230 EST] - We are delivering HISTORIC TAX RELIEF for the American people! #TaxCutsandJobsAct [1309 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tax bill's 'pass-through' rule will aid wealthy, not workers: critics;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wealthy business owners, such as President Donald Trump, stand to gain from a provision in the Republican tax bill that creates a valuable deduction for owners of pass-through businesses, Democrats and some tax experts say. The provision creates a 20-percent business income deduction, with some limits, for sole proprietors and owners in partnerships and other non-corporate enterprises. It was initially sold by Republicans as a way to help small businesses and create jobs. But the final formula for determining what types of businesses can benefit has widened to take in companies with few, if any, workers, critics said. “The president will try to tell the American people that his great political victory is a win for working people, but they see all the benefits going to his type of businesses: real estate pass-throughs,” Democratic Senator Jack Reed said on the Senate floor. Trump, a real estate developer, wants to sign the Republican tax bill into law this week, which would give Republicans their first major legislative victory of 2017. The House of Representatives and Senate were hurrying toward passage of the bill on Tuesday, with a final House vote set for Wednesday. On House Speaker Paul Ryan’s website, he said pass-through businesses employed about half of U.S. private-sector workers. High tax rates, he said, “discourage investment and job creation, discourage business activity, and put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage.” Pass-through businesses’ profits “pass through” their books directly to owners, unlike corporations, which parcel out profits through dividends to stockholders. Under existing law, pass-through owners pay the individual income tax rate on those profits, not the corporate rate. Under the Republican bill, the corporate rate would be slashed to 21 percent, while the top individual income tax rate, which some pass-through business owners pay, would be 37 percent. To address the disparity, Republicans included tax relief for pass-through owners in their bill, allowing them to deduct 20 percent of their pass-through business income. Republicans put in anti-abuse measures to ensure owners of bona fide business operations claim the 20 percent deduction and prevent high earners from seeking to recategorize their income as pass-through income to take advantage of the deduction. Republicans also capped the income eligible for the full 20-percent deduction at $315,000 for married couples and $157,500 for individuals. But they included a “capital element” in the formula for determining eligibility beyond those thresholds, presenting a lucrative tax break for some, including wealthy owners of commercial property, said tax experts. “This seems ideally suited for commercial property businesses, where there aren’t a lot of workers, but there is a lot of valuable property around,” said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank. Income above the pass-through caps can be eligible for the 20-percent deduction based on a formula: 50 percent of employee wages paid;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senator Cornyn trying to get Big Corn behind U.S. biofuels reform;(Reuters) - Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, is trying to win support from the Midwest corn lobby for a broad legislative overhaul of the nation’s biofuels policy, according to sources familiar with the matter. The effort comes as President Donald Trump’s White House mediates talks between the rival oil and corn industries over the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires oil refiners to blend increasing amounts of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels in the nation’s fuel supply every year. Oil refiners say the regulation costs them hundreds of millions of dollars a year and is threatening to put a handful of the nation’s refineries out of business. Ethanol interests have so far refused to budge on proposals to change it. Cornyn “is working hard to unify all stakeholders in a consensus effort to reform the Renewable Fuel Standard,” an aide to the senator told Reuters. The aide, who asked not to be named, did not provide details. Cornyn, of Texas, the U.S. state that is home to the most oil refineries, is part of the Senate’s leadership team, responsible for securing the votes needed to pass the Republican party’s legislative agenda. Two lobbyists for the oil refining industry said Cornyn was having some success cobbling together a coalition of lawmakers and stakeholders around a potential RFS reform bill that could be dropped early next year. However, similar efforts to unify these rival factions have fallen flat in the past. Any such effort would need the buy-in of legislative backers of the ethanol industry, like Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst of Iowa, the top-producing state for corn. Officials for the senators did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Both Grassley and Ernst have previously repeatedly expressed their intention to defend the RFS in its current form. The White House has been hosting negotiations between both sides of the issue over short-term remedies that can provide relief to refiners struggling with the existing regulation. The refining industry says compliance now costs it hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and threatens to put some refineries out of business. Refineries that do not have adequate facilities to blend ethanol into their gasoline must purchase blending credits, called RINS, from rivals that do. RIN prices have risen in recent years as the amount of biofuels required under the RFS has increased. Refineries that buy RINs include Philadelphia Energy Solutions and Monroe Energy, both of Pennsylvania, and Valero Energy Corp of Texas. Valero said RINs cost it around $750 million last year, though there are competing arguments over whether refiners pass along those costs. Senator Ted Cruz, also of Texas, last week sent a proposal to the White House to cap the price of RINs at 10 cents each, a fraction of the current price. The proposal was widely rejected by the ethanol industry. The ethanol industry has said in the past that placing caps on the credits was a non-starter, and has instead argued for policies to increase volumes of ethanol in the U.S gasoline supply. The industry claims this would boost supplies of the credits, lowering their prices. Prices of renewable fuel credits have fallen in recent weeks on reports of the discussions in Washington. The price hit 68 cents on Wednesday, nearing a seven-month low, according to traders and Oil Price Information Services. The White House has not yet commented on Cruz’s proposal. The RFS was introduced by former President George W. Bush as a way to boost U.S. agriculture, slash energy imports and cut emissions. It has since fostered a market for ethanol amounting to 15 billion gallons a year. The refining industry has pressed the Trump administration repeatedly to adopt reforms that would lower the credit costs or otherwise ease the burden on refineries, but the ethanol industry has successfully defeated those efforts so far. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House says tax bill will not hurt Puerto Rico;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sweeping tax code changes aimed at keeping U.S. companies from shifting profits offshore to avoid taxes will not affect the battered economy of Puerto Rico, a senior White House official said on Wednesday. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello has said the provisions in a new tax bill passed by Congress could prompt drug and medical device manufacturers to leave the island territory, which is considered a foreign jurisdiction for tax purposes. “I personally do not think that this is going to hurt Puerto Rico,” the White House official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The tax base erosion provisions in the bill provide exemptions for the cost of goods U.S. companies buy offshore, meaning supplies made in Puerto Rico would not be affected, the White House official said. The manufacturing plants are an economic lifeline for 3.4 million Americans in the territory, where the economy never recovered after Congress in 2006 ended a different set of longstanding business tax breaks. Puerto Rico has $120 billion of combined bond and pension debt and near-insolvent public health systems, and filed the largest-ever U.S. government bankruptcy this year. Three months ago, Hurricane Maria slammed into the island, tearing up homes and the power grid and bringing its economy to a halt. Congress is considering an $81 billion disaster aid bill - some of which is aimed at Puerto Rico - as part of a must-pass government funding bill. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vote in Senate on 'Dreamers' hinges on bipartisan pact: McConnell;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday said he would bring a “Dreamers” immigration bill to the Senate floor if bipartisan negotiations between senators and the Trump administration produce an agreement by the end of January. McConnell also said in a statement that he would offer the measure as a “free-standing vote,” without specifying when it would occur. Many supporters of the immigration initiative have argued that it would have the best prospects for passage if it was coupled with a must-pass bill such as a spending measure early next year that potentially increases military spending. The immigration measure would be designed to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Democrats in Congress have been pressing for passage well before early March, when an Obama-era program is due to be completely phased out by the Trump administration. Earlier on Wednesday, Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake said in a statement that McConnell had promised to bring such a bill to the full Senate next month. Flake is one of a group of seven Democratic and Republican senators negotiating a bill. Former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order temporarily protected around 800,000 Dreamers from deportation. President Donald Trump announced in September he was terminating the program but had asked Congress to devise a more permanent solution by March. A San Francisco federal judge on Wednesday wrestled with whether to order the government to keep DACA in place, while lawsuits challenging Trump’s decision unfold. At a hearing, U.S. District Judge William Alsup questioned whether he had the authority to review the decision to end DACA, but also said the administration’s justification for its move was brief and “conclusory.” Alsup did not rule from the bench. One of the plaintiffs, DACA recipient Dulce Garcia, attended the hearing and said she was in the sixth day of a hunger strike intended to urge lawmakers to make protection of DACA recipients a condition for passage of any more federal spending bills. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said in a statement, “Bipartisan negotiations continue and we’re fighting to pass this measure soon.” He did not provide details on any progress being made in the talks. A bipartisan group of senators led by Durbin and Republican Lindsey Graham have been holding private negotiations over how many Dreamers would be covered by legislation giving them temporary legal status and whether they would ultimately be allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship. The negotiations have been complicated by Republican demands that increased border security be included in any legislation. Republicans also have been clamoring for more immigration enforcement throughout the United States. Democrats have been opposed to that as part of a Dreamer measure, saying it is a way for the Trump administration to step up its deportations of undocumented relatives of Dreamers, thus breaking up families currently in the United States. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Top Democrat says Trump firing of Mueller could provoke 'constitutional crisis';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, responding to escalating Republican attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, said on Wednesday that if President Donald Trump fires Mueller, it “has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.” Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Mark Warner denounced attacks on Mueller’s impartiality and said the special counsel’s investigation of ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia must be “able to go on unimpeded.” Russia denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and Trump has denied any collusion. While Trump’s political allies have increased their criticism of Mueller, the president said on Sunday he was not considering firing him. Republican lawmakers have seized on anti-Trump texts by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who was involved in the Russia investigation as evidence of bias in Mueller’s team. Mueller removed the agent from his team after the texts came to light. Republicans on several House of Representatives committees have also announced their own probes into long-standing political grievances, including the FBI’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Clinton, a Democrat, was Trump’s opponent in last year’s election. “Over the last several weeks, a growing chorus of irresponsible voices have called for President Trump to shut down Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation,” said Warner, adding that the attacks were “seemingly coordinated.” “Firing Mr. Mueller or any other of the top brass involved in this investigation would not only call into question this administration’s commitment to the truth, but also to our most basic concept of rule of law,” Warner said. “It also has the potential to provoke a constitutional crisis.” Warner called for Congress to make clear to the president that firing Mueller would have “immediate and significant consequences.” House Democrats had circulated rumors last week that Trump would fire Mueller this Friday, just before the Christmas holiday. Trump’s White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, said in a statement on Wednesday that the administration “willingly affirms yet again, as it has every day this week, there is no consideration being given to the termination of the special counsel.” “If the media is going to continue to ask for responses to every absurd and baseless rumor, attention-seeking partisans will continue to spread them,” Cobb added. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrat Franken to leave Senate on January 2;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken, who earlier this month announced his plan to resign following sexual misconduct allegations against him, will step down on Jan. 2, a representative for the lawmaker said on Wednesday. The 66-year-old former comedian from Minnesota had been seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, but faced growing calls from fellow Senate Democrats to step down as allegations against him mounted. Franken is one of several influential men who have lost their jobs after being accused of sexual misconduct, assault or harassment, including Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein and journalists Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley. He will be the third lawmaker facing misconduct allegations to depart from Congress following Democratic Representative John Conyers and Republican Representative Trent Franks. Two others, Democratic Representative Ruben Kihuen and Republican Representative Blake Farenthold, have said they will not seek re-election next year. Franken has denied some of the allegations against him and questioned others. Reuters has not independently verified any of the allegations. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Mark Dayton, last week appointed Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith, who is also a Democrat to fill Franken’s seat. Smith, 59, will serve a one-year term concluding in January 2019, Dayton said, and will run in a special election for the seat next November. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump's Supreme Court appointee Gorsuch plots rightward course;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eight months into his lifetime U.S. Supreme Court appointment, Neil Gorsuch has given every indication through his votes in key cases and remarks from the bench he will be a stalwart of the conservative legal agenda, as President Donald Trump promised. Still early in his career as a justice that could span decades, Gorsuch has already established himself as among the most conservative members of the top U.S. court, and has not been shy about expressing his views, sometimes in idiosyncratic ways. He also has made public appearances before conservative audiences, including a speech at the Republican president’s Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, that have drawn rebukes by liberal critics who questioned his independence from the president who nominated him. Gorsuch’s record so far suggests “he is going to be a reliably conservative vote,” said Carolyn Shapiro, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Trump, who as a candidate promised to pick a justice in the mold of the late conservative icon Antonin Scalia, has set out to move the federal judiciary to the right. Gorsuch’s appointment has been his biggest step yet toward that goal, restoring the high court’s 5-4 conservative majority. Gorsuch’s April confirmation by the Republican-led Senate, despite strong Democratic opposition, provided one of Trump’s biggest political victories since taking office in January. Writing about Gorsuch on Twitter on Tuesday, Trump said he was “very proud of him and the job he is doing,” and rejected a Washington Post report that he had considered rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination this spring after the jurist said attacks on the judiciary like those that had been made by Trump were “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” The newspaper reported that Trump had vented angrily to advisers that Gorsuch may not be sufficiently loyal. Trump responded that he had “never even wavered.” As the court rolls into 2018 with some big rulings ahead - on free speech, gay rights, voting rights and employee rights - legal experts said Trump will be able to rely on Gorsuch. The new justice has delivered key votes backing Trump’s travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries and on the death penalty, and embraced certain kinds of public funding for churches. During arguments this month in one of the court’s biggest cases of its current term, Gorsuch signaled sympathy for a conservative Christian baker who contends he was within his constitutional rights to refuse to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. Gorsuch declined an interview request for this article. Inside the Supreme Court chambers and outside it, Gorsuch, a 50-year-old Coloradoan, speaks his mind. “He is not intimidated about being the newest justice,” said John Malcolm, a lawyer at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. Gorsuch has regularly sided with his fellow conservative justices. In the legal fight over the three versions of Trump’s travel ban, Gorsuch sided with the president on four different occasions. In June, he was one of three justices who would have let Trump’s second travel ban go into full effect. The court voted 6-3 to allow a limited version of the ban. On the death penalty, Gorsuch was among four conservative dissenters when the court in September granted a stay of execution for a Georgia inmate. In April, in his first recorded vote on the court, he was part of a 5-4 conservative majority that declined a stay of execution request from an Arkansas inmate. The court in 2018 is set to rule on two cases - one from Wisconsin and another from Maryland - involving the practice of drawing legislative districts in states in a way intended to entrench one party in power, known as partisan gerrymandering. The rulings could influence U.S. elections for decades. Based on the Oct. 3 oral argument in the Wisconsin case, in which Democratic voters challenged a Republican-drawn electoral map, it is unclear how the court will rule. Gorsuch used a culinary analogy to express his doubts during the argument about the Democratic challengers’ legal theory. “It reminds me a little bit of my steak rub,” Gorsuch said. “I like some turmeric, I like a few other little ingredients, but I’m not going to tell you how much of each. And so what’s this court supposed to do, a pinch of this, a pinch of that?” During a November speech hosted by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, Gorsuch confidently touted his judicial ideology, stressing the importance of interpreting the U.S. Constitution based on its original meaning and narrowly reading the text of laws passed by Congress. “Tonight,” he said to sustained applause, “I can report, a person can be both a committed originalist and textualist and be confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States.” ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawmakers seek temporary extension to internet spying program;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are working to build support to temporarily extend the National Security Agency’s expiring internet surveillance program by tucking it into a stop-gap funding measure, lawmakers said. The month-long extension of the surveillance law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, would punt a contentious national security issue into the new year in an attempt to buy lawmakers more time to hash out differences over various proposed privacy reforms. Lawmakers leaving a Republican conference meeting on Wednesday evening said it was not clear whether the stop-gap bill had enough support to avert a partial government shutdown on Saturday, or whether the possible addition of the Section 702 extension would impact its chances for passage. It remained possible lawmakers would vote on the short-term extension separate from the spending bill. Absent congressional action the law, which allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States, will expire on Dec. 31. Earlier in the day, House Republicans retreated from a plan to vote on a stand-alone measure to renew Section 702 until 2021 amid sizable opposition from both parties that stemmed from concerns the bill would violate U.S. privacy rights. Some U.S. officials have recently said that deadline may not ultimately matter and that the program can lawfully continue through April due to the way it is annually certified. But lawmakers and the White House still view the law’s end-year expiration as significant. “I think clearly we need the reauthorization for FISA, and that is expected we’ll get that done” before the end of the year, Marc Short, the White House’s legislative director, said Wednesday on MSNBC. U.S. intelligence officials consider Section 702 among the most vital of tools at their disposal to thwart threats to national security and American allies. The law allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. But the program incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas. Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill in November that would partially restrict the U.S. government’s ability to review American data by requiring a warrant in some cases. (This story has been refiled to correct typographical error in headline) ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax plan roils popular bet in bond market;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Passage of a long-anticipated U.S. tax overhaul has up-ended the bond market’s favorite trade of the year as yields on some long-dated Treasuries shot to their highest in months, but doubts that the tax cuts will fuel inflation have many investors confident the reversal will be short-lived. The view that the U.S. Federal Reserve will keep raising short-term interest rates, even as inflation remains subdued, has made longer-dated Treasury bonds more appealing to own than short-dated ones. This has made so-called yield curve flattener trades - a bet that the gap between short- and long-dated bond yields will narrow - a profitable bet in the bond market this year. Investors’ appetite for this trade drove the yield curve to its flattest level in a decade earlier this week. However, a sharp reversal got underway as the tax bill’s passage became certain, paving the way for a bigger government deficit and more federal borrowing. “It’s a great time to cash out,” said Brian Reynolds, asset class strategist at New York-based Canaccord Genuity. Both Republican-controlled Congressional chambers have approved the tax legislation, and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it in the days ahead. The Treasury market selloff pushed the benchmark 10-year yield up to nearly 2.50 percent, its highest in nine months and the 30-year yield to around 2.87 percent, a five-week peak. Some analysts reckoned the jump in yields reflects investors demanding higher compensation, or term premium, in case the tax cuts stoke inflation and hurt longer-dated bonds. How long this prevails is an open question, though, given previous episodes of curve steepening in the last year have quickly faded. “In other words, sharp term premium moves tend not be permanent,” Cornerstone Macro analysts said in a note on Wednesday. In late afternoon trading, the spread between two-year and 10-year Treasury yields was 63 basis points versus 60 basis points on Tuesday and around 51 earlier in the week. Even with this week’s steepening, the two-to-10-year part of the curve has flattened nearly 63 basis points this year. Curve flatteners are seen as likely to regain popularity in the long run due to a low inflation outlook and sturdy global demand for long-dated U.S. debt. In the short term, however, it may prove a choppy trade as investors gauge the bill’s impact. “It’s hard to predict how the yield curve would behave in the short term. The biggest question is the timing and level of cash flows going to the government after tax reform,” Canaccord’s Reynolds said. One factor is the mountain of corporate cash held overseas. As part of the new tax code, U.S. multinational companies could bring back some of the estimated $2.6 trillion in business profits they have overseas and the Treasury Department could benefit from the taxes on the repatriated money. Reynolds estimated the Treasury might receive as much as $225 billion in tax receipts in 2018 if the companies bring back all their overseas profits. This means the government could issue fewer two- and three-year Treasury securities, pressuring these yields lower and steepening the yield curve into 2019, he said. Independent government estimates suggest the tax plan could add at least $1 trillion to the $20 trillion in national debt in 10 years as the Treasury Department would ratchet up borrowing to compensate for shortfalls in tax receipts. The degree to which the bill may spur both business investment and consumer spending, which could lift tax receipts and cap the rise in the deficit, is another key unknown for the shape of the yield curve going forward. Still, the dominant view on Wall Street remains that the cut will provide only a short-term bump up in economic growth, and many analysts expect the longer-term curve-flattening trend to reassert itself in the year ahead. “Accordingly, we maintain our conviction on curve flattening going into 2018,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note on Wednesday. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Democrats plan to use tax bill to attack Republicans at midterms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The tax bill is President Donald Trump’s biggest legislative victory this year, but Democratic strategists are already planning how to turn it into his biggest liability. The emotional trigger they think will work on voters at next year’s midterm elections: arguing the bill is profoundly unfair by giving the lion’s share of benefits to corporations and the rich. “Be careful what you wish for,” Tom Steyer, a Democratic billionaire, said of Republican leaders in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday. “They wanted this, they should have never have wanted it. Now that they’ve got it, they’re going to wish they didn’t.” Steyer said he plans to use his money - through his political group NextGen America - to attack the Republican tax overhaul, using social media and online advertising aimed at young voters, a strategy that recently helped elect Democratic candidate Doug Jones in a Senate race in Alabama and Ralph Northam as governor of Virginia. In November 2018, elections will be held for all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and for 34 seats in the 100-member Senate. Pollsters believe the midterms could be a rare “wave election,” when one party seizes back control of Congress. It happened for Republicans in 2010 and 1994. If Democrats are able to pick up two more Senate seats, they will take control of the chamber. And after the wins in Alabama and Virginia, they are even hopeful they could tap into anger over tax cuts for the rich to win control of the House. Only about 29 percent of voters approve of the tax bill, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid December. Slightly more than 52 percent oppose it. In no region of the country did even half of the people polled say they support it. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee is already running anti-tax plan ads in several key states including Nevada, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The ads are only five-second spots running before YouTube videos. The viewer, unable to skip over the ads, will hear: “The Republican tax scheme gives huge breaks to corporations but raises taxes on middle class families.” The tax bill cuts the corporate tax rate to 21 percent and raises the threshold at which an inheritance is taxed. It also cuts the tax rate for top earners. While it also cuts the tax rate for most other income groups and doubles the size of the standard deduction, the elimination of other popular deductions could result in some taxpayers seeing a tax increase instead of a cut. It has been popular with the Republican base, Trump voters and the party’s donors. The stock market has surged in anticipation of the cuts. Democrats plan to focus on provisions like benefits to commercial real estate owners, arguing that the tax bill could produce millions of dollars of more cash for Trump and his family members. The White House asserts Trump will not personally benefit – but it admits that his business might. The Super PAC American Bridge, which supports Democratic candidates, is running digital ads in states with Senate races targeting women, swing voters and Republicans in suburban areas, said Joshua Karp, the group’s communication director for Senate races. “I think there is a couple of things that get almost all Americans riled up about this bill, it is fundamentally unfair and breaking the promise the Republicans made to the American people,” Karp said. Republicans say Democrats are indulging in wishful thinking. Polls say 50 percent of voters think their taxes will go up, but tax analysts say that 80 percent will pay less tax. Republicans are counting on voters, when they see more money in their paychecks, to dismiss Democratic rhetoric, and perhaps even throw their support behind Trump. And if there are any unpleasant surprises in store for taxpayers, they will not be filing their first tax returns under the new law until early 2019, months after the midterm elections. Republican strategist Alex Conant, a veteran of congressional and presidential campaigns, said the unpopularity of the tax cuts in opinion polls can be directly attributed to Trump’s low approval levels. “We’re losing elections because Donald Trump is incredibly unpopular and makes a lot of independents and soft Republicans uncomfortable ... Trump’s numbers are dragging down tax reform’s numbers,” Conant said, although he also played down the electoral risks of the tax overhaul. “I would be very surprised if people are marching in the streets months from now because we cut their taxes.” Republicans have some other advantages, like the growing economy, that means an attack on the tax overhaul could backfire. “Democrats will have a very hard time taking this road if the economy is still going gang busters 11 months from now,” Republican strategist Joe Bretell said. But he acknowledges that the Democrats are on the right track. “The emotional trigger point is in fairness,” he said. “The party that can best explain or brand this bill and explain why it’s fair or unfair to their base or the other side, wins.” ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Republicans seek to question FBI officials in Clinton probe: letter;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Republican lawmakers told the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday that they want to question three senior FBI officials about an investigation of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her handling of classified information while she was secretary of state. The lawmakers, who are leading a joint probe into the Clinton investigation, said in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, that they wanted to speak with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Chief of Staff Jim Rybicki and FBI counsel Lisa Page beginning on Thursday. The FBI declined to comment on the letter and referred reporters to the Justice Department. The request to meet the FBI officials for “transcribed interviews” was made after Republicans obtained more than 300 text messages sent last year between Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok critical of then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The text messages called him an “idiot” and “a loathsome human,” among other things, according to copies reviewed by Reuters. Strzok later worked for Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election and ties between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. Moscow denies U.S. allegations of election meddling and Trump denies any campaign collusion. Strzok, who helped lead the investigation of Clinton’s handling of classified material, was removed from Mueller’s team after the special counsel became aware of the texts critical of Trump. Republican lawmakers have attacked Mueller, expressing concern about potential bias among his investigators. But Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has testified to lawmakers that he was “not aware” of any impropriety by Mueller’s team. Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, are conducting a joint review of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton investigation. In their letter to Sessions and Rosenstein, they said they were looking into several decisions by the FBI during the Clinton investigation, including then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision not refer Clinton’s case for prosecution. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FORMER ASST FBI DIRECTOR WARNS ANTI-TRUMP KABAL: “Something is about to happen” [Video];Former Asst. FBI Director James Kallstrom spoke with Stuart Varney about the details behind the increasingly transparent 2016 and 2017 Joint FBI and DOJ Counterintelligence Operation to target the candidacy -and block the presidency- of Donald J Trump: I think they were trying KallstromToward the end of the interview Mr. Kallstrom shares his view, based on current FBI contacts, that FBI insiders (white hats) are on the cusp of removing the cloud of mystery behind all of the obvious politicized shenanigans. When asked about his knowledge of the current morale within the FBI: but I think recent events, that I m aware of, are going to improve that, because there s going to be something actually something that s going to happen;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump aides hope win on taxes will stem slide in poll numbers;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Near the end of President Donald Trump’s rocky first year in office, White House aides view imminent victory on a tax overhaul as a starting point to strengthen his weak approval ratings ahead of key congressional elections next November. Some Republicans said any effort at a political turnaround must include reining in Trump’s habit of lashing out at critics on Twitter. White House aides said they recognized that Trump’s poll numbers needed to start rising to limit the damage in 2018 elections in which his fellow Republicans’ continued control of Congress will be at stake. A Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives and Senate could jeopardize Trump’s agenda. “We have to grow, we have to move up, and I think having more successes like the tax vote will be important to us,” said a senior White House official. Administration officials said Trump would seek to use momentum generated from the biggest tax rewrite in 30 years to help propel other legislative priorities, including an infrastructure program and welfare reform. Final passage of the Republican tax bill is expected on Wednesday in what would be Trump’s first major legislative victory since taking office in January. But the tax bill carries risks. Republicans insist it will boost the economy and job growth. Democrats condemn it as a giveaway to corporations and the rich. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, some 52 percent of adults said they opposed the tax plan, while 27 percent supported it. Unless Trump practices greater discipline, some Republican strategists see disaster looming in the congressional elections, in which a third of the 100-member Senate and all 435 seats in the House will be up for grabs. “Stop tweeting and start the new year with a new level of message discipline. Just try it. It’ll work. And you’ll get those poll numbers back up,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed. “They’ve got to focus on that job approval number because it’s a historic death watch for midterm elections. The record is strong. His discipline is key for year two,” Reed said. Trump has repeatedly caused controversy with early morning tweets, particularly those aimed at individuals. He raised hackles recently when he tweeted that Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand “would do anything” for campaign donations. “There are definitely moments that we’d all like to see stop,” one senior aide said. “Some of the early morning stuff has not been helpful over the last few weeks.” There has been some talk in the White House and among Trump’s outside advisers about hiring a senior political adviser akin to former President Barack Obama’s political aide David Axelrod or former President George W. Bush’s adviser Karl Rove. The White House political director, Bill Stepien, is seen as a more data-driven adviser. Trump, who sees himself as his own strategist, does not have anyone steeped in politics like his former White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, or former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Aides said there was some discussion of getting Trump into events with smaller settings in order to show a more personal side of the president. His standard appearance is to go to an event, deliver a speech to a big crowd and leave. Trump is up against a historical trend in which the party that holds the White House typically loses seats in the first congressional elections after a president’s initial two years in office. Democratic President Bill Clinton had a 46 percent approval rating in November 1994 and his party still lost 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Trump was at 41 percent in a mid-December poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said Trump had done much to keep his conservative base of support happy but had to expand his popularity. To do that, he needs to ease voters’ concerns about his fitness for office. “What he has to do to win over people like independents and never-Trumpers is make the American people feel comfortable with him as president,” said O’Connell. “His achievements are quite striking, but he’s just not connecting (with the public).” ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After ruling, Virginia legislature's majority to be chosen by lot;(Reuters) - Republicans could hold onto control of Virginia’s legislature after a race that had appeared to change the balance of power was ruled a tie on Wednesday, setting the stage for the winner of the district to be chosen by lot. The results of a recount on Tuesday showed Democrat Shelly Simonds beating Republican incumbent David Yancey by one vote, enough to shift the 100-member House of Delegates to an even 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans. However, on Wednesday a three-judge panel ruled that a disputed ballot should be counted for Yancey, the Virginian-Pilot newspaper reported and Yancey confirmed. The two candidates in the 94th District, which includes Newport News in southeastern Virginia, are now tied at 11,608 votes. Under Virginia law, a tie in a House race should be decided by drawing lots, the equivalent of a coin toss or drawing straws, the Conference of State Legislatures said. “I am happy that every vote in Newport News was counted and that the judges took time to deliberate before rendering a decision,” Yancey said in an emailed statement. “This certainly is a historic election in our Commonwealth.” But Democrats slammed the decision, calling it erroneous and saying they were considering legal action to challenge it. Just Tuesday, Republicans conceded the seat, and Simonds, who made international news with what had appeared to be a narrow win, spent the morning Wednesday discussing the race on a variety of news shows. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment following Wednesday’s decision, but an attorney for the Virginia House Democratic Caucus criticized the judges’ move in a news release. “Today’s decision by the court was wrong, and Delegate-elect Shelly Simonds should have been certified the winner,” he said. “We are currently assessing all legal options before us as we fight for a just result.” Democrats claimed historic gains in Virginia’s statehouse last month, part of the party’s first big wave of victories since Republican Donald Trump won the White House last year. Before the Nov. 7 general election, Virginia Republicans held 66 seats to the Democrats’ 34 in the House of Delegates, along with a majority in the state Senate. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In Georgia, battle of the 'Staceys' tests Democrats' future;ATLANTA (Reuters) - The two Democratic candidates running for governor in Georgia are both lawyers and former state legislators. Both are women, and on many policy issues it’s hard to tell them apart. Both even share the same first name - Stacey. But they sharply disagree on the path to victory.   Stacey Abrams, 44, wants to become the first African American female governor in the United States by mobilizing solidly Democratic black voters, who vote sporadically in elections, to form a winning coalition with white liberals. Stacey Evans, 39, thinks the math does not add up without also appealing to white moderates, many of them outside urban areas, who voted for President Donald Trump last November. She is highlighting her crossover appeal as a white suburban mother with country roots. Their divergent strategies mirror a wider debate within the Democratic Party that has grown louder after strong turnout by minority voters helped to power recent Democratic victories in Alabama and Virginia. As the party prepares for the 2018 congressional elections, there is disagreement over which voters to spend more time and money on - minority voters who are a fast-growing share of the electorate but do not reliably cast ballots, or blue-collar and suburban whites who swing between parties. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2yYkcHV) Reuters interviews with liberal activist groups, some donors and an examination of campaign finance records show that many on the left are betting on Abrams’ strategy as the best shot at turning a Republican state. Underscoring the stakes in Georgia is the unusual attention from national groups seeking to push the party farther left. Their level of early support for Abrams is largely unparalleled among other 2018 gubernatorial and many congressional races. A dozen liberal groups have already thrown support behind Abrams, according to a Reuters tally, even though the Democratic primary, or nominating contest, is still months away. The breadth of that support has been little reported. Abrams, who rouses audiences to near religious fervor describing her struggles growing up poor and black in the South, argues that Democrats have wasted resources on swing voters. “We have left too many voters untouched,” she said in an interview, noting that she refuses to tone down her support for abortion, gay rights and labor unions to appeal to Republican-leaning voters. Her opponent does not discount the importance of black voters and also embraces liberal views. But “you are going to have to persuade some moderate Republicans to vote for you, if you are going to win in Georgia,” said Evans, who tears up before crowds when she recounts a childhood spent moving from one rural trailer home to another. After losing the White House last year, the Democratic Party found itself powerless in Washington. Some in the party faulted their presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, for her lack of outreach to minority voters in key states. Others blamed her inability to connect with working class white voters who were once Democratic. Minorities supported the Democratic ticket by wide margins in 2016, but turnout was flat among Hispanics and sharply lower among African Americans, according to the Pew Research Center. Only half of Georgia’s black voters cast ballots in 2016, compared to more than two-thirds of whites, a Reuters review of state records showed. The Democratic National Committee said the recent wins in Alabama and Virginia “show that Democrats are a force to be reckoned with when we invest early in the communities that represent who we are as a Party.” Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said boosting Democratic turnout could work as a strategy. But she urged caution - focusing too narrowly on specific demographic groups risks alienating moderate Democrats. And swing voters, especially in suburban areas, also played a role in the recent Democratic victories, she noted. University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock agreed the numbers are there if Democrats do not lose more white voters.     At the Abrams campaign headquarters, a poster titled “How We Win” points out that Democrats in Georgia have lost recent elections by some 200,000 votes. More than 1 million black voters did not cast ballots during the last governor’s race in 2014, state data shows.     “They don’t vote because we don’t ask, and this is a campaign that is going to keep asking,” Abrams said, speaking on a recent evening to an audience of three dozen volunteers.     Abrams, a tax attorney and romance novelist who led Democrats in the state legislature, said her campaign has already reached out to more than 300,000 voters with door knocks, phone calls and text messages.     She hosted summer events with music and barbecue in a dozen smaller cities - places like Macon, a predominately African American community, and tiny Dalton in the rural northern state.     National liberal activists are lining up endorsements, money and manpower behind Abrams, who is seen as starting with an advantage in a Democratic primary dominated by black voters. Democracy for America, MoveOn Political Action and the Working Families Party call her campaign a model of how to engage the nation’s increasingly diverse electorate.     “Politics is changing in America, and Abrams’ path to victory reflects the changing demographics and enthusiasm,” said Dan Cantor, national chairman of the Working Families Party.     MoveOn, whose recent endorsement of Abrams marked its first in a 2018 governor’s race, said it would mobilize its 125,000 Georgia members as volunteers for her campaign.     Democracy for America is similarly engaging nearly 35,000 members in the state. Officials said the group has already raised nearly $25,000 for Abrams, an unusually high sum for an election still a year away. A group called PowerPac is organizing a $10 million get-out-the-vote effort with plans to hire people to contact minority voters and use targeted radio, phone and digital campaigns.     Individual donors from outside Georgia have contributed more than half of the $470,000 in larger donations that Abrams has reported, according to a Reuters analysis of campaign finance records. Billionaire George Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest financial backers, and two sons donated $21,000 each.     By contrast, Evans is not receiving many donations from outside of Georgia, nor national endorsements. Her campaign is focused on restoring cuts to a state college scholarship called HOPE. Most of her money has come from in-state donors, who have fueled almost all of her reported $390,000 in major donations.     She has support from Georgia’s last Democratic governor, as well as a big-name Democratic strategist, Paul Begala, who worked for the governor who created the scholarship.     The Georgia contest reflects divisions between those who want to broaden the Democratic electorate by bringing back voters who have shifted away, and those who want to drill deeper into the party’s base to increase turnout, said Begala, calling it “an utterly false choice.” “It is like a football team saying, ‘Do you play offense, or defense?’” Begala said. “You have to do both.”     At a recent barbecue luncheon in Athens, Evans pointed out that she outperformed Clinton last year in her district by 12 percentage points, picking up moderate voters.     “You can win in areas where you might not think you are going to have support, if you show up and talk to people,” she told lawyers lunching on pulled pork served on paper placemats.     Evans is not knocking on voters’ doors just yet. But she is traveling the state talking to local Democratic organizations and African-American churches.        Lukis Newborn, an undecided rural voter, recently heard Abrams speak in a suburban Atlanta sports bar. He found her exciting. But he also connects with Evans, having been raised in a household where dinner was rice and beans or peanut butter and jelly. “Both are a part of me,” said Newborn, 26, from Paulding County. “It’s an internal struggle of a Georgia Democrat like no other.”    ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;FBI deputy director to sit for closed interview with House panels;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI’S deputy director, Andrew McCabe, will appear for a closed-door interview on Thursday with two key U.S. congressional committees, after Republicans asked him to discuss the bureau’s handling of its Hillary Clinton email probe. The Justice Department confirmed in a letter on Wednesday to the chairmen of the House of Representatives Judiciary and Oversight committees that McCabe will sit for a transcribed interview, but said McCabe will not be permitted to discuss anything related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. It said the interview must be conducted in a classified setting and that the transcript should not be publicly released. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is part of the Justice Department. The Republican-led House Judiciary and Oversight committees announced in October they were launching fresh probes into a number of long-standing political grievances, including concerns over the FBI’s handling of the investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Republicans have said they want to get to the bottom of why former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump, publicly discussed the Clinton investigation and announced that the bureau would not seek to bring charges. Comey also publicly revealed, just 11 days before the 2016 presidential election, that he was reopening the matter after the FBI discovered a new batch of Clinton emails. The case was closed shortly after the emails were reviewed, and no new information was uncovered. Critics say the Republicans’ focus on Clinton is merely a tactic to distract from Mueller’s investigation and whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. Since the new Clinton probe was announced, Republicans have also turned up the pressure on Mueller and attacked the FBI’s integrity, after anti-Trump text messages surfaced between two FBI employees who worked on Mueller’s team. One of the employees, agent Peter Strzok, was reassigned after the texts were discovered. The other, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, completed her temporary 45-day detail assignment with Mueller in mid-July. Republican have also asked the Justice Department to make Page, who works in the FBI’s general counsel’s office, available for interviews. Trump has openly attacked the FBI, saying its reputation is in “tatters.” Russia has denied meddling in the election, and Trump has said there was no collusion. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WISCONSIN PRIEST COMES OUT AS “GAY” During Sunday Mass…Gets Standing Ovation…Wait…What?;In 1992, the Vatican under Pope John Paul II published the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which stated, among many other things, that homosexual tendencies are objectively disordered. One of the principal theologians who shaped the document was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would succeed John Paul II as Pope Benedict XVI. He too would take a hard-line stance against homosexuality.Two decades later, Pope Francis has signaled what many believe to be a softening on the matter.In 2013, when asked about gay priests, he famously replied, Who am I to judge? He has continued to call for the Catholic Church to treat LGBT people with dignity and respect, and to fight discrimination against sexual minorities. RNSFrom the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The Rev. Gregory Greiten told his congregation Sunday, I am Greg. I am a Roman Catholic priest. And, yes, I am gay! The priest in the Milwaukee Archdiocese serves as the pastor of St. Bernadette Parish. On Monday, he came out to the rest of the world with a column in the National Catholic Reporter. He received a standing ovation from his parishioners when he made his announcement before the column s publication.Greiten said he was breaking the silence of gay men in the clergy so he could reclaim his own voice.While it is established that there are gay men who serve as priests, it is rare for a priest to come out to his congregation in this way. Greiten shares an estimate in his article that there are between 8,554 and 21,571 gay Catholic priests in the United States from The Changing Face of the Priesthood. Church theology teaches that acting upon homosexuality is a sin.In announcing his identity as a gay man, Greiten chastised the Catholic Church for its stance on homosexuality.He wrote: By choosing to enforce silence, the institutional church pretends that gay priests and religious do not really exist. Because of this, there are no authentic role models of healthy, well-balanced, gay, celibate priests to be an example for those, young and old, who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation. This only perpetuates the toxic shaming and systemic secrecy. NYP-Greiten wrote that has decided to stand with the few courageous priests who have taken the risk to come out of the shadows and have chosen to live in truth and authenticity. The church s silent stance on gay priests perpetuates toxic shaming and systematic secrecy, Greiten wrote. The church needs healthy role models for priests who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation, he said.Greiten met with Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki before coming out, according to an archdiocese spokeswoman. We support Father Greiten in his own personal journey and telling his story of coming to understand and live with his sexual orientation, Listecki said in a statement Monday. As the Church teaches, those with same-sex attraction must be treated with understanding and compassion. ;left-news;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WISCONSIN PRIEST COMES OUT AS “GAY” During Sunday Mass…Gets Standing Ovation…Wait…What?;In 1992, the Vatican under Pope John Paul II published the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which stated, among many other things, that homosexual tendencies are objectively disordered. One of the principal theologians who shaped the document was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would succeed John Paul II as Pope Benedict XVI. He too would take a hard-line stance against homosexuality.Two decades later, Pope Francis has signaled what many believe to be a softening on the matter.In 2013, when asked about gay priests, he famously replied, Who am I to judge? He has continued to call for the Catholic Church to treat LGBT people with dignity and respect, and to fight discrimination against sexual minorities. RNSFrom the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The Rev. Gregory Greiten told his congregation Sunday, I am Greg. I am a Roman Catholic priest. And, yes, I am gay! The priest in the Milwaukee Archdiocese serves as the pastor of St. Bernadette Parish. On Monday, he came out to the rest of the world with a column in the National Catholic Reporter. He received a standing ovation from his parishioners when he made his announcement before the column s publication.Greiten said he was breaking the silence of gay men in the clergy so he could reclaim his own voice.While it is established that there are gay men who serve as priests, it is rare for a priest to come out to his congregation in this way. Greiten shares an estimate in his article that there are between 8,554 and 21,571 gay Catholic priests in the United States from The Changing Face of the Priesthood. Church theology teaches that acting upon homosexuality is a sin.In announcing his identity as a gay man, Greiten chastised the Catholic Church for its stance on homosexuality.He wrote: By choosing to enforce silence, the institutional church pretends that gay priests and religious do not really exist. Because of this, there are no authentic role models of healthy, well-balanced, gay, celibate priests to be an example for those, young and old, who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation. This only perpetuates the toxic shaming and systemic secrecy. NYP-Greiten wrote that has decided to stand with the few courageous priests who have taken the risk to come out of the shadows and have chosen to live in truth and authenticity. The church s silent stance on gay priests perpetuates toxic shaming and systematic secrecy, Greiten wrote. The church needs healthy role models for priests who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual orientation, he said.Greiten met with Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki before coming out, according to an archdiocese spokeswoman. We support Father Greiten in his own personal journey and telling his story of coming to understand and live with his sexual orientation, Listecki said in a statement Monday. As the Church teaches, those with same-sex attraction must be treated with understanding and compassion. ;politics;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MCCONNELL PUSHES BACK ON MEDIA: I Understand ‘Your Job Is to Use the Democratic Talking Points’ [Video];WHO KNEW HE HAD IT IN HIM? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) pushed back against a reporter who asked a question critical of the Republican tax reform bill early Wednesday morning by pointing out it was the reporter s job to use Democratic talking points. McConnell held a press conference shortly after the Senate passed the $1.5 trillion package of tax cuts and tax code revisions in the chamber s 51-48 vote. The vote was at about 1:30 a.m. after much debate on the floor of the Senate. The Democrats are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the Republicans. They are putting politics before what s best for America. Pro-growth is the way to go! MAGA!A MONTAGE OF HYSTERIA FROM THE LEFT OVER THE TAX BILL AFTER THE HOUSE VOTE BUT BEFORE THE SENATE VOTED ON IT: Check out the woman who breaks into the live feed to call the bill a scam Wow! What do you say to Sen. Schumer when he says that you guys are going to rue the day that you pass this bill that the politics of passing long-term corporate tax cuts with short-term individual cuts is going to catch up to you guys? a reporter asked.McConnell cleared his throat and told the reporter he understood his job to use the Democratic talking points before explaining why he believes the tax reform bill is good for Americans.;politics;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House expects Congress to waive spending cuts triggered by tax overhaul;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House expects the U.S. Congress to soon waive a rule known as “Paygo” that could trigger deep spending cuts in areas such as Medicare and agriculture in order to cover the costs of the recently passed tax overhaul, a White House official said on Wednesday. Congress will likely waive the rule, which requires the Senate to find offsets for the large tax cuts in the bill, through the spending resolution it must soon pass in order to keep the government open, the official added. The official said the Internal Revenue Service, the country’s tax agency, can immediately begin implementing changes called for in the $1.5 trillion overhaul of the U.S. tax code and does not need to wait for President Donald Trump to sign the bill into law. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fight over Alaska Arctic drilling has just begun, opponents vow;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, won a decades-long battle on Wednesday to open part of an Arctic wildlife reserve in her state to oil and gas drilling, but Democratic senators and conservationists vow the war has only begun. The tax bill passed by Congress contains language pushed by Murkowski and supported by President Donald Trump to hold two lease sales in the 1.5 million-acre (600,000-hectare) 1002 area on the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. Democrats and environmentalists deplore the prospect of development in ANWR, home to polar and grizzly bears, 200 species of birds, and where Gwich’in natives depend on migrating herds of porcupine caribou. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, said the fight over the drilling was not over. “In fact I would say today is the beginning,” said Cantwell adding that Democrats would make sure the Trump administration follows all environmental laws before allowing drilling. Murkowski said ANWR oil would provide jobs, reduce U.S. imports of crude and help fill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a source of oil for the U.S. West Coast. The pipeline is now operating at a quarter of its capacity, after Alaskan production slumped in recent years. Trump, expected to quickly sign the tax bill into law, said he had not been aware that fellow Republican politicians had long been trying to get at the oil in ANWR. “A friend of mine who is in the oil business said: ‘I can’t believe it. ANWR. They’ve been trying get it for 40 years,’” Trump said at the start of a Cabinet meeting. Trump said opening ANWR, a move supported by some members of the native Iñupiat tribe, would put the country, already the world’s top oil and natural gas producer, at a new level. But environmentalists said there were many stages, such as applications by companies to conduct seismic tests in the refuge, at which they could block drillers with lawsuits over endangered species and other environmental laws. Suzanne Bostrom, a lawyer at Trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit environmental law firm, said opponents would scrutinize applications by energy companies for exploration, development, leasing and oil and gas production. “We will be working every step of the way to make sure that the coastal plain is protected,” said Bostrom. The Interior Department will carry out environmental reviews of the lease sales, one to be held within four years and another within seven years, that opponents will track. Environmental lawyers have had success in stopping drilling in the harsh and frigid Arctic. In 2015, Royal Dutch Shell ended a $7 billion quest to find oil offshore Alaska partly because environmental groups uncovered a little-known law that limited the number of drilling wells. Analysts at British bank Barclays said environmentalists could delay the lease sales and project approvals and “may discourage investment” entirely. Still, the bank said if new surveys show promising ANWR deposits, the region could attract producers that drill in frontier regions in Latin America and the Middle East. Senator Edward Markey, a longtime opponent of Arctic drilling, said the Republican tactic of including the drilling in a bill that only needed 50 votes in the Senate could backfire and help Democrats pick up seats in the 2018 congressional elections. Nobody knows how much oil the refuge contains, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimated in 1998 that the 1002 area held about 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable crude. But a global oil glut that has kept domestic oil prices at levels below $60 a barrel may prevent wide success in ANWR. In a lease sale this month for land in Arctic Alaska, less than 1 percent of the 10.3 million acres (4.2 million hectares) received bids from oil companies. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“PROGRESSIVE” DE BLASIO VISITS IOWA: Denies He’s Running For President…So He Just Wanted To Visit Iowa?;Soooo, NYC Mayor de Blasio wants you to believe he just wants to visit Iowa. He s been running for President since before he became Mayor, that s why he ran for Mayor. And even in progressive NYC, everyone still despises him for doing nothing. And yes, he s further left than Hillary and Obama.Via Free Beacon: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) on Tuesday repeatedly denied that he is running for president in 2020 during a trip to Iowa, a state that automatically begs questions about White House ambitions if politicians head there. No, de Blasio said. I m not running for president. The New York Times noted, however, that de Blasio made Iowa his first stop since his easy re-election to the mayorship. The Iowa caucuses launch the nominating process each presidential election cycle, so any jaunts to the midwestern state attract attention.The Washington Post described the far-left mayor as fielding versions of the 2020 question throughout the day. He described himself as focused on his second term.De Blasio is a total phony HERE S A PREVIOUS REPORT ON DE BLASIO S PROGRESSIVE AGENDA:Why would anyone expect anything else from a mayor who criticized Barack Obama for being too conservative and too afraid to take the bold kind of action that President Roosevelt took during the Great Depression. Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a 13-point national Progressive Agenda that is being touted as the liberal Contract with America. The aim is for the Progressive Agenda to become the basis for the Democratic Party s main economic policies, including those of its 2016 presidential candidate.De Blasio has compared his plan to the Contract with America, a document released by the Republican Party during the 1994 congressional election and drawn up by future House Speaker Newt Gingrich to serve as the GOP policy agenda.Now WND documents that most of the 13 points in de Blasio s Progressive Agenda can also be found in the manifestos and literature of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Party USA.The full progressive plan, entitled, The Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality, can be found on the agenda s new website.Here is a comparison of the Agenda s plan with literature from the manifestos and writings of the Community Party USA, or CPUSA, and the Socialist Party USA, or SPUSA. Progressive Agenda: Raise the federal minimum wage, so that it reaches $15/hour, while indexing it to inflation. SPUSA: We call for a minimum wage of $15 per hour, indexed to the cost of living. CPUSA: Calls for struggles for peace, equality for the racially and nationally oppressed, equality for women job creation programs, increased minimum wage. Even with ultra-right control of the Federal government, peoples legislative victories, such as increasing the minimum wage, can be won on an issue-by-issue basis locally, statewide, and even nationally. Progressive Agenda: Pass comprehensive immigration reform to grow the economy and protect against exploitation of low-wage workers. SPUSA: We defend the rights of all immigrants to education, health care, and full civil and legal rights and call for an unconditional amnesty program for all undocumented people. We oppose the imposition of any fees on those receiving amnesty. We call for full citizenship rights upon demonstrating residency for six months. CPUSA: Declares the struggle for immigrant rights is a key component of the struggle for working class unity in our country today. Progressive Agenda: Make Pre-K, after-school programs and childcare universal. SPUSA: We support public child care starting from infancy, and public education starting at age three, with caregivers and teachers of young children receiving training, wages, and benefits comparable to that of teachers at every other level of the educational system. Progressive Agenda: Earned Income Tax Credit. Implement the Buffett Rule so millionaires pay their fair share. SPUSA: We call for a steeply graduated income tax and a steeply graduated estate tax. CPUSA: No taxes for workers and low and middle income people;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING: Federal Judge Declares MISTRIAL In Bundy Case After Prosecutors Willfully Withheld Evidence Of FBI Snipers and Surveillance Used During Standoff;Who could forget the unbelievable standoff in Oregon between patriots and the government? Who could forget the dramatic shooting of patriot Lavoy Finicum who traveled from Arizona to Oregon from to stand with American ranchers against the BLM, an overbearing government agency? Oregon State Police troopers fired the three rounds that killed the Arizona rancher and father of 11 during a confrontation on a remote road, law enforcement officials said at a news conference in Bend. Go HERE to see the actual video showing patriot Lavoy Finicum being shot to death by authorities.Here s a great video showing the historic standoff between patriots and the overreaching BLM government agency:Recently FOX News Bret Bair did a special report, where he asked, whatever happened to the Bundy s? On October 27, 2016, Ammon and Ryan Bundy were been found not guilty of conspiracy. Their five co-defendants Jeff Banta, Shawna Cox, David Fry, Kenneth Medenbach and Neil Wampler have all been found not guilty as well. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on Ryan Bundy s theft of government property charge.The jury returned its verdict after some six weeks of testimony followed by less than six hours deliberations, and the last minute replacement of a juror after an allegation surfaced that he was biased.The jury was instructed to disregard their previous work and to reconsider the evidence. It was a pretty jaw-dropping verdict, said OPB reporter Amelia Templeton of the climate in the courtroom. The jury began by reading out the verdict for Ammon Bundy, ostensibly the leader of the occupation, and when we heard that Ammon Bundy was not guilty, it became clear very quickly that likely no one in the case was going to be found guilty, and indeed, everyone has been acquitted. After the verdict was read, Ammon Bundy s attorney Marcus Mumford was tackled to the ground by five U.S. Marshals. He insisted his client was free to go. Ammon Bundy faces a US Marshall hold and is supposed to be transferred to Nevada where he faces charges for the Bunkerville standoff.Here is Ammon Bundy explaining why they are protesting:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BOOM! #AT&T and #Boeing Step Up to Invest Billions and Give Employee Bonuses After Tax Cut Bill [Video];"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PRO-GROWTH PRESIDENT TAKES THE REINS: Boeing announces $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future:#Boeing announces $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future. pic.twitter.com/ZNawbAW7AY The Boeing Company (@Boeing) December 20, 2017At&T Announces:.@POTUS announces that ""AT&T plans to increase US capital spending $1B and provide $1,000 special bonuses to more than 200,000 US employee"" as a result of the Republican tax reform bill. https://t.co/XtcvkW3NEW pic.twitter.com/JTrdfBOoLx FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 20, 2017AT&T's full statement: ""With Tax Reform, AT&T Plans to Increase U.S. Capital Spending $1 Billion and Provide $1,000 Special Bonus to more than 200,000 U.S. Employees"" pic.twitter.com/Mjttx3D1gI Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 20, 2017MAGA!Together, we are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/47k9i4p3J2 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017";politics;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“NUMEROUS” CONFLICTING STATEMENTS: Deputy FBI Director in Hot Water After Testimony [Video]; While we re really not surprised by the conflicting statements by Andrew McCabe, we just can t believe another type of conflict wasn t an issue long ago. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the Clintons for his wife s campaign. It doesn t take a rocket scientist to understand that this is a conflict of interest and wrong on every level. Please see our previous report below on McCabe s involvement in his wife s run for Virginia state senate in 2015.FOX News reports:Congressional investigators tell Fox News that Tuesday s seven-hour interrogation of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe contained numerous conflicts with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting the Republican majority staff of the House Intelligence Committee to decide to issue fresh subpoenas next week on Justice Department and FBI personnel.Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump dossier and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier s financing and provenance.FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe testifies behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/GHjihJkmz4 FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 19, 2017OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON MCCABE:Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is being investigated by the Office of U.S. Counsel violating the Hatch Act according to a new report by Circa News.The Hatch Act prohibits FBI agents from campaigning in partisan races. Photos of McCabe campaigning for his wife raised questions about McCabe s compliance with the law.Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is being investigated by the Office of U.S. Special Counsel for violating The Hatch Act that prohibits FBI agents from campaigning in partisan races.The Office of U.S. Special Counsel, the government s main whistleblower agency, is investigating whether FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe s activities supporting his wife Jill s Democratic campaign for Virginia state senate in 2015 violated the Hatch Act s prohibition against FBI agents campaigning in partisan races.The agency s probe was prompted by a complaint in April from a former FBI agent who forwarded social media photos showing McCabe wearing a T-shirt supporting his wife s campaign during a public event and then posting a photo on social media urging voters to join him in voting for his wife. I am voting for Jill because she is the best wife ever, McCabe put on a sign that he photographed himself holding. The photo was posted on her social media page a few days before the election, in response to Dr. Jill McCabe s plea to help me win by posting photos expressing reasons why voters should vote for her, according to the complaint.Other social media photos in the complaint showed McCabe s minor daughter campaigning with her mother, wearing an FBI shirt, and McCabe voting with his wife at a polling station.Here is another social media photo of our acting #FBI director, #AndrewMcCabe breaking the rules by campaigning on social media. #Corrupt pic.twitter.com/hBCH29yErY Senator Dick Black (@SenRichardBlack) May 9, 2017The Hatch Act prohibits FBI employees from engaging in political activity in concert with a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or a partisan political group. It defines prohibited political activity as any activity directed at the success or failure of a partisan group or candidate in a partisan election. An ethics expert told Circa the photos raised legitimate questions about McCabe s compliance with the law.Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe s office released to Circa under the Freedom of Information Act documents showing McCabe attended a meeting with his wife and the governor on a Saturday in March 2015 specifically to discuss having Jill McCabe run for state Senate in Virginia as a Democrat. This is a candidate recruitment meeting. McCabe is seriously considering running against State Senator Dick Black. You have been asked to close the deal, the briefing memo for McAuliffe read.Watch Sean Hannity discuss McCabe s involvement in his wife s campaign as well as his ties to Hillary s campaign:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1R0Wb6f7MwIncluded in the governor s briefing package was a copy of McCabe s FBI biography. The biography made clear that Andrew McCabe was a senior executive who at the time oversaw the FBI s Washington field office that among many tasks supervised investigations in northern Virginia.At the time of the meeting, published reports indicate agents in the Washington field office were involved in both a probe of McAuliffe and of the governor s close friend, Hillary Clinton s and her private email account.h/t Gateway Pundit;politics;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GREAT SCOTT! SC REP TIM SCOTT HITS BACK AT REPORTER For Calling Him Trump’s Token Black Guy [Video];"Immediately after the House passed the tax reform bill, members of the Republican caucus went over to the White House for a victory lap. Key lawmakers who had a hand in the bill were there along with Mitch McConnell and Paul RyanAs President Trump spoke, Tim Scott stood next to him. Scott has been a key player in the hard work that went into passing the bill. The snarky left couldn t wait to comment on his appearance at the event with POTUS. This is sickening. Will the left ever practice what it preaches on tolerance?TIM SCOTT TWEETS:HUFFPO REPORTER TWEETS:TIM SCOTT HITS BACK HARD:TIM SCOTT S WONDERFUL COMMENTS ON THE TAX CUT BILL:.@SenatorTimScott: ""This tax reform plan delivers for the average single mother a 70% tax cut."" #TaxReform https://t.co/tkYGGkohS4 pic.twitter.com/3zkeQcMc2B Fox News (@FoxNews) December 20, 2017BRAVO!";politics;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! Emails Prove Woman Who Accused Trump Of Sexual Assault In The 1990’s Is A Phony…Tried to Get A Job On Trump’s Campaign That Would Require Her To Be Close To Him;Just a few months before reports of her sexual assault lawsuit against Donald Trump rocked the campaign, cosmetics executive Jill Harth lobbied to be the then-candidate s make-up artist.On Monday, The Hill detailed the story of Harth s repeated efforts to become Trump s campaign makeup artist and to pitch her new male cosmetics product line, Made Man. Her solicitations, in both emails and in person, came a few months before her 1997 lawsuit was brought to light, along with several other sexual misconduct allegations against the candidate. The Hill learned of her appeals to Trump in an interview with Harth in December about her friendship with celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; WATCH: Lindsey Graham Trashes Media For Portraying Trump As ‘Kooky,’ Forgets His Own Words;The media has been talking all day about Trump and the Republican Party s scam of a tax bill;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox - Big-ticket items at center of Congress funding battle;(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is weighing military spending, healthcare and other major decisions tied to a temporary funding bill to keep the government operating beyond Friday, as lawmakers rush to begin a year-end recess. Republicans control the House of Representatives and Senate, but disagreements between the two chambers, along with differences between Republicans and Democrats, make for potentially difficult days ahead. The following are the big initiatives under consideration: Money expires at midnight on Friday for the operation of most federal agencies. That is because Congress has failed to approve the regular appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1 and Washington has been operating on a series of temporary funding bills. The House is proposing another temporary extension - one that would run through Jan. 19, 2018. It is unclear whether the Senate would stick with that date or seek a slightly later one to give Congress more time to write legislation funding agencies through Sept. 30. President Donald Trump is pushing for a significant increase in defense spending. Conservatives in Congress want to include that money in the stopgap funding bill this week. But Senate Democrats are expected to block it until negotiators can reach a deal on coupling more non-defense spending with a bigger military budget. Congress is likely to include $81 billion to help Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and several states recover from severe hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. The Children’s Health Insurance Program, which helps provide medical care to nearly 9 million children in low-income families, is slated for a five-year renewal by the House. But the Senate might balk at the way it is structured. It was unclear whether it would opt for temporary funding. The Senate might attach a bipartisan measure that maintains healthcare subsidies for low-income people participating in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Many House Republican lawmakers dislike that idea. The National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could be renewed, but there are competing versions of such legislation in the House and Senate. Legislation to protect “Dreamers” from deportation is not expected to be included, despite Democrats’ push to resolve the issue by year’s end. Negotiators are trying to reach a deal on helping the immigrants, many from Mexico and Central America, who were brought to the United States illegally as children. The issue is expected to come back to life in early 2018. ;politicsNews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Heiress To Disney Empire Knows GOP Scammed Us – SHREDS Them For Tax Bill;Abigail Disney is an heiress with brass ovaries who will profit from the GOP tax scam bill but isn t into f-cking poor people over. Ms. Disney penned an op-ed for USA Today in which she rips the GOP a new one because she has always been cognizant of income and wealth inequality. In other words, she is not Donald Trump, Paul Ryan or Bob Corker. Or Mitch McConnell. She is Abigail Disney, dammit. Since the election of Ronald Reagan, the gap between rich and poor has grown dramatically and trickle down economics has turned out to cause more of a trickle up, she writes. But nothing has brought the problem of inequality into sharper focus for me than the current proposals by Republicans to overhaul the tax system. Disney says that this proposal will be burdensome to the middle class while decreasing the responsibility of the wealthy to contribute to the common good. And then she dropped a truth bomb. (We like truth bombs.)Republicans insist this plan will cut taxes for the middle class, but the truth is that any meager savings will be offset by losses elsewhere in deductions no longer allowed, loss of Medicaid and Medicare coverage, and less funding for education, all of which are on the chopping block in order to provide a tax cut for a few very wealthy people like me. There is even a tax break to private jet owners. This bill will give me this tax cut while also killing health insurance for over 13 million people, Disney wrote. It will let me pass over $20 million to my children, tax-free. And all my friends with private jets? They get a tax cut too. With a suffocating education system, a dying infrastructure and a national debt that will be at least $1.5 trillion bigger, that social mobility will be far out of reach for people like you, Disney continued. But I will be able to stay comfortably right where I am. Does that strike you as fair? No, it does not, thankyouverymuch. But given how this bill was written, I think it s looking a lot like a nightmare from Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney wrote. Have I made you angry yet? I really hope I ve made you angry. You should be. No one who votes for this tax bill will be voting with your life in mind. But you will pay for it. Watch:This Disney heiress is taking a stand against the GOP tax bill even though she s going to benefit from it pic.twitter.com/E5bmcI83mU NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 20, 2017 If democracy is just a bunch of people advocating for their own self-interest instead of the interests of the greater good, then we re not a democracy, we re anarchy, Disney added. We need to start voting and acting as citizens as though the common good matters more than our own personal well-being. This isn t tax reform. It s a heist.Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images for Burda Media.;News;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Tone Deaf Trump: Congrats Rep. Scalise On Losing Weight After You Almost Died;Donald Trump just signed the GOP tax scam into law. Of course, that meant that he invited all of his craven, cruel GOP sycophants down from their perches on Capitol Hill to celebrate in the Rose Garden at the White House. Now, that part is bad enough celebrating tax cuts for a bunch of rich hedge fund managers and huge corporations at the expense of everyday Americans. Of course, Trump is beside himself with glee, as this represents his first major legislative win since he started squatting in the White House almost a year ago. Thanks to said glee, in true Trumpian style, he gave a free-wheeling address, and a most curious subject came up as Trump was thanking the goons from the Hill. Somehow, Trump veered away from tax cuts, and started talking about the Congressional baseball shooting that happened over the summer.In that shooting, Rep. Steve Scalise, who is also the House Majority Whip, was shot and almost lost his life. Thanks to this tragic and stunning act of political violence, Scalise had a long recovery;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CHER AND ROSIE In Desperation Mode Over Tax Cuts…Illegal Bribes and “Hate You” Tweets Offered to GOP;Has-been liberal celebrities took to twitter to voice their displeasure and to offer bribes to change votes. Rosie, Rosie, Rosie she knows better than to throw millions at politicians. she just made herself look like a fool with the tweet below:so how about this i promise to give 2 million dollars to senator susan collins and 2 million to senator jeff flakeif they vote NO NO I WILL NOT KILL AMERICANS FOR THE SUOER RICH DM me susan DM me jeff no shit 2 million casheach ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Cher got nasty when she tweeted out a hate u tweet:4get anger.Who are these republicans,who will let ppldie. means nothing if you lose your child,wife,husband, sister,brother,father, mother.trump &his stepford wives r trying 2destroy our beloved America,we will rise up & #Resist.have ten rallies a day.the majority hates u Cher (@cher) December 20, 2017The left has shown themselves to be totally wacko during the time of the tax cut vote. We ve heard of a woman ripping off her top in the gallery of the House and other downright nasty threats from leftists on twitter:https://twitter.com/ActualEPAFacts/status/943315104862482432Different Democrats have gone full drama mode over this tax cut. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have lead the way .Nancy Pelosi just got even more embarrassing than ever She pulled the drama card while commenting on the tax cuts: No this is the end of the world. The debate on health care is life or death. This is Armegeddon! This is a really big deal. Because you know why? It s really hard to come back from this ;politics;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU executive moves to punish Poland over court reforms;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU executive launched an unprecedented process on Wednesday to suspend Poland s voting rights in the European Union after two years of dispute over judicial reforms that Brussels says undermine Polish courts independence. The European Commission, the guardian of EU law, will now ask the other EU governments to declare that Poland s changes to the judiciary constitute a clear risk of a serious breach of EU values especially the rule of law. However, it gave Warsaw, where a new prime minister took office only this month, three months to remedy the situation and said it could rescind its decision if it did so. Often referred to as the EU s nuclear option , the move carries the ultimate threat of sanctions but is in fact unlikely to result in that. The Commission has today concluded that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in Poland, the Commission said in a statement. Judicial reforms in Poland mean that the country s judiciary is now under the political control of the ruling majority. In the absence of judicial independence, serious questions are raised about the effective application of EU law. The Commission s deputy head, First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who has conducted talks with the Polish government dominated by Law and Justice Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for the past two years, said he was acting with a heavy heart but was obliged to take action to protect the Union as a whole. We are open for dialogue 24/7, Timmermans said, saying that if Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who took office just this month, were to change tack, he would be ready to respond. But Timmermans insisted: As guardians of the treaty, the Commission is under a strict responsibility to act ... If the application of the rule of law is left completely to the individual member states, then the whole of the EU will suffer. This decision has no merit. It is in our opinion a purely political decision, Beata Mazurek, a spokeswoman for Poland s ruling party, was quoted as saying by state news agency PAP. Stung by Britain s vote last year to leave the Union, the EU institutions are battling a rise in euroskeptic nationalism across the continent and particularly in the former Communist east, where Poland s ally Hungary has also prompted previously the Commission to threaten sanctions over the rule of law. Seeking to counter Warsaw s accusations of an anti-Polish bias in Brussels and in his own behavior, Timmermans, who once worked in the Soviet bloc as a Dutch diplomat, praised Poland s historic contribution to overcoming the Cold War divide of Europe but said Warsaw now bore a special responsibility to prevent new rifts opening up over democratic principles. I want to stand by the Polish people in this time which is very difficult for them, and for us, he said, adding that the defending a separation of powers was of existential importance not just for the Polish nation but for the EU as a whole . The next step in the process is that EU governments, meeting in the Council of the European Union, will hear Poland out and ask it to address their concerns. But if 22 out of the EU s 28 countries and the European Parliament are not satisfied in the end, the process will move on to the next stages, which may mean sanctions. The sanctions can involve the suspension of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights . This formulation leaves open the possibility also of suspending EU financial transfers to Poland, now the biggest beneficiary of European funds aimed at boosting living standards in the former communist country. Sanctions can be imposed with the backing of a majority of countries representing a majority of the EU s citizens. But to get to that stage, EU governments have first to unanimously agree that what was initially just a risk of a serious breach of the rule of law has now become a reality. This is unlikely to happen, because Hungary has already declared that it would not support such a motion against Poland. But the mere threat of it underlines the sharp deterioration in ties between Warsaw and Brussels since the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won power in late 2015. The Commission and Council of Europe legal experts, known as the Venice Commission, say Poland s judicial reforms undermine judges independence because they give the ruling party control over the sacking and the appointments of judges, as well as the option to end the terms of some Supreme Court judges early. The Council of Europe, Europe s human rights watchdog, has compared such measures to those of the Soviet system. The PiS government rejects these accusations, saying the changes are needed because courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist era-mentality. Polish President Andrzej Duda has until Jan. 5 to sign them into law. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. follows Mexico in backing disputed Honduran vote result;WASHINGTON/TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday followed Mexico in signaling that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez had won a heavily disputed presidential election last month, lending weight to his legitimacy in spite of ongoing opposition protests. The Honduran electoral tribunal at the weekend declared U.S. ally Hernandez the winner of the Nov. 26 election in spite of widespread misgivings about the count, which turned in favor of the incumbent after suddenly halting with the opposition ahead. Violent protests have broken out in Honduras over the vote, and the Organization of American States (OAS) urged the country to hold new elections to resolve the dispute. That proposal has, however, been rejected by senior Honduran officials. Hernandez s rival Salvador Nasralla traveled to Washington this week to urge the United States not to recognize the vote, but a senior U.S. State Department official said that his government had no evidence that would alter the results. At this point ... we have not seen anything that alters the final result, the official told reporters, saying Washington may wait to make a definitive judgment in case the opposition presents additional evidence of fraud in the election. Mexico on Tuesday congratulated Hernandez for being declared victor. Mexico s step, which followed the recognition of Hernandez by Colombia and Guatemala, strengthened the incumbent s hand and could tilt other countries in his favor. The Mexican statement, and its review, indicates that a call for a new election is a pretty dramatic outcome in this case, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Washington may hold off on making a final judgment until the end of a five-day period when the opposition can produce further evidence to contest the results, the official added. He said a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state met with Nasralla, who has accused Hernandez of stealing the election. He did not have any new (allegations of) fraud (or) evidence to present to us, and I think we are going to work through this quickly to get to a definitive U.S. statement, he added. The Mexican statement is going to have a strong influence on whether we think we can move forward sooner. The Mexicans seem pretty certain in their statement. Hernandez on Wednesday named a new head of the armed forces, Rene Orlando Ponce, who quickly indicated on local radio that solving the impasse would be for Honduras alone. We re not going to accept any interference beyond Honduran law, he said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine leader declares unilateral ceasefire for Christmas;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has declared a 10-day unilateral ceasefire with communist rebels to allow Filipinos to celebrate a stress-free Christmas season, two weeks after peace talks with the insurgents were formally scrapped. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte had ordered the army and police to suspend offensive operations from Dec. 24 to Jan. 2 to lessen the apprehension of the public this Christmas season . He said he expected the Maoists and their political leaders to do a similar gesture of goodwill. There was no immediate comment from the communist rebel movement, whose top leaders and negotiators have been living in exile in The Netherlands since the late 1980s. Duterte restarted a stalled peace process and freed several communist leaders as a gesture of good faith when he came to office last year but he recently abandoned talks due to escalating rebel attacks. He has vented his fury on a near-daily basis at what he considers duplicity by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People s Army (NPA). He has collectively declared them a terrorist organization and has ended the three-decades peace process. The rebel forces, estimated to number around 3,000, have been waging a protracted guerrilla warfare in the countryside for nearly 50 years in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people and stifled growth in resource-rich areas of the Philippines. The guerrillas have been targeting mines, plantations, construction and telecommunication companies, demanding revolutionary taxation to finance arms purchases and recruitment activities. Duterte on Tuesday night said he only wanted Filipinos to celebrate a stress-free Christmas. I do not want to add more strain to what people are now suffering, he told reporters. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Serbian, Croatian police detain 17 for smuggling migrants to EU;BELGRADE (Reuters) - In a joint sting, Serbian and Croatian police have detained 17 people suspected of smuggling dozens of migrants into the European Union, Serbia s Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. Serbia was at the center of the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016 when hundreds of thousands of people fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and Asia journeyed up through the Balkans to reach the European Union. That route was effectively closed last year, but a steady trickle of migrants, arriving mainly from Turkey via neighboring Bulgaria, has continued. Many migrants use smugglers to reach the EU. In a statement, the Interior Ministry said the group detained in Belgrade and four northern towns comprised 12 Serbians and one Afghan man. The police in neighboring Croatia have detained four more suspects, it said. It is suspected that this criminal group facilitated the illegal crossing of the border and transit ... to a total of 82 migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, from whom they took 1,500 euros ($1,800) per person, it said. Official data show there are up to 4,500 migrants stranded in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say hundreds more are scattered in the capital Belgrade and towns along the Croatian border. ($1 = 0.8442 euros) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poll shows improvement in Brazil President Temer's low approval rating;BRASILIA (Reuters) - The approval rating for Brazilian President Michel Temer s scandal-plagued government has doubled to 6 percent from the prior survey, a new poll published on Wednesday showed, as the country s economy continues to improve. The survey by pollster Ibope, conducted between Dec. 7-10, said the number of people who considered Temer s government bad or terrible fell to 74 percent, from 77 percent in the previous survey in September. That represents the first improvement in Temer s unfavorable rating since he took over last year from his predecessor Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached for breaking budget rules. Brazil s economy continues to strengthen as it exits its worst recession in a century, posting its third consecutive quarter of growth in the third quarter. The poll comes as Brazil s Congress heads into a winter recess until February without voting to overhaul the pension system, Temer s top policy initiative that is seen as vital to fixing the country s finances but is widely unpopular. The government has notched some smaller legislative successes, including more flexible labor regulations that came into effect last month. In October, the lower house of Congress again rejected corruption charges against Temer. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims air base attack in Egypt's North Sinai;CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State has claimed an attack on an Egyptian military airport that killed one officer and wounded two near the town of Arish in North Sinai on Tuesday, the group s Amaq news agency said in a statement. Security sources meanwhile said an army officer and five militants had been killed in clashes as security forces carried out arrest raids near the Arish air base on Wednesday. The Amaq statement said Islamic State fighters used a Kornet anti-tank missile in the Tuesday attack that targeted the interior and defense ministers who were visiting the area. Neither minister was harmed, a security source said. Islamic State s Sinai branch has for years waged attacks against security forces, and in the past year expanded targets to include Christians and other civilians. An attack on a mosque last month which killed more than 300 people, the deadliest in Egypt s modern history, was widely attributed to Islamic State, but the group did not claim it. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered security forces to use heavy force to stamp out the Sinai insurgency within three months after that attack. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two Kosovo men plea guilty of plotting to attack Israeli soccer team;PRISTINA (Reuters) - Two Kosovo men pleaded guilty on Wednesday to planning attacks at a World Cup soccer match in Albania against the visiting Israel team last year. Kosovo police arrested 19 people in November 2016 on suspicion that they had links with the Islamic State militant group and were planning attacks in Kosovo and neighboring Albania. Nine of them were charged. The state prosecutor said some of them were in contact with Lavdrim Muhaxheri, Islamic State s self-declared commander of Albanians in Syria and Iraq , who ordered them to attack. Police said Muhaxheri was killed in June this year. ... I accept guilty plea, defendant Kenan Plakaj said in court. He is accused of making explosives, after police found half a kilo of explosives at his house, the indictment said. The other defendant, Besart Peci, also pleaded guilty. Sentences were not announced. Another defendant facing trial had kept in his basement 283 grams of self-made explosives. The same triacetone triperoxide explosive was used in attacks in Paris and Brussels and has been found in various foiled bombings in Europe since 2007. No militant attacks have been staged in Kosovo, whose population is largely ethnic Albanian Muslim. But at least 200 people have been detained or investigated over offences related to Islamic State, and a total of 300 Kosovars have gone to Syria to fight for Islamic State. More than 70 have been killed. International and local security agencies in Kosovo are worried that many of those returning from combat zones will pose a security threat. In 2015, Kosovo adopted a law introducing jail sentences of up to 15 years for anyone found guilty of fighting in wars abroad. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea says delay in military drills aimed only at ensuring peaceful Olympics;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean officials said on Wednesday a proposed delay in military drills with the United States was aimed at ensuring a peaceful 2018 Winter Olympics, not ending the North Korean missile crisis, as relations with China suffered new setbacks. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is seeking to soothe relations with North Korea, which is pursuing nuclear and missile programmes in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and with China, the North s lone major ally, before the Games begin in South Korea in February. China, which hosted years of on-again-off-again six-party talks to try to end the North Korea standoff, resumed some blocks on group tours to South Korea, industry sources said, and rebuked Seoul for firing warning shots at Chinese fishing boats On Tuesday, Moon, who visited China last week, said he had proposed postponing major military drills with the United States until after the Games, a move his office said was designed to reassure athletes and spectators. This is confined to our efforts to host a peaceful Olympics, an official from the presidential Blue House said. We are only talking about the exercises which are supposed to take place during the Olympics and Paralympics. North Korea sees the regular joint exercises as preparation for war, while China is still angry about the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system, commonly known as THAAD, by South Korea, whose powerful radar it fears could see deep inside its territory. The South argues it needs THAAD to guard against the threat posed by North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, Japan and the United States. For a graphic on North Korea's missile launches, click tmsnrt.rs/2j2S5T3 The proposed delay in drills was discussed during a summit last week between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping, after the proposal had already been submitted to the Americans, the Blue House official said. China and Russia have proposed a freeze for freeze arrangement under which North Korea would stop its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a halt to the exercises. However, the official denied the proposed delay had anything to do with the freeze idea. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Ottawa on Tuesday he was unaware of any plans to alter longstanding and scheduled and regular military exercises . North Korea has stepped up its missile and nuclear tests at an unprecedented rate this year, and any new provocation from the North would inevitably have an impact on the exercises, the Blue House official said. It is a display of the president s strong message that North Korea must not conduct any provocation (during the Olympics), the official told reporters. (For a graphic on North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, click tmsnrt.rs/2vXbj0S) Japan s Asahi newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified person connected to South Korean intelligence, that North Korea was conducting biological experiments to test the possibility of loading anthrax-laden warheads on its intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Asahi report said the U.S. government was aware of the tests, which were meant to ascertain whether the anthrax bacteria could survive the high temperatures that occur during warheads re-entry from space. Reuters was unable to verify the report independently. In a statement released by state media, North Korea s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called reports it was developing biological weapons nonsense designed to provoke nuclear war. The United States has given China a draft resolution for tougher U.N. sanctions on North Korea and is hoping for a quick vote on it by the U.N. Security Council, a Western diplomat said on Tuesday, however Beijing has yet to sign on. When asked about the U.S. resolution at a press briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying would only say that China always takes a responsible and constructive attitude towards Security Council talks on North Korea. The United States has also called on the Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea. Hua said China had received the proposal from the United States. China has resumed at least some restrictions on group tours into the South, South Korea s inbound travel agency said. The restrictions were first in place last year as part of China s retaliation over THAAD deployment. I was told from my boss this morning that our Chinese partners (based in Beijing and Shandong) said they won t send group tourists to South Korea as of January, the official from Naeil Tour Agency told Reuters by phone. One source in China said the reason for reinstating the ban was to rein in overly aggressive tour operators who had been rolling out package deals to South Korea too quickly in the eyes of authorities. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua told reporters she had not heard of a tourism ban, but she reiterated that Moon s visit to Beijing was successful and that China has an open attitude towards exchanges and cooperation in all areas. Beijing has never officially confirmed restrictions on tourism. Three representatives at Beijing travel agencies told Reuters that they were not currently organising group tours to South Korea. One confirmed that the tourism administration had issued the notice, while a third said: At the moment we have no group trips to South Korea. A travel agency in the northern province of Shandong also said it could not organise group trips. Three others said they could, but with restrictions such as on the number of people. South Korea s coast guard said on Wednesday it had fired around 250 warning shots on Tuesday to chase away a fleet of 44 Chinese boats fortified with iron bars and steel mesh that were fishing illegally in South Korean waters. The Chinese fishing boats sought to swarm around and collide with our patrol ship, ignoring the broadcast warnings, the coast guard said in a statement. China, which has in the past lodged diplomatic protests to South Korea over the use of force by its coast guard, expressed serious concern about the latest clash. (For a graphic on rocket science, click tmsnrt.rs/2t6WEPL) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somali lawmakers seek to impeach president amid political crisis;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Some Somali lawmakers said on Wednesday they plan to impeach the president in a mounting political crisis that could put the fledgling government on a violent collision course with one of the country s most powerful clans. The political turmoil endangers fragile gains against the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency and could derail the government of President Mohamed Abdullahi. Universally known by his nickname Farmajo , the dual U.S.-Somali citizen took power earlier this year in a U.N.-backed process. The Horn of Africa state s parliament adjourned last week until the end of February, but some legislators want it to reconvene on an emergency basis, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters. Ninety-six lawmakers have asked the speaker to reopen the session so that the impeachment against the president kicks off. The president is accused of violation of the constitution, treason, destruction of the federal states and so on, he said. The letter had not yet been delivered to the speaker. There are 275 lawmakers and two-thirds would have to vote against the president to impeach him. The motion follows a deadly raid on Sunday on the home of an opposition leader, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, who ran for the presidency against Farmajo. Somali security agents arrived at his house around midnight and engaged his guards in a firefight, killing five people. The minister of security said Warsame resisted arrest and he would be charged with treason. He appeared in court on Tuesday but no warrant was shown for his arrest, a witness said. A Wednesday court hearing was postponed until Thursday. The information minister did not return calls seeking comment. A statement from the security minister and attorney general said they were investigating the crimes of Somalis who were involved in treason, terror and the destruction of government systems . Warsame comes from Somalia s formidable Habar Gidir clan, which is spread across south-central Somalia. Although both his supporters and the government stress that his detention is political, rather than a clan issue, it will further sour relations between the two sides. If that sparks fighting it could split Somalia s security forces, which are composed mostly of clan-based militias. In September, a battle between the police, intelligence, and military killed nine people in Mogadishu s Habar Gidir district. It s a lose-lose situation for the government. If they pursue this, they face a showdown with the Habar Gidir, who are powerful, wealthy and well-armed and provide many units in the SNA, said a Somalia security analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the Somali National Army. If they back down, they look weak. It s very hard to see how the administration could survive this crisis. In August, a joint U.S.-Somali raid in the town of Bariire killed 10 Habar Gidir members. The U.S. military said they were Islamist militants but clan elders said they were civilians. In May, a soldier accidentally killed the minister of public works in a case of mistaken identity. A Habar Gidir clan member, the soldier was sentenced to death, angering clan members who felt that blood money should have been accepted. Somalia s new government has won plaudits from diplomats for trying to assess the extent of mismanagement and corruption in the armed forces and the International Monetary Fund has praised it for fiscal reforms. But at home, the government has many problems. It has hired and fired a string of top security officials. Al Shabaab militants, skilled at exploiting clan divisions, stepped up a campaign of deadly bombings in Mogadishu. One October bomb killed more than 500 people. A split between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have supported Somali factions, has fuelled a spat between the president and leaders of Somalia s regional administrations, damaging security cooperation. This month, the U.S. government announced it was suspending aid to most of the military over accountability concerns. Now many parliamentarians are angry that a government that promotes itself as reformist is arresting critics like Warsame, said Abdirizak Mohamed, a lawmaker and former security minister. MPs are concerned about freedom of expression and association. This was an unnecessary crisis when they already had a lot on their plate. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Saudi prince says Trump's Jerusalem move threatens stability;RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital will stoke violence in the region, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said, dismissing reports of prior consultations made with Riyadh over the move. It is a very bad decision. The consequences will be more bloodshed, more conflict rather than peaceful resolution, Prince Turki, a senior royal family member and a former ambassador to Washington, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday in Riyadh. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and veered from international consensus this month by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Most countries say the city s status must be left to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia condemned the decision. Saudi King Salman told President Trump that any decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached will inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported. But Saudi Arabia stopped short of calling for any Arab action against the decision. Palestinian officials say Riyadh has been working for weeks behind the scenes to press them to support a nascent U.S. peace plan. The reaction here was total surprise, said Prince Turki, who now holds no government office but remains influential. ... If there has been prior consultation or anything like that, why would the King go through the process of telling him (Trump) this is a bad idea and make that known publicly? I don t think there ever was any discussion of this before the decision was taken, he added. As regards possible Saudi and Arab action in response to Trump s decision, Prince Turki said: I am sure lots of people would prefer to have something just for the sake of appearance but I don t think that s how the Saudi government operates. If it is going to take action, it is going to be a serious action. Four Palestinian officials, who spoke on condition they not be named, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have discussed in detail a grand bargain that Trump and Jared Kushner, the president s son-in-law and adviser, are expected to unveil in the first half of 2018. Arab officials say the plan is still in its early phases of development. Prince Turki said he was unaware of details of any such plan. Prince Turki is a son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. His brother, Saud al-Faisal, served as foreign minister for 40 years until 2015, and their branch of the family is seen as influential over Saudi foreign policy, even as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has solidified his authority. Prince Saud championed a 2002 Arab peace initiative which called for normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel in return for Israel s withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. In a letter to Trump published in a Saudi newspaper on Dec. 11, Prince Turki said that Trump s opportunistic Jerusalem move would threaten security in the region. The now much diminished terrorist international gets a rejuvenation boost from you and re-energizes its recruitment of volunteers to broaden their murderous attacks on innocent civilians, worldwide, he wrote in his letter. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said he would encourage a more moderate and tolerant version of Islam in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The ambitious young prince has already taken some steps to loosen Saudi Arabia s ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police, permitting public concerts and announcing plans to allow women to drive next year. Prince Turki said that Saudis share in the blame for the spread of extremist ideology through funding of mosques abroad that may have fallen into the wrong hands, but that such funding stopped since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The kingdom has been the victim of such people and such activity... Since Sept. 11 the kingdom has had a sustained and continuous program opposing extremist ideology, not just in the kingdom but abroad, he told Reuters. For a period of time, yes it is true there were some Saudis who promoted issues of extremism and so on. Now we are getting rid of all of those. I would say we have gotten rid of most of them, if not all of them. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar military appoints general to probe mass grave in Rakhine state;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s army said on Wednesday that it had appointed a senior officer to investigate whether any members of the security forces were involved in the killing of 10 people whose bodies have been uncovered in a mass grave in Rakhine State. A violent crackdown by the security forces in response to attacks by militants in the western state has caused around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh in recent months. The discover of the grave, at the village of Inn Din, about 50 km (30 miles) north of the state capital Sittwe, was announced by the military two days ago. In a statement posted on the Facebook page of the military s commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the army said a five-member investigation team had left the capital Naypyitaw on Wednesday. The team, led by Lieutenant General Aye Win, would investigate whether the security forces took part or not, in relation to the unidentified dead bodies found in Inn Din village graveyard . It gave no further details and military officials were not immediately available for comment. General Aye Win is the same officer who led a wider probe into the conduct of troops in a conflict that began in late August, which concluded in a report last month that no atrocities took place. Myanmar s armed forces launched what they termed clearance operations in northern Rakhine, where many of the stateless Muslim minority lived, after Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base on Aug. 25. Rights monitors have accused troops of abuses, including killings, mass rape and arson during those operations. The United States has said it amounted to ethnic cleansing . Myanmar s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced fierce international criticism for failing to do more to protect the Rohingya. The civilian government, which has no control over the military, has said the army was engaged in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. It has promised to investigate allegations of abuses in Rakhine if it is given evidence. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: EU launches action against Poland over courts reform;WARSAW (Reuters) - Below are details of the European Commission s decision to launch the Article 7 procedure against Poland on Wednesday over judicial reforms that Brussels says undermine Polish courts independence. The procedure could lead to a suspension of Poland s voting rights in the EU if approved by all over EU members except Poland. Hungary has said it would veto any sanctions on Poland. First Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, said at a news conference on Wednesday that thirteen laws passed in Poland over the last two years put at serious risk the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers in Poland . The common pattern of all these legislative changes is that the executive or legislative powers are now set up in such a way that the ruling majority can systematically, politically interfere with the composition, the powers, the administration and the functioning of these authorities, thereby rendering the independence of the judiciary completely moot, Timmermans said. He said that laws passed by Poland s parliament mean that: Almost 40 percent of current Supreme Court judges will be forced into compulsory retirement Poland s president will have discretionary power to decide if and for how long to prolong their mandates New Supreme Court judges will be appointed by the president on the recommendation of the newly composed National Council for the Judiciary (NCJ), which is dominated by political appointees of the ruling party. This politicized Supreme Court will decide directly about the validity of election results A number of judges in ordinary courts are forced to retire following a decrease of the retirement age of judges. Their mandates can be prolonged at the discretion of the Minister of the justice minister who is also the chief prosecutor Justice minister has discretionary power to appoint and dismiss all presidents of courts without concrete criteria, no obligation to state reasons and no judicial review Mandates of members of NCJ will be prematurely terminated and members will be reappointed by Polish parliament instead of by other judges as required by European standards NCJ plays key role throughout the career of judges when it comes to their appointments, their promotions, to where they are assigned to in the country and the courts, to disciplinary proceedings Timmermans said on Wednesday the European Commission asks Poland to: Restore the independence and legitimacy of the Constitutional Tribunal by ensuring that its judges, its President and its Vice-President are lawfully elected and appointed Publish and implement fully the three 2016 verdicts of the Constitutional Tribunal Amend the law on the Supreme Court so as to not apply a lowered retirement age to the current Supreme Court judges, and remove the discretionary powers of the President of Poland and remove the extraordinary appeal procedure Amend the law on the ordinary courts so as to remove the new retirement regime for judges of ordinary courts Amend the law on the National Council for the Judiciary so as to ensure that the mandate of members of the Council is not terminated and the members are elected by other judges The Commission said that should the Polish authorities implement the recommended actions in the coming three months the Commission stands ready to reconsider its decision to move forward with the Article 7 procedure. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French PM defends flight home for 350,000 euros;PARIS (Reuters) - France s prime minister, whose government has vowed to clean up politics, was forced on Wednesday to defend his decision to hire a private jet for 350,000 euros ($415,000) to fly back from Japan. Opposition politicians decried Edouard Philippe s use of the private charter, and a non-governmental agency that pursues financial wrongdoing in high places accused him of ignoring his own government s pledges of exemplary behavior. President Emmanuel Macron came under fire earlier this month for celebrating his 40th birthday in the grounds of a royal palace. His office sought to play that down, saying the event had been paid for by Macron and his wife. Philippe acknowledged on RTL radio that he and his delegation flew back to Paris from Tokyo, after an official trip to New Caledonia, at a cost of 350,000 euros, but said he had been obliged to do so. I totally understand the surprise and the questions of the French people, Philippe said. We knew there was no commercial flight at the time we needed to return, and we knew we had to return because the President was leaving on the Wednesday morning of our return for Algeria, he said. The rule is that, whenever possible, (either) the Prime Minister or the President must be on national territory ... I take full responsibility for this decision. Karim Bouamrane, spokesman for the Socialist Party, said on Twitter that the flight pointed to amateurism regarding the organizational skills of Philippe s team. Macron put financial and ethical probity in public life at the heart of a presidential election race he won last May, and his new government passed a law to tighten up on ethical standards in French politics. He has struggled nonetheless to shake detractors charges that he is a president of the rich after reforms including the scrapping of a wealth tax and reductions in housing benefit - moves Macron says will boost investment and social mobility. In August, social media commentators and political opponents criticized the French president after it emerged he spent 26,000 euros on makeup during his first 100 days in office. Anticor, a non-governmental agency that focuses on financial corruption and profligacy in politics, said use of a private jet was at odds with Macron and his government s declarations that financial probity was a priority. ($1 = 0.8450 euros) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May forces her deputy to resign over pornography scandal;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign for lying about whether he knew pornography had been found on computers in his parliamentary office. The resignation of one of May s closest political allies, who had helped pacify her deeply divided party, is a blow as she navigates the final year of tortuous negotiations ahead of Britain s exit from the European Union in March 2019. Green, who voted to stay in the EU, was appointed as first secretary of state just six months ago in a bid to shore up May s premiership following her disastrous bet on a June snap election that lost her party its majority in parliament. But Green s future was thrust into doubt when the Sunday Times newspaper reported last month that police in 2008 had found pornography on his office computers in the Houses of Parliament. In response, Green said the story was untrue. A review, requested by May and conducted by a senior government official, concluded that Green s statements which suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on the computers, were inaccurate and misleading. The inquiry, a summary of which was distributed by May s Downing Street office, found he had breached rules governing the behavior of ministers because the police had told him about the indecent material. I apologize that my statements were misleading on this point, Green said in a letter to May. I regret that I ve been asked to resign from the government. Green, 61, said he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers. He added that he should have been clearer about his statements after the story broke. May said she had asked him to resign and accepted his resignation with deep regret. He is the most senior British politician to fall since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal triggered a debate about a culture of abuse by some powerful men at the heart of Westminster. May s defense minister, Michael Fallon, quit last month for unspecified conduct which he said had fallen below required standards. Her aid minister resigned a week later after holding undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials. During the turmoil that followed the botched election, May turned to Green a university friend from their days at Oxford to stabilize her premiership and appease those within the Conservative Party who wanted her to quit. One of his key roles was to act as a conduit for disgruntled party members who felt they had been ignored in May s election campaign. He sought to help her to shed the image of a distant leader who only listens to those in her inner circle. It s another blow for May but it is not deadly in any way at all, said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King s College London. She has lost her soulmate in cabinet but this is not the end of Prime Minister May. May is surviving not because of Damian Green but because there are sufficient MPs in her party who don t want to have a leadership election while Brexit is going on and that fundamental calculation has not changed, he said. The internal investigation found that Green s conduct as a minister was generally professional and proper but found two statements he made on Nov. 4 and 11 to be inaccurate and misleading. In the statements, Green suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on his computers. The inquiry said Green s statements had fallen short of the honesty requirements for those in public life and thus constituted breaches of the ministerial code of conduct. The allegations about pornography were publicly aired by former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Bob Quick, drawing a rebuke from the head of the London police, Cressida Dick, who said officers had a duty of confidentiality. May, who served as home secretary for six years before winning the top job, said she shared concerns about the comments made by the former police officer. Sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Weinstein have prompted some women and men to share stories about improper behavior at the heart of British political power in Westminster. The internal investigation also addressed allegations, made by the daughter of a family friend, that Green had made an unwanted advance towards her during a social meeting in 2015, had suggested that this might further her career, and later had sent her an inappropriate text message. The report said it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Green s behavior in that instance, though the investigation found allegations to be plausible. Green said in his resignation letter that he did not recognize the account of events, but apologized to the woman, academic and critic Kate Maltby, for making her feel uncomfortable. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine, allies fear escalation after Russia exits ceasefire group;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev s foreign backers warned on Wednesday that Moscow s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine. On Monday, the Russian foreign ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line. Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak and security chief Olekshandr Turchynov said the decision, coupled with a recent surge in fighting in the eastern Donbass region, suggested Russia had switched to a more offensive strategy. We cannot rule out that they withdrew their officers in order to start stepping up not only military provocations but also military operations, Turchynov said. We will strengthen our positions at the front. The Ukrainian armed forces are currently prepared for a change in the situation, Poltorak told journalists. A Russia-backed separatist insurgency erupted in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a ceasefire that was meant to end the conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis. A spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which works with the JCCC to monitor the much-violated Minsk peace agreement, said: We are concerned about any step that might lead to a further deterioration of the security situation in the region, affecting both the SMM (OSCE special monitoring mission) and the civilian population. Fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatists has climbed to the worst level in months, the OSCE said this week, after the shelling of a frontline village wounded civilians and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes. Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO it supports the rebels with troops and weapons, but the U.S. envoy to peace talks, Kurt Volker, said Moscow was answerable for the violence. Russia withdrew its officers from JCCC - a ceasefire implementation tool - right before a massive escalation in ceasefire violations. Ukraine just suffered some of the worst fighting since February, 2017. Decision for peace lies with Russia, Volker tweeted on Tuesday. Germany and France, which have spearheaded international efforts to resolve the conflict, expressed concern. A Germany foreign ministry spokesman said it could have severe consequences for civilians in the conflict zones. We call on the Russian authorities to reconsider this decision and hope that the Ukrainian authorities will guarantee access to Ukrainian territory to Russian representatives of the joint center (JCCC), said Alexandre Giorgini, deputy spokesman for the French foreign ministry. Created in 2014, the JCCC is made up of Ukrainian and Russian officers, who are meant to work together to ensure the safety of OSCE monitors and help implement the Minsk ceasefire. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. concerned by KRG security raid on local broadcaster: embassy;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said on Wednesday it was concerned by the closure of a local Kurdish broadcaster at the hands of Iraqi Kurdish security forces a day earlier. We are concerned by recent actions to curb the operations of some media outlets through force or intimidation, specifically yesterday s raid by Kurdistan Regional Government security forces of the NRT offices in Sulaimaniya, the embassy said in a statement. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kidnapped aid workers in South Sudan released: U.N., rebels;JUBA (Reuters) - Six aid workers kidnapped by rebels in South Sudan earlier this week have been released, according to the United Nations and a spokesman for the rebels. The aid workers are from the French organization Solidarites International and had been kidnapped on Sunday while traveling on a road near the city of Raja, in the west of the country. All of them were released and they have landed safely in Wau, another city in the west of the country, a United Nations official in Juba who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters. He said one of those who had been held by the rebels was a foreigner. Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told Reuters that the six humanitarian aid workers had been freed: All their belongings were given back to them including their vehicles. It was not clear why the rebels had taken the aid workers and their vehicles into custody. Solidarites said in a statement on Monday that it had lost contact with three members of its team on Saturday. [L8N1OI50M] It gave no indication of their fate and it was not immediately clear why it gave a different number of those involved. The spokesman for Solidarites in Paris did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement of the release of its staff. The army spokesman in Juba also did not respond to request for comment. South Sudan is one of the world s most dangerous countries for aid workers. Some 28 aid workers have been killed this year, with nine shot dead in November alone, according to the United Nations. The world s youngest nation is embroiled in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced a third of the 12 million strong population to flee their homes. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru president, crying 'coup,' signals VPs would quit if he ousted;LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Wednesday signaled both his vice presidents would resign if Congress forced him from office, calling an opposition bid to remove him a coup attempt that had to be resisted. The rightwing populist party that controls Congress, Popular Force, aims to oust Kuczynski in a vote on Thursday on grounds he is morally unfit to govern, after finding he once had business connections with a company at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal. Kuczynski, who denies anything improper or illegal, said Popular Force was misusing its majority to attempt a power grab. The constitution and democracy are under attack. We re facing a coup dressed in supposedly legitimate legal interpretations, he said in a late night speech on national television. This is a conviction that my two vice presidents share, because neither wants to be part of a government born of an unjust and anti-democratic maneuver, Kuczynski said. He was flanked by First Vice President Martin Vizcarra and Second Vice President Mercedes Araoz. If Kuczynski loses Thursday s congressional vote to remove him and his two vice presidents depart as well, new presidential and legislative elections would be called. A 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, Kuczynski has struggled to govern since winning last year s presidential election but only a small share of congressional seats for his center-right party. Popular Force says its efforts to remove him are well within the bounds of the constitution and key to its fight against corruption. He simply doesn t care about the country, Popular Force lawmaker Luz Salgado said after Kuczynski s address. Earlier this week, Salgado called for Vizcarra to govern the country through 2021, when Kucyznski s term ends. Vizcarra and Araoz both pledged their loyalty to the center-right president on Wednesday but declined to comment on whether that meant they would resign if he was removed from office. Araoz told Reuters on Sunday that she and Vizcarra would not quit. In recent days, Kuczynski s supporters have increasingly called for his vice presidents to refuse to replace him. They believe new elections would cost Popular Force its majority amid widespread contempt for elected officials as a graft scandal taints much of the country s political class. But investors worry a new ballot could sweep anti-establishment candidates to power in one of Latin America s most stable economies. Kuczynski s government does not think it will come to that, said a government source. It expects about a dozen opposition lawmakers to oppose the motion or abstain from voting, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Eighty-seven votes are needed to oust Kuczynski. Congress passed the motion to start presidential vacancy proceedings last week with 93 votes. On Wednesday, thousands of Peruvians marched in front of Congress to denounce what they saw as Popular Force s bid to exploit the crisis to sabotage country s democratic institutions, pointing to its recent efforts to also oust the attorney general and a justice in the Constitutional Court. Popular Force emerged from the rightwing populist movement started in the 1990s by former President Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year-sentence for graft and human rights crimes during his autocratic 1990-2000 government. The United States, where Kuczynski once held citizenship, said Peru was a strong democracy. We are confident that the Peruvian people and institutions will address this situation according to Peru s constitutional norms, the U.S. State Department s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said. The political crisis stems from a disclosure by Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL], which has landed elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic since acknowledging bribing officials across the region for much of the century. Responding to a request by Congress, Odebrecht said it paid more than $4 million to consulting companies owned by Kuczynski or a close business associate for about a decade starting in 2004. Some deposits were made to a company Kuczynski owned while he was minister in a government that awarded Odebrecht lucrative contracts. Odebrecht said Saturday that there was no indication the transactions were part of its past corrupt dealings with politicians, which it can only discuss with prosecutors. Kuczynski once strenuously denied ever having any ties with Odebrecht. He has since apologized to Peru for not disclosing his connections with the company, blaming forgetfulness and poor organization of his personal records after decades of work in finance and public administration. But he said there was nothing improper about the payments. Being careless and sloppy is a defect but it is not...a tool for dishonesty and much, much less, for crime, Kuczynski said. Kuczynski had once raised hopes that his decades of finance and public administration experience would usher in a new period of investments to spur faster economic growth in the world s No.2 copper producer. But in a sign of how the crisis has engulfed his government, Peru postponed an auction of a $2 billion copper project, scheduled for Wednesday, until February. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar bars U.N. rights investigator before visit;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. independent investigator into human rights in Myanmar called on Wednesday for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar s military commanders after being barred from visiting the country for the rest of her tenure. Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur, had been due to visit in January to assess human rights across Myanmar, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. But Myanmar had told her she was no longer welcome, she said, adding in a statement that this suggested something terribly awful was happening in the country. From what I see right now I m not sure if they are feeling pressured. I m not sure if there is the right kind of pressure placed on the military commanders and the generals, she later told Reuters by telephone from Seoul. She said it was alarming that Myanmar was strongly supported by China, which has a veto at the U.N. s top table in New York. Other countries including the United States and human groups were advocating targeted sanctions on the military, she said. It has to work. And I m sure the world has to find a way to make it work. And I think the United Nations and its member states should really try to persuade China to really act towards the protection of human rights, she said. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week. More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping response by the army and Buddhist vigilantes. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the situation in Rakhine State was an internal affair for Myanmar with its own complex history. Myanmar and Bangladesh resolving this issue was the only way to go, she told reporters. The international community should provide constructive help for Myanmar and Bangladesh to resolve the issue rather than complicating it, Hua added. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan Sate in northern Myanmar, where the military is battling autonomy-seeking ethic minority guerrillas. Lee, in an earlier statement, said Myanmar s refusal to cooperate with her was a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening throughout the country, although the government had repeatedly denied any violations of human rights. They have said that they have nothing to hide, but their lack of cooperation with my mandate and the fact-finding mission suggests otherwise, she said. She was puzzled and disappointed , since Myanmar s ambassador in Geneva, Htin Lynn, had told the U.N. Human Rights Council only two weeks ago that it would cooperate. Now I am being told that this decision to no longer cooperate with me is based on the statement I made after I visited the country in July, she said. Htin Lynn did not respond to a request for comment. Neither Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, nor Kyaw Moe Tun, a spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs that Suu Kyi heads, were immediately available. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Migrants in Serbia's north brave winter to cross to EU;SID, Serbia (Reuters) - Mudassir, 18, from Pakistan s city of Peshawar has tried to enter the European Union 30 times but was always caught and sent back to his starting point in Serbia. Now, he and dozens of other migrants are braving near-freezing temperatures in shrubs and fields near Sid, a northwestern Serbian town just outside European Union s member Croatia, hoping to make another border run. They spend nights in tents and makeshift shelters in a shrub they call - the jungle. I have tried 30 times, I am in Serbia for 16 months, ... I am tired of sleeping in the jungle , said Mudassir, dressed in a black hooded jacket. Meanwhile, other migrants, all young males, huddled outside an abandoned printing factory in the outskirts of Sid, waiting for a meal delivered by an international volunteer group, the No Name Kitchen. The so-called Balkan route for migrants was shut last year when Turkey agreed to stop the flow in return for EU aid and a promise of visa-free travel for its own citizens. But people mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia continued to arrive in Serbia, mainly from Turkey, via neighboring Bulgaria, attempting to enter Croatia and the EU. According to official data there are as many as 4,500 migrants in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say that hundreds are scattered in the capital Belgrade and towns along the Croatian border. Muhammad, 22 from the Moroccan town of Oujda, said he has tried to reach the EU 26 times. Three times he made it to Slovenia, but was caught and deported back to Serbia. I will try again ... my family is in France and my girlfriend is in Italy, Muhammad said. Bruno Alvares of the No Name Kitchen said migrants are given two meals a day, water, clothes, footwear and tents. Even if it is cold, it doesn t matter, they will keep on trying because there s ... no evolution in their lives in camps, Alvares said. Migrants who cannot afford to pay smugglers, often hide in passing trucks and freight trains or ride on the top of them. Recently an Afghan girl was killed by a train as she and her family attempted to cross into Croatia. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan defends Ottoman commander after UAE minister retweets criticism;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan leapt to the defence of an Ottoman military commander on Wednesday after the United Arab Emirates foreign minister retweeted accusations that Ottoman forces looted the holy city of Medina during World War One. Erdogan appeared to be responding to a tweet shared on Saturday by UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan, which said Ottoman troops led by Fakhreddin Pasha stole money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916. The tweet also said Turkish forces abducted residents of Medina and took them to Istanbul. These are Erdogan s ancestors, and their history with Arab Muslims, read the tweet, originally posted by someone identifying themselves as an Iraqi dentist from Germany. Medina, now part of Saudi Arabia, was part of the Ottoman territory for centuries until the empire s collapse at the end of World War One. In a speech to local administrators, Erdogan said Fahreddin Pasha had not stolen from Medina or its people, but strived to protect the city and its occupants during a time of war. Those miserable people who are delirious enough to shamelessly and tirelessly say Erdogan s ancestors stole sacred items from there and brought them to Istanbul - it was to protect them from the people that came to invade, he said. The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, sees Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling party as a friend of Islamist forces which the UAE opposes across the Arab world. Relations were further strained by Ankara s support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf emirate in June. Two months later, Sheikh Abdullah criticised what he called Turkey and Iran s colonial actions in Syria, even though Turkey and the UAE have both opposed Syria President Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin has also responded to Sheikh Abdullah s comments, saying it was a shame that he retweets this propaganda lie that seeks to turn Turks & Arabs against one another, again. Is attacking President Erdo an at all costs the new fashion now? Kalin tweeted on Tuesday. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-Interpol chief says ready to testify for Argentina's Fernandez;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s previous government never asked Interpol to drop arrest warrants against a group of Iranians accused of bombing a Jewish center, the ex-head of the police agency said on Wednesday, as the government proceeded with treason charges against the former president. Former Interpol chief Ronald Noble said in an email on Wednesday that he wants to testify that the government of former President Cristina Fernandez did not ask to have the arrest warrants lifted as part of a memorandum she had with Iran. If a judge allows Noble to testify, the treason case filed this month against Fernandez and 11 other top officials could crumble. She denies wrongdoing and calls the charge politically motivated. The arrest warrants were not affected in their validity by the approval of the memorandum, Noble said in an email to a federal appeals court that was seen by Reuters. The Fernandez administration always expressed its belief that the warrants should remain in effect, the email said. The accusation that the Fernandez government worked behind the scenes to clear the accused bombers of the AMIA Jewish community center in order to improve trade between Argentina and Iran is at the heart of a charge of treason brought against Fernandez. She served as president for eight years before being succeeded by Mauricio Macri in 2015. Others agreed that the treason charge against Fernandez appeared questionable. The indictment by Judge Claudio Bonadio of former President Fernandez, her Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, and 10 others, for treason and concealment points to no evidence that would seem to substantiate those charges, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Tuesday. The allegations against Fernandez drew international attention in January 2015, when the prosecutor who initially made them, Alberto Nisman, was found shot dead in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment. An Argentine appeals court ordered the re-opening of the investigation a year ago. Nisman s death was classified a suicide, though an official investigating the case has said the shooting appeared to be a homicide. Nisman s body was discovered hours before he was to brief Congress on the 1994 bombing of the AMIA center. Nisman said Fernandez worked behind the scenes to clear Iran of any wrongdoing and normalize relations to clinch a grains-for-oil deal with Tehran that was signed in 2013. The memorandum agreement created a joint commission to investigate the AMIA bombing that critics said was really a means to absolve Iran. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey orders arrest of former police investigator's parents: Hurriyet;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - An Istanbul prosecutor has issued arrest warrants for the parents of a former police investigator who gave evidence at the trial of a Turkish banker in the United States last week, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Wednesday. Turkey has called for the arrest of Huseyin Korkmaz after he testified at the trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a former executive of state-lender Halkbank who is accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. The Istanbul prosecutor s office was not immediately available for comment. U.S. prosecutors have accused Atilla of working with Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and others to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions through fraudulent gold and food transactions. The case has strained relations between Turkey and the United States, which are NATO allies. Atilla has pleaded not guilty and Halkbank has denied involvement with any illegal transactions. But Zarrab has pleaded guilty and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Korkmaz said he fled Turkey in 2016 fearing retaliation from the government after leading an investigation in 2013 into Zarrab which implicated high-ranking officials. Hurriyet said the Istanbul prosecutor s order to arrest Korkmaz s parents came after his testimony in the U.S. case in which he said he gave documents related to the 2013 investigation to his mother to keep. Last week, Turkish police summoned a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official over statements made by Korkmaz in the U.S. court, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgaria parliament passes anti-corruption law under EU pressure;SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria s parliament passed anti-corruption legislation on Wednesday under European Union pressure over its failure to prosecute venal officials, but President Rumen Radev has said the bill is not fit for purpose and he will veto it. The Balkan, formerly communist country is the poorest as well as one of the most corrupt countries in the EU, which it joined in 2007, and has made scant progress towards stamping out graft and organized crime. The European Commission, the EU s executive, has repeatedly rebuked Bulgaria for failing to prosecute and sentence allegedly corrupt officials and for not overhauling a creaking judiciary. This law corresponds to the wishes of Bulgarian citizens and the European Commission, said Tsvetan Tsvetanov, chairman of the ruling GERB party s parliamentary group. Analysts voiced concern, though, that the bill would not allow efficient investigations of corruption networks. The management of a special anti-graft unit envisaged by the legislation would be appointed by parliament, something analysts said could limit its objectivity. Radev said the new five-person unit, meant to investigate persons occupying high state posts as well as assets and conflict of interest, may not be truly independent and could be used by those in power to persecute opponents. The instruments envisaged in this law are ineffective, Radev said last week. It does not deal a blow on those who feed corruption, and it can be used as a weapon against inconvenient people. He said he would veto the measure. The president, prime minister and lawmakers could be targets of investigation, as well as municipal councillors, directors of hospitals and border customs bosses. The new law also focuses on improving control and accountability of law-enforcement agencies, just before Bulgaria assumes the six-month, rotating EU presidency in January. Corruption has deterred foreign investment since communism collapsed in Bulgaria in 1989, and the EU has kept Sofia as well as neighboring Romania - for the same rule-of-law failings - outside its Schengen zone of passport-free travel. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru cancels copper project auction amid political crisis: sources;LIMA (Reuters) - The center-right government of Peru s embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski canceled its scheduled auction of a $2 billion copper project, Michiquillay, on Wednesday amid a growing political crisis, two government sources said. The regional bloc Organization of American States said earlier on Wednesday that it was preparing to send a delegation to Peru, the world s second biggest copper producer, to observe the political situation at the request of Kuczynski ahead of a vote in Congress to oust him on Thursday. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi king receives Palestinian president Abbas;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s King Salman received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Riyadh on Wednesday and reiterated the kingdom s support for the Palestinian people, state news agency SPA reported. The king reassured the Palestinian leader that Saudi Arabia continues to support the right of Palestinians to an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, SPA said. The two leaders also discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian territories, it said. A dozen Saudi princes and officials also attended the meeting. Saudi Arabia condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said any decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached would inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kidnapped aid workers in South Sudan released: U.N., rebels;JUBA (Reuters) - Six aid workers kidnapped by rebels in South Sudan earlier this week have been released, according to the United Nations and a spokesman for the rebels. The aid workers are from the French organization Solidarites International and had been kidnapped on Sunday while traveling on a road near the city of Raja, in the west of the country. All of them were released and they have landed safely in Wau, another city in the west of the country, a United Nations official in Juba who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters. He said one of those who had been held by the rebels was a foreigner. Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel told Reuters that the six humanitarian aid workers had been freed: All their belongings were given back to them including their vehicles. It was not clear why the rebels had taken the aid workers and their vehicles into custody. Solidarites said in a statement on Monday that it had lost contact with three members of its team on Saturday. [L8N1OI50M] It gave no indication of their fate and it was not immediately clear why it gave a different number of those involved. The spokesman for Solidarites in Paris did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement of the release of its staff. The army spokesman in Juba also did not respond to request for comment. South Sudan is one of the world s most dangerous countries for aid workers. Some 28 aid workers have been killed this year, with nine shot dead in November alone, according to the United Nations. The world s youngest nation is embroiled in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced a third of the 12 million strong population to flee their homes. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. concerned by KRG security raid on local broadcaster: embassy;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said on Wednesday it was concerned by the closure of a local Kurdish broadcaster at the hands of Iraqi Kurdish security forces a day earlier. We are concerned by recent actions to curb the operations of some media outlets through force or intimidation, specifically yesterday s raid by Kurdistan Regional Government security forces of the NRT offices in Sulaimaniya, the embassy said in a statement. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine, allies fear escalation after Russia exits ceasefire group;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev s foreign backers warned on Wednesday that Moscow s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine. On Monday, the Russian foreign ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line. Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak and security chief Olekshandr Turchynov said the decision, coupled with a recent surge in fighting in the eastern Donbass region, suggested Russia had switched to a more offensive strategy. We cannot rule out that they withdrew their officers in order to start stepping up not only military provocations but also military operations, Turchynov said. We will strengthen our positions at the front. The Ukrainian armed forces are currently prepared for a change in the situation, Poltorak told journalists. A Russia-backed separatist insurgency erupted in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a ceasefire that was meant to end the conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis. A spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which works with the JCCC to monitor the much-violated Minsk peace agreement, said: We are concerned about any step that might lead to a further deterioration of the security situation in the region, affecting both the SMM (OSCE special monitoring mission) and the civilian population. Fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatists has climbed to the worst level in months, the OSCE said this week, after the shelling of a frontline village wounded civilians and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes. Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO it supports the rebels with troops and weapons, but the U.S. envoy to peace talks, Kurt Volker, said Moscow was answerable for the violence. Russia withdrew its officers from JCCC - a ceasefire implementation tool - right before a massive escalation in ceasefire violations. Ukraine just suffered some of the worst fighting since February, 2017. Decision for peace lies with Russia, Volker tweeted on Tuesday. Germany and France, which have spearheaded international efforts to resolve the conflict, expressed concern. A Germany foreign ministry spokesman said it could have severe consequences for civilians in the conflict zones. We call on the Russian authorities to reconsider this decision and hope that the Ukrainian authorities will guarantee access to Ukrainian territory to Russian representatives of the joint center (JCCC), said Alexandre Giorgini, deputy spokesman for the French foreign ministry. Created in 2014, the JCCC is made up of Ukrainian and Russian officers, who are meant to work together to ensure the safety of OSCE monitors and help implement the Minsk ceasefire. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi king receives Palestinian president Abbas;DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia s King Salman received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Riyadh on Wednesday and reiterated the kingdom s support for the Palestinian people, state news agency SPA reported. The king reassured the Palestinian leader that Saudi Arabia continues to support the right of Palestinians to an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, SPA said. The two leaders also discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian territories, it said. A dozen Saudi princes and officials also attended the meeting. Saudi Arabia condemned U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and said any decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached would inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: EU launches action against Poland over courts reform;WARSAW (Reuters) - Below are details of the European Commission s decision to launch the Article 7 procedure against Poland on Wednesday over judicial reforms that Brussels says undermine Polish courts independence. The procedure could lead to a suspension of Poland s voting rights in the EU if approved by all over EU members except Poland. Hungary has said it would veto any sanctions on Poland. First Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, said at a news conference on Wednesday that thirteen laws passed in Poland over the last two years put at serious risk the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers in Poland . The common pattern of all these legislative changes is that the executive or legislative powers are now set up in such a way that the ruling majority can systematically, politically interfere with the composition, the powers, the administration and the functioning of these authorities, thereby rendering the independence of the judiciary completely moot, Timmermans said. He said that laws passed by Poland s parliament mean that: Almost 40 percent of current Supreme Court judges will be forced into compulsory retirement Poland s president will have discretionary power to decide if and for how long to prolong their mandates New Supreme Court judges will be appointed by the president on the recommendation of the newly composed National Council for the Judiciary (NCJ), which is dominated by political appointees of the ruling party. This politicized Supreme Court will decide directly about the validity of election results A number of judges in ordinary courts are forced to retire following a decrease of the retirement age of judges. Their mandates can be prolonged at the discretion of the Minister of the justice minister who is also the chief prosecutor Justice minister has discretionary power to appoint and dismiss all presidents of courts without concrete criteria, no obligation to state reasons and no judicial review Mandates of members of NCJ will be prematurely terminated and members will be reappointed by Polish parliament instead of by other judges as required by European standards NCJ plays key role throughout the career of judges when it comes to their appointments, their promotions, to where they are assigned to in the country and the courts, to disciplinary proceedings Timmermans said on Wednesday the European Commission asks Poland to: Restore the independence and legitimacy of the Constitutional Tribunal by ensuring that its judges, its President and its Vice-President are lawfully elected and appointed Publish and implement fully the three 2016 verdicts of the Constitutional Tribunal Amend the law on the Supreme Court so as to not apply a lowered retirement age to the current Supreme Court judges, and remove the discretionary powers of the President of Poland and remove the extraordinary appeal procedure Amend the law on the ordinary courts so as to remove the new retirement regime for judges of ordinary courts Amend the law on the National Council for the Judiciary so as to ensure that the mandate of members of the Council is not terminated and the members are elected by other judges The Commission said that should the Polish authorities implement the recommended actions in the coming three months the Commission stands ready to reconsider its decision to move forward with the Article 7 procedure. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: China's border city with North Korea eases tourism curbs - sources;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese tourists are still visiting Pyongyang from China s border city of Dandong, tourism sources say, even after authorities unofficially halted the tours just ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump s visit to China last month. A group of 40 Chinese tourists left on Friday from the border city of Dandong to Pyongyang, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters, a sign local authorities have not been strongly enforcing curbs on tourist flows. This is the largest group to go in from Dandong since the curb, a tour operator said, adding the tourists traveled by train into North Korea for a four-day tour. The Dandong Tourism Bureau declined to be interviewed for this story. When asked for comment, China s foreign ministry said they did not understand the situation. Local businesses in China are known to find ways around policies introduced by local authorities or Beijing, whether in good times or bad. There s always a way around government policies, said one Dandong-based tourism source. You know how Chinese people are. I think the central government will be very annoyed at Dandong for lifting the travel restriction, the tour operator said. MONEY-MAKER FOR NORTH Tourism to North Korea is not banned by the United Nations and is one of the few remaining ways that North Korea earns hard currency. The Korea Maritime Institute, a South Korean think-tank, estimates that tourism generates about $44 million in annual revenue for North Korea. The U.N. has ramped up sanctions over North Korea s accelerating missile program over the past year, curbing key export industries including coal, seafood and textiles. Simon Cockerell, head of Beijing-based Koryo Tours which organizes travel to North Korea, said he saw 3 to 4 busloads of Chinese tourists in Pyongyang in mid-November. But I m not sure where they entered from or what visas they were on, he said. If you have a visa to North Korea, it doesn t say where you can and can t go. So once you enter into Sinuiju or Rason, you could travel onwards to Pyongyang. The North Koreans wouldn t care, Cockerell said. Sinuiju and Rason are popular entry points for Chinese tourists traveling overland into North Korea. China never publicly announced a ban on Chinese tourists visiting Pyongyang and strongly opposes unilateral sanctions, which it says undermines U.N. unity. But the day before U.S President Donald Trump s first official visit to China in early November, Reuters exclusively reported that the Dandong Tourism Bureau had told Chinese tour operators based in Dandong to halt trips to North Korea s capital of Pyongyang. Trump has frequently praised Chinese President Xi Jinping Trump with whom he has been working to exert pressure on North Korea through strict enforcement of sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Dandong, a city of 800,000 people in northeastern Liaoning province, is the main trading hub on the Chinese side of the border and most tour companies that take Chinese tourists to North Korea are based there. The U.N. sanctions have particularly hit Dandong s economy this year. Almost all tours to North Korea have stopped and many Dandong-based companies who traditionally conducted business with North Korea are struggling, sources told Reuters. A lot of the more successful Chinese businessmen have gone on holidays because there s nothing for them to do around here at the moment, said one Chinese businessman in Dandong. China s trade with North Korea has already fallen to its lowest in months. Beijing has repeatedly said it is rigorously enforcing U.N. resolutions aimed at reining in Pyongyang s missile and nuclear programs. North Korea has accelerated the pace of its missile tests this year. Pyongyang said its latest test on Nov. 28 was an intercontinental ballistic missile that it said could deliver heavy nuclear warheads anywhere in the continental United States. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar military appoints general to probe mass grave in Rakhine state;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar s army said on Wednesday that it had appointed a senior officer to investigate whether any members of the security forces were involved in the killing of 10 people whose bodies have been uncovered in a mass grave in Rakhine State. A violent crackdown by the security forces in response to attacks by militants in the western state has caused around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh in recent months. The discover of the grave, at the village of Inn Din, about 50 km (30 miles) north of the state capital Sittwe, was announced by the military two days ago. In a statement posted on the Facebook page of the military s commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the army said a five-member investigation team had left the capital Naypyitaw on Wednesday. The team, led by Lieutenant General Aye Win, would investigate whether the security forces took part or not, in relation to the unidentified dead bodies found in Inn Din village graveyard . It gave no further details and military officials were not immediately available for comment. General Aye Win is the same officer who led a wider probe into the conduct of troops in a conflict that began in late August, which concluded in a report last month that no atrocities took place. Myanmar s armed forces launched what they termed clearance operations in northern Rakhine, where many of the stateless Muslim minority lived, after Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base on Aug. 25. Rights monitors have accused troops of abuses, including killings, mass rape and arson during those operations. The United States has said it amounted to ethnic cleansing . Myanmar s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced fierce international criticism for failing to do more to protect the Rohingya. The civilian government, which has no control over the military, has said the army was engaged in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. It has promised to investigate allegations of abuses in Rakhine if it is given evidence. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somali lawmakers seek to impeach president amid political crisis;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Some Somali lawmakers said on Wednesday they plan to impeach the president in a mounting political crisis that could put the fledgling government on a violent collision course with one of the country s most powerful clans. The political turmoil endangers fragile gains against the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency and could derail the government of President Mohamed Abdullahi. Universally known by his nickname Farmajo , the dual U.S.-Somali citizen took power earlier this year in a U.N.-backed process. The Horn of Africa state s parliament adjourned last week until the end of February, but some legislators want it to reconvene on an emergency basis, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters. Ninety-six lawmakers have asked the speaker to reopen the session so that the impeachment against the president kicks off. The president is accused of violation of the constitution, treason, destruction of the federal states and so on, he said. The letter had not yet been delivered to the speaker. There are 275 lawmakers and two-thirds would have to vote against the president to impeach him. The motion follows a deadly raid on Sunday on the home of an opposition leader, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, who ran for the presidency against Farmajo. Somali security agents arrived at his house around midnight and engaged his guards in a firefight, killing five people. The minister of security said Warsame resisted arrest and he would be charged with treason. He appeared in court on Tuesday but no warrant was shown for his arrest, a witness said. A Wednesday court hearing was postponed until Thursday. The information minister did not return calls seeking comment. A statement from the security minister and attorney general said they were investigating the crimes of Somalis who were involved in treason, terror and the destruction of government systems . Warsame comes from Somalia s formidable Habar Gidir clan, which is spread across south-central Somalia. Although both his supporters and the government stress that his detention is political, rather than a clan issue, it will further sour relations between the two sides. If that sparks fighting it could split Somalia s security forces, which are composed mostly of clan-based militias. In September, a battle between the police, intelligence, and military killed nine people in Mogadishu s Habar Gidir district. It s a lose-lose situation for the government. If they pursue this, they face a showdown with the Habar Gidir, who are powerful, wealthy and well-armed and provide many units in the SNA, said a Somalia security analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the Somali National Army. If they back down, they look weak. It s very hard to see how the administration could survive this crisis. In August, a joint U.S.-Somali raid in the town of Bariire killed 10 Habar Gidir members. The U.S. military said they were Islamist militants but clan elders said they were civilians. In May, a soldier accidentally killed the minister of public works in a case of mistaken identity. A Habar Gidir clan member, the soldier was sentenced to death, angering clan members who felt that blood money should have been accepted. Somalia s new government has won plaudits from diplomats for trying to assess the extent of mismanagement and corruption in the armed forces and the International Monetary Fund has praised it for fiscal reforms. But at home, the government has many problems. It has hired and fired a string of top security officials. Al Shabaab militants, skilled at exploiting clan divisions, stepped up a campaign of deadly bombings in Mogadishu. One October bomb killed more than 500 people. A split between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have supported Somali factions, has fuelled a spat between the president and leaders of Somalia s regional administrations, damaging security cooperation. This month, the U.S. government announced it was suspending aid to most of the military over accountability concerns. Now many parliamentarians are angry that a government that promotes itself as reformist is arresting critics like Warsame, said Abdirizak Mohamed, a lawmaker and former security minister. MPs are concerned about freedom of expression and association. This was an unnecessary crisis when they already had a lot on their plate. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea says delay in military drills aimed only at ensuring peaceful Olympics;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean officials said on Wednesday a proposed delay in military drills with the United States was aimed at ensuring a peaceful 2018 Winter Olympics, not ending the North Korean missile crisis, as relations with China suffered new setbacks. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is seeking to soothe relations with North Korea, which is pursuing nuclear and missile programmes in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and with China, the North s lone major ally, before the Games begin in South Korea in February. China, which hosted years of on-again-off-again six-party talks to try to end the North Korea standoff, resumed some blocks on group tours to South Korea, industry sources said, and rebuked Seoul for firing warning shots at Chinese fishing boats On Tuesday, Moon, who visited China last week, said he had proposed postponing major military drills with the United States until after the Games, a move his office said was designed to reassure athletes and spectators. This is confined to our efforts to host a peaceful Olympics, an official from the presidential Blue House said. We are only talking about the exercises which are supposed to take place during the Olympics and Paralympics. North Korea sees the regular joint exercises as preparation for war, while China is still angry about the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system, commonly known as THAAD, by South Korea, whose powerful radar it fears could see deep inside its territory. The South argues it needs THAAD to guard against the threat posed by North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, Japan and the United States. For a graphic on North Korea's missile launches, click tmsnrt.rs/2j2S5T3 The proposed delay in drills was discussed during a summit last week between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping, after the proposal had already been submitted to the Americans, the Blue House official said. China and Russia have proposed a freeze for freeze arrangement under which North Korea would stop its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a halt to the exercises. However, the official denied the proposed delay had anything to do with the freeze idea. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Ottawa on Tuesday he was unaware of any plans to alter longstanding and scheduled and regular military exercises . North Korea has stepped up its missile and nuclear tests at an unprecedented rate this year, and any new provocation from the North would inevitably have an impact on the exercises, the Blue House official said. It is a display of the president s strong message that North Korea must not conduct any provocation (during the Olympics), the official told reporters. (For a graphic on North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, click tmsnrt.rs/2vXbj0S) Japan s Asahi newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified person connected to South Korean intelligence, that North Korea was conducting biological experiments to test the possibility of loading anthrax-laden warheads on its intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Asahi report said the U.S. government was aware of the tests, which were meant to ascertain whether the anthrax bacteria could survive the high temperatures that occur during warheads re-entry from space. Reuters was unable to verify the report independently. In a statement released by state media, North Korea s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called reports it was developing biological weapons nonsense designed to provoke nuclear war. The United States has given China a draft resolution for tougher U.N. sanctions on North Korea and is hoping for a quick vote on it by the U.N. Security Council, a Western diplomat said on Tuesday, however Beijing has yet to sign on. When asked about the U.S. resolution at a press briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying would only say that China always takes a responsible and constructive attitude towards Security Council talks on North Korea. The United States has also called on the Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea. Hua said China had received the proposal from the United States. China has resumed at least some restrictions on group tours into the South, South Korea s inbound travel agency said. The restrictions were first in place last year as part of China s retaliation over THAAD deployment. I was told from my boss this morning that our Chinese partners (based in Beijing and Shandong) said they won t send group tourists to South Korea as of January, the official from Naeil Tour Agency told Reuters by phone. One source in China said the reason for reinstating the ban was to rein in overly aggressive tour operators who had been rolling out package deals to South Korea too quickly in the eyes of authorities. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua told reporters she had not heard of a tourism ban, but she reiterated that Moon s visit to Beijing was successful and that China has an open attitude towards exchanges and cooperation in all areas. Beijing has never officially confirmed restrictions on tourism. Three representatives at Beijing travel agencies told Reuters that they were not currently organising group tours to South Korea. One confirmed that the tourism administration had issued the notice, while a third said: At the moment we have no group trips to South Korea. A travel agency in the northern province of Shandong also said it could not organise group trips. Three others said they could, but with restrictions such as on the number of people. South Korea s coast guard said on Wednesday it had fired around 250 warning shots on Tuesday to chase away a fleet of 44 Chinese boats fortified with iron bars and steel mesh that were fishing illegally in South Korean waters. The Chinese fishing boats sought to swarm around and collide with our patrol ship, ignoring the broadcast warnings, the coast guard said in a statement. China, which has in the past lodged diplomatic protests to South Korea over the use of force by its coast guard, expressed serious concern about the latest clash. (For a graphic on rocket science, click tmsnrt.rs/2t6WEPL) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two Kosovo men plea guilty of plotting to attack Israeli soccer team;PRISTINA (Reuters) - Two Kosovo men pleaded guilty on Wednesday to planning attacks at a World Cup soccer match in Albania against the visiting Israel team last year. Kosovo police arrested 19 people in November 2016 on suspicion that they had links with the Islamic State militant group and were planning attacks in Kosovo and neighboring Albania. Nine of them were charged. The state prosecutor said some of them were in contact with Lavdrim Muhaxheri, Islamic State s self-declared commander of Albanians in Syria and Iraq , who ordered them to attack. Police said Muhaxheri was killed in June this year. ... I accept guilty plea, defendant Kenan Plakaj said in court. He is accused of making explosives, after police found half a kilo of explosives at his house, the indictment said. The other defendant, Besart Peci, also pleaded guilty. Sentences were not announced. Another defendant facing trial had kept in his basement 283 grams of self-made explosives. The same triacetone triperoxide explosive was used in attacks in Paris and Brussels and has been found in various foiled bombings in Europe since 2007. No militant attacks have been staged in Kosovo, whose population is largely ethnic Albanian Muslim. But at least 200 people have been detained or investigated over offences related to Islamic State, and a total of 300 Kosovars have gone to Syria to fight for Islamic State. More than 70 have been killed. International and local security agencies in Kosovo are worried that many of those returning from combat zones will pose a security threat. In 2015, Kosovo adopted a law introducing jail sentences of up to 15 years for anyone found guilty of fighting in wars abroad. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims air base attack in Egypt's North Sinai;CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State has claimed an attack on an Egyptian military airport that killed one officer and wounded two near the town of Arish in North Sinai on Tuesday, the group s Amaq news agency said in a statement. Security sources meanwhile said an army officer and five militants had been killed in clashes as security forces carried out arrest raids near the Arish air base on Wednesday. The Amaq statement said Islamic State fighters used a Kornet anti-tank missile in the Tuesday attack that targeted the interior and defense ministers who were visiting the area. Neither minister was harmed, a security source said. Islamic State s Sinai branch has for years waged attacks against security forces, and in the past year expanded targets to include Christians and other civilians. An attack on a mosque last month which killed more than 300 people, the deadliest in Egypt s modern history, was widely attributed to Islamic State, but the group did not claim it. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered security forces to use heavy force to stamp out the Sinai insurgency within three months after that attack. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poll shows improvement in Brazil President Temer's low approval rating;BRASILIA (Reuters) - The approval rating for Brazilian President Michel Temer s scandal-plagued government has doubled to 6 percent from the prior survey, a new poll published on Wednesday showed, as the country s economy continues to improve. The survey by pollster Ibope, conducted between Dec. 7-10, said the number of people who considered Temer s government bad or terrible fell to 74 percent, from 77 percent in the previous survey in September. That represents the first improvement in Temer s unfavorable rating since he took over last year from his predecessor Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached for breaking budget rules. Brazil s economy continues to strengthen as it exits its worst recession in a century, posting its third consecutive quarter of growth in the third quarter. The poll comes as Brazil s Congress heads into a winter recess until February without voting to overhaul the pension system, Temer s top policy initiative that is seen as vital to fixing the country s finances but is widely unpopular. The government has notched some smaller legislative successes, including more flexible labor regulations that came into effect last month. In October, the lower house of Congress again rejected corruption charges against Temer. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany takes political vacuum in its stride, for now;BERLIN (Reuters) - Largely unperturbed by Angela Merkel s failure to form a government after a September election, many Germans are taking the prospect of several more months of coalition talks in their stride. The country is used to lengthy transitions but this is the longest since reunification in 1990. It is 87 days since the election and few experts see a government in place before March. EU leaders fear delays to euro zone integration plans, some of which are to strengthen the banking system, and many economists warn Europe s biggest economy must reform and invest in broadband and infrastructure to stay competitive. But as caretaker chancellor, Merkel is voting at EU summits, parliament is passing laws required by international mandates, local authorities are wading through asylum applications and a bright outlook in Europe s biggest economy is buoying the mood. I haven t noticed much difference from before, said Nadja Helling, 36, cradling a steaming mug of gluehwein at a Berlin Christmas market. It s not ideal but nobody is panicking. Domestic and foreign demand are driving solid growth and the effects of low borrowing costs and European Central Bank stimulus are supporting record-high employment levels and rising real wages. We have jobs and are enjoying the Christmas markets, said Helling s friend, Silvia. What s the problem? The Munich-based Ifo institute raised its forecasts last week and expects the German economy to expand by 2.6 percent next year, the highest rate since 2011, adding, however, that this might be the peak. The IfW institute in Kiel said the delayed formation of a government does not pose an economic risk , but also sounded a warning for the longer term. A boom may feel good but it carries the seeds of a crisis. The view that a boom is harmless, as long as consumer prices are under control, falls short, said the IfW s Stefan Kooths. The reality experienced by many Germans belies dire warnings from commentators last month about looming instability and even new elections after Merkel, weakened by losing votes to the far-right, was humiliated by the collapse of 3-way coalition talks. She is now wooing the Social Democrats (SPD), reluctant partners after voters punished them for sharing power with Merkel s conservatives over the last four years. Germany s transition pales into comparison with some other EU partners, such as Belgium and the Netherlands where a coalition took 225 days to clinch a deal this year. I suspect the process will take some time yet but people who talk about instability are mistaken. We have a stable caretaker government, an effective parliament and a democracy that is functioning very well, said Nils Diederich, politics professor at Berlin s Free University. Confounding some predictions, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), dogged by infighting, has so far failed to capitalize on the lack of a proper government despite being the third-biggest party. Opinion polls have barely changed since the Sept. 24 election, indicating there is little sense of crisis. The Ifo institute said on Tuesday uncertainty about the shape of the government was growing but that a surprise drop in its business moral survey in December after a record high the previous month was nothing too unusual. Indeed, seasonally adjusted unemployment is at the lowest level since 1990 and Christmas sales forecasts are bright, with the HDE retail industry association expecting sales over the festive season to rise by 3 percent to a record high. Merkel, unruffled as ever, has sought to reassure voters and investors that it is business as usual in Germany, with most incumbent ministers staying on in an interim government. If anything, there is a striking lack of urgency about the talks, partly to keep skeptical SPD rank and file on board. After party leaders meet on Wednesday to draw up a rough timetable, no further talks are expected before January. Meanwhile, the Bundestag lower house has agreed to roll over military missions in Afghanistan and Mali and debated topics from Brexit to planned job cuts by Siemens. Germany s federal structure means much business that affects ordinary people, including dealing with asylum applications, housing and school issues, goes ahead regardless of Berlin. Deutsche Bahn has launched a much delayed fast train link between Berlin and Munich, complete with the usual teething problems, and Christmas markets have opened, albeit with tight security after last year s attack. The impasse has had little effect on Brexit talks because there is consensus among Germany s main parties about the German, and EU, position towards Britain. Plans for euro zone reform, however, are more contentious, although Merkel said on Monday, she hoped to make progress on the issue by March. The main possible negative effect is that the momentum in Europe (for reform), that was desired after the Brexit vote might be lost, said Thomas Jaeger, politics professor at Cologne University. The SPD, determined to stamp its identity on any coalition deal with Merkel, backs deeper integration than Merkel s conservatives, but is split over whether it should agree to a grand coalition with Merkel. Its leader Martin Schulz has championed French President Emmanuel Macron s proposals for a euro zone budget and finance minister and wants a United States of Europe by 2025. The only political crisis in Germany is the struggle for direction by the main parties, in particular the SPD, said Diederich. The SPD needs time to overcome this. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"EU's Tusk says important to end ""devastation"" of Poland's reputation";WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland is currently seen as a force for disintegration of the European Union (EU) and hence it is important to end the destruction of Warsaw s reputation, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday. Poland is perceived today as a disintegrating force in this part of Europe and this is why I believe that it is important to end this devastation (...) of Poland s reputation, Tusk told local media, commenting on European Commission s decision to launch Article 7 procedure against Warsaw. Tusk also said he did not expect sanctions to be imposed on Poland in the near future. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's refusal to accept Muslim migrants may be behind EC decision: ruling party;WARSAW (Reuters) - The European Commission s decision to launch the so-called Article 7 procedure against Poland may be related to Warsaw s refusal to accept Muslim migrants, spokeswoman of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party Beata Mazurek said on Wednesday. This may be an effect not only of the opposition s informing (on Poland to the EC) but also because we don t want to accept immigrants, we don t want to accept Muslim migrants, as we care for the security of Poles, Mazurek told reporters. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior Saudi prince says Trump's Jerusalem move threatens stability;RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital will stoke violence in the region, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal said, dismissing reports of prior consultations made with Riyadh over the move. It is a very bad decision. The consequences will be more bloodshed, more conflict rather than peaceful resolution, Prince Turki, a senior royal family member and a former ambassador to Washington, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday in Riyadh. Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and veered from international consensus this month by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Most countries say the city s status must be left to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia condemned the decision. Saudi King Salman told President Trump that any decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem before a permanent peace settlement is reached will inflame the feelings of Muslims, official media reported. But Saudi Arabia stopped short of calling for any Arab action against the decision. Palestinian officials say Riyadh has been working for weeks behind the scenes to press them to support a nascent U.S. peace plan. The reaction here was total surprise, said Prince Turki, who now holds no government office but remains influential. ... If there has been prior consultation or anything like that, why would the King go through the process of telling him (Trump) this is a bad idea and make that known publicly? I don t think there ever was any discussion of this before the decision was taken, he added. As regards possible Saudi and Arab action in response to Trump s decision, Prince Turki said: I am sure lots of people would prefer to have something just for the sake of appearance but I don t think that s how the Saudi government operates. If it is going to take action, it is going to be a serious action. Four Palestinian officials, who spoke on condition they not be named, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have discussed in detail a grand bargain that Trump and Jared Kushner, the president s son-in-law and adviser, are expected to unveil in the first half of 2018. Arab officials say the plan is still in its early phases of development. Prince Turki said he was unaware of details of any such plan. Prince Turki is a son of King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975. His brother, Saud al-Faisal, served as foreign minister for 40 years until 2015, and their branch of the family is seen as influential over Saudi foreign policy, even as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has solidified his authority. Prince Saud championed a 2002 Arab peace initiative which called for normalizing relations between Arab countries and Israel in return for Israel s withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. In a letter to Trump published in a Saudi newspaper on Dec. 11, Prince Turki said that Trump s opportunistic Jerusalem move would threaten security in the region. The now much diminished terrorist international gets a rejuvenation boost from you and re-energizes its recruitment of volunteers to broaden their murderous attacks on innocent civilians, worldwide, he wrote in his letter. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said he would encourage a more moderate and tolerant version of Islam in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The ambitious young prince has already taken some steps to loosen Saudi Arabia s ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police, permitting public concerts and announcing plans to allow women to drive next year. Prince Turki said that Saudis share in the blame for the spread of extremist ideology through funding of mosques abroad that may have fallen into the wrong hands, but that such funding stopped since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The kingdom has been the victim of such people and such activity... Since Sept. 11 the kingdom has had a sustained and continuous program opposing extremist ideology, not just in the kingdom but abroad, he told Reuters. For a period of time, yes it is true there were some Saudis who promoted issues of extremism and so on. Now we are getting rid of all of those. I would say we have gotten rid of most of them, if not all of them. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa promises zero tolerance in corruption fight;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Wednesday promised zero tolerance in his government s push to punish corruption that stifled political freedom and economic growth under Robert Mugabe s 37-year rule. Mnangagwa, giving his first state of the nation address since he assumed power last month following a de facto coup that ousted his 93-year-old predecessor, has sought to draw a line under years of endemic corruption and impunity. Under pressure to deliver results, especially on an economy crippled by severe currency shortages, Mnangagwa said reforms of a bloated state sector would be launched in early 2018. With opposition parties calling for widespread political reforms before an election next year, he repeated a promise that his government would do everything in its power to ensure a credible, free and fair ballot. Corruption remains the major source of some of the problems we face as a country and its retarding impact on national development cannot be overemphasized, Mnangagwa told a joint sitting of the country s two houses of parliament. On individual cases of corruption, every case must be investigated and punished in accordance with the dictates of our laws. There should be no sacred cows. My government will have zero tolerance towards corruption and this has already begun. The latter was an apparent reference to comments last week he would name and shame those who failed to return stolen public funds after a three-month amnesty ends in February. His government is also pursuing corruption charges dating back over two decades against former finance minister Ignatius Chombo, a close ally of Mugabe and his wife, Grace. Chombo, whose lawyer has said he will deny the charges, faces trial early next year. In the latter half of Mugabe s rule the economy fell apart amid the violent and chaotic seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. Billions of dollars of domestic debt issued to pay for a bloated civil service triggered a collapse in the value of Zimbabwe s de facto currency and hyperinflation. Mnangagwa said the government would in the first quarter of next year announce a program to reform, commercialize or shut down some state-owned firms he said had been for a long time an albatross around the government s neck . Zimbabwe s efforts to re-engage international lenders and lure investors will rest on the credibility of next year s election, and the president again pledged a commitment to a free and fair vote. To level a playing field they say is skewed in favor of Mnangagwa s ZANU-PF party, opposition parties have however challenged his army-backed government to first enact a long list of electoral reforms. They include a new voters roll, opposition access to public media, allowing an estimated three million Zimbabweans living abroad to vote and international observers including the United Nations. We would like to see genuine, credible electoral reforms that will lead to free and fair elections and they must be underwritten and guaranteed by the international community, Tendai Biti, leader of the opposition MDC Alliance, told reporters ahead of Mnangagwa s address. Biti and other members of the alliance also criticized what they called the militarization of the government following the appointment of two former senior military officials to the new cabinet. Mnangagwa gave his clearest signal yet on Tuesday that he would appoint as vice president Constantino Chiwenga, the military leader who led the coup that ousted Mugabe. Chris Mutsvangwa, adviser to the president and the influential leader of the war veterans association, has rejected the criticism of the appointments, saying they were not unique to Zimbabwe. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's new ANC leader Ramaphosa aims to fight corruption;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Cyril Ramaphosa, the new leader of South Africa s governing ANC party, said on Thursday he aims to stamp out corruption and pursue a policy of radical economic transformation that will speed up expropriation of land without compensation. Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old union leader who became a businessman and is now one of South Africa s richest people, is likely to become the country s next president after elections in 2019, because of his party s electoral dominance. His promise to fight rampant corruption and revitalize the economy has been hailed by foreign investors. This conference has resolved that corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality, Ramaphosa said in his maiden speech at the close of a five-day party meeting where he was elected. We must also act fearlessly against alleged corruption and abuse of office within our ranks, he said in the early hours of Thursday after a long delay. Ramaphosa, who is South Africa s deputy president, was elected the new leader of the African National Congress (ANC) on Monday, succeeding President Jacob Zuma as party head after Zuma s presidency became tainted with corruption allegations. Ramaphosa s narrow victory over former cabinet minister and African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 68, is seen as a pivotal moment for the ANC, which launched black-majority rule under Nelson Mandela s leadership 23 years ago but is now deeply divided with its image tarnished. Ramaphosa paid tribute to Zuma in his speech, saying the ANC would be united despite a fractious campaign. Zuma had backed his ex-wife Dlamini-Zuma for ANC s top job. However, investors are concerned that Ramaphosa may not be able to push through policy changes because the ANC s top decision-making group, known as the Top Six , was split down the middle, with three politicians apiece drawn from Ramaphosa s camp and that of Dlamini-Zuma. Analysts warned that the division of the party presidency, held by Ramaphosa, and the state presidency in Zuma s hands, could lead to policy uncertainty or paralysis. Mr. Zuma, for instance, still occupies South Africa s presidency a cohabitation that may cause a period of policy uncertainty, Capital Economics Africa economist John Ashbourne said in a note. Expectations that Ramaphosa would win the ANC race had pushed the rand to 12.5200 per dollar on Monday, its firmest since March 27, when a cabinet reshuffle by Zuma rocked markets and triggered credit ratings downgrades to junk. The rand weakened on Tuesday, but firmed on Wednesday as investors continued to digest how much clout Ramaphosa wields. Victory for Ramaphosa, but not a loss for Zuma, said Geoff Blount, managing director at BayHill Capital. Zuma has faced allegations of corruption since he became head of state in 2009, but has denied any wrongdoing. The president has also faced allegations that his friends the wealthy Gupta businessmen wielded undue influence over his government. Zuma and the Guptas have denied the accusations. Ramaphosa alluded to these allegations in his speech, saying, At the state level we must confront the reality that critical institutions of our state have been targeted by individuals and families, through the exercise of influence and the manipulation of governance processes and public resources. He said this had weakened the state-owned enterprises in Africa s most industrialized economy. South Africa, the continent s traditional powerhouse, has had lethargic growth over the last six years and the jobless rate stands near record levels. Ramaphosa also had a warning for corporate executives. We must investigate without fear or favor the so-called accounting irregularities that cause turmoil in the markets and wipe billions off the investments of ordinary South Africans, he said. South African furniture retailer Steinhoff, has been embroiled in a scandal over accounting irregularities, which have wiped more than $10 billion off its market value over the past two weeks. Ramaphosa also said he would aim to expedite job creation, improve the lackluster economy and speed up the transfer of land to black people. Two decades after the end of apartheid, the ANC is under pressure to redress racial disparities in land ownership where whites own most of the land. This conference has resolved that the expropriation of land without compensation should be among the mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution, Ramaphosa said. He said the land transfers would be speeded up under the radical economic transformation program, a vague ANC plan to tackle racial inequality. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Explainer - Damian Green, UK PM's May deputy, resigns over pornography scandal;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign on Wednesday after an internal investigation found he had made misleading comments about pornography on computers in his parliamentary office. Below are details about Green, the investigation into his behavior and May s decision to demand his resignation. An ally and a friend from their days at the University of Oxford, Green was appointed first secretary of state, May s de-facto deputy, in the wake of her snap June election which stripped her party of its parliamentary majority. In the tumultuous weeks after the June vote, Green helped to stabilize May s premiership and appease some of those within the Conservative Party who wanted her to quit. His departure is a blow for the government as May navigates the final year of tortuous Brexit negotiations before Britain s exit from the European Union in March 2019. He is also the third minister to quit in recent weeks following the departure of the defense minister and the aid minister. The departure of Green, who like May voted in the 2016 referendum to stay in the EU, also removes one of her most senior advocates of a softer Brexit. The resignation comes a day after May started the delicate process of agreeing a common negotiating position among her cabinet for the long-term relationship Britain wants to have with the EU after Brexit. On Nov. 1 Kate Maltby, an academic, critic and family friend wrote an article in the Times newspaper alleging that Green had made an inappropriate sexual advance toward her in 2015. He offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested, said Maltby, who is three decades younger than Green. He steered the conversation to the habitual nature of sexual affairs in parliament... He mentioned that his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee. Green denied the allegations as absolutely and completely untrue . May asked the Cabinet Office, responsible for the administrative functions of the government, to investigate. Five days later the Sunday Times reported that the police had found pornography on a computer in Green s office during a 2008 investigation into government leaks. Green said in a statement that the story was completely untrue . More importantly, the police have never suggested to me that improper material was found on my parliamentary computer, he added. In a second statement on Nov. 11 he again said no allegations about the presence of improper material on his parliamentary computers had ever been put to him. On Wednesday, May s office published a summary of its investigation into Green. It found that Green s conduct as a minister was generally professional and proper and that it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of his behavior with Maltby. It said however that the investigation found Maltby s account of the events to be plausible. On the issue of pornography, it found the two statements made by Green on 4 and 11 November to be inaccurate and misleading. The Metropolitan Police Service had previously informed him of the existence of this material, it said. These statements therefore fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code. Mr Green accepts this. On Wednesday, May asked for his resignation. While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations which have been made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the high standards which the public demands of Ministers of the Crown, May wrote to Green in a letter. It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the government and have accepted your resignation. Green apologized for breaking the ministerial code. He said that he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers but accepted that he should have been more clear in his November statements about what the police had told him. He said he did not recognize the description Maltby gave of their 2015 meeting but said he had clearly made her feel uncomfortable and apologized. He added that he deeply regretted the distress caused to Maltby after she wrote the article. I regret that I ve been asked to resign from the government following breaches of the ministerial code, for which I apologise, he said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Denmark no longer to automatically accept U.N. refugee resettlement quota;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will no longer automatically accept a quota of refugees under a U.N. resettlement program after passing a law on Wednesday that enables the government to determine how many can enter each year. Since 1989, Denmark has agreed to take 500 refugees a year selected by the United Nations under a program to ease the burden on countries that neighbor war zones. But after the European migration crisis in 2015 brought almost 20,000 claims for asylum, Denmark has refused to take any U.N. quota refugees. Under the new law, the immigration minister will decide how many refugees will be allowed under the U.N. program, with 500 now the maximum except in an exceptional situation . It s hard to predict how many refugees and migrants will show up at the border to seek asylum, and we know it may be hard to integrate those who arrive here, Immigration and Integration Minister Inger Stojberg said last month when her ministry proposed the law. The opposition Social-Liberal Party said opting out of the U.N. program would increase pressure on countries already accommodating large numbers of refugees, and the move could encourage other countries to follow suit. Last year, more than 6,000 people claimed asylum in Denmark. Between January and November this year just over 3,000 people did. (Corrects throughout to show new law only applies to U.N. resettlement quota, not other refugee applications.) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine police chief defends deadly drug war of the 'Davao Boys';MANILA (Reuters) - The police chief of the Philippines on Wednesday stood by the head of a secretive unit behind dozens of killings in the country s war on drugs, saying officers fired only in self-defence and the death toll reflected the danger and the scale of the narcotics problem. National police chief Ronald dela Rosa was responding to a Reuters Special Report that spent four months examining killings by one group of policemen from or near Davao City, the hometown of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Dela Rosa said police district 6 in Quezon City had Metro Manila s most serious drug problem and he personally sent squad commander Lito Patay there because he was a very professional and very dedicated officer capable of dealing with it. Patay handpicked and headed a unit of 10 men who called themselves the Davao Boys , which racked up the highest number of kills in Quezon City, a violent frontline in Duterte s ferocious anti-narcotics campaign. Police station 6 officers killed 108 people in anti-drug operations from July 2016 through June 2017, the campaign s first year, accounting for 39 percent of Quezon City s body count, according to official crime reports analyzed by Reuters. A majority of the killings were carried out by the squad run by Patay, who was reassigned to Quezon City just a few weeks after Duterte unleashed his crackdown. He (Patay) was chosen because I have big trust in him, he has the balls to face the problems. He will fight, dela Rosa told reporters. He is not an officer who is after money, who will be assigned in an area only to collect money, he is not that kind of officer. He has focus. I assigned him there because I know he can deliver. Asked about the high rate of killings in areas under Patay, he said deaths were inevitable where the drugs trade was rampant. So what s the problem? The worst drug problem is there in station 6, so if you hit the problem head on, you face the problem head on then, there would always result in casualties, he said. Nearly 4,000 mostly urban poor Filipinos have been killed in anti-drug operations since July 2016. Police reject activists allegations they have executed drug users and peddlers and say they kill only when their lives are in danger. Dela Rosa said Patay has since been reassigned to another province to make him eligible for promotion, reflecting his success in convincing drug suspects in Quezon City to surrender to the authorities. He said Patay had been given a free hand at station 6 and had command responsibility over his operations. It is his own call whatever he does there, he has to solve the drug problem, dela Rosa said. The story of the Davao Boys also highlights a larger dynamic: Many of the drug war s key police officers - dela Rosa included - hail from or served in Duterte s hometown, where the campaign s brutal methods originated during his time as mayor. Duterte has repeatedly denied he ordered the killings of criminals and drug dealers during his 22 years as Davao mayor, or his 17 months as president. Dela Rosa appeared frustrated when asked by a reporter if he personally had ordered the deaths of drug suspects in Quezon City. He said Patay s men had no alternative but to kill armed criminals who refused to go quietly. He was placed there to address the drug problem, and not to kill those who deserved to be killed, he said of Patay. If they resist, why would you risk your life? You have to fight back. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. freedom of speech expert concerned about net neutrality;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. s freedom of speech expert said on Wednesday he was concerned about the ramifications of a decision in the United States to roll back net neutrality, since it could lead to small and independent voices being drowned out on the web. Last week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal rules intended to ensure a free and open internet, setting up a court fight over a move that could recast the digital landscape. David Kaye, an American law professor and the U.N. Human Rights Council s independent expert on freedom of expression, said net neutrality, the idea that all internet traffic should be treated the same regardless of content, was essential. Net neutrality is a really, really important principle from the perspective of ensuring broad access to information by all individuals, Kaye told reporters in Geneva on the sidelines of the Internet Governance Forum. I don t want to say that tomorrow there will be a huge amount of censorship, but over the long term, combine this with the concentration of media in the United States and in most places around the world, I think we should be worried about the ability of smaller voices that often (find it) harder to get traction in the market. He said it would take years to know exactly what impact the U.S. move would have. My concern in the U.S. space is that over time the companies will make decisions based more on their business model than on the content of information and the breadth of information that people should have access to, he said. That s a long-term problem and that s why I m very, very concerned about the rollback of net neutrality. As companies blur the lines between providing the infrastructure and the content that makes up the internet, there is increasing risk of political pressure creeping in, Kaye said. We used to think of telcos being very separate from content providers. But there s a lot of convergence now. So one of the risks is as content and infrastructure are merged more, the pressures on both, which might be of a political nature ... might restrict certain kinds of coverage. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Opposition groups quit Iraqi Kurdish government over protests;BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Opposition groups quit the government of Iraq s Kurdish region on Wednesday in protest at violent unrest in which at least three people were killed, with one group saying authorities had shown a flagrant disregard for life. In another test for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, the United States meanwhile called on authorities in the semi-autonomous region to respect press freedoms after it shut down a local broadcaster. The United Nations called for restraint on all sides. Tension has been high in the region since the central government in Baghdad imposed tough measures in response to an independence referendum on Sept. 25 called by the KRG in which Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede. The move, in defiance of Baghdad, also alarmed neighbouring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. Strains spilled onto the streets on Monday and Tuesday when Kurds joined protests against years of austerity and unpaid public sector salaries, with some burning down offices belonging to political parties. At least three people were killed and more than 80 wounded on Tuesday in clashes with Kurdish security forces in Sulaimaniya, local officials said. Some were injured when the crowd was shot at with rubber bullets and sprayed with tear gas. On Wednesday leading opposition movement Gorran withdrew its ministers from the KRG and Kurdistan Parliament Speaker Yousif Mohamed, a party member, resigned in response to the violence. Some have demanded the regional government s ousting. We urge the international community to confront the flagrant disregard for life, liberty and democracy shown by the authorities in #Kurdistan Region, Gorran said in a tweet. The Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), another opposition party with a smaller presence in parliament, also withdrew from the government. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad said on Wednesday it was worried about the closure of a local Kurdish broadcaster at the hands of Iraqi Kurdish security forces a day earlier. We are concerned by recent actions to curb the operations of some media outlets through force or intimidation, specifically yesterday s raid by Kurdistan Regional Government security forces of the NRT offices in Sulaimaniya, an embassy statement said. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) also said Kurdish authorities should respect media freedoms and that it was deeply concerned about violence and clashes during the protests. It called for restraint on all sides. The people have the right to partake in peaceful demonstrations, and the authorities have the responsibility of protecting their citizens, including peaceful protesters, UNAMI said in a statement. Kurdish Asayish security forces on Tuesday raided the offices of Kurdish private broadcaster NRT in Sulaimaniya province, and took the channel off the air. NRT s founder and opposition figure Shaswar Abdulwahid was also arrested at the Sulaimaniya airport on Tuesday. His family have asked for his release, amid local media reports that another NRT journalist was arrested in Sulaimaniya on Wednesday. In a statement on Tuesday, Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, who is on an official visit to Germany, told protesters that although he understood their frustrations, the burning of political party offices is not helpful . There were no major protests in the city on Wednesday. Security forces from the region s capital Erbil have been deployed to help quell the unrest in Sulaimaniya, security sources told Reuters. After Tuesday s unrest, curfews were imposed in several towns across the wider Sulaimaniya province, some have lasted through Wednesday. Local media reported smaller protests in towns across the province, including Ranya and Kifri. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's Kurz says will fight anti-Semitism after Israel voices concern;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday his new coalition would focus on fighting anti-Semitism, after Israel made it clear it would not work directly with any ministers from the far-right party now back in government. Kurz, a 31-year-old conservative, was sworn in with the rest of his government on Monday after reaching a coalition deal that handed control of much of Austria s security apparatus to the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO). The FPO came third in October s parliamentary election with 26 percent of the vote. Israel reacted to the inauguration by saying it would do business only with the operational echelons of government departments headed by an FPO minister. The FPO now controls the foreign, interior and defence ministries, though Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl is not officially a member of the party. Anti-Semitism has no place in Austria or Europe. We will fight all forms of anti-Semitism with full determination, both those that still exist and those that have been newly imported, said in a speech outlining the government s goals to parliament. That will be one of our government s significant tasks. The FPO, which was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, says it has left its anti-Semitic past behind it, though it has still had to expel members each year for anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi comments. It now openly courts Jewish voters, with limited success. Its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, has also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Israel wishes to underline its total commitment to fighting anti-Semitism and commemorating the Holocaust, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a short statement on Monday in response to the Austrian government s swearing in. The European Jewish Congress has called on the new government to take concrete steps against anti-Semitism while taking a generally more inclusive approach. The Freedom Party cannot use the Jewish community as a fig leaf and must show tolerance and acceptance towards all communities and minorities, it said on Monday. Austria, where Adolf Hitler was born, was annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938. Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of that takeover as well as the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One, which led to the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kurz said the events of 1938 were shameful and sad . His People s Party (OVP) and the FPO published a 180-page coalition manifesto over the weekend, which includes plans to cut public spending, taxes and benefits for refugees. The OVP won October s election with a hard line on immigration that often overlapped with the FPO s. The issue dominated the campaign after Austria took in large numbers of asylum seekers during Europe s migration crisis, many of them from Muslim countries. Austria s Jewish community of just over 10,000 is tiny relative to the more than half a million Muslims who live in the nation of almost 9 million, many of whom are Turkish or of Turkish origin. Both Kurz and Strache have warned of Muslim parallel societies they say are emerging in Austria, despite there being few obvious signs of sectarian tension. Kurz flew to Brussels on Tuesday to dispel concerns that his alliance with the far right will undermine the European Union. In their speeches to parliament, both he and Strache said they opposed Turkey joining the European Union a position that polls show a majority of Austrians support. Turkey is moving in the wrong direction, which means Turkey will certainly have no future in the European Union, said Kurz, who has criticised Ankara s clampdown on dissent since a failed coup last year. On Tuesday night during his first foreign visit as chancellor, to Brussels, Kurz told broadcaster ORF he would soon meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I hope we will succeed in dispelling the concerns that exist regarding the FPO government members, Kurz said. It would be in the interest of both our countries. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Strikes kill 19 in rebel village in Syria's Idlib: Observatory, rescue service;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Air strikes killed 19 people in a village in Syria s rebel stronghold of Idlib overnight, a rescue service there and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday. The strikes pounded Maar Shureen in the northwestern Idlib province and injured 25 other people, the Britain-based Observatory said. The dead included seven children, it said. The war monitoring group added that Syrian government or Russian aircraft had struck the village. Russia s Defence Ministry denied involvement, saying in a statement carried by RIA news agency that its jets had not flown in that area. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military, which says it only targets militants. Idlib s civil defense, a rescue service known as the White Helmets which operates in rebel territory, said on social media that fierce bombing killed 19 people overnight. There were two consecutive strikes...The second strike came shortly before rescue teams arrived, Mustafa Youssef, who heads the Idlib civil defense, said. The Damascus government lost Idlib after insurgents took over the provincial capital in 2015. It has since become the only province fully under opposition control, and the most populated insurgent-held part of Syria. Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the Islamist alliance spearheaded by the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is the dominant rebel force in Idlib. This has raised fears among some civilians and other rebel factions that the province could come under attack and turn into a major battlefield. Thousands of civilians and fighters have poured into Idlib in the past year, bussed out of towns and cities which Syrian troops seized with the help of Russia and Iran-backed militias. Government forces and their allies stepped up air strikes against opposition towns in the Hama countryside and the southern part of Idlib, rebels said last week. The province, bordering Turkey, is part of Russian-brokered de-escalation agreements that seek to shore up ceasefires in parts of western Syria. Turkey, which had long backed some Syrian rebel factions, set up observation posts in Idlib in October under a deal with Russia and Iran to reduce fighting there. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said the military operation in Idlib was largely completed. The deployment was also seen partly aimed at containing Kurdish influence nearby in northern Syria. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU executive moves to punish Poland over court reforms;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU executive launched an unprecedented process on Wednesday to suspend Poland s voting rights in the European Union after two years of dispute over judicial reforms that Brussels says undermine Polish courts independence. The European Commission, the guardian of EU law, will now ask the other EU governments to declare that Poland s changes to the judiciary constitute a clear risk of a serious breach of EU values especially the rule of law. However, it gave Warsaw, where a new prime minister took office only this month, three months to remedy the situation and said it could rescind its decision if it did so. Often referred to as the EU s nuclear option , the move carries the ultimate threat of sanctions but is in fact unlikely to result in that. The Commission has today concluded that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in Poland, the Commission said in a statement. Judicial reforms in Poland mean that the country s judiciary is now under the political control of the ruling majority. In the absence of judicial independence, serious questions are raised about the effective application of EU law. The Commission s deputy head, First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who has conducted talks with the Polish government dominated by Law and Justice Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski for the past two years, said he was acting with a heavy heart but was obliged to take action to protect the Union as a whole. We are open for dialogue 24/7, Timmermans said, saying that if Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who took office just this month, were to change tack, he would be ready to respond. But Timmermans insisted: As guardians of the treaty, the Commission is under a strict responsibility to act ... If the application of the rule of law is left completely to the individual member states, then the whole of the EU will suffer. This decision has no merit. It is in our opinion a purely political decision, Beata Mazurek, a spokeswoman for Poland s ruling party, was quoted as saying by state news agency PAP. Stung by Britain s vote last year to leave the Union, the EU institutions are battling a rise in euroskeptic nationalism across the continent and particularly in the former Communist east, where Poland s ally Hungary has also prompted previously the Commission to threaten sanctions over the rule of law. Seeking to counter Warsaw s accusations of an anti-Polish bias in Brussels and in his own behavior, Timmermans, who once worked in the Soviet bloc as a Dutch diplomat, praised Poland s historic contribution to overcoming the Cold War divide of Europe but said Warsaw now bore a special responsibility to prevent new rifts opening up over democratic principles. I want to stand by the Polish people in this time which is very difficult for them, and for us, he said, adding that the defending a separation of powers was of existential importance not just for the Polish nation but for the EU as a whole . The next step in the process is that EU governments, meeting in the Council of the European Union, will hear Poland out and ask it to address their concerns. But if 22 out of the EU s 28 countries and the European Parliament are not satisfied in the end, the process will move on to the next stages, which may mean sanctions. The sanctions can involve the suspension of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights . This formulation leaves open the possibility also of suspending EU financial transfers to Poland, now the biggest beneficiary of European funds aimed at boosting living standards in the former communist country. Sanctions can be imposed with the backing of a majority of countries representing a majority of the EU s citizens. But to get to that stage, EU governments have first to unanimously agree that what was initially just a risk of a serious breach of the rule of law has now become a reality. This is unlikely to happen, because Hungary has already declared that it would not support such a motion against Poland. But the mere threat of it underlines the sharp deterioration in ties between Warsaw and Brussels since the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won power in late 2015. The Commission and Council of Europe legal experts, known as the Venice Commission, say Poland s judicial reforms undermine judges independence because they give the ruling party control over the sacking and the appointments of judges, as well as the option to end the terms of some Supreme Court judges early. The Council of Europe, Europe s human rights watchdog, has compared such measures to those of the Soviet system. The PiS government rejects these accusations, saying the changes are needed because courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist era-mentality. Polish President Andrzej Duda has until Jan. 5 to sign them into law. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish president signs judicial overhaul bills into law;WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish President Andrzej Duda has signed into law two bills overhauling the judiciary, he said on Wednesday, in defiance of European Union criticism that the legislation undermines the rule of law in central Europe s largest economy. I have taken a decision to sign these bills, Duda said in a statement broadcast on public television. Earlier on Wednesday, the EU executive launched an unprecedented action against Poland over its reforms of the judicial system. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romania senate backs bill seen in West as threat to judiciary;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s senate approved on Wednesday part of a judicial overhaul criticized by the European Commission, the United States and the country s own president as a threat to judicial independence. The bill passed by the assembly is one of three that have triggered street protests across the country, a European Union state ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, and drawn opposition from thousands of magistrates. The three bills jointly limit magistrates independence and set up a special unit to probe crimes committed by magistrates. This makes magistrates the only professional category with a prosecuting unit dedicated to investigating them. The proposed changes mean the country is joining its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. Lawmakers approved another bill on Tuesday, amending the definition of prosecutor s activity to exclude the word independent . A third bill is widely expected to be approved on Thursday. The Commission launched an unprecedented action on Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms it says pose a threat to democracy. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said there were obvious risks that the Commission could do the same in Romania s case if the legal changes take hold. If someone imagines there will not be consequences, then they are from the moon, Iohannis told reporters. There will be consequences, the magnitude depends on the laws final form. It could be months before the bills are enforced. Opposition parties plan to challenge them in the Constitutional Court. The president could do the same, as well as send them back to parliament for re-examination, something he can do only once. He could also trigger a country-wide referendum on continuing the fight against corruption. Romania s ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the warnings. They are also working on changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. The country s prosecutor general, chief anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of the anti-organized crime unit have all criticized the proposed changes which they said will not only end the anti-graft fight but endanger general safety. Hundreds of magistrates protested in silence this week, lining the steps of courthouses across the country. Romania s anti-corruption prosecution unit has sent 72 members of parliament to trial since 2006. The speakers of parliament s lower house and senate are both currently on trial in separate cases. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hong Kong's underused military land a potential goldmine: but a minefield for government;HONG KONG (Reuters) - As Hong Kong seeks more land to help ease a worsening housing crisis, some lawmakers and activists are urging officials to take a fresh look at little-used swathes of more than $100 billion worth of real estate controlled by the Chinese military. The Hong Kong garrison of the People s Liberation Army (PLA) still occupies some 19 sites across the global financial hub it inherited from the British military when the former colony was handed back to China in 1997. While several sites, such as the high-rise barracks near the Central financial district, are neon-lit and busy, others appear overgrown, rundown and little used, according to Reuters investigations, activists and diplomats monitoring military activity. The parcels range from mansions in the exclusive Peak district and once-luxurious officers apartments in Hong Kong and Kowloon, to firing ranges and decades-old Nissen huts across the semi-rural New Territories, near the border with mainland China. With Hong Kong property prices at record highs, Denis Ma, head of research at property consultancy JLL, said a mid-range estimate of the total land value could reach HK$1.06 trillion ($135 billion). Based on the recent sale of a nearby plot, the Central site alone could be worth $29 billion and deliver 4.5 million square feet of floor space if developed into a commercial site. Suitable residential land among the 19 sites could yield 65,000 family-sized apartments, Ma added. Across Hong Kong, the PLA occupies some 2,700 hectares (6,670 acres), according to local government records, nearly half the size of Manhattan. A lack of housing is a source of rising social and political tension in Hong Kong, one of the world s most expensive property markets where owning even a 600-square foot flat is beyond the reach of many families. A recently formed government task force on land supply acknowledged public calls for some military land to be returned for housing, but its chairman has said their development potential may not be large . The task force s initial meetings have instead advocated developing 1,400 hectares of new land through reclamation. The preference for costly reclamation over re-purposing PLA land has led some to believe the Hong Kong government does not want to confront the Beijing leadership over a potentially sensitive issue of national security. Under the laws that enshrine Hong Kong s freedoms and autonomy, Beijing is given direct control of defense and foreign affairs. Reuters sent questions to Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, the government s development bureau and the task force. In reply, a spokesman told Reuters the task force would consider ideas from the community, their facts as well as their pros and cons . It would finalize its recommendations by the end of 2018. As far as we understand, all existing military sites in Hong Kong are currently used for defense purposes and none is left idle, the spokesman said, quoting Hong Kong s security bureau. Lawmaker Eddie Chu, part of Hong Kong s democratic opposition, said even though it was common sense to open up some military sites for housing, the local government would likely avoid asking tough questions of Beijing. The Hong Kong government must know this is a solution, but I expect them to pay lip service to it, he said. The PLA garrison and China s Defence Ministry did not respond to faxed questions from Reuters. Security experts say while some PLA presence is a fact of life, the city s defense needs are easily met by Beijing s rapidly modernizing forces - a vastly different situation to that faced by the British in defending their outpost during the Cold War. Hong Kong has never been so well defended ... it is a tiny segment of the mainland and is surrounded by the now significant forces of the Southern Theatre Command of the PLA, said Trevor Hollingsbee, a former Hong Kong security official and naval intelligence analyst with Britain s Defence Ministry. Rather than serve a vital strategic interest, the PLA presence in Hong Kong is essentially to show the public who is boss. After inspecting the garrison as part of 20th handover anniversary celebrations in June, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the troops they were an important embodiment to national sovereignty , according to state media. As well as its Central barracks, security experts and diplomats believe a naval base and small airfield are considered key local sites to the PLA, along with a Kowloon barracks that houses light tanks and anti-riot units. Another 10-hectare Kowloon site and residential blocks near Shek Kong appear barely used, according to activists and Reuters own checks. Soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets guard the entrance to the Kowloon site, but some buildings appear dilapidated, others rundown and many are unoccupied. At Shek Kong, the residential blocks appear little used, day or night, and security is lax. In camps closer to the border, small deployments of troops drill at dawn outside aging British-era huts and weed-choked fences. The 122 hectares of the Stanley fort on Hong Kong s prime southern coast is also underutilized, according to diplomats. About half of the 8,000-10,000 soldiers of the Hong Kong garrison are based in the city at any time, security experts and diplomats believe. Key units are kept in southern China, along with its most advanced weaponry, including jet fighters and air defense weapons. Chinese laws covering the garrison state that any unused land, after central government approval, should be handed back without compensation to the local authorities, so any deal would likely have no benefits for the PLA s coffers. Community organizer Sze Lai-shan, who assists some of the city s 200,000 people living in wire cages and partitioned homes, said all options for the land should be on the table. I think using some for temporary housing shouldn t be a big issue, Sze said. We could perhaps use some existing buildings for temporary housing, or even build temporary housing on some sites. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says U.S. isolated on Jerusalem, issuing threats;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Wednesday the United States has isolated itself by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital and accused it of threatening countries that might vote against it on the matter at an emergency U.N. General Assembly session. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country has led Muslim opposition to Washington s stance on Jerusalem, was speaking before leaving Istanbul with the Palestinian foreign minister to attend Thursday s gathering in New York. With his Dec. 6 decision, President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy, and upset an international consensus enshrined in U.N. resolutions, that treated Jerusalem s status as unresolved. Israel captured East Jerusalem in a 1967 war and Palestinians want it as the capital of a future state they seek. Trump s move stirred outrage among Palestinians and in the Arab world, and concern among Washington s Western allies. On Monday, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution calling on it to withdraw its declaration. Thel 14 other council members, including close U.S. allies such as Japan and four European Union countries, backed the draft. On Thursday there ll be a vote criticizing our choice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Twitter. The U.S. will be taking names. Cavusoglu said that was a threat, and called on Washington - a NATO ally of Turkey - to change course. We expect strong support at the UN vote, but we see that the United States, which was left alone, is now resorting to threats. No honorable, dignified country would bow down to this pressure, Cavusoglu told a news conference held together with his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki. We want America to turn back from this wrong and unacceptable decision, Cavusoglu said earlier in the Azeri capital Baku, where he met Iranian and Azeri ministers. God willing, we will push through the General Assembly a resolution in favor of Palestine and Jerusalem, he said. The rare emergency session of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly was called at the request of Arab and Muslim states. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour has said the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for the U.S. declaration to be withdrawn. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has lambasted Trump s move, and hosted a summit of Muslim leaders last week which called for East Jerusalem to be recognized as the capital of Palestine. Israel calls Jerusalem its indivisible and eternal capital. From now on we will be more active in defending the rights of Palestinians. We will work harder for the international recognition of an independent Palestinian state, Cavusoglu told reporters in Baku. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's conservatives, SPD start talks Jan. 7 on another 'grand coalition';(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) have agreed to exploratory talks on forming a new government starting on Jan. 7, both parties said on Wednesday after informal discussions. The decision, 87 days after a national election that returned a fragmented parliament and complicated coalition arithmetic, brightens prospects for a renewal of the grand coalition that governed Germany over the past four years. A repeat coalition is Merkel s best chance of securing a fourth term as chancellor after talks on forming a three-way alliance with two smaller parties broke down, leaving Europe s largest economy in an unprecedented state of uncertainty. It was a good discussion in a trusting atmosphere, the parties said in a joint statement after leaders met on Wednesday. They agreed to hold four days of talks from Jan. 7, with the aim of deciding by Jan. 12 whether to open formal coalition negotiations. Even in the most optimistic case, Germany will have smashed 2013 s post-World War Two record of needing 86 days to form a new government after an election. The hiatus highlights that Germany, long Europe s bastion of stability, is not immune to the political fragmentation that has swept the continent. The conservatives and Social Democrats have identified 15 policy areas for exploration, including education, the welfare state and employment law, where the SPD is keen to carve out a distinctive left-wing identity for itself after a disastrous election showing blamed in part on Merkel s dominant stature. The SPD s membership, which tends to be more radical than the party leadership, will have to ratify any decision to repeat a coalition with Merkel, who has been in power for 12 years. (This version of the story corrects the date to Jan. 12 in fourth paragraph) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish banker makes second bid for mistrial in U.S. sanctions case;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawyers for an executive at Turkey s majority state-owned Halkbank who is accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions on Wednesday asked a U.S. federal judge to declare a mistrial as jurors were expected to begin deliberating. In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, the lawyers for Mehmet Hakan Atilla said prosecutors had prejudiced the jury by asking their client during cross-examination on Tuesday whether he remembered that a report by a Turkish expert concluded he violated sanctions. Atilla s lawyers immediately objected before Atilla could answer, and U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ordered the question stricken from the record. However, Atilla s lawyers said Wednesday that the damage had been done. They said jurors should not have been allowed to hear about the Turkish report because its author was not in court, depriving Atilla of his right to confront his accuser. They also said the question grossly mischaracterized the report s conclusion. Asking this question in open court had the effect of introducing otherwise inadmissible hearsay and an expert opinion on the ultimate issue for the jury, they said. Berman ordered prosecutors to respond to the motion by 5 p.m. (2200 GMT) Wednesday. Jurors had been expected to begin deliberating Wednesday morning after a three-week trial that has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey. At the center of the trial was explosive testimony from Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty to charges of violating sanctions and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Zarrab testified that Atilla helped design fraudulent transactions of gold and food that allowed Iran to spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, including through U.S. financial institutions, defying U.S. sanctions. Zarrab also implicated Turkish officials in the scheme, including President Tayyip Erdogan. Attempts to reach Erdogan s spokesman for comment on the allegations at the trial have been unsuccessful. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government. Atilla, testifying in his own defense at the trial, denied all the charges against him. Halkbank has denied taking part in any illegal transactions. Atilla s lawyers already asked for a mistrial last week after jurors heard testimony from Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Turkish police officer who said he led an investigation that included Atilla and was forced to flee Turkey to escape retaliation. Berman denied that motion. U.S. prosecutors charged nine people in the criminal case, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, were arrested by U.S. authorities. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss government urges voters to reject call for national ban on face veils;ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss government urged voters on Wednesday to reject a campaign for a nationwide ban on face veils, saying any decision on facial coverings was a matter for Switzerland s cantons individually. But, in a counter move to a referendum to be held by 2020, the government said it would propose to voters a ban on face veils being worn by individuals while doing business with federal authorities, including in immigration offices or employment agencies. Regulation of public spaces in Switzerland is traditionally a cantonal matter, the government said in a statement. So cantons should continue to decide for themselves whether to enact a ban on facial coverings. In particular, it said it was down to individual cantons to decide how they handled tourists from the Arab world who wore the veil. In September, activists submitted a petition for a nationwide ban after collecting more than the 100,000 signatures required to put the proposal to a binding referendum. Several cantons have already taken a stand on the issue. Zurich, Solothurn, Schwyz, Basel City and Glarus have rejected a ban on veils, while Italian-speaking Ticino has imposed a ban. At least two demonstrators who wore veils in Ticino in defiance of the ban were fined 250 Swiss francs ($260), according to media reports. The parliament in St. Gallen canton this year backed a ban on facial coverings which were deemed likely to endanger public security or upset the peace. With an eye to the referendum, the federal government said it would also present a proposal to stop individuals being forced to cover their face. We can not allow husbands and fathers to demand their wives and daughters wear a face veil, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told a news conference. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa promises zero tolerance in corruption fight;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Wednesday promised zero tolerance in his government s push to punish corruption that stifled political freedom and economic growth under Robert Mugabe s 37-year rule. Mnangagwa, giving his first state of the nation address since he assumed power last month following a de facto coup that ousted his 93-year-old predecessor, has sought to draw a line under years of endemic corruption and impunity. Under pressure to deliver results, especially on an economy crippled by severe currency shortages, Mnangagwa said reforms of a bloated state sector would be launched in early 2018. With opposition parties calling for widespread political reforms before an election next year, he repeated a promise that his government would do everything in its power to ensure a credible, free and fair ballot. Corruption remains the major source of some of the problems we face as a country and its retarding impact on national development cannot be overemphasized, Mnangagwa told a joint sitting of the country s two houses of parliament. On individual cases of corruption, every case must be investigated and punished in accordance with the dictates of our laws. There should be no sacred cows. My government will have zero tolerance towards corruption and this has already begun. The latter was an apparent reference to comments last week he would name and shame those who failed to return stolen public funds after a three-month amnesty ends in February. His government is also pursuing corruption charges dating back over two decades against former finance minister Ignatius Chombo, a close ally of Mugabe and his wife, Grace. Chombo, whose lawyer has said he will deny the charges, faces trial early next year. In the latter half of Mugabe s rule the economy fell apart amid the violent and chaotic seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms. Billions of dollars of domestic debt issued to pay for a bloated civil service triggered a collapse in the value of Zimbabwe s de facto currency and hyperinflation. Mnangagwa said the government would in the first quarter of next year announce a program to reform, commercialize or shut down some state-owned firms he said had been for a long time an albatross around the government s neck . Zimbabwe s efforts to re-engage international lenders and lure investors will rest on the credibility of next year s election, and the president again pledged a commitment to a free and fair vote. To level a playing field they say is skewed in favor of Mnangagwa s ZANU-PF party, opposition parties have however challenged his army-backed government to first enact a long list of electoral reforms. They include a new voters roll, opposition access to public media, allowing an estimated three million Zimbabweans living abroad to vote and international observers including the United Nations. We would like to see genuine, credible electoral reforms that will lead to free and fair elections and they must be underwritten and guaranteed by the international community, Tendai Biti, leader of the opposition MDC Alliance, told reporters ahead of Mnangagwa s address. Biti and other members of the alliance also criticized what they called the militarization of the government following the appointment of two former senior military officials to the new cabinet. Mnangagwa gave his clearest signal yet on Tuesday that he would appoint as vice president Constantino Chiwenga, the military leader who led the coup that ousted Mugabe. Chris Mutsvangwa, adviser to the president and the influential leader of the war veterans association, has rejected the criticism of the appointments, saying they were not unique to Zimbabwe. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bulgaria parliament passes anti-corruption law under EU pressure;SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria s parliament passed anti-corruption legislation on Wednesday under European Union pressure over its failure to prosecute venal officials, but President Rumen Radev has said the bill is not fit for purpose and he will veto it. The Balkan, formerly communist country is the poorest as well as one of the most corrupt countries in the EU, which it joined in 2007, and has made scant progress towards stamping out graft and organized crime. The European Commission, the EU s executive, has repeatedly rebuked Bulgaria for failing to prosecute and sentence allegedly corrupt officials and for not overhauling a creaking judiciary. This law corresponds to the wishes of Bulgarian citizens and the European Commission, said Tsvetan Tsvetanov, chairman of the ruling GERB party s parliamentary group. Analysts voiced concern, though, that the bill would not allow efficient investigations of corruption networks. The management of a special anti-graft unit envisaged by the legislation would be appointed by parliament, something analysts said could limit its objectivity. Radev said the new five-person unit, meant to investigate persons occupying high state posts as well as assets and conflict of interest, may not be truly independent and could be used by those in power to persecute opponents. The instruments envisaged in this law are ineffective, Radev said last week. It does not deal a blow on those who feed corruption, and it can be used as a weapon against inconvenient people. He said he would veto the measure. The president, prime minister and lawmakers could be targets of investigation, as well as municipal councillors, directors of hospitals and border customs bosses. The new law also focuses on improving control and accountability of law-enforcement agencies, just before Bulgaria assumes the six-month, rotating EU presidency in January. Corruption has deterred foreign investment since communism collapsed in Bulgaria in 1989, and the EU has kept Sofia as well as neighboring Romania - for the same rule-of-law failings - outside its Schengen zone of passport-free travel. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru cancels copper project auction amid political crisis: sources;LIMA (Reuters) - The center-right government of Peru s embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski canceled its scheduled auction of a $2 billion copper project, Michiquillay, on Wednesday amid a growing political crisis, two government sources said. The regional bloc Organization of American States said earlier on Wednesday that it was preparing to send a delegation to Peru, the world s second biggest copper producer, to observe the political situation at the request of Kuczynski ahead of a vote in Congress to oust him on Thursday. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police arrest alleged Islamic State militant in ice rink truck attack plot;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police arrested a 29-year-old man they said was an active member of Islamic State who was plotting a truck attack on an ice rink. The arrest, a year after Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck and drove it into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people, comes as security services have warned of growing numbers of radical Islamists in Germany. He was considering an attack on the ice rink on the Schlossplatz in Karlsruhe, police in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said, adding that the suspect was a German citizen whose name they gave only as Dasbar W. To that end he was assessing areas around Karlsruhe Castle and, from September 2017, had begun seeking employment as a delivery driver - without success, the police statement said. In 2015, the suspect traveled to Iraq to fight for Islamic State, receiving weapons training and working as a scout seeking potential attack targets in the city of Erbil, police said. He returned to Germany the following year. Before leaving for Iraq, Dasbar worked for Islamic State from Germany, producing propaganda videos and proselytizing to converts in online chat rooms, police said. Earlier this month, Germany s security service warned that the number of Salafists - followers of a radical Islamist ideology - had risen to an all-time high of 10,800, though the number prepared to mount attacks was in the order of hundreds. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led coalition to allow cranes into Yemen's Hodeidah port;DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition will allow four cranes into the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah to boost humanitarian aid deliveries into wartorn Yemen, the Saudi ambassador to Sanaa said on Wednesday. Saudi-led forces blocked the port for more than three weeks last month in response to Houthi missile attacks, adding to food shortages in Yemen. A coalition spokesman said on Wednesday the Houthis had fired 83 ballistic missiles towards the kingdom since the war started in 2015. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Cameroonian troops entered Nigeria without seeking authorization, sources in Nigeria say;ABUJA/DAKAR (Reuters) - Cameroonian troops this month crossed into Nigeria in pursuit of rebels without seeking authorization from Nigeria, causing a falling-out between the governments behind the scenes, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. At least one incursion was confirmed by a Nigerian government official, two Nigerian military officers and two foreign diplomats, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. Nigerian security forces were deployed to the border to stop any further crossings, said a military source. The Cameroonian and Nigerian governments said in separate statements there were no incursions. Relations between the two countries are good, Cameroon said. Cameroonian military officials and pro-government media accuse Nigeria of sheltering Anglophone insurgents. For the past year they have been based in the dense equatorial forests that straddle the border between the two countries, fighting for an independent state they call Ambazonia. At least 7,000 people have fled as refugees from Anglophone Cameroon to Nigeria following a crackdown ordered this year by President Paul Biya to quell the insurgency, which represents the gravest challenge yet to his 35-year rule. French is the official language for most of Cameroon but two regions speak English and these border Nigeria, which is also Anglophone. Cameroonian troops were in Nigeria, said a foreign diplomat. Zero warning, zero authorization. The troops crossed into Nigeria at least twice this month, the diplomat and a Nigerian military official told Reuters. The incidents have caused anger on both sides and could sour diplomatic relations further as Cameroon increases pressure on its Anglophone regions, according to the diplomat and a Nigerian government official. Tensions are high and could escalate, the government official said. Cameroon government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary denied that troops had crossed the border illegally. Relations between the two countries are cohesive when it comes to fighting against terrorism. Cameroon and Nigeria are on the same wavelength. Nigeria s foreign minister, speaking to Reuters after a cabinet meeting in Abuja, also denied the incursions. The (Nigerian) government had investigated and discovered that it s not true, said Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria s foreign minister. But the Nigerian government official and a diplomat said Cameroon had threatened to suspend senior Nigerian embassy officials in Yaounde after they lodged complaints. Tchiroma and Onyeama denied this. Governments in Africa often play down diplomatic disputes and present a show of harmony even during bitter rows. On Monday, rebels killed four gendarmes, Cameroon s government said, the latest raid on police and military positions in the country s southwest region. Nigeria has for decades been West Africa s powerhouse but the militaries of the two countries have cooperated extensively to confront a threat posed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The group has staged attacks in Nigeria for years but more recently it has also conducted deadly assaults in Cameroon. Cameroon has repeatedly pressed Nigeria to allow it the right of hot pursuit for Boko Haram militants and the issue has left the countries at loggerheads. After Cameroon s military crossed the border this month in pursuit of separatist insurgents, Nigeria sent security forces to deter any future attempts, said one of the military sources. We were not for war but keeping the peace and protecting our territorial integrity. They were asked to leave and they did and everything has been brought under control, the source said. Many refugees have crossed into Nigeria and many more are still crossing and the Cameroon authorities appear to be concerned that the situation may escalate if they keep coming into Nigeria. Two Cameroonian military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters separatists had set up bases and launched attacks from Nigeria. One attack was on Dec. 14 and involved two groups of at least 100 separatists, one of the officials said. How do you explain that these guys come to attack us and then leave without being troubled across the border? When we drive them back, these separatists withdraw toward Nigeria, the official said. Julius Ayuk Tabe, the Nigeria-based chairman of the Ambazonian Governing Council, the political wing of the armed resistance, said he was not aware of any separatist military bases in Nigeria. Cameroon s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the German colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors. The English-speaking regions joined the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Burst tire may have caused deadly tourist bus crash in Mexico -police;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The driver of a tour bus that crashed on Tuesday on a quiet road in Mexico s Yucatan Peninsula, killing 12 people, may have lost control after one of the front tires exploded, the local police chief said. The bus was carrying 31 passengers, including citizens of the United States, Brazil, Canada and Sweden, on a trip to Mayan ruins when it crashed and flipped over, authorities said. Most of those aboard were travelers on Royal Caribbean cruise ships. It seems a front tire of the bus exploded, making it lose control and leave the asphalt, Carlos Briceno Villagomez, head of the police in the municipality of Bacalar, told Mexican TV network Televisa on Tuesday night. The government of Quintana Roo state said it was investigating the cause of the accident, which happened on a flat stretch of road and did not appear to involve another vehicle. The driver was injured and has been arrested. A Mexican tour guide was among those killed. A local civil protection official said authorities were also investigating whether human error contributed to the accident. The U.S. State Department confirmed on Wednesday that multiple American citizens had died in the crash. Mexican authorities said eight U.S. citizens died. We can confirm the deaths of multiple U.S. citizens in #Mexico bus accident, and several injuries. We express our heartfelt condolences to those affected by this tragedy, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a post on Twitter. One Canadian died in the crash and three others were injured, a spokesman for Canada s Global Affairs department said. Two Swedish citizens died and two others were injured, Mexican authorities said. A child was among the dead. Quintana Roo is one of three states on Mexico s Yucatan Peninsula, a major tourist destination. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Earthquake of magnitude 5.2 strikes near Iran's capital;LONDON (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 5.2 struck a town near the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday night, state media reported, but there were no initial reports of casualties or significant damage. Last month, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit villages and towns in Iran s western Kermanshah province along the mountainous border with Iraq, killing 620 people and injuring thousands of others. Authorities said they were gathering information about the latest quake, which hit in the late evening at a depth of 7 km (4 miles). They asked residents to remain calm but be prepared for possible aftershocks. The epicenter of the quake was 3 km from the city of Malard, and not far from Meshkin Dasht, which sits about 50 km west of Tehran, state news agency IRNA said. The quake was also felt in Alborz, Qazvin, Qom, Gilan and Markazi provinces, according to state media. There have been no reports of casualties or damage, Behnam Saeedi, a spokesman for Iran s National Disaster Management Organization, was quoted as saying by the semi-official ILNA news agency. In Tehran and other cities, residents flooded into streets and parks, fearing a stronger aftershock. Some set up tents to spend the night outside, and lit fires. Tasnim news agency quoted Minister of Sports Masoud Soltanifar as saying sport centers in city of Karaj in Alborz province, and Eslamshahr in southern Tehran were open to the public to spend the night. Some people also took refuge at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic in southern Tehran. Minister of Energy Reza Ardakanian was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying that Amirkabir Dam, one hour west of Tehran, remained intact and supply of water and electricity was not disrupted in any way. Schools, universities and government offices will be closed in Tehran, Alborz and Qom provinces on Thursday, according to the state television. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. follows Mexico in backing disputed Honduran vote result;WASHINGTON/TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday followed Mexico in signaling that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez had won a heavily disputed presidential election last month, lending weight to his legitimacy in spite of ongoing opposition protests. The Honduran electoral tribunal at the weekend declared U.S. ally Hernandez the winner of the Nov. 26 election in spite of widespread misgivings about the count, which turned in favor of the incumbent after suddenly halting with the opposition ahead. Violent protests have broken out in Honduras over the vote, and the Organization of American States (OAS) urged the country to hold new elections to resolve the dispute. That proposal has, however, been rejected by senior Honduran officials. Hernandez s rival Salvador Nasralla traveled to Washington this week to urge the United States not to recognize the vote, but a senior U.S. State Department official said that his government had no evidence that would alter the results. At this point ... we have not seen anything that alters the final result, the official told reporters, saying Washington may wait to make a definitive judgment in case the opposition presents additional evidence of fraud in the election. Mexico on Tuesday congratulated Hernandez for being declared victor. Mexico s step, which followed the recognition of Hernandez by Colombia and Guatemala, strengthened the incumbent s hand and could tilt other countries in his favor. The Mexican statement, and its review, indicates that a call for a new election is a pretty dramatic outcome in this case, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Washington may hold off on making a final judgment until the end of a five-day period when the opposition can produce further evidence to contest the results, the official added. He said a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state met with Nasralla, who has accused Hernandez of stealing the election. He did not have any new (allegations of) fraud (or) evidence to present to us, and I think we are going to work through this quickly to get to a definitive U.S. statement, he added. The Mexican statement is going to have a strong influence on whether we think we can move forward sooner. The Mexicans seem pretty certain in their statement. Hernandez on Wednesday named a new head of the armed forces, Rene Orlando Ponce, who quickly indicated on local radio that solving the impasse would be for Honduras alone. We re not going to accept any interference beyond Honduran law, he said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May will allow Brexit delay in exceptional circumstances;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she would permit a delay to Britain s departure from the European Union in exceptional circumstances, bowing to criticism from her own party over the government s plan to fix the exit date in law. The decision is a compromise with Conservative lawmakers who last week rebelled in parliament and inflicted an embarrassing defeat on May during a debate on the legislation that will end Britain s EU membership. The legislation, formally titled the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, later won approval to move to the next stage of the parliamentary process, although it still faces weeks of further scrutiny before becoming law. May headed off a second rebellion by agreeing that her government s plan to define the date of Britain s EU exit as March 29, 2019, should be tempered by inserting a proviso allowing that date to be changed if necessary. If that power were to be used, it would be only in extremely exceptional circumstances and for the shortest possible time, May told lawmakers. Parliament will have to approve any new date. Junior Brexit Minister Steve Baker added that he could not envisage the date being brought forward. The passage of the bill to the next stage was overshadowed by the resignation of May s most senior ally in government, Damian Green, at May s request after an internal investigation found he had breached the government s code of conduct. The destabilising resignation adds to the political difficulties May faces as she tries to deliver Brexit against a backdrop of a divided parliament and electorate, and questions about her ability to meet an already tight timetable. She wants to negotiate a transition deal with Brussels by March to reassure businesses and then seal a long-term trade deal by October. Brussels has said a detailed trade deal is likely to take much longer, and that Britain s transition period must end by 2020. In addition, May s government has to undertake the huge legislative task of transferring the existing body of EU law into British law before it leaves in order to provide legal certainty for businesses. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: May's Brexit plan passes parliamentary test, more to come;LONDON (Reuters) - Legislation underpinning the government s plan to leave the European Union passed the latest stage in its journey through parliament on Wednesday, but still faces weeks of scrutiny before it becomes law. After eight days of debate, the legislation completed its Committee Stage , where lawmakers debate the bill line by line and try to make changes to the government s proposed wording. Formally known as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the legislation will now face other stages of approval in the lower house of parliament, and must then make its way through a multi-stage process in the upper house. Both chambers must agree on the wording before it can become law. What is the bill and what does it do? The legislation serves two main functions: 1. Repealing the 1972 European Communities Act which made Britain a member of the European Communities, forerunner to the European Union. This effectively ends Britain s EU membership. 2. Transferring the existing body of EU law into British law. This is designed to provide legal certainty about the complex process of leaving. Why is it controversial? The bill has faced criticism from opposition lawmakers, campaign groups and members of May s Conservative Party. Brexit is still divisive in Britain after a referendum in June last year, and many people, including some lawmakers, want to retain as much of the country s current EU membership as possible. Others would like to reverse the vote altogether. The most significant objections so far have focused on several different parts of the bill: 1. The power for the government to amend EU laws as they are brought onto the British statute book. 2. The extent to which parliament will be given a say on the final exit deal. 3. The government s intention to fix March 29, 2019 in law as Exit Day . May runs a minority government, which has a slim 13-seat working majority in the 650-seat parliament thanks to a deal with a small Northern Irish party. Only seven Conservative lawmakers could be required to rebel to defeat the government. What has happened so far? The threat of rebellion has forced the government to make several concessions on its plans, including Wednesday s compromise to allow the date of Brexit to be changed in exceptional circumstances. Ministers also agreed to greater scrutiny in parliament of the process of transposing EU law. May suffered one embarrassing defeat, when 11 Conservatives sided with the opposition to successfully demand stronger guarantees that parliament will have a meaningful vote on the country s final exit agreement. Ministers fought off, or bargained their way out of other disagreements on issues like the powers government will have to change EU laws as they are transposed into British law, and the government s intention not to transfer across the EU s Charter of Fundamental Rights. The bill cleared its first parliamentary hurdle in September when, after two days of debate, lawmakers voted 326 to 290 in favor of the principles of the bill. What happens next? The debate will continue in the lower house of parliament next year at a date which has yet to be set. This so-called Report Stage is a new opportunity to add amendments. Immediately after report stage, the bill is given a Third Reading . It usually lasts an hour and is a general discussion of the bill followed by a vote. No amendments can be made. If approved, the bill will then pass to the upper chamber of parliament, where the Conservatives do not have a majority. The entire process will take months to complete, and there is no target end date. House of Lords: Once the bill passes to the unelected upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords, Lords can put forward their own amendments, each of which will be discussed and decided on in turn. If the lords agree to any amendments, the bill passes back to the House of Commons for its approval. Ping Pong: If the bill passes back to the commons, they debate and vote on the lords amendments. No new amendments can be introduced. In theory the bill can continue passing back and forth between the lords and commons until the final bill is agreed upon. Royal assent: Once the bill has been agreed by both houses of parliament, it is given royal assent, when the queen formally agrees to make the bill into an Act of Parliament. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Full Brexit in Jan. 2021 as EU sets transition deadline;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union wants a transition period after Brexit to end no later than the last day of 2020, according to the European Commission s negotiating directives agreed on Wednesday. That date, coinciding with the end of the EU s seven-year budget period and 21 months after Britain departs the EU, had long been expected as the target end point of the transition. But this was the first official confirmation that it is the goal of the Union s negotiators. British Prime Minister Theresa May had sought a transition lasting around two years. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, speaking at a news conference after the EU executive had agreed the terms, said the 2020 deadline was logical and would avoid complications in the next 2021-2027 EU budget period. The four pages of new directives for Barnier were in line with guidelines issued by EU leaders at a summit on Friday and will form the basis of talks on the transition that he hopes to start next month. He has said in the past he hopes a free trade pact could be ready to take effect in January 2021. The directives spell out that Britain will effectively remain in EU institutions, bound by all their rules including new ones, while not having a say in their making. The EU will also offer Britain a non-voting place at some meetings where decisions may affect specific issues and will set up special arrangements for a UK role in setting annual EU fishing quotas. The directives also spell out more clearly that EU treaties with other countries and international organizations will no longer apply to Britain during the transition period. However, the document adds: Where it is in the interest of the Union, the Union may consider whether and how arrangements can be agreed that would maintain the effects of the agreements as regards the United Kingdom during the transition period. This has been important to Britain since it could mean that it no longer benefits automatically from free trade agreements which the EU has with, say, Canada or South Korea, while it would still have to apply EU trade policy for example collecting EU customs duty at UK ports. Barnier said he understood that Britain was working with other countries to try to retain the advantages of some of the nearly 750 international agreements to which London is currently party as an EU member. Among elements spelled out more in the directives than in the leaders guidelines last week was a repetition of a previously agreed EU position that everything applying to Brexit for Britain would also apply to other British territories. Brussels has said the Spanish government must agree any future arrangements with Britain that affect the British territory of Gibraltar on Spain s southern coast. Asked about his previously expressed view that a future trade deal may offer little automatic access for the City of London s financial services firms to the EU market, Barnier repeated that free access would be unprecedented as far as he was aware. I remind you that I m not aware of any free-trade deal in the past between the European Union and third countries that would have allowed privileged access for financial services, he told a news conference. British negotiators have said Britain s size and proximity give it the leverage to negotiate a more ambitious relationship with the EU than any other state. During the transition, Britain will maintain access to the European single market, Barnier added. Britain will keep all the benefits, but also all the obligations of the single market, the customs union and the common policies, he said, ruling out a la carte terms. Barnier welcomed agreements made earlier this month on issues such as the Irish border, citizens rights and the divorce settlement. We are not at the end of the road, he said. But it is an important stage of this road towards an orderly withdrawal rather than a disorderly one. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions Chechen leader, four others under Magnitsky Act;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed new sanctions on five Russians and Chechens, including the head of the Russian republic of Chechnya, for alleged human rights abuses. The new sanctions blacklisted Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Treasury Department said in a statement. U.S. authorities accused Kadyrov of overseeing an administration involved in disappearances and extrajudicial killings . On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, a senior U.S. State Department official said that one or more of Kadyrov s political opponents were killed at his direction. Kadyrov reacted to news of the sanctions with his usual defiance. A sleepless night is waiting for me, Kadyrov wrote, apparently sarcastically, on his Instagram social media account. I can be proud that I m out of favor with the special services of the USA. In fact, the USA cannot forgive me for dedicating my whole life to the fight against foreign terrorists among which there are bastards of America s special services. He also wrote that he would not be visiting the United States. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed the sanctions, which freeze the banks accounts of those targeted, under a 2012 law known as the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian auditor and whistleblower. The act also seeks to hold responsible those U.S. authorities allege orchestrated or benefited from the death of Magnitsky. Treasury remains committed to holding accountable those involved in the Sergei Magnitsky affair, including those with a role in the criminal conspiracy and fraud scheme that he uncovered, Director of the Treasury Department s Office of Foreign Assets Control John Smith said in a statement. Magnitsky was arrested and died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after discovering a $230 million tax fraud scheme, according to U.S. authorities. Supporters of Magnitsky say the Russian state murdered him by denying him adequate medical care after he was imprisoned on tax evasion charges. The Kremlin denies the allegation. In addition to Kadyrov and one other Chechen official, the Treasury s action on Wednesday targeted three Russians that U.S. authorities say were involved in the complex tax fraud scheme that Magnitsky exposed. The Magnitsky sanctions have been a point of tension between Moscow and Washington, even before Russia s annexation of Crimea sent relations spiraling. In retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, Putin signed a bill halting U.S. adoptions of Russian children. It had been unclear to sanctions experts whether President Donald Trump s administration, which has signaled a desire to rebuild ties with Moscow, would continue to target people under the law. The Magnitsky Act attracted greater public attention when it emerged that the president s son Donald Trump Jr., had met with a Russian lawyer and a lobbyist - both strident opponents of the law - in New York ahead of the 2016 U.S. elections. When asked about the June 2016 meeting, Trump Jr. later said they discussed the adoptions issue. On a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, State Department officials said that despite the new sanctions the Trump administration wants a constructive relationship with Moscow. We believe a Russia that takes care of the human rights of its own citizens will be an even more effective partner, a senior State Department official said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish PM calls Rohingya killings in Myanmar 'genocide';COX S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Turkey s prime minister on Wednesday dubbed the killing of minority Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar by its security forces genocide and urged the international community to ensure their safety back home. Binali Yildirim met several Rohingyas in two refugee camps in Cox s Bazar in neighboring Bangladesh. Almost 870,000 Rohingya fled there, about 660,000 of whom arrived after Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. The Myanmar military has been trying to uproot Rohingya Muslim community from their homeland and for that they persecuted them, set fire to their homes, villages, raped and abused women and killed them, Yildirim told reporters from Cox s Bazar, before flying back to Turkey. It s one kind of a genocide, he said. The international community should also work together to ensure their safe and dignified return to their homeland, Yildirim, who was accompanied by Bangladesh s Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, said. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug. 25, MSF said last week. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Yildirim inaugurated a medical camp at Balukhali, sponsored by Turkey, and handed over two ambulances to Cox s Bazar district administration. He also distributed food to Rohingya refugees at Kutupalong makeshift camp. He urged the international community to enhance support for Rohingyas in Bangladesh and help find a political solution to this humanitarian crisis. U.N. investigators have heard Rohingya testimony of a consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson . The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria. Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi s less than two-year old civilian government has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals it has to share power with under Myanmar s transition after decades of military rule. Yildirim s trip follows Turkish first lady Emine Erdogan s visit in September to the Rohingya camp, when she said the crack down in Myanmar s Rakhine state was tantamount to genocide and a solution to the Rohingya crisis lies in Myanmar alone. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump threatens to cut aid to U.N. members over Jerusalem vote;WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We ll save a lot. We don t care, Trump told reporters at the White House. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday - at the request of Arab and Muslim countries - to vote on a draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that Trump had asked her to report back on those countries who voted against us. She bluntly echoed that call in a Twitter post: The U.S. will be taking names. Several senior diplomats said Haley s warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing U.S. voters. According to figures from the U.S. government s aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania. It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries, according to USAID. Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, declined to comment on Trump s remarks, but added: It s the right and responsibility of member states to express their views. A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also declined to comment on Trump s remarks on Wednesday. I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations, for all those nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council, or they vote against us potentially at the assembly, Trump said. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington s Western allies. He also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls on all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. A senior diplomat from a Muslim country, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Haley s letter: States resort to such blatant bullying only when they know they do not have a moral or legal argument to convince others. Responding directly to that comment on Twitter, Haley said: Actually it is when a country is tired of being taken for granted. A senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Haley s letter as poor tactics at the United Nations but pretty good for Haley 2020 or Haley 2024, referring to speculation that Haley might run for higher office. She s not going to win any votes in the General Assembly or the Security Council, but she is going to win some votes in the U.S. population, the Western diplomat said. A senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed Haley was unlikely to sway many U.N. states. We are missing some leadership here from the U.S. and this type of letter is definitely not helping to establish U.S. leadership in the Middle East peace process, the diplomat said. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The first name that she should write down is Bolivia, Bolivia s U.N. Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorentty Sol z said of Haley s message. We regret the arrogance and disrespect to the sovereign decision of member states and to multilateralism. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Several countries, the United Nations and journalist groups are demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts are not known. We and their families continue to be denied access to them or to the most basic information about their well-being and whereabouts, Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler said in a statement calling for their immediate release. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing, he said. Here are comments on their detention from governments, politicians, human rights groups and press freedom advocates around the world: Two U.N. human rights experts called on Thursday for Myanmar to release the two reporters, saying it was putting Myanmar on a dangerous path by using the Official Secrets Act to criminalize journalism. Journalism is not a crime. These detentions are another way for the Government to censor information about the military s role in Rakhine State and the humanitarian catastrophe taking place, said Yanghee Lee and David Kaye, who are the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar and on freedom of expression respectively. - A spokeswoman for Norway s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Wednesday: Norway expects the Myanmar authorities to ensure the full protection of their rights and to release the journalists as quickly as possible. - Human Rights Watch said the detentions appeared to be aimed at stopping independent reporting of the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya. Brad Adams, the group s Asia director, said, Their secret, incommunicado detention lays bare government efforts to silence media reporting on critical issues. - In Washington, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for their immediate release. This is outrageous, said Senator Ben Cardin. It just brings back the memory of the horrible practices with the repressive military rule. - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. On Tuesday, the State Department reiterated the U.S. demand for the reporters immediate release. - Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Chris Coons, leaders of the U.S. Senate Human Rights Caucus, said they were gravely concerned about the reporters arrests and that press freedom was critical to ensuring accountability for violence against the Rohingya. Democratic congressman Ted Lieu, a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, called the arrests outrageous and a direct attack on press freedom. - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kano said in response to a question from a Reuters reporter on Tuesday, Freedom of the press is extremely important, including in order to protect fundamental human rights. The Japanese government would like to watch (this matter) closely. Tokyo-based Human Rights Now called on Japan on Wednesday to take a stronger stance. - The European Union urged Myanmar on Monday to release the reporters as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said, Freedom of the press and media is the foundation and a cornerstone of any democracy. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and press freedom in Myanmar. It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country, he said. - Britain, Holland, Canada and Sweden have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. Australia has expressed concern and Bangladesh has denounced the arrests. - Vijay Nambiar, former special adviser on Myanmar to the U.N. Secretary-General, said in a statement to Reuters on Monday that the detentions had caused widespread disappointment within and outside the country that is likely to further damage the international reputation and image of Myanmar, already under stress as a result of its handling of the Rakhine crisis. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the reporters. - The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) called on Myanmar to immediately disclose the reporters whereabouts. All detainees must be allowed prompt access to a lawyer and to family members, Frederick Rawski, ICJ s Asia-Pacific Regional Director, said on Monday. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said the arrests were having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance . - Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests and the charges being considered against the journalists were completely spurious . - Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded Myanmar immediately and unconditionally release the Reuters journalists. - Myanmar s Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. It said it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed as police normally do to criminals on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime. - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance said the journalists were only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, local reporters who have demonstrated against prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about press freedom in Myanmar. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club and Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong have issued statements supporting the journalists. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab coalition says will keep Yemen port open;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's ANC calls for nationalizing central bank, land expropriation;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress has adopted a resolution calling for the nationalization of the central bank and land expropriation without compensation, a senior party official said on Wednesday. Any mention of nationalization in South Africa is enough to spook investors, since left-wing elements of the ANC have also called for mines and banks to be state-owned. Similarly, land is an emotive issue two decades after the end of apartheid, and the ANC has been under pressure to redress racial disparities in land ownership. Unlike most central banks in the world, the South African Reserve Bank has been privately owned since it was established in 1921. But its shareholders have no control over monetary policy, financial stability policy or banking regulation. Following a meeting of party delegates, the head of the ANC s economic transformation committee, Enoch Godongwana, told reporters changing the ownership of the South African Reserve Bank would not affect its independence. He said the party had also agreed to initiate amendments to the constitution to achieve land expropriation without compensation, but gave no timeline. He said there would be no illegal occupation of land. Following the proposal made in July by the ANC at a policy conference to nationalize the bank s shareholding, South Africa s Reserve Bank said that changing its shareholding would not affect its mandate, because that mandate is derived from the constitution. Godongwana said no timeline had been laid down for the plan to acquire the central bank s shares or for any directives to parliament to change the country s laws to effect the change. No change in the constitution, no change in the Reserve Bank Act, he said. We ve also said it s not likely to have an impact at all because shareholders in the Reserve Bank do not affect monetary policy in any way. Godongwana said the changes would come after more work was done to prepare for the bank s nationalization. In July, when the party said it would like the central bank to be wholly state-owned, investors were initially worried and knocked the rand. The currency was little changed on Wednesday immediately after the announcement by Godongwana, but analysts said markets would react negatively. The SARB resolution will spook the markets even if it is ultimately unlikely to be implemented, said Anne Fruhauf political analyst with consultancy Teneo. On the land issue, Godongwana said some of the delegates became rowdy during the heated debate that nearly collapsed the conference . ANC officials rejected reports that delegates had come to blows during the debate. Godongwana said the delegates eventually agreed to initiate some amendments to the constitution in order to achieve expropriation of land without compensation. The condition is that it must be sustainable and not impact on food production and food security, he said, adding that there should be no illegal occupation of land. Asked how the markets would react, Godongwana said: My suspicion is they are going to say wow and react badly ... my sense is, if I was the markets, I would simply hold off. Most of South Africa s land remains in white hands 23 years after the end of white minority rule. Experts say the plan to expropriate land in South Africa will not signal the kind of often violent land grabs that took place in neighboring Zimbabwe, where white-owned farms were seized by the government for redistribution to landless blacks. However, some economists and farming groups have said the reform could hit investment and production. Around 8 million hectares (20 million acres) of land have been transferred to black owners since apartheid ended, equal to 8 to 10 percent of the land in white hands in 1994, the government says. The total is only a third of a 30 percent target by 2014 set by the ANC. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congo and Uganda to launch joint operation against rebel ADF;GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Congo and Uganda are planning a joint military operation against a Congo-based Ugandan rebel group blamed for an attack that killed 15 United Nations peacekeepers, army officials from the two countries said on Wednesday. Fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces are suspected of being behind the Dec. 8 assault on a base manned by Tanzanian U.N. troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo s troubled eastern borderlands. The attack, which also killed five Congolese soldiers and wounded another 53 peacekeepers, and came amid a rising wave of violence in the mineral-rich area. The commanders of the ADF are Ugandan citizens. A mechanism will be outlined so the two armies can share intelligence and carry out a coordinated operation, said General Marcel Mbangu Mashita, a senior Congolese army commander in the east. Representatives from the two armies met in the Congolese border town of Kasindi last week. Under the plan, Ugandan troops will not cross over into Congolese territory but instead be concentrated along the border. (The Ugandan army) is reinforcing security on the common border with Congo in order to dissuade any attempt by the ADF to cross over and attack targets of interest in Uganda, Ugandan army spokesman Brigadier Richard Karemire said. Congo s U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, has pledged to track down those responsible for the attack on its base. But it was not involved in the bilateral talks between the Congolese and Ugandan officials. Rival militia groups control parts of eastern Congo, long after the official end of a 1998-2003 war in which millions of people died, mostly from hunger and disease. Congo and Uganda were enemies during that conflict and, in the years since, relations between the two countries have at times been strained. Increased militia violence this year in the center and east comes as Congo faces a political crisis linked to President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down when his mandate expired last December. The ADF is an Islamist group that has long been active along the border and has been blamed for a wave of massacres there over the past two years. Since its leader Jamil Mukulu was arrested in 2015, it has been headed by Musa Baluku. General Mashita said previous Congolese operations had succeeded in eliminating around a third of the ADF s top commanders, but added that its ranks had been bolstered by escaped prisoners after a major prison break in June. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ugandan parliament passes law allowing Museveni to seek re-election;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan legislators voted late on Wednesday to amend the country s constitution to allow 73-year-old leader Yoweri Museveni to extend his rule, potentially guaranteeing him a life-time presidency. A provision in the current constitution limits the age of a presidential candidate at 75 years, which would have made Museveni ineligible to stand at the next polls in 2021. At the end of Wednesday s day-long House debate, which capped a protracted and violence-marred process to remove that age limit, MPs voted 315-62 in favor of the amendment. The bill passes, said speaker Rebecca Kadaga after announcing tally results, prompting raucous celebrations from the mostly ruling party MPs who favored the bill. Earlier in the day, two lawmakers were dragged away and detained when they tried to enter parliament, as the divisive debate proceeded in the chamber. Police had blocked some legislators from entering the building, and live television footage showed two of them being driven away in security vehicles. Both opposed the bill. The legislators blocked by police were attempting to enter parliament to serve court documents on House speaker Rebecca Kadaga, who was presiding over the debate. The document called on her to appear in court at 2:00 PM in respect of the irregular suspension of our members of parliament, independent lawmaker Wilfred Niwagaba told a local television station minutes before he was detained. Six MPs - all opposed to removal of the age cap - were suspended from parliamentary proceedings on Monday for alleged disorderly conduct and refusing to heed the speaker s instructions. The bill to amend the constitution was introduced in parliament on October 4 by a Museveni loyalist, after two consecutive days of brawling in the debating chamber between those opposed and those in favor, supported by security personnel. On the second day, security personnel who some MPs said were soldiers from an elite military unit entered the chamber and violently ejected at least 25 MPs that the speaker had suspended from proceedings for alleged misconduct. Wednesday s vote was the second time Ugandan parliament has changed the constitution to allow Museveni extend his rule. In 2005, they voted to remove a limit of two five-year terms, which blocked him from standing again. The bill also extended the length of a term for MPs to seven years from the current five. The limit of two terms was also re-imposed for the president, although that only means Museveni would be limited to two more terms, starting with the 2021 election. Are you not seeing what happened in Zimbabwe, do we want his excellency to end like Gaddafi of Libya, opposition legislator, Gilbert Olanya, who opposed to the amendment, said in Wednesday s debate as he attempted to persuade colleagues to reject it. Several African leaders have amended laws designed to limit their tenure. Such moves have fueled violence in countries including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. Initially hailed for restoring political order and fostering economic growth, Museveni has lately come under mounting pressure fueled by runaway corruption, and accusations he uses security forces to maintain his grip on power. A combination of both military and police personnel were heavily deployed around parliament this week, which opposition MPs say was meant to intimidate members. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada's Trudeau broke ethics rules with visit to Aga Khan island;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke some conflict of interest rules when he accepted a vacation last year on the Aga Khan s private island, the ethics watchdog said on Wednesday, the first time a prime minister has been found to have committed such a transgression. While the finding could tarnish Trudeau s popularity half-way into his mandate, he does not face any penalties. Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson said Trudeau contravened a rule on gifts when he accepted the use of the island in March and December 2016, while there were ongoing official dealings with the Aga Khan and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada was registered to lobby Trudeau s office. The vacations accepted by Mr. Trudeau or his family could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence Mr. Trudeau in his capacity as Prime Minister, Dawson said. While Trudeau says the Aga Khan is a family friend, Dawson found the exception for gifts from friends did not apply. Trudeau said he accepted her report and would clear future vacations with the watchdog. I take full responsibility for it. We need to make sure that the office of the prime minister is without reproach, Trudeau said. Trudeau and his family vacationed on the island during the holidays in late December 2016 into January this year. Members of his family visited in March 2016. Trudeau has come under fire from the opposition, who have said the luxury Bahamas vacation was inappropriate and showed the Liberal government is out of touch with average Canadians. The opposition has also accused Finance Minister Bill Morneau of being in a conflict of interest for not putting his assets in a blind trust. He has since said he will do so and has divested his stock in his family business. Trudeau says he has known the Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini, since childhood. The Aga Khan, the title held by the leader of the Ismaili branch of Shi ite Islam, was a pallbearer at the funeral of Justin s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Trudeau also contravened the rules when he and his family traveled in the Aga Khan s private helicopter last December and when his family traveled on a non-commercial aircraft chartered by the Aga Khan in March 2016, Dawson said. However, she found no evidence Trudeau discussed any parliamentary business with the Aga Khan or his representatives, or participated in any related debates or votes. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ugandan parliament passes law allowing Museveni to seek re-election;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan legislators voted overwhelmingly late on Wednesday to remove from the constitution an age cap of 75 for presidential candidates, allowing President Yoweri Museveni, 73, to seek re-election at the next polls in 2021. Critics say the move opens the possibility of a life presidency for Museveni, who has ruled the east African country for 31 years. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Divided Catalans prepare to vote in close-run election;VIC/CERDANYOLA DEL VALLES, Spain (Reuters) - Catalonia votes on Thursday for a new administration in an election many hope will resolve Spain s worst crisis in decades after the region declared independence leading Madrid to sack local leaders. Polls suggest neither the pro-independence nor the pro-unity camp will win a majority. The likely outcome is a hung parliament and many weeks of wrangling to form a new regional government. In the separatist heartland of rural Catalonia, fireman Josep Sales says he hopes the results will endorse the result of an Oct. 1 illegal referendum on independence from Spain and lead to the creation of a republic. If we get a majority, something will have to be done. And if the politicians don t do it, the people will unite, he said, speaking from the town fire station where many of the red fire engines bear the slogan Hello Democracy . If we have to bring the country to a standstill, so be it, said the 45-year-old, who plans to vote for Carles Puigdemont, the sacked Catalan head who is campaigning for election from self-imposed exile in Belgium. The uncertainty generated by the independence drive has hurt hotel occupancy rates in the region, dented consumer sales and caused more than 3,000 businesses to move their registered headquarters from Catalonia. It has also bitterly divided Catalan society between those who support independence and those who favor unity with Spain. Everyone is eager for the election and to see how it turns out, because nothing is clear at the moment, said 34-year-old flamenco teacher Maria Gonzalez, who lives in Cerdanyola del Valles, an industrial suburb of Barcelona. The feeling on the streets is not comfortable, says Gonzalez, the daughter of migrants from other parts of Spain who moved to Catalonia decades ago and who plans to vote for pro-unity party Ciudadanos ( Citizens ). There s a hidden tension. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalan separatists win election in rebuke to Spain and EU;BARCELONA (Reuters) - Catalonia s separatists look set to regain power in the wealthy Spanish region after local elections on Thursday, deepening the nation s political crisis in a sharp rebuke to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and European Union leaders who backed him. With nearly all votes counted, separatist parties won a slim majority in Catalan parliament, a result that promises to prolong political tensions which have damaged Spain s economy and prompted a business exodus from the region. Rajoy, who called the elections after sacking the previous secessionist government, had hoped Catalonia s silent majority would deal separatism a decisive blow in what was a de facto independence referendum, but his hard line backfired. The unexpected result sets the stage for the return to power of deposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont who campaigned from self-exile in Brussels. State prosecutors accuse him of sedition, and he faces arrest if he were to return home. Either Rajoy changes his recipe or we change the country, Puigdemont, said in a televised speech. He was flanked by four former cabinet members that fled with him. At jubilant pro-independence rallies around Barcelona, supporters chanted President Puigdemont and unfurled giant red-and-yellow Catalan flags as the results came in. Puigdemont s spokesman told Reuters in a text message: We are the comeback kids. The result unnerved global markets, contributing to a softer euro and subdued sentiment in stock markets. Opinion polls had predicted secessionists to fall short of a majority. More than 3,100 firms have moved their legal headquarters outside Catalonia, concerned that the indebted region, which accounts for a fifth of the national economy, could split from Spain and tumble out of the EU and the euro zone by default. Spain has trimmed its growth forecasts for next year, and official data shows foreign direct investment in Catalonia fell 75 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, dragging down national investment. The EU s major powers, Germany and France, have backed Rajoy s stance despite some criticism of his methods at times. On Oct. 1, when Catalonia staged an independence referendum, Spain declared it unconstitutional and national police used tear gas and batons to prevent some Catalans from voting. When Catalan parliament declared independence after the referendum, Rajoy invoked constitutional powers to impose direct rule from Madrid on the region. He has said he would rescind direct rule regardless of the election result, but could re-impose it if a new government again pursued secession. There was no immediate comment from Rajoy after the election results. The narrow victory for Puigdemont s secessionist camp presents a fresh headache for the EU, which had defended the Spanish judiciary s pursuit of separatist leaders on grounds that they had violated Spain s constitution. Puigdemont s attempts to gain international support in Brussels have come to nothing so far. He has called the EU a club of decadent countries for declining to mediate a solution. Separatist parties won 70 seats out of 135, with Puigdemont s Junts Per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) party retaining its position as the largest separatist force. Unionist party Ciudadanos (Citizens) won the most votes, but other unionist forces Rajoy s People s Party and the Socialist Party registered a dismal performance. It s a bitter victory, said Paloma Morales, a 27-year-old student at a Ciudadanos rally. It means four more years of misery. Analysts said the ball was back in Rajoy s court. What this shows is that the problem for Madrid remains and the secession movement is not going to go away, said Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at London-based research firm Teneo Intelligence. Turnout on Thursday reached a record high with over 83 percent of eligible Catalans voting. Puigdemont s former deputy, Oriol Junqueras, and several other Catalan politicians are in prison, along with the leaders of the two main separatist grassroots movements. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Six bodies hung from bridges near Mexico's Los Cabos tourist resort;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The bodies of six men were found hanging from three different bridges near the Mexican tourist resort of Los Cabos on the Baja California peninsula on Wednesday, local authorities said. The authorities did not give details on what happened to the men, but drug gangs often hang the bodies of their murdered victims in public to intimidate rivals. Drug gang violence is set to make 2017 Mexico s deadliest year in modern history. Two bodies were found on a bridge in Las Veredas, near Los Cabos International Airport, and two on a different bridge on the highway between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, local prosecutors said in a statement. In a separate statement, the prosecutors said two further bodies were found on a third bridge near the airport. An official from the prosecutor s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bodies of the men had been hung from the bridges. Violent crime has spiked in Baja California, particularly around the once peaceful resort of Los Cabos visited by million of foreign tourists every year. Los Cabos police chief Juan Manuel Mayorga was shot dead last week. Mexico is on track for its most violent year since records began, with the rise of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, now one of the country s most powerful, and disputes between other criminal groups fueling murder rates. On Tuesday, authorities in the northern state of Chihuahua said 12 people were killed in clashes between armed groups. The governor of the state of Baja California Sur, Carlos Mendoza Davis, said that authorities were investigating the incidents near Los Cabos. I condemn these acts and any expression of violence. Today more than ever in #BCS we should be united, he said via Twitter, using the hashtag for the state s initials. Homicides have more than doubled in Baja California Sur this year, with 409 people killed through October, from 192 in all of 2016. In June authorities said they had found a mass grave with the bodies of 11 men and three women near Los Cabos. More than 4.4 million passengers, mostly international, have passed through Los Cabos Airport so far this year, according to operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's May to visit China around Jan. 31: Sky News;(Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will visit China around the end of January to promote her vision of a global Britain whose economy is strongly placed to succeed after Brexit, Sky News reported on Wednesday. May s office has pencilled in a trip on or around Jan. 31. She will be accompanied by a delegation of business leaders drawn from across the UK economy, Sky reported, citing insiders. China is one of the countries with which Britain hopes to sign a free trade pact once it leaves the EU. Plans for the trip have not been finalised and remain subject to change, Sky added. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss government urges voters to reject call for national ban on face veils;ZURICH (Reuters) - The Swiss government urged voters on Wednesday to reject a campaign for a nationwide ban on face veils, saying any decision on facial coverings was a matter for Switzerland s cantons individually. But, in a counter move to a referendum to be held by 2020, the government said it would propose to voters a ban on face veils being worn by individuals while doing business with federal authorities, including in immigration offices or employment agencies. Regulation of public spaces in Switzerland is traditionally a cantonal matter, the government said in a statement. So cantons should continue to decide for themselves whether to enact a ban on facial coverings. In particular, it said it was down to individual cantons to decide how they handled tourists from the Arab world who wore the veil. In September, activists submitted a petition for a nationwide ban after collecting more than the 100,000 signatures required to put the proposal to a binding referendum. Several cantons have already taken a stand on the issue. Zurich, Solothurn, Schwyz, Basel City and Glarus have rejected a ban on veils, while Italian-speaking Ticino has imposed a ban. At least two demonstrators who wore veils in Ticino in defiance of the ban were fined 250 Swiss francs ($260), according to media reports. The parliament in St. Gallen canton this year backed a ban on facial coverings which were deemed likely to endanger public security or upset the peace. With an eye to the referendum, the federal government said it would also present a proposal to stop individuals being forced to cover their face. We can not allow husbands and fathers to demand their wives and daughters wear a face veil, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga told a news conference. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French PM defends flight home for 350,000 euros;PARIS (Reuters) - France s prime minister, whose government has vowed to clean up politics, was forced on Wednesday to defend his decision to hire a private jet for 350,000 euros ($415,000) to fly back from Japan. Opposition politicians decried Edouard Philippe s use of the private charter, and a non-governmental agency that pursues financial wrongdoing in high places accused him of ignoring his own government s pledges of exemplary behavior. President Emmanuel Macron came under fire earlier this month for celebrating his 40th birthday in the grounds of a royal palace. His office sought to play that down, saying the event had been paid for by Macron and his wife. Philippe acknowledged on RTL radio that he and his delegation flew back to Paris from Tokyo, after an official trip to New Caledonia, at a cost of 350,000 euros, but said he had been obliged to do so. I totally understand the surprise and the questions of the French people, Philippe said. We knew there was no commercial flight at the time we needed to return, and we knew we had to return because the President was leaving on the Wednesday morning of our return for Algeria, he said. The rule is that, whenever possible, (either) the Prime Minister or the President must be on national territory ... I take full responsibility for this decision. Karim Bouamrane, spokesman for the Socialist Party, said on Twitter that the flight pointed to amateurism regarding the organizational skills of Philippe s team. Macron put financial and ethical probity in public life at the heart of a presidential election race he won last May, and his new government passed a law to tighten up on ethical standards in French politics. He has struggled nonetheless to shake detractors charges that he is a president of the rich after reforms including the scrapping of a wealth tax and reductions in housing benefit - moves Macron says will boost investment and social mobility. In August, social media commentators and political opponents criticized the French president after it emerged he spent 26,000 euros on makeup during his first 100 days in office. Anticor, a non-governmental agency that focuses on financial corruption and profligacy in politics, said use of a private jet was at odds with Macron and his government s declarations that financial probity was a priority. ($1 = 0.8450 euros) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany's conservatives, SPD start talks Jan. 7 on another 'grand coalition';(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) have agreed to exploratory talks on forming a new government starting on Jan. 7, both parties said on Wednesday after informal discussions. The decision, 87 days after a national election that returned a fragmented parliament and complicated coalition arithmetic, brightens prospects for a renewal of the grand coalition that governed Germany over the past four years. A repeat coalition is Merkel s best chance of securing a fourth term as chancellor after talks on forming a three-way alliance with two smaller parties broke down, leaving Europe s largest economy in an unprecedented state of uncertainty. It was a good discussion in a trusting atmosphere, the parties said in a joint statement after leaders met on Wednesday. They agreed to hold four days of talks from Jan. 7, with the aim of deciding by Jan. 12 whether to open formal coalition negotiations. Even in the most optimistic case, Germany will have smashed 2013 s post-World War Two record of needing 86 days to form a new government after an election. The hiatus highlights that Germany, long Europe s bastion of stability, is not immune to the political fragmentation that has swept the continent. The conservatives and Social Democrats have identified 15 policy areas for exploration, including education, the welfare state and employment law, where the SPD is keen to carve out a distinctive left-wing identity for itself after a disastrous election showing blamed in part on Merkel s dominant stature. The SPD s membership, which tends to be more radical than the party leadership, will have to ratify any decision to repeat a coalition with Merkel, who has been in power for 12 years. (This version of the story corrects the date to Jan. 12 in fourth paragraph) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beijing condemns Taiwan probe into tiny pro-China opposition party;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - China has condemned a Taiwan government probe into a tiny but passionately pro-China opposition party, the latest flashpoint between Beijing and a self-ruled island it considers its own. Taiwanese investigators searched the homes of four officials from the New Party, which currently has no members of parliament, on Tuesday on suspicion they had violated the National Security Act. A New Party delegation, including at least one of those whose homes was raided, party spokesman Wang Ping-chung, visited China last week as part of a scheduled trip to meet China s policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office. The New Party has denounced the raids as politically motivated and retribution for their opposition to Taiwan independence and support for union with China. Taiwanese prosecutors and the government have not given details of what the party members are suspected of. Unlike in China, where the legal system is controlled by the ruling Communist Party, democratic Taiwan has an independent judiciary. Taiwan media has reported that the case could be linked to that of Chinese citizen Zhou Hongxu, jailed by a Taiwan court in September for breaching national security laws. Speaking to reporters in Taipei on Wednesday, New Party spokesman Wang Ping-chung said he knew Zhou, and that Zhou had attended party events held in the past. In 2014, when I successfully became a representative of the party, he came to an event to offer his support. Later he participated in our organization events so we of course know him. In a short statement released late on Tuesday, China s Taiwan Affairs Office praised the New Party for its stance in opposing Taiwan independence and upholding the one China principle, which states that Taiwan is part of China. Recently, the Taiwan authorities have shielded and connived with Taiwan independent splittists, and taken various moves to wantonly crack down on and persecute forces and people who uphold peaceful reunification, it said. We strongly condemn this and are paying close attention to developments, the office said. The New Party broke off from the Nationalists, who once ruled all of China, in 1993. Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists. Relations between China and Taiwan have soured since Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won presidential elections last year. China suspects she wants to push for Taiwan s formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security. The Chinese military has stepped up air force patrols around Taiwan in recent weeks. China has never renounced the use of force to bring what it considers a wayward province under Chinese control. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Too late, Theresa - Brexit offer to EU citizens leaves many cold;LONDON (Reuters) - Back from Brussels with a hard-fought Brexit deal, Prime Minister Theresa May wrote an open letter to the three million citizens of other European Union states living in Britain. I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay, she wrote after striking the initial agreement, which promises to secure their British residency rights after Brexit and allows the negotiations to move onto trade relations. But for some EU nationals - who have endured uncertainty over their rights since the Brexit vote in June 2016, not to mention an unpleasant feeling that many Britons do not want them around - May s Dec. 8 deal is too little, too late. It s too late to keep German nurse Daniela Jones in the chronically short-staffed National Health Service (NHS), where she worked for 35 years. It s too late for French psychotherapist Baya Salmon-Hawk, who after 40 years in Britain has moved to Ireland to remain in the EU. It s too late for French accountant Nathalie Duran, who is planning early retirement in France because after 31 years as a taxpayer in Britain she objects to being told she has to pay a fee and fill in forms to be granted a new settled status . I will have to regretfully decline your generous offer for settled status and oblige your lovely countrymen s wishes and go home, she wrote on Facebook in a response to May laden with irony. Duran told Reuters that the prime minister s late outpouring of love for EU citizens, after years of tough talk on the need to cut immigration, could not mask negative attitudes towards immigrants unleashed by the Brexit vote. I think it s turning ugly, said 56-year-old Duran. It s now OK to say go home foreigners . EU citizens, particularly those from the poorer eastern member states such as Poland and Romania, have complained of increasing hostility from some Britons. They find themselves accused of stealing jobs from Britons and driving down wages, even though unemployment is at a four-decade low, or of overburdening health services as patients, even though many help to provide them by working for the NHS. Official figures show hate crimes in Britain surged by the highest amount on record last year, with the Brexit vote a significant factor. The impact of Brexit on EU citizens in Britain is a serious concern for sectors of the economy that rely heavily on European workers, such as hospitality, construction, agriculture, care for the elderly and the cherished NHS. Britain won t leave the bloc until March 2019, but many EU nationals are already voting with their feet. In the 12 months following the referendum, 123,000 of them left Britain, a 29 percent year-on-year increase. They were still outnumbered by the 230,000 EU citizens who arrived to live in Britain in the same period, although that figure was down 19 percent on the previous year. Not everyone is making plans to go: 28,500 EU citizens applied for British citizenship in the 12 months after the referendum, an 80 percent year-on-year jump. With personal and professional roots often running deep, many more have applied for permanent residence documents. UK citizenship would be an option for nurse Jones, 61, who moved to England from Munich just before her 18th birthday. That was in 1974, the year after Britain joined what is now the EU. Today she has a grown-up British son and a British husband. But as a point of principle she cannot see why she should apply for something she never needed in the past. Despite my enormous love for Britain, I do not feel that I am British, was how she put it in a letter to Ruth Deech, a pro-Brexit member of parliament s House of Lords, sent in February to lobby her on the EU citizens rights issue. In a one-line response to the long, impassioned letter, which made clear Jones had worked for 35 years in the state NHS, Deech said she should have applied for UK citizenship. Jones replied it had never been necessary and explained that she was already a dual German and U.S. national through her German mother and her American father, a serviceman in the U.S. army who was posted to Germany in the 1950s. Deech sent another one-liner: You sought U.S. citizenship - presumably you could have shown the same commitment to this country. Jones was dismayed by that response, which in her eyes lacked understanding and respect. She began to think she needed to look after her own interests better. A few months later, she quit her NHS job at a doctors office in Yateley, a small town southwest of London. She is now re-training as a foot and ear care specialist and plans to work privately. I still like looking after people but I want to do it on my own terms, she told Reuters. It s time to get out. Work for myself, start a little business. Jones wrote to Deech again, saying: I have now freed up a British job for a British worker. This time she got no response. Deech declined an interview request from Reuters, but said in an emailed response to questions that obtaining a British passport might be a good idea for any EU citizen who is (probably needlessly) concerned . French national Baya Salmon-Hawk, 61, initially reacted to the Brexit vote by trying to make sure her residency rights were not under threat. Having lived in England for 40 years, had her son there, owned a home, worked in a variety of jobs and paid taxes, she thought that should be straightforward. But when she made inquiries about a permanent residence permit she had obtained in 1977, she was told this was no longer valid and she would have to re-apply by filling an 85-page form and providing lots of documents, including details of every time she had left the country and returned, stretching back years. Besides, Salmon-Hawk was struggling to adjust to the new reality. Having believed previously that she was integrated into British society, she felt unwelcome for the first time. I just don t understand what s happened to the UK, she said. I became quite easily upset by all this and I didn t want to live like that anymore. She and her 74-year-old wife Audrey Evelyn, who is British, decided to leave. They sold their house in a village north of London, and in July this year they moved to County Kilkenny in Ireland, where Evelyn has family ties. At times, Salmon-Hawk has wondered if they made the right decision. I may have made a foolish mistake. I have woken up in the middle of the night in a state of panic, she said. But she is starting a new venture as a professional story-teller at Hook Lighthouse on the southeast coast of Ireland, telling visitors tales from Irish history. I thought I was done, I was settled, and I m not. I m having a new adventure. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean inbound travel agency says China bans group tours to South;SEOUL (Reuters) - China has resumed its ban on group tours into South Korea, South Korea s inbound travel agency said on Wednesday, an issue that erupted last year as part of China s retaliation over the South s deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system. I was told from my boss this morning that our Chinese partners (based in Beijing and Shandong) said they won t send group tourists to South Korea as of January, the official from Naeil Tour Agency told Reuters by phone. The move was probably due to visa refusals by Chinese authorities, the official said. The move came despite South Korean President Moon Jae-in s recent visit to China, which showed some signs of a thaw in relations since the row over the anti-missile system broke out last year. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea 'fired 249 warning shots' to fend off Chinese fishing boats;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea s coast guard said it fired 249 warning shots over a group of Chinese fishing boats swarming around one of its patrol ships in South Korean waters, prompting a call for restraint from Beijing. South Korean coast guard vessels regularly chase Chinese boats suspected of fishing illegally in South Korean waters, at times sparking violent confrontations, complicating a relationship which is key to efforts to try to rein in North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. A fleet of 44 Chinese fishing boats fortified with iron bars and steel mesh on Tuesday began to rush the patrol boat which broadcast warnings to steer clear, the coast guard said. The coast guard vessel fired 249 shots over the boats until they retreated. The Chinese fishing boats sought to swarm around and collide with our patrol ship, ignoring the broadcast warnings, the coast guard said in a statement. China, which has in the past lodged diplomatic protests with South Korea over the use of force by its coast guard, expressed serious concern about the reports. We hope that South Korea appropriately handles the relevant issue and in the course of law enforcement takes no extreme actions that endanger people s safety, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing. Seoul s foreign ministry said the coast guard followed domestic law in its use of weapons in a legitimate step against the boats which made a mass violation of the country s waters for illegal fishing . In September last year, three Chinese fishermen were killed in a fire on their boat when a South Korean coast guard crew trying to apprehend them for illegal fishing threw flash grenades into a room where they were hiding, according to the South Korean coast guard. A month later, two Chinese fishing boats illegally fishing in South Korean waters crashed into and sank a coast guard vessel, the coast guard officials said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. President Trump to visit Britain in February: Daily Mail;LONDON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump plans to visit Britain in February to open the new U.S. embassy in London but will not meet Queen Elizabeth, the Daily Mail newspaper reported on Wednesday. Trump s planned visit to Britain has proved controversial since Prime Minister Theresa May invited him for a state visit, which typically involves lavish pageantry and events hosted by the queen. However nearly 2 million people have signed a petition saying Trump should not be invited because it would cause embarrassment to the queen, and protests could be expected to greet the U.S. leader. The Daily Mail cited a source in Westminster as saying Trump had told May during a call on Tuesday that he planned a working visit to Britain to open the new embassy, a billion-dollar building which overlooks the River Thames, in late February. A spokesman for May s Downing Street office declined to comment on the report. He said the position on the state visit had not changed. An offer had been extended but no dates have been arranged. May originally invited Trump to visit by the end of 2017. Britain regards its close ties with Washington as a special relationship and a pillar of its foreign policy as it prepares to leave the European Union. However the ties have been strained in recent months, most recently when Trump sparked outrage by rebuking May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia working on defensive measures to counter possible new U.S. sanctions: Kremlin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is working on defensive measures to prepare for possible new sanctions from the United States and other countries, the Kremlin said on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a new package of sanctions in August drafted by U.S. lawmakers. One of the provisions asked the U.S. Treasury Secretary to submit a report on the impact of expanding sanctions to cover Russian sovereign debt, with an outcome expected as early as February. U.S. and EU sanctions imposed over Russia s 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea, and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, remain in place. But U.S. allegations that Moscow interfered in last year s U.S. presidential election, something Russia denies, have spurred calls for more sanctions. On Wednesday, the Kremlin was asked to comment on media reports that Russian state development bank VEB planned to transfer its Globex bank to the state and about speculation that the bank would then be used to service the military industrial complex to try to protect Russia from new sanctions. We are working on and taking measures aimed at defending our interests against a backdrop of possible new restrictive actions and sanctions by various countries, which we continue to deem unlawful, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. He did not mention Globex bank. It would probably not be right now to make public or disclose all these measures aimed at hedging our risks, Peskov said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Thailand seeks air safety rating upgrade by U.S. aviation body;BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand aims to get its air safety rating upgraded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by March, the country s transport minister said on Wednesday, after the FAA downgraded the rating in December 2015. Thailand s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) was downgraded to Category 2 from 1 because it fell short of the FAA s standards. We aim to be restored back to Category 1 by March, Transport Minister Arkom Termpittayapaisith told reporters. Arkom s comment came three months after the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) removed a red flag against Thailand over safety concerns in October. He said Thailand will speed up its inspection of pilot qualifications and aim to have more aviation personnel and qualified pilots to be considered for the safety ratings upgrade. Bangkok is a regional airline hub and Thailand targeted a record 33 million to 34 million tourist arrivals this year. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Desperate Venezuelans peddle wares door-to-door in Colombia to survive;CUCUTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Thousands of impoverished Venezuelans are crossing the border to Colombia every day to sell cheap basics, from oranges to candles, in a desperate attempt to earn hard currency amid their country s worsening economic collapse. The porous roughly 2,220-kilometer (1,380-mile) frontier for years has been rife with smuggling due to the massive differences in prices on either side due to controls imposed by Venezuela s socialist government. But in the past three months there has been a spike in Venezuelans migrating to the border area and spending their days going door-to-door trying to sell low-cost goods in Colombia. Hundreds of vendors are sleeping in the streets of the Venezuelan border town of San Antonio, while the surge in hawkers on the Colombian side is stoking anger among local shopkeepers. Albert Rodriguez, 22, spends his nights on a plastic sheet in the streets of San Antonio since moving from Venezuela s inland agricultural state of Lara a month ago. He sells coffee in Colombia, but still has not been able to send money home to help his newborn daughter. It s tough because there are so many Venezuelans. I feel like crying because I am so impotent, said Rodriguez, who said he hopes to eventually migrate to central Colombia where he thinks job prospects will be better. The flood of vendors is evidence of how a fourth year of recession - which has fomented malnutrition, disease and violent crime - is tearing Venezuela s social fabric apart. It also highlights that Colombia, already home to the most Venezuelan migrants in South America, remains particularly vulnerable to the crisis. The Colombian government did not respond to a request for comment. Come daybreak, Venezuelan hawkers jostle for hours to get a spot on a bus traveling to the Colombian border. They then cross the teeming frontier on foot, many silently praying that the National Guard will not demand payment to let them through with their goods. Once safely in Cucuta, the vendors disperse on different buses that take them across the Colombian border city. In the low-income hillside neighborhood of La Libertad, around a hundred Venezuelans rang doorbells offering mayonnaise, insecticide, cereal boxes and more. Sales are often brisk. Prices are roughly half those in Colombian stores due to Venezuela s depreciated bolivar currency. Some worried Colombian shopkeepers are demanding the border be closed to protect their businesses. Colombians also at times fret that the influx of Venezuelan vendors could lead to crime. Marlon Carrillo, a 21-year-old Venezuelan who abandoned university studies to start selling fruit in Colombia three months ago, said some locals slammed doors in his face out of fear. It s hard to pay for the sins of others, said Carrillo, who crisscrosses Cucuta for eight hours a day selling the lemons, strawberries, bananas and pineapples he crams into his backpack. I want to progress and study but I have to work. I m not going to let my family die of hunger, said Carrillo, who is supporting his three nephews after his sister died of bone marrow failure. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rights group calls on Japan to take stronger stance over arrests of journalists in Myanmar;TOKYO (Reuters) - A Tokyo-based non-governmental organization, Human Rights Now, on Wednesday called on the Japanese government to take a stronger stance over the arrests of two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar last week. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono on Tuesday said freedom of the press was vital and that Japan was closely monitoring the situation, but he did not call for the journalists release. Human Rights Now Secretary-General Kazuko Ito told Reuters that Japan should send a stronger message about the arrests. Ito said that by not joining in international calls for the journalists release, Japan might be sending a message that it was ok for the Myanmar government to violate human rights. Therefore, I would like (the government of Japan) to exercise care in its comments and clearly express astance of standing together with those who are victims of humanrights violations, she told Reuters. Asked about Ito s remarks, Japan s top government spokesman said Tokyo had already conveyed its concerns to Myanmar. I will refrain from details but the government has already directly conveyed its concerns regarding this incident to the government of Myanmar, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference. Japan typically shies away from outspoken public comments about human rights issues overseas, preferring to focus on quiet diplomacy. Japan is one of Myanmar s biggest foreign aid donors, where it vies for influence with China, Myanmar s largest trading partner. Japan said last year it would provide aid worth 800 billion yen ($7 billion) to Myanmar over five years. Human Rights Now is a well-known group in Japan. It has a membership of over 700 individuals and organizations, including lawyers, with a presence in Tokyo and Osaka in Japan as well as New York, Geneva and Myanmar, its website says, and has had United Nations special consultative status since 2012. The Reuters journalists were arrested after they were invited to dine with police officers on the evening of Dec. 12 on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon. They had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown in the western state of Rakhine following attacks by militants. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday he had been informed that the police had almost completed their investigation of the journalists, after which a court case against them would begin. Authorities have been investigating whether the journalists violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. A number of governments, including the United States, Canada and Britain, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, have criticized the arrests as an attack on press freedom and called on Myanmar to release the two men. The detention of journalists reporting on such critical matters to the public interest is an egregious attack on freedom of the press in Myanmar that will severely undermine the ability of journalists to conduct their legitimate work without fear of reprisal, Human Rights Now said in a statement, in which it called for the journalists immediate release and the end to proceedings against them. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU seeks to end Brexit transition no later than end: 2020;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union wants a transition period after Brexit to end no later than Dec. 31, 2020, according to the European Commission s negotiating directives agreed on Wednesday. The transitional arrangements should apply as from the date of entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement and should not last beyond 31 December 2020, the published text showed. Coinciding with the end of the EU s current seven-year budget period, the end of 2020, 21 months after Brexit at the end of March 2019, had long been expected as the target end date of the transition but this was the first official confirmation that this is the official goal of the Union negotiators. British Prime Minister Theresa May had formally asked for a transition to last around two years. The four pages of new directives for EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier were in line with guidelines issued by EU leaders at a summit on Friday and will form the basis of talks on the transition which Barnier hopes to start next month. They spell out that Britain will be effectively still a member of EU institutions, bound by all their rules including new ones, while not having a say in their making. The EU will also offer Britain a non-voting place at some meetings where decisions may affect specific issues and will set up special arrangements for a UK role in setting annual EU fishing quotas. The directives also spell out more clearly that EU treaties with other countries and international organizations will no longer apply to Britain during the transition period. However, the document adds: Where it is in the interest of the Union, the Union may consider whether and how arrangements can be agreed that would maintain the effects of the agreements as regards the United Kingdom during the transition period. This has been important to Britain since it could mean that it no longer benefits automatically from free trade agreements which the EU has with, say, Canada or South Korea, while, as the directives underline, it would still have to apply EU trade policy for example collecting EU customs duty at UK ports. Among elements spelled out more in the transition directives than in the leaders guidelines last week was a repetition of a previously agreed EU position that everything applying to Brexit for Britain would also apply to other British territories. Brussels has previously said the Spanish government must agree any future arrangements with Britain that affect the British territory of Gibraltar on Spain s southern coast. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Too late, Theresa: Brexit offer to EU citizens leaves many cold;LONDON (Reuters) - Back from Brussels with a hard-fought Brexit deal, Prime Minister Theresa May wrote an open letter to the three million citizens of other European Union states living in Britain. I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay, she wrote after striking the initial agreement, which promises to secure their British residency rights after Brexit and allows the negotiations to move onto trade relations. But for some EU nationals - who have endured uncertainty over their rights since the Brexit vote in June 2016, not to mention an unpleasant feeling that many Britons do not want them around - May s Dec. 8 deal is too little, too late. It s too late to keep German nurse Daniela Jones in the chronically short-staffed National Health Service (NHS), where she worked for 35 years. It s too late for French psychotherapist Baya Salmon-Hawk, who after 40 years in Britain has moved to Ireland to remain in the EU. It s too late for French accountant Nathalie Duran, who is planning early retirement in France because after 31 years as a taxpayer in Britain she objects to being told she has to pay a fee and fill in forms to be granted a new settled status . I will have to regretfully decline your generous offer for settled status and oblige your lovely countrymen s wishes and go home, she wrote on Facebook in a response to May laden with irony. Duran told Reuters that the prime minister s late outpouring of love for EU citizens, after years of tough talk on the need to cut immigration, could not mask negative attitudes towards immigrants unleashed by the Brexit vote. I think it s turning ugly, said 56-year-old Duran. It s now OK to say go home foreigners . EU citizens, particularly those from the poorer eastern member states such as Poland and Romania, have complained of increasing hostility from some Britons. They find themselves accused of stealing jobs from Britons and driving down wages, even though unemployment is at a four-decade low, or of overburdening health services as patients, even though many help to provide them by working for the NHS. Official figures show hate crimes in Britain surged by the highest amount on record last year, with the Brexit vote a significant factor. The impact of Brexit on EU citizens in Britain is a serious concern for sectors of the economy that rely heavily on European workers, such as hospitality, construction, agriculture, care for the elderly and the cherished NHS. Britain won t leave the bloc until March 2019, but many EU nationals are already voting with their feet. In the 12 months following the referendum, 123,000 of them left Britain, a 29 percent year-on-year increase. They were still outnumbered by the 230,000 EU citizens who arrived to live in Britain in the same period, although that figure was down 19 percent on the previous year. Not everyone is making plans to go: 28,500 EU citizens applied for British citizenship in the 12 months after the referendum, an 80 percent year-on-year jump. With personal and professional roots often running deep, many more have applied for permanent residence documents. UK citizenship would be an option for nurse Jones, 61, who moved to England from Munich just before her 18th birthday. That was in 1974, the year after Britain joined what is now the EU. Today she has a grown-up British son and a British husband. But as a point of principle she cannot see why she should apply for something she never needed in the past. Despite my enormous love for Britain, I do not feel that I am British, was how she put it in a letter to Ruth Deech, a pro-Brexit member of parliament s House of Lords, sent in February to lobby her on the EU citizens rights issue. In a one-line response to the long, impassioned letter, which made clear Jones had worked for 35 years in the state NHS, Deech said she should have applied for UK citizenship. Jones replied it had never been necessary and explained that she was already a dual German and U.S. national through her German mother and her American father, a serviceman in the U.S. army who was posted to Germany in the 1950s. Deech sent another one-liner: You sought U.S. citizenship - presumably you could have shown the same commitment to this country. Jones was dismayed by that response, which in her eyes lacked understanding and respect. She began to think she needed to look after her own interests better. A few months later, she quit her NHS job at a doctors office in Yateley, a small town southwest of London. She is now re-training as a foot and ear care specialist and plans to work privately. I still like looking after people but I want to do it on my own terms, she told Reuters. It s time to get out. Work for myself, start a little business. Jones wrote to Deech again, saying: I have now freed up a British job for a British worker. This time she got no response. Deech declined an interview request from Reuters, but said in an emailed response to questions that obtaining a British passport might be a good idea for any EU citizen who is (probably needlessly) concerned . French national Baya Salmon-Hawk, 61, initially reacted to the Brexit vote by trying to make sure her residency rights were not under threat. Having lived in England for 40 years, had her son there, owned a home, worked in a variety of jobs and paid taxes, she thought that should be straightforward. But when she made inquiries about a permanent residence permit she had obtained in 1977, she was told this was no longer valid and she would have to re-apply by filling an 85-page form and providing lots of documents, including details of every time she had left the country and returned, stretching back years. Besides, Salmon-Hawk was struggling to adjust to the new reality. Having believed previously that she was integrated into British society, she felt unwelcome for the first time. I just don t understand what s happened to the UK, she said. I became quite easily upset by all this and I didn t want to live like that anymore. She and her 74-year-old wife Audrey Evelyn, who is British, decided to leave. They sold their house in a village north of London, and in July this year they moved to County Kilkenny in Ireland, where Evelyn has family ties. At times, Salmon-Hawk has wondered if they made the right decision. I may have made a foolish mistake. I have woken up in the middle of the night in a state of panic, she said. But she is starting a new venture as a professional story-teller at Hook Lighthouse on the southeast coast of Ireland, telling visitors tales from Irish history. I thought I was done, I was settled, and I m not. I m having a new adventure. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alleged UK plotter who posted photo of Prince George to face trial in April;LONDON (Reuters) - A British man accused of posting a picture of four-year-old Prince George and the address of his London school as part of a series of possible targets for Islamist militants will face trial from April 30, a London court said on Wednesday. Husnain Rashid, 31, is accused of posting information on the Telegram messaging service to encourage jihadis to carry out attacks, along with information to help them with possible targets such as sports venues. He appeared at London s Old Bailey central criminal court charged with preparing acts of terrorism, and was remanded in custody. His four-week trial will take place at Woolwich Crown Court in south London. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish banker makes second bid for mistrial in U.S. sanctions case;NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawyers for an executive at Turkey s majority state-owned Halkbank who is accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions on Wednesday asked a U.S. federal judge to declare a mistrial as jurors were expected to begin deliberating. In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, the lawyers for Mehmet Hakan Atilla said prosecutors had prejudiced the jury by asking their client during cross-examination on Tuesday whether he remembered that a report by a Turkish expert concluded he violated sanctions. Atilla s lawyers immediately objected before Atilla could answer, and U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ordered the question stricken from the record. However, Atilla s lawyers said Wednesday that the damage had been done. They said jurors should not have been allowed to hear about the Turkish report because its author was not in court, depriving Atilla of his right to confront his accuser. They also said the question grossly mischaracterized the report s conclusion. Asking this question in open court had the effect of introducing otherwise inadmissible hearsay and an expert opinion on the ultimate issue for the jury, they said. Berman ordered prosecutors to respond to the motion by 5 p.m. (2200 GMT) Wednesday. Jurors had been expected to begin deliberating Wednesday morning after a three-week trial that has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey. At the center of the trial was explosive testimony from Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty to charges of violating sanctions and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Zarrab testified that Atilla helped design fraudulent transactions of gold and food that allowed Iran to spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, including through U.S. financial institutions, defying U.S. sanctions. Zarrab also implicated Turkish officials in the scheme, including President Tayyip Erdogan. Attempts to reach Erdogan s spokesman for comment on the allegations at the trial have been unsuccessful. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government. Atilla, testifying in his own defense at the trial, denied all the charges against him. Halkbank has denied taking part in any illegal transactions. Atilla s lawyers already asked for a mistrial last week after jurors heard testimony from Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Turkish police officer who said he led an investigation that included Atilla and was forced to flee Turkey to escape retaliation. Berman denied that motion. U.S. prosecutors charged nine people in the criminal case, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, were arrested by U.S. authorities. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man accused of plotting to kill British PM May to face trial in June;LONDON (Reuters) - A man accused of plotting to kill British Prime Minister Theresa May will go on trial next June for five weeks, a London court said on Wednesday. Naa imur Rahman, 20, of north London, is accused of planning to detonate an explosive device at the gates of Downing Street to gain access to May s office and kill her in the ensuing chaos. He appeared at London s Old Bailey central criminal court, charged with preparing to commit acts of terrorism, and was remanded in custody. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Afghanistan political turmoil deepens as regional leader ousted;KABUL (Reuters) - One of the main parties behind Afghanistan s Western-backed government warned President Ashraf Ghani that it could withdraw its support unless he reversed the dismissal of one of its most powerful regional governors this week. The warning from the Jamiat-e Islami party came after Ghani removed Atta Mohammad Noor as governor of Balkh, a strategic northern province bordering Afghanistan s Central Asian neighbors Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Describing the dismissal as a unilateral decision by Ghani, Jamiat s leadership called into question the legitimacy of the unity government formed after a disputed presidential election of 2014. If the presidential palace does not reconsider its one-sided action which is misusing the presence of the international community, Jamiat-e Islami will nullify the national unity government agreement and will employ all options to defend the legitimate rights of the people, the party leadership said in a statement. The man named as Atta Noor s replacement, Mohammad Daoud, also from Jamiat, said he would not take up the position until the situation had been resolved. I want to stay out of it for now, he told Reuters. The standoff adds to an already clouded political climate in Afghanistan, where the United States has announced a stepped-up military effort to break a stalemate with the Taliban and force a settlement to 16 years of conflict. Long-delayed parliamentary elections, officially scheduled for next year, are now in doubt and an array of political leaders both inside and outside the government are positioning themselves ahead of a presidential election in 2019. Ghani s government retains strong international backing but has faced increasing pressure from opposition groups and debilitating tension within its ranks between allies of Ghani and government Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, a senior Jamiat leader. However, Jamiat is itself divided and it remains unclear what approach will be taken by Abdullah, who was Ghani s rival in 2014 before taking the specially created post of chief executive in a U.S.-brokered power-sharing deal. Abdullah, who has regularly clashed with Atta Noor, has made no public comment on his dismissal. The move to oust Atta Noor, one of a group of powerful regional strongmen, followed calls from politicians including former President Hamid Karzai for a loya jirga, or grand assembly of elders and political leaders to discuss the future of the government. This month, Atta Noor was prevented from attending a meeting in the southern city of Khandahar to discuss the loya jirga proposal. As the political uncertainty has deepened, tension between Pashtuns and ethnic Tajiks, Afghanistan s two largest ethnic groups, as well as others including ethnic Uzbeks and the mainly Shi ite Hazara minority, have worsened. Many in Jamiat, a mainly northern, ethnic Tajik party, see Ghani as a Pashtun nationalist bent on concentrating power in his own office while Jamiat s own opponents see the party as a base for old-style warlords who undermine national unity. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam to prosecute another former oil executive over mismanagement;HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam police on Wednesday ordered the prosecution of a former executive at scandal-hit state energy company PetroVietnam over financial losses, the latest move in a high-level corruption crackdown that has seen a politburo member arrested. Phung Dinh Thuc, a former chairman of PetroVietnam, will be prosecuted for alleged violation of state regulations on economic management, causing serious consequences while he was in charge of a PetroVietnam solar power plant project, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement posted online. Thuc is one of two officials that Vietnamese state media had earlier this month reported would be prosecuted. Vietnam s state-run news agency later apologized for issuing what it said was a false report on the prosecution of the two. Thuc was not available for comment. PetroVietnam did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. PetroVietnam is at the center of a high-level corruption crackdown. Former PetroVietnam chairman and also a former member of the communist state s politburo, Dinh La Thang, 56, was the most senior executive arrested in the scandal. Police have said they are investigating alleged violations of state rules at PetroVietnam that resulted in an 800 billion dong ($35 million) loss for local lender Ocean Bank. On Tuesday, the security ministry said Phan Dinh Duc, a member of PetroVietnam s board of directors, would face prosecution over financial losses. The corruption crackdown made global headlines in August when Germany accused Vietnam of kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former chairman of PetroVietnam s construction unit, after he applied for asylum in Berlin. Vietnam has denied kidnapping Thanh and has said he turned himself in. The Communist Party has said Thanh will go on trial in January. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico recognizes Honduran president as winner of disputed election;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico recognized Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez on Tuesday as the winner of last month s election, just days after the Organization of American States called for a fresh vote to dispel widespread allegations of fraud. The statement by Mexico, an important player in Central America, strengthened the position of Hernandez, who declared himself president-elect on Tuesday. It could pave the way for more countries, including the United States, to weigh in the incumbent s favor. Mexico respectfully calls for the democratic institutions, the political forces and the people of Honduras, in a mark of respect and agreement, to definitively conclude this electoral process, the foreign ministry said in a statement. Mexico s announcement was brokered in coordination with the United States, two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The presidents of Guatemala and Colombia had recognized Hernandez, a staunch U.S. ally. The Mexican foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The statement was requested by Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, one of the sources said. Honduras ambassador in Mexico was alerted of the move on Monday. The embassy did not immediately respond to request for comment. It is likely to enrage the center-left opposition, led by TV star Salvador Nasralla, who has accused Hernandez of stealing the election, sparking violent nationwide protests. The General Secretariat of the OAS on Sunday said the election was plagued with irregularities and should be redone to meet democratic standards. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Who killed U.N. experts in Congo? Confidential prosecutor's file offers clues;DAKAR (Reuters) - U.N. investigators Zaida Catalan and Michael Sharp were on familiar ground when they sat down with local leaders in central Congo in March to discuss a widening seven-month-old conflict in the area. The pair experienced members of a panel monitoring the sanctions regime in Democratic Republic of Congo for the U.N. Security Council were meeting members of the Kamuina Nsapu, a local clan, on the sidelines of peace talks with the government in the city of Kananga. Among other things, they discussed plans to visit the village of Bunkonde, the site of violent clashes, the next day. The two U.N. workers left Kananga on the morning of March 12. On March 27, their bodies were found in a shallow grave. Catalan had been decapitated. Congolese government officials maintained for months to reporters that no state agents were involved in the killings and that they did not know that the two experts were in the region, let alone heading to Bunkonde. But at least one person who helped organize the trip, Jose Tshibuabua, worked for Congo s intelligence service, the Agence Nationale de Renseignements (ANR), Reuters and Radio France Internationale (RFI) have learned. The trial of a dozen suspected Kamuina Nsapu militia members started in June but was suspended in October pending the arrival in Congo of four U.N. experts last month to assist with additional investigations. Phone logs in a confidential prosecutor s case file compiled for the trial and seen by Reuters and RFI, who jointly reported this story, show that Tshibuabua had frequent contact with a local ANR boss, Luc Albert Tanga Sakrine, before and after the two experts were killed. Two security sources said that case file was given to a U.N. board of inquiry that concluded militiamen were likely responsible for the killings of Sharp, 34, an American, and Catalan, 36, a Swede. Tshibuabua and his ties to the ANR were not mentioned in the board s confidential report to the U.N. Security Council or in the trial, however. The board said it was unable to establish a motive for state actors to have been involved. But the two experts were conducting investigations in an area where the United Nations has accused Congo s military of using excessive force against militia and civilians and of digging mass graves. The top ANR official in Congo, Kalev Mutond, told Reuters and RFI that Tshibuabua was working as a volunteer informant for the agency at the time of the meeting, but did not inform ANR officials about his contacts with the two experts. Since the trial of the militiamen was suspended, Tshibuabua was arrested and charged last week with the murder of Catalan and Sharp and participation in an insurrection, his lawyer, Tresor Kabangu, told Reuters. Kabangu said his client denies the charges and has not worked for the ANR in more than a year. Government spokesman Lambert Mende now says that authorities have not excluded the possibility that state agents were involved. If there is a state agent who was involved, he will be pursued and judged, Mende said on Dec. 1 after Reuters and RFI laid out the contents of the case file and phone logs. The U.N. board s chairman, Greg Starr, declined to say if he had seen the prosecutor s file or was aware of its contents. In an emailed answer to questions, Starr said only that the board s report had a tight deadline and did not include some sensitive information, which was turned over to authorities in the United States and Sweden, because of concerns about leaks. A thorough criminal investigation into a heinous act like this, under these circumstances, could not be accomplished in only three months, he said. Congo s top military prosecutor, Joseph Ponde, declined to respond to questions about why Tshibuabua s involvement was not raised in the trial, except to say the proceedings are public. Tanga Sakrine declined to comment. President Joseph Kabila s deputy chief of staff, Jean-Pierre Kambila, also declined to comment, citing the ongoing trial. Ties between the United Nations and Congo can be tense, with authorities often accusing the world body of meddling in their sovereign affairs. The U.N. peacekeeping mission, deployed in 1999 to monitor a cease-fire in a long-running war in the east, is the world s largest with about 18,000 uniformed personnel. Catalan and Sharp were investigating a new conflict in the central Kasai region. In August 2016, Kamuina Nsapu militiamen in the area rose up to demand government forces withdraw after the local chief, Jean-Pierre Mpandi, was killed. Up to 5,000 people died in the violence. On the weekend of March 11, a delegation of about 40 Kamuina Nsapu representatives was in Kananga to talk peace. Members of this delegation met Sharp and Catalan at the Woodland Hotel. In audio recovered from Catalan s computer by the United Nations, Tshibuabua describes himself as a Mpandi family member and helps translate from the local Tshiluba language into French for the group s leader, Francois Muamba. He does not say he works for the ANR. According to a Reuters translation, Tshibuabua and another person assured Sharp and Catalan in French that their safety would be guaranteed in Bunkonde, even as Muamba warned not to make promises they couldn t keep. We don t know the situation over there, Muamba said at one point. He said he did not have control of the local militia in Bunkonde. Let s talk about (the situation) near us. Tshibuabua continued to assure the U.N. investigators that the militiamen will not do anything , adding later: Here in Kasai, we really guarantee your passage. Reuters was unable to reach Muamba for comment. The prosecutor s case file includes logs from about 20 phone numbers over various periods from early March to mid-June. One is from the phone of Tshibuabua and another is from the phone of his cousin Betu Tshintela, who accompanied Catalan and Sharp to Bunkonde as an interpreter. Tshintela claimed in a 2012 job application to the government of Kasai-Occidental province - seen by Reuters and RFI - to have also worked for the ANR. The government says Tshintela is dead but the United Nations cannot confirm that. Mutond, the top ANR official, could not confirm if Tshintela had worked for the ANR but said he was looking into it. The phone logs show Tshibuabua was repeatedly in contact with Tanga Sakrine, the provincial ANR chief, around this time. Between March 10 and 12, the two exchanged at least 17 text messages, including five in the afternoon of March 11, shortly after the meeting at the Woodland Hotel, and five around 9 p.m. on March 12, hours after Sharp and Catalan were killed. Mutond said he asked Tshibuabua three times in an interrogation in the capital Kinshasa whether he informed ANR officials about his contacts with the investigators, and Tshibuabua said no each time. Reuters and RFI could not independently confirm this. I looked Jose Tshibuabua in the eyes and asked him because I myself wanted to have a clean conscience, Mutond said. Sharp spent three years working in eastern Congo for a Mennonite peace-building organization, trying to persuade rebels to lay down their weapons, before joining the sanctions panel in 2015 as its armed groups expert. Catalan, the panel s humanitarian expert, worked for the European Union s police mission in Congo in 2011-12 and also held posts with the EU in Palestine and Afghanistan. The phone logs show the last call from Catalan s phone was to her sister, Elizabeth Morseby, in Sweden at 4:49 p.m. Morseby told Reuters and RFI she could hear only some male voices in the background and Catalan breathing deeply before the call disconnected. No-one answered when she called back. Some relatives and rights activists told Reuters and RFI they raised concerns early about possible government involvement because state forces were heavily implicated in rights abuses in Kasai that attracted international attention in the past. The families and Washington want the United Nations to launch an independent investigation. A former colleague on the U.N. panel also cast doubt on a video that the government said showed the two being executed by Kamuina Nsapu members. He said the video raised more questions than it answered, for example, why at least one of the alleged assassins gave orders in Lingala, the language of western Congo and the army, rather than the local Tshiluba. Mende, the government spokesman, countered that many Congolese speak at least some Lingala. The U.N. board noted theories of alternate causes of the incident but cited a lack of motive for government to be involved. It also said Sharp and Catalan failed to heed warnings from U.N. security officials that travel outside Kananga was dangerous. The FBI has opened an investigation, according to Sharp s parents, who have met with bureau investigators. The FBI declined to comment. The Swedish prosecutor s office is investigating Catalan s killing but complained in a statement last month that Congolese officials are not cooperating. Mende said it was up to Swedish authorities to provide information to the Congolese court hearing the case, not the other way around. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Explainer - Damian Green, UK PM's May deputy, resigns over pornography scandal;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign on Wednesday after an internal investigation found he had made misleading comments about pornography on computers in his parliamentary office. Below are details about Green, the investigation into his behavior and May s decision to demand his resignation. An ally and a friend from their days at the University of Oxford, Green was appointed first secretary of state, May s de-facto deputy, in the wake of her snap June election which stripped her party of its parliamentary majority. In the tumultuous weeks after the June vote, Green helped to stabilize May s premiership and appease some of those within the Conservative Party who wanted her to quit. His departure is a blow for the government as May navigates the final year of tortuous Brexit negotiations before Britain s exit from the European Union in March 2019. He is also the third minister to quit in recent weeks following the departure of the defense minister and the aid minister. The departure of Green, who like May voted in the 2016 referendum to stay in the EU, also removes one of her most senior advocates of a softer Brexit. The resignation comes a day after May started the delicate process of agreeing a common negotiating position among her cabinet for the long-term relationship Britain wants to have with the EU after Brexit. On Nov. 1 Kate Maltby, an academic, critic and family friend wrote an article in the Times newspaper alleging that Green had made an inappropriate sexual advance toward her in 2015. He offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested, said Maltby, who is three decades younger than Green. He steered the conversation to the habitual nature of sexual affairs in parliament... He mentioned that his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee. Green denied the allegations as absolutely and completely untrue . May asked the Cabinet Office, responsible for the administrative functions of the government, to investigate. Five days later the Sunday Times reported that the police had found pornography on a computer in Green s office during a 2008 investigation into government leaks. Green said in a statement that the story was completely untrue . More importantly, the police have never suggested to me that improper material was found on my parliamentary computer, he added. In a second statement on Nov. 11 he again said no allegations about the presence of improper material on his parliamentary computers had ever been put to him. On Wednesday, May s office published a summary of its investigation into Green. It found that Green s conduct as a minister was generally professional and proper and that it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of his behavior with Maltby. It said however that the investigation found Maltby s account of the events to be plausible. On the issue of pornography, it found the two statements made by Green on 4 and 11 November to be inaccurate and misleading. The Metropolitan Police Service had previously informed him of the existence of this material, it said. These statements therefore fall short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life and constitute breaches of the Ministerial Code. Mr Green accepts this. On Wednesday, May asked for his resignation. While I can understand the considerable distress caused to you by some of the allegations which have been made in recent weeks, I know that you share my commitment to maintaining the high standards which the public demands of Ministers of the Crown, May wrote to Green in a letter. It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the government and have accepted your resignation. Green apologized for breaking the ministerial code. He said that he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers but accepted that he should have been more clear in his November statements about what the police had told him. He said he did not recognize the description Maltby gave of their 2015 meeting but said he had clearly made her feel uncomfortable and apologized. He added that he deeply regretted the distress caused to Maltby after she wrote the article. I regret that I ve been asked to resign from the government following breaches of the ministerial code, for which I apologise, he said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's new ANC leader Ramaphosa aims to fight corruption;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Cyril Ramaphosa, the new leader of South Africa s governing ANC party, said on Thursday he aims to stamp out corruption and pursue a policy of radical economic transformation that will speed up expropriation of land without compensation. Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old union leader who became a businessman and is now one of South Africa s richest people, is likely to become the country s next president after elections in 2019, because of his party s electoral dominance. His promise to fight rampant corruption and revitalize the economy has been hailed by foreign investors. This conference has resolved that corruption must be fought with the same intensity and purpose that we fight poverty, unemployment and inequality, Ramaphosa said in his maiden speech at the close of a five-day party meeting where he was elected. We must also act fearlessly against alleged corruption and abuse of office within our ranks, he said in the early hours of Thursday after a long delay. Ramaphosa, who is South Africa s deputy president, was elected the new leader of the African National Congress (ANC) on Monday, succeeding President Jacob Zuma as party head after Zuma s presidency became tainted with corruption allegations. Ramaphosa s narrow victory over former cabinet minister and African Union Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 68, is seen as a pivotal moment for the ANC, which launched black-majority rule under Nelson Mandela s leadership 23 years ago but is now deeply divided with its image tarnished. Ramaphosa paid tribute to Zuma in his speech, saying the ANC would be united despite a fractious campaign. Zuma had backed his ex-wife Dlamini-Zuma for ANC s top job. However, investors are concerned that Ramaphosa may not be able to push through policy changes because the ANC s top decision-making group, known as the Top Six , was split down the middle, with three politicians apiece drawn from Ramaphosa s camp and that of Dlamini-Zuma. Analysts warned that the division of the party presidency, held by Ramaphosa, and the state presidency in Zuma s hands, could lead to policy uncertainty or paralysis. Mr. Zuma, for instance, still occupies South Africa s presidency a cohabitation that may cause a period of policy uncertainty, Capital Economics Africa economist John Ashbourne said in a note. Expectations that Ramaphosa would win the ANC race had pushed the rand to 12.5200 per dollar on Monday, its firmest since March 27, when a cabinet reshuffle by Zuma rocked markets and triggered credit ratings downgrades to junk. The rand weakened on Tuesday, but firmed on Wednesday as investors continued to digest how much clout Ramaphosa wields. Victory for Ramaphosa, but not a loss for Zuma, said Geoff Blount, managing director at BayHill Capital. Zuma has faced allegations of corruption since he became head of state in 2009, but has denied any wrongdoing. The president has also faced allegations that his friends the wealthy Gupta businessmen wielded undue influence over his government. Zuma and the Guptas have denied the accusations. Ramaphosa alluded to these allegations in his speech, saying, At the state level we must confront the reality that critical institutions of our state have been targeted by individuals and families, through the exercise of influence and the manipulation of governance processes and public resources. He said this had weakened the state-owned enterprises in Africa s most industrialized economy. South Africa, the continent s traditional powerhouse, has had lethargic growth over the last six years and the jobless rate stands near record levels. Ramaphosa also had a warning for corporate executives. We must investigate without fear or favor the so-called accounting irregularities that cause turmoil in the markets and wipe billions off the investments of ordinary South Africans, he said. South African furniture retailer Steinhoff, has been embroiled in a scandal over accounting irregularities, which have wiped more than $10 billion off its market value over the past two weeks. Ramaphosa also said he would aim to expedite job creation, improve the lackluster economy and speed up the transfer of land to black people. Two decades after the end of apartheid, the ANC is under pressure to redress racial disparities in land ownership where whites own most of the land. This conference has resolved that the expropriation of land without compensation should be among the mechanisms available to government to give effect to land reform and redistribution, Ramaphosa said. He said the land transfers would be speeded up under the radical economic transformation program, a vague ANC plan to tackle racial inequality. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Earthquake of magnitude 5.2 strikes near Iran's capital;LONDON (Reuters) - An earthquake of magnitude 5.2 struck a town near the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday night, state media reported, but there were no initial reports of casualties or significant damage. Last month, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit villages and towns in Iran s western Kermanshah province along the mountainous border with Iraq, killing 620 people and injuring thousands of others. Authorities said they were gathering information about the latest quake, which hit in the late evening at a depth of 7 km (4 miles). They asked residents to remain calm but be prepared for possible aftershocks. The epicenter of the quake was 3 km from the city of Malard, and not far from Meshkin Dasht, which sits about 50 km west of Tehran, state news agency IRNA said. The quake was also felt in Alborz, Qazvin, Qom, Gilan and Markazi provinces, according to state media. There have been no reports of casualties or damage, Behnam Saeedi, a spokesman for Iran s National Disaster Management Organization, was quoted as saying by the semi-official ILNA news agency. In Tehran and other cities, residents flooded into streets and parks, fearing a stronger aftershock. Some set up tents to spend the night outside, and lit fires. Tasnim news agency quoted Minister of Sports Masoud Soltanifar as saying sport centers in city of Karaj in Alborz province, and Eslamshahr in southern Tehran were open to the public to spend the night. Some people also took refuge at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic in southern Tehran. Minister of Energy Reza Ardakanian was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying that Amirkabir Dam, one hour west of Tehran, remained intact and supply of water and electricity was not disrupted in any way. Schools, universities and government offices will be closed in Tehran, Alborz and Qom provinces on Thursday, according to the state television. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: China's border city with North Korea eases tourism curbs - sources;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese tourists are still visiting Pyongyang from China s border city of Dandong, tourism sources say, even after authorities unofficially halted the tours just ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump s visit to China last month. A group of 40 Chinese tourists left on Friday from the border city of Dandong to Pyongyang, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters, a sign local authorities have not been strongly enforcing curbs on tourist flows. This is the largest group to go in from Dandong since the curb, a tour operator said, adding the tourists traveled by train into North Korea for a four-day tour. The Dandong Tourism Bureau declined to be interviewed for this story. When asked for comment, China s foreign ministry said they did not understand the situation. Local businesses in China are known to find ways around policies introduced by local authorities or Beijing, whether in good times or bad. There s always a way around government policies, said one Dandong-based tourism source. You know how Chinese people are. I think the central government will be very annoyed at Dandong for lifting the travel restriction, the tour operator said. MONEY-MAKER FOR NORTH Tourism to North Korea is not banned by the United Nations and is one of the few remaining ways that North Korea earns hard currency. The Korea Maritime Institute, a South Korean think-tank, estimates that tourism generates about $44 million in annual revenue for North Korea. The U.N. has ramped up sanctions over North Korea s accelerating missile program over the past year, curbing key export industries including coal, seafood and textiles. Simon Cockerell, head of Beijing-based Koryo Tours which organizes travel to North Korea, said he saw 3 to 4 busloads of Chinese tourists in Pyongyang in mid-November. But I m not sure where they entered from or what visas they were on, he said. If you have a visa to North Korea, it doesn t say where you can and can t go. So once you enter into Sinuiju or Rason, you could travel onwards to Pyongyang. The North Koreans wouldn t care, Cockerell said. Sinuiju and Rason are popular entry points for Chinese tourists traveling overland into North Korea. China never publicly announced a ban on Chinese tourists visiting Pyongyang and strongly opposes unilateral sanctions, which it says undermines U.N. unity. But the day before U.S President Donald Trump s first official visit to China in early November, Reuters exclusively reported that the Dandong Tourism Bureau had told Chinese tour operators based in Dandong to halt trips to North Korea s capital of Pyongyang. Trump has frequently praised Chinese President Xi Jinping Trump with whom he has been working to exert pressure on North Korea through strict enforcement of sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Dandong, a city of 800,000 people in northeastern Liaoning province, is the main trading hub on the Chinese side of the border and most tour companies that take Chinese tourists to North Korea are based there. The U.N. sanctions have particularly hit Dandong s economy this year. Almost all tours to North Korea have stopped and many Dandong-based companies who traditionally conducted business with North Korea are struggling, sources told Reuters. A lot of the more successful Chinese businessmen have gone on holidays because there s nothing for them to do around here at the moment, said one Chinese businessman in Dandong. China s trade with North Korea has already fallen to its lowest in months. Beijing has repeatedly said it is rigorously enforcing U.N. resolutions aimed at reining in Pyongyang s missile and nuclear programs. North Korea has accelerated the pace of its missile tests this year. Pyongyang said its latest test on Nov. 28 was an intercontinental ballistic missile that it said could deliver heavy nuclear warheads anywhere in the continental United States. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU Commission may launch moves to punish Poland over legal reforms;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union s executive may trigger a process on Wednesday to begin to strip Poland of its voting rights in the bloc, officials say, as months of tensions between Brussels and Warsaw come to a head. In what would be an unprecedented move, the European Commission could invoke Article 7 of the European Union s founding Lisbon Treaty to punish Warsaw for breaking its rules on human rights and democratic values. Unless the Polish government postpones these court reforms, we will have no choice but to trigger Article 7, said a senior EU official before a Commission meeting on Wednesday, where Poland s reforms are on the agenda. Poland s new prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Brussels last week that the decision has already been made . The Commission s deputy head Frans Timmermans warned in July that Poland was perilously close to facing sanctions. Such a punishment could still be blocked. Hungary, Poland s closest ally in the EU, is likely to argue strongly against it. But the mere threat of it underlines the sharp deterioration in ties between Warsaw and Brussels since the socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS) won power in late 2015. The Commission says Poland s judicial reforms limit judges independence. Polish President Andrzej Duda has until Jan. 5 to sign them into law. If all EU governments agree, Poland could have its voting rights in the EU suspended, and may also see cuts in billions of euros of EU aid. The PiS government rejects accusations of undemocratic behavior and says its reforms are needed because courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist era-mentality. Following a non-binding European Parliament vote last month calling for Article 7 to be invoked, the Commission appears to have little leeway to grant Warsaw more time to amend its legislation. The reforms would give the PiS-controlled parliament de facto control over the selection of judges and end the terms of some Supreme Court judges early. The Council of Europe, the continent s human rights watchdog, has compared such measures to those of the Soviet system. The Commission fears letting Poland off the hook could weaken its hand, especially in the ex-communist east, and risk damaging the EU s single market and cross-border legal cooperation. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar bars U.N. rights investigator before visit;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. independent investigator into human rights in Myanmar called on Wednesday for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar s military commanders after being barred from visiting the country for the rest of her tenure. Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur, had been due to visit in January to assess human rights across Myanmar, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. But Myanmar had told her she was no longer welcome, she said, adding in a statement that this suggested something terribly awful was happening in the country. From what I see right now I m not sure if they are feeling pressured. I m not sure if there is the right kind of pressure placed on the military commanders and the generals, she later told Reuters by telephone from Seoul. She said it was alarming that Myanmar was strongly supported by China, which has a veto at the U.N. s top table in New York. Other countries including the United States and human groups were advocating targeted sanctions on the military, she said. It has to work. And I m sure the world has to find a way to make it work. And I think the United Nations and its member states should really try to persuade China to really act towards the protection of human rights, she said. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week. More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping response by the army and Buddhist vigilantes. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the situation in Rakhine State was an internal affair for Myanmar with its own complex history. Myanmar and Bangladesh resolving this issue was the only way to go, she told reporters. The international community should provide constructive help for Myanmar and Bangladesh to resolve the issue rather than complicating it, Hua added. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan Sate in northern Myanmar, where the military is battling autonomy-seeking ethic minority guerrillas. Lee, in an earlier statement, said Myanmar s refusal to cooperate with her was a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening throughout the country, although the government had repeatedly denied any violations of human rights. They have said that they have nothing to hide, but their lack of cooperation with my mandate and the fact-finding mission suggests otherwise, she said. She was puzzled and disappointed , since Myanmar s ambassador in Geneva, Htin Lynn, had told the U.N. Human Rights Council only two weeks ago that it would cooperate. Now I am being told that this decision to no longer cooperate with me is based on the statement I made after I visited the country in July, she said. Htin Lynn did not respond to a request for comment. Neither Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, nor Kyaw Moe Tun, a spokesman for the ministry of foreign affairs that Suu Kyi heads, were immediately available. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain's Brexit rebels offer compromise on latest EU exit laws row;LONDON (Reuters) - British MPs who inflicted defeat on Prime Minister Theresa May last week in parliament over Brexit have signalled a possible compromise to avoid another row on Wednesday when legislation taking Britain out of the EU is debated. The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which will repeal the 1972 legislation binding Britain to the EU and copy existing EU law into domestic law, has tested May s authority to deliver on her Brexit plan during several days of line-by-line debate. Last week, 11 lawmakers from her Conservative Party rebelled against their leader, joining forces with the opposition to force through changes giving parliament greater guarantees of a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal. However, another row - this time over the government s desire to fix the planned date of Britain s departure into law - could be averted on Wednesday after rebels said they were prepared to agree to it if another proviso were inserted in the bill allowing that date to be changed if necessary. Pro-EU Conservative Nicky Morgan, who voted against the government last week, said on Twitter she would back the plan when it comes to a vote. Some of the other rebels also publicly indicated their support. Last week s defeat underscored just one of the serious difficulties May faces in taking the country out of the EU. As well as navigating a divided parliament without an overall majority, she has to please ministers who are deeply split over the country s long term relationship with Brussels and negotiate a deal from an EU which is keen to send a discouraging message to other potentially wayward states. The initial move to define March 29 2019 in law as exit day was designed to ease pressure on the government from Brexiteers who fear slow negotiations and opposition to the divorce could cause delays. The government has not confirmed it will accept the compromise plan - which represents a watering-down of its original intention - but has said it will consider its response and remains open to changes that will improve the legislation. However, ministers have limited room to manoeuvre with over 40 Conservative lawmakers signed up to the proposal - more than enough to defeat May if opposition parties also back it. It would be foolhardy to make assumptions either about the votes of colleagues or about the decisions of government. But I am cautiously optimistic that the government will accept my amendments and that they will carry, said Oliver Letwin, the former minister responsible for brokering the compromise. Wednesday s debate is the last in the current stage of the legislating process but the bill will receive further scrutiny in both chambers of parliament over the coming months before it is finally approved. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru president, crying 'coup,' signals VPs would quit if he ousted;LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Wednesday signaled both his vice presidents would resign if Congress forced him from office, calling an opposition bid to remove him a coup attempt that had to be resisted. The rightwing populist party that controls Congress, Popular Force, aims to oust Kuczynski in a vote on Thursday on grounds he is morally unfit to govern, after finding he once had business connections with a company at the center of Latin America s biggest graft scandal. Kuczynski, who denies anything improper or illegal, said Popular Force was misusing its majority to attempt a power grab. The constitution and democracy are under attack. We re facing a coup dressed in supposedly legitimate legal interpretations, he said in a late night speech on national television. This is a conviction that my two vice presidents share, because neither wants to be part of a government born of an unjust and anti-democratic maneuver, Kuczynski said. He was flanked by First Vice President Martin Vizcarra and Second Vice President Mercedes Araoz. If Kuczynski loses Thursday s congressional vote to remove him and his two vice presidents depart as well, new presidential and legislative elections would be called. A 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, Kuczynski has struggled to govern since winning last year s presidential election but only a small share of congressional seats for his center-right party. Popular Force says its efforts to remove him are well within the bounds of the constitution and key to its fight against corruption. He simply doesn t care about the country, Popular Force lawmaker Luz Salgado said after Kuczynski s address. Earlier this week, Salgado called for Vizcarra to govern the country through 2021, when Kucyznski s term ends. Vizcarra and Araoz both pledged their loyalty to the center-right president on Wednesday but declined to comment on whether that meant they would resign if he was removed from office. Araoz told Reuters on Sunday that she and Vizcarra would not quit. In recent days, Kuczynski s supporters have increasingly called for his vice presidents to refuse to replace him. They believe new elections would cost Popular Force its majority amid widespread contempt for elected officials as a graft scandal taints much of the country s political class. But investors worry a new ballot could sweep anti-establishment candidates to power in one of Latin America s most stable economies. Kuczynski s government does not think it will come to that, said a government source. It expects about a dozen opposition lawmakers to oppose the motion or abstain from voting, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Eighty-seven votes are needed to oust Kuczynski. Congress passed the motion to start presidential vacancy proceedings last week with 93 votes. On Wednesday, thousands of Peruvians marched in front of Congress to denounce what they saw as Popular Force s bid to exploit the crisis to sabotage country s democratic institutions, pointing to its recent efforts to also oust the attorney general and a justice in the Constitutional Court. Popular Force emerged from the rightwing populist movement started in the 1990s by former President Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year-sentence for graft and human rights crimes during his autocratic 1990-2000 government. The United States, where Kuczynski once held citizenship, said Peru was a strong democracy. We are confident that the Peruvian people and institutions will address this situation according to Peru s constitutional norms, the U.S. State Department s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said. The political crisis stems from a disclosure by Brazilian builder Odebrecht [ODBES.UL], which has landed elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic since acknowledging bribing officials across the region for much of the century. Responding to a request by Congress, Odebrecht said it paid more than $4 million to consulting companies owned by Kuczynski or a close business associate for about a decade starting in 2004. Some deposits were made to a company Kuczynski owned while he was minister in a government that awarded Odebrecht lucrative contracts. Odebrecht said Saturday that there was no indication the transactions were part of its past corrupt dealings with politicians, which it can only discuss with prosecutors. Kuczynski once strenuously denied ever having any ties with Odebrecht. He has since apologized to Peru for not disclosing his connections with the company, blaming forgetfulness and poor organization of his personal records after decades of work in finance and public administration. But he said there was nothing improper about the payments. Being careless and sloppy is a defect but it is not...a tool for dishonesty and much, much less, for crime, Kuczynski said. Kuczynski had once raised hopes that his decades of finance and public administration experience would usher in a new period of investments to spur faster economic growth in the world s No.2 copper producer. But in a sign of how the crisis has engulfed his government, Peru postponed an auction of a $2 billion copper project, scheduled for Wednesday, until February. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fighting in eastern Ukraine worst since February: OSCE;KIEV/NOVOLUHANSKE, Ukraine (Reuters) - Fighting in eastern Ukraine has escalated to the worst level in months, officials monitoring the conflict said on Tuesday, after the shelling of a frontline village wounded eight civilians and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes. A Russia-backed insurgency erupted in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a ceasefire deal that was meant to end a conflict in which more than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitors the implementation of the peace agreement, said it had recorded 16,000 ceasefire violations between Dec. 11 and Dec. 17, a 35 percent increase on the week before. We note with concern a sharp deterioration in the security situation with ceasefire violations reaching levels not recorded since February this year, chief monitor Ertugrul Apakan said in a statement. In February, a surge of violence around the government-held industrial town of Avdiivka cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line. Apakan said the latest escalation reflected an established trend in which a recommitment to the ceasefire by the sides was followed by a steady increase in the level of violence, culminating in fierce fighting . Apakan s comments followed warnings from aid agencies over the humanitarian situation in the eastern Donbass region, particularly given Monday s attack on the government-controlled village of Novoluhanske. The United Nations OCHA humanitarian arm said on Twitter heavy shelling near Novoluhanske was affecting 2,000 residents. People are fleeing the area in blizzard conditions, it said. Eight civilians were wounded and more than 50 buildings were damaged in the shelling, which also temporarily cut power supplies, the regional Kiev-controlled Donetsk administration said. A Reuters witness saw residents picking their way through the rubble of destroyed homes and surveying fire-blackened buildings. The U.S. State Department said the humanitarian situation was dire because of the shelling, which it blamed on Russian-led forces firing Grad multiple-launch rockets. The Ukrainian military on Tuesday accused pro-Russian separatists of deliberately firing more than 40 times from multiple-launch rocket systems at Novoluhanske. Meanwhile, the rebel command said attacks from the Ukrainian side had almost doubled in the past 24 hours, according to separatist news website DAN. Rebels deny attacking Novoluhanske and say the Ukrainian military fired at the village to justify their attacks on separatist-held civilian areas, according to DAN. The U.S. State Department also voiced concern about fighting around the Donetsk water filtration station, which has a system of pipes that carry chlorine gas. If those were to go off in this area, which is close to where people live, it could be potentially devastating, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a briefing. She said civilian water workers were trapped in the station s bomb shelter and could not get out because of fighting. In an effort to end the deadlock, the international community, including the United States, has in recent months been advocating for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers in the Donbass. Both Kiev and Moscow backed the idea but disagree on whether the troops should be positioned on the rebel-controlled part of the Ukraine-Russia border, so no decision was made. Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO that it supports the rebels with troops and weapons. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico to recognize Honduran president winner of disputed election: sources;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico is poised to recognize Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez as the winner of last month s election, according to a draft foreign ministry statement seen by Reuters, just days after the Organization of American States called for a fresh vote to dispel widespread allegations of fraud. Mexico s announcement was brokered in coordination with the United States, two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The presidents of Guatemala and Colombia had recognized Hernandez, a staunch U.S. ally. A statement by Mexico, an important player in Central America, would strengthen the position of Hernandez, who declared himself president-elect on Tuesday. It could pave the way for more countries, including the United States, to weigh in the incumbent s favor. The government of Mexico congratulates Juan Orlando Hernandez for his victory in the general elections, Mexico s foreign ministry wrote in a draft of the statement seen by Reuters. The Mexican foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The statement was requested by Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray and awaits final approval, one of the sources said. Honduras ambassador in Mexico was alerted of the move on Monday. The embassy did not immediately respond to request for comment. It is likely to enrage the center-left opposition, led by TV star Salvador Nasralla, who has accused Hernandez of stealing the election, sparking violent nationwide protests. The General Secretariat of the OAS on Sunday said the election was plagued with irregularities and should be redone to meet democratic standards. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela's Maduro says 'terrorists' stole weapons from military unit;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan leftist President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday that terrorists had broken into a National Guard unit over the weekend and stolen weapons, the latest sign of volatility in the oil-rich country convulsed by a profound economic crisis. Oscar Perez, a rogue Venezuelan police pilot wanted for lobbing grenades and shooting at government buildings in June, claimed responsibility for the attack, which he called Operation Genesis. A video posted on Perez s YouTube account shows armed, masked men taking control of military barracks under cover of night. They smash photos of Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, handcuff around a dozen soldiers and berate them for supporting dictatorship in Venezuela. You yourselves are dying of hunger. Why have you not done anything, given you have weapons? Why do you keep protecting these drug-trafficking dictators? the assailants shout at gagged soldiers crouching on the floor of what appears to be a bathroom. Soon we ll win the war ... so that Venezuela can be free, says Perez, under the cover of a black balaclava. His Twitter account later posted a purported summary by authorities of the attack. The summary says some 49 armed men stole around 26 Kalashnikov AK-103 s and over 3,000 munitions for the rifles, as well as pistols, in Miranda state near Caracas during the early hours of Monday. Reuters was not able to independently confirm details of the attack. The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. An action film star who portrays himself as a James Bond cum-Rambo figure on social media, Perez has added surreal twists to Venezuela s long-running political drama. He rose to fame in June after hijacking a police helicopter flying over Caracas center. He fired shots at and lobbed grenades on the Interior Ministry and the Supreme Court to fight what he said was a tyrannical government. He went into hiding after the attack, only to pop up two weeks later at an opposition vigil for anti-government protesters killed during demonstrations that rocked the country earlier this year. Perez s latest offensive highlights instability in Venezuela, an OPEC member state heaving under malnutrition, disease and the world s steepest inflation rate. The opposition has long appealed to the military, historically a powerbroker in Venezuela, for help. Maduro on Tuesday denounced the attackers, whom he did not name, as terrorists sent by his ideological enemy the United States. Wherever they appear, I ve told the armed forces: Fire at the terrorist groups! he said during a speech on state television, as he blamed opposition groups in Miami for orchestrating the raid. Do these people think they can attack a unit of the armed forces to steal some guns and threaten democracy and that that s going to be tolerated? Zero tolerance! Maduro said. The military has played a key role in government since Chavez - himself a former military officer - took office in 1999 promising to bring greater equality to Venezuela, home to the world s largest oil reserves. The top brass continues to publicly profess loyalty to Maduro s government. Critics say juicy government contracts, corruption and contraband mean that many military officials want Maduro to stay in office and fear persecution should the opposition take power. Discontent is higher among lower-tier officials, who are often sent to control rowdy protests and are paid the equivalent of just a handful of U.S. dollars a month. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea says delay in joint U.S. drills depends on halt to North Korea provocations;(Reuters) - Any delay in South Korea-U.S. military drills would depend on whether North Korea carries out provocations during the 2018 Winter Olympics, an official at Seoul s presidential Blue House said on Wednesday. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Tuesday he was willing to try to ease tensions ahead of next year s Winter Olympics in South Korea by curtailing joint military exercises with the United States. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. gives China draft proposal for tougher North Korea sanctions - sources;UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has given China a draft resolution for tougher U.N. sanctions on North Korea and is hoping for a quick vote on it by the U.N. Security Council, a Western diplomat said on Tuesday. A senior official of the Trump administration confirmed efforts were under way to negotiate a new U.N. resolution, but added that there had been no agreement. We re trying to get another one, said the official, who did not want to be identified. They re not there yet. Details of the draft given to China last week were not immediately available, but the United States is keen to step up global sanctions to pressure North Korea to give up a weapons program aimed developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. Among the steps it wants is a tightening of restrictions on North Korea s supply of refined petroleum, which is capped by previous U.N. sanctions at 2 million barrels a year. China, which supplies most of North Korea s oil, has backed successive rounds of U.N. sanctions but has resisted past U.S. calls to cut off supplies to its neighbor. Its embassy in Washington and Foreign Ministry in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States has also called on the U.N. Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea, documents seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed. The documents said vessels had been conducting ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels or transporting North Korean coal in violation of existing U.N. sanctions. Earlier on Tuesday, China responded to the announcement of a new U.S. national security strategy this week that branded Beijing a competitor seeking to challenge U.S. power by saying that cooperation between it and Washington would lead to a win-win outcome for both sides, but confrontation would bring mutual losses. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron firms up bounce in opinion polls;PARIS (Reuters) - French president Emmanuel Macron s popularity jumped back above 50 percent thanks in part to better ratings among the young and the working class, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday, confirming a rebound that started at the beginning of December. Macron s popularity dropped quickly after he swept to an electoral victory in May on a centrist platform, shattering a long-standing two-party system in France. But while the former investment banker has struggled to shake off a president of the rich tag pinned on him by rivals for policies such as cuts in housing benefits, Macron s efforts to defend French interests abroad have helped lift his ratings. His popularity rose above 50 percent for the first time since his election in early December, and a new poll on Wednesday, taken on Monday and Tuesday, showed the president scoring a 52 percent approval rating. That was a six-percentage-point jump from November, according to the BVA poll, carried out for Orange and La Tribune and released on the eve of Macron s 40th birthday. As well as praising Macron s international efforts, those surveyed also highlighted that he was delivering on campaign promises, BVA said, even though some policies like a labor reform that gives employers greater freedom to hire and fire staff were deeply unpopular with many of his detractors. The president is most popular with older voters and higher earners, but made the biggest progress in the latest poll with the young, BVA added. Other surveys this week also confirmed Macron was making headway, although a ViaVoice poll for Liberation published on Tuesday put his popularity rating lower, at 46 percent. That was also a six-percentage-point improvement on the previous month. An Odoxa survey gave Macron a 54 percent approval rating. Macron s turnaround in polls comes as political rivals are scrambling to regroup and form a stronger opposition, at a time when both the left and right are deeply fragmented. The president s office recently played down attacks from some opponents over Macron s planned birthday celebrations with his family in the grounds of a former royal palace, which drew jibes about him being out of touch. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May forces her deputy to resign over pornography scandal;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign for lying about whether he knew pornography had been found on computers in his parliamentary office. The resignation of one of May s closest political allies, who had helped pacify her deeply divided party, is a blow as she navigates the final year of tortuous negotiations ahead of Britain s exit from the European Union in March 2019. Green, who voted to stay in the EU, was appointed as first secretary of state just six months ago in a bid to shore up May s premiership following her disastrous bet on a June snap election that lost her party its majority in parliament. But Green s future was thrust into doubt when the Sunday Times newspaper reported last month that police in 2008 had found pornography on his office computers in the Houses of Parliament. In response, Green said the story was untrue. A review, requested by May and conducted by a senior government official, concluded that Green s statements which suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on the computers, were inaccurate and misleading. The inquiry, a summary of which was distributed by May s Downing Street office, found he had breached rules governing the behavior of ministers because the police had told him about the indecent material. I apologize that my statements were misleading on this point, Green said in a letter to May. I regret that I ve been asked to resign from the government. Green, 61, said he did not download or view pornography on his parliamentary computers. He added that he should have been clearer about his statements after the story broke. May said she had asked him to resign and accepted his resignation with deep regret. He is the most senior British politician to fall since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal triggered a debate about a culture of abuse by some powerful men at the heart of Westminster. May s defense minister, Michael Fallon, quit last month for unspecified conduct which he said had fallen below required standards. Her aid minister resigned a week later after holding undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials. During the turmoil that followed the botched election, May turned to Green a university friend from their days at Oxford to stabilize her premiership and appease those within the Conservative Party who wanted her to quit. One of his key roles was to act as a conduit for disgruntled party members who felt they had been ignored in May s election campaign. He sought to help her to shed the image of a distant leader who only listens to those in her inner circle. It s another blow for May but it is not deadly in any way at all, said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King s College London. She has lost her soulmate in cabinet but this is not the end of Prime Minister May. May is surviving not because of Damian Green but because there are sufficient MPs in her party who don t want to have a leadership election while Brexit is going on and that fundamental calculation has not changed, he said. The internal investigation found that Green s conduct as a minister was generally professional and proper but found two statements he made on Nov. 4 and 11 to be inaccurate and misleading. In the statements, Green suggested he was not aware that indecent material had been found on his computers. The inquiry said Green s statements had fallen short of the honesty requirements for those in public life and thus constituted breaches of the ministerial code of conduct. The allegations about pornography were publicly aired by former Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Bob Quick, drawing a rebuke from the head of the London police, Cressida Dick, who said officers had a duty of confidentiality. May, who served as home secretary for six years before winning the top job, said she shared concerns about the comments made by the former police officer. Sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Weinstein have prompted some women and men to share stories about improper behavior at the heart of British political power in Westminster. The internal investigation also addressed allegations, made by the daughter of a family friend, that Green had made an unwanted advance towards her during a social meeting in 2015, had suggested that this might further her career, and later had sent her an inappropriate text message. The report said it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Green s behavior in that instance, though the investigation found allegations to be plausible. Green said in his resignation letter that he did not recognize the account of events, but apologized to the woman, academic and critic Kate Maltby, for making her feel uncomfortable. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Serbian, Croatian police detain 17 for smuggling migrants to EU;BELGRADE (Reuters) - In a joint sting, Serbian and Croatian police have detained 17 people suspected of smuggling dozens of migrants into the European Union, Serbia s Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. Serbia was at the center of the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016 when hundreds of thousands of people fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and Asia journeyed up through the Balkans to reach the European Union. That route was effectively closed last year, but a steady trickle of migrants, arriving mainly from Turkey via neighboring Bulgaria, has continued. Many migrants use smugglers to reach the EU. In a statement, the Interior Ministry said the group detained in Belgrade and four northern towns comprised 12 Serbians and one Afghan man. The police in neighboring Croatia have detained four more suspects, it said. It is suspected that this criminal group facilitated the illegal crossing of the border and transit ... to a total of 82 migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, from whom they took 1,500 euros ($1,800) per person, it said. Official data show there are up to 4,500 migrants stranded in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say hundreds more are scattered in the capital Belgrade and towns along the Croatian border. ($1 = 0.8442 euros) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine leader declares unilateral ceasefire for Christmas;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has declared a 10-day unilateral ceasefire with communist rebels to allow Filipinos to celebrate a stress-free Christmas season, two weeks after peace talks with the insurgents were formally scrapped. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte had ordered the army and police to suspend offensive operations from Dec. 24 to Jan. 2 to lessen the apprehension of the public this Christmas season . He said he expected the Maoists and their political leaders to do a similar gesture of goodwill. There was no immediate comment from the communist rebel movement, whose top leaders and negotiators have been living in exile in The Netherlands since the late 1980s. Duterte restarted a stalled peace process and freed several communist leaders as a gesture of good faith when he came to office last year but he recently abandoned talks due to escalating rebel attacks. He has vented his fury on a near-daily basis at what he considers duplicity by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People s Army (NPA). He has collectively declared them a terrorist organization and has ended the three-decades peace process. The rebel forces, estimated to number around 3,000, have been waging a protracted guerrilla warfare in the countryside for nearly 50 years in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people and stifled growth in resource-rich areas of the Philippines. The guerrillas have been targeting mines, plantations, construction and telecommunication companies, demanding revolutionary taxation to finance arms purchases and recruitment activities. Duterte on Tuesday night said he only wanted Filipinos to celebrate a stress-free Christmas. I do not want to add more strain to what people are now suffering, he told reporters. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany would back Brussels if it opens proceedings against Poland;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany would support the European Commission if it opens proceedings against Poland over legal reforms there, a spokesman for the German government said on Wednesday. If it comes to the decision we will support it, Steffen Seibert said. Western European Union peers, the bloc s executive Commission, opposition in Poland and democracy advocates say reforms undermine court independence by putting them under more direct government control. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan defends Ottoman commander after UAE minister retweets criticism;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan leapt to the defence of an Ottoman military commander on Wednesday after the United Arab Emirates foreign minister retweeted accusations that Ottoman forces looted the holy city of Medina during World War One. Erdogan appeared to be responding to a tweet shared on Saturday by UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan, which said Ottoman troops led by Fakhreddin Pasha stole money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916. The tweet also said Turkish forces abducted residents of Medina and took them to Istanbul. These are Erdogan s ancestors, and their history with Arab Muslims, read the tweet, originally posted by someone identifying themselves as an Iraqi dentist from Germany. Medina, now part of Saudi Arabia, was part of the Ottoman territory for centuries until the empire s collapse at the end of World War One. In a speech to local administrators, Erdogan said Fahreddin Pasha had not stolen from Medina or its people, but strived to protect the city and its occupants during a time of war. Those miserable people who are delirious enough to shamelessly and tirelessly say Erdogan s ancestors stole sacred items from there and brought them to Istanbul - it was to protect them from the people that came to invade, he said. The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, sees Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling party as a friend of Islamist forces which the UAE opposes across the Arab world. Relations were further strained by Ankara s support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf emirate in June. Two months later, Sheikh Abdullah criticised what he called Turkey and Iran s colonial actions in Syria, even though Turkey and the UAE have both opposed Syria President Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin has also responded to Sheikh Abdullah s comments, saying it was a shame that he retweets this propaganda lie that seeks to turn Turks & Arabs against one another, again. Is attacking President Erdo an at all costs the new fashion now? Kalin tweeted on Tuesday. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's May to visit China around Jan. 31: Sky News;(Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will visit China around the end of January to promote her vision of a global Britain whose economy is strongly placed to succeed after Brexit, Sky News reported on Wednesday. May s office has pencilled in a trip on or around Jan. 31. She will be accompanied by a delegation of business leaders drawn from across the UK economy, Sky reported, citing insiders. China is one of the countries with which Britain hopes to sign a free trade pact once it leaves the EU. Plans for the trip have not been finalised and remain subject to change, Sky added. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's ANC calls for nationalizing central bank, land expropriation;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling African National Congress has adopted a resolution calling for the nationalization of the central bank and land expropriation without compensation, a senior party official said on Wednesday. Any mention of nationalization in South Africa is enough to spook investors, since left-wing elements of the ANC have also called for mines and banks to be state-owned. Similarly, land is an emotive issue two decades after the end of apartheid, and the ANC has been under pressure to redress racial disparities in land ownership. Unlike most central banks in the world, the South African Reserve Bank has been privately owned since it was established in 1921. But its shareholders have no control over monetary policy, financial stability policy or banking regulation. Following a meeting of party delegates, the head of the ANC s economic transformation committee, Enoch Godongwana, told reporters changing the ownership of the South African Reserve Bank would not affect its independence. He said the party had also agreed to initiate amendments to the constitution to achieve land expropriation without compensation, but gave no timeline. He said there would be no illegal occupation of land. Following the proposal made in July by the ANC at a policy conference to nationalize the bank s shareholding, South Africa s Reserve Bank said that changing its shareholding would not affect its mandate, because that mandate is derived from the constitution. Godongwana said no timeline had been laid down for the plan to acquire the central bank s shares or for any directives to parliament to change the country s laws to effect the change. No change in the constitution, no change in the Reserve Bank Act, he said. We ve also said it s not likely to have an impact at all because shareholders in the Reserve Bank do not affect monetary policy in any way. Godongwana said the changes would come after more work was done to prepare for the bank s nationalization. In July, when the party said it would like the central bank to be wholly state-owned, investors were initially worried and knocked the rand. The currency was little changed on Wednesday immediately after the announcement by Godongwana, but analysts said markets would react negatively. The SARB resolution will spook the markets even if it is ultimately unlikely to be implemented, said Anne Fruhauf political analyst with consultancy Teneo. On the land issue, Godongwana said some of the delegates became rowdy during the heated debate that nearly collapsed the conference . ANC officials rejected reports that delegates had come to blows during the debate. Godongwana said the delegates eventually agreed to initiate some amendments to the constitution in order to achieve expropriation of land without compensation. The condition is that it must be sustainable and not impact on food production and food security, he said, adding that there should be no illegal occupation of land. Asked how the markets would react, Godongwana said: My suspicion is they are going to say wow and react badly ... my sense is, if I was the markets, I would simply hold off. Most of South Africa s land remains in white hands 23 years after the end of white minority rule. Experts say the plan to expropriate land in South Africa will not signal the kind of often violent land grabs that took place in neighboring Zimbabwe, where white-owned farms were seized by the government for redistribution to landless blacks. However, some economists and farming groups have said the reform could hit investment and production. Around 8 million hectares (20 million acres) of land have been transferred to black owners since apartheid ended, equal to 8 to 10 percent of the land in white hands in 1994, the government says. The total is only a third of a 30 percent target by 2014 set by the ANC. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congo and Uganda to launch joint operation against rebel ADF;GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Congo and Uganda are planning a joint military operation against a Congo-based Ugandan rebel group blamed for an attack that killed 15 United Nations peacekeepers, army officials from the two countries said on Wednesday. Fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces are suspected of being behind the Dec. 8 assault on a base manned by Tanzanian U.N. troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo s troubled eastern borderlands. The attack, which also killed five Congolese soldiers and wounded another 53 peacekeepers, and came amid a rising wave of violence in the mineral-rich area. The commanders of the ADF are Ugandan citizens. A mechanism will be outlined so the two armies can share intelligence and carry out a coordinated operation, said General Marcel Mbangu Mashita, a senior Congolese army commander in the east. Representatives from the two armies met in the Congolese border town of Kasindi last week. Under the plan, Ugandan troops will not cross over into Congolese territory but instead be concentrated along the border. (The Ugandan army) is reinforcing security on the common border with Congo in order to dissuade any attempt by the ADF to cross over and attack targets of interest in Uganda, Ugandan army spokesman Brigadier Richard Karemire said. Congo s U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, has pledged to track down those responsible for the attack on its base. But it was not involved in the bilateral talks between the Congolese and Ugandan officials. Rival militia groups control parts of eastern Congo, long after the official end of a 1998-2003 war in which millions of people died, mostly from hunger and disease. Congo and Uganda were enemies during that conflict and, in the years since, relations between the two countries have at times been strained. Increased militia violence this year in the center and east comes as Congo faces a political crisis linked to President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down when his mandate expired last December. The ADF is an Islamist group that has long been active along the border and has been blamed for a wave of massacres there over the past two years. Since its leader Jamil Mukulu was arrested in 2015, it has been headed by Musa Baluku. General Mashita said previous Congolese operations had succeeded in eliminating around a third of the ADF s top commanders, but added that its ranks had been bolstered by escaped prisoners after a major prison break in June. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Migrants in Serbia's north brave winter to cross to EU;SID, Serbia (Reuters) - Mudassir, 18, from Pakistan s city of Peshawar has tried to enter the European Union 30 times but was always caught and sent back to his starting point in Serbia. Now, he and dozens of other migrants are braving near-freezing temperatures in shrubs and fields near Sid, a northwestern Serbian town just outside European Union s member Croatia, hoping to make another border run. They spend nights in tents and makeshift shelters in a shrub they call - the jungle. I have tried 30 times, I am in Serbia for 16 months, ... I am tired of sleeping in the jungle , said Mudassir, dressed in a black hooded jacket. Meanwhile, other migrants, all young males, huddled outside an abandoned printing factory in the outskirts of Sid, waiting for a meal delivered by an international volunteer group, the No Name Kitchen. The so-called Balkan route for migrants was shut last year when Turkey agreed to stop the flow in return for EU aid and a promise of visa-free travel for its own citizens. But people mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia continued to arrive in Serbia, mainly from Turkey, via neighboring Bulgaria, attempting to enter Croatia and the EU. According to official data there are as many as 4,500 migrants in government-operated camps in Serbia. Rights activists say that hundreds are scattered in the capital Belgrade and towns along the Croatian border. Muhammad, 22 from the Moroccan town of Oujda, said he has tried to reach the EU 26 times. Three times he made it to Slovenia, but was caught and deported back to Serbia. I will try again ... my family is in France and my girlfriend is in Italy, Muhammad said. Bruno Alvares of the No Name Kitchen said migrants are given two meals a day, water, clothes, footwear and tents. Even if it is cold, it doesn t matter, they will keep on trying because there s ... no evolution in their lives in camps, Alvares said. Migrants who cannot afford to pay smugglers, often hide in passing trucks and freight trains or ride on the top of them. Recently an Afghan girl was killed by a train as she and her family attempted to cross into Croatia. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada's Trudeau broke ethics rules with visit to Aga Khan island;OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke some conflict of interest rules when he accepted a vacation last year on the Aga Khan s private island, the ethics watchdog said on Wednesday, the first time a prime minister has been found to have committed such a transgression. While the finding could tarnish Trudeau s popularity half-way into his mandate, he does not face any penalties. Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson said Trudeau contravened a rule on gifts when he accepted the use of the island in March and December 2016, while there were ongoing official dealings with the Aga Khan and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada was registered to lobby Trudeau s office. The vacations accepted by Mr. Trudeau or his family could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence Mr. Trudeau in his capacity as Prime Minister, Dawson said. While Trudeau says the Aga Khan is a family friend, Dawson found the exception for gifts from friends did not apply. Trudeau said he accepted her report and would clear future vacations with the watchdog. I take full responsibility for it. We need to make sure that the office of the prime minister is without reproach, Trudeau said. Trudeau and his family vacationed on the island during the holidays in late December 2016 into January this year. Members of his family visited in March 2016. Trudeau has come under fire from the opposition, who have said the luxury Bahamas vacation was inappropriate and showed the Liberal government is out of touch with average Canadians. The opposition has also accused Finance Minister Bill Morneau of being in a conflict of interest for not putting his assets in a blind trust. He has since said he will do so and has divested his stock in his family business. Trudeau says he has known the Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini, since childhood. The Aga Khan, the title held by the leader of the Ismaili branch of Shi ite Islam, was a pallbearer at the funeral of Justin s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Trudeau also contravened the rules when he and his family traveled in the Aga Khan s private helicopter last December and when his family traveled on a non-commercial aircraft chartered by the Aga Khan in March 2016, Dawson said. However, she found no evidence Trudeau discussed any parliamentary business with the Aga Khan or his representatives, or participated in any related debates or votes. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ugandan parliament passes law allowing Museveni to seek re-election;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan legislators voted overwhelmingly late on Wednesday to remove from the constitution an age cap of 75 for presidential candidates, allowing President Yoweri Museveni, 73, to seek re-election at the next polls in 2021. Critics say the move opens the possibility of a life presidency for Museveni, who has ruled the east African country for 31 years. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Divided Catalans prepare to vote in close-run election;VIC/CERDANYOLA DEL VALLES, Spain (Reuters) - Catalonia votes on Thursday for a new administration in an election many hope will resolve Spain s worst crisis in decades after the region declared independence leading Madrid to sack local leaders. Polls suggest neither the pro-independence nor the pro-unity camp will win a majority. The likely outcome is a hung parliament and many weeks of wrangling to form a new regional government. In the separatist heartland of rural Catalonia, fireman Josep Sales says he hopes the results will endorse the result of an Oct. 1 illegal referendum on independence from Spain and lead to the creation of a republic. If we get a majority, something will have to be done. And if the politicians don t do it, the people will unite, he said, speaking from the town fire station where many of the red fire engines bear the slogan Hello Democracy . If we have to bring the country to a standstill, so be it, said the 45-year-old, who plans to vote for Carles Puigdemont, the sacked Catalan head who is campaigning for election from self-imposed exile in Belgium. The uncertainty generated by the independence drive has hurt hotel occupancy rates in the region, dented consumer sales and caused more than 3,000 businesses to move their registered headquarters from Catalonia. It has also bitterly divided Catalan society between those who support independence and those who favor unity with Spain. Everyone is eager for the election and to see how it turns out, because nothing is clear at the moment, said 34-year-old flamenco teacher Maria Gonzalez, who lives in Cerdanyola del Valles, an industrial suburb of Barcelona. The feeling on the streets is not comfortable, says Gonzalez, the daughter of migrants from other parts of Spain who moved to Catalonia decades ago and who plans to vote for pro-unity party Ciudadanos ( Citizens ). There s a hidden tension. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Six bodies hung from bridges near Mexico's Los Cabos tourist resort;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The bodies of six men were found hanging from three different bridges near the Mexican tourist resort of Los Cabos on the Baja California peninsula on Wednesday, local authorities said. The authorities did not give details on what happened to the men, but drug gangs often hang the bodies of their murdered victims in public to intimidate rivals. Drug gang violence is set to make 2017 Mexico s deadliest year in modern history. Two bodies were found on a bridge in Las Veredas, near Los Cabos International Airport, and two on a different bridge on the highway between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, local prosecutors said in a statement. In a separate statement, the prosecutors said two further bodies were found on a third bridge near the airport. An official from the prosecutor s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bodies of the men had been hung from the bridges. Violent crime has spiked in Baja California, particularly around the once peaceful resort of Los Cabos visited by million of foreign tourists every year. Los Cabos police chief Juan Manuel Mayorga was shot dead last week. Mexico is on track for its most violent year since records began, with the rise of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, now one of the country s most powerful, and disputes between other criminal groups fueling murder rates. On Tuesday, authorities in the northern state of Chihuahua said 12 people were killed in clashes between armed groups. The governor of the state of Baja California Sur, Carlos Mendoza Davis, said that authorities were investigating the incidents near Los Cabos. I condemn these acts and any expression of violence. Today more than ever in #BCS we should be united, he said via Twitter, using the hashtag for the state s initials. Homicides have more than doubled in Baja California Sur this year, with 409 people killed through October, from 192 in all of 2016. In June authorities said they had found a mass grave with the bodies of 11 men and three women near Los Cabos. More than 4.4 million passengers, mostly international, have passed through Los Cabos Airport so far this year, according to operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Burst tire may have caused deadly tourist bus crash in Mexico -police;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The driver of a tour bus that crashed on Tuesday on a quiet road in Mexico s Yucatan Peninsula, killing 12 people, may have lost control after one of the front tires exploded, the local police chief said. The bus was carrying 31 passengers, including citizens of the United States, Brazil, Canada and Sweden, on a trip to Mayan ruins when it crashed and flipped over, authorities said. Most of those aboard were travelers on Royal Caribbean cruise ships. It seems a front tire of the bus exploded, making it lose control and leave the asphalt, Carlos Briceno Villagomez, head of the police in the municipality of Bacalar, told Mexican TV network Televisa on Tuesday night. The government of Quintana Roo state said it was investigating the cause of the accident, which happened on a flat stretch of road and did not appear to involve another vehicle. The driver was injured and has been arrested. A Mexican tour guide was among those killed. A local civil protection official said authorities were also investigating whether human error contributed to the accident. The U.S. State Department confirmed on Wednesday that multiple American citizens had died in the crash. Mexican authorities said eight U.S. citizens died. We can confirm the deaths of multiple U.S. citizens in #Mexico bus accident, and several injuries. We express our heartfelt condolences to those affected by this tragedy, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a post on Twitter. One Canadian died in the crash and three others were injured, a spokesman for Canada s Global Affairs department said. Two Swedish citizens died and two others were injured, Mexican authorities said. A child was among the dead. Quintana Roo is one of three states on Mexico s Yucatan Peninsula, a major tourist destination. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: Cameroonian troops entered Nigeria without seeking authorization, sources in Nigeria say;ABUJA/DAKAR (Reuters) - Cameroonian troops this month crossed into Nigeria in pursuit of rebels without seeking authorization from Nigeria, causing a falling-out between the governments behind the scenes, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. At least one incursion was confirmed by a Nigerian government official, two Nigerian military officers and two foreign diplomats, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. Nigerian security forces were deployed to the border to stop any further crossings, said a military source. The Cameroonian and Nigerian governments said in separate statements there were no incursions. Relations between the two countries are good, Cameroon said. Cameroonian military officials and pro-government media accuse Nigeria of sheltering Anglophone insurgents. For the past year they have been based in the dense equatorial forests that straddle the border between the two countries, fighting for an independent state they call Ambazonia. At least 7,000 people have fled as refugees from Anglophone Cameroon to Nigeria following a crackdown ordered this year by President Paul Biya to quell the insurgency, which represents the gravest challenge yet to his 35-year rule. French is the official language for most of Cameroon but two regions speak English and these border Nigeria, which is also Anglophone. Cameroonian troops were in Nigeria, said a foreign diplomat. Zero warning, zero authorization. The troops crossed into Nigeria at least twice this month, the diplomat and a Nigerian military official told Reuters. The incidents have caused anger on both sides and could sour diplomatic relations further as Cameroon increases pressure on its Anglophone regions, according to the diplomat and a Nigerian government official. Tensions are high and could escalate, the government official said. Cameroon government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary denied that troops had crossed the border illegally. Relations between the two countries are cohesive when it comes to fighting against terrorism. Cameroon and Nigeria are on the same wavelength. Nigeria s foreign minister, speaking to Reuters after a cabinet meeting in Abuja, also denied the incursions. The (Nigerian) government had investigated and discovered that it s not true, said Geoffrey Onyeama, Nigeria s foreign minister. But the Nigerian government official and a diplomat said Cameroon had threatened to suspend senior Nigerian embassy officials in Yaounde after they lodged complaints. Tchiroma and Onyeama denied this. Governments in Africa often play down diplomatic disputes and present a show of harmony even during bitter rows. On Monday, rebels killed four gendarmes, Cameroon s government said, the latest raid on police and military positions in the country s southwest region. Nigeria has for decades been West Africa s powerhouse but the militaries of the two countries have cooperated extensively to confront a threat posed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The group has staged attacks in Nigeria for years but more recently it has also conducted deadly assaults in Cameroon. Cameroon has repeatedly pressed Nigeria to allow it the right of hot pursuit for Boko Haram militants and the issue has left the countries at loggerheads. After Cameroon s military crossed the border this month in pursuit of separatist insurgents, Nigeria sent security forces to deter any future attempts, said one of the military sources. We were not for war but keeping the peace and protecting our territorial integrity. They were asked to leave and they did and everything has been brought under control, the source said. Many refugees have crossed into Nigeria and many more are still crossing and the Cameroon authorities appear to be concerned that the situation may escalate if they keep coming into Nigeria. Two Cameroonian military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters separatists had set up bases and launched attacks from Nigeria. One attack was on Dec. 14 and involved two groups of at least 100 separatists, one of the officials said. How do you explain that these guys come to attack us and then leave without being troubled across the border? When we drive them back, these separatists withdraw toward Nigeria, the official said. Julius Ayuk Tabe, the Nigeria-based chairman of the Ambazonian Governing Council, the political wing of the armed resistance, said he was not aware of any separatist military bases in Nigeria. Cameroon s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the German colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors. The English-speaking regions joined the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi-led coalition to allow cranes into Yemen's Hodeidah port;DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi-led coalition will allow four cranes into the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah to boost humanitarian aid deliveries into wartorn Yemen, the Saudi ambassador to Sanaa said on Wednesday. Saudi-led forces blocked the port for more than three weeks last month in response to Houthi missile attacks, adding to food shortages in Yemen. A coalition spokesman said on Wednesday the Houthis had fired 83 ballistic missiles towards the kingdom since the war started in 2015. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German police arrest alleged Islamic State militant in ice rink truck attack plot;BERLIN (Reuters) - German police arrested a 29-year-old man they said was an active member of Islamic State who was plotting a truck attack on an ice rink. The arrest, a year after Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck and drove it into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people, comes as security services have warned of growing numbers of radical Islamists in Germany. He was considering an attack on the ice rink on the Schlossplatz in Karlsruhe, police in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said, adding that the suspect was a German citizen whose name they gave only as Dasbar W. To that end he was assessing areas around Karlsruhe Castle and, from September 2017, had begun seeking employment as a delivery driver - without success, the police statement said. In 2015, the suspect traveled to Iraq to fight for Islamic State, receiving weapons training and working as a scout seeking potential attack targets in the city of Erbil, police said. He returned to Germany the following year. Before leaving for Iraq, Dasbar worked for Islamic State from Germany, producing propaganda videos and proselytizing to converts in online chat rooms, police said. Earlier this month, Germany s security service warned that the number of Salafists - followers of a radical Islamist ideology - had risen to an all-time high of 10,800, though the number prepared to mount attacks was in the order of hundreds. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Denmark no longer to automatically accept U.N. refugee resettlement quota;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will no longer automatically accept a quota of refugees under a U.N. resettlement program after passing a law on Wednesday that enables the government to determine how many can enter each year. Since 1989, Denmark has agreed to take 500 refugees a year selected by the United Nations under a program to ease the burden on countries that neighbor war zones. But after the European migration crisis in 2015 brought almost 20,000 claims for asylum, Denmark has refused to take any U.N. quota refugees. Under the new law, the immigration minister will decide how many refugees will be allowed under the U.N. program, with 500 now the maximum except in an exceptional situation . It s hard to predict how many refugees and migrants will show up at the border to seek asylum, and we know it may be hard to integrate those who arrive here, Immigration and Integration Minister Inger Stojberg said last month when her ministry proposed the law. The opposition Social-Liberal Party said opting out of the U.N. program would increase pressure on countries already accommodating large numbers of refugees, and the move could encourage other countries to follow suit. Last year, more than 6,000 people claimed asylum in Denmark. Between January and November this year just over 3,000 people did. (Corrects throughout to show new law only applies to U.N. resettlement quota, not other refugee applications.) ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine police chief defends deadly drug war of the 'Davao Boys';MANILA (Reuters) - The police chief of the Philippines on Wednesday stood by the head of a secretive unit behind dozens of killings in the country s war on drugs, saying officers fired only in self-defence and the death toll reflected the danger and the scale of the narcotics problem. National police chief Ronald dela Rosa was responding to a Reuters Special Report that spent four months examining killings by one group of policemen from or near Davao City, the hometown of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Dela Rosa said police district 6 in Quezon City had Metro Manila s most serious drug problem and he personally sent squad commander Lito Patay there because he was a very professional and very dedicated officer capable of dealing with it. Patay handpicked and headed a unit of 10 men who called themselves the Davao Boys , which racked up the highest number of kills in Quezon City, a violent frontline in Duterte s ferocious anti-narcotics campaign. Police station 6 officers killed 108 people in anti-drug operations from July 2016 through June 2017, the campaign s first year, accounting for 39 percent of Quezon City s body count, according to official crime reports analyzed by Reuters. A majority of the killings were carried out by the squad run by Patay, who was reassigned to Quezon City just a few weeks after Duterte unleashed his crackdown. He (Patay) was chosen because I have big trust in him, he has the balls to face the problems. He will fight, dela Rosa told reporters. He is not an officer who is after money, who will be assigned in an area only to collect money, he is not that kind of officer. He has focus. I assigned him there because I know he can deliver. Asked about the high rate of killings in areas under Patay, he said deaths were inevitable where the drugs trade was rampant. So what s the problem? The worst drug problem is there in station 6, so if you hit the problem head on, you face the problem head on then, there would always result in casualties, he said. Nearly 4,000 mostly urban poor Filipinos have been killed in anti-drug operations since July 2016. Police reject activists allegations they have executed drug users and peddlers and say they kill only when their lives are in danger. Dela Rosa said Patay has since been reassigned to another province to make him eligible for promotion, reflecting his success in convincing drug suspects in Quezon City to surrender to the authorities. He said Patay had been given a free hand at station 6 and had command responsibility over his operations. It is his own call whatever he does there, he has to solve the drug problem, dela Rosa said. The story of the Davao Boys also highlights a larger dynamic: Many of the drug war s key police officers - dela Rosa included - hail from or served in Duterte s hometown, where the campaign s brutal methods originated during his time as mayor. Duterte has repeatedly denied he ordered the killings of criminals and drug dealers during his 22 years as Davao mayor, or his 17 months as president. Dela Rosa appeared frustrated when asked by a reporter if he personally had ordered the deaths of drug suspects in Quezon City. He said Patay s men had no alternative but to kill armed criminals who refused to go quietly. He was placed there to address the drug problem, and not to kill those who deserved to be killed, he said of Patay. If they resist, why would you risk your life? You have to fight back. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. freedom of speech expert concerned about net neutrality;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. s freedom of speech expert said on Wednesday he was concerned about the ramifications of a decision in the United States to roll back net neutrality, since it could lead to small and independent voices being drowned out on the web. Last week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal rules intended to ensure a free and open internet, setting up a court fight over a move that could recast the digital landscape. David Kaye, an American law professor and the U.N. Human Rights Council s independent expert on freedom of expression, said net neutrality, the idea that all internet traffic should be treated the same regardless of content, was essential. Net neutrality is a really, really important principle from the perspective of ensuring broad access to information by all individuals, Kaye told reporters in Geneva on the sidelines of the Internet Governance Forum. I don t want to say that tomorrow there will be a huge amount of censorship, but over the long term, combine this with the concentration of media in the United States and in most places around the world, I think we should be worried about the ability of smaller voices that often (find it) harder to get traction in the market. He said it would take years to know exactly what impact the U.S. move would have. My concern in the U.S. space is that over time the companies will make decisions based more on their business model than on the content of information and the breadth of information that people should have access to, he said. That s a long-term problem and that s why I m very, very concerned about the rollback of net neutrality. As companies blur the lines between providing the infrastructure and the content that makes up the internet, there is increasing risk of political pressure creeping in, Kaye said. We used to think of telcos being very separate from content providers. But there s a lot of convergence now. So one of the risks is as content and infrastructure are merged more, the pressures on both, which might be of a political nature ... might restrict certain kinds of coverage. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"EU's Tusk says important to end ""devastation"" of Poland's reputation";WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland is currently seen as a force for disintegration of the European Union (EU) and hence it is important to end the destruction of Warsaw s reputation, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday. Poland is perceived today as a disintegrating force in this part of Europe and this is why I believe that it is important to end this devastation (...) of Poland s reputation, Tusk told local media, commenting on European Commission s decision to launch Article 7 procedure against Warsaw. Tusk also said he did not expect sanctions to be imposed on Poland in the near future. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany takes political vacuum in its stride, for now;BERLIN (Reuters) - Largely unperturbed by Angela Merkel s failure to form a government after a September election, many Germans are taking the prospect of several more months of coalition talks in their stride. The country is used to lengthy transitions but this is the longest since reunification in 1990. It is 87 days since the election and few experts see a government in place before March. EU leaders fear delays to euro zone integration plans, some of which are to strengthen the banking system, and many economists warn Europe s biggest economy must reform and invest in broadband and infrastructure to stay competitive. But as caretaker chancellor, Merkel is voting at EU summits, parliament is passing laws required by international mandates, local authorities are wading through asylum applications and a bright outlook in Europe s biggest economy is buoying the mood. I haven t noticed much difference from before, said Nadja Helling, 36, cradling a steaming mug of gluehwein at a Berlin Christmas market. It s not ideal but nobody is panicking. Domestic and foreign demand are driving solid growth and the effects of low borrowing costs and European Central Bank stimulus are supporting record-high employment levels and rising real wages. We have jobs and are enjoying the Christmas markets, said Helling s friend, Silvia. What s the problem? The Munich-based Ifo institute raised its forecasts last week and expects the German economy to expand by 2.6 percent next year, the highest rate since 2011, adding, however, that this might be the peak. The IfW institute in Kiel said the delayed formation of a government does not pose an economic risk , but also sounded a warning for the longer term. A boom may feel good but it carries the seeds of a crisis. The view that a boom is harmless, as long as consumer prices are under control, falls short, said the IfW s Stefan Kooths. The reality experienced by many Germans belies dire warnings from commentators last month about looming instability and even new elections after Merkel, weakened by losing votes to the far-right, was humiliated by the collapse of 3-way coalition talks. She is now wooing the Social Democrats (SPD), reluctant partners after voters punished them for sharing power with Merkel s conservatives over the last four years. Germany s transition pales into comparison with some other EU partners, such as Belgium and the Netherlands where a coalition took 225 days to clinch a deal this year. I suspect the process will take some time yet but people who talk about instability are mistaken. We have a stable caretaker government, an effective parliament and a democracy that is functioning very well, said Nils Diederich, politics professor at Berlin s Free University. Confounding some predictions, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), dogged by infighting, has so far failed to capitalize on the lack of a proper government despite being the third-biggest party. Opinion polls have barely changed since the Sept. 24 election, indicating there is little sense of crisis. The Ifo institute said on Tuesday uncertainty about the shape of the government was growing but that a surprise drop in its business moral survey in December after a record high the previous month was nothing too unusual. Indeed, seasonally adjusted unemployment is at the lowest level since 1990 and Christmas sales forecasts are bright, with the HDE retail industry association expecting sales over the festive season to rise by 3 percent to a record high. Merkel, unruffled as ever, has sought to reassure voters and investors that it is business as usual in Germany, with most incumbent ministers staying on in an interim government. If anything, there is a striking lack of urgency about the talks, partly to keep skeptical SPD rank and file on board. After party leaders meet on Wednesday to draw up a rough timetable, no further talks are expected before January. Meanwhile, the Bundestag lower house has agreed to roll over military missions in Afghanistan and Mali and debated topics from Brexit to planned job cuts by Siemens. Germany s federal structure means much business that affects ordinary people, including dealing with asylum applications, housing and school issues, goes ahead regardless of Berlin. Deutsche Bahn has launched a much delayed fast train link between Berlin and Munich, complete with the usual teething problems, and Christmas markets have opened, albeit with tight security after last year s attack. The impasse has had little effect on Brexit talks because there is consensus among Germany s main parties about the German, and EU, position towards Britain. Plans for euro zone reform, however, are more contentious, although Merkel said on Monday, she hoped to make progress on the issue by March. The main possible negative effect is that the momentum in Europe (for reform), that was desired after the Brexit vote might be lost, said Thomas Jaeger, politics professor at Cologne University. The SPD, determined to stamp its identity on any coalition deal with Merkel, backs deeper integration than Merkel s conservatives, but is split over whether it should agree to a grand coalition with Merkel. Its leader Martin Schulz has championed French President Emmanuel Macron s proposals for a euro zone budget and finance minister and wants a United States of Europe by 2025. The only political crisis in Germany is the struggle for direction by the main parties, in particular the SPD, said Diederich. The SPD needs time to overcome this. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Opposition groups quit Iraqi Kurdish government over protests;BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Opposition groups quit the government of Iraq s Kurdish region on Wednesday in protest at violent unrest in which at least three people were killed, with one group saying authorities had shown a flagrant disregard for life. In another test for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, the United States meanwhile called on authorities in the semi-autonomous region to respect press freedoms after it shut down a local broadcaster. The United Nations called for restraint on all sides. Tension has been high in the region since the central government in Baghdad imposed tough measures in response to an independence referendum on Sept. 25 called by the KRG in which Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede. The move, in defiance of Baghdad, also alarmed neighbouring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. Strains spilled onto the streets on Monday and Tuesday when Kurds joined protests against years of austerity and unpaid public sector salaries, with some burning down offices belonging to political parties. At least three people were killed and more than 80 wounded on Tuesday in clashes with Kurdish security forces in Sulaimaniya, local officials said. Some were injured when the crowd was shot at with rubber bullets and sprayed with tear gas. On Wednesday leading opposition movement Gorran withdrew its ministers from the KRG and Kurdistan Parliament Speaker Yousif Mohamed, a party member, resigned in response to the violence. Some have demanded the regional government s ousting. We urge the international community to confront the flagrant disregard for life, liberty and democracy shown by the authorities in #Kurdistan Region, Gorran said in a tweet. The Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), another opposition party with a smaller presence in parliament, also withdrew from the government. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad said on Wednesday it was worried about the closure of a local Kurdish broadcaster at the hands of Iraqi Kurdish security forces a day earlier. We are concerned by recent actions to curb the operations of some media outlets through force or intimidation, specifically yesterday s raid by Kurdistan Regional Government security forces of the NRT offices in Sulaimaniya, an embassy statement said. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) also said Kurdish authorities should respect media freedoms and that it was deeply concerned about violence and clashes during the protests. It called for restraint on all sides. The people have the right to partake in peaceful demonstrations, and the authorities have the responsibility of protecting their citizens, including peaceful protesters, UNAMI said in a statement. Kurdish Asayish security forces on Tuesday raided the offices of Kurdish private broadcaster NRT in Sulaimaniya province, and took the channel off the air. NRT s founder and opposition figure Shaswar Abdulwahid was also arrested at the Sulaimaniya airport on Tuesday. His family have asked for his release, amid local media reports that another NRT journalist was arrested in Sulaimaniya on Wednesday. In a statement on Tuesday, Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, who is on an official visit to Germany, told protesters that although he understood their frustrations, the burning of political party offices is not helpful . There were no major protests in the city on Wednesday. Security forces from the region s capital Erbil have been deployed to help quell the unrest in Sulaimaniya, security sources told Reuters. After Tuesday s unrest, curfews were imposed in several towns across the wider Sulaimaniya province, some have lasted through Wednesday. Local media reported smaller protests in towns across the province, including Ranya and Kifri. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Austria's Kurz says will fight anti-Semitism after Israel voices concern;VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday his new coalition would focus on fighting anti-Semitism, after Israel made it clear it would not work directly with any ministers from the far-right party now back in government. Kurz, a 31-year-old conservative, was sworn in with the rest of his government on Monday after reaching a coalition deal that handed control of much of Austria s security apparatus to the anti-Islam Freedom Party (FPO). The FPO came third in October s parliamentary election with 26 percent of the vote. Israel reacted to the inauguration by saying it would do business only with the operational echelons of government departments headed by an FPO minister. The FPO now controls the foreign, interior and defence ministries, though Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl is not officially a member of the party. Anti-Semitism has no place in Austria or Europe. We will fight all forms of anti-Semitism with full determination, both those that still exist and those that have been newly imported, said in a speech outlining the government s goals to parliament. That will be one of our government s significant tasks. The FPO, which was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, says it has left its anti-Semitic past behind it, though it has still had to expel members each year for anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi comments. It now openly courts Jewish voters, with limited success. Its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, has also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Israel wishes to underline its total commitment to fighting anti-Semitism and commemorating the Holocaust, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a short statement on Monday in response to the Austrian government s swearing in. The European Jewish Congress has called on the new government to take concrete steps against anti-Semitism while taking a generally more inclusive approach. The Freedom Party cannot use the Jewish community as a fig leaf and must show tolerance and acceptance towards all communities and minorities, it said on Monday. Austria, where Adolf Hitler was born, was annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938. Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of that takeover as well as the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One, which led to the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kurz said the events of 1938 were shameful and sad . His People s Party (OVP) and the FPO published a 180-page coalition manifesto over the weekend, which includes plans to cut public spending, taxes and benefits for refugees. The OVP won October s election with a hard line on immigration that often overlapped with the FPO s. The issue dominated the campaign after Austria took in large numbers of asylum seekers during Europe s migration crisis, many of them from Muslim countries. Austria s Jewish community of just over 10,000 is tiny relative to the more than half a million Muslims who live in the nation of almost 9 million, many of whom are Turkish or of Turkish origin. Both Kurz and Strache have warned of Muslim parallel societies they say are emerging in Austria, despite there being few obvious signs of sectarian tension. Kurz flew to Brussels on Tuesday to dispel concerns that his alliance with the far right will undermine the European Union. In their speeches to parliament, both he and Strache said they opposed Turkey joining the European Union a position that polls show a majority of Austrians support. Turkey is moving in the wrong direction, which means Turkey will certainly have no future in the European Union, said Kurz, who has criticised Ankara s clampdown on dissent since a failed coup last year. On Tuesday night during his first foreign visit as chancellor, to Brussels, Kurz told broadcaster ORF he would soon meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I hope we will succeed in dispelling the concerns that exist regarding the FPO government members, Kurz said. It would be in the interest of both our countries. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Strikes kill 19 in rebel village in Syria's Idlib: Observatory, rescue service;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Air strikes killed 19 people in a village in Syria s rebel stronghold of Idlib overnight, a rescue service there and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday. The strikes pounded Maar Shureen in the northwestern Idlib province and injured 25 other people, the Britain-based Observatory said. The dead included seven children, it said. The war monitoring group added that Syrian government or Russian aircraft had struck the village. Russia s Defence Ministry denied involvement, saying in a statement carried by RIA news agency that its jets had not flown in that area. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military, which says it only targets militants. Idlib s civil defense, a rescue service known as the White Helmets which operates in rebel territory, said on social media that fierce bombing killed 19 people overnight. There were two consecutive strikes...The second strike came shortly before rescue teams arrived, Mustafa Youssef, who heads the Idlib civil defense, said. The Damascus government lost Idlib after insurgents took over the provincial capital in 2015. It has since become the only province fully under opposition control, and the most populated insurgent-held part of Syria. Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the Islamist alliance spearheaded by the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is the dominant rebel force in Idlib. This has raised fears among some civilians and other rebel factions that the province could come under attack and turn into a major battlefield. Thousands of civilians and fighters have poured into Idlib in the past year, bussed out of towns and cities which Syrian troops seized with the help of Russia and Iran-backed militias. Government forces and their allies stepped up air strikes against opposition towns in the Hama countryside and the southern part of Idlib, rebels said last week. The province, bordering Turkey, is part of Russian-brokered de-escalation agreements that seek to shore up ceasefires in parts of western Syria. Turkey, which had long backed some Syrian rebel factions, set up observation posts in Idlib in October under a deal with Russia and Iran to reduce fighting there. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said the military operation in Idlib was largely completed. The deployment was also seen partly aimed at containing Kurdish influence nearby in northern Syria. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Polish president signs judicial overhaul bills into law;WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish President Andrzej Duda has signed into law two bills overhauling the judiciary, he said on Wednesday, in defiance of European Union criticism that the legislation undermines the rule of law in central Europe s largest economy. I have taken a decision to sign these bills, Duda said in a statement broadcast on public television. Earlier on Wednesday, the EU executive launched an unprecedented action against Poland over its reforms of the judicial system. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romania senate backs bill seen in West as threat to judiciary;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s senate approved on Wednesday part of a judicial overhaul criticized by the European Commission, the United States and the country s own president as a threat to judicial independence. The bill passed by the assembly is one of three that have triggered street protests across the country, a European Union state ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, and drawn opposition from thousands of magistrates. The three bills jointly limit magistrates independence and set up a special unit to probe crimes committed by magistrates. This makes magistrates the only professional category with a prosecuting unit dedicated to investigating them. The proposed changes mean the country is joining its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. Lawmakers approved another bill on Tuesday, amending the definition of prosecutor s activity to exclude the word independent . A third bill is widely expected to be approved on Thursday. The Commission launched an unprecedented action on Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms it says pose a threat to democracy. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said there were obvious risks that the Commission could do the same in Romania s case if the legal changes take hold. If someone imagines there will not be consequences, then they are from the moon, Iohannis told reporters. There will be consequences, the magnitude depends on the laws final form. It could be months before the bills are enforced. Opposition parties plan to challenge them in the Constitutional Court. The president could do the same, as well as send them back to parliament for re-examination, something he can do only once. He could also trigger a country-wide referendum on continuing the fight against corruption. Romania s ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the warnings. They are also working on changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. The country s prosecutor general, chief anti-corruption prosecutor and the head of the anti-organized crime unit have all criticized the proposed changes which they said will not only end the anti-graft fight but endanger general safety. Hundreds of magistrates protested in silence this week, lining the steps of courthouses across the country. Romania s anti-corruption prosecution unit has sent 72 members of parliament to trial since 2006. The speakers of parliament s lower house and senate are both currently on trial in separate cases. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says U.S. isolated on Jerusalem, issuing threats;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Wednesday the United States has isolated itself by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital and accused it of threatening countries that might vote against it on the matter at an emergency U.N. General Assembly session. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country has led Muslim opposition to Washington s stance on Jerusalem, was speaking before leaving Istanbul with the Palestinian foreign minister to attend Thursday s gathering in New York. With his Dec. 6 decision, President Donald Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy, and upset an international consensus enshrined in U.N. resolutions, that treated Jerusalem s status as unresolved. Israel captured East Jerusalem in a 1967 war and Palestinians want it as the capital of a future state they seek. Trump s move stirred outrage among Palestinians and in the Arab world, and concern among Washington s Western allies. On Monday, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution calling on it to withdraw its declaration. Thel 14 other council members, including close U.S. allies such as Japan and four European Union countries, backed the draft. On Thursday there ll be a vote criticizing our choice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Twitter. The U.S. will be taking names. Cavusoglu said that was a threat, and called on Washington - a NATO ally of Turkey - to change course. We expect strong support at the UN vote, but we see that the United States, which was left alone, is now resorting to threats. No honorable, dignified country would bow down to this pressure, Cavusoglu told a news conference held together with his Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki. We want America to turn back from this wrong and unacceptable decision, Cavusoglu said earlier in the Azeri capital Baku, where he met Iranian and Azeri ministers. God willing, we will push through the General Assembly a resolution in favor of Palestine and Jerusalem, he said. The rare emergency session of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly was called at the request of Arab and Muslim states. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour has said the General Assembly would vote on a draft resolution calling for the U.S. declaration to be withdrawn. Such a vote is non-binding, but carries political weight. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has lambasted Trump s move, and hosted a summit of Muslim leaders last week which called for East Jerusalem to be recognized as the capital of Palestine. Israel calls Jerusalem its indivisible and eternal capital. From now on we will be more active in defending the rights of Palestinians. We will work harder for the international recognition of an independent Palestinian state, Cavusoglu told reporters in Baku. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab coalition says will keep Yemen port open;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump threatens to cut aid to U.N. members over Jerusalem vote;WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We ll save a lot. We don t care, Trump told reporters at the White House. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday - at the request of Arab and Muslim countries - to vote on a draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that Trump had asked her to report back on those countries who voted against us. She bluntly echoed that call in a Twitter post: The U.S. will be taking names. Several senior diplomats said Haley s warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing U.S. voters. According to figures from the U.S. government s aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania. It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries, according to USAID. Miroslav Lajcak, president of the General Assembly, declined to comment on Trump s remarks, but added: It s the right and responsibility of member states to express their views. A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also declined to comment on Trump s remarks on Wednesday. I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations, for all those nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council, or they vote against us potentially at the assembly, Trump said. Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab world and concern among Washington s Western allies. He also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The draft U.N. resolution calls on all countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. A senior diplomat from a Muslim country, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Haley s letter: States resort to such blatant bullying only when they know they do not have a moral or legal argument to convince others. Responding directly to that comment on Twitter, Haley said: Actually it is when a country is tired of being taken for granted. A senior Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Haley s letter as poor tactics at the United Nations but pretty good for Haley 2020 or Haley 2024, referring to speculation that Haley might run for higher office. She s not going to win any votes in the General Assembly or the Security Council, but she is going to win some votes in the U.S. population, the Western diplomat said. A senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed Haley was unlikely to sway many U.N. states. We are missing some leadership here from the U.S. and this type of letter is definitely not helping to establish U.S. leadership in the Middle East peace process, the diplomat said. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The first name that she should write down is Bolivia, Bolivia s U.N. Ambassador Sacha Sergio Llorentty Sol z said of Haley s message. We regret the arrogance and disrespect to the sovereign decision of member states and to multilateralism. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ugandan parliament passes law allowing Museveni to seek re-election;KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan legislators voted late on Wednesday to amend the country s constitution to allow 73-year-old leader Yoweri Museveni to extend his rule, potentially guaranteeing him a life-time presidency. A provision in the current constitution limits the age of a presidential candidate at 75 years, which would have made Museveni ineligible to stand at the next polls in 2021. At the end of Wednesday s day-long House debate, which capped a protracted and violence-marred process to remove that age limit, MPs voted 315-62 in favor of the amendment. The bill passes, said speaker Rebecca Kadaga after announcing tally results, prompting raucous celebrations from the mostly ruling party MPs who favored the bill. Earlier in the day, two lawmakers were dragged away and detained when they tried to enter parliament, as the divisive debate proceeded in the chamber. Police had blocked some legislators from entering the building, and live television footage showed two of them being driven away in security vehicles. Both opposed the bill. The legislators blocked by police were attempting to enter parliament to serve court documents on House speaker Rebecca Kadaga, who was presiding over the debate. The document called on her to appear in court at 2:00 PM in respect of the irregular suspension of our members of parliament, independent lawmaker Wilfred Niwagaba told a local television station minutes before he was detained. Six MPs - all opposed to removal of the age cap - were suspended from parliamentary proceedings on Monday for alleged disorderly conduct and refusing to heed the speaker s instructions. The bill to amend the constitution was introduced in parliament on October 4 by a Museveni loyalist, after two consecutive days of brawling in the debating chamber between those opposed and those in favor, supported by security personnel. On the second day, security personnel who some MPs said were soldiers from an elite military unit entered the chamber and violently ejected at least 25 MPs that the speaker had suspended from proceedings for alleged misconduct. Wednesday s vote was the second time Ugandan parliament has changed the constitution to allow Museveni extend his rule. In 2005, they voted to remove a limit of two five-year terms, which blocked him from standing again. The bill also extended the length of a term for MPs to seven years from the current five. The limit of two terms was also re-imposed for the president, although that only means Museveni would be limited to two more terms, starting with the 2021 election. Are you not seeing what happened in Zimbabwe, do we want his excellency to end like Gaddafi of Libya, opposition legislator, Gilbert Olanya, who opposed to the amendment, said in Wednesday s debate as he attempted to persuade colleagues to reject it. Several African leaders have amended laws designed to limit their tenure. Such moves have fueled violence in countries including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. Initially hailed for restoring political order and fostering economic growth, Museveni has lately come under mounting pressure fueled by runaway corruption, and accusations he uses security forces to maintain his grip on power. A combination of both military and police personnel were heavily deployed around parliament this week, which opposition MPs say was meant to intimidate members. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions Chechen leader, four others under Magnitsky Act;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed new sanctions on five Russians and Chechens, including the head of the Russian republic of Chechnya, for alleged human rights abuses. The new sanctions blacklisted Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Treasury Department said in a statement. U.S. authorities accused Kadyrov of overseeing an administration involved in disappearances and extrajudicial killings . On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, a senior U.S. State Department official said that one or more of Kadyrov s political opponents were killed at his direction. Kadyrov reacted to news of the sanctions with his usual defiance. A sleepless night is waiting for me, Kadyrov wrote, apparently sarcastically, on his Instagram social media account. I can be proud that I m out of favor with the special services of the USA. In fact, the USA cannot forgive me for dedicating my whole life to the fight against foreign terrorists among which there are bastards of America s special services. He also wrote that he would not be visiting the United States. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed the sanctions, which freeze the banks accounts of those targeted, under a 2012 law known as the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky Act imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian auditor and whistleblower. The act also seeks to hold responsible those U.S. authorities allege orchestrated or benefited from the death of Magnitsky. Treasury remains committed to holding accountable those involved in the Sergei Magnitsky affair, including those with a role in the criminal conspiracy and fraud scheme that he uncovered, Director of the Treasury Department s Office of Foreign Assets Control John Smith said in a statement. Magnitsky was arrested and died in a Moscow jail in 2009 after discovering a $230 million tax fraud scheme, according to U.S. authorities. Supporters of Magnitsky say the Russian state murdered him by denying him adequate medical care after he was imprisoned on tax evasion charges. The Kremlin denies the allegation. In addition to Kadyrov and one other Chechen official, the Treasury s action on Wednesday targeted three Russians that U.S. authorities say were involved in the complex tax fraud scheme that Magnitsky exposed. The Magnitsky sanctions have been a point of tension between Moscow and Washington, even before Russia s annexation of Crimea sent relations spiraling. In retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, Putin signed a bill halting U.S. adoptions of Russian children. It had been unclear to sanctions experts whether President Donald Trump s administration, which has signaled a desire to rebuild ties with Moscow, would continue to target people under the law. The Magnitsky Act attracted greater public attention when it emerged that the president s son Donald Trump Jr., had met with a Russian lawyer and a lobbyist - both strident opponents of the law - in New York ahead of the 2016 U.S. elections. When asked about the June 2016 meeting, Trump Jr. later said they discussed the adoptions issue. On a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, State Department officials said that despite the new sanctions the Trump administration wants a constructive relationship with Moscow. We believe a Russia that takes care of the human rights of its own citizens will be an even more effective partner, a senior State Department official said. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-Interpol chief says ready to testify for Argentina's Fernandez;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina s previous government never asked Interpol to drop arrest warrants against a group of Iranians accused of bombing a Jewish center, the ex-head of the police agency said on Wednesday, as the government proceeded with treason charges against the former president. Former Interpol chief Ronald Noble said in an email on Wednesday that he wants to testify that the government of former President Cristina Fernandez did not ask to have the arrest warrants lifted as part of a memorandum she had with Iran. If a judge allows Noble to testify, the treason case filed this month against Fernandez and 11 other top officials could crumble. She denies wrongdoing and calls the charge politically motivated. The arrest warrants were not affected in their validity by the approval of the memorandum, Noble said in an email to a federal appeals court that was seen by Reuters. The Fernandez administration always expressed its belief that the warrants should remain in effect, the email said. The accusation that the Fernandez government worked behind the scenes to clear the accused bombers of the AMIA Jewish community center in order to improve trade between Argentina and Iran is at the heart of a charge of treason brought against Fernandez. She served as president for eight years before being succeeded by Mauricio Macri in 2015. Others agreed that the treason charge against Fernandez appeared questionable. The indictment by Judge Claudio Bonadio of former President Fernandez, her Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, and 10 others, for treason and concealment points to no evidence that would seem to substantiate those charges, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Tuesday. The allegations against Fernandez drew international attention in January 2015, when the prosecutor who initially made them, Alberto Nisman, was found shot dead in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment. An Argentine appeals court ordered the re-opening of the investigation a year ago. Nisman s death was classified a suicide, though an official investigating the case has said the shooting appeared to be a homicide. Nisman s body was discovered hours before he was to brief Congress on the 1994 bombing of the AMIA center. Nisman said Fernandez worked behind the scenes to clear Iran of any wrongdoing and normalize relations to clinch a grains-for-oil deal with Tehran that was signed in 2013. The memorandum agreement created a joint commission to investigate the AMIA bombing that critics said was really a means to absolve Iran. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish PM calls Rohingya killings in Myanmar 'genocide';COX S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) - Turkey s prime minister on Wednesday dubbed the killing of minority Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar by its security forces genocide and urged the international community to ensure their safety back home. Binali Yildirim met several Rohingyas in two refugee camps in Cox s Bazar in neighboring Bangladesh. Almost 870,000 Rohingya fled there, about 660,000 of whom arrived after Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive. The Myanmar military has been trying to uproot Rohingya Muslim community from their homeland and for that they persecuted them, set fire to their homes, villages, raped and abused women and killed them, Yildirim told reporters from Cox s Bazar, before flying back to Turkey. It s one kind of a genocide, he said. The international community should also work together to ensure their safe and dignified return to their homeland, Yildirim, who was accompanied by Bangladesh s Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, said. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug. 25, MSF said last week. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Yildirim inaugurated a medical camp at Balukhali, sponsored by Turkey, and handed over two ambulances to Cox s Bazar district administration. He also distributed food to Rohingya refugees at Kutupalong makeshift camp. He urged the international community to enhance support for Rohingyas in Bangladesh and help find a political solution to this humanitarian crisis. U.N. investigators have heard Rohingya testimony of a consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson . The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria. Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi s less than two-year old civilian government has faced heavy international criticism for its response to the crisis, though it has no control over the generals it has to share power with under Myanmar s transition after decades of military rule. Yildirim s trip follows Turkish first lady Emine Erdogan s visit in September to the Rohingya camp, when she said the crack down in Myanmar s Rakhine state was tantamount to genocide and a solution to the Rohingya crisis lies in Myanmar alone. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Poland's refusal to accept Muslim migrants may be behind EC decision: ruling party;WARSAW (Reuters) - The European Commission s decision to launch the so-called Article 7 procedure against Poland may be related to Warsaw s refusal to accept Muslim migrants, spokeswoman of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party Beata Mazurek said on Wednesday. This may be an effect not only of the opposition s informing (on Poland to the EC) but also because we don t want to accept immigrants, we don t want to accept Muslim migrants, as we care for the security of Poles, Mazurek told reporters. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France to raise minimum food prices, limit bargain sales;PARIS (Reuters) - France will on Thursday announce a plan to raise regulated minimum food prices and limit bargain sales in supermarkets as part of a wider field-to-fork plan aimed at increasing farmers income, a government official said. The measures are part of a wider review promised by President Emmanuel Macron to appease farmers, an important constituency in French politics, who have long complained of being hit by squeezed margins and retail price wars. In October Macron said the government would raise minimum prices retailers can charge on food products only if each sector proposed detailed organization plans by the end of the year. Most of these plans arrived late last week, the official said. The government will propose that threshold below which retailers cannot sell food products will rise by some 10 percent while prices on promotional offers could not be discounted by more than 34 percent and no more than 25 percent of a product s volume could be sold in a promotional offer, the official said, in line with a proposal reported by daily Le Figaro. The new rules, aimed at limiting sales at losses that pressure suppliers down the chain, would be applied for a trial period of two years. Macron had delayed until year-end the proposal by retailers to raise regulated minimum prices as he sought guarantees it would meet his promise to boost farm income while minimizing retail inflation. The measures will be included in a new law, set to be approved in the first half of next year, which will also tackle price renegotiation in case of a wide swing in commodity prices and create a reversed contract starting from farmers production costs to food processors and to retailers. Company and industry representatives, unions, non-governmental organizations and officials, have gathered at the so-called Food Convention since the summer to discuss topics ranging from food quality to farm income and export strategy. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey orders arrest of former police investigator's parents: Hurriyet;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - An Istanbul prosecutor has issued arrest warrants for the parents of a former police investigator who gave evidence at the trial of a Turkish banker in the United States last week, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Wednesday. Turkey has called for the arrest of Huseyin Korkmaz after he testified at the trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a former executive of state-lender Halkbank who is accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. The Istanbul prosecutor s office was not immediately available for comment. U.S. prosecutors have accused Atilla of working with Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and others to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions through fraudulent gold and food transactions. The case has strained relations between Turkey and the United States, which are NATO allies. Atilla has pleaded not guilty and Halkbank has denied involvement with any illegal transactions. But Zarrab has pleaded guilty and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Korkmaz said he fled Turkey in 2016 fearing retaliation from the government after leading an investigation in 2013 into Zarrab which implicated high-ranking officials. Hurriyet said the Istanbul prosecutor s order to arrest Korkmaz s parents came after his testimony in the U.S. case in which he said he gave documents related to the 2013 investigation to his mother to keep. Last week, Turkish police summoned a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official over statements made by Korkmaz in the U.S. court, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar says probe of two Reuters journalists almost finished, court case to follow;YANGON (Reuters) - A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday he had been informed that the police had almost completed their investigation of two Reuters journalists arrested over a week ago, after which a court case against them would begin. Zaw Htay said the two reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, would then have access to a lawyer and be able to meet members of their families. It will not be long. The investigation is almost done, he said by telephone. The spokesman said the Ministry of Home Affairs and police told him on Tuesday that the two men were being detained in Yangon, were in good condition and had not been subjected to illegal questioning. A number of governments and human rights and journalist groups have criticized Myanmar s authorities for holding the pair incommunicado since their arrest, with no access to a lawyer, colleagues and family members. Asked if the police were respecting their human rights, Zaw Htay replied, Yes, yes, I have told them not to do those things. I told them to act according to the law. They guaranteed that they will act only according to the law, said Zaw Htay, who was not more specific. Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, have been in detention since Dec. 12. There have been no details on where they were being held as authorities proceeded with an investigation into whether they had violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The act carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. The United States and the United Nations have described the campaign as ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya people. The Myanmar military has said its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities in Rakhine. The two journalists were arrested on Dec. 12 after they were invited to dine with police officers on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon. The Ministry of Information said last week that they had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media . A number of major governments and political leaders, including the United States, Canada and Britain, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, have called for the journalists release. Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that the detentions appeared to be aimed at stopping independent reporting of the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya. Their secret, incommunicado detention lays bare government efforts to silence media reporting on critical issues, Brad Adams, the group s Asia director, said in a statement. Separately, the U.N. independent investigator into human rights in Myanmar said on Wednesday she had been told by the government that it would not cooperate with her or grant her access to the country for the rest of her tenure. Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur, said she had been due to visit in January to assess human rights, including allegations of abuses against Rohingya in Rakhine state. This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country, she said in a statement. Myanmar government and foreign ministry spokesmen were not immediately available for comment on the criticism from Human Rights Watch and on Lee s status. In Washington, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for the immediate release of the Reuters journalists. This is outrageous, said Senator Ben Cardin, who has introduced with 14 other lawmakers legislation that seeks through targeted sanctions and visa restrictions to hold senior Myanmar military officials accountable for human rights abuses.\ It just brings back the memory of the horrible practices with the repressive military rule. The Myanmar Press Council, some of whose members are government-appointed, told a news conference in Yangon that it would like to mediate in the case of the Reuters journalists. Thiha Saw, the council s secretary, told Reuters that the arrests were not aimed at muzzling the media. I don t agree that this is to silence the voices of the journalists attempting to cover the Rakhine issue independently ... We don t want to generalize things, he said. Critics have characterized the arrests as an attack on press freedom in the former Burma and, although this is not a view widely held in Myanmar, about one-third of the roughly 100 journalists at the news conference were dressed in black as a protest against the detention of the Reuters reporters. Myanmar has seen rapid growth in independent media since censorship imposed under the former junta was lifted in 2012. Rights groups were hopeful there would be further gains in press freedoms after Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi came to power last year amid a transition from full military rule that had propelled her from political prisoner to elected leader. However, advocacy groups say that freedom of speech has eroded since she took office, with many arrests of journalists, restrictions on reporting in Rakhine state and heavy use of state-run media to control the narrative. If the government continues to ratchet up the pressure on the independent press, media freedom in Aung San Suu Kyi s Burma will look a lot more like the media repression during the military junta, Human Rights Watch s Adams said. Myo Nyunt, deputy director for Myanmar s Ministry of Information, told Reuters on Saturday that the case against Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had nothing to do with press freedom, and said journalists have freedom to write and speak. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Full Brexit in Jan. 2021 as EU sets transition deadline;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union wants a transition period after Brexit to end no later than the last day of 2020, according to the European Commission s negotiating directives agreed on Wednesday. That date, coinciding with the end of the EU s seven-year budget period and 21 months after Britain departs the EU, had long been expected as the target end point of the transition. But this was the first official confirmation that it is the goal of the Union s negotiators. British Prime Minister Theresa May had sought a transition lasting around two years. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, speaking at a news conference after the EU executive had agreed the terms, said the 2020 deadline was logical and would avoid complications in the next 2021-2027 EU budget period. The four pages of new directives for Barnier were in line with guidelines issued by EU leaders at a summit on Friday and will form the basis of talks on the transition that he hopes to start next month. He has said in the past he hopes a free trade pact could be ready to take effect in January 2021. The directives spell out that Britain will effectively remain in EU institutions, bound by all their rules including new ones, while not having a say in their making. The EU will also offer Britain a non-voting place at some meetings where decisions may affect specific issues and will set up special arrangements for a UK role in setting annual EU fishing quotas. The directives also spell out more clearly that EU treaties with other countries and international organizations will no longer apply to Britain during the transition period. However, the document adds: Where it is in the interest of the Union, the Union may consider whether and how arrangements can be agreed that would maintain the effects of the agreements as regards the United Kingdom during the transition period. This has been important to Britain since it could mean that it no longer benefits automatically from free trade agreements which the EU has with, say, Canada or South Korea, while it would still have to apply EU trade policy for example collecting EU customs duty at UK ports. Barnier said he understood that Britain was working with other countries to try to retain the advantages of some of the nearly 750 international agreements to which London is currently party as an EU member. Among elements spelled out more in the directives than in the leaders guidelines last week was a repetition of a previously agreed EU position that everything applying to Brexit for Britain would also apply to other British territories. Brussels has said the Spanish government must agree any future arrangements with Britain that affect the British territory of Gibraltar on Spain s southern coast. Asked about his previously expressed view that a future trade deal may offer little automatic access for the City of London s financial services firms to the EU market, Barnier repeated that free access would be unprecedented as far as he was aware. I remind you that I m not aware of any free-trade deal in the past between the European Union and third countries that would have allowed privileged access for financial services, he told a news conference. British negotiators have said Britain s size and proximity give it the leverage to negotiate a more ambitious relationship with the EU than any other state. During the transition, Britain will maintain access to the European single market, Barnier added. Britain will keep all the benefits, but also all the obligations of the single market, the customs union and the common policies, he said, ruling out a la carte terms. Barnier welcomed agreements made earlier this month on issues such as the Irish border, citizens rights and the divorce settlement. We are not at the end of the road, he said. But it is an important stage of this road towards an orderly withdrawal rather than a disorderly one. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: May's Brexit plan passes parliamentary test, more to come;LONDON (Reuters) - Legislation underpinning the government s plan to leave the European Union passed the latest stage in its journey through parliament on Wednesday, but still faces weeks of scrutiny before it becomes law. After eight days of debate, the legislation completed its Committee Stage , where lawmakers debate the bill line by line and try to make changes to the government s proposed wording. Formally known as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the legislation will now face other stages of approval in the lower house of parliament, and must then make its way through a multi-stage process in the upper house. Both chambers must agree on the wording before it can become law. What is the bill and what does it do? The legislation serves two main functions: 1. Repealing the 1972 European Communities Act which made Britain a member of the European Communities, forerunner to the European Union. This effectively ends Britain s EU membership. 2. Transferring the existing body of EU law into British law. This is designed to provide legal certainty about the complex process of leaving. Why is it controversial? The bill has faced criticism from opposition lawmakers, campaign groups and members of May s Conservative Party. Brexit is still divisive in Britain after a referendum in June last year, and many people, including some lawmakers, want to retain as much of the country s current EU membership as possible. Others would like to reverse the vote altogether. The most significant objections so far have focused on several different parts of the bill: 1. The power for the government to amend EU laws as they are brought onto the British statute book. 2. The extent to which parliament will be given a say on the final exit deal. 3. The government s intention to fix March 29, 2019 in law as Exit Day . May runs a minority government, which has a slim 13-seat working majority in the 650-seat parliament thanks to a deal with a small Northern Irish party. Only seven Conservative lawmakers could be required to rebel to defeat the government. What has happened so far? The threat of rebellion has forced the government to make several concessions on its plans, including Wednesday s compromise to allow the date of Brexit to be changed in exceptional circumstances. Ministers also agreed to greater scrutiny in parliament of the process of transposing EU law. May suffered one embarrassing defeat, when 11 Conservatives sided with the opposition to successfully demand stronger guarantees that parliament will have a meaningful vote on the country s final exit agreement. Ministers fought off, or bargained their way out of other disagreements on issues like the powers government will have to change EU laws as they are transposed into British law, and the government s intention not to transfer across the EU s Charter of Fundamental Rights. The bill cleared its first parliamentary hurdle in September when, after two days of debate, lawmakers voted 326 to 290 in favor of the principles of the bill. What happens next? The debate will continue in the lower house of parliament next year at a date which has yet to be set. This so-called Report Stage is a new opportunity to add amendments. Immediately after report stage, the bill is given a Third Reading . It usually lasts an hour and is a general discussion of the bill followed by a vote. No amendments can be made. If approved, the bill will then pass to the upper chamber of parliament, where the Conservatives do not have a majority. The entire process will take months to complete, and there is no target end date. House of Lords: Once the bill passes to the unelected upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords, Lords can put forward their own amendments, each of which will be discussed and decided on in turn. If the lords agree to any amendments, the bill passes back to the House of Commons for its approval. Ping Pong: If the bill passes back to the commons, they debate and vote on the lords amendments. No new amendments can be introduced. In theory the bill can continue passing back and forth between the lords and commons until the final bill is agreed upon. Royal assent: Once the bill has been agreed by both houses of parliament, it is given royal assent, when the queen formally agrees to make the bill into an Act of Parliament. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;May will allow Brexit delay in exceptional circumstances;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she would permit a delay to Britain s departure from the European Union in exceptional circumstances, bowing to criticism from her own party over the government s plan to fix the exit date in law. The decision is a compromise with Conservative lawmakers who last week rebelled in parliament and inflicted an embarrassing defeat on May during a debate on the legislation that will end Britain s EU membership. The legislation, formally titled the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, later won approval to move to the next stage of the parliamentary process, although it still faces weeks of further scrutiny before becoming law. May headed off a second rebellion by agreeing that her government s plan to define the date of Britain s EU exit as March 29, 2019, should be tempered by inserting a proviso allowing that date to be changed if necessary. If that power were to be used, it would be only in extremely exceptional circumstances and for the shortest possible time, May told lawmakers. Parliament will have to approve any new date. Junior Brexit Minister Steve Baker added that he could not envisage the date being brought forward. The passage of the bill to the next stage was overshadowed by the resignation of May s most senior ally in government, Damian Green, at May s request after an internal investigation found he had breached the government s code of conduct. The destabilising resignation adds to the political difficulties May faces as she tries to deliver Brexit against a backdrop of a divided parliament and electorate, and questions about her ability to meet an already tight timetable. She wants to negotiate a transition deal with Brussels by March to reassure businesses and then seal a long-term trade deal by October. Brussels has said a detailed trade deal is likely to take much longer, and that Britain s transition period must end by 2020. In addition, May s government has to undertake the huge legislative task of transferring the existing body of EU law into British law before it leaves in order to provide legal certainty for businesses. ;worldnews;20/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; WATCH: Brand-New Pro-Trump Ad Features So Much A** Kissing It Will Make You Sick;Just when you might have thought we d get a break from watching people kiss Donald Trump s ass and stroke his ego ad nauseam, a pro-Trump group creates an ad that s nothing but people doing even more of those exact things. America First Policies is set to release this ad, called Thank You, President Trump, on Christmas Day and, well, we threw up a little in our mouths trying to watch this.Basically, the spot is nothing but people fawning all over Trump for all the stuff he hasn t actually done. The ad includes a scene with a little girl thanking Trump for bringing back Merry Christmas, which never went away (there are even videos of President Obama saying Merry Christmas himself). A man thanks him for cutting his taxes. And America First says that everyday Americans everywhere are thanking Trump for being such a great and awesome president.The best president.Nobody s ever done what he s done. He s breaking all kinds of records every day.Believe us.Anyway, the word propaganda comes to mind when watching this. That s what it is literal propaganda promoting someone who shouldn t need this kind of promotion anymore. Watch this ad bullshit below:The way the MAGAs are kowtowing to Orange Hitler is both disgusting and frightening. The man has done nothing, and his policies will harm the very same Americans who are thanking him. Unfortunately, it will take an obscene amount of pain before they ll open their eyes and see they ve been duped by a con man with a bad hairdo.And his ongoing need for this kind of adoration is, at best, unbecoming of his office. This ad is vile.Featured image via Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images;News;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House Democrats rally to protect Special Counsel Mueller;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives rallied behind Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday, after recent attempts by Republicans and conservative news outlets to discredit him and his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In a letter sent to Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, 171 of the 193 Democrats in the House said they support Mueller’s probe, and urged Rosenstein to let it continue “unfettered by political influence or threats to his authority.” “We will not stand by and allow Fox News and right-wing Republicans to defy the rule of law and create their own rules to interfere with the legitimate investigation under the Constitution of the United States,” California Democrat Maxine Waters said during a press conference Thursday. “There is an organized effort by Republicans ... to spin a false narrative and conjure up outrageous scenarios to accuse Special Counsel Mueller of being biased,” she added. Rosenstein appointed Mueller as Special Counsel in May, after President Donald Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey for what Trump later said was “this Russia thing.” Critics promptly accused the president of trying to obstruct the probe. Mueller is investigating whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election. Russia has denied meddling and Trump has said there was no collusion. Republican criticism of Mueller, himself a member of their party, has intensified in recent months since he charged four of Trump’s close associates, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Republicans and talk show hosts on Fox News have accused Mueller’s team and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of bias, citing issues including anti-Trump text messages exchanged between two FBI staffers who previously worked on Mueller’s team. House Republicans have launched their own investigation into the FBI’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails, and questioned whether she received favorable treatment after no charges were brought. Recently, rumors have flown around Washington that Trump may be seeking to have Mueller fired. Trump’s lawyers have said that is not true. Rosenstein, also a Republican, oversees Mueller’s team. He can only fire Mueller for good cause, and he told Congress last week he sees no legitimate basis for doing so. “This investigation must continue unimpeded,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler said Thursday. Nadler said Republicans were trying to “provide cover for the President as the walls close in on him.” ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Second U.S. judge blocks Trump administration birth control rules;SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A second U.S. judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing new rules that undermine an Obamacare requirement for employers to provide insurance that covers women’s birth control. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. in Oakland, California, said the federal government likely did not follow proper administrative procedures in promulgating the new rules, and put them on hold while a lawsuit challenging their legality proceeds. The decision followed a similar ruling from a federal judge in Philadelphia last Friday that blocked the administration from enforcing rules it announced in October allowing businesses or nonprofits to obtain exemptions on moral or religious grounds. Gilliam ruled on a lawsuit pursued by Democratic attorneys general in California, Delaware, Maryland, New York and Virginia. He said that a preliminary injunction was necessary given the “dire public health and fiscal consequences” that could result as a result of the administration adopting the rules without the input of interested parties. “If the Court ultimately finds in favor of Plaintiffs on the merits, any harm caused in the interim by rescinded contraceptive coverage would not be susceptible to remedy,” he wrote. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement that, given last week’s decision in Pennsylvania, “today’s ruling amounts to a one-two punch against the Trump administration’s unlawful overreach.” The U.S. Justice Department defended the rules in court. Lauren Ehrsam, a department spokeswoman, said the agency disagreed with the ruling and was evaluating its next steps. “This administration is committed to defending the religious liberty of all Americans and we look forward to doing so in court,” Ehrsam said in a statement. The lawsuit is among several that Democratic state attorneys general filed after the Republican Trump administration revealed the new rules on Oct. 6, which targeted the contraceptive mandate implemented as part of 2010’s Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. The rules will let businesses or nonprofits lodge religious or moral objections to obtain an exemption from the law’s mandate that employers provide contraceptive coverage in health insurance with no co-payment. Conservative Christian activists and congressional Republicans praised the move, while reproductive rights advocates and Democrats criticized it. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Papa John’s Founder Retires, Figures Out Racism Is Bad For Business;A centerpiece of Donald Trump s campaign, and now his presidency, has been his white supremacist ways. That is why so many of the public feuds he gets into involve people of color. One of his favorite targets, is, of course, the players in the National Football League who dare to exercise their First Amendment rights by kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racist police brutality. Well, there is one person who has figured out that racism is bad for business, even if it did get the orange overlord elected: The founder of the pizza chain Papa John s.This is a man who has never been on the right side of history on any number of issues, and plus his pizza sucks. But, when he decided to complain about the players protesting, his sales really dropped. Turns out racism doesn t pay, and we all know that corporations are all about the bottom line. Therefore, Papa John Schnatter will no longer be CEO of the hack pizza chain.BREAKING: Papa John's founder John Schnatter to step down as CEO;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senators seek to stop expansion of airport facial scans;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators on Thursday urged federal authorities to halt the planned expansion of a $1 billion airport facial scanning program, saying the technology used to identify travelers on some flights departing from nine U.S. airports for international destinations may not be not accurate enough and raises privacy concerns. Congress has approved the use of the program for non-U.S. citizens, but never expressly authorized its use for Americans. The Department of Homeland Security has said the system is needed to prevent travelers from leaving the country using someone else’s identity and to prevent visitors to the United States from overstaying their visas. Senators Mike Lee, a Republican, and Edward Markey, a Democrat, in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, raised concerns that too many travelers would be inconvenienced by faulty scan results and questioned why Americans are being subjected to the screens, known as biometric exit detection technology. In the letter, they raised objections to expanding the program beyond the nine airports where it is already in use. “We request that DHS stop the expansion of this program and provide Congress with its explicit statutory authority to use and expand a biometric exit program on U.S. citizens,” the senators wrote. “If there is no specific authorization, then we request an explanation for why DHS believes it has the authority to proceed” They cited a report released Thursday by Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Privacy & Technology that found DHS is conducting the scans “without basic legal and technical safeguards - or any meaningful justification of its billion-dollar cost.” Congress in 2016 authorized spending up to $1 billion over 10 years on the facial scans. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), on its website, says the program collects “facial images from all travelers from the United States” on a flight and uses the images to verify identities. It says the images are stored for no more than two weeks and says that “CBP is dedicated to protecting the privacy of all travelers.” The government said Thursday that U.S. citizens may opt out of the facial screening and instead have a separate review of their ID documents. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said the government is working to establish the biometric exit program “in a way that’s most efficient and secure for the traveler and that is least disruptive for the travel industry.” Airports using the system include Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York’s John F. Kennedy, Washington Dulles, both Houston airports, Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta. The senators want DHS to provide data that the program will not unduly burden travelers. DHS said previously its goal is a 96 percent “true accept rate,” meaning the technology can positively identify 96 percent of the faces it scans. The senators, however, said this meant “there would still be a false denial for one in 25 travelers. Further there is evidence that certain face scans exhibit different error rate depending on the race or gender of the person being scanned.” DHS has said travelers who cannot be verified are escorted to another area where Customs and Border Patrol uses other methods to verify their identity. The Georgetown Law report also noted that DHS has not established any rules governing the program. “It’s as if DHS has hired a billion-dollar bouncer to check IDs but never checked how good he is at spotting a fake,” said Laura Moy, deputy director of the center and co-author of the report. “They also don’t know if he’s biased against certain groups of people.” The senators said DHS also needed safeguards to ensure facial data is not shared with other U.S. agencies. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. launches effort to reduce reliance on imports or critical minerals;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday launched an effort to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign supplies of critical minerals used in smartphones, computers and military equipment, which he said poses a national security and economic risk. Under a directive from President Donald Trump, Zinke will work with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to publish in 60 days a list of non-fuel minerals that are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and necessary for manufacturing and will develop a strategy to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers. The policy would aim to identify new domestic sources of critical minerals;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Short-term government funding, disaster aid bills advance in House;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday took a step toward averting a partial government shutdown at the end of this week, approving rules to debate a bill that would fund federal agencies through Jan. 19. Also cleared for debate was an $81 billion disaster aid bill to help U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands recover from a series of recent natural disasters. House votes on both bills were expected later on Thursday. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spy chiefs pressure Congress to renew expiring surveillance law;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leaders of the U.S. intelligence community on Thursday pressed Congress to renew the National Security Agency’s expiring surveillance law, warning in a rare public statement that national security may be endangered if lawmakers let it lapse. The message from the intelligence chiefs sought to apply pressure on lawmakers who appeared to abandon an effort this week to pass legislation that would have reauthorized for several years the NSA’s warrantless internet spying program, which is due to expire on Dec. 31. That plan cratered late on Wednesday amid objections from a sizable coalition of Republicans and Democrats who want to have more privacy safeguards in the program, which chiefly targets foreigners but also collects communications from an unknown number of Americans. Instead, House Republicans unveiled a stopgap funding measure on Thursday that includes an extension of the surveillance law until Jan. 19. The law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is considered by U.S. intelligence agencies to be vital to national security. “There is no substitute for Section 702,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the directors the NSA, FBI and CIA wrote in the joint statement, adding that failure to renew the authority would make it easier for foreign adversaries to “plan attacks against our citizens and allies without detection.” Section 702 allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. But the program incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas. Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some lawmakers in both parties want to eliminate or partially restrict the U.S. government’s ability to review data of Americans collected under Section 702 without first obtaining a warrant. The intelligence chiefs also criticized the current plan to temporarily extend the program, saying short-term extensions “fail to provide certainty and will create needless and wasteful operational complications.” U.S. officials recently acknowledged the end-year deadline may not matter much because of a belief the program can lawfully continue through April due to the way it is annually certified. In their statement, however, the intelligence chiefs warned that the surveillance program would need to begin “winding down” well in advance of the April date. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; WATCH: Paul Ryan Just Told Us He Doesn’t Care About Struggling Families Living In Blue States;Republicans are working overtime trying to sell their scam of a tax bill to the public as something that directly targets middle-class and working-class families with financial relief. Nothing could be further from the truth, and they re getting hammered on that repeatedly. Speaking on CNBC, Paul Ryan was going full throttle, trying to convince us that the paltry savings we re getting is actually wait for it big money.But he didn t just go with the usual talking points. With a smug look that only someone who grew up in a wealthy family can muster when talking about that which he does not know, Ryan claimed that the $2,059 more per year that families living paycheck-to-paycheck will see is extremely significant. Then he decided he had to amend that to say such savings might be nothing to a family earning $600,000 per year (true), or for people living in New York or California (false).Those are the same two states that Trump s loyal subjects insist on stripping from the 2016 vote totals to claim that Trump actually won the popular vote. Watch Ryan completely dismiss all the struggling families living in blue states below:If you re living paycheck-to-paycheck which is more than half of the people in this country and you got #2059more from a tax cut next year, that s not nothing. pic.twitter.com/8TKtrMqRa1 Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) December 21, 2017Someone needs to reach through their computer or television and wipe that smugness off his face. It is the height of arrogance and insult to imply that there are no struggling families in either of those two states.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images;News;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump commutes fraud sentence of kosher meatpacker;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, in a first exercise of his power to commute criminal sentences, cut short the 27-year prison term of a kosher meatpacking executive who was convicted eight years ago of bank fraud, the White House said on Wednesday. The commutation granted to Sholom Rubashkin, 57, marked only the second time that Trump has invoked his clemency authority as president, following the blanket pardon he granted earlier this year to Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona. Unlike the case of Arpaio, whom a judge had found guilty of contempt in a case involving racial profiling, Trump’s latest action leaves Rubashkin’s conviction intact, as well as terms of his supervised release from federal prison and his obligation to make restitution. Rubashkin was convicted in 2009 of 86 counts of financial fraud that came to light after a government raid on a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, where hundreds of undocumented immigrant workers were arrested. Rubashkin, a father of 10, was the chief executive overseeing the slaughterhouse and headquarters for a family business that was then the largest kosher meat-processing company in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 refused to hear an appeal contesting Rubashkin’s sentence, which his lawyers argued was excessive for a first-time, non-violent offender. His lawyers also contended, to no avail, that he was entitled to a new trial based on evidence of alleged judicial misconduct. The case sparked an outcry from members of the legal and Orthodox Jewish communities who rallied to Rubashkin’s defense. The White House statement cited letters of support for review of Rubashkin’s case from more than 30 members of Congress of both parties, including House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and veteran Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. Trump also pointed to bipartisan expressions of support for review of the case from over 100 former high-ranking U.S. Justice Department officials, prosecutors, judges and legal scholars. The White House further noted criticism of Rubashkin’s sentencing as unusually harsh in comparison to penalties imposed on others for similar white-collar crimes. Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was originally sentenced to 24 years in prison, but a federal judge later shortened his term of 14 years. The former CEO of Tyco International Ltd, L. Dennis Kozlowski, was sentenced to 8-1/3 to 25 years in prison and was paroled after serving eight. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. responds in court fight over illegal Indonesian immigrants;BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. immigration officials sought to block a federal judge’s order delaying efforts to deport 51 Indonesians living illegally in New Hampshire, saying they have not shown they would face harm if repatriated, court documents on Wednesday showed. The U.S. government’s motion in federal court in Boston was in response to a judge’s order last month that found members of the group should be given time to make a case that changed conditions in the southeast Asian nation would make it dangerous for them to return. “Even if they are removed, petitioners’ generalized evidence of Indonesia’s conditions do not prove that persecution or torture is immediate or likely for each petitioner,” the motion said. It said the court lacked jurisdiction over their claims, and the immigrants did not state any plausible claims. The group of ethnic Chinese Christians fled the world’s largest Muslim-majority country following violence that erupted 20 years ago and have been living openly for years in New England under an informal deal reached with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Beginning in August, members of the group who showed up for ICE check-ins were told to prepare to leave the country, in keeping with U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration. Members of the group have said in interviews with Reuters that they entered the country on tourist visas but overstayed them and failed to seek asylum on time. Several said they fear they would face persecution or violence for their Christian faith and Chinese ethnicity if they were returned to Indonesia. Federal law gives authority over immigration matters to the executive branch, not the courts, and ICE contends that it has always had authority to deport members of the group. Chief U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston last month found she had authority to ensure the Indonesians have a chance to argue that conditions in their home country had deteriorated significantly enough to reopen their cases for trying to stay in the United States. The Indonesians are part of an ethnic community of about 2,000 people clustered around the city of Dover, New Hampshire. Their cause has drawn the support of the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, including U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and Republican Governor Chris Sununu. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawmakers seek temporarily extension to internet spying program;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are working to build support to temporarily extend the National Security Agency’s expiring internet surveillance program by tucking it into a stop-gap funding measure, lawmakers said. The month-long extension of the surveillance law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, would punt a contentious national security issue into the new year in an attempt to buy lawmakers more time to hash out differences over various proposed privacy reforms. Lawmakers leaving a Republican conference meeting on Wednesday evening said it was not clear whether the stop-gap bill had enough support to avert a partial government shutdown on Saturday, or whether the possible addition of the Section 702 extension would impact its chances for passage. Absent congressional action the law, which allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States, will expire on Dec. 31. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey seizes largest ever haul of ancient statues and coins;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police said on Thursday they had rescued thousands of artefacts dating back to Anatolian, Greek and Egyptian civilizations in the largest operation to combat smuggling of ancient treasures in the country s history. Among the items recovered were a golden queen s crown with an inscription of the Hellenistic god, Helios, a bust dedicated to Alexander the Great s conquest of India and a statue of a goddess dating back to the Hittite era 3,000 years ago. The 26,456 objects recovered also included Egyptian-origin statues and Phoenician-type teardrop vials. The retrieved artefacts are... more valuable than the artefacts in the inventory of an average size museum, Istanbul police said in a statement. For three months the investigation, dubbed Operation Zeus , tracked the smuggling ring, which aimed to take the artefacts abroad and sell them to museums and collectors for millions of dollars, it said. Six people involved in the ring were detained on Dec. 12 in Turkey s northwestern province of Duzce as they attempted to sell off some of their haul. Seven more were detained in four different provinces. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Bad News For Trump — Mitch McConnell Says No To Repealing Obamacare In 2018;Republicans have had seven years to come up with a viable replacement for Obamacare but they failed miserably. After taking a victory lap for gifting the wealthy with a tax break on Wednesday, Donald Trump looked at the cameras and said, We have essentially repealed Obamacare and we will come up with something that will be much better. Obamacare has been repealed in this bill, he added. Well, like most things Trump says, that s just not true. But, if the former reality show star could have done that in order to eradicate former President Obama s signature legislation, he would have and without offering an alternative.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told NPR that This has not been a very bipartisan year. I hope in the new year, we re going to pivot here and become more cooperative. An Obamacare repeal in 2018 is DOA. Well, we obviously were unable to completely repeal and replace with a 52-48 Senate, the Kentucky Republican said. We ll have to take a look at what that looks like with a 51-49 Senate. But I think we ll probably move on to other issues. NPR reports:McConnell hopes to focus instead on stabilizing the insurance marketplaces to keep premiums from skyrocketing in the early months of 2018, a promise he made to moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine to get her support for the tax bill.On top of that McConnell broke with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on the approach to paring back spending on programs like Medicaid and food stamps. McConnell told NPR he is not interested in using Senate budget rules to allow Republicans to cut entitlements without consultation with Democrats. I think entitlement changes, to be sustained, almost always have to be bipartisan, McConnell said. The House may have a different agenda. If our Democratic friends in the Senate want to join us to tackle any kind of entitlement reform. I d be happy to take a look at it. This is coming from Mitch McConnell. He knows Donald Trump is destroying the GOP. It doesn t matter, Sen. McConnell. We still recall him saying that his number one priority is making sure president Obama s a one-term president. Well, we re hoping that Trump doesn t last a full term. Funny how that works.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images;News;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's ANC decides on Israel embassy downgrade ahead of Jerusalem vote;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s ruling ANC decided to downgrade its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office over a U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, ahead of a U.N. vote on Thursday on a resolution urging Washington to drop the move. The decision was taken at the end of a five-day African National Congress conference, in which Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as its new leader and South Africa s likely next president after 2019 elections, following Jacob Zuma. Delegates endorsed the proposal that we must give practical support to the oppressed people of Palestine and resolved on an immediate and unconditional downgrade of the SA (South Africa) Embassy in Israel to a Liaison Office, new ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule said on Thursday. There was no immediate comment from Israel s Foreign Ministry. South Africa s ministry for international relations and cooperation said on its website that it was deeply concerned about Trump s move as it would undermine Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, which has been frozen since 2014. The South African Board of Jewish Deputies and the South African Zionist Federation jointly condemned the ANC s decision. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim states to vote on the draft resolution, which Washington vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process has been frozen for over three years. Israel deems Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. The ANC s move comes at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pursuing closer ties with other African countries. Last month, on a visit to Kenya, Netanyahu announced that Israel was opening a new embassy in nearby Rwanda as part of the expanding Israeli presence in Africa and the deepening of cooperation between Israel and African countries . Israel is seeking to expel thousands of African migrants to Rwanda. On Thursday, Netanyahu described the United Nations as a house of lies on Thursday and said Israel totally rejects this vote, even before approval . Trump upended decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington s Western allies. When under white-minority rule, South Africa was one of Israel s few allies on the continent. But after the 1994 demise of apartheid, relations cooled as the black-majority ANC took over. The ANC has condemned Israeli occupation of territories where Palestinians seek statehood, while maintaining full diplomatic and trade relations with Israel. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected cholera cases in Yemen hit one million: ICRC;DUBAI/GENEVA (Reuters) - Yemen s cholera epidemic has reached one million suspected cases, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday, with war leaving more than 80 percent of the population short of food, fuel, clean water and access to healthcare. Yemen, one of the Arab world s poorest countries, is embroiled in a proxy war between the Houthi armed movement, allied with Iran, and a U.S.-backed military coalition headed by Saudi Arabia. The United Nations says Yemen is suffering the world s worst humanitarian crisis, and eight million people are on the brink of famine. The cholera figure is almost certainly exaggerated, but that does not diminish the scale and complexity of the humanitarian crisis, said Marc Poncin, Yemen emergency coordinator for aid agency M decins Sans Fronti res. Cholera flared up in April and spread rapidly, killing 2,227 people. The death rate has fallen dramatically, and without laboratory confirmation, recent cases are probably diarrhea, Poncin said. A new wave of cholera is expected in March or April. It s probably unavoidable. We need to be ready to face another big epidemic, said Poncin, adding that cholera may become a long-term burden as it has in Haiti. The places where the war is active are the ones most at risk for increase of disease. The latest emergency is diphtheria, a disease not seen in Yemen for 25 years, which has affected 312 people and killed 35. It has not spread explosively, as cholera did, but diphtheria outbreaks can affect many thousands, and there is a global shortage of diphtheria anti-toxin. Yemen has enough for 200-500 patients, Poncin said. An urgent diphtheria vaccination campaign early in 2018 will complicate the WHO s hope of doing mass cholera vaccination at the same time, especially given the problems with security and accessing remote areas, Poncin said. The Houthis, who control much of the country, are also suspicious of vaccination drives, he added. Yemen s troubles have been aggravated by the Saudi-led coalition s blockade of its ports, which has caused a fuel shortage and a spike in food prices. The health system has virtually collapsed, with health workers unpaid for a year, although the WHO gives incentive payments for cholera work. The ports were closed in retaliation for a missile fired from Yemen by the Houthis. On Wednesday, despite a fresh missile attack on Riyadh, Saudi Arabia said it would allow the Houthi-controled port of Hodeidah, vital for aid, to stay open for a month. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cameroonian journalist to be freed after terrorism charges dropped;YAOUNDE (Reuters) - A Cameroonian journalist jailed for over two years for contact with Islamist militant group Boko Haram is set to be freed after a court on Thursday shortened his sentence, his lawyer said. Radio France Internationale reporter Ahmed Abba was arrested in July 2015 and sentenced in April this year to 10 years on terrorism charges that rights groups denounced as a sham. Authorities said they found evidence on Abba s computer of attacks planned by Boko Haram, whose Islamist insurgency in Nigeria, Cameroon and neighboring countries has cost the lives of at least 20,000 people since 2009. Abba has denied knowledge of attacks and protested his innocence. The sentence was reduced to two years on Thursday when an appeals court dropped the terrorism charges but upheld less serious charges of non-denunciation of terrorism. Technically, Mr. Ahmed can be outside today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, given that he has already been in jail for over two years, his lawyer Charles Tchoungang told Reuters. Abba s forthcoming release comes amid a crackdown on dissent by President Paul Biya who is seeking to extend his 35-year rule in elections next year. The government is confronting a growing separatist insurgency in the country s Anglophone regions as well as the threat from Boko Haram. Patrice Nganang, a prize-winning Cameroonian author who lives in New York, was arrested during a visit to Cameroon this month for writing a Facebook post critical of Biya. Nganang is being held in jail until court proceedings next month. Rights Groups and RFI welcomed Thursday s ruling. This ruling is a victory for Ahmed Abba who has been detained for more than two years simply for doing his job as a journalist, said Amnesty International researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. war crimes court that prosecuted Milosevic closes doors;THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The U.N. war crimes court that prosecuted atrocities committed during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and put former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic on trial, closed its doors on Thursday after two decades. Today it s common for the U.N. Security Council to call for perpetrators of the worst crimes be held responsible. .... Accountability has taken root in our collective conscience, said U.N. Secretary General Ant nio Guterres of the court s legacy at a ceremony in The Hague. When the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was set up in 1993, the Balkan wars were still raging and few thought it stood much chance of success. But it went on through international co-operation to capture and try every one of the 161 suspects it indicted who didn t die first. It was the first serious attempt to hold war criminals responsible for their actions since the Nuremberg trials after World War Two. Now the idea that international courts or special tribunals will be set up to try war crimes after conflicts has become commonplace. The ICTY had begun to fade from popular consciousness outside of the Balkans until the conviction last month of Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic of genocide for the massacre of thousands of unarmed men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995. Days later, Bosnian Croat general Slobodan Praljak committed suicide in the courtroom by drinking a cyanide potion moments after his conviction and 20-year sentence were upheld. A low came in 2006 when Milosevic, whose trial had dragged on for years, died of a heart attack in his cell in 2006 before a verdict was reached in his case. Victims attended the closing ceremony, notably Munira Subasic, representing the Mothers of Srebrenica group who lobbied for justice for the more than 8,000 boys and men who were massacred by Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995. Prominent figures included Bosnian Serb military leader Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years, and Ratko Mladic, convicted last month and sentenced to life. Both are appealing their convictions. The court s architects hoped that establishing what happened during the war and punishing its worst offenders would help reconcile Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. However, Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said while the court brought justice for some, it had not brought the communities together. Throughout the region war criminals are seen as heroes and victims are ignored , he said. At the bittersweet closing ceremony, Alfons Orie, the presiding judge in Mladic s case, performed part of Handel s oratio Solomon , singing the part of Solomon. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pope says foes make reforming Vatican as hard as cleaning Sphinx with toothbrush;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis issued a stinging new critique of the Vatican s top administration on Thursday, saying traitors stood in the way of his reforms and made any change as hard as cleaning Egypt s Sphinx with a toothbrush . For the fourth year running, Francis used his annual Christmas greetings to the Roman Catholic Church s central bureaucracy, or Curia, to lecture the assembled cardinals, bishops and other department heads on the need for change. Reforming Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx of Egypt with a toothbrush, he said, quoting a 19th-century Belgian churchman. The phrase did not evoke much laughter when the pope read it in the frescoed Clementina Hall of the Vatican s Apostolic Palace. Since his election as the first Latin American pope in 2013, Francis has been trying to reform the Italian-dominated Curia to bring the Church s hierarchy closer to its members, to enact financial reforms and guide it out of scandals that marked the pontificate of his predecessor, former Pope Benedict. But he has encountered resistance, particularly as some departments have been closed, merged or streamlined. Francis said some in the bureaucracy - the nerve center of the 1.2-billion-member Church and whose members are entrusted with carrying out the pope s decisions - were part of cliques and plots . Francis called this unbalanced and degenerate and a cancer that leads to a self-referential attitude . In his address on Thursday, he spoke of those traitors of trust who had been entrusted with carrying out reforms but let themselves be corrupted by ambition and vainglory. When they are quietly let go, he said, they erroneously declare themselves to be martyrs of the system ... instead of reciting a mea culpa (Latin for my fault ). Francis did not cite any specific examples. Last June the Vatican s first auditor general resigned suddenly. He later said he was forced to step down because he had discovered irregularities but the Vatican said he had been spying on his superiors. Earlier this month, the Vatican bank s deputy director was fired under circumstances that have not been explained. In July, in a major shake-up of the Vatican administration, Francis replaced Catholicism s top theologian, a conservative German cardinal who has been at odds with the pontiff s vision of a more inclusive Church. Francis said the overwhelming majority of Curia members were faithful, competent and some saintly. Later, in a separate meeting with lay Vatican employees and their families, Francis asked forgiveness for the failings of some Church officials. He spoke hours before the funeral of Cardinal Bernard Law, the ex-Archbishop of Boston who resigned in disgrace after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests and whose name became a byword for scandal in the Catholic Church. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish President calls UAE minister impertinent in Ottoman looting row;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan described the United Arab Emirates foreign minister as impertinent and spoiled by money on Thursday after he retweeted accusations that Ottoman forces looted the holy city of Medina during World War One. Without naming him, Erdogan said UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan - who shared a tweet accusing Ottoman troops led by Fakhreddin Pasha of stealing money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916 - was ignorant. Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has, Erdogan told an awards ceremony at his Ankara palace. When my ancestors were defending Medina, you impudent (man), where were yours? First, you have to give account for this, he added. The United Arab Emirates, a close U.S. ally, sees Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling party as a friend of Islamist forces the UAE opposes across the Arab world. Relations were further strained by Ankara s support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf emirate in June. Two months later, Sheikh Abdullah criticized what he called Turkey and Iran s colonial actions in Syria, though Turkey and the UAE have both opposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Medina, now part of Saudi Arabia, was under Ottoman rule until the empire s collapse at the end of World War One. On Wednesday, Erdogan said Fakhreddin Pasha, who led the Ottoman forces, had not stolen from Medina or its people but strived to protect the city - where the Prophet Muhammad was buried - and its occupants during a time of war. Believe me, this man who insulted us, who disrespected us, wouldn t even know what the holy relics are. They are ignorant like this, Erdogan said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. denies arrested Reuters reporters in Myanmar had given it information;YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters reporters arrested in Myanmar had not passed any information to the United Nations, the world body said, rejecting a report published in domestic media which suggested that could be the reason for their detention. A report published online by the Irrawaddy magazine on Tuesday had cited an unnamed source who has close ties with military intelligence as saying that the two men had passed photographs obtained during their reporting on violence in the western state of Rakhine to the U.N. Asked about the report, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday: We can confirm that Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo do not work for the United Nations and have not contacted the United Nations regarding the situation in Rakhine State. Reuters also denied that Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, who have been in detention since Dec. 12, had worked with the U.N. or any other organization. We reject the assertion that Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were working with any organization other than Reuters, said a spokeswoman for the news agency, when asked about the Irrawaddy report. They were engaged only in independent, unbiased reporting consistent with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. A government spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Myanmar authorities have said the two journalists are being investigated over whether they violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The act carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of the crisis in Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. A number of governments and human rights and journalist groups have criticized Myanmar s authorities for holding the pair incommunicado since their arrest, with no access to a lawyer, colleagues and family members. A senior government spokesman said on Wednesday that the pair were in good health and had been well treated. The authorities have previously said that the arrest of the two men did not represent an attack on press freedom. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UAE diplomat summoned by Turkish ministry over Ottoman tweet;ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish foreign ministry official said on Thursday the United Arab Emirates charge d affaires was summoned to the ministry over comments about an Ottoman commander retweeted by the UAE foreign minister. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan retweeted on Saturday accusations that Ottoman forces stole goods from the holy city of Medina during World War One, saying those people were Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s ancestors. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N.'s de Mistura: Next Syria peace talks in Geneva in January;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday he planned to organize a next round of Syrian peace talks in Geneva in the second half of January. De Mistura was speaking in Moscow at a news conference after holding talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. De Mistura told Lavrov that the last round of peace talks had gone badly. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine MPs vote to withdraw law to spur creation of anti-corruption court;KIEV (Reuters) - The Ukrainian parliament voted on Thursday to withdraw a law on the creation of an anti-corruption court, paving the way for the submission of a new law more in line with demands from backers, including the International Monetary Fund. Slow progress establishing an independent court to deal with corruption cases has been one of the main obstacles to the disbursement of loans under a $17.5 billion aid-for-reforms program from the Fund. President Petro Poroshenko has promised to submit a draft law to set up such a court, but first parliament needed to vote to withdraw a similar bill that did not meet recommendations by a leading European rights watchdog. The motion was backed by 235 lawmakers, slightly more than the 226 required to pass. A government source told Reuters the president would submit the new law to parliament by the end of this week. The IMF and Ukraine s other foreign backers have repeatedly called for Ukraine to improve efforts to root out graft. They see an anti-corruption court as an essential tool for eliminating the power of vested interests. MP Mustafa Nayyem criticized the president for the delays. It took the presidential administration a whole year to develop this document, he said in a post on Facebook. They (the authorities) tried to convince the world that we have no use for it (a court). As a result of public accusations from foreign partners and the noise of street protests, they ve backed down, he said. Earlier in December, Poroshenko emphasized his commitment to reform, responding to accusations that the Ukrainian authorities were deliberately sabotaging the anti-corruption fight. Establishing the court, sticking to gas price commitments and implementing sustainable pension reform are the key conditions Ukraine must meet to qualify for the next loan tranche of around $2 billion from the IMF. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France tells eastern Libyan military commander to respect U.N. talks;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - France told eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar he needed to respect the U.N. peace process to stabilize the oil producer, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday. I said there is no alternative (to the U.N. plan) for you, Le Drian told reporters after meeting Haftar in Benghazi. You need to put yourself at the service of your country. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Bundy Case Ruled a Mistrial – Will Federal Case Soon Crumble?;Mark Anderson 21st Century WireThe Greek philosopher Plato was credited with saying, Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens. Well, since longtime Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons, and his other compatriots have demonstrated they possess a strong sense of principles and justice, perhaps a little justice in the life of the American state is possible which is no small thing in an age of nearly universal tyranny and injustice.This welcome ray of light became apparent in Las Vegas on Dec. 20 when U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the current high-profile proceedings involving Cliven, his sons Ryan and Ammon, and Ryan Payne.This prompted members of the Bundy family and dozens of their supporters to leave the courthouse on that Tuesday in a state of elation, even with the presence of protesters who, holding signs that read, Keep your Bundy hands off public lands, appeared to be paid agitators for billionaire leftist revolutionary George Soros, as one protestor basically admitted.Back in the spring of 2014, the above-named four defendants who ve become emblematic of the plight of Western ranchers resisting heavy-handed federal land controls were accompanied by other Bundy siblings, and by scores of supporters from across the nation, all of whom gathered near Cliven s ranch in Clark County, in southern Nevada, to exercise their First and Second Amendment rights.On that basis, these brave souls, some of whom were armed in an open-carry state, protested the actions of well-armed Bureau of Land Management agents, FBI agents (including SWAT units) and contractors, when these officials showed up, set up shop, and finally moved to impound Cliven s cattle over flimsy allegations of unpaid grazing fees on public lands. The impoundment attempt, on April 12, 2014, was unsuccessful, however.But while the government retreated that day after a lengthy and often tense standoff, a 16-count federal indictment was eventually handed down. Cliven, Ammon and the two Ryans were among nearly 20 initially indicted in this now-legendary federal case, which hasn t gone particularly well for prosecutors ever since the first of several planned trials started in February of 2017.Thus, the government, despite spending millions of dollars, has seen its case steadily deflate to the point where, as of now, the only things that remain, according to a legal observer, are for Judge Navarro to receive briefs from the prosecution and the defense by 5 p.m. Dec. 29 (when a hearing may take place). Those briefs will consist of arguments to enable the judge to decide whether or not to fully dismiss the case.The mistrial happened around 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time Dec. 20, as Navarro told the jury to go home . . . it s over, recounted Roger Roots, a legal expert and author who has observed virtually every trial proceeding firsthand.He said that after Judge Navarro reviews the briefs, an open hearing will be convened at 9 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to the court schedule as of this writing. If she rules for dismissal Jan. 8 without prejudice, the indictment remains in force and federal prosecutors technically could reset the trial of Cliven and the three others, reportedly on or around Feb. 26. But if she rules for dismissal with prejudice, then the indictment is dissolved, according to Roots.Roots said a dissolved indictment would mean the government would have to go to the trouble and expense of convening a new grand jury in order to seek a new indictment which would be double jeopardy and therefore a probable constitutional violation.And while Roots said the government conceivably could appeal the mistrial ruling to the Ninth Circuit, at this point he does not believe the government would jump through all the necessary hoops for a new indictment.Notably, what helped make the mistrial a reality was Navarro s findings (reached during hearings on exculpatory evidence that the government has been withholding) that the prosecution had committed several Brady v Maryland violations including not disclosing to the defense the existence of surveillance cameras, including those trained at the Bundy homestead.Also included is not disclosing the fact that concealed snipers were stationed around the area at the time of the 2014 standoff;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. tax bill may face lawsuits with long odds but political payoffs;(Reuters) - Democratic-leaning states may take legal action to challenge the cap on deductions of state and local taxes under the sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code, and even though such lawsuits would face long odds they could help galvanize Democrats for next year’s mid-term election. The U.S. tax bill, passed by Republicans in Congress on Wednesday, limits deductions of state and local income and property taxes, known as SALT, to $10,000. The provision hits hardest Democratic-leaning states with high incomes, high property values and high taxes, like New York, New Jersey and California. Law professors said legal challenges would likely rest on arguing that the provision interferes with the protection of states’ rights under the U.S. Constitution. Some political strategists see a win for Democrats regardless of how courts ultimately rule, saying that lawsuits could be used to keep the issue front and center for voters already largely disenchanted with the Republican party. “It’s a no-brainer for them to do this,” said Democratic political consultant Phil Singer. “Failing to aggressively pursue a remedy would be political malpractice.” New Jersey Governor-elect Phil Murphy said during an appearance on CNBC on Wednesday that “everything is on the table” for New Jersey to oppose the bill, including challenging its “legality and constitutionality.” The governors of California and New York, Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo, have both previously said they were exploring legal challenges to SALT deduction limits. Their offices did not return requests for comment on Wednesday. Since President Donald Trump took office, blue states have aggressively used the courts to attempt to block the president’s agenda, suing over his proposed travel ban, environmental policies and other measures. William O’Reilly, a conservative political consultant in New York, said the SALT deduction issue would likely add to Republicans’ “suburbia problem” among college-educated voters ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. “They already had one because of this president’s style,” O’Reilly said. Darien Shanske, a tax law professor at the University of California Davis School of Law, said the governors would probably argue that restricting the SALT deduction, which dates back to the introduction of the federal income tax in 1862, violates the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment that protects states’ rights. Shanske and other tax experts said the federalism argument would need to overcome the U.S. Supreme Court’s historically broad interpretations of Congress’ 16th Amendment power to impose taxes. “As a general matter, nothing prevents the federal government from changing the SALT deduction,” said David Gamage, a professor of tax law at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. In a frequently cited 1934 decision, the Supreme Court called tax deductions a “legislative grace” rather than a right, and said Congress has broad leeway to abolish them. The court reiterated this view in a 1988 decision allowing Congress to remove a federal tax exemption for interest on some state and local bonds. Kirk Stark, a professor of tax law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said there is a slight possibility that a federalism argument against limiting the SALT deduction could gain traction. “Courts create new law all the time,” he said, noting that decisions on matters this sweeping tend to become political. But some legal experts noted that the state’s rights argument is more typically a conservative position. Using it to challenge the SALT provision could be a move that Democratic governors come to regret in the future, said Daniel Hemel, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. “The progressive agenda depends on the federal government being able to raise revenue and the Supreme Court not getting in the way of that,” Hemel said. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. mediator de Mistura to attend Syria talks on Friday: report;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura will arrive in Kazakhstan s capital on Friday to take part in Syria peace talks, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, according to Russia s state news agency RIA. De Mistura will fly to Astana after talks in Moscow on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kazakhstan is hosting negotiations that aim to end the Syria crisis. Discussions in the past few months have focused on establishing de-escalation zones in Syria. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British PM May says Russia trying to weaponize information;WARSAW (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday that Britain and Poland are concerned about Russian attempts to weaponise information. We have agreed today to bolster our cooperation to counter Russian disinformation in the region .... we are both deeply concerned by Russia s attempts to weaponise information, she told reporters during a visit to Poland. The Kremlin is seeking to undermine the international rules-based system and it will not succeed. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia may widen designation for media outlets it deems 'foreign agents': Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia may decide to designate any media as foreign agents if they are financed by a foreign state or citizen, or by a Russian organization that gets foreign financing, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday. Interfax cited a draft regulation from the justice ministry. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last month that allowed the authorities to designate foreign media outlets as foreign agents in response to what Moscow said was unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. So far, it has been exclusively used to label media sponsored by the U.S. authorities as foreign agents, but the new regulation would appear to go further. Under the existing law media branded foreign agents must provide any news they provide to Russians as the work of foreign agents and disclose their funding sources. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspects in Malta blogger's murder sent to trial;VALLETTA (Reuters) - Three men accused of killing Maltese anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia were committed to trial on Thursday by a magistrate hearing preliminary evidence. Brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat were arrested in early December on the strength of phone intercepts and accused of having killed Caruana Galizia in a carbomb as she drove out of her home on Oct. 16. In the Maltese judicial system, police have to present initial evidence to a magistrate, who decides whether there are sufficient grounds to press charges. On the third day of the preliminary hearing, Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit ruled that the three should be sent to trial. The trio have denied wrongdoing. Police told the court that George Degiorgio was sitting on a boat outside Valletta harbor when he sent an SMS to trigger the deadly bomb, which had been planted overnight in Caruana Galizia s hire car. Mobile phone data showed that Alfred Degiorgio and Muscat had repeatedly visited Caruana Galizia s home village Bidnija in the days before the blast. Police believe they watched from a nearby vantage point as Caruana Galizia set out in her car and told George Degiorgio via telephone to detonate the device. Her death shocked Malta, the smallest nation in the European Union, which has been engulfed by a wave of graft scandals, including accusations of money laundering and influence peddling in government all of which have been denied. Caruana Galizia exposed many of these cases, but had never written about the three suspects, who had fallen foul of local police in the past. The slain blogger s family say the mastermind behind the killing must still be at large. Malta s attorney general must now draw up precise charges against the Degiorgios and Muscat, and no trial date has been set. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese aircraft drill again in Western Pacific;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese military aircraft have again carried out drills in the Western Pacific, the Xinhua state news agency said on Thursday, with bombers and fighters from a South China Sea naval air arm exercising with warships. Chinese aircraft, most of them from the air force, have carried out increasing numbers of drills far from Chinese shores in the past few years, most recently focused on self-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as its own, and near Japan. Xinhua said dozens of aircraft, including bombers, fighters and early warning aircraft, drilled in the Western Pacific along with warships, but it did not give an exact location. The exercises were normal drills, part of annual plans, and accorded with international law and norms and were not aimed at any specific country or region, Xinhua said, citing the military. The exercises had no impact on freedom of navigation or overflight in the area, the news agency added. The participation of aircraft attached to the South China Sea fleet implies they could have flown over the disputed South China Sea, where China has been building airfields and other military facilities, some on artificial islands, unnerving the region. China claims most of the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which $3 trillion worth of goods passes every year. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei all have overlapping claims. China has continued to install high-frequency radar and other facilities that can be used for military purposes on its man-made islands in the South China Sea, a U.S. think-tank said last week. [nL8N1OE7HR] ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kurdish-led Syrian groups plan to attend Sochi talks: officials;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Kurdish-led Syrian groups plan to attend Russia s proposed Syria peace talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Kurdish officials have said. The Syria peace congress was originally scheduled for Nov. 18 but was postponed and the Kremlin said on Thursday that no new date had been set. If the invitation is renewed, we will attend Sochi and every other meeting that concerns the Syrian crisis as representatives of the people s will Sihanouk Depo, an official of Syria s main Kurdish party, PYD, told an affiliated website on Wednesday. We are still invited, Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official, told Reuters on Thursday. If the framework for the congress still stands, we will attend , said Jia Kurd, an adviser to the administration that governs Kurdish-led autonomous regions of Syria. It would mark the first time Syria s main Kurdish groups are brought into peace talks. Although they now run at least a quarter of Syria, they have so far been left out of international talks in line with Turkish wishes. Before the Sochi talks were postponed, the PYD said in November it had been invited and favored attending. Since the conflict erupted in 2011, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its allies have carved out autonomous cantons in the north. The YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State militants with Washington s backing. Their territorial grip has expanded since joining forces with the United States, though Washington opposes their autonomy plans. Turkey views the PYD and the YPG as offshoots of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey. Last month, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s spokesman said Russia had told Ankara that the PYD would not be invited to the peace talks. The Kurdish groups share enmities with both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government and with neighboring Turkey. This week, Assad described the U.S.-backed militias as traitors . On Wednesday, in an interview with Iran s Arabic language Al-Alam television, Syria s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad equated the Kurdish-led forces with Islamic State. There is another Daesh called SDF, he said, using the Arabic acronym for the militant group that until recently controlled swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. In his interview on Wednesday, Depo said: Any attack from the regime will be a failed venture. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police say suspicious package at Frankfurt Christmas market harmless;FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of a Christmas market in Frankfurt has turned out to be harmless, the city s police said on Twitter. Authorities said the package in question at Roemer square, the heart of the city s Christmas market, was a donation for the homeless. Well intentioned, but poorly placed, the police said on Twitter. The all clear came about 45 minutes after the evacuation was announced. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine ferry capsizes with 251 on board, four dead;MANILA (Reuters) - Four people were killed and seven were missing after a Philippine ferry with 251 people on board capsized during bad weather on Thursday near the capital, Manila, disaster officials and a coastguard spokesman said. Accidents involving boats sailing between the many islands of the Philippines are common. Vessels are often overloaded but the coastguard said that was not the case on Thursday and the ferry had the capacity to carry 286 people. A total of 240 people were rescued from the sea by fishermen and rescue boats sent out by the coastguard hours after the ferry capsized and sank, about eight miles off Real town in Quezon province. Search and rescue operations will continue until all crew and passengers are accounted for, said coastguard spokesman Captain Armand Balilo. Most of the rescued passengers were brought to Dinahican port. Two men and two women drowned, he said. The ferry set sail at around dawn from a port in Real. Survivors told reporters the weather turned bad three hours later with strong winds and huge waves. The ferry began taking in water and in minutes it capsized and sank, they said. Disaster officials said search and rescue operations were hampered by heavy rain and huge waves caused by a tropical storm affecting the southern Philippines. A tropical storm is expected to make landfall on the southern island of Mindanao late Thursday or early on Friday. The weather bureau has warned of extensive flooding and landslides as the storm, packing center winds of 65 kph (40 mph), approaches the Philippines. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey seeks life sentences for 60 ex-military over 1997 'post-modern coup';ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Sixty people including a former military chief faced demands for life jail terms over a 1997 campaign of army pressure, known in Turkey as the post-modern coup, that toppled the country s first Islamist-led government, state media said on Thursday. Coups in 1960 and 1980 and a failed 2016 putsch involved overt army use of force, but the resignation of prime minister Necmettin Erbakan followed warnings and only a brief appearance of tanks in a provincial town. It is an action that has long rankled with current Islamist-rooted President Tayyip Erdogan. In his final opinion on the case, the prosecutor said the army action, which did not result in any direct military rule, constituted a real coup attempt and could not be defined as post-modern , broadcaster NTV reported. Among those facing life sentences are General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, 85, who was chief of general staff between 1994 and 1998, and his deputy at the time General Cevik Bir, state-run Anadolu news agency said. The investigation into the unseating of Erbakan, who led a coalition government, is one of a series of court cases that have targeted the formerly all powerful secularist military in recent years. The army s influence has been curbed drastically under Erdogan, who first came to power in 2003 and who was a member of Erbakan s Welfare Party at the time of the government s ouster. A total of 103 people, mostly retired generals, had been named in the trial s 1,300-page indictment, accused of overthrowing by force, and participating in the overthrow of a government. While aggravated life sentences were sought for 60 defendants, the prosecutor asked for the acquittal of 39 other defendants, NTV reported. The four other defendants have died since the court case began in 2013. Last year, rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters in a failed coup which killed 250 people and which Ankara has blamed on U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen. He has denied involvement. Erbakan, who died in 2011, pioneered Islamist politics in Turkey, a Muslim country with a secular state system, paving the way for the later success of Erdogan s AK Party. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says no firm date for Syria peace congress;MOSCOW (Reuters) - There is no firm date yet for the much-discussed Syria peace congress, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. No one wants to artificially accelerate holding of the congress, Peskov told reporters on a conference call. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's interior minister accuses Uber of not checking records;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s interior minister said on Thursday that Uber driver suspected of murdering a British embassy worker last week had served time in prison, and he accused the company of not checking criminal records of its drivers. The body of Rebecca Dykes was found strangled on Saturday next to a highway outside Beirut. Police detained a suspect on Monday and said the crime was not politically motivated. Minister Nohad Machnouk said the driver had three priors on his judicial record involving drugs and had been imprisoned on that basis. This company, when it hires drivers, and lets them work within its organisation, does not check their priors , he said at a news conference. An Uber spokesperson said all drivers the company uses in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record. The spokesperson said a copy of the driver s judicial record published by local media, showing no judgments against the driver, was accurate. Uber confirmed in an email that he was a licensed taxi driver with a clean background check. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia: Syria opposition sabotages Geneva talks to ruin proposed national congress: TASS;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syria s opposition is sabotaging the Geneva peace talks in a bid to ruin Russia s preparations for a planned congress of national dialogue in Syria, the TASS news agency cited Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on Thursday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia spurns U.S. allegations it violates nuclear arms pact;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. allegations that Russia is breaking its Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Washington lack evidence and are speculative, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar says still working with U.N., wants a rights investigator who is fair;YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar wants to continue working with the United Nations on human rights but its investigator must be fair, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, a day after special rapporteur Yanghee Lee was barred from visiting the country. Myanmar is still cooperating with the special rapporteur mechanism, said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Kyaw Moe Tun. But Ms Yanghee Lee s undertakings don t have impartiality and objectivity, he said, adding that Myanmar had asked the United Nations to replace her with someone who knows Myanmar well and is both fair and impartial. Lee had been due to visit Myanmar next month to assess human rights across the country, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, but on Wednesday she said she had been barred from visiting for the rest of her tenure. She called for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar s military and said in a statement that the ban suggested something terribly awful was happening in the country. More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping counter-offensive by the army and Buddhist vigilantes. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Myanmar has rejected accusations of ethnic cleansing, blaming most of the violence and torching of Rohingya villages on the Rohingya insurgents who attacked the security forces. Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan State in northern Myanmar, where the army is battling autonomy-seeking ethnic minority insurgents. Kyaw Moe Tun, who is director general of the foreign ministry s International Organizations and Economic Department, said a statement released by Lee after her last visit in July was not objective and not impartial . If she comes again and does that, it is not easy to cooperate with us and have a positive attitude, he said. Lee said in July that activists and journalists continued to be followed and questioned by state surveillance agents, and that her visit was beset by official snooping and access restrictions. The office of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said at the time that it was disappointed with Lee s end-of-mission statement, which contained many sweeping allegations and a number of factual errors . It did not give any details and did not directly address the issues of access or surveillance. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Czech far-right party says will not support new government;PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) said on Thursday it would not support a new minority government formed by the ANO party leader Andrej Babis, making it more likely the government will lose a confidence vote next month. If Babis loses, he will stay in power as caretaker while another coalition arrangement is sought. Given ANO s strength, however, it is almost impossible to form a government without it. SPD leader Tomio Okamura told a news conference his party had led talks with ANO and while there were some common points on program, there were also many differences and SPD had objections to several ministers. We told them we will not support this government, Okamura told reporters. He said ANO refused to back its plan to legislate a referendum law allowing to vote on leaving the European Union, one of SPD s campaign calls. Running on an anti-establishment platform and pledges to improve management of public affairs, ANO won 78 out of 200 seats in the lower house of parliament in an October election. But it has failed to find any coalition partners or support for its minority government among the other eight factions in parliament. Only the far-left Communists, with 15 seats, have not ruled out supporting the government. The SPD, with 22 seats, had supported ANO in a number of votes, raising the possibility that it might also in the end vote for the cabinet. The fresh rejection to back the cabinet makes Babis s success less likely. Under the EU and NATO member country s constitution, Babis has to call a confidence vote by mid-January. Several parties - including SPD but also ANO s coalition partners in the previous cabinet, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats have indicated they may be open to discussions on supporting an ANO-led government in the second round if Babis s first attempt fails. The main objection to Babis is a police investigation into alleged fraud Babis is suspected of in tapping a 2 million euro EU subsidy for a conference center outside Prague a decade ago. Babis denies any wrongdoing. Parliament is expected to vote in January whether to lift his immunity and allow police to prosecute him. Parties also criticise Babis for conflicts of interests he has as a politician and a billionaire owner of over 25o firms in chemicals, farming, media and other sectors. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says Kiev's belligerence forced its observers to quit east Ukraine;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian military observers had to pull out of a joint ceasefire control group due to Kiev s determination to solve the crisis in the rebel-held eastern regions of the country by force, a spokesman for Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. Earlier this week, the ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said on Thursday that the United States encouraged the resumption of large-scale bloodshed in eastern Ukraine by Washington s approval of lethal arms sales to Ukrainian army. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hariri says Gulf states not planning measures against Lebanon;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Thursday Gulf Arab countries were planning no action against Lebanon after a political crisis last month thrust it onto the front line of rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hariri has been a political ally of Saudi Arabia but his coalition government includes Lebanon s powerful Shi ite Muslim Hezbollah group, an ally of Shi ite Iran and sworn enemy of Sunni Muslim Riyadh. Last month s political crisis, sparked when Hariri announced his resignation while in Saudi Arabia, raised fear in Lebanon that Riyadh and its Gulf allies would take economic action against the tiny Mediterranean country. In an interview broadcast from Riyadh before he returned to Lebanon and rescinded his resignation, Hariri warned of possible Gulf sanctions on Lebanon and of a threat to the livelihood of Lebanese workers in Gulf states. His remarks on Thursday seemed aimed at reassuring that no such action was in the cards. This is not going to happen. I assure you we have the best relationship with Saudi Arabia, we have a very good relationship with the UAE, and most of the Gulf, he said at a business conference. The Gulf has a problem with one political party in Lebanon and does not have a problem with the whole of Lebanon, Hariri added, alluding to Hezbollah. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspect in London Finsbury Park mosque attack pleads not guilty;LONDON (Reuters) - A 48-year-old man from Wales pleaded not guilty on Thursday to terrorism-related murder and attempted murder after he allegedly drove a van at Muslims outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, London in June, leaving one worshipper dead and 11 injured. Darren Osborne, a father of four from Cardiff, denied the charges during a hearing at the Old Bailey central criminal court. His trial will start on Jan. 22 at Woolwich Crown Court in London. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian Foreign Ministry says latest U.S. sanctions are 'grotesque';MOSCOW (Reuters) - The latest U.S. sanctions imposed on five Russians and Chechens are grotesque and groundless, and Moscow will hit back with tit-for-tat sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed the new sanctions on the five people, including on Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, for alleged human rights abuses. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;French foreign minister visits Libya in new push for U.N. talks;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya s rival factions should stick to a United Nations peace process and prepare for elections in spring 2018, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday, trying to give stalled U.N. talks a new push. The North African country has two rival governments, one in the east and a U.N.-backed administration in the capital Tripoli in the west, in a conflict stemming from the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. France was a leading player in the NATO intervention against Gaddafi, sending warplanes to bomb his forces. The United Nations launched a new round of talks in September in Tunis between the rival factions to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, but they broke off after one month. I noted the desire from the Prime Minister (Fayez al-Seraj) to stick to the calendar. We have a total convergence of views to implement this agenda, Le Drian said after meeting the Tripoli-based prime minister in the Libyan capital. Drian will later fly to the eastern city of Benghazi to meet the powerful eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar, who on Sunday called the U.N.-backed government and peace process obsolete. The U.N. talks had stumbled over the question of what role Haftar should play. He indicated on Sunday he wants to run as presidential candidate. Haftar remains popular among Libyans in the east who are weary of the chaos, but faces opposition in western Libya. The eastern-based House of Representatives on Tuesday widened divisions between east and west by approving a new central bank governor. The bank s Tripoli headquarters and U.N. rejected the move. Le Drian said a political deal would help solve crisis of thousands of illegal migrants stuck in detention centers in Libya where human rights groups said they often face abuse. Libyan officials deny this but say they are overwhelmed with a flood of migrants. Libya is to main departure point for illegal migrants heading for Europe by boat. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: U.S. arms license for Kiev may trigger new bloodshed in east Ukraine;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The approval by the United States of an export license for Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers may provoke hotheads among Ukrainian nationalists to seek to unleash a new bloodshed in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Thursday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White, moldy and French: Russia's response to sanctions goes gourmet;VERKHNAYA PYSHMA/YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - One thousand French goats have found a new home in Russia s Ural mountains as a local company bets on producing European-style cheeses no longer available for import. Russia banned the wholesale import of fresh food from the European Union, including dairy products, in response to sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. But as images of steamrollers flattening illegally imported European cheeses were beamed across the country, Russian businesses were gearing up to fill the gap. Investment in the production of sanctioned foodstuffs has grown, and in the Ural mountains the owners of mining company UMMC have added goats to their copper and coal assets. Iskandar Makhmudov and Andrey Kozytsin, both on the Forbes list of Russia s 100 richest people, are among UMMC s main shareholders. Their company, UGMK-Agro, spent one million euros on trucking the Alpine goats 5,000 km from the Vendee region in France. Working out of a converted cowshed north of Yekaterinburg, it is aiming to be Russia s largest producer of white mold goat s cheese, a French delicacy. The company has invested 200 million rubles ($3.4 million)in cheese production and expects to turn a profit in six years. For us, sanctions have of course played a positive role. We saw a gap in the market - not quite a deficit, but some room for maneuver, Ilya Bondarev, CEO of UGMK-Agro, told Reuters. With most Russians accustomed to semi-hard cheeses, part of the challenge will be encouraging buyers to try something new. I m sorry but goat s cheese smells, and I don t like the taste of moldy cheeses, said 30-year-old Alexander, a Yekaterinburg resident. I prefer mozzarella and normal Russian cheeses, which remind me of my childhood, he said. There is also the price. A kg of UGMK-Agro s B che-de-Ch vre cheese, sold under the Coeur du Nord brand, costs 2,200-2,500 rubles ($37-$43) versus 300-800 rubles per kg for standard Russian cheeses. UGMK-Agro plans to produce 500-700 kg of cheese a day by the spring of 2018. We are launching in Moscow ... and are talking to distributors in St Petersburg, Bondarev said. But our main challenge is the creation of a local market. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea plans to buy 20 additional F-35 aircraft: report;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea plans to buy an additional 20 F-35A stealth fighter aircraft from the United States, a South Korean newspaper reported on Thursday, less than two months after U.S. President Donald Trump announced Seoul would be purchasing billions of dollars in new military equipment. South Korea s Defence Acquisition Program Administration has established a process for procuring the 20 additional aircraft, the Joongang Ilbo newspaper reported, citing multiple government sources. In 2014 South Korea formally announced a plan to buy 40 F-35As from American defense contractor Lockheed Martin. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican governor requests leave to run for president;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The governor of Nuevo Leon, a prosperous state in northern Mexico, requested a leave of absence on Wednesday to run as an independent candidate for president next year. Jaime Rodriguez, known as El Bronco, wrote in a post on Twitter that he had asked the state s congress for permission to take a six-month leave of absence. I want to change Mexico so that the citizens together make history, he wrote in Spanish. While this is being decided, I will continue working as every day. Diana Adame, a spokeswoman for the state of Nuevo Leon, said the governor expects to hear back from Congress in the next few days. Rodriguez still needs more signatures across 12 states to become an independent candidate, having reached the goal in five, according to the electoral regulator INE. A poll by Parametria published by Reuters on Tuesday showed just 2 percent of people said they would vote for Rodriguez, though other polls have put it at around 4 percent. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean military fires warning shots at North Korean troops searching for defector: Yonhap;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean guards fired around 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a defector who fled across the heavily militarized border between the two countries on Thursday, South Korea s Yonhap news agency reported. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela may ban main opposition parties from presidential vote;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s pro-government legislative superbody ruled on Wednesday that parties who boycotted this month s local elections had lost legitimacy, potentially eliminating the main opposition groups from the 2018 presidential race. The decree by the Constituent Assembly - created in a controversial July vote boycotted by the opposition and widely condemned abroad - infuriated Venezuela s opposition and drew criticism from the United States. The Venezuelan government and its illegitimate Constituent Assembly are inventing rules as they go along. This is not democracy, the U.S. Embassy said on Twitter. The Justice First, Democratic Action and Popular Will parties did not run candidates in this month s mayoral polls in protest against what they said was a biased election system designed to perpetuate leftist President Nicolas Maduro s dictatorship. Maduro had warned that could cost them participation in future votes and the Constituent Assembly echoed that position on Wednesday, saying the parties had lost their legal status and should re-apply to the National Election Board. Given that the board is pro-Maduro and authorities are constantly throwing up obstacles to the opposition, that could well mean those parties are now effectively unable to run in the presidential election due before the end of 2018. Maduro, 55, is expected to run for re-election despite the disastrous state of the economy in Venezuela, where millions are skipping meals and struggling to survive amid one of the world s highest inflation rates and widespread shortages of basics. Two of his potentially biggest rivals already cannot run against him: Popular Will leader Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest, while Justice First leader Henrique Capriles is prohibited from holding political office. We alert the world and all democratic governments that banning opposition political parties is yet another measure by the dictatorship that deserves rejection and condemnation, said Capriles party colleague Tomas Guanipa. Maduro and his allies say the Constituent Assembly has brought peace to the OPEC nation after months of opposition protests earlier this year in which more than 125 people were killed. Demonstrators said they were fighting for freedom, but the government condemned them as violent subversives. It s time for the coupsters to face the constitution. Let no one undermine the people s participation and the democratic system, Constituent Assembly head Delcy Rodriguez said after the passage of Wednesday s measure. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. approves license for Ukraine to buy small arms from U.S. firms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved an export license for Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Wednesday. Department records show Ukraine has bought small amounts of those types of weapons for several years, both before and after the 2014 Russian annexation of Ukraine s Crimean peninsula. The department notified Congress of the decision on Dec. 13, Nauert said, adding that the U.S. government was not selling the weapons directly to the Kiev government but was allowing Ukraine to buy from U.S. manufacturers. Under the previous two administrations, the U.S. government has approved export licenses to Ukraine, so this is nothing new, Nauert said. The license covers weapons in categories such as semi-automatic and automatic firearms up to, and including, .50 caliber weapons. It also includes combat shotguns, silencers, military scopes, and flash suppressors, as well as parts. Nauert said the U.S. government had not directly provided lethal defensive equipment to Ukraine, nor had it ruled out doing so. U.S. exporters can apply for direct commercial sales licenses at any time and those are reviewed by the State Department on a case-by-case basis, she said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea rejects U.S. accusation, says it is not linked to any cyber attacks;SEOUL (Reuters) - A spokesman for North Korea s foreign ministry said on Thursday Pyongyang is not linked to any cyber attacks, the North s first response since the United States publicly blamed it for a massive worldwide cyber security breach. As we have clearly stated on several occasions, we have nothing to do with cyber attack and we do not feel a need to respond, on a case-by-case basis, to such absurd allegations of the U.S., the spokesman said, according to the North s official KCNA news agency. The U.S. accusation was a serious political provocation against North Korea that Pyongyang would never tolerate, the spokesman said. The May cyber attack crippled hospitals, banks and other companies. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico arrests former high-ranking PRI official in corruption probe;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican authorities on Wednesday arrested a former high-ranking official of President Enrique Pena Nieto s party in a corruption investigation in the northern state of Chihuahua, the state s governor said. The arrest extends a streak of corruption allegations dogging the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), with four former governors arrested on such charges this year. Entrenched corruption is expected to be a key issue in the runup to Mexico s next presidential election in 2018. Alejandro Gutierrez, who was the adjunct secretary to the presidency of the PRI, was arrested in a joint operation by state and federal police, Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral wrote in a post on Facebook. The Chihuahua prosecutor s office accused Gutierrez of participating in a sophisticated scheme to divert public funds of 250 million pesos ($13 million) earmarked for educational programs in 2016. Gutierrez will present himself before a judge early Thursday, the office said in a statement. This week, Mexican newspaper Reforma published reports on an alleged Chihuahua corruption scheme to funnel the money into the PRI s campaign fund, through avenues such as fake contracts for workshops for parents and expensive software. The reports were based on testimony to prosecutors by former state finance minister Jaime Herrera that the paper obtained. Gutierrez arrest took place in Coahuila. This week, he rejected allegations against him in an interview with Mexican newspaper Vanguardia, saying he was considering suing for defamation. I am thinking, I will have to look into it, if I initiate some legal proceeding, he said. I do not know, I repeat to you, I did not know not even one official, nor ex-official, of finances... I see things that are absolutely false. Gutierrez arrest contributes to the clearing up of the crimes of political corruption that have been attributed to the former governor, C sar Duarte J quez, said Corral, of the National Action Party. The government is determining whether others should be held responsible for the funneling of funds to PRI coffers in 2016, Corral added. In March, a Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant for Duarte on suspicion of embezzlement. Corral has said he is a fugitive from justice. A spokesman for the PRI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The PRI was routed in 2016 regional elections, losing several of its bastions, including the states of Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo, as voters expressed discontent over a series of graft scandals. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Food security in Middle East, North Africa deteriorating, says U.N. agency;CAIRO (Reuters) - Food security in the Middle East and North Africa is quickly deteriorating because of conflict in several countries in the region, the United Nations said on Thursday. In those hardest hit by crises Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Sudan an average of more than a quarter of the population was undernourished, the U.N. s Food and Agriculture Organization said in its annual report on food security. A quarter of Yemen s people are on the brink of famine, several years into a proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that has caused one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent times. The report focused on changes to food security and nutrition across the region since 2000. It said that undernourishment in countries not directly affected by conflict, such as most Gulf Arab states and most North African countries including Egypt, had slowly improved in the last decade. But it had worsened in conflict-hit countries. The costs of conflict can be seen in the measurements of food insecurity and malnutrition, the FAO s assistant director-general Abdessalam Ould Ahmed said. Decisive steps towards peace and stability (need to be) taken. Several countries in the region erupted into conflict following uprisings in 2011 that overthrew leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Syria s civil war, which also began with popular demonstrations, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and made more than 11 million homeless. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean 'nut rage' executive remains free after court upholds suspended sentence;SEOUL (Reuters) - A former Korean Air Lines executive who went into a rage on an aircraft over the way she was served nuts in first class avoided jail on Thursday when South Korea s Supreme Court upheld her 10-month suspended sentence. Heather Cho had been charged with, among others, violation of aviation law in 2015 after she took issue with the way she was served nuts and forced the Korean Air Lines plane to return to its gate in a New York airport in December 2014. The incident became a national scandal in South Korea, as Cho is the daughter of the chairman of Hanjin Group, the conglomerate of which Korean Air is an affiliate. Cho stepped down from her role as Korean Air Lines vice president and attempted to apologize to crew members. The Supreme Court upheld an appeals court ruling that said forcing an on-the-ground plane to return to its gate cannot be seen as route deviation, but found Cho guilty of abusive language and actions against cabin crew and forcing a crew member to disembark. Cho was originally sentenced to one year in jail, but has been free from custody since May 2015, when the appeals court suspended her sentence. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. mediator de Mistura to attend Syria talks on Friday: report;MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura will arrive in Kazakhstan s capital on Friday to take part in Syria peace talks, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, according to Russia s state news agency RIA. De Mistura will fly to Astana after talks in Moscow on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kazakhstan is hosting negotiations that aim to end the Syria crisis. Discussions in the past few months have focused on establishing de-escalation zones in Syria. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. creating 'sensational hype' over China's military modernization: ministry;BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has created sensational hype over China s military modernization, the defense ministry has said in reaction to a White House report branding China a competitor seeking to challenge U.S. power. U.S. President Donald Trump s administration on Monday laid out a national security strategy based on Trump s America First vision, singling out of China and Russia as revisionist powers seeking not only to challenge U.S. power but to erode its security and prosperity. China s foreign ministry said on Tuesday cooperation between China and the United States was the only correct choice. The spokesman for its defense ministry, Ren Guoqiang, said in a statement posted on the ministry website late on Wednesday that the U.S. strategy had without regard for the facts, created sensational hype over the modernization of China s defenses . Ren also said the strategy had called into question the intentions of China s military development plan and that it ran counter to peace worldwide and the development of China s relations with the United States. China s contribution to world peace was plain for all to see, he said. Attempts by any country or any document to distort the facts or cast aspersions will be in vain, Ren said. China s armed forces, the world s largest, are in the midst of an ambitious modernization program, which includes investment in technology and new equipment such as stealth fighters and aircraft carriers, as well as cuts to troop numbers. The tough U.S. national security strategy comes after Trump has sought to build strong relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump has called upon Xi to ensure China does more to help the United States rein in North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. administration cited China s growing military might and its efforts to build military bases on manmade islands in the contested South China Sea as evidence of Chinese attempts to alter the status quo. China says its expansion of islets in the South China Sea is for peaceful purposes only and that, as it has irrefutable sovereignty there, no other country has the right to question its actions. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia finds wreck of first Allied submarine to sink in World War One;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia has discovered the wreck of its first submarine off the coast of Papua New Guinea, authorities said on Thursday, resolving one of the country s oldest naval mysteries after more than a century. The submarine, AE-1, was the first Allied vessel to sink during World War One, while patrolling for German warships in 1914, in circumstances that have never been established. The Australian Navy and several private bodies found the final resting place of the vessel s 35 crew on their 13th attempt, Defence Minister Marise Payne told media. The submarine s disappearance was a tragedy for our then fledgling nation, Payne said, adding that a small commemorative service was held aboard the survey ship that found the wreck and authorities were trying to contact the crew s descendants. It is my hope that what we have done in the last couple of days will now provide relief to the family and descendants of all of those members, said navy chief Vice Admiral Timmy Barrett, adding that the crew had come from Australia, Britain and New Zealand. The authorities did not disclose the wreck s location, except to say it was found off the Duke of York Islands. The governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea said they planned to preserve the site. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Dying for a paycheck: the Russian civilians fighting in Syria;ORENBURG, Russia (Reuters) - When Vladimir Kabunin signed up as a private military contractor, he saw a chance to make a wage much higher than any he could earn in his provincial Russian hometown. Happy to be able to support his wife and son, the ex-police officer left Orenburg, nearly 1,500 km (940 miles) southeast of Moscow, and joined pro-Russian rebels fighting government forces in east Ukraine, a family friend and a relative told Reuters. When fighting subsided there, he went to Syria to serve as a field medic with troops under Russian command, they said. Kabunin was killed in Syria this year and his body was sent home, they said. But the government does not recognize he was in Syria, so he was buried without military honors and nothing on his grave shows he was killed in action. Kabunin, who was 38, was one of hundreds of military contractors secretly recruited by Moscow for combat operations in Syria since Russia s military operation began there in 2015, according to people familiar with the deployment. According to a Reuters tally based on accounts from people who knew the deceased and local officials, at least 28 private contractors have been killed in Syria this year, and Russian consular documents seen by Reuters suggest the figure may be much higher. The government denies recruiting and sending private military contractors to fight abroad. The defense ministry did not respond when asked about Kabunin s case and the role of contractors in Syria, and has said previous Reuters reports on the contractors are an attempt to discredit Russia s mission to restore peace to Syria. But over two years, Reuters has spoken to dozens of family members, colleagues and friends of military contractors who have been killed in Syria. Those familiar with the deployment say the contractors are under government command and have helped turn the tide of war in favor of Russia s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while hiding the scale of its military involvement and losses. The fact that Kabunin and others like him are willing to sign up for such missions shows the Kremlin can draw on a large reserve of fighters who, as long as they are well remunerated, are willing to risk dying in the shadows. WELL-TRODDEN PATH Kabunin followed a path taken by many contractors: service in the military or security forces, a return to civilian life, a struggle to make a living, then a chance to make decent money fighting secretly for Russia, in Ukraine and then Syria. Family members of Russian contractors say that in Syria they were paid up to $6,500 per month, which exceeds Russia s average monthly wage more than 12 times. If you quit law enforcement bodies, you have only one way (choice) - to become a mercenary, Vasily Karkan, a classmate of Kabunin at school, told Reuters. Kabunin was shy as a child until he started kickboxing classes, Karkan recalled. The sport became a life-long hobby. Kabunin obtained a degree in medicine and also studied law, but followed in the family footsteps by joining the police. In 2010, he found a new job in a prison, where his wife also worked in a tuberculosis hospital. Kabunin s role was to work with prisoners to obtain information and gather intelligence on planned escape attempts or potential unrest, but he left that job in 2012. A spokesman for Orenburg prisons service said he had left of his own volition. A family friend spoke of job cuts and said he looked for a new job for about two years. There is no place to work, the family friend said. You can t earn more than 10,000 rubles ($170)(a month) here. When fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Kabunin saw a job opportunity. Moscow denies deploying active service troops in Ukraine or providing direct military help to the separatists. But Kabunin signed up with Dmitry Utkin, the leader of a group of Russian ex-servicemen fighting there who uses the nom de guerre Vagner , and, drawing on his medical degree, served as a military medic, his relative said. When Utkin and his comrades deployed to Syria in support of Russia s regular forces, Kabunin went with them, people familiar with the deployment said. As of April 2016, he was a field medic in a medical evacuation unit under Utkin s command in Syria, according to an official in a Ukrainian law enforcement agency. The agency says it has obtained the personnel records of 1,700 Russian contractors deployed in Syria, most of whom were earlier in Ukraine. Kabunin left home for his last trip to Syria on Jan. 4 and was put in command of a medical company, but was wounded on Jan. 31 and died on Feb. 7 in Homs province, a relative said. The relative knew this from former police colleagues of Kabunin, some of whom also served in Syria, and from his death certificate, which was handed to his wife Natalya. It was not clear how she was informed and who gave her the death certificate. She declined to speak to Reuters. Relatives of other killed contractors say the news has come via friends or acquaintances, or by phone from people who say they represent a private company. Kabunin was buried next to other family members graves in Orenburg, his portrait displayed on a cross showing a man with a shaved head in civilian clothes. His wife received a compensation payment, according to the relative, who gave no further details. According to accounts from relatives of other contractors killed in Syria, the employer typically pays out 3 million rubles ($51,227) in compensation to the next of kin when a contractor is killed. Relatives of another dead contractor told Reuters that, in his case, the money was handed over to his widow in cash in a hotel in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. On a visit to Syria on Dec. 11, President Vladimir Putin declared mission accomplished for the Syrian operation and paid tribute to Russian servicemen who have been killed there. There was no mention of the contractors losses. The government is under no obligation to disclose the deaths of non-regular forces fighting under its command and Russian military losses in Syria are a state secret. Kabunin s death did not dissuade his friend Valery Dzyuba, also a former police officer and kickboxer from Orenburg, from heading to Syria to fight as a military contractor. Dzyuba s family received a phone call from an unidentified man saying he had died on Aug. 20 but not specifying the circumstances. Dzyuba was killed in Syria, according to one of his classmates, Kabunin s relative and an official in the village where Dzyuba was buried. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian police say car that hit pedestrians in Melbourne was a deliberate act;SYDNEY (Reuters) - A car was deliberately driven into pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne on Thursday, injuring up to 14 people, though the motive was not known, police said. We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act, Victorian Police commander Russell Barrett told media in Melbourne. The motivations are unknown. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China jails 44 Taiwanese for fraud in case denounced by Taipei;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Beijing court on Thursday handed down jail sentences of up to 15 years to 85 people deported from Kenya for telecoms fraud, including 44 from self-ruled Taiwan, an island Beijing claims as its own which said vital evidence had been ignored. Over the past two years, countries including Kenya, Spain, Vietnam and Cambodia have deported hundreds of people from Taiwan to China for telecoms fraud, sparking accusations from Taipei that Beijing was effectively kidnapping its citizens. China has defended the deportations, saying the crimes were committed against people in China and that as Taiwan is a part of China. The Beijing court said in a statement that one of the Taiwanese, Chang Kai-min, had been jailed for 15 years for helping scam 185 people out of more than 29 million yuan ($4.4 million). Taiwan s China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said Taiwan and China had initially agreed to cooperate in investigating the Kenya case, but China had gone back on its word. The outside world could only believe justice had been done if the case had fully considered all the evidence and gone through proper legal procedure, the council added. In this case, we obtained intelligence on the criminal suspects behind the scenes, it said. We again call on the mainland China side to cooperate with our public security organs, investigate the origins and not allow the masterminds behind the scenes to get away with it. On at least two occasions last year, Kenya deported groups of Taiwanese to China. In one case, a Kenyan magistrate said the Taiwanese should be repatriated to their place of origin, Taiwan, but the Kenyan government sent them to China. Kenya, like most countries, only has diplomatic relations with China. Beijing considers democratic Taiwan a wayward province, ineligible for formal ties with other nations. Chinese authorities have sought to contain an explosion of telecom crime it says has led to huge financial losses, with callers often impersonating officials or authority figures and preying on the elderly, students or the unemployed. The fraud has spread overseas, with Chinese speakers recruited in neighboring Taiwan increasingly setting up operations in East Africa or Southeast Asia. The deportations have come as relations between Beijing and Taipei have deteriorated, with China suspecting Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen of pushing for the island s formal independence. She says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security and democracy. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian court acquits all accused in 2G telecoms case;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian court on Thursday acquitted a former telecoms minister, politicians and business executives of graft and money laundering charges in the grant of telecoms licenses due to lack of evidence in one of the country s biggest corruption scandals. The case relates to alleged below-market-price sale of lucrative telecoms permits bundled with airwaves in 2008, which a federal auditor said may have cost the government as much as $28 billion in lost revenue. A special court convened by the federal investigator was called to give its verdict on the accused, including former telecoms minister A. Raja. The prosecution has miserably failed to prove its charge, defense lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told reporters, citing the judge s ruling. Shares of companies affected by the case rose after the verdict, with Reliance Communications Ltd gaining as much as 13.3 percent, DB Realty jumping nearly 20 percent and SUN TV Networks Ltd rising as much as 6.8 percent. The scandal dented the fortunes of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government, which oversaw the sale of the licenses at below-market prices, and triggered street protests. It was one of the several scandals that emerged during Singh s second term, hobbling policymaking and diverting the government s attention away from pushing forward crucial economic reforms. The uncertainty hurt business sentiment in Asia s third-biggest economy, and led to questions about the government s efforts to crack down on corruption. In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered 122 licenses held by eight operators to be revoked, declaring the licenses illegal and the process wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest . ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesian police warn Islamists against raids in search of Santa hats;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police appealed on Thursday for tolerance and respect for other people s religious celebrations after an Islamist group threatened to raid businesses to check for Muslims being forced to wear Santa Claus hats or other Christmas garb. The hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) said this week it would conduct sweeping operations in the world s biggest Muslim-majority country, and that forcing Muslims to wear Christmas attire was a violation of their human rights. Indonesia is home to several religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and people who follow traditional beliefs. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion in an officially secular state though tension between followers of different faiths can flare. There can be no sweeping operations ... members of the public should respect other religions that are carrying out celebrations, national police chief Tito Karnavian told police during a security exercise in the capital, Jakarta. The FPI said it aimed to enforce a fatwa, or decree, issued by Indonesia s Islamic Clerical Council in 2016 prohibiting business owners from forcing employees to wear Christmas clothing. We will raid businesses in anticipation of them being stubborn about this and we will be accompanied by police, said Novel Bakmukmin, head of the FPI s Jakarta chapter. Employers forcing staff to wear Christmas clothes were violating their rights. Businesses should be aware that there should be no forcing, he said. The Islamic Clerical Council s decrees are not legally binding but serve as guidelines for Indonesian Muslims. Christmas is widely celebrated across Indonesia and holiday decorations are ubiquitous, especially at shops, restaurants and malls where many enthusiastic workers - even Muslims - don Santa hats or elf costumes. The FPI built its reputation with raids on restaurants and bars serving alcohol during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In recent years, it has turned its attention to Christian celebrations. The group has also said it wants the Jakarta city government to stop sponsoring New Year celebrations, which attract many thousands of people. About 90,000 police officers will be on duty cross the country during the end-of-year holidays, in an operation largely aimed at preventing militant attacks. Attacks on churches in Jakarta and elsewhere on Christmas Eve in 2000, killed nearly 20 people. Ever since, authorities have stepped up security at churches and tourist spots for the holiday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moscow says it was London's decision to scale back UK-Russia dialogue;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The decision to scale back British-Russian dialogue was a groundless and untimely decision by London, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, on the eve of British foreign minister Boris Johnson s visit to Moscow. Johnson s visit on Dec. 22 for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss international security issues will be the first visit to Russia by a British foreign minister in five years. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron's presidential jet plan hits bad-publicity turbulence;PARIS (Reuters) - Plans to buy a new presidential jet for France s Emmanuel Macron could be held up because of a controversy sparked by his prime minister, who hired a private plane for 350,000 euros ($416,000) to fly home from Japan. Business paper La Tribune said news of Edouard Philippe s costly Japan-to-Paris charter had come at a bad time, with Macron who has campaigned against wasteful spending about to decide on a new presidential plane. France s equivalent of Air Force One is an old Airbus A330 that was bought second-hand 10 years ago and given a luxury refit for use by Nicolas Sarkozy, whose penchant for high-living earned him the nickname President Bling Bling . At Macron s office, an official played down the jet issue, saying a new purchase was being considered before he took office in May and that the government was waiting for a report on the matter before making a decision. That will take a few weeks and when it s done we will assess all options for improving travel arrangements for the president and government, an Elysee official told Reuters. Macron has a similar PR problem to Sarkozy in a country where ostentatious displays of wealth are frowned upon: opinion polls show many voters feel the former investment banker is overly pandering to the rich, pointing to his scrapping of a wealth tax and lowering of subsidies for public housing. Macron, who turned 40 on Thursday, drew criticism early in his presidency after it emerged he had spent 26,000 euros on makeup in his first 100 days in office. There were further brickbats this week after he celebrated his birthday in the grounds of a famed Loire chateau. Aside from the bad timing, the acquisition of a new presidential jet raises another delicate issue. The bill at least $100 million but possibly double that is likely to be paid from the defense budget. France s army chief abruptly quit in July following a row over budget cuts, forcing Macron to say the cuts were a one-off and that increases were planned in the years ahead. The plane bought for Sarkozy cost 176 million euros once it was fitted with a presidential bedroom, a soundproofed meeting room, kitchen, scrambled communications technology and various other medical and emergency capabilities. While Airbus declined to comment on any new order, a plane of the kind mooted for Macron, an Airbus A319neo, has a list price of $99.5 million. It could cost more than double that if the refit ordered for Sarkozy is anything to go by. But it would at least provide the president and seven staff with the ability to fly 12,500 km, or up to 15 hours, non-stop, reaching most of the world s capitals in a single journey. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Critics accuse UK government of not taking Brexit preparations seriously enough;LONDON (Reuters) - Pro-European campaigners accused ministers of failing to take preparations for Brexit seriously enough on Thursday, after a committee of lawmakers published the government s sector-by-sector analysis on the impact of leaving the European Union. The analyses have become a focal point for critics of the government s approach to Brexit since last year s referendum vote to leave. The government revealed in October the 58 economic sectors it had analyzed to help it prepare for leaving, but refused requests to publish them. Brexit minister David Davis said the reports contained excruciating detail and that their publication could undermine negotiations with the EU. However, lawmakers demanded to see the papers and used an unusual parliamentary procedure to compel the government to hand them over to a parliamentary committee. The committee published them on Thursday, but with some sensitive sections redacted. There is little or nothing in them that couldn t be learned from the annual reports of different trade bodies, said Pat McFadden, a member of the committee and spokesman for the Open Britain campaign group. Breezy busking won t cut it when people s jobs and livelihoods are on the line. Winging it should not be a matter of principle, the opposition Labour Party lawmaker said. Since his initial remarks, Davis has stressed that the work does not constitute a formal impact assessment - a detailed document setting out the economic implications of policy decisions. He said earlier this month that it was too soon for such work to have been conducted. The documents released on Thursday cover sectors from asset management to tourism, describing each sector, the current EU regulatory regime and a summary of how trade is conducted in these areas. A section entitled sector views was redacted by the committee. Non-profit organization The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, which has previously warned of the risks posed by leaving the EU, also criticized the documents. What leaps out at you is the total absence of analysis. Search, and you do not find, said the organization s director Richard Black. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indian court acquits all accused in 2G telecoms case;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian court on Thursday acquitted a former telecoms minister, politicians and business executives of graft and money laundering charges in the grant of telecoms licenses due to lack of evidence in one of the country s biggest corruption scandals. The case relates to alleged below-market-price sale of lucrative telecoms permits bundled with airwaves in 2008, which a federal auditor said may have cost the government as much as $28 billion in lost revenue. A special court convened by the federal investigator was called to give its verdict on the accused, including former telecoms minister A. Raja. The prosecution has miserably failed to prove its charge, defense lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told reporters, citing the judge s ruling. Shares of companies affected by the case rose after the verdict, with Reliance Communications Ltd gaining as much as 13.3 percent, DB Realty jumping nearly 20 percent and SUN TV Networks Ltd rising as much as 6.8 percent. The scandal dented the fortunes of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government, which oversaw the sale of the licenses at below-market prices, and triggered street protests. It was one of the several scandals that emerged during Singh s second term, hobbling policymaking and diverting the government s attention away from pushing forward crucial economic reforms. The uncertainty hurt business sentiment in Asia s third-biggest economy, and led to questions about the government s efforts to crack down on corruption. In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered 122 licenses held by eight operators to be revoked, declaring the licenses illegal and the process wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest . ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China jails 44 Taiwanese for fraud in case denounced by Taipei;BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Beijing court on Thursday handed down jail sentences of up to 15 years to 85 people deported from Kenya for telecoms fraud, including 44 from self-ruled Taiwan, an island Beijing claims as its own which said vital evidence had been ignored. Over the past two years, countries including Kenya, Spain, Vietnam and Cambodia have deported hundreds of people from Taiwan to China for telecoms fraud, sparking accusations from Taipei that Beijing was effectively kidnapping its citizens. China has defended the deportations, saying the crimes were committed against people in China and that as Taiwan is a part of China. The Beijing court said in a statement that one of the Taiwanese, Chang Kai-min, had been jailed for 15 years for helping scam 185 people out of more than 29 million yuan ($4.4 million). Taiwan s China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said Taiwan and China had initially agreed to cooperate in investigating the Kenya case, but China had gone back on its word. The outside world could only believe justice had been done if the case had fully considered all the evidence and gone through proper legal procedure, the council added. In this case, we obtained intelligence on the criminal suspects behind the scenes, it said. We again call on the mainland China side to cooperate with our public security organs, investigate the origins and not allow the masterminds behind the scenes to get away with it. On at least two occasions last year, Kenya deported groups of Taiwanese to China. In one case, a Kenyan magistrate said the Taiwanese should be repatriated to their place of origin, Taiwan, but the Kenyan government sent them to China. Kenya, like most countries, only has diplomatic relations with China. Beijing considers democratic Taiwan a wayward province, ineligible for formal ties with other nations. Chinese authorities have sought to contain an explosion of telecom crime it says has led to huge financial losses, with callers often impersonating officials or authority figures and preying on the elderly, students or the unemployed. The fraud has spread overseas, with Chinese speakers recruited in neighboring Taiwan increasingly setting up operations in East Africa or Southeast Asia. The deportations have come as relations between Beijing and Taipei have deteriorated, with China suspecting Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen of pushing for the island s formal independence. She says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security and democracy. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian police say car that hit pedestrians in Melbourne was a deliberate act;SYDNEY (Reuters) - A car was deliberately driven into pedestrians in the Australian city of Melbourne on Thursday, injuring up to 14 people, though the motive was not known, police said. We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act, Victorian Police commander Russell Barrett told media in Melbourne. The motivations are unknown. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Dying for a paycheck: the Russian civilians fighting in Syria;ORENBURG, Russia (Reuters) - When Vladimir Kabunin signed up as a private military contractor, he saw a chance to make a wage much higher than any he could earn in his provincial Russian hometown. Happy to be able to support his wife and son, the ex-police officer left Orenburg, nearly 1,500 km (940 miles) southeast of Moscow, and joined pro-Russian rebels fighting government forces in east Ukraine, a family friend and a relative told Reuters. When fighting subsided there, he went to Syria to serve as a field medic with troops under Russian command, they said. Kabunin was killed in Syria this year and his body was sent home, they said. But the government does not recognize he was in Syria, so he was buried without military honors and nothing on his grave shows he was killed in action. Kabunin, who was 38, was one of hundreds of military contractors secretly recruited by Moscow for combat operations in Syria since Russia s military operation began there in 2015, according to people familiar with the deployment. According to a Reuters tally based on accounts from people who knew the deceased and local officials, at least 28 private contractors have been killed in Syria this year, and Russian consular documents seen by Reuters suggest the figure may be much higher. The government denies recruiting and sending private military contractors to fight abroad. The defense ministry did not respond when asked about Kabunin s case and the role of contractors in Syria, and has said previous Reuters reports on the contractors are an attempt to discredit Russia s mission to restore peace to Syria. But over two years, Reuters has spoken to dozens of family members, colleagues and friends of military contractors who have been killed in Syria. Those familiar with the deployment say the contractors are under government command and have helped turn the tide of war in favor of Russia s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while hiding the scale of its military involvement and losses. The fact that Kabunin and others like him are willing to sign up for such missions shows the Kremlin can draw on a large reserve of fighters who, as long as they are well remunerated, are willing to risk dying in the shadows. WELL-TRODDEN PATH Kabunin followed a path taken by many contractors: service in the military or security forces, a return to civilian life, a struggle to make a living, then a chance to make decent money fighting secretly for Russia, in Ukraine and then Syria. Family members of Russian contractors say that in Syria they were paid up to $6,500 per month, which exceeds Russia s average monthly wage more than 12 times. If you quit law enforcement bodies, you have only one way (choice) - to become a mercenary, Vasily Karkan, a classmate of Kabunin at school, told Reuters. Kabunin was shy as a child until he started kickboxing classes, Karkan recalled. The sport became a life-long hobby. Kabunin obtained a degree in medicine and also studied law, but followed in the family footsteps by joining the police. In 2010, he found a new job in a prison, where his wife also worked in a tuberculosis hospital. Kabunin s role was to work with prisoners to obtain information and gather intelligence on planned escape attempts or potential unrest, but he left that job in 2012. A spokesman for Orenburg prisons service said he had left of his own volition. A family friend spoke of job cuts and said he looked for a new job for about two years. There is no place to work, the family friend said. You can t earn more than 10,000 rubles ($170)(a month) here. When fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Kabunin saw a job opportunity. Moscow denies deploying active service troops in Ukraine or providing direct military help to the separatists. But Kabunin signed up with Dmitry Utkin, the leader of a group of Russian ex-servicemen fighting there who uses the nom de guerre Vagner , and, drawing on his medical degree, served as a military medic, his relative said. When Utkin and his comrades deployed to Syria in support of Russia s regular forces, Kabunin went with them, people familiar with the deployment said. As of April 2016, he was a field medic in a medical evacuation unit under Utkin s command in Syria, according to an official in a Ukrainian law enforcement agency. The agency says it has obtained the personnel records of 1,700 Russian contractors deployed in Syria, most of whom were earlier in Ukraine. Kabunin left home for his last trip to Syria on Jan. 4 and was put in command of a medical company, but was wounded on Jan. 31 and died on Feb. 7 in Homs province, a relative said. The relative knew this from former police colleagues of Kabunin, some of whom also served in Syria, and from his death certificate, which was handed to his wife Natalya. It was not clear how she was informed and who gave her the death certificate. She declined to speak to Reuters. Relatives of other killed contractors say the news has come via friends or acquaintances, or by phone from people who say they represent a private company. Kabunin was buried next to other family members graves in Orenburg, his portrait displayed on a cross showing a man with a shaved head in civilian clothes. His wife received a compensation payment, according to the relative, who gave no further details. According to accounts from relatives of other contractors killed in Syria, the employer typically pays out 3 million rubles ($51,227) in compensation to the next of kin when a contractor is killed. Relatives of another dead contractor told Reuters that, in his case, the money was handed over to his widow in cash in a hotel in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. On a visit to Syria on Dec. 11, President Vladimir Putin declared mission accomplished for the Syrian operation and paid tribute to Russian servicemen who have been killed there. There was no mention of the contractors losses. The government is under no obligation to disclose the deaths of non-regular forces fighting under its command and Russian military losses in Syria are a state secret. Kabunin s death did not dissuade his friend Valery Dzyuba, also a former police officer and kickboxer from Orenburg, from heading to Syria to fight as a military contractor. Dzyuba s family received a phone call from an unidentified man saying he had died on Aug. 20 but not specifying the circumstances. Dzyuba was killed in Syria, according to one of his classmates, Kabunin s relative and an official in the village where Dzyuba was buried. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia finds wreck of first Allied submarine to sink in World War One;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia has discovered the wreck of its first submarine off the coast of Papua New Guinea, authorities said on Thursday, resolving one of the country s oldest naval mysteries after more than a century. The submarine, AE-1, was the first Allied vessel to sink during World War One, while patrolling for German warships in 1914, in circumstances that have never been established. The Australian Navy and several private bodies found the final resting place of the vessel s 35 crew on their 13th attempt, Defence Minister Marise Payne told media. The submarine s disappearance was a tragedy for our then fledgling nation, Payne said, adding that a small commemorative service was held aboard the survey ship that found the wreck and authorities were trying to contact the crew s descendants. It is my hope that what we have done in the last couple of days will now provide relief to the family and descendants of all of those members, said navy chief Vice Admiral Timmy Barrett, adding that the crew had come from Australia, Britain and New Zealand. The authorities did not disclose the wreck s location, except to say it was found off the Duke of York Islands. The governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea said they planned to preserve the site. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. creating 'sensational hype' over China's military modernization: ministry;BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has created sensational hype over China s military modernization, the defense ministry has said in reaction to a White House report branding China a competitor seeking to challenge U.S. power. U.S. President Donald Trump s administration on Monday laid out a national security strategy based on Trump s America First vision, singling out of China and Russia as revisionist powers seeking not only to challenge U.S. power but to erode its security and prosperity. China s foreign ministry said on Tuesday cooperation between China and the United States was the only correct choice. The spokesman for its defense ministry, Ren Guoqiang, said in a statement posted on the ministry website late on Wednesday that the U.S. strategy had without regard for the facts, created sensational hype over the modernization of China s defenses . Ren also said the strategy had called into question the intentions of China s military development plan and that it ran counter to peace worldwide and the development of China s relations with the United States. China s contribution to world peace was plain for all to see, he said. Attempts by any country or any document to distort the facts or cast aspersions will be in vain, Ren said. China s armed forces, the world s largest, are in the midst of an ambitious modernization program, which includes investment in technology and new equipment such as stealth fighters and aircraft carriers, as well as cuts to troop numbers. The tough U.S. national security strategy comes after Trump has sought to build strong relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump has called upon Xi to ensure China does more to help the United States rein in North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. administration cited China s growing military might and its efforts to build military bases on manmade islands in the contested South China Sea as evidence of Chinese attempts to alter the status quo. China says its expansion of islets in the South China Sea is for peaceful purposes only and that, as it has irrefutable sovereignty there, no other country has the right to question its actions. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. House approves $81 billion for disaster aid;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved an $81 billion bill to help widespread recovery efforts from hurricanes and wildfires this year. By a vote of 251-169, the House passed the measure to help Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and states rebuild following the natural disasters. The bill now goes to the Senate where it is expected to be approved this week. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White, moldy and French: Russia's response to sanctions goes gourmet;VERKHNAYA PYSHMA/YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) - One thousand French goats have found a new home in Russia s Ural mountains as a local company bets on producing European-style cheeses no longer available for import. Russia banned the wholesale import of fresh food from the European Union, including dairy products, in response to sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. But as images of steamrollers flattening illegally imported European cheeses were beamed across the country, Russian businesses were gearing up to fill the gap. Investment in the production of sanctioned foodstuffs has grown, and in the Ural mountains the owners of mining company UMMC have added goats to their copper and coal assets. Iskandar Makhmudov and Andrey Kozytsin, both on the Forbes list of Russia s 100 richest people, are among UMMC s main shareholders. Their company, UGMK-Agro, spent one million euros on trucking the Alpine goats 5,000 km from the Vendee region in France. Working out of a converted cowshed north of Yekaterinburg, it is aiming to be Russia s largest producer of white mold goat s cheese, a French delicacy. The company has invested 200 million rubles ($3.4 million)in cheese production and expects to turn a profit in six years. For us, sanctions have of course played a positive role. We saw a gap in the market - not quite a deficit, but some room for maneuver, Ilya Bondarev, CEO of UGMK-Agro, told Reuters. With most Russians accustomed to semi-hard cheeses, part of the challenge will be encouraging buyers to try something new. I m sorry but goat s cheese smells, and I don t like the taste of moldy cheeses, said 30-year-old Alexander, a Yekaterinburg resident. I prefer mozzarella and normal Russian cheeses, which remind me of my childhood, he said. There is also the price. A kg of UGMK-Agro s B che-de-Ch vre cheese, sold under the Coeur du Nord brand, costs 2,200-2,500 rubles ($37-$43) versus 300-800 rubles per kg for standard Russian cheeses. UGMK-Agro plans to produce 500-700 kg of cheese a day by the spring of 2018. We are launching in Moscow ... and are talking to distributors in St Petersburg, Bondarev said. But our main challenge is the creation of a local market. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesian police warn Islamists against raids in search of Santa hats;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian police appealed on Thursday for tolerance and respect for other people s religious celebrations after an Islamist group threatened to raid businesses to check for Muslims being forced to wear Santa Claus hats or other Christmas garb. The hardline Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) said this week it would conduct sweeping operations in the world s biggest Muslim-majority country, and that forcing Muslims to wear Christmas attire was a violation of their human rights. Indonesia is home to several religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and people who follow traditional beliefs. The constitution guarantees freedom of religion in an officially secular state though tension between followers of different faiths can flare. There can be no sweeping operations ... members of the public should respect other religions that are carrying out celebrations, national police chief Tito Karnavian told police during a security exercise in the capital, Jakarta. The FPI said it aimed to enforce a fatwa, or decree, issued by Indonesia s Islamic Clerical Council in 2016 prohibiting business owners from forcing employees to wear Christmas clothing. We will raid businesses in anticipation of them being stubborn about this and we will be accompanied by police, said Novel Bakmukmin, head of the FPI s Jakarta chapter. Employers forcing staff to wear Christmas clothes were violating their rights. Businesses should be aware that there should be no forcing, he said. The Islamic Clerical Council s decrees are not legally binding but serve as guidelines for Indonesian Muslims. Christmas is widely celebrated across Indonesia and holiday decorations are ubiquitous, especially at shops, restaurants and malls where many enthusiastic workers - even Muslims - don Santa hats or elf costumes. The FPI built its reputation with raids on restaurants and bars serving alcohol during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In recent years, it has turned its attention to Christian celebrations. The group has also said it wants the Jakarta city government to stop sponsoring New Year celebrations, which attract many thousands of people. About 90,000 police officers will be on duty cross the country during the end-of-year holidays, in an operation largely aimed at preventing militant attacks. Attacks on churches in Jakarta and elsewhere on Christmas Eve in 2000, killed nearly 20 people. Ever since, authorities have stepped up security at churches and tourist spots for the holiday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico arrests former high-ranking PRI official in corruption probe;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican authorities on Wednesday arrested a former high-ranking official of President Enrique Pena Nieto s party in a corruption investigation in the northern state of Chihuahua, the state s governor said. The arrest extends a streak of corruption allegations dogging the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), with four former governors arrested on such charges this year. Entrenched corruption is expected to be a key issue in the runup to Mexico s next presidential election in 2018. Alejandro Gutierrez, who was the adjunct secretary to the presidency of the PRI, was arrested in a joint operation by state and federal police, Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral wrote in a post on Facebook. The Chihuahua prosecutor s office accused Gutierrez of participating in a sophisticated scheme to divert public funds of 250 million pesos ($13 million) earmarked for educational programs in 2016. Gutierrez will present himself before a judge early Thursday, the office said in a statement. This week, Mexican newspaper Reforma published reports on an alleged Chihuahua corruption scheme to funnel the money into the PRI s campaign fund, through avenues such as fake contracts for workshops for parents and expensive software. The reports were based on testimony to prosecutors by former state finance minister Jaime Herrera that the paper obtained. Gutierrez arrest took place in Coahuila. This week, he rejected allegations against him in an interview with Mexican newspaper Vanguardia, saying he was considering suing for defamation. I am thinking, I will have to look into it, if I initiate some legal proceeding, he said. I do not know, I repeat to you, I did not know not even one official, nor ex-official, of finances... I see things that are absolutely false. Gutierrez arrest contributes to the clearing up of the crimes of political corruption that have been attributed to the former governor, C sar Duarte J quez, said Corral, of the National Action Party. The government is determining whether others should be held responsible for the funneling of funds to PRI coffers in 2016, Corral added. In March, a Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant for Duarte on suspicion of embezzlement. Corral has said he is a fugitive from justice. A spokesman for the PRI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The PRI was routed in 2016 regional elections, losing several of its bastions, including the states of Veracruz, Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo, as voters expressed discontent over a series of graft scandals. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea rejects U.S. accusation, says it is not linked to any cyber attacks;SEOUL (Reuters) - A spokesman for North Korea s foreign ministry said on Thursday Pyongyang is not linked to any cyber attacks, the North s first response since the United States publicly blamed it for a massive worldwide cyber security breach. As we have clearly stated on several occasions, we have nothing to do with cyber attack and we do not feel a need to respond, on a case-by-case basis, to such absurd allegations of the U.S., the spokesman said, according to the North s official KCNA news agency. The U.S. accusation was a serious political provocation against North Korea that Pyongyang would never tolerate, the spokesman said. The May cyber attack crippled hospitals, banks and other companies. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. approves license for Ukraine to buy small arms from U.S. firms;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has approved an export license for Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Wednesday. Department records show Ukraine has bought small amounts of those types of weapons for several years, both before and after the 2014 Russian annexation of Ukraine s Crimean peninsula. The department notified Congress of the decision on Dec. 13, Nauert said, adding that the U.S. government was not selling the weapons directly to the Kiev government but was allowing Ukraine to buy from U.S. manufacturers. Under the previous two administrations, the U.S. government has approved export licenses to Ukraine, so this is nothing new, Nauert said. The license covers weapons in categories such as semi-automatic and automatic firearms up to, and including, .50 caliber weapons. It also includes combat shotguns, silencers, military scopes, and flash suppressors, as well as parts. Nauert said the U.S. government had not directly provided lethal defensive equipment to Ukraine, nor had it ruled out doing so. U.S. exporters can apply for direct commercial sales licenses at any time and those are reviewed by the State Department on a case-by-case basis, she said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela may ban main opposition parties from presidential vote;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s pro-government legislative superbody ruled on Wednesday that parties who boycotted this month s local elections had lost legitimacy, potentially eliminating the main opposition groups from the 2018 presidential race. The decree by the Constituent Assembly - created in a controversial July vote boycotted by the opposition and widely condemned abroad - infuriated Venezuela s opposition and drew criticism from the United States. The Venezuelan government and its illegitimate Constituent Assembly are inventing rules as they go along. This is not democracy, the U.S. Embassy said on Twitter. The Justice First, Democratic Action and Popular Will parties did not run candidates in this month s mayoral polls in protest against what they said was a biased election system designed to perpetuate leftist President Nicolas Maduro s dictatorship. Maduro had warned that could cost them participation in future votes and the Constituent Assembly echoed that position on Wednesday, saying the parties had lost their legal status and should re-apply to the National Election Board. Given that the board is pro-Maduro and authorities are constantly throwing up obstacles to the opposition, that could well mean those parties are now effectively unable to run in the presidential election due before the end of 2018. Maduro, 55, is expected to run for re-election despite the disastrous state of the economy in Venezuela, where millions are skipping meals and struggling to survive amid one of the world s highest inflation rates and widespread shortages of basics. Two of his potentially biggest rivals already cannot run against him: Popular Will leader Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest, while Justice First leader Henrique Capriles is prohibited from holding political office. We alert the world and all democratic governments that banning opposition political parties is yet another measure by the dictatorship that deserves rejection and condemnation, said Capriles party colleague Tomas Guanipa. Maduro and his allies say the Constituent Assembly has brought peace to the OPEC nation after months of opposition protests earlier this year in which more than 125 people were killed. Demonstrators said they were fighting for freedom, but the government condemned them as violent subversives. It s time for the coupsters to face the constitution. Let no one undermine the people s participation and the democratic system, Constituent Assembly head Delcy Rodriguez said after the passage of Wednesday s measure. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean military fires warning shots at North Korean troops searching for defector: Yonhap;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean guards fired around 20 warning shots at North Korean troops searching for a defector who fled across the heavily militarized border between the two countries on Thursday, South Korea s Yonhap news agency reported. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican governor requests leave to run for president;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The governor of Nuevo Leon, a prosperous state in northern Mexico, requested a leave of absence on Wednesday to run as an independent candidate for president next year. Jaime Rodriguez, known as El Bronco, wrote in a post on Twitter that he had asked the state s congress for permission to take a six-month leave of absence. I want to change Mexico so that the citizens together make history, he wrote in Spanish. While this is being decided, I will continue working as every day. Diana Adame, a spokeswoman for the state of Nuevo Leon, said the governor expects to hear back from Congress in the next few days. Rodriguez still needs more signatures across 12 states to become an independent candidate, having reached the goal in five, according to the electoral regulator INE. A poll by Parametria published by Reuters on Tuesday showed just 2 percent of people said they would vote for Rodriguez, though other polls have put it at around 4 percent. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea plans to buy 20 additional F-35 aircraft: report;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea plans to buy an additional 20 F-35A stealth fighter aircraft from the United States, a South Korean newspaper reported on Thursday, less than two months after U.S. President Donald Trump announced Seoul would be purchasing billions of dollars in new military equipment. South Korea s Defence Acquisition Program Administration has established a process for procuring the 20 additional aircraft, the Joongang Ilbo newspaper reported, citing multiple government sources. In 2014 South Korea formally announced a plan to buy 40 F-35As from American defense contractor Lockheed Martin. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korean 'nut rage' executive remains free after court upholds suspended sentence;SEOUL (Reuters) - A former Korean Air Lines executive who went into a rage on an aircraft over the way she was served nuts in first class avoided jail on Thursday when South Korea s Supreme Court upheld her 10-month suspended sentence. Heather Cho had been charged with, among others, violation of aviation law in 2015 after she took issue with the way she was served nuts and forced the Korean Air Lines plane to return to its gate in a New York airport in December 2014. The incident became a national scandal in South Korea, as Cho is the daughter of the chairman of Hanjin Group, the conglomerate of which Korean Air is an affiliate. Cho stepped down from her role as Korean Air Lines vice president and attempted to apologize to crew members. The Supreme Court upheld an appeals court ruling that said forcing an on-the-ground plane to return to its gate cannot be seen as route deviation, but found Cho guilty of abusive language and actions against cabin crew and forcing a crew member to disembark. Cho was originally sentenced to one year in jail, but has been free from custody since May 2015, when the appeals court suspended her sentence. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Food security in Middle East, North Africa deteriorating, says U.N. agency;CAIRO (Reuters) - Food security in the Middle East and North Africa is quickly deteriorating because of conflict in several countries in the region, the United Nations said on Thursday. In those hardest hit by crises Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Sudan an average of more than a quarter of the population was undernourished, the U.N. s Food and Agriculture Organization said in its annual report on food security. A quarter of Yemen s people are on the brink of famine, several years into a proxy war between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that has caused one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent times. The report focused on changes to food security and nutrition across the region since 2000. It said that undernourishment in countries not directly affected by conflict, such as most Gulf Arab states and most North African countries including Egypt, had slowly improved in the last decade. But it had worsened in conflict-hit countries. The costs of conflict can be seen in the measurements of food insecurity and malnutrition, the FAO s assistant director-general Abdessalam Ould Ahmed said. Decisive steps towards peace and stability (need to be) taken. Several countries in the region erupted into conflict following uprisings in 2011 that overthrew leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Syria s civil war, which also began with popular demonstrations, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and made more than 11 million homeless. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin: U.S. arms license for Kiev may trigger new bloodshed in east Ukraine;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The approval by the United States of an export license for Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers may provoke hotheads among Ukrainian nationalists to seek to unleash a new bloodshed in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Thursday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says no firm date for Syria peace congress;MOSCOW (Reuters) - There is no firm date yet for the much-discussed Syria peace congress, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. No one wants to artificially accelerate holding of the congress, Peskov told reporters on a conference call. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India pledges $25 million for Myanmar's Rakhine to help refugees return;NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India will provide Myanmar with $25 million for development projects including prefabricated houses in troubled Rakhine state to enable the return of Rohingya Muslims who have fled the area, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. More than 600,000 Rohingya have escaped to Bangladesh after attacks by insurgents on Myanmar security forces in August triggered a military crackdown that the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing. The international community demands the Rohingya be allowed to go home in safety, and Bangladesh and Myanmar have begun talks on repatriation, but huge doubts remain about the Rohingya ever being able to return in peace to rebuild homes and till fields. India, which is concerned about the influx of the refugees into its territory, has stressed economic development of the Rakhine region as a way to help lower tensions. Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar held talks with Myanmar leaders on Wednesday and signed a memorandum of understanding to support development of Rakhine and help create jobs. This is intended to help the Government of Myanmar achieve its objective of restoration of normalcy in Rakhine State and enable the return of displaced persons, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement. Under this MoU, Government of India proposes to take up, among others, a project to build prefabricated housing in Rakhine State so as to meet the immediate needs of returning people. India will spend $25 million over the next five years on development of the impoverished region, foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said. Besides housing, the proposals include building schools, healthcare facilities and building bridges and roads. India has been trying to promote economic cooperation with Myanmar to try to push back against China s expansive involvement in infrastructure development across south Asia. Beijing has also stepped into the Rohingya crisis and proposed a three-phase plan including a ceasefire, bilateral talks and then tackling poverty long-term. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;A hard knock life for London's rough sleepers;LONDON (Reuters) - Outside London s Piccadilly theater where tickets cost up to 110 pounds and a banner advertising the musical Annie reads It s a hard knock life , Bryan and Kevin sleep in small tents on the street. They are among almost 1,000 people who sleep rough in the British capital, according to official figures, while more than 4,000 are on the streets across the country every night. Bryan, 51, who last year nearly died from pneumonia, became homeless after personal problems led him to drink and drugs. It s worse than it used to be right now, but I think it s down to a lot of things, he says. The way people are now - everything is going up and costing more and then the other stuff, services and care, humanity, it s going down. There is wide agreement that the problem has become worse in the last seven years, leading to criticism of the Conservative government s approach and accusations that its austerity policies, including changes to welfare payments for housing, are partly to blame. In a report this week, parliament s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) called the extent of homelessness across England a national crisis . The latest official figures hammer home the shameful state of homelessness in England and the abject failure of the government s approach to addressing the misery suffered by many thousands of families and individuals, PAC chairman Meg Hillier said. The charity Shelter estimates more than 300,000 people in Britain are homeless, a figure which has risen by 13,000 in a year. It says one in every 200 people in England are homeless and 128,000 children will be without a home this Christmas. Official figures show that there were 4,134 rough sleepers counted on a single night in autumn 2016, an increase of 134 percent since 2010 when there were fewer than 1,800. All you really want is a gaff (place) of your own, says Jimmy, who beds down in a subway near Waterloo Station. People come from out of town into the city at Christmas - you make more money - so it s harder for us who are here all the time, said Jimmy, 51, who originally hails from Glasgow in Scotland. There is both a human and financial cost to the problem. The average age of death of someone who is rough-sleeping is 47 and people living on the street are 17 times more likely to be the victims of violence than those in settled accommodation. I m getting to a point where I can t do it anymore, I m trying to save my money but it s hard, said John, 19, one of a small group of men living under Waterloo Bridge. Andrew, who now has a place to live but returns to hang out with his homeless friends under the bridge, recalls how he was offered drugs on his first night on the streets: I said no mate, I m not into that and he said It s a free trial, no strings. While he has escaped the streets, Andrew is pessimistic about John s future. He won t get himself off the streets, it s almost impossible without help, he said. As to the financial impact, the National Audit Office, parliament s spending watchdog, said local authorities had spent 1.15 billion pounds ($1.54 billion) on homelessness services in 2015-16. NAO head Amyas Morse said in September the government s recent performance in reducing homelessness therefore cannot be considered value for money. The government has set a target of halving rough sleeping by 2022 and abolishing it by 2027. Last week, Prime Minister Theresa May told lawmakers the government would spend 500 million pounds on tackling homelessness and was putting in projects to tackle rough sleeping. We do not want to see anybody who is homeless or anybody who is sleeping rough on our streets, May said. But critics say the Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010, have done little to find solutions and warn that the problem could get even worse. We heard that over the next 10 years, if the current trajectory stays as it is, the 160,000 people who are homeless in a year could increase by 25 percent and the 9,100 people sleeping rough could rise by 76 percent, the PAC report said. Meanwhile for some of those who have been homeless for a number of years, getting off the streets can be difficult, especially for those battling drug additions. One of those is Bryan outside the Piccadilly Theatre. Despite his problems, he says he refuses to take any money from children, recalling how one girl recently tried to give him her pocket money. Afterwards I sat and I cried, he said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Borussia Dortmund bomb suspect stands trial for attempted murder;DORTMUND (Reuters) - A German-Russian man suspected of detonating three bombs targeting the Borussia Dortmund soccer team bus in a plan to profit from a plunging share price appeared in a German court on Thursday charged with 28 counts of attempted murder. The team was heading to the club s stadium for a Champions League match against AS Monaco on April 11 when the explosions went off, wounding Spanish defender Marc Bartra and delaying the match by a day. Letters left at the scene had initially suggested Islamist militants were behind the bomb attack, but prosecutors later said the 28-year old suspect, a dual German and Russian national identified as Sergei V., was motivated by greed. The attack near the Signal Iduna Park stadium, the largest in Germany, holding more than 80,000 fans, nonetheless revived memories at the time of the November 2015 attacks in Paris that targeted entertainment venues including the Stade de France where France were playing Germany in a soccer friendly. The start of the trial also comes only days after the anniversary of a deadly truck attack at a Berlin Christmas market, which killed 12 people and put the issue of security at the heart of political debate in Germany. Sergei V., who was led into a courtroom at the Dortmund regional court in handcuffs on Thursday, may face a life sentence in prison if he is found guilty. No plea was entered. In addition to the attempted murder charges, he is accused of inflicting grievous bodily harm and of causing an explosion. Prosecutors have said that he bought about 44,000 euros ($52,000) worth of options on the day of the attack entitling him to sell shares in Borussia Dortmund at a pre-determined price. His goal was allegedly to push the price of the shares down through the attack and earn a high profit of around 500,000 euros through the options, a spokesman for the regional court in Dortmund said. But shares in BVB rose after the attack and are up 16 percent so far this year. Defence lawyer Carl Heydenreich declined to comment on the allegations against his client on Thursday, saying the matter was complicated by what he said was a smear campaign ahead of the trial. The Dortmund court has set trial dates through March for now. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: FORMER NBC NEWS ANCHOR Tom Brokaw Tells Morning Joe Hacks “We’re At War” With Trump…and “Fox News Is On A Jihad” [VIDEO];This morning, President Trump tweeted a note of congratulations to Fox and Friends, after they were named, The Most Influential Show In News . In his tweet, President Trump told Fox and Friends, You deserve it three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! Was @foxandfriends just named the most influential show in news? You deserve it three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2017Trump s tweet was enough to put the maniacal Trump hater Mika Brzezinski over the edge. She mockingly read the tweet to the MSNBC show s panel, then turned to Tom Brokaw to ask for his reaction to President Trump s tweet. Brokaw smugly told Brzezinski that President Donald Trump watches Fox News because it reinforces what he believes . Brokaw then went on to exclude leftist crybaby Shepard Smith from his disgusting and inflammatory assertion that Fox News is on a jihad. Fox News, after Shepard Smith, in the late afternoon, is on a jihad right now on the whole question about whether there is a fairness about this or not, Brokaw told Brzezinski. The whole assault is on the institutions. Brokaw then went on to criticize Newt Gingrich for daring to call out the corrupt and biased behavior of the FBI, that s recently been uncovered as a result of the Trump-Russian collusion witch hunt. Brokaw told the panel, Newt Gingrich looking in the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization, right? Three months earlier he had said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have. Newt Gingrich looking into the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization three months earlier he d said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have. So, we re at war here, Brokaw told the like-minded leftist hack panel at MSNBC.Watch (audio is missing for the first second of the video):;left-news;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BIG MOUTH ROSIE O’DONNELL Could Be Heading To Prison After Taking Her Hate For President Trump Too Far;Many are suggesting that the former comedian, turned militant, leftist activist, Rosie O Donnell needs to be treated by federal authorities like every other American when it comes to being held accountable for her actions. O Donnell broke the law when she offered to pay two Republican lawmakers for voting against Trump s tax cut bill on Twitter. Even offering this is illegal. You are not above the law but I guess you are since the Feds haven't been knocking on your door. with all these tweets you obviously are not joking. Androgynous Priest (@AndrogynPriest) December 21, 2017After ex-comedian Rosie O Donnell s meltdown on Twitter before the Senate s big tax vote Tuesday night, President Donald Trump can reasonably direct federal authorities to lock her up and even to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets, which he once infamously cited as a personal goal.Starting a few hours before the legislation passed, O Donnell tweeted:so how about this i promise to give 2 million dollars to senator susan collins and 2 million to senator jeff flakeif they vote NO NO I WILL NOT KILL AMERICANS FOR THE SUOER RICH DM me susan DM me jeff no shit 2 million casheach ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Even after another Twitter user, Louise Mensch, replied that O Donnell was irresponsibly advocating bribery, O Donnell doubled down.i disagree it is obvious there is a price corker had one collins tooflake almost brave he crawled out backwards2 million to any GOP senator who votes noon KILLING AMERICANS MILLIONS WITH OUT HEALTH CARE MY GOD HAVE WE NO SO ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Federal law addresses O Donnell s actions.18 U.S. Code 201 criminalizes the attempted bribery of federal officials by whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official with intent to influence any official act. The penalty? For Rosie, she could spend up to 15 years in jail, suffer a lifetime ban from elective office and pay up to a cool $12 million:The statute calls for a fine of not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. In court, O Donnell would probably argue that her attempted bribe was in jest, or perhaps a syndrome of a mental illness.After all, her attorneys would argue, who, while seriously attempting to bribe members of the U.S. Congress would do so in such a reckless, public manner that would all but ensure a conviction? Daily CallerThe emboldened screwball doubled down on her vile tweets calling for people to rise up against our government and mobilize , to call 911 and again, offered to pay US Senators millions of dollars to vote against tax cuts for working, American families.WE CANNOT SIT AT HOME WHILE THEY ROB OUR NATION YOUR NEIGHBORS HEALTH CARE FOR THE FUCKING MERCERS AND KOCH BROTHERS FUCK THEM RISE UP ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017She even asked her followers to call 911 to report a fake crime. There has to be a law against this:call 911 crime in progressUS SENATEthis is too much ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017What does Rosie mean when she calls on people to mobilize against our government? Isn t that the same thing as calling for a coup? Isn t that also considered to be illegal?WHY HAVENT THE MOBILIZE PEOPLE MOBILIZED https://t.co/wEucdcLqoH ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017And then, she doubled down on stupid with this tweet:heres the thing al i am not looking to give more money to a corrupt system however this bill is criminal i therefore offer 2 million for any GOP senator that votes no to them personally or directed to A NON PROFIT OF THEIR CHOICE no strings attached DO WHATS RIGHT ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Here s how a few Twitter users responded:What you just tweeted is criminal check yourself on that ! LaDeplorable (@NenaPacino) December 20, 2017Send that 2 million and any benefit you receive from the tax cuts back to the government. Better yet, why not go out in the streets of L.A. and find 40 homeless people and give each 50 grand for job training for a career that will change their life 4ever. D.B. (@boingboingbong) December 20, 2017 ;left-news;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PELOSI CHUCKLES AND MOCKS President Trump when Asked About Their Relationship [Video];What a bizarre exchange between a reporter and Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi! She is asked during a press conference what her relationship is with President Trump and she laughed. What s even stranger is she mocked the way Trump says DACA .It s as if she detests the president so much that she can t bring herself to speak his name. Notice how she talks in disjointed sentences and stops suddenly to think. She cannot even form a complete thought! This is yet another example of the strange behavior of Pelosi that is ignored by the main stream media like an enabling spouse.Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) chuckled Thursday when asked to characterize her relationship with President Donald Trump, saying there is a good rapport there but mainly focusing on their stark disagreement over tax reform.After a reporter asked the question, Pelosi paused and smiled, appearing to gather her thoughts for a diplomatic response given her strong criticism of the administration. I think we have a good rapport, Pelosi said. I don t think we ve accomplished much together. Pelosi said she and Trump could find a path together on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, although she gently mocked his pronunciation of DACA. Read more: WFBShe went on the rant against the Republican tax bill in another disjointed word salad moment. How can anyone take her seriously when she uses terms like armageddon to describe the tax bill?;left-news;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Borussia Dortmund bomb suspect stands trial for attempted murder;DORTMUND (Reuters) - A German-Russian man suspected of detonating three bombs targeting the Borussia Dortmund soccer team bus in a plan to profit from a plunging share price appeared in a German court on Thursday charged with 28 counts of attempted murder. The team was heading to the club s stadium for a Champions League match against AS Monaco on April 11 when the explosions went off, wounding Spanish defender Marc Bartra and delaying the match by a day. Letters left at the scene had initially suggested Islamist militants were behind the bomb attack, but prosecutors later said the 28-year old suspect, a dual German and Russian national identified as Sergei V., was motivated by greed. The attack near the Signal Iduna Park stadium, the largest in Germany, holding more than 80,000 fans, nonetheless revived memories at the time of the November 2015 attacks in Paris that targeted entertainment venues including the Stade de France where France were playing Germany in a soccer friendly. The start of the trial also comes only days after the anniversary of a deadly truck attack at a Berlin Christmas market, which killed 12 people and put the issue of security at the heart of political debate in Germany. Sergei V., who was led into a courtroom at the Dortmund regional court in handcuffs on Thursday, may face a life sentence in prison if he is found guilty. No plea was entered. In addition to the attempted murder charges, he is accused of inflicting grievous bodily harm and of causing an explosion. Prosecutors have said that he bought about 44,000 euros ($52,000) worth of options on the day of the attack entitling him to sell shares in Borussia Dortmund at a pre-determined price. His goal was allegedly to push the price of the shares down through the attack and earn a high profit of around 500,000 euros through the options, a spokesman for the regional court in Dortmund said. But shares in BVB rose after the attack and are up 16 percent so far this year. Defence lawyer Carl Heydenreich declined to comment on the allegations against his client on Thursday, saying the matter was complicated by what he said was a smear campaign ahead of the trial. The Dortmund court has set trial dates through March for now. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No clean sweep for South Africa's Ramaphosa in ANC race;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Cyril Ramaphosa may have won the race to be leader of the African National Congress, but he failed to decisively wrest control of South Africa s ruling party from President Jacob Zuma. Zuma s faction retains influence in the ANC s incoming National Executive Committee (NEC) and was felt in conference debates on divisive policies such as land expropriation and nationalization. Ramaphosa s incomplete victory could stymie his chances of tackling entrenched corruption and implementing reforms to kickstart economic growth, tasks which he placed at the center of his campaign for the ANC s top job. It also lessens his chances of ousting Zuma from the state presidency before his second term ends in 2019. That could disappoint investors who have bet heavily that Ramaphosa, a 65-year-old former trade union leader and millionaire businessman, will be able to turn around Africa s most industrialized economy. The rand currency has been volatile since Ramaphosa s election, as investors continue to assess how much clout he wields. Because Ramaphosa does not have a strong majority in the NEC and because of the lingering presence of Zuma loyalists, he will not be able to drive his own agenda, said Darias Jonker, director for Africa at Eurasia Group. Zuma s decade in power has badly tarnished the ANC s image at home and abroad as growth slowed to a near-standstill. He has survived several votes of no confidence, and analysts say he has cemented his control over the ANC by using political patronage. The ANC s new NEC, announced in the early hours of Thursday, is split roughly 50-50 between the Ramaphosa and Zuma factions. The party s top six most powerful officials, announced on Monday, are also split down the middle. Zuma said on Thursday that there was no winner or loser in the election of leaders at the ANC conference. Were Ramaphosa to try to force Zuma from office, he would need to secure the support of the NEC, which includes his main rival in the ANC race, former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma s ex-wife and preferred successor. Others on the NEC include prominent Zuma lieutenants Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and Energy Minister David Mahlobo, who would defend the 75-year-old leader to the bitter end. The two most controversial policy resolutions adopted at the ANC conference on Wednesday called for land expropriation without compensation and nationalization of the central bank. Both those policies were most vociferously backed by Dlamini-Zuma. The expropriation of land from white farmers in neighboring Zimbabwe had a devastating impact on food production and any mention of nationalization in South Africa is enough to spook investors, since left-wing elements of the ANC have also called for mines and banks to be state-owned. A senior ANC source told Reuters the Ramaphosa camp would try to ensure that the shift to full state ownership of the Reserve Bank would go no further than the resolution adopted at the conference. The Reserve Bank said that changing its ownership structure could raise the level of uncertainty in the economy and would be costly. Land expropriation without compensation is also unlikely to become the norm soon, but the fact that the ANC called for the constitution to be amended as a step in that direction could dent already weak investor confidence. This kind of rhetoric will now have to inform Ramaphosa s speeches and perpetuate concerns over property rights at a time when the economy needs exactly the opposite signals, said Anne Fruhauf, an analyst at consultancy Teneo. Land is especially emotive in South Africa, where the ANC is under pressure to address gaping racial inequality more than two decades after the end of white minority rule. The opposition Democratic Alliance on Thursday criticized the ANC s call for land expropriation, saying it failed to address the broader issues of property rights for poor South Africans and government mismanagement of existing land programs. The debate over land was so heated among ANC members on Wednesday that a delegate said a fight broke out, and a party official said it nearly caused the conference to collapse. Jonker at Eurasia Group said ANC policies were always more populist and left-leaning than what was eventually implemented by government. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian Foreign Ministry says latest U.S. sanctions are 'grotesque';MOSCOW (Reuters) - The latest U.S. sanctions imposed on five Russians and Chechens are grotesque and groundless, and Moscow will hit back with tit-for-tat sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed the new sanctions on the five people, including on Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov, for alleged human rights abuses. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lebanon's interior minister accuses Uber of not checking records;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon s interior minister said on Thursday that Uber driver suspected of murdering a British embassy worker last week had served time in prison, and he accused the company of not checking criminal records of its drivers. The body of Rebecca Dykes was found strangled on Saturday next to a highway outside Beirut. Police detained a suspect on Monday and said the crime was not politically motivated. Minister Nohad Machnouk said the driver had three priors on his judicial record involving drugs and had been imprisoned on that basis. This company, when it hires drivers, and lets them work within its organisation, does not check their priors , he said at a news conference. An Uber spokesperson said all drivers the company uses in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record. The spokesperson said a copy of the driver s judicial record published by local media, showing no judgments against the driver, was accurate. Uber confirmed in an email that he was a licensed taxi driver with a clean background check. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey seeks life sentences for 60 ex-military over 1997 'post-modern coup';ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Sixty people including a former military chief faced demands for life jail terms over a 1997 campaign of army pressure, known in Turkey as the post-modern coup, that toppled the country s first Islamist-led government, state media said on Thursday. Coups in 1960 and 1980 and a failed 2016 putsch involved overt army use of force, but the resignation of prime minister Necmettin Erbakan followed warnings and only a brief appearance of tanks in a provincial town. It is an action that has long rankled with current Islamist-rooted President Tayyip Erdogan. In his final opinion on the case, the prosecutor said the army action, which did not result in any direct military rule, constituted a real coup attempt and could not be defined as post-modern , broadcaster NTV reported. Among those facing life sentences are General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, 85, who was chief of general staff between 1994 and 1998, and his deputy at the time General Cevik Bir, state-run Anadolu news agency said. The investigation into the unseating of Erbakan, who led a coalition government, is one of a series of court cases that have targeted the formerly all powerful secularist military in recent years. The army s influence has been curbed drastically under Erdogan, who first came to power in 2003 and who was a member of Erbakan s Welfare Party at the time of the government s ouster. A total of 103 people, mostly retired generals, had been named in the trial s 1,300-page indictment, accused of overthrowing by force, and participating in the overthrow of a government. While aggravated life sentences were sought for 60 defendants, the prosecutor asked for the acquittal of 39 other defendants, NTV reported. The four other defendants have died since the court case began in 2013. Last year, rogue soldiers commandeered warplanes, tanks and helicopters in a failed coup which killed 250 people and which Ankara has blamed on U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen. He has denied involvement. Erbakan, who died in 2011, pioneered Islamist politics in Turkey, a Muslim country with a secular state system, paving the way for the later success of Erdogan s AK Party. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippine ferry capsizes with 251 on board, four dead;MANILA (Reuters) - Four people were killed and seven were missing after a Philippine ferry with 251 people on board capsized during bad weather on Thursday near the capital, Manila, disaster officials and a coastguard spokesman said. Accidents involving boats sailing between the many islands of the Philippines are common. Vessels are often overloaded but the coastguard said that was not the case on Thursday and the ferry had the capacity to carry 286 people. A total of 240 people were rescued from the sea by fishermen and rescue boats sent out by the coastguard hours after the ferry capsized and sank, about eight miles off Real town in Quezon province. Search and rescue operations will continue until all crew and passengers are accounted for, said coastguard spokesman Captain Armand Balilo. Most of the rescued passengers were brought to Dinahican port. Two men and two women drowned, he said. The ferry set sail at around dawn from a port in Real. Survivors told reporters the weather turned bad three hours later with strong winds and huge waves. The ferry began taking in water and in minutes it capsized and sank, they said. Disaster officials said search and rescue operations were hampered by heavy rain and huge waves caused by a tropical storm affecting the southern Philippines. A tropical storm is expected to make landfall on the southern island of Mindanao late Thursday or early on Friday. The weather bureau has warned of extensive flooding and landslides as the storm, packing center winds of 65 kph (40 mph), approaches the Philippines. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police say suspicious package at Frankfurt Christmas market harmless;FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A suspicious package that prompted an evacuation of a Christmas market in Frankfurt has turned out to be harmless, the city s police said on Twitter. Authorities said the package in question at Roemer square, the heart of the city s Christmas market, was a donation for the homeless. Well intentioned, but poorly placed, the police said on Twitter. The all clear came about 45 minutes after the evacuation was announced. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kurdish-led Syrian groups plan to attend Sochi talks: officials;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Kurdish-led Syrian groups plan to attend Russia s proposed Syria peace talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Kurdish officials have said. The Syria peace congress was originally scheduled for Nov. 18 but was postponed and the Kremlin said on Thursday that no new date had been set. If the invitation is renewed, we will attend Sochi and every other meeting that concerns the Syrian crisis as representatives of the people s will Sihanouk Depo, an official of Syria s main Kurdish party, PYD, told an affiliated website on Wednesday. We are still invited, Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official, told Reuters on Thursday. If the framework for the congress still stands, we will attend , said Jia Kurd, an adviser to the administration that governs Kurdish-led autonomous regions of Syria. It would mark the first time Syria s main Kurdish groups are brought into peace talks. Although they now run at least a quarter of Syria, they have so far been left out of international talks in line with Turkish wishes. Before the Sochi talks were postponed, the PYD said in November it had been invited and favored attending. Since the conflict erupted in 2011, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its allies have carved out autonomous cantons in the north. The YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State militants with Washington s backing. Their territorial grip has expanded since joining forces with the United States, though Washington opposes their autonomy plans. Turkey views the PYD and the YPG as offshoots of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey. Last month, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s spokesman said Russia had told Ankara that the PYD would not be invited to the peace talks. The Kurdish groups share enmities with both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government and with neighboring Turkey. This week, Assad described the U.S.-backed militias as traitors . On Wednesday, in an interview with Iran s Arabic language Al-Alam television, Syria s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad equated the Kurdish-led forces with Islamic State. There is another Daesh called SDF, he said, using the Arabic acronym for the militant group that until recently controlled swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. In his interview on Wednesday, Depo said: Any attack from the regime will be a failed venture. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese aircraft drill again in Western Pacific;BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese military aircraft have again carried out drills in the Western Pacific, the Xinhua state news agency said on Thursday, with bombers and fighters from a South China Sea naval air arm exercising with warships. Chinese aircraft, most of them from the air force, have carried out increasing numbers of drills far from Chinese shores in the past few years, most recently focused on self-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as its own, and near Japan. Xinhua said dozens of aircraft, including bombers, fighters and early warning aircraft, drilled in the Western Pacific along with warships, but it did not give an exact location. The exercises were normal drills, part of annual plans, and accorded with international law and norms and were not aimed at any specific country or region, Xinhua said, citing the military. The exercises had no impact on freedom of navigation or overflight in the area, the news agency added. The participation of aircraft attached to the South China Sea fleet implies they could have flown over the disputed South China Sea, where China has been building airfields and other military facilities, some on artificial islands, unnerving the region. China claims most of the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which $3 trillion worth of goods passes every year. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei all have overlapping claims. China has continued to install high-frequency radar and other facilities that can be used for military purposes on its man-made islands in the South China Sea, a U.S. think-tank said last week. [nL8N1OE7HR] ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspects in Malta blogger's murder sent to trial;VALLETTA (Reuters) - Three men accused of killing Maltese anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia were committed to trial on Thursday by a magistrate hearing preliminary evidence. Brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat were arrested in early December on the strength of phone intercepts and accused of having killed Caruana Galizia in a carbomb as she drove out of her home on Oct. 16. In the Maltese judicial system, police have to present initial evidence to a magistrate, who decides whether there are sufficient grounds to press charges. On the third day of the preliminary hearing, Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit ruled that the three should be sent to trial. The trio have denied wrongdoing. Police told the court that George Degiorgio was sitting on a boat outside Valletta harbor when he sent an SMS to trigger the deadly bomb, which had been planted overnight in Caruana Galizia s hire car. Mobile phone data showed that Alfred Degiorgio and Muscat had repeatedly visited Caruana Galizia s home village Bidnija in the days before the blast. Police believe they watched from a nearby vantage point as Caruana Galizia set out in her car and told George Degiorgio via telephone to detonate the device. Her death shocked Malta, the smallest nation in the European Union, which has been engulfed by a wave of graft scandals, including accusations of money laundering and influence peddling in government all of which have been denied. Caruana Galizia exposed many of these cases, but had never written about the three suspects, who had fallen foul of local police in the past. The slain blogger s family say the mastermind behind the killing must still be at large. Malta s attorney general must now draw up precise charges against the Degiorgios and Muscat, and no trial date has been set. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia may widen designation for media outlets it deems 'foreign agents': Ifax;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia may decide to designate any media as foreign agents if they are financed by a foreign state or citizen, or by a Russian organization that gets foreign financing, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday. Interfax cited a draft regulation from the justice ministry. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last month that allowed the authorities to designate foreign media outlets as foreign agents in response to what Moscow said was unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. So far, it has been exclusively used to label media sponsored by the U.S. authorities as foreign agents, but the new regulation would appear to go further. Under the existing law media branded foreign agents must provide any news they provide to Russians as the work of foreign agents and disclose their funding sources. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar says two Reuters journalists remanded in custody;YANGON (Reuters) - The two Reuters journalists who were detained in Myanmar on Dec. 12 have appeared in court and been remanded in custody, a police spokesman said on Thursday. Yes, they were sent to the court, said police colonel Myo Thu Soe. The remand has already been obtained. The case is under the Burma State Secrets Act ... so, for now, they are not allowed to meet with anyone and they are being investigated. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in detention for nine days with no detail on where they are being held. They have not had access to visitors or lawyers. Pan Ei Mon, Wa Lone s wife, said she was told by police on Thursday that both journalists were well and she was allowed to leave food and clothes for them. The authorities are investigating whether they violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. The Ministry of Information said last week that Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media . A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday that the police had almost completed their investigation, after which a court case would begin and the reporters would have access to a lawyer and be able to meet members of their families. The spokesman said he was told by the Ministry of Home Affairs and police that the two men were being detained in Yangon, Myanmar s largest city, were in good condition and had not been subject to illegal questioning. A number of governments and human rights and journalist groups have criticized Myanmar s authorities for holding the pair incommunicado since their arrest, with no access to a lawyer, colleagues and family members. Myo Thu Soe, the police spokesman, said: During the investigation by the police force, we are not torturing them nor doing anything that is not in line with human rights. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. court rejects Trump bid to stop transgender military recruits on Jan. 1;NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court in Virginia on Thursday rejected a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to prevent the U.S. military from accepting transgender recruits starting Jan. 1. The administration had urged the appeals court to suspend an order by a federal judge in Baltimore for the armed forces to begin accepting transgender recruits on that date. The administration has said the Jan. 1 start date was causing the armed forces to scramble to revise their policies at the risk of harming military readiness. In a brief two-paragraph order, the three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was denying the administration’s request while the appeal proceeds. All three judges are Democratic appointees. The court’s action could prompt the administration to ask the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. “We disagree with the court’s ruling and are currently evaluating the next steps,” U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said in a statement. Several transgender service members, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit in Maryland after Trump said in July he would ban transgender people from the military, a move that would reverse a policy of the Republican president’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama to accept them. Trump cited concern over military focus and medical costs. So far, three federal judges around the country have issued injunctions blocking Trump’s ban. His administration has appealed all three rulings. Joshua Block, an ACLU attorney who represents the plaintiffs in the Maryland case, said he was happy the appeals court saw through the government’s “smokescreen” to further delay enlistment. Thursday’s action was in response to the administration’s appeal of a Nov. 21 ruling by U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis, who said that the transgender prohibition likely violates the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to equal protection under the law. The Garbis ruling followed a similar one on Oct. 30 by another federal judge in Washington, D.C. A third judge in Seattle also ruled against the administration on Dec. 11. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender people from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty military personnel. The Obama administration had set a deadline of July 1 of this year to begin accepting transgender recruits. But Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, postponed that date to Jan. 1, which the president’s ban then put off indefinitely. The Trump administration said in legal papers that the armed forces are not prepared to train thousands of personnel on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants and might have to accept “some individuals who are not medically fit for service.” The Pentagon on Dec. 8 issued guidelines to recruitment personnel in order to enlist transgender applicants by Jan. 1. The memo outlined medical requirements and specified how the applicants’ sex would be identified and even which undergarments they would wear. The ban’s challengers said the memo contradicted the claim that the military was not ready. The Justice Department disagreed, telling the court on Wednesday that “all this memorandum shows is that the military is scrambling to comply with the injunction.” The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff Brock Stone, 34, has served in the U.S. Navy for 11 years, including a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan, and wants to remain for at least 20 years, according to court papers. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump urges Congress to pass short-term spending bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump called on the Republican Congress to pass a short-term government spending bill later on Thursday to avoid a shutdown when current funding expires at midnight on Friday. Republicans in the House of Representatives have unveiled a stopgap spending bill that would allow the government to stay open at current funding levels. “Pass the C.R. (continuing resolution) TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 21) - Tax Cuts, Home sales;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - The Massive Tax Cuts, which the Fake News Media is desperate to write badly about so as to please their Democrat bosses, will soon be kicking in and will speak for themselves. Companies are already making big payments to workers. Dems want to raise taxes, hate these big Cuts! [0724 EST] - Was @foxandfriends just named the most influential show in news? You deserve it - three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! [0745 EST] - Home Sales hit BEST numbers in 10 years! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN [0856 EST] - House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, don’t let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN! [0952 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. envoy says expects Russia to maintain big presence in Syria;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia is likely to maintain a big presence in Syria despite Russian President Vladimir Putin s announcement of a partial military withdrawal, the U.S. special envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State insurgent group said on Friday. I ve seen the announcement that they ... are going to withdraw from Syria, but that remains to be seen, U.S. envoy Brett McGurk told reporters. I think they will retain a fairly significant presence. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions Myanmar general, others for abuses, corruption;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on 13 serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors including Myanmar general Maung Maung Soe, who oversaw this year s brutal crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority. The U.S. government, applying penalties for the first time under a law passed last year, also targeted 39 other individuals and entities with sanctions that block their assets under U.S. jurisdiction, bar most Americans from dealing with them and largely cut them off from the global financial system. The Treasury Department said those sanctioned included Benjamin Bol Mel, who has served as an adviser to South Sudan President Salva Kiir and is suspected of getting preferential treatment in government contracts. The list also included former Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh, accused of human rights abuses and corruption, and Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler, accused of using his friendship with Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila to secure sweetheart mining deals. Myanmar s government spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the U.S. sanctions. Reuters has been unable to reach Jammeh for comment since he went to exile. He has previously denied ordering the torture or death of political opponents. His lawyer until exile, Edward Gomez, said earlier this year that he was unaware of any misspending of public or charity funds by Jammeh. Gertler has denied all allegations of impropriety and has said his investments in Congo have created thousands of jobs. A spokesman for his Amsterdam-based company the Fleurette Group was not immediately available for comment. Myanmar s military cracked down on Muslim Rohingya from Rakhine state following Aug. 25 Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts. Maung Maung Soe was in charge of the operation that drove more than 650,000 Rohingya to flee mostly Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh. The United States on Nov. 22 called the Myanmar military operation against the Rohingya population ethnic cleansing and threatened targeted sanctions against those responsible. The United States examined credible evidence of Maung Maung Soe s activities, including allegations against Burmese security forces of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages, the Treasury Department said on Thursday. Myanmar s army last month released a report denying all allegations of rape and killings by security forces, having days earlier replaced Maung Maung Soe. No reason was given for his transfer from the post. We must lead by example, and today s announcement of sanctions demonstrates the United States will continue to pursue tangible and significant consequences for those who commit serious human rights abuse and engage in corruption, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement. The sanctions against the 13 people described by the Treasury Department as serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors and the 39 affiliated individuals and entities were the first imposed under a U.S. law called the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. Jammeh, who ruled Gambia for 22 years before being forced into exile after refusing to accept an election defeat, created a terror and assassination squad reporting to him called the Junglers that threatened, terrorized, interrogated and killed people he saw as a threat to his rule, the Treasury Department said. The sanctions targeted Gertler, considered by diplomats to be a member of Kabila s innermost circle, 19 of his businesses and his Congo-based associate Pieter Deboutte. The United States imposed sanctions this year and last against top Democratic Republic of Congo security officials over alleged human rights abuses and the failure to organize an election on time to choose Kabila s successor. For details on the U.S. action, see the Treasury Department statement (here) and for a full list see the department's website (here) ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. vote a resounding global 'No' to U.S. intimidation: Iran's Zarif tweets;Ankara (Reuters) - The United Nations General Assembly s vote on Jerusalem on Thursday was a clear international rejection of U.S. President Donald Trump administration s thuggish intimidation , the Iranian foreign minister said on Twitter. Mohammad Javad Zarif said on his Twitter feed: A resounding global NO to Trump regime s thuggish intimidation at #UN . ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Catalan separatists seen in position to keep majority in election: exit poll;MADRID (Reuters) - Pro-independence parties in Catalonia are seen in a position to keep their absolute majority of seats in regional elections on Thursday, according to an exit poll published by La Vanguardia newspaper as polling stations closed. The separatist parties were seen getting 67-71 seats in the 135-seat assembly, the poll showed. No official results have yet been published and it was unclear if final results would match the poll. Opinion polls before the vote had shown separatists and unionists running neck-and-neck in the wealthy Spanish region. The first official preliminary results are expected around 2100 GMT and final results after midnight. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Somalia releases jailed ex-minister and government critic;MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A court in Somalia on Thursday released without charge a former minister and government critic who spent two days in jail after being arrested for alleged treason, an arrest which ignited a smoldering political crisis for the fragile government. Abdirahman Abdishakur was released after the attorney general, who had ordered his arrest, had failed to bring evidence against him, Judge Aweys Sheikh Abdullahi told a courtroom. He was released at midnight after reconciliation efforts between the government and traditional leaders before Thursday s court ruling, Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman said. Somali attorney general Ahmed Ali Dahir said he planned to appeal the ruling and criticized the court for not granting him five extra days to investigate as he had requested. The case is in its first phase, he told reporters. The attorney general s office was not given the investigation period it asked for. Earlier this week, Dahir had described Abdishakur s house as a hub for the opposition and a gathering point for people who wanted to replace the government. The arrest of Abdishakur, who ran in the February election won by President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, followed mounting pressure on the president and his U.N.-backed government to end an Islamist insurgency. On Wednesday, some Somali lawmakers said they planned to impeach the president. [L4N1OK3Z0] Parliament adjourned last week until the end of February, but some legislators want it to reconvene on an emergency basis, lawmaker Mahad Salad told Reuters. The political turmoil endangers fragile gains against the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency. Islamist militants al Shabaab have been stepping up pressure on Mohamed s government by staging frequent and increasingly large-scale bombings against both civilian and military targets in recent months in the capital Mogadishu and elsewhere. The group is fighting to expel African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM from Somalia, topple the federal government and impose rule based on its strict interpretation of Islam s sharia law. More than 500 people were killed in twin bomb blasts in Mogadishu in October while this month a suicide bomber killed at least 18 people at a Mogadishu police academy. Early on Thursday, al Shabaab militants ambushed three vehicles belonging to the military s U.S.-trained special forces unit Danab on a road between Mogadishu and the town of Wanlaweyn. The group said it seized the three cars while residents said they saw two burning cars. Police Major Ahmed Nur told Reuters al Shabaab had targeted the convoy with a roadside bomb before ambushing it. We sent reinforcement to the area but we believe many died from both sides, he said. We ambushed the so-called military commandos and took their pickups, Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab s military operation spokesman, said. Somalia has been locked in lawlessness and violence since the early 1990s, following the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel rejects U.N. vote, thanks Trump for stance on Jerusalem;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel rejected a U.N. vote on Thursday that called on the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Israel rejects the U.N. decision and at the same time is satisfied with the high number of countries that did not vote in its favour, said a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s office. Israel thanks (U.S.) President Trump for his unequivocal position in favour of Jerusalem and thanks the countries that voted together with Israel, together with the truth, it said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan says expects U.S. to rescind Jerusalem decision after UN vote;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday he expected U.S. President Donald Trump s administration to rescind without delay its unfortunate decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. In comments on Twitter, Erdogan said he welcomed the overwhelming support for the resolution in the United Nations General Assembly, where more than 100 countries voted in favor of calling for the United States to reverse its decision. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin's Syria envoy: U.S. forces should leave Syria;ASTANA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin s envoy for Syria said on Thursday that there was no reason for U.S. forces to remain in Syria and that Washington s stated reasons for maintaining a military presence there were groundless. Alexander Lavrentiev was speaking in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, ahead of a new round of Syrian peace talks between Russia, Iran and Turkey. Any reasons cited by the Americans to justify their further military presence ... are just excuses and we think their presence must end, he told reporters. Lavrentiev said the Astana talks would focus on setting the ground for a Congress of Syrian Peoples which Russia plans to host early next year. The sides plan to decide on the date for the congress on Friday, he said. But agreeing a list of delegates will take longer, up to three weeks. Turkey last month objected to the presence of the main Syrian Kurdish group at the congress. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cardinal Law funeral held at Vatican with no mention of sex abuse crisis;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The funeral of Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston 15 years ago after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests, was held in the Vatican on Thursday without a mention of what led to his downfall. About 200 people attended the funeral Mass in a chapel in the apse of St. Peter s Basilica and presided over by a senior cardinal, Angelo Sodano. The wooden coffin lay on the floor with an open book of the gospels resting on it. Pope Francis entered the chapel for a few minutes after the Mass to bless the coffin and conduct a brief service known as the Final Commendation and Farewell - which he does for all cardinals who die in Rome. He dedicated his whole life to the Church, Sodano said in his homily in praise of Law, who died on Wednesday. Sodano listed the stages of Law s clerical life and said the late Pope John Paul had called him to Rome to be archpriest of a Rome basilica. But Sodano made no mention of the reason why he left Boston. Unfortunately, each of us can sometimes be lacking in our mission, Sodano said. The pope read out a Latin prayer, part of which reads: May he be given a merciful judgement . About 15 cardinals attended, though not Law s successor in Boston, Cardinal Sean O Malley. O Malley said on Wednesday that Law served at a time when the Church failed seriously in its responsibilities ... Law was Archbishop of Boston for 18 years when he resigned on Dec. 13, 2002, climaxing a tumultuous year that sparked the greatest crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church. A succession of devastating news stories by Boston Globe reporters showed how priests who sexually abused children had been moved from parish to parish for years under Law s tenure without parishioners or law authorities being informed. Victims groups have expressed outrage that Law s funeral was being in St. Peter s and that he would be buried in a crypt in a chapel of the Rome Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he served as archpriest. Survivors of child sexual assault in Boston, who were first betrayed by Law s cover-up of sex crimes and then doubly betrayed by his subsequent promotion to Rome, were those most hurt, SNAP, a victim s group, said in a statement on Wednesday. After Pope Francis left Thursday s funeral, two nuns in brown robes knelt by the coffin and arched over it to pray. After the funeral, Cardinal Franc Rode of Slovenia praised Law as a good man with good intentions . All these provisions about paedophilia were not as severe as they are now so one can t say that he made that many mistakes, Rode told Reuters Television, saying it was another era . He did not elaborate. About a half dozen ambassadors attended. The United States official representative was Louis Bono, the current chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican. U.S. Ambassador-designate Callista Gingrich and her husband Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, attended in a private capacity. Callista Gingrich officially becomes ambassador on Friday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine detains suspected Russian spy in premier's inner circle;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine s state security service SBU have detained a government official on suspicion of working in the interests of Russia, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said on Thursday. Together with the Security Service of Ukraine, an official in the government s secretariat was found to be working for a long time in the interests of the enemy state. He was detained, Groysman said on Facebook. Neither he nor the SBU named the position or name of the detained official, but lawmakers and local media said the suspect was called Stanislav Yezhov, a deputy head of the government s protocol service who had also worked as an interpreter for Groysman. Yezhov could not immediately be reached for comment. The SBU said in a statement that the official was recruited by Russian agents while he traveled abroad. It said the official had been collecting information about the activities of the government. Ukraine and Russia were once allies whose intelligence agencies often worked closely together, but relations deteriorated after Russia s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's move to raise minimum food prices, limit promotions;PARIS (Reuters) - France, the European Union s largest farm producer, plans to raise regulated minimum food prices and limit bargain sales in supermarkets in a bid to increase farmers income, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Thursday. The move is part of a wider field-to-fork review that closed on Thursday. Farmers, an important constituency in French politics, have long complained of being hit by a price war between retailers, which has benefited consumers but hurt producers down the chain. The measures will be put in place for a trial period of two years, Philippe said. Selling at a loss is forbidden in France. To determine the minimum level at which retailers are allowed to sell a product, France has set a Resale Below Cost (RBC) threshold. The RBC threshold is currently defined by the product s basic purchase price, minus discounts, plus transport costs to the retailer s warehouse. The government will propose to raise the RBC threshold by 10 percent, Philippe said at the close of the food review. The aim is to rebalance trade relations for the benefit of farmers income, he said when describing the proposal. The rise would include some of the additional costs already supported by retailers, such as the cost of logistics and staff needed to bring products from warehouses to the shelves, food industry group Ania said. This will increase the end-price of all products sold between the current RBC threshold and the new one - but not necessarily more expensive ones. The government will propose limiting discounts on food products to 34 percent of a product s price and to 25 percent of available volumes, Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert said. This means that retailers will be able to do promotion offers such as three products for the price of two but only for a fourth of their supplies for that product. The war in prices had led to rebates of up to 70 percent, which are most often supported by food producers. The aim of the measure is to avoid consumers losing the sense of prices. It would now be promotions, not sell-offs, Christiane Lambert, head of France s largest farm union FNSEA, said. Analysts say the measures would reduce aggressive price competition among French retailers and accelerate food inflation, potentially benefiting retailers profit margins in the short-term. This should calm down the (price) game a bit but the most aggressive players on prices may be tempted to parry an attack, Raymond James analyst Cedric Lecasble said. A softer competitive climate could come as a relief for retailers like Carrefour (CARR.PA) and Auchan [AUCH.UL], whose profitability is under pressure and whose hypermarkets sales suffer from aggressive price discounting from the market s dominant player, Leclerc, Barclays analyst Nicolas Champ said. Leclerc is now the leading retailer in France with a national market share of 21 percent against 20.5 percent for Carrefour, the latest Kantar data show. Accelerated food inflation could also lead some consumers to trade down, which could benefit hard discounters like Lidl. The limitation of promotions could also benefit discounters who have mostly Every Day Low prices strategies and reduce the attractiveness of the hypermarket stores, which are more focused on promotions. The government s aim is to present draft legislation to Parliament early next year, Philippe said. Analysts say the measures are unlikely to have an impact on the food chain before the second half of 2018. Ania had estimated that a rise of 15 percent in the RBC threshold would cost consumers an average of 30 cents ($0.36) per person and per week. Prices of products currently sold lower than the new RBC floor level - mostly products used to attract consumers such as Ferrero s Nutella or Coca Cola (KO.N) soft drinks - would rise mechanically. The government hopes that the measures will prompt retailers to loosen pressure on suppliers and food makers who would then pass at least part of the rise onto farmers. But some are doubtful that this will happen. We will increase some products prices by 10 percent, promising that miraculously this money, taken from consumers, will go down to the agri-food industry and that industry will give this money back to farmers. By what miracle, we do not know, there are no tools, Olivier Andrault from consumer rights group UFC-Que choisir told Europe 1 radio. The government will also reinforce the so-called renegotiation clause that allows parties to ask that contracts - concluded on an annual basis in France - be reviewed if there is a large swing in production prices. To ensure that farmers are not paid below their costs, France also plans to reverse the process of determining prices by taking farmers production costs as the starting point. ($1 = 0.8432 euros) ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: London-listed NMC in talks to run struggling Saudi hospital - sources;DUBAI/KHOBAR (Reuters) - London-listed NMC Healthcare is in talks with the Riyadh government to take over the running of a struggling Saudi hospital, according to four sources familiar with the matter. A deal for the Saad Specialist Hospital in Khobar, one of the top cancer treatment facilities in the Gulf, would be a rare instance of a foreign group operating a Saudi hospital. It would be a test of Riyadh s plan to bring overseas investors into the healthcare sector under a reform drive, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aimed at restructuring the kingdom s economy and reducing its dependence on oil revenue. The Saudi health ministry has asked interested parties to submit bids for the operational license by the end of this month, said the sources who declined to be named as the discussions are confidential. UAE-based NMC is involved in the process and is considered a frontrunner to win the contract, they added. The 750-bed hospital is owned by Saad Group, a conglomerate owned by billionaire tycoon Maan al-Sanea which also operated the facility. But in recent weeks the government has stepped in after the hospital become weighed down by financial problems, said the sources. The hospital had effectively ceased operating - with the emergency room the last unit of the facility to close last month - due to debts which meant it was unable to pay salaries or contractors, according to the sources. The government s intervention coincided with the detention of the al-Sanea by Saudi authorities for unpaid debts, sources have previously told Reuters. NMC Healthcare and the Saudi health ministry were not immediately available to comment. Saad Specialist is one of only two hospitals in the kingdom to have a cyclotron, used to help identify cancerous tumors. The ministry is keen to get it re-opened as quickly as possible. It approached NMC and other healthcare companies a few weeks ago about taking over the running of the facility and conducted a site tour for potential bidders, which number around 10, according to the sources familiar with the matter. The sources did not name any other potential bidders. Saad Specialist Hospital, which al-Sanea opened in 2001, gradually ground to a halt this year as staff began to leave, including doctors and nurses, because of non-payment of salaries, which in some cases dated back around one year, said the sources. In addition, contractors began to stop maintaining the high-tech medical equipment because of lack of payment, the sources said. At the peak of his business success in 2007, al-Sanea was ranked by Forbes as one of the world s 100 richest men, with his Saad Group owning interests in everything from banking to civil engineering. But his empire has been embroiled in a high-profile debt dispute since 2009 spanning courts in London to the Cayman Islands, and Saudi authorities have recently begun liquidating some of his assets. Al-Sanea was detained in October in the kingdom s Eastern Province and he has been held in a civil detention center in Khobar, sources previously told Reuters. His detention was a few weeks before Prince Mohammed launched a corruption crackdown in which dozens of Saudi princes and businessmen are being held. In an effort to get him released, Reemas Group, a financial consultancy hired by Saad Group, has outlined a proposed settlement covering $4 billion in debt, sources previously told Reuters. Reuters was not able to determine whether the plan includes any provision to repay hospital staff or contractors. NMC Healthcare has $800 million available to start investing in 2018 in the Gulf and other markets, its CEO Prasanth Manghat said this week. We want to look at opportunities in Saudi Arabia, he said. It is a very strong market and the reforms happening there will give the healthcare sector a lot of momentum. The government is looking to bring in foreign investors to the healthcare sector as part of its Vision 2030 plan. But progress has been slow. The health ministry has put on hold its tender seeking financial advisers for the privatization of 55 primary healthcare units in Riyadh, a financial source familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia police say don't suspect terrorism after car plows into pedestrians;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An Australian man of Afghan descent with a history of mental health issues drove a car into Christmas shoppers in the city of Melbourne on Thursday, injuring 19 people, but police said they did not believe the attack was terror-related. In January, four people were killed and more than 20 injured when a man drove into pedestrians just a few hundred meters away from Thursday s attack. That too was not a terror attack. Jim Stoupas, the owner of a donut shop at the scene, told Reuters the vehicle was traveling up to 100 kph (62 mph) when it drove into the intersection packed with people, hitting one person after another. All you could hear was just bang bang bang bang bang and screams, Stoupas said in a telephone interview, adding the car came to rest by a tram stop. Police said they detained the 32-year-old driver, an Australian of Afghan descent with a history of assault, drug use and mental health issues. At this time, we don t have any evidence or intelligence to indicate a connection with terrorism, said the acting chief commissioner of Victoria State, Shane Patton. Four of the injured were in critical condition, including a pre-school aged boy who suffered a head injury. Police also detained a 24-year-old man at the scene who was filming the incident and had a bag with knifes. Patton said it was quite probable the 24-year-old was not involved. The men had not been charged and their names have not been released by police. The attack took place on Flinders Street, a major road that runs alongside the Yarra River, in the central business district of Australia s second-biggest city. Melbourne has installed about 140 concrete bollards in the city center to stop vehicle attacks by militants similar to recent attacks in Europe and the United States. We ve seen an horrific act, an evil act, an act of cowardice perpetrated against innocent bystanders, said the state premier, Daniel Andrews. Sydney, Australia s biggest city, has also installed concrete barricades in main pedestrian thoroughfares. Our thoughts & prayers are with the victims & the emergency & health workers who are treating them, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a post on his official Twitter account. Australia has been on a high national threat level since 2015, citing the likelihood of attacks by Australians radicalized in Iraq and Syria. Two hostages were killed during a 17-hour siege by a lone wolf gunman, inspired by Islamic State militants, in a cafe in Sydney in December 2014. For a map of Melbourne, click tmsnrt.rs/2BcJp3z ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU embassies urge Romania to rethink judicial overhaul;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Seven European Union states urged Romania s ruling coalition on Thursday to avoid legislation that could weaken its judiciary and the fight against corruption, hours after senators approved a contentious overhaul of the justice system. Senators passed the last of three bills which critics say limit the independence of magistrates and which have triggered street protests across Romania, widely regarded as one of the EU s most corrupt states. The three bills change the process of appointing chief prosecutors and set up a special unit to probe crimes committed by magistrates, making them the only professional category with a prosecuting unit dedicated to investigating them. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden said in a joint statement from their embassies in Bucharest that the bills and criminal code changes under debate in parliament undermined Romania s progress on judicial reforms. We appeal to the parties involved in the justice reform project to avoid any action that could lead to weakening the independence of the justice system and of the fight against corruption, the joint statement said. The seven states joined a chorus of criticism that included the European Commission, the U.S. State Department, thousands of Romanian magistrates and centrist President Klaus Iohannis. Romania s ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the warnings. They are also working on changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. Opposition politicians challenged the bills in the Constitutional Court on Thursday. Romania s top court also said it will challenge legal changes to the status of magistrates. It was unclear when the court would meet to rule on the challenges but it could be months before the bills are enforced, as the president must also sign off on them. Iohannis has repeatedly criticized the bills. The proposed changes place Romania alongside its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. The Commission launched an unprecedented action on Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms it says pose a threat to democracy. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hamas chief in Gaza says Palestinian unity deal is collapsing;GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian Islamist group Hamas s leader in Gaza said on Thursday a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas s Fatah faction was collapsing, just 10 weeks after the agreement was reached. The rivals signed a deal brokered by Cairo on Oct. 12 after Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of the Gaza Strip, including its border crossings with Egypt and Israel, a decade after seizing control of the enclave in a civil war. The deal bridged a deep gulf between Abbas s Western-backed mainstream Fatah and Hamas, an Islamist movement designated a terrorist group by Western countries and Israel. But continued disputes have delayed its implementation. Yehya Al-Sinwar, Hamas s chief in Gaza and a key architect of the unity agreement, offered a bleak outlook on Thursday, suggesting the deal could suffer a similar fate to numerous reconciliation attempts over the past decade. The reconciliation project is falling apart. Only a blind man can t see that, Sinwar said in comments published by pro-Hamas media. One of the latest disputes came earlier this month when Hamas, according to Fatah officials, missed a milestone to complete the handover of Gaza to Abbas s West Bank-based government. Hamas says it has given up all administrative control in Gaza. Rami Al-Hamdallah, the prime minister, said Hamas had not transferred moneys as agreed, while Hamas said Hamdallah s government had not paid salaries in Gaza as agreed. Sinwar in the past has said his group would not go back to governing Gaza and that he was committed to making the deal succeed. Fatah officials declined immediate comment. Reconciliation is collapsing because some people want to get from it the relinquishing of arms and the closing of tunnels, said Sinwar without elaborating, but in apparent reference to Fatah. During the last Gaza war, in 2014, Hamas fighters used dozens of tunnels to blindside Israel s superior forces and threaten civilian communities near the frontier. Israel and the United States have called for Hamas to be disarmed as part of the pact between it and the Palestinian Authority, so that Israeli peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which collapsed in 2014, can proceed. Hamas has rejected the demand. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK minister Garnier keeps job after misconduct inquiry finds no rules broken;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May wants to draw a line under allegations of misconduct against one of her junior ministers, Mark Garnier, a statement from her office said on Thursday after an investigation found he had not breached ministerial rules. May ordered the investigation in October after the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported Garnier, now a junior international trade minister, asked secretary Caroline Edmondson to buy two sex toys. The statement come a day after May forced her most senior minister, Damian Green, to resign for lying about whether he knew pornography had been found on computers in his parliamentary office. The investigation into Garnier s conduct said he had not breached the rules since becoming a minister in 2016. Addressing events between Garnier and his staff member, it said the incident happened before Garnier became a minister, and that whilst there was no dispute about the facts, there was a significant difference of interpretation between the parties. It was not his intention to cause distress, and Mr Garnier has apologized unreservedly to the individual. On that basis the Prime Minister considers that a line should be drawn under the issue, the statement from May s office said. The Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal has triggered a debate about a culture of abuse by some powerful men at the heart of Britain s Westminster parliament. That has played a role in the departure of two of May s senior ministers after former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon resigned in November saying his past conduct had fallen below the required standard. The departures have added to May s political difficulties at a time when she is trying to manage a party and electorate still split over Brexit, negotiate an exit deal with the European Union and convince voters she can drive through domestic reforms. Nevertheless, having secured progress in Brexit negotiations and steered key EU withdrawal legislation through difficult tests in parliament, she is not facing immediate pressure to quit from her own party. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey says U.N. Jerusalem vote showed dignity, sovereignty 'not for sale';ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s foreign minister said on Thursday the U.N. members had shown that dignity and sovereignty are not for sale by voting in favor of a resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. In comments made on Twitter, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said that Turkey, Palestine and other co-sponsors thanked every country that supported the resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia should not forfeit 'sovereign' right to enrich uranium: senior prince;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia should not forfeit its sovereign right to one day enrich uranium under its planned civilian nuclear program, especially as world powers have allowed Iran to do so, a senior Saudi royal told Reuters. Former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal s comments reinforced Riyadh s stance on what is likely to be a sensitive issue in talks between Saudi Arabia and the United States on an agreement to help the kingdom develop atomic energy. Riyadh aims to start talks with the United States within weeks on a civilian nuclear cooperation pact, which is essential if U.S. firms are to bid in a multi-billion-dollar tender next year for building Saudi Arabia s first two nuclear reactors. The reactors will be part of a wider program to produce electricity from atomic energy so that the kingdom can export more crude oil. Riyadh says it wants nuclear technology only for peaceful uses but has left unclear whether it also wants to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel, a process which can also be used in the production of atomic weapons. U.S. companies can usually transfer nuclear technology to another country only if the United States has signed an agreement with that country ruling out domestic uranium enrichment and the preprocessing of spent nuclear fuel steps that can have military uses. It s a sovereign issue. If you look at the agreement between the P5+1 with Iran specifically it allows Iran to enrich, Prince Turki, who now holds no government office but remains influential, said in an interview on Tuesday in Riyadh. He was referring to the six countries the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany that reached a deal with Tehran in 2015, under which economic sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for the Islamic Republic curbing its nuclear energy program. The world community that supports the nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran told Iran you can enrich although the NPT (global non-proliferation treaty) tells us all we can enrich, Prince Turki, a senior royal family member and a former ambassador to Washington, said. So the kingdom from that point of view will have the same right as the other members of the NPT, including Iran. SELF-SUFFICIENCY The dual technology has been at the heart of Western and regional concerns over the nuclear work of Iran, Saudi Arabia s regional rival. These worries helped lead to the 2015 deal, which allows Iran to enrich uranium to around the normal level needed for commercial power production. Atomic reactors need uranium enriched to around five percent purity but the same technology can also be used to enrich the heavy metal to higher, weapons-grade levels. Saudi Arabia plans to build 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity by 2032, the equivalent of around 16 reactors. Riyadh has previously said it wants to tap its own uranium resources for self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel. Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told Reuters on Wednesday that said these large resources were being explored, were promising and that Saudi Arabia would like to localize the industry in the long-term. Prince Turki said the only way to stop uranium enrichment would be by establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, a longstanding idea which has been backed by the U.N. s nuclear assembly. This is not going to happen overnight. You have to set a time scale for negotiations to include regional discussions between the prospective members of the zone on issues not just of nuclear, but of achieving peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, he said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. to join Syria talks in Astana, with humanitarian hopes;MOSCOW/GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday he would take part in the latest round of Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana on Friday, with a month to go before he hopes to break the deadlock in political talks in Geneva. De Mistura s Geneva peace process reached deadlock this month, missing what said was a golden opportunity to close out almost seven years of war. Blaming intransigence on both sides, he told the U.N. Security Council he would start 2018 with a proposal to involve a wider constituency in constitutional and electoral reform, since the warring sides were stuck. He said on Thursday he planned to hold the next round in Geneva in the second half of January. I am planning to go to Astana just after this meeting, de Mistura said in Moscow at the start of Syrian talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. U.N. timetables routinely slip, but the presence of many of the global power elite at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on Jan. 23-26 could also create some political momentum. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have made big gains on the ground since Russia joined the war in late 2015, but the fighting shows no sign of ending conclusively. De Mistura s humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said that although fewer people were now under siege or out of reach of humanitarian aid, 2017 had defied expectations by being worse than 2016 in many respects, and fewer aid convoys were going in. In December we haven t reached a single soul (in besieged areas), Egeland told reporters in Geneva. He hoped Astana might bring a cessation of hostilities in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, where Assad s forces are besieging almost 400,000 people. U.N. aid convoys are waiting for Syria s government to give them a green light. Food prices have risen eightfold since August, Egeland said. 495 people were on the priority lists for medical evacuations. That number is going down. Not because we are evacuating people, but because they are dying. Russia, Iran, China, Egypt, Algeria and Iraq could all bring their influence to bear, he said. If we are going to get out of this quagmire it is because there will be political agreements, really. So I hope that out of the Astana meetings in the next couple of days we will have some kind of impulse for a change on the humanitarian side. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU drone rules in balance as member states hold off endorsing deal;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe s first ever rules on drones, which were tentatively agreed three weeks ago, risk being scuppered as EU governments hesitate over endorsing the deal because of their opposition to a drone registration requirement, among other issues. European Union lawmakers and member states finally struck a tentative deal on a long-awaited reform of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on Nov. 30, which also includes rules requiring owners of drones to register their devices if dangerous . Such deals then need to be definitively endorsed by member states in the Council of the EU and lawmakers in the European Parliament before becoming law, something which is usually a formality. Member states were supposed to endorse the EASA reform on Wednesday, but the vote was put off when several countries, including France and Germany, expressed major concerns about elements of the deal, such as the registration requirement for drones with a kinetic energy of more than 80 joules based on their mass and maximum speed. A spokeswoman for Estonia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said member states had until Friday to analyze the final text and say whether they could endorse it. If the EASA reform is not endorsed it risks derailing the project for months to come as negotiations between the parliament and member states will have to start almost from scratch, over two years after the initial proposal was made. The risk of the deal falling apart has unleashed a wave of lobbying from both the aerospace industry and pilots. The emerging market of civil drones, including small as well as larger certified category of drones, has many potentials for the EU aeronautical industry. It is therefore crucial that EASA has received the mandate to put in place the safety regulatory framework for the deployment of this new technology, the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe said in a statement ahead of Wednesday s meeting. Members include plane manufacturer Airbus, Safran, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce. Member states had opposed a registration requirement for drones throughout the negotiations, and the European Parliament had initially pushed for a registration threshold of 250 grams. Many countries fear the 80 joules threshold is too complicated and are not happy with the compromise. I don t think there is one happy member state around the table, said one person involved in the discussions. The German pilots union wrote to the German transport minister on Tuesday urging him to endorse the EASA deal. Any delay through further negotiations - as some countries are apparently envisaging - would clearly not be in the interest of aviation safety, wrote Ilja Schulz, President of the Vereinigung Cockpit union. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Defying Trump, over 120 countries at U.N. condemn Jerusalem decision;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - More than 120 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, which is non-binding, nine voted against and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote. Trump s threat appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. Nevertheless, Washington found itself isolated as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure. Some of those allies, like Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, are major recipients of U.S. military or economic aid, although the U.S. threat to cut aid did not single out any country. A spokesman for Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the vote a victory for Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the vote. Earlier this month, Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy by announcing the United States recognized Jerusalem - home to major Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites - as the capital of Israel and would move its embassy there. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the 193-member General Assembly ahead of Thursday s vote. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world s largest contribution to the United Nations, and so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit, she said. Later on Thursday, Haley asked the 64 countries who voted no, abstained or did not cast a vote to come to a Jan. 3 reception to thank you for your friendship to the United States, according to the invitation seen by Reuters. The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who were furious over Trump s move. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the full city. French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre said in a statement: The resolution adopted today only confirms relevant international law provisions on Jerusalem. France voted in favor. Netanyahu described the resolution as preposterous. Jerusalem is our capital, always was, always will be. But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theater of the absurd, he said in a video on his Facebook page. Israel captured East Jerusalem in a 1967 war and Palestinians want it as the capital of a future state they seek. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet the vote was a clear international rejection of the Trump administration s thuggish intimidation. Among countries that abstained were Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda. Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo joined the United States and Israel in voting no. Honduras vote against the motion comes after the United States signaled it would recognize President Juan Orlando Hernandez as the winner of an election the Organization of America States said should be scrapped over fraud claims. Since Trump s election, Mexico has aligned its foreign policy more closely with Washington in what diplomats say is an attempt to curry favor in face of threats to withdraw from the NAFTA free trade agreement. Trump s rhetoric on cutting aid startled some U.S. allies but State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday s vote was just one factor that Washington would take into consideration in its foreign policy. I just wanted to reiterate what the president had said yesterday and that that was the U.N. vote is really not the only factor that the administration would take into consideration in dealing with our foreign relations and countries who have chosen to vote one way or the other, she told reporters. According to figures from the U.S. government s aid agency USAID, in 2016 the United States provided some $13 billion in economic and military assistance to countries in sub-Saharan Africa and $1.6 billion to states in East Asia and Oceania. It provided some $13 billion to countries in the Middle East and North Africa, $6.7 billion to countries in South and Central Asia, $1.5 billion to states in Europe and Eurasia and $2.2 billion to Western Hemisphere countries, according to USAID. The General Assembly vote was called at the request of Arab and Muslim countries after the United States vetoed the same resolution on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem. Thursday s resolution affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded. The U.N. action comes a year after the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements. That was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama s administration, which defied heavy pressure from longtime ally Israel and Trump, who was then president-elect, for Washington to wield its veto. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peruvian president divides opposition to avert ousting;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has thwarted a bid in Congress to force him out over a graft scandal, as an opposition lawmaker accused him of securing votes by promising to free ex-president Alberto Fujimori from jail. Before Thursday evening s vote on a motion to push him out, Kuczynski urged lawmakers to set aside unproven allegations of graft against him to defend Peru from what he called a coup attempt by the right-wing Popular Force party. Popular Force emerged from the populist movement started in the 1990s by Fujimori, who is now serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and human rights crimes. Kuczynski s government had denied that a pardon would be part of a political negotiation. But Popular Force lawmaker Cecilia Chacon told reporters that the government had promised a faction of her party that Fujimori would be pardoned if it backed him. The bulk of Popular Force, led by Fujimori s daughter Keiko Fujimori, sought to depose Kuczynski as morally unfit to govern after discovering business ties he once had with a firm at the center of the region s biggest graft scandal. But the party, which last week mustered 93 votes to begin proceedings, failed to secure the 87 needed to pass the motion, thanks to 10 Popular Force abstentions. The vote capped a week of political turmoil in one of Latin America s most stable and robust economies, also the world s second-biggest copper producer. Television images showed Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, dancing a jig amid cheering supporters outside his home in Lima s financial district. Tomorrow a new chapter in our history begins: the reconciliation and rebuilding of our country, he tweeted. But Kuczynski s political troubles might not be over. Popular Force has vowed to continue to investigate deposits totaling $4.8 million that Brazilian builder Odebrecht made to consultant firms owned by Kuczynski or a close business associate of his over a decade, starting in 2004. Odebrecht has rocked Latin American politics with its confession exactly a year ago that it bribed officials across the region, landing elites in jail from Colombia to the Dominican Republic. Kuczynski once denied having any professional ties to the company, and has since said he was unaware of the transactions but that there was nothing improper about them. Kuczynski took office promising that his decades of experience in finance and public administration would help usher in an era of clean government and robust growth. But his first 16 months in power have been marked by clashes in Congress, where Popular Force has helped oust four ministers. His triumph on Thursday was the first clear sign that he might be able to exploit a family feud in Popular Force to defend his government from Congress. Keiko Fujimori faces competition from her younger brother Kenji for leadership of their father s following. Hours before the vote, Kenji threw his support behind Kuczynski in a video, without specifying who else he spoke for, saying: We re going to prioritize making the president s administration stronger. Kenji has been more vocal than his sister in calling for a presidential pardon for their father. Alberto Fujimori remains a divisive figure. While some considered him a corrupt dictator, others credit him with ending an economic crisis and leftist rebellion in the 1990s. Congresswoman Chacon, loyal to Keiko, said the abstainers had been swayed by the government. They ve spoken to several of them, offering to free President Fujimori, she said. Let s see if they follow through with it. After the vote, Kenji shared a clip from the movie The Lion King , saying only: The time has arrived. Many interpreted the post to mean a pardon was pending. Kuczynski s government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hours before the vote, Prime Minister Mercedes Araoz had denied that the government would trade a pardon for Fujimori in exchange for votes. That s not something that s negotiated, she told a news conference. A Justice Ministry spokesman said Alberto Fujimori had sent Kuczynski s presidential pardons committee a request last week to free him by reducing his prison sentence. The person who filed the request was one of the Popular Force lawmakers loyal to Kenji who cast an abstention. Prior to the political crisis, Kuczynski said he would make a decision on a pardon for Fujimori by the end of the year. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Yazidi sisters reunited after three years in Islamic State captivity;SHARYA, Iraq (Reuters) - When Rosa, now 14, asked her Islamic State captors about her younger sisters Bushra, 12, and Suhayla, seven, she was told they had been killed for misbehaving. At that point, I didn t care about anything anymore. Even if I died, she said. I never thought I d see them again. The sisters were finally reunited on Sunday, more than three years after being taken by the militants in an assault on Sinjar, the Yazidi heartland on August 3, 2014. Just last week, Iraq declared final victory over Islamic State, with parades through the streets of Baghdad in celebration after three years of bloody war. But the damage done by the militants is not easily remedied: they brutalized Iraqis, exposing fault lines in the country s already fragile social fabric and ripping families apart. For Rosa and her family, though overjoyed at reuniting, the last three years will not be easily erased. The militants shot, beheaded, burned alive or kidnapped more than 9,000 members of the minority religion, in what the United Nations has called a genocidal campaign against them. According to community leaders, more than 3,000 Yazidis remain unaccounted for. Among them, are Rosa s parents, thought murdered by the militants who rolled their victims into mass graves scattered across the sides of Sinjar mountain, where thousands of Yazidis still live in tents. The girls nine-year-old brother, Zinal, is also still missing. Captured and held with them in the nearby city of Tal Afar, he was later driven away to Mosul in a car full of young Yazidi boys. They haven t heard from him since. Reuters could not verify all of the details given by Rosa, Bushra and some of the five older brothers they now live with in a group of tents in the tiny village of Sharya in Iraq s Kurdistan region. But Amin Khalat, spokesperson for Kurdish government office which helps return missing Yazidis, said Rosa and Suhayla had been taken to Syria and Turkey respectively after being held in Tal Afar and that his office had helped reunite them with their family. He said Rosa was returned from Syria by fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Suhayla by the Iraqi government which was alerted to her existence by Turkish officials who found her at a refugee camp in Turkey. Her family then recognized her photograph. Rosa said she and her younger siblings were sold, by the Islamic State militants who attacked Sinjar, to a fighter and his family in Tal Afar, a city of predominantly ethnic Turkmen which produced some of the group s most senior commanders. She said she did all the household chores and cared for her siblings and other young Yazidi captives, who lived together in a tiny room. After a year together, Zinal was taken to Mosul, while Suhayla and Bushra were sold off to separate Islamic State families, close to one another, but not allowed to meet. After Bushra s captors took her to Rosa s house for a visit, she said she memorized the route so she could return. I would wait till everyone fell asleep in the afternoon, I d pretend to fall asleep and then sneak out to see Rosa, said Bushra. They once caught me and threatened to sell me off if I didn t stop seeing my sister but I didn t care. Bushra said she was eventually sold again, but about a year ago, she and six older Yazidi girls ran away and reached Sinjar, where Kurdish fighters helped them find their families. Rosa was taken to Deir Ezzor, Syria and sold twice more. She said she was originally bought for $4 in Tal Afar and last sold in Syria for $60. Those dogs made quite a good profit out of me, she said with a wry smile. PKK fighters came across her in Idlib and brought her back to Iraq and her family, she said. Suhayla was taken by her Turkmen captors to a refugee camp in Turkey, where authorities discovered her situation and repatriated her. She was reunited with her sisters and other relatives on Sunday, a day after Rosa returned. Beaten, forced to convert and forget their native Kurdish, the girls even had their names changed. Rosa was known as Noor hers was an infidel s name, her captors told her. Suhayla, captured when she was three, barely recognizes her sisters and speaks in broken Turkman dialect and Arabic. She has to learn to remember us again, said Rosa. She got used to calling some strangers mum and grandpa while she was held captive. Her sisters say Suhayla has barely spoken since returning to her family, but wearing a pink sweater and plastic jewelry, she relaxed under a flood of kisses from her sisters. Bushra, nine when she was captured, is only at ease with her closest relatives. Because she returned to the family first, her brothers have asked her to help her sisters, but she warned them that it would not be easy. It s true we are strong, we ve been through so much. But our hearts are weak they re broken. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;The Guardian's photographer of the year: Zohra Bensemra of Reuters;NEW YORK (Reuters) - In April, Reuters photographer Zohra Bensemra was sent to cover the drought in Somalia. Once there, she looked for ways to humanize the plight of more than 2 million people trying to survive the famine amid fields of withered crops and the brittle skeletons of livestock. See her portfolio of work here In a makeshift camp for displaced people, Bensemra met Zeinab, a 14-year-old girl forced to marry an older man offering $1,000 as her dowry. Zeinab had wanted to become an English teacher, but that small fortune made it possible for her extended family to travel to a Somali town on the Ethiopian border where international aid agencies providing food for drought refugees. Bensemra found similar stories during a nearly two-week trip through the Horn of Africa. Photography opens eyes to what s going on in the world, says Bensemra, who was named agency photographer of the year by the Guardian, a U.K.-based newspaper. It s not about nationalism or religion but about human beings. The Guardian recognized Bensemra s 2017 work covering some of the planet s most dire situations: the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Worries about Malaysia's 'Arabisation' grow as Saudi ties strengthen;Kuala Lumpur (Reuters) - Malaysia s growing ties to Saudi Arabia - and its puritan Salafi-Wahhabi Islamic doctrines - are coming under new scrutiny as concerns grow over an erosion of traditional religious practices and culture in the multi-ethnic nation. A string of recent events has fueled the concern. Hostility toward atheists, non-believers and the gay community has risen. Two annual beer festivals were canceled after Islamic leaders objected. A hardline preacher, accused of spreading hatred in India, has received official patronage. The government has backed a parliamentary bill that would allow the shariah court wider criminal jurisdiction over Muslims in the state of Kelantan. And after religious officials supported a Muslim-only laundromat, Malaysia s mostly ceremonial royalty made a rare public intervention, calling for religious harmony. Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, publicly lashed out at the government for allowing the Arabisation of Malaysia. Marina, who heads the civil rights group Sisters in Islam, told Reuters Saudi influence on Islam in Malaysia has come at the expense of traditional Malay culture . Her father, 93, now heads the opposition alliance. Saudi Arabia s fundamentalist Wahhabi beliefs have strongly influenced Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia - for decades, but have strengthened considerably since Najib became prime minister in 2009 and began cozying up to the kingdom. The relationship came under a harsh spotlight when nearly $700 million wound up in Najib s bank account in 2013. Najib said it was a donation from the Saudi Royal family, rebutting allegations it was money siphoned from the 1MDB state investment fund he had founded and overseen. Malaysia s attorney-general cleared him of any wrongdoing. The trend toward a politicized brand of Islam in Malaysia, a middle-income emerging market, has alarmed Malaysia s non-Muslims, including ethnic Chinese who comprise a quarter of the population and dominate private sector commerce. It is also a concern for foreign investors, who account for nearly half the local bond market and have invested $8.95 billion in project investments in the first nine months of this year. The government denies actively promoting Wahhabi-style Islamic conservatism. Najib has been largely silent about the recent religious controversies. Critics have accused the prime minister, whose governing coalition lost the popular vote in the last general election but retained a simple majority in parliament, of playing on fears that Islam and Malay political power will be eroded should the opposition win. An election is due by mid-2018. Militancy has also been on the rise in Malaysia, which from 2013 to 2016 had arrested more than 250 people with alleged ties to Islamic State, many of whom were indoctrinated with hardline interpretations of Islam. After the visit of the Saudi monarch this year, Malaysia announced plans to build the King Salman Centre for International Peace to bring together Islamic scholars and intelligence agencies in an effort to counter extremist interpretations of Islam. The center, which is being built on a 16-hectare (40-acre) plot in the administrative capital of Putrajaya, will draw on the resources of the Saudi-financed Islamic Science University of Malaysia, and the Muslim World League, a Wahhabi Saudi religious body. Saudi Arabia has long been funding mosques and schools in Malaysia, while providing scholarships for Malaysians to study in the kingdom. Many of them find employment in Malaysia s multitude of Islamic agencies, said Farouk Musa, chairman and director of the moderate think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front. One of the most worrisome doctrines they preach in multi-cultural Malaysia is al-w ala wa-al-bara or allegiance and disavowal , Farouk said. This doctrine basically means do not befriend the non-believers (al-kuffar), even if they are among the closest relatives. We have never heard of Islamic scholars forbidding Muslims to wish Merry Christmas before, for example. Now, this is a common phenomenon, he said. The adoption of Arab culture and interpretations of Islam is a result of greater exposure to Middle Eastern people and universities, said Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, a member of the Supreme Council of Najib s political party, the United Malay National Organisation. The extensive usage of social media also accelerated the external influence on the locals, he told Reuters. The government is not promoting Wahhabism but rather the doctrine of wasatiyyah , or moderation and balance, to accommodate Malaysia s multi-cultural society, said Abdul Aziz, who is also a federal deputy minister. Karima Bennoune, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for cultural rights, expressed concern in a report after her September visit to Malaysia about the deepening involvement of religious authorities in policy decisions. She said this was influenced by a hegemonic version of Islam imported from the Arabian Peninsula that was at odds with local forms of practice. She also expressed concern about the banning of books, including some about moderate and progressive Islam, in the country when the government extols these very concepts abroad . Marina Mahathir said religious departments, staffed with Saudi graduates, are now consulted on absolutely everything, from movies to health and medicine to insurance, all sorts of things that they do not necessarily have any expertise in . The kingdom also exerts leverage over Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia through the quotas it gives to countries for the number of pilgrims they can send on the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam that all capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lives. This could all start to change if Saudi Arabia s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman succeeds in returning the Saudi kingdom to a moderate Islam, which he says was practiced before 1979. He has already scaled back the role of religious police, permitted public concerts and announced women will be allowed to drive. The kingdom has also set up an authority to scrutinize uses of the hadith accounts of the sayings, actions or habits of the Prophet to prevent them being used to justify violence or terrorism. (This story has been corrected to clarify bill on Islamic law and remove reference to stoning and amputations in paragraph 3) ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pence visits Afghanistan, says U.S. will 'see this through';KABUL (Reuters) - Vice President Mike Pence made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan to meet its leaders and underscore U.S. commitment to the country four months after President Donald Trump agreed to an open-ended war against insurgents here. Pence arrived on a military plane at Bagram Airfield under the cover of darkness on Thursday night after leaving Washington on Wednesday night. He then flew by helicopter to Kabul, where he met President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah at the presidential palace. Pence told the leaders he hoped his presence there was tangible evidence that the United States was here to see this through. In a reversal of his campaign call for a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, Trump in August pledged a stepped-up military campaign against Taliban insurgents and signaled the United States would send more troops to fight in what is the longest war in its history. At the end of August, there were some 11,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and more have since arrived. Ghani expressed gratitude to the U.S. government and said Afghanistan s partnership with the United States was cemented in sacrifice. Pence told reporters the strategy of increased troops on the ground and greater authorities for military leaders was paying dividends. The results are really beginning to become evident around the country, he said, adding that Ghani and Abdullah had said they ve begun to see a sea change in the attitudes among the Taliban. Pence said their hope was that eventually the enemy will tire of losing and be willing to talk peace. Asked if more troops would be needed, Pence said that would be a decision for Trump in the days ahead. Pence said he pressed the Afghan leaders for political reforms and Ghani assured him that an election commission was developing a framework for parliamentary elections in 2018. Pence had originally planned to travel to Israel and Egypt this week, but he postponed that trip to remain in Washington while Congress passed legislation to overhaul U.S. tax law. The short visit to Afghanistan, originally part of the Middle East trip, was shrouded in secrecy for security reasons. Reporters traveling with the vice president were asked not to reveal his whereabouts until after the delegation arrived back at the air base from Kabul and Pence had addressed U.S. troops. Pence almost did not make it to the presidential palace. The helicopters he and others were flying in came close to turning back to Bagram because of poor visibility, but the pilots were able to find a route in the end, a White House official said. Pence, who coordinated the process that resulted in Trump s new Afghanistan policy, has been one of the main interlocutors between the White House and the Afghan leadership since Trump entered office in January. He repeated his promise of U.S. commitment to the region during remarks to troops at Bagram. Under President Donald Trump, the armed forces of the United States will remain engaged in Afghanistan until we eliminate the terrorist threat to our homeland, our people once and for all, Pence said. Trump s views of the 16-year-long Afghan conflict have shifted since he came to power. As a presidential candidate he called for a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces, which were bogged down through the presidencies of Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama after a U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Islamist Taliban government for harboring al Qaeda militants who plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. But Trump, while acknowledging the decision went against his instincts, argued in August that a hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum for Islamic State and al Qaeda to fill. He declined to set a timeline for withdrawal or outline benchmarks for the new strategy s success. Echoing Trump s comments when he unveiled the new strategy, Pence had sharp words for neighboring Pakistan, which he said had provided safe haven to the Taliban and other groups for too long. Those days are over, Pence said. Pakistan had much to gain from partnering with the United States, and much to lose by harboring criminals and terrorists, he said at Bagram. U.S. troops are involved in training Afghan security forces and carrying out counter-terrorism operations, hoping to reverse gains by the Taliban and prod it to negotiate for peace. Some 2,400 U.S. forces have died in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Former Catalan leader Puigdemont seen regaining regional leadership;MADRID (Reuters) - Catalonia s separatist leader Carles Puigdemont was on track to regain the leadership of Spain s northeastern region after preliminary results showed a coalition of secessionist parties winning a majority in regional elections. Puigdemont went on self-imposed exile in Brussels in October after conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked his regional government when they organized an illegal independence referendum and later proclaimed a Catalan republic. The separatist parties were seen getting a total of 70 seats in the 135-seat assembly, official data with 76 percent of the votes counted showed. Puigdemont s Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) were seen winning 34 of those seats, ahead of two other separatist parties. Final results are expected after midnight. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan government, rebel groups sign ceasefire;ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - South Sudan s government and rebel groups signed a ceasefire on Thursday in the latest attempt to end a four-year civil war and allow humanitarian groups access to civilians caught in the fighting. The ceasefire aims to revive a 2015 peace deal that collapsed last year after heavy fighting broke out in South Sudan s capital Juba. It was agreed after talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa convened by regional bloc IGAD. A decision by President Salva Kiir to sack his deputy Riek Machar triggered the war in the world s youngest country. The war has been fought largely along ethnic lines between forces loyal to Kiir, who is Dinka, and Machar, who is Nuer. Tens of thousands have died and a third of the population of 12 million have fled their homes. The conflict has since mutated from a two-way fight into one involving multiple parties and this has made it harder to find peace. Representatives of Kiir and Machar were both present at the signing. South Sudan s Information Minister Michael Makuei Leuth told journalists: The cessation of hostilities will be effective 72 hours from now. As of now, we will send messages to all the commands in the field to abide by this cessation of hostilities. From now onwards, there will be no more fighting, he added. Just talks. I do hope in signing this agreement, you will try to put an end to this tragedy .... This is an encouraging first phase, said Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission. Ethiopia s Foreign Minister Workneh Gebeyehu, also present, said: There is no longer any excuse for the violations of human rights. All parties are obliged to observe cessation of hostilities agreement. Diplomats at the talks told Reuters the next phase of the negotiations would now center on thrashing out a revised power-sharing arrangement leading up to a new date for polls. The United States, Britain and Norway, which form a group that supported a 2005 accord leading to the independence of South Sudan from Sudan, welcomed the agreement. The troika ... congratulate the parties on their willingness to compromise for the benefit of the people of South Sudan and hope that they immediately take action to make good on that agreement, they said in a statement issued by the U.S. State Department. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cuba delays historic handover from Castro to new president;HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba extended the term of its current leadership to April on Thursday, signaling a two-month delay in the historic handover from Raul Castro to a new president, while announcing tighter regulations on the non-state sector. Castro, 86, was originally set to step down in February after two consecutive terms, ending nearly 60 years of Castro brothers rule and marking a transition from the leaders of the 1959 revolution to a new, younger generation. The National Assembly, however, said that devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma in September had caused a delay to the start of the political cycle in which voters and electoral commissions pick delegates of municipal, provincial and national assemblies who then select a Council of State and president. As a result, the assembly, which is holding one of its twice-yearly meetings, extended its term through to April 19. When the National Assembly is constituted, I will have concluded my second and last mandate, and Cuba will have a new president, Castro said, according to state-run media. All that is left for me is to wish you and our people a happy new year, he said. Castro, who officially took over the presidency from his late, older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008, is set to remain head of the Communist Party, the only legal party in Cuba and its guiding force. His heir apparent, First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57, was born the year after the revolution but has argued for the need to defend its achievements and provide continuity. Analysts say Diaz-Canel is unlikely to reveal his true colors until he is designated president, and even then his room to maneuver could be limited by the need to establish himself as a legitimate successor to the historic generation. Hopes that the next president might deepen market reforms to the centrally planned economy introduced by Castro were dampened on Thursday by the announcement of new regulations on the fledgling private and cooperative sectors. State-run media cited Marino Murillo, chief of the reform commission, as saying that income distribution at cooperatives would be more closely regulated and business licenses would be limited to one per person. The economic measures announced today suggest a continued slowing down, if not an undoing, of the economic reforms implemented between 2010 and 2016, said Michael Bustamante, an assistant professor of Latin American history at Florida International University. Cuba s political transition comes as it faces a host of challenges from declining aid from socialist ally Venezuela to U.S. President Donald Trump s partial reversal of the U.S.-Cuban detente and tightening of the decades-old U.S. embargo. We have witnessed a serious and gradual deterioration in relations with the United States that cannot be blamed on our country, Castro was cited by state-run media as saying. He said the United States was fabricating pretexts to continue its failed policy toward Cuba. The Trump administration said this year that U.S. diplomats in Havana had been victims of health attacks . A cash crunch has left Cuba behind on payments to its foreign providers, thereby affecting imports, Economy Minister Ricardo Cabrisas told the assembly. Hurricane Irma also caused damage worth the equivalent of 13.2 billion pesos, Cabrisas said. When evaluating damages from natural disasters, Cuba traditionally assumes a peso is equal to one U.S. dollar. Many other official exchange rates exist in Cuba, valuing the peso at much less. The economy nonetheless recovered this year from recession in 2016 - the first in nearly a quarter century - growing 1.6 percent, the minister said, citing expansion in the tourism, transport and communications, agriculture and construction sectors. Despite Hurricane Irma and a renewed U.S. crackdown on travel to Cuba, the number of foreign visitors grew 19.7 percent on the year to 4.3 million in the first 11 months of 2017, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero told parliament earlier this week. Cabrisas forecast the economy would grow around 2 percent next year. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. Security Council to vote Friday on new North Korea sanctions;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Friday on a U.S.-drafted resolution that seeks to toughen sanctions on North Korea in response to its latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch, diplomats said. The draft, seen by Reuters on Thursday, seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum product exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and demand the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 12 months. It would also cap crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year. The United States has been calling on China to limit its oil supply to its neighbor and ally. The text was circulated to the 15-member council on Thursday. While it was not immediately clear how China would vote, traditionally a draft on North Korea is not given to all members until it is agreed by Beijing and Washington. The United States has been negotiating with China on the draft resolution for the past week, diplomats said. If adopted, it would be the 10th resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea over its missile and nuclear programs since 2006. To pass, a resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. The United States late last month warned North Korea s leadership it would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out after Pyongyang test-fired its most advanced missile, putting the U.S. mainland within range. During a speech on Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stressed that nobody can deny the entity of the DPRK which rapidly emerged as a strategic state capable of posing a substantial nuclear threat to the U.S., according to North Korea s official KCNA news agency. DPRK is the acronym for the country s official name, Democratic People s Republic of Korea. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman visited Pyongyang earlier this month - the first senior U.N. official to do so since 2011 - and said North Korean officials did not commit to talks, but he believes he left the door ajar. The U.S.-drafted resolution repeats previous language by reaffirming the council s support for the Six Party Talks, calls for their resumption. So-called six-party talks on North Korea s nuclear program stalled in 2008. In a bid to further choke North Korea s external sources of funding, the draft resolution also seeks to ban North Korean exports of food products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone, including magnesite and magnesia;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico president says Supreme Court should rule on security law;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said on Thursday that he would send a contentious new security law to the Supreme Court for review after signing it, and would not make use of it until the tribunal has ruled on its constitutionality. The law, which the government says sets out the rules under which the armed forces can operate in the battle with organized crime, has sparked fierce criticism by opponents who fear it could open the door to more abuses. Acknowledging the concerns that have been stirred by the legislation, known as the Law of Internal Security, Pena Nieto stressed that the Supreme Court will have the final say. I m conscious this law that I will have to enact this afternoon is especially sensitive for the public life of the country, he said. For that reason, I will not issue an internal security declaration in the terms of this law until the highest court has decided on its constitutionality. The law was published in the government s official gazette on Thursday afternoon. Multiple human rights groups and international organizations, including the United Nations, have attacked the bill, mindful of cases of abuses by members of the military in Mexico over the past 11 years. In an address to security forces, Pena Nieto framed the law as a critical tool to combat Mexico s drug-related violence. 2017 is set to be the country s deadliest year on record, as disputes between rival cartels fueled murders. The challenges confronting our country in this area are great, and they mean that we cannot pause, we cannot make mistakes and we cannot fail, he said. Critics of the law have cautioned that it could lessen the urgency to improve local law enforcement. Pena Nieto reiterated his pledge to shift to a system of 32 regional police forces, rather than over 18,000 local units. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australia to end air strikes in Iraq and Syria, bring Super Hornets home;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia will end air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and bring its six Super Hornet planes home after three years as part of the U.S.-led coalition in the Middle East, Defence Minister Marise Payne said on Friday. She told a media conference the decision was made following the Iraqi declaration of victory over Islamic State. Following discussions with Iraq and with members of the international coalition, the Australian government has determined that we will bring home our six Super Hornet strike aircraft from the Middle East, Payne told reporters. It has been long. It has been arduous. It has been brutal. All of our personnel made an extraordinary contribution. Australia has been in the Middle East as part of the U.S.-led effort against Islamic State since 2014. Payne said other Australian operations in the region would continue, with 80 personnel who are part of the Special Operations Task Group in Iraq, including Australian special forces, continuing their deployment. Australian soldiers have also been training Iraqi troops at the Taji military base outside Baghdad. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British police say lifting road closures near Buckingham Palace;LONDON (Reuters) - British police started to reopen roads around Buckingham Palace in London late on Thursday after investigating a suspicious vehicle. All road closures are now in the process of being removed, London s transport authority said. There s significant congestion in the area but this should now improve. A police spokesman said road closures were being lifted. Queen Elizabeth is not at Buckingham Palace as she travelled to her Sandringham estate in eastern England earlier on Thursday for the Christmas holiday. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Second day of jury deliberation for Turkish banker ends with no verdict;NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York jury on Thursday ended its second day of deliberations without a verdict in the trial of a Turkish banker accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. The jury had begun deliberating on Wednesday following the three-week trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an executive at Turkey s majority state-owned Halkbank. The trial featured testimony from Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty to charges of violating sanctions and testified for U.S. prosecutors, and from Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Turkish police officer who said he investigated Zarrab in 2012 and 2013. Jurors on Thursday sent notes asking to review a part of Korkmaz s testimony. They have also asked for clarification of a part of U.S. District Judge Richard Berman s legal instructions. The jurors are expected to resume deliberations on Friday. Zarrab testified that Atilla helped design fraudulent transactions of gold and food that allowed Iran to spend its oil and gas revenues abroad, including through U.S. financial institutions, defying U.S. sanctions. Both Zarrab and Korkmaz implicated Turkish officials in their testimony, including President Tayyip Erdogan. Attempts to reach Erdogan s spokesman for comment on the allegations at the trial have been unsuccessful. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government. Korkmaz testified that he was jailed in retaliation for his investigation and eventually fled Turkey last year. An Istanbul prosecutor has issued arrest warrants for Korkmaz s parents, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Wednesday. Korkmaz testified that he left some evidence from his investigation with his mother. Atilla, testifying in his own defense at the trial, denied all the charges against him. Halkbank has denied taking part in any illegal transactions. U.S. prosecutors charged nine people in the criminal case, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, were arrested by U.S. authorities. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. welcomes decision by Saudi-led coalition to keep Yemen port open;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday said it welcomed an announcement by a Saudi-led coalition to keep the Hodeidah port in Yemen open for a month and allow humanitarian aid to flow through, and condemned a Houthi bombing of a palace in Saudi Arabia. In a brief statement, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders suggested the United States believed Iran bore ultimate responsibility for the Dec. 19 missile attack against the palace in Riyadh. We urge the United Nations Security Council to hold Iran responsible for its repeated and blatant violations of Security Council resolutions, Sanders said. At a briefing later on Thursday, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Tim Lenderking said the United States would have a conversation with Saudi Arabia about the 30 days the port will be open and about possibly changing the timeline, but said the United States first wants to see ships moving in and goods and services reaching the people of Yemen. The Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting in Yemen said on Wednesday it would open the Houthi-controlled port it had blockaded. A cholera epidemic has been spreading across the country and 8 million people are on the brink of famine in what the United Nations deems the world s worst humanitarian crisis. The Saudis say the Red Sea port is also a hub used by the Houthis to bring in weapons, which it accuses Iran of supplying. Tehran denies the charges. Lenderking also said there was no military solution to the conflict and that President Donald Trump s administration believes the best course is aggressive diplomacy. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted on Thursday in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. When asked if U.S. aid to Yemen would diminish given that Yemen drafted the resolution and was one of the 120 countries that voted for it, Lenderking said he was not sure but Trump s threat was not empty. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House widens ethics probe to include Farenthold campaign work;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ethics probe into U.S. Representative Blake Farenthold, who is already under a cloud for alleged sexual misconduct, is being expanded to look into whether he mixed his political campaign with congressional work and lied to the House Ethics Committee, the panel said on Thursday. Last week, Farenthold said he would not seek re-election next year after accounts surfaced that he created a hostile work environment. The Texas Republican denied allegations of sexual harassment but admitted allowing an unprofessional culture in his Capitol Hill office. On Thursday the ethics committee voted unanimously to investigate whether Farenthold used his congressional staff and other resources of the House of Representatives to further his political campaign, and if he had made false statements or omissions to the committee. The panel was already looking into whether he committed sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation against a former staff member and if he made inappropriate statements to other members of his staff. The committee said the announcement should not be read as an indication that it had found any rule violations. Farenthold’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Congress strictly divides lawmakers’ work on Capitol Hill and their runs for re-election so that taxpayers do not end up subsidizing political campaigns. In August, the committee went so far as to warn Representatives, who face elections every two years, they should not even send texts or forward emails related to their campaigns while in House buildings. Congress is reviewing its workplace policies on sexual harassment after a number of lawmakers have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent weeks amid a wave of such allegations against powerful men in entertainment, politics and the media. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House said on Thursday intends to introduce legislation in January reforming a 20-year-old law that covers sexual harassment in Congress, which it hopes will pass soon after. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Britain's ""Madame Brexit"" tells Poland: Your constitution is your own matter";WARSAW (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May gave Poland a rare dose of big power support on Thursday by saying that its constitution was its own affair, a sharply different tone to that of the European Union which has scolded Warsaw over judicial reforms. The EU executive launched an unprecedented action against Poland on Wednesday, calling on other EU member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms that Brussels says pose a threat to democracy. When asked about the Commission s move to deploy the nuclear option under Article 7 of the 2009 Lisbon treaty, May said: These constitutional issues are normally, and should be primarily a matter for the individual country concerned. Speaking alongside Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Warsaw, May said: Across Europe we have collective belief in the rule of law. I welcome the fact that Prime Minister Morawiecki has indicated that he will be speaking with the European Commission and I hope that that will lead to a satisfactory resolution. While the EU executive has censured Polish ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski s push to have control of judicial appointments, May is seeking to court Poland as an ally in Brexit negotiations and key military partner against Russia. Poland has said reforms are necessary while like-minded allies in Hungary have indicated they will veto the ultimate sanction of suspending Poland s voting rights in the bloc. At one point, a translator s slip made Morawiecki appear to cast May as Madame Brexit , though in fact he said in Polish: as Madame PM said, Brexit is Brexit . May said Britain and Poland had signed a defense and security cooperation treaty which deepens cooperation on training, information sharing and capability development. On the eve of a visit by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to Moscow, May said Vladimir Putin s Kremlin was trying to weaponise information and undermine a rules-based international system. We are both deeply concerned by Russia s attempts to weaponise information, she told reporters. The Kremlin is seeking to undermine the international rules-based system and it will not succeed. Morawiecki said he hoped France and Germany were aiming to work out the best solution with Britain as it leaves the EU I have deep hopes and conviction that our French and German partners aim to work out the best solution in this new, not easy situation that we are in with respect to Brexit, Morawiecki said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel's Netanyahu calls U.N. 'house of lies' before Jerusalem vote;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the United Nations as a house of lies ahead of a vote on Thursday on a draft resolution calling on the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The State of Israel totally rejects this vote, even before (the resolution s) approval, Netanyahu said in a speech at a hospital dedication in the port city of Ashdod. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday at the request of Arab and Muslim countries to vote on the draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. Generating outrage from Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world, and concern among Washington s Western allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy on Dec. 6 when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Palestinians have protested daily in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip since Trump s announcement, throwing stones at security forces and burning tires. Gaza militants have also launched sporadic rocket fire. Eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli gunfire during the demonstrations and dozens wounded, Palestinian health officials said. Two militants were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza after a rocket attack. Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of the U.N. draft resolution, and his ambassador to the world body, Nikki Haley said the United States will be taking names . Netanyahu, in his speech, thanked Trump and Haley for their brave and uncompromising stance . He repeated his prediction that other countries would eventually follow Washington s lead in pledging to move their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The attitude towards Israel of many countries, on all continents, outside the walls of the United Nations, is changing and will ultimately permeate into the U.N. - the house of lies, he said. Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Several senior diplomats said Haley s warning was unlikely to change many votes in the General Assembly, where such direct, public threats are rare. Some diplomats brushed off the warning as more likely aimed at impressing U.S. voters. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As he hits 40, Macron can toast a tumultuous year;PARIS (Reuters) - As he looks back on a momentous year, French President Emmanuel Macron might be tempted to have an extra glass of champagne this holiday season, and not just because he turned 40 on Thursday. A year ago, his newly created En Marche movement was only just starting to gain traction, with the candidate inching ahead of his main center-right rival Francois Fillon in the polls. But he still faced a full-throated challenge from far-right leader Marine Le Pen, and the idea of a 30-something former economy minister with no party affiliation rising to become president of the republic appeared far-fetched. A year on, and a few wobbles aside, Macron looks to be sitting pretty: he s up in the polls again, the opposition is largely in disarray, the economy is picking up, and business and consumer confidence are strong. With German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 63, bogged down in draining coalition negotiations, Britain s Theresa May, 61, battling to make Brexit work while holding her divided government together, and President Donald Trump, 71, taking the United States in often unpredictable directions, Macron is arguably the most stable and reliable leader in the West. In the past few weeks alone he has hosted a global climate summit, convened Middle East and African leaders to tackle Islamist militancy in the Sahel, brokered the return of Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Lebanon from Saudi Arabia, and been at the forefront of discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the status of Jerusalem. Next month he will visit China for four days, and in the coming months he is expected to become the first French leader to visit Tehran since 1971 six years before his birth. In Europe, he is credited with standing up to the wave of nationalist populism and unabashedly backing EU integration at a time when such ideas have become a dirty word in many capitals. Macron s unexpected performance underscores that harsh anti-EU populism is not always a winning strategy, Erik Brattenberg, director of the Europe Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote this week. So as Macron prepares to wind down a little bit at the end of the year, what are the risks? One of the former investment banker s shortcomings has been a tendency to use dismissive, even denigrating, language that has at times made him appear arrogant. Opponents have dubbed him president of the rich , a label that s proving hard to shake. Referring to those who oppose his economic reforms as slackers and suggesting that protesting workers should stop kicking up a bloody mess was ready fuel for the center-left opposition and dented his popularity. [nL8N1MG11O] He faces a challenge to keep his ambitious agenda on track. While he has pushed through changes to the labor rules with minimal unrest, he still needs to secure an overhaul to the pensions and unemployment benefit systems. [nL8N1MM3H0] In Europe, his grand plans for a separate budget for the euro zone have been stymied in large part by Germany s post-electoral impasse [nL8N1OC2QI], and his talk of pan-European lists to run in next year s elections to the European Parliament is unsettling parties and leaders across the continent. He also cannot bank on the opposition being disordered forever. The center-right Republicans party has now elected Laurent Wauquiez, a 42-year-old in the Macron mould, as its leader, and the far-left La France Insoumise keeps promising to put hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets. What s certain is that 2018 is unlikely to be uneventful. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: Even CNN Admits Tax Bill That “Not One Democrat Voted For” Gives Working Families “Damn Good Money”;On Wednesday, a jubilant President Trump tweeted about the passage of the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Not one Democrat voted for the massive tax cut bill that will put real money back into the pocket of working families.The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed. Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017As it turns out, the Democrats embarrassing #Resist plan is not to do one thing to help parents put food on the table or take that vacation they haven t been able to afford for the past 8 years. As Democrats try to create mass hysteria over the Republican tax reform bill, left-wing news organizations like CNN have admitted that the tax bill is going to give working families damn good money. On Wednesday, CNN host John King said, The Republicans are making a big bet, taking a big risk. Will over time the American people say, Oh, actually I like having more money in my pocket. Oh, they did hire more people at the factory down the street. That s their big bet, King said. Not one Democrat has voted for a bill that cuts taxes by $1.5 trillion, King continued. To Abby s point, if you re a working-class family, a lot of people say, Oh, it s only $200, $300, but if you re a working-class family living paycheck to paycheck, $200-$300 is damn good money and you are grateful for it. Daily WireWATCH:CNN s John King: The Republican tax bill gives working-class families damn good money. pic.twitter.com/PG4TRJ1JF4 Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 20, 2017Businesses are also pleased with the new pro-growth, pro-business tax plan, and as a result, more workers will be hired in America and many of the current workers will see pay raises and/or bonuses.According to the Daily Wire, seven American businesses announced on Wednesday that they would both be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in their employees because of Republican tax reform bill that the Senate passed on Tuesday night.AT&T announced that once President Donald Trump signed the bill into law that they would invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018 and pay a special $1,000 bonus to more than 200,000 AT&T U.S. employees. AT&T further noted that if Trump signed the bill before Christmas that the company will receive the bonus over the holidays.Boeing announced an immediate commitment to investing an additional $300 million in three areas that will directly benefit their employees:$100 million for corporate giving, with funds used to support demand for employee gift-match programs and for investments in Boeing s focus areas for charitable giving: in education, in our communities, and for veterans and military personnel. $100 million for workforce development in the form of training, education, and other capabilities development to meet the scale needed for rapidly evolving technologies and expanding markets. $100 million for workplace of the future facilities and infrastructure enhancements for Boeing employees.Fifth Third Bancorp, a bank headquartered in Ohio, announced that they would raise the minimum hourly wage for all employees to $15 following the tax reform bill and would give a one-time bonus of $1,000 to more than 13,500 of its employees.Wells Fargo announced that they will increase their minimum hourly pay rate to $15, and will aim for $400M in philanthropic donations next year due to the newly-passed GOP tax bill. Comcast announced that they will give $1,000 bonuses to over 100,000 eligible frontline and non-executive employees & invest $50 billion over the next five years in infrastructure based on the passage of tax reform. FedEx announced that the company will ramp up hiring in response to the tax bill.CVS Health announced in October that it the corporate tax rate went down that it would create 3,000 permanent new jobs.Here s President Donald J. Trump s latest tweet with a video explaining the benefits to farmers and middle-income Americans:WE ARE MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/HY353gXV0R Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017 ;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In victory for Trump, judge tosses suit on foreign payments;NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge in New York on Thursday threw out a lawsuit that had accused President Donald Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution by accepting foreign payments through his hotels and other businesses, handing him a major victory on an issue that has dogged him since even before he took office in January. Though other lawsuits remain pending that make similar claims, the ruling by U.S. District Judge George Daniels is the first to weigh the merits of the U.S. Constitution’s anti-corruption provisions as they apply to Trump, a wealthy businessman who as president regularly visits his own hotels, resorts and golf clubs. In a 29-page opinion granting the Trump administration’s request to toss the suit, Daniels said the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to bring the suit. The plaintiffs included the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a hotel owner, a hotel events booker and a restaurant trade group. The lawsuit, filed after the Republican president took office in January, accused Trump of running afoul of the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause by maintaining ownership of his business empire while in office. The emoluments clause, designed to prevent corruption and foreign influence, bars U.S. officials from accepting gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval. Trump has ceded day-to-day control of his businesses to his sons. Critics have said that is not a sufficient safeguard. The plaintiffs said they are legally injured when foreign governments try to “curry favor” with Trump by paying to use his businesses, such as the Trump International Hotel in Washington or a high-end restaurant at a Trump hotel in New York City. The plaintiffs said this leads them to have lost patronage, wages and commissions. U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said the Trump administration “appreciates the court’s ruling.” Daniels, appointed to the bench by Democratic former President Bill Clinton, said in his decision that the plaintiffs’ claims were speculative. Daniels said Trump had amassed wealth and fame even before taking office and was competing in the hospitality industry. “It is only natural that interest in his properties has generally increased since he became president,” the judge wrote. The judge also said that if Congress wanted to do something about the president’s actions, it could. “Congress is not a potted plant,” Daniels said. “It is a co-equal branch of the federal government with the power to act.” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said that his legal team is weighing options on how to proceed. “While today’s ruling is a setback, we will not walk away from this serious and ongoing constitutional violation,” Bookbinder added. Some legal experts had raised concerns even before his inauguration on Jan. 20 that Trump would violate the emoluments clause as president. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Big-ticket items at center of Congress spending bill;(Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Thursday approved a temporary funding bill to prevent federal agencies from shutting down at midnight Friday when existing money was set to expire. The following are the major items that were debated on the legislation that President Donald Trump is expected to sign into law: The Friday midnight deadline for action was the result of the Republican-controlled Congress failing to pass any of the regular appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Instead, the government has been operating on a series of temporary measures. This newest stopgap bill continues funding for government operations through Jan. 19, giving lawmakers several weeks to work out a spending bill that would pay for agency activities through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. House of Representatives conservatives failed in their bid to attach a major defense spending increase that would fund the Pentagon through September. Instead, Congress agreed to fund the military through Jan. 19, like most other programs. But in a move to attract support, a $4.7 billion increase was included to be used for missile defense and ship repair. Democrats and Republicans will continue negotiations on higher funding for both military and non-military programs. An $81 billion disaster aid bill was going to be attached to the government funding bill. Instead, the House approved it as a stand-alone bill, only to see the Senate put off action until at least next month. It would build on about $52 billion already provided to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and several states hit by severe hurricanes, wildfires or other natural disasters. Democrats want to do more for Puerto Rico and some Republicans worry about the mounting costs of disaster aid. The Children’s Health Insurance Program, which helps provide medical care to nearly 9 million children in low-income families, will get $2.85 billion to cover expenses through March as lawmakers seek a more permanent solution. Senators put off until early next year their bid to maintain healthcare subsidies for low-income people participating in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Many House Republican lawmakers dislike the idea. The National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will be extended through Jan. 19 as lawmakers try to reconcile competing versions of such legislation in the House and Senate. Legislation to protect “Dreamers” from deportation was not included, despite Democrats’ push to resolve the issue by year’s end. It was a major disappointment for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and immigration advocacy groups. But negotiators are still trying to reach a deal on helping immigrants, many from Mexico and Central America, brought to the United States illegally as children. The issue is expected to come back to life in early 2018. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congress votes to avert shutdown, sends Trump stopgap spending bill;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress on Thursday averted a government shutdown just one day before federal funding was due to expire, sending President Donald Trump a bill to provide just enough money to keep agencies operating through Jan. 19. With lawmakers eager to begin a holiday recess until Jan. 3, the House of Representatives and Senate scurried to pass the hastily written bill by votes of 231-188 and 66-32, respectively. When Congress returns, lawmakers will immediately have to get back to work on appropriating more money for a fiscal year that already will be three months old. They will try to pass an “omnibus” spending bill to fund the government from Jan. 19 through Sept. 30. Negotiators have been struggling for months over thorny issues such as the amount of defense-spending increases versus increases for other domestic programs, including medical research, opioid treatment and “anti-terrorism” activities. Fiscal hawks, meanwhile, are angry that Congress is again moving to bust through spending caps that had been designed to tamp down mounting federal debt. But some of those same lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Congress earlier in the week voted for a sweeping tax bill that will add $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years to a national debt that already stands at $20 trillion. With the clock ticking toward a deadline of midnight on Friday when government funding would run out, Democrats in the House and Senate made a strong pitch for including protections for young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children, popularly known as “Dreamers.” In the end, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and immigration advocacy groups failed. But nearly all of the House’s 193 Democrats and 29 of the Senate’s 46 Democrats voted no, in part to protest the lack of action on the immigration measure. Shortly before the House and Senate votes, Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez told reporters, “We’re really tired of tomorrow,” referring to years of failed attempts in Congress to protect Dreamers from deportation, allow them to legally work in the United States and get on a path to citizenship. They will resume their fight in January, aiming to win on the next spending bill or a separate measure. Trump has eliminated Obama-era temporary protections for Dreamers, but has asked Congress to come up with a permanent solution by March. In the meantime, about 122 Dreamers a day are becoming vulnerable to deportation while Congress bickers. Also on Thursday, the Senate put the brakes on another bill that passed the House, which would provide $81 billion in new disaster aid to help Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and several states hit by this year’s hurricanes or wildfires. The temporary spending bill did, however, give Trump a modest increase of $4.7 billion for the Department of Defense to be used for missile defense and ship repair. The bill includes $2.85 billion to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program through March and funding for community health centers and the Indian Health Service. The plan also would extend the National Security Agency’s expiring internet surveillance program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, through Jan. 19. Other provisions address funding for veterans, the Coast Guard and flood insurance. Most government programs would be temporarily extended until Jan. 19 at fiscal 2017 levels. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: State Department tells refugee agencies to downsize U.S. operations;(Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has told refugee agencies it will sharply pare back the number of offices across the country authorized to resettle people in 2018 as President Donald Trump cuts the number of refugees allowed into the United States. The announcement was made at a Dec. 1 meeting in Washington with State Department officials and representatives from nine major refugee agencies, several executives of the agencies said. Advocates said the decision is likely to lead to the closure of dozens of resettlement offices around the country, potentially leaving some refugees without access to services that help them integrate into American life. Several state refugee coordinators said they had also been made aware of the closures.     Refugee resettlement in the United States is handled by nine non-profit agencies that receive funding from the federal government for some of their refugee work. They partner with, or oversee, hundreds of local offices in nearly every state that help new arrivals with basic tasks like enrolling children in school, arranging doctors’ visits and applying for Social Security cards and other documents. Though the agencies are independent, they must get government approval for where they will resettle new refugees. Aid workers and state officials involved in refugee resettlement said the agencies were informed by the State Department in the Dec. 1 meeting that offices expected to handle fewer than 100 refugees in fiscal year 2018 will no longer be authorized to resettle new arrivals, which means many of them will have to close. There are about 300 resettlement offices spread across 49 states, and advocates estimate several dozen are at risk, though shuttering plans will not be finalized until next year. The Trump administration has said it wants refugees to assimilate quickly, both to promote national security and so that they can become self-sufficient. Refugee advocates say the closure of local offices will undermine that goal. They say the offices play a crucial role in helping newcomers traumatized from having fled conflict or persecution. Even if no new refugees are resettled by the offices they still have an obligation to help those already here, they say. If refugees lose access to “services to help them navigate the processes of registering for school, and English classes and finding a job, that will mean that it will take longer for them to navigate life in the United States and contribute to our economy,” said Robert Carey, who directed the Office of Refugee Resettlement under former President Barack Obama. A State Department official confirmed the Dec. 1 meeting and said the agency is looking to “reduce costs and simplify management structures to help the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program run in a way that is fiscally responsible and sustainable.” Some conservative groups that favor lower immigration said they would welcome curbs on the agencies’ activities. “These organizations have to adapt when their services are no longer needed as much,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “There is no reason to keep funneling money to them.” Joshua Meservey, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation who formerly worked in refugee resettlement, said that costs need to be balanced against benefits. “It is unclear to me if the assimilation gains are great enough to justify the extra expense” of funding the smaller agencies, he said. The nine agencies are now trying to coordinate closures so that they can maintain at least one resettlement agency in as many states as possible, several agency executives said. “We’re hoping that they (the State Department) only close sites where there is possible duplication,” said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, one of the nine agencies. “This is going to have to be a negotiation and a process.” Since taking office in January, Trump has moved to sharply reduce refugee admissions to the United States, because of national security concerns and a belief that money could be better spent resettling people closer to their original homes. Soon after taking office, he slashed the 2017 U.S. refugee cap to 50,000 from the 110,000 ceiling set by Obama. In September, he announced a cap of 45,000 for 2018, the lowest number since the modern U.S. refugee program was established in 1980. The resettlement office in Chattanooga, Tennessee is at risk of shutting down, because it is only projected to receive about 85 refugees, said Holly Johnson, the state’s refugee coordinator. “Small doesn’t necessarily mean weak or subpar,” Johnson said. “They spend more time with folks, they have really well-established connections to the community, so people feel welcomed, which really helps.” Until this year, Idaho had four resettlement offices - three in Boise and one in Twin Falls, said Jan Reeves, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees, a non-profit which administers resettlement in the state. Earlier this year one of the sites in Boise shut down, he said. “It was disruptive, and we’ve lost a really valuable partner and we’ve lost some capacity to do the job,” he said. ;politicsNews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Erdogan says U.S. can't buy Turkish support on Jerusalem;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey told U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday he could not buy its support in a United Nations vote on Jerusalem, and said the world should teach the United States a very good lesson by resisting U.S. pressure. Trump has threatened to cut aid to countries that support a draft U.N. resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in Ankara U.N. member states should not let their decision in Thursday s vote at the U.N. General Assembly be dictated by money. Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey s democratic will with your dollars, he said. The dollars will come back, but your will won t once it s sold. That is why your stance is important. Trump s announcement two weeks ago that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital broke with decades of U.S. policy and international consensus that the city s status must be left to Israeli-Palestinian talks. Last week Erdogan hosted a special meeting of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, which condemned Trump s decision and called on the world to respond by recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. Trump s Jerusalem move led to harsh criticisms from Muslim countries and Israel s closest European allies, who have also rejected the move. A draft resolution calling for withdrawal of Trump s decision was vetoed at the United Nations Security Council by the United States on Monday. Following that vote, opponents of the U.S. decision called for the vote in the General Assembly. I hope and expect the United States won t get the result it expects from there and the world will give a very good lesson to the United States, Erdogan said. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Shots fired at DMZ as North Korean soldier defects to South;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean guards fired warning shots across the heavily militarized border with North Korea on Thursday as a soldier from the North defected in thick fog, complicating efforts to ease tensions over Pyongyang s nuclear and missile programs. A South Korean defense ministry official said up to 20 warning shots were fired as North Korean troops approached too near the military demarcation line at the demilitarized zone (DMZ), apparently in search of the missing soldier. Thursday s defection came about five weeks after a North Korean soldier suffered critical gunshot wounds during a defection dash across the border. Two North Korean civilians were also found in a fishing boat on Wednesday and had sought to defect, officials in the South said. That brings the total number of North Koreans who have defected by taking dangerous routes either directly across the border or by sea to 15 so far this year, including two other soldiers. That is three times the number last year, according to South Korean officials. Tensions on the Korean peninsula were already high after reclusive, impoverished North Korea accelerated testing of its missile and nuclear programs this year in defiance of international pressure and UN sanctions. The defections also threaten to complicate South Korea s efforts to ensure the smooth running of the 2018 Winter Olympics, which begin in Pyeongchang in February. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Tuesday he had proposed postponing major military drills with the United States until after the games in an attempt to soothe relations, although officials in Seoul later said any proposed delay would depend on the North not engaging in any provocations . In a notice published online, the U.S. military s 8th Army said a significant number of North Korean propaganda leaflets and CDs had been distributed at strategic locations on multiple U.S. military bases in South Korea. The notice called on troops to report any suspicious individuals to help combat potential insider threats that could disrupt military operations. The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and North Korea says regular U.S.-South Korean military drills are a prelude to invasion. It regularly threatens to destroy the United States and its two key Asian allies, South Korea and Japan. Seoul says more than 880 North Koreans have defected to the rich, democratic South so far this year, but the vast majority have taken a less dangerous route through China. Going through China, North Korea s neighbor and sole major ally, means they avoid the DMZ, which features landmines, barbed wire, surveillance cameras, electric fencing and thousands of armed troops on both sides. The number of defectors arriving successfully in the South has dropped since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011, a trend defectors and experts say may be linked to a crackdown by Pyongyang. There was no immediate comment from the secretive North about the latest incidents. However, the North s state media released a statement sharply denying U.S. allegations this week that Pyongyang was behind a number of recent cyber attacks. Washington has publicly blamed North Korean hackers for a cyber attack in May that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies. Researchers also say the North was likely behind attacks on virtual currency exchanges. The military drills with the United States have also complicated relations with China. The proposed delay in drills was discussed during a summit between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping last week after the proposal was submitted to Washington, an official at the presidential Blue House said this week. China and Russia have proposed a freeze for freeze arrangement under which North Korea would stop its nuclear and missile tests in exchange for a halt to the exercises, but there has been little interest from Washington or Pyongyang. In Thursday s defection, a low-ranking soldier crossed the border near a South Korean guard post, South Korea s Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman, Roh Jae-cheon, said. No shots were fired at the soldier. Surveillance equipment detected him despite heavy fog that limited visibility to about 100 meters (110 yards), Roh said. South Korean guards fired about 20 warning shots at North Korean troops near the border presumably searching for the defector about half an hour later, a defense ministry official in the South told Reuters. Gunfire from the North was detected later but the target could not be determined, the official said. South Korea s Unification Ministry also said maritime police had found two North Korean men drifting in a small boat off the coast on Wednesday. The pair expressed their willingness to defect , a ministry official said, and their claim for asylum was being investigated. The North Korean soldier who was shot several times during a daring dash across the border on Nov. 13 has since been identified as 24-year-old Oh Chong Song and is now in a military hospital south of Seoul. His treatment for gunshot wounds and pre-existing conditions has included two major operations and intelligence officials will begin questioning him soon. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian PM says nine foreigners among those hurt when driver plows into crowd;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Nearly half the 19 people injured when a driver with no known extremist links plowed into pedestrians in the southern city of Melbourne were foreign nationals, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday. Police allege that the 32-year-old Australian man, a refugee from Afghanistan, had a history of mental illness and drove a car into Christmas shoppers on one of the busiest roads in Australia s second-largest city on Thursday. The incident was a chilling reminder of attacks using vehicles in cities around the world. Four people were killed in a similar incident in Melbourne in January. Turnbull and police said the driver had no known ties to extremist organizations, although they also said he had spoken of the perceived mistreatment of Muslims after his arrest. Police have yet to interview, charge or identify the man. Turnbull said nine of the victims were foreign nationals. He did not specify their nationalities but Australian media reported they included people from China, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, South Korea and Venezuela. This is a shocking incident to occur just on the eve of Christmas but we will not be cowed by it, Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. Four people were killed and more than 20 injured in January when a man deliberately drove into pedestrians just a few hundred meters away from Thursday s attack. That was also not designated as a terror attack. Police had cordoned off the area immediately after the incident but roads in central Melbourne were open and trams were operating as usual on Friday morning. Reuters witnesses reported a heavy police presence around exits from nearby Flinders Street train station, with trauma support and Red Cross workers in the area. Department store staff said foot traffic was down from the day before. It s definitely quieter, said a saleswoman at a beauty counter in the David Jones department store, who declined to give her name. More people are coming in from the back entrance. I think they re trying to avoid Flinders Street Station, she said. Workers at Walker s Doughnuts, which overlooks the site of the incident, said business was normal. We thought it would be less, but we re very busy, said store worker Bindu Kaki. Police vehicles lined the streets and volunteers for the Victorian Council of Churches in Australia stood in high- visibility shirts with labels reading personal support . Community group the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Victoria issued a statement denouncing the incident and offering to donate blood to victims. As Australian Muslims it is not just a moral but also a religious duty to condemn in the strongest possible terms (the) horrific and senseless act of violence, it said. Police said a second man arrested at the scene was released and was expected to be charged with possession of cannabis and a controlled weapon, although those offences were not linked to the car incident. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Bundy Case Ruled a Mistrial – Will Federal Case Soon Crumble?;Mark Anderson 21st Century WireThe Greek philosopher Plato was credited with saying, Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens. Well, since longtime Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his sons, and his other compatriots have demonstrated they possess a strong sense of principles and justice, perhaps a little justice in the life of the American state is possible which is no small thing in an age of nearly universal tyranny and injustice.This welcome ray of light became apparent in Las Vegas on Dec. 20 when U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the current high-profile proceedings involving Cliven, his sons Ryan and Ammon, and Ryan Payne.This prompted members of the Bundy family and dozens of their supporters to leave the courthouse on that Tuesday in a state of elation, even with the presence of protesters who, holding signs that read, Keep your Bundy hands off public lands, appeared to be paid agitators for billionaire leftist revolutionary George Soros, as one protestor basically admitted.Back in the spring of 2014, the above-named four defendants who ve become emblematic of the plight of Western ranchers resisting heavy-handed federal land controls were accompanied by other Bundy siblings, and by scores of supporters from across the nation, all of whom gathered near Cliven s ranch in Clark County, in southern Nevada, to exercise their First and Second Amendment rights.On that basis, these brave souls, some of whom were armed in an open-carry state, protested the actions of well-armed Bureau of Land Management agents, FBI agents (including SWAT units) and contractors, when these officials showed up, set up shop, and finally moved to impound Cliven s cattle over flimsy allegations of unpaid grazing fees on public lands. The impoundment attempt, on April 12, 2014, was unsuccessful, however.But while the government retreated that day after a lengthy and often tense standoff, a 16-count federal indictment was eventually handed down. Cliven, Ammon and the two Ryans were among nearly 20 initially indicted in this now-legendary federal case, which hasn t gone particularly well for prosecutors ever since the first of several planned trials started in February of 2017.Thus, the government, despite spending millions of dollars, has seen its case steadily deflate to the point where, as of now, the only things that remain, according to a legal observer, are for Judge Navarro to receive briefs from the prosecution and the defense by 5 p.m. Dec. 29 (when a hearing may take place). Those briefs will consist of arguments to enable the judge to decide whether or not to fully dismiss the case.The mistrial happened around 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time Dec. 20, as Navarro told the jury to go home . . . it s over, recounted Roger Roots, a legal expert and author who has observed virtually every trial proceeding firsthand.He said that after Judge Navarro reviews the briefs, an open hearing will be convened at 9 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to the court schedule as of this writing. If she rules for dismissal Jan. 8 without prejudice, the indictment remains in force and federal prosecutors technically could reset the trial of Cliven and the three others, reportedly on or around Feb. 26. But if she rules for dismissal with prejudice, then the indictment is dissolved, according to Roots.Roots said a dissolved indictment would mean the government would have to go to the trouble and expense of convening a new grand jury in order to seek a new indictment which would be double jeopardy and therefore a probable constitutional violation.And while Roots said the government conceivably could appeal the mistrial ruling to the Ninth Circuit, at this point he does not believe the government would jump through all the necessary hoops for a new indictment.Notably, what helped make the mistrial a reality was Navarro s findings (reached during hearings on exculpatory evidence that the government has been withholding) that the prosecution had committed several Brady v Maryland violations including not disclosing to the defense the existence of surveillance cameras, including those trained at the Bundy homestead.Also included is not disclosing the fact that concealed snipers were stationed around the area at the time of the 2014 standoff;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada pays tribute to billionaire couple after mysterious deaths; (In Dec. 21 item, corrects spelling of Jonathon Sherman s first name) By Anna Mehler Paperny and Matt Scuffham TORONTO (Reuters) - Tearful family members paid tribute to Canadian pharmaceutical billionaires and philanthropists Barry and Honey Sherman before thousands of people on Thursday, less than a week after news of the couple s mysterious deaths shocked the nation. The Shermans were found hanging by belts around their necks from a railing beside a pool in the basement of their Toronto mansion, a friend of the family told Reuters. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the memorial service in Toronto, as did hundreds of Apotex Inc employees wearing blue, the official color of Barry Sherman s company. The Sherman s son Jonathon began an emotional eulogy by saying the family was frustrated with the way Toronto police have handled the case, referencing Canadian media reports that said investigators were working on the theory that Barry Sherman, 75, had killed his 70-year-old wife and then himself. We ve had to navigate through a terrifying maze of non-information and unfounded speculation, Jonathon Sherman said. I kept expecting my parents to walk through the front door and say, Everything will be fine. We ve taken control of the situation. Police have confirmed that the Shermans died of ligature strangulation and that there were no signs of forced entry to the couple s home. Homicide detectives are leading the investigation, but the deaths have not been declared a homicide. Police have not detained any suspects and have not said if they are looking for any. Family, friends, colleagues and political leaders remembered Barry Sherman as a brilliant man. They described the graduate of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an accomplished executive who worked around the clock to build Apotex into one of the world s biggest generic drugmakers. Several speakers mentioned his penchant for chiding people over grammatical mistakes. He pretty well thought he was smarter than anyone else, said Jack Kaye, an Apotex executive who worked alongside Sherman for decades. And he wasn t wrong about that. Honey Sherman was described as vivacious and dedicated, a philanthropist who worked hard to keep her extended family close. She was my best friend and my other half, said her sister Mary Schechtman. We completed each other s sentences and never went anywhere without each other. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ululations, tears as white Zimbabwean farmer returns to seized land;RUSAPE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - The last time white Zimbabwean farmer Rob Smart left his land it was at gunpoint, forced out in June by riot police armed with tear gas and AK-47 assault rifles. He returned on Thursday to ululations and tears of joy from former workers and their families who were also kicked out - a jubilant return and the first sign that the president who has replaced Robert Mugabe is making good on a vow to stop illegal land seizures and restore property rights. Scores of jubilant black Zimbabweans nearly knocked the 71-year-old off his feet as he and his two children stepped out of their car and onto their land for the first time in six months. Smart s case was taken up by Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe s then vice-president who heard of Smart s violent eviction while at an investment conference in Johannesburg. Mnangagwa became president last month following a de facto coup that ended 93-year-old Mugabe s rule. In the latter half of his 37 years in power, Zimbabwe s economy collapsed, especially after the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms under the banner of post-colonial land reform. Land ownership is one of Zimbabwe s most sensitive political topics. Colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land and much of it remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980 leaving many blacks effectively landless. Twenty years later, Mugabe authorized the violent invasion of many white-owned farms and justified it on the grounds that it was redressing imbalances from the colonial era. White farmers complained that well connected people used state security forces to force them off their farms, sometimes in the middle of harvesting, even after the Mugabe government indicated, some four years ago, that land seizures were over. We are overjoyed, over the moon. We thought we would never see this day coming, Smart s son, Darryn, told Reuters. Getting back to the farm has given not just us, but the whole community hope that it s a new Zimbabwe, a new country. Rob Smart, whose father said he started the farm from virgin bush in 1932, expressed confidence in the new government s pledge to protect the commercial farming sector, a mainstay of the struggling economy. It s early days but so far what they (the new government) said they are going to do they are doing, he told Reuters. We just hope this whole incident will give hope to other farmers, who ve had the same situation. Mnangagwa, who is under pressure to revive the economy ahead of elections next year, said on Thursday that he was resolute about the changes he was introducing. There is no business as usual. Things have changed, it s a new era, he said at a meeting with business leaders in South Africa. I m from the military. If it s left turn then it s left turn . If it s right turn it s right turn . No confusion. Mnangagwa s new agriculture minister, Perrance Shiri, last week ordered illegal occupiers of farms to vacate the land immediately, a move that could ultimately see some white farmers who say they were unfairly evicted return to farming. Shiri, a military hardliner who was head of the air force before being picked for the crucial ministry this month, called for unquestionable sanity on the farms . For 83-year-old Anna Matemani, whose late husband worked on the farm, Smart s return was long overdue. I m so happy he is finally back. He always helped us and the farm provides jobs for many of our young people, said the grandmother of 15, who grew up and raised her children on the farm and witnessed Rob s birth, wiping away tears. Some of the Smarts joy subsided as they walked into their ransacked farmhouses. The occupiers had looted property, including clothes, the children s toys, three guns, bottles of 100-year-old wine and Smart s late father Roy s medals from when he served with the Police Reserve Air Wing in the former Rhodesia. I m sad about my grandfather s medals, Darryn Smart said, surveying a ransacked room. You can buy tables and chairs, you can t buy that family history. But thank goodness we re here. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fire in South Korean fitness center kills 29;SEOUL (Reuters) - A fire in an eight-storey fitness center in the scenic South Korean city of Jecheon on Thursday killed at least 29 people, most of them as they were taking a sauna, officials said. The blaze began in a car parked on the first floor and spread, one official told Reuters. The local fire station said at least 12 women and three men were known to have died. Thirteen bodies were unrecognizable. The fire station official said most of the victims were found in the sauna, and the main cause of the death was suffocation rather than burns. The casualty toll was likely to rise as efforts to find victims remained in progress, fire station officials said. Heavy smoke charred glass facades of the building as firefighters struggled to extinguish the blaze, some climbing up and down a ladder in desperate search of survivors. Local news channel YTN said President Moon Jae-in voiced deep sorrow for so many deaths while Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon vowed to expedite rescue efforts to try to minimize the number of dead and injured. Jecheon is southeast of the capital Seoul and is popular with visitors to its mountains and lakes. ;worldnews;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: SENATOR RAND PAUL Calls For Investigation…BLASTS High-Ranking Obama Officials Who May Have Colluded To Prevent Trump’s Election…”Could Be Worse Than Watergate”;Senator Rand Paul appeared on Bill Hemmer s Fox News show to discuss the importance of fighting the FISA law, to prevent the US government from unlawful spying and collection of information on Americans.With tax reform a done-deal and the wind at his back, Senator Rand Paul came out swinging against the Obama administration.Paul said he wants answers as to why Mueller s investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion appears so obviously partisan. You have the Department of Justice, where you have a high-ranking official whose wife works for the group doing opposition research on Trump being paid for by the Democrat National Committee, that sounds like a lot of high-ranking people colluding to try to prevent Donald Trump from being president, Paul told Fox News Bill Hemmer from the Hill on Thursday.I'm never a fan of shutting down government so that's not my intention. I am a fan of defending the bill of rights, though. pic.twitter.com/qJ9Sc298Ep Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 21, 2017Paul was referring to last week s bombshell that top DOJ official Bruce Ohr not only met with key players in the creation of the infamous Trump dossier, but his wife Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the unproven document. BPRTime to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!Time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate! Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 21, 2017;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WOW! UN AMBASSADOR Nikki Haley BLASTS UN Vote…Tweets LIST Of Nations Who VOTED To SUPPORT President Trump’s Declaration Of Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital;"Yesterday, President Trump threatened to cut foreign aid to countries that vote in the UN for a resolution condemning his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.UN Ambassador Nikki Haley echoed President Trump s sentiment preceding the UN vote today:Referencing tomorrow's UN vote criticizing the US embassy move. In the words of the President, ""Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot."" pic.twitter.com/eUGWD4cCBR Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 20, 2017 I like the message that Nikki sent yesterday at the United Nations for all of these nations that take our money and then they vote against us at the Security Council, or they vote against us potentially at the [General] Assembly, he said about US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.She had said a day earlier that the US would be taking names of countries that voted for the resolution. They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we re watching those votes. Let them vote against us, we ll save a lot. We don t care, Trump said during a cabinet meeting at the White House.The president contended that American officials don t even know what foreign countries do with the money the US sends them. NYPToday, the Independent UK reported that the UN General Assembly voted 128-9 to declare US President Donald Trump s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel s capital null and void .The vote, while a victory for the Palestinians, was significantly lower than its supporters had hoped for, with many forecasting at least 150 yes votes. There were a total of 35, while 21 nations did not turn up for the vote.Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the result, his spokesman saying: The vote is a victory for Palestine. We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation and to establish our Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted the vote tally, saying 68 countries refused to condemn the United States and 128 voted against us. There were 35 abstentionsThe vote is in 65 countries refused to condemn the United States and 128 voted against us. Final vote tally to follow. Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 21, 2017Haley also tweeted a message to thank the nations who stood behind President Trump. Her message included a list of those nations who stood by President Trump and his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel:We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the @UN: pic.twitter.com/a0hUTepD8H Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) December 21, 2017Here s a close up look at the list:Ambassador Haley also made clear the decision of the U.S. to move forward with its plans to move the embassy to Jerusalem:Ms Haley said no vote in the United Nations will make any difference on the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, which will go ahead because it is the right thing to do. She said the United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very right of exercising our right as a sovereign nation. We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world s largest contribution to the United Nations, she says. And we will remember when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit. Ms Haley said the vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the UN and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the UN, and this vote will be remembered. Israel s prime minister says he completely rejects the preposterous UN resolution declaring the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital as null and void. Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video posted to Facebook that Jerusalem always was, always will be Israel s capital. He also says he appreciates that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theatre of the absurd. Mr. Netanyahu also thanked President Donald Trump for his stalwart defense of Israel. ";politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;REP STEVE SCALISE Scolds Obama Crony For “Obit” Tweet About GOP Leaders;WHAT S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? Clinton Crony Ben Rhodes tweeted out a wish for death to McConnell, Ryan and Pence:Rhodes is a former Obama administration official with the National Security Council.Republican Steve Scalise was shot last year when a crazed Democrat attacked Republicans practicing for a baseball game He was near death and had months of recovery before he could come back to D.C. It goes without saying that the Ben Rhodes tweet was very insensitive and helps no one in any way to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats continuously show themselves to be hateful and snarky Not a good look for anyone.Scalise responded to the Rhodes tweet with a short and sweet tweet that got the point across:You may want to reconsider your rhetoric. https://t.co/VQVWej6n00 Rep. Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) December 21, 2017But the lefty lunatics started coming after Scalise. No kidding!GOP. Whip offended by implication fellow Republicans leaders are not immortal https://t.co/LnwO2caZ1h Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) December 21, 2017Sicko!;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BIG MOUTH ROSIE O’DONNELL Could Be Heading To Prison After Taking Her Hate For President Trump Too Far;Many are suggesting that the former comedian, turned militant, leftist activist, Rosie O Donnell needs to be treated by federal authorities like every other American when it comes to being held accountable for her actions. O Donnell broke the law when she offered to pay two Republican lawmakers for voting against Trump s tax cut bill on Twitter. Even offering this is illegal. You are not above the law but I guess you are since the Feds haven't been knocking on your door. with all these tweets you obviously are not joking. Androgynous Priest (@AndrogynPriest) December 21, 2017After ex-comedian Rosie O Donnell s meltdown on Twitter before the Senate s big tax vote Tuesday night, President Donald Trump can reasonably direct federal authorities to lock her up and even to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets, which he once infamously cited as a personal goal.Starting a few hours before the legislation passed, O Donnell tweeted:so how about this i promise to give 2 million dollars to senator susan collins and 2 million to senator jeff flakeif they vote NO NO I WILL NOT KILL AMERICANS FOR THE SUOER RICH DM me susan DM me jeff no shit 2 million casheach ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Even after another Twitter user, Louise Mensch, replied that O Donnell was irresponsibly advocating bribery, O Donnell doubled down.i disagree it is obvious there is a price corker had one collins tooflake almost brave he crawled out backwards2 million to any GOP senator who votes noon KILLING AMERICANS MILLIONS WITH OUT HEALTH CARE MY GOD HAVE WE NO SO ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Federal law addresses O Donnell s actions.18 U.S. Code 201 criminalizes the attempted bribery of federal officials by whoever directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official with intent to influence any official act. The penalty? For Rosie, she could spend up to 15 years in jail, suffer a lifetime ban from elective office and pay up to a cool $12 million:The statute calls for a fine of not more than three times the monetary equivalent of the thing of value, whichever is greater, or imprisoned for not more than fifteen years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. In court, O Donnell would probably argue that her attempted bribe was in jest, or perhaps a syndrome of a mental illness.After all, her attorneys would argue, who, while seriously attempting to bribe members of the U.S. Congress would do so in such a reckless, public manner that would all but ensure a conviction? Daily CallerThe emboldened screwball doubled down on her vile tweets calling for people to rise up against our government and mobilize , to call 911 and again, offered to pay US Senators millions of dollars to vote against tax cuts for working, American families.WE CANNOT SIT AT HOME WHILE THEY ROB OUR NATION YOUR NEIGHBORS HEALTH CARE FOR THE FUCKING MERCERS AND KOCH BROTHERS FUCK THEM RISE UP ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017She even asked her followers to call 911 to report a fake crime. There has to be a law against this:call 911 crime in progressUS SENATEthis is too much ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017What does Rosie mean when she calls on people to mobilize against our government? Isn t that the same thing as calling for a coup? Isn t that also considered to be illegal?WHY HAVENT THE MOBILIZE PEOPLE MOBILIZED https://t.co/wEucdcLqoH ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017And then, she doubled down on stupid with this tweet:heres the thing al i am not looking to give more money to a corrupt system however this bill is criminal i therefore offer 2 million for any GOP senator that votes no to them personally or directed to A NON PROFIT OF THEIR CHOICE no strings attached DO WHATS RIGHT ROSIE (@Rosie) December 20, 2017Here s how a few Twitter users responded:What you just tweeted is criminal check yourself on that ! LaDeplorable (@NenaPacino) December 20, 2017Send that 2 million and any benefit you receive from the tax cuts back to the government. Better yet, why not go out in the streets of L.A. and find 40 homeless people and give each 50 grand for job training for a career that will change their life 4ever. D.B. (@boingboingbong) December 20, 2017 ;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PELOSI CHUCKLES AND MOCKS President Trump when Asked About Their Relationship [Video];What a bizarre exchange between a reporter and Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi! She is asked during a press conference what her relationship is with President Trump and she laughed. What s even stranger is she mocked the way Trump says DACA .It s as if she detests the president so much that she can t bring herself to speak his name. Notice how she talks in disjointed sentences and stops suddenly to think. She cannot even form a complete thought! This is yet another example of the strange behavior of Pelosi that is ignored by the main stream media like an enabling spouse.Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) chuckled Thursday when asked to characterize her relationship with President Donald Trump, saying there is a good rapport there but mainly focusing on their stark disagreement over tax reform.After a reporter asked the question, Pelosi paused and smiled, appearing to gather her thoughts for a diplomatic response given her strong criticism of the administration. I think we have a good rapport, Pelosi said. I don t think we ve accomplished much together. Pelosi said she and Trump could find a path together on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, although she gently mocked his pronunciation of DACA. Read more: WFBShe went on the rant against the Republican tax bill in another disjointed word salad moment. How can anyone take her seriously when she uses terms like armageddon to describe the tax bill?;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CHRIS CHRISTIE Gets Frustrated…SNAPS At MSNBC Hack Host Nicolle Wallace: “Do You Work For Mueller Now?” [VIDEO];New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie got into a heated discussion with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday. Wallace asked Christie about Chris Wray, the new director of the FBI. Governor Christie told Wallace that he thought highly of Wray and that he was going to be an outstanding director of the FBI. Christie told Wallace that Mueller made some mistakes, in that he didn t do a very good job of vetting his team for his Russian collusion investigation. Christie then went on to tell her that Bob Mueller is a good man, but he shouldn t have allowed biased agents to be involved in the investigation.Wallace asked Christie, Were you ever around Donald Trump when he was ever warned about Russia or Russians? Christie responded, No, not that I remember, no. Wallace continued to press Christie, Were you ever around Donald Trump with Mike Flynn when they were talking about Russia or Russians? Christie answered, Who are you? Do you work for Mueller now? I mean, you know, no. Watch the exchange here:;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NBC REPORTER Asks Sarah Sanders About Taxes…She Points Directly To Reporter’s Paycheck [Video];Sarah Sanders does it again! The snarky DC reporters always try and get her but she ends up on top every time! This time was no exception;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: FORMER NBC NEWS ANCHOR Tom Brokaw Tells Morning Joe Hacks “We’re At War” With Trump…and “Fox News Is On A Jihad” [VIDEO];This morning, President Trump tweeted a note of congratulations to Fox and Friends, after they were named, The Most Influential Show In News . In his tweet, President Trump told Fox and Friends, You deserve it three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! Was @foxandfriends just named the most influential show in news? You deserve it three great people! The many Fake News Hate Shows should study your formula for success! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2017Trump s tweet was enough to put the maniacal Trump hater Mika Brzezinski over the edge. She mockingly read the tweet to the MSNBC show s panel, then turned to Tom Brokaw to ask for his reaction to President Trump s tweet. Brokaw smugly told Brzezinski that President Donald Trump watches Fox News because it reinforces what he believes . Brokaw then went on to exclude leftist crybaby Shepard Smith from his disgusting and inflammatory assertion that Fox News is on a jihad. Fox News, after Shepard Smith, in the late afternoon, is on a jihad right now on the whole question about whether there is a fairness about this or not, Brokaw told Brzezinski. The whole assault is on the institutions. Brokaw then went on to criticize Newt Gingrich for daring to call out the corrupt and biased behavior of the FBI, that s recently been uncovered as a result of the Trump-Russian collusion witch hunt. Brokaw told the panel, Newt Gingrich looking in the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization, right? Three months earlier he had said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have. Newt Gingrich looking into the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization three months earlier he d said Bob Mueller is one of the great, distinguished public servants we have. So, we re at war here, Brokaw told the like-minded leftist hack panel at MSNBC.Watch (audio is missing for the first second of the video):;politics;21/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UNHCR says Australia abandoned refugees, must clear up the mess it made;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N refugee agency on Friday accused Australia of abandoning hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea s Manus Island and said it must take responsibility for the mess it created with its offshore processing system. About 800 refugees are still in a precarious situation on Manus Island, having been forcibly removed from a holding camp last month when Australia decided to close it, UNHCR spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva. We are talking here about people who have suffered tremendously, extreme trauma, and are now feeling so insecure in the places where they are staying. There are many victims of torture, people who have been deeply traumatised, having no idea what is going to happen next to them, she said. In light of the continued perilous situation on Papua New Guinea s Manus Island for refugees and asylum seekers abandoned by Australia, UNHCR has called again this week on the Australian government to live up to its responsibility and urgently find humane and appropriate solutions. Conditions in the camp, and another on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, have been widely criticised by the United Nations and human rights groups. The two camps have been cornerstones of Australia s contentious immigration policy under which it refuses to allow asylum-seekers arriving by boat to reach its shores. The policy, aimed at deterring people from making a perilous sea voyage to Australia, has bipartisan political support. The closure of the Manus Island camp, criticised by the United Nations as shocking , caused chaos, with the men refusing to leave the compound for fear of being attacked by Manus island residents. [nL3N1NT437] Pouilly said that in the past four weeks, there had been at least five security incidents, including an attempt by three people armed with machetes and an axe to force their way into a site where 150 refugees and asylum seekers have been accommodated since the Australian facility closed. Pouilly said that although Papua New Guinea now had to deal with the situation, the buck should stop with Australia. What we clearly are saying is that it s Australia s responsibility in the first place, she said. Australia is the country that created the situation by putting in place this offshore processing facility. So what we are asking is for Australia to find solutions for these people. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel's conservatives tempt SPD with offer on healthcare, jobs;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives hope to draw the Social Democrats (SPD) into coalition with offers on healthcare and employment, one of her ministers said, but the two camps remain far apart on tax issues. Merkel s CDU/CSU alliance won a national election in September, but she has so far failed to agree terms with other parties on a coalition that would enable her to serve a fourth term. Her best chance now appears to be a reboot of the grand coalition with the centre-left SPD that ran Germany from 2013 to 2017 and continues to govern in a caretaker capacity. Peter Altmaier, acting finance minister and Merkel s chancellery chief, told newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung he thought such an alliance was again possible. The SPD had previously said it intended to go into opposition after suffering its worst election result in more than eight decades. But Germany s two biggest political groups are now set to start exploratory coalition talks next month and hope to decide by Jan. 12 whether to open full-blown negotiations. Asked what offers the conservatives would make, Altmaier said: We ll of course talk with the SPD about problems in hospitals and nursing care, improvements for families and children, broadband expansion, qualification for new jobs and how we can reach full employment. There is overlap with the SPD on these areas, he said, adding that helping Germany s 900,000 long-term unemployed needed to be a key project - an idea likely to go down well with the SPD. Taxation could be a sticking point, however. Senior SPD member Andrea Nahles told German magazine Der Spiegel her party wanted to press for a higher top rate of tax for individuals and non-listed companies and ensure the wealthy paid more. The conservatives have rejected the idea of higher taxes for the rich. Altmaier said that while the conservatives would not draw any red lines ahead of the talks, they wanted a coalition treaty to include a pledge not to raise taxes or increase debt. The SPD also wants to scrap Germany s dual healthcare system of premium private care and more widely accessible public care to replace it with a single citizen s insurance . The conservatives fear that would harm competition. Nahles said employers and employees needed to pay the same amount towards public healthcare and doctors fees for public and private healthcare systems should be reviewed. While the conservatives have made clear they are keen on another grand coalition , the SPD has kept the option of tolerating a minority Merkel-led government on the table. The chancellor rejects that idea. Senior SPD member and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the Funke newspaper consortium that some of his party colleagues were ready to live with a minority government. But he said he worried about the implications for Europe s stability. I m rather skeptical, he said in an interview published on Friday as political crisis gripped Spain, where separatists were set to regain power in Catalonia following regional elections. A shaky government in Germany would probably lead to an earthquake in Europe - but we need to talk about it. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Stop meddling in foreign elections, UK's Johnson tells Russian hosts;MOSCOW (Reuters) - British foreign minister Boris Johnson told his Russian counterpart on Friday there was abundant evidence of Moscow meddling in foreign elections, but said any Russian efforts to interfere in last year s Brexit referendum had fallen flat. On the first visit to Russia by a British foreign minister in five years, Johnson said he wanted to normalize UK-Russia relations, which were going through a very difficult patch . But that didn t mean pretending that Britain did not have serious concerns about Russia s behavior, he said. ... We can t pretend that they (the problems) do not exist, and that we share a common perspective on the events in Ukraine, or in the Western Balkans or ... on Russian activities in cyberspace, said Johnson. He also said Britain had a duty to speak up for the LGBT community in Chechnya. Two men from Chechnya told Reuters in June they had been tortured because they were gay. Chechen authorities deny the allegations. Johnson s visit comes at a time when relations between London and Moscow are strained by differences over Ukraine and Syria as well as by allegations, which Russia flatly denies, that Moscow has meddled in the politics of various European countries by backing cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov challenged that narrative, however, saying Johnson himself had recently said he had no proof that Moscow had meddled in last year s British referendum on leaving the European Union. Not successfully, not successfully, I think is the word, Johnson a leading advocate of Brexit shot back, to which Lavrov replied: He s scared that if he doesn t disagree with me, his reputation will be ruined at home. Johnson, who said there was abundant evidence of Russian election meddling in Germany, the United States and other countries, said it was Lavrov s reputation he was worried about. I think it is very important ... to recognize that Russian attempts to interfere in our elections or in our referendum, whatever they may have been, they ve not been successful, said Johnson. Lavrov said he blamed Britain for the poor state of relations, complaining about insulting and aggressive statements from London. He also complained about Britain airing its differences with Moscow publicly rather than in private. But although the two men spent much of their joint news conference exchanging barbs, both sounded upbeat when it came to trying to cooperate in narrow areas, such as in the U.N. Security Council, and on security arrangements for next year s soccer World Cup in Russia. Lavrov complained, however, that Britain was still not fully cooperating with Russia s FSB security service. Johnson had riled Russian officials before his visit by telling Britain s Sunday Times newspaper that Moscow was closed, nasty, militaristic and anti-democratic . But when asked about the comment on Friday, he rowed back, saying he had been referring to the Soviet Union, not modern Russia. Russian media has portrayed Johnson as anti-Russian. Johnson told reporters on Friday however that he was a committed Russophile . ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malaysia arrests 20 over suspected terror links;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has arrested 20 suspected militants, including 13 foreigners, police said on Friday, adding to a list of hundreds detained in recent years accused of having links to terror groups. The Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country has been on high alert since gunmen linked to Islamic State launched multiple attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighboring Indonesia, in January 2016. The suspects were arrested in a counter-terror operation carried out in four states between Nov. 30 and Dec. 15, Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement. They include a 50-year-old Filipino suspected of recruiting his countrymen in Malaysia to join up with the Abu Sayyaf, a militant group notorious for kidnappings and beheadings in the southern Philippines. The man, who has been living in Malaysia since 2016, was believed to be a cousin of late Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, a Malaysian intelligence source told Reuters. Hapilon, the Islamic State s anointed emir in Southeast Asia, was killed in October by Philippine troops in Marawi city, where he had led a five-month siege. Police also arrested an Indonesian, suspected of being a leader of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, a pro-Islamic State alliance of Islamic militants, he said. The man was involved in a July 2017 bombing in Bandung, Indonesia, before traveling to Malaysia to escape arrest, Mohamad Fuzi said. The suspect... planned to raise funds in Malaysia before departing for Syria to join up with Daesh, he said, referring to Islamic State. A 46-year-old former Malaysian teacher was arrested in Sarawak, on Borneo island, in connection with a plan to attack a beer festival in Kuala Lumpur, police said. Three others had been arrested in October in connection with the plan. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. judicial rights expert decries Poland's 'political' legal reforms;GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. independent expert on the independence of judges and lawyers criticized Poland on Friday for legal reforms that have already attracted unprecedented censure from the European Union, dubbing them a serious breach of the rule of law. Diego Garc a-Say n, a special rapporteur mandated by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate the independence of judges and lawyers, said Poland s newly adopted laws threatened the independence of the judiciary. These new laws are part of a larger plan aimed at placing the judiciary under the political control of the ruling party, Garc a-Say n said in a statement. He said Poland had been comprehensively reforming its judicial system since parliamentary elections in 2015, aiming to increase its effectiveness and restore public trust. Such reforms were a legitimate objective, he added. What is happening in Poland today, however, is a vicious attempt to place the whole judicial system under the control of the executive and legislative branches. The EU executive launched an unprecedented action against Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms that Brussels says pose a threat to democracy. [nL8N1OK2YJ] Poland s government rejects accusations of undemocratic behavior and says reforms are needed because the courts are slow, inefficient and steeped in a communist era-mentality. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. hails first step on Syria detainees, cautious on Sochi plan;GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said Syria talks in the Kazakh capital Astana on Friday had agreed on a working group for the release of detainees, which he said was a commendable first step towards an arrangement between the warring sides. He also said that Russia s plan to convene a Syrian congress of national dialogue in Sochi next month should be assessed by its ability to contribute to and support the U.N.-led Geneva talks on ending the war in Syria. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian government envoy: U.S. and Turkish troops should leave Syria;ASTANA (Reuters) - Syria s U.N. ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, said on Friday that U.S. and Turkish troops should leave Syria immediately. He made the demand during Syrian peace talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“NEVER-TRUMPER” and Weekly Standard Editor Sends Vile Tweet Mocking VP Pence…Suggests Pence Has Replaced God With President Trump;The former Fox News contributor and editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, took to Twitter to appease his newfound liberal friends with a disgusting tweet, mocking devout Christian and genuine conservative, Vice President Mike Pence. Ever since President Trump won the election, Kristol and his never-Trump friends have become unhinged with hate for the President and for anyone he surrounds himself with. Yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise visit to the troops in war-torn Afghanistan to roll out President Trump s new fight to win policy.Pence addressed the troops at a Bagram Airfield hangar, telling them that before he made his trip, he asked president Trump what message he wanted to be delivered to the troops. Here is Pence s touching message to the troops from President Trump:Pence told the troops, Before I left the White House yesterday, I asked Trump if he had a message for our troops here in Afghanistan. And he looked at me and said, Tell them I love them. And he did.WATCH:Before I left the @WhiteHouse yesterday, I asked @POTUS Trump if he had a message for our troops here in Afghanistan. And he looked at me and said, Tell them I love them. pic.twitter.com/PO4F7Z5vOx Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) December 21, 2017 Never-Trumper and former frequent FOX News guest Bill Kristol mocked Vice President Mike Pence over his speech to our troops. Kristol wrote:And I, a mere humble and unworthy VP, gazed back into the kindly and understanding eyes of the great and glorious POTUS, and said, Thank you O POTUS! And thank you for letting us say once again, Merry Christmas! And I, a mere humble and unworthy VP, gazed back into the kindly and understanding eyes of the great and glorious POTUS, and said, Thank you O POTUS! And thank you for letting us say once again, Merry Christmas! https://t.co/RAQwmQk2Sq Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 22, 2017Little sad man, Bill Kristol, who was once respected by conservative Americans, has been reduced to retweeting glowing articles about himself published by liberal rag publications like The Slate to discuss where Republicans went awry, whether Palin abetted Trump s rise, and the costs of rationalization. NEW @IHaveToAskPod: @BillKristol talks about where Republicans went awry, whether Palin abetted Trump's rise, and the costs of rationalization. https://t.co/rEwacCUfZx Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) December 21, 2017 ;left-news;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Legal action to see whether UK could unilaterally stop Brexit gets go-ahead;EDINBURGH (Reuters) - A group of anti-Brexit Scottish members of parliament has been given the go-ahead to pursue legal action to establish whether the United Kingdom can unilaterally stop the process of leaving the EU, a Scottish court said on Friday. The Scottish Court of Session has accepted a petition from the cross-party group of seven MPs, excluding British Prime Minister Theresa May s ruling Conservatives, to determine whether Brexit can be stopped if Britain, acting alone, decides to reverse the process. The British government has three weeks to respond to the challenge, before the Edinburgh court - Scotland s supreme civil judicial body - sets a date to hear the case, a spokesman said. The seven MPs from the Labour Party, Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens, want the Court of Sessions to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice, the EU s highest court, to conclusively rule on the issue. We know it is possible to stay in the European Union if the other member states allow. But experts believe our parliament can withdraw the (leaving) notification without their permission, the Scottish MPs said in a statement earlier this week. But there is only one way to be sure: a court has to decide what Article 50 means. May formally notified the EU of Britain s intention to leave the EU by triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on March 29, starting a two-year exit process, and has said she will not tolerate any attempt in parliament to block it. Brexit supporters argue that after last year s referendum vote to leave, any attempt to halt the process would be anti-democratic. But opponents say the country should have a right to pass final judgement on any exit deal negotiated, and the Scottish challenge is the latest legal attempt to try to ensure this happens. Article 50 does not specify whether the exit process can be unilaterally reversed although former British diplomat Lord Kerr who drafted it has said Britain can change its mind at any stage before the final exit date in 2019. The referendum saw 52 percent of voters backing Brexit. The poll shook Britain s structure, as voters in Northern Ireland and Scotland backed remaining in the EU but those in Wales and England opted to leave. However, a recent BMG opinion poll found that 51 percent of Britons would now keep EU membership versus 41 percent who still wanted to leave. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin accuses U.S. of plotting to break landmark arms control pact;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused the United States of plotting to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, which bans short and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles. Both Russia and the United States have accused each other of breaking the landmark arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War and have said its existence is now under threat. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' coast guard rescues 252 passengers from capsized ferry;REAL, Philippines (Reuters) - The Philippines coast guard said on Friday it had rescued 252 passengers and crew, including an Australian and his Filipino wife, and recovered five dead people from a ferry that capsized east of the capital Manila. A Philippine vessel capsized on Thursday because of bad weather, highlighting frequent boat accidents in the Southeast Asian nation that is composed of more than 7,000 islands. The Philippine Coast Guard has confirmed five deaths while 252 passengers including an Australian and his Filipino wife, were rescued, said spokesman Captain Arm and Balilo. All the passengers and crew are accounted for but as I have said we will re-evaluate based on the claims of the families of the missing passengers, Balilo told Reuters. The vessel was carrying 257 passengers and crew. The boat left the port around 9 a.m. and capsized an hour later due to strong winds and giant waves. A survivor said the passengers panicked when the boat started to take in water and went to one side, causing the ferry to tilt and capsize. The others waited on top of the ship while it was sinking, but I didn t do that because I know the ship will break down and I want to avoid getting hurt by that, Rene Ebuenga, a rescued passenger told Reuters. That s dangerous and the big waves can slam debris to your body. The ferry capsized and sank about 5 miles off Quezon province, east of the capital on the main northern island of Luzon. The Philippine Coast Guard said it will conduct an inquiry to determine the cause of the incident and to verify possible oil spills. In 1987, nearly 5,000 people died in the world s worst peacetime shipping disaster when an overloaded passenger ferry Dona Paz collided with an oil tanker off Mindoro island in the central Philippines. Tropical storm Tembin, packing center winds of 80 kmh (49 mph), made landfall on the southern island of Mindanao early Friday. It weakened after hitting the land mass, the weather bureau said on Friday. But, the weather agency warned of extensive flooding and landslides until the storm exits the Philippines on Sunday. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Lotte chief gets suspended prison sentence;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK PM May says she was unaware of allegations against sacked deputy;LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday she knew nothing of allegations of inappropriate behavior by her most senior minister, forced to resign this week, until she read about them in a newspaper. Damian Green, 61, has been accused of making a sexual advance towards academic Kate Maltby, the daughter of a family friend, in 2015, suggesting it might further her career. May forced Green, one of her closest political allies, to resign on Wednesday night because of a separate scandal - lying about whether he knew pornography had been found on computers in his parliamentary office. An internal investigation requested by May and conducted by a senior government official said on Wednesday it was not possible to reach a definitive conclusion on Maltby s allegations but said it found them plausible. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph published on Friday, Maltby said she had told an aide in May s Downing Street office about Green s advances in 2016. However May said she had not been aware of the accusations about Green until they became public last month when Maltby wrote about them. I first learnt of these allegations when Kate Maltby wrote about them in the Times, May said in a television interview while visiting a British air base in Cyprus on Friday. I recognize that Kate Maltby was obviously extremely distressed by what had happened. Damian Green has recognised that, he said that in the letter that he wrote to me, and he has apologized. And I think that s absolutely the right thing to do. Green quit after the review said he had made inaccurate statements following reports last month in the Sunday Times newspaper that police had found pornography on his office computers in the Houses of Parliament in 2008. He said he had not downloaded or viewed the pornography, but admitted making misleading statements. Two former police officers who publicly disclosed details about Green s computers are themselves facing investigation over whether they breached data protection laws. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said their actions had the slight feeling of a vendetta . Green was appointed first secretary of state six months ago in a bid to shore up May s premiership following her disastrous June snap election that lost her party its majority in parliament, and is the third cabinet minister to quit in less than two months. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Court ruling allows Syrian youth to bring family to Germany;BERLIN (Reuters) - A Berlin court ruling that permits the parents and siblings of a 16-year-old Syrian migrant to join him in Germany will now take effect after the foreign ministry abruptly dropped an appeal of the decision, German broadcaster ARD reported on Friday. ARD said Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), decided to drop an appeal filed just days ago, allow the ruling to take effect, following intense criticism by top SPD leaders. The ruling was the first to deal with the right of under-age migrants to bring their families to Germany and could set a new precedent, ARD reported. The foreign ministry had no immediate comment on the issue, but Gabriel told the broadcaster: We know that it is bad, of course, when minors are here without their parents. It s a good thing that we now have clarity. The ministry s reversal on the issue comes as Gabriel s party prepares to enter talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives about continuing the grand coalition that has ruled Germany for the past four years. Migration - and the issue of allowing migrants to bring family members to Germany - could be a key topic in the coalition talks, which are due to begin on Jan. 7. Merkel had failed to reach agreement with two smaller parties. The case in question centers on a Syrian youth who arrived in Germany in the summer of 2015 with an older cousin, and was granted only subsidiary protection rather than full asylum. In 2016, the government had decided to suspend family re-unifications for two years for migrants with subsidiary protection , which is granted to people who are not considered as being persecuted individually but in whose home country there is war, torture or other inhumane treatment. The court said that rejecting the family reunification in this case violated child welfare protections guaranteed under the European human rights convention and the U.N. Refugee Convention. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. has disqualified itself from MidEast peace process: Abbas;PARIS (Reuters) - The United States has disqualified itself from the Middle East peace process due to its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday. The United States are no longer an honest mediator in the peace process, we will not accept any plan put forward by the United States, said Abbas, speaking through a translator at a joint news briefing in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron. Abbas also condemned a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to cut off financial aid to countries that voted at the United Nations against the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. On Thursday, more than 120 countries defied Trump and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Macron reiterated on Friday that France remained committed to a two-state solution, namely one in which Israel and Palestine peacefully co-exist side-by-side with one another. Macron added that France would recognize a Palestinian state at the right time , and not under pressure. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan calls on United States to step back from Jerusalem move;ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Friday for the United States to step back from its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital after the United Nations voted against the move despite what he called ugly and unforgivable U.S. threats. More than 120 countries defied President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Despite threats, the U.N. took an honorable stance, Erdogan said at a meeting of his AK Party in Istanbul. The U.S. should turn back from this wrong step. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor. A total of 128 countries backed the resolution, which is non-binding, nine voted against and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote. The U.S. attitude ahead of the U.N. vote will be remembered in the history of democracy as an ugly and unforgivable act, Erdogan said. Trump s warning appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the resolution than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. The White House picked up the phone and called these countries one by one, threatening them blatantly, Erdogan said, without elaborating. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia, Turkey hope Astana peace talks will lead to congress on Syria in Sochi;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday they hoped the current round of Syria peace talks in Astana would lay the groundwork for a Syrian national dialogue congress in Sochi, the Kremlin said. Speaking over the phone, the two leaders also confirmed their readiness to assist the settlement of the Palestine-Israeli conflict on the basis of international law and help implement the right of the people of Palestine to create an independent state , the Kremlin said in a statement. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany calls for reconciliation, respect for constitution in Spain;BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany called for reconciliation and respect for the constitution in Spain after separatists triumphed in Catalan regional elections on Thursday in a result that threatens to prolong political tensions there. We hope that the current division in Catalan society can be overcome and that a common future can be found with all political forces in Spain, government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer told a regular government news conference on Friday. Any government will have to act on the basis of the rule of law and the Spanish constitution, she added. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UK's Johnson to Russia: We can't ignore your election meddling;MOSCOW (Reuters) - British foreign minister Boris Johnson said on Friday that London could not ignore Russia s meddling in elections around the world, its actions in Ukraine, or the persecution of gay people in Chechnya. Johnson was speaking at a news conference in Moscow after holding talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says 48,000 of its troops took part in Syria campaign;MOSCOW (Reuters) - A total of 48,000 of Russian troops have taken part in Moscow s military campaign in Syria, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ugandan army attacks rebel camps in eastern Congo;KAMPALA (Reuters) - The Ugandan army on Friday attacked rebel camps in eastern Congo, an army spokesman said. The attack followed intelligence sharing with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, spokesman Richard Karemire told Reuters. So in a pre-emptive move this afternoon, UPDF conducted attacks, they are of a limited nature on camps in DRC, he said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Contrasting realities in Libya for French minister's visit;TRIPOLI/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A hundred meters from the office of Libyan Prime Minister Fayaz al-Seraj in Tripoli, guards at a detention center for migrants had a message for a visiting French delegation: no minister, no journalists, nobody is allowed in. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian went to Libya on Thursday to revive U.N. talks between rival groups controlling the west and east, with a view to stabilizing a nation in turmoil since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. But the Tripoli leg of the visit showed how difficult it will be to find anyone capable of imposing authority, with a weak U.N.-backed government depending on an array of armed factions, each with its own agenda. After meeting Seraj in his impressive office, Le Drian was meant to visit the nearby detention facility to see conditions for African migrants caught as they try to reach Europe. But after CNN aired a video appearing to show migrants being auctioned off as slaves, Libyan officials are on edge, with guards refusing to let the French visitors through the detention camp s thick steel door. What do you want to call it? said a visibly tetchy man who described himself as the supervisor. It is a detention center. Nobody is allowed. Not the minister and not journalists. Not allowed. French officials played down the incident, saying there had been no time for a visit anyway. But it was symptomatic of how Seraj s government is struggling to make an impact, failing to fix anything from electric power cuts to a collapsing currency. Seraj promised to tackle migrant trafficking, but French officials say that will depend on which armed groups are prepared to help him. While armed factions are vying for control in Tripoli, power in Benghazi is in the hands of one man, General Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have driven out Islamist fighters. It s a lot more ordered here. There s no doubt here that there is just one chief, said a European security contractor in Benghazi. Haftar s self-styled Libyan National Army is made up of different groups, which he struggles at times to control. But the general, who hopes to run for the Libyan presidency next year, sought to impress his French visitor with as much fanfare as possible. Soldiers stood at strategic points, uniforms spotless and boots polished, in contrast to other parts of Libya, where armed groups are more informally dressed in a mixture of uniforms and civilian clothes. Opponents accuse Haftar of Gaddafi-style high-handedness and of trying to revive a police state, something his supporters vehemently deny. He did not leave his office during the French visit, leaving Le Drian to review air, sea and land forces as a military band struggled to play La Marseillaise. Haftar s aides did not allow journalists to film his meeting with le Drian with their phones. I appreciate the frankness of our exchanges, Le Drian said after an hour-long discussion. That s quite natural, Haftar responded loftily. Haftar is attempting to position himself as a presidential candidate, but there is still sporadic fighting in Benghazi despite his having declared victory in July. One diplomat recalled how Haftar was envious of Seraj after he met U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington last month, perhaps sensing a shift in the Libyan balance of power. I don t know how comfortable he (Haftar) is feeling, because I sense that this time the security was much more stringent than when we were last here (in August), said a French official. He may be feeling some pressure. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘MORNING JOE’ PANEL Says Nikki Haley “Embarrassed” the U.S. at the UN…Embarrassed? We Think NOT! [Video]; It s really interesting to hear this panel go ballistic over Nikki Haley finally standing up for America.MSNBC s Morning Joe panel on Friday lashed out at U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley for her speech before the U.N. General Assembly the prior day in which she criticized countries that supported a resolution condemning President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital.Haley castigated the U.N. on Thursday after the international body backed a non-binding resolution to reject the U.S. decision on Jerusalem. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly, she said, threatening to cut off funding to the U.N. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world s largest contribution to the U.N. and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit. The Morning Joe panel took issue with Haley s remarks We think she stood strong and put these freeloading nations on notice. We say BRAVO! Read more: WFB;Government News;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. Security Council imposes new sanctions on North Korea over missile test;UNITED NATIONS/SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, seeking to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. The U.N. resolution seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and, in a last-minute change, demands the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 24 months, instead of 12 months as first proposed. The U.S.-drafted resolution also caps crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year and commits the Council to further reductions if it were to conduct another nuclear test or launch another ICBM. North Korea on Nov. 29 said it successfully tested a new ICBM that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Tension has been rising over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House. In November, North Korea demanded a halt to what it called brutal sanctions , saying a round imposed after its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 constituted genocide. U.S. diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplomatic solution but proposed the new, tougher sanctions resolution to ratchet up pressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishments and isolation, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said after the 15-0 vote. The North Korean mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wu Haitao, China s deputy U.N. ambassador, said tensions on the Korean peninsula risk spiraling out of control and he repeated Beijing s call for talks. China s foreign ministry said it hoped all parties would implement the resolution and urged all sides to exercise restraint. It also reiterated a call for what it calls a dual suspension proposal for the United States and South Korea to stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programs. South Korea welcomed the sanctions and called on the North to immediately cease reckless provocations, and take the path of dialogue for denuclearization . North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan, and says its weapons are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. On Friday, North Korea called U.S. President Donald Trump s recently released national security strategy the latest attempt to stifle our country and turn the entire Korean peninsula into an outpost of American hegemony. Speaking before the Security Council vote, analysts said the new sanctions could have a major effect on the North s economy. The cap on oil would be devastating for North Korea s haulage industry, for North Koreans who use generators at home or for productive activities, and for (state-owned enterprises) that do the same, said Peter Ward, a columnist for NK News, a website that tracks North Korea. The forced repatriation of its overseas workers would also cut off vital sources of foreign currency, he said. China, which supplies most of North Korea s oil, has backed successive rounds of U.N. sanctions but had resisted past U.S. calls to cut off fuel supplies to its neighbor. John Park, director of the Korea Working Group at the Harvard Kennedy School, said it was important to manage expectations about sanctions, which could take years to have a full impact while the North was making progress in its weapons programs at a pace measured in weeks and months. If the game plan is to use sanctions as the last non-military policy tool to induce North Korea s return to the denuclearization table, we may quickly find Washington prioritizing military options, Park said. The move to curb Chinese fuel exports to North Korea may have limited impact after China National Petroleum Corp CNPET.UL suspended diesel and gasoline sales to its northern neighbor in June over concerns it would not get paid. Business has slowed since then, with zero shipments of diesel, gasoline and other fuel from China in October. Russia quietly boosted economic support for North Korea this year, and last week Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Moscow was not ready to sign up to sanctions that would strangle the country economically. In a bid to further choke North Korea s external sources of funding, the resolution also seeks to ban North Korean exports of food products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stone, wood and vessels. It also bans exports to North Korea of industrial equipment, machinery, transport vehicles, and industrial metals as well as subjecting 15 North Koreans and the Ministry of the People s Armed Forces to a global asset freeze and travel ban. The resolution seeks to allow countries to seize, inspect and freeze any vessel they believe was carrying banned cargo or involved in prohibited activities. Even if the sanctions have an economic effect, it is not clear whether that would push Pyongyang to negotiate or stop its weapons development, said Kim Sung-han, a former South Korean vice foreign minister. We have had numerous ... sanctions against North Korea over the past 25 years, he said. Almost none have worked effectively to halt the regime s military and nuclear ambitions. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. backs re-election of Honduran president despite vote controversy;WASHINGTON/TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The United States on Friday backed the re-election of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez despite widespread misgivings about the vote count, prompting the opposition candidate to describe his bid for the presidency as a lost cause. The Honduran electoral tribunal declared Hernandez winner of the Nov. 26 election last weekend amid strident opposition protests over the vote count in the impoverished Central American country, which is a major hub for drug trafficking. The vote tally had initially clearly favored opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, a center-leftist, but it swung in favor of the incumbent after a 36-hour delay. After the United States weighed in, Nasralla was pessimistic about his chances of winning support in Honduras, claiming in an interview with Reuters that the nation s supreme court and electoral tribunal are in Hernandez s camp. But he maintained that he had a path to victory at the international level, noting the Organization of American States (OAS) had called for new elections to resolve the dispute. Nationally, we think it s a lost cause, he told Reuters. But internationally, we are confident that the OAS, which understands the great fraud in Honduras, will take action so that they repeat the elections. Earlier in the day, Nasralla appeared all but ready to bow out of the race, saying in an interview with TV network France TV that his political career was over. The situation is practically decided, he told the network. I no longer have anything to do in politics, but the people, which are 80 percent in my favor, will continue the fight. The United States followed Mexico and other Latin American countries in supporting Hernandez, who has been a reliable U.S. ally. The U.S. State Department congratulated Hernandez and said Honduras should pursue a long-term effort to heal the political divide in the country and enact much-needed electoral reforms, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. The Honduras election tribunal s declaration in Hernandez s favor last week sparked violent protests in Honduras, and the OAS s call for new elections has been rejected by the Honduran government. Nasralla had been backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was ousted in a 2009 coup after he proposed a referendum on his re-election, which was barred by the constitution at the time. But Zelaya said Friday that Nasralla was no longer a member of his alliance. Nasralla said that he had no need for party membership anymore. I am the president elect of all Hondurans, he said. It no longer makes sense to belong to the Alliance. The streets of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and other major cities were largely calm on Friday with a few protests cleared by the armed forces. By mid-week some 27 people had died in clashes, according to local human rights group COFADEH. The State Department called for all sides to refrain from violence, for those who wish to challenge the result to use legal means, and for the government to ensure that security services respect the rights of peaceful protesters. It also called for the electoral tribunal to transparently and fully review any challenges filed by political parties. Hernandez has led a military crackdown against gangs in the Central American country, and Honduras notoriously high murder rate has slid since he took power in 2014. Nasralla, a television host, traveled to Washington this week to urge the United States not to recognize the vote, but a senior State Department official said on Wednesday the government had not seen any evidence that would alter the vote s outcome. Nasralla said the U.S. decision reflected Washington s strategic concerns over a leftist government in Honduras. They re afraid of losing Honduras, he told local television. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CBS HIT JOB On New Tax Bill Backfires When Accountant Meets With Middle Class Taxpayers…Winning! [Video];For weeks and weeks we ve heard the propaganda and DNC talking points about how President Trump was going to trick Americans with the tax cuts. Well, CBS News just lost one of their false narratives today.Despite their earnest efforts, they were forced to broadcast financial results from three families they used as representative examples of the Trump tax plan.The weeks-long media spin ran into the wall of reality: We asked an accountant to crunch the numbers for three working families to see how much they could be saving. Tony Dokoupil reports. It s safe to say that all three families were surprised at their savings. They were like so many other Americans who bought into the gloom and doom narrative with tax reform.HERE S ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW BRAINWASHED PEOPLE ARE AGAINST TRUMP S TAX PLAN:Liberal college students don t care much for Donald Trump s new tax plan unless of course they re told that Bernie Sanders came up with it They can t help it They ve been taught Trump=bad Bernie=good so they know nothing else Maybe this will teach them to think for themselves Ya think?President Donald Trump s proposal for comprehensive tax reform was almost immediately dismissed as heartless and impractical by his political opponents.But what would some of those opponents think if they were told the same plan was being proposed by someone they adore Senator Bernie Sanders?To find out, we headed to George Washington University to ask students their opinions on Trump s new tax plan. WIthout much explanation, the students immediately made clear their distaste for the plan. It s not the most efficient, nor beneficial to the general populus, said one student when asked her opinion of Trump s plan. It s better for the upper class than anyone else, added another.After watching student after student express their disapproval of the plan, we then asked those same students what they thought of Senator Bernie Sanders new tax plan.Immediately, they expressed excitement and support after hearing the details of the plan.The only problem for them? There was no tax plan for Senator Sanders. The plan they loved was actually President Trump s.Read more: Campus Reform;Government News;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan rebels say army attacked them after signing ceasefire;JUBA (Reuters) - A South Sudanese rebel group on Friday accused government troops of attacking their base only a day after the parties signed a ceasefire in a four-year war that has killed tens of thousands of people. The ceasefire, that would allow humanitarian groups access to civilians caught in the fighting, formally comes into force on Sunday morning. On Friday afternoon, a spokesman for the SPLA-IO rebel group said army forces had attacked a rebel base in Deim Jalab, in the western part of the country. Lam Paul Gabriel said two rebels and five government troops were killed in the fighting. The army spokesman in the capital, Juba, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The war that began in late 2013 in the world s youngest nation has forced a third of the population to flee their homes. The United Nations describes the violence as ethnic cleansing. Earlier this year, pockets of the country plunged briefly into famine. The latest round of talks in the Ethiopian capital, convened by the East African bloc IGAD, brought the warring sides back to the negotiating table after a 2015 peace deal collapsed last year during heavy fighting in Juba. After the new agreement was signed on Thursday, South Sudan s Information Minister Michael Makuei Leuth told journalists: The cessation of hostilities will be effective 72 hours from now. As of now, we will send messages to all the commands in the field to abide by this cessation of hostilities. From now onwards, there will be no more fighting, he added. Just talks. The German foreign ministry welcomed the agreement as an important step toward bringing peace to South Sudan. We call on all participating parties to implement the agreement in a comprehensive and sustainable manner, and to ensure that humanitarian organizations are not hindered in doing their work, a ministry spokeswoman said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Arab states believe U.S. aid secure despite defying Trump Jerusalem move;AMMAN/CAIRO (Reuters) - Leading Arab allies threatened with cuts in aid by Donald Trump said on Friday they had no choice but to defy the U.S. president over his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, and did not believe he would follow through. More than 120 countries, including every Arab nation, voted at the U.N. General Assembly late on Thursday to urge the United States to withdraw its decision, announced earlier this month. Trump threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor of the U.N. resolution, drafted by Egypt and supported by all members of the U.N. Security Council except Washington. He repeated his threat on Friday, writing on Twitter: After having foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is time to start rebuilding our country! In Egypt and Jordan, among the top recipients of U.S. aid but long the most heavily invested in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Trump s threats were not taken seriously enough to backtrack on firm opposition to the U.S. move. The Americans know more than any one else that a stable Jordan is crucial for U.S. interests in the region, a government minister who asked not to be named said. For its cooperation in defense and other fields, Jordan receives some $1.2 billion annually from Washington. We do not expect the American administration to touch assistance but if it does this will only add to Jordan s economic woes, the minister said. Former Jordanian prime minister Taher al-Masri said Jordan s role as an ally in a volatile region where unrest has led to attacks on U.S. soil would likely keep the aid safe. Trump is not giving us aid as charity. Jordan performs a regional role in stability that we have not gone back on delivering, he said. In a sign of concern over Trump s unpredictability, some Jordanian officials privately expressed worry, however. Masri said the U.N. resolution would have received many more votes from member states had Trump not made his threat. For Arab and Muslim states, anything less than total rejection of Trump s Jerusalem decision would have been impossible, he said. Nations around the world have criticized the move as damaging chances to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected any further U.S. role in the peace process. As home to major Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, Jerusalem s status has long been fought over in rounds of failed negotiations, and ignited deadly conflict between Israeli and the Palestinians. Jordan s monarchy is custodian of Jerusalem s holy shrines, making Amman sensitive to any changes of status of the disputed city. Egypt, which led regional efforts to reject Trump s decision as having a negative impact on security in the region, has been a key broker of past peace deals. Egypt s foreign ministry and presidency could not be reached for comment after several attempts following the General Assembly vote. H.A. Hellyer, an Egypt expert at the Atlantic Council, said Egypt likely felt secure over its $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid despite Trump s threats. I don t think Egypt will be worried ... certainly Trump s inner circle will not be too impressed - but I doubt that it will extend beyond that, he said. Egypt is an important military partner for the United States and is fighting its own Islamist insurgency in part of the vast Sinai Peninsula. Arab countries are unanimous in their rejection of Trump s Jerusalem move. Key allies such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq reiterated their stance at the General Assembly vote. Iraq s foreign ministry described the result as a triumph for international law . Saudi Arabia s delegation said their vote on the Palestinian cause reflected a policy priority since the time of the founder (of Saudi Arabia), King Abdul Aziz. It is unclear if U.N. votes and strong rhetoric alone will force Washington to reverse course, however. Israel, the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East, has heaped praise on Trump. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed his decision, which reversed decades of U.S. policy, as a historic landmark . Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all embassies based there. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Young Catalan liberal rises in challenge to Rajoy's grip on Spanish power;MADRID (Reuters) - Forget the traditional Socialist opposition and perhaps even the Catalan separatists: the main threat to Spain s conservative prime minister may now come from a Barcelona politician dedicated to national unity - Ines Arrimadas. The 36-year-old leader of the liberal Ciudadanos party in Catalonia has jumped to the frontline of Spanish politics by coming out on top in elections to the region s assembly. Supporters even compare her performance with Emmanuel Macron s meteoric rise to the presidency across the border in France. Laying down the gauntlet to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the separatists alike, Arrimadas boosted her party s share of the vote to more than 25 percent in Thursday s snap election, up from just 7.6 percent two years ago. That made Ciudadanos ( Citizens ) the biggest group in the assembly, ahead of parties backing either more Catalan autonomy or outright independence which had won every regional election since the restoration of Spanish democracy in the 1970s. Arrimadas will struggle to form a regional coalition as collectively separatist parties achieved a narrow majority. Still, she celebrated victory with hundreds of supporters in the streets of Barcelona on Thursday night, flanked by her party s national leader, 38-year-old Albert Rivera. On Friday she made an appeal for unity following October s independence referendum which led to the Catalan leader fleeing the country, other separatists leaders landing in jail and Madrid imposing direct rule. Yesterday was a great night, a historic night and for me the start of reconciliation in Catalonia, even if sometimes things take a little longer than what we would expect, she told Onda Cero radio. Her performance echoed similarly strong showings from centrists in French presidential and legislative elections earlier this year, raising the hopes of Ciudadanos. This result is fully transferable to national politics, said Toni Roldan, a lawmaker for the party in the Spanish parliament who is also from Catalonia. It takes Ciudadanos to the next level and we will be competing on equal footing with Rajoy in the next Spanish election. Describing Arrimadas as a political jewel , Roldan said the choice for all Europeans was now between liberalism and populism. In this struggle, Ciudadanos stood alongside Macron - who beat far right candidate Marine Le Pen to the presidency - and was now ready to blow apart the traditional left-right divide in Spain, Roldan added. Ciudadanos, which has its roots in Catalonia, will need strong momentum if it is to threaten Rajoy s grip on power as the party came only fourth in last year s national election with 13.9 percent. An opinion poll taken before the Catalan vote put it still in fourth. However, alone among the major parties, its support was up to 17.5 percent, suggesting voters are being won over by its tough stance on Spanish unity and against corruption, as well as its young professional leaders. A veteran politician who has survived past crises, Rajoy leads a minority government and has yet to get a 2018 budget through parliament. However, he is under no immediate pressure as he can simply roll over the 2017 budget for months. Also, the opposition is so fractured that it probably cannot bring Rajoy down and no serious leadership rival has emerged within his traditional center-right Popular Party (PP). If the secessionists pursue their aims by negotiation, they too are unlikely to pose a great threat to Rajoy, who could also re-impose direct rule in the region if they decided to act unilaterally. Arrimadas was born in the Andalusian town of Jerez, far from Barcelona where she moved after completing a law degree. Her husband was a lawmaker for separatist leader Carles Puigdemont s party, before resigning in 2016 to avoid complicating her political rise. Both have said their passion for Barcelona football team brought them together. She was first elected as a Ciudadanos lawmaker in 2012 at 31, two years after a colleague at the consultancy where she worked in Barcelona had invited her to a party rally. The political and social situation was so serious that I felt the need to stop complaining from the sofa and go on to propose ideas and debate from parliament, she told an interviewer in 2015. Since then, her party has made a successful move into national politics, backing Rajoy s minority government although not joining it. Ciudadanos is creating the next big headache for Rajoy. They can extract concessions from the PP without any political cost. And if Rajoy fails to pass the budget because of the Catalan issue, he won t be able to blame Ciudadanos for the stalemate and a potential snap election, said Teneo Intelligence analyst Antonio Barroso. Barroso and other analysts said the moment of truth may come in the second half of 2018, should Rajoy have failed to normalize the situation in Catalonia. Rivals express grudging admiration for the party. Ciudadanos has managed to bring together all unionism in a technically perfect campaign, a source close to Puigdemont said on condition of anonymity. It is an artificial product that represents the feelings of many people. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spain's Rajoy rules out national election after Catalonia upset;MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Friday ruled out calling a national election after Catalan separatists won a regional vote, thwarting his bid to resolve the country s biggest political crisis in decades. Rajoy had gambled on unionist parties taking control of Catalonia s regional government, which he sacked in October for illegally pursuing independence from Spain. Rajoy, speaking at a news conference, said he would make an effort to hold talks with the new Catalan government. However, he did not clarify whether he would be willing to meet deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, who is in self-imposed exile in Brussels and whose party retained its position as the largest separatist force. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump signs tax, government spending bills into law;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed Republicans’ massive $1.5 trillion tax overhaul into law on Friday, cementing the biggest legislative victory of his first year in office, and also approved a short-term spending bill that averts a possible government shutdown. Trump said he wanted to sign the tax bill before leaving Washington on Friday for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, rather than stage a more formal ceremony in January, so he could keep his promise to finish work before Christmas. “I didn’t want you folks to say I wasn’t keeping my promise. I’m keeping my promise,” he told reporters in the White House. The two pieces of legislation represent Trump’s most significant accomplishment with Congress since taking office in January, as well as a sign of what awaits when he returns from Florida after the Christmas holiday. The tax package, the largest such overhaul since the 1980s, slashes the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and temporarily reduces the tax burden for most individuals as well. Trump praised several companies that have announced employee bonuses in the wake of the bill’s passage, naming AT&T, Boeing, Wells Fargo, Comcast and Sinclair Broadcast Group. “Corporations are literally going wild over this,” he said. Democrats had opposed the bill as a giveaway to the wealthy that would add $1.5 trillion to the $20 trillion national debt during the next decade. The spending bill extends federal funding through Jan. 19, largely at current levels. It does nothing to resolve broader disputes over immigration, healthcare and military spending. Republicans also are divided over whether to follow up their sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code with a dramatic restructuring of federal benefit programs. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he would like to revamp welfare and health programs but Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told National Public Radio on Monday that he was not interested in cutting those programs without Democratic support. Trump’s year also closes with significant turnover of many top staffers who had been in the White House since early in his term. On Friday, the White House confirmed Deputy Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn and Jeremy Katz, who worked under White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, were leaving. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitaries deploy to Syrian border;BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi ite paramilitary groups have deployed to the frontier to back up border guard forces who came under fire from within Syria over the past three days, one of their commanders said on Friday. There was no immediate word on who opened fire from Syrian territory, but forces arrayed against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria expect the group will resort to guerrilla warfare after losing its urban bastions earlier this year. After several Iraqi border guard positions came under several attacks by missiles, and backup from security forces was late, the 13th brigade of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) was deployed and targeted the origins of the launch, PMF commander for west Anbar, Qassem Mesleh, said in a statement. Operations command and the infantry brigade are now present on the Iraqi-Syrian border in border guard positions to repel any attack or movement by the enemy, Mesleh said. This area is not within the PMF s remit but it is our duty to back up all security forces. The PMF is an umbrella grouping of mostly Iran-backed and trained Shi ite militias that formally report to Iraq s prime minister but are separate from the military and police. Sunni Muslims and Kurds have called on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to disarm the PMF, which they say are responsible for widespread abuses against their communities. An Iraqi military spokesman confirmed the deployment. Brigadier General Yahya Rasool told Reuters it was temporary, however, and very normal because it was the PMF s duty to back up government forces. The PMF were officially made part of the Iraqi security establishment by law and formally answer to Abadi in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Abadi has said the state should have a monopoly on the legitimate use of arms. Iraqi forces on Dec. 9 recaptured the last swathes of territory still under Islamic State control along the frontier with Syria and secured the western desert. It marked the end of the war against the militants, three years after they overran about a third of Iraq s territory. Rasool, the military spokesman, denied backup to the border guards had been late. The primary responsibility for the borders lies with the border guards and the army, however, said Rasool. He said Iraqi forces coordinate with both the Syrian army, which is backed by Russia, Iran and Iran-backed Shi ite militias, and the U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He said parts of Syria - including many areas on the border with Iraq - were still under Islamic State control. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Taking back control: UK's classic blue-and-gold passport to return;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday hailed the return of Britain s classic blue passport as a benefit of leaving the EU, pleasing Brexit campaigners for whom it is a symbol of national sovereignty but attracting derision from many remainers. The government said a version of the old passport, issued to Britons from 1920 to 1988, when it was replaced by the burgundy jacket of the European Union, will be reintroduced after the country leaves the bloc in March 2019. The UK passport is an expression of our independence and sovereignty - symbolizing our citizenship of a proud, great nation, May said on Twitter. That s why we have announced that the iconic blue passport will return after we leave the European Union in 2019. During often bitter campaigning for the June 2016 referendum on whether to leave the EU, which Britain joined in 1973, some Brexit supporters seized on the color of the passport as a symbol of the country s lost independence. Opponents meanwhile mocked their attachment to something superficial while arguing that Brexit would diminish Britain s real standing in the world. Former United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, a leading supporter of Brexit, responded to Friday s news by tweeting: Happy Brexmas! A return to British passports means we are becoming a proper country again, he wrote. We are getting our individuality and national identity back. But Anna Soubry, a lawmaker from May s Conservative party who opposes Brexit, tweeted: Stand by for street parties as blue passports return. Not sure they ll make up for broken #Leave promise of extra 350m a week for (British public health service) NHS. A Brexit campaign slogan suggesting that Britain s financial contributions to the EU could be diverted to the National Health Service has been credited with swinging voters toward Leave . The new document, which will be issued from October 2019, will come with enhanced security features, immigration minister Brandon Lewis said, and will be introduced as old passports expire and at no extra cost to the taxpayer. Speaking to the BBC, Lewis said even people who voted remain still had an attachment to the dark blue passport. Responses to May s tweet were overwhelmingly negative, however, with many Twitter users pointing out that Britain could have kept the old color under EU rules. Others bemoaned the fact that Britons would lose the right to live and work in 27 other EU countries as a result of Brexit. Wow this passport s fancy. Must have some kickass features, read one tweet accompanied by a picture of a smiling family collecting their new passports. How many countries do you have the right to work in on this bad boy? One Huh. Still, blue though... ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran justice ministry says no decision yet on British-Iranian aid worker;LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Iran s justice ministry was quoted on Friday as saying Tehran would decide the fate of a detained British-Iranian aid worker sentenced to five years in jail and that he could not confirm Western media reports relating to her case. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she was heading back to Britain with her two-year-old daughter after a family visit. She was convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran s clerical establishment, a charge denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. Zaghari-Ratcliffe s husband Richard Ratcliffe told the Guardian newspaper and other British media on Thursday that her lawyer had said that her case had been marked as being eligible for early release. Iran s judiciary cannot confirm any of the claims in Western media about this case, Iran s semi-official Tasnim news agency on Friday quoted Gholamhossein Esmaili, the head of the justice department in Tehran province, as saying. When a decision is made, it will be announced by the Islamic Republic s judiciary or through diplomatic channels. British foreign minister Boris Johnson traveled to Iran this month to lobby for her release. Esmaili was also quoted by Tasnim as saying that a second case had been brought against Zaghari-Ratcliffe - the first such acknowledgement from a justice ministry official. Her family said in October that the second case carried charges that could bring mean another 16 years in prison, including joining and receiving money from organizations working to overthrow the Islamic Republic and attending a demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy in London. Besides serving her current sentence, she has also another ongoing case against her in court... We do not know if she would be found guilty or not, Esmaili was quoted as saying. Tasnim said Esmaili also dismissed reports of a swap deal, but did not make clear which reports he was referring to. The release of dual national prisoners in Iran in recent years has been mainly done through prisoner swaps. Iran refuses to recognize dual nationals and denies them access to consular assistance. It has arrested at least 30 dual nationals during the past two years, mostly on spying charges. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Danish police charge Syrian man with attempted terrorism;COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish Police have charged a 30-year-old Syrian man, an asylum-seeker to Sweden, with attempting to commit a terrorist act in Copenhagen in November 2016, according to a police statement. The man, whose name media are prohibited from mentioning, was arrested on Thursday in an operation involving the Danish intelligence service, police said. The court found there was reasonable suspicion the man had planned to commit a terrorism attack at an unknown place in Copenhagen in November 2016 together with a man who was convicted in Germany in July of planning an attack in Copenhagen. The two men had aimed at killing or wounding several random people by attacking them with knives and afterwards detonate one or several explosive charges, the police said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Don't scrap war crimes court, U.S. warns Kosovo;PRISTINA (Reuters) - Any move by Kosovo to scrap a war crimes court linked to its independence struggle would seriously undermine relations with friendly western nations, its main backer the United States said on Friday. Lawmakers from the governing coalition, who hold a majority, are pressing for a vote to abolish the court. The vote was scheduled for later in the day but it failed twice due to opposition from other parties. Parliament speaker Kadri Veseli said parliament would continue to attempt to vote on the issue in the coming days. Isa Mustafa, Kosovo s former prime minister and an opposition leader, said the proposal was devastating for our state and very damaging for justice . The Specialist Chamber was established in The Hague in 2015 to bring to justice Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas alleged to have committed atrocities during the 1998-99 war that led to the country s secession from Serbia. It has yet to hear any cases. Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, President Hashim Thaci and parliamentary speaker Veseli are former KLA commanders. The court s judges and prosecutors are foreign but it has been set up under Kosovan law, giving Pristina jurisdiction over it. Calling for the parliamentary vote to be halted, U.S. ambassador Greg Delawie said it would have extraordinarily negative implications for Kosovo. It is just a disgrace, he told reporters in Pristina. This will be considered by the U.S. as stab in the back. Kosovo will be choosing isolation instead of cooperation. There was no immediate response from Kosovo officials to Delawie s comments. Washington has been Kosovo s leading political and financial backer since it declared independence in 2008. Nataliya Apostolova, the EU representative in Pristina, called the attempt to scrap the court appalling and extremely damaging . The court was set up following U.S. and European pressure on the government to confront alleged KLA crimes against ethnic Serbs. According to Kosovo media, the court could indict or call as witnesses some of current government officials. It was set up in the Netherlands to minimize the risk of witness intimidation and judicial corruption. Kosovo s war veterans association last week launched an initiative to hold a parliamentary debate to abolish the law that established the court. They gathered 15,000 signatures, Kosovo media reported. NATO air strikes on Serbia forced Belgrade to withdraw its troops from Kosovo in 1999, having killed around 10,000 Albanian civilians. NATO has around 5,000 troops stationed in Kosovo to keep a still fragile peace. Kosovo, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian and 5 percent Serbian, is recognized by more than 110 mainly by western countries but not by Serbia s key ally Russia or China. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine president submits anti-corruption court law to parliament;KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has submitted a new draft law to parliament for the creation of an anti-corruption court, the parliamentary website showed late on Friday. Slow progress establishing an independent court to deal with corruption cases has been one of the main obstacles to the disbursement of loans under a $17.5 billion aid-for-reforms program from the International Monetary Fund. A committee will now need to review and approve the bill, before it can be voted on by parliament, the next session of which is in January. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. appoints American to lead Children's Fund;UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations announced on Friday the appointment of Henrietta Fore, an economic development advocate and former U.S. State Department official, as executive director of its Children s Fund, effective Jan. 1. Fore, 69, who currently is the chief executive officer of manufacturing and investment company Holsman International, will succeed Anthony Lake, U.N. Secretary-General Ant nio Guterres said in a statement. UNICEF provides humanitarian and development assistance to children and mothers in over 190 developing nations and territories, focused primarily on saving children s lives and defending their rights. Fore was administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2006 to 2009, the first woman to lead the agency. She also served as undersecretary for management at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration and as director of the U.S. Mint. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ukraine's Poroshenko vows to work for quick exchange of prisoners: Germany;BERLIN (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday that he would work to implement a rapid exchange of prisoners held on both sides of the line of conflict in eastern Ukraine, a spokesman for Merkel said on Friday. Merkel spoke by telephone with Poroshenko on Friday, a day after she spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Merkel s deputy spokesman Georg Streiter. Merkel and Poroshenko welcomed a decision by the parties to recommit to a ceasefire agreement signed in 2015 ahead of the Christmas holiday, and both agreed it should lead to a longer-term improvement of the security situation in the region. A Russian-backed separatist insurgency erupted in 2014 and bloodshed has continued despite the ceasefire. More than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis. Poroshenko and Merkel underscored the importance of an agreement by the parties to exchange prisoners, calling it an important step toward implementation of the Minsk agreements, Streiter said. President Poroshenko stressed that he would push to ensure that this exchange happened as soon as possible, he added. The two leaders also discussed the withdrawal of Russian officers from the Joint Center for Control and Coordination that plays an important role in supporting the observer mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They agreed that the Russian officers should return to the center quickly, and said German and French experts could get involved in a mediating role in coming days. Merkel also welcomed Poroshenko s plan to submit a draft law to set up an independent anti-corruption court, the spokesman said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Spain's crisis re-ignited as Catalan separatists win vote;BARCELONA/MADRID (Reuters) - Separatists looked set on Friday to regain power in Catalonia after voters rejected Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s attempt to neuter its independence movement, instead re-igniting the country s biggest political crisis in decades. Spanish markets recoiled at a surprise result that is also a setback for the European Union, which must now brace for more secessionist noise as it grapples with the disruption of Brexit and simmering east European discontent. By risking a parliamentary election in the region, Rajoy appears to have made the same mistake that leaders including Greece s Alexis Tsipras, Britain s David Cameron and Italy s Matteo Renzi have made in recent years: betting that voters would resolve their troublesome domestic conundrums for them. For an interactive graphics package, click tmsnrt.rs/2AGBazV With well over 99 percent of votes from Thursday s election counted, separatist parties had secured a slim majority. Spain s stock market fell around 1 percent and the country s borrowing costs rose as investors bet the ensuing ramp-up in tensions with its richest region will hurt the euro zone s fourth-largest economy. Rajoy ruled out calling national elections over events that have weakened his authority, while both he and exiled separatist leader Carles Puigdemont said they were open for dialogue. But they offered no details and such calls in the past have failed to yield any solution. After several strained months that saw secessionists organize an illegal referendum on Oct. 1, and police confiscate urns to try to prevent it from taking place, the election result has done nothing to resolve the standoff either. The secessionists kept a majority, but it was reduced and they may have difficulty forming a government;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uzbek leader says he will curb power of state security service;TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev said on Friday he would reform the Central Asian nation s state security service, adding that its power had become excessive under his predecessor Islam Karimov. The National Security Service (NSS), the local successor to the Soviet KGB, wielded sweeping powers under Karimov who died in September 2016 after a quarter century-long rule criticized for systematic abuses of human rights. Rustam Inoyatov, NSS chairman since 1995, is the only Karimov-era senior security official still in his post, one year into Mirziyoyev s presidency. Speaking to parliament on Friday, Mirziyoyev accused security bodies of rights abuses and called for deep reforms. To strengthen national statehood, sovereignty, peace and stability of the people ... it is time to reform the work of the National Security Service, he said, asking MPs to draft new legislation on law enforcement agencies. At the moment, the National Security Service bases its work on a statute passed by the government 26 years ago. The fact that this statute has remained untouched for a quarter of a century and that every problem was regarded as a threat to national security has led to a groundless expansion of this agency s powers. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Uzbek president says economic data was 'fiction' for years;TASHKENT (Reuters) - President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said on Friday Uzbekistan had reported inflated economic growth and employment figures for years, describing the amplified numbers as fiction , and promised more reforms in the Central Asian nation. The former Soviet republic has reported gross domestic product growth of about eight to 10 percent for a decade, although foreign economists have often questioned the quality and veracity of its data. Speaking to parliament, Mirziyoyev, elected president a year ago after the death of veteran leader Islam Karimov, said those figures were not real. Eight percent (GDP growth) was fiction, he said, adding that this year s growth was seen at 5.5 percent. To be frank, I ordered the 5.5 percent figure to be checked almost 10 times. Employment figures were also greatly inflated, he said. In 2017 we have created 336,000 new jobs and this is a real figure, he said. Before, we used to report creating nearly a million jobs annually. No country in the world can do it! Mirziyoyev, who had served as prime minister since 2003, blamed the misleading reports on former government economists without naming them. Mirziyoyev has reshuffled the government during his first year in power and implemented some reforms such as the liberalization of the previously draconic foreign exchange regulations which had scared off foreign investors. On Friday, he vowed to continue reforms and said Uzbekistan would resume talks on joining the World Trade Organisation next year. Mirziyoyev also said the resource-rich nation of 32 million badly needed to upgrade its ageing infrastructure. In 2017 we have produced 56.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas, he said. But because the sector had not been modernized for many years we have great losses, up to 20-23 percent, during production and shipping. Mirziyoyev said Uzbekistan would boost gas output to 66 bcm next year. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico prison population drops as police, prosecutors bungle cases;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico s prison population has fallen by a fifth from the peak in 2014 as fewer people are locked up under a new criminal justice system, with experts saying that cases are falling apart under a higher bar for police conduct and standards of evidence. The number of people imprisoned has dropped 19.8 percent from a record of 258,563 in September 2014, according to the statistics from the National Security Commission (CNS), meaning for the first time in more than 20 years there are technically more beds than inmates. The drop in the prison population has coincided with a spike in murders to record levels. Politicians have linked rising crime to the U.S.-backed 2008 reform, introduced to modernize Mexico s opaque and slow justice system. It was adopted by many states by 2014 and was fully in force from mid-2016. Data shows fewer people have been entering prison. Even justice experts who support the reform say police and prosecutors are struggling to make watertight cases due to a lack of training in the new system across the country. They had eight years to make the transformation and they didn t do it, said Maria Novoa, a criminal justice expert at think tank Mexico Evalua. We don t have either the institutions or trained people. Novoa said police are not detaining people because they fear they could make mistakes and be held liable. She also said prosecutors are overusing a rule that allows suspects to face the criminal process at liberty rather than trying to ask a judge to detain them. In 2016, 37 percent fewer people entered state prisons than in the prior year, according to the latest data from national statistics institute INEGI. And contrary to political rhetoric, fewer were also let out, the data shows. Neither Mexico s attorney general s office nor the Federal Police returned a request for comment. The 2008 reform moved Mexico to an adversarial justice system with oral trials from an inquisitive one mostly done on paper, with a deadline of June 2016. It radically changed the role of the police and prosecutors, by giving police greater responsibility and raising the evidentiary standard that prosecutors must reach to get a conviction. It also limits pre-trial detention, bringing an end to a practice where people were locked up for years without trial. In 2017, for the first time in more than 20 years, the country has enough space for all prisoners. But their uneven distribution across the country and a number of federal inmates in state facilities mean prisons in at least 13 states still have overcrowded facilities. Think tank CIDAC estimated last year that the reform would take 11 years to take hold properly, due to lack of police training in high quality investigations. We always knew that for the new system to work people would have to be trained, but there was a lot of resistance and lack of interest from state governments, said Vicente Sanchez, a professor at the College of the Northern Border. Now governors and prosecutors blame the new system and want to undo it. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnamese court upholds jail term for prominent activist: lawyer;HANOI (Reuters) - A court in Vietnam on Friday upheld a nine-year jail sentence for a prominent activist convicted of spreading propaganda against the state, her lawyer said. Blogger Tran Thi Nga, 40, was initially found guilty at a trial in July, six months after she was arrested in a widening crackdown on critics of the Communist government. Despite sweeping economic reform and increasing openness towards social change, the ruling party retains tight media censorship and does not tolerate criticism. Nga s sentence of nine years in prison and five years probation was upheld by a court in the central city of Nha Trang, one of her lawyers said. Nga said she was innocent and was not guilty of propaganda against the state, lawyer Ha Huy Son told Reuters by telephone. Court officials were not immediately available for comment. Nga s family did not have access to the hearing. The U.S. embassy said it was deeply troubled by the court s decision and that everyone in Vietnam should be able to express their political views without fear. The United States calls on Vietnam to release Tran Thi Nga and all other prisoners of conscience immediately, U.S. Embassy spokesman Pope Thrower said. In November, a Vietnamese court upheld a 10-year jail sentence for another prominent blogger, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, known as Me Nam , or Mother Mushroom, who was jailed for publishing propaganda against the state. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.N. evacuates refugees to Italy from Libya for first time;PRATICA DI MARE, Italy (Reuters) - The United Nations began bringing African refugees to Italy from Libya on Friday, evacuating them from detention centers whose conditions have been condemned by humanitarian groups as inhumane. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled conflict or poverty at home and are now trapped in Libya, where they had hoped to pay people smugglers for passage to Europe via Italy. It is the first time the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Libya has evacuated refugees directly to Europe. An Italian C-130 military plane landed at an airport south the capital carrying 110 women and children, and a second flight is expected to bring more than 50 people later in the day. The African migrants, including many small children, were covered in blankets or bundled in coats as they disembarked from the plane on a chilly evening. We really hope other countries will follow the same path, Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR s Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean, said in a statement after the first plane arrived. Some of those evacuated suffered tremendously and were held captive in inhumane conditions while in Libya. Five of these women gave birth while in detention, with only the very limited medical assistance, Cochetel said. The UNHCR estimates about 18,000 people are being held in detention centers for immigrants that are controlled by the Tripoli government and it aims to evacuate as many as 10,000 next year. [nL8N1OJ3EG] Italy s Catholic Church will house many of the new arrivals in shelters across the country, Church charity Caritas said, as the migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen go through the country s asylum request process. Migrant arrivals to Italy have fallen by two-thirds since July from the same period last year after officials working for the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli persuaded human smugglers in the city of Sabratha to stop boats leaving. Italy is also bolstering the Libyan coast guard s ability to turn back boats.[nL8N1OE34J] Italy s move to open a safe corridor for some of the migrants follows criticism by rights groups who have condemned the country s efforts to block migrants in Libya in exchange for aid, training and equipment to fight smuggling.[nL8N1NK77C] This should be a point of pride for Italians, Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters on the tarmac. This is the just beginning. We will continue to try to open this humanitarian corridor. Migrant smuggling has flourished since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with more than 600,000 making the perilous journey across the central Mediterranean in four years. Tens of thousands of migrants are estimated to be detained by smugglers, and the African Union says that as many as 700,000 migrants are in Libya. The UNHCR has registered more than 44,000 as refugees and asylum seekers. The UNHCR classifies Friday s arrivals as vulnerable refugees, which means they are children, victims of abuse, women, the elderly or have disabilities. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Temer warns pension reform failure will hurt Brazil's credibility;BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s President Michel Temer warned on Friday the country would face economic volatility and loss of international credibility if a bill overhauling its costly social security system is not passed by Congress early next year. Speaking to reporters, Temer acknowledged that corruption accusations had undermined his popularity and delayed passage of a pension reform bill that is now scheduled to be put to a vote on February 19. He said his government would not support a candidate in the 2018 presidential elections that does not back pension reform. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Callista Gingrich becomes Trump's envoy to pope as differences mount;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Callista Gingrich, wife of the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, on Friday became U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, which is at odds with Washington over immigration, climate change and Jerusalem. Callista Gingrich, 51, an author, documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide, presented her credentials to Pope Francis at the Vatican to officially assume her role. Her husband Newt Gingrich was an early supporter and vocal ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. Newt Gingrich is expected to continue his role as a political contributor to Fox News from his new base in Rome. Trump s nomination of Callista Gingrich to the post at the Holy See in May caused some controversy because of her marriage to Gingrich, with whom she became involved when he was still married to his second wife. Both are Roman Catholic. On Thursday they attended the funeral at the Vatican of Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston 15 years ago after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests. The pope has implicitly criticized Trump s decision to pull out of the Paris accord on climate change. He said last month that denying climate change or being indifferent to its effects were perverse attitudes that blocked research and dialogue aimed at protecting the future of the planet. Francis is also opposed to Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The pontiff has called for respect for the city s status quo, saying new tension in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts.. On Thursday at the United Nations, where the Vatican has permanent observer status, more than 120 countries defied Trump and voted in favor of a resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition. The U.S. embassy said in a statement that the new ambassador looks forward to working with the Holy See to defend human rights, advance religious freedom, combat human trafficking, and to seek peaceful solutions to crises around the world . ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Two Palestinians killed in anti-US protests after U.N. vote on Jerusalem-Gaza ministry;GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead at least two Palestinians and wounded about 60 with live fire on Friday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said, as protests intensified against Washington s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. A U.N. General Assembly resolution passed on Thursday, rejecting U.S. President Donald Trump s Dec. 6 Jerusalem declaration, did little to calm Palestinian anger over his reversal of decades-old U.S. policy on the contested holy city. Instead, thousands of Palestinian protesters, many of them throwing rocks, confronted Israeli security forces along the Gaza border fence, in all of occupied West Bank s seven cities and in East Jerusalem. In Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, smoke from burning tires billowed in the street, just two days before Christmas celebrations. Israeli gunfire killed two Palestinians in a confrontation in the southern Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry said, putting the number of wounded at 120, half of them shot with live ammunition and the rest struck by rubber bullets or hit by tear gas canisters. In a statement, the Israeli military said some 2,000 Palestinians had faced off against the troops at the Gaza border fence. It said the crowd threw stones and rolled burning tires at soldiers, who responded with riot dispersal measures and fired live rounds selectively towards main instigators . Protesters chanted Trump is a coward. Trump is a fool . Among the wounded was a man dressed as Santa Claus. Palestinian health officials said at least one Palestinian suffered a live bullet wound in the West Bank and some 30 protesters were hit by rubber bullets. The military, putting the number of demonstrators at about 1,700 and the injured at six, said troops faced firebombs, rocks and burning tires. The protests died down after sunset. Demonstrations have been held daily since Trump s announcement. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a Christmas message, called the U.S. leader s move an insult to millions of people worldwide, and also to the city of Jerusalem . Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians want the capital of an independent Palestinian state to be in the city s eastern sector, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move never recognized internationally. Most countries regard the status of Jerusalem as a matter to be settled in an eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, although that process is now stalled. A total of 128 countries voted for the U.N. resolution. Nine opposed it and 35 abstained. Twenty-one countries did not cast a vote. Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Gaza s dominant Hamas Islamists, called the U.N. vote a defeat for Trump, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the resolution as preposterous and branded the U.N. a house of lies . But Michael Oren, Israel s deputy minister for diplomacy, seemed to play down the support for the resolution shown by many countries Israel considers friends. We have an interest in tightening our bilateral relations with a long list of countries in the world, and expect and hope that one day, they will vote with us, or for us in the United Nations, Oren said on Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM. But I am not prepared to suspend all cooperation with important countries, such as India, he said. Netanyahu, who hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July, is due to visit New Delhi next month. Friday s deaths in Gaza raised to 10 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire since Dec. 6, Palestinian health officials said. Gaza militants have also fired rockets into Israel, and two gunmen were killed in an Israeli air strike after one such attack. There have been no Israeli fatalities or significant injuries. Amnesty International on Friday called on Israeli authorities to stop using excessive force . The fact that live ammunition has been used during protests in Gaza and the West Bank is particularly shocking, it said. In the run-up to the U.N. vote, Trump threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that supported the resolution. His warning appeared to have some impact, with more countries abstaining and rejecting the document than usually associated with Palestinian-related resolutions. But most of the European Union, Israel s biggest trading partner, and countries such as Greece, Cyprus and India, with which Netanyahu has pursued closer relations and economic ties, backed the resolution. I prefer we have tight bilateral relations over a situation in which we don t have close bilateral relations, and they vote in our favor in the United Nations, Oren said, describing India s vote as certainly disappointing . ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kansai Electric to scrap two reactors in latest blow for Japan's nuclear sector;TOKYO (Reuters) - Kansai Electric Power Co said on Friday it will decommission two 38-year-old reactors at its Ohi nuclear plant as Japan s electricity industry struggles to cope with new safety standards imposed after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The widely expected announcement brings to 14 the number of reactors being scrapped since the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. More than six years on, Japan is still turning away from nuclear power in the face of technical problems, public opposition, court challenges and unfavorable economics. Most of Japan s reactors remain shut, with only four operating, while they undergo relicensing processes in a bit to meet new standards set after the Fukushima crisis highlighted shortcomings in regulation. Kansai Electric will now scrap the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the Ohi plant, some 86 kilometers (53 miles) from Osaka, western Japan, where the utility is based. Shut since 2011, the reactors have capacity of 1,175 megawatts each, began operations in 1979 and were near the end of their standard operating life of 40 years. A Kansai Electric spokeswoman said that costs in meeting the new safety standards were not a factor behind the decision, but technical difficulties were. The containment vessels of these reactors are smaller than other reactors in Japan, and a need to beef up the walls to meet the standards would make the work zones even more cramped, making it difficult for prompt repairs in case of troubles, the spokeswoman said. The move means Japan is likely to soon be eclipsed by China as the third biggest nuclear power sector in the world - by reactor numbers - after the United States and France. Japan now has 42 reactors, including the two to be decommissioned at Ohi, compared with 38 in China, which has nearly 20 more under construction, while the U.S. and France have 99 and 58 respectively, according to the International Energy Agency. Kansai Electric was the most reliant on nuclear energy among Japan s atomic operators, using reactors for nearly half of its electricity generation before the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011, when reactors melted down following a giant earthquake and tsunami. Two other reactors at the Ohi site remain closed. While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe s government is keen to restore a power source that provided about a third of electricity supply before the Fukushima crisis, Japan s public remains deeply skeptical over industry assurances on safety. Anti-nuclear campaigners and residents are increasingly using courts to block restarts and push for plants to close. A Japanese court last week ordered Shikoku Electric Power Co not to restart one of its reactors, overturning a lower court decision in the first instance of a higher court blocking the operation of nuclear plant. Residents have lodged injunctions against most nuclear plants across Japan. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Callista Gingrich becomes Trump's envoy to pope as differences mount;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Callista Gingrich, wife of the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, on Friday became U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, which is at odds with Washington over immigration, climate change and Jerusalem. Callista Gingrich, 51, an author, documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide, presented her credentials to Pope Francis at the Vatican to officially assume her role. Her husband Newt Gingrich was an early supporter and vocal ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. Newt Gingrich is expected to continue his role as a political contributor to Fox News from his new base in Rome. Trump’s nomination of Callista Gingrich to the post at the Holy See in May caused some controversy because of her marriage to Gingrich, with whom she became involved when he was still married to his second wife. Both are Roman Catholic. On Thursday they attended the funeral at the Vatican of Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston 15 years ago after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests. The pope has implicitly criticized Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord on climate change. He said last month that denying climate change or being indifferent to its effects were “perverse attitudes” that blocked research and dialogue aimed at protecting the future of the planet. Francis is also opposed to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The pontiff has called for respect for the city’s “status quo,” saying new tension in the Middle East would further inflame world conflicts.. On Thursday at the United Nations, where the Vatican has permanent observer status, more than 120 countries defied Trump and voted in favor of a resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition. The U.S. embassy said in a statement that the new ambassador “looks forward to working with the Holy See to defend human rights, advance religious freedom, combat human trafficking, and to seek peaceful solutions to crises around the world”. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China adds new protections for graft suspects amid detention system overhaul;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s graft-busters will be required to do more to protect detained suspects, such as informing families and employers within a day of their detention, state media said on Friday, as part of efforts to revise a secret interrogation system. President Xi Jinping has vowed that his war against graft in the ruling Communist Party will not ease until officials at all levels dare not, cannot and do not want to be corrupt. Xi told top party leaders in October revision of the anti-graft architecture would include the scrapping of a controversial shuanggui system of secret interrogations, and the introduction of a new detention system. Protection for detained suspects have been added to a draft national supervision law under review by the National People s Congress, China s legislature, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The latest version of the legislation says both families and employers of suspects must by notified within 24 hours of their detention, unless that might result in witness interference or evidence tampering, Xinhua reported. Previously, either families or employers needed to be contacted and inspectors could keep a detention a secret if they feared any kind of interference, such as with witnesses or evidence. Xinhua said physical checks of female suspects would be carried out by female workers under the new rules. Rights groups have welcomed the proposed changes saying the old system allowed abuses and torture, but urged that the new system not simply repackage old ways. The legislation is expected to be passed in March. It will also legally empower a State Supervision Commission to oversee various anti-graft agencies and all civil servants. Under the proposed new rules, assets frozen or seized from suspects and later found to be unrelated to the investigation should be unfrozen or returned within three days, Xinhua said. Cases should be thrown out if no evidence of a crime is found, Xinhua said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;After Reuters arrests, some Myanmar reporters fear 'it could've been me';YANGON (Reuters) - Some human rights advocates say press freedom is under attack in Myanmar, even though decades of rule by a junta that tightly controlled the media has given way to a government led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar has detained at least 29 journalists in the 20 months since Suu Kyi came to power. While most have since been released on bail, the frequency of arrests - along with the detention last week of two Reuters reporters - has rekindled worries among some journalists trying to cover violence in Rakhine State. There are too many risks being added to journalists, said Sonny Swe, chief executive officer and co-founder of Yangon-based magazine Frontier. I feel that we are not moving forward, but going back in time for freedom of press and speech. As of December, there were five reporters, including the Reuters pair, behind bars. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo - who had worked on Reuters coverage of the crisis in Rakhine - were arrested on Dec. 12 in Yangon. The Ministry of Information said they had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media . They face up to 14 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act. Myanmar authorities have said the case has nothing to do with press freedom. There are different views, based on where you stand ... There s press freedom in Myanmar as long as you follow the rules and regulations, Kyaw Soe, director general of the Ministry of Information, told Reuters by phone on Thursday. He declined to comment further. A vibrant domestic media has sprung up since the transition from military rule began in 2011 and pre-publication censorship was lifted in 2012. Nevertheless, this year Myanmar was ranked 131 out of 180 nations for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders - in the bottom third, but ahead of seven countries in the region: Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Laos and Vietnam. The authorities continue to exert pressure on the media and even intervene directly to get editorial policies changed, Reporters Without Borders said in a report this year. Kyaw Zwa Moe, editor of Irrawaddy s English edition, said in a commentary last week that Myanmar does have press freedom, but with an invisible line . No one can know where that line is because it s unseen. When you touch or cross it, you re finished, he wrote. Although she is Myanmar s de facto leader, Suu Kyi is forced to share power with the military, which runs security-related ministries and the police. Suppression of the media has hardened, rights groups say, since October 2016, when Rohingya Muslim militants attacked security posts in Rakhine state, triggering a military crackdown that right groups say included killings, rape and arson. After further strikes by insurgents on Aug. 25, the military campaign intensified, touching off a mass exodus of Rohingya to Bangladesh, where more than 800,000 now live in refugee camps. Some local journalists say they cannot report independently from Rakhine State due to harassment and threats from both the authorities and local people, while foreign reporters are denied access to the conflict zone. When Moe Myint, a 29-year-old journalist for the online news site Irrawaddy heard about their arrest, his first thought was: It could ve been me . What if the police found out that I carry any controversial document? he said. It s a deliberate arrest in order to muzzle media coverage on conflicts in northern Rakhine. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Suu Kyi has shown scant understanding of the role an independent press plays in a democracy . The ethnic cleansing in Rakhine state has made the government even more intolerant, he said. Suu Kyi s spokesman, Zaw Htay, declined to comment on Myanmar s press freedom, but he told Reuters on Sunday: Your reporters are protected by the rule of the law. Myanmar has denied most allegations against its security forces in Rakhine, rejecting charges by the United Nations, the United States and others that a campaign of ethnic cleansing was waged against the Rohingya. The authorities have accused international media of putting out fake news about rights abuses in Rakhine and of working hand-in-glove with insurgents. In October last year, spokesman Zaw Htay singled out English-language newspaper Myanmar Times special investigations editor Fiona MacGregor for criticism on his Facebook page. Days later MacGregor, who had written a report about alleged gang rape by soldiers, was sacked by the paper. When contacted this week, MacGregor declined to add to the comment she made in an interview with Reuters last year, when she said it was unacceptable that representatives of the democratically elected government would use social media and bullying tactics to suppress stories . Zaw Htay said at the time that he was sorry she had been fired. He said he had just highlighted she didn t reach other reliable sources and it led to a one-sided news article based on unreliable sources . Rights monitors say the erosion of press freedoms has not been limited to coverage of the Rakhine crisis. Since April 2016, 21 journalists have been charged or arrested under a telecommunications law that broadly prohibits the use of telecommunications networks to extort, defame, disturb or intimidate . Critics say it is used to curb criticism of the authorities and reporting of corruption. Suu Kyi s spokesman did not respond to further Reuters requests for comment. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;No man an island - China warns against straying from party path;BEIJING (Reuters) - Members of China s ruling Communist Party have a duty to follow orders from the central leadership lest the country stray into anarchy, the country s top newspaper wrote on Friday, warning against those who put themselves above the party. President Xi Jinping has amassed power since taking office five years ago, tightening party control over all aspects of life and locking up rights activists and dissidents on subversion charges. Xi has also gone after competing power bases by jailing opponents for corruption, including the powerful former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang and the popular one-time party boss of Chongqing, Bo Xilai. The party under Xi s leadership has repeatedly warned that it will not tolerate dissenting voices, and the official People s Daily struck a firm note in pressing home that message against a phenomenon it termed de-centralism . De-centralism is a way of thinking and behaving where each goes their own way, with only freedom and no discipline, only thinking of acting alone and ignoring everyone else, the paper wrote in a commentary. It is an extreme expression of individualism, and in its essence it s anarchy, it added. The government has previously accused some of its disgraced former top officials, including Zhou and Bo, of seeking to establish independent kingdoms . Both men are currently serving life terms for corruption. Bo was well-known for his populist policies, including a high-profile crackdown on organized crime, investments in flashy infrastructure projects and quasi-Maoist practices like organizing mass sing-alongs praising the party. Chongqing, one of China s most important cities and located in the country s southwest, has remained a hotbed of intrigue. Another former party boss, Sun Zhengcai, is currently awaiting trial in his own corruption scandal. He too is accused of paying lip service to orders from Beijing. The People s Daily said that some party officials were too free and undisciplined in their thinking. Add to that is the encroachment of individualism, hedonism and the worship of money. A small number of these people slip into the morass of de-centralism and cannot extract themselves, it said. Party members must do as they are told, as that is the only way to guarantee the authority of the central leadership, the paper added. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan approves record defense spending that favors U.S.-made equipment;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan s government approved a record military budget on Friday but did not earmark enough extra money to stop a splurge on U.S.-made ballistic missile defense kit from putting a squeeze on funding for an ambitious domestic jet fighter project. Japan s defense outlays for the year starting April 1 will rise for a sixth straight year, increasing by 1.3 percent to 5.19 trillion yen ($45.76 billion), according to a budget breakdown published by the government. The biggest ticket item is 137 billion yen to reinforce defenses against a possible North Korean ballistic missile attack. That includes purchases of a new longer range interceptor, the SM-3 Block IIA, designed to strike ballistic missiles in space, upgrades for the Patriot missile batteries that are the last line of defense against incoming warheads and preparations for the construction of two ground-based Aegis radar stations. Japan will also spend 2.2 billion yen to begin acquiring medium-range air-launched cruise missiles able to strike sites in North Korea in a bid to deter any potential attack by Pyongyang, which continues to test ballistic missiles. It is essential that we have the latest, most capable equipment to bolster our defenses, Japanese Minister of Defence Intsunori Onodera said after he and other Cabinet members approved the new spending plan. The latest rocket launched by the North on Nov. 29 reached an altitude of more than 4,000 km (2,485 miles) before plunging into the Sea of Japan. A spending spree on mostly U.S.-made equipment means Japan s defense planners are being forced to curtail domestic programs that would help local defense contractors such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries maintain their military industrial base. That may force Japan to curtail its long-held ambition to build an advanced stealth fighter, dubbed the F-3. In November, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to buy more U.S.-made weapons as his administration pushes Washington s allies to contribute more to their joint defense. Japan plans to allocate 279 billion yen of its next budget to buy defense equipment through the U.S. government s Foreign Military Sales system, 15 percent more than the current budget and more than double the amount spent in year that ended March 31, 2015. People who spoke to Reuters in November said Japan will delay a decision to develop the F-3, which is meant to counter military technology advances by China, putting on hold a project estimated to be worth more than $40 billion. The latest defense spending plans provide the first concrete public indication that pause is underway. A budget request submitted in August earmarked 7.4 billion yen for a new large jet engine test facility that Japan s defense ministry will need to test a prototype F-3 engine. That item was not included in the budget approved on Friday. A proposed 2.4 billion for other F-3 research was also trimmed to 1.6 billion yen. Money is being spent in other areas and this is a sign that the government sees the F-3 as a low priority, a Japanese defense ministry official said. He asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Passengers on Saudi Arabia airlines allowed to bring electronics on flights to UK;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia announced on Friday that passengers traveling on its airlines to the United Kingdom would once again be allowed to carry on electronic devices, reversing a ban put in place earlier this year for security reasons. Passengers will be able to use laptops and tablets in aircraft cabins on flights from the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah starting from Dec.21, the General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) said in a statement on its official Twitter account. The United States and Britain implemented curbs on electronic items in the cabin in March on direct flights from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia in response to unspecified security threats. The United States lifted its ban in July on passengers on Saudi Arabian airlines carrying large electronics on board flights bound for America. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox - What's next for Catalonia's exiled separatist leader?;MADRID (Reuters) - Exiled Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont looks set to regain power after regional elections on Thursday, but what comes next is unlikely to be an easy ride. - CAN HE GO BACK TO CATALONIA? Puigdemont is targeted by an arrest warrant for his role in organizing an illegal independence referendum on Oct. 1 and leading the secession bid. He is now in Brussels but he faces arrest the minute he steps foot in Spain. Seven of the 70 separatists elected on Sunday are either in jail or in exile on allegations of sedition and rebellion. Unless they are released or they return home, they cannot vote in parliament to form a workable majority. They could hope to be freed or have arrest warrants dropped if they swore no to pursue independence unilaterally. But that in turn could jeopardize support for a Puigdemont government from Catalonia s most vehement pro-independence party, the CUP. Another option would be for these leaders to forfeit their seats and hand them to the next candidates on the list. Puigdemont cannot take absolutely for granted that he will be Catalonia s next president because the other two separatist parties, the CUP and ERC, have shown some reluctance to put him back at the helm. His party got more votes than the other two. - WHAT S ON THE AGENDA? Negotiations to form a government are likely to start following a holiday break, after Jan. 6. Around the same date, conservative Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will say when regional parliament will begin preliminary proceedings ahead of its first sitting. That process must start no later than Jan. 23. Parliament must then vote by Feb. 8 on putting a new government into place. By then, Puigdemont should also clarify whether he will put himself forward as Catalonia president. If no leader can command an absolute majority of the 135-seat regional assembly, a second vote will be held where a leader only needs a majority of votes cast in the chamber. If that does not work, talks can go on for another two months. If they fail, parliament is dissolved and new elections are held. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 22) - Tax cut, Missile defense bill;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Our big and very popular Tax Cut and Reform Bill has taken on an unexpected new source of “love” - that is big companies and corporations showering their workers with bonuses. This is a phenomenon that nobody even thought of, and now it is the rage. Merry Christmas! [0747 EST] - At some point, and for the good of the country, I predict we will start working with the Democrats in a Bipartisan fashion. Infrastructure would be a perfect place to start. After having foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is time to start rebuilding our country! [0805 EST] - “The President has accomplished some absolutely historic things during this past year.” Thank you Charlie Kirk of Turning Points USA. Sadly, the Fake Mainstream Media will NEVER talk about our accomplishments in their end of year reviews. We are compiling a long & beautiful list. [0917 EST] - With all my Administration has done on Legislative Approvals (broke Harry Truman’s Record), Regulation Cutting, Judicial Appointments, Building Military, VA, TAX CUTS & REFORM, Record Economy/Stock Market and so much more, I am sure great credit will be given by mainstream news? [1004 EST] - Will be signing the biggest ever Tax Cut and Reform Bill in 30 minutes in Oval Office. Will also be signing a much needed 4 billion dollar missile defense bill. [1007 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: U.S. isolated as 128 nations at U.N. condemn Jerusalem decision;(Reuters) - Some 128 countries defied U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for Washington to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that voted in favor of the resolution. After the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, tweeted that the United States will be taking names. Washington found itself isolated as many of its Western and Arab allies voted for the measure. Some of those allies, like Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, are major recipients of U.S. military or economic aid, although the U.S. threat to cut aid did not single out any country. Among countries that abstained were Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda. Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo joined the United States and Israel in voting no. Following are reactions to the vote: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan: Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey s democratic will with your dollars. The dollars will come back, but your will won t once it s sold. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif: A resounding global NO to Trump regime s thuggish intimidation at #UN. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Jerusalem is our capital, always was, always will be. But I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theater of the absurd. Spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rdainah: The vote is a victory for Palestine. We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation and to establish our Palestinian state with east Jerusalem. French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre: The resolution adopted today only confirms relevant international law provisions on Jerusalem. Botswana s Ministry of International Affairs: Botswana will not be intimidated by such threats and will exercise her sovereign right and vote based on her foreign policy principles, which affirm that Jerusalem is a fundamental final status issue, which must be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant United Nations resolutions. Canadian Ambassador to the UN, Marc-Andre Blanchard, on Canada decision to abstain from voting: We are disappointed that this resolution is one-sided and does not advance prospects for peace to which we aspire which is why we have abstained on today s vote ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Korea's Moon promises thorough probe as anger mounts at deadly sauna fire;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in comforted mourners in the small scenic city of Jecheon on Friday amid growing public anger at how fire ripped through an eight-storey building, killing at least 29 people, most of them taking a sauna. All but one of the victims had been identified by Friday morning, including 20 women who were overcome by toxic fumes in the second-floor sauna, Jecheon fire chief Lee Sang-min said. Our crew on the scene said the lockers inside the facility were installed like a labyrinth and it s a glass building with few windows, which apparently made way for the smoke from the first floor to quickly fill up the second floor, Lee told reporters. Consoling family members, President Moon Jae-in said he was devastated and promised a full investigation. The government as a whole will thoroughly probe this accident s cause and process of response, and although after the fact, the investigation and measures will be such that, at least, there will not be lingering deep sorrow. Moon s predecessor, ousted former president Park Geun-hye, was widely criticized for her slow and ineffective response to the Sewol ferry tragedy in 2014 in which more than 300 people, mostly schoolchildren, drowned. Anger mounted on Friday at reports of shoddy construction, broken doors and other problems that may have contributed to the deaths. One man shouted at officials visiting survivors in hospital, complaining that firefighters failed to break through to the trapped women in time. Media reported that a glass door leading to the sauna had not been working properly for more than a month, and that emergency stairs were often used for storage. Nothing has changed even after the Sewol tragedy, parliament member Ahn Cheol-soo said. I just cannot understand why the same type of accidents happen over and over again, he said, according to the Yonhap news agency. Jecheon s mayor told reporters the city was considering a mass funeral and planned to cover most of the costs. Investigators were still trying to find out the cause of the conflagration, but were focusing on a first-floor parking lot, Lee said. There were cars parked on the first floor, and as they were burning, a large amount of toxic gases were released. Tragic stories began to emerge as victims were identified. One man told Yonhap that he lost his mother, wife, and daughter. Another said he received a phone call from his trapped wife as she coughed in the gathering smoke, but was later unable to reach her again. Heavy smoke charred glass facade of the building as firefighters struggled to extinguish the blaze, climbing up and down a ladder in a desperate search for survivors. Organizers called off a leg of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games torch relay in Jecheon on what should have been a day of celebration ahead of the games. We thought that having a torch relay at a place where so many people died in a fire accident is just not right, and therefore canceled today s event in Jecheon, Ryu Hoyon, the torch relay manager for the Pyeongchang organizing committee, told Reuters. We are planning to adjust further schedules with those who want to continue the relay. Jecheon is southeast of the capital Seoul and is popular with visitors to its mountains and lakes. (tmsnrt.rs/2BvndG6) The Games begin in February. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;House panel asks Trump ex-top aide Bannon to testify: Bloomberg;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Steve Bannon, a former top White House strategist and a former chief campaign aide to Donald Trump, has been asked to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence panel next month, Bloomberg News reported. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, was also asked to testify in early January, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing an official familiar with the committee’s schedule. Representatives for the committee did not immediately respond to inquiries for comment. The panel is probing alleged Russian meddling into the 2016 U.S. election. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;McConnell happier with Trump tweets after tax victory;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A summer spat between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has turned into a warm embrace - and all it took was a sweeping rewrite of the U.S. tax code. For months, McConnell urged the president to lock his cell phone in a drawer and retire his signature tweets that have Washington abuzz on a daily basis. He even chided Trump for having “excessive expectations” of Congress. For his part, Trump scorched McConnell in August for failing to repeal Obamacare, sidestepped reporters’ questions over whether the senator should retire and tweeted, “Mitch, get to work.” But with Congress’ passage of the tax bill this week, giving Trump his first major legislative victory, the president tweeted on Wednesday, “I would like to congratulate @SenateMajLdr on having done a fantastic job.” McConnell joined in the love fest on Friday, or at least what constitutes a love fest for the understated senator. “With regard to the president’s tweeting habits, I haven’t been a fan until this week. I’m warming up to it,” McConnell quipped. Still, he reined in reporters who asked whether he might visit Trump in Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, over the Christmas and New Year holidays. McConnell laughed and said he would instead be attending a Dec. 30 football game in Jacksonville, Fla. “That’s the closest I’ll get.” ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘MORNING JOE’ PANEL Says Nikki Haley “Embarrassed” the U.S. at the UN…Embarrassed? We Think NOT! [Video]; It s really interesting to hear this panel go ballistic over Nikki Haley finally standing up for America.MSNBC s Morning Joe panel on Friday lashed out at U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley for her speech before the U.N. General Assembly the prior day in which she criticized countries that supported a resolution condemning President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital.Haley castigated the U.N. on Thursday after the international body backed a non-binding resolution to reject the U.S. decision on Jerusalem. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly, she said, threatening to cut off funding to the U.N. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world s largest contribution to the U.N. and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit. The Morning Joe panel took issue with Haley s remarks We think she stood strong and put these freeloading nations on notice. We say BRAVO! Read more: WFB;politics;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama to certify Democrat Jones winner of Senate election;(Reuters) - Democrat Doug Jones’ surprise victory over Republican Roy Moore in this month’s special U.S. Senate election will be certified on Dec. 28, Alabama state officials said on Friday. Jones will be the first Democrat sent to the Senate from Republican stronghold Alabama in a quarter century. When he takes office, Republicans’ majority in the chamber will narrow to 51 of the 100 seats. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall and Secretary of State John Merrill will meet to certify Jones’ win, Merrill’s office said in a statement. Jones’ margin of victory was 1.5 percentage points. Moore has not conceded defeat in the Dec. 12 vote, despite being urged by President Donald Trump to do so. Calls and emails to Moore’s campaign spokeswomen were not immediately returned on Friday. Moore was a controversial candidate whose campaign was beset by allegations that he sexually assaulted or pursued teenage girls while he was in his 30s. He denied the misconduct allegations, saying they were a result of “dirty politics.” ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate leader McConnell sees a more collegial 2018;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday said a shifting landscape will lead him to work with Democrats on immigration and financial regulation early in the new year, following a year of acrimony and partisan legislation. In an end-of-year news conference, McConnell touted a list of Republican accomplishments since President Donald Trump took office in January. It started with the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and ended with an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. But in January, McConnell’s already razor-thin 52-48 Republican majority will shrink to 51-49 with the swearing in of Senator-elect Doug Jones, the Democrat who surprised the political world with a win in a special election in the deeply Republican state of Alabama. Adding to McConnell’s difficulties, special Senate procedures are fading that allowed him to pass a tax bill and try to repeal the Affordable Care Act this year without any Democratic support. That means that McConnell’s victories - if he has them - will require more collaboration and less confrontation. The pivot was the centerpiece of his news conference remarks. “There are areas where I think we can get bipartisan agreement,” McConnell said. First on his list was legislation to change Dodd-Frank banking regulations that he said would help smaller financial institutions. The Kentucky senator noted that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo has advanced legislation that is co-sponsored by several Democrats. McConnell also pointed to bipartisan efforts to help undocumented immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” who were brought into the United States when they were children. If negotiators from both parties can come to a deal for the Dreamers that Trump’s administration can support, “we’ll spend floor time on that in January,” McConnell said. On Thursday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer complained that throughout 2017 Republicans “have been hell-bent on pursuing a partisan agenda.” When asked by a reporter of possible bipartisan successes in 2018, Schumer pointed to the need for infrastructure improvements but said that Trump has been “all over the lot” on how to accomplish road, airport and other construction projects. With the November 2018 congressional elections approaching, Democrats might have less incentive to cooperate with Republicans, especially after Schumer’s party won decisive victories in special elections this month and last in Alabama and Virginia. McConnell hinted it would be tougher to find agreement with Democrats on some other legislative issues, including welfare reform, which Trump says he wants to push ahead with in 2018. McConnell said he would consult with Trump and House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan in January over prospects for welfare reform. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico to review need for tax changes after U.S. reform-document;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s finance ministry will evaluate whether to make fiscal changes in response to the U.S. tax reform, according to a document seen by Reuters on Friday. In the document, the ministry said Mexico would not make changes that left it with a higher public sector deficit. “Nevertheless, there will be an assessment of whether modifications should be made to Mexico’s fiscal framework,” the document said. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Former CIA Director Slams Trump Over UN Bullying, Openly Suggests He’s Acting Like A Dictator (TWEET);Many people have raised the alarm regarding the fact that Donald Trump is dangerously close to becoming an autocrat. The thing is, democracies become autocracies right under the people s noses, because they can often look like democracies in the beginning phases. This was explained by Republican David Frum just a couple of months into Donald Trump s presidency, in a piece in The Atlantic called How to Build an Autocracy. In fact, if you really look critically at what is happening right now the systematic discrediting of vital institutions such as the free press and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well the direct weaponization of the Department of Justice in order to go after Trump s former political opponent, 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and you have the makings of an autocracy. We are more than well on our way. Further, one chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives, already has a rogue band of Republicans who are running a parallel investigation to the official Russian collusion investigation, with the explicit intent of undermining and discrediting the idea that Trump could have possibly done anything wrong with the Russians in order to swing the 2016 election in his favor.All of that is just for starters, too. Now, we have Trump making United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley bully and threaten other countries in the United Nations who voted against Trump s decision to change U.S. policy when it comes to recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State. Well, one expert, who is usually quite measured, has had enough of Trump s autocratic antics: Former CIA Director John O. Brennan. The seasoned spy took to Trump s favorite platform, Twitter, and blasted the decision:Trump Admin threat to retaliate against nations that exercise sovereign right in UN to oppose US position on Jerusalem is beyond outrageous. Shows @realDonaldTrump expects blind loyalty and subservience from everyone qualities usually found in narcissistic, vengeful autocrats. John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) December 21, 2017Director Brennan is correct, of course. Trump is behaving just like an autocrat, and so many people in the nation are asleep when it comes to this dangerous age, in which the greatest threat to democracy and the very fabric of the republic itself is the American president. Fellow Americans, we know the GOP-led Congress will not be the check on Trump that they are supposed to be. It s time to get out and flip the House and possibly the Senate in 2018, and resist in the meantime, if we want to save our country from devolving into something that looks more like Russia or North Korea than the America we have always know. We re already well on our way.Featured image via BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images;News;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China considers punishing those who slander heroes and martyrs;BEIJING (Reuters) - China is considering a law punishing those who slander heroes and martyrs or cause physical damage to their memorials, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday, the latest piece of legislation to protect the country s symbols of state. Xi Jinping has ushered in new legislation aimed at securing China from threats both within and outside its borders since taking over as president in 2013, as well as presiding over a sweeping crackdown on dissent and free speech. China s largely rubber stamp parliament amended its criminal law last month to extend punishments for publicly desecrating the national flag and emblem to include disrespecting the national anthem. Punishments include jail terms of up to three years. The latest proposed legislation is aimed at protecting the reputation of martyrs - those who have given their lives for China or the Communist Party - and who are already publicly lauded in the country. Memorials to those who fought against the Japanese during World War Two, or in the Chinese civil war against the Nationalists, and others are scattered across the country. School children learn about the feats of the most famous. Xinhua said the new law would offer unspecified punishments to those who insult or slander heroes and martyrs or damage their memorials. The law would also give a responsibility to the media and internet users to report any insults to the honor of martyrs, it said. It is unclear when the proposal could be put into law, but Chinese laws normally go through at least two rounds of drafting before they are passed, meaning it could be some months away. Party history is a sensitive subject in China because so much of the party s legitimacy rests on its position as claiming great historical achievements, such as leading China to victory over Japan during World War Two. Disputes about party history already occasionally make it to Chinese courts. A court ordered a former magazine editor to publicly apologize last year for two articles written in 2013 questioning the details of a well-known story about Communist soldiers fighting the Japanese in World War Two. In the story, the five soldiers jumped off a cliff so the Japanese could not take them alive, although two of them survived. The editor had expressed doubt about how many Japanese the Chinese soldiers killed, how the two survived and the location of the cliff. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Indonesia holds cabinet meeting in Bali as volcano threatens tourism;JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo will on Friday hold his cabinet meeting on the holiday island of Bali in a bid to reassure visitors that there is nothing to worry about from the rumbling Mount Agung volcano. Authorities last month raised the alert status of Mount Agung in northeastern Bali to the highest level, imposing an exclusion zone of up to 10 km (6 miles) around its crater as it spewed clouds of ash, steam, and other volcanic material. Widodo will take the unusual step of gathering his cabinet in Bali as part of government efforts to assure visitors that the island is safe to come to and to stave off a major drop off in visitor numbers during the upcoming holiday season. For those who have plans to vacation in Bali, there s no need to doubt or be worried about the status of Mount Agung, Bali is very safe to visit, Energy Minister Ignasius Jonan said in a Twitter message after visiting an observatory overlooking the volcano, before the cabinet meeting. President Widodo is expected to make a statement after the cabinet meeting. The cabinet usually meets at the state palace in the capital Jakarta or on its outskirts in Bogor. The relatively small island of Bali, famous for its beaches and temples, has an outsized importance for Indonesian tourism. In January-September, Bali received 4.5 million foreign tourist arrivals, nearly half of the 10.5 million arrivals in Indonesia. Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said this week that Indonesia was expecting an estimated 15 trillion rupiah ($1.11 billion) in lost income and around 1 million fewer tourists because of the volcano, according to daily newspaper Kompas. Many business operators and hotels have seen cancellations since authorities first raised the alert in September, and most expect the holiday season to be slower than in previous years. Thousands of tourists were left stranded late last month when a volcanic ash cloud forced the closure of Bali s airport for several days. Countries like Australia and Singapore have advised their citizens to be cautious when traveling to Bali. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Maoists declare traditional Christmas truce;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine Maoist rebels declared a traditional Christmas truce on Friday after the government announced the same, calling off hostilities for six days. In a statement posted on its website, Jorge Madlos, alias Ka Oris, spokesman for the communist New People Army (NPA), said the truce would last from Saturday to Tuesday, when the group celebrates its 49th anniversary. All units of the NPA and the people s militias shall remain on active defensive mode in order to defend the people and revolutionary forces, Madlos said, adding the guerrillas will maintain a high degree of alertness and preparation against any hostile actions or movements by enemy armed forces . On Thursday, the defense department announced a truce over the same period to allow Filipinos to celebrate a stress-free Christmas season. Both the government and the NPA have declared Christmas truces since the late 1980s when the two sides first agreed to peace talks, brokered by Norway. The tradition has continued even after negotiations stalled and now have been scrapped by President Rodrigo Duterte. The NPA rebels, estimated to number around 3,000, have been fighting for nearly 50 years in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people and stifled growth in resource-rich areas of the country. The country also faces various Islamist insurgencies in the south. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Africa's Zuma seeks to appeal ruling on influence-peddling;JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s President Jacob Zuma has sought leave to appeal a court ruling ordering him to set up a judicial inquiry into influence-peddling in his government, local television channel eNCA reported on Friday. The High Court ruled on Dec. 13 that Zuma must set up a judicial inquiry into influence-peddling within 30 days and that he should pay costs for an earlier legal challenge. Zuma s spokesman could not immediately comment when contacted by Reuters. Zuma was seeking leave to appeal the High Court ruling on 20 grounds, including that he should pay legal costs, eNCA reported. The influence-peddling inquiry was recommended in a report released a year ago by South Africa s Public Protector, whose job is to uphold standards in public life. Zuma also sought to block the release of the report, entitled State of Capture , which focused on allegations that Zuma s friends, the businessmen and brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, had influenced the appointment of ministers. Zuma and the Guptas have denied all accusations of wrongdoing. The 75-year-old president has faced and denied numerous corruption allegations since taking office in 2009 and has survived several votes of no-confidence in parliament. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senate shelves disaster aid bill until next month;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to provide $81 billion in new disaster aid for U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands was put on hold by the Senate on Thursday amid attacks from both Republicans and Democrats. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the legislation earlier on Thursday to help recovery efforts stemming from hurricanes and wildfires. But the Senate put off a vote until at least January, according to some lawmakers and aides, after Democrats complained Puerto Rico was not getting enough help and some fiscal hawks fretted about the overall cost. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;AFTER A SURPRISE DETOUR…PRESIDENT TRUMP Arrives in Palm Beach to Celebrations and Protests: “We are victorious” [Video];PRESIDENT TRUMP MADE A SURPRISE DETOUR ON HIS WAY TO AIR FORCE ONE TODAY President Trump stopped at Joint Base Andrews and greeted military service members and their families as he was en route to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.After landing at Joint Base Andrews, he exited Marine One and headed for an air terminal to greet approximately two dozen military service members were waiting along a fence line. The move was unexpected and the crowd had originally gathered to watch him leave Joint Base Andrews. While you were down here, I wanted to say hello, Trump said, according to a press pool report.He then proceeded to shake their hands as he wished them a Merry Christmas. After shaking hands, Trump then boarded Air Force One PRESIDENT TRUMP ARRIVES IN PALM BEACH:President Trump is in Florida for a well-deserved break over the Christmas holiday. This is President Trump s tenth visit to Palm Beach since he came to office last January.He arrived in Palm Beach at 1:35 p.m. Friday to celebrate the holidays with his family at Mar-a-Lago. This trip will be much shorter since he s scheduled to return to Washington, D.C. on new year s Day..@realDonaldTrump exiting Air Force One at PBIA. #TrumpInPalmBeach pic.twitter.com/ShB4OuCTQk George Bennett (@gbennettpost) December 22, 2017President Trump greeted supporters at the Palm Beach airport before he went on to Mar-a-Lago..@realDonaldTrump greeting supporters at PBIA. #TrumpInPalmBeach pic.twitter.com/NC9QBjg6s1 George Bennett (@gbennettpost) December 22, 2017Both supporters and protesters are standing along Southern Boulevard to watch the president s motorcade pass by.Rabbi Alan Sherman wearing a @realDonaldTrump yarmulke awaiting Air Force One arrival at PBIA. #TrumpInPalmBeach pic.twitter.com/glTUoKiQkO George Bennett (@gbennettpost) December 22, 2017The president s motorcade drove unusually slow along Southern Boulevard so he could wave to crowds on the street.Barbara Goff, with niece Savannah, said of @realDonaldTrump: I think he is a very smart and intelligent person. People don t like him and I don t know why. The protestors are awful just disgraceful to the people who are for him. #TrumpInPalmBeach pic.twitter.com/Fv71s9RRje Jorge Milian (@caneswatch) December 22, 2017Among supporters was a group of Orthodox Jews who made signs thanking Trump for commuting the prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, a former meatpacking executive convicted of bank fraud.Jewish pro-Trump group dancing and singing We are victorious outside Dreher Park. #TrumpInPalmBeach pic.twitter.com/RXE9WrBfh5 Jorge Milian (@caneswatch) December 22, 2017;politics;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Explosion outside Athens court shatters windows, no injuries;ATHENS (Reuters) - A makeshift bomb exploded outside a Greek court in Athens early on Friday shattering windows and damaging the facade of the building, police officials said. Shots were also fired at a person guarding the Athens Appeal Court building, Justice Minister Stavros Kontonis told state TV. The Justice Ministry suspended the court s operation for one day. There were no reports of injuries. Two Greek media organizations received warning calls at 2:50 a.m. (0050 GMT), before the explosion, one official said. Police, who had cordoned off the area, later found a bag which contained the makeshift bomb outside the building. Police were also investigating footage from cameras nearby, another official said, and reports of two people leaving the scene in a van. Small-scale attacks on businesses, state buildings, police and politicians are frequent in Greece, which has a long history of political violence. Public anger remains high after seven years of belt-tightening in a crisis that has cut thousands of jobs and eroded living standards Protesters have repeatedly tried to block foreclosure auctions of home at courts, a key condition of Greece s international bailout. Electronic auctions started in November. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Malaysian PM Najib says will use all means to fight Trump's Jerusalem move;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak vowed on Friday to use every means to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a tough stand likely to win him support among Muslim voters. Najib has been embroiled in a graft scandal over a state-run fund, and has faced unprecedented criticism from former ruling party stalwarts, making the support of members of the Muslim, ethnic Malay majority vital in a general election next year. We will continue to fight on this issue, using every available means, through political and diplomatic channels, through discussion and prayer, until one day, God willing, Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinian people, Najib told a rally of about 1,500 in the administrative capital of Putrajaya. He said he would not sacrifice the sanctity of Islam despite his friendship with Trump. Najib visited the White House in September. It is our first duty as Muslims to uphold the religion. If Jerusalem is a sacred land for Muslims, then it is upon us to free it from the grasps of Zionists, Najib said. Najib and his ruling party have been burnishing their Islamic credentials with the aim of boosting their chances in the general election, which must be held by mid-2018. About 60 percent of Malaysia s population is ethnic Malay Muslim, with most of the rest ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian. Najib, who did not mention the election in his speech at the rally, is hoping to win a third term despite the multi-billion dollar corruption scandal at 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) that has dogged his premiership for two years. U.S. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions this month described the scandal at the sovereign fund set up by Najib as the worst form of kleptocracy. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed several lawsuits to seize more than $1.7 billion in assets believed to have been stolen from 1MDB. Sessions did not identify any officials he thought were corrupt. Najib, who served as chairman of 1MDB s advisory board, has consistently denied any wrongdoing at the fund, and Malaysia s attorney-general has cleared him of any wrongdoing. The ruling party united behind Najib at a conference this month, letting him stand unopposed in a party leadership contest due next year. A rebounding economy and currency have also helped him improve his image. Four years ago, the ruling party crept back into power despite losing the popular vote and registering its worst ever election performance. This time, the challenge is coming from the veteran former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who gave up the premiership in 2003 after 22 years in power and had been Najib s mentor. Mahathir, the chairman of the opposition coalition, last week called Trump an international bully and a villain for his recognition of Jerusalem. Mahathir said on Twitter the Friday rally could only be meaningful if it results in the BN government acting against Donald Trump and the United States , referring to the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition. Malaysia was one of the 128 countries that defied Trump on Thursday and voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain will take a 'hard-headed' approach to Russia: May;LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain would take a hard headed approach to dealing with Russia ahead of a meeting between foreign minister Boris Johnson and his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Friday. We are aware of the activity that Russia has undertaken, the illegal annexation of Crimea, its continued activity in the Ukraine, also the action that it is taking in relation to disinformation elsewhere, she said in an interview with Sky News at an air base in Cyprus. (Johnson) will be speaking in a hard-headed way with the Russians about the concerns we have about their activity. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;As Republicans aim to ride economy to election victory, a warning from voters in key district; KING OF PRUSSIA, Pennsylvania/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the Fox & Hound sports bar, next to a shopping mall in suburban Philadelphia, four Democrats are giving speeches to potential voters as they begin their journey to try to unseat Republican congressman Pat Meehan in next year’s elections. Winning this congressional district - Pennsylvania’s 7th - is key to Democrats’ hopes of gaining the 24 seats they need to retake the U.S. House of Representatives next November. The stakes are high - control of the House would allow them to block President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. On the surface, Democrats face a significant hurdle. In nearly two-thirds of 34 Republican-held districts that are top of the party’s target list, household income or job growth, and often both, have risen faster than state and national averages over the past two years, according to a Reuters analysis of census data. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2Bgq29K) That is potentially vote-winning news for Republican incumbents, who in speeches and television ads can trumpet a strengthening economy as a product of Republican control of Washington, even though incomes and job growth began improving under former Democratic President Barack Obama. “The good economy is really the only positive keeping Republicans afloat,” said David Wasserman, a congressional analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report. Still, trumpeting the good economy may have limited impact among voters in competitive districts like this mostly white southeast region of Pennsylvania bordering Delaware and New Jersey, which has switched between both parties twice in the past 15 years. Many of the two dozen voters that Reuters interviewed in the 6th and 7th districts agreed the economy was strong, that jobs were returning and wages were growing. A handful were committed Republicans and Democrats who always vote the party line. About half voted for Meehan last year, but most of those said they were unsure whether they would vote for him again in 2018. Some said they were disappointed with the Republican Party’s handling of healthcare and tax reform as well as Trump’s erratic performance. About half also felt that despite an improving economy, living costs are squeezing the middle class. Drew McGinty, one of the Democratic hopefuls at the Fox & Hound bar hoping to unseat Meehan, said the good economic numbers were misleading. “When I talk to people across the district, I hear about stagnant wages. I hear about massive debt young people are getting when they finish college. There’s a lot out there not being told by the numbers,” he said. Still, Meehan, who won by 19 points in last November’s general election, is confident the strong economy will help him next year. He plans to run as a job creator and a champion of the middle class. “The first thing people look at is whether they have got a job and income,” Meehan said in a telephone interview. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton carried the district by more than two points in the White House race, giving Democrats some hope that they can peel it away from Republicans next November. Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said the election will essentially be a referendum on Trump. The economy might help Republicans, he said, but other issues will likely be uppermost in voters’ minds, like the Republican tax overhaul - which is seen by some as favoring the rich over the middle class - and Trump’s dismantling of President Barack Obama’s initiative to expand healthcare to millions of Americans, popularly known as Obamacare. Indeed, healthcare is Americans’ top concern, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month. Next is terrorism and then the economy. “Healthcare will be the No. 1 issue,” in the election, predicted Molly Sheehan, another Democrat running to unseat Meehan. Democrats have warned that dismantling Obamacare will leave millions of Americans without health coverage, and political analysts say Republicans in vulnerable districts could be punished by angry voters. Republicans argue that Obamacare drives up costs for consumers and interferes with personal medical decisions. In Broomall, a hamlet in the 7th District, local builder Greg Dulgerian, 55, said he voted for Trump and Meehan. He still likes Trump because of his image as a political outsider, but he is less certain about Meehan. “I’m busy, which is good,” Dulgerian said. “But I actually make less than I did 10 years ago, because my living costs and costs of materials have gone up.” Dulgerian said he was not sure what Meehan was doing to address this, and he was open to a Democratic candidate with a plan to help the middle class. Ida McCausland, 65, is a registered Republican but said she is disappointed with the party. She views the overhaul of the tax system as a giveaway to the rich that will hit the middle class. “I will probably just go Democrat,” she said. Still, others interviewed said the good economy was the most important issue for them and would vote for Meehan.     Mike Allard, 35, a stocks day trader, voted for Clinton last year but did not cast a ballot in the congressional vote. He thinks the economy will help Meehan next year and is leaning toward voting for him. “Local businesses like the way the economy is going right now,” he said. In the 7th district median household income jumped more than 10 percent from 2014 to 2016, from $78,000 to around $86,000, above the national average increase of 7.3 percent, while job growth held steady, the analysis of the census data shows. Overall, the U.S. economy has grown 3 percent in recent quarters, and some forecasters now think the stimulus from the Republican tax cuts will sustain that rate of growth through next year. Unemployment has dropped to 4.1 percent, a 17-year low. In midterm congressional elections, history shows that voters often focus on issues other than the economy. In 1966 the economy was thriving, but President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Democrats suffered a net loss of 47 seats, partly because of growing unhappiness with the Vietnam War. In 2006, again the economy was humming, but Republicans lost a net 31 seats in the House, as voters focused on the Iraq war and the unpopularity of Republican President George W. Bush. In 2010, despite pulling the economy out of a major recession, Democrats lost control of the House to Republicans, mainly because of the passage of Obamacare, which at the time was highly unpopular with many voters. “When times are bad, the election is almost always about the economy. When the economy is good, people have the freedom and the ability to worry about other issues,” said Stu Rothenberg, a veteran political analyst. ;politicsNews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian police seize record A$1 billion methamphetamine haul;SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police said on Friday they had seized a record 1.2 tonnes of methamphetamine with a street value of more than A$1 billion ($771 million) after a raid in a remote area of the west Australian coast. Eight Australian men were charged with offences carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, police in Western Australia state said in a statement. We are striking at the top end of drug trafficking before it gets further down the distribution chain, Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said. The drugs were collected from a ship called the Valkoista, police said, and were then offloaded into a white hire van at a dock in Geraldton, about 375 km (230 miles) north of the Western Australia capital, Perth. Tactical police intercepted the van as it reversed away from the dock. Police arrested the van s three occupants, all from the eastern Australian state of New South Wales. Three others were arrested on the Valkoista and the remaining two were charged in Perth. Police said they suspected the drugs were destined for Australia s more populous east coast. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish police arrest 15 senior military officers in Gulen probe: Anadolu;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police arrested 15 senior military officers in an investigation into the network of a U.S.-based cleric who Ankara accuses of orchestrating last year s attempted coup, state-run Anadolu news agency said on Friday. It said police were seeking one more officer in the operation, focused on the capital Ankara and spread across nine provinces, adding that 12 of the total 16 suspects were serving officers. Among the suspects were seven colonels and nine lieutenant colonels from Turkey s gendarmerie force, which maintains security in rural areas, the Hurriyet news website said. More than 50,000 people, including security personnel and civil servants, have been jailed pending trial in the aftermath of the failed putsch, which the government blames on Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen. He has denied involvement. Some 150,000 people have also been suspended or dismissed in a crackdown which rights groups say has been used as a pretext to muzzle dissent but which the government says has been necessary due to the security threats Turkey faces. Police operations targeting alleged followers of Gulen have been conducted on a near daily basis since the coup attempt in July 2016, and authorities issued arrest warrants for 44 teachers on Friday, Anadolu said. The suspects were former teachers at Gulen-linked schools which were previously closed by state decree, Anadolu said. Twenty-eight of the teachers were arrested so far. Schools linked to Gulen s network have been established across Asia, Africa and the United States and since the putsch, Turkey has asked countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan to close them down. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China tells U.S. not to be a 'human rights judge' after sanctions on Chinese official;BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Friday urged the United States not to set itself up as a human rights judge and denounced the U.S. Treasury Department for punishing a Chinese public security official for alleged rights abuses. Gao Yan was one of the targets of an executive order issued by U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday blocking the property of foreigners involved in human rights abuses. Gao had been in charge at Chaoyang Detention Centre in Beijing where a Chinese rights activist, Cao Shunli, was held and questioned prior to her death in hospital under police custody in March 2014. Rights groups say Cao was tortured and denied medical care. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing that China opposed the United States using sanctions to target other countries citizens based on their own domestic laws. We urge the United States to impartially and objectively look upon China s human rights development and to stop acting as a so-called human rights judge, she said, adding that China s police maintain public security in accordance with law. The head of the Russian republic of Chechnya and four other Russians and Chechens were also included on the list of individuals to be targeted under the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law which freezes the bank accounts of those targeted. Hong Kong-based group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement that they welcomed Gao being named, but that they regretted the inclusion of only a low-level Chinese official, calling for Fu Zhenghua, a deputy minister of public security, to also be included. Other higher-level police officials, who had command responsibility for Cao Shunli s death in custody and for other incidents of torture and human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, continue to enjoy impunity, they said. Beijing regularly rejects foreign criticism of its human rights record saying that its people are best placed to judge the rights situation in China and that the country is governed by law. President Xi Jinping has presided over a crackdown on rights activists and lawyers that has seen hundreds detained or jailed since 2015 in what advocacy groups have called an unprecedented attack on human rights in China. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan says president not connected to sanctioned businessman;JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudan denied on Friday that a businessman sanctioned by the United States was an adviser to President Salva Kiir, and said the decision to blacklist him was based on misleading information. Benjamin Bol Mel was among several individuals from different countries whom the United States placed under sanctions on Thursday. It said Mel had served as Kiir s principal financial adviser as well as his private secretary, and that ABMC Thai-South Sudan Construction Company Limited, of which Mel is president, was suspected of getting preferential treatment in government contracts. Ateny Wek Ateny, Kiir s spokesman, said the assertion that Mel had business ties with the president is not true , and also denied that there were any official relations between the two men. He is not an adviser to the president and he should be treated as an individual. Ateny said most of the information the United States used to blacklist South Sudan officials was misleading . South Sudan has been battered by a four-year civil war triggered by a disagreement between Kiir and his then-deputy, Riek Machar. The fighting has left tens of thousands dead, displaced about a quarter of the population and left the oil-dependent economy moribund. Rights activists have accused mostly government troops of killings, mass rapes, and looting and destroying property. Several serving or former South Sudanese officials are already under U.S. sanctions for alleged roles in the conflict, including Malek Reuben Riak Rengu, the army s deputy chief of the defense staff for logistics;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan closes 27 NGOs in what activists see as widening crackdown;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has ordered 27 international aid groups to shut down for working in unauthorized areas, spurring human rights campaigners to denounce swelling constraints on free speech and humanitarian work. The Ministry of Interior gave the 27 NGOs 90 days to conclude operations, according to a list seen by Reuters. Among those being expelled are Action Aid, World Vision, Plan International, Trocaire, Pathfinder International, Danish Refugee Council, George Soros Open Society Foundations, Oxfam Novib, and Marie Stopes. Talal Chaudhry, Pakistan s Minister of State for Interior Affairs, told Reuters the reason for shutting down the NGOs was because they were doing work in Pakistan which is beyond their mandate and for which they have no legal justification . He declined to give specific examples, but said the targeted NGOs spend all their money on administration, are not doing the work they said they were doing, and are working in areas where they were not authorized. The Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF), which represents 63 international aid groups, said the ministry had issued 11 of its members letters of rejection . All of them said they will appeal. No reason for the rejections have been provided, the forum said. Plan International, which has worked in Pakistan since 1997, said it is supporting over 1.6 million children across Pakistan. Plan said it was given no reason for the ministry s decision and would appeal it. The organization is hopeful that the appeals process will make it possible for its work with vulnerable and marginalized children, especially girls, to continue in Pakistan, it said in a statement. All the other NGOs on the list who responded to queries from Reuters also said they had been given no reason for being forced to shut down. They must be having reasons for every (NGO) and those reasons should have been shared with the organizations, said a representative from one NGO who declined to be identified. Chaudhry said the number of NGOs in the country ballooned after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Many organizations arrived to provide humanitarian assistance after Islamabad allied itself with the United States in what was then known as the global war on terror. But there were also a number of NGOs that are used, knowingly or unknowingly for activities that conflict with Pakistan s national interests, Chaudhry said, adding that registration procedures are commonplace in other countries. Pakistan has hardened its stance towards domestic and international NGOs in recent years, requiring them to undertake a painstaking registration process and clear multiple bureaucratic hurdles to continue working in the country. The Save the Children aid group fell afoul of the government in 2011, when it was linked to a Pakistani doctor recruited by the CIA to help in the hunt that led to the killing of al Qaeda militant leader Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad. In January, the interior ministry ordered a dozen domestic groups working on women s issues and human rights to halt operations, a move later overturned in courts. Pakistan is hardly alone in cracking down on foreign charities. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi s government has since 2014 tightened surveillance of non-profit groups, saying they were acting against India s national interests. Thousands of foreign-funded charities licenses have been canceled for misreporting donations. In China, a law that went into effect on Jan. 1 this year grants broad powers to police to question NGO workers, monitor their finances, regulate their work and shut down offices. The clampdown on NGOs has come after a number of activists disappeared this year, some of whom have not been heard from. Reuters estimates at least 14 people have been picked up and interrogated from major urban centers including journalists, political workers, and social media activists. Three members of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) have also disappeared in the past year, chairperson Mehdi Hasan told Reuters. Human rights campaigners say the crackdown on NGOs and disappearances of civil society activists are part of a wider campaign to quell free speech. They both signify the shrinking space for free expression and activism in Pakistan and the diminishing tolerance the Pakistan state has, Saroop Ijaz, a representative for the Pakistan chapter of Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. Yusuf, who formerly served as HRCP chairperson, said Pakistan feels it has impunity in dealing with rights groups and activists. Its the repositioning of Pakistan as a security state and perceiving all forms of dissent as a security challenge, Yusuf said. It s creating a lot of fear in society. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Addressing Venezuela, China says choice of path must be respected;BEIJING (Reuters) - A country s right to choose its own development path must be respected, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Venezuelan counterpart on Friday, offering support for the strife-torn Latin American nation. The OPEC member is locked in a deep political and economic crisis, with more than 125 people killed during months of opposition protests earlier this year, drawing condemnation from the United States and Europe. Meeting in Beijing, Wang told Jorge Arreaza that stability in Venezuela was not only in his own people s interests, it was also the common wish of the international community, including China, China s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. China wishes that Venezuela maintains its trend of returning to stability, and encourages the resolution of the problems that exist via dialogue and consultation within a legal framework, the ministry cited Wang as saying. Every country s right to go down a development path that accords with its national conditions should be respected, he added. China and oil-rich Venezuela have a close diplomatic and business relationship, especially in energy. China has repeatedly brushed off widespread condemnation from the United States, Europe and others about the situation in the country. Last month, China, along with Russia, Egypt and Bolivia, boycotted an informal public U.N. Security Council meeting on Venezuela organized by the United States. On Wednesday, Venezuela s pro-government legislative superbody ruled that parties which boycotted this month s local elections had lost legitimacy, potentially eliminating the main opposition groups from the 2018 presidential race. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;PM Orban: Hungary will block any punitive EU action on Poland;BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday said that Hungary sees a strong Poland as a vital component of a central European caucus within the European Union, and so will block any action to suspend Poland s voting rights in the EU. Orban said Poland, under fire from Brussels for its transformation of the judiciary, was being criticized unfairly and unjustly. He spelled out that Hungary would not subscribe to an attempt to invoke the EU s Article 7 sanction process. We need to make it clear to the EU that it is pointless even to start proceedings against Poland as there is no chance of seeing it through - because Hungary will be there and form an insurmountable road block, Orban said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hong Kong leader says she won't blindly obey Beijing's orders;HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said she would not blindly obey the orders of Communist Party leaders in Beijing, while admitting the government has no way to suppress skyrocketing prices in one of the most expensive property markets in the world. Lam was sworn in by Chinese President Xi Jinping in July as the former British colony celebrated 20 years of Chinese rule under the principle of one country, two systems , which promises the city a high degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in the mainland. While a recent poll shows the new chief executive is more popular than her predecessor, some accuse her of being a puppet of Beijing amid perceptions of Chinese meddling in Hong Kong s affairs. Specifically, they criticize her for pushing an arrangement that will allow Chinese officials to enforce Chinese laws in a high speed railway station due to open next year. Lam, in an interview with the government-funded RTHK, said she was accountable to both the Hong Kong public and Beijing, but she would not blindly obey the central authorities. Being accountable doesn t mean you have to do everything you re told, Lam said. So you can t say you ll do whatever the Central Government (says). If the Central Government asks me to do something that I think is beyond what Hong Kong people can bear or against Hong Kong s developmental interests, then of course I have the duty to tell the Central Government and fight for a more favorable arrangement for Hong Kong. Lam also said she did not plan to kickstart legislation for a controversial national security law in 2018, and urged people not to demonize it. Asked about Hong Kong s red-hot property market, where prices have shot up more than 12 percent over the past year and are expected to climb another 10 percent in 2018, Lam said the government was helpless in reversing the trend. The government really has no ways to curb property prices... The government has introduced a few rounds of cooling measures, but they did not suppress prices, and quite the contrary now some people say these measures have pushed up prices. The government s mixed bag of tax and regulatory policies, on top of eight rounds of mortgage tightening measures by the city s defacto central bank since 2009, has effectively locked up supply in the secondary housing market. Lam also said that while she has never promised to suppress property prices, she would seek more land to boost long-term housing supply. I ve never said I want to turn around the increase in property prices, because there are many factors contributing to that. But I want to turn around how supply falls short of demand, or, simply put, insufficient supply, Lam said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru president vowed to free Fujimori to win support: lawmaker;LIMA (Reuters) - A congresswoman in Peru said embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski survived a vote in Congress to oust him by promising some opposition lawmakers that he would pardon the country s jailed former authoritarian leader, Alberto Fujimori. Cecilia Chacon, a lawmaker with the opposition party Popular Force, said the 10 abstentions by a faction in her party had helped defeat its bid to oust Kuczynski in the wake of a graft scandal, and that some of them had mentioned the promise. That s what they told us, Chacon said in broadcast comments. Earlier on Thursday, Kuczynski s government denied it was negotiating a possible pardon for Fujimori in exchange for votes to save him. Kuczynski pulled off a surprise victory after the motion in Congress to oust him fell eight votes short of the 87 needed to pass. Fujimori is serving a 25-year prison sentence for graft and human rights crimes during his 1990-2000 government. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says new Trump security strategy seeks 'total subordination of whole world';SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump s new national security strategy unveiled this week is a criminal document that seeks the total subordination of the whole world to the interests of the U.S., North Korea s foreign ministry said on Friday. This has fully revealed that America first policy which the gang of Trump is crying out loudly about is nothing but the proclamation of aggression aimed at holding sway over the world according to its taste and at its own free will, a foreign ministry spokesman said, according to a statement released by state media outlet KCNA. In the document, announced on Monday, Trump said Washington had to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea s weapons programs. The U.N. Security Council is due to vote on Friday on a U.S.-drafted resolution that seeks, yet again, to toughen sanctions on North Korea in response to its latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch, diplomats said. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Germany hopes for improvement in Turkey ties after new prisoner release;BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Turkey s decision to release a sixth German citizen from jail on Thursday gave hope that relations between the two NATO allies could improve after plumbing new lows following a failed coup in 2016. The decision to allow pilgrim David Britsch to return to Germany follows the release earlier this week of German journalist Mesale Tolu after nearly eight months in prison. Decisions such as these give hope that we can rebuild trust step by step and relax the bilateral relationship, Gabriel said in a statement released late on Thursday. Gabriel said he had agreed with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu to continue talks given the difficult issues that still had to be resolved. Germany is home to some 3 million people of Turkish heritage. Following recent rulings in Turkey, six persons have now been released from prisons or allowed to leave, Gabriel said. And in the case of the imprisoned journalist Deniz Yucel, the Turkish judiciary has at least made the conditions for detention easier. The next urgent step here is the presentation of an indictment. The releases come two weeks after German federal prosecutors dropped an investigation against a dozen Muslim clerics who were suspected of spying in Germany on behalf of the Turkish government. Tolu was charged with being a member of a terrorist organization and publishing terrorist propaganda following the July 2016 coup. She was released on the condition that she does not leave the country. German politicians have been outspoken critics of Turkey s security crackdown since the coup. Tens of thousands of Turks have been jailed, including around a dozen who hold German citizenship. Ankara has criticized Berlin for not handing over asylum seekers it accuses of involvement in the failed coup. It says U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen was the mastermind of the coup, but Gulen denies involvement. ;worldnews;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“NEVER-TRUMPER” and Weekly Standard Editor Sends Vile Tweet Mocking VP Pence…Suggests Pence Has Replaced God With President Trump;The former Fox News contributor and editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, took to Twitter to appease his newfound liberal friends with a disgusting tweet, mocking devout Christian and genuine conservative, Vice President Mike Pence. Ever since President Trump won the election, Kristol and his never-Trump friends have become unhinged with hate for the President and for anyone he surrounds himself with. Yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise visit to the troops in war-torn Afghanistan to roll out President Trump s new fight to win policy.Pence addressed the troops at a Bagram Airfield hangar, telling them that before he made his trip, he asked president Trump what message he wanted to be delivered to the troops. Here is Pence s touching message to the troops from President Trump:Pence told the troops, Before I left the White House yesterday, I asked Trump if he had a message for our troops here in Afghanistan. And he looked at me and said, Tell them I love them. And he did.WATCH:Before I left the @WhiteHouse yesterday, I asked @POTUS Trump if he had a message for our troops here in Afghanistan. And he looked at me and said, Tell them I love them. pic.twitter.com/PO4F7Z5vOx Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) December 21, 2017 Never-Trumper and former frequent FOX News guest Bill Kristol mocked Vice President Mike Pence over his speech to our troops. Kristol wrote:And I, a mere humble and unworthy VP, gazed back into the kindly and understanding eyes of the great and glorious POTUS, and said, Thank you O POTUS! And thank you for letting us say once again, Merry Christmas! And I, a mere humble and unworthy VP, gazed back into the kindly and understanding eyes of the great and glorious POTUS, and said, Thank you O POTUS! And thank you for letting us say once again, Merry Christmas! https://t.co/RAQwmQk2Sq Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 22, 2017Little sad man, Bill Kristol, who was once respected by conservative Americans, has been reduced to retweeting glowing articles about himself published by liberal rag publications like The Slate to discuss where Republicans went awry, whether Palin abetted Trump s rise, and the costs of rationalization. NEW @IHaveToAskPod: @BillKristol talks about where Republicans went awry, whether Palin abetted Trump's rise, and the costs of rationalization. https://t.co/rEwacCUfZx Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) December 21, 2017 ;politics;22/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TRUMP RUFFLES FEATHERS With New And Bold Presidential “Challenge” Coin;Who knew that members of a presidential administration can have coins made to hand out. Challenge coins are given out and received by different people like first responders or the military . President Trump has the challenge coins he has received displayed in the Oval Office.Coin collector John Wertman shows his very gold Trump challenge coin:HOW THEY GOT THEIR START:Challenge coins got their start as military baubles bearing division insignia and presented by officers to troops for exemplary service. The moniker came from a tradition in which service members challenged one another to produce their coins. Those who did not have one had to buy a round of drinks.For two decades, the commander in chief has doled out distinguished-looking coins as personal mementos. Now, the presidential challenge coin has undergone a Trumpian transformation.The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump s signature. The eagle s head faces right, not left, as on the seal. The 13 arrows representing the original states have disappeared. And the national motto, E pluribus unum a Latin phrase that means Out of many, one is gone.Instead, both sides of the coin feature Trump s official campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. The aide said the president, whose real estate properties are known for their gilded displays of wealth and status, was personally involved in redesigning the coin. Trump, who also had a hand in creating his famous red campaign hat, wanted to weigh in on it, the aide said. It s beautifully made. FEATHERS RUFFLED: Ethics experts are all aflutter because President Trump used his political slogan on the coin: For the commander in chief to give a political token with a campaign slogan on it to military officers would violate the important principle of separating the military from politics, as well as diminishing the tradition of the coin. There is also dispute about who pays for the coins. As it turns out, the Republican Party is paying for the coins.Yes, the coin is very gold and big but it is Trump s style. It s interesting to note the coins of Obama and Trump reflect each president.Read more: Boston Globe;politics;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: SUSPECTED LEAKER and “Close Confidant” of James Comey Has Been Reassigned From His Post As TOP FBI Lawyer [VIDEO];On December 5, 2017, Circa s Sara Carter warned there would be a major shake-up at the FBI after the Inspector General s report was completed. So far, Sara Carter has been right on everything she s reported on, as it relates to the Mueller investigation. In the video below, Carter tells Sean Hannity why she believes the FBI will have a major shake-up soon there are 27 leakers that the IG is looking at! Yes, 27 leakers!Sara Carter: We re going to see parts of that report before December (end of the month). We re going to see other parts of his report coming out after January. And they re looking at Peter Strzok. They re looking at Comey. They re looking at 27 leakers. It would not surprise me if there was a shake-up at the FBI and a housecleaning.Watch:Is the FBI s former top attorney, James Baker, one of the first leaker casualties? James Baker, the FBI s leading lawyer who was a confidante of fired FBI Director James Comey, has been reassigned from his post, as the agency s top personnel are under high scrutiny.Baker told colleagues he will assume different duties for the bureau, the Washington Post reported.Baker oversees the bureau s Office of General Counsel and has received such awards as the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in counter-terrorism in 2006.He also was the subject of a leak investigation over the summer after Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a crackdown on leakers.The FBI had no comment when asked why Baker was being reassigned and what he would be doing.His reassignment comes at a time of increased scrutiny and pressure on the agency, following the release of private text messages between agents working in the Hillary Clinton email probe. Daily Mail Three sources, with knowledge of the investigation, told Circa that Baker is the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation, but Circa has not been able to confirm the details of what national security information or material was allegedly leaked.A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of ongoing internal investigations in the bureau told Circa, the bureau is scouring for leakers and there s been a lot of investigations. The revelation comes as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to contain leaks both within the White House and within its own national security apparatus.Baker is a close confidant of former FBI Director James Comey, and recent media reports suggested he was reportedly advising the then-FBI director on legal matters following private meetings the former director had in February with President Trump in the Oval Office.Baker was appointed to the FBI s general counsel by Comey in 2014 and has had a long and distinguished history within the intelligence community.;left-news;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru opposition leader skeptical president's victory will last;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski s political troubles will likely continue despite his surprise victory over a bid in Congress to oust him this week, a key opposition leader said on Saturday, citing ongoing graft probes and opposing demands from allies. Jose Chlimper, secretary general of the right-wing Popular Force, said his party could eventually emerge stronger from this week s political crisis, despite failing to garner enough votes in the 130-member Congress to remove Kuczynski from office. For us having 71 lawmakers was an asset but also a liability. Because whatever Congress did was our fault, Chlimper told Reuters in a rare interview. The party, which grew out of the populist movement of imprisoned ex-president Alberto Fujimori, sought to remove Kuczynski from office this week over business links he once denied having to a company at the center of a massive graft scandal. Ten Popular Force lawmakers broke ranks to keep a presidential vacancy motion from succeeding. Chlimper called the defections a painful betrayal but said the rest of Popular Force lawmakers have reaffirmed their commitment to staying in the party and voting as a bloc. Kuczynski, on the other hand, could see the cross-party alliance that defended him this week evaporate going forward, said Chlimper. I don t see how he can come out stronger, he said. Chlimper said Kuczynski lured the rebel Popular Force lawmakers with a promise to free their movement s political leader, Fujimori, from prison - an accusation denied by Kuczynski s government. The dissident faction was led by Fujimori s youngest son, Kenji, who has challenged his sister Keiko s leadership of their father s following and who could receive a boost if the once-popular patriarch is released from prison. Kuczynski would lose the support of Fujimori s left-leaning foes if he makes good on the deal to secure the elder Fujimori s release, said Chlimper. In coming days, the left may have achieved what Fujimori s supporters have been unable to: a pardon for Fujimori, Chlimper said. At the same time, ongoing probes in Congress and in the attorney general s and comptroller s offices threaten to implicate Kuczynski in new allegations of wrongdoing, he added. His allies are going to have to explain themselves for the documents that will keep coming out, said Chlimper. This isn t a picture. It s a video. And we re going to keep seeing the scenery change in coming weeks and months, Chlimper said. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy's ruling PD slides further in polls as election nears;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s ruling Democratic Party (PD), hit by internal divisions and a banking scandal, is continuing to slide in opinion polls, with a new survey on Saturday putting it more than six points behind the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The survey by the Ixe agency, commissioned by Huffington Post Italia, comes just days before parliament is expected to be dissolved to make way for elections in March. It gives the center-left PD just 22.8 percent of voter support, down almost five points in the last two months, compared with 29.0 percent for 5-Star, which has gained almost two points in the same period. Silvio Berlusconi s center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy!) is given 16.2 percent, with its right-wing allies the Northern League and Brothers of Italy on 12.1 percent and 5.0 percent respectively. This bloc is expected to win most seats at the election but not enough for an absolute majority, resulting in a hung parliament. With the PD s support eroding in virtually all opinion polls, several political commentators have speculated that its leader Matteo Renzi may choose or be forced to announce he will not be the party s candidate for prime minister at the election. Renzi has given no indication so far he will take this step. The PD has split under his leadership, with critics complaining he has dragged the traditionally center-left party to the right. Breakaway groups united this month to form a new left-wing party called Free and Equal (LeU), which now has 7.3 percent of support, according to Ixe. The PD s popularity seems to have also been hurt by a parliamentary commission looking into the collapse of 10 Italian banks in the past two years. The commission s findings have put the PD on the defensive, allowing the opposition to claim a conflict of interest involving one of Renzi s closest allies who was active in trying to save a bank where her father was a board member. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Companies have up to a year for new U.S. tax bill reporting: SEC;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. financial regulators said on Friday that because the new tax bill could make timely financial reporting difficult, public companies can make reasonable estimates when uncertain of the impact of the new tax law in financial reports, and will have up to a year to report final numbers. The Securities and Exchange Commission bulletin comes after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned on Thursday that some U.S. listed companies may struggle to file their annual financial reports on time because the Republican-led overhaul of the country’s tax system may prompt a raft of additional disclosures. In a statement on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TJCA) issued on Friday, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and Commissioners Kara Stein and Michael Piwowar said guidance was similar to that given in the past when tax law changes affected financial reporting. The $1.5 trillion tax bill, signed into law on Friday by U.S. President Donald Trump, will significantly affect many companies’ year-end financial statements because listing rules oblige them to flag any potential material risks or changes to their operations and financial outlook to shareholders. The bill significantly lowers the income tax rate for U.S. companies - to 21 percent from 35 percent - allows them to repatriate cash from overseas, and modifies numerous deductions, among other changes. Public companies have been given a “measurement period” to study the changes created by a new law. During the measurement period, the SEC expects companies to complete their accounting and that “in no circumstances should the measurement period extend beyond one year from the enactment date,” of the TJCA. Companies will also need to make disclosures during the measurement period, including any updates to provisional amounts given earlier, or newly discovered reporting implications from tax bill. For companies with fiscal years ending Dec. 31, getting the necessary analysis done in time could be tough, the Chamber said. The tax bill It is the largest such overhaul since the 1980. In addition to slashing the corporate rate, it temporarily reduces the tax burden for most individuals. ;politicsNews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron: France ready to strengthen force in Sahel fighting Islamists;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday France stood ready if needed to strengthen its military force fighting alongside African troops against Islamist insurgents in the Sahel. France has been seeking to eventually withdraw from the poorly policed scrublands of the Sahel region - which abuts the Sahara to the north and has become a recruiting and training ground for Islamist militants - with the help of a new regional African force. The G5 Sahel, which began official operations in November, is made up of troops from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania that will patrol the region in collaboration with 4,000 French troops deployed there since intervening in 2013 to quell an insurgency in northern Mali. But Macron said on a visit to the Niger capital Niamey that the Sahel would remain a focus for the French army, should it be required in the future. France is ready, not only to maintain, but if necessary to strengthen its engagement in the region because the fight against terrorism in the Sahel is essential, in my opinion, he said during a joint news conference with his Nigerien counterpart Mahamoudou Issoufou. The fight is not won today ... it is essential not only to maintain but to further improve our agility on the ground, to innovate more and to focus our priorities on the regions identified as the most vulnerable, he added. Speaking during his visit to Niger, Macron also announced an additional 10 million euros to help educate girls, one of the priorities promoted by President Issoufou to curb migration. This sum is on top of 15 million euros already invested by France to help education in Niger. Paris pledged in mid-December to spend 400 million euros over 2017-2021 to support Niamey. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Congo Republic signs peace accord with 'Ninja' rebels;BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - The government of Congo Republic on Saturday agreed a ceasefire with rebels in the southeast region of Pool, halting a 15-year conflict that rights groups say has cost dozens of lives and forced tens of thousands to flee. Political violence spiked in the Central African oil producer after a contested presidential election in April 2016 was won by President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who has ruled for 33 of the last 38 years. A militia led by Frederic Bintsamou, better known as Pastor Ntumi, which fought Sassou Nguesso during and after a 1997 civil war, has been blamed by the government for deadly raids on police, military and government bases, and has also halted trade through the Pool region with blockades. In return, the government has bombed the Pool region, including one helicopter raid last year on a residential area that Amnesty International said killed at least 30 people. The unrest has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes and sparked allegations from human rights groups of abuse by government troops. Ntumi s so-called Ninja rebels have clashed with the Congo government since 2002 and have long sought an end to government military intervention in the Pool region. The peace agreement between the two sides was signed by Interior Ministry security advisor Fran ois Nd and Pastor Ntumi s representative, Jean Gustave Ntondo. Today is a great day for the Congolese. This is the day we have just signed the cessation of hostilities agreement, said Ntondo. Under the deal, the militias have agreed to hand over arms and allow the free movement of trade between the capital Brazzaville and the commercial hub of Pointe Noire. During hostilities, trains and cars were often halted by militias. The government will oversee a commission that will monitor the peace, and loosen security in the region to allow people to travel to and from their family homes. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: SUSPECTED LEAKER and “Close Confidant” of James Comey Has Been Reassigned From His Post As TOP FBI Lawyer [VIDEO];On December 5, 2017, Circa s Sara Carter warned there would be a major shake-up at the FBI after the Inspector General s report was completed. So far, Sara Carter has been right on everything she s reported on, as it relates to the Mueller investigation. In the video below, Carter tells Sean Hannity why she believes the FBI will have a major shake-up soon there are 27 leakers that the IG is looking at! Yes, 27 leakers!Sara Carter: We re going to see parts of that report before December (end of the month). We re going to see other parts of his report coming out after January. And they re looking at Peter Strzok. They re looking at Comey. They re looking at 27 leakers. It would not surprise me if there was a shake-up at the FBI and a housecleaning.Watch:Is the FBI s former top attorney, James Baker, one of the first leaker casualties? James Baker, the FBI s leading lawyer who was a confidante of fired FBI Director James Comey, has been reassigned from his post, as the agency s top personnel are under high scrutiny.Baker told colleagues he will assume different duties for the bureau, the Washington Post reported.Baker oversees the bureau s Office of General Counsel and has received such awards as the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in counter-terrorism in 2006.He also was the subject of a leak investigation over the summer after Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a crackdown on leakers.The FBI had no comment when asked why Baker was being reassigned and what he would be doing.His reassignment comes at a time of increased scrutiny and pressure on the agency, following the release of private text messages between agents working in the Hillary Clinton email probe. Daily Mail Three sources, with knowledge of the investigation, told Circa that Baker is the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation, but Circa has not been able to confirm the details of what national security information or material was allegedly leaked.A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of ongoing internal investigations in the bureau told Circa, the bureau is scouring for leakers and there s been a lot of investigations. The revelation comes as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to contain leaks both within the White House and within its own national security apparatus.Baker is a close confidant of former FBI Director James Comey, and recent media reports suggested he was reportedly advising the then-FBI director on legal matters following private meetings the former director had in February with President Trump in the Oval Office.Baker was appointed to the FBI s general counsel by Comey in 2014 and has had a long and distinguished history within the intelligence community.;politics;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's ruling party seeks Putin's 'ultimate victory' at 2018 election;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia s ruling party United Russia wants the ultimate victory of President Vladimir Putin at the presidential election in March, party head and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday. Putin, 65, said earlier this month he would run for re-election as a self-nominated candidate, in a contest he seems sure to win comfortably, extending his grip on power into a third decade. Speaking at an annual gathering of United Russia, Medvedev said the party was Putin s party, and his key political resource. Medvedev promised it would support Putin in the election, which is scheduled for March 18. We will give you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, all possible support, now and in the future, said Medvedev, addressing Putin by his first and patronymic names. Putin has been in power since 2000 either as president or prime minister. If he wins what would be a fourth presidential term, he will be eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Putin thanked Medvedev for the support and announced some goals for the future, such as higher economic growth and better healthcare. We need to achieve a long-range steady increase in real incomes of citizens, to increase pensions and social support, he said. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING: FBI ARREST STOPS Horrific San Francisco “MASS CASUALTY” Christmas Day Attack By MUSLIM, Truck Driver and Former Marine Sharpshooter;Truck attacks are becoming increasingly popular with Muslim extremists as a way to threaten large groups of people in popular areas. Meanwhile, the US Appeals Court has just ruled President Trump s travel ban violates federal law and goes beyond the scope of his delegated authority. The ban, which targets people from six Muslim-majority countries, should not be applied to people with strong US connections, the court said.Breitbart News The FBI announced on Friday that it arrested California tow truck driver Everitt Aaron Jameson for plotting a Christmas terror attack on Pier 39 in San Francisco.In statements to undercover informants, Jameson outlined a plan that would have involved running civilians down with his truck, deploying improvised explosives, and using his skills as a Marine sharpshooter to increase the body count. A note he evidently intended for publication after the attack swore allegiance to ISIS and cited President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a reason for his actions.FBI documents state that Jameson planned to use his tow truck for a mass-casualty attack on Pier 39 because he had been there before and knew it was a heavily crowded area. He reportedly said Christmas would be the perfect day to commit the attack. I m glad to know we Muslims are finally hitting back. Allahu Akbar! The kuffar deserve everything and more [for] the lives they have taken, he allegedly told an FBI informant after the November 2 truck jihad attack in New York City, which killed eight people. Allahu akbar! It says he was one of us. May Allah grant him Jannah firtuidus Amin, he said of New York City truck terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, indicating that he hoped Saipov would enter paradise as a reward for attacking the infidels.Jameson also reportedly spoke approvingly of the attack on a Christmas party by a husband-and-wife jihadi team in San Bernardino in December 2015 and suggested his operation would include vehicles, explosives, and firearms. He told an undercover agent that America needed another attack like New York or San Bernardino. Communicating with FBI assets he believed were representatives of the Islamic State, Jameson advertised himself as a military veteran and offered to put his skills at the service of the caliphate. In a meeting with undercover informants, he added that he was well versed in the Anarchist Cookbook, a manual for making bombs and other implements of terrorism. He also offered financial assistance to ISIS, offered to travel to Syria if needed, and said he was ready to die for the cause. He demonstrated fluency in spoken Arabic during a telephone call. I was a soldier in the kuffar army before I reverted, he said. I have been trained in combat and things of war. Inshallah, anything of that nature, as well as funding. Anything for Allah. The FBI confirmed that Jameson attended U.S. Marine Corps basic training and earned a sharpshooter rifle qualification. He was eventually discharged for fraudulent enlistment, apparently because he failed to disclose a history of asthma to the recruiters.When the undercover FBI operatives asked what he needed for the attack, Jameson outlined an ambitious plan involving M-16 and/or AK-47 rifles, timers, remote detonators, and pipe bomb materials.When a search warrant was executed at Jameson s residence in Modesto, a number of pistols, rifles, and ammunition were confiscated, along with his last will and testament and a handwritten letter he signed as Abdallah abu Everitt ibn Gordon al-Amriki. The letter was evidently meant to be published after he carried out his terror attack. It reads:I, Abdallah adu Everitt ibn Gordon, have committed these acts upon the Kuffar, in the name of Dar al Islam, Allahu Akbar! You all have brought this upon yourselves. There is no innocent Kuffar! Each and every Kuffar in this Nationalistic, Godless society has a hand in this. You ve allowed Donald J. Trump to give away Al Quds to the Jews. Both You and he are wrong, it belongs to the Muslemeen. We have penetrated and infiltrated your disgusting country. These Acts will continue until the Lions of Islam overtake you. Turn to Allah, make tawbah and fight with us, the soldiers who fight in the day and the night. Allah SWT is most forgiving. I am not. Long live Isil, Long Live Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Allahu akbar!Dar al Islam means the house of Islam. Kuffar is a derogatory term for non-Muslims. Al Quds is an Arabic name for Jerusalem. Muslemeen is another way of saying Muslim Tawbah means repent. Allah SWT is a shorthand way of saying Allah the most glorious and exalted. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the caliph or leader of the Islamic State.According to the FBI, Jameson was a voracious consumer of Islamic State propaganda online, and wrote numerous social media posts that are supportive of terrorism. ;left-news;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian communists drop veteran, select surprise candidate to challenge Putin;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Communist Party on Saturday unexpectedly dropped its veteran leader Gennady Zyuganov as its presidential candidate to challenge President Vladimir Putin next year, choosing instead a largely unknown businessman with links to the farm sector. Zyuganov, 73, an evergreen of the post-Soviet political scene, had been widely expected to contest his sixth consecutive presidential election next March. But instead the party picked Pavel Grudinin, 57, a mechanical engineer who has run a farm on the outskirts of Moscow since the mid-1990s, as its candidate to take on Putin in an election which the 65-year-old Kremlin leader is expected to win comfortably. Zyuganov congratulated Grudinin on his nomination at an annual gathering of the party on Saturday, the Communist Party said on its website. By ditching one of the communist old guard as candidate and choosing someone from a new generation, the party appeared to be attempting to widen its political appeal. Its main support base has been from an age group that is fast disappearing. Speaking at the meeting where Grudinin was nominated, Zyuganov said voter apathy, which many independent analysts say is on the rise, was now Russia s biggest misfortune . The communists came second after the ruling party United Russia, which backs Putin, in parliamentary elections in 2016 - but winning only 19.2 percent of the vote. Separately on Saturday, United Russia pledged its full support for Putin in what is expected to be a one-sided presidential contest. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macedonia's largest opposition party appoints new leader;SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonia s main opposition party, the rightist VMRO-DPMNE formally replaced its leader Nikola Gruevski on Saturday and appointed Hristijan Mickoski, a technocrat, as his successor. Gruevski, 47, resigned earlier this month following an election defeat last year and unrest that rocked the small Balkan country in April. In his speech to the party s convention on Saturday, Gruevski said that a key reason for VMRO-DPMNE s fall from power was his refusal to yield to what he described as international and domestic pressure to accept a compromise in a dispute with Greece. Macedonia, which won independence in 1991 from then-federal Yugoslavia, has made little progress towards EU and NATO membership due to a long-running dispute with Greece which claims Macedonia s name represents a territorial claim to its province with the same name. We wanted a fair compromise and a name solution, but not under dictate, Gruevski said. Gruevski s successor Mickoski, 41, a relative novice in politics, became VMRO-DPMNE Secretary General earlier this year. He served in Gruevski s government as the general manager of ELEM, Macedonia s state-owned power plants managing company. (This story corrects spelling to Mickoski in paras 1 and 6.) ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: PRESIDENT TRUMP BLASTS “Retiring” FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and “’Leakin’ James Comey” After JUDICIAL WATCH Uncovers A McCabe Bombshell;After Judicial Watch exposed a serious ethics issue related to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe s involvement in his Democrat wife s VA Senate campaign, President Trump just took to Twitter to expose FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, calling him: The man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (33,000 illegally deleted emails) Trump seemed to be stunned that McCabe could be given $7000,000 for wife s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? into her emails.How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017President Trump then tweeted:FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017Judicial Watch today released 79 pages of Justice Department documents concerning ethics issues related to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe s involvement with his wife s political campaign. The documents include an email showing Mrs. McCabe was recruited for a Virginia state senate race in February 2015 by then-Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam s office.The news that Clinton used a private email server broke five days later, on March 2, 2015. Five days after that, former Clinton Foundation board member and Democrat party fundraiser, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, met with the McCabes. She announced her candidacy on March 12. Soon afterward, Clinton/McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated nearly $700,000 (40% of the campaign s total funds) to McCabe s wife for her campaign.Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a July 24, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to an October 24, 2016, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-01494)). Judicial Watch seeks:All records of communication between FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and other FBI or Department of Justice officials regarding ethical issues concerning the involvement of Andrew McCabe and/or his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, in political campaigns;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Fujimori taken to hospital from prison, life at risk: doctor;LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s former President Alberto Fujimori was rushed from prison to a local hospital by ambulance late on Saturday after suffering a severe drop in blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythm that put him at risk of dying, Fujimori s doctor said. Cardiologists recommended that he be removed from prison immediately, Alejandro Aguinaga said. It looks complicated, he told journalists gathered outside the hospital. Fujimori, 79, is serving a 25-year sentence for graft and human rights crimes. He is a deeply divisive figure in Peru. While many consider him a corrupt dictator, others credit him with ending an economic crisis and bloody leftist insurgency during his 1990-2000 term. The medical emergency will likely heap pressure on center-right President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to free the former leader, a move that could rewrite political alliances and spark protests in one of Latin America s most stable economies. Three days earlier, a faction of Fujimori s supporters in Congress unexpectedly saved Kuczynski from a motion that would have forced him from office less than two years into his five-year-term. The opposition said Kuczynski only survived the vote by promising 10 lawmakers that he would free Fujimori if they backed him. Kuczynski s government denies the allegations. Fujimori fled Peru for his parent s native Japan as his government imploded in a graft scandal at the turn of the century. He was eventually extradited to Peru and was convicted for leading death squads that massacred civilians. Despite Fujimori s downfall, the rightwing populist movement Fujimori started in the 1990s remains one of the country s most potent political forces. His two adult children, Keiko and Kenji, lead rival factions of the rightwing party, Popular Force, that controls a majority of seats in Congress and pushed to oust Kuczynski this week. Over the past year, Kenji has challenged his sister Keiko s leadership and he has led calls for his release, which could give him a boost if he is freed. TV images showed Kenji, who led the faction that backed Kuczynski, riding in the ambulance that drove Fujimori to the Peruvian-Japanese Centenario Clinic for treatment. If a (presidential) pardon happens now, it s because there was a pact, Congresswoman Marisa Glave said on Twitter. A pardon can t be decided in an under-the-table deal. Glave is one of about 10 leftist lawmakers who - despite criticizing Kuczynski as a lobbyist - opted not to support the bid to oust him out of fear it would empower Popular Force. Fujimori s well-organized foes were key to Kuczynski s razor-thin victory over Keiko in last year s presidential election, and to keeping Keiko s followers from ousting him this week. Fujimori s supporters dismissed suggestions that his health troubles were a ruse to pave the way for a pardon. There s no circus, Luisa Maria Cuculiza, a former ruling party lawmaker during his government, said on local broadcaster RPP. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Aardvark dies in blaze at London Zoo, meerkats missing;LONDON (Reuters) - An aardvark was killed and four meerkats are missing believed dead after a blaze tore through part of London Zoo early on Saturday, destroying a cafe and gift shop. The fire broke out shortly after 0600 GMT at the zoo s Animal Adventure section before spreading to the shop and cafe, near to an area where visitors can handle and feed animals, the zoo and London Fire Brigade said. More than 70 firefighters took three hours to bring the fire under control while desperate keepers who live on the site in Regent s Park in central London moved animals to safety. Some of the staff needed treatment for smoke inhalation and shock. Ten-year-old Misha the aardvark, one of the zoo s best-loved animals, perished in the fire and four of the meerkats were unaccounted for and are also presumed to have died. Taking their name from the Afrikaans word for earth-pig , aardvarks are large burrowing mammals found across much of Africa. We re absolutely devastated that Misha the aardvark has been killed and we re still trying to find out what happened to the meerkats, but at the moment the site where this fire took place is closed down, Dominic Jermey, the zoo s Director General, told BBC TV. At the moment we re not certain what has happened to the meerkats but I m not optimistic at this stage, unfortunately. Other animals nearby are being monitored by vets, but the zoo said indications were that they were unaffected. It said it hoped to reopen on Sunday. It is the world s oldest scientific zoo, dating from 1826, and houses 20,166 animals, according to its inventory for 2017. The fire brigade said it had sent 10 fire engines and 72 firefighters to the scene and added that the cause of the blaze was under investigation. The fire mainly involved the cafe and shop but part of a nearby animal petting area was also affected, said Station Manager David George. When they arrived our crews were faced with a very well developed fire. They worked incredibly hard in arduous conditions to bring it under control as quickly as possible and to stop it from spreading to neighboring animal enclosures. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Moscow: U.S. arms may spur use of force by Kiev in eastern Ukraine;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The U.S. decision to supply weapons to Ukraine is dangerous as it will encourage Kiev to use force in eastern Ukraine, Russian officials said on Saturday. The U.S. State Department said on Friday the United States would provide Ukraine with enhanced defensive capabilities as Kiev battles Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the weapons included Javelin anti-tank missiles. Washington has argued in the past that such weapons would help stabilize the situation and cannot effectively be used to take territory. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Facebook on Saturday the weapons would be used to protect Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Supplies of any weapons now encourage those who support the conflict in Ukraine to use the force scenario, Russia s RIA state news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as saying on Saturday. Franz Klintsevich, a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament s security committee, said Kiev would consider arms supplies as support of its actions, Interfax news agency reported. Americans, in fact, directly push Ukrainian forces to war, Klintsevich said. Since Moscow s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine and Russia have been at loggerheads over a war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 10,000 people in three years. Poroshenko said in his Facebook post that he had confirmed the weapons deal with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, calling it a transatlantic vaccination against the Russian virus of aggression. American weapons in the hands of Ukrainian soldiers are not for offensive, but for stronger rebuff of the aggressor, protection of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, as well as for effective self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Poroshenko said. Kiev accuses Moscow of sending troops and heavy weapons to the region, which Russia denies. The Russian foreign ministry said the U.S. decision once again undermines the Minsk agreements, TASS state news agency reported on Saturday. The agreements, intended to end the fighting in Ukraine, were signed by Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France in the Belarussian capital in early 2015. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China punishes over 8,000 people for misuse of government funds: Xinhua;SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has punished 8,123 people for committing fiscal violations after an audit of how the government s 2016 central budget was spent revealed multiple problems, the Xinhua state news agency reported. Hu Zejun, head of the National Audit Office, announced the infringements while briefing lawmakers on Saturday, Xinhua said. A broad anti-graft campaign in China, aimed at rooting out deep-seated corruption in the ruling Communist Party, including the misuse or embezzlement of government funds, has ensnared more than 1.3 million officials. Hu said that of the offenders, 970 were punished for misusing funds earmarked for a poverty relief campaign intended to lift everyone in rural areas out of poverty by 2020. Another 1,363 were punished for irregularities in the use of funds meant to provide affordable housing, she said. She said 800 people in state-owned enterprises and 73 people in eight major banks were found to have committed violations, along with 505 people who were punished for malpractice involving medical insurance funds. Hu also said about 48 billion yuan ($7.30 billion) of the funds earmarked for affordable housing projects had been left unused for more than year, she said, while another 1.37 billion yuan of misused funds were recovered. The unused affordable housing funds had since been put to use, she said. Hu gave no details of what punishment the violators faced. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel frees three Turks arrested amid Jerusalem unrest;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli court on Saturday freed without charge three Turks who had been arrested on suspicion of assaulting police outside a Jerusalem holy site contested by Jews and Muslims, a police spokesman said. The men - described by police as tourists - were taken into custody on Friday, as Israel confronted a weekly surge in protests against U.S. President Donald Trump s Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. Bystander video appeared to show Israeli police detaining several fez-wearing men and boys in the walled Old City of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want as capital of their own future state. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the three Turks had tried to reach Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam s third-most important shrine, where they planned on taking part in a demonstration . Jews revere the site as the vestige of their two ancient temples, and sometimes visit under the protection of Israeli police who also guard the compound entrances - a presence resented by many Palestinians. Rosenfeld said the three Turks carried out an assault on police officers there . He did not elaborate on the circumstances, other than to say there were no casualties. Brought before Jerusalem Magistrate s Court on Saturday, the men did not speak from the dock. Two of them flashed four-finger hand gestures that appeared to be the so-called Rabia sign of solidarity with Egypt s ousted Muslim Brotherhood. The Turks Israeli defense lawyer, Nick Kaufman, said police asked the court to keep them in custody so charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest could be brought. It was obvious that this was a politically charged case and the judge rightly released them, Kaufman told Reuters. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Let me come back, Catalan leader tells Spain;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Catalonia s separatist leader Carles Puigdemont called on Spain s government on Saturday to allow him to return home in time for the opening session of the Catalan parliament so that he can become the region s next president. Puigdemont, who ruled in Catalonia until October and faces arrest in Spain for his role in organizing an illegal referendum on independence and proclaiming a Catalan republic, is currently in self-imposed exile in Belgium. Separatist parties secured a parliamentary majority in a regional election on Thursday, though it is still unclear whether Puigdemont and other jailed leaders of the movement will be able to attend assembly sessions. I want to come back to Catalonia as soon as possible. I would like to come back right now. It would be good news for Spain, Puigdemont told Reuters in an interview. Asked if he would be back in time for the opening session which has to take place at the latest on January 23, he said: It would be natural. If I am not allowed to be sworn in as president, it would be a major abnormality for the Spanish democratic system. I am the president of the regional government and I will remain the president if the Spanish state respects the results of the vote, he also said. Puigdemont, who has called for dialogue with the Spanish government to resolve the current tensions between the turbulent region and the authorities in Madrid, said he was ready to listen to any proposal from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy even if this offer fell short of an offer of independence. If the Spanish state has a proposal for Catalonia, we should listen, Puigdemont said, asking for a dialogue of equals. Rajoy on Friday said he was open to dialogue but implicitly rejected Puigdemont s demand to meet soon, saying he would talk with whoever was Catalonia s president only once they have been elected by the new regional parliament. Before that, his first interlocutor should be Ines Arrimadas, whose centrist, anti-independence party scored most votes on Thursday, he said. Arrimadas does not have enough seats or allies to form a government, while separatist parties put together have a narrow majority. Past calls for dialogue on both the separatist and unionist side in the past have failed to yield concrete results and the crisis is likely to keep haunting Madrid, as well as EU leaders, for a long time. Negotiations to form a government in Catalonia are likely to open after Jan. 6 following the holiday break. Parliament must vote by Feb. 8 on putting a new government into place. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar, accused of crackdown, invited to U.S.-Thai military exercise;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Myanmar military, which has been accused of ethnic cleansing against the country s Muslim Rohingya minority, has been invited back as an observer in a major multinational military exercise next year led by the United States and Thailand. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters that Thailand had invited Myanmar to take part in the annual Cobra Gold exercise, which involves thousands of U.S and Thai military personnel and participants from other Asian countries. Myanmar had been invited to observe the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief portion of the exercise, Logan said. A senior officer at the Directorate of Joint Intelligence of the Royal Thai Armed Forces told Reuters it was unclear whether Myanmar had accepted the invitation but Thailand was eager for them to join. Asked why Thailand decided to invite Myanmar despite concerns over the crackdown against the Rohingya and whether this issue was part of their deliberations, the official said: That never came up in the discussions. We separated that issue (the Rohingya). We focus on training, on education, on military cooperation. That is our wish, to have Myanmar involved. That is politics. We are soldiers. This is a military exercise, added the official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The Myanmar military did not respond to several requests for comment. When asked whether the U.S. military had attempted to apply pressure on Thailand not to invite Myanmar because of the international condemnation of its crackdown, the Pentagon declined to comment on internal deliberations. Myanmar s military cracked down on Muslim Rohingya from Rakhine state following Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts in August. The crackdown has caused around 650,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh in recent months. The United States and the United Nations have described the campaign as ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya people. The Myanmar military has said its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities in Rakhine. But earlier this week, the United States imposed sanctions on 13 serious human rights abusers and corrupt actors including Myanmar general Maung Maung Soe, who oversaw the crackdown against the Rohingya. Zachary Abuza, a professor at the U.S. National War College, said inviting Myanmar to the exercise was outrageous and sent the wrong message. To invite them after what the U.S. government has labeled ethnic cleansing, when the Treasury Department just yesterday designated the commander for these egregious violations of human rights, just seems wrong, and that is putting it too mildly, said Abuza, who focuses on Southeast Asia and security issues, including human rights. In the 2017 Cobra Gold exercise, 29 nations either participated or observed the exercise, including Myanmar. It included about 3,600 U.S. personnel. Cobra Gold is an annual exercise in Thailand. The 2018 war games are expected to be held in February. The United States and Thailand have carried out joint war games for decades, even though Bangkok s record on human rights and democracy has often been criticized in Washington. The U.S.-Thai relationship cooled when the Thai military took power in a 2014 coup but has improved under President Donald Trump. Two Reuters journalists were arrested in Myanmar on Dec. 12 and on Thursday appeared in court and have been remanded in custody. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in detention for nine days with no detail on where they are being held. They have not had access to visitors or lawyers. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;German would-be partners have very different immigration ideas;BERLIN (Reuters) - Leading figures from Angela Merkel s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) outlined differing visions on how their possible government would approach immigration, as Germany s would-be coalition partners prepared for talks in the New Year. Chancellor Merkel s 2015 decision to open the doors to more than a million migrants, many fleeing war in the Middle East, transformed Germany s demographic landscape and boosted the far right, hurting her bloc and the SPD in September s election. In separate interviews, Thomas Strobl, deputy leader of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU) and SPD foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel outlined ways of winning back disenchanted supporters. Strobl told the Heilbronner Stimme newspaper Germany should cap the number of new immigrants at 65,000 a year, the level in 2012, and far below the limit of 200,000 that the conservatives had previously advocated. But Gabriel, whose party s restive membership would be unlikely to accept such a draconian cap, suggested municipalities around Germany and Europe could be compensated financially if they agreed to shelter refugees. That way municipalities would decide themselves how many refugees to take, he told the Funke newspaper group. That would avoid citizens gaining the impression that refugees get everything and we get nothing. Germany has argued in vain for the stream of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa to be divided proportionately between the European Union s member states, with poorer, more ethnically homogenous eastern members particularly set against the idea. The EU could establish a program to help municipalities in poorer countries with the financing, Gabriel added. Merkel, for whom a renewed conservative-SPD grand coalition is her best chance of securing a fourth term as chancellor, has blamed her Sept. 24 election losses on concern at migration and now favors a tougher stance on deporting migrants accused of crimes. The SPD s membership, which must ratify any government deal, is cautious about repeating the experience of a grand coalition, for which voters rewarded it with a drubbing in the polling booths. While Gabriel is not a member of the SPD s negotiating team, his proposal could prove popular with the party s broadly more pro-European rank-and-file, and especially with party leader Martin Schulz, a former European Parliament president. In a further sign the center-left party is trying to distinguish itself from the conservatives, party deputy chairman Hubertus Heil said the next government should allocate 12 billion euros more to education over the next four years. The money was needed to fund investment in digital learning methods, he told newspaper Bild am Sonntag, insisting that the federal government had to play a bigger role in education, traditionally a state-level competency. Exploratory talks between the parties are due to begin on Jan. 7, and Merkel hopes to reach a deal by mid-January. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Help refugees wherever they come from, Austria's Kurz says;BERLIN (Reuters) - Austria s new Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, called for an end to failed attempts to achieve a quota system for distributing asylum seekers around the European Union and urged new efforts to help refugees in their country of origin. When he was foreign minister, Kurz, a conservative now governing in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, was a strong critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel s decision to open Germany s borders to more than a million fleeing migrants in 2015. Since becoming Chancellor this week, he has aligned himself with central European neighbors like Hungary and the Czech Republic in opposing German-backed proposals to distribute asylum seekers around EU member states. Forcing states to take refugees doesn t take Europe any further. The discussion makes no sense, he told Germany s Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Migrants who set off for Europe don t want to go to Bulgaria or Hungary. They want to go to Germany, Austria or Sweden. Instead of doubling down on what he termed a failed policy, Kurz called for the EU to support, perhaps militarily , efforts to help migrants in their countries of origin or in neighboring states. If that isn t possible, then they should be helped in safe areas on their own continent, he said. The EU should support that, perhaps even organize it, and back it militarily. It was not clear from the interview extracts, published by the newspaper, what kind of military support he envisaged. But European leaders have on occasion suggested the EU contribute to peacekeeping operations to stabilize conflicts in Africa. The question of how to deal with streams of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa also divides Merkel s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) as they prepare for talks on forming a new government. Hard-line members of Merkel s conservative camp demand tight absolute caps on the numbers of refugees allowed to enter Germany each year, while a senior SPD official on Saturday suggested local authorities around Europe be paid to house refugees. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico murders hit record high, dealing blow to president;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has this year registered its highest murder total since modern records began, according to official data, dealing a fresh blow to President Enrique Pena Nieto s pledge to get gang violence under control with presidential elections due in 2018. A total of 23,101 murder investigations were opened in the first 11 months of this year, surpassing the 22,409 registered in the whole of 2011, figures published on Friday night by the interior ministry showed. The figures go back to 1997. Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 pledging to tame the violence that escalated under his predecessor Felipe Calderon. He managed to reduce the murder tally during the first two years of his term, but since then it has risen steadily. At 18.7 per 100,000 inhabitants, the 2017 Mexican murder rate is still lower than it was in 2011, when it reached almost 19.4 per 100,000, the data showed. The rate has also held below levels reported in several other Latin American countries. According to U.N. figures used in the World Bank s online database, Brazil and Colombia both had a murder rate of 27 per 100,000, Venezuela 57, Honduras 64 and El Salvador 109 in 2015, the last year for which data are available. The U.S. rate was 5 per 100,000. Still, Pena Nieto s failure to contain the killings has damaged his credibility and hurt his centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which faces an uphill struggle to hold onto power in the July 2018 presidential election. The law bars Pena Nieto from running again. The current front-runner in the race, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has floated exploring an amnesty with criminal gangs to reduce the violence, without fleshing out the idea. Mexican newspaper Reforma said on Saturday that after a campaign stop in the central state of Hidalgo on Friday, Lopez Obrador again addressed the issue when asked whether talks aimed at stopping the violence could include criminal gangs. There can be dialogue with everyone. There needs to be dialogue and there needs to be a push to end the war and guarantee peace. Things can t go on as before, Reforma quoted Lopez Obrador as saying. Such a strategy harbors risks for the former Mexico City mayor. A poll this month showed that two-thirds of Mexicans reject offering an amnesty to members of criminal gangs in a bid to curb violence, with less than a quarter in favor. Separately, Lopez Obrador said on Saturday he would get rid of Mexico s intelligence agency CISEN if he won the July election, calling it an unnecessary expense. We re not going to monitor anybody, we re not going to spy, we re not going to listen to phone calls, or hack phones to get files and photos, he said in the central town of Tezontepec. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa appoints former army boss as party VP;HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa appointed retired army boss Constantino Chiwenga and veteran politician Kembo Mohadi as the ruling party s vice presidents, a spokesperson said on Saturday. The appointments paved the way for the two to ascend to similar positions in government, officials said. Mnangagwa, who took over last month from 93-year-old Robert Mugabe after the intervention of the military, is under pressure from opposition parties and the public to implement political reforms. Under Mugabe s 37-year rule political space was limited, with the latter part of his reign marked by the emergence of a ZANU-PF faction aligned to his wife Grace that threatened to usurp the army s central role in government. Chiwenga, who retired from the army on Monday, is the latest in a string of senior military figures appointed by Mnangagwa to important political posts. Presidential spokesman George Charamba said Chiwenga and Mohadi s appointments as vice presidents of the country could only be made by the Chief Secretary to the Government and Cabinet, Misheck Sibanda, who is out of the country. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Beirut activists hold vigil in tribute to murdered women;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Dozens of people gathered outside Beirut s national museum on Saturday evening to light candles for a British woman and three Arab women murdered in the past week in Lebanon. The killing of the British embassy worker Rebecca Dykes last week has sparked extensive media coverage in Lebanon, prompting activists to press for more attention to be given to widespread violence against women. Lebanese women s rights activists held the vigil to mourn the victims, demand better laws, and to protest against the violence - including the three reported murders in northern Lebanon alone over the past week. Society refuses to listen to us or see us until our blood is spilled, Leen Hashem, an organizer, told the crowd from the steps of the museum. This violence is structural and systematic. Justice is not only arresting the criminal. Justice is for all this not to happen to us in the first place, she said. Don t tell me to cover up. Tell him not to rape me, one woman chanted through a megaphone, a demand repeated by people in the crowd. Participants laid white roses over pictures of the four women, and lined the steps with candles. Wafaa al-Kabbout stood on the sidelines, holding a framed photo of her 21-year-old daughter Zahraa, whose ex-husband shot her dead last year. Now my daughter is gone, she s not coming back, she said. But all these young women are our daughters. And there is still fear for the young women after them. The United Nations says a third of women worldwide have suffered sexual or physical violence. A 2017 national study by the Beirut-based women s rights group ABAAD said that one in four women have been raped in Lebanon. Less than a quarter of women who faced sexual assault reported it, the survey said. Little by little, we are breaking the silence ... for women to come forward and talk about the violence they are facing, said Saja Michael, program manager at ABAAD. In the past five years, women have become more likely to report violence and seek help, she said, though sexual assault remains a bit more taboo. Part of the reason is that NGOs have set up new shelters and community centers, with psychological, legal, medical, and other services, Michael added. It s becoming more of a public discourse, she said. It s no longer what s happening behind closed doors. Lebanon s parliament passed a long-awaited law in 2014 that penalized domestic violence for the first time. But rights groups were outraged that authorities watered it down, and it fell short of criminalizing marital rape. Child marriage also remains legal in Lebanon. In August, parliament abolished a law that absolved rapists if they married their victims, joining other Arab states that repealed similar laws this year. Activists welcomed it as a major step, but said there was a long way to go on Lebanese legislation to protect women. Every day we are subjected to harassment, in college, on the street, everywhere, said Ramona Abdallah, a university student at the vigil. It really could be any one of us. Rebecca Dykes, 30, who worked at the British embassy in Lebanon, was found strangled beside a highway outside Beirut last weekend. A Lebanese Uber driver picked her up before assaulting and killing her, state media said. A security official said the suspect had confessed. Earlier in the same week, a Lebanese man killed his mother-in-law and wounded his wife by shooting them inside their home in the northern Akkar region, state news agency NNA said. Authorities have arrested him, it said. In another incident, Nazira al-Tartousi, a 15-year-old pregnant Syrian, was found dead with a bullet in her neck in the north, security sources said. Her husband, the suspect, has denied killing her, they said. And Yaman Darwish, 22, died after sustaining a broken chin and gunshot wounds in another northern village, the security sources said. The investigation showed the Lebanese woman had also been hit on the head with a vase, and choked. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela freeing some jailed activists, may expel diplomats;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s leftist government prepared to release some 80 jailed anti-government activists on Saturday, and threatened to expel envoys from Canada and Brazil after criticism over rights. Delcy Rodriguez, head of the pro-government Constituent Assembly, told reporters the legislative superbody was recommending the detainees be given alternative punishments such as community service and compensation for victims. Thirteen activists were later paraded in front of state TV cameras during a meeting with Rodriguez, a hardline ally of President Nicolas Maduro. They looked stony-faced as they sat listening to her admonishments in the formal surroundings of Venezuela s colonial-era foreign ministry. Rights groups and foes of Maduro say authorities are unfairly holding 268 political prisoners for protesting against dictatorship. Maduro, the 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez, says all jailed activists are there on legitimate charges of violence and subversion. Let it be understood that the events promoted by the extremist Venezuelan opposition, which caused Venezuelans deaths, must not be repeated, Rodriguez said. Some 170 people died in violence around two bouts of anti-Maduro street protests in 2014 and earlier this year. The assembly president told the detainees at the meeting they would return to their detention centers for medical tests then be freed to spend Christmas with loved ones. The releases, albeit with alternative sentences, could inject life into stuttering political talks between the government and opposition due to resume in the Dominican Republic in early January. Western nations and Latin American neighbors have been increasingly critical of Maduro this year, accusing him of stamping on democracy and human rights. The government says foreign nations are trying to encourage a right-wing coup. Rodriguez said the Constituent Assembly - which various foreign countries refuse to accept - was also recommending Brazil s ambassador Ruy Pereira and Canada s charge d affaires Craig Kowalik both be declared persona non grata. The Canadian government, which has imposed sanctions on Maduro s administration, said it would not be cowed into easing pressure on the anti-democratic Maduro regime in Venezuela. Canadians will not stand by silently as the Government of Venezuela robs its people of their fundamental democratic and human rights, and denies them access to basic humanitarian needs, said Global Affairs Canada, the government department that manages its foreign and trade relations. Brazil s foreign ministry also responded sternly. If confirmed, the Venezuelan government s decision to declare Brazil s ambassador persona non grata shows once more the authoritarian stance of Nicolas Maduro s administration and its lack of willingness to engage in any dialogue, it said, promising reciprocal measures. U.S. President Donald Trump s administration has been especially critical of Maduro, also imposing sanctions on him and other senior Venezuelan officials this year. Under new stewardship with the arrival of charge d affaires Todd Robinson last week, Washington s embassy in Caracas called on Saturday for the freedom of all jailed activists. We urge Maduro s regime to respect human rights, it tweeted. Free them during this holiday time. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY OBAMA’S CORRUPT INNER CIRCLE Is Desperately Fighting To Protect His Failed Reputation; History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea. Those words were written by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Thursday in the New York Times, in arguing for appeasement towards Kim Jong-un.It was also the perfect symbol of everything that was wrong with Barack Obama s feckless foreign policy and it explains why the world that President Donald Trump inherited is so dangerous and unstable.The Obama administration believed it was worth living in the shadow of terror and nuclear aggression as long as the U.S. could maintain a dignified posture that could not provoke anyone. BreitbartNoah Rothman of Commentary Magazine wrote a brilliant article about the death rattle of Obama s reputation . In his article, Rothman reminds us of the ineffective and dangerous path former President Barack Obama took our nation down, and why the successes of President Trump are forcing his corrupt inner circle to speak out against Trump in defense of Obama s failed legacy.The members of Barack Obama s administration in exile have become conspicuously noisy of late even more so than usual. Former CIA Director John Brennan accused Donald Trump and his administration of engaging in outrageous, narcissistic behavior typical of vengeful autocrats by threatening proportionate retaliation against countries that voted to condemn the United States in the United Nations, as though that were unprecedented. It is not. James Clapper, Obama s director of national intelligence, all but alleged that the president is a Russian asset. Perhaps the most acerbic and incendiary series of accusations from the former Democratic president s foreign-policy professionals were placed in the New York Times by Obama s national security advisor, Susan Rice. In her estimation, America has abdicated its role as a force for good. Rice s attacks on the Republican administration deserve the most attention, if only because they are the most apoplectic. Donald Trump s recently released national-security review paints a dark, almost dystopian vision of the world, Rice contended. His world is full of hostile states and lurking threats. Rice claimed that there is no common good in Trump s worldview. What s more, there is no international community and no universal values. There are just American values. Rice acknowledges that Moscow is a threat to regional stability and peace, Western values, and U.S. sovereignty. She implies that Trump is a menace because he declines to recognize that. In fact, it was Obama much more so than Trump who has failed to see the obvious.Barack Obama was inarguably the least Atlanticist president since the end of World War II. Within a year of Russia s brazen invasion and dismemberment of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Obama scrapped George W. Bush-era agreements to move radar and missile interceptor installations to Central Europe. In 2013, the last of America s armored combat units left Europe, ending a 69-year footprint on the Continent. By 2014, there were just two U.S. Army brigades stationed in Europe. The folly of this demobilization became abundantly clear when Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader since Stalin to invade and annex territory in neighboring Ukraine.A year later, Putin intervened militarily in Syria, where U.S. forces were already operating, resulting in the most dangerous escalation of tensions between the two nuclear powers since the end of the Cold War. Putin s move in Syria should not have come as a surprise;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Christians worldwide prepare for holidays with an eye on security;QUETTA, Pakistan/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Christmas church services and other celebrations are being held this weekend under the gaze of armed guards and security cameras in many countries after Islamic State gunmen attacked a Methodist church in Pakistan as a Sunday service began. Majority-Muslim countries in Asia and the Middle East were particularly nervous after U.S. President Donald Trump s recent announcement he intends to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a decision that has outraged many Muslims. In Indonesia, the world s biggest Muslim-majority country, police said they had stepped up security around churches and tourist sites, mindful of near-simultaneous attacks on churches there at Christmas in 2000 that killed about 20 people. Muslim volunteers in Indonesia are also on standby to provide additional security if requested. If our brother and sisters who celebrate Christmas need ... to maintain their security to worship, we will help, said Yaqut Chiolil Qoumas, chairman of the youth wing of the Nahdlatul Ulema, one of the country s biggest Muslim organizations. In Cairo, where a bombing at the Egyptian capital s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people last December, the interior ministry said police would conduct regular searches of streets around churches ahead of the Coptic celebration of Christmas on Jan. 7. Egypt s Christian minority has been targeted in several attacks in recent years, including the bombing of two churches in the north of the country on Palm Sunday in April. At the Heliopolis Basilica, a Catholic cathedral in northeastern Cairo, security forces had set up metal detectors at the main doors and police vehicles were stationed outside ahead of masses on Dec. 25, which marks Christmas Day for Catholic and Protestant Christians. German police brought in experts and an explosives robot to investigate a suspicious package at a Christmas market in the city of Bonn late on Friday. Germany is on high alert a year after a failed Tunisian asylum seeker killed 12 people when he hijacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market. BOMBED-OUT CHURCH In the Pakistani city of Quetta, members of a Bethel Memorial Methodist Church were repairing the damage done by a pair of suicide bombers who attacked during a service last Sunday, killing 10 people and wounding more than 50. Broken pews and damaged musical instruments were still strewn around church grounds on Thursday, with about a dozen police standing guard. We re making efforts to complete repairs and renovation before Christmas, but it seems difficult in view of the lot of damage, said Pastor Simon Bashir, who was leading the service when the attackers struck. He was not hurt. The government of Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is capital, plans to deploy 3,000 security personnel in and around 39 Christian churches this Sunday and Monday. Provincial police chief Moazzam Jah Ansari told Reuters volunteers from churches were also being trained to conduct body searches and identify worshippers entering churches. Pakistan s Christian minority, which makes up about 1 percent of the population of 208 million, has been a frequent target, along with Shi ite and Sufi Muslims, of Sunni Muslim militants. In the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, where an Easter Day bombing in a park last year killed more than 70 people, police Detective Inspector General Haider Ashraf said every church would be monitored with CCTV cameras as part of security measures. Christian Kaleem Masih lost his aunt in the Easter attack, which was claimed by Islamic State, and his wife was wounded, but he said they would be attending Christmas services. Christmas is our holy day, Kaleem said. We will fulfill our religious duty by celebrating it with smiles on our faces. In Malaysia, a police official said Trump s decision on Jerusalem increased worry about attacks. We are concerned not only with safety at churches and places of worship but also any threats by Islamic State or any other security threat following the Jerusalem issue, said Malaysia s Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun. Jerusalem, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, is home to Islam s third holiest site and has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it in an action not recognized internationally. Protests across the Muslim world in Asia and the Middle East have largely been peaceful. In Jerusalem itself, an Israeli police spokesman said there were no new security measures but police would deploy forces as usual around Christian holy sites including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and also secure convoys of worshippers from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, traditionally known as the birthplace of Jesus Christ and run by the Palestinian Authority. Many Palestinian Christians oppose Trump s announcement and say they have no fear of attacks. Trump s decision offended all Palestinians, be they Christians or Muslims. Why would we feel threatened by Muslims? said George Antone, a Catholic who lives in Gaza, which is run by the Palestinian Hamas group. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY OBAMA’S CORRUPT INNER CIRCLE Is Desperately Fighting To Protect His Failed Reputation; History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea. Those words were written by former National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Thursday in the New York Times, in arguing for appeasement towards Kim Jong-un.It was also the perfect symbol of everything that was wrong with Barack Obama s feckless foreign policy and it explains why the world that President Donald Trump inherited is so dangerous and unstable.The Obama administration believed it was worth living in the shadow of terror and nuclear aggression as long as the U.S. could maintain a dignified posture that could not provoke anyone. BreitbartNoah Rothman of Commentary Magazine wrote a brilliant article about the death rattle of Obama s reputation . In his article, Rothman reminds us of the ineffective and dangerous path former President Barack Obama took our nation down, and why the successes of President Trump are forcing his corrupt inner circle to speak out against Trump in defense of Obama s failed legacy.The members of Barack Obama s administration in exile have become conspicuously noisy of late even more so than usual. Former CIA Director John Brennan accused Donald Trump and his administration of engaging in outrageous, narcissistic behavior typical of vengeful autocrats by threatening proportionate retaliation against countries that voted to condemn the United States in the United Nations, as though that were unprecedented. It is not. James Clapper, Obama s director of national intelligence, all but alleged that the president is a Russian asset. Perhaps the most acerbic and incendiary series of accusations from the former Democratic president s foreign-policy professionals were placed in the New York Times by Obama s national security advisor, Susan Rice. In her estimation, America has abdicated its role as a force for good. Rice s attacks on the Republican administration deserve the most attention, if only because they are the most apoplectic. Donald Trump s recently released national-security review paints a dark, almost dystopian vision of the world, Rice contended. His world is full of hostile states and lurking threats. Rice claimed that there is no common good in Trump s worldview. What s more, there is no international community and no universal values. There are just American values. Rice acknowledges that Moscow is a threat to regional stability and peace, Western values, and U.S. sovereignty. She implies that Trump is a menace because he declines to recognize that. In fact, it was Obama much more so than Trump who has failed to see the obvious.Barack Obama was inarguably the least Atlanticist president since the end of World War II. Within a year of Russia s brazen invasion and dismemberment of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Obama scrapped George W. Bush-era agreements to move radar and missile interceptor installations to Central Europe. In 2013, the last of America s armored combat units left Europe, ending a 69-year footprint on the Continent. By 2014, there were just two U.S. Army brigades stationed in Europe. The folly of this demobilization became abundantly clear when Vladimir Putin became the first Russian leader since Stalin to invade and annex territory in neighboring Ukraine.A year later, Putin intervened militarily in Syria, where U.S. forces were already operating, resulting in the most dangerous escalation of tensions between the two nuclear powers since the end of the Cold War. Putin s move in Syria should not have come as a surprise;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey plans to change embassy street name in row with UAE: report;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey plans to change the name of the street where the embassy of the United Arab Emirates is located to Fakhreddin Pasha, the historical figure at the center of a diplomatic row caused by a retweet, the state-run Anadolu agency said on Saturday. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan retweeted last week accusations that Ottoman forces led by Fakhreddin Pasha stole money and manuscripts from Medina in 1916 during World War One when the city was under Ottoman rule. Medina is now part of Saudi Arabia. The mayor of the Turkish capital Ankara ordered preparations to change the name of the street where the UAE mission is located to that of the former commander and one-time governor of Medina, Anadolu said. Without naming him, Erdogan suggested on Thursday that the UAE minister was ignorant. The UAE charge d affaires in Ankara was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry over the issue. UAE officials had no immediate comment on dispute. The UAE, a close U.S. ally, sees Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling party as a friend of Islamist forces which the UAE opposes across the Arab world. Ties were further strained by Ankara s support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf nation in June over a dispute in which the Arab states accused Doha of supporting terrorism. Doha denies this. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Honduran opposition candidate Nasralla says ""I no longer have anything to do in politics"" after U.S. recognition of Hernandez victory";MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Honduran opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla said his bid for the presidency was a lost cause on Friday after the United States recognized President Juan Orlando Hernandez as winner of the election. The situation is practically decided, Nasralla said in an interview with TV network France 24. I no longer have anything to do in politics, but the people, which are 80 percent in my favor, will continue the fight. The United States backed Hernandez as winner of the Nov. 26 election despite widespread misgivings about the vote count. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Failed vote to oust president shakes up Peru's politics;LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski could end up the surprise winner of an attempt to oust him from power this week, after some opposition lawmakers broke ranks with party leaders to support him, opening a divide that might strengthen his hand. Despite having a Congressional majority, the rightwing opposition party Popular Force was unable to push through a motion to remove Kuczynski from office on Thursday, after 10 of its own lawmakers broke ranks to save the president. The vote cemented a growing divide in the opposition and looked to threaten its control over Congress, potentially aiding Kuczynski as he tries to restore political stability and revive investments in one of Latin America s most robust economies. The surprise defection was the result of a deal struck between Kuczynski and Popular Force rebel lawmaker Kenji Fujimori to get his father and ex-president Alberto Fujimori out of prison, alleged Popular Force secretary general, Jose Chlimper. Over the past year, Kenji has courted Kuczynski s center-right government while challenging his sister Keiko s leadership of the rightwing populist movement that their father formed in the 1990s. In defiance of his sister, Kenji threw his support behind Kuczynski ahead of the vote on whether to remove him from office over unproven graft allegations. Nine other Popular Force lawmakers followed his lead. This is the birth of a serious and formal split (in the Fujimori movement), said Guillermo Loli, the head of political research for pollster Ipsos Peru. Everything points to a pardon, he added. Kuczynski s government denied that a pardon for Fujimori was part of its political negotiations. In an address to the nation late on Friday, Kuczynski said he would spend the coming days reflecting on his year and a half in office. I ll be announcing to you changes to make sure 2018 is not just a year of greater growth, but politically different, Kuczynski said. Efforts to reach the Popular Force lawmakers who defected were not successful. One, Clayton Galvan, said on local TV channel Canal N that Alberto Fujimori called them from prison to ask them to help Kuczynski stay in power. Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for graft and human rights crimes, is a deeply divisive figure in Peru. While many consider him a corrupt dictator, others credit him with ending an economic crisis and bloody leftist insurgency during his 1990-2000 term. Freeing him would likely anger the well-organized foes of the Fujimori clan - a mix of technocrats, leftists, human rights activists and academics. The day (Kuczynski) signs a pardon, he loses all of those guys. Permanently, said Harvard University political scientist Steve Levitsky. Support from the anti-Fujimori crowd was key to Kuczynski s razor-thin victory over Keiko in last year s presidential election, and to keeping the motion to oust him from succeeding. Kuczynski was saved by two diametrically opposed political groups: Kenji s group and the left, which opposes a pardon. He can t please both of them, said Levitsky. Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former investment banker, took office amid hopes he would usher in cleaner government and faster economic growth. Instead, a graft scandal roiling Latin America has stalled investments and ensnared him in allegations of wrongdoing. Before the vote on Thursday, Kuczynski fanned fears of a return to Peru s authoritarian past and described the motion as part of a legislative coup attempt by Keiko s supporters. Popular Force denies the charge and says the bid to remove him was part of its fight against corruption and within the bounds of the constitution. A hardline Popular Force lawmaker loyal to Keiko, Hector Becerril, said the Kenji faction represented traitors. If they have any sense of decency after this vote, the least they could do is present their resignations, Becerril told journalists on Friday. Hopefully today. With 10 votes fewer, Popular Force would command 61 seats in the 130-member, single-chamber Congress, less than an absolute majority, though it would still be the biggest voting bloc. The political crisis has cost Kuczynski his interior minister, Carlos Basombrio, who announced his resignation on Friday. Kuczynski could make a decision about other Cabinet changes in coming days, his government said. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Police evacuate Bonn Christmas market, probe suspicious package;BERLIN (Reuters) - Police brought in experts and an explosives robot to investigate a suspicious package found at the Christmas market in the west German city of Bonn late on Friday. Bonn police cordoned off and evacuated a large area of the market just before 9 p.m. local time, and experts were still examining the object five hours later, a spokesman said. We assume it s not dangerous, but we re still investigating, the spokesman said. He said the object was discovered shortly before the market was to close for the evening, so it was not crowded. Germany is on high alert for potential attacks a year after failed Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri killed 12 people when he hijacked a truck and drove it into a crowded Berlin Christmas market. Chancellor Angela Merkel, marking the first anniversary of the attack on Tuesday, said Germany should learn from security shortcomings exposed in the incident. German authorities evacuated part of a Christmas market in Potsdam near Berlin earlier this month after a package containing powerful firecrackers, wires and nails was delivered to a nearby pharmacy. Officials later said that criminals had used the incident to try to extort millions of euros from logistics firm DHL, which had delivered the package. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Failed vote to oust president shakes up Peru's politics;LIMA (Reuters) - Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski could end up the surprise winner of an attempt to oust him from power this week, after some opposition lawmakers broke ranks with party leaders to support him, opening a divide that might strengthen his hand. Despite having a Congressional majority, the rightwing opposition party Popular Force was unable to push through a motion to remove Kuczynski from office on Thursday, after 10 of its own lawmakers broke ranks to save the president. The vote cemented a growing divide in the opposition and looked to threaten its control over Congress, potentially aiding Kuczynski as he tries to restore political stability and revive investments in one of Latin America’s most robust economies. The surprise defection was the result of a deal struck between Kuczynski and Popular Force rebel lawmaker Kenji Fujimori to get his father and ex-president Alberto Fujimori out of prison, alleged Popular Force secretary general, Jose Chlimper. Over the past year, Kenji has courted Kuczynski’s center-right government while challenging his sister Keiko’s leadership of the rightwing populist movement that their father formed in the 1990s. In defiance of his sister, Kenji threw his support behind Kuczynski ahead of the vote on whether to remove him from office over unproven graft allegations. Nine other Popular Force lawmakers followed his lead. “This is the birth of a serious and formal split (in the Fujimori movement),” said Guillermo Loli, the head of political research for pollster Ipsos Peru. “Everything points to a pardon,” he added. Kuczynski’s government denied that a pardon for Fujimori was part of its political negotiations. In an address to the nation late on Friday, Kuczynski said he would spend the coming days reflecting on his year and a half in office. “I’ll be announcing to you changes to make sure 2018 is not just a year of greater growth, but politically different,” Kuczynski said. Efforts to reach the Popular Force lawmakers who defected were not successful. One, Clayton Galvan, said on local TV channel Canal N that Alberto Fujimori called them from prison to ask them to help Kuczynski stay in power. Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for graft and human rights crimes, is a deeply divisive figure in Peru. While many consider him a corrupt dictator, others credit him with ending an economic crisis and bloody leftist insurgency during his 1990-2000 term. Freeing him would likely anger the well-organized foes of the Fujimori clan - a mix of technocrats, leftists, human rights activists and academics. “The day (Kuczynski) signs a pardon, he loses all of those guys. Permanently,” said Harvard University political scientist Steve Levitsky. Support from the anti-Fujimori crowd was key to Kuczynski’s razor-thin victory over Keiko in last year’s presidential election, and to keeping the motion to oust him from succeeding. “Kuczynski was saved by two diametrically opposed political groups: Kenji’s group and the left, which opposes a pardon. He can’t please both of them,” said Levitsky. Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former investment banker, took office amid hopes he would usher in cleaner government and faster economic growth. Instead, a graft scandal roiling Latin America has stalled investments and ensnared him in allegations of wrongdoing. Before the vote on Thursday, Kuczynski fanned fears of a return to Peru’s authoritarian past and described the motion as part of a legislative “coup” attempt by Keiko’s supporters. Popular Force denies the charge and says the bid to remove him was part of its fight against corruption and within the bounds of the constitution. A hardline Popular Force lawmaker loyal to Keiko, Hector Becerril, said the Kenji faction represented “traitors.” “If they have any sense of decency after this vote, the least they could do is present their resignations,” Becerril told journalists on Friday. “Hopefully today.” With 10 votes fewer, Popular Force would command 61 seats in the 130-member, single-chamber Congress, less than an absolute majority, though it would still be the biggest voting bloc. The political crisis has cost Kuczynski his interior minister, Carlos Basombrio, who announced his resignation on Friday. Kuczynski could make a decision about other Cabinet changes in coming days, his government said. ;politicsNews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Fresh Off The Golf Course, Trump Lashes Out At FBI Deputy Director And James Comey;Donald Trump spent a good portion of his day at his golf club, marking the 84th day he s done so since taking the oath of office. It must have been a bad game because just after that, Trump lashed out at FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Twitter following a report saying McCabe plans to retire in a few months. The report follows McCabe s testimony in front of congressional committees this week, as well as mounting criticism from Republicans regarding the Russia probe.So, naturally, Trump attacked McCabe with a lie. How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Trump tweeted.How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017He didn t stop there.FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017Wow, FBI lawyer James Baker reassigned, according to @FoxNews. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017With all of the Intel at Trump s disposal, he s getting his information from Fox News. McCabe spent most of his career in the fight against terrorism and now he s being attacked by the so-called president. Trump has been fact-checked before on his claim of his wife receiving $700,000 for her campaign.Politifact noted in late July that Trump s tweet about Andrew McCabe is a significant distortion of the facts. And the implication that McCabe got Clinton off as a political favor doesn t make much sense when we look at the evidence. His July tweet was rated mostly false. But Trump repeats these lies because he knows his supporters will believe them without bothering to Google. It s still a lie, though.Photo by Zach Gibson Pool/Getty Images.;News;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Exclusive: U.S. memo weakens guidelines for protecting immigrant children in court;NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has issued new guidelines for immigration judges that remove some instructions for how to protect unaccompanied juveniles appearing in their courtrooms. A Dec. 20 memo, issued by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) replaces 2007 guidelines, spelling out policies and procedures judges should follow in dealing with children who crossed the border illegally alone and face possible deportation. The new memo removes suggestions contained in the 2007 memo for how to conduct “child-sensitive questioning” and adds reminders to judges to maintain “impartiality” even though “juvenile cases may present sympathetic allegations.” The new document also changes the word “child” to “unmarried individual under the age of 18” in many instances. (Link to comparison: tmsnrt.rs/2BlT0VK May 2007 document: tmsnrt.rs/2BBR8wj December 2017 document: tmsnrt.rs/2C2sWCs) An EOIR official said the new memo contained “clarifications and updates” to 10-year-old guidance “in order to be consistent with the laws as they’ve been passed by Congress.” The new memo was posted on the Justice Department website but has not been previously reported. Immigration advocates said they worry the new guidelines could make court appearances for children more difficult, and a spokeswoman for the union representing immigration judges said judges are concerned about the tone of the memo. President Donald Trump has made tougher immigration enforcement a key policy goal of his administration, and has focused particularly on trying to curb the illegal entry of children. The administration says it wants to prevent vulnerable juveniles from making perilous journeys to the United States and eliminate fraud from programs for young immigrants. One changed section of the memo focuses on how to make children comfortable in the court in advance of hearings. The old guidance says they “should be permitted to explore” courtrooms and allowed to “sit in all locations, (including, especially, the judge’s bench and the witness stand).” The new guidance says such explorations should take place only “to the extent that resources and time permit” and specifically puts the judge’s bench off limits. The new memo also warns judges to be skeptical, since an unaccompanied minor “generally receives more favorable treatment under the law than other categories of illegal aliens,” which creates “an incentive to misrepresent accompaniment status or age in order to attempt to qualify for the benefits.” It also says to be on the lookout for “fraud and abuse,” language that was not in the previous memo. Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. Attorney General and courts are part of the Department of Justice, not an independent branch. The only sitting immigration judges routinely allowed to speak to the media are representatives of their union, the National Association of Immigration Judges. Dana Marks, a sitting judge and spokeswoman for the union, said the “overall tone” of the memo “is very distressing and concerning to immigration judges.” “There is a feeling that the immigration courts are just being demoted into immigration enforcement offices, rather than neutral arbiters,” Marks said. “There has been a relentless beating of the drum toward enforcement rather than due process.” Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes lower levels of immigration overall, said the new guidelines were needed. In their previous form, he said, “so much emphasis was placed on the potential inability of the alien to understand the proceedings ... that it almost put the judge into the position of being an advocate.”  The courts have had to handle a surge in cases for unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, after their numbers sky-rocketed in 2014 as violence in the region caused residents to flee north. While illegal crossings initially fell after Trump took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that since May, each month has seen an increase in children being apprehended either alone or with family members. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech in Boston in September that the special accommodations for unaccompanied minors had been exploited by “gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing.” Echoing some of these concerns, the new memo notes in a preamble that not all child cases involve innocents, and that the courts might see “an adolescent gang member” or “a teenager convicted as an adult for serious criminal activity.” Jennifer Podkul, policy director of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) said Congress included special procedural protections for immigrant children in a 2008 anti-trafficking bill to “make sure that a kid gets a fair shot in the courtroom.” “These kids are by themselves telling a very complicated and oftentimes very traumatic story,” said Podkul. “The approach of this memo, which is much more suspicious, is not going to help get to the truth of a child’s story.” In cases where children are called to testify, the old guidance instructed judges to “seek to limit the amount of time the child is on the stand.” The new guidance says that judges should “consider” limiting the child’s time on the stand “without compromising due process for the opposing party,” which is generally a government prosecutor. The memo leaves in a range of special accommodations made for children, including allowing them to bring a pillow or booster seat or a “toy, book, or other personal item.” It also maintains that cases involving unaccompanied minors should be heard on a separate docket when possible and that children should not be detained or transported with adults. ;politicsNews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Said Some INSANELY Racist Stuff Inside The Oval Office, And Witnesses Back It Up;In the wake of yet another court decision that derailed Donald Trump s plan to bar Muslims from entering the United States, the New York Times published a report on Saturday morning detailing the president s frustration at not getting his way and how far back that frustration goes.According to the article, back in June, Trump stomped into the Oval Office, furious about the state of the travel ban, which he thought would be implemented and fully in place by then. Instead, he fumed, visas had already been issued to immigrants at such a rate that his friends were calling to say he looked like a fool after making his broad pronouncements.It was then that Trump began reading from a document that a top advisor, noted white supremacist Stephen Miller, had handed him just before the meeting with his Cabinet. The page listed how many visas had been issued this year, and included 2,500 from Afghanistan (a country not on the travel ban), 15,000 from Haiti (also not included), and 40,000 from Nigeria (sensing a pattern yet?), and Trump expressed his dismay at each.According to witnesses in the room who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, and who were interviewed along with three dozen others for the article, Trump called out each country for its faults as he read: Afghanistan was a terrorist haven, the people of Nigeria would never go back to their huts once they saw the glory of America, and immigrants from Haiti all have AIDS. Despite the extensive research done by the newspaper, the White House of course denies that any such language was used.But given Trump s racist history and his advisor Stephen Miller s blatant white nationalism, it would be no surprise if a Freedom of Information Act request turned up that the document in question had the statements printed inline as commentary for the president to punctuate his anger with. It was Miller, after all, who was responsible for the American Carnage speech that Trump delivered at his inauguration.This racist is a menace to America, and he doesn t represent anything that this country stands for. Let s hope that more indictments from Robert Mueller are on their way as we speak.Featured image via Chris Kleponis/Pool/Getty Images;News;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt to launch building project in Sinai: Sisi;CAIRO (Reuters) - President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Saturday Egypt will in the next two to three years embark on a $5.60 billion construction project in the Sinai peninsula whose north has been gripped by an Islamist insurgency. While coast of the south of the peninsula is peppered with Red Sea tourist resorts, North Sinai province is underdeveloped and lacks basic infrastructure and job opportunities. Security forces have battled Islamist militants in the mainly desert region, stretching from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, since 2013. Militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers. Sisi ordered armed forces to end the insurgency within three months after an attack on a mosque in North Sinai last month killed more than 300 people. It was the worst militant attack in Egypt s modern history. We have entrusted the ministry of housing and the engineering authority with a national project of comprehensive urban planning, Sisi said at a ceremony to inaugurate a development project in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. The president said the project would cost 100 billion Egyptian pounds and that it would be carried out whether he remained in power or not. He did not provide a start date, sources of funding or specific details of what would be built under the project. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;JUST IN: PRESIDENT TRUMP BLASTS “Retiring” FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and “’Leakin’ James Comey” After JUDICIAL WATCH Uncovers A McCabe Bombshell;After Judicial Watch exposed a serious ethics issue related to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe s involvement in his Democrat wife s VA Senate campaign, President Trump just took to Twitter to expose FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, calling him: The man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (33,000 illegally deleted emails) Trump seemed to be stunned that McCabe could be given $7000,000 for wife s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? into her emails.How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017President Trump then tweeted:FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017Judicial Watch today released 79 pages of Justice Department documents concerning ethics issues related to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe s involvement with his wife s political campaign. The documents include an email showing Mrs. McCabe was recruited for a Virginia state senate race in February 2015 by then-Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam s office.The news that Clinton used a private email server broke five days later, on March 2, 2015. Five days after that, former Clinton Foundation board member and Democrat party fundraiser, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, met with the McCabes. She announced her candidacy on March 12. Soon afterward, Clinton/McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated nearly $700,000 (40% of the campaign s total funds) to McCabe s wife for her campaign.Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a July 24, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to an October 24, 2016, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-01494)). Judicial Watch seeks:All records of communication between FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and other FBI or Department of Justice officials regarding ethical issues concerning the involvement of Andrew McCabe and/or his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, in political campaigns;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar to grant families access to two Reuters journalists after remand period expires: media;YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar will be allowed to meet their families once their first 14-day period of remand expires, according to local media reports. Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in detention for 11 days in an undisclosed location and have had no access to their families, lawyers or colleagues. They were arrested after being invited to meet police officials over dinner on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon on Dec. 12. The authorities are investigating whether they violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which has a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. After the first remand (expires), they will be able to meet their families. They will be sent to the court for testimonies, Tin Myint, permanent secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs, was quoted as saying by Radio Free Asia. In Myanmar, those remanded must be brought to court within 14 days. But it s not immediately clear when the pair was first remanded and whether the authorities will seek court approval to remand them for a second 14-day period. The Home Affairs Ministry did not responded to several requests for comments. Family members of the two journalists say they have not received any official communication about the question of remand or the investigation, and neither has Reuters. Tin Myint said the case against the two Reuters reporters will be transparent and the authorities will follow the rule of law, according to Daily Eleven newspaper. Major governments, including the United States, Britain and Canada, leading international political figures and top United Nations officials are among those who have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi this week told Reuters that the police had almost completed their investigation and the two reporters will be treated in line with the law. The Ministry of Information said last week that Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media . ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump travel ban should not apply to people with strong U.S. ties: court;(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday said President Donald Trump’s hotly contested travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries should not be applied to people with strong U.S. ties. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers several West Coast states, also said its ruling would be put on hold pending a decision on the latest version of the travel ban from the Trump administration by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since taking office in January, Trump has been struggling to enact a ban that passes court muster. A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit narrowed a previous injunction from a lower federal court to those people “with a credible bona fide relationship with the United States.” It also said that while the U.S. president has broad powers to regulate the entry of immigrants into the United States, those powers are not without limits. “We conclude that the President’s issuance of the Proclamation once again exceeds the scope of his delegated authority,” the panel said. The ban targets people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. Trump, a Republican, has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism. The state of Hawaii, however, challenged it in court, and a Honolulu federal judge said it exceeded Trump’s powers under immigration law. Trump’s ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect. The same three-judge 9th Circuit panel, which limited a previous version of Trump’s ban, heard arguments earlier this month. Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, which caused chaos at airports and mass protests. He issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. That expired in September after a court fight and was replaced with the current version. The ban has some exceptions. Certain people from each targeted country can still apply for a visa for tourism, business or education purposes, and applicants can ask for an individual waiver. “We are pleased that the Supreme Court has already allowed the government to implement the proclamation and keep all Americans safe while this matter is litigated. We continue to believe that the order should be allowed to take effect in its entirety,” U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said in a statement. ;politicsNews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MARINE CORPS GENERAL WARNS U.S. TROOPS: “There’s A War Coming”;While the mainstream media remains transfixed on a phony Trump-Russian collusion story, they completely ignore the real news, about how things appear to be heating up between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the U.S.A Marine Corps commandant on Thursday warned U.S. troops stationed in Norway to be prepared for a coming war.Neller pointed to the near future possibility of Russia and the Pacific theater being the next major areas of conflict.Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green sounded a similar tone. Just remember why you re here, Green said. They re watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We ve got 300 Marines up here;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. says it will provide Ukraine with 'defensive' aid;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will provide Ukraine with enhanced defensive capabilities, the State Department said on Friday, as Kiev battles Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country. U.S. assistance is entirely defensive in nature, and as we have always said, Ukraine is a sovereign country and has a right to defend itself, the department said in a statement. It said the decision was part of the U.S. effort to help Ukraine defend its territorial integrity and deter further aggression, but did not specify the capabilities being considered. Earlier on Friday, ABC News reported that President Donald Trump was expected to approve the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, citing State Department sources. Any sale would need congressional approval. Ukraine and Russia are at loggerheads over a war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 10,000 people in three years. Kiev accuses Moscow of sending troops and heavy weapons to the region, which Russia denies. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September that any decision by the United States to supply defensive weapons to Ukraine would fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine and possibly prompt the separatists to expand their campaign there. On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line. Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev s foreign backers warned on Wednesday that Moscow s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this week the State Department said it had approved an export license for Ukraine to buy certain light weapons and small arms from U.S. manufacturers. Senator John McCain on Wednesday welcomed the small arms sale. McCain, a Republican, urged Trump to authorize additional sales of defensive lethal weapons, including anti-tank munitions, and to fully utilize security assistance funds provided by the Congress to enable Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BREAKING: FBI ARREST STOPS Horrific San Francisco “MASS CASUALTY” Christmas Day Attack By MUSLIM, Truck Driver and Former Marine Sharpshooter;Truck attacks are becoming increasingly popular with Muslim extremists as a way to threaten large groups of people in popular areas. Meanwhile, the US Appeals Court has just ruled President Trump s travel ban violates federal law and goes beyond the scope of his delegated authority. The ban, which targets people from six Muslim-majority countries, should not be applied to people with strong US connections, the court said.Breitbart News The FBI announced on Friday that it arrested California tow truck driver Everitt Aaron Jameson for plotting a Christmas terror attack on Pier 39 in San Francisco.In statements to undercover informants, Jameson outlined a plan that would have involved running civilians down with his truck, deploying improvised explosives, and using his skills as a Marine sharpshooter to increase the body count. A note he evidently intended for publication after the attack swore allegiance to ISIS and cited President Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as a reason for his actions.FBI documents state that Jameson planned to use his tow truck for a mass-casualty attack on Pier 39 because he had been there before and knew it was a heavily crowded area. He reportedly said Christmas would be the perfect day to commit the attack. I m glad to know we Muslims are finally hitting back. Allahu Akbar! The kuffar deserve everything and more [for] the lives they have taken, he allegedly told an FBI informant after the November 2 truck jihad attack in New York City, which killed eight people. Allahu akbar! It says he was one of us. May Allah grant him Jannah firtuidus Amin, he said of New York City truck terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, indicating that he hoped Saipov would enter paradise as a reward for attacking the infidels.Jameson also reportedly spoke approvingly of the attack on a Christmas party by a husband-and-wife jihadi team in San Bernardino in December 2015 and suggested his operation would include vehicles, explosives, and firearms. He told an undercover agent that America needed another attack like New York or San Bernardino. Communicating with FBI assets he believed were representatives of the Islamic State, Jameson advertised himself as a military veteran and offered to put his skills at the service of the caliphate. In a meeting with undercover informants, he added that he was well versed in the Anarchist Cookbook, a manual for making bombs and other implements of terrorism. He also offered financial assistance to ISIS, offered to travel to Syria if needed, and said he was ready to die for the cause. He demonstrated fluency in spoken Arabic during a telephone call. I was a soldier in the kuffar army before I reverted, he said. I have been trained in combat and things of war. Inshallah, anything of that nature, as well as funding. Anything for Allah. The FBI confirmed that Jameson attended U.S. Marine Corps basic training and earned a sharpshooter rifle qualification. He was eventually discharged for fraudulent enlistment, apparently because he failed to disclose a history of asthma to the recruiters.When the undercover FBI operatives asked what he needed for the attack, Jameson outlined an ambitious plan involving M-16 and/or AK-47 rifles, timers, remote detonators, and pipe bomb materials.When a search warrant was executed at Jameson s residence in Modesto, a number of pistols, rifles, and ammunition were confiscated, along with his last will and testament and a handwritten letter he signed as Abdallah abu Everitt ibn Gordon al-Amriki. The letter was evidently meant to be published after he carried out his terror attack. It reads:I, Abdallah adu Everitt ibn Gordon, have committed these acts upon the Kuffar, in the name of Dar al Islam, Allahu Akbar! You all have brought this upon yourselves. There is no innocent Kuffar! Each and every Kuffar in this Nationalistic, Godless society has a hand in this. You ve allowed Donald J. Trump to give away Al Quds to the Jews. Both You and he are wrong, it belongs to the Muslemeen. We have penetrated and infiltrated your disgusting country. These Acts will continue until the Lions of Islam overtake you. Turn to Allah, make tawbah and fight with us, the soldiers who fight in the day and the night. Allah SWT is most forgiving. I am not. Long live Isil, Long Live Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Allahu akbar!Dar al Islam means the house of Islam. Kuffar is a derogatory term for non-Muslims. Al Quds is an Arabic name for Jerusalem. Muslemeen is another way of saying Muslim Tawbah means repent. Allah SWT is a shorthand way of saying Allah the most glorious and exalted. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the caliph or leader of the Islamic State.According to the FBI, Jameson was a voracious consumer of Islamic State propaganda online, and wrote numerous social media posts that are supportive of terrorism. ;politics;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron's Europe reforms in focus in German coalition talks: Gabriel;BERLIN (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron s proposed European reforms will play a big role in talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives to form a government with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), a top SPD member said. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who led the party until stepping aside earlier this year to make way for former European Parliament president Martin Schulz, said he supported Macron s call for a separate budget for the eurozone. We should be ready to invest more in our future, Gabriel told Germany s Funke newspaper group and the French newspaper Ouest-France in an interview published Saturday. Germany is the biggest winner of the EU and can afford to contribute more. Gabriel said Macron s proposals to reform the European Union would be very important in the coalition talks, which are due to begin on Jan. 7 after Merkel failed to reach agreement with two smaller parties. He said he was enthusiastic about Macron s core idea of strengthening the EU and making it a global player. The SPD had initially hoped to go into opposition after suffering its worst election losses in the post-war era, but was persuaded to enter into negotiations with conservatives to avoid new elections. Merkel earlier this month gave her strongest endorsement of Macron s proposals, but Germany has been hamstrung in taking more decisive action on any concrete proposals until it has a new government in place. Merkel said she saw promising areas of common ground with Social Democrats on the future of Europe, and urged speedy action to work on EU reforms before the next European elections in 2019. This week she said she wants an initial coalition deal with the SPD by mid-January. Macron hopes to make progress with Germany on ideas to reform the eurozone by March, once Germany has a new coalition government in place, with the goal of agreeing a roadmap with all eurozone leaders by June. Gabriel also called for the EU to adopt programs that would encourage communities in poorer member states to accept more migrants by offering financial assistance. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's parliament approves 2018 budget;ISTANBUL(Reuters) - Turkey s parliament has approved the government s 2018 budget, which includes increased spending on defense and projects a rise in the fiscal deficit to 65.9 billion lira ($17.28 billion). The 2018 budget, approved by parliament late on Friday, introduces changes in tax regulations, such as tax increases for companies and motor vehicles, to help pay for increased security. In 2017, Turkey s budget is expected to show a deficit of 61.7 billion lira, more than twice the 2016 budget deficit of around 30 billion lira. Turkey s 2018 budget also projects tax income of 599.4 billion lira, up some 15 percent from estimates for 2017, and a 5.8 billion lira primary surplus. Over the past two years, Turkey s current account deficit has widened due to increasing government incentives to boost the economy and defense spending. Next year s budget deficit to gross domestic product ratio is expected to be 1.9 percent. The government says the additional defense spending is urgently needed to modernize the military, the second-largest in the NATO alliance, and meet the costs of domestic and foreign security operations. Turkey s economy has rebounded from a downturn that followed an attempted coup last year, helped by a series of government stimulus measures. GDP grew 11.1 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, its fastest expansion in six years, according to official data. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russian foreign ministry: Moscow ready to cooperate with U.S. on Afghanistan - RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow stands ready to cooperate with the United States on Afghanistan, Russia s Foreign Ministry official said in an interview with RIA state news agency published on Saturday. Russia maintains contacts with U.S. acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells, said Zamir Kabulov, special representative to the Russian president on Afghanistan and the head of Asian region department at the Foreign Ministry. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Driver charged with attempted murder over Australian vehicle attack;MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The man accused of deliberately plowing into Christmas shoppers on a busy street in the Australian city of Melbourne was charged on Saturday with 18 counts of attempted murder and one count of conduct endangering life. The Thursday incident was the second serious vehicle attack in Australia s second biggest city this year. Police said they had charged the man, former Afghanistan refugee Saeed Noori, after formally interviewing him about the attack that police had earlier described as a deliberate act . Police have said Noori, 32, is known to have mental health problems and to use drugs and they did not believe the attack was terrorism-related. Police suspect Noori was behind the wheel of a white SUV when he deliberately sped up and drove into dozens of pedestrians crossing the road at one of the busiest intersections in Melbourne s central business district. Noori appeared in the Magistrates Court later on Saturday where he was remanded in custody. He will next appear in court on Wednesday. The court also ordered that Noori be assessed by psychologists. Islamist militants have used vehicles to attack people several times in Europe and the United States over the past couple of years. In January, six people were killed in Melbourne s central business district when a man used his vehicle to mow them down. Police also ruled out terrorism for that attack. Following the January incident, authorities installed 140 concrete bollards in the city center. Victoria State premier Daniel Andrews said 12 people remained in hospital, including three who in critical condition. He said there would be an increased police presence at Melbourne events, including the Boxing Day Test Cricket, carols and other major sports events. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan's emperor draws record birthday crowd as he prepares to abdicate;TOKYO (Reuters) - A record crowd paid their respects to Japan s 84-year-old Emperor Akihito at Tokyo s Imperial Palace on Saturday, in his first birthday celebration since the date of his abdication was set. The emperor s birthday is traditionally marked by a national holiday and an address at the Imperial Palace, which opens to the public on the day. Well-wishers waved small Japanese flags and held up smartphones as Emperor Akihito, whose position is ceremonial with no political power, addressed them from a balcony, flanked by his wife and other members of the imperial family. The crowd of 52,300, according to the Imperial Household Agency, was the largest birthday attendance during Akihito s symbolic 29-year reign, known as the Heisei era, which means achieving peace in Japanese. On this day as we face the cold, my thoughts go out to those who suffered from typhoons and heavy rains, as well as the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake who continue to lead difficult lives, he said, referring to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed and displaced tens of thousands on the country s eastern seaboard. Along with Empress Michiko, Akihito has spent much of his reign addressing the legacy of World War Two, which was fought in the name of his father, Hirohito, and consoling victims of disasters such as the 2011 earthquake. Earlier this month, a 10-member Imperial Household Council agreed that Akihito would step down on April 30, 2019, before passing the Chrysanthemum Throne to his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito. In comments made to media, Akihito said he would use the remaining days of his reign to carry out his duties and prepare to pass the torch to the next era. Akihito has had heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer and said last year that he feared he would struggle to fulfill his royal duties due to his age. Japan passed a law this year allowing him to step down in a one-off provision as existing law did not provide for abdication. The last time a Japanese emperor abdicated was in 1817. Throughout his reign, Akihito has consistently urged the Japanese never to forget the horrors of war. His conciliatory remarks contrast with gestures made by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has adopted a less apologetic tone over Japan s past military aggression. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;More than 100 dead in Philippine mudslides, flooding: officials;MANILA (Reuters) - A tropical storm in the southern Philippines triggered mudslides and flash floods that killed more than 100 people, while dozens are missing, police and disaster officials said on Saturday. The casualties, most of them caused late on Friday, were all on the main southern island of Mindanao, they said, adding three provinces were hardest hit. Disaster officials said many residents had ignored warnings to leave coastal areas and riverbanks. Many people were swept to the sea as flood waters quickly rose due to the high tide, Manuel Luis Ochotorena, a disaster agency official, said. They never heeded the warnings. They thought it was a weak storm but it dumped more rains. Hundreds of kilometers to the east, army and emergency workers were checking reports an entire village was buried by mudslide in Tubod town in Lanao del Norte. Ryan Cabus, a local official, said power and communication lines to the area had been cut, complicating rescue efforts. The weather bureau said the storm had gathered strength over the Sulu Sea and was packing winds of up 80 kph (50 mph) and moving west at 20 kph. It was heading out over the sea by midday on Saturday and would have moved clear of the Philippines by Monday, it said. Emergency workers, soldiers, police and volunteers were being mobilized to search for survivors, clear debris, and restore power and communications. More than 100 deaths were reported in various places including 60 in Tubod, El Salvador and Munai towns in Lanao del Norte province. In Zamboanga del Norte province, police said 42 people had been killed in the towns of Sibuco and Salug. Three people were killed in Bukidnon province, while politicians in Lanao del Sur province said 18 people had drowned in flash floods there. Sixty-four people were reported missing in floods and landslides, according to a tally of reports form officials and police. The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons every year, bringing death and destruction, usually to the poorest communities. Last week, 46 people were killed in the central Philippines when a typhoon hit. In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan killed nearly 8,000 people and left 200,000 families homeless. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macedonia's parliament adopts 2018 budget, opposition boycotts vote;SKOPJE - Macedonia s parliament has adopted a 2018 draft budget, lowering the deficit to 2.7 percent of national output from 2.9 this year and forecasting growth of 3.2 percent. The budget, totaling 221.7 billion denars ($4.28 billion) and adopted late on Friday, allocated spending equivalent to about 400 million euros ($474.28 million) for capital investment, while average annual inflation was expected to be 1.7 percent. Revenues were forecast at 193.5 billion denars. The main opposition VMRO-DPMNE party boycotted the budget vote in protest at the arrest of a former interior minister, several lawmakers and political activists on charges related to violence in parliament in April, which pushed the nation into a political crisis. Macedonia s central bank revised its economic growth forecast for 2017 down to 0.5 percent from 2.5 percent, citing a poor economic performance in the first half of the year because of political instability. Macedonia s two-year crisis over a wiretapping scandal that toppled the government of nationalist Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, ended in June with the appointment of a pro-Western government of the Social Democrat Prime Minister Zoran Zaev. Finance Minister Dragan Tevdovski told parliament that the government planned to finance the deficit through a combination of domestic and foreign loans. The borrowing abroad may be done through a Eurobond or favorable foreign loans, Tevdovski said. The economy of the landlocked Balkan country grew by 2.4 percent in 2016 but national output contracted 1.9 percent in the second quarter of 2017, the first decline since 2012. Macedonia, which won independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991, has made little progress towards membership of the European Union and the NATO alliance due to a name dispute with Greece. ($1 = 0.8434 euros) ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Merkel, Macron say no alternative to peaceful settlement in eastern Ukraine;PARIS (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron urged the parties involved in an increase of ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine to implement decisions they have already agreed upon as soon as possible. Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev s foreign backers had warned on Wednesday that Moscow s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Macron and Merkel said in their statement there was no alternative to an exclusively peaceful settlement and called for a return of the Russian officers to the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination. Russia had accused the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line. In the light of the volatile security situation, they ask the sides for immediate and verifiable steps to remedy this situation, Macron and Merkel s statement said. It is necessary to implement agreements on disengagement and the withdrawal of heavy weapons behind the agreed withdrawal lines, withdrawal of tanks, artillery and mortars to the agreed storage sites . Other aspects of the Minsk agreements, like the withdrawal of foreign armed formations or the return of control over the Russian-Ukrainian border need to addressed seriously as well. Fighting in eastern Ukraine has escalated to the worst level in months, officials monitoring the conflict said on Tuesday. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italian parliament passes 2018 budget, clearing way for elections;ROME (Reuters) - Italy s upper house Senate on Saturday gave parliament s final approval to the government s 2018 budget, clearing the way for national elections expected to be held in March. The financial law, which had already passed in the Chamber of Deputies, aims to lower next year s fiscal deficit to 1.6 percent of gross domestic product from a targeted 2.1 percent this year. It also introduces a web tax from 2019, obliging companies to pay a three percent levy on some Internet transactions. The Senate passed the package in a vote of confidence by 140 votes to 97. Confidence votes allow the government to speed up legislation by curtailing debate on proposed amendments. If the government loses such a vote it has to resign, but with elections in any case imminent no parties had any real interest in scuppering the budget and bringing down Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni s administration. President Sergio Mattarella is expected to dissolve parliament before the end of the year, after which the government will set the date of the election. Politicians often tout March 4 as the most likely date. The European Commission says the budget may break EU rules because it raises previously agreed deficit targets and does too little to rein in Italy s huge public debt. At just over 130 percent of national output, Italy s debt is the highest in the euro zone after that of Greece. Brussels will issue a final verdict on the budget in the spring, after the Italian election which opinion polls suggest will produce a hung parliament. The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement leads in the polls, with around 28 percent of the vote, but a center-right coalition of parties is seen winning most seats in parliament. The ruling Democratic Party has been hit by internal divisions and lags 5-Star by around four points in most polls. ;worldnews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;A YOUNG DONALD J TRUMP: The 34-Year Old Shares His Views on Politics, Leadership, and a Vision for America’s Renewal in 1980 [Video];The video below is a much watch! A young Donald J. Trump speaks about leadership and politics long before he ran for president. His insight and thoughtfulness are there in a more soft spoken manner than today. Enjoy!Below this video is commentary from the interviewer many years later.INTERVIEWER RONA BARRETT 40 YEARS LATER:Many people may not remember but nearly 40 years ago then-businessman and developer Donald Trump was questioned about whether he would want to be President of the United States someday.His answer then might surprise you now.NewsChannel 3 sat down with world renown journalist and former gossip columnist Rona Barrett, who honed her journalist craft interviewing the rich and famous from the late 1950s to the early 1990s.Barrett reflected back on 1980. She had just launched a pilot program, zeroing-in on America s self-made millionaires. Her first guest was developer Donald Trump. He had a very spicy reputation way back in the 70s, Barrett said. He was flamboyant, in that the press made him that kind of a guy. If I look back now, He was very much like he is today. By then, Trump was on his way to becoming a billionaire. He was 34 years old. He was one of the first people, if not the first person, who ever bought the air over a major facility in Manhattan, Barrett said. I think it was Bonwit Teller (a luxury department store) at the time. He bought the air to build something above the place he couldn t buy! I had never heard of anyone buying air! It was Trump s first network interview. And it was done in his opulent, 66-floor penthouse. Gold in certain places, real gold in certain places, Barrett remembered. I mean, this fellow knew how to live a very rich life. KEYT s Beth Farnsworth sat with Barrett in the lobby of the Golden Inn and Village senior community she built in the Santa Ynez Valley. She looked back at the man she interviewed, for two hours, all those years ago. He was charming, Barrett said.Then, she reflected on the man leading our country today. I didn t see any of the bravado that I see now. That 1980 interview between Barrett and Trump is now in demand, worldwide, all because of that one question. It just popped out of my mouth. Would you like to be President of the United States? He looked at me and he said, No . The clip reveals a few of the reasons Trump did not embrace a presidency at the time. I see it as being a mean life and I also see it as somebody with strong views and somebody with the kind of views that are maybe a little bit unpopular, which might be right, Trump said. And he made some sort of comment about he didn t like the attitude of political people, having to smile and be with babies, Barrett added.At the time, Trump said he didn t feel America was going forward in a proper direction and was using very little of its potential as a nation. It should really be a country that gets the respect of other countries, Trump told Barrett.He was highly critical of the handling of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. He also said, There are many more people who are far more qualified to be President than I am . Barrett remembered.Yet, he refused to name names. The one man could turn this country around, Trump said during the interview. The one proper President could turn this country around. Barrett did some more reflecting during NewsChannel 3 s interview, then offered a personal opinion while admitting that she s no doctor or expert. I ve always had another feeling after that interview with Donald as I was talking to him, Barrett reflected. I always have felt that he was trying to prove to daddy that he could be bigger and better than daddy ever could. Fred Trump was a highly successful real estate developer, mostly in New York City, and a philanthropist;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Second court rejects Trump bid to stop transgender military recruits;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday rejected a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to prevent the U.S. military from accepting transgender recruits starting Jan. 1, the second court to issue such a ruling this week. Four federal judges around the country have issued injunctions blocking Trump’s ban on transgender people from the military, including one that was also handed down on Friday. The administration has appealed the previous three rulings. In a six-page order, the three-judge-panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the administration had “not shown a strong likelihood that they will succeed on the merits of their challenge” to a district court’s order blocking the ban. On Thursday the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it was denying the administration’s request while the appeal proceeds. The two courts’ actions could prompt the administration to ask the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Also on Friday, a federal trial court in Riverside, California, blocked the ban while the case proceeds, making it the fourth to do so, after similar rulings in Baltimore, Seattle and Washington, D.C. U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal said without the injunction the plaintiffs, including current and aspiring service members, would suffer irreparable harm. “There is nothing any court can do to remedy a government-sent message that some citizens are not worthy of the military uniform simply because of their gender,” he added. The administration had argued that the Jan. 1 deadline for accepting transgender recruits was problematic because tens of thousands of personnel would have to be trained on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants, and the military was not ready for that. The Obama administration had set a deadline of July 1, 2017, to begin accepting transgender recruits, but Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, postponed that date to Jan. 1. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender individuals from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty personnel. ;politicsNews;23/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In 'China's Jerusalem', Christians say faith trumps official Sunday School ban;WENZHOU, China (Reuters) - When authorities in China s southeastern city of Wenzhou outlawed Sunday School earlier this year, Christian parents determined their children must still learn about Jesus and the Bible. Churches in Wenzhou started teaching children in private homes or at other venues. Some billed Sunday School classes as daycare, not education, or moved them to Saturdays, more than a dozen local Christians told Reuters. Wenzhou, sometimes known as China s Jerusalem due to its sizable Christian community, is at the forefront of a growing standoff between China s leadership and the country s devout over religious education for children. The ruling and officially atheist Communist Party has increased efforts to curb the influence of Christianity, tightening restrictions on faith classes and warning against the religion s Western ideas. But Christians say the resolve of the community in Wenzhou suggests the party will struggle to exert control over the next generation of the country s 60 million Christians. In her house, faith comes first, grades come second, said one parent surnamed Chen, asking not to use her full name due to the sensitivity of the matter. Immaculately turned out in a cream fur coat and wearing a giant turquoise ring, Chen is one of Wenzhou s numerous wealthy Christians who say their children must attend Bible classes because state education fails to provide sufficient moral and spiritual guidance. Drugs, porn, gambling and violence are serious problems among today s youth and video games are extremely seductive, she told Reuters. We cannot be by his side all the time so only through faith can we make him understand (the right thing to do). In some districts of Wenzhou, in Zhejiang province, an official edict has prohibited Sunday Schools since August, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter. The provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, Henan and the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia have barred children from faith activities including summer camp, Christian news site World Watch Monitor reported in September. Sources spoken to by Reuters were unaware if the policy was a local government initiative or centrally mandated. They also did not know of any similar bans in other regions of China. Also in September, new rules were released expanding state oversight of religious education nationwide in what officials say is an attempt to create a new generation of religious leaders loyal to the party. China s State Administration for Religious Affairs and the foreign affairs office of the Wenzhou city government did not reply to faxed requests for comment. In the last four decades of economic prosperity, China s faithful have multiplied rapidly. Official numbers say there are now around 30 million Christians, while independent estimates suggest the number is about 60 million, most of whom are Protestants. In Wenzhou, a small Christian community started by 19th century missionaries has bloomed to over one million Christians. Until recent years, they had enjoyed a relatively relaxed relationship with local officials, residents said. Then, in 2014, a government campaign to demolish illegal churches and tear down the crosses that adorned them sparked an outcry from the Christian community and sowed mistrust of authorities among believers. The campaign came shortly after President Xi Jinping, who had been communist party chief of Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007, was appointed General Secretary of the party. But attempts to stem the rapid growth of believers has struggled in Wenzhou where churches, often funded by devout local business owners, are ubiquitous. Wenzhou government does not let churches register, because there are way too many, so there are lots of house churches and it is tough for the government to manage them, Zhao Gang, the minister at Wenzhou s Church of the Rose-tinted Clouds, told Reuters. Sunday School textbooks have been especially sensitive in the clampdown in Wenzhou, teachers said. The government restricts religious publications, and churches often use translated texts from overseas. One teacher said classes resumed when they stopped using unsanctioned textbooks and avoided the words Sunday School . Chinese law officially grants religious freedom for all, including children, but regulations on education and protection of minors also say religion cannot be used to hinder state education or to coerce children to believe. Local governments in troubled areas of China, such as the far western region of Xinjiang, ban children attending religious events, but Christian communities elsewhere rarely face blanket restrictions. This year, the party has been unusually strict in warning university students, state-owned enterprise employees and officials themselves against celebrating Christmas, with admonitions such as to resist the corrosion of Western religious culture , according to state media reports. While parents in Wenzhou want to control their children s education, the government is working to create a new crop of religious leaders loyal to the party. New rules governing religious schools from China s cabinet, due to take effect in February, are necessary to meet China s pressing need for patriotic religious leaders, Wang Zuoan, the head of China s official State Administration of Religious Affairs, told Reuters in written comments in October. We hope that the talent graduating from religious schools will be up to standard in both their political and religious character and will do a good job of combining love for the country with love for religion, he said. But for many Christians allowing the party to control religious education is unacceptable, as it requires putting the party before God, according to Sarah Cook, a New York-based analyst at Freedom House, an advocacy group. As such, the party can only do so much to control faith education. There are always going to be kids at home whose bedtimes stories are from the Bible, Cook said. For Chen in Wenzhou, faith should be at the forefront of education until believers outnumber atheists in China s young. There will definitely be more Christian believers in the next generation, she said. The ability for the Christian faith to be inherited and passed on is ever growing. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey dismisses more than 2,700 with emergency rule decree;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey said on Sunday that 2,756 people were dismissed from their jobs in public institutions including soldiers, teachers and ministry personnel over links to terror organizations. The dismissed personnel were found to be members of, or linked to, terror groups, structures and entities that act against national security, according to a decree published in the Official Gazette. Some 50,000 people have been arrested since a failed putsch in July last year and about 150,000 have been dismissed or suspended from their posts, including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with the movement of U.S-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The government accused Gulen of organizing the attempted coup. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied the accusation and condemned the coup. Rights groups and some Western allies fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the attempted coup as a pretext to stifle dissent. The government argues the crackdown is necessary due to the gravity of the coup attempt, in which 240 people were killed. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Federal judge partially lifts Trump's latest refugee restrictions;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge in Seattle partially blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s newest restrictions on refugee admissions on Saturday, the latest legal defeat for his efforts to curtail immigration and travel to the United States. The decision by U.S. District Judge James Robart is the first judicial curb on rules the Trump administration put into place in late October that have contributed significantly to a precipitous drop in the number of refugees being admitted into the country. Refugees and groups that assist them argued in court that the administration’s policies violated the Constitution and federal rulemaking procedures, among other claims. Department of Justice attorneys argued in part that U.S. law grants the executive branch the authority to limit refugee admissions in the way that it had done so. On Oct. 24, the Trump administration effectively paused refugee admissions from 11 countries mostly in the Middle East and Africa, pending a 90-day security review, which was set to expire in late January. The countries subject to the review are Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. For each of the last three years, refugees from the 11 countries made up more than 40 percent of U.S. admissions. A Reuters review of State Department data showed that as the review went into effect, refugee admissions from the 11 countries plummeted. Robart ruled that the administration could carry out the security review, but that it could not stop processing or admitting refugees from the 11 countries in the meantime, as long as those refugees have a “bona fide” connection to the United States. As part of its new restrictions, the Trump administration had also paused a program that allowed for family reunification for refugees, pending further security screening procedures being put into place. Robart ordered the government to re-start the program, known as “follow-to-join”. Approximately 2,000 refugees were admitted into the United States in fiscal year 2015 under the program, according to Department of Homeland Security data. Refugee advocacy groups praised Robart’s decision. “This ruling brings relief to thousands of refugees in precarious situations in the Middle East and East Africa, as well as to refugees already in the U.S. who are trying to reunite with their spouses and children,” said Mariko Hirose, litigation director for the International Refugee Assistance Project, one of the plaintiffs in the case. A Justice Department spokeswoman, Lauren Ehrsam, said the department disagrees with Robart’s ruling and is “currently evaluating the next steps”. Robart, who was appointed to the bench by Republican former President George W. Bush, emerged from relative obscurity in February, when he issued a temporary order to lift the first version of Trump’s travel ban. On Twitter, Trump called him a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” opinion “essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country”. Robart’s ruling represented the second legal defeat in two days for the Trump administration. On Friday, a U.S. appeals court said Trump’s travel ban targeting six Muslim-majority countries should not be applied to people with strong U.S. ties, but said its ruling would be put on hold pending a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. ;politicsNews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MOVIEGOING HITS 22-YR LOW…LA Times Blames Everyone But ANTI-TRUMP HOLLYWOOD;The LA Times is reporting that moviegoing is at the lowest level since 1995. The article blames Americans who are going to see fewer movies, on streaming services, which, to some extent, could be true, but from the majority of the comments we ve seen on our Facebook page, which reaches almost 1.7 million followers, Americans are no longer interested in paying their hard-earned money to support the anti-American and anti-Trump hate machine that is Hollywood. While there are a few openly conservative actors in Hollywood, the majority of them are swimming in a cesspool of liberalism and are consumed with hate for President Trump and his deplorable supporters. From George Clooney trashing Trump over his stance on refugees coming to America from Muslim hotbed nations, to Meryl Streep using a televised award ceremony to trash our newly inaugurated President, to has-been pop stars like Madonna saying she d like to blow up the White House;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRESIDENT TRUMP Calls Out Corrupt FBI Clinton Crony for Alleged ‘Misuse’ of FBI Email;You just can t make this level of cronyism up. It s a blatant disregard for laws, rules and just about everything else unethical. But this is the Clintons so the rules don t apply to them. They are sickeningly corrupt grifters who have been able to get away with just about everything for decades. It s time to call them out and hold them accountable for their lawlessness. The American people need to be able to trust their government will follow the rule of law. The time is now President Trump tweeted out to call out the FBI s Andrew McCabe on his cronyism with the Clintons and misuse of FBI email:President Trump tweeted Sunday that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe allegedly used his official agency email account to promote his wife s failed 2015 attempt to win, as a Democrat, a Virginia state Senate seat..@FoxNews-FBI s Andrew McCabe, in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 The president has long been a critic of the FBI s cronyism with the Clintons. Our previous report on what went on when Andrew McCabe s wife ran for Virginia state senate is unbelievably corrupt:OUR REPORT ON THE CLINTON CRONY BACK IN OCTOBER SPELLS OUT THE CORRUPTION:How much more criminal activity are American voters willing to overlook? Have we, as Americans gotten to the point that no crime committed by Hillary or anyone attached to Hillary will disqualify her from being elected to the highest office in our nation? Are we willing to accept that we can no longer trust anyone working for a government organization in America? The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton s email use.Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe s campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records. That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe s control or strongly influenced by him. The figure represents more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised in the effort.Mr. McAuliffe and other state party leaders recruited Dr. McCabe to run, according to party officials. She lost the election to incumbent Republican Dick Black.A spokesman for the governor said he supported Jill McCabe because he believed she would be a good state senator. This is a customary practice for Virginia governors Any insinuation that his support was tied to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous. Among political candidates that year, Dr. McCabe was the third-largest recipient of funds from Common Good VA, the governor s PAC, according to campaign finance records. Dan Gecker received $781,500 from the PAC and $214,456 from the state party for a campaign that raised $2.9 million, according to records;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MOVIEGOING HITS 22-YR LOW…LA Times Blames Everyone But ANTI-TRUMP HOLLYWOOD;The LA Times is reporting that moviegoing is at the lowest level since 1995. The article blames Americans who are going to see fewer movies, on streaming services, which, to some extent, could be true, but from the majority of the comments we ve seen on our Facebook page, which reaches almost 1.7 million followers, Americans are no longer interested in paying their hard-earned money to support the anti-American and anti-Trump hate machine that is Hollywood. While there are a few openly conservative actors in Hollywood, the majority of them are swimming in a cesspool of liberalism and are consumed with hate for President Trump and his deplorable supporters. From George Clooney trashing Trump over his stance on refugees coming to America from Muslim hotbed nations, to Meryl Streep using a televised award ceremony to trash our newly inaugurated President, to has-been pop stars like Madonna saying she d like to blow up the White House;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was sent gift-wrapped box of horse manure: reports;(Reuters) - A gift-wrapped package addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s home in a posh Los Angeles neighborhood that was suspected of being a bomb was instead filled with horse manure, police told local media. The package was found Saturday evening in a next-door neighbor’s driveway in Bel Air, the Los Angeles Police Department told the Los Angeles Times and KNBC television, the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles. The package also included a Christmas card with negative comments about President Donald Trump and the new U.S. tax law signed by Trump last week. Reuters could not reach LAPD officials for comment on Sunday. An LAPD bomb squad X-rayed the package before opening it and found the horse manure inside, police told local media. Aerial footage from KNBC showed officers investigating a large box in wrapping paper, then dumping a large amount of what they later identified as the manure and opening the card that was included inside. Mnuchin, who KNBC said was not home when the package was discovered, is a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive and Hollywood film financier. A road in Bel Air was closed for about two hours, KNBC reported. The U.S. Secret Service is also investigating the incident, according to the TV station. ;politicsNews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China closes more than 13,000 websites in past three years;BEIJING (Reuters) - China has closed more than 13,000 websites since the beginning of 2015 for breaking the law or other rules and the vast majority of people support government efforts to clean up cyberspace, state news agency Xinhua said on Sunday. The government has stepped up already tight controls over the internet since President Xi Jinping took power five years ago, in what critics say is an effort to restrict freedom of speech and prevent criticism of the ruling Communist Party. The government says all countries regulate the internet, and its rules are aimed at ensuring national security and social stability and preventing the spread of pornography and violent content. A report to the on-going session of the standing committee of China s largely rubber stamp parliament said the authorities had targeted pornography and violence in their sweeps of websites, blogs and social media accounts, Xinhua said. As well as the 13,000 websites shut down, almost 10 million accounts had also been closed by websites, it added. It did not give details but the accounts were likely on social media platforms. Internet security concerns the party s long-term hold on power, the country s long-term peace and stability, socio-economic development and the people s personal interests, Xinhua said. More than 90 percent of people surveyed supported government efforts to manage the internet, with 63.5 percent of them believing that in recent years there has been an obvious reduction in harmful online content, it added. These moves have a powerful deterrent effect, Wang Shengjun, vice chairman of parliament s standing committee, told legislators, according to Xinhua. Authorities including the Cyberspace Administration of China have summoned more than 2,200 websites operators for talks during the same period, he said. Separately, Xinhua said that over the past five years, more than 10 million people who refused to register using their real names had internet or other telecoms accounts suspended. China ushered in a tough cyber security law in June, following years of fierce debate around the controversial legislation that many foreign business groups fear will hit their ability to operate in the country. China maintains a strict censorship regime, banning access to many foreign news outlets, search engines and social media including Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O). ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Sudan, Turkey to set up 'strategic cooperation council', boost trade ties;KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Turkey and Sudan have agreed to set up a strategic cooperation council to strengthen economic ties, their presidents said at a news conference in Khartoum on Sunday after the first visit by a Turkish leader to the African nation. The countries hope gradually to increase bilateral trade ties to $10 billion a year from the current $500 million, and signed 12 agreements on military, economic and agricultural cooperation. Sudan s economy has been struggling since the south seceded in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of the country s oil output. In recent years, Turkey has boosted investments in Sudan. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey wants to bring wounded from Syria's Ghouta for treatment;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey is working with Russia to evacuate around 500 people from the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday. There are around 500 people, including 170 children and women who need urgent humanitarian aid, Erdogan said ahead of his departure on an official visit to Sudan. He said he had discussed the issue with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Ankara aimed to bring people in need of assistance to Turkey to provide treatment and care. The Russian and Turkish chiefs of staff would discuss the steps to be taken in operations that would also involve the Turkish Red Cresent and Turkey s Disaster and Emergency Organisation (AFAD), Erdogan said. In November, the U.N. humanitarian adviser for Syria called the situation in eastern Ghouta a humanitarian emergency. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt FM to head to Ethiopia after Nile dam talks stall;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will visit Addis Ababa next week for talks with his Ethiopian counterpart, a foreign ministry spokesman said, in a bid to end a standoff over a multi-billion dollar dam project on the Nile river. The dispute, which also involves Sudan, centers on control of a share of the waters of the Nile that stretches 6,695 km (4,184 miles) from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean and is the economic lifeblood of all three countries. Cairo says the dam would threaten water supplies that have fed Egypt s agriculture and economy for thousands of years. Ethiopia says the Grand Renaissance Dam, which it hopes will help make it Africa s largest power exporter, will have no major effect on Egypt. It accuses Cairo of flexing its political muscle to deter financiers from backing other Ethiopian power projects. Delegations from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia met in Cairo in November to approve a study by a French firm commissioned to assess the dam s environmental and economic impact. But negotiations stalled when they failed to agree on the initial report with each blaming others for blocking progress. Sudan s Irrigation Minister Moataz Moussa said Egypt was unwilling to accept amendments to the report put forward by Khartoum and Addis Ababa. Sudan and Ethiopia had expressed concern over several points, especially the proposed baseline from which the study would measure the dam s impacts, Moussa said in November. Another source of disagreement is whether Ethiopia plans to complete construction before negotiations over water flows have finished. It s clear they don t want to reach conclusions quickly. We believe they probably want to start filling the dam and complete construction while there are still some ongoing discussions, said Mahmoud Abou Zeid, Arab Water Council Chair and former Egyptian irrigation minister. He said this would violate an agreement signed by all three countries in Khartoum in 2015 meant to ensure diplomatic cooperation and stem fears of a resource conflict. Cairo fears the 6,000-megawatt dam, being built by Italy s largest construction firm, Salini Impregilo SpA, and due for completion next year, will reduce the flow it depends on for drinking water and irrigation. Egyptian officials say safeguarding the country s quota of Nile water is a matter of national security. No one can touch Egypt s water ... (which) means life or death for a population, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said last month. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Pope, on Christmas Eve, says faith demands respect of immigrants;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis strongly defended immigrants at his Christmas Eve Mass on Sunday, comparing them to Mary and Joseph finding no place to stay in Bethlehem and saying faith demands that foreigners be welcomed. Francis, celebrating his fifth Christmas as leader of the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, led a solemn Mass for about 10,000 people in St. Peter s Basilica while many others followed the service from the square outside. Security was stepped up, with participants checked as they approached St. Peter s Square even before going through metal detectors to enter the basilica. The square had been cleared out hours earlier so security procedures could be put in place. The Gospel reading at the Mass in Christendom s largest church recounted the Biblical story of how Mary and Joseph had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be registered for a census ordered by Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary. We see the tracks of entire families forced to set out in our own day. We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away, but driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones, Francis said. Even the shepherds who the Bible says were the first to see the child Jesus were forced to live on the edges of society and considered dirty, smelly foreigners, he said. Everything about them generated mistrust. They were men and women to be kept at a distance, to be feared. Wearing white vestments in the flower-bedecked church, Francis called for a new social imagination ... in which none have to feel that there is no room for them on this earth. The 81-year-old pope, who was born of Italian immigrant stock in Argentina, has made defense of migrants a major plank of his papacy, often putting him at odds with politicians. Austria s new chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, has aligned himself with central European neighbors like Hungary and the Czech Republic in opposing German-backed proposals to distribute asylum seekers around EU member states. In elections in Germany in September, the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party made significant gains, with electors punishing Chancellor Angela Merkel for her open-door policy and pushing migration policy to the top of the agenda in talks to form a coalition government. Italy s anti-immigrant Northern League, whose leader Matteo Salvini often gives fiery speeches against migrants, is expected to make gains in national elections next year. A law that would give citizenship to children born in Italy to migrant parents is stalled in parliament. In his homily, Francis said, Our document of citizenship comes from God, making respect of migrants an integral part of Christianity. This is the joy that we tonight are called to share, to celebrate and to proclaim. The joy with which God, in his infinite mercy, has embraced us pagans, sinners and foreigners, and demands that we do the same, Francis said. Francis also condemned human traffickers who make money off desperate migrants as the Herods of today with blood on their hands, a reference to the Biblical story of the king who ordered the killing of all newborn male children near Bethlehem because he feared Jesus would one day displace him. More than 14,000 people have died trying to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean to Europe in the past four years. On Christmas Day, Francis will deliver his twice-yearly Urbi et Orbi (To the City and to the World) blessing and message from the central balcony of St. Peter s Basilica. (In fourth paragraph, this story corrects to say Mary and Joseph, not Mary and Jesus.) ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Emirates stops flying to Tunisia in row over ban on Tunisian women;TUNIS (Reuters) - Dubai airline Emirates will stop flying to Tunisia, it said on Sunday, after the North African country said it had banned flights from the United Emirates carrier. The announcement came two days after Tunisian government officials said the UAE had banned Tunisian woman from flying to or transiting through its territory. No reason was given for either decision. Emirates said on Twitter it would stop its Dubai-Tunis connection from Monday following instructions from Tunisia. The Tunisian transport ministry said in a statement earlier that Emirates flights would be suspended until the UAE airline found a way to operate according to international law and treaties. The UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said on Twitter both countries had been in contact about the security measure information , without elaborating. He added that the UAE valued and respected Tunisian women. In Tunisia anger has been building after women said they had been banned at Tunis airport from boarding Emirates flights to Dubai. Tunisian civil organizations and political parties called on the government to act. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;For Iraq's Christians, a bittersweet first Christmas home after Islamic State;TELESKOF, Iraq (Reuters) - Inside the newly renovated Church of Saint George in the Northern Iraqi town of Teleskof, Hayat Chamoun Daoud led children dressed as Santa Claus singing Jingle Bells in Aramaic. Like every other resident of Teleskof, this was Daoud s first Christmas back home in three years, since Islamic State militants overran her town and forcibly displaced its 12,000-strong Chaldean Christian community. It s so special to be back in my church, the church where I got married, the church I raised my children in, the school headmistress said, tears in her eyes. Faced with a choice to convert, pay a tax or die, Daoud, like many other Christians in the Nineveh Plains, chose to flee. Most sought refuge in nearby towns and cities, but many sought permanent asylum abroad. Though the militants were only in Teleskof for a few days, residents only began returning home earlier this year. On Sunday, they celebrated their first Christmas together again at the town s main church, which was overflowing. Hundreds of congregants, dressed in their finest, poured in to pray and receive communion from Father Salar Bodagh, who later lit the traditional bonfire in the church s courtyard, a symbol of renewal he said. Despite the obvious joys of being able to celebrate openly once again, it was a bittersweet Christmas for most across the Nineveh Plains, the epicenter of Iraq s ancient Christian communities which can trace their history in the country back two millennia. Though Iraq declared full victory over the militants just two weeks ago after a brutal three-year war, the damage done to Christian enclaves was extensive, and left many wondering whether they could overcome their recent history. Islamic State ravaged Christian areas, looting and burning down homes and churches, stripping them of all valuable artifacts and smashing relics. The damage in Qaraqosh, a town 15 km (10 miles) west of Mosul also known as Hamdaniya, was extensive, particularly to the town s ancient churches. At the Syrian Catholic Church of the Immaculate, congregants gathered for midnight Mass on Sunday surrounded by scorched and blackened walls, still tagged with Islamic State graffiti. They also sat on donated plastic chairs - the church has not yet been able to replace the wooden pews the militants used to fuel the massive fire which engulfed the church. Most families will require tens of thousands of dollars to repair their homes and replace their stolen goods. But most say they can overcome the material damage, unlike the forced separation of their families. Before the militant onslaught, Qaraqosh was the largest Christian settlement in Iraq, with a population of more than 50,000. But today, only a few hundred families have returned. Entire congregations have moved overseas, such as the Syriac Orthodox congregation of the Church of Mart Shmony. On Saturday afternoon, Father Butros Kappa, the head of Qaraqosh s Church of the Immaculate was trying hard to summon any sense of hope to deliver his congregation during Christmas Mass. We ll have a Christmas Mass like in previous years, but this year, ours will be a joy soaked in tears, because all of our people have left Iraq, said Father Kappa. Holding Mass in the singed and upturned ruins of his church was therefore important, he said, to remind everyone that despite the tragedies that have befallen us, we re still here. In Teleskof, 30 km (20 miles) north of Mosul and itself one of the oldest continuing Christian communities in the world, some families were skipping Mass altogether upset at their forced dispersal. We usually celebrate with our entire family, said Umm Rita, as she prepared the traditional Christmas Day dish of pacha (sheep s head, trotters and stomach all slowly boiled) at her home. But how can we be happy this year? Our brothers and sisters, even my own daughter, her husband and child I ve never met have all moved away. Community leaders estimate more than 7,000 of Teleskof s residents are now scattered across Iraq and it s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, the United States, Australia, Germany, Lebanon and Jordan. Amid ongoing tensions between the central government in Baghdad and Iraq s Kurds after a referendum on Kurdish independence was held over Baghdad s objections in September, Teleskof s residents fear violence once again. We just want to live in peace, said Umm Rita. We are more anxious now than when Islamic State was in our homes. Our community has been gutted, said Firas Abdelwahid, a 76-year-old former state oil employee, of the thousands who have sought permanent shelter overseas. Watching children play by the church bonfire, he felt melancholy. But what do we expect? The past is tragic, the present is desperate and well, there is no future for us Christians in Iraq. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru president pardons ex-leader Fujimori;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin critic Navalny clears first hurdle in bid for Russia presidency;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Sunday cleared the first hurdle towards taking part in next year s presidential election, even though the central election commission has previously ruled him ineligible to run. Navalny, 41, is a fierce opponent of President Vladimir Putin, who is widely expected to win re-election in March, extending 17 years in power. A veteran campaigner against corruption among Russia s elite, he won the initial support of 742 people at a gathering in a district of Moscow - above the minimum 500 required to initiate a presidential bid. There is no large-scale support for Putin and his rule in this country, Navalny told the meeting, describing himself as a real candidate for election and threatening a boycott of the vote by his supporters if he is barred from running. On Sunday evening, Navalny submitted the documents to the central election commission needed to be registered as a candidate. The commission, which extended its working hours on Sunday to take the documents, has five days in which to decide whether Navalny will be registered. The commission has previously said he is ineligible due to a suspended prison sentence that he says was politically motivated. We are capable of opposing the current authorities. Our key demand is to be allowed to take part in the elections, Navalny told reporters as he was leaving the election commission building in the central Moscow. Navalny has been jailed three times this year on charges of repeatedly organizing public meetings and rallies in violation of existing laws. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in October that Navalny s conviction for fraud in 2014 was arbitrary and ordered Moscow to pay him compensation. The ruling party United Russia meeting on Saturday pledged all possible support to the 65-year-old Putin in his bid to win a further six years in power in the March election. The Communist Party, which came second after United Russia in a parliamentary election last year, named Pavel Grudinin, 57, as its candidate, dropping veteran party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Another politician who has run before, Sergei Mironov from A Just Russia party, said his party had decided to support Putin instead and not propose its own candidate. Property developer Sergei Polonsky, who has been convicted of defrauding investors, also secured enough initial backing to seek clearance from the election commission to take part in the presidential race. Others planning to run include television personality Ksenia Sobchak, whose late father was Putin s boss in the early 1990s, journalist Ekaterina Gordon. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chess federation says Israel excluded from Saudi-hosted match;ATHENS (Reuters) - Israeli players have been denied visas to participate in a speed chess championship hosted by Saudi Arabia this week, a vice president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) said on Sunday. Seven Israeli players had requested visas for the tournament on Dec. 26-30. It would have marked the first time Saudi Arabia had publicly hosted Israelis as the Gulf state does not recognize Israel and there are no formal ties between them. Israel Gelfer, vice president of FIDE, whose Secretariat is based in Athens, told Reuters in an email that visas for the Israeli players have not been issued and will not be issued . He said the tournament would go ahead as planned. It was not immediately clear if other delegations had been excluded but players from Qatar had suggested they may have been rejected. Saudi Arabia s Center for International Communication said in a statement that more than 180 players would participate but did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel Chess Federation Spokesman Lior Aizenberg said efforts were still being made by various parties to ensure the Israeli players took part. The event is not a world championship if they prevent chess players from several countries from taking part, Aizenberg told Reuters. Every chess player should have the right to participate in an event on the basis of professional criteria, regardless of their passports, their place of issue or the stamps they bear. Aizenberg said FIDE should ensure Israeli players could compete in international events and that the Israeli federation was considering all options, including legal action and holding an international competition in Israel for players excluded from the Saudi match. FIDE had said in November it was undertaking a huge effort to ensure all players were granted visas. (This version of the story was refiled to clarify that FIDE secretariat in Athens, but unclear where Gelfer speaking from) ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Guatemala to move embassy to Jerusalem, backing Trump;GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said on Sunday he had given instructions to move the Central American country s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a few days after his government backed the United States in a row over the city s status. In a short post on his official Facebook account, Morales said he decided to move the embassy from Tel Aviv after talking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. This month U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing decades of U.S. policy and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies. The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to forging a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as their capital. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. On Thursday, 128 countries defied Trump by backing a non-binding U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem. Guatemala and neighboring Honduras were two of only a handful of countries to join the United States and Israel in voting against the resolution on Jerusalem. The United States is an important source of assistance to Guatemala and Honduras, and Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that supported the U.N. resolution. Morales, a former television comedian with an important base of conservative Christian support, earlier this year became embroiled in a bitter spat with the United Nations when a U.N.-backed anti-corruption body in Guatemala tried to impeach him. Although Morales avoided impeachment, he failed in an attempt to expel the head of the body, the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, after criticism from the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;World's largest amphibious aircraft makes maiden flight in China;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s domestically developed AG600, the world s largest amphibious aircraft, performed its maiden flight on Sunday from an airport on the shores of the South China Sea, the latest step in a military modernization program. China has stepped up research on advanced military equipment as it adopts a more muscular approach to territorial disputes in places such as the disputed South China Sea, rattling nerves in the Asia-Pacific region and the United States. State television showed live images of the AG600 lifting off from Zhuhai airport in the southern province of Guangdong, which sits on the South China Sea coast. It returned about an hour later and taxied to its stand accompanied by martial music and greeted by crowds waving Chinese flags. Xinhua news agency said the aircraft was the protector spirit of the sea, islands and reefs . It had previously been scheduled to make its first flight earlier this year but it is unclear why it was delayed after ground tests took place in April. State-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC) [SASADY.UL] has spent almost eight years developing the aircraft, which is roughly the size of a Boeing Co (BA.N) 737 and is designed to carry out marine rescues and battle forest fires. However, state media has also noted its potential use in the South China Sea, where China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei all have overlapping claims. The AG600 s chief designer, Huang Lingcai, was quoted in the official China Daily earlier this month as saying it can make round trips without refueling from the southern island province of Hainan to James Shoal, claimed by China but which is located close to Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo. Powered by four turboprop engines, the AG600 can carry 50 people during maritime search-and-rescue missions, and can scoop up 12 metric tons of water within 20 seconds for fire fighting trips, according to state media. The aircraft has received 17 orders so far from Chinese government departments and Chinese companies. It has a maximum flight range of 4,500 km (2,800 miles) and a maximum take-off weight of 53.5 tonnes. It can use conventional airports and also land and take-off from the sea. China is in the midst of a massive military modernization program, ranging from testing anti-satellite missiles to building stealth fighters and the country s first indigenous aircraft carrier, to add to an existing one bought from Ukraine. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;South Sudan army, rebels clash hours after ceasefire;NAIROBI (Reuters) - South Sudan s army clashed with rebels in an oil-producing region early on Sunday, both sides said, shattering a ceasefire hours after it came into effect. Both sides accused the other of starting the fighting around the town of Koch in Unity state. Seventeen aid workers fled the violence, according to a humanitarian source. There were no immediate details of casualties. The government and rebel groups signed a ceasefire on Thursday in the latest attempt to end a four-year civil war and let humanitarian groups reach civilians. The ceasefire formally came into force on Sunday morning, but fighting broke out soon afterwards, according to a humanitarian security report seen by Reuters. Our forces came under heavy fire this morning in Koch county, Dickson Gatluak, a spokesman for the government side, said. Our forces acted in self defense and repulsed the attacking forces and defeated them, he added in a statement. Rebel spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said the army attacked first and rebel forces were now pursuing government soldiers towards the town. The world s youngest country plunged into war in late 2013 after President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy, Riek Machar. The dispute erupted into fighting that spread across the country, largely along ethnic lines between forces loyal to Kiir, who is Dinka, and Machar, who is Nuer. The violence, which the United Nations says has amounted to ethnic cleansing, has forced a third of the population to flee. Earlier this year, pockets of the country plunged briefly into famine. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt to hike Cairo metro fares from next July: state newspaper;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will raise the price of tickets on Cairo s loss-making metro system from next July, tripling the present fare for many commuters, the state-owned newspaper al-Ahram said on Sunday. Commuters will be charged a base fare of 2 Egyptian pounds (11 U.S. cents) for the first 9 stops, and an additional pound for 9 more stations, the newspaper, quoting Transport Minister Hisham Arafat, said. A maximum fare of 6 Egyptian pounds will be charged for commuters who ride one line from start to finish, though discounted rates for government workers and students will be maintained. Currently, commuters can cover an unlimited number of stops and can even switch lines for the same base fare of 2 Egyptian pounds. The move comes as part of an effort by the transport authority to cover operational costs after the floatation of the Egyptian pound, the newspaper said. The government angered Cairo residents, already hit by a sharp rise in living costs, when it doubled the price of metro tickets in March for millions of commuters, an increase which followed losses of 500 million Egyptian pounds which have put the network at risk, media reported in March. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;From Jerusalem, Netanyahu offers Christians personal tours of Israel;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to play tour guide to Christian pilgrims on Sunday in a message relayed from Jerusalem, whose recognition as Israel s capital by U.S. President Donald Trump has split global Christian opinion. A Christmas Eve video on Twitter showed Netanyahu against the backdrop of East Jerusalem, an area laden with Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines that Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want as their own future capital. In the message, titled Merry Christmas from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel! he described Israel as a haven for its 2 percent Christian minority because, he said, We protect the rights of everyone to worship in the holy sites behind me. Netanyahu named several Christian pilgrimage sites in Israel - including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in East Jerusalem s Old City - which would take visitors in the footsteps of Jesus and the origin of our Judeo-Christian heritage. For those of you who come to Israel, I m going to take a guided tour. In fact, I ll be your guide on this guided tour, Netanyahu said. This would happen Christmas next year he said, without going into the logistics. Trump s Dec. 6 announcement on Jerusalem reversed decades of U.S. policy on leaving the city s status to Israeli-Palestinian negotiation. The move angered Muslims and was rejected by most world powers. U.S. evangelicals who see God s hand in the modern-day return of Jews to a biblical homeland were buoyed. But Pope Francis called for the status quo in the city to be respected, and several other Christian denominations were opposed. The international consensus strengthens our cause and imbues our people with steadfastness, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah said at a ceremony in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, traditional site of Jesus birth. East Jerusalem, Hamdallah said, is a Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian city, and there will be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital, and without this there will be no peace in the region nor in the whole world. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three workers die in gas accident at Libyan oilfield: source;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Three workers, two of them Sudanese, died in an accident at Libya s Zelten oil and gas field on Saturday, an oil source said. They died after inhaling gas during maintenance works, the source said, adding that a fourth person was being treated in hospital. The nationality of the third dead was not immediately known. The field belongs to Sirte Oil Company and pumps between 35,000 and 40,000 barrels a day. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuela frees 36 jailed opponents in Christmas gesture;CARACAS (Reuters) - Three dozen opponents of Venezuela s socialist government were released from prison and reunited with their families on Sunday as part of a wider Christmas release, a local rights group said. Lambasted by critics at home and abroad for holding around 270 activists in prison, President Nicolas Maduro s administration said on Saturday it was freeing 80 of them with alternative sentences like community service. Thirteen were paraded in front of TV cameras at a meeting with a senior official, Delcy Rodriguez. She harangued them for violence and subversion, but also wished them a happy Christmas. Alfredo Romero, whose Penal Forum group tracks the detention of activists and protesters, said 36 political prisoners had been freed by Sunday morning. But he criticized the government for not giving a blanket amnesty. They should release not just some but all of them, and not imprison any more, he said. The best-known among the released prisoners were former provincial mayor Alfredo Ramos, opposition electoral adviser Roberto Picon and a dozen policemen who worked for the opposition-run Chacao district of Caracas. I m happy to be free. I m with my family, Ramos was quoted as saying in local media. It was a tough ordeal, very difficult. It was an arbitrary detention, unjust. I didn t commit any crime. Maduro, the 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez, refutes the term political prisoners , saying all of the jailed activists were there on legitimate charges of plotting to overthrow his government and promoting violence. Some 170 people died during two rounds of anti-Maduro street protests in 2014 and earlier this year. Opponents say they are fighting for freedom against a dictatorship that has destroyed the OPEC nation s economy and democracy. Maduro accuses them of being part of a global right-wing plot to topple him in a coup. U.S. lawmaker Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a fierce critic of both Venezuela and Cuba s Communist government, called the pre-Christmas releases in Venezuela a hypocritical gesture. Maduro in Venezuela cynically releases 80 political prisoners who were actually innocent, parades and humiliates several on state TV ... and expects thanks for Christmas mercy , tweeted the Republican U.S. representative from Florida. What a cruel farce. Nevertheless, the releases could inject life into stuttering mediation talks between Venezuela s government and opposition due to resume in the Dominican Republic in early January. The releases concretely demonstrate the Revolution and President Nicolas Maduro s firm desire for dialogue, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said. Let s hope the opposition knows how to interpret this and isolate its violent factors. Venezuela s best-known detained politician is Leopoldo Lopez, who remains under house arrest in Caracas, accused of spearheading violence in 2014. Though they have turned his house into a jail, I know his mind is strong and he will keep fighting tirelessly for a better Venezuela, said his mother Antonieta Lopez, lamenting he was spending a fourth Christmas detained. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to hire 110,000 new public servants in 2018;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that Turkey would employ an additional 110,000 public servants in 2018 including teachers, medical and religious personnel. Speaking in the southern border town of Kilis, Yildirim said that among the total, the government would hire an extra 36,000 medical personnel and 20,000 teachers. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;London Zoo reopens after fire that killed aardvark, meerkats;LONDON (Reuters) - London Zoo reopened on Sunday, a day after a fire that killed an aardvark and likely four meerkats and which left staff suffering from smoke inhalation and shock. The Zoo said an initial post mortem showed the aardvark named Misha most likely died from smoke inhalation whilst sleeping, while the four meerkats unaccounted for were presumed to have died. We are all naturally devastated by this but are immensely grateful to the fire brigade, who reacted quickly to the situation to bring the fire under control, ZSL London Zoo said in a statement on Sunday. After consultation with fire experts attending yesterday, we are able to safely open the zoo today. The fire broke out shortly after 0600 GMT on Saturday in the Animal Adventure section before spreading to a shop and cafe at the site in Regent s Park in central London. The zoo, which dates from 1826, said it was too soon to speculate on the cause of the fire. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fire in Philippine shopping mall kills 37;MANILA (Reuters) - Fire swept through a shopping mall in the Philippines killing at least 37 people, most of them workers at a call center, city government officials said on Sunday. The vice mayor of the southern city of Davao, Paolo Duterte, said the chance of survival for any of the 37 people missing at the NCC Mall was zero . Let us pray for them, said Duterte, the eldest son of President Rodrigo Duterte. The fire broke out on Saturday at a furniture store on the mall s third level and quickly engulfed an outsourcing business on the upper floor, said a spokeswoman for the city government, Ma. Teresita Gaspan, The cause was not known but an investigation was being launched, she said. President Duterte and his daughter, Sara Duterte, who is mayor of the city, visited the scene late on Saturday to meet anxious relatives of the missing and survivors. Six people were rescued and taken to hospital. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt detains 15 after dozens attack Coptic church south of Cairo;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities have detained 15 people pending an investigation into an attack on an unlicensed Coptic Christian church in a village south of Cairo, a security source said on Sunday. Dozens of Muslims from the village of Kafr al-Waslin attacked the church after Friday prayers, smashing the windows and breaking everything inside, the archdiocese of Atfih said in a statement. The diocese had applied to legalize the status of the church, which has housed worshippers for 15 years after a church building law was passed in 2016, the statement said. Those detained are accused of stirring sectarian strife, harming national unity and destroying private property, one judicial source told Reuters. The owner of the building was also in custody pending inquiries into the operations of the facility by state security and the interior ministry, the source added. Egyptian Christians make up about a tenth of the country s almost 95 million population and are the Middle East s largest Christian community. They have long complained of discrimination in the majority-Muslim country. The government does not make the official number of Christians public in its census and Christians have long complained of being undercounted. Some Muslims object to turning this building into a church because there s a really big mosque beside it, one villager who asked not to be named told Reuters. There are strong social ties between the Muslims and Christians [in our village, he added. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Swiss president wants a vote to clarify country's EU position;ZURICH (Reuters) - A referendum in Switzerland to clarify the country s relationship with the European Union would be helpful, Swiss President Doris Leuthard said on Sunday, after ties between the two sides cooled this week. Switzerland s frictions with the EU, of which it is not a member, arise as Britain negotiates its withdrawal from the bloc following a referendum in June last year and seeks a new trading relationship with its closest neighbors. Talks on securing a new framework treaty to govern the Swiss-EU relationship have been underway for some time, with Brussels wanting to replace the more than 100 bilateral accords which regulate its relationship with Bern. But relations soured this week when the EU granted Swiss stock exchanges only limited access to the bloc, prompting Swiss threats of retaliation for what it called discrimination. The bilateral path is important, Leuthard told Swiss newspapers Sonntags Blick. We therefore have to clarify our relationship with Europe. We have to know in which direction to go. Therefore a fundamental referendum would be helpful. Talks on the an all-encompassing agreement made headway last month after Switzerland agreed to increase its contribution to the EU s budget. Such a deal would ensure Switzerland adopts relevant EU laws in return for enhanced access to the bloc s single market, crucial for Swiss exports. But a deal would be opposed by the anti-EU Swiss People s Party (SVP), currently the biggest group in parliament. Leuthard, who steps down as president at the end of the year, said the latest row had not overshadowed her year in the rotating office. Of course, the differences with Brussels are now in focus. Here our attitude is clear - for the EU to link such a technical thing like stock exchange equivalency with a political question like the framework treaty, that is not possible, She said some countries were putting Switzerland in the same category as Britain, while others wanted to strengthen their own financial centers at Switzerland s expense. Others think we are cherry pickers who benefit too much from the single European market, they want to increase pressure for a framework agreement, Leuthard said. Pressure from outside would did not contribute to a beneficial climate in Switzerland over a potential agreement, she said. She said she understood Swiss scepticism towards the EU, but there was no alternative to finding an accommodation with the bloc which generates around two thirds of Swiss trade. We can strengthen the cooperation with India and China, but the EU remains central. We need a mechanism and regulated relationship with the EU, that would also prevent political games like we are having at the moment, Leuthard said. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt security forces kill nine suspected militants in raid: ministry;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces on Sunday killed nine suspected militants in a shootout in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, the interior ministry said in a statement. The ministry said security forces had received information that the militants were using a farm in Sharqiya as a hideout and were trained there to use weapons to carry out attacks in north Sinai. It said their attacks had resulted in the deaths of a number of police and army personnel. Upon raiding the farm, security forces were surprised by gunshots in their direction which were dealt with, resulting in the killing of nine, the ministry said. It said it was still trying to determine the identity of the suspects. Weapons and ammunition were found at the farm. In a separate raid in Cairo on a terrorist hideout , police arrested nine other suspected militants on Sunday, the ministry said in the same statement. Those arrested all have ties with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, it said. Security forces have battled Islamist militants in the mainly desert region stretching from the Suez Canal eastwards to the Gaza Strip and Israel, since 2013. Militants there have killed hundreds of police and soldiers. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered the armed forces to end the insurgency within three months after an attack on a mosque in North Sinai last month that killed more than 300 people in Egypt s worst militant attack in modern history. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chad reshuffles finance, other key ministries - decree;N DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad s President Idriss Deby on Sunday appointed Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul as minister of finance and also named new economy, foreign affairs, security and justice ministers, a presidential decree showed. Fadoul has served as interim finance minister since Deby sacked his predecessor, Christian Georges Diguimbaye, last month. The appointment comes amid stalled negotiations with Glencore over more than $1 billion in oil-backed loans Chad owes the commodities trader. Glencore lent the West African country s state oil firm SHT about $1.45 billion in 2014 to be repaid with crude oil. The loan was subsequently syndicated with several banks. It was restructured in 2015 following the crash in global oil prices but Chad is again struggling to repay the debt. Funds from the International Monetary Fund depend on reaching new terms. In October, Chad decided to redirect crude previously allocated to Glencore in a marketing agreement to Exxon Mobil instead starting from January, which has made negotiations fraught. Djimet Arabi, an adviser to Deby, was named the new justice minister in the reshuffle while Ahmadaye Abdelkerim Bokit takes over the security ministry. The new foreign minister is Mahamat Zene Cherif, Chad s former permanent representative to the United Nations. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy PM plans to shift military forces from Iraq to Niger;ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Sunday he would propose to parliament transferring some of the country s troops stationed in Iraq to Niger to fight people smuggling and terrorism. Gentiloni said Italy s 1,400-strong military presence in Iraq could now be reduced after victories against Islamic militants and instead deployed in the Sahel region of West Africa. We have to continue to work, concentrating our attention and energies on the threat of people trafficking and terrorism in the Sahel, he said aboard the Italian ship Etna used in the European Union s Sophia operation to counter people smuggling in the Mediterranean. For this reason, part of our forces in Iraq will be deployed to Niger in coming months - this is the proposal the government will make to parliament, Gentiloni said. He did not specify how many people would be sent to Niger. Newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano wrote on Sunday that the contingent would be at least 470 as part of a commitment made to French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron has thrown his weight behind a French-backed West African force known as the G5 Sahel, which includes the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, which was set up in October to tackle Islamist militants. To give the force a boost, Macron held a Paris summit on Dec. 13 attended by the leaders of the five participating countries, Germany and Italy as well as Saudi and Emirati ministers. The Italian parliament is expected to be formally dissolved by the end of this year ahead of March elections. But it will continue to meet for ordinary administration and could approve Gentiloni s request for the transfer of military personnel. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Rescuers search for Philippine storm victims as toll rises to 200;MANILA (Reuters) - Rescuers in the Philippines searched on Sunday for survivors of a storm that triggered floods and landslides and killed about 200 people, left scores missing and thousands homeless, most of whom apparently ignored warnings to move to safety. Misery in the largely Christian Philippines was compounded by the death of at least 37 people in a shopping mall fire, officials said on Christmas Eve. The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons a year and warnings are routinely issued, but the level of destruction wreaked by tropical storm Tembin on the southern island of Mindanao from late on Friday came as a surprise. It happened very fast, the flood waters quickly rose filling our house, farmer Felipe Ybarsabal, 65, told Reuters by telephone, saying he and his family had to run to higher ground. We weren t able to save anything from the house. There was no help from anyone because it was so fast. Everything was two to three meters under water in less than an hour. Police and disaster officials said they expected the toll of about 200 dead to rise with more fatalities likely to be discovered in remote farm communities and coastal areas, as rescuers reached them and restored communication and power links. Disaster officials said 159 people were listed as missing while about 70,000 had been forced from their homes. Soldiers and police joined emergency workers and volunteers to search for survivors and victims, clear debris and restore power and communications. Disaster officials said many villagers had ignored warnings to leave coastal areas and move away from riverbanks, and got swept away when flash floods and landslides struck. The storm was moving west on Sunday, over some outlying Philippine islands and the South China Sea toward southern Vietnam, at a speed of about 20 kph (12 mph). It intensified into a typhoon with winds of 120 kph (75 mph) as it moved out of the Philippine area of responsibility, the national meteorological agency said. The United Nations was ready to help the Philippines, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. Pope Francis offered his prayers for the people of Mindanao while delivering his weekly blessing to a crowd on St Peter s Square at the Vatican. Merciful Lord, take in the souls of the dead and comfort those who are suffering as a result of this calamity, he said. Last week, 46 people were killed in the central Philippines when a typhoon hit. In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan killed nearly 8,000 people and left 200,000 families homeless. The south of the Philippines has been plagued by insurgencies by communist rebels and Muslim separatists for years, as well as often bearing the brunt of tropical storms roaring in from the Pacific. The region was hit by another disaster on the weekend when fire swept through a shopping mall in the city of Davao, killing at least 37 people, most of them workers at a call center, city government officials said. The vice mayor of the southern city of Davao, Paolo Duterte, said the chance of survival for any of the 37 people missing at the NCC Mall was zero . The fire broke out on Saturday at a furniture shop on the mall s third level and quickly engulfed an outsourcing business on the top floor, said a spokeswoman for the city government, Ma. Teresita Gaspan. The cause was not known but an investigation was being launched as authorities searched for the bodies of the victims. President Duterte, and his daughter, Sara Duterte, who is mayor of the city, visited the scene late on Saturday to meet anxious relatives of the missing and survivors. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea says new U.N. sanctions an act of war;BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - The latest U.N. sanctions against North Korea are an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against it, North Korea s foreign ministry said on Sunday, threatening to punish those who supported the measure. The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, seeking to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. The U.N. resolution seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and, in a last-minute change, demands the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 24 months, instead of 12 months as first proposed. The U.S.-drafted resolution also caps crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year and commits the Council to further reductions if it were to conduct another nuclear test or launch another ICBM. In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea s foreign ministry said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country . The new resolution was tantamount to a complete economic blockade of North Korea, the ministry said. We define this sanctions resolution rigged up by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the region and categorically reject the resolution , it said. There is no more fatal blunder than the miscalculation that the U.S. and its followers could check by already worn-out sanctions the victorious advance of our people who have brilliantly accomplished the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force , the ministry said. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Nov. 29 declared the nuclear force complete after the test of North Korea s largest-ever ICBM test, which the country said puts all of the United States within range. Kim told a meeting of members of the ruling Workers Party on Friday that the country successfully realized the historic cause of completing the state nuclear force despite short supply in everything and manifold difficulties and ordeals owing to the despicable anti-DPRK moves of the enemies . North Korea s official name is the Democratic People s Republic of Korea (DPRK). South Korea s foreign ministry told Reuters it is aware of the North Korean statement on the new sanctions, again highlighting its position that they are a grave warning by the international community that the region has no option but to immediately cease reckless provocations, and take the path of dialogue for denuclearization and peace . The North Korean foreign ministry said its nuclear weapons were a self-defensive deterrence not in contradiction of international law. We will further consolidate our self-defensive nuclear deterrence aimed at fundamentally eradicating the U.S. nuclear threats, blackmail and hostile moves by establishing the practical balance of force with the U.S, it said. The U.S. should not forget even a second the entity of the DPRK which rapidly emerged as a strategic state capable of posing a substantial nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland, it added. North Korea said those who voted for the sanctions would face its wrath. Those countries that raised their hands in favor of this sanctions resolution shall be held completely responsible for all the consequences to be caused by the resolution and we will make sure for ever and ever that they pay heavy price for what they have done. The North s old allies China and Russia both supported the latest U.N. sanctions. Tension has been rising over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House. In November, North Korea demanded a halt to what it called brutal sanctions , saying a round imposed after its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 constituted genocide. U.S. diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplomatic solution but proposed the new, tougher sanctions resolution to ratchet up pressure on North Korea s leader. China, with which North Korea does some 90 percent of its trade, has repeatedly called for calm and restraint from all sides. China said on Saturday the new resolution also reiterated the need for a peaceful resolution via talks and that all sides needed to take steps to reduce tensions. Chinese state-run tabloid the Global Times said on Saturday the tougher resolution was aimed at preventing war. It suggested the United States had wanted an even harsher resolution, and noted there was no indication in the resolution that the United Nations could grant the United States permission for military action. The difference between the new resolution and the original U.S. proposal reflects the will of China and Russia to prevent war and chaos on the Korean Peninsula. If the U.S. proposals were accepted, only war is foreseeable, it said in an editorial. ;worldnews;24/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mideast needs two-state solution, Pope says in Christmas message;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis used his Christmas message on Monday to call for a negotiated two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after U.S. President Donald Trump stoked regional tensions with his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital. Francis spoke of the Middle East conflict and other world flashpoints in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) address, four days after more than 120 countries backed a U.N. resolution urging the United States to reverse its decision on Jerusalem. Let us pray that the will to resume dialogue may prevail between the parties and that a negotiated solution can finally be reached, one that would allow the peaceful coexistence of two states within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders, he said, referring to the Israelis and Palestinians. We see Jesus in the children of the Middle East who continue to suffer because of growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, he said in his address, delivered from the balcony of St. Peter s Basilica to tens of thousands of people. It was the second time that the pope has spoken out publicly about Jerusalem since Trump s decision on Dec. 6. On that day, Francis called for the city s status quo to be respected, lest new tensions in the Middle East further inflame world conflicts. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, whereas Israel has declared the whole city to be its united and eternal capital. Francis, leader of the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, urged people to see the defenseless baby Jesus in the children who suffer the most from war, migration and natural calamities caused by man today. Today, as the winds of war are blowing in our world ... Christmas invites us to focus on the sign of the child and to recognize him in the faces of little children, especially those for whom, like Jesus, there is no place in the inn, he said. Francis, celebrating the fifth Christmas of his pontificate, said he had seen Jesus in the children he met during his recent trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, and he called for adequate protection of the dignity of minority groups in that region. More than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya people have fled mainly Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh in recent months. The pope had to tread a delicate diplomatic line during his visit, avoiding the word Rohingya while in Myanmar, which does not recognize them as a minority group, though he used the term when in Bangladesh. Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed and how hard it is not to have a place to lay one s head. May our hearts not be closed as they were in the homes of Bethlehem, he said. He also urged the world to see Jesus in the innocent children suffering from wars in Syria and Iraq and also in Yemen, complaining that its people had been largely forgotten, with serious humanitarian implications for its people, who suffer from hunger and the spread of diseases . He also listed conflicts affecting children in South Sudan, Somalia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Ukraine and Venezuela. At his Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter s Basilica on Sunday, Francis strongly defended immigrants, comparing them to Mary and Joseph finding no place to stay in Bethlehem and saying faith demands that foreigners be welcomed. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Man says he delivered manure to Mnuchin to protest new U.S. tax law; (In Dec. 25 story, in second paragraph, corrects name of Strong’s employer to Mental Health Department, not Public Health Department.) By Bernie Woodall (Reuters) - A man claiming to be the person who delivered a gift-wrapped package of horse manure at the Los Angeles home of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday he did it to protest the federal tax overhaul signed into law last week by President Donald Trump. Robert Strong, 45, a psychologist for the Los Angeles County Mental Health Department, said by telephone he left the poop-filled parcel addressed to Mnuchin and Trump in the driveway outside Mnuchin’s home in the posh Bel Air community. KNBC-TV, an NBC television affiliate in Los Angeles, reported Mnuchin was not home at the time. The package was found by Mnuchin’s neighbor. “Protest really should be funny,” Strong told Reuters. “People’s eyes glaze over when they just see angry people in the streets.” He believes the new tax law will hurt poor people. Neither the U.S. Secret Service nor the Los Angeles Police Department, both of which investigated the incident, would confirm Strong was responsible. The Secret Service interviewed an individual who admitted delivering the package, but no charges had been filed against him as of Monday afternoon. LAPD Lieutenant Rob Weise said it was possible whoever left the package did not break any criminal laws. While he is not assigned to investigate the incident, Weise said if the box did not present any danger, it would not be illegal. The LAPD bomb squad X-rayed the box before opening it on Saturday. In a photo of the card Strong posted on Twitter, he wrote “Misters Mnuchin & Trump, We’re returning the ‘gift’ of the Christmas tax bill” and signed it “Warmest wishes, The American people.” Strong said a Secret Service agent, accompanied by six police officers, showed up at his house to question him on Sunday night, and the agent chided him, asking, “‘Are you ashamed of your behavior?’” The White House declined to comment on Monday and officials with the Treasury Department could not be reached. ;politicsNews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Attackers torch Democratic Republic of Congo president's property;GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - A home belonging to Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila has been attacked and a policeman died in the incident, local lawmakers and U.N. sponsored radio said on Monday. Photos posted on social media showed the main house on the farm, located near the village of Musienene in North Kivu province in the east of the country, was gutted by fire. Kabila was not at the property during the attack which took place overnight from Sunday to Monday. It was not immediately known who was responsible for the raid. The body of the policeman who died was burned, a local government official said. Congo is embroiled in a political crisis linked to Kabila s refusal to step down as president when his mandate expired a year ago while militia violence and political unrest are increasing. We firmly condemn this barbarous act and call on the population ... to disassociate from any actions likely to compromise peace and development in this part of the country, lawmakers said in a statement. More than a decade after the end of a 1998-2003 war in which millions of people died, mostly from hunger and disease, rebel fighters and local militias stalk Congo s mineral-rich eastern borderlands. The armies of Congo and neighboring Uganda launched a joint operation against the Congo-based, Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) last week. The Islamist rebel group is suspected of being behind a Dec. 8 attack on a United Nations base in North Kivu that killed 15 Tanzanian peacekeepers and five Congolese soldiers. The ADF has been blamed for a wave of attacks and massacres in the area. Raids by local Mai Mai militia fighters are also growing increasingly frequent. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian, Iranian backed forces advance in border area near Israel;AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian army forces backed by Iranian-backed militias pushed deeper into the last rebel-held enclave near a strategic border area with Israel and Lebanon in a new expansion of Tehran s influence in the war-torn country. The army and the Shi ite forces helped by Druze militias in the area advanced east and south of the Sunni-rebel held bastion of Beit Jin backed by some of the heaviest aerial bombing and artillery shelling since a major assault began more than two months ago to seize the area, rebels said. The Syrian army said it had encircled the village of Mughr al Meer at the foothills of Mount Hermon as troops moved toward Beit Jin amid fierce clashes. On Monday, the army said they had cut off insurgent supply lines and made further advances. The enclave is the last rebel bastion left in the southwest of Damascus known as the Western Ghouta that had since last year fallen under government control after months of heavy bombing on civilian areas and years of siege tactics that forced rebels to surrender. A western intelligence source confirmed rebel reports that Iranian-backed local militias alongside commanders from the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah Shi ite group were playing a major role in the ongoing battles. Tehran was pushing to establish a strategic presence along the Israeli border in the Syrian Golan Heights, the source said. Rebels said they had repelled several attempts to storm their defenses and denied reports they were about to surrender. The Iranian-backed militias are trying to consolidate their sphere of influence all the way from southwest of Damascus to the Israeli border, said Suhaib al Ruhail, an official from the Liwa al Furqan rebel group that operates in the area. Worried by Iran s expanding influence in Syria after the defeat of Islamic State, Israel has in recent weeks stepped up its strikes against suspected Iranian targets inside Syria. Early this month there was an Israeli strike on a base near Kiswah, south of Damascus, that was widely believed to be an Iranian military compound, a Western intelligence source said. Israel has been lobbying Washington and Moscow to deny Iran, Lebanon s Hezbollah and other Shi ite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels. The southwest of Syria is part of a de-escalation zone in southern Syria agreed last July between Russia and the United States, the first such understanding between the two powers. The area has not seen Russian bombing, unlike other ceasefire areas in Syria. Diplomatic sources say several thousand Shi ite and Druze fighters are pitted against hundreds of Sunni jihadists and mainstream Free Syria Army (FSA) rebels closing ranks under the banner of Itihad Quwt Jabal al Sheikh, or Union of fighters of Jabal al Sheikh . They are mainly drawn from local fighters from the area. With the army and Iranian backed offensive widening, the Sunni rebels have called on youths to enlist, while mosque imams in Beit Jin called on people to take up arms and fight the army. Rebels still have a sizeable presence in central and southern Quneitra, in the Syrian Golan Heights. Western diplomatic sources say the crushing of the Sunni rebel presence in areas they have been in since 2013 will allow Lebanon s Hezbollah to open another secure arms supply line from its border in southern Lebanon into Syria. Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, Iran has had a growing presence in the country, deploying thousands of Shi ite fighters drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan who have fought against both mainstream Sunni rebel groups and more militant groups. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;A POEM: ‘Twas The Night Before CNN’s Christmas…’;ACR s BOILER ROOM presents a Christmas poem Twas the Night Before CNN s #FakeNews Christmas By Randy J.. HELP US TO KEEP DOING WHAT WE DO DONATE NOW TO 21WIRE!SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigerian army says it repels suspected Boko Haram militant attack;MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria s army said it had repelled an attack on Monday by suspected Boko Haram militants on the city at the center of the conflict with the Islamist insurgency. Major General Nicholas Rogers, who heads Nigeria s military operations against Boko Haram, told Reuters that the situation in Maiduguri, in the northeast of Nigeria, was under control. He did not give further details. The government says it is on alert for Boko Haram attacks during the Christmas period and other festivals for Christians and Muslims. Embassies regularly warn their nationals to be cautious and avoid public spaces at those times. Heavy gunfire was heard in the Molai area on the outskirts of the city on Monday evening, prompting residents to flee the district, two residents and an officer in a local vigilante group had said. The vigilante commander, who asked not to be identified, said his group had joined the effort to repel the attackers. There were no immediate reports of casualties nor any immediate claim of responsibility. It was also not immediately possible to identify the target of the assault. Boko Haram has in the past targeted places of worship during religious celebrations, including attacking churches at Christmas or mosques during Muslim festivals or prayer times. The last major Boko Haram attack on Maiduguri, a mainly Muslim city with a Christian minority, was in June, when the group launched an assault on the eve of a visit by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. President Muhammadu Buhari s administration has previously said Boko Haram was almost defeated but the latest attack shows the group s continued ability to stage hit-and-run raids, prompting a renewed government push against the militants. The Nigerian government approved the release of $1 billion last week from a state oil fund to help with the fight. Nigeria s long-term plan is to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns, a move that effectively cedes the rural areas to Boko Haram. Nigeria replaced its previous military commander of the fight against Boko Haram after half a year in the post. Military sources told Reuters this followed a series of embarrassing attacks by the militants. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three people die in avalanches in Swiss Alps;ZURICH (Reuters) - Three people have died in separate avalanche accidents in the Swiss Alps, police said on Monday. A man who was skiing close to the 2,844-metre high Hofathorn, in the southern canton of Wallis, died after being carried away by an avalanche on Monday morning. The 39-year-old from the Wallis region was quickly found and recovered by his friends but was confirmed dead at the scene by emergency services. Police in Graubunden, in the east of Switzerland, said a tourist who went missing on Saturday had also been found dead. The 31-year-old Frenchman had tried to climb the Glattwang mountain alone on Saturday afternoon after skiing with his girlfriend. When he did not return, a search was launched and the man s body was found in a ravine on Sunday morning. Police said he had triggered an avalanche on his descent which carried him more than a kilometre over rocky terrain. Separately, one of three walkers buried by a snow drift in Wallis on Saturday has died, Swiss broadcaster SRF reported, quoting the police. The group was hiking at a height of 2,700 meters in the St Luc region when the accident happened. One of them managed to get free and make an emergency call which allowed the others to be rescued. All three were flown to hospital, where one, a 29-year-old woman from the Swiss canton of Vaud, died of her injuries on Sunday evening, SRF said. (This version of the story corrects paragraph four to make clear Graubunden is in the east of Switzerland, not the west) ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Topless Femen activist tries to snatch Jesus statue from Vatican crib;VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A topless activist from the feminist group Femen tried to snatch the statue of the baby Jesus from the Nativity scene in St. Peter s Square on Monday but was stopped by police as she grabbed it. A Reuters photographer said the woman jumped over guard rails and rushed onto the larger-than-life Nativity scene shouting God is woman . She had the same slogan painted on her bare back. A Vatican gendarme stopped her from taking the statue and she was detained. The incident happened about two hours before Pope Francis delivered his Christmas message to some 50,000 people in the square. The group s website identified her as Alisa Vinogradova and called her a sextremist . It says the goal of the group, which was founded in Ukraine, is complete victory over patriarchy . A Femen activist staged a similar action on Christmas Day 2014 but managed to take the statue out of the crib before she was arrested. (This version of the story corrects the year in the final paragraph) ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: PRESIDENT TRUMP AND FIRST LADY Receive Standing O and Cheers at Christmas Eve Church Service [Video];PRESIDENT TRUMP AND FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP ATTENDED CHRISTMAS EVE CHURCH SERVICES:The Trumps arrive at Bethesda by the Sea church, where they were married, for Christmas Eve service pic.twitter.com/PZfXNcDDJy Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) December 25, 2017A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ARRIVAL: The President and First Lady arrived at The Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, FL earlier for Christmas Eve service. PO-56SU pic.twitter.com/b4wHqjBBl6 CNN Newsource (@CNNNewsource) December 25, 2017 DAN SCAVINO TWEETED OUT AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE CHURCH:President @realDonaldTrump and @FLOTUS Melania Trump are greeted by stand ovation and cheers upon their arrival to attend Christmas Eve church services, tonight, at The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. #ChristmasEve2017 pic.twitter.com/DwKVMZtnvn Dan Scavino Jr. (@Scavino45) December 25, 2017 THE POOL REPORT:President Trump departed the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-sea at 12:19The president was seated in the third row in the spot closest to the aisle, on the right side of the church (if youre in the back looking toward the altar). The First Lady was the only member of the presidents family to attend mass with him.Reverend James Harlan, the churchs rector, gave the homily. It centered around the themes of the power of words and Gods light. He began by quoting Nelson Mandela, whom he noted rebelled against his government for its systemic oppression.The Mandela quote: It is never my custom to use words lightly. If 27 years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die. Harlan connected the power of words especially as it pertains to Gods word to their ability to educate, enlighten and draw out the best in people, while he also cautioned words can be used to cause harm.Your words can have as much destructive potential as they do healing, Harlan said. Gods word is pure light.A crowd of people encircled the president to shake his hand when it came time for the peace-be-with-yous. The churchs live stream cut to another angle once the president stood up to take communion. Once it cut back, the president was standing in his pew, and appeared to be holding the communion, which he then took.Songs:* God rest ye merry gentlemen * O come let us adore him ;politics;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Racist Alabama Cops Brutalize Black Boy While He Is In Handcuffs (GRAPHIC IMAGES);The number of cases of cops brutalizing and killing people of color seems to see no end. Now, we have another case that needs to be shared far and wide. An Alabama woman by the name of Angela Williams shared a graphic photo of her son, lying in a hospital bed with a beaten and fractured face, on Facebook. It needs to be shared far and wide, because this is unacceptable.It is unclear why Williams son was in police custody or what sort of altercation resulted in his arrest, but when you see the photo you will realize that these details matter not. Cops are not supposed to beat and brutalize those in their custody. In the post you are about to see, Ms. Williams expresses her hope that the cops had their body cameras on while they were beating her son, but I think we all know that there will be some kind of convenient malfunction to explain away the lack of existence of dash or body camera footage of what was clearly a brutal beating. Hell, it could even be described as attempted murder. Something tells me that this young man will never be the same. Without further ado, here is what Troy, Alabama s finest decided was appropriate treatment of Angela Williams son:No matter what the perceived crime of this young man might be, this is completely unacceptable. The cops who did this need to rot in jail for a long, long time but what you wanna bet they get a paid vacation while the force investigates itself, only to have the officers returned to duty posthaste?This, folks, is why we say BLACK LIVES MATTER. No way in hell would this have happened if Angela Williams son had been white. Please share far and wide, and stay tuned to Addicting Info for further updates.Featured image via David McNew/Stringer/Getty Images;News;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DID REP SHEILA JACKSON LEE Bump First Class Passenger From Seat?…Angry Passenger Tweets Out Photo!;This is so funny but so infuriating! Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee apparently makes it a habit of bumping first class passengers on flights. She might think twice before doing it again after the angry woman she bumped took photos of Lee enjoying the seat the passenger paid for. Ouch!Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in seat 1A the one I paid for dearly, and the one United gave to her without my consent or knowledge! Fellow congressman on same flight said she does it repeatedly. @united pic.twitter.com/Q2c6u6B0Yp Jean-Marie Simon (@JeanMarieSimon1) December 23, 2017Chron reports:Jean-Marie Simon was a passenger on a flight from Houston to Washington D.C. and has accused United Airlines of giving her first-class seat to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. D-Houston. The flight attendant threatened to remove her from the plane for complaining and snapping a photo of the Houston congresswoman:A mechanical problem with the plane delayed take-off and after about 50 minutes, she said, passengers were invited to consult with a gate agent about alternative flights.Simon said she went to the front and snapped a photo of Jackson Lee and told a flight attendant that she knew why she d been bumped.In her statement, Jackson Lee said she overheard Simon speaking with an African-American flight attendant and saw her snap the photo.JACKSON LEE PULLS THE RACE CARD: Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice, Jackson Lee said in the statement. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry. Simon said Jackson Lee s statement accused her of racism, adding: I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else, she said. There is no way you can see who is in a seat from inside the terminal. PASSENGER THREATENED?About five minutes after Simon took the photo on the plane, Simon said, another flight attendant sat next her and asked if she was going to be a problem. Simon said she replied that she just wanted to go home.IS THE $500 VOUCHER EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING BY THE AIRLINE? WHAT HAPPENED WHEN SIMON ARRIVED AT THE GATE: It was just so completely humiliating, said Jean-Marie Simon, a 63-year-old attorney and private school teacher who used 140,000 miles on Dec. 3 to purchase the first-class tickets to take her from Washington D.C. to Guatemala and back home.When it came time to board the last leg of her flight home from George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Dec. 18, after a roughly hour-long weather delay, Simon said the gate attendant scanned her paper ticket and told her it was not in the system.Did you cancel your flight?, the attendant asked. No, she said she replied. I just want to go home. Her seat, 1A, was taken, she was told. Simon was given a $500 voucher and reseated in row 11, Economy Plus.Simon later learned that Jackson Lee was in her pre-purchased seat and has alleged that the congresswoman received preferential treatment, which United denies.THIS ENTITLED MENTALITY WILL HOPEFULLY GET JACKSON LEE KICKED OUT OF CONGRESS!;politics;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;GREAT NEWS! TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES It’s Drastically Cutting UN Budget;While we believe the UN headquarters would make a great condo building (please see Krauthammer video below), this is a start. The Trump administration just decided to significantly reduce the UN budget. Amabassador Nikki Haley released a statement:Ambassador Haley on the United States Negotiating a Significant Reduction in the UN BudgetFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEToday, the United Nations agreed on a budget for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. Among a host of other successes, the United States negotiated a reduction of over $285 million off the 2016-2017 final budget. In addition to these significant cost savings, we reduced the UN s bloated management and support functions, bolstered support for key U.S. priorities throughout the world, and instilled more discipline and accountability throughout the UN system. The inefficiency and overspending of the United Nations are well known. We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked. This historic reduction in spending in addition to many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable UN is a big step in the right direction. While we are pleased with the results of this year s budget negotiations, you can be sure we ll continue to look at ways to increase the UN s efficiency while protecting our interests, said Ambassador Haley.THE UNITED STATES CARRIES THE BURDEN OF THE UN BUDGET:MAGA! Defund the UN!PRESIDENT TRUMP THREATENED TO CUT AID HE S FOLLOWING THROUGH ON HIS PROMISE:Reuters reported:U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favor of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We ll save a lot. We don t care, Trump told reporters at the White House.CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Trump should turn the United Nations building into condos :;politics;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian rebel groups reject Russian-sponsored Sochi conference;AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebel groups on Monday rejected Russia s planned Sochi conference on Syria, saying Moscow was seeking to bypass a U.N.-based Geneva peace process and blaming Russia for committing war crimes in the war-torn country. In a statement by around 40 rebel groups who include some of the military factions who participated in earlier rounds of Geneva peace talks, they said Moscow had not put pressure on the Syrian government to reach a political settlement. Russia has not contributed one step to easing the suffering of Syrians and has not pressured the regime that it claims it is a guarantor by move in any real path towards a solution, the rebel statement said. Russia, which has emerged as the dominant player in Syria after a major military intervention over two years ago, received backing from Turkey and Iran for holding a Syrian national dialogue congress in the Russian city of Sochi on Jan. 29-30. Russia is an aggressor country that has committed war crimes against Syrians... It stood with the regime militarily and defended its politically and over seven years preventing U.N. condemnation of (Syrian President Bashar) Assad s regime, the statement said. Moscow says it targets militants but rebels and residents say the Russian air strikes conducted since a major aerial campaign over two years ago has caused hundreds of civilian casualties in indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas away from the frontline. Some rebels said they had not yet made up their mind. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said that Russia s plan to convene the congress should be assessed by its ability to contribute to and support the U.N.-led Geneva talks on ending the war in Syria. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;A POEM: ‘Twas The Night Before CNN’s Christmas…’;ACR s BOILER ROOM presents a Christmas poem Twas the Night Before CNN s #FakeNews Christmas By Randy J.. HELP US TO KEEP DOING WHAT WE DO DONATE NOW TO 21WIRE!SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Fujimori family pulls Peru back into political turmoil;LIMA (Reuters) - The Fujimori clan is at it again. Nearly two decades since Alberto Fujimori and his family occupied Peru s presidential palace and gripped the Andean nation s attention during one of its most turbulent chapters, they are once more at the center of political upheaval. Now an ailing and grey-haired 79-year-old, Fujimori became a free man on Christmas Eve thanks to a pardon from President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, clearing him of graft and rights convictions less than halfway into a 25-year jail sentence. The decision, stunning Peruvians as they sat readied their holiday feasts, triggered clashes between police and protesters and could reshape Peruvian politics for years. Fujimori had unsuccessfully sought a pardon from two previous presidents, but secured one from Kuczynski after benefiting from a political rivalry between two of his children, Keiko and Kenji. The siblings lead separate factions of the rightwing party, Popular Force, which grew out of the populist movement their father founded in the 1990s and now controls Congress. Last week, Kuczynski was nearly removed from office by loyalists to Keiko in the wake of a graft scandal, Kenji and nine of his followers saved the president with abstention votes. Kuczynski denies the pardon was part of a pact, and Fujimori s supporters hail it as an overdue humanitarian gesture due to health problems they say put the former president s life at risk. Yet what is undisputed is the central role that the Fujimoris, descendants of the Japanese diaspora, continue to play in Peruvian politics - long after Alberto s authoritarian government imploded in a graft scandal in 2000. The Fujimori dynasty will be with us for a while still, said Fernando Tuesta, a political scientist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. The family saga was a reminder of the enduring support authoritarian movements often enjoy long after they fall, especially when subsequent democratic leaders - bound by institutional limits - disappoint, Tuesta said. Since first riding onto Peru s political scene on a tractor in Peru s 1990 election, Fujimori has been admired by many in Peru s poorer provinces, where he had schools and roads built and wielded an iron fist against leftist Maoist rebels. Kenji, 37, was widely seen as having presidential ambitions after Keiko s two failed bids to reach Peru s highest office and may launch a bid in the 2021 race. Once best known as the boy Fujimori publicly doted on during his decade in power, Kenji has since turned his carefree juvenile image into an asset that contrasts with the 42-year-old Keiko s more composed persona. Miguel Campoblanco, Kenji s friend in school, recalled parties with classmates at the presidential palace and the occasional military helicopter ride to the jungle. He always looked up to his father. I remember in sixth grade he used to say, I m going to be president like my dad, said Campoblanco. After his father, Kenji may emerge as the biggest winner from the pardon. Having long led calls for his father s release, he has seized the spotlight in events surrounding the pardon. On Saturday, Kenji rode in the passenger seat of an ambulance chased by news cameras as it rushed Fujimori to the hospital, and later shared a video that showed the father-and-son duo celebrating news of the pardon. He s the good son, said political analyst Ivan Lanegra. But his political career thus far had one goal: his father s freedom. The siblings might reconcile now that their father is free and it becomes politically convenient, added Lanegra. Keiko has spent the past decade turning her father s populist following into the country s most powerful political party. At 19, Keiko became Peru s first lady after their parents acrimonious divorce. The secretary general of Keiko s party, Jose Chlimper - a former minister in her father s government - said she was paying the price for keeping a campaign promise to not seek her father s freedom through politics. Keiko doesn t lie, said Chlimper, betting she would eventually come out stronger for it. I worked with ex-President Fujimori. And I wonder if he s going to be happy leaving his unjust imprisonment in this way. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Pope Francis Just Called Out Donald Trump During His Christmas Speech;Pope Francis used his annual Christmas Day message to rebuke Donald Trump without even mentioning his name. The Pope delivered his message just days after members of the United Nations condemned Trump s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Pontiff prayed on Monday for the peaceful coexistence of two states within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders. We see Jesus in the children of the Middle East who continue to suffer because of growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, Francis said. On this festive day, let us ask the Lord for peace for Jerusalem and for all the Holy Land. Let us pray that the will to resume dialogue may prevail between the parties and that a negotiated solution can finally be reached. The Pope went on to plead for acceptance of refugees who have been forced from their homes, and that is an issue Trump continues to fight against. Francis used Jesus for which there was no place in the inn as an analogy. Today, as the winds of war are blowing in our world and an outdated model of development continues to produce human, societal and environmental decline, Christmas invites us to focus on the sign of the Child and to recognize him in the faces of little children, especially those for whom, like Jesus, there is no place in the inn, he said. Jesus knows well the pain of not being welcomed and how hard it is not to have a place to lay one s head, he added. May our hearts not be closed as they were in the homes of Bethlehem. The Pope said that Mary and Joseph were immigrants who struggled to find a safe place to stay in Bethlehem. They had to leave their people, their home, and their land, Francis said. This was no comfortable or easy journey for a young couple about to have a child. At heart, they were full of hope and expectation because of the child about to be born;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Queen Elizabeth praises British spirit in Christmas address after attacks, fire;SANDRINGHAM, England (Reuters) - Britain s Queen Elizabeth praised the resilience of London and Manchester after appalling attacks , in a Christmas message that also paid tribute to her husband, Prince Philip, who retired from regular royal duties this year. The powerful identities of the capital and the northern English city had shone through after militant attacks as well as a devastating fire that destroyed the residential tower block Grenfell Tower in London, the Queen said. The 91 year-old monarch, whose televised address is an essential part of a traditional Christmas in Britain, said it had been a privilege to visit victims of the bomb attack at a pop concert in Manchester, as she was able to witness the bravery and resilience of survivors first-hand. On the 60th anniversary of her first televised Christmas address, Elizabeth said her reflections on the year had made her grateful for the blessings of home and family , and praised her husband and his unique sense of humor. The 96-year-old prince, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, has been at the queen s side throughout her 65 years on the throne, and has often grabbed the headlines with his off-color comments. Elizabeth, the world s longest reigning monarch, celebrated her platinum wedding anniversary in November. Philip retired from regular royal duties over the summer having carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements. I don t know that anyone had invented the term platinum for a 70th wedding anniversary when I was born. You weren t expected to be around that long, she said. Even Prince Philip has decided it s time to slow down a little having, as he economically put it, done his bit . But I know his support and unique sense of humor will remain as strong as ever. Philip has continued to make occasional appearances, and joined other members of the royal family at a Christmas Day church service on their country estate in Sandringham. Also joining them for the service was Prince Harry s fiancee Meghan Markle who is spending Christmas with the royals. The American actress wore a distinctive brown hat as she arrived alongside the Queen s grandson Harry, his elder brother William and his wife Kate. As they left, both couples briefly chatted to some well-wishers who had gathered to glimpse the royals on Christmas morning. The Queen, who missed last year s service with a heavy cold, said in her address that she was looking forward to welcoming new members into the royal family next year. As well as Markle, who will marry Harry in May, Kate is expecting a third child. The royal Christmas broadcast dates back to King George V in 1932 when it was on the radio. It was first televised in 1957. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;39 injured in fireworks explosion at Cuban festival on Christmas Eve;HAVANA (Reuters) - A fireworks explosion injured 39 people, including six children between the ages of 11 and 15, during a popular Cuban carnival on Christmas Eve, state-run media reported on Monday. The centuries-old Parrandas festival in the central town of Remedios takes place every Dec. 24 and draws thousands of Cubans and some tourists. An unfortunate accident with fireworks occurred last night in Remedios, the government s Cubadebate internet news service reported. Among the more than 20 seriously injured, according to Cubadebate, health authorities said some were in very grave, some less grave, and others in critical and very critical condition. All the injured appeared to be local residents, and the report did not mention that any tourists were hurt. Remedios is located in Villa Clara province on the northern coast of the island. Two of the town s neighborhoods compete on Christmas Eve each year to put on the most spectacular show with floats and fireworks amidst a carnival atmosphere. The cause of the explosion was under investigation, according to official media. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov says timing of Putin-Trump meeting not yet discussed: RIA; (This version of the Dec. 25 story was refiled to amend signoff with no changes to text) MOSCOW (Reuters) - The timing of the next meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump has not yet been discussed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told RIA news agency in an interview on Monday. The timings of the next personal meeting have not yet been discussed, he said. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;'God bless you', Netanyahu tells Guatemalan president over Jerusalem embassy move;JERUSALEM/GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Guatemala with a God bless you on Monday for deciding to move its embassy to Jerusalem, while the Palestinians said the Central American country was on the wrong side of history . In an official Facebook post on Sunday, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said he had chosen to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv - siding with the United States in a dispute over Jerusalem s status - after talking to Netanyahu. [L1N1OO0F7] U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Dec. 6, reversing decades of U.S. policy and upsetting the Arab world and Western allies. On Thursday, 128 countries rebuked Trump by backing a non-binding U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on the United States to drop its recognition of Jerusalem. God bless you, my friend, President Jimmy Morales, God bless both our countries, Israel and Guatemala, Netanyahu said, switching to English, in remarks to a weekly meeting of his Likud party faction in parliament. Guatemala and neighboring Honduras were two of only a handful of countries to join Israel and the United States, which has pledged to move its embassy to Jerusalem, in voting against the U.N. resolution. The United States is an important source of assistance to Guatemala and Honduras, and Trump had threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that supported the U.N. resolution. The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest obstacles to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they want to establish in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA quoted Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki as saying that Morales was dragging his country to the wrong side of history by committing a flagrant violation of international law . Prior to 1980, Guatemala - along with Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, The Netherlands, Panama, Venezuela and Uruguay - maintained an embassy in Jerusalem. Israel s passage in June 1980 of a law proclaiming Jerusalem its indivisible and eternal capital led to a U.N. Security Council resolution calling upon those countries to move their embassies to Tel Aviv, prompting their transfer. Israel s ambassador to Guatemala, Matty Cohen, said on Army Radio that no date had been set for the embassy move, but it will happen after the United States relocates its own embassy to Jerusalem. U.S. officials have said that move could take at least two years. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigerian military says it repels suspected Boko Haram attack;BAUCHI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria s military has repelled an attack on Monday by suspected Boko Haram militants on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Maiduguri, the regional army commander said. The situation is now under control, Major General Nicholas Rogers, who heads Nigeria s military operations against Boko Haram, told Reuters by phone. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims blast at Afghan intelligence agency in Kabul;KABUL (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Monday on a compound of Afghanistan s national intelligence agency in Kabul, which killed at least five people and wounded two. The blast comes a week after the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a training facility of the same agency, the National Directorate for Security, in Kabul that ended when the attackers were killed before causing significant casualties. In a statement issued through the group s Amaq news agency, Islamic State said it was also behind Monday s attack. In Kabul, security officials said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber who approached the agency s entrance on foot before blowing himself up. All the casualties reported were of civilian passersby. Najib Danish, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said at least five people were killed and two wounded. U.S. President Donald Trump has been briefed on the attack, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. Islamic State s local affiliate, which first appeared in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan in early 2015, has become increasingly active and has claimed several recent suicide attacks in Kabul. It has frequently fought Taliban militants and has been heavily targeted by U.S. air strikes and Special Forces operations in its main stronghold in Nangarhar province. But there remains considerable uncertainty about how the group operates and the exact nature of its connections with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin says Russia should scrap profit tax on repatriated funds;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia should scrap the 13 percent profit tax on funds repatriated from abroad and renew an amnesty from penalties for businesses returning capital, as Washington moves toward tougher sanctions, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday. Amid huge capital outflows in 2014, deteriorating relations with the West over the Ukraine conflict and weak oil prices, Moscow offered the amnesty for those returning capital to Russia. The amnesty, which expired in mid-2016, scrapped responsibility for past taxes and currency violations for those who declared assets abroad. But few agreed to take part in the amnesty. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Friday that his ministry was proposing such an amnesty be restored in 2018 for at least a year. Speaking at the meeting with the leadership of the Russian parliament, Putin said he had two proposals which he had not previously spoken about publicly. The first is to extend the amnesty timeline, I mean external restrictions are not easing, but, on the contrary, tending to rise, he said. U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a new package of sanctions in August. One provision asked the U.S. Treasury Secretary to submit a report on the impact of expanding sanctions to cover Russian sovereign debt, with an outcome expected as early as February. Putin s second proposal was to scrap 13 percent taxes for transfers of capital to Russia by businesses. Among other tools to encourage the return of money will be a special bonds program. Russia plans to adjust the terms of a sovereign Eurobond issue next year so that businesses can use the bonds to repatriate funds in a way that would protect them from being damaged by new sanctions on Moscow. Reuters reported earlier this month that wealthy Russians facing the prospect of targeted U.S. sanctions next year had floated the idea of a special treasury bond to help create favorable conditions for them to bring their cash home. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chinese report says South China Sea islands expanded 'reasonably';BEIJING (Reuters) - China has reasonably expanded its islands in the disputed South China Sea and this year construction projects there including radar facilities covered about 290,000 square meters (72 acres), according to a new government report. The number was broadly similar to one provided by a U.S. think tank earlier this month. China has conducted extensive land reclamation work on some of the islands and reefs it controls in the South China Sea, including building airports, alarming its neighbors and Washington. Beijing says the work is help provide international services such as search-and-rescue but admits there is a military purpose too. China also says it can do whatever it wants on its territory. The new report, posted on a website run by China s National Marine Data and Information Service and the overseas edition of the ruling Communist Party s People s Daily, says China has enhanced its military presence there and reasonably expanded the area covered by the islands. Apart from what it termed large radar - it was unclear if the report was referring to more than one - construction this year has included facilities for underground storage and administrative buildings. There has been an increase in military patrols too, the report added, without giving specifics. The report was released on Friday but appeared in the state-run newspaper the Global Times on Monday. While attention in Asia has been distracted by the North Korean nuclear crisis in the past year, China has continued to install high-frequency radar and other facilities that can be used for military purposes on its man-made islands in the South China Sea, a U.S. think tank said this month. That report, by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of Washington s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Chinese activity has involved work on facilities covering 72 acres (29 hectares) of the Spratly and Paracel islands, territory contested with several Asian neighbors. More than $5 trillion of world trade is shipped through the South China Sea every year. Besides China s territorial claims in the area, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China has 'overwhelming advantage' in bringing Taiwan to heel, official says;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s growing economic, political and diplomatic power means it is achieving an overwhelming advantage in bringing self-ruled Taiwan to heel, and time is on China s side, a senior official said in a comments published on Monday. Taiwan is one of China s most sensitive issues. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring what it considers a wayward province and sacred Chinese territory under its rule. Writing in the influential state-run newspaper the Study Times, Liu Junchuan, who heads the liaison office of China s policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office, said it was inevitable Taiwan would come under China s control. China s economic growth means its economy now far surpasses Taiwan s, and the trend would only continue, Liu wrote in the paper, which is published by the Central Party School that trains rising Communist Party officials. The swift development and massive changes in the mainland of the motherland are creating an increasingly strong attraction for the people of Taiwan, he said. The contrast in power across the Taiwan Strait will become wider and wider, and we will have a full, overwhelming strategic advantage over Taiwan, Liu added. The economic, political, social, cultural and military conditions for achieving the complete reunification of the motherland will become even more ample. The concepts of peaceful reunification and one country, two systems would become even more attractive to Taiwan s people and foreign forces will not be able to stop it, Liu said. The basic situation of the Taiwan Strait continuing to develop in a direction beneficial to us will not change, and time and momentum are on our side. China has long mooted taking Hong Kong s one country, two systems form of government, which is supposed to give Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, and applying it to Taiwan, though the people of the proudly democratic island have shown no interest in being ruled by the autocratic mainland. Taiwan says Beijing does not understand what democracy is and that only Taiwan s people can decide the island s future. Relations between Beijing and Taipei have soured since Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won presidential elections last year, with China suspecting she wants to push for the island s formal independence. Tsai says she wants peace with China but will defend Taiwan s security and democracy. China has stepped up military drills around Taiwan and squeezed Taiwan s international space, siphoning off its few remaining diplomatic allies. Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Islamic State claims responsibility for blast in Afghan capital, Kabul;CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for an explosion on Monday carried by a suicide bomber near a compound of Afghanistan s national intelligence agency in the capital, Kabul, the group said on its Amaq news agency. The blast, close to the entrance of the security agency compound, killed at least three people and wounded one, Afghan government officials said. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's president pardons ex-leader Fujimori, citing his health;LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori late on Sunday, clearing him of convictions for human rights crimes and graft before completion of a 25-year prison sentence. Kuczynski s office said in a statement that a medical review showed that Fujimori, 79, who governed Peru from 1990 to 2000, suffered from a progressive, degenerative and incurable disease. The pardon comes just days after a faction of Fujimori s supporters in the opposition-controlled Congress saved Kuczynski from a motion that would have forced him from office in the wake of a graft scandal. [nL1N1OL160] ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov calls on U.S. and North Korea to start talks: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Monday for the United States and North Korea to start negotiations, the RIA news agency reported. Lavrov was cited as saying that Russia was ready to facilitate such negotiations. Moscow has long called for Washington and Pyongyang to hold talks aimed at de-escalating tensions around North Korea s nuclear and missile program. North Korea s foreign ministry said on Sunday that the latest U.N. sanctions against North Korea were an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against it. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia says Shi'ite judge killed by kidnappers;RIYADH (Reuters) - A Shi ite Muslim judge abducted in eastern Saudi Arabia a year ago has been killed by his kidnappers, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Monday. Sheikh Mohammed al-Jirani disappeared last December from outside his home in the Qatif region, which is home to about one million Shi ite Muslims in the predominantly Sunni Muslim kingdom. SPA said a security officer and one of the kidnappers were killed in a clash on Dec. 19 and a second kidnapper was arrested. It also said the judge s body had been found in the remote farming district of Awamiya but did not say when he had been killed. Authorities said earlier this year that three men being sought in connection with the abduction were already on a wanted list for their suspected involvement in terrorist attacks in eastern Saudi Arabia. Since 2011 the region has been shaken by frequent, though mostly peaceful, protests by the Shi ite minority. However, Shi ite militants, angry over what they say is repression of their community, have sometimes attacked Saudi security forces in the oil-producing Eastern Province where Qatif is located. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines' Duterte's son quits as vice mayor of hometown Davao;MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte s eldest son quit as vice mayor of the southern city of Davao on Monday, citing his being linked to a drug smuggling case by opponents and personal problems from a failed marriage as reasons for the move. Paolo Duterte announced his resignation during a special session of the Davao City Council. Davao is President Duterte s hometown and its mayor is Paolo s younger sister, Sara Duterte-Carpio. There are recent unfortunate events in my life that are closely tied to my failed first marriage, the vice mayor said, in a statement made available to media. These, among others, include the maligning of my reputation in the recent name dropping incident in the Bureau of Customs smuggling case and the very public squabble with my daughter. Paolo testified at a senate investigation in September into a seized shipment of around $125 million worth of narcotics from China after opponents of the president, who has instigated a fierce crackdown on the drugs trade, said they believe his son may have helped ease the entry of the shipment at the port in Manila, the Philippine capital. Paolo has denied any involvement. More recently, he has been involved in an online spat with Isabelle, his 15-year-old daughter from his first wife. Paolo has called her embarrassing on Facebook after she complained on Twitter about being treated badly by her father. The president s office, the mayor s office and other members of Paolo s family did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comments. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Driver rams German party headquarters in apparent suicide bid;BERLIN (Reuters) - A man drove a car at the entrance of the Berlin headquarters of Germany s Social Democratic Party (SPD) late on Sunday evening, lightly injuring himself, later telling police that he had intended to commit suicide. Police said the car, which crashed through the first set of glass doors of Willy Brandt House, the SPD s headquarters, was laden with petrol canisters and gas cartridges. The building s sprinkler system extinguished the resulting blaze. Authorities did not identify the man, in part because of a policy of limiting public communications in cases involving suicide, attempted or otherwise, saying only that he was 58 years old. A police spokeswoman said investigators had found nothing to cast doubt on the man s claim that he had been attempting to commit suicide. The incident did not appear to be an attack, she added. It was unclear why he had chosen the SPD, which is about to start negotiations on governing for another four years in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, as his target. The man was taken to hospital for treatment for superficial injuries to his head. Nobody else was hurt. Police launched an arson inquiry and state security services were also investigating. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Three Turkish soldiers killed in southeast: military;ANKARA (Reuters) - Two soldiers were killed and another was wounded in an attack by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants which took place as the troops were carrying out security operations in the southeastern province of Hakkari, the military said on Monday. Separately, one soldier was killed and two others were wounded on Sunday in northern Iraq when a grenade detonated by accident, the military said. The wounded soldiers were not in critical condition, it added. The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union, has waged an insurgency against the state since the 1980s. Violence in the largely Kurdish southeast has escalated since the collapse of a ceasefire in 2015. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China calls for constructive efforts to ease Korean tensions;BEIJING (Reuters) - China called on Monday for all countries to make constructive efforts to ease tension after North Korea said the latest U.N. sanctions against it are an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade. The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, seeking to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. The U.S.-drafted resolution also caps crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year and commits the Council to further reductions if it were to conduct another nuclear test or launch another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). North Korea on Sunday rejected the resolution, calling it an act of war. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the resolution appropriately strengthened the sanctions but was not designed to affect ordinary people, normal economic exchanges and cooperation, or humanitarian aid. Hua noted it also called for the use of peaceful means to resolve the issue and that all sides should take steps to reduce tension. In the present situation, we call on all countries to exercise restraint and make proactive and constructive efforts to ease the tensions on the peninsula and appropriately resolve the issue, she told a daily news briefing. The North s old allies China and Russia both supported the latest U.N. sanctions. Tension has been rising over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House. In November, North Korea demanded a halt to what it called brutal sanctions , saying a round imposed after its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 constituted genocide. North Korea on Nov. 29 said it successfully tested a new ICBM that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. U.S. diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplomatic solution but proposed the new, tougher sanctions resolution to ratchet up pressure on North Korea s leader. China, with which North Korea does some 90 percent of its trade, has repeatedly called for calm and restraint from all sides and for a return to talks. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Iran confirms upholding death sentence for academic over spying;DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran s Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence against a Sweden-based Iranian academic convicted of spying for Israel, the Tehran prosecutor was quoted as saying on Monday, confirming reports by Amnesty International and his family. Ahmadreza Djalali, a medical doctor and lecturer at the Karolinska Institute, a Stockholm medical university, was accused of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists. Djalali was arrested in Iran in April 2016 and later convicted of espionage. He has denied the charges, Amnesty said. At least four scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said were assassinations meant to sabotage its efforts to develop nuclear energy. Western powers and Israel said Iran aimed to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran denied this. The Islamic Republic hanged a man in 2012 over the killings, saying he was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. On Monday, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said the Supreme Court recently upheld the death sentence against Djalali, the news site of Iran s judiciary, Mizan, reported. Dolatabadi said Djalali had confessed to meeting Mossad agents repeatedly to deliver information on Iran s nuclear and defense plans and personnel, and helping to infect Defense Ministry computer systems with viruses, Mizan reported. London-based Amnesty International and Djalali s wife said earlier this month that his lawyers were told that the Supreme Court had considered his case and upheld his death sentence. Iranian state television broadcast last week what it described as Djalali s confessions. His wife said he had been forced by his interrogators to read the confession. Djalali was on a business trip to Iran when he was arrested and sent to Evin prison. He was held in solitary confinement for three months of his detention and tortured, Amnesty said. It said Djalali wrote a letter inside prison in August stating he was being held for refusing to spy for Iran. Sweden condemned the sentence in October and said it had raised the matter with Iranian envoys. Seventy-five Nobel prize laureates petitioned Iranian authorities last month to release Djalali so he could continue his scholarly work for the benefit of mankind . ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Canada to expel Venezuelan diplomat in retaliatory move;TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada will expel a Venezuelan diplomat and also bar the country s ambassador from returning, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday, two days after Venezuela booted out Canada s envoy for criticizing its rights record. Western nations and Latin American neighbors have been increasingly critical of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro this year, accusing him of stamping on democracy and human rights. Venezuela says foreign governments are trying to encourage a right-wing coup. On Saturday, it also expelled the Brazilian envoy. Venezuela had already withdrawn its ambassador to Canada in protest over sanctions against the Maduro regime that Canada imposed in September. In a statement, Freeland said the ambassador was no longer welcome in Canada and that Venezuela s charge d affaires is persona non grata. Venezuela s expulsion of the Canadian diplomat over the weekend, she said, was typical of the Maduro regime, which has consistently undermined all efforts to restore democracy and to help the Venezuelan people. Canadians will not stand by as the Government of Venezuela robs its people of their fundamental democratic and human rights, and denies them access to basic humanitarian assistance, she said in the statement. Canada in September, following a similar move by the United States, imposed targeted sanctions against 40 Venezuelan senior officials, including Maduro, to punish them for anti-democratic behavior. The ministers of defense and the interior as well as several Supreme Court judges were also among those targeted by the measures. Canada is a member of the 12-nation Lima Group, which is trying to address the Venezuelan crisis and which next meets in Chile in January. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan allows wife, mother to visit Indian man sentenced to death;ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan allowed the wife and mother of an Indian man convicted of spying to visit him on Monday in Islamabad, eight months after he was sentenced to death by a military court. Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav, a former officer in the Indian navy, was arrested in March 2016 in the Pakistan province of Baluchistan, where there has been a long-running conflict between national security forces and militant separatists. The case has added to tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who often accuse each other of violating a 2003 ceasefire along their disputed border in Kashmir, where the countries sometime engage in intense artillery duels. Pakistan released a picture of Jadhav s mother, Avanti, and wife, Chetankul, seated at a desk and speaking to him from behind a glass window. The mother and wife of Commander Jadhav sitting comfortably in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Pakistan. We honor our commitments, a spokesman for Pakistan s foreign office, Mohammad Faisal, said in an earlier Twitter posting when the women first arrived at the ministry in Islamabad. India s foreign affairs office has not responded to a request for comment on the meeting. After Jadhav was sentenced to death in April, India asked the World Court for an injunction to bar the execution, arguing that he was denied diplomatic assistance during what it says was an unfair trial. The World Court ordered Pakistan in May to delay Jadhav s execution, and said Islamabad had violated a treaty guaranteeing diplomatic assistance to foreigners accused of crimes. Pakistan authorities say Jadhav confessed to being ordered by India s intelligence service to conduct espionage and sabotage in Baluchistan to destabilize and wage war against Pakistan . Baluchistan is at the center of a $57 billion Chinese-backed Belt and Road development project that at first focused on Chinese companies building roads and power stations, but is now expanding to include setting up industries. In a transcript released by Pakistan of what it says is Jadhav s confession, the former naval officer says disrupting the Chinese-funded projects was a main goal of his activities. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;UAE has information Tunisian women may commit 'terrorist acts', Tunisia says;TUNIS (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has information that Tunisian women or women traveling on Tunisian passports might commit terrorist acts in the Gulf country, Tunisia s state news agency TAP said. Tunisia late on Sunday suspended flights from Dubai carrier Emirates to Tunis, with officials saying the airline was refusing to carry female Tunisian travelers. Emirates has given no reason for not allowing female Tunisians to board its flights since Friday. A spokesman for Tunisia s presidency did not elaborate on the security threat in a brief TAP article. Emirates had stopped its Dubai-Tunis connection on Monday. In Tunisia, anger has been building after women said they had been banned at Tunis airport from boarding Emirates flights to Dubai. Tunisian civil organizations and political parties called on the government to respond. Foreign Minister Khemais Jhianoui told a local radio station the UAE should apologize for the travel ban, which he said its authorities had not informed Tunisia about. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Afghan political crisis deepens as ousted governor refuses to go;KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Ashraf Ghani s bid to oust one of the country s most powerful provincial governors has run into strong resistance that has deepened political uncertainty just as Washington steps up its campaign against the Taliban insurgency. Atta Mohammad Noor, governor of the strategically important northern province of Balkh, has refused to leave office, a week after Ghani s office said the president had accepted his resignation and named a replacement. The standoff has underlined how uncertain central government control remains outside the capital and how volatile the political situation has become as maneuvering begins ahead of a presidential election scheduled for 2019. One of a number of powerful regional leaders who command strong local loyalty while acting semi-independently of the government, Atta Noor has long sought a role on the national stage and is a potential candidate in the 2019 election. Allies have warned that unless Ghani reverses his decision, he risks civil unrest that will threaten security and allow Taliban and Islamic State militants to gain a foothold in Balkh, a major economic hub which sits on lucrative trade routes to Central Asia. If President Ghani does not show flexibility, he will be responsible for the consequences, said Farhad Azimi, a member of parliament from Balkh province. However he said no side had any interest in a confrontation that would cause violence or threaten security. The standoff, which has alarmed Afghanistan s Western partners, has re-opened divisions that were only partially covered up by the U.S.-brokered agreement creating Ghani s unity government following a disputed presidential election in 2014. After widespread claims of fraud by both sides in the election, Ghani was finally installed as president alongside his former rival Abdullah Abdullah from the Jamiat-i Islami party, who took the specially created post of chief executive. Atta Noor, who has built a strong regional power base as Balkh governor, has received the backing of the party, which is supported mainly by ethnic Tajiks from northern Afghanistan, many of whom still resent Ghani, an ethnic Pashtun. Atta Mohammad Noor is the strongest figure in Jamiat, said Bresha Rabeh, another member of parliament from Balkh. He will not back down. However he has clashed bitterly with his party rival Abdullah, whom he called a serpent whose teeth he would break. After days of silence, Abdullah confirmed on Monday that he had backed the decision to remove Atta Noor. The dispute comes as U.S. forces have stepped up air strikes against the Taliban and other militant groups as part of a beefed-up strategy aimed at forcing the insurgents to accept a peace settlement after 16 years of war. U.S. commanders say the campaign has had significant success against the Taliban but the impact risks being diluted by political turmoil that has undermined public confidence in the Western-backed government. As the turmoil has deepened, tensions between Tajiks and Pashtuns, Afghanistan s two largest ethnic groups, have intensified, undermining attempts to build national unity. Parliamentary elections, officially scheduled for next year, are in doubt and opposition groups have stepped up pressure on the government, with former president Hamid Karzai calling for a loya jirga , or council of elders and political leaders. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel orders deportation of two Turks after Jerusalem arrests;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has ordered the deportation of two of three Turks who were briefly arrested during Palestinian demonstrations last week after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. The three were detained on Friday on suspicion of assaulting Israeli police near a Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as the capital of their own future state. An Israeli court freed them without charges on Saturday. An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said one of the men was scheduled for deportation later on Monday and another on Saturday. She said both had entered Israel on Belgian passports. Israeli police had described the three as Turkish tourists. A photograph circulated on social media showed them among a group of fez-wearing men and boys outside Al-Aqsa. One is seen wearing a Turkish flag T-shirt and waving a Palestinian flag, while two hold up pictures of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has been vocal in opposing Trump s Jerusalem move, which reversed decades of U.S. policy over the status of a city whose eastern sector Israel captured in the 1967 war and which is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. The Interior Ministry spokeswoman said she had no information on the third Turk who had been arrested in the case. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan pledge to improve ties in wake of trade war;ALMATY (Reuters) - The leaders of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan pledged on Monday to improve relations, after ties between the two former Soviet republics degenerated into a trade war under the previous Kyrgyz leadership. The standoff between Astana and the government of former Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev strained a Russian-led economic bloc and disrupted supplies of Kyrgyz goods to some European countries. We have established a constructive and trust-based dialogue in all areas, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev s office quoted him as telling his Kyrgyz counterpart Sooronbai Jeenbekov. Jeenbekov was elected president last month. In the run-up the vote, his predecessor and backer Atambayev accused the Kazakh government of interfering in Kyrgyz politics and supporting an opposition candidate. Astana denied those charges but introduced tough border controls that nearly halted the flow of goods out of Kyrgyzstan, which is landlocked and sends most of its exports out through Kazakh territory. Kyrgyzstan filed complaints both to the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, a post-Soviet bloc, and the World Trade Organization, accusing Kazakhstan of imposing a blockade . Bishkek also briefly suspended operations at a copper and gold mine operated and run by Kazakhstan-based and London-listed Kaz Minerals. But tensions started easing after Jeenbekov, a former prime minister, took office this month. Last week, Bishkek informed the WTO it had settled its dispute with Astana. Kyrgyzstan will continue to carry out its foreign policy aimed at deepening and intensifying bilateral ties with Kazakhstan, Jeenbekov s office quoted him as saying at the meeting in Astana. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam braces for typhoon as Philippine toll rises to 230 dead;HANOI/MANILA (Reuters) - Authorities in Vietnam prepared to move a million people from low-lying areas along the south coast on Monday as a typhoon approached after it battered the Philippines with floods and landslides that killed more than 230 people. Typhoon Tembin is expected to slam into Vietnam late on Monday after bringing misery to the predominantly Christian Philippines just before Christmas. Vietnam s disaster prevention committee said 74,000 people had been moved to safety from vulnerable areas, while authorities in 15 provinces and cities were prepared to move more than 1 million. The government ordered that oil rigs and vessels be protected and it warned that about 62,000 fishing boats should not venture out to sea. Vietnam must ensure the safety of its oil rigs and vessels. If necessary, close the oil rigs and evacuate workers, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc was quoted as saying on a government website. Schools were ordered to close in the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City on Monday, a working day in Vietnam. On Sunday, Tembin hit the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, parts of which are contested by several countries, including Vietnam and China. No casualties were reported in outposts there. Vietnam, like the Philippines, is regularly battered by typhoons that form over the warm waters of the Pacific and barrel westwards into land. Tembin will be the 16th major storm to hit Vietnam this year. The storms and other disasters have left 390 people dead or missing, according to official figures. In the Philippines, rescue workers were still struggling to reach some remote areas hit by floods and landslides that Tembin s downpours brought, as the death toll climbed to more than 230. Scores of people are missing. The full extent of the devastation was only becoming clear as the most remote areas were being reached. Health worker Arturo Simbajon said nearly the entire coastal village of Anungan on the Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao island had been wiped out by a barrage of broken logs, boulders and mud that swept down a river and out to sea. Only the mosque was left standing, Simbajon said. People were watching the rising sea but did not expect the water to come from behind them. Manuel Luis Ochotorena, head of regional disaster agency, said he expected the death toll to rise. Many areas in Zamboanga peninsula are still without power and communications, some towns are cut off due to collapsed bridges, floods and landslides, he said. Tens of thousands of people on Mindanao have been displaced by the storm, which struck late on Friday. The Philippines is battered by about 20 typhoons a year and warnings are routinely issued. But disaster officials said many villagers had ignored warnings this time to get out coastal areas and move away from riverbanks. In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan killed nearly 8,000 people and left 200,000 families homeless in the central Philippines. (This version of the story was refiled to fix spelling in paragraph two) ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Red Cross rebukes Israel after lawmaker confronts prisoners' families on bus;GAZA (Reuters) - The Red Cross said on Monday Israel has a duty to guarantee the safety and dignity of Palestinian families visiting prisoners, after a right-wing lawmaker was filmed shouting abuse aboard a bus taking relatives to a family visit in an Israeli jail. The legislator, Oren Hazan, boarded the bus at the Gaza border with video crews in tow. He said on Twitter he told the relatives that the prisoners were terrorists who belong in the ground . In a video clip on social media, he shouted at one prisoner s mother that her son was an insect and a dog . An insect?, she yelled back. My son is the best of men. A dog is whoever calls him a dog. Hazan has a record of staging publicity stunts, including crashing a welcoming ceremony for visiting U.S. President Donald Trump. He once agreed to stage a fistfight at the border with a member of Jordan s parliament, only to cancel it on the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The families on the bus were on their way to Nafha prison in southern Israel from the Gaza Strip in a convoy escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In a statement, the ICRC said it takes very seriously what happened today . Families have the right to visit their loved ones in a dignified manner, Suhair Zakkout, Gaza spokeswoman for the ICRC, said in the statement. It is the responsibility of the competent authorities to ensure that the visits take place safely and without interference. Hazan, a member of Netanyahu s Likud party, said he confronted the relatives to promote legislation to cancel such family visits until Israeli prisoners in Gaza and the remains of Israeli troops were returned. Hamas, the dominant militant group in the Gaza Strip, has acknowledged holding three Israeli civilians who crossed into the enclave. In addition, Israel is seeking the return of the remains of two soldiers it says were killed in a 2014 Gaza war. Hamas has demanded the release of its members who were re-arrested and imprisoned by Israel in 2014 for alleged security offences after being released in a 2011 swap for a captured Israeli soldier. Israel s Prisons Service declined comment on the incident. Maximum security Nafha prison, in the southern Israeli desert, is used mainly to hold Palestinians convicted of anti-Israeli security offences. The convoy completed its journey to the facility. Qadoura Fares, chairman of the Palestinian Prisoner Club that advocates on behalf of Palestinians held by Israel, branded Hazan a fanatic but said Israel s government bears responsibility for this brutal action . ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish court keeps opposition newspaper staff in jail during trial;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish judge ordered four prominent journalists and senior staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper to remain in jail for at least two more months during their trial, accused of supporting the organizers of last year s failed coup. Editor in chief Murat Sabuncu, attorney Akin Atalay, correspondent Ahmet Sik and accountant Emre Iper, some of whom have already been detained for 14 months, were ordered to be jailed until the next session of their trial on March 9. Prosecutors say Cumhuriyet was effectively taken over by supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric blamed by the government for last year s failed coup. The newspaper and staff have denied the charges and say they are being targeted to silence critics of President Tayyip Erdogan. Monday s hearing included drama in court, when the judge ordered Sik removed from the hearing for making political comments. Sik, who wrote a book critical of Gulen s movement at a time when it was an ally of the government, described Turkish authorities as an authoritarian regime dedicated to cruelty , according to the newspaper. After he was ordered out, Sik said the case itself was political. The days will come where you will be tried, do not forget this, he said, according to Cumhuriyet. I hope you won t be tried in a court like yours. The court said the next hearing will be held in Silivri courthouse, the site of a large prison about 60 km (40 miles) west of Istanbul, to ensure security and order. The Turkish authorities have launched a crackdown since the failed 2016 coup, which they blame on followers of Gulen, who denies involvement. More than 150,000 police, teachers, university lecturers, journalists and other professionals have been sacked or suspended from their jobs and 50,000 people have been arrested. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkish lawyers say decree grants impunity for political violence;ANKARA (Reuters) - A new emergency decree in Turkey could allow vigilantes to carry out political violence with impunity against opponents of the government suspected of involvement in last year s coup attempt, Turkey s main lawyers groups said on Monday. The government defended the emergency decree, issued on Sunday, which it said was intended to ensure that Turks who took to the streets to protect the elected government during the failed 2016 coup would not face punishment. Turkey already granted officials immunity last year from prosecution for their official actions taken to suppress the coup. Sunday s decree extended that immunity to civilians whether they have an official title or not, and whether they have carried out official duties or not . The lawyers groups said the measure was vaguely-worded and could lead to violence. People will start shooting each other in the head on the streets. How will you prevent this? Metin Feyzioglu, the head of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations, said in a video response. So you have brought out an article that leaves civilians killing and lynching each other unpunished and without compensation. Are you aware of what you have done Mr. President? Turkey s main opposition Republican People s Party (CHP) said it would appeal the decree at the constitutional court. In a rare show of opposition, Abdullah Gul, a former president and longtime ally of President Tayyip Erdogan, said the wording of the article was worrisome, adding that he hoped it would be revised to prevent problems in the future. A separate decree on Sunday dismissed 2,756 more people from their jobs, accusing them of links to terrorist organizations. Turkey has already sacked or suspended more than 150,000 police, teachers, lawyers and other professionals from their jobs in the aftermath of the coup. More than 50,000 people have been arrested. In a joint statement, the Ankara and Istanbul bar associations called Sunday s two decrees the last two nails in the coffin of the law . Erdogan says tough measures in the wake of the coup are necessary to root out the perpetrators. His government blames the failed takeover on followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish-born cleric based in the United States, who denies responsibility. The lawyers said the decree granting immunity did not make clear what sort of actions could be seen as furthering the aims of the coup, for which civilians carrying out revenge attacks could now be protected from punishment. The government said the decree covered only the night of the failed military takeover itself, despite the date not being specified in the text. This regulation concerns solely the night of the coup attempt, July 15 2016, and its aftermath, which is the morning of July 16. This does not encompass terror acts that were carried out later, Mahir Unal, the spokesman for the ruling AK Party, told reporters at a televised news conference. What we have done for this country s stability and development is evident. What is also evident is what these people who tell these lies and black propaganda do, he said. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin critic Navalny barred from Russian presidential election;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was barred on Monday from running in next year s presidential election after officials ruled he was ineligible to take part due to a suspended prison sentence he says was trumped up. The decision by the central election commission was widely expected as election officials had repeatedly declared Navalny would be ineligible to run. Twelve members of the 13-member commission voted to bar Navalny. One member abstained, citing a possible conflict of interest. Navalny, 41, who polls show would struggle to beat incumbent Vladimir Putin in the March election, said he would appeal and called on his supporters to boycott the election and campaign against it being held. We knew this could happen, and so we have a straight-forward, clear plan, Navalny said in a pre-recorded video released immediately after the decision. We announce a boycott of the election. The process in which we are called to participate is not a real election. It will feature only Putin and the candidates which he has personally selected. Navalny said he would use his campaign headquarters across Russia to support the boycott and monitor turnout on voting day, March 18. Polls show Putin, 65, who has dominated Russia s political landscape for the last 17 years, is on course to be comfortably re-elected, making him eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Allies laud Putin as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. Navalny says Putin s support is exaggerated and artificially maintained by a biased state media and an unfair system. He says he could defeat him in a fair election, an assertion Putin s supporters have said is laughable. Before the commission voted, Navalny, dressed in a dark suit, had demanded he be allowed to take part in the election delivering a speech that angered election officials. In one heated exchange, he said Russian voters faith in the system hung in the balance. If you do not allow me to run, you are taking a decision against millions of people who are demanding that Navalny take part, he said, referring to himself in the first person. You are not robots, you are living, breathing human beings you are an independent body ... for once in your lives, do the right thing, he said. His supporters clapped him, but officials were unmoved. Boris Ebzeev, one of the officials, said: We re talking about the law and abiding by the law. Ebzeev said there could not be the slightest doubt that Navalny was ineligible to run, a reference to Russia s constitution that bars him running because of his suspended sentence relating to an embezzlement case. Navalny has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and says the case is politically motivated. There had been some speculation prior to the decision among the opposition that Navalny might be allowed to run in order to inject more interest into what looks like a predictable contest amid Kremlin fears that apathetic voters might not bother to vote. Navalny has been jailed three times this year and charged with breaking the law by repeatedly organizing public meetings and rallies. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bus drives into pedestrian underpass in Moscow, kills four: agencies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - A passenger bus swerved off course and drove into a busy pedestrian underpass in Moscow on Monday, killing at least four people, Russian news agencies reported. Video from the scene posted on social media showed a bus veering off the road and plunging down the steps of a pedestrian underpass, crushing several people beneath its wheels. The driver of the bus had been detained by police, agencies said, after he lost control of the vehicle. The incident occurred on one of the Russian capital s busiest roads near the Slavyansky Boulevard metro station. Monday was an ordinary working day in Russia where Orthodox Christmas will be celebrated on Jan. 7. An unnamed emergency services source told the TASS news agency that the number of fatalities had risen to five people. There were also unconfirmed reports that some 15 people had been injured. The Interfax news agency said investigators were looking into whether the incident had occurred as a result of a technical fault with the bus. Ten ambulances, fire service personnel, and three medivac helicopters were on the scene, agencies reported. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Bahraini military court convicts six to death on terror charges; (In Dec. 25 story, removes reference to Shi ite Muslims in first paragraph, and changes militant attacks to terrorist crimes in second paragraph) DUBAI (Reuters) - A Bahraini military court sentenced six men to death and revoked their citizenship after they were convicted on charges of forming a terrorist cell and plotting to assassinate a military official, Bahrain news agency BNA reported on Monday. The men, including one soldier, were accused of several terrorist crimes and of attempting to assassinate a commander of the Bahraini army, BNA said. The court sentenced seven other people linked to the case to seven years in jail and revoked their citizenship, while five others were acquitted, BNA added, quoting a state prosecution statement. BNA said the 18 men involved in the case include eight who were convicted in absentia, having fled to Iraq and Iran. It was not clear which of the absent eight were sentenced to death and which to jail. Bahrain accuses mainly Shi ite Iran of stoking militancy in the kingdom, a strategic island where the U.S. Navy s Fifth Fleet is based, charges Tehran denies. Bahrain has a Shi ite Muslim majority population but is ruled by a Sunni royal family. The rulings are subject to appeal, the statement said. Bahrain in January executed three Shi ite men convicted of killing three policemen, including an officer from the United Arab Emirates, in a 2014 bomb attack. They were the first such executions in over two decades and sparked protests. Bahrain had seen occasional unrest since 2011 when authorities crushed protests mainly by the Shi ite majority demanding a bigger role in running the country. ;worldnews;25/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 26) - Hillary Clinton, Tax Cut Bill;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Based on the fact that the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate has been terminated as part of our Tax Cut Bill, which essentially Repeals (over time) ObamaCare, the Democrats & Republicans will eventually come together and develop a great new HealthCare plan! [0658 EST] - WOW, @foxandfrlends “Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED.” And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign! [0824 EST] - All signs are that business is looking really good for next year, only to be helped further by our Tax Cut Bill. Will be a great year for Companies and JOBS! Stock Market is poised for another year of SUCCESS! [17:17 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. appeals court rejects challenge to Trump voter fraud panel;(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court in Washington on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to allow President Donald Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud to request data on voter rolls from U.S. states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) watchdog group, which filed the lawsuit, did not have legal standing to seek to force the presidential commission to review privacy concerns before collecting individuals’ voter data. EPIC had argued that under federal law, the commission was required to conduct a privacy-impact assessment before gathering personal data. But the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that the privacy law at issue was intended to protect individuals, not groups like EPIC. “EPIC is not a voter,” Judge Karen Henderson wrote in the ruling. Washington-based U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly first denied EPIC’s injunction request in July, in part because the collection of data by the commission was not technically an action by a government agency so was not bound by laws that govern what such entities can do. Kollar-Kotelly noted that the commission, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, was an advisory body that lacks legal authority to compel states to hand over the data. Most state officials who oversee elections and election law experts say that voter fraud is rare in the United States. Trump, a Republican, set up the commission in May after charging, without evidence, that millions of people voted unlawfully in the 2016 presidential election in which he defeated Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote. The commission’s vice chair, Kris Kobach, the Republican secretary of state for Kansas and an advocate of tougher laws on immigration and voter identification, asked states in June to turn over voter information. The data requested by Kobach included names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliation, felony convictions and voting histories. More than 20 states refused outright and others said they needed to study whether they could provide the data. Civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have said the commission’s eventual findings could lead to new ID requirements and other measures making it harder for groups that tend to favor Democratic candidates to cast ballots. EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg could not immediately be reached for comment. ;politicsNews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 26) - Hillary Clinton, Tax Cut Bill;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Based on the fact that the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate has been terminated as part of our Tax Cut Bill, which essentially Repeals (over time) ObamaCare, the Democrats & Republicans will eventually come together and develop a great new HealthCare plan! [0658 EST] - WOW, @foxandfrlends Dossier is bogus. Clinton Campaign, DNC funded Dossier. FBI CANNOT (after all of this time) VERIFY CLAIMS IN DOSSIER OF RUSSIA/TRUMP COLLUSION. FBI TAINTED. And they used this Crooked Hillary pile of garbage as the basis for going after the Trump Campaign! [0824 EST] - All signs are that business is looking really good for next year, only to be helped further by our Tax Cut Bill. Will be a great year for Companies and JOBS! Stock Market is poised for another year of SUCCESS! [17:17 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FLASHBACK: CNN HOST Concerned Working Americans “Are Going To Vote For Donald Trump Again” After Getting Bonuses and Pay Raises;"CNN s Allyson Camerota expressed her concern about how the tax breaks for Americans will harm the Democrats chances of winning in the mid-term elections with Michigan s Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.Camerota appeared somewhat panicked, as she started out her segment whining to Dingell about bonuses and pay raises that Americans will receive as a result of Trump s GOP tax bill: Just, ever since the tax reform was announced, or the tax overhaul, or whatever you want to call it, there have been this whole slew of companies that have come forward and saying, Guess what? We re going to give out bonuses, now, to our employees. I mean, I have just a partial list in front of me, and there s nine companies on here from AT&T, to Boeing, to Comcast, Bank of America, Sinclair, Wells Fargo, PNC. There s all sorts of companies that say they re going to give something to a thousand dollars worth of bonuses to their hundreds of thousands of employees. Fifth Bank Corp is gonna boost the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Obviously, they could have done this before the tax overhaul was announced. They were sitting on profits. But they didn t, they did it when the tax overhaul was announced. And I m wondering if you, as a Democrat are you worried about the wind in their sails? People vote with their pocketbooks. I don t have to tell you this. So if you get a thousand dollar bonus, you re voting for Donald Trump again. Although Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) voted against the tax cut bill, she smartly responded to Camerota s question by saying that she s never going to complain that any working man or woman will get an extra boost in their, uh, income. Dingell then told Camerota that at some point a lot of people are still going to see a tax increase at some point. Camerota interrupted her to say, Years from now Years from now! Well after the mid-terms. So couldn t this carry Republicans through the mid-terms? RT @RealSaavedra: CNN ""journalist"" Allisyn Camerota frets over how many businesses are giving back to their employees as a result of the tax cuts and worries it may help GOP. #TheFive #Tucker #SpecialReport pic.twitter.com/xUHXHHJ8wk Tosca Austen (@ToscaAusten) December 26, 2017Businesses and major corporations tweeted about bonuses and pay raises they would be giving their employees as a direct result of Trump s GOP tax reform bill that was passed without a single Democrat vote:Here is AT&T s full statement: Boening announced on Twitter that a $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future:#Boeing announces $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future. pic.twitter.com/ZNawbAW7AY The Boeing Company (@Boeing) December 20, 2017";left-news;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar police to free journalists working for Turkish broadcaster;(Reuters) - Myanmar police said on Tuesday they would drop pending charges against two journalists working for Turkey s state broadcaster, their interpreter and driver, who were jailed in November for violating an aircraft law by filming with a drone. Cameraman Lau Hon Meng from Singapore, reporter Mok Choy Lin from Malaysia, Aung Naing Soe - a local journalist who was interpreting for the pair - and driver Hla Tin were detained by police on Oct. 27 near Myanmar s parliament building in the capital Naypyitaw. They are currently each serving a two-month prison sentence under a colonial-era aircraft law, but all four still face further charges for importing the drone. The two foreign nationals have also been charged with an immigration offence. Police Lieutenant Tun Tun Win and an immigration officer - the complainants - appeared in a Naypyitaw courtroom on Tuesday and asked that the court drop the charges. Tun Tun Win told Reuters higher police officials had ordered the case dropped because the four did not mean to endanger national security by flying the drone. Additionally, he said, the decision was intended to forward the relationship between countries , referring to the two journalists home countries, Singapore and Malaysia. A law officer - the government s prosecutor in the case - was expected to tell the court the charges were formally dropped in another hearing set for Thursday, defense lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told Reuters. The higher authorities already instructed to terminate with good intention, but the procedure can only be accomplished on that day (Thursday), the lawyer said. The four are set to complete their sentences under the aircraft act on Jan. 9, but may be released earlier for good behavior, he added. The case had raised concerns over freedom of the press in Myanmar, where a civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi took power last year but the military retains control of security matters, including the police. Two Reuters journalists were arrested on Dec. 12 after they went to meet police officers for dinner on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city Yangon. Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, have now been in detention for two weeks with no access to visitors or to a lawyer. They had covered the crisis in western Rakhine state that has driven 655,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims across the border to Bangladesh since August. The reporters are being investigated under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Four killed in suspected Boko Haram Nigeria attack on Monday: sources;LAGOS (Reuters) - Four civilians were killed in an attack by suspected Boko Haram militants on Monday in the Nigerian city at the center of a conflict with the Islamists, a resident and two officials told Reuters. Nigeria s army said on Monday evening it had repelled the assault on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the spiritual birthplace of Boko Haram. It was the first major attack on the northeast city since June. The army statement made no mention of casualties but Musa Alkali, a resident of the attacked area, Molai, told Reuters on Tuesday he saw four corpses. Boko Haram fought their way into Molai and burnt three houses before the military fighter jet arrived, he said. Three people were burnt in their houses, (then) I saw four dead bodies taken out of the area, said Alkali. He said the fourth person had been shot. Two other people, a local vigilante group commander and a military officer, also told Reuters on Tuesday that four civilians had died. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had been told not to speak to media and feared reprisal. The military said that none of its troops had lost their lives. It said the attackers had come with trucks mounted with guns and suicide bombers, and when retreating had set fire to houses and vehicles. Three Nigerian military spokesmen did not immediately respond to calls, texts and WhatsApp messages seeking comment. Fourteen people were killed in an attack on Maiduguri in June when the group struck on the eve of a visit by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. The government often says it is on alert for Boko Haram attacks during the Christmas period and other festivals for Christians and Muslims. The insurgency has in the past targeted places of worship such as churches and mosques during those times. Embassies regularly warn their nationals to be cautious and avoid public spaces at those times. President Muhammadu Buhari s administration has been saying Boko Haram are almost defeated but the latest attack shows the group s continued ability to stage hit-and-run raids, prompting a renewed government push against the militants. The Nigerian government approved the release of $1 billion last week from a state oil fund to help with the fight. Nigeria s long-term plan is to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns, a move that effectively cedes the rural areas to Boko Haram. Nigeria replaced its previous military commander of the fight against Boko Haram after half a year in the post. Military sources told Reuters this followed a series of embarrassing attacks by the militants. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait arrests five over video deemed offensive to crown prince;DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait arrested five suspects accused of posting a video on social media considered offensive to the Gulf state s crown prince, the interior ministry said on Tuesday. The accused were government employees with positions at important institutions within the state , the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency KUNA. In recent days, a clip has circulated on social media showing the crown prince jabbing his finger at dignitaries at a Gulf football event, apparently trying to tell them who should be first to shake the hand of the ruling emir. It was not immediately clear if that video was the subject of the legal charges. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Suspected U.S. drone kills militants on Pakistan-Afghan border;PARACHINAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. drone attack along the Pakistani-Afghan border killed an Islamist militant commander from the Taliban-allied Haqqani Network, a Pakistani official and two members of the Haqqani group said. The Pakistani official said it was not immediately clear whether the missile struck on the Afghan or Pakistani side of the border. The members of the network and an eyewitness reached by Reuters said the incident took place inside Pakistan. There have been multiple suspected U.S. drone strikes in the mountainous border region separating Pakistan s Kurram Agency from Afghanistan since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January. Trump has taken a hardline stance on Pakistan, which he says provides safe haven to terrorists including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network carrying out attacks in Afghanistan. Tuesday s suspected drone attack targeted the vehicle of a militant commander named Jamiuddin, said the Pakistani official, who is based in the area, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that it also killed an associate of the commander. A senior member of the Haqqani network told Reuters: Maulvi Jamiuddin was our trusted man. He was part of our organization and used to facilitate our fighters during their movement inside Afghanistan. He added that Jamiuddin was traveling in his car in Pakistan s Kurram region and that none of his associates were killed in the attack. Jamiuddin stopped the car ... for conversation on his cellular phone when the drone fired two missiles and killed him on the spot, another Haqqani member said. Rehmanullah, a resident of the area who uses only one name, said he saw the strike near the Mata Sanghar area of Kurram agency, across from the Afghan province of Paktia. I saw two missiles hit the vehicle and the people inside were killed, he told Reuters by telephone. An increase in drone strikes that hit inside Pakistani territory is one of the steps U.S. officials have said could be taken if Islamabad does not end safe havens for militants. Pakistan has sought to play down several recent drone strikes inside the border, with officials saying they were on the Afghan side even though local residents said they were in Pakistan. In October, three suspected strikes in two days killed 31 people who officials said belonged to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, allied to the Taliban. Those attacks came days after a Canadian-American couple held hostage by the Taliban were freed from the area in Pakistan s northwest, striking a rare positive note in the country s often-fraught relations with the United States. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Philippines to sanction firms involved in deadly fire if safety skirted;MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Tuesday it would investigate whether safety regulations were ignored at an office where a fire killed 37 call center employees, and vowed to impose sanctions if firms had not met standards. The remains of 37 employees of the U.S.-based Research Now SSI killed by Saturday s fire in Davao City have been recovered and a criminal investigation will be launched by the Justice Department. Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello said he had instructed the government s workplace health and safety agency and the Labour Ministry s regional office in Davao, President Rodrigo Duterte s hometown, to investigate if there were lapses in safety standards. The fire broke out at a furniture store on the third level of the 14-year-old New City Commercial Center and quickly engulfed an outsourcing business on the upper floor, based on an initial report from the city government. We will immediately look into possible violations of some safety and health standards, Bello told Reuters. We may not issue any clearance to operate, he said when asked to clarify sanctions that could be imposed on the mall or call center management if culpable. Research Now SSI has confirmed 37 of its 500 employees in its Davao call center were lost in the fire. We cannot comment on what is an ongoing investigation, said Barbara Palmer, company senior vice president for global marketing, in an email in response to a Reuters query on Tuesday about safety protocols at the company s Davao office. On Sunday the firm said in a statement it was helping to support funeral arrangements and would create a fund for contributions for victims families. The fire is a setback for the Philippines $23 billion business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which is an economic lifeline in the country of more than 100 million. The sector employs about 1.15 million people, with jobs forecast to grow to 1.8 million by 2025. Along with remittances from overseas workers, BPO revenues are a major earner of foreign exchange for the country, driving what is one of Asia s fastest-growing economies. The BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) has expressed concern about postings on social media that said the building was made of sub-standard materials, had locked its fire exits, and had not held fire drills. It was not possible to immediately check the accuracy of the postings. BIEN said the government should look into every BPO firm s compliance with occupational health and safety standards. Justice must be served to the victims and those accountable must be penalized so as to avoid future workplace deaths, BIEN said in a statement. On Monday night, Duterte told relatives of victims that the National Bureau of Investigation, police and fire protection bureau would get to the bottom of the disaster. The truth will come out, he said. Research Now SSI has offices in Texas, California, New York and Toronto and more than 3,500 market research, consulting, media, healthcare and corporate clients. The Call Centre Association of the Philippines (CCAP) said it was waiting for a full report from Research Now SSI, but saw no problem with its members meeting workplace safety standards. We always comply with government safety regulations because our priority is the welfare of all our employees, CCAP President Jojo Uligan told Reuters. But the Associated Labour Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) said safety standards were not being adhered to and the labor department and companies were not living up to their responsibilities to enforce and comply. This deaths-causing fire could have been minimized to the barest damage to property, ALU-TUCP spokesman Alan Tanjusay said. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Britain escorts Russian ship near national waters amid strained relations;LONDON (Reuters) - A British ship escorted a Russian vessel as it passed near UK territorial waters over Christmas, Britain s defense ministry said on Tuesday, adding that Russian naval activity near Britain had increased in the holiday period. The frigate HMS St Albans departed on Dec. 23 to track the new Russian warship Admiral Gorshkov as it moved through the North Sea. The Royal Navy vessel monitored the Russian ship over Christmas and will return to dock in Portsmouth later on Tuesday. UK defense minister Gavin Williamson said in a statement after the incident that he would not hesitate in defending our waters or tolerate any form of aggression . Relations between Britain and Russia are strained, and UK foreign minister Boris Johnson said there was abundant evidence of Moscow meddling in foreign elections during a trip to Russia last week. His counterpart Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof for Johnson s claim. While Johnson said he wants to normalize relations with Russia, Moscow blames London for the poor state of relations between the countries. Britain s defense ministry said another ship, HMS Tyne, was called to escort a Russian intelligence-gathering ship through the North Sea and the English Channel on Christmas Eve. A helicopter was subsequently dispatched to monitor two other Russian vessels. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin seeks investigation of vote boycott called by Putin opponent;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Hundreds of Russian celebrities, sportspeople and politicians nominated President Vladimir Putin for re-election on Tuesday, hours after the Kremlin said it wanted opposition leader Alexei Navalny investigated for calling for a boycott of the vote. Navalny called for the boycott of the March 18 election on Monday after Russia s central election commission ruled he was not eligible to run for president due to a suspended prison sentence hanging over him. The 41-year-old lawyer, who says he s being excluded on false grounds because the Kremlin is running scared, said he would use his campaign headquarters across the country to call the election s legitimacy into question and organize protests. The Kremlin, which points to polls that show Putin is the runaway favorite with Navalny trailing far behind, on Tuesday set the scene for possible police action against Navalny and his supporters whose protests have been broken up before. The calls for a boycott will require scrupulous study, to see whether or not they comply with the law, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. Declining to comment on the election commission s decision to bar Navalny, Peskov shrugged off allegations that the presidential poll would be a farce without the opposition leader who has made a name for himself by leveraging social media and conducting corruption investigations into senior officials. The fact that one of the would-be candidates is not taking part has no bearing on the election s legitimacy, said Peskov. Hours later, Putin, 65, was feted by his supporters, almost 700 of whom pledged to back him for re-election above the minimum 500 required to initiate a presidential bid. Putin s own schedule was too busy for him to attend the Moscow nomination event, the Kremlin said, though he is expected to personally submit the necessary paperwork to the central election commission in the coming days. The former KGB officer is running as an independent, a move seen as a way of strengthening his image as a father of the nation rather than as a party political figure. The ruling United Russia party and the Just Russia party have both said they will support him. I have worked under the leadership of the president for quite a long time so I know that everything will be alright for us with President Putin, Sergei Kislyak, Russia s former ambassador to the United States, now a senator, told Reuters at Tuesday s nomination meeting. The commander of a nuclear submarine, Sergei Novokhatsky, told the same meeting that Putin had helped revive the Russian Navy, which he described as mired in apathy at the end of the 1990s with many of its ships stuck in ports. Now, he said, wages were up and Russian ships served throughout the world. The course the motherland is on is the right one, Novokhatsky told the meeting. If, as expected, he wins re-election, Putin, who has dominated Russia s political landscape for the last 17 years, will be eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Allies laud him for restoring national pride and expanding Moscow s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. But Navalny, the opposition leader, says Putin s support is exaggerated and artificially maintained by a biased state media and an unfair system which excludes genuine opponents. Navalny, who says he could defeat Putin in a fair election, has been jailed three times this year and charged with breaking the law for organizing public meetings and rallies designed to bolster his presidential campaign. He has said millions of voters will be disenfranchised unless the authorities relent and allow him to run. The European Union has also questioned the decision to bar Navalny. (It) casts a serious doubt on political pluralism in Russia and the prospect of democratic elections next year, the EU s External Action Service said in a statement on Tuesday. Politically motivated charges should not be used against political participation, it said, urging Moscow to ensure a level playing field for all Russian elections. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;British woman sentenced in Egypt to three years in jail for smuggling painkillers;CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court sentenced a British woman to three years in prison on Tuesday for smuggling around 300 painkiller tablets into the country, in a ruling her defence team said she would appeal to have overturned or commuted. Laura Plummer, a 33-year-old shop worker from Hull, was arrested in October after the Tramadol tablets were found in her suitcase. Her family told British newspapers she bought the tablets for her Egyptian partner living in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada. Plummer attended a hearing in her case on Monday, before Tuesday s sentencing. The court also ruled that she must pay a fine of 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($5,600). Tramadol is a legal, prescription medicine in Britain, but it is banned in Egypt. Plummer was arrested on arrival from Britain in October, and her detention was extended twice prior to her court appearance. Plummer s family said on Tuesday they were disgusted by the way the trial had been conducted. From day one, this has been a complete nightmare. Yesterday in the court she wasn t even allowed her own interpreter. She had to get the court s interpreter who was interpreting the wrong answers, her sister Jayne Synclair said, speaking on BBC television. The family said Plummer had also been forced to sign Arabic-language documents which she did not understand. She s on the verge of a mental breakdown ... It s just horrendous, her sister said. Her lawyer said Plummer would appeal, seeking to reverse the verdict or get a commuted sentence, which is possible in the two months after sentencing. He added that she did not know Tramadol was banned in Egypt. Speaking to the court on behalf of Plummer, the lawyer, said she had no criminal intent in bringing in the painkillers. On Monday the lawyer, Mohamed Othman, told Reuters: It is illogical that she was dealing in Tramadol. She had only 320 pills. Even the plane ticket is almost double the price of those pills. A spokesman from Britain s Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: We will continue to provide assistance to Laura and her family following the court ruling in Egypt, and our embassy is in regular contact with the Egyptian authorities. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov tells Tillerson U.S. 'aggressive rhetoric' on Korea unacceptable;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday that Washington s aggressive rhetoric had heightened tension on the Korean peninsula and was unacceptable, the Russian foreign ministry said. In a phone call, the two men also discussed further steps towards resolving the Syrian crisis and the situation in Ukraine, it added. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin says ready to mediate North Korea-U.S. talks, if both sides willing;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is ready to act as a mediator between North Korea and the United States if both parties are willing for it to play such a role, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. Moscow has long called for the two sides to hold negotiations aimed at reducing tensions over the nuclear and missile program North Korea is pursuing in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Russia s readiness to clear the way for de-escalation is obvious, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with reporters. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Monday for Washington and Pyongyang to start negotiations, saying Russia was ready to facilitate such talks. Though U.S. diplomats have said they are pursuing a diplomatic solution, President Donald Trump has said Pyongyang must commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before any talks can begin. In a phone call, Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday that Washington s aggressive rhetoric and beefing up of its military presence in the region had heightened tension on the Korean peninsula and was unacceptable. The necessity of the fastest move to the negotiating process from the language of sanctions was underscored, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted to impose new sanctions on North Korea on Friday in response to its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, a move North Korea called an act of war, tantamount to a complete economic blockade. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Attack on Libyan crude pipeline cuts output by up to 100,000 bpd;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Armed men blew up a pipeline pumping crude oil to Es Sider port on Tuesday, cutting Libya s output by up to 100,000 barrels per day (bpd), military and oil sources said. The state-run National Oil Corporation (NOC) said in statement output had been reduced by 70,000-100,000 bpd. The cause of the blast was unclear, it added. The attackers arrived at the site near Marada in two cars and planted explosives on the pipeline, a military source said. Pictures purportedly showing a huge cloud from the blast in central eastern Libya circulated on social media. The damage was still being assessed, one oil source said. Oil prices rose on the report. Islamic State fighters had a presence in the area until government forces expelled them from their main stronghold in Sirte a year ago. The operator of the pipeline is Waha, a subsidiary of the NOC and a joint venture with Hess Corp, Marathon Oil Corp and ConocoPhillips. Waha pumps a total 260,000 barrels a day, its chairman said last month. The North African state s oil production was last put by officials at around one million bpd but exact figures are hard to obtain in a country riven by factional conflict. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syria says military jet downed in northern Hama, pilot killed;AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria s armed forces said insurgents downed a military jet in northern Hama province on Tuesday, killing the pilot. Militant group Tahrir al Sham - a fighting force dominated by members of Al Qaeda s former branch in Syria - said it hit the plane. A source said the militants were searching for another pilot they believed had survived the crash. Syria s air force and army, supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, have stepped up an offensive in Hama in recent weeks, pushing north toward the rebel stronghold of Idlib. Aid workers and witnesses say dozens of civilians have been killed in towns and villages away from the front lines. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions two North Korean officials over missile program;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions on two North Korean officials for their roles in developing the country s ballistic missiles, the latest step in a campaign to press Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. Treasury named the officials as Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol. It said Kim was reportedly a key figure in North Korea s efforts to switch its missile program from liquid to solid fuel, while Ri was reported to be a key official involved in the country s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development. Treasury is targeting leaders of North Korea s ballistic missile programs, as part of our maximum pressure campaign to isolate (North Korea) and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. These actions follow Friday s United Nations Security Council Resolution, which imposed strong new sanctions on North Korea further shutting down its ability to raise illicit funds. The U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea last week over a recent ICBM test. The sanctions sought to limit the country s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. North Korea, which has been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States, declared those steps to be an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against the country. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korea likely to pursue talks, South says in rosy New Year forecast;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea predicted on Tuesday that North Korea would look to open negotiations with the United States next year in an optimistic outlook for 2018, even as Seoul set up a specialized military team to confront nuclear threats from the North. The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new, tougher sanctions on reclusive North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, a move the North branded an economic blockade and act of war. North Korea will seek negotiation with United States, while continuing to pursue its effort to be recognized as a de facto nuclear-possessing country, South Korea s Unification Ministry said in a report, without offering any reasons for its conclusion. The Ministry of Defence said it would assign four units to operate under a new official overseeing North Korea policy, aimed to deter and respond to North Korea s nuclear and missile threat . Tensions have risen over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs, which it pursues in defiance of years of U.N. Security Council resolutions, with bellicose rhetoric coming from both Pyongyang and the White House. U.S. diplomats have made clear they are seeking a diplomatic solution but President Donald Trump has derided talks as useless and said Pyongyang must commit to giving up its nuclear weapons before any talks can begin. In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country . China, the North s lone major ally, and Russia both supported the latest U.N. sanctions, which seek to limit the North s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad, while on Monday Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called for all countries to ease tension. On Tuesday, Beijing released customs data indicating China exported no oil products to North Korea in November, apparently going over and beyond U.N. sanctions. China, the main source of North Korea s fuel, did not export any gasoline, jet fuel, diesel or fuel oil to its neighbor last month, data from the General Administration of Customs showed. China also imported no iron ore, coal or lead from North Korea in November. In its 2018 forecast, South Korea s Unification Ministry said it believed the North would eventually find ways to blunt the effects of the sanctions. Countermeasures will be orchestrated to deal with the effects, including cuts in trade volume and foreign currency inflow, lack of supplies, and reduced production in each part of the economy, the report said. The latest round of sanctions was prompted by the Nov. 29 test of what North Korea said was an intercontinental ballistic missile that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. The Joongang Ilbo Daily newspaper, citing an unnamed South Korean government official, reported on Tuesday that North Korea could also be preparing to launch a satellite into space. Experts have said such launches are likely aimed at further developing the North s ballistic missile technology, and as such would be prohibited under U.N. resolutions. The North Korean Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on Monday saying that peaceful space development is a legitimate right of a sovereign state . North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan, and says its weapons are necessary to counter U.S. aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, and regularly carries out military exercises with the South, which the North sees as preparations for invasion. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Forty-four Venezuelan activists released from prison: rights group;CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan authorities have so far released 44 opponents of the socialist government from prison over Christmas, but scores more remain in prison, a rights group said on Tuesday. President Nicolas Maduro s administration said it is freeing about 80 jailed activists in all, but giving them alternative punishments such as community service for crimes from violence to subversion during protests in 2014 and 2017. Opponents say those being released - and the nearly 200 others still detained - are pawns of a dictatorship that unjustly punishes protest and dissent. The local Penal Forum group confirmed 44 people have been released since Dec. 23, but criticized the government for manipulating their cases for political gain. Thirteen of those released were paraded in front of television cameras at a meeting with a senior official, Delcy Rodriguez, who harangued them but also wished them a happy Christmas. The releases came days before Venezuela s government and opposition were due to resume stuttering mediation talks in the Dominican Republic in early January. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Twenty-eight arrests after Venezuela looting, violence;PUERTO ORDAZ, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested 28 people in southern Bolivar state for looting and disorder over Christmas in the latest unrest during a severe economic crisis. There have been scattered protests and roadblocks around the South American OPEC nation in recent days over food shortages, power-cuts, high prices and fuel rationing. Local chamber of commerce head Florenzo Schettino told Reuters 10 businesses - mostly liquor stores - were looted as dark fell on Christmas Day in Bolivar, which has seen unrest at various points over the last four years of brutal recession. In the western Andean states, police and soldiers were guarding gas stations, where there were large lines and customers were only allowed to fill up 35 liters per vehicle. We re wasting so much time ... The government is testing people s patience, said bus driver Pedro Pina, waiting for hours to buy fuel in Barinas state. Critics blame President Nicolas Maduro and the ruling Socialist Party for Venezuela s economic mess, saying they have persisted with failed statist policies for too long, while turning a blind eye to rampant corruption and inefficiency. The government says it is the victim of an economic war by political opponents and right-wing foreign powers, intent on bringing down Maduro in a coup. This can only be reversed with deep economic reforms, said opposition legislator and economist Angel Alvarado. In western Zulia state, several hundred thousand people were plunged into darkness on Christmas Eve, sparking fury among those who had scraped together money and hunted for products throughout the day to prepare a traditional family dinner. I spent the whole day stressed out - and then the lights went off. What a pathetic Christmas, said Lilibeth Rodriguez, 40, whose family gathering was ruined. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;India says Pakistan mistreated visiting wife of convicted spy, seized her shoes;NEW DELHI, ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India denounced Pakistan on Tuesday over the treatment of the family of an Indian man sentenced to death for spying, saying they had been harassed during a visit, a charge Pakistan called baseless . Among other things, the Indian government accused the Pakistani authorities of refusing to return the shoes of the visiting wife of Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav after she turned them over to security for the visit. Jadhav, a former officer in the Indian navy, was arrested in March 2016 in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, where there has been a long-running conflict between security forces and separatists, and he was convicted of planning espionage and sabotage. His wife and mother were allowed to see him behind a glass window on Monday, eight months after he was sentenced to death, but that gesture of goodwill appeared to have quickly descended into acrimony. Ties between the nuclear-armed neighbors are in a deep chill and Jadhav s case has added to long-running tensions, with each accusing the other of supporting cross-border violence. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said Jadhav s family had been subjected to harassment when they arrived to see him. The Pakistani press was allowed on multiple occasions to approach family members closely, harass and hector them and hurl false and loaded accusations about (Shri) Jadhav, Kumar said in a statement. Pakistan s foreign ministry rejected the accusations. The Indian baseless allegations and twists ... about the visit of the wife and mother of Commander Jadhav, a convicted terrorist and spy, who has confessed to his crimes, are categorically rejected, it said. The Pakistani statement added that it had kept both Pakistani, Indian and international media at a safe distance, as requested by India . Pakistan authorities say Jadhav confessed to being assigned by India s intelligence service to plan, coordinate and organise espionage and sabotage activities in Baluchistan aiming to destabilise and wage war against Pakistan . India says Jadhav is innocent, and it won an injunction from the World Court to delay his execution, arguing he was denied diplomatic assistance during his trial by a military court. On Monday, Pakistan released a picture of Jadhav s mother, Avanti, and wife, Chetankul, seated at a desk and speaking to him from behind the glass partition. Islamabad said it had honored its commitment to give access to the family. But India said Jadhav s mother was not allowed to speak in her native Marathi language and was frequently interrupted during the meeting. Kumar said the two women had been asked to remove the red dot that Hindus wear as well as their jewelry and shoes during security screenings, adding that Pakistani authorities had refused to return the shoes that Jadhav s wife had worn. The Pakistani foreign ministry rebuttal did not address the report of the missing shoes. India and Pakistan often accuse each other of spying, and several people have been held in prisons for years in both countries, some on death row, to be used as bargaining chips in their troubled relationship. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Families chased from Libyan town in 2011 can go home: government;TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libyan families displaced from a town ransacked after the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 will be allowed to return home in February, the U.N.-backed government said on Tuesday after more than a year of negotiations. The deal, if implemented, would be a step toward reconciliation in the North African oil producing country, which is heavily divided between competing factions, communities, tribes and governments since 2011. Residents of the town of Tawergha were expelled by former anti-Gaddafi rebels in 2011 in retaliation for the strongman having used their settlement as a launch pad for attacks on the western city of Misrata during the uprising. They have been living in camps and makeshift settlements in poverty across Libya and were banned from returning home. They faced abuse and arbitrary arrest since videos surfaced purportedly showing some of them joining Gaddafi forces in 2011. Within the frame of achieving the national reconciliation ... as well as to develop the basics of state of law and institutions, I declare today the beginning of return of Tawergha families to their town on the first of February, the Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez Seraj said in a statement. The town, which is east of Misrata, has been a ghost town since it was looted by Misrata forces in 2011. Some 40,000 people were displaced, according to Human Rights Watch s website. The government will pay compensation to the relatives of those who were killed and to those who had been detained, wounded or whose homes were destroyed in the conflict, it said. A spokesman for the Misrata city council confirmed the deal, saying it was up to the government to implement it. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brazil declares top Venezuelan diplomat persona non-grata;SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil s government will declare Venezuela s charg d affaires persona non-grata, stripping him of his diplomatic status, Brazil s foreign affairs ministry told Reuters on Tuesday. The move to cease official recognition of Gerardo Antonio Delgado Maldonado follows Venezuela s expulsion of Brazil s diplomatic envoy over the weekend. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt wants outside experts to help settle Nile dispute;ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Egypt said on Tuesday it had suggested to Ethiopia and Sudan that they all call in international experts to help settle a dispute on an Ethiopian dam project on the river Nile. Egypt fears the hydroelectric scheme will restrict the waters flowing down from Ethiopia s highlands, through the deserts of Sudan to its fields and reservoirs. Ethiopia, which wants to become Africa s biggest power exporter, says it will have no such impact. Ministers from Ethiopia and Egypt met on Tuesday to try to resolve a disagreement over the wording of a report on the environmental impact of the $4-billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is still being built. But Egypt s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said they had not managed to reach a breakthrough since the three nations last met in November. From a practical perspective, we have to recognize that technical deliberations ... have not (yielded) sufficient results to enable the process to move forward, Shoukry told journalists after the meeting in Addis Ababa. He suggested the countries call in outside experts, without going into details. Officials who took part in the sessions said Egypt had suggested involving an international body such as the World Bank. Ethiopia s foreign minister, Workneh Gebeyehu, told the same press conference he was looking for a win-win situation, but did not comment on the Egyptian proposal. Countries that share the river have argued over the use of its waters for decades - and analysts have repeatedly warned that the disputes could eventually boil over into conflict. Sudan and Ethiopia say Egypt has refused to accept amendments that they had put forward to the environmental report. Another source of disagreement is whether Ethiopia should be allowed to complete construction of the dam before the negotiations over ensuring water flows have finished. Egyptian officials say this would violate an agreement signed by all three countries in 2015 meant to ensure diplomatic cooperation. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian army and Iranian proxies demand surrender of rebels near Israel border;AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels pinned down in a strategic area where the Israeli and Lebanese borders meet with Syria were handed an ultimatum by the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militia allies to either surrender or face certain military defeat, rebels said on Tuesday. The Syrian army backed by local militias financed and equipped by Iran alongside Druze fighters from the area have been escalating a fierce assault against Sunni rebels in an enclave in the foothills of Mount Hermon, close to both the Israeli and Lebanese borders. They were given 72 hours to surrender with fighters to go to Idlib or those who want to stay have to reach a settlement, said Ibrahim al-Jebawi, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official familiar with the situation on the ground. Another rebel official who asked not to be named said they were told either to surrender or a military solution. The rebels have now been left encircled in Beit Jin, their main stronghold after losing strategic hills and farms around it this week after over two months of near daily shelling and aerial strikes. Iran-backed Lebanon s Hezbollah s media unit said insurgents had agreed to negotiate surrender terms and said negotiations had already begun over their evacuation in the next few days to rebel-held Idlib. The Syrian army has used similar tactics of pushing opponents to rebel areas further from the Syrian capital after a twin tactic of siege and months of strikes on residential areas. There were also more than 8,000 civilians who have been trapped in the remaining enclaves with their plight worsening, according to rebel spokesman Sohaib Alraheel. Israel, which Syria accuses of helping the rebels, is alarmed at the growing Iranian military influence in the Golan Heights and has stepped up its strikes against pro-Iranian targets inside Syria. Israel has been lobbying both big powers to deny Iran, Lebanon s Hezbollah and other Shi ite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels. Early this month there was an Israeli strike on a base near Kiswah, south of Damascus, that was widely believed to be an Iranian military compound, a Western intelligence source said. Hezbollah s bastion in southern Lebanon is only a few kms from the rebel enclave, and securing a supply line from its stronghold into Syria s Quneitra province was a major strategic gain, rebels and defense analysts say. Now Hezbollah will have a bigger foothold on the Syrian side of the Golan and it is desperate to link this area with southern Lebanon, al-Jebawi added. Israel had warned Hezbollah against trying to open a front in the Golan Heights and was believed to be behind the killing a prominent commander in an air strike in 2015 whom the group later admitted had overseen a local Hezbollah presence in the area. This is an effort by Iran and its proxy Hezbollah to expand the lines of engagement with Israel. The question is will Israel allow that? said Fayez al Dweiri, a retired Jordanian general who follows Syria closely. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Argentina judge says death of prosecutor Nisman was murder;BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who was found dead days after accusing former President Cristina Fernandez of covering up Iran s role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center, was murdered, a federal judge said on Tuesday. In a 656-page ruling, judge Julian Ercolini said there was sufficient proof to conclude that the shot to the head that killed Nisman in January 2015 was not self-inflicted. That marked the first time any judge has said the case was a murder. Fernandez and others had suggested the death was a suicide, but a prosecutor investigating the case last year recommended it be pursued as a murder probe. Nisman s death could not have been a suicide, Ercolini wrote in Tuesday s ruling, which also charged Diego Lagomarsino, a former employee of Nisman s, with accessory to murder. Lagomarsino has acknowledged lending Nisman the gun that killed him the day before he was to appear before Congress to detail his allegation against Fernandez. But he has said Nisman asked him for the gun to protect himself and his family. Fernandez, now a senator, was indicted for treason earlier this month over Nisman s allegations that she worked behind the scenes to clear Iran of blame for the attack on the AMIA Jewish center, which killed 85 people, in an effort to normalize relations and clinch a 2013 grains-for-oil deal with Tehran. Human rights groups and the former head of Interpol have criticized that indictment. Tehran has denied links to the attack. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Venezuelans scramble to survive as merchants demand dollars;CARACAS/CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela (Reuters) - There was no way Jose Ramon Garcia, a food transporter in Venezuela, could afford new tires for his van at $350 each. Whether he opted to pay in U.S. currency or in the devalued local bolivar currency at the equivalent black market price, Garcia would have had to save up for years. Though used to expensive repairs, this one was too much and put him out of business. Repairs cost an arm and a leg in Venezuela, said the now-unemployed 42-year-old Garcia, who has a wife and two children to support in the southern city of Guayana. There s no point keeping bolivars. For a decade and a half, strict exchange controls have severely limited access to dollars. A black market in hard currency has spread in response, and as once-sky-high oil revenue runs dry, Venezuela s economy is in free-fall. The practice adopted by gourmet and design stores in Caracas over the last couple of years to charge in dollars to a select group of expatriates or Venezuelans with access to greenbacks is fast spreading. Food sellers, dental and medical clinics, and others are starting to charge in dollars or their black market equivalent - putting many basic goods and services out of reach for a large number of Venezuelans. According to the opposition-led National Assembly, November s rise in prices topped academics traditional benchmark for hyperinflation of more than 50 percent a month - and could end the year at 2,000 percent. The government has not published inflation data for more than a year. I can t think in bolivars anymore, because you have to give a different price every hour, said Yoselin Aguirre, 27, who makes and sells jewelry in the Paraguana peninsula and has recently pegged prices to the dollar. To survive, you have to dollarize. The socialist government of the late president Hugo Chavez in 2003 brought in the strict controls in order to curb capital flight, as the wealthy sought to move money out of Venezuela after a coup attempt and major oil strike the previous year. Oil revenue was initially able to bolster artificial exchange rates, though the black market grew and now is becoming unmanageable for the government. President Nicolas Maduro has maintained his predecessor s policies on capital controls. Yet, the spread between the strongest official rate, of some 10 bolivars per dollar, and the black market rate, of around 110,000 per dollar, is now huge. While sellers see a shift to hard currency as necessary, buyers sometimes blame them for speculating. Rafael Vetencourt, 55, a steel worker in Ciudad Guayana, needed a prostate operation priced at $250. We don t earn in dollars. It s abusive to charge in dollars! said Vetencourt, who had to decimate his savings to pay for the surgery. In just one year, Venezuela s currency has weakened 97.5 per cent against the greenback, meaning $1,000 of local currency purchased then would be worth just $25 now. Maduro blames black market rate-publishing websites such as DolarToday for inflating the numbers, part of an economic war he says is designed by the opposition and Washington to topple him. On Venezuela s borders with Brazil and Colombia, the prices of imported oil, eggs and wheat flour vary daily in line with the black market price for bolivars. In an upscale Caracas market, cheese-filled arepas, the traditional breakfast made with corn flour, increased 65 percent in price in just two weeks, according to tracking by Reuters reporters. In the same period, a kilogram of ham jumped a whopping 171 percent. The runaway prices have dampened Christmas celebrations, which this season were characterized by shortages of pine trees and toys, as well as meat, chicken and cornmeal for the preparation of typical dishes. In one grim festive joke, a Christmas tree in Maracaibo, the country s oil capital and second city, was decorated with virtually worthless low-denomination bolivar bills. Most Venezuelans, earning just $5 a month at the black market rate, are nowhere near being able to save hard currency. How do I do it? I earn in bolivars and have no way to buy foreign currency, said Cristina Centeno, a 31-year-old teacher who, like many, was seeking remote work online before Christmas in order to bring in some hard currency. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to restore Sudanese Red Sea port and build naval dock;ISTANBUL/KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Turkey will rebuild a ruined Ottoman port city on Sudan s Red Sea coast and construct a naval dock to maintain civilian and military vessels, Sudan s foreign minister said on Tuesday, as Ankara expands military and economic ties in Africa. The restoration at Suakin was agreed during a visit to the ancient port by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour said. Making the first trip by a Turkish president to Sudan, Erdogan said Turkey had been temporarily granted part of Suakin so it could rebuild the area as a tourist site and a transit point for pilgrims crossing the Red Sea to Mecca. He said the Suakin deal was one of several, worth $650 million in total, agreed with Sudan, which emerged from two decades of U.S. sanctions in October and is seeking to attract international investment. The countries also agreed to build a dock to maintain civilian and military vessels, Ghandour told reporters, adding that they had signed an agreement that could result in any kind of military cooperation . The agreements come three months after Turkey formally opened a $50 million military training base in Somalia as it exerts increasing influence in the region. Suakin was Sudan s major port when it was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, but fell into disuse over the last century after the construction of Port Sudan, 35 miles (60 km) to the north. Speaking on Monday in Khartoum, Erdogan said the refurbished port city would attract Mecca-bound pilgrims who would want to see the island s history, helping Sudan s tourism sector. Imagine, people from Turkey wishing to go on pilgrimage will come and visit the historical areas on Suakin Island, Erdogan said. From there ... they will cross to Jeddah by boat. The other agreements signed during Erdogan s visit include Turkish investment to build Khartoum s planned new airport and private sector investments in cotton production, electricity generation and building grain silos and meat slaughterhouses. Erdogan and Bashir said they aimed for trade between the two countries to reach $10 billion, Turkey s Foreign Economic Relations Board said. In October, the United States lifted a trade embargo and other penalties that had cut Sudan off from much of the global financial system. Sudan s state minister for investment has said he aims to attract investment of $10 billion a year, compared to $1 billion estimated by the United Nations for 2016. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China halts oil product exports to North Korea in November as sanctions bite;BEIJING (Reuters) - China exported no oil products to North Korea in November, Chinese customs data showed, apparently going above and beyond sanctions imposed earlier this year by the United Nations in a bid to limit petroleum shipments to the isolated country. Tensions have flared anew over North Korea s ongoing nuclear and missile programmes, pursued in defiance of years of U.N. resolutions. Last week, the U.N. Security Council imposed new caps on trade with North Korea, including limiting oil product shipments to just 500,000 barrels a year. Beijing also imported no iron ore, coal or lead from North Korea in November, the second full month of the latest trade sanctions imposed by U.N. China, the main source of North Korea s fuel, did not export any gasoline, jet fuel, diesel or fuel oil to its isolated neighbour last month, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Tuesday. November was the second straight month China exported no diesel or gasoline to North Korea. The last time China s jet fuel shipments to Pyongyang were at zero was in February 2015. This is a natural outcome of the tightening of the various sanctions against North Korea, said Cai Jian, an expert on North Korea at Fudan University in Shanghai. The tightening reflects China s stance , he said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she didn t know any details about the oil products export situation. As a principle, China has consistently fully, correctly, conscientiously and strictly enforced relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea. We have already established a set of effective operating mechanisms and methods, she said at a regular briefing on Tuesday, without elaborating. Since June, state-run China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) [CNPET.UL] has suspended sales of gasoline and diesel to North Korea, concerned that it would not get paid for its goods, Reuters previously reported. Beijing s move to turn off the taps completely is rare. In March 2003, China suspended oil supplies to North Korea for three days after Pyongyang fired a missile into waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. It is unknown if China still sells crude oil to Pyongyang. Beijing has not disclosed its crude exports to North Korea for several years. Industry sources say China still supplies about 520,000 tonnes, or 3.8 million barrels, of crude a year to North Korea via an aging pipeline. That is a little more than 10,000 barrels a day, and worth about $200 million a year at current prices. North Korea also sources some of its oil from Russia. Chinese exports of corn to North Korean in November also slumped, down 82 percent from a year earlier to 100 tonnes, the lowest since January. Exports of rice plunged 64 percent to 672 tonnes, the lowest since March. Trade between North Korea and China has slowed through the year, particularly after China banned coal purchases in February. In November, China s trade with North Korea totalled $388 million, one of the lowest monthly volumes this year. China has renewed its call on all countries to make constructive efforts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, urging the use of peaceful means to resolve issues. But tensions flared again after North Korea on Nov. 29 said it had tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Meanwhile Chinese exports of liquefied petroleum gas to North Korea, used for cooking, rose 58 percent in November from a year earlier to 99 tonnes. Exports of ethanol, which can be turned into a biofuel, gained 82 percent to 3,428 cubic metres. To view a graphic on China's trade with North Korea click on this link tmsnrt.rs/2BDYD1F ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Serbia extradites Kurdish activist to Turkey despite U.N. warning;BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia has extradited to Turkey a Kurdish political activist who had been seeking asylum, a police official said on Tuesday, defying a recommendation by the United Nations Committee against Torture. Cevdet Ayaz requested asylum in Serbia earlier this year after fleeing Turkey, where he had been sentenced to 15 years in prison over alleged activities against the constitution, the Belgrade-based N1 TV quoted his lawyer Ana Trkulja as saying. It also quoted her as saying that Ayaz had been extradited to Turkey on Monday and that his brother had been asked to contact a police station in Istanbul where he was being held. The U.N. Committee against Torture (UNCAT) issued a recommendation on Dec. 18 urging Belgrade to refrain from extraditing Ayaz. The Serbian police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Serbian courts had ruled that all preconditions for the extradition had been met and that Justice Minister Nela Kuburovic had acted accordingly. The motion by the U.N. came after that (decision) ... The police only performed the extradition procedure, the official said. Officials at Serbia s Justice Ministry, which approved Ayaz s extradition, were not immediately available for comment on the case. On Monday UNCAT chairman Jens Modvig warned Serbia, a candidate for European Union membership, to adhere to its international obligations. Serbia is in the process of extraditing Mr. Ayaz to Turkey ... Serbia, please be aware of your UNCAT obligations, Modvig wrote on his Twitter account. Rights groups accuse Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan of using a state of emergency declared after the 2016 coup attempt to quash decades-long Kurdish dissent and political opposition. Turkey, which is also a candidate for EU membership, denies using torture. Serbia, the legal successor to the now-defunct Yugoslavia, has ratified the U.N. convention against torture, which came into force in 1987. Serbia s President Aleksandar Vucic has sought to boost trade ties with Turkey, and Erdogan visited Belgrade in October. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tunisia working with UAE on terrorist threat from female jihadist returnees;TUNIS (Reuters) - The UAE, which angered Tunisia by banning Tunisian women from its passenger flights, has intelligence that female jihadists returning from Iraq or Syria might try to use Tunisian passports to stage terrorist attacks, a Tunisian government official said. Tunisia had demanded the United Arab Emirates apologize for the travel ban - saying that the UAE had provided no explanation - and on Sunday it suspended the Dubai-based airline Emirates from operating at Tunis airport. Since then, Saida Garrach, an advisor at the Tunisian presidency, told local radio Shems FM that the UAE had serious information over the possibility of terrorist acts as part of returning fighters leaving Iraq and Syria, and that the two countries were now working together to address the threat. There are terrorist plots in several countries, Garrach said in an interview conducted on Monday and posted on the station s website. What concerns the United Arab Emirates is the possibility of terrorist acts committed by Tunisian women or by Tunisian passport holders, she said. Garrach criticized the way the threat had been communicated to Tunisia. We are fighting terrorism together with the United Arab Emirates and we are coordinating to solve this problem. But we cannot accept the way Tunisian women are treated and don t accept what has happened to Tunisian women at airports. Tunisia is among the countries with the highest per capita number of militant Islamists, a problem linked to widespread radicalisation among disillusioned youths and a loosening of security controls after Tunisia s 2011 uprising. The military defeat of the Islamic State group in most of Syria and Iraq this year has prompted many foreign militants and their families to go home. Islamic State has also lost its main stronghold in Tunisia s neighbor Libya. More than 3,000 Tunisians are known to have traveled abroad to wage jihad, according to the interior ministry. A year ago the interior minister said 800 had come back to Tunisia, where they have been jailed, monitored or put under house arrest. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexican police arrest suspect in crime journalist's murder;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A man alleged to be behind the murder this year of a crime reporter in northern Mexico has been arrested by federal police, Chihuahua state Governor Javier Corral said in a statement on Monday. The suspect, identified as Juan Carlos Moreno Ochoa, alias El Larry , was detained in the neighboring border state of Sonora on Monday and was allegedly the intellectual author of the murder of journalist Miroslava Breach, the statement said. Breach was shot several times as she drove out of her garage on March 23. One of her children was with her in the car, but was not hurt. A man alleged to be the gunman in Breach s murder, Ramon Andres Zavala, was assassinated last week in Sonora, Corral s statement said. Moreno Ochoa was scheduled to be brought before a judge later on Monday to begin proceedings against him, the statement said. Reuters was unable to locate Moreno Ochoa s lawyer. At least 16 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the last three years, and 43 since 1992, making Mexico one of the world s most dangerous countries for reporters, according to the Committee to Project Journalists. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Kuczynski urges people to accept Fujimori pardon and 'turn the page';LIMA (Reuters) - Peru s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski defended his pardon for Alberto Fujimori on Monday as justified clemency for an ailing man whose authoritarian government in the 1990s helped the country progress, after Peruvians protested for a second day. Addressing Peruvians for the first time since pardoning Fujimori on Christmas Eve, Kuczynski appealed to Peruvians protesting his decision to turn the page and accept it. The pardon has pitched Kuczynski s center-right government into a fresh political crisis less than a week after Congress nearly removed him from office in the wake of a graft scandal. Earlier on Monday, police fired tear gas to disperse crowds in downtown Lima in a second day of unrest, while a third lawmaker announced he was abandoning Kuczynski s political party. Fujimori, who like Kuczynski is 79, is a deeply divisive figure in Peru. While many consider him a corrupt dictator, others credit him with ending a severe economic crisis and quashing a leftist rebellion during his decade in power. The pardon cleared Fujimori of convictions for graft and human rights crimes, 12 years into a 25-year prison sentence. Kuczynski, a former Wall Street banker, reiterated that the pardon was a response to fears that Fujimori might die in prison. But - for the first time since running for office a year ago - he also defended Fujimori s decade in power. It s clear his government, which inherited a country submerged in a violent and chaotic crisis at the start of the 1990s, incurred in significant legal transgressions regarding democracy and human rights. But I also think his government contributed to national progress, Kuczynski said in a televised address. The remarks placed Kuczynski more firmly on Fujimori s side of Peru s biggest political faultline, and triggered a fresh wave of criticism of Kuczynski from Fujimori s foes. You ve got to be pretty stingy, President Kuczynski, to not say a word of solidarity for the victims and their loved ones, Gisela Ortiz, a Peruvian human rights activist, said on Twitter after his speech. Just a week ago, Kuczynski fanned fears of a new rise of Fujimori s rightwing movement, denouncing its bid to remove him from office as a legislative coup attempt that threatened Peru s democracy. Many of Fujimori s detractors, who helped Kuczynski win last year s runoff election, joined Kuczynski in calling for lawmakers to defeat the presidential vacancy motion. But it was a rebel faction among Fujimori s supporters in Congress which unexpectedly saved Kuczynski from the vote, fueling speculation that it was part of a deal to trade votes for a pardon for Fujimori. The pardon s for President Kuczynski, it s not for Fujimori, leftist lawmaker Marisa Glave said on local TV channel Canal N. The lawyer who defended Kuczynski before Congress last week, Alberto Borea, said he was opposed to the pardon and did not know it was in the works. Chanting traitor and the pardon has got to go, many Peruvians marching on Monday called for Kucyznski to resign and new elections to be held. So far, three ruling party lawmakers have announced their resignations from Kuczynski s party, which controls about a fifth of congressional seats. The deputy human rights minister has also resigned, a government source said. Fujimori remained at a hospital in Lima, where he was taken from prison late on Sunday to treat a drop in his blood pressure and an abnormal heart beat, according to his doctor. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan considers refitting helicopter carrier for stealth fighters: government sources;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is considering refitting the Izumo helicopter carrier so that it can land U.S. Marines F-35B stealth fighters, government sources said on Tuesday, as Tokyo faces China s maritime expansion and North Korea s missile and nuclear development. Japan has not had fully fledged aircraft carriers since its World War Two defeat in 1945. Any refit of the Izumo would be aimed at preparing for a scenario in which runways in Japan had been destroyed by missile attacks, and at bolstering defense around Japan s southwestern islands, where China s maritime activity has increased. Three government sources close to the matter said the Japanese government was keeping in sight the possible future procurement of F-35B fighter jets, which can take off and land vertically, as it looks into the remodeling of the Izumo. The 248-metre (814-feet) Izumo, Japan s largest warship equipped with a flat flight deck, was designed with an eye to hosting F-35B fighters. Its elevator connecting the deck with the hangar can carry the aircraft, the sources said. Possible refitting measures included adding a curved ramp at the end of the flight deck, improving the deck s heat resistance against jet burners, and reinforcing the ship s air traffic control capability, they said. However, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said the government was not taking any concrete steps towards refitting the Izumo. Regarding our defense posture, we are constantly conducting various examinations. But no concrete examination is under way on the introduction of F-35B or remodeling of Izumo-class destroyers, Onodera told reporters on Tuesday. The Izumo has a sister ship called the Kaga. Japan has frequently conducted joint drills with U.S. aircraft carriers in recent months to boost deterrence against North Korea. One of the three government sources called such exercises a great opportunity to see with our own eyes how the U.S. military operates their aircraft carriers as Japan looks into the possible conversion of the Izumo into an aircraft carrier. Regional tension has soared since North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test in September. Pyongyang said a month later it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach all of the U.S. mainland. Japan is also wary of China s long-range missiles, and would like to secure measures to launch fighters from aircraft carriers in case runways operated by U.S. forces in Japan or by Japan s Air Self-Defence Force were destroyed by missiles. Article 9 of Japan s pacifist constitution, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. However, Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense. Owning an aircraft carrier could raise a question of constitutionality, the sources said, so the government is set to address the issue in its new National Defence Programme Guidelines to be compiled by the end of 2018. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China, Pakistan to look at including Afghanistan in $57 billion economic corridor;BEIJING (Reuters) - China and Pakistan will look at extending their $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday, part of China s ambitious Belt and Road plan linking China with Asia, Europe and beyond. China has tried to position itself as a helpful party to promote talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan, both uneasy neighbors ever since Pakistan s independence in 1947. Their ties have been poisoned in recent years by Afghan accusations that Pakistan is supporting Taliban insurgents fighting the U.S.-backed Kabul in order to limit the influence of its old rival, India, in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies that and says it wants to see a peaceful, stable Afghanistan. Speaking after the first trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Wang said China hoped the economic corridor could benefit the whole region and act as an impetus for development. Afghanistan has urgent need to develop and improve people s lives and hopes it can join inter-connectivity initiatives, Wang told reporters, as he announced that Pakistan and Afghanistan had agreed to mend their strained relations. So China and Pakistan are willing to look at with Afghanistan, on the basis of win-win, mutually beneficial principles, using an appropriate means to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to Afghanistan, he added. How that could happen needs the three countries to reach a gradual consensus, tackling easier, smaller projects first, Wang said, without giving details. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said his country and China were iron brothers , but did not directly mention the prospect of Afghanistan joining the corridor. The successful implementation of CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) projects will serve as a model for enhancing connectivity and cooperation through similar projects with neighboring countries, including Afghanistan, Iran and with central and west Asia, he said. India has looked askance at the project as parts of it run through Pakistan-administered Kashmir that India considers its own territory, though Wang said the plan had nothing to do with territorial disputes. China has sought to bring Kabul and Islamabad together partly due to Chinese fears about the spread of Islamist militancy from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the unrest-prone far western Chinese region of Xinjiang. As such, China has pushed for Pakistan and Afghanistan to improve their own ties so they can better tackle the violence in their respective countries, and has also tried to broker peace talks with Afghan Taliban militants, to limited effect. A tentative talks process collapsed in 2015. Wang said China fully supported peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban and would continue to provide necessary facilitation . The Belt and Road infrastructure drive aims to build a modern-day Silk Road connecting China to economies in Southeast and Central Asia by land and the Middle East and Europe by sea. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Building owner, manager arrested in South Korean fire that killed 29;SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean police have arrested the owner and the manager of a building where 29 people died in a fire last week, accusing the pair of multiple safety lapses, including blocked exits and malfunctioning sprinkler systems. On Thursday, a fire ripped through an eight-story high-rise in the small city of Jecheon. At least 20 of the victims were women who were overcome by toxic fumes in a second-floor sauna. Jecheon police have only identified the owner by his last name of Lee, and the manager by his last name of Kim. Both men are in custody in Jecheon after being arrested on Sunday, police announced on Tuesday. Lee faces two charges of violating fire safety regulations and committing involuntary homicide by professional negligence, while Kim also faces the involuntary homicide charge. If convicted of involuntary homicide, Lee and Kim could face up to five years in prison or 20 million won ($16,000) in fines. The sprinkler system on the building s first floor did not work properly when the fire erupted, a police detective, who asked not to be named as he was not authorized to speak on an ongoing investigation, told Reuters. If the sprinkler system worked, the fire probably would not have spread as fast as it did. Police said on Tuesday that Lee has retained a lawyer but declined to name the lawyer or firm. Police said Kim has not yet hired a lawyer. Photos released by the Yonhap news agency showed a smoke-stained stairwell and a fire exit filled with shelves and supplies on the second floor, where most of the deaths occurred. The emergency exit on the building s second floor was blocked by iron shelves and other miscellaneous items, the detective confirmed. Officials are still investigating the cause of the conflagration. According to police, both Kim and Lee had denied reports they were trying to remove ice on the ceiling of the first floor, where the fire appeared to have originated, but later changed their statements after police confronted them with evidence. The Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday that Lee had at one point told police he did not alert the women in the sauna because they were undressed, however, the police detective told Reuters he could not confirm that as investigations were ongoing. Anger mounted over the weekend at reports of shoddy construction, broken doors, blocked roads and other problems that may have contributed to the deaths. A number of cars parked along the narrow roads around the building impeded the ability of firefighters to reach the fire, an official with the Jecheon fire department told Reuters, but noted that none of the parked vehicles appeared to have violated parking rules. Although vehicles can park there legally, it was quite difficult for fire trucks to go through to get to the scene, because the road was too narrow, said the fire official, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak publicly. Visiting the scene on Friday, President Moon Jae-in promised a full investigation. The government as a whole will thoroughly probe this accident s cause and process of response, and although after the fact, the investigation and measures will be such that, at least, there will not be lingering deep sorrow, he said. On Monday, a separate fire at a construction site at an apartment complex south of Seoul killed one person and injured 14 others, according to Yonhap. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HILLARY’S UNUSED VICTORY PARTY Confetti Turned Into Aspen “Art”…Proceeds Go To Planned Parenthood [Video];While leading Democrats wish Hillary would just go away, some of her supporters are still wallowing in her 2016 election loss:Longtime Hillary Clinton supporter Bunny Burson is transforming the unused election night confetti from Clinton s humiliating defeat to Donald Trump last November into something special .HILLARY ISN T THE ONLY ONE THAT S DELUSIONAL ABOUT HER LOSS AND STILL I RISE ???The Colorado woman and her husband Charles attended Clinton s party in New York on election night to witness the first female candidate for a major political party shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling, Burson told The Aspen Times.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;REP SHEILA JACKSON LEE Suggests First Class Customer Is A Racist For Complaining About Being Bumped To Back Of Plane By United Airlines To Give Lee Her Seat…Customer Claims Apology Never Happened: “United has NOT apologized to me”;"Jean-Marie Simon was a passenger on a flight from Houston to Washington D.C. and has accused United Airlines of giving her first-class seat to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. D-Houston. The flight attendant threatened to remove her from the plane for complaining and snapping a photo of the Houston congresswoman:Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in seat 1A the one I paid for dearly, and the one United gave to her without my consent or knowledge! Fellow congressman on same flight said she does it repeatedly. @united pic.twitter.com/Q2c6u6B0Yp Jean-Marie Simon (@JeanMarieSimon1) December 23, 2017A mechanical problem with the plane delayed take-off and after about 50 minutes, she said, passengers were invited to consult with a gate agent about alternative flights.Simon said she went to the front and snapped a photo of Jackson Lee and told a flight attendant that she knew why she d been bumped.In her statement, Jackson Lee said she overheard Simon speaking with an African-American flight attendant and saw her snap the photo.JACKSON LEE PULLS THE RACE CARD: Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice, Jackson Lee said in the statement. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry. Simon said Jackson Lee s statement accused her of racism, adding: I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else, she said. There is no way you can see who is in a seat from inside the terminal. PASSENGER THREATENED?About five minutes after Simon took the photo on the plane, Simon said, another flight attendant sat next her and asked if she was going to be a problem. Simon said she replied that she just wanted to go home.IS THE $500 VOUCHER EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING BY THE AIRLINE? WHAT HAPPENED WHEN SIMON ARRIVED AT THE GATE: It was just so completely humiliating, said Jean-Marie Simon, a 63-year-old attorney and private school teacher who used 140,000 miles on Dec. 3 to purchase the first-class tickets to take her from Washington D.C. to Guatemala and back home.When Simon asked for the same free meal/beverage privileges that she would have received in first class in addition to her lousy $500 voucher, she claims the gate agent mocked her, saying: And I want a Mercedes Benz, but I m not going to get it. Gate agent wanted originally to give me $300. I've seen people get twice that for voluntarily giving up seat on overbooked flights. When I asked for free meal/bev., gate agent said, ""And I want a Mercedes Benz, but I'm not going to get it."" https://t.co/cYPg5m9WBT Jean-Marie Simon (@JeanMarieSimon1) December 24, 2017When it came time to board the last leg of her flight home from George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Dec. 18, after a roughly hour-long weather delay, Simon said the gate attendant scanned her paper ticket and told her it was not in the system.Did you cancel your flight?, the attendant asked. No, she said she replied. I just want to go home. Her seat, 1A, was taken, she was told. Simon was given a $500 voucher and reseated in row 11, Economy Plus.Simon later learned that Jackson Lee was in her pre-purchased seat and has alleged that the congresswoman received preferential treatment, which United denies.This law professor suggests that the House Ethics Committee should investigate if Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee pressured the airlines to get her first class seat.The questions for House Ethics Committee should be (1) what pressure might have brought by @JacksonLeeTX18 to get 1st class seat and (2) what @United did to accommodate her. Better put @United under oath";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MEDIA IGNORES TRUMP’S FIRST Record-Breaking Christmas Season…Retail Sales Of $600 BILLION: “This is literally the best season since before the recession”;The Stock Market is setting record after record and unemployment is at a 17 year low. So many things accomplished by the Trump Administration, perhaps more than any other President in first year. Sadly, will never be reported correctly by the Fake News Media! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017CBS News reported on the retailer s record-breaking holiday season without ever mentioning President Trump:Total retail sales this holiday season added up to a record $598 billion dollars up $33 billion from last year.Not surprisingly, the AP also failed to mention President Trump: Experts have issued rosy forecasts for the season. Shoppers seemed to be in the mood with unemployment at a 17-year low and consumer sentiment at its highest level since 2000. Shoppers have been spending at a pace not seen since the Great Recession, says Craig Johnson, president of retail consulting group Customer Growth Partners. The Wall Street Journal reported sales were up for retailers like Macy s and Wal-Mart. The Wall Street Journal even mentioned that spending was up in all income categories, as shoppers were encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, but failed to attribute any of the retailer s success to President mention Trump:Retailers are enjoying some extra Christmas cheer.Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year, according to the Mastercard Inc. unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%. Overall, this year was a big win for retail, Ms. Quinlan said.That newfound buoyancy is a relief to retailers from department-store giants like Macy s Inc. to mall favorites like Gap Inc. that struggled through a difficult year of store closures, declining foot traffic and bankruptcies by chains including the Sports Authority, Toys R Us and Payless Shoes.Investors, who have abandoned many retail stocks even as the broader stock market surged, have started to return. Shares of Macy s and Gap, for example, have jumped 24% and 18%, respectively, in the past month, compared with a 3% gain in the S&P 500. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has rallied 40% on the year and, like online nemesis Amazon.com Inc., is trading near all-time highs. Unlike in past years, when spending was driven by high-income shoppers, this holiday season a broader swath of the population opened their wallets, encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, analysts and economists said. Fewer people are living paycheck to paycheck, said Chris Christopher, executive director of economic-research firm IHS Markit. There is a lot more spending from the lower- and middle-income groups, while the upper-income groups are splurging. Fox Business News reported the amazing Christmas season sales, but neglected to mention President Trump s positive effect on the economy:Retailers are finally enjoying some Christmas cheer.Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year, according to the Mastercard Inc. unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%. It started with a bang in the week leading up to Black Friday, said Sarah Quinlan, a senior vice president of marketing insights at Mastercard. She added that retailers benefited this year from Christmas Day falling on a Monday, giving shoppers a full weekend to scoop up last-minute purchases. Dec. 23 ranked next to Black Friday in terms of spending, according to Mastercard.Via: Gateway Pundit;politics;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRICELESS! WATCH MSNBC HOST’S Shocked Response When GOP Lawmaker Calls For “Purge” of “Deep State” FBI and DOJ;THIS IS PRICELESS! The video below shows just how out of control the left is when it comes to the corruption within the FBI and DOJ.When a Republican lawmaker called for a purge of what he said are deep state elements within the FBI and Justice Department, the MSNBC host Hallie Jackson was clearly agitated and shocked: I m very concerned that the DOJ and the FBI, whether you call it deep state or what, are off the rails, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney stated then cited reasons behind his concern. The anti-Trump bias and the demotion of Bruce Ohr were just two of the examples Rooney gave.Jackson shot back, Congressman, you just called the FBI and the DOJ off the rails. Something that you re okay with talking about here? How does that not sort of undermine the work that the agencies are doing? I don t want to discredit them. I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it, said Rooney. And say look, we ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state. Jackson responded: Language like that, Congressman, purge? Purge the Department of Justice? Rooney responded, Well, I think that Mr. Strzok could be purged, sure. Ms. Jackson might want to read up on the corruption that s been uncovered so far with the FBI and DOJ.;politics;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SHAME! SENATE QUIETLY RELEASES New Report Revealing Tax Dollars Spent Settling Harassment Claims;The Senate waited until Christmas to quietly release a report on how much was dolled out to settle workplace harassment claims. Remember that you never approved this and they used YOUR money to make the payments to accusers. The amount is $1.5 million. This needs to end. The Senators should pay for this on their own. It s just too easy to settle using someone else s money YOUR money!Via Daily Caller: As the Christmas holiday weekend set in, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee released a report revealing the Senate has spent $1.5 million on workplace harassment settlements since 1998.The data, provided by the Office of Compliance, a little known administrative body that has quietly settled dozens of complaints against congressional offices, provides little by way of details, beyond an itemized list of violations and the corresponding settlement.GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who chairs the Rules Committee, said further particulars cannot be made public, in order to respect the confidentiality afforded to victims.Because we paid for these settlements, should we not have a right to know? What do you think?;politics;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FLASHBACK: CNN HOST Concerned Working Americans “Are Going To Vote For Donald Trump Again” After Getting Bonuses and Pay Raises;"CNN s Allyson Camerota expressed her concern about how the tax breaks for Americans will harm the Democrats chances of winning in the mid-term elections with Michigan s Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Dingell.Camerota appeared somewhat panicked, as she started out her segment whining to Dingell about bonuses and pay raises that Americans will receive as a result of Trump s GOP tax bill: Just, ever since the tax reform was announced, or the tax overhaul, or whatever you want to call it, there have been this whole slew of companies that have come forward and saying, Guess what? We re going to give out bonuses, now, to our employees. I mean, I have just a partial list in front of me, and there s nine companies on here from AT&T, to Boeing, to Comcast, Bank of America, Sinclair, Wells Fargo, PNC. There s all sorts of companies that say they re going to give something to a thousand dollars worth of bonuses to their hundreds of thousands of employees. Fifth Bank Corp is gonna boost the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Obviously, they could have done this before the tax overhaul was announced. They were sitting on profits. But they didn t, they did it when the tax overhaul was announced. And I m wondering if you, as a Democrat are you worried about the wind in their sails? People vote with their pocketbooks. I don t have to tell you this. So if you get a thousand dollar bonus, you re voting for Donald Trump again. Although Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) voted against the tax cut bill, she smartly responded to Camerota s question by saying that she s never going to complain that any working man or woman will get an extra boost in their, uh, income. Dingell then told Camerota that at some point a lot of people are still going to see a tax increase at some point. Camerota interrupted her to say, Years from now Years from now! Well after the mid-terms. So couldn t this carry Republicans through the mid-terms? RT @RealSaavedra: CNN ""journalist"" Allisyn Camerota frets over how many businesses are giving back to their employees as a result of the tax cuts and worries it may help GOP. #TheFive #Tucker #SpecialReport pic.twitter.com/xUHXHHJ8wk Tosca Austen (@ToscaAusten) December 26, 2017Businesses and major corporations tweeted about bonuses and pay raises they would be giving their employees as a direct result of Trump s GOP tax reform bill that was passed without a single Democrat vote:Here is AT&T s full statement: Boening announced on Twitter that a $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future:#Boeing announces $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future. pic.twitter.com/ZNawbAW7AY The Boeing Company (@Boeing) December 20, 2017";politics;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Liberians vote in historic, delayed election;MONROVIA (Reuters) - Liberians went to the polls on Tuesday for a presidential election they hope will mark their first democratic transfer of power in more than seven decades, despite allegations of fraud. Former world footballer of the year George Weah is squaring up against vice president Joseph Boakai, both of them promising to tackle poverty and corruption in a country where most citizens have no reliable electricity or clean drinking water. They are bidding to succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in a run-off vote delayed for more than a month after Boakai and another candidate alleged widespread fraud in October s first-round vote, a challenge that the Supreme Court rejected this month. There were no reports of violence as voting proceeded under sunny skies in the capital Monrovia. Election agents told Reuters first indications pointed to a lower turnout than in the first round. It is great day for Liberia - a test day for democracy, said Boakai after casting his vote in Paynesville. We will accept the results provided they meet all the standards. Officials said results were expected in the next few days, declining to give a specific date. Johnson Sirleaf s 12-year rule cemented peace in the West African country after civil war ended in 2003, and brought in much needed aid. But critics, including much of the country s youth, say her administration was marred by corruption and that she did little to raise most Liberians out of dire poverty. Liberia was also racked by the Ebola crisis, which killed thousands between 2014 and 2016, while a drop in iron ore prices since 2014 has dented export revenues. Weah, world footballer of the year in 1995, won with 38 percent in the first round versus Boakai s 29 percent. I voted George Weah because I believe that he will do better for me and my country. I want change, said Miama Kamara, a 32-year-old businesswoman, after casting her ballot in the capital. Observers from the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute said polling stations were better organised than in the first round. The National Elections Commission said there were isolated incidents of voting irregularities, including one woman caught trying to vote twice, but no sign of widespread graft. So far the election process has been smooth and there are marked improvements on the Oct. 10 poll, NEC said. Boakai has found it harder to convince voters that he will bring change, given that he worked alongside Johnson Sirleaf for 12 years. Weah, by contrast, has won the hearts of mostly young Liberians through his star performances for Europe s biggest football teams in the 1990s. His arrival at a polling station in Paynesville was met with cheers by a crowd of supporters. My focus now is to win, he told reporters. From there, I am going to get on the drawing board with my team and then we ll put a plan together to move our country forward. Some however are wary of Weah s lack of political experience, education and concrete policy. Boakai understands diplomacy, said McArthur Nuah Kermah, a school registrar in Paynesville. Weah is not experienced and doesn t know the workings of government. Turnout appeared low on the day after the Christmas holiday, in contrast to the high turnout for the first round, although official figures are yet to be released. NEC did its best to rally young voters and conjure a sense of occasion in a morning Twitter post. First-time voters MUST vote on December 26 Run-Off elections, its tweet said. This is the first big process you are a part of ... you must complete it in order to be a part of tomorrow s glorious and democratic Liberia! ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY FINAL “Sunday Night Football” Game Was Canceled… Is Low Attendance The Reason?;The NFL announced Tuesday that the final Sunday Night Football game of the season has been canceled Was it due to low attendance in previous weeks? Well, it s part of the reason. Low attendance has been plaguing the league since the kneeling controversy took hold.Recently, a liberal news source tried to downplay the boycott from NFL fans by citing injuries from key star athletes in the NFL as the reason for low interest in games. We think the kneeling controversy has more to do with the lack of interest in games. It s being reported that the attendance is down 9% from last year:We ve seen stadiums with hundreds of empty seats along with low viewership.There are a few other reasons why the game was canceled but low attendance was certainly part of it:Daily Caller reports:The league had yet to announce who would play during the primetime game next Sunday, but with the chance that none of the matchups would have playoff implications for one or both of the teams, they opted not to schedule the game.NEW YEAR S EVE:The other problem the league faced was broadcasting a game on New Year s Eve, which would invite lower number of viewers traditionally on that night. We felt that both from a competitive standpoint and from a fan perspective, the most fair thing to do is to schedule all Week 17 games in either the 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. windows, NFL broadcast chief Howard Katz said in a statement.The last time a Sunday Night Football game took place on the final night of the year was in 2006 when the Chicago Bears hosted the Green Bay Packers. That game was Hall of Fame member Brett Favre s final game with the Packers. Despite that fact, the game only drew 13.4 million viewers, which for that season was a quarter of the typical audience for SNF. In a season plagued with lower ratings due to the national anthem protests, the league s decision was not surprising.;politics;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Major governments, including the United States, the European Union and Canada, and top United Nations officials, are among those demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, scene of around 650,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh since August. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Their exact whereabouts are not known. We and their families continue to be denied access to them or to the most basic information about their well-being and whereabouts, Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler said last week in a statement calling for their immediate release. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing, he said. Here are comments on their detention from governments, politicians, human rights groups, journalists and press freedom advocates around the world: - The New York Times said in an editorial on Saturday that releasing the two journalists immediately would help restore at least some lost faith in Aung San Suu Kyi s government. - Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said it was disturbing to hear of the detention of the two Reuters journalists. Press freedom is very important, she said in a tweet on Christmas Day. - Two U.N. human rights experts called on Myanmar last week to release the two reporters, saying it was putting Myanmar on a dangerous path by using the Official Secrets Act to criminalize journalism. Journalism is not a crime. These detentions are another way for the Government to censor information about the military s role in Rakhine State and the humanitarian catastrophe taking place, said Yanghee Lee and David Kaye, who are the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar and on freedom of expression respectively. - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. Last week, the State Department reiterated the U.S. demand for the reporters immediate release. - Senator Ben Cardin, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called the arrests outrageous . It just brings back the memory of the horrible practices with the repressive military rule, he said. - Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Chris Coons, leaders of the U.S. Senate Human Rights Caucus, said they were gravely concerned about the reporters arrests and that press freedom was critical to ensuring accountability for violence against the Rohingya. - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kano said last week, Freedom of the press is extremely important, including in order to protect fundamental human rights. The Japanese government would like to watch (this matter) closely. Tokyo-based Human Rights Now has called on Japan to take a stronger stance. - The European Union has urged Myanmar to release the reporters as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said, Freedom of the press and media is the foundation and a cornerstone of any democracy. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and press freedom in Myanmar. It is clearly a concern in relation to the erosion of press freedom in the country, he said. - Britain, Holland, Canada, Norway and Sweden have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. Australia has expressed concern and Bangladesh has denounced the arrests. - Vijay Nambiar, former special adviser on Myanmar to the U.N. Secretary-General, said in a statement to Reuters that the detentions had caused widespread disappointment within and outside the country that is likely to further damage the international reputation and image of Myanmar. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the reporters. - Human Rights Watch said the detentions appeared to be aimed at stopping independent reporting of the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya. Brad Adams, the group s Asia director, said, Their secret, incommunicado detention lays bare government efforts to silence media reporting on critical issues. - The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) called on Myanmar to immediately disclose the reporters whereabouts. All detainees must be allowed prompt access to a lawyer and to family members, said Frederick Rawski, ICJ s Asia-Pacific Regional Director. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said the arrests were having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance . - Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests and the charges being considered against the journalists were completely spurious . - Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded Myanmar immediately and unconditionally release the Reuters journalists. - Myanmar s Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. It said it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed as police normally do to criminals on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime. - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance said the journalists were only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, local reporters who have demonstrated against prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about press freedom in Myanmar. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club and Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong have issued statements supporting the journalists. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Taiwan says Chinese air force exercised near island 16 times in last year;TAIPEI (Reuters) - China s air force has carried out 16 rounds of exercises close to Taiwan in the last year or so, Taiwan s defense ministry said on Tuesday, warning that China s military threat was growing by the day. China considers self-ruled and democratic Taiwan to be its sacred territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring what it views as a wayward province under Chinese control. China has taken an increasingly hostile stance towards Taiwan since Tsai Ing-wen from the island s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won presidential elections last year. Beijing suspects her of pushing for the island s formal independence, a red line for China. Tsai says she wants peace with China, but that she will defend Taiwan s security and way of life. In a lengthy report, Taiwan s defense ministry listed the number of times China s air force had drilled near the island since the end of October last year and which aircraft were involved, including bombers and advanced fighter jets. Of the 16 drills, 15 of them were around Taiwan, flying through the Bashi Channel which separates Taiwan from the Philippines and near Japan s Miyako island, to the north of Taiwan. The other drill was through the Bashi Channel and out into the Pacific. China has repeatedly said the drills are routine. Taiwan s defense ministry said China was the island s biggest security threat. The Chinese military s strength continues to grow rapidly, it said. There have been massive developments in military reforms, combined operations, weapons development and production, the building of overseas military bases and military exercises, and the military threat towards us grows daily. Chinese missiles can already cover all of Taiwan, and China has been improving its abilities in long-range anti-ship missiles to build an ability to resist foreign forces , the ministry added. Tensions rose earlier this month after a senior Chinese diplomat threatened that China would invade Taiwan if any U.S. warships made port visits there. Taiwan is well equipped with mostly U.S.-made weapons, but has been pressing Washington to sell more advanced equipment. The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, to China s distaste. Proudly democratic Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by autocratic China, and Taiwan s government has accused Beijing of not understanding what democracy is all about when it criticizes Taipei. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China hands down harshest sentence yet in crackdown on activists;BEIJING (Reuters) - China sentenced a prominent rights activist to eight years in jail for subversion on Tuesday, his lawyer said, the harshest sentence passed in a government crackdown on activism that began more than two years ago. In a separate case, a rights lawyer avoided criminal punishment despite being found guilty of inciting subversion, because he admitted his crimes, the Chinese court trying him said. Wu Gan, a blogger better known by his online name Super Vulgar Butcher , plans to appeal against the eight-year sentence handed down by the Tianjin Municipality s No. 2 Intermediate People s Court, his lawyer, Yan Xin, told Reuters. The harshness of the sentence prompted the German embassy in Beijing to issue a statement expressing disappointment. Wu regularly championed sensitive cases of government abuses of power, both online and in street protests. He was detained in May 2015 and charged with subversion. The activist criticized China s political system online and used performance art to create disturbances, as well as insulting people and spreading false information, according to a statement from the court posted on its website. He carried out a string of criminal actions to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system and seriously harmed state security and social stability, the court said. Before his arrest, Wu used his platform to cast doubt on the official version of events in an incident in early May 2015, in which a police officer shot a petitioner in a train station in northern Heilongjiang province. Wu s refusal to bow to pressure or admit guilt likely explains his harsh sentence, said Kit Chan, Hong Kong-based director of China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Wu Gan is being punished for his non-conformity, she said. His sentence is the most severe in what rights groups have called an unprecedented attack on China s rights activists and lawyers, known as the 709 crackdown, which began in full force on July 9, 2015. The hardline approach to rights activism has shown no sign of softening as Chinese President Xi Jinping enters his second five-year term in office. In the other case concluded on Tuesday, rights lawyer Xie Yang received no punishment after being found guilty of inciting subversion and disrupting court order, the Changsha Intermediate People s Court said on social media. The court released a video of the proceedings, in which Xie said he accepted the outcome and would not appeal. He also thanked authorities and said he will be a law-abiding citizen. Xie had worked on numerous cases deemed sensitive by Chinese authorities, such as defending supporters of Hong Kong s pro-democracy protests. In May, he confessed to the charges against him in what rights groups called a scripted sham trial. In January, Xie s wife and lawyer released detailed accounts of torture suffered by Xie at the hands of the authorities, which were widely reported on in the international media. Chinese state media branded those reports fake news and said the accounts were concocted as a means of gaining attention. Xie s lawyer told Reuters he stands by the account. In both cases these have been serious concerns about violations of due process of law, the German embassy in Beijing said in a statement. The decision to hand down both sentences the day after Christmas, when there would likely be less attention from diplomats and international observers, reeks of cynical political calculation , said Patrick Poon, Hong Kong-based researcher for Amnesty International. Asked about the verdicts, China s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing that Amnesty is biased when it comes to China and should not be believed, adding that China abides by the rule of law. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia establishing permanent presence at its Syrian bases: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has started establishing a permanent military presence at naval and air bases in Syria, the defense minister said on Tuesday as parliament ratified a deal with Damascus to cement Russian presence in the country, the RIA news agency reported. The deal, signed on Jan. 18 will expand the Tartus naval facility, Russia s only naval foothold in the Mediterranean, and grant Russian warships access to Syrian waters and ports, Viktor Bondarev, head of the upper house security and defense committee, told RIA. RIA news agency separately quoted Sergei Shoigu as saying: Last week the Commander-in-Chief (President Vladimir Putin) approved the structure and the bases in Tartus and in Hmeimim (air base). We have begun forming a permanent presence there. The Tartus naval facility, in use since the says of the Soviet Union, is too small to play host to larger warships. According to the RIA report, the agreement will allow Russia to keep 11 warships at Tartus, including nuclear vessels. The agreement will last for 49 years and could be prolonged further. The Hmeimim air base, from which Russia has launched numerous air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad during his war with rebels, can now be used by Russia indefinitely, according to the deal. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi Arabia releases corruption detainees, others to stand trial: report;RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has released 23 of the 200-or-so powerful individuals detained since November on corruption charges after they reached deals with the government, Okaz newspaper reported on Tuesday. The report did not name those involved in what appeared to be the first large-scale release since the royals, business people and government officials were detained in a crackdown spearheaded by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The suspects have been held at Riyadh s luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel since early November and told to hand over assets and cash in exchange for their freedom. Okaz said more detainees would be released in the coming days and trial proceedings would begin soon for those who continue to deny the charges against them. Saudi authorities see the settlements not as blackmail but as an obligation to reimburse money taken illegally from the world s top oil producer over several decades. Video posted on social media showed a smiling Saoud al-Daweesh, the former chief executive of Saudi Telecom, telling well-wishers he had been treated decently. Private Affairs (a unit of the Royal Court) brought us a full lamb dish day and night. They treated us well and did a good job, he said. Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Brexit deal could be template for EU ties to Ukraine, Turkey, Germany's Gabriel says;BERLIN (Reuters) - An EU agreement with Britain on relations after Brexit could serve as a model for ties with other countries that want to be as close as possible to the bloc but are not yet ready to join, such as Ukraine and Turkey, Germany s foreign minister said. Britain secured the go-ahead from Brussels to start talks on its future relationship with the EU earlier this month, with London saying it aspires to a closer relationship as a former member than that of any other third country. In an interview with the Funke newspaper group published on Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said such a deal could offer a solution to the puzzle of how the bloc of 27 can manage its ties with two other large non-members. I can t imagine Turkey or Ukraine becoming EU members in the next few years, he said. If we get a smart agreement with Britain regulating relations with Europe after Brexit, that could be a model for other countries - Ukraine and also Turkey. Turkey, a candidate for EU membership for decades, already has a customs union with the EU which allows the trade of most goods without tariffs. One possibility would be to offer Ankara a new, closer form of the customs union , Gabriel said, although he also said such a project would have to wait for changes in Turkey s political environment. Thousands of people, including German citizens, have been detained in Turkey as part of a government crackdown since a failed coup in 2016. An agreement between the EU and Ukraine on a deep and comprehensive free trade area formally came into force in September, aimed at allowing free trade of goods, services and capital, and visa-free travel for people for short stays. Ukraine s desire for closer ties with the EU was one of the driving forces behind a popular revolt that toppled a pro-Russian president in 2014, leading Moscow to seize Ukraine s Crimea peninsula and back pro-Russian separatists in a still-unresolved conflict in the east of the country. Gabriel s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is preparing for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives on governing together for another four years. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Italy rescues more than 250 migrants in Mediterranean;ROME (Reuters) - More than 250 migrants were rescued in the central Mediterranean during the night between Monday and Tuesday, Italy s Coast Guard said. A statement said the migrants, in one large rubber dinghy and two small boats, were rescued in three missions by two ships, one from a non-governmental organization. Migrant arrivals to Italy have fallen by two-thirds year on year since July after officials working for the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli put pressure on people smugglers in the Libyan city of Sabratha to stop boats leaving. Italy is also bolstering the Libyan coast guard s ability to turn back boats. Last week, the United Nations began bringing African refugees to Italy from Libya, evacuating them from detention centers whose conditions have been condemned by rights groups as inhumane. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Egypt hangs 15 militants for killing security forces in Sinai: security sources;CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt hanged 15 men convicted of attacks that killed security forces in the Sinai Peninsula, security sources said on Tuesday, in what appears to be the largest number of executions on a single day since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took office in 2014. The hangings took place at two prisons in the north of the country early on Tuesday, the sources said. A military court issued the sentences and interior ministry officials carried out the executions simultaneously at Borj al-Arab and Wadi al-Natroun prisons, the sources said. Most of the militants were from Sinai region and were accused of joining militant groups and taking part in carrying out, planning and assisting in killing a number of army and police personnel in Sinai, the sources said. Islamic State s Sinai branch has waged attacks against security forces in a years-long insurgency in North Sinai, and in the past year expanded targets to include Christians and other civilians. An attack on a mosque last month which killed more than 300 people, the deadliest in Egypt s modern history, was widely attributed to Islamic State, but the group did not claim responsibility for it. In 2015, six people were executed for killing two soldiers during a raid in Qalyubiah province, north of Cairo. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MEDIA IGNORES TRUMP’S FIRST Record-Breaking Christmas Season…Retail Sales Of $600 BILLION: “This is literally the best season since before the recession”;The Stock Market is setting record after record and unemployment is at a 17 year low. So many things accomplished by the Trump Administration, perhaps more than any other President in first year. Sadly, will never be reported correctly by the Fake News Media! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017CBS News reported on the retailer s record-breaking holiday season without ever mentioning President Trump:Total retail sales this holiday season added up to a record $598 billion dollars up $33 billion from last year.Not surprisingly, the AP also failed to mention President Trump: Experts have issued rosy forecasts for the season. Shoppers seemed to be in the mood with unemployment at a 17-year low and consumer sentiment at its highest level since 2000. Shoppers have been spending at a pace not seen since the Great Recession, says Craig Johnson, president of retail consulting group Customer Growth Partners. The Wall Street Journal reported sales were up for retailers like Macy s and Wal-Mart. The Wall Street Journal even mentioned that spending was up in all income categories, as shoppers were encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, but failed to attribute any of the retailer s success to President mention Trump:Retailers are enjoying some extra Christmas cheer.Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year, according to the Mastercard Inc. unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%. Overall, this year was a big win for retail, Ms. Quinlan said.That newfound buoyancy is a relief to retailers from department-store giants like Macy s Inc. to mall favorites like Gap Inc. that struggled through a difficult year of store closures, declining foot traffic and bankruptcies by chains including the Sports Authority, Toys R Us and Payless Shoes.Investors, who have abandoned many retail stocks even as the broader stock market surged, have started to return. Shares of Macy s and Gap, for example, have jumped 24% and 18%, respectively, in the past month, compared with a 3% gain in the S&P 500. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has rallied 40% on the year and, like online nemesis Amazon.com Inc., is trading near all-time highs. Unlike in past years, when spending was driven by high-income shoppers, this holiday season a broader swath of the population opened their wallets, encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, analysts and economists said. Fewer people are living paycheck to paycheck, said Chris Christopher, executive director of economic-research firm IHS Markit. There is a lot more spending from the lower- and middle-income groups, while the upper-income groups are splurging. Fox Business News reported the amazing Christmas season sales, but neglected to mention President Trump s positive effect on the economy:Retailers are finally enjoying some Christmas cheer.Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year, according to the Mastercard Inc. unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%. It started with a bang in the week leading up to Black Friday, said Sarah Quinlan, a senior vice president of marketing insights at Mastercard. She added that retailers benefited this year from Christmas Day falling on a Monday, giving shoppers a full weekend to scoop up last-minute purchases. Dec. 23 ranked next to Black Friday in terms of spending, according to Mastercard.Via: Gateway Pundit;left-news;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kremlin wants opposition's call for election boycott investigated;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday a call by opposition leader Alexei Navalny to boycott next year s presidential election must be checked to see if it complies with the law, paving the way for possible police action against him and his supporters. Navalny called on Monday for a boycott of the March 18 election after Russia s central election commission ruled he was not eligible to run for president due to a suspended prison sentence hanging over him. The calls for a boycott will require scrupulous study, to see whether or not they comply with the law, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. Declining to comment on the election commission s decision, Peskov shrugged off allegations that the presidential poll would be a farce without Navalny. The fact that one of the would-be candidates is not taking part has no bearing on the election s legitimacy, said Peskov. Navalny, a 41-year-old lawyer, has repeatedly said the suspended sentence handed to him in an embezzlement case was politically motivated. On Monday Navalny said millions of voters would be disenfranchised without his participation in the election, which opinion polls show incumbent Vladimir Putin winning comfortably. The European Union also questioned the Russian election commission s decision to bar Navalny. (It) casts a serious doubt on political pluralism in Russia and the prospect of democratic elections next year, the EU s External Action Service said in a statement on Tuesday. Politically motivated charges should not be used against political participation, it said, urging Moscow to ensure a level playing field for all Russian elections. Putin, 65, has dominated Russia s political landscape for the last 17 years and if, as expected, he wins next year s election would be eligible to serve another six years until 2024, when he turns 72. Allies laud Putin as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. Navalny says Putin s support is exaggerated and artificially maintained by a biased state media and an unfair system which excludes genuine opponents. He says he could defeat him in a fair election, an assertion Putin s supporters have laughed off. Navalny has been jailed three times this year and charged with breaking the law for organizing public meetings and rallies designed to bolster his presidential campaign. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Eastern Libya to stage conference in March to rebuild Benghazi;BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Authorities in eastern Libya have announced a conference in March to drum up support to rebuild the country s second-largest city Benghazi heavily damaged during three years of fighting between military forces and Islamist fighters. The announcement signals a desire to demonstrate a return to normality in the port, where top military commander Khalifa Haftar declared the end of a campaign to oust Islamist fighters in July. Clashes have sporadically continued in some isolated areas, while life has returned in the rest of the city, though some districts were almost completely destroyed by shelling and air strikes. A forum titled International Conference and Exhibition for rebuilding Benghazi city will be held from March 19-21, the organizers said in an invitation posted online, adding that a six-day exhibition would be held the same month. Haftar is aligned with a government and parliament in eastern Libya which was listed as the conference s sponsor. He has rejected a U.N.-backed government based in the capital, Tripoli, as he has gradually strengthened his position on the ground. The United Nations has sought to bridge differences between the two sides, part of a conflict since Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011. Talks were suspended in October. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“ENTITLED” DEM REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE Has Been Taking Advantage Of Her “Public Servant” Status On Airplanes For Decades: “Don’t you know who I am?…Where is my seafood meal?”;Jean-Marie Simon, a passenger on a United Airlines flight from Houston to Washington D.C. has accused United Airlines of giving her first-class seat to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. D-Houston. When the flight attendant saw her taking a picture of the congresswoman who was seated in her front row, first-class seat, she threatened to remove her from the plane.Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in seat 1A the one I paid for dearly, and the one United gave to her without my consent or knowledge! Fellow congressman on same flight said she does it repeatedly. @united pic.twitter.com/Q2c6u6B0Yp Jean-Marie Simon (@JeanMarieSimon1) December 23, 2017A mechanical problem with the plane delayed take-off and after about 50 minutes, she said, passengers were invited to consult with a gate agent about alternative flights.Simon said she went to the front and snapped a photo of Jackson Lee and told a flight attendant that she knew why she d been bumped.In her statement, Jackson Lee said she overheard Simon speaking with an African-American flight attendant and saw her snap the photo.JACKSON LEE PULLS THE RACE CARD: Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice, Jackson Lee said in the statement. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry. Simon said Jackson Lee s statement accused her of racism, adding: I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else, she said. There is no way you can see who is in a seat from inside the terminal. It was just so completely humiliating, said Jean-Marie Simon, a 63-year-old attorney and private school teacher who used 140,000 miles on Dec. 3 to purchase the first-class tickets to take her from Washington D.C. to Guatemala and back home.According to True Pundit The Democrat has developed a reputation for making life hell for any clerk, stewardess, or pilot unwilling or unable to make her three-and-a-half-hour flight anything less than glamorous. She takes advantage of federal travel perks to book multiple flights (only to cancel at the last minute and at no charge). She demands an upgrade to premier seats. She expects, in her words, to be treated like a queen. Sometimes it gets ugly. For instance, when one peasant of a flight attendant failed to serve the food Jackson Lee requested, the congresswoman went wild. Don t you know who I am? she reportedly shrieked. I m Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Where is my seafood meal? I know it was ordered! That inflight incident was in 1998, and Jackson Lee has only increased in seniority since. She sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and she serves as the ranking member of the subcommittee on transportation security, no doubt, giving her, even more, sway over the airlines and even more of a reason to feel entitled.When accused of taking an ill-gotten first-class seat, Jackson Lee was adamant she didn t do anything wrong. It s just the way she expects to be treated. I asked for nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary and received nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary, the congresswoman said in a statement. True Pundit;politics;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Chile beefs up border crossings ahead of Pope's visit in January;SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile said on Tuesday that it would beef up border policing ahead of a wave of visitors likely to arrive in the country from Argentina next month during a visit of Pope Francis. With less than three weeks until the Pope s arrival, Chilean authorities said they were working with the Roman Catholic Church to prepare for an onslaught of tourists at the peak of the austral summer, a traditional time for vacationing in both countries. We are going to see a record number of (foreign) visitors, Reginaldo Flores, the head of the interior ministry s border crossings unit, told reporters. Starting in Chile on Jan. 15, the Argentine pontiff will go to the cities of Santiago, Temuco and Iquique, before heading to Peru, where he will stop in Lima, Puerto Maldonado and Trujillo. A planned mass in the Chilean capital of Santiago is expected to attract more than 500,000 people. Thousands of police officers will be present, officials said. Since his election to lead the world s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in 2013, Francis, the first Latin American pope, has visited Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Cuba and Mexico, but has not made a pastoral trip to Argentina. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;EU questions Russia's 2018 vote after Navalny decision;BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Russian authorities decision to bar opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running in next year s presidential election raises questions about the vote, the European Union s foreign service said in a statement on Tuesday. The central election commission said on Monday Navalny was not eligible to run in the March 18 election due to a suspended prison sentence. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and says the case is politically motivated. The decision casts a serious doubt on political pluralism in Russia and the prospect of democratic elections next year, the EU s External Action Service, or EEAS, said in a statement. Politically-motivated charges should not be used against political participation, the EEAS said. It urged the Russian authorities to ensure that there is a level playing field in the presidential vote in March and in all other votes. The EEAS said that Navalny was denied the right to a fair trial in his prosecution in 2013, according to the European Court of Human Rights, to which Russia is a signatory. Polls show President Vladimir Putin is on course to be comfortably re-elected, meaning he could remain in power until2024. Navalny has been jailed three times this year and charged with breaking the law by organizing public meetings and rallies. The European External Action Service (EEAS), set up in 2009, runs a network of diplomats around the globe, drafts policy papers for EU foreign ministers and is led by the EU s top diplomat Federica Mogherini, who visited Moscow in April this year. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRICELESS! WATCH MSNBC HOST’S Shocked Response When GOP Lawmaker Calls For “Purge” of “Deep State” FBI and DOJ;THIS IS PRICELESS! The video below shows just how out of control the left is when it comes to the corruption within the FBI and DOJ.When a Republican lawmaker called for a purge of what he said are deep state elements within the FBI and Justice Department, the MSNBC host Hallie Jackson was clearly agitated and shocked: I m very concerned that the DOJ and the FBI, whether you call it deep state or what, are off the rails, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney stated then cited reasons behind his concern. The anti-Trump bias and the demotion of Bruce Ohr were just two of the examples Rooney gave.Jackson shot back, Congressman, you just called the FBI and the DOJ off the rails. Something that you re okay with talking about here? How does that not sort of undermine the work that the agencies are doing? I don t want to discredit them. I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it, said Rooney. And say look, we ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state. Jackson responded: Language like that, Congressman, purge? Purge the Department of Justice? Rooney responded, Well, I think that Mr. Strzok could be purged, sure. Ms. Jackson might want to read up on the corruption that s been uncovered so far with the FBI and DOJ.;Government News;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Peru's Fujimori asks for forgiveness, thanks Kuczynski for pardon;LIMA (Reuters) - Former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori sought forgiveness from Peruvians from the bottom of my heart on Tuesday for shortcomings during his rule, and thanked President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for granting him a Christmas pardon. In a video on Facebook, Fujimori, 79, vowed that as a free man, he would support Kuczynski s call for reconciliation, hinting that he would not return to politics. I m aware the results of my government were well received by some, but I acknowledge I also disappointed other compatriots, the ailing Fujimori said, reading from notes while connected to tubes in a hospital bed. And to them, I ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart. The remarks were Fujimori s first explicit apology to the Andean nation that he governed with an iron fist from 1990-2000. They came after two days of unrest as protesters slammed the pardon as an insult to victims and part of a political deal to help Kuczynski survive a scandal. The pardon cleared Fujimori s convictions for graft and human rights crimes during his leadership of the rightwing government. Late on Monday, Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker, appealed to Peruvians opposed to the pardon to turn the page and defended his decision as justified clemency for a sick man whose government helped the country progress. I cannot keep from expressing my profound gratitude for the complex step that the president took, which commits me in this new stage of my life to decidedly support his call for reconciliation, Fujimori said. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY FINAL “Sunday Night Football” Game Was Canceled… Is Low Attendance The Reason?;The NFL announced Tuesday that the final Sunday Night Football game of the season has been canceled Was it due to low attendance in previous weeks? Well, it s part of the reason. Low attendance has been plaguing the league since the kneeling controversy took hold.Recently, a liberal news source tried to downplay the boycott from NFL fans by citing injuries from key star athletes in the NFL as the reason for low interest in games. We think the kneeling controversy has more to do with the lack of interest in games. It s being reported that the attendance is down 9% from last year:We ve seen stadiums with hundreds of empty seats along with low viewership.There are a few other reasons why the game was canceled but low attendance was certainly part of it:Daily Caller reports:The league had yet to announce who would play during the primetime game next Sunday, but with the chance that none of the matchups would have playoff implications for one or both of the teams, they opted not to schedule the game.NEW YEAR S EVE:The other problem the league faced was broadcasting a game on New Year s Eve, which would invite lower number of viewers traditionally on that night. We felt that both from a competitive standpoint and from a fan perspective, the most fair thing to do is to schedule all Week 17 games in either the 1 p.m. or 4:25 p.m. windows, NFL broadcast chief Howard Katz said in a statement.The last time a Sunday Night Football game took place on the final night of the year was in 2006 when the Chicago Bears hosted the Green Bay Packers. That game was Hall of Fame member Brett Favre s final game with the Packers. Despite that fact, the game only drew 13.4 million viewers, which for that season was a quarter of the typical audience for SNF. In a season plagued with lower ratings due to the national anthem protests, the league s decision was not surprising.;left-news;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“ENTITLED” DEM REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE Has Been Taking Advantage Of Her “Public Servant” Status On Airplanes For Decades: “Don’t you know who I am?…Where is my seafood meal?”;Jean-Marie Simon, a passenger on a United Airlines flight from Houston to Washington D.C. has accused United Airlines of giving her first-class seat to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. D-Houston. When the flight attendant saw her taking a picture of the congresswoman who was seated in her front row, first-class seat, she threatened to remove her from the plane.Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in seat 1A the one I paid for dearly, and the one United gave to her without my consent or knowledge! Fellow congressman on same flight said she does it repeatedly. @united pic.twitter.com/Q2c6u6B0Yp Jean-Marie Simon (@JeanMarieSimon1) December 23, 2017A mechanical problem with the plane delayed take-off and after about 50 minutes, she said, passengers were invited to consult with a gate agent about alternative flights.Simon said she went to the front and snapped a photo of Jackson Lee and told a flight attendant that she knew why she d been bumped.In her statement, Jackson Lee said she overheard Simon speaking with an African-American flight attendant and saw her snap the photo.JACKSON LEE PULLS THE RACE CARD: Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice, Jackson Lee said in the statement. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people. But in the spirit of this season and out of the sincerity of my heart, if it is perceived that I had anything to do with this, I am kind enough to simply say sorry. Simon said Jackson Lee s statement accused her of racism, adding: I had no idea who was in my seat when I complained at the gate that my seat had been given to someone else, she said. There is no way you can see who is in a seat from inside the terminal. It was just so completely humiliating, said Jean-Marie Simon, a 63-year-old attorney and private school teacher who used 140,000 miles on Dec. 3 to purchase the first-class tickets to take her from Washington D.C. to Guatemala and back home.According to True Pundit The Democrat has developed a reputation for making life hell for any clerk, stewardess, or pilot unwilling or unable to make her three-and-a-half-hour flight anything less than glamorous. She takes advantage of federal travel perks to book multiple flights (only to cancel at the last minute and at no charge). She demands an upgrade to premier seats. She expects, in her words, to be treated like a queen. Sometimes it gets ugly. For instance, when one peasant of a flight attendant failed to serve the food Jackson Lee requested, the congresswoman went wild. Don t you know who I am? she reportedly shrieked. I m Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Where is my seafood meal? I know it was ordered! That inflight incident was in 1998, and Jackson Lee has only increased in seniority since. She sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and she serves as the ranking member of the subcommittee on transportation security, no doubt, giving her, even more, sway over the airlines and even more of a reason to feel entitled.When accused of taking an ill-gotten first-class seat, Jackson Lee was adamant she didn t do anything wrong. It s just the way she expects to be treated. I asked for nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary and received nothing exceptional or out of the ordinary, the congresswoman said in a statement. True Pundit;left-news;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions North Korean missile experts, Russia offers to mediate;WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States announced sanctions on two of North Korea s most prominent officials behind its ballistic missile program on Tuesday, while Russia reiterated an offer to mediate to ease tension between Washington and Pyongyang. The new U.S. steps were the latest in a campaign aimed at forcing North Korea - which has defied years of multilateral and bilateral sanctions - to abandon a weapons program aimed at developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. Treasury is targeting leaders of North Korea s ballistic missile programs, as part of our maximum pressure campaign to isolate (North Korea) and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The move followed new United Nations sanctions announced last Friday in response to North Korea s Nov. 29 test of an ICBM that Pyongyang said put all of the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Those sanctions sought to further limit North Korea s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. North Korea declared the U.N. steps to be an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade. The standoff between the United States and North Korea has raised fears of a new conflict on the Korean peninsula, which has remained in a technical state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The United States has said that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea. It says it prefers a diplomatic solution, but that North Korea has given no indication it is willing to discuss denuclearization. The U.S. Treasury named the targeted officials as Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol. It said Kim was reportedly a major figure in North Korea s efforts to switch its missile program from liquid to solid fuel, while Ri was reported to be a key official in its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development. The largely symbolic steps block any property or interests the two might have within U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit any dealings by U.S. citizens with them. With their ruling Workers Party, military and scientific credentials, the men are two of three top experts considered indispensable to North Korea s rapidly developing weapons programs. Photographs and television footage show that the men are clearly among North Korean leader Kim Jong Un s favorites. Their behavior with him is sharply at variance with the obsequiousness of other senior aides, most of whom bow and hold their hands over their mouths when speaking to the young leader. Ri is one of the most prominent aides, and likely represents the Workers Party on the missile program, experts say. Born in 1948, Ri was partly educated in Russia and promoted when Kim Jong Un started to rise through the ranks in the late 2000s. Ri has visited China once and Russia twice. He met China s defense minister in 2008 as the air force commander and accompanied Kim Jong Il on a visit to a Russian fighter jet factory in 2011, according to state media. Kim Jong Sik is a prominent rocket scientist who rose after playing a role in North Korea s first successful launch of a rocket in 2012. He started his career as a civilian aeronautics technician, but now wears the uniform of a military general at the Munitions Industry Department, according to experts and the South Korean government. Many other details, including his age, are not known. On Tuesday, the Kremlin, which has long called for the United States and North Korea to negotiate, said it was ready to act as a mediator if the two sides were willing for it to play such a role. Russia s readiness to clear the way for de-escalation is obvious, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Asked to comment on the offer, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Justin Higgins, said the United States has the ability to communicate with North Korea through a variety of diplomatic channels , and added: We want the North Korean regime to understand that there is a different path that it can choose, however it is up to North Korea to change course and return to credible negotiations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who made a similar offer on Monday, told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Tuesday that Washington s aggressive rhetoric and beefing up of its military presence in the region had heightened tension and was unacceptable, his ministry said. Lavrov underscored the need for the fastest move to the negotiating process from the language of sanctions , it said. Another U.S. State Department spokesman, Michael Cavey, said Washington remained open to talks, but the onus was on North Korea to take sincere and meaningful actions toward denuclearization and refrain from further provocations. South Korea s Unification Ministry forecast on Tuesday that North Korea would look to open negotiations with the United States next year while continuing to seek recognition as a de facto nuclear power. The United States has stressed the need for all countries, especially Russia, and China - North Korea s main trading partner - to fully implement sanctions, including by cutting off oil supplies. According to Chinese customs data, China exported no oil products to North Korea in November, apparently going above and beyond U.N. sanctions imposed earlier in the year. China also imported no North Korean iron ore, coal or lead in November, the second full month of those trade sanctions, the data showed. China has not disclosed its crude exports to North Korea for several years, but industry sources say it still supplies about 520,000 tonnes, or 3.8 million barrels, a year to the country via an aging pipeline. North Korea also sources some of its oil from Russia. Trade between North Korea and China has slowed through the year, particularly after China banned coal purchases in February. Chinese exports of corn to North Korea in November also slumped, down 82 percent from a year earlier to 100 tonnes, the lowest since January. Exports of rice plunged 64 percent to 672 tonnes, the lowest since March. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. sanctions North Korean missile experts, Russia offers to mediate;WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States announced sanctions on two of North Korea s most prominent officials behind its ballistic missile program on Tuesday, while Russia reiterated an offer to mediate to ease tension between Washington and Pyongyang. The new U.S. steps were the latest in a campaign aimed at forcing North Korea - which has defied years of multilateral and bilateral sanctions - to abandon a weapons program aimed at developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. Treasury is targeting leaders of North Korea s ballistic missile programs, as part of our maximum pressure campaign to isolate (North Korea) and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The move followed new United Nations sanctions announced last Friday in response to North Korea s Nov. 29 test of an ICBM that Pyongyang said put all of the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. Those sanctions sought to further limit North Korea s access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad. North Korea declared the U.N. steps to be an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade. The standoff between the United States and North Korea has raised fears of a new conflict on the Korean peninsula, which has remained in a technical state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The United States has said that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea. It says it prefers a diplomatic solution, but that North Korea has given no indication it is willing to discuss denuclearization. The U.S. Treasury named the targeted officials as Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol. It said Kim was reportedly a major figure in North Korea s efforts to switch its missile program from liquid to solid fuel, while Ri was reported to be a key official in its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development. The largely symbolic steps block any property or interests the two might have within U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit any dealings by U.S. citizens with them. With their ruling Workers Party, military and scientific credentials, the men are two of three top experts considered indispensable to North Korea s rapidly developing weapons programs. Photographs and television footage show that the men are clearly among North Korean leader Kim Jong Un s favorites. Their behavior with him is sharply at variance with the obsequiousness of other senior aides, most of whom bow and hold their hands over their mouths when speaking to the young leader. Ri is one of the most prominent aides, and likely represents the Workers Party on the missile program, experts say. Born in 1948, Ri was partly educated in Russia and promoted when Kim Jong Un started to rise through the ranks in the late 2000s. Ri has visited China once and Russia twice. He met China s defense minister in 2008 as the air force commander and accompanied Kim Jong Il on a visit to a Russian fighter jet factory in 2011, according to state media. Kim Jong Sik is a prominent rocket scientist who rose after playing a role in North Korea s first successful launch of a rocket in 2012. He started his career as a civilian aeronautics technician, but now wears the uniform of a military general at the Munitions Industry Department, according to experts and the South Korean government. Many other details, including his age, are not known. On Tuesday, the Kremlin, which has long called for the United States and North Korea to negotiate, said it was ready to act as a mediator if the two sides were willing for it to play such a role. Russia s readiness to clear the way for de-escalation is obvious, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Asked to comment on the offer, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Justin Higgins, said the United States has the ability to communicate with North Korea through a variety of diplomatic channels , and added: We want the North Korean regime to understand that there is a different path that it can choose, however it is up to North Korea to change course and return to credible negotiations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who made a similar offer on Monday, told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Tuesday that Washington s aggressive rhetoric and beefing up of its military presence in the region had heightened tension and was unacceptable, his ministry said. Lavrov underscored the need for the fastest move to the negotiating process from the language of sanctions , it said. Another U.S. State Department spokesman, Michael Cavey, said Washington remained open to talks, but the onus was on North Korea to take sincere and meaningful actions toward denuclearization and refrain from further provocations. South Korea s Unification Ministry forecast on Tuesday that North Korea would look to open negotiations with the United States next year while continuing to seek recognition as a de facto nuclear power. The United States has stressed the need for all countries, especially Russia, and China - North Korea s main trading partner - to fully implement sanctions, including by cutting off oil supplies. According to Chinese customs data, China exported no oil products to North Korea in November, apparently going above and beyond U.N. sanctions imposed earlier in the year. China also imported no North Korean iron ore, coal or lead in November, the second full month of those trade sanctions, the data showed. China has not disclosed its crude exports to North Korea for several years, but industry sources say it still supplies about 520,000 tonnes, or 3.8 million barrels, a year to the country via an aging pipeline. North Korea also sources some of its oil from Russia. Trade between North Korea and China has slowed through the year, particularly after China banned coal purchases in February. Chinese exports of corn to North Korea in November also slumped, down 82 percent from a year earlier to 100 tonnes, the lowest since January. Exports of rice plunged 64 percent to 672 tonnes, the lowest since March. ;worldnews;26/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Gunman opens fire in Moscow pastry factory, killing one;MOSCOW (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire in a pastry factory in Moscow, killing a guard early on Wednesday, officials said. The man, identified by prosecutors as the factory s former director Ilya Averyanov, told a radio station over the phone he was holed up inside as special forces circled the building. I shot one guy and unfortunately I think I killed him, the man told Business FM. If I survive, I will fight to the end ... Now I will either shoot myself or hand myself in. The man said he had opened fire in self defence to stop people taking the factory from him. They used fraudulent documents to steal my factory and bankrupt me. I have eight children, he told Business FM. Other media reports, citing Russia s interior ministry, said the man later fled the scene and was on the run. Moscow s public prosecutor s office said bailiffs had arrived at the factory in a southeastern part of the city that morning. The Menshevik factory was being reviewed for bankruptcy by a Moscow court, state news agency RIA reported. Its owner had filed several complaints with the courts, arguing that he was being defrauded, the agency added. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to host Norway's Solberg on Jan. 10, White House says;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will host Norway s Prime Minister Erna Solberg in Washington next month to discuss various security and economic issues, the White House said on Wednesday. The two leaders will meet on Jan. 10 at the White House to talk about a range of topics including NATO and the fight against Islamic State as well as bilateral trade and investment, the White House said in a statement. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says satellite launch failure due to programming error;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday the failed launch of a 2.6 billion-rouble ($44.95 million) satellite last month was due to an embarrassing programming error. Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month it had lost contact with the newly-launched weather satellite - the Meteor-M - after it blasted off from Russia s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East. Eighteen smaller satellites belonging to scientific, research and commercial companies from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Japan, Canada and Germany, were on board the same rocket. Speaking to Rossiya 24 state TV channel, Rogozin said the failure had been caused by human error. The rocket carrying the satellites had been programmed with the wrong coordinates, he said, saying it had been given bearings for take-off from a different cosmodrome - Baikonur - which Moscow leases from Kazakhstan. The rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur, said Rogozin. They didn t get the coordinates right. The Vostochny spaceport, laid out in the thick taiga forest of the Amur Region, is the first civilian rocket launch site in Russia. In April last year, after delays and massive costs overruns, Russia launched its first rocket from Vostochny, a day after a technical glitch forced an embarrassing postponement of the event in the presence of President Vladimir Putin. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya puts 142 migrants on plane back to Guinea;MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) - Libya put 142 illegal migrants on a flight back to Guinea on Wednesday with the help of the U.N. migration agency, officials said, as the North African country steps up deportations to ease severe overcrowding in its detention centers. The number of people stuck in Libyan detention centers has risen dramatically this year after armed groups largely shut down the boat route to Italy from the smuggling hub of Sabratha. The International Organization for Migration flew the Guinean migrants from two western cities to the city of Misrata, from where they boarded a plane for Conakry. The deportations come in the wake of a CNN report on migrants being sold for slave labor that sparked an international outcry. Migrant flows through Libya have surged since 2014. More than 600,000 people have crossed the central Mediterranean to Italy in the past three years, but departures from Libya s coast dropped sharply in July when armed groups in Sabratha began preventing boats from leaving. After clashes in the western city in September, thousands of migrants held near the coast emerged and were transferred to detention centers under the nominal control of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. Amnesty International said this month that up to 20,000 people are being held in detention centers and are subject to torture, forced labor, extortion, and unlawful killings . Other human rights organizations have said similar things in recent months. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson, Lavrov agree to continue North Korea diplomacy: U.S. State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Russia have agreed to continue diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis over North Korea s development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States and emphasized that neither accept Pyongyang as a nuclear power, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone on Tuesday, after Washington and the United Nations both announced sanctions against North Korea in recent days. The two discussed concerns related to the DPRK s destabilizing nuclear program and emphasized that neither the United States nor Russia accepts the DPRK as a nuclear power, Nauert said in a statement, using the acronym for North Korea s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. She said both sides agreed to continue working toward a diplomatic way to achieve a denuclearized Korean peninsula. On Tuesday, Russia reiterated an offer to mediate to ease tensions between Washington and Pyongyang that have raised fears of a new conflict on the peninsula. Moscow said Lavrov told Tillerson Washington s aggressive rhetoric and beefing up of its military presence in the region had heightened tension and was unacceptable. Russia has repeatedly called for talks to resolve the crisis and said Lavrov underscored the need for the fastest move to the negotiating process from the language of sanctions. Tillerson has emphasized diplomacy but the administration of President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned that all options, including military ones, are on the table regarding North Korea. In October, Trump said Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with North Korea and this month the White House followed up an offer by the secretary of state to begin talks with no pre-conditions by saying that no negotiations could be held until North Korea improves its behavior. Washington announced sanctions on two of the most prominent officials behind North Korea s ballistic missile program on Tuesday, its latest steps in a global campaign aimed at forcing North Korea to abandon its weapons programs. On Friday the U.N. Security Council agreed on new sanctions in response to North Korea s Nov. 29 test of a missile that Pyongyang said put all of the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. North Korea declared the U.N. steps to be an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel ambassador asks to meet New Zealand pop star Lorde over canceled show;WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Israel s ambassador to New Zealand on Wednesday appealed to the pop star Lorde to meet him after she canceled a show in Tel Aviv after appeals from activists for her to shun Israel as a protest against its treatment of Palestinians. Itzhak Gerberg, Israel s ambassador to New Zealand, said in a public letter it was regrettable that the concert had been called off and the boycott of his country represented hostility and intolerance . I invite you to meet me in person to discuss Israel, its achievements and its role as the only democracy in the Middle East, Gerberg said on the Embassy of Israel s Facebook page. Lorde s representatives did not immediately respond to request for comment on her response or whether she planned to meet the ambassador. The 21-year-old New Zealand singer had been slated to perform in Tel Aviv in June as part of a global tour to promote her chart-topping second album Melodrama . Campaigners have been urging her to scrap the show, calling in an open letter on Dec. 21 for her to pull out as part of a boycott to oppose Israel s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation, campaigners Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab, wrote on news website The Spinoff. We believe that an economic, intellectual and artistic boycott is an effective way of speaking out, they said. Lorde said on Twitter at the time she was speaking with many people about this and considering all options . Eran Arielli, the promoter of the concert, said on Facebook on Sunday that the show was off. The truth is I was naive to think that an artist of her age would be able to absorb the pressure involved in coming to Israel, he wrote in Hebrew. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched in 2005 as a non-violent campaign to press Israel to heed international law and end its occupation of territory Palestinians seek for a state. Artists who have boycotted Israel include Pink Floyd s Roger Waters and Elvis Costello. Other major stars, such as Elton John, Aerosmith, Guns and Roses, the Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber and Rihanna have performed in recent years in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s right-wing government has long campaigned against the BDS movement, describing it as anti-Semitic and an attempt to erase Israel s legitimacy. (This story has been refiled to show Eran Arielli was sole promoter, paragraph 10.) ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria says U.S. agrees delayed $593 million fighter plane sale;ABUJA (Reuters) - The United States has formally agreed to sell 12 Super Tucano A-29 planes and weapons to Nigeria, the West African country s air force said, confirming the resurrection of a deal frozen by the Obama administration over rights concerns. Former U.S. President Barack Obama delayed the sale in one of his last decisions in office after the Nigerian Air Force bombed a refugee camp in January. But his successor Donald Trump decided to press on with the transaction to support Nigeria s efforts to fight Boko Haram militants and to boost U.S. defense jobs, sources told Reuters in April. The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria presented letters of offer and acceptance to Nigeria s air force earlier on Wednesday, the air force said in a statement. It said the U.S. State Department had approved the sale and final agreements would be signed and necessary payments made before Feb. 20. There was no immediate statement from the U.S. embassy or from authorities in Washington. U.S. government and Nigerian Air Force officials would meet in early January to discuss the early delivery of the aircraft once payment had been made, the Nigerian air force said. The sale of the 12 aircraft, with weapons and services, is worth $593 million, and includes thousands of bombs and rockets. The propeller-driven plane with reconnaissance, surveillance and attack capabilities, is made by Brazil s Embraer. A second production line is in Florida, in a partnership between Embraer and privately held Sierra Nevada Corp of Sparks, Nevada. The Super Tucano costs more than $10 million each and the price can go much higher depending on the configuration. It is powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT 6 engine. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait says GCC to keep operating despite Qatar crisis;DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait s deputy foreign minister said on Wednesday that the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council would continue to operate despite a row among three of its members and Qatar that it has unsuccessfully sought to mediate. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain plus non-GCC member Egypt cut off diplomatic, travel and trade ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of supporting militants and their arch-foe Iran. Doha denies the charges and says their move is aimed at curtailing its sovereignty. Western nations have called for the countries, which are all close U.S. allies, to settle their differences in talks. The heads of state from the three boycotting countries skipped a GCC summit hosted by Kuwait s ruler in December, and the UAE called for the formation of a bilateral committee with Saudi Arabia on economic, political and military issues. But Kuwait appears determined to preserve the loose union set up in 1980 as a bulwark against larger neighbors Iraq and Iran, and said its reconciliation efforts would proceed. Despite the spat which appears to have no end in sight, the GCC s work will not be frozen or disrupted, Khaled Jarallah was quoted by state news agency KUNA as telling reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Kuwait. After the summit in Kuwait, we are not worried about the future of the council, Jarallah added. Mediation efforts have not stopped, and a breakthrough will be achieved one day. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian rebels say discussing evacuation from territory near Israel;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels in a pocket of land near where the Syrian, Lebanese and Israeli borders meet are negotiating a deal with the government to leave for other insurgent-held areas, rebel officials there said. The Syrian army, backed by Russian air power, Shi ite militias supported by Iran and local fighters from the Druze sect have besieged the rebel enclave around Beit Jin for weeks. In recent days it captured various positions, leaving the rebels trapped inside the town itself. There is now negotiation on the departure of fighters and those who wish to leave with them, said Abu Kanaan, an official in a local rebel group. The militias are trying to convince them to evacuate to Idlib... There has been no agreement reached yet, said Ibrahim al-Jebawi, an official with a Free Syrian Army faction familiar with the situation. Syria s army and its allies have increasingly pushed for such evacuation deals for rebel enclaves near big cities or in other strategic locations after long periods of siege and bombardment. The area around Beit Jin is sensitive because of its location next to the Israel-controlled Golan Heights. Israel wants to keep Lebanon s Hezbollah, the most powerful of the Iran-backed militias aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the rebel groups, far away from its border with Syria. It has repeatedly targeted military positions in Syria near the border after stray projectiles crossed into Israeli-controlled areas, and it has struck Hezbollah convoys and weapons caches inside Syria. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian rebels say discussing evacuation from territory near Israel;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels in a pocket of land near where the Syrian, Lebanese and Israeli borders meet are negotiating a deal with the government to leave for other insurgent-held areas, rebel officials there said. The Syrian army, backed by Russian air power, Shi ite militias supported by Iran and local fighters from the Druze sect have besieged the rebel enclave around Beit Jin for weeks. In recent days it captured various positions, leaving the rebels trapped inside the town itself. There is now negotiation on the departure of fighters and those who wish to leave with them, said Abu Kanaan, an official in a local rebel group. The militias are trying to convince them to evacuate to Idlib... There has been no agreement reached yet, said Ibrahim al-Jebawi, an official with a Free Syrian Army faction familiar with the situation. Syria s army and its allies have increasingly pushed for such evacuation deals for rebel enclaves near big cities or in other strategic locations after long periods of siege and bombardment. The area around Beit Jin is sensitive because of its location next to the Israel-controlled Golan Heights. Israel wants to keep Lebanon s Hezbollah, the most powerful of the Iran-backed militias aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the rebel groups, far away from its border with Syria. It has repeatedly targeted military positions in Syria near the border after stray projectiles crossed into Israeli-controlled areas, and it has struck Hezbollah convoys and weapons caches inside Syria. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump to host Norway's Solberg on Jan. 10, White House says;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will host Norway s Prime Minister Erna Solberg in Washington next month to discuss various security and economic issues, the White House said on Wednesday. The two leaders will meet on Jan. 10 at the White House to talk about a range of topics including NATO and the fight against Islamic State as well as bilateral trade and investment, the White House said in a statement. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia says satellite launch failure due to programming error;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday the failed launch of a 2.6 billion-rouble ($44.95 million) satellite last month was due to an embarrassing programming error. Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month it had lost contact with the newly-launched weather satellite - the Meteor-M - after it blasted off from Russia s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East. Eighteen smaller satellites belonging to scientific, research and commercial companies from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Japan, Canada and Germany, were on board the same rocket. Speaking to Rossiya 24 state TV channel, Rogozin said the failure had been caused by human error. The rocket carrying the satellites had been programmed with the wrong coordinates, he said, saying it had been given bearings for take-off from a different cosmodrome - Baikonur - which Moscow leases from Kazakhstan. The rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur, said Rogozin. They didn t get the coordinates right. The Vostochny spaceport, laid out in the thick taiga forest of the Amur Region, is the first civilian rocket launch site in Russia. In April last year, after delays and massive costs overruns, Russia launched its first rocket from Vostochny, a day after a technical glitch forced an embarrassing postponement of the event in the presence of President Vladimir Putin. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Libya puts 142 migrants on plane back to Guinea;MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) - Libya put 142 illegal migrants on a flight back to Guinea on Wednesday with the help of the U.N. migration agency, officials said, as the North African country steps up deportations to ease severe overcrowding in its detention centers. The number of people stuck in Libyan detention centers has risen dramatically this year after armed groups largely shut down the boat route to Italy from the smuggling hub of Sabratha. The International Organization for Migration flew the Guinean migrants from two western cities to the city of Misrata, from where they boarded a plane for Conakry. The deportations come in the wake of a CNN report on migrants being sold for slave labor that sparked an international outcry. Migrant flows through Libya have surged since 2014. More than 600,000 people have crossed the central Mediterranean to Italy in the past three years, but departures from Libya s coast dropped sharply in July when armed groups in Sabratha began preventing boats from leaving. After clashes in the western city in September, thousands of migrants held near the coast emerged and were transferred to detention centers under the nominal control of the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli. Amnesty International said this month that up to 20,000 people are being held in detention centers and are subject to torture, forced labor, extortion, and unlawful killings . Other human rights organizations have said similar things in recent months. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Tillerson, Lavrov agree to continue North Korea diplomacy: U.S. State Department;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Russia have agreed to continue diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis over North Korea s development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States and emphasized that neither accept Pyongyang as a nuclear power, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone on Tuesday, after Washington and the United Nations both announced sanctions against North Korea in recent days. The two discussed concerns related to the DPRK s destabilizing nuclear program and emphasized that neither the United States nor Russia accepts the DPRK as a nuclear power, Nauert said in a statement, using the acronym for North Korea s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. She said both sides agreed to continue working toward a diplomatic way to achieve a denuclearized Korean peninsula. On Tuesday, Russia reiterated an offer to mediate to ease tensions between Washington and Pyongyang that have raised fears of a new conflict on the peninsula. Moscow said Lavrov told Tillerson Washington s aggressive rhetoric and beefing up of its military presence in the region had heightened tension and was unacceptable. Russia has repeatedly called for talks to resolve the crisis and said Lavrov underscored the need for the fastest move to the negotiating process from the language of sanctions. Tillerson has emphasized diplomacy but the administration of President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned that all options, including military ones, are on the table regarding North Korea. In October, Trump said Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with North Korea and this month the White House followed up an offer by the secretary of state to begin talks with no pre-conditions by saying that no negotiations could be held until North Korea improves its behavior. Washington announced sanctions on two of the most prominent officials behind North Korea s ballistic missile program on Tuesday, its latest steps in a global campaign aimed at forcing North Korea to abandon its weapons programs. On Friday the U.N. Security Council agreed on new sanctions in response to North Korea s Nov. 29 test of a missile that Pyongyang said put all of the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. North Korea declared the U.N. steps to be an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Reuters journalists in Myanmar appear in court, remanded for another 14 days;YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters journalists who have been detained in Myanmar for the past two weeks were remanded in custody for a further two weeks on Wednesday as a probe continues into allegations they breached the nation s Official Secrets Act. Judge Ohn Myint granted the 14-day extension in the case of the journalists, Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, at the request of the police, who then took them to Yangon s Insein prison. They were previously being held in a police compound. When they appeared at the Mingaladon court for the proceedings, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were allowed to meet their families and their lawyer for the first time since their arrest. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where - according to United Nations estimates - about 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. They were detained on Dec 12 after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner. The Ministry of Information has said they illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media and faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists said they had not been mistreated in custody. The situation is okay, Wa Lone said after the hearing. We will face it the best we can because we have never done anything wrong, he said. We have never violated the media law nor ethics. We will continue to do our best. A Reuters spokesperson said they should be freed. These two journalists are being held for simply doing their jobs and have done nothing wrong. It is time for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to be released, the spokesperson said. About 100 journalists, lawyers and farmers held a protest in the town of Pyay, 290 km (180 miles) north of Yangon, to demand the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, one of the participants said. Members of the Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists sat draped in chains in a public square in the center of the town and wrote the names of the two arrested reporters on their palms, an often used symbol in Myanmar of solidarity with those in jail. Government officials from some of the world s major nations, including the United States, Britain and Canada, as well as top U.N. officials, have previously called for their release. Dozens of reporters and cameramen were outside the courthouse in a northern district of Yangon for the appearance of the two journalists. They were brought in a white van, rather than a police truck, dressed in casual clothes and were not handcuffed. Their lawyer, Than Zaw Aung, who has been retained by Reuters, also said the two had only been doing their job as journalists. They are being accused under this charge while doing their work as media, he told reporters. Lieutenant Colonel Myint Htwe, a senior staff officer from the Yangon Police Division, said: We took action because they committed the crime. It needs to be solved in court. Only their lawyer and the families of the two journalists, along with police and government lawyers, were allowed into the courtroom. The families were later allowed to travel in the van as the two journalists were taken to prison. I believe that he didn t commit any crime, Pan Ei Mon, Wa Lone s wife, told Reuters. I would like to request the government to consider releasing them. Nyo Nyo Aye, a sister of Kyaw Soe Oo, said her brother told her he had not committed any offense. I believe that he can come home soon, she said. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Nigeria says U.S. agrees delayed $593 million fighter plane sale;ABUJA (Reuters) - The United States has formally agreed to sell 12 Super Tucano A-29 planes and weapons to Nigeria, the West African country s air force said, confirming the resurrection of a deal frozen by the Obama administration over rights concerns. Former U.S. President Barack Obama delayed the sale in one of his last decisions in office after the Nigerian Air Force bombed a refugee camp in January. But his successor Donald Trump decided to press on with the transaction to support Nigeria s efforts to fight Boko Haram militants and to boost U.S. defense jobs, sources told Reuters in April. The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria presented letters of offer and acceptance to Nigeria s air force earlier on Wednesday, the air force said in a statement. It said the U.S. State Department had approved the sale and final agreements would be signed and necessary payments made before Feb. 20. There was no immediate statement from the U.S. embassy or from authorities in Washington. U.S. government and Nigerian Air Force officials would meet in early January to discuss the early delivery of the aircraft once payment had been made, the Nigerian air force said. The sale of the 12 aircraft, with weapons and services, is worth $593 million, and includes thousands of bombs and rockets. The propeller-driven plane with reconnaissance, surveillance and attack capabilities, is made by Brazil s Embraer. A second production line is in Florida, in a partnership between Embraer and privately held Sierra Nevada Corp of Sparks, Nevada. The Super Tucano costs more than $10 million each and the price can go much higher depending on the configuration. It is powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT 6 engine. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HOUSE INTEL Slaps Subpoenas on McCain Institute Associate Involved in “Trump Dirty Dossier” Sources;Please see our previous report below on the McCain Institute associate who has now been subpoenaed by the House Intel Committee. David J. Kramer was in hot water before for the same reason the Intel Committee is now issuing a subpoena:He was previously subpoenaed by the lawyers for a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed. The guy just refuses to give out any information on sources for the dirty dossier. This raises the question of if there were sources that were fictional and were used just to build a fake case against Trump. President Trump just tweeted out that the dossier is a pile of garbage . Could it be that this pile of garbage was used to make the case for a FISA warrant to spy on POTUS The plot thickens on this one The Daily Caller reports: The House Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena for an associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain s who revealed last week that he knows the names of the Russian sources used in former British spy Christopher Steele s infamous dossier.A congressional source tells The Daily Caller that California Rep. Devin Nunes issued the subpoena on Wednesday for David J. Kramer, a former State Department official.Kramer refused to divulge the names of Steele s sources during a Dec. 19 interview with the panel, the source says.Steele used Russian sources to gather information on the Trump campaign and Donald Trump s activities in Russia. The ex-spy was working for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was on the payroll of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE MCCAIN ASSOCIATE WHO REFUSED TO SPILL THE BEANS: Lawyers for a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed for publishing the Steele dossier say that a longtime associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain and two major news outlets are resisting subpoenas seeking their depositions for the case.In a brief filed in federal court late Wednesday, lawyers for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, claim that David Kramer (pictured below), a former State Department official and McCain associate, has been seemingly avoiding service of a deposition subpoena for weeks.Please see the very curious input Reason.com put out just this July regarding Kramer s involvement in the Steele dossier getting into the hands of the press. And The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are challenging deposition subpoenas they have been served as part of the case.Gubarev s lawyers are attempting to find out who gave BuzzFeed the salacious dossier, which the website published to much controversy on Jan. 10.The dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges that Gubarev and his companies, XBT Holdings and Webzilla, used spam, viruses and porn bots to hack into DNC computer systems. Gubarev vehemently denies the allegations.Gubarev s attorneys say that identifying BuzzFeed s source could shed light on whether the news outlet was warned that information in the dossier could be false. They argue that publishing the dossier despite such warnings would show reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the information published. BuzzFeed has defended its decision to publish the dossier, which was financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC and commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. It is also resisting demands from Gubarev s team to identify its dossier source on the grounds that it would violate its First Amendment protections as a news-gathering organization.Via: Daily CallerReason had this to say on July 16th on the mystery surrounding how the fake dossier got into the hands of Buzzfeed:Did John McCain and a controversial D.C. lobbying group conspire to get the infamous pee dossier into the hands of the press?A lawsuit making its way through court in the UK hopes to determine just what role the senator and his associates had in making the lurid dossier public.New filings in the lawsuit, obtained by McClatchy, detail how David Kramer employed by the nonprofit and purportedly non-political McCain Institute acted as a representative of McCain in the Arizona senator s dealings on sensitive intelligence measures:According to a new court document in the British lawsuit, counsel for defendants Steele and Orbis repeatedly point to McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal Trump critic, and a former State Department official as two in a handful of people known to have had copies of the full document before it circulated among journalists and was published by BuzzFeed. Read more: McClatchyIt also reveals that McCain was one of a just few people with whom the dossier s author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele, shared a copy of his final findings. So how did they get from there to publication in Buzzfeed?THE PLOT THICKENS!;Government News;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Reuters journalists in Myanmar appear in court, remanded for another 14 days;YANGON (Reuters) - Two Reuters journalists who have been detained in Myanmar for the past two weeks were remanded in custody for a further two weeks on Wednesday as a probe continues into allegations they breached the nation s Official Secrets Act. Judge Ohn Myint granted the 14-day extension in the case of the journalists, Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, at the request of the police, who then took them to Yangon s Insein prison. They were previously being held in a police compound. When they appeared at the Mingaladon court for the proceedings, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were allowed to meet their families and their lawyer for the first time since their arrest. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where - according to United Nations estimates - about 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. They were detained on Dec 12 after they had been invited to meet police officials over dinner. The Ministry of Information has said they illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media and faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists said they had not been mistreated in custody. The situation is okay, Wa Lone said after the hearing. We will face it the best we can because we have never done anything wrong, he said. We have never violated the media law nor ethics. We will continue to do our best. A Reuters spokesperson said they should be freed. These two journalists are being held for simply doing their jobs and have done nothing wrong. It is time for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to be released, the spokesperson said. About 100 journalists, lawyers and farmers held a protest in the town of Pyay, 290 km (180 miles) north of Yangon, to demand the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, one of the participants said. Members of the Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists sat draped in chains in a public square in the center of the town and wrote the names of the two arrested reporters on their palms, an often used symbol in Myanmar of solidarity with those in jail. Government officials from some of the world s major nations, including the United States, Britain and Canada, as well as top U.N. officials, have previously called for their release. Dozens of reporters and cameramen were outside the courthouse in a northern district of Yangon for the appearance of the two journalists. They were brought in a white van, rather than a police truck, dressed in casual clothes and were not handcuffed. Their lawyer, Than Zaw Aung, who has been retained by Reuters, also said the two had only been doing their job as journalists. They are being accused under this charge while doing their work as media, he told reporters. Lieutenant Colonel Myint Htwe, a senior staff officer from the Yangon Police Division, said: We took action because they committed the crime. It needs to be solved in court. Only their lawyer and the families of the two journalists, along with police and government lawyers, were allowed into the courtroom. The families were later allowed to travel in the van as the two journalists were taken to prison. I believe that he didn t commit any crime, Pan Ei Mon, Wa Lone s wife, told Reuters. I would like to request the government to consider releasing them. Nyo Nyo Aye, a sister of Kyaw Soe Oo, said her brother told her he had not committed any offense. I believe that he can come home soon, she said. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;"Eastern Libyan force says ""terrorist group"" probably responsible for pipe explosion";BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A terrorist group is probably responsible for the explosion on a Libyan crude pipeline on Tuesday, a spokesman for an eastern Libyan petroleum protection force said on Wednesday. The fire at the pipeline had been brought under control, Miftah Magariaf, from the force tasked with guarding oilfields in eastern Libya, told Reuters. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CHRISTMAS IN DETROIT: FIGHTS Break Out…THUG MOM Pulls Knife At Toy Giveaway Where Thousands Wait For Free Toys [VIDEO];Large crowds, fights and a woman arrested for pulling a knife none are normally synonymous with a toy giveaway. But Saturday on Detroit s west side, hundreds, if not thousands, gathered for free Christmas toys.Police had to be called in because, at times, the crowds were unruly. People were fighting over toys, so they shut the door, one person said.It was likely a first for any kind of toy giveaway, crowds so large Detroit police had to step in, and those trying to get toys, at times, getting out of control.Saturday night s toy giveaway is part of a program called Toys Making I.M.P.A.C.T.S. For months, those in need could register for free toys for their children, and when the doors opened at Tower Center Mall on Grand River Avenue at 4 p.m., close to 6,000 children were signed up.And more families who didn t sign up showed up.The organizers admit that organization and crowd control is on them. They just weren t expecting so many people.A 39-year-old woman was arrested after pulling a knife on someone during a fight. No one was hurt, but this happened in front of her children, so Detroit police had to take them back to the precinct and try to find other family members. WDIV ;left-news;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY THIS BLUE-COLLAR DEMOCRAT STRONGHOLD County Is Still Fighting For Trump: “He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse” [VIDEO];AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ISRAEL WILL NAME New Train Station Near Western Wall After President Donald Trump;Israel s transportation minister is pushing ahead with a plan to extend Jerusalem s soon-to-open high-speed rail line to the Western Wall, where he wants to name a future station after President Donald Trump. The Western Wall is the holiest place for the Jewish people, and I decided to name the train station that leads to it after president Trump following his historic and brave decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz told the Jerusalem Post.The national daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth was first to report Tuesday that Katz had approved final construction plans for the train, which will include excavating a 2-mile tunnel from the Umma (nation) station at the entrance to the city to the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter.The route will take travelers through downtown Jerusalem and under the politically and historically sensitive Old City. The Western Wall is the holiest site where Jews can pray.Transportation Ministry spokesman Avner Ovadia said Wednesday the project is estimated to cost more than $700 million and, if approved, would take four years to complete.Katz s office said in a statement that the minister advanced the plan in a recent meeting with Israel Railways executives, and has fast-tracked it in the planning committees.Katz said a high-speed rail station would allow visitors to reach the beating heart of the Jewish people the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Donald Trump: It s time to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital.Trump s announcement acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel s capital and his pledge to move America s embassy there enraged Palestinians and much of the Muslim world.The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution last week rejecting the U.S. s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, with several traditional American allies voting in favor of the motion.The Western Wall train proposal will likely face opposition from the international community, which doesn t recognize Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem and the Old City, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed. ThePalestinians seek east Jerusalem and the Old City, home to Muslim, Christian and Jewish holy sites, as capital of a future state. Daily Mail ;left-news;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SAY WHAT? PROSECUTORS Claim Convicted ISLAMIC TERRORIST Used His LAPTOP and Jihadi Materials To Radicalize Fellow Prisoners In NY Prison;According to The Sun, George W. Bush successor, Barack Obama, promised to close the camp in 2009, calling it a sad chapter in American history .But he faced strong opposition from Congress and succeeded only in reducing the number of inmates from 245 to around 40, as detainees were either freed or transferred to other countries.Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump has vowed to keep the prison open and use it to detain bad dudes .He has also stated he would happily use torture against inmates.He said: I would bring back waterboarding, and I d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding Don t tell me it doesn t work torture works if it doesn t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they re doing to us. We have to fight fire with fire. According to CNN, the man convicted in the 2016 bombing in New York s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 30 people has been trying to radicalize other inmates, federal prosecutors say.Ahmad Khan Rahimi also told a judge he is on a hunger strike.Rahimi provided inmates with copies of terrorist propaganda and jihadist materials, including speeches by Osama Bin Laden and the late militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, bomb-making instructions, books on jihad and issues of the al Qaeda-backed magazine Inspire, prosecutors said.Rahimi has been attempting to radicalize fellow inmates in the Metropolitan Correction Center by, among other things, distributing propaganda and publications issued by terrorist organizations, according to a letter from Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim to US District Judge Richard Berman.Rahimi let other inmates view the items on his laptop and gave them electronic copies, Kim s letter said. Discs of the materials were found in two inmates possession.Defense attorneys for Rahimi have yet to respond to the allegations.Prosecutors said Rahimi began distributing these materials in October if not earlier. Rahimi was convicted October 16 on eight federal charges in connection with the Chelsea bombing.Among the inmates Rahimi gave the materials to, prosecutors say, is Sajmir Alimehmeti, who is scheduled to go on trial next month on terrorism-related charges.Rahimi was arrested and charged after a pressure cooker bomb went off in New York s Chelsea neighborhood on September 17, 2016. A second pressure cooker bomb was found a few blocks away, on 27th Street, but didn t detonate.Earlier the same day, a bomb went off near the start of a Marine Corps charity run in Seaside Park, New Jersey.After a two-week trial and roughly four hours of jury deliberation, Rahimi was convicted of charges including the use and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, bombing a public place, destroying property by means of fire or explosives, and using a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence.During the trial, the prosecution presented evidence including DNA and fingerprints linking Rahimi to the bombs that were placed in New Jersey and New York.Rahimi faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison, according to an earlier statement from Kim.Rahimi faces separate charges in other jurisdictions in connection with the bomb that went off in Seaside Park, a backpack containing improvised explosive devices found the following day at a transit station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and a shootout he had with police before being taken into custody.;left-news;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;REMEMBER “Pam” From “The Office”? The Real-Life Actress, Jenna Fischer, Just Got CALLED OUT On Twitter For Using Bad Information To Bash Trump’s Tax Bill;Jenna Fischer is best known for playing the very likeable character, Pam , in the hit series The Office . Actress Jenna Fischer decided to use her huge fan base of over 750,000 followers on Twitter to point out how the GOP Tax bill that President Trump worked so hard to push through was punishing teachers. The only problem is, Fischer s tweet was incorrect.Maybe she should stick to comedy.Actress Jenna Fischer, best known for her role as Pam on NBC s The Office, found herself in hot water after she shared inaccurate information about the GOP tax bill on Twitter. I can t stop thinking about how school teachers can no longer deduct the cost of their classroom supplies on their taxes something they shouldn t have to pay for with their own money in the first place. I mean, imagine if nurses had to go buy their own syringes. #ugh, Fisher tweeted on Saturday.After Fischer got destroyed on Twitter for posting bad information, she DELETED her tweet.Twitter users were quick to point out that Fischer was misinformed;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY THIS Democrat Stronghold County Voted For Trump…And Why They’ll Vote For Him Again: “He’s a fighter…nobody’s gonna push him into a corner” [VIDEO];AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Kuwait says GCC to keep operating despite Qatar crisis;DUBAI (Reuters) - Kuwait s deputy foreign minister said on Wednesday that the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council would continue to operate despite a row among three of its members and Qatar that it has unsuccessfully sought to mediate. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain plus non-GCC member Egypt cut off diplomatic, travel and trade ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of supporting militants and their arch-foe Iran. Doha denies the charges and says their move is aimed at curtailing its sovereignty. Western nations have called for the countries, which are all close U.S. allies, to settle their differences in talks. The heads of state from the three boycotting countries skipped a GCC summit hosted by Kuwait s ruler in December, and the UAE called for the formation of a bilateral committee with Saudi Arabia on economic, political and military issues. But Kuwait appears determined to preserve the loose union set up in 1980 as a bulwark against larger neighbors Iraq and Iran, and said its reconciliation efforts would proceed. Despite the spat which appears to have no end in sight, the GCC s work will not be frozen or disrupted, Khaled Jarallah was quoted by state news agency KUNA as telling reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Kuwait. After the summit in Kuwait, we are not worried about the future of the council, Jarallah added. Mediation efforts have not stopped, and a breakthrough will be achieved one day. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY THIS BLUE-COLLAR DEMOCRAT STRONGHOLD County Is Still Fighting For Trump: “He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse” [VIDEO];AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SAY WHAT? PROSECUTORS Claim Convicted ISLAMIC TERRORIST Used His LAPTOP and Jihadi Materials To Radicalize Fellow Prisoners In NY Prison;According to The Sun, George W. Bush successor, Barack Obama, promised to close the camp in 2009, calling it a sad chapter in American history .But he faced strong opposition from Congress and succeeded only in reducing the number of inmates from 245 to around 40, as detainees were either freed or transferred to other countries.Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump has vowed to keep the prison open and use it to detain bad dudes .He has also stated he would happily use torture against inmates.He said: I would bring back waterboarding, and I d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding Don t tell me it doesn t work torture works if it doesn t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they re doing to us. We have to fight fire with fire. According to CNN, the man convicted in the 2016 bombing in New York s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 30 people has been trying to radicalize other inmates, federal prosecutors say.Ahmad Khan Rahimi also told a judge he is on a hunger strike.Rahimi provided inmates with copies of terrorist propaganda and jihadist materials, including speeches by Osama Bin Laden and the late militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, bomb-making instructions, books on jihad and issues of the al Qaeda-backed magazine Inspire, prosecutors said.Rahimi has been attempting to radicalize fellow inmates in the Metropolitan Correction Center by, among other things, distributing propaganda and publications issued by terrorist organizations, according to a letter from Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim to US District Judge Richard Berman.Rahimi let other inmates view the items on his laptop and gave them electronic copies, Kim s letter said. Discs of the materials were found in two inmates possession.Defense attorneys for Rahimi have yet to respond to the allegations.Prosecutors said Rahimi began distributing these materials in October if not earlier. Rahimi was convicted October 16 on eight federal charges in connection with the Chelsea bombing.Among the inmates Rahimi gave the materials to, prosecutors say, is Sajmir Alimehmeti, who is scheduled to go on trial next month on terrorism-related charges.Rahimi was arrested and charged after a pressure cooker bomb went off in New York s Chelsea neighborhood on September 17, 2016. A second pressure cooker bomb was found a few blocks away, on 27th Street, but didn t detonate.Earlier the same day, a bomb went off near the start of a Marine Corps charity run in Seaside Park, New Jersey.After a two-week trial and roughly four hours of jury deliberation, Rahimi was convicted of charges including the use and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, bombing a public place, destroying property by means of fire or explosives, and using a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence.During the trial, the prosecution presented evidence including DNA and fingerprints linking Rahimi to the bombs that were placed in New Jersey and New York.Rahimi faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison, according to an earlier statement from Kim.Rahimi faces separate charges in other jurisdictions in connection with the bomb that went off in Seaside Park, a backpack containing improvised explosive devices found the following day at a transit station in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and a shootout he had with police before being taken into custody.;politics;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;SARAH SANDERS…She Doesn’t Have Time For THIS! [Video];Sarah Sanders is great at getting the White House Press Corps to hurry it up The Supercut below shows the tactics used by this superstar to keep the wild press in line:Go Sarah!ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITES WAS A RARE OCCASION WHEN SARAH WASN T FINISHED :Sarah Huckabee Sanders was hot today when she went off on CNN s Jim Acosta over the fake news that s been constant the past few days. Jim Acosta also would not be quiet so Sanders had to get loud and forceful: I m not finished Sanders was making a point about reporters making a mistake vs when they report fake news on purpose There is a big difference. There s a big difference between making honest mistakes and purposely misleading the American people something that happens regularly. Sarah Huckabee SandersFox News Insider reports:White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders battled CNN reporter Jim Acosta, accusing the mainstream media of purposefully putting out false information.As he began a question, Acosta told Sanders at Monday s press briefing that journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn t mean it s fake news. Sanders started to answer but Acosta and another reported interjected. I m sorry. I m not finished! she countered. There s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly, she shot back.Acosta asked for an example of a story that was intentionally false and meant to mislead Americans.Sanders called out the false report by ABC News Brian Ross on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which earned Ross a four-week suspension.She called it very telling that Ross was suspended. Acosta kept pushing Sanders to let him ask his original question about allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump, but she refused.;politics;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;REMEMBER “Pam” From “The Office”? The Real-Life Actress, Jenna Fischer, Just Got CALLED OUT On Twitter For Using Bad Information To Bash Trump’s Tax Bill;Jenna Fischer is best known for playing the very likeable character, Pam , in the hit series The Office . Actress Jenna Fischer decided to use her huge fan base of over 750,000 followers on Twitter to point out how the GOP Tax bill that President Trump worked so hard to push through was punishing teachers. The only problem is, Fischer s tweet was incorrect.Maybe she should stick to comedy.Actress Jenna Fischer, best known for her role as Pam on NBC s The Office, found herself in hot water after she shared inaccurate information about the GOP tax bill on Twitter. I can t stop thinking about how school teachers can no longer deduct the cost of their classroom supplies on their taxes something they shouldn t have to pay for with their own money in the first place. I mean, imagine if nurses had to go buy their own syringes. #ugh, Fisher tweeted on Saturday.After Fischer got destroyed on Twitter for posting bad information, she DELETED her tweet.Twitter users were quick to point out that Fischer was misinformed;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;HOUSE INTEL Slaps Subpoenas on McCain Institute Associate Involved in “Trump Dirty Dossier” Sources;Please see our previous report below on the McCain Institute associate who has now been subpoenaed by the House Intel Committee. David J. Kramer was in hot water before for the same reason the Intel Committee is now issuing a subpoena:He was previously subpoenaed by the lawyers for a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed. The guy just refuses to give out any information on sources for the dirty dossier. This raises the question of if there were sources that were fictional and were used just to build a fake case against Trump. President Trump just tweeted out that the dossier is a pile of garbage . Could it be that this pile of garbage was used to make the case for a FISA warrant to spy on POTUS The plot thickens on this one The Daily Caller reports: The House Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena for an associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain s who revealed last week that he knows the names of the Russian sources used in former British spy Christopher Steele s infamous dossier.A congressional source tells The Daily Caller that California Rep. Devin Nunes issued the subpoena on Wednesday for David J. Kramer, a former State Department official.Kramer refused to divulge the names of Steele s sources during a Dec. 19 interview with the panel, the source says.Steele used Russian sources to gather information on the Trump campaign and Donald Trump s activities in Russia. The ex-spy was working for Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was on the payroll of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE MCCAIN ASSOCIATE WHO REFUSED TO SPILL THE BEANS: Lawyers for a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed for publishing the Steele dossier say that a longtime associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain and two major news outlets are resisting subpoenas seeking their depositions for the case.In a brief filed in federal court late Wednesday, lawyers for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, claim that David Kramer (pictured below), a former State Department official and McCain associate, has been seemingly avoiding service of a deposition subpoena for weeks.Please see the very curious input Reason.com put out just this July regarding Kramer s involvement in the Steele dossier getting into the hands of the press. And The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are challenging deposition subpoenas they have been served as part of the case.Gubarev s lawyers are attempting to find out who gave BuzzFeed the salacious dossier, which the website published to much controversy on Jan. 10.The dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges that Gubarev and his companies, XBT Holdings and Webzilla, used spam, viruses and porn bots to hack into DNC computer systems. Gubarev vehemently denies the allegations.Gubarev s attorneys say that identifying BuzzFeed s source could shed light on whether the news outlet was warned that information in the dossier could be false. They argue that publishing the dossier despite such warnings would show reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the information published. BuzzFeed has defended its decision to publish the dossier, which was financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC and commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. It is also resisting demands from Gubarev s team to identify its dossier source on the grounds that it would violate its First Amendment protections as a news-gathering organization.Via: Daily CallerReason had this to say on July 16th on the mystery surrounding how the fake dossier got into the hands of Buzzfeed:Did John McCain and a controversial D.C. lobbying group conspire to get the infamous pee dossier into the hands of the press?A lawsuit making its way through court in the UK hopes to determine just what role the senator and his associates had in making the lurid dossier public.New filings in the lawsuit, obtained by McClatchy, detail how David Kramer employed by the nonprofit and purportedly non-political McCain Institute acted as a representative of McCain in the Arizona senator s dealings on sensitive intelligence measures:According to a new court document in the British lawsuit, counsel for defendants Steele and Orbis repeatedly point to McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal Trump critic, and a former State Department official as two in a handful of people known to have had copies of the full document before it circulated among journalists and was published by BuzzFeed. Read more: McClatchyIt also reveals that McCain was one of a just few people with whom the dossier s author, ex-British spy Christopher Steele, shared a copy of his final findings. So how did they get from there to publication in Buzzfeed?THE PLOT THICKENS!;politics;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CHAIRMAN OF DEMS FOR TRUMP: My Party is Suffering from ‘Trump Derangement’ [Video];We have to agree that the left is suffering from Trump derangement because just about anything the POTUS does is met with derision from the Democrats. There is no middle ground but only division that continues with the leaders of the left stirring the pot. Think about it. Without the division, the left has nothing Well, the The chairman of Democrats for Trump reacted to repeated calls for the president s impeachment and obstructionist behavior by members of his party. I think it s Trump derangement, former New York City Council President Andrew Stein said on Fox & Friends. Ed Henry played video of Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introducing articles of impeachment and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) telling a crowd that President Trump s motives and actions are contemptible. Impeach 45 every day, she later said.Stein said he doesn t know why his fellow Democrats think Trump is a bad guy. Stein thinks President Trump should just continue to take his message to the people. We have to agree that the president needs to go around the lying media to deliver his message.The latest example of lying from the media is the poor treatment of First Lady Melania Trump. The media bombarded Melania with fake news about a tree that needed to be cut down. The press made it seem like evil Melania demanded that the tree be removed. In reality, the 200-year old tree had become a hazard. The media conveniently left that part out.Via Fox News Insider: ;politics;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHY THIS Democrat Stronghold County Voted For Trump…And Why They’ll Vote For Him Again: “He’s a fighter…nobody’s gonna push him into a corner” [VIDEO];AP News The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock. He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here, says Whitt. I still see it. Despite the president s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump s white working-class base.The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn t shoulder the blame because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.It means God, guns, patriotism, saying Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He s punching at all the people who let them down for so long the presidential embodiment of their own discontent. He s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question, Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt s regulars, declares as he deals the day s first hand of cards.He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media all crooked as a barrel of fishhooks had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him. One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody s gonna push him into a corner, says Whitt, 35. He s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it. He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes. Bill, bill, bill, he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day because there aren t many options better than minimum wage. There s the school system, and a prison, and that s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.Whitt slides a medical bill across the table. Looks like this one is the new helmet, he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.This represents the cracks in America s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a Make America Great Again cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can t get ahead. Where s the fairness in that? he asks.But Whitt doesn t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the brick wall in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while small people like them in small places like this are left again to languish.A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.Many here blame global trade agreements and the war on coal environmental regulations designed by Obama s administration to curb carbon emissions for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the American carnage of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.Coal has ticked up since Trump took office;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. lawmakers question businessman at 2016 Trump Tower meeting: sources;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Georgian-American businessman who met then-Miss Universe pageant owner Donald Trump in 2013, has been questioned by congressional investigators about whether he helped organize a meeting between Russians and Trump’s eldest son during the 2016 election campaign, four sources familiar with the matter said. The meeting at Trump Tower in New York involving Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign advisers is a focus of probes by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller on whether campaign officials colluded with Russia when it sought to interfere in the U.S. election, the sources said. Russia denies allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that it meddled in the election and President Donald Trump denies any collusion. The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees recently questioned behind closed doors Irakly Kaveladze, a U.S. citizen born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the sources said. He is a U.S.-based representative of Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov’s real estate firm, the Crocus Group. The panels knew Kaveladze was at the June 9, 2016 meeting but became more interested in him after learning he also attended a private dinner in Las Vegas in 2013 with Trump and Agalarov as they celebrated an agreement to hold that year’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, the sources said. Committee members now want to know more about the extent of Kaveladze’s contacts with the Trump family and whether he had a bigger role than previously believed in setting up the Trump Tower meeting when Trump was a Republican candidate for president. The White House declined to comment. Mueller’s office also declined to comment. Scott Balber, a New York lawyer who represents Kaveladze, confirmed that his client attended both the dinner in Las Vegas and the Trump Tower meeting but said he did not set up the second meeting. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, other Trump campaign aides, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya were also at that meeting. Lawyer Balber also said the committees were only seeking Kaveladze’s input as a witness and were not targeting him for investigation. “No-one has ever told me that they have any interest in him other than as a witness,” Balber said. Lawyers for Trump Jr. and Kushner did not respond to requests for comment about their contacts with Kaveladze. A lawyer for President Trump declined to comment. One photograph from the 2013 dinner, when Trump still owned the Miss Universe pageant, shows Agalarov and his pop singer son Emin along with Trump, two Trump aides and several other people at the dining table. Another shows Kaveladze standing behind Trump and Emin Agalarov as they speak. The pictures were found by a University of California at Irvine student and blogger Scott Stedman, who posted them on Nov. 22. Aras Agalarov is a billionaire property developer in Russia who was awarded the Order of Honor by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mueller’s team and the committees are looking for any evidence of a link between the Trump Tower meeting and the release six weeks later of emails stolen from Democratic Party organizations. They are also trying to determine whether there was any discussion at the New York meeting of lifting U.S. economic sanctions on Russia, a top priority for Putin, the officials said. Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, told Trump Jr. ahead of the New York meeting that Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya would be bringing damaging information about donations to a charity linked to Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to emails later released by Trump Jr. Trump Jr. initially said the meeting was about Russian adoptions but later said it also included Veselnitskaya’s promises of information on the donations to the Clinton charity. He said he ultimately never received the information, although it was later posted on the Internet. In a statement issued after meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, Trump, Jr. said Goldstone and Veselnitskaya were in a conference room with him as well as Kaveladze and a translator. Balber said Kaveladze attended expecting to serve as a translator, although he did not do so in the end because Veselnitskaya brought her own. ;politicsNews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;ISRAEL WILL NAME New Train Station Near Western Wall After President Donald Trump;Israel s transportation minister is pushing ahead with a plan to extend Jerusalem s soon-to-open high-speed rail line to the Western Wall, where he wants to name a future station after President Donald Trump. The Western Wall is the holiest place for the Jewish people, and I decided to name the train station that leads to it after president Trump following his historic and brave decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz told the Jerusalem Post.The national daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth was first to report Tuesday that Katz had approved final construction plans for the train, which will include excavating a 2-mile tunnel from the Umma (nation) station at the entrance to the city to the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter.The route will take travelers through downtown Jerusalem and under the politically and historically sensitive Old City. The Western Wall is the holiest site where Jews can pray.Transportation Ministry spokesman Avner Ovadia said Wednesday the project is estimated to cost more than $700 million and, if approved, would take four years to complete.Katz s office said in a statement that the minister advanced the plan in a recent meeting with Israel Railways executives, and has fast-tracked it in the planning committees.Katz said a high-speed rail station would allow visitors to reach the beating heart of the Jewish people the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Donald Trump: It s time to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital.Trump s announcement acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel s capital and his pledge to move America s embassy there enraged Palestinians and much of the Muslim world.The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution last week rejecting the U.S. s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, with several traditional American allies voting in favor of the motion.The Western Wall train proposal will likely face opposition from the international community, which doesn t recognize Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem and the Old City, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed. ThePalestinians seek east Jerusalem and the Old City, home to Muslim, Christian and Jewish holy sites, as capital of a future state. Daily Mail ;politics;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China to bring paramilitary police force under military's wing;BEIJING (Reuters) - China will bring its paramilitary police force, the People s Armed Police, under the control of the Central Military Commission which controls the country s armed forces from Jan. 1, state media said on Wednesday. Since taking power five years ago, President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping modernization of the People s Liberation Army, the world s largest military, laying off troops, streamlining its organization and investing in advanced weapons. In a brief report, the official Xinhua news agency said that from midnight on Jan. 1 the People s Armed Police would no longer fall under the purview of the State Council, or cabinet, and instead report to the Central Military Commission. Xi heads the Central Military Commission in his role as armed forces chief and commander in chief. Xi has steadily consolidated his power over the military, and has appointed allies to key positions of power in the armed forces. Xinhua did not provide any details on how the new reporting structure would work or why the government had made the decision. However, the party s official People s Daily, in a commentary for publication on Thursday but reported by Xinhua on Wednesday, said the move was needed to ensure security and promote the aim of having a strong military . The People s Armed Police will remain separate, carry out its existing functions and not be absorbed into the People s Liberation Army, the People s Daily said. The paramilitary police force serves as a backup for the military in times of war, and domestically has a role in putting down protests and counter-terrorism as well as border defense and fire-fighting. Xi has radically overhauled the old Soviet-era command structure of the military to make the armed forces nimbler and better able to respond to crises at home and abroad. That has included condensing the command structure and giving greater emphasis on new capabilities including cyberspace, electronic and information warfare. China s military has not fought a war in decades, but faces what the government calls a complex security environment, such as nuclear-armed North Korea and territorial disputes in the South China Sea and over self-ruled Taiwan, claimed by China as its own. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel ambassador asks to meet New Zealand pop star Lorde over canceled show;WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Israel s ambassador to New Zealand on Wednesday appealed to the pop star Lorde to meet him after she canceled a show in Tel Aviv after appeals from activists for her to shun Israel as a protest against its treatment of Palestinians. Itzhak Gerberg, Israel s ambassador to New Zealand, said in a public letter it was regrettable that the concert had been called off and the boycott of his country represented hostility and intolerance . I invite you to meet me in person to discuss Israel, its achievements and its role as the only democracy in the Middle East, Gerberg said on the Embassy of Israel s Facebook page. Lorde s representatives did not immediately respond to request for comment on her response or whether she planned to meet the ambassador. The 21-year-old New Zealand singer had been slated to perform in Tel Aviv in June as part of a global tour to promote her chart-topping second album Melodrama . Campaigners have been urging her to scrap the show, calling in an open letter on Dec. 21 for her to pull out as part of a boycott to oppose Israel s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation, campaigners Justine Sachs and Nadia Abu-Shanab, wrote on news website The Spinoff. We believe that an economic, intellectual and artistic boycott is an effective way of speaking out, they said. Lorde said on Twitter at the time she was speaking with many people about this and considering all options . Eran Arielli, the promoter of the concert, said on Facebook on Sunday that the show was off. The truth is I was naive to think that an artist of her age would be able to absorb the pressure involved in coming to Israel, he wrote in Hebrew. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was launched in 2005 as a non-violent campaign to press Israel to heed international law and end its occupation of territory Palestinians seek for a state. Artists who have boycotted Israel include Pink Floyd s Roger Waters and Elvis Costello. Other major stars, such as Elton John, Aerosmith, Guns and Roses, the Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber and Rihanna have performed in recent years in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s right-wing government has long campaigned against the BDS movement, describing it as anti-Semitic and an attempt to erase Israel s legitimacy. (This story has been refiled to show Eran Arielli was sole promoter, paragraph 10.) ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;In first remarks since retweet feud, UAE diplomat says Arabs won't be led by Turkey;DUBAI (Reuters) - A senior UAE diplomat said on Wednesday the Arab world would not be led by Turkey, the Gulf State s first comment on Ankara since a quarrel broke out last week over a retweet by the Emirati foreign minister that President Tayyip Erdogan called an insult. Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, said there was a need for Arab countries to rally around the Arab axis of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The sectarian and partisan view is not an acceptable alternative, and the Arab world will not be led by Tehran or Ankara, he wrote on his official Twitter page. Last week, Turkey summoned the charge d affaires at the UAE embassy in Ankara, after UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahayan shared a tweet that accused Turkish troops of looting the holy city of Medina a century ago. Erdogan himself lashed out: Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as accusing our ancestors of thievery ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has, the Turkish leader said at an awards ceremony. Turkey s state-run Anadolu newspaper reported on Saturday that Turkey planned to rename the street where the UAE embassy is located in Ankara after Fakhreddin Pasha, the commander of the Ottoman Turkish troops at Medina in 1916. Medina, the holiest site in Islam after Mecca, is now in Saudi Arabia. The UAE sees itself as a bulwark against political forms of Islam, and views Erdogan s Islamist-rooted ruling AK party as a supporter of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which it opposes. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan says ties at risk if South Korea messes with 2015 'comfort women' deal;SEOUL (Reuters) - Japan said on Wednesday any attempt by South Korea to revise a 2015 deal meant to have resolved a row over comfort women forced to work in Japan s wartime brothels would make relations unmanageable after Seoul said the agreement had failed. The two U.S. allies, which share a bitter history including Japanese colonizations, are key to international efforts to rein in North Korea s nuclear and missile programs that it pursues in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha apologized for the controversial deal on Wednesday, as a panel investigating the negotiations leading up to the agreement unveiled its results. The investigation concluded that the dispute over the comfort women, a Japanese euphemism for the thousands of girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in wartime brothels, could not be fundamentally resolved because the victims demand for legal compensation had not been met. South Korea wants Japan to take legal responsibility and provide due compensation. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the 2015 settlement, which includes a 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) fund to help the victims, resulted from legitimate negotiations , warning any amendment may complicate relations. If (South Korea) tries to revise the agreement that is already being implemented, that would make Japan s ties with South Korea unmanageable and it would be unacceptable, Kono said in a statement. Kang apologized for giving wounds of the heart to the victims, their families, civil society that support them and all other people because the agreement failed to sufficiently reflect a victim-oriented approach, which is the universal standard in resolving human rights issues . Under the deal, endorsed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in s predecessor and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan apologized to former comfort women and provided the fund to help them. They agreed the issue would be irreversibly resolved if both fulfilled their obligations. Tokyo says the matter of compensation for the women was settled under a 1965 treaty. It says that in 2015, it agreed to provide the funds to help them heal psychological wounds . The South Korean government will review the result of the investigation and translate it into policy after consulting victims and civic groups that support them, Kang said. The comfort women issue has been a regular cause for contention between Japan and neighbors China and North and South Korea since the war. Japan colonized the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and occupied parts of China before and after the war. (The Moon government) has said it will seek a two-track policy by separately dealing with the comfort women issue and the relationship in the face of North Korea s threats, but Japan may not agree with that , Lee Sung-hwan, a professor of Japanese studies in Keimyung University in South Korea, told Reuters. Japan wants South Korea to remove statues near the Japanese embassy in Seoul and the Japanese consulate in Busan city commemorating Korean comfort women. Seoul says the memorials were erected by civic groups and therefore out of its reach. According to the investigation, however, the sides struck a separate, secret deal in which South Korea promised to persuade the groups to relocate the statues, provide no support for their overseas statue-raising campaign and refrain from calling the women sex slaves on the world stage. In 2014, the U.N. Human Rights Committee requested Tokyo to clarify the comfort women euphemism, with an independent expert on the panel calling for it to be replaced with enforced sex slaves . Such an issue of universal value and historical awareness as that of comfort women cannot be resolved through short-term diplomatic negotiations and a political bargain, said Oh Tai-kyu, a former journalist who led the investigation. Andrew Horvat, a visiting professor at Josai International University in Japan, said that the pact was flawed from the beginning because it failed to produce real reconciliation. The agreement was not reconciliation, but an agreement not to talk about it anymore , Horvat said. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Hundreds sacked from Uzbek FinMin in 'rat' purge;TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbekistan s Finance Ministry has sacked 562 employees after President Shavkat Mirziyoyev ordered it to root out inefficiency and get rid of what he had called rats tarnishing its reputation, the state news agency UzA reported on Wednesday. The purge followed criticism of the ministry by Mirziyoyev last week over what he described as a poorly drafted state budget, failure to finance important projects in various provinces and embellishing economic data. The ministry employs about 3,000 people and a further 13,000 in subordinate agencies such as the state pension fund. According to the UzA report, the sacked officials were holdovers from a previous minister , a clear reference to Rustam Azimov, former minister of finance and deputy prime minister sacked by Mirziyoyev in June. The report did not identify Azimov by name. Mirziyoyev was elected president last December following the death in September 2016 of Islam Karimov, who had ruled the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He has reshuffled the cabinet during his first year in power and implemented some economic reforms such as the liberalisation of foreign exchange regulations. Mirziyoyev named Djamshid Kuchkarov finance minister last month, replacing his previous appointee Botir Khodjayev who took over the Economy Ministry instead. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Australian woman escapes the noose for drug trafficking in Malaysia;KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - An Australian mother of three escaped the death penalty on Wednesday after a Malaysian court found her not guilty of drug trafficking. Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, 54, was found with more than 1 kg of methamphetamine in her backpack while in transit in Kuala Lumpur enroute to Melbourne from Shanghai in December 2014. Under Malaysian law, anyone found guilty of possessing more than 50 grams of illegal drugs is considered a trafficker and faces a mandatory death penalty. The law was amended last month to do away with the mandatory death sentence, allowing judges to use their own discretion. But the changes have not yet come into effect. Exposto s lawyers said she was the victim of an internet romance scam and was lured into carrying a bag containing drugs unknowingly by a friend of her online boyfriend, who claimed to be a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan. I agreed with the defense s argument that the accused had no knowledge of the drugs that were in her bag, Judge Ghazali Cha said on Wednesday. Exposto s conduct during her arrest showed she was naive and her behavior was that of an innocent person, he said. The judge referred Exposto to Malaysia s immigration department for deportation. I m happy now that I m free, Exposto said in brief comments to reporters. Three Australian nationals have been executed by Malaysia for drug trafficking: Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers in 1986, and Michael McAuliffe in 1993. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia to limit U.S. military observation flights: RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow will limit the scope of U.S. military observation flights over Russia from Jan. 1 next year in retaliation for U.S. curbs on similar Russian flights over the United States, the RIA news agency reported on Wednesday. The United States has accused Russia of flouting the Open Skies Treaty, an agreement designed to build confidence between the countries militaries which entered into force in 2002, and said it plans to take measures against Moscow. The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported in September that this would include restricting Russian military flights over American territory in response to what it said was Moscow preventing U.S. observation flights over its heavily militarized Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad. The United States is reported to have been keen to restrict Russian flights over Alaska and Hawaii as well as limiting the distance of Russian observation flights. RIA on Wednesday cited Georgy Borisenko, a senior foreign ministry official, as saying Moscow would take reciprocal steps to respond to the new U.S. measures from Jan. 1 and limit the territory which U.S. observations flights can fly over. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Vietnam jails 15 for plot to blow up airport: media;HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese court on Wednesday sentenced 15 people to multiple years in jail for plotting to bomb the country s biggest airport in the southern city of Ho Chi Minh, media reported. The 15 were charged with terrorism opposing the people s administration , the Phap Luat (The Law) newspaper reported. Terrorist acts can be punishable by death in Vietnam. Police foiled the plot to bomb Tan Son Nhat airport after passengers spotted boxes which were later found to consist of explosive devices, the newspaper said. Dang Hoang Thien, accused of making petrol bombs, was jailed for 16 years. Other defendants were given jail terms from five to 14 years. The court was not available outside office hours for comment. Vietnam government s official news website cited the court indictment as saying the team acted on instructions from an overseas group which had used social media to spread propaganda and recruit. Vietnam, one of the top 10 countries for Facebook users by numbers, has called for tougher internet controls and unveiled a military cyber unit to fight wrong views online. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China says part of Hong Kong rail station to be subject to mainland laws;BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - China s parliament on Wednesday said part of a high-speed railway station being built in Hong Kong would be regarded as mainland territory governed by mainland laws, an unprecedented move that critics say further erodes the city s autonomy. Hong Kong reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997, when it was granted a high degree of autonomy under a one country, two systems arrangement, giving it a separate police force, immigration controls, an independent judiciary and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China. China s largely rubber stamp parliament, the National People s Congress, voted to allow Chinese immigration checks and the enforcement of mainland Chinese laws within part of the station, so that after boarding the train in Hong Kong passengers would not need to get off the train for immigration checks at the Hong Kong-mainland border. It is appropriate ... that the Mainland Port Area within the West Kowloon station would be regarded as belonging to mainland China, according to the legislative document released by parliament on the decision. Critics say the co-location arrangement, also known as one land, two checks in Chinese, sets a dangerous precedent as it violates the city s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, in which article 18 explicitly states national laws, with a few exceptions, do not apply in Hong Kong. But the document passed by parliament says since mainland officials operations will be strictly confined to specific areas in the station, it is different from the article which governs the whole of Hong Kong. Setting up a Mainland Port Area inside the West Kowloon station does not change the administrative area of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, does not affect the HKSAR s right to a high degree of autonomy accorded by the law, does not reduce or harm (Hong Kong) residents rights and freedoms accorded by the law, the document added. Li Fei, deputy secretary-general of parliament s standing committee, told reporters the decision would not take away Hong Kong people s freedoms. If Hong Kongers don t feel comfortable, they can use another entry port and not take the high-speed train, Li said. At a cost of more than HK$84 billion ($11 billion), the Express Rail Link will link up with the rest of China s high-speed rail network and roughly halve the journey time between Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou to 48 minutes. It is expected to be operational in the autumn on 2018. The Hong Kong government said it would seek to put draft laws to its legislature by early February to implement the plan, but the bill is expected to be voted through without strong resistance after a series of controversial court cases stripped the opposition pro-democracy camp of its veto power. The prospect of Beijing tightening its grip on the financial hub has already stoked social tensions and protests including the 2014 Occupy street demonstrations that demanded, in vain, full democracy for the city of 7.3 million. The abductions of a Hong Kong-based bookseller in 2015 who later showed up across the border in Chinese custody also touched a raw nerve. The former head of Hong Kong s legislature and pro-establishment heavyweight, Jasper Tsang, wrote in a column last week that the government should admit frankly the arrangement does not comply with the Basic Law. Opposition lawmaker and barrister Tanya Chan, who leads a group against the arrangement, said the issue represents the most serious violation of the Basic Law since the 1997 handover. What we re seeing is the Central Government exercising overall jurisdiction over Hong Kong, Chan said. What we see today is the (NPC) Standing Committee ruling Hong Kong, zero degree of autonomy. Constitutional law professor Albert Chen said he believed the arrangement was based on reasonable arguments and did not violate the Basic Law. But it remained a grey area whether Hong Kong courts could handle judicial reviews that directly challenge Beijing s decision, he said. Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam welcomed the decision, but conceded that there had been complex issues of applicability of mainland and Hong Kong laws for the project as it had been first conceived around a decade ago. She added that these complexities could not have been foreseen back then. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron opens door to changes in mainland-Corsica relationship;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron has said his government could consider changes in the relationship between mainland France and Corsica, which seeks greater autonomy, but ruled out new residency rights or recognition of Corsican as an official language. An alliance of Corsica s two main nationalist parties swept a local election on Dec. 10 and has been pressing for talks with Paris. Its leaders want more autonomy on fiscal issues, an equal status for the French and Corsican languages, and the limiting of the right to buy property in some areas to people who have been resident on the holiday island for at least five years. The two-party Pe a Corsica (For Corsica) alliance won nearly two thirds of seats in the local assembly election. Support for their cause is driven by dissatisfaction with France s mainstream parties, mirroring a trend that has spurred secessionist ambitions elsewhere in Europe, such as Catalonia. Looking ahead, we could consider possible changes, and the prime minister has indicated this to Corsica s leaders, Macron said in an interview published by Spanish daily El Mundo on Wednesday. But these would come, as elsewhere, within the framework of the constitution. This republican framework does not allow us to say yes to certain demands, such as on residency rights or recognizing Coriscan as the official language alongside French. Corsica s nationalists are split between those who seek greater autonomy and those who see full independence as the ultimate goal. Corsica makes up two of France s 101 departments - local administration areas. Unlike in Catalonia, its nationalists downplay any immediate ambitions for independence, saying the island - where Napoleon was born in 1769 - lacks the Spanish region s demographic and economic clout. While Macron did not say what he might be prepared to negotiate, it is the first time he has touched on the subject since the vote. France is a highly centralized state and Corsica s demands for more autonomy have often been met with irritation and a refusal to negotiate by past governments. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Macron opens door to changes in mainland-Corsica relationship;PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron has said his government could consider changes in the relationship between mainland France and Corsica, which seeks greater autonomy, but ruled out new residency rights or recognition of Corsican as an official language. An alliance of Corsica s two main nationalist parties swept a local election on Dec. 10 and has been pressing for talks with Paris. Its leaders want more autonomy on fiscal issues, an equal status for the French and Corsican languages, and the limiting of the right to buy property in some areas to people who have been resident on the holiday island for at least five years. The two-party Pe a Corsica (For Corsica) alliance won nearly two thirds of seats in the local assembly election. Support for their cause is driven by dissatisfaction with France s mainstream parties, mirroring a trend that has spurred secessionist ambitions elsewhere in Europe, such as Catalonia. Looking ahead, we could consider possible changes, and the prime minister has indicated this to Corsica s leaders, Macron said in an interview published by Spanish daily El Mundo on Wednesday. But these would come, as elsewhere, within the framework of the constitution. This republican framework does not allow us to say yes to certain demands, such as on residency rights or recognizing Coriscan as the official language alongside French. Corsica s nationalists are split between those who seek greater autonomy and those who see full independence as the ultimate goal. Corsica makes up two of France s 101 departments - local administration areas. Unlike in Catalonia, its nationalists downplay any immediate ambitions for independence, saying the island - where Napoleon was born in 1769 - lacks the Spanish region s demographic and economic clout. While Macron did not say what he might be prepared to negotiate, it is the first time he has touched on the subject since the vote. France is a highly centralized state and Corsica s demands for more autonomy have often been met with irritation and a refusal to negotiate by past governments. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Putin registers re-election bid;MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin formally registered his re-election bid on Wednesday, submitting the necessary documents to Russia s central election commission in person ahead of a March 18 vote. Polls show that Putin, who has dominated Russia s political landscape for the last 17 years as either president or prime minister, is on course to comfortably win another six-year term. That would allow him to rule until 2024, when he ll turn 72. The former KGB officer is running as an independent, a move seen as a way of strengthening his image as a father of the nation rather than as a party political figure. The ruling United Russia party and the Just Russia party have both said they will support him. Allies laud Putin for restoring national pride and expanding Moscow s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. But opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been barred from the election over a suspended prison sentence he says was fabricated, says Putin has been in power too long and that his support is artificially maintained by a biased state media and an unfair system which excludes genuine opponents. Navalny has called for a boycott of the election, raising the prospect of large-scale protests and clashes with the police. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jailed Cameroon writer who criticized government to be expelled - lawyer;DOUALA (Reuters) - A prize-winning New York-based Cameroonian novelist will be freed from jail and expelled from his native country after being held for nearly three weeks on charges of insulting and threatening the president, his lawyer said on Wednesday. Patrice Nganang was arrested on Dec. 7 as he prepared to board a flight to Kenya, and accused of insulting President Paul Biya. The government later said he had threatened Biya in posts on Facebook. A literature professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Nganang was born in Cameroon and holds dual Cameroonian and U.S. nationality. Nganang s lawyer, Emmanuel Simh, told Reuters that a judge had dismissed the government s charges and ordered his client released. Simh later said the authorities had retained Nganang s Cameroonian passport and that he would be placed on an afternoon flight to the United States. According to (the government), he is an American who does not have a right to this passport, Simh said. Nganang s supporters say the accusations against him were politically motivated and related to a Dec. 5 piece he wrote for Paris-based magazine Jeune Afrique, in which he criticized a government crackdown on Cameroon s English-speaking minority. Since last year, the government, which is dominated by members of the French-speaking majority, has repressed protests by English speakers who say they are socially and economically marginalized. Dozens of civilians have been killed in unrest that has fueled support for separatists seeking an independent state. Some separatists have launched armed attacks on state forces, creating the most serious challenge to Biya s 35-year rule. Thousands of English speakers have fled across the border into neighboring Nigeria. Cameroonian law forbids adults from holding dual nationality, although the prohibition is unevenly enforced. Cameroon s government spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. English speakers make up around a fifth of the population of Cameroon, which was formed when parts of a formerly British-ruled territory joined the larger, newly independent French-speaking Republic of Cameroon in 1961. The past year s violence is the latest example of how Biya s rule has grown increasingly intolerant of dissent, with opposition activists, journalists and intellectuals routinely arrested and sometimes prosecuted. A Cameroonian reporter for Radio France Internationale was released from prison last week after more than two years behind bars for contact with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, in a case that drew international condemnation. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Mexico presidential hopeful hemmed in by ruling party legacy;MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mired in allegations of corruption, Mexico s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has thrown its weight behind an untainted outsider in a bid to clean up its image and hang on to the presidency in elections next July. But having never been a member of the party, former finance minister and PRI presidential hopeful Jose Antonio Meade faces a delicate balancing act persuading undecided voters he will cut out graft without alienating the grassroots support he needs to win. It is proving to be a tough job. The awkward symbiosis limits Meade s ability to play to the strengths that PRI grandees hope will overcome the accusations of embezzlement, fraud and vote buying that have plagued the party under President Enrique Pena Nieto. Reliant on the PRI machinery to deliver votes, Meade must wrap himself in the party banner, while distancing his campaign from the failures of the outgoing government he also represents. He s between a rock and a hard place, said Andres Rozental, a former deputy Mexican foreign minister. Pena Nieto is constitutionally barred from re-election, and the centrist PRI will not formally elect its candidate until Feb. 18. However, the party has lined up behind Meade, who held various cabinet posts across two opposing administrations before announcing his run late last month. Meade, a technocrat with a sharp command of the minutiae of the economy, launched his campaign for the PRI candidacy in a straw sombrero festooned with red and green streamers in the poor southern town of San Juan Chamula on Dec. 14. Meade acknowledged Pena Nieto in his speech, which called for a secure and just Mexico. But he did not detail policies or directly address corruption. Like the president, he has said graft must be attacked by strengthening institutions. In subsequent outings to rally the PRI faithful, he has continued to frame his vision in general terms - prompting expressions of dismay by some of his supporters. It s a typical PRI campaign, said one pro-Meade lawmaker, shaking his head, and speaking on condition of anonymity. Polls show Meade has plenty of work to do. A survey by polling firm Parametria published on Dec. 19 put him 11 percentage points behind leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who has spent years railing against corruption and inequality. Another survey, by pollster Mitofsky, showed this month that 57.4 percent of voters reject the PRI, up nearly seven points from October, and 17 points more than any other party. In December 2011, the same point in the previous campaign, the PRI had a lead of about 17 points and only one in five voters rejected the party, according to Mitofsky data. Serving in the cabinet for almost seven years running, Meade has sold himself as irreproachably honest and the safest pair of hands for the economy, painting Lopez Obrador and conservative rival Ricardo Anaya as risky bets for Mexico s stability. However, his time in government has left the 48-year-old with a problematic legacy to defend. Gang violence has worsened in the past couple of years, with murders hitting a record high in 2017. [L1N1ON0EQ] Meanwhile the economy is growing at barely 2 percent annually, less than half the rate the government first targeted, inflation is near a 16-year high and the peso has depreciated by more than 34 percent against the dollar under Pena Nieto. A study by the Pew Research Center in September identified crime and corruption as the top concerns for Mexicans. As standard-bearer for an unpopular government, Meade has to present more compelling solutions to those problems than his rivals, said one senior official backing him. It was one of this government s biggest mistakes not to see the damage that corruption could do to its reputation, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said he believed Meade s policies could become clearer once he is formally invested as PRI candidate. Meade s campaign did not reply to requests for comment. Another government official closely following the campaign said that while Meade could recognize failings in the PRI, he could not be expected to attack the party. You can t take the PRI s core vote for granted, the official said. With some PRI governors, lawmakers and Pena Nieto facing allegations of corruption, it could be suicidal for Meade to push a tough line on graft, said Juan Pardinas, general director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank. How could you (take) a strong stance against corruption, being the PRI candidate?, he asked. It s like (taking) a strong stance against racism at a Ku Klux Klan rally. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Israel wants to build 'Trump station' near Western Wall;JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel wants to name a train station after Donald Trump to thank him for recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, but the site of the planned building could be as divisive as the U.S. president s declaration. Transport Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday he had chosen a proposed subway stop near the Western Wall in Jerusalem s Old City - right in the middle of the area that the Palestinians want as their own future capital. I have decided to name the Western Wall station ... after U.S. President Donald Trump for his courageous and historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel, Katz said in a statement. The envisaged underground extension of a high-speed rail link between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is still on the drawing board and a transport ministry spokeswoman said other departments still needed to approve it. The announcement was quickly condemned by Palestinian leaders already angered by Trump s Dec. 6 decision to overturn decades of U.S. policy on the city. The Israeli extremist government is trying to race against time to impose facts on the ground in the city of Jerusalem, Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization s Executive Committee, told Reuters. Trump has said he was simply acknowledged the reality on the ground by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital - but the Palestinians and most world powers have said he undermined the long-held position that Jerusalem s status must be settled by future negotiations. A ministry spokeswoman said the proposed station and underground extension still required the approval of various governmental planning committees, and gave no date for when a final go-ahead might be given. She said she did not know where funds for the estimated $700-million rail add-on would come from. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem - among whose shrines is Islam s third-holiest mosque, Al-Aqsa - as the capital of a state they seek in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia to supply Turkey with four S-400 missile batteries for $2.5 billion: Kommersant;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will supply Turkey with four batteries of S-400 surface-to-air missiles for $2.5 billion under a deal that is almost complete, Sergei Chemezov, head of Russian state conglomerate Rostec, told the Kommersant daily on Wednesday. The deal has caused concern in the West because Turkey is a member of NATO but the Russian missile system cannot be integrated into NATO s military architecture. In addition, relations between Moscow and the Western military alliance are strained, in part because of Russia s annexation of Ukraine s Crimea peninsula. Turkish Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said Ankara would purchase two S-400 systems and four batteries and that all agreements were made, the state broadcaster TRT Haber reported. Turkey will pay 45 percent of the cost up front with Russia providing loans to cover the remaining 55 percent, Chemezov said. Moscow expected to begin the first deliveries in March 2020, he said. Chemezov told Kommersant that Turkey was the first NATO member state to acquire the advanced S-400 missile system. He said the Russian and Turkish finance ministries had already completed talks on financing the deal and that the final documents just needed to be approved. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Ex-army boss to be sworn in as Zimbabwe vice president on Thursday;HARARE (Reuters) - Retired army chief Constantino Chiwenga and veteran politician Kembo Mohadi will be sworn in as Zimbabwe s vice presidents on Thursday, state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation said on Wednesday. The pair, appointed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, were elevated to similar positions in the ruling ZANU-PF party on Saturday. Chiwenga retired from the military this month. His appointment was expected as a reward for leading a de facto coup in November that ended Robert Mugabe s 37-year rule and brought Mnangagwa to power. It also adds to signs of a consolidation of power for the army since it turned against the 93-year-old Mugabe. Mnangagwa has appointed several senior military officers to his cabinet and the ruling party s top decision-making body, the Politburo. Mnangagwa is under pressure from opposition parties and the public to implement political reforms. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey to review 11,480 cases linked to app used by coup suspects;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors said on Wednesday they will review legal cases against 11,480 people after finding they had been re-directed unwittingly to a messaging app linked to suspects in last year s failed coup. Turkey has so far identified 215,000 users of the messaging app ByLock, which was believed to be used by supporters of a U.S.-based cleric blamed for the failed July 2016 coup attempt. It launched investigations against more than 23,000 of them. But on Wednesday the Ankara prosecutor s office said many of them had been re-directed to ByLock without their knowledge or consent, after downloading a different app which had functions for prayer times and music. As a result of a detailed examination, it has been determined that 11,480 GSM number users with similar properties in terms of connection data parameters were unwittingly re-directed to ByLock IPs, it said. State-run Anadolu news agency quoted Ankara chief prosecutor Yuksel Kocaman as saying that he would ask for nearly 1,000 people to be released unless there was other evidence against them. He said an arrest warrant had been issued for the developer of the other app which had re-directed users to ByLock. Authorities say ByLock was widely used by followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government blames for orchestrating the failed military coup in which 250 people were killed. Gulen has denied any involvement. Since the coup attempt, more than 50,000 people, including civil servants and security personnel, have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 suspended or dismissed from their jobs. Rights groups say the crackdown has been exploited to muzzle dissent. The government says the measures have been necessary due to the security threats which Turkey has faced since the putsch. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Saudi businessman in debt dispute released from detention: sources;DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi Arabian businessman whose family s commercial empire is involved in a multi-billion dollar debt dispute has been released from detention in the kingdom s Eastern Province, according to sources familiar with the matter. Abdulaziz al-Sanea s release comes as the government steps up efforts to find a company to run a struggling 750-bed hospital owned by his family, a search that has turned the spotlight on the kingdom s effort to bring overseas investors into the healthcare sector. Al-Sanea was freed late last week after being detained in October for unpaid debts, related at least in part to the hospital, according to the sources. An arrest warrant, issued in October for his brother Mishal for the same reason, was also lifted, according to the same sources. At the same time, the authorities approved a plan intended to restart operations at Saad Specialist Hospital in the city of Khobar in Eastern Province, which has been closed in recent weeks after being unable to pay staff and contractors, according to the sources. A special committee, formed by the government to find solutions for the hospital s future, concluded that the facility should be operated under the guidance of the Ministry of Health for seven years, the sources said. The revenue would be deposited into the account of the court handling the liquidation of Saad Group, the family s company that owns the hospital, the sources added. The Ministry of Justice did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. London-listed NMC Healthcare is among companies in talks with the government to take over the running of the hospital, one of the top cancer treatment facilities in the Gulf, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Maan al-Sanea, the owner of Saad Group and the father of Abdulaziz and Mishal, is still in a civil detention center in Khobar, according to the sources. He was also detained by authorities in October for unpaid debts. Saad Group, which at its height employed about 12,000 staff and has interests in sectors spanning banking to healthcare, ran into difficulties in 2009 because of heavy debts, unleashing a series of long-running legal battles and a Saudi court-enforced liquidation of the company. Reemas Group, a financial consultancy hired by Saad Group, last month outlined a proposed settlement covering $4 billion in debt under a plan to repay part of the money owed to creditors. The legal action against the family is believed to be separate from a crackdown on corruption by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which dozens of Saudi princes and businessmen are being held. The kingdom has released 23 of the 200-or-so powerful individuals detained since November on corruption charges after they reached deals with the government, Okaz newspaper reported on Tuesday. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Syrian Kurds say Russia has promised they can attend Sochi talks;BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russia has promised that the autonomous region controlled by Kurds in northern Syria will be represented at peace talks it is hosting next month, the commander of the main Syrian Kurdish militia was cited as saying on Wednesday. Moscow has said 155 representatives of the autonomous region will participate, Sipan Hemo, the commander of the YPG, was quoted as saying by official Syrian Kurdish social media channels on Wednesday. Kurdish groups have not taken part in any round of Syrian peace talks so far despite their control of more than a quarter of Syria. Turkey opposes their involvement in talks. Moscow backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria s six-year-old civil war while Turkey opposes him. But Ankara views the YPG as a terrorist group affiliated to the Kurdish PKK, which has waged an insurgency in Turkey for decades. Russia, Iran and Turkey announced the Jan. 29-30 dates for the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi date after a round of peace talks in Kazakhstan last week, but did not say who would participate. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called Assad a terrorist and said it was impossible for Syrian peace efforts to continue with him. Syria responded that Erdogan himself supported terrorist groups fighting in Syria. About 40 Syrian rebel groups, including factions that have taken part in other rounds of peace talks, said on Monday they would refuse to attend the Sochi congress. Russia is the most powerful supporter of Assad. Its jets have helped him bring the rebellion against his rule near to an end, and rebels say Moscow has put no pressure on him to find a political solution. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has said that the success of the congress should be assessed by its ability to contribute to and support the U.N.-led Geneva talks on ending the war. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Myanmar says U.S. sanctions against general based on 'unreliable accusations';(Reuters) - Myanmar feels sad over a U.S. decision to sanction a military general, a government spokesman said, after Washington linked the commander last week to abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority. This targeted sanction is based on unreliable accusations without evidence, as we have repeatedly said, so we feel sad for that, Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, told Reuters by phone late on Tuesday. The Trump administration announced on Dec. 21 that it was sanctioning Major General Maung Maung Soe, who was in charge of a crackdown on the Rohingya minority in the western state of Rakhine. The United States, as well as the United Nations, have called the crackdown ethnic cleansing . About 655,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine state and sought shelter over the border in Bangladesh, according to the United Nations. The United States said American officials had examined credible evidence of Maung Maung Soe s activities, including allegations against Burmese security forces of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages . The military and the civilian government of Suu Kyi have denied allegations of widespread abuse in Rakhine. The testimonies of Rohingya refugees were only talking stories , Zaw Htay said, adding that Myanmar would act if it received reliable and strong evidence that its troops committed crimes. We have told international governments and human rights groups including the U.N. that the current government is committed to protecting and promoting human rights, said Zaw Htay. The U.S. Treasury said Maung Maung Soe, former chief of the army s Western Command, would have his U.S. assets frozen and Americans could no longer deal with him. Reuters was unable to determine if Maung Maung Soe had business interests in Myanmar or elsewhere. Maung Maung Soe was transferred from his post in Rakhine and put in reserve , an army spokesman told Reuters on Nov. 13. No reason was given, but the military said the same day action would be taken against officials who were weak in acquiring information and who allowed the militant Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) to spread through Muslim villages in Rakhine. Reuters was unable to contact Maung Maung Soe. Major General Tun Tun Nyi of the military s public relations division, the True News Information Unit, said he had no comment on the sanctions and declined to answer questions on Maung Maung Soe. As well as dominating the country s politics for decades, Myanmar s army - known as the Tatmadaw or Royal Force - has gained notoriety for brutal counter-insurgency tactics employed against rebels seeking autonomy in the borderlands since independence from Britain in 1948, according to historians and human rights monitors. But since it began ceding power in 2011 - albeit under a constitution that keeps soldiers in key posts - the army has sought to burnish its image as a modern fighting force. It has defended its actions in Rakhine, with military investigators concluding that troops adhered to rules of engagement and sought to minimize civilian casualties while responding to terrorist provocations. But the spiraling Rohingya crisis has dashed hopes of expanding engagement with Western armies, Andrew Selth, an academic who has researched Myanmar s armed forces, wrote in September. This is a significant loss for the Tatmadaw, which is keen to learn about foreign military policies and practices, Selth wrote on the website of the Sydney-based Lowy Institute. Such contacts would have also helped its officers learn about international norms of behavior and the role of armed forces in democracies. Myanmar s military does not provide detailed biographies of senior officers. In February last year, a state media report said Maung Maung Soe was a brigadier general in the far south of the country, near the border with Thailand. He was referred to as a major general in charge of the military s Western Command in October, 2016, shortly after ARSA attacked three border posts there, killing nine guards. In the weeks after the attacks, Rohingya villagers told Reuters of gang rapes by soldiers and extrajudicial killings. Two military sources told Reuters that Maung Maung Soe oversaw battalions Nos. 352, 551, 564 and 345, which led the so-called clearance operations , and he reported directly to a Bureau of Special Operations in the capital Naypyitaw. His forces were again in combat following more widespread ARSA attacks on Aug. 25 this year, although troops from elite units that report straight to Naypyitaw were airlifted into Rakhine ahead of those attacks. New York-based Human Rights Watch said in October that Battalion 564 was identified by villagers as taking part in an alleged massacre of scores of people in the village of Maung Nu, close to the unit s base in the Buthidaung area. The day Maung Maung Soe s replacement as the commander in Rakhine was announced, the military released a report saying its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities, including in Buthidaung. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Support slides for Merkel serving full term as coalition talks beckon;BERLIN (Reuters) - If Angela Merkel becomes German chancellor again, nearly half of voters would want her to quit her term early, according to a poll offering a rare sign that domestic support for Europe s most influential leader may be waning. Merkel s conservatives won a national election in September, setting her up for a fourth stint in office. But they bled support to the far right, and talks on a three-way coalition with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats collapsed in November. Merkel is now pinning her hopes on cutting a deal with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who finished second in the election but have so far given a lukewarm response to the idea of renewing the grand coalition that governed Germany between 2013 and 2017. The YouGov survey, commissioned by Germany s DPA agency and published in Wednesday s Die Welt newspaper, showed 47 percent of respondents wanted Merkel to step aside before 2021, when her fourth term would end - up from 36 percent in a poll taken at the beginning of October. By contrast, 36 percent want her to serve a full four years, compared to 44 percent three months ago. The SPD, which lost ground among voters after the coalition with Merkel, has been reluctant to commit to a re-run as it looks to keep a skeptical rank and file on board. SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a former leader of the party, adopted a tough tone on Wednesday in top-selling daily Bild. If the chancellery continues to reject all the proposals for EU reform, there will be no coalition with the SPD, he told the paper. The SPD s current leader, Martin Schulz, has championed deeper euro zone reform, calling for a United States of Europe by 2025. Gabriel also said the conservatives needed to reform the health system to close the gap between private and state care. An INSA poll in Bild put Merkel s conservatives up 2 points at 33 percent and the SPD down 0.5 percent at 20.5 percent. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which, capitalizing on voters fears about growing inequality and the impact on Germany of Europe s migrant crisis, entered parliament for the first time in September, was down 1 point at 13 percent. Many commentators have suggested the AfD would make gains if new elections were held due to a failure on Merkel s part to form a government. Merkel s conservatives and the SPD have said they will start exploratory coalition talks on Jan. 7. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New York removes misleading nuclear fallout shelter signs;NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City has quietly begun removing some of the corroding yellow nuclear fallout shelter signs that were appended to thousands of buildings in the 1960s, saying many are misleading Cold War relics that no longer denote functional shelters. The small metal signs are a remnant of the anxieties over the nuclear arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, which prompted U.S. President John F. Kennedy to create the shelter program in 1961 in cities across the nation. The signs, with their simple design of three joined triangles inside a circle, became an emblem of the era. While some New Yorkers may barely notice them today, to others they can be an uneasy reminder that the threat may have altered and diminished, but it has not vanished. Although the Cold War era has long ended, North Korea continues working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States amid bellicose rhetoric from Washington and Pyongyang. A nuclear explosion is now seen as even less likely than during the Cold War. But should catastrophe ever strike, the signs, which still linger in their thousands, would be best ignored, city officials and disaster preparedness experts say. In the aftermath of a nearby nuclear explosion, any survivors counting on the signs to lead them to safety from radioactive fallout after needlessly dashing outside would likely find themselves rattling locked doors or perhaps breaking into what is now a building s laundry room or bike-storage area. Maintenance of the shelter system, which once entailed federal funding to stock shelters with food and water, ended decades ago. The removal of some of the signs from public school buildings, which has not previously been reported, is intended to partly reduce this potential confusion, according to the city s Department of Education. Michael Aciman, a department spokesman, confirmed that any designated fallout shelters created in the city s schools are no longer active and said that the department is aiming to finish unscrewing the signs from school walls by roughly Jan. 1. Although some of the tens of thousands of fallout shelter signs placed around the city by the federal government s Office of Civil Defense have vanished as old buildings have been renovated or demolished, city officials say this is the first coordinated effort to remove them. The Office of Civil Defense was eventually abolished in the 1970s, subsumed into the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Aciman declined to say whether, given the signs are technically federal property, the U.S. government was consulted. But FEMA said it did not mind anyway. FEMA does not have a position regarding the signs, Jenny Burke, a FEMA spokeswoman, wrote in an email on Tuesday. Although the agency does not maintain lists of the old shelter locations, she added, as a part of an ongoing planning effort, the agency is conducting research to retrieve Office of Civilian Defense records. The city s removal appeared somewhat haphazard: on one Brooklyn street, a sign on a school photographed by Reuters this month was subsequently removed, while a second school a few blocks away still had its sign attached, albeit with a screw missing. As a history buff, Jeff Schlegelmilch is fond enough of the signs that he stuck a replica on his office door at Columbia University s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, where he is deputy director. I love seeing the signs, but, as a disaster planner, they have to come down, he said. At best, they are ignored, at worst, they re misleading and are going to cost people s lives. The consensus now, from the federal government downward, was that designated shelters were an outmoded concept, and updated contingency plans have been widely adopted since al Qaeda s attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Schlegelmilch said. Were a nuclear explosion ever to happen, those far enough from the blast center to survive would do well to head to the lower interiors of any standard residential or commercial building, ideally a windowless basement, to shelter from radioactive particles outside, which can burn skin and cause serious illness and death. Cars, on the other hand, are terrible, Schlegelmilch said: the particles sail right through a vehicle s thin exterior. NYC Emergency Management, the agency that runs the city s disaster preparations, was not involved in the decision but staff there welcomed the signs removal. Nancy Silvestri, the agency s press secretary, said even once the signs are gone from schools, many would remain on apartment buildings and other structures. City officials are uncertain who has jurisdiction over those, she said. Eliot Calhoun, the agency s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Planner, sees the signs as unhelpfully muddying the waters. He has spent years endlessly finessing a message, designed to flash as an alert on cellphones, that he hopes he will never have to send. In the nerve center of the agency s Brooklyn headquarters, he called up onto a screen its current form: Nuclear explosion reported. Shelter in basement/center of building, close windows/doors. Every single time I look at it I change it a little bit, he said. When you only have 90 characters and you re trying to save lives you can really think too much about it. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S., Germany urge China to release jailed activist;BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and Germany called on China to immediately release a prominent human rights activist who was jailed for eight years on Tuesday for subversion, the harshest sentence passed in a recent crackdown on activism. Wu Gan, a blogger better known by his online name Super Vulgar Butcher , regularly championed sensitive cases of government abuses of power, both online and in street protests. He was detained in May 2015 and charged with subversion. In a separate case, also on Tuesday, rights lawyer Xie Yang avoided criminal punishment despite being found guilty of inciting subversion, because he admitted to his crimes. We call on the Chinese authorities to release Wu immediately, the U.S. and Germany embassies in China said in a joint statement. As Xie has been exempted from punishment, we urge China to allow Xie to resume his professional activities without preconditions and be free of any restrictions. China s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Beijing frequently denounces foreign concern about rights cases as an interference in internal affairs and says China is a country with rule of law. Wu, in a statement released by his lawyers late on Tuesday, said he considered the sentence an honor as it proved that he had not become a slave or accomplice to the China s autocracy . I got eight years, but I feel no grief or despair. This was my choice, because opposing autocracy means you are already on the road to jail, Wu said in the statement. I call on the international community to pay attention to China s deteriorating human rights situation, he added. Wu s sentence was the most severe in what rights groups have called an unprecedented attack on rights activists and lawyers, known as the 709 crackdown, which began in full force on July 9, 2015. The hardline approach has shown no sign of softening as President Xi Jinping enters his second five-year term in office, and has drawn widespread concern in Western capitals. Germany has been particularly outspoken, to China s irritation. Speaking at a daily news briefing on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying expressed displeasure at comments last week by the German ambassador on China s failure to set up a previously agreed upon cyber consultation mechanism. China had, in fact, invited Germany to send representatives to talks, but the Germans kept putting China off, Hua told reporters. China hoped the ambassador stops saying such irresponsible remarks , she added. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump will fail against Iran as did 'smarter' Reagan: Khamenei;DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump would fail in his hardened stance towards Iran, saying Tehran was stronger than during the time of the more powerful and smarter Ronald Reagan. Reagan was more powerful and smarter than Trump, and he was a better actor in making threats, and he also moved against us and they shot down our plane, Khamenei said in a speech carried on state television. In 1988, a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian passenger plane over the Gulf, killing all 290 aboard, in an incident which Washington said was a mistake. Tehran said it was a deliberate attack on Iran, then at war with neighboring Iraq. But Reagan is gone and, according to out beliefs, he now faces God s retribution ... while Iran has made great advances in all areas since Reagan s time, Khamenei added. This trend will continue under the current American president and any hopes on their part that the Islamic Republic would back off or weaken is futile. Trump refused in October to certify that Tehran is complying with its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and warned he might ultimately terminate the agreement. He announced the shift in U.S. policy in a speech in which he detailed a more aggressive approach to Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its support for militant groups in the Middle East. Under the nuclear deal, sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for Tehran rolling back technologies with nuclear bomb-making potential. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey's Erdogan calls Syria's Assad a terrorist, says impossible to continue with him;TUNIS (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a terrorist and said it was impossible for Syrian peace efforts to continue with him. Syria s foreign ministry quickly responded by accusing Erdogan of himself supporting terrorist groups fighting Assad in Syria s civil war. Turkey has demanded the removal of Assad from power and backed rebels fighting to overthrow him, but it has toned down its demands since it started working with Assad s allies Russia and Iran for a political resolution. Assad is definitely a terrorist who has carried out state terrorism, Erdogan told a televised news conference with his Tunisian counterpart Beji Caid Essebsi in Tunis. It is impossible to continue with Assad. How can we embrace the future with a Syrian president who has killed close to a million of his citizens? he said, in some of his harshest comments for weeks. Though Turkey has long demanded Assad s removal, it is now more focused in Syria on the threat from Islamist militants and Kurdish fighters it considers allies of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who it says have formed a terror corridor on its southern border. Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara views as an extension of the outlawed PKK which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since the 1980s, cannot be invited to Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana. The YPG is the main element in a force that Washington has assisted with training, weapons, air support and help from ground advisers in the battle against Islamic State. That U.S. support has angered Ankara, a NATO ally of Washington. Despite its differences with Russia and Iran, Turkey has worked with the two powers in the search for a political solution in Syria. Ankara, Moscow and Tehran also brokered a deal to set up and monitor a de-escalation zone to reduce fighting between insurgents and Syrian government forces in Syria s rebel-held northwestern Idlib province. We can t say (Assad) will handle this. It is impossible for Turkey to accept this. Northern Syria has been handed over as a terror corridor. There is no peace in Syria and this peace won t come with Assad, Erdogan said. Syria s state news agency SANA quoted a foreign ministry source as saying Erdogan continues to misdirect Turkish public opinion with his usual froth in an attempt to absolve himself of the crimes which he has committed against the Syrian people through advancing support to the various terrorist groups in Syria . ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: International reaction to arrest of Reuters reporters in Myanmar;(Reuters) - Major governments, including the United States, the European Union and Canada, and top United Nations officials, are among those demanding the release of Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from detention in Myanmar. The reporters were arrested on Dec. 12 after being invited to meet police officials on the outskirts of Yangon. They had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, from where about 665,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled since August and sought refuge in Bangladesh, according to the United Nations. The two journalists were sent to Yangon s Insein prison on Wednesday after a brief court appearance where they were allowed to meet their families and a lawyer for the first time since their arrest. Myanmar s Ministry of Information has said the reporters illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media, and released a photo of them in handcuffs. It said the reporters and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, though officials said they have not been charged. Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler has called for their immediate release. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing, he said in a statement. Here are comments on their detention from governments, politicians, human rights groups, journalists and press freedom advocates around the world: - A group of 50 Pulitzer Prize winners called their arrest an outrageous attack on media freedom and demanded their immediate release. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are brave, principled and professional journalists who were working in the public interest and were jailed simply for doing their jobs, they said in a statement on Wednesday. - Two U.N. human rights experts called on Myanmar last week to release the two reporters, saying it was putting Myanmar on a dangerous path by using the Official Secrets Act to criminalize journalism. Journalism is not a crime. These detentions are another way for the Government to censor information about the military s role in Rakhine State and the humanitarian catastrophe taking place, said Yanghee Lee and David Kaye, who are the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar and on freedom of expression respectively. - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the United States was demanding their immediate release or information as to the circumstances around their disappearance. Last week, the State Department reiterated the U.S. demand for the reporters immediate release. - Senator Ben Cardin, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called the arrests outrageous . It just brings back the memory of the horrible practices with the repressive military rule, he said. - Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Chris Coons, leaders of the U.S. Senate Human Rights Caucus, said they were gravely concerned about the reporters arrests and that press freedom was critical to ensuring accountability for violence against the Rohingya. - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kano said last week, Freedom of the press is extremely important, including in order to protect fundamental human rights. The Japanese government would like to watch (this matter) closely. Tokyo-based Human Rights Now has called on Japan to take a stronger stance. - The European Union has urged Myanmar to release the reporters as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said, Freedom of the press and media is the foundation and a cornerstone of any democracy. - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should do everything possible to secure the journalists release and press freedom in Myanmar. - Britain, Holland, Canada, Norway and Sweden have demanded the release of the Reuters reporters. Australia has expressed concern and Bangladesh has denounced the arrests. - Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said it was disturbing to hear of the detention of the two Reuters journalists. Press freedom is very important, she said in a tweet on Christmas Day. - Vijay Nambiar, former special adviser on Myanmar to the U.N. Secretary-General, said in a statement to Reuters that the detentions had caused widespread disappointment within and outside the country that is likely to further damage the international reputation and image of Myanmar. - President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani called on Myanmar to protect media freedoms and release the reporters. - The New York Times said in an editorial on Saturday that releasing the two journalists immediately would help restore at least some lost faith in Aung San Suu Kyi s government. - Human Rights Watch said the detentions appeared to be aimed at stopping independent reporting of the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya. - The Committee to Protect Journalists said the arrests were having a grave impact on the ability of journalists to cover a story of vital global importance . - Reporters Without Borders said there was no justification for the arrests and the charges being considered against the journalists were completely spurious . - Advocacy group Fortify Rights demanded Myanmar immediately and unconditionally release the Reuters journalists. - Myanmar s Irrawaddy online news site called on Dec. 14 for the journalists release in an editorial headlined The Crackdown on the Media Must Stop. It said it is an outrage to see the Ministry of Information release a police record photo of reporters handcuffed as police normally do to criminals on its website soon after the detention. It is chilling to see that MOI has suddenly brought us back to the olden days of a repressive regime. - The Southeast Asian Press Alliance said the journalists were only doing their jobs in trying to fill the void of information on the Rohingya conflict. - The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists, local reporters who have demonstrated against prosecutions of journalists, decried the unfair arrests that affect media freedom . - The Foreign Correspondents Club of Myanmar said it was appalled by the arrests and gravely concerned about press freedom in Myanmar. - The Foreign Correspondents Club in Thailand, Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club and Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong have issued statements supporting the journalists. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Putin critic Navalny calls election boycott rallies;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced on Wednesday a series of rallies across Russia in January to press home his call for a boycott of next year s presidential election, a move likely to draw a sharp response from the Kremlin and police. Navalny unveiled his plan hours after President Vladimir Putin, who polls suggest is a shoo-in for re-election, registered his candidacy at the central election commission ahead of the March 18 vote. The commission ruled on Monday that Navalny was not eligible to run against Putin due to a suspended prison sentence. A furious Navalny, who says the sentence was part of a fabricated case designed to thwart his political ambitions, responded by calling for an election boycott. That prompted the Kremlin to demand an investigation to determine whether his statement broke the law. On Wednesday, Navalny upped the ante, saying he and his supporters would organize nationwide rallies on Jan. 28 in 85 towns and cities, including Moscow and St Petersburg, to support his call for an election boycott. We refuse to call the reappointment of Putin an election, Navalny said in a statement on his website. We are not going to vote and will convince everyone around us not to vote. We are going to campaign (for a boycott) with all our might. A boycott could pose a problem for the Kremlin which is keen to ensure a high turnout in the election to help confer legitimacy on Putin s expected victory amid some signs of apathy among voters. Under Russian law, the time and place of rallies must be agreed with the authorities who have often declined to authorize them in the past, citing conflicting events or security concerns. When the opposition has gone ahead anyway, the police have broken up rallies by force and detained attendees. Polls show that Putin, who has led Russia for 18 years as either president or prime minister, is on course to comfortably win another six-year term, allowing him to rule until 2024, when he ll turn 72. The former KGB officer is running as an independent, a move seen as a way of strengthening his image as a father of the nation rather than as a party political figure. The ruling United Russia party, which he once led and which controls three quarters of seats in the lower house of parliament, has said it will support him, as will Just Russia, a pro-government center-left group. Allies laud Putin for restoring national pride and expanding Moscow s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine. But Navalny says Putin has been in power too long and that his support is artificially maintained by a biased state media and an unfair system which excludes genuine opponents. Navalny has made a name for himself by successfully leveraging social media and conducting high profile corruption investigations into senior officials. He has also organized some of the biggest anti-government protests in years. Opinion polls, whose accuracy Navalny dismisses, put his support in single digits while giving Putin an approval rating of around 80 percent. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;North Korean defectors may have been exposed to radiation, says South;SEOUL (Reuters) - At least four defectors from North Korea have shown signs of radiation exposure, the South Korean government said on Wednesday, although researchers could not confirm if they were was related to Pyongyang s nuclear weapons program. The four are among 30 former residents of Kilju county, an area in North Korea that includes the nuclear test site Punggye-ri, who have been examined by the South Korean government since October, a month after the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told a news briefing. They were exposed to radiation between May 2009 and January 2013, and all defected to the South before the most recent test, a researcher at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, which carried out the examinations, told reporters. North Korea has conducted six nuclear bomb tests since 2006, all in tunnels deep beneath the mountains of Punggye-ri, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and international condemnation. The researcher cautioned that there were a number of ways people may be exposed to radiation, and that none of the defectors who lived had lived in Punggye-ri itself showed specific symptoms. A series of small earthquakes in the wake of the last test - which the North claimed to be of a hydrogen bomb - prompted suspicions that it may have damaged the mountainous location in the northwest tip of the country. Experts warned that further tests in the area could risk radioactive pollution. After the Sept. 3 nuclear test, China s Nuclear Safety Administration said it had begun emergency monitoring for radiation along its border with North Korea. And in early December, a state-run newspaper in China s Jilin province, which borders North Korea and Russia, published a page of common sense advice on how readers can protect themselves from a nuclear weapons attack or explosion. Cartoon illustrations of ways to dispel radioactive contamination were also provided, such as using water to wash off shoes and using cotton buds to clean ears, as well as a picture of a vomiting child to show how medical help can be sought to speed the expulsion of radiation through stomach pumping and induced urination. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Romanian ruling lawmakers propose looser anti-graft rules;BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania s ruling Social Democrats have filed a slew of new changes to the criminal code that would decriminalize several graft offences, including some abuse of office crimes, their second attempt this year to weaken a crackdown on corruption. Transparency International ranks Romania as one of the European Union s most corrupt states and Brussels keeps its justice system under special monitoring, although it has praised magistrates for their efforts to root out high-level graft. A draft bill released on Tuesday showed a group of Social Democrat lawmakers are proposing that abuse of office offences that cause financial damage of less than 200,000 euros ($237,100) should no longer be punishable. Other changes include serving prison sentences of less than three years at home, lower sentences for bribe taking and other graft crimes, as well as decriminalizing taking a bribe for someone other than the accused. Another proposal would make using one s position to obtain sexual favors no longer a crime. If approved, the changes would put an end to an ongoing trial of Social Democrat Party leader and lower house speaker Liviu Dragnea, who is accused of abuse of office. Dozens of lawmakers and mayors across all parties stand to benefit from the changes. Romania s anti-corruption prosecution unit has sent 72 members of parliament to trial since 2006. A similar attempt to decriminalize some abuse of office crimes triggered the country s largest street protests in decades at the start of 2017. The ruling coalition backed down at the time but has revived the proposals. Earlier this month, the ruling coalition has used its overwhelming parliament majority to approve a judicial overhaul that puts magistrates under political control. They have also filed a different set of proposals to change the criminal code that could derail law and order. Thousands of magistrates, centrist President Klaus Iohannis, the European Commission, the U.S. State Department and seven EU states have all criticized both the approved bills and the criminal code proposals. The Social Democrats and their junior coalition partner ALDE have denied the changes would affect the independence of the judiciary and have stressed that parliament has the right to legislate however it sees fit. The proposed changes place Romania alongside its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Get used to drills, China tells Taiwan;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Haiti's ex-prime minister banned from travel amid corruption probe;PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haitian authorities said on Tuesday a former prime minister and top official have been banned from leaving the country as prosecutors lead a corruption probe in which 12 people, including government officials, have been arrested. Former Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, who served from 2009 to 2011, and former justice minister Camille Edouard Jr., who served in 2016, cannot travel abroad while an investigation proceeds into corruption-related charges, Haiti s prosecutor Clame-Ocnam Dameus said. Bellerive, who was premier during a catastrophic earthquake, was ordered to remain within Haiti by a judge who is investigating the 2009 disappearance of a public procurement official and the 2012 death of a construction manager allegedly connected to the case. Bellerive denied any connection to either incident, or to other acts of corruption. I believe all this is part of a political lynching, he told Reuters. No one can show me where I ve enriched myself or acquired unjustified properties. Corruption has plagued Haiti for generations and President Jovenel Moise has pledged to fight it as a way to improve the impoverished Caribbean country s social and economic development. Dameus said Edouard could potentially face charges of money laundering as well as misappropriation of public funds and properties. Edouard did not respond to a request for comment. The dozen others arrested between November and December, a group comprised mostly of government officials, face corruption charges that include the misappropriation of public funds, Dameus said. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Cambodia's Hun Sen vows to stay in power for at least another 10 years;PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen vowed to extend his more than 30 years in power by at least another decade on Wednesday, weeks after the highest court dissolved the main opposition party ahead of a 2018 general election. The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved in November at the request of Hun Sen s government, signaling what one rights group called the death knell for democracy in the Southeast Asian country. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre who defected from the genocidal group and helped drive it from power in 1979, is credited with helping Cambodia achieve economic growth but has also been criticized for his crackdown on civil society groups and the media. China, Cambodia s biggest backer, has said it supports the government s attempts to maintain Cambodia s national security. At a speech given to thousands of garment workers on Wednesday at a pagoda on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Hun Sen said he would stay in power for another two terms and asked workers to vote for his Cambodian People s Party (CPP). I will continue to be the elected Prime Minister for another two mandates which is not less than 10 years, Hun Sen said. I hope that you as well as your parents and grandparents, if they are alive, and your families continue to vote, to support CPP on July 29, 2018. Garments are Cambodia s biggest export by far and garment workers are a politically powerful group. In 2016, garment exports were worth $6.3 billion and reached $4.9 billion in the first seven months of 2017. Hun Sen has been courting garment workers ahead of the vote. He has promised money for female workers who give birth, among other things. You have to remember that if you want to keep jobs ... you should not give opportunity to anyone, including Cambodians and foreigners, to destroy peace, Hun Sen said. Concerns about the impact of next year s election and competition from lower-cost Asian rivals will slow the growth of Cambodia s garment industry next year, the main manufacturers group said earlier this month. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Virginia officials postpone lottery drawing to decide tied statehouse election;(Reuters) - A lottery drawing to settle a tied Virginia legislative race that could shift the statehouse balance of power has been indefinitely postponed, state election officials said on Tuesday, after the Democratic candidate mounted a legal fight. The decision to put off the high-stakes lotto, originally scheduled for Wednesday, marks the latest twist in a dramatic election recount that at one point showed Democrat Shelly Simonds beating Republican incumbent David Yancey by a single vote. A victory by Simonds would shift Republicans’ slim control of the 100-member House of Delegates to an even 50-50 split with the Democrats, forcing the two parties into a rare power-sharing arrangement. A day after Simonds emerged as the victor of a recount, a three-judge panel ruled that a disputed ballot should be counted for Yancey. That decision left the two candidates tied with 11,608 votes each in a district that encompasses the shipping hub of Newport News in southeastern Virginia, setting the stage for the equivalent of a coin toss to pick a final winner. Simonds asked a state court to reconsider on Tuesday, arguing that the disputed ballot was wrongly included. An image filed in court showed that the ballot had bubbles filled in beside both names, with a slash mark by Simonds’ name. The voter selected Republicans for other offices. Simonds told reporters that the case had implications not only for her contest but for the integrity of state elections as a whole, saying that without a court ruling in her favor, “recounts would become a never-ending spiral of courtroom challenges.” The chairman of the Virginia Board of Elections, James Alcorn, said in a statement that while holding a lottery would be in keeping with state law, such a move should be considered “an action of last resort.” He added: “Any substantive concerns regarding the election or recount should be resolved before a random drawing is conducted.” Yancey’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Virginia House Republican Caucus said in a statement that it was reviewing the new court filings. “We believe the court acted appropriately and that the integrity of the process is without question,” spokesman Parker Slaybaugh said. Virginia Department of Elections spokeswoman Andrea Gaines said in an email that no new date for a drawing has been set. Democrats notched historic gains in Virginia’s statehouse elections last month, part of the party’s first big wave of political victories since Republican Donald Trump won the White House last year. Before the Nov. 7 general election, Virginia Republicans held 66 seats to the Democrats’ 34 in the House of Delegates, along with a majority in the state Senate. ;politicsNews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japanese woman, confined by parents for years, found frozen to death: police;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police said on Wednesday they have arrested a couple whose 33-year-old daughter froze to death in a tiny room where they had confined her for years because they believed she had a form of mental illness that made her violent. Western Japan s Osaka Prefectural Police Department said Airi Kakimoto s body was found in a state of extreme malnutrition after her parents reported the death on Saturday. She was 145 cm (4.76 ft) tall and weighed just 19 kg (42 lb). Police said Yasutaka Kakimoto, 55, and Yukari Kakimoto, 53, had confessed that they fed their daughter only once a day and kept her in a 3-square-metre room for some 15 years. Our daughter was mentally ill and, from age 16 or 17, she became violent, so we kept her inside the room, police quoted her parents as saying. People with mental and physical disabilities and their families can still suffer stigma and shame in Japan despite some changes in public attitudes. Police said the parents added the small room - fitted with a camera and a double door that could only be unlocked from the outside - to their house and equipped it with a makeshift toilet and tube to a water tank outside. About 10 surveillance cameras were installed outside the single-storey home, which was surrounded by a 2-metre high fence, police said. The parents found their daughter dead on Dec. 18 but they reported the death Saturday. We wanted to be together with our daughter, police quoted them as saying. Police said the couple were arrested on suspicion of illegally disposing of a body, a step that often precedes more serious charges. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Turkey detains 54 former university staff in Gulen-related operation: Anadolu;ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police have detained 54 staff from a university shut down after an attempted coup last year that was blamed on U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, state-run Anadolu news agency said on Wednesday. It said the police had arrest warrants for a total of 171 academics and staff from Istanbul s former Fatih University, which was regarded as having close ties to Gulen. The cleric has denied any involvement in the failed putsch of July 15, 2016. Fatih University was shut under a state decree following the coup attempt and Anadolu said staff there were found to have been users of ByLock, an encrypted messaging application which the government says was commonly used by Gulen s supporters. Since the coup attempt more than 50,000 people, including civil servants and security personnel, have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 suspended or dismissed from their jobs. Rights groups say the crackdown has been exploited to muzzle dissent. The government says the measures have been necessary due to the security threats which has Turkey faced since the putsch, in which 250 people were killed. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Pakistan appoints economist to head finance ministry in run-up to election;Karachi, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan has appointed an economist, who was recently chairman of the board of investment, to take charge of the finance ministry after the former minister was relieved of his duties amid accusations of corruption. Miftah Ismail has been made an adviser to the prime minister for finance, with the status of a federal minister, the government said in a notification. Although I will have stewardship of the Ministry of Finance for only 5 months, the prime minister has tasked me to help him implement a very ambitious agenda, Ismail said in a post on Twitter. He was referring to general election due next year and widely expected in May, though no date has been fixed. The former fiance minister, Ishaq Dar, was relieved of his portfolio on Nov. 22 amid mounting headwinds for the $300 billion economy battling to stave off balance of payments pressures due to dwindling foreign currency reserves and a widening current account deficit. Dar, who was widely credited with navigating Pakistan out of a 2013 balance of payments crisis, is facing corruption charges in connection with accusations he amassed wealth beyond his known sources of income. Dar has denied all charges. He is receiving treatment in London for a heart condition. Ismail is a member of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif s political party, which is still the ruling party even though Sharif was ousted amid corruption allegations in July. Sharif has also denied any wrongdoing. The party has been reluctant to allow the rupee to weaken ahead of elections as it may stoke inflation, though many investors and economists say a weaker rupee is needed to shore up lagging exports. Samiullah Tariq, director of research at Arif Habib Limited, said he expected Ismail would let the rupee soften if he though it necessary. Basically, he s pro-business, if he feels that a stronger rupee is hindering exports, he will let it weaken, Tariq told Reuters. He has plans to introduce tax reforms, rationalize tax rates, create a scheme to release refunds and initiate a scheme to bring back and declare foreign assets owned by Pakistanis, Tariq added. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Japan says revising comfort women agreement with South Korea unacceptable;TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Wednesday that any attempt to revise Tokyo s 2015 agreement with South Korea over comfort women forced to work in Japan s wartime military brothels would be unacceptable and make relations unmanageable. Kono s comment comes after his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, said the agreement failed to meet the needs of victims and apologized for the controversial deal. The Japan-South Korea agreement is an agreement between the two governments and one that has been highly appreciated by international society, Kono said in a written statement. If the South Korean government ... tried to revise the agreement that is already being implemented, that would make Japan s ties with South Korea unmanageable and it would be unacceptable. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia's Lavrov: main part of battle with Islamic State in Syria is over - RIA;MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday the main part of the battle with Islamic State in Syria was over, according to the state-run RIA news agency. RIA also quoted Lavrov as saying the key task in Syria now was to destroy Jabhat al-Nusra, referring to the al Qaeda-linked group known in English as Nusra Front. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Russia accuses U.S. of training former Islamic State fighters in Syria;MOSCOW (Reuters) - The chief of the Russian General Staff has accused the United States of training former Islamic State fighters in Syria to try to destabilize the country. General Valery Gerasimov s allegations, made in a newspaper interview, center on a U.S. military base at Tanf, a strategic Syrian highway border crossing with Iraq in the south of the country. Russia says the U.S. base is illegal and that it and the area around it have become a black hole where militants operate unhindered. Islamic State has this year lost almost all the territory it held in Syria and Iraq. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday the main part of the battle with Islamic State in Syria was over, according to the state-run RIA news agency. The United States says the Tanf facility is a temporary base used to train partner forces to fight Islamic State. It has rejected similar Russian allegations in the past, saying Washington remains committed to killing off Islamic State and denying it safe havens. But Gerasimov told the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on Wednesday that the United States was training up fighters who were former Islamic State militants but who now call themselves the New Syrian Army or use other names. He said Russia satellites and drones had spotted militant brigades at the U.S. base. They are in reality being trained there, Gerasimov said, saying there were also a large number of militants and former Islamic State fighters at Shadadi, where he said there was also a U.S. base. They are practically Islamic State, he said. But after they are worked with, they change their spots and take on another name. Their task is to destabilize the situation. Russia has partially withdrawn from Syria, but Gerasimov said the fact that Moscow was keeping an air base and naval facility there meant it was well placed to deal with pockets of instability if and when they arose. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Foreign tourist numbers up 23 percent in Tunisia in 2017;TUNIS (Reuters) - The number of foreign tourists in Tunisia rose by 23 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year, official data showed, indicating that a vital industry crippled two years ago by Islamist attacks is recovering. Tourism accounts for about 8 percent of Tunisia s gross domestic product, provides thousands of jobs and is a key source of foreign currency, but has struggled since two deadly militant attacks in 2015. A total of 6.731 million tourists visited the North African country in the year until Dec. 20, data provided by the presidency showed. The number of European tourists rose by 19.5 percent to 1.664 million, the data showed. The number of French visitors rose by 45.5 percent and the number of Germans by 40.8 percent in the same period. The number of Algerians visiting rose by 40.5 percent to 2.322 million. Tunisia s tourism revenues rose by 16.3 percent to 2.69 billion dinars ($1.09 billion), data showed. In 2010 Tunisia s tourism revenues had hit a record at 3.5 billion dinars with almost 7 million tourists visiting. The rise is helping the government weather an economic crisis as it plans to raise taxes from 2018, part of reforms agreed with the International Monetary Fund in return for a loan package. High unemployment has driven youth to seek illegal migration to Europe. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;France's Macron presses Saudi king to lift Yemen blockade: Elysee source;PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron called for a complete lifting of a blockade on Yemen in a telephone call with Saudi Arabia s King Salman on Dec. 24, an Elysee source said on Wednesday. The president expressed his strong concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and called on the Saudi king to lift completely the blockade to allow humanitarian aid and commercial goods to enter Yemen, the source said. The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said a week ago that it would keep the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah port - vital for aid - open for a month despite another missile attack against Riyadh, but it has kept up air raids. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;China's Communist Party to discuss amending constitution, graft fight;BEIJING (Reuters) - China s ruling Communist Party will meet next month to discuss amending the constitution and to talk about the ongoing fight against graft, state media said on Wednesday, ahead of March s expected passing of a new anti-corruption law. Fighting deeply ingrained graft has been a key policy plank for President Xi Jinping in his first term in office, and that battle will take on a new hue with the setting up of the National Supervision Commission as he begins his second term. Trial work has already begun for that commission, which is likely to be formally codified in law in March at the meeting of China s largely rubber stamp parliament. The new body will take over from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and merge multiple anti-graft units into a single body. It will also expand the graft campaign s purview to include employees at state-backed institutions rather than just party members. In a short report, Xinhua news agency said the party s politburo, one of its elite ruling bodies, had met and decided to hold two important meetings next month - one on amending the state constitution and the other specifically on fighting corruption. Xinhua gave no details of what the constitutional amendment might entail, but Chinese legal scholars have said the country needs to amend its constitution before it can set up the new supervision commission to ensure there is a proper constitutional basis for its powers. The constitution clearly defines China s top political institutions, such as the judiciary and the prosecutor, in order to grant them state power and changes need to be made to these definitions to make room for a similarly powerful supervision system, scholars argue. The party will discuss the amendment, or amendments, at a plenum next month, Xinhua said without giving an exact date or saying whether it was one amendment or more. The constitution, which is different from the party constitution, was last amended in 2004 to include guarantees to protect private property and human rights. The other meeting, a full session of the anti-corruption watchdog the CCDI, will be held from Jan. 11-13, the report added, again without giving details. Xi has vowed that his war against graft will not ease until officials at all levels dare not, cannot and do not want to be corrupt. Xi told top party leaders in October revision of the anti-graft architecture would include the scrapping of a controversial shuanggui system of secret interrogations, and the introduction of a new detention system. The latest draft of the new Supervision Law, unveiled last week, adds protections for graft suspects as part of efforts to revise the interrogation system. ;worldnews;27/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CNN’S FAKE NEWS BACKFIRES! CNN Legal Analyst Agrees With Trump On FBI, DOJ: “Off the rails!” [Video];Hell has frozen over! CNN is actually reporting the truth! CNN legal analyst Paul Callan agrees with the assessment that the FBI and DOJ need to be purged . They refer to Rep. Rooney s (see below) take that the FBI and DOJ are off the rails:OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON REP ROONEY S TAKE ON THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI:THIS IS PRICELESS! The video below shows just how out of control the left is when it comes to the corruption within the FBI and DOJ.When a Republican lawmaker called for a purge of what he said are deep state elements within the FBI and Justice Department, the MSNBC host Hallie Jackson was clearly agitated and shocked: I m very concerned that the DOJ and the FBI, whether you call it deep state or what, are off the rails, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney stated then cited reasons behind his concern. The anti-Trump bias and the demotion of Bruce Ohr were just two of the examples Rooney gave.Jackson shot back, Congressman, you just called the FBI and the DOJ off the rails. Something that you re okay with talking about here? How does that not sort of undermine the work that the agencies are doing? I don t want to discredit them. I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it, said Rooney. And say look, we ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state. Jackson responded: Language like that, Congressman, purge? Purge the Department of Justice? Rooney responded, Well, I think that Mr. Strzok could be purged, sure. Ms. Jackson might want to read up on the corruption that s been uncovered so far with the FBI and DOJ.;politics;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;The Jerusalem Decision: From Creative Chaos to Effective Turmoil; Dr Can Erimtan 21st Century WireDid Donald J. Trump have any idea about the impact his words would have across the world?!? Did he have any idea that the whole wide world, including the United Nations, would turn against him?On Wednesday, 6 December 2017, in the White House s Diplomatic Reception Room the President of the United States proceeded to make history, or, proceeded to leave his personal mark on the flow of world events as his words set a whole chain of global events in motion: I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. In his preamble to this potentially explosive and arguably rather disconcerting statement, Trump explained that [i]n 1995, [under Bill Clinton s watch, that is] Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city and so importantly is Israel s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago. In this way, the 45th U.S. President showed himself to have been cut from a completely different cloth indeed, as he uttered words that neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush or, more importantly perhaps, Barack Obama had dared speak.Yes, Trump openly came out and made plain the deep love that dare not speak its name in spite of the vehemently pro-Israel stance taken by the U.S. ever since the time of President Eisenhower (1953-61) and particularly, ever since the Six Day War (5-10 June 1967), in spite of the ceaseless activities of AIPAC and J Street, no previous incumbent had dared bestow a bona fide U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as a physical token of the deep and ardent bonds between the New World and the Promised Land. Only, Donald J. Trump had the gall to deliver, doing what Clinton had promised yet none of his successors had been able to realise . . . until now, that is.In true Aristotelian fashion Trump took the potentiality that was Jerusalem (known as Al Quds or the Sacred City in the Muslim world) and turned it into an actuality by means of pledging full ambassadorial honours for the ancient city. Following these presidential words, outspoken Israeli voices did not take long to heap praise on the White House. Mark Regev, the erstwhile spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem (2004-7) and frequent Israeli apologist appearing on various mainstream media, and currently even active as Israeli Ambassador in London (since 2015) blurted out that he think[s] this was a just move and a good move for peace. His boss, Bibi or Benjamin Netanyahu (fourth premiership, 2015 present) was equally forthcoming, talking to the press on the same day the U.S. President made his performance in the Diplomatic Reception Room: Thank you President Trump for today s historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful. The PM in the next instance also echoed his ambassador s words, declaring that [t]here is no peace that doesn t include Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The idea that Jerusalem should be at the heart of the Jewish people s land and nation namely has its roots in the Bible, in 2 Chronicles 6:5-6, to be precise: Since the day I brought my people out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built so that my Name might be there, nor have I chosen anyone to be ruler over my people Israel. But now I have chosen Jerusalem for my Name to be there, and I have chosen David to rule my people Israel, as worded in the New International Version. And Bibi knows that too.Bibi even took his words of praise abroad. First to Paris, where he met with President Emmanuel Macron, who had urged his U.S. counterpart to preserve the city s status quo prior to Trump s Diplomatic Reception Room performance (10 December 2017). Bibi disagreed volubly with the Frenchman, characterising as absurd anyone not willing to recognise the millennial connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. Next, even proceeding to refer to God s word that had elevated Jerusalem to its lofty position as site for his temple: [y]ou can read it in a very fine book it s called the Bible. The following day he went to Brussels, where he attended a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers (11 December 2017). The Israeli PM told the gathered EU FM as well as the assembled press corps that Trump s Jerusalem declaration makes peace possible because recognizing reality is the substance of peace, the foundation of peace. The Invention of the Jewish People and the Position of Jerusalem in IslamThe state of Israel, as a Jewish nation state implanted on Middle Eastern soil in 1948, employs nationalist myth and religious tradition as credible arguments justifying its mere existence. The Israeli journalist and author Daniel Gavron, for example, states that most Israelis [regard it as] axiomatic that the celebrations for the 3,000th anniversary of the conquest of Jerusalem by King David [in 1995] mark[ed] a real and tangible event, even though he himself doubts its authenticity. In other words, the Jewish people, as a shorthand for the Israeli citzenry, have apparently already been following the political and ideological leanings currently exhorted by Bibi for quite a while. But, as I explained at length some time ago, the mere mention of the term nation or even just people is a problematic issue in its own right the point that I am trying to get across is that nations or people cannot be perceived as natural or even organic phenomena, but rather as contrived and constructed social units consisting of individuals who willingly become part of a larger artificial whole through the manipulation and management of larger forces and structures leaders of men and their organisations. It has been nearly ten years now that the historian Schlomo Sand published his groundbreaking text The Invention of the Jewish People, which attempted to popularise the theoretical constructs of writers and thinkers like Benedict Anderson and Ernst Gellner, amongst others, but, as seems blatantly apparent from looking at Bibi s recent proclamations, his message has clearly failed to penetrate the academic bubble, in spite of having topped Israeli bestseller list for nineteen weeks. With regard to the city of Jerusalem, on the other hand, archeological evidence appears to prove conclusivedly that the site has been continuously occupied for some 5,000 years, signalling the urban centre s pre-Jewish roots. But the notion that King David conquered the place to establish the one true god s temple seems rather shaky. Gavron explains that the biblical account of the capture of the city is the only one we have, and in the opinion of most modern scholars, the Bible is not an entirely reliable historical document. Still, archeological excavations carried out in the summer of 1993 appear to have produced evidence that a certain David indeed founded a dynastic live in the 10th century BCE namely, a small triangular piece of basalt rock . . . subsequently identified as part of a victory pillar erected by the king of Syria and later smashed by an Israelite ruler carrying an Aramaic inscription talking about a Beit David ( House or Dynasty of David ). But the Jewish conquest of Jerusalem did not mark the end of the city s story of military takeover and/or occupation: remaining in ancient times, the Assyrian King Sennacherib laid siege to the city in the year 701 BCE, whereas the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar captured the city in the seventh year of his reign (598 BCE), but of greater importance is the sack and destruction of the city and its temple at the hands of Titus, son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian (70 CE), in response to the Jews Great Revolt against Rome that had sprung up in 66 CE. The ultimate outcome of Rome s harsh response was the Diaspora, as explained by the American rabbi, lecturer, and author Joseph Telushkin, who estimates that as many as one million Jews died as a result, while carrying in its wake the almost two-thousand-year span of Jewish homelessness and exile. With the majority of Jews apparently dispersed from the land and city, Jerusalem was eventually conquered by the Caliph Umar (reign 634-44) in the year 638, an event which seems to have taken place following a peaceful siege, no blood was shed, in the words of Zia H Shah, a New York-based physician and the Chief Editor of the Muslim Times. The addition of Jerusalem to the Dar al-Islam (or, the abode of Islam) was important. Though the city s name does not appear specifically in the Quran (containing only a reference to al-Masjid al- Aqsa or the Furthest Mosque, 17:1), it is the locus of the Prophet s miraculous Night Journey (or Mi raj). The story, as related in various prophetic traditions (or hadith), tells how the figure of the Prophet travelled from Makkah to the Furthest Mosque (in Jerusalem), from whence he ascended Heaven, so that Allah might show him of Our signs. As a result, the Masjid al- Aqsa, arguably built by the Caliph Umar though no historical records exist to this effect, is regarded as the third most sacred mosque in Islam, following the Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah, and Al Masjid An-Nabawi in Madinah.A Pseudo-Ottoman Gambit: Diverting Attention for a PurposeAs a result, Donald Trump s Diplomatic Reception Room stunt far supersedes the thorny Palestinian issue, the life-and-death matter of peace in the Middle East, or even the real estate division between East and West Jerusalem. The English-language pan-Arab television channel Al Jazeera English matter-of-factly point out on its website that [v]iolence, protests and arrests have followed US President Donald Trump s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. All across the globe Muslims have taken to the street to voice their disapproval of Trump s latest attempt to act like a real president, a president unlike any of his predecessors: [r]allies against Trump s decision also took place in the Indian city of Mumbai, the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the Japanese capital, Tokyo. But also in Turkey where President Recept Tayyip Erdo an (aka the Prez) has been at pains for years to appear as a rightful heir to the Ottoman sultans of old after all, Sultan Selim I (1512-20) took hold of the city of Jerusalem in 1517, remaining part of the Ottoman fold till the onset of the British Mandate (1917-48). On Thursday and Friday, (7-8 December 2017), spontaneous meetings took place throughout the whole of the country, from Istanbul over Bursa, Ankara, and Mersin, to Hatay, Gaziantep, Tatvan, Adana, Van, and Kahramanmara . More importantly, the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held a meeting in Istanbul on 13 December 2017, and the Prez employed this platform to portray himself as the ultimate champion of Islam, defying not just the United States of America and Israel, but also the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the nominal Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. As I have written quite some time ago, the Prez is more than determined to challenge his erstwhile friend and ally King Salman and see himself as the rightful Calip of the world of Islam, in true pseudo-Ottoman fashion.The OIC meeting dutifully released its Istanbul Declaration on Freedom for Al Quds' : [a]ppreciating the Republic of Turkey and the Turkish people for hosting the Extraordinary Islamic Summit regarding this important cause of Ummah, especially the call for this Extraordinary Summit made by His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdo an (image, left), President of the Republic of Turkey . . . We reject and condemn the US Administration s unlawful statement regarding the status of Al Quds . . . Just like the fact that Israel s decision to annex Al Quds and its actions and practices therewith are never accepted, we declare that this statement is identically null and void from the point of view of conscience, justice and history. We invite all members of the UN, the EU and the international community to remain committed to the status of Al Quds and all related UN Resolutions. Rather than accomplishing anything much at all, the extraordinary OIC meeting primarily served to heighten Tayyip Erdo an s prestige, at home as well as abroad. As such, a cynic would say that Trump s timing was impeccable, as 17/25 December marks the anniversary of the scandal variously known as #AKPgate that erupted in 2013, and that presently was very much on people s minds in Turkey given that the Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab (or R za Sarraf, in Turkish) was appearing in court in New York. The court case investigates breaches of the sanctions placed upon Iran and many Turks eagerly followed the proceedings on Twitter. One Istanbul-based writer Kareem Shaheen described the accusations as follows: [i]n a case that has strained relations between Turkey and the US, Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, described a sprawling money laundering network that allowed Iran access to international markets from 2010 to 2015 in violation of sanctions over its nuclear programme. He told jurors in New York on Thursday [30 November 2017] that [Tayyip] Erdo an, who was prime minister of Turkey at the time, had personally authorised a transaction on behalf of Iran. Zarrab said he had [also] bribed the then Turkish economy minister Zafer a layan and the former head of the state-owned Halkbank. As a result, given that the Zarrab case all but exacerbated the dire Turco-American relationship, Trump s Jerusalem declaration must have come as a welcome bolt from the blue for Erdogan. The decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital finally absolved the Erdogan from any attempts to salvage the cross-Atlantic relationship, and instead emboldened him to announce publicly that the Republic of Turkey is now the rightful heir to the Ottoman Empire and the only hope left for Muslims across the world, Muslims that have been victimised by years and years of oppressive U.S. foreign policy. And, putting a cherry on top of the proverbial cake of discontent, Erdo an announced on Thursday, 17 December 2017, that he would establish a Turkish Embassy in Jerusalem, representing Ankara in Palestine, to be clear. Speaking to an audience of faithful followers in the city of Karaman, the Prez declared God willing, the day is close when officially, with God s permission, we will open our embassy there, in Jerusalem.All the while, the Palestinian people continue to suffer and Israel employs any and every pretext available to stage military assaults on the Gaza strip and crack down on Palestinian protesters But, Trump has done his deed, leaving his indelible mark on the Middle East, while the Prez, in turn, can now rightfully claim that he alone is able to represent the Muslim world on the international arena.*** 21WIRE special contributor Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar who was living in Istanbul for some time, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. He attended the VUB in Brussels and did his graduate work at the universities of Essex and Oxford. In Oxford, Erimtan was a member of Lady Margaret Hall and he obtained his doctorate in Modern History in 2002. His publications include the book Ottomans Looking West? as well as numerous scholarly articles. In the period 2010-11, he wrote op-eds for Today s Zaman and in the further course of 2011 he also published a number of pieces in H rriyet Daily News. In 2013, he was the Turkey Editor of the stanbul Gazette. He is on Twitter at @theerimtanangleREAD MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Palestine FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;The Jerusalem Decision: From Creative Chaos to Effective Turmoil; Dr Can Erimtan 21st Century WireDid Donald J. Trump have any idea about the impact his words would have across the world?!? Did he have any idea that the whole wide world, including the United Nations, would turn against him?On Wednesday, 6 December 2017, in the White House s Diplomatic Reception Room the President of the United States proceeded to make history, or, proceeded to leave his personal mark on the flow of world events as his words set a whole chain of global events in motion: I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering. In his preamble to this potentially explosive and arguably rather disconcerting statement, Trump explained that [i]n 1995, [under Bill Clinton s watch, that is] Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city and so importantly is Israel s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago. In this way, the 45th U.S. President showed himself to have been cut from a completely different cloth indeed, as he uttered words that neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush or, more importantly perhaps, Barack Obama had dared speak.Yes, Trump openly came out and made plain the deep love that dare not speak its name in spite of the vehemently pro-Israel stance taken by the U.S. ever since the time of President Eisenhower (1953-61) and particularly, ever since the Six Day War (5-10 June 1967), in spite of the ceaseless activities of AIPAC and J Street, no previous incumbent had dared bestow a bona fide U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem as a physical token of the deep and ardent bonds between the New World and the Promised Land. Only, Donald J. Trump had the gall to deliver, doing what Clinton had promised yet none of his successors had been able to realise . . . until now, that is.In true Aristotelian fashion Trump took the potentiality that was Jerusalem (known as Al Quds or the Sacred City in the Muslim world) and turned it into an actuality by means of pledging full ambassadorial honours for the ancient city. Following these presidential words, outspoken Israeli voices did not take long to heap praise on the White House. Mark Regev, the erstwhile spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem (2004-7) and frequent Israeli apologist appearing on various mainstream media, and currently even active as Israeli Ambassador in London (since 2015) blurted out that he think[s] this was a just move and a good move for peace. His boss, Bibi or Benjamin Netanyahu (fourth premiership, 2015 present) was equally forthcoming, talking to the press on the same day the U.S. President made his performance in the Diplomatic Reception Room: Thank you President Trump for today s historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jewish people and the Jewish state will be forever grateful. The PM in the next instance also echoed his ambassador s words, declaring that [t]here is no peace that doesn t include Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The idea that Jerusalem should be at the heart of the Jewish people s land and nation namely has its roots in the Bible, in 2 Chronicles 6:5-6, to be precise: Since the day I brought my people out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built so that my Name might be there, nor have I chosen anyone to be ruler over my people Israel. But now I have chosen Jerusalem for my Name to be there, and I have chosen David to rule my people Israel, as worded in the New International Version. And Bibi knows that too.Bibi even took his words of praise abroad. First to Paris, where he met with President Emmanuel Macron, who had urged his U.S. counterpart to preserve the city s status quo prior to Trump s Diplomatic Reception Room performance (10 December 2017). Bibi disagreed volubly with the Frenchman, characterising as absurd anyone not willing to recognise the millennial connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. Next, even proceeding to refer to God s word that had elevated Jerusalem to its lofty position as site for his temple: [y]ou can read it in a very fine book it s called the Bible. The following day he went to Brussels, where he attended a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers (11 December 2017). The Israeli PM told the gathered EU FM as well as the assembled press corps that Trump s Jerusalem declaration makes peace possible because recognizing reality is the substance of peace, the foundation of peace. The Invention of the Jewish People and the Position of Jerusalem in IslamThe state of Israel, as a Jewish nation state implanted on Middle Eastern soil in 1948, employs nationalist myth and religious tradition as credible arguments justifying its mere existence. The Israeli journalist and author Daniel Gavron, for example, states that most Israelis [regard it as] axiomatic that the celebrations for the 3,000th anniversary of the conquest of Jerusalem by King David [in 1995] mark[ed] a real and tangible event, even though he himself doubts its authenticity. In other words, the Jewish people, as a shorthand for the Israeli citzenry, have apparently already been following the political and ideological leanings currently exhorted by Bibi for quite a while. But, as I explained at length some time ago, the mere mention of the term nation or even just people is a problematic issue in its own right the point that I am trying to get across is that nations or people cannot be perceived as natural or even organic phenomena, but rather as contrived and constructed social units consisting of individuals who willingly become part of a larger artificial whole through the manipulation and management of larger forces and structures leaders of men and their organisations. It has been nearly ten years now that the historian Schlomo Sand published his groundbreaking text The Invention of the Jewish People, which attempted to popularise the theoretical constructs of writers and thinkers like Benedict Anderson and Ernst Gellner, amongst others, but, as seems blatantly apparent from looking at Bibi s recent proclamations, his message has clearly failed to penetrate the academic bubble, in spite of having topped Israeli bestseller list for nineteen weeks. With regard to the city of Jerusalem, on the other hand, archeological evidence appears to prove conclusivedly that the site has been continuously occupied for some 5,000 years, signalling the urban centre s pre-Jewish roots. But the notion that King David conquered the place to establish the one true god s temple seems rather shaky. Gavron explains that the biblical account of the capture of the city is the only one we have, and in the opinion of most modern scholars, the Bible is not an entirely reliable historical document. Still, archeological excavations carried out in the summer of 1993 appear to have produced evidence that a certain David indeed founded a dynastic live in the 10th century BCE namely, a small triangular piece of basalt rock . . . subsequently identified as part of a victory pillar erected by the king of Syria and later smashed by an Israelite ruler carrying an Aramaic inscription talking about a Beit David ( House or Dynasty of David ). But the Jewish conquest of Jerusalem did not mark the end of the city s story of military takeover and/or occupation: remaining in ancient times, the Assyrian King Sennacherib laid siege to the city in the year 701 BCE, whereas the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar captured the city in the seventh year of his reign (598 BCE), but of greater importance is the sack and destruction of the city and its temple at the hands of Titus, son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian (70 CE), in response to the Jews Great Revolt against Rome that had sprung up in 66 CE. The ultimate outcome of Rome s harsh response was the Diaspora, as explained by the American rabbi, lecturer, and author Joseph Telushkin, who estimates that as many as one million Jews died as a result, while carrying in its wake the almost two-thousand-year span of Jewish homelessness and exile. With the majority of Jews apparently dispersed from the land and city, Jerusalem was eventually conquered by the Caliph Umar (reign 634-44) in the year 638, an event which seems to have taken place following a peaceful siege, no blood was shed, in the words of Zia H Shah, a New York-based physician and the Chief Editor of the Muslim Times. The addition of Jerusalem to the Dar al-Islam (or, the abode of Islam) was important. Though the city s name does not appear specifically in the Quran (containing only a reference to al-Masjid al- Aqsa or the Furthest Mosque, 17:1), it is the locus of the Prophet s miraculous Night Journey (or Mi raj). The story, as related in various prophetic traditions (or hadith), tells how the figure of the Prophet travelled from Makkah to the Furthest Mosque (in Jerusalem), from whence he ascended Heaven, so that Allah might show him of Our signs. As a result, the Masjid al- Aqsa, arguably built by the Caliph Umar though no historical records exist to this effect, is regarded as the third most sacred mosque in Islam, following the Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah, and Al Masjid An-Nabawi in Madinah.A Pseudo-Ottoman Gambit: Diverting Attention for a PurposeAs a result, Donald Trump s Diplomatic Reception Room stunt far supersedes the thorny Palestinian issue, the life-and-death matter of peace in the Middle East, or even the real estate division between East and West Jerusalem. The English-language pan-Arab television channel Al Jazeera English matter-of-factly point out on its website that [v]iolence, protests and arrests have followed US President Donald Trump s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. All across the globe Muslims have taken to the street to voice their disapproval of Trump s latest attempt to act like a real president, a president unlike any of his predecessors: [r]allies against Trump s decision also took place in the Indian city of Mumbai, the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the Japanese capital, Tokyo. But also in Turkey where President Recept Tayyip Erdo an (aka the Prez) has been at pains for years to appear as a rightful heir to the Ottoman sultans of old after all, Sultan Selim I (1512-20) took hold of the city of Jerusalem in 1517, remaining part of the Ottoman fold till the onset of the British Mandate (1917-48). On Thursday and Friday, (7-8 December 2017), spontaneous meetings took place throughout the whole of the country, from Istanbul over Bursa, Ankara, and Mersin, to Hatay, Gaziantep, Tatvan, Adana, Van, and Kahramanmara . More importantly, the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held a meeting in Istanbul on 13 December 2017, and the Prez employed this platform to portray himself as the ultimate champion of Islam, defying not just the United States of America and Israel, but also the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the nominal Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. As I have written quite some time ago, the Prez is more than determined to challenge his erstwhile friend and ally King Salman and see himself as the rightful Calip of the world of Islam, in true pseudo-Ottoman fashion.The OIC meeting dutifully released its Istanbul Declaration on Freedom for Al Quds' : [a]ppreciating the Republic of Turkey and the Turkish people for hosting the Extraordinary Islamic Summit regarding this important cause of Ummah, especially the call for this Extraordinary Summit made by His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdo an (image, left), President of the Republic of Turkey . . . We reject and condemn the US Administration s unlawful statement regarding the status of Al Quds . . . Just like the fact that Israel s decision to annex Al Quds and its actions and practices therewith are never accepted, we declare that this statement is identically null and void from the point of view of conscience, justice and history. We invite all members of the UN, the EU and the international community to remain committed to the status of Al Quds and all related UN Resolutions. Rather than accomplishing anything much at all, the extraordinary OIC meeting primarily served to heighten Tayyip Erdo an s prestige, at home as well as abroad. As such, a cynic would say that Trump s timing was impeccable, as 17/25 December marks the anniversary of the scandal variously known as #AKPgate that erupted in 2013, and that presently was very much on people s minds in Turkey given that the Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab (or R za Sarraf, in Turkish) was appearing in court in New York. The court case investigates breaches of the sanctions placed upon Iran and many Turks eagerly followed the proceedings on Twitter. One Istanbul-based writer Kareem Shaheen described the accusations as follows: [i]n a case that has strained relations between Turkey and the US, Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, described a sprawling money laundering network that allowed Iran access to international markets from 2010 to 2015 in violation of sanctions over its nuclear programme. He told jurors in New York on Thursday [30 November 2017] that [Tayyip] Erdo an, who was prime minister of Turkey at the time, had personally authorised a transaction on behalf of Iran. Zarrab said he had [also] bribed the then Turkish economy minister Zafer a layan and the former head of the state-owned Halkbank. As a result, given that the Zarrab case all but exacerbated the dire Turco-American relationship, Trump s Jerusalem declaration must have come as a welcome bolt from the blue for Erdogan. The decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital finally absolved the Erdogan from any attempts to salvage the cross-Atlantic relationship, and instead emboldened him to announce publicly that the Republic of Turkey is now the rightful heir to the Ottoman Empire and the only hope left for Muslims across the world, Muslims that have been victimised by years and years of oppressive U.S. foreign policy. And, putting a cherry on top of the proverbial cake of discontent, Erdo an announced on Thursday, 17 December 2017, that he would establish a Turkish Embassy in Jerusalem, representing Ankara in Palestine, to be clear. Speaking to an audience of faithful followers in the city of Karaman, the Prez declared God willing, the day is close when officially, with God s permission, we will open our embassy there, in Jerusalem.All the while, the Palestinian people continue to suffer and Israel employs any and every pretext available to stage military assaults on the Gaza strip and crack down on Palestinian protesters But, Trump has done his deed, leaving his indelible mark on the Middle East, while the Prez, in turn, can now rightfully claim that he alone is able to represent the Muslim world on the international arena.*** 21WIRE special contributor Dr. Can Erimtan is an independent scholar who was living in Istanbul for some time, with a wide interest in the politics, history and culture of the Balkans and the Greater Middle East. He attended the VUB in Brussels and did his graduate work at the universities of Essex and Oxford. In Oxford, Erimtan was a member of Lady Margaret Hall and he obtained his doctorate in Modern History in 2002. His publications include the book Ottomans Looking West? as well as numerous scholarly articles. In the period 2010-11, he wrote op-eds for Today s Zaman and in the further course of 2011 he also published a number of pieces in H rriyet Daily News. In 2013, he was the Turkey Editor of the stanbul Gazette. He is on Twitter at @theerimtanangleREAD MORE PALESTINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Palestine FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CNN’S FAKE NEWS BACKFIRES! CNN Legal Analyst Agrees With Trump On FBI, DOJ: “Off the rails!” [Video];Hell has frozen over! CNN is actually reporting the truth! CNN legal analyst Paul Callan agrees with the assessment that the FBI and DOJ need to be purged . They refer to Rep. Rooney s (see below) take that the FBI and DOJ are off the rails:OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON REP ROONEY S TAKE ON THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI:THIS IS PRICELESS! The video below shows just how out of control the left is when it comes to the corruption within the FBI and DOJ.When a Republican lawmaker called for a purge of what he said are deep state elements within the FBI and Justice Department, the MSNBC host Hallie Jackson was clearly agitated and shocked: I m very concerned that the DOJ and the FBI, whether you call it deep state or what, are off the rails, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney stated then cited reasons behind his concern. The anti-Trump bias and the demotion of Bruce Ohr were just two of the examples Rooney gave.Jackson shot back, Congressman, you just called the FBI and the DOJ off the rails. Something that you re okay with talking about here? How does that not sort of undermine the work that the agencies are doing? I don t want to discredit them. I would like to see the directors of those agencies purge it, said Rooney. And say look, we ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here, those are the people that I want the American people to see and know the good works being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state. Jackson responded: Language like that, Congressman, purge? Purge the Department of Justice? Rooney responded, Well, I think that Mr. Strzok could be purged, sure. Ms. Jackson might want to read up on the corruption that s been uncovered so far with the FBI and DOJ.;left-news;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;NEW YORK GOVERNOR Pardons 18 CONVICTED Illegals Waiting for Deportation…Cut Off Fed Funds Now!;DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR Andrew Cuomo just pardoned 18 illegals who were facing immigration enforcement actions because of prior criminal charges. He says his pardon was based on their rehabilitation efforts. Cuomo blasted what he called President Trump s hard-line immigration efforts. Is following the rule of law a hard line ?IN SEPTEMBER OF LAST YEAR CUOMO SIGNED AN EXECUTIVE ORDER IGNORING IMMIGRATION LAW?Yesterday New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order barring law enforcement officials from inquiring about the citizenship status of suspects during investigations. It would also apply to other state agencies outside of law enforcement in most cases. In other words, rather than just refusing to cooperate with ICE when they seek to deport illegal aliens, Cuomo is raising the bar and basically pretending that we don t even have any immigration laws.IS THIS ABOUT VOTES, VOTES, VOTES? YOU BET IT IS! While the federal government continues to target immigrants and threatens to tear families apart with deportation, these actions take a critical step toward a more just, more fair and more compassionate New York, Cuomo said in a statement.WE SAY THAT TRUMP SHOULD CUT OFF INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDS!IGNORING CRIMINAL HISTORIES:Among those pardoned Wednesday was Lorena Borjas, 57, who had been convicted of criminal facilitation in 1994 as a result of being a victim of human trafficking. Borjas, a transgender woman from Mexico, has worked as an advocate for the transgender and immigrant communities since her conviction, the governor s office said. Freddy Perez, 53, was convicted of criminal sale of a controlled substance in 1993. Perez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, said he hopes to become a U.S. citizen, according to the governor s office.Prior to Wednesday s pardons, Cuomo had issued seven pardons for immigrants in an effort to postpone their deportation, The New York Times reported.Read more: The Hill;politics;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;OOPS! SHEILA JACKSON LEE Called The Woman She Kicked Out of First Class A Racist…Too Bad She Didn’t Know This ONE IMPORTANT Thing About The Passenger;I noted that this individual came toward me and took a picture. I heard later that she might have said I know who she is. Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, Sheila Jackson Lee (@JacksonLeeTX18) December 26, 2017Via Washington Times:The woman Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee accused of racism is a celebrated photojournalist who helped document human-rights abuses in war-torn Guatemala during the 1980s.Jean-Marie Simon, whose first-class seat on a United Airlines flight was given to Ms. Jackson Lee, Texas Democrat, lived and worked in Guatemala during the turbulent decade that saw the military seize control of the government in a coup. Hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans were killed or disappeared during the conflict.Now a teacher, Ms. Simon, 63, is the author of Guatemala: Eternal Spring Eternal Tyranny. A 2012 blog post on Amnesty International saidMs. Simon donated 1,000 copies of her book to schools and universities in Guatemala to keep the truth of what happened alive. [ ]After bartering with Ms. Simon over the amount of the voucher she would receive as compensation, United eventually placed the disgruntled passenger in Economy Plus. The airline has yet to apologize for the incident. I was the last passenger on the plane, Ms. Simon wrote on Facebook. A Texas congressman, a nice guy, sat down next to me. He said was glad I had made it on the flight. I showed him my boarding pass with my seat, 1A, printed on it. He said, You know what happened, right? Do you know who s in your seat? I said no. He told me that it was Jackson Lee, a fellow U.S. congresswoman who regularly does this, that this was the third time he personally had watched her bump a passenger. ;politics;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Jones certified U.S. Senate winner despite Moore challenge;(Reuters) - Alabama officials on Thursday certified Democrat Doug Jones the winner of the state’s U.S. Senate race, after a state judge denied a challenge by Republican Roy Moore, whose campaign was derailed by accusations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls. Jones won the vacant seat by about 22,000 votes, or 1.6 percentage points, election officials said. That made him the first Democrat in a quarter of a century to win a Senate seat in Alabama. The seat was previously held by Republican Jeff Sessions, who was tapped by U.S. President Donald Trump as attorney general. A state canvassing board composed of Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, Governor Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall certified the election results. Seating Jones will narrow the Republican majority in the Senate to 51 of 100 seats. In a statement, Jones called his victory “a new chapter” and pledged to work with both parties. Moore declined to concede defeat even after Trump urged him to do so. He stood by claims of a fraudulent election in a statement released after the certification and said he had no regrets, media outlets reported. An Alabama judge denied Moore’s request to block certification of the results of the Dec. 12 election in a decision shortly before the canvassing board met. Moore’s challenge alleged there had been potential voter fraud that denied him a chance of victory. His filing on Wednesday in the Montgomery Circuit Court sought to halt the meeting scheduled to ratify Jones’ win on Thursday. Moore could ask for a recount, in addition to possible other court challenges, Merrill said in an interview with Fox News Channel. He would have to complete paperwork “within a timed period” and show he has the money for a challenge, Merrill said. “We’ve not been notified yet of their intention to do that,” Merrill said. Regarding the claim of voter fraud, Merrill told CNN that more than 100 cases had been reported. “We’ve adjudicated more than 60 of those. We will continue to do that,” he said. Republican lawmakers in Washington had distanced themselves from Moore and called for him to drop out of the race after several women accused him of sexual assault or misconduct dating back to when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. Moore has denied wrongdoing and Reuters has not been able to independently verify the allegations. ;politicsNews;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;New York governor questions the constitutionality of federal tax overhaul;NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new U.S. tax code targets high-tax states and may be unconstitutional, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday, saying that the bill may violate New York residents’ rights to due process and equal protection. The sweeping Republican tax bill signed into law by U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday introduces a cap, of $10,000, on deductions of state and local income and property taxes, known as SALT. The tax overhaul was the party’s first major legislative victory since Trump took office in January. The SALT provision will hit many taxpayers in states with high incomes, high property values and high taxes, like New York, New Jersey and California. Those states are generally Democratic leaning. “I’m not even sure what they did is legally constitutional and that’s something we’re looking at now,” Cuomo said in an interview with CNN. In an interview with CNBC, Cuomo suggested why the bill may be unconstitutional. “Politics does not trump the law,” Cuomo said on CNBC. “You have the constitution, you have the law, you have due process, you have equal protection. You can’t use politics just because the majority controls to override the law.” The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, better known for its protection against self-incrimination, also protects individuals from seizure of life, liberty or property without due process and has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as guaranteeing equal protection by the law. Cuomo and California Governor Jerry Brown, both Democrats, have previously said they were exploring legal challenges to SALT deduction limits. Law professors have said legal challenges would likely rest on arguing that the provision interferes with the protection of states’ rights under the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment. Tax attorneys said Cuomo’s legal argument against the tax bill could be that it discriminates and places an unjust tax burden on states that heavily voted for Democrats in the past - known as “blue states.” “The de facto effect of this legislation is to discriminate against blue states and particularly from (Cuomo’s) perspective the state of New York,” said Joseph Callahan, an attorney with the law firm Mackay, Caswell & Callahan in New York. But some tax experts noted the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the 16th Amendment to give Congress broad latitude to tax as it sees fit. In a frequently cited 1934 decision, the Supreme Court called tax deductions a “legislative grace” rather than a vested right. “I don’t understand how they think they have a valid lawsuit here,” David Gamage, a professor of tax law at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, told Reuters last week, speaking generally about governors in blue states that could challenge the tax bill. Cuomo also said on Thursday that New York is proposing a restructuring of its tax code. He provided no details. A group of 13 law professors on Dec. 18 published a paper suggesting ways that high-tax states could minimize the effects of the SALT deduction cap. Their suggestions included shifting more of the tax burden onto businesses in the form of higher employer-side payroll taxes, since the federal tax bill’s cap on SALT deductions only applies to individuals and not businesses. States also could raise taxes on pass-through entities, which the federal tax bill specifically benefits with a lower rate on a portion of their income. On Friday, Cuomo said he would allow state residents to make a partial or full pre-payment on their property tax bill before Jan. 1, allowing taxpapyers to deduct such payments for 2017 before the cap kicks in, prompting a wave of residents to pay early. However, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday advised homeowners that the pre-payment of 2018 property taxes may not be deductible. ;politicsNews;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Dec 28) - Vanity Fair, Hillary Clinton;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Vanity Fair, which looks like it is on its last legs, is bending over backwards in apologizing for the minor hit they took at Crooked H. Anna Wintour, who was all set to be Amb to Court of St James’s & a big fundraiser for CH, is beside herself in grief & begging for forgiveness! [1024 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Alabama official to certify Senator-elect Jones today despite challenge: CNN;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said he will certify Democratic Senator-elect Doug Jones as winner on Thursday despite opponent Roy Moore’s challenge, in a phone call on CNN. Moore, a conservative who had faced allegations of groping teenage girls when he was in his 30s, filed a court challenge late on Wednesday to the outcome of a U.S. Senate election he unexpectedly lost. ;politicsNews;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 27) - Trump, Iraq, Syria;"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - “On 1/20 - the day Trump was inaugurated - an estimated 35,000 ISIS fighters held approx 17,500 square miles of territory in both Iraq and Syria. As of 12/21, the U.S. military estimates the remaining 1,000 or so fighters occupy roughly 1,900 square miles...” via @jamiejmcintyre [1749 EST] - Just left West Palm Beach Fire & Rescue #2. Met with great men and women as representatives of those who do so much for all of us. Firefighters, paramedics, first responders - what amazing people they are! [1811 EST] - “On 1/20 - the day Trump was inaugurated - an estimated 35,000 ISIS fighters held approx 17,500 square miles of territory in both Iraq and Syria. As of 12/21, the U.S. military est the remaining 1,000 or so fighters occupy roughly 1,900 square miles..” @jamiejmcintyre @dcexaminer [2109 EST] - ""Arrests of MS-13 Members, Associates Up 83% Under Trump"" bit.ly/2liRH3b [2146 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ";politicsNews;28/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH HERO Singlehandedly Shut Down Anti-Trump Protest: “Hey! This is library!” [Video];The video below is one of the highlights from the protests last year. Protesters at the University of Washington were firmly reminded that their shouting in a library was not appreciated. This is epic!About two dozen social justice warriors gathered in the normally quiet zone, a couple students wielding megaphones, and began to chant Who s got the power? We ve got the power! What kind of power? Equal power! The small protest took place about an hour after the inauguration, says the description on the YouTube video uploaded by KING 5 s Alex Rozier.But just as the momentum is getting louder, a lone voice calling Hey, hey hey! interrupts the protest. Everyone quiets down as the camera dramatically pans to a young man in a dark-blue buttoned up shirt and glasses. This is library! he scolds them.The protesters are stunned into silence for several moments, though a few feebly call out insults, including one woman who seems to ask if he s going to go back to Beijing. The man turns and leaves.Read more: barstoolsports.com;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Dopey Santas, McAfee Hacked, Silicon Valley vs. ACR – Boiler Room EP #141;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Fvnk$oul and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE contributors) for the hundred and forty first episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs, analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social rejects club.On this episode of Boiler Room the social rejects club meets for the final shebang of 2017. We ll be discussing John McAfee s twitter account being hacked to promote a low value crypto-currency, silicon valley censorship in social media, year end wrap ups and 2018 predictions.Direct Download Episode #141 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;US_News;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHAT THE U.S. Would Save If Trump Cut Aid To U.N. Countries That Voted Against Us;The U.N. voted against America moving our embassy to Jerusalem, raising the question of what we pay to those who voted against us. The grand total of all donations to countries around the world (using stats from 2016) is over $24 BILLION that s billion with a b! We could save that much by cutting off those who voted against us. What do you think about that? We think the U.N. would make a great condo building!Here are the countries that voted against the U.S., listed alphabetically, along with America s 2016 financial obligation to each country:Afghanistan $5,060,306,050Albania $27,479,989Algeria $17,807,222Andorra $0Angola $64,489,547Armenia $22,239,896Austria $310,536Azerbaijan $15,312,389Bahrain $6,573,352Bangladesh $263,396,621Barbados $5,442,370Belarus $11,166,107Belgium $3,101,636Belize $8,613,838Bolivia $1,378,654Botswana $57,252,922Brazil $14,899,949Brunei $354,829Bulgaria $20,066,715Burkina Faso $74,469,144Burundi $70,507,528Cabo Verde $5,044,716Cambodia $103,194,295Chad $117,425,683Chile $2,266,071China $42,263,025Comoros $1,057,063Congo $8,439,457Costa Rica $14,650,552Cote d Ivoire $161,860,737Cuba $15,776,924Cyprus $0Democratic People s Republic of Korea (North Korea) $2,142,161Denmark $3,455Djibouti $24,299,878Dominica $616,000Ecuador $26,014,579Egypt $1,239,291,240Eritrea $119,364Estonia $15,937,295Ethiopia $1,111,152,703Finland $33,492France $4,660,356Gabon $31,442,404Gambia $3,197,858Germany $5,484,317Ghana $724,133,065Greece $8,508,639Grenada $690,300Guinea $87,630,410Guyana $9,691,030Iceland $0India $179,688,851Indonesia $222,431,738Iran $3,350,327Iraq $5,280,379,380Ireland $0Italy $454,613Japan $20,804,795Jordan $1,214,093,785Kazakhstan $80,418,203Kuwait $112,000Kyrgyzstan $41,262,984Laos $57,174,076Lebanon $416,553,311Liberia $473,677,614Libya $26,612,087Liechtenstein $0Lithuania $15,709,304Luxembourg $0Madagascar $102,823,791Malaysia $10,439,368Maldives $1,511,931Mali $257,152,020Malta $137,945Mauritania $12,743,363Mauritius $791,133Monaco $0Montenegro $2,118,108Morocco $82,023,514Mozambique $514,007,619Namibia $53,691,093Nepal $194,286,218Netherlands $0New Zealand $0Nicaragua $31,318,397Niger $144,122,239Nigeria $718,236,917Norway $100,000Oman $5,753,829Pakistan $777,504,870Papua New Guinea $14,836,598Peru $95,803,112Portugal $207,600Qatar $95,097Republic of Korea (South Korea) $3,032,086Russia $17,195,004Saint Vincent and the Grenadines $612,000Saudi Arabia $732,875Senegal $99,599,642Serbia $33,062,589Seychelles $223,002Singapore $468,118Slovakia $2,585,685Slovenia $715,716Somalia $274,784,535South Africa $597,218,298Spain $81,231Sri Lanka $27,192,841Sudan $137,878,835Suriname $232,672Sweden $1,269Switzerland $1,168,960Syria $916,426,147Tajikistan $47,789,686Thailand $68,182,970The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia $31,755,240Tunisia $117,490,639Turkey $154,594,512United Arab Emirates $1,140,659United Kingdom $3,877,820United Republic of Tanzania $628,785,614Uruguay $836,850Uzbekistan $20,067,933Venezuela $9,178,148Vietnam $157,611,276Yemen $305,054,784Zimbabwe $261,181,770;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FINALLY RELEASED! Email from Huma Abedin Includes Classified Documents [Video];"Thanks to the persistence of Judicial Watch, the emails from Huma Abedin were finally released today. Within those emails are classified documents that are heavily redacted . Chris Farrell just commented on the documents: A national security crime that Mr. Comey thinks is no big deal .@JudicialWatch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell on release of Huma Abedin emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop: ""Yet another really grave national security crime that Mr. Comey apparently thinks is no big deal."" https://t.co/xAzOlbGImt pic.twitter.com/YwvR2CIL3E FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 29, 2017Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch:Thanks to @JudicialWatch, we know classified info from Hillary Clinton s email server was on Anthony Weiner's laptop. There is an urgent need for a criminal investigation by the @RealDonaldTrump Justice Department. pic.twitter.com/rTCS8zD206 Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 29, 2017New York Post Reports:The State Department Friday released a trove of emails from Huma Abedin that the feds discovered on her husband Anthony Weiner s laptop including at least five that were marked as classified. Most of the emails were heavily redacted because they contained classified material but one that was sent on Nov. 25 2010 was addressed to Anthony Campaign, an apparent address belonging to Weiner.The message contained a list of talking points for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was prepping to make a call to Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia to warn him about sensitive documents that had been given to WikiLeaks by then-Army intelligence officer Bradley Manning. I deeply regret the likely upcoming WikiLeaks disclosure, read one of the talking points. This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law the message continued. This is the kind of information we fear may be released: details of private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. State was expected to dump roughly 2,800 emails as a result of a court case won by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.Thanks to @JudicialWatch, State Department now posting government docs from Clinton/Abedin found on Anthony Weiner laptop. Weiner campaign received classified info through Abedin/Clinton emails. Docs being posted here: https://t.co/dHCRPEk3gn Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 29, 2017This is a major victory, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, said in a statement. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. ";politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;AMERICAN WORKERS Scr@wed Over By Outsourcing Jobs Get Their Day In Court;American workers have suffered tremendously with the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers. The H-1B Visa program has scr@wed over Americans with decades of experience in jobs. American workers are forced to train their foreign replacements adding insult to injury for the American workers being laid off.Many of the workers are threatened that they will lose their payout if they break a gag order. One of the most famous cases of an employee who didn t take a payout so he could speak up is from a Disney worker. The emotional testimony below is Exhibit One of why this Visa program is so horrible:AMERICAN WORKERS SUE FOREIGN COMPANY: American workers suing an India-based outsourcing firm accused of discriminating against its U.S.-born employees, while favoring Indian nationals, will get their day in court thanks to an Oakland, California federal judge. This week, a California federal judge not only refused to throw out a case against Tata Consulting Services (TCS), one of the largest outsourcers in the U.S. of American jobs, but he also turned the case into a class-action lawsuit, according to Bloomberg.ANTI-AMERICAN BIAS:The case was brought against TCS in 2015 by American workers who said they experienced an anti-American bias at the company, which they say overwhelmingly favors imported workers of Indian descent.Brian Buchanan, one of the American workers suing TCS in the class-action suit, said he had nearly 30 years of experience in the Information Technology (IT) industry when he and roughly 400 American workers were laid off by Southern California Edison after TCS was contracted to outsource the Americans jobs to cheaper foreign workers.Read more: Breitbart;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;How Trump is Accelerating the Decline of US Global Influence;It should also be said that the current US Administration is merely finishing the job which started under three consecutive two-term presidents;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CNN ANCHOR: Fox Does A ‘Disservice’ To Viewers By TELLING THE TRUTH [VIDEO];CNN s Brian Stelter called out Fox & Friends for doing a disservice to viewers, but his reasoning may leave you scratching your head . In fact, we re sure it will leave you puzzled.As you probably know, it was reported on Thursday that Trump s approval at the end of his first year in office is on par with Obama s approval rating at the same time during his presidency.Daily Caller reports: Fox & Friends shared this fact on air Friday morning, leading the president to tweet this out:While the Fake News loves to talk about my so-called low approval rating, @foxandfriends just showed that my rating on Dec. 28, 2017, was approximately the same as President Obama on Dec. 28, 2009, which was 47% and this despite massive negative Trump coverage & Russia hoax! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017Cue Brian Stelter. According to Stelter, it is a disservice to make any comparisons of poll numbers that are favorable toward Trump. It is especially bad if Trump signals that he is happy with what has been reported. This is a prime example of how Fox & Friends does a disservice to viewers, Stelter tweeted.This is a prime example of how Fox & Friends does a disservice to viewers: https://t.co/ErJBOTAHbo Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 29, 2017Let s review the facts.On Dec. 28, 2009, according to a Rasmussen poll, Obama had a 47 percent approval rating. On Dec. 28, 2017, Trump had a 46 percent approval rating. Obama s approval rating on December 29, 2009 just one day later was 46 percent, the exact same as Trump s.So Brian Stelter is apparently angry that Fox News reported poll numbers that are factually accurate because they happen to be favorable to the president. Very unbiased.FOX COULD START TELLING LIES LIKE STELTER AND CNN DO ALL THE TIME:Watch this classic moment where The Weather Channel CEO calls baloney on the Global Warming claims by Stelter: John Coleman, Founder, The Weather Channel, appeared on CNN s Reliable Sources with host Brian Stelter, after writing an open letter to UCLA denying the existence of anthropogenic global warming. This is a great takedown:Coleman told Stelter that CNN has taken a very strong position on global warming that it is a consensus. Well there is no consensus in science. Science isn t a vote. Science is about facts, and that he was terribly disappointed by his former network, The Weather Channel, because it has bought into [climate change]. But so has all the media. That s no big surprise. Coleman notes that he is not a paid shill (as has been claimed) of the Koch Brothers, concluding his letter with a link to Heartland s Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) website. Coleman s open letter to UCLA was sent to numerous local television stations in the Los Angeles area, as well as the Los Angeles Times.Coleman produced a special report for KUSI-TV, entitled Global Warming: The Other Side. The program suggests that Global Warming is a scam and presents what Colemen contends is evidence of a deliberate manipulation of world temperature data by NASA and other groups.;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;MSNBC: “The Trump ‘Resistance’ has to become a church that seeks converts” [Video]; Persuasion is so important The Resistance has to become a church a church that seeks converts Huh??? This guy is allowed to spew his propaganda like he s an expert on Americans. Unreal! Did anyone else out there have to listen to that a few times to let it sink in?American Mirror reports:Despite Trump s obvious successes implementing campaign promises like tax cuts, rooting out ISIS, and bringing back jobs, Giridharadas believes the resistance has been effective in protecting our institutions in 2017. When you think about 2017, I think resistance was incredibly important, frankly, from my point of view. This president shattered every Democratic norm that people on both sides take for granted, he alleged. But if the movement that has done such a good job in 2017 at protecting our institutions only protects our institutions, I think they are going to miss an opportunity. The plan for progressives, Giridharadas argues, should be to take the resistance movement to people who allegedly don t like them, tell those folks their way of thinking is wrong, and convince them to join forces against the president. The same president who just cut their taxes.Notice how not one person on the panel refuted what he said! No fair and balanced here!;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;DISNEYLAND: Anti-Trump Protester Shouting “Lock him up!” Gets Surprise Blowback From Trump Supporters [Video];The left continues to prove to all of us that they are a twisted bunch. How is the protest filmed below going to persuade any voter to turn away from President Trump?A protester who may have an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome shouted at a animatronic lookalike of the president in front of a room full of children at the Happiest Place on Earth.The ugly meltdown occurred in the Hall of Presidents at Disney World on Wednesday.I protested @realDonaldTrump at the #hallofpresidents cuz I'll never get this close in real life probs. #lockhimup pic.twitter.com/jKOQShIdz8 Earnest Gay Thoughts (@JayMalsky) December 27, 2017 I protested @realDonaldTrump at the #hallofpresidents cuz I ll never get this close in real life probs, Jay Malsky tweeted on December 27, adding the hashtag #lockhimup. ONE OF THE PRO-TRUMP PEOPLE WHO YELLED BACK AT THE PROTESTER TWEETED THIS OUT:My response to the person yelling at robot trump at the #hallofpresidents at #disney made @DRUDGE_REPORT. Glad they also pointed out the guys point about Disney being a public institution being absolutely irrelevant. pic.twitter.com/cWrfPheMIw Kenny Liszewski (@kenny_liszewski) December 29, 2017DISGUSTING DISPLAY:Malsky s Twitter profile image shows him holding a purple dildo and advertises his solo show in New York City, titled, Jay Malsky Slept With My Boyfriend. Malsky recorded himself watching the introductions of the presidents of the last half of the 20th Century to the president.After George Washington introduced Trump, the current president recited the Oath of Office, only for Malsky to begin shouting Lock him up! QUIET! Quiet! another attendee responded. Shut up! another one yelled.Trump s speech was halted as the crowd grew angrier. Please remain seated, a staff member said over the sound system. Thanks, asshole, someone could be heard telling Malsky as began chanting again.Via: American MirrorThe new President Trump depicted in The Hall of Presidents has been criticized for its likeness to Hillary Clinton. It certainly doesn t look like Trump:;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Trump Is So Obsessed He Even Has Obama’s Name Coded Into His Website (IMAGES);On Christmas day, Donald Trump announced that he would be back to work the following day, but he is golfing for the fourth day in a row. The former reality show star blasted former President Barack Obama for playing golf and now Trump is on track to outpace the number of golf games his predecessor played.Updated my tracker of Trump s appearances at Trump properties.71 rounds of golf including today s. At this pace, he ll pass Obama s first-term total by July 24 next year. https://t.co/Fg7VacxRtJ pic.twitter.com/5gEMcjQTbH Philip Bump (@pbump) December 29, 2017 That makes what a Washington Post reporter discovered on Trump s website really weird, but everything about this administration is bizarre AF. The coding contained a reference to Obama and golf: Unlike Obama, we are working to fix the problem and not on the golf course. However, the coding wasn t done correctly.The website of Donald Trump, who has spent several days in a row at the golf course, is coded to serve up the following message in the event of an internal server error: https://t.co/zrWpyMXRcz pic.twitter.com/wiQSQNNzw0 Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 28, 2017That snippet of code appears to be on all https://t.co/dkhw0AlHB4 pages, which the footer says is paid for by the RNC? pic.twitter.com/oaZDT126B3 Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 28, 2017It s also all over https://t.co/ayBlGmk65Z. As others have noted in this thread, this is weird code and it s not clear it would ever actually display, but who knows. Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 28, 2017After the coding was called out, the reference to Obama was deleted.UPDATE: The golf error message has been removed from the Trump and GOP websites. They also fixed the javascript = vs == problem. Still not clear when these messages would actually display, since the actual 404 (and presumably 500) page displays a different message pic.twitter.com/Z7dmyQ5smy Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2017That suggests someone at either RNC or the Trump admin is sensitive enough to Trump s golf problem to make this issue go away quickly once people noticed. You have no idea how much I d love to see the email exchange that led us here. Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2017 The code was f-cked up.The best part about this is that they are using the = (assignment) operator which means that bit of code will never get run. If you look a few lines up errorCode will always be 404 (@tw1trsux) December 28, 2017trump s coders can t code. Nobody is surprised. Tim Peterson (@timrpeterson) December 28, 2017Donald Trump is obsessed with Obama that his name was even in the coding of his website while he played golf again.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.;News;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;US Advising Soldiers to Be ‘Less Masculine’ as Military Tries to Curb Flood of Sexual Harassment Cases;170619-N-AA175-092..SAN DIEGO (June 19, 2017) Command Master Chief (Ret.) Kathleen Henson, from Midland, Mich.,, center, and USS Makin Island (LHD 8) Sailors cut a cake during the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month observance. Makin Island is homeported in San Diego. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Eric Zeak Published at Wikicommons)21st Century Wire says While military forces are fighting one enemy in the theatre of combat, another multi-front culture war is also being fought within their institutions. According to a recent report in Military.com, US military lawyers have begun speaking about how sexual assault cases are flooding the military courts threatening to break the back of the military s legal system, and perhaps radically alter the institutional culture.After the release of the documentary, The Invisible War, the issue of sexual assault in the military has again been thrust into the national spotlight, claiming that 1 in 5 U.S. female veterans have sustained some form of sexual assault.The issue of sexual assault in the US military first rose to national prominence in 1992 with the emergence of the infamous Tailhook Scandal. One likely reason for this new spike in reported cases could be because each military service branch has recently implemented new awareness programs as well as sexual assault prevention campaigns which actively encourage female troops to report anything they might feel constitutes sexual harassment or a constitutes a sexual assault.This also comes at a time where the US military has undergone the gradual process of becoming more gay friendly in order to advance issues of equality and to cater for its growing ranks of LGBT service men and women.Military.com explains how the new liberal progressive agenda may be adversely affecting operations: Military lawyers said the Pentagon leadership has the right intentions, but these prevention campaigns have flooded military court rooms with so many sexual assault cases, it s made it harder to prosecute guilty sexual predators.Prosecutors lack witnesses or strong evidence in the majority of cases, making it hard to yield a conviction, said Michael Waddington, a military defense lawyer and former judge advocate in the Army. He sees too many cases that involve alcohol and depend on hearsay.The military has the resources to take many sexual assault cases to court, said Philip Cave, a military defense lawyer and retired Navy lawyer. Waddington estimated that ninety percent of the sexual assault cases taken to court-martial would be thrown out in a civilian court because of a lack of evidence.As a result, the military are now trying various other different initiatives to try and cope with a problem which to have spun out of control.RT International reports Promoting empathy and cracking down on hypermasculinity may help the Department of Defense to reduce unwanted sexual behavior and improve combat readiness, a new government report on sexual violence in the military says.Unwanted sexual behaviors such as sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence undermine core values, unit cohesion, combat readiness, and public goodwill, says the report, published this month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and signed by Brenda Farrell, director of defense capabilities and management.The report pointed out that interconnected, inappropriate behaviors are part of a continuum of harm that creates a climate conducive to sexual harassment, assault and violence. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017 expanded the definition of sexual harassment in the military beyond sex discrimination, to make it an adverse behavior on the spectrum of behavior that can contribute to an increase in the incidence of sexual assault. Both the Pentagon and the separate service branches have yet to update their policies to reflect this new definition, the GAO found.The report also urged the Pentagon to incorporate the guidelines for preventing and dealing with sexual violence developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The Pentagon is ignoring risk factors identified by the CDC such as alcohol and drug use, hypermasculinity, emotionally unsupportive family environments, general tolerance of sexual violence within the community, and societal norms that support male superiority and sexual entitlement, the report says.NEWPORT, R.I. (Oct. 29, 2010) Gunnery Sgt. Duncan Hurst encourages an officer candidate to properly perform pushups during the first week of the 12-week Officer Candidate School at Naval Station Newport. Hurst is one of 12 Marine Drill Instructors who train the candidates in military bearing, discipline, drill and physical fitness. (U. S. Navy photo by Scott A. Thornbloom/Released). Also ignored by the DoD are protective factors such as emotional health and connectedness, and empathy and concern for how one s actions affect others. CDC s research has also established that survivors of one form of violence are more likely to be victims of other forms of violence, that survivors of violence are at higher risk for behaving violently, and that people who behave violently are more likely to commit other forms of violence, the GAO report notes, apparently seeking to make a distinction between violence in authorized military conflict and personal violence.Noting that the DoD instructed the services in 2014 to develop mechanisms for reporting incidents of sexual harassment anonymously, the GAO said that such mechanisms are not yet part of the department-wide sexual violence policies.Additionally, each service branch uses a different database format to record formal complaints of sexual harassment the Navy uses Excel spreadsheets, for example. While the GAO does not go as far as to recommend a single database, the report does advocate improving and standardizing data collection so that the Department of Defense can further develop its understanding of the connection between unwanted sexual behaviors. Having a single standard across service branches would also be helpful, the GAO report says, noting that the US Marine Corps (USMC) updated its standards of conduct in May. The USMC made the change in response to the Marines United scandal, where current and former members posted nude photos of female recruits in a Facebook group, along with disparaging comments. While the Marines now consider posting nude photos of others without consent to be harassment, other service branches do not as of yet.The GAO report comes at a time of renewed interest in sexual harassment in the US. Accusations of improper behavior have forced a number of Hollywood celebrities, media executives and members of Congress to resign or be removed from public life.In 2015, the Obama administration lifted restrictions on having women in combat roles and set a deadline for allowing openly transgender troops to serve. In July this year, President Donald Trump said he would not allow transgender people to serve in any capacity, citing tremendous medical costs and disruption to the military. The matter is currently being fought over in the courts.So far, only men are required to register for potential draft ( Selective Service ) under US law. Attempts to expand the requirement to women have failed to get enough votes in Congress.See more at RTREAD THE FULL US GOV T G.A.O. REPORT HEREIn addition to new measures meant to mitigate the rise in sexual assault claims, general dictates on gender neutral language are also being rolled out apparently to protect vulnerable minority members of the armed service from being offended or triggered. This institutional trend is not limited to the US, as the institutional march of political correctness and its weaponization of gender identity politics is making its way through Great Britain s armed forces too where phrases such as mankind , chaps and sportsmanship have now been banned.The UK Mail Online says: The guide suggests the word chaps be swapped for the words people , friends , folks or you all . The phrase gentleman s agreement has also be banned. Now, soldiers must use the term unwritten agreement . Instead of sportsmanship members of the force are encouraged to say fairness . The two-page guide was compiled by the Joint Equality Diversity and Inclusion unit which has earned the nickname of Jedi. Many LGBT servicewomen believe the US military is too male-oriented (Image: Pinterest).As pc cleric cluture takes over the military s management through the leveraging of radical progressive power-politics, people should be aware that this tactic actually designed to break down existing institutions and rearrange the internal power structure.It s no surprise then why the Russians are resisting Soros-funded political colonization in their country, which Moscow has correctly identified as subterfuge through the clear exploitation of these culture and gender war battle lines. ImageQuestion: How will the US and UK armed forces be run in 10 years, if this socialized agenda is fully rolled out?READERS PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS BELOWREAD MORE CULTURAL MARXIST NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Cultural Marxism FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;IT ONLY TOOK ONE TWEET FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP For Billionaires To Open Up Their Wallets For This “FIGHTER!”;A week after President Trump endorsed Ron DeSantis for Florida governor via Twitter, a handful of billionaires have thrown their support behind the three-term Republican congressman, per Politico.Here s President Trump s tweet endorsing Rep. Ron DeSantis for governor of Florida. Trump tweeted: Congressman Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard Law, who would make a GREAT Governor of Florida. He loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER! Congressman Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard Law, who would make a GREAT Governor of Florida. He loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2017Why it matters: The monetary support DeSantis has received could prove instrumental in his race, because, in a state as big as Florida, where a week s worth of saturation TV during next year s general election could cost as much as $3 million, cash is king, per Politico.Supporters include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, hedge fund heiress Rebekah Mercer, investment tycoon Foster Friess, as well as other donors who have funded Trump s 2016 campaign and the conservative Koch brothers network, per Politico. AxiosRepresentative Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is a fighter. Here s an example of how DeSantis took on the fake Trump-Russian collusion story:Sun Sentinel DeSantis, who hasn t officially announced his candidacy, thanked Trump in a press release with the headline, President Trump Backs Ron DeSantis for Governor of Florida. I m grateful to have the president s support and appreciate what he has done, DeSantis said, adding praise for Trump achievements that have pleased conservatives: recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, signing the tax reform legislation, and appointing conservative judges.DeSantis, a Republican from Ponte Vedra Beach, has been a strong supporter of Trump.In August, he proposed cutting off funding for special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.DeSantis proposal, which went nowhere, would have stopped money for the investigation 180 days after it becomes law. And it would have prevented Mueller from investigating matters that occurred before Trump announced his presidential campaign.Also in August, DeSantis used an appearance at the Palm Beach County Republican Party s annual lobsterfest to advertise his pro-Trump credentials.As he delivered a combination political speech and invocation, the big screens at the front of the room flashed a picture of DeSantis, his wife, their infant daughter, the president and First Lady Melania Trump outside the White House.DeSantis said the president complimented his wife on her appearance.At that Palm Beach County appearance, and at events throughout the state, DeSantis has been laying the groundwork for a 2018 candidacy for the Republican nomination to run for governor.Here s Ron DeSantis blasting the press and our government agencies for giving Barack Obama a free pass over his support for Hezbollah:The Trump effect: DeSantis reflects the shifting type of Republican candidate under Trump: he s a Fox News contributor, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a supporter of Trump s recent decision to make Jerusalem the home of the U.S. embassy in Israel, and he opposes Special Counsel Bob Mueller s Russia probe (even calling for it to end after just six months).;left-news;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;FINALLY RELEASED! Email from Huma Abedin Includes Classified Documents [Video];"Thanks to the persistence of Judicial Watch, the emails from Huma Abedin were finally released today. Within those emails are classified documents that are heavily redacted . Chris Farrell just commented on the documents: A national security crime that Mr. Comey thinks is no big deal .@JudicialWatch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell on release of Huma Abedin emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop: ""Yet another really grave national security crime that Mr. Comey apparently thinks is no big deal."" https://t.co/xAzOlbGImt pic.twitter.com/YwvR2CIL3E FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 29, 2017Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch:Thanks to @JudicialWatch, we know classified info from Hillary Clinton s email server was on Anthony Weiner's laptop. There is an urgent need for a criminal investigation by the @RealDonaldTrump Justice Department. pic.twitter.com/rTCS8zD206 Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 29, 2017New York Post Reports:The State Department Friday released a trove of emails from Huma Abedin that the feds discovered on her husband Anthony Weiner s laptop including at least five that were marked as classified. Most of the emails were heavily redacted because they contained classified material but one that was sent on Nov. 25 2010 was addressed to Anthony Campaign, an apparent address belonging to Weiner.The message contained a list of talking points for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was prepping to make a call to Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia to warn him about sensitive documents that had been given to WikiLeaks by then-Army intelligence officer Bradley Manning. I deeply regret the likely upcoming WikiLeaks disclosure, read one of the talking points. This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law the message continued. This is the kind of information we fear may be released: details of private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. State was expected to dump roughly 2,800 emails as a result of a court case won by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.Thanks to @JudicialWatch, State Department now posting government docs from Clinton/Abedin found on Anthony Weiner laptop. Weiner campaign received classified info through Abedin/Clinton emails. Docs being posted here: https://t.co/dHCRPEk3gn Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 29, 2017This is a major victory, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, said in a statement. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. ";left-news;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;IT ONLY TOOK ONE TWEET FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP For Billionaires To Open Up Their Wallets For This “FIGHTER!”;A week after President Trump endorsed Ron DeSantis for Florida governor via Twitter, a handful of billionaires have thrown their support behind the three-term Republican congressman, per Politico.Here s President Trump s tweet endorsing Rep. Ron DeSantis for governor of Florida. Trump tweeted: Congressman Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard Law, who would make a GREAT Governor of Florida. He loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER! Congressman Ron DeSantis is a brilliant young leader, Yale and then Harvard Law, who would make a GREAT Governor of Florida. He loves our Country and is a true FIGHTER! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2017Why it matters: The monetary support DeSantis has received could prove instrumental in his race, because, in a state as big as Florida, where a week s worth of saturation TV during next year s general election could cost as much as $3 million, cash is king, per Politico.Supporters include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, hedge fund heiress Rebekah Mercer, investment tycoon Foster Friess, as well as other donors who have funded Trump s 2016 campaign and the conservative Koch brothers network, per Politico. AxiosRepresentative Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is a fighter. Here s an example of how DeSantis took on the fake Trump-Russian collusion story:Sun Sentinel DeSantis, who hasn t officially announced his candidacy, thanked Trump in a press release with the headline, President Trump Backs Ron DeSantis for Governor of Florida. I m grateful to have the president s support and appreciate what he has done, DeSantis said, adding praise for Trump achievements that have pleased conservatives: recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, signing the tax reform legislation, and appointing conservative judges.DeSantis, a Republican from Ponte Vedra Beach, has been a strong supporter of Trump.In August, he proposed cutting off funding for special counsel Robert Mueller s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.DeSantis proposal, which went nowhere, would have stopped money for the investigation 180 days after it becomes law. And it would have prevented Mueller from investigating matters that occurred before Trump announced his presidential campaign.Also in August, DeSantis used an appearance at the Palm Beach County Republican Party s annual lobsterfest to advertise his pro-Trump credentials.As he delivered a combination political speech and invocation, the big screens at the front of the room flashed a picture of DeSantis, his wife, their infant daughter, the president and First Lady Melania Trump outside the White House.DeSantis said the president complimented his wife on her appearance.At that Palm Beach County appearance, and at events throughout the state, DeSantis has been laying the groundwork for a 2018 candidacy for the Republican nomination to run for governor.Here s Ron DeSantis blasting the press and our government agencies for giving Barack Obama a free pass over his support for Hezbollah:The Trump effect: DeSantis reflects the shifting type of Republican candidate under Trump: he s a Fox News contributor, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, a supporter of Trump s recent decision to make Jerusalem the home of the U.S. embassy in Israel, and he opposes Special Counsel Bob Mueller s Russia probe (even calling for it to end after just six months).;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CNN’S DON LEMON LOSES IT: Screams No! No! No! When Hillary, Huma, Weiner Scandal Brought Up [Video];CNN host Don Lemon continues to show his extreme bias when it comes to Democrats vs Republicans. His most recent show of bias was his interview with a panel that included Ben Ferguson. When Ferguson brought up the Hillary, Huma, Weiner scandal, Lemon screamed No! over and over again. He thinks this is old news but it s a fact that the emails from Weiner s laptop are coming out today. We took a screenshot of Lemon s smirk at the end of the video (SEE BELOW) showing his irritation at the direction Ferguson took during the interview.EMAILS TO BE RELEASED TODAY THIS ISN T OLD NEWS!.@StateDept will publish releasable portions of 2800 government docs that @FBI found on Anthony Weiner laptop tomorrow (Dec. 29th). Again, thanks to @JudicialWatch lawsuits. Will @RealDonaldTrump DOJ finally take action on Clinton/Abedin misdeeds? https://t.co/8X4p0srBa9 Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 28, 2017A screenshot from the last moment of the interview shows Lemon s disgust and frustration with the fact that Ben Ferguson brought up a topic the Dems would like to forget:ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITES WITH LEMON IS WHEN ROY MOORE S ATTORNEY TROLLED HIM ON-AIR SO FUNNY!Roy Moore s attorney just called political hack Don Lemon a funny name on air. The CNN host was not pleased with the attorney s quip of Don Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy Roy Moore attorney calls CNN host 'Don Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy' pic.twitter.com/dDyvj81xnO Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) November 12, 2017;left-news;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;LEGENDARY DIRECTOR Shocks Liberal Elites With Comments On Trump Tax Overhaul;It s a rare occasion when a Hollywood legend defends President Trump. The director of blockbuster hits like Alien and Blade Runner just came out in support of President Trump s tax overhaul. It s ironic that it was during a presser for his new movie All the Money in the World . Is he just pandering to audiences who have turned away from Hollywood? Will he be shunned by the Hollywood elites now that he s gone against the grain? After five decades of directing, maybe he s oblivious to any blowback WFB reports:Ridley Scott defended the Republican tax overhaul during an interview about his new film, saying the bill will result in business owners reinvesting and generating economic growth.The topic came up as the legendary movie director spoke to the Denver Post about his latest movie, All The Money In The World, which is based on the true story of a kidnapping in Italy in the 1970s. There s a lot [sic] commentary in this film about the value of human life, class struggles and the role of wealth in society, interviewer John Wenzel said. Do you think there s anything to be learned from it at this moment in America? Well, let s take the tax bill, Scott said. People say (Republicans) are doing it for the wealthy class. What they forget is if you get a clever, un-selfish business person I don t care if it s a corner store or a big business who s suddenly saving 15 percent, they ll put it back in this business. ;politics;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump wants Postal Service to charge 'much more' for Amazon shipments;SEATTLE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump called on the U.S. Postal Service on Friday to charge “much more” to ship packages for Amazon (AMZN.O), picking another fight with an online retail giant he has criticized in the past. “Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE!” Trump wrote on Twitter. The president’s tweet drew fresh attention to the fragile finances of the Postal Service at a time when tens of millions of parcels have just been shipped all over the country for the holiday season. The U.S. Postal Service, which runs at a big loss, is an independent agency within the federal government and does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, according to its website. Package delivery has become an increasingly important part of its business as the Internet has led to a sharp decline in the amount of first-class letters. The president does not determine postal rates. They are set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent government agency with commissioners selected by the president from both political parties. That panel raised prices on packages by almost 2 percent in November. Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos, who remains the chief executive officer of the retail company and is the richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg News. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, a newspaper Trump has repeatedly railed against in his criticisms of the news media. In tweets over the past year, Trump has said the “Amazon Washington Post” fabricated stories. He has said Amazon does not pay sales tax, which is not true, and so hurts other retailers, part of a pattern by the former businessman and reality television host of periodically turning his ire on big American companies since he took office in January. Daniel Ives, a research analyst at GBH Insights, said Trump’s comment could be taken as a warning to the retail giant. However, he said he was not concerned for Amazon. “We do not see any price hikes in the future. However, that is a risk that Amazon is clearly aware of and (it) is building out its distribution (system) aggressively,” he said. Amazon has shown interest in the past in shifting into its own delivery service, including testing drones for deliveries. In 2015, the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping, 46 percent of its total operating expenses that year. Amazon shares were down 0.86 percent to $1,175.90 by early afternoon. Overall, U.S. stock prices were down slightly on Friday. Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix Inc, which analyzes shipping data, disputed the idea that the Postal Service charges less than United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) and FedEx Corp (FDX.N), the other biggest players in the parcel delivery business in the United States. Many customers get lower rates from UPS and FedEx than they would get from the post office for comparable services, he said. The Postal Service delivers about 62 percent of Amazon packages, for about 3.5 to 4 million a day during the current peak year-end holiday shipping season, Jindel said. The Seattle-based company and the post office have an agreement in which mail carriers take Amazon packages on the last leg of their journeys, from post offices to customers’ doorsteps. Amazon’s No. 2 carrier is UPS, at 21 percent, and FedEx is third, with 8 percent or so, according to Jindel. Trump’s comment tapped into a debate over whether Postal Service pricing has kept pace with the rise of e-commerce, which has flooded the mail with small packages.Private companies like UPS have long claimed the current system unfairly undercuts their business. Steve Gaut, a spokesman for UPS, noted that the company values its “productive relationship” with the postal service, but that it has filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission its concerns about the postal service’s methods for covering costs. Representatives for Amazon, the White House, the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx declined comment or were not immediately available for comment on Trump’s tweet. According to its annual report, the Postal Service lost $2.74 billion this year, and its deficit has ballooned to $61.86 billion. While the Postal Service’s revenue for first class mail, marketing mail and periodicals is flat or declining, revenue from package delivery is up 44 percent since 2014 to $19.5 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2017. But it also lost about $2 billion in revenue when a temporary surcharge expired in April 2016. According to a Government Accountability Office report in February, the service is facing growing personnel expenses, particularly $73.4 billion in unfunded pension and benefits liabilities. The Postal Service has not announced any plans to cut costs. By law, the Postal Service has to set prices for package delivery to cover the costs attributable to that service. But the postal service allocates only 5.5 percent of its total costs to its business of shipping packages even though that line of business is 28 percent of its total revenue. ;politicsNews;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;White House, Congress prepare for talks on spending, immigration;WEST PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it was set to kick off talks next week with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on immigration policy, government spending and other issues that need to be wrapped up early in the new year. The expected flurry of legislative activity comes as Republicans and Democrats begin to set the stage for midterm congressional elections in November. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party is eager to maintain control of Congress while Democrats look for openings to wrest seats away in the Senate and the House of Representatives. On Wednesday, Trump’s budget chief Mick Mulvaney and legislative affairs director Marc Short will meet with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan - both Republicans - and their Democratic counterparts, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the White House said. That will be followed up with a weekend of strategy sessions for Trump, McConnell and Ryan on Jan. 6 and 7 at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, according to the White House. The Senate returns to work on Jan. 3 and the House on Jan. 8. Congress passed a short-term government funding bill last week before taking its Christmas break, but needs to come to an agreement on defense spending and various domestic programs by Jan. 19, or the government will shut down. Also on the agenda for lawmakers is disaster aid for people hit by hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida, and by wildfires in California. The House passed an $81 billion package in December, which the Senate did not take up. The White House has asked for a smaller figure, $44 billion. Deadlines also loom for soon-to-expire protections for young adult immigrants who entered the country illegally as children, known as “Dreamers.” In September, Trump ended Democratic former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected Dreamers from deportation and provided work permits, effective in March, giving Congress until then to devise a long-term solution. Democrats, some Republicans and a number of large companies have pushed for DACA protections to continue. Trump and other Republicans have said that will not happen without Congress approving broader immigration policy changes and tougher border security. Democrats oppose funding for a wall promised by Trump along the U.S.-Mexican border. “The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc,” Trump said in a Twitter post on Friday. Trump wants to overhaul immigration rules for extended families and others seeking to live in the United States. Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, a frequent critic of the president, said he would work with Trump to protect Dreamers. “We can fix DACA in a way that beefs up border security, stops chain migration for the DREAMers, and addresses the unfairness of the diversity lottery. If POTUS (Trump) wants to protect these kids, we want to help him keep that promise,” Flake wrote on Twitter. Congress in early 2018 also must raise the U.S. debt ceiling to avoid a government default. The U.S. Treasury would exhaust all of its borrowing options and run dry of cash to pay its bills by late March or early April if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling before then, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Trump, who won his first major legislative victory with the passage of a major tax overhaul this month, has also promised a major infrastructure plan. ;politicsNews;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump says Russia probe will be fair, but timeline unclear: NYT;WEST PALM BEACH, Fla (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believes he will be fairly treated in a special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election, but said he did not know how long the probe would last. The federal investigation has hung over Trump’s White House since he took office almost a year ago, and some Trump allies have in recent weeks accused the team of Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller of being biased against the Republican president. But in an interview with the New York Times, Trump appeared to shrug off concerns about the investigation, which was prompted by U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda. “There’s been no collusion. But I think he’s going to be fair,” Trump said in what the Times described as a 30-minute impromptu interview at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Mueller has charged four Trump associates in his investigation. Russia has denied interfering in the U.S. election. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said this month that he was not aware of any impropriety by Mueller’s team. Trump’s lawyers have been saying for weeks that they had expected the Mueller investigation to wrap up quickly, possibly by the end of 2017. Mueller has not commented on how long it will last. Trump told the Times that he did not know how long the investigation would take. “Timing-wise, I can’t tell you. I just don’t know,” he said. Trump said he thought a prolonged probe “makes the country look bad” but said it has energized his core supporters. “What it’s done is, it’s really angered the base and made the base stronger. My base is strong than it’s ever been,” he said. The interview was a rare break in Trump’s Christmas vacation in Florida. He has golfed each day aside from Christmas Day, and mainly kept a low profile, apart from the occasional flurry of tweets. He spent one day golfing with Republican Senator David Perdue from Georgia, who has pushed legislation to cap immigration numbers, and had dinner on Thursday with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, an international trade hawk. Trump told the Times he hoped to work with Democrats in the U.S. Congress on a spending plan to fix roads and other infrastructure, and on protections for a group of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Trump spoke about trade issues, saying he had backed off his hard line on Chinese trade practices in the hope that Beijing would do more to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear and missile testing program. He said he had been disappointed in the results. He also complained about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which his administration is attempting to renegotiate in talks with Mexico and Canada. Trump said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had played down the importance of Canadian oil and lumber exports to the United States when looking at the balance of trade between the two countries. “If I don’t make the right deal, I’ll terminate NAFTA in two seconds. But we’re doing pretty good,” Trump said. ;politicsNews;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Factbox: Trump on Twitter (Dec 29) - Approval rating, Amazon;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - While the Fake News loves to talk about my so-called low approval rating, @foxandfriends just showed that my rating on Dec. 28, 2017, was approximately the same as President Obama on Dec. 28, 2009, which was 47%...and this despite massive negative Trump coverage & Russia hoax! [0746 EST] - Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer? Should be charging MUCH MORE! [0804 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Trump on Twitter (Dec 28) - Global Warming;The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Together, we are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! bit.ly/2lnpKaq [1814 EST] - In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up! [1901 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly/2jpEXYR) ;politicsNews;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;Dopey Santas, McAfee Hacked, Silicon Valley vs. ACR – Boiler Room EP #141;Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Fvnk$oul and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE contributors) for the hundred and forty first episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs, analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social rejects club.On this episode of Boiler Room the social rejects club meets for the final shebang of 2017. We ll be discussing John McAfee s twitter account being hacked to promote a low value crypto-currency, silicon valley censorship in social media, year end wrap ups and 2018 predictions.Direct Download Episode #141 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:;Middle-east;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;US Advising Soldiers to Be ‘Less Masculine’ as Military Tries to Curb Flood of Sexual Harassment Cases;170619-N-AA175-092..SAN DIEGO (June 19, 2017) Command Master Chief (Ret.) Kathleen Henson, from Midland, Mich.,, center, and USS Makin Island (LHD 8) Sailors cut a cake during the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month observance. Makin Island is homeported in San Diego. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Eric Zeak Published at Wikicommons)21st Century Wire says While military forces are fighting one enemy in the theatre of combat, another multi-front culture war is also being fought within their institutions. According to a recent report in Military.com, US military lawyers have begun speaking about how sexual assault cases are flooding the military courts threatening to break the back of the military s legal system, and perhaps radically alter the institutional culture.After the release of the documentary, The Invisible War, the issue of sexual assault in the military has again been thrust into the national spotlight, claiming that 1 in 5 U.S. female veterans have sustained some form of sexual assault.The issue of sexual assault in the US military first rose to national prominence in 1992 with the emergence of the infamous Tailhook Scandal. One likely reason for this new spike in reported cases could be because each military service branch has recently implemented new awareness programs as well as sexual assault prevention campaigns which actively encourage female troops to report anything they might feel constitutes sexual harassment or a constitutes a sexual assault.This also comes at a time where the US military has undergone the gradual process of becoming more gay friendly in order to advance issues of equality and to cater for its growing ranks of LGBT service men and women.Military.com explains how the new liberal progressive agenda may be adversely affecting operations: Military lawyers said the Pentagon leadership has the right intentions, but these prevention campaigns have flooded military court rooms with so many sexual assault cases, it s made it harder to prosecute guilty sexual predators.Prosecutors lack witnesses or strong evidence in the majority of cases, making it hard to yield a conviction, said Michael Waddington, a military defense lawyer and former judge advocate in the Army. He sees too many cases that involve alcohol and depend on hearsay.The military has the resources to take many sexual assault cases to court, said Philip Cave, a military defense lawyer and retired Navy lawyer. Waddington estimated that ninety percent of the sexual assault cases taken to court-martial would be thrown out in a civilian court because of a lack of evidence.As a result, the military are now trying various other different initiatives to try and cope with a problem which to have spun out of control.RT International reports Promoting empathy and cracking down on hypermasculinity may help the Department of Defense to reduce unwanted sexual behavior and improve combat readiness, a new government report on sexual violence in the military says.Unwanted sexual behaviors such as sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence undermine core values, unit cohesion, combat readiness, and public goodwill, says the report, published this month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and signed by Brenda Farrell, director of defense capabilities and management.The report pointed out that interconnected, inappropriate behaviors are part of a continuum of harm that creates a climate conducive to sexual harassment, assault and violence. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017 expanded the definition of sexual harassment in the military beyond sex discrimination, to make it an adverse behavior on the spectrum of behavior that can contribute to an increase in the incidence of sexual assault. Both the Pentagon and the separate service branches have yet to update their policies to reflect this new definition, the GAO found.The report also urged the Pentagon to incorporate the guidelines for preventing and dealing with sexual violence developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).The Pentagon is ignoring risk factors identified by the CDC such as alcohol and drug use, hypermasculinity, emotionally unsupportive family environments, general tolerance of sexual violence within the community, and societal norms that support male superiority and sexual entitlement, the report says.NEWPORT, R.I. (Oct. 29, 2010) Gunnery Sgt. Duncan Hurst encourages an officer candidate to properly perform pushups during the first week of the 12-week Officer Candidate School at Naval Station Newport. Hurst is one of 12 Marine Drill Instructors who train the candidates in military bearing, discipline, drill and physical fitness. (U. S. Navy photo by Scott A. Thornbloom/Released). Also ignored by the DoD are protective factors such as emotional health and connectedness, and empathy and concern for how one s actions affect others. CDC s research has also established that survivors of one form of violence are more likely to be victims of other forms of violence, that survivors of violence are at higher risk for behaving violently, and that people who behave violently are more likely to commit other forms of violence, the GAO report notes, apparently seeking to make a distinction between violence in authorized military conflict and personal violence.Noting that the DoD instructed the services in 2014 to develop mechanisms for reporting incidents of sexual harassment anonymously, the GAO said that such mechanisms are not yet part of the department-wide sexual violence policies.Additionally, each service branch uses a different database format to record formal complaints of sexual harassment the Navy uses Excel spreadsheets, for example. While the GAO does not go as far as to recommend a single database, the report does advocate improving and standardizing data collection so that the Department of Defense can further develop its understanding of the connection between unwanted sexual behaviors. Having a single standard across service branches would also be helpful, the GAO report says, noting that the US Marine Corps (USMC) updated its standards of conduct in May. The USMC made the change in response to the Marines United scandal, where current and former members posted nude photos of female recruits in a Facebook group, along with disparaging comments. While the Marines now consider posting nude photos of others without consent to be harassment, other service branches do not as of yet.The GAO report comes at a time of renewed interest in sexual harassment in the US. Accusations of improper behavior have forced a number of Hollywood celebrities, media executives and members of Congress to resign or be removed from public life.In 2015, the Obama administration lifted restrictions on having women in combat roles and set a deadline for allowing openly transgender troops to serve. In July this year, President Donald Trump said he would not allow transgender people to serve in any capacity, citing tremendous medical costs and disruption to the military. The matter is currently being fought over in the courts.So far, only men are required to register for potential draft ( Selective Service ) under US law. Attempts to expand the requirement to women have failed to get enough votes in Congress.See more at RTREAD THE FULL US GOV T G.A.O. REPORT HEREIn addition to new measures meant to mitigate the rise in sexual assault claims, general dictates on gender neutral language are also being rolled out apparently to protect vulnerable minority members of the armed service from being offended or triggered. This institutional trend is not limited to the US, as the institutional march of political correctness and its weaponization of gender identity politics is making its way through Great Britain s armed forces too where phrases such as mankind , chaps and sportsmanship have now been banned.The UK Mail Online says: The guide suggests the word chaps be swapped for the words people , friends , folks or you all . The phrase gentleman s agreement has also be banned. Now, soldiers must use the term unwritten agreement . Instead of sportsmanship members of the force are encouraged to say fairness . The two-page guide was compiled by the Joint Equality Diversity and Inclusion unit which has earned the nickname of Jedi. Many LGBT servicewomen believe the US military is too male-oriented (Image: Pinterest).As pc cleric cluture takes over the military s management through the leveraging of radical progressive power-politics, people should be aware that this tactic actually designed to break down existing institutions and rearrange the internal power structure.It s no surprise then why the Russians are resisting Soros-funded political colonization in their country, which Moscow has correctly identified as subterfuge through the clear exploitation of these culture and gender war battle lines. ImageQuestion: How will the US and UK armed forces be run in 10 years, if this socialized agenda is fully rolled out?READERS PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS BELOWREAD MORE CULTURAL MARXIST NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Cultural Marxism FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;How Trump is Accelerating the Decline of US Global Influence;It should also be said that the current US Administration is merely finishing the job which started under three consecutive two-term presidents;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH HERO Singlehandedly Shut Down Anti-Trump Protest: “Hey! This is library!” [Video];The video below is one of the highlights from the protests last year. Protesters at the University of Washington were firmly reminded that their shouting in a library was not appreciated. This is epic!About two dozen social justice warriors gathered in the normally quiet zone, a couple students wielding megaphones, and began to chant Who s got the power? We ve got the power! What kind of power? Equal power! The small protest took place about an hour after the inauguration, says the description on the YouTube video uploaded by KING 5 s Alex Rozier.But just as the momentum is getting louder, a lone voice calling Hey, hey hey! interrupts the protest. Everyone quiets down as the camera dramatically pans to a young man in a dark-blue buttoned up shirt and glasses. This is library! he scolds them.The protesters are stunned into silence for several moments, though a few feebly call out insults, including one woman who seems to ask if he s going to go back to Beijing. The man turns and leaves.Read more: barstoolsports.com;left-news;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;U.S. military to accept transgender recruits on Monday: Pentagon;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Transgender people will be allowed for the first time to enlist in the U.S. military starting on Monday as ordered by federal courts, the Pentagon said on Friday, after President Donald Trump’s administration decided not to appeal rulings that blocked his transgender ban. Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week rejected the administration’s request to put on hold orders by lower court judges requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits on Jan. 1. A Justice Department official said the administration will not challenge those rulings. “The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issues in the coming weeks. So rather than litigate this interim appeal before that occurs, the administration has decided to wait for DOD’s study and will continue to defend the president’s lawful authority in District Court in the meantime,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. In September, the Pentagon said it had created a panel of senior officials to study how to implement a directive by Trump to prohibit transgender individuals from serving. The Defense Department has until Feb. 21 to submit a plan to Trump. Lawyers representing currently-serving transgender service members and aspiring recruits said they had expected the administration to appeal the rulings to the conservative-majority Supreme Court, but were hoping that would not happen. Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb said in a statement: “As mandated by court order, the Department of Defense is prepared to begin accessing transgender applicants for military service Jan. 1. All applicants must meet all accession standards.” Jennifer Levi, a lawyer with gay, lesbian and transgender advocacy group GLAD, called the decision not to appeal “great news.” “I’m hoping it means the government has come to see that there is no way to justify a ban and that it’s not good for the military or our country,” Levi said. Both GLAD and the American Civil Liberties Union represent plaintiffs in the lawsuits filed against the administration. In a move that appealed to his hard-line conservative supporters, Trump announced in July that he would prohibit transgender people from serving in the military, reversing Democratic President Barack Obama’s policy of accepting them. Trump said on Twitter at the time that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” Four federal judges - in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Seattle and Riverside, California - have issued rulings blocking Trump’s ban while legal challenges to the Republican president’s policy proceed. The judges said the ban would likely violate the right under the U.S. Constitution to equal protection under the law. The Pentagon on Dec. 8 issued guidelines to recruitment personnel in order to enlist transgender applicants by Jan. 1. The memo outlined medical requirements and specified how the applicants’ sex would be identified and even which undergarments they would wear. The Trump administration previously said in legal papers that the armed forces were not prepared to train thousands of personnel on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants and might have to accept “some individuals who are not medically fit for service.” The Obama administration had set a deadline of July 1, 2017, to begin accepting transgender recruits. But Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, postponed that date to Jan. 1, 2018, which the president’s ban then put off indefinitely. Trump has taken other steps aimed at rolling back transgender rights. In October, his administration said a federal law banning gender-based workplace discrimination does not protect transgender employees, reversing another Obama-era position. In February, Trump rescinded guidance issued by the Obama administration saying that public schools should allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. ;politicsNews;29/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TOP FIVE Food Stamp Fraud Takedowns of 2017…Do You See The Common Thread?; After the Obama years of record food stamp usage, President Trump is pushing new initiatives to get people off of the government dole. The number was higher than 39.5 million (all-time high of 47.6 million in 2015) but you see the explosion with the graph below: The fraud in the food stamp program is so rampant and easy to commit, we ve become a global magnet for grifters who immigrate and set up shop to cash in on money for food stamps. This program is ripe for reform but what s most disturbing is the very lenient penalty for the crime of food stamp fraud. The fraudsters are usually given a very light jail sentence and ordered to pay back the money. The problem is that the money has probably gone overseas and will NEVER be paid back. These grifters fade into the woodwork only to resurface when they reoffend. THE TOP 5 FOOD STAMP FRAUD CASES FROM 2017: After the Obama years of record food stamp usage, President Trump is pushing new initiatives to get people off of the government dole. The number was higher than 39.5 million (all-time high of 47.6 million in 2015) but you see the explosion with the graph below:The fraud in the food stamp program is so rampant and easy to commit, we ve become a global magnet for grifters who immigrate and set up shop to cash in on money for food stamps.This program is ripe for reform but what s most disturbing is the very lenient penalty for the crime of food stamp fraud. The fraudsters are usually given a very light jail sentence and ordered to pay back the money. The problem is that the money has probably gone overseas and will NEVER be paid back. These grifters fade into the woodwork only to resurface when they reoffend.THE TOP 5 FOOD STAMP FRAUD CASES FROM 2017:The food stamp program is a federally-funded program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and federal investigators are most often the ones who catch those engaged in fraudulent activities..Investigators often uncover millions of dollars worth of food stamp fraud, mostly from people who run convenience stores in low-income areas where many patrons receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).To show how many millions of dollars these criminals have taken away from the federal government, here are the 5 biggest takedowns of food stamp fraud of 2017.IMMIGRANT FRAUD IS THE COMMON THREAD!1. Ohio Convenience Store Owner Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for $2.8 Million in Food Stamp FraudA former Ohio convenience store owner got caught carrying out a $2.8 million food stamp fraud scheme where he allowed benefit recipients to exchange their food stamps for cash.The USDA revealed in an audit that the store, Breaden Market, cashed in on SNAP benefits more than ten times the amount of larger stores in the area, raising red flags among investigators.A judge eventually convicted and sentenced George Rafidi, 62, to 33 months in prison in February and ordered him to pay that $2.8 million back.2. Florida Investigators Discover More than $20 Million in Food Stamp FraudThe agency said it uncovered the majority of fraud when paging through SNAP benefit applications stating fraudulent household information.3. Baltimore Man Sentenced to Four Years for $3.7 Million Food Stamp FraudA Baltimore store owner got slapped with a four-year prison sentence for carrying out $3.7 million worth of food stamp fraud.Mohammad Shafiq, 51, was one of 14 other Baltimore-area retailers sentenced for $16 million worth of food stamp fraud, where they exchanged SNAP benefits for cash.The judge ordered Shafiq to pay back that $3.7 million to the federal government and serve three years of supervised release following the end of his sentence.4. Three Wisconsin Men Who Carried Out $1.2 Million Food Stamp Fraud Sentenced to Hard TimeA judge sentenced three Milwaukee, Wisconsin, convenience store owners Kanwar Gill, 67, Raviinder Gill, 27, and George Nance, 59 to prison terms ranging from 15-20 months in October after the three had been found guilty of exchanging cash for SNAP benefits.Their store, Quick N EZ, had been an authorized retailer that accepts food stamp benefits, but the $1.2 million in benefits the store redeemed was far beyond the amount the small convenience store was expected to redeem.Records show that all three men had been ordered to pay back the $1.2 million in fraudulently earned money. An Iraqi immigrant pleaded guilty to $1.4 million in food stamp fraud in November for conspiring with others to defraud the U.S. government.Ali Ratib Daham, 40, of Maine, gave customers cash in exchange for SNAP and Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program benefits. He then redeemed the full value of the benefits to obtain more money from the government fraudulently.The naturalized U.S. citizen is expected to face a harsh prison sentence for his crime he faces up to 20 years behind bars and will most likely be expected to pay back the $1.4 million to the government.Via: Breitbart;Government News;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘Classified’ Emails from Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop;Looking back on the 2016 Presidential election, there was a non-stop chorus on denials by Hillary Clinton, her campaign surrogates, and the mainstream media that had not allowed any classified emails to float around her home-brew server, or onto the family of her close aids.As it turns out, Hillary Clinton was lying. A new batch of emails released by the US State Department clearly show that Anthony Weiner, convicted sex criminal and husband of Clinton s chief aid Huma Abedin, had kept classified emails pertaining to official US State Department business during Hillary Clinton s tenure as Secretary of State kept on the same laptop which Weiner used to target an underage girl and where he also kept child pornography.Among the released emails were exchanges which clearly show Hillary Clinton conspiracy with authoritarian Saudi Arabia to stop Wikileaks. The reopening of this old Clinton gaping wound is another devastating blow for the mainstream media and the Democratic Party s resistance movement, whose mission is to remove Donald Trump for office.RT International reports At least five of the 2,800 emails stored on a laptop belonging to former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner were marked confidential and involved delicate talks with Middle Eastern leaders and Hillary Clinton s top aide.On Friday, the State Department released a batch of around 2,800 work-related documents from the email account of Huma Abedin, who served as the deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.At least five of the emails found on Abedin s ex-husband s laptop were heavily redacted and marked classified and at confidential level, the third more sensitive class the US government uses below secret and top secret. The State Department applies the confidential classification level to information that the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security, according to the Government Publishing Office.While the documents were not marked as classified before they were released, some of the information recovered in the emails was considered classified. It is illegal for civilians to posses or read classified documents without a security clearance.The confidential emails, which date from 2010 to 2012, concern discussions with Middle Eastern leaders.Dishonest: despite being caught multiple times, Hillary Clinton is still in denial about mishandling classified material.One of the emails has the subject Egyptian MFA on Hamas-PLO talks, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The email is mostly redacted, only mentioning that it is a further update on Hamas-PA talks, referring to the Palestinian Authority.Another four-page email contains a completely redacted call sheet to prepare Clinton for an upcoming call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.A call sheet in another 2010 email includes notes to guide Clinton through a call she would make to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. The purpose of the call was to inform Saud about an impending WikiLeaks disclosure. This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the call sheet instructed Clinton to say.Clinton was warning the Saudis the leak could contain information related to private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and asked the Saudi s to help the US prevent WikiLeaks from undermining our mutual interests. During a congressional hearing in 2016, former FBI Director James Comey said Abedin regularly forwarded emails to Weiner for him to print out for her so she could deliver them to the secretary of state. The emails were released in response to a 2015 lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch against the State Department after it failed to respond to a Freedom of Information request (FOIA) seeking: All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non- state.gov email address. In a statement issued Friday, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the release a major victory, adding that it was no surprise there were classified documents on Weiner s computer. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin s emails on Weiner s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials, Fitton said in a statement. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton s and Huma Abedin s obvious violations of law. The emails were discovered on Weiner s laptop during an FBI investigation into allegations that he engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl. In September, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to sending obscene material to a minor.The discovery of the emails led Comey to announce that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton s use of a private email server 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. Clinton said the announcement contributed to her loss to Donald Trump See more at RTLast year, in effort to shore-up Clinton s crumbling reputation for being truthful to the public, her campaign published a bizarre 4,000-word fact sheet on the Clinton campaign website.As it turned out, Clinton s fact sheet was riddled with numerous false statements and other half-truths, including a lie that the FBI was conducting a security review when it was in fact conducting an investigation, and that she never sent or received classified information on her email account.This latest Weiner revelation is just another devastating blow to an already damaged political brand.Could Clinton mount a 2020 run?It s highly unlikely.READ MORE HILLARY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Clinton FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;US_News;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;‘Classified’ Emails from Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin found on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop;Looking back on the 2016 Presidential election, there was a non-stop chorus on denials by Hillary Clinton, her campaign surrogates, and the mainstream media that had not allowed any classified emails to float around her home-brew server, or onto the family of her close aids.As it turns out, Hillary Clinton was lying. A new batch of emails released by the US State Department clearly show that Anthony Weiner, convicted sex criminal and husband of Clinton s chief aid Huma Abedin, had kept classified emails pertaining to official US State Department business during Hillary Clinton s tenure as Secretary of State kept on the same laptop which Weiner used to target an underage girl and where he also kept child pornography.Among the released emails were exchanges which clearly show Hillary Clinton conspiracy with authoritarian Saudi Arabia to stop Wikileaks. The reopening of this old Clinton gaping wound is another devastating blow for the mainstream media and the Democratic Party s resistance movement, whose mission is to remove Donald Trump for office.RT International reports At least five of the 2,800 emails stored on a laptop belonging to former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner were marked confidential and involved delicate talks with Middle Eastern leaders and Hillary Clinton s top aide.On Friday, the State Department released a batch of around 2,800 work-related documents from the email account of Huma Abedin, who served as the deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.At least five of the emails found on Abedin s ex-husband s laptop were heavily redacted and marked classified and at confidential level, the third more sensitive class the US government uses below secret and top secret. The State Department applies the confidential classification level to information that the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security, according to the Government Publishing Office.While the documents were not marked as classified before they were released, some of the information recovered in the emails was considered classified. It is illegal for civilians to posses or read classified documents without a security clearance.The confidential emails, which date from 2010 to 2012, concern discussions with Middle Eastern leaders.Dishonest: despite being caught multiple times, Hillary Clinton is still in denial about mishandling classified material.One of the emails has the subject Egyptian MFA on Hamas-PLO talks, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The email is mostly redacted, only mentioning that it is a further update on Hamas-PA talks, referring to the Palestinian Authority.Another four-page email contains a completely redacted call sheet to prepare Clinton for an upcoming call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.A call sheet in another 2010 email includes notes to guide Clinton through a call she would make to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. The purpose of the call was to inform Saud about an impending WikiLeaks disclosure. This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the call sheet instructed Clinton to say.Clinton was warning the Saudis the leak could contain information related to private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and asked the Saudi s to help the US prevent WikiLeaks from undermining our mutual interests. During a congressional hearing in 2016, former FBI Director James Comey said Abedin regularly forwarded emails to Weiner for him to print out for her so she could deliver them to the secretary of state. The emails were released in response to a 2015 lawsuit filed by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch against the State Department after it failed to respond to a Freedom of Information request (FOIA) seeking: All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non- state.gov email address. In a statement issued Friday, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the release a major victory, adding that it was no surprise there were classified documents on Weiner s computer. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin s emails on Weiner s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials, Fitton said in a statement. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton s and Huma Abedin s obvious violations of law. The emails were discovered on Weiner s laptop during an FBI investigation into allegations that he engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl. In September, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to sending obscene material to a minor.The discovery of the emails led Comey to announce that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton s use of a private email server 11 days before the 2016 presidential election. Clinton said the announcement contributed to her loss to Donald Trump See more at RTLast year, in effort to shore-up Clinton s crumbling reputation for being truthful to the public, her campaign published a bizarre 4,000-word fact sheet on the Clinton campaign website.As it turned out, Clinton s fact sheet was riddled with numerous false statements and other half-truths, including a lie that the FBI was conducting a security review when it was in fact conducting an investigation, and that she never sent or received classified information on her email account.This latest Weiner revelation is just another devastating blow to an already damaged political brand.Could Clinton mount a 2020 run?It s highly unlikely.READ MORE HILLARY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Clinton FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV;Middle-east;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;EMBARRASSING: Anti-Trump “THE HILL” Gets SLAMMED For Publishing Article Claiming MTV’s “Jersey Shore” Reality Star “Schooled” Trump On Global Warming ;"#JokeNewsAfter record, cold temperatures were reported across the United States, President Trump took to Twitter to mock the Global Warming scam supported by shyster politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama, who were poised to extort trillions of US taxpayer dollars to fund their global climate change scam.Trump tweeted: In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up! In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017Accuweather backed up President Trump s tweet with this report:Cold air rivaling that of the past 100 years for late December and early January will make it painful to be outdoors and may lead to damage in the central and the northeastern United States.AccuWeather RealFeel Temperatures are projected to be below zero over much of the Northeast and well below zero in much of the Midwest.In the coming days, RealFeel temperatures 5 to 20 degrees below zero will be common. in the northern tier, RealFeel temperatures may dip as low as 30 to 40 degrees below zero.From The Hill:Former Jersey Shore cast member Vinny Guadagnino shot back at President Trump on Thursday after Trump said the United States could use some good old global warming to heat up cold states. I think climate change is more complex than global warming will make it hotter, Guadagnino tweeted to Trump. It has to do with disruptions of atmospheric conditions, ocean patterns, jet streams and s t like that. ""Jersey Shore"" cast member schools Trump on climate change https://t.co/Vlfl6hskeT pic.twitter.com/URSHWTqgw0 The Hill (@thehill) December 29, 2017The former MTV reality star later responded to Twitter users who mocked him for replying to Trump, asking why does having a summer shore house automatically make [you] stupid? Per my last tweet about global warming and ppl saying it s bad when someone from jersey shore educates the president etc.I get the joke but why does having a summer shore house automatically make u stupid?No smart ppl ever partied with friends on weekends? Vinny Guadagnino (@VINNYGUADAGNINO) December 29, 2017The Hill then attempted to prove how smart Vinny Guadagnino s was because other Democrats also mocked President Trump s tweet:Democratic lawmakers also slammed Trump following the tweet.Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted that the U.S. has a moral obligation to combat climate change, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) blasted the tweet as embarrassing. Trump has denied that global warming exists in the past, claiming it was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Here s a closer look at the guy who The Hill claims schooled President Trump on phony Global Warming on Twitter: The energizer bunny ! Follow me on vinguadagnino for more inspiration in a chipmunk voice pic.twitter.com/JWj3OmKhf5 Vinny Guadagnino (@VINNYGUADAGNINO) December 6, 2017Here s how Twitter users responded to The Hill s tweet:Mueller Day mocked The Hill for using a guy who coined the phrase GTL (gym, tan, laundry) for suggesting he schooled our President.Ok, the dude who was instrumental in coining the phrase ""GTL"" (gym, tan, laundry) has just schooled the ""president"" on the science behind global warming. The world can end now. We've come full circle and there's nothing left to do. Mueller day (@TiersOfLove) December 29, 2017This Twitter user mocked The Hill for using a reality MTV show cast member s tweet to disproved President Trump s belief about phony global warming science:Yikes! You're scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't ya? Who's next? Mama June on foreign affairs (@EuroRaver) December 30, 2017nea sportsfan reminds The Hill that the Founder of the Weather Channel says climate change is bull Founder of weather channel says climate change is bull nea sportsfan (@sportsfanNEA) December 30, 2017twentyman also mocked The Hill for using the reality MTV star s tweet, calling them #FakeNews: Jet streams and shit like that what school are you referring to, you #FakeNews propagator?""Jet streams and shit like that"" what 'school' are you referring to, you #FakeNews propagator? twentyman (@tirbagofah) December 29, 2017Justin hilariously reminded The Hill of a 2015 tweet by Bernie Sanders:Maybe Vinny can ""school"" Bernie too.https://t.co/wW9qEuhykH Justin (@JustCrum79) December 29, 2017Here s the tweet from Bernie Sanders where he blames a 65-degree day on Christmas Eve in 2015 on climate change :Nobody can recall a Christmas Eve where the temperature was 65 degrees. Why is it that we're not effectively addressing climate change? Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 28, 2015";politics;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;JUST IN: TRUMP ENDS FREE MONEY TRAIN After Pakistan Refuses To Stop Housing Terrorists…Cuts STUNNING About Of Military Aid ;The Trump administration on Friday announced the United States will deny Pakistan military aid amounting to $255 million as it expects Islamabad to take decisive action against terrorists and militants on its soil . The United States does not plan to spend the $255 million in FY 2016 in Foreign Military Financing for Pakistan at this time, said a spokesperson of the President s National Security Council in a statement to Hindustan Times. The President has made clear that the United States expects Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorists and militants on its soil, and that Pakistan s actions in support of the South Asia Strategy will ultimately determine the trajectory of our relationship, including future security assistance. The Administration continues to review Pakistan s level of cooperation. The statement reflected and sealed the administration s complete disillusionment with Pakistan, which had sought to brazenly disregard the explicit warnings issued by President Donald Trump personally and leading members of his cabinet, such as secretaries James Mattis and Rex Tillerson.Financial Times reported last week that the Trump administration is considering dropping Pakistan as an ally as it examines tough measures to quell more than 20 terrorist groups it says are based in the country. Here again, the President who is daily derided and ridiculed by foreign policy experts is right, and they are wrong: Pakistan is no ally, and has not been for years. This is a rupture that is much needed and long overdue.President Trump has accused the Pakistani government of housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. And it s true, with the most notorious of these being Osama bin Laden himself. Journalist Carlotta Gall, who reported from Afghanistan for the New York Times for twelve years, reported in March 2014 that:Soon after the Navy SEAL raid on Bin Laden s house, a Pakistani official told me that the United States had direct evidence that the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, knew of Bin Laden s presence in Abbottabad. The information came from a senior United States official, and I guessed that the Americans had intercepted a phone call of Pasha s or one about him in the days after the raid. He knew of Osama s whereabouts, yes, the Pakistani official told me. The official was surprised to learn this and said the Americans were even more so.He shouldn t have been. It had been obvious for years at that point, and remains obvious, that the Pakistanis had been aiding the same jihadists that the U.S. government has been giving them billions of dollars to fight. This could be the severest blow dealt to Islamabad by this administration if it indeed decided to withhold it, said a leading US expert on Pakistan, who did not want to be identified. There is more coming, the expert added. IOTWReportThe amount, $255 million, is left over from $1.1 billion aid earmarked for Pakistan in 2016, and which included non-military aid as well. It was cleared for handing over in August, just days before it would lapse as unspent money.First reported by The New York Times, the move to withhold the money, which may not be large but would have signaled US backing, is reported to have come shortly after Pakistan refused to hand over to the Americans an operative of the Haqqani Network apprehended during the rescue of an American-Canadian family in October.The Haqqani Network is an affiliate of Afghan Taliban and works out of Pakistan, inflicting massive casualties on the US-led international coalition in Afghanistan. Frustrated by Islamabad s reluctance to give them, the United States has tied large portions of military aid payments to Pakistan for its actions aimed at debilitating the network.Pakistan, however, has chosen to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in such payments over 2015 and 2016, instead of kicking out the terrorists. And it has lost equity.The Trump administration was clear from the start it wouldn t countenance continuity in ties and aid without real changes. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting, President Donald Trump had said unveiling his new South Asia strategy in August. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately. Hindustan Times;politics;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BILL NYE The FAKE Science Guy THREATENS Conservatives…Blue States Will “Impose Economic Sanctions” Against Climate Change Denying States;Friday on MSNBC, climate activist Bill Nye warned conservatives to watch out, saying progressive blue states will address climate change on their own.Nye said, Only 40 percent of people in the U.S. think that Congress should be addressing this and that s because certain conservative groups, especially from the fossil fuel industry, have been very successful in introducing the idea that scientific uncertainty, plus or minus two percent, is the same as plus or minus 100 percent. He continued, There s a lot of emphasis from conservatives on what are writ-large states rights. Just watch out, conservatives, if states rights include California, Illinois, New York these places that, where people voted in a progressive fashion watch out if all those places start to address climate change and then impose economic sanctions, either overtly or by default, on places that have not embraced the work that needs to be done. Then you ll end up with this states rights working the other way. He added, We ve got to remind people that we re all in this together. The people I think about all the time are what are eloquently stated as the hillbillies. We want to engage everybody. Not working to address climate change is in no one s best interest. It is not in the best interest, especially of your children and grandchildren. A couple of times you mentioned that I am against the president and so on. I m not especially against the president. I just think he s gotten himself surrounded by people who are willing to mortgage the future, to let the people who are coming into the workforce now pay for the future. This is true, not just with regard to the national debt, which will almost certainly increase the same way it tripled under the beloved Ronald Reagan, not only will that national debt increase, but the climate debt, in a sense, what we have to do to address climate change, will be more and more difficult to pay back or pay down. Breitbart NewsThe climate change debate went nuclear last year, over a whistleblower s explosive allegation that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association manipulated data to advance a political agenda by hiding the global warming pause. In an article on the Climate Etc. blog, John Bates, who retired last year as principal scientist of the National Climatic Data Center, accused the lead author of the 2015 NOAA pausebuster report of trying to discredit the hiatus through flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards. In addition, Mr. Bates told the Daily [U.K.] Mail that the report s author, former NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information director Thomas Karl, did so by insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation. Gradually, in the months after [the report] came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his thumb on the scale in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy, Mr. Bates said Saturday on Climate Etc.The June 2015 report, Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus, which updated the ocean temperature record, was published six months before the U.N. s Paris summit.The accusations sparked a fierce back-and-forth Sunday between so-called climate warmists and skeptics over the validity and implications of Mr. Bates claim, which he defended on the Climate Etc. blog run by former Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry.Zeke Hausfather, Berkeley Earth climate scientist, said in a Sunday fact-check on the CarbonBrief blog that the Karl paper s conclusions have been validated by independent data from satellites, buoys, and Argo floats and many other independent groups. While NOAA s data management procedures may well need improvement, their results have been independently validated and agree with separate global temperature records created by other groups, Mr. Hausfather said, citing Berkeley Earth and the U.K. s Met Office Hadley Centre.He said the record strongly suggests that NOAA got it right and that we have been underestimating ocean warming in recent years. Meanwhile, the whistleblowing prompted a we-told-you-so moment from Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee who have long suspected the Obama administration of retroactively fiddling with climate data in order to erase the 1998-2013 pause in global temperature increases. Now that Dr. Bates has confirmed that there were heated disagreements within NOAA about the quality and transparency of the data before publication, we know why NOAA fought transparency and oversight at every turn, said Chairman Lamar Smith in a Sunday statement.The panel launched an investigation into the NOAA pausebuster report after whistleblowers said the study was rushed to publication before underlying data issues were resolved to help influence public debate about the so-called Clean Power Plan and upcoming Paris climate conference. Dr. Bates revelations and NOAA s obstruction certainly lend credence to what I ve expected all along that the Karl study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the president s climate change agenda and ignored NOAA s own standards for scientific study, Mr. Smith said.Mr. Bates said he decided to come forward after reading a Washington Post article Dec. 13 that said federal scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump. As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data, he said on Climate Etc.In his experience, the most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no hiatus in global warming in the 2000s. NOAA did not return immediately Sunday a request for comment. The Daily Mail said that Mr. Karl admitted the data had not been archived when the paper was published but denied trying to influence the climate summit. Asked why he had not waited, he said: John Bates is talking about a formal process that takes a long time. He denied he was rushing to get the paper out in time for Paris, saying: There was no discussion about Paris, said the Daily Mail article.The American Geophysical Union issued a statement saying it was very closely monitoring the situation, have considered the possible implications, and will be sharing any new information or response by AGU with you here. ;politics;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;U2’s LIMOUSINE LIBERAL BONO Proves He’s Clueless On Trump: “Bleakest Era”;This would be a laugh a minute except for the fact that millions actually listen to this guy The most recent ramblings from U2 s Bono are a litany of lefty talking points that you ve heard a million times. Social justice yada, yada, yada .People like Bono have absolutely no clue what Trump is about and what his mission has been. Bono is so sucked in by the Clintons and other limousine liberals that he s living in La La Land BLEAKEST ERA U2 frontman Bono bashed President Donald Trump in a lengthy Rolling Stone cover story this week, lamenting Trump s criticism of the press and said the election of the real estate mogul and the current political climate is surely the bleakest era since Nixon. In the Western world, in our lifetime, there has never been a moment, until very recently, when fairness and equality was not improving, the Irish rocker said. There were setbacks, but it was as if the world was on a trajectory toward fairness and justice and equality for all. But then the election of Trump happened, Bono said, and then People s innocence had died. And a generation that had grown up thinking that the human spirit had a natural evolution toward fairness and justice was learning this might not be the case. My attitude was, OK, good. Now it is time we wake up and realize we can t take any of this for granted. Big primates have been around a lot longer than democracy, and this dude who shall not be named he is just a new manifestation of that big primate, the 57-year-old said of Trump who he believes he can t work with on policy because you can t believe what he says. And a generation that had grown up thinking that the human spirit had a natural evolution toward fairness and justice was learning this might not be the case. My attitude was, OK, good. Now it is time we wake up and realize we can t take any of this for granted. Big primates have been around a lot longer than democracy, and this dude who shall not be named he is just a new manifestation of that big primate, the 57-year-old said of Trump who he believes he can t work with on policy because you can t believe what he says. Read more: Breitbart;politics;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“CONSERVATIVE GAY GUY” BLASTS Pence’s Aspen Neighbors For Hanging “Make America Gay Again Banner” In Front Of House;"It s been said that good fences make good neighbors. But in Aspen, Colo., this week, Vice President Mike Pence has something different posted between his vacation lodging and that of the people next door.Specifically, it s a rainbow banner reading Make America Gay Again. It appeared on a stone pillar in front of the house where Pence and his wife are staying this week.VP @mike_pence is staying in a house near #Aspen on vacation. His neighbors have a colorful message for him. https://t.co/Ldef4h1G8U via @JasonAuslander pic.twitter.com/PzWqmN9Iml Aspen Times (@TheAspenTimes) December 30, 2017The daughters of the couple across the street and one of their girlfriends reportedly draped the rainbow banner on the pillar while a Pitkin County deputy and Secret Service members stood nearby, the Aspen Times reported. The stone pillar is situated at the end of the driveway between the two homes.According to the Times, the Secret Service agents were unfazed when the women draped the banner over the pillar, telling them, We re not here to control your free speech rights. FOX News Conservative Gay Guy expressed his disgust for the people who placed the Make America Gay Again banner across from the Pence family vacation retreat. He tweeted: I may be gay, but I m tired of this crap. My life doesn t revolve around my sexuality. I m a person first. The so-called tolerant left just continues to cause more division in this country. Mike Pence's neighbors in Aspen hung a ""Make America Gay Again"" banner.I may be gay, but I'm tired of this crap. My life doesn't revolve around my sexuality. I'm a person first. The so-called tolerant left just continues to cause more division in this country. Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 30, 2017Conservative Gay Guy is not afraid to call out liberal gays for being intolerant, he s also not afraid to call out his liberal friends for their hypocrisy:None of my conservative family members or friends turned their back on me when I came out as gay.However, 2 of my friends became social justice warriors & stopped being friends with me over my political views.The side that claims to be tolerant/compassionate isn't really so. Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 7, 2017When Muslim feminst (LOL!) activist Linda Sarsour tweeted in support of Sharia Law, Conservative Gay Guy destroyed her with his response:You'll know when you're living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans & credit cards become interest free. Sound nice, doesn't it? Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) May 13, 2015I'll know when I'm thrown off a building for being gay. https://t.co/bxREbbopLb Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 28, 2017Conservative Gay Guy hit the nail on the head with this illegal immigration analogy:If half a family bought tickets to Disneyland & half snuck in, would they be breaking up families by kicking out the ones who snuck in? Isn't the half who paid allowed to leave with them? Please take the free education & go back to your country now that you know how to fix it. Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 28, 2017";politics;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;“CONSERVATIVE GAY GUY” BLASTS Pence’s Aspen Neighbors For Hanging “Make America Gay Again Banner” In Front Of House;"It s been said that good fences make good neighbors. But in Aspen, Colo., this week, Vice President Mike Pence has something different posted between his vacation lodging and that of the people next door.Specifically, it s a rainbow banner reading Make America Gay Again. It appeared on a stone pillar in front of the house where Pence and his wife are staying this week.VP @mike_pence is staying in a house near #Aspen on vacation. His neighbors have a colorful message for him. https://t.co/Ldef4h1G8U via @JasonAuslander pic.twitter.com/PzWqmN9Iml Aspen Times (@TheAspenTimes) December 30, 2017The daughters of the couple across the street and one of their girlfriends reportedly draped the rainbow banner on the pillar while a Pitkin County deputy and Secret Service members stood nearby, the Aspen Times reported. The stone pillar is situated at the end of the driveway between the two homes.According to the Times, the Secret Service agents were unfazed when the women draped the banner over the pillar, telling them, We re not here to control your free speech rights. FOX News Conservative Gay Guy expressed his disgust for the people who placed the Make America Gay Again banner across from the Pence family vacation retreat. He tweeted: I may be gay, but I m tired of this crap. My life doesn t revolve around my sexuality. I m a person first. The so-called tolerant left just continues to cause more division in this country. Mike Pence's neighbors in Aspen hung a ""Make America Gay Again"" banner.I may be gay, but I'm tired of this crap. My life doesn't revolve around my sexuality. I'm a person first. The so-called tolerant left just continues to cause more division in this country. Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 30, 2017Conservative Gay Guy is not afraid to call out liberal gays for being intolerant, he s also not afraid to call out his liberal friends for their hypocrisy:None of my conservative family members or friends turned their back on me when I came out as gay.However, 2 of my friends became social justice warriors & stopped being friends with me over my political views.The side that claims to be tolerant/compassionate isn't really so. Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 7, 2017When Muslim feminst (LOL!) activist Linda Sarsour tweeted in support of Sharia Law, Conservative Gay Guy destroyed her with his response:You'll know when you're living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans & credit cards become interest free. Sound nice, doesn't it? Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) May 13, 2015I'll know when I'm thrown off a building for being gay. https://t.co/bxREbbopLb Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 28, 2017Conservative Gay Guy hit the nail on the head with this illegal immigration analogy:If half a family bought tickets to Disneyland & half snuck in, would they be breaking up families by kicking out the ones who snuck in? Isn't the half who paid allowed to leave with them? Please take the free education & go back to your country now that you know how to fix it. Conservative Gay Guy (@ConservGayGuy) December 28, 2017";left-news;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BILL NYE The FAKE Science Guy THREATENS Conservatives…Blue States Will “Impose Economic Sanctions” Against Climate Change Denying States;Friday on MSNBC, climate activist Bill Nye warned conservatives to watch out, saying progressive blue states will address climate change on their own.Nye said, Only 40 percent of people in the U.S. think that Congress should be addressing this and that s because certain conservative groups, especially from the fossil fuel industry, have been very successful in introducing the idea that scientific uncertainty, plus or minus two percent, is the same as plus or minus 100 percent. He continued, There s a lot of emphasis from conservatives on what are writ-large states rights. Just watch out, conservatives, if states rights include California, Illinois, New York these places that, where people voted in a progressive fashion watch out if all those places start to address climate change and then impose economic sanctions, either overtly or by default, on places that have not embraced the work that needs to be done. Then you ll end up with this states rights working the other way. He added, We ve got to remind people that we re all in this together. The people I think about all the time are what are eloquently stated as the hillbillies. We want to engage everybody. Not working to address climate change is in no one s best interest. It is not in the best interest, especially of your children and grandchildren. A couple of times you mentioned that I am against the president and so on. I m not especially against the president. I just think he s gotten himself surrounded by people who are willing to mortgage the future, to let the people who are coming into the workforce now pay for the future. This is true, not just with regard to the national debt, which will almost certainly increase the same way it tripled under the beloved Ronald Reagan, not only will that national debt increase, but the climate debt, in a sense, what we have to do to address climate change, will be more and more difficult to pay back or pay down. Breitbart NewsThe climate change debate went nuclear last year, over a whistleblower s explosive allegation that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association manipulated data to advance a political agenda by hiding the global warming pause. In an article on the Climate Etc. blog, John Bates, who retired last year as principal scientist of the National Climatic Data Center, accused the lead author of the 2015 NOAA pausebuster report of trying to discredit the hiatus through flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards. In addition, Mr. Bates told the Daily [U.K.] Mail that the report s author, former NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information director Thomas Karl, did so by insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation. Gradually, in the months after [the report] came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his thumb on the scale in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy, Mr. Bates said Saturday on Climate Etc.The June 2015 report, Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus, which updated the ocean temperature record, was published six months before the U.N. s Paris summit.The accusations sparked a fierce back-and-forth Sunday between so-called climate warmists and skeptics over the validity and implications of Mr. Bates claim, which he defended on the Climate Etc. blog run by former Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry.Zeke Hausfather, Berkeley Earth climate scientist, said in a Sunday fact-check on the CarbonBrief blog that the Karl paper s conclusions have been validated by independent data from satellites, buoys, and Argo floats and many other independent groups. While NOAA s data management procedures may well need improvement, their results have been independently validated and agree with separate global temperature records created by other groups, Mr. Hausfather said, citing Berkeley Earth and the U.K. s Met Office Hadley Centre.He said the record strongly suggests that NOAA got it right and that we have been underestimating ocean warming in recent years. Meanwhile, the whistleblowing prompted a we-told-you-so moment from Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee who have long suspected the Obama administration of retroactively fiddling with climate data in order to erase the 1998-2013 pause in global temperature increases. Now that Dr. Bates has confirmed that there were heated disagreements within NOAA about the quality and transparency of the data before publication, we know why NOAA fought transparency and oversight at every turn, said Chairman Lamar Smith in a Sunday statement.The panel launched an investigation into the NOAA pausebuster report after whistleblowers said the study was rushed to publication before underlying data issues were resolved to help influence public debate about the so-called Clean Power Plan and upcoming Paris climate conference. Dr. Bates revelations and NOAA s obstruction certainly lend credence to what I ve expected all along that the Karl study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the president s climate change agenda and ignored NOAA s own standards for scientific study, Mr. Smith said.Mr. Bates said he decided to come forward after reading a Washington Post article Dec. 13 that said federal scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump. As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data, he said on Climate Etc.In his experience, the most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no hiatus in global warming in the 2000s. NOAA did not return immediately Sunday a request for comment. The Daily Mail said that Mr. Karl admitted the data had not been archived when the paper was published but denied trying to influence the climate summit. Asked why he had not waited, he said: John Bates is talking about a formal process that takes a long time. He denied he was rushing to get the paper out in time for Paris, saying: There was no discussion about Paris, said the Daily Mail article.The American Geophysical Union issued a statement saying it was very closely monitoring the situation, have considered the possible implications, and will be sharing any new information or response by AGU with you here. ;left-news;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;EMBARRASSING: Anti-Trump “THE HILL” Gets SLAMMED For Publishing Article Claiming MTV’s “Jersey Shore” Reality Star “Schooled” Trump On Global Warming ;"#JokeNewsAfter record, cold temperatures were reported across the United States, President Trump took to Twitter to mock the Global Warming scam supported by shyster politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama, who were poised to extort trillions of US taxpayer dollars to fund their global climate change scam.Trump tweeted: In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up! In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017Accuweather backed up President Trump s tweet with this report:Cold air rivaling that of the past 100 years for late December and early January will make it painful to be outdoors and may lead to damage in the central and the northeastern United States.AccuWeather RealFeel Temperatures are projected to be below zero over much of the Northeast and well below zero in much of the Midwest.In the coming days, RealFeel temperatures 5 to 20 degrees below zero will be common. in the northern tier, RealFeel temperatures may dip as low as 30 to 40 degrees below zero.From The Hill:Former Jersey Shore cast member Vinny Guadagnino shot back at President Trump on Thursday after Trump said the United States could use some good old global warming to heat up cold states. I think climate change is more complex than global warming will make it hotter, Guadagnino tweeted to Trump. It has to do with disruptions of atmospheric conditions, ocean patterns, jet streams and s t like that. ""Jersey Shore"" cast member schools Trump on climate change https://t.co/Vlfl6hskeT pic.twitter.com/URSHWTqgw0 The Hill (@thehill) December 29, 2017The former MTV reality star later responded to Twitter users who mocked him for replying to Trump, asking why does having a summer shore house automatically make [you] stupid? Per my last tweet about global warming and ppl saying it s bad when someone from jersey shore educates the president etc.I get the joke but why does having a summer shore house automatically make u stupid?No smart ppl ever partied with friends on weekends? Vinny Guadagnino (@VINNYGUADAGNINO) December 29, 2017The Hill then attempted to prove how smart Vinny Guadagnino s was because other Democrats also mocked President Trump s tweet:Democratic lawmakers also slammed Trump following the tweet.Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted that the U.S. has a moral obligation to combat climate change, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) blasted the tweet as embarrassing. Trump has denied that global warming exists in the past, claiming it was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Here s a closer look at the guy who The Hill claims schooled President Trump on phony Global Warming on Twitter: The energizer bunny ! Follow me on vinguadagnino for more inspiration in a chipmunk voice pic.twitter.com/JWj3OmKhf5 Vinny Guadagnino (@VINNYGUADAGNINO) December 6, 2017Here s how Twitter users responded to The Hill s tweet:Mueller Day mocked The Hill for using a guy who coined the phrase GTL (gym, tan, laundry) for suggesting he schooled our President.Ok, the dude who was instrumental in coining the phrase ""GTL"" (gym, tan, laundry) has just schooled the ""president"" on the science behind global warming. The world can end now. We've come full circle and there's nothing left to do. Mueller day (@TiersOfLove) December 29, 2017This Twitter user mocked The Hill for using a reality MTV show cast member s tweet to disproved President Trump s belief about phony global warming science:Yikes! You're scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't ya? Who's next? Mama June on foreign affairs (@EuroRaver) December 30, 2017nea sportsfan reminds The Hill that the Founder of the Weather Channel says climate change is bull Founder of weather channel says climate change is bull nea sportsfan (@sportsfanNEA) December 30, 2017twentyman also mocked The Hill for using the reality MTV star s tweet, calling them #FakeNews: Jet streams and shit like that what school are you referring to, you #FakeNews propagator?""Jet streams and shit like that"" what 'school' are you referring to, you #FakeNews propagator? twentyman (@tirbagofah) December 29, 2017Justin hilariously reminded The Hill of a 2015 tweet by Bernie Sanders:Maybe Vinny can ""school"" Bernie too.https://t.co/wW9qEuhykH Justin (@JustCrum79) December 29, 2017Here s the tweet from Bernie Sanders where he blames a 65-degree day on Christmas Eve in 2015 on climate change :Nobody can recall a Christmas Eve where the temperature was 65 degrees. Why is it that we're not effectively addressing climate change? Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 28, 2015";left-news;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;TOP FIVE Food Stamp Fraud Takedowns of 2017…Do You See The Common Thread?; After the Obama years of record food stamp usage, President Trump is pushing new initiatives to get people off of the government dole. The number was higher than 39.5 million (all-time high of 47.6 million in 2015) but you see the explosion with the graph below: The fraud in the food stamp program is so rampant and easy to commit, we ve become a global magnet for grifters who immigrate and set up shop to cash in on money for food stamps. This program is ripe for reform but what s most disturbing is the very lenient penalty for the crime of food stamp fraud. The fraudsters are usually given a very light jail sentence and ordered to pay back the money. The problem is that the money has probably gone overseas and will NEVER be paid back. These grifters fade into the woodwork only to resurface when they reoffend. THE TOP 5 FOOD STAMP FRAUD CASES FROM 2017: After the Obama years of record food stamp usage, President Trump is pushing new initiatives to get people off of the government dole. The number was higher than 39.5 million (all-time high of 47.6 million in 2015) but you see the explosion with the graph below:The fraud in the food stamp program is so rampant and easy to commit, we ve become a global magnet for grifters who immigrate and set up shop to cash in on money for food stamps.This program is ripe for reform but what s most disturbing is the very lenient penalty for the crime of food stamp fraud. The fraudsters are usually given a very light jail sentence and ordered to pay back the money. The problem is that the money has probably gone overseas and will NEVER be paid back. These grifters fade into the woodwork only to resurface when they reoffend.THE TOP 5 FOOD STAMP FRAUD CASES FROM 2017:The food stamp program is a federally-funded program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and federal investigators are most often the ones who catch those engaged in fraudulent activities..Investigators often uncover millions of dollars worth of food stamp fraud, mostly from people who run convenience stores in low-income areas where many patrons receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).To show how many millions of dollars these criminals have taken away from the federal government, here are the 5 biggest takedowns of food stamp fraud of 2017.IMMIGRANT FRAUD IS THE COMMON THREAD!1. Ohio Convenience Store Owner Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison for $2.8 Million in Food Stamp FraudA former Ohio convenience store owner got caught carrying out a $2.8 million food stamp fraud scheme where he allowed benefit recipients to exchange their food stamps for cash.The USDA revealed in an audit that the store, Breaden Market, cashed in on SNAP benefits more than ten times the amount of larger stores in the area, raising red flags among investigators.A judge eventually convicted and sentenced George Rafidi, 62, to 33 months in prison in February and ordered him to pay that $2.8 million back.2. Florida Investigators Discover More than $20 Million in Food Stamp FraudThe agency said it uncovered the majority of fraud when paging through SNAP benefit applications stating fraudulent household information.3. Baltimore Man Sentenced to Four Years for $3.7 Million Food Stamp FraudA Baltimore store owner got slapped with a four-year prison sentence for carrying out $3.7 million worth of food stamp fraud.Mohammad Shafiq, 51, was one of 14 other Baltimore-area retailers sentenced for $16 million worth of food stamp fraud, where they exchanged SNAP benefits for cash.The judge ordered Shafiq to pay back that $3.7 million to the federal government and serve three years of supervised release following the end of his sentence.4. Three Wisconsin Men Who Carried Out $1.2 Million Food Stamp Fraud Sentenced to Hard TimeA judge sentenced three Milwaukee, Wisconsin, convenience store owners Kanwar Gill, 67, Raviinder Gill, 27, and George Nance, 59 to prison terms ranging from 15-20 months in October after the three had been found guilty of exchanging cash for SNAP benefits.Their store, Quick N EZ, had been an authorized retailer that accepts food stamp benefits, but the $1.2 million in benefits the store redeemed was far beyond the amount the small convenience store was expected to redeem.Records show that all three men had been ordered to pay back the $1.2 million in fraudulently earned money. An Iraqi immigrant pleaded guilty to $1.4 million in food stamp fraud in November for conspiring with others to defraud the U.S. government.Ali Ratib Daham, 40, of Maine, gave customers cash in exchange for SNAP and Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program benefits. He then redeemed the full value of the benefits to obtain more money from the government fraudulently.The naturalized U.S. citizen is expected to face a harsh prison sentence for his crime he faces up to 20 years behind bars and will most likely be expected to pay back the $1.4 million to the government.Via: Breitbart;left-news;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Sheriff David Clarke Becomes An Internet Joke For Threatening To Poke People ‘In The Eye’;On Friday, it was revealed that former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, who was being considered for Homeland Security Secretary in Donald Trump s administration, has an email scandal of his own.In January, there was a brief run-in on a plane between Clarke and fellow passenger Dan Black, who he later had detained by the police for no reason whatsoever, except that maybe his feelings were hurt. Clarke messaged the police to stop Black after he deplaned, and now, a search warrant has been executed by the FBI to see the exchanges.Clarke is calling it fake news even though copies of the search warrant are on the Internet. I am UNINTIMIDATED by lib media attempts to smear and discredit me with their FAKE NEWS reports designed to silence me, the former sheriff tweeted. I will continue to poke them in the eye with a sharp stick and bitch slap these scum bags til they get it. I have been attacked by better people than them #MAGA I am UNINTIMIDATED by lib media attempts to smear and discredit me with their FAKE NEWS reports designed to silence me. I will continue to poke them in the eye with a sharp stick and bitch slap these scum bags til they get it. I have been attacked by better people than them #MAGA pic.twitter.com/XtZW5PdU2b David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) December 30, 2017He didn t stop there.BREAKING NEWS! When LYING LIB MEDIA makes up FAKE NEWS to smear me, the ANTIDOTE is go right at them. Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD. Nothing gets a bully like LYING LIB MEDIA S attention better than to give them a taste of their own blood #neverbackdown pic.twitter.com/T2NY2psHCR David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) December 30, 2017The internet called him out.This is your local newspaper and that search warrant isn t fake, and just because the chose not to file charges at the time doesn t mean they won t! Especially if you continue to lie. Months after decision not to charge Clarke, email search warrant filed https://t.co/zcbyc4Wp5b KeithLeBlanc (@KeithLeBlanc63) December 30, 2017I just hope the rest of the Village People aren t implicated. Kirk Ketchum (@kirkketchum) December 30, 2017Slaw, baked potatoes, or French fries? pic.twitter.com/fWfXsZupxy ALT- Immigration (@ALT_uscis) December 30, 2017pic.twitter.com/ymsOBLjfxU Pendulum Swinger (@PendulumSwngr) December 30, 2017you called your police friends to stand up for you when someone made fun of your hat Chris Jackson (@ChrisCJackson) December 30, 2017Is it me, with this masterful pshop of your hat, which I seem to never tire of. I think it s the steely resolve in your one visible eye pic.twitter.com/dWr5k8ZEZV Chris Mohney (@chrismohney) December 30, 2017Are you indicating with your fingers how many people died in your jail? I think you re a few fingers short, dipshit Ike Barinholtz (@ikebarinholtz) December 30, 2017ROFL. Internet tough guy with fake flair. pic.twitter.com/ulCFddhkdy KellMeCrazy (@Kel_MoonFace) December 30, 2017You re so edgy, buddy. Mrs. SMH (@MRSSMH2) December 30, 2017Is his break over at Applebees? Aaron (@feltrrr2) December 30, 2017Are you trying to earn your still relevant badge? CircusRebel (@CircusDrew) December 30, 2017make sure to hydrate, drink lots of water. It s rumored that prisoners can be denied water by prison officials. Robert Klinc (@RobertKlinc1) December 30, 2017Terrill Thomas, the 38-year-old black man who died of thirst in Clarke s Milwaukee County Jail cell this April, was a victim of homicide. We just thought we should point that out. It can t be repeated enough.Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.;News;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;FBI Russia probe helped by Australian diplomat tip-off: NYT;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had political dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The conversation between Papadopoulos and the diplomat, Alexander Downer, in London was a driving factor behind the FBI’s decision to open a counter-intelligence investigation of Moscow’s contacts with the Trump campaign, the Times reported. Two months after the meeting, Australian officials passed the information that came from Papadopoulos to their American counterparts when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, according to the newspaper, which cited four current and former U.S. and foreign officials. Besides the information from the Australians, the probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch, the Times said. Papadopoulos, a Chicago-based international energy lawyer, pleaded guilty on Oct. 30 to lying to FBI agents about contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials. It was the first criminal charge alleging links between the Trump campaign and Russia. The White House has played down the former aide’s campaign role, saying it was “extremely limited” and that any actions he took would have been on his own. The New York Times, however, reported that Papadopoulos helped set up a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and edited the outline of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech in April 2016. The federal investigation, which is now being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has hung over Trump’s White House since he took office almost a year ago. Some Trump allies have recently accused Mueller’s team of being biased against the Republican president. Lawyers for Papadopoulos did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment. Mueller’s office declined to comment. Trump’s White House attorney, Ty Cobb, declined to comment on the New York Times report. “Out of respect for the special counsel and his process, we are not commenting on matters such as this,” he said in a statement. Mueller has charged four Trump associates, including Papadopoulos, in his investigation. Russia has denied interfering in the U.S. election and Trump has said there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow. ;politicsNews;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;CELEBRATE! TRUMP HIGHLIGHT Video From “Year One”…The List of Accomplishments!;The conservative 45Committee is out with a new video, Year One, celebrating President Donald Trump s accomplishments so far during his first year in office. President Trump and Vice President Pence have had an incredible year of accomplishments from day one to today, said 45Committee president Brian Baker. Year One showcases their record of historic tax cuts and much, much more. Here are all the accomplishments the group lists for 2017:MAGA!;politics;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WHITE COLLEGE SNOWFLAKES Can ‘Identify’ As Black….Call It The ‘Pocahontas Policy’ But We Call It Delusion [Video];The latest video from Campus Reform shows just how far some college students think universities should go to recognize people s racial identity delusion and all!The Ivy League setting of Brown University shows Cabot Phillips asking students about a hypothetical Pocahontas policy that would allow students to self-identify based on race. Overall I think it s a good thing, one student said. However, that student later said in the video that he feels weird talking about this as not a person of color. Phillips asked, But what if you feel like one though? Another student answered, It s intended to create uh, you know, an atmosphere of inclusion and support diversity and I don t see anything wrong with that. If somebody identifies as something it should be their right to, another student said.Soooo these college snowflakes choose to live in the land of delusion and call it an atmosphere of inclusion and diversity . In our day we called it mental illness .Via: Daily Caller;left-news;30/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +1;Senior U.S. Republican senator: 'Let Mr. Mueller do his job';WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel investigation of links between Russia and President Trump’s 2016 election campaign should continue without interference in 2018, despite calls from some Trump administration allies and Republican lawmakers to shut it down, a prominent Republican senator said on Sunday. Lindsey Graham, who serves on the Senate armed forces and judiciary committees, said Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller needs to carry on with his Russia investigation without political interference. “This investigation will go forward. It will be an investigation conducted without political influence,” Graham said on CBS’s Face the Nation news program. “And we all need to let Mr. Mueller do his job. I think he’s the right guy at the right time.” The question of how Russia may have interfered in the election, and how Trump’s campaign may have had links with or co-ordinated any such effort, has loomed over the White House since Trump took office in January. It shows no sign of receding as Trump prepares for his second year in power, despite intensified rhetoric from some Trump allies in recent weeks accusing Mueller’s team of bias against the Republican president. Trump himself seemed to undercut his supporters in an interview last week with the New York Times in which he said he expected Mueller was “going to be fair.” Russia’s role in the election and the question of possible links to the Trump campaign are the focus of multiple inquiries in Washington. Three committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives are investigating, as well as Mueller, whose team in May took over an earlier probe launched by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Several members of the Trump campaign and administration have been convicted or indicted in the investigation. Trump and his allies deny any collusion with Russia during the campaign, and the Kremlin has denied meddling in the election. Graham said he still wants an examination of the FBI’s use of a dossier on links between Trump and Russia that was compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, which prompted Trump allies and some Republicans to question Mueller’s inquiry. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that it was not that dossier that triggered an early FBI probe, but a tip from former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damaging information about former Trump rival Hillary Clinton. “I want somebody to look at the way the Department of Justice used this dossier. It bothers me greatly the way they used it, and I want somebody to look at it,” Graham said. But he said the Russia investigation must continue. “As a matter of fact, it would hurt us if we ignored it,” he said. ;politicsNews;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YEAR IN REVIEW: 2017 Top Ten Conspiracies;Patrick Henningsen and Shawn Helton 21st Century WireOnce again, we ve arrived at our New Years Eve wrap-up of some of the most compelling and conspiratorial stories of the year. Like in years past, 2017 presented a polarizing political landscape, further exposing the current establishment paradigm. Unlike the establishment gatekeepers, when we use the word conspiracy here, we are talking about a real crime scene. Whether it was the ousting of thousands of western-backed terrorists in Iraq and Syria or a string of known wolf attacks amplified by made-to-order media agitprop, or the heavily manufactured Russia-gate narrative relentlessly pushed by mainstream outlets and Deep State actors it seemed there was no shortage of topsy-turvy stagecraft designed to mislead and confuse the masses at a time when the real world is undergoing some significant geopolitical realignments.As was the case in 2016, there were many high-profile incidents and individual stories which didn t make our annual compendium (but they are worth mentioning) like the red herring laced New Year s Eve mass shooting at Turkey s Reina nightclub that kicked off 2017 in classic Daily Shooter fashion, along with other dubious events like Fort Lauderdale s FBI-known shooter and subsequent CNN media circus. On the political front, it was a banner year for astroturfing starting with The Resistance which spent most of the first 3 months of the year demanding Trump s impeachment before he had served 100 days in office. As part of these efforts, we saw Hollywood and the Democratic Party s choreographed women s march backed by political agitator and perennial globalist George Soros, as well as MoveOn.org and other Soros-backed protests which followed Trump s highly controversial immigration ban, as contentious resignations by key members of the Trump White House loomed large. The stage was then set for Antifa s US riot tour which culminated the Charlottesville riots in Virginia followed by a series of social justice protests over Confederate statues, followed by more extremist left-wing antifascists foot-soldiers like black bloc throwing molotov cocktails and smashing buildings for kicks. And that only scratches the surface of what transpired in 2017.Other notable stories throughout the year included the Trump administration s decision to announce the creation of an Arab NATO headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the world s second-largest state sponsored of terror (US being the largest). That geopolitical gambit then teed up the Trump White House to announce that the US Embassy in Tel Aviv would begin proceedings to move to Jerusalem, a shift which some critics believe is further evidence of an ultra-Zionist agenda encroaching on Israeli-occupied Palestine and the West Bank. On the Asia front, questions emerged over what North Korea actually has in terms of ICBM missiles and a nuclear deterrent, while in the Middle East speculation raged about Saudi Arabia s historic palace purge and sabre rattling in the region. The year then saw the exposure of a giant US-NATO-Saudi weapons trafficking operation using diplomatic flight in order to arm terrorists in Syria and Iraq. 2017 also saw the mainstream media continue to market the media construct known as Bana of Aleppo, expecting the public to believe that an 8 year old girl who could not speak English was running a Twitter account from war-torn (and terrorist-occupied) East Aleppo from the autumn of 2016 all the while waxing poetic about the evil Assad, and the evil Russians and calling for US military intervention in Syria pure propaganda and a clear case of child exploitation. Interestingly, this outlandish Bana propaganda myth campaign has been shamelessly promoted by the multimillionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. 2017 also saw a wave of intelligence releases, set in motion by the CIA, who released more than 12 million documents pertaining to covert war programs, psychic research and the Cold War era, further outlining the symbiotic relationship between the agency and American media. This was followed by Wikileaks exposing much of the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities in their Vault 7 and later in their Vault 8 publications. Towards the end of the year, a new twist in the downing of MH17 revealed an apparent Netherlands cover-up, as another bizarre Daily Shooter event, the Texas Church shooting, would later disappear from headlines. Around the same time frame, new questions also emerged in the Sandy Hook saga concerning prior knowledge of the FBI, as New York was then stricken by a known wolf truck attacker. In December it was finally announced that after being held in prison for two years without trial, the Fed s Bundy Ranch Standoff case was declared a mistrial. However, most of the year s controversial stories were quickly pushed to the back page, buried underneath an avalanche of ready-to-go Weinstein-inspired sex abuse scandals involving Hollywood s elite punctuated by obligatory hashtag campaigns like #MeToo, before snagging a number of high-profile news media personalities and some of Washington s most coveted swamp dwellers. As an onslaught of new accusations flooded the media, the sordid revelation of a Congressional slush fund used to payoff sexual harassment accusers made headlines. The whole situation conjured DC s Conspiracy of Silence regarding tales of sexual misconduct in days past.All in all, it was another year of hyper-real media propaganda, as some stories published by mainstream media led to a cascade of retractions and corrections, and in certain cases, provided an all to convenient mask for other politically charged news throughout much of 2017. Unlike the mainstream media official conspiracies (like Russiagate), these ones are actually real 10. The JFK Files Over the course of 2017, one of America s most compelling conspiracies was reignited following the release of thousands of intelligence files long-held by the CIA and FBI. In late October, the Trump administration called for the release of the remaining JFK files, citing the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act deadline placed into law in 1992. While the material released was reportedly a mix of new and old, some critics declared that the recently declassified files revealed even more startling evidence related to the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. This prompted larger legacy media establishments to provide a murky retelling of the JFK saga. Predictably, a week after the releases, one newer CIA memo stated that any links between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald, were unfounded. In essence, the JFK file releases appear to have been a way for the political powers that be to shut the door on a conspiracy that has an overwhelming amount of information suggesting CIA links not only to Oswald, but many of the characters surrounding the case. In reality though, as newfound interest in the JFK files was reawakened, it cast light on the over five decade old case, reopening the door to coup d tat claims concerning JFK and Cold War era false flag terror. In particular, terror created by Operation GLADIO, a CIA-NATO construct, which utilized covert armies to subvert the political interests of various nations through the implementation of a Cold-War era strategy of tension. The further one digs into America s seedy underworld of organized crime, intelligence operations, unlikely coincidences and secretive relationships concerning the mysterious plot to kill Kennedy, a highly intricate web of activity emerges that points to a compelling case beyond almost any other modern-day conspiracy.9. Grenfell Tower Fire & Cover-Up It was Britain s biggest domestic disaster post WWII, and from the minute this story broke, reports of government and corporate corruption began to surface. This real-life Towering Inferno featured some of the most surreal revelations, including a corrupt government Qango known as TMO (Tenant Management Organisation) who had paid a contractor to install highly flammable petroleum-based cladding on the building, supposedly to meet green sustainability goals but also to cover-up what wealthy property developers deemed as an eye sore (social housing high rise building), part of London s continuous and rampant gentrification property bubble agenda. The controversy did not stop with the fire itself though, as residents and concerned members of the public began to question the abnormally low death count which was being trumpeted by the media and the government agencies. Meanwhile, thousands of residents from Grenfell Tower and the surrounding buildings continued to suffer and mourn the loss of loved ones and friends leaving in indellible scar on the community while the government s elite Common Purpose management class continued on with business as usual. Six months on, the public is still wondering whether anyone will be arrested, or held to account for this unprecedented story of criminal negligence. In one of its most seminal episodes, the SUNDAY WIRE radio show, along with its affiliate the UK Column, drove the investigative agenda early on in this story, with the mainstream media later picking talking points covered by this independent media outlet.8. The Crisis in Yemen Back in January 2015 while the world was focused on the war in Syria, 21WIRE first raised the alarm over Yemen after it noticed the insatiable war-time president Barack Obama, along with Deep State and Pentagon media outlet CNN began drifting out talking points about Yemen. It wasn t long after that, in March 2015, that Saudi Arabia with the full military and political backing of the US and UK, began an undeclared war of aggression against Saudi s neighbor Yemen. Nearly three years on, with tens of thousands slaughtered by Saudi airstrikes dropping their newly purchased US and UK munitions (and even enjoying air refueling by the US military) and with the Saudi and US military blockade which is keeping much-needed humanitarian aid from entering the war-ravaged country leading to mass starvation and disease outbreaks like cholera on the peninsula why isn t the international community calling out the illegal war against Yemen for what it is genocide? In order to prop-up their fake narrative on Yemen, the US and UK mainstream media conglomerates and their state propaganda directors from intelligence agency information warfare units have concocted a new batch of official disinformation lies and myths used to muddy the waters of this important discussion and ultimately justify their slaughter and arms sales bonanza in Yemen. On balance, what the US, UK and Saudi Arabia have done to Yemen is by orders of magnitude worse than what Nazi Germany did to its neighbors in the initial phase of WWII. Nothing less than a new Nuremberg Trial will be suitable to help correct this act of international barbarism.7. London s GLADIO-style Attacks On March 22nd, an apparent two-pronged terror attack stretched from London s Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square. In the days leading up to the London attacks, it was revealed that Met Police rehearsed a terrifyingly realistic drill on the River Thames prior to yet another known wolf act of terror taking place. Adding to the drama, the London attacks occurred exactly one year after the Brussels airport bombings. In addition, the bizarre and unexpected event took place during a massive uptick of Western allied involvement in the Syrian conflict and in less than 24 hours, London authorities revealed that the British-born attacker named Khalid Masood, (after media outlets erroneously reported the wrong suspect) was already well-known to MI5 and had worked in Saudi Arabia sometime between 2005-2008. Shortly after the attack, it was revealed that eye-witnesses reported seeing multiple assailants at the crime scene, this was something that directly contradicted the official story. In fact, in those reports, it was suggested that at least two individuals participated in the large-scale attack in one of the most heavily surveilled parts of London. This aspect of the case was quickly buried by major media outlets, echoing other high-profile cases involving known wolf terrorists. In recent years, there s been a pattern of multiple suspects often witnessed or said to be involved in other terror-related events. This proved to be the case in the aftermath of the Nice, France truck attack, as well as the Brussels airport bombing in 2016. Rather incredibly or unbelievably, London s acting Police Commissioner Craig Mackey, just so happened to be at the scene to witness the Parliament Square attack on Pc Keith Palmer. All in all, the latest symbolically charged ISIS-approved attack on the verge of spring, appeared to be an effort to polarize the perception of Western viewers with yet another round of wartime propaganda, while also providing a media smoke screen for recent US military action in Syria. By early summer, just after the Manchester arena bombing, London once again became a target of a purported multi-pronged terror event right on the heels of the UK s hotly contested 2017 general election. Afterwards, a number of questions were raised following the London Bridge attacks, just as there were following the Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge attacks and the Manchester Arena attack. It s important to note the common thread between each suspicious event, and the recent UK attacks are no exception there s now indisputable evidence linking MI5 and MI6 British security services to various known wolves prior to carrying out the terror crimes mentioned above. The precarious relationship between security and terror is an ongoing pattern seen after almost every major terror attack on Western soil. Throughout 2017, the London attacks seemed to increase racial and ethnic tensions in the West, while also pushing the public into accepting a more direct military intervention in Syria, and new police state measures and surveillance powers in the UK prompting us to ask, who benefited the most from the London Attacks? We d say the answer to that question is pretty obvious now 6. Manchester s Known Wolf Arena Attack Another day, another conspiratorial crime. In this case, the public was witness to yet another known wolf terror attack allegedly carried out by an ISIS-inspired individual who, as with numerous other cases, was under the gaze of MI5. The man named in the Manchester bombing attack, Salman Abedi, was also tied to a terror group supported by NATO in Libya during the operation to oust Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011. The Manchester arena attack proved to be more than just blowback from security operations gone awry, it provided further evidence of complicity on behalf of the West in the War On Terror era. While some researchers and analysts were a buzz with the numerological synchronicities associated with the Manchester attack, others noted some very real political circumstances and significant timelines surrounding this apparent mass-tragedy in Manchester. The event just happened to arrive on the heels of a monolithic arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth $110 billion dollars that will total $350 billion over the next 10 years, and only shortly after the Manchester attack, there were US-led coalition airstrikes supposedly targeting ISIS in both Syria and Iraq that killed 121 civilians in the process. The strikes led to increased tension, placing external pressure on the Russian-led Astana Peace Agreement in Syria, while continuing to benefit the strategic movements of ISIS in Syria. The really damning link however, was exposed by one major UK Government eyesore after the Manchester attacks: the revelation that a community of outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists were in fact living in close proximity to the Manchester attacker Abedi, and directly connected to Abedi himself. This was a deeply troubling development for a public unaware of the nearby danger, as British security services and officials allowed this thriving group of fighters to reside in the UK seemingly without consequence or disclosure of their previous activities until the Manchester attack. So naturally, when it was revealed that Ramadan Abedi (the father of the purported Manchester suicide bomber) was also a member of the UK government-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and was believed to have been a part of LIFG during the NATO-backed regime change operation in Libya in 2011 it only raised more questions concerning the attack. It s worth noting, Libya s militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was also a part of the Mujahideen fighters closely linked to Bin Laden who became known as al-Qaeda. In fact, Belhadj returned to his home country [in 1995] as head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an underground paramilitary organisation dedicated to Gaddafi s downfall. Over the years, Belhadj was incarcerated and turned loose back into the field after being rendered by the CIA and British security services. As of 2015, despite the Manchester attack links to LIFG, the group is still on the US State Department s Delisted Foreign Terrorist Organizations. In the days after the attack, authorities released CCTV imagery apparently depicting the Manchester attacker Abedi, in what appeared to be a way to dramatize the bombing through emotionally charged imagery, as the media obscured other facts and connections observed in the aftermath of the attack itself. The Manchester attack was similar to other high-profile incidents used to distort public opinion in the wake of media styled mass-tragedies.5. The Las Vegas Mass Shooting October 1st marked the return of the Great American Mass Shooting a real record-breaker, complete with a shocking mile-long crime scene that stretched from the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino to the nearby Route 91 Festival, where thousands of concertgoers suddenly became a target. Although America had seen a host of smaller, less sensationalized mass shootings throughout the course of 2017, including the bizarre Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting and the strange Programmed to Kill Texas Church shooting, the high-profile Las Vegas calamity resuscitated the trauma inducing imagery so prevalent in the post-9/11 War On Terror era. This made-for-TV event was designed for media shock and awe, like the 9/11 of Mass Shootings. Over the past several years, 21WIRE has chronicled many bizarre shootings and mass casualty incidents that have rippled across America and Europe. These events have become a new kind of ritualized crimescape moving well beyond security concerns, but now accompanied by a complete range of socio-political mainstream media talking points including race, religion, gun reform , social media concerns and domestic extremism while concurrently obscuring and obfuscating the forensic reality of the crimes themselves. We re told that this tragic shooting attack was carried out by a classic lone gunman one individual without a criminal past (or nay past, as far as we could tell) but there proved to be much more to the story. Adding to this hyper-real incident, the main suspect in the Las Vegas tragedy was also revealed to be a multi-millionaire players club member, 64 year-old Stephen Paddock. With no motive and no criminal history, Las Vegas police were tasked with uncovering details of a crime overseen by billionaire bosses at MGM Resorts International and the FBI. As authorities failed to uncover a clear motive for the crime, police scanner audio, along with eye-witness testimony suggested that multiple shooters may have been at the scene, although this aspect was downplayed by mainstream media. This was quickly followed by several official revisions in the timeline of the shooting and even the crime scene itself, as evidenced by this disastrous press conference which failed to yield any new information in the case. The star-witness of the shooting, Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos, also vanished and was declared missing right before a major media interview, only to resurface much later on the oddest of media venues, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, giving media gatekeepers the chance to run interference for DeGeneres s slot machine business partners at MGM. Along the way, bizarre media performances by Paddock s brother, Eric Paddock, only prompted more questions and deepened the mystery surrounding this surreal case. While the public waited for MGM to release CCTV footage of the alleged shooter Paddock, not one tape materialized, except for an older tape from 2011. Staged photos of the Mandalay Bay crime scene led to other forensic questions concerning the weaponry used, compounding other acoustic anomalies already noted. Other confusing elements of the case included the missing hard drive from Paddock s laptop, another brother s arrest, the wiring of $100,000 to his live-in girlfriend s (Marilou Danley) home country, the Philippines, Paddock s previous employment at the predecessor company of Lockheed Martin, a reported break-in at one of his homes after the shooting, the absurd insertion of an ISIS-inspired motive (which a number of dubious click-bait media outlets ran with), and later seeing a back drop of active shooter related drills and government activity, along with details suggesting Paddock may not have been alone and much more. In the search for answers in America s largest-ever mass shooting, months later, we still have yet to see any CCTV footage of the alleged killer or his whereabouts leading up to the tragedy, as he moved in and around Las Vegas. Imagine that: no CCTV footage. While some have attempted to make sense of the Las Vegas shooting tragedy, there are reports of a major push to revamp security in the hospitality industry through the use of gunfire detection systems, X-ray, body scanners and facial recognition in the wake of this confusing, if not partly manufactured event. The popular media concept of a lone wolf killer in today s world has reprogrammed the public mind in the very same way that the serial killer phenomenon did decades ago. This new fear-based saga has ushered in a string of improbable Hollywood-style scenarios, inducing a frozen apathy across the masses. Rather than looking deeply at crime scene forensics or pouring over piles of collected data, these Daily Shooter crimes hold the public psyche hostage until the next unexplained mass tragedy. Until the next episode 4. Syria s Sarin Gas False Flag In less than 24 hours after the highly dubious alleged chemical attack on April 4th (reported to be Sarin gas by Western media) in Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib province of Syria, wide-scale unsubstantiated condemnation laid blame at the doorstep of the Syrian government and Russia following the release of video footage that had yet to be forensically scrutinized. In fact, the mainstream media flooded the airwaves with a bevy of circumstantial and speculative evidence a far cry from actual hard evidence. Leaders in Washington and Western media outlets once again set the stage for wider military intervention in Syria. Days after the release of a forensically unproven chemical attack out of Khan Shaykhun, US President Donald Trump ordered a military strike on the Syrian government s Shayrat Air Base in response to the alleged chemical attack in Idlib. Trump s missile strike won him instant praise from the Pentagon media oracle CNN, as well as giddy celebrations by war-mongering neocons in the US. Perhaps the most telling aspect of Syria s most recent mass casualty terror tragedy, was the suspicious involvement of the US-UK-NATO-Gulf state backed NGO known as the White Helmets a group who once again was witnessed in wartime imagery that was not only full of anomalies but a production designed to evoke an emotional response rather than one based in rationality. Since their inception in late 2013, the White Helmets have largely conducted their so-called rescue operations in rebel-terrorist held areas in Syria, while producing an unprecedented amount of western-oriented war propaganda for nations deeply invested in arming and backing rebel-terrorists vying for regime change in Syria. Nearly two weeks after the alleged sarin gas attack, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore Postol directly disputed claims concerning the official US report regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack out of Khan Shaykhun in the rebel-held terrorist-occupied Idlib province of Syria. Postol s initial analysis, along with its addendum, appeared to echo what MIT research affiliate and former US Congressional staffer Subrata Ghoshroy observed in the aftermath of the Syrian chemical incident in East Ghouta, Damascus in 2013. In addition, other award-winning American journalists like Seymour Hersh and Gareth Porter also exposed the sarin attack narrative as a fabrication promulgated by a corrupt OPCW but their reports were muted by mainstream gatekeepers. Both apparent attacks in Damascus and Idlib, were claimed through the presentation of dubious video imagery and suspicious photographs as a main source of evidence. Despite the absence of any real forensic investigation, the western media proclaimed certainty over images and videos largely supplied by the dubious NGO known as the White Helmets. It would later be revealed that on April 4th, the Syrian Air Force had also struck a warehouse in Idlib where chemical weapons were said to have been produced and stockpiled by US-backed militants. What was most disturbing, was that many in US-UK leadership seemed desperate for the public to buy into any WMD claims without concrete proof and in the process, they deliberately pushed heavily propagandized imagery presented on social media as proof of the as yet forensically unproven sarin gas attack. In essence, the whole event became a wag the dog moment ensnaring not only the White House, but many leaders in the UK as well.3. White Helmets Fraud The White Helmets. Who are they, who created them, who funds them, and which master do they serve in Syria? In the US and in Europe, these fundamental questions routinely go unanswered by the western mainstream media organizations and government officials. Since first appearing on the western media scene in late 2013, the UK and US government-funded pseudo NGO known as the White Helmets has achieved cult-like status as their pictures adorn the front pages of newspapers and CNN breaking news segments about Syria. For the last 4 years, their principle function has been to produce a steady stream of anti-Assad regime and anti-Russian propaganda tailored for western audiences. Since 2015, 21WIRE led the way in asking these important questions, and in 2017 the overwhelming pressure of mounting evidence of the White Helmet fraud eventually led to various shoddy academics in the US and in the UK mainstream media outlets attacking 21WIRE and its writers for challenging the official White Helmets narrative and for exposign how the UK government has been channeling hundreds of millions of pounds into terrorist-occupied areas of Syria under the thin guise building civil society (US and UK trojan horse) organizations in Syria. Establishment attacks included one mainstream media outlet promoting the White Helmets, The Guardian newspaper in the UK. According to The Guardian anyone who dared to question their official government-sanctioned narrative were conspiracy theorists and somehow part of a secret Russian-backed propaganda campaign. Despite mountains of evidence including various fake rescue videos, colluding in acts of murder and extreme violence and evidence which clearly depicts the dodgy search and rescue groups members as dual members in armed al Qaeda terrorist affiliates operating in rebel-held opposition areas of Syria western mainstream media are still determined to play dumb on this issue, which only goes to prove just how ignorant mainstream gatekeepers are as to the realities on the ground in Syria, or worse how controlled are mainstream editors desks by the western intelligence apparatus. Either way, Toto has already drawn the Wizard s curtain all the way back and it s only a question of time before western media apologists and clueless politicians retreat into full no comment mode on this issue.2. The Russia-Gate PsyOp It s been 18 months since the Democratic Party and the US mainstream media launched its Russia-gate narrative, claiming that Moscow had hacked the DNC, John Podesta and somehow influenced the result of the US 2016 Presidential Election. 18 months later, there s still no evidence to substantiate this mainstream conspiracy theory making Russiagate easily the biggest fake news story of the year. What s most telling about this official conspiracy theory (as it turns out, it s the mainstream that peddles the grandest conspiracy theories) is that its proponents have to resort to publishing repeated lies and wild exaggerations in order to maintain the pillars supporting their narrative. So desperate were the New York Times to tie Trump to Russia that it even claimed that the Russians where creating Facebook pages about puppies in order to confuse and mislead vulnerable American voters. New York Times also had to retract their central lie which claimed that 17 US Intelligence agencies had all agreed that the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election but still we hear legions of mindless journalists and shaky politicians like Adam Schiff (who, not surprisingly is also promoting the White Helmets) repeating that same old canard. As part of Washington s new McCarthyite red scare reboot, the US government labeled Russian international media network RT, and RT America as foreign agents forcing the channel and its journalists to register with the US government under old outdated pre-WWII espionage legislation. Other fake claims by US media include Kremlin bots deployed on Facebook to mess with the fragile minds of potential voters on social media, and CNN s all-time classic: an Exclusive! no less claiming that the Russians somehow infiltrated the computer game Pokemon Go in order to sow confusion among Americans. Honestly, we couldn t make it up if we tried. What s beyond ironic is that the same media who has been constantly crying fake news! as their prime talking point to explain how Trump beat Clinton has been dutifully recycling their own fake news narrative for over a year now. This one will surely go down in history as the biggest political hoax of all-time and all of the mainstream media outlets who helped promulgate this myth should also go down with it. Sadly, too many mentally-challenged lawmakers in the US, UK and Europe are actually basing their foreign policies of this mainstream fake news myth which is all too convenient for an ever-inflating the US defense budget, NATO s breakneck expansion eastward, and also for Brussels new roll-out of its EU Army 1. Fake News 2.0 2017 was the year of fake news. Last year, we crowned Fake News 1.0 as our top conspiracy, but this past year has seen it ascend to an entirely new level. From the beginning, this faux crisis had a clear set of political objectives. The first was to provide a scapegoat for Hillary Clinton s catastrophic imploding presidential run, and secondly, to try and prop-up the establishment s official conspiracy theory that somehow the Russians were spreading fake news across social media and alternative media websites in order to help Donald Trump win the election. On this front, many of us are indebted to Trump for branding CNN with the meme that keeps sticking, as the President hit CNN s bumbling White House correspondent Jim Acosta, with Trump pointing to Acosta and saying, You are fake news! live on national TV. If was a glorious moment for sure. Newspapers like the Washington Post performed a key role for the US Deep State by pushing-out fictional news features like the one claiming 200 of the leading alternative media websites were part of some Kremlin-orchestrated network of websites carrying out active measures (a defunct Cold War term) propaganda against the American people. The Post even presented a bogus anonymous construct, a website called PropOrNot in order to try and make their conspiracy theory look official. Around the same time, a radical progressive academic from Merrimack College in Massachusetts published a fake news list a database and virtual blacklist design;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +d to defame and slander any independent media outlets who happened to veer from the party line and challenge the policies of Hillary Clinton and Obama. Dr. Zimdars heavily politicized list was promoted by the LA Times which; like the fraudulent story published in The Post; claimed that hundreds of alternative media websites were producing fake news and conspiracy stories and therefore were unreliable as information sources. It wasn t long before the establishment began referencing these politicized lists; holding them up as proof of some crisis in what the liberal intelligensia proudly dubbed a post-truth world. Despite the establishment s insistence on pushing this faux crisis; an increasing number of smart news consumers came to realize that for at least the last century and half; the establishment s tightly-controlled information syndicate has been able to manufacture its own consensus reality through the use of their own official fake news. By channeling public opinion in this way; the mainstream press has helped facilitate a number of engineered outcomes including war. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the fake news circus; is that Silicon Valley monopolies like Google and Facebook have taken it upon themselves to manipulate their online platforms in such a way that they are choosing which websites and news sources will be de-ranked and effectively hidden from the view of most users; and; in the case of Facebook censoring real information presented by independent; non mainstream journalists; but allowing political operatives to abuse their problematic communitarian information policing system to strike off offensive content. As a result a number of leading alternative commentators have been banned from Facebook for completely illegitimate reasons. Finally; we can reveal the 2.0 aspect of the establishment s fake news faux crisis a false pretext to unleash a wide-ranging program of internet censorship and it s already begun. Reasonable people should be under no illusions: Google Inc; Facebook and global monopolies like them it are the closest thing to a classic fascist-corporatist behemoth you will find in the world today. Both Google and Facebook are both actively colluding with big government and other mainstream media partners; and are guilty of stealth censoring through either their A.I. filtering algorithms; or through flagged websites on a database used to de-rank leading independent and anti-war sites like 21st Century Wire; Anti-War.com; Consortium News; Global Research and countless others. Furthermore; Facebook is now on record as admitting to colluding with both the US and Israeli governments to delete undesirable accounts. This is a corporation which is now actively and opening violating US laws; which is engaging in criminal activity by any other definition. These are not the only threats posed by these corporate fascists. The very same corporate digital barons have also been busy colluding with politicians in order to repeal Net Neutrality as part of the elites final end-run to marginalize and ultimately crush all independent and dissenting voices online who threaten the primacy of mainstream groupthink; and who could get broader traction among the population if the playing field was truly a level one. Not only is this illegal under antitrust laws; but it represents a brutal form of fascism. It s now clearer than ever that Silicon Valley executives and government bureaucrats cannot be trusted to manage the most important public utility of the new century the information super highway.So if the mainstream press can no longer be trusted; then who can you trust for objectivity and accuracy? Again;" we have to ask the question: who s watching the watchers? Answer: We are.HAPPY NEW YEAR.SEE PREVIOUS TOP TEN CONSPIRACIES: 2016 Top Ten Conspiracies2015 Top Ten Conspiracies2014 Top Ten ConspiraciesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV""";Middle-east;31/12/2017 +1;As U.S. budget fight looms, Republicans flip their fiscal script;WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of a conservative Republican faction in the U.S. Congress, who voted this month for a huge expansion of the national debt to pay for tax cuts, called himself a “fiscal conservative” on Sunday and urged budget restraint in 2018. In keeping with a sharp pivot under way among Republicans, U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” drew a hard line on federal spending, which lawmakers are bracing to do battle over in January. When they return from the holidays on Wednesday, lawmakers will begin trying to pass a federal budget in a fight likely to be linked to other issues, such as immigration policy, even as the November congressional election campaigns approach in which Republicans will seek to keep control of Congress. President Donald Trump and his Republicans want a big budget increase in military spending, while Democrats also want proportional increases for non-defense “discretionary” spending on programs that support education, scientific research, infrastructure, public health and environmental protection. “The (Trump) administration has already been willing to say: ‘We’re going to increase non-defense discretionary spending ... by about 7 percent,’” Meadows, chairman of the small but influential House Freedom Caucus, said on the program. “Now, Democrats are saying that’s not enough, we need to give the government a pay raise of 10 to 11 percent. For a fiscal conservative, I don’t see where the rationale is. ... Eventually you run out of other people’s money,” he said. Meadows was among Republicans who voted in late December for their party’s debt-financed tax overhaul, which is expected to balloon the federal budget deficit and add about $1.5 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt. “It’s interesting to hear Mark talk about fiscal responsibility,” Democratic U.S. Representative Joseph Crowley said on CBS. Crowley said the Republican tax bill would require the United States to borrow $1.5 trillion, to be paid off by future generations, to finance tax cuts for corporations and the rich. “This is one of the least ... fiscally responsible bills we’ve ever seen passed in the history of the House of Representatives. I think we’re going to be paying for this for many, many years to come,” Crowley said. Republicans insist the tax package, the biggest U.S. tax overhaul in more than 30 years, will boost the economy and job growth. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who also supported the tax bill, recently went further than Meadows, making clear in a radio interview that welfare or “entitlement reform,” as the party often calls it, would be a top Republican priority in 2018. In Republican parlance, “entitlement” programs mean food stamps, housing assistance, Medicare and Medicaid health insurance for the elderly, poor and disabled, as well as other programs created by Washington to assist the needy. Democrats seized on Ryan’s early December remarks, saying they showed Republicans would try to pay for their tax overhaul by seeking spending cuts for social programs. But the goals of House Republicans may have to take a back seat to the Senate, where the votes of some Democrats will be needed to approve a budget and prevent a government shutdown. Democrats will use their leverage in the Senate, which Republicans narrowly control, to defend both discretionary non-defense programs and social spending, while tackling the issue of the “Dreamers,” people brought illegally to the country as children. Trump in September put a March 2018 expiration date on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which protects the young immigrants from deportation and provides them with work permits. The president has said in recent Twitter messages he wants funding for his proposed Mexican border wall and other immigration law changes in exchange for agreeing to help the Dreamers. Representative Debbie Dingell told CBS she did not favor linking that issue to other policy objectives, such as wall funding. “We need to do DACA clean,” she said. On Wednesday, Trump aides will meet with congressional leaders to discuss those issues. That will be followed by a weekend of strategy sessions for Trump and Republican leaders on Jan. 6 and 7, the White House said. Trump was also scheduled to meet on Sunday with Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott, who wants more emergency aid. The House has passed an $81 billion aid package after hurricanes in Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico, and wildfires in California. The package far exceeded the $44 billion requested by the Trump administration. The Senate has not yet voted on the aid. ;politicsNews;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM DROPS BOMBSHELL… FINALLY Confirms The Fake Russian Dossier Was Used To Obtain FISA Warrant To Spy On Trump;Everyone suspected the sketchy Steele Dossier was what corrupt FBI and DOJ officials used to get the October 2016 FISA warrant against Trump. FBI and DOJ officials refuse to answer that question publicly.Rep Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said in a statement: We now know that the so-called Steele dossier was paid for by the Democratic Party in an effort to gin up negative information regarding then-candidate Trump. What the American people deserve to know is whether the information compiled by Steele on the Democrats dime was used by the Obama administration to obtain approval to conduct surveillance against Trump associates. The FBI has stonewalled producing these documents for months and their production shouldn t be limited to closed door viewing by a small number of members of Congress. The Trump administration should immediately declassify all the documents used to obtain surveillance warrants against Trump or his associates. Immediately after his inauguration, President Trump came out swinging over the fake Russian dossier. He even went as far as to blame the intelligence community. President Trump was immediately criticized for his comments, and the media behaved as though he was insane to even insinuate such a wild theory. As it turns out, he wasn t too far off the mark.CT Despite a hundred different ways congressional investigators have asked the question, and despite numerous on-camera questions to FBI and DOJ officials about the 2016 FISA process, no-one had definitively confirmed the Christopher Steele Russian Dossier was the underlying evidence for the 2016 FISA application to gain wiretaps and electronic surveillance upon presidential candidate Donald Trump. UNTIL NOW.Senator Lindsey Graham just confirmed the sketchy Steele Dossier was used to get the wiretap and surveillance warrant from the FISA court. Brian Kilmeade understood what he was hearing was serious, but didn t quite catch the specific gravity of it. Watch at starting at the 04:10 mark: The back-story to the FISA warrant is the cornerstone. The back-story contains both the FBI and the DOJ scheme. Expose it, remove it, and the entire muh Russia conspiracy collapses under the weight of sunlight This is critical and important because the specific use of the Steele Dossier underpins the BIG UGLY and exposes the entire top-tier apparatus of the FBI Counterintelligence Division (Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, James Baker, Andrew McCabe) and the DOJ National Security Division (John Carlin, Stuart Evans, Mary McCord and Sally Yates), as well as DOJ Bruce Ohr and FBI lawyer Lisa Page directly to conspiracy charges.The 2016 FBI counterintelligence operation was surveillance on the Trump Campaign and was thinly disguised under the fraudulent auspices of a FISA warrant, sold as a defense of U.S. democracy from Russia, which permitted the wiretaps and surveillance etc.The DOJ involvement surrounds legal arguments, processing of FISA applications, and use of the legal system to support the FBI operation with actionable legal framing (against Trump). The DOJ National Security Division carried out that collaboration with the FBI.Tablet Mag did a deep dive into the Fusion-GPS connection to the creation of the Steele Dossier;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BARBRA STREISAND Gives Up On Dream Of Impeaching Trump Over Fake Trump-Russian Collusion…Tweets HILARIOUS New Reason Trump Should Be Impeached;Barbra Streisand was an Obama sycophant and one of the corrupt Clinton s most loyal fans. She is also part of the Hollywood liberal resistance movement. Much like Rosie O Donnell, Kathy Griffin, and literally hundreds of overpaid celebrities, Barbara Streisand is obsessed with tweeting about how much she hates President Trump. It s Streisand s latest tweet that has conservatives calling her out for her complete and utter stupidity .Streisand tweeted: Collusion or no collusion, @realDonaldTrump should be impeached for sheer stupidity. Collusion or no collusion, @realDonaldTrump should be impeached for sheer stupidity. Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) December 30, 2017Twitter users wasted no time DESTROYING the has been entertainer.This tweet suggested her music and acting awards should be recalled due to the sheer stupidity of the recipient.I can think of a lot of Oscars, Emmy s, Tony s and Grammy s that should be recalled due to sheer stupidity of the recipient. Particularly this one: https://t.co/f4KtzLsOQA AnneMarie (@bulliegirl1959) December 30, 2017Dan Bongino suggested that talent aside, Streisand should be mocked for failing constitutional basics 101.Singing or no singing @BarbraStreisand should be mocked for failing constitutional basics 101. https://t.co/EeFKkiYtOb Dan Bongino (@dbongino) December 30, 2017 Mike truly schooled Streisand when he explained to her, You can t impeach a President, because of your feelings, Barbra. You can't impeach a President, because of your feelings, Barbra. https://t.co/vsmuW223pI Mike (@Fuctupmind) December 30, 2017Barbra got destroyed in one powerful image reminding her that Impeachment requires an actual crime pic.twitter.com/BBW1lEY9hn chach malone (@chachmalone) December 30, 2017OUCH! Rita replied to Barbra that she used to be a fan, but no more. She even took it a step further, and let Barbra know that she was now on her boycott list!!! I was a Fan of you!!! Now you are on my boycott list!!! Rita Reisch Afd (@rita_reisch) December 30, 2017Finally, this Twitter user refers to Barbra Streisand as a has been vs the President.There ya go!! A has been vs the President beaner (@CWhitam) December 30, 2017;politics;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;COORDINATED? Yet Another Hack Reporter Claims U.S. Doesn’t Have ‘Moral Authority’ To Talk About Iranian Protests [Video];"A coordinated effort to spew anti-Trump propaganda by reporters from CNN and ABC has us pretty disgusted. We previously reported on a CNN reporter (see below) who said pretty much verbatim what Matthew Dowd of ABC just said:ABC Reporter Matthew Dowd:.@matthewjdowd: ""Our moral authority in the world has been drastically diminished,"" reducing our ability to weigh in on protests in Iran. ""How can we talk about what's going on Iran when we don't talk about what goes on in Russia?"" #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/H24KxuNWGv ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 31, 2017WE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED ON A CNN POLITICAL HACK WHO SAID ALMOST THE SAME THING: CNN correspondent Arwa Damon takes the propaganda route and sides with Iran in bashing America by saying we don t have a moral leg to stand on . This is a mind blower We just reported that America gives over $24 billion in aid to countries around the world. Iran has been bashing the U.S. for decades and now this liberal hack at CNN says the world thinks we don t have a moral leg to stand on? America has literally been the beacon of light for the world! We give more than anyone and are taking in the most refugees by far. The world might need to do a reality check on this one Via Daily Caller: During CNN s coverage of protests in Iran Saturday, a correspondent read a statement from the Iranian government, adding that many countries are frustrated with the United States, and that many think America doesn t have a moral leg to stand on. CNN correspondent Arwa Damon said, This coming out from the [Iranian] foreign ministry, not only talking about the fact that they view the government of President Trump as the greatest bearer of ill will towards Iran but going on to say that, The people of Iran give no value or credibility to such opportunistic expressions by the Government or the person, Mr. Trump. American officials, through their conduct have not earned a place from which they can express masked sentiments as sympathies, for the aware of the people of Iran. This reporter has a history of being anti-Israel. Is CNN taking sides in the Iranian uprising? We think so.To watch the video: Daily Caller";politics;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;PRESIDENT TRUMP TWEETS The Perfect New Years Message…It’s Who He Included In His Tweet That Has Everyone LAUGHING!;As 2017 comes to a close, we d like to acknowledge our gratitude to President Trump, who is truly a gift to America. He came at a time when we needed him most. He came at a time when We The People were watching our freedoms and rights being stripped away by an out-of-control government. He came at a time when educators were teaching our youth that America was the enemy. He came at a time when American citizens were being forced to cede our country to unvetted foreign invaders and illegal aliens in exchange for Democrat Party votes. He came at a time when Democrats, celebrities, and the media were shaming gun owners and Christians for their conservative beliefs, and where daring to say Merry Christmas was a borderline punishable offense. He gave up a successful business and time spent with his close-knit family to step into a hornet s nest like no one could ever have imagined, but he did it because he believed in the greatness of America, and in defending that greatness, no matter the personal cost. That s what makes his New Years tweet so perfect!President Trump took time tonight, to wish his supporters, enemies the very dishonest Fake News Media and even his haters a Happy and Healthy 2018. As we say goodbye to an incredibly successful 2017, led by an incredibly successful President, we d like to thank President Trump for the incredible sacrifices he s made on behalf of every American (even those who don t yet understand) to Make America Great Again!President Trump tweeted: As our Country rapidly grows stronger and smarter, I want to wish all of my friends, supporters, enemies, haters, and even the very dishonest Fake News Media, a Happy and Healthy New Year. 2018 will be a great year for America! As our Country rapidly grows stronger and smarter, I want to wish all of my friends, supporters, enemies, haters, and even the very dishonest Fake News Media, a Happy and Healthy New Year. 2018 will be a great year for America! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017As a special tribute to President Trump, as he wraps up his unbelievably successful first year, we d like to share this powerful article, written by Evan Sayet. The article brilliantly explains why America loves the fighter Donald J. Trump. HE FIGHTSMy Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I m not bothered by Donald Trump s lack of decorum. They ask if I don t think his tweets are beneath the dignity of the office. Here s my answer:We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized collegiality as John McCain? We tried propriety has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.I don t find anything dignified, collegial or proper about Barack Obama s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don t see anything dignified in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don t see anything statesman-like in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was articulate and polished but in no way was he in the least bit dignified, collegial or proper. The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the 60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one the violent take-over of the universities till today.The problem is, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality, and propriety.With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America s first wartime president in the Culture War.During wartime, things like dignity and collegiality simply aren t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that I cannot spare this man. He fights. General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich.Trump is fighting. And what s particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommel s, he s shouting, You magnificent bastards, I read your book! That is just the icing on the cake, but it s wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he s defeating the Left using their own tactics.That book is Saul Alinsky s Rules for Radicals a book so essential to the Liberals war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clinton s senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer.Trump s tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after the fake media and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri Trump has isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as the most powerful weapon of all. Everyone gets that it s not just CNN in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose reporting is in no way significantly different than CNN s CNN is just a piker.Most importantly, Trump s tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trump s ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices.They can either go high (as Hillary would disingenuously declare of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery.The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright s, church.Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration s cover-up. This makes going high a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next nothing burger and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how it s worse than Nixon. This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before, and faker outrage only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media.And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case l ) libel laws protecting the media, they ve had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly.Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to dox release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasn t meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their deal with him public.Instead, CNN playing by Chicago Rules was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated. This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule.So, to my friends on the Left and the #NeverTrumpers as well do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be collegial and dignified and proper ? Of course, I do. These aren t those times. This is war. And it s a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years.So, say anything you want about this president I get it, he can be vulgar, he can be crude, he can be undignified at times. I don t care. I can t spare this man. He fights.Townhall published this brilliant article on July 13, 2017. It was written by Conservative author and pundit Evan Sayet, who is the author of The KinderGarden of Eden: How The Modern Liberal Thinks. His lecture to the Heritage Foundation on this same topic remains, some ten years later, by far the single most viewed lecture in their history.Here is the link to the video of Evan Sayet s viral lecture on How the modern liberal thinks.;politics;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Donald Trump Sends Out Embarrassing New Year’s Eve Message;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0; Drunk Bragging Trump Staffer Started Russian Collusion Investigation;House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is going to have a bad day. He s been under the assumption, like many of us, that the Christopher Steele-dossier was what prompted the Russia investigation so he s been lashing out at the Department of Justice and the FBI in order to protect Trump. As it happens, the dossier is not what started the investigation, according to documents obtained by the New York Times.Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was drunk in a wine bar when he revealed knowledge of Russian opposition research on Hillary Clinton.On top of that, Papadopoulos wasn t just a covfefe boy for Trump, as his administration has alleged. He had a much larger role, but none so damning as being a drunken fool in a wine bar. Coffee boys don t help to arrange a New York meeting between Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt two months before the election. It was known before that the former aide set up meetings with world leaders for Trump, but team Trump ran with him being merely a coffee boy.In May 2016, Papadopoulos revealed to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russian officials were shopping around possible dirt on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear, the report states. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians role. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness with Special Counsel Robert Mueller s team.This isn t a presidency. It s a badly scripted reality TV show.Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.;News;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;WATCH: SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM DROPS BOMBSHELL… FINALLY Confirms The Fake Russian Dossier Was Used To Obtain FISA Warrant To Spy On Trump;Everyone suspected the sketchy Steele Dossier was what corrupt FBI and DOJ officials used to get the October 2016 FISA warrant against Trump. FBI and DOJ officials refuse to answer that question publicly.Rep Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said in a statement: We now know that the so-called Steele dossier was paid for by the Democratic Party in an effort to gin up negative information regarding then-candidate Trump. What the American people deserve to know is whether the information compiled by Steele on the Democrats dime was used by the Obama administration to obtain approval to conduct surveillance against Trump associates. The FBI has stonewalled producing these documents for months and their production shouldn t be limited to closed door viewing by a small number of members of Congress. The Trump administration should immediately declassify all the documents used to obtain surveillance warrants against Trump or his associates. Immediately after his inauguration, President Trump came out swinging over the fake Russian dossier. He even went as far as to blame the intelligence community. President Trump was immediately criticized for his comments, and the media behaved as though he was insane to even insinuate such a wild theory. As it turns out, he wasn t too far off the mark.CT Despite a hundred different ways congressional investigators have asked the question, and despite numerous on-camera questions to FBI and DOJ officials about the 2016 FISA process, no-one had definitively confirmed the Christopher Steele Russian Dossier was the underlying evidence for the 2016 FISA application to gain wiretaps and electronic surveillance upon presidential candidate Donald Trump. UNTIL NOW.Senator Lindsey Graham just confirmed the sketchy Steele Dossier was used to get the wiretap and surveillance warrant from the FISA court. Brian Kilmeade understood what he was hearing was serious, but didn t quite catch the specific gravity of it. Watch at starting at the 04:10 mark: The back-story to the FISA warrant is the cornerstone. The back-story contains both the FBI and the DOJ scheme. Expose it, remove it, and the entire muh Russia conspiracy collapses under the weight of sunlight This is critical and important because the specific use of the Steele Dossier underpins the BIG UGLY and exposes the entire top-tier apparatus of the FBI Counterintelligence Division (Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, James Baker, Andrew McCabe) and the DOJ National Security Division (John Carlin, Stuart Evans, Mary McCord and Sally Yates), as well as DOJ Bruce Ohr and FBI lawyer Lisa Page directly to conspiracy charges.The 2016 FBI counterintelligence operation was surveillance on the Trump Campaign and was thinly disguised under the fraudulent auspices of a FISA warrant, sold as a defense of U.S. democracy from Russia, which permitted the wiretaps and surveillance etc.The DOJ involvement surrounds legal arguments, processing of FISA applications, and use of the legal system to support the FBI operation with actionable legal framing (against Trump). The DOJ National Security Division carried out that collaboration with the FBI.Tablet Mag did a deep dive into the Fusion-GPS connection to the creation of the Steele Dossier;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;BARBRA STREISAND Gives Up On Dream Of Impeaching Trump Over Fake Trump-Russian Collusion…Tweets HILARIOUS New Reason Trump Should Be Impeached;Barbra Streisand was an Obama sycophant and one of the corrupt Clinton s most loyal fans. She is also part of the Hollywood liberal resistance movement. Much like Rosie O Donnell, Kathy Griffin, and literally hundreds of overpaid celebrities, Barbara Streisand is obsessed with tweeting about how much she hates President Trump. It s Streisand s latest tweet that has conservatives calling her out for her complete and utter stupidity .Streisand tweeted: Collusion or no collusion, @realDonaldTrump should be impeached for sheer stupidity. Collusion or no collusion, @realDonaldTrump should be impeached for sheer stupidity. Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) December 30, 2017Twitter users wasted no time DESTROYING the has been entertainer.This tweet suggested her music and acting awards should be recalled due to the sheer stupidity of the recipient.I can think of a lot of Oscars, Emmy s, Tony s and Grammy s that should be recalled due to sheer stupidity of the recipient. Particularly this one: https://t.co/f4KtzLsOQA AnneMarie (@bulliegirl1959) December 30, 2017Dan Bongino suggested that talent aside, Streisand should be mocked for failing constitutional basics 101.Singing or no singing @BarbraStreisand should be mocked for failing constitutional basics 101. https://t.co/EeFKkiYtOb Dan Bongino (@dbongino) December 30, 2017 Mike truly schooled Streisand when he explained to her, You can t impeach a President, because of your feelings, Barbra. You can't impeach a President, because of your feelings, Barbra. https://t.co/vsmuW223pI Mike (@Fuctupmind) December 30, 2017Barbra got destroyed in one powerful image reminding her that Impeachment requires an actual crime pic.twitter.com/BBW1lEY9hn chach malone (@chachmalone) December 30, 2017OUCH! Rita replied to Barbra that she used to be a fan, but no more. She even took it a step further, and let Barbra know that she was now on her boycott list!!! I was a Fan of you!!! Now you are on my boycott list!!! Rita Reisch Afd (@rita_reisch) December 30, 2017Finally, this Twitter user refers to Barbra Streisand as a has been vs the President.There ya go!! A has been vs the President beaner (@CWhitam) December 30, 2017;left-news;31/12/2017;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +0;YEAR IN REVIEW: 2017 Top Ten Conspiracies;Patrick Henningsen and Shawn Helton 21st Century WireOnce again, we ve arrived at our New Years Eve wrap-up of some of the most compelling and conspiratorial stories of the year. Like in years past, 2017 presented a polarizing political landscape, further exposing the current establishment paradigm. Unlike the establishment gatekeepers, when we use the word conspiracy here, we are talking about a real crime scene. Whether it was the ousting of thousands of western-backed terrorists in Iraq and Syria or a string of known wolf attacks amplified by made-to-order media agitprop, or the heavily manufactured Russia-gate narrative relentlessly pushed by mainstream outlets and Deep State actors it seemed there was no shortage of topsy-turvy stagecraft designed to mislead and confuse the masses at a time when the real world is undergoing some significant geopolitical realignments.As was the case in 2016, there were many high-profile incidents and individual stories which didn t make our annual compendium (but they are worth mentioning) like the red herring laced New Year s Eve mass shooting at Turkey s Reina nightclub that kicked off 2017 in classic Daily Shooter fashion, along with other dubious events like Fort Lauderdale s FBI-known shooter and subsequent CNN media circus. On the political front, it was a banner year for astroturfing starting with The Resistance which spent most of the first 3 months of the year demanding Trump s impeachment before he had served 100 days in office. As part of these efforts, we saw Hollywood and the Democratic Party s choreographed women s march backed by political agitator and perennial globalist George Soros, as well as MoveOn.org and other Soros-backed protests which followed Trump s highly controversial immigration ban, as contentious resignations by key members of the Trump White House loomed large. The stage was then set for Antifa s US riot tour which culminated the Charlottesville riots in Virginia followed by a series of social justice protests over Confederate statues, followed by more extremist left-wing antifascists foot-soldiers like black bloc throwing molotov cocktails and smashing buildings for kicks. And that only scratches the surface of what transpired in 2017.Other notable stories throughout the year included the Trump administration s decision to announce the creation of an Arab NATO headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the world s second-largest state sponsored of terror (US being the largest). That geopolitical gambit then teed up the Trump White House to announce that the US Embassy in Tel Aviv would begin proceedings to move to Jerusalem, a shift which some critics believe is further evidence of an ultra-Zionist agenda encroaching on Israeli-occupied Palestine and the West Bank. On the Asia front, questions emerged over what North Korea actually has in terms of ICBM missiles and a nuclear deterrent, while in the Middle East speculation raged about Saudi Arabia s historic palace purge and sabre rattling in the region. The year then saw the exposure of a giant US-NATO-Saudi weapons trafficking operation using diplomatic flight in order to arm terrorists in Syria and Iraq. 2017 also saw the mainstream media continue to market the media construct known as Bana of Aleppo, expecting the public to believe that an 8 year old girl who could not speak English was running a Twitter account from war-torn (and terrorist-occupied) East Aleppo from the autumn of 2016 all the while waxing poetic about the evil Assad, and the evil Russians and calling for US military intervention in Syria pure propaganda and a clear case of child exploitation. Interestingly, this outlandish Bana propaganda myth campaign has been shamelessly promoted by the multimillionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. 2017 also saw a wave of intelligence releases, set in motion by the CIA, who released more than 12 million documents pertaining to covert war programs, psychic research and the Cold War era, further outlining the symbiotic relationship between the agency and American media. This was followed by Wikileaks exposing much of the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities in their Vault 7 and later in their Vault 8 publications. Towards the end of the year, a new twist in the downing of MH17 revealed an apparent Netherlands cover-up, as another bizarre Daily Shooter event, the Texas Church shooting, would later disappear from headlines. Around the same time frame, new questions also emerged in the Sandy Hook saga concerning prior knowledge of the FBI, as New York was then stricken by a known wolf truck attacker. In December it was finally announced that after being held in prison for two years without trial, the Fed s Bundy Ranch Standoff case was declared a mistrial. However, most of the year s controversial stories were quickly pushed to the back page, buried underneath an avalanche of ready-to-go Weinstein-inspired sex abuse scandals involving Hollywood s elite punctuated by obligatory hashtag campaigns like #MeToo, before snagging a number of high-profile news media personalities and some of Washington s most coveted swamp dwellers. As an onslaught of new accusations flooded the media, the sordid revelation of a Congressional slush fund used to payoff sexual harassment accusers made headlines. The whole situation conjured DC s Conspiracy of Silence regarding tales of sexual misconduct in days past.All in all, it was another year of hyper-real media propaganda, as some stories published by mainstream media led to a cascade of retractions and corrections, and in certain cases, provided an all to convenient mask for other politically charged news throughout much of 2017. Unlike the mainstream media official conspiracies (like Russiagate), these ones are actually real 10. The JFK Files Over the course of 2017, one of America s most compelling conspiracies was reignited following the release of thousands of intelligence files long-held by the CIA and FBI. In late October, the Trump administration called for the release of the remaining JFK files, citing the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act deadline placed into law in 1992. While the material released was reportedly a mix of new and old, some critics declared that the recently declassified files revealed even more startling evidence related to the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. This prompted larger legacy media establishments to provide a murky retelling of the JFK saga. Predictably, a week after the releases, one newer CIA memo stated that any links between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald, were unfounded. In essence, the JFK file releases appear to have been a way for the political powers that be to shut the door on a conspiracy that has an overwhelming amount of information suggesting CIA links not only to Oswald, but many of the characters surrounding the case. In reality though, as newfound interest in the JFK files was reawakened, it cast light on the over five decade old case, reopening the door to coup d tat claims concerning JFK and Cold War era false flag terror. In particular, terror created by Operation GLADIO, a CIA-NATO construct, which utilized covert armies to subvert the political interests of various nations through the implementation of a Cold-War era strategy of tension. The further one digs into America s seedy underworld of organized crime, intelligence operations, unlikely coincidences and secretive relationships concerning the mysterious plot to kill Kennedy, a highly intricate web of activity emerges that points to a compelling case beyond almost any other modern-day conspiracy.9. Grenfell Tower Fire & Cover-Up It was Britain s biggest domestic disaster post WWII, and from the minute this story broke, reports of government and corporate corruption began to surface. This real-life Towering Inferno featured some of the most surreal revelations, including a corrupt government Qango known as TMO (Tenant Management Organisation) who had paid a contractor to install highly flammable petroleum-based cladding on the building, supposedly to meet green sustainability goals but also to cover-up what wealthy property developers deemed as an eye sore (social housing high rise building), part of London s continuous and rampant gentrification property bubble agenda. The controversy did not stop with the fire itself though, as residents and concerned members of the public began to question the abnormally low death count which was being trumpeted by the media and the government agencies. Meanwhile, thousands of residents from Grenfell Tower and the surrounding buildings continued to suffer and mourn the loss of loved ones and friends leaving in indellible scar on the community while the government s elite Common Purpose management class continued on with business as usual. Six months on, the public is still wondering whether anyone will be arrested, or held to account for this unprecedented story of criminal negligence. In one of its most seminal episodes, the SUNDAY WIRE radio show, along with its affiliate the UK Column, drove the investigative agenda early on in this story, with the mainstream media later picking talking points covered by this independent media outlet.8. The Crisis in Yemen Back in January 2015 while the world was focused on the war in Syria, 21WIRE first raised the alarm over Yemen after it noticed the insatiable war-time president Barack Obama, along with Deep State and Pentagon media outlet CNN began drifting out talking points about Yemen. It wasn t long after that, in March 2015, that Saudi Arabia with the full military and political backing of the US and UK, began an undeclared war of aggression against Saudi s neighbor Yemen. Nearly three years on, with tens of thousands slaughtered by Saudi airstrikes dropping their newly purchased US and UK munitions (and even enjoying air refueling by the US military) and with the Saudi and US military blockade which is keeping much-needed humanitarian aid from entering the war-ravaged country leading to mass starvation and disease outbreaks like cholera on the peninsula why isn t the international community calling out the illegal war against Yemen for what it is genocide? In order to prop-up their fake narrative on Yemen, the US and UK mainstream media conglomerates and their state propaganda directors from intelligence agency information warfare units have concocted a new batch of official disinformation lies and myths used to muddy the waters of this important discussion and ultimately justify their slaughter and arms sales bonanza in Yemen. On balance, what the US, UK and Saudi Arabia have done to Yemen is by orders of magnitude worse than what Nazi Germany did to its neighbors in the initial phase of WWII. Nothing less than a new Nuremberg Trial will be suitable to help correct this act of international barbarism.7. London s GLADIO-style Attacks On March 22nd, an apparent two-pronged terror attack stretched from London s Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square. In the days leading up to the London attacks, it was revealed that Met Police rehearsed a terrifyingly realistic drill on the River Thames prior to yet another known wolf act of terror taking place. Adding to the drama, the London attacks occurred exactly one year after the Brussels airport bombings. In addition, the bizarre and unexpected event took place during a massive uptick of Western allied involvement in the Syrian conflict and in less than 24 hours, London authorities revealed that the British-born attacker named Khalid Masood, (after media outlets erroneously reported the wrong suspect) was already well-known to MI5 and had worked in Saudi Arabia sometime between 2005-2008. Shortly after the attack, it was revealed that eye-witnesses reported seeing multiple assailants at the crime scene, this was something that directly contradicted the official story. In fact, in those reports, it was suggested that at least two individuals participated in the large-scale attack in one of the most heavily surveilled parts of London. This aspect of the case was quickly buried by major media outlets, echoing other high-profile cases involving known wolf terrorists. In recent years, there s been a pattern of multiple suspects often witnessed or said to be involved in other terror-related events. This proved to be the case in the aftermath of the Nice, France truck attack, as well as the Brussels airport bombing in 2016. Rather incredibly or unbelievably, London s acting Police Commissioner Craig Mackey, just so happened to be at the scene to witness the Parliament Square attack on Pc Keith Palmer. All in all, the latest symbolically charged ISIS-approved attack on the verge of spring, appeared to be an effort to polarize the perception of Western viewers with yet another round of wartime propaganda, while also providing a media smoke screen for recent US military action in Syria. By early summer, just after the Manchester arena bombing, London once again became a target of a purported multi-pronged terror event right on the heels of the UK s hotly contested 2017 general election. Afterwards, a number of questions were raised following the London Bridge attacks, just as there were following the Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge attacks and the Manchester Arena attack. It s important to note the common thread between each suspicious event, and the recent UK attacks are no exception there s now indisputable evidence linking MI5 and MI6 British security services to various known wolves prior to carrying out the terror crimes mentioned above. The precarious relationship between security and terror is an ongoing pattern seen after almost every major terror attack on Western soil. Throughout 2017, the London attacks seemed to increase racial and ethnic tensions in the West, while also pushing the public into accepting a more direct military intervention in Syria, and new police state measures and surveillance powers in the UK prompting us to ask, who benefited the most from the London Attacks? We d say the answer to that question is pretty obvious now 6. Manchester s Known Wolf Arena Attack Another day, another conspiratorial crime. In this case, the public was witness to yet another known wolf terror attack allegedly carried out by an ISIS-inspired individual who, as with numerous other cases, was under the gaze of MI5. The man named in the Manchester bombing attack, Salman Abedi, was also tied to a terror group supported by NATO in Libya during the operation to oust Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011. The Manchester arena attack proved to be more than just blowback from security operations gone awry, it provided further evidence of complicity on behalf of the West in the War On Terror era. While some researchers and analysts were a buzz with the numerological synchronicities associated with the Manchester attack, others noted some very real political circumstances and significant timelines surrounding this apparent mass-tragedy in Manchester. The event just happened to arrive on the heels of a monolithic arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth $110 billion dollars that will total $350 billion over the next 10 years, and only shortly after the Manchester attack, there were US-led coalition airstrikes supposedly targeting ISIS in both Syria and Iraq that killed 121 civilians in the process. The strikes led to increased tension, placing external pressure on the Russian-led Astana Peace Agreement in Syria, while continuing to benefit the strategic movements of ISIS in Syria. The really damning link however, was exposed by one major UK Government eyesore after the Manchester attacks: the revelation that a community of outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists were in fact living in close proximity to the Manchester attacker Abedi, and directly connected to Abedi himself. This was a deeply troubling development for a public unaware of the nearby danger, as British security services and officials allowed this thriving group of fighters to reside in the UK seemingly without consequence or disclosure of their previous activities until the Manchester attack. So naturally, when it was revealed that Ramadan Abedi (the father of the purported Manchester suicide bomber) was also a member of the UK government-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and was believed to have been a part of LIFG during the NATO-backed regime change operation in Libya in 2011 it only raised more questions concerning the attack. It s worth noting, Libya s militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was also a part of the Mujahideen fighters closely linked to Bin Laden who became known as al-Qaeda. In fact, Belhadj returned to his home country [in 1995] as head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an underground paramilitary organisation dedicated to Gaddafi s downfall. Over the years, Belhadj was incarcerated and turned loose back into the field after being rendered by the CIA and British security services. As of 2015, despite the Manchester attack links to LIFG, the group is still on the US State Department s Delisted Foreign Terrorist Organizations. In the days after the attack, authorities released CCTV imagery apparently depicting the Manchester attacker Abedi, in what appeared to be a way to dramatize the bombing through emotionally charged imagery, as the media obscured other facts and connections observed in the aftermath of the attack itself. The Manchester attack was similar to other high-profile incidents used to distort public opinion in the wake of media styled mass-tragedies.5. The Las Vegas Mass Shooting October 1st marked the return of the Great American Mass Shooting a real record-breaker, complete with a shocking mile-long crime scene that stretched from the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino to the nearby Route 91 Festival, where thousands of concertgoers suddenly became a target. Although America had seen a host of smaller, less sensationalized mass shootings throughout the course of 2017, including the bizarre Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting and the strange Programmed to Kill Texas Church shooting, the high-profile Las Vegas calamity resuscitated the trauma inducing imagery so prevalent in the post-9/11 War On Terror era. This made-for-TV event was designed for media shock and awe, like the 9/11 of Mass Shootings. Over the past several years, 21WIRE has chronicled many bizarre shootings and mass casualty incidents that have rippled across America and Europe. These events have become a new kind of ritualized crimescape moving well beyond security concerns, but now accompanied by a complete range of socio-political mainstream media talking points including race, religion, gun reform , social media concerns and domestic extremism while concurrently obscuring and obfuscating the forensic reality of the crimes themselves. We re told that this tragic shooting attack was carried out by a classic lone gunman one individual without a criminal past (or nay past, as far as we could tell) but there proved to be much more to the story. Adding to this hyper-real incident, the main suspect in the Las Vegas tragedy was also revealed to be a multi-millionaire players club member, 64 year-old Stephen Paddock. With no motive and no criminal history, Las Vegas police were tasked with uncovering details of a crime overseen by billionaire bosses at MGM Resorts International and the FBI. As authorities failed to uncover a clear motive for the crime, police scanner audio, along with eye-witness testimony suggested that multiple shooters may have been at the scene, although this aspect was downplayed by mainstream media. This was quickly followed by several official revisions in the timeline of the shooting and even the crime scene itself, as evidenced by this disastrous press conference which failed to yield any new information in the case. The star-witness of the shooting, Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos, also vanished and was declared missing right before a major media interview, only to resurface much later on the oddest of media venues, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, giving media gatekeepers the chance to run interference for DeGeneres s slot machine business partners at MGM. Along the way, bizarre media performances by Paddock s brother, Eric Paddock, only prompted more questions and deepened the mystery surrounding this surreal case. While the public waited for MGM to release CCTV footage of the alleged shooter Paddock, not one tape materialized, except for an older tape from 2011. Staged photos of the Mandalay Bay crime scene led to other forensic questions concerning the weaponry used, compounding other acoustic anomalies already noted. Other confusing elements of the case included the missing hard drive from Paddock s laptop, another brother s arrest, the wiring of $100,000 to his live-in girlfriend s (Marilou Danley) home country, the Philippines, Paddock s previous employment at the predecessor company of Lockheed Martin, a reported break-in at one of his homes after the shooting, the absurd insertion of an ISIS-inspired motive (which a number of dubious click-bait media outlets ran with), and later seeing a back drop of active shooter related drills and government activity, along with details suggesting Paddock may not have been alone and much more. In the search for answers in America s largest-ever mass shooting, months later, we still have yet to see any CCTV footage of the alleged killer or his whereabouts leading up to the tragedy, as he moved in and around Las Vegas. Imagine that: no CCTV footage. While some have attempted to make sense of the Las Vegas shooting tragedy, there are reports of a major push to revamp security in the hospitality industry through the use of gunfire detection systems, X-ray, body scanners and facial recognition in the wake of this confusing, if not partly manufactured event. The popular media concept of a lone wolf killer in today s world has reprogrammed the public mind in the very same way that the serial killer phenomenon did decades ago. This new fear-based saga has ushered in a string of improbable Hollywood-style scenarios, inducing a frozen apathy across the masses. Rather than looking deeply at crime scene forensics or pouring over piles of collected data, these Daily Shooter crimes hold the public psyche hostage until the next unexplained mass tragedy. Until the next episode 4. Syria s Sarin Gas False Flag In less than 24 hours after the highly dubious alleged chemical attack on April 4th (reported to be Sarin gas by Western media) in Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib province of Syria, wide-scale unsubstantiated condemnation laid blame at the doorstep of the Syrian government and Russia following the release of video footage that had yet to be forensically scrutinized. In fact, the mainstream media flooded the airwaves with a bevy of circumstantial and speculative evidence a far cry from actual hard evidence. Leaders in Washington and Western media outlets once again set the stage for wider military intervention in Syria. Days after the release of a forensically unproven chemical attack out of Khan Shaykhun, US President Donald Trump ordered a military strike on the Syrian government s Shayrat Air Base in response to the alleged chemical attack in Idlib. Trump s missile strike won him instant praise from the Pentagon media oracle CNN, as well as giddy celebrations by war-mongering neocons in the US. Perhaps the most telling aspect of Syria s most recent mass casualty terror tragedy, was the suspicious involvement of the US-UK-NATO-Gulf state backed NGO known as the White Helmets a group who once again was witnessed in wartime imagery that was not only full of anomalies but a production designed to evoke an emotional response rather than one based in rationality. Since their inception in late 2013, the White Helmets have largely conducted their so-called rescue operations in rebel-terrorist held areas in Syria, while producing an unprecedented amount of western-oriented war propaganda for nations deeply invested in arming and backing rebel-terrorists vying for regime change in Syria. Nearly two weeks after the alleged sarin gas attack, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore Postol directly disputed claims concerning the official US report regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack out of Khan Shaykhun in the rebel-held terrorist-occupied Idlib province of Syria. Postol s initial analysis, along with its addendum, appeared to echo what MIT research affiliate and former US Congressional staffer Subrata Ghoshroy observed in the aftermath of the Syrian chemical incident in East Ghouta, Damascus in 2013. In addition, other award-winning American journalists like Seymour Hersh and Gareth Porter also exposed the sarin attack narrative as a fabrication promulgated by a corrupt OPCW but their reports were muted by mainstream gatekeepers. Both apparent attacks in Damascus and Idlib, were claimed through the presentation of dubious video imagery and suspicious photographs as a main source of evidence. Despite the absence of any real forensic investigation, the western media proclaimed certainty over images and videos largely supplied by the dubious NGO known as the White Helmets. It would later be revealed that on April 4th, the Syrian Air Force had also struck a warehouse in Idlib where chemical weapons were said to have been produced and stockpiled by US-backed militants. What was most disturbing, was that many in US-UK leadership seemed desperate for the public to buy into any WMD claims without concrete proof and in the process, they deliberately pushed heavily propagandized imagery presented on social media as proof of the as yet forensically unproven sarin gas attack. In essence, the whole event became a wag the dog moment ensnaring not only the White House, but many leaders in the UK as well.3. White Helmets Fraud The White Helmets. Who are they, who created them, who funds them, and which master do they serve in Syria? In the US and in Europe, these fundamental questions routinely go unanswered by the western mainstream media organizations and government officials. Since first appearing on the western media scene in late 2013, the UK and US government-funded pseudo NGO known as the White Helmets has achieved cult-like status as their pictures adorn the front pages of newspapers and CNN breaking news segments about Syria. For the last 4 years, their principle function has been to produce a steady stream of anti-Assad regime and anti-Russian propaganda tailored for western audiences. Since 2015, 21WIRE led the way in asking these important questions, and in 2017 the overwhelming pressure of mounting evidence of the White Helmet fraud eventually led to various shoddy academics in the US and in the UK mainstream media outlets attacking 21WIRE and its writers for challenging the official White Helmets narrative and for exposign how the UK government has been channeling hundreds of millions of pounds into terrorist-occupied areas of Syria under the thin guise building civil society (US and UK trojan horse) organizations in Syria. Establishment attacks included one mainstream media outlet promoting the White Helmets, The Guardian newspaper in the UK. According to The Guardian anyone who dared to question their official government-sanctioned narrative were conspiracy theorists and somehow part of a secret Russian-backed propaganda campaign. Despite mountains of evidence including various fake rescue videos, colluding in acts of murder and extreme violence and evidence which clearly depicts the dodgy search and rescue groups members as dual members in armed al Qaeda terrorist affiliates operating in rebel-held opposition areas of Syria western mainstream media are still determined to play dumb on this issue, which only goes to prove just how ignorant mainstream gatekeepers are as to the realities on the ground in Syria, or worse how controlled are mainstream editors desks by the western intelligence apparatus. Either way, Toto has already drawn the Wizard s curtain all the way back and it s only a question of time before western media apologists and clueless politicians retreat into full no comment mode on this issue.2. The Russia-Gate PsyOp It s been 18 months since the Democratic Party and the US mainstream media launched its Russia-gate narrative, claiming that Moscow had hacked the DNC, John Podesta and somehow influenced the result of the US 2016 Presidential Election. 18 months later, there s still no evidence to substantiate this mainstream conspiracy theory making Russiagate easily the biggest fake news story of the year. What s most telling about this official conspiracy theory (as it turns out, it s the mainstream that peddles the grandest conspiracy theories) is that its proponents have to resort to publishing repeated lies and wild exaggerations in order to maintain the pillars supporting their narrative. So desperate were the New York Times to tie Trump to Russia that it even claimed that the Russians where creating Facebook pages about puppies in order to confuse and mislead vulnerable American voters. New York Times also had to retract their central lie which claimed that 17 US Intelligence agencies had all agreed that the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election but still we hear legions of mindless journalists and shaky politicians like Adam Schiff (who, not surprisingly is also promoting the White Helmets) repeating that same old canard. As part of Washington s new McCarthyite red scare reboot, the US government labeled Russian international media network RT, and RT America as foreign agents forcing the channel and its journalists to register with the US government under old outdated pre-WWII espionage legislation. Other fake claims by US media include Kremlin bots deployed on Facebook to mess with the fragile minds of potential voters on social media, and CNN s all-time classic: an Exclusive! no less claiming that the Russians somehow infiltrated the computer game Pokemon Go in order to sow confusion among Americans. Honestly, we couldn t make it up if we tried. What s beyond ironic is that the same media who has been constantly crying fake news! as their prime talking point to explain how Trump beat Clinton has been dutifully recycling their own fake news narrative for over a year now. This one will surely go down in history as the biggest political hoax of all-time and all of the mainstream media outlets who helped promulgate this myth should also go down with it. Sadly, too many mentally-challenged lawmakers in the US, UK and Europe are actually basing their foreign policies of this mainstream fake news myth which is all too convenient for an ever-inflating the US defense budget, NATO s breakneck expansion eastward, and also for Brussels new roll-out of its EU Army 1. Fake News 2.0 2017 was the year of fake news. Last year, we crowned Fake News 1.0 as our top conspiracy, but this past year has seen it ascend to an entirely new level. From the beginning, this faux crisis had a clear set of political objectives. The first was to provide a scapegoat for Hillary Clinton s catastrophic imploding presidential run, and secondly, to try and prop-up the establishment s official conspiracy theory that somehow the Russians were spreading fake news across social media and alternative media websites in order to help Donald Trump win the election. On this front, many of us are indebted to Trump for branding CNN with the meme that keeps sticking, as the President hit CNN s bumbling White House correspondent Jim Acosta, with Trump pointing to Acosta and saying, You are fake news! live on national TV. If was a glorious moment for sure. Newspapers like the Washington Post performed a key role for the US Deep State by pushing-out fictional news features like the one claiming 200 of the leading alternative media websites were part of some Kremlin-orchestrated network of websites carrying out active measures (a defunct Cold War term) propaganda against the American people. The Post even presented a bogus anonymous construct, a website called PropOrNot in order to try and make their conspiracy theory look official. Around the same time, a radical progressive academic from Merrimack College in Massachusetts published a fake news list a database and virtual blacklist design;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; +d to defame and slander any independent media outlets who happened to veer from the party line and challenge the policies of Hillary Clinton and Obama. Dr. Zimdars heavily politicized list was promoted by the LA Times which; like the fraudulent story published in The Post; claimed that hundreds of alternative media websites were producing fake news and conspiracy stories and therefore were unreliable as information sources. It wasn t long before the establishment began referencing these politicized lists; holding them up as proof of some crisis in what the liberal intelligensia proudly dubbed a post-truth world. Despite the establishment s insistence on pushing this faux crisis; an increasing number of smart news consumers came to realize that for at least the last century and half; the establishment s tightly-controlled information syndicate has been able to manufacture its own consensus reality through the use of their own official fake news. By channeling public opinion in this way; the mainstream press has helped facilitate a number of engineered outcomes including war. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the fake news circus; is that Silicon Valley monopolies like Google and Facebook have taken it upon themselves to manipulate their online platforms in such a way that they are choosing which websites and news sources will be de-ranked and effectively hidden from the view of most users; and; in the case of Facebook censoring real information presented by independent; non mainstream journalists; but allowing political operatives to abuse their problematic communitarian information policing system to strike off offensive content. As a result a number of leading alternative commentators have been banned from Facebook for completely illegitimate reasons. Finally; we can reveal the 2.0 aspect of the establishment s fake news faux crisis a false pretext to unleash a wide-ranging program of internet censorship and it s already begun. Reasonable people should be under no illusions: Google Inc; Facebook and global monopolies like them it are the closest thing to a classic fascist-corporatist behemoth you will find in the world today. Both Google and Facebook are both actively colluding with big government and other mainstream media partners; and are guilty of stealth censoring through either their A.I. filtering algorithms; or through flagged websites on a database used to de-rank leading independent and anti-war sites like 21st Century Wire; Anti-War.com; Consortium News; Global Research and countless others. Furthermore; Facebook is now on record as admitting to colluding with both the US and Israeli governments to delete undesirable accounts. This is a corporation which is now actively and opening violating US laws; which is engaging in criminal activity by any other definition. These are not the only threats posed by these corporate fascists. The very same corporate digital barons have also been busy colluding with politicians in order to repeal Net Neutrality as part of the elites final end-run to marginalize and ultimately crush all independent and dissenting voices online who threaten the primacy of mainstream groupthink; and who could get broader traction among the population if the playing field was truly a level one. Not only is this illegal under antitrust laws; but it represents a brutal form of fascism. It s now clearer than ever that Silicon Valley executives and government bureaucrats cannot be trusted to manage the most important public utility of the new century the information super highway.So if the mainstream press can no longer be trusted; then who can you trust for objectivity and accuracy? Again;" we have to ask the question: who s watching the watchers? Answer: We are.HAPPY NEW YEAR.SEE PREVIOUS TOP TEN CONSPIRACIES: 2016 Top Ten Conspiracies2015 Top Ten Conspiracies2014 Top Ten ConspiraciesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV""";US_News;31/12/2017 +0;JUST IN: CROOKED DOJ OFFICIAL Didn’t Reveal That His Wife Was Being Paid By Fusion GPS to Get Dirt on Trump [Video];"We ve been covering the curious case of DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr What they did is so corrupt and underhanded! Nellie worked for the opposition research firm hired by the Democrats to get dirt on Trump (see below). Her husband would take whatever Nellie produced about Trump and hand it over to the FBI! Unreal! This should be jail time because of the omission of the conflict of interest being an ethics violation. So far, it appears as though Bruce Ohr has just been demoted.NOW WE FIND OUT THAT BRUCE OHR HID THE FUSION GPS PAYMENTS TO HIS WIFE:Daily Caller reports:Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, did not disclose that Fusion GPS, which performed that research at the Democratic National Committee s behest, was paying his wife, and did not obtain a conflict of interest waiver from his superiors at the Justice Department, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.The omission may explain why Ohr was demoted from his post as associate deputy attorney general after the relationship between Fusion GPS and his wife emerged and Fusion founder Glenn Simpson acknowledged meeting with Ohr. Willfully falsifying government ethics forms can carry a penalty of jail time, if convicted.The Democratic National Committee (DNC) hired Fusion GPS to gather and disseminate damning info about Trump, and they in turn paid Nellie Ohr, a former CIA employee with expertise in Russia, for an unknown role related to the dossier. Bruce Ohr then brought the information to the FBI, kicking off a probe and a media firestorm.The DOJ used it to obtain a warrant to wiretap a Trump adviser, but didn t disclose to the judge that the DNC and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s campaign had funded the research and that Ohr had a financial relationship with the firm that performed it which could be, it turns out, because Ohr doesn t appear to have told his supervisors. Some have suggested that the financial payments motivated Bruce Ohr to actively push the case.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON NELLIE OHR:This is a big deal even though we re sure the main stream media will ignore it. The connection between a now demoted DOJ official and Fusion GPS just got closer. His wife worked for the opposition research firm responsible for THE ANTI-TRUMP DOSSIER! The plot thickens